Recreation Center Governing Board

REC GOVERNING BOARD Minutes for Meeting of September 6, 2018 @ 10 a.m. City Board Members: Mayor Dave Kline, Law Director Megan Raber, Finance Director Mollie Gilbride, Dir. of Public Service Mike Rorar School Board Members: Don Seeker, Jeff Manion Community Board Member: Mark Salerno not in attendance (6 RGB members voting) Rec Personnel (non-voting): Parks and Recreation Superintendent Jessica Simons, Assistant Parks and Recreation Superintendent Adam Bozic and Administrative Assistant Dan Enos Approval of Minutes: Gilbride moved to approve the minutes of the May 3rd meeting; seconded by Seeker. Vote to approve: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: We’ve had a lot of events since May 3rd and the minutes. a) Food Truck Festival: The Food Truck Festival was held towards the end of May. Once again, that program was just beyond popular and because of that, we’re looking to potentially move it to the fairgrounds next year to help with parking and event flow. We’re working with the Police and Fire Departments on that. We had 27 trucks and probably close to 12,000 people attending. We filled the high school parking lot, the elementary school parking lot, the church’s parking lot, people were parking all over the side streets, it was just insane. Mayor: It’s time to move it. Simons: Yes, and I must repeat, that event would not be so successful if we did not have all the city employees and Street Department workers helping out. Mayor: Have you picked a date yet? Simons: I believe we did, I think it’s May 19th or whatever that Sunday is. Mayor: And have you talked to the Summit County Fair Board yet? Simons: No. I was trying to get with Steve Gibson to kind of look at the area and come up with a plan before we officially publicize the change. Mayor: Well you probably ought to do it real soon because that date may not be available. Simons: I will get in touch with them as soon as possible. b) Music On The Circle and Movie In The Park: Simons: Music On The Circle this summer was probably the most overwhelmingly popular it’s been since we started it. People were arriving earlier and earlier before the auxiliaries were arriving to cross them so it was a little crazy crossing to the Circle. We had our Movie In The Park as well and that was extremely popular also. It was well-attended and the Lions Club sold pre-packaged concessions as a fundraiser. c) Touch A Truck: Simons: The weather was hot, as always, but we still had a big attendance and that also was so successful because of the help of a lot of city departments bringing all their vehicles. d) Other Events: Simons: After Prom, Basketball Tournaments (have had issues in the past but did not this year), Relay For Life and our annual Cleaning Day Weekend in August. We also had work done to the racquetball courts, to the basketball courts, the floors refinished in the concession stand - all of us working on this together really knocks it out of the park. As you can see, we had a very busy summer! Mayor: Do you have a cost analysis of some of the bigger events just to see what it costs us? I know some of those are non-money makers. Simons; Yes, like Music On The Circle does not bring in any money and yet is quite expensive to put on. Touch A Truck takes a lot of staff monies with all the vehicles they bring. We do have those figures and I’ll be glad to get them for you.  -2- Staff Updates: Simons: We’re hiring for all positions and we’re starting our seasonal hiring as well. So Donnie, if you know of anyone who is looking for a job at the high school, we need basketball scorekeepers for Community AllStars and also concession workers. We can hire 16 year olds for those positions so if you know of anyone that might be available Saturdays and Sundays, December through January, let me know. It’s a great first job for people and if they’re over 18 and they work out well, we may keep them on after that season is over. We are planning on moving the rental coordinator position from City Hall over to the Rec Center this month. That conversation has been had with the current rental coordinator and that should happen September 17th and then on the 24th those operations will officially move to the Rec Center. Mayor: Will she move over there? Simons: Yes, at my last discussion with her, she said she will. Mayor: I understand she will be putting in her notice to retire sometime in the future? Simons: Yes, she told me the middle or end of December. We wanted to move her over before that happens so we could get a good grasp of what she does so that we are able to train a new person for that position and handle the operations during her absence. Bozic: We have a couple of offers that are going out right now for front desk attendants, for a fitness attendant, a facility attendant and then a new supervisor as well. A lot of new staff and a lot of new training going on. Other: Cycling Studio: Simons: The cycling studio renovation is complete and we are holding our first classes in it this week. It’s like a night and day difference. It is amazing to walk in there, it’s actually really cool in there now – the fans are going really nice, the lights are dimmable, there’s no real echo. It’s a vast improvement. We do plan to really aggressively recruit some evening cycling instructors potentially offering a little bump in pay to teach during that time slot just because we’re having a struggle trying to find someone to teach during that timeframe. Many of them teach elsewhere and cycling studios have the ability to pay more than what we can pay because they charge people so much more to join. So we are competing with those kind of places and we’re also looking at “fitness on demand” type programming for that room specifically as well as the other aerobic rooms just to offer something during those off hours. I understand there’s a Rec Center in Solon who uses this programming and I’m going to try and set up a trip out there to see what they are doing. Gilbride: What is “fitness on demand” programming? Simons: It is basically like pre-recorded workout classes that you can play on a tv screen or on the wall or something. Almost like a YouTube video-type thing but you pay a subscription fee to use it and they have certified instructors teaching and you can play that when there is no class in there. Gilbride: Are you doing that for all the rooms or just the spinning room? Simons: I think the long-term goals would be to have it in all the rooms or have the ability to do it in all the rooms. We just have to figure out how we would use it. If anybody can use it then what would be the point of having the gold memberships? How can we lock it down and only offer it to gold members? There’s also some other stuff we have to figure out before we would move into it. We just want to make sure that room is being used up to its full potential since we did spend the time, money and energy necessary to turn it into that cycling studio. Mayor: It’s an expensive room. Bozic: There’s some nice benefits to that program as well because if we have class cancellation, where instructors can’t make it, you can preload a class right there and still hold the class, preventing people from walking away.  -3- Summer Camp: Simons: Camp was through the roof again this year. We had 150 kids in the program on every given week. Parents like the program because their kids are outside doing stuff and it’s pretty reasonably priced. We did the automatic withdrawal from people’s accounts for payment and that worked out very well and I think it was well-received so we are kind of finalizing or updating the refund policy to accommodate that plan whether or not we’re doing a bunch of refunds for things people were charged for or not. Before and After School Care: So far that program has been working well. We have 17 people signed up. Mayor: Did we get the bus thing straightened out - where you had multiple buses coming in? Simons: No, there are still multiple buses coming to the Rec Center and I have not received a report since before I left for my conference two weeks ago. The last I’d heard, the earliest that the second bus had arrived was 4:15 and I don’t know if it got better last week or not. I know our second bus from Dunbar was not getting there until after 4:00. Mayor: So you get 2 from Dunbar? Simons: One gets there around 3:26 and the other one is scheduled for 3:55 but doesn’t get there until after 4:00. School gets out at 3:00 so we have a lot of parents that are not happy about that but there’s not much we can do. I did contact Steve Wood just to express our concern with it and he says they are working on it. Raber: There are definitely parents that are really mad about it because they are on the bus for 50 minutes at least. Mayor: You’d think they would put all those kids coming to the Rec on the same bus. Gilbride: Just as an aside, my daughter’s bus ticket says she will be home at 3:24 and if I look at the bus tracker, the bus is still at Dunbar at 3:24. Simons: I know there is a kindergartner that falls asleep on the bus every day after being on the bus for an hour. We have parents waiting in our lobby to pick up their kids because they get there before the bus. I haven’t received any refund requests from them, but I would not be surprised if we started getting some. Raber: I talked to a parent last night (a teacher) and she can’t get there at 3:00 for parent pickup but she’s paying for the kid to literally just ride the bus. And the kid is walking in and all of her friends are on the way out so she hates coming to the Rec and consequently now, going to school. Simons: We’re trying to work through it, we have suggested parents might want to be at the bus to get their kids and not have to be a part of our program but they have to be there because we will not get their child off the bus and watch them. Gilbride: Wasn’t part of the issue that there were a lot of parents that signed up for this bus staying very late due to the fact that Kathy’s Preschool quit sending and a lot of people did not turn in their bus forms so they were scrambling at the end so we have to give the school some credit, they were scrambling to get these kids bussed over to the Rec Center because they were switching from a pre-school after-care program that picked up the kids independently and now the district is bussing students that they never bussed before. And there wasn’t enough room on the Rec bus so they had to put them on two buses. Simons: Yes, that was a problem. We talked to the school about that and they said they would try and switch that around once the school year started but I don’t think it has straightened out yet. So we did move our registration date for next year up to the middle of June because the school wants all the bus forms in by July 1st and we’re trying to work to facilitate that as well. Mayor: For the record, Mark Salerno (Community Member) has arrived; it is 10:13.  -4- New Business: Master Plan Process – Simons: As you know, we are currently undertaking our Master Park and Recreation Plan process and we have a series of stakeholder meetings next week for different groups and we also have a big community-user open house program that Thursday night so this is a lot of the information-gathering phase. We’ll be sending out a statistically valid survey as well in the next couple of weeks. I know we just gave final approval for that so they’ll be mailing those out and we’ll be gathering all this information and then start putting together the recommendations and plans. Park Updates – Simons: We have done a lot of work in the parks this summer and most of it was undertaken at Lions Park. They have new playground equipment with the new poured-in- place rubber, a new gaga ball pit courtesy of an eagle scout project and it has poured-in-place rubber surfacing inside of it. We have new LED lights at the basketball courts at Lions Park and they are on a timer so once you hit the timer they are on from 6 until 11. That is our only basketball court in a park so it’s nice that we can use it later on into the evening. I know I see kids there all the time. We also have new dugouts at the ballfield and that’s another eagle scout project that we’re having done there. While the city did put a little bit of money into these projects, it was really nice that the eagle scouts came to us with these ideas and can now take pride in seeing how they are being enjoyed. We are going to be putting together a list of the things that we need done in some of the other parks that might make for future eagle scout projects so that if we are approached by kids wanting to take on a project, we’ll have some ideas to share. The new playground at Washburn is up now and they are installing the underlayment for the