**CORRECTION**

Dr. Brad Gregory was incorrectly identified as the the executive director of the Colquitt County Educational Foundation.

MOULTRIE — Participants on the Recreational Panel at the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Eggs & Issues Breakfast gave insight into what their respective organizations provide to the community and the importance thereof.

Dr. Brad Gregory, was the moderator for the recreational panel which included Jennifer Buckner of the YMCA; Maggie Davidson, executive director of the Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Authority; Preston Jimmerson of Moss Farms Diving and Wayne Fuller, manager of Reed Bingham State Park.

Gregory, asked the panel to share some of their long-term goals for their respective organization and what their organization does.

Jimmerson replied that for Moss Farms Diving, it started with one man’s vision back in the 1950s.

“To bring a program to Colquitt County, Moultrie and the surrounding areas, where it could be an individualized sport where children would learn self-discipline, learn how to lose, how to win and they would learn how to work hard and try to attain and achieve their goals,” he said.

He went on to say that Moose Moss also figured out that he could send kids to college and the program now has a long tradition of doing just that. Five current NCAA coaches that have gotten their start in Colquitt County, he said.

“Going forward for the future, we actually just hired and announced, yesterday, that we’ve got a coach coming from Canada, Mr. Wing. He is of Chinese nationality and he carries Olympic experience,” Jimmerson said.

He added that their plan for the future was to continue to bring in the best qualified people they can to lead and grow their children.

Buckner said that as the YMCA was a fitness family for all, the biggest thing that they liked to provide for the community was outreach.

“How better can we serve and continue to serve the community, to continue to expand and reach parts of the community that we haven’t reached yet? To continue to meet those needs,” she said.

Davidson said that some of the recreation authority’s goals, now that they’ve updated their facilities, were reconnecting with the community and school system to try to reach populations that they’re not serving or who are underserved.

“Not necessarily related to poverty,” she added. “Think about our high school age students. Think about our adults. Think about those groups, our older adults.”

Davidson said they also needed to educate people about what the recreation authority was and added, “We’re a government organization. A lot of people think, ‘my taxes take care of that’ but it doesn’t.”

The authority brings athletic events to the community that affect tourism and bring in SPLOST dollars, and Davidson added that those dollars go back to businesses in the community not to the recreation authority.

She also said that they weren’t privately funded but pursued grants.

Davidson said that recreation has evolved and if any of the agencies in Colquitt County doesn’t evolve, they won’t stay relevant.

“A world with recreation and a world without that type of quality of life. What would it be?” she asked.

Fuller answered, “I think with Georgia State Parks and specific to Reed Bingham, our leadership in Atlanta has done an incredible job of developing an annual action plan specific to the natural and cultural resources that we’re able to interpret at our site.”

He added that they had the Junior Ranger program that ties directly into that.

“But I also think our longtime goal at Reed Bingham, specifically, is maintaining staff, getting a naturalist that can come in, get into our school systems and provide opportunities to our local communities that will self-sustain, ultimately, over time,” he said.

The next question that Gregory asked was, “How do you secure funding to provide the resources and services that you do to the community?”

“We do three or four fundraisers throughout the year. … We apply every year to USA Diving to host one of their three big events,” Jimmerson said.

He said that Moss Farms Diving applies every year to be one of those events and, historically, they have gotten one at least every other year but most of the time they’ve gotten at least one every year. He said they’ve hosted nationals on a big level.

He said the fundraising, for them, was the big one but they also charge monthly fees just like any other organization.

“Our goal is to try to keep it at the same rate as your local babysitter. So, if you take it per hour basis of training and you do all the math, it comes out to equal a fairly close amount. So that’s how we’re trying to keep our price down,” he said.

“We’re fortunate enough that the County, the City, the local authority, everybody has contributed to help us over the last 50 years,” he said.

He also said that they have a facility that’s maintained by the recreation authority and that was one of their most fortunate aspects.

Jimmerson pointed out Mayor Bill McIntosh in the audience and said that was his and Moose Moss’ brainchild, in the early ’90s, to use some of the community’s support in that way.

Buckner said, that as they knew, the YMCA relies heavily on donations and grants. She also said that they had a new development director, Beth Bates, who was doing an amazing job.

Davidson said that the past few years, the Recreation Authority has been focusing more on grants, which was a learning process all in its self. She said that they’ve had some success in the past couple of years with it.

“It’s really moved forward our ability to get our facilities up-to-date, bring in different types of activities to the community,” she said.

She encouraged the audience that when they saw the recreation authority line item on their tax bill to educate themselves on what the money is actually going to and how it’s making an impact on the community.

Fuller said, “So, again, just preaching self-sustainability, any of the allocated funds that we’re seeing from the General Assembly every year to operate our budget, we have been pushed with a good initiative to be self-sustainable within that.”

He said that he was happy to say that, this year, Reed Bingham operated completely in the black and their return on investment of their allocated funds was 113% internal investment.

“So, we made our budget back and then we generated 13% on top of that. We also have great individuals that go up to bat for us for additional funding for projects that we have on the park throughout the year,” he said.

Fuller said that they were encouraged to generate that revenue that comes in the form of capital outlay projects to update a campground. Recently, he said, they updated 22 sites and that had helped tremendously in generating additional revenue and securing funds for the next fiscal year.

Jimmerson said that he wanted to add one more thing on behalf of the recreation authority. He said that before the authority was created, the County and the City split the bill for recreation and when they needed budgetary relief, it was the quickest place to look.

So, he said, it becomes an issue where it’s easy to be a budgetary line item that’s scratched and it’s easy to be a part of the mom’s schedule that gets cut.

“But it’s actually the most important thing, outside of educating our children that we can do. There’s no other place your child is going to go to learn how to lose or fail in a safe place and become better for it. There’s no other place your child is gonna go and learn self-discipline,” Jimmerson said.

He said that it was such an issue for him that he would go to every budget meeting of the City and County to fight and they came up with the recreation authority.

“So, when you sit and you see that line item on your bill at the end of the year, please realize that was done to save recreation. To save your children and to give your children a safe place to lose,” Jimmerson said.