Arts Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening, and welcome to the October Parks and Community Services board meeting. Paul is unable to join us today. Otherwise, we are at quorum, and so this meeting is now called to order. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda? I so move. A second? Second. Alright. Let's vote. All in favor to approve tonight's agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Great. The agenda is approved unanimously. Next up is the approval of the minutes from the Park Board September 2025 regular meeting. Is there a motion to approve the September minutes?

I so move.

Thank you. Second?

I second. Move.

Thank you. Alright. Let's vote. All in favor to approve the September 2025 meeting minutes, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Alright. The min the minutes are unanimously approved. Next up is oral communications. The Parks and Community Services Board values community input and looks forward to hearing from you during its meeting.

Please be aware that in compliance with Washington State campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during election, no speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes your own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. There are rules adopted by the City Council limiting the topics about which the public may speak during our meetings. Under Ordinance 6,752, the public may only speak during public comment about subject matters that are related to City of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the Parks and Community Services Board. Following the Board's bylaws, the total time allowed for oral communications shall not exceed thirty minutes.

Each speaker will be allowed to speak one time for up to three minutes. We will follow the order in which individuals signed up. If you do not get a chance to speak this evening, you are always invited to email your comments to us at parkboardbellviewah dot gov. So now we'll turn it over to Ryan, who'll read names from the online and in person sign in sheets.

Thank you, chair. We have one speaker signed up this evening, Alex Zimmerman. Oh, yours?

Oh, I'm good. Thank you very much. Nazi pig. In special for council Hamilton who are Nazi pig. And I explained to where is the problem today. Yesterday, it's absolutely critical for all city right now for Bellevue. So don't ex interrupt me. Give me a chance. I will explain to you in detail. Yesterday in council meeting, I start speak about problem what is we have right now. It's a fundamental problem right now. Two council two council people in Bellevue, you know

what this means? Excuse me, chair. I would like it if you please would warn our It's my time. Public

that this is not

all within the power and duties of the board.

It's my time.

Mister Zimmerman, can you kindly speak about matters that are within the power and duties of the Parks and Community Service Board?

And cities. This exactly in 03/6752. You repeat this many times. I spoke exactly what is important for your commission, for every commission. He don't want to win because he's a Nazi pig. I this again. So listen to me very careful right now. Situation, what is we have is a crime, what has happened right now. And I just want to explain to you various point why mayor Robinson cut me. Don't give me a chance to speak. He too. So people with two citizenship cannot be a member of government.

Oh, please speak to matter of

committee. Committee is a government too. You understand that by talking? I'm not talking about you. I

talking about

second warning. Please speak to matters that are within the power

Is it this is exactly what is I speak about. It's critical because people with double citizenship cannot work for government. Committee like you, you will have this, you cannot do in this. We have to consult. They cannot be a consult. This a law, a federal law. You cannot broken federal law.

Your third warning, please speak to the parks portal. That's this is not relevant. You

understand that biotalkin many from you who have two citizenship, a member of this committee is a criminal. You understand? It's not my opinion. They said no country in this planet. With two citizenship, you cannot make it work for government.

This is your no. This is too much. I've given you plenty of warnings. I'm sorry, but you'd have to leave.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You're welcome. No. So for the record, I consider the speaker's refusal to follow the rules adopted by council ordinance six seven five two after being warned three, four times. He formed a disruption of our public meeting. And I wanna let the public know that the Bellevue Parks And Community Service Board does not condone hateful or offensive speech from any individual. While we prefer to people I'm not sure if it's quite fine. People refrain from making these kinds of comments. The board respects individuals. First Amendment free rights. Individuals are allowed to express their thoughts or feelings whether we agree with them or not.

But he did not speak about matters related to the Parks and Community Services Board, so that's why he had to go today. Thank you. Alright. Is there any other

No. That's all of our signed up speakers. If there's anyone else online or in the room who wishes to speak I'm not hearing or seeing any. So that end

Alright. Thank you, Ren. Thank you, council member Hamilton as well. Alright. Actually, next up is city council communications. I'll turn it over to council member Hamilton.

