A lengthy City Council agenda last week included the issue of
community and cultural center rental policies. While interest in
renting the facility
’s several venues remains high, the fairly involved cost
structure and the post 9-11 insurance atmosphere are obstacles to
signing on the dotted line.
A lengthy City Council agenda last week included the issue of community and cultural center rental policies. While interest in renting the facility’s several venues remains high, the fairly involved cost structure and the post 9-11 insurance atmosphere are obstacles to signing on the dotted line.
The center contains eight rooms, large to small, plus the community playhouse and an outdoor amphitheater, all located on a campus at East Dunne Avenue and Monterey Road.
Council committed, when the center was proposed, to making the facility as self-supporting as possible but the cost and insurance hurdles have reduced that possibility.
Since the new center now has a four-month track record to draw from, Julie Spier, recreation department manager, and her staff have been working to tweak policies and procedures with hopes of making the process less cumbersome and boosting cost recovery.
“The purpose is to increase rentals by the public and nonprofit groups,” Spier told the council, “not by increasing fees but by being more inclusive.” She hoped the proposed structure, if approved by council, would make the center more marketable to the community.
In a proposed rate structure change, instead of listing every cost separately and writing separate checks – for room fee, attendant fee, coffee, kitchen and security – the new rental structure would collect many of these items under one umbrella fee – less confusing to everybody, Spier said.
“People want the bottom line here,” she said. “Some fees, particularly those for nonprofits, would go down.”
The new rental policy would also consider special negotiated rates for certain circumstances, such as a large event that would use the entire facility.
Other alterations include room use categories, a modified deposit policy and a simplified security/damage deposit for some uses.
Insurance presents a separate boulder-sized hurdle that a change in policy won’t easily solve.
“Because we have no ‘history’ with insurance companies (claims for damages),” Spier said, “they hesitate to work with us and many won’t even give us quotes up front.”
Jack Dilles, finance director and risk manager for the city, said a particular problem is an ‘indemnification’ clause in which the renter’s insurance company promises to shoulder any future claims so they won’t end up in the city’s lap.
If renters are allowed to add an event-only rider to their homeowner’s policy (an increasingly rare event after Sept. 11) and the city has its own policy, the question arises about which one pays first should damage or injury occur.
The city wants it understood that the renter’s policy is first in line for lawsuits and claims but, Dilles said, most won’t allow that.
“If there is no non-contributory language,” Dilles said, “it becomes complicated.”
Still, the prognosis looks promising, according to Spier. In the four months, the center has seen 176 city uses and 78 paid community uses.
“We’re doing really well despite all these hurdles,” Spier said. “We’re almost on our projections considering we got started two months late.”
The center opened Dec. 7 instead of the planned early fall date.
“We’re trying to work through them.”
The policy update will return to the council agenda in late June when, Dilles and Spier hope, they will have heard enough from insurance companies to solve their security problem.
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