Council Airport Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good evening, or good afternoon, everybody. Today is Thursday, 02/05/2026. This is the council infrastructure and airport committee. It is 05:30PM. This is a joint, special joint HARD board in council infrastructure and airport committee meeting. I want to welcome everybody, particularly our colleagues from HARD. And so and if I could have miss Barras, please take roll call.

Council member Andrews? Present. Council member Slimer? Present. Mayor Salinas?

Present. And do we take roll for heart?

Sure.

You know?

Go on. Yeah. Let's Can I help you?

Let's press the button.

Read it. Read it here.

I'd like to introduce our director and media past president, Luis Andrade, and our president of the board, Sarah Monday.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to public comments. This is reserved for anybody who would like to make a public comment on item that is not on the agenda. I do have some cards here. And just for clarification Oh, I got it. I did see it. Okay. Alright. So first first card is Mary Clements.

Hello? Oh, give me one second. Sorry.

Just ran out of. He slept after. Oh,

I did speak.

Yeah. I just had a capture in the Zoom.

Oh, okay. I'm Mary Plymouth, and I'm calling just about SkyWest Golf Course maintenance. Or one of my residents came to me yesterday and said that the front pond, which is the pond that's located near the maintenance building, it's almost dry. And I haven't been out there in a while. I don't know what maintenance is, if they shut the water off through winter. But, anyway, but she just reported, you know, turtles from ducks and and everything around. Okay. This morning. Okay.

Thank you. And just to remind listeners in

the

general, we will be listening to this, and I know council member Andrews has brought this up. But, director O'Meary, as of today, SkyWest Golf Course, that whole property is closed to the public. Correct? It is. It is? Okay. And nobody should be in there. Correct? Correct.

It's a liability.

It's a liability of the city and and all involved, right, if something were

to happen bad in Absolutely. Okay.

I just wanna be clear. Okay. Thank you. Next is, Mimi Dean.

Well, I guess I do wanna say that today is Western Monarch Butterfly Day as celebrated by

the state of California since 2004 for those of you who are unaware of that. And we know that SkyWest is full of Western Monarch butterflies. And last week, I was at a meeting with the Xerxes Society. And once again, SkyWest is the number one open wintering site for our monarch butterflies in the whole East Bay. We have over 500 butterflies, and we have two different grooves.

One of them is really close to that first pond that's over by the SkyWest HOA. That's where some of the the development is planned. And then the other grove, of course, is down closer to the bay where the other big development, the industrial buildings are planned. So we're number one in the whole East Bay, and we're number five in the whole state of California. So go Western Monarch butterflies and go SkyWest Golf Course.

So that's my good news. My sad thing is that we're closing SkyWest. I know there is a sign there that says do not enter, but I'm gonna say something that's probably gonna make people mad at me, but I'm gonna say it anyway. There's so many sidewalks that are trip hazards and horrible things all over the city of Hayward, and we're closing SkyWest because it's a liability. Like, let's let's think about that.

That seems a little bit out of touch with reality to me personally. We've got bad sidewalks. We've got trip hazards, but we're closing SkyWest. So I'm not really sure why we're doing that. And I I guess I'm gonna have to have a meeting with somebody to find out why it is exactly we're doing that because it seems a little bit mean spirited when we know that we have so much support. I gave a presentation at the San Lorenzo Library three weeks ago, and I had standing room only. I had over 60 people in the room. The HOA doesn't get that kind of participation. The Eden map doesn't get that kind of participation. SkyWest got that participation.

Since that time, I have gotten almost 900 signatures on our online petition. We have almost 3,100. Okay? So between the 3,100 we have online and the five to 800 we have on paper, we've got almost 4,000 signatures about saving SkyWest as open space for mama butterflies and western pond turtles and passive recreation for seniors, for kids, for families, and it's an environmental justice and a climate action, issue. And I know that I read on the airports on the airport's website that SkyWest was built as a buffer zone for the homes in San Lorenzo.

Thank you for listening, and sorry if I'm h man, but, hey. It's Mimi D.

Thank

you. I don't have any more cards, and I don't think there's anybody online. So I will Sorry.

I'm a behind. Can I speak?

Yes. Mister Stiles.

Good. I'm sorry.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Fred Simon. I'm a board member of Guadalupe sanitary district. I'm also city council member of City Of San Leandro. I'm speaking behalf of myself tonight as a council member, as a board member, however, not on behalf of City Council of San Leandro and not for Aloha. However, I am here to speak in support of saving SkyWest. It's keeping it as open space. I've lived in San Leandro right on the border of San Lorenzo Creek.

I live in Heron Bay. I've lived there thirty years, and I've raised my wife and I have raised two kids. They're now 19 and 16, and we love our open space in our community. And me and part of San Leandro, I'm also part of Unincorporated and Hayward. We we love all of our communities here. And I really think it's a benefit to not just the people, but the environment. The butterflies are nesting in the eucalyptus trees there. I helped and went out to get a survey of it a few weeks ago, and I just wanna show my support to the cause, keep more open space. And we have many people of color that live in this area, that live in the Flatlands, and we need more open space. We need more clean air.

And that airport, about 3AM this morning, those jets wake me up. I have brand new windows in my house, dual pane Anderson windows, and that's those jets still run through our house. So I see expansion of that airport also impacting, the neighborhood and community. But in summary, thank you for everyone here, all your support for our community. We appreciate it, and we appreciate keeping that open space. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. I don't have any more public comments, so I will close public comment and then, move on to our action items. Tonight, we have one action item, and it is the joint agency discussion of La Vista Park project and coordination opportunities for future park projects. And this meeting is long time coming, and it is a conversation that I know that we have been looking forward to for a very long time.

Just a couple of people to acknowledge. I wanted to acknowledge, of course, director Andrade from the HART board and director and board president, Sarah Lemnen, from HARD. And also mister Wheeler, who's the general manager of HARD, and Megan Thierman, who is capital planning and development director and, of course, Duane Taylor, is director of park and facilities maintenance. And so wow. Okay.

But but, no, I I think the conversation today is convened out of good spirits. I know we have been talking offline in a lot of different spaces and a lot of other different places, and it's good to now have a a very formal structured conversation around some of the big projects that we are working on, particularly around La Vista Park and some of the other projects within the city of Hayward. So with that said, I don't know if the city manager will kick this off or I turn it over to mister director Amiri.

Sure. Good evening, Board members, mayor, and city council members. I'm really just gonna kick out in in the spirit that I've I've now been here. It's almost about eight weeks. But I just want we're gonna get into the details, and I don't have all the details because I'm still learning.

But I I do wanna say to this whole group that we and I, as the manager, I'm committed to coordinating closely with Bart and our staff. And I've already met with the general manager a couple times in conversation and have arranged some meetings with staff to meet on a regular basis to go over issues. So I just wanted everyone to know that I'm committed to coordination and and and communication improving communication and making sure we're staying that we're including hard in all the different decisions around our projects and other relevant issues. So I just wanted you to hear that from me personally. And so I'll pass it on to director Miri who actually has the details of the projects. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good evening. And I just wanted to mention that I have been here a couple years short of forty years. So

a little bit longer. Forty years and eight weeks. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. You're

my hero.

Anyway, I wanted to mention that this project has been around and going on for a number of years. We started in 2017, working closely with Howard to come up with a project. This is something that I could do that serve or is going to serve the southern part of Hayward as well as a residential community out there that contributed to the construction of the park. So we'll add coordination in his own biweekly. This is really hard to go over the design and development.

