September 4, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to our joint meeting. Adequate notice has been given and I would like for everyone to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. And Chris, would you please read the motion to adopt the agenda?

I move that we adopt the agenda as posted. Second. All those

in favor?

Aye.

Motion passes. I will now turn it over to Mayor Michelle Harris. Thank you.

Hello, everybody. The first thing on my list here is to talk to you about the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. This has been going on since around 2012, and so I don't know, about a dozen years, and it's become really, really a really valuable program in my opinion. This year we have quite a few students, and I see a lot of them here. I'll introduce them, but The purpose of it is to teach students about local government and get them interested in participating in their own communities. What they do for the school year is meet with all of the different city departments, public works, parks and rec, fire, police, and get a real tour and a real bird's eye view or inside look at what those departments are responsible for. And then they also attend, they each choose a committee, a board or commission to attend throughout the year. And at the end of that time, They make recommendations to that committee and to the board for things that they might want to do or research or look into. So I think this is – I'm excited about this year with these students. They all seem amazing. We had our first meeting, and everybody was there, and everybody was really engaged. So I'm going to read their names to you, and if you're here, just wave at everybody. Dasha Arnold. Barron Borick. Violet Edmondson, Nicholas Helmering, Ben Koster, David Lin, Oliver Maher, Spencer Pompeon, Henry Rosenzweig, Yahia Said, Lance Sheets, and Nicholas Vendini. Very good. And just so you know, we have more applicants usually than we take. and they do have to fill out an application, they do have to have a teacher recommendation. And so it's not just something you can glom onto. So we really are pleased with our students this year and welcome you guys. And now that you've been introduced It's fine if you want to leave. No problem. Or stay. Okay. And then the main reason we're here today really is to hear from Tony about the Sports and Wellness Commission annual budget. So I'll turn it over to you. Great, thanks.

