Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For July 8, 2021 @ 10 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Law Director Raber, Director of Finance Gilbride, Svs. Director Rorar, School Principal Manion and new Athletic Director Bill Johnson (6 voting) Rec Center Staff Attending: Parks/Recreation Superintendent Simons, Adm. Assistant Enos, Program Dir. DeLapa (non-voting) Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan Call To Order and Approval of Minutes: The Mayor called the meeting to order. Raber moved to approve the Rec Governing Board minutes from the May 6, 2021 meeting; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: Our biggest past event was the new eSports Tournament we had approved at our May 6th meeting. It was on June 26th and we had 14 sign up and 10 of them actually came to the tournament. It went very, very well and from what I can understand, the kids had a good time and the winner was actually the youngest one there from Tallmadge. We will be working on planning another one of those tournaments for some time in September at the same place, Bounce Innovations but we have not finalized the date yet. Manion: I went to that event just to get some inside on these sports because the school district is kind of moving in that direction. I thought that facility was fantastic and very well run. It was good to see the kids enjoy it and we got a lot of information, they’re very knowledgeable in terms of . . . they were speaking a different language in a lot of conversations that I got in with their staff but very well done and the kids really enjoyed it. Mayor: So how long does that take from start to finish? Manion: They did . . . and you can arrange it in a lot of different ways, but they gave them kind of a practice session like 45 minutes, just to get comfortable with the set-up and the game they were playing. Then they did kind of like an hour session where you’re trying to get as many points as you can so you’re really not competing against the other people in the room, you’re competing on this platform to try and get as many points as you can. Then the top earners kind of move into a second tier bracket and then the one tier bracket kids were done or they could stay and just play. All in all I think it was a few hours from beginning to end in terms of how they structure it. It could have been a lot longer, they could have gone on for a couple of days (all laughing). Rorar: I’d like to commend you guys with coming up with something like this because it is high-tech now and I have a hard time getting my head wrapped around it and I think everybody in this room probably does too. But at the end of the day, they’re giving out scholarships for that stuff. Simons: Kudos to Randy, Gary and Adam, they got this information at our Ohio Parks and Recreation Conference back in 2020 before the world shut down. They were really kind of gung-ho on it but 6 weeks between then and everything shutting down because of Covid, they had to put it aside. So to pick it back up and be able to run things and do all that in this amount of time was really great. We’re looking to expand -2- their meeting with the schools right after this and a couple other meetings in the next couple of days about some other eSport things that we’re planning to do. So it’s really good to see our employees being so excited about planning something new and getting a new program that they really have no idea about either. So we’re all sort of learning this together and I’m really happy and excited about it too. Rorar: And continue to push it! Manion: Yes, everything we are hearing is that within the next 3 to 5 years, it going to be a . . . (indecipherable) sport. I want to get as many people involved early on is a good thing. Staff Updates: Simons: We are pretty good on our staffing right now. It’s summer, and lots of our members are enjoying the warm weather. We did move one of our front desk employees into Rental Coordinator and she’s doing a really good job filling in for Kristin who will be working here part of the time and at the Payment Center in the City Building the rest. All are good employees. Kristin is doing a good job, Sam is doing an excellent job with our summer camp, and for the most we’ve been very lucky with our staffing. We are fully staffed with summer camp, fully staffed at Maca and this morning I got an email that the Concession Stand was closed on Friday night and Saturday morning. There were still options for snacks because they have vending machines there. Rorar: Did you put an explanation on social media? Simons: No, I’ll contact Andrea. It was really a short amount of time they were closed and Friday night would not have been too much of a problem. When I was over there yesterday people were coming in after noon, so probably a lot come in after lunch. Mayor: OK, thank you. New Business: New/Updated Program Proposals: Simons: We are actually excited to say we are putting out a program guide which we haven’t done in about a year. This is for the fall and winter