Recreation & Parks Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. We're gonna call order at 05:51, and we are gonna start with the pledge of allegiance.

Agenda item C, roll call. Commissioner Holloway. Present. Bauer. Smith? Present. Lopez? Abong?

Present.

Rodriguez? Present. Huitran? :Chair Huitron, I would like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the Recreation and Parks Commission, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium to my left. Citizens can submit public comment to the commission electronically no later than 1PM on the day of the meeting.

Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the commission and will be part of the record and be mentioned as part of public comment portion of the agenda. Material may be emailed to the torecreation@cityofMerced.org and should be limited to 300 words or less. Any correspondence received after 1PM will be distributed to the commission and retained for the official record. Agenda item D, public comment. Members of the of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed on the agenda may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes.

State law prohibits the commission from acting at this meeting on any matter raised during the public common period. The chair may propose a further limit to the time available for all speakers and at the discretion of the commission in order to accommodate as many speakers as possible. Members of the public who wish to speak on a matter that is listed on the agenda will be called upon to speak during discussion of that item. I currently have zero request to speak forms from the audience members wishing to speak on items not listed on the agenda. Agenda item E, reports.

Good evening, commission, community. Christopher Jensen, Parks and Community Services Director. This evening, I'm here to give our annual budget update. We have a process by which the city uses every year annually to determine not only the city budget, but also each department's budget and what we plan to do with that budget. So I'm going to go through the process with you that we follow this evening and then what our determinations were and our recommendations as well as some of the actions we've proposed to the city manager's office for consideration by council next month.

So just to review, the Parks and Community Services Department serves the community through two main divisions. We have contracts and facilities, which oversees external use of parks and facilities. So that includes our youth service organizations that either provide youth sports programs at our recreational venues or our community nonprofits that we contract with to support recreation and after school programming for youth in our youth or senior centers. We also have community services division, which is our direct services that are offered through our department. So that's anything that we offer directly through staffing in our department to the community.

That includes youth, adult sports, special events, and community events as well supporting community events, excuse me. The department's made up of eight full time staff that coordinate services programs, special events, and facilities with approximately 25 to 35 part time staff each year. The twenty five-twenty six budget represents a significant decrease not only to the city but our department's ability to maintain the recent service level to the community and for our partners. Each year, we work with the city manager's office and our staff to determine our mission, goals, and objectives for each year. Our mission does not change as an organization, but our goals and objectives may.

We give a report every year. And at the end of this year, I'll give the commission a report on where we ended up with our goals for twenty four-twenty five. Before you this evening are the mission goals and objectives for the 2526 fiscal year. First goal, and we'll go we'll go through the timeline of this a little bit because it may not make sense. We're working with the city manager's office to potentially revise the procedure for which these are determined.

We have to determine our goals and objectives prior to knowing what our budget forecast looks like for our department. So what you'll hear me talk about is some of the things that we hoped to accomplish this next year without knowing what our budget shortfall may be. Each December, we're given an opportunity or a projection from our finance department to work off of for our goals and objectives. However, once we determine our goals and objectives, that financial forecast or reality may become a little more clear later on into the spring, which was the case this year, which caused us to pull back some of our goals for this next fiscal year. The first goal we set for ourself is increasing youth and adult leadership in the field of parks and community services.

You as stakeholders and representatives of the city of Merced should be supported through training and onboarding processes so that you can make informed decisions as commissioners. My hope as well as our staff, was to be able to send two commissioners this next year to California Park and Recreation Society's statewide conference. That's the one annual training that we have over several days where you get exposed to not only other organizations across the state that offer parks and community services, but also other leaders, other commissioners, etcetera. So I know Commissioner Smith. The Planning Commission goes to the planning conference each year.

Our goal was to establish an opportunity for our recreation commissioners to do the same. With the financial forecasts that we were provided prior to our or after our goals being established, we might have to limit that to one commissioner instead of two. Field and facility management, increasing utility, safety, and reducing cost, to maintain the highest value of service offered through our facilities. So whether it's an outdoor shelter, if it's public restrooms, if it's rentable facilities, those usually go through our office to ensure that they have the utility for the community that's desired. Unfortunately, our staffing reductions that we're proposing this next fiscal year will limit our ability to prepare things like outdoor shelters.

