Library Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Thanks. Okay. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the 11/13/2025 Alameda Recreation and Park Commission meeting. Could we start with the roll call please?

Commissioner Alexander? Present. Commissioner Bernie?

Present.

Commissioner Robbins?

Here.

Vice chair Swartz?

Here.

Chair Radiss?

Present. Thank you. The first item on our agenda this evening is non agenda public comment. Members of the public may speak for three minutes regarding any matter not on the agenda. Commissioners will not respond to comments or answer questions. The city welcomes speakers providing public comment, but please be advised that this is a limited public forum. As such, speakers must stay on topic if speaking to a particular agenda item. And if speaking during non agenda public comment, they must address matters within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. If speakers fail to follow these rules, they'll be warned. And if they continue to disregard the rules, their opportunity to speak will be ended. Do we have any non agenda public speakers this evening?

No non agenda public speakers.

Great. Thank you. Our next item then is our staff communication from Recreation and Parks director Justin Long. Director Long.

Good evening commissioners. I'm gonna walk you through kind of what's going on and what we've got going on. Wanna start with some upcoming citywide community events. There's a Diwali celebration taking place on November 15 at 04:30PM at the Rhythmics Cultural Works. We then have the Toys for Tots and Trains, Saturday, December 6 at 10AM at the US Hornet Museum.

There'll be model trains and kids crafts and bring a toy donation for discounted admission on the Hornet. Our our downtown Alameda winter market takes place Saturday, December 6 starting at 1PM at Park Street and Central Ave and celebrate the season with local vendors and entertainment. That that afternoon, we have our winter lights celebration. That's, again, Saturday, December 6 at 05:30PM at City Hall for the tree lighting, the dancing Christmas trees, Alameda Community Chorus, and the Alameda Free Library for free book giveaways. So we're excited for that.

And then our monthly coastal cleanup, Saturday, December 13 at 10AM at Seaplane Lagoon, and that is sponsored by the Community Action for Sustainable Alameda. For our recreation events, just wanna let everyone know the winter spring twenty six activity guide is out, so you can register for upcoming ARPD and Massock senior classes. The Elks National Hoop Shoot contest is taking place on Friday, December 12 at 06:30PM at Alameda Pointe Gym. It's a free event for Alameda youth ages eight to 13, and we're asking people to register online by noon of the day of the event. This is sponsored by the Elks Lodge.

Online registration is also open for our holiday camps and space or sorry, other events such as our twenty third annual breakfast with Santa, which takes place December 13 at 10AM at the o club. We're also conducting our Santa visits Alameda homes, so Saturday and Sunday, December. And then we're also doing our Santa's virtual visits on Monday, December 22. The twenty twenty six Junior Warriors Youth Basketball Program is taking place Saturday every Saturday, January 10 through February 28 at the Alameda Point Gym. Sign ups are underway.

These are for offering kids in k through fifth grade. And then our annual rose planting or rose pruning is taking place on January 17 at 10AM at the Lincoln Park Rose Garden. This is hosted by the East Bay Rose Society members. And they'll provide rose pruning demonstration for our volunteers to help us take care of the roses. So we just wanna give you some project updates.

Estuary Park Phase 2, the contract was awarded. The The contractor has already started prepping the site. So we anticipate construction to be just over a year long. So we're happy to finally have that underway. The skate park is approaching 70% to 80% of its construction documents for the expansion.

And so we're looking forward to that. The Lincoln Park is getting some fencing netting for security along the the full on the north side of the baseball field and field area. And then the surf pool, council gave us direction to explore the surf pool option with the developer. And so we're just sitting down having the very preliminary meetings. We'll then set up a schedule for what it looks like for the community engagement process and before we start any of the decision making around any of that.

So we're just in preliminary conversations around that at this point. I also wanna touch base on a presentation we provided to the city council on November 4. It was the infrastructure needs for both parks and libraries. And so I just wanna give you guys a little bit of a high level of just, you know, the parks in general so that you sort of understand what our capacity is. We have 35 city parks.

We have 12 rec centers, 26 playgrounds, 19 sports fields. We take care of over 300 acres of land, and we have over 10 miles of pathways and trails throughout our our program. But, you know, it's varying states of age. And just to give you guys an idea from facilities need, the park amenities, these are all the different features within parks. Our outstanding infrastructure need is about 43,500,000.0.

To bring our park ADA improvements up to snuff, it's about $5,000,000. Our park buildings, those rec centers, need about 19,000,000 in upgrades. That's roofs, HVAC, things like to keep keep them functioning. And then we have our Park Specialty Building. So we have the Vets Building. We have Massock Senior Center. We have the Officers Club. Those are have deferred maintenance to about 18,000,000. So, you know, all in all, you know, we're we're approximately, you know, 220,000,000 behind. But then we also have future parks that still need to happen.

And so that's just keeping what we have as status quo, not adding any fields, not adding any components. So the parks that we see that are unfunded that are still on the books for in the future are Depave Park, we have Seaplane Lagoon phases two and three to complete, we have Enterprise Park, We have the completion of Gene Sweeney Open Space. And then there's the regional sports complex. So that park development, we believe, is without the sports complex included, is about 66,000,000. And in today's dollars, for what we have master planned for the sports complex, it's estimated to be around 65,000,000.

So, you know, I just wanna give you that perspective. Council had a bunch of questions. We were able to provide answers about, you know, what have you had, what would be your key priorities? If you couldn't do everything, where would you start? How would you make these investments? And so they had a good conversation around that. And so council will still be hearing further discussion around whether it will proceed with a bond measure or not. So but we're we're hopeful that we've made our our plea for some portion of being in that bond measure to help improve the parks. And then getting back to kind of the recreation highlights. I know we took the last month off, so I just wanna give you guys some highlights.

The family fun ride around Alameda was held on the twenty seventh on Bay Farm Island, had 250 participants. The fourth annual Alameda Pride event took place on October 11 with a five k run and then the Pride celebration in Trucheno Park. The twentieth annual teen haunted house thrilled visitors on October 24 through the twenty sixth. And then the forty fifth Alameda Holiday Boutique took place on November at the Officers Club, and that had about 70 local artisans offering various handcraft items. At the Encinal Swim Center, their registration is now open for the turkey dip.

So we've hosted this the last few years, so come down and swim before you eat some turkey. So but please please sign up and register as there's limited spaces for that. Also, our youth non school day camps for fall and winter breaks, that's November 24 through the twenty sixth and December 22 through the twenty fourth. And the twenty ninth through the thirty first are taking place at Kruse, Leidacker, Harrison, the Alameda Point Gym, the Vets Building. So if you if you need a place for your kids to go during break, please sign up.

Our our tween teen adventure friendsgiving is taking place Monday and Tuesday, November from 11:30 to 04:30, and this will take place at the underground teen center at the Vets Building. PD is also still facilitating the the Queer Teen Alameda Center program. This is for sixth through twelfth grades, and it takes place at the underground teen center. For sports, our youth programs, our after school pickleball is Monday through Thursday at the Alameda Point Gym had about 28 participants. Our homeschool PE takes place on Wednesdays and Fridays and has about 51 participants in it.

Our adult programs, the the open gym is still every Sunday from 6PM till 10PM out at the Alameda Pointe gym. And then we're still offering our tennis and pickleball lessons, and so private sessions can be booked and group sessions will resume in January 2026. I also want to note that as of November 2, all of our fields are closed for organized play. We're in the process of doing renovations. So you may, throughout the next two and a half months, you'll see temporary fence going up, you'll see renovation activity happening.

And so we strongly encourage the public not to use the fields during that time so that they can rest and be in good shape for the spring season. It it if you were just there with your child, that's it's just really only organized play that we're really trying to limit. For Mastic Senior Center, we've got some upcoming events. There's a day trip to the Blackhawk Museum. That's on November 21.

And then we also have Knowledge is Key, Know Your Medicare Rights. That's taking place Tuesday, December 9 at ten a. M. Individuals can learn about consumer protections, rights and information advocacy from organizations and other agencies. The center is also conducting its new member orientation which offers guided tours and complimentary lunch.

And that's taking place December 11 and January 8. You can reach out to the Mastic Senior Center, and they'll provide you with any type of details you will need for that. Just some highlights from Mastic over the last month and a half. On October 23, 50 seniors visited High Hill Ranch in Placerville. Over a 100 seniors attended the Halloween social line dance on October 31.

And then some just stats for the last couple months, they served over 2,700 meals at lunch. They distribute over 630 Mercy Brown bag groceries to seniors. Our leisure club had on October 9, the leisure club had a fur, scales, and tails animal show that took place October 9, and we had over 50 attendees. For parks and operations, Littlejohn Park, the large picnic area was renovated tables were placed to improve functionality. We currently are redoing the basketball court, converting two half courts into a full court at Littlejohn.

We have other courts that are available throughout at Franklin, Longfellow, McKinley in Washington. Many of those are half courts. The retaining wall at Woodstock Park behind the backstop has been rebuilt. And then the request for the Lincoln Park Rose Garden volunteers for the upcoming pruning was really successful, and they now have a full team. So thanks to everyone who's volunteering.

