City Council - Regular Meeting

August 25th, 2026 at 430 p.m. If you'd please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Thank you. Item three on the agenda is roll call. Ms. Williams, will you please call the roll?

Council members, Nancy Campbell. Jim Dolan. Cameron Moses.

Here.

Michelle Lin. Here. Jenny Koch. Here. Vice Mayor David Diaz.

Here.

Mayor Kal Sheehy.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item four is our public hearing. Item 4.1 is our parks master plan update and progress report. Mr. Kozlowski.

GOOD AFTERNOON, MAYOR AND COUNCIL. TODAY'S PRESENTATION IS AN UPDATE ON WHERE WE ARE AT WITH THE PARKS MASTER PLAN. THE TEAM HAS BEEN WORKING REALLY HARD TO COMPILE ALL THE NECESSARY INFORMATION AS IT PERTAINS TO THE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PLAN, PARK COMMUNITIES INVENTORY, AND ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT FACILITIES. THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS IT'S NECESSARY THAT WE UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MASTER PLAN AND IDENTIFY BOTH THE CURRENT AND FUTURE NEEDS OF THE PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT AND THE NEEDS OF OUR COMMUNITY. As we move through the presentation, just a couple of housekeeping items as far as please provide as much feedback as possible as pertains to the community engagement plan, as well as there will be a slide as part of the presentation for our comparable communities. We provided you with a list of some of those to reference. But please, if there's any other communities that you feel we should be taking a look at as part of this process, we'd love to have some consensus as far as what that looks like moving forward. And with that, I'd be happy to introduce Theresa Jackson, who is our project manager with the Barry Dunn side of things. And with that, I will turn it over to her for the presentation, and staff and myself are available for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome, Ms. Jackson.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. So my name is Teresa Jackson. I'll be your project manager working with Anthony and the team throughout the effort. My background is in parks and recreation. I spent nearly 20 years in municipal parks and recreation before I started consulting about seven years ago. I've had the opportunity to work on projects across the country, but several here in Arizona. One of my first projects was in Kingman, Arizona, just up the road. I also worked in Mesa, Glendale, a number of communities, so really enjoy working in this region and understand some of the challenges and some of the benefits that are specific to agencies here in Arizona. So today I wanted to start out by just going over some of the project goals and the overall schedule. It was quite some time ago when this body adopted or accepted the proposal and adopted the contract to move the project forward. And so I thought it would be good to have a refresh on some of the project goals and that schedule. And then we'll get into that engagement strategy as well as talking about some of our benchmark communities that we've identified thus far. So starting with the goals of the project. So this is really that 10,000 foot view of the system and the development of a roadmap for the future. So really taking a look at our current conditions to understand what some current needs are, but also projecting into the future and trying to understand what those needs are going to look like five and 10 years down the road. And so through conversations to date in our kickoff and also the RFP itself, we really like to highlight and document some of the agency's goals. That way when that final draft comes before you, you can take a look at it and compare it to those original goals and ensure that we met those goals for your agency. So the goals that we have identified, first that foster a healthy and inclusive community. What we are really looking at there is what are the program opportunities available to the community now and how can we continue to provide those opportunities to ensure the community is being active, staying engaged and connected. The next goal is relative to our park system and really enhancing access there. And so we'll be doing a very thorough inventory of your parks, your amenities, and also doing some level of service mapping so we can understand if there's any corners of the community where there's a gap in service. Next, provide a safe community. And really, this is about providing safe parks and gathering places to your community members. And that's from three key perspectives. It's the design, it's the maintenance, and also how the park is operated. Next, we want to promote conservation and environmental stewardship. So really ensuring that through this process, as we make recommendations, we are also ensuring those natural resources are going to continue to be protected over time. And then last, we have the stimulate economic activity and financial stewardship. This is not one that you will always see in a parks and recreation master plan, but Lake Havasu and the channel provides a very unique aspect for the department. And so we'll be taking a look at some connectivity opportunities there between Rotary Park, the channel, and the Riviera property. There we go. So I also want to touch on some of the key aspects that we'll be looking at that will allow us to achieve those goals. So there's a variety of types of analysis across this planning effort with your parks and facilities. I mentioned that inventory and assessment. We actually already had a team out here last month who moved around the community and visited all the parks with Guy and they conducted a thorough inventory as well as scoring of those amenities as well as the parks themselves. So we're gonna be able to compare and contrast how parks are performing against each other and also visually represent that through mapping. We'll be taking a look at your trails as well and looking for any opportunities for enhanced connectivity or expansion of the system. With your programs and services, you have a sizable amount of programs, especially in the aquatics area that you're offering. So we'll be taking a look at some performance trends to see if they've been growing over time, to see if they've hit capacity, to see if there's programs that perhaps it might be time to divest in and replace with a new and upcoming program. Community needs, this is a key aspect of the planning effort, and I'll be diving in specifically to some of those engagement strategies, ensuring that analysis isn't driving recommendations. IT SHOULD REALLY BE A COMBINATION OF WHAT WE HEAR YOUR COMMUNITY NEEDS AND WANTS BUT SUPPORTED BY ANALYSIS APPROPRIATELY. THE LEVEL OF SERVICE WORK IS THE MAPPING. SO DETERMINING IF THERE'S ANY GAPS IN YOUR SYSTEM FOR PROGRAMS, SERVICES, PARKS OR FACILITIES. WE'RE ALSO GOING TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE ORGANIZATION AS IT RELATES TO STAFFING CAPACITY. AS WELL AS OPERATIONS. SO REVIEWING ALL OF THE EXISTING POLICIES TO DETERMINE IF THERE'S ANY GAPS THERE AND WE CAN MAKE SUGGESTIONS AS TO WHAT POLICIES MIGHT BE NEEDED INTO THE FUTURE. BUT REALLY THE GOAL HERE IS TO ENHANCE EFFICIENCIES. AND FINALLY, FUTURE INVESTMENT. SO ULTIMATELY WE WANT TO DEVELOP A PLAN WITH A CLEAR IMPLEMENTATION PLAN THAT INCLUDES YOUR GOALS, YOUR ACTION ITEMS, BUT ALSO FORECAST THE COSTS THAT ARE RELATED TO THOSE ELEMENTS. So taking a look at the schedule. So the project is designed into five key phases. In the beginning, it's really understanding our current conditions, kicking off the project. And that's really what we're focused on this summer. And as I mentioned, we did that inventory with your team already. As we get into the fall and into the winter, that's where our engagement is really going to be focused in understanding community needs. As we get into the early spring, winter, early spring, we should be in a place where the majority of our analysis is complete, and we're working with your team on what the opportunities are in developing a strategy for the future. In the spring, we'll be looking to provide a draft document for the team for review that includes that implementation plan, and then finally adoption in that May-June timeframe of 2027. Are there any questions before I go into engagement strategy?

