| 2/22/2005 3:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Hanover votes to restructure
parks department
By: Jenny Jones
Courier Staff Writer
The Hanover Town Council passed an ordinance to restructure the town’s parks department Monday night.
After several months of discussions with the current parks board and parks director, council members approved a plan to reorganize the parks department to include a parks manager, pool supervisor, custodian, maintenance staff, the town’s deputy clerk-treasurers and a parks advisory board. All the parks employees will be paid with $34,000 that is available in the parks budget for salaries.
The reorganization changes the parks department so that more than one or two people are responsible for all the duties of the park. As it is now, the parks director does a majority of the custodial, pool and grounds work as well as fund-raising and programming for the parks.
With the approved changes, the parks manager, a full-time position, will be in charge of publicity and sales, fund-raising, programming, overseeing rentals, filing work orders as maintenance is needed, keeping track of concession inventories and opening and closing the parks. The park manager will report to the Hanover Town Council, which will be the governing body of the parks. In the past, a parks board was the governing body.
“That was something a majority of the park board wanted,” council president Debbie Kroger said.
The pool supervisor will hire pool employees and manage the pool, concession stand personnel and lifeguards. The pool supervisor will be a seasonal position, running from May to approximately August, and will report to the parks manager, according to the approved reorganization.
The custodian will perform routine light cleaning of the parks building, including meeting rooms after events and rest rooms. This person will be an independent contractor, working 10 to 12 hours a week.
Parks maintenance will be taken care of by a maintenance staff that will include the town’s current utilities and streets employees on an as-needed basis, as well as an additional maintenance technician whose main focus will be the parks. The maintenance staff will report to the utility and streets supervisor and receive a percentage of their salaries from the parks budget.
The town’s deputy clerk-treasurers will also be involved in the parks. They will be responsible for keeping the books, scheduling rentals and showing the park building by appointment. The deputy clerk-treasurers, who report to the clerk-treasurer, will receive a small percentage of their salaries from the parks budget.
Once the job descriptions for the newly constructed parks department are approved, the town will advertise for the positions. It hopes to have the positions filled by the end of March, Kroger said.
Besides the paying positions, the parks department also will include a core advisory board, along with sub-advisory boards. The advisory board will be made up of community members who volunteer to help oversee projects such as programming or community events at the parks.
Members of the core advisory board will be asked to recruit others to the board and organize informal meetings. Narci Burress, a former parks board member, said she plans to stay on the advisory board and offered to help recruit other members to the board. “There are a number of people who were born and raised in this town who are very interested” in serving on the advisory board, Burress said.
The advisory board will be open to all volunteers and will be an informal group that has no governance over the parks employees. Members of the board will be able to give input on topics they are interested in being involved with and will have the opportunity to end their time on the board at any time, Clerk-Treasurer Ralph Seifert said.
Cable
The Town Council heard a proposal from Steve Biggerstaff of Cinergy/Metronet, which is interested in bringing its fiber optic cable infrastructure to Hanover to provide high-speed Internet access, cable television and telephone service.
In order for the company to bring cable service to Hanover, it must sign a contract with the town, which has jurisdiction over the local cable service. Currently, Hanover has a contract with Adelphia.
Cinergy/Metronet proposed signing a contract similar to the advisory agreement the town has with Adelphia. It would then offer high-speed service to residents in Hanover, excluding those outside of the town limits who are not in heavily populated areas, Biggerstaff said.
Cinergy/Metronet has made similar proposals to Madison and Jefferson County.
Members of the Town Council asked how much time they would have to consider the proposal. Biggerstaff said Cinergy/Metronet would like to have an answer as soon as possible. It would like to begin offering its services to the area by the end of the year.
The council plans to review the proposal and give the company an answer next month.
Utility rate analysis
The Town Council received a letter from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management offering to perform a water-rate analysis for the town at no cost. The town already had planned to hear a proposal from a utility rate consultant at its next regularly scheduled meeting, Tuesday, March 1.
Seifert informed council members of the letter it received from IDEM. He asked if they would still be interested in hearing from the rate adjuster during its next meeting or if they would want to only take advantage of IDEM’s proposal.
Seifert said IDEM’s proposal to perform a water-rate analysis for free was worth taking a look at, but that the letter did not say how long it would take for the department to perform the analysis or how comprehensive it would be.
Seifert suggested keeping the appointment with the consultant, whose company has handled Hanover’s rate adjustments in the past. “There’s something to be said for continuity,” he said.
Council members agreed but thought it would be a good idea use IDEM’s offer as a second opinion. Seifert said he would call IDEM to find out more about its offer.
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