At Main Street Linear Park, there's a volunteer tree planting that's taking place Saturday, November 15 at 9AM, and approximately a 100 trees will be planted in collaboration with local organizations and high school students. And then staff are currently installing centralized lighting controllers for our sports fields and courts, and this is starting this Monday, November 17. We expect there to be little impact, but please be patient. There may be some trips where lights aren't coming on exactly at the right time while we're getting the system updated and get all the the bugs worked out of it. So just be patient with us.

I just wanna let you know what's gonna happen. And then I wanna congratulate Nick Casaneda. He is our new park technician. So he's been with the department for several years, and he's been proven to be a great asset to the park crew. And this position will go around doing the small repairs that we've generally been having contractors do that we can now have our own staff do.

So we're happy to have that. And then I wanna point out one of our rec staff. He's with seventeen years of dedicated service, Brendan Candelier, a recreation leader in our team programs. He's been become an indispensable part of ARPD, and he manages the AYC food at all of our major community events and plays a critical role in the teens, field trips, and summer adventure programs. He's really dependable, and he's goes above and beyond. And so we really appreciate Brandon. So with that, that is the end of my director's report.

Thank you, Director Long. Commissioners, any questions?

I just have I have a question. So what happens I know you mentioned about the bonds measure. What happens if that fails for some reason in terms of getting the parks involved in that? What do we do then?

So if the bond measure does not go through, then we will continue to do the best we can with the funding that we have to update and make repairs as we can. We are putting money away for basically the patchwork. We have an internal service fund that the department is paying to that public works then can replace roofs and components like that. But those funds aren't enough to make large improvements like if we were to modernize the O Club to be a true accessible entertainment or rental facility that would be many millions of dollars, which that fund can't do. So we will target the things that are of highest risk and highest need.

Those generally most at risk, which are would be young children on playgrounds. We want to make sure that we've continued to do playground replacements as a top priority. So we'll be doing that. So there will be funds. There just won't be enough to make long lasting sort of we're talking about improvements for the next fifty years type of improvements. But we'll continue to do the same thing to try to keep our parts in decent shape.

Okay. And my next question is when are the signs indicating that the parks will be closed for renovation? When are they going up?

There should be signs located at all the athletic fields at this point, Okay. Whether they're on a frames, but they should be all throughout for for the athletic fields. Our general turf areas and parks are not closed. Mhmm. So we're really only looking at the athletic fields themselves.

Okay. I might have missed the one at Cruze, but I'll check because I drive by there the way to work. I'll double check.

Okay. They should be out.

Okay. Commissioner Robbins.

For the bond measure, how helpful would it be to get residents in front of the city council at the meetings to talk about the fact that we need more money as I constantly say?

I think community support for any type of value that they see in this type of activity would be helpful. I think for not just my department but libraries, roads, our infrastructure, I think all of that is something that the community, if they find interest in that long term planning, which is really what what this is about is making, generational change and improvement to our cities and it just takes resources that come in much larger buckets.

Okay, I'll work on that.

Have a question about Riddler Park. They took an extensive area of the park to do a driveway into Wood School. How much is that gonna impact the soccer that's played at that field?

So the area that was taken, it was in between there and the old Lum School. Yes. And they're providing a parking lot there that'll support the school and the future athletic facility that will be where the portables are. Right now, it's not impacting soccer. It's still being conducted there.

I think one of the things that when we did the discussion with AUSD about benefit to the park is that we will have full access to the actual parking lot, which Rittler right now does not have. And it's something that we're hoping that would make an improvement to that. We're still offering that program. I think the bigger issue is trying to figure out how do we fit Little League, soccer and everyone who wants to use that field there. And that's always been a tight fit.

Well I was by there the other day and there were two baseball games or I don't know how many soccer games where that field was just fully packed. So that's why I wanted to ask that question.

And could I just say that there are gonna be pickleball courts at the New Wood Middle School and you should be, I don't know if you're already talking with but a great way to try and divert people to those pickleball courts.

Yeah and then my understanding

And have them pay for it finally.

From my understanding is that those courts will be open to the public. They're being built in a location that the school has put extra security secondary fencing in so that on weekends and evenings that those should be open to the public.

Yeah, it's good that AUSD finally is putting the bill forward that we have been putting forward on a lot of different issues. It's nice to finally see that.

I have one more question. The fencing that you put in at Lincoln, is that in response to the couple of citizens that came and talked to us about the balls coming over during the baseball games?

The fencing that we're talking about is actually along the road, the access road at the But we are addressing that netting at the same time.

Thank you.

So both will be addressed.

Terrific. Thank you. Director Long. Go ahead.

Can you just expand on what's getting updated with the lighting controllers and what the benefit will be of this versus whatever the old system was if there was one?

Okay. So this is helpful too because a lot of our parks are older. A lot of the light systems are either on automatic timers or on timers that are set. This will allow us to centralize it. So, you know, someone on a computer can turn them on and off or set programs as daily savings changes. We'll have to physically go out and do it. And then some of our parks like Lidacker physically has to be turned on. So a human has to go and flick a switch and then turn it off.

That's great.

Great. Thank you. Our next item is commissioner communications. Commissioner Alexander, would you like to go first?

Sure. Thank you. I've been out and about. I went to the dive in movie down at it's at Lydecker Park. I mean, it was really interesting. I think it's important for us to get out in the community at these events and talk to people. There was a gentleman there who had a concern about something at Tillman Park, and so he was able to talk to me directly. I was able to talk to Director Long and to Director Nolan and get that situation resolved, I hope, or at least answer his question. So, it's really important I think for us to get out at these community events. I was at the Friends of the Park bike event.

Everybody had a great time. There were a lot of little kids there, not just grown ups, but a lot of little kids and they had a good time afterwards. I attended Alameda Pride Event. And, of course, I had to go to the forty fifth Annual Holiday Boutique. I used to have to work that when I was a park director. I had to do crafts in the afternoon for kids. So, I feel like if I don't go there, I'm not doing my duty. And that's a really that you know what I noticed this year? There was so many handmade items. I know everything has to be handmade but some really things in.

I bought some good deals there too. As I said, at Rittler Park, there were so many kids there that day. There was soccer everywhere. There was baseball, and I couldn't even figure out where the soccer fields were. That's how many kids were out there playing.

I did go to the city council meeting to discuss the bond issue and what recreation might need. I spoke as a lifelong Alameda resident. I also spoke as a board member of Friends of the Park, and I also spoke as a former park director and a commissioner. I highly suggest that all of us get out and attend these meetings and send emails to the city council. I was very direct with them.

I told them that there's been maintenance. It hasn't been taken care of for years and years and years. And when I first came on the commission, I went around to all the parks and I took notes of all the things that I thought had to be fixed. One of them was a Woodstock retaining wall. So that was eight years ago. And that's no one's fault. It just has to do with the money that's available and how we use it. So I was very direct with them. So I and I also told them that I will support the bond as long as they delineate where they're going to spend the money. I said I'm not going to give you $50,000,000 and you do what you want.

I said it needs to be delineated to what we need to have fixed in all parts of the city. So I just encourage all of you to go out and about and do that. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Commissioner Bernie.

I think the only thing that I'll say is that I'll just support what Commissioner Alexander said about the bond issue is that I know when I go around Alameda and when I train at Alameda parks that they're really popular, they're usually very clean, they're very put together and does not come cheap. There is a cost associated with it. And, the city government has been trying hard to keep these prices and we're going to go over the budget tonight that really reasonable to maintain that reasonability for people to enjoy these parks. And, this bond issue is a very important issue in order to maintain that affordability because we have to maintain the high quality of the parks in Alameda. So, I just want to support what Commissioner Alexander said about being aware and going to the city council in terms of whether you support or disagree with just let your voice be heard as it relates to this issue.

Thank you. Commissioner Robbins.

Thank you. I too have been out and about. One of the things that I think is great and I'm probably letting the cat out of the bag, but a lot of tennis players don't go to some of the smaller parks where there's just one or two tennis courts. And I've been able to walk onto the tennis courts and play where at Washington Park sometimes we have to wait. So I would encourage anybody who's into playing tennis to look at these, the smaller parks because those courts are not being used as often and they're in great shape and they're something that should be used.

I attended the Pride celebration event. I was at a booth for a part of the event and just as Commissioner Alexander said that it's

important for

us to attend these different events because I got feedback from different individuals as well at that event and I thought that that was really helpful. I also attended the bone health yoga at Mastic. And I'm really happy that they're having classes at night so that the younger old people can attend the classes. And even by attending and going to a class, got comments and feedback from yoga people as well. So I thought that was interesting.

The Holiday Boutique, I do have to say this is the second year in a row where I have tried to apply to be a vendor. And again, they said, oh no, the people that are vendors there from previous years all get a chance to sign up before everyone else and 95% of the booths are taken and no new vendors can ever seem to get in there. Vendors. And it's really, I think, a crappy way to run a boutique where you are just having the same specific vendors over and over again and not giving people the chance to be able to be a part of giving money to the city and to everyone else. So I think somebody needs to look into that policy for that.

