APRIL 2024
GVREC.ORG
Reservation Policy Changes At their regular February 28 meeting, the Board of Directors adopted significant changes to room reservation and facility use policies by unanimous vote. The Board Affairs Committee (BAC) had worked with staff on four iterations of the policy changes before recommending them to the Board of Directors. Where do these changes come from? Why is change needed? The BAC’s job is to clean out and stock the GVR policy fridge on a regular basis. The facility use policy was long overdue. The policy was missing important elements, causing conflict between members (pool-side music, for example). In other cases, staff had developed approaches to member demands without a clear policy to regulate those approaches. Over time, any policy, like a refrigerator, tends to collect relics that seemed like a good idea at the time but eventually spoiled. Most of the facility use policy clean-up efforts were made with two goals in mind: manage resources better and improve member access to the facilities. Previous policy had failed to adequately prioritize recreation opportunities available to all members. As a result, nearly 40% of the 2,305 reservation hours last month were dedicated to private parties and activities. Many of those private activities (340 hours) were small groups of people getting together to play cards or games. In some cases, reservations were made for solo individuals to occupy rooms multiple times per week
to pursue their personal interests. This abundance of private bookings creates two problems: it is very difficult for members to find open rooms for drop-in use, and the resource demand on the staff team is impressive. Each reservation involves three to four staff members—one to process the reservation and get it “in the system,” another to contact the reserving party and document their needs, another to set up the room, and often a fourth to tear down and tidy the room for the next users. That’s a big chunk of payroll to dedicate to small groups of people who want exclusive use of a space to play cards or do yoga together a couple of times a week. Some of the more significant policy changes are designed to address these problems:
• This summer, staff will establish “static” set-ups in rooms
where it makes sense (many of the satellite centers, for instance). Members using those rooms will be free to rearrange the space as needed and will be expected to return the room to the established static setup at the end of their activity.
• Three-month groups—those smaller private groups who make recurring reservations for up to three months at a time—will be limited to one reservation per week for a maximum of four hours each.
• Private events (often socials) will be limited to one every other month. This does not apply to GVR clubs since no GVR club is private—all clubs are open to all members.
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