Well, I think I know almost everyone here, but if I don't, my name is Tony Searing. I'm the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Clayton. and we're going to talk about the Center of Clayton. We're going to start off just talking about some of the folks that we serve. So you've got all this information in your packet, but in 2024 to date, so we know there's still a couple months left, we have about just over 8,300 members at the Center of Claydon who have already swiped in or visited the center over 215,000 times. It's a lot of people that come through our doors. That doesn't include some of the other folks that we can talk about. Of our members, we've had 844 Clayton High School students, which was last school year, had a membership to the Center of Clayton that they could use Monday through Friday until 4.30. And of those 844 students, 659 of those visited the Center of Clay ton at least one time, which is 78%. We're really excited for that. We like that they're engaged, we like that they use the facilities and become active. And that also includes, you know, they can come over to Subway or come over during their lunch period and hang out as well too. We also have a seventh grade program for White Island Middle School students And last school year, there were 212 of those students. And of those students, about 50% of those kids, 101 came to the Center of Clayton at least, again, one time during that school year. So again, they're active. They're involved. We would like to get that number a little bit higher. So we'll work with the middle school and talk about how we can get the kids over to the Center of We also have over 800 senior memberships at the Center of Clayton. That includes, obviously, residents, non-resident, corporate, but it also includes over 400 folks who have a Renew Active membership, and that's a membership that they can get through their health insurance through UnitedHealthcare that provides them free access to the Center of Claydon, and then we're reimbursed from UnitedHealthcare for those folks for their visits. Again, we're always looking to grow those folks and have them become more active as well. We had over 4,000 people that paid a daily fee last year to come to the Center of Clayton, so that's quite a high number of folks. Again, we're still coming up from the pandemic when that dipped a little bit lower, but we're looking to increase that as well. We have, of our membership, we had 5,075 of those folks were residents. So over half of our membership base is residents. And then we had 1,800 corporate folks and about 1,400 non-residents who have a membership at the center of Clayton. That corporate area is still an area that as people return to Clayton with their businesses and with their daily work that we hope to increase that as well too. But the good news is that we are making progress since the pandemic. On the bottom right, you'll see some numbers that we've really been growing steadily by about 1,000 members each year, really since the pandemic. We've had a lot of conversations this year about what is the maximum capacity at the center, how many members can the facility hold without seeming like we're bursting at the seams. We did some research, and while it's hard to really nail down a specific number, the general thought process is you would have about 10% to 15% of your capacity, and that's not your fire capacity, that's really more of the usage capacity, how many pieces of equipment we have, how many lap lanes we have, things like that. And I'm pleased to say that the 8,300 is over 10% about what our capacity would be, which would be about 6,500 total members. And we are slowly inching towards 15% capacity, which is about 9,800 total members. So that is going to be our goal for FY25, and we're actively pursuing that with implementing our marketing plan as well. So really, if we look at some of the youth that we've been serving this year, which is obviously a very important part of our day-to-day operations, we had 24 kids who received financial assistance to the Center of Clayton for Center of Clayton activities. This does not include any activities that are outdoors at our city-sponsored facilities, so this was just for the center. that does include adaptive aquatics, which is one-on-one private swim lessons for those with disabilities as well. And that is offset by the Clayton Community Foundation. They do reimburse us for those scholarships as well. We had about 72 kids that participated in martial arts over the last year. We had 96 different kiddos that stayed in our child care center, which is the kids' center, while their parents worked out. So you'll see later on we'll talk about some expanded child center hours for the next fiscal year. So we do want to increase that along with the usage and participation by some adults. We also had over 1,400 children participate in just our youth basketball and youth volleyball leagues. Again, that doesn't include the number of kids that participate in the outdoor sports, soccer, baseball, t-ball. So we did have quite a few students at the Center of Clayton during the winter months. And if you've ever been to the center on a Saturday during basketball, I would describe it as organized chaos. So there's a lot of people there, which is great. We like that. We also had over 500 students get swim lessons last year. I would say this number is only limited by the lack of available aquatics instructors right now. If we had more qualified instructors, which is a struggle for instructors and lifeguards right now, I would say this never would be significantly higher. But we still are looking for any instructor, water safety instructors or water swim lesson instructors. So if you know anyone, please send them our way. We had over, thank you to the athletic department for the high school. They let us know that we had over 190 student athletes who practiced and participated at the center. Again, this doesn't include the teams that are outside. This is just volleyball, basketball, things like that. So quite a few student athletes that come to the center. And then this past summer we had over 800 campers participate in our half-day camp program. So A lot of kids, again, some days it was organized chaos. If it was a warm day or if it was a rain day, there's a lot of participants at the center. But it's a lot of moving parts, but we make it work, and we think that's what the fun thing to do is. We also provide, obviously, services for adults. And we had over 509 different individuals take part in 400 land-based fitness classes. So that is step aerobics, cycling, Pilates, yoga, things like that. We had 124 individuals who took part in our water fitness classes last year. And those are currently free for center members, and they will continue to be free. So that is definitely an area that we have room to grow for those folks, but we have seen reduced participation in particular on water fitness classes since the pandemic and we're looking to rebuild those. We also had 172 personal training clients last year which is really great. Personal training is a nice moneymaker for us, and it also does keep people active with their membership. It keeps them coming back, and we have some great personal trainers right now, so we're able to capitalize on those sessions as well. And then the average number of people that visit the fitness center every day is about 330. So we have quite a few people that are coming and going. If you've ever been to the center, we're generally busier at the beginning of the week after people went out. They went out to dinner over the weekend. They had fun. They feel guilty. They come back and work out on Mondays, and then that participation slowly goes down as the week goes on, and then it will ramp up again the next Monday. But we're happy. We think that there's definitely room to grow with some of those numbers, but we are happy to say that we're inching a little bit closer towards our capacity. With rentals last year, we had almost 17,000 people that visited the Center of Clayton as part of a rental. We have the Clayton Shaw Park swim team rents our pool for their swim team practices. We have multiple different ongoing business rentals who will rent with us once a month, once a week, things like that. So we had a lot of folks come through the door. for our rentals as well. We had 102 volunteers last year, which includes the vast majority of this is our coaches, our volunteer coaches for our youth basketball and youth volleyball programs. So we thank those folks. We could not do our leagues without those people. But it also includes members of the CRSWC. They donate their time and talent as part of their commission to provide us with wonderful insight that that we generally appreciate, and it helps us keep our operations running smoothly. And last but not least, we have 170 full and part-time employees at the Center of Clayton. That includes the full-time staff for the city, the recreation staff, the district, which is the facility services staff, and then also all of our part-time employees as well too that work at the front desk, the fitness center, all of our instructors as well. So we have quite a bit of people, quite a bit of activity happening right now. Any questions about any of those numbers before I jump into the budget? So this year, you should have all received our overall budget outlook for the Center of Clayton. There are some operating fund highlights that we do want to talk about for this year. In FY25, this budget does include about a 4.5% rate increase for all members, resident, corporate, and non-resident. That's the average fee increase. It also includes about 5% membership growth, which is a little aggressive, but we feel like that is definitely attainable based on the implementation of our marketing plan with the marketing staff person as well, too. So that should generate a little over $380,000 of additional revenue based on this year, based on the membership. We also specifically intended to drive membership. The next two items, we are planning on offering all free fitness classes for center members. So this includes all land-based and water-based fitness classes. Currently, we have the water-based fitness class are free and some land-based fitness classes are free, but this would include all classes. yoga, Pilates, cycling, basic pump classes, weight training classes, things like that. This does put us on par with our competition and is specifically intended to drive membership sales. And we also are planning on expanding our Kids Center hours Since we've come back from the pandemic, we have not had evening Kids Center hours, but that was something that we heard that our members do want. We will program adult programming around that as well so that there will be program offerings for people to come, but we will plan on adding evening Kids Center hours from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, again, specifically intended to drive membership sales, and that'll cost about $21,000 for us to do that. The additional marketing specialist position, we really want to focus on marketing communications for the Center of Clayton as well as implementing the marketing plan that the CRSWC paid for, got the study for last year. So this position is specifically intended to drive that marketing plan for the center for membership. Currently, the center pays for, or there are two people in, three people, I'm sorry, in the communications and marketing department, and the center pays for half of one of those marketing specialists. This person would then, the full salary would be dedicated to the center, and their focus will be the center of Clayton and implementing that marketing plan, which should help us get to those membership numbers that we're looking for. And then finally, one of the big operating fund drivers this year is also going to be increased utilities. Specifically, sewer, I believe, is supposed to increase significantly this year as well. So that really is driving that to a tune of an additional about $45,000. So when we look at our operating fund revenue, the vast majority of our revenues, over $2.4 million, is going to come from the sale of annual passes. That has been and will continue to be the largest driving force of our revenue, followed then by programming revenue, which includes, as I mentioned earlier, all the personal training revenue, aquatic lessons, camps that are held indoors, youth sports programs that are held indoor, the climbing wall, which doesn't bring in a lot of money, but it's an indoor program. The program revenue is our next largest revenue generator. And then we also have daily passes. I think it's important to note that when we look at our membership fees each year, we look at our daily fees and our philosophy is that it should not be cheaper for you to buy one daily fee per week, so four per month, than to get a membership. So we want to make sure that our daily fees are always set up to be in line to drive membership, that if you're a frequent visitor, it shouldn't be cheaper for you to pay multiple daily fees. So we look at those when we look at the membership revenue as well. And then we do bring in, obviously, rental revenue. We have after-hours revenue as well, too, so for larger parties, bar bat mitzvahs, and that helps bring in some additional revenue as well. Our expenses are largely driven by personnel expenses and then contractual services. Included in the contractual services, it's important to note that about $369,000 of that is for the school district personnel expenses. Again, that's for the facility services staff that work at the Center of Clayton and also included in the contractual service is MPM personnel which is Midwest Pool Management. That's for our lifeguards and that's about $495,000. So that's also included under contractual services but is really specifically related to personnel. We do have some large IRF and capital expenses happening in FY25, and we do acknowledge that. And we want to make sure that everyone understands where those are coming from because they are larger than we have experienced in the last several years. First and foremost, we do an annual fitness equipment replacement. Our fitness staff will look at all of the equipment that's up in the fitness center. If there are pieces that aren't performing well is a good way to say they maybe aren't. They're down and broken a lot. Those people, pieces will be removed from the floor. They'll be replaced. There may be other pieces that just aren't quite as functional. They're not getting as much use. Our staff look at those every year and then we'll do an annual fitness equipment replacement. We generally will replace a similar number of pieces. So if there's five pieces that we remove from the floor We'll put five back on the floor. Pre-renovation at the Center of Clayton, we were averaging just under $50,000 a year for fitness equipment replacement annually. We did reduce that when we did the renovation because we bought so many new pieces of equipment at that time. We were able to spend a little bit less those first couple years after the renovation for But we do need to start spending more for the pieces that are getting more use and do need to be replaced. So we did up that from 30,000 to 40,000 in FY25. One of the other programs that we talked about was cycling. So even though I know that Pelotons were very popular during the pandemic, our cycling program continues to be very popular at the Center of Clayton and continues to increase in participation. However, our cycling bikes have not held up very well. The brand of bikes that we have, the company is, unfortunately, is out of business. So that's not good. So we don't have the parts aren't available to replace a lot of the pieces. So if we do get all new cycling bikes, that would be an expense of about $45,000. And we do think that that would be an appropriate expense based on the class offerings, the we will need to have to increase based on the member demand with increased membership. Each session, we are increasing our program offerings for fitness based on the increased membership that we currently have. So we expect that to increase as well. There's a large technology project planned for FY25 to the tune of about $89,000. And I believe it's for some server replacements. And again, that's only the center's portion of the entire project as well. So only the 17% that's allocated to the center of Clayton is charged to the CRSWC's budget. Okay. And then finally, as far as IRF expenses go, we do need a new commercial washing machine. We have towels that we wash on a regular basis. We do need some more bleachers. I don't know if you've sat on the bleachers in between courts two and three, but they have been there since the center opened about 24 years ago. So they certainly need to be replaced and then At the request of athletics, we also are going to hopefully add another set of bleachers so that one more bleacher that can accommodate more folks for matches as well too. So we also have some maintenance, annual maintenance and repair that we will do on all of the basketball goals at the center. But there are six goals per court. So there's 24 goals that are just at the center of Clayton. So depending on what needs to be done at those, sometimes it can be a little bit more costly. But those are the IRF projects that we have planned for FY25. We do realize we have quite a large capital project planned for FY25, which is a flat roof coating on the roof over the gymnasiums. That was one of the two major things that was delayed when we did the center renovation, was the new roof for the gyms and then the new HVAC unit for those areas as well too. The flat roof coating is expected to extend the life of the current roof at least 15, or we hope at least 15 years, which would buy us some time to then save up for what will certainly be a much more expensive roof than $250,000. But then we also, and that's not part of this budget, but the next probably I would say four to five years we would need to address that. the HVAC unit that will eventually need to be replaced. But I know that Jim Bernal is working on trying to find out exactly how long the current one will last and what we need to do to make that happen. And then we also need, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Can I ask a

