Rec and Parks officials first said that as many as 10 centers not attracting private operators would be closed by December 31.
Staff currently consists of volunteers and interns and has raised $1,000 in donations. It proposes enrichment, sports and academic programs at the Hilton center in West Baltimore, with a small annual enrollment fee for children. There would be additional fees for arts and crafts and cooking classes as well as a summer camp fee of $225 per child.
The new bidders wereYouth Sports Programfor the Oliver center,Diamonds on the Risefor Hilton, andIsraelite School of Universal Practical Knowledgefor Parkview.
The few recreational activities provided by the group would take place on Friday nights (basketball, jump rope, hoola hooping and roller skating, according to its proposal) and on Saturday.
He will also teach thinking skills to &8220;the observated neighbrecreation center New round of bids for city rec centers gets feworhoods&8221; and provide financial planning seminars.
The second round of bids by private groups to run recreation centers was even less successful than the first round, throwing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blakes plan to save money by privatizing the cilities into question.
In a reprise of his rejected bid for Oliver, Leith Walk and Northwood in October, owner John D. Brantley proposes to move from a recreation-program paradigm to a safer and more encompassing service that expands with available partnerships based on financial reality&8221; and will serve &8220;as a improvement and creative relief&8221; to the city.
For months, the administration had hoped that an experienced operator (such as the YMCA) or a major institution (such as Loyola University) or a sports organization (such as the Orioles ball club) or another public organization (such as Baltimore city schools) would agree to operate some of the centers, which the city describes as obsolete and too costly to operate.
Here are profiles of the five proposed operators,recreation center based on a review of the material they submitted today to the Board of Estimates.
recreation center New round of bids for city rec centers gets few,City officials inspect the Greenmount rec center earlier this month. It was one of only five cilities bid on by private parties today.
Chief of rec bureau calls some city rec centers &8220;horrible&8221;
They were joined by two parties rejected in the first round John Darrell Brantley Financial Service for Oliver andPark Heights Renaissancefor Towanda.
The group projects a budget of roughly $140,000 a year, including a $49,000 salary for Tyler. The group hopes to raise funds from car washes, pizza sales and shion shows. It projects total revenues of $11,577 a year from grants and contributions.
2 Diamonds on the Rise (Hilton)
Photo by: MarkReutter
57,000 dollars plus 20,000 dollars=67,000 dollars. That&8217;s Oliver, Greenmount and 55,000 dollars from that vast sum to Thigpen, the CEO? What&8217;s left is a measly 12,000 dollars for the kids? Thigpen couldn&8217;t do it all himself. He needs help and it sounds like the help has to work for free.
Brantley would pay himself $60,00 to run Oliver and depend on grant funds from various groups to cover the operating budget.
On Saturday, after waking up to Baltimore&8217;s first significant snowll of the season, more than 200 people packed meeting rooms at the University of Baltimore for this year&8217;s rendition of the free-form arts and technology &8220;unconference,&8221; Create Baltimore. Ideas were spit-balled, the collaborators of tomorrow (perhaps) met each other and an assortment of topics were [...]
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I love the Brew. It brings to the subject of budget a &8220;Saturday Night Live&8221; dimension. If this is the state of private industry in the USA, then President Obama speaks from la la land about enlivening employment. Even the non profits are mostly about CEO pays. No private enterprise is really interested in the te of the poor kids of Baltimore.
1 Youth Sports Program (Oliver, Greenmount)
3 Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge (Parkview)
Instead, no major group has materialized.
The te of rec centers that the Rawlings-Blake administration pegged for privatization including Cecil Kirk, Central Rosemont, Crispus Attucks, Northwood, Solo Gibbs and Woodhome is up in the air.
Jack Young vents his concerns
The group has an all-volunteer staff and says it receives donations of less than $25,000 a year. It would charge fees for programs it runs at the Parkview center near Druid Hill Park, including $10 per session for martial arts, $30 per session for homework help and $80 per session for GED prep.
Fate of Many Rec Centers Uncertain
A meeting that was supposed to take place last week between WBAL-1090 radio management and &8220;Detour Dave&8221; Sandler to discuss the veteran traffic reporter&8217;s future was postponed, Sandler said today. In a Jan. 13 post, The Brew had reported on the planned meeting, amid rumors that the ailing Sandler was being dropped by the Hearst-owned [...]
The proposal does not explained how the group plans to bridge the yawing gap between its expenses and revenues outside of receiving a one-time $50,000 seed grant from the city.
The group,barber schoolFlorida Barber Schools with Career Training Overviews barberschools in florida (4)2011-12-13 13:59:16 founded in 2006 to provide a support system for substance abusers, ually abused individuals, criminals (adults and youth) and gang members, has outlets in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. Its director is listed as Holly Sawyer of Washington.
This is a resubmission of the October proposal by the non-profit community group headed by Julius Coln. The group proposes to continue and expand the rec activities at Towanda in northwest Baltimore and apparently would not charge youth for using the center.
