Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For November 4, 2021 Meeting At 10 a.m. City Hall Lower Level Conference Room Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Finance Director Gilbride, Public Service Director Rorar, School Reps Johnson and Manion and Community Mbr. Salerno (6 voting) Non-Voting Members: Parks and Rec Sup’t. Simons, Adm. Assistant Enos Meeting Chaired By: Mayor Kline Minutes: Karen Morgan Call To Order and Approval of Minutes: The Mayor called the meeting to order. Salerno moved to approve the minutes of the October 7th meeting; seconded by Gilbride. Vote: 6/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: The only past event that we’ve had since our last meeting was our Drive-In Movie Night. We ended up having to move it at the last minute to the Rec Center but I think it ended up working out so well because they upgraded us to this LED screen so you really see the picture a lot more clearly and it filled our space a little bit better. It may have looked less popular if we had done it at the high school because there’s more space. So we ended up with about 40 cars and then got about 25 kids to participate in our little kids costume parade and I think everyone there really enjoyed the event. So we will plan to do this again next year with the LED screen. Mayor: Great! Staff Updates: Simons: Not too many staffing updates. We’re still looking for more people to work different shifts but I think we’re pretty good. We just offered positions to 2 custodians to kind of help fill those voids. Our current custodians are getting pretty burned out working 7 days a week. Hopefully they’ll get started towards the end of November and then we have a bunch more seasonals starting for Community All Stars as well. Other: Simons: I do not have any “other” items. Mayor: The only “other” item I have is congratulations to the Rec Center staff, Jessica and your team . . . we had a person on a machine who collapsed of a cardiac arrest. He needed an AED and a CPR and I heard the guy is leaving the hospital today. That’s the 3rd one that I know of from the Rec Center and Pete, one of our Rec employees, even got well enough to return to work at the Center! Just wanted to say, great job! Salerno: There’s a local group called “the Tallmadge Recateers” (sp?) headed by Tim Dimoff and they have a little meeting at the Rec and a semi-annual meeting as well and they posted out how well the Rec Center did in helping him out. Simons: Is he a member of the Recateers? Simons: Yes. Salerno: It’s kind of an informal group but they’ve been spreading the word what a good job you guys did and literally saved his life. Mayor: You got him to the hospital and gave him another chance, and that’s our goal! New Business:  Price Change For Speed & Agility Training: Simons: This is programming that all of us enjoy reintroducing. Speed and Agility was a really popular program at our facility prior to Covid. -2- It presented some challenges at that time, with people registering at the door and it just kind of became chaotic with billing and all of the other stuff so before we brought it back, we wanted to kind of take a look at the pricing structure and how we register people and all those other things in order to take this time to “reset”. So what we are proposing is to change the rates, currently it’s $60 per resident and $75 for non- residents for 6 sessions. But there’s no . . . they don’t have to be in a row, they don’t have to be in any order, you just have to buy 6 sessions at a time to get this discount. The problem this presents is that people are moving their stuff all over the place, you don’t know when the free one is or when the paid one is, and it has just become a scheduling nightmare and an accounting nightmare for both us and the instructor. So, we’re planning to just run this in continuous 4 week sessions and have people register by that 4 week session instead of taking 6 classes whenever they want to. And then to encourage people to do the session as opposed to dropping in at the 4, we’ve raised that single day session price – so they can still come and join the class if they’re not a part of the session but we kind of tried to make the price different enough to encourage them to register for the session. We were having like 20 people come in and register at the door that day, so then classes were starting late or there was just chaos at the front desk, getting people checked in, etc. So this is kind of what we came up with after brainstorming with that instructor. Gilbride: So, how many classes a week? Simons: We do one class a week. Gilbride: So we’re basically increasing the cost per class by 50%? Simons: Yes, it was really like “buy 5 classes, get 1 free”. Mayor: What was a single rate? Simons: A single was $12 or $15 so we are doubling it. Our instructor believes it is a price that people will pay and I know when we brought other programs to the table for specific training, like basketball and the prices for that were actually much higher than this. So I think we can give it a go, see if it works, we’re just trying to find out the best way for everybody - for him, for us, for accounting purposes and that sort of thing. Gilbride: I’m a little concerned you’re going to price yourself out but . . . Salerno: If I was going there and I was going to be charged $25, I would just buy the 4 week package. I think that would entice me to go ahead and sign up. Simons: That’s our thought process as well. Mayor: It’s your program and I’m going to support you on it but I have to agree with Mollie, I’m not sure I would go for $25. Gilbride: Here’s my other perspective on this. We have a place in Munroe Falls offering a similar program affiliated with our high school sports program, charging $10 a time and offering it twice a week, and you can come and go whenever you please. So I’m a little concerned that this rate and having to commit to 4 weeks, I’m just concerned . . . if it works that would be great but not sure that there are other programs around us at a private location. Mayor: Who’s this geared toward? Is it high school kids? Simons: Ages 13-18. So, with that in mind, I think that this is really a better value for the money than our “jump start” programs that are geared to pre-schoolers at $80 or $90 for 6 weeks. I think I’d be more inclined to pay this . . . This guy has a pretty big following and I believe he charges similar to this at the Natatorium and some of the other training locations that he has as well. Mayor: Ok. I move to approve the recommendation from the Rec Center for the Speed and Agility Training; seconded by Salerno. Discussion: Mayor: Do you have a minimum number in the classes before you would cancel the program? Or would the -3- instructor do just one student? Simons: I believe the instructor would teach one student because with the 4 week program, others can just