Parks Recreation Board - Regular Meeting

Aaron, are you ready? Great. Can we have a roll call, please?

Board Member Caviezel?

Here.

Board Member Tirtu?

Present.

Board Member Regan?

Present.

Board Member Martin?

Present.

Board Member Spracklin?

Present.

Vice Chair McKenna is excused. Chair Whiter?

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Aaron. Make a motion for the approval of the agenda. Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Motion carries. Make a motion for the consideration of the minutes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And public comments? It does look like we have someone here today, Erin?

While we do have someone in attendance, we don't have any public comments or anybody signed up for that.

OK. Great. We'll move on to considerations and requests. Looks like we have none. Cody, let's go ahead and go on with staff reports.

First up, we have Alex Campbell from AHBL who's going to present on the PROS plan. Alex is not attending in person, but I hope he's online. There's Alex. Alex. Afternoon. I'll pass it over to Alex.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. As always, great to be back in front of the Parks and Recreation Board. No surprise based on the agenda packet that's been provided to you guys this week, a decent amount of information here, not only our goals and policies review, but our level of service information that we've been referencing for kind of the past couple months as this process has been ongoing. really we're at a point that we're ready to present that material to you guys for feedback and consideration really the level of service summary before we dive into the presentation is a comparative metric for comparable size jurisdictions figuring out what the city of Puyallup is providing in terms of parking recreation facilities and amenities and how that lines up to comparable jurisdictions primarily from a population standpoint Tonight, we have two presentations. One of those is goals and policies oriented. And my intention is not to go through every goal and policy, but just provide a brief summary. What are goals? What are policies? How are they similar? How are they different? And more importantly, how are they used through the lens of the PROS plan and associated comprehensive plan? And then solicit any feedback that you guys have had or hear you guys' thoughts and consider potential updates to those goals and policies, as you guys have had a chance to review in the agenda packet. From there, start to look at our level of service information. So with that being said, I will pull up our goals and policies presentation. And that should screen share. And I just want to make sure that that is coming through for everybody.

Yes, Alex, we can see that.

Perfect. Appreciate it. So brief overview, again, as I mentioned, really focusing on goals, policies, and level of service for tonight's board meeting. And our intention is to solicit all the feedback that you guys wish to provide, use that as our baseline for potential goal policy updates. And those updates will dictate our chapter by chapter updates of the PROS plan. And the intent is take all of this baseline information, initial feedback, and use that to engage with the public and get their thoughts as well. So step one, PRB thoughts and summary feedback, and bring that forward to public input. So brief primer, not going to dive too deep into this information, but happy to expand on it if you guys are interested. What are goals and policies really the foundation of any jurisdictional planning effort as to establish both goals and policies in the associated planning document? Obviously, here we're looking at the park recreation and open space plan, the PROS plan. Throughout, there are already established goals and policies that got carried over from the 2020, the existing PROS plan. And our effort with this PROS plan update is really twofold. One, make sure that the goals and policies are still reflective of the city's desired direction, which our work with Cody and city staff is generally, yes, we are on track, but want to provide an opportunity to get your thoughts to that effect as well. And then two, use any changes of those goals and policies again to promote changes to chapter by chapter updates to the pros plan. So looking at goals and policies, goals really are the overarching kind of 30,000 foot level statement that establish what does the city want to get from the PROS plan? How is a PROS plan intended to be used to get in a desired direction? So they are more general than policy statements, but they are specific enough to establish a benchmark of where the city wants to go. Goals being a little bit less specific than policies, where policies are more specific statements that implement the goal. How do we reach the goal, specific steps to reach that goal from what the city is doing today to get to where the city wants to go? The policies, as stated on this slide, establish a framework of how decisions should be made at the city level to reach those goals, especially through the lens of other policy materials like comprehensive plans. Generally, policies are reviewed against development proposals, rezoning proposals, a little bit different through the lens of our PROS planning effort, but just to establish kind of a benchmark of how policies really get used. Policies really are the driver to look at what are we doing with any specific project or goal or grant pursuit and how does that align with the policies in the PROS plan to kind of establish framework of how to look at decision making. Currently, there are seven existing goal statements. And again, those are derived from the 2020, the existing PROS plan. And importantly for this project, one of our main goals of updating the PROS plan is not only to account for time relevant updates since 2020, fair amount has changed, not just in the park and recreation system, but also resulting from COVID and the way people interact with park and recreation programming. But the city's comprehensive plan has also been updated since the 2020 PROS plan. And we really want to drive consistency between those policy documents to make sure all city policy documents are pointing in the same direction. The reason that's important is as we look at these goal statements, we do have an important opportunity if changes to goals and or policies are made in this process to amend the city's comprehensive plan, again, to ensure both documents are consistent with one another. With that being said, I am curious the board's thoughts or preferences. This PowerPoint does contain each individual goal and policy. No surprise, fairly dense in that respect. The goals and policies were included in the board's packet for review and consideration. And I'm happy to step through goals and policies individually. Also happy to maybe make it a more open forum for initial thoughts and feedback that you guys had. and go from there versus looking at each one individually. And maybe before answering that question, maybe a peek at the additional information that we will discuss here tonight. And that is, again, kind of the ongoing work through the lens of the PROS plan update. That is working through the facilities inventory, driving all this information we received tonight for chapter updates. And then starting to get through our chapter by chapter updates, including appendices to the PROS plan, and then looking at revised goals and policies based on initial feedback, and then working towards the same level of effort, but at a public forum. So the general public, city residents primarily, and those who interact with the park and recreation system can provide their feedback as well. And then after our goals and policies, there's a little bit more information dense presentation that's specific to the level of service. So with that, for the time being, I will stop sharing and just curious about the board's overall preferences about how to look through each individual goal and policy. Again, happy to read each goal and policy individually. But for the benefit of everybody's time, if there's specific items, I'm happy to address those individually as they arise for the board.

