City Council - Regular Meeting

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We will go ahead and get tonight's study session started. We have Jasmine that needs to be admitted online. All right. So tonight we are going to go over the comprehensive recreation parks and open space plan. And I will quickly mic pass over to the team that we have here tonight. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for having us and for giving us this opportunity to share Erie Outside, which is the name that's given to this plan. It's the Comprehensive Recreation Parks and Open Space Plan. Before we begin, I'd like to just recognize and thank everyone who contributed to this effort. This effort represents more than a year of collaboration with our consultant team from Design Workshop led by Brenna Laffey. as well as city departments, particularly Public Works and Planning. And I just would like to recognize the team that we've been working with who are mostly here tonight, and I love that. Jason Sayers is the Director of Public Works. Jeff Gibbons is the Assistant Director of Public Works. Hannah Oleski in Planning. Gary Graham, Bureau of Parks. Steve Joint, Deputy Assistant Bureau Chief of Parks, I'm sorry. Cooper Moore, Assistant Planner. And Liz Reyes, who is now in- So that has been our internal team, working team for over a year and a half and really has been a collaboration between the two departments. So this plan is more than a vision. It is a roadmap for action. And while it sets an ambitious direction for the future of Erie's parks, recreation system, and public spaces, it is grounded in the city's fiscal realities and operational capacity. Most importantly, this plan reflects commitment to ensuring that every resident has a safe, welcoming, and accessible public spaces regardless of where they live in the city. With that, I am pleased to turn things over to Brenna from Design Workshop to walk us through Erie Outside and the key recommendations that have emerged through this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Jackie, and thank you all for giving me the time to speak today. I'm excited to go through this planning process with you and answer any questions that you have. So just to give you an overview, we're going to give you some background about the planning context and how to navigate the plan contents. I'll talk through the community engagement process and key findings. We'll talk through the vision and plan framework. So that's the strategies and the actions. And then we'll talk about prioritization for investments and projects and an implementation strategy. Okay, so just where we're at in the planning process, we're here in the fourth column, the last phase of the planning process. We started in spring of 2025, really started with a grounding of conditions, so understanding what parks does the city manage and maintain, what is the condition of those parks, what amenities they have, making sure we had a solid inventory of the parks, amenities, and programs. And then we pair that with trend data analysis on the community profile, demographic trends, to take a look at the context in which the park system exists. Then we moved into community engagement, and I'll say it's not a totally linear process. Some of these phases overlap, and engagement was really a part of the process throughout. We started off with some targeted youth engagement with youth worksheets that were distributed across many different events that the city helped to collect, and then we had a Celebrate Erie open house during that festival set up, where anybody could walk in at any time and participate in activities and share their thoughts. It was paired with a survey that was open through the fall of 2025 and a series of 29 community events that the city helped to get the word out, collect more feedback across the planning process. We then took all of what we heard from that community survey and engagement and analysis to begin drafting the planned vision and themes and framework. And we uncovered some gaps and areas where we needed to find out more information, the series of four focus groups and about 20 individual stakeholder conversations to understand more specific needs and understanding the partner network a little bit better in terms of program offerings. And expanded outreach with a youth focused workshop specifically targeting youth and recreation needs. And then now we are in the plan development phase, so we've wrapped all of that additional feedback into some adjustments and more detailed action plan. Okay, so we're here at this meeting today. We have a public comment period that we're anticipating will be June 22nd through July 21st. That will be when the draft plan document is published online and there will be some outreach during that time period as well to bring the plan and explain some of the recommendations. And then we're anticipating based off of that that adoption may happen in August. A little bit of framework to kind of set the stage and understanding, as Jackie mentioned, this is an ambitious plan, but from the beginning we had conversations that it needs to be rooted in reality and it needs to have actionable strategies. And so we don't want to lose sight of the vision and the excitement and ambition and what can be, but pair that with what we can do now and the steps that we would need to take there. Something to note is that when we take a look at the condition and quality of parks, there are a lot of parks that are in need of basic upgrades. Things like ADA accessibility and improvements to aging infrastructure. So we've estimated about 17 to 20 million of estimated deferred maintenance across the park system. There are 50 parks in the city of Erie that are parks bureau managed or owned and maintained and about 350 acres. We'll get into a little bit more details around benchmarking, but that's a lot of parks and a low amount of operating budget to be able to manage and maintain that many parks when you compare to your peers, and we'll get into that. And community expectations are growing. We've heard from across the community, you know, they want safer, cleaner, more comfortable parks. Parks are really important to people in their everyday life, but also their memories and what they find important to their families and community. So ultimately, we hope that this plan creates a path forward to help prioritize decision-making, pursue grants, and build partnerships to build this over time. It also doesn't exist in a silo. It exists among many other plans that the City of Erie has gone through. Some of which are older and so what we do when we start this planning process is read through everything that you all have to make sure that we're pulling in pieces and understanding maybe something that needs to be revisited or understood more deeply and making sure that the park system exists within the context of not only city of Erie plans, but also the statewide comprehensive outdoor recreation plan and more regional planning efforts like the Lake Erie Watershed Conservation Plan. And some of those key themes from past plans that we pulled, there's a strong emphasis on environmental stewardship across many of those plans, connectivity and mobility, expanding trail networks, greenways, multimodal streets, including to parks, strengthening neighborhoods and equity. Many of the plans talk about prioritizing access, culturally relevant amenities and universal accessibility, as well as prioritizing underserved neighborhoods. Placemaking and activation, investing in downtown parks, neighborhood green spaces, and the bayfront. Partnerships, coordinating across jurisdictions, and adopting asset management and meeting strategies. Some of these things are mentioned across these different plans. So the plan document itself is organized somewhat similarly to how I'm going to walk through this presentation today, although I'm not going to talk through all 163 pages plus appendices today. But I just wanted to give you some context. There will be more detail in the context around demographic trends and addressing equity. We'll go into some of that today. And then it goes into an analysis of your existing parks and amenities and recreation facilities as well as programs. And then it goes into contextualizing that within the community engagement process and what we heard from the community before it goes into the plan framework, which is organized around four themes that we'll get into later. The implementation guidance has additional detail on how to get there, and the actions are then organized with responsibility, timeline, and so forth. Just to contextualize the plan, it is a long-range planning tool. It's intended to be a visionary document and an opportunity to reflect the community needs and values. It includes recommendations for implementation, operations, and prioritization. But it's not a detailed design proposal for any specific park. I think that's just important to contextualize. Though it does make recommendations on, you know, individual park basis, it's just not a specific design proposal. And it's not a specific method for approving funding, but it does give you the tools to begin planning. So a little background on the community engagement. Throughout the planning process, we heard from multiple people from different methods of input. So as mentioned, there's 29 pop-up events, 100 plus attendees at the open house event during Celebrate Erie. and 613 survey respondents. And we also collected about 200 youth worksheets and surveys that are incorporated into the feedback. And one of the things that we did, as we look at amenities and priorities, it's not just about what amenity got the most percentage votes on the survey, but taking a look at individual communities, You'll also see in the appendices, we broke down the survey by neighborhood as well. So if you're getting on a neighborhood planning level, the survey results are organized in that way.

