Park Board - Regular Meeting

All right. This regular meeting on August 26, 2026 of the Kirkland Park Board is called to order. Recording Secretary, please call roll.

Please say here when I say your name. Board Member Veronese Bortoni. Here. Board Member Denise Lindberg. Here. Board Member Shivani Jain. Here. Board Member Ava Spainhower. Here. And Chair Jared Sylvia.

Here. A quorum is present. I'll now open for items from the audience. Recording secretary, are there any audience members?

There was one audience member tonight, Erica. Thank you.

All right. Go ahead and go up to the front.

I've never done this before, so I need to prepare any notes.

Hey, you guys have three minutes, and we can't answer any questions.

That's fine. Okay, my name is Erica Schliep, so I'm a Kirkland resident. Last week I attended, or I went to the Kirkland Park swimming pool with my son and my infant daughter, and I was shocked by one of the policies that there is a $7 fee for anyone who enters, including a one-day-old baby. which most of the time they're sleeping in their car seats or in their strollers anyway. They're not really using the facility. So I looked at surrounding areas to see, hey, is this a common feed? And it's not in Seattle. It's not in Bothell. It's not in... So Homish and Bellevue, they have discounted rates. So it seems like this is the only area where everyone's charged the exact same fee, regardless of how they're actually going to use the facility. And that bothered me enough that I decided to come to this meeting and raise that as I think that we should relook at that fee. Not so much for adults because I would be sitting there with her. I could get in the water or not get in the water, but for infants or children under one year of age. They're not using it in the same way that a 10-year-old would or an adult would, and I don't think that they should be charged the same fee. I actually don't think they should be charged a fee at all. That's it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. I think since there's no other audience members, we'll close this portion of the meeting. You are welcome to stay for the remainder or whatever you'd like.

Yeah, I'll just...

John Pimentel, All right, moving on to approval of the minutes, the May 27 June 24 and July 22 meeting minute drafts which should be given our board packets, are there any corrections or amendments to the minutes. John Pimentel, Hearing none minutes are approved as presented.

Before we jump into business, can I say a few words?

Yeah. Adding it to the agenda. Adding it to the agenda, yes. Feel free, John.

So before we jump into business, you may recognize a couple new faces, or seen a couple new faces here tonight. So we do have two new board members. We also have a new staff member who I'll introduce joining us virtually. And I do have an announcement that Kathy, Board Member Kearney, has resigned from her. So she had personal issues going on. She decided to step back from the board. So that's why she's not here tonight. Juliana's stuck in travel plans arise. So she was not able to get here in time. But I would love to introduce Ava Steinhauer and Shivani Jain to Parkboard. I'd love to have the two of you just introduce yourselves, tell us why you're interested in being on Parkboard. And I always like to ask people what your favorite Kirkland Park is at the same time. And then we'll go around and introduce who we are. I'll let you guys know who we are. And then I'll show you guys who Nick is. And then we'll get back to business.

Hi, I'm Shivani. I've been here for 12 years. I love all the parks of Kirkland. I especially love the waterfront parks. And I and my daughter, who's now in college, have used most of the parks and all of the park programming. And now that she's gone to college, I have more time. I'd love to be involved and make sure that everyone else avails of these amazing opportunities.

Insider info into park works.

I'm Ava, I'm 16. I just joined as a youth member and I'm here because my mom really encouraged me because me and my grandpa used to go to the parks all the time and we really enjoyed it. So she thought it would be good for me to take care of the parks now that I'm older.

It's a great opportunity for you to learn more about the parks and also we love to hear your feedback from the youth perspective because we're one One element, so. If the rest of the board members would like to introduce themselves, and then we can have staff introduce ourselves.

So, Jared, do you want to start? I'll start. I've been with Park Board maybe a year, year and a half.

Favorite park?

Favorite park, Juanita Beach.

Jared? I've been on Park Board for two and a half years. My favorite park is probably O'Odenny.

I'm Denise. I've been on the board, same as Bernice. So like, you're in the little bit. I was gonna say, oh, Denny, but I guess all day. You can share. I don't like it as much as you. A lot of people do.

I'm Sarah Schellenberger. I work as the recreation manager. I've been with the city for about seven years, and I have lots of parks I enjoy.

I think my current favorite is Peter Kirk Park.

I'm Adam Queens. I'm the recreation supervisor at the North Kirkland Community Center, which means my favorite park is the North Kirkland Community Center.

Good answer, good answer.

John Lillard, i'm john Lloyd i'm the deputy director for the department and I. John Lillard, Peter Kirk is my favorite part as well. John Lillard, First Parker spent any good time so.

Emily and the administrative assistant i've been with the city for five years, and I think my favorite part is wanting to pay for the wildlife viewing.

My name is Jason Fallon. I took my favorite part, but I also love wanting to be because it's where I asked my wife to marry me. It's a special place. The folks that I work with are the ones out there all kinds of cool stuff, those capital improvements and acquisitions and developments. I'm going to say it for a couple minutes, for a few.

Mariah Gill, I've met you both, but I'm the Parks Planning and Development Manager, and I work with Jason over on the operations side of the house. My favorite park is Waverly, because I love to swim there, and it has great toddler playground activities, so

I'm Marika Burgess. I'm the events and services manager. I've been with the city for five years. And my favorite park is Heritage Park.

So we also have on the, not on the screen, you can't see right now, but you can see his name. Nick is our new senior management analyst with the department. He's been with us for about two weeks now, I feel. So like I said, he is going to be involved in all sorts of different projects with the department. And you'll probably see him more in the future when he makes future presentations, but he wanted to kind of get to know how Parkport operates. So he wanted to attend virtually tonight. So we said, sure. So Nick, if you want to say anything, you're welcome to. Otherwise, you can just say hi.

Yeah, can everybody hear me okay?

All right. Good evening, Park Board. It's a pleasure to meet you virtually. I'm hoping to be at the next Park Board meeting in person. So I'll get to meet you then. But as John said, I'm the senior management analyst. Just started last week. So I'm getting my bearings, meeting everybody and looking forward to seeing you. And one of my favorite parks is Watershed Park. Thank you.

Welcome back. Okay, one other thing I'll just mention now for everyone is there's new technology in the room. If you didn't notice, we have a nice big new screen and a secondary screen. And we also have new speakers and microphones. And Emily let me know that the microphones are very good. So side conversations and whatnot will be picked up in the recording. So just FYI, think about that. keep that in mind as we go through the this meeting with the new tech all right well welcome you both appreciate it uh we'll now move into the business items uh portion of the meeting the first item uh for tonight is donation recognition and that's going to be presented by recreation manager uh sarah Sellen Barger.

You're good. Sellen Barger. It's a mouthful.

All right. Thank you, Sarah.

Cool. Thanks, Jared. Adam, do you want to come join me? So I'm going to invite Debbie and Melissa to come up here too. We're delighted to have Debbie Walford and Melissa Kloots here from the Kirkland Dance Center joining us tonight. Debbie and Melissa are board members with Kirkland Dance Center who generously donated $10,000 to the city to go towards operations and the scholarship fund supporting North Kirkland Community Center.

And we are truly so grateful for your donation. The money is literally going to help hundreds of people in the community participate in recreation programs that they wouldn't otherwise be able to participate in.

including dance classes and dance camps at NKCC. And then another portion of the donation is going to offset operating funds.

And Adam has some, do you want to share what you're envisioning? When we were talking about with my staff, like where we could see some of this money going, we talked about maybe having a ballet shoe and a tap shoe library. So there's no barriers to participation. So when kids come in, if they can't afford it or they just need to borrow, they'll be able to have access.

