At the top of the meeting Leo introduced Allain Joinville who has joined the department as the P.R. person and Maureen Maier who is working on outcomes and Philly Stats. Also Stu Greenburg who is currently serving as a Program manager will also be sitting in on the committee meetings.

As per Leo’s request the agenda will be emailed to the administration in advance for review and possible agenda input.

Kathy Black asked who else would be placed on the committee and stated that she would like to see complete management representation, which would include the reintroduction of Lisa Anne Kenny who is now back serving as a District Manager.

Budgeting Issues

15 facilities will be involved in Operation Welcome, a program which has been developed to increase/enhance the appearance of various facilities throughout the department. This process will include lobby beautification, painting of doors, walls and outside cleanups of the facility.

A $500,000.00 increase has been put into the Rec Dept. budget.
There will be no Camp William Penn, but $100,000.00 will be allocated towards disadvantaged children.

It was discussed that in a recent hearing in front of city council, Councilwoman Anna Verna expressed her concern about the disparity in the number of positions that had been budgeted for. The budget is for 517 but at the time of the hearing there were actually 460. The shortage was 47 in program and 10 in maintenance; currently 27 new jobs have been approved, 10 in program and 17 in maintenance.

Mary Hewston stated that each facility must prepare an emergency evacuation procedure which will go in a facility manual. Mary also introduced Mike Rudman (from Risk Management) to the committee. According to Leo the Policy and Procedures manual is still in the making. The Administration is involving DBH for violent incidents in the department at facilities.

Mary Kerr asked if the administration could provide a short list of things that the department could provide to the individual sites that would assist the staff in the case of some sort of incident (what to do when and after something happens). Leo did say that there will be something put out next week through the District Managers.

Leo brought up that for the next 3months the police will have someone on duty at 12 of the recreation centers in what are considered the challenged areas, during the time frame of 6pm to 10pm, Monday thru Friday. They will be preparing a plan for the pool season.

Leo asked Stu to work on having the Police Captains and Community Relations Officers to meet with Facility Supervisors. Leo said that he also talked with the inspector about gang related activities that had been occurring in the city and affecting the activity and the facilities.

Mary Hewston will disseminate a list of Comp Clinics in which staff should attend when they are injured at work along with a list procedures of what to do.

It was asked how would information be disseminated to the field staff and it was stated that the Health and Safety info will go on the individual District Meeting agenda in each district in which the Shop Stewarts would go over information.

Kathy stated that we should have a meeting with the Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and Leo thought that we need to be more properly prepared before going to that level.