District 205 administration said last night that they will renegotiate an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Galesburg over use of facilities for sports.
The current agreement was reached in 2014, but 205 Finance Superintendent Jennifer Hamm says their requests to use school facilities have increased this year to use multiple buildings on several nights a week.
Fees are waived per the intergovernmental agreement, but some cost would come back to the district, Hamm says.
Since the use would not be during school hours, District 205 would have to pay a custodian time and a half, coming out to around $30 an hour.
Hamm says fees are waived for some groups and not others and she asked the board for policy direction so she wouldn’t have to arbitrarily make those calls.
Superintendent Ralph Grimm says there was nothing wrong with the policy, it’s just this significant uptick in requests for facility use from the city.
Members Tianna Cervantez and Jean Ann Glasnovich were confused as to why the YMCA and city need fee waivers when they charge participants a fee.
“I’m sorry but that fieldhouse needs to be paying for itself a little bit,” Glasnovich says. “We’ve got a huge fieldhouse there that we could generate some money from the use of that.”
Grimm and Hamm both agreed they aren’t looking to make any profit.
Member Wayne Statham said this is a time for “building partnerships not brick walls” but said maybe there’s a way for 205 to get more out of the deal.
For example, Staham suggested asking the city for increased use of the Lake Storey Pavilion.
Grimm says he will be sitting down with the city and likely bring a proposed revision to the agreement.