And to recognize your donation and express our gratitude, we have a few things for you tonight. So we have a certificate of appreciation for you. We have a letter of gratitude as well. Thank you. And then Adam has the shiniest, coolest one. I'm going to let him share and show.

So it says, thank you to the Kirkland Dance Studio for their generous support of the North Kirkland Community Center, making recreation, dance, and lifelong learning more accessible to the community. And we'll have that in the dance room.

I love that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you guys so much.

Yeah, we're so grateful. And you're just continuing to have such an impact in the community and going to facilitate ongoing learning

learning and enrichment and people getting to build community yeah that's fantastic it was just a way of us to keep our legacy going and our missions aligned uh so much that we thought why not just do this make a partnership and you know keep things going so thank you so much thank you all right thank you so much thank you

The next item of business is a team building activity. So this will be led by events and services manager. All right. You want to take it away?

Yes, thank you. So we have new folks here, and it's the end of summer, and we've got a great amount of staff. So we thought it'd be a nice opportunity to briefly do a team building activity. This is just going to be fun and short and sweet, no longer than about 15 minutes. So I'll explain it first, and then we'll get into four groups of three, because there's 12 of us. It has to be a mixture of staff and park board members in the teams. And basically what we're going to do is just connect. And as a group, we're going to have the first six minutes, you're going to create a simple and imaginary best day ever in one of our Kirkland parks. And we have a list of different parks you can choose. And of course, we have amenities in our parks. We've all got that. But I also am hoping that we're going to focus on how being in our parks makes people feel. So I'm going to give you some directions, and it has some ideas on what you guys can do. And then we'll rip off a piece of paper here. So each one person in a group, go rip off a piece of paper and then grab a Sharpie. And then you can go ahead and envision your best day in your park. And there you go. I'm just going to pass this out. Everyone will have one. And then you can get into groups. Three, four groups of three. And then we can go from there and I'll time it for six minutes so that we can keep things going. Yeah, I can count us off. Sure. Okay. So one, two. Oh, well, we got to have a mixture. Okay. Yeah.

One, two, three.

Four. Three groups.

I thought there were 12 if you include me. Okay. One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. Why is this not working? I'm sorry. We're the short one. Do you want three groups or four groups? Let's just do three drips.

Okay. Yeah. So we'll count by threes. Yes. Okay.

It's just your own mix.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

Okay. One, two, three.

One, two, three. Two, three. It's okay. I'm sorry. I'm very embarrassed.

You're good. Let's go ahead and get into our groups.

One's over there. Two's back here. Three's over there.

Yep. And then one person from your group will grab a piece of paper. Two over here. Two, seven, nine. I'm three.

Three go right here.

I'm a three. Fifty threes. We go. We're going to get a piece of paper. Well, let's grab a pen. So let's do one of the news. You're a one. You know, you're not your pen. Avar, you're a one. Awesome. Are you a one too? Anyone else? I'm going to be a chair on the other side.

Oh, Emily, you have the same idea. Yeah. Paper.

Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper.

Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper.

Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper.

Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper.

Paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Okay, so go ahead. Mariah was a three. I think I might have.

Mariah, you're a three. All right, I'm just going to set the timer for six minutes.

Okay.

All right. How about, yeah, make a park and then make a day.

What park are we doing? What park do you want? You said your favorite was in there. Oh, Denny's. i mean i i always like his the same it's pretty like non-stop little art sculpture things there's like one of the Okay. Yeah.

During COVID, when they're outside, they wouldn't have, like, clay in the lake or in the river.

One word or phrase. Water. Leisure. Feeling. Like. Okay. Oh, I can't. Yeah. Oh, it's actually on the video. Yeah. So, whoa.

Like the bunches here, like the big table. I don't know. I am very. I don't know.

Again, on par. Is that a part of cooking? That's not part. It's not public. It's all private. And then what do we think about a feature? There is a shelter. I think it's a gathering. Gotta walk it off. Let everything set up. I don't know if the play is the playground. Yeah.

My kids love to, like, put stuff in their chat.

Oh, sure.

And also, we've got it with, like, the boat on the other end. It's an exciting story.

It's going to be a great day.

I've not actually heard anybody.

I love it. I love it. So that could be our great day in this moment is that Crete going on. Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to do my thing. Playing in the street for an hour. And what did you do? The kids. The kids are finding out. And we went in the show. That's true.

There's a lot of kids there. Yeah. So maybe, yeah, man. Are you enjoying them? Where are we going next? What's the point of joining?

people watch because it's like a nice kind of like area especially in our area yeah like relax and look at the chaos and see people having fun and right so i think uh watch it's play yeah

You don't have to do it right now.

Every time I see a water branch. Yeah. Particularly that one, I think, because you feel like you're laying out.

You get a little, like, forest cleanse. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I did it a couple years ago. Oh, that's right. Right off the screen.

Oh, which one that is? It's down in the south. Yeah, I mean, I figured from Berlin.

Oh, I don't even know what street it was on.

It's in the middle of a bridge. People can see it, and then we can get London. I need it.

I was like, I haven't been, I knew it was kind of a neighborhood, like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it is big.

We have the first two in. So we're birdwatching. Oh, I think we got. All right. Yeah. Just one more minute.

Okay. One more minute extension. No problem. We're only at noon.

Oh, that's a long day at the park. Oh, okay. I love that. Okay. Great. We didn't have a good show our whole day. I mean, we're having picnic, right? Yeah. So you put like six in there, and you put six in there, and you put six in there. Yeah, that's a nice tradition. I haven't been to that dog park in a while. There's a nice little community.

That open area.

There's a bigger area. And like the nature sounds to your point. They have some benches. They have like the water dish. They have enough exercise. there's some things like The few years ago, they were like, oh, 30 seconds. We were watching in the early 70s.

It was a branch. So they weren't going to worry about it. So that's a real.

i was like i'm sure okay 10 seconds um

okay so now we just need to pick one person from your group to very quickly present your group's great day for about a minute each or so to your and then what we'll do afterward is i mean i can't um we'll think about as a group what what reflection you what one word reflection you have about your park or your park experience so how about this group first okay

So we decided Edith Moulton as our great day park location, partly because there's so much to do there. There's the picnic shelter, there's the playground, there's the lawn area, there's restaurants, there's trails, there's the creek for kids to play in. We're playing poo sticks in the creek. For people who don't know what that is, it's like Winnie the Pooh. You drop a stick in on one side of the bridge and then the stick flows and you run over to the other side of the bridge and you look for your stick to come through. So yeah, playing in the stream, the dog park. So yeah, lots of different things to do. But playing in the stream was kind of our wow moment that we talked about. And the word that came to mind was refreshed. What did I miss? Anything else, team? That was great. Yeah, it was wonderful. Wonderful. How about us? I'll do this.

Thank you. We chose Totem Lake. One of the pieces, as we were talking, that came to my mind was like, what's iconic about that park? And it's, I'm a very practical person, but I thought like the seating is really comfortable, like the long table where you can have like several families kind of like farm style, kind of like gathering and watching the kids play. It's a really great gathering place when you're coming from either Totem Lake or Whole Foods or like walking through the cross-curriculum corridor. So there's like a lot of like convenience to get to it. And there's like a lot of fun that surrounds it, which makes it, a great gathering spot um so for us or one of the things this is something that i used to do with my kids all the time like we would uh drive our bikes from home take it to whole foods we would buy sushi or some snacks or something take them to the park spend there like one or two hours letting the kids like run like crazy and we'd be sitting in a chair and relaxing because like you get like everyone is kind of like tight in that one space so you don't have to be like looking at five miles wondering where your kid is at um so watching kids and watching people and just relaxing all together um and another thing that um that we brought up is the notion of like what makes it special again speaking about the surrounding areas like how you can stand on the on the boardwalk and like watch nature from the top and see like uh i don't know like there's a It's just like very special when you're like in the midst of the city, but you're still like in the nature. So it feels really special. And I think at the end of the day, you walk out of there like really appreciative that the park is there in such a like urban area. But still, it feels like very refreshing and very like it kind of like renews you. But you're also walk away thankful for the memories that you built in your time there.

