The Crookston Park Board met on Monday to review two grants. The Crookston Rotary Club and Rotary International are providing $10,000 for accessible playground equipment that will be installed at Carman Park, according to Parks and Recreation Director Scott Riopelle. “Rotary International has a grant for approximately $10,000 that they want to go into one of our parks,” said Riopelle. “I think they picked Carman Park to do that. It would be some accessible equipment and adaptive equipment for those people that aren’t as fortunate as others. We do lack in those in some of our parks and thought it would be a great choice to start up at that park, and we’re really happy to work with them on this project.”
The Crookston Rotary Club is also purchasing two benches that will be put into the Mayor’s Courtyard on the corner of Robert St and Main St. The second grant approved by the Park Board was for the Park and Recreation matching grant to purchase two benches that will be placed at to be determined parks around town. The grant request was submitted by the Early Childhood Initiative, who will pay for one $900 bench, and the City of Crookston will buy the second. “They put in park benches in various parks each year,” said Riopelle. “Each year, we do two benches. They pay for one through the matching grant, and we get the other one for them.”
Riopelle also shared with the board information he’s gathered attending various webinars and meetings about reopening public recreation facilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the past few weeks. Whether it’s been the Minnesota Ice Arena Manager’s Association, Minnesota League of Cities, or other organized meetings, Riopelle said the make focus has been sanitizing the facilities. “Everything, I guess, falls back on sanitizing once we get back to what will be the new normal,” said Riopelle. “All of these have the same thing – how can we safely operate facilities, parks, programs, whatever the case would be. And make sure it’s safe for all the users and staff as well.”
The League of Minnesota Cities has stressed proper signage, and the City of Crookston has signage in the parks about using the parks at your own risk and that the park staff can’t sanitize between each use. Riopelle said the other facilities will need operational plans in place to answer key questions before reopening. “There will be a plan before we can open any of the facilities,” said Riopelle. “You have to have a plan to go forward. What’s your sanitizing schedule? How are employees going to handle this and that? Do we do testing for people entering our facilities, whether it’s the staff and/or our users to make sure their temperature is okay, and we don’t have issues coming forward? Do they cut back on the number of people participating? For instance, do we let X number of people into a pool so they can keep safe distances? How do we handle locker rooms? Locker rooms probably won’t be utilized at the arena or the pool. I know that sounds hard at the pool, but the summer months, you can if we’d be open. At the arena, it would be for games and all that type of stuff. Then we have to have more time in between games, in tournament games, and all that other stuff is what they are looking at statewide.”
SUMMER OPERATIONS
The Park and Recreation Department announced on May 5 that all summer activities were canceled. With that, the department also decided not to hire summer seasonal employees for most positions. Instead, full-time staff who’s other duties have been reduced are now filling the ranks typically filled by seasonal staff. Those include tasks such as mowing and park maintenance, a decision Interim City Administrator Angel Weasner said was made to ensure the full-time staff had secure employment through the pandemic. “That was one of the factors we’ve been looking at all along,” said Weasner. “We wanted to ensure that all full-time employees had secure employment.”
Both not having activities, and not hiring seasonal staff have impacts on the budget. Weasner said the expected loss of revenue was approximately $87,000, while the anticipated reduction in expenses for seasonal employees is $189,00. She added that those numbers are fluid as the city hopes to be able to provide activities for Crookston’s youth by the fall. “As far as the loss of revenue, we will be losing some,” said Weasner. “The reduction in expenses is mainly going to be from our temporary salaries. We did not adjust all of them to exclude everything because we are hoping we may be able to hold some of the other programs in the fall. We are very fluid in doing what we can to make sure that the youth of this community have activities to participate in whenever possible.”
Riopelle said the ultimate decision to cancel activities was made to keep people safe, and the timing was to allow those seeking seasonal employment to find a job elsewhere. “The main reason that we did any of this was for the safety of the users, those watching, our staff,” said Riopelle. “Safety came first, and we want to make sure that our seasonal employees could find jobs elsewhere. So, we made that decision far enough in advance that they could pick up other positions before they were all taken for the summer.”