Sure. Thanks, Alex. Certainly asking if anybody else has anything that they want to share with Alex. You know, Alex, I think an overview would be preferred. It's quite a large packet here. So if you could just keep it to maybe a brief summary of what's going on.

Sure. Yeah. With the goals and policies specifically, let me reshare my screen here. And maybe what we can do is look at the goal statements individually and just kind of reemphasize those and put for the benefit of the record and recording for interested parties that will watch this later, actually look at each goal individually. Again, there's multiple supporting policy statements that support each one of these goals. But I think the overarching goal language really is the key. And maybe as a bit of a primer, the intent with this update is A light refresh, and I say that with the understanding that when you hear that, it means maybe we're not looking for a lot of input or feedback, but that's really not the intention. When we say light refresh, our goal is to say, essentially, we believe that the goals and policies are still pretty accurate to the city's desired direction, and we just want the opportunity to provide feedback should there be any on those existing statements. Generally, we think they're working pretty well. They're integrated into the city's comprehensive plan, but we do have a process to amend the city's comprehensive plan with any potential changes to these goals and policies. So these are not written in stone, but from city staff perspective and Cody tell me if I'm off base, I don't want to speak for everybody in one go. But our conversation essentially says that the goals and policies are working and keep the city on track for the desired direction. With that being said, goal number one, actively seek community involvement in planning and development of park and recreation facilities and programs. Tonight's meeting I think is a step in that direction with our subsequent intent to take this information to the general public for feedback as well. Eight, supporting policies for this full statement. And feel free to stop me as I go through. My plan is to maybe just address each goal individually. Happy to stop at specific policies if there's information that kind of piques your interest.

Sounds good.

Goal number two, provide a broad range of park and recreation activities, programming experiences for all users, addressing all community members. Include cultural programs and activities within the community. And there are 10 supporting policies for this goal statement to implement this goal. Goal number three is promoting acquisition of parkland that provides maximum benefits through concurrent and compatible uses for supporting policies for this goal statement. Goal number four, make park and recreation facilities accessible to community residents with nine supporting policies establishing how to make them accessible for residents. Goal number five, strive for a broad-based approach to funding park and recreation facility improvements with eight supporting policies. Again, this really just drives towards inter-policy document consistency, and that's a mouthful to be sure. The short of that is just if all the city's policy documents, the PROS plan, parks plans, even down to things like public work standards are marching to the beat of the same drum, That makes it easier to accomplish goals and policies, not just in one individual document or through one lens, one department lens, but citywide consistency and efficiency. Goal number six, provide for maintenance, measure it with new improvements, make sure that we're keeping up with the improvements that occur with 13 supporting policies of how to do this. Goal number seven, promote cooperative agreements in community parks and neighborhoods with six supporting policies, looking at maybe unique ways to take advantage of ongoing development and making sure development pays for development, not only from a financial perspective, but from a parks and recreation perspective as well. And that completes all six of the existing goals with their supporting policies. Again, I'll just stop sharing briefly just so that way I can see you guys a little bit better. And a fair amount of text, it is text heavy, we'll admit that. Just to reemphasize, our goal with presenting this information to the board tonight is to provide the board with the first opportunity for directed changes to goals and policies before we engage with the general public. Again, from the staff side, we believe that The goals and policies are still accurate for the city's preferred direction. And just wanted to solicit feedback for maybe how these policies or goals might need to change from your perspective, either for time relevant information or desired direction.

Sure. Thanks, Alex. So I'll first ask if anybody has any initial thoughts on the goals and the policies. The policies, there's quite a few. So we'll probably need a little time to digest those. But if anybody has any initial thoughts on the goals and if there are anything that's missing in anybody's mind.

Not off the top of my head. I think all the goals and policies are very broad and overarching. I think it covers pretty much everything Parks looks for. Okay.

Thank you. Anyone else have any input for Alex? So obviously Alex, it's quite a few policies that we're gonna have to go through. So I'd ask the board to review this and we'll get back to you at the next meeting. What is your timeframe?

Yeah, we would like to start looking at public Public meeting dates, I would say in the next month or so, Cody, and I believe that's consistent with our conversation, but tell me if I'm off base. So if we could get feedback, I would say even in the next couple of weeks and similar to what we've requested before, it doesn't have to be very kind of formal feedback. Don't feel like there's a established template. I think when Cody provided the agenda packet materials, one of those documents was a matrix that allowed to underline strikeout. the goal or policy language with a text box to provide additional thoughts or revise language outside of track changes. So we're kind of open to any feedback that you guys have in any method you would prefer to levy it. And what we'll use that for is the basis of our direction for public engagement. And again, if we're looking to do a public meeting Even in the next month or month and a half, generally, we always want to give about a two-week public notice ahead of time, let people kind of know and schedule it. So that way, if we were able to get any potential feedback from the board within the next couple weeks, we can revise public meeting materials and make sure they're ready to go for that.

Sure. That sounds good. So how would you feel about, say, giving us till the end of the month, till July 31st with feedback and then work from there?

I think that works for me. Cody, do you have any initial thoughts, concerns with that?

Uh, just because I know we're kind of pushing up against that fall timeline on the comp plan. Um, I'm okay with it as long as you're okay with it.

Does that not give you enough time?