And the last thing I'll say, Commissioner Alexander and I, we have for years talked about the fact that we need to be better funded and it's not any of your fault. It's all of us that are listening, it's us citizens. We continue to complain that there aren't enough soccer fields, there aren't enough softball fields, that there aren't enough tennis courts, there aren't enough pickleball courts and the swimming facilities are not being taken care of. And it's because of us. We're the ones who are not willing to step up and stop complaining and pay more taxes.

It's ridiculous that we have to go after a bond measure and we have to plead and beg and borrow for a portion of a bond measure when, as has been already outlined, there's over 200,000,300 million dollars worth of stuff that just needs to be done just to keep us going. So we as Alamedians need to stop complaining and we need to start voting yes for any of the bond measures and any of the tax increases for anything associated with our city if we want to continue to have a decent city.

So that's it. Thank you. Vice Chair Schwartz.

I did also I I wasn't at the city council meeting, but I had listened in, so that was really great information on the infrastructure needs. And then speaking of that, I know we're talking about the Lydecker Playground today. I now have a four year old who will only take a nap driving three or four laps around Bay Farm, so I pass by it a lot and have been taking a closer look ever since the survey came out. So really excited that that's going to be getting replaced early next year. Haven't seen a lot of people on it and hopefully we'll just bring some new life to the playground area of that park with the new playground. So that was all I had today. Thanks.

Thank you. I was about out and about myself and I'll work in a reverse chronological order. My family and I had a very Parks Veterans Day this past week. We biked across the island. We ended up at Bohoe Circle. We took the Woodstock across the estuary for the first time. And especially for parents of small children, I would recommend that experience. Seven minutes is enough time to be out on the water, I found. It was great. The fall season meant that for the third consecutive year, I was out at Riddler Field as a volunteer coach for the Alameda Little League.

Had a great group of kids to be able to work with. And this fall was a bit unique because in addition to Rittler, I was able to go out and able to experience the facilities at Lower Washington, at Woodstock where I got to see the new retaining wall, as well as over at the Challenger Field, that turf field over near Estuary Park. So it was a wonderful way to get an on the ground tour of of a number of different facilities. I also wanna share with my colleagues, my fellow commissioners, and I I was also out this fall. Spoke at a Board of Education meeting earlier in the fall.

There was a dispute between the Little League and AUSD about the field rental out at Rittler Park. I spoke in a personal capacity not advocating for any particular position but to encourage the parties to to work together to get the kids back out onto the field. I'll conclude just by putting in my own pitch for for crafts. As commissioner Alexander usually does, I will send people to the Mastic Senior Center Thrift Shop for their holiday shopping coming up. It's a wonderful wonderful place to find unique unique gift items for the season.

Thank you everyone for your reports, for your comments and we'll move forward. The next item on our agenda is to approve the minutes from our 09/11/2025 meeting. Can I have a motion please to approve those minutes?

I'll motion to approve.

And a roll call vote please.

Commissioner Alexander.

All abstain I was not present. Commissioner Bernie.

Approved. Commissioner Robbins.

Approved.

Vice Chair Swartz.

Approved.

Chair Radies.

Approved. Thank you. The motion's been approved. Our next item on the agenda is our regular agenda item six a which is to receive an update on the teen programs. We'll have a report and presentation then the commissioners can ask clarifying questions followed by public comment and then the commissioners will discuss and offer feedback and comment. There's no motion to make on this item. Thank you and welcome.

Good evening everyone. My name is Ashley and I am the recreation assistant who oversees the teen programs. In 2019, I graduated from Cal State East Bay with a Bachelor of Science in Recreation. 2018, I got hired with ARPD as a recreation leader and worked my way through many roles and programs into my current position as a recreation assistant. In addition to overseeing the TEAM program, I assist in elementary age youth programs, coordinating and supporting staff during the non school day camps, also providing guidance and support to the summer coordinator who oversees summer youth and well sites.

I also contribute some contribute to some community events such as the fourth of July parade by helping secure sponsorships and organizing VIP vehicles by recruiting and coordinating with the volunteer drivers and their unique vehicles. Another community event I manage is a Starlight movie in the park. I oversee the production and logistics from coordinating the dates, communicating with the movie screen contractors, scheduling staff, and pre movie activities. Because we're Reparation, I implemented a get your play on trend during the pre movie activities, where if you're seen being active or having fun, whether you're an adult or a child, you'll be provided with a word in which you provide that word to the information booth, and you'll be receiving a free giveaway that we provide. Our last showing in September was our biggest yet.

Over two fifty members of the community attended. So if you haven't attended a movie in the park, I encourage you to do so. It's a fun evening filled with great energy and community spirit. On the ARPD event website, we are now taking votes for next year's genre movies, so please go ahead and vote. These are the following programs that I directly oversee.

The Underground Teen Center, also known as the UTC, is a free, year round drop in program. In addition to the UTC, we provide the underground teen shuttle, which transport participants from their school to the underground. All participants are welcome to stay and enjoy social activities such as active games, cooking projects, and crafting activities. Since the start of this year, we've seen an increase of participation compared to the last few years at this time. The team tween summer adventure camp and day trips provide participants with fun and engaging experiences that might explore their interest or discover new passions, such as the overnight camping trip or the late night trip to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Our exciting trip outings build self esteem and teamwork skills on trips such as the whitewater rafting or the indoor skydiving. It's exciting to see participants and staff step out their comfort zones and face fears of heights at road courses. Throughout the camps and trips, participants develop friendship and life skills, learning to gain independence by using public transportation to attend the variety of outings we provide. The following programs provide teens the opportunity to be in leadership roles, to help their environment in beautification projects, develop social skills, be creative in skill based projects, and provide teens to earn community service hours. Alabina Youth Committee, also known as AYC, is an event planning committee that teens create events for their peers or for the community.

Some past events were the teen talent show, Valentine's Day bake sale, and Spring Carnival. AYC is led by a group of teen leadership who oversees and coordinates the event planning meetings. AYC also helps with ARPD events such as riding the AYC food booth at the Spring Shinjig or the Movie Night in the Parks, all funds generated from the food booth go back into AYC to provide other materials and supplies for future AYC events. AYC also helps with monitoring the games and crafts at certain events such as Breakfast with Santa, the Family Snowball Dance Party, which also they make the massages for, and the Spring Shindig. During the Teens Teaching Technology program, participants volunteered their time at MasTec Senior Center to help seniors navigate their devices.

Teens develop their communication skills and problem solving skills in ways that like some of the seniors have like older devices that the teens are not used to, so they have

to have

them work through that. But it also encourages intergenerational connections. The teen volunteer program is a stepping stone giving teens a responsibility to develop their skills in communication and encourage leadership. Teens go through a group interview and training process. During the program, teens have the opportunity to work alongside staff at certain sites and provide fun and engaging activities to elementary aged youth.

The teens help assist with cooking projects, setting up activities, and giving them it gives them the time to, like, lead an activity for themselves, from planning and running staff guidance and feedback. The junior leader teen volunteer program is kind of like the next step from teen volunteers. It's like the LIT program that other cities provide. This program is only during the summer. It was established in 2023, and it continued to grow.

The junior leaders have more responsibility and accountability. We mentor and prepare the teens, giving them the real life hands on experience and opportunities of being a recreation leader. There's weekly meetings for them to ask questions and bring up any issues about their experience in the field, which we work through at different sites. Our goal for this program is for them to apply and become a recreation leader for the next summer. Operation Green Sweep is a that it's a hands on program that gives teams the opportunity to beautify the parks or community centers, gives them the tools gives them tools to work with, such as painting fences, handling garden garden tools.

We collaborate with Park Maintenance and East Bay Regional Park District and other nonprofits. A Tia Haunted House. This one is my favorite is my favorite part of my job. I love Halloween and having the kids work alongside each other and coming up with a theme for the haunted house. Each we collaborate with South Shore.

They let us they give us a space to host the haunted house. The teens have five weeks to create, build, and plan, and execute for a three day event only. That's usually the weekend before Halloween. This year, our was our twentieth annual teen haunted house. Our theme was fairy tales gone wrong.

'92.

We had the most volunteer sign ups of 80 plus and the most community attendance of 1,400. Surprisingly, our most busy day was not on Saturday with South Shore having their annual fall festival, but it was actually on Sunday, which it was raining and wet. We had almost six we had 600 people show up, which usually we would only have 300. So it was a really great turnout. So I wanna thank everyone who came out to support the teams.

Also, to thank our sponsors the last few years who helped provide some of the materials, friends of the Park Foundation, ACI, Paganos, Trader Joe's, Jump Jumpin' Away, and South Shore. The next program is Every Act Matters, which is a new program I implemented this volunteer on their own terms, as many of them are busy with academics or sports. So, it gives them the flexibility to volunteer on one time or along multiple, events. So, they're not really committed to, a long term like the other programs that we provide. So some of the events that they can apply they can volunteer for is Breakfast with Sienna, Spring Shindigs, Starlight Movie in the Park, and the Haunted House.

