Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For Meeting Of October 3, 2019 @ 10:01 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Finance Director Gilbride, Service Director Rorar, School Rep. Mike Householder, Community Rep. Salerno (6 voting members) Rec Center Staff In Attendance: Parks/Rec Superintendent Simons, Ass’t. Superintendent Bozic, Adm. Assistant Enos (non-voting) Guest: THS exchange student Tamuna G. from the country of Georgia (she is shadowing Mayor) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan Approval of Minutes: Raber moved to approve the Governing Board minutes from the September 5th meeting; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: I believe the only past event in the last month is the Circle City Cycle Social which in addition to being difficult to say, was not very well attended again this year. Moving forward, we probably will discontinue that program – I think they only had 20 people. It was really a nice day, only rain came at the very end of it so it wasn’t because of the weather. Mayor: I’m surprised it doesn’t do better, are we advertising? Simons: We actually did more advertising this year, I don’t know if it’s because it’s on a Sunday in early fall when the kids are back in school and there’s a lot going on . . . Gilbride: And soccer is going on – the fields near me are crowded all day. Simons: We used to do it in the summer, but then it was too hot. But doing it in the fall just seems like it won’t work because there are too many conflicts with other things. So I think that program may have run its course . . . Bozic: We do have a new overnight event for First Apostolic Church. They had about 200-300 youth in the building for that. It was on a Friday night going into early Saturday morning. No complaints, no injuries and they seemed to enjoy it. Mayor: Great! Staff Updates: Simons: We need to hire a lot of people. We’re looking for seasonal basketball scorekeepers for the Community All Star Week and we’ve also had a number of people resign from the front desk to take full-time employment elsewhere. We also need people in Concessions, so if you know anybody . . . Mayor: Are you posting brochures at the schools? Simons: We send over an announcement to the schools for scorekeeping and concessions since those are the ones we can hire people in at 16. Front desk people need to be 18 because they can handle a little more responsibility and need a little less supervision. Householder: Do our coaches help you out with that at all? Simons: Yes and actually in addition, this year we tried to send out to all of our Community All Star representatives from the past just to try and get some more kids interested. Householder: I’ll sure get it on the announcements and talk to our coaches to see if we can get some of our students interested. I’ve got a drive on this weekend so I have a lot of kids helping me and I’ll see if any of them are interested. Mayor: Great! -2- New Business: Grid Changes: Simons: We’ve been doing some profit and loss statements for some of our programs and in doing so we kind of took a harder look at some of our memberships and some of our rental rates and just some different things that we wanted to potentially change for 2020. Since this is the grid that goes to council, we always try to make as many changes as possible in “one fell swoop” so we don’t have to keep taking changes to them all the time. I have a couple of changes and Dan can jump in if he has anything to add as well. Right now we’re proposing to eliminate two memberships that we currently offer, the “aerobics only membership” and the “Silver League membership”. They just really aren’t utilized as much as we’d like them to be and the people who are using them now are using them in multiple months generally speaking and they can get basically the same pass with more if they were to just upgrade to an annual pass instead of doing these two programs on a “monthly” basis. For example the “aerobics pass” only allows people to come in to take a group fitness class and use childcare during that time. They can’t come in and use any other aspects of the facility aside from those 2 things and that’s difficult for us to police as well. So we’re proposing eliminating that and those people would have the option to transfer to monthly or annual gold memberships to have more benefits for about the same price. With the “Silver League” pass, their usage is extremely limited. They are only permitted to come into the building on Monday, Wednesday, Friday OR Tuesday, Thursday depending on the season from 10 am until noon and they are not permitted to do anything except to play basketball. They are not permitted to come in any time other than that so if we were to move them to the senior blue membership it would be the same rate if they did an annual one (if a resident) and $5 a month more for non-residents and they could use the facility at any time and all aspects of it. So they could come in and play basketball whenever they wanted to instead of just being limited to a short window of time. Those are 2 eliminations, and we also will eliminate the Limbercize Pass because we no longer offer the classes – it just cleans up the grid. Questions? Mayor: You said “aerobics-only