Great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for handling that. I do hope that, there is some follow-up and that with three warnings and being kicked out of a meeting, I think some additional action should be considered, including banning him from future meetings. So, well done. He's not an easy person to deal with. I think you did a great job. I think it's really important that we stick to the same rules. Everybody follows the rules, and I appreciate you enforcing those.

And I also appreciate how challenging it can be. With that, I'll just kinda continue with my normal report. I know there's a few things we're gonna talk about that are coming up, but we'll be talking about parks at our meeting next week. So just wanna flag that for you. Critical areas, I know that's something that the board has looked into and provided feedback on and has an interest in.

We're gonna be taking that up, our critical or areas ordinance update on November 12. And then we'll be taking up East Gate neighborhood park design and name recommendation at our November 18 meeting. Want to report that, due to some excellent work, by park staff, including Tony Esparza, who is here. We had a the grand opening celebration of our community court last week, which was amazing. We had a great turnout.

Paul Clark was there. We had a chance to see two people graduate from the program, which is an addition to one who has already graduated. So community court is up and running. It's really amazing. Takes a ton of work, but the outcomes are are really amazing.

So just was great to be there and see it and very interested in continuing to see all of the positive results. And I know we're gonna come from the community court because we've seen it in lots of other community courts locally and around the country. A number of us were in Denver last week on a BDA study trip, the Bellevue Downtown Association. A lot of what took us there was thinking about the Grand Connection, thinking thinking about East Trail, thinking about activating those spaces, keeping them safe. So it was a really good trip.

I think what I saw in Denver makes me all the more excited about what we can do here with the Grand Connection and, East Trail. Last night, we had a Arbor Day proclamation at council. There's an Arbor Day celebration coming up this Saturday from 08:45 to eleven at Lewis Creek. There's more information on the city's, website. And then a a few cleanup events coming.

I think I've mentioned some of these before, but just as a reminder, also on Saturday from nine to ten in Bell Red, gonna have a cleanup event. Another cleanup event for Eastgate is nine to ten on November 15, and the final one of the year is December 13 from nine to ten in Crossroads. So plenty of information about where to meet and how these go on the city's website. And I know that I think I'm gonna be at the Eastgate one. So if you haven't done them, they're pretty cool.

Chance to walk around the neighborhood with neighbors and hear from them on a wide range of topics while we're making the place look a little better. So that's what I've got to report and certainly open to any questions if anyone has them.

Thank you, council member Hamilton. Does anyone have questions for council member Hamilton? Alright. Alright. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, the director's report. So we'll turn it over to director Shiyazaki.

Thank you very much, Chair Klima. Good evening, everyone. So I come to you, and I'm gonna bring up something that's gonna be on the agenda because I just wanna say how really, really important accreditation is to so many departments in the city, especially parks and community services. This is a big deal. It's a long, arduous five year process.

The minute you're done, you basically have to start again. And the reason Tony Esparza is presenting it, she was the chief ringleader in all of this over the last five years. And it's it gets especially tough right at the end, the final year when basically all the reporting, all the documentation that we're doing what we said we would do in our plans needs to all come together and be reviewed. And then there's this virtual site visit. And sorry.

I don't mean to be stealing your thunder, Tony. But I just really want to thank Tony and all the staff for this incredible effort. I think it's sometime during the year, at some point we think, do we really want to do this again? And of course we do, but it's really hard. So big thanks to Tony and everyone across the department for accomplishing this again.

Also, kudos once again to Tony and Craig Fritz, who is the head he's the manager of probation. And he a lot of the nuts and bolts and how that community court came together are because of Craig's work. I know there were a lot of people involved, but in terms of kind of on the Citi side, Craig was really instrumental. So thanks to Craig for his incredible work. And then I did wanna make a plug for the city's food and hygiene supply drive, is going on right now.

You know, as I think we know during this time where there is still lingering inflation and there are so many complicated issues in our country right now. There are so many people in need. And so, you know, there's a QR code you can scan and what's donated. There are about a dozen partner organizations that will help distribute this, But, really, hopefully, we can all commit to give during this time and as this continues on. And then I have a couple of events I just wanted to highlight.