Yeah, I think, I think it's a bit narrow. And the only reason I say that is, um, We want to make sure that the feedback and preferences from the board that we get is reflected for any public meeting that we have also. So that way, hey, we've kind of started from the staff or city perspective. This is the way we're kind of steering the ship. Public, tell us what you think about any proposed revisions that we may have. So having that information would be beneficial.

Let's push it up a week and let's say July 24th.

The 24th, and I can send out that matrix again to the board just separately with that date in Alex's email cc'd on it so we can all respond directly.

It gives a full two weeks or almost two weeks to respond to you. So, yeah, so let's call it July 24th. We'll get back. Everybody has any input back to you on the policy?

Yeah. Great. No, and appreciate it. Again, not trying to put the blinders on by any means, but from city staff's perspective, working with Cody and the staff so far, we're pretty inclined to think that the goals and policies read true still today from the 2020 plan update, but wanted to make sure that you guys have an opportunity to levy your feedback based on your engagement with the community position on the board before we go to the public.

I think we all appreciate that. All right.

Great, so that takes care of goals and policies. Our next presentation is a bit more info dense and the silver lining for the amount of information that we're about to present is that it's summarized in the memo that's included in the agenda. This presentation is essentially the PowerPoint version of the 18 page memo that we provided. So maybe saying an 18 page memo as a summary is generous. So a lot of information, but some short context, I think, kind of makes it a little bit more digestible than it sounds like on its face when you hear an 18-page memo full of numbers and comparisons. So a brief summary when we're talking about level of service. There's the NRPA. which is the National Park and Recreation Association. Generally, they just establish benchmarks for level of service and it allows an opportunity for jurisdictions and municipalities to provide an equal level comparison for neighboring jurisdictions and municipalities that provide recreation and park services. Essentially, how are we doing compared to our neighbors? And before we dive into any numbers, a strong reminder that any NRPA comparison or level of service comparisons really are not the end-all be-all. They're a great beginning point or benchmark to understand how a municipality is doing, but there sure is a lot of nuance and context underneath a lot of these numbers that are primarily related to not just funding, but community desire for different facilities too. So Again, the level of service, LOS categories are really broken down into a few different areas, primarily facilities, programming, activities that are offered, staffing, budget, and a few more specific ones, but those are the main categories. Generally, all of the level of service metrics are presented in median values, including lower and upper quartiles. So looking at how do jurisdictions compare from a population standpoint, taking the median at a right down the middle from a metric standpoint, and then looking at kind of the higher end or lower end. So that way, there's a little bit more to the benchmark than jurisdictions might do more, jurisdictions might do less. The upper and lower quartiles give a little bit more wiggle room for those metrics to understand how Puyallup is doing compared to its neighbors. Generally, when we're looking at these ratios, a lower resident to facility or park ratio is positive. It just means there's more parks per resident, more facilities per resident. For example, looking at residents per park, Puyallup comes in just over 2,400. And when we're looking at our comparative jurisdictions, and I'll back up one slide just to kind of illustrate comparative jurisdictions, really this fourth bullet point is the key. The city lies within the 20,000 to 50,000 population band, pretty wide band, especially when we're talking about municipal budgets. The range there is pretty healthy. For NRPA, that's kind of the population band that they break out. And Puyallup is really trending towards the higher portion of this particular population band, sitting with the population 43,000, just above. So from here, I think we will step through some of the highlights. And again, there is a lot of numbers in here that I will speak to. And I think the summary memo that's included in the agenda packet does a good job translating a lot of numeric information into a more narrative format. So I strongly recommend referencing that and happy to pause and answer any questions along the way as well. So generally for these slides, what I'll do is I'll highlight where the city is with respect to the median. In this case, acres of park, and that's citywide per 1,000 residents. Our median for comparative jurisdictions is 10.9 acres of park per 1,000 residents, with the city coming in just over seven acres of park. outdoor recreation facilities. And again, in general, the lower the residents Um, when we're looking at the next few charts, we've color coded these red and green again, not a one-stop shop to say we're doing great thumbs up or red means we're doing bad thumbs down. There's a whole lot more context and nuance here. These NRPA level of service metrics really, uh, from, from our perspective, our gauge to say, If we want to promote certain types of facilities or parks and recreation opportunities, they should trend towards the green side. We're doing better than our comparative jurisdictions. If there are certain recreation facilities amenities that the city says, hey, this just isn't a fit for us. We don't have the funding to provide that. A red highlight doesn't mean it's a bad thing. So don't take the color coding as the end all be all here. Okay, so a lot of information and really what I'll focus on are the red areas. Again, just friendly reminder that red doesn't necessarily mean bad. In this case, red actually kind of points to some of the recreation priorities that the city is already accounting for. For example, the skate park. So when we're looking at the NRPA metrics, it really is kind of a binary option. Do you have a skate park? Yes or no. It's not very qualitative. How big is the skate park? What kind of unique amenities do you provide at the skate park? So just keeping in mind the nuance behind some of these numbers. So when we look at the skate park, although there's a difference of number of residents per facilities that the city has compared to our comparative jurisdictions, what we're looking at is with one skate park, that means all of our residents are using the one facility through the LOS calculation. Comparative jurisdictions have a little bit lower resident per facility count, but given all the information we've heard from Cody and kind of the background of the skate park development, we know that even though maybe from a facility standpoint, we're sitting a little bit underneath our comparative jurisdictions, if quality was involved in this metric, I think this number would turn green because the skate park is gonna be a great facility.

