Olathe is considering raising membership fees for the city’s community center, among other changes to its recreational programming, as the center struggles to break even.
Last Tuesday, the city’s Director of Quality of Life Mike Sirna told the city council during a budget workshop that “expenditures are outpacing revenues,” which has required the city to supplement the proposed $7.7 million recreational fund budget with cash transfers from the city’s general fund.
He said that discrepancy is, in part, due to inflation on things like utilities, rising labor costs and an inability to return some city services to their pre-pandemic levels, including the Olathe Community Center.
“We’re looking at everything,” Sirna said.
Some Olathe rec programs have “rebounded”
- Kathryn Messer, an Olathe budget analyst, said some recreational programs weren’t hit as hard by COVID-19 and have “rebounded both in participation and in revenue” in the past four years.
- “Participants were still ready to come attend camps, go to pools and sign up for our sports programs,” she said.
- The same cannot be said for the community center, which is dealing with competition from privately owned gyms and the proliferation of virtual workouts, Messer said.
- And, according to city documents, revenues from some other city recreational programs seem to be supplementing the cost of the decade-old community center more and more since 2020.
“Very little room” to raise community center rate
Sirna said that there is “very little room” to increase the membership rates at the community center considering Olathe already charges “significantly” more than its neighboring cities. (He added that it costs more to use the community center because Olathe recovers a higher percentage of the facility’s operating costs with its revenue than other cities do.)
Still, city staff is recommending as part of the 2025 budget to raise the Olathe Community Center membership rates slightly.
Currently, monthly memberships cost:
- $90 a month for a family of up to five residents
- $55 a month for an individual resident
- $80 a month for two individual residents
- $50 a month for an individual senior resident
The city is proposing raising each monthly membership cost by $5. For example, that would make the monthly family membership cost $95 next year.
Olathe is looking at other recreation changes
- Sirna said the city is already reducing the cost of operating its outdoor pools by stopping heating most of them, saving on some utility and upkeep expenses.
- The city’s recreation division also added additional day camp offerings and birthday party booking options, neither of which cost a lot for the city to put on but bring in revenues.
- Olathe has also reinstituted its childcare options for people using the Olathe Community Center.
- Sirna said city staff are pondering other options, like adding a zip-line attraction to Lake Olathe and expanding hours at the Beach at Lake Olathe.
- Additionally, the city is reevaluating its “fee and cost structure” for recreation activities and has implemented cost-cutting elsewhere.
Next steps:
- The presentation last week was the final of three scheduled budget workshops for Olathe’s 2025 budget process.
- Two public hearings tied to the 2025 budget are scheduled for Aug. 27.
- Then, the Olathe City Council is scheduled to adopt a final budget on Sept. 3.
More Olathe 2025 budget news: Olathe gets first look at 2025 budget. How much could homeowners pay in taxes?