pass” – how many do we have there? Simons: We currently have 9 using that pass. We had 22 people purchase it within this calendar year and 6 of them have had it 6 or more months so they would be using it more on an annual basis. A couple had it once or twice and never came back. Mayor: So 6 of these 9 people would pay $11 more a month – if they went to just the monthly membership. For the resident it would be $10 a month more and if they went to the annual membership, it would be the same price. And obviously all these changes we are proposing would not take effect until January l, 2020, or when their pass expires. Raber: Are you planning to make a focused effort at explaining the change to them and walking them through . . . Simons: Yes. Mayor: Yes and I can see all of them in my office shortly after! Gilbride: You’ve got 4 silver league members and 8 group fitness members. Mayor: Does it hurt to just keep it on? Simons: No and we can, it just kind of makes more sense in the end for them to upgrade because they get more use. Gilbride: If they want more use. Simons: Yes, you make a fair point. Bosic: We offer so many passes and I’m not saying it’s a time consumer but it’s a matter of almost offering too much. I think we would be offering the same thing but more, -3- with benefits at essentially the same price. Mayor: I think – even though it’s only 12 people – it’s something that’s existing and they’ve been members for how long? Simons: It’s hard to say. Mayor: But most at least a year. . . and this is probably all they want. They just want to come in, do their thing and get out the door. Gilbride: Do the aerobics-only people . . . what’s the percentage of them that actually renew that every single month? Simons: Dan put together a membership report and the people who currently have it, one has renewed 7 times this year, another who has renewed 6 times and this person has bought it for the first time, this person had it 7 times, this one 8 times, this one 9 times. Enos: So in this calendar year of the 9 that currently have the active memberships, 6 have purchased it 6 or more times this year, one renewed twice . . . Gilbride: 6 times in a row or 6 different months? Enos: 6 or more different months this year. Mayor: Have we had conversations with these people saying “you know if you do this you can” . . . Gilbride: but it’s not if you do this because if they’re really just coming in to do aerobics and childcare, to get the same price, they have to pay for it all year long. So that essentially is $96 more expensive. Potentially if they are picking and choosing and saying you know, in the summer I’m slammed and can’t make it to aerobics classes so I don’t want to get the month of July whereas under the new model they’ll be required to get the month of July and pay $32. Enos: We do run a promotional in the summer unrelated, the $99 for 99 days and it’s the gold membership. A lot of times the gold monthlies will go for that one if they do decide to have anything in the summer. There’s something that kind of entices them during the summer months when some people won’t . . . Gilbride: But that person would already be required to – there would be no enticement if they have to get the annual to get . . . Simons: So maybe we just go through and try to educate these people on what they would get if they did upgrade and we’ll maybe see then where we are and maybe come back to it. Gilbride: I feel like our memberships are going down anyway and now we’ve got people willing to pay for 6 months but we really don’t know if they’re willing to pay for 12. Simons: Or if they are willing to pay the increased rate to keep it a monthly membership? I will say that we only looked back to the beginning of 2019 and it does look like some of these people have been renewing it every month but that’s on our end to educate them so we’ll go through and we’ll talk to these people and reeducate them and we’re also maybe – with that quarterly basketball membership – see change after the first of the year because that supplemental insurance policy is coming back and they will be a part of the insurance-based stuff come January 1st. So I would say if we end up with nobody with that membership that maybe we should just stop selling it. If we leave it in the grid then people might ask for it but if we just stop offering it as an option . . . so we can just hold off on those but we would like to remove that Limbercize class because we haven’t offered that for a very long time! Mayor: So we’re going to hold grid changes #1` and # 3 and eliminate #4? Simons: Yes. Can we skip back to #2? I do want to talk about that. This is just changing up how we do our special college break passes. As it is now, we offer a holiday break membership in the winter for 6 weeks and then a summer break membership for about 3 ½ months (117 days) so we’re talking about eliminating the “special” memberships for the colleges and just transitioning into offering just a straight up monthly membership for college students. We get requests for this fairly frequently because we have a lot of commuters or there -4- are people who come home for the summer and are only going to be home for a month but they don’t want to spend the money for the 3 ½ month membership because they’re