Hey, Alex, if you don't mind interrupting real quick, I'm really glad that you brought the skate park piece up because there was a question that I had, and I think you might be trying to answer this a little bit, but I'd like to understand it a little bit more. In the memo under skate parks, the way that it's written in the memo is there's a 1.0 skate park in Puyallup. representing a ratio of one skate park per 43,410 residents. This is above the NRPA agency median of having one skate park per 35,000 residents. The way I read that without actually looking at the numbers, but just at the words was that, hey, we're actually, you know, exceeding this. Like we're above average on this. But then again, when you look at the numbers, no, we're not actually exceeding So that's a little misleading, at least in my, you know, just in my perspective. So is that kind of what you're talking about here? I mean, or is it just that maybe that should be reworded?

Yeah, I think the language could definitely be strengthened in the memo. And when we wrote the memo, when we said it's above the NRPA metric, When I hear that phrasing, that means we're kind of beating the metric. We're doing better than the metric. But I think the intent of the language there above the comparative jurisdictions was to say there's a higher actual number of population residents per facility for the city, meaning that from a comparative basis, there aren't as many skate parks per resident as maybe the comparative jurisdiction population band. So to your point, I think the language probably could just be revised and strengthened to, yes, it's above the comparative jurisdiction, but specifically from a resident per facility standpoint.

So Alex, I have a question about that too. And Cody, you may be able to help on this. I know you did some geofencing on the skate park and have a pretty good understanding of the rate of usage of the area. And could we maybe compare that to the usage of other skate parks? So, for example, if, you know, for the same acreage, 10 people per day, 20 people per day, whatever it might be, could be compared to another skate park of the same size or acreage that how many people are actually using the skate park? You know, a skate park is not necessarily one of the higher usage facilities within the city. Does that make sense to you? We could look at it as more of a how many people are actually using the facility compared to other facilities?

Within the city?

No, within other skate parks and other cities. So if we were to compare them equally and say our skate park services say, just using random numbers, 10 people per day and a skate park in say Auburn services 20 people per day, then We actually look a little bit better. Is that confusing? Would that be hard to do?

I think, yeah, just the data piece of that is going to be the struggle to get from other cities just because if we're all using the same cell phone geofence data, that would be easy, but that's not a commonly used tool. Okay. So I think that would be our struggle. Unless Alex, unless, yeah.

You know, it's not one of the bigger, the more heavily used facilities that we have. However, it is pretty heavily used. And we have a lot of people coming from out of our area to use our skate park. I know we talked about this in the skate park meeting that people tend to make a trip to a skate park. So we might actually be servicing a lot more people than we realize.

And I think potentially in the next, you know, eight years when we go to that next PROS plan where AI and geofencing and those become more commonly used tools, then there may be an opportunity to do that. I just think it might be difficult to get that data from other cities at this point until we're all kind of using the same.

Okay.

As Cody mentioned, I think that would be the hurdle, essentially, is are other jurisdictions collecting the data the same way that we are? And then secondarily, through the lens of the PROS plan specifically, having more information is always great. When we're looking at the level of service, we do want to kind of tie it to the NRPA benchmarks just because that is a defined level of comparison. But to your point and kind of some of the information we talked about, we see this box is red because of really it's just a population consideration. Again, kind of ignores the quality metric or the non-resident metric. metric of, like you said, there might be people that come from outside of the city that use the skate park. How do we capture that level of information? And to be frank, through the lens of NRPA specifically, I think we don't. And that's just kind of one of the challenges, one of those kind of cost benefit items where The NRPA does a great jurisdictional wide benchmark comparison, but it does not get into that nuance or context. So one of the limitations of NRPA comparisons.

Sure. And you know, maybe I wasn't entirely clear. So I was speaking towards what Brian was saying is the verbiage that you're saying that maybe we could put something in there that says that even though our number is lesser than what the NRPA benchmark is, that we do believe that we maybe service a larger number of people that come in from an outside area.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think that is important information to provide because that does build some of the context that maybe the numbers themselves are silent on.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. And the skate park in particular was one that I wanted to highlight because, yeah, again, I think you see red on the screen and it gravitates towards, hey, is there a gap? Is there a hole in what we're providing from a park and recreation facility standpoint? And yeah. Just because it's red does not mean yes. Splash pads is another good example where a lot of jurisdictions look at splash pads or any water facility as a large maintenance obligation that many jurisdictions, frankly, don't want to or can't take on. So a lot of times these numbers may be red when we're looking at comparative jurisdictions, but that can be the result of policy decision making as well. So indoor park and recreation facilities, very similar take to our outdoor recreation and park facilities. This one is a little bit different because it kind of turns into the more binary yes or no. Do agencies provide this facility? So a lot of red on this sheet, again, ignores the context. It's really just a math equation. What I would encourage you to focus on is the percentage of agencies column. So the percentage of agencies is, do agencies provide this amenity? If yes, include them in the percentage. So with a lot of these metrics, really, no surprise, racquetball, handball, squash courts, similar. The city has a number that they maintain, seven. And that dials down the residents per facility. But again, when we compare that to the percentage of agencies within this comparable band, the 20,000 to 50,000 range, Puyallup really is doing a lot more than other jurisdictions, even by having more than one in any category. when we look at the percentage of agencies. So a lot of red on the sheet. And I just want to provide the context of, yeah, again, red not necessarily bad. To me, red is, hey, let's look into this and maybe figure out, is this something that we want to prioritize or emphasize?

Sure. I just have a quick question here, too. So I'm questioning your numbers here. Yeah. And we're tennis courts. We have zero. But I know we have more than zero. Yeah. Are they classified in another area? Indoor or outdoor?

Yeah, and Cody, you might be able to help me out.

Oh, I'm sorry, indoor. Sorry, I missed that.

Yes, indoor specific.

Yep, I'm sorry.