season and that’s where all of these programs will come in. Meditation Class: This is from a resident who is extremely excited to teach these classes. She is very gunho about this subject and hopefully this will help promote the classes. This would be a 4-week session with one hour class each where half the class will be spent on a different meditation or relaxation tactic and the other half will be talking about … say, a stress-reducing thing like diets, exercises, etc. She had originally pitched this as a group-class kind of a thing. I think she worked with Carol Martin at her salon with her staff. What we’re looking to charge for this is $75 for residents, $85 for non-residents and that will be on a contractual split, 70-30. We’ll probably do that in the Community Center in the evenings or on a Saturday morning. Raber moved to approve offering the “Meditation Class”; seconded by Rorar. Discussion: Mayor: So at the Community Center, do we have to make sure that there is nobody on the other side? This would be the B side I take it? Simons: Yes. And if it ends up creating a problem, I would assume we would try to avoid the same day as Yoga. But if we can’t do it at the Community Center we can find another place like at the Rec – we’re not really too busy at the Community Center so far. Mayor: But you would want it to be someplace that is quiet, so no card players on the other side?. Simons: Yes, so no rowdy poker games! Vote to approve: 6/0.  -3- Simons: I’m going to let Sam go over the next 4 items. These are new programs that she is putting together/spearheading. Challenge Island: DeLapa: Everything you would need to know about this program is found on our website. It’s really cool. What they do is either come to you or you can go to them. I wish I would have known about this before summer camp because I would have had them come to the park because they do camps as well. They bring like a new theme every time. I kind of want to do it definitely one time because sometimes it’s a pirate theme and they do a bunch of hands-on problem-solving activities. We could have it at the Rec Center or the Community Center depending on space and timing. They would receive 80% of the total sales and we would receive 20%, we are proposing a cost of $15 for a resident and $20 for a non-resident and I think it would be really cool, something different that we’ve never done before and it actually will promote problem-solving as well as be a new fun activity for the kids. I think we would get a lot of kids that are involved in our summer camp programs but I would definitely like it to go out to a lot of the other kids in the community. If the first one takes off, we can definitely do more because there are so many different options of what types of themes we would like to go with. Mayor: So where do you set this up at? DeLapa: It would depend on how many kids we have – but it will be an indoor activity. We haven’t talked about what she would bring, or what she would do, The theme would depend on how many kids are signed up. There will be slime- making and potion-making … Mayor: But not on the soccer field, right? DeLapa: No, not on the soccer field! It could be building and/or construction projects. Mayor: So it would be like different stations you would move to . . . DeLapa: Yes she said she would divide the groups up into 4 or 5 kids. She would like a class to be no more than 20 kids just so she can be more “hands-on” with them. Gilbride: Another just “throw it out there” that I don’t know if you want to manage . . . but I know the school district did do a “Club Invention” during the school year last year and I think this is a great idea but you might want to consider coordinating and make sure we aren’t offering this that might be in conflict with what they plan to offer. This was an after-school program for the grade school kids so you might just want to coordinate with them. Mr. Anzaldi did it last year, he’s a 4th grade teacher, and I don’t know if he plans to do it again this year or not . . . So, when you start planning when you want to offer this, kind of coordinate with them so we’re not … DeLapa: Yes, definitely, that’d be cool. I think I have his phone number. Manion: Let me know, I can get you his number. DeLapa: Thanks. Raber: I move to approve the offering of the Challenge Island program; seconded by Rorar. Vote to approve: 6/0. Princess Tea Party: DeLapa: This would be held in the winter, maybe January or February when there’s not too much going on, giving little girls something to look forward to. It will either be at the Community Center or Ritchie Hall. It would be $25 for residents and $30 for non-residents with a maximum of 25. The proposed expenses would be $100-$250 and then the proposed revenue anywhere from $200 to $625. The little girls will come in their princess dresses, we’ll offer cupcakes, little tea sets, decorations, etc. We’ll play games, have a craft, and have a “real life” princess come visit them and maybe she will tell them a story. It would be like an hour long, just