Yeah, I guess we didn't come up with our one word takeaway for this.

So grateful.

Yeah, grateful. Yeah, thanks. That's wonderful. Love it. Thank you for presenting slides lecture. Yeah.

So we couldn't pick just one park because all of them are great. And so we are going to spend a great day throughout all of our parks. We are starting with a 6 a.m. swim at Waverly, which that in itself gets a wow. That's the first thing Mariah wanted to do with her great dance part. So after we swim at Lake Lee, we're going to head downtown and we're going to get some coffee and we're going to spend some time at Marina Park just to check out the waterfront. Then at 9, we're going to walk down the waterfront. We're going to go fishing at Marsh Park because you might be able to enjoy our waterfront and take advantage of it. Then we're going to go play some pickleball at 10 at Peter Kirk Park because we're going to take advantage of those new courts. Hopefully there's some courts available by then. At 11, we're going to go pick up Bo and we're going to take him to the dog park at Juanita Beach. And then we're going to eat lunch at Juanita. And then at 1pm, we're going to go to Bay Park and check out the wildlife. Then at 2, we're going to go to Crestwoods and watch some softball games. 3 o'clock, we're going to take the CKC out to Total Lake Park and just check that park out. And then we're going to finish up our long day at Happy Hour in Total Lake somewhere. And the word we picked was exhausting.

There's so much to do in our room. You guys took full advantage of what Kirkland has to offer. And you just, you really. Yeah. We missed that we took the stairs up to Crestwood.

I didn't write stairs. I just wrote Crestwood.

Well, thank you, everyone, for that. Oh, thanks. And I'll do better with my mask the next time, if given the opportunity. Thanks, Margo. Thank you. Do I get to collect this, or do you want to keep it?

Your life is kind of a first meeting type of thing. Mariah Meachum, For your mom. Mariah Meachum, First meeting.

Mariah Meachum, Yes, love the art.

Okay. We will keep moving. Sounds good. Okay. Next. Thank you.

No, you're welcome. Thank you, everybody.

Next item of business is an update on green branding and way finding development manager Mariah.

So I assume you've all read the memo. So today I'm just going to give a brief update on the branding and wayfinding project behind the Green Loop. So a little background because I know we have some new members. The Green Loop is in the Penn Hill neighborhood, also the Juanita, kind of borders the Juanita neighborhood as well. And the concept is to connect a lot of our native or natural parks and open spaces in that area with a continuous trail. We've been working on the planning behind that for about a year now. And we've gotten some levy funding passed through from King County to help fund the planning of this project of the Greenland. So we're still in the planning stage. We have started to look at really key acquisitions to help connect the trail sections. And our big push this summer is getting the implementation plan completed. We do have levy funding that is expiring this year. And so that is where we're prioritizing the branding and wayfinding portion of the project. So why is branding and wayfinding important? It helps create an identity. So the Green Move, we want to have an identity that the community can connect with, that it's identifiable when you're talking regionally, so it can possibly bring in tourism. But most importantly, when you're hiking the Green Loop or walking the Green Loop or biking the Green Loop, you know you're on the Green Loop. And it's something that, especially in the planning stages, because it's such a long-term project, it will help keep the focus on the Green Loop. So we feel like it's very important, especially even though it's early in the planning and development stage, to have an identity that we can always come back to moving forward for however long it takes us to complete this project.

Oh yeah.

So mention the levy funding that's expiring. So we're using that funding so it doesn't go away essentially. Again, creating an identity. And ultimately, we want to create tools that are user friendly and welcoming to community members and users from elsewhere. So whether that's map signage and trail wayfinding, you know, biomarkers and the like, we want to make sure that those are inclusive and accessible. And so we've hired a We've hired a consultant OTAC through our typical PROCEDURE. AND THEY ARE GOING TO GUIDE US THROUGH THIS PROCESS. THEY HAVE COMPLETED THE DISCOVERY PHASE OF THE PROJECT, WHICH BASICALLY THEY REVIEW ALL OF OUR PLANNING DOCUMENTS, OUR PROS PLAN, OUR SUSTAINABILITY PLAN, OUR DEIB PLAN, COMP PLAN, ZONING CODES AND THE LIKE. AND THEY MAKE SURE THAT WHEN THEY'RE MOVING FORWARD WITH THEIR DESIGN, IT MEETS ALL OF THE CITY'S REQUIREMENTS. The next step is to create two to four conceptual visions for the Green Loop brand, and so we're expecting to get those in the next few days. I don't have any prepared yet today to share, but by the next meeting, we'll definitely have two to four, and you'll actually see those before the next meeting, and I'll get into that in a second. Once we have those concepts, we'll meet internally, make sure that they meet our staff needs, you know, for maintenance and and that they meet the overarching kind of city of Kirkland identity. And then we'll be seeking community input through an online survey where you can actually view the concepts and provide feedback. And I'll get into a little bit more of what we're looking for when we ask the community, like, what do you think about these concepts? Because I think it is a little, at this stage, it might feel a little I've gotten questions in the past about, you know, why are you doing branding? What are you finding now before you have a trail? And so I want to make sure I answer those tonight, that question tonight. So as I mentioned, right now we don't have, We're working on those concepts within the next several days by the 9th of September. I will have an email from me that invites you to participate in this outreach, this survey and provide feedback on the different concepts that we have in that.

Outreach campaign will remain open through the 25th.

So we'll have an opportunity on the 23rd at our next parkour meeting to go through the concepts together and discuss in more detail any thoughts or ideas that you have about those concepts. I also invite you to share anything you have now that you think is really important for the designers to consider as they move forward with this brand identity for the green loop. Our goal is to have the branding and wayfinding toolkit, we're calling it, so a sign hierarchy and the brand finalized by wintertime, and it'll be incorporated into the implementation plan. So when I talk about sign hierarchy and kind of brand identity, I wanted to provide a few examples. examples um if you're like me this isn't really my world branding but um maybe for some of you this is your bread and butter um but here are a couple no winter A couple of examples. This is actually from the city of Tukwila. They did a similar kind of sign trail wayfinding project with OTAC. This is an OTAC example. And they actually used Pacific Northwest animals to kind of identify different types of amenities and then the different color schemes to further differentiate trail segments or events or whatever it was. And you can see the different, you know, these are like mile markers. There's an interpretive sign here. There's more traditional street signage. And you can tell that it's all part of one system. And so this is kind of what we're talking about as far as the sign hierarchy. And then the branding, I think the San Juan example is a good example of kind of this logo being the brand of the San Juan Islands, and then how that kind of can be pulled out into a different sign art hierarchy. And so we're looking to accomplish something similar for the green loop, something that's recognizable, but that can be pulled out and simplified into easily maintainable and identifiable and readable user-friendly functional signage. So this is where I talk about what we're looking for. So this is really important. As park board, you do help, you know, provide a connection to the community. And so we're really asking for you all to tell us what does the Green Loop identity look like? Um, so does it, you know, when you're looking at these concepts, please try to ask yourself some of these questions, you know, does it, when you look at this concept, do you see a green loop? Do you see the green loop that you've envisioned in your heads or heard about, um, you know, community members, um, discuss, um, And then another part of that is, is it part of the Kirkland kind of brand? And I think, you know, we all live and work in Kirkland. Kirkland does have a very distinctive feel. I mean, it's our waterfront parks. It's our logo. It's our beautiful ballparks. You know, we have so many great parks in Kirkland. I think that there's this sense of place that most people who live and work here kind of feel. And so now we're just asking to make it tangible essentially um and so and then finally again welcoming experience we want to make sure that the signage is um welcoming and and and inclusive as much as possible um we are going to be looking at you know different languages and seeing how we can um accomplish that while also not cluttering um how sign reads so that's something that we'll be exploring with the consultant um and so definitely those the welcoming experience at this point we'll just be looking at the concepts and kind of deciding if there's anything off-putting to it um especially culturally but when we get further along um just know that you know we'll be looking at that in a lot, like from a DEIB lens as well. And then finally, when you're on a trail, what do you need? Again, another example, kind of the sign hierarchy that we're looking at. So you can see this is a trailhead sign. Again, you have more of a connector kind of road sign. And then it gets all the way down to like a pavement marker here, where you might just have the green loop logo. And that might be for a sidewalk section. I believe that's, oh, I kind of talked about this. So we've completed contracting and discovery, moving into concept development. We'll refine the brand after outreach and then publish in the winter. Any questions on branding and weight binding of the green loop?