question? Sure. Just in terms of the flat roof and also the new cycling bikes, Are you getting warranties guaranteed for a certain amount of time, like with the roof, 15 years, the cycling? If they go out of business in two years, we have to rebuy all the bikes. I mean, is there some way to ensure that we'll be able to replace these or repair them as time goes by?

We certainly will get a warranty for the new cycling bikes. The ones that we currently have are about eight years old, so my guess is the warranty will probably be for a year. It won't be much longer than that, but there should be some kind of warranty with those. I can't really speak to the flat roof coating over that. I know that Jim Burnell is the one who got those numbers together, and I'm not sure what the warranty would be on that, but I can find out. And then last but not least, as far as capital projects for next year, we do have about $36,000 planned for new pool heaters. Again, those are all on our capital project schedule. I can tell you we do need that one because the one in the leisure pool broke today. So I know that the facility services staff is putting that back together and they're going to do what they can to limp us through the next three weeks of the fiscal year and then they'll look at purchasing another one for that pool as well. So... Again, we acknowledge that these are quite large capital and IRF projects for the next year. And we don't take these lightly. So we want to make sure that we did all of our research and we did include the things that we think are needed to make the center successful for the next fiscal year. We do have some tenants that are in our building. Oasis, which occupies the second floor at the center of Clayton, they're a great partner for us. They provide senior services and we don't have to duplicate their efforts for those. They do pay a utility and supply reimbursement that includes reimbursement for paper products and the facility services time as well. It's about $48,000 a year. And then we get use of those rooms in the evening hours after they're done for the day, about 3.30 every day. We can use those for rentals if we want. They haven't been quite as popular since we have a party room that's right off the pool right now, but they work perfectly for small group meetings. If there's like a scout meeting or a small neighborhood meeting, those rooms are a little bit cheaper to rent than our first floor meeting rooms, but it's a great partnership for us. We also have Subway, as you know, in our building. And I think the students like Subway and we see them down there quite often every day. I think the corporate world is always a little bit taken aback when the students come back because all summer long it's been quiet at Subway. And then when they come back during the school year, people are like, oh, I need to adjust my schedule for getting a sandwich. But it works out quite well. We get a percentage of their sales based on $180,000. The sales are picking up, but they are still a little bit slow to rebound since COVID. And then we do have projected revenue of about $8,000 for the fiscal year FY25 is included in this budget. And then the Clayton Community Foundation also pays us a quarterly utility reimbursement for their office, which is across from where the meeting rooms are at the center of Clayton. It's a very small office. They meet folks there sometimes just to talk about the history of Clayton. But they do pay us a utility reimbursement for that area as well. So when we look at the fund summary for FY25, again, we do acknowledge that it is a little eye-opening, I guess, when you look at the bottom line. I think it's important to note that even though we have added the free fitness classes, the additional 50% of the marketing person, and the... Even in kid center hours, our overall funding deficit is going down, albeit about $10,000. But it's really this year's deficit is really due to the additional IRF and capital expenses that we are expecting. So. it is for FY25 just over $660,000. However, when we talk about cost recovery, you know, the average cost recovery for a rec center in the country is about 28%. We realize that the Center of Clayton is quite different than the average recreation center, so we do acknowledge that. When the Center of Claydon was first, I guess, developed and talked about, There was a study that said we should expect about 85% cost recovery, so that is our goal when we look at it each year, and that is without the contributions from our parent organizations. So the upper right cost recovery without contributions number is that 83%, and we are... Again, our goal is 85%, so we will do everything within our power to try to get as close to 85% as possible when we talk about cost recovery. You know, if we did include the parent contributions, it's more along the lines of 90%, but really without those contributions, it is 83% for FY25. Again, just operating. That was all of my slides, and I'm sure people have some questions, so I'm happy to answer those.

