Partnering with the Y on its SkyView facility will allow North Las Vegas to continue offering recreation services, such as swimming, to residents. Photo courtesy of YMCA of Southern Nevada.

In the last few years, reports of municipalities cutting funding for public recreation facilities have become common.

“The recent economic conditions have caused a lot of jurisdictions to look at all of their operations—not just parks and recreation,” says Bill Beckner, research manager for the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA). “But parks and recreation in many cases are not seen as essential in comparison to police and fire services.”

Some municipalities have slashed recreation facilities’ services or hours. Others have reduced overhead by combining recreation departments with those that manage other community services, such as libraries. And quite a few others have found no alternative but to close facilities altogether.

Beckner says in most of the cases he has studied, the facilities that are picked for closure are older constructions that are more expensive to maintain and are underused because they cannot offer the same quality of comfort or services that their more modern counterparts can.

Recreation may be considered more elective than essential when it comes to balancing a city or county budget, but the public still wants these services. Increasingly, municipalities are looking to partnerships with private, nonprofit entities in order to meet that demand.

At press time, the residents of Delaware, OH, were considering a plan that would hand over the management of all its recreation programming to the local YMCA. Delaware, which currently subsidizes its rec department by about $350,000 annually, proposed partnering with the Central Ohio YMCA after learning that its state local government fund would be cut by around $500,000 over the next two years, according to media reports. City officials estimate that Delaware will save around $70,000 per year if the Y takes over. The Central Ohio YMCA and the city of Delaware have an existing relationship.

In 2008, residents voted to raise the city income tax by 0.15 percent in order to fund the construction of a $14 million recreation and fitness facility that will be owned by the city but operated by the Y. The Delaware YMCA Community Center is scheduled to open this fall.

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