City staff presented a proposal to bring Urbandale's aquatic-pass subsidy administration in-house and to terminate or revise the current 2080 arrangement with Clive Parks & Recreation. Staff said the in-house approach would address ZIP-code issues that currently prevent some Urbandale residents from receiving the discount and would make the subsidy more transparent and predictable for budgeting.

David (city staff) summarized three spreadsheet attachments comparing last year, a no-change scenario and a revised in-house administration. He walked the council through an example for a family of four: last year a family-of-four paid $235.40 at Clive (including tax) and Urbandale reimbursed $107 under the previous arrangement; under the new Clive pricing model (staff said Clive/West Des Moines are moving to a per-person flat resident price of $60), the city’s per-family subsidy would rise in some scenarios — staff calculated a potential reimbursement of $171.20 instead of $107 for a comparable household under the proposed structure.

David framed the operational proposal this way: residents would purchase passes at the vendor, forward their receipt to a dedicated Urbandale email, city staff would confirm residency using the usual participant reports and issue reimbursements on the city’s normal accounts-payable schedule (checks cut Thursdays). “Bring it inside — let the city manage and administer the program,” David said, arguing the city could market the program more consistently and fix ZIP-code mismatches.

Staff provided budget and volume estimates: using four years of activity, staff projected about $46,000 pretax (about $50,002 with tax, as presented) for the resident portion under the revised approach and estimated roughly 400–500 pass reimbursements in a season. Staff also noted administrative work would add a comparable number of temporary vendor payments but said that volume is within typical city operations.

Council questions focused on timing, sales tax treatment and operational details: staff explained that sales tax is charged on the full value of the pass at the point of sale and that the city’s reimbursement would not eliminate the underlying sales-tax remittance requirement by the vendor. Staff said they can create a process to cut checks directly to Clive in cases where residents cannot front the full cost and can request reports from Clive because both entities use Sportsman registration software.

Staff said the existing 2080 arrangement has a 60-day termination clause and that next steps are to coordinate with counsel and Clive to set a clean cut-off date, finalize the reimbursement workflow, and then return to council with a full package for approval and an anticipated rollout date. The council indicated consensus to move forward with staff work; no formal council vote to terminate the 2080 agreement was recorded at the meeting.

The item generated broader policy discussion about regional approaches to aquatics and how different cities share costs; councilmembers suggested examining past regional conversations and the 2016 aquatics study as context for long-term planning.