The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks plans to keep all of its 55 recreation centers open at least through the end of the fiscal year in June 2012, a top recreation official told skeptical City Council members on Wednesday.
"The goal is not to close any centers," Chief of Recreation Bill Tyler told the Recreation and Parks Subcommittee at a public hearing in City Hall.
Later, Tyler said more definitively, "We are keeping the rec centers open."
But council members Bill Henry and Mary Pat Clarke were unconvinced by Tyler's assurances.
Clarke questioned how the city could continue funding the centers in the face of a Department of Recreation and Parks budget shortfall.
"How do we do that when the budget is ($370,000) short?" she asked Tyler.
And she asked, "What does 'open' mean? Keep them open, but with no staff, and they turn off the heat?"
"'Open' means that under the current levels of funding, we would continue to do similar programs," Tyler said. "That is the goal in the plan."
Henry wondered why he hasn't heard similar assurances on the centers from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is proposing to privatize or close some rec centers, including Roosevelt in Hampden, and to expand and renovate others as community centers.
Henry appeared surprised by Tyler's insistence that no rec centers would be closed, and said he called for the hearing to find out which centers were "on the chopping block."
When asked if he believed Recreation and Parks wouldn't close any centers, Henry said, "I think Bill Tyler believes that. I think the department works for the mayor."
Tyler said the department is planning to spend $14 million over the next two years to turn 10 centers into community centers with bigger staffs, and to renovate others.
City Budget Director Andrew Kleine said that depending on budget constraints, some centers might become after-school centers with shortened hours of operation.
The department also wants to require all rec center users to show a pass for security and data collection purposes, Tyler said. Medfield Heights Recreation Center would be one of the first six citywide to use the so-called Rec Pass, he said.
Clarke said she was happy to hear Tyler promise no centers would be closed, and that if true, it gives the city more time to find operators for the ones it wants to privatize.
But Clarke was critical of the city's initial search for private operators. The city's 60-page Request for Proposals was too cumbersome; too much like an RFP for a road construction job, Clarke said.
And Tyler admitted that a requirement that operators must carry an $8 million insurance policy scared many potential bidders away. He said the city would issue a second RFP.
"I think we have to start from scratch," Clarke commented as she left the hearing.
Genny Dill, president of the Hampden Recreation Council, scolded the city for not seeking community input before it issued the first RFP.
"How dare you RFP this out to some stranger without including us as a community?" Dill said.
In other testimony, a public school system official said that the administration is willing to be an operator of last resort for some centers. Tisha Edwards, chief of staff for schools CEO Andres Alonso, said the administration "would have to redirect dollars away from academic programs in order to operate rec centers."
But Edwards said the school system could use the centers as extra space for classes in the arts and other programs.
She said the school system would only take them over only if no one else wants to, and if the communities approve.