one my colleagues in the front here is a presentation of the draft strategic action plan a cost analysis for the town of belmont recreation and it will be presented by one hundred ten percent david kills going to make an introduction of  draft copies of the report available here at the table if you want would like to take one this endeavor of creating a recreation strategic plan was an outgrowth of the financial task force report and one of the items that was contained a report is to take a review of the recreation department and make recommendations for where they need to go over the next three years which includes programatic reviews and financial reviews and take advantage of our full far facilities and with potential provide better coordination just a couple introductions again this is a an endeavor that has taken several months to complete a lot of information gathering a lot of interviews a lot of coordination and i just like to introduce the public works recreation team jay mark card our director mike santoro the assistant director joe and how the recreation program she can watch the cubs in cleveland at eight fifteen that would be great and with that jamie will have a power point presentation and is chair polo said will be happy to take questions of the draft report thank to spend time on it because it chaunced close to answer the question what do you believe in is it leads to in this case it's parks and recreation services and then what value would purpose need to be today because we've got to start was to which the government in what's happening so indeed underground shifts what are the trends issues that are affecting influencing our business today of writing the things it's really important that we figure out what's happening around us because that obviously should drive down where we need to head and then as a our strategic plan questionnaire and this basically is just a series of questions where we ask so you know what was your strategic planning process going in the past when did you learn from it was a successful if it wasn't why would you believe it usually this organization is facing in the next few years what would you like to see result so it provides us with our attorneys frankly as third party folks to learn a little bit about the system before we actually get your insight and we really appreciate the contributions we get  it's a lot of energy and takes them offline if you will we believe it's a huge investment into the most important maybe but we ask them a lot of questions you know what's happening today in the system what you think needs to happen what are you hearing from your customers what do you think essentially the critical resources the system needs to have function and to survive and thrive and then finally what we like to call has center which is political environmental societal and technological  statement it's important to this organization to think about responsibility as a release to the finite resources they have and really trying our continue to work hard to create a collaborative norm for tunis all in the community that off with the staff and the commission workshops and continue that with a focus group meetings so we serve here and that is intended to lead us to our values and our mission what's important as relates to the delivery of recreation services position and that's not to suggest that there was a leadership being exhibited in the system whether it was by junior high you jay or anyone else the idea was do we need a director to kind of drive the boss will you know steer the ship and it's our contention that certainly might be necessary moving forward however there's a lot of having living that's going to have to be done here in the short term and it's our will be the running and bringing new executive in full time right now and you bring somebody that there is no fusion it was very clear to us in our conversations that some cases there have confused it was very clear in some cases than the community was confused about who owned what who do i go to schedule what we do i paid  process including the adoption and use of service categories to them the simplest way to describe this is something that has been issued in the field of public parks and recreation for decades we got away from probably about thirty so we help the organization create service categories which she quite nicely into the cost analysis and then challenges the system think about how should i own my tax resource based on introductory types of or how long they've been in the discussions to date but i would be curious to hear what your thoughts are not because i think it needs to be united and needs to be very strong in order to to support anyone that we would know we did have some input here and i know it's been a nine month process i think under ten percent is not a very good job for us and i think the recommendations seem sound to us but we need to decide you know the first step is david indicated you know whether we hire a temporary recreation director  then move forward with some of the other things that we need to execute upon i don't think you can happen overnight but i think we are committed to trying to change the way we do recreation in belmont iterate through any conversation we actually set brain for saying hey let's take this on let's address this and let's let's have set an expectation back to the community that in eighteen to twenty four whatever the timeframe  is that we're going to implement and and you know implement change in the way we do recreation here because i would hate for it to sort of die on the vine of analysis paralysis and right  last week so we have an opportunity as a board to discuss them i also think that we need to discuss them together with the recreation commission as well so i think we likely schedule within the next thirty to sixty days of meeting with the rector commission and go through the my reaction to the recommendations were all positive when i first read and now heard him tonight but i don't know my colleagues think so i think we need to deliberate on that i don't think we're going to lose momentum on this we've spent a lot of time and some money on this charlie so  o let it just sit there on the shelf i think would be irresponsible on our part so i think i would rest assured we intend to move forward with at least the liberating discussing what's in the what's in the plan with other comparable communities to belmont one what is their recreational strategic plan if they have one and then the probably the first part of the question is how do our current practices compare to what other comparable communities you know to belmont do i knew you're really asking that question because everybody  it's so similar yet different i would say most of the challenges this organization is facing the vast majority public park of this conversation which is why cost analysis was such a critical component it is a current challenge and we know that whether it's parks and recreation is how it works transportation libraries we all face a challenge collaboration are probably a little worry you need to know as opposed to things like financial viability that's a challenge or we're cross the country organizational identity right now is a huge issue i would say for a lot of organizations similar to their government because there is more competition for before we're trying to figure out who we are all the systems