Parks and Recreation Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Calling to order the 09/22/2025 Special Parks and Rec Advisory Board Meeting. Will the board clerk please call the roll?

Chair Michael Guardino?

Here.

Vice Chair Benjamin Rosario? Here. Mr. Kenneth Forbes?

Here.

Mr. Michael Madigan?

Here.

Mr. Joel Van Hemmel?

Here.

Ms. Gail Daniel? Present.

This meeting is being conducted live and a quorum physically present. The material for today's meeting is available online at coconutcreek.net. Anyone wishing to appeal any decisions made will need a record of the proceedings and for such purpose may need to ensure that a verbatim recording of the proceedings is made, including the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based. The audio of the meeting may be requested from the city clerk or may be heard online at www.coconutcreek.net. At this point, we will take any input from the public. If you are present and wish to speak, come forward.

Mr. Chair, Sheila Rose, City Manager. I just understand that there are members of the public here, but they wanted to comment following the consultant's report.

Okay. I think we'll move forward with the approval of the minutes. If any member of the public is present and would like to address the board, you may do so at this time. When you come forward to speak, please state your name and address. Are there any corrections or revisions to the minutes for 05/21/2025 meeting?

If none, is there a motion and a second to approve the minutes as presented? Second.

Chair Michael Guardino? We approve the minutes.

I approve, yes.

Vice Chair Benjamin Rosario? I approve, yes. Kenneth Forbes?

Yes.

Michael Madigan?

Yes.

Joel Van Hamel?

Yes.

Thank you.

Jack Cardi from Jack Cardi Strategies will present agenda item number five regarding the analysis of parks and recreation policies and operational procedures.

Yes, if I can, just before Jack comes up, do want to give a little biologist on his background. So before he comes up, Jack Hardy's strategies, he's the one that's going to be doing our policies and best practices to events for the Butterfly Festival as well as finding the analysis for our youth sports programs. So I'm going to read his background to you. Jack Cardy, president of JKS, retired as a director of the nationally accredited and gold medal award winning Miami Dade Parks and Recreation and Open Spaces Department in 2017, one of the largest and most diverse park systems in The United States. He has over forty years in the parks and recreation profession.

Jack has earned dozens of awards that recognize his extraordinary leadership and achievements. With Jack's guidance, the Miami Dade County Parks and Open Space System master plan established the blueprint for improving quality of life in Miami through a system of great parks, public spaces, natural and cultural areas connected by great greenways, blueways, trails, and complete streets. Jack has served as the National Recreation and Park Association's chairman on the board, the president of the Florida Recreation and Park Association, and an associate with PROS Consulting. At this time, I'm gonna have Jack come up. Jack Cardies.

Good evening. Now let's see if I can work this gizmo here. Okay. There we go. Now if this will go that way perfect.

Okay. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity for to be here and speak with you this evening, talk a little bit about the project that I'll be working on for the Park and Recreation Department. And this is primarily a project that will be looking at the primary focus areas on ball fields. And it will be looking at the policies and practices, and the quality control measures, all those things that it takes to run a properly organized ball field operation within a park and recreation structure.

We'll be looking at the park operations, the recreation programming, the efficiency. We'll be looking at a lot of different things, crunching a lot of different data points in order for us to determine what is the best way in which these fields are both distributed. Are there enough fields? Is there enough capacity within the structure with the way things are organized today? And then given some recommendations.

And the secondary focus is also the special event operations. We'll be looking real hard at the Butterfly Festival, an absolutely spectacular festival from everything that I've seen. I've never attended it, but I will make sure that I get all the information that I can to make the best recommendations that we can on it. But the intent of the study is to give the city a clear assessment of its park operations, the current sports fields and recreation and the special event programming, to give the recommendations that hopefully it will take on and be able to implement down the road. So the study methodology is pretty clear.

It's where are we right now? We look at the community profile, the existing conditions, policy review, the event evaluations, the after action reports and things like that. We look at where do you want to be, and we look at the benchmarking and best practices from peer agencies around the state. We also look at cost recovery targets, revenue enhancements, facility enhancements, those capital projects that are in the works to make sure that things are going in the right direction. We are looking at the standards and policies and procedures manuals to see how we get there.

We're going be looking at the planning and evaluation of not only the ball fields and their use and the relationships that are involved in all of that, but also the venue improvements, if there are any, to be recommended. In the ball field portion of it, we're primarily going to be looking at facility utilization. We'll be looking at an analysis of the operating hours. It's a process by which we look at what is the capacity that each of those ball fields can handle. What are they currently being used?

Is there any surplus unused capacity that remains within those? We'll be looking at the direct operating cost analysis, what it costs to operate, how they're being maintained. We'll look at all the existing conditions there. Also going be looking at cost recovery strategies. Ball fields do not come without a price tag.

There's an awful lot of maintenance that involve utilities that are involved in those sorts of things. So, we'll be grinding all those numbers together, looking at how things are priced and what the cost recovery goals of the city are. So youth sports partner agreements, we'll be providing a checklist of best practices to guide how those agreements will move forward. Right now, we know that those agreements are not really firm. They're not really sophisticated agreements.

They're pretty much a special event type of a permit. So we'll be looking at a checklist of things that'll help the city to make some good decisions moving forward regarding their partnership agreements with their youth sports providers. First, we start by looking at the sports and facility industries associations trends. So we determine what is the youth sports market potential within the community. We look at their park and recreation master plan and we see about all the compliance.

We make sure that things are in that things are actually it's said in the master plan, has it been done? Is it moving forward as it should be? We look at the sports marketing potential. We look at the facility utilization, the existing conditions, cost recovery, benchmarking, summary. And in the end, what it comes out with is what is the recreation program plan for how these services are rendered within the city.

It's designed to answer questions as to what are the trends around the nation? What are kids playing? What are adults playing? We look at all the sports across the spectrum that are covered by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Then we look at your census data.

We determine what is a potential market, the number of children that you have. I'll show that to you in a second on the next slide. What are the facility utilization rates that you have, the conditions of your facilities, and the cost recovery and all of that that I had just mentioned. This will give you an example of some of the way in which we'll be grinding the data. Right now, Coconut Creek population from ages five to 19 years old is about 9,640 children that are within your community.

So we look at all the sports, the sports that are provided by those non profit providers, as well as the Creek Sports Operation that are the second batch that are there. And we look at those numbers, and of that 9,640 soccer as an example, the combined addition of the five seventy five from the Creeks Sports added to those that are provided by the third party providers is twelve seventy one children, which represents 13.2% of the kids in the community playing that sport. And then we do the same for each of the sports down the road. So, now, you are serving 2,420 children within the community, or about 25% of the kids that are ages five to 19 years old. We look at there's a little differentiation in the ages that the Sports and Fitness Association covers.

So, the national participation rates for six to twelve year olds are seven point six percent, and 6.6% for thirteen to seventeen year olds for soccer. So if we look at that number and we take those percentages, that means that based on your 9,640 kids within the community, you should be serving about thirteen sixty nine kids in the community. Or right now, soccer programs are serving twelve seventy one or about 92.8% of the kids in the community of a typical sports market based on national trends. We do the same thing for softball and baseball. Softball, you're serving about 25%.

In baseball, you're serving about 12.5%. Flag football, about 40.5%. 34% in volleyball. And basketball, about 11.7%. A sample of peak utilization.

So this kind of gives you an idea of what we're doing. And this is only a sample on one of the parks. So there are three ball fields that are there, two baseball fields and one multipurpose field. And when we look at these, you're looking at about ninety hours per week of total capacity at peak hours, those peak hours being from five until ten at night. And so, right now, part of our number crunching includes the user fee portion.

So you have fees charged on about 10% of that ninety hours. The total actual usage is 53% across all sports. And then your actual fees that you're earning of that 53%, you're earning 18% of the time hours are actually fee recovered. So this all leads into a cost recovery set of cost recovery calculations that we do as well. And in general, we look at when you look at that, you realize that there probably about, there's about 46% of unused capacity at that particular park right now, or unprogrammed space during those peak hours.

So what we'll be making recommendations for and working with the staff is what would you do with that usable space? Do you solicit more sports providers through a competitive RFP process? Do you rent the space to improve your cost recovery and your return on investment? Do you leave the space available for public open access? One of the things that we as park professionals get a lot of is all your spaces are always programmed.

I don't have a place to go kick a ball around with my kid. So there's a percentage of time that we'll recommend for open space play. And then, do you further develop in house programming to engage a broader set of activities beyond the sports that are listed there as well? Because there's an awful lot of sports that people appreciate doing out there. So that's primary.