only going to be home for a month or 3 weeks or what have you. So, what we did in coming up with this membership was basically take what the daily rate is for the special membership and convert it to what it would be for a monthly membership. This kind of falls along with this senior membership pricing for the monthlies. We made it a monthly membership but they do have to continue to provide proof of being a college student in order to receive the membership. That way we don’t get people who just kind of are on it for awhile . . . Gilbride: Here’s my question. Do you need to put age restrictions on that so like . . . what if you have a 40 year old guy getting his masters degree and now he wants to come in for a college membership because he goes to classes. So is there an enrollment eligibility? Is there an age eligibility? I think you’re trying to attract a younger group of people but the reality is anybody who has graduated from high school could be in college. Like I could go take a college class and bring my registration in and say I want the monthly college special? Have you discussed this? Simons: We have discussed this internally and we were kind of under the impression that if you were trying to decide between gyms and you weren’t a member anywhere but you were an adult college student, if you’re going to come here and become a member because we offer this, then we’d be okay with that. Gilbride: My thought is I get that but I guess the way I was thinking of it is all of a sudden we have people downgrading their membership because they are enrolled in college. Householder: If they’re college students, they probably can’t afford to go to the Rec Center. Gilbride: I’m just throwing this out there because this could happen. Simons: It could. I’ll be honest, we might have people doing that just to save on the monthly membership and we kind of talk about that aspect of it and is why we went with a transcript or schedule instead of a college ID. I still have my college ID. Gilbride: I have both of my college ID’s . . . Simons: So we went with a transcript to make sure they were current college students and they would be eligible for it. Mayor: Does it say full-time student? Simons: We could change it but I know we get a lot of commuters who technically are not full- time students but are still . . . Bozic: I think the benefit here is instead of it being only a 6 week program where we’re collecting $30/month, now it can be a year-round program where you’re collecting $22/month so essentially we’re looking at it as maintaining these people for a longer period of time which hopefully means we will have more of those as opposed to even if we gave half those couple people who downgraded - yea, we’re losing that but making it up on the other side. Gilbride: Well, it could be more – it could be really eligible people downgrading. I mean we likely have a number of college students who live in Tallmadge commuting from Akron and Kent that are probably regular members at this time. Bozic: If they’re annual members they’re already paying the same price. Simons: I don’t think most of them are annuals, most of them are monthlies because they like to take advantage of the specials when they run them. Gilbride: I do think there will be off-setting negative changes, I do. So hopefully the additional memberships – I think we just need to look at that after a significant period of time – did we actually increase -5- membership because of the change? Or did this have a negative . . . we can’t know that so overall, it’s a positive thing to get more members but I do think we should keep track of who went from one to the other to see if the negative impact was actually greater than the additional number of members that we’ve obtained. Simons: So you’re okay with it as long as we track it? I mean evaluate it. Gilbride: Yes, I think we should take a look at it after we’ve been in it for about a year. Was it effective or not and should it be continued? Increasing Basketball Court Rental Fees: Bozic: We have been inundated with requests for court time. It continues to increase every year and we would like to go from $45/hour during our non-peak season to $50/hour and then during our peak season, going from $55 to $60. We feel that the demand is high enough that we can withstand even the loss of some of the hours that get requested but at the current rate of $55 people aren’t even blinking an eye. Even our soccer field rentals – which I know is not related – just talked to somebody that wants 18 hours worth of field time at $120/hour so the whole aspect of AAU basketball, travel basketball, year-round training, all of that has really just exploded in the time requests that we are receiving. I think an increase of this nature will not make anyone blink an eye. Rorar: I think you could raise it even more. Raber: I think at some point we have to think about the fact that there are limited amount of basketball courts in our community, the schools are at maximum capacity, we are at maximum capacity and we still want to be able to serve the residents of our community. I know there’s a change in the basketball program at the schools where they’re not supporting the travel teams this year so you’re going to have even more of these