Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For TEAMS Meeting of February 4, 2021 @ 10:00 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Finance Director Gilbride, Svs. Dir. Rorar, School Reps Mosher and Manion (6 members voting) Rec Center Staff In Attendance: Park/Rec Superintendent Simons, Adm. Assistant Enos (non-voting) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan Call To Order and Approval of Minutes: Gilbride moved to approve the RGB minutes from the May 7, 2020 meeting; seconded by Raber. Vote to approve: 6/0. Gilbride moved to approve the RGB minutes from the October 1, 2020 meeting; seconded by Raber. Vote to approve: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: Well, we have not had many past events due to Covid. We did have our Community All-Star Basketball League ready and set to go and then due to Covid restrictions, ended up not running it this year. At this point, we are just focusing on streamlining operations here at the Rec Center. I will send some kudos out to our Childcare staff and Joanne who’s handling the Before and Aftercare. When the schools did go virtual right around Christmas, we were able to pull together a program for the kids in the Before and After School program where we did the remote learning with them so parents still had a place for them to go. That was very well received by the parents that took advantage of it and I’m very happy that we were able to pull together and offer that service. Mayor: Yes, great job! Staff Updates: Simons: Well, here’s a big one! Earlier this week we received the resignation of Adam Bozic, our Assistant Superintendent. He will be leaving next Friday the 12th and we are going to be asking Dan to temporarily take on some of those duties and he has graciously though perhaps reluctantly accepted that and we’ll be working with Adam when he returns from vacation to get updates on everything and then we’ll be working to fill some other positions here to really get moving forward and on the right track for summer. Mayor: It’s a shock, happy for Adam – he will be missed. I’m sure Dan can fill in until we can figure it out, so thank you Dan for stepping up. Good luck to Adam in whatever his future has in store for him. Board Member Salerno enters meeting at 10:08 (now 7 members voting) New Business: Updated Guest Pass Fees For Maca: Simons: We are looking to add a guest pass fee for Maca Pool for this season due to the admission limits put on us by Covid restrictions. We will only be allowing members and guests into the pool this year. So in order to cut down on the interactions between our staff and people coming in on guest passes, and to eliminate confusion and all of those things, we are proposing to have one fee just for guests so they don’t have to prove residency to receive a fee or anything like that. I believe you should have the “Guest Pass Rate” grid in front of you. The Guest Pass Rate basically just splits the difference between the resident -2- admission rate and the non-resident admission rate. Mayor: I don’t really have a problem with this, are there any questions? Rorar: It will definitely streamline the process. Simons: That’s what we think too. Mayor: I move to approve the new Guest Pass Fee rates for Maca Pool as stated; seconded by Salerno. Vote to approve: 7/0. Other Items: Mosher: I just have a real quick question. I was contacted yesterday by Elliot Giles who is the League President of a flag football association. Is that anything that you guys have heard of or are aware of? Simons: I don’t believe that we’ve been in contact with anyone in a flag football association. Definitely, if he’s looking for field time, send him our way and we can work that out. I am not sure if Randy or Adam have previously been in contact with him. Mosher: Here’s why I’m asking. He’s not looking for field time, it actually is an organization that’s starting to expand into Summit County according to the letter he sent me and they’re playing their games in Barberton. It’s for kids that are from 3 and 4 years old all the way up to 13 and 14 and it’s a spring league so it’s not in the fall and wouldn’t conflict necessarily with Tallmadge Youth Football. But before I responded to this guy, I wondered if you guys had anything in place in the spring or summer that was flag-football oriented? Simons: A while back we had been working with “Jump Start Sports”, one of our contractors who offered a flag- football program in the spring or summer but it never really took off. I’m not sure if it was the format, the price, or the interest because we’re also a big baseball community with lots of kids in Little League, but we’re always happy to have a conversation. It’s not going to conflict with anything we do right now . . . Mosher: Gotcha. Again, the guy called and left a voicemail for me yesterday and then he sent me this email so before I called him back I wanted to know if it was going to step on anybody’s toes and then furthermore I’m not very keen on sending our kids down to Barberton to play flag football. And I also believe that if you’re going to play baseball, then play it during baseball season which is what the spring is really for, so I was just curious if you guys had heard anything about this and if you were doing anything like this in the spring or summer. Appreciate the info! Monthly Reports: TRC Membership Report: Simons: I did send this report along to everyone this morning. It is sad, we are down quite a few memberships. I think that’s to be expected with everything going on, it’s happening across the board and it’s not just us. I will say that with those insurance-based memberships (as far as people coming in the building), the number of memberships are not reflective of the actual number of users just because once you have a Silver Sneakers membership you have it basically until you change insurance companies or you die or are somehow no longer eligible. So those memberships may be a little bit skewed. What I did not send along today but I am currently updating, is I’ve been tracking our visits regularly since we opened back up. I update the spreadsheet daily and we are increasing our numbers. Aa t the end of January our daily average of member and guest pass visits were at 354 average per day as opposed to when we reopened in June and it was 121. And already for February we are at an average per day of 450 a day. We’re trending in the right direction, it’s just taking a little while to get there. Especially the Silver Sneaker’s numbers – it will take a while for them to catch up to coming back in as they are -3- obviously an “at risk” population and so it will take more time to get that program up to full- steam. In addition, we are not allowing daily admission passes right now so we can better regulate who’s coming into the building. Also, we’re not permitted to allow pick-up basketball games at this time so another way to help enforce that is to not sell the daily admission passes. Those are some things that are keeping our numbers down – not necessarily the membership report, but when Mollie gets to the financial report and in addition, our normal “visit report”, these are some of the things that are affecting that. I expect as time goes on and more people get vaccinated, things will begin to go back to normal. I hope to improve upon the way our numbers look in the near future, but I know we have a very safe operation going on here and I’m confident in what we’re doing and as people become more comfortable, they’ll start coming back. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: I’ve sent 2 financial reports since we’ve not met since the end of the year I thought it would be helpful to give everybody a glimpse of how the year ended. As Jessica has said, the pandemic was not kind to the Rec Center’s operations. Our revenue is down over 50% and as you can see, we had a huge operational loss this year due to that. I guess it is what it is . . . If you want to go ahead and look at January, as expected we’re continuing to see declines – we didn’t have Community All Stars which is a huge revenue generator in January in terms of admissions for spectators and as Jessica reported, memberships are still down and as actually stated, the paying memberships that are I think are causing the 64% decline and the insurance-based groups are not coming into the facilities. As you can see with the Silver Sneakers, last year we received almost $25,000 and this year, we’re about a third of that. That is reflective of how far down the visits are. So, we’ll keep on reviewing all the numbers, forge ahead and make adjustments as needed. TRC Donation Request Report: Enos: We really didn’t receive any requests in the last part of the year or the beginning of this one but we did give a donation for the “Light Up Tallmadge” event that was held, we gave a gift card and lunchbox. It was a good event, well- publicized and with a good turnout. Mayor: I’d just like to ask Jessica a question. Are there any updates on the event inside the Rec Center this April that happens every other year? Simons: The Expo? Mayor: Yes. Simons: I know the Chamber is working to change that event a bit and I have not heard exactly what is going on but I do not believe it will be the same set-up as it has been in previous years. Mayor: I’m sure we can’t have it in the Rec Center because of the number of people that attend. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:18 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on February 19, 2021/km