Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For Meeting Of January 16, 2020 @ 11:34 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Finance Director Gilbride, School Rep. Tim Mosher, Community Rep. Salerno (5 voting members) Rec Center Staff In Attendance: Parks/Rec Superintendent Simons, Ass’t. Superintendent Bozic, Adm. Assistant Enos (non-voting) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Patti Gaffney Approval of Minutes: Raber moved to approve the Governing Board minutes from the October 3rd meeting; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 5/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: We’ve had several past events since we met last on October 3rd. The Street Dance was one of those. We had to hold that indoors this year due to the weather. It is a good learning experience, as it always is, when you have to hold an outdoor event indoors, so we have a couple changes that we’ll make if we have to do that again. Overall, we think it went well. It was well attended. We’ve also had a Middle School Night. I think our attendance was a little bit down for that in November. Those are still fairly popular. Our community all-star basketball league is underway. That seems to be going fairly well also. We were open again on New Year’s Day, as we generally are. We only had about 27-30 people in the building, so it wasn’t quite as popular as usual, but it was still pretty good. Mayor: Great! Staff Updates: Simons: Our only really major staff update was the loss of Renee Kaufman since the last time we met. She was our Recreation Program Coordinator. She has left to seek other employment. I think in the end it’s going to be a positive change for our department because we are able to rearrange some duties and change a couple things and work to improve moving forward. Not that we couldn’t have done that with Renee, but it gives us a little more flexibility. Mayor: You can look at things differently. Simons: Yes, exactly. Mayor: Any other Old Business? Simons: The only other thing that I did want to mention under Old Business is that AARP Insurance Program that we had previously talked about last year that was no longer offering the free membership, they were doing the 50% membership in 2019. That has changed. They must have lost people for whatever reason and they’ve changed in 2020 to offering that free membership again. So we have seen a big influx of people signing up for that program and we expect that to continue. I’m glad they changed their minds. That will be good for our community as well as our bottom line. Mayor: You’ve clarified free, just for the record ? Simons: So it’s not free, it’s paid for by their insurance company. We are reimbursed up to a certain value based on the number of times that they come in. Mayor: Great ! Joanne was telling me she had a stack of about 100 people that she is signing up. That’s good to see these folks coming back in that couldn’t afford to come in before. Now they can get in there and get a healthy lifestyle and that comradery is really what it’s all about. Simons: Absolutely. Mayor: Nice job. -2- New Business: Additions to Program Grid: Simons: We have some additions for the program grid and Adam will tell you about them. DKM Development: Bozic: Our first one that we’ll cover is the DKM development or Ultimate Ball Handling System – he’s still working on the name. This program will focus on only ball handling and dribbling or how to create space and turn that into some offense upscoring. It’s very similar to our Speed and Agility that we currently do, but it’s going to be on the basketball court and then on the other side of this conversation too it’s limited numbers. So, 3 is the minimum and 6 is the max. He’s going to offer two different offerings, one being one day a week on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 and then another offering at two days a week Mondays and Wednesdays from 7 to 9 as well. These classes will be held on Court 4, he does only need half a court to make this happen, so we can still utilize the other half of the court for member use should we need it. The pricing is listed as shown on your sheet, for the once a week or 4 classes a month program at $120 for residents and $140 for non. The twice a week or 8 classes a month would be $160 for residents and $200 for non. So this will be a 4 week session and we are hoping to start this in March if he can get some marketing stuff together. He does a lot on his end with his current clients, he already offers maybe not so much this class but other basketball training at another facility in Akron so we’re looking forward to getting him in and trying to see how this goes and possibly expanding it to other areas within just the sport of basketball. Mayor: Can you tell me who “he” is? Bozic: Sorry about that – his name is Dominic I believe. Mayor: So it’s an outside contractor? Bozic: Correct. He’s a younger gentleman, he’s trained a lot of basketball players, high school players, those that have played in college and some who are playing internationally. I have all of his certifications and I’m looking forward to expanding in this area. Mayor: So if the resident paying $120 for the 4 week class, how much is his take? Bozic: So he is asking for 70% and we get 30%. Gilbride: I’m curious why there is such a steep discount for double the classes? Bozic: When we had a conversation about it . . . Gilbride: I mean I get like maybe a session, so 4 weeks is $30 so like for 8 you’d pay $30 less than double but that’s like . . . Bozic: So we kind of went back and forth a bit on the pricing. He doesn’t want to like shut people completely out because the pricing comes out to $30 a week and he doesn’t want to have it too steep, like $60 a week or $240 a month if he kept the same pricing for the 2 classes. He didn’t want to price himself out being that it’s a new program. Gilbride: But then do you price yourself out when – I mean you’re talking about such . . . the supply is small so if the demand is high, we’re really losing opportunity