Can I just ask a quick one? Yes. This is, I love this. This is something that we actually get a lot of feedback and pushback when we've presented other plans. So just... Could you highlight just a little bit how you went, maybe identifying the collaboration of groups, like where did you find, like, that's a lot of feedback points. That's great. I'd love to see more plans like using this same method. So clearly you've done something, you've found something that's working. Could you just share just a little bit more on how you collected and gathered?

Yeah, well, I'd have to give a lot of credit to the city. I think a part of it is having really great relationships with the community. We spent a lot of time planning for the engagement on this. We didn't want to go immediately out and put a survey out there because we know that people get surveys asked of them all the time. And so one of the strategies that we talked about was we really need to make sure we're going to where people are. and not expecting them to come to us. So we talked a lot about how to best use our time and events to strategically make sure we're going to get people from different places. So that was one of the reasons why we chose to celebrate Erie event to be able to get as much people. We knew people were going to be there already. We were not asking them to make another trip for this engagement. We also used incentives, so there were raffle prizes, things like that to encourage people to participate and get them interested during that event too. We also had people with clipboards and surveys to go find people. So just creating multiple methods, whether you have five minutes or you have more time to spend sharing feedback. And then, again, that strategy to go to neighborhood events, events that are already happening, and really using that to push the survey and push feedback. Thank you.

Sorry to digress, but I think it is important to highlight that.

I just would like to add just a few things. Thank you, Brenna. It was from the onset there was a strategy in place. It was very intentional, like Brenna mentioned, about how we were going to receive feedback. And it was not only at events, but also to the credit of Liz and Hannah, it was at the grassroots level, absolutely. Multiple times the parks plan was brought up at neighborhood meetings, at neighborhood events. And to their credit, they were there asking those questions. What is missing? What are the gaps? What do we need to do? We knew that the survey, The survey method is not working. It's not working for us, and we knew we had to pivot. We had had some experience from the Safe Streets and Roads for All and the Safety Action Plan, and we knew we had to change our methods with this plan, and it was critical to the development of the plan. So it was a lot of work, but it was absolutely worth it and fed into everything that was developed.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that question. And one of the things that we did then following, you know, some of that community engagement was to then say, okay, what questions do we still have? Who do we still need to talk to that we haven't? And that's where those individual stakeholder conversations, organizations, making sure we're hearing from all different perspectives and the focus groups that we held as well. So we had, I think, over 60 individuals or organizations represented from across different organizations. Some of them are Parks and Recreation partners. They put on programming within the parks, or they have utilized the parks in some ways for their services and communities. or they're interested in getting more involved in Erie's parks or have ideas around how to get more involved. Yes.

I was just going to add also that we had an initial round of discussions that we thought we could bring people together as a group and have discussions. And we did have many of those initially with these stakeholders, but we didn't have as much attendance as we wanted. So what we then did is we changed the strategy again And we invited one-on-one. So we had at least 25 to 30 different one-on-one meetings with Presque Isle Partnership, Mill Creek Township, Port Authority, Children's Museum, YMCA. Where we met with them, we listened to them. Some of these organizations are already in our Parks and Rec program. programs and work with us. Some of them want to work with us. They want to utilize the parks plan and a lot of that information we know that we've spoken with the mayor will feed into the research and the analysis around improving the parks and rec So it was very eye-opening for us because some of the partners even had not been asked questions over the last couple decades of like, what do you need? What are we missing here? And how can we improve this partnership? So it was very eye-opening through that process. Thank you. Sorry. Thanks.