We're in a day and age where it's very difficult for us to determine the condition a shelter may be in. Even if we clean it Friday evening, the the utility of that shelter and how it's used might make it unusable the following day for a reservation. So those are some of the things that we were hoping to work on with that budget that we might have to revisit. Recreational opportunities to offer youth and adult sports that meet the needs and interests of the community, that's still viable for us. Basically, what that means is we're going to continue to assess what the community interest is for the sports and and programming opportunities that we offer the community and make sure that we're doing stuff that people want to utilize and meets a need for our community, not just something that we like to do.

Cost reductions as a goal, increasing sustainability of summer programs and leisure classes and the zoo through new partnerships. We've brought in some money that is termed, so meaning grant or foundation contributions over the last several years. The problem with that is it's very time sensitive. You have an opportunity to expand, you know, programming or capacity or training opportunities for staff on a very limited basis, maybe a two to three year turnaround. If you're lucky, maybe a four to five year grant.

If you're paying attention to the federal landscape right now financially, federal subsidy through grants and so forth are not going to be available in the near future. So we really need to look at new ventures to obtain financial sustainability for our programs. And increasing the quality of life that parks, open space, and playgrounds offer through coordinated capital improvements, maintenance, and volunteering opportunities. So this last year, we started the adopt a park Green Scout initiative. So if you follow us on social media, you may have seen some of our successful partnerships.

I think, mister Smith, you attended one of the adopt a park days at Joe Herb, but our parks are looking really, really good right now. And the Green Scout initiative offers Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other scouting troops to adopt a park in their community and give back by coordinating a day of service. And that could be planting new flowers or trees in coordination with our office or establishing new new paint schemes for the park so they're coordinated and up to date. The objectives are pretty measurable. So they're in the report, but due to our late start, I'm gonna save the details.

But please review those and give your input on our next meeting next month. Parks and community services, major projects. CPRS that I talked about earlier, California Parks and Recreation Society, this is an image here which was really cool. It was a moment captured at this year's Parks and Community Services regional or excuse me, statewide conference. This is our department representatives and Milton Design Group.

This is a consultant we're working with to provide the park master plan and construction of phase one for General Vangpal Park, Emir said. Our park design was recognized by the state and highlighted at this year's conference. So pretty cool to see our local efforts being recognized on a statewide basis. So some of the major projects for this next year are to complete our parks, rec, and open space master plan. We'll be giving you a presentation next month with our consultant, one hundred and ten percent Inc, who is helping us carry out that initiative.

We have contracted an outside consultant to help drive the effort, but we are working very hand in hand with that consultant to bring together communities, wisdom holders that will be convening about 14 different stakeholder groups over the next two months. And in the month of May, we'll be doing some, I think, 15 community pop ups across across the city of Merced to gather community input on what they wanna see in the form of parks, open space, and recreation opportunities for the next ten years. We'll also be hoping to complete Community Park 42, the South. So if you've been to CP 42 or the Merced Regional Sports Complex that's being built right now off of Tyler And Mission, it's a major investment. It's coming along very well.

One of the things that we got feedback from our consultant on was really wanting to make sure that the grass on all four of the soccer fields is established for a full summer, fall, and winter season. So instead of opening up this summer, we're gonna let the grass establish its root system and open up for a full ribbon cutting in next spring twenty twenty six. But we'll be having a soft opening this summer just to showcase the construction and the completion of the project. Also, the completion of Merced Applegate Zoo, the renovation effort there, we're in contract with NJA Architecture out of Lathrop, California or excuse me, Lodi, California, and All About Building out of Sacramento, California. Those two are made up of a design build team that we're working with in collaboration with some of the construction management crew at Chaffee Zoo in Fresno.

We have some concepts put together already for a new black bear enclosure as well as a bobcat exhibit and a tortoise exhibit. Those will all be renovated later this year. We'll be presenting on all of these at the May Commission meeting. General Vang Powell Park, which again was showcased here at CPRS, will be constructing phase one, which will include Aletha June Playground. It'll be one of two new all inclusive themed playgrounds brought to you by not only your department, but funding initiative through First Five of Merced County.