Questions from members of the council?

Just keep going?

Yeah, please.

Sure, okay. So with our engagement strategy, we really like to use a mixed method approach. And so I'm gonna go over the various types of engagement we'll be using over the course of the planning effort. But another key element is really having a clear understanding as to what we're trying to learn. And so in this situation, we wanna understand what's working well, where we have gaps in the system. We also wanna understand how we should prioritize recommendations. What action will have the biggest or the most significant benefit to your larger community? We also want to understand the demographics and how the community could be changing because that influences our recommendations. So we're ultimately trying to get to what should the future system look like once we've identified those gaps with your community? And then what should the future of that channel look like? But with a specific focus on that connectivity, but also thinking through how any enhancements there can enhance the overall park system, as well as have some place making opportunities that would benefit the local economy and business owners. So with engagement, I mentioned it's mixed method. And depending on the engagement type is really going to dictate the level of detail that you can get from a group. So we do have first kind of a listen broadly approach, where it's not a granular engagement, but it's a general understanding of needs across the community. And that's really where our statistical survey and our online engagement falls. So the survey, we have it. So it's going to be a random selected members of the community. So 3,000 mail pieces of randomly selected community members will receive the survey in the mail. And they'll have the opportunity to complete that via paper or submit it online. And we're looking to get to a point where the returns are representative of your demographics. And we've also hit a number that makes the statistically survey valid. So we want less than a 5% margin of error. And ETC is our survey company on this, and they will continue to put mail pieces out into the community until we can hit that mark. It generally takes between six and eight weeks to get there. And then online engagement, it'll be an interactive website that will allow individuals to engage and share with us, but also provide important content about the planning effort. We also want to be out in the community. So we've identified several community events to attend. I'll be going over those in a moment. And along with going to events, thinking through that, meeting people where they're at, we've identified some specific user groups where we can do some drop-in engagement. So such as your aquatics users, your pickleball users, and going and doing planned visits with them. And then to get a little bit deeper into what we're learning with the community, that's where focus group sessions and stakeholder interviews come into play. So with our focus group sessions, for example, we would sit down with your sports field users. And we could get much more granular about what those sports field users are most in need of or where the system may be presenting some gaps for them. So going from survey, we need more sports fields to the type of sports field, to the quality of sports fields. And then finally, we'd like to incorporate some open houses. So opportunities for individuals to drop in, hear a little bit about the planning effort, and then go through some interactive stations with us. So this is a breakout of those different categories here. I mentioned those focus group sessions. Specifically, we've targeted the sports field users, aquatic users, and we wanna have a couple of sessions that are a little bit broader intent that would encompass general park users. And then as it relates to the open house, a come one come all type format again with those interactive stations, but also the opportunity for community members to ask questions and then those drop in visits specifically at the pool as well as the pickleball courts. The community events, we've identified six specific events, and we're really trying to have a mix of events that appeal to your local community, but also have a regional draw as well, so we can understand some of those needs along the channel. So we identified Relics and Rods, Concert in the Park, London Bridge Parade, the Fall Fun Fair, the Balloon Festival, and also Winter Fest. So really that engagement timeframe between October and February. So with the channel-specific engagement, We've separated that out a bit because we want to make sure we're connecting