Also the Friends of the Park Family Fun Ride. All right, thank you. And are there any questions?

Thank you. Commissioners, are there questions?

Great program. Thank you for everything that you're doing. The Teens Teaching Technology Operation Green Suite Teen Haunted House, what is the I teach seventh, eighth graders, so I've got 12 to 14 year olds. What's the age?

All of them are aged I don't know the age but it's sixth grade through twelfth grade.

It is sixth grade through twelfth, okay, great, thank you.

You're welcome.

Mr. Boerne.

So if anyone is watching this and they're interested in their teenager participating in any of these programs, where would they go?

So they can go to our website, our ARPD website. If they're like interested in something specific, they can email me on my email or email ARPD email to get more information.

Okay. And my next question is, are all these programs I'm not sure if all these programs free or they come with a cost or

Some are free, some have a cost to it.

And that will be on the website? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Other questions?

Well I want to thank you Ashley for coming. I'm the one who asked for you all to give a report so I appreciate you coming and telling us about it. Unfortunately I missed the haunted house this year. I was out of town. I was really disappointed because I know the kids just do a great job there and it's so much fun.

The every act, act new one, what is, where did we come up with that idea? Is that something you thought about?

Yeah. It's something that I kinda just thought up because every during every season, I have parents or volunteers ask, like, oh, can I still volunteer for this? Or can I still volunteer for that? But they have to go through, like, the teen program, they have to go through, a process. For AYC, they have to go through a process. So for this one, it's just, like, I'll send them an email. Hey. These are the events coming up, and if they have the schedule or the time for it, they can let me know and then I'll send them more information as the day gets closer.

I have one more question. So it looks like we're servicing a lot of teens in all of these programs. If we had more of a budget for you, would you be able to service more teens or would they be able to do more activities?

That's a good question. I think if I had a bigger budget, I would like to create like more classes such as a creative space or life skills classes for these teens. I did a survey I think last year and some wanted to know how to become an adult or what are some skills that you'll need as an adult. Are even having trips to go to colleges so they can look at colleges and see what kind of what they wanna do.

Well, I certainly think that if there's any businesses out there listening to this that they might think about that and contact you and maybe they would like to sponsor something. Yeah. I certainly was if I was a business in town. Thanks, Ashley. Appreciate it.

Is there any public comment on this item?

No public comment.

All right. Commissioners, opportunity to offer Ashley, Ashley, come back. Ashley, come back. Is there any comment that folks would like to offer?

I didn't realize like Haunted House took five weeks to build, so that's pretty cool. I was there during the fall. I can't even imagine it being busier on Sunday because I was at the fall festival, didn't go through the haunted house because I have a four year old and didn't want to terrorize him. But that was a pretty long line, so I can't even imagine what Sunday was like. Love all the volunteering opportunities you provide.

Also in high school, as a teenager, balanced school and athletics and volunteering and working. I actually do really love the Every Act Matters where those students who maybe are struggling to balance everything can still find some opportunities to volunteer without a long term commitment. So I think that's a really great program that can hopefully help some teenagers be able to still volunteer while juggling other activities. Love all these programs. Great job. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

Job on the presentation.

I've been a big proponent of the underground teen center from Wood Middle School. We've been able to funnel a lot of students there. I really appreciate everything you're doing, the new program that you came up with. Kids are pushed in so many different ways. What a great idea. So I love the work that you're doing and just keep up the good work.

Thanks.

For my part, thanks very much for your work. You've in fact trained my son and you are something of a hero to him. So thank you for that. I had a piece of feedback and a couple of ideas to share. The feedback, my son in particular loved the adventure camps over the summer.

As parents, one challenge we had was as the week went on, the kids were bringing increasing amounts of money with them to fund their various side activities. And so it would have been helpful for us as parents just to have a little bit more guidance and boundaries around how much cash is allowed at the program and how much is expected and that type of thing. Otherwise the kids kind of escalated that on their own and it felt like it got away from us a little bit. Terms of a couple of ideas to share, the first is I wonder whether there's any opportunity for additional collaboration with other organizations that offer youth training in town. You know, I'm thinking of organizations like the Scouts and whether there's a sense of different organizations providing different types of training.

And maybe some of these kids could end up with a portfolio of training experiences that could be valuable for them build out their kind of teen resumes. The second is as, you know, I work with teens. An area that two areas that I see as real areas of need are just really basic financial literacy training and help just understanding how money works and even the basics of building an age appropriate budget, that type of thing. An area of interest that I see from my son and a lot of his friends is a real interest in the very basics of entrepreneurship. So I think the experiences you offer around running booths at different events, selling things and the like might be the nice framework for just a very basic sense of how to run a business and how to run a P and L and and that type of thing.

They're all really interested in how do I make money because they wanna spend money. So that that might be interesting. And then I wonder whether there's any opportunity looking to the to the kind of back end of your program as you're training all of these kids, whether there's any potential for partnership with local businesses as on ramps for hiring as you identify kids that you're working with that have potential whether local businesses their most entry level of jobs might be an outlet and opportunity for kids. But thanks very much for your presentation.

Thank you for the feedback.

I have one more thing. I see all of your workers at the Starlight movie events because I attend almost all of them and all the games and stuff that they do in front, it's fabulous. But this Operation Green Sweep caught my eye. Of course, know, I always have an idea. I see they're painting fences here. Could the youth paint the backstops that need to be painted or anything that's just kind of flat, easy to go? Is that something that we could use?

I'm not gonna actually do that to stay on the spot on this one. We coordinate and she coordinates directly with our masons team and try to figure out the best and easiest ones. Sometimes with painting some things, we've discovered that there's a little bit more effort required in order to make sure everything is prepared. But she does a great balance act with Eric in picking out the appropriate things to to take.

So I was just thinking that's kind of some of it's straight painting that might be a way that we could get that done. So just you know me, I'm always giving you an idea of something. Thank you, Ashley. Very well done.

Great. Thank you all. Thank you, Ashley. Moving forward, the next item on our agenda is our regular agenda item six b which is to receive a Leidecker Park Playground update. This item will same follow the same format as the previous item. Again, there's no motion to make on this item. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening commissioners. I prepared a my name is Eric Vollnar. I am the acting parks manager. Tonight, I have prepared a presentation about our upcoming playground installation at Lydecker Park.

You might ask why Lydecker? Out of all the parks that we have, Lydecker was built in 1991. An average playground lasts about ten to fifteen years, so we are well over that threshold at this point. Recently, we've had some fairly major repairs that were needed and we were able to accomplish those. However, it is getting more and more challenging to get parts.

So we selected that based on its need. So this is a five to 12 year old playground currently and we wanted to match that. So we went out for a survey and we had two separate surveys. They were distributed to community members. We ended up doing about 13,000 on each of them And on both surveys we got about six fifty responses back.

In addition to the emails, we did signage with QR codes at various locations. We did the East Side playgrounds. We did libraries and the ARPD office where you could actually just do the QR code and take the survey. The 600 or so is about 5% which is a pretty decent number of returns. The initial survey, we are looking for community to respond to all the questions that we generally get from the vendors.

We usually they usually want to know what kind of design do we want, whether a modern or traditional design. They want to know what kind of swings, whether it's a tire swing, a traditional swing, a toddler swing. They also always ask if we want a theme and if we do, what kind of theme? So we threw out some suggestions being Bay Farm like island theme, do we want it to be a farm theme, and then other. And then we compiled all those results and we sent it back to the vendors so that the vendors could take those suggestions that the community desired.

And so they provided several designs and I'll show you the final three. That's option A. Option A says Lydecker across the top. It's a tower. It's a traditional theme. It's got a couple of slides. It has a climbing small climbing structure and then the swings. Option B has it's more of a hybrid between the two both a modern and a traditional. It has swings, slides, and it has a variety of swings on there. It combined both.

And then the third option is a modern design. It has the net climber. It's and then it's got the big the big side by side slide. And in the end, the community voted and they selected option B. Option B has it's a combination of the two and it's got those combination on the swings which I think helped.

And then I think the big selling point was probably the nautical island thing, which also came in first place on the survey. The expected well, we just got the final in last week on cost and installation with installation. And once we get it ordered, it should take approximately twelve weeks to arrive. And usually after that it takes about one month to demo and then install and reopen. That puts it somewhere potentially around April, hopefully before summer.

And some of that is weather dependent. And hopefully there's minimal impact based on the timing. I believe that's all I have. Thank you. Do you have any questions?

Thank you. Questions?

How much is this going to cost?

I believe the cost, do you remember what the cost is on that?

For removal and install we're just under 300,000 with a hybrid version of Pour in Place and Fibar for the surfacing.

So that servicing is that that poured flooring that we familiar with that soft squishy stuff?

Correct. A portion of it is surfacing to improve access to the transition pads in the high traffic areas such as the slides and swing sets with kind of a cost benefit of using five bar where we can in some of the outskirts of the area.

I have a question. Do know how many people use that QR code to fill out the survey? Do we have that, can we get that information or is that just?

I don't believe the survey comes back and tells us.

