Committee on Sustainability and Parks - Regular Meeting

He was a very smart, very intelligent guy. It wasn't all born of the education. It was born of the life he grew up and the early life he had here and everything he experienced. So there is lots of inspiration to be found still today.

Before I let you go, there was a lot of quotes that were mentioned. The service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. My favorite quote from Muhammad, and he loved this one because it really fit the time. He said, He said, if you put a rooster in the dark, he won't make a sound. He said, if you show him the light, he'll crow all day. And he said, I've seen the light and I'm crowing. In other words, I know the truth. And I'm gonna talk about social justice. I'm gonna talk about the fight for peace and equality. That, to me, to be able to stand up in what you believe and say it is important. Do you have a favorite quote?

Well, yeah, I love this. I love the rent that you pay, you know, the service you do to the others is the rent that you pay for your time on earth. And he understood that he had a lot of rent to pay because he had He'd had adversity, but he also had a lot of blessings, and he had been blessed and touched and blessed by God with great and immense talent, but he didn't let it stop in the ring. It flowered outside, and if you talk to any number of musicians and artists and politicians and others who were inspired by his legacy, as we saw that day when we said goodbye, you see just how far that legacy extends and it'll go on forever because of the size of the people and the numbers of people that he inspired and just by the rent he paid here.

Eric, again, thank you for your time. You're one of those people that I point to when I say I'm proud to be a Louisvillean and to have a broadcast journalist, the quality of you and the quality of work that you put out that I'm able to enjoy on behalf of people who are watching Global Now. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. You're very kind to say so. You're the same, John. The legacy that you're keeping alive and the work you're doing here is going to live on.

Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Eric Crawford, unbelievable. Enjoyed my time. I hope you did as well. Broadcast journalist from WDRB. I encourage you to read that piece and every piece that Eric Crawford puts out. Once again, thank you for watching Louisville Now.

I closed August 31st and I started on the project September the 1st. After I bought the house, I saw the alley and it was years worth of things. It was also years worth of overgrowth. The easeway right behind me, you couldn't walk through, you couldn't look through it. There was plenty of dumping back there. I'm not gonna live like that. We're not gonna live like that. So I started to clean it up little by little. I had some friends of mine come over and they brought me some chainsaws and clippers and start clipping away at the overgrowth. I reported to the city the large items. They picked that up and I picked up what they couldn't and it started from there.

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Metro TV 30 seconds. Good afternoon, everybody. Today is Thursday, June 4th, 2026, and we are having the regularly scheduled Parks and Sustainability Committee meeting. I'm joined in chambers today by my vice chair, Councilwoman Dr. Paula McCraney. I have Councilman J.P. Leninger, Councilman Anthony P. Argentini, Councilwoman Crystal Bass, and Councilwoman Betsy Rui. I don't have anybody online. Let's go ahead and just jump through it. So we have two special discussions today and two pieces of legislation we're gonna hear. We'll start out with special discussions. We have item ID26-0418. It's a partnership for a green space sustainability achievements. Is anybody here to speak on that please? And please say your name and title for the record. Thank you.