PB, David Ensign he or him, One thing I noticed in the memo right was the point around the city, not right now, having a particularly consistent park and trail kind of way finding branding and I thought it was a good point to bring up yes, will you do just even some general work on that with the city to kind of. and other things, is that part of the plan?

Yes, and thank you for asking that because I actually meant to mention that in my presentation and I just missed it. So another tool we're using, we have funding for this through the Green Loop, but we know and we've actually been wanting to do a park-wide branding and wayfinding signage project for many years now. It's been on our CIP and it continually gets defunded for other projects. So we're hoping to use this as the foundation to scale up to the rest of the parks. So while we do want a very clear green loop identity, we also want something that will eventually work within a larger parks branding and wayfinding. So The green loop will be another amenity, so to speak, just like the ball fields at Crestwoods will be an amenity. And that all needs to work together in the future with a park-wide branding wayfinding. So this is sort of a little backwards than what is typically done, but we're working with the resources we have. And we've made it really clear to the consultants that this does need to be kind of the foundational block that we grow from and can scale up from.

I'll add a small bit. One thing you'll hear next month is an update to our KMC park rules. And so there's a bunch of signage that will be tied into this project that we'll be doing because there's some new rules to the sites. So all that signage throughout the whole system will have to be updated. So part of it will tie in and we'll try to make a little connection. Okay, cool. That's great.

And the neat thing about the Green Loop is it does connect so many different types of resources. So you have your open space, natural areas, you have county owned park facilities that have the baseball fields and playground. And then you also have, you know, O'odham, which is a lakefront park. So you do have quite a few different park types being connected by the Green Loop. And so I think it is a good little microcosm of what we have in the rest of Kirkland. we should be able to use that to scale out. On your shot, can you go back to your timeline?

Would this be deployed on segments that will be part of the green, like Odeni and others earlier, or will it be rolled out all at once?

Yeah, so we'll be getting a toolkit from the consultant that gives us all the proper files that we can then produce the signs from. And that way the city will own those files and we can use them hopefully for a very long time until, you know, they are the thing of floppy disks. I don't know. But that's the goal. So that way, as we roll out new sections of trail, we can implement the sign type that will be appropriate for that trail section. So for example, We've gotten this commerce grant from the state for $500,000 to build the section in the northeastern quadrant of the Green Loop. We're still working through the contract with the Department of Commerce right now, so no real action has happened with that. But here in the next few months, we're going to start planning that section. And that very well could be the first official green loop section that's built on public lands. And so we'll have the toolkit and be able to actually put the proper signage, the mile markers, the signal, the trail markers, and you'll get a kind of big example of what the rest of the green loop could look like in the future. And then as we build out, we'll keep adding. But yeah, it won't be all at once. And I think, Yeah, there is some concern on funding. We'll have the toolkit, but bulk producing all the signage is quite expensive. So I think doing it in stages makes a lot of sense for the project.

I think it'll help, too, from a branding awareness standpoint. If people start seeing the signs, they'll get more interested in what it is and that can help drive support to make sure it continues to move forward.

Absolutely. I do think it's going to create a little momentum, which is really important, especially from an acquisition standpoint.

Other questions or comments? I have one final question on the green more generally. Is it been decided that it's just going to be Kirkland? I feel like the Finnell neighborhood association had a dream of it going into Kenmore as well. Is that still on the table or not?

I think that there's the future is I can't say what will happen in the future. Right now the scope of the project that we have funding for is to do the Kirkland

loop.

I think that there could be opportunities in the future to extend into Kenmore, especially, well, depending on what happens with kind of the last year, campus and St. Edwards. Yeah, partnerships are definitely there could be opportunity for better partnerships. But right now, our focus is the Kirkland. Awesome.

Yeah. Thank you, Mariah.

My pleasure.

All right, next I'm a business is a revisit of the park board work plan, and this will be led by administrative assistant Emily.

Or did suggest that we revisit our work plan, now that we've had a lot of activity this summer. I did a review and identified at least a handful of items. Some of these are items that we had talked about early on this year after some of our discussions with city council about adding to the work plan, like the green loop implementation. And then we have some new items that have come up in the current year, like the church property acquisition. So I will kind of jump right into it by these are the specific and these were outlined in the memo as well. These were the highest I felt priority ones. The others are primarily housekeeping or very minor adjustment items, at least right now. And obviously, if you have any other ideas, we can add those on as well. So several of these are going to be, the first two are going to be updates to an existing work plan item, and then the second two, the former church property and the green loop, are going to be brand new items for the board work plan. The original version of the Peter Kirkpool redevelopment item had the board in a more active role supporting the long-term development of the pool. drafted a proposal that has uh that item moving down into our long-term project section of our work plan uh the council i believe at the july 21st meeting um approved the phased approach to the peter kirk pool activities um so we're starting to move forward on that and it will kind of be a very slow roll and so that will be a continually something that will be continuing to update um the board on but it may not be as elevated as it was in the recent push that we had to prioritize you know specific pool funding for a specific enclosure or that type of thing so That is the primary update to this. It's slightly more passive. It matches the other kind of template language that we use for that level of items in the work plan. And I have also started to add in the italics in the bottom is an estimated duration. And for the board, a lot of these items are going to be pretty long term. So for the phased approach of the pool development, I don't think I think I forgot to check this one with Mariah, but I was thinking five to 10 years. Is that correct for a phased approach or?

That project's actually shifted a little bit. So the enclosure is really off the table, like we talked about last month. So we are proceeding with the activity pool redevelopment, mechanical pool, mechanical upgrades, and bathhouse expansion. I think it's on the schedule for the November meeting to give you guys a good detailed update of where we're at, because we should be a lot further along and get a lot more information by then. The enclosure, five to 10 years out is probably a good guess.

The staff feel like that feels fair, five to 10 years for the, or just for the general evolution of the project. And obviously if anything comes up again, we can always reescalate it back to an active item.

I mean, it'll be an active construction project starting next spring in some way, shape or form. And then I think a lot of the work will happen fall of 27 after the season.

And it'll wrap up by spring of 28.

So. HAB-Terry Palmos- A lot more information. HAB-Terry Palmos- But long term five to 10 years. HAB-Terry Palmos- Okay, it will be close.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- feel okay about roommate having it remain and updates item, rather than an active item at this point with active construction it'll be kind of the standard. types of informational updates that Mariah will give. There's feedback at certain points. Some of it's just, yes, still going. Yes, it's late, whatever it might be.

Questions, comments?

I'm wondering with regard to maximizing access to swim lessons, are there alternatives we can be looking at and in the near term that we can be more active.

