Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For Meeting of October 1, 2020 @ 10:00 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Finance Director Gilbride, Svs. Dir. Rorar, Comm. Rep. Salerno, School Rep. Mosher @ 10:07 (6 members voting) Rec Center Staff In Attendance: Parks/Rec Superintendent Simons, Ass’t Superintendent Bozic, (non-voting) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan Approval of Minutes: Simons: I don’t think the minutes have been completed yet. Mayor: I have them here, wonder if Karen sent them to all of you? You can copy these if you want and I’ll check to see if they were mailed. Note: Minutes were forwarded to Dan Enos for distribution on September 30, 2020 and must not have been forwarded to Board yet. Mayor: We will hold them until our next meeting. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: We’ve had very few past events with the threat of Covid. We did the “Camp In The Boxes” which we talked about at our last meeting. Those went pretty well, we sold almost 20 of the 3 that we did and we’re getting ready to do another one to kind of correspond with the “no school” days on October 9th. Really we have just been focusing on getting ourselves opened up and offering as many services as we can. We did do our “Silly Walk” at Lions Park and I want to thank all of you who participated, it was fun and it will stay at the park until October 8th. Mayor: Got a lot of positive comments about the “Silly Walk”, people seemed to enjoy seeing it online. Rorar: Did we actually see others doing it. Simons: I have not but when they went to put the signs on the opposite side because originally I had only done the one side, they said there were people doing it at that time and actually, the second they went up. Mayor: I did hear one of the local businesses was going to do it to post on our website to follow up with us. Simons: Oh, that’s cool. Mayor: It was Carol Martin. Staff Updates: Simons: Our staffing right now is interesting to say the least. We’ve repurposed some people, moved some people around to try and do as much as we can with as few staff as possible. One of the issues this situation has caused moving forward is that we haven’t really been able to replace some of the part-time employees that we’ve lost due to them finding other employment or the changes we always have at this time of the year with kids going back to school and we just haven’t had enough hours to necessitate hiring anyone at this point. In order to add more hours, we are gearing up. We’re hiring a bunch of people for different areas of the facility just to make sure we can have those people available to staff the hours that we’d like to open. New Business:  A. Changes To Program Grid: Simons: So this is just to change the price for our “no school day camp” that we host at the Rec Center or I guess, really to kind of just add a price to that. The history behind this is that we did not charge last year for “before and after school care” on days -2- that children were not in school. So they were not paying for that extended care on the days they had off like Thanksgiving and NEOEA Day which is coming up. This year because of COVID, we are just charging a set weekly fee whether you go 4 days or 5 days that week. So we feel if we were to charge them the same rate for the “no school” days as we did last year, it’s almost like double charging them for some of that period of time. So this is a price to be added in for the people who are already enrolled in “before and after school care”. They would just basically pay a price for the mid-part of the day so now they’re not getting double charged for the “before and after care” price. This does equal out, when you do the math, at $20 a day which is equal to the price we were charging for the “no school day camp” for the whole day, if you divide out what “before and after care” is for the week as well. So it does still equal out to that $35/day that we were charging, this is just for that mid-part of the day. Mayor: Keep talking, I see Tim coming. Simons:The thought is to just leave this in the grid as an “addition to structure” so if next year we do allow people who are not enrolled in our “before and after care program” into the “no school day camp” that they would have that higher fee to pay. Mosher arrives: “Sorry for being late” . . Mayor: For the record, Tim Mosher has joined the meeting. Gilbride: I have a question on the “before and after school care”. I realize we’re not … I mean, wouldn’t you say the fee is developed based on the fact that we know that there are days and weeks that kids would not be in school? Like we came up with a weekly rate for “before and after care” and we said we’re not basing it based on attendance, so we’re not saying “if your kid can only come 2 days a week, sorry it’s a per week rate, we have to save the space . . . whatever. But once the fee is developed based on the premise that there are actually days where there is no school. Simons: No. If I’m understanding your question right, it was not. The price