And the secondary part of what we're going to be doing is the study of the events. So we'll be looking at all the special event policies and practices and making those kinds of policy recommendations. We look at peer agency benchmarking. We've got benchmarking from about 11 different communities around the state of Florida, primarily looking in the Southeast section. We look at that benchmarking and what are the best practices they're doing.

And we give you a set of cost recovery recommendations, revenue enhancements, things that you can do to grow revenue, things that you can do to make the events even more special than they already are. First class special events, we can tell you just a little checklist of those that they're extremely high customer satisfaction, great pre event planning. They have first class entertainment that's unique and memorable. Positive cost recovery. First class first impressions when you come to the event.

The quality vendors that are clean, unique, honest, priced appropriately, highly visible security, and above all, venues that are designed to accommodate the number of people that are actually coming to them. So this is the lens through which we're going to be looking at the special events. Not only the Butterfly Festival, but the other 15 or more events that the Parks and Recreation Department is running at this time. So, there's a lot to unpack in what we'll be doing in a relatively short period of time, but we hope to give you a very good set of quality recommendations for both your ball fields and your special events when wrap it up. So if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them for you.

Let's open it up to the public for questions and then we could go to the board after if that works. Okay. If you have a question please step to the microphone and state your name and your address. I think is the protocol, right?

On record, put your name on the

record. Sorry,

this is my first time. And it was just kind of a small question, so I wasn't didn't wanna make a big deal about it. But my name is Paul Vieira. I'm Coconut Creek resident. And my question was just that number for, like, soccer, the number of kids, does that include outside of Coconut Creek? Because that seems like that number would be a little bit high. I mean, it would be higher because I know a lot of from playing rec sports, there's a lot of kids from outside Coconut Creek. So I was just wondering if, that is taken into consideration. At least within I know the nonprofits, they have a lot of kids from outside Coconut Creek. So I think the addressable market is probably a lot bigger than the number that was there for Coconut Creek residents.

Is this more of a common

And which number were you referring to?

Like right here. Right

there. Okay.

9600 Coconut Creek, that's kids in town, right?

That's your population base. That's census data right there.

But that twelve seventy one includes a lot more kids than what's in town.

The twelve seventy one is what's registered in Creek Sports and what's registered the nonprofit partners provided us with the information for what was in there registered in their programs. And that's the sum total of both of those combined.

And those are my question is, do they include kids that are outside of Coconut Creek?

I'm sure they do. We haven't got that far in the analysis yet to determine what the percentage of resident versus non resident is. I know that we're actually tracking that right now. So we're getting that information back in because that is one of the

All right. It was more of just a comment.

Okay. So we will be doing the resident, the non resident ratios. You'll receive all that information.

Right, so along those lines, I was wondering similar. Some of those kids are from Pompano, Deerfield Beach. But in addition to that, some of our kids are going to Parkland or going to Coral Springs. So do we have an idea of how many are leaving the city in addition to how many are in the city? I don't know if I'm phrasing that properly.

Know you are. There's really no way to determine that without broadening the net and going into those other cities where they might be going and finding out just how many come from this particular zip codes. There's three zip codes that we're working through from here. So there's no way to find out who's going outside, but we can through the registration records both for Creek Sports and for each of the providers. They should have rosters that'll show those zip codes. And we've asked for that information so we can

Also when reviewing the best practices of other cities, do you have an idea of what a good number of players coming into the city is? I mean we don't want 80% of these kids to be from a different city, but I would imagine we want some of them to come in and play and bring commerce and whatever. Can you give us an idea of what those numbers generally look And

an eightytwenty split is what most of the benchmarked agencies are looking at. Some go to seventhirty, seventythirty, some go none whatsoever from the outside city only. There's a pretty broad spectrum, but it's typically between 7080%, but the majority are doing it eightytwenty splits.

I think on what you're showing up here, so my question was is how long is your assessment and at what phase are you in? To dovetail that, these numbers that you're showing today, are these just preliminary numbers before you've actually dug in and done your assessment? This is after your assessment for this phase is done?

Yeah, well, at this point in time, this is census data, so this is as is. This is based on the information that we've received back from both Creek Sports and from the individual providers. So, are pretty much hard and fast. These are the percentages of what in the community based again, now, those registrations, if we have to back out once we get the eightytwenty if in fact it is an eightytwenty split, just use that for an example, we can back out that number and actually create another column and show what the residents so that we're not combining that perhaps that 20% of non locals that are using your system. We can back that out of these numbers.

So that's one of the reasons why we want to get that. As well as for best practice purposes, so we see exactly where you guys land in the scale for the benchmarking.

And then your assessment is how long and at what part of that are you at right now?

We're in the initial phases right now, getting we're still acquiring the data that we need to finish that. We anticipate probably within the next four to six weeks we would have the first draft of the report together so that we can send that in, begin to just get a trouble shot, and then complete the report probably within sixty days total.

Are we actually the cost for the field usage you brought up as part of the analysis, are we tracking that today pretty diligently? Or is that part of your assessment to determine how we're tracking that and to how maybe better track that going forward?

Because we're getting that data in right now, it's maintained. The Park and Recreation Department does not maintain the fields. That's done by the public works units that are there. But as we acquire utility bills, lighting, water, all those kinds of things that go into those numbers, we'll put that all in there. And so that's a little bit more number crunching that we still have to do.

It's probably tough to allocate as well, right, in terms of share of utilities and things like that?

Yeah, because we know the number of ball fields and we have rough, and we understand that typically working clay is more costly than rectangle fields. So when you're looking at diamonds, your clay, there is a little more effort that goes in on that. So there'll be a little variation in the different type of fields that are there and what they cost to run. But utility wise, they're pretty much about the same.

And then as part of your analysis where you're determining, you have it on one of your slides, the four main objectives of field usage. Is part of your analysis projecting based upon the proportion of how we allocate the field usage, whether that's for creek sports, for private clubs, free use, all of that? Are you also projecting wear and tear on the fields and how long it would take that we'd have to do major renovations on fields and things like that?

Yeah, I think in the final analysis we'll be looking at a downtime process and trying to consolidate what that downtime is. When you look at the facility, basically the facility use that we're looking at right now is on a weekly basis, that facility utilization, how many hours might be available to it. We have to then kind of temper that because typically, and I've to tell you, your ball fields look great. I did an inspection on them probably about, it was about a month ago or so. Wayne and I got a chance to take a ride around and they're a bang up job, they really look good.

Typically, whole process of going through and looking at what those expenses are and how that all works, you have to block out about two months a year for maintenance. Plain and simple. A good downtime policy typically is working two times a year, shutting fields down for up to four to six weeks at a time, sod replacement, giving the chance to fields to rest. Because your field's like all communities all over Florida. With the good weather that we have out here, the play is incredible.

Grass grows back, but it does take some time to do that. And it does, so those will also impact that field utilization. So when we grind in as we determine what that period is that they're using for downtime versus a best practice downtime policy, we'll get a little better handle on what really is available out there.

Makes sense.

So, piggybacking off of his question, for the recovery for the fields, do you also recommend to the staff better ways to have enhanced or faster recovery from the stress of too much use? And secondly, the numbers that you gave for the youth participation, that's based on current or the most recent seasons for each sport. Am I correct?

That was the data that was provided within the

last two weeks. So my question is do you think it would be more accurate if we did an average for the last two, three, four, five years to see how those participation numbers have fluctuated?

You could, two, three years getting back into COVID and that's where there's been a little bit of I think analyzing a snapshot in time and what we're doing here is really looking at a snapshot in time. Where are you at right now with the way things are operating today? Going back that far, that would be quite a bit more work to kind of grind in and to try to make some more assumptions. So we're working primarily on the data that we have as a snapshot in time for today.

My question is market potential participation. Where are you getting those numbers? Is that annual or is that during season for each sport?

If you look at these percentages, the 7.6 and the 6.6 based on those age categories, that thirteen sixty nine is the portion of that 9,640 kids that are playing sports, those are the participation rates at the national level. So right now, that would be what we would consider the potential sports market for soccer within this community, based on trends that are across the nation. So you're serving that next calculation is your actual participation numbers that come from this page. And that's 92% of that potential youth sports market.

I was looking at switching gears into baseball and softball. Uh-huh. Those those numbers look awful high for our, you know, our our potential participation.

Mhmm.

I know that when we were running softball at a 140 to a 150 kids, we were maxed out, couldn't get another field.

