VERO BEACH — Needed maintenance on aging city buildings, a $100,000 rebuild of the Royal Palm Pointe fountain, plus increased employee salaries and benefit costs may require some tough choices when the Vero Beach City Council considers this year’s recreation budget in July.
The department’s proposed capital budget was presented to the Recreation Commission Tuesday afternoon for discussion. The full $2 million department budget was not considered at Tuesday’s meeting.
Two options were presented to the advisory commission, listing $277,800 in capital improvements and equipment such as a $50,000 new roof for Leisure Square, $100,000 to completely refurbish the Royal Palm Pointe fountain, new radios for lifeguards, a storage shed for lifeguard equipment, new computers and a copier for office staff and a $9,000 new slide for the Riverside Park playground.
Option B added up to about $30,000 less than Option A, but pushed off recommended work such as an emergency exit for the second-floor offices at the Centerstage building.
Commission Chair Richard Yemm suggested it would be a good idea to get a structural engineer to examine all of the recreation department’s buildings to assess the continued life span, and to start formulating a plan for replacing them as repairs become cost-prohibitive or the structures become unsound or unsafe for the public to use.
“These buildings are aging,” Yemm said, and the city staff concurred, saying that it had been many decades since the city had built any new recreation buildings.
City Manager Jim O’Connor explained the process of how and when capital improvements get put in the plan. He said a funding source must be identified before a major repair or rebuild is included in the capital budget and, as of late, there’s been no extra cash to even contemplate a new building.
Recreation Director Rob Slezak said his first draft of the department budget is about $100,000 costlier than the target he was given. Part of that is because employees were given three percent increases in March and those carry over into the coming budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Another factor is increased pension costs, which are based on a variety of factors, including salaries. Pension costs citywide, City Manager Jim O’Connor told the commission, increased about $300,000.
Recreation has traditionally been presented in budget workshops as an “enterprise fund” but O’Connor told Yemm and his commission members Tuesday afternoon that this year it will be a part of the general fund budget.
Government accounting principles, O’Connor said, no longer justify the $2 million recreation budget, which is 70 percent subsidized by general fund revenues, to be counted as an enterprise fund similar to the electric, water and sewer utility and the airport, which generate their own revenues for the operation of the business or enterprise.
About 30 percent of the recreation budget is derived from program fees and facilities rentals. Staff has tried to boost those revenues in recent years by increasing fees and also by soliciting sponsorships of events and programs from local businesses and organizations.
“The bottom line is we’re about $300,000 off in general fund,” O’Connor said, meaning that either he needs to find that much to trim, or it will be up to the City Council to decide whether or not to increase the city’s property tax rate.
Recreation accounts for about 8 percent of Vero’s $19 million general fund budget in the current year.
O’Connor warned the council in May that they should brace for a potentially unpleasant series of budget workshops scheduled for July 7-11. The recreation budget is scheduled to be vetted on July 8.
