The City Council will hold this public hearing open until they take up the item for final consideration on January 23, 2023.
Acting Mayor Jones The next item is 9.2 master fee schedule for facility use, reservations, permits and programs for 2023 and Shirley. Oh I see you Shirley, you're here to present on this item. Good evening.
Shirley Kinsey Yes, thank you. Shirley Kinsey, Missoula Parks and Recreation. I'd like to just go ahead and share my screen. Can you all see that?
Acting Mayor Jones Perfect. If you can, we see a lot of the border also. If you can expand it?
Shirley Kinsey Oh. How’s that?
Acting Mayor Jones Go ahead Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Vasecka If you go to view and I believe in the bottom, it says like full screen or something, one of the tabs in the upper lefthand corner, view and then close to the bottom it says expand to full screen…full screen mode.
Shirley Kinsey Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thanks for walking me through that. So, so this is an annual process that we undergo to revise the master fee schedule and pass a resolution to change those fees. The, the document itself is the foundation for our fees associated with, with all of our facility rentals and reservations, permits, admissions fees and some program fees and we, the public process includes informing our user groups and we do mass emails of the memo that you guys all received at the CCP. And our, we put the, the fee schedule up online and, and just try to get as much feedback as we can prior to, and then the public hearing. The review and approval of the Parks and Recreation board in December, they approved the, the fees and all the policy along with it unanimously. We reviewed it with the county parks trails and open lands advisory board, mostly reviewed the sections pertaining to Fort Missoula Regional Park, which the, the city manages under contract with them. We present at the Conservation, Climate, and Park Committee and now this public hearing. So, these fees will, will be for 2023 and this year is going to be a transition year for us. We plan to, per your request and administration's request, to align the, the fees, decisions and structure with the budget, and we're hoping we're going to be able to do this, that's during the most busy season for us and, and not a lot of our, our fees are collected through the summer season. So, so it, it's gonna, it should be good but, but we'll see how, how it goes. So, I'll be back again in the spring to set fees for project and set fees for 2024. So, none of us here at Parks and Recreation want to charge fees, but we understand the, the need to offset the budget and set some reasonable expectations. The fee increases, fees increase our ability to serve more residents by expanding capacity. It allows us to increase the value and quality of our services and reduce conflicts with folks that, that are registered, or they have the sites reserved throughout the city. Through a, through surveys that we've done in the past, we've learned that the majority of Missoula taxpayers really are, are satisfied with Parks and Recreation the services we provide, the facilities, trails programs, but they've indicated that that while they support our overall mission and the opportunities that we do provide, they'd like us to charge fees. So, those directly benefiting from the use of those facilities pay for those additional services through user fees and generally most of our fees are connected to services we provide that are beyond normal base maintenance practices. We've continued to be challenged with inflation for goods services and, and we ended up increasing wages 10% this, this past calendar year, supplies, shortages have, are still an issue. We, we're, we're looking at significant increases in our especially for aquatics in our calcium tabs. Our manufacturer decided to move to a 50 gallon bucket and from a hundred gallon bucket and not change the price, so you can imagine what that kind of thing will do to impact our supply for chlorine, which is very necessary to our pool operations, but we're, we're investigating different options and we'll move forward in a positive manner. Purchase Services have also increased about 7% for utilities and, and maintenance services. By necessity, we, we increase the intermittent wages 10 %. Last year, we adopted a three-year plan so we could look at, at moving our seasonal and intermittent temporary employees to a more livable wage here in, while they're living here. So, and then and then with the fee increases that we, we've proposed, we're proposing this year, in order to maintain a high access for our community, we do have a scholarship program and we've always been committed to creating ways for all people in the community can access and no one's turned away for socioeconomic reasons. In section 1.5, the tennis and pickleball courts the fee will increase, the rental fee will increase 25%, $4.00 to $5.00 per hour and for the pros who teach private lessons on our courts, that, that will increase from $10.00 to $12.25. And then we do offer the pros a, a court block and it's a little bit of a discount that they can rent monthly instead of by the hour. The pickleball courts will also increase 25% and essentially