September 3, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

posted okay

all those in favor okay any opposed okay now the motion passes it is my pleasure now to turn the meeting over to Mayor Bridget McAndrew who's going to do this evening's recognizing our own which is something we do at every Board of Education meeting recognizing our students but tonight it's very special because they are students that we actually share with the city so Mayor McAndrew

I am very excited to be here. I think that there was, I think somebody had reached out to one of our board members that there might have been, I know that both boards always provide a time for public comment and we usually do that right at the beginning. So if there is somebody here from the public that wants to address both boards on an issue that's not necessarily on our agenda, you're welcome to come forward now.

Oh, for our board.

Okay. Got it. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. Great. So I am excited to be here. I can't believe it, but I became mayor in April. So it's my first year leading the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. And if any of you doesn't know, it's a collaboration between the City of Clayton and the School District of Clayton. It's designed to encourage high school students to become active in the community by participating in local government and building a greater capacity for civic participation. And I think we can all agree that more than ever, we need all of you to go out and become active in your communities now and when you grow up. So generally the program occurs throughout the school year. It's juniors and seniors. We meet on a monthly basis, and each of the students have picked a city committee. So that's Parks and Rec, the Equity Commission, the plan commission ARB some will come to Board of Aldermen meetings and then some will also go to sustainability meetings so they'll go to those meetings on a monthly basis which is something we started a few years ago which I think has been great and then we're also they'll take tours of city departments and work on a community project so I am going to go up to the middle of the room and I'm going to announce each of your names and you guys are going to get a certificate

Thank you.

Learn how to balance a budget. Okay, congratulations again to all of the students on the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. Thank you for being here. Agenda item three is the Clayton Recreation Sports and Wellness Commission, the CRSWC, and I'm going to turn that over to Tony, who is the Director of Parks and Rec. Thank you.

Do I have a clicker? Great. So follow me. All right. Well, again, thank you everybody for coming tonight. For those of you, I think I know almost everybody here, but if I don't, my name is Tony Searing. I'm the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Clayton. So tonight we're here to talk about the Center of Clayton, what our impact is on the community, and our budget for FY26. proposed budget for FY26 which would start October 1. So so first of all we'll kick right off and who we serve if you haven't had a chance I won't go through every single number it is in your packet though but we currently have about 8,000 just over 8,000 members and those 8,000 folks swiped in over 239,000 times at the Center of Clayton the last fiscal year so we're pretty excited and we know that number will still grow because we're still in the last month of our fiscal year, but we're pretty excited on how many members we have coming through our doors. Most of those folks are residents. About 5,000 of the 8,000 people are residents. And really, we're also excited that we had almost 4,200 people who are non-residents come to the Center of Clayton and pay a daily fee. So they use anything from the pool to the fitness center to the basketball courts, things like that as well. So We also have 802 high school students the last fiscal year who used the Center of Clayton. They came over 10,000 times, swiped in over 10,000 time during the school year. So that's a really great number that we like to see. We want to see the students on our campus and we're glad they're really utilizing our facilities. If you don't know, we also do a free seventh grade membership for school district students. And there was 208 students last year and they swiped into the center of Clayton about 720 times. So they're not there every single day. They have to make a concerted effort to come over to the center, but we are glad that they do come. And our goal with that is to try to get those folks to convert or get their parents to convert to a a youth membership or a family membership so that they utilize the center and also get them to know the Center of Clayton, what it's about so that when they are a freshman, they kind of know the ropes, they know where to go for the locker rooms, know where to go to the basketball courts and the fitness equipment as well too. So we're pretty happy with our numbers and how they've been growing. If you focus on the youth, we're proud to say that we had 31 kids that received over $5,300 in scholarship last year. And then that number we do expect to grow. Thank you to Kathleen Gund and Valerie Eagle who spearheaded a scholarship review committee for both the Parks and Rec Commission and the CRSWC. And we will be expanding that program to allow for more students to participate. And also I know we've been working with the district's communication staff to get the word out about that scholarship program and the new updated, not regulations, provisions for that will start on October 1 as well too. So we talked about this with both the center and the city Parks and Rec staff and it's the same formula that we use for both of those. So again trying to attract more students, more families who are in need to that program as well too, which is sponsored by the Clayton Community Foundation. And they were also supportive of us expanding this initiative as well too. So we're really excited about that. We had 162 high school students come through for their athletic programs last year. That is only the ones that use the Center of Clayton. So it doesn't include soccer or football things like that or the outdoor sports it's just the indoor sports so they as you know they use the center for their primary athletic activities for those indoor sports and we are pleased to host those folks as well too. Another positive note is last year we had 172 families use the kids center and it was significantly more attended 3,600 hours because we did offer Evening Kids Center hours as part of the family membership against free included with your membership So we did have a significant boost in our usage of the Kids Center last year with that offering as well We had about five hundred and sixty six campers use our the center of Clayton camp programs That's anything from chess Wizards to indoor swimming camp basketball camp volleyball camp We did have a few less participants this year because we did not offer winter break camps because of the way the holidays fell. It was right in the middle of the week, so it wasn't really conducive to offer a full week of programming. But still pretty strong numbers, and we're happy with that. I'm pleased to say that everyone who walks through the door with the Center of Clayton membership has free fitness classes, land fitness, Pilates, yoga. Everything is included for free right now. Also, water fitness classes. Our land fitness classes have significantly increased in participation. We're now offering about 10 programs less than we did at the start of the pandemic. We have 50 classes a week. Pre-pandemic, we were at about 60. So we're looking to eventually inch up in that direction. We do have over 500 different types of classes. And I'm sorry, there were 500 different people that participated in those classes. Yeah, that would be a lot, 500. Yeah, and we're always looking for new programs. So we have added some different programs that we haven't had before, some mixture of like kettlebell and cycling and sports eccentrics, things like that. So we are growing our participant class and we have about 60 more participants each week now than we did this time last year. So the inclusion of fitness programming in the membership has certainly boosted the membership and boosted the participation in the programs as well. As far as personal training, I'm pleased to report that we had over 200 personal training clients last year. And we are inching our way to, as far as revenue goes, a 10-year high in personal training revenue. So we have some really, really great trainers right now. They're really active. If you see us on Facebook or Instagram, we do Friday trainer tips. So they encourage folks with different workouts. And we have some trainers that have actually expanded their availability because they were so busy that they couldn't meet the demand of all the clients. So we are expanding some of those folks and we have some new hires as well too. So that's an area for us that's really doing well. As we talked about earlier our rentals are also doing well and just for rentals We had over 21,000 folks come into the center of Clayton specifically just for a rental whether it be an after-hours rental a birthday party Basketball practice rental anything like that So last year we had quite a few few more people come in our to our facility just for rental purposes Which is nice as well too because it gets them Exposed to the facility and you know if they want to come and get a membership. We like that as well, too. So So preparing for FY 26 so in your packet everybody should have seen the proposed fund summary for the estimated year-end for FY 25 and then also the proposed budget for FY 26 and So the adopted budget for FY25 had predicted a total deficit of $660,000. We are predicting that we will end at about $509,000. Yeah, that's the right slide. The operating budget, we are doing quite under budget, I guess, in that. We did have four full-time positions this year that were vacant during some part of the year. So that does account for a lot of the personnel savings that we experienced in FY25. In FY26, we have budgeted for all of those full and part-time positions to be fully staffed all year long. So that is one of the main reasons that we were significantly under our expenses in the operating budget for FY25. And then as far we'll talk a little bit more about this but as far as capital Requests that fluctuates from year to year based on the projects that we have planned and we work with Jim Bernal and his Facility services staff for that and we can talk a little bit in a couple slides about the projects that we Have that are upcoming The next slide is really just our accounting report, and we tie that with the audit every year. So I just want everybody to look and see that we do tie that with our audit, and Valerie works with John Brazeal on that every year as well, too, along with the city finance department as well. So capacity, we've talked a little bit over the last couple years. We've really looked into what is our capacity at the Center of Clayton? What do we think the maximum number of people that we can have have a membership or be in the facility at one time? And really it's an industry standard if you look at how many memberships you're trying to sell. So if we were to look at our facility and every single piece of cardio equipment were to be full If there were eight people in every single lap lane, if the maximum number of people were in the gymnasiums every single time, what is our maximum capacity? So in the yellow bar, you will see what our current capacity is. The orange is if we are at 10 times. Now, what that means is that the industry... Help me explain this. Sorry. What