So special thanks to that group of commissioners there. We will be looking to acquire funding to renovate McNamara Turf. If you're familiar with McNamara Turf, it serves hundreds of kids every single week. They're probably there right now. McNamara in and of itself as a park is probably one of our most utilized parks, has a lot of different amenities. The turf is a big investment. It's about $1,000,000 if not more, to renovate the carpet there. But it is on year 12 of a ten year lifespan. And so there is a sufficient need to upgrade that turf just for the safety and viability of that amenity for our community. We'll also be working to finish up Bob Hart Square.

Happy to give a presentation on what that may look like when we're in completion. That will be renovating canal, which is under construction right now. Bob Hart Square would no longer just be the grassy area with the flower bed in the front across Main Street. It'll actually expand all the way out to 16th Street and be an entire downtown event plaza from now on. So that should be complete this July.

We will also be looking to renovate the softball field at Joe Herb. Joe Herb is the location where we house Merced Youth Softball, Merced Adult Softball for two seasons, and we also run our NFL Flag Football Youth Program there as well. So a little bit about our budgetary process. This is a very wordy slide, but I think it's really important for our commissioners and community to be aware of what our process is. So in December, the city finance department provides each department in the city an authorized allocation for the next fiscal year.

And that's based on financial projections, how revenues are looking, how expenses are looking for the next year. Our our department was instructed to plan for a 4% increase in our expenses, and that's why we set the goals we did for this next fiscal year. In March, after a true up of all payroll increases due to the MOUs that were that were adopted by the city council for the various labor unions, the department budget was determined to be out of balance by $440,000 So what looked to be a 4% increase in expenses was actually a deficit by the time all of the staffing increase in costs were added. Not only is it our department, but we provide cost recovery for other departments that service us. So if we look for the city attorney to review contracts that we do through our contracts and facilities department or division within our department, that comes at a cost.

All of our recreation centers, our community centers, our youth centers, if there's any major repairs that are required for the city to take on, those get charged to our department. So all of those things add up to the staffing and contracting costs, which led to us being upside down by about $440,000 this year. In April, our department provided the city manager an update with $440,000 worth of adjustments for the department budget to be presented in May to city council for feedback and to make any necessary, excuse me, necessary revisions. So some of the major moves that were made in order to accomplish this are on the right here, increase in revenues. We're going into excuse me.

We're in contract now for the first time with Merced City School District. It's a small contract. We're just piloting how this might go as a relationship with the city school district to offer our summer recreation program, Junior Giants Baseball. That will start, I believe, in June and run through the August. We're also projecting several mini grants from First Five of Merced County to support family days on certain Sundays of the month for Merced Applegate Zoo.

That would allow grandparents and grandchildren to come into the facility for free. And then looking to acquire the California violence intervention prevention grant for outdoor recreation programming. Historically, this was afforded through another California grant that has since been cut from the governor's budget. So we're looking at another grant resource to bring in to complement that program and keep that sustained. Reduction in expenses would come from the reduction of one full time employee at the zoo.

That full time employee was afforded through the Daniel R. Martin Foundation out of Fresno, California. We've had the luxury of having that staff for three years. That foundation contribution is sunsetting this fiscal year, so we will not be funding that moving forward. We're also looking at a 35% reduction in extra help staffing levels.

We're really hoping to lean on outside opportunities such as AmeriCorps, College Corps. However, I just received an email before commission this evening stating that about 400,000,000 may be cut from the federal budget for AmeriCorps reserves. So we're not sure how reliable that funding stream might be for increasing staffing. Reduction of 75% of the training, funding for our department, deletion of summer camp. We are looking to reinvent summer camp and what that may look like, But the reality is sometimes we're duplicating services at detriment to the community.

And we have several vendors that offer summer camp in our community centers. And we also have the school district now through ELOP funding that is offering several site specific summer opportunities, which makes it extremely competitive to continue to offer summer camp at Applegate Park. We'll be deleting the summer stick to fitness clinics, which was operating street hockey and pickleball at no charge for youth over the summer. We'll be removing the block party trailer, which was an amenity afforded to us by Measure Y a few years ago. So the wreck the block party trailer was an initiative we kicked off where if you were hosting a community free event, you could call us up and we would bring the PA system, tables and chairs, activities, children's games, and we would be there to help expand your offering at the community event.