did just want to mention very briefly that we did start with reviewing a budgeting survey that happened in 2022 and so we reviewed all of the comments organized those these are just some very high level takeaways but i think you'll see that some of the themes that were gathered during that input in 2022 still still relevant to this planning process today as we heard from more folks But that was one of the things that we did first, was make sure we read through that survey, or not survey, but feedback, the mapping comments, to make sure that we grounded our questions back to the community from there. So some of the key takeaways, again, there's a much longer description, and if you want to dig into any of the specifics, it's in the appendices. But overall, we really heard from the community that there's a desire for places to relax and spend time in nature, places to gather with family and friends, and really amenities that make parks comfortable, safe, and welcoming. When we heard from folks, we asked them if they experienced any barriers to either accessing parks or programs, and the top barriers were condition, parking, safety concerns, weather, so not having access year-round, and activities and features, so maybe not having the activities or programs and features that appeals to them, as well as information and awareness. That was particularly important when we filtered out by underrepresented responses in communities. Information and awareness was one of the top and we heard that again and again throughout the stakeholder conversations as well, just a need to have a place where you can find out about programs, about what the parks have, and the amenities that they have. When we asked about what was most important to people from priority facilities and amenities, this looks like a long list, but we asked people about a lot of things. I think what you'll see here is that again, comfort amenities, basic comfort amenities like drinking fountains and restrooms and shade came up time and time again across all points of input. So really, some smaller investments can have a really huge impact on the comfortableness of parks. Nature walks and walking trails were also really important. Water play, splash pads in areas to swim, as well as access to the lake, came up time and time again. Play for all ages and abilities. Yes?

probably too much in the weeds about it, but when you start talking nature walks and walking trails, I'm thinking green space and natural and less concrete. Is that something that would've came out of this at a time when most communities are tearing concrete out and putting green in? Are there any of those type of discussions about what our parks would look like in the future?

I think maybe without knowing the full context of what you're thinking, we might talk about this a little bit more in the plan when we talk about the different types of parks. So while there is a desire for more like nature-based walks, I think walking loops in general or walking trails in general were high up there. Do you just mean in terms of converting?

In terms of climate change and in terms of putting concrete in, versus taking it out. Most communities are tearing concrete out and they're making things more walkable, but they're doing it green, in a green way. It's probably semantics, but any of the solar stuff that would operate any of the bathrooms, any of that type of stuff, Parks and Recreation 2040 or any of that, you know, shut on, shut off water, shut off by itself, save, that type of stuff. Am I getting too much into the... No, that's great.

You mean recommendations for more energy efficient and climate focused solutions?

Yeah, and instead of creating heat zones by putting in concrete, try to eliminate them.

Yeah, I think in many ways this plan supports those strategies for sure.

One example that Brenna will talk about a little bit later is we have a lot of open spaces or areas where Bureau of Parks will mow. And instead of having grassy areas, you explained it much better, but there's, instead of having that be grass where we have to maintain it, we could put native plants there specifically for irrigation, or not irrigation, but for filtration of water, something, so there's,

It's mitigating water instead of... Trust me, the last couple of weeks we've had a lot of conversation about native plants. Yes, we have. And I'm sorry if I got off course or anything like that.

No. I hope we'll speak to that a little bit more and maybe you can tell me if we hit the mark or not. I won't go through the full list, but I think you'll see here that there's kind of a mix of smaller amenities and then there's also a desire to see some more challenging amenities, play for all ages came up often as well as all abilities and that could include just more challenging play structures or opportunities to be active outside. We also captured park memories from the community. I'd encourage you to read them. I think there is very touching to hear how important specific parks were. That was another great engagement tool, another way for people to engage in the process, to let us know what matters to them. And we heard, again, I think lots of stories about water and pools and gathering with family and friends. So the community needs assessment pulls together all these pieces, the survey, what we heard from youth participants, the open house and events. It also takes into account level of service, which I'm gonna dive into in this next section, which is the more technical analysis of the number and distribution of amenities. Focus group, conversations, study committee. We did pull out specifically underrepresented communities from the survey results. That's cross tabulated in the appendices as well. And then trends. We take a look at national, regional, and local recreation trends to see if there's an indicator for a future need. This is a long list of key takeaways, some of which I've already mentioned, but again, these small improvements could make a big impact. Another thing that we really uncovered from this process is that there's a really strong foundation of partners and organizations who are excited and willing to put in a lot of effort I guess the work for coordination and alignment. And there was, I think, a lot of really exciting conversations that were had throughout this planning process that had a lot of energy and excitement around it. That said, the recreation programs and services are currently really limited by staffing, funding, and facilities, right? So there isn't an indoor recreation center that the city runs to be able to run recreational programming. So any of that sort is run through partnerships. And then there isn't dedicated recreation staffing with the city. It's all externally coordinated. And then, of course, funding. And again, the year-round recreation opportunities are really limited due to that kind of lack of indoor space. Another thing that we'll talk about here is that access really goes beyond just distance. So it's not just about are you within a 10-minute walk of a park, but what's the quality of that park and the experience that you have at that park. And so we take a look at that in the plan. We heard again, over and over again, that parks and programs need to be accessible, they need to be welcoming, and they need to be engaging for people of all ages, abilities, backgrounds. I mentioned earlier that one of the barriers, we talked about some barriers overall, but when it comes to programming, We specifically heard about conversations. This really came out of the stakeholder conversations and learning about what's working and not working with the recreation program. We heard about cost. The programs themselves are mostly free, but access to equipment. People are limited from being able to participate in certain programs because of the cost of equipment. And then transportation access is a limiting factor, being able to get to where that programming is occurring. And then just limited options. We talked a lot about the timing, when programs were offered, and whether that was suitable for the targeted audience.

Yes. So when I look at this, and I've been through other communities, probably the closest to ours would be Mill Creek Youth Athletic Association. and they have actually buildings so that people can actually do, or that are, when people think about Parks and Rec, I think they think outdoors here in the city of Erie, and not in that manner as a programmatic central. like all things park athletics, baseball, football, you know what I'm saying? Basketball, soccer, seasonal, like Maya, you can just kind of go in one place and sign up for it all. And so that's the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Erie's parks as being, it could never be the park that it was when we were. children because things are different and so but like we don't have boys baseball in the city of erie we don't have a skating rink or anything like that things that perhaps we could reimagine our park and recreation program being, and I understand liability too, but it doesn't seem to stop those other communities from sending home the insurance slip like they did when we were kids and having some. Anyway, I'll get off it.