By November, we'll have more information. Like I said, part of the project is replacing the waiting pool with an activity pool. that's what we'll bring for feedback is the concepts of that.

Yeah. I guess I'm just, I understand that the enclosure is now long-term, but it seems like there's still active steps we can be taking in the meantime. And so I don't know that I love us like moving back to totally passive here, because I think it is a priority for a lot of the people on the board to make sure that we are in the short-term increasing access to some hours until the activity pool is built.

Okay, I can take it. I can maybe put it a little bit in the middle and use some of the more of the original language. I'll probably add the addition I think of the estimated duration I think is probably the key part and that is also something that council had asked us about is how long are these projects supposed to take and of course for us some of these things are going to take a decade and it'll kind of just hang out there on the work plan but I can I also kind of was on the fence on this item of like how the level of the board role and how much we would still be requiring community effort to drum up support for pool improvements and that type of thing. So I'm not sure if other staff want to give input on how much support they think will be required or if it's moved into more of a standard construction phase.

Sounds like maybe it's just going to be the next few months.

It's going to sit there and you're not going to hear anything. And then in a few months, you'll hear a lot more that you'll have a lot more active participation.

So yeah, whatever. So let's keep it on the agenda for November. So what the updates are, I think it's kind of like the pool itself, the redevelopment is to prioritize, but ensuring the swim lessons is prioritized. I think that's what I was changing. A different, a new line item, just focused on increasing swim lesson access, trying to figure out ways to do that.

What does that mean to you guys, though? Like, we're not going to have a separate discussion about how to increase access to some lessons other than the pool conversations that we're going to have. So unless you want to have other conversations about increasing some lessons, like, why add it to the work plan if it's going to be separate?

Because I want to make sure it doesn't just get rolled up as a CIP project because it's an operational discussion job, right?

I just want to make sure that we're all aware of what we're asking for.

Yeah, right.

Because putting it on a different list doesn't make a difference from one list or another list.

The other thing I'll also keep in mind during this discussion as well, I'm already starting to think about our upcoming council discussions, which is probably like a good six months away. But this is, you know, we're going to try to get to council every year now that we're kind of back in our habit. So we can continue to discuss this into the winter and be part of a discussion that comes that you get to discuss with council as well. So. No final decisions are expected. We'll keep doing an iterative process. So I'll tweak that one a little bit and pull it into and keep it in the active projects list and maybe refine it a little bit because obviously we do have a lot of other CIP projects. Anything that is a real high priority is already still living in the active projects list as well.

And we can revisit in November on the next step.

Yeah, obviously, all of these. And that is also something to think about for this work plan is how often we want to revisit it, where we are kind of, especially right now, it feels like we're in a situation where our priorities have been changed multiple times in the last, like, what, six months, one year. And so how often we want to be revisiting that work plan again. you know, it's not mandating what we talk about in these meetings, right? It's a guide. So we don't have to, you know, when our priorities change, we can follow what is, you know, active and relevant. And we don't have to revisit the work plan if it's, you know, not necessarily convenient in that moment. And we can be on a schedule for that kind of thing. Or publishing more often. Do you have any comments, John? So also something to think about as we go through all of these items. Like I said, I'm not going to publish any of the changes that we make, but it'll come back in a future iteration. The next item that we have is the updates to the KMC 1180, and that is the park rules item. This was previously department municipal code updates. We had recommended drafted municipal codes for council approval. And I'm proposing that that stays a high priority for the board and that the item changes slightly to be more focused on the actual implementation plan. maybe if i had been thinking a little bit harder about it when we had originally created this work plan that would have been another bullet for instance under this item that there will be a recommendation portion and an implementation portion but we can convert our item to be a more active support role. There will be more to come in the future meetings with Jason and with Nick about what the implementation plan will look like and what kind of engagement will be required. And there will probably be feedback elements as well that we'll ask for from the board.

Sounds good. Next question.

The former church property item will be a new item for the board and that all I've put that as an activation item. We have that as receiving updates only at this point for current staff direction for the item and then like any of our other items providing feedback as needed. The primary reason for keeping it in the long-term updates item is that We're still working with the city manager's office to determine and finance to determine how exactly, we don't currently have funding to activate the site with our own level of staffing. So there may be some intermediary, that's not the word I'm looking for, interim, thank you. We might have some interim activation of the site before, parks department actually is able to activate it with some plan. So for the current time, it'll probably just be updates. And then going forward into towards the end of 2728. That's when we'll start to be looking at funding and parks department activation site. So I feel like a fair representation, Mariah.

Yeah.

Any questions? Yeah.

Sounds good.

The green loop is also new. We've seen a version from a while ago. Um, the, this is some of our template language a little bit here, the support role for the board, especially for a long-term project like this is going to be the promotion and engagement with the community. Um, receiving updates on acquisitions as they occur. That one will not be an engagement item necessarily. That one will remain updates only as far as confidentiality and that type of thing is concerned. I don't think I included all of the kind of nuance that maybe we wanted to add about potentially having board members or asking board members to help us build connections with potential acquisitions, especially as we are in the very early stages of the project. And like some of our other items, full implementation could take between 10 and 20 years. but would, as we've talked about several times now, a lot of community engagement to come and the community is really interested in the project, you're sure as well.

Yeah.

Everyone good?

Okay.

The only change made to this item, this is a slightly different format from the others, The topic was CIP updates. The original text is in the center column, and then the new text for that item is in the far column. Receiving monthly, I eliminated some of the specific examples. We just don't really need them. And I believe some of the original examples had also been moved up, like the green loop had been moved up into their own work plan item. These last few are going to be all administrative-y items, just clarifications more than anything else. The only addition to the PROS plan was to add the timeline or the renewal timeline. We're starting to work our way towards the renewal of the PROS plan. Right now it's updates or in the off season, I guess it's updates on the PROS plan. But when we are in the active renewal process, that will be bumped up to a higher priority for the board. I think that was it. And as I kind of had briefly mentioned before, We're looking forward to more work plan revisits for the fall, a future upcoming joint session with council. I'll probably aim for a similar time, maybe March. We haven't put it on the council calendar yet, but maybe late winter next year will probably be the time we look for again so that should continue to come up for us or this will continue to come up for us as we start preparing for that. And I think in our upcoming meetings, we also have some time set aside to chat about our joint session and what kinds of things we want to take so we can keep these items in mind and discuss them more.

Sounds good. Any final comments or questions for Emily?

I'm just going to say in all these as we're moving forward, I'd love to like Keep in mind what we want to do differently versus what we did with the crack and ice Plex in terms of communicating. I mean, I think that our communication and engagement with the Community is one of the places where we can best serve and so. Being thoughtful as we move into the phases where that's more relevant of like what might we want to change versus how we engaged with. The project yeah.

And obviously I didn't touch at all on the board engagement is still an active project on the list. We haven't revisited it for a while. But this fall, and especially I think this winter will be a good time to revisit now that we've had several board members come and do some of our events. We're already, even without an official engagement plan, we're already doing a lot more engagement work than we have been in the past or in recent past, I'll say. And so once you've all gotten a chance to have those experiences, that might also be a good opportunity to come back and talk about the engagement plan. And, you know, if, again, if you were doing it, what kinds of things would you want to do or look back on you know, your tabling experiences and that type of thing and what you would want to advise a new board member. Sounds great. when would you want to talk about, do you have anything, are we ready to talk about a new, an updated engagement plan at a next meeting? I don't have any, you know, for the work plan, I can identify some specific areas, you know, where we wanted to improve, but I don't have any recommendations necessarily for an updated engagement plan. So I'll kind of leave it up to the board to decide when you'd like to revisit that topic. And if you, any of you have, you know, more that you want to say on it. I can also resend our most recent version of the draft so that it's fresh in your inboxes.

