Memorandum 14-170 HERC Needs Assessment

Memorandum 14-170

TO:                       Mayor Wythe and Homer City Council

THROUGH:       Walt Wrede, City Manager

FROM:                Julie Engebretsen, Deputy City Planner

DATE:                  October 27, 2014

SUBJECT:         PARC Needs Assessment

Recently, a few more questions about the needs assessment have come up; what about the HERC building, and why are we assessing art and culture. The purpose of this memo is to address them as time allows. A full project update will be presented to Council at the November 24th meeting.

The HERC and the Needs Assessment

With the decisions about the new Public Safety Building, there is also a discussion about the HERC building. These discussions will continue as options are explored on that site. The Needs Assessment is not going to answer all our questions about the HERC building, nor should it. The Assessment WILL provide our community and decision makers with information, from which to make these future decisions about the HERC.

The consultants wrote a little bit about the HERC:

“The needs assessment provides an opportunity for us as a community to step back from individual projects and look at the universe of PARC programs and facilities in the Homer area. This allows us to see where participation has been shifting among programs and facilities, and where the potential lies for new ways in how we coordinate our PARC amenities. It is relatively easy – and useful – to focus attention on a physical building as a future home for our community’s dream programs. The prospect of a physical space, helps us to imagine and define in very real, concrete terms what we hope to achieve. However, there may be other alternative spaces that could work as well or even better than a proposed new facility for the programming we are trying to maintain. These types of opportunities will be explored through the needs assessment, and will lead to better facility management down the road, whether for new or existing facilities.”

Art and Culture as Part of the Needs Assessment

(With input from Kate Crowley, ReCreat Rec)

Funding for the needs assessment was awarded after the budget discussions last year.  The Pratt was on the chopping block and the City was expressing the need to address the constant lack of funding for what they referred to as "extras". With the inclusion of the Arts and Culture community in the funding discussion, it seemed relevant to try and problem solve the lack of municipal funding from year to year. Also, the research and comparisons of Recreation Departments in similar sized cities are not just Parks and Recreation departments anymore…they include Arts and Culture. Reliable municipal funding for such programs helps to secure other sources of funding and can cancel out duplicity of asking and giving to such programs.