The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board met to review some proposed fee changes last Wednesday, May 8. The fee changes discussed in the meeting were mainly for streamlining and reformatting, according to Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas. She said that most of the altered fees were either moved into a different category of the department's spreadsheet, or eliminated altogether.
For example, the $5 fee for use of the showers at the community pool was removed, as Thomas said those fees were already paid by memberships and when people came in to swim or use the exercise equipment. Thomas also said they eliminated the three-month pool passes as they were not a very popular pass for people to purchase, so it was redundant. The same went for "adult couple" pool passes, as Thomas said most people bought pool passes individually. People can still purchase one month, six month, or one year passes.
There are three areas where the parks and rec department is actually increasing their fees. These are the youth basketball program, Wolfpack wrestling, and the summer recreation fees. These are all very popular programs the parks and rec department hosts, and Thomas said the fee increases were minimal. Youth basketball and Wolfpack wrestling were set at a fee of $40 each. Thomas proposed that this be raised to $50. Summer recreation, meanwhile, had a few extra changes. It used to be that parents could sign up their child for summer recreation at $12 a day. Each additional child the parents signed up after that would incur smaller fees, $10 a day for the second child and $8 a day for the third child. The proposed fee change eliminated the discounts altogether, and raised the fee to $15 a day.
"I don't have any negative comments, I think every now and then it's good to tweak the fee schedule," said board member Haig Demerjian. "Since I've been on the board I think we've done it a couple, three times."
Most of the board members present agreed that the alterations to the department's fees were a good change, and also said that even with the higher fees for summer recreation it was still a good deal. After a brief discussion the changes were approved. Thomas reminded the board that these changes would still need final approval from the borough assembly.
Thomas also gave a report to the board about the borough's ongoing budget workshops. The parks and rec department is looking at approximately $60,000 in cuts. She said that this was substantial, but reasonable given the financial concerns Wrangell is currently facing.
Other items covered in the meeting include approval of various department policy changes, and a review of the recent Helping Our Parks Project. Thomas said that the final count of the community service project, which took place in April, saw 61 volunteers donate over 200 hours of time to clean up and repair Volunteer Park.
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