The Recreation Department is starting to put some formal policies in place for their facilities, and the locker rooms are the first to be tackled.
The policy, which would cover the locker rooms in both the Golden Municipal Swimming Pool, as well as the Golden and District Arena, sought the approval of council. It contains within it the ability to levy fines.
“At all of our facilities we have a lot of different procedures and rules and processes. However none of that is in formal stamped policy through council,” said Jordan Petrovics, manager of recreation services for the Town of Golden.
“A dressing room policy was the project of choice as it is more of a high risk area within our facilities. It is also an area that a fair amount of staff time is going into.”
The policy covers basic conduct and regulations for dressing rooms, and was drafted after examining policies from existing user groups such as Swim, Skate and Hockey Canada.
Some of the guidelines are:
-All youth under the age of 16 must have adult supervision during dressing room use.
-Each group is responsible for their own clean up, and glass bottle and containers are not permitted
-Alcoholic beverages are prohibited unless a the group has obtained a BC government liquor permit and approval of the manager of recreation services.
-Cell phones and other video recording devices are not permitted in the dressing rooms when the public are using the space.
-Dressing rooms are available 30 minutes prior to scheduled facility use, and must be vacated one hour after facility use.
Three written warnings, and eventually fines may be imposed on user groups who do not comply.
In the event that user groups continue to ignore the policy, staff will be permitted to evict them from the facility.
The policy is intended to provide “facility staff with clear direction and minimizing their conflict with users,” as well as to “provide clear direction to Council, Staff, and Facility Users on the guidelines for using this space for private and public events.”
Council approved the draft policy, and Petrovics will gather user group feedback at the All User Meeting for the Golden and District Recreation Centre. A final draft of the policy will be presented to council at a later date.
