operation of the facilities, we have a chart called the Coordinating Committee on Recreation Plans. It is a mixed technicians' committee that brings together those representatives who have anything to do with the provision and use of the facilities for recreation. We have a representative of the Planning Commission which buys the property; we have representatives of the physical-education departments of the public schools, and an assistant superintendent of schools; we have a representative of the Municipal Architect's office which designs the school buildings, and we have a representative of the Office of National Capital Parks which does our planning and maintenance work. There is also a representative of the Council of Social Agencies. Thus, we have public and private interests represented in recreation. It is a very effective device for trying to meet our local problems. A typical example of some of the work that is being done with the coordination of the community is the two charts that you see. In other words, when school properties are being purchased, or school buildings are being designed, we want them to give adequate consideration to buying property around the school buildings so that it has use for the community and the school. This also applies to the design of school buildings for community use so that they can be more economically operated after school and in the evening. You can shut off a gymnasium or an auditorium in the building and not heat or supervise the whole plant. Senator CAIN. Does somebody from the School Board sit upon your Advisory Recreation Board? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. A member of the Board of Education is elected a representative to our Board. Mr. BATES. That is a representative board of all classes of citizens in the District or particular classes of citizens, so that no particular section is overlooked. . Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. The Recreation Board has seven members, consisting of four citizens who are a cross-section representation of our parent-teacher, citizen, civic, and business interests. There are three officials on the Board representing the properties that are to be used, representing the Board of Education, the District Commissioners, and the Superintendent of National Capital Parks. I mentioned previously that the four citizen members are appointed by the Commissioners. Mr. BATES. Do you have some Negro member of the Board? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Yes; we have one Negro member, the secretary of our Board. To show you how the total concept of recreation has developed in recent years, you have there before you another chart which interprets our job to the community, to our Board, and to our Department, and the organizations with whom we work. For the most part, all of these groups have parks and recreation committees or councils. We have 83 parent-teacher organizations all of whom have recreation committees; we have 110 citizen and civic associations. In addition, there are several home and school associations. These groups all have a definite stake in the provision of community recreation, particularly on the children and youth side. There is the board of trade, the juvenile-court committee, the public-school councils, the Council of Social Agencies, and neighborhood councils. Our staff or myself are members of those groups, all working in an attempt to meet the problems and responsibilities outlined in the legislation created in 1942. Just for the purposes again of interpreting recreation to the community and to our Board, those are the general classifications in which recreation falls. There are five main categories, as you can see, some of which are physical, mental, creative, social, and service. For your information this pamphlet is a brief description of the scope of activities which we conduct during the year in the recreation department. It is divided into two parts, the summer program and the fall-winter program. Senator CAIN. The printing of these bulletins is a charge against your departmental budget? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Yes; that is right, District funds, and the work is done by the District print shop. Senator CAIN. But it comes out of your own recreation budget? We operated 147 different units this year, and the Board took over 111 units when it was created in 1942. The chart shows an expansion of 36 different locations over what was operated in 1942 in the 5-year period of our existence. When the Board took over in 1942 there were 1,276 sessions of operation. By "session" I mean a morning, afternoon, or evening period. In the present fiscal year there are 1,796 sessions, showing a gain of 520 sessions. In the winter period, we had 602 when the Board took over. This last winter we had 876, showing a gain of 374 sessions, which is a reflection of our additional funds. You might be interested in looking back on this chart to 1925. From 1925 to 1942 there was very little gain in the provision of the funds for recreation. From 1942 the funds moved up graphically to 1947. You can see that we have had commendable increases and been able to render these additional services. Senator CAIN. What is your line of dashes above Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Those are $20,000 intervals. operating budget; the blue line is capital outlay. your- in the blue line outlay was attributable to about $660,000 made available to us through the Lanham Act. Mr. BATES. Is that for baseball diamonds, and so forth? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is right; baseball diamonds, softball fields, playgrounds, and recreation areas. Mr. BATES. No building construction of any kind. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. No building construction. The funds were only for drainage, fill, and surfacing. Part of the funds were justified on the basis of the war influx of people. Many of the facilities had been taken away because of the war, building construction, sabotage protection, and antiaircraft installations. Mr. BATES. Now, in connection with your operating expenditures from, say, 1925-you say you took over in 1942? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Yes. Mr. BATES. What are the figures, say, from 1937? Are there any figures that could be correlated together in view of the consolidation of the departments, and the creation of a new department that would put us somewhat on a comparable basis in comparing figures? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. It is very difficult, of course, to pick up all those expenses as such. Mr. BATES. Let us take from the time you started there, that shows sort of a static condition there. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. When our Board took over we had an appropriation of $379,788. The present appropriation this year, with the addition of a deficiency, will be $875,274. Mr. BATES. That is 1942 to 1948 budget. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is fiscal 1943 to fiscal 1947. Mr. BATES. Fiscal 1947. What about fiscal 1948? What do you have in the budget next year? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. We asked for $998,100. Mr. BATES. Practically a million dollars. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is right. I would like to add for your information, too, that is not all increase; $36,700 is money that is being transferred to us this year from the Board of Education. By the effort of the school board to show truer school costs, as far as educational purposes are concerned, a cost study was made this last year, of the heat and light that the schools have normally paid for community use and recreation. The study shows the amount of coal, oil, and wattage consumed. Unit prices are fixed so it was possible to determine the $36,700. Mr. BATES. Who provides the janitor service, both before and after the activity is over? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. We pay for the custodial service for all activity in connection with our program. Mr. BATES. Are those custodial services rendered by the janitor of this building or is a selected person by the playground? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. No; we use-it is almost a requirement that we use the same custodial staff who are familiar with the building. Mr. BATES. That is fine, and there the responsibility lies with him. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. And we pay him the same hourly rate for the services that they get during the day in our schools. Mr. BATES. And it is overtime work for him? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. It is not overtime in the terms of pay because they only get the same amount of hourly rate. In other words, many of them may work a normal tour of duty in the schools. But if they work only 6 or 4 hours, they get only the regular time, and not the overtime rate. I would also like to explain in the increased budget, Mr. Chairman, that we also pay for the custodial services for the parent-teacher meetings, and the citizens and civic association meetings. We permit them eight meetings a year for which we pay the custodial services, and the parent-teacher organizations, four meetings a year. In any organizational use of the school facilities that is operated beyond the time, it is paid for by the organization requesting the use of that facility. We also provide facilities for the private agencies in the community; the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Boys' Club use our facilities. Senator CAIN. How do you arrive, say, at the figure of eight meetings that you would provide for any given year? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Because, normally most of the citizens' organizations do not meet all year; they usually meet during the fall and winter months. So, that constitutes about a meeting a month. Senator CAIN. What is the average cost of a meeting? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. It will vary according to the building that is used. Ordinarily it will run from about $3 to $5 a night. Senator CAIN. Let me ask a question without prejudice. Money being precious, whether it is large or small, has the thought occurred to you that in those instances the operations should be always self-supporting? That the group using the building should pay for that? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. I would like to explain that. Senator CAIN. The group using the building should pay for the service rendered. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. We make an attempt to familiarize the citizen and civic groups of the time that the building is open for regular activities. We also are familiar with the time when the night schools are open. Thus, we attempt to schedule those citizens' meetings on the same nights that the buildings are regularly open, so there would not be those additional charges over and above regular operation. There are some cases, of course, where we have to pay for that time where they cannot get those nights when the school is open or when there is not a night school in operation, or where the building is not in operation. Senator CAIN. Before you move, your budgets are approximately trimmed in the 5 years of your consolidated jurisdiction. I wonder if you would express an opinion as to what percentage of the service you would like to render to the District, if you had everything that you are now asking for. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is a good question, because that ties in with the attempt of the Commissioners in trying to give a total view of all District needs here on community services. We prepared a 6-year program at the request of the District Commissioners. If conditions were ideal and we had all the money that was needed in that 6-year program, we would need approximately $4,300,000 for capital outlay alone. This would involve construction of swimming pools, field houses, gymnasiums, wading pools, grading and fill, and lighting of many of our areas. The operating expense would go up to approximately $1,700,000 in that 6-year span. Senator CAIN. Well, that rather implies that up until 1942 your over-all operation in the field of recreation had been catch-as-catch can, and nobody paid attention, very much attention, to it as an approximation of a science one way or the other. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. I would not say that no one was, but because of the division of responsibility and mixed jurisdictions, it was difficult to meet the problems at that time. Senator CAIN. I am not being critical, because that was a condition that pertained generally throughout America. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Then, there was a tremendous increase of population, as Commissioner Young referred to, since 1941, or from 660,000 to 938.000 in 6 years. When critical conditions develop it points up the deficiencies in community service. Senator CAIN. A large percentage of that increase being represented obviously in children. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is right. Senator CAIN. One other question before you turn to the next item. Do you feel that you are getting a full use through the school board of facilities at night, namely, basements in which children can skate, and gymnasiums and swimming pools, and so forth? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. I think we are very fortunate here, Mr. Chairman, in having a school board that is community-minded to the extent that they permit us almost full use of school facilities for community and recreation use. Of course, many of the facilities that we utilize are substandard. In other words, we use facilities that we try to adapt to the best of our ability. We cannot always render maximum service because of the design of the facility. But there is not any question of trying to educate the Board of Education to the fact that it is necessary to provide the facilities in the schools. That is not true in many other cities. Many school boards in other cities are reluctant to permit the use of facilities beyond 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but it is not true here. Senator CAIN. That is why I asked the question. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. We have very excellent working relations with the school board. Mr. BATES. Before you proceed with this tabulation of comparison of expenditures in these other cities that we are trying to make some analysis of, we have a figure here in the District of Columbia that expenditures of 1945 were $2,335,000 for recreation. Now, in this set-up of these classifications by the Bureau of the Census, what do you think they had in mind, having your thoughts here where you say that your expenditures, say, in 1947, are $875,000, when these records here show that in 1945 there was $2,335,000 spent on recreational facilities? Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. I am very much interested in that release in the paper the other day because I do not know on what basis they made those estimates. I am of the opinion that they included the zoo and the National Capital parks for police protection, landscaping, and all types of service which goes into that big figure. Mr. BATES. Well, of course, the same relative factors must be taken into consideration in the other 13 cities, as well. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. That is probably true. Mr. BATES. We also find here that the distribution of the tax dollar, so to speak, was 4.7-that is $4.70-out of every hundred, and the average for these other 13 cities was only $3 in 1945. Now, the per capita expenditure, unfortunately, we have not got it here for 1945 for all the other cities because of the difficulties in ascertaining the population in 1945-but we have it for 1941-that is before you took office; this set-up was created in 1942. Mr. CHRISTIANSEN. Yes. Mr. BATES. The figures of 1941 show a per capita cost for recreation of $2.41 in the District, and the average of $2.01 in the other cities. We have other figures here for 1941 which are meaningless for the District in view of the 1945 figure that I already referred to, but I have another set of figures here which has considerable bearing on that of recreation, and that is on crime within the District; that all recreational activity is created for the purpose of trying to obviate, in part at least, although I believe that most of your crime is above what we call the school age. Now, we find in 1945 that the number of offenses per 10,000 population-I am only reading this to you for your own information to show you the real job ahead of you, along with other authorities in the city dealing with children, school authorities and everyone else— that the number of offenses per 10,000 population, and those offenses |