for the weekly fee is for attending 5 days whether they’re in school for 5 days or not. Last year we did adjust the billing fee to accommodate the shortened week and that sort of thing but this year because of the way that we’re asking everybody to be part of the installment bill and for ease of explaining that for everything, we just went with one flat fee per week. It kind of sets standard in the day care/child care realm to do that. Mayor: But the Monday of a holiday week, say Memorial Day or Labor Day, do you include that in your 5 day fee? But now you’re asking parents to pay a little extra on those days for the “no school day camp”? Simons: Yes, if they were to attend the “no school day camp”. Gilbride: So I guess the argument becomes if you send your kid to the “no school camp”, but you’re giving the people who do choose to attend the “no school camp” they’re actually getting something for their no school day. Simons: Right, so they’re getting something for their $15 that they paid for that day whereas the people who are not sending their kids . . . Mayor: So this cost would be for the kids that are not signed up for the weekly “before and after care”? Simons: This cost would be for the kids that are signed up for the week of that child care program because there is additional staff needed, additional supplies, crafts and that sort of thing. So we do buy additional things strictly for the “no school day camp”, we feed them lunch and some of those other different things which is why we feel we need to charge something for that. Gilbride: No, you need to charge something. I guess I’m just questioning in my mind, are we really charging for the “no school days”? I guess if you are telling me that in an overall pricing structure, of how we price each program, we didn’t take into account that there are days in a week because of holidays and other non-school days that -3- we’re charging for … you know a lot of places when they charge for that item it’s based on a time period of charge, not based on “per day”. So we went from a “per day” charge to an overall weekly participation fee. Knowing that within those weeks would be holidays, days people don’t come and kinds of things like that so I’m kind of struggling with are we really charging people for “before and after care” for days that we already knew from the calendar, we were not going to be holding “before and after care”. Simons: I see what you’re saying but I guess me being in that world right now, sending my kids to childcare/daycare, I pay a weekly fee whether they’re there or not. They charge more weekly during the summer and they’re charging more right now because they’re doing schooling with my kid in daycare 3 days a week or whatever. So I can see it both ways – you don’t usually in the child/care world get a discount for that but . . . Mayor: Should I look at this as they only stay a couple of hours in the morning or the afternoon and this would be 9-3 so it’s just extra . . . Bozic: Correct me if I’m wrong, but under last year’s pricing we did it by the day and we had 5 week days of caring for your child and we only charged you for 4. So on that 5th day if it was a “no school day”, we had a separate pricing for that which was the $35. So what we’re doing now is charging you for the entire week for “before and after care” whether you use it and in this program it’s just to fill in that gap. Simons: We’re only allowing people who are currently in our “before and after care” to register for this so that we can keep our group not mingling with other kids. Mayor: And for $20, that’s pretty cheap! Gilbride: Really, you’re not allowing other people? Simons: Correct. This is just to fill in the mid-point of the day where they would normally be in school and it’s only for the people who are currently in the “before and after school care”. I think the way we were looking at it is as opposed to doing the “no school day camps” and charging the $35 that we normally charge because we’re now charging for the whole week of “before and after care” – this is like basically giving them a discount of that amount for the “no school days”. Mayor: I’m ok with it. If you have vacancies would you fill them with other people? Simons: Not this year, we’re trying to keep the kids in the program only with each other. Mayor: Any other discussion? Raber: I think we should probably put in the title, 2020 or COVID so we know this is only applicable for this year. Mayor: That’s a great idea. Raber: I’m assuming that when we’re back to normal, we may have at least 2 rate structures and one for those people who may just need the coverage for a day. Simons: Right. Raber: I move to approve the 2020 Covid “no school day camp” rate increases to the program grid as stated; seconded by Mayor. Vote to approve: 6/0 (for the record, Tim joined the meeting at 10:07 and is voting). B. Changes To Council Grid: Simons: We have one proposed change to the council grid and that is adding a tournament fee of $50 a day if you use 2 fields, and $150 a day for 3 fields or more and it would