Park Commission - Regular Meeting

The hour of 05:30 having arrived. I'd like to call the Dane County Park Commission to order. Please call the roll. Banks.

Present.

Bogue.

Present.

Brower.

Here.

Supervisor Eicher is excused. Go forth is excused. Supervisor Posler? I would assume is going to log on any second. Chair Thorson?

Yep, present.

And then Youth and Governance Program member Song Kwon may be

joining joining us.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. First order of business or second order of business consideration of minutes. Is there a motion?

I'll move.

Okay. Second?

I'll second.

Okay. Any changes, corrections? If not, all those in favor of approving the minutes, save signify saying aye, please. Aye. Next item are the resolute referrals and resolutions. First one being 2025Resolution402, a contract change order number 5 for the Walking Iron Trail, phase one construction along Highway 78, Mazomenei, contractor Zenith Tech Incorporated. Julie?

Do want a motion first?

Yes, thank you. We have a motion for approval.

I'll move. Second?

Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Actually, Alex is going to do this one.

Yes. Thank you. So if you recall this project, this is the Great Sauk walking Iron Wisconsin River Bridge Trail project. If you recall, there's two kind of bridge components to this project. One is the new Wisconsin River Bridge that's been built over the river. We have a few little odds and ends to finish up on that. And like pouring the concrete deck, we should be done with that this fall. And the other piece of that project is another bridge. If you recall, I think I showed pictures a while back. That's the rehabilitation of the historic steel truss railroad bridge.

And this change order relates to that. So throughout construction, we realized through some investigatory work on one of the concrete peers that it was failing, that there's no rebar in it. And so to protect our investment, we pursued some design options to replace that, worked with our design consultant team, and presented some documents to our contractor to get a price on the corrective action to replace that concrete pier. And so this change order is reflective of that. So we're looking to move that forward and have that project completed this fall with this additional work that we've requested.

Any questions? If not, Alex, the additional because it's going to take an oh, I'm sorry, Nan, go ahead.

Is is this the relatively short bridge that as you're heading towards Sauk Prairie or Sauk City, it's on the left kind of of the bridge, of the big bridge? Or is it a different

Yep.

It's east of the bridge. It's a 500 foot long Okay. Bridge. Yep.

I'm kind of thinking, okay. Then that's a longer one. Yeah. That'll be nice to restore. Okay.

You wanted to say something?

I was gonna say relatively short compared to the first band. Right. But Yeah. And and

I I mean, a couple a couple of things. One would just be the the additional funds to increase that were allocated already?

Yeah. We have funding in the account for that. Some of it is potentially reimbursable through the DOT grants that we do have.

Okay. And then it I know that there's social media coverage on the progress of these bridges. At least I've been getting feed on it. And it is it is nice to actually see it. So, any other questions or discussion? If not, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Okay. Motion carries. Next item is, resolution twenty twenty five resolution four zero seven, awarding a contract for Black Earth Creek Hydrologic Restoration at the Schultz Road And Highway 14, Black Earth. Contractor, HGS Limited. Okay. Is there a motion? Okay. Moved by Stephanie. Second.

Second.

Okay. Yeah. That's what I assume. Yep. Okay. Go ahead, James. Wanna cover the the contract? And we we appreciate learning. These wouldn't necessarily have to go to us. I appreciate the fact that Jolene sends them so that we can all be aware of what's happening to the park properties and the public can know what's happening to the park properties. So Most definitely.

Alright. Am I successful in sharing my slides here?

Yep. Mhmm.

I can

see that. Alright. So I just wanna spend a few minutes and kinda walk through a little bit of the background, the primarily on the why and the what of the project, I'm happy to field any questions anybody may have. So, this is a project on Black Earth Creek. Very deep history for folks that aren't aware.

It's been a conservation priority in the county for decades now. It's classified by DNR as what they call a outstanding and exceptional resource water predominantly because of its highly valued trout fishery. And the fishing records here actually go back to, like, the late eighteen nineties. It was often revered as one of the most productive trout streams in this part of the state. And it's also been used for quite a long time for environmental science and education, especially since those fields really took off kinda in the mid nineteen hundreds.

It's also got a bit of a a dark past. So this is a picture of one of the Highway 14 bridges that was completely destroyed during the twenty eighteen floods, which I'm sure is still fresh on a lot of our minds. $100,000,000 plus in damage, did claim one life, and inundated, you know, entire communities as a shot of, the central part of Meso Mani kinda at the the peak of the flooding. So a lot of times when these things happen, people always ask, you know, how can this be avoided or how could it be reduced? Really, when you get 13 and a half inches of rain in a twenty four hour period, you're gonna experience some degree of flooding.

But we are learning more and more about how these flood impacts can be reduced. So this is just a map of the majority of Black Earth Creek from its headwaters just West of Middleton, till Mazomani until it dumps in the Wisconsin River. And what I wanna point out here, if you kinda cut the stream in half and you look at the east side, you see a lot of straight lines, right angles, things that really don't look too natural. And then as you get on the downstream section, especially downstream and West of Black Earth, you see a lot more wiggle in the stream where it hasn't been manipulated as much for, you know, the Highway 14 development, agriculture development, all those things. So what we've learned is when we manipulate these waterways, we kinda turn them into a fire hose that can wreak havoc in these downstream communities.

The green star is where the project is occurring. So, like, the resolution said, it's just South of Schultz Road, about a mile and a half as the crow flies from Black Earth. When we do these projects, we do a lot of monitoring assessment to perform our designs. So this is one of our reference or call it healthy stream reaches, near South Valley Road. Folks know where that is.

Stream's only about 25 feet wide. There's you see these nice riffles in the water from a nice hard rocky bottom. And the one thing I really wanna point out here, you can see the gal Alex on the left here sitting on the banks, and the top of the bank there is only, you know, about two feet above the water surface. So you only needed a couple inches of rain, and that water will spill over those banks and go into those adjacent floodplain wetlands. So this is a picture looking due east of the, section of the Creek on County property that's proposed for restoration.

You can see here it's very wide, almost 70 feet in some locations, straight as an arrow, and it's just choked with invasive trees and brush. And, really, one of the biggest impairments again, this was the section of creek was straightened when they, put the highway in almost a century ago. And on the north side of the creek is where they dumped all that dirt from when they dug that channel out. So what happens here, it kind of has created a levee, and I think a lot of folks are probably familiar with levees. Right?

They actually are built to contain floodwaters as they go through and around cities. What we wanna do here as part of this restoration is really the opposite. To get rid of that material, we're in a rural setting. There's no infrastructure, you know, nearby and kinda reactivate some of that adjacent floodplain to help mitigate that downstream flooding. This is just a zoomed out view.

The pink line, which is, denotes the grading limits, does, encompass the entire 14 acre county property at the Black Earth Creek Fishery And Wildlife Area as well as a handful of acres on the adjacent DNR land. They have a land use agreement for where we're gonna be doing some vegetation enhancement, and taking out some of those invasive trees to actually be used, for some of the wood structures in the project. So a lot of the the floodplain reconnection, the earthwork, and the grading is gonna occur on the north side of the stream where it's currently an agricultural field. And if you zoom in on the actual call it the the stream restoration component, that steel or aqua line will be the new center line of the stream, pretty much returning it to its historic flow path. And then a lot of the trees that are gonna be taken out are gonna be used, incorporated into the creek banks to provide overhead cover for fish habitat, and also help with erosion control and really help to kinda slow down and spread out those floodwaters.

And doing similar practices out in the floodplain where you're actually anchoring whole trees to help with flood mitigation. And then just you can see what's the called the riffles and pools, just reestablishing kind of that natural sequence of a cold water stream for both stability, and for fish habitat purposes. And I don't have it shown here, but all the surrounding lands, it's gonna be restored either to Upland Prairie. I think the seating for that is just short of six acres, and there's also gonna be about five and a half acres of, native wetland seating in the adjacent floodplain as well. So that's all I have for the slides. I will pause there just to see if anybody has any, comments or questions.

K. Questions?

Yeah.

Go go ahead, Steph.

James, thank you very much. It's very informative, and the visuals are excellent. How long will all of this take?

