Watch the video above: City officials make improvements to help with leisure registration
SASKATOON – Registration for spring and summer leisure programs in Saskatoon takes place this Sunday at 6 p.m. sharp and can come with it’s challenges.
“This will be the fourth time we’re registering my daughter in swimming and the first time was a breeze, we logged on, we got through and I thought this is no problem. I didn’t even realize there’s problems but the last three times I’ve had trouble getting through every time,” said Angie Biblow.
“Last August was the first time we missed out on a class, we at least got into the ones but it took a good hour of my time trying to register.”
This time around, Biblow plans to enroll her two-year-old daughter in a toddler class and swimming lessons, clearing her schedule a month ago to make sure she’s home on Sunday evening.
“I didn’t realize it was registration night and the week-end came and I realized it was and we had four moms sitting in my living room during the birthday party, on the phone, on the computer trying to register,” said Biblow.
An hour and a half later, the group got through to start registering everyone but by that time the class Angie wanted was full.
Instead, the Biblows would end up taking their daughter to swim lessons on a different night, to a facility across the city and Angie missed the majority of her daughter’s second birthday.
“I just don’t understand why it gets so bogged down online, you should be able to design a program such that everyone can log on at the same time and yes I recognize it’s first-come, first-serve, but there should be no reason that the system goes down for an hour and it takes 100 times hitting refresh to get through,” said Biblow.
City officials admit they’ve experienced capacity issues in the past and have since made improvements to the system.
“We’ve increased our phone capacity, we have twenty customer service representatives that will process phone in registration but also our online registration we take up to 300 registrations in a queue at the same time so we’ve increased that capacity,” said Cary Humphrey, the city’s director of recreation and sport.
Officials say after every registration and programming session, staff evaluate the classes offered and demand and make changes as they see fit like offering more classes or time slots.
Residents are encouraged to have their client ID numbers and family pin numbers ready when registering online. Those should be picked up before March 23.
Also, have a second or third program choice selected just in case the first choice is unavailable. Names can also go onto a wait list and new classes may be created if the demand is there.
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