City Council - workshop

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's just silly. Right?

And I call this workshop of the City Council to order at 6.03. Of course, the purpose of the workshop is to gather information and for discussion purposes only. There will not be any votes taken at the workshop. And we do have the right as the council to reserve the rights to add or delete anything from the associated agenda. However, looking at the agenda this evening, we have one thing on the agenda, which is joint discussion with Community Redevelopment Agency, CRE Board, regarding parks. Oh, he's still here. Mr. Crawford there. Wow. And it's open.

If you don't mind, if I can start. Yes, ma'am. Because I think I was part of making this problem today. My goal in this workshop is to help us identify what our funding and priorities are as we go into the fiscal year 2027 budget. So that's like the overall goal for Parks and Rec. And it started because there was a conversation about Main Street potentially helping us with one or two different parks downtown. And so my recollection was that I felt like, let's figure out what our big picture vision items are. And one of the things that I think is a great opportunity for us is the, to look at the NRPA assessment and see what were those immediate action items that were suggested to get us up to kind of a rated parks. And then to what extent does our master parks plan impact downtown? And then how can we work with the CRA or a main street to help move those projects forward while we on the, on the, um, city council can focus outside of downtown because we have support in the downtown area. That's where I'm, that's how I'm approaching this meeting so that we can make better decisions as we come into budgeting next month. That's where I'm at.

Okay. Anybody else?

Anyone else? How many parks in town are we talking about? Is there... Everything except me.

I would suggest we're talking about all the parks if need be, but maybe if Mr.

So we say allocate that to the CRA.

Oh, no. In my mind, we look at what the NRPA says for what we should do, like our immediate action items, and how many of those fall into the CRA. So I don't know if Mr. Foreman has the NRPA report, but there was a page and it was presented so quickly that I wanted to be able to look at those items so that we could see what might we be talking, because if you remember, there were specific, like if you add sidewalks here, if you add accessibility there, there were specific things that were listed in the NRPA report. And then what if those fall into downtown? That was what I thought we were doing today. I love starting meetings with what I thought we were doing. It's better than ending them that way. Did anybody else think we were doing something different? I mean, there's certainly...

I didn't know what we were doing really. I was like, okay, I'll be there.

I don't know. My brain was going towards like discussion about what of maybe some of the ABA ethos ideas and recommendations we would want to implement down here. But that is, there's that too. So I'm thinking of some of the waterfront projects and all that kind of stuff too.

And that's what I understood as well, but I have learned to be ready to shuck and jive when you come to these because... They can change direction quickly.

We're a dynamic, maturing city. It's a good line. I'll steal it if you let me.

I also know some of this sort of came out of talking about having a place for kids to play in the downtown area too, right?

Yeah, we were going to talk about that.

Totlock, Victory Point came up. There was a conversation about a playground at Victory Point, and I think that's what kind of led us to say, let's have a workshop on this. Yeah.

Sorry. This is where ABA Ethos' presentation and report regarding the seven pillars, seven dimensions of well-being started.

Yeah, this is it. This is what I'm thinking.

So let me know. This is it.

This is the scores of each of the parks. So when you say, what do we have downtown? So for purpose of CRA Main Street, we've got everything under Waterfront Park. That's one, two, three, four, five. 13 parks downtown. And then we've got the other, looks like about 13 parks throughout the city. And then there was something with scores. Brian, can you speak to that? There's something about the different scores and how we could improve the quality of each of these parks.

It's too small for me to read.

it's tough for me also so according to his scores when he went through social physical intellectual environmental emotional economic and cultural looks like the parks that were scored which he didn't he included waterfront park which scored very well um the arts and rec center scored well Looks like Hiawatha Preserve scored very well. Powell Park scored very well. The trail in general was okay. Felter Park was okay. And the other ones, it looks like where, I'm just looking at a scores where zeros line up. Economic. Economic, cultural, physical and intellectual, there was a lot, there were some zeros in there when you get towards, there's a lot of the neighborhood parks that, you know, where they scored lower because they didn't, I guess they didn't have the activity.

So we can see a lot of these parks have threes or zeros. So for example, under facilities and healthcare services, under physical, and then also healthy food, chronic disease and health management, we can see not a lot of food options, whether that's nearby or onsite. So as we look at these scores, one thing that I think would be worthwhile would be if, if we start here and say, how do we get each of our parks to be four or above in each of the categories, or maybe there's another metric that we want to use. And then for purposes of CRA and downtown, we've got this list of 13 parks and do we want to see some sort of plan relative to that? You know, top lot has already come up and so has victory point. Oh, thank you, Brian. I'm definitely getting older. Yeah, I know. The doctor warned me about that. So the visual and performing arts, we see that on the far right. So I just thought if we can look at this, am I off or is this something that we could agree as council? I mean, is Parks and Rec is looking for direction on what to do for fiscal year 27.

does this matter to us well just look at let me say this looking at this report i i am not very happy with the fact that everything like waterfront park why we have all these parks listed on the waterfront and neither one of them have a score tour yeah okay first of all a lot of these parks even in the downtown area are shooting so how do they all get grouped on the waterfront park mckinney park is all the way to the other side of town Okay, so how to get on the waterfront park and it doesn't have a score a tree Veteran Park, okay row house. Well, I guess that can stay on the waterfront But I think we need to go back and look at look at taking some of these out of there and trying to put some kind of score to them because these are all parts and yet and still neither one of them parts have any type of score and So we just all listed everything on the waterfront park and give it a 312.

Is there another page that talks about those parks by chance? Or might that be something we could send back and ask for?

We can.

I mean, I communicate with Shane on a random basis. You look at this here. I'm going to pull this back a little bit.

So I think this is interesting. So we should have 530 acres of parkland. We have 360. But he said the lake acreage and the access to lakes could make that an immediate.

Well, I don't think we can claim the lake, okay, and everything. That all belongs to the state.

But the access.

We do have some access, some lake bottoms, like where all our piers are. We own a lake bottom at the piers and different lake bottoms, so we do have some of that. For example... I would like to really see a rating on McKinney Park because I know I was going to get with you and Mr. Bryan and Mr. Van Wagner because the courts out there in McKinney Park really need resurfacing. They're in very bad shape. When the police department was out there last week, a week before last, with the suit around with the kids they were going around doing, they came to me and talked to me about it.