No worries. I had the same question. I'm glad that that came up, the indoor criteria in particular. And that's also why you see the percentages being fairly low when you think about other comparative jurisdictions that we think, yes, they definitely have these facilities, but do they have them available indoor?

I was curious what the symbols mean next to some of the facilities, like the asterisks and the plus.

Yeah, and that was derived from the memo in particular. And I can circle back on that one and give it a little bit more context. But I think the memo does provide the kind of footnotes for those denominators or designations. Offhand, though, I do not recall offhand.

we'll ask one other quick question here on the basketball courts. And I know the city has, you know, obviously the two, uh, we do utilize a lot of the schools and where does that come into play?

Yeah. From the NRPA standpoint, uh, And Cody, tell me if I'm wrong, because we got these numbers from you, but from the NRPA calculation, it's generally, is that a facility that the city can operate, function, and program, where shared use agreements or combined uses like schools that limit that ability to say the city kind of has open recreation programming opportunity impacts how you count that number.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

And Alex, I'll follow up with you on one other quick thing. We meant to add three more pickleball courts to pickleball courts, and I think they got added to the racquetball courts. So I think racquetball courts are actually four and pickleball courts are six, but I'll follow up with you.

Okay. Yeah, no, appreciate that. We can definitely get that clarified and split back out where they actually belong.

Okay. Okay.

So continuing on with our indoor, this is more recreation and programming oriented. And again, kind of our red area in the difference classification is back to the one facility being provided as a senior center, but again, kind of ignores the context and quality and programming therein. It's more of, is there a senior center? Yes or no. So when we see the red, not necessarily bad. I think it's always important to look at, okay, How many facilities are we providing? Is this a notable gap based on what the community wishes to see for park recreation and programming? And let that be the guide for kind of future decision-making as opposed to the red and green designations on their own. These are really meant to just kind of prioritize or focus attention given the amount of information.

Alex, I wanted to just quickly point out same issue with the skate park on the senior center on part of the memo as well.

Okay. Yeah, the language there.

It's not that I want to be nitpicky about these things. It's just that the reality is that these types of documents often just go into a file cabinet until we're talking about budget and until the public's asking for something. And then that's when you're going to see the council go into the file and say, okay, well, where are we at here? Like, what is, you know, what, what do things look like? And so, you know, it's really important for us to have, even though the context is there, sure. I mean, the, the senior center is well-loved and it's well-utilized and, and great programming goes on there. But what happens if we outgrow, you know, the one center and people are, you know, in, in the city are saying, Hey, we need, we need more than one center. they're going to come back to this and they're going to say, you know, Oh, but we're good because you know, it's well loved and well, well used. Does that make sense?

yeah yeah as opposed to them going back to the same memo to say hey we need a second or additional senior center because our number kind of shows red or shows us in a deficit of comparative jurisdictions bill put some meat on the bone so to speak of uh why the number looks the way it does and more importantly why that is okay because of what it provides well and i would go back to the same thing as a skate park and mike maybe you could share some input on this

How many out-of-city residents or out-of-area people come and utilize the Senior Center?

It's amazing because we don't limit it to city limits, Brett. So we get people from Eatonville, Lakewood, Tacoma, Fife, Sumner, Buckley. We get people from miles away.

I'm sorry, if you could speak a little more into the microphone, it was not picking up.

And with that amount of use... Do you feel like the senior center is appropriately sized for the amount of use that you get? Do you feel like it's overrun?

I wouldn't say it's overrun. I think there are probably ways to schedule things more differently to make the best use of the facility. The downside is we have And this is during the hornet's nest is parking. And we're going to potentially lose a bunch of parking, which is going to make it more difficult for people to participate.

The parking lot across the street from the senior center? Sure. But I think maybe if we could put some kind of language in there that even though our metric is low, that we do service a lot of people from outside of our community with that same center. One other thing I would like to ask is if you could define what nature centers are.

Yeah, and from NRPA, fairly open and ambiguous. Generally, when I think of a nature center, it's kind of a defined area that provides educational programming for outdoor learning opportunities, specifically, or like environmental education or learning opportunities, being near a wetland or the river and talking about the ecological value thereof and probably provides some sort of programming, especially for school-aged children, not necessarily exclusively, but definitely an important component from my mind.

So to that, Cody, I'd ask you how the signage at both Clark's Creek and Bradley Lake play into that, and also would the new Minnick property fall under the category of nature centers?

Uh, we're still talking about indoor facilities. So at this point it's, yeah, we wouldn't classify it.

There was talk of using some of the facilities over there.

Potentially.

Yeah. Building over there. So that, that is a possibility for that. So, okay.

Yeah. Uh, but, but points, points well taken. And I think we can definitely, uh, clarify the language in the memo, because yeah, it's important that the memo reflects the context and the nuance of some of these numbers, like, like we talked about the PowerPoint and looking at the numbers on their own does not do that. And that was our intent of the narrative. And I think we can strengthen language to get there. Another major category is miles of trails by jurisdiction. And generally this is measured by trail miles specifically per resident. And here's a good example where comparative to our comparable jurisdictions, Puyallup comes in 14.8 with our median coming in right at 10 trail miles per resident, just pointing to the fact that the city has a solid trail network that is well-used. And this gets more into programming, number of annual programs offered per resident. And that is a pretty broad brush. Programs are not equal one to one, not all programs require the same level of funding, effort or staffing. But from this table, they are looked at equally. So just something to keep in mind when we're looking at the city's number coming in at 91 annual programs offered with our median at 164. And just to highlight one more item on this slide, we see the upper quartile comes in at 788. So not all of these metrics are the one stop shop to look at the number and say, yes, we are exactly on track in line with goals and policies. These really are meant to be a benchmark to establish some baseline of comparison. Not to say that every jurisdiction, even in the comparable band, the 20,000 to 50,000 range, looks at park and recreation facility programming the same and has available staffing or funding the same way.