When we did Lincoln Park, I know we had a community meeting there at the park and the kids were able to pick all the different designs. Did we do that this time? If not, is it because there's not a school nearby or what was the thought to just do it online this time?

We did not. I think in the future, we will probably hybrid with that as well, doing an outreach within the community. This was unique and probably got more responses than we've ever had. The designers had mentioned that they hadn't seen a survey like this and they found the information helpful.

Oh, that's good. That's good. Thank you.

So is this $300,000 does that also include labor or is it just the construction cost?

I believe it's

full inclusive. Okay. Yeah, and it's through a source well contract.

Okay. Do

we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Any further commissioner comments? No. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay,

moving forward the next item on our agenda is regular agenda item six C which is to review and approve the revised recreation and park fees for calendar year 2026. We'll have a report and presentation from director Long then commissioners can ask clarifying questions and public comment. Then the commissioners will discuss. We'll need to make a motion at the conclusion to recommend or not recommend for this to move forward to council. Director Long.

Alright. Good evening commissioners. Again, my name is Justin Long. I'm the director of the Recreation Parks department. Every year, we present our user fee schedule in November, and then we present to city council in December.

We do this a little bit out of alignment with the city's normal fee schedules, which is our usually approved starting for July 1. We don't do that because we're in the middle of programs at that time. And so for us to make sure prices are set in place, ours go into effect on January 1 generally. So we work really hard to try to balance a few high level challenges. You know, as you all have experienced inflation, we're experiencing inflation, our part time staffing costs, which where department has the largest number of part time staff.

We have over 150 in the summertime and that even goes up to almost 300 sometimes. With the cost of living increases that happen, those are about a 3.5 to a 4% depending on the year and what the minimum wage for our part time staff go up. We also look at trying to balance the different types of programs and also sort of our market demand. We do research. We try to figure out what is being charged in our surrounding cities.

You know, are we comparable? Are we out of whack? Are we looking at, you know, adding different programs and, you know, we work with a lot of outside contractors. We balance a fee separate or split with them. So we really do look at a lot of that. And then there's also the administrative portion of supporting all these staff. As you see, Ashley was here and some of our other rec staff, but there's a lot of support staff that go into making sure that these programs can occur. And so we look at trying to include some of those indirect costs as well. In general this year, our prices went up between 310% for most things. However, there are outliers which are identified in the report.

And as this compares to last year, last year you saw a lot of fees get increased because we had kept them quite static since the start of COVID, and we wanted to make sure programs stayed attainable. And so last year there was a larger increase, and it was more between 10 to 15%. And so we just really want to give you that focus of what we did. You also see that there's not as many fee changes this time because programs are either at market. We actually have some that are above market rate specifically for our picnics and picnic rentals.

You may not know, but we have almost 1,200 of those a year and they happen throughout almost year round even though our because our climate allows us to do that. But we are we're at the top of our market for our our picnic rentals right now. So I think there's going to be a pretty big hold for those. And then just to give you kind of the overall of how we kind of structure fees in the department as a total, this triangle represents sort of like, you know, the higher the fee, it's benefiting really just individuals. They're talking about different sports or specialty camps or some of our specialty activities.

And then, you know, we try to look at like sort of our group things, like our larger classes, our group swim lessons, summer our, camps, our wrap program. And so there's a larger segment that we're hitting and so the price is in that middle. And then there's the community benefit for free or low cost programs. Now, you know, this last summer we brought back our parks and playgrounds program, which was completely free for individuals. We also have mobile rec that travels around throughout the year where we actually bring recreation to Elameda Housing Authority several times a week.

And so we bring recreation out to them. These are completely free programs. And then there is sort of what we do with our senior programs. So we try to keep the cost very low for our seniors and to create a almost a no boundary for people getting access to those classes and those programs. And so you'll see how we've done that.

So we also do everything we can to minimize our expenses. I've jokingly said our rec manager is a hoarder, but Pat knows how to make a lot out of a little, and he really does his best. And so we minimize our expenses. We use our volunteers and our thousands of volunteer hours. I mean, as you guys know, at the Massey Senior Center, the thrift shop is completely volunteer run.

A lot of our programs are volunteer run, and then we have volunteers at our parks in our summer programs through our junior our junior leader programs. So we are trying to maximize the use of our staff and reduce our staff costs. So some of the revised fees that point out that are higher than our percentage really come in around a few different areas. Our fields for athletic youth, as you know, our rates are very low and as some of you have commented on the interactions back and forth with AUSD and Little League, you know, 29 an hour is a field fee for them. We are at 11 right now.

It's over a 10% increase on that right there. But this is a activity that we've actually been able to gain ground on for many years. We weren't allowed to raise this fee. And so we've gotten our user groups into the pattern that this fee is going to go up every year as our maintenance costs go up and you know as we do more field renovations we want to make sure that our parks are safe and available for many to use. The open space park rental.

So this is if you're wanting to host a picnic outside of our sites or you want to rent something or you want to do that. So we've increased that to the new price of 43 an hour. And you'll probably hear a lot tonight, but last year we proposed a three year implementation plan around our pools. This did not happen out of the blue. This happened because we are trying to get an alignment with our aquatic center, when it's going to be coming online in 2027, and get a lot of our groups used to what the market rate is and what we're able to offer.

And so we raised them last year. They were almost 50% increases last year. This year we were raising from the youth from $5 an hour per lane to $7.50 as the second phase and then $11.33 for the adult resident. And that is the same very similar percentage increase in order to get to the end all in the third year plan which would be $10 an hour and $15 an hour for the difference between youth and adult. And then our adult sports with three officials.

So our games are getting bigger and we're having to hire more officials to do this. So this is a new fee. There's partly a new fee and then there's the $98 an hour for the resident was already there. So like I said, the overall increase is ranged between 35%. Know athletic fields in the non resident and the picnics and the youth programs kind of ranged in there.

And then we proposed a few new fees this year. So one of the things you'll see at our parks and around at some of these athletic fields, you'll see storage boxes, you'll see small shipping containers sometimes. And then we also have some groups that have abandoned said equipment. And so as part of our process for getting people to give us current information on their organization, we're asking them to have a little skin in the game. So you have a small storage facility, it's $50 a year.

And then if you have a much larger one, it goes up to $150 if you were to have like a 20 foot storage container or something in our park. This was what we're really trying to do is to make sure that we have your contact information, you know where your stuff is. We want to make sure that everyone, if you have brought it to us, that you get to take it back and that it it comes and leaves in the same condition, especially if you're no longer renting any fields from us. So there's also we made a a purchase last year in our department for some battery backup units. These can power things at our events.

Like for example, they were used at Pride to power an air conditioner for the performers. They can be used as to help at movie nights for different games and different things like that. These are very expensive pieces of equipment, so we've restricted it to only for city approved events. So if you have a city issued permit for fourth of July or if you have a permit for Blues Brews and BBQ from the city, this would be available to those groups to rent. This is also an effort that you'll see ongoing in the cities to reduce carbon producing generators.

So this is an effort that we can help support that. Also with special events that we've been having, we want to make sure that we're meeting all the ADA requirements. It's very expensive to rent a stage with a ramp. And so this last year we purchased the wheelchair lift that is portable, that can be brought to different stages. And again, this will be something that the department can offer to other citywide events, especially if they have permits.

A thousand dollars per event sounds expensive, but these rentals are about $17.50 from private companies and then there's delivery and setup charges. And so we're here to try to help alleviate that, plus we need them at all of our events. So we're able to amortize the cost off over a few years, hopefully, that we can help other community events meet this hurdle as well. And it's really something that we really want to help support too to make sure everyone has access to our events. So that's the bulk of the main fee changes.

You'll see throughout that there's, like I say, there's some that were left alone, there's some that are at market rate. Also in the staff report, there's a fee comparison study that looks at the other cities that we looked at, the different fees associated with those. And with that, I will open it up to questions.

Thank you. Commissioners, questions?

Did you get any feedback or pushback on the storage fees from anybody because I think even at 50 to 150 is minimal and or reasonable, I think 200 to four fifty because these baseball teams and they're just storing their stuff for free on public property and other organizations have to pay, like we have to pay a locker fee at Encino High School for our tennis group. We have to pay a locker fee at Alameda High School. So I think I'm just wondering if you've got pushback on it because I think that the prices could be a lot higher and it would still be reasonable.

So thank you for the question Commissioner Robbins. We didn't get any pushback on the storage container fees. We have a direct say over whether they go into a park or not. We have long standing user groups like Little League and Alameda High School and some of those other groups. We've been hosting AUSD at Estuary Field for the better part of two years now.

And so they had to bring a shipping container there to help store their stuff. From a cost perspective, we didn't want this initial portion to be punitive. You know, what we're really trying to do is pull people back into the fold and get connected with us. So we wanted to make the hurdles and roadblocks to doing that low. And because we really want people to be communicative and be part of that.

So this is just the questions and not the comments section? Okay.

Hold on until the later. Thank you. Other questions? Does

the success or failure of the bond measure, will that impact the user fee cost?

