The Park & Recreation (P&R) steamroller reappeared at the May 3rd Council committee meeting.
We’ve seen the P&R steamroller before: it’s the steamroller to erect a new park pavilion and to do it--hurry, hurry--right now, immediately, as in it should have been done yesterday.
The park already has two pavilions. P&R Director David Ianiro pitched his latest concept for pavilion # 3 on Tuesday night, and---get this—he asked Council to immediately: (1) approve the hiring of an architect of Ianiro’s choosing (someone who hasn’t worked for the city before); and (2) authorize the city engineer to do the site work and put the project out to bid as soon as the architectural drawings come in.
Service Director Thom Evans, who told Council that Mayor Scott Coleman asked him to help “spearhead” the project, actively supported Ianiro’s plan to rush the project to completion.
We saw the same behavior before, in connection with the previous concept for the new pavilion (which involved renovating and expanding the Old Pool House building in the park). Then, as now, Ianiro asked Council to dispense with further discussion and give him carte blanche, rubber stamp approval to proceed at will.
Ianiro might have the right to ask for that if P&R was using its own money to pay for the project.... But it’s not.
In addition to the activity fees it collects, P&R receives 1 mill of the property taxes that Highland Heights residents pay each year. As you can imagine, that translates into a pretty nice taxpayer-paid revenue stream (it is estimated that P&R will receive $332,500 in property taxes this year).
While P&R plans to use $25,000 from its 2011 deficit-spending budget towards the project, most of the money to pay for pavilion concept #3 (which P&R Director Dave Ianiro calls a “Park Barn Pavillion” (PBP)), would come from the city’s capital improvement fund.
The capital improvement fund (CIF) is used to pay for durable city necessities, like road, sewer and infrastructure work, vehicle and equipment replacement, and major building repairs.
Mayor Coleman earmarked $175,000 in the 2011 CIF budget to pay for the PBP project. Meanwhile, he plans to spend only $ 252,000 on street repairs this year—a paltry sum that will allow for some patching of a few main streets, but nothing more.
How’s that for fiscal priorities?
From the very beginning, P&R has said that the new pavilion will be used to provide a home base and rain shelter for the city’s day camp program. The camp runs from 9 am- 4 pm for 8 weeks, beginning in mid June. The Highland Heights day camp was a perpetual money-loser until last year, when P&R finally raised camp fees to more realistic levels.
Ianiro told Council that the camp averaged “about 70 campers” a week last year, but the budget numbers don’t seem to back that up. 2010 camp revenue totalled $ 71,755—or an average of about $ 8,970 per week. Dividing that number by the cheapest child (Highland Heights resident, early bird registration) and by the most expensive child (non-resident, regular registration), that translates into an average of between 48 and 66 campers a week. Since many kids attend day camp for more than one week, the total number of campers served by the camp is unclear, and if recent trends held true, many of those campers were not from Highland Heights.
Up until now, the camp has used Millridge School when the weather turned bad, for “minimal” cost according to the city’s Finance Director. Millridge offers a large gym and accessory rooms for campers to use on rainy days, and most importantly, it has something that none of the park pavilions --not even Dave Ianiro’s proposed PBP--has:
a tornado shelter.
With all the focus on building a new pavilion for the day camp, P&R has given scant attention to several significant infrastructure and safety issues that affect a far greater number of people who use the park.
For many years P&R ignored the fact that the pool was leaking. I don’t mean a little wetness; we’re talking about daily, substantial drops in water level. Although some fixes were made last year, that problem has yet to be completely resolved.
Some of the park roads are in terrible shape. The access road to Woodside is pretty near un-driveable. City Engineer Steve Hovancsek said he thought that it’s been 40 years since that drive was reconditioned. And get ready to shake, rattle and roll when you enter the park. The park entrance road isn’t in much better shape.
The park also has one very serious safety issue that Mayor Coleman, Council, and P&R Director Dave Ianiro have all acknowledged: the park entrance.
Because of the angle of the road and the placement of the traffic lights, residents take their lives into their own hands each and every time they turn left to go into the park from Wilson Mills Road.
You’d think safety would be P&R’s top priority, but you’d be wrong. P&R’s “top priority” according to P&R Director Dave Ianiro---the single thing P&R has been pushing and steamrolling for, nonstop, for over three years---is a new park pavilion for the day camp.
That got me thinking.
Since there is only so much money to go around and since the park has so many infrastructure/safety issues that need to be addressed and since the day camp is the primary justification for building a 3rd pavilion in the park, why not just ditch the day camp? That would eliminate the need for a new pavilion, and P&R would have money to spend on other, more essential things---like finally fixing the pool leak, resurfacing the park roads and improving the safety of the park entrance.
A radical concept, but think about it.
Sentimentality aside, the Highland Heights day camp program is an anachronism—an outdated throwback to a different era. When the day camp program started years and years ago, most moms were stay-at-home moms. Day camp offered summertime relief to those moms by getting their kids out of the house and keeping them occupied and amused for part of the summer.
But times have changed---and the current camp numbers reflect that. The Highland Heights day camp doesn’t provide what working parents need today, i.e., fulltime summer day care, from early morning to dinner time, from the day school lets out until the day it resumes. Today’s working parents don’t enroll their kids in the Highland Heights day camp, they send them to sports and/or other fulltime camps or day care facilities that are designed to provide fulltime supervision and child care in the summer.
Bottom line, there is one question that Council should ask itself before succumbing to the P&R steamroller:
Does it make sense to spend $175,000 (or even $100,000, which is what Ianiro claimed his PBP project would cost) of the city’s precious capital improvement money to build a 3rd pavilion in the park to support an outdated, 8-week summer day camp program that serves a relatively small number of Highland Heights residents? Does it make sense to do that, when the city has so many other needs—both inside and outside the park---waiting to be addressed?I know what my answer to that question would be.
