Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For Meeting Of September 5, 2019 @ 10:01 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Finance Director Gilbride, Svs. Dir. Rorar, School Rep. Mosher, Community Rep. Salerno (6 voting members) Rec Center Staff In Attendance: Parks/Rec Superintendent Simons, Ass’t. Superintendent Bozic, Administrative Assistant Enos (non-voting) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan__ Approval of Minutes: Raber moved to approve the Governing Board minutes from the May 2nd meeting; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: We had our food truck festival since we last met and it was extremely well attended. We’re looking to make a few changes for next year to help increase the revenue brought in from that program as well as combat some of the issues that we have with parking and dust control at the new venue (Summit County fairgrounds). Overall, I thought the move to the fairgrounds was really good for the event and allowed it to be a bit bigger than it could have been at the Rec Center. We also had our summer camp come and go and were able to add an extra week onto that to accommodate the school’s opening 2 weeks later. We did have some increased expenses with that program this year because we rented the bus from the schools rather than using our own bus and drivers. However, I thought that was a very nice improvement for the program since we didn’t have to worry about our bus breaking down or availability of bus drivers and that sort of thing. The program was really well received. Mayor: Do you have any cost comparisons for the bus prices? Simons: Adam is working with all the program directors to put that together. I know we were just invoiced for the bus recently and it was about $18,000 for the summer and it did include that extra week that we added-on so going forward, it won’t be that much normally. Maca Pool is finally closed. I think we had a pretty smooth season with the exception of some odd “hiccups” as far as staffing and chemical control goes. We did have a “loose fecal accident” that caused the pool to be closed for quite some time. We took due diligence and followed a whole host of procedures. We also had 3 of our large umbrellas damaged in that windstorm we had a couple of weeks ago and we turned in claims to the insurance company for that. In my research I found out that those umbrellas are supposed to withstand 90 mph wind gusts so the gusts that came through had to have been pretty intense! So now we’re just working on getting everything cleaned up, trying to track down a potential leak in the system and getting everything shut down for this year. The other thing we had going on in that timeframe was our annual cleaning weekend and I’ll let Adam talk about that.  -2- Bozic: Our annual cleaning was conducted in conjunction with our new strength equipment being brought into the facility. All of that went very smoothly. We are just waiting for one additional piece to be brought in. They had an issue with the wrong color – it was silver and should have been white. You have the list showing all the equipment that we did order. The actual cleaning portion went extremely well and along with that, we had our court refinishing which ended about 2 weeks prior to the cleaning weekend. That went extremely well and putting the dust control barrier up helped us a lot with the cleaning. Some other things that have happened is DeRich (sp?) TV, a basketball showcase, were in there about 2 weeks after the cleaning and they had about 200 kids or so and it went very well. It’s a good rental for us! Some upcoming events - we have a Sunday basketball league that is going to take place and we have a First Apostolic Church “overnighter” (as they’ve done for the past several years) and that will be coming up shortly, it’s a Friday night through Saturday morning. Mayor: It’s not on a football home game night is it? Bozic: No, I don’t believe it’s a weekend with a home game. And they don’t start until 10 p.m. anyway. Mayor: How was the Rec Center parking lot during the football game? I never made it to the Rec Center side . . . Bozic: It was very full and we had a few people on their own park on the grass along the north side of the building and they were parking in the grass past the tennis court area too. People were mostly respectful but it would definitely be a problem if we had bad weather because any cars parking on the grassy areas would be stuck. Mayor: Was there available spots on the hard surface of the lot? Bozic: Yes, there were some spots in the south parking lot but I think because of the direction that everyone was using to come in through the main entrance they wanted to take the closest spot. Raber: Do we need to rope it off? Bozic: That’s what I was about to say. Mosher: Yes. When I wrote that article for the Tallmadge Express, I told them all about where to park and actually said, “no one should park on the grass anywhere”. So since it seems to not be working out, I would just rope it all off. I would venture to say we will have a good crowd this Friday because we’re playing Ellet. Going forward, the next week we play Coventry and they don’t always bring a huge crowd. Aurora will bring a bigger crowd and we play them week 5, but I don’t know if we’ll see quite the volume that we saw this past Friday – it was an anomaly since it was week one in a brand new stadium. The goal hopefully is that becomes the “norm” eventually. While I would love for that to be the case, unfortunately for this season and probably the next, I can’t see that we would have tons and tons of people week in and week out. I know that the shuttles seemed to work quite well. Initially we had talked about not doing that but I made the decision to do it simply because I didn’t want people walking from the Rec in the dark all the way over to the