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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003-07-09 Recreation Committee Minutesv FAX: (781) 942 - 5441 Town of Reading 16 Lowell Street Reading, MA 01867-2685€Gs SS. t. `5 P 3J.' Z t s RECREATION DIVISION: (781) 942 - 9075 READING RECREATION COMMITTEE MINUTES July 9th . 2003 Attendance: Bernie Winne, Rec. Committee Chair, Claire Bolger, Rec. Committee Member, Vice-Chair, Jack Downing, Recreation Committee Member, Nancy -Linn Swain Rec. Committee Member, Chris Campbell, Rec. Committee Associate Member, Mary Ellen Stolecki, Rec. Committee Member, John Feudo, Recreation Administrator Guest- Mel Suarez Meeting was called to order at 7:43 PM by B. Winne. B. Winne asked the committee to look over the minutes from the June 11th Meeting. J. Downing made a couple of notations of error. He asked to have the word "Chair" omitted next to Alan Beaulieu's name. Also, J Downing asked to change the phase on paragraph 5, page 1 form "abutters issues" to "abutter issues". It was also noted that there were no scores on the votes for Chairman and Vice Chairmen and they needed to reflect in the minutes. J. Downing made a motion to accept the Minutes from the June 11th Recreation Committee meeting as amended. C. Bolger seconded the motion. Motion passes in favor of acceptance of the minutes 5-0-0. B. Winne asked Nancy-Linn Swain to introduce herself. The Recreation Committee welcomed Nancy to the Committee. J. Feudo introduced Mel Suarez from MLSuarez.com. He was appearing before the Recreaiton Committee to do a presentation for a Model Airplane program. Mr. Suarez made a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation. He stated that he has not really worked out any pricing for the program and had a basic curriculum that he had used for past classes. The program would be held inside for building the planes and outside for flying. Locations would need to be determined. Mr. Suarez thought that an 8 class program for flying model airplanes was the direction he was headed in, but asked the Recreation Committee for their thoughts. The committee had many questions. B. Winne asked if there would be a minimum number of participants for the program. Suarez stated that would depend on fees, but there would be a minimum and a maximum. M. Stolecki asked about the issue of inclement weather. Suarez stated because the class length was two hours they could just stay inside, but overall could present a problem. N. Swain stated that she felt if may be difficult to hold a young child's attention for more than an hour. READING RECREATION COMMITTEE MINUTES FOR JULY 9th CONTINUED J. Feudo stated that it might be best to have it become a parent/ child hobby program. The Committee and Suarez seemed to agree. B. Winne stated that the ideas that were being discussed were good ones but needed to be hammered out on the administrative level. The committee consensus was for Suarez to contact J. Feudo to iron out details and bring back a concrete program to the Recreation Committee to look at. Next the Recreation Administrator J. Feudo requested to have some discussion with the Recreation Committee surrounding travel basketball from last season. B. Winne stated before the committee could make any decisions about travel basketball it would need to know the status of the Mike O'Brien travel team program. J. Feudo stated he would find out their plans were and get back to the committee. J. Feudo stated he intended to seek out competition that was better suited for the Travel teams the Recreation Division hosted. He stated towns such as Winchester, Lexington, Arlington and Malden all base their teams on the philosophy of two equal teams. Rather than having an "A" and "B" squad, J. Feudo stated he would prefer to split the players up evenly for both the boys and girls programs. C. Campbell stated one of the issues last year was people showed up unexpectedly at the tryouts and it forced Mark Hyson to make a very hard decision. Mark's decision was to have one team based on trying to find suitable competition so late in the scheduling season. Parents did not see the decision as a popular one and requested that the Recreation Committee reevaluate the decision, which lead to "B" teams in the Boys Division. The result was the "B" teams at the 7th Grade level didn't make past February and the 8th teams got enough games but were often beat handily. The Committee decided to wait to hear back from the O'Brien program before making further decisions. FIELD FEE FOR NON-RESIDENTS J. Feudo presented to the Recreation Committee a proposal to raise fees for field use of outside organizations. Outside organizations would be defined as less than 50% Reading Resident Representation with in the group. The fee