Health rules, venue limits forced cancellation of Richland summer recreation program, board says

Supervisor Robert North's Town Board meeting on May 12 heard a public plea for clarity after the cancellation of Richland's Summer Recreation Program. Resident Robert Jeffery asked why the program — which drew about 110 sign-ups last year — would not run this year, and Councilman Eric Pappa explained the decision was rooted in public-health and venue constraints.

Pappa said detailed inspection criteria from the county health authority made the firehouse venue offered by the Richland Fire Department unusable because it is not on public water and therefore would fail inspection. "The Department of Health is the one that killed the program for the safety of the children. You have to have municipal water or you fail. You cannot have alcohol anywhere on the premises. If you have over 40 kids, you have to have 2 bathrooms for the boys and 2 bathrooms for the girls," Pappa told the meeting. He described additional requirements the town must meet: fencing at any site in town to keep children from running into roadways, proper refrigeration and kitchen facilities for lunches, and mapping of registered sex offenders in proximity to the program site.

Pappa provided cost and staffing examples to illustrate the scale of running an off-site program: Camp Zerbee allows up to 100 children and uses a ratio of one counselor per 10 children; using Camp Zerbee's model at $40 per student per week, "One hundred kids at $40 per student, that is $4,000 per week but it's 9 weeks so that is $36,000," he said, and added an illustrative total including counselor pay and busing costs: "That comes to $54,446 to go to Camp Zerbee and we haven't even bussed them yet." The board said the combination of short lead time, loss of the expected Haldane venue because of overlapping school projects, and lack of a Health Department–approved alternative left them unable to run the program this year.