We had a Council meeting on Monday night. Here is a recap of the highlights.
We spent most of the night discussing the Verona Community Pool. After last year's rate setting process, I and other members of the Council insisted that we have an outside firm look at the pool's finances and create a rate study on the pool. On Monday, we got that report. NewGen Strategies and Solutions presented a detailed financial analysis and recommendations on how to set rates in 2025 and beyond to ensure that the pool is financial healthy and stable. You can see a summary of the study here.
The pool has had some challenges with finances recently due to a confluence of events. The cost to run the pool has gone up dramatically, mainly due to increases in minimum wage. Our membership fees, which were fairly low, did not rise fast enough to cover these increases. Covid also created an accounting emergency due to lost revenue, and that emergency is still impacting our accounting. In recent years the Administration improved its accounting policies to ensure that all costs associated with running the pool get charged to the pool utility. The most significant of them, water costs, are now being paid for through the utility.
Additionally, the pool takes on debt to pay for improvements. We have some pretty significant debt to pay off from improvements made prior to 2013 and 2017, and we have now added the splash pad. In the immediate future we need to re-line the pool, and soon we need to fix the basketball courts. These projects need to be planned and incorporated into the financials.
All of this is putting pressure on the pool finances. It was comforting to have an outside firm analyze all of this for us to confirm that the pool is not in risk of closing due to financial challenges. However, we need to strengthen the financials to prevent large rate increases in the future.
Part of our financial challenges would be solved if we attracted more membership. Pool memberships are stable, but not rising. While we can and should improve the marketing of the pool to Verona residents, we are not confident that increased marketing will bring in enough memberships to close the financial gap.
We are therefore at a point where we need to make a pretty significant decision. Do we open the pool membership to out of town residents in a limited but controlled way to increase our membership base? If we do so this helps to keep increases to membership fees reasonable. In addition, the Council was presented with a recommendation to decide the level of "fund balance" we want to use to help offset membership increases. Fund balance is like the savings account for the pool utility. We can use a lot of fund balance to help smooth over some of these rate increases, or we can use less and charge more.
To address the issues of allowing out of town (OOT) residents in, the Administration is planning a detailed survey, with actual scenarios, to both current pool members and residents who did not join the pool. On Monday night they proposed allowing 50 out of town memberships from a select few surrounding towns. There was mention of each OOT membership getting a sponsor from an existing Verona pool member. The cost proposed would be $2,400 per family for an out of town resident.
After the NewGen presentation, our Director of Community Services then gave a detailed presentation on other recommendations with the pool. This included recommendations to cut costs and services and increase fees. Some things that were presented:
Cutting the extended hours of the splash pad from Monday to Friday (currently 10 am to 12 pm) - These additional hours cost $8,500 last year
Possibly cutting the Recreation Tent if grants could not be found to pay for it. The Rec Tent cost $23,000 last year
Allowing for private rentals of the pool pre and post season
Charging a family night fee of up to $25 for a family of four (currently free)
Adding a $50 annual fee for first responder memberships (currently free)
Creating a new summer concert event in June and charging $20 for admittance
Raising the age from 12 to 14 for children to enter without an adult (this is recommendation to address safety and behavioral issues that arose last year)
Increasing the gazebo rental to $100
Increasing fees for water aerobics
Adding a $25 fee for pool field trips for children enrolled in the summer playground
Increasing the fees for the Cougars to rent our facility
Increasing Verona Swim Team fees from $60 to $100
Increasing costs for non-profits to host parties at the pool pre-season.
Overall, a lot of possible changes are on the way. We had a lot of unanswered questions on some of the information or recommendations presented by Recreation, so the list above is just a list of suggestions. We definitely need more data, and we will look towards the survey feedback that is sent out to the community. In addition, or Recreation Advisory Committee will be discussing this list of possible changes and providing feedback to the Council after their next meeting in December.
To set expectations - I think the Council will have an additional conversation on the pool in December, with likely a final decision/vote in January. I look forward to getting more fleshed out and creative recommendations from our Administration and feedback from the community as we move forward.
Moving on we passed a $60K bond to improve the sewer line along the Peckman. Hopefully this helps to improve some backflow issues impacting residents on Derwent. We introduced an ordinance on stormwater management fees which is simply a technical change we need to make - nothing substantial.
We hit a significant snag during consent agenda with a resolution authorizing the purchasing of two dump trucks for DPW. We had to pull that from consent agenda.
Per standard procedure, we approved contracts with a variety of vendors that we perform significant business with. This includes: Academy Apparel, All American Sewer Service, EG Technologies, Essex Fence, Green Valley, Hillcrest Farms, and Martin Contracting. We contracted with Molfetta Corporation to build a salt dome for DPW and Motorola Solutions to buy radios for the police department. We accepted a fire fighters grant for $70K and $1K from the National Opioid Settlement.
In new business, we talked about some final changes we are making to the Town Center zone. We are modifying the list of businesses that would be conditional usages, with a particular focus on how we are defining "commercial entertainment". We are adding classes of businesses such as coworking spaces, brewpubs, artisanal workshops, and shared kitchens, woodshops, and textile spaces to our definition. We are also making adjustments to the lot size and front yard setbacks. Finally we are eliminating the "even distribution of principal usages" clause that is severely limiting development in our community. This will allow businesses to have one floor of commercial and build two additional floors of residential.
Also in new business we talked about making a significant parking change on Gould Street near HBW and the Library/Town Hall. We are going to change the parking on the current zone that prohibits parking 7 am to 4 pm on school days to 7:30 am to 9 am September through June, Monday to Friday. This will allow people to park on that stretch of Gould during the workday. We hope that elevates some parking challenges we have for the Library and Town Hall. It will change the flow a bit for HBW middle school pick up. If you have any comments on this change I suggest you email the Council as soon as possible.
We ended the meeting fairly late, and then we went into Executive Session.
Should you have any comments on anything we discussed, I encourage you to send it to the entire Council here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.