Okay. My name is Brent Fryrear, and I'm the director of the Partnership for a Green City. And Fryrear is spelled F-R-Y-R-E-A-R. And Councilwoman McCraney is my representative. So it's nice to be here and actually have some time to talk. The partnership for Green City, I was just telling Councilwoman Rui that we kind of fly under the radar. We've been around for over 20 years, and a lot of people haven't heard of us, but we're not out there trying to be in everybody's face. We're trying to be real diligent in our efforts to get things done. So it's four partners, Louisville Metro, UofL, Jefferson County Public Schools, and Jefferson Community and Technical College. We've been around since 2004. All the partners pay is $31,000 a year max. So for $124,000, we do our work, and a lot of that goes into my salary and benefits, but we use the rest for operations. My position is located at the university, and we've got a memorandum of agreement for the partnership as well as purchasing, and purchasing brings in the quasi-governmentals, MSD, the water company, the regional airport authority, and TARC. Just to show you what we can do working together between 2005 and 25, every year we save about $800,000 to $900,000 buying paper on a joint contract. That more than pays for my job and the operations of the partnership. We've got a joint paper contract with right now I believe it is Office Depot. And that economy of scale is just crazy good. So we've saved over $16 million since we started in 2005. And we purchase over a half million cases of paper in any given year. Energy efficiency in buildings from 2011 through 2025, we've done a lot of energy savings performance contracts, and we've avoided the costs of additional energy by $82 million plus. And that's real money. We had $6 million in savings last year and that's on the wind down. We started the contracts 13 years ago was the last one and they run about 13 years. So our guaranteed savings will be complete. All right, we've avoided 528 million kilowatt hours of energy use over that time. If you look at garbage and recycling, we've diverted almost seven billion pounds and that's with a B billion of recyclables and the major person or the major group with that is Metro Solid Waste Management. So they're sending so much to the landfill, or to the recycling that's not going to the landfill, and then 15 million pounds of compostables. So we've got a lot of different things that we're trying to take out and save the landfill space. Since you've got three educational institutions in the partnership, one of the things that we've done is a sustainability education pipeline. It starts out in K through 12 with JCPS. JCTC was the first college to have a sustainability degree. UofL added the sustainability degree and a master's in sustainability. The master's is on hold right now, but Councilwoman Rui was the first graduate of the interdisciplinary master's in sustainability. It goes all the way up to the PhD. And so you can have sustainability from the time that you're in kindergarten through your doctorate. And it's been instrumental having the people at the table from those organizations to get through a process. We also have a lot of students that go through internships. because Louisville needs people for different departments and things and so business school, we've got people from arts and sciences, we've got people from the science side of everything and sustainability that go all over the city to actually do internships. Over the time, we've come up with a number of different awards. The first one that we did was the Joan Rehm Memorial Environmental Leadership Award. And I'm sure people remember Joan Rehm as being the deputy mayor for the city of Louisville that merged Louisville and Jefferson County back in the day. Joan Rehm was responsible for me having a job because she got an MOA together that moved us towards having a director to direct the partnership. Julie Shenton-Fried worked for Brightside, and Julie was an integral part of our youth summits. And Julie passed away, I guess, in 2008. 21 from ovarian cancer and had been an environmental educator for years. So we give the Julie Shenton Freed Sustainable Schools Award. We do one Founders Award. The Founders Award doesn't mean that they were a founder, although that's what we've given them out so far is to the founders. It's for somebody who's done an exceedingly good job on sustainability they've worked very diligently in their efforts so that's not something we give all the time the other two are annual uh... awards and then we've got sustainability champions as we've gone out and given these presentations at the different partners We wanted to name one sustainability champion at least every venue so everybody knows that there are people that have worked with the partnership and helped us make it as well as helping the four partners. I think that's it. There's my information if anybody needs it. I'm glad to talk to anybody. And if you all have got any questions, I'm happy to talk.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Brant. We appreciate that. I'll start off with one question. And you mentioned JCTC in there. Is there any work ever done in the southwest campus of JCTC? Yes. Can you elaborate on that at all?

Vince DiNodo is the gentleman out there that does all the mapping work. And he's been on our urban heat island team. And then he's also worked with us on trying to... geolocate green infrastructure around the partnership. We had a student that came in and did an internship one semester where he went all over starting at U of L and came down to the city and was doing the different green infrastructure projects and geolocating them and then putting them into an app that Mr. Donato designed. A lot of things that we do at JCTC are at the request of their president or vice president for facilities. But those are the two things that jump out real quick, and they were both with Vince.

And just to get a better understanding in regards to sustainability, I think you mentioned something about solar panels. Do you all install them, or do you all advocate for them? Can you elaborate a little bit more about what your solar panel program looks like?

What program? Solar panel. Solar panel program. Okay. We've been working lately with REAL, the Renewable Energy Alliance of Louisville, on trying to get people together on the solar project that we would like to see done in the Louisville area. We've advocated for solar on UofL buildings, TC buildings, JCPS buildings, Louisville Metro buildings. I mean, we've... done quite a bit with that working with, I work with Jake Medley and Jessica Kane right now from the committee and Michelle's been on our steering committee. So we've worked on a lot of different things. I don't know how much has been actually done because of what we did, but a lot of that was set early on in what work the partnership did, especially with things that were put on UofL buildings. Originally, sustainability director for the city was Maria Cutter, and she worked to get, she was on a steering committee, and she worked to get solar on top of the 555 building, I think it is, or 444, whichever, I forget.

Okay, I'm not 100% sure, but yeah, all right, sounds good, thank you. Council Member Biagentini.

Yes, hi, thank you. A great presentation. Love the coordination. I'll give some credit to a, not for starting this or anything, but a former councilman, Brandon Cohen, who I had the pleasure of speaking with earlier this week. He was a big fan of coordinating amongst government agencies for economies of scale. Like, it just makes sense. And it's great to see that related to sustainability, related to purchasing power, what that means for reducing waste, reducing costs, all good. Regarding the solar, and I've supported purchasing solar and converting to more solar energy here in the city, I don't know if you're talking exclusively about what I'll call commercial solar, so it's government buildings, large institutions. I know that there's been a push and there's been an organization trying to get or pricing for residential solar. I actually priced it out for my house. I have to tell you, I could not figure out how to make the dollars work. I don't know if it's because energy prices generally here are fairly low compared to other jurisdictions and or the solar is just still too expensive, but some combination thereof. There was almost no break-even analysis that I could figure out that wasn't beyond like 20 years. So are we seeing, and again, maybe you can comment on why that's true and what we may be able to do moving forward related to residential solar so that it makes more sense for homeowners who want to convert but need a break-even analysis that's closer to 10 years or less.