The first one is coming up this Friday. It's being hosted at at and by the Crossroads Community Center. It's the day of the dead, the Dia de los Muertos, which we'll be highlighting live dance performances and music. It's free for everyone. There's arts and crafts.

It really I I think it's a great opportunity to be out in the community and and Crossroads. And then another one, and I think you all on the park board have been invited personally, but I will reemphasize this if you haven't had a chance to RSVP, and that is YouthLink Gumbo Night, which is next Wednesday, the twenty second. And I'll say, this is really a cool event where you get to sit down with youth leaders in this community and talk about issues, hopefully, that are relevant to them. They also get to hear from us about how things were in the good old days. So that's always a part of the the conversation, but it really is a great opportunity to both have some great gumbo, but to just have some wonderful conversations with youth leaders in this community that really are so sharp.

So plugs for those two events, and I think that's all I have. Questions?

Oh, yeah. Questions? Liz had a question about Gumbo Night. I knew it was coming up and had it on my calendar, but I didn't RSVP. And I saw in the mail that you had to RSVP by the tenth.

Did I miss the deadline? Am I good? Make that happen to you. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are you RSVPing right now?

I will do that right

Or or you can do that by just saying it right now.

So Yes. I'm already Done.

Done. We'll hold you to it. Okay. Anything else?

Oh, Eric?

Yeah. Having been through an accreditation process for another organization, I know the amount of work that goes into that. And for some organizations, it's expected. The fact that really for parks and human services, it's not really considered an expectation, but we went through the process and the effort to do that. And it to me, that let me let me know that Bellevue Parks is that much of a higher level in how we provide service to our community, and I really appreciate that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric. Any other comments or questions for director Shiyazaki? I have I have one comment. On the agenda, you sent us some information about the summer ranger program, so I just thought I'd check-in to see if there's anything else you wanted to add or all that stuff.

No. But if you have questions, feel free to yeah. I don't think I yeah.

Okay. Alright. Sounds good. Thank you, director. Alright. With that, we'll move on to board communications. Perhaps we'll start at one end of the table and work our way around. Should we start off? You wanna start first, Eileen, or we could start with Steve? Oh, we'll just start with Eileen.

Yeah. K. Well, good. Good evening, everyone. So first of all, I remember seeing a picture of the Bellevue monopoly. We had a Bellevue okay. I'll let you speak. I'll let you speak because I'm really excited about that.

And you're in the picture, so I feel

So just last week, there was the unveiling of the new Bellevue edition of monopoly. This event was at kids quest. But, I mean, the cool thing about the new Bellevue monopoly game is that it features four squares that have parks on them. It includes Downtown Park, Kelsey Creek, the Botanical Garden, and Maine Bauer Bay Park. And so and and I'm just gonna tell you, we're not the cheap real estate. We are not we're not we're we're not Baltic Avenue or Mediterranean Avenue. We're the high rent district. I just want you to know. So so, anyway, really a cool thing. And I do wanna make the plug.

It is available to purchase, I know, in many places, but the place you really wanna buy it is at the Trillium gift store at the Bellevue Botanical Garden because then you're helping support the garden. So, anyway, there's my plug on that. But really a cool thing, I'm sure everyone in your families will want

one of these. So

Gonna ask if we could get that as an annual gift.

Mhmm. Okay.

Okay. My update. I don't know if you guys remember. A few months ago, I mentioned I would love to get, like, a list of events that are, like, upcoming for the parks because I could never remember. But, actually, it turns out there's a monthly newsletter from the parks and community services.

I think it does pretty good job of, you know, kinda highlight the parks, talk about upcoming events. I think this month, I pay a little more attention. It was sent on October 1, and there was a picture of you on Arbor Day, Rowena, probably last year's Arbor Day. And then they sent another, special edition, I think, on October 7. So I actually was thinking in as the future as you guys looking at topics, I would love to meet the team kinda or the leader behind this newsletter process.

I kinda wanna understand different roles, how they put this newsletter together, and, you know, what makes cut, what oh, I think somebody's managing the team. Yeah. Like, I would just love to know, like and how they gauge the readership of the newsletter and if any future plans. I thought that may be something that at least I'm interested, maybe the pub group interested as well.