I I'm I'm not quite following you. So I'm looking at saw we wanna

I'm looking at softball. You got 280 per potential participation

Right.

In Creek.

Mhmm.

When we were running softball at I think we had about 500 baseball players at the time, something like that. And we had about a 150. We started with 70 back back when we took over, and we we got it up to about a 140, 150, and we had to cap out and we had to turn kids down. We we didn't have any more fields. So I was just wondering where are you getting that 280 number?

Yeah. Go ahead, Roy.

If may, just to let you know, these numbers that we're getting from the permit holders, we had sent out a letter to those that permit the fields to get their data based on their resident and nonresident rate along with their numbers. Because, as you know, the ones that permit our fields, we don't get their numbers when they go on the field. They have to provide that to us. So that's where we got those numbers from. And there are some permit holders that have not responded back to us as of yet either.

But, we don't have a system in place to where when you're getting a field outside of Coconut Creek fields, we know our creek sport numbers because we're taking in those registrations. But, those permit holders that are out there in the public, we're not there when they're doing the registration. So it's a little bit of an honor system based on what you're taking in on their side that tells us those numbers. So based on that information that Jack's putting together for us, we're getting that information from those that we know that permit our fields, and then we're relaying that information over to Jack to put this spreadsheet together for us. So, it's going to be only as good as those that are out there using our fields that give us that information.

Otherwise, we've got to do a guesstimate or estimate based on the park rangers that are out in those fields, if that helps. So, those softball numbers that you see up there, we're getting from the softball organization right now. Same thing with the Little League Baseball program. Those are the numbers that they received last year.

No, not the 70 participation that we have now. I'm just saying it shows that we have a potential to put two eighty kids on fields. We definitely do not during during softball season. And at about 500 players in the baseball program and 140 to 160, I think we maxed out at 161 year. That was as you know, we couldn't get another we couldn't get a field to practice and then much less play. Yeah. We're maxed

So, don't confuse this with field availability with that. This is just a look at what portion is being served of a potential sports market based on the 9,640 kids between this in that age group. So it's not relating to field availability yet. And again, if what you're describing at those peak times when the baseball, because of the overlap of those fields, that could be a long term capital improvement park space issue of whether or not you repurpose other fields that may be underutilized, add more baseball, or go the other direction. So that could be one of the options or one of the potential recommendations down the road.

Is

there a national figure for the number of fields or the percentage of fields available? You spoke about field availability as opposed to the number of persons that are playing on the field. Is there a national number for that as well?

The National Recreation and Park Association, one of the things we will be doing in benchmarking, they perform an annual agency performance review. And in that, they have about 1,000 park and recreation departments across the country who contribute data that tells the average number of baseball fields, rectangle fields, the diamonds or the rectangle fields, per thousand residents. So it's broken into a level of service like your comprehensive development plan would be. And so that is part of the evaluation that we'll be doing. So you will see what the rest of the country is doing within your population base.

You're in a population base that's up to the 50,000 range. And have, then then also we'll look at the Southeast, and the Southeast in that benchmarking will include Georgia, Alabama, Florida. It's the Southeast portion of The United States. So there'll be three comparison points you'll have for that.

With regards to the starting point, these numbers, are they maximum and minimum or are they average? Because all of these games here, they all have a peak in the season over the years. So, what are you talking about? The maximum amount of people at the seasonal time? Or, the maximum number during the non seasonal time?

These are registration numbers that are the registration numbers that to us represent the total number of kids that are being served. There's no seasonality in it. It's an annualized kind of how many kids are getting a crack at a particular sport and how many are registered. So no, it doesn't fluctuate with peak use of a season. If you're referring to that you have more kids typically at the beginning of a season and it trails off towards the end, is that what you're referring to?

Something like maybe you have a peak in March, and you have another peak in October, but in between there, it can be zero.

Yeah,

yeah. And so, again, are averages. So, looking at those peak times for that would be a whole another we would have to break that utilization. These are typical it's a typical what is the average over the annual. So that average, it should be considered in there in the numbers that we receive based on that data. So, on the usage rates of those particular fields.

Question, do we collect registrations each time that a provider uses the field, or is just was this just sent out recently? Do we have that information on how many kids use the fields on a regular basis?

Only for Coconut Creek sport pro athletic programs are the only ones that we have registrations. But as far as someone permitting the fields, we do not

collect.

Do not collect. We just get the permit fee for the field and they use the field. Okay.

One part of the scope is providing you with it will be to provide you with a checklist of those practices that are considered best practices within the industry for how agreements might be looked at in the future. And one of those is that kind of a redacted by zip code to determine who's in the city and who's not, but listings that will provide that information so that the Park and Recreation Department will have a thorough understanding. Because ultimately, what the Park and Recreation Department is charged with is delivering recreation programming for this community. And it needs to know exactly who's participating in what sports, and it'll help them make those decisions as to what priorities need to be made for either capital improvements or operational improvements or how the whole pie gets divvied up among the various sports. I can tell you there's a remarkable, just from my observations and then going through the data with the Parks team, you bring multi use to another level.

You really try to get places where some communities are really rigid about a sport being only this. But if they have an ability to give and provide it space available, the outfields of baseball fields that are being used as soccer fields, It seems right now, and initially looking at it, the rectangle fields are probably a little bit under. There might need to be another rectangle field or two to help ease with that load. But we won't know that until we grind it all out and get the final data and final registration information and all of that.

I see a number of people behind you begging to get up here and talk, so let me give them a chance. I

am Ron Chamay, Coconut Creek, San Molina. Hey, some people know me here. I did a list of questions, but I'll start with the basic. I'm a number guy. Can you go back please to the slide before that?

You see over there you say age five to 19. Go to the slide after. Say over here to the age of 17. Wait, wait, wait, that's one question. Second thing that I have here, which bothers me, is let's take basketball for example. Over here you have a 14 to 15.5% national average, correct? If I read it correctly?

That's 14% of the population for six to twelve and fifteen 0.5% for the thirteen to seventeen year old. Nationally? Nationally, correct.

Okay. Isn't it different if I go basketball in Boston in the colder countries compared to I go to the warmer. So I think this number is very misleading. And compared to playing baseball and soccer, for example, Florida is a lot more full of soccer because the population is different. We have over here a lot of immigrants that come from South America.

They're more familiar with the soccer environment compared to North United States. So I think this table is very misleading and very not a good status to start with when you try to do what you're trying to do, which I appreciate, which I'll get to, but I think that's wrong there, and especially the numbers are like out there. And what bothers me more, even more if you go back to the table before that After or before? Before. Now, this one, you got the numbers from Wayne here, right, of the participation that we have per or is it on the last how much we have per this?

What bothers me the most is where's the money? How much are we how much is the income for each category? How much is the income? How much is the expense? We have a budget today. Coconut Creek has a budget. What's your budget? How much you're spending on soccer? How much you make up basketball? Bottom line is money. And what I don't understand here, if we're making more money on soccer, for example, why do we want even to look into the baseball and into the other sports? Yeah. We wanna have them, but do we need to invest the time and come into this conclusion that we need more fields in the future? Which brings me to the major question is, what are we trying to get here? What are we trying to conclude in this, what this gentleman is gonna do for us?

Is it gonna be into the situation where we're gonna change programs? Is it gonna be to the situation where we change how we look at stuff? And what's the bottom line? What are you looking to gain? What is the city looking to gain from this? What do we need? Do we wanna gain to know that our fields look great? Beautiful. By the way, there's another thing that's missing here. Weather. Weather's missing as a parameter as well. How many months can you utilize fields? That which is missing in the second table. You're missing data that is very important to get to conclusions in the future. And I think that's major here.

I'll give you another thing. Birthdays, parties, people using recreation and and doing over there and renting the space. Correct? Am I correct that they rent the space, they pay whatever, and they can rent and do birthdays and do parties. That's not in there. And that's also utilization of the parks. That's also income for the city. Where is that going into? And then and what about looking into comparing to other cities? Where's the comparison which is major for us, and why other cities?

And I think that's what I think Mike was was aiming when his question was, why is Parkland more successful than us? Why is because our fields are so good, so something's not ticking here. And I can't even know if Parkland is more successful than us because I'm missing the money. I'm missing what the net is. We have a budget there. I don't know how much is your budget, your department budget is. Whatever it is, what's the net at the end of the year? Are you profitable? Are you balanced? Are you losing money? And then go from there. From the money, build it up. That's how I would do it. Find the statistic. What where are we missing and what we're missing? So I'm trying to get to the bottom line. Please.