with the right individual. So it is a similar approach with mixed method and that we want to have some focus group sessions and open houses, but the conversation will be much more specific to the channel. So we did identify focus groups with the business owners as well as your channel users, recreational users, and then we want to spend some time with city staff and partners to understand the specific needs and then ALSO CONDUCTING AN OPEN HOUSE WITH THAT ONE COME ALL FORMAT AND THE OPPORTUNITY FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO ASK QUESTIONS AS WELL AS ENGAGE IN ENGAGEMENT STATIONS. SO FINALLY I'M GOING TO HIT ON OUR BENCHMARK AGENCIES. SO WHEN WE IDENTIFY AGENCIES TO BENCHMARK AGAINST, WE LIKE TO TRY TO GET AS APPLES TO APPLES AS WE CAN BUT STILL KNOWING NO TWO AGENCIES ARE ALIKE. But we start with population, and then we'll also pull in some other demographic info to try to find some alignment. So specifically here in Lake Havasu, we looked at the percentage of the population that was over 65, as well as the median age as two of our metrics as we're trying to identify those right agencies to benchmark. WE ALSO THOUGHT THERE WAS VALUE IN UNDERSTANDING IF THESE AGENCIES WERE SOMEWHAT OF A TOURIST DESTINATION. BECAUSE THE MAINTENANCE NEEDS INVOLVED WITH HAVING AN OUTDOOR TOURIST DESTINATION OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE MORE SIGNIFICANT. AND SO WHEN WE'RE COMPARING BUDGETS AND STAFFING, AGAIN, TRYING TO BE APPLES AND APPLES. SO TO START WITH, WE IDENTIFIED SIX FOR CONVERSATION THIS EVENING. PRESCOTT, ARIZONA. ORA VALLEY, ARIZONA. Bullhead, St. George, Utah, a little larger on our population there. Palm Springs and Ocala, Florida. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. And as you can see there, each falls generally in line with your population as well as your demographics and the square miles of the agency. In addition to the specific agency benchmarks, I just wanna note that the National Parks and Recreation Association benchmarks 1,000 agencies each year. And so we'll pull data from them as well about performance metrics for agencies between 20 and 50,000. But this is designed to go a little bit deeper with more comparative type agencies. And then to wrap things up tonight and to hear from this body specifically, I had a few questions here designed to start the conversation. BUT IF WE WANT TO PAUSE AT LOOKING AT THIS TO JUST TALK THROUGH ANY ASPECTS OF WHAT I'VE PRESENTED SO FAR, WE CAN START THERE AND THEN MOVE INTO THESE.

THANK YOU, MS. JACKSON. GREAT PRESENTATION. THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN COUNCILS, A COUPLE OF TAKEAWAYS THEY WANTED TO HAVE FROM US IS ARE WE COMFORTABLE WITH THESE COMPARABLE CITIES OR DO WE WANT TO INCLUDE OTHERS INTO THE CONVERSATION? AND THEN, OF COURSE, I think engagement strategy, I actually think it's a pretty comprehensive engagement strategy, picking a good selection of the events through the fall and early winter season, a good cross-section with every method that really is available that people communicate. So with that, I'll open it up for comments or questions from members of the Council. For Ms. Jackson?

Council Member Campbell? Yes, thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. But there's always one thing lacking when I see this. One of our biggest parks, the most beautiful park, is Sarah Park. which is everything from rodeos to bike race riding to tracks. It's incredible how much Sarah Park, from ball fields to shooting ranges to car races, I mean, to a hockey ring. I mean, it really is. And every time there's a conversation that comes to the table, it seems to be swept way over here. When I see it as probably one of our top parks in the community. And the other part is on the other side of town, we have the equestrian. And I'm going to just say right in the front is my sister's tree, okay? So I've always been around it since I was a little girl. And nobody really talks about equestrian in this community and how valuable it is. And there has been more conversations for safe tracks. I mean, safe riding areas, because when you have... shooting ranges so close to where horses are walking. And the equestrian community has reached out to myself and many others on this dais for years saying, why do they always seem to not look at the rodeo grounds, the equestrians, the horse trails? Because every cowboy that comes to our rodeo ground says Sarah Park is one of the most beautiful rodeo grounds they've ever been at and want to know how they can stay longer and they do have camping. So why is that never in with the parks? Do you consider that part of park and recreation or not?

