Council Approves Fees for New Summer Aquatics Programs

Sierra Madre’s City Council on Tuesday approved a fee schedule for a suite of new classes to be offered by the City’s Aquatics Program beginning this summer. The new classes include a Water Aerobics class as well as group and private swimming lessons.

At issue was both the growing desire in the community for these classes, as well as the potential recovery of costs to the city by way of the proposed fee schedule.

The addition of the Water Aerobics class came at the suggestion of the Sierra Madre Senior Community Commission and “many senior patrons” who have asked for such classes to be offered at the city pool, according to Director of Community & Personnel Services Elisa Weaver, who presented the new programs and fee schedule to the City Council on Tuesday, May 24.

“This is something that the seniors have been greatly pushing for; it’s a program that we had about ten or 15 years ago and it was popular at the time,” Weaver said in her presentation to the Council. “We did not have someone to teach it for quite a while but we’re going to train somebody for this summer.”

The Water Aerobics classes, which consist of low-impact aerobic exercise in shallow water, will be held at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings starting June 13 and will cost each participant just $5 per session.

Weaver said she expected the classes would be able to accommodate between 10 and 15 people at a time.

The $5 cost for the Water Aerobics program is a far cry from the full cost the city in expected to incur by holding the classes, which comes in at $49 per person, according to staff reports.

Similarly, two other new programs, including private and semi-private swim lessons, do not fully recover the full cost of offering the services. The fees for private swim lessons are set at $55 per session and semi-private lesson fees are $25 per student, while the expected cost to the city for each of these is $110.

“These prices will cover the cost of the staff and the way that they’re set they would not increase the subsidy that goes to the aquatics fund; it may decrease it some,” Weaver said.

Addressing the difference in the estimated cost to the city and the proposed fees, Council Member Joe Mosca asked Weaver to explain how staff had arrived at the proposed fees.

“When we look at 100 percent [cost recovery], we’re looking at the direct and the indirect costs. And then the fees that are recommended are lower, and they’re significantly lower,” Mosca said. “Do the fees recommended by staff represent fair market value? How did we arrive at those?”

Weaver said that the proposed fees did represent market value or were “just slightly under, to give us that edge.”

Weaver said that factors such as part-time employee base pay, worker’s compensation,, and “anything that we would pay directly to the employees” and that indirect costs, such as that of full-time staff and facility costs were considered, though not completely recovered.

In her staff report, Weaver further explained the reason for the cost differentiation by saying that “the increase in programming assists in spreading out the fixed costs associated with operating the pool”