The Mayor's Office of Sustainability is doing solarized Louisville and they're trying to get solar on people's homes. That's the process I'm talking about.

Okay.

I've been through it as well for my home and I did not go through with it yet. Part of the problem right now is that there's a disparate thought about solar power or wind power or hydroelectric. with the different administrations. And a lot of different things have been canceled as far as contracts. And it's the same thing. The more people buy solar, the less it's going to become. But it is right now an issue. But there are places like the Mayor's Office of Sustainability that are working on getting it out, and especially in areas that people might not have the same source of income to be able to do it or it might be people that live in rented housing. I don't really have a good answer for it because it's not something that we've done a whole lot of. On the solar we have done, we've dreamed big. One of our former steering committee members talked about there's 44 acres of parking lot south of Central Avenue. Why couldn't we figure out a way to put 44 acres of solar panels for covered tailgating? Run the electricity to... U of L, run it to the city around where it's going. But the problem with that is how do we connect into the Louisville grid because the Louisville grid is owned wholly by LG&E. So there's things to overcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Councilwoman Ruby.

Thank you very much. First, thank you Brent for coming today and letting people know about the partnership for Green City, because I would hazard a guess that many of the people on this side of the room have never even heard of the partnership or were aware that we were participating in it. And I've known about it for years, primarily from working through education. but since the city is part of it, but it's been flying under the radar, do you have any ideas on how we can make it more prominent and have greater participation from the city side?

I'm glad to work with Jessica and Jake on getting more people involved. We're looking at right now starting an AI committee or an AI team that would look at the environmental impacts of AI and also the social impacts of the data centers. The Environmental Institute is also working on that, but from a higher research level. We want more into the weeds that what's happening to people. Our committee structure is such that we have at least one person from each of the partners on each team and we could still use more people from the city of Louisville. We've got a lot of city people that work and have worked on the partnership. We're trying to figure out a way to either work with a television station to be a sustainability source of information and be on camera once a month or something. That's one thing we're looking at. We've not ever given a newsletter or anything like that, but I don't see it would be a problem to start a newsletter that would go online and be distributed widely to people who are interested.

Thank you. I would be happy to offer my time as a person going across between Metro Council and the partnership to ensure that people in here know what's going on and that we are able to optimize it better from our end, as we spoke about earlier. The copy paper for the Metro Council office comes from Amazon, and I know they'd save money if they went through that purchase plan, and we would get paper that has some recycled content, which would be better for the planet and better for our pocketbooks. So I would be happy to work with you and the other members of the committee to see if we can widen the impact.

Just before this meeting, I came from the green purchasing meeting, and we work on things like that with them. And we also work on problems that we have with contractors or when things are coming up. And so we've always got something moving. And if I may have one more second, I just said we were giving awards as... Sustainability Champions. Councilwoman Betsy Rui, on its 20th anniversary, the Partnership for a Green City recognizes you as Sustainability Champion for your commitment and support of our collective sustainability initiatives in Louisville Metro, UofL, Jefferson County Public Schools, and Jefferson Community and Technical College. You provide dedicated leadership as you work to increase sustainability while improving Louisville's quality of place. Well, that's a nice surprise. Thank you, Brent. and this is made out of bamboo and recyclable metal.

Thank you so much, Brent, for your presentation.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Up next is item number two, or presentation number two, special discussion at Olmstead. Sorry, Amy.

This meeting is being held for search and care areas 61.826 and council number 5A, reading 4.

again special discussion number two we've got the Olmstead parks current and future projects someone here to speak to that miss Mary that's me we've got a couple more things on the agenda and run through it thank you so much thank you very much committee chair Batson