people have depended on persian region for certain things over the years and now they've actually moved away to these other types of delivery systems and services so figuring out who we are going forward i would say is a cult challenge as well so i think there are some significant similarities and at the same time some very polarizing differences that go why i was experiencing but maybe s belmont charges as much for its services as in the ever other surrounding communities so we didn't find any great opportunity there although there was a great opportunity for the attention that's being given to recreation so i think  this is a really good step forward i want to know from angie is did you talk to him you must have talked to the vision twenty one committee was there a connection there in terms of doing your project focused on strategy as well on the other thing is that one of the things we learned in the revenue opportunities find is that you really can't charge more for something as a government entity than it cost to do it in does that ring true with your work because this was so for example of something like a dog license you know we turned twelve dollars everybody else charges ten but you can't charge twenty funded may not generate more than a hundred percent cost recovery however it does not negate the fact that are services within a fund that cannot be seen as profit and gins or providing access revenue for the fine so for example if you've got twenty let's say twenty different services or two thousand different services as long as the funding in its entirety as an aggregate does not generate more than one hundred percent co fine however most services within our field are heavily subsidized so that allows us the opportunity with let's say vending machines merging nice for resale goal operations acquiring parks you  and that you have come just to just sunday public private partnerships that we also look at those in the context of what the new facility under understanding what our costs are and what the cost recovery could be and who those write the new facility because certainly today our hockey rink is not capable of being open or providing other programming other than the limited programming that it does the hours that it runs but other hockey rinks close to us for instance in arlington have had been  successful at not only covering their costs but also raising money to improve right through the recreation enterprise to improve build or pay for improvements on their facilities so that's one thing i'd like to say no  that the other comment i'd like to make is just when i looked started looking this up four years ago i think david said it usually takes about ten years for these things to come into fruition i'm hoping that with the first census report that we will be the ten years and that we will echo charl rise comments that we don't let this set and not gain some traction because i think it's a really critical thing to do for everyone in belmont to have the enjoyable to be able to enjoy recreation assets from which we have many and  and to be able to do it in a way that's financially and otherwise responsible for the community and lastly i just like to say that a lot of the communities around us in answer to sammy's question are probably maybe ahead of us in terms of looking at these kinds of  things and in many what i found in my discussion with many of them is that they talk to each other and they come up with ideas and share ideas whether it's programming ideas whether it's other ideas on how to lower their costs or be more efficient or what programs have been successful the for them that kind of thing and i really encourage us to also utilize that that resource because many of them are you know experienced recreation directors thank you thank you and the other questions but let me just comment to this is a component that grew out of as jim miller indicated the financial task force and you've heard me comment publicly that the next step is  force implementation committee this is one aspect of that so i'm committed to moving forward with the recommendations or at least deliberating discussing with my colleagues in the recreation commission and of course the school department as well on the school committee discussed where you said in the recommendation for the the part which you considered development a cost recovery subsidy allocation philosophy a model to provide strategic direction guidance as relates to where to focus on increasing revenues and how finally tax resources will be used is that the point that you wanted to make in that you believe that we subsidize most communities subsidize recreation we don't look at all aspects of cost services rendered and what we do instead is rely on our tax resources to sort of help with that subsidization we need to consider ways to do a full cost you know what we provide to the community from a service point of view and determine whether a factor user fees are appropriate or not is that part of it you know so the cost analysis again was to just very simply although it's not all identify the cost of doing business for every service in the system so what does it cost you to provide us with less and what does it cost you in the right camp whatever it might be and then to take that a step further and begin to think about how do you want to think about cost recovery is it really is dollars look at so it's more flat philosophical discussion because you know raising user fees to many of the communities they reflect upon this i'm sure you've heard this is an additional w rather than using tax resources but i like the i like the point you made and that is we need to think about things in a philosophical way in terms of what services we deliver which we subsidize which ones perhaps we don't write in ways that man has recommended as well  average assets that we have from a service point of view and so to generate revenues for more private organizations yeah and i would just add again that very issue that topic is it's a hot button with a lot of organization because there is sort of a perception that tax resources pay for recreation services in and we have shifted from the model where we are to in the seventy's a forcefully subsidizing all of our recreation services to one where questionably do we have the resources to continue to be able to do that so there's a philosophical discussion but the underpinning is which services provide for the greatest public benefit and which provide for the greatest private benefit and having that is potentially your underpinning and then also having a difficult conversation which is not necessarily highlighted in the report but will not come to us as a surprise to anybody in this room challenging the notion of ability to pay versus willingness to pay and that is that's that's a tough conversation to have but one nonetheless that's critically important to the conversation around cost recovery get it i also think that what they're not talking about is necessarily just raising fees i want to make that very clear i think it's about looking at cost recovery and then making a decision on how you want to approach the cost recovery and that's where it gets into also then looking for other sources of revenue whether it's from nonresident rentals are charging more for nonresidents to use your facilities so that you are also helping to to to pay for the costs of the facilities