apply to all fields owned by the city including those traditionally used by Little League. So including the Hole, Indian Hills, Washburn and Maca. These tournaments that Little League runs are just taking increased staff time to clean up after, to monitor bathroom situations to make sure the toliets aren’t clogged and an adequate amount of supplies are there. For a long time, Little League did a really good job of cleaning up after themselves, making sure trash is in -4- the trashcan, pulling the bags out when the trashcans are full. Over the last couple of years and especially this year, that just wasn’t happening. So we’ve invested a lot of staff time over the last couple of years making sure the fields and surrounding areas were put back to normal afterwards. We’re proposing adding this fee to help cover those costs and lost revenue. When they have tournaments at the Hole, we are not able to rent out Ritchie Shelter House because of parking issues and not renting some of the pavilions because of that as well. We do not charge them for that but this does kind of help accommodate some of that lost revenue. Gilbride: Does it really at $50 for a day? Simons: It brings in more than 0 dollars a day. Gilbride: So how many hours are you paying for work when that would occur ($50/day)? Simons: That’s only for 2 fields or less. Generally when that happens, it is not Little League, those that only use 1 or 2 fields usually use Howe Road and Lions Park and they’re already paying rental fees for those fields. So, we didn’t want to go too drastic with 2 fields or less because we do have some smaller tournaments that do pay rental fees to rent our fields already. So the $150/day for 3 fields would generally affect Little League because they do play larger tournaments at more fields. When I figured out what we spent for the last tournament, it was a little bit less than that a day so I just thought we could kind of recoup those costs. We generally do not clean the bathrooms as often as we have been but we will still check them during the tournaments. We also had more staff on for longer times this year. Mayor: So the question for the Hole, since Little League actually has a lease, how can you charge a field rental? Is it because of the Richie Center? Because if they’re having a tournament on their field that they have a “lease” on . . . Simons: This isn’t really a rental fee, it’s more of a “maintenance fee”. Raber: Yes, I was going to suggest that it be called a “maintenance fee”. Rorar: The Hole is just one field in that tournament - they’re using several fields throughout the city. We had to call Terry in twice to unplug the toilet at the Hole and we don’t recoup any of those costs. Simons: Even when we had a sign on the stall that said “out of order”, they still used it! Mosher: That’s because signs don’t seem to apply to anyone anymore, they read them and say well that doesn’t apply to me! Gilbride: Well, $150 just covers general maintenance items, do we want to add something that allows for extra billing for emergency services as needed? Mayor: Well they are our parks and restrooms, are we charging rentals on the fields? Gilbride: I just don’t see us taking on some of these extra burdens . . . Mayor: Are they charging . . .? Raber: They’re making money, they charge every team like $300/hour as a typical tournament fee. Gilbride: In both tournaments, it’s not like they rented a field, they basically give Little League the fields for the most part (Howe Road being the only one they pay for) and they charge $400 or $500 a team and we’re stuck with taking care of the facilities with hundreds of people in the park. I think $150 a day is probably a nominal charge, that’s my opinion. Mayor: What do other communities do when they’re running tournaments? Simons: I don’t know, have any of you looked into that? Rorar: Bath Township charges a tournament fee. I don’t know the exact amount but I could look it up. They do charge a seasonal fee for renting their fields and then they charge a tournament fee at maybe $100 a day. Bozic: The City of Cuyahoga Falls is right now in an evaluation period of trying to figure out what they should be charging, and what kind of policies should be in place and have been calling me to get some background. They will probably be in line with where we’re at, if not higher depending on what they come up with. Mayor: I’m good with charging, I’m just -5- wondering is this enough or is this just a starting point? Is this more than we’ve gotten in the past? You think this will cover our costs? Simons: It will cover staffing and supply costs. Mayor: What do you do for that senior league that rents the parks? Simons: They’re just a straight rental. Mayor: So part of their rent comes with restrooms that we have to maintain? Simons: Correct. Mayor: So part of the rent that Little League pays for Howe Road park is included as “maintenance” and would include the restrooms? Simons: When they rent those fields for tournament games, a game day rental comes with us dragging and lining the fields. The Silver League is not a tournament, it is a regular league and they have fewer spectators so they do not require as much of our time and maintenance. If you go to a baseball or softball tournament there are a not more spectators that are there all day so there’s a lot more trash and more restroom usage. I would like to go with the tiered pricing so as not to put an undue burden on some of our smaller teams that host tournaments just at 2 of our fields. But this should cover our staffing and supply costs. I think this is a good place to start, and we can reevaluate at the end of next year. Mayor: I make the motion to approve the tournament maintenance fee as proposed; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. 