Vice Chair McCraney for allowing us the opportunity to present before the Parks and Sustainability Committee today. My name is Mary Grissom. It really is my great honor to serve as President and CEO of the Olmstead Parks Conservancy. I'm excited to share our progress and our gratitude because we partner with Louisville Metro Government to care for our most exceptional shared resource, the Olmstead Park System. I'm grateful for the support of several mayoral administrations, aldermen, and council people throughout the years because Olmstead people will drive you a little bit crazy. But we are really responsible for this incredible legacy, which is a baton pass from generation to generation, since 1891 in Louisville. So today I'm going to provide just a little bit of history of the parks in Louisville and Frederick Law Olmsted, like why does it matter? Why do we care? I'm going to tell you about the Conservancy and its operations and I'm going to tell you about some recent and current projects we've undertaken together. I'm going to make sure I can do that. There we go. All right. So for over 100 years, Olmsted Parks have defined life in Louisville. We've named our community centers and our streets for them. And for 30 years, the Conservancy has been partnering with the city of Louisville to protect and enhance this legacy of national importance for the city of Louisville and of everyday well-being for Louisvillians. Our parks represent only 17 to 19% of the total public parks in Louisville, but they are among the most visited, and they are the most highly chosen for important moments. Weddings, funeral processions, birthday parties, family reunions. We have over 2.5 million visitors per year to Olmstead Parks. We are an independent nonprofit citizen-led organization, a 501c3 with an independent board of directors. All of our dollars are raised from individuals in our community. Our dollars do not cross, city dollars do not cross our books. In fact, they go the other way. If you think about another great Olmstead Park Central Park in New York City, the Central Park Conservancy, we function just like them. The city of New York owns Central Park. The Central Park Conservancy helps the city take care of that incredible asset. That's just like Louisville's Olmstead Parks. This is a continuous line of civic leadership for 135 years. It was citizens of Louisville that worked together to establish Park Lands. It was citizens of Louisville that raised the dollars to bring Frederick Law Olmsted here. And so we represent that continuous line of leadership. I do want to just draw, we're going back in history before we go to present day, so imagine cities emerging from the Civil War. They were overcrowded, ill places, right, where people really needed to think about drainage, they needed to think about fresh air, and to find open spaces. That is what forms Frederick Law Olmsted's vision for parks. No single person has had more impact on the development of American cities than Frederick Law Olmsted, and he saw public parks as essential public health infrastructure, which we know today to be the case. This is a map of Louisville in 1855. I'm gonna just kind of walk back for you that 1799, George Rogers Clark wanted every third block to be open space. He didn't quite get that vision. But in 1880, the first public park was declared. It was Baxter Square, Baxter Square, right down where Beecher Terrace used to be in the Russell neighborhood. That park was later designed by Olmsted, and so that is the original park of Louisville. In 1890, park commissioners, Andrew Cowan, the Salma Gundy Club, set aside green space that would form an outer ring of Louisville, a city that had not yet arrived. In 1891, Frederick Law Olmsted came here. We are the last place that he designed a public park system. He drew Cherokee, Iroquois, Shawnee, Baxter, Boone with his own hand and the parkways which connect us. and connect at Stansbury Park, right in the center of this intentional design. Why do we care about Olmsted? We care about him because our cities formed around this vision for public parks. He designed Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the U.S. Capitol Grounds, Emerald Necklace in Boston, and Louisville was the last place that he designed. We are one of only four complete Olmsted Park systems in the world, and we are the most fully realized system. What makes Olmsted's design so lasting? He wanted and really believed that open spaces and beauty and nature and rest were for everyone. So he designed places that should be open and accessible to every person regardless of economics or social status. He had a phenomenal life. He was a surveyor. He was a journalist. He understood how drainage worked because he worked during the Civil War to improve battlegrounds. And so this legacy of stormwater mitigation is something that the Conservancy carries on today. The Olmsted brothers really represent the firm after Frederick Law Olmsted died. It's important to say this because Louisville is responsible for stewarding a legacy of national importance. It is lovely that the Olmstead firm continued to design private estates and neighborhoods and universities, but the only thing that Frederick Law Olmstead himself touched here is our public park system. That is the legacy that the Conservancy is formed to protect and enhance. So I want you to think about Shawnee Park, right? In the west, this was the flagship in the western side. Today there are seven Olmstead parks in the west end of Louisville, but Shawnee is the original waterfront park of Louisville. It's 298 acres. It's a treasure. It's gorgeous. Cherokee Park, 389 acres in what was the east end of Louisville at the time it was developed. You think about the top of Barringer Hill, it's one of the most classic views in our city. That's an Olmsted original design by his own hand. Iroquois Park, over 700 acres in the south end of Louisville. If you have been to the North Overlook at the top of Iroquois Park, you know this is the masterpiece of our city. That skyline was not there when Olmsted designed that view, but he knew it would be there one day, and so here we have a treasure of our community. The parkways are not just roads that connect our parks, they are linear parkways. They are the first multimodal transportation in our community. Horses, pedestrians, bikes go along them. They contain historic trees within them and they connect us to each other and to nature from east to west to south Louisville. So this is an intentional design. It is the original park system of Louisville. It is a public park system that a city has grown around, right? Now Metro Parks has 120 parks to take care of. So we partner with Louisville Parks and Recreation to take care of these 17 original parks of Louisville and six parkways. We were formed in the 20th century because parks were struggling, right? Lack of dollars to take care of them. Encroachment is a challenge, right? The interstate went right through Cherokee Park. Natural disasters occur. The entire tree canopy was stripped from Cherokee Park in the 1970s. So we were like the original Friends of the Parks group, and out of that grew the Conservancy. 1989 is when we were formed under Mayor Abramson. Our mission, you can see, is to enhance, restore, and protect Louisville's Olmstead Design Parks and Parkways. And these represent over 2,000 acres of urban green space in the core of our city. Real estate, you cannot get back once it is gone. So it is very important to us that the restorative power of nature is brought to all. We have a small but mighty team. We have 17 employees. Our work is divided in three areas, ecological stewardship, park planning and capital projects, and advocacy and engagement. In ecological stewardship, we take care of the woodlands, the natural trails, invasive plant removal, and if you see managed landscape beds in these parks, that's us, right? So Metro Parks and Rec, they're mowing, they're string trimming, they're taking out the trash, they're opening and closing the bathrooms, and we are working to make sure that this nature is here for every Louisvillian, for every generation that is to come. Park planning and projects, we know that Metro Parks can't do it alone, so we work hard to fill the gaps. We raise private dollars to fill gaps on capital projects. Our project management team has the ability to directly perform work as an owner's agent, right? The owner is the city, we work on their behalf. community outreach and advocacy. We know that when parks are activated with positive use, that ends negative use in the parks. And when seniors and kids are safe in a park, everybody is. So you see us at beer gardens, hayrides, music in the parks, programming in the parks, come on down and join us. We had 1,500 people at Seneca Park last week for a pop-up. And we'd love for you to join us in that. I'm going to talk about recent successes and current work. We, in 2025, opened a new beloved place in Cherokee Park, the Campbell Overlook. This was an underutilized part of the park. We built on Olmsted's original design plans for Cherokee to create this overlook. It's at a part of the park where the most utilized trail systems meet, especially for mountain bikers. we see that this is incredibly well used and well loved a year later. Central Park, we worked to restore the historic pergola. This was part of the original design. We're thrilled that it's there and ready as Shakespeare in the Park is unfolding this week. Go see as you like it. It's incredible. It's beautiful. And so Central Park is an Olmsted Park. We announced an incredible and transformational gift last fall, $5 million for the full restoration of Chickasaw Park. As you all know, I started with Olmstead's vision that parks would be open and accessible for all, and that was true, at least in theory, in 1891. But Louisville, like a lot of cities, segregated its parks in the 1920s, And so Chickasaw was created later and the Olmstead firm was brought back to Louisville to design that park. So it has a distinction as the only park in America specifically designed by the Olmstead firm for black Americans. And it contains an amazing legacy of black Louisville. It's Muhammad Ali's home park. So we announced this gift at the West Louisville Tennis Club, recognition of its oldest living members. It's been there since 1923, and we look forward to this project unfolding over the next three years.

