Park Commission - Regular Meeting

All righty, the hour of 5.30 having arrived. I'd like to call the park commission to order. Please call the roll.

Banks.

Present.

Fogg. Here. Brower. Here. Supervisor Eicher will probably be pulling in shortly. Goforth is excused. Supervisor Postler.

Postler here.

And Chair Thorson.

Here. All right, you've got a quorum. Okay, thank you. It's an item in consideration of the minutes. Is there a motion? So moved. Okay. Any discussion on corrections? I'll just say I appreciate Jolene putting together all the reports and everything that goes with it, with the records there. Okay, no other changes? All those in favor of approval, signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, before the thunder hits. Referrals and resolutions, we don't have any, but we do have an important number D, which is items requiring committee action. Set the 2027 part fees. Is there a motion? Second. Okay. Discussion or considerations? Go ahead, Stephanie.

I thought the objection was...

He had comments about the increase in fees for veterans because he said county officials are making such huge salaries. Well, he's talking about $2. I just found that I didn't think that the objections held a lot of water. That's just my input. I think everything was very, very reasonable and not at all excessive.

Yeah, I didn't see any significant reason why we should change what we had drafted from the public's perspective.

Okay, any other...

Any other comments or whatnot? I would just like to add or reinforce, I think at the last meeting, I thank Supervisor Hosler for helping get us to this point. I think it was nice that you started this early because it's going to help. One of the things that struck me because we did these broad you know let people know about this is that generally we've got a feeling I think that most people support our parks and they don't want to see things slide so they're willing to spend a few more dollars here and there on extra things because the critical thing that we're keeping is use of the parks is free. It struck me yesterday when we were in the new playground area that all these people coming were able to enjoy and I think it's reasonable in line so those are my comments and I appreciate the work that everyone puts in on it. Go ahead, Nan.

I would like to thank the public for coming. I think I think I mentioned earlier that there weren't significant objections in my opinion, but there were important ones. And I do think each of the presenters had something to say from their hearts, and we appreciated that.

to us and we will try to do the best we can to listen and incorporate where that might be because you know it's one of those things I think to respect those comments even if it's not something that we agree with so we want to have a strong parks department and we want to make or I should say division I sometimes go ahead Stephanie it's okay

You know, Don, Lael, and Jolene, at looking at our rates and comparing them with some other municipalities, not only in Wisconsin but in other states, to me that was a very impressive effort. And I think that uphelds the reasonableness of our increases. Because we're still lower than a lot of other places.

I think we want to also think about what other opportunities so that when it comes to 2028 so what other things that we might want to incorporate you know by paying attention to what other communities are doing you know whether things could be done to really help so that we're able to maintain our staffing like we like we want If there's no other comments, maybe I should, Annalise will be here in a second. I want to make sure she doesn't. So, Annalise, just to give you, we just gave our comments about the fees, and the motion is to approve. The 27th. And I just wanted to see if you had anything you wanted. Okay. All right. Well, with that, the motion is to approve the 2027 fees as proposed. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, that covers. We don't have presentation reports to the committee. The draft park commission manual, I think you've passed them out, right, Charlene? I have, this is something that when I started on the park commission 22 years ago, We had a handbook, which is very nice, and I think it's important to update it. I have to give Jolene, I kind of put a little bit of structure on this, but Jolene really did most of the work. So this is something that should be helpful to all of us, and it's just a good reminder to look at. And if you have any comments or things you'd like to see changed, send them in in the next, because I think we'll adopt it, you know. as the handbook at one of the future meetings not too far from now. Julian, is there anything you want to say on it? Happy reading.

OK.

And next we've got two reports, the first one being Badger Prairie Ribbon Cutting and the Ho-Chunk Dugout Canoe Donation. Do you want to do it, Joanne, or should we both?

Go ahead, or whatever.

Okay, well, why don't you go ahead and talk about yesterday.

Okay, well, we had the Badger Prairie Ribbon Cutting yesterday morning. It was a beautiful day, really well-attended event. um both county executive melissa agard and then chair thorson gave a great speech we had lots of kiddos playing on the playground for a perfect photo opportunity um wkow channel 27 was there so if you didn't see the news story last night um you can look it back up online i'm sure today to catch it it was just like fun fun pr was really pleased to see um Staff members, kids playing, you know, construction, the company that built it, some of our design consultants, like everyone was there. So it was a great ribbon cutting for a project that was long overdue and I'm really excited about the project.

And the nice thing about it was that it was really a positive statement by the county executive, the county board, everybody about following the accessibility plan, that we want to make sure our parks, people can use. When you look at, you know, I went into the restrooms, you know, to kind of see the changing tables they have for no matter what age, we can help people. And, of course, you've got, you know, people who have needs that we want to be able to make sure are taken care of. So I think it was a... a really nice event, and it was a beautiful day, too. It was beautiful, yeah. The other item, which happened at 4 o'clock, right here, was the Ho-Chunk Dugout canoe donation. Anything you want to say?

Yeah, that one was also wonderful. We had great... Great turnout of people, great speakers, really heartfelt event to hear the story again of the dugout canoe, how it was created, why it's coming back full circle.

We'll watch the news later tonight, too. Yeah, it was really nice. Bill Quackenbush from the Ho-Chunk Nation and Chris James gave a real nice... background on how the cottonwood trees were found and harvested and the whole whole process and then also how you know it's such a good cultural lesson and it's a message about conservation culture and cooperation so it was a real nice real nice event Next would be our future meetings, July 8th. Oh, go ahead, man.