I have one probably easy, maybe easy question. I believe that we changed the rules for rentals outside of operating hours to allow alcohol. Yes. With the idea that would get us additional programming like trivia nights and things like that. When did that happen? And have you seen any increases due to that yet?

Yes, we have seen increases. That went into effect, was it last fiscal year? Yeah, last fiscal year. And I know we already have events booked further out. And we've probably had about 10.

I would say we've probably had 10 after hours. And it's one of the areas too with the new marketing person that

we've really done

a soft push of it. We haven't really been up to that yet. I kind of wanted to see how it worked, too, with hiring the additional police officer.

Yeah, and the last time I talked to Chief Smith, they did not have any concerns about it and that the after-hours rentals were going well. I think one of the things that's important to talk about, too, is that since the pandemic, we have adjusted our hours a little bit. And on the weekends now, we're open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., So that 5 p.m. close time has really allowed us to offer more after hours. We used to close at 7 p.m. on Saturday nights, and your rental couldn't start until an hour after we closed. So your event couldn't start, including setup, couldn't even start until 8 p.m. So with this adjustment of us closing at 5 p.m., an event is able to start with the setup at 6 p.m., and we're able to have a little bit more flexibility to offer more after-hours events.

Thanks. You're welcome.

Thanks for coming. You're welcome. You always give a great presentation every year. Oh, thank you. So I just have one question. So I think you said practical capacity is 85%, which is about 9,800 members. And I know if we set aside the target kind of percentages on cost recovery, it looks like if you get to that target of 9,800 members, that with an increase of less than $70 per member, which I know that's not straight line because you have residents and non-residents and... students that pay and some students that don't pay. Is there any thinking to once you're at that capacity and there's not this deficit between supply and demand that you could be totally self-funded?

I mean... That would be the ultimate goal, I guess. Yes, we have been self-funded in the past. There have been times where we haven't had the parent organizations have only contributed to IRF and capital, depending, you know, that was probably 15 plus years ago. And then... you know, as new facilities started to open up. But I think our first goal, I guess, is to get to 85% cost recovery and then that would be our next goal is to get to as close as 100% as possible without parent contributions.

Yeah, because I think, I mean, once you reach a practical capacity, then you've effectively demonstrated through a free market, right, that your supply and demand is even. And then I think that our rates there are much lower than, for example, a Lifetime Fitness or any other alternatives that you could slowly start to look at optimizing your rate structure where you could effectively be really self-funded. And you may even begin to build a capital fund for your longer-term CapEx needs.

We have talked about in the past, and many, many years ago, the center did have its own capital fund. funding where they did build their own capital fund. But then at some point in time, the parent organizations decided they would rather build their capital funds and contribute to the center annually. So again, that would certainly be a conversation that we could have going forward. But yeah, I'm happy to have that conversation in whichever way the boards decide that they want to move. It's fine with me. But yeah, it's certainly...

It seems like it's within reach.

I think it is. I think it could be, yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, our rates are definitely lower than Lifetime Fitness, certainly. You know, our non-resident rates do creep up a little bit high. You know, right now it's over $100 a month if you're a non-resident family. So because of the center's proximity to some non-residents, I think, you We need to just keep that in mind as well, too. But I certainly think it's worth consideration and yes, a possibility.

Well, and I do think, yes, we're much less than lifetime. But as far as our comparables, which other rec facilities, which a lot of the rec facilities you can't really compare to the center because we have a lot of amenities like the pools, the gyms that, you know, the Heights doesn't have or that the new Olivet Rec Center doesn't have. So we are significantly higher than any other rec center in the area. So I think it's just striking that balance

with

these.

Yeah. But we've been there before. We can get there again.

Tony, question for you. You spent a lot of time talking about kind of the revenue side, right? So we're going to hire a new marketing person. We're going to raise rates. We're going try to grow folks. Can you spend some more time or some time talking about what you're doing on the expense side? I saw if I read the numbers right, looks like personnel costs have gone up almost 50% from 2022 till now. So can you talk a little bit about what you either plan on doing or have done to kind of control that side of it?

