BATON ROUGE - BREC Superintendent Janet Simmons says more outsourcing of jobs could be coming to the organization.

Last week, BREC announced a 10-percent workforce cut. BREC leaders at the start of the cut said the organization had 825 employees. Simmons said the total number of people cut looks to be around 90 people and the cuts initially began in June.

At the same time, BREC placed a hiring freeze, halting the hiring of what Simmons called "non-critical" employees.

"Critical jobs are people who are taking care of animals, custodians," she said.

Simmons said upcoming seasonal jobs like summer camp counselors will not be impacted by the freeze. Simmons said administrators are using the time to look at what jobs are least necessary to BREC and can be consolidated.

"Let's say, you have in the park system, you have two people doing the same thing, you can take one person to do two people's jobs, it really doesn't need to take two people," Simmons said. "You might have two custodians working where you could consolidate that down to one. You have that across all the departments that could just be one. There's a lot of part-time jobs, seasonal jobs that create those redundancies as well."

As previously reported on Friday, sources told WBRZ the layoffs began with several park operations and maintenance employees being cut.

Simmons said along with consolidating some jobs, BREC is looking at outsourcing others.

Central Mayor Wade Evans serves on BREC's commission as Vice Chair. He said it doesn't matter who does the job at BREC's parks, as long as it gets done.

"We need great parks, it doesn't matter how we get great parks, we just need great parks," he said.

Evans added, if outsourcing is successful, the commission and BREC leaders would look at cutting more positions.

"We've got to get out of the mindset that they have to have a BREC hat on to do the service delivery. The City of Central operates a very efficient government with no employees. We do it through contract management," Evans said.

Lawmakers who proposed BREC's 2025 commission shake-up which reworked who served on the board said it was time for a leadership change.

State Representative Lauren Ventrella originally proposed a bill that would have allowed the City of Central to break away from the Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge. Ultimately, the bill that passed and was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry in June 2025 instead changed the makeup of BREC's commission.

Before, BREC's board consisted of nine members, six of the members appointed by the Metro Council, the other three were appointed by the mayor-president, the East Baton Rouge Schools board members and members of the planning commission.

After the signing of the act, the commission is now comprised of five members who are the mayors or mayor-appointed representatives of the five cities of EBR (Baker, Baton Rouge, Central, St. George and Zachary). The other four members are appointed, as the bill puts it, by "the governing authority of Baton Rouge parish of East Baton Rouge."

"The first thing I have to say is, 'I told you so.' People in the committee said there were no problems with BREC, that everything was just fine, then why is it that we just fired an unprecedented amount of employees?" State Representative Lauren Ventrella said.

BREC's consolidation is well underway. Simmons said BREC has already hired SELA Aquatics, a pool management company, to run its aquatics department. She referenced Liberty Lagoon which opened late last summer due to staffing shortages and maintenance needs and said the outsourcing will improve the pools. According to Simmons, 77 positions were cut from BREC's staff with the consolidation which is not included the 10-percent workforce reduction.

"They're doing all the interviewing for lifeguards, all the services for all of our aquatics programs, all the training for lifeguards, all the swim lessons," Simmons said. "It saves money."

The measure, she said, frees up $100,000 for BREC to use elsewhere.