the, they're the same as the tennis ball, the designated pickleball is the same as tennis, but if you play on a pickleball court where you have to supply your own net, the price is a little bit less expensive. In section 1.12, the Moon Randolph Homestead if any of you, I'm sure all of you read through that whole long document. There was a lot of red line in the Moon Randolph Homestead area, but these changes were largely formatting and reorganization of existing policy; there were no fee changes that were involved there. The aquatics facilities we added a couple of, we added a couple of hourly rental rates for before and after hours. We have the, mostly the Mac swim team that comes in and practices when the grizzly pool is down, and we do have private businesses like scuba and kayaking that also rent the pool. That fee is set at $75.00 per hour for either the deep end or the shallow area. We're also increasing, asking to increase fees at Splash Montana for rental. The pool rents before and after hours for an hour and 15 minute hour and a half rental and you can rent the facility either with the 50 meter or without the 50 meter. Splash Montana 50 meter swim team rental fees will increase 10%, it, the entire pool go from $96.00 an hour to $106.00 or $12.00 per lane to $13.25 per lane. We're asking to increase the daily admission prices 25 cents here at Currents and that increase will match Splash Montana. so Splash Montana will not increase. They were, last year it was a quarter higher than, than Currents and then the all the, the fees, punch cards and, and season passes will increase. It's, it's basically math, the, the formulas are pretty straightforward. If you take a 30 punch pass times it by the, the daily admission and then give it a 25, give it a discount rate, you get the, the fee for the past the 30 punch pass, 20 punch pass, or 10 punch pass and then with our annual pass holders, we base on, on the number of swims that we think are, are reasonable for an annual, a six-month, or a three month and basically the same formula. The category, you take the 104 swims times the, the admission rate and, and percentage discount. And then, keep, bear in mind that these all these prices are regular fees, residents of the City of Missoula can apply for a city card that allows them an additional 20% discount on many of our programs and the aquatics. So, that's basically what we're asking to do this year. Are there any questions?
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you Shirley. Let me call for public comment first and then we'll go to questions.
Shirley Kinsey Okay.
Acting Mayor Jones Any public comment from anyone in the chambers? If so, come on up and I'm not seeing any raised hands, so let's go to questions from Councilors. And we had Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Vasecka Yeah, I'm happy that the city card was at the end of it because that's regarding my question and thank and thank you for the good presentation as well. For the city card, is it still you have to pay two, two dollars to and have to prove that you do live within city limits and then every year you have to re-up that with a dollar, is that, is that still correct?
Shirley Kinsey Correct.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay, I'm just asking because a few of my constituents have, have reached out to me thinking that was silly to re-up it every year with for a dollar but it's just question time so…
Shirley Kinsey Yeah…
Acting Mayor Jones Thanks. Why don't you take the presentation down, if you can do that Shirley? And we'll see if there's any other questions from Council. Mr. Carlino.
Shirley Kinsey Gosh…
Acting Mayor Jones First things first. We’ll…if you can take the presentation down.
Shirley Kinsey You know, when I expanded it, I can't get back. Is there some way Marty can take it down?
Acting Mayor Jones If you hit escape…..
Shirley Kinsey Oh, oh okay and then….
Acting Mayor Jones There you go, awesome. Thank you.
Shirley Kinsey Okay, perfect. I learn something new every….[laughs]
Acting Mayor Jones Great, wonderful. Okay, we had Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Thanks. Yeah, Shirley, with the scholarship program, I was wondering how that works with team sports? Like, for example, with soccer where one teammate would pay, or like the team captain would pay for everybody for the team, how would the scholarship program work like for individuals on a team that would like to use the scholarship program?
Shirley Kinsey So, that’s kind of a complicated question because many of the soccer for instance or team sports are rentals for the facility and there are no discounts on the actual facility rental. If, if they sign up for a program through Parks and Recreation, we sign people up individually and, and then they can apply for a scholarship. I know that, that a lot of the youth organizations have a scholarship program as a private organization or non-profit, but in general, when a sports team rents a facility, there is no discount.
Acting Mayor Jones Any other questions? Okay, thank you Shirley. Thanks for the presentation and answering questions. We will keep this open until January 23, 2023 when we'll take it up for final consideration. Thanks so much.
Shirley Kinsey Perfect, thanks so much.