The Bowling Green Parks and Recreation department’s $2.5 million budget is being used mostly for maintenance and personnel costs in 2017, according to experts.

Bowling Green has 11 parks covering 373 acres, meaning that “there’s a park within 1.5 miles of every resident in Bowling Green,” said Parks Director Kristin Otley. 11 parks require extensive upkeep, which is not cheap.

“Right now, we are tackling a lot of deferred maintenance issues with our aging facilities,” Otley said. “We need to continue to prioritize maintaining and taking care of the facilities and parks that we have, while also being adaptive to changing program interests.”

Aside from park renovation projects, Otley said personnel costs are automatically the biggest expense each year due to the size of the parks department.

Otley has served as the parks’ director since July 2015 and was the recreation coordinator for 18 years prior to that. According to Park Board Chair Jeff Crawford, Otley is responsible for preparing the annual budget, which is then approved by the board.

“The primary purpose of the board is to approve fees, but we like to think of ourselves as the eyes and ears of the community,” Crawford said. “We gather information about what the parks department really needs.”

Otley said that to determine the parks’ budget each year, she refers to the department’s five-year master plan, which is currently being updated.

Funding for the budget comes from a variety of sources. Some has come from a recently passed levy.

After the expiration of a $1.4 million property tax levy in 2015, a new five-year levy was passed worth $2 million.

“This was the first time the levy committee had asked for an increase in 16 years,” Crawford said.

According to a 2016 levy brochure, the cost of the newer levy on a home assessed at $100,000 is $61.25 per year, $18.25 more than the old property tax levy had cost citizens.

Can Bowling Green residents expect a similar increase in the coming years?

“It would be very hard to anticipate at this point if we will remain at the same amount or ask for an increase,” Otley said.

While the levy earns the parks department a significant 30 percent of its budget, the largest sources of funding for the budget are park fees and charges. The rest of the budget comes from income tax, donations and reimbursements.

Although having a bigger parks department requires large amounts of funding, Recreation Coordinator Ivan Kovacevic said that it is worth every penny.

“Having a larger department allows me to work in a situation where we are much more diverse in offerings with many more qualified staff to lead those offerings,” Kovacevic said.

Before he worked in Bowling Green’s parks department, Kovacevic served as Recreation Director in both Rittman and Rossford Ohio. As both towns have populations of about 6,000, their parks departments only had a fraction of the resources and staff of Bowling Green’s department, which currently has 18 full-time employees.

“I came here because of the size and reputation of the Bowling Green Parks & Recreation Department and because I have always loved the City of Bowling Green since my time here as a student,” Kovacevic said.

Kovacevic said that, while the department is typically very accurate in predicting how much money it will need, any money left over at the end of the year enters into a reserve fund to be used in future years on “operation costs and unforeseen expenses.”