something fun for them to do. Raber: I move to approve offering the “Princess Tea Party”; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. -4- Decade Dance: DeLapa: This is one of my favorites. It will be for adults, it is something a little different – I know the Chamber does a “Casino Night” maybe in January, but this would be music from different decades and everyone comes wearing their favorite attire from their favorite decade. We would have beer and wine service and small plate appetizers. We would have dance contests and do some other fun things. It would be $50 for residents and $75 for non-residents and a minimum crowd of 75 to a maximum of 150 with proposed expenses of $5,000 and a proposed revenue of $7,500. We would probably have it at the Community Center due to the beer and wine which we would need a liquor permit for. Raber: So, I like the concept in general, but just so you know, this would be the first time that the City would be serving alcohol during a sponsored program so there’s a lot that’s involved with that. Liability, control of ticket sales, control of alcohol consumption, control of security, and all the things that come with that. So we would need to develop all of that and make sure that we had all those controls set forth and make sure we’ve got all of our liability issues covered. I’m not opposed to us going down that road but it will be new territory and we need to be sure we are doing it all appropriately. And I know the next one to be discussed also has an alcohol element with it so I just want to make sure we are following proper procedures for the permit, and all the controls are in place. Mayor: The only thing I’m not sure of is the wine – does the ticket price include it or do you buy it there? DeLapa: It would be an open bar so that’s why the ticket price is higher, the alcohol is factored into it. It’s kind of like the Casino Night, we were thinking of maybe offering a “special drink” that would relate to one of the decades that someone could order. Mayor: I don’t think you can have wine at the Community Center. I think the permit reads beer and wine coolers . . . It has to do with the percentage of alcohol . . . DeLapa: So that is for the B Permit? Mayor: Yes, we’ll work on that detail before you actually promote this. The way the Casino Night gets down is they don’t do it in a city facility . . . they do it in establishments that are zoned that way. The zoning for the Community Center does not allow for that. The way weddings get around that is you can have an open bar because you don’t charge for it. DeLapa: My first thought was that it could be held at the Venue because they do have the right permit. Raber: We need to look further into this because there are more restrictions at the Community Center. DeLapa: Right. Gilbride: And maybe the Venue would be the best anyway because at the Community Center you’d have to bring in a caterer and all of that already exists at the Venue. DeLapa: We’ll definitely need to talk with them about this and see what it would cost. Simons: We do plan to seek sponsors for this event as well so it will offset costs and increase the profit on it. Gilbride: And maybe the Venue would be interested in being a sponsor so they could promote their location. Mayor: And I believe the Chamber does something like this for Seniors at the Venue at Homecoming so we need to be sure we are not in conflict with what they’re doing. It’s a great concept but I think it will have to be at an off-site location. Raber: I would approve the offering of this program with the caveat of having the location moved to another place and that there is coordination from the Rec Department with regard to serving alcohol and what we need to do to be in compliance; seconded by Rorar. Vote to approve: 6/0.  -5- Fall Festival: DeLapa: So this is a fall celebration to kind of take the place of the street dance and the Halloween movie night as well. The Fall Festival would be held at the beginning of the fall season and the Halloween movie night towards the end of the month. So the Fall Festival would be on October 2nd in the Rec Center parking lot. We would have food trucks with a $50 deposit that would give us 5% of the sales. We would have lots of kid’s activities: $5 a ticket for an all-day wristband, the bounce houses, the pumpkin game, the mechanical pumpkin, and maybe apple-bobbing with social distancing of course. Alcohol sales would be $5 to $10 a ticket depending on pricing and with sponsorships included. The minimum would be 3,000 people in attendance and a maximum of 5,000 with proposed expenses of $12,000 and proposed revenue of $17,000. This is kind of, since Covid, one of the bigger things that would be going on and would encourage people to get out and actually be a community again. We have talked to a bakery, but that fell through and I have been on the phone this morning trying to line up other vendors, games, pumpkin painting, pumpkin carving contests with a judge (probably you Dave). We would have a DJ with a band, Dussel Farms is really