drop in which is how that class operated before anyway. He would show up regardless of whether or not he had anyone enrolled for that day ahead of time because people could still drop in. Mayor: And then we don’t pay him just to show up? Simons: Right. Salerno: Was this a popular program? Simons: Yes, before Covid, we were getting like 40 kids in it each time. And at least half of those were paying at the door so it was really bogging down our front desk and making it difficult to process. Vote to approve: 6/0. New Program – Nutrition Coaching: Simons: I’ll go over this program first, because it is kind of in line with our Personal Training program. What we’ve done, based on this program, is to change the structure of Personal Training. The 2 trainers that we’ve just brought on are both also certified nutritionists so that gives us the opportunity to offer Nutrition Coaching in addition to Personal Training or Fitness Training type thing. We are planning to offer a Nutrition Coaching program by setting up a 3 session “intro pass” so they can kind of talk to you about what the needs in your daily life are and kind of set up a plan for you and check in a couple of times and then after that it would be $30 for any additional sessions you would purchase. Then our Personal Training would be $18 an hour so we would be making revenue of about $12 per session. I think this would fill a need and combine a couple of packages that provides us with another “wellness” avenue at our facility. Mayor: So if I signed up for both packages, would I get a discount? Simons: It’s the same price, like this one would still be $90 on the Personal Training would still be the initial 3 package program that we’ll talk about. Mayor: I move to approve this recommendation by the Rec Center; seconded by Gilbride. Discussion: Gilbride: How long are the sessions? Simons: About one hour. Mayor: We will want like a 6 month report on how this is going. For the record, at 10:17 Megan Raber entered the meeting. Vote to approve: 7/0. Move Personal Training to Program Grid from Council Grid: With adding the pricing for the nutrition training we wanted to change the way we charge for our personal training as well. So starting out with that same initial 3 session intro package, this time for $120 as we charge $40 per session for personal training. We used to give a discount if people purchased 5 or 10 sessions but that wasn’t really the bulk of what we sold so I think moving to a “per session fee” for that will work out a lot better. People kind of want to come in with a trainer, get their work- out and then maybe check in once a month or as needed. So anyone who has already used our personal trainers would not have to purchase that initial intro package before purchasing a single session but anyone who is new to our personal training would have to purchase the initial 3 session package before, then moving on to kind of the as-needed $40 per session. That way you have a chance to meet with the trainer, where they can assess your overall physical fitness, kind of create a plan, have another meeting with you to kind of check with you to see how it’s going and adjust from there. I think the 3 session intro sets them up for success a little bit better. This is being proposed by Gary, our Fitness Coordinator. He also trains at some other gyms to help supplement his income so he feels this is very much in line if not a little less expensive as training at other facilities, -4- specifically the Natatorium where he is currently training. So we believe that this price change would be reasonable. Gilbride: I have a question. Because personal training is currently in the grid, are we kind of being backward by approving this on a program forum prior to Council approving it coming off the grid? Simons: Yes. Gilbride: Ok. Simons: My other thing on here was to move them to our program grid from the council grid seeing as what we did with them but what you are saying is that we need to do that first? Mayor: I make a motion to move the personal training program from the council grid to the program grid; seconded by Raber. Raber: You need to amend the motion by adding: “contingent upon the approval of council”. Mayor: OK, and you second it right? Raber: Yes. Vote to approve: 7/0. Monthly Reports TRC Membership Report: Mayor: Mollie passed those numbers out. Simons: Yes, our membership report keeps getting better and better. Our memberships are increasing, specifically in a lot of these monthly ones being higher than last year. A lot of the annual ones are kind of skewed because of how we put people’s memberships on pause so some of them are off a bit. But overall, our non-insurance based memberships (paid memberships) are up 225 from the end of October last year which is an excellent increase especially when you consider the weather in early October was so favorable that a lot of people hesitated to move indoors. I will also say that we have been seeing that now like Monday, the flood gates opened and we’ve had rushes at our desk after school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to where it’s just tons of people up there. We’ve sold a bunch of new memberships as well. Yesterday we actually had our highest single day visit of members and day pass users than we’ve had since March of 2020. We had 617 visits and that does not include wheelchair basketball, and the 9th grade boys. And we had 2 high school teams in as well, plus our other program kids so the building was really hopping yesterday and we were all really happy to see that. It’s been a really great couple of days so we’re happy to be moving in the right direction. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: This report is based on numbers before yesterday. The revenue is slowly upticking and that is good. However, I do think our Community All Star registration is down comparatively even to where it was last year during the pandemic so I do not think we will see it return to its previous participation, but we still seem to be moving along. Simons: Yes, our Community All Star registration is going to be down from last year. Our spectator fees are going to be down from we saw in 2020 as well but we are playing on fewer courts this year so we will still have open courts available for members so we’re hoping that will continue increase the memberships and day passes as well. Normally we have to shut our courts completely down for the program. That is great because we’re making money but now we’re able to serve our members and day pass users on the weekends too. Mayor: And the line right below that, “Basketball Court Rentals” is up substantially over last year. So we’re trending . . . TRC Donation Request Report: Enos: I have no donation report for today. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:25 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on November 23, 2021/km