Just to be clear, Alex, this is the median. These are for communities that are 20-something to 49,000 residents, right?

Yes, yep.

And so according to this, there are communities out there with 49,000 residents that offer 788 programs. Feels like maybe somebody's counting.

I would love to. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the struggle. And we went round and around about this because, you know, is youth basketball one program or is fourth grade youth basketball program and fifth grade youth basketball and girls fifth grade basketball? Is that a separate program? And so how do you count that? And so we just went by the catalog, each program in the activity center guide and our guide is one program. The participation level, if you probably looked at our participation level, it would be very high in these numbers, but that's not what they ask for, it's a program. And so I think people define those programs separately And differently, is each week of camp one program to us? We could make the argument that it is because each week is different kids, it's different theme, and they're registering for it separately. But in this exercise, we just went day camp. So we may have done ourselves a disservice. And, you know, and if... I mean, we could easily go back and review how we, we did that, but I think we would be up in the hundreds of programming if we looked at it separate, like each program subset would be different.

Yeah. To your point, Cody, this metric is almost useless. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the disparity on that, a better metric, like you said, would be more like how many, you know,

I'm sorry, if you could speak a little more into the microphone.

Thank you. How many participants are in these programs per capita?

Or if NRPA had a definition of how to count the programs, that would also be helpful and be more consistent as well.

So that said... Or is somewhere included in this are how we defined that. So when we go look at this five years from now, we'll know this is how we counted the, you know, the amounts of the programs. And so if a definition shows up from, you know, the source, you go, well, we did it differently, but this is how we arrived at that number.

Did you hear that, Alex? Yeah, and that was based on the catalog offering specifically. And if that is not explicit in the memo, I will take a look. We will make that, along with the other revision, make that explicitly clear I would be inclined to agree that this particular NRPA metric is nebulous, to say the least. Useless might be a more compelling way to look at it because, again, when we look at this upper quartile number, especially compared to the lower quartile, we're assuming that 50% of all offerings for comparable jurisdictions fall within the 63% to 788% range. You talk about a wide array of information there. And I think that number can get artificially inflated, as Cody mentioned, based not only on the way that you look at individual programs that are offered, but the smaller the jurisdiction that opens up that catalog to say each individual piece of our programming is a separate one, those numbers really start to skyrocket. So again, just a benchmark, and this is one of the items that NRPA does look for and RCO looks for when they're reviewing the plan to say, have you looked at comparable jurisdictions as the baseline for some policy planning, goal planning, and finance allocation, financial allocation? Have you looked at this information? Doesn't have to be the basis of your decision-making, but has there been a comparative look? Not to say that each individual figure tells the whole story.

Alex, can we go, hold on for a second, go back a second. Back to the indoor nature center portion of it. Now, I know that Puyallup Parks doesn't necessarily have it, but is there any way to consider something like the fish hatchery, which is, while not run by Puyallup Parks and Recreation, It does butt up against Clark Street Park. It does, for most people, feel like the same type of area. Is there any way to put that into consideration?

I think we can include that in the PROS plan and speak to that through the lens of NRPA. The information they're looking for is what is not just owned or maintained, but operated by the city specifically, because that also interfaces with the funding allocation comparison. If it's not a facility run by the city specifically, generally should be excluded from NRPA. The opportunity there, though, is to backfill that information in the PROS plan specifically to talk to how that does interface with educational environment or nature centers outside of what the city specifically provides.

Yeah, we do have a chapter on, you know, the school district and those facilities and what's available to us and what we use and who else is providing services within the city of Puyallup.

Yeah, good opportunity to highlight those non-agency partners, non-jurisdiction partners that do influence, especially not just operation, but perception of what the city provides. But for NRPA specifically, I think kind of outside of the lens for the comparative look.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, and then building off of the program ambiguity of the previous figure, this just gets into a little bit more information about programs that are fee-based to participate in. And again, just kind of a bench line or benchmark for comparative jurisdictions here. Our median coming in at 85% of the programs identified from our previous example are fee-based at the median, with the city coming in just over 80%. And just as maybe a quip, but whatever jurisdiction came in at the upper percentile of upper quartile 788 programs also uh if it's the same jurisdiction providing the upper quartile of 96 fee base that jurisdiction uh has a lot of funding available to them i would imagine oh well i i guess i have a question about that though i mean is that a badge of honor no i i would look at that almost tongue in cheek to say that um yeah uh again this is all individual municipality jurisdiction base of how to provide these types of programming. And there are programs that are better fit for fee-based programming. Sports leagues, for example, is kind of the first one that sticks out to me in my mind. There has to be some cost recovery mechanism to make sure that those programs can be offered in the future. Not all programs are necessarily great to be fee based, especially potentially like outdoor education programs, nature walks, things like that. This is, again, just kind of highlighting that. How many of the recreation programs are being offered through the lens of fees to finance them and operate them? Okay, so this gets to our conversation here. Oops, sorry about that. So all of our information for programming was primarily based in the activity center catalog, no surprise. And what we see the big takeaway, especially from the next few slides, the city tends to have more commonly offered recreation programs compared to other jurisdictions. And when we say commonly offered programming, this chart really highlights where a lot of cities might not offer the same type of amenities This city does so again this, this is more of a binary question do cities within the comparative population band offer this program yes, no, if yes you're included in the all agency percentage. And this is where again. ignores context nuance out of the black and white look, do we provide it or not? The major benefit or takeaway absent that context to me is potentially looking at areas where our answer is currently no. And then saying, is this something that we really want to prioritize in the future? If so, what goals, policies or changes the pros plan could we potentially implement to make sure that we can kind of close some of these gaps?