Yeah. Let's talk about it when we talk about agendas. The next few meetings.

Yeah.

If it was on schedule.

Yeah, that works. Open there.

And then these updates seem good. So you'll send us an update of your work plan as well.

I will send a draft. A draft, yeah. Yes.

Awesome. That'd be great. Okay, that's great. Thank you so much, Emily. All right, can we take a quick break?

Yeah.

Awesome. Five minutes back for the CIP dashboard. Okay, next thing with business, CIP dashboard review. This will be presented by Manager Gill.

Hello again. All right. I'm going to go pretty quickly through a lot of the items just in the interest of time. So please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions on specific projects. I'm actually going to go so quickly that I'm going to skip a few. I'm not even going to mention it. Okay. So the only thing I want to mention on the synthetic turf infield project is that we are getting very close to selecting some color options that we're going to take out to the community to help them determine the final color selections for the infield. So stay tuned for that. Of course, you'll be the first to know once that outreach is live. Okay, the Houghton Park and Play. I do have some not-so-awesome news for the skate park and Houghton Park and Play. So about, what, three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, there was an accident, a really unfortunate accident where a car left the freeway and crashed into where we were storing all of our skate park and bike components. features equipment at the Houghton Park and Play. It was a horrific accident and unfortunately the driver didn't make it and a lot of our equipment was damaged. We have an assessor, like an inspector, coming out who will look at the equipment and determine what's solvable at the end of September. And until then, we're working with Washington State Patrol and our insurance to see if we're covered in any way. At this point, there doesn't seem to be evidence that the driver was insured. And so we're working through that internally. Given the situation, we have put the skate park planning and design on hold because a lot of, you know, at least 50% of the design really relied on using the modular feature, reusing the modular features that we have. So for now, unfortunately, I don't have a further update and we will be on hold until we determine what is salvageable. Oh, Danny bridge. I'm working on contracting right now. We have a bridge selected and we will be placing our order and moving that project for all permits are in place other than building permit, which now that we've selected the bridge will be able to finalize design and get the building permit. So we're about eight to 12 weeks out from construction on the bridge.

And do you have a sense of how long it'll take once we start the construction?

Should be fairly quick because it's a prefabricated bridge. So I don't have an actual timeline right now, but we're hoping that's no more than a few weeks. Great.

All right. When that's all said and done, do you give us just kind of like a postmortem? Yes. Just the whole timeline and just walk us through that so we can better understand like The bridge. Yeah, I mean, it's been over a year, right? And it's one of those things that from a.

It happened. It hasn't been a year yet.

Well, 18 to 12 months more. We're starting to get pretty close, aren't we? 18 to 12 weeks more.

Weeks, yeah. We are going to be getting close. And I think that, you know, this has actually moved forward very, very quickly. So I'd be happy to do a breakdown. I can do a little presentation.

I know you're moving as quickly as possible. Just be helpful. Yeah, because it just impacted that park right disruption or to take this long to replace one bridge with another is it's just really unfortunate. And so what, what can we do with government to make that better would be awesome. So, absolutely.

Um,

The only other update I have today is on the Juanita Bay Park expansion. So very, very exciting. We have our first porch light tenants that have moved in. Three tenants that were formerly experiencing homelessness and now have a roof over their head and secure housing. So we're really excited about that. And Port Shite so far seems like to be a good partner. And then we've also started work on the community gardens that will be at the Bonita Bay expansion parcel that we acquired last year. We're essentially using some leftover funding and garden materials that we had from the Miller project. And we have a fence contractor that we've selected through our bidding process and are working through contracting. And our crew has been incredible and already brought water out and are working on starting, they'll be starting, we're doing, we're using the beds from the Hilton Park and Play. And then we're also building a few custom beds. So they'll be bringing materials and getting that work started on Friday. We've already done the layout and everything. So really exciting. Those will be open for spring of 2027. Any questions? specific questions on anything I didn't mention or mentioned?

Just on the CASEL playground survey.

How could I skip over that? See, I was trying to go too fast. Castle Playground. So a concept challenge is underway. So we reached out to all seven KCDA vendors. KCDA is one of our cooperative agreements that we're a party to. And all seven are participating, and many of them are bringing two designs. So it's been really exciting. I've met with all of them. I did a group kind of vendor roundtable and then also have had individual conversations. consultations with each vendor. Really excited about the designs they're bringing forth. We've capped it, you know, we have a budget, we've had certain specifications, you know, making sure that they stay out of the wetland buffer and stay under 500,000. They have to include all the site work, demo, containment, fencing, and it has to be castle-themed. And so by September 8, I will have each vendor give a presentation on their concepts, and then staff will select three to four concepts to move forward into public outreach. And we have, I think at this point, six outreach events scheduled, so the first will be kicked off right now. On the 10th at Mark Twain Block Party, where we'll be tabling and we will be doing token voting for the concepts. Thank you, Jared, for helping me streamline that idea. And then we'll be at City Hall for All, the Wednesday Market, Boys and Girls Club, Cardboard. I'm missing one. We have several. And Sarah Rock is working on getting those updated on the website. We'll also have an online survey component that will dig into more of the design details and elements within each of the designs so that it's not just, you know, hey, this is my favorite design. That's all the information we get. We want to get information from the community online. well we really liked this climber we really like these spinning elements and we liked how the configuration allowed for you know these the younger kids to play you know integrated with the older kids those are the types of design questions we're going to really get to on with the online survey so really exciting stuff quick question there is there regulation or

or a framework of sorts on like thinking about like the redesign around ADA compliance.

Yeah, absolutely. So all of our playgrounds have to be accessible and meet ADA. There's a bunch of different requirements that are associated with that. And playground designers have their own set of kind of regulations that they have to meet. And Jason, you can probably speak more to that actually than I can.

But for like the features themselves, like the inclusive, like there's some like playgrounds that are like more like grounded, that kind of stuff. I don't know if it's regulation or if it's something that came through the surveys of something that people were interested in, like more inclusive.

There was mention of inclusivity, and that is a guideline that I've given to the designers. So ensuring that, for example, that there's a swing that is very inclusive and accessible, and that not only the swing is inclusive and accessible, the design is inclusive and accessible. the surfacing under it is, you know, wheel friendly. That's important. So that's one of the guidelines I've given. And then also ensuring that as many of the features are available to as many of the kits as possible. So that is definitely something that is always a goal of ours and you will see in the concepts that come forward.

Great. Thank you.

There's an organization called Nipsey that all of the like reputable playground Vendors kind of false called national safety playground student and it has everything from like accessibility components to fall zones, all these things kind of surrounded around making sure that that structure is checking those boxes so it's actually kind of cool.

yeah.

Any other questions from around. Good efficient rundown thanks man. John Pimentel, All right, we're moving out of business items communications portion of the agenda first item is the parks community services 2025 annual report. John Pimentel, So the annual report there's a printout on the table. John Pimentel, You also have this in your board packet. John Pimentel, Does any park board members have any questions or comments for. That was quite nice. It's a great summary for very well done. Not sure. So put that together. Sarah.

Sarah.

Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, lots of great highlights of all the events. Y'all do so well done on another great year. Um, yeah. I think the one thing that still was a little, I was trying to understand was the 2020 parks levy priorities and then just how it matched up with the pros plan, what that process was to align that. I don't know if those are actually accurate, 2020, 2012 park levy priorities or what the history of that was.

Park levy priorities are slightly different than the PROS plan. The levy priorities are the specific obligations that they add from the 2012 levy that we are obligated to then report on every year.

So when it was voted on, those were what were?