You will have cost recovery. Cost recovery is going to be done. It's part of the analysis that's being done. I'm trying to remember all your points. Birthday parties won't be considered at all because it has nothing to do with ball fields, that I can understand, relationships. So that's nowhere in there. So you will know your numbers by the end of it. We are doing a comparison on a national level. There is no state level that can show us those kinds of numbers, that can create those kind of percentages. We get them from the Sports and Fitness Association.

It's a national association. Will there be some fluctuation through there? There is, I'm sure. But again, it's just giving you, this is an imaginary sports youth. No, let me finish.

Let me finish. Let me finish. This is a snapshot of looking at trying to compare, and I said it earlier that we were trying to compare, the census data doesn't line up perfectly with ages with what the Sports and Fitness Association of America conducts either. But it gives you a relative rough look at what the potential sports market is. What the typical kid in America plays those sports.

And that's what we're trying to arrive at. It's not an audit. This is not an audit. This is simply looking at what are those rates, those usage rates, or those participation rates on a national level. So I can't get you every different biosphere across The United States, and its weather and all of those kinds of things. That's not in the scope. I could perhaps if I spent six months doing this, but we're doing this, we've got a relatively compressed timeframe to help us get at least are we in the ballpark, are we moving in the right direction. That's really what the intention of this

I don't want to derail the public comment, but I think it may be helpful if you go to your slide five which shows your, in essence your milestones, which has the arrows.

Oh,

Okay. You're really at step two right now, am I right?

Correct, We we

are. So, all the figures, that's why I was trying to help you earlier by saying, all the figures and stuff that you've put out here is your preliminary data, and you're comparing it against national averages. Has no findings to it, You made a comment that in four to six weeks' time, you expect to hopefully have a first draft of your findings. That doesn't mean that anything is cement in stone or there's any direction is your findings. I'm assuming it's going to come with some recommendations. And then we'll continue down the road from there in terms of taking decisions and making moves.

You're spot on. The intent of this presentation was just to simply outline a scope of work and where we're going, and just some preliminary data to just show you the kind of analysis that we're going to go through on it. So it's a little ways off before. And hopefully by the time we get done, I'll keep in mind the things that you're talking about. And if we can probe those and get those in there, we'll do that.

What's the end result it needs to be, from your experience? What are you looking to come back to us and say, hey, you need to increase more soccer, less basketball, more tennis? The end result should be compared to what the city is doing wrong to date if it actually is doing wrong?

I'm sorry but I just want to be clear. If you're going to speak you do need to come to the podium. That's how we handle our proceedings, and it is what it is.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is very difficult for the clerk's office to comprehend what's happening here. It's actually good dialogue, but the format of the meeting is they're recording this, there's going to be minutes, and if somebody's going to speak, they need to come up, speak in the microphone, name and address for the record.

And also, I just wanted to make sure you guys know for input from the public or questions or comments about an agenda item, you do have only three minutes. So I just wanted to make sure you guys understand that. But it's up to now, Mike, if you want to have somebody else come up out another

Ingrid, if you would like to speak, please come up.

And just please remember to name and address for the record, please.

Hello, my name is Ingrid Gaudi, Coconut Creek resident, 4910 Northwest 54th Street. A couple of things. First thing is I appreciate what everyone is doing. I have a child that lives in the city, and over a year my child lost 13 pounds and gained a lot of confidence, so the sports programs are critical, and I want to see them continue to excel. From the point of view of residents' ability to use the field, what so far is the standard?

And I ask that question because one of the biggest heartache that I had, my daughter was out on the field, no permit was on the field, we had 10 fields available, and she was removed by a ranger. We were told as residents to get a permit, as residents who pay $10,000 in taxes. That's my first question. The second question, will your analysis include using other materials on the field, and I'm going to use the bad word, example turf, because if we're comparing to other areas, do those areas use turf, which quite often as much as we might not like it, if some of our fields were turf fields could possibly allow more play time for her students. That's it for questions.

Good.

Really good questions. Yes, there needs to be a percentage of open time. Typically, as recreational professionals, tennis centers are a example. If you have a tennis center that you have a tennis pro running programs out of, typically departments ask that one to two tennis courts remain open to the general public at peak times or at all times throughout the day so that there can be some public access. In the sweet spot is probably somewhere in between 5% to 10% of the time open play is allowed on those fields where mom and dad can go out and kick a ball around and kids can just have fun.

We have to give open play. We have to give play opportunities to kids. And it can't always be tied up in either a program or a rental operation. So that is the key part. The second question was

Other materials.

Other materials, yes. We will make some we'll give some recommendations regarding the pros and cons of TURF using synthetic TURF products. Very expensive to install, yet the benefit of being able to beat the daylights out of for about ten years before you have to replace the rug and you can play on it constantly makes a big difference. So some areas in peak use that may be something that could be considered. But I think when you're looking at some of that TERF uses, I live in Monroe County.

In Monroe County, the public school system, and I was just a part of doing the master plan for Isla Mirada Park. The school system in Morone County has gone to all artificial turf fields everywhere. They have no for a variety of reasons. One of which is water is extremely expensive down there and all the fertilizer runoff with the mangroves and everything around, environmentally turf makes more sense for them down there. They've gone to completely using turf for baseball fields as well, their high school fields. There's no clay anymore. There's no working of clay. It's all colored turf. And the fields are holding up wonderfully down there. And so, it is an alternative.

It is an expensive alternative. And there are some people from the environmental side who say that artificial turf may not be the way to go because of the plastics and the things like that. But the infill that's being used has been great inroads. Nobody's using chopped up tires anymore. It's typically coconut husks. There's organic material that's being used in them. So it could be a viable alternative.

Thank you.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I don't know your name but please come forward and speak. Roger, you would you like

to Yeah. My name is Roger Pineda, and I'm a resident of Coconut Creek for the last decade, 3646 Asperwood Circle, Coconut Creek. My parents have been residents here for twenty years, so I I've seen the city grow. I think we can all agree that if I'm understanding the the charts correctly that soccer is a big deal in this process that you guys are doing because it looks like to me soccer is creating a lot of residents to come into the community. It's expanding.

I wanna go to back to a point that was said by one of the gentlemen here sitting down. I think that going back into the data is actually not to me not very useful because the city has been growing. I also work in real estate and we're moving forward. The city has been growing. There's people wanna move into this area for many years now, even fifteen, twenty years I'm talking about.

So looking at the data here for the SAGA programs, I hope that the goal here with everybody is to make more opportunities for people to be involved in that community and not having people move out of the community. Because I am one of those people. I'm the result of a person who, because of my son playing soccer, had to move out into another city, the city of Weston for a year because it was just more convenient for my son to be there seven times a week to practice. I don't want to do that. I came back to Coconut Creek because I love this place.

I've I've been growing up here for a long time. I hope that the idea here is to make more opportunities for for young kids to develop their skills in certain areas. It looks like apparently from these charts, most of the kids here are involved in soccer like one of the gentlemen said. We are in South Florida. This is just a soccer state.

Some of the other items that were that were shown that I also agree with is maybe the data needs to be not national and just needs to be with the state of Florida to see what compare other cities what are they doing. The comment that was made about the turf fields, I think is great. I think we need a turf field. We can't close the park down, beautiful park, beautiful grass just because the park the grass has not been able to you know touch and the maintenance and people are gonna mess it up. It looks great.

I like walking around there. I go there every day. But, I think we do need to amplify that option for the families, so more families can come into the community, enjoy the beautiful city of Coconut Creek. We need the kids to be able to grow and not just play at a certain level because I unfortunately have to take my kid forty minutes away from here so he can develop, keep developing when I have it right across the street. You know, that's not fair to me.

He doesn't care that much because he's just in the car. But but I have to drive him there over there, and I've been doing that for for a very long time. But when I have the opportunity, I would like him to enjoy our community, our people, grow up with the with the kids who he's seen for seven or eight years. And, that's all based on on on some of the numbers that you've that that you've, you know, shown us. It looks like the if you go to one of the the the slides where it says the 1,300, 1,200.

Mhmm.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, it looks, the the one before that. Yeah. So, 1,271 kids are participating right now. The number could increase, but I think these numbers are pretty low because I know for certain there's kids out of the zone who have come into Coconut Creek just because of the the things that are offered, especially soccer. I'm not not to worry about the other ones.