So I have a question. I think this is the right spot for the question. One of my whole, because I had money in the budget to resurface the courts in McKinney a couple years ago. It didn't line up. One of my questions, one of my holdups is, is there a plan or a thought to redesign McKinney Park in some way? Whether we reallocate how the space is divided, do something with parking, rebuild the fields in some way, do something. Is there any kind of thought there, or are we just, this is McKinney Park, just make it the best it can be?

Well, McKinney Park, I know we spent a lot of money on it in the past, and basically right now, like I say, the biggest thing I saw over there was the fact that when I went out and looked at it, it was the resurfacing. I think there's a push on by... south lake lincoln park south lake alliance about trying to do something with mckinney the upper area of the field uh recreation uh community center i don't know where well where we're going with that we i think we'll be in community discussion with that about it but mckinney park itself is in pretty good shape other than the courts uh i know we went through and took down a lot of signs out there a year or two ago so we can have more parking because all the parking signs that was up there um I think, of course, when they opened up the Lincoln Park Education Center, a lot of the parking went away because they fenced off the school there and took away some of the parking because the redevelopment of the school out there, repurposing it. And, of course, I think next week they're getting ready to do a ribbon cutting on Lake Tech out there. And I think I've got a school board looking to resurface the area up on the corner.

But real quick, we're talking about McKinney, and it's not even listed on one of the six most active parks here.

Well, that's what I'm saying. McKinney, all those parks. I'm concerned about every one of those parks that's listed on the waterfront because I know Hiawatha, if we go back to the other slide.

But Hiawatha is listed.

Yeah, but all of them need work. But none of them have been raided. That's what I'm saying. If you look under this slide here, you've got Waterfront Park. You've got a historic event. You've got Bishop Field, which isn't there. And you have no raiding. to tell us what's wrong, do they actually go out and look at them and rate them like they did all the rest of the parks? I think every one of them needs to be listed and rated in some kind of place and give us some idea of exactly what needs to be done.

We don't have Will J there.

So the first question would be, can we get ABA to finish or provide updated numbers on the NRPA ratings for each of those parks in the CRA, basically?

I don't see why they call waterfront parks.

Well, that's the other thing. Like I say, they all listed on the waterfront. Why they grouped all these on the waterfront park, I don't know. Okay. And I just took McKinney. The main reason I took McKinney Park is because that's the furthest thing away from the waterfront.

You mean the rowing house.

Well, the rowing house, like I said, I can... The rowing house and Victory Point, I can kind of see since it's on the waterfront, but it's all the way around to the other side of the lake. So why we have everything grouped on the waterfront park, I don't know. Okay.

Yeah, that's a good question about... You know, when we advertise events and we say, come to Scaramon on the Trails at Waterfront Park.

Yes.

we don't mean center Lake. We don't mean McKinney. We don't mean veterans or victory point. So I think water to that point, I echo, I think waterfront park needs to be its own. And then all those other parks need to be moved over to the left and their own separate lines. And maybe we don't have visitor accounts, but then we put on available like we did for the other ones. But I think they do. I think they should be scored. And I think we should have a, a total picture of all the, park land that we as a, as a city own manage operate so that it can inform what priority or master parks plan that we want to put forward. Um, because again, you know, lower scoring or lower safety or less use may help us inform, okay, well, maybe there's a reason for that. I think any of us who went to the Totlot area when Main Street had their event there, it's pretty clear once you were there why not a lot of people are using it. And so that may inform, right? That may inform that for us and say, all right, if we want this to be a space, we've got to commit to improving it or doing something with it. And then it becomes a conversation of do we have opportunities to partner with entities or communities to work on this? Is this a city – This is a city venue. The city really needs to take the lead and be the lead on this. I would even go as far as saying, we talk about parks. Do we even have a definition? Maybe this is for Mr. Foreman, a legit question. Do we have a definition of city park versus... community park versus neighborhood park versus, like, do we define what those are and then what parks fall into those categories?

Yeah, so, you know, Azalea Park would be an Edgewood Park place. Those are neighborhood parks.

Yeah, and I think that would be really good for us as a community to be able to define what those are and what that means. Um, because again, going back to a funding type of thing, obviously venues that host major events are, are probably going to be in the conversation every year for funding because we're constantly using it and we're going to have to make sure that it's, it's up to date. And, but then some of the more neighborhoods, smaller, more passive recreation, I don't know. I'm just making these categories up, but if there, we have the ability to say, these are areas that You know, we need to prioritize and that's where that master plan comes in. And we're not going to see their name every year in a budget process. But that doesn't mean that we aren't committed to making sure that there's still, you know, a three or above or a four and above whatever we want to see our parks as a whole be for the community.

Well, and that's kind of where I was looking at this is it, I think this allows us to say, okay, if you can go to the next screen, what it looks to me, the interpretation that I have on this is they've identified the parks that have the most activity. So the other parks weren't scored. I would want to trust, but verify what I'm about to say, but I'm imagining they weren't scored because they didn't have much activity showing people tracking to them. So if we start with the ones with the most activity and we get their scores up, I mean, look, conservation and sustainability protocol changes every single one of these because they all have the same issue. What does that mean? If we can get all the scores up on the ones that are the most active and then maybe as a a council and a board, we identify a number of emerging parks. And then the question might be, well, how do we prioritize those parks? One thing I want to put out there for the purposes of city council is when I look at the list of parks, there are none in Wellness Way. None. And there's no actual what I would call parks on the southwest side of town near Legends and Hammock Ridge. There's the Performing Arts Center, but you can see nature access. So that might be an opportunity, even though it's one location, to create a park setting as well as... So figuring out how do we give every section of the city... I mean, there's nothing on the east side at all on the northeast side of town. So ensuring that everybody in the city has access access to parks I think I would say is a priority for me is making sure that everybody has access to parks and then to your point Mr. Bain what are the big city parks and then what are the neighborhood parks and so once everybody has a park well how do we get everybody close to a pocket park or a community park or just a green space that you can go be in nature like Something. Access to a lake that's clean water. Something. And so right now we don't have a standard. Brian doesn't have a standard. He doesn't have a specific goal that I'm aware of. No, it's like go out, do your job every day. Well, what's my job? Well, just parks, right? Well, what's that mean? So my goal is to figure out What is the standard? What is the measurement that we're using? We have a start. And I do think it makes sense to get the other parks rated for sure. But I would suggest that we can maybe start by figuring out what does this mean, conservation and sustainability protocol? And then what does cultural programs mean? Have staff get to work on that while ABA is finishing the map. And then maybe we could identify what's our priority of emerging parks for 27, 28, 29, so that we have a plan. Because right now, I don't see a plan and recreation and parks can be a huge budget item. And sometimes it should be. But right now, it seems like it's kind of at a whim of whatever someone might feel in that moment. But I don't think it's just. When I look at the map of where the parks are, I don't think everybody in the city who's paying taxes and paid impact fees is getting the parks that they've paid for.