That's

Topics for the future. And and we do have a a pretty brand spanking new marketing coordinator. Her name is Bridget Larson. And so, anyway, she started, and she's responsible for that. So happy to do that.

So that's my update. Thank you. Thank you, Eileen. Mhmm. Next, Eric, would you like to share it?

Yeah. First off, I was commenting on the monopoly. I am a game geek. I actually collect games, so I'm not gonna be waiting for a gifting. I'm gonna be running out to the Botanical garden so I can purchase my own cup.

Aside from that, I am also looking into cloning myself because the neighborhood cleanup and the Arbor Day are are conflicting. So I am I'm planning on going to the Arbor Day, and I wanna help plant trees. So Saturday morning, I plan on being there. I have registered or RSVP'd for gumbo night, so I'm excited for that, and just finding other ways for us to get engaged with the community. So, finding ways to clear my schedule so that, I can also visit more parks and take the lead from my friend here.

And, not just visit more parks, but I wanna go to the parks that I have not, been to so that, I can experience, that part of building. So that's my report.

Thank you, Eric. Michelle, are we good for next?

Hey. Thank you. Thank you for hosting Kelsey Creek Farm fair this couple weeks ago. I always go with my younger kids. We actually were able to bring a bigger group. I would say the photobomb session. So, basically, we had there was a little barn photo op, and then there was a tiny little person that you didn't realize was there and then would pop up and try like, kind of photobomb you in the back, which we didn't realize until we saw the picture and we're, like, freaked out. And then there she was. So I'm surprised the kids didn't notice. And then once they did, they ran away.

But, again, super fun. Every year, it changes. There was, I think, so many more vendors this time than last time. I don't know how many more we could fit, but, you know, great job. We got I got more people to come this year. And as always, the pony rides were impossible. I think the line was probably a 100 people deep. So most popular, I think. So, anyway, great event. Very happy to attend.

Looking forward to Arbor Day. We did it last year. We'll see see if we can do it again, how many we can plant this time, and so many fun fall activities. I hope folks, now that nighttime is coming out, obviously, much earlier, I encourage a lot of, you know, home outdoor light decorations to kinda make it festive for the kids. It gets very dark and spooky early.

And then we're also moving our park activities to the parks next to lighted facilities. So Robinswood, and there's a couple more that, feel like after school when the sun comes down, there are still parks where kids can go and and play. So maybe we can make a shout out next month once it's officially completely dark after 4PM on which ones have lighting that people can go to after school. So but, anyway, thank you so much.

Thanks, Michelle. Elizabeth, do you like to go next?

Yes. So

Oh, your mic isn't on? Oh.

Oh. Yes. Happy to discuss. So I had a really great visit this past month with Ryan and the team to Phantom Lake where we looked at the entrance, the paddle boarding entrance, which I talked about on a previous call. So first of all, thanks to the staff that went out there with me.

It was extremely informative. I think everybody was able to see the what I was talking about and the the challenges that people have entering the lake. And I learned a lot from our staff also about some of the things we're doing, all of the policies around water protections and how what it takes to actually make changes around our bodies of water, which is great. Super impressive how much everybody had at the top of their head to let me know, here's what would need to happen. And I felt really good about understanding where what we have planned, which is in that particular space, nothing for the time being, but what it would take to to make changes to get people access in the right way and make sure that we're still respecting the environment of the park.

So that was great. It was just also great to understand why sometimes those things are built the way they are and why they stay that way. So that was very helpful. My partner also went to Festival de Mais, and that was really good and had amazing tamales. But the by time we got there, they were all meat tamales, so I didn't have any. But I have heard that it was fantastic. So another vote of approval for all of the Crossroads events. I am looking forward to the Crossroads cleanup as well coming up.

Alright. Thank you, Elizabeth. Steve, would you like to go next?

So I wasn't able to make it last month, but I when I was reading the meeting agendas, I think there were some communication about the namings of parks that and I think the board went through that. So I've just went on to the website and started clicking on each of the links to the different parks that we have. And I thought, well, you know, some of the parks actually has some historical background. And, of course, I mentioned in the past that I was a history major in in college. So I I took an interest in it and and started clicking all the most of the links.