6. Other New Business: Simons: We do have a new event coming up at the end of this month. We’ll be hosting a drive-in movie for Halloween instead of the street dance. It will be on Saturday, October 31st in the high school parking lot and we’ll be showing “Hotel Transylvania”. So far we’ve received some really good responses and sent out some sponsorship information as well and we’ve received some interest from businesses that we’ve really not been in contact with before. I think it will be really well received by the community and its businesses together! Aside from that, we are just gearing up for community all-stars starting in a smaller capacity and our soccer leagues as well starting in a smaller capacity. We are trying to open all areas we can following the guidelines set forth by the state and the health department. Mayor: How are you doing with the leagues, the soccert and the different events? Simons: I think it’s a challenge, as got some pushback from the community all stars that we are only allowing 10 players per team because of our spectator limit. We were able to go back and look at the blueprint for soccer and at the bleachers in the soccer area and we are actually able to take one spectator per player for our youth soccer leagues so we believe that should help. We’ve got to go out there now and kind of mark off where people can sit in those spaces. So far I think we’ve received some good feedback, even some interest for basketball from teams that haven’t played in our league before. People are really just wanting to get out and do some things, so I’m hopeful that will help increase the participation. Mayor: How are we going to work out the school district going into . . . are you guys allowing them to come in? Mosher: That was what I was going to ask. In terms of using the Rec for basketball practice, I know that you guys were storing equipment largely on the courts, and I’ve spoken with Adam and he told me you were working on that. We’re preparing to practice in our 3 gyms, the high school, middle school and elementary. If we could use the Rec, that would be huge but at the same time, we all understand the reality of what we’re dealing with. So I didn’t know where that stands now . . . Simons: Well, Adam and I will have to go back and look at it. I think that we could accommodate some time in an after-school period like 3-6, around our classes -6- because we do have equipment on one court for our aerobic classes and I’m trying to keep one court open for members so that leaves us 2 more courts – one might also be listing fitness classes depending, and we also have our “before and after school” care. So we have a lot of things we’re trying to spread out too but we’ll talk internally and try to see what can be done. Mosher: Thanks, I would appreciate it. I know that the one positive thing in all of this, is with the elementary building open, we now have that gym to use which is actually usable compared to Dunbar and Munroe. The one problem that we have is the elementary gym is essential the same size as the middle school gym so you’re good in terms of one court. Trying to do side court or cross court play is very tough because they’re so much smaller. The high school could probably conduct 2 practices at the same time on the side courts like a varsity and jv but down at the elementary and the middle school, it becomes tougher because the space is not there. We’re working on trying to find ways to make it work. Of course, nobody knows what will eventually be going on, the Governor has not addressed this yet. And I’m guessing it will be at the 11th hour and 59th minute like they did for fall. And that’s part of the nature of a pandemic and we all know that. You do not know how things will be one week, two weeks or three weeks down the road. What I can tell you is if it stays the way it has been, we’ll probably be operating under the same protocols that we’ve operated under in the fall for volleyball. So that means 1,500 or 15% of whatever’s lesser for spectators. In order for us to have spectators for middle school basketball, we’re going to have to play those games in the high school gym. So we’re working right now on juggling all the practices around to make sure that we can actually have the middle school games in the high school gym and right now there are 4 conflicts so