That's that's that's always a little up in the air. Right? Always You're at the mercy of mother nature. But for folks that are familiar, this is very similar to a project that was done on Black Earth Creek and Walking Iron County Park, going on three years ago now. So a lot of these practice are gonna practices are gonna look the same. That was a much bigger project. That one took about eight weeks start to finish. Our initial conversations with the contractors that they think they'll be able to get this one done in about four to five Wow. Weather permitting. And we are up against we have to have it delivered, by kind of the midpoint 2027 because part part of the funding for the project is coming from, that Wisconsin emergency management grant as well.

Oh, okay. So this is part of the flood mitigation money

Correct.

The 2018 2017, flooding?

It didn't come directly from that. I will say that event really did kind of launch, some lobbying. This this new grant program, it's called a pre disaster flood resiliency grant, and it was really championed by the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, and then Wisconsin Emergency Management is the state agency that does the administration. But, you know, a big a big goal of that grant as it's baked into the title is to help reduce flooding, but all the other, you know, ecological, benefits that come along with those projects as well.

Is this all state money, or is it some of it federal or all federal or some of it state?

The only the only fund funding for the project is coming through that, WEM grant through the state. There's no federal funding source.

Federal funding. Yeah. You mentioned that some of the the trees you're taking down will be used for habitat

Yeah. Correct.

To, for spawning purposes?

Not necessarily for spawning. They're more in these if folks what what's what's called the root wad structure on this graphic here. Yeah. It's a pretty basic concept. You pretty much take a whole tree out, cut it to a 20 foot length, and then bury it in the stream bank. So the big bottom side of the tree, root ball and all, is actually partially in the water. So it actually provides a great hiding spot for kinda middle age and adult trout. Where you see the riffles going in, that's rock structure. That boat, that really helps with, with spawning grounds for juvenile.

So this will actually slow down the water flow.

That is the big goal of the project. Right? Like, the the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, whenever go on these kinda these these road shows and tours, the goal of these projects is where it makes sense, where there's not gonna be damage, you know, to to people and property to spread out those floodwaters and really slow everything down. So that's what we're going for.

Great. Thanks a lot.

Yep. Other questions?

Yeah. I had a question. Why do the fish like I think you're saying the fish like this, the curvy waterway instead of the straight, but what what do they get more in the curvy than the straight?

So, really, the they the they call that sinuosity in the stream restoration world. What that does is on those outside bends where you see the dark blue blobs, the pools here, when that stream moves like that, it'll actually scour the bottom out. When you get those outside bends, the water is moving a lot faster. So that'll actually help to create depth. And depth is just another form of cover for fish. Right? If you're if a fish is sitting in 12 inches of water, you know, the the blue heron or the anything hunting from the shoreline is a lot easier to see them. So deeper water ultimately provides more cover and more safety for them.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Also a very nice, visual presentation. Thank you.

I have another question. James, can you hear me?

I can. Shoot.

K. So I I often walk the the boardwalk in cross planes. That whole stretch was maneuvered, as you know, or was restored, you know, sometime ago, maybe ten years ago. There are lots of muskrat in that stream. My question is, they beneficial or not to to stream health and fish life?

Oh, boy. That's a bit of a curveball there. In in the eye of the beholder, right, I I love all critters, mostly equally, but there there's beaver that have been spotted and active, and muskrat can kinda do the same thing. So they can cause damage. Right? They burrow into the banks. They can, you know, build dams and kinda water diversion structures. But there is a lot of, call it dialogue and debate, especially around beavers. Right? So similar to kind of the the life processes of a muskrat, where the work that they do, they're actually doing what we're trying to do here for a lot less money.

Right? They build a dam. They slow down the floodwater and spread it out. So the impacts on the trout and the fishery, there's a lot of science going into that. We could debate debate that for many, many more hours into the late night. But I guess there's pro there's pros and cons.

Mhmm.

Well, I see them all burrowing into the bank, and that was my question. You know, is is that does that affect the stability of the bank?

It does. And one of the nice things about these root wads, kinda how they're built is you put, like, a root wad, and then you put a whole log. And all the small branches and the slash, it's all packed in there. So that entire bank is more or less like a composite wood structure. So it's just not as welcoming to kind of these bank burrowing critters like muskrat and beaver. So it does help with the long term stability of it.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep. Other questions? If not, you kind of, thanks so much for your presentation. You kind of triggered the question on the muskrats and beaver on what I was going to ask. And that is how much trapping do we do we know how much trapping is going on? Because beaver will slow and warm the water, which, again, is a cheap a cheaper way for flood problem, but then it also hurts the fishery potentially.

Yeah. I would say as as a as a general trend, we are seeing and not just on this property or Dane County, Wisconsin Southern Wisconsin in general, we're seeing a a a pretty big decrease in the number of trappers that are out there. There's just you know, the the the payout for the pelt isn't there, and it just seems to be that the new generations aren't kinda taking the reins from from their successors on that. So from my experience and my time at the county when I was at DNR, we are seeing less and less of that.

Is there gonna be a change in the upland a little bit upland vegetation? Because I know you're taking trees out, but what what beyond that that may also help contribute to, you know, basically, water retention?

So let me that actually switched.

Do you

see a different map with kinda teal and yellow on

it? Yep.

Okay. So right now, the adjacent lands on both sides of the creek are in, agricultural rent that actually ceased this year. So the county did plant just some native grasses in this north field to stabilize everything, so it's not a muddy mess during construction. And when this project is all done, probably in late summer, early fall, whatever is in teal here will be kind of an upland prairie. So similar seeding mix and look to a lot of other county properties.

And then everything in the county in the DNR land that's slated in yellow will be that herbaceous native wetland vegetation. We did have an alternate in the bid to do some, shrub and tree planting as well, but we were just up against our budget. So we decided to, pass on that. So we are, working with groups like Trout Unlimited to potentially do, some bottom planting and put in, like, some white oaks or something similar to the tree planting that was done on a walking iron.

Well, it it it's something that'll be beneficial, that's for sure, in the long run. So Yep. Greatly appreciated. Any other questions? If not, the motion to approve the resolution, for the contract with Lackworth Creek. Is there let's all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Carries unanimously.

Next next item is, twenty twenty five resolution 409, awarded the contract for the Lenny Lake Farm, County Park, boat launch and parking and lots improvements at 4286 Libbey Road. Contract is, Blocky Paving Corp. Is there a motion? Nan? And Steph? I see the two of you. Okay. Motion to approve. Let's see. Who's got this, Alex?

I'll take this one. I moved over so you can see me. Shereen and I switched. But, yeah, this is a resolution to award a contract for reconstruction of the boat launch at William G. Lani Lake Farm County Park just down the road here at the Cap Springs Rec Area.

And this is a project that's kind of been in the works for a while. The current boat launch and concrete ramp are in a very state of disrepair and are in need of improvement. And this project will not only restore the asphalt, it will improve stormwater management through some new stormwater treatment facilities within that parking lot. And we will also be replacing the entire concrete ramp structure that goes into the water. That's a big part of this project.

So I think Poblocchi has done a lot of work for us in the past. And so we're looking forward to getting this project underway this spring into summer.

Ahead. Nan, go ahead.

Will you be doing anything with the disabled fishing ram?

Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Nan. Part of the efforts here are to not only improve the existing payment, but to improve accessibility around the existing restroom facility and the ADA parking stalls and access to the actual boat launch piers that we have and we'll be replacing. So yes, part of this project will address ADA and that will be corrected.

Yeah. That'll be really nice. We go out there a lot, and my husband has an old boat. And my niece is in a wheelchair. So, yeah, we can't it doesn't work to mix boating and wheelchairs very well. But even if she could get out there a little bit easier, it'd be great.

Okay. Other questions? If not, the one question I have is the resolution does say that they're decreasing certain parts and increasing others. And I assume that's just to make sure we've got the right budget. Yeah.

The accounting part of the resolution is long. So we have a number of projects that had closed out that had remaining funds left that we need to transfer over to make this work. Yeah. Alright.

Well, I I just wanted to make sure that we're not holding lots of stuff back. Some of the transfers are so good. Because I I I happened to go down there today because they were doing a somebody was doing a burn on, alongside the road, and I just wanted to see what was going on. And I I went to the lot, and it it really does need it. So, you know, I think this is important to get that fixed. The one question I did have, the sign there says open in the '26, closed summer of. Do we know the dates?

