Apr 2 2026

Mar 26 MBA board meeting notes:

See also the VI Consortium’s coverage: Magens Bay Authority Weighs Food Truck Proposal for South End of Beach.

• Discussion of approval of Jan minutes

  • The official minutes are now the full transcripts, rather than the summary

  • One board member noted they are too lengthy to review, and that they will not review the minutes unless they go back to shorter summary

• BP’s comments on Ms Simon’s report

  • Concerned about decline in number of children, both resident and non-resident, going to the beach - want children to use Magens

  • Bathhouse renovations & reimbursements are going well

  • Magens will have an employee of the year [I didn’t catch the context but I think this means someone from Magens is being honored as one of the government employees of the year?]

• Made note of the unusual meeting time this month: thought it was important to meet sometime this month, because likely not going to have time to meet in April between Seatrade and Carnival

• Board retreat still hasn’t happened and needs to happen

  • BP will provide the board with 3 possible dates in Jun/Jul

  • As one recent example of need for meeting, recently tried to determine the duration of board terms [I think this refers to the duration for specific board positions] and couldn’t, so need to make sure the bylaws are amended

  • More generally, things to discuss for MBA planning the next ~10-15 years

• Ms Simon’s report on operations

  • ~75K visitors/year

  • Responding to concern about number of children

    • On high cruise ship (long-line) days, a lot of children don’t get tallied since they have free entry

      • Request from board to change that so they can get more accurate data

  • Question from board about bathhouse reimbursements from feds in light of DHS shutdown

    • Magens is not impacted, still receiving reimbursements on track

• CdY’s report from finance committee [sorry, that’s all the detail I recorded in my notes]

  • RFP open for financial advisor

  • Union contract

  • Capital projects

  • Payroll changes

  • Converting 7 MBA employees to fulltime status (as of last month)

• DB’s report from labor negotiations committee

  • Collective bargaining agreement

  • Determine financial bargaining position

  • Collective bargaining agreement expires Sep 30, intend to negotiate for the next 4 year agreement

• Unfinished business

  • Town hall still needs to be scheduled - important to have and apologies for scheduling difficulty, will propose 2 dates in May and announce soon

  • Serving food further down the beach

    • The food & beverage concession (Elevated Hospitality) has a proposal to have a running cart (not a permanent structure) to serve food on the other side of the bridge

      • Representative from Elevated Hospitality clarified considering having a truck and “maybe going all the way down to where King of the Wings is”, would have a limited menu

    • This is already allowed by the current contract so would not be an amendment to the contract

• New business

  • Rotary Sunrise Kids Triathlon is scheduled for Apr 11

    • [Note: Registration is at 7AM for a race start time of 8AM; all known events are on the Friends’ calendar]

• Public section - comment from attendee Judy King-Edmeade

  • Do not think a food truck would contribute to the aesthetics, to me that’s just not Magens Bay

  • Also noticed people with blow-up kayaks, blow-up loveseats (2 person couch-like seating), etc, all the way beyond the “no lifeguards” side; a lot of locals go down there for the peace & quiet; this gives the impression that beach is overrun, and “I’m not down with that”

    • Was unaware and will ask to have that area monitored more closely, please bring things to the attention of MBA operations (in this case she had notified an enforcement officer at the beach)

  • Are there lifeguards as far down as shed 4? Stopped swimming far out in that area because don’t see lifeguards

    • Have a rotation, and usually have lifeguards on stands 1,3,5

      • [Note: shed 5 is just before shed 3, so definitely not as far down as shed 4 regularly, although I have seen lifeguards there on occasion; there’s an interactive map with approximate locations on Friends’ facilities & concessions page] 

    • MBA has gotten some new lifeguards, but would still love to hire more.