But some of the links, you know, it was named after I think some of the parks are named after historical figures that were prominent in our in the in the history of of the city, but there some of them didn't have much details about these historical figures. So I was thinking that whether there's any way to find out more or or maybe it's a a project for for me to do. And if any of you know where you get you you can point me to the direction of of where I could, you know, dig into this and maybe, you know, look into the the names of these parks. And and it'll be actually a fun project for me to dig something up and report back to the board or to to the group. So that's what I was thinking of doing.

K. Thank you, Steve. Yeah. And we'll have some more name name conversations later today too. It'll be fun. Okay. So next up is me. I also briefly attended the Kelsey Creek Farm Fair. It was really fun. I always forget how big, like, the hogs are, so it's always fun to see farm animals in person.

And it was great seeing all the kids and families having fun. It was a gorgeous day too, so good job planning the weather. And I also plan to attend Arbor Day with the Bellevue Naturalist and all you all this Saturday, so looking forward to that. And I also plan to attend Gumbo Night. And, yes, I really it was really insightful last year.

So definitely, if you're on the feds, check it out. So that kinda concludes my communications. So with that, maybe we'll jump into our first, discussion slash action item, which is park service, park and community services accreditation with Tony Esparza, assistant director of the Parks and Community Services department.

Thanks for joining us tonight. Good evening, everybody. Quite the buildup to a presentation on accreditation, so thanks for that. Thank you for making time on your agenda for me to talk about just only a very positive and exciting topic. This is an information only presentation. We're just gonna give you an overview of what our accreditation process is, both its history and how we've recently achieved reaccreditation. So we'll go over some different parts. We'll give you a background on the history of accreditation, what our accreditors look for, our current reaccreditation process, and then where that takes us next. So beginning with some background. So fair question is, what even is accreditation?

And so there's a definition there on the screen. It's a process. It evaluates efficiency and effectiveness. It compares practices to hospitals seek accreditation and educational institutions. And we'll talk in a minute about all of our departments within the city.

But in each of those, the way that it is conducted is subject matter experts in the field come together to identify what are a list of standards that are a demonstration of best practices. And then agencies that seek their accreditation are held up against those standards, and you have to work to prove that you have met those standards. And so that is what our accreditation process is as well. And, you know, fair question. Director Shiyasaki mentioned there's always this moment that you're like, why are we doing this?

And then you're reminded, here are some reasons of why we do it. Seeking accreditation is a demonstration of our standing as a national leader in the field of parks and recreation and community services. When we go through this process, it enhances our overall effectiveness, it makes sure that we are being efficient, and it holds us to a standard of accountability. By doing that, it helps ensure the safety and well-being of our participants in our programs, because we are held to a standard that is known to keep people safe in addition, our city greatly values excellence in public service. And so that is why we, along with several other departments, are held to the standard of accreditation.

So within the city itself, we have five departments that each have their own accrediting bodies and seek reaccreditation on a regular basis. So our department, along with our police department, utilities and transportation seek joint accreditation through their own body, and so does our fire department. And then it's worth noting that while these are the departments that get named for accreditation, that the process actually explores our supporting departments as well, such as our finance department, HR department, risk, legal departments, because it wants to make sure those are integrated into our work as well. So a little bit on the background. There is an agency called the National Recreation and Parks Association in our PA, and they are the body that then has a accreditation body.

And our accreditation is body is called CAPRA. It's the commission for the accreditation of park and recreation Agencies. We first sought accreditation through them in 2005, and then reaccreditation occurs every five years, so 2010, '15, '20, and '25, which means we have now been accredited for twenty years. Capra first began offering accreditation in 1994. And also, as was mentioned during you all's sharing, it is not a requirement.

And so it does represent sort of an elite standard for agencies when they are able to achieve it. And in fact, in our nation, there are only 231 agencies across the entire nation that have sought and achieved accreditation via CAPRA, and there are only three in the state of Washington. Washington, and, of course, we are one of them. So as I mentioned, we first were accredited through CAPRA in 2005. The city of Shoreline Parks, Recreation, and Community Services first was accredited in 2019, and Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma was first accredited in 2014.

