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Minutes of a Meeting of The Parks and Recreation Commission May 2, 2005 available), and community input (this will be tricky because most of the Rec Center’s base is from outside the city. There must be some way to tap into all users). Ms. Wenger questioned the amount of money being proposed to spend on a survey and the value received. Based on past experience, she believes that a very good turnout might be between five and ten percent. Oftentimes, halfway into the project the questions asked would become completely different. By then, it’s too late. The money is spent. There is a high non-return rate and the people outside the community haven’t been tapped. Ms. Wenger thought that there are effective ways to get input; she was not sure that a survey is the most cost effective way to get it. However, she would invite any consultant or any firm that would propose to the city to put forth what methods they think are most important or it had the most success with in its history. It might be in the form of a survey; maybe it will be a focus group or community meeting or interviews. They could look at other communities’ recreation efforts and get information as well, but there would be a component in the input that would be refined through working with a consultant and working with this group as well. This Phase One could possibly be finished by the end of the year, which is why Ms. Wenger thought it dovetails pretty well with the schools to see how the community votes with the schools and the facilities with the levy. Phase Two would be the Plan Development Phase, which would create the functional plan. There would be a visioning or goal-setting process envisioning information gathered in the initial phase. By that we would have all the baseline data and what the city hopes to achieve in the future based upon what the community wants. The consultant shall prepare a long-range facilities plan that would detail the actual improvements and maintenance items to be achieved. Then there will be certain conceptual designs that might be architectural or artistic renderings of the additions to the Rec Center or additions to other fields and would actually be conceptually designed by the firm. The last phase would be an implementation phase. The city needs to put a cost to these maintenance or improvement issues and look at financing options. The city will look at how other communities finance recreation; what is appropriate for North Olmsted, other grant opportunities, is it taxed, is it bonds, how the city is going to achieve the plans it designs, as well as prioritizing its needs. The city has limited funds. The Rec Center needs to look at what its future priorities should be: is it the outdoor pool? Is it a zero depth pool? Let’s stop dumping money into things that won’t continue on into the future and start putting money into things that will start to make the most significant long-term improvements for the city. Along with this, the city will ask the consultant to put together a budget for each of the phases (Existing Conditions Analysis, Plan Development and Plan Implementation). After that, Phase One will be complete by the end of 2005, and then the city may appropriately budget 2006 for the remaining Phases. The city will stick by this schedule so that it would not be an infinitely long planning process but that it will be done in a reasonable period of time. The last page of the proposal shows the evaluation and consultant selection. Ms. Wenger asked the Commission if there were any questions or comments or if she could clarify anything Page 4