travel teams pushed onto our court and they’re kids from our community. And I question the timing. I’m not opposed to doing this but the reality is it won’t be effective until January so it would be like a mid-season . . . Bozic: We’re looking at June so we’re going to increase the rates on June 1st because that’s when our typical off-season rates would change. Anybody who is going under contract now we would keep their rate at the current level. And anyone that books a contract prior to that date we would continue with the past pricing. At this point it’s kind of ideal for us because we don’t really book any of our fall/winter contracts until about August or September. A few we will get earlier because they like to book ahead wanting to make sure they secure their time. The Hogan Classic in the Castle is one of them – this year they had some changeover but typically in the past I’ve booked them as early as May for a November tournament. And that one’s going at the new rate of $55/hour. Gilbride: Once council passes this I do think even if they come before June 1st . . . Simons: It’s for rentals taking place after the grid has passed. The grid will be effective January 1st so anything booked after that will pay the new fees. Any fall, winter rentals that would happen always happen after June 1st anyways because the new rates would be in effect October 1. Mayor: And the Tallmadge schools still get the 50% discount so it would only be a $2.50/hour increase for them. Bozic: I would agree with Megan’s analysis of lack of courts within the community. I’ve had conversations with the Tallmadge Youth Basketball and Tallmadge Travel and they are seeking hours that right now, we should be able to help them with but additional courts within the community would be ideal. Mayor: How are the schools doing with their court time? They’re probably booked up all the time. Householder: Oh yes – once the season starts there’s not much . . . Raber: My understanding -6- is that they’re not allowing the teams to book the courts as late as they used to because they don’t want to pay the janitorial fee. So they are looking at a cost benefit analysis to them and they’re not going to allow as many teams to come in which is part of the push. So now you have all of these travel teams that are being pushed out of the schools. Bozic: Had I known that the girls program because of the set up of last year’s middle school, because I had two daughters that were playing in it, it was set up at the old middle school and we were running on two downsized courts. A lot of the parents felt that it was not exactly fair because we were forcing the girls to play on smaller courts and they wanted to see them playing on full courts so because of that I believe they will be running full courts at the middle school on Sundays in a 4 hour time slot as opposed to in the past, a 2 hour time slot which obviously has nothing to do with our facility but it is something that will change for them and I have yet to talk to anyone with the girls program as far as their travel teams go, so I don’t even have a request yet from them for court time but I know that we’ve received the boys request from travel teams. We’ve already booked the boys Rec League, they are using our facility on Saturdays as they did last year. They want a full court and they want to have more than one game going on at once. It’s probably a savings for them because if they had to go into the schools they’d have to pay custodians and there’s only one court so it’s an extra amount of hours they would have to book. Mayor: I’m ok with this. Any other questions? Racquetball Court Rentals: Bozic: So, we would like to basically eliminate all fees for using the racquetball court. Demand is not really high enough to justify having a rental fee. Right now the use of this court is kind of limited to open play or you can reserve it if you are a Silver Sneaker member or a Gold member. So we are kind of eliminating that element of it and anyone can reserve it – first come, first served. You have to reserve it if you want and they still have to maintain the same booking/timing that we have built into our system and you can’t book it for more than the allotted time of 2 hours. It kind of just opens that up. Mayor: I know we have very limited racquetball players but now that winter’s coming up, there will be more activity . . . like after work. Simons: I think we have maybe 3 or 4 people a week that use the racquetball court during the winter, but they’re gold members who don’t pay the fee. So, eliminating the fee would be a good thing. No one’s a gold member just so they can reserve the racquetball courts. Some of these players don’t have gold memberships but they have a friend with one who will reserve the court. So I don’t think we’re going to lose any members or any real rental fees which is the annual issue with that. Bozic: The second part of that is Wallyball which we do have the netting for but in the 3 or 4 years that I’ve been here, I can’t recall us setting it up at all. Maybe once if that. Again, the fee for it is not a necessity. Mayor: Questions? Field Rentals: Bozic: We’d like to increase the softball rental fee for an all-day tournament. The current pricing is at $150 for an all-day rental