Then later, a few years ago, we decided to go ahead build a project. We did that and received bids that were extremely high. They were between 42,000,000 and $47,000,000, which was way over the budget that we have. So we decided to work with our and make some minor changes to the design and how the keyway was going to be constructed and, you know, went to bid again. The cost was at that time about $32,000,000, the estimated cost, but we received bids that were at least $6,000,000 over the engineer's estimate.

We did receive four bids, and the bids were very, very close to the agreement. So I knew that the bids are legitimate and good, and our cost is a little bit too low. So we came up with some minor changes and then decided that we should we we didn't have the money to build the project. I had a conversation with the construction company, and I told them that, you know, we cannot afford to do this. My understanding was that there are value engineering things that can be done, value engineering not to change any of the features of the park, not any of the amenities of the park, but the way, for instance, that the T wave was going to be constructed, you know, same safety, same thing, but a different way.

That would have resulted in a reduction in cost to bring us to the engineer's estimate and the budget that we have. But in order for me to be able to talk to the contractor, I had we had to cancel that to award the project. So council awarded the project with some contribution from measure c. This is last June when we knew that we have a fiscal, you know, condition and everything. But we awarded the project with the understanding that we could work with the contract token and bring the cost down through value engineering.

So we have done some of that. We think that there's a good potential to bring the cost down by about $4,000,000 or so. We have construction contingencies that can be rightsized and brought down again. And with that, we would be in the budget that we have and able to award the project with the features that we had all wanted and agreed upon and then move forward. With that, we have a PowerPoint presentation, and Sammy Lowe, our senior engineer, is going to continue working.

Great. Good evening, mayor, council members, and the numbers moving hard. As I was mentioning, today's meeting, we joined the session of the park as he gets ready to full construction and also the session on future opportunities. The the design effort had completed financing and just in place with the. They have a contract and then boarded, and now get ready to start construction while city will administer construction contract, and they they oversight of the activities.

Part of what we need, engage as active partner, and we will conduct weekly coordination meetings with our staff, city staff, design team, contractor, and also if we clean off going communications to as related to cost, schedule, and fuel issue. And in preparation for, construction, as I also mentioned, city update. Closely assigned to in a contract on construction or value. The efforts focus on maintaining the approved features, usability, and safety elements while looking for construction in construction. Together, we target approximately, like, 1 to $10 savings and get the construction about $2,029,000,000 dollars.

And moving forward, staff anticipate having a preconstruction meeting later this month in a couple of weeks, as well as the coordination meeting with the union labor groups has been clarified a community workforce agreement. The start instruction is anticipated to be March, mid March, April. One day, we have both days. Patient is designated by summer. It's a business park. And

he's over there two weeks. Oh,

it's been a long road. We're happy to be here tonight. I think we've settled on how to finance it. We are happy for the value of engineering that the city can get measures, see money back into their offers at such a, you know, important time for the city. So I think we're I think we're feeling really good.

What we're, I think, happiest about is the idea that for project team would include our parts and facility maintenance director and one of our project managers, senior project manager, Brian, actually, who's probably our best. It's team. He's the assistant director, actually, of Kaplan Planning. So we look forward to, you know, trying to move this thing forward, and we understand all the steps it's gone through. It's complex.

And, you know, a lot of our park projects are $8.10, $12,000,000. This one's 32. And when you multiply that, know those numbers by three and get there, it's it gets complex. So I wanna thank Alex and his team for all the work and dedication. This has been a long time coming, and I cannot wait to be on that hillside of stuff. The shoveling is going out. So I don't have a lot to say. We're very happy. The design has been flushed out. We look forward to the open space.

And I would be lying if I didn't say after the project's finished, we look forward to maybe being able to do some single track trails for maybe some mountain biking or cyclocross events on some of the undeveloped acreage. But we're very, very excited about this project. We think it will be a destination park in Hayward, which just adds to the heart of East Bay. You know, we're thumping our chest last week. 880,000 people visited the sports park last year.

200 2,000,000 people came into Hayward, 55% from out of Hayward for the park's use. So we're very happy, and we love the fact that we we use bond dollars, Mia's Dream, Punk Track, Tennyson Park's now done, this park, all down in South Hayward. We plan on doing a bunch of improvements in weeks in the upcoming some communities and improvements around weeks. So we're we're very excited about this project. I think it'll lend a lot to that side of

town.

Okay. So let me before I go to council, let me open up for public comment on this. The first person is, Bruce King.

King.

You can move the podium.

Is the only time,

Bob, tonight?

This is it. Okay.

Hi. I'm Bruce King with Friends at Santa Lorenza Creek. I'm here to talk about protecting, restoring, conserving land, and especially building healthier habitat, especially in our creek and riparian quarters. We have mascots and indicator species such as monarchs at SkyWest, wild rainbow trout, and other fish in the San Lorenzo Creek system, steelhead and salmon that are eat a fish ladder down on Hayward, and western red bats that need to roost and mature oak trees. These are indicator species, but they're but they're they're obvious examples of all the organisms that need healthy native habitat to survive.

They're at the top of the ecosystem. We have three to four jurisdictions in this area that can lead the effort to restore habitat. Hard, East Bay Regional Park District, Hayward, and jurisdictions like flood control. So I'm asking you to be habitat leaders when we're developing things, developments, building things, we need to think about how do we add and restore habitat even if it's just incremental. What's our record? You know? So, hey. We had an engineered earthen channel. We failed to restore it at all. We built we built a great housing development and a trail.

And the airport, we have a mitigation site next to the the flight control tower that's that was supposed to be for Creeks at Hayward Buried, and that's a failed mitigation site in noncompliance with the water board. And I know you guys are looking for for a place to to spend them to take the mitigation money. The runway, we need to bury Sulphur Creek so their their airplanes are safe. That's gonna be more mitigation. We've got citizens speaking up for SkyWest trying to conserve that. At the Lincoln Landing site, what did we get? We got a great quarter mile of St. Lorenzo Creek Trail. It's all concrete. No habitat.

K? The Eaton housing project in Castro Valley, we got great low income housing. Two thirds of the site got buried into parking lots. We lost a ton of mature oak trees and other dated trees, all roosting habitat for western red bats that migrate from the Central Valley to the Bay Area. K? The 4th And B housing project site, we we didn't get any any bank restoration included in that project. I don't know if that project's still approved. The Carlos B Partial and partial eight, we're planning for a trail. I'm hoping we're gonna include some some habitat enhancement when we do that. K?

Because right now, we've got a quarter mile trail next to the Eden Housing Project site, but that didn't really include any any building back of habitat. So I'm asking you guys to be habitat leaders as we do these things and be thinking about how can we chip away and get their habitat back because we're great at building things, but not always great at getting the habitat. Thanks.

Thank you. Next speaker is Mimi Dean.

Gonna be short.

I just wanna say I'm totally happy that we're gonna move forward on La Vista and that we have hard loo leaving the charge because we know that they are the best kind of park district to do this kind of recreation. It's more developed recreation, although there is some passive stuff going on up there. So they are the right agency to be running this, and I think it's really awesome the way that Heart has stepped up to the plate and is helping Hayward with so many other things like the downtown street stuff and stuff like that. So thank you so much, Heart, because those events mean a lot to the community.