Yeah. Thanks, Tom. That's a great question. So we plan to so as this goes through for award, we plan to put the piers in this spring and open it for spring fishing. And then as we work with Poblocke to get an actual construction schedule and work with our public works staff on that, We will be sending notifications out to the public on exactly how that closure is gonna be implemented and the timing of that. We just don't know the exact dates to that. So it'd be premature to kind of just keep everything closed and

Well, it's a heavily used Yes. Yep. You know, people want to get on there, but they're gonna need to know, let's say it's June or whenever it happens.

Exactly. We've we've already sent out letters. We've posted this to our Facebook page. We've posted I believe we posted it to our Facebook page. We posted it to our website. We've sent out information to all the Lake Access permit holders from last year and this year. There's been some traction on Facebook whether we've had it on our webpage or not. We've sent out notifications to a lot of the local bait shops. We've sent out notifications to a lot of the fishing groups and like the Madison Fishing Chain groups and some of our special event permit holders that hold tournaments and things like that, trying to get the word out. We had posters at the Wisconsin Fishing Expo on both this project and Babcock.

There was some questions about the timing of Babcock in this project. We are not shutting both those launches down at the same time. Babcock is anticipated to be a twenty twenty seven construction following the completion of this project, which we anticipate being fall twenty twenty six.

Well, it's good that you've got the plan on notification and are already notifying people because, you know, otherwise, you get the calls afterwards. Oh, yeah. So you know? And you still will get some calls. I don't know how that goes, but you're doing everything you can, and that's what's appreciated. So, okay. The the motion is to, approve the, the resolution. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? It carries unanimously. Next item, reports to committee. The twenty twenty seven park fees, data sharing and initial guidance.

Alright, everybody. I have Lael and I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks putting together some data to share with you as it relates to, our park fees, inflation rates, some options, comparable counties in the Midwest, and we're gonna probably in no particular order sort of share some of this overarching information with you. And I wanna know if there's other data that you think might be helpful that we haven't yet found that you want us to hear. And then once you sort of hear these pieces, I've got some questions for you all to consider at the end to give us some initial guidance. Then Don, Lael and I will take this and put together our plan is to put together some draft proposed fees to bring back to all of you before our Earth Day meeting in April.

So within the next month, we'll have initial draft for commissioners to react to. So, Nan, I don't think you were here at the last meeting when we shared initially the 2027 county budget looks to be tough, and we're expecting a significant budget reduction. One of the ways that we can offset part of that reduction would be to consider raising revenue. Dane County Parks generates a decent amount of revenue from our permit sales, from our shelter reservations, our campground fees.

I think I was at the meeting.

Were you okay? Sorry. Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah. So that's the background. And why why we're coming with a bunch of this this information. So I said in no particular order, I'm gonna information dump on you. Lael and I will. I'm gonna share my screen. A lot of what I have here is not the the prettiest Excel spreadsheets, Okay? So bear with me. I've got apparently far too many things up here. Okay.

I don't know what to start with. Maybe I'll start with this one. Here we go. So these are our historic numbers of how well Dane County Parks has been doing from a revenue perspective, what we've sold year over year comparison whether it be camping nights, shelter reservations, permits sold, these daily permits and then a kind of a breakdown by permit. And I wanna start by saying as we were looking at 2025 year end revenue and some of these numbers and we don't a fully reconciled '25 budget yet countywide because we can back charge expenses because invoices are still coming in and getting paid late.

That really it's about the end of the March that we see a fully reconciled budget. But I have to tell you that we had a decrease in revenue in 2025 compared to '24, and the last few years. And I I I attribute it probably to sort of this bust of the pandemic area, get outside everywhere. So this is not unique to us after doing some additional research. I mean, hunting and fishing licenses went down.

A lot of camping has gone down. A lot of the revenue that comes from people buying fancy outdoor equipment is alright. Apologize for the technology issues there. We are recording again. I can reshare my screen.

Actually, I wanna go the whole screen so I can keep going back and forth. Alright. So, yeah, first and foremost, as we're having these conversations, just know know that we're gonna have to do a really good job monitoring, you know, month to month budget as we're extrapolating how many permits do we anticipate that we'll sell in '26. Is that gonna decline again? Are we gonna level out? Are we gonna see more people outside? I mean, there's just still a lot of questions to answer.

Quick question on that point, do we have month by month data or is it year end?

I could pull I mean, we could pull data on what we've sold to date.

Because that's a lot of times, things are dependent on weather and all that. You know?

Are you looking for month to month, like, camping and shelter data?

Well, I mean, it'd be camping, you know, probably dog park use, that kind

because what we see anecdotally is we do a huge push of our permit sales in November.

Right.

And for example, last year, had less seasonal staff staying on later into the season. But typically, they would be out selling a significant number of permits in November trying to kind of get ahead of others that maybe are selling permits. And also, a lot of people will purchase them for gifts. So we'll see this huge uptick kind of before the holidays, and then again in the spring when folks come out. But, you're not gonna see it as well because we won't have because we have our Ventec machines that are doing a lot of the, like, daily permits out in the field, which we can get, but it's a little bit they're a little bit different than what you're gonna see online. Okay.

I mean, we could run a year to date report

Yeah. No. No.

I to see how that compares to, like, the whole year.

It it just triggered when you said that, you know, you'll get this, you know, kinda in March. But as we go through 2026, if we know where we were in '25 for the same kind

of month. Oh, to compare the two. Yeah.

We can do that year over year.

Lail? How do how do how do staff sell permits in November? What do they do? I think you said sell. Yep.

They sell. The rangers, we start selling permits and taking reservations on November 1. So the rangers, if they have time, will go, hang out in a dog park at a picnic table right at the entryway and sell permits for the next year. And, people love it. They, like, go and buy all their permits. They look forward to it. We have little signs. They get very into it. They buy them for gifts as well. They'll sell dog park permits at the dog park, but then they sell all the permits if someone wants to buy something else too.

Plus you email people to get it a year.

Yeah, we do.

We see a huge spike, people buy their permits in advance.

Good question. All right, the other piece that is on this specific spreadsheet is resident versus non resident use for the specific permits. So I will say the data's not perfect. Right? But because sometimes in person sales, we're not getting everyone's correct ZIP code.

When people are buying things online, they might be accidentally typing their ZIP code because there is no ZIP code that's 544716. Right? So they, like, doubled the four as an example or something. But we did an analysis based on every specific type of permit and all of their ZIP codes to see how many how many people who buy annual permits are nonresident versus resident. One of the ideas that we'll be asking you to consider is increasing or adding nonresident permits for these because in, you know, in essence, as a Dane County resident, your tax dollars are supporting Dane County parks.

As a nonresident, none of your property tax dollars are supporting Dane County parks and therefore, you know, they're not underwriting these services that require a permit. For well part of it is data right as how many permit holders do we have that are non residents and I will say Lake Access is the only permit that already has a nonresident rate. But if all of these of this is what the permit costs. And then if we were to just, again, just for understanding data and beginning analysis, if we were to double the cost of these permits for nonresidents, so a nonresident aero modeling permit would be 60 instead of 30, a disc golf would be a 100, and we sold the exact same number of nonresident permits, it would generate an additional 43 almost thousand dollars of revenue. This is important for me to think about just when I think about as soon as we get you know, our department gets our budget guidelines, how much of a budget reduction do we have to make versus offsetting.

So this extrapolation, like, if this and this and this and this and this, you know, that that total number becomes important to me on the budgetary side. There are a whole bunch of other questions that I want you to consider as you think about potentially adding a nonresident rate is double right or not? Do we think nonresidents will buy them? You know, what's the argument of tax support or not? I mean, those are things that you'll have to to answer, and I'm not gonna give you all the questions, like, that go along with that.

But I think that it's important to say, right, increasing the nonresident rate at double cost certainly is not solving our budget crisis alone. Right? But but that's, again, something to think about. So I'm gonna move on to the next spreadsheet now. Or let me stop. Yeah. Are there questions about what we're seeing here? I would love this to be a discussion.

Yeah. For interrupting. If somebody else, I'll give you a chance later. It popped into my head. As far as I can see like where was it? I'm trying to see.

I know. It's so small.

Yeah. No. But it looks like it's about 10% were non residents. Approximately 10%. But varied when it came to Lake Lake Access. There, it was, what, maybe 20%? I guess that that thirty

Seven seventeen out of yeah. 3,900.