We absolutely do, and thank you for bringing that up. Sarah Park at over 1200 acres, that makes up the vast majority of your acreage as a system. And I think with this engagement strategy, we've been thinking about existing user groups pretty extensively. And so frankly, I think that's just a little bit of a mess. And so this input is very valuable and we can think through as a team, does that look like a focus group session? for those partners that are at Sarah Park? Or is it a focus group session with the, excuse me, the equestrian community? I just had dental work done so I'm a little, with the equestrian community. So thank you for bringing that because I think Sarah Park is a big piece of this planning effort and understanding what opportunities are there.

Thank you for listening and I too, my family was behind it from day one. We understand the value of the equestrian community and how big they are and how long they've been here. And sometimes I just think they're overlooked, but thank you for listening.

Vice Mayor Diaz. I have a few questions, thank you. I was lucky enough to sit in on the Zoom meeting that you ran and just as professional in person as you were on the Zoom call, so thank you. Can you go to the benchmark slide?

Yeah, add it up right now for us.

Oh, there it is. Okay. So the very first one, I think we're missing something on the Lake Havasu side, because although tourism is very important to our community, we also have a lot of full time residents here. And their big concern is athletic field, you know, availability and so forth. So I think we might have to add this, even though we are a seasonal population, we have people live here full time and year round. So make sure we don't lose that site. Are we going to be using, I think we did a field study or analysis about 11 years ago, maybe? Are we going to use any of that information to look at our field analysis? Do we know? Maybe Anthony might have to answer that question.

At the last Parks and Rec.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Mayor Diaz, I'm assuming you're referring to the Sarah Park plan? Yes. Yes, all those documents will be reviewed and part of the study and we'll have those all part of the, all of those will be included in the process as we move forward, yep.

Okay, thank you. Enhanced connectivity, I'm glad you put that in there because there's a lot of, I think, want and need for better trails to connect more parts of the city, walking, biking, hiking, so horseback riding, as you put there. Community engagement, you have a lot of good buckets there. I hope you really think outside the box because when we have an open house and five people show up, I think I talked about this during on the Zoom call. Let's really think about how we could get community engagement. I don't care if we have to do something at the Aquatic Center and invite 500 people to show up, that place holds a lot of people. Let's really get as many people as we can because make sure it's getting the voices of all the community. And then the last thing I had is on organizational and staffing. I know when these kind of studies are completed, usually it's, we need more staff here, we need more staff there, but I really want you to look at, are we overstaffed in some areas, or could we better utilize staff here and put them in another area where we're understaffed? Instead of hiring new people, maybe we have to cut some areas to put more people where they're getting more bang for our dollar. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. And part of our process is looking at efficiencies and those type of opportunities.

And then the last question, because I lied, I said that was the last one. The last one is inventory of parks. Explain to me when you say inventory of parks, what does that mean?

So the first step is just really understanding all of the parks and the ownership that are here in the system. We also put together a list of all of the acres the maintenance team is maintaining outside of traditional parks so that we can understand the full workload. But that's kind of a small step in the beginning. Some agencies have GIS, others have outdated GIS, but we want to get to a place where we aren't missing any parks. We've got them all accounted for.

And I'm really interested in seeing some of the pluses are the nice features of other communities that we have here that we don't have, and why can't we have those here too and make sure it's feasible? So I appreciate your work so far, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council Member Lin?

Yeah, I just have a question on the recreational side, because I see we're talking to sports field users, aquatic users, park users. What about our recreational programs? Because now that our recreation department down there, we're kind of outgrowing it with all of our things. Will we be addressing some of those focus groups on the users who use those facilities down there?

That's another great, perhaps miss for us that parks focus group is supposed to be kind of generalized and so it could very well incorporate those recreation users. But in the past, I have done focus group sessions that are both with those program participants as well as instructors, because then it helps to understand how a facility is serving them. So we can bring that into the mix as well.

Because we use it for our after-school programs and our summer programs. We do our teen break. There's a lot of things that we use those facilities for that are not necessarily outlined in here.

That's a very good point. Actually, I am working on the Prescott, Arizona plan. I'm about to wrap up on it. and they picked Lake Havasu to benchmark against. And one of the questions is about 30 programs, and Lake Havasu has the most X's and check marks as far as providing a service. So I had noticed that out the gate, especially with the after school programming and summer programming you're doing.

Yeah, like I know some in some of the cities They have like indoor pickleball courts and stuff like that almost a lot of our facility things are outside They're not inside and I and I know we got on here aquatic users But I really want to make sure that we're talking to our second pool advocates out there that want our second pool that that's important and

We identified two opportunities for aquatic, so I think we're getting there. I'll check with the team. One is an invited focus group session and the other is more of a drop in opportunity to visit some of those individuals who are participating in a current aquatic programs. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Koch.

