By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON August 2, 2011 – He runs what is one of the largest departments in the city and the one that impacts most on most people – parks and recreation which includes programming in the more than a dozen community centers. The five Managers reporting to him run various sections of the operational side of parks and recreation while Chris Glenn manages the strategic thinking and ensuring that the department is within its budget.
Glenn, Director, Parks and Recreation, reports to General Manager of Community Services, Scott Stewart – the two are like a tag team at Council committee meetings. The current challenge for both Stewart and Glenn is a wholesale revision of the numerous Joint Venture agreements the city has with numerous groups in the city. “Some”, explains Glenn “were and understanding, while others are complex legal documents that involve not only the group the city is working with but third party groups as well”.
The Civic Rose Association wanted to be able to use a room in a city building and have the normal fee waived, the Burlington Gymnastics Club wanted to be able to sell food suitable to young athletes and wanted to run a small concession of their own. Each of these situations required someone within city hall to get an agreement or an understanding in place.
Sitting at the western edge of Central Park and across the street from the YMCA Central Recreation is heavily used buy the community.
The city has for some time wanted to get some standardization into the agreements and is working towards a “template” approach, where there is a core document with all the essential gotta have boiler plate the lawyers insist on in place.
The city currently has 23 joint ventures related to programs and services as part of a “supported” approach to the delivery of services. One of the largest is the joint venture with the Burlington Youth Soccer Club and the domes set up at their Fairview field.
The Joint Venture agreements, which are gong to be much more standardized and then tracked very carefully, are part of a different approach to the city’s relationship with community groups that will see minimal city staff involvement. Each Joint venture Agreement will establish the business arrangement; define roles and responsibilities; assign liability and risk and clarify each parties rights and responsibilities.
Parks and Recreation Director Chris Glenn explains that” many of these arrangements were done on a hand shake and no one remembers whose hand was being shaken at the time.” “And” he adds, “there was very little if any documentation.” When the Gymnastic Club turned up at a Council Committee meeting asking if they could have a concession stand at the Central Park Arena to sell the kind of quality food young athletes need instead of the French fries that are usually on offer – the city realized that here was another situation where there wasn’t an agreement in place to cover his kind of situation.
Chris Glenn Acting Director for Parks and Recreation, on the far right in this picture, was part of the Strategic Planning team. He is in the process of creating standard Joint Venture agreements for community groups that use city facilities and bringing a more professional level of management to the department.
At the time the city wan entering into an agreement with a concession operator and found themselves saying: “You can enter into an agreement with us but you can’t sell your stuff on these dates.” Kind of messy from a contract administration point of view.
The gymnasts by the way were given permission to sell their Power Bars and Gatorade and the event went off without a hitch. This was at a time when many of the departments human resources were being burned up dealing with the “elite cycling events” that eventually didn’t make it to Burlington.
Many municipalities in Ontario provide programs through direct delivery. The Burlington experience is with groups that are much more self sufficient and self-directed. Burlington, Niagara Falls and Haldimand County are at the 90% self directed level on a continuum of different models of service delivery.
The role of the Joint Venture organizations is to provide programs and services that meet specific community interests and increase the level of service available in the community. The groups will partner with the city with the objective of operating in a self sustaining mode that has the Joint Venture partner operating, maintaining, repair and renewing facilities.
Seniors, one of the fastest growing parts of Burlington’s population have a centre of their own and take part in numerous programs they create and run. One of the more successful community operations
While great in concept – it hasn’t worked out quite that way for the folks at the Burlington Gymnastics Club, where they find they need to put a new roof on the building and don’t have the finds to do so. They didn’t have a fund for this kind of repair and didn’t realize they were expected to pay for major repairs. The building was put in place by the city 40 years ago and the gymnastics people have kept it in decent shape. The understanding they had with the city made no mention of their having to pay for major repairs and as George Curran, Manager of Facilities at the Club explains it: “We just don’t have the money for an expense like this” and is hoping that the city can work something out with them. “I think we can pay for maybe half of a new roof” said Curran.
Glenn is sympathetic and realizes that it is going to take a bit of time to get all the new Joint Venture agreements in place and fully expects there will be some speed bumps that slow things down and maybe even some sensibilities that get bruised. While the city doesn’t expect to get “hard nosed” with the groups that put on the programs, they do insist that there be a change and that groups who felt that had almost “anytime” access to the eighth floor are finding that the passes they had don’t work anymore.