Big Rock, everybody loves Big Rock.

So the Big Rock area in Cherokee Park is the eighth most used location in the entirety of the metro park system. This tiny little spot where Cherokee and Seneca Park meet. We are incredibly excited to move forward with the restoration of the Galbert Pavilion there, as well as some planning around the site needs, right? This is an incredible ecological spot where Bear Grass Creek meets the world. People love to be there, but it is overcrowded with cars and not safe for bicyclists and pedestrians. And so we are working together on that full site plan you'll see July. being the launch of that work. Bingham Park, this is what's in your budget this year, so this is what I wanna make sure you see and hear. Bingham Park is a lovely, original neighborhood park in the Clifton area, and it has proximity to the American Printing House for the Blind and Kentucky School for the Blind, which have been there almost as long, actually longer than the park. And so the community worked on a master plan in 2020, got sidelined by COVID. We're taking it off the shelf. We're doing the last bit of design with American Printing House for the Blind and the Dot Experience. And this will be an incredible, beautiful park when it is complete. We are grateful that the first phase is in the budget. We respectfully and joyfully ask that it stay in the budget. And we are having a beer garden there on the 12th. Come on down, see us with the community. This is a beautiful park. We are celebrating the new Iroquois Park Playground. This is the most utilized playground with the most diverse users in the city of Louisville, and it is overdue for its refresh. We are... Grateful for the beautiful design that Metro Parks and Recreation has rolled out with the community, and you will see that work underway. Iroquois will also get a new nature play. This is something that Olmsted Parks Conservancy feels is very important for kids to learn. It doesn't gotta be plastic. You can do it on a log with all kinds of benefits, and so this will be adjacent to that. I want to make sure I'm just reiterating a couple points here, and that is our parks are the original park system of Louisville. They are utilized by residents of every single council district. We have cell phone data that helps us understand where users are coming from. They are regional attractors for our city, and they are a point of pride for Louisville. We're honored to do this work. I love hearing about people's first kisses, first dates, naughty things they've done. These are the core memories of our community. And we're grateful for Louisville Metro Council's support. I'd love to take questions.

