Parks and Recreation

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 — Denver Parks and Recreation (DPR) presented members of Denver City Council’s Land Use, Transportation, and Infrastructure Committee today with proposed changes to improve recreation center membership benefits.  Denver Parks and Recreation staff outlined changes to annual memberships for youth, adults and seniors-moving the fee structure to a tiered system. With nine neighborhood, 11 local and seven regional centers, membership fees will be $15, $20 or $30 per month, respectively. This change will support a budget plan with tiered payments to help close a more than $4.2 million deficit in the 2012 Parks and Recreation budget.  Other changes include the addition of automatic monthly payment withdrawal, family memberships, young adult memberships, 15 and 30 visit punch passes and operating hours increased to 7 days a week.  Tiering of the recreation centers was based on criteria developed and recommended by the Recreation Center Taskforce. This criteria includes center size, amenities and hours of operation and prices.

In 2008, DPR put together a Recreation Center Taskforce which was comprised of community members, stakeholders and staff to develop recommendations for the future of recreation in Denver. After three years of assessments, an eight month taskforce process and 21 community meetings the taskforce developed four core recommendations for the future of recreation.

- Improve customer service
- Create partnerships throughout the system
- Implement a flexible staffing model
- Implement tiering of centers based on size, amenities and location

In addition, DPR will more than double the number of need-based scholarships given by rolling out an improved financial assistance program. This program will offer assistance through:

- The My Place Program
- Membership assistance
- Program assistance for youth 

Denver Parks and Recreation has 27 recreation centers, 16 outdoor pools, 13 indoor pools, community recreation programming, therapeutic recreation programming, outdoor recreation with high and low ropes courses, and youth sports programming. To review the current proposed fee changes please visit: www.denvergov.org/parksandrecreation

See full presentation here: (pdf)
Proposed Fee Tiering Model

New Fees (effective September 1, 2011)