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Commission Level-Sets Expectations with Financial Reality
Sudbury’s Park and Recreation department has no shortage of challenges, and according to the Park and Recreation Commission (PRC), residents have been voicing frustration with their access to, and the utilization of, the new community center building in recent weeks. Those challenges were a major focus for the commission on Monday, but almost all of the conversations pointed back to how the department is funded and structured.
The Brass Tacks
The backdrop of the story is equal parts complicated and simple. The department has been operating out of a construction site (the new Fairbank Community Center) for a couple years, and has been facing staffing challenges for even longer. Both challenges would create difficulty for any department, but Park and Recreation is somewhat unique. It’s programs have to be self-sustaining; meaning that they cover the costs of their programs by charging fees rather than paying for them from an appropriated budget. That program revenue doesn’t come in if the facility is closed or they can’t staff programs.
On the staffing side, the department has been operating without an Assistant Director since before Fiscal Year 2020. That position remains unfunded in the Town budget. (Page 6) The Town is also advertising to fill a vacant Program Coordinator position.
Notably, the department has two program coordinator positions, but, as was explained in the meeting, the Town budget pays for half of each salary, and the rest is paid by revenue generated by the department through programs like the Sudbury Summer camps. Other seasonal positions within the department are paid for via the relevant/appropriate enterprise funds, and those funds also pay for two salaries in the Parks and Grounds division of the Department of Public Works, which maintains the fields.
Mara Huston presented the FY25 budget for the department late in the meeting and summed it up quite succinctly:
In terms of the Town budget, Park and Recreation gets approximately $250,000. (Page 75) There’s also another approximately $300K in the budget for the Parks and Grounds division. In total, the park and recreation related funding amounts to less than one-half of one percent of the Town budget.
From a taxpayer perspective, the funding the recreation department receives from the Town budget is modest, and quite consistent in recent years. It is about a fifth of what the Library receives within the Culture and Recreation “cluster.” (Page 73)
By contrast to the approximately $250K the department gets from the Town budget, the Pool Enterprise Fund and Recreation Enterprise Fund are expected to cover nearly $800K in direct and indirect costs in Fiscal Year 2024. (Page 82)
While the financial structure of the department is mildly complicated, the structure itself is reportedly creating much more challenging complications in the day-to-day operation of the department. (More on that below.)
Don’t Forget One-Time Projects!
There are, of course, other ways that money gets spent to benefit the recreation department. That includes capital projects, Community Preservation Act projects like the Feeley Field improvements that are underway, and the tax increase that pays the debt for the new Fairbank Community Center, grants and earmarks, and so on. As a result, the recreation department has a sizable list of projects underway, not just related to the new community center.
On Monday, the Park and Recreation Commission discussed the status of all those projects, which included:
- Fairbank Community Center — It’s open, though still under construction, and expected to be complete in late June.
- Atkinson Pool — Divers were evaluating the pool leak this week, and the major renovation was approved by Town Meeting last week. Bids were initially reviewed by the Permanent Building Committee this week as well.
- SMILE Playground Improvements — They’re hoping to get that done this summer.
- Feeley Field Phase 1 — The contractor has not finished some last-mile work and they’re struggling to get them back out to the site. The major parts of the work are complete.
- Feeley Field Phase 2 — This has not gone out to bid yet.
- Haskell Field Walking Path — They’re meeting with a landscape design contractor soon.
While many of those projects are underway, and commissioners were enthusiastic on Monday, the conversation painted a bleak picture for the department overall. Expectations from the public have increased since the new community center opened, but the department is still hobbled by staffing and financial woes which have largely gone unaddressed for many years.
Commissioners worried that the public wasn’t hearing their message over the last few years.