Yeah. You know, so that that's closer to maybe 20%. I

need Excel to do my math for me.

Anyways, I saw that variation. But it's also good to see some of the maybe after we're done, maybe if you want to send that. Because sometimes when you get a chance to look at it, you can start to analyze it a a little bit more for because when you increase, nonresidents, which I think we should do, let me just but the question is, where's that line? This is where you would do a marketing to find out when it's gonna drop off. So I and I don't know where the answers to those questions. Probably nobody does. But but but you have to kinda find out based on how much people are hooked, are they gonna continue to, yeah, I'll pay double. That's no problem.

Yeah. Or I only come four times a year, so I'm gonna pay 4 dailies instead of buy the annual now or something. Yeah. Those are all questions to ponder. I mean, I could not, in faith, say we're gonna double this and I'm gonna actually generate an extra $43,000 of revenue. You know, like that's just not gonna happen. Think we would lose people for sure.

And if we were to increase these or have non residents, we would definitely want to increase our dailies because anecdotally we know that many of our daily users are non residents.

I would agree with the principle that you can't just do the annual. You gotta do the dailies too. Go ahead. But, yeah, that gets gets our stimulation going. And I see Stephanie has her hand up.

Yeah. I just wondered, have you, you have comp data to compare, other counties that have the same some of the same, lake resources and river resources that we have, like, you know, Jefferson County, Rock, Greene, not Green, but Waukesha County.

Yeah. We'll get there. We have that data too.

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Yeah. I've got a question. Yeah. A couple of things. How do we tell if they're nonresidents?

Well, this is based on the data that we have in our permit sales system.

No. I mean, when when someone comes to buy a permit, they just self select nonresident? Or I mean, that must be what they do.

Or the reservation system will put you in the category based on the ZIP code that you've entered.

Yeah. It's code based. Okay. That makes sense. What is offsetting of a budget? What is that option? Pardon? Oh, what is offsetting of a budget mean? What what is that? I think you mentioned that as an option.

Well, my point is just that, you know, we're gonna be tasked with reducing our expenses by I'm gonna just throw out a number there. I don't have my budget guidelines yet. $600,000. Right? It's probably gonna be that big, would be my guess for Dane County Parks budget alone. Then if I can if I can generate a $100,000 of additional revenue over what we budgeted to generate in 2026, then I would only have to cut $500,000. Right? Because I'm offsetting this reduction in expenses by an expected increase in revenue.

Right. And will any of these things you're going to show us get an extra 100,000?

Well, that's I mean, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. I I think that depending on, you know, your appetite for raising the fees, maybe maybe. We also have to balance that with the fact that our sales numbers and our camping nights are down.

And so if we expect to to raise the fees enough to get a $100,000, is that going to, in addition, offset what we're selling less of? You know? Two weeks ago, I didn't I hadn't yet anal you know, analyzed the 2025 sales numbers and and but we didn't hit our revenue expectation in 2025 by a long shot. So are we going to be able to do that in 2026 is at this point to be determined, but that's gotta be a part of our, you know, our decision making as our department proposes our budget this summer.

The last thing is I know it's not time to, you know, vote or whatever, but I do like the since we're talking about nonresidents, I do like the idea of increasing daily passes, daily passes.

Great. Any other comments before I move on to sort of the next piece of data to share?

Yeah. I think, you know, when one of those things maybe for between now and our April 22, you know, there's some principles that I think that you're getting the feedback on, which is, yes, we're we're fine as long as fees are reasonable and we don't block people out, you know, raising both, you know, annual or permit. We're we at least I'm giving you my view here. It's okay to raise nonresidents a little bit more as long as we don't lose the revenue from that, you know, overall, you know, because what we wanna have is make sure the public, you know, can is not blocked out from, you know, doing these things. And that's where when you get to your thing about other counties and whatnot, that would be helpful.

Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Stephanie. Oh,

Tom, I can't hear you very well. Can you speak into the mic? Okay.

I'm done talking. Much better. Much better. Sorry.

That's okay. Alright.

So I've got just the permit fee history if you wanna see sort of how we've raised things in in the past. And I wanted to share that with as we I also have the rate of inflation from the last five years, which is something that you asked about, which was pretty high here in '20, you know, '22, and then it's it's leveled off again. And so when you take that and look at these, although I don't have I don't have specific percents because we didn't raise fees across the board percentage wise. You know, we were making them whole dollars. You can see in '22 to '23, right, that's when we did a pretty big fee increase, which pretty much matched inflation, you know, and then we were held steady again.

We went up a little bit in, you know, in in '26. So I I think the point that I wanna make here is kind of on par with an inflation for the past couple of years. Some of this much more historic data, you know, we we sat at the same fees for many numbers of years. And I I didn't go past, you know, that five year mark. But I do wanna that's just sort of brief to share this. Again, I'm sorry. My spreadsheets are not pretty and there's a whole bunch of numbers here. So I'm gonna just talk kind of high level about what these trends are. So these are, again, all of our permit fees. What we're charging for '26.

If for '27, we said, well, we wanna across the board raise the fees. What it'd 3%, 5%, seven percent, 10% for consideration. What does that translate to in an actual permit sale amount? Okay. So that's what these are coming down here. So we also are not doing, you know, 33¢ and 67¢. So what are we doing this percent rounded to a whole number? That's why you see, you know, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it doesn't. Three, five, 7%, still rounds to the same number sometimes. Right?

Then we take the exact number of permits sold. This is based on twenty twenty five actual permits sold for each specific category. That's how much revenue we generated in permit sales or we would expect to generate in permit sales this calendar year based on the twenty twenty six fees, the twenty twenty five numbers. Okay? So we're hopefully going to bring in about $629,000 in revenue in 2026.

Actually, hopefully, we're gonna bring in more, but we're gonna sell more permits. We'll see. Then, if we were to raise these fees by 3% in '27 and sell the exact same number of permits that we sold in '25, we would see an increase in about $19,000 in revenue generated. If we went to 5%, we would see about 31,000. If we went to 7%, you'd see potential increase in revenue of 44,000.

10%, right, 60 almost 63,000. So again, this is exactly the same number of permits, not losing people, you know, barring, at least continuation in sales. That's that's across the boards for all of the permits. Including the lake access? Including lake access.

So this is not if there's a nonresident that's double or whatever, this is if we didn't change anything about resident, nonresident, we just said, hey. We're gonna go, you know, across the board 5,000 or 5% increase. It would translate into about $30,000 of additional revenue. Now I certainly can share this data with you if you want. Like, if you wanna see the spreadsheet and the formulas.

I I I have to share it this way to talk through it, but I you know, the it's the high level points that I'm saying that I think are really important. So I want you to focus on, you know, am I think about and you don't have to answer this now. Would I be comfortable with a dog park annual permit going from 46 to 51, or does that seem like too high of a jump? Do I feel better at 49 or 48? I mean, again, no answers today, but I think comparing, you know, these kind of percentage increases with what we're charging now are the things that I want you to start thinking about.

Do I feel comfortable with that? And then if I feel comfortable with that, what does that really bottom line get us? Right? Like, is it worth it for these dollar amounts?

I'll I'll let others comment first, and then I'll comment. Go ahead. Anybody got their hands

up? Yeah.

Go ahead, Nan.

So I look at this, and it just feels depressing, which you guys have already experienced because, you know, you we raise them 10%, and we make 63,000, and we're 600,000 short.

Well, we don't know that yet, but that's an assumption.

Yeah.

That It certainly isn't gonna solve the the budget crisis. It could be a piece of the solution, but but it isn't we would never be able to generate enough revenue and park fees to make up the difference.

If if we if we raise them, and then to Tom's point, saw, you know, a significant decrease in purchases, do we can we decrease them again?

Mean, you as park commission, you have the authority to set the fees every year. So

Okay. Yeah.

Are there other hands up? Can only see Stephanie. Okay. Stephanie.

Quite frankly, I don't think the 10 increase is shocking at all. I when I think of the the the dog permit going from 46 to 51, feel quite comfortable with that.

