Vice Chair Sanchez.

Present.

Councilwoman Barnes is asking General Acad.

Present.

Kenny Phillips is asking to get three president and two apps and behalf for him.

Alright, before we begin, I want to recognize our vice chair on the occasion of his birthday.

Is dedicating his time here at the city hall?

He is a selfless public servant, and uh we appreciate you being here on your birthday.

Thank you, Chairman.

Appreciate it.

And uh happy birthday to you.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um so uh we had it's been a few months now since we came together.

We are missing uh uh one of our members for short too.

Um but uh since we last met uh the mayor's budget has been proposed for well as entire budget's been proposed, but also in particular, we're gonna be spending some time looking at the recreation department budget tonight.

Um we will do a review of programming on basketball and soccer is currently underway, basketball is done, um, and then summer programming which is coming up.

Um get to update on facilities, open up for any public comment, and uh we'll go from there.

Does anybody have any thoughts or anything else I want to not add to the agenda because it's been publicized already?

But all right, great.

Um director, we will turn it over to you for an initial I think presentation on the on the mayor's proposed budget and your budget.

And we are always blessed to have our director and deputy directors here.

Um appreciate all your work as always and looking forward to hearing more.

We appreciate you as well.

It feels like uh beige, so to speak, with uh being in front of Kelsey and uh Sanchez with this budget.

Um but the budget that was uh proposed has been pretty much staff's poll as it was last year.

It hasn't really been any increases or an increase uh just really evident as the um item of uh rubbish removal um things like that, but it's no real adjustment as far as programming budgets or the uh anything else that's right.

And for your um so for personnel, are you fully staffed up at this point, Director?

Or there where are you in terms of uh staffing?

We do have uh an additional uh position that's in here, recreation specialists, uh as well as the um director of uh Elwood Community Center is also new, right?

Right, right.

But are you fully staffed up now?

Are there are there any poll and vacancies in Varnes then?

Well Western Western Assistant Director position is being posted as well, but those are positions that are already in the budget.

Right, yeah, right.

I'm sorry.

No, those those are your vacant vacant spots right now.

Those are the only ones that you have vacant to West End deputy director position and Weston, Elwood Director, and the recreation specialist.

Yeah, I mean I think the budget's pretty status 12, basically the same exact thing from from last year.

Um do you in your programming budget last year um did that about meet the needs of of the department?

Yeah, I think um we still have uh a decent amount of in the programming budget for the last year.

I mean the it's a budget that actually I inherited um six months in.

Um but it is a budget that I've been able to work with uh with the team.

Uh David, Jackie, everybody's been great in terms of helping navigate through that existing budget.

Um as to get ready for the new budget.

So within the existing programming budget, then are you thinking is there anything that you're thinking about switching around?

Is there more money that would go towards like basketball and soccer or soccer and basketball, or is there a lot of people?

Well, we have some areas that we definitely would like to address.

Uh certainly given well, soccer's always been very popular.

Um but given the uh increased popularity of soccer and with what's coming to the region.

It's been uh sort of focus of ours to create more of a developmental program for a soccer to uh get our youth for uh interested in soccer, just um just exposing it to the sport too as well.

Is that a programming area that's been necessarily a focal point for recreation in the past, but certainly something that we need to be very mindful and very involved with huge sport?

So that would that would be a key area as far as programming uh to focus on.

Okay.

I'm interested in the recreation director, the new role, is that what it's called?

The which one?

The new one you're creating recreation specialists, specialists, yes.

Is that to oversee expanded soccer leagues or literally, or what's the goal, the intent of that role?

Well, we found uh high need to look at our data capturing, work of our data, because I think that'll strip to us in terms of developing new programming to look at what we've done in the past, what works, what doesn't work.

To have a strong person that could be focused on data would be certainly a key area for the recreation specialist.