Thank you. I appreciate that comment. Water access, again, when we take into all of those factors, kept rising to the top, as well as trail and greenway connectivity between parks, but also neighborhoods and regional destinations, specifically talking about the distance to Presque Isle, especially for the eastern portion of the city of Erie. How can we create more connections to the water and easier ways for people to connect to the great assets that already exist? Expanding tree canopy and restoring natural systems and making sure that parks better reflect Erie's history and cultural diversity. We had great focus group conversation around cultural art and history and ideas about community engagement as part of that process. We also talked about tourism. So we met with Visit Erie in particular as well as some other organizations. And how could we leverage the city parks as a potential visitor destinations? What parks could be more visitor ready or calling more attention to the park system as amenity and a draw for people? And then awareness of parks and programs. So we'll move that. So benchmarking. When we do benchmarking, we do this through a couple of different metrics. So we take a look at NRPA agency performance review. That's the National Recreation and Park Association's agency. And they take a look at parks and recreation agencies across the nation. And then they collect information and then provide that in a report every year. And then you can dig into it to find specifics. So we use that as one benchmark. They organize it by population ranges. So we took a look at the population range suitable for Erie. But that's a lot of park agencies and there's a lot of differences among them, so that's just one. We also take a look at Trust for Public Land. They have a ParkServe platform which takes a look at access and equity indicators, percent of residents with a 10-minute walk, and that's how we're able to see how Erie compares to other places. And then we take a more custom approach to the city and we've selected six peer cities for various different metrics that relate to the city of Erie. And so I'm giving you a snapshot of some of the quantitative aspects of this benchmarking, but there is a longer memo, if you're interested, that goes into more kind of best practices, specific projects. There's some really interesting ideas that each of these cities are dealing with similar challenges and opportunities to take a closer look at. So when we take a look at the peer cities average and the national average and where Erie is, this is just a snapshot of some of the things that stood out to us. So when we look at park acreage per 1,000 residents, that's one of the metrics that NRPA looks at. The city of Erie is on the lower end, 3.8 acres per 1,000 residents. When you look at your peer cities, it's more like 13.7 and national 9.2 acres. But when you look at the number of parks, it's higher. So what that tells us is that you have a lot of parks and a lot of them are small. And you have a couple of bigger parks. And so there's nothing to say that URI should be at a different phase in that. It's just a benchmark understanding where you are as compared to your peers. Typically about 5% of your peer cities are of land is dedicated to parks and recreation. National median is actually about 15%. So we were trying to look at places that have a little bit more similar density to the city of Erie. Whereas currently city of Erie about 3% of land is dedicated to parks and open space. 10 minute park access is also a key metric and this is where Erie has incredible strength because of that number of parks and the way that they're distributed throughout the city as well as other public open space. So we're including other parks in this metric. It's 87% of residents have access to a park within a 10 minute walk. And even when you take out the other public parks, it's still 76%. So it's very high when you look at that compared to your peers in national median. But with all of those parks and acres, the budget is significantly lower. So you've got $26 per operating expenditure versus $99 and $126. So you can kind of see that delta that the city is operating off of constrained resources. And staffing as well. So that 20.5 is full-time equivalent positions, and when you look at that compared to your peer cities in national median, which is much higher in the 70s, something of note, as I mentioned earlier, because there aren't any indoor recreation centers, which most of your peers have, For a population this size, it's more typical to have that. So they do have recreation programmers in most of those pure cities, and that does account for some of that increase in staffing. But even when you take a look at the kind of typical breakdown of a Parks and Recreation Department, there's still a delta that 51.3 is without programming staff. Okay, these are just the same information but in map form so you can kind of see how they're distributed. I won't go into too much detail there. Getting into park types, part of what we do in the plan is give some big buckets to the park types that you have because they're not all the same and they don't all need to have the same amenities. But what we've organized the parks into is natural areas, neighborhood parks. Those are really your parks that are around 2 to 10 acres. They tend to have a playground and maybe a park shelter, some seating and amenities for nearby residents. Residents and then your destination parks. We've broken that into three different categories community parks Such as Roger Young Park or McClellan Park. They're a little bigger. They have more specialized amenities downtown Civic Park like Perry Square and then regional destination that might have a more regional draw or have a wider mix of amenities such as Frontier Park and Here's just a map showing that 87% of residents within a walk to a park. So this is using street network. And you can see here in dark gray, those are residential areas without a 10 minute walk to a public park. But we also take a look at quality, as I mentioned. And this is not just the condition of park amenities. So it doesn't just fall into account is, okay, there's a park here and there's a playground. Is the park in good condition or not? But it's also the quality of that park experience. What's the mix of experiences? Does it feel safe along the edges? Does it have appropriate access? Is it accessible from an ADA perspective? And so it goes beyond just condition to look at several factors of quality. And so we're just showing here, this is not a scaled map, but each park is then kind of given a score across those different categories and we've included here the kind of good to great quality. And so it does cut down your 10 minute walk to a quality park to 53% of residents. We also take a look at metrics. I won't go into too much detail on this one, but we take a look at the number of facilities per population. So how many playgrounds do you have, or how many residents per facility? And this is another metric that NRPA uses to compare. Again, it's not a suggestion that Erie should match that metric, but it just tells you where you are and then we pair that with community input about what their priorities are and it tells us maybe we should adjust that level of service for that amenity because the community is desiring this and we're not matching also what's typical. So it kind of just tells you kind of the capacity for each of those facilities. And you can see here that you have a really good distribution of playgrounds and it's more a matter of the kind of quality and experience of those playgrounds But there are some other amenities that might be lower. There's also that first column I wanted to note. Some of these are more specialty, like ice rinks. Not every park system has an ice rink. Only 17% of park agencies that the NRPA looks at. And so you might be lower, but that's not necessarily something that is typically offered all the time. Okay, and then we also take a look at the distribution of those amenities and their service areas. And this can help serve as a guide and a tool as you're planning improvements to a new park, planning improvements to a new area, using this as a way to identify where there might be gaps in specific amenities. Then we overlay all of those service areas to understand where there's a higher mix of amenities, so the variety of experiences and types. The darker areas in the map have more overlapping amenities within a 10-minute walk, and the lighter areas have fewer.

