Othello council approves new summer youth recreation program

May 7—OTHELLO — The Othello City Council unanimously approved Monday the Parks and Recreation Department to implement a three-week summer youth recreation program in June and July for children ages four to 12 with a fee of $45 per child.

The new program comes after the city recently announced the Othello Community Swimming Pool's indefinite closure due to safety concerns. Othello Parks and Recreation Coordinator Valerie Hernandez presented the recreation program to the council during Monday evening's regular meeting.

"Following the unfortunate announcement of the swimming pool, we all know that did affect a lot of people, but we were on it," she said. "We had the Parks and Rec Department and some city employees who had conversations and we are set to initiate a summer youth recreation program with the approval of city council."

Parents would drop their children off from 8:30 to 9 a.m. and pick them up again from 12:30 to 1 p.m. The program is scheduled to run from June 17 to July 12 Monday through Friday with a week break from July 1 to 5 for Independence Day.

"The program aims to offer children a platform to engage in diverse sports and activities over three weeks through active participation," Hernandez said. "The participants will not only enhance their physical abilities but also foster social connections with their peers. Skills include friendship building, peer model observing, problem-solving skills, positive self-image and respect for others."

The estimated budget for the program is $124,000, according to the presentation agenda item, including the fee charged for each child and a free camp t-shirt provided to each participant.

"We are aiming to have school-aged kids aged four to 12 to participate," Hernandez said. "We would like to cap that at 200 kids. Parents will register through Sports Connect, and that's online; we already have a lot of our parents registered and using that."

Hernandez said the activities will vary each week and by groups.

"We would most likely divide our groups into three groups (and) have three activities to do," she said. "I would love to have this at Lions Park so that we can incorporate our new playground. I think the kids would be excited to use the playground as one of the activities to do."

Parks and Rec's goal is to include chalk art, coloring, watercolor, jump ropes, playground, rock painting and sports, such as basketball, volleyball, soccer, badminton and relay races, Hernandez said.

"I'd like to remind everybody that we do have the equipment for the sports," she said. "We would like to incorporate some creative stuff like art, coloring and things like that so that we can involve everybody and it's not just for little athletes. We don't want to advertise it in that way. We want to hopefully get a lot of kids involved, and not all kids like sports, so if we can include the other things that would be fun."

There will be one staff member present for every eight to 10 kids, according to the presentation.

"We would like to hire one program manager and two supervisors in addition to the program leaders, which would be teens," she said. "From my perspective, and talking to the committee and our other city employees, I would like to offer these positions to our lifeguards. Again, we are doing this because we don't have this option of the pool ... They also have their first aid and (Automated External Defibrillator) training; they would be ideal for me to have as team leaders with these kids."

Originally, Hernandez said she wanted to include free school lunches as part of the program, but the requirements are too stringent.

"Kids would have to physically show up and pick up their lunch, and that would be the difficult part for us," she said. "So that's where we decided maybe we can provide a snack of some type and then help the school district advertise that there is a school lunch program where maybe (the children's) pickup person can stop by the school district where they have their facility where they're going to be handing out those lunches."

After the presentation, the council voted unanimously to approve the program. Council member Denae Valdez was absent from the meeting and did not vote.

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com.