So our user fee costs are only helping to support our operating budget. So they don't really go into any type of fund reserve. And maybe I can clarify a little bit more here on our structure. So we are not a true cost recovery program because we're a program that provides public service. So we do not anticipate ever collecting how much it costs us to run a program as that's not a goal of our department.

We try to minimize the expenses as we can and mitigate that so we can continue to offer the vast amount of programs that we do. So I just wanted to kind of clarify that, you know, different programs are operating at different cost recovery just because of the number of people that use them and those components. But the overall department, if you were to throw maintenance into it, you know, are operating around a maybe a 30 to a 40% max cost recovery. So it's it's there's a real large cost into it. So just wanted to clarify that.

I'm curious on the the flip side to cost increases. I wonder whether you feel that your scholarship funds are sufficiently, sufficiently funded to help residents who need that type of assistance.

So, thank you for the question, Charities. I would say, we utilize every dollar of our scholarship program. If we had more, we could utilize more. There's a lot of people that have need and access of programs. So I will never say that we have enough around that. We do the best that we can with mitigating it. And, But we utilize every dollar.

Okay, great, thank you.

Go ahead.

On the O Club rentals, I'm looking at the fee created over cover damage, has that been an issue?

Unfortunately, we've seen some of the rentals that are happening, some of these quinceaneras are going a little overboard. Know, right now we have not gone over the amount, but we've gotten really close, and so we wanted to put the caveat in there that we would recover true costs. Because we didn't have a mechanism for doing that, so if we have to hire a company to come in and clean the carpets afterward because you spilled food and beverage all over the place, wanted to make sure that there was enough in there to cover it.

Got it. And then I know it doesn't specifically say this for the gym cleanup fee, but it looks like that's a pretty significant change and increase. Has that been an issue?

And again, it's more around deterrent. So a lot of our user groups clean. We rarely ever charge them cleaning fees. But if we do we have to have maintenance staff come in and do the work which is why there's the fee increase for that. But I would say 99% of the time this is not an issue.

Go ahead.

You sure? Yeah. I had a question after Commissioner Bernie asked that question. So how much money do we have in this scholarship fund approximately?

So right now we have about $20,000 in the scholarship fund. And depending on need, it can break a program cost down between 2575%. So for example, if you're having a, you want a kid into a summer program and it's $500 we can potentially knock it all the way down to 125 or depending on true need, it may even be zero.

So if you could ask for a budget increase, what would you like that increase to?

Like I say, any number we would utilize.

I mean if we doubled it?

If you doubled it, it would be utilized in the department and supported.

Thank you.

For the pool rentals, I know it's resident youth team, resident adult team, 75% Alameda participants. Those are those requirement also they have to be nonprofits, registered as nonprofits or that's not a requirement?

Usually these are for these groups who are renting this are all non profits. So we don't have any individual, but there are individual pool rentals you can do that are out later on the other fees scheduled for under pool rentals. But those are generally for all the Alameda non profits. Got

it. Can you explain how on the market rate, the youth and adult are not the same for us. But looking at the fee report, I don't think I see a single city that has a separate youth and adult rate.

So if you look at all of our fee structures and you look at our programs around our allocations, all of our programs have youth and senior rates built into them. So it's not just swim rentals, it's all of our actual programs have both resident youth, resident adult, and then non resident rates.

But so do other cities. So why would they, do you know why they would not have separate rates for any pools but they would keep separate rates?

Just curious. Can you clarify the question?

So if you look at the fee comparison, so City of San Ramon, So they have difference for their field rentals between youth and adult like we do. But their pool fees, they don't differentiate. I

don't have a reason for why they don't do that.

Okay, because it

seems like every other city is also like that so I'm just curious why we, if there's a reason it was different for us.

We were just implementing what our standard has been for all of our other programs.

Okay. And then again looking at the fee schedule, first just a comment. I don't know if anyone double checks these. There's a couple errors on here. I know because I've paid some of these lap swim fees, so there are a couple that I don't know if they're from old fee schedules, but not accurate on some of the lap swim drop ins, specifically for San Ramon and Emeryville.

And then it doesn't seem, I'm just curious why we voted So last year we obviously approved the going from a If anyone remembers, we used to rent for the entire pool. Now it's per lane per hour. A lot of other cities do that. It doesn't seem like looking in the fee comparison, a lot of them, if not all of them, melt the Lifeguard fee into the pool rate versus we're keeping it separate. Is there a reason for that versus kind of going with what the market's doing?

So it's the way we've structured it over the years since we've been requiring lifeguards here, it's not really structured at any end. If you divide it by the number of lanes you rented and then added it in, it's still the comparable price. So for example, if you have it's $25 an hour for us right now. So if you rented six lanes, it's $4.16 an hour. So you would add that to the lane rental price and that would be the the fee. So that per hour.

Sorry. Can you can you just explain that again?

So so the lifeguard fee that, like, say if you rent six lanes in our pool. Mhmm. Right? So 25 divided by six, you get to $4.16. Right. So you add that times the lane charge per that, it's still $25 an hour. So that's how it's broken out.

Okay, so you're still just taking the total lifeguard and dividing it by the number of lanes? It's not necessarily like

It's not a set hourly because it depends on the number of lanes you have and the number of lanes you rent determines how many lifeguards we need you to have. Right. And another clarifying question, a lot of the centers that we talked to, because specifically we went out and verified with them, like if like at Dublin for example, if the facility is normally open from ten until six, unless there's a number of people that requires a secondary lifeguard, they don't charge because they're just normally open to the general population. So if we had normal programming just out and around, and as with the Masters you know, we divide the lifeguard fee between our programs and your program. So you don't have to pay for two lifeguards, you just have to pay for the one that's required to do the number of swimmers that you have.

Right, Yeah. Okay.

I think that was all the oh, and then on the

was it the

I would like to see for next year or I mean I would like to see if the next time we increase tennis courts. I think a lot of the cities we compare to, it just seems like there's a small sample size because I think a lot the cities we normally compare to don't have tennis court rentals. If just add a couple more in there, it seems like we're kind of within market rate, but I would like if it comes to ever increasing, we'd just like to see a larger sample size there.

Sure.

You. Other questions? So

for the field prep, last year we had the hourly fee and now it's been consolidated into just per game. Why was the hourly fee removed?

If you're looking at just the one that's showing the proposed, the total fee schedule shows that the other one's still there. The hourly one is still in the full fee schedule. The field prep per game, if I am correct, Matt, do you have the?

I believe I'm looking at the same sheet you are. Is it this one?

No, he's not. He's just looking at this. Okay. Yeah.

So the one sheet is

just showing the

you're looking at there, it was the 75 per game and it was including staff hourly rate.

Okay.

And so now we've consolidated to be more of a flat rate basis instead of it being if it's two and a half hours of staff time, what their hourly rate is fully burdened, it's now just a flat rate.

Okay.

So it's kind of making it more simplistic.

Okay. And then for the gym cleanup fee, now there's an hourly rate, hourly fee included and that's still, that's for staff?

That is correct. Okay. And we'd also have that, I was looking for it, but we do have that as well for field prep as far as like cleanup. If users don't clean up after that, we do also charge an hourly fee for that as well including the $75

Okay.

And that's it. That also goes if like they don't lock up the fields behind them, they leave the goals out, etcetera. If they left a big mess, it's $75 per incident plus hourly fee of staff due to the amount of cleanup necessary.

And is that set throughout the year once for this budget or is that will that vary over the course of the year?

The only variance to that would be the amount of staff time associated with it and their hourly rate.

Okay.

Additional questions? Do we have public comment on this item?

We do Chair Radius. We have five speakers total, four in person and one online.

Why don't we start with the online speaker?

Sure. The first speaker is Maria Ducey.

Welcome, Speaker Ducey.

And she has to unmute. Speaker Dussi, can you unmute, please?

We can come back to her

if

she can unmute at a later time.

Great. Our in person speakers.

The first speaker is speaker Ann Delp.

Welcome speaker Delp.

Hi everyone, my name is Ann Delp. I'm an Alameda Aquatic Masters swimmer and have been for twenty eight years. And I'm here to talk about the pool fee increase that's proposed. Alameda Aquatic Masters Masters has been the longest standing aquatics organization in Alameda. It's been occurring for forty two years.

We have 136 members currently, 50% of which are seniors and 54% which are women. We serve all levels of swimming ability from beginners all the way to competitive athletes, fitness swimmers, triathletes, open water swimmers. We include everyone and make sure there's a space for them. We are nonprofit community based organization, just like the Alameda youth swimming programs. The proposed rate change for adult nonprofits significantly more than the youth program for the same lane space.

And individuals and it feels definitely like we are paying significantly more than a lot of surrounding communities. Our rates are going up 46%, which is definitely going to impact our ability to continue to offer as many lanes to be able to rent as many lane spaces as we're currently renting or to offer as many swim practices as we're currently offering. It's going to increase our fees $28,000 a year, which will essentially put us out of business if we try to maintain what we're currently doing. And that would be very sad since we are a community based organization in Alameda that is giving a service that AARP doesn't currently provide a master's swim program. And what else would I like to say?