Thank you, Mary. I don't have any questions in the queue or anybody in the queue, but if you haven't done the Olmstead tour, that was, I did that a year or so ago. I think we did that. Paula put that on. Great time. So I encourage people to do that, to learn a little bit more. So thank you so much for your presentation. Oh, Councilwoman Ruby, you're in the queue.

Thank you, I added late, that's why you didn't see me. So anyway, thank you so much for presenting as I'm sure you're aware and Sarah's aware and Michelle's aware, I'm a friend of Iroquois Park. And it means so much to our community and everything that's done for it. When you mentioned friends of the park, it's like, oh yeah, that's us. And since you asked for embarrassing stories, I will give you one. Many years ago, I took my mom for a walk up Iroquois Hill and we're going to have a picnic up on top. And she says, oh my, I haven't been here in 30 years and never in the daytime. I repeated that her memorial service. Ah, there it is. There it is.

Yep. These are, these are core memories, uh, and we all have them. Thank you for that very much.

One final question real quick before you get out of here. Does the Conservancy see itself in any role partnering with golf-related improvements in the Olmstead parks?

Great question. Yeah, we're really proud to have some of the city's oldest golf courses in the community. I would say that they are... revenue producing opportunities for Metro Park System. I think that we see ourselves as helping to enhance the underlying land that the golf courses exist on. We're incredibly happy when we hear from golf partners. First Tee does an incredible job at Shawnee. They have made investments in the park even beyond the golf course. So we view any recreation, tennis, pickleball, runners, cross country, golf, all of the equestrian, all of the activities that go on in the park, we see ourselves as partners with those users. But our job is to balance use within the parks.

Wonderful, thank you so much. I have nobody else in the queue.

Could I please get in the queue?

Councilwoman Chappell.

Yes, and Councilman Chappell has been in this meeting for a minute. I don't think that I was introduced by the chair, but hello. Um. I had 2 questions 1, you had mentioned Park playground and that the community is excited about it. We are excited about it, but. No, 1 has seen the plans for that yet. Is that going to be made publicly available?

Yes, very soon.

When we say very soon, is that weeks, days, months?

Early next week is what I'm being told.

All right, we're looking forward to seeing that. And could you please explain the MOU that Louisville Metro has with Olmstead? We're very grateful for all of your work and we love the Olmstead parks. Very happy to have one in my district. But when we were funding that playground, Louisville Metro had put $675,000 toward the playground and there was an Olmstead match. I think when people hear match, they think dollar for dollar, however i believe olmstead's match in that case was only 75 000 which is a notable amount for a non-profit to come up with um but you know it's not a dollar for dollar match so could you talk about that agreement that you have with louisville metro not only as it pertains to uh matching projects but um you know other details in that mou

Great question, great question. Thank you for it. So we do have an MOU with the city of Louisville, a 2012 MOU. That match refers to a match across the entire Olmstead Park system. So we don't always match dollar for dollar on every project. We do our best as an independent nonprofit to raise dollars from individuals across the community, sometimes $5 at a time. So we would not expect, we understand that Metro government is going to be putting more money into public parks than any single nonprofit will. So we interpret that match across the total dollars that we put into the park, Olmsted Park system. And that playground was one of several parts that satisfied that match requirement. Other elements of the MOU that are important, it requires that we have a project specific agreement every time we commit to raise dollars and execute as a co-investor in those parks. It does mean that we can act as owner's agent and perform work directly in those parks. It also requires Metro government to consult with us about the master plans and design decisions for park improvements that go into these parks. Is that helpful?

Thank you.

Council Member Piagetini.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, very grateful for the Conservancy's matching of the Olmstead parks. The issue actually that we've run into across the city is that historically, not in modern time, by modern time I mean the last four years, Beyond that, the Olmstead parks generally got the vast lion's share of city funding, particularly on capital projects, because of your matching and because the administration generally wanted to get get access to private fundraising that was helping these parks out. Meanwhile, any park that was outside of the system or particularly in an area outside the Gene Snyder, forget the Watterson, up until recently hasn't received a dollar in city funding. I'll pick on Long Run Park just because I know it the best, but I could talk about Memorial Forest and hit on a bunch of other parks until recently hadn't received any dollars from the city. So yeah, I think we just need to continue to manage the balance because we want the Olmstead parks to be wildly successful. We want to continue the partnership. I mean, I think anybody that has an Olmstead park and gets money from you guys, whether it's 10 cents on the dollar or dollar for dollar, it's a huge benefit to those parks. That's wonderful. And people should be grateful for it. I know I'm grateful for it. But what I also don't want to lose sight of is that that should dictate necessarily where money should go. It should flow where needed and at the right time. But I'm grateful for what you guys do. And the fact that for those parks, you do, again, whether it's dollar for dollar or not, help fund those things. I mean, that is a tremendous benefit to taxpayers, to those communities. And, you know, we all tend to use all these parks. I know I've been in and out of the Golden State Parks, and I don't live near them. And I know people that have been in and out of my parks or the parks in District 19, and they don't live near them, right? So we all want to see them successful. But thanks for the update. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