Most of today&8217;s bidders said they would make ends meet by charging children and adults for use of the rec centers. In its Request for Proposals, the city offered to award two $50,000 seed grants for smaller rec centers and $100,000 for a rec center over 8,000 square feet.
The non-profit was established seven years ago by Shantel Thigpen. The group says it will maintain the current rec programs at Oliver and Greenmount, but charge $30 a week for children for &8220;after-school care.&8221;
Last month, the cityhanded overfour rec centers Brooklyn OMalley, Collington Square, Easterwood and Lillian Jones to three private parties over the objections of City Council President Bernard C. &8220;Jack&8221; Young.
All these private companies sound like they are already teetering on the brink of disaster. I wonder why they want to do it. Mitt Romney&8217;s Bain Capital was involved with Staples and now Staples through Oliver will be involved in an entrepreneurship program at a rec center in Baltimore if it wins its bid. Why does that sound like poetic injustice? Only because Mitt Romney&8217;s claims about job creation are horribly exaggerated and Oliver&8217;s proposed intellectual foray on behalf of Baltimore&8217;s students, at 60,000 dollars a year for Brantley the CEO, sounds more like a pipe dream than like achievable reality. Financial planning seminars? The man sees no conflict of interest in this?
The agency backed down after a public uproar and promised that all 55 youth cilities would remain open until the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2012.
Charging Fees to Rec Users
For its first year of operation, PHR seeks $50,000 in city seed money to supplement its $90,000 commitment. After that, the community group plans to use the annual slots allocation provided to the Park Heights Master Plan as well as funds from the Family League and Sinai Hospital.
Proposed rec center operator withdraws bid
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Groups slated to run rec centers have few resources
Towanda seems to be best cushioned with money from Sinai Hospital. Hospitals are squeezing the doctors and the patients but seem to have money for extracurricular activities. I suppose this would be considered a charity, community involvement and a tax deduction. Three fruits with one stone for Sinai. Bravo&8211;I&8217;d tell the city to go for that one.
SRB is wrong about the greater viability of the rec centers if they are ceded to private managers. Jack Young is right. She wants to turn her back on the poor children of Baltimore and in her canny way she knows how to dump those kids. She will invite the ilk of Thigpen etc to submit proposals. She will turn down many of the bids for the right reasons and then she will turn around and plead budgetary shortll for closing down the rec centers. She tried didn&8217;t she with the private bids? She certainly couldn&8217;t go with private operators who smell like fly by nights could she? Brilliant!
((UPDATE: The funds for more beds were approved, as expected, at the BOE meeting.)) The Baltimore Board of Estimates is expected to approve funding for an additional 25 women&8217;s and 50 men&8217;s emergency beds at the new city shelter to handle the influx of homeless between now and March 31. The new beds receiving funding [...]
Diamonds on the Rise will take a long time to be completely risen if one is to judge it by its budget proposal. Very reminiscent of the US Congress&8217;s fiscal shenanigans.
Some ofBrew&8217;sprior coverage:
The group projects total revenues of $104,712 during its first year of operation and expenses of $97,743.
4 John Darrell Brantley Financial Service (Oliver)
Below is the text of a press release issued this afternoon by RG Steel, confirming what Brew readers knew Friday morning. Still no word from the company about whether it has been refinanced by its bankers or found another source of investment succor to alleviate the &8220;liquidity crisis&8221; that shut the L furnace [...]
The paucity of applicants coupled with the scant financial resources of four of todays five bidders means that, at best, only a small portion of the centers originally slated for privatization will have a new operator.
Only three new bidders, along with two previously rejected parties, submitted proposals by todays deadline. City officials had expected a dozen or more groups to offer bids based on interest at pre-bid conferences.
Sheila Dixon couldn&8217;t have pulled that one off. The poor woman may have actually possessed a heart a little softer than the one ticking in the rib cage of SRB&8211;not much softer I admit, but a teeny bit softer.
The group, found by Elisa Tyler in 2009, specializes in enrichment programs and self-esteem workshops for at-risk youth.
Gov. Martin O&8217;Malley has scheduled a news conference this afternoon to announce that the Sparrows Point steel mill has reopened. None of this is news for Brew readers, of course, but the governor has been eager to show that he was active in helping RG Steel overcome its liquidity crisis, which led to the shutdown [...]
The fees from the after-school and summer camp programs will generate $57,500. The groups says it will raise another $20,000 from fundraising. The groups exact budget was hard to determine, but it says that a $55,000 salary would go to director Thigpen.
Low turnout on second round of bids throws Rawlings-Blakes high-stakes privatization plan into doubt.
5 Park Heights Renaissance (Towanda)
Each group was awarded $50,000 in seed money by the Board of Estimates.
To achieve this goal, Brantley will offer after-school math and science programs taught, he says, by the Baltimore City Schools and an entrepreneurship program taught by Staples, apparently referring to the office supply company.
The group says it will also operate a summer camp at $50 a week per child, with a $100 registration fee.