Arts in Public Places Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

All right, I call this meeting to order. First thing on the agenda, first item is public comments. These are comments on items that are not on the agenda. I don't see any public out here. Do we have anybody online that has a hand up for public comments?

Nobody online.

Excellent. Well, then we'll move on next to business items. First thing is the approval of the minutes from the July 8th, 2026 meeting. Does anybody have any comments, corrections, edits, any? Can you hear us, David?

Yeah, Jerry, I can hear you and I don't have anything to add.

Okay, great. All right. Does anybody want to make a motion to approve those minutes?

I move that the board approve the attached minutes meeting minutes from the July 9th 2026 meeting second I second that all in favor That passes unanimously We have on this

Business item next working group discussion. I don't know if you guys remember last week. We talked about a new Procedure for authorizing working groups to Take up certain tasks or assignments I Don't know you saw that didn't you last week that Brian brought to the meeting Okay, well we'll get you a copy of that at some point I He's not here, and none of the three working groups that I'm associated with met this month, so we did not discuss that procedural form at all. So they don't have any input at this point. So I don't think there's any point in trying to have any sort of a discussion about this unless Paula or David, if you had any comments about that particular procedural form.

Jerry, this is Dave Bowman. Can you hear me?

Yeah.

I don't think I received a copy of that form, and I didn't see one when I went to look at the agenda packet. Was it not out there?

Huh. I received a written copy last week and I don't know why you guys didn't. Brian may have given one to me only. We should certainly get that out and distribute it to everybody before next month's meeting so we can actually have a discussion about it and hopefully by then I'll have some input from the working groups on that. Can we get that sent around?

Yes, yes. Vice Chair, board members, we'll make sure to get that emailed out to everyone tomorrow. I can tell you that we have created that form online like we spoke about at last month's meeting. For those that are, you know, more tech savvy and would rather do something online, then we'll have that made available. So, yes, we'll send that out. And then once we receive all the feedback, we can go in and make those adjustments online and get everything set up as need be.

Okay, terrific. Then I think we'll... JUST TABLE THIS DISCUSSION AND MOVE IT TO NEXT MONTH'S BOARD MEETING AND HAVE A DISCUSSION AT THAT POINT. ANY OTHER COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? OKAY. GREAT. NEXT ITEM ON THE AGENDA, PRESENTATIONS, PROCLAMATIONS, RECOGNITIONS. WE HAVE A PRESENTATION ON THE CANYON MEDIAN DESIGN.

Yes, Vice Chair, that would be me.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Can you guys see it? Yes, okay.