No, I... First, we need to go back and rate it. I hear what you're saying about trying to – these are the high-rated parks right now. But I have somewhat look at it. If I spend all my time working on these parks here that's up here and I got parks down here and I'm not spending time trying to bring these up to this level, these are slipping further and further. That's what I'd like to see in emerging. So we need to get these other ones rated, really rated, so we'll know where we need to spend our money and concentrate. If we already got these at B's and C's, I'm saying maybe, yeah, I'm not saying we ignore them altogether and everything, but we need to be looking at the parts that's not at B and C, A and B's and C, to try to get them up there. We need to focus on these things. I hear you about the usage and everything, but... How do we go back and determine how the usage is? Because I can tell you, I look at McKinney Park and from 7 o'clock in the morning when the gates open to 10 o'clock at night, there's people running through that park all the time. We have no figures on how many people are using it.

That is part of the upcoming budget of having place your AI or something similar to where we can go to all these parks and check what our attendance is in real time.

Yeah.

check when the high usage times are so that's one of the things that I want to do this year so yeah and Mr. Mayor the other issue is if the parks that are shown as being low lowly attended or we don't have numbers for it's a chicken and egg argument are they lowly attended because they've been neglected right or or they're in the wrong place or or whatever I I mean, I think there's a place for very passive parks with almost nothing in them. We used to play baseball, football, and all those. And just grass is all you needed. And a water hose at the place next door where you could get a drink of water. Get a drink of water.

You're showing your age.

Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, we do that.

We tend to do that. And you're right, Mr. Crawford. But let me give you a perfect example. We had a chestnut park. About three, four years ago, I got a complaint, but nobody using it. The equipment was all broken down. Of course, I went over, I looked at it, did an inspection of it. I called Park and Rec at the time. First thing they told me, we didn't have any money in the budget. I said, well, we need to do something about Park, Chestnut Park, because people are complaining. I kind of stepped back and gave it to one of the residents over there. I went and found the resident over there. They said, hey, can you head this up for me? And they worked with, I think, Scott David Hoffer, still a parking rep. Somehow they found money. They went out there and they redid everything. Guess what? The park had almost used up. I started getting phone calls talking about, we got too many people in the park.

Right, right, right.

Okay. Going back to what Mr. Crawford is saying, see, and also is they not being attended because they're in poor condition and we need to pay attention to them. But I can speak for McKinney Park because I run past that thing three, four times a day. I know it's very highly utilized. Okay. But yet and still we show no numbers on it. Yeah. Okay.

And Mr. Mayor, the other... Input that I would love to see for a full picture that is probably not easy to get, it's probably not NRPA, is what we would call private parks. Like in Wellness Way, most of the parks are HOA or CDD.

That's a good point.

Even though they're open to the public.

Or not.

Yeah, some are not. Some are gated, but not many down there. Most of them are like summer port or that kind of thing. And to truly see the needs where maybe a church has a big bouncy house. I don't know. And those kind of things. It might be one of those. And to get a full picture of recreation availability to everybody, I'd love to know that, but I don't know how to get it.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think all our parks, regardless of the condition of them, they're all being utilized. Because people have nowhere else to go, but, you know, they do complain. And like I say, well, when I was working the post office, I got a chance to see most of the parks. And I used to work with the park and rec guy on just about all the parks and everything during that time. Because as I rode around the city most of the time doing my job with the post office as address management, I got a chance to visit a lot of these places and see them. And now when I go as the mayor, I ride around, I see the parks, they all, they all being utilized.

Okay.

It's just an activity. We don't have enough parks is what I don't think we need to create some more. I agree with that. Do we have the land to do that with?

And that's, that's what I was hoping. What's next after this? What's the next slide? Cause this was like a hundred and some odd. Okay. So here we go. So this was the community surveys.

So now in the community survey, and I remember, I'm a little careful with what the community survey says because the responses are not fully representative of Claremont residents. They're... There are a lot of responses that were not city residents that were outside of that and unincorporated. And also, it wasn't a large sample size.

That's right. He did say he wanted to keep it open for a year, something like that.

Yes. So I want to be a little careful with taking this as gospel.

Yeah.

Yes, they are.

Trust me. That's number one.

I've seen you in here enough to know that.

We have. I looked at this list you had. I don't know if that's a complete list. And one of the biggest things. I do not see on this list that I keep getting hammered on and I think I just sent you an email on it last week or so is the skate park. Okay. I mean, I had a young lady write an email. I think I sent it in to them last week. I'm like, okay, they back at me again with the skate park. They've been hammering me for six years about the skate park. Yeah, they have.

Oh really? Yeah.

There's a petition right now on, on a changed, I think it's on change.org. Is that what it is? Uh, the petition website that, uh, there's a, uh, a young person who is advocating for, yeah, I got tagged as a decision maker, um, on that. And, um, yeah, but, but, but also how, how great that's awesome that they're excited absolutely great that we have someone who cares enough to say they really want some sort of activity in our community and that they're willing to do something about it yeah i think that's great and so um you know i Maybe a missing piece of all of this, too, is how are we engaging our youth who are going to be the future users themselves and potentially for their families of what they would like to see in the community moving forward as well? And then I go on the other end of that. that age bracket of, you know, what are our older residents saying about what kind of park space or maybe slightly more passive or less, you know, intense activity that might be available for folks as they age and mature. And so I, you know, I think there's some opportunities there for us to capture that and, And I don't want to go too far away from the point of doing this with CRA and making sure that we tie this back to the CRA and keep that there. But I think all of this is really good conversation about parks in general. And I think it shows the necessity or need for a true master plan. And getting this information, I think, will really help us. This was one that really struck my eye when Shane was here.

