The Crookston City Council held a budget workshop on Wednesday evening at the Crookston City Council Chambers at City Hall. The lone budget was the Parks and Recreation budget, and the discussion was two hours long, covering big items like the Crookston Community Pool, the Crookston Sports Center, and the parks in town.
Crookston Park and Rec Director Scott Butt went through the budget, which is being decreased by $200,000 from 2025 to 2026. “We’re trying,” said Butt. “I understand money’s tight for everybody, so anywhere we can reduce, we’re going to try to do that. And understand that we’re trying to be the guardians of the tax dollar and see what we can do to help.”
CROOKSTON COMMUNITY POOL-
The Crookston Community Pool discussion was about an hour long, and most of the discussion was about how much the equipment repairs should cost. So far in 2025, the City has spent $89,000 on equipment repairs, with some of the money donated by Fin and Fit. The budget for 2025 was $25,000, so the council wanted to double it for 2026. “They looked at raising from $25,000 to $50,000 for repairs of equipment with the idea that we will also eliminate $15,000 out of another line, and then we’ll look to try to trim another $10,000 out of another somewhere else in the budget,” said Butt. “I just think that to have a more realistic number for equipment repairs is a better idea. So as we’re moving down the line, we’re not having to close the pool at any point, and we’re able to do maintenance as needed. I appreciate the council’s willingness to look at that and say, yeah, you’re right, we need to look at this more from a realistic standpoint.”
The pool runs at a deficit of $250,000, and with the budget and more income coming in, it should stay the same in 2026, or possibly be better with more revenue coming in. “We are looking to increase our revenues even more, hopefully, we can start to reduce that number even more,” said Butt.
Councilman Dylane Klatt said he doesn’t expect the pool to make it five years, and they need to start looking at a plan for the future. Most of the council agreed, and the discussion turned into looking at a community center-type addition by the Crookston Sports Center.
CROOKSTON SPORTS CENTER
They had a lot of discussions about the Crookston Sports Center. They talked about promoting the building more. The Crookston Community Fund is buying blow-up games that will be used at the arena and could be rented along with the turf. “We really need to promote the Sports Center more, especially with what we’re going to be adding to it,” said Butt. “When we have the turf in, add the blow-up games that we’ll be able to have for birthday parties and stuff like that. So, we really want to push the publication and promotion of it so that we can raise our revenues that way, so it becomes more of a user fee than a taxable fee.”
Another idea to increase revenue was charging for open skating and open hockey. “The council came to me a while back and said you need to really look at how we’re going to increase revenues,” said Butt. “We haven’t charged for open skating or open hockey in a long, long time, and I think it’s just something that we had to look at. Not that it’s something that I want to do or anything like that, but we charge to get in the pool, so we have to look at all our facilities and say how can we increase our revenues, and this is one of the ways that we saw that would be a way to increase some of the revenues.”
Each department has a capital improvement project wish list, and Butt said his top priority was to repair the lights at the Ecklund Complex tennis courts. “We’ve kicked that can down the road for a long time. Those lights have been out for over half of them for a long time. And we hoped it was bulbs that we could replace, and it’s not. It’s the fixtures have gone bad,” said Butt.
There was also discussion of charging the Crookston Blue Line Club rent for the office at the Crookston Sports Center, which they haven’t done for several years. The Blue Line Club recently bought a skating treadmill and wants to put it in the community room at the arena, so they also discussed charging the club for the use of the room.
There will be another budget workshop after the regular city council meeting on Monday, September 15, to discuss the Community Development, Police, and Fire budgets. The final scheduled budget discussion will be on Wednesday, September 17, at 5:30 p.m., to discuss the Public Works budget.
You can watch the full meeting below-