So we are one of them, and we are the oldest in Washington. So now I'll talk a little bit about what does a CAPRA accreditation process include. So we're going to start there at the top. You first indicate your interest by submitting an application, and then you move into this very extensive process of becoming familiar with the standards. For us, there were 154.

And you have to document how you meet each of those standards. So that includes a narrative write up, and then literal pieces of documentation that an external person could look at and be able to understand this agency that they know nothing about. How did you meet that standard? So you put all that in a package, you submit it, and then it's all reviewed by a team called the CAPRA Review Team. This is a group of park and recreation professionals throughout the nation that agree to help with this process. A team is assigned to you. They first just review your materials to make sure there aren't any red flags. And then if there are none, then they move forward with coming for a site visit. I'll talk about our site visit a little bit later. At the end of that, they write a report.

It's given to another body to review, which is the CAPRA commission. And then if they give the thumbs up for your accreditation or reaccreditation, it's announced at a conference. But that is not the end. You then move into ongoing annual reports. You move into needing to continuously make improvements to stay in alignment with those standards, and of course maintaining that documentation throughout the five years.

Because I don't know how it would be possible at the end to just suddenly decide you wanted to get all that together. It's it's a lot of work. To give you a glimpse, when we were holding our pre meeting, Chair Khalima had said, could could we maybe get a copy of all of the materials? So just the narrative part, just the write ups, which I'll talk about all the staff that contributed to this, is over 150 pages. But there are also over seven fifty pieces of documentation that have to be submitted, and many of those are multiple pages.

So we're talking about thousands of pages that if you're really interested, I guess I can give you the link where you can go look at those. And within Capra, they look at 10 different areas of our operations. These are what are called the chapters, and you'll look at them and see it's both it assesses the city. Is the city even legally in existence and in operations? It looks at our support departments, like I mentioned, our budgeting processes, how our council operates, but it also looks at our actual divisions within our department that includes basically everything we do, even our divisions that maybe a lot of people would not think of within a park and recreation accreditation contribute to our accreditation.

So for example, our classes that we offer at probation meet a health and wellness standard that we need to meet, the human services needs assessment that our Human Services Division does meets a requirement that we assess the needs of the community and understand their demographics. And so it really is an entire department effort. And then I'm going to click on a slide that you're not expected to read all the details. There's too much text on it, it's intentional because I want you to feel as overwhelmed as we do. So this isn't a path of a standard.

And so this is just the introduction, and then this is some more detail of the standard that's on our parks and open space system plan. And so if you really read into it or any of the 153 other standards, you see that it speaks to how we do outreach for this plan, how we make updates, what are the components within the plan, and there are standards like this for each one of our department plans in addition to everything else. So we just sought reaccreditation. What did that entail? So again, this is a year round effort.

It is not just a once every five year effort, and so literally every person in our department contributes to our accreditation process. When it comes time to really dig in and make sure we have our package put together that we need to submit, we divide up those standards across standard leads in the departments. So we had more than 20 standard leads that took on this body of work this time. We started two years in advance of our deadline just to make sure that we were doing it thoughtfully and thoroughly. And a standard lead's responsibility is to write up that narrative that I mentioned, but also go out and make sure we have every piece of documentation that we need.

So it it isn't just that they get to report on something they might have within their own personal work files. They have to coordinate across our department. They frequently have to coordinate across other departments and go get that and really put it in a place that we can then package it all up. That is, again, submitted to our CAPRA review team. So we submitted that in December 2024.

You have to submit it at least ten weeks in advance of their visit so that they can read it and make sure they feel you're worthy of site visit and prepared. And then we had our virtual site visit March 31 through April 2. That virtual site visit included them meeting with our executive team and all of our standard leads to ask follow-up questions. They're really interested in making sure that this isn't just files that you have somewhere, that your staff actually are familiar with these processes, that they're actually integrated. Our review team was very supportive.

They want you to be successful, but they also want to make sure if they give you a stamp of approval that it's valid and it's real, what you are doing in your work. At the end of their site visit, they tell you what they think. They give you kind of this initial, Here's what we're going to recommend. And we were really excited to hear from them that they felt we had met all 154 standards, and then they submitted that to the CAPRA board. And then at the national conference that just occurred in September, we had a staff member, Laura Harper, one of our park rangers, that was able to attend on behalf of the department and receive our announcement and our award when we are awarded reaccreditation.

