Henderson to review adjusting recreation fees

By Jeremy Twitchell

Friday, July 17, 2009 | 1:14 a.m.

The Henderson City Council is scheduled to authorize a review of the city’s recreation fees at its Tuesday meeting, though a decision on who — if anyone — will be paying more isn’t expected for another year.

Last year, the Council commissioned PROS Consulting to examine the city’s fee structure for parks and recreation to determine whether an increase would be warranted. The city has not raised it rates in 10 years, according to the study’s findings.

If the Council accepts the study, as expected, it is also expected to task employees within the Parks and Recreation Department to begin a yearlong evaluation of the city’s recreation fees with the study’s suggestions as guiding principles.

At current growth rates, the study said, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department will double in size in the next 10 years. PROS said the city’s current fee structure for recreation programs would not be able to support a department of that size.

Henderson Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Kim Becker said the purpose of the review is not to consider a blanket increase of all fees, but to evaluate the benefits of creating a new fee structure that would vary the charges for a given activity or class based on time, location and popularity.

Any increase would only be used to cover programming costs — maintenance of parks and recreation facilities is paid for out of the city’s tax-supported general fund.

By instituting a new fee structure, Becker said, the city could charge more for a class at a popular time and recreation center than for the same class at a less popular time and location. The idea of such a structure, she said, would be to more evenly distribute traffic amongst city facilities.

“One of the things that we’re really focusing on is maximizing capacity at our facilities, so that we don’t have empty classrooms, dance rooms and music rooms,” she said.

Another factor the study recommends the city consider in setting prices is who benefits from a given class. Certain classes — such as a basic swimming class for children — benefit the individual taking the class but also benefit the community by training children in safety and teaching them to exercise, Becker said.

Other classes, such as an advanced dance or racquetball class, for example, provide little benefit to the community as a whole, and PROS said the city’s examination of fees should take that distinction into account.

At present, every activity the city offers is subsidized out of city coffers to some degree. PROS recommended that the cost of activities with benefits more personal in nature be borne more directly by the people participating in them.

Other suggestions PROS made was that Henderson better communicate to residents the amount of a given course’s fee that is subsidized by the city, seek other sources of revenue, such as grants and sales of advertising at parks and recreation facilities, keep the scholarship program in place that gives low-income families $100 per year for recreation programs, and create more rigorous performance reviews for parks and recreation staff and programs.

If the city does raise any fees, Becker said, those increases will be slowly phased in over a period of years.

“It think (the evaluation) will be a good thing, because it will give us an opportunity to assess the services that we’re providing,” Becker said.