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EAGLE (Idaho Statesman) — Jeronimo Lopez was rushed to the emergency room after a dialysis appointment in Eagle.

Before the Oct. 28 appointment last year, the 67-year-old Eagle resident was on a bus that picked him up at the Eagle Senior Center to take him to his appointment, but the bus driver had not secured him in his wheelchair for the trip, according to the Lopez family. The driver made a sharp maneuver, and Lopez “was launched from his seat and hit his head,” a claim filed by the family stated.

After his dialysis appointment, a different driver picked him up, noticed he was acting strangely, and rushed him to a St. Luke’s Health System emergency room, according to the claim filed with the city of Eagle. At the hospital, Lopez had intracranial bleeding from “trauma to his head” and was transferred to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, where he died on Nov. 9, a week and a half after the bus ride.

That incident is among factors that led the Eagle City Council to end the Eagle Senior Center’s lease of a city-owned building. The city plans to take over programming for senior citizens and evict the center from its longtime home on State Street.

The Senior Center is a nonprofit that offers exercise classes, pool, bingo and other games. It also hosts lunches at noon on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and dinners at 4:30 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays.

EAGLE COUNCIL MEMBERS CITE SAFETY PROBLEMS

The Senior Center, Valley Regional Transit and the city of Eagle are subjects of a $5 million wrongful death tort claim from Lopez’s family. A tort claim is a civil claim made against a state or local government for a wrongful or negligent act. A tort claim is a precursor to a lawsuit, though not all plaintiffs follow up unanswered claims by suing.

The family filed the claim Dec. 12. The claim said medical bills from St. Luke’s were over $15,000 and the family had not yet received bills from Saint Alphonsus.

According to his online obituary, Lopez was born in Valle de Santiago, Guanaguato, Mexico. He married Maria Conception Martinez, and they had seven children.

Valley Regional Transit provided transportation for the Eagle Senior Center, but the center had its own transportation employees who drove and loaded the buses.

At a City Council meeting Feb. 14, council members Helen Russell and Brad Pike, who were liaisons to the center, said they had grown concerned about safety problems and the center’s finances.

Russell said there was also another “incident” on a bus that was being driven by a Eagle Senior Center employee “related to not safely securing a wheelchair passenger.”

After the incidents, Russell said, Valley Regional Transit conducted a safety assessment and decided to remove the transportation service from the Senior Center and cancel its contract effective Jan. 27.

The city did not respond to a Statesman request for comment on the tort claim.

EAGLE SENIOR CENTER GETS A DEADLINE TO MOVE OUT

Russell, who is a member of the senior center, said it does not operate on a written budget.

“At the (senior center) board meetings, there was a simple profit-and-loss report printed, and there was never a balance sheet,” Russell said at the council meeting. “We never knew the health of the senior center financially, and we could see that was becoming a problem.”

The city leases the building to the center for $1 a year, and it cleans and maintains the building. Now, the city has notified the Senior Center that it has four months to move out.

Lindsey Meza-Turner, a former paid employee of the center, called the decision “a shame” and “a great loss to the senior community.”

“Working at the Eagle Senior Center made me feel like they were surrogate grandmothers and grandfathers,” Meza-Turner told the Statesman in a Facebook message. “It was a failure of leadership that brought the decline of the senior center, but more than anything it was a lack of resources and funding by the city of Eagle that were the nail in the coffin.”

Several Eagle Senior Center members spoke at the Feb. 14 meeting after the council members decided to terminate the building lease. Many asked that the city give the senior center another few months to work on its budget and safety concerns before terminating the lease.

Rayne Merrywood, an Eagle Senior Center member, said the center “changed “ her life.

“I just want to say dollars and cents (are) not always such an important factor in the quality of life,” Merrywood said. “I know it’s expensive to run the property, maintain the property and so on, but you have to look at the other side of it. It is the quality of life that it gives to the people who participate in the senior center.”

MAYOR: WE’LL KEEP PROVIDING SENIOR SERVICES

Mayor Jason Pierce promised to continue the work of the senior center through city-run events.

In a statement on the city’s website, Pierce said the city plans to “continue to provide the same senior-focused activities at the Eagle Senior Center and engage our terrific Recreation Department to increase programming opportunities…”

The city plans to hold an open house during the four-month period before the center’s lease is up to “hear insights, concerns and recommendations.”

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