We also took a look at equity indicator factors.

This builds upon the Trust for Public Lands equity criteria and customized updates it for ERIE and the date to be updated for the timing of this plan. So it takes a look at population characteristics from percent of low income population, older adults over the age of 64, youth under age 19, adults with less high school diploma and limited English speaking proficiency, percent of people with a disability, percent of people of color, percent of households without access to a vehicle. Health characteristics include higher rates of physical inactivity, which is a data point that we're able to use, and higher rates of poor mental health, higher rates of sensitive populations, which includes rates of chronic health conditions. as well as neighborhood characteristics, taking a look at where there's higher vacancy rates, environmental justice characteristics, taking a look at the percent of tree cover, as well as proximity to contamination and environmental exposures for brownfields and pollution discharge sites, as well as the urban heat island index. Okay, so all of those are given, each category has its own map and then an overlapping map together. And so when we just take a look at that data, one lens of priority, this is where the darker areas have a higher equity score and then the lighter areas have a lower. Yes.

I mentioned about equity that this plan from the outset was really rooted in that. Even from when we were awarded the grant through DCNR, it was specifically addressing those challenges. And so throughout this planning process, We have zones here, but throughout this planning process, that was the lens in which, one of the lenses, but a priority lens that we looked at our challenges, looked at our priorities and strategies around that.

Just following along, it seems pretty intentional. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

We also took a look at conservation priority areas. So where is there already, you know, habitat from an important habitat for birds to wetlands. We took a look at soils, lake buffers, streams, and all of that aggregated together. This can help with grant funding and an understanding where, you know, what might need to be protected. And then we looked at remediation and restoration. So areas that might, there's many brown fields as you can see that top little map there. Buried streams, there's a lot of places that are daylighting streams and there's great opportunities for recreation and restoration. Areas of high erosion, so these are areas that are targeted towards restoration needs. So it needs some care, not just conservation.

Just because I like to do this every now and again, it's highlighting, there's a few points that you just made that I think are really critical and I want to make sure that just we as council hear them, but that also the public notes. When you line up where the brownfields are, And also a few slides back where the inequity, they line up perfectly, right? So we can see, and those also line up, again, on the east side. So just for us to note, where we're seeing people don't have safe spaces to play or family safe places to gather, we're seeing also where there's a lot of remediation that still needs to occur. So just for us all to put those together.

Yeah, I can just add, Dr. Titus, I think we all We all know, right? I mean, anyone who lives in the city very knows. What's helpful is then you see the data, and you see the data point to it in multiple ways, right? Different things being measured and all coming out with that same. I think it helps us as we make decisions, things we already knew, but on paper, it just makes it so abundantly clear.

Okay, now we're going to get into the vision and plan framework. I just wanted to mention that there is a mission statement for the Department of Public Works property and parks, which is where the Bureau of Parks and Recreation sits. I won't read through that, but it's somewhat of a foundation of understanding where the park sits. This is the vision statement that we put together through the community engagement and planning process. So Erie parks are connected, welcoming, resilient, and accessible to all, honoring our cultural diversity, natural environment, history, and vibrant neighborhoods while supporting a thriving local economy and ensuring every resident has safe, inspiring places to play, explore, and belong. And this is really intended to be that big vision statement when you think 10, 20 years and beyond of where you want parks, open space, and recreation to be. So to support the outcome of that vision, we've organized the planned strategies and actions within these four themes. And those include stewardship and maintenance. There's a goal statement for each theme. Ensure Erie's park system is well cared for, financially sustainable, and supported by the staff, partnerships, and tools needed to operate effectively over time. Access belonging and connectivity is that all Erie residents have equitable access to safe, welcoming, and inclusive parks, programs, trails, and the waterfront, regardless of neighborhood income or ability. Active and vibrant places to create active, flexible, year-round park experiences that bring people together, reflect Erie's diverse cultures and history, and support community health and well-being. and nature and resilience to protect and enhance Erie's natural systems and habitats, expand access to nature and education, build climate resilience, and repair lands shaped by industrial paths. So we won't dive into every single strategy and action item in this presentation, because I know we're already running short on time. But this is how the plan is organized. So each theme has about five or six buckets of strategies. And then each of those have a series of action items. And this is just two examples. So for example, strengthening staff operations and organizational capacity. has an action item to establish a youth recreation coordinator position and then there's some greater detail underneath that action to describe what that means. And then, you know, improving financial sustainability and funding strategies. There's a suite of strategies. It's going to take creative funding solutions and layered approaches. One of them is to develop a tiered fee structure aligned with community priorities. So when you take a look at park agencies, sorry, this light is shining directly in my eye. No, I'm okay. Just if you see me squinting, that's all that is.

Just like God is speaking.

We're getting to the good stuff now.

I have sunglasses.