I'm just looking at this benchmark community because I know you were asking if we had any changes or ads. When we talk about our ball fields a lot we get a lot of times They'll say what we do so many different tournaments up in Bullhead City Why can't have us who host as many tournaments and I notice Bullhead City's on here But it doesn't really list that as one of the things I'm wondering if there are other communities on here that maybe are just not listed as I mean I see st. George, Utah, but it's a major sports facility and events. It doesn't say that THE SPORTING EVENTS FOR, SAY, YOUTH OR YOUNG ADULTS. SO I JUST WONDER IF THAT IS SOMETHING THAT'S UNIQUE AND RELEVANT FOR THESE COMMUNITIES THAT YOU'VE PICKED AND MAYBE JUST ISN'T LISTED ON HERE. BUT I THINK THAT'S GOING TO BE KEY BECAUSE I KNOW BULLHEAD CITY WOULD BE SOMETHING WE'D WANT TO BE COMPARED TO BECAUSE OF THAT, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF COMMUNITIES DOWN IN THE VALLEY I KNOW THAT HAVE amazing sports facilities that are just some of them way grandiose. But I mean, that's what our kids are looking for more ball fields in general. So that would be my only question is, are these comparables including those sports facilities? They weren't identified for sports specifically.

They were identified in just having a similar demographic makeup, if you will. If we were to move forward, with these benchmark agencies or another mix frankly. There's a long list of things we generally benchmark and we're always adding to that list to make sure we're hitting the mark with the community we're working with. So what we could look at if we were to select these communities is going into detail about how many rectangular fields they have, how many diamond fields they have, if they have a sports complex. Because then you're comparing a similar sized community to your community. And if the findings are that they have two thirds more, then it does start to support the community's case that they don't have enough.

so along those lines then with this particular study do you go into depth as far as i mean we are we are pretty much landlocked and so there isn't a whole lot of opportunity but do you go into possible opportunities for expansion or acquisition that the city could do to show us what could possibly be down the road if we were to look and how that when you said connectivity there from rotary park i assume that's probably something that you were talking about but Just wondering if you go into that much depth and detail above and beyond just the actual what we have in our stock right now.

We do. So where we identify park gaps will be somewhat specific to the region that a park could service a new area. We won't identify a parcel, but if you were able to acquire a parcel in this area. We'll also, if you have a GIS layer, of the the parcels you already own as a city but haven't developed that we could bring into the mix because we could potentially say you have this parcel it's in a gap area we suggest that you develop it into a park and have three rectangular fields. Because over here we found that you have an overall shortfall of fields, so we do try to connect those dots as best we can.

I mean, are there any specific questions you want to know from us or you just want to know our overall overarching thoughts?

I had developed a few questions. This conversation has been really valuable because I think a key piece for us as we move into the next phase related to engagement is really ensuring that we are doing it in an inclusive way and aren't leaving out any user groups, which we've heard a couple already tonight that we need to take a look at.

One of the things I've always been asking for is an audit of the actual usage. I think our groups are a little bit in famine mode, so they're grabbing as much as they can. So to know where you wanna go, you gotta know where you're starting from, right? And so I really hope we dive into that a little bit, just seeing what is actually needed. I think our shortage situation has just exasperated our stock, you know what I mean, our situation, so. Take a look at that. Also, we have plans. We've put money in budgets and we're working towards, you know, staff has been working so hard towards some things. You'll be able to take these things that, because I looked at your timeframe, it's a year out, right? You'll be able to take our plans that we're using right now and PUT THAT INFORMATION INTO THE MODELS AS THINGS PROGRESS.

ANY PROJECT THAT'S BEEN FUNDED, WE WILL INCLUDE. IF IT HASN'T RECEIVED FUNDING, WE'RE NOT IN THE HABIT OF INCLUDING IT BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS THAT COULD CHANGE. BUT WE WANT IT TO ACCURATELY REFLECT YOUR SYSTEM WHEN YOU ADOPT IT. THAT'S OUR GOAL.

I WAS REALLY KUDOS TO OUR TEAM, RIGHT? put such a concerted effort towards programming and doing those services that you reflected. It was kind of cool to hear that, that they are heads and shoulders above some of our comparables. So thank you for reaffirming that for the guests and for our crew. I would just say that I love the ball fields and I love those open spaces for them to do all sorts of sports. I would agree with some of my colleagues down there that connectivity Throughout this, the town is kind of a cool deal. We kind of need to get bikes and e-bikes off our roads, and if we could work out more trail systems and different things like that. Some of it might be pie in the sky, but it would still like to know what we could accomplish.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Dolan also joined us, and I'm sure Councilman Dolan, if you have any questions or comments.