Okay, vice chair, board members, we'll go ahead and start. So if you recall, some of you might not have been on the Parks and Recreation Board at the first initial presentation that myself and Emanuela Beda presented a couple of years back. but this is the information that was pretty much shared then with a little bit of changes on here. So I'll just kind of talk about it a little bit. So we started, we kicked this process off in latter part of 2022, 2023, just kind of looking at medians and kind of what standards are out there and designs and by the airport. that median is also just a very narrow median so you're pretty limited on what you can do and what you can get away with and we have recently in the last couple of months we went in there and pretty much scraped that whole median back and received some pretty nice comments from residents who said they couldn't see with some of the vegetation turning out onto 502 so i was really glad to hear that and that is one of the medians that will also be included when we do canyon and we hope to get this project started pretty quickly. So that's the plateau and what it looks like. The second one is the bandolier option, and this is what bandolier looks like. So it, again, is some stamped concrete, a lot of rocks, and really just if you've been in Santa Fe of recent, they are redoing some of their medians, and I don't know if you see the slope on the concrete on the side of it, but it's sloped at an angle to where if a car hits it, You're not going to potentially blow out your front tire or mess up the front end of your vehicle. It's going to have a little bit of a slope where you could go up and then get right back on the road. Hopefully not go over the median by any stretch, but you could do that on any of them. But it's just a little bit more friendly if you for some reason make that misstep and hit the median instead of hitting that bigger curbing and then right into it. You're going to hit a little bit of curbing and then you're going to have that little bit of a slope. that's going to redirect you right back down. So all of these templates are going to have that design. So Bandelier, as you can see, is a little bit of a different color, and you can kind of see where they got their color schemes from, Bandelier Park, and just our natural settings. So... We we have selected as a county for these two designs and we're going to be putting out and I'm calling it a survey But it's really more of a comment to the community for them to comment on these two designs and get some feedback this this is not a normal project like what we're doing in one of our parks and have all the community engagement meetings because we do have NM dot rules and regulations that we need to follow and Also, just the maintenance and safety concerns of median So I could see that people would probably ask for trees to be all in the medians You probably have seen the trees that we continue to remove out of 502 because of visibility issue also being right in the middle of the median and the Sun is baking everything as we know and The trees are not doing well because you've got them set right in the middle of a cooking pot, all the concrete that's around them. It's very difficult for the root system to get established and stay established under those conditions of pure concrete. So trees are not something that we historically would put back down on our medians just because of those reasons. But It's also for safety and access for our maintenance crews to minimize a lot of our water usage. We want to maintain that sight and distance element for our residents as they're pulling in and out of whether it be apartments on Canyon or the aquatic center. If we need to get on there, which we probably won't be mowing because really the plans that we're looking at does not really include a lot of grass, but it does have vegetation in way of flowering shrubs and things that's really going to kind of beautify the area. We want to make sure that what we're putting in is maintainable. You know, as we all talk about the struggles of staffing and we are still short on parks and open space side, we're trying to hire some folks and hopefully we'll get that taken care of soon. But just maintaining the landscape and knowing what our boundaries are with the current staff level that we have now, and that too played a part into how Hewitt Zoller helped us drive the bus of coming up with this template. Drainage, making sure that drainage is proper, coming off of the medians onto the roadway. that was another factor that we looked at and then just emergency response so making sure we have medians in play that if we you know our fire or police as they need to respond to things that they too are going down a roadway that is safe for our first responders and that they can see and not have obstructions in the way and then just uh really just reducing the long-term maintenance And I know a lot of people are not real crazy about the stamped concrete, but that will be limited across the medians. So it would more be, and as you look at the designs, it's more on the ends of the medians than it is at the middles. And the ends are usually the ones that seem to take more of the traffic hit as you're coming on the roadways for whatever reason. I'm sure there's been many studies that I'm not privy to, but could probably do a little bit of research on that and find out. But these two designs are the ones that we will be putting out for public comment. And then once that's done, we'll finalize everything on the drawings, create a task order for construction and a timeline. and start really heavy heavy heavy communication because it's not going to be a fun project as we come down canyon and we're hearing all the complaints right now with the people coming up trinity so it's going to be just as as painful if not a little more and then just our timelines for media and communication because we all know it's it will be a huge impact on traffic so i think for us trying to time that at a better part of the year where we have the least footprint and least impact as we can. And I don't know that that's even possible because Canyon is, you've got cars on that thing constantly all the time. So that's really what I wanted to present today. You'll see something come out in the next week or so. Just getting the public to get them to engage and kind of look at the two designs. No different than Ashley Pond and the bollards. We kind of did the same thing with that project. This is kind of what we have. The only difference here is we have already pretty much married the template that we'll be using as the footprint going down Canyon just for all the reasons we cited as far as safety, maintenance, and others. But that's really it for my presentation. And if you have any questions, I'll stand for this now.

Great. Thank you, Wendy. That was a very thorough explanation of the project. I had one quick question. When you go to do this survey comment period, I call it a comment period for the public, is that going to be through the paper online, a combination of things?

Yes, it will be a combination. So we will have a link that will be live. It will be a PSA that will go out, hit something on Instagram, Facebook, and we'll probably post something at both of the libraries as well.

Okay, great.

Some QR codes for people to get to it. So we'll probably, and with that at the library, we'll have some things available at both libraries for folks to make comments just in case they don't have access to the internet or a way to do something online. We want to make sure we capture those comments as well.

Great. Any other questions, comments?

So it's new median construction. It's not just improvising and using what's there already. Is that correct?

Correct. So the curbing that is currently there, if it's not damaged or in need of repair, then correct. The curbing will remain, and then everything on the median will be removed and replaced. And going down canyon, we only have water in a couple of areas. So those couple of medians that we do have a little bit of water access, you'll see a little bit more of the vegetation in those areas. And then the medians that we don't, you'll see a lot less vegetation. Certainly as you first start coming down canyon, that first little median that's not It's pretty small in size. I don't know what the footage would be on it, but one like that one that is so small, you'll probably just see that one would be more of a stamped concrete, and that's where we would have an opportunity to do some different coloring schemes in the concrete itself, some different stamping designs as you first hit Canyon to come down. So we do have room to make some really neat designs and opportunities for some really fun colors that will really complement Canyon as you're making your way down the roadway.

Any other comments? Do we have anybody online that has any questions or comments?

None for me, Jerry.

All right. Thanks, David. All right. Well, wonderful. Look forward to seeing that come out to the public. And thank you, Wendy. Thank you. Next on the agenda, board and staff communications. Chairman's report, Brian Watkins was speaking to me through the ether and he said he has absolutely nothing to say. So we'll skip right through that one and go on to staff reports. Catherine, Wendy, if you have any reports you need to give us.