Although, I have played baseball, I've had I've done softball, and I've encouraged my kid to, you know, to do basketball as well, but it looks like soccer is definitely important. So, I hope that the goal is to actually increase opportunity for all the residents and for the kids to actually be able to grow up in their community with their friends, with the families, and everybody together, you know, just moving forward. I think that's pretty much what I have to say.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you. And, think one of the things that we don't have the benefit of in this particular study is a statistically valid survey of community need. And I think that is, to really get down, we're working from the master plan, which is 2019. I know that'll be probably updated within a couple of years or so. So, at this point, one of the reasons we're using these national statistics is because just don't to open up that sort of piece is just simply not in the stars for us on this particular scope and this project.

Yes, I think getting the fields and getting the space and getting it sorted out so that the right level of competition is in the right area and all those things, those are the kinds of recommendations that we will make during this report.

Hello, Brittany Rodriguez, also Sam Molina. Ron is my HOA president. I'm actually here on behalf of Coconut Creek Girls Softball. Thank So you, Chairman, for speaking to those numbers when you guys used to run it. We really appreciate it. And I think Brody is here, who also helps us out from time to time. I don't think you got a very clear answer to the question that you were asking previously, so I'll restate it in a way where hopefully we can get some clarification. The 280 number that is there, that is not the number that was reported by us. That is the number that you guys are gauging as potential market that is not being utilized, right? That was the number he was asking about.

You provided clarification to the 70, which was also provided prior to registration being closed. We're actually at 85 now, which is the highest numbers we've had since COVID, FYI. So I'd like to understand where the two eighty comes because of all of the sports that are located there, besides possibly volleyball, I can tell you that softball is one of the only ones that's dedicated solely to females, which is why one of the numbers is lower. Additionally, and Enrique, I've had these conversations with you, and I know that we've had conversations with Parks and Recs previously, is very much like the struggles you spoke of, Mr. Chairman, we have those same struggles when it comes to expansion.

Many times we have to cut who we can bring into the program because of availability. We're utilizing Lions Creek Softball fields, which for lack of a better word are not very great. There's tarps over them, they don't have bases on them, we can't have games on there. We'll take them gladly because we want a place for our kids to play. Many times we lose the primary fields which are beneficial to parents who have kids in multiple sports, Sable Pines, because soccer is going on in the outfield.

While I understand soccer needs a place for them to be able to function, they are a high volume sport. There's a lot of kids that are interested in it primarily because of the high level of immigrants that are in this area from South America. Totally agree. But I do feel there's a definite need for segregated and delineated lines for what fields are dedicated to which sports because it negatively impacts some other areas. I find myself having to push girls that are ages 13 to 16 to having to come and practice from 07:45 to 09:15, and we're fighting lights and time and weather because we want to give grace to soccer being able to finish up their time span.

So, if anything, when we walk away from this, we'd like to see not just a plan for recreational sports, but for suggestions on how we can better allocate resources so that we can grow the program. A better understanding and analysis of seasonal functionality again, softball and baseball are twice a year. So when you're quoting 70 to the two eighty, are we accounting for the fact that we have two seasons a year, and that those kids are being that are in our program for a longer period of time? And also, able to come up with some type of potential guidelines for if we need to share or work together to ensure that we're allocating space for dual purposes at the same time. Many times, you know, my son plays flag football, he also does baseball.

I run the girls softball fields. I can put 8U players on the infield at Sable Pines while soccer is going on in the outfield. There's not an 8U player on this planet that's gonna go past the line of where soccer is going on. Right? So we're losing space for things that could probably have regulations surrounded by them. That's it. Thank you.

Ron, please be aware you have three minutes.

Oh yeah, that's fine. No problem. I wanted to go because I got the recommendation as well and that's one of the reasons I came here is to put things on the record and I'll continue with the beautiful words that was said before. I think a lot of changes need to be done in regarding to the department. I emailed Wayne knows me very well, knows my recommendations, knows knows exactly what I'm aiming to, and the things that bother me out there. One of the things that is new that I want to put on the on the record today are two. One is marketing. I don't think the city is marketing correctly. I don't think the city is marketing at all. That's why we're losing to other cities.

And I think one of the ways to market is we need the money and then know what we're doing with money, but basically stop charging the little kids money. So we basically get the little kids in to the programs for free. The six year old, seven year old, if there's not investment, there's no refs, there's no this, volunteers, parents, and get it rolling so they'll know the system and get familiar with this. That was one of my ideas that I never got an answer back if it's worth it. And then the second thing that I got hit by this weekend was I don't know how many of you guys know, but there is foster kids just around the block from my house, from your house.

It's called Help, SOS. SOS villager. Then it brought me into the idea, these kids do not participate. The reason they don't participate because nobody can bring them. I'm not even talking about money. Even we sell the idea that they'll pay the 100 and something dollars which is outrageous for them, that they shouldn't but I think the city needs to go. The problem is that they can't go to the programs. They can't go to the programs nobody can take them. And even if somebody can take them, you have a coach that does a coach at six, somebody does it seven, somebody does it eight, whatever. We need to start thinking about those kids, how we do bring them into these programs because that will help them tremendously.

I think that will open the door volunteer wise, not volunteer wise, but they need to come in into the fields and play. Those are kids that are bored, those are kids that are sitting out there and not doing anything in the afternoons and don't have anybody to look at them. And I think that's sad. And our programs can provide something to them. I gave a lot more recommendations here that should be on the record. You gave me forty eight seconds, I won't put many of that. I think that we need to change a little bit the format of the league. We need to make it more accessible to other people. We need to supervise coaches. I think the coaches that cheat need to be kicked out of the system.

It's not a joke, it's a fact. Sadly to say over here and that did not happen. They were actually giving as if a price to continue with the city. And on one hand, you've been checked for fingerprints every year, but when you cheat, it's okay and then you can continue coaching the next year or stay and get a minor penalty. So all kinds of small things that need to be changed, need to be thought of down the road when you guys have time and you think it's worth talking about, I'll be here. Thank you.

Hello. Tina Nuzzi, 395650 I have a couple things to touch on just as I was listening to other people speak. One, I completely agree with Ron about the SOS, village. Full disclosure, I'm on the board of a nonprofit soccer club here in the city. We have offered free soccer to them, and they have the same issue.

They just don't have anybody to bring them there. They came for a while, and then, you know, the woman told us, we just cannot get kids to the field. So that's the first thing. Two, when we talk about the eighty twenty split of the kids versus residents versus non residents, do we take that into account when renting out fields to outside clubs and things like that? Like I know for soccer, we rent out fields at such a cheap price to these outside clubs.

So their kids aren't participating in our sports, but they're wear and tear in our field and taking advantage of what we're giving when they don't have that available in their city or they're out of fields and and things like that. So I don't know if that's gonna be something that's looked at, who we're actually renting our fields to and permitting to. And anybody can put a Coconut Creek address and say, I'm a Coconut Creek resident, and everybody's got the Coconut Creek rate. But where are these clubs actually coming from? And I think my third thing is moving forward, we have all of our kids participating in rec, and we're big on rec, and I'm a big proponent of rec.

Our kids are getting better. So we have kids that are and then where where do they go? They're going to different cities to play for different clubs and bring their money to different places. And like I think he left, Roger said, you know, he's driving to Weston. So our kids are capped at basically how good at soccer they can be.

I think that's a really big miss on our city of and what we provide in all rec sports. And also, as far as the the field rentals go, if soccer is our number one sport, we do not have one field dedicated to soccer in this city. We don't have any lined fields, which I know is really hard to do. But as somebody that has to line fields in order to play games at a $180 a pop, for us, a very low cost nonprofit soccer club, it's nearly impossible for our kids to play games in this city. So, you know, I think that's something that really has to be looked into.

And the same with softball. They're sharing their fields. Everybody's just sharing their fields, and we're also sharing with other cities who wanna come and play at our park at, you know, discounted rates. And that's it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, one more thing. Will a survey be going out to residents regarding what you're looking for?

No, not as part of this study, no.

I think that's a big miss for what the community is looking for.

I just wanted to sorry. I'm Paul Veer. I'm back again. Coconut Creek resident. I just wanted to kinda add on to what she says because I've experienced problems where it's like we compete for fields, and then I'll drive by and I'll see some town, some club from god knows where being playing soccer.

And I feel like really the goal should be serving our residents as much as we could. So it's like when I'm part of a club that is trying to compete for fields and we can't get field time and I see these outside clubs have field time, that's frustrating. So I think the goal should be to service Coconut Creek residents. And I so that's one thing. And another thing about our rec program is I've heard this said, like, you know, talking to one of my, you know, son's friends, their father, you know, said that someone from rec told him that if he wants to play competitive soccer, he has to go go to Parkland because we can't serve you here at Coconut Creek.

