Cookeville Leisure Services Revenue Seeing Pre-Pandemic Figures

The revenue stream of Cookeville’s Leisure Services Department starting to come back strong.

Finance Director Brenda Imel said that the pandemic greatly affected the revenue stream, with last year’s collection just a third of its normal numbers. She said that it’s promising to see that people are back out and enjoying what the community has to offer.

“And I think for our employees, it gives them a sense of fulfillment too,” Imel said. “That they have more participants in their program, they’re doing  all this work to provide these services and to have people want to engage and participate in them, I think is good too.”

Imel said that she does not foresee the months with little revenue having an impact on future budgets. She said that this line of revenue is a small percentage of the overall budget. She said that the budget is part of the general fund which is funded primarily through sales tax and property tax.

Leisure Services Director Rick Woods said that the process to return to normalcy was a slow one. He said at one point no programs were offered at all and facilities were essentially shut down.

“We were limited in what we were able to offer at that point,” Woods said. “And some of our programs and activities were shut down a little bit longer than others. Dance programs, CPAC performances, a lot of different things that generally have a reliable stream of revenue and a reliable audience and participation, our fitness program went all online during that period. Slowly that came back a little bit at a time because we did social distancing when we first started to open again. So we were limiting the number of participants, particularly in camps and fitness programs, and at CPAC we were separating people and selling fewer tickets. So it was a slower reopening.”