Cody could ask you, uh, on the cultural crafts, could you consider something like the sewing program, depending on what they're doing in the cultural crafts? Um, and it seemed like we have some, some cultural crafts that the department.

Yeah. We discussed, you know, all of these categories we kind of discussed in our, our meeting and, um, It felt like we were trying to stretch that a little bit, but we, we discussed, you know, do we do those? These are nos. And do we actually do some of these things and, you know, things like running and cycling races, we, we have done them in the past, but we're not currently, it's not a current snapshot of what we're doing. So we left it off, but yes, there's, there's some wiggle room to, to potentially do that. But we, we didn't feel strongly about it.

Okay.

Great. Moving on to programs focused on children, other adults, and those with disabilities. Similar look at our tables here. Again, the city is doing a great job overall, especially comparative to maybe the jurisdictional band that the city falls within. And the only item that came in as a no from the category list defined by NRPA would be the before school programs. But in fairly good company with comparable jurisdictions with 18% within that comparable band providing that type of amenity or programming.

I think something to be noted there too is that the Peel School District does a fairly good job of before school programs. Maybe some notation of that in the PROS plan.

Yeah, especially when we're looking at this table, if that's the only item that flashes red, There's, again, more context and nuance there that we can add to the plan that is important to consider before maybe driving some policy decisions. Just one second, I want to make a note of this slide in particular. Okay, moving on to the responsibilities of park and recreation agencies, this is more getting into does the city oversee this type of programming? And again, the city being the operating agency as the basis of comparison, as opposed to maybe some associated jurisdictions or school districts or tribal communities doing the same. This table goes on to describe the staffing associated with the city's park recreation programming and facilities. And this is a notable slide to me just looking at the staffing level really trending towards the lower quartile as opposed to the median for the city based on the amount of yeses or green boxes that we saw. Again, not to kind of cherry pick and say, The red doesn't tell the whole story, neither do the green cells. But what I would like to highlight here is the amount of programming and park space and trail miles that are offered by the city, comparative to the FTEs within the department, is pretty impressive. This drives a little bit more into FTEs based on jurisdiction size, again, within our population band, and no surprise trending towards the lower quartile, similar to our last slide, but this gives a little bit more equal take at how much staff is available based on the city size and programming available. Annual operating expenditures, again, just kind of a quick take at how much the city is spending on park recreation facility programming and amenities. Again, trending towards the lower quartile. Again, no surprise, fairly impressive for the city, given the amount of programming offered and participation levels when looking at comparative metrics for staffing and funding. This just breaks it down for capita, similar to our last slide. This is where the city kind of drops below the lower quartile from an expenditure per capita standpoint. And again, that drives back towards our annual operating expenditures being similar there. This drives into expenditure per acre of park. Sorry, and I'm happy to pause on any of these slides. I do know there's a fair amount of tables included in this PowerPoint. So happy to expand on any of this information as you guys see fit. expenditures per park coming in between the lower median. No surprise given our previous information we had just discussed. And then this is the annual operating expenditure per FTE. Just a few different ways to take a look at the financial information the city's providing, especially compared to other jurisdictions of similar sizes. So breaking out the operating expenditures into categories, this again, not a hard benchmark, but a good basis of comparison to maybe dig more into the information underneath the numbers here. But just looking at where funding goes, breaking it out by parks, recreation, administration, and other. And other can include programming. Generally, programming falls within our recreation bucket, but can fall in our other bucket as well. And generally across the board, pretty close on the mark with other jurisdictions. The gap that I think is pretty noticeable would be this other category with the recreation category these categories derived from NRPA and working with Cody that's where we figured out where for our overall operating expenditures how that breaks down based on each of these categories so a good just kind of quick quick reaction to see where the operating expenditures are going by category Park and Recreation revenue per capita So this is taking into account where money comes from to operate and maintain park recreation facility funding based on the amount of population within the city and breaking that out per capita. Five-year capital budget spending. This is looking at the information in the PROS plan, particularly the list of improvements and associated costs for those. What do those look like for comparable jurisdictions? The city falling between the lower and median there. Again, I think the tongue-in-cheek look is the upper quartile recreation program at 788 is also pointing towards maybe the upper quartile financial number here, where Some of those numbers can feel a bit inflated, and it's hard to really get a meaningful takeaway from the NRPA comparisons. Again, really meant to be kind of the first benchmark to dig more into information, not meant to be the takeaway of this table has all the information related to this question. Targets for capital expenditures. Again, this is based on the NRPA's breakdown of comparable jurisdictions and the averages that we've seen. And the city kind of falls right in line with that. One notable piece, the city does break the expenditures a little bit more formally into improvements and acquisitions where some other jurisdictions picked up the other category. And that other category can be things like staffing or really improvements that would fall within these other categories that jurisdictions just identified as being outside improvements or acquisitions for one reason or another. That number percentage is fairly low. And working with Cody, we broke that out into these two categories cleanly to make sure that all the expenditures were captured as either improvement or acquisition. This is improvement dollar split by renovation or new development. Are we maintaining what we have? Are we adding on to what we have? Are we pursuing new acquisition? And pretty much online with the NRPA average across the board, 70-30% for the city. And really our key takeaway, there's a lot of green in our tables. Again, not our one-stop shop to say, yep, everything looks good. But what that means to me is that from particularly a staffing perspective, the amount of park and recreation facilities and programming offered by the city is doing fairly strong, especially compared to the population band that the city falls within. and being at the higher end of that population band. There's a high diversity of not just park amenities, but also recreation programs available. And again, just to reemphasize, generally, the short summary takeaway for us looking at the NRPA tables is PUAB does more with less with respect to funding and FTEs available. So very, very information dense and genuinely appreciate the feedback that you guys provided. And we can definitely clean up the memo to add a little bit more language, one, to clarify what more means through the context of population with respect to comparing that to comparable jurisdictions, and then adding more information about things like the Nature Center and partnering agencies.

