YMCA discussion and the Feb 2nd Work Session

We’ve had a couple of work sessions now with the new council members in place.  We’ve seen some positive and some negative results.  The one item I plan to talk about today is the discussion with the director of the Huber Heights YMCA.  That discussion is on video.  It is the 5th agenda item and starts about 1 hour 30 minutes into the meeting.  Before I start that discussion let me point out that the meeting also had discussions on creating six pickleball courts out of the two tennis courts at Community Park (a project I support), a presentation by The Impact Group on the Services they provide for the City (I’m hoping we exercise the 30 day opt out clause of that contract – immediately), a discussion on providing city-wide water softening (for the first time we learned that there was an oral briefing in 2011 that highlighted some potentially negative consequences.  For instance, changing the composition of the water might affect the waterlines.  If those issues were captured in minutes or another written form, they have not been provided to me.  Locating or documenting those issue probably should have been the first task given at the end of the discussion Tuesday, to go along with, an update of the cost for the equipment and to run the facility).  The other interesting discussion was on whether residents should be allowed to store trash cans in the front of their houses.  This was interesting because there were different views from the council on this.  One council member was asking why so many residents were storing in front and mentioned she was getting feedback that this was not attractive and zoning should do more to enforce the current ordinance.  Another stated he is one of those people that stores his at the front of his house.  Look at the agenda to see the order of the discussion and then open the video and find the discussion you’d like to listen too.   
 
Concerning the YMCA, this is a good item to write about because it is an important item and we did just about everything wrong in the discussion.  There was no read ahead material which was detrimental in many ways and the discussion was confrontational.
 
First of all, if you look at the meeting agenda there is no read ahead material.  This item was a follow-up discussion to two previous meetings the first being Jan 5th.  At the very least the read ahead should have mentioned this.  If there was a read ahead to that meeting there could have been a link pointing to that material.  Additionally, this item was meant to be a discussion on the YMCA duties as the City’s Parks and Recreation Department.  In 
preparationto the Jan 5th meeting I had requested the contract between the City and the YMCA showing the Y’s duties as the Parks and Recreation Department.  On Jan 4th the City Manager sent me the 2004 contract and I forwarded that to the rest of council.  Well it turns out that the current contract was negotiated in 2011.   I’m not sure why the City Manager gave me the old contract but the point is that if we had referenced the old document in the read ahead materials then someone could have pointed this out before the discussion at the committee meeting and everyone would have had the opportunity to be familiar with the same material before the discussion started. 
 
The other thing that made the discussion peculiar was the format.  There are widely different views among council members, the YMCA and the public about the roles and performance of the YMCA as they relate to their duties as the Parks and Recreation Department for the City.  Having Council members at the dais and the Y representative at the podium was not conducive to working through those differences.  If we were going to try to work through those differences directly with the YMCA representative we really needed to be at tables with the contract and other supporting documents, like the stat sheet the Y rep brought with her.  We should have sat down and then gone through the documents paragraph by paragraph and asked what does this mean to you?  What are your expectations as a Council member/resident?  How do you think you performed as the YMCA?  Is there need for improvement? If so how can it be improved?

Example, the contract states the Y’s duties include:

The development of the comprehensive annual park and recreation program for the citizens of the City of Huber Heights including proposed fees and procedures (the “Parks and Recreation Program”)

We should have sat down looked at that paragraph, asked for the comprehensive plan and then discussed if it met the terms of the agreement.  Then we should have moved on to the next paragraph. 
 
You can probably tell that done correctly this would be a long discussion.  So maybe Tuesday’s discussion should have been just to identify that we have a difference of expectations and we need to plan on having an in-depth work session dedicated solely to this discussion.  Given the feedback I get from residents it makes sense to have a frank discussion about expectations and performance.   I don’t believe that we ended Tuesday’s discussion with that being the way forward.  Like I said at the beginning of this article – the way this agenda item was handled is a prime example of how not to conduct business.
 
Caveat:  I’m sure that reading just the words I’ve written above you’ll get a wrong impression about my perception of the YMCA and their place in the City.  The fact is the YMCA is very busy and provides many residents recreational activities.  I know that much of the feedback I get is because the YMCA is so well known in the City.  Because they are well known it often makes people talk about them.  Don’t come to the conclusion that just because I hear the comments and this prompts me to evaluate performance and offer suggestions for improvement, that it equates to anything more than my looking for opportunities to make sure we are getting services to our residents. 
 

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