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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION – OCTOBER 19, 2020 4 There doesn’t appear to be much room to increase fees as you will lose participation. You need to find the sweet spot where you charge enough to maximize revenue but not too much where you scare off participation. The committee wants to see the user charges kept at a high enough level that meets with the approval of the majority of users and utilize grants and scholarships through the Arden Hills Foundation to assist with costs for those that can’t afford to participate. Finance Director Bauman stated the Net Cost line from Attachment A represents the amount of taxpayer dollars being utilized toward recreation programs. It ranges from $96,607 to $184,550 for the years 2009 to 2019. The current 2021 estimate is $145,550. The cost factor having the biggest impact on this number is full time employee wages that can vary from year to year. Finance Director Bauman said items for the City Council to consider include: • Is the range of 95% - 105% an acceptable level of coverage of direct costs by program revenues? • Do you want to look at coordinating with other cities for any of our adult programs? • What programs do you want to make available and what user charges will the market support to run them? • Is there an amount of taxpayer dollars the council is comfortable with for allocating toward recreation programs? Councilmember Holden wondered what categories go into the 55% for Parks for the Program Coordinator. Finance Director Bauman explained how she split up the percentages. She also said Recreation is all the programs that are done through the Rec program brochure; the programs offered, revenue collected, supplies purchased and other charges directly related to those programs. Councilmember Holmes felt staff did a nice job of summarizing what the FPAC came up with. The committee felt the direct cost of the programs should be covered by the direct expenses so as to break even and staff salaries are overhead and not covered. Program costs to residents have to be competitive but staff costs wouldn’t be able to be covered with that revenue. She felt they need to decide if they want to devote two full time people and their expenses to the Park and Rec program. Councilmember Holden thought maybe they should have one full-time year-round and add one part-time person in the summer. Mayor Grant said they could also have a full time and part time person year-round. City Administrator Perrault suggested this could be something the Personnel Committee could discuss and bring back to Council. Councilmember Holmes said she’d like to hear Public Works Director/City Engineer Blomstrom’s thoughts as the supervisor of the department. Public Works Director/City Engineer Blomstrom stated historically staffing has been between 1.25 to 2 FTEs. He characterized the recreation program as generally needing two full-time employees at certain times during the year, such as managing spring and summer programs. One