Uh, no, I just want to thank him for the presentation. Um, you know, I definitely have those concerns too about getting the public out. Um, I think the, uh, I think this is definitely a topic. A lot of the user groups will be, so it will be at. So hopefully we get some good turnout. Um, and yeah, I just appreciate everyone's hard work and it's looking good.

Thank you. Consumer Campbell's just in the net.

Yes, I had a question. As I was looking at your benchmarks, the only one that I could find equestrian on had the youngest age demographic. Can you explain what that looks like? If you have an answer to that, I thought that was interesting.

That was the one on the bottom, wasn't it? Let me go back. No, Florida.

Yeah.

I don't know why.

It's an interesting demographic. It was the age group of older, 65, and then... Challenged with this remote a little bit bottom we have believe it or not. The median age was 38.3 and

Yeah, so this one was, I kind of went back and forth about including it, being located in Florida. But their over 65 population was at 29%, and you're at 35. So it seemed kind of still in the ballpark, and their population was close, and they come up as a tourist attraction. So they marked some of the boxes, but it is interesting that their median age is as low as it is, because they clearly have a lot of families. as well. So it's not a one to one match. We actually started with a list of maybe 20. And so it is a process of whittling and trying to find the closest matches.

Well, when I looked at it, and I'm no expert, but I thought, how many communities really support the equestrian communities? We have many communities that are supporting everything that we're talking about up here. But if you are a real equestrian person, you will find homes and locations to go to that actually do embrace what you love to do. And so I didn't know if that had anything to do with it or not. I just was wondering.

I wish I could say that that was the reason behind it. I love that that is part of their identity, but it was picked more because of the demographics.

Okay, thank you.

Again, thank you for the presentation. We're going to one of your questions of what does success look like to us at the end of this? Starting on, I know that your final question, but from my perspective, success is going to look like a community plan that is supported and driven by our community, meaning that our entire engagement and community outreach was successful so that at the end of the day, although this body would be the one that would adopt the final Parks and Recreation Master Plan, it would be driven by our residents for accountability to get the projects done. So that's what success is gonna look like to me, is to make sure we do a great job with community engagement and the buy-in from our residents so that we can drive this. And economic development is important to me, and sports tourism important, but it's a far secondary byproduct to making sure that we build a system for our residents first. If the byproduct is tourism related or economic development, fantastic. We can celebrate twice, but the real win for me is for our residents that call Lake Havasu City home. And then when it comes to voices within our community, one area we didn't speak of specifically that I think would be very interesting is the youth. If we could have a focus group that is focused on a wide perspective from the youth's perspective. perspective when it comes to how they use the system what they would use how they'd use our recreation programs we had in the 90s and early 2000s a really really successful team break it was waiting waiting list every single year to really no interest in the last five or six years and so you know why is that are we not meeting our youth where they're at and And then we also have a really dynamic skate park that's part of Rotary, which I'm sure you all saw already. There's another user group there as well from a youth perspective, again, of how that can help. So those would be the two areas that I would see as success and some of the demographics or user groups that we haven't talked about already.

Thank you, Mayor. Do you have a youth commission? I believe I saw that you do.

Yeah, we do have the Habits Youth Advisory Council, which is a body of our council. We also have a youth member on our Parks and Recreation board that's vacant. We need to find interested youth to join us, so we are taking applications. But we do have some youth that's available, but we also, Anthony and his team have probably dynamic youth leaders that are in our recreation programs already that might want to step up for a focus group. Yeah, Mr. Kozlowski, did you have something to add to that?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I just wanted to point out as part of this process, we have a very robust, as part of all the recreational program that we provide to the community, a robust registration database that we can pull from for all these parents and individuals who participate in those programs that we're currently compiling as part of the team to provide as far as outreach and survey. data as well. And then just one quick thing, I'd love to get a bit more feedback as far as are we comfortable moving forward with some of the Arizona benchmark communities and then taking a look at as far as some additional communities to add to that list as far as ball field, the amount of ball fields or something similar to that?

I'm comfortable with the comparables that were put up here. I actually think it's a really diverse group that are very similar, have similar interests for us. I think you did a really fantastic job. They're not all comparable cities to us, as you would have put, like, obviously, City of Noro Valley next to each other, but as far as the demographics and the components that you're outlining when it comes to a park system, I think you did a great job with that. Any other thoughts from members of the council?

I have a quick question. It's kind of down below what I was going to say. IF YOU IDENTIFY SOME OF THESE CITIES AND THEY HAVE SOME GREAT SPORT COMPLEX, IT COULD BE AN INDOOR COMPLEX OR SOME GREAT BASEBALL FIELDS, I WOULD LIKE TO FIND OUT, TOO, HOW THEY FUNDED THAT, IF IT WAS FUNDED BY PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS OR IS IT A LOCAL PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM THAT'S DONE IT? BECAUSE THAT HAPPENS ALSO. I WOULD LIKE TO MAYBE TAKE THAT ONE STEP EXTRA IF WE COULD FIND OUT HOW THEY FUNDED IT. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU COULD PROVIDE TO US, YOU THINK?

