By vote of Cincinnati City Council, city administrators will analyze the pros and cons of combining the city’s parks and recreation departments.
Again.
When administrators make good on a council request made this week, it will be at least the eighth time in last four decades that the city has considered a parks-recreation combo.
None of the earlier conversations, launched between 1987 and 2024, motivated a merger.
And this one comes with new financial considerations: recent scrutiny of rec spending, huge maintenance needs in both systems – and a giant gap in their foundation accounts, with parks sitting on more than $22 million compared to just more than $1 million at rec.
The topic needs new consideration precisely because it keeps coming up, Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney said in putting forward a motion on it.
“We’ve had so many discussions about it … So let’s just get some information,” she said.
Long wants oversight, rec grilled over spending
Kearney’s motion asks for a city report, within 120 days, to look at cost savings and possible structure of a combined department. The report should also include arguments against a merger, her motion said. There is “really nothing going on” that inspired the motion right now, she said.
But it follows City Manager Sheryl Long’s proposal, introduced in June but not yet considered by council, to create a Department of Recreation in place of the Cincinnati Recreation Commission.
Long’s plan would put her in charge of hiring the department director, taking that task from its Board of Commissioners. The city manager, instead of the rec board, would also have final say on spending decisions.
The request for a merger study also comes just months after council members grilled Recreation Director Daniel Betts about overspending. Betts asked council to move $1.5 million between rec accounts last September after he discovered some rec centers had spent more than budgeted, mostly for wages.
Betts’ request, reduced to $1.2 million later in the year, set off a tense conversation about decision-making in the department. Shortly after, the commission’s chief financial officer was gone, according to minutes from commission meetings.
Park board president open to conversation about merger
When the city manager proposed a Department of Recreation, the president of its oversight board suggested it was time for a conversation about combining with parks.
“That feels like a better use of energy,” Leslie Mattie Rich told The Enquirer then.
Park Board President Molly North is also open to that conversation. “It’s always valuable to explore opportunities for greater efficiency,” she said in a statement.
Parks Director Jason Barron declined to comment through a spokesperson. At rec, Betts did not respond to two emails seeking comment.
Merger conversations have been underway for decades
City documents reviewed by The Enquirer lay out earlier merger conversations:
Some of the examinations led to collaboration – with the two entities swapping some properties and some oversight. In the 1990s, rec took over seven park properties located next to rec centers. Around the same time, parks took over eight rec properties adjacent to park sites. In 2011, parks took over all Ohio River sites, some earlier managed by rec.
Park Foundation dollars would remain with parks
The directors of parks and rec earn the same salaries. Both manage dozens of properties.
But rec has a larger overall budget and more staff. It also has greater financial need, with $165.6 million worth of deferred maintenance projects through 2031, according to the city’s latest budget. Parks need $89.6 million in fixes through that year, the budget says.
Perhaps most notable, however, are their foundation accounts. Cincinnati Parks Foundation manages $22.4 million in assets to Cincy Rec Foundation’s $1.1 million, their most recent reports to the Internal Revenue Service show.
Those financial realities would not change in a merger.
Foundation dollars, in particular, are often restricted. Park donations must be spent on parks and rec contributions must stay with rec.
“A combination will not significantly change how donated funds can be spent,” former Park Board Chair Jim Goetz wrote in a 2022 analysis about merger proposals.
The foundation does not take a position on how the city organizes departments, its leaders said. Foundation President and CEO Jennifer Hafner Spieser and Foundation Board Chair Lisa Caldemeyer Diedrichs both pointed to Cincinnati Parks + Rec for Wellness, which offers outdoor health programs, as an example of how the groups already work together.
Ozie Davis III, president of the rec foundation, could not be reached for comment.
‘Little to no cost savings,’ former official concluded
Earlier merger talks largely stalled over finances, documents indicated.
Backers could not, in the end, prove that combining parks and rec would save the city money, the Goetz memo said.
The 2010 effort, for example, “found that merging the two departments would result in little to no cost savings,” he concluded.
The park board opposed the idea then, telling city leaders that parks would still need the same number of employees to care for park properties and rec would still need staff dedicated to running pools and rec programs.
North, the current park board chair, said that is still the case.
“Most responsibilities of the two departments are quite distinct,” she said. “Combining two complex organizations may introduce more challenges than efficiencies.”
What parks and rec need most, the park board said in 2011, is more money for services and deferred maintenance. It suggested an earnings tax that never materialized.
‘People keep debating it,’ Kearney says
Kearney said she does not know if parks and rec should be one. “People keep debating it,” she said. “We just need to have some info to know if this is something we should even consider.”
Colleague Jeff Cramerding, who heads council’s budget committee, said he supports the investigation but warned of what might come next.
“This is going to be a big, heavy, citywide lift,” he said during the committee meeting. “If we go down the road, it’s a lot of hard work.”
Long, the city manager, has until the end of November to produce a report.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Eighth time a charm? Cincinnati to again consider parks and rec merger
Reporting by Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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By Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
