The Great Bend Recreation Commission’s board will hold a budget work session on June 25 as it prepares to hold next year’s budget hearing on July 9. Both meetings will start at 4 p.m. at the Carl Soden Recreation Center, 1214 Stone St.
The GBRC Board set the time line when it met Monday. Diann Henderson, executive director of the rec commission, said her staff has already been looking at long-range and short-term goals with next year’s budget in mind. Staff members have ranked possible capital outlay expenditures in light of goals, which include:
• Continue responsible fiscal management;
• Sustain and fund technology improvements in software programs and hardware equipment/mobile technology;
• Have diversity representation with recreation commission board and staff;
• Enhance and promote recreation programs/activities;
and four other goals.
Some objectives (expenditures) toward meeting these goals might include offering an instructional flag football course; using the Internet’s Survey Monkey for paperless surveys to get more feedback from coaches and the public at large; addressing accessibility issues at the Recreation Center; and getting a cell phone for the office staff. The cell phone, an item easily addressed, is so coaches can be sent text messages instead of voice messages. Henderson said staff have been borrowing her cell phone since discovering some people would rather receive texts that other types of messages. “By texting they’ve gotten responses much quicker,” she said.
The board on Monday heard the monthly report for special needs, senior, sports, and leisure programs. During the month of May, there were 4,830 enrollments. There were 12,177 participants, of which 3,497 were spectators, and GBRC offered 1,080.75 hours of supervised activities.
This summer GBRC will offer 231 different activities, Henderson said.
The board also met in executive session for 10 minutes to discuss personnel.