Yeah, and I definitely think that once you include the lifeguard fees on top of the rate the lane rate we are up to like proposed when it gets to the $15 a lane that really looks like more like $19 a lane which is significantly higher than surrounding communities. We can only up our rates so much before we price ourselves out of what's being comparable to other masters teams in the area. So we will start to lose swimmers either to just plain old lap swimming or to other master's teams. And that again would be very sad. I've been on this team twenty eight years and have been very committed to the Alameda's aquatics program and have watched kids go from age group swimming, high school swimming, and then joining our team over the years.

So we really are community based. But thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Next speaker, speaker Annie Horn.

Welcome speaker Horn.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Annie Horn. I've been an Alameda resident for eleven years and a member of the Alameda Aquatic Masters for almost as long. Alameda Aquatic Masters is a community nonprofit fitness program for adult swimmers of all abilities from elite competitors to beginners that need personalized coaching. The proposed fee schedule would increase our rental rates by 46%.

These rates would be unsustainable and detrimental to our team. We are asking you to reconsider these pool rental fees so that swimming in Alameda remains accessible, especially to our seniors who comprise 50% of our team. Aligning with the 3% to 10 increase for other user groups would be very reasonable. And please consider the removal of the adult nonprofit category, and have one nonprofit category at the youth team rate. Thank you.

And just for context, our fees right now, I guess, they're $90 a month, and we are raising them because the pool rates are going up. And I do feel like that's kinda already getting a little inaccessible for some of our teammates and I worry, you know, that some of our members won't be able to continue, you know, so. Thanks.

Thank you.

Next is speaker Stephanie Lapache.

Welcome speaker Lapache.

My name is Stephanie Lapache. I'm an Alameda resident for many years and here

to talk about the pool.

Just to reiterate, and actually I'm an Alameda parent whose children have been on every sport that Alameda offers. And I will say, you know, I understand that pools are more expensive to run, but it is the hardest and most expensive youth groups in the city, even with the rate you and so when you're raising all these rates, how about the field? You can rent an entire field for the price for a single lane in a pool. You can't have a swim team in a single lane in a pool. And meanwhile, you have 50 kids in a soccer field and you're paying the same rate?

When my kids were playing soccer, it's lovely how cheap it is, but at the same time, making swimming and other aquatic sports so inaccessible by these incomparable rates. Anyway, I also swim in a lot of different cities all over the state of California, and our lap swim rate is nowhere near what other cities are paying. So if you want to keep teams, and I know you're building this we want to build this beautiful new pool, but if you're gonna start making the teams that you're hoping that are going to be in there not be able to afford to use the pool, good luck getting enough lapswimmers. I'm at that pool a lot of times during the day. And there's a handful of lapswimmers and a lot of master swimmers.

And so doesn't you're gonna alienate you know, get rid basically, you're gonna price out the laps the masters teams, and then how are you gonna keep pools open with lap swimmers who are only paying $5 to swim? When, again, other cities, it's usually $10 or more. So I think you need to look at, keeping things a little more equitable and not putting the burden on the, master's team in this community because that's what it looks like with those fee schedule increases. And if you lose Alameda Masters before you open your big beautiful pool, and those are the rates you're going to charge, good luck getting anyone else. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is speaker Kristen Koblik.

Welcome.

Hi everybody, thanks for having us. I first want to express my sincere appreciation for the Alameda Rec and Parks Committee and everything that you do. I wanna say that I'm an automatic yes vote on any bond. And I wanna really echo and reiterate the comments about equity and accessibility that previous speakers have made and just lend my support to those. I also wanna speak to the role of the Alameda Aquatic Masters team as, and it's kind of symbiosis with the youth programs.

I know of at least three or four master's swimmers who have started swimming because their kids are part of the youth programs. And I just think so beautiful and wonderful to see a community that's coming together intergenerationally around swimming. And I really hope that we can, you know, sustain the affordability of the master's program in addition to the youth programs. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioners, it's time for our discussion.

Did we get the

Oh, is the online speaker back? No. No? Who would like to start?

I have a couple of questions and I'm Drew, Commissioner Vice Chair, since you are a master swimmer, am I correct? Can you tell me what the difference is between let me go to my notes here. How old do you have to be to be a master swimmer? 18. Okay, so anybody over 18 is a master swimmer.

Yep.

So when they talked about renting a lane to lap swim and then a master swim, what's the difference? Aren't you renting a pool to lap swim So or

lap swim is open to the general public. So anyone can come during oak lapsometime, swim in a lane. So masters is you have a coach, a team, very similar format to like a youth swim program where a workout's given by the coach, everyone's swimming the same workout, you're swimming in a lane with people around the same speed as you. So it's a little bit more structured where laps swimmer you're coming and you're just kind of doing your own thing.

And back in the day when I swam in high school, you had a lot of people in lap at one time. How many swimmers do you have in a lap on average?

Yeah, slow days it can be one to two. Weekends especially it can get to four to five, which is three to five. I'd say five is probably around the capacity for a master's in a short course pool.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Me? Sorry.

The online public speaker is raising their hand. Thank you. Let's try this again.

Welcome. Speaker Ducey, are you there? Hello. We can hear you.

Oh, hi. This is Maria. Thanks for being patient with me. I've been swimming with Alameda Aquatic Masters for ten years, and I believe an equal fee should be charged per lane for youth and adult swim teams because a body is a body in a lane. Please charge us equally. Thank you.

Thank you. Other comments?

I guess there's more to our There's one more. Sorry.

One more online.

Yeah, just one moment. Speaker Henry Song.

Welcome speaker.

Speaker Song, are you there?

You're unmuted sir.

Speaker Song, can you you're unmuted.

Let's move on.

Okay. So I guess Mr. Birney. I also have a question for Vice Chair Schwartz. So, are these because I don't pay I do open water swimming.

Swim So,

in pools that often anymore. So, I don't pay these fees. Are these fees comparable to the rest of the Bay Area that we're proposing?

I mean there's a fee schedule here.

I know it's hard for me to interpret that.

Okay, yeah. I it's I'd mean say the challenge is I think as we did last year, some especially older facilities are still charging for the entire pool versus the per lane per hour rate, which is what newer facilities or like programs like us are, like that's more generally accepted right now. So I think it is a little bit, could be a little bit challenging looking at the fee schedule. I believe there was a fee schedule in one of the, there were some additional cities I think in one of the, I have papers everywhere, the communications that we got previously that I think outlines it too. Mean I think my biggest concern if we're on the topic is I don't see anywhere in any of the fee schedules there's a different adult and youth rate.

So I don't know why we just wouldn't align to that as some of our speakers had commented on. Because that just seems to it seems like we're in that category, we would be the like I understand other rental rates have different adult and youth fees, but it seems like that's pretty typical of other cities as well. But what's typical of other cities that have pools is to just charge a single rate. So I think that's my biggest concern. I want to make sure that pool space is equitable to everybody.

Looking at the fee schedule to me it seems like we're below or at the lower end of market rate for lap swim and swim lessons, which is great. But to me these fee increases go above market rate. And so if rates have to go up, I would hope we would do it across all aquatics as a whole versus just particular keeping some groups high and some groups low. But that's just how I see it based on how I'm reading the fee comparison.

I have another question, Vice Chair. So you pay $90 a month to swim with Alameda Masters, is that correct?

That is correct.

So is that $90 supposed to buy as much lap time as you want in a pool or what?

So there's 15 practices a week. So it has to be within one of those practice times. You can't just come at any time like lap swim.

You can go 15 times or?

I mean you could, but no one's probably going to swim three times a day.

Well I'm just curious as so you're paying $90 a month and you could swim five days a week, three days a week for the whole month for $90

Yeah.

Thank Like

for other sports, it's like once a week in tennis. So if it's once a week and it's $90 then we are talking 90 divided by four would be the actual cost and not the $90 So I think we as a board need to understand that because tennis we're charged by the hour every time and as we go out, if I go just for four hours in, well two hours a week, I'm paying $90 a month. So I'm paying the same price. So it's not more money than what I'm being charged for tennis. It's a hell of a lot more money than what these softball people continue to complain about and soccer people continue to complain about, but I will get to that comment later.

So here's my other question. So there could be five of you in a pool. We're not charging each person individually, we're just charging for that lane, correct?

So basically there's a, ARPD does a quarterly allocation. So teams put in what they want, what they need pool space wise. It gets allocated out prioritizations to youth over adult programs. And then the teams have to commit to the lanes and hours of the renting for that allocation period.

I guess my question is, so if there's five of you swimming in the lane, we're only charging you for one person. We're not charging you that lane fee times five.

Right, per lane per hour. Got

it. Thank you.

Director Long, I wonder whether you might walk us through how you assessed, how you benchmark our pool fees with other neighboring towns. And related to that question, when you set the target for the three year endpoint for where fees will ultimately land, Is that driven primarily by the cost structure of the aquatic center or is that a long term view on where market is going?