Yeah. The thing that I, you know, I'm just weighing in here on what you just said there. To me, it almost seems psychologically better to have a, an even number like 50. Yeah. Know, as far as because when the public I'm I'm trying to look at how the public looks at when they see something. Mhmm. You know? And and because then you have to explain, well, it's 51 because we had a 10% increase. Whereas, you know, 50 may be, what, a 9% or something. I don't know.

You I So I'm I'm just kinda giving you I think we wanna have parameters on what we wanna see potentially for an increase, but I'd like them to be, like, whole numbers that fit with, you know, other park departments and whatnot. So that's just a a principle.

I have another question. Nan just mentioned, cutting services. What have you thought about services that would that you would cut, Jolene?

Yeah. Well, I'd like to keep that conversation separate from a fee conversation Yeah. Just because, like, let's let's tackle park fees. Let's get them set before the county my department's budget is due into the county executive's office.

Okay.

And then and then we can start talking about, you know, service reductions because we'll have less staff because of, you know, budget cuts. So The

the the thing, again, that I think is important that we look at, and that's why it'll depend what you got next for presentation will be important, and that is where's the market with the other agencies and state? And what's fair that also does not basically discourage, you know, mom and pop and people from, you know, being able to use the park because we're gonna keep the parks for free for entrance. You know? I mean, I Waukesha County has $7 entrance fee, you know, just to go into their parks, which I don't you know, it's not the way we wanna go. I'm just giving you my Mhmm.

View. So my my thought process would be, let's get this. But then another question is, what don't we charge that we should maybe be? And and this is where staff probably has the best feel for

I have a few of those examples that I'm so once we go through the data, I'm gonna ask you some questions to ponder or to throw ideas out, like, whether it be an initial reaction. We can always change our mind. We're not setting these park fees for months. So this is a collaborative conversation that I we all really need to be intentional about. Right. Okay. Just

one quick thing on on this page. Mhmm. It doesn't matter to me whether we have, you know, rounded off numbers as Tom mentioned. But if we did that, I'd I'd round up. So

Yeah. And Excel is just rounding to the closest at this the way this is. But, certainly, rounding up is definitely an option. That's a good idea, ma'am. Okay. I'm gonna share the next one. This is this is Lael's. So tell me what you want me to go through, like how you want me to navigate this. Okay?

Jolene's are far more organized than mine. Don't know about for the next tab. So these this first tab is going to show you the counties I compared our fees to. So I didn't do it based on Wisconsin counties. I asked for help and recommendations from our new GovAI, and I asked it to give me the most comparable counties to Dane County.

And what it gave me was these top 10 counties based on our metro core, the university, our regional draw, and our overall operation of county government. So this is what it recommended, and that's what I did the analysis. I'm happy to add more into this based on what your feedback is. I will say no one compares to Dane County. Everyone should feel really good about our parks, even though we all know that they're the best, because really nothing compares.

I mean, we're gonna go to the next tab, but which is the comparison tab, and you're gonna be like, it makes no sense. But, because it doesn't make any sense, no one has everything that we have. So either they have an entry fee to their park and maybe some shelters, maybe they charge special event fees, maybe they have permit fees, they might have camping, they might have camping in shelters, but no permit fees. No one across the board is similar enough to us to say this agency can really be compared, like, pretty much apples to apples. It's like every different fruit in the basket is happening in this.

So I tried my best to organize this, but it's a little crazy. What I will point out that I did find is there were some many of these had you can see at Champaign County, Illinois, that was kind of the most comparable number three there. It has non oh, wait. Don't scroll.

Don't scroll.

Okay. Sorry. Can you scroll back?

Yeah. I can. Sorry.

Okay. So if you look at the spreadsheet, on the left hand side, says county. Go down to three. You can see Champaign County. Now look over to the right. You're going to see shelters and then special events. This is more comparable to ours. What I found interesting was they have, their rates for their special events broke up by the group size, and they charge 50% more to nonresidents. And I think that this is a really good example of something that we could consider, for our special event fees. And our special event fees are one of the things that I think are much lower than they should be.

We have huge special events like Vegan Fest, Sugar Maple Music Festival, several mountain bike events that take a ton of staff time for setup and cleanup and organization. And I think we should really consider looking at our special event fees. This is a really nice example. And then their shelter is pretty comparable to ours. So they would, you know, book their shelter, and then also you would get your special events.

So I thought they were pretty similar. But again, there's not really anyone that kind of is consistently similar to us. Another thing I found were, camping fees. It seemed like even park systems that had camping fees that were lower non electric than ours, almost all of their electrics were above our pricing. So, yeah, you can see this one, McLean County Parks, which is this table I added in from their website.

It's kind of like a crazy table. But they're they have like a base fee, plus they have these different reservation fees. If you make your reservation in person, they have a different price. Our staff feedback is actually our in person reservation or phone reservation should be more than our online reservation because it's more work, so it would be the opposite. But, as you can see, their electric sites are like $38 a night.

Their nonelectric sites are pretty much the same cost, you know, dollars 32 per night when you compare, which ours are are pretty different. Know, ours are like 23 to 33, so a $10 difference in our pricing. So that's something to consider. Many park systems had theirs already up to $35 for their electric sites, and I'll say our parks, what we offer in our campgrounds with our shower facilities and bathrooms are a lot more than these are getting. Many of these, campgrounds were pretty primitive.

They did have flush toilets, but maybe they didn't have showers, water, things like that. So that is that. And then the other thing I'll point out is just the dog fees. If you wanna scroll a little more to the right, you can kind of skim this column, h, dog fees. All of these just had one dog park, and look how much their dog park permits are. $50, was pretty much the main cost, and then, I think one of them was, like, $45. So, you know, their dog parks really were were a little bit more, and that's for one much smaller dog park than we have. So I do think that that's something we could consider increasing.

Okay. Comments? Questions? I'm looking for

I I did have a few. We currently charge I see the dog park thing. You know? That's for a one dog park only. Or do we do something like that, or do we just say, here's a dog park. Go anywhere?

Oh, our dog park permits are even better than that, Nan, because you can go to all of our dog parks, Middleton's dog parks, all of the city of Madison, and Sun Prairie dog parks. So you can really go to so many dog parks with our permit.

Have we ever thought of, do we do more than one dog as another permit?

Yeah. That's an additional fee. Our additional dog permit right now so our our annual dog park permit is $46, and our additional is 20 right now.

Okay. And

how much what do the Sugar Maple people pay, for example, for their special permit?

I'd have to pull up those fees.

Oh, that's okay.

I some can examples. Examples.

Yeah. I think between all of the so, you know, they are setting up on Wednesday with the starting with the tents. The event is Friday, Saturday. They're cleaning up on Sunday. So they've got multiple days of the of multiple shelter spaces plus their special event fee plus the vending fee, the tent fee. We set up temporary electric boxes, multiple of them for this event. They're using a group campsite where they then charge people to camp for the music festival, and they pay us, you know, a small portion of what they charge those other people. And they're paying about $3,000 to host that event, you know, for the entire weekend.

Mhmm. Okay. Other hands. I was gonna just say thanks, Leo, for doing this work and getting it together. From a principal, when you mentioned the 50% for nonresidents, I think there's general support for that kind of concept.

May have to look at particular permits or fees where that may actually cause a drop. But I think overall, nonresidents, I mean, the people of Dane County would support that, I think, from the standpoint of having, hey, wait a minute. We're paying money. We're to have somebody. One of the things that it's good that we're doing this early because when it comes to boat fees, we're going to have to coordinate, I think Yes. With the other units of government. Go ahead.

Yeah. We have three of these permits that are cooperative, meaning, the permit is valid at any of our locations, whatever municipality is part of the cooperative permit. So as Lael talked about with DOG, it's city of Madison, city of Middleton, city of Sun Prairie. Lake access is also cooperative. That's city of Madison, city of Monona. And so they have to agree to raise the fees at the same level that we do. That's the only way it works. Mhmm. And so this we can't make those decisions on cooperative permits in a vacuum.

And and I assume that they're keyed into this getting early, because I because if you had surcharges, then you gotta send it to DNF. Mhmm. So, anyways, to your point, I think, you know, having that higher potential 50% for permits for nonresidents, I think people would would support that. We have to as long as it doesn't really push it like over the edge, you know, kind of deal it might. And this is an editorial comment here. In fact, when we did the code for voting access, we put in the law, you can't go more than 50% for nonresidents.

