SOLEDAD — Soledad City Council has approved the creation of part-time employee position descriptions for the Parks and Recreation Department.
During the council’s March 17 meeting, City Manager Brent Slama said the city is close to making an announcement for their new recreation manager, but it is also planning on reopening facilities as the county progresses toward color tiers with fewer Covid-19 restrictions.
“The Red Tier allows for the opening of gyms and it allows for the start of outdoor sports,” Slama said. “Due to these tier systems, we may even be looking at basketball and other indoor sports.”
Slama noted many community members have reached out to the city asking when the community center would reopen as well as when various other recreation and sports programs would resume. This, coupled with the ability to soon reopen facilities, meant a greater need for part-time employees as staff.
“This is the next step in being able to implement these programs,” Slama said.
Part-time titles created in the decision were: Recreation Leader, Recreation Leader II and Recreation Program Supervisor. The most likely people hired to staff the city’s programs would be high school and college students, Slama said.
“Whether we choose to do summer camps, whether we do basketball groups or other supervised activities, we definitely need youth leaders,” he said, explaining that the city didn’t have classifications for such positions prior to the council decision, nor a salary schedule.
Slama said Soledad worked with neighboring cities to determine the designations. He added that the council decision didn’t come with a determined number of positions, as the exact number of staffers would need to wait for more information, such as the city’s budget for recreation.
“It comes down to the budget and making sure the recreation manager sticks to the budget,” Slama said.
Councilmembers and the public had no comments or questions, and the motion passed with a unanimous 5-0 vote.