WE CAN IDENTIFY IF IT WAS A BOND OR PUBLIC-PRIVATE PPP.

Yeah, Council Member Campbell, then we'll go to Council Member Lin.

What about the student council in all of across our city schools? Because that may come with their parents too. If there was like a special invite to the student councils across every community, because they're always engaged. I have a couple in my mind, but I know how eager they are and how involved. And they wanted to be student council because they wanted to have a voice. So I think it would be a larger demographic. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but when you were talking about how to reach out, those are little future leaders of America. So maybe that.

That's a great idea. And I'll talk to the team about what our opportunities are to make sure we can get a cross-section of youth because what the elementary school kids want, who are going to be our teens before we know it, does look really different than what the teens want. Right.

And I would love to see their parents come along for the conversation. That would be great.

Yeah. Yeah, I just have a quick question. So I'm assuming that you've done these master plans before, these parks and rec master plans. And can you tell me what other cities you've done these in?

Sure, I've completed about 40. So maybe the last couple. So my last couple in the last year, I completed Johnson County in Kansas. I did three planning efforts for them. They're a population of 600,000. I also completed more relevant, I think, is Mesa, Arizona. I reference Kingman. I'm trying to think of my Arizona projects at the moment.

Are you in Prescott right now?

I'm in Prescott right now.

How successful have you been with getting the community engagement? And did you similar to the same process that we're doing the same outreach? Because we've had these, like we're going through a general plan right now and trying to get community engagement for that is really lacking. So I see what you're doing and it's very similar to what we did the general plan and we didn't get that much engagement. So I'm just curious, is it different? Are people more excited about Parks and Rec? Will they show up? So I'd say the budget for community engagement varies.

And I feel like in this planning effort, we have a good portion of the budget allocated to community engagement. And so we're able to go to a lot more events. And frankly, there is more success when you meet people where they're at. The open houses that I've hosted in the last... I'll say two, maybe even three years have had very low attendance. We keep it as an option because you still have a contingent of your community that that's what they like. That's what they're used to. That's what they're accustomed to. But that is not the most successful engagement tool in our toolbox. Your team has been fantastic in communicating options like going out to the pickleball courts. And so I think we will have good success because of the landscape of options that we put together. But they all won't be equal in numbers. It is a reality that the open house could draw less than 20. But that won't be due to a lack of effort. We're looking at branding the project so we can have some recognition. And then we're going to work with your communication team on how we can market it through social media. And another benefit is generally people love parks. It is something that piques their interest and they want to know what's happening. They want to know how they can contribute. And they want to also tell you what they think you need more of. So PERC plans can have more success and engagement than comprehensive plans, just because of the topic.

When you were talking about going to pickleball courts and stuff, we've been talking, Vice Mayor Diaz and I have been talking to Little League and Baseball users and stuff, there's 500 alone. 500, I think there was? Little leagues alone, so like getting out to those games, getting to the football games. Our football games are highly attended, like those type of things. If we're gearing and looking for those field users, I highly suggest going to those, because that's where you're gonna get the parents, the families, the grandparents, teachers coming and watching their students to just get that kind of engagement. Like I said, some of those things, you're gonna have 20 people show up, but if you go to a little league game, You have a lot more showing up.

Well, and the project website has been one of our most successful tools across projects in the last two to three years. And a project I'm working on now in Oklahoma, small community, we had 1,700 contributions on the website. And we had a targeted survey that was specific to sports field users, and that received 300 responses. And whether it was a rectangular user or a diamond user, the messaging was the same. And so there is value in going out to those touch points and getting people excited about the plan. But if we can get them to engage in a larger way, in a larger conversation or through a survey, it really gives us more detail about what those needs are. And the sports field piece can be interesting because there's an operational aspect to it as well that we'll be looking at because sometimes there is a situation where maybe there's almost enough fields, but how they're divided maybe needs to evolve in order to allow more access to what's available in the system.

Council Member Koch, and before I turn over to you, Council Member Koch, if you all could be thinking if we're comfortable with the comparable cities, because we'll just go down the dais and just make sure, and then we'll open the public hearing. So, Council Member Koch?

