By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
For the past couple of years, the City of Great Bend has paid for a single membership to Club 1 Fitness for all their employees. All new hires have to sign an acknowledgment that the city pays for a single membership because the benefit is a taxable fringe benefit through the IRS, meaning all employees must pay the tax on the membership. All existing employees see the approximately $128 gym-membership tax come out of their checks in July.
As of
now, the gym membership program with Club 1 is scheduled to expire at the end
of June. Chris Berger, the general manager at Club 1, approached the Great Bend
City Council Monday in an attempt to renegotiate a new deal with the city.
"Every employee through the city had a membership whether they knew it or not," said Berger. "The city would send me a list of new hires and terminations on Friday. So whether they knew it or not, they could have walked into our facility and used our club. I don't know if that was completely communicated the right way."
Berger said Club 1 operates 85 corporate accounts throughout the Great Bend
area, and he could trace back to the 1990s for how long the city has provided
memberships for their employees.
Great Bend Human Resources Director Randy
Keasling said the city made the switch from payroll deduction to ease the paperwork
process for administration.
"For many years, it was payroll deduct and we did it at any point," said Keasling. "Early on, we realized it was just a disaster for us administratively. We had staff that would jump on and jump off. They'd be single, go to family and then go back to single membership. Administratively, it was honestly just a nightmare."
The city is considering opening the gym membership deal for bids to see if any
other fitness centers want to make a proposal. Keasling mentioned the city was
approached by Anytime Fitness. The city council will discuss the gym membership
at a future meeting.
Listen below to the entire discussion about the city's gym membership.