I have that pulled up too, so we can pull that up if you want. Do you want to talk about the staff piece or no?

No. We don't need to talk

about it now. Okay. Well,

I I missed a little bit of what what are what are the cooperative permits with other

Lake access, dog, and ski is a cooperative permit too, which I want to have a separate discussion about cross country skiing, which I'll I'll bring up more at the end with questions. So this state state statute that Tom is referring to about about how you can set boat launch fees. Is this n r one ninety. It gives you this daily base fee that is set at State Park daily fees, which actually just went up. It used to be $8, So now that can go up to 13.

So the maximum that we could charge for a daily at our lake access site would be 13. And then we have on-site restroom facilities at all of our parks gives us this this number, like, a surcharge that we can charge. We could charge for our we could charge more for our dailies because we have restrooms up to $15.60, and then this state code prohibits us from charging more than 10 times the daily launch fee for an annual pass, which is a $156. So this sets sort of the high end limit that we could go and still be in compliance with the state statute, which we want to do, obviously. But but there's a lot of wiggle room between this maximum dollar amount at a 150 and what we're currently charging for our lake access sites, you know, at 53.

So there's there we would not I I doubt that you all would be comfortable pushing these limits up here. I don't know that I you know, I personally wouldn't feel good about that either. So I'm just saying that, we have to, of course, keep this state requirement in our heads as we're thinking about, you know, what we're charging.

Let me just give to follow-up on that, let me give an example because I was aware of how late the problem in the state was Lake Geneva. And it's still kind of a problem. Their daily fee is, between $11.75 and 37 daily.

Whoo.

Well, when they have the you know, when you add the length of the boat Mhmm. And all this other stuff. But, anyways but but I do think that this is an area that, especially right now, our annual for a boat launch is 53. Daily is, I think, 8. 8.

Yep. And and, that's something where we could probably go closer. I don't know that I we'd wanna go to thirteen, but we may go daily somewhere between eight and twelve or somewhere, maybe, you know, a little more than than, I'm just telling you it could be more than that. Our annual definitely should go up. People will continue to buy that. It's one of the bigger ones, think, what, 80% by an annual. And 53 is really it's

It's a steal.

Yeah. It's it's yeah. And and in looking at, because I did some looking, you know, too. A lot of places charge 82 or a or a 100 for an annual Mhmm. Boat launch.

So anyways, that's just Waukesha County has access for $10 a launch. And I just think this is an area that I think it would be supported because we're not still we're not gonna price people out from using the lake at, you know, something above 8. So the annual one should go up for both residents and non residents. Whatever we pick for daily launch, the annual cannot be more than 10 times that. So if we were to pick $10 it would be a 100.

If we picked $12 it would be a 120. But you could have it less than that too. That's the other thing. Too. But and this is one of those things that I think we also have to and Don has somebody out there. We got to figure out how we make sure we got plenty of support for whatever we do. That's my thoughts. Go ahead, Steph.

Oh, it just seems like and and correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like historically, Dane County's rates have been lower than comparable counties. Do you think that's true?

I feel like it's it it is. You know? And

It's definitely less than Milwaukee County.

Yeah. Mhmm.

Mhmm. You know, Waukesha County is seven day, but they have an entrance fee.

Yep.

And their and their daily access right now is 10. So theirs is already $2 more than ours.

Yep.

Brown County is a little bit less, but they don't provide as much either.

Would be interest oh, sorry, ma'am.

Go ahead, Jasmine.

Oh, I was gonna say I would be interested to know what is the highest park fee in which county in the state of Wisconsin? Do we know that? And what's the lowest?

I'm guessing Milwaukee is the highest, but that could be

Yeah. Right. There's gonna that would be hard, I think, to gather data. We could totally ask of AI and see what it finds.

And, you know, and the funny thing is, Jolene, I just so I wanted to know, like, just in The United States what was, like, the highest county fee, and it came up with Maricopa County in Arizona, and they will charge up to a 140 to $205. So then I was like, oh.

For entry or for, like, what?

For annual so it says, annual fees for County Park Systems?

I'm assuming that's just an entry fee maybe.

An annual pass?

So it's

not just to be able to get in.

Oh, I see. Okay.

What I looked quickly on the numbers, so I didn't see. But is our what is our annual boat launch fee? Was that 53?

53 as a resident that is not a senior or a military veteran, you know, all the other things that we provide discounts for.

So I just asked my husband what he would think if we raised the boat fee from or the launch fee from 53 to a 100. And he said, I'd be upset. And I said, what about 53 to 75? And he said, you know, we could do that, but a lot of the boaters out there, you know, don't have, you know, great boats or a lot of money. So but he's just one one person. But

Can I I have two things, Nan? Mhmm. One, I did look this up, Jasmine. Just in real quick. And it says, of Madison parks, $1,500 for their event scheduling fee for a neighborhood or community group park event is the highest that my really quick thirty second search found.

Way higher than our special event fees.

One thing I like to keep in mind with boating is, like, we have a lot of really great, like, canoe and kayak areas that we aren't charging fees for Mhmm. Which I do think provides, like, a really nice way for folks to be able to access the water. And not that they can't also access the water right at boat launches. I use, the closest, like, access site to me, which is Fish Camp, but to launch my, like, small crafts. But also if you're able to afford a boat generally with a gas engine, you need to also buy gas, which, as we all know, is going up right now.

So I would just also point that out that that's something that, you know, it takes a lot to have ability to also own, store, and maintain a boat. And if you're financially able to handle those things, then we have to also keep that in mind for our permits. That's the way I try to see it too.

Thank you, Lael.

Go ahead, Steph.

Yeah. I was just kind of curious about Walworth County because you've mentioned Lake Geneva. I'd be interested to know what the boat access fee is in Lake Geneva.

I got them right here.

Oh, you do? Okay.

Yeah. So in Lake Geneva, it's there's four boat launches. I'm very familiar with Lake Geneva. There are four boat launches or or municipalities that have launches on Lake Geneva. Lake Geneva, they vary between $11.75 per launch and $37 per day per launch.

And that's based on size of the they get the exact they've maximized their surcharges based on size of the boat and whatnot. There were there were things that were in the, the state law, the code, for this. They also had a nonmotorized fee, which kinda gets to that it was between $2 and $13 for somebody who just had basically a canoe or carry on. So I don't know. Really, it's are are they using the a parking lot? Because that's where I think if you wanna have a fee, if somebody just walks

How you enforce that?

Yeah. You know, so that's how you would, enforce it. So but anyways, the Lake Geneva communities, Fontana, Williams Bay, Town Of Lynn. We had to sue the town of Lynn in Williams Bay

Mhmm.

From the state because they didn't wanna get in compliance.

So so Walworth count you're just talking about Walworth County General, Tom. Right?

That well, that's Lake Geneva. There are other there's just the Lauderdale Lakes. There's a whole bunch of other and I don't know. I didn't look up what Lauderdale what those and that I gotta think what town that is.

But doesn't this doesn't the county have, like, one are the fees different for the different lakes in in Walworth County?

Well, they have different fees based on the community. Williams Bay had different than Lake they're all on Lake Lake Geneva is a huge lake.

Yeah. Right.

It's it's about eight miles long.

Yeah. A

mile wide or more. Anyways but the four communities there had different fees. They didn't have a uniform fee.

Yeah. We're unique in the way that we have a cooperative permit. I mean, you know, a boater would normally have to buy both a Dane County boat launch if they wanted to use one of ours and a City Of Madison boat launch if they wanted to go to Ulbrich or Olin instead. And it's not unusual for, you know, an individual to have multiple permits to use lake access sites that are under different municipal jurisdictions. Right? So it's unique. It was it's a service, right, that we're providing to the community to have this cooperative permit where if you buy a permit from the city of Madison, we basically honor that permit at a Dane County boat launch instead of charging an additional fee.

Maybe Derek was just hungry.

I mean, I I would expect I would expect some outcry if we do I mean, that's a, you know, a significant fee increase. I would expect that people would come come if they're paying attention to the, you know, to the press release and all of the outreach that we do when when it comes time for us to propose fees. If we were proposing fee increases like that, I I would expect the community to come out. And then, you know, it's all of you as park commissioners to think about way that feedback based on what you know with the budget and make a an informed decision. Right? That's why we're we're starting these conversations. That's why we're pulling up data. They're gonna be hard decisions.