that works pretty well but what’s tough is that some people know that volleyball is the only show in town in the gym so when winter comes you have boys and girls basketball, wheelchair basketball, and one of the other concerns I have right now . . . I have no idea but wrestling may occur (I think it will) and the way it is now you don’t necessarily wrestle in duals so much as you do tournaments on the weekends. I can’t seeing the tournaments being allowed. I could be wrong, but if they’re not allowed then we’re going to have to start having duals for our wrestling team which cuts into more gym time so it’s going to be interesting. So – any help, any help! Simons: We’re facing the same challenges so you guys aren’t alone. Mosher: Oh yes, we’re both in the same boat on this one! Raber: I have another item. Someone had asked me the other day if we were contemplating using the age level at any point? As far as commitment in the facility? Simons: That’s something that we kind of continue to struggle with because we do get kids that just kind of walk over from the high school and hang out. Obviously that’s something that we can’t have going on right now. No one is supposed to be congregating, we don’t have any feeding, they can’t play a pick-up game so that’s kind of why we’re at where we are right now. We’d like to be able to find a way to make it work but I don’t want to have one staff person who has to spend their time chasing around this group of kids and telling them not to congregate with each other. We keep looking at it and try to evaluate a way to make it work, but right now we’re still at a kind of loss as to how to do it. Raber: Thank you. -7- Monthly Reports TRC Membership Report: Simons: We have a number of memberships that are frozen or paused or on hold or otherwise just not being used but we leave them active in the system so we know when they expire and when a person does come back we can add that time onto the end of their membership. Our membership is down. I did include in the packet a “member visit report” - the form with the 3 colors on it – and it kind of gives you an idea of where we’re at usage-wise. But that compares our visit with each month that we’ve been reopened so we can compare those with what we’re seeing this year and how it kind of compares to last year. Obviously when you compare the numbers from year to year, it’s really bleak but I think the good news is that it is steadily increasing for this year. In the current environment, I think this is all that we can hope for. We did just increase our hours starting on Monday so we have had some people in there in those mid-afternoon hours. Not sure how many people we’ve had in after 7 pm yet but we’re hopeful that by adding these things back in as we feel we’re able to do so that we can continue to increase our member visits and increase those memberships that do not have them on “pause or hold”. Gilbride: Are you seeing any of that yet? Simons: Yes we regularly have people coming in and saying OK I want to restart my membership or getting a new membership. I hear them signing a new waiver for Covid so that happens several times a day and we’re getting them back. It’s very hard to see that fact reflected in the numbers of the report because of the way we had to pause, hold etc. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: Obviously the numbers are down. Due to no summer camp, no Maca, and all of the other items it is certainly not looking good for this year. We are just going to have to move forward, there’s not much else to say. Mayor: I understand the revenue is down but are the expenses proportionately down the same? Gilbride: No. So we are going to have to take a look at that and see if we have to make some adjustments. And we might have to look into operations . . . Simons: And we have tried to do that too. Part of the issue is too that we’ve been paying our employees to be in our building since January but the membership fees have not been coming in as well. For the month of June we didn’t have any fees coming in because a lot of those people were those who had memberships on hold from March and we didn’t bill any of our ENT ? people until July and then our Silver Sneakers revenue was almost a month behind. So that does have a big effect on us. Even with members coming back we’re not seeing the full financial impact of those numbers coming back. And expenses are up because we still have to staff the building at a minimal level during these times. Then there were additional expenses in trying to prepare the building for reopening. TRC Donation Request Report: Simons: There were 2 organizations that made requests and their events were cancelled because of the pandemic. They were never claimed and not added to the list so they will remain eligible for another request next year. At the last meeting in May we issued 2 donations to the United Steel Workers for their annual picnic and for Six Year?? Enterprises for their United Way campaign. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on November 22, 2020/km