By Chris Frost
Eagle Times News Editor
CLAREMONT, NH — The Claremont City Council received an update from Parks & Rec Director Nicholas Lawrence on Wednesday, Oct. 26, with key performance data about the Claremont Savings Bank Community Center.
The Community Center is three months into its new membership structure, and new members have increased by 192 between Sept. 30, 2022, and 2023.
“We had 1,110 members at this time last year, and it’s risen to 1,302 despite the implementation of the fee increases,” said Lawrence. “We’re looking at revenue increasing from 2022 to 2023. At this time last year, we were at $72,000 in revenue, and we’re up over $118,000 over the first three months of the fiscal year.”
He said 311 of the 1,302 memberships are new, around 25 percent, and three-quarters of the members have not been affected by the pricing changes.
“We will not understand the true effect of the pricing adjustment until July 2024 from a fiscal standpoint,” Lawrence said.
He said they are building a case for exploring different recreation software options with a possible 2024 switch.
“Possible areas of improvement include improved reporting, membership tracking, passes sold and registration information for our recreation programming,” Lawrence said. “We’re looking at speedier customer service; our current provider hasn’t been able to provide an account representative for over a year. That’s something that’s important to us.”
He said reduced training, support costs and a more user-friendly site for the community center are also a priority. The largest hurdle lies with the migration of a new system, though.
“We’re established with over 1,300 members at the facility itself, and that’s not including our recreation users,” Lawrence said. “We need a well-thought-out plan for 2024 for recreation software.”
Dawn Zombeck was promoted to Community Center Coordinator.
“For the past 10 years, Dawn has been a fitness instructor and a huge advocate for the Community Center,” Lawrence said. “Dawn has a tremendous rapport with members at the Community Center, and she’s eager to help our management team in a new capacity and achieve the objective put forth in the action plan.”
Councilor Jonathan Stone asked about the status of collecting debts from past memberships and if that process has begun.
“We haven’t. I’ve talked to the city manager and finance director, and we have a customer service representative in the form of a part-time position, which is Jamie DeRosa’’ role,” Lawrence said. “She’s been switched over to the city manager’s office, but our hope in the future, if we can possibly get it passed, is to up that role to a full-time role and put some more energy into that endeavor.”
Councilor James Contois asked how much money the Community Center is owed, and Lawrence said it’s $260,000 in unpaid fees spanning 10 years.
Councilor Nicholas Koloski asked if the city could use a legal remedy to collect past-due debts.
City Manager Yoshi Manale said he has yet to explore any legal collection remedy to collect those.
“We want to look at going to the new system first and then move from there and take it step by step,” said Manale. “Right now, our old system was part of the issue, and that was one of the major things we needed to fix. Our underlying payment system didn’t flag those people and allowed them to go still.”
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