So our personnel, as I mentioned earlier, were either city of Clayton employees or school district of Clayton employees. So the full-time staff salaries that are charged to the center of Clayton are really only for those people that work in that building. And then those are dependent on the city's pay structure, which they implemented a new pay structure in FY24, and the school district's pay plan, which I don't know when they most recently updated theirs. But those are for all the full-time Some of our staff positions are split weird ways. Like we have a community recreation supervisor who's paid 50% out of the city, 50% out of CRSWC. So we look at that every year. And then our part-time employees have had significant pay raises over the past several years in the attempt... For many, many years, Clayton was one of the highest paid part-time employees, part-time employers... Wait, employers for part-time employees. We are significantly ahead of most other cities, rec centers, things like that to attract the best qualified candidates. During the pandemic and then subsequent years, many cities caught up with us. So we made a concerted effort within the last couple of years to increase our part time pay plan. Our part time pay plan, the starting rate for the lowest paid, I don't want to say it like that. The starting rate for any part time person in our department is $15 an hour and then it goes up from there depending on are you a shift supervisor? Do you teach fitness classes? Do you teach aquatics classes? Those salaries have increased over the past several years, and that was a concerted effort on the part of the city and the center to implement those. We did that for the outdoor positions as well. This budget in FY25 does include a 3% merit increase for part-time employees.

And it looks like there's more cost being spent in the full-time than the part-time staff, if I'm looking at these numbers right?

Probably I'd have to double check. Part

of it is what I'm thinking through and tell me if my logic's right. From the school board and from the city standpoint, while we're talking about trying to break even, we have ourselves to point to when it comes to the expense side because we're the ones approving salary increases for a lot of the staff, at least the full-time staff.

Correct. Okay. Yeah. And other than that, I think that our other contractual, our supply accounts, we operate pretty lean. I mean, we don't buy stuff unless we really need it at the center of Clayton. We don't spend a lot of money on office supplies or rec supplies or things that we generally don't need. We will bid out large contracts to make sure that we're getting the best price as possible. But we do not, in my opinion, I don't think we have a lot of fluff in our budget otherwise.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Well, I'll jump in. And first of all, I just want to thank Tony and Valerie over the past year. You know, we've had a handful of conversations, and I really very much appreciate all the work that's gone in here. And to Kim's point, I think through that work, we've sort of figured out there is kind of a pathway to get to fully funding operations. But I think, you know, what Jeff said is basically right. Whatever we decide, this group sitting at this table is voting on this every year. And whether we like it or not, the operating deficit is you take out the capital contributions, it's going to be about $750,000 give or take this year. And we just need to decide whether we're OK with this or not. And I think we're not totally, even within our boards, I think we just have different perspectives on this. And if the center opened up 24 years ago, and we decided on this 85% figure, cost recovery figure 24 years ago, we probably ought to take some time over the next year and just decide what are the financial outputs that we're expecting from management. Otherwise, they're just sort of throwing darts against the wall, hoping that we're going to be happy every September when we get back together. So I, one, just wanted to thank you guys for the hard work over the past year, but then also just sort of perhaps plant the flag that I think that's the conversation that this group needs to have as it relates to the center over the next year.

And thanks for reminding me. I'd be remiss if I did not thank Valerie Eagle. She's the primary point person for the Center of Clayton and is the one who puts together, gets and gathers all this data for you guys. So I thank her and then the rest of my staff as well too.

So, Jason, you just suggested we should be having some kind of discussion, and I don't know what you think that looks like. But I just want to share that I think the recovery since the pandemic and what you're planning and what you've done has been great. And I don't have... expectation that this community service that we offer is has full cost recovery I think if there's a way to get to it that's great I'm not gonna tell you to stop and it's I think it's wonderful but like I don't lose sleep over this I think it's an amenity for our community and I think it's something that I know as like an elected official from Ward one I feel like totally comfortable supporting with the goals that were set up. Now, if other folks want to like research and try to plan something else and present it, I'm not saying I'm not open to it, but I feel really good about the position of the center and the improvements that have been made in the last year or two.

Only because she called me out, I'll respond, so yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what you're... No, I... I

don't think we have a lot of division on our board, I guess. I could be wrong. We haven't taken a vote on it, but like...

Yeah, I'm not, I didn't say that that's, you know, full cost recovery is what we need to aim towards. I just think it's been 24 years. This is, the budget gap is going to get wider. You know, the cost, the increase in expenses is growing faster than the increase in our, you know, membership dues, right? And you're going to

bounce out at 90%.