Yeah, so the interpretive panels there have some different language buttons so you can audio listen to the language. And the posts are in and the signs are going to be coming later this summer. So really soon you'll get to go out and see that. So the Friends of McCarthy Park received a grant and have led that with a lot of our staff, Lael in particular, approving the design, providing good feedback. Our ops team just installed the posts. So really soon.

McCarthy, yep. McCarthy has a number of nice... Yeah, interpretive notes there.

So next meeting is July 8th at the Scheidegger Forest in Verona.

So that will be good because we've got a relatively new shelter there that's very nice.

No, I mean, I've been here five, and it's older than my time. Okay.

A nice, tiny shelter. A nice shelter.

Yeah. And then the meeting after that is July 22nd at Springfield Hills Natural Resource Area.

And then after that is the tour with Ice Age Trail Alliance and Groundswell. So we are job-all booking this park commission meeting with a tour for the full county board. You can correct me if I'm wrong on any of these details. So hopefully we'll have a couple more supervisors at our meeting, and you all can stay longer and do the tour as well.

Swamp lovers. It's going to end at swamp lovers. And we're going to stop at, the groundswell wants to sow the board of the commission the pine prairie property, which was one of the grant projects that you recently raised. we will park at Pine Quarry, or we might park at Town Hall. So we'll go from Springfield Hill to Town Hall, and then end at Pop Lovers on the top of the hill. And they're gonna have some snacks and a little cocktail.

I didn't know that.

I wonder if there's any changes. You get a lot. Okay. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, the Alliance and Gathering Waters and So they're working it out.

A little late.

That's okay. I'm going to be interested to kind of listen how much we hear birds and how much we hear people.

These audio recording devices are not great, but it's a requirement that we record it.

Well, yeah, it's important. So next item is any public comment on items not on the agenda. Hearing none. The next is Other Businesses Allowed by Law. And this one is the Outgoing Commissioner Recognition. And...

Okay, go ahead. Okay.

Thanks. So I had a constituent reach out with some questions about the Token Creek Dog Park and moving from changing the pathways to gravel and just had some questions about that. Is that consistent across all of our dog parks? Is there a particular reason that's happening at Token Creek?

So we have a multi-year... I'm just going to come sit next to it. Okay, cool.

Alright, so we have a multi-year capital improvement project going on. So it's like the third dog park now that we have. We're investing capital money to improve the dog parks. So this one includes the vault toilet which we put in last year, paving the access path up to the gate, replacing and repairing portions of the fence, and then taking one of the loops and making it a crust aggregate. which is the same trails that we have have already at anderson was the first person part that we put that in then we added a loop to pray moraine and it's so we have one of the loops is accessible okay and it's um it's not going to be like loose pea gravel or anything it's the crushed crushed aggregate compacted so like any of the limestone screening trails you see anywhere awesome I'll let them know. Thank you. Great. And you can send them to us if you've got further questions. I will. Okay.

Thank you. Any other comments on the agenda? One thing I'd like the minutes to reflect, Alina's not here tonight because she has actually had bad to girl space. And I'd like the minutes to reflect our thanking her as our youth and government person. She may be back next year, maybe not. You know, it's often good to get other experience, but she certainly, it's nice to see young people who are energetic and want to make the world a better place. And she certainly does that, so that's that. And the commissioner recognition that we have on the agenda is for Nan. And I think maybe we can all, you know, whoever wants to say something can. And then you have one? Okay. Well, we'll save the best for last. That'll be the year. So one of the things a lot of people don't know, and I know Nan doesn't beat her own drum or toot her own horn, is that Nan has a master's in African-American studies from UW. And she had an anthropology undergrad, right? And she spent time tutoring kids. A lot of good to help our youth. And then she was a diversity training coordinator. And she really helped the management team at CUNA Mutual. And then of course, she was the first chair of the Dane County Environmental Council.

We had a $500 budget.

I thought that you could give up the grants up to $2,500. No, not in the 90s.

Yeah, Rick Falk said, okay, we have this $500 budget.

And David Brooke was on that, was on the commission at the time, or was on the board. Okay.

And importantly, Nan served on the Park Commission for eight years and we are all really appreciative of that service. The one thing that I wanted to say is you were always such a good listener and always very positive and You were really excellent at thanking people. Whenever we had the public come, that was, I think, a really nice touch because we do, it's a good, you're led by example there. We need to thank people for their, you know, coming to do what they do. So from the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you for all your dedicated service. And you're always welcome to come and, you know, we always like the public here. Anybody else want to say anything?

I can't believe it's been eight years. It really has seemed like it's flown by.

And it's been fun. I can't believe it's been eight years. It's hard to think that that was eight years ago.

There are a lot of new people, right? I don't really know. Well, okay. Should I read my little speech? Well, I want to introduce my daughter, Zoe, if any of you haven't met her. And I think she's here for moral support, but she says she's here for the cake. Tom told me there was a little cake. Today is really not a celebration of me, but all that we've accomplished in eight years. Yeah, think about so much that we have done. You know, I don't know about statistics, but how much land has been protected and how many amazing things have been done. It's been such an honor to be part of this. I was surprised when Jolene called me and very kindly let me know that Melissa had replaced mine and many other positions in county government to give others a chance to participate in local government, and I totally agree with that. And I wish the new person lots of good things. But at the same time, I'm really going to miss this. Let me find my place, okay? You've all been so wonderful to get to know. I'm earning my cake. I consider you all to be friends and co-workers.

Okay, I will get it together.

I've enjoyed working with all of you. The staff is exceptional. I want you to know how competent, ethical, creative you all are. I'm going to miss you all. I love our meetings.

I love learning about stuff.