08-23-17 Personnel and Finance (#3)

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Councilmember Scott asked, Are you fielding phone calls about the hotels? Ms. Belew replied, Yes and we have already started looking at events that we have previously lost due to lack of occupancy. This is also getting us talking about employment retention to make sure we can absorb the increased activity. Councilmember Broden asked, How many employees do you have on the hourly payroll? Ms. Belew answered, We have about twenty-two (22) full-time employees and the rest are hourly. It costs us about $30,000 a year to pay for the hourly employees. We are always looking for more part-time banquet servers,though. Mr. Perri stated, I have members of our team with me to answer any lingering questions you may have. We have so many Divisions that support one (1) another. We have commissioned a group to evaluate our joint management structure to deliver some recommendations on how to approach that joint management. The mission of VPA prioritizes recreation, arts, culture, economic and neighborhood development, health and wellness, and overall improvement to our quality of place. We have many accomplishments in 2017. We recognized$100,000 in savings for increased efficiency through consolidation of managements and structure for our main venues. These were the low-hanging fruit opportunities. We anticipate more savings moving forward. Branding has also helped increase understanding of what VPA is doing. We hired a Development Director last fall and that position has brought in well over$100,000 of revenues already. We won the $5 million Regional Cities Grant that we reported on earlier this year. We created the Ecological Advocacy Committee and they drafted the Natural Resources Management Plan that the Park Board is yet to adopt. Our cost recovery has moved up from nineteen percent(19%)to twenty-eight percent (28%) and we hope to get that to forty percent (40%). Staffmg levels will remain neutral this year. There will be no program or athletic fee increases this year. Mr. Perri continued, We are piloting the Mobile Experience Vehicle where it can go around the parks and it'll have programs and things related to health and wellness. We will sustain and retain all staff and programming throughout all renovations. We are also increasing the scholarship fund by $25,000. This helps the cost barrier of participation to be lowered for low- income youth. All maintenance will be sustained and continued. Parking garage revenues are at an all-time high and we are reinvesting in the garages with some capital improvements. He then showed a video that advertised the My South Bend Parks& Trails Initiative. He continued, Over the years it has felt like we make a plan and then we put it on the shelf, not touching it again. It was time to dust them all off and put them all together. This plan addresses every major capital improvement identified in the 2014 Master Plan. He then showed a slide that visualized the effect that VPA has on quality of life. He showed maps of all current capital improvement projects as well as the proposed improvements to come throughout the City's Park System. He stated, This plan does call for additional green space in the City. It could be that we buy and build a brand new park but could also be us partnering with an entity that already has a park. We partnered with Notre Dame to create a public access map. A good National benchmark is to live within ten(10)minutes from a park. The map depicted our system to be in the top twenty (20) 7