I mean, and I can say, I know we got quite a few parks and we have more parks than people realize. Okay. But they are very highly use every 1 of them and we need more space. But my thing is, ever since I've been sitting here, where can we put new new park? Where do we have laying to put parks at? It's just nonexistent right now. I know when I got the email last week from the young lady, and there was a 14-year-old wrote a kind of email to me, and I passed it on. And, of course, I think she mentioned, I may mention, but she may mention about the petition that they were going to get started and all, because I've had young folks, 12, 13, 14-year-olds come and stand in this council chamber and hammer me about the skate park. Okay, and we've been promising them, but where is it located? Two acres we got over there by the Volkswagen deal. I know we got a stipulation on it saying we can't use it for a park and everything. But I think I would like Mr. Van Wagen to go back and renegotiate that with them if they can. Maybe if we put up walls or something to protect the car lot.

But again, now we're kind of picking and choosing without the input of the people involved. in the whole in the city as a whole and so i think that we really owe it to the people because we have six weeks until until brian's bringing us a final budget and i don't feel like he has a vision for what to do and you know we've got members of the public here i would love to hear from the members of the public and what they see obviously this was brought as a joint meeting so we could have cra discussions maybe one of the things we could do is say okay what Because we have a willing, what I understand to be a willing partner with Main Street, let's start the CRA kind of, I almost feel like community groups in each section of the city who could advise us on what they need because... If you only hear from one group of people, if we only listen to people who live and work in downtown and we make all the decisions for downtown, then we're never going to be serving the people who, to your point about, is it the chicken or the egg? People in Wellness Way live 25 minutes away. So to get to us, it's a long drive. Exactly. So if we ignore the people on the east side of town because they're not the squeaky wheel, then... All of the park's money is going to go to one place, and that's not just. So if we can, I would love to have support to give Mr. Foreman direction to say, we want to know what each region of the city feels they need. I'd love to have Shane's input on what he sees. I think Mr. Crawford makes a really good point about, I think we need a real map of the city that shows every single park, private, small, city managed. And I also think it would benefit us to see where our dollars are being spent. I don't know if Urban 3 can do that. They're on our comprehensive planning team. But it would be really nice to see where are our park dollars being spent. If you see that on a map, I might be surprised.

That place or AI, like I said, or something similar, they're not the only one. They can do stuff. They can do that. So they know that after somebody visits the Arts and Recreation Center, they're going to Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A.

How nice of you to ride your bike. Right next door. I hear what you're saying and all in every little area, but... My thing is let's try to know what some of the requirements are, what they're asking us for, some of the people. So I've been trying to hit that just like with the pickleball courts. All the crowds we had from pickleball courts, and they came in, organized, and they got their pickleball courts. We found their land. So where do we have land? I would love to be able to go down in Wellness Way. If Wellness Way, the landowners around there want to give us a couple acres of land to put apart, why not?

Well, there's 100 acres in Wellness Way that is coming from the CEMEX mine that's going to Lake County. And then what? What's going to happen to it then?

There's no plan that I'm aware of.

Well, that's the thing is, you know, we've got residents down there who are supposed to benefit. It's going to Lake County. At least that's the plan right now. But maybe if we have a plan, we could help facilitate... getting something done because I've not heard anything about it. I mean, it's going to be a hundred acres that suddenly falls into the county's lap and it's going to feel sudden and then there's going to be no money and there'll be no plan. And we have another... 40 acres outside of, um, what's Vinny, what road do you live on? Heartwood Marsh. Thank you. You know, there's another, I think it's 40 acres that's coming online. So if we're not looking ahead and you get 40 acres, a hundred acres, and you don't have a plan for it, that's a multimillion dollar project potentially. Or we might say we want to prioritize passive use. Like, but if we don't give Brian clear vision, he can't do his job. And so what I'm trying to do, Brian, Brian Bang, you are the best process person, I think, up here. So I need your help. I need to know how we can move this forward and, like, let's get a vision. Let's get a plan. How do we do this? That's your wheelhouse, I think. I'm voluntolding you.

I think it's a two-stage process. In six weeks, we're not going to have that master plan and all that information. Right.

the 2027 budget but i think now that we're embracing the issue we ought to do there ought to be a short term and a long term yeah and do our priorities two jobs and the short term in the short term right now we need to be as we started this conversation focusing on on the grades that we have the parks we have trying to get them up to snuff and at the same time on the second stage As he's saying, we need to be looking for other areas that we can go out and do parts.

I have a suggestion.

Yeah.

So ABA Ethos, which we've worked with before. two projects for him. One is exactly what you're talking about, where he maps out all the parks and includes the stuff that are in HOAs, the stuff that's in Wellness Way that are little parks that are part of neighborhoods. And then he looks for a spot, so if we can have a skate park, maybe those acres, maybe those couple acres by Volkswagen's not the right spot for it. Maybe he says this is a better spot for a skate park. So he does that work. And then secondly, because I think there's a big return on investment on this opportunity, is he master plans the ARC property that includes the opportunity for public-private partnerships. I think those two things, and we start there, and then we go from that. Mm-hmm.

And I know it's not going to be long before I'm hearing already that we got the pickleball players that's looking to come back at us. Sure.

They want more courts?

Yes. They want more courts.

Does the inventory of Ethos include National Training Center? No, they don't have enough. Because that's, you know, I know it's...

i mean it can we can but it is private yeah yeah i mean we can he can map it i mean there's nothing that stops him from mapping it and saying this this is what it exists what exists there it's all part of the scope of work that we give him yeah right you can map i mean i think most of our parks is out there somewhere we got it pretty much mapped out except for the ones that's in the subdivisions and everything uh but if most of our public parks are scattered around like i say People, when they find out how many parks we have, they'll be a little surprised how many parks we have.

And then we combine that with the Placer AI that's part of the operations budget that's proposed for next year. And then that could give us numbers. So at any time, we could go online and say, okay, how many people are going to McKinney every week? And then we could find out what time are they there. So where are they going after? So we can figure that out. We can have that information with that software.

