MILTON — Throughout July, The Guy Thompson Community Center will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, allowing the community additional time to use the public facility a little more time each week.
Milton officials including City Manager Brian Watkins and John Norton, parks and recreation director, said this trial run could lead to a permanent change.
“We will see how it goes and if we can make it work long term, we will make it work long term,” Watkins said.
The decision on whether to keep the community center, located on Byrom Street, open on Saturdays will come down to the number of attendees who sign in upon entering.
“At the end of July, we will look at it and evaluate it and see if we want to continue on, whether it be month by month (basis) or make it permanent,” Norton said.
Based on the number of residents who sign in on Saturdays, Norton said changing its permanent hours is a real possibility.
“So far it is looking good,” he said. “When you are looking at 40 and most of these are kids, we are probably doing what we need to do. I don’t know what our other goals would have been, other than getting kids off of the streets on a Saturday and give them a place to come and play inside.”
The main obstacle in keeping the facility open on Saturdays involves having personnel on hand to oversee operations.
“This is not something that has come up overnight; we have been working on this for a couple of years,” Norton said. “The progress has been to staff enough people here, so that we can do that.”
Norton said the facility can be overseen with one person on Saturday with several of the senior activities, including pickle ball and bridge, requiring little to no supervision from staffers.
“Those are programs that run themselves, and they don’t require much oversight,” Norton said.
As for a potential in having regular Sunday hours of operation, Norton again said the issue comes down to staffing.
“I think if we do go into a Sunday with a staff that we got, we would probably have to look to add another person which would require more money,” he said.
“As it goes right now, there is no extra money in the budget.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Community center testing Saturday hours