Do I have a clicker? Great. So follow me. All right. Well, again, thank you everybody for coming tonight. For those of you, I think I know almost everybody here, but if I don't, my name is Tony Searing. I'm the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Clayton. So tonight we're here to talk about the Center of Clayton, what our impact is on the community, and our budget for FY26. proposed budget for FY26 which would start October 1. So so first of all we'll kick right off and who we serve if you haven't had a chance I won't go through every single number it is in your packet though but we currently have about 8,000 just over 8,000 members and those 8,000 folks swiped in over 239,000 times at the Center of Clayton the last fiscal year so we're pretty excited and we know that number will still grow because we're still in the last month of our fiscal year, but we're pretty excited on how many members we have coming through our doors. Most of those folks are residents. About 5,000 of the 8,000 people are residents. And really, we're also excited that we had almost 4,200 people who are non-residents come to the Center of Clayton and pay a daily fee. So they use anything from the pool to the fitness center to the basketball courts, things like that as well. So We also have 802 high school students the last fiscal year who used the Center of Clayton. They came over 10,000 times, swiped in over 10,000 time during the school year. So that's a really great number that we like to see. We want to see the students on our campus and we're glad they're really utilizing our facilities. If you don't know, we also do a free seventh grade membership for school district students. And there was 208 students last year and they swiped into the center of Clayton about 720 times. So they're not there every single day. They have to make a concerted effort to come over to the center, but we are glad that they do come. And our goal with that is to try to get those folks to convert or get their parents to convert to a a youth membership or a family membership so that they utilize the center and also get them to know the Center of Clayton, what it's about so that when they are a freshman, they kind of know the ropes, they know where to go for the locker rooms, know where to go to the basketball courts and the fitness equipment as well too. So we're pretty happy with our numbers and how they've been growing. If you focus on the youth, we're proud to say that we had 31 kids that received over $5,300 in scholarship last year. And then that number we do expect to grow. Thank you to Kathleen Gund and Valerie Eagle who spearheaded a scholarship review committee for both the Parks and Rec Commission and the CRSWC. And we will be expanding that program to allow for more students to participate. And also I know we've been working with the district's communication staff to get the word out about that scholarship program and the new updated, not regulations, provisions for that will start on October 1 as well too. So we talked about this with both the center and the city Parks and Rec staff and it's the same formula that we use for both of those. So again trying to attract more students, more families who are in need to that program as well too, which is sponsored by the Clayton Community Foundation. And they were also supportive of us expanding this initiative as well too. So we're really excited about that. We had 162 high school students come through for their athletic programs last year. That is only the ones that use the Center of Clayton. So it doesn't include soccer or football things like that or the outdoor sports it's just the indoor sports so they as you know they use the center for their primary athletic activities for those indoor sports and we are pleased to host those folks as well too. Another positive note is last year we had 172 families use the kids center and it was significantly more attended 3,600 hours because we did offer Evening Kids Center hours as part of the family membership against free included with your membership So we did have a significant boost in our usage of the Kids Center last year with that offering as well We had about five hundred and sixty six campers use our the center of Clayton camp programs That's anything from chess Wizards to indoor swimming camp basketball camp volleyball camp We did have a few less participants this year because we did not offer winter break camps because of the way the holidays fell. It was right in the middle of the week, so it wasn't really conducive to offer a full week of programming. But still pretty strong numbers, and we're happy with that. I'm pleased to say that everyone who walks through the door with the Center of Clayton membership has free fitness classes, land fitness, Pilates, yoga. Everything is included for free right now. Also, water fitness classes. Our land fitness classes have significantly increased in participation. We're now offering about 10 programs less than we did at the start of the pandemic. We have 50 classes a week. Pre-pandemic, we were at about 60. So we're looking to eventually inch up in that direction. We do have over 500 different types of classes. And I'm sorry, there were 500 different people that participated in those classes. Yeah, that would be a lot, 500. Yeah, and we're always looking for new programs. So we have added some different programs that we haven't had before, some mixture of like kettlebell and cycling and sports eccentrics, things like that. So we are growing our participant class and we have about 60 more participants each week now than we did this time last year. So the inclusion of fitness programming in the membership has certainly boosted the membership and boosted the participation in the programs as well. As far as personal training, I'm pleased to report that we had over 200 personal training clients last year. And we are inching our way to, as far as revenue goes, a 10-year high in personal training revenue. So we have some really, really great trainers right now. They're really active. If you see us on Facebook or Instagram, we do Friday trainer tips. So they encourage folks with different workouts. And we have some trainers that have actually expanded their availability because they were so busy that they couldn't meet the demand of all the clients. So we are expanding some of those folks and we have some new hires as well too. So that's an area for us that's really doing well. As we talked about earlier our rentals are also doing well and just for rentals We had over 21,000 folks come into the center of Clayton specifically just for a rental whether it be an after-hours rental a birthday party Basketball practice rental anything like that So last year we had quite a few few more people come in our to our facility just for rental purposes Which is nice as well too because it gets them Exposed to the facility and you know if they want to come and get a membership. We like that as well, too. So So preparing for FY 26 so in your packet everybody should have seen the proposed fund summary for the estimated year-end for FY 25 and then also the proposed budget for FY 26 and So the adopted budget for FY25 had predicted a total deficit of $660,000. We are predicting that we will end at about $509,000. Yeah, that's the right slide. The operating budget, we are doing quite under budget, I guess, in that. We did have four full-time positions this year that were vacant during some part of the year. So that does account for a lot of the personnel savings that we experienced in FY25. In FY26, we have budgeted for all of those full and part-time positions to be fully staffed all year long. So that is one of the main reasons that we were significantly under our expenses in the operating budget for FY25. And then as far we'll talk a little bit more about this but as far as capital Requests that fluctuates from year to year based on the projects that we have planned and we work with Jim Bernal and his Facility services staff for that and we can talk a little bit in a couple slides about the projects that we Have that are upcoming The next slide is really just our accounting report, and we tie that with the audit every year. So I just want everybody to look and see that we do tie that with our audit, and Valerie works with John Brazil on that every year as well, too, along with the city finance department as well. So capacity, we've talked a little bit over the last couple years. We've really looked into what is our capacity at the Center of Clayton? What do we think the maximum number of people that we can have have a membership or be in the facility at one time? And really it's an industry standard if you look at how many memberships you're trying to sell. So if we were to look at our facility and every single piece of cardio equipment were to be full If there were eight people in every single lap lane, if the maximum number of people were in the gymnasiums every single time, what is our maximum capacity? So in the yellow bar, you will see what our current capacity is. The orange is if we are at 10 times. Now, what that means is that the industry... Help me explain this. Sorry. What