Yeah, well, even I see a pickup in use of Bishop Field now. It seems like I got people in Bishop Field just about every day now. You know, some kind of use is going on. And I don't know what game they're playing out there. I looked at little nets and balls or something.

Are they playing lacrosse?

No, it's not lacrosse.

I haven't seen what you're seeing.

It's different. When I passed there, there were a bunch of little kids and people out there, and they looked like they had little nets and goals all over the place. I didn't know what it was. I'm like, okay, that's something new. But, you know, like I said, all our parks, and I think that's why Bishop Field is being utilized so much because all the other parks is being utilized, and Bishop Field is just sitting there, so people coming up wherever they can find parks free, they're utilizing it.

Yeah, and we also have Hancock. All three parks with the multipurpose fields are shut right now for maintenance. For maintenance. We're waiting for Felter. Felter, we're waiting for the conversion to artificial turf, and Hancock and Powell will open again in a couple weeks.

Yeah. And that's why I was so ready to go to AstroTurf so we get them all in AstroTurf. We don't have to shut them down every year for so much time for maintenance because people go crazy when you shut them down.

Can we open it up to the public? Because I know we said 530 originally and now it's 630.

This is a public. Anybody in the public want to come in and address this issue may come and take three minutes.

How are we doing? Patrick Bianchi, 810 West Montrose. I am the president of Claremont Main Street, and I do have a board member and my executive director here as well. What I'll say is kind of a 10,000-foot level. One, I think with respect to the property tax initiative and referendum that's coming, I think If it passes, Parks and Rec, unfortunately, will be one of the ones that get cut the most. So I think nonprofit relationships are imminent. You know, yes, Main Street is CRA. We already did initiative for the tot lot. We have all of the drawings here. So we can handle that. You know, I'm thinking McKinney Park. Southlake Alliance should be all over that. I mean, literally building community is their mission. There are other pockets of the community that, to your point, should be organized to see what they want. The other layer, I know that Feltner Park was a C. I think it should be a D because of the bathrooms. That wasn't talked about. But there are other initiatives and things that we have to talk about. How many people from outside the city are using a particular park? So does the city general fund, park and rec impact fees, go to fund something that is going to be heavily utilized by Mineola, Groveland, Winter Garden, or should those be allocated to something rather Pocket Park, Community Park, that kind of thing oriented. So the allocation of how you spend the money. Is there a regional plan? Maybe Lake County and the cities next to us can all get together and fund something like they did at the Southlake Regional Park. Those kind of conversations. But I'm up here to say, get your nonprofits involved. We're here. I'm sure Southlake, Lincoln Park Alliance Group will absolutely join. Love that too. And any other ones that want, we have the relationships that can make these things possible at a faster pace. We have the corporate relationships to be able to raise money for sponsorships. We have grant. I mean, Natalie is a genius grant writer. She can even help the city offer that kind of stuff for grant. You guys have great writers, I think, or you at least had a budget for it. So that's what I'm up here to say. Leverage us because I think that's imminent anyway, especially in 27.

should the property tax pass thank you thank you thank you yes ma'am natalie quake kaler claremont main street executive director um these are the submissions that we had from our tot lot submissions uh from the children aging in range from two to seventeen and um i don't know i always forget how this thing works where do i set it on the sticker Okay, I'm going to put this up first because this is Brian's favorite. This way? Okay, this is Brian's favorite.

This is yours? You're Brian?

The girl said she didn't have any ideas for park equipment, but she wanted a shell theme. And what I appreciated is literally every single one of the 70-some things that we got are incredibly different. This is one of my favorites. This is done by a nine-year-old. They wanted more of a dinosaur theme to it. I can see this. So you're climbing up. and around and then coming down the back um and then you also could go through his mouth and down and then i forget what this is a tiger maybe yeah um training yeah the skate park uh sienna has included a little skate park in her area um but i say all this to say here's a 13 year old That I think if you're going to get community involvement and you want the community to help fund it, you need to let the community do this. They are not going to be as excited about something as now this kid obviously knew how to use AI. Way better than me. But they have this interest thing. Isn't that precious? I think if we want... the community money and buy-in we have to give them a voice and they have to be at the table and something that is really important to me if the city allows us to continue um to do the the tot lot this we just did sketches for the kids so there was no commitment we didn't promise anything we had no actually right to design a park so this was our way of getting everybody involved but if we are allowed to continue and become a partner in this what I want to do is have a citizen group that includes some of these children because it's important for them to understand okay if we can't have a water feature because there's no water there they need to know why their feature got cut and how we make the decisions of what things actually end up being there. And that's what's really important to me. And I think the more we give them an actual voice, not a fake voice with sticky notes, that we're gonna get the buy-in from the community. So we would love to help. That's my vision for what it would look like if we helped.

Thank you. And Mr. Mayor, whether the nonprofits put money in directly or the community does, it's the community's money we're using anyway.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, yeah, well, you're speaking nonprofit, and I know I haven't did much with my nonprofit, Christian Men in Action, but that's how I was getting things done before. I was using my nonprofit, Christian Men in Action, to go around to the parks before I became mayor anyway. That's how I was working through my nonprofit. Okay. I just don't work with them as much now since I'm mayor. I've been stepping back and stuff. But we'll get back busy again.

Evan Forcaso, 1844 12th Street. Two parts here. I'll start with Mr. Mayor first. When you talk about Bishop Field, I look at the Padaleca fields at that park. Those are premier fields.

Right.