and that’s only on Saturdays. Sundays we would like to increase to $150 per day and our basic justification is that a renter would just request two 4 hour time slots, which is what a normal game rental is, that cost comes out to $170 on a weekend -7- so we’re kind of bringing that up with this in mind. Typically an all-day rental could be on the field from early as 8 and as late as 11 so that would be at least 3 or 4 hour time slots which would come out to $255 if we rented it like that. We obviously don’t but with the all day field rental increase I think we’re justified. Mayor: Questions? Bozic: And honestly, the only field we would usually do that with is Lions, that one we get more use out of for the all-day tournaments. Mayor: Could that be renting that field not for softball, but also for volleyball or kick-ball or anything like that? Bozic: Yes, anything you would want. Shelter Rentals: Bozic: We would like to eliminate the “chapel wedding fee” for the church on the Circle. Right now we typically rent the church for a traditional wedding, and rarely if ever have we had a “chapel wedding”. According to Kristin, she’s never booked one so we’d like to eliminate that from even the grid as part of the price structure. Rorar: What was the thought behind having a “chapel wedding”? Simons: I have no idea. Rorar: I mean is there a difference? Gilbride: There’s a 2 hour timeframe difference. Bozic: I think on our end we are still requiring crossing guards, obviously not as long. Gilbride: But they pay that directly. Bozic: As far as our staffing goes, we are still there, still cleaning up. Gilbride: I think that the thought is, you can only have up to 30 people in the facility for a “chapel wedding” -it’s meant for a small, more intimate wedding. Mayor: So then you could sign up for the “chapel wedding” if you were having a short service and . . . Simons: Yes, at mine I wouldn’t have needed more than an hour and a half anyway but . . Gilbride: But you can only have 30 guests. Rorar: Wouldn’t it be tough to monitor? Raber: We have people there why would it be tough to monitor? Mayor: So if it’s 31 or 32 then Scott’s going to have to say, you have to pay $500 instead of $250? Gilbride: He’s going to report it back to somebody and then Finance will handle it. Simons: More than 30 people can fit in the lower level so it’s not even like it’s maxed out because we’ll keep the top level shut so the 30-guest thing I just found to be odd because I don’t know where that number came from. And it’s not like we’re saving money by having the top floor closed and just use the bottom one. Enos: From my understanding the length of the wedding also includes deliveries, set-ups, tear-downs, etc. It easily could go a little longer than that stated hour and a half. Mayor: I think this is just a carryover from when the city took over the rental of the church. If you can’t find any history that we’ve ever been asked to use that for a “chapel wedding” . . . Gilbride: I know we’ve sold it before but I’m sure not frequently. Ritchie Hall: Bozic: We would like to increase this rental fee for the Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holiday rentals. In talking with Kristin about how this facility gets booked, she said that a lot of the renters basically say that we are the cheapest facility around as far as space, accommodations, setting etc. So in our opinion, we feel we have a great facility, good customer service, the best pricing and we feel like the market can withstand a slight increase on this. We would like to go from our daily weekend rental rate of $125/day up to $150/day. The Lions Hall is $150 for 5 hours so – and people will see Lions and compare the prices and then want to take a look at Ritchie since it’s cheaper. Simons: Ritchie is booked every weekend from now to the end of the year. Bozic: Yes, Ritchie is very popular and I think this price will not deter any rentals. -8- Pavilion Rentals: Bozic: We would like to increase this fee as well. Our pavilions are in extremely high demand and we feel that the surrounding park amenities create a great venue for whatever special event you want to hold, birthday party, family reunion, etc. and most of these renters come back to us time and time again. So we feel as though we should consider raising these fees. We did some research to see what the surrounding communities are offering and right now you can rent a pavilion in Akron for $100/day, Stow is about $65/day. When we looked at the size of those pavilions, they are smaller than ours so we felt like we should increase the fee for non-residents for sure because they are coming here to pay less for a bigger space. We are suggesting we go from our current rate of $40/day for the standard size and $50/day for the larger ones to $60/day and $70/day or an increase of $20 each. Raber: A question on the pavilions. Aren’t there some of them that say there’s a 2 hour block and that way you can book multiple people in a day? Gilbride: Wasn’t that recommended, didn’t we have a different fee for . . . Simons: We don’t have the ability to staff employees to monitor and clean between “blocks”. We have staff that come in and clean them around 10 am and it takes them a while to go around to all of them so if you were turning