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Parks & Recreation details pool and Big Dipper closures, lifeguard shortages and fee changes
Summary
Parks & Recreation outlined planned closures for the Big Dipper (structural repairs) and pool maintenance, requested additional staff/training for aquatics, and proposed user-fee tweaks including a 10% weekend arena increase and higher firewood prices.
Parks & Recreation staff told the Finance Committee on April 7 that the Big Dipper arena will undergo structural repairs that require an extended closure this year and that pools will continue to face scheduling constraints because of lifeguard staffing shortages.
Recreation staff said the Big Dipper will be closed for a lengthened maintenance window this season to accommodate structural work and estimated a modest revenue impact while describing plans to shift some ice programs into the Carlson Center to reduce disruption. "We're shutting from May 11 through October 1 for them to do structural repairs," a recreation official said, and staff estimated roughly $36,000 in lost arena revenue during the closure (the department intends to recoup some demand into alternative venues).
The division proposed modest staffing increases — 1.25 FTE transferred/added to the recreation division and an upgrade of an adaptive recreation coordinator from 0.75 to 1.0 FTE — and requested larger training budgets for lifeguard and instructor certifications. Staff said recruitment and retention of lifeguards remain challenging because the job requires irregular hours and certification barriers; the department has increased in-house training and is requesting two permanent lifeguard positions in the FY27 proposal.
Parks maintenance noted a sizable jump in the vehicle-maintenance charge assessed by the transportation enterprise and requested a one-time $8,000 appropriation to provide bottled drinking water to staff at Chena Lakes because the on-site office tap water is described as poor-tasting.
Among user-fee changes, parks proposed doubling the price of firewood bundles (from $5 to $10) to reflect costs, removing a general dump-station fee (limiting access to campground users) and increasing Carlson Center prime weekend arena rates by ~10% to encourage weekday use and help balance demand.
What happens next: the committee asked parks staff to provide a more detailed revenue-per-hour and lost-revenue analysis by facility (pools and arenas) and to model staffing scenarios showing what it would take to expand pool hours and services.