So we've supported several community wide events, specifically cultural events, over the last two years that we'll be reducing our commitment to as a result of the budget deficit. We're also decreasing our own special event budget and reducing certain things that we've established over the last several years since I've been here and looking at more partnerships to bring on through sponsorships. Excuse me. More sponsorships to bring on through local businesses to help subsidize the cost of those to bring them back online. We'll also be looking to decrease the youth, service, organization support with ball field preparations and also the annual contracted facility contributions to used service providers.

Just a high level overview for time's sake. The details are here, but we're looking for the block party trailer to reduce $18,000 of our annual budget. That removes three part time positions from the department, which typically are youth jobs. The Stick to Fitness summer clinics, the street hockey and pickleball, those are free youth clinics that are two lessons every week, three hours each lesson. We have about 20 youth that participate every session, again free of charge, looking to remove two part time positions from the department that help facilitate those clinics over the summer.

Into the Wild summer camp, a $36,000 cost reduction. This is two eight week sessions available for four hours a day, serving approximately 30 youth per session at the Brazadi Education Building, offering lunch and daily activities, including the Growing Up Wild lessons, playground free time, and daily park tours, both to Merced Applegate Park and Merced Applegate Zoo. It removes seven part time positions from the department over summer. Merced Applegate Zoo is looking at a $90,000 reduction. The majority of that would be coming from the Daniel R.

Martin Foundation contribution to help us fund the one full time zookeeper and also two part time zookeepers. We are looking at increasing some of the revenues, which would help supplement a little bit of that shortfall in the form of $30,000 for reducing annual entry fees or excuse me, increasing annual entry fees based on a new fee schedule, and then also looking towards First Five for free family day sponsorships each month of the year. Community center utility support. So our current contracts for youth service providers include an annual allocation where we either reimburse the you service provider in the case of leases or we cover the cost of utilities up to a certain amount for you service providers for service agreements. In conversations with the city manager and city council, it was determined that for youth service contracts where it's not a lease, meaning that you cannot sub rent the facility, that we would reduce that by about 25%.

So that's in the form of about $2,500 this next year to the Central Youth Center and the McNamara Youth Center. In terms of the McCombs Youth Center lease with the Boys and Girls Club of Merced County, Those discussions and terms have been held in closed session with city council and are being arranged currently. We hope to bring you those terms for consideration next month. For youth sports organization support, we maintain 11 baseball and softball fields every single week in the spring just for our schools in addition to our own fields. So that's Nenini Youth Sports Complex and Joe Herb Youth Sports Complex.

That is a lot. It is a lot of work. And we try to support our nonprofit youth service organizations and youth sports organizations as much as possible. But it's just not viable for us to do that at that capacity any longer. So we're meeting with our youth sports organizations now to talk about what that may mean as far as a lift for them moving forward.

The way this relationship works is the city of Merced has a joint use agreement with many of our schools or school districts. And the reason that exists is because of a financial investment that was made historically by the city of Merced to increase some type of field or amenity. In the case of middle schools, sometimes we add sports filled lighting or outdoor restrooms that aren't connected to the schools so that our youth sports organizations have the ability to program there. In the terms of indoor facilities, sometimes that may mean a basketball gym that was constructed with assistance from the city of Merced. So we go into shared use agreements as a result of those commitments.

Our youth sports organizations, being nonprofit youth serving organizations, use those piggyback as piggyback contracts so that they can use fields for free or low cost. And we try to supplement their use by preparing the fields. So we prepare the fields for the school sports teams. After the school sports teams use the fields, our youth service sports organizations come on the field after five and they use the same fields that we prepared for the school. So that's how that arrangement works.

What we're looking at doing is pulling back from the commitment to prepare the fields for play. So we would still maintain the joint use agreements for those annual investments as necessary for field conditioning, light replacement, you know, restroom repair, things of that nature. But the weekly commitment to prepare 11 fields every week, we just can't maintain that commitment. So we'll be looking to our youth sports organizations to take that on. And that is the conclusion of this year's budget presentation.