we're looking at right now is the industry standard is when you're trying to figure out how many memberships you want to sell or how many memberships would, kind of you would max out at your fitness facility, you want to try to figure out what Tony said is how many people at one point in time, if every inch of our facility was being used, how many people would be in there? And if memory serves, it was around 600 people. And then what you take is you wanna be between 10 times that number to 20 times that number, and that's how you figure out how many memberships you wanna sell. So what we did is we looked at In units, obviously adult, senior, and youth, those are single people. It's a single unit. Family, we figured out what our average family size was, and I think it was 3.5. So we figured out how many, to be at 10 times, how many units we would need to sell of each category. And when we met a few years ago, we decided we wanted to be in between that 10 times and 15 times capacity as our target goal for membership units. So you can see right now we are at a little slightly over 10% capacity, which I think is a great number to hit. So we want to kind of strive for that, I think right now, that 15% capacity. So we would kind of max out at 4,500 units. That's not members. It's not people. It's units

of membership. And that I think when we get to that point then as Valerie said a couple of years ago and Jason you might recall this when we talked about this we were looking at the 10 to 15 10 to 15 times capacity. So we thought that when we get to 15, we need to look and see does our facility seem too crowded? And if it's not, then maybe we're looking at trying to get at 18, 20%, or really evaluating and seeing where we are as we get incrementally closer to that 20%. Because 20% is really I guess the average industry standard, but we need to make sure that we're also not overcrowding our facility as well because 10, 15 years, I would say probably 15 years ago, we heard that the facility was too crowded. So we need to be mindful of that as we're pushing forward. But still, we believe we have the capacity right now to push forward to get to that 15 times number. And I think it's also...