And I will say, we want every person in the city of Louisville to have access to beautiful, well-maintained parks. And that we are an advocate for the entire park system and I would encourage us to think about the entire system every time and to see us as an example of a citizen partnership that has helped Walk the talk right we have walked the talk since 1891 of how do we wrap around these beautiful spaces and keep them and really appreciate the incredible difficult choices that have to be made for communities that have not had access to these parks historically.

But it's good, there's a follow-up, good point that, you know, hopefully that it inspires others who don't have Olmstead parks necessarily to say, how can we create other opportunities that can match and help out? So anyway, thank you very much. We'll give you the playbook. That's right, that's right, thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Leninger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just wanted to jump in and say that we're really lucky in District 6, despite being the smallest geographic district in the city, to have three really great Olmstead parks, Central Park and Shelby Park, and then we have that hub of the entire system in Stansbury. And we're really grateful for everything that you all are doing to help us you know, give a really fantastic park system to the people of Louisville and to preserve, you know, again, District 6, we've got Louisville, we're all about preservation of, you know, historic, important architecture and properties in our city. And I think that Olmstead is something that we really need to, you know, cherish that partnership that we have. So thank you all.

I appreciate that and it does give me just a slight chance to talk about the sort of total deferred maintenance challenge that our city faces and to remind folks that there are Olmsted parks that are on that deferred maintenance list that haven't seen investment in 20 years. And a lot of that has to do with where those parks are located. And we know that if we grow the pie and we look at deferred maintenance, deferred maintenance becomes a capital project eventually. And so thank you for pointing out the reality that there are parks that are underinvested within the Olmstead Park system that haven't seen that investment. Thank you.

I think that is everyone. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation. We are going to move on to item number three is being held by the sponsor. Item number four is ordinance 0145-26, ordinance amending the Louisville Jefferson County Metro Government Code of Ordinances 42.41 to set green fees at Louisville Metro golf courses. All right, motion and second it. Moved. Do we have anyone to speak on that today? Okay, Councilman Piagentini.

Thank you. So I'll just get things started here, and I know there's members of the Parks Department here. Maybe they can clarify some of the technical issues parts to this. First of all, just a level set with my colleagues. We went through this process, and it predates maybe one or two of my colleagues on the committee here, where we increased prices several years ago. It might have been four years ago or five years ago. and all pricing for parks is set via ordinance. As part of that pricing update, we also allowed for, and we did the same thing with the zoo. Actually, it might have been longer than four or five years ago. It might have been like seven years ago. Six? Okay, six years ago. I'm seeing fingers fly all over the gallery. That's right, because I remember it was right after the budget cut discussion, which was seven, eight years ago now. We wanted to give more dynamic pricing opportunities to revenue generating organizations within the city. That was the zoo. If it's a rainy day, they might drop the pricing. If it's a sunny day, increase the pricing. Same thing with the golf courses. We had this crazy system where the prime rates went into effect on a certain date and a lot of people didn't want to pay that at that certain times of year, etc. What this does is really go full Monty into the dynamic pricing concept for the golf courses. What you'll notice this does at one point, and I'll mention some of the other updates it does, It does require that quote, and this is new language, the director shall publish and maintain an annual greens fee rate sheet on the Louisville Parks and Recreation website. So we do want to have transparency and information for the public on what they should expect to pay when they're using our golf courses. At the same time, we have removed the reference to the base rates. We've removed the charts in the ordinance that had the dollar amounts per golf course, really, that they would charge. There are some boundaries here on increasing, and some of this was already in the ordinance. It says, upon review every year, the fees may be increased, we added, without Metro Council approval, by the greater of a dollar or an amount based on the most recently published consumer price index provided the CPI-based amount is in increments of one dollar. So we give the Gulf forces some ability to adjust these prices moving forward, again, publishing them with transparency, but not coming to us every time they wanna move the prices by a dollar here, dollar there. I also want to say that this is part of and really the last step on a process, not the last, but maybe, you know, an advanced step on a process that we've been going through over the past year with the golf, with parks and the golf courses on improving the experience at golf. We had some hearings last year, there was some, you know, I think well justified concerned with the condition of our golf courses. And since then, we've hired an agronomist dedicated to golf who's done a terrific job in turning around things. I've personally seen in some of our public golf courses a big difference between last year and this year. We're loving this. There has been information shared with us on how the Parks Department will use this first year revenue and then draft ideas for second, third year to continue to improve all of our golf courses, to invest back in them, and to make sure they continue to improve. So the other quick areas of this that were changed, just so people are aware, We eliminated, there was a mandatory $5 booking fee. We eliminated that and instead added that new language, quote, the golf pro shall also have the authority to establish policies and procedures to address missed tee times. What we do wanna give, and some of the pros have this problem, is if we don't have a policy, people will book multiple courses and then just not show up to half of them, which is problematic. And at the same time, Again, if the demand is low, they might give some latitude on enforcing it. This does give the flexibility of the golf pros to manage that, so really go after maybe the repeat offenders or during peak times, but also maybe not when business is slow. It does increase the seven-day pass fee. That moves from $375 to $500 a year. And then it talks about how prices can fluctuate set by the golf pros and baseline greens fees are set by the directors of parks with the parameters that we set. So I would appreciate everybody's support of this. I will open it up to, we have several members of the parks department if they would like to speak, but I want to also thank Chair Batch on as well as councilman Owen for being co-sponsor to this But I think this is really another step in the progression of improving our golf courses here in Louisville Michelle King executive director of Louisville Parks and Recreation and I could not have summed it up better I