Mayor Scott Coleman has already given his answer---you don’t have to look any farther than his $175,000 appropriation from the 2011 capital improvements budget to build a day camp pavilion in the park.
Who Said That?
These are quotes from the May 3rd Committee of the Whole meeting.
Can you guess the speaker?
1. “Roads are a big priority right now.”
2. “We had sticker shock.”
3. “I have the number, I know how much it (the building itself ) will cost. I don’t know exactly how much everything is.”
4. “If it’s not acceptable for residents, why is it acceptable for us?”
5. “If we can get (the project pieces) under the (public) bidding limit, we could authorize them as separate projects.”
6.”Aren’t we putting the cart before the horse? We need to fix the drive and then if there’s money left over, we can do the building.”
7. “It will be the most sought-after rental pavilion.”
Answer:
1. Mayor Scott Coleman, who ironically earmarked just $252,000 for city road repair in his 2011 budget.
2. Councilwoman Cathy Murphy, describing the reaction of P&R and Council to the bids for implementing P&R’s prior pavilion concept, which involved renovating and expanding the Old Pool House in the park. The lowest acceptable bid for that work was $299,000, or about 75% above what P&R had originally estimated it would cost ($75,000).
3.P&R Director Dave Ianiro. Ianiro was responding to a question that asked him if he was confident that the total cost for his latest pavilion concept (which he called a “Park Barn Pavillion” (PBP)) would come in under $100,000. Ianiro said, “Yes,” and then responded as detailed above. Ianiro later said that the PBP building itself would cost $40,000. When asked, based on his $100,000 estimate, what the cost per square foot for the entire PBP project was, Ianiro responded, “I couldn’t tell you that sir.” The answer: about $20 a square foot. To put that figure in perspective, the much smaller plain, open air gazebo being discussed for the new city hall greenspace costs about $50 a square foot.
4. Councilman Bob Mastrangelo. In response to the suggestion that the city could use a cheap (and not particularly durable) “chip and seal” refinishing process on the park roads, Mastrangelo asked if residents would be allowed to use that same process on their driveways. The answer was, “No”.
5. Service Director Thom Evans. Evans suggested that the PBP project possibly could be broken into smaller pieces, which would allow him to avoid using a public bidding process for at least part of the work. Although dispensing with a public bidding process could mean that city taxpayers end up paying more for the entire project, it would allow Evans to fast-track the project by soliciting informal bids from a just a few companies that Evans pre-selected.
6. Councilman Bob Mastrangelo. He was responding to the suggestion that Council approve the PBP project with the understanding that leftover capital improvement money, if any, would be spent on improving/repairing the park roads.
7. P&R Director David Ianiro. Pavillion rentals are just a tiny fraction of P&R’s revenue stream. P&R’s total 2010 revenue was $662,276---$3,720 of that was from park pavilion rentals.
The Backstory
The P&R steamroller began in mid-2007.
Mayor Scott Coleman stated at the July 10, 2007 Council meeting that the new greenspace where the old park drive used to be would be a:
“...fabulous place to put a gazebo attached to a pavilion or even a larger pavilion with sides that come down so the day camp could use it during inclement weather…”
http://www.highlandhts.com/docs/city_council/minutes/2007/07-10-07_city_council_minutes.htm
At the February 12, 2008 Council meeting, Mayor Coleman reported that former P&R Commissioner Tony Valentino’s vision was to install:
“...a mini Blossom with fire pits and grills and a large cement area for concerts.. (with) an area that is practical for the day camp to use ...”
http://www.highlandhts.com/docs/city_council/minutes/2008/02-12-08_city_council_minutes.htm
A month later, at the March 11, 2008 Council meeting, Council’s P&R rep, Ted Anderson, described what P&R wanted:
… a pavilion, amphitheatre, about 2000 SF., concrete, with a fireplace, rustic looking.”
http://www.highlandhts.com/docs/city_council/minutes/2008/03-11-08_city_council_minutes.htm
P&R changed tacks when it became clear to that it didn’t have the money or support to build the 2,000 square feet “mini Blossom” pavilion with fireplace that it had envisioned. P&R decided to renovate and expand the Old Pool House (OPH) in the park instead. P&R member Cathy Gould told Council at an April 28, 2009 Council meeting that:
“.. Park & Recreation has been working hard on the renovation of the former pool building so it could be used for camp.” The projected cost, according to P&R, was $75,000.
http://www.highlandhts.com/docs/city_council/minutes/2009/04-28-09_council_minutes.htm
Councilwoman Cathy Murphy recently described the “sticker shock” when the bids for P&R’s proposed OPH renovation project came in. The lowest acceptable bid was $299,000---75% higher than P&R’s estimated cost.
In 2011, P&R Director Dave Ianiro went back to the drawing board and came up with pavilion concept #3, something he calls a “Park Barn Pavillion.” He told Council on May 3, 2011 that he estimated that the entire project---which includes, among other things, renovating the bathrooms in the OPH---would cost $100,000 or less. Ianiro claimed that the bathroom renovation could be done “for very low cost,” but his plan includes only minor cosmetic work, not bringing the OPH bathrooms up to current code (including meeting ADA handicap accessibility requirements). Also consider this: P&R paid almost $15,000 this year to install two small bleacher pads in the park---a small fraction of the concrete work required for the PBP.
If Ianiro---with Service Director Thom Evans squarely behind him---succeeds in steamrolling Council, the PBP project---or at least a portion of it--will go out to bid within a month.