That's kind

of all I wanted to say. I'm glad you guys were on board, and

thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So I will close public comment, and then what I could do is well, let me ask question. Who has questions?

Comments.

Or or comments and or questions. Commentary. Yeah. Should I just go around the Here. Should I start with you, Mr. Andrade, and then you go around the room?

I just wanna ask recall that there was another part of the presentation just from some other projects in the city that I was working on. We could just split them, or you could we could get through the presentation to whatever you wanted. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew that there's another So the first

thing.

Yeah.

Just wanted to make sure we

Yeah.

I'll put it over here.

Take Let me take Let Let take

a look.

Only Lovista.

Well, regarding Lovista, as I recall, the earliest date and time when it was 2017, maybe maybe a little earlier than that. But any event, it it it's been that long, almost ten years. And I've gotten calls with people up their way, saying we sports over parking. I'm sure you have. And so it's it and they don't care that city you know, we point fingers at you and vice versa, and they don't care. You know, it's government. And, you know, government looks bad, and we don't do it. Right? So this is the time to to do this and get it done. I'm happy that we seem to have an and what you we can work with, and the designs have been worked out, and the engineering's been worked out. Let's just get the show was going.

Thank you. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. And, yeah, I I really appreciate this conversation. I know there was a lot of work to get to today, and I appreciate all of it. And, yeah, I think there were there were three of us who were elected at the time of this project. One of us switched sides.

Anyway but I think one of the things I remember from that conversate two things that I don't think we talked about at that time, and one condition that's changed, which I think Jim was referencing, is we didn't have a capital team. We didn't have the delivery of lots and lots of projects that are on budget and mean, under budget and on time and so on. So the expertise has changed in districted. So I really appreciate this conversation for this new day. And then the things that we didn't talk about at the time, one was ongoing maintenance. So that leads me to a question. Is there a my memory is that there's not a landscape and lighting district related to this park. Is that correct?

That was correct.

Okay. So what yeah. So just, you know, it's gonna be a big part. I remember thinking we just give all this land, and Hard will take care of it, and we'll think differently in the future about that. Yeah. For and it'll cost about almost $1,000,000 a year to keep it to maintain it. So Water

it. Yeah.

And the other thing I remember is that the goal here was to really have a natural space because it's so big, and to not do a lot of earth moving. And so, know, you I appreciate that the conversations are gonna happen and continue to value engineer because this really needs to we just need to get the thing open. And what I don't remember us talking about was a keyway. And so where on the map is the keyway, and do we still need it?

Picture. Do we have the in the slide? Somewhere in this packet,

there was a picture part.

Right. You have

that can we put on the

screen, or do we know?

Didn't I see the map in the

Yeah. That's a incident.

It's about the middle of I'm gonna let

you answer that, Alex, because you definitely know where the QA was.

And do we do we still need it? Because I know Yeah.

What's

it? Eden Housing already built their project. And I know it's really tied to their project, not really tied to this park. Correct?

Right. So this is in addition to the keyway that has been constructed. This is going to be on the western side of the property. Sammy is going to bring it up and show you more of we have been doing is working with the geotechnical engineering firm to right size the keyway and also to slightly change the design so that it doesn't interfere with access to Parcel Group 3, and those changes have been made. If you can share this.

And just real quick, can we just define what Keyway is before we proceed so that people learn this?

Keyway is a structure that is buried underground and is constructed in order to prevent sliding of the, you know, soil that is above the Keyway in a seismic event or other events. So

And it's designed by two geotechnical engineers.

It's a highly specialized facility that's designed by geotechnologists and then then have some special expertise in seismic stabilization. And we have continued to work with the original geotechnical engineer who's being involved in the project. We didn't hit that design and change it by, you know, using other engineering firms. Okay.

That makes perfect sense.

Can you explain with this?

The key the keyway is shown, the shaded area, just underneath the soccer field at the theater activity area, and it's designed to hold up all of this bill or case of a of a seismic event. And they and that and the unique factor

lights and batteries in our office, not yours. And it's the so the soccer field is where the previous three smaller flood retention basins, that becomes a flood retention basin, right, in the winter. And so I would look at too, like, the the hundred year rains in our experience with the Medrano family and their property. If that thing were to get rained like that again and fill up, I because my understanding is the keyway is really what's gonna help stabilize that hillside and keep stuff from moving in that basin. That's correct. Okay. Just wanna

to No. I appreciate I appreciate that. I guess what I'm trying to get at is is there anything we can do to the park to to therefore not need the Cuban?

So the purpose of the work that we have done through value engineering is to make sure that what we are designing and constructing is not going to be excessive, but the design that we have is required and would have to be maintained.

Okay.

What yeah. I just this is supposed to be a natural park. And so it's one thing that if it's not stable and not safe for people to be on it and there's a housing, you know, affordable housing complex right below it, and in in the agreement, if whatever protects that housing, if that still hasn't been built, then that's one thing. But if there's some kind of earth moving of this park that then therefore requires Keyway, that to me seems like a place that needs to be reevaluated. Why are we why are we moving dirt?

Why don't we just let it be, and then we don't have this expensive keyway? I mean, we're still doing a park. I'm not saying that, but you can have parkland that doesn't move a ton of ground.

In order to accommodate some of the park features, we need to have some earth moving and earth movement, and that has been done. None of the earth is going to be exported from the the the site. It's going to be all maintained the way it is, but some earthmoving is required in order to prepare the site for the features and amenities.

And and let me just inter just interject right here. Just for the map, the the the development she's referring to, that's the the development that's at the top of

Mm-mm.

To the bottom?

Or three. Parcel Group 3 right there.

That's the East Housing. The East Housing Project.

And they just put in some

Yes. Oh, yeah. That's that's the yeah. Okay. That yeah. That's what I meant.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. It's okay. That

Yeah. So I will yield in a second. I just I ask that as these conversations happen to really think through, do we need a heavy engineering space, or can we, you know, keep it to its original intent, which was a natural space? And the last piece is, is this property in the GAD?

It is it is not in the GAD. It can be included in India.

Yeah. I think I mean, I defer to the colleagues who sit on that board, but I think, you know, that's already a a monitoring mechanism, and so it seems like it might make sense to be there.

Can I respond to what you asked about something? So whereas I really am not a big fan of Harvey, you know, beautiful hillsides and open space when we know that the number one thing our community wants is open space and trails and natural areas, I do plan because we took about 11 acres out of development of this completely. Keep it as a, like, a conservation area, unrestored riparian. So we did back off on some of the carving up. But I think some of it, especially for that empathy and arthrocophagus control probably gonna have to. I know.

Thank you. Okay.

Yep.

Thank you for this report, and I'm just excited to be in partnership with Heart here. You know, this project has been a long time coming. I'm happy that we're able to get close to breaking ground. I just wanna really express my appreciation for the partnership that we have with Hard. I think there's been an ongoing conversation over the last few years about Hard really being seen as Hayward's district.

And I think as we as a city of Hayward, city government have gone through our budget was over the past year, it's been really heartening to see Hart step up in numerous ways, not just with this project, but also with things like the downtown street fair that we mentioned before too. I I think in this moment, we're really not just us, but our residents too are really understanding the goal that Hart plays, a very significant role that Hart plays as as the city's parks and recs district and government agency. So I'm I'm happy that we've been able to come to some kind of agreement. Also, appreciated while we're in these difficult budget throws that, you know, the the the the grace this by which you're allowing us to value engineers savings to help us recoup our measure fee costs here is is very significant for us. I also wanted to note on the topic of GAD.

