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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-YB-1999-06-14 ITHACA YOUTH BUREAU Board of Directors June 14, 1999 Attendance: Bill Murphy, Cathy Currier, Joan Spielholz, Scott Miller, David Delchamps, Jim Walker, Sheila Hemami, Joanne Kingsley-Wells, Deb Traunstein arrived at 7:45 p.m. Staff: Sam Cohen, Marilyn Hall, John Bailey The meeting was called to order at 7:08 p.m. A motion was made seconded and carried unanimously to approve the May 10th minutes. II. STAFF AND COMMITTEE REPORTS 1) Director's Report • The FY2000 Budget Guidelines/timelines have not yet been released although we have been told the guidelines would be similar to last year which means a 0%, &-3% budget. Overall, meeting this timeline will be a real hardship for us since this is our busiest program season. Essentially we will be preparing two different budgets; one budget to Rec Partnership in a format that is more flexible, workable, easier to understand, and usable for adjusting numbers and one to City in the Munis format. Our Youth Bureau preliminary budget review of programs will be done in one session by the Executive Committee(and other interested members) standing as the Finance Committee on Tuesday, July 20th, 4-6:30 p.m. This will then be brought to the whole Board on Monday, July 26th. • City Planning Update—Tony Scott and Patrick Walkinshaw were interviewed independently by Marcia Fort and Sam to do a preliminary proposal for City youth services planning. Patrick's approach is starting at the perspective of developing a vision of community and how best it can nurture the health and well-being of all of its children. Tony Scott comes from a perspective of looking very carefully at the dilemmas facing children and families coming up with a real deep levels needs assessment and how services match up to those needs. Both perspectives are valuable therefore both Tony and Patrick will participate and write half of the proposal from the perspective they were taking. A series of meetings will then be held with the appropriate people in the community—children and families will be directly involved in the proposal stage. Meetings will then follow with appropriate groups—Youth Bureau Board, Southside Board, GIAC Board, different community groups with a goal that by the time we went to Common Council there would be a strong enthusiasm and support by City of Ithaca residents, agencies, and perhaps the schools for going ahead with this to seek funds from Common Council. David wants to make sure the school district be included as a major player. Sam agrees we need a close relationship with the school and will build this into the proposal. 2) Youth Development • One-to-One-Common Council passed a resolution that essentially allows One-to-One to raise funds and keep them, not be rolled into the City's general fund at the end of the year which was one of the requirements for affiliation with BBBSA.. The new Planning and Development Council(PDC)will not recruit people until all compliance issues are straightened out and the actual Articles of Constitution delineating the duties and desirable characteristics of people who would serve on this council are in place. Scott M. went over the final version of the Articles of Constitution. The PDC will have between 6-10 members. Scott reviewed the three sub committees (finance/program; fund raising; public relations/nomination)and each of their functions. Finance/program committee will review the annual financial status of the program, make recommendations to this Board and to the 1-1 program, review procedures and policies annually, and see if the program is meeting needs of the community. Fund raising committee will be responsible for raising approximately$24,000 per year. This committee will provide a sound fund-raising program with various activities in order to supplement the One-to-One budget. Public relations/nomination committee will center on getting the positive message out to the community on what the One-to-One program is doing and will continue to increase their volunteer recruitment. The Articles of Constitution contain some advise and consent type clauses which our Youth Bureau Board will be involved with(i.e. Finance Program needs IYB Board approval). Sam summed by saying he feels there is a delicate balance between a group being strongly encouraged to take a lot of initiative and responsibility for decision making balanced with the responsibilities and obligations of the City(Board&Admin. staff)and this document does a nice job in doing it both ways. R. ACTION: A motion was made, seconded, and approved to endorse the Articles of Constitution for the One-to- One Planning and Development Council. All members gave aye votes. John Bailey announced two people that have agreed to serve on the Council— 1) Scott Miller who actually became involved with 1-1 while attending Cornell law school where he successfully recruited volunteers for the program and put mechanisms to continue this volunteer effort, and 2) Denise Malone, City Human Resources staff,and long-term supporter of One-to-One who will bring skills and energy to the project. John reiterated that first we agreed to get our Constitution approved and second we have a quorum. After becoming officially affiliated,the next step would be to publicize. A question raised from Bill M. on how long is the moratorium on taking new referrals. The date placed was June 15t although John and staff agree it is now time to lift the moratorium and take referrals. Scott raised concern for committing to both the PDC/IYB Board and Chair Delchamps states he does not see a conflict of interest. There was a brief discussion on what it takes to qualify a child for the program. One of the jobs of the PDC will be to establish a set of criteria for receiving referrals and sorting out the serving the need of children on the waiting lists. • We are