As part of this new operational understanding between the city and its Joint Venture partners Corporate Strategic Initiatives is undertaking “condition assessments” to determine just what the condition of the different facilities actually is and expect to have all the data collected by the fall. The city is looking into software that will improve efficiencies and allow all the agreements to be maintained and managed in the one location. One gets the sense that there were a couple of dozen agreements stuffed away in bottom drawers of desks or somewhere in a filing cabinet.
Parks and Recreation provides a considerable amount of financial support to the community. They funnel funds to various Boards in the city, they pay for the operation and upkeep of some facilities and offer one-time support to an initiative that has merit but needs a little pump priming to things flowing.
While the department is a large one it has not had the benefit of much in the way of policy and even less technology and professional management applied to their operations. With the creation of standardized Joint Venture agreements in place and an inventory of the condition of the numerous facilities they operate and then a data base that will feed them information on what has to be done when and what has to be paid or collected when – one can expect to see a much more efficient operation.
The objective is to have most of their work done by the end of this year so that they can align themselves with the Strategic Plan that is going through its finals stages and have a solid handle on the financials and fit nicely into the budget that will get developed for 2012.
There are some 525 sports and culture related organizations in the city and something in the order of 700 + small groups that don’t fit into a specific category. Civic Rose and the Rotary Memorial Tree program are examples of the latter. While that’s a lot of organizations to deal with it speaks well of a city that has organized itself and works, for the most part, quite well with city hall. It wasn’t always that way with Parks and Recreation.
Parks and Recreation manages seven arena and recreation centres. The newest, Appleby Ice Centre is joined by Central Recreation Centre, Mainway Recreation Centre, Mountainside Arena, Nelson Arena and Skyway Arena which may not have that much longer to exist if the sentiment around the Council table reflects the reality in the community.
It is a large department with five managers reporting to him. They include:
Manager of Recreation Services
Manager of Facility Operations and Special Projects
Manager or Parks and Open Space
Manager of Community Development
Manager of Business Services
A great idea that hasn’t met expectations. The location is costing more than the revenue it produces. The Mansion needs a re-think in terms of where it fits in the locations run by the Parks and Recreation department. The land was originally deeded to Laura Secord for her heroics during the War of 1812
The department also runs the Paletta Mansion in the east end of the city and the LaSalle Pavilion in the west end, as well as the Tyendaga Golf course, which just over a year ago was losing tonnes of money. That problem got resolved and the golf club is on a much better footing but resolving that issue brought forward the question: What businesses should the city be in? Is a golf club a legitimate city business? And where is the money to run the different venues going to come from ? Paletta lost a big chunk of change last year and while it is a lovely setting and a fine building – it is limping financially.
Along with getting the existing plant and operations to the point where they are at least not losing money Chris Glenn has to deal with the three partner community centre in the Alton community. The arrangement up there is between the Catholic School Board the Halton District School Board, the Library and the city.
Mayor Rick Goldring along with a Parks department staff member and Ward 6 Council member Blair Lancaster turn sod at the Palladium Way soccer field that will serve the needs of the community in the north east part of the community.
Add to that – the General Brock Park deal seems to be falling off the table; the Catholic school Board cannot come up with the money to pay for its share of the properties and City Council is in no mood to take on an additional multi-million dollar expenditure.
And yet another project that is finally on track – the New City Park that will host teams practicing for the PanAm Games. This is not to the time to talk to Parks and Recreation about the missed opportunity that the PanAm Games presented Burlington.
Meeting the recreational needs of the north western part of the city is a challenge. The xx community centre doesn’t get nearly enough community use and is closed as much as it is open. Some re-thinking to be done on this location as well.
After summer jobs as a Life Guard Glenn’s parents insisted he go to university where he studied Marine Biology which seemed to be the closest subject he could find that would keep him near water. He got a job with the city in Parks and Recreation and except for a short stint with Human Resources he has been involved with recreation for the twenty years he has worked for the city.
Chris Glenn, lives in Oakville (why do so many of our senior people live in other cities and towns – maybe they don’t want to meet you at the supermarket on Saturday) and has been in the recreational field ever since he left the University of Guelph where he majored in Marine Biology. From that he quickly got into aquatics and recreation – which as Glenn explains it “wasn’t that big a jump – it all had to do with water”.
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[…] win for Chris Glenn. But about that roof? That will get taken care of and will be part of the new Joint Venture Agreement the city will put in place with the gymnastic […]