Oh, I'm good. Yeah, I just needed a little tweak. So this strategy is really about looking at, it's not, you still want to make sure that everything's affordable, but there are ways to get some revenue to support park operations. And so having a tiered structure is, for that, where you're making essential services and parks programs cost effective at a certain tier, and then as you get up in the specialized nature of that, you might have higher costs or some cost to them. Again, access, belonging, and connectivity. It has five strategies to support it. A couple of samples here to support design parks to be safe, comfortable, and inclusive for all. One of those is to expand access to drinking water across the park system. So there's a specific strategy for that. Developing a universal design toolkit for park improvement projects and new park projects. So anytime you improve a park, making sure that there's a universal design kind of checklist when you're considering improvements. And then anytime there's a new park, making sure that that's also part of that checklist and guidelines. So there's a couple big idea spreads in the plan, some of which capture some kind of long-term visions and big ideas to achieve over time. One of those is to reconnect Erie to the waterfront. And so this looks at conceptually thinking about connectivity across the city of Erie and regionally. connecting to Presque Isle, connecting to the Bayfront, and to the parks and each other. So we took a look at existing plans as well as potential opportunities. So certainly this would be a very long-term vision to think through and it's not intended to be exact alignment. lots of planning would have to go into this. But just thinking about these larger connections that could be made and whether or not there's opportunities to daylight streams as a part of a larger strategy for connectivity. and just reflecting what that big idea might be like. These are just some examples across different projects of what greenways look like in different contexts, whether that's with art along them or along a waterfront, a multi-use trail. Active and vibrant places, we'll just highlight a couple of actions here. So one of those is, one strategy is to expand year round programming and park use. And so one of those action items is to begin evaluating the feasibility partnerships and funding strategies for new indoor recreation facilities. That came up in a lot of stakeholder conversations. There's a long way to go to get there to make that happen, but it is an action to get that conversation started.

Dr. Titus, can I ask a quick question? Is it your recommendation, and maybe it's spelled out, that those would be owned and operated by the City of Erie? Are you suggesting that they could also be partnerships owned and operated by another entity?

They could be operated by another entity.

Your point is just to have them and make sure that we're doing it in cooperation with?

Yeah. Okay, thank you. Another, there's some programming recommendations. One of those is to develop targeted programming for underserved age groups, including teens and older adults. Another action item is to develop cultural and historical trails and guided experiences. So layering in multiple benefits into these projects.

What does that mean?

So it's really thinking about, we had a lot of conversations both on a community scale but then also on a kind of tourism conversations in the stakeholder meetings around integrating potentially guided tours or self-guided tours, connected routes that highlight history, neighborhoods, cultural assets. but also partnering with local organizations. So there's a lot of recommendations to make sure that's coming from the community up. But just to think intentionally about if you're making improvements along a trail, could that also tell a story along the way?

Yeah, because this city kind of has its own kind of unique story. We started talking about inclusivity and equity. And so I was just imagining and wondering what that statement meant. I'm still curious as to what that statement means.

Yeah, it doesn't prescribe what that history is in this plan, but it just talks about the potential to explore that.

And we recently, through this grant, through this grant process, we were actually able to apply for an early implementation project. So it's additional funding to do another kind of project. And one of the One of the things that we've applied for is to actually understand the history of our parks, why they're named that way, what the cultural relevance is, how it was used historically, what kind of things might be in the ground at some of these parks. And so that's the narrative and the story that we want to build upon. It has to do with tourism, but it's also placemaking. Also, it's our story, and we should know what it is and then celebrate it and also make sure that we're educating the public on maybe there's a piece of artwork there or something that signifies the history of that park.

I'm just trying to get where the intersectionality of it is as it's presented with the intentionality. And clearly, you can almost place like a facsimile where the brownfields are and what your data presents. And so when that statement comes out, the question just vaguely be asked. What does that mean? So you kind of touched on some of it, because some of these parks, you just don't have an inkling of who they're named after. And we're no longer celebrating Civil War heroes around here. So I'm glad that we're at least willing to approach those discussions.

Yeah. To that point too, there is an action item to kind of establish a process for park naming and renaming and to have guidelines around that. Okay. Shifting here.

I guess God is a woman.

So one of the big ideas that we highlight in the plan, and we had some great conversations with stakeholders about the possibility of this as well as potential for mobile recreation, so something for the city to consider and explore in the meantime when you're maybe looking to have an indoor recreation facility. Cities across the country have mobile recreation programs that brings recreation to communities that might not have access to programming. And so there's some examples here with Asheville's Rec and Roll program, Nature Tracks mobile outreach program in Cleveland, and the playful learning landscapes in Philadelphia. Experience Children's Mobile Museum is right here in Erie and so there's opportunity to build on partnerships where they're already kind of taking activities out into the community. Okay, another one of those kind of big picture ideas is considering a long-term idea to think about a signature winter experience. People want to get outside more in the winter and some Smaller investments like maybe sled rentals or offering sleds for people to go outside are easier to implement. But we wanted to include some of the big visions that we talked about with community and stakeholders around thinking about ice skating. And so we wanted to share some examples across the country. These are places that have successfully implemented revitalized areas and drawn in visitation but also created these really interesting water and ice parks or skate ribbons as some people call them. They can serve as roller skating or rollerblading in the summertime or walking paths in the summertime and then they actually convert them into a rink in the wintertime. So something to think about. It's a big vision idea that would take lots of creative strategies, but I think it is something that is suitable for the context of Erie. Okay, nature and resilience is the fourth theme, and again, a series of strategies and action items, one of which is to set a measurable citywide tree canopy target for parks. So that begins with understanding your existing tree canopy and setting a target by park type. converting underused lawn areas to natural landscapes that Jackie was bringing up earlier. So that's identifying low-use lawn areas, so not areas that people are using for recreation activity, but areas that maybe are underutilized and could be better served or transitioned to a meadow or pollinator habitat, rain garden, reforested area, or other low-mow zones, and that can reduce the maintenance expectations and needs, but also support biodiversity and habitat goals. And then transforming brownfields and underutilized spaces. There are many funding programs for taking brownfields to parks, and a great opportunity in Erie to think about that. Also, brownfields are sometimes redeveloped for other purposes, so the plan is suggesting that there's a toolkit and approach for assessing parcels of land that might be suitable for park conversion. Just a big idea around that. Okay, so how do you make this happen and how do you prioritize projects? As mentioned earlier, there's 17 to 20 million of deferred maintenance. And so as you're thinking about reinvesting in existing parks or new parks, Setting a kind of living criteria and framework is what we've put together for the plan. So it's not intended to be a rigid, this is what you must do first and this is what you must do next, but a framework of decision making that supports the outcomes of this plan and the analysis that went into it. So the criteria is equity, quality, level of service and park experience gap, access, nature and resilience, alignment. So does the project align with community input or other city priorities? That's really focusing on things like priority neighborhood investments where you're grouping investments together across different, maybe you're repairing streets or investing in bike lanes and that's a great opportunity to pair that with investments for a park. And then feasibility. Is it owned by the city? What's the land use? Available funding and partnerships? So really pairing the realities with the park project.