embarking on a full evaluation of the Paul Schreurs Memorial Program and we hope to not only develop a full picture of how the program has been doing over the years,how the kids are doing that have been involved in the program,the impact on the kids, but also to develop a tool for future use so the staff can easily keep up with this year after year. This tool must be simple to administer. Recreation (Sam) • Facilities Committee met for the first time May 12th. An overview was given of why we need this committee, and what the key issues are. Phil Dankert of the Rec Partnership will also be serving on this committee. The key issues from the point of view of the Youth Bureau are that fields are very heavily used, fields are in great demand,and because of the demand on facilities there are a lot of challenges that we have. Who do you give priority to in terms of usage,when outsiders want to donate money to make a field better for them what is the criteria by which you allow them to do that and what rights to they get when they do that. We need to develop long range plans for all of the fields, creation of new fields, need for field rotation, and need for continued money to keep in good condition. Sam did talk with Mayor Cohen about the problematic situation with Buttermilk Falls fields but there is nothing we can do except wait for the State. We will be doing a more in depth historical analysis this next meeting so we can begin looking at some recommendations for decision making of these issues. • Long Term Parks Planning Process -There's pressure to look at not only field usage but long range park usage, park ownership,park management and park land. The Rec Partnership is taking a very close look at the cost of the facilities versus the cost of the program. Cass Park is the largest cost of the Rec Partnership. It is very important to have all of the communities of the county take a look at the issues of parks: how to manage, plan,pay for them,etc. We've come here to initiate a process for establishing a new committee—the purpose of the group would be to do long term park planning and come up with recommendations or proposals to come up with answers on who should own the parks, who should pay for the parks,who should maintain the parks, who should do planning for the parks. Members took a moment to read Sam's prepared outline that was distributed. The City Parks Commission passed a resolution unanimously supporting the development of a coordinated park management and facilities plan for City and Town parks and selected areas that serve as regional attractions. John Doyle went to this group to tell him that this was being presented to the IYB Board and we were hoping to create a new committee. We were going to ask that the Board pass a resolution to send on to the appropriate committee of Council asking Council to play the central role in setting up this group and making recommendations of who might sit on it . David mentioned the only consumers he sees listed are the Rec Partnership Board. Curious if softball people might be interested. There might be sports groups that are interested in the fields and other groups would be interested in using the parks for other purposes. We should add a"User Groups"listing. It's hard to say what this will lead to. We will start open and look for the best solution. It's likely that our present system will not be the final solution This could lead to a county parks department,or parks and recreation, it's possible it could lead to a City of Ithaca/Town of Ithaca parks department, it's possible that the Rec Partnership might form an entity that not only oversees recreation but oversees the parks as well. There are lots of possible solutions to create a more unified system of ownership, planning, decision-making. Question raised if we should invite someone from the State Parks given the link with Cass,the Marina, Buttermilk? Bill mentioned that Carol Reeves is here locally and she is the new delegate from the State for the Parks Commission. Members feel she would be a great addition and is an informed person with much knowledge about the parks. Propose a request to Council Different ways we can do this: 1)a formal resolution to present to Council We will send some formal request to Council, it could be a resolution, it could be a request based on the prepared outline stating the YB Board has discussed the pros and cons of park planning and for these reasons is asking Council to proceed. We are now looking for a vote that this Board wants to request that this committee be formed. Brief resolution along with the outline. ACTION: a motion was made, seconded, and carried to support this proposal (adding to possible membership "User Groups" near top of the list) development of a supported park management and facilities plan with this enclosed outline. • Recreation Partnership extension—the City has agreed to a one year extension of the Rec Partnership at the same fees per each community in the county as last year. All of the other communities have agreed to such. This relieves some of the pressure of trying to get this done before this budget period. We will have an extended meeting Rec Partnership budget meeting on from 3-7 p.m.Wed., June 23`1 III. Report from GIAC Liaison—none IV. Report from School Board Liaison—Tim has been our liaison but has now left employment with the City to join the Tompkins County Sheriff's Department. V. Board Comments: • Joan Spielholz attended a Diversity Leadership workshop and found it extremely interesting to share ideas with other key political representatives from the County and Ithaca School District. Two more sessions will be coming up during September and November. • We want to thank Portia for her special dialogue presented to the group this warm summer evening. 0 Next meeting will be Monday, July 26th . There will be a summer break with no meeting scheduled in August. Adjourned 8:50 p.m.