stadium. Unfortunately it’s not as if there is a well-lit pathway and it sounds like from what I understand (speaking with Wylie and my people in the vehicle pass gate), a decent amount of people access that. They said vans start running at 5:30 and no one was using them but people started trickling in more and more as those buses kept running, and about half of the bus was full each time they unloaded. Salerno: I used the shuttle because I parked over at the Rec Center and it was very convenient. Mosher: Good. It’s what’s in place for this Friday -3- as well, and I apologize that they were parking on the grass. Raber: The Lutheran Church’s parking lot is being used also isn’t it? Mosher: They will not be able to park people there the night that we play Aurora – they have a kid’s concert scheduled. I told them they need to mark off your entrances off of the East Avenue approach – that access road. Just tell your people that are coming to the concert to funnel in off of East Avenue and that way you’re not getting a mixture of people who want to park for the stadium and those wanting to park for the church’s program. They said it shouldn’t be an issue. Rorar: Why don’t we look at roping it off next week, we don’t have time to do it for tomorrow’s games . . . Mayor: So where they’re parking near the tennis courts is school property not part of the lease. It is only 35 feet from the building out which is the driveway. Mosher: Nevertheless, if we get nasty weather, that will tear the grass up and people will be driving mud all through the parking lot. Simons: We get people parking there when we have a large event at the Rec so it’s not uncommon. Mosher: We probably have enough cones to do down the side of the building. Rorar: Do you want to put out larger ones? Mosher: I think the short ones with caution tape will do. Master Plan Update: Simons: The Master Park Plan is complete and we do have the binders ready to distribute to the administration and council. We will be meeting with council on October 10th prior to the council meeting to go over it and Brandstetter Carroll will be there to do the presentation. Raber: Just real quick, circling back to the basketball courts, I thought that at one time we thought of – as a gesture of good will – to do some kind of plaque for the people who had . . .Simons: I’m just waiting on prices back from the plaque company. What we’re looking at will pretty much match with the living tree memorial that we’ll be putting in the lobby as well. Raber: Good! New Business: Additions to Governing Board Grid: Youth Tennis Lessons: Simons: We have just a couple of new programs, one that needs to be added into the grid because the pricing structure is a little different than what’s currently in there. The other three all fit within the current pricing structures but we just wanted to make this group aware that we were adding them to the grid at generic level 1 and generic level 2 programs. I will let Adam go over these programs so we’re all more familiar with them. Bozic: About 3 months ago Randy and I met Brian from the LaTouche Tennis and talked about how we can offer more tennis programming. One of the options was to expand this program into his facility over the winter so we had the option to still offer tennis programming throughout the year. So the Youth Tennis programming is a new price structure and the pricing has two options, basically an $80 for resident, $95 for non-resident and a $120 for resident and $135 for non- resident. They are all 5 week sessions and offer multiple sessions throughout the season. Kind of like one starts, stops and the next one starts. We’re kind of excited about it, we think it will be good for tennis and hopefully it will help the high school program. Mosher: That would be great! Basically it will be able to provide kids some tennis experience before they get to high school. Any questions? Raber: Just for reliability purposes, I think we need to be cautious -4- when we send our people through our programs to a different location. I know we’ve had people on golf courses in the past but this is kind of a private-enter type thing so I think we might need to get some kind of agreement where we have him list us as an additional insured, make sure we have certificates of insurance and know that he has the liability coverage and everything that we would want to see. Simons: We have to put an addendum into his current contract anyway because the revenue split will be changing with them being indoors, so we could add that into all of our current contracts. Bozic: I believe some of those documents have that requirement , COI and . . . Raber: But that’s for them, not necessarily their premises right? They probably have insurances but we just need to make sure we add the right language about what type of insurance coverage they have. Simons: Can we forward you that contract to look over? Raber: Of course. Adult Tennis Lessons: Bozic: This programming does fit into the current pricing structure. I believe we opened up at this same time last year – we had tried to hold some tennis lessons over the summer months at the same time as we were holding the youth lessons hoping that some of the parents would want to participate while their kids are participating but it didn’t really take off so we’re trying a different approach here with different timeframes available, 4 different days of the week, so again this is more of a fall/winter type of program and again this would be a 5 week session just as the youth program is. Not any big changes with this, just that it will be held indoors at a different location. The other two programs are new – card-making classes and pumpkin painting and carving classes - but will fit into the existing pricing structure, one at generic level 2 and the other at generic level 3 pricing. There are really no expenses on our end with that