Recreation Center Governing Board

CITY OF TALLMADGE RECREATION GOVERNING BOARD Minutes For January 6, 2022 Meeting At 10 a.m. Rec Board Members In Attendance: Mayor Kline, Finance Director Gilbride, Public Service Director Rorar, School Rep Manion, Community Mbr. Salerno (5 Voting Members)* 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. Gilbride moved to approve the minutes of the November 4, 2021 meeting; seconded by Rorar. Vote to approve: 5/0. Old Business: Past Event Updates: Simons: Since November’s meeting we’ve had our first Holiday Ball in December and it went pretty well. We instituted a Covid policy where you don’t have to have a vaccination card or a negative test, so that seemed to work pretty well. The event itself was attended by maybe 85 people or so, but it fit the space pretty well so it seemed like a pretty good event. I don’t believe we have it included in this coming year’s budget but it went well. We also had the start up of the Community All Star Basketball program at the beginning of December and so far that’s going pretty well. We have about 6 games that we have to make up right now because of teams having Covid and not being able to make their games. Those games are currently scheduled for this weekend and then we’ll start another list of games that need to be made up and we’ll make them up probably one of the last 2 weeks of the season. We instituted online ticket sales for the Community All Stars and that’s not going as well as we wanted it to but we are hopeful that as it continues, more people will take advantage of it. Mayor: Will you still be taking tickets at the door? Simons: Yes, we still sell tickets at the door but they get to “skip the line” if they do the online ticket sales. It’s something that we plan to do this year at Maca as well for our daily admissions to give people a more streamlined option so they don’t have to wait in line quite as long for daily admissions. Gilbride: In my opinion I think you should just consider mandating that. People are getting used to that policy, you can’t go to a youth game or a high school game without having to do it that way . . . Mayor: So you just download a QR code or something? Like with plane tickets? Gilbride: Yes. I think if you don’t mandate it, you will always be stuck with some who don’t want to but I think for next year it will save a lot of … Simons: Everybody just seems to be angry this year for whatever reason, so we’ve been having a lot of issues with fights and different spectators and coaches ejected from games especially and specifically in this league. We do have a rematch this weekend of two teams that had gotten into an altercation at the beginning of the season so we did ask for police presence so hopefully everything will go ok. Mayor: What time is that game? Simons: Sunday at 1 pm. That’s kind of it for events . . .we have winter break camp going on right now. Mayor: So the kids who were on court 2 and court 3 - they looked like young kids – were they practicing for the All Star team? Sue and I were walking the track and there was one team, they had red shirts on and one of the coaches was really -2- yelling at them and Sue even remarked “I would never let one of my kids play for someone like that”! I mean, these are little kids and he was screaming “get off the floor right now”! Law Director Raber joins the meeting (the voting members now are 6).* Staff Updates: Simons: We are “holding on by a thread”. We’ve had a lot of people out over the last few weeks. Most were on quarantine because of exposure and all of those are back now, so add to that the people who are resigning or retiring … and we do have one employee who has been out for Covid complications, it’s been 2 months so we’re trying to get some help for that. But we’re here and running things as close to normal as we can. New Business: New Program Proposal – Pickleball Lessons: Simons: This is one of our most popular programs. I met with several representatives about putting together a program that would offer pickleball lessons. Those people showing an interest in trying pickleball seem to be intimidated by the group that comes in the morning to play or else they work during the day and can’t come in to play in the morning. So we are looking at some evening classes for pickleball lessons. It would be a 6 week session keeping the program kind of low with the charges kind of low, $10 an hour for the instructor so we would be charging $15 per class for 6 weeks. We’re looking at $20 a resident, $25 a non-resident so again, it would be in the evening so that people who work during the day could come in and learn how to play and then in the spring/summer, be able to use our outdoor courts at Lions Park as well. Gilbride: I just have a question because I am confused about the costs. Does this mean that for a class of 8 students you need 6 instructors? Simons: No, that’s the total cost for the whole class. We need one instructor for 8 students and then two if there’s 9-12 students and that $90 is the cost for the whole 6 week session. Gilbride: Oh, gotcha. Simons: So the $15 is times 6 weeks. Gilbride: OK. Mayor: So, February 9th when this would start, do we have court time available? Simons: We do. We have the ability to give up one court for one hour and still have two open for our members. Most of the basketball practices that we have right now are for Community All Stars and the season ends February 6th and then they lose their half price discount so we will go down a bunch of rentals at that time. Rorar: I like it and think it makes a lot of sense. I move that we establish a new program that will offer Rec Center members pickleball lessons as stated in Jessica’s description; seconded by Salerno. Vote to approve: 6/0. Price Change – Ritchie Memorial Shelter House Rental Rates: Simons: We are proposing raising the rental rates for the Ritchie Memorial Shelter House. They are actually fairly inexpensive right now and part of the reason for that is that we require people to do their own set- up of the tables and tear-down at the end of the function. But as we did just buy all new chairs for there and our tables are only a couple of years old, we are finding that people are not taking care of our equipment. They are stacking chairs “cattywampus”, running them into things and in so doing, causing lots of wear and tear on them. Our custodian out there verifies they’re not stacked properly after the rentals so we’re proposing to raise the rental rate moving forward, by $50 to cover the set-ups and tear-downs of that facility. Salerno: This would be a recommendation for the Council, right? Simons: Yes. Rorar: But it is at 3rd reading right now, is that a problem? -3- Gilbride: You just make an amendment and it goes back to 2nd reading. Rorar: So we’d have to wait for the second meeting in January to get it passed? Simons: I would hope, even with the change, that it could pass at this first meeting (the 13th). Gilbride: The effective date of that grid is not called February 1st. Simons: The Rec Center membership piece was put off until March 1st so . . . Gilbride: So do you want to put this one off until March 1st too? Simons: We’re already doing it, I told them to . . . Gilbride: I’m not saying it’s not what you’re doing, it’s their notice. Simons: I think we’ll just move forward with anyone who books after February 1st for their rental, we’ll charge the flex $50 and I don’t believe it will be a big deal. We’re not going to go back and change the rentals rate for the people who have already booked it. Mayor: Yes, it should be just bookings in the future … Gilbride: But you didn’t take off on this new rate the optional cleaning fee – it still says 4 table set-ups and tear downs. Simons: I changed it on the grid, I just didn’t change it here, I apologize. I would leave that at the $100 rate because it can take them a couple of hours to clean up sometimes. Usually if people ask for that option, there’s a lot to clean up. Gilbride: Can you just remind me why Friday we have 11-5 and 6-11? And we charge the same for the all day rentals? Simons: Fridays we still only do one of those rentals, we don’t do both. But I believe it started because there was only the option to rent 6-11 or to rent all day for more money. And so we just . . . Gilbride: But if someone wanted it all day for a Friday? Simons: They could rent it all day, it would be $200 plus a security deposit. We still wanted to charge a little more for Fridays than for Monday-Thursday. I can tell you that the Lions Club raised their prices for their rentals so we have been renting Ritchie more often because people are opting for the lower rates and even with this increase we’ll still be less than what the Lions get. Gilbride: And theirs is limited, on the weekends it's just 4-5 hours right? Mayor: No. Salerno: They’re changing it to one day rentals only, you can do noon-5 or noon- 10 and the rates are higher than Ritchie Shelter. Raber: I move to recommend a grid change to council that will increase the rental rate for Ritchie Memorial Shelter; seconded by Salerno. Vote to approve: 6/0. Other: Simon: Just one other thing. We were planning to do the “Family Fun Night” this year at the end of February but are thinking now it would be best not to because of Covid. We also have one of our Silver Sneakers’ coffee talks on the calendar which was supposed to be an in-person talk at the end of January and we decided with that demographic of people it would be better to not get a group of them together in a room. We are still processing through some of these events and programs being cancelled or postponed due to Covid but I think our members are understanding about cancelling the larger events. We’ll continue to monitor sponsoring events as the situation allows. Mayor: What about Primetimers? Simons: We are pretty much letting them do what they want to do as far as continuing their luncheons . . . Monthly Reports: TRC Membership Report: Simons: Our membership compared to what it was at this same time last year is up about 61% which is great. We continue to see increases both in our membership as well as our visits over the course of 2021. So far in 2022 it looks like it is continuing. Our day passes really seem to be selling more so than our memberships. Our day passes for December -4- were actually up over what our day passes were even in December of 2019. The actual number of day passes we sold this December are what 2019 and 2020 were combined. Starting with January, the company that does one of our medicare insurance-based supplementals - “Awesome? Fitness” has started offering a “One-Pass” program which is for people who are younger and it is offered through employee-sponsored health insurances. So it’s kind of like the Prime membership through Healthway or Silver Sneakers, but it is bringing in some younger people. So that’s awesome but what we’ve found out with the Prime membership, it does tend to fluctuate numbers and is completely out of our control because if an employer tenders the health insurance, and no longer offers that benefit, people lose their membership and that is reimbursed in a similar fashion to these other insurance-based memberships. Mayor: What do they pay? Like the Prime? Simons: What does the company pay? Mayor: Is it per swipe? Simons: It is, and I do not have that information in front of me right now but I know that it is per swipe but it maxes out and it’s more for the younger people because those memberships cost more. Mayor: Not like Silver Sneakers where they pay by swipe but a maximum of $30 or so a month. Simons: Right. Mayor: But you could swipe $100,000 a month if you wanted to and we hope you do! Simons: We won’t know how successful this has been until March when we get our first check. TRC Financial Report: Gilbride: (Hands out report to members.) As you can see, we are making strives toward improving but we’re still clearly behind where we were in 2019, but revenues were up 32% over last year with expenses only being up .15%. A good chunk of that though, was all the refunds that we wrote last year. Luckily we won’t have those major refund issues that we had then. So, we’re headed in the right direction! Mayor: Good job! TRC Donation Request Report: Enos: We did have two donation requests since our last meeting, the Athletic Booster’s event held in November and then the City’s Christmas light contest winners in December. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:27 a.m. Minutes electronically provided to Dan Enos on January 13, 2022/km