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Show r i i m I . . . , . 1 ' J ' ' I J 7 ; Steve Haugen Haugen settles into new post Steve Haugen, Park City's new Recreation Department director, has been on the job for one week. He has had just enough time to briefly look over the budget, to observe some of the department's classes and to try to get a feel for the community. And he is already starting to make a list of suggestions. For the most part, Haugen wants to study the existing programs before making any radical changes. "The staff has been doing a great job," he said. "Park City is really lucky to have Annie (Bowman) and Joy (Ras-mussen). (Ras-mussen). They've been putting put-ting in a lot of hours." But he does have some ideas of his own. For one thing, Haugen, who is an experienced recreation department director, would like to revise the format of the budget. "I'd like to change it from a line by line item budget to a program budget," he explained. ex-plained. A program budget, he feels, would give the department "a better handle for the accountability of each activity! Then we could really see whether a particular particu-lar class was labor or supply intensive, and how each program's revenue compares com-pares with its expenditures." "I'm stingy," he said. "I like to be frugal, especially with other people's funds." Even though he considers himself a little bit tight with money, he does not intend to scrimp on youth programs. He figures that if he is careful with the department's depart-ment's budget, he will be able to schedule more activities activi-ties in the long run. "My philosophy is that I would like to provide all kids' programs for free whenever possible," he explained. One of the first decisions he made was to drop the Day Camp tuition from $60 to $45. "I'll have to make that up somewhere," he said. "But I was worried that it was too high and that some youngsters young-sters who would benefit from the program couldn't pay that much." One of Haugen's priorities, he said, is to provide more programs for youth who are between 13 and 17 years old. "We seem to have a lot for younger kids and for adults but we don't seem to be , offering much for that age group." He pointed out that there is not much for 14- and 15-year-olds who don't have: driver's licenses. "They need to be able to meet in a healthful environment and we have a great facility here for dancing," he pointed out. "I want to provide programs pro-grams for those who really need it." |