I don't understand why we don't have that same standard across the entire park system. While we're at Patalatka, you have a great spot down there next to the playground for a skate park under the giant oak trees that can stay in place and it'll be a nice shaded area. Just a thought. Back to the survey where it was talking about conservation and sustainability. This is for Councilmember Strange. When we had the, what was it? The Frisbee golf group that wanted to use Hiawatha Park. The conversation was brought up about public works maintaining versus the parks. Whereas public works just goes in there and just cuts. They have no direction. They just, that's what they do. And it was brought up that there was going to be potential partnership between Public Works and the Parks Department in order to maintain our parks to a higher standard. And I don't know if anything ever came from that afterwards. So I think that's a way to probably maybe boost that conservation and sustainability in that scoring. One other thing I did have is I've noticed this morning out on my run, parks still needs to address signage and access. At the dirt parking lot next to the rowing house, you have signage there that says no, read it directly. No swimming, launching, or beaching of watercraft. This is actually a sign that sits right in front of where the old abandoned boat ramp sits. I noticed a guy last week parking just west of Waterfront Park in one of the surface lots, dragging his kayak across the trail through the grass to access a place to launch his kayak and fish. I see these signs everywhere throughout anywhere that there would be a public access point for kayaking, paddle boarding, whatever those may be that are outside of the boat ramp. The way the signage currently reads is essentially if I really want to launch my kayak, I'm supposed to go to the boat ramp to launch my kayak and go over there and fight with jet skis and power boats. That's not an acceptable option for me. I live across the street from, oh my goodness, What is our park over there called?

Well, I call it Peter Pool Park, but other people call it the Park of Indian Hills.

I live across the street from the Park of Indian Hills. I launched my kayak from there, and the sign says no launching of watercraft. Really? Yes.

Oh, I would not.

You live on one cross from Indian Hills. Yeah, at the dead end of 12th Street in Lake Shore.

It says that because there's a boat launch right there.

It used to be called Peter Poole.

Right, but again, it says no launching. And I remember last summer when we had the college rowing teams here, they had 10 boats sitting over there. Absolutely. I mean, our signage could be worked on. That's an easy budget item to address that kind of signage and just give people more access.

It's also not clear that the boat ramp dock is a public watercraft launch dock. Which one? The boat house dock is for the public, but it's not clear that that is public.

No, it's the same thing at West End Beach. I could pull up right there next to the bathrooms and launch right there, but there's a sign on one side. I don't know if they've changed them. Before they redid the dock, one side said no launching, and then the other side said no beaching. So you could launch on one side.

And these are paddle craft docks. They're made for this launching. Yeah.

Yes, sir. Ms. Keyes. Yes, sir. Sharon. He was here first.

Yeah, something about that.

Oh, I'm sorry. 2693 Jumpy Jack Way. I'd just like to circle around back to the 100 acres out there in Wellness Way. As I know, two of you attended when we had the... dpz meeting out there at the clubhouse you heard the overwhelming uh enthusiasm from the residents there and i think that south claremont deserves something beautiful and when you can take a piece of land and you can create a beautiful park from the ground up that is an opportunity especially when you can tie it into the wildlife corridors because currently we don't have any parks down there where you can experience the nature it's community neighborhood parks And we do have a trail system for the bicycles. But what about the people that would like to go out and see the wildlife that lives in Wellness Way or Louisa State Park? There could be a whole side there. And that attracts people. When they go and they see the wildlife, the snapping turtles, the armadillos, I think that it would be a great idea. I know you talk about a park up there in Groveland that's just fantastic. Well, here's our chance to make something like that or even come close to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Sharon Key, 644 West South Seattle. I'm here just in support of the community center in Lincoln Park. We've been working on this project for about seven years, six months and some days. So we're hoping, I know there's two properties now in Claremont that I was told. and a possibility of one or the other. And our hope is really for McKinney Park because that way you can have the concept that we came up with. You can have the community center, but you can also have a youth baseball field behind it. And also you already have the playground there. The next property that we were told about is on Diston and Highland, and it has approximately 1.7 acres there. The McKinney Park one has approximately 4.2 with the playground so we are really hoping that we can come to a conclusion on which property because you can put i talked to john cross cross yesterday here and you can put a community center on either one but also with the mckinney park the hub is right there you already have the playground you already have the field you already have the communities the tech center so it's just a point of saying we need a community center and this is something we've been asking for for years okay thank you thank you anyone else anyone else anyone else if not nobody on line okay well bring it back to the board I guess Mr. Crawford

I've talked too much already, and I'm supposed to be the CRA, and I keep talking about things that are everywhere else.

I'm going to hush. No, you have valuable points. When I listen to the public, I have this overwhelming feeling that we don't know what each neighborhood needs. I think that Natalie's points were profound. They hit me in a way I don't know if she meant to hit me, but it did. I made a note that maybe we should allow a use of city funds for different neighborhoods. I'm going to say neighborhoods. I don't necessarily mean HOAs. I mean areas of the city to use our resources as a city, specifically our grant writers, to be able to apply for grants for a neighborhood park that they design. So, or some sort of request, RFI, I just learned about that one this year, you know, request for information or request for ideas. Something where people in neighborhoods, Mr. Fumasi saying, okay, what I heard, and I'm probably going to say it wrong, but the way I received what he said was, hey, we don't need parks with playgrounds on them. We have plenty of those. You know, what we need is we need access to nature. So just like Hiawatha Park, we need access to nature. So, yeah. every neighborhood's gonna be different. And I would love for us to collectively come up with a way for us to empower the citizens. What do we have? We have money, we have grant writers, we have some staff, but for the most part, we can't keep up with the need and the demand, my observation and opinion, of the community. But if we were to say, 50,000 grants. Show us a piece of property. Show us a plan. We'll give you the grant. I mean, and we'll give you a grant writer so you can take that and match it and make it something. And empower the people to do something in their neighborhood. Now, whether it's on private property, city property, these are details. But I'm just trying to find a way to give every citizen access to parks in Claremont. And I don't feel like that plan is in place right now. And main street is great. We don't have to worry about the Northwest corner because we have the Lincoln park Alliance we have. So, so do we say, okay, here's our budget. Let's split it amongst the kind of five sections of the city and equitably allocate it. Like, I don't know, but that feels better to me than just picking and choosing winners and losers when it comes to parks and recreation. I think every person in this city, as long as we fund parks and recreation deserves access. to nature and recreation. And I don't necessarily feel like the government has to do it. So I hate that I'm being vague, but I feel like we have the resources, but we don't necessarily know how. Yeah. You're making good points.

Well, and I agree. One of the things I was very impressed with yesterday when I went down to the, uh, Panther run is the fact that they, they, allocating 72 percent of that all that land they have down there to remain nature okay um which means that the wildlife and everything is have somewhere to stay and all down there however with our situations right now it's kind of hard to reinvent nature around here when we've already bulldozed up so much so much of it um again going back to the uh to the comment for wellness way with the hundred acres down there hey there is that potential okay to preserve it and that hundred acres in nature and everything just which is what which is north of panther run that they will have 72 acres i mean i don't know how many thousands of acres of land they're going to have and authorized to And I think I saw one comment on there with like 11 miles of trails and everything within the area.

