Recreation Commission asks city for a lease
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 01:38 p.m., December 18, 2007
Updated 01:38 p.m., December 18, 2007
Members of the Emporia Recreation Commission aired some frustrations Monday evening over having no written lease agreement with the city of Emporia — something the ERC has never had in the 30-year history of the Lee Beran Recreation Center. That frustration finally resulted in a motion to ask the city for a proposed lease document to review.
The commission concluded its meeting with a 5-0 vote to request that city management produce a document for the commission’s review within 60 days. Discussion of the lack of a lease agreement came up while the commission was discussing its governance report of October 2005.
“As you know,” commissioner Roger Hartsook said to his colleagues, “there’s been some contention between us on the maintenance of this building, and why we maintain other facilities when they’re not part of our program.
“I think one of the reasons ... I talked to people who are here in Emporia and elsewhere, trying to get a feel for why we have this problem. And it occurred to me ... we have no written agreement between us and the city as to what we take care of and what they take care of. And it’s a fair statement that we’ve been trying to get an agreement for years.”
Which responsibilities are the commisson’s and which are the city’s is a large part of the issue. One such responsibility is maintenance of the Beran center, an approximately 30-year-old building that has seen a marked spike in use in the last seven years. The number of people using the center in the 2006-07 year was 171,400. In 1999-2000, that number was 41,978.
“We’ve just simply gotten too big,” Hartsook said.
Commissioners Jim Markowitz and Mike Helbert were particularly upset. Markowitz said the recreation commission couldn’t afford another major maintenance issue.
“The type of budget we’re under right now, you can’t afford to do anything,” he said. “The building’s dilapidating.”
Director Tom McEvoy said that in order to reach a lease agreement with the city, the commission would need to hire a separate attorney; the ERC currently uses the services of City Attorney Blaise Plummer.
“My feeling is,” Markowitz said, “that if you have to hire an attorney to put together an agreement, have him sit down with some of us and see what needs to be on the agreement, and get it written up.
“Take it to the top of the dadgum list, if you have to. Because nothing’s getting done with this other crap, and that should be at the front. ... I’m getting tired of hearing about how it can’t be taken care of, we don’t have the money for it. Because it gets shoved to the back.”
Helbert said the lease agreement issue was one of few issues that everyone in the public could understand.
“You can’t be lost in limbo out here with public funds,” he said. “These are public funds, and nobody knows you’re supposed to be taking care of this? It’s ridiculous.”
Helbert said he didn’t want the issue to be confrontational, but if the ERC couldn’t negotiate with city management, “you go over their heads to the people. And the people have the new city commission. They’re the elected representatives of the people, and we have been messing around with this for 30 years, it’s been sitting in limbo. I think that’s outrageous.”
The commission did not decide immediately to hire an attorney, but it did decide to solicit a proposal from the city. Helbert said he wanted the commission to tell the city to “give us a document we can look at,” and the commission agreed to request such a document be presented within 60 days.
The matter was placed on the agenda under unfinished business, then so moved and voted upon. The motion carried 5-0.
The ERC and the city do have an interlocal service agreement that covers bond payments. McEvoy, as the director, is the commission’s contact with city management.
“I know this is confrontational, and it’s unfortunate it’s come to that,” Hartsook said after the meeting. “Part of it, I think, is we really — no disrespect to Tom or Tom’s predecessor — but maybe we’ve (done) a less-than-great job of emphasizing to the city how desperately we need a written agreement so we know who’s in charge of what.”
In other business Monday, the commission discussed locker room and office renovations for the center and approved a motion to have a two-person interim committee discuss the renovations with a city representative. Those renovations were supposed to be up for approval at Monday’s meeting, but the architect compiling information on the renovations couldn’t receive information on the locker room from the engineering firm in time for Monday’s meeting.
The purpose of forming the interim committee was to review the renovations for a special meeting to approve them so they could then get on the city agenda for approval at a January commission meeting.