So the CAPRA review team does provide some observations of where they see excellence in your work as well. And these were really incredibly encouraging and high compliment. So a few things they noted was that, you know, when we provide our responses, you can go everywhere from, we'll just give them everything in the kitchen sink to make sure that we proved ourselves or underreporting. And and, you know, neither one is gonna get you there. And so they really observed how both thorough but well organized our responses were and how they struck the right balance of proving our accreditation standards without just completely overwhelming them with unnecessary information.

They also observed some compliments about our plans, which we've heard for several cycles now. They have to read through all of those plans to make sure that we meet those standards. And they've noted for a couple of cycles now how beautiful and well written our plans are, like our parks and open space system plan, our strategic plan, our recreation and program plan. So our department plans receive really, really high compliments. When they met with our standard leads, they noted how integrated processes were.

They really called out that we can tell these aren't just files you put together. This is really built in, your continuous improvement, your data driven decision making. It is really built into who you are. They also really complemented the expertise expertise of our staff, which I heard a little bit from Commissioner Kronov tonight about how they just hold this body of knowledge that they are experts in. And not just that they're experts, but that they're very proud of their work, and they could tell that from meeting with our staff.

And then they really complemented, through our plan work, through our program development, how committed we are to community outreach, and how we demonstrate value for the voice of our community. So really high praise. And that resulted in a perfect score for 2025. And that is the second time, and it truly is a reflection of the commitment that our entire staff has to maintaining excellence day in, day out, whether it's a day we're providing documentation or not, that our staff are committed to that level of excellence. What are next steps now that we're reaccredited?

Because as Michael said, it's we're off and running. Here we go for the next steps. Okay. Thank you. We had cupcakes, so we did. We had cupcakes. So first, how did how does this involve you in our next steps and continuously? So even through your report outs tonight, you demonstrated that you are champions of our work, and that is very important to the work of our standards of excellent excellence and and pushing us towards those. So a keep a couple of key actions that you do that we rely upon for our accreditation is your review of our plans and your input into our plans. And so examples of that within the department are, again, Parks and Open Space System plan or the Recreation Program plan.

But you also provide input into other departments' plans that we have to be able to point to for accreditation, such as the comprehensive plan and those policies or the sustainable Bellevue plan, which previously was the environmental stewardship initiative. We rely on those plans for our accreditation, so your input to them is crucial. And then, you know, we receive such high praise for engaging the public, and we do that through you. And so your willingness to engage the public, hear their public comments, and bring them into their voices into the room is very crucial to our success and to our accreditation, whether that's when we're looking at a planning document or park design or any other process. So those are really important aspects of your work.

And then for our staff, the minute we took that breath, they announced all new standards. And so those 154 standards are not our standards anymore. We have a whole new batch of standards, and that really is because CAPRA is also committed to continuous improvement and excellence and wanting to take a step back and say, are these really still the best practices that we want to hold people to? So we'll start our trainings on those new standards. We'll make sure everything we're doing is still in alignment, and making sure our documentation is driven towards those new standards.

And then coming up quick, we'll have an annual report. Annual reports are essentially like a mini reaccreditation or a mini audit. They pick a handful of standards that they really want to make sure are being done consistently year to year and that aren't just waiting until the last minute, and you kind of have to go through that documentation process for them, which drives our need for ongoing documentation and our need for continuous improvement at all times. And that is our reaccreditation. So thank you for your support and the ways you make that possible, and I'd love to answer any questions you all may.

Thank you, Tony, for this wonderful extensive for your wonderful presentation and all your work on that extensive report. It's amazing, and kudos to the park staff and everyone else who helped Tony to put this report together and perform actions that, got the park to get that perfect score. So it's really great news. So I guess I'll open it up to board members who have any questions or comments.