Alex, thank you. That's a lot of information to digest in just a little over an hour. So it looks like we're on to the matrix over here. So this is something for the board to go through and look over. It looks like there's a fairly concise version of all the slides attached to it. So again, we'll ask everyone on the board to get back to you within the next two working weeks.

Perfect. Appreciate it. And from my perspective, Cody, again, tell me if I'm off base, but also happy to take any additional feedback with respect to the level of service information. A lot of numbers in there that I think on their face, again, don't tell the whole story. I know I've mentioned that a few times tonight, but that's the prime takeaway that I would encourage you to look at these numbers through. These comparisons are built based on the NRPA metrics specifically, and the numbers have a lot more context and nuance underneath them. No surprise, as we've discussed throughout the night. So any additional feedback that you guys would have with respect to the LOS numbers and information or the summary memo, we'll take all the information you guys have already provided. Anything else that you provide, we'll get the summary revised, get that cleaned up. And from there, I think we are ready to switch over to public engagement, following the feedback that we get. And we are driving towards providing the planning department with the updated goal and policy information towards the end of September following that public engagement process. So making sure that for the planning department and comprehensive plan, they're staying updated as we update our work as well.

Sounds great. So we'll definitely put that on our next agenda item and work towards that. Do we have any, with that being said, do you have anything more to present to us?

I think that is it for now. I appreciate the time offered. I know it's fairly information dense this round. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Alex. We appreciate it too.

Thanks.

I know we've been here for quite a while, so we'll try to keep this a little bit short. Cody, do we have any park project updates?

Yeah, park project updates. So the skate park, we kind of delayed the bid for the skate park because of not wanting to start construction in the middle of summer. We went out to bid. Grindline was the only bidder on the project. So we will go to contract. So hopefully here at the next council meeting, it'll be on the agenda. Grindline will hopefully start in the fall. Um, so we're, once we get that contract in place, we'll put some banners out at the skate park and hope that they, um, they remain there and, uh, uh, just notifying them that this fall we'll start construction down there at the skate park. So that's happening. Um, the pioneer park pavilion, the next time you're in there for the market, uh, we did upgrade. There's two new led panels on the wall. that flank both sides of the projection screen up there. So we've done a technology upgrade there. So we've updated the public address system. So all the speakers in there are new and connected. And then we also have two LEDs in there. So if somebody wanted to do live events or, you know, video up on the wall, then it'll be, crystal clear during the day. So, um, that's that project's nearing completion. Uh, I was asked to give a, an update on Rainier Woods. Uh, we're, we're a little bit of a staffing shortage this summer. And so we haven't gotten to Rainier Woods, so it's still on our project list. Uh, but the drainage at Rainier Woods is, is there, but we, we had hoped to get it done by July and, And now we're hoping by the end of the summer, we'll get out there and fix that drainage issue over there. So the Wildwood Trail is WTA is returning in August, the beginning of August to try and work on finishing the trail down to the meadow. Multi-care easement. I think we're in the final stretch. I probably said that the last three meetings, but we're close to signatures on that piece. And Wildwood Master Plan kicks off this month as well. And Bradley Lake presentation to RCO will be August, I believe, 15th. We got good feedback from RCO. Not a lot of feedback. Our presentation was pretty solid, so that's a good sign. And then the Van Lierup parking lot, we received money from the state. And so we'll pick a consultant here soon on the Van Lierup. parking lot design and, and what we have to, what hoops we have to jump through to extend the parking lot there at Van Leer.

Sounds great. Definitely answered all of the questions that I had about updates. So thank you. I appreciate that.

And Move Puyallup, you can hear it. Move Puyallup is happening right now in the park. So Move Puyallup is awesome for a second season there.

But I will say the, the big, so far the, the parks and the concert have gone pretty well too. So.

Yeah, first one last week. Yeah, we think the crowd was over 2,500, so between there and the market. So we think it was a huge, huge first night. And we have new sound folks, and so we've gotten really good feedback from night one.

Is this Thursday?

Oh, it's, oh gosh, one of the guys from the coast. Slim Whizzy. Yeah, Slim Whizzy.

All right, we'll move on to board comments. I think we...

I was just curious, how many working days do we have for the skate park? When are we anticipating to be opened up?

100. I was surprised by that number, but that's demo and install. They've asked for 100 working days on that.

Potentially late spring next year?

Yeah.

I'm not entirely sure where this falls. If between board, probably future agenda items. So I would like to ask the board to consider moving our start time back to 6 p.m. for the remainder of my term. I have, well, it's difficult for me to get here at 5 p.m. going forward. I'd like everybody to think about that.

I can make it work, but is there a possibility to kind of split the difference where maybe at 5.30?

5.30 might work too. Just 5 o'clock is very difficult for me. So I just want to put that out there. We can talk about it at the next meeting and see whether or not I'm definitely good for the next meeting. After that, it might be a little more difficult. It's going to be a lot more difficult. So with that, any other future agenda items? No? Okay. Well, then I'm going to make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries.