Recreation Center Governing Board

Recreation Center Governing Board Minutes for Meeting of August 3, 2016, 10:00 a.m. Board Members Present: Mayor Kline, Fin. Dir. Gilbride, Law Dir. Raber, Svs. Dir. Esler, Pastor Zachrich. School Reps absent. Voting Members Present: 5. Rec Personnel Present: Rec Fac. Mgr. Simons, Ass’t. Fac. Mgr. Bozic Approval of Minutes: Esler: I move to approve the minutes of the May 5th, 2016 meeting; seconded by Zachrich. Vote to approve: 5/0. Old Business Past Event Updates: Simons: We’ve had a couple of events since our last meeting. The biggest one was the Food Truck Festival the end of May. That event was through the roof this year and we really were not anticipating the number of people we got. We estimated over 12,000 people were there so we will definitely want to continue this program next year with a couple of changes to be more accommodating to our neighbors and also extend it a bit and try to ease everyone’s “issues”. Mayor: Yes, most definitely we will need to work with the church because they did have services going on while we were setting up and people were trying to park all over . . . Simons: Yes, we are going to move it to a timeframe of 12 – 6 to accommodate the church services and try to get another shuttle to help with bringing people from the parking lot over. We had a lot of problems with just the one shuttle and then it regularly got stuck in traffic and couldn’t make its way back to the school parking lot to pick up more people. We’ll also look at potentially closing the Rec Center in the afternoon for 4 hours so we don’t have to deal with that traffic too. It’s just “too successful” of a program! Mayor: How did we do financially? Simons: We did not secure an event sponsor this year. The company that normally sponsors this event dropped out at the last minute so it was too late to secure another sponsor so we ended up being short just about that amount of money so I think next year we will come close to just about breaking even with this program with a sponsorship. Mayor: It’s a lot of work just to hope to “break even”. Raber: Have you contemplated trying to do the ticket thing where we would have more control over what we’re getting back from the food truck? Simons: I’ve thought about it but for the most part, they’re pretty honest about it. They all submit little square business things with their sales for the day on them along with the check they’re sending us so we do have documentation so it looks like what they’re telling us they’re making, they actually are. Gilbride: what about all the cash? Simons: They ring all their transactions in through basically their cash register software, and that includes the cash, checks, credit and all transactions for the day. Gilbride: And did you have 100% compliance this year? Simons: Yes. Everyone  -2- has paid and we’re all good. Tickets would take a lot more on our part with staffing, making change and having the ability to take credit cards so I think that might be more of a headache than the small amount of money we might be missing out on. School Rep Seeker enters at 10:04 am. (Voting members will now be 6) Simons: I just have a quick update on our movies and concerts. Bozic: And we did have another event in May that was pretty successful. We had a partnership event at the Center with the American Cancer Society – and they want to come back. Mayor: It was an excellent program and opened the Rec Center to a group that had never been there before so it was really good for us. Raber: When we passed that we did the ordinance really quick. Did we change that on the grid? In other words are we going to have to do something to capture that? Simons: I don’t remember the exact wording on the ordinance so I’ll have to go back and look at it. Raber: I’m wondering whether it was just a one year thing . . .I kind of think it was, so you may want to add it to the grid. Simons: Yes, I have some additional suggestions for the grid, we’ll work on it for the next Governing Board. Bozic: Now to the movies and concerts. The Concerts at the Circle were pretty well attended. We lucked out with weather this year. Movies at the Center were not greatly supported but we’re going to reevaluate that program at the end of this year as to whether we’ll continue it, move it back to the parks, change the day and/or time etc. Simons: And we want to do a little more promotion on Facebook and hopefully we’ll get bigger crowds using that medium. Bozic: Our last concert is this Saturday and our last movie is Sunday. Raber: I personally like the time being earlier than what you can do at the park because it ends up being so late when it’s at the park and on a Sunday with parents having to work on Monday, it probably is not a high priority. Simons: I think the reason we chose Sunday was that we didn’t want to create a conflict with the concerts on Saturday night. Staff Updates: Simons: We don’t have any at this time. And we have no other “Old Business” either.  -3- New Business Flag Football Tournaments – New Program Proposal: Bozic: Have been working with Randy on creating some new programming and this one was suggested. We talked to a lot of our teams and it would seem that the league itself has become kind of stagnant with just playing indoors all the time. The question has come up if we could run some outdoor tournaments. It’s something that we’re proposing – doing either some form of single or double elimination or round robin and that would depend on the number of teams and the number of weeks that we allow for that. If we do go outdoors, it would be held at Lions Park behind the ballfield in that grassy area. Fin. Dir.: I move to approve this program; seconded by the Mayor. Vote to approve: 6/0. Council Grid Changes: Simons: We have some changes to the grid and also recommend that we add the “Relay For Life” into the grid as well. A lot of this is just kind of cleaning up some stuff that we’ve gone through and noticed it is not exactly accurate. The first thing on there is our “Aerobics Only Program” – for some reason it does not include Yoga and it should. It is not a premium class, we don’t charge any extra for it for any of our memberships so we’d just like to include it in this type membership as well. Mayor: Is that still offered at the Community Center? Simons: We have 2 nights at the Community Center and 2 day classes at the Rec Center. The next one is for the batting cages. This wasn’t really spelled out at all so there was some confusion on it and we just decided to do something about it. We have the two batting cages, the one at Court 4 and the one next to Court 4 so we just want to add wording in there to state “if you rent the cages directly over Court 4 you would just pay the court rental rate instead of a batting cage rate plus a court rental rate which is what people were charging at one point. So, we are just kind of cleaning up the wording there so if you rent the cage next to it, it’s only $30. If you rent the cage on Court 4 it would be the price of renting Court 4 which is $40 off-season and $50 in-season. Mayor: But the batting cages – is that only to guarantee that you’ll get the use of it? If I wanted to just go in there and just take my neighbor in to . . . Simons: Yes, if you just wanted to go in and use the batting cage to play catch or something, as a member, we would lower that for you if there wasn’t a class going on Court 4 or another rental or something along those lines. This is just strictly if you want full use of it and won’t ask for it to be solely yours when you reserve it. Mayor: Does that allow the team to come in? Simons: Yes.  -4- Simons: The next thing we’re cleaning up is the wording for racquetball in the grid. I want to clean it up to specify what memberships are paying what rate and I took out the “per person” portion of the rates since we eliminated that about a year ago for all of our other rentals just so that everything is sort of similar across the board for ease of understanding for all of our staff. The next couple of items are things we’re actually adding to the grid. The first one is eliminating our soccer field advertising – that was decided when we put in the new turf on the soccer field that we weren’t going to continue those advertisements along the boards. Which I still think is a good decision, they tend to wear a lot faster, especially the ones that are by the boxes because the kids pick at them and stuff. In lieu of that, we were going to put up some of those pole banners like what they do around the Circle before CircleFest down the main corridor kind of off where the soccer bleachers are. The hardware for those depending on what kind you get bolt straight to the I-beam and it is about $40 to 60 per pole and we were thinking of doing around $500/year plus the cost of the sign. That’s not unusual, when we were doing the soccer fields, the sponsor paid for the cost of the sign as well. Simons: The other thing has to do with the TV ads at the Rec Center. We have those 3 TV screens that just show advertisements. The company we used is taking a step back from the advertising programming we had before and are just sort of putting it all on us. So we can use those screens strictly for Rec Center advertising or contact those people on their list of people who are advertising already and they’re all local people. They charge around $1,000 a year for the advertising on there and we’ve already got a list of 10 companies that are advertising on our TV’s so it would be an easy thing for us to be able to step into and continue doing. Mayor: So why is the company that was handling it backing out? Bozic: They’re backing out of the advertising part of it, they don’t want to sell the ads anymore. Mayor: Would we still be able to use their equipment? Simons: Yes. We used to have a profit-share with them and I think it is still good until the end of November. They would go out and sell the advertisements and then send us a portion of that less the charge for the equipment and the program, etc. So instead of doing that now, we’ll get all the advertising monies. We do have to pay them a small fee every year but I think it’s only $300 which we would pay if we kept the TV’s regardless of whether we did the advertising on them or just used them for our own purposes. This is a good  -5- way to make some money off of them in addition to that. Gilbride: If this company was designing the ads before, who’s going to design them now? Bozic: They can still do the design work. Gilbride: But that would be an additional cost to the company in addition to the $1,000 they are paying? Simons: Yes, and that’s the way it already works – if they have the company design the ad for them they charge them an extra $75 which is what it would be if they went back to that company and had them design the ad. Gilbride: Then my final question would be, are we only selling annual ads? What if someone has a “seasonal ad” they would like to put up? Are we losing out on potential ads by not allowing a monthly or a 3 month ad because . . . we’re only selling ads by the year? What if someone is having a Christmas bazaar and wants to put it on the screen? I just think we might be missing out on some advertisements by not providing a shorter term cost. Simons: On our end there’s not a lot of work involved, so we could look into that, I think it’s a good idea. We could do $250 a quarter or $100 a month and offer those two options as well. Zachrich: I think the part that is really good about Mollie’s idea is that it will keep the info on the monitors fresher. If it’s the same ad running for a whole year, after a few times I won’t watch it any more. Let’s take advantage of the technology and change it frequently. Simons: And the people who commit for a year can change their ad as long as they’re willing to pay the $75 for a new design or they can make their own. They’re really easy to make in “Photo Shop” – that’s where I make all our ads so we could also have someone in-house do the designs. I will add this into this document before we take it to Council. Raber: So we’re thinking about $100 a month and $250 a quarter? Simons: Yes. Zachrich: You know it might even be nice to do some community service like advertising for the Weaver Christmas Bazaar or if there’s something happening in the community that would be of interest to people, to include it at no cost because it will keep it fresh and keep people’s attentions for the advertisers as well. Mayor: What are the rules and regs for the ad? Simons: It’s basically up to our discretion. I think it would fall under our other advertising that we do as far as what our policy would be. Raber: Do we have them sign contracts? Do we have them agree that we have the right to . . . . Simons: Yes, that would be what we would do. I don’t know what we were doing for the soccer field ads. Pat Sauner was the one who handled all the soccer field banners so he’d be the person to talk to about how that was done. I don’t know that we would want him to continue handling that – Gilbride: No. Simons: That’s fine. I would absolutely have them sign a contract and we can make sure that all the wording is in there – final approval of content, the things that wouldn’t be allowed, the businesses that we’re not  -6- going to take advertising from, etc. Raber: You’re getting into a fine line with that . . . Esler: Wasn’t there an issue with bible verses before? Raber: As a public entity, we get into a fine line with items like that. Mayor: I still think we should purchase our own seasonal banners to match the ones that are on the Circle that we could put up and then you could slide the banner off and put an advertising banner say on every other one . . Simons: It would be good in the meantime to let people know they are available. I did some research on what Stow/Munroe Falls does with their banners so we can talk about that a little bit later. Gilbride: I don’t like the CircleFest ones . . . Simons: The standard size that we would use would be 30 x 60. Mayor: Yes, the CircleFest banners were smaller. Esler: Will they meet our sign regulations? Mayor: Yes. OK, let’s go on. Simons: That’s it for additions to the grid and we’re asking for the Board’s approval to take these changes to Council to add into the grid. Mayor: Have you looked at the rates? Simons: We’ve looked at Maca’s rates and have not had a chance yet to discuss what changes we might want to recommend. We want a little more time to do some homework on those things – one item was just brought to our attention last week so we wanted to look at Maca and then make some recommendations and we’ll look at everything towards the end of the year. Mayor: What about the hall rentals? Simons: We just updated Ritchie and some of the others recently but we’ll look at those as well. Raber: I move to recommend that Council approve the grid changes as proposed including the amendments as discussed; seconded by Zachrich. Vote to approve: 6/0. Other: Simons: We are upgrading our computers, our RecTrac software the week after next. It will be a pretty big change for us as everybody goes from the way it is now to something completely different. With that, we’re also going from having our card that you swiped to having bar code readers that will hopefully take out the errors we have with people swiping which is kind of annoying. We’re also going to offer putting your card on your phone and then you can scan it off your phone which may be a little more convenient for some. We’re making that change this month and then another to the sound system which Adam will talk about. Bozic: Everything is fully installed now for the App-Audio and basically it’s devised so you can dial in on your phone and you’ll be able to listen to the audio on the TV’s. Over the years we’ve gotten many complaints about the TV volumes on some sets being turned up way too loud and disturbing other members so this is sort of geared toward that. Basically, we’ll roll that new policy out  -7- after our annual shutdown here, the week of the 15th. Mayor: So you have to have an I phone for it to work? Bozic: Yes, you’ll have to have a smart phone in order for it to work. On the cardio side we will have receiver units attached to 10 pieces of equipment where if you don’t have a smart phone you can plug in a pair of headphones and still get the TV audio. Overall we’ve gotten pretty good feedback about it – a few complaints but that’s pretty much normal. Gilbride: Do you have to log into the wifi at the Rec? Bozic: Yes, you have to be on the guest network in order to access. Gilbride: Did the new sign mention that step? Simons: I don’t know. If your phones are connected to the internal network you should just connect when you get there. Raber: But I have my private phone. Simons: You actually would have to disconnect it from the internal network and connect it to the “guest network” in order for it to work. Gilbride: Mine does not work. Simons: That’s a question for Lloyd. I really don’t know. Zachrich: As long as you’re on the guest network anywhere within the city you can pull up the audio for it. So I could pull it up right here if you’re on the guest network. Mayor: What’s the app? Zachrich: It’s nyeappaudio. Simons: There are some marketing apps that we’re looking at as well because we can send out notifications with it so if a class is cancelled we can let people know ahead of time. We can let people know about