Providence Recreational Advisory Board-Monday, February 10, 2025-6:00 PM

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's Anderson.

We're ready. Alright.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Today is 02/10/2025. This is the meeting of the recreation advisory board. May I please call the roll?

Chairman Simon?

Here.

Vice chair Sanchez?

Here.

Councilwoman Vargas is absent. Jenna Lafayette?

Here.

Kenneth Phillips is absent. We have three present and two absent.

We have a forum.

And, first of me start by saying happy New Year to everybody. I can't believe this is the first time we've met since the New Year, but we've got a couple of mishaps in scheduling and rec centers that had construction issues going on. So so here we are. First first meeting of the year. And if you guys all can be here tonight, then to as well.

We appreciate you guys being here. We have a very straightforward agenda for tonight. We'll have a presentation from mister Holland, who is the director here at at Rogers. We're gonna review 2024 accomplishments and challenges, sets and goals for 2025. And I'm gonna have discussion about winter and spring programming and especially about the soccer league that's coming up.

We're gonna go do a the basketball program now and sort of, like, what how are the moments for that and some challenges and things you wanna face in the program there.

I will do you have

a presentation or anything? Greg?

Or you you do have something? Okay. Yeah. The product's next. Worse.

I'm just gonna send this to you.

That's probably the next thing.

And as always, have director Grace with us. We'll be joining you for the.

Okay. Can get a call. Yeah. In the meantime My name is Mike Collins, senior. I'm the director here at Madeline Rogers.

I'm a director at Kennedy Declaration Center as well. I've been with the city recreation department over two decades. So before you

get into it, let me just say thank you for all we do for the city. I always love coming to this rec center. I know we've been to a lot of different rec centers, been a record part for a long time, but this recreation center when you're right, come in. It looks bright, clean. You have staff presents well, and really appreciate all these.

I speak on behalf of all the board. I mean, you guys we say this to all the the directors that we go around to, but, truly, you guys are what makes this city turn a good way. We are big believers, all of us here in recreation. That's why we do this, and we wanna be a supporter to you guys as we possibly can. But thank you for what you do for our kids there.

Absolutely. My pleasure. Been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. You.

Thank you. Thank you all. So like I said, I've been with the department for over twenty years. I started as a young man coming to the recreation centers. I ended coming to this pool, walking all the way from the East side that used to be called Danford Pool before this building existed.

The actual rec center was the adjacent building on the other side of the pool. I put myself to school. I am a master machinist, semi retired, did that for twenty two years. Always kept my foot in the door in recreation, meaning I was part time. And then when I retired, I got off with the director's job over at Kennedy, and I am I matched it up.

So here I am. I love what I do. I'm like this is, like, my first home as my staff will tell you. I have a great, great staff. They always say, you know, as good as your staff.

And That's the truth. They it's very good. I've seen a lot of directors. I've seen a lot of mayors, five or six in each on each end. I am grateful that Steven is in the board and the new administration is bringing us to the twenty first century because we need it as far as all the data that we're getting, all the like, I just showed you the check-in attendance.

It's it's great because now we can track things. It's a little difficult when you've around so long that you're not using computers, but Steven's doing a great job on his team on training everybody on it. So and then again, Jason and I train my staff. So we're doing a good job. And what I try to do in in here at this rec center, I I don't always just worry about 02 908, that's this area.

I I'm I know kids from every rec center, every part of town. So I'm not just this is not just Rogers Recreation Center. It's not just Kennedy. I I like to service all the kids, right, and the community. So I try to involve myself with every kind of community meeting that happens over here with the different council people.

I just I just try to I try to stay busy. And I always tell my staff, I'm like, you know, you want a present presentation well when you come into the building. You want you want the kids to feel comfortable. You want the kids to come to a cleanly place. You wanna have a lot of things going on.

So that's what we we we really strive on here. And and that's basically about me. I don't wanna talk too much about me. So the weight of Steven on that. Yeah.

My apologies. Any questions? Or I'll rent. Right. Yeah.

I guess you can rent some space. What are some of your biggest challenges right now?

I guess, Rex, you wanna be

Well, we've been working on lately, we've been working on females' participation. I have a dominant female staff. I mean, I have a lot of female staff, and we're we're not having problems with getting them in the door. We're having a problem with keeping them in the door. So we're working very diligently on trying to say, okay.

So what what are we doing? What I have my assistant director, Matt Gaffey. He's actually going around doing a survey right now. He's going around the each rec center talking to the director and the assistant director to find out, you know, if there's anything that we can do that they're doing to get to get the females in in the door. I think that's just my biggest biggest challenge out there.

The the boys are gonna get us, the gym. As long as you know, because the gym is gonna. But so that's that's our biggest challenge. But we're we're working hard. We'll get there.

Now you had mentioned before that prior to COVID, you had you had better luck with.

Yeah. I I just I don't know. I mean, like I said, you hate to keep playing anything on COVID, but before COVID, we were getting all the vet centers were getting female participation. When I was at Kennedy, we had all three machines. We you know, every every vet center had an abundance of females, and that's you know, whether it's basketball, you're doing just a regular arts and crafts program, we used to get the females.

I don't know if I knew the answer to that. I wouldn't you know? Sure. I wouldn't be here. Yeah.

Alright. We got your presentation up, director. Go for it. Turn around so I can see here.

So far, I think, was already handled. Right? That's alright. That's the right.

Yeah. Very cool.

Great photo. That's the

nice photo, though.

Love it. Portrait mode.

That's Zander. Right?