I did ask our GAD general manager, I think not the most recent meeting, but the meeting before that. They had mentioned that currently it was planned for the GATT to maintain the water quality pond and dual use detention basin and related storm drain lines, inlets, and outlets. It could support some of the responsibilities they proposed with new park improvements. And so I guess my feedback from your director is if you can maybe reach out to miss Ralston to have a conversation about what role, if any, the GATT can play, especially as it relates to supporting ongoing maintenance costs for Hard. It sounded like there were plans to incorporate Locus as part of the overall parcel project, and so we should just follow-up and clarify those details.

Miss Wallace did offer to present that to the full council before the most recent meeting, but it didn't feel appropriate until we have this conversation first. So I think they should get the conversations too. Without belaboring the point, I'm just excited to see this move forward and continue to partner on this project. I I think thinking through maintenance once the project once the parking is up and running is a conversation we should continue to have. I guess my last note here, and this is not not just in terms of how the city works with HARD, but when we redid our strategic road map recently, we included this concept of Education City, which was really, to me, a way of which the city has new processes. So if we have a project that is education related, we reach

out to

educational stakeholders. This is more feedback for the city, but I don't really know what that looks like in practice. And similarly, when we're doing something that has to do with recreations or parks or events, what is our standardized process for incorporating HART or bringing HART to the table? And I gave an example at our last infrastructure meeting. HART is working on a partner in D Street in this upcoming year, and we are also doing traffic comp measures on D Street.

And so it it feels kinda natural that there should have been a conversation built in during that development process, not to find out about it kinda after the fact. And so I I'm really just interested in and and, you know, you're welcome to speak with the city manager. Just wanna figure out for issues like Education City or when we're working with other government stakeholders, how can we begin to really operationalize and ensure that our our community stakeholders are at the table so that we don't run into an issue where we're having to reverse engineer something so we didn't talk to someone at the right time?

Yeah. I think that's a great question. I think in my experience, you need both formal and informal communication. I think the formal kind of holds everyone accountable. And so setting up regular meetings with those bodies, so setting up the bimonthly meeting with our executive team members. So and then each come with kind of a standing agenda. It might be standing projects. Each jurisdiction can add their projects. You have those conversations, and then you're kind of accountable to each other. Alright. We'll set timelines. And and then every two months, you meet to kinda make sure that the other group is doing kinda what they said Yeah. And following up. But if you're not, then you're gonna have to that next meeting, you're gonna have to Why? And so there's kinda that formal accountability.

And then in the case of her, the general manager and I will meet just the two of us every on the off month. So there are just those formal moments. But then, honestly, it's a it it also should be part of a more informal culture of thinking of these other groups that we work with, whether it's school district or CSU or part of the staff is thinking anytime, like, that that pops into their mind. And I think maybe that you know, I I won't look backwards. Let's just look forward.

But that those informal kind of culture of including each other and talking to each other, and that's really where a lot of the magic happens is where you really are, you know, having informal conversations. You know, I should give the general manager a call just to make sure he has a heads up on this because this meeting's coming and maybe you know? And so those are the moments when I think you have you want that both to be able to make sure you've got good partnership.

Great. Thank you for that. Can I

just echo that real quick? I think the word I used you in your email today was refreshing, so thank you.

Good. Yeah. And I'm happy to hear you're thinking about this. And my director said, you know, to the public, the government is just the government. They might not be aware of different agencies. And so there I think there is really an expectation that we are coordinating like that to to try to actualize the best outcome as quickly as possible. So I'm appreciative that you understand what I'm getting at here. I'm so looking forward to more backwardation. Thanks. Thank

you. I just have just a reminder question. So we are on the same page between the two agencies of the design now. Right. This meeting is solidified that we agree, and I would love to get some kind of sign off saying we agree with the design. So if you have to sign every page of the design drawings,

the gin's what's Sound like a ceremonial.

Yes. With the manager's signature.

They can say there's not the

The hard

directors. Just making sure we're okay with this design.

So council member Andrew, that that is the MOU that was established a couple years ago. The the later one with January date that was updated when Alex and I worked on costing. We we back in January, we kinda nod into, yep, fill the gap with the park impact fees, use the bond dollars. Let's you know, the developer fees are still let's just get a shuffle in the ground. The design had been battered around and talked about for years.

And so through no fault to anybody, it's just it's big and complex and lots of people involved, but but we're there. Yeah. The agreement is in here and signed, and that was part of why I like, yeah, we maybe like to go back and revisit it, but when we finally got to a point last January, we were just like, you know what? We just gotta do this. And that that design's okay. And, you know, everybody's always got a few little things that concern about the project. But I think at the end of the day, the conversations I've had in the last eight weeks, conversations I've had with Alex in the last eight months have have made me feel really good about the cooperation in this project going forward and what was designed as as good as we can do what we are doing.

Okay. And then also, I just had a quick technical question, possibly to the civil engineer or, of course, do we have a demand study that's related to what types of amenities that should be here in terms of quantity? And was that considered as part of value engineering? Because I'm seeing two dog parks, two basketball courts, two playgrounds. And I know with dog parks, it could be challenging because you've got big dogs, small dogs separated. But just wanted to see if that was considered as part of the value sharing. I'm not trying to take away any more amenities, but I just wanna make sure we're being cost conscious.

So I would just say none of the park features were included in value engineering. Okay. Value engineering was how to accomplish, you know, what is plan and what has been approved in a way that is less costly and can be done faster. Okay.

Yeah. But I if I can so as you're aware, there's there's really two distinct neighborhoods connected to this park. One is La Vista on top of the hill, and one is the area up to the north west on at the bottom of the park. And those are where the dog parks are. I was looking at the table. Wow. That's a lot of cool dog space, mister mayor. But but I do believe that part of it was it was we, Virginia. Yeah.

It's true. They all all three have dogs.

You're not a dog? I mean, not. Okay.

So we the but I think the concept was you're gonna build a 50 acre park. These the people who live down at the bottom of the hill have always needed a park, and there's nothing really close. And it it's minor park amenities, but it gives you enough to walk your dog, walk around, have a picnic, and play basketball. And then and then the top of the park, that that was kinda developed for the people who have been living there for, oh gosh, eight or nine years and had the developer fees, 2,000,000. We've been spending I don't know.

Hey. You hold on to $2,000,000 for all that time. A good job. And so I think there was the idea was these neighborhoods finally get the the parks that they deserve, and then the middle would be this big multiuse scenic vistas trails hiking and stuff. So I think that's why there's two parks was my understanding.

Just making sure that we have the amenities and making sure they get absolutely needed because I'm also thinking about keeping space open as well. So that's the question I wanted

to make

sure. And then I know we're all just looking at moving forward. I would like to say I do wanna do a little bit of a back. And just a reminder that the city also took on big risk by buying or operating in the space of wanting to build parks when we were not in our district, but now it's coming into fruition. So sometimes people take on big risk in order to make things like this happen because things were not happening.