special offers, etc. We’re finalizing some pricing for adding that to what we’re doing since especially class cancellations are the hardest things for us to push out to people. Zachrich: I would like to see you add more of the units for those people who do not have “smart phones”. Simons: We are looking at doing that with what money we might have left in our equipment budget. We asked if there were any portable units because I check out and go around – we haven’t found any yet because the system is still relatively new and I don’t think they have anything like that yet. We will look into purchasing some of the units that actually go on the machine – they get their power from the machine so you have to be actually working out too in order to power the unit so that you can listen. That’s it on our updates. Monthly Reports Membership: Simons: The big thing on the membership report this year is the jump in our “99 Days For $99” memberships. These are a special we offer every June and they more than doubled this year I believe because we did a lot more advertising of the program and we’ve been very pleased with that. Otherwise, our memberships have been pretty stable, obviously the same huge increases with Silver Sneakers as there is every month. Our total memberships are up about 7% with the gold memberships up about  -8- 6% which really is probably because of the “99 Days For $99” offer. Remember, about 1,700 of those are Maca memberships since they’re tied into those figures. Our youth memberships are down a little bit at Maca, and our overall memberships there were down a little bit which is a big surprise with all the good weather we had. Counterbalancing that are the daily admission sales – they have been pretty amazing. A couple of Saturdays ago we had our highest attendance day – over 1,000 people. The girl working the daily admission window made over $4,000 during her 6 hour shift. Financial Report: Gilbride: I told Jessica I wouldn’t have July done but I did get it done. As of July we have a $4,190 loss but it’s a large improvement over last year. Our overall revenues are up almost 7% with expenses only being up 2.5% so that is good. If you look at the revenues, the main reason they are up are the Before and After Care and Summer Camp programs. Now to sort of offset that, refunds are up really high because there were some issues with the way sign-ups were done with Before and After Care and Summer Camp so that is why that is way off. Otherwise, things seem to be moving in the right direction. Simons: We’re very encouraged by that and are going to make some changes to Summer Camp and really try to inform our front desk staff some of the policies we have for registering. They were telling people that had to register for the whole summer for Before and After Care or they wouldn’t be guaranteed a spot and that’s not true. If you are registered in Summer Camp, you are guaranteed a spot in the Before and After Care so we were doing a lot of refunds for that. The other problem was that Summer Camp has filled up so quickly that a lot of people were registering not knowing exactly if they would need it and then they were requesting refunds for some of the weeks they were not able to attend because they didn’t know their schedules when they originally registered. We’re looking at making some improvements and changes to Summer Camp for next year also to be able to take more kids in the program since our 7- 9 year old and 10-13 year old groups both filled up a week or two before the program even started for each session so we’re looking at making some changes to that. Simons: We’re looking at eliminating the 2 5 week sessions and just going to a 10 week session or by the week because people got shut out of the first session so they registered for the second session then the people in the first session didn’t have a spot in the second session and were very upset. Gilbride: I would bet the majority of your users are doing it all summer long because that is how they maintain their child care. That makes sense to do either 10 weeks or week by week. Gilbride: Here’s another idea – I think those who  -9- want to sign up for all 10 weeks should get to register a week before any of those who want specific weeks because you don’t want to run into a problem where someone wants to do all 10 weeks but week 6 is now completely shut out and they can’t. And if you’re doing the whole 10 weeks you may want to grant 1 week for vacation . . . Simons: The way our program worked was if you signed up for a 5 week program you got 1 week free and if you registered for 10 weeks you basically got 2 weeks free throughout the summer so it’s already kind of set up that way. Raber: Another thing I would like to add is could we include the “extra costs” as a part of the flat fee? Every week it was have your kid bring money for the ice cream truck, for snacks at the movie theater, etc. my kid is 7 years old and I really don’t like sending him with money. And what happens to those kids whose parents forget and/or can’t afford all the extras? I think it would work a lot better if everyone got a snack at the theater and everyone got an ice cream, etc. and make it included in the fee. Simons: We could do that with the ice cream truck, the price of the field trips are included already and if you want your child to have a treat during the field trip then you can send the money. Gilbride: Why can’t everyone get a little bag of popcorn and a drink when they go to the movie? Simons: I guess we can do that we’ll just have to look at raising the price . . . Raber: Or just have them bring their own snacks when on the field trips . . . Donation Request: None to report. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 a.m. Minutes sent to Jessica Simons September 27, 2016 via email/km