And at some point it's going to be a problem for someone, maybe for both bodies, you know, and I'd rather us work through it through the commission. That's, you know, that's kind of what I had in mind, you know, not some like grandiose how, you know, summit, but through the commission and through feedback from our respective boards. try to get a sense of do we need to update what we're guiding management to, to what the financial outcome should be. And then we can each project our own budget based on that, right? But if we're going to be charged additional money at the end of every year to fill the hole, that chargeback is only going to grow over time based on where we're headed with all this. And so I'd rather do it while we can than, you know, be reactive.

I think part of that, too, The center, looking at communities and looking at the things that are provided, it seems like I am very comfortable, as Becky said, with this is an amenity for our community. And given that, we do have to be fiscally responsible in how we provide that benefit and make sure everything's in balance. Very similar to what you said, the two boards both agree with that. Maybe what we need to talk about is I think you all have done a beautiful job in doing this. I think that an 85% recovery is, from the little bit I know, is pretty unheard of, that we're doing very, very well. Obviously, I'd love 100%. Maybe what we talk about is if both boards are still comfortable with that going forward and maybe be more realistic in what we say our annual contributions are versus every year saying, oh my gosh, we have to cover an additional whatever. Being more honest about it, I think, would give us better conversation and more constant over the years as well versus each year having that jump. And I imagine, yes, as the building continues to age despite renovations, despite everything else, it will get more and more expensive for both of these bodies.

I would just say, Kim, I agree with you. At some point we're going to cap out on revenue somewhere unless we keep raising rates. And then I think, Jason, to your point, I think this is also part of that conversation is where do we feel rates need to be? Not an actual like dollars and cents, but there's going to come a point where we're going to say, look, that's just more expensive than we want to charge folks. And if that's the case, then we need to set it, you know, whatever the number is, we just assume we're all going to eat the rest of it. And if we don't believe that, and we're like, we just got to keep raising rates because we want to be self-sufficient, that's okay too, I guess. But Jason, to your point, I'd rather have that conversation now so we have a roadmap the next five years than get five years from now and we're all writing million-dollar checks to try to cover

stuff.

And if we want to make it free for every resident, we could in theory want to do that. I think it's worth, instead of just plodding along, raising rates to try to balance, we just need to have that conversation so I would agree with that or make the decision as to what we want this amenity to be for the next decade.

Well, and I know we've talked about a study related to that because somebody 20-some years ago came up with this number. And I know that there was obviously a cost associated with something like that because I think just coming up with some random number, whether it's, I mean, if we're not getting to 85%, it's 80%, and everybody feels good at the end of the year with 81%. But yeah, I mean, I agree. I think managing expectations is good and having more of a roadmap. But I mean, I guess I'm more with Becky. I think not that I don't want... Not that I don't want there to, I guess if we need to adjust expectations to make everybody feel more comfortable. But again, this is a community amenity. I think nobody wants to profit from this or nobody wants money left over at the end of the year. I mean, I guess if it's there, it's there. But in the end, I think we have to look at this for what it is, an amenity for our community, a great service to our students. And that's just how I feel about it.

Well, Bridget, I think the question is, okay, what does that amenity look like? Is it an amenity that's $500 a month that most of our community can't live in? And if that's not the case, then again, I think that's what we're talking about. It's not that it shouldn't be. It's how do we provide that amenity? Again, is it $500 a month in order to kind of break even when we've capped out enrollment? Or do we say, look, we don't want it above 250 and we're just going to eat the rest. I think, and I don't put words in Jason's mouth, but I think that's kind of what he's trying to talk about is how we kind of figure that out.

Just predictability around the business model, and therefore, to Susan's point, I mean, therefore we know this is what we all chose to spend. We probably should not wait 24 years before we revisit that, you know, so that there's – the expectations are clear both to us and to Tony and Valerie, you know, and whoever else.

I might suggest that we I think Bridget is right. We would need to do a big analysis We would need to a study that costs money And so we would need to budget for that. So if we don't have it in this year's budget I don't know if we talked about a budget amendment of some sort down the road for this But I think we would need to set aside some money to have us, you know, because for example, I We offer certain things, and I know we just got done doing a livable communities plan, and I frankly haven't taken a dive into it yet. It just came out. So I don't know how much that information might impact the center. Hopefully there's a lot there for us to use, but I think we have to look at not only the finances, but what are we providing the community, and what does that look like in the future, and what are people gonna want? And maybe that's less expensive. Maybe that's more expensive. Maybe we need to consider generating an endowment of some kind and having an arm like the Clayton Community Foundation become a partner. So I think there's a lot you can... You can do. I think we need to take a look at it holistically, not just are we going to be able to break even in five years. I mean, there's got to be a lot more to it than that, and I think that will inform the possibilities of doing better on the finances. So there might be a lot of opportunities that we can take advantage of. I mean, to be

clear, this is not a break-even proposition.

