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Date: 10/13/2021
NORTHAMPTON – In its first meeting since before summer, the Northampton Parks and Recreation Commission received updates from Parks and Recreation Director Ann-Marie Moggio about staffing shortages, potential financial hurdles and successes from the summer.
One of the biggest changes to staffing Moggio discussed came as a result to school start times because the younger students are getting out earlier than the high schoolers who worked the program in the past.
“The elementary schools used to get out at 3 p.m. and the high schools at 2 p.m., now that it is flip flopped, so the high schools get out at 3:30 p.m. and the elementary schools at 2:10 p.m., so we have programs that we have always run after school or on half days. Any of our staff we have for camps which are typically high school students we hold onto throughout the school year cannot do the after-school programs because they are still at school,” she said.
With changes to the middle school’s start time, Moggio said the custodians come in later, which means the before school swimming programs start an hour later.
“Because JFK is not starting until 8:30 a.m. the custodian times changed because they are now starting later and therefore, we cannot get our Rec programs into the pool at 5:45 a.m. anymore, we cannot get in until 6:45 a.m. and we have to be out by 8 a.m., so we are losing an hour,” she said.
Because students are getting out later, Moggio said the after-school programs start later as well and could be pushed back even further once the high school swim team begins practicing.
“Now that JFK is not getting out until 3 p.m. we cannot get into the pool because of the after-school programs until 4:15 p.m., which is later than usual. When the high school swim team starts, we do not really know what is going to happen because there practices most likely will not be until 4 p.m.,” Moggio said.
Because there is no weekend custodian, Moggio said the pool recently reopened at JFK has only been able to operate during the week and may only be able to continue to offer weekday programs until at least Thanksgiving due to financial concerns and a loss of revenue on the weekends.
“We have not been able to open weekends there yet. We just opened about a week and a half ago at the pool and we are going to be doing weekdays until Thanksgiving and then we are going to reassess with our finances because weekends are huge for income,” she said.
Moggio added that she may need to go to before the mayor and City Council to request more funds if necessary.
Commission member Thomas Dunphy said he was concerned the lack of weekend custodians could become a problem once basketball and other winter programs begin.
“I understand Central Services is down staff and everything else and on weekends especially but has there been any discussion with them about possibly having one custodian that is making rounds to the buildings especially as we move closer to winter when we have basketball. I think this is the time to talk to Central Services, the mayor, or whoever it should be about a custodian to maintain the buildings,” he said.
Moggio said the Department of Public Works (DPW) had someone help with cleaning the bathrooms for the summer camps but to maintain the pool she said the department would need someone with specialized knowledge for taking care of pools.
“We tried to do that in the summertime with the bathrooms and the DPW had a floater who did our camp bathrooms for us on overtime so we could have those open, but that is exactly what we need to deal with. It has to be a specialized person for the pools and for the gyms and opening things up and if we have supervisors, I would hope we can work things out,” she said.
Despite the concerns with staffing, Moggio reported positive news from the summer programs, including a successful summer at Musante Beach.
“The beach was amazing this year and we had quite a few rainy days and some wicked hot days but overall, the beach did really well. It was great, a lot of families, our camps were up there during the seven weeks they ran so things went really well up there,” she said. “Especially with everyone wanting to be outside with COVID[-19], it was a great spot.”
While other beaches in the area were closed due to E. coli concerns, Moggio said Musante Beach stayed open all summer.
Moggio said the summer camp programs were also a success and one of the biggest changes was the ability to offer free lunches to children that needed them.
“One new thing we did this year was that we were able to work with the school’s food service director and offer the free lunch program for our camps for the first time, which was really cool. Parents could opt in for the free lunch and it was for everybody. It was probably 40 to 50 lunches each day,” she said.
The Northampton Parks and Recreation Commission’s next scheduled meeting is Nov. 1.