Yeah, but that's not even in the city. No, it's not in the city, but... The 100 acres is a CEMEX mine, so it's literally destroyed land and it would have to be restored. But to the Hiawatha Preserve, we've had... I've personally spoken with at least three people in our community who are willing to donate their time and probably their treasure and certainly their talent to help us preserve and restore land that we have. And I mean, that's an asset that we have as a city too. But we have to invite those people to, quote, do business with the city if we want to leverage them.

Yeah. Mr. Mayor, I lied. Can I have one comment? Sure. Thank you. I just remembered that for new parks and new land, Development and maintenance funding is so important. It's overlooked so many times. You get a donation, they go like, oh, that's free land. It's never free. The attorney for the Lake County Water Authority, and for decades, we took cheap land that was given. Somebody needed mitigation. Somebody needed this. Oh, yeah, we'll take it. And now most of that land is locked up behind a fence, no public access, no money for public access. I like those public-private partnerships. The CDDs, the HOAs, the non-profits partner with us just because we get 100 acres that's an ex-sand mine. it doesn't mean we have the wherewithal to do what we need to do with it. Right.

And that's all. Well, like I say, most of the things I look at around here have been stripped, so how can we go back and redo it like a sand mine? What can we do? Once they finish that, that land is pretty much destroyed.

They make beautiful lakes at times.

And I'm hearing, also hearing that the one on Hartwood Marsh Road, the same man out there, is another three, four years. It's going to be vacated, I understand. So there's another opportunity there as well. But my last I heard, yeah, about three, four more years, it'll be vacating. That's mine out there as well. Okay.

Sorry, are we going in order or can I jump in?

You go ahead, man.

Okay. Just thinking about specific direction for Brian and some of the stuff that I've heard. If we do engage ABA ethos in a further scope of work, just I think a part of that being looking into what the private-public partnership potential is. And prioritizing how to find that. And to me, it is really important, the four quadrants. And I think we'll find that. I mean, I think of the kid from Waterbrook that was at the final comp plan meeting. And he was like, I just want to get to, like, I can't even get out of my neighborhood. And he wasn't young. He was youth. And there was no good access for him. but there was a developer potentially next door that was willing to develop a kind of village center and do some nature stuff. I don't know where that's at, but someone that can kind of mine that potential that's more than just one type of solution, I would love to see that. I think this conversation to me also highlights the importance of expanding our trail network and connectivity, because you're never gonna be able to do all the things that everybody wants in the four different quadrants, you know, kids wanting to get to a skate park. Some of them might have to travel a little further or the elderly wanting to get to, um, the Keillor center with the shuffleboard, not to stereotype that sport. If anyone, any young people play that, um, yeah, but having that safe, uh, access and the trail connectivity. And I know that there's. That's not really a parks thing, but it, it is a part of this conversation. It is for the people. So how do we make sure that we are. thinking about that and advancing that as we think about these parks, because we could help people, you know, down in Kings Ridge, get up here or the kid from Waterbrook, get over to park pal, maybe all on bike trails, you know? So it just highlights the importance of that for me. Um, this, I was prepared for a different conversation coming in here, but yeah, I think that I like the idea of utilizing potentially ABA to help kind of dig a little bit deeper into where are these spaces? Where are these partnership opportunities? What communities can we help activate to be a part of this process?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mary. I think getting the scores, that's going to be important. We talked about that at the beginning, and I don't want to lose sight of that, of getting those other parks and not just lumping so many of them into waterfront and separating those out. I think we have a framework of what we're doing with the tot lot. And if we can capitalize that, I think what was said is community voice is I wrote down with an exclamation point. And that's been said in a lot of different public comment tonight. And if we have a framework, we have a willing partner in Claremont Main Street right now who's willing to work on this. And we have somebody who, if we don't get it, Quite right. Or we're not exactly sure. We're like, Oh shoot. We stepped on your foot. Oh shoot. You stepped on our foot. Sorry. We got to figure this out. I would, I would like us to, if they're willing and I think they are to go hand in hand with us with this and try to figure it out and create the model by which we might be able to duplicate and replicate this going forward to get community buy-in and community involvement. Um, And I think, Mr. Bianchi, you said regionalization, and that's been something that's been on my mind, not just even with relation to the proposed amendment and the potential ramifications of that, but just in general. I think, Ms. Strange, you say sometimes water doesn't follow property lines or doesn't know property lines well. Well, quite frankly, our residents out there, they don't know that they don't... We have people who say they live in Claremont. They eat, breathe, go to school, go to work, buy their clothes, buy their car in Claremont. They are Claremont folks. But they don't pay taxes in the city of Claremont. And... But they want to be a part of something. And I think we have to, when we can, remove these silos that have created this territorialism in government. And there's good reason for some of those things to exist. I get that. But with things like parks and recreation and even sometimes some of the public services, we're going to have to look at how can we collaborate and work more closely together. And people expect us to be nimble and creative. and not just do something because, well, sorry, that's X, Y, Z on that side of the street. That is a terrible example. It's like Disney goes through the mantra, you never give somebody the finger. If you always see a cast member, they never point you with one finger. They're always directing you, and it's that thing. You don't just say, oh, sorry, that's Mineola, or that's a private park. So what? So what? Let's figure out how to work together on it. And I think this goes back to that whole thing of community development and process. If there's a way for us to somehow establish a community development overarching theme of what we're doing, whether it's neighborhood association development, whether it's parks and recreation development, whether it's how do we engage residents to get more buy-in and collaboration, I think that that's something that we could do in that regard. But To tie it back to CRA and Main Street, I think we have a willing partner who's willing to work with us in the tot lot if we can explore what's really working well in that, what's maybe we could do a little bit better from start to finish, and then model that, replicate that. Let's find another park. Let's find another entity. Let's find another group. And we gain that momentum and that traction. And then we have other entities saying, Hey, I want in on that. I want my community park. I want to be a part of a partner.