excited to bring a haywagon out there and give rides for the kids and that’s about it. Mayor: I love the concept, it would be new if we don’t have the street dance. But when you evaluate the street dance that’s been going on forever, a lot of Tallmadge kids go to that but there’s a lot of people that know about this and bring their families for the free hot dogs, donuts, cider, etc. And I don’t really care as long as the kids are having fun, that’s what it’s for. The alcohol will again be a problem – if this is for the kids, are we providing that so we get the parents to come and bring the kids? Simons: It’s more about offering something for everyone in the family. As opposed to the Street Dance which I feel is more for the middle schoolers. I know parents with young kids don’t often go to the Street Dance because they’ve been at work all day and then they went trick or treating, and it makes for a very, very long day. So we’re looking at this for all ages in the family. The alcohol would require an event permit so we have to look into that, it’s similar to what we were going to do with the Food Truck Festival in 2020. Mayor: And how many food trucks were you going to use? Simons: I think 5 and we’ll probably limit it to that amount for the first year just to make sure that we don’t have too many and then the beer and wine. Raber: I guess I’m worried that we’ll have a lot of people and won’t have adequate facilities for it. I know that the Food Truck Festival itself was getting to the point where it was too big for the spot and so I think that this could draw a lot of people – especially since we didn’t have Circle Fest and people want to have a community event. We should be thinking of shuttles and maybe coordinate with the school district for the high school parking lot. You’ll need all that space that’s at the Rec Center. Gilbride: I guess I’m questioning the actual title of the event and if people would go at that time. It’s a Saturday afternoon from 12-6 and Tallmadge Youth Football has games that go from 9 to 4:30/5 in the afternoon. My understanding is that they have 2 teams. I did look, and there’s a THS JV home game that morning at the high school that would start at 10 and go until the start of this . . . so having kids in lots of these activities, I don’t know that having it on a Saturday afternoon would get any sports parents there. I guess I’m thinking that a Sunday afternoon would work best. And I’m thinking that at that time of the year, it would be getting dark around the ending time and cold. DeLapa: That’s -6- why I thought about it for either late September or early October so it would be a nice fall day and no cold weather yet. I guess one of the reasons I chose Saturday was that people wouldn’t have to go to work the next day and not have to be home at a certain time. Gilbride: Some people might just do that, I’m just looking at it from my perspective and how my family works. And if you find out the JV football season is over, then maybe . . . A.D. Johnson: For sure their season isn’t over, it goes almost to November. Mayor: You’d lose a lot of people. A.D. Johnson: At the same time though, I think that trying to avoid a weekend where there’s not a conflict will be tough. I know for sure that the following weekend is homecoming. Mayor: What about a Sunday? It might not be bad. This is not really a “drinkfest”, we do not want people there driving away after a couple of beers with kids there. Rorar: Dusk is at 7:30 on that particular weekend. DeLapa: Yes, because I did not want to be cleaning up in the dark. I think the band is done at 5:30 and that would give us a half hour to start cleaning things up. Rorar: Can you move it to a Sunday? Mayor: That’s when the other Food Truck Festival was held and it was very popular, let’s try that. Rorar: On a Sunday, what more are you going to do, unless it’s to watch a Browns game . . . Gilbride: And you really would get a crowd if you could get a TV hooked up and broadcast the Browns game. Is there a Sunday game that weekend? Simons: We have our big movie screen and a projector and could do it! Mayor: Oh, wow the Browns and beer – too much like a “beer garden”, not sure that’s what we want. Simons: We’ll take another look at all of this for a Sunday date and if the things we had planned for would be available on a Sunday too. We had talked about doing it at the Fairgrounds but they’re completely booked for September/October. Rorar: You know my thoughts . . . Simons: I don’t think Lions Park would work because of the electricity needs that we have, we’d have to bring in too many generators and all that stuff. Raber: I move to approve the Fall Festival with the stipulations of changing the date and time and coordinating with the Law Department on the liquor issue; seconded by Gilbride. Vote to approve: 6/0. Family Fun Night Price Increase: Simons: The last Family Fun Night we had was in February of 2020. I actually oversaw the program since Rene was not here and in seeing what everything costs and with prices all increasing right