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AP Community Center Costs Raise Questions

File photo

Friends play black jack at the Avon Park Casino Night in 2007 at the Avon Park Community Center. The Avon Park Community Center has been used over the past years for several events, including casino night.

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: February 19, 2008

AVON PARK — The Avon Park Community Center cost the city and its taxpayers an average of well over $10,000 every year since it opened at its current location, city records indicate.

For all but one year since record-keeping began on the community center, expenses were considerably higher than revenues. This is without considering the damages the building received during the 2004 hurricane season.

Last week, the community center's losses led at least one councilman to compare it to the city's airport, accusing both of losing money each year.

"We need to either get rid of it or do it right," Councilman George Hall said Monday.
Hall blamed the center's losses partially on the lack of advertising for it. He added that there was not even an information box placed there.

"We just sort of think everyone knows what's going on," Hall said.

Council members Joe Wright and Brenda Gray did not have as strong an opinion on the community center.

"I haven't really thought about it," Gray said.

"Everything's on the table but this is a comprehensive issue," Wright said, referring to the budget crunch that provoked Hall into bringing up the community center last week.

Calls and messages to Councilman Al Joe Hinson and Mayor Sharon Schuler were not immediately returned.

Interim City Manager Sarah Adelt said that the community center was not meant to make a profit.

"No one ever thought the community center would ever make money, but at the same time, no one wants to see it lose money," Adelt said.

She suggested the city could either begin marketing it more or using it less, but she did not say what the city could market it to if it began such a campaign, nor did she say that the city would begin any such effort.

The building that became the community center was bought for $209,000 in 1998. It then went through a $515,500 renovation before the city began using it. City Finance Director Renee Green said it was purchased directly and there were no loans involved.

City Records Clerk Cheryl Tietjen said that the center is typically used for wedding receptions, baby showers, birthday parties, graduations and banquets among the locals.

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