Yeah, those were the priorities. And obviously in the PROS plan allows us to evolve our active priorities. But because we have money coming from that original levy, we have to continue to report on it.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, There was a resolution or the ordinance when they put that on the ballot was included that we were doing a report on the levy and so that's why this is this the first year, the bridge got by to just call the report, you look at our last couple years and prices in your report for. HAB-Jacques Juilland, parks levy report and annual work is a little bit of both because we're trying to blend that language to get there, so what I took it over it was it was. the levy report. It had some recreation stuff about guarded beaches because that's what the levy paid for, but we didn't talk about the pool or the rec programs or any of the other stuff. And it just felt like we weren't telling our full story. We were telling just little bits and pieces that were tied to the one funding source. And so I wanted to expand it to be a full department annual report. So that's where some of the nuance, that's why that is specifically in there because we are legally obligated to report on the activities used with the 2012 levy. Which is all of our, it all gets blended. Human Services doesn't touch that, don't get me wrong. But all of this covers what's in that levy and then some.

And that levy continues?

Is it ongoing or not? And so there was a significant amount dedicated to capital projects. And then as those capital projects completed, the money transferred into operations. So now it's kind of hard to report on like, oh, look what we accomplished with your money. We maintained the parks. It's not like we built the park anymore. It's like some of those items, like it was to renovate one of your beaches, to renovate Edith Bolton Park, all those items that were in there. So we've completed those projects. Now we're just maintaining them. There's not additional money for new capital projects in that way. Any other questions or comments?

How is this report distributed or made accessible to the community?

It's on our website. We print some hard copies in our various facilities, and it does go to, it's in our packet, obviously, and then it goes to council. It's in their packet.

It's a really comprehensive file.

We could do a better job of spreading the word a little bit more, but it's

you can get some socials or something like that it's like just like really nice year in review kind of like really calls the highlights and yeah really powerful did you drink again?

I did get it Siri's always listening exactly her microphone's on yeah

Okay, we'll keep moving correspondence. No correspondence was received.

I don't believe so.

All right. In the last month, does anyone have any comments or questions about any correspondence from the past? Okay. Park board member reports. All right. Does any park board member have any reports they'd like to share? And also talk about upcoming events. Anyone have anything you want to share?

go for it um john do you remember when i asked you about all the problems in the parks so i'm doing like my own little survey at schools in kirkland try to talk to other teenagers about problems that we're having around conservation and sustainability and then they've been giving their input so i've only collected a few responses but that's like an ongoing project that i'm doing that i wanted you guys to know about cool do you have any And you want to share from that already or you want to wait not really I just started a couple days ago that's been really slow, but I think one school starts i'll be able to get more responses awesome that's great.

um. I'll just share, went to Juanita Neighborhood Association. They had a community picnic. I saw Mariah there manning the parks table, so that was great. Good engagement there from the folks. Juanita folks are very passionate about parks. Nothing big there. I mean, they want to know more about the Green Loop and the Olivia parcel question, but I think they got their questions answered. at the Juanita Market in Bernice and Ava. And so that was a fun outreach event. Not a lot of people coming by, but a few people came by and asked questions about parks. Yeah, people just love the parks. That was the general feedback at that event. So they like the swag we were giving away. So swag's good. Need some new swag.

The overall will be very similar. Okay.

The only thing I would add on top of that is while I was there, there was a strong reaction in seeing the rec guide printed. People were like, oh, how come I didn't get it? That was a common thread. So I understand that there's obviously investment. So I don't know the reason why we don't do the fall guide. But people were reacting very positively like, oh, I didn't get it. It wasn't sent out and people were taking it out. So yeah.

just something to to consider like people react very positively to to a printed guy yeah and and i know this is um before before our division came events and sarah did a lot of work on um i think we did some initial surveying or or and some some research and um

It's also a budget thing. Yeah, right. Printing was the primary driver for that, the printing cost for the guide. But we do send the postcard out to every community member who lives in Kirkland. But it's easier to lose a postcard in your stack of mail than it is a thick, beautiful recreation guide. So that's helpful feedback.

It is nice, though, that people get excited when they see it, which is good. We do print enough where if anyone wanted to go to, you know, that was really interested, we have several here at the different community centers. They're accessible there. And if someone wanted one, we can send one to them. Yeah.

We can easily mail someone. If someone specifically does not want to come to a commuter center and get one, I will mail them one.

I think my point is there was a very positive reaction and people missing it. I just wanted to share that.

That's great.

It would be fun to have it in the library.

Good suggestion.

If you have several copies, maybe you can borrow it. I don't know.

She makes several hundred copies. Oh, yes. We have several boxes of a hundred each. We could give them away for free at the library.

Fall, winter, spring, summer.

But I think you're suggesting just having one or two copies there that everyone can borrow and look through. Sarah's on it.

Plus they can have a poster for a link. Or QR code in the library. So a nice flyer in the copy is over. They still have access to.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, we could very easily do that now is make an image of our front front page of our guide and put a QR code on it and link it to our web page.

Great idea.

Yeah.

Um, one other thing for summer rec, um, some parents expressed frustration with the swim test that Peter Kurt.

Oh, okay.

And the paper copy, um, the lifeguards keep a paper copy for the season for the season. It was lost.

Oh, and so someone had to redo it.

So people had to redo it. Um, and so just something to think about whether that could be translated into a digital copy.

When a kid goes to get a bracelet, they have to remember what day they took it, and then they flip through, so it takes forever to find the kid's name.

I've got three ideas in my head already of ways we can digitize this tomorrow.

It's like 10 minutes of waiting in line while they flip through pages.

I so appreciate you guys sharing that. Thank you. The things we don't know, so we can make some adjustments.

Yeah, that's it.

Good solution. Thank you for part of that. That's an easy thing for us to fix.

I thought, yeah, I thought this is something.

But sometimes if you don't know about it, you don't realize that that's an issue. And it probably isn't an issue until it's an issue. Because it works perfectly until you lose a piece of it. Or keep it out of work.

It's just paper at a pool. That's my experience with paper.

All right. Any other board member reports?

Okay. Moving on to staff updates. Any staff want to have any updates or information they want to share with the board?

Rebecca, you want to go first?

I'll go first. It's been a great summer for events, community building events. Just to share with our new Park Board members, events and services, we do internal events that our coordinators, our team puts together for the community. We also handle some of those outside permitted events where an outside agency wants to come in and do an event like Kirkland Uncorked or, you know, An outside organizer comes to our park and does that, and we provide the permit for that. We also do some customer service. We help do education and outreach, producing things like this, our rec guide, registration, as well as we handle some things around the marina, things of that nature. And so I wanted to share a couple of highlights from these past month. We have an event called International Night Market. And so it's a celebration of different heritages and backgrounds from people all over Kirkland and regionally. And it's a great day. We had about 5,000 people at Juanita Beach Park on the 19th, where we had a stage. We had people doing performances, everything from K-pop to Scottish dancers to Latin dancing to lions dancing. It was really fun. And And a lot of different groups. I think we had 39 different vendor groups of all kinds of international foods. It was great. So that was a fun day. Coming up on September 5th, I want to share a really good moment that we did with Jared at Junk in the Trunk earlier. Because now it's September 5th. we're having our first Spanish language outdoor movie. And that was a direct result of a suggestion from a community member from a tabling day that Jared came out and represented Park Board at Junk in the Trunk. So that was something we felt like we could do. And we did. So we're going to have a food truck. We're kind of making it a little bit more elevated. We're having a food truck. We're doing even doing a little craft, some crafts, and that'll be at Juanita Beach Park as well. So I really like that aspect of it. Sea Spot Splash is coming up. If you don't know what that is, it's the last, you know, once the pool is no longer open for people, before we close it down for the season, the dogs get to play in there and, you know, have a great time. And we turn Lee Johnson Field into an off-leash dog park. So they get to go play in the pool and then go do some off-leash fun there. And then we have the Harvest Festival coming up. And that's happening on October 3rd. And that's one of our bigger events too, which is a great thing. And I know that I don't want to take too much time, but I feel like I want you to get to know us a little bit and what we do. For some permanent events that are coming up, we have right across the bridge. We've got some Kirkland Wednesday Market evening summer concerts. And then also our team puts on the 1E to Friday Market every week. So- And then just one more thing, and that is something just you might be aware of that our team handles the boat launch at Marina Park. And you may not know this, but we sell seasonal boat launch cards. So someone could come and buy a boat launch card and use that over and over again from April until the end of October. And it's a lot more economical than paying one way each time. You just buy a boat launch card. and then they can go off all the time. It's still a great time to buy the boat launch card. So there's still plenty of time left, but every division does so much, but I just wanted to give you a little flavor of some of the things that we do.