So these are... Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry.

These are, you said membership units. Some people... The high school students don't have a membership. Are they captured? Correct. So these are what I would call paying memberships So the high school they don't they're not anyone doesn't have a paying membership is not correct, correct, correct

So these are great numbers to see and important ones to track. I'm wondering Do we have the benefit of any history to look back on this? Did we ever track the data that way that we could look historically on how we've done I

We have not, only in the last couple years. Yeah, we only started doing this once we kind of had determined that this was one of the targets we wanted to hit. But we have those numbers. We can create that.

It would just be interesting to see if there's been much variance in that.

Yeah, that's something we can go back and track.

Do you have to moderate the formula for capacity based on the number of hours that your center is open, based on whatever the baseline is for the formula?

They don't particularly go by number of hours that you're open. That wasn't something that we saw when we were looking at this. I would

think that would make a difference because some gyms are open 24 hours. Some gyms are open like 6 a.m. until midnight. So it doesn't surprise me that maybe when you get to 15x, that's when you're going to cap out just because of the nature of the hours.

Sure, we can look into that as well as one of the factors. Well, currently right now we have a total of 3124 membership units, which is not, again, the number of people. The number of people as of July 1st that we had that had a membership was 8,009. So, again, we have grown since COVID. So that's really where we're looking at the rebound since COVID. And also, if you recall, right in the middle of COVID is when we did our facility renovation too. So we're preparing for – I guess a much larger expansion of our membership numbers, but that happened. So we're plugging on from there as well. Is there any

reason why there's a drop year over year in membership?

It's going up. Sorry.

Units went up. Individual numbers went down.

I think it's just the number of people in a family membership that's fluctuating. If you look at the residency by type and by membership, you'll look that really residents are still our largest category. But it is followed closely by non-residents and corporate as well. These, I would say this pie chart on the left, that has remained fairly consistent probably over the last 15 years. It's about the same percentages for resident, non-resident and corporate. And then we have adult versus family, senior and youth. Youth is our smallest category. And really we're trying to capture those folks who want to come to the center on evenings and weekends if they're Clayton students because right now their membership only is good during the school day, and also non-resident students who live close by will want to come as well too. So we do try to promote those in the summer as well, but really by far and away our adults and our family are the largest categories that we have too. So this is going to be hard to see on the screen, but it's in your packet. But we did want to let you know that every year as part of our budgeting process, we are looking at our competition and what they are charging across the board. We look to see do they charge adults, family, youth, senior. Some of them have much more varied pricing schemes. Some of them might have two senior family or just a two adult family, things like that. But we broke down the main categories for what they have. So what you'll notice is that the Center of Clayton is on the higher end of some of these fees. One of the other facilities that's fairly close in price range to us is Maryland Heights, which it's a fairly new facility. But, you know, we have a lot nicer facilities than some of these places. So I do think we can charge more because we have four gymnasiums. We have two pools. Not everybody has that. But, you know I think we just wanted you guys to know that we look at this every single year We want to make sure that in some cases we're not pricing ourselves out of the market. I think with our rate increase last year, there is a little concern that we may have done that for non-resident families. But again, we're really focusing on our marketing efforts on what the center has to offer, the value that you get for your membership, all the facilities that you get at our place versus some other places are, while they might be 24-7, they don't have a pool or they don't have gymnasiums. That's one of the things that we're going to focus on, too. We're really going to go after corporate memberships this year with the understanding that we know many of these facilities that are being built locally have a fitness center in them, but they necessarily don't have a swimming pool and they don't have... You know all their classes. They don't have the volume of classes and programs that we have with our membership They may not have basketball courts So we really want to set ourselves apart for what makes us different from some of these other facilities as well, too But this will give you an idea of what some of the other places in and around town. We also try to pick Facilities that are somewhat equitable to ours. We certainly wouldn't like pick like a really small facility It doesn't have a pool or a gym or anything like that so most of these places are Do you have a gymnasium? They do have pools, things like that as well.

Do most of these places also offer free fitness classes?

Yes. That was really one of the motivations. I know the YMCA has for some time, and this doesn't include any private places, you know, Club Fitness, Planet Fitness. They don't often want to give you their rates or things like that, but most of those folks include fitness classes with their memberships as well.

So River Chase down... Those are all private?