other than obviously providing space. The instructor provides materials and they get a percentage based on whatever the contractual percentage is. Gilbride: I have a question about that. What are the criteria we are using for what percentages instructors get? So like one of these has a 70/30, one is 75/25, what criteria do you use to determine what that instructor’s percentage is vs. this city’s percentages. Simons: Generally speaking, when we look at that we look at the cost associated with the instructor as well as whether it is in our building or off site, etc. As far these ones go, I don’t know who had conversations with Rene on why one is getting 75 and one 70. I’m guessing it’s the cost of materials of the instructors. Gilbride: But wouldn’t we build that into the cost of the class? Simons: Yes we would. Gilbride: What I don’t want to see is someone coming back and saying we’re not negotiating rates fairly or we don’t have a criteria that we’re using to decide these percentages. I mean we have the same thing on our . . . like fitness instructors. There are some large disparities on what we pay them so on this I’m just curious how that looks when we’re deciding what percentage of the contract we give ourselves vs. the instructor and why. Simons: Well I can’t really speak to exactly where these numbers came from, but in the past we have taken into account where people’s price points would be for the program as well as concern over what they get to take home and that sort of thing. We want to make sure that we’re pricing it at a price where people will actually participate as well as help the instructor cover his/her costs because sometimes that will cause a fluctuation in what -5- the instructor is paid percentage-wise because someone doesn’t perceive quite as much value if they don’t get as much “take-home”, so that might result in a higher percentage for the instructor. I’m not sure these contracts have been finalized yet either. Bozic: I don’t believe so. Simons: So that’s definitely something we can go back and speak with Rene about. Mayor: I think it’s a valid question – why isn’t it . . . again, I always ask you if we are making money on these classes or is it just good for the Rec Center to offer these kind of classes to attract people? I would think the split should always be the same and you would adjust the price of the program. If it costs too much, then we just can’t offer it. Simons: We’ll go back and reevaluate those with Rene and find out how she came up with those numbers. She proposes what they should be, but the contracts are not finished yet. This is just the proposal so we will talk with her and see just where she was coming with that and adjust it accordingly. Rorar: Are there any safety concerns with the carving of the pumpkins, how does that work? Simons: It’s not like a carving where you take out a giant knife and are using that to carve the pumpkins, it’s more like molding clay and you use more of those types of tools . . . Raber: Like the kid-friendly color type things? Simons: No, not really but the age limit on that class is 13 I think. Bozic: I believe it might be 10 . . . Raber: Make sure you are getting those releases signed. Rorar: Did you reach out to Miss Dillon on the tennis? Simons: No, I have not. Mayor: So we need a motion to amend the grid? Simons: Yes, to add the youth tennis to the Governing Board Program Grid. Mayor: Are there any more grid items? Simons: This is just for the Governing Board. Raber: I move to approve the youth tennis program and add it to the Governing Board Program Grid; seconded by Rorar. Vote to approve: 6/0. New Programs Within Current Pricing: Simons: These we’ve already gone over and I don’t think we necessarily need any motion to approve those because they fit in with our current structure, but I’m not 100% clear on how . . .Raber: I thought we still had to do a motion for programming and sign off on that internal thing? Mayor: I’ll make a motion to approve the adult tennis lessons, the card-making class, pumpkin painting and carving classes; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. Other: None. Monthly Reports: TRC Membership Report: Simons: We’re doing 2 different reports because this one’s nicely colorful. But then this one does a good job of showing our total membership and then kind of what the breakdown is between the Silver Sneakers memberships and our non-insurance- based memberships. Overall, we’re down a little bit and a lot of that does have to do with that AARP program dropping Silver Sneakers-type coverage. We did actually just receive word that their foray into making people pay half of their membership failed and so they will be adding all of those people that they had taken that benefit away from and giving it back to them in 2020. So I kind of think they experienced what we thought they would by losing a lot of people to other insurance companies that were offering that benefit. So, they will be offering those benefits to -6- those eligible come 2020 which is good for us because with the way our reimbursements work, even if we had somebody continue to come to the Rec Center but now all they’re doing is walking, the income for that one person is a lot less now than it would be with our Silver Sneakers-type reimbursement. So, we’re excited for that and expect to see our membership grow once again, we continue to think this is a great program for seniors and as a whole has enhanced their lives with the health and wellness it brings. If you look at the other grid that lists individually all of our memberships, you can see we’re down just about 43 of the non-insurance based memberships and I do believe that had a lot to do with “shutdown” and a lot of people now trying to get back from the summer time activities to the school year. Also, with school starting later, parents are not getting in here in the mornings as they had, so we look to later on in September for things to return to normal when everyone gets back to their regular routine. Maca memberships were down but they have been for the entire season. Our day passes are up so it seems like a lot of families have opted for that choice rather than buying a full family membership without knowing how much good weather we’ll be able to count on. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: I am distributing the July financials to all of you. As of July 31. 2019, the revenues are all down by .07% but again, we did move some stuff around this year so that may be why the revenue showed up in 2018 and isn’t showing up in 2019. Overall, membership revenues are down about 5%, walk-in fees due to the court closures are down 28% so hopefully that will rebound next year when we have a full season of court use. The Silver Sneakers program as Jessica explained is down overall. Before and After Care continues to keep growing and as such, offsets some of our other losses. And of course we had the wheelchair basketball tournament that made our court rentals increase quite significantly. Overall, expenses are down .7% but again we did move some payroll out of the Rec Center that really isn’t related to the Rec Center and took it to more appropriate places. So, overall we’re probably at the same place we were last year at this time. FYI, operating loss is typical in the summer because we’re running a full facility and less people are coming indoors to workout. Mosher: Why is the Family Fun Middle School-Rec-sponsored program down so much? Simons: That one is down because we moved something from that profit-loss into some other cost centers. Gilbride: So we used to put everything that the Rec Center managed into one place and in an effort to better discuss the Rec Center and their actual profits and losses, we moved all of those things that the city expects to fund like the Food Truck Festival – like we’re not generating revenue to off-set that so we kind of moved “community events” that we were putting in there out of there but I did not go backwards to try and mesh with what was once there so that’s why the report reflects that. Simons: I can put those numbers together for you to look at. Raber: I know the Before and After Care had a really big wait-list again this year, and I know in the winter it gets really crammed in there but is there any way we would . . . Simons: You are right, in the winter months when we have a lot of the school activities in our place we’re kind of fighting for space and 50 kids in an aerobics room or split between an aerobics room and a multi- purpose room is really pretty cramped. We don’t have access to the soccer field or the basketball courts with the school teams practicing so we’re limited to those couple of months with limited space. It would be good to open it up but 50 kids in that -7- program is a lot. It would be interesting to try and manage a larger program than that – I know that even in the summer that can become a challenge with around 70 kids in the program. If we were able to open up more space in the Rec Center, it would be something we could consider. Raber: I just know it’s a need in the community that seems to be growing . . . Mosher: With our new stadium, and this will not be an all-the-time thing, but I know there is bad weather when you get to spring and our plans are to have baseball and softball working out in our stadium on the turf and in the cages. The nice thing about the turf field that we have is there will be days when you can’t get on a field but it’s not raining out so you can go out on the turf at the stadium and practice which as a former coach, I would always rather be outside working out than inside. And we would be on-site where they could go into the cages and auxiliary gym that we have so that might free up some Rec space but it’s hard to predict at this time. Simons: Baseball usually comes in the end of January because basketball is still going on. Mosher: When they just flat- out can’t get outside period. Simons: Yes, that is where our struggles generally happen, January, February and early March. Mayor: Was there any thought of utilizing any space at the schools like a Y program similar to other schools? Simons: We have talked about that internally, we just worry about the oversight that that program would get at that point. We’d have to obviously restructure some hours and the hours of some of our supervisory staff and then unable to do it until they’re in the one school building. Even at that point we’d have to limit it to K-5. I know my daughter’s in the YMCA program in Cuyahoga Falls and it is different because they have satellite facilities and they may have 6 or 7 that they have to be at but I think they struggle for staff and oversight as well. So it’s kind of nice to have it in our building because we can always see what’s going on and kind of provide quicker re-direction if it is needed. TRC Donation Request Report: Enos: We’ve made 3 donations since our last meeting in May: The Bobbie Hindel Memorial, this is their 5th annual golf outing; the Tallmadge/Mogadore FOP for their 14th annual charity golf event and then the Honor Amanda Foundation that has an event coming up at the Venue here in Tallmadge. They offer a scholarship to a Tallmadge-based student and I believe one from another area school as well. We’ve only had one certificate redeemed so far this year - they are usually good for 2 years and we don’t generally see them right away but I think last year we only got 4 or 5 back. Not sure why that happens, maybe it takes that long for them to remember they have the certificate . . . ?? Motion To Adjourn: With no further business to come before the board, the meeting was adjourned at 10:35 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on October 1, 2019/km