How would you feel and how would the others feel? And this is probably a bad idea, but let's go with it. I think we allocated something like two hundred and fifty thousand this year for I might be wrong. It might be two hundred for the victory point. Something. Okay. Something. And we didn't know. And here we are a year later and we don't have a plan and nothing's been done. What if we were to say we've put $250,000 in the fiscal year 26 budget for a park in the CRA and we say Main Street, we're willing to grant that to you. See what you can do with it. come up with a plan. And that plan might be three or four or five different parks. And they might take that $250,000 and make it $750,000. I might be thinking a lot of you, Natalie, but we don't know. But if they don't have that commitment, they can't go see. I mean, we could say this is not yours, but we are allocating this towards parks in the area that you are a member of. And we want you to manage it and oversee it. Is that something that this board would consider? And is that in the vein of what you're talking about, Brian? I like that.

Yeah.

We need someone to help with the plan that is community rooted neighborhood up style. Um, and I think, yeah, I mean, let's give them that seat. Yeah. And we, we don't have a good grasp on what to do with victory point.

So do you think you could do something with that? I'm seeing head nods for purposes of the public record. You want $250,000? I have at least four head nods. Is that OK? Can they talk? I mean, if we were to do that and say, hey, you've got $250,000 in your grant program this year. Bring us a plan. I can't tell what she's saying, but I'm sure it's going to get us all in trouble.

Yes, we would be happy to take that 250 and utilize it as a grant for parks and a plan. What I'll say too, and here's a perfect example of this. If you ever go to Panama City Beach, they have a park and it's Publix Sports Park. Publix sponsors. It's a multimillion dollar park that has very high level tourism and sports and all the things. They're out there. We have them here. Livewell, Kiwanis, Advent Health, Orlando Health. I can name a ton of people that would be willing to put their Claremont marker on on something like this that would engage the community. And I think Main Street would be a really good partner in that to kick that off in the CRA. And there are other partners around the city that can do the same. So if you have anything to add.

I'll just add that giving the seed money allows us to have matches for anything that I'm putting grants in for, which a lot of times you're going to need. It also shows city support, which is really important. And then it also, for anybody that we bring in, gives them an opportunity to donate to a nonprofit, which is good for them tax-wise. So I do think it really makes a lot of sense for us to do that. And we would love to partner with you if you're willing to trust us with that.

whose job is it to sorry this is separate from from the cra but like no no sorry not you um whose job is it to hunt down these opportunities? All the entities that Patrick just mentioned, I do think these are entities that would be like, yeah, I would love to be a part of this if they got the invite. Who's in charge of inviting? Do we have somebody that owns that? What does that kind of innovative opportunity hunting look like? It's Natalie's job. Well, I'm talking about outside of the CRA.

Well, yeah. Actually, once they come up with a plan and what you want to do, we all can go to the different organizations and see it. And that can go through our economic development department. However, before you approach them, you need to have a plan in exactly what you want to do.

Well, I think we need help with the planning, too, like what Main Street's doing. They are helping facilitate the planning.

Yep.

So when we can activate it even before that stage of like, because that puts a lot of pressure on the city to figure out the plan and do all the things and it takes time and there's things that make that slow. So I just don't know how that gets done in government or in Claremont, you know, but it seems like these opportunities are out there that are waiting for an invitation.

You're right. They're out there and they could say, hey. I like it. Who are we going to do the plan? Because once we get a plan, we know what we need. Do it meet the specification for Live Well. Okay. That's what you have to look at. All the plans, once you lay down a plan, which organization out there that we can go to that will meet their requirements. Okay. And give it to Live Well. Of course, I know them. If you're doing anything with kids, pretty much. And then they always ready to give back.

Well, and I think this is where we are providing support. We're a CRA right now and a council. I'm not sure who's speaking, what hat I'm wearing. But if we're talking about from a council perspective, as a city council, we're providing direction to our city manager. He's hearing what we're talking about. And whether we're CRA or council, he's hearing what we're talking about.

Yeah.

And I think that then that becomes incumbent for him. I don't really necessarily want to get too wrapped up in saying this is how he this is how who has to be involved when and where and how. But I think he's hearing the objectives we would like to see accomplished. And I would like to see him work with his team, with his staff. to help us achieve this directive and these goals and come back to us and say, we have the staff in place. This is the plan that we have in place. This is how we're going to go about doing these things. Or, you know what, we want to accomplish these things. And after meeting with everybody involved, these are the things we're going to need that we don't currently have. And that could be funding, that could be staffing, that could be funding and staffing. whatever, but then they need, I would like for him to come back to us and say, this is what I'm going to need to be able to accomplish these things. Are you willing to invest in that to accomplish that? Because I, I don't know that we need to say it needs to be Mr. Foreman or Mr. Norris or somebody else because that's providing a direction that I don't know that we necessarily should provide. So much to say it's guidance for the city manager to then create the direction and vision and implement it.

And you're saying we want public-private partnerships wherever possible to maximize the citizens getting what they need with the public funds.

Community voice.

Mr. Bain, imagine if in five years we had Bishop Field and it was called because of Winn-Dixie Bishop Field and it was immaculate and perfect. That'd be okay. I mean, there's not a single major sports stadium in the country that doesn't have a corporate name on it.

Right. And, of course, we're in the process of trying to do this. Hey, I don't know, but I think we, Ms. Keyes, I think you're going to be the last comment of the night if it's all right with everybody else, and we're going to call it a night. We've been going a little over an hour now.

Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to say, you were saying some of the places that you can reach out to. We did a tour over in Orlando. They took us to seven of their community centers, and they had magic. Disney, some of the hospitals and everything. So it's out there. It's just making those contacts and everything. But they are available. And we are planning a community meeting. Lincoln Park South Lake Alignments are planning a community meeting in the next few weeks.

Well, I hope you're hearing what we're saying, that if there's a community partner who thinks they can leverage the government dollars, I'm hearing this council saying, bring us a plan.

and and we can help grant fund it you have to have a vision first and with a plan a vision plan and everything and then we'll know what organization we need to go to okay without without a plan and a vision we just have to perish yes yeah i know that one oh you know that one all right No one else has any comments or any concerns. We're going to call this adjourn this meeting.