9.1sr Superitendent's Report 4-22-2024

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Senior Facility Worker We are very pleased to share that our new full-time Senior Facility Worker, Sam Hansen started March 18, 2024. The last day for the part-time staff that had been doing facility cleaning was March 15, 2024. Sam has been a very positive addition to the staff. We are seeing significant improvements in facility cleanliness, preparation, and maintenance since Sam has been on board. Thumbs Up Partnership On March 19, staff met with Katie Shatusky and Kate Swanson from Thumbs Up, a local foundation that provides a variety of mental health services and resources for the Elk River area community. Thumbs Up is interested in establishing an afterschool/summer program for middle and high school students at the FT Center. We had a good conversation, explored several options for creation of a middle school/high school afterschool program and agreed to continue to pursue avenues to support a program of this type at the FT Center. Additionally, we began to lay the groundwork for a large Thumbs Up fundraising event here at the FT Center. Figure Skating Clinic On March 22-23, the FT Center hosted a figure skating clinic that featured Olympic and world class coaches from around North America. The clinic focused on jumping and spinning skills and was facilitated by the Elk River Figure Skating Club. It was an honor to host this prestigious group of coaches! The FT center drew rave reviews from the coaches who praised the cleanliness and functionality of the facility, along with the hospitality of the staff. Summer Ice As you may recall, we faced a challenge with our summer ice schedule due to multiple users desiring the same limited ice in August 2024. We are happy to report that we have been able to resolve this issue by negotiating a change in schedule with one of the users. Below you will find information outlining this scheduling challenge that was shared previously. In the fall of 2023, it became apparent the demand for summer indoor ice had risen to the level making it financially advantageous to operate both sheets of ice throughout the summer. To this point we have taken the ice out of one of the arenas for the summer months. Budgetary goals were set to sell an additional 200 hours of offseason ice and significant efforts were made by staff to sell those added hours. Happily, ice bookings quickly exceeded the 200 hour mark! Later, some opportunities that aligned with our facility mission came to us, the premier event being the Taste of Elk River, hosted by the Elk River Rotary. To accommodate these dry floor opportunities, we revised the schedule for summer ice in Cornerstone for a few weeks in August. By this point, we had committed one of the two planned ice sheets to a new ice sale opportunity. Most of these scheduling challenges caused by the reduction to one sheet were able to be resolved with relative ease, however, August 5-9, involves some particularly challenging scheduling issues impacting Two Brothers Hockey. We are still working to find a workable solution to accommodate multiple users. We are presenting some creative solutions that would involve collaboration between Two Brothers Hockey and the camp schedule for that week. Community Center Article Included you will find an article published March 11, 2004, by the Star Tribune. The article explores Community Centers in the Twin Cities metro area and some of the unique challenges communities face regarding the operation and management Community Center Facilities. Rental Patron Feedback We have again received some very complimentary feedback from recent facility users. Some of those emails have been included with this report. Social Media Reports Attached are the FT Center Social Media Reports for February 2024 and March 2024.