So whether that's happening for economic development, whether it's providing space for our residents, this is why sometimes we have to take on risky things. So I just want to acknowledge that because other councils took on risky things. So the other reason I wanted to mention that is we also had meetings, which are the HLAC and wanted to know if we can start doing these kinds of activities in HLAC. I sat on HLAC briefly and the presentations are great, but this is also an opportunity to meet. I know that school district is also president present on this board, but I think those are opportunities where we can communicate more, where you already have elected officials at at the days, at the table, and maybe we can work some of these things out where we don't have to put a lot of burden on our administrative support's needs to create special meetings and and all that.

So just something for us to consider in the future. And programming. So I am very interested to see if this is gonna be a space that's gonna be more of a quiet space for residents. And I know you have an amphitheater here, but what type of programming would you see suitable for this type of park? And so this is something that you all might wanna discuss at each, like, later on.

And I'll save my comments regarding our partnership after the next presentation, but I'm so excited that you all are supporting us in this way. I do agree with Mayor President Steyer that you are our part of this district, and we are also looking at other things that the city should be doing in support of your efforts as well. It's not just about you all coming to help out the city of Hayward, but there's initiatives that we can help you out on as well. So look forward to the next conversation. And thank you to the design team.

I know it's not easy to value engineer $5,000,000 off of a project. I know that it's very difficult, and I know there's a lot of geotechnical things that you all have to consider when you do work like this. So just thank you to all your hard work on that and helping Sydney out as well.

Okay. Thank you. I am not going to go too much into this. I just wanna say thank you for all of the work. I think this is great. Everything that was said is good. I'll let the engineers wrestle over the keyway and get that resolved. But I think I have to agree with director O'Meary about the need of having a key way there. So I think there seems to be a consensus there. So I'm gonna I'll leave it there.

Okay. But I'm glad this is moving forward, and and I'll let those remarks stay as is because I really wanna get into the following presentation. So why don't we do this? Why don't we end this and pivot to G. The next portion of it? Let me take you. Okay.

K. Well, we'll we'll move on. I'm doing the general manager here with our recreation district. So mister mayor, council members, my board president, board members, our second item that we were gonna talk about was collaboration on few potential collaboration on future projects, and we just looked out for two of them. We know SkyWest is out there.

We did not put it on the agenda, so we cannot discuss it tonight. But we know that we have talked to the city, and there will be community meetings going forward to look at the plans and how to develop the airport. So we're gonna stay away from that tonight. But we have two projects that I felt were super significant that will require a lot of cooperation. One being the Foothill Trail.

We have a Foothill Trail master plan that we did. City kind yep. It it deals with basically, When you did the first beautiful mile and a half from Union City up Mission Boulevard, we actually landed some materials from our Mission And Maddox property, Unity Park. They cut some big slabs. There's reused cement there that got credits for that project, so we were happy to help it.

But that's ideally a long trail, and you have there's a lot of Caltrans parcels. And city manager, Ott, and I were talking today that that we should start looking at the parcels and figuring out. Because I feel like if you're gonna give away 2,000 bicycles in the community, a kid could get on a bike in Union City and basically ride up to Grove Way, Michigan Maddox. He has the other end of Hayward. And so our goal, and Maggie's gonna talk about this plan, would be to try to sprinkle some amenities up that trail.

You can go to the pump track at Tennyson. You can go up and maybe go ahead from there. Maybe Parsley gets a little bike park area developed in it somewhere in that a kid could get on a bike and do. And then the other project we thought was super collaborative is we appreciate we had a thing to sign off on a grant. The city was trying to get to do some connectivity down through the Eden Greenway, and they mentioned some park stuff. And we're like, look. We would love to be a partner in that kind of project with a park and walkways. I'm gonna let Megan tell you about it because it's really her work.

Good evening, mister Bear. I'm a little council member of the. I am Megan Schooner, the head of planning and development director for. So if I can have the next slide. So the first project, yeah, like Jim just said, talk about is the Foothill Trail.

So our board of directors approved a master plan that we developed with community outreach in 2020. And the intent of that master plan was to provide guidance to be used for the development of that trail through different parcels along the way and to provide some design guidelines. So it's a consistent trail because it's going to be built by different people in different segments, but at the end of the day, we want a new front trail. So when complete, it will be provide both recreation and transportation values for the community and then link schools together and shopping and things like that. The next slide, please.

Six miles.

Right? Yeah. It's about six to seven miles. On this plan, north is on the left side and south is on the right side. So starting from the south, the the trail starts at about Industrial Boulevard, those two are Mission Hills Golf Course.

It crosses Mission Boulevard and then stays on the east side of Mission Boulevard, and it it winds through a lot of the different Caltrans parcels. On the map through in Grand, it's very difficult to see them, so I put an inset map in the top right hand corner that identifies those parcels a little bit more clearly. We have had conversations over the years regarding how how that trail would be with groups five and six, but seems like those developments kind of stalled or went away. We are currently talking about the foot to hill trail through the Caltrans Parcel Room 8. This is I know it's hard to see a lot of detail on this, but if you're interested in the master plan, it's easily accessible from our website.

You can see the details and all the maps and detail on those maps if you're interested. Next slide, please. So the current use that we're working on now is gonna go from 8th Street to Grove Way in the past five to Japanese Gardens, Senior Center, DMT, the Park, up around the log tower and up to Grove Way. We received a habitat conservation fund grant to fund part of this. We're matching bond dollars. We've been held a community meeting about a month ago, and we're having another community meeting on February 2 at the senior center. It's an open house style meeting from ten to June.

Twenty first.

Pretty first. First, I think.

Yeah. He said second. It's twenty first. Okay. 21 senior. He's afraid everybody was. No. That's funny. I think.

I'll write this here. Too. And so we we had actually a really great turnout at the first meeting. People have some concerns about safety in that area, and that Foothill Trail. And, basically, the gist of that meeting was people agreed that actively in this area is the best solution.

So we got a lot of buy ins, so we're looking forward to moving forward with that. And next slide, please. The other project is in Greenway. It gets classified as a trail, but I think to be realistic, it's two it's a two mile corridor through two mile, basically, linear through PG and E corridor, and it does have some barriers along the way, so it's not two continuous miles. We hard leases that property for PG and E, specifically for recreation purposes.

There are a couple of caveats that what we can and can't do in there related to the height of trees and plantings and metal structures because of the electrical power. The northern end of the Greatway is anchored by the Hayward Community Garden, which we finished in 2020. The we finished the first phase of 2020, so there's 70 garden lots in there. There's some learning areas, some seed exchange, compost, and other support facilities. So that's the anchor that one end.

Should be the city combo center.

And the city combo center is gonna be on the other side Awesome. As well off of Berry Avenue. And may I have the next slide? Thank you. We've done some improvements kind of in localized areas along the Greenway over the past couple of years and have some new stuff coming.

So we at Southgate Park, which is not technically in the Greenway, but it is adjacent and accessible from the Greenway, we converted the tennis courts into pickleball. Hugely popular sports there. We finished the renovation of the playground, actually, two last year. So we replaced the play equipment, made pathways on 88, extended the pathway for kids into the Greenway, so it was all connected by accessible paths. We have recently as part of our ADA, small projects, repainted the Cypress And Harder area.

It's a little triangle, but Hayward Props. Hayward's my friend, if you would give away and needed better, more stable paving for for there. The clients that they serve, so that was completed last year. We put in an outdoor fitness court across from any of our community garden or excuse me, across from Southgate a few years ago. And then as part of our playground replacement project that we're just kicking off, we're going to be improving the playground at Barry Avenue. And as part of our basketball court renovation project, we'll be improving the two basketball courts along the Greenway as well. That's.