And that's why we've gotta we have to figure out how to navigate what's fair, what's right, what the public will accept, what will, keep people feeling good about the parks and the services they're getting. I mean, it's a you got to think about a whole big world and what's the right thing to do. I mean, that's just the bottom line. What's the right thing to do? And raising some of the costs on both resident and nonresident is that, but we got to figure out what that is and where. That's just and you got to stay in the ballpark of what the market is.

Yeah. So, some of the questions that I'd like you all to consider, now and into the future for these next few months are many of these things that we've already talked about. So this nonresident versus resident for permits, consider it for shelter reservations too. I didn't pull the data on our shelter reservations. There are not all that many that would be nonresident for that. Special events as well, another one. So could we do nonresident rates for all of these different buckets? Do you have some that you like more than others? And then just know, you know, there's even less in the shelter, you know, reservations. So it's not gonna come up with a significant amount of revenue for that.

Another question that I'd like you to consider is the minimum age for permit holders. So right now, we do not require a permit if you are under the age of 16. So six if you're 16 or older than you need your disc golf permit, you need your mountain bike permit, you need your cross country ski permit. Right now, you know, if you're younger than that and you're doing this activity with your parent, the child doesn't have to pay. We have, you know, a significant amount of some of these permits that that have have a really high youth use, particularly probably mountain biking and disc golf.

So do you want to consider reducing that age, which would require, you know, more families to buy multiple permits, But we'll end up with an overall net increase of permit holders.

Response to that question?

Initial response that you can change your mind to.

My my initial response is do we have data of other locations that do 14 year olds? Do we have

We're gonna have to look into that. We don't have it now.

I mean, because you wanna you wanna you you know, there there are things that you want to look at from the standpoint because, yes, a 14 year old might have impact. I mean, a 14 year old has to buy a hunting license. It's not free. So you have to figure out what the impacts are, but you'd also wanna have justification in that we're not the only ones.

Are there any permits that are family permits or household permits? Not yet. Okay.

So, like, the lake access is per vehicle. Per vehicle. So we often yeah. So you would often see, like, someone just bringing the family. Like, we we see a lot of, like, you know, 16, 17 year olds launching a boat. They'll just bring the family car or something.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Potential new permits to consider. And, Leo, I've just been taking notes over the last few days, so you haven't even heard these yet. But just think about it. So these are things that we see often in the park that we might want to charge even a little bit for. So photographers.

So professional photographers that take family photos. Right now, if you're hiring a photographer and you're coming to a beautiful Dane County Park, we see this quite a bit, the photographer doesn't have to hold a license to then take pictures in the county park. But they are, of course, making money from their business to take all these family photos. So do you require photographers to get an annual permit to have the ability to take pictures in the county park? We have it yeah. We have it at the heritage center, but no but but we don't have it system wide.

Do we have the information? Because I think that is required at other places.

That that is that is something that is not wouldn't be brand new. Correct.

Mhmm. Because it'd be good to get examples of, okay, does, you know, Hennepin County required in, you know, in Minneapolis or does, you know, Milwaukee County required if you go to the Milwaukee Parks? Yep. So I I mean, that that's information I'd wanna know.

Okay. Another example for this would be foraging. So right now, you know, anyone could come and collect berries and eat them along the way or go look for mushrooms or etcetera. Do do we want do we want to consider a foraging permit? You know, we have we have some permits that don't have a very high fee attached to them, like our night sky viewing, which allows you to be in the park after the park closes at 10PM to look at stars or full moon, northern lights, etcetera, that's $10 for the year. So, I mean, is the foraging permit $10? Again, I'm just throwing that out there to think about.

I guess to think about it, I don't know if you want a response, but foraging, very few people require it. I'm kind of like So

Andy just told me today the DNR does.

They do. For what?

Foraging and wildlife areas. Don't know.

Berry picking and asparagus picking and all that. At least they never used to require it.

I'll confirm with Andy, and we can look it up.

Check on n r 45 and what it says. Okay.

Or tapping maple trees, which is something that we would not normally let people do unless they're doing it for an educational purpose right now. So we've got a couple of friends groups that will tap trees. Yeah. You know, Anderson is example, and they bring school kids out, and it's it's educational based. So so resort I've actually gotten a lot of questions over the last five years from individuals who want to tap maple trees on Parkland to make their own syrup. And, you know, the answer so far has been no. But is it an opportunity for us to say yes with a permit and we're gonna charge you this fee? Again,

that's a thing I'd wanna look at. Has anybody else done that? You know, do they do that in Vermont, you know, at at parks, you know, because, you know, because I I'd be concerned about the damage to the trees. You get some amateur, get they get the permit, and then they kill the maple tree, you know. That'd be my thought. So that's probably why we wouldn't wanna do it. But that's just

Then, the last conversation that I wanna have is about our cross country ski permit. So this is a larger question, and and I feel like permit, you know, fee setting is the is the vehicle where you make a change even though the conversation is much larger than just fees and revenue. As you know, we've seen a decrease in good snow days year over year over year due to climate change. Our permit sales for cross country skiing are also decreasing. It's not a huge revenue generator for us. We do most of our grooming when there is enough snow, which

is

rare, overnight on staff overtime because that's, you know, when the trails aren't busy and when it's the coldest, so the grooming goes better. It is the overtime cost because we've had such crummy snow are less than the revenue that we bring in for sure. But I also want you to think about, like, the overall ski experience. So because our snow has been really bad, you know, I often hear complaints about I pay for this ski trail pass, and you don't even set the tracks. And we don't set the tracks because there's not enough snow.

We can only roll it. But once you start setting the tracks, then you're getting down to bare ground. Right? And then I hear it on the other side from hikers, dog walkers, and snowshoers who are who say, you close all these ski trails to me. The snow quality is crummy anyway.

Why can't I hike at Indian Lake? Because they're all cross country ski trails. Right? And then some people hike anyway, and so then I hear from the skiers that say, the snowshoers have ruined my trail. And I just wonder if if we just eliminate the cross country ski trail pass, we eliminate our grooming operations, ski wherever you want, hike wherever you want, the conditions are what they are, enjoy.

Again, I don't need an answer today, but I just want you to think about, particularly as climate change continues to impact our winter season and snow quality, at what point do we pull out of the cooperative ski permit with the city of Madison and make some drastic changes to our cross country ski trails in this way?

And I think, what, 10% of the sales are not what was it, 300 or 170 or I'm trying to remember the number.

Like, how many people bought ski passes? Yeah. 315 bought an annual cross country ski pass in 2025. 315 people. 13 of them were nonresidents. And like I bought one, but I went skiing once. And the conditions weren't great. And I I mean, I buy it because I'm the Dane County Parks director and I like skiing and I have hope. What I figured out

the average annual cost and I understand it's probably going down because that

I mean, what the revenue is versus our overtime cost? I mean, I do have I'm in a different because we were doing a different overtime analysis, I can tell you how many hours we spent grooming cross country ski trails. It's we were doing that on an calendar year, not a snow season year, so it's different. You know? But they're out ten hours, twelve hours, overnight, all in overtime.

So it adds up fast even if you're just gonna groom the whole system once. Right? But it's still it it wouldn't this wouldn't be a budget neutral decision because even what I eliminate in overtime, which we're over on that line all the time anyway, so, like, I in good faith, I couldn't actually reduce that expense line. It would give us some more wiggle room for all the other things we're having to do overtime for. We are gonna have to eliminate that revenue line.

So this is, like, separate from a budget discussion. This is more of a what sort of service are we providing. Fee setting is the time that we need to do it because we would have to eliminate that fee to eliminate that permit requirement. But it's not solving it's not solving a budget issue. It's probably making a worse budget issue.

Other other questions of Jolene or comments or things you'd like to see us do as we continue to move forward with this? Getting the for me, getting those spreadsheets would be helpful, just because it helps to analyze and then also the data from the other communities on some of the stuff that we mentioned would be helpful.

So are you are are you is the presentation done, Jolene?

That's the data that I have. Those were the specific questions that I wanted to get out there for you to think about. I'm sure there'll be more that will come up. So next steps, any initial feedback that you have would be great. Then Don, Lail, and I are going to sit down and come up with what we based on what we heard today, based on sort of our recommendations, what we think a good like a solid proposal of 27 fees might be that we would bring back to you and present at the April 22 meeting, so the next meeting that we have.