No, River Chase. Actually, everybody on here, River Chase is Fenton. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, are all municipal except for the YMCA. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Our next slide will talk about our membership rates, including inflation. So you will see in the green line was what our membership rates were as of 2008. If you factor in inflation, which is the next bar, which is the yellow bar, that would be what, based on the 2008 rates, if you took the annual inflation and adjusted that, that would be should be or would be if you had the inflation number. And then the last column, the orange column, is what our actual rates are. So they're tracking very close to what the inflation was over this, what is that, 10-year, eight-year period? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were concerned that were our rates too high based on inflation and it looks like they are right on track. So jumping into the proposed budget, just some highlights. The membership, this year we did not do a membership fee increase. We did one in FY25 this fiscal year. We are projecting to be a little bit under budget in those membership categories, but we are planning a 3% growth in membership for FY26 and we also, we did not have a full year of our membership specialist at the CRSWC. We did not have a whole year of that person being on board to implement that marketing plan so we are implementing that more I would say weekly and the budget for FY26 would include a full implementation of that marketing plan. So we do think we struggled a little bit this year because we didn't have it have the plan implemented for all 12 months, and we want to make sure, and we will make sure that that will happen for FY26. So that's why we did have the 3% growth, but we did not include any membership fee increase. But with that 3% growth, that amounts to about $157,000 as well. The membership survey, we have not done a membership survey since pre-COVID. So we think it's very important that we included that in the budget this year because we really want to make sure that we're on target with what our members want, that we're hitting the mark with the free fitness classes, the free child care. Are those the things that they want or is there something else that we're maybe missing the mark on? we can get some more feedback from those folks as well too so we felt like that was important to include that in this year's budget um again we are increasing our program offerings and participation um with the intent to increase the participation we're adding a minimum of three more fitness classes uh as of right now we know that we intend to add more throughout the year as well and like we said we have 60 more participants in each class, or in the classes weekly. So we want to make sure that that grows as well too. So again, making sure that people are experiencing the value that they're paying for their membership and that they're taking as many classes as possible and using the services that we're offering as part of their membership package. But I will say our expenses are outpacing our revenue. Really, our revenues are up 5%, but the expenses are up 10%. Our largest expenses and you'll see that is personnel. So if we were to make any significant cuts, we would be cutting personnel and we would have to cut some of the services as well too. So we watch that all throughout the year. We make sure that if there is a chance that We can save any money on any commodities, contractual services, things like that. We are going to do that. Many of our contractual services, we will see if there's any savings to be had with the district, with cooperative purchasing agreements, or even sometimes with other cities. If we're buying equipment and we could split it with the city of Brentwood and we could get a better price, that's something that we would consider as well too. But we always are keeping an eye on that. And then really some utility expenses are also forecasted to increase in FY26. In particular electric and natural gas. I believe both had about 12% projected increases and when you're talking about a Facility that's over a hundred thousand dollars a hundred thousand square feet on that will certainly make an impact as well, too We keep hoping for milder winters and milder summers and that doesn't seem to be happening so we run our electric a lot if you've been up in the fitness center you can attend a test to that and How folks would like that to be cooler upstairs? So, you know, but we do adjust those things where we whenever we can Just like parking further away from their front door people don't want to park far away from the front door when they're coming to work out Yeah, when you look at our revenues by far and away our larger source of revenue is annual passes so that continues to be a focus of ours and Program revenue is next, so any swim lessons, any camps, anything like that. Then the contributions, daily passes, and then we do have some miscellaneous revenue as well too from our tenants that we have at the Center of Clayton. And as I mentioned, as far as expenses go, personnel is about 43% of our expenses for our budget. And then in contractual services, that is 53%. But in the contractual services, the school district includes the school district personnel, because that's a contract, And the MPM contract for lifeguards at the center of Clayton. So those, although those show up in contractual services, about $900,000 of that contractual service is really staffing. It's the school district's maintenance staff and it's the MPM lifeguard. So again, by far and away, our largest expense really is personnel. And we are very lean on commodities. We really don't buy things unless we have to. And then we also try to do the same thing on our contractual services as well. And then each year, if you don't know, each year at the end of the year we do reconcile with MPM for lifeguards for any shifts that they perhaps missed or if the center was closed, like for a snow day, things like that. We'll reconcile that as of September 30th. We reconcile that contract with them and they will give us any credit that we would need off of our last invoices if there's a credit to be had. Like I said, if they had missed shifts, if we didn't open, things like that,

Tony. I think I'm just confused. So both city and school district staff work at the center, right? Work at the center, yes. So just the school district staff

is in the operating? No. In the green section, the personnel expenses, that's all the full-time city staff and part-time city staff. that work at the center. Correct. So it's all in there. Yes,

correct. So wait, Midwest Pool Management makes you do the labor reconciliation? No,

they do it. They do it, but they provide it. We work with them and they provide it to us every year and they say this is how much we should owe them. So do

you pay for the labor up front and that's how you get the credit?

We pay for the labor at the beginning of each month.

Okay.

Yes, yeah, not the whole year's contract up front. We pay it monthly, and then on the last month of the year, we don't pay that when, and they will do the reconciliation. That's when they do the reconciliation. Yes, yes. Great question. Thank you. Did that make sense? Okay. All right, so in FY26, we do have some earth and capital expenses, equipment replacement and capital expenses that are upcoming. We replace annual cardio fitness equipment. That'll be about $40,000. What we do every year, if you don't know, some of the pieces that aren't working as great require a lot of repair. Um, maybe just aren't at their top peak performance. We'll replace those every year. Um, and Molly has a system. She looks at those. So she rotates the equipment around so it gets different use because if you don't know pieces in the middle of the cardio room get more use than the pieces on the edges, she'll move some of those around too so that they try to get equal use. But we do replace those cardio pieces every year. This year we have $40,000 budgeted for that. Thirty three thousand dollars is technology projects that the city of Clayton provides for us and then This year we're scheduled to have the West parking lot striped and sealed We also are working with mic for the school district to get the security camera system upgrades similar to what the district has just done so we're planning on we included that in our budget and then the other large ticket item that we uh included in our budget this year was for the pool deck for both the competition pool at the and the leisure pool if you've been in those pools you know that the the The product that was used when we went over the surface during the renovation, it's like an epoxy product. It has not lasted. It's wearing away. In some places, quite candidly, it looks moldy, but it's not. We've tested it multiple times. Jim and his staff have done that. So it's really just wearing away. We think it just was not a great product. So we have a solution for that. And then also to replace the pool filter media Which is a fancy way of saying to replace the sand that goes through our our pool System that that helps the filter filter out all the dirt and debris so that is due for upgrade this year I think it's important to note that really and we talked about this with the Finance Committee that The majority of these projects are public facing there there's no the pool filter media probably helps a little bit with the water quality but everything that we put in this year's budget really is public facing some of the smaller projects for interior were a renovation of the mind body room which you might know we took that over probably 20 years ago from the school district when it used to be a health classroom it still looks like a health classroom we just happen to do to do yoga and spinning and that in there but we are going to to renovate that so it looks more like a fitness room. Some of the doors in our family locker room have also not held up from the renovation, so Jim has a plan to replace those. But everything else we're doing is public facing and really for the benefit of the members. That was really what we focused on as far as IRF and capital this year. There were a couple other things that we decided could wait a couple years, scoreboards, things like that, that were still functioning fine, but maybe there was a little dent in one of them. We pushed those back, and what we do every year is we evaluate our IRF and capital. We sit down with Jim Brunel, and we say, okay, this is coming up for replacement this year. Do we think it needs it? Should we try to push it off? Things like that. So this budget is really a reflection of Everything that we felt was public-facing and needed to be done in FY26.

