ROGERS — Annual membership fees for residents are scheduled to double Thursday at the Adult Wellness Center and more than double for nonresidents in an effort to make the center more self-supporting.
“This is the first time we have raised the rates since the center opened in 2006,” said Lesli Ossenfort, center director. “We started looking at increasing the $25 rate more than a year ago. We conducted a survey of our members and gave everyone the opportunity to express their feelings on the rate change before we took it to the City Council.”
The membership fee for Rogers residents will increase from $25 to $50 per year. The membership fee for nonresidents will increase from $25 to $60.
Aldermen decided earlier this year the fee for nonresidents should be higher than for residents. Aldermen didn’t want to set the new fees, saying the decision should be made by the administration, not the legislative body.
Mayor Greg Hines set the fees are based in part on what members of the the
center said during the survey.
At A Glance
Wellness Center Fee To Increase
The increase in fees is to help reduce the amount of taxpayer money needed to operate the Wellness Center. According to the 2013 budget, about $466,175 of the $876,175 operating cost comes from the city’s general fund.
Source: Staff Report
“The Wellness Center was never designed to be self-supporting. It’s for the health and welfare of our older residents, but as the building and the equipment age, it’s costing more in maintenance,” Hines said. “We felt we needed to increase the fees to take some of the financial responsibility off of the taxpayers and put more of it on the users of the facility.”
Members who are within 30 days of having to renew their membership can renew for $25 until Aug. 1, Hines said.
Most of the survey respondents agreed an increase in the membership fee was justified and the wellness center is still a bargain at double the fee.
Dwight Weinrich, a longtime member, said Monday the increase in the fee won’t be a problem for most members.
“You can’t join a gym that has all the amenities the Wellness Center has for $50 a year, it would be more like $50 a month,” Weinrich said.
Virgil Hamilton, also a member, said he isn’t concerned about the fee increase.
“This a great place,” Hamilton said as he sat in the center’s lounge drinking coffee.
“I enjoy coming here and working out with people my own age. If I went to a regular gym, I might be working out by some young man that can do twice as much as I can and that would be depressing,” Hamilton joked. “The rise in the fee is still a bargain as far as I can see. There’s no place like this anywhere else.”
There was a small surge of people renewing their memberships earlier this month, Ossenfort said.
“It wasn’t a bunch of people, but several people renewed their membership before the rate increase. I don’t think we’ll have too many surprised people after Aug. 1. We have been talking and working on a rate increase for more than a year and the volunteers at the desk have been reminding people as they come in,” Ossenfort said.
Scholarships are available to those who cannot afford the fee.