And that to me is just it's I don't know. That we shouldn't be we shouldn't be hearing that stuff and feel that we we're better served to go. I mean, the other gentleman that was here, he said he had to travel to Weston seven days a week or whatever. I don't know. To go and play soccer. So I think that we should do probably, you know, a better job trying to build our rec league to make them more competitive, not less competitive. We should try to be building, you know, elite athletes, not just, you know, just settle for mediocrity. I really do feel like we need a focus on you know, I want my son to play competitive sports. I want him to be served there. I don't want him to feel that he has to go somewhere else outside the town, you know, to be served.

So just more comments. But I wish there was more of like a open discussion where people can just I think there should be a survey, because I think that the town residents have a lot to say, but I didn't even know about this meeting. Thankfully, somehow, I came across it.

Would anyone else from the public like to speak? Okay. On up. No. No. No more.

Just make sure you do your name and address for the record, please.

Hello. My name is Alexis Berrios. 5553 Northwest 39th Ave, Coconut Creek. I've lived in Coconut Creek for twenty years. I went to Lions Creek Middle. I graduated Monarch High School. Pretty much, I grew up here. I've played soccer all of my life. And I was very quickly kind of priced out of soccer because my family wasn't able to afford it, and the city wasn't able to provide something for us. I remember I would go after class to Sable Pines with a group of friends and half the time we would be kicked out for just playing soccer.

I do wish there was something the city could do more because I know they have a rec program, but that's only three months out of the year. And me personally, I don't just like playing soccer three months out of the year. What else was I going to say? More than that, I just wanted to share my experience because I wasn't the only one. I had to stop playing soccer competitively at 16, so that just left me with a lot of free time that I didn't have anything else to do but just stay home and play video games. I kind of just wish more for our community. Yeah. That's all I got to say.

Hi. My name is Laura Fermonte, 4539 Northwest 51st Court Coconut Creek. I was the president of the league for softball last year. We had a few issues, like she was saying, with the fields. We used to have Field 2 in the front of Sable, then Little League took that over.

Hosford and Sable Pines Park Field 2 is our only field that we can actually use. Hosford was awful until Brody got somebody to fix the clay there. The girls were playing with hard surfaces, like just the parks aren't really up to where they need to be and they can utilize possibly Field 4 with a portable mound. That might be an option for us to have other areas to play because Lions Creek is really bad. My girls practice there.

Both girls play softball. We love softball. It is the only girls sport in the city. Volleyball has boys as well so that's the only option for them. So we just want to make sure even though we're the small number there that they still get what they deserve. Thank you.

For what it's worth, I have a few questions I'd like to ask. Before I do, I don't think anyone thank you for being here tonight. I mean, I'm sure this wasn't an easy thing for you. I appreciate you making your time available to us. That's very nice of you.

So, one of the things that I'm curious about, and I have about four or five questions, so I apologize. I'll ask one and then I'll give you a chance, and then I'll go to the next one. I don't hear us talking anything about the level of satisfaction that some of our athletes have with the program. So we're looking at the numbers of who's participating and what, and is it rec, or is it a third party that's facilitating the activity. But are we asking any questions or looking into the satisfaction rate of the people that are participating?

I personally know, and it sounds like some of the people in the community have spoke to this, There are a number of kids sorry, I'm a soccer guy. I happen to participate in soccer, so that's what I focus on. There are a number of people in the community that yearly participate in the recreational program, but at the same time I know a number of them really aren't thrilled with it. They're doing it because it's the only game in town. They don't really have a secondary option. So as we look at these numbers are we also asking what our satisfaction rate is or happy we are with the product that's being offered to us?

It's not a part of the scope of this study.

And then my next question is in reference to the distribution of resources. So as I look at these numbers, it seems like soccer has more players or involvement than the rest of the sports combined. Are the resources being distributed in an attempt to mirror the numbers we're seeing here? Or do we not, I don't want to say care, do we not look at that as a factor? Or how does that work? Well in

the cost recovery analysis that we'll be doing we'll be showing a more accurate how the expenses are being given over for maintenance, in particular in maintenance, to the diamonds and the rectangle fields. So I don't know that the study itself is going to say that it should be giving more money to this because it has more players on it. We'll look at that and I'm glad you brought that up because it is a good point. I think that what is the level of effort that's being committed to based on the numbers that are there. But I think all things considered, the level of maintenance is typically the same across the board in a park system.

Just because one sport is more popular than another or being used by more doesn't mean that you typically would let go another sport that's got participants in it. Lower their level of service in order to address that one. So it's a balance, we'll take a look at that when we do a cost recovery and we look at the exact expenses that are allocated between those two types of fields.

Also, excuse me, and I think the beautiful young lady in the green shirt touched on this. Do our fields match what the best practices of other cities are, or at least try to mirror them? In essence, what I'm asking is, I'm familiar with the soccer club. I am also on the board of that soccer club. We, to give you an example, are in a period of the season where we have to schedule games.

There's not one single lined available soccer field in the entire city of Coconut Creek. Is that the norm for other cities? Or are we maybe behind the services on that one? Because that strikes me as highly irregular. I mean, it's one thing to say, oh, we have more resources dedicated to this or more baseball fields than soccer fields. But to say not one single field in the city is properly available for us to schedule games strikes me as borderline insanity. I can't really rationalize that. Is that normal or are we failing there?

Well, I couldn't even tell you whether that's accurate or not. I see soccer fields just through my Google Earth research and stuff lined in the system.

There are no lines. I don't mean to speak over your time. I apologize.

That's okay.

But, promise you there is not one single lined soccer field in this entire city.

Not one.

Gerber is lined because the not for profit soccer club paid $200 to have them line the field. I might add, we were trying to have it lined on a Friday because the lines only last a certain amount of time. For some unknown reason it was lined on a Monday which now that we've paid for the lines has cut into the timeframe that we can actually use it. In addition to that, the process of doing that is archaic. We have to figure out when they're going to line our fields, and they won't give us a date.

They just give us a week time frame. Then we have to coincide our permits and our scheduling with the other clubs for the games to go with this random window in time that the field might get lined to kind of do this balancing act is extremely difficult. And as a perfect example, I think you know because you have a daughter on one of these teams, Saturday, there was a game scheduled. The other team ended up having to cancel for whatever reason. So now we've paid to line the fields.

We're going to have to repay to line the fields. We're going to have to reschedule that game. On Sunday, again, I know you happen to be there for this, it was gorgeous out. There was nothing wrong with the field. They tried to tell us we could not play on the field and they tried to ask us to cancel that game as well which now would have led to you know what. But the point is there are no lines fields. The one line field that happens to be in existence over this two weeks is in existence because a third party paid for it. Is that normal? Or is that what other cities best practices typically are or are we behind the times on that?

Well, yeah, rectangle fields, if a rectangle field is rentable or usable in a city, it's either going to be lined either on a rental basis. It may be charged to have that lines, the field's lined for. Do they remain lined and striped at all times? That's hard to say, but most of them have a demand that require that. But again, that's a variable. I think that's up to the individual cities to determine the usage rate. I'm not far enough into it to know whether or not that's the first I've heard of that just now. So it's a little hard for me

to react to it right now. And then I just have one final question, hopefully one final question. I'm passionate about this as most of you know, I apologize. So I know over the past five years, in particular with coming out of COVID and the sports programs and soccer in particular, has just blown up. I mean, level of participation has absolutely gone through the roof. So I'm curious, are we looking at whether or not as a city we've kept up with that growth or are our numbers behind the growth of other cities? And if so, are we looking into why, what we can fix to change that or is that not within the scope of your job here?

Well, I think you're going to get a general understanding of it for of whether or not you have enough ball fields in to serve what is a potential sports market and what you're serving now. I think by the end of the report, you're going to get some recommendations along those lines. What is the demand? The demand is listed by based on the number of rentals that are out there versus the number of vacant space and the vacant time not used. And if you have space to use, why build more fields?

Use the space you have more efficiently if it can be used more efficiently. If there is a need to make sure that because of the resourcefulness of the department trying to accommodate everybody within their needs are multi purposing fields that take it offline for a particular sport but give it to another sport, that's another part of the equation. I think when we went through our analysis, were looking to just isolate a baseball field as a baseball field. A soccer field or a football field or a rectangular field is a rectangular field, that's it. Let's not count that as soccer space, the outfield of a baseball field.