But having said that, you're not deferring any maintenance that needs to be done? No, not anything. That's not public-facing?

Not anything that is correct. We are not deferring any main maintenance, correct. What's

an example of something

we'd defer? We deferred a scoreboard. Like the scoreboards, they have a useful life, I think, of 10 years. They were up for renewal, up for, Replacement in 26 and we said well, they're totally working fine one of them has a dent on the Grading around the scoreboard other than that. They're perfectly functional. We felt like that could wait a year

Yeah,

we felt like those could wait they weren't in dire such but there's nothing mechanical that we deferred and

How old are major systems like HVAC,

roof? Well, the HVAC system, as you might see in a couple slides, we have that replacement. And I believe those are for the gyms, correct? The gymnasium? Yeah. The gymnasium HVAC systems are probably, what, 20 years,

we think? They're building original.

Yeah. During the renovation, we replaced the units on top of the pools, but we did not replace the units on top at the gym. So that's what we have for FY 30, which is when you look in that packet, that was why that year was so much higher. And that to your question is probably the last and largest major expense that we did defer from the renovation. We tried to get a lot of those done in the renovation. Our tenants, so Oasis still remains a good partner for us up on the second floor of the Center of Clayton. They pay us rent, which is just over $51,000 annually. And during their off hours, so after 3.30 and on the weekends, we can use their room for rental purposes. So we do try to put some of our smaller rental groups up there to generate some more revenue as well. Subway is still a popular choice for people who visit the center. The high school students are over there. So as they said to me yesterday, school's back. I said, oh yes. So yeah, so that's nice. And we get a percentage of their sales based on $180,000. So we're projecting that to be about $8,000 this year. And then finally, Clayton Community Foundation is our last tenant. They have the small offices that are over by where the meeting rooms are, kind of underneath the stairs. We carved that little space out for two reasons. One, for the CCF offices, and the second reason was to prevent people from sneaking into the center of Clayton by cutting to the left and going around that hallway. That has worked. But they pay us a nominal amount each year, just over $2,100 for use of those rooms as well, so... So all those tenant contracts are going very well. All are great partners to work with. So our last couple slides, again, is just a restatement of the estimated fund summary for FY25 and FY26. Again, with some of those larger capital expenses, we are looking at a total – budgeted, proposed budget deficit of just over $704,000. Again, we will do everything within our power to make that less if we have the opportunity as the year goes along. So we do pay attention to that on a regular basis. If you look at the cost recovery, the cost recovery with the parent contributions for FY25 we're estimating will be at 94%. For FY26 we're proposing 89%. Without the parent contributions our operating fund is looking at an estimated 85% cost recovery for FY25 and 82% proposed for FY26. Across all funds, so operating, IRF, and capital, we're estimating FY25 to be at 89%, and FY26 proposed at 85%. Again, without those parent contributions, 75% for FY25 and 73% proposed for FY26. And each year, the recreation management does put out a state of the industry report every year. And so it just gives you some of the statistics at the bottom for cost recovery for private, for-profit places, nonprofit, and government. So 85% is our goal. And that's still the goal that we're shooting for annually. If you look at the cost recovery, I'm sorry, the future years projections, you will see again we talked a little bit about the larger capital expenses and really on the bottom it shows what we think the deficit projected will be each year. This assumes revenue increases of about 5.7 percent each year, including growth and inflation. and it includes 5% operating expenditure escalations each year. Our Irvine Capital already have an expenditure escalation each year, the way the spreadsheet is set up, so those were already included in the Irvine Capital numbers. So again, you'll look at the big jump in FY30 is again for those replacement of those air handling units over the gyms which were not done when we did the renovation. The next slide will show you just kind of if you look at the capital expenses are in orange and the earth expenses are in green that just kind of gives you a summary moving forward of really what is comprising of our Irving capital and for the most part 26 and 30 are those larger products projects next year being the pool deck replacement and the security camera and Upgrades and then in 30 again the air handling units, but the rest of them are really IRF related. When we say IRF, every year that's going to include an annual cardio equipment replacement budget. Every year is going to include IT projects and equipment and those go on a schedule as well that's given to us by the city's IT department. And then, again, we have a large capital spreadsheet, and most of these are just all the items that were coming up for replacement in these fiscal years. So an example I gave is we have three sets of scoreboards at the Center of Clayton for three basketball courts. We took those out of FY26, but we pushed them to one in 27, one in 28, one in 29. Again, if we get to next year and we think we can last longer on some of those, we could push those out as long as they are still functional. We are not going to not replace things that are not functional. But we will look at these and we'll tweak them every year where we have to if there's things that need to be moved up. or moved back, like I said, if they're working or some things aren't working, then we can look at adjusting those timelines as well. So this just kind of gives you an idea of most of our replacement coming up in the next several years will be related to different equipment replacement items. Do

you have an inflation cost assumption in these numbers? Yes. What is

it? Two to three percent. We've been on target with some of those. Some of them have been more, some of them have been less, so... That is my last slide. If anybody has any other questions, we'd be happy to answer those.

