08-30-16 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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Some of the other increases are part of the service management agreement. We were able to realize a few expense reductions though this year, the Zoo subsidy is on a schedule to reduce over time by $100,000 this year per the contract. We're able to save on some maintenance contracts by consolidating what had historically been three (3) separate contracts. The good news is that we see some increased revenues as well through property taxes and grants and sponsors. The net impact to our budget should be about $200,000, negative. We plan to fund that initially through our reserves, which are healthy at this point. We have a five (5) year plan to work on this, as outlined in the budget packet. Besides the new department of Venues, Parks and Arts, the $3.5 million is still in the budget, on reserve from the park bond for the renovation and major expansion of the Charles Black Center. We hoped to break ground on that this year, but with the ongoing EPA investigation, we just weren't able to do that. The investigation has pretty much wrapped up as far as the onsite soil investigation, so we should hear back in the next couple of months about the next steps. We lost a major national tournament this year because of the condition of our tennis courts. We resurfaced seven (7) or eight (8) years ago, and they are in need of resurfacing again. The Howard Park Ice Rink is in the budget, funded by TIF. That won't be open this year, we're doing the Riverfront parks and trails study to help make sure we position that in the right spot in the park and plan for future expansions as necessary in that area. We're going to continue to sustain the Mademen program at the MLK Center, now called just Made, because young women are now a part of it. We'll continue the movies in the parks series this year, which is unique. We decided to take the movies to every neighborhood throughout the City, instead of just putting them in Howard Park or something. Committeemember Williams- Preston stated that she loved Creature from the Black Lagoon at Pinhook. Mr. Perri continued that we celebrated the Fourth of July with the river lights, there will be some new streetscape responsibilities, and we mentioned the roundabouts. Some of the remaining park bond will be used to continue some of the maintenance programs throughout the parks. The staffing changes, this year, more people were added as a result of the tree maintenance agreement. We are paying to help maintain the new trees that were installed, so we added the capacity to help take care of all of those. Hopefully you're seeing the result of that. Historically, we outsourced services by combining all of those folks, it made sense at this point in time to bring in the HVAC tech in house, replace one of the retiring positions with the horiculturalists, so here's where you see a transfer of five (5) positions that have historically been at the Morris, Palais complex to the Venues, Parks and Arts, still servicing Morris and Palais and funded in their budget, but transferred to our budget so it is cost - neutral. FIX