and then once we’ve priced it like this the ability to raise the price I think becomes more difficult, we will be stuck at this price. Salerno?: Well it works out to $30 a class if you take 4 $20 classes, if you take 8 I can see why he might want to try and build it up and then maybe if you do it the other way it would be $240 for the 8 week class and some people might be scared from that. Raber: I agree that most of our pricing when we do that differential is not that much of a gap, like you get a little bit of an incentive to do that extra class or whatever but it’s usually not that . . . Simons: Well you’re going to sell out of the twice a week . . . Gilbride: Yea but no one’s going to be willing to pay $120 for the one week unless you really . . . for $40 more -3- I’m getting my kid double the class but then am I willing to pay . . . does then the lower class seem over-priced? Because you’ve discounted the other one so much then the lower one actually seemsoverpriced and people aren’t willing to pay to enroll in that. Bozic: What price recommendation do you have? Salerno: Well $25 a class for the 8 week class would be $200 so, is that what you were thinking? Gilbride: And that’s a $40 discount. Simons: So you’re thinking just a $5 per class discount? Gilbride: Basically to go from 4 to 8 you’re paying for just over 1 and a half classes so you’re getting 2 and a half classes for free. Simons: That would change the price then of the twice a week class to $200 and $240 if we kind of followed that same outline of doing a $5 per class discount. It would be $30 a class for the non-resident and it would take it to $240 for them. Gilbride: If there’s research behind it . . . I’m just posing the question, it seems like a large cost differential. Raber: I wonder if he’s planning on having a lot of people from the Akron area if he’s already established there? I know that kind of happened with the Action Packed Sports with some of the clientele from other places so they’re going to be non-residents and he just wants to keep it affordable for the . . . but then I think we need to try to be able to adjust it if it does become popular and we’re . . . you know because you’re making them . . .Gilbride: And then we lose interest because now we kept it low and then we don’t have a ton of it spent. I mean what kind of expenses does he have other than keeping up his certifications to maintain his reputation but he’s not paying electricity, facility charges or any of that. Salerno: Aren’t you relying on him to do the marketing though? Bozic: Yes, he’s doing most of the marketing. Basically it will be all digital, like on Facebook. Gilbride: So how much does he charge at his other place? Bozic: I would have to go back to him and get that specifically. I can see your point, my only thought would be to start out . . . I want to get the program up and running and I think that’s what he wants as well and I look at it as if it becomes a highly demanded class, we can easily raise the prices – it would be no different than what we do at the basketball courts. When the courts became in high demand, we raised the price. Simons: I guess I can see Mollie’s point of view too. Like I would be willing to pay $160 for 8 classes but I may not be willing to pa $120 for 4 under that same idea. So if we’re keeping it lower to get people in the building, I can see how there might be some . . . so if we got 6 people in the twice a week class well then that’s full so we can only do the once a week, is that price then too high at that point? Raber: it looks like on his FB page he’s charging for basketball training $10 per hour at the lowest and $15 at the highest. So he’s also charging – Gilbride: Well that’s for 2 hours so that is the . . . it’s a 2 hour class at $30 a class, I don’t think that is unreasonable. Mayor: So are you suggesting $200 and $240? Salerno: Yea, I think that’s where we’re at. If you went from $30 for the 4 classes and $25 for the 8, that would work out to $120 and $200 for the residents. Mayor: I will move to approve the program with the modified changes, 4 classes $120 for residents and $140 for non and $200 for 8 classes for resident and $240 for non; seconded by Raber. Vote to approve: 5/0. Action Packed Sports Football Combine: Bozic: We currently contract with this group for speed and agility. This is kind of an “all sports” kind of class meant to increase speed and agility. He is expanding and we’re focusing more on specific sports now like football. What he is going to offer just prior to this course is just a one day activity same pricing as our speed and -4- agility pricing but it will be like an “intro” to this class that is specific to football players and then this will be the makeup of it. So it’s a football skills camp consisting of one week of testing which is that first initial offering followed by the 6 weeks of mini-camp drills. This is a 6 week session consisting of 2 one hour time blocks of training for grades from 2 to 5 and then grades 6 to 8 all on Sunday. The pricing will be $60 for a resident and $75 for non. His contract split is 70/30 and we’re looking at doing a minimum of 25 for each grade grouping and a maximum of 50. So right now he’s pretty confident that we’re going to get the numbers in this, he has currently been involved very highly with one of the youth boards. I guess Tallmadge is switching to some new youth league like Ohio Buckeye League or whatever . . . Raber: We are currently in that. Bozic: So we’re switching to something else I guess. Mosher: Who is this guy? Bozic: His name is Jared Atkinson and he is on the board for whatever this new league is and is very well connected with all the youth sports related organizations throughout the northeast Ohio region so from North Royalton to Hudson and a couple others. Mosher: The 2 you mentioned are suburban league schools. Bozic: So there’s a couple that are moving with this and it’s specifically to youth. He has already talked to his board and they’ve said they would push this out to all the teams and