them over again after a specific block of time, it would be difficult because part of our issue is that we are having people that come in (and because the rental rate is so inexpensive) they don’t treat the pavilions and park with the respect that we would hope they would. They leave trash all over, smashed cake on the tables, etc. so it is taking our staff and the Street department staff longer and longer to clean up during the week so that is another reason for increasing it to try and offset that cost. In the future there might be something else that we can look at but right now we do not have the manpower for that to be feasible. Mayor: What about Munroe Falls park and Cuyahoga Falls behind the swim place? Simons: I believe they are close to $100. The ones at Water Works are owned by Cuyahoga Falls Parks and Rec and I believe that Kristin looked at those. Bozic: My family has attended birthday parties over there and most every time I’ve ever been there the pavilions are kind of dirty and a lot of times there is still trash in the trashcans so I do know from a maintenance and upkeep side it would be cumbersome to have to do that because we have so many pavilions and they are spread out throughout the city. Right now it’s a one man job and I think we would end up having to have a second truck out there in circulation with at least one more employee if we were going to do it in blocks of time. Mayor: One thing I liked about that was that when a family member rented it for a birthday party etc. there was a little card in front that said rent me or decline rental – and the fact that we put in the name of the clients who are renting it for that particular day. Simons: We are planning to try and add that to all of our facilities next year. But even the manpower that would be necessary to put the signs up is a little more than what may be able to be done. Raber: Are we not able to reassign job responsibilities for people who work at the Rec Center during the day? Like in the summer months, your job will include going to the parks . . . Simons: We do on the weekends – during the week the parks maintenance is done by the Street department. Raber: I guess I can’t just figure it out – if it’s a cost thing can’t we just offset that with some additional . . . Gilbride: You are suggesting we raise the rates $20 an hour and we’re paying somebody $8 something an hour. Bozic: Recent policy changes within the city make it necessary that you are -9- 19 to drive our trucks so we can’t even use the seasonal summertime workers because they are the younger crowd and do not meet the age requirement. We’d gladly hire additional seasonals if that’s what you want but I don’t think that we’ll get candidates that just want to come in and just do the parks trash. Right now we have parks trash/ballfield maintenance so they’re out there dual purpose. We struggle but it is a revolving door year-in and year-out and we’ve been lucky enough to get some very skilled, dedicated employees to help with that. On occasion we’ve had to go to our custodial staff (like Scott for example). Mayor: Sunday morning, I saw Randy Keen running around like crazy at Lion’s Park . . . Bozic: Yes and I don’t think we’re going to find many employees like that. Simons: The problem is, it would strictly be weekends as far as the pavilions go so you’re asking somebody to work – if we’re doing turnarounds – all day Saturday or all day Sunday and that’s essentially the only day they would be working because we try to get them to do the fields as well but that’s only a couple of days a week so we’d have to have a fairly large window between rentals in order for them to be able to get around to all of the pavilions and empty the trash, clean off the tables, etc. It’s something we can look at for the future but right now, I’m not sure this could be feasible. Rorar: We can’t do it, we just don’t have the manpower. We could get there but today, we’re not set up for that. Mayor: And still, for $70 you’re getting a great deal. Rorar: Yes you’re getting a great deal and those shelters are a mess when they’re done with them. It’s more than just picking up trash and wiping off the tables. Sometimes you have to go and get a hose. Raber: But again, shouldn’t we be having a deposit and then we retain the deposit if they leave it a mess? Gilbride: We won’t let someone do that when renting one of our indoor facilities so why do we treat this any differently? Simons: It’s not standard practice to have a deposit for an outdoor facility. Rorar: We’ve not done it, and I’m not saying that we can’t. It just hasn’t been done in the past. Bozic: I think that would be unfair to our renters because the park is a public space. So you may leave there at 8 pm and we get there the next morning and the place is a disaster – and you have no idea who might have done it. Mayor: It could even have been a raccoon . . . Gilbride: Got you. Mayor: Any other questions on this increase? Maca Guest Passes: Simons: One of the things that we’ve been hearing at Maca every single year is that people don’t feel there is a value in the membership anymore because the summer keeps getting shorter (with the schools going back earlier) and the weather is terrible in the first part of the season so they don’t