The Source of Funding Matters
Also on Monday, Dennis Mannone, the Director of Parks, Recreation and Aquatics, explained how something as simple as an open gym for pickup basketball requires staffing, but they don’t have the staff to do it, and they would need to design some sort of recreation membership with a fee to fund a new position. But that highlighted another dilemma created by the self-sustaining financial model for department programming: do you hire someone first and just hope that those memberships sell like hotcakes? And how much are you willing to risk in sunk-costs to try something new?
Commissioners discussed how it’s risky to pilot new programs within this model. A newly-added “general expense” budget of $15,000 was cited as a possible funding source to seed a new program by Mannone, but that also has to cover some office expenses. That $15,000 is at least predictable since its in the Town budget, but it doesn’t change how topsy-turvy the revenue has been from programs in recent years.
Expectations, Meet Reality
Some of the reported resident complaints included frustration that room rentals weren’t available, and that certain types of programs were not being offered. Mannone addressed that head-on, stating that, in addition to being short staffed, it’s also difficult to pilot new programs or run existing programs when they know the pool will be closing for a renovation later this year. When the pool closes, they may need to use other spaces creatively for existing programs, or adapt their operation in other ways. And it’s not just a matter of space use; they also discussed how each closure means lost revenue for the department, increasing their financial stress.
Sandra Duran, Sudbury’s Combined Facilities Director, echoed much of what Mannone said, and she emphasized for the public that the facility is still under construction, they need time to “live” in the completed space to determine how best to utilize and operate it, and that the Park and Recreation Department has been the most disrupted by the construction process. She asked the PRC to help get a message out that they need patience from the public as they try to complete the projects and get things running smoothly in the building.
“If anyone could help support that message that: We hear you, we want to be successful, we want to do it safely, we want to do it well. That requires preparation and planning. And we’re still trying to finish the construction. And we’re going to be in construction probably until November because I’m going to have to go out there and do all that drainage in the front. And then that’s all grass growing and another year of warranty and all that kind of stuff. We still have solar going on the building, and we have a lot of stuff still happening. It’s not like you just go and buy a building off a shelf.”
Sandra Duran, Combined Facilities Director (1:24:40)
A Tangled Web
Further discussion during the Park and Recreation Commission meeting revealed that the Park and Recreation department maintains the fields at Ephraim Curtis Middle School at no cost to the school, and the school does not pay to use the fields like a youth league might pay to use Feeley Field. It’s just a “loss” on the books of a department that depends on field fee revenue to maintain the fields. But that also raised questions about which departments are covering which expenses, as well as reporting structures.
The maintenance work is done by the Parks and Grounds division of the Department of Public Works. But they don’t report into the Park and Recreation department, and the work they do at the school fields is in service of yet another Town cost center (Sudbury Public Schools). There was also discussion about which department should be covering expenses like bathroom cleaning and repairs at athletic fields. Sometimes the Facilities department covers that type of thing, other times Park and Recreation pays for it.
PRC Chair, Ben Carmel, voiced the frustrations of the commission, highlighting how revenue from field users was paying for salaries in other departments to maintain assets that had little to do with fields:
“We’re talking about Featherland courts, we’re talking about Japanese maples in parks, why is 50% of that salary being covered out of girls softball? It just, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Ben Carmel, Park and Recreation Commission Chair (2:06:50)
He went on to add “It’s insane to me that that’s not a Town-funded resource. I don’t even understand how it got here in the first place.”
One thing was quite clear at the end of the conversation: user fees will need to be increased if something doesn’t change. But there’s no specific solution on the table. Mannone mentioned that moving a portion of the Parks and Grounds salaries over to the Town could free up meaningful money for the department, suggesting that even small changes could make a major difference in the services delivered by his department. Doing so may even mitigate some of the upwards pressure on user fees. But they will likely need to engage Town Manager Andy Sheehan to make any meaningful changes; which the commission intended to do following their meeting.
Commissioners, along with Mannone, lamented the idea of raising fees, but ultimately seemed to agree that they might be left with little choice given the challenges facing the department, and the meager funding they feel they get from the Town budget. No decisions were made, and discussions will continue in the months ahead.