Background:

The Parks & Recreation Director Ken Sherbenou requested an audit for the Leisure Service Representative (LSR) position held by Jennifer Howard and Matthew James as part of the 2023 budget. The basis for the audit is the duties and responsibilities have increased in scope and complexity.

Changes to Position:

Over the past years, the Parks and Recreation Department has expanded their facilities, programs, and staff to better serve the community. As the department has grown, the position has become the main point of contact for all citizens, businesses and employees regarding Parks and Recreation matters. These changes resulted in higher level administrative duties being shifted to the LSR team. It is the expectation this position handles all routine questions and processes independently and only escalates non-routine questions to other staff. Examples of more complex duties are illustrated below.

The LSR team now oversees the approval of food vendors (trucks, trailers, and booths) for the City of Grand Junction, Mesa County, City of Fruita and the Town of Palisade. This includes communicating with food vendors, collecting required documents, working with multiple City and outside agency departments and maintaining and updating related information on the City’s website.

The LSR team oversees the commercial use permit process for individual citizens and business owners who want to conduct activities or business on City property. The team reviews applications, verifies sales tax, collects insurance documents, determines eligibility, and issues available permits while managing overall availability for the entire parks system.

The team is responsible for managing the Tivity and United Healthcare systems contract which provides recreational access for members to use the department’s fitness programs and facilities. Managing the contract includes evaluating insurance qualifications, tracking usage, submitting monthly reports and reimbursement requests, and distributing funds received into appropriate general ledger accounts.

As the summer camp program has grown, the LSR team has been given the responsibility of distributing tax forms for dependent care expenses for 900+ participants. In addition to normal tax mailings, the team is required to create tax forms from scratch for approximately 60 families who participate in the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). This task requires the team to understand the federal dependent care laws and regulations to answer families’ tax questions regarding forms and why certain camps don’t qualify.

As the summer camp program has grown, the LSR team is tasked with maintaining summer camp records for 2500+ participants. One of the main components of these records is maintaining immunization records for each child. The City is audited annually to ensure immunization records are accurate and within state guidelines. Errors in record keeping could cause the City to lose its daycare license. The LSR team must be certified annually to be up to date on any changes to immunization requirements. The LSR team is required to understand the immunizations required for each age and interpret out of state immunization records and determine how they meet or don’t meet Colorado state regulations to attend a licensed childcare program.

The LSR team manages the City scholarship program, which waives a percentage of registration fees to attend recreation programs based on qualification through food stamps, TANIF, foster care participation and hardship. The team independently reviews and interprets statements from the Workforce Center, court documents, emergency custody documents, police reports, bank statements and tax documents to make eligibility decisions.

The LSR team spends a great deal of time creating and managing individual contracts with large user groups (CMU, School District, Fire FC, Grand Junction Rockies, and Grand Valley Lacrosse). Each contract is different and must include the correct fee, reservation times, and maintenance schedule. There are always more requests from user groups than can be accommodated within the parks system. The LSRs must be able to have tough conversations and negotiate with user groups to accommodate as many requests as possible. In addition, the team monitors usage and invoices and bills customers. The intergovernmental agreement with the City and Mesa County for the Veterans Park and Long Park facilities requires the team to work directly with Mesa County staff to oversee facility reservation, and billing per the agreement.

Internal Alignment:

Insufficient market data was available, therefore internal alignment was analyzed. At this time, the Leisure Service Representative is aligned 10% below Customer Service Representative; grade 60, $18.85 - $24.51.

In reviewing positions for internal alignment, the Customer Service Representative (CSR) job description was analyzed. Both the CSR and LSR positions require a high school diploma or G.E.D. The CSR position requires one year of general accounting and/or customer service experience and the Leisure Service Representative position requires two years of increasingly responsible administrative and/or customer service experience. Both positions are expected to handle their tasks independently, have difficult conversations with customers, collect payments and respond to inquiries related to accounts and billing. The CSR job description did not contain any job duties more complex or higher level than duties listed in the LSR job description.

Recommendations:

Based on my review of the Leisure Services Representative position, I recommend the position be reclassified equal to Customer Service Representative; grade 68, $20.82 - $27.07.

Matt James was hired into the position in April of 2015 and is currently earning $22.51, Step 7. Jennifer Howard was hired September of 2020 and is currently earning $18.85, Step 1. I recommend Matt’s pay be adjusted to $24.86, Step 7, and Jennifer’s pay be adjusted to $20.82, Step 1, on the recommended pay scale. This change would result in a 10.4 % increase in pay for the incumbents. I recommend both be eligible for the annual step increase payable in April 2023. The recommended effective date for this change is 2/5/2023, pay period 4.

In anticipation of the job audit completion, a placeholder of $121,913 was added in the 2023 budget. The recommended changes would result in an additional $2,647 to the general fund.

In addition, it is recommended the job title be updated to Recreation Customer Service Representative as the term “leisure” is no longer used in the Recreation industry.