I'm gonna rearrange the furniture a little bit. And then of course my pen stopped working as I was writing. Oh no, now it starts to work. Alrighty, a few updates from the recreation side. Last week we held the Los Alamos County Fair and Parade and Rodeo. Successful event, busy event, not only for downtown with the two fairs and the parade, but also at the rodeo grounds. On Saturday, we hosted our first night rodeo, which seemed to be very popular. We had a total of about 1,500 participants attend the rodeo that evening, which was awesome. For the parade and fair, we had about 3,000 people present for that. Then Sunday was a little bit lower, but also that the contestants for Sunday was lower as well, with roughly over 750 attendees for that. So really good. We did get feedback from the bleachers because we had so many people there wasn't room to sit. Hopefully this is the last year that that's an issue. Cross your fingers. And yeah, otherwise fair and rotors seem to go off pretty well. We are, where's my other notes? Let's see here. For the aquatic center, just a small update. We took to county council an amendment for the contract for leisure pools to work for the pump and filtration room. That demolition has already started. Pipes have been cut, and we're working on pulling everything out. Well, we aren't, but the contractor's working on pulling everything out to replace all the piping, the pumps, the filtration system. ALL WITH A REDUNDANT SYSTEM AND MEETS THE FLOW RATE NEEDED FOR THE POOL PER STATE REGULATIONS. SO THAT'S EXCITING. ALSO JUST SOME NEWS GOING FORWARD FOR THE AQUATIC CENTER AND PENYON POOL. WE ARE GOING TO START CHANGING HOURS IN SEPTEMBER AFTER LABOR DAY. THE LAGOON WILL BE OPEN MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY 9 TO 7 WHICH HAS BEEN ITS NORMAL HOURS. but open on Saturday from 9 to 5. And then for Pinon, we'll be open Monday through Friday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. So we're reducing hours there during the week. And we will also be closed on Saturdays. So we're still offering public swim for eight hours. It's just going to be flip-flopped. It's not going to be at the Leisure Luluku rather than at Pinon Park Pool. And then as for events coming up, next on our list, I'm happy to report that the golf course warranty work is complete minus one item. So we are working on a grand reopening for September 12th, 9 to 12 p.m. We are also talking with 19th Hole Sports Pub to couple that with their grand opening event. on the same day. So be on the lookout for an invite, hopefully in the next few days for that. And then on September 19th, we will host the Trans-Rocky Mountain Bike Single Track event. That's the following Saturday. And Ellen Felton and I are working on pulling that event together. That is a three-stage race, and we are stage one. And with that, I will stand for questions.

Thanks. Quick question on the pool. Are you going to be able to keep Pinon open until Larry Walkup reopens, or is Larry Walkup on schedule? How's the timeline on those working out?

As of right now, as far as we know, the Aquatic Center is on schedule. We will keep Pinon Pool open as long as we can. We are at the mercy of the weather and what the weather does. So if it decides to turn cold in October, we may be looking at closing it down, but we'll keep it open as long as we possibly can.

Great, thanks. Any other questions, comments? David, do you have any questions?

No, Jerry, I don't have any questions, but thanks for the briefing. I appreciate it.

Thank you. All right. Thanks, Catherine.

