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Show Recreation Goes Back To Cities By TOM BISSELBERG FARMINGTON - Dispersal Disper-sal of county recreational monies directly to cities shouldn't have any impact on the program, school district officials said Monday. TELEPHONE interviews with the district superintendent, superinten-dent, business manager and physical education supervisor all painted that picture after county mayors were told last week the school district would no longer handle it. Com. Chairman Ernest Eberhard said the school district dis-trict was "returning recreation back to the county" and said the county-district programs for volleyball, basketball and the ski school will complete their schedules although it will basically be turned over to the cities starting next month. HE SAID the county doesn't have the organization to handle hand-le the program, that includes dispersal of about $4l.000the same amount as has left the kitty for the last five years, and noted individual cities are doing more, with many employing em-ploying their own staff and accounting capabilities brought on by growth. The county will continue to maintain its golf courses, tennis ten-nis courts and ball diamonds at Nichols Park, Fruit Heights, he said, adding, "We won't just drop the pieces. In the spring, the cities will pick up Softball," also indicating the county's budget crunch as a factor bringing the change. SUPT. LAWRENCE Welling Well-ing said he had met with the commission and asked "if it might not be appropriate" for some other agency to handle accounting procedures that included in-cluded tallying records and making out payroll checks. That process probably cost the district an estimated $10,000 in time from various district personnel, per-sonnel, business manager Roger Ro-ger Glines said. The superintendent said some cities are raising the issue of cost to use district facilities faci-lities for recreational programs noting, "They've always paid for thenv-that's not new. If they haven't been paying, that's been something leaking through the crack. Any city that wants to talk to us about that is certainly welcome to do o." HE SAID the district was handling any inequity by "keeping the records for those expenditures when the cities could handle it." Mr. Glines said the district follows a board policy that school buildings "be available for use of citizens for their educational edu-cational well-being" with charges set for community and recreational activities to cover the cost of a custodian and utilities. uti-lities. FOR A high school gymnasium gymna-sium that would mean $17 for the first hour and $12 for each additional hour and $10 per hour for shower use. In Clearfield Clear-field and Bountiful use of such facilities is traded for student swimming pool use, he explained. ex-plained. "We're trying to get this back (recreational funding) to where there's better accountability," accounta-bility," wiiii uti:s knowing their employees, etc. "We're not the culprits-we're trying to keep this thing running," Mr. Glines added. JAMES L. Hill, who oversees over-sees physical education, said the district started handling the accounting and dispersal more than five years ago at the request re-quest of some county officials since cities were using district facilities. "We discussed with the (present) county commissioners commission-ers that money they were supplying sup-plying had to be increased. We evaluated very carefully why we were in the recreational program and felt it should be handled by the county commissioners. com-missioners. They get the money and mutually we agreed they should take the program back. What business are we doing in the recreation business, busi-ness, anyway?" I. asked. |