These are all preliminary projections that were made over the last month in regards to the shortfall that we were facing of $440,000. I really wanna make a huge give a huge thanks to our staff who worked a couple of weekends, really late nights, to try to cut almost half $1,000,000 from our budget. It's not easy. It's very hard decisions that we had to come to to try to suggest to the city manager to have council consider. But I'm proud of of what we've done with the resources and time afforded to us, I think that we've made it out, still providing some amazing partnerships for our community to leverage through our department, as well as some great programs for us to offer internally.

Does the commission have any questions about the proposed budget? Any recommendations or considerations? Okay. Thank you.

Okay, then we'll move on to agenda item E2, review of the youth center program quarterly reports and consideration of use of the facility as a service provider.

Hello again. So in your agenda item or packet, you will see several quarterly reports just for the community's awareness and for any commissioners that may be new to the arena. Our youth service providers that use city facilities to expand programming offered to our residents have the opportunity to share with you what they've been doing on a quarterly basis. This is in support of the youth center service agreements or lease agreements that they have been provided to utilize these facilities. It should each report we did receive a report from each use center service provider for your review.

All were reviewed by staff and seem to be carrying out their function successfully With one, there are some facility modifications that are required. We're working on that with our facilities department in public works to accommodate. And then as always, the Boys and Girls Club did mention the significant concern related to the development of high speed rail and what that means for the McCombs Youth Center there on the 15th Street area. I know we have Merced Senior Inc. Here as well, which is not a youth service provider but does provide senior services and has shared consistently their continued concern on that same issue.

Outside of that, there really is some fantastic work going on across the board with our service providers. And these quarterly reports are for your review to support any recommendation to maintain the service provider in these facilities. Currently, the term for all of these service, excuse me, for all of the service providers in the city venues is a one year term with the potential to extend for two additional terms for a maximum, two additional years for a maximum term of three years consecutive use. And we have a new suggested term timeline for your consideration tonight, but that'll be an additional admin report for your review coming up next. So in the meantime, does anyone have questions related to the youth service providers or the services that are being provided in the Central Youth Station, the McCombs Youth Center, or the McNamara Youth Center?

-Agenda item F, business.

JAMES Okay. So here's the good news. All of our youth service providers are doing an amazing job. Lifeline Community Development Lifeline CDC I can't remember what the last C is and Restorative Justice League and Challenge Family Resource Center are all on service agreement contracts, which means they cannot use their facility as a rental property to increase revenues. They can only program for the time allocated in their contract.

And all three have been doing an outstanding job. I want to give kudos to each of them for the ongoing support that they've showed our community, collaboration with our office, consistent communication if there's any needs at the facility or programmatic opportunities to partner. It's been a great approach with all three vendors. And what we're suggesting and when I first came to the city, there was some concern about the duration, the long term duration of our contracts. And counsel wanted the opportunity to consider maybe some short intermediate terms of contracts to reconsider who was using the facility on a routine basis.

We went to a one year option with the potential to extend two for three consecutive years. In discussing this and some of the shortfalls that this type of contracting term provides both our office as far as the need to put out constant requests for information or interest from the community, as well as processing quarterly reports, and our vendors who don't know where they're going to be one year to the next. With that being said, both this commission, our youth service providers, and council have shared their support of what's before you this evening, which is our request for your consideration of amending the current service agreements with our youth center providers from a one year with the potential to extend for two additional years to a three year term with the potential to extend two additional years for a term not to exceed five years. That would give some breathing room to our youth service providers. I think it shows a vote of confidence in what they're currently doing to establish programming in our community and maintain a high level of service for our young people and their families.

And I think it also gives them more energy to focus on programming and less energy needed to focus on contract terms. From our staffing perspective, it gives us a lot more opportunity to support their programming and less necessity to oversee what's being done on a month to month or year to year basis for them as a service provider. So we would love to focus more of our efforts on making sure that the facilities are in good repair, that our programming that may be happening in these facilities is complementary and not in competition of what's being offered, And again, some relief to our youth service providers to have a more consistent term in front of them. The other amendment that would need to be made on these contracts is, again, reducing their annual allocation per facility from $7,500 down to $5,000 And again, that reduces the liability or reliance on the city to subsidize their operation. And each service provider has had this discussion in isolation with one another as well in collaboration with one another about what that may mean for them.