All righty. A quick update on a few things from our end. So renovation of sports fields, the three-year contract that was awarded, we are finishing up. Dunn-Ryan sounds like it is complete. We were out there last week. It looks really good. Senior field was pretty much done last year, and the teams have been playing on it. And so we are still waiting for Spirio to be completed. And we have a 30-day window for the contractor to finish up by September 5th. And then starting on September 6th, we will be allowing a limited number of teams to be on the field. And we'll have the areas that have been worked on by the contractor. We'll have this fenced off And that will be in a no-play zone that starting September 6 We will have that availability for some of our teams to at least get on there and utilize the field for practice And we'll we'll be meeting with lazel to have some conversation kind of about what that looks like moving forward and what their needs are and We'll work with our groups as best we can to get everything going as well as we can this fall Let's see, on the North Mesa master plan, let's see, it looks like we did the final draft concept back in August, public input August 13th, it looks like. Well, no, that's already been approved. That's wrong. So let me scratch that. Yeah, that's not correct. I need to update that. So Brewery Arena. Yeah, the master plan is already complete. That should be the bike part. We'll come up to that here in just a second. So Brew Arena, if you did not make it out to the rodeo, the foundation for the grandstand bleachers has already been poured. And we were able to work around that with the rental bleachers. So we had good seating available for those that did attend on Saturday and Sunday. It was pretty cool having the lights on on Saturday night's arena. So all the events going on and watching the kids look up at the lights was kind of cool. And all of that will kick back off again this week. And so the Crow's Nest and Grandstand bleachers will be up and running for next year's rodeo event. So it would be nice not to have to rent any additional bleachers and have our facilities 100% up and running. The restrooms were probably about at 85%, 90% completion. They had everything done on the inside with the exception of painting. So the outside and inside of the building still needs to be painted, but those were available for the rodeo along with the artwork on the outside, which I thought looked really great. I thought they did a good job on it. And we did hear some really nice feedback from people that went into the bathrooms and came out. So that was really nice to hear. But, yeah, they'll start that now again this week, and we'll be finished and ready for the 2027 event. So we're looking forward to that. For upcoming projects for our 27 fiscal year, the first one is a demo garden. And this one is basically working to make it ADA accessible here in Los Alamos. And our initial listening session is scheduled for September 14th. And that's going to be at 530 at the library. So you'll see more information coming out on that one. And then the North Mesa Recreation Master Plan, so the one that I was reading you earlier needs to be taken off because that one's done. But this is for the bike park. So we're currently working on procurement, with procurement, on a design and build request for qualifications. So we anticipate that going out in the next few weeks. And the bike park, of course, is in this first phase of the Recreation Master Plan. And I'm pretty sure we can... We can count on many fingers and toes, all the other folks that are just as excited as we are to get that going, because I know that's been years in the process. And the Guahe Pines columbariums, it's really Guahe Pines phase one. As you recall, we got the master plan approved by council, and we're looking forward to kicking off our task order number one with Lloyd and Associates. So this will be kicking off here pretty soon. And we'll be going through the community engagement process on this one. And this one is really going to be focused on the columbariums, the ossuary, a scattering garden with a cenotaph. So we already have the two columbariums currently. We've had those in our shop for a little over a year now. And this project will incorporate those and get those two placed, which will be Great news for a lot of residents who are waiting for that columbarium to be placed so they can make a purchase, and we're pretty excited about that as well. We have had some emails that have been received about the cemetery and making sure we keep our tree canopy and don't let any of the trees be removed. And we will always do our very best. I think we can say we're probably one of the biggest tree advocates in the county as a parks department. They are very important to us for many reasons as they are residents. So we will do our due diligence as we go through the process to make sure we have as little footprint as possible when it comes to losing any of our tree canopies. The area that this phase one will be impacting mostly is right over by the baby grave area. That is a big open area. And I just do want to remind people that the master plan is just a conceptual plan. So everything you see in the master plan doesn't always mean it's going to be 100% that size, that footprint, the whole nine yards. As we all know, when we make those conceptual plans, it's really our best advice from our consultants at the time of what would fit based on what they've looked at. But it doesn't always mean that that's going to be what we're going to be able to put into that footprint. So as we move forward in the process and get our community members hopefully at the meetings and engaged, we'll make some really good decisions moving forward and have a fantastic phase one as we move forward and get the columbariums in and all of the other things that we've been asked for for several years now. So I believe that is it on my end. Do we have any questions?

Anybody? Questions? Online? In person?

None for me.

All right. Thank you, Wendy. You're welcome. Next item on the agenda is council communications. Councilor Cole.

Thanks, Chair. So I'm just going to go back a few meetings and highlight a few things. At our last meeting, we had a quarterly update on the Climate Action Plan. We introduced a couple of ordinances, one for gas service rates and one for the LITA project at The Rock, formerly known as the Time Out Pizza in White Rock. And those public hearings are scheduled for August 25th, if you're interested in either of those. We did discuss the plastic bag ban and it did not pass. It failed on a vote of three to three. We needed four and we didn't get four. Um, at our July 28th meeting, um, we had a presentation about a possible LITA and MRA, uh, development agreement for the guest house, which is the former Hilltop house. Uh, we, um, approved a seven year service agreement for tree trimming around high voltage power lines. We approved changes to Article 5 of the Development Code, and as already been mentioned, we approved the mechanical system improvements for the Olympic pool. We also approved sending a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Interior opposing the revocation or reduction of the Chaco Cultural National Historic Park. On July 14th, it was a work session. We reviewed the community dashboard of performance metrics. We had a comprehensive plan update. And we approved an agreement with the New Mexico Department of Transportation for the New Mexico 4 crossing and multi-use trail improvement project in White Rock. And that's it. Any questions?

I don't have any. Anybody else? Excellent. Let's see. Oh, I skipped the work group, but as I mentioned earlier, the working groups did not any of them meet this last month, so there was nothing there anyway. Preview for the next meeting, we'll definitely put the working group discussion on that, and you guys will get a, receive a, form that that is what we're talking about and you'll see that and we can have a discussion at that point about that just to remind you guys any items that you want on the agenda you just need to let Brian or I know and we can get that set up on the agenda for you so if there's anything you want discussed or brought up just let us know and with that I adjourn this meeting