Right.

So there is no scenario which you'll break even for more than a year or two where you won't eventually run into a deficit again that continues to grow. And as school board members, our constituents are students. And so projecting what that growth is going to be and how much it's going to cost us is different than the calculation perhaps that you make as aldermen in terms of the community benefit that provides to the greater, wider community. So that's why understanding these expectations, knowing what it is, And as a school board, we may say yes, a million dollars a year as far as a contribution is worth it for our students. But at what point is that going to be too high if there's not additional improvements made in the center, if we're not competing with private fitness centers? What is that limit where eventually the partnership either has to change or come to an end? And I think if we don't start thinking about some of that long-term planning the same way that you guys are doing your community studies on livable communities, 20 years down into the future, you can blindly go into this and then we'll be in a position where, God forbid, we'll be forced to based on fund balances when none of current school board members are potentially sitting at this table where you've got to make a decision. And the partnership that's existed for a long time because we haven't put the planning in place for it then has to

be dissolved. Yeah, I think that being intentional at all times is important and stay on top of it. And as Michelle mentioned, the Livable Communities Plan, if you look at that, it's when... I guess I just caught when you said you. It involves our family, it involves our kids. What are we serving? A lot of it was that multi-generational coming together which serves the district and the city. So I need to delve into it again. And it's also a good opportunity as you all start your long-term planning because we are talking about the same people, a lot of the same people with the needs and figure out how we want to serve and how best to use our resources.

So that just reminds me that I know you guys are doing a facilities plan. So I think that the results of that could really be important as it might impact the use of the center for the district, and that would be important for this big, hairy study that we're talking about doing. So I feel like we're about a year away from being able to dive into your question very well. We have your input on that plan, and then we'll have our livable communities info, but We need all these pieces to figure out how to optimize this great facility that we've got. It is attached to the school, so I don't know how we split that off, yeah.

Yeah, so I was just going to kind of follow up on that vein, Mayor, that I was curious, since the facilities master plan is just kicking off, what, if anything, have you put in scope as it relates to assessing and planning and making recommendations related to athletic and aquatic facilities? What does the scope look like for the consultant there?

And part of the scope for that work would be the athletic facilities that our students use, the gymnasiums specifically. Beyond that, we have not gone into studying that. So it's really the athletic facilities, which would be the two gyms, the weight room.

Does the district use the pool? We do. We do. Okay. All right, so you've set a scope that's the... And when you say the gyms, you mean the gyms that are in the center, not Stuber? Correct. Okay. Yes. So you're doing some aspect of looking at the facilities that are in the CRSWC for the district, but not the full... Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Anybody else? Well, thanks for your time. I just wanted to tell everybody thank you. Again, I mentioned Valerie, but we also work with Jim Burnell from Facility Services and Steve Hudson with Athletics. So thanks to those folks as well because I do think we have a great partnership and we work well together. Thank you, Tony. Great job.

Well, thank you, Tony, so much for coming and for the very clear... visual presentation as well as your explanation we appreciate it thank you um and before we adjourn i just want to thank um all of the board of aldermen and mayor harris and David Gipson for joining us tonight i think any opportunity we get to work together socialize together um is great and so i appreciate the opportunity to be together and thank you for joining us and also for dinner. They're coming for dinner with us too, so thanks.

Well, thank you, Tony, so much for coming and for the very clear... visual presentation as well as your explanation we appreciate it thank you um and before we adjourn i just want to thank um all of the board of aldermen and mayor harris and david gibson for joining us tonight i think any opportunity we get to work together socialize together um is great and so i appreciate the opportunity to be together and thank you for joining us and also for dinner. They're coming for dinner with us too, so thanks.

On that note, are we gonna be doing our breakfasts? Are we continuing the quarterly or whatever breakfasts that we used to

do? We have, well I think like what we did last spring I think we've talked about

one. I'll get back to you. Yeah, because I think that might be kind of a good way to go. And I

liked the breakfast we did last spring because it involved everybody instead of just select few. Instead of taking turns. So maybe we'll do that again.

Yeah, sounds good.

So we'll talk.

All right.

But thank you. So anyway, thank you to the Board of Aldermen for joining us for dinner and for the meeting. So great to see everyone. And I will turn it over to Chris to adjourn.

I move that the Board of Education adjourn. And the Board of Aldermen?

No, they adjourned. I have no idea. We're just your guests. We're just here. Yeah, that's okay.

Okay, you got it right, I guess. I move that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, motion passes. Meeting adjourned.