Yeah. There's a dark part there. So

as far as collaboration, we in last year, we worked with some landscape architectural students from Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo. Was a project, and we wanted to get their ideas on how to activate

the e we went

to Saint Caleb with some really fantastic ideas. But we partnered with the city, with the Lisa Wilfong from their stormwater division because we added the challenge to the students is this needs to be a multi multifunctional space. It has to be recreation, transportation, and it has to have that environmental benefit. So for so we asked them to add in stormwater control of that. Hoping to generate some ideas that we could maybe move forward with with professional designers and do a positive plan that that would help us get funding under recreation, storm water.

And, again, we did sign, as you mentioned, the letter support for the transportation related grant to improve the street crossings that would would make this more So that's kind of an ongoing opportunity. You see opportunities where go get here, and then we'll we'll let you know as well. Are there any questions on those?

Okay. I started on that side last time. Can share it with mine. Sure. Okay.

Thank you for the presentation. I do and for the reason we tend to miss these, presentations at BeachFlex, so it's nice to get them here. Wanted to also give kudos to you all on the. I see so many people walking through there. A lot of dog walking stuff. But even though I know things are happening at a a lot of residents are using Park. So I just wanted to give you acknowledgment and kudos on that work as well. I I I just wanna make sure, are we okay with Biltwell Park? And and are we moving forward with that? And things are already all on the same page on the design and the parking and all that?

Yes. So we have. Actually we put the project out to bid. We got 17 bids as a. And then after that, because it was something, we got three bids for our assets. So you can Okay. What's valid. It's not. But we're looking to take that project to our board in the next meeting on the seventeenth.

For more than contract.

For more than contract. And.

Great. I was more concerned about making sure you guys are on the same page with the parking. So we're good there. So

the concerns that the things we worked with on the city successfully were parking spaces, parking numbers, the transportation plan. I worked with director Mary to agree to put in some new street lighting in front of the rec center, right, similar to what we're doing at Mia's Dream and Tennyson. We're putting helping put some lighting in there to light up the park side of those streets better. So I think it's been a good cooperative project. We look forward just to getting it going. It has been so hard to defend that site, and I know you know that the neighbors probably have told you. It's been rough. We've had someone in there all the time. So but we're very happy. It's gonna get awarded. We're gonna put a big fence around it. It comes to contractors responsibility through construction, so we're very

happy with that. Awesome. Great.

Then I also wanted to know if there's opportunities for us to work together on some of our plazas. So for example, Heritage Plaza. I know that we've had presentations in the past where we've been told that the Heritage Plaza has enough events, and I disagree. I think Park should be a partner in activating that space more in order to drive more economic development downtown. So I'm wondering if that's something that can be discussed at HVAC.

We can discuss that. It's one of the few parks in town we don't manage. I know. But And and I completely understand why it's a beautiful park. We'd love to do more stuff there. I know that we have talked offline about many special events. I think the thing to remember is at this point between the school district, the chamber, and the city put about a 150,000 out for special events this year that we did not budget. Right? Because we found out in July we're gonna help her in June back in June. So I'm happy to look at that too and activate workplaces.

You know, we do fifth we last year, I think we did 52, what I would call small and medium sized special events, and now we have the larger ones. So we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to work with you and the ideas and organizations that you've represented us that could use help or maybe do events for.

Okay. Are there any other parts that you all have put on your radar that you need City of Favorites Partnership on?

You mean for you mean for, like, park development? We don't have a lot of develop I mean, D Street, the the example of D Street with the traffic calming while we bought the house up on top of the nature center. The goal for that plan is to expand the driveway into the nature center, be able to get a bus in there, kids drop off, turnarounds. We have a $10,000,000, nature center plan that we think we're gonna be maybe halfway to fundraising that in just the next couple months. So that's gonna all get activated there.

So the coordination of that and the coordination going into San Felipe and the call meet, I think just working together for the if there's road closures and other things, we'd really need to know because we do a lot of rentals in those buildings. And it'd be a shame to rent it out four months in advance to somebody and then the streets close. So I think there's coordination there. And then I think as they come as city manager and were talking, I personally believe that the Caltrans parcels investigating the ones that can be developed, the ones that can't be developed should be parked where the Foothill trolls gonna go through. I firmly believe the data in the Greenway and there's active transportation corridors, bikes, kids getting bikes.

I saw the great press release. Biggest bike giveaway of any city in the country. Right? Like, I think it's amazing. We wanna have places for those kids to ride those bikes and be able to get around safely. So I think the Greenway, Caltrans, and then, of course, at some point, the discussions about SkyWest and how much of that's parks and and maintenance and all that. So I think that's three that probably keep us pretty busy.

Okay.

Yep. Alright.

And then are you also interested in the future? Not now, so you don't have to worry about the budget.

But in the future,

I'm looking at areas where there could be hot spots that are addressed with urban design. So features that a park would have that can be put into those areas where we're seeing troubles trouble spots where

Yeah. I mean, I think there's

parts and development. Yeah. I think there's a

lot of little opportunities around Hey. Or, you know, the one that comes to mind, and I don't know where we are in the because we haven't talked, is the, I think it's the Main Street Garden, the little garden down Mhmm. Behind the creek. And they've come to us. Can you help support us? And I'm like, yeah. But the ask wasn't support us was, can you basically run and maintain and take care of us on the road of our food? We're like, that's not quite the partnership we'd look for in a community garden. Right? But I think that's one example of there's probably spots and corners and things all over where you could look at trying to do something to to develop those for better.

Okay. Great.

Thank you. Better behavior, better socialization, better just everything that comes with parks.

Thank you.

Thank you for this presentation. A lot of really exciting projects that Hart's taking on. And I think for the most part, the big ones you just named and very aligned with the eating Green Way, I think, you use a lot of love. It goes through the Jackson Triangle and catches a lot of neighborhoods that I think really benefit from that kind of access. So I am curious to see not just the the better connectivity, which is definitely needed, but also what what reimagined amenities can be there. Recognize there's a lot of limitations of what can go there, but I imagine there's some things we can do to help activate it a bit more.

Sure.

Yeah. I made the pump track everywhere. It turned the whole city into a pump track. So I I I'm just kinda building on your comment around the Prospect Garden in the Prospect or the Hazel Garden in the Prospect neighborhood. So that that was actually a people budget project, and then they developed so much they started reaching out to Hard to say, hey.

You know, does this wanna be a Hard Park? I recognize that's, you know, incurring a larger expense for your team. But to council member Andrew's point, I am also interested the city's not in a position where we can do a people's budget, but it has hard looked at, you know, microgrants for residents in certain areas to do that activation. So your team doesn't have to invest in a massive planning project that kind of unlocks the latent potential of organized residents that they come with a project proposal and and, you know, incredible enough showing that they

could actually can pull it off. We could consider anything. The community members come and talk to us. They do that a lot. Yeah. I I have to be honest. Yeah. We're we're helping everybody right now. So, Sherry, we're we're we're not filthy rich.

Yeah.

No. No. I don't know if that's right to say, but we we do have the means to do that. And we could intentionally use our bond and part development dollars. And we have a nonbond capital fund that we kind of put away for, like, something breaks, and it's not a capital project for bond dollars. Yeah. So there's money to do these projects and help people. Yeah. You know, I'm not gonna use any particular project as an example. Mhmm. But, you know, we hear all the time, hey. Can you come bring your big LED scout so we can partner and have a movie? Yeah. It's really just us bringing our screen down. Yeah.