now, we are requesting to raise the prices from $4 a person presale and $5 event day, to $8 presale and $10 event day. Kids 2 and under are still free, but I think that based on everything that we have at that program, I would still in a heartbeat pay that amount of money. There’s a petting zoo, the inflatables, games, etc. I want to get an “in the door, everything’s included” price. I think that the program can bear that increase and help us with the costs. Mayor: Is there a family rate? Simons: No, we do not have a family rate for that. Raber: I move to approve the rate increase for the Family Fun Night program; seconded by Mayor. Vote to approve: 6/0. Monthly Reports: TRC Membership Report: Simons: I passed out our monthly membership report. The 2020 numbers are still off a little because when we did reopen in June of 2020, we extended the expiration date of everyone’s membership by 90 days to account for the time that we were closed. -7- So some of those memberships are still carryovers from probably the end of March and people who may not have renewed their memberships, for the summer anyway. They just got an incentive because we had been closed for so long. So for us to be only down about 162 memberships from 2020 at the end of June I think is really good and actually in our Usage Report, our usage is up quite significantly from what it was in 2020 generally speaking. I believe our average daily visits for the month of June were up 16% from May’s daily visits. Generally, they decreased from May because we’re usually not as busy in June as we are in May; however this year we were busier than we normally are in May so it seems like everything is kind of leveling out and our usage is going up, which I think are both good signs. Starting July 1st we did start selling our daily admission passes and actually are already up to the number we sold in June when we were registering guest passes so we’ve been twice as busy at the front desk with those and hopefully those numbers will start to show on the revenue report for July. Mayor: Looks like the Silver Sneakers are down a little bit? Simons: Yes but that really fluctuates depending on what insurance companies people have – a lot of different factors go into that. Our optimum membership is up a little bit but not quite offsetting the Silver Sneakers. The Prime Healthways being down, that really depends on the health insurance offered by the businesses in our area. The Prime is for the younger people and is offered as an extension of their insurance. I know we had a lot of people on that benefit and then Summit Racing dropped it and we lost some people and that really is out of our control. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: This is the finance report for June and we are seeing programming come back and obviously we did not have summer camp last year and those kind of items that are allowing us to put some revenue back in. But the membership revenue is still lagging behind where we were, even during the first 3 months of last year. So we’re still significantly behind. I did add the numbers from 2019 to the report so people had a reference for what a regular year of operation looked like, so while we are in a better place right now than we were last year, and knowing we are on a recovery-side versus last year at this time when we were still not sure where we were going to end up, makes me hope we’ll keep moving forward. TRC Donation Request Report: Enos: We do have some organizations in our community getting back out and starting to offer events again which is encouraging to see. We’ve had 2 requests. One from the Tallmadge Athletic Boosters for one of their 3 events and as we’re only allowed to give one donation a year, we let them pick which one of the events they wanted it for, so they chose “A Night At The Races” for their Blue Devil raffle. And then we also had the USW Local #2 donation for their annual picnic which we have donated to in the past. Mayor: Before we adjourn, I’d like to personally thank Dan Enos and his staff for the CPR efforts they made on a gentleman at the Rec Center who collapsed. Dan actually was teaching a CPR class when this occurred and left the class to go out on the basketball court and perform it! Our EMS workers were very complimentary about what Dan did. Do we have an update on that? Enos: After 2 weeks or so, he did end up passing away from complications from that but the family was very grateful that he survived long enough for them to say their goodbyes. I was told our EMS workers had to deliver 5 or 6 shocks to him while on the way to the hospital. Mayor: -8- Having the opportunity to say goodbye to someone in your family is very important. You did an excellent job and without you and your team, that wouldn’t have happened. So personally, I’d like to thank all of you. While I hope you don’t have to go through something like this again, keep up the good work! Motion To Adjourn: The meeting was adjourned at 10:41 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on August 18, 2021/km