would increase from $20 per use to $20 per hour. After doing some research with some surrounding communities, it was established they Reading did not charge nearly as much as others, hence all the phone calls received at the Rec. Division. The new fee would make the finding of scarce fields more cost and time effective. C. Bolger made the motion to accept the "New" field fees for non-resident groups as proposed. M. Stolecki seconded the motion. Motion passes in favor of raising the "New" field fees for non-resident groups as proposed 5 -0-0. FILLING CASTINE FIELD C. Campbell stated he requested to have Castine Field on the.agenda to discuss filling it for next Summer or not filling it with water. Chris felt that some of the issues the Recreation Committee has been faced with over the past couple of weeks could be avoided with the addition of Castine earlier READING RECREATION COMMITTEE MINUTES FOR JULY 9th CONTINUED in the Summer. J. Downing stated that filling Castine with dirt would cause a problem with water not being able to filter anywhere else causing a potential flood problem. C. Bolger stated that she thought the Recreation Committee approached this very subject a few years back, but could not recall why it was not done or what the reason was for continuing to fill it. The Recreation Committee asked if it was possible for the Conservation and Engineering Divisions to do a "mini" feasibility study. J. Feudo stated he would look into and report back. J. Feudo brought the special permit request for the Tennis Courts to the Recreation Committee. Gregg Luongo, the Reading Recreation Division Tennis Professional booked Tournaments on two separate weekends. Unaware of the Sunday Permitting issue Gregg asked for 2 consecutive Sunday AM permits. J. Feudo stated that the Tournaments had already been advertised in the Brochure but did not have times posted however, Gregg had already done some secondary advertising for the Tournament and could not get all the "Draws" in necessary for the Tournament by starting at noon on either Sunday. The Recreation Committee had a spirited conversation about the scenario. The central questions were: Do the Tennis Courts fall under a special Sunday permit? Does the Special Sunday Permit apply to Reading Recreation sponsored programs? J. Feudo stated the literature on the Special Permitting of Fields was unclear as to whether or not Tennis Courts fell under the jurisdiction of fields. However, the Reading Recreation Field Rules and Regulation Document does state that Tennis Courts and Basketball courts not be permitted and be used on a first come first serve basis. J. Downing made the motion to allow Reading Recreation Tennis Professional Gregg Luongo to reserve the field for July 13th and July 20th for the purpose of 2 Tennis Tournaments. C. Bolger seconded the motion. Vote was 4-0-1. Due to lack of quorum M. Stolecki reconsidered her vote with the understanding that this type of situation be avoided in the future. Motion passes to allow Tennis Professional Gregg Luongo to reserve the field for July 13th and July 20th for the purpose of 2 Tennis Tournaments 5-0-0. RECREATION ADMINISTRATORS REPORT J. Feudo gave the Recreation Committee an update of the Summer Programs. He stated that Summer camp numbers continued to grow and the Division would continue to advertise and get word out about Camp. The numbers were up over 5% from the previous month. J. Feudo went on to pass out a participation report itemizing each program. He stated Camp has been running very smooth and there have been many compliments from parents on how well the staff had done thus far. J. Feudo stated Summer Concerts had gone well. Volunteers were still needed to cover the July 13, 27 and Aug 3rd Concert. N. Swain volunteered for the 7/13 Concert. A subject from the June Recreation Committee meeting, the use of the Batting Cage via permit was addressed by the Recreation Administrator. Feudo stated that after receiving an email back from the Town Manager, it was a good idea to create a task force to look at the issue. The main concern would be that the cage is not being used during games and any program that the Batting Cage is needed for should have some type of posting of a schedule. Sub-Committee Reports: The Aquatics Advisory Council did not meet for the month of June. J. Feudo stated that the Committee still need to replace the vacancy for the Aquatics advisory board. J. Downing stated he was interested if nobody else wanted to do it. B. Winne appointed J. Downing as the new representative to the AAC. J. Downing made a motion to adjourn the meeting for July 9t', 2003. C. Bolger seconded the motion. Motion passes in favor of adjourning meeting 5-0-0. Meeting Ajourned at 9:57 PM. by: J hn A. eudo ecreation Admini