coaches. Gilbride: What about our own local youth football board? Bozic: Whatever the youth football league is, those have switched over to this mass conglomerate of leagues to participate in is what I’m being told. Mosher: I haven’t heard anything regarding this but I could say that the Buckeye League that they’re in was not the strongest. Years and years and years ago Tallmadge was in the Suburban League along with of local teams and it was a pretty good league. That kind of dissolved and this one developed and it’s kind of “hit or miss” so it would make sense that they are kind of going in this direction. I don’t know how big this league would be, but my guess is they’re probably looking for more competitiveness, that was the conversation I had with Chad . . . just about what they were experiencing down there. Bozic: That is what I also heard, the competitive nature of this league is beyond what they’ve experienced so . . . Salerno: But Tallmadge residents would be able to participate, right? Bozic: Absolutely! Mosher: Will they get “first dibs” over anybody else? Do we have a way to do that? Gilbride: I am going to guess that with a 50 maximum . . . unless he’s trying to . . . could you structure it so that residents could sign up a week before non residents or something like that to promote it? And then my second comment and this is really not with approval of the program, but just looking at these times on a Sunday, and this is just something to think about, I would almost even recommend them being later if this is a summer activity. Bozic: This is going to hopefully be kicked off in March. Gilbride: So how are you going to get 2nd through 5th graders at 3:30 p.m.? Bozic: Well, it’s on Sunday. Gilbride: Oh that’s right, I’m sorry. And when I was thinking of them being held in the summer, I was just thinking of baseball being a conflict. Bozic: We know we would be competing with other sports like basketball, wrestling, soccer but we basically came down with this particular training, you’re going to get more athletes that are dedicated to that particular sport. You have parents that want their kids to be more focused on baseball, then they get them training in the off season on that even though they may play basketball at the same time. So this is like a new avenue for specifically football. Salerno: Well I think this kind of training would best be done before -5- dinner so I think the times are good. Gilbride: I wasn’t thinking about this starting in March and was thinking you might lose potential people but there are also the parents out there that let their kids do 10 different sports at once. Mosher: And then they burn out when they get to high school. Gilbride: Right. I was just thinking if this was going to be in the summer, the 3:30/4:30 time frame would interfere with baseball and maybe the 6:30/7:30 timeframe would work better. But now that it’s in March, that makes sense. Mosher: This Jared Atkinson, is he pretty solid? Bozic: Yes. Raber: I really like him. Ethan took the agility training which is kind of generic, but he loved him. Then we got into basketball season. Mosher: We just talked about how kids are playing year-round sports, and it’s a for-profit business. Sometimes you have people who will do this stuff and you don’t have a clue if they know what they’re doing. Bozic: In our conversations, I actually told him you are well under-priced for this program. He was in total agreement but he said that’s not why I am in this, I just want to train kids. Gilbride: My son goes to Munroe Falls to a place and it’s $10 a class. Raber: And I think the one’s that on Southeast on the way to Mogadore is $10 too. He has a year’s program at $10 a class or a monthly one where you do 3 classes a week. Mosher: The only thing I will say – and I’m half joking – if somebody shows up with a Hoban, St. V or any other parochial shirt, they’re scouting our kids and ought to be escorted out of the building. It really is becoming a big problem for us. Raber: I move to approve the Action Packed Sports and Agility Football Combine; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 5/0. Changes to Program Grid: Bozic: This is simply a price increase for the TT Tennis who we contract with for tennis programs on the school courts right next to the Rec Center. It currently costs $75 for a resident and $85 for a non resident. We are looking for a $3 increase. Raber: I move to approve the price increase for tennis by $3; seconded by Salerno. Vote to approve: 5/0. Monthly Reports: Simons: This handout shows you where we were December 31, 2019 vs. the same time in 2018. Total memberships were down but that was all due to the loss of insurance-based memberships. The AARP memberships coming back will help that to rebound and the Silver Sneakers and Optimum Fitness will also help. Our non-insurance based memberships were up, not a lot, but it’s good and we look to build on that. Gilbride: Financial Report. Our revenues were down 1.46% but that’s expected due to the decline in insurance memberships, the walk-in fees because of court renovations. Children’s activities did increase significantly so it continues to be a positive program for revenue and the community court rentals were up to offset some of the membership losses. We had a positive with the wheelchair tournament but we expect them to be down a bit this year because of the Dru Joyce tournaments. Expenditures were only up 3.4%, we did move some stuff out of there just as we did on the revenue side that were not Rec Ctr.-related which is why you see the slight decrease, but salaries only went up .4% so that’s pretty good. Mayor: You did an excellent job rebounding considering all the interruptions this year! Donation Requests: Enos: We have issued 3 donations but none have been redeemed. At the end of 2019 we gave to the Tallmadge Athletic Boosters for their fall fundraiser, the Steere Enterprises for their United Way campaign and Treehouse Preschool for their Family Night. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 12:04 p.m.