I just got one though. Yeah. I asked a bunch of questions. My mother couldn't stand me as a kid. My siblings couldn't either. I'M GOING BACK QUITE A FEW SLIDES. EARLIER IT TALKED ABOUT MOST RESIDENTS LIVING WITHIN TEN MINUTES WALK FROM A PARK. AND IT GAVE SOME PERCENTAGE NUMBERS. BUT ONE OF THE NUMBERS IN ONE OF THE COLUMNS WAS THAT WE WERE REALLY, REALLY HEALTHY. WE HAD LIKE 50 PARKS. you know I'm talking about and we have like 50 parks or like 87 percent under what we were above the national and the medium or whatever uh was this plan or does this have any recommendations about uh making fewer parks uh perhaps repurposing some of those parks if they decide to make fewer since we're Because without knowing anything, I'm thinking 50 parks and most of us within 10 minutes. It's almost like if you take 10 of them away, you're still within 10 minutes of a park. And I was just wondering, was there any consideration into consolidation or... I don't even know what the question is, but I think you get where I'm going.

Yeah, definitely. We don't go into the level of detail of saying you should remove this park because it is redundant to this other park within 10 minutes, but the data in the plan can help you make those choices should that be a consideration. So then you can kind of take a look at would we lose level of service? So you can kind of use the same criteria. Would we lose level of service if this park were to be transitioned to something else, would residents not have a park within 10 minutes walk from them?

Would we lose level of service if we put housing there, opened it up for development, and still have them 10 minutes walk from a park?

Yeah. okay i digress no no i think that's a great point um so each each uh existing park project was scored using this criteria to organize priorities um and so there are four tiers again this is a flexible framework but it's intended to kind of give some some guidelines um six park reinvestment projects kind of have the the greatest score across all these different categories and when we add that up and then tier 2 is another 14 parks tier 3 is another 15 parks and then tier 4 is another 17 parks some of which might just be kind of monitoring for for reinvestment they might not require major investments so that question becomes even more

relevant because maybe it's not 17 parks, maybe it's 13 parks, maybe it's not 14 parks, maybe it's 10 parks. And it could have a very significant, you know, it could be a very significant variable in those 57 to 121 million or even the 17 to 20 million depending on what parks you're prioritizing.

That's right. If I may, thank you so much for your presentation. The history of our city, most of our playgrounds were built around clubs, taverns, and so forth. That's how Second and Wallace became there. That's how Tintin has. All wonderful. Other good news, Mayor Slovakia made Bayview a passport. So folks that already have some connectivity already, I applaud you for the hard work you put into this. It's going to be safe.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. We're almost done. This is just kind of a high-level summary of this chapter, but really just some of the principles that go into thinking about it. So beyond the prioritization criteria, working to figure out how to maintain what you have, Building capacity, whether that's through staffing, programming, grants, project delivery, advancing those priority projects. A lot of recommendations around how to set up a capital improvement project process and making sure that there's an internal process for that. Coordinating investments, expanding partnerships. It's going to take a lot of partnership. and diversifying funding. So there's some recommendations around creative strategies and diversifying funding sources, including potentially exploring the idea of a parks foundation, a non-profit organization, that's able to raise money for parks, or a park conservancy. Those are some strategies that other places have used to be able to build capacity for parks. And then tracking progress. So revisiting these priorities, at least on an annual basis, and reporting progress out over time. So each of those actions are organized. There's a time frame, a suggested time frame responsibility. We are working through who would be responsible within the city to lead the charge on that, knowing that there will be partners involved. And then the type of action. Not every action is a physical project. Sometimes it's a policy or a planning improvement, funding and partnerships or operations and programs. And this goes into more detail in the plan, but again, just looking at diversifying the funding across different sources. I wanted to add before I just move on from that last one. Oh, no, I pressed the wrong button. Okay. One of the key things when you're thinking about any new projects that are coming into the city and you're building a new park, really important to make sure that it's evaluated through the lens of operations and maintenance. So not only the cost to build that thing up front, but I think it's a 3% to 4% is typical projection for the cost to maintain that over time. So building that in and understanding that there will be future costs to keep that in good condition is a really important part of planning so you don't kind of overbuild what you can maintain. Okay. Okay. Okay, there we go. So, again, we're here, and any other questions or comments?

