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Date: 2/25/2016
EAST LONGMEADOW – Director of Recreation Colin Drury was recently named president elect of the Massachusetts Recreation and Park Association.
“It’s an absolute honor to be elected as the president elect for our state association,” Drury, who has been working as a recreation professional for the past decade, told Reminder Publications. “It’s going to be a lot of work. It’s a full year presidency and I have a lot of goals.”
He added some of his goals include growing membership for the association, which consists of about 200 park and recreation professionals throughout the Commonwealth.
Drury said his role as president elect of the organization means that the town as at the “forefront legislatively” for recreation needs.
“We get to be in the first line,” he explained. “We get to have all the information first. We get to have our word and we can actually almost fight for Western Massachusetts … Many people think that Massachusetts ends in Worcester. You can’t forget about us western siders. It just means that we’re more connected to the other side of the state, which in some cases I feel we’re not.”
Drury said one bill working its way through the Legislature would allow a community to save more money in unallocated funds. Currently there is a $10,000 limit for recreation departments across the state regarding savings of undesignated money in a department’s revolving fund.
“It looks like they’re going to expand that and actually completely get rid of a cap, which would then allow a community a little bit more control over larger projects,” he added. “What it could do is have a recreation director like me advocate to our [Board of Selectmen] or form of government on saving money for lights for Center Field or saving money for a renovation project of a baseball field.”
The department could add a small fee on registration fees, which would “go towards the advancement and betterment of facilities.”
He said the association has been a part of making Christian’s Law – a mandatory requirement to provide lifejackets to all children attending waterfront facilities that recently became a law – a reality.
“It doesn’t really affect the town of East Longmeadow because we don’t have a waterfront facility, but many recreation departments around the state do have a waterfront facility,” Drury explained. “If you have a camp and if you have 100 kids at your camp, then you have 100 lifejackets at your camp.”
Another duty of the president elect of the organization is to plan its annual conference and trade show, Drury said. He will be planning the 2017 event. This year’s meeting of recreation officials and vendors would be located on Cape Cod.
“We bring over 200 professionals to one site at one time and we take the time to bring in professionals from around the country to present on various topics,” he noted. “We also invite about 60 different commercial vendors and give them the opportunity to meet with professionals.”
He continued, “The nice part of being a professional there is that you have 60 vendors in one spot. It saves us as directors a ton of time. If we have either brand new ideas or we’re looking into a new piece of equipment, we can check out five, six, seven vendors all at one time.”
Expanding the conference and trade show is one of his goals as well.
Drury said a similar association in Connecticut has a vendor hall twice the size of his organization during its annual conference.
The Connecticut organization has seen financial growth and increased recreational professional attendees in recent years.
He explained he would like to see that level of growth for his organization.