And each are comfortable with those terms and would like to move forward with your recommended amendment. The way this would work is someone would need to adopt a motion to amend the service agreements for both Restorative Justice League, also Challenger Family Resource Center, and Lifeline CDC, or you could recommend something different than that. But those recommendations, if made and adopted tonight, would be taken to city council in the month of May for consideration. And just on a on a similar but separate note, again, the terms and conditions for the use of the McCombs Youth Center due to its relation to the impending high speed rail project were taken into consideration separately, and those terms will be brought to you for recommendation and consideration next month. So we can open it up for discussion.

We do have some of our youth service providers here in the audience that might be able to speak to any questions you may have. Or if not, we would take a motion.

I see this being beneficial. They won't be on edge as much, and they have been doing an awesome job. Every time we've gone to visit, their arms are wide open. Doors are open for us to come in. They fill out their quarterly reports when needed. So if you guys are okay, I'll adopt a motion to change the service agreements to three years.

So we would have let's see if there's any other discussion. And then if not, we can take a motion. And then we would need a motion to, again, recommend the amended contract for each individual service provider.

Okay. Okay, so my only question is, you said that it would reduce annual from 75 ks to five ks. Is that are more people going to lose their jobs?

I'm sorry. Let me clarify. From $7,500 so $7,500 to $5,000 And what that money is currently allocated to is our youth service providers use city facilities to operate their programs. We would reduce what we would pay for their utility expenses by the 2,500. So if that means job reduction, we would let the youth center service providers answer that question.

In our communication about the situation and our recommended term amendments, no one has suggested to this point that that would lead to, job reductions for staffing. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other conversation? No more questions. All right. So if we could get a motion to amend the existing service agreements with Restorative Justice League, Challenge Family Resource Center, and Lifeline CDC from a three year maximum term to a five year maximum term. We can take that to counsel.

I motion what he just said. Doctor. Repeat it all? Okay. A motion to extend amend the existing service agreements with Restorative Justice, Challenge Family Resources Center, and Lifeline CDC from a three year maximum term to a five year maximum term. I second.

Mr. Smith?

Then we need to so take a the motion's on the table. So now we need to ask the commission to

vote. Okay.

Okay. I

can only

That's Okay. Cynthia is doing an amazing

job, Sorry, guess by the my first time.

Cynthia is our new admin assistant in our office. There you go. Great. The motion

The motion passes.

JULIET Okay. So just to recalibrate, we will be taking the commission's recommendation. It's Okay. I think Walter is usually in the Farsi, so wrong district. We'll get it right in the minutes. So just to recalibrate, we will take your recommendation for counsel's consideration in May. Thank you.

Agenda item f three, request to add item to future agenda.

Next month, if we can get a report on the Applegate Park on the zoo on the Kidneyland renovation report out for next month, please.

Yeah, we can definitely bring back. So there's several works that have been completed in the past few years at Applegate Park to bring the park back to life. We will report on those initiatives as well as the status on the Merced Applegate Zoo and Kitty Land renovations.

Agenda Okay. Item f three, commission comments.

I actually do have a comment. I think it's called a Marino Park Marino Park. It was very special. My sister passed away from cancer last year. And the Cub Scouts planted a tree in her honor at the park, and it was so beautiful. I didn't even know that was a thing. So I just want to give a huge shout out to the parks for coming out. The gentleman that came out that represented the parks, he was just so patient with us. My brother-in-law had a hard time. He was very emotional.

I think we were it took like an extra hour for them to actually show up. And he waited patiently. And he just understood that it was a big moment for us. And it was very emotional. So we're very grateful for the parks for doing that and the Cub Scouts for planting that tree. It's there. We have a rock garden that we started. So if you want to paint a rock and drop it off at the park, it's the one by the dog park off of El Rodondo, I believe. There's a rock in her honor right next to the tree. And it's just so beautiful. So I just want to thank the Parks Department for offering that and the Cub Scouts for taking the lead on that. So thank you.

Agenda item G, adjournment. Yeah, we can adjourn this meeting at 06:35. Can I get a motion?

I motion it.

And can I get a second? I second. Okay. We adjourn. Thank you, everybody.