I'm sorry, Mr. Trude. Go ahead, Mr. Warren. As my comment was just going to echo my colleague, Mr. Brzezinski's, in that this is quite a document. I kind of looked over it a little earlier, so thank you. I apologize for not being able to go through it completely. But, man, I look at it and I just think, man, it must be nice to be a 25-year-old, 30-year-old in the city of Beery. Many of these things are manifested, and the quality of life presupposes that your quality of life will improve, and they have some stuff to look for. And I tell people all the time that I believe that Erie's best days are ahead, and it's because of people like you and the staff. So I want to thank everybody in the audience that had a part to play in this document, and I look forward to being able to help in any way that I can, help some of this stuff come through to a reality. So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, nice presentation. Thank you. So most of you know I work with teenagers in high school. So one day I happened to go in the classroom to do what's called a walkthrough for one of the teachers. And one of the kids said, hey, I saw a sign in my yard, this Mo Troop. Do you know who he is? I said, well, I've met him a few times. Pretty nice guy, you know. And so... The teacher said, well, Mr. Troop's an elected official, and they were talking about elections. So I brought up parks. I said, here's one of the things that we talk about. They were really interested in that. So I don't know if you're still doing surveys with youth. I mean, they gave me note cards just filled with ideas of, hey, I think we could do this in the park, do this in the park. So if you're still looking for... youth engagement, the school's a good place, because this really sparked a lot of interest with teens. One of the ideas, I guess, came up with kind of what you were saying with Mr. Horton about when you talked about kind of like, do we need 52 parks? One kid was like, hey, do you guys have a way of measuring which parks are used more? And then maybe you could put more in that park. And then one person said, well, you should try to find out why the other parks aren't being used. And so they had a lot of ideas. I asked them about if you had this amount of money, should you put all the money in one park? A lot of them didn't like that idea. They liked money spread out. So if you're looking for more engagement, I think the schools is also placed in. They really care about this issue about parks, so that's just a thought.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much. I loved it so much this morning. Back for tonight, and I really appreciate you. So about a year ago, I was in Wilmington, and we have to, I think, be aware of what we want and don't want in parks, and we do have to have some signage. They had nine rules of what they want And I really think that that's like a good thing too. Like welcome and we want you to enjoy yourself, but no smoking, no illegal drugs, and making sure that you have appropriate conduct so that the peaceful enjoyment of others... can be continued in this park. And please properly dispose of food, other refuse in designated containers. Please go... keep the streets clear from obstructions and things like that. And at the very end of it, thanks for visiting and welcome back. But I think there was a lot of good points in here that People, you can't assume anymore because there are parks that have the trash. And I love walking and seeing birthdays being celebrated for the young kids, the old kids, and through all the parks that have the shelters to do that. But they need to clean up. They can't just leave those balloons there. So thank you so much again, though.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions from anyone?

Sorry, I just wanted to make a real quick statement. I caught some of your, some of this this morning on the city website and I'm glad I was able to pretty much get the whole thing. It's very interesting and I did last year during celebratory when you were at the Boston store I was very impressed with how that was handled and a lot of people seemed interested and I think I even put one of those sticky ones on there but and then You have to make people aware, we do have a lot of parks. We do have 50 parks. We have another one going in on 6th Street. And we lost one overnight at the I went down there this morning. It's very sad. It's horrible, especially all the work they put into it last year, redoing it. We have a lot of parks, but they're not all swing sets and slides. They're just little spaces sometimes in a neighborhood where people can go and just have a little picnic or sit on a bench and, like Chautauqua, just sit on the bench and look at the water. And that doesn't need a lot of upkeep. You just cut the grass and hope everybody keeps everything clean. I'm looking forward to this project. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think the last thing I would say is, if I can, Dr. Titus, Mr. Horton had a good idea. He talked about communities with these centralized athletic facilities. I mean, I see those when I go visit my brothers down in Pittsburgh or wherever, like different communities have these little, and we talked about tourism. I mean, those are ways to bring people into those communities, and then they use everything else around. That's just something maybe. It's a big vision idea, like you said, but it is a good idea, though.

Yeah. I agree with you, Mr. Troop. In fact, when we met with Visit Erie and the Sports Commission, they talked about how many tournaments and things will come in. And I said, well, how many do you locate in the city of Erie? And they were like, well, none, because your facilities aren't where they need to be. So, yeah, there's real benefit there. And I agree with you. That's something we should explore. I also just wanted to thank you for making the trip and really thank the planning department under the leadership of Jackie Spry and Cooper Moore and in close collaboration, I know, with Public Works. I think we all agree this is such an example of real community engagement. And I think we have a lot to learn from this as we move forward, and I think you've shown us how to do it well. So I really want to thank you for that, and I think it really shows in the product. So on behalf of the administration, just really, truly thank you.

Thank you. That means a lot.

I think one of the things that I've noticed just as I'm watching this is the word intentional has been used several times, but that there is a plan and it's not just, it doesn't feel as sporadic as sometimes when we've seen things before, like we're going to fix this over here, now we'll try it over here. that there's a very intentional design with a metric system on why we're doing it and that also makes it easier for us when people are asking like how are things being spent or what is happening? We can lay out the plan so that it pulls back, it just pulls together cohesiveness and parks really are a community connector and it's how we create formal supports but informal supports. So I'm very excited to see this playing out and this is how we address everything from mental health to Strengthening in our neighborhoods, right? So, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you That's all right

All right. Well, thank you again. Thank everybody for coming in. I know we ran a little over, but I think that this is well worth especially getting this information out to the public. So very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Great job.

Thank you.