So for me, in order to make these kinds of distinctions within this report, I need to know that this field is what it's so we ask for what is a primary, secondary, and even tertiary use on it. So we're evaluating based on primary use. I don't have the data to tell you whether you're behind or ahead of the game. If you do, right now the preliminary data appears to be that you have enough fields. It's just a matter of getting them organized in a way that they might be better used.

But again, we might be if anything, the rectangle field number may be a little low. As we look at the NRPA data and we look at what that is and other levels of service around the state, we'll be able to give you a little more information on that.

But are we going to look at the growth model? Are we going to look at, say, Coral Springs and say how many players did they have playing five years ago, what was their growth, and did our growth match theirs? Because I can tell you, being in the community seven days a week, our growth has not matched other cities. And that's okay. Not everything is perfect. But I would at least like to know why and if there is something that we can do to start matching the growth of other cities and start providing the same access and the same resources that other cities do. But again, it sounds like that's not going to be within That's the scope of

in the scope. That would be a much broader look if we were starting to compare growth numbers over periods of time with other regionals, with other cities, municipalities within a region. Yeah, that's just not in the scope at this point. But you'll get a good snapshot based on what the current usage rates are now and what the facility utilization is, how they're being used. So you'll see whether there is available space and we'll be able to make some recommendations along the lines of do we make it open play? Do we rent more? Do have third party operations? Is it an in house program? How do you approach that? We'll make some recommendations for that.

Hi. It seems like a lot of the things that we're talking about are addressed in the master plan. And I saw that that master plan was done before COVID. And it may be time to update the master plan because it does deal with a lot of these issues you're talking about.

To Sheila's credit, who I believe is right behind you maybe or was right behind you, I believe Sheila has addressed that she's also concerned with updating the maps of the plan. That's part of kind of what we're doing, I hope. I'm not certain. I don't want to speak for her.

Up on the mic. Sheila Rose, city manager. Just to address that issue, clearly Jack has a limited scope to address some very specific issues that we need, but the Parks and Recreation staff and city manager's office are always willing and want to continue to work to improve whatever we're doing. So just because it's not in his scope doesn't mean we can't address these issues. We're here to look at it. Master plan was developed to be a ten year plan, and in fact, we've had to stretch that out because of financial issues, but we're always looking to update that information.

Yes, if you'd like to speak, come forward. I'm obligated to remind you about the three minutes.

Ingrid Gaudi, Coconut Creek resident, 4910 Northwest 54th Street, Coconut Creek, Florida. One additional question regarding what is being evaluated. For example, when my daughter's team is playing at Sybil Pines, the field is not separated from the lake, and it's a concern for the balls getting in the lake. It's a concern when I I don't have a younger child, but it's still a concern when I see younger kids running around out there, and then the wildlife or the animals coming out the lake. Is that a part of the scope? And if it's not, can it be considered? Thank you.

Well, it's not specifically in the scope, but you know I'd be happy to take a look at it and make some recommendations.

That's something that we looked into and we identified that. Thank you.

Would anyone else like to speak for the record before we move on to the next agenda item? Okay. I think I'm supposed to say are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item number five?

I think it's really great everybody that came out to discuss this. Everyone that discussed it in the open forum and all that and that truly cares for our parks, cares for the kids, cares for the sports. I think that's really awesome. So thank you.

You know, along those lines, I couldn't agree with you more. And having been on the board for two years, I don't think I've ever seen a single member of the public at one of these meetings. So hopefully this was productive. But if nothing else, I would like to acknowledge that clearly this is a hot button kind of issue. And clearly we have people in our community that care about this and would like to see change for the better or growth for the better. And it's very encouraging that we're all kind of working together. There wasn't any argument. There wasn't any bad blood or whatever. I really enjoyed this. Thanks, guys.

Dan Nelson, grants administrator, will present agenda item number six regarding the Florida Recreation Development Assistant Program grant for Lakeside Park. Good

evening, everyone. My name is Dan Nelson. I'm the grants administrator with the City of Coconut Creek. My item is probably not as exciting as that past one. I promise you I will not take as much time.

One of the I've been I've been administering grants to the city for quite some time. One of the things I do is I try to save the city and its taxpayers money. I wanna applaud you for your service here. You know, not a lot of people show up, and spend their time, and you can see, the sincerity of the the passion be behind the audience that showed up tonight too. You know, I have that passion for writing grants. The project that I'm writing a grant for right now is Lakeside Park. It's part of the Parks and Rec Master Plan that you talked about. It's been in front of this board. It's been in front of the city commission. We have an approved site plan.

It's funded. And part of the grant application that I'm writing requires some public participation, which is why I'm here. If you're not aware how competitive grants work, it's really a point system. So for having a public meeting in front of the an advisory board for the city, it increases our likelihood of being successful in our grant application. The grant is the Florida Recreational Development Assistance Program.

That's the FERDAP grant. It's a grant that the city has used several times before if you're not familiar with. Sable Pines Park, Windmill Park, Lakeside Park. We've all gotten FERDAP grants to help develop those. It's a state funded grant program.

It provides financial assistance to local governments to develop and improve outdoor recreation areas. It's a reimbursement grant. That means the local government pays the upfront cost and then gets reimbursed. Eligible projects include land acquisition, park development, playground, athletic fields, trails, picnic areas, and other outdoor recreational facilities. The program's goal, obviously, is to increase availability of quality recreational opportunities.

There's a maximum grant of $200,000 It is a matching grant. Coconut Creek is eligible, and the applications are due on September 30. Now just to refresh about Lakeside Park, three of the major developments in phase one are pickleball courts, a basketball court, and some batting cages. I'm asking for $200,000 reimbursement for the pickleball courts. Why I'm asking for that?

Is it because it ranks higher. The state did a needs assessment for the state of Florida in Broward County. Tennis courts are a high priority. They equate pickleball courts with tennis courts. So it's a high I've ran an estimate of the figures, and we do have a pretty successful opportunity here to submit a submit a solid grant application. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Thank you.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item number six? Please come forward.

It's got to make you feel important. Brittany Rodriguez again with Sam Molina in Coconut Creek, again on behalf of Coconut Creek Girls Softball. I believe I wrote a letter of recommendation related to that grant today. I'm curious to see if you got any support from any of the other leagues. I know you grouped baseball and myself together. I don't know if they were able to get you support on that grant. But being that we have others here that would benefit from that, is there advocacy from the soccer groups to give you some support on that as well?

That would be much appreciated.

Seems like we have board members sitting here.

Maybe I misunderstood the presentation, but if well, I'll let Tina speak. She's kind of more in control of our board than I am, if you would. But we're happy to help in any way we can. We are not we happen to be a soccer club, but pickleball is great. Or I think we summed it up perfectly by saying, great, let's do it. So if there's something that we can do that you need, we'd be happy to help.

Absolutely. So I drafted a letter that you could use as a template. I've sent it to Enrique. Enrique has forwarded it to league representatives. I'm sure he has your email and could send it to you. And you can take a look and see how it looks or edit it and sign it, send it back. That'd be great. They would absolutely support the grant application.

And

the grant is obviously just for the pickleball courts? Because this whole project is a lot more than $400.

You know, one of the reasons is there's another phase and we may be able to apply next year for a different phase.

So, is there a from a high level like a phased rollout to do this? I happen to be looking at, which would have been great to pull up, but I happen to be looking at the presentation here of the overview of the park. Is there a phased rollout of this?

Yeah, absolutely. So, that really is all and kind of go in my context of my framework of how I go about my job, I go off of like a budget, the budgeted items that are already approved in the CIP. So this is already city expenses. So once phase two is funded, absolutely you can guarantee you the next day I'm going to be creating a grant application for phase two.

Got it. That's great.

City staff will present agenda item seven regarding updates on special events.

Hello? Alright. I'm Enrique. I'm the park superintendent over at Sable Pines Park. So first, we're gonna talk a little bit about our special events. Hometown Market is coming back Saturday, October 4. It's gonna be near Veterans Park at the plaza. Salsa in September. Is that you? No worries.

Salsa in September this Saturday, September 27, 6PM to 9PM. You can be salsa lessons, band, and, the band starts playing at 7PM. Band name, Sabor Latino. Movie in the park Movie in the Graveyard, Hotel Transylvania transformation, Friday, October 24. That that will be held at the Lions Creek Athletic Facility.

Monster Mash is on there. Monster Mash is same day, though. Monster Mash is also taking place on that same day that will be held at the recreation complex. Veterans Day ceremony, Tuesday, November 11, 11AM, Veterans Park. Our annual fall harvest festival, Saturday, November 15, 2PM to 6PM at Sable Pines Park. And lastly, disco in the in December, Friday, December 5, 6PM to 9PM here at City Hall. That's all we got. Thank you.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item seven? No. City staff will present agenda item eight regarding updates on recreation and athletic programs.

