Emporia Rec Director Tom McEvoy was pleased to inform all members of the Emporia Recreation Commission Monday evening that the Recreation Center is looking strong financially heading into 2021
During the ERC monthly board meeting, McEvoy presented an overview of the ERC’s projected revenues and expenses for the upcoming fiscal year. According to McEvoy revenues are slowly beginning to pick back up after being down more than 60 percent last July. He says there are a few reasons for the uplifting outlook including the ERC halting certain capital improvement projects at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
McEvoy also expressed he had concerns back in December regarding the employee benefits fund potentially running out of money. Thankfully, McEvoy made the executive decision to move certain expenses out of the fund, specifically the rec center’s liability insurance which comes to roughly $1,400 per month.
McEvoy summed the report by simply stating, “we’re not going to run out of money.”
In other business, McEvoy and Assistant Operations Director Amanda Gutierrez discussed preparations for the 2021 5A State Basketball Championship tournament in March. According to McEvoy the ERC is planning to meet with the Kansas State High School Activities Association and Lyon County Public Health on Jan. 28 at White Auditorium to go over plans for COVID mitigation for when the tournament comes to town.
Gutierrez says she is very confident the tournament will be able to move forward thanks mainly to upgrades made at the auditorium in response to the pandemic over the past year.
As it currently stands this year’s tournament will take place Mar. 11-13 with only eight teams — top four girls and boys — attending. The current schedule will have two games on Thursday the 11th at 3 pm and 7 pm with the same schedule taking place on Friday. The only games that will be played on that Saturday will be the girl’s and boy’s championship games, however, the exact times for those games have yet to be announced.
McEvoy plans to have another update at the ERC’s next monthly meeting scheduled for Monday, Feb. 18 at 5:30 pm inside the Lee Beran Recreation Center.