So for me, I would love and we are right now we just we're developing a partnership policy. Yeah. So that says because I think I alluded the other day, we gave away $206,000 worth of rent to 50 community community and municipal organizations last year for picnic areas, buildings, parks. We gave away, oh my gosh, $300,000 worth of free and equitable programs. Right? And we're doing that with people in the partnership. We have to be very deliberate about where we go with that.

Yeah.

We're happy to talk to anybody about development. We were working with Sarah Wizard about the request for a dog parking cannery. Yeah. And we went we went mulling down that road with them and what we could do and helped identify stuff. So those projects are definitely out there. Went up to College Heights last week. Looked at that park. Huge park. Big lawn. Yeah. Ladies like, we think we'd like a dog park. And Megan and I went up there and looked around. Duane was at paternity leave because he's got a six week old baby, but he didn't go with us. But we went up there and looked around, and there's an opportunity. So now we put, like, five places where it might be, and we'll go back to community. We we definitely wanna do that, councilman.

Okay. Good to hear. Congratulations, Duane. So, yeah, I'm I'm glad that you're thinking creatively, and it sounds like you're taking the right approach on data. I mean, I also you know, a different people's budget project was the policy of park renovation, and, you know, the family saw so many pictures of our kids playing out there. So I'm just glad that you have the flexibility in your thinking on how we can deploy capital to activate things in the way that customer Andrew said. There was a Sun Gallery project in the Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So so I I mean, overall, you know, I I don't have any significant comments or questions.

I think the the projects and priorities you're looking at make a lot of sense. On the topic of SkyWest, not getting too into detail here, because I know it's not formally on the agenda, just interested later down the line in hearing how hard Imagine's being a partner on that front. Just in early conversations with certain board members, I was under the impression that hardness from parks, not open space, and we're talking about a potentially larger, you know, 100 plus acre space. So I'm kinda

yeah. We we man, do you know offhand how many acres of open space? And that's probably a 157 or I think we have about a 150 acres of open space. We are we we are neighbors to what who I call big brother, which is East Barriersville Park District, who has done a good job grabbing a lot of open space, some adjacent to the unincorporated areas where open spaces, some adjacent to take apart Garen Park. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One in your hills. Yeah. And and, of course, the shoreline. So Okay. We are definitely looking at these opportunities. Okay. We're looking at working with people.

I I believe we I told you we did this huge community survey, and what we found out is everyone wants parks and open space. So the parcel eight conversations were very exciting today Okay. About what we can do with those places.

Okay. Great. Well, thank you for the presentation. Made the good work. Thank you. Mhmm.

Alright. Thank you.

So lots of thoughts.

I'll try and be concise. To your point, I think that's one of the exciting things about PAR is that we do that kind of community entry. I think you characterized it well, manager. We had a youth come in asking about wanting better skate parks. And so we not only improved his skate park, but all of our skate parks, and it it sparked that. So I think that mindset exists.

Yeah.

And I'm excited about the two things that HLSAC will work on this year is is our youth master plan, and which gives more opportunities for that, but also our events. How how do we what events do we do? How do we support them? How do we do that in a culturally informed way? So because, you know yeah.

So I think there is more work to be done, and and that sort of highlights your point, council member Andrews, about about events. Where does HLAC where does this conversation fit with HLAC? And I think there are these broad things that touch all three agencies, and that makes sense to be in HLAC. And then there are things that are capital projects. We have capital committees.

And so I think not duplicative, but I think that there really is benefit in this conversation once or twice a year of to your point about D Street. You asked about projects. Of course, I have a list because you've all met me. So, you know, in addition to the ones that have already been said, I think having real conversation about the and landscape and lighting districts and how do those funds flow. Because the statutes seem to say that they come to us, but our practice is that they come to the city and where how does that happen?

And I'm not saying that in any kind of accusatory way. I'm saying, I know I don't know a lot about it. And so as policymaking bodies, it might be really beneficial to have us take a look at that kinds of policies, similarly with SkyWest and what does or does not need to be charged there. Certainly, SkyWest is a future conversation, as we've all said. And then some things to support stuff that's already happening, like the old City Hall Garage might be a really great place building out bike infrastructure in the community.

Swore As you said. Swag isn't gonna bring that up.

That's why I brought it up. And then just, you know, ongoing things, playgrounds and park projects as they happen, that should really be us these days. There was a time when that was true. It's not true anymore. We have the team to do it. It doesn't need to be you know, I appreciated your point, but things needed to happen, and now they can happen differently. And so, you know, how do we work together? Even, you know, conversations about the stack center

of, you know, that wouldn't have gotten

as far as it has a lot because of Mary, but also because of the team. And now it's time to look at what are the things that it might make sense to come to this shop in the same way of what are the things we're doing around safety and so on that might make sense for us to talk together. And the last point is I really appreciated what you said about activating spaces. And so maybe it's that we need to bring a program to a corner that's been problematic, or maybe we need to think about what is this habitat opportunity together. So I'm looking forward to collaboration in the both informal and formal ways as we mentioned. Thank you.

Speaking just to the trail and the greenway, I think the trail is is ready I wanna say ready to go, but it's getting there. And it's you know, show she'll be a model for the rest of the trade, one thing, you know, and it would and that would kind of give people's imaginations up and and support them. So I think that that's important to get going. Greenway has always been, you know, potential. You know, that's never never reached its potential.

And the problem with Greenway is it's long and deep. And over the years with parks, you know, the the deeper the park and holds shorter than frontage, the more problems you have. But I think if you do, it has to turn go through there and activate it, I think, you know, the pump track but to be honest, I've seen pump tracks, but I've never seen one until we built ours as lively as that, and it's you know, it's with beautiful parts. It's beautiful. And And I think we can do that in more places.

And so it really draws kids. It really draws a lot of family of kids. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity, and, you know, it's linear, which is great. So I think it's one opportunity on the great way to really enlighten that We make it something else. And the other thing is, you know, our part of our old parks were designed in the seventies, and it's basically long. You know? And just long long blow, as they said. So there wasn't much landscaping to it. But I think there's a lot of opportunities for, you know, playing and and, you know, the, you know, in in those areas, you know, water retention. But they they could be really attractive sort of by having as well.

So it could be a very beautiful trail. It's not it's not a continuous trail. It's broken on the freeway and the tracks and the base of it, but but it does in those neighborhoods. It is great amenity. So it has that's a great opportunity. So so those are I'll just talk to those two, and I think we're pretty good.

Thanks. Director Andromeda, you bring up the Greenway, the parks, you know, back in the seventies because, you know, growing up, you know, we used to go to the Greenway Parks, and we didn't know then so we we didn't know then, like, what more could we do with the park? All it was just flat grass, and we had to you know, it was either football or, you know Mhmm. Or whatever. But, you know, it was so funny.

Well, you know, I, you know, I was gonna say, my comment they have a a few. One comment was, you know, I'm not here asking you hard to take on, you know, anymore and pay for anymore. I was gonna come here with, you know, offering you to take something. But but but good. If if the conversation you guys had earlier this afternoon was was as good as I hope it was, Hopefully, we're we're close we're close to something.

The only one we like each other.

