The Emporia Recreation Commission discussed during a special board meeting Monday afternoon the possibility of requesting an additional 2 mills from the Emporia school district. No action was taken, however, because board members want more input from the city of Emporia over shared responsibilities for recreation facilities.
By state law, the current maximum the commission can levy is 4 mills, which hasn’t changed since 1989. A 2-mill increase would bring in an additional $350,000 per year.
Tom McEvoy, director of the Lee Beran Recreation Center, said the additional funding is needed because the role of the recreation commission has changed from creating programs to running them.
“Recreation commissions were created to be programmers, not facilitators,” McEvoy said. “Over the years, our role has changed to not only providing programming, but we also became maintainers and developers of a variety of recreation facilities throughout the community.”
Money also is needed to help fund capital improvement projects that are needed at various recreation facilities. Additional money from a mill levy increase could be used to create a fund to help pay for these projects. The current five-year Capital Improvement Plan, which is made up solely of improvements and maintenance of current facilities, amounts to $4.8 million.
“These are just improvements,” McEvoy said. “There’s no new facilitation in the CIP, this is just to improve what we currently have.”
Under the recreation commission’s current funding program, only 8 percent of that amount will be funded, or $373,000.
“Raising the mill levy would meet the needs of current and future programming,” McEvoy said, “and the improvement of recreation facilities. ... Planning for the future needs of the facilities is imperative. We’re at a crossroads right now. Either we do something about it to start making some of these improvements or we’re going to start losing programming down the line, or we may have to cut what we’re currently doing out there as it relates to facilitation issues.”
The recreation commission receives about $643,000 per year. The average for cities of a similar size is $938,000.
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