RETROACTIVE CANCELLATION AND PARK & REC TROUBLES CONTINUE

RETROACTIVE CANCELLATION?

The official city calendar is handily available online, on the city’s website: www.highlandhts.com.

The calendar shows all of the various activities going on in the city each month.

Interested residents checking the calendar late in the afternoon last Tuesday would have seen an 8 pm listing for a regularly-scheduled, bi-weekly Council Committee of the Whole meeting.

Boy would they have been surprised if they showed up for that meeting.

City Hall was dark and locked up tight.
Despite being listed on the official calendar, no Council meeting was actually held.

I had a little chuckle when I looked at the official calendar yesterday.

The listing for last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting had mysteriously disappeared. 

Do you suppose that’s Council way of retroactively cancelling the meeting?

It reminded me of a news story I just read, about Russians purportedly attempting to rewrite history by changing Wikipedia entries.

 Ah, how lucky to be a politician, living in this electronic age...!

DAY CAMP STILL LOSING MONEY

The Park & Recreation Commission (P&R) found itself with serious budget troubles a couple years back.

In addition to bloated payrolls, another significant contributor to P&R’s fiscal woes was the city’s summer day camp program.

It was bleeding money.

The day camp program is a throwback to former times, when the world was populated with stay-at-home parents who looked to city-run day camp programs to amuse and distract their kids part-time, for a couple of weeks each summer.

The day camp is a non-starter for most working parents.

With its limited operating hours and schedule it's not a good substitute for full-time summer day care.
Clearly it struggles to compete with the many more robust camp programs that are readily available in the area.

Despite all that, P&R has soldiered on with the program.

P&R raised fees and convinced city leaders to spend over $100,000 to install a new party barn in the park, to use as the camp home base during the day.

So did it work?

Do the numbers justify continuing the program?

Decide for yourself.

These are the numbers, as reflected in the 2014 Official City Budget:

Actual 2013 day camp revenue: $59,325.

Actual 2013 day camp expenses: $67,396.

For those not good at math, that adds up to a $8,071 operating deficit.

The bleeding continues….

A NEW P&R PROBLEM: STAFFING THE POOL

On June  24th Council suspended the required readings (again) and passed as an emergency measure (again) Resolution 7-2014:

..authorizing a mutual exchange of service agreement with the City of Mayfield Heights and the Village of Mayfield to provide for the mutual exchange of Lifeguard Services during the 2014 Summer Season…

Council President Cathy Murphy stated at the June 17^th Committee of the Whole meeting that the legislation was:

"..necessitated because the college kids leave at the end of the summer.”

Mayor Scott Coleman backed up that version of events, telling Council that:

“At the end of the year and at other spot times during the year we share lifeguard services. “

Subsequent events, however, have me questioning the stated rationale.
I have to wonder:

Was it just political spin, offered up by our elected city leaders, to cover mismanagement by P&R Director Dave Ianiro?

Right after the legislation was enacted---when the summer pool season was well underway--- the city’s “Emergency Red” electronic sign boards flashed “Help Wanted” signs, seeking Lifeguards for the city pool.

Suddenly the legislation looked less like an attempt to address “end of the year” staffing issues and much more like an attempt to cover current staffing problems.

What's going on?

With P&R involved, it’s always hard to tell.

After the "Help Wanted" signs appeared I had the opportunity to talk to someone who is working as a lifeguard this summer.

The individual, an experience lifeguard and a Highland Heights resident, is working elsewhere---not at the Highland Heights pool.

“Why not?” I asked.

The individual told me that they sent out a bunch of job applications last winter, looking for summer lifeguard work.

A nearby city contacted and hired the individual in January.

The individual didn’t hear a word from Highland Heights for months... and months.

Finally, in May, a week or so before beginning their summer lifeguard job, the individual received a call from Highland Heights.

Too little, too late.

With Resolution 7-2014 Council has managed to put a Bandaid on the situation….at least for this year.

But the question remains:

What about next year?