City calls special meeting Tuesday to discuss Salvation Army settlement

Apparently a settlement has been reached between the City of Yuma and The Salvation Army.

The council has called for a special meeting on Tuesday to potentially approve the settlement agreement. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chambers, 1 City Plaza.

The agenda also includes a ceremony to honor outgoing council members Edward Thomas, who was defeated in the November general election, and Jacob Miller, who did not seek reelection. Miller earlier told the Yuma Sun that he wants to spend more time with his young children and be able to coach their sports teams.

As previously reported by the Yuma Sun, the city filed a lawsuit against The Salvation Army in December 2018, claiming that the church and nonprofit organization’s decision to end its affiliation with the national Boys and Girls Club of America violated the terms of the agreement which transferred the cityowned property to the nonprofit in January 2003.

A couple of months before the lawsuit, The Salvation Army ended its longtime affiliation with the Boys and Girls Club and announced that the facility would be turned into a community center available for adults to use in the evenings.

This angered people who donated to a $1.6 million capital fundraising campaign by The Salvation Army to enlarge the building that housed the Boys and Girls Club, with the nonprofit making no mention of potential changes to the affiliation or building use. A new building and renovated older building, located at 1100 S. 13th Ave., were dedicated in October 2016.

Most of the charity’s local advisory board and some employees quit as a result. Board members said they didn’t have any say in the decision, and some joined with other donors to hire a local attorney to represent their interests.

The Salvation Army filed a counterclaim saying the city had no right to the Boys and Girls Club property, and the nonprofit had spent more than $800,000 of its own money on the expansion as donations fell short and construction costs escalated.

Last week, the council introduced a proposed ordinance that would authorize city staff to move forward with efforts to reacquire property that used to house a Boys and Girls Club before The Salvation Army severed its ties to the youth organization.