Aquatic center reports back on Columbus Council’s table Tuesday

Columbus Council will hear two more reports from the city administration Tuesday concerning the Columbus Aquatic Center, according to council’s published agenda for the meeting.

In recent meetings, councilors have asked the administration to produce ideas for shifting funding in the Parks and Recreation department to increase the center’s budget enough to allow it to remain open for a full 89 hours a week. At a recent meeting, City Manager Isaiah Hugley produced a list of ideas for councilors to pick from, but was told to skip forward to a short list that he intended to recommend from the overall list.

One of those was to turn the Parks and Rec after-school program over to the Muscogee County School District, which would save the city $300,000, or raise fees enough to produce the $300,000. That would mean an increase of about $6 per child per week.

Another was to redirect a portion of the city’s hotel/motel tax from the RiverCenter and/or Convention and Visitors Bureau to the CAC. The RiverCenter gets 1 percent and the CVB gets 4 percent. Each percent is worth about $600,000.

Councilors were cool to both of those ideas and left the meeting with a consensus to go forward with the current budget of $825,000, but also with an earlier consensus to keep the facility open for 89 hours a week. But $825,000 will only pay for about 45 hours a week, a private pool management firm says, and 89 hours would cost more than $1.2 million.

Facing that “non sequitur,” as Mayor Teresa Tomlinson called it, she sent an email to councilors last week telling them she intends to put the aquatic center funding at the full $1.27 million in her fiscal 2017 budget. She said further that she would find the money from within Hugley’s list of ideas.

“Should you wish input into the mix of that combination, we welcome your input,” the email says.

Presenting the ideas Tuesday is a way to give council that input on the front end rather than waiting for the budget process, which is complicated enough already, Tomlinson said.

“The budget is a very full schedule,” Tomlinson said. “It’s very difficult to get bogged down for two hours on any particular subject and stay on schedule in order to get the budget completed within the time frame required by law.”

Tomlinson will present her fiscal 2017 budget to council on April 26, then it must be vetted and approved by early June so councilors can hold public hearings on first and second readings and hold a final vote before fiscal 2016 expires on June 30.

Among the other ideas the administration will present, and their projected savings, are:

Reduce hours at recreation centers from 44 to 30 hours a week -- $450,000.

Reduce hours at outdoor pools -- $347,000 if they were open only on weekends, $8,700 if hours were cut only one hour per day

Eliminate golf course subsidies -- $50,000 at Bull Creek and $250,000 at Oxbow Creek.

Reduce Cooper Creek Tennis Center hours from 79 to 45 hours a week -- $177,000.

Privatize Britt David Pottery Studio -- $125,350.

Implement fees for therapeutic recreation programs -- between $50,000-$120,000.

Unfund Golden Park -- $83,000.

Implement $100 user fees on all athletic groups -- $50,000.

Charge admission and/or membership fees at all recreation centers -- $50,000.

Reduce Lake Oliver Marina hours from 70 to 45 hours a week and raise launching fees -- $50,000.

Reduce operational hours at senior centers by one hour a day --- $36,500.

Charge rental fees at all outdoor pavilions -- $20,000.

Eliminate the Parks and Rec annual budget for travel to schools, conferences and seminars -- $12,300.

The other report council will hear will be a comparison of the Columbus Aquatic Center’s hours and cost of operation against other aquatic centers in Georgia.

This story was originally published March 28, 2016 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Aquatic center reports back on Columbus Council’s table Tuesday."