Vignettes of Five Cities/Towns in ComparisonDraft 9/11/12 St.

Albans Interview by Phil Dodd, answers by Kelly Viens, Recreation Department Director for the City of St. Albans, VT St. Albans receives a $40,000 annual contribution from St. Albans Towns, which allows residents of the town to participate in recreation programs at city resident rates. Many programs are contracted out to individual instructors. For these programs, there is an agreement that the instructor takes a certain amount of revenue after costs and the recreation department receives the remaining amount. For most of these programs the agreement is that the instructor takes 60% and the Rec Dept takes the remaining 40% . The city promotes the courses, carries insurance, etc. There are no Recreation Department maintenance staff in St. Albans, so maintenance needs are handled in a variety of ways. They have a couple of part-time kids who help during the school year. The Public Works Department handles a lot of things, like mowing the soccer fields. At the pool, the summer help handles things like mowing the grass. In addition to the facilities owned by the Rec Department (pool, pool house, four tennis courts, four basketball courts, there is a gym in city hall, and the department has use of a room in the Barlow building. The Recreation Department is also able to use fields at the nonprofit Hardack recreational facility, which has a small ski area and fields. The city operates the facility, but the nonprofit raises enough money to reimburse the town for all expenses. Finally, the Recreation Department is also able to use a sports and fitness center owned by the high school. St. Johnsbury Interview by Phil Dodd, answers by Joe Fox, former Recreation Department Director and now an employee of St. Johnsbury Academy but still running recreation programs for the town. The town of St. J had a Recreation Department from the 1960s until November 2010, when it was terminated. There had been fiscal issues leading up to the closure of the department, and in 2009 the armory that had been used as the rec. building (with a size basketball court) was closed down because it needed expensive repairs and renovation. St. Johnsbury Academy offered to hire the Rec. Department director, Joe Fox, and let him use office space at the Academy to run recreation programs for the town. Fox also does some recreation work for the Academy. There is no recreation budget per se, but the town pays $10,000 per year to the Academy towards Foxs salary and benefit. It also pays $15,000 to the Kiwanis, which operates a pool. When there was a full time recreation department, the budget was about $137,000, of which the town contributed $60,000. The rest comes from fee, fundraisers and grants. When there was a recreation department, the town also used Americorps volunteers and convicts on parole for cleaning and maintenance.

The pool in St. Johnsbury is owned by the Kiwanis, which raises about $45,000 to $50,000 each year to operate the pool and nearby tennis courts (the town contributes about $15,000 annually toward the pool). It is the only entirely free pool in the U.S., the claim Baseball and softball fields are owned and run by a nonprofit group, St. Jay Baseball. The recreation department also schedules courses and programs at both the St. Jay elementary school and at the Academy, which has fields, a gym, field house, and indoor pool. Barre Interview by Phil Dodd, answers by Stephanie Quaranta, Barre Rec. Director. The Barre Recreation Department has been shrunk down over time. At one point, in addition to the director, there was a program director and a half-time secretary. Now there is just the director. All recreation programs are required to pay for themselves. The city just pays for the one staff person and office operation, for the most part. Barre is not able to offer as many program as Montpelier, Stephanie said, but they do have a pool and the city also owns the Barre auditorium and the ice rink, which the rec department uses. The director does all scheduling for ice time at the rink. A separate Facilities Department in Barre takes care of maintenance and operation of the ice rink and he auditorium and other city property. Stephanie also said they city, including her department, makes good use of the Streets Department employees in the winter. They renovated her offices, did painting, work on the ice rink in the winter, etc. Brattleboro Interview by Toni Hartrich, answers by Carol Lolatte, Director of Parks and Recreation. Brattleboro is the largest of the towns in this comparison with 12,046 residents. Its Recreation budget is the closest to the size of Montpelier Recreation, at approximately $700,000. The recreation budget per capita is $58.11 which is less than Montpeliers per capita amount of $103.83. The program offerings seem fairly similar to Montpeliers offerings. Like Montpelier it charges non-residents more for programs. In Brattleboro the surcharges for non-residents range from $15 to $20. Brattleboro Recreation is part of the Parks and Recreation Department. The 9 person full-time staff includes the director, an assistant director, administrative assistant, program coordinator, a building maintenance person, a park supervisor, and 3 park maintenance staff. The Senior Center is part of Parks and Recreation Department in Brattleboro. Middlebury-Interview by Toni Hartrich, answers by Dustin Hunt Rec. Department Coordinator and Kathleen Ramsay, Town Manager.

Middlebury is slightly larger than Montpelier with 8,496 residents and its $348,130 Recreation Budget is much smaller than Montpeliers. The per capita cost of Recreation is $40.98 and the percent of the Recreation budget that comes from Taxes is 46% while fee revenues are 54% of the budget. Non-resident surcharge on fees is between $5 and $25. Recreation has 4 year round employees, 2 full-time and 2 part-time. The Recreation program is part of Parks and Recreation Department. The Town has a Senior Center which is not part of the Parks and Recreation Department but it is housed in the same building. For more complete comparison between these programs and Montpelier see the Comparative Chart-Recreation Montpelier and Five other Towns in this section.