by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
City workers rallied Tuesday in support of an ailing ordinance to build a City Hall gym, but a mayoral spokesperson said before the rally started the plan may already be dead.
Susie Wiles, the mayor’s chief of special initiatives and communications, said Tuesday morning that the administration was “killing” the plan to build a gym in the City Hall basement. She spoke two hours prior to a sign-up drive for the gym held in City Hall’s first-floor Renaissance Room. Funds for the gym’s construction are contingent on 240 City workers signing up to use the facility and paying a $25 membership fee by Sept. 30. With less than three weeks left, the list is still 70 names short.
Wiles said Mayor John Peyton would wait to see “if this thing dies on its own.” But, if the gym garners enough support, Wiles said Peyton would introduce preventative legislation. Peyton felt the City could find a better use for the $225,000 set aside to build the gym.
Wiles said workout facilities were already available to City workers. She offered the Riverside YMCA and a gym in the Bank of America tower, which accepts YMCA members as alternatives.
“Considering the available workout facilities in close proximity to City Hall, we consider this not to be the best use of valuable taxpayer resources,” said Wiles.
The mayor’s position was unknown to about 30 of his employees, who spent their lunch hour listening to the advantages a new gym would bring. City Council member Jerry Holland sent assistant Sandra Henderson to offer his support. Holland has been one of the ordinance’s strongest supporters. He called the mayor’s plans “disappointing,” and his rationale “short-sighted.
“Having an unhealthy workforce actually costs taxpayers money,” said Holland. “Because taxpayers pay 100 percent of health insurance costs for employees. Healthy employees save money while unhealthy employees cost money. This is well known in the business community; I would think the mayor, with his background, would understand this concept.”
Holland said he thought it was unlikely the gym would receive enough support before the Sept. 30 deadline.
During the rally, Tony Iaquinto, president of a fitness consulting company and member of the the Mayor’s Council on Fitness and Wellbeing, told the gathered employees that the City would save $1-to-4 a month in insurance premiums for every City employee who used the gym. There are currently about 170 employees who have signed up for memberships.
Holland pointed to several members of Peyton’s staff who signed up for memberships as evidence of the gym’s appeal.
“What’s amazing to me is some of his own staff have signed up; apparently they don’t feel the same way,” said Holland.
Peyton’s chief of staff, Scott Teagle, withdrew his name and registration fee Monday, shortly after he declined to let his name be used for the membership drive.