Capital improvements were the topic of discussion among members of the Emporia Recreation Commission Monday as the commission worked toward making a request of the Emporia school district for more money for its operations.
The ERC wants to ask for an additional two mills, which would provide an additional $355,000 per year for the commission. Out of that money, 34 percent, or $120,000, would go to the Lee Beran Recreation Center; 32 percent, or $115,000, would go toward developing new programming; and the last 34 percent would go for capital improvements such as bringing the ball diamonds at Southwest Santa Fe Park back in working condition.
Before going before the school board to request an additional two mills, the ERC is trying to come up with a management agreement with the City of Emporia and a plan for how the money will be spent.
One thing became clear at Monday’s meeting — even with more money, the ERC’s needs still will outweigh its ability to pay for capital improvements.
In an effort to prioritize the ERC’s five-year capital improvement plan, board members participated in an activity Monday in which they tried to decide how to spend the $120,000 per year that will go toward capital improvements. Board members quickly found that the money would not go far.
“I think with the conditions we have at our facilities, you know and I know there’s not enough money to fund everything,” said rec center director Tom McEvoy. “I think that’s what this exercise was, a way to show the board that if we did get the money increase, then you’re really going to have to prioritize what you want to do.”
The topic of discussion revolved around what projects to fund and how, but the meeting ended without a clear consensus for how the money would be spent. Still, board members saw the meeting as productive.
“I think it was perfectly obvious today that we’ve got a lot of ideas about what we can do, and there’s never enough money to go the whole route,” ERC president Roger Hartsook said.
But the exercise was an important one in working toward the management agreement with the city and the request for more money, he said.
“To do anything, we need to have our agreements in hand before we go to the school board,” Hartsook said. “No matter what took place here today, in the future we cannot proceed until we have a plan in mind.”
McEvoy said the exercise was useful because it forced the board members to look at the long term instead of just the upcoming year.
“There are a lot of long-term issues that need to be addressed,” McEvoy said. “... The money would be spent, and there’s way more projects out there that need to be funded than money we’re asking for, and that’s one of the things we’re trying to do, is concentrate on the biggest ones with what funding would potentially be available.”
Unfortunately, commission members only had funny money to play with today, and still they had difficulty deciding how best to spend it.
“All this was an exercise, because the money’s not there,” Hartsook said. “If it was there, these are some of the things we thought we could do. In all fairness to the rest of the group, the needs are in the millions.”
“I think it opened up some eyes,” McEvoy said.