So thank you for the questions. So we do an extensive comparison with all local cities, even those that are not in that plan. We have three spreadsheets here. Most of the organizations do it slightly differently. It's one of those things where if you wanted to say apples to it's impossible. And so we do our best to try to assess whether we are in market or we are not in market or where we're at. There's a variety that charge lifeguard fees. There's some that say you have to rent the pool. There's there's some information correspondence you were handed that have two hour requirements, mandatory rentals. So and then lifeguard fees are assessed based on the number of people in a pool.

Our organization took the stance years ago that we would have lifeguards at all of our facilities and they would be provided and then we would assess fees for those. As for the aquatic center question, we do believe that will that in 2020 at the end of twenty twenty seven, that will be market rate in the area for laps minimum or not laps swim, but for lane rental swimming. I wanna clarify something around a point around why swim lessons and lap swim are considered a a lower dollar value. We were given direction by council and this commission itself to try to keep youth and senior costs low and to try to keep those programs available and accessible. And so we've taken that directive to keep that cost barrier relatively low.

And then as you know, the aquatic center put forward an operating plan that we presented when we presented the designs for the amount of money that it needs to make in order for it to function. One of the targets of this group when we met with the youth swimming community and swimming community before we proposed the three year implementation was about trying to get people allocate or give them time to get to a market rate price over a three year period. When this originally started, the youth rental rate per lane, if you divide it out the pool cost was $2.88 and for the adult it was $4.11 So in order for us to try to get to a market share because we want everyone to be able to participate at the aquatic center, we want to make sure that it is accessible when it is built and when Emma Hood comes online. Those are some key things that we have to assess. This last year the expenses for operating at Encenel were $1,200,000 That's over 50% cost for just the school fee.

We were assessed just slightly above 5 and $31,000 this last year. And so we generate just over 500 and some odd thousand in revenue with our rentals only accounting for $125,000 of that and that's for all the groups that rent for the facility. So the majority of our cost of programs are in our summer camps, our swim lessons, our group swim lessons which is why during the school year mid June through August 15, it's really hard to get time in the pool because we are pushed to the limits especially with the one pool. And I do thank everyone for for working with us during those difficult times and during the difficult times when AUSD cannot function a pool. We've had many closures in the last few months due to boilers being down, chemical imbalances, and so, you know, that's one of the things that the staffing model for the aquatic center will have certified pool operators.

They will have staff that can operate a pool. So that's that's part of the operating plan for the aquatic center. So all that gets baked into that rental rate.

Thank you. And one one additional follow-up question. Setting aside the specifics of aquatics, what's the general department philosophy on separating out youth versus adult rates and setting fees?

So again, this has been a longstanding thing with ARPD about providing access for youth at an affordable and attainable level. So whether it's the soccer rentals or the basketball or any of those, we've tried to keep it at a very low rate so that as we know AYB charges and Viper's charges for that and Alameda U soccer charges a fee just like Little League does. And those fees try to stay low and we've kept those costs relatively low. If we were to go to the model of the school district where we have to charge $29 an hour for a field rental plus a custodian plus another staff member, the cost would get astronomical and you'd be paying a $100 an hour Mhmm. And which would just be really cost prohibitive for many groups to use our facilities.

So that has been the direction from council. That has been the direction from this commission before. And so as a department we've tried to hold that in tradition in all of our programs that we offer.

Thank you.

Can I ask a clarifying question for the tennis court rentals? I know you have a and I have no problems with the rates. I just clarifying question. Resident is $15 an hour, non resident is $18 an hour. Since we have tenant, I'm on a tennis team.

We ran out of Ensignal High School and Alameda High. For the teams that rent out of WAPA, Washington Park, couldn't a team that, couldn't a resident be the one to rent the courts so that it's only at $15 an hour, even though we're hosting teams from all over the East Bay and the majority of the people will be non residents. So I'm just wondering how does that all work out?

So just like with all of our other allocations, we do the tennis allocation the same and they have the same 75% requirement.

Oh, So

Wawa mainly pays the full non resident, because they don't have enough members from Alameda.

Good, good. Thank you. And just for reference, city of San Francisco has an 85% rate. So we're better than I mean we're doing better than that.

Any additional comments?

I just have one.

I have comments.

I have one more question for Director Long. As it relates to the pool rental increases, so all this just for my confirmation, all this is for the transition to a three year transition to the aquatic center and that will slowly be increasing these fees over time to meet the market rate by the time we get there, right?

Yeah,

that's been the intent the whole time.

Right, so the inevitability is that we either increase it slowly over time or do it all at once once the aquatic center is built?

Yeah, when we presented the operating plan, it was pretty well identified by city management at the time that we wanted to make sure that the aquatic center can cover its operating costs to the best of its ability. I will say that almost no swim facility ever recovers its costs. What I don't want to have happen is have Menlo Park where they have built a nice new swim center next to their community center and there's been articles all in the paper about how it can't be open now. They don't have enough money to operate it and so now it's only open four hours a day. So what I'd wanna do is to avoid that and to make sure that when the aquatic center is up and running that we do have the ability to fund it and to fund it appropriately because I do not wanna restrict hours because I think they just defeat the purpose of why we're doing this.

And so developing an operating plan that can sustain includes all of these different things. That operating plan has that pool maxed out as much as it can all day long, whether we're offering specialty programs, teaching kayaking, scuba, we're willing to host anything as long as it can bring in some revenue we're doing. There'll be senior programming, there will be all sorts of things throughout the day in order to try to cover those operating costs.

Thank you. Additional comments?

And I think if you please correct me if I'm wrong, I think that one of our speakers had said that decreasing the difference would be a $26,000 a year. So I just want to put that in perspective the numbers Justin was talking about.

I just want to say that Commissioner Robbins, you and I have done this for eight times now.

Yes.

And the comments are usually the same. Boy, our fees are certainly reasonable when you look at you have $11 an hour to rent a field and you probably got 15 kids out there. That's not a dollar, you know. So and I trust staff to come up with these numbers, but I just want to read something that it's repeated here every on after every section. Fee increases due to staff and utility costs. Fee increases due to staff and utility costs. Fee increases due to administrative and staffing costs. On and on and on under every section. So, there's a reason why these fees are changing. It's not just arbitrary that, oh, let's charge, you know, an extra dollar.

I think a lot of our fees are too reasonable. Council doesn't seem to agree with us when we send them the information that we should raise them a little bit. So I am I just wanted to read that sentence that fee increase is due to staffing and administrative costs. Thank you.

Any additional comments?

My comment is the previous director of the Parks and Rec said we are trying to make the increase to the athletic fields reasonable by only doing it $1 per year. And eight years ago it was like $5 and now it's at $11 we're proposing $11 and it isn't for 15 kids, it's 30 kids total because it's 15 on each side. I also attended the AUSD meeting and the parents that were crying about the price increase for the fields for soccer and softball and baseball. And I have to say when you have 30 kids on a field and it's $11 an hour and my kid had to pay $10 an hour for every hour of tennis and I have to pay $10 an hour for every hour of tennis and we have to pay for swimming, I think the real problem here is our soccer and baseball, softball rates. It's an insult that these people continue to get away with paying pennies on the dollar compared to what all the other sports have to pay.

And I hear them complain about the costs and I will say it and I'm going to look right into whatever camera's out there, I'd like to see a complete breakdown on your baseball costs for the entire year because if you've got 15 kids on your team playing and you're only paying $10 an hour, where are all your fees going? I want to know what your end of year party costs for the adults and what are the costs of those parties. And where is all this money going to that these families have to pay for these softball and soccer kids to play when, from what I understand, the end of year parties are lavish, amazing shindigs for the adults where there's liquor and all kinds of fun stuff and there's a lot of expense towards those. When if it's supposed to be for the kids, let's put the money to the kids and not the end of the year parties and let's make it reasonable. Let's make soccer and baseball, softball the same prices that we in swimming or tennis or other programs have to pay.

And let's stop this $1 a year increase and let's really make it equitable and make those individuals pay what they should be paying just like all the rest of us are having to pay. That's my comment.

Okay, any other comments? Okay, if we're out of comments, do we have a motion?

I would like to make a motion to proceed.

Is that a motion to approve the revised recreation

I would like to make a to approve. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Okay, may we have roll call vote please.

Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Commissioner Bernie? Yes. Commissioner Robbins?

Yes.

Vice Chair Swartz? No. Chair Radice?

Yes. The motion passes, thank you. Okay. Moving forward, the next item on the agenda is our next meeting on 12/11/2025. Do we have any agenda items that we'd like to put on that, excuse me, on that agenda? Nope. Okay. Director Long, do you have anything for that agenda?

I believe there's going to be a report out on the coastal shoreline adaptation. I think they delayed it until December and then we'll review internally if we think there's going be any other agenda items on there.

Great, thank you. The next item on the agenda is our adjournment. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I'll motion to adjourn. I'll second. And can we have a vote please? Sure.

Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Commissioner Bernie? Yes. Commissioner Robbins?

Yes.

Vice chair Swartz? Yes. Chair Radies?

The meeting is now adjourned. We'll see everybody in December. Thanks very much.