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ATTACHMENT 15 Task Force Meetin� Minutes than Kent St. were looked at. Former Parks and Rec. director Bob Beirscheid favored building the Oval next to the existing arena. This involved closing a street and was met with some neighborhood resistance but ultimately proved to be the best location. When the bonding was approved it was decided that the Oval would be placed at its current location, next to the arena. The state provided 19 million dollars for the construction of the Oval, the city needed to provide another 1.5 million. The state also provided $500,000.00 when the skating center was expanded to include locker rooms and banquet facilities, the city raised the remainder of the money needed for the expansion. Mr. Goedelcenoted that many public hearings were held during this time and the majority of comments were in favor of building the Oval, he remembers counting 130 positive comments versus 3 negative comments at one hearing. Instrumental to the operation of the Oval was the addition of a pro shop and a restaurant — planners looked at these options and RFPs were put out asking for bids to build these facilities but no one came forward wanting to operate a pro shop or restaurant at the skating center, probably due to the fact that this was a down time in the economy and fewer retailers were willing to take chances in a new venture. Pat and John both noted that the city went ahead with the decision to build because the Oval would be an asset to our community and especially to the kids —�QSevilJe takes pride in taking care of our youth. Some discussion followed dealing with questions about pursuing a bid for the Olympics — Barclay responded that possibility of vying for the Olympics ended when the Twin Cities lost out to Atlanta to compete to host the summer Olympics, but Governor Perpich's dream of creating training facilities in il�� state was realized — with the exception of alpine sports (we need mountains!) Leslie commented that she testified before the planning commission when they first considered building the Oval and recalls that there were questions about long term sustainability and marketing expertise was going to be needed to promote the facility, but most of the coininents were in favor of building the OvaL There was also discussion of adding a%% tax at the time which never got legislated. Pat noted that most everyone involved in the discussions realized that if the Oval was built there would be a financial cost to the community but that the quality of life would gain by the addition of the facility and so people supported it and most still do today. Both John and Pat commented that more could have been done to insure the financial stability of the facility. After hearing from both Mr. Goedeke and Mrs. Johnson-Nygaard Jake concluded, and the rest of the task force agreed, that we have gathered most of the facts we need to understand the current problems with the operations at the Oval and that we have the historical perspective to help us realize how we got where we are today. Now we need to start discussing the scope and mission of this task force. We began discussing some of the options that had already coine to light during the past meetings such as sponsorships, programming, marketing and merchandising, tax increases, city financing for repair and maintenance of facilities and many other issues. Jake asked us to focus on defining the problem and all agreed that Chris Miller's calculations of approximately $100,000 shortfall in revenue annually plus $150,000 needed each year to cover depreciation costs defines the problem as: A need to find a sustainable way to bring in an extra $250,000 each year. Bob W. pointed out that Chris ATTACHMENT 15 Task Force Meeting Minutes