The committee charged with remedying the Incline Village’s recreation pass and punch card ordinance could have its proposed changes ready for approval by April 9. Proposed changes include eliminating family tree language and regulating morning population at the golf courses.
Incline Village General Improvement District Board of Trustees’s April 9 meeting is the tentative target date to present those and other changes for possible board approval, according to minutes from recent Ordinance No. 7 committee meetings.
That date would meet the district’s deadline to be written into the 2008-2009 fiscal year budget.
Whether updated changes are presented by April 9 hinges on progress made at the committee’s next meeting, at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at 893 Southwood Blvd.
At the meeting, committee members are set to decipher the proposed changes in hopes of preparing an updated ordinance to meet the tentative deadline, said Incline resident Tom Bruno, who chairs the group.
“I’ve been a bit more optimistic at the meetings,” Bruno said. “We essentially came up with a proposal that was adopted at our last meeting.”
The committee, appointed by the IVGID board at its Jan. 9 meeting, first met Jan. 23. Besides Bruno, IVGID residents Matt White, Ginny Hestmark and Gene Murrieta; IVGID trustees John Bohn and Chuck Weinberger; and IVGID staff members Bill Horn (general manager), Hal Paris (parks and recreation director), CJ Johnson (director of golf), Ed Youmans (Diamond Peak general manager) and Linda Vail (administrative assistant) make up the committee.
Bruno, Weinberger and White drafted the proposal after hearing public and committee input on a number of topics, 39 of which are spelled out in the group’s most recent minutes. The minutes can be viewed at www.ivgid.org or in person at the IVGID building at 893 Southwood Blvd.
According to the proposal, one of the changes is to regulate the amount of recreation passes that have full recreation privileges. Parcel owners still will receive five recreation passes; however, only two can be used to receive the full resident rate discount at the Mountain and Championship golf courses, unless the other three users who live in the parcel are under 18 years old.
“Two of those passes shall come with all benefits available to that parcel, including full golf privileges (i.e., residents discounted green fees),” the proposal reads. “The other three passes shall have the same benefits except that they will not have full golf benefits unless they are issued in the name of a minor dependent child of the parcel owner or his/her spouse.”
Furthermore, the proposal addresses larger-family concerns.
“In the event there are more than five people in the owner’s immediate family (i.e., two adults and more than three dependent minors), then the owner may apply to the District for enough passes to provide all of its immediate family members with access to all otherwise available recreational benefits, including full golf privileges,” the proposal reads.
The golf changes are being proposed because in recent years the golf courses have seen a large morning golfing population and not as large an afternoon one, committee members said.
Currently, Ordinance No. 7 operates under a “family tree” principle, which essentially allows parcel owners to distribute their five recreation passes to any family members, including grown brothers and sisters.
By changing the language to give only parcel owners and minor dependent children full golf privileges, it should help ease the morning overflow at the golf course, Weinberger said.
“We want to make it so families that live together can golf together at the resident rate,” Weinberger said. “Now if someone comes in, like your grown child or your grown brother, you can assign them a rec pass, but without resident golf privileges.”
The goal of this change is to regulate the morning, committee members said.
“It’s more to do with providing the golf discounts to residents who live here, in the morning,” Horn said. “They can golf in the afternoon all they want.”
Some committee members want to rid Ordinance No. 7 of the “family tree” idea completely.
“We definitely saw that the family tree is very difficult for staff to implement, so we want to address that,” Weinberger said.
The proposal also addresses the distribution of recreation punch cards, something that also has grown to be a problem in recent years.
“There are two ways that a parcel owner may acquire recreational punch cards,” the proposal reads. “First, a parcel owner may trade any number of its recreational passes in to the District in exchange for punch cards. Second, a parcel owner may purchase any number of additional punch cards for 1/5 of the recreation fee each. Regardless of the method the owner uses to obtain punch card, he/she may never have more than three punch cards outstanding at any given time.”
According to the proposal, if punch cards are lost, they are considered outstanding, and residents must pay a cancellation fee to the district.
Another change would allow parcel owners to purchase a “baby-sitter card” from the district, which gives the holder all recreation privileges as long as he/she is accompanied by a child 12 years or younger who has a valid recreation pass. Another would give one-day beach use passes a three-week expiration date.
Bruno said the committee will work make the changes to the ordinance at Tuesday’s meeting in hopes of meeting the April 9 tentative deadline,
“Ideally, on the 9th, we want to send the proposal to the board,” Bruno said.