Thank you. You're welcome. On the two slides up from here with the deficit in orange or the proposed, you said that you're anticipating 5% increase in revenue as well as 5% increase in expenses. Yeah. Earlier in your slides, you said it was 5 and 10. So I'm wondering what drove your estimation of 5% increase in expenses.

Oh, this year. Unless

I heard you

incorrect. I think I'm answering the right question. This year we had a 5% increase in our revenue projections, but we're estimating 10% increase just for 26%. For the out years, we did some research and we felt like 5% was really, that was what the research was giving us, that you should average 5% inflation for the out years. But FY26 was more specific based on actual numbers that we had researched for projects, for supplies, for things like that. But for an average for the out years, the number that we saw to use was 5%.

But you only used two to three here?

That was for IRF and capital, yes. And some of those we updated, yes. We only used 2% to 3% for IRF and Capital with the most recent numbers we have, which some of those already have inflationary increases in them. So for example, if we knew that the scoreboard we thought was going to cost $10,000. When we did the research and found out it was going to be $12,000, we put the $12,000 the newest number in there and then left it at the two to 3% then going forward when originally we would have the escalator had it only at escalated up to about 10,000. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so it increased 20%. But in the forward months, years, you only put in the two to 3%, inflationary increase.

For the

thing? Yes. In that example?

Correct.

Yeah. Yes. Okay.

Did I answer your question? Okay.

sorry wrong page oh the meeting rooms we had in two percent is that right yeah two percent from where we estimated um just the meeting rooms that was the change in the policy was specifically related to meeting room rentals

like for the weekend yes yes

yeah

so that'll

We were conservative for that, yes.

Do you have a vacancy rate built into your FTEs? No. Under your budget? No. So the four FTE positions that you currently have open which is really the difference between the anticipated spend this year and what the actual spend was. I guess the question is, have you really evaluated whether that's necessary? Because the deficit year over year is close to It's 38%, and it would have only been like 7%, which is close to your debt difference between your expenditures versus your revenues. So I guess the question is, I mean, there's a lot of businesses now that are looking at kind of resources from a human capital standpoint and doing more with the same number of people. That may not be possible for your business. Scenario if you're paying a lot of overtime instead, but like I guess I guess that's the question is you plan to fill the fill those four positions Do you really need to fill those four positions?

I would say yes, and we have already filled all four so they were just vacant at different times of the year In the last I would say five or so years. We really haven't looked at staffing levels and we Have one less maintenance staff person that we had previously and one less full-time front desk person that we had recently So we have replaced at least the the front desk position. We have replaced those with part-time individuals as well, too Yeah, so we are we do look at that

Tony, you mentioned that this year you've been without a marketing person or our campaign has not been fully activated. Correct. So you've got that set up for this coming year. Yes. Can you give us some highlights of what that will entail? Yes.

So she is actually very excited to tackle the corporate campaign. She really wants to get out to the businesses in the Clayton area, you know, recruit corporate memberships as well. She's also been very active on social media, both Facebook, Instagram, really promoting. We have Friday Trainer Tips, like I mentioned, and also promoting the events, the benefits of membership. Did I miss anything else?

focused not only on some new campaigns, probably doing about three or four a year, but also really focusing on retention. So making sure that it's actually cheaper for us to retain our members than try to go out and get new members. So we've got like some member get a member campaigns going on in December. We're doing people who've had a membership for a certain length of time. I don't remember what that is, but they're gonna get a gift. We try to do the classes. I think one of the big reasons that the class partition participation went up because we had kind of like a challenge a fitness challenge to do to our current members and They participated at a certain level. Oh my god

We had a 12-month marketing plan that was set out and she just hasn't been able to implement because she hasn't been here the whole 12 months So she would be implementing those for the months that she hasn't yet gotten to yeah

Any other questions comments

I'm just wondering about corporate membership, Tony. When the center started in 2000, offices didn't have facilities for people who work there, and obviously that's changed considerably. I'm just wondering, I think you mentioned that positives about the center were a swimming pool and basketball, which of course those facilities don't have. I'm just wonder anecdotally do you have any sense from corporate members is that really a distinction that would bring someone to the center, and I guess my subpart is since Wellbridge has now been gone for a couple years, which was pretty popular but is gone, do you have any sense that you're having success attracting some of those folks who used to go to Wellbridge maybe because their offices didn't have corporate aspects to it?

To answer your second question first, I don't have the exact numbers, but I do believe we did get a good bump of members from Wellbridge who actually had said, in particular to Molly Troy, our fitness supervisor, that they didn't realize how nice the center was since we did our renovation. They're happy with the extra equipment. So we did capture some of those folks. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. I think we have heard from some corporate membership folks Some people don't want to work out in front of people that they work with, which I understand. So I think it's tracking some of those folks. It's tracking, again, really focusing on what they if they're just going to take a quick jog on a treadmill and they don't care and they're going to shower and go back to their office, you know, but if they're interested in something besides like a cardio workout. So do they want swimming? Do they want basketball? We have a group of guys that rent a basketball court every Friday, I think it is, that come in and their company works in Clayton. So they just want a court just for themselves. So really, I think those things are important to some people. It's just finding out who those people are and getting to those folks. And, again, making sure that they know we're here. I mean, honestly, we still hear from people that say, I didn't even know the center was here. So, again, especially if it's a newer company that's moving to Clayton, maybe from somewhere else, Emerson, I know that they have a fitness center. But, again, if they want the pool, if they want a basketball court, or if they want to work out incognito, then we're happy to make sure that they know what benefits that they have over at the center.

First of all, just out of curiosity, what happened with the babysitting? The child care after that? It was one of the things we rolled out last year. Oh, yeah. No, it had

significant. Was it? Yeah. Our usage almost doubled just from offering the evening child care. It was on the slides.

Did we get? Okay. Sorry, I missed it. My bad. Yeah, that's okay. No, that's

okay? It's a good question because, yeah. And I will also say, I think

we

are busier than we were before we did. There were times before we did the renovation, we would have zero kids or maybe one kiddo. And right

now

we're

probably averaging. about four to five kids, and I think that's amazing.

Yeah.

That's great. Two quick things. One is just for the broader group to consider over time is do we start funding depreciation again? The history of our capital funds has been lumpy, right? I think this past year, I remember the big topic of the conversation is do we put this much money into our capital equipment for FY25? this year it will be some not as much i saw a couple zeros up on the relevant slide and so if you want to smooth things out for both of our organizations do you start funding depreciation finding a pathway or some sort of glide path back to that i put that out there the commission could discuss it and whatever um my question is is it a stated or unstated objective that we want the membership rates to keep up with inflation was at the point of the slide

No, I guess the point of the slide was really like we felt we at least were on par with inflation because some people thought that maybe we should be ahead of it. We kind of heard the question, should we be ahead of inflation? Are we making sure that we are keeping up with it? So I guess that was really the point of our slide. We actually were kind of on track and we didn't even know it until we really looked into it, honestly.

Yeah, I mean, I told, okay, that makes sense. I just, you know, again, I know when I was on the commission, this was a hot topic last time we looked at the rates, you know, how aggressively do you raise the rates or not? Well, you know, it was like $4 or $6 or whatever it was, you know, if we see that expenses are growing by 10% year over year, you know, I would just want to ask the commissioners to think about that when sending the rates because I know next year will be next spring should be the time that we reconsider the rates.

Yeah, we've been on an every other year pattern for quite a few years. And if we need to change that, I'm happy to entertain that from both boards and or the commission. But yeah, usually if we're staying on the every other year pattern, next spring is when we'll look at that.

But otherwise, thanks. I mean, this is a great presentation. Thank you.

Yeah, I just, I mean, Tony and Valerie, I just want to say thank you. I think you did a great job. Not only the people that live in Clayton, but the students throughout Clayton. Most specific, I mean, it's startling that 800 students went into the center. Was that really like 10,000 times? So, I mean, I feel like it's a great place for the kids. You know, revenue could be greater at the center, but Tony and Steve Hudson have an awesome relationship. So on days when it's too hot or it's rainy, Stephen can call up Tony and say, hey, I need a softball team or a baseball team to come inside. Or I need an extra court. So this relationship works because we're all sitting here. So I just, you know, I hope that we all recognize that, yeah, the deficit is going up. But I don't think that there's going to be a whole lot we can do to prevent that. Of course. I'm not advocating that we, it's very crucial to meet every year and of course focus on the budget and have the CRSWC look at the budget quarterly. That's very important. But I just hope as a group, as both boards, we really evaluate that this is a very important arrangement, not just for the city but also for the students. But yeah, I want to thank you. It was a great presentation. And I've lived here 15 years. I go to the center every week. And I don't think that the Center of Clayton has ever looked better. It's never looked more vibrant. It's clean. People are happy. People are excited. So I want to thank Tony and Valerie and your team because the center looks great. And I think you guys are doing a great job. Thank you. I'd like

to thank Valerie. She did a lot for the presentation. She puts together a lot of the numbers. And I know Jim Burnell is back there. We couldn't do it without him and, like you said, Steve Hudson and also my recreation superintendent, Mickey Kaufman, as well, too. So it's all part of a well-oiled machine.

And I'd like to echo some of what Bridget said was what I was about to say. Actually, Ben and I just spoke the other day about, of course, looking at the budget and these numbers are important, but there are a lot of – benefits to the center for both of us, for the entire community, for our partnership that we can't measure or quantify. Which is I think the point Bridget was trying to make. I think it's also worth reminding all of us about that. And the reason that this partnership was created and that the center was built with both of us in mind is important to remember and think about, too.

Thank you. You almost said exactly what I was going to say. But I'm just remembering back to when the arrangements were made 25, 30 years ago and the premise. that we were serving collectively, sort of our shared constituencies. And I think it continues to do that and the challenges are there with the deficit. It's certainly a community asset.

Nina, did you have any questions or comments?

I mean, definitely Clayton students love the Center of Clayton. You guys are doing such a great job. I hear about it all the time. It seems to be a very favorite activity.

Excellent. Great. That's what we like. Well, if there are no other comments, I don't think there are. Thank you again very much for the presentation, for all the work you've done putting it together, and all the work you do every day. Thank you. We appreciate your support. Thank you. Both entities. Thank you. Thanks so much. And Chris, could you please motion to adjourn? I move

that the Board of Education,

Board of Aldermen joint session adjourned. Thank you.