Okay. So I'm gonna start off with our recreation complex. Currently, our girls basketball league is taking place, and it will end next month in October. Youth soccer will start next month as well in October. Our monster mash, I just touched on it a little bit, will be themed the Hotel Transvania, and that will take place on Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24.

That will be at the Recreation Complex. The sustainable series last session will be Thursday, November 6, 6PM here in the Commission Chambers. The last three sessions have gone well and have highlighted composting, edible landscaping, and extreme heat next year's series will focus on public safety. And lastly, with the recreation complex, we just completed our accessible include inclusive accessible playground at the community at the recreation complex. I apologize.

And that was open last month, I believe. Yes. Alright. Moving over to parks. At Sable Pines Park, our say our Cypress Pavilion will go under renovation here shortly.

Plan improvements will include a new roof, updated railings, and elevator repairs. As these upgrades move forward, we will be exploring opportunities for parks and parks and recreation to generate additional revenue either through enhanced facility rentals or by introducing new programming. We welcome creative suggestions and feedback as potential uses. At Windmill Park, tennis, pickleball, and racquetball repairs and resurfacing were completed in July and June and July. I apologize. How do you like that, Joel? You like that?

Nice job.

Just additionally in their part of this project, one of the quadrants was converted from a shared tennis and pickleball use to a dedicated pickleball court. So that was a nice touch there. And lastly, in our parks, we will be hosting our preserve our parks program on sat Saturday, October 18, 12:12PM to 01:30PM at Winston Park And Nature Nature Trail. Alright. Community Center.

Alright. At the community center, our senior expo will be held on December 5, 09:30AM to 12:30PM. Our youth athletic leagues flag football championships are scheduled for October 18, finishing up. We are currently starting or started our four outdoor pickleball leagues at the community center divisions, men's, women's, fixed partners, and coed leagues. Our seven on seven adult flag football league will start on Wednesdays starting in November.

And currently, our adult kickball league is running on Thursdays at Gerber Park. Special needs program, 18 and up. Bowling league is being held on Mondays. Special needs fun and fitness held on Fridays here at the community center, and we will be hosting a special needs Halloween party Thursday, October 30, 7PM to 9PM. And that is all. Is there any questions?

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item number eight? City staff. You do need to come to the microphone, state your name and address. Please be reminded of the three minutes.

Tina Nizzi, 3956 Northwest 56th Street, Coconut Creek. All the information that you've mentioned, like where is this like readily available for people to see? Like you have to go to the website to see, but we don't do like much like social media. I could be honest, I'm on the website a lot doing you know my field stuff. I don't even I go straight to what I need and I move along.

I'm not really looking at other stuff and I think maybe we'd have more participation if we like really just started like posting about this stuff online. Because I would love to you know be a part of a lot of this stuff and even like a lot of these meetings. You know you just kind of don't really know about a lot what's going on unless you go to the website which nobody really does that.

I can respond to that. Danielle DeBarris, Assistant Director. This is a conversation that we have had with our marketing department and they're big advocates for us and they're really trying to help us out because we do know that a lot of people, the trend is moving more towards digital versus paper or the website is not necessarily drawing the people. We do have to share our social media with City Hall and all the other departments within the city. As a teaser, we are hoping to try and get our own dedicated Parks and Recreation social media page.

And if that does happen, then we can post more. But we have a limited the city has a limited number of posts they can do a day so it doesn't get lost. And once again we do have to share with other departments. Hopefully if all things go well then we will have our own dedicated social media page for Parks and Recreation. We'll be able to advertise a little bit more. Fingers crossed. Thank you.

City will present agenda item nine regarding updates on Creek Fit.

Alright. Creek Fit. We are currently at 2,252 current memberships. And recently, we have received our new treadmills at the Creek Fit North. That is the recreation complex thank you so much

are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item nine City staff will present agenda item 10 regarding the updates on the park and recreation master plan.

Thank you, Chairman Wayne Toby, director of parks and recreation. Just going to give you a brief update based on where we're at with some of the parks that are out there regarding the master plan. Not a lot of change, but there is a little change. Sunshine Drive Park and Donaldson Park obviously is under construction now, and it is expected to be completed hopefully by the October is what we're looking at. Weather plays a big part on it so it could go into November but so far everything's looking good with those two parks.

Lakeside Park, we're working right now on a PO for the contractor and in the meantime reviewing the shop drawings that were recently submitted to us. And we anticipate having a notice to proceed within the next six months of the work and hope we put it out. Oak Trails Park, we're finalizing permit comments and obtaining external permits as well. We anticipate bid being advertised probably within the next couple of weeks going into October. And then once the notice to proceed is issued, they'll have one year to complete that project.

And that's one of the projects that Dan helped us with a grant with. So a lot of that part is being built with a grant. The only last thing I want to just mention, we had a preconstruction meeting this week for George Gerber Memorial Park on the playground. We're going to be replacing that playground with a themed airplane theme. Once we get that notice to proceed, it'll take hopefully, I'm thinking four to six weeks to complete because of the weather.

So we're anticipating somewhere around that second week of or the October to begin. That's all I got on the projects that we have going on in the parks right now. Are there any questions regarding any of them?

Are you expecting any closures at Gerber to accommodate the work? What was that? Are we expecting any closures at Gerber to accommodate the work? Do they need to close the ball I fields in order to

don't think so. They are going to have an area that's fenced off that leads from the parking lot to the playground. It shouldn't affect anything on the playing field itself. And, hopefully, it'll move pretty rapidly when they start that project.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item 10? Yes, if you'd like to speak, please come forward.

Paul Verick, Coconut Creek resident again. I just wanted to make a comment about the Gerber Park with the new playground and the baseball field being next to the soccer field and the playground. I've noticed, you know, from our experience, we have a little one. And when we hang out there, the balls come flying, and it's and it's only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt, and it's gonna be sad to say that it's just, you know, it's just not a matter it's just a matter of win at this point with those balls flying into the park, even on the soccer field or onto, the playground there. So I was wondering if there's anything to be done to address that issue.

The only thing that we're doing on our behalf is we are putting up

a shade canopy over the playground to hope hopefully, that'll prevent from kids getting hit. I think what he's referring to is when they do batting practice, as an example, on the baseball field there, the balls tend to get fouled up and back and the fence isn't high enough. So they come and land actually on the baseball field. So there have been kids. I personally have witnessed kids that have been hit by those balls.

So I don't know. I don't know what the cost of curing that is or whatever, but I do tend to agree with Paul in the sense that it's only a matter of time until one of those balls catches a kid in the head or hits them the wrong way. And if it's a problem that we're aware of, it almost makes me more concerned that we know there's a problem, but we're choosing not to address the situation.

We did put in our budget this year which is still going through. It has the second reading still. We did put in our budget to extend the backstop, curve it out to the field to help prevent some of the balls to go out. We're hoping that would help. But we do have it in our budget. It just has to go through the second reading. Then once it gets that approved then obviously October 1 when it kicks in we'll start working with our Public Works Department to get the quotes and whatever we need to do to get it going. Yeah, yeah.

Again, Rick A, Parks and Rec. Just to communicate, we also have curved the playing fields. So as far as I'm not gonna rent out the baseball field if the West Soccer Field or football field is being utilized and vice versa. So I'm trying to ensure that all those spaces are not involved at the same time at the same time. If it's kickball, okay.

It's probably a lesser possibility that something could happen. But baseball, yes, I understand. So we've we've curved that where the West Soccer Field will not be utilized if the baseball field is used. And if the baseball field if the soccer field is being used, the baseball field will not be used. So we're trying to mitigate a little bit of that until we can figure out how this backstop works.

And if this backstop I'm not gonna say it's gonna be a 100% perfect, but it's it should limit the amount of balls that are flying in those areas. So we will continue to address those issues and bring those those issues to the front to make sure that everyone is safe on both ends. Okay? Thank you.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding agenda item number 10? We will now hear communications and reports. Does city staff have any communications or reports for the board? Nothing at this time. Do any members of the board have communications or reports to share?

At this time, we would like to set the date for our next meeting. City staff will present the date.

Wednesday, 01/21/2026. That would be at our normal time of 06:30PM.

And I'm assuming we have a consensus that this date and time is good for everybody. If there are no further comments, I'll take a motion and a second to adjourn the meeting. I second that motion.