Oh, Michelle. Hi, Tony. Thank you. I'm just curious, right, in terms of and, again, probably a little bit broader question, not specifically for the park. But given we are perfect scores, that does put a lot of pressure on us to, you know, how do we elevate other park systems or support other cities, hoping to either improve their scores or get accredited at the very least. Seems like we do a good job. So Yeah. Let me know if we do any of that or if CAPRA does that.

Yes. Absolutely. Great question. So first of all, I would say we within the existing 154, you can miss six and still be accredited. So not to say that if we didn't get a perfect score that we still would not be at an elite standard. We would be. We just we like that we do.

We would feel crushed now if we weren't, though.

We would still be elite, even if we missed a standard or two. And there's only certain standards you're allowed to meet. There's miss. There's some standards that if you miss them, you can't be accredited. But yes, to your question, one of the requirements from CAPRA is that any accredited agency gives back to the accreditation process.

And so there's something that NRPA offers different forms of certifications. And so, there's a Certified Parks and Recreation Professional, which is called CPRP, or there's a Certified Parks and Recreation Executive, CPRE. And so staff have to first have one of those accreditations to be able to volunteer with CAPRA, so that they know that this is somebody that is committed to their field and is excellent in their field. So we do have staff with certifications from NRPA, and one of our staff in particular volunteers pretty extensively with CAPRA, and so has been on other site visits. Actually will be beneficial to us as well.

We get benefits from this as well. Went on a site visit against these new standards. And so they had other agencies that were willing to kind of be beta tests for these new standards. And Colin Walker, in fact, many of you have probably met him, volunteered to go do a virtual site visit with an agency against the new standards. So both helping them come along, and it helps us, because now we have insight into what those new standards might bring for us as well. But it's a requirement for the process. Yeah.

Oh, thank you. Elizabeth, did you have a question?

Thank you so much, and congratulations. That just sounds like so much work, but all worthwhile. Mhmm. My question is about our status as a parks and community services board. You touched on this when you mentioned that some of the work we do through community services is part of accreditation, but it's different than being parks and recreation. Can you speak to the feedback that we get on community services and how that ties into parks? Does that augment, distract? Were there questions in the beginning, and how do they think about that?

Yeah. So I've worked for the city for seven and a half years, and I have found that this type of department consists of different things in a lot of different jurisdictions. And so I think even in the other cities that I mentioned in the state of Washington that have accreditation, you had a county agency, you had a city agency, it was titled something unique itself. And so I don't think we're the loan agency that might be comprised of some different things. So I do think our site visitors, the two times I've been involved in 2020 and 2025, were accustomed to that as they've visited other cities.

And then within our body of work itself, again, we do rely on aspects of them for our accreditation. So it really helps us demonstrate that we take that holistic look at our community. And so I know that you all have probably seen our continuum image before, that we do prevention and intervention and enhancement services. And those two pieces of our body of work really help ensure that we are meeting that full continuum. And that is something that gets noted, and explored, such as when you're providing recreation services.

We have Assistant Director Shelley Brittingham here with us. There's a whole chapter on recreation, and making sure that we provide various types of services to the community that meet various types of community needs. So it isn't just, Do you provide recreation programming? It's, did you assess what the community needed? Is some of it driven towards leisure? Is some of it driven towards health and well-being? And so they are very much integrated and necessary for our accreditation.

Anyone else with questions? Oh, Eileen? No.

Well, thank you, Tony, and congratulations. I'm curious. Like, Bellevue has gone through, what, six times or seven times? Five. Five, nine times. What was the original, kind of a thought process behind to go for the accreditation? Because, like you said, only Bellevue, Shoreline, Tacoma. So that means most cities don't go for this. And it sounds like it's a lot of work. Right?

It's two years in advance. So in terms of resources, there must be some kind of trade off. Right? Because you have the same body of people, and these people are gonna be allocated with this effort. So I kinda what was the kind of original I I know you've here for seven years, so I'm kinda looking at director, or Cameron been here maybe.

Like, I want I'm kinda curious. Because another thing I'm kinda thinking is, like, let's say if I'm talking to my friends who lives in Kirkland, Redmond, or Issaquah, hey. Bellevue is accredited. And as a normal resident, what are some of the major things maybe Bellevue would be doing because we're accredited versus, say, Kirkland, Redmond that they're not credited? What are some of the