City plans to sue Salvation Army
Mayor: Yuma will seek to regain property
Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls announced Friday the city is preparing a lawsuit against the Salvation Army over the nonprofit’s decision to end its Boys and Girls Club affiliation after 16 years and change the Yuma location into a mul-tigeneraltional community center.
Nicholls held a noon press conference at the corner of 11th Street and 13th Avenue, on the sidewalk bordering the club, before any children were to arrive for the after-school program.
He said the legal action could be filed as early as next week, and the city would seek to regain the property behind him, which was transferred to the Salvation Army for a nominal fee in 2002 after it took over operation of the club.
Officials would then find another group to operate it as a Boys and Girls Club, he said.
“The donation of the public building and the public property was intended for a public use, specifically a secular youth program,” Nicholls said. “You cannot
take the property under the pretense that you are going to continue the public benefit, and then turn it into a private, religious organization youth benefit.”
The mayor also said the club, if it does become a Salvation Army-branded Red Shield Community Center Jan. 1, could start to get zoning violation notices, due to lack of parking for a multi-use campus.
The city issued a conditional use permit for the club in 2015, before construction began on a $1.6 million expansion project funded by local donors.
“This site does not have the parking that it would normally need for that use. However, the discussion when that conditional use permit was granted was that this use is not normal.
“People don’t drive here and stay here. They drop their children off, people are brought by bus; there’s no need for a large parking lot,” he said.
By changing the use of the property, “They will be invalidating the parking variance, which means they will invalidate the conditional use permit, and they will no longer be able to utilize the building,” the mayor said.
A group including Deputy Mayor Gary Knight and City Councilman Mike Shelton and former Salvation Army advisory board members, including Danny Bryant and Tom Kelly, stood behind Nicholls during the announcement.
Yuma attorney Barry Olsen also spoke, saying he had been retained by several major donors to the club’s expansion and they were prepared to file their own claim against the nonprofit, on the basis it was not living up to promises made to them during the capital fundraising campaign in 2014-15.
“At this time, my clients are hoping we can start a productive dialogue with the Salvation Army and work with them to keep the Boys and Girls Club open and its operations intact, to serve the boys and girls of this community and remain an important asset,” he said.
City officials are hoping to open communications with regional leaders of the Salvation Army, who made the decision about the change. “There needs to be meaningful discussion, which has not been happening,” Olsen said.
A short distance away on the Boys and Girls Club property, Salvation Army Yuma Coordinator Capt. Jeff Breazeale and other leaders and volunteers stood by with coffee and donuts, and one of its iconic Red Kettle donation buckets, for those who had come out for the press conference.
He did say the youth after-school programs set to replace the Boys and Girls Club activities next month are secular and don’t include any compulsory religious content for the children participating.
“We know everyone doesn’t have the same ideas as we do,” he said. “There is no club ministry participation.
“At Christmas, parents are told they’re welcome to participate in the Salvation Army’s holiday activities with their children, but we leave it up to the community they want to do it. Nothing is forced,” he said.
Later Friday, he said the Salvation Army was still working on its response to the press conference.
The decision to shift to the Red Shield format was announced at the end of October, and the negative reaction was swift from city officials and most of the sitting board of directors, who resigned in protest.
Bryant has condemned the Salvation Army’s action numerous times on Facebook and spoke to the City Council during the public comment section of a November meeting.
He said after the press conference Friday that the credibility of every other Yuma charity is being undermined by the Salvation Army’s actions, and will make it more difficult to convince donors that their money will be spent in the community and on the programs
they intend them to be.
Nicholls said the decision to take legal action was “not taken lightly” by the City Council, because “We don’t want to affect any of the good work the Salvation Army has done for the local Boys and Girls Club, or any of the other areas they work in. But some things need to be taken care of.”
He said the city may not begin citing the new Red Shield center as soon as it opens, depending on the Salvation Army’s response to its new legal stance, but “there is the potential for that to happen.”
The Boys and Girls Club has had a presence in Yuma since the 1980s, succeeding a Boys Club which began about 20 years earlier.
The city asked the Salvation Army to take over management of the club in 2002, as a way to restore confidence after its previous executive director was arrested and convicted for embezzlement.
A spokeswoman for the Boys and Girls Club of America could not be reached for comment Friday. Nicholls said the organization has been contacted at the national level, but has not taken a position on the issue.