Recreation Commission, City Meet To Discuss Moving Forward

By Jeff Gulley

The Osawatomie Recreation Commission can move forward with hiring a new director after a joint meeting last Wednesday night with the Osawatomie City Council.

The two groups met to discuss issues in the recreation director’s employment contract and the relationship between the director and the city.

While the two sides agreed to work together to iron out problems with the contract, the council agreed that the commission needed to have the ability to proceed with hiring a director as soon as possible.

At the end of the meeting, recreation commission member D.J. Needham spoke with concern about the hiring process moving forward.

“We can’t give them (recreation director applicants) a legitimate answer when they ask questions because of so many unknowns and so many different possibilities,” Needham said. “We need to move forward, otherwise we’re left in limbo and we will have a very tough time being honest and upfront. We have some very good candidates and we’re going to lose them.”

City manager Don Cawby shared the concern and said the current arrangement could be used until somebody new is on board.

“I think we should move forward the way we have it now,” he said. “We will come to an agreement. The pay we had, the health insurance we have all will stay in place and I would like to see it continue that way.”

The two sides agreed that a committee made up of city council members, recreation commission members and the city manager will work quickly to get a temporary agreement in place while work continues to iron out the details of a new working agreement.

Cawby began the meeting outlining the history of the agreement between the city and recreation commission and the details of the recreation director’s contract.

In his memo to the council and recreation commission, Cawby identified seven areas of the concern including the recreation director being on the city health insurance plan, the fact that the recreation director as an employee of the recreation commission supervises city employees and that the city processes recreation employees’ payroll under the city’s Federal employee identification number.

Other issues include the use of a city vehicle by a non-employee, potential violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and a lack of financial controls.

Cawby told the group that the two solutions would be to keep the director under recreation commission control or to make the recreation director a city employee.

Under the current arrangement, Cawby said changes to the current agreement must be made to outline where the responsibilities and authority of both bodies begins and ends.

If the city were to create a Parks and Recreation Department, an official agreement would still have to be made but the role of the recreation commission would change to an advisory board which would be responsible for reviewing recreation programs, review and suggest capital improvements and oversee the budget and expenditures of the department.

Following the presentation by Cawby, recreation commission president Bart Needham said it was a lot of information to digest and that the commission had only seen the memo hours earlier.

Both sides agreed that more time needed to be spent reviewing the issues and working toward a solution but a firm commitment to the recreation needs of the youth of Osawatomie was given.

“Everybody at this table and I think everyone in this room is committed to maintaining the rec program,” Councilman Mike Moon said. “We’re famous for these rec programs. We’re strong in the city, strong in the county and strong in the state for these programs and no one wants to blow that and that is important to remember as we leave here tonight. I want to make sure we do that and protect tax payer dollars.”

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Posted by admin on Sep 21 2011. Filed under News and Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry