A committee of Issaquah city councilors are leaning toward continuing their contract with the managers of the city’s troubled senior center on Dec. 21. But the organization, Issaquah Valley Seniors, will have to make some significant changes to benefit its members’ voting rights, they said.

For the better part of 2015, the Issaquah Senior Center has been the subject of a public dispute between management and members who say they were banned for questioning the center’s finances. Councilors began publicly questioning the city’s relationship with the center at the start of budget considerations in October and, earlier this month, Issaquah Valley Seniors was removed from a list of nonprofit grant beneficiaries while administrative staff planned for the possibility of providing senior services themselves.

The council Services and Safety Committee met Tuesday night to consider two potential bills to recommend to council — one in which the city would continue cautiously with Issaquah Valley Seniors, and one that would see the city strike out on its own.

The bill authorizing a continued contract with Issaquah Valley Seniors would enact probationary status on the majority of the funding provided by the city. Under that plan, the city would renew its contract with the nonprofit for only the first six months of the year and give the nonprofit less than 40 percent of a $99,000 grant to cover that time period. A continued contract and payment on the remainder of the grant would be contingent on the findings and response to a management audit over the first three months of the year.

Under the second bill, the city would throw its senior center contract overboard and staff would spend the first month of 2016 getting a city-run senior program up and running for a Feb. 1 launch.

“We had to ask ourselves, what’s the minimum that needs to get done?” City Administrator Bob Harrison said.

According to presentations by human services coordinator Martha Sassorossi and Community Center recreation supervisor Ross Hoover, seniors would minimally need a public gathering place and access to medical services, such as blood pressure and cholesterol examinations.

Finding a place for the seniors could be a point of difficulty under the plan. Issaquah Valley Seniors holds a lease on the Creek Way senior center building through 2022. Staff estimated the cost to provide those services could range between $120,000 to $210,000. Achieving a cost close to the lower estimate would depend on Issaquah Valley Seniors managers surrendering the organization’s lease, Bob Harrison said.

Councilmember Josh Schaer considered whether that might be possible, but councilor Tola Marts said he wasn’t so sure.

“If wishes were fishes, we’d all swim in riches,” Marts said.

Alternatively, the city could lease Gibson Hall on Newport Way from Kiwanis, Sassorossi said. But the facility would be unavailable on Wednesdays, necessitating an alternative site like the Community Center.

“I don’t like either of these,” Councilmember Eileen Barber said, noting her distaste for the expense and logistics of a start-up program, as well as the apparent breakdown of camaraderie at the existing senior center.

Ultimately, the committee chose to recommend pursuing a continued contract with Issaquah Valley Seniors after adding further conditions. Those conditions included a lift on the no-trespass orders issued against its members, open availability of the senior center bylaws and an open election for the senior center board.

The conditions also included the striking of a provision in the contract waiving a portion of the lease to allow the center to sublet city space to religious organizations. The revision was made due to criticism by public commenters that the nonprofit center could be profiting from a current arrangement with a local church.

Whether that contract is authorized on Dec. 21 will partially depend on whether Issaquah Valley Seniors leaders agree to the additional conditions, Marts said.

But Inez Petersen, a lawyer representing banned senior center members and their supporters in a recently filed defamation case against the center, said the committee didn’t go far enough. She contended that center managers abused their authority and violated her clients’ civil rights when they trespassed them from city-owned property.

“It’s so upsetting to me tonight that you could step over that and ignore it,” Petersen said. “… A leopard does not change its spots.”

On the no-trespass orders issued against Regina Poirier and former senior board member David Waggoner, senior center leaders cited the reason for the issuance as elder abuse and harassment, respectively.

“Nobody has explained to me what that harassment was,” Waggoner said at the committee meeting. However, he noted that his ban occurred the month after he was overwhelmingly elected to the senior board and began asking questions about finances.

He added that Poirier, who was banned for life, now has terminal cancer. He said he wanted to walk her into the center one last time, even if it meant violating his no-trespass order.