get all the use out of their memberships that they used to and that is causing more and more people to forego purchasing an actual membership but instead going through the daily admission line which causes back-ups in the daily line and then we get complaints about that as well. One of the things that we’ve thought about would be to give free guest admission passes out with the purchase of a Maca membership so you would receive 2 complimentary passes for each person that purchases a membership up to a total of 6 in the family and then those could be used to bring friends or visitors in from out of town. We just thought it might add value to a membership and persuade those people who are kind of on the fence because they don’t feel they’re getting the usage they want because they can bring – for instance - the kids friends. Gilbride: You mean 6 times. -10- Simons: Yes, it would only be 6 one-day passes and they would all be numbered and labeled and that way we could track what’s coming back in . . . Gilbride: I think you need to add that language here because I don’t think it’s clear. I would think the wording should say something like “complimentary one-day guest pass” . . . Simons: Got you. Mayor: It really does not cost the city anymore to have an additional body there unless we are at capacity. Simons: Yes and we don’t get there very often – maybe once in the summer and then everyone gets mad and they stop coming. I think this is something that will add some “perceived value” to it and it doesn’t cost us anything to do. Rorar: So a family of 6 could get 12 of these? Simons: No, it would be a maximum of 6 one-day passes for the family. The other thing that we are proposing is a complimentary refund pass. We don’t give refunds very often at Maca – we had to do more this year because of a couple of incidents that were major and closed down the pool. The “liquid fecal” matter and then that storm that came through and knocked out power and that was difficult for us to issue refunds for because all of our computers were down so we had to track people down after the fact and mail them checks, petty cash, etc. So one of the things a supervisor suggested was could it be possible for us to have complimentary refund passes that we could hand out sin case we have to say “sorry you have basketball shorts on and can’t come into the pool” it would give them a cash refund or a refund back to their credit card. We would track it and follow the same guidelines as we would for refunds now but with the hope that it would be an easier process for everyone involved. And as always when you hand out things like that you’re kind of thinking you aren’t really affecting your bottom-line quite as much because either they’re going to come back on a free pass or just not going to come back at all and you’re not out the money that they originally spent. We would obviously track these similar to the way we’d track the desk passes coming back in. They’d all be numbered, a supervisor when they give them out would provide an explanation of why they’ve given them out, following the procedures already in place but for issuing a cash refund. It’s just another way to make the process a little easier at the pool and increase our customer satisfaction. Mayor: I’d rather see them get a pass. What’s going to happen if they say I don’t want that, I want my money back? Simons: This is how refunds are. Gilbride: Quite frankly, on the shorts thing and all these other things we actually give refunds for, I mean we could frankly get away with giving no refunds. Simons: We do post that there are no refunds for weather. Gilbride: But people know we give the refunds . . .Simons: Yes, if you complain enough you get a refund usually because it’s just not worth arguing about. We do have that “no refund policy” that would be similar to that but we would just be like “okay” and just give them a pass. Maca Refund Passes: Simons: I’m not sure if this needs to go into the grid as it’s an update to our refund policy. Should it go into this grid or in another grid or in our “policy and price”? Gilbride: My opinion is it belongs in the grid because it’s a fee that we’re charging but I don’t know – we’re charging them a fee for the class and this is another fee to cancel. Simons: Each one of them does have a fee – the membership fee is refunded with no fee if it’s for a medical reason or if you move a significant distance away and you cancel your membership. For Rec summer memberships we do not refund monthly memberships unless for an injury but even then we don’t refund those. The annual membership if someone were to cancel in the middle, we assess -11- a fee which is equivalent to the price difference between the annual and the monthly to basically eliminate the discount they were to receive by making an annual commitment. For Maca, there’s no real thing in place for that. We kind of have been operating under giving them a refund less their daily admission for that. This would do the daily admissions for any visits that they would have had or 10% of the membership cost, whichever is greater. And then for program and league registration, we would assess a $5 cancellation fee or 10% of the total cost, whichever is greater. Because really if you sign up for