poured-in place today, I know - in the rain. Actually I just missed a call from the installer so we’ll see exactly what’s going on here in a second. Mayor: Lions Park is really coming together. Also, compliments to the Lions Club who donated some money towards the improvements. Simons: We are also putting underdrains in at the ballfield at Maca to help with some of the drainage issues in the outfields. The field does not drain properly and as such we haven’t been able to use it very much. Mayor: Did the high school softball team do OK there this year? And coming back again next year? Seeker: We’re still having a conversation with Mike about that – whether we go to Lions or stay at Stein – Stein worked fine as far as we were concerned. We didn’t use it that much – I don’t think it was as big an issue as we might have let it out to be. We’re open to conversation if you think we should make the change to Lions Park. Rohar: The latest discussion with the softball coach is the field at Maca, if the underdrains are put in. I don’t think it will be ready in time. Seeker: We need more conversation. Other: Raber: I do want to ask a question about one of the classes we’re offering next year but we can do that after this meeting. Monthly Reports: TRC Membership Report – Simons: I continue to be encouraged by our membership report. I know for a couple of years every month someone would say, oh you haven’t lost that many. And now we are finally getting to the point where we are gaining. It may not be significant  -5- gains but they are “gains”. If you look at the “non-insurance based” at the bottom of the page, we’re up 5% over August of last year. That’s really good since August tends to be our slowest month at the Rec Center since everybody is so busy getting ready to go back to school, take last minute vacations, etc. And our annual memberships are where that growth has come from so that’s also very encouraging to get consistent year-round numbers. The blue adult, child, senior categories are up and the gold adult and senior categories are down but a lot of that are those who are aging into Silver Sneakers and are transferring over. So for those numbers to not be that far down is really good news and mostly because all of the good work our staff does in making our facility clean and friendly and a great place for people to be. TRC Financial Report – Gilbride: The month of August does not look that good – I won’t sugarcoat it. Part of it is because there is an extra pay period in August like there was last year in September so that works out to about a $36,000 payroll difference. Our payroll is up and we budgeted for it to be up. Revenues are up slightly but not quite enough to offset the additional payroll expenses. I am working with Jessica on our 2019 budget process to review what we’re accounting for in our recreation department and determine what of that programming actually relates to the Recreation Center vs. things we’ve kind of thrown in the Recreation Center because they’re under Jessica. So we’re looking at some items that are more park functions that kind of get lumped into the Rec Center and creating a new department so we can have a better analysis and review of what we’re really doing in the operations of the Rec Center. For example, part of our payroll is up because we hired 2 employees to clean our halls that we rent out. However, none of our hall rentals are actually accounted for on the revenue side of that so we’re going to do kind of a “clean-up” of this data so that next year we can hopefully have a better analysis but in the meantime, I’m just going to move forward with our current budget and what it looks like. Jessica, do you have anything else to add? Simons: No, just some of the things that are off have been off for the whole year. The soccer league income on the revenue side has been down since the beginning of the year and part of that is because we lowered the price to offer fewer games to get it done in time for the teams based on the feedback we’ve heard, they want to play outdoors so we do fewer games at a smaller price and we also kind of adjusted the registration timeframe so a lot of them registered in December instead of January so that loss in revenue has been there all year – it will even out a little bit in October and December once we have soccer registration going on but that variance will likely be there for the remainder of the year. The loss in Concessions came from not doing those volleyball tournaments which is also why some of the other programs are down because we didn’t open Concessions – we didn’t spend as much but also didn’t make as much either. The large increase in the Miscellaneous League Expenditures again came from a bill that was not paid until January that the year before had been paid in December. So that was about $12,000 of that $27,000. So some of this was just timing but we do need to do better. Some bright spots are the personal training programs and we are trying to improve that this year. We are up in that line item revenue, trying to be more responsive to people’s needs. Do you have anything to add Adam? Bozic: I think a lot of these numbers will be evening out as we get towards the end of the year. I know our basketball court rental appears to be down a lot but again, some of that is timing. We collected a pretty significant portion of our 2018 rentals in December of last year so that was kind of a push at the end of the year but it also kind of hurts us in this year’s numbers. We have quite a few rentals  -6- coming up, basketball, tournaments, overnight events, so there’s still a significant amount of revenue coming in. TRC Donation Requests – Enos: We’ve made 6 donations since we last met in May. A gift certificate for a membership and then giving a choice of a water bottle or a t-shirt. We’ve donated to a variety of organizations – it tends to be a lot of the same organizations who each year ask for help. We have the Tallmadge Lutheran Church, the Bobbi Hindel Memorial, The First Church of God, the American Heart Association, the Tallmadge/Mogadore FOP, and Steere Enterprises. On the far right of this page we have the term “certificate redeemed”. The certificate is good for 2 years, it usually takes a while for people to get around to using them; I do mark it off when they redeem it. Motion To Adjourn: The meeting was adjourned at 10:29 a.m. km