Yeah. No. No. What is a what is a pump track? I don't think I've ever

You've been out to Tennyson recently. It's a the pump a pump track. Sorry. Let's do this. A pump track is basically designed it's like a hilly banked curves, and pump tracks are different from bike parks in that a pump track is designed to teach a kid how to get on a bike and use their body momentum to get around the track.

They don't pedal. You maybe pedal off the start, but then it's like I throw myself in the curves. Like, I push down the hill, and they learn to pump their bike around those tracks. And it's a pretty big skill for, like, if they start to go into BMX and other bike riding. You know, ideally, we'd have a couple in ground dirt, big fan elm and bike parks somewhere because we have a lot of open space we could probably do stuff with. Well,

good. I okay. You you know, as you know, I spend a

lot of

time at at dog parks here.

And You do those too.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And, you know, I am you know, I was at the I was at the, you know, at the dog park today at the Greenway, in the Greenway in Greenway. And, you know, it's it's nice.

Is there still a puddle under the match?

No. There's not. No. There's not. However, I you know, there I have seen I have seen the the park, you know, used very much on you know, like, in the evening, you know, at three, four, 05:00, especially in the summertime, you know, when the, like, when the sun drops, when the sun sets later.

And, you know, I've always just thought about taking one of those, you know, sections of Eden Greenway and just putting the put the fence around it and just having this big swath of land. I know to build them out of it is expensive, but, you know, just considering the amount of dogs that are out there right now, you know, just really taking one, you know, thumb of the of eating greenway, pick one, and fence it all in and and do it. I I wrote here on my notes, San Felipe Park, you know, I don't wanna cause alert or alarms, but, you know, that whole hill is just incredible. If we were to do something there, you know, dogs would run up and down and, you know, put that tree in the middle. Anyway, I I don't wanna go into all that, but but I you know, there is a there is a you know, we talk about amenities, and I know that there were a couple of a couple of dog parks up at the La Vista.

There's, you know, there's a lot of dogs out there. And and and the bigger the bigger the dog park, I think, is is great. On occasion, I go Saturday mornings, if I have the time, I drive out to Point Isabel, and that place is incredible. You know? So I don't know how big that place is.

You know? 50 acres? I don't know. You just unleash the dog, and they just you know, there's nowhere to go, you know, unless the ocean or, you know, the warehouse is on the other side, but it's all fenced in, all natural barriers, and and so forth. But, anyways, just something that I always thought about, you know, was part you know, chunking out part of the greenway and just making one big, you know, park for dogs, which goes to a much bigger part.

I know you guys talked about, you know, some of the parcels, some of the Caltrans parcels today. But, you know, I know Hard, maintains, Eden Greenway now, but, you know, maybe something you know, a future conversation that we should have is, you know, what, you know, what can be done on those green things and that really make it, you know, an outstanding destination for not just the neighborhoods, but some of these parks are next to commercial. They're next to food. They're next to and they're great spaces as you've done with with the Cypress And Ardour where, you know, you can stage things up there and have food and, you know, and so forth. And I just you know, you know, like I said earlier, you know, mean, Eden Greenway growing up, that was that was the destination of the neighborhood.

And and over the years, for for decades, I just there hasn't been much done on you know? It's been maintained and all of that, but I just haven't seen a whole lot done.

The year this passive recby issue. Yeah. I think that when I told people I wanted to put disc golf down one of the greenways, they looked at

me like I was a

little crazy. I'm like, no. Like, well, it's not challenging. It's not a disc golf course. I said, no. It's a place where people go and throw discs and learn how to play disc golf, straight holes down, no barriers, no trees, no green bushes. Right? And so I think that that particular project and then the ideas like we've talked about, I could see a couple more dog parks down the greenway, or I don't know if I could take a home because the bike riders go down the trail. But maybe no. But maybe one side. I never even thought maybe one side of the whole Yeah. Sure. Right in the middle. And and the other side can have other, you know, petty care, recreation, mental. So I really I really appreciate, like, this conversation and that fact.

I do think that we'll be coming back to present, our an annual report to city council. It's part of the MLA at the February. So we look forward to being able to tell you more about what we're doing. I I think that our story becomes very compelling when we do that. And, again, I'm not you know, I don't wanna just derail all this because I have so much I wanna tell you. But So

Well, lastly, I just wanna say, you know, big compliment. Over the years, you know, even in in times of limited resources, pre bond, pre hard bond days, I think you guys have, you know, have done just a great job at doing everything you can to keep parks clean, keeping them livable in terms of going out there and playing and and recreating. And today, in particular, I mean, the Greenway Parks are they're clean, and they're they're green. And, you know, and I know the city is over the keep a clean green stuff. I mean, we're you know, they're they really are maintained really good.

And, of course, you know, selfishly speaking, you know, over there on Sleepy Hollow, that whole corridor is exceptional. It's clean. Today, they're out the the grass. You know, they smell grass. I mean, it's just it's just really, really clean out there. And the and the neighbors I should also say that the neighbors also know this, and they they

So we'll tell you later in the month, but the last part I need to and I don't wanna keep telling you about all the stuff we're doing, but we we have finally done our fifth round of park evaluations with the standards we developed. We have scores for every park in town. We know the top 10, the bottom 10. Now we're breaking up by many inter parks. So is it the is it the custodial scores, the par scores, the turf scores?

We put a lot of resources into a turf and irrigation crew when we close SkyWest and got out, we took the superintendent, a bunch of those maintenance workers, and we developed a turf and irrigation. And these guys have been going out fixing irrigation with our smart controller system for about two years now, and I think you're seeing green parts. When I met with them all the other day, they said, when are the next round of evaluations? They said in June or July when it's hot, we're gonna go see if it's still green. So Right. Yeah.

Go ahead. Did you

have No.

Oh oh, okay. Yeah. Go ahead.

Thank you. Just, you know, one last point about sort of infusing collaboration in everything we do is also clean and green. Right? We have a volunteer in parks program, course, the Keep Every Clean and Green task force. Let's plan those events together. We've got plans to do developments in the parcel groups that haven't already. Let's make sure that there there's dedicated space for the Foothill Trail. Let's, you know, keep each other in mind as we do our mutual things. You have to hold us to that standard and invite that from

Absolutely.

The city as well.

I'm gonna I'm gonna break from decorum just a bit and ask open it back up for public comment because I know mister King is probably sitting there itching to say something. And it just gives you guys an opportunity to say something and respond to what we talked about here. Are there any public comment? Seeing none, I will close public comment.

Bruce?

Mr. King, you have thirty seconds. No. I'm kidding. If you if you wanna make a public note, then miss Dean, you have fifteen seconds.

I have my seat.

No. Go ahead instead. Okay? If you

wanna make it.

Alright. I'm gonna say something. Something.

Oh, there's no microphone. Hello. Well,

I just think this

is really awesome, and I

think we have a lot

of great projects happening. I keep counting the number of times SkyWest has been said today, and I am so excited about that. And I love it that Jim said open space is the number one thing people want, and that is absolutely correct. That is what the people want, and let's give the people what they want. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So seeing none, seeing no more, next item is council committee reports or reports or announcements. And seeing none, ladies and gentlemen, thank you hard, and thank you, and congratulations. That's why you have baggy your bags of your eye. Yeah. He's fucking He's been sick and tired. Meeting the journey.

Said he got the he said he got his

best night's sleep last night, finally.

How did

he call you? Feel perky today.

And I

kept

him here for

thirteen