Yes, I was comfortable with comparable cities. I just wanted to throw in here, when thinking about engagement and how to – First Friday is a great representation of our people, and that's – you've got a few opportunities in your timeframe. So maybe keep that in mind. I know just from my personal attendance, there's a wide variety –

of age group demographics and from kids to adults and it just would be a great place i think all right councilmember moses yeah i'm fine with the comparables i thought you did a good job there um just one more thought have you ever do you ever look at like um amphitheaters or anything like that for any of these communities

So we have a list of amenities that will confirm or deny if they have. An event space is on the list. It doesn't state amphitheater specifically, but broadly we are looking at event spaces. And if an amphitheater is something specific that you want to take a look at, then we can add that because it's some information we can pull from the internet, of course, but we also reach out to the communities. We do a written survey. We do phone calls. It takes a bit of time to get all of the information back.

There just have been residents who they're starting to try and do work to try and get the ball rolling. It's come up a few different times at different times kind of deal.

I think that's an amenity we can add to the survey. We've got a draft survey and amphitheater is not there.

So, Council Member Moses, you've said you're good with the comparables. Council Member Koch, you are. Council Member Lin, I think you shook your head that you're comfortable with it. No additions. Vice Mayor Diaz, you're comfortable? I'm good with it. Okay. And Council Member Campbell and Council Member Dolan, are you good with the comparable cities? Yes. Yes, I'm good with them. All right, perfect. We'll go ahead and open up the public hearing. Would anyone like to address the City Council on this work session item? If so, just make your way to the podium and state your name for the record. For those in the audience, we do have a regular meeting starting at 5.30. We'll be at a regular council meeting.

Good evening. A couple questions. One, when she spoke, she mentioned an FOP and that this was going out to FOP. When I heard that, I was thinking that meant... RFP? RFP? Request for Proposals is what went in my brain when I heard what she said. And I didn't understand why this would be going out for any kind of proposal for anything because of... I thought that was their job.

Yeah, that is the way that I understood is when we went out for RFP originally, and now Barry Dunn was the selected company. So Ms. Jackson's the project manager with Barry Dunn, who's been selected and appointed by the council.

Okay, so she's not going out for more?

No, just community engagement.

Okay, so then with the community engagement, I did hear Councilmember Koch mention First Fridays. But also, I'd like to make the recommendation that there are several events with athletics during the year. In October, I know that there's Arizona AZAK, no, AK, Tony Ravello's event company is hosting a trail run at Sarah Park in September or October and there will be several hundred people there too and that would be a really great place to engage some people during that event and I'm certain between now and whenever the sessions end that there's a couple more races like the Havasu Half Marathon, you know, then the events with the suicide walk and The other walks that rotary has those would be really great engagements for them to participate in I do have a concern with as Councilmember Moses had mentioned about e-bikes being on the road and stuff. I would was wondering if there was any way that the sidewalk trail could be included somehow into the parks and I think we really need that sidewalk trail to go from across the whole city. People on e-bikes and regular bicycles or people who just enjoy walking for the fun of walking should not have to go all the way down London Bridge Road to walk up to the mall. They should be able to walk along the highway safely. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THAT WAY FOR YEARS. THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A SIDEWALK THAT WENT AROUND THE WHOLE THING. I DON'T KNOW IF THAT CAN BE INCLUDED INTO A PARKS PLAN BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE LIKE A SHARED USE PATH TYPE OF A DEAL. AND YOU ALREADY HAVE THE SHARED USE PATH THAT GOES FROM NORTH MCCULLOUGH DOWN TO North Palo Verde or South McCulloch to North Palo Verde. So also I noticed that the Main Street Commons, even though you mentioned First Fridays, but the Main Street Commons is not listed in parks. So I don't know how that would be included in your parks plan or if it is.

So Main Street Commons is included in the plan and will be And as far as the multi-use path that goes along the highway, that can be incorporated with connectivity in those discussions. The MPO is also working on some of that in connection with the city. So all those are part of the current conversations that are going on.

Definitely need a shared use path that goes along the whole city.

Thank you, Ms. Toye. Would anyone else like to address the City Council on this work session item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for any final thoughts from members of the council. Mr. Kozlowski, do you have any final thoughts or Ms. Jackson?

Mr. Mayor, members of council, just want to point out as far as some of the other events throughout the community, as well as the 30 plus events that the city puts on. There'll be plenty of opportunities, not just in conjunction with Barry Dunn, but with our staff alone that will be able to engage with the community as far as we move forward with the master plan. even out at Sarah Park with Ms. Van Roy with horse trails. Well, I have her on speed dial, so I know exactly how to reach her. So we'll make sure she's included in this study. And I'm becoming very good friends with both the presidents and vice presidents of both the baseball leagues as well. So we'll make sure that there is a healthy participation from them as well. So just wanted to point that out. Thank you.

All right, again, thank you so much for being here, Ms. Jackson. We appreciate it, and we look forward to working with you over the next 12 months or so.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you. All right, we will now adjourn our work session, and we'll start our council meeting in about 10 minutes at 530. We're adjourned.