basketball and then cancel the day before and you paid $475 and you cancel the day before the league starts, being assessed a $5 penalty is really not a whole lot. Gilbride: Well, on the league side, I would make a timeframe that doesn’t allow for cancellation at that late a date. I would say, no, you’re out. Don’t you need to put some time specifications with it so that you have an opportunity to refill the league with another team? Especially basketball leagues, where we are always at maximum capacity. If you had enough notice, you probably could refill that spot. Simons: Generally speaking, we do not offer a refund if we cannot fill your spot especially if it’s full like in “Community All Stars” - if we can’t fill your spot for that, then we do not issue you any refund as long as you have given an especially short notice. I would say maybe a week’s notice for all of the programs and leagues and if you don’t give that you may not be issued any refunds. Raber: Not “may not”, but WILL NOT be issued any refunds. Gilbride: Then, other than the program and league which I get, what would be a medical reason a whole team couldn’t play? Simons: Yes, there wouldn’t be for a team – that would be more like on the program side of it. Gilbride: I’m wondering if a league and a program registration under . . . like for instance a program, someone could come the day before the program per se but a whole team . . . Bozic: So one example could be for our youth soccer leagues. We require that there has to be a coach that’s 18 years or older on the bench so if the coach is having some sort of medical condition or something that they were unable to be the coach and no one else steps in to be a coach then that might be an example where the whole team cannot participate? Simons: I’ll separate those out and we can look at this a little more. I just wanted to mention it in case we did want to put it in the grids with those changes as well and kind of start the discussion with . . . and then I’m wondering about the rentals too. Raber: In the contract we may want to say so if we get the question, per contract or per rental agreement . . . Bozic: If a rental occurs outside of the rental contract the current policy is that there is no refund. There may be a reschedule where you might use the money but there is no refund. Raber: Yes, we need to sit down and talk more about these points before we just drop them into the grid. Gilbride: Well, it’s October, do we meet again to firm it up? Or do you want to make a motion to approve it subject to those modifications? Simons: I would like for you to make a motion to accept it with the changes so we can get started on it because there are a limited number of council meetings left in the year. So we’d like to make sure it’s done by January 1st so that all these prices could go into effect. Mayor: I don’t have a problem if you guys work out the fine details - the concept I’m okay with. Raber: I move to approve the refund policy as presented with modifications to be forthcoming on the program and league registrations and minor other edits to be vetted and approved through the Director of Finance and Director of Law prior to the presentation to Council; seconded by Salerno. Vote to approve: 6/0. Raber: I now move to -12- approve the grid as presented with the modifications as discussed; seconded by Salerno and added by Mayor (with the directives as shown on the “Grid Changes” page as follows: item #1/hold, #2/OK, #3/hold, #4/accepted to be removed, and items #5- 13/OK). Vote to approve: 6/0. Monthly Reports TRC Membership Report – Simons: Our membership is up from last month but down from this time last year. A lot of that is due to the decrease in the insurance-based memberships. We’re down about 72 from this time last year. We’re up in our paid memberships. As I stated earlier, the one insurance-based company that had dropped the insurance-based memberships will be picking that up in 2020 so I do expect to see those numbers go back up after the first of the year. But we are encouraged that our paid memberships are up. TRC Financial Report – Gilbride: I’m passing around the financial report. Our revenues are up about 1% while memberships are down about 5%. We’re making that up through the Before and After Care and summer camps and some of our field and court rentals are up. This is as of August 31st but while we do have current operating loss, it’s typical for August. We usually do not have a lot of registrations in the month of August coming in so there’s expenses but it is not a high revenue-generating time. We’ll start to see basketball leagues and registrations to offset some of the costs associated with those programs but we are about 25% better than we were last year so that’s good. Questions?  TRC Donation Request Report – Enos: Since we met last month we had 3 donation requests. Two were for health fairs our staff attended and we also had the Colony Health Care Center reach out to us this year for a fundraiser they were doing that had been published in the Tallmadge Express. The first two got gift certificates and the last a certificate and lunch bag. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:03 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on November 6, 2019/km