Coralville Civil Service

Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting Minutes January 28, 2019 7:00 p.m. Coralville Recreation Center Meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. In attendance were Commission members Fred Fevold, Kyle McEvilly, and Marti Mount. Also in attendance was Council Member Jill Dodds and Director of Parks and Recreation Sherri Proud. New member Kyle McEvilly was introduced. McEvilly is a Senior Academic Advisor. He enjoys hiking the trails in Coralville, running, and playing racquetball. He is looking forward to being involved on the Commission. There were no Citizen comments. Minutes were approved for the December 17, 2018 Commission meeting. Moved to approve by Mount, seconded by McEvilly. Officers were elected for 2019. Fred Fevold was re-elected as Chair and Alex Taylor was re-elected as Vice Chair. Moved by Mount, seconded by McEvilly. Proud reviewed the proposed FY2020 budget for Brown Deer Golf Club. Between weather and low event numbers, the budget for FY18 and projected for FY19 are going to come in under projections. Staff are working to keep expenses down to match the lower revenue projections. FY20 budget was presented as prepared to date. Staff are still working to look at ways to reduce expenses because of anticipated flat sales for events. Staff are also working with the Marriott staff on ways to increase events. At current booking rate of leads to contracts of 71%, we estimate that we need to generate 75- 80 more leads to bring events back up to a level that will generate revenue of $50,000-$55,000 per year from the food and beverage contract. Staff are also looking at ways to cut costs by looking at maintaining top sellers while removing items that aren’t selling well or are out character with remainder of menu making them difficult to prepare. Other ideas include ending dinner service at 7:30 p.m. and going to appetizer and snacks at the end of the night so that the 2nd cook can be let go earlier cutting costs. For weddings, commission members discussed ideas and impressions. These discussions included the impression that the current trend tends to be away from sit down dinners so would like to see Marriott offer lighter faire options and items that are not as formal. Also discussed were the trends of offering “bars” of fun items such as a sundae bar or a candy bar as part of the offerings. Proud also shared that she has asked the Marriott to price the space and let her know what it would take to have an offering where people could use the space and kitchen on a rental basis without Marriott food involved. Proud shared that it is imperative that the food and beverage revenues return to levels of $50,000 or better for the fiscal year. Proud presented the Fee Scale for Parks and Recreation programs for FY2020. Mount motioned to approve, seconded by McEvilly. Proud also gave an update on Summer Lunch. Summer lunch has been served the park for 14 years. The staff work very hard to get groups and programs to attend but have not been able to get many children to attend that aren’t part of an organized program. The average attendance of non-program youth has been 11 – 13 for the past few years. The community has been surveyed through the local elementary schools and reasons for not attending include not wanting children to walk to the program, wanting a bus pick up service at homes to attend, wanting children to stay home and inside when parents aren’t home, and finding the sack lunch meals not what their children like to eat for lunch. Staff explored new options for summer 2019. Staff still want to stay connected with the youth in the neighborhoods who are attending and are hoping to attract more. Food insecurity for lunch will be addressed with two new programs, replacing the USDA program in the park. Staff is working with the Coralville Community Food Pantry to provide a Lunch Sack program which is simple one or two step lunch supplies which will be purchased by the Food Pantry, funded by the City of Coralville and donations, and picked up every other Tuesday at the Rec Center. The second program is a snack and activity program Monday through Friday from 1:30-3:00 p.m. A substantial snack will be served each day along with activities led by Recreation staff. Partners who already have committed are Subway, Brueggers, Jimmy John’s, and Olive Garden. Under Council Member Dodds report she talked about the naming of the new arena as the Xtream Arena (Mediacom) and that the arena opening is anticipated in August 2020. For Commission Comments: Mount – no comments McEvilly – no comments Fevold – welcome to Kyle McEvilly. McEvilly made a motion to adjourn at 8:26 p.m. and Mount seconded.