Commission approves adjusted facility and aquatics fees after discussion

The Parks and Recreation Commission voted on April 14 to approve a set of fee changes for facility rentals, concession/vendor arrangements and aquatics passes, following staff presentations and commissioner questions about resident versus nonresident pricing.

Spencer Duall, recreation staff, said the department is proposing to allow nonresidents to reserve recreation center facilities and set nonresident rental rates roughly double the resident rate — for example, the presentation cited $60 an hour for a nonresident room rate and $30 an hour for residents. Duall explained the recommendation follows earlier policy changes that allowed nonresidents to reserve park pavilions and noted staff used benchmark cities and current cost-recovery models to develop the recommendations.

The package presented also included: gymnasium and game-room hourly rates (examples cited in the presentation), a 4‑hour private facility block (presented as $900 for nonresidents and $450 for residents), modest increases to gymnastics holiday camp fees (an increase of $5 was proposed), a proposed revenue split for tournament concessionaires (15% of gross sales) and a flat $150 vendor fee for tournament-related vendors. For the Heights Family Aquatic Center, staff proposed creating a rentable artificial-turf party space (approximately 2,000 sq. ft.) with example pricing cited in the presentation; transcript formatting of those example amounts was inconsistent and is noted below.

Commissioners questioned how to treat cabana/pavilion pricing when admission fees differ for residents and nonresidents and discussed whether hosts should be charged differently from their guests. After discussing a few modest adjustments (staff proposed a $25 additional nonresident increment on the pavilion in one scenario), the commission moved and voted to approve the proposed fees with the discussed modifications by voice vote.

Duall also recommended changes to aquatics passes: the presentation listed increases including an all‑pools resident pass from $45 to $50, a family pass increase (presentation text formatted as '1.50 to 1.60' which appears to be missing hundreds-separators in the transcript), and a new nonresident family pass option (presented as '2.25' in the transcript). For parks bench dedications, staff proposed increasing the dedication fee to $2,500 to cover bench and plaque cost increases.

The commission approved the motion to move the package forward to city management and council with the discussed clarifications and asked staff to refine the resident/nonresident logic for the pavilion and family-pass calculations before final council submittal.