Mesa Parks & Recreation proposes $942,000 in cuts; Fremont Aquatic Complex to close for summer

Andrea Alicote, interim director of Parks and Recreation, told the Mesa City Council study session the department proposes about $942,000 in ongoing reductions as part of the citywide 2% reduction exercise.

The package would eliminate three currently vacant full-time positions (a recreation specialist, a recreation programmer and a trades worker), reduce roughly 15,000 part-time, non-benefited hours across many programs (less than 5% of the department's part-time availability), and decommission Fremont Aquatic Complex after May 23 so it will not operate for the summer season. The department also proposed eliminating the spring "Celebrate Mesa" event to concentrate resources on the larger fall festival.

Alicote said the department assessed operating and program needs and believes the cuts can be absorbed with minimal program disruption: contracted and affiliated swim clubs and other users can be moved to Shepherd, Brimhall and Stapley aquatic complexes, and many programmatic excursions will be reduced but in-house mobile and bus alternatives will be used to maintain program quality. "Given that we are not going to be moving forward with the summer programming, we still had in our department's ongoing budget the 3.5 FTE" tied to Fremont; removal of those hours is part of the reduction, Alicote said.

Councilmembers expressed concern about maintaining sworn public-safety staffing and about the effects of civilianizing certain police functions; staff said public-safety sworn positions would not be eliminated and civilianization plans are designed to redeploy sworn personnel into needed roles while hiring civilians for support duties.

Next steps: the proposed reductions are embedded in the manager's proposed budget and will be subject to Council deliberation during the upcoming budget hearings in April.