And then then we can really react to what's what's in there. Right? How do we feel about this kind of a thing? Because by by mid May, we're hoping to go public with this.

And I'm just think I'm thinking out loud here. I think we probably wanna send our comments to just, Jolene or Dan because we don't wanna have a Walking quorum. A walking quorum on this issue where we're weighing in. I just want to make sure we do this right. So I think we sent our comments to Jolene, Don.

Okay. So you're saying instead of giving them the comments, Instead of giving we'll

just them is a public meeting, and we're having this discussion. I wanna make sure that we're, you know, having, a very transparent process rather than somebody coming up with an idea and then everybody sharing it. And then where did that come from?

Yeah. And if you have feedback you wanna give right now, this is an appropriate place to do it as part of this meeting. It's part of the public record. What we can't what Tom's saying we can't get into is an email exchange with every commissioner saying, I want this. No. I want this. No. I want this. Once you get a quorum in that email group, so you hit reply all and you start conducting business. Yeah.

But then then you have this, you know, walking quorum, this public. You're you're conducting business by having a discussion about these fees, and we didn't provide appropriate public notice to say, this is a meeting that's open to all. You can come now. So that's the piece that we need to be careful of and mindful of.

Well, maybe we could each give our feedback. I've written down stuff, just general. So I don't want anything. These are just ideas. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because we're not at that point where I'm voting or anything like that.

Yeah. Okay.

Is that so can I can I do that now? Is that Yeah.

You can that's fine. Yeah. Or you can

I just can't hear you guys?

As part of the as part of this discussion here. Right. Yes. Okay.

As part of this discussion. I I like the raising the nonresident kind of fees. I like the event fees and the dog park fees maybe also being increased. The I I like the age 14 minima or the dropping from 16 to 14. And, first, you did a great job explaining all of this.

Both of you did a really nice job doing that. The the one thing that sticks in my mind is how do we advertise? Because there are so many cool things like night viewing. And and the reason I say that this is I would say out of three to three out of five, maybe four out of four out of five people that I say, oh, have you been to Martin Forest? No. They don't know about that. So I how do we advertise currently?

Passively. Yes and no.

I mean, I don't know how other county parks advertise, you know, TV. No. I mean but it just seems like we're not letting a lot a lot of people don't know don't know what we have. So and I think education and advertising might be two different things. Mhmm. Like, an on the education side Good. I kind of like, if we're gonna raise boating permits, then make make some comp make some notes. Like Lael said, these permits get you this permit gets you canoeing and access to these other things. So so an increase in education of what our what our things are, but maybe that's already great. I don't know.

I'm not saying that. But definitely an increase in advertising is my main feedback. Mhmm. Thank you.

Other comments, questions? Go ahead, Steph.

I wanna say that, I agree with, everything that, Nan proposed, the the things that she liked. I I also would like to see the boat access permit increased, and I very much think we need to increase all of our nonresident fees. But, otherwise, I agree with everything that that Nan said.

Jasmine or Don? One one thought, and I brought I'd like I was gonna say, Lael brought a very valid point when this was at our last meeting, and that was, well, we can't just have we gotta know we got you know, that we gotta be able to look what that fee is and what it is. Because I was looking at thinking, could we go to the foundation or have somebody that has we love our parks fund, and people, you know, can donate to it. You know? And, of course, that's there's no predictor on that.

But, you know, it's basically a volunteer thing that if we know that the foundation can each year say, well, we're gonna give you out of that fund x amount. So it's almost like a fund within a fund that really helps. So that that was my, concept of whether or not we could get the foundation to agree to and which which makes them fundraise more potentially. And but, anyways, that's something that I'd like to see explored because I think there are people who would say, hey. Yeah. I'm gonna give an extra out of my out of my required distribution this year. I'm gonna give an extra $50 or something. Wow. Well, I'm just saying.

That'd be nice. Well, there

there there are there are people who will do that. Yeah.

So And I and I don't

wanna miss an opportunity is what I'm saying.

Yeah. So we've focused today's discussion really specific on fees because that's what part commission has the authority to set. You know? Definitely, these conversations about level of service that we'll have later once we've got budget guidelines and we know what we're cutting, you know, it is a piece of the puzzle. Right? Foundation, fundraising and support, naming rights, sponsorships, etcetera. That's another piece of the puzzle. So something that I'm working on independent from these fees is a memorandum of understanding with the foundation to help formalize our relationship. Don, you might remember the zoos just got approved pretty recently. We're using that one as a template.

Our donation and naming right policy is significantly outdated. That needs to be updated. That would come, through you all later this year or early next year for approval that would then give, you know, the foundation and us the right to work on on naming rights for larger capital campaigns. So so those are conversations that we're having that aren't really ready yet for this type of discussion, but just know that that they're also a piece of this puzzle, as we kinda figure out our new norm in this current budget climate. And now we're we're adapting to change.

We're we're gonna figure it out. You know, we're even though, like, I can't remember if it was you, Nan, if it was Stephanie that said, like, this is disappointing. Right? It's not all doom and gloom. Like, we will provide amazing customer service in Dane County Parks, and people will still get to go outside and love it. Like, it will be okay. Will it be different? Yeah. I mean, will we have maybe fewer staff to do it? Yeah. But we core to our mission, we will work continue to work really hard. Yeah.

Well, thanks thanks, everyone. I had a lot of other ideas, but I think we've gone to

This was a great discussion. I appreciate you all being willing to engage like this.

Thank you. That will take us then to, future meetings, April 22. I expect that one to, you know, again, be a continuation of this plus plenty of other items that may have come up.

Plus it's Earth Day, so come in person to see all the cool activities happening here or volunteer before park commission.

Yeah. Earth Day activities start before, so you could go to Earth Day, plan to tour, get shelter too, and then come on over to the Heritage Center.

Sounds good.

And then after that, the next meeting will be May 7. We've got the, rest of the 26, meeting schedule.

Yeah. It's in there. I can pull it up if you want.

Oh, I think So

I sent it to you all by email, and then I included it again here in the packet, and I swear I had it up. You Oh, know where I have it up is here. So just, we a friendly reminder, we added it back in this June 24 date, which is gonna be at one of the solar shelters just right outside the Heritage Center here. And then we have our outdoor meeting locations selected for the summer, so update your calendars if you haven't yet done so. I I included this as a separate PDF when I sent the meeting notification. It's also linked in the meeting minutes from the last meeting, and it's linked on to its agenda. So you should be able to get to this PDF in in many ways.

Oh, this this triggered too, I think, was it May 1 that's gonna be Mendota? I saw something from

Yeah. We are, tentatively not publicly announcing yet the ground or the ribbon cutting for Mendota County Park, which is the significant redevelopment that we had, thanks to a substantial private donor through the foundation of Dane County Parks. It's going to be Friday, May 1 at 4PM. It is not the normal ribbon cutting time at 4PM on a Friday afternoon, but the family that made the donation is flying in from all over the country, and they, like, land in Madison around one and then are gonna come right to the park.

So that is not for distribution.

It will will it'll be coming out soon, but it's please mark your calendars now. That's fine.

Yeah. I think it's important because it's nice to have the commissioners there.

Yeah.

Let's see. Other such business, anyone have any other?

We don't have anyone else listening. We're

going to be closed session.

Okay.

I'm going to read this, and then we'll take the vote. So the commission plans to meet in closed session for the purpose of deliberating or negotiating, purchasing or acquiring property where open discussion of bargaining positions and strategies would discourage bargaining and harm the public interest in obtaining properties. The authority for this possible closed session is Wisconsin Statute 19.6 or is that 8.5-1E. Is there a motion? Stephanie? Move to go into closed session. Okay. Call the roll, please.

All right. Banks?

Present. Bogue? Present.

Brower?

Yes. Here.

Supervisor Eicher is excused. Go forth is excused. Supervisor Posler?

Posler here.

Chair Thorson? Aye. And then youth governance program member Songguan is excused. So, we're in closed session.

The commission has voted to come back into open session. The next item of business is, adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Okay. All those in favor of adjournment signify by saying aye.

Aye. Anyone

opposed? Thanks, everybody.