Two more audits are pending for BREC as it gears up to promote its Imagine Your Parks 3 plan.
BREC Superintendent Corey Wilson told the Metro Council earlier this week that BREC’s 2022 financial records have been submitted to auditors and their review is underway. As soon as that one is complete, he says, records for the 2023 audit are ready to be evaluated.
BREC hired the accounting firm EisnerAmper LLP to perform the audits. Wilson says the agency has been told that the 2022 audit would be completed by October. The hope is to have all audits, including the 2024 audit, done by June 30, 2025.
Findings in the long-delayed 2021 audit threaten to overshadow BREC’s campaign to promote a November tax renewal that will fund BREC for the next 10 years. Wilson presented the Imagine Your Parks 3 plan to the Metro Council, highlighting areas of need and challenges.
But questions raised at that gathering focused on that audit―the first released in nearly three years. Among the findings: three instances of misappropriation of BREC funds for the 2021 fiscal year.
“Some of that was within our control, such as the reconciliation of bank accounts,” Wilson noted. “Some of it wasn’t in our control. When are the auditors available? We had an untimely death of a CFO, and so there were challenges. We take our responsibility as stewards of taxpayer dollars seriously and we know our success is based on the trust of the community, and that audit is one piece of that trust.”
At the meeting, Wilson also acknowledged potentially controversial aspects of the master plan itself.
“We have some challenges when we talk about old facilities and revitalizing old facilities and some of those challenges,” Wilson told the council. “These new and exciting things don’t come with a bag of maintenance money. We still have the same maintenance dollars to maintain everything, so we have to shift these dollars around.”
Compared to similar park systems in Atlanta, Seattle and Minneapolis, Minnesota, BREC has more recreation centers, sports fields, basketball courts and playgrounds.
Wilson says that abundance of amenities burdens the system in maintaining the inventory.
BREC has 56 recreation centers―38 more than the average park system its size. Twenty-seven centers are at least 30 years old, and three are over 50 years old. BREC conducted a survey that showed 72% of the people supported fewer but higher-quality facilities.
To that end, the master plan recommends repurposing 10 to 15 recreation centers over the next 10 years.
“The recommendation is to go to a tiered model where you have not only different size recreation centers, but some of those recreation centers are coming offline to allow us to provide better quality while maintaining a high level of service,” Wilson said.
Tier 1 centers would be a larger facility serving a broader area. In contrast, a Tier 2 facility would serve as a destination for a local neighborhood and would include indoor centers and outdoor recreation hubs.
Read the full Imagine Your Parks 3 proposal.