Thank you. Just very quickly, we're wrapping up summer camps this week. The pool is doing open swim every afternoon for summer. the rest of the season through Labor Day. But next week they're doing night swim too, from five to seven. So open night swim, which will be fun. And then lifebirds are remaining on duty at the swimming beaches that are open. So right now it's Waverly and Juanita Beach, also through Labor Day. And we are transitioning to fall programs. So we've got... a little bit of a some some people have a little bit of a gap. Some people are going straight from summer camp into after school programs next week. And then K tub is getting ready for the new school year to open as well.

So they'll be welcoming students back next week. Oh, thanks.

Jason, you got anything? Oh, I will. Just a couple things. It is that time of year when we start to lose seasonal stuff to go back to college, and so it's pretty stressful for full-time staff because it's still pretty brisk. It's still busy out there, and it's wonderful and nice, and people are using the parks. Kudos to the staff. We hosted the softball Louisville series. It went really well. A lot of compliments about staff and their ability to kind of zip through and keep the fields beautiful and wonderful and nice, so... because to them but other than that it's been a really good summer lots of uh just lots of nice weather it made a little smoke but a lot long stretches without rain which is kind of tricky and hard for us but also really nice for the customers so it's been been good good summer i will say missing our service at juanita We've gotten a couple of calls about what's going on, but the company line is disclosed, chosen to maintain their site. So that's what it is. All right.

Emily, John.

Nothing for me.

I think I'll reserve comments for the upcoming slides. Okay.

All right. Thank you all for sharing. Comments from the chair? Nothing else from me. So we're done with communications. And we'll go to any other discussion points? I guess the events that you need people to sign up for.

Do you want to do that now? Yeah, technically, just in the slide deck, I should probably move this up. We do have a couple of upcoming events. City Hall for All on Saturday, September 19th, and then Harvest Fest, as Marika mentioned, on Saturday, October 3rd. There's still two volunteer slots available. They're two-hour slots staggered throughout those days, and you'd be... paired with at least one or two staff members during that time. So if you see anything on the board now that you want to jump onto, I can add you to my list or I'll continue recruiting volunteers via email and paying you guys a major.

I can take the city call 224. Okay. I'll let you know tonight. I just got my kid's soccer schedule today. So as soon as I look at it tonight.

Can I have shift two for city all for all? Yes.

And do you only need one or are you going to have two? We can have two, right? But not more than two.

I think we could have two people on a shift if we wanted it. The way that it's set up right now, it's to avoid if we have three or more members becomes an unofficial board meeting. Yeah. Maybe. Either way, keeping it at three is safe. Especially now that we're down Kathy, three is like next to quorum. And we don't want to have quorum at an unsanctioned event. I think with any, the way that the schedule is currently set up, especially if we had somebody either in the mornings or afternoons on either of those days, that would keep us still at our cap of no more than two at a time. Or three just in that short overlapping period. There's also these don't include set up and tear down time. So if you're available prior to these events or after, we can also take volunteers for those as well. Right now, I have it just slated for staff to do set up and tear down, but that is typically the hour before and the hour after.

a lot of people wanting to talk about parks.

And we'll be at City Hall for All. We'll be talking about the Castle Playground. We'll be doing some boating at that booth.

And we'll also be most likely decorating crowns.

Yes, and we'll have an activity. And then we'll also have folks from recreation talking about fall winter programs. And then we'll also have a park rules part of our table as well.

All right, so yeah, check your schedules and see if you can make those ends.

All right, agendas. The other item that we don't have to get into it tonight, it is getting a little bit late and we can come back to it for future discussion when we have our folks back or our other missing folks. We're now down to less than half of our neighborhood liaison assignments are currently active. So it would be a good time to revisit that here in the next couple of months. And we can bump it up to a business item to make sure that we prioritize it. John, do you want to cover our upcoming agendas?

Yeah. So next month, Lynn's going to come to our meeting, our director, and she's going to give a finance training, a little bit about the city's budget overall. But if you have any specific questions about the city's finances or more specifically our finances, please let me know. You can email me or let me know. I can make sure that Lynn gets that incorporated in there. We've talked about the KMC updates and innovation plan next month. playground concept discussion, and Morgan, possibly TB. October, we will have an update for you on the Kraken Community Center operating plans and what we're doing there. I hope that we'll be ready to give you a little more information about that. A couple acquisition updates. And then just a, it's generally just a memo, but a quick five-minute conversation about the upcoming elections. We are required to elect a new chair and vice chair at the last meeting of the year. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Which would be November, based on our meeting in August everyone so they wanted to cancel December so we're gonna skip December November, you know, typically, is a special meeting. HAB-Jacques Juilland, This one up by week, so that we're not meeting the night before thanksgiving because I figured everyone would appreciate that. We will provide a full project update. So like I said, a little bit more information about where we're at with the project, discussion about our joint meeting prep. And I think I actually added on the September meeting, we should look at the dates for the joint meetings. And I'll probably send an email out beforehand for folks to bring calendars and pick dates. Because last time, a few folks were sick, but we had a very late turnout. I'd like to get everyone there for that conversation. But like Emily mentioned earlier, and like you see on the screen, we'll start talking about what we want to discuss with city council a few months out. So we can start discussing that. And then we'll conduct some elections. And there will likely be other things that get plugged in along the way.

Has there really been a year since we've had elections? Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. I feel like it was like two months ago.

I'm happy where you are.

It went really fast.

Back at it. Yep. All the way around. Three more meetings and that's it. 2026 is over.

You've been chair for a year?

I know, right? You've been chair for eight months. Most of this year. It's a blur. Okay.

It's the end of August.

It's time five when you're having fun. It's 2026.

It'll be 2027. 2026 is gone. Awesome. This looks good. All that. If you have any thoughts, let John and Emily know. Um, okay, great. No further comments. We'll close.

What's the last shift for the Harvest Fest? Two to four.

Right. No further comments. We'll close this portion of the agenda. And one last thing I wanted to share with folks. Emily, I sent you an email just now in the picture. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Do you want to pull it up yeah so. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I thought. HAB-Masyn Moyer- staff would get a kick out of this so finnhill middle school at the prep day last week and.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- All right, it'll take me just.

HAB-Terry Palmos- To correct the square in the top.

They had a prep day, and they had class pictures, and my daughter had a class picture, and we celebrate Kirkland. While volunteering at the parade.

That's so beautiful.

If she's ever an elected official, I'll be like, I can't believe it.

It's like a 250 also. That's very cool, Jerry.

Yeah, commercial. Yeah. We don't know how many sizes, but we do have a small handful left. If anyone wants one, I can give them one before they leave if they want.

She wears it all the time.

Yeah. That's great. That's really good.

All right. There being no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all.