Would appreciate the support from Metro Council. We've seen a lot of support already for our golf system, and we think that this update to the fees, which have not been changed since they were first adjusted most recently in 2020, makes sense. The costs of everything have risen, including all of the materials, supplies, and labor that maintain these golf courses. So this is just going to help us catch up so that we can continue investing and making those improvements that I think you've seen.

So yeah, I didn't say this, but the proposed baseline rates that the Parks Department is looking to get to or the golf is looking to get to are not even where it would be had we kept up with CPI. So we're not looking to make or what's been proposed is not, you know, obviously we have to balance this with we want high demand, We want to make sure that we have an affordable golf system compared to private golf courses. This should be more of a public good where your average working class citizen can get access to these golf courses. So I think they're balancing that very, very well. And their baseline proposals, just for my golfers out there that are thinking, oh my gosh, these fees are going up, it will not even go up. to the level that it could have if we just anchored this to the consumer price index. But as the director was saying, if we don't increase it, I mean, all you'll see is decreased. We will not be able to keep up with the costs from labor to raw material to seeding to insecticides, everything that has to go into a golf course to keeping it playable. So thank you very much.

Councilwoman Rui.

Thank you very much and I absolutely respect the idea of dynamic pricing and being able to shift people from a period where it might be very busy or a golf course that's very popular and you make it more expensive and hopefully you drive some of the golfers to the lesser used ones to help spread the use around. As far as the dynamic pricing goes, how are golfers going to be able to find out what the price is for any golf course on any given day?

Golf prices are on the website for when those dynamic prices change. They get updated where they actually would book their tee times. They also are updated at the clubhouse when they call to make that reservation.

Okay, so if you book your tee time on Tuesday for Friday, you're getting whatever the rate is on Tuesday.

yes so it goes up on friday you got the better deal book it early okay thank you uh i have no one else in the queue i want to thank you all for your leadership on this and moving us forward uh we look forward to seeing the improvements on all the parks and all the um all the golf courses. We've had some compliments already thus far, so thank you all for, and I appreciate it. We're gonna move on to, oh, sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah. Geez, we need to do a roll call vote, please. Or a voice vote. All in favor? Aye.

I'd like to be recorded as a present, please.

This is an ordinance that needs a roll call vote, right? Yes, ma'am, we got it.

Oh, thank you. Thank you all. I'm just going to go to old business. And item number five is a resolution. Resolution 057-26, authorizing the mayor to accept funds totaling $265,000 from the United States Tennis Association for reconstruction of 10 tennis courts at Seneca Park to be administered by the Department of Parks and Recs. Motion. And we are moved. Looks like we have parks here.

Yeah, good afternoon. My name is Jason Canuel, the Director of Louisville Parks and Recreation. This resolution is basically the result of a grant that we applied for with the USTA to apply to the Seneca Park Tennis Court renovation project. In the receipt of the grant, it's coming from three different places. One is USTA National, USTA Southern, and I think the local district of USTA. So there's a whole lot of interest in the Seneca Park Tennis Courts. That's the second largest bank of tennis courts we've got, right behind Petersburg once it's done. um in seneca those 10 courts get played on a lot they're kind of overplayed so this renovation project is huge very important for us and we really really urge the support for this grant any questions i know sonia will be extremely excited to have new tennis courts at seneca as she's taking everybody's money on the court

I think we need to do a voice vote on this. All in favor? Aye. And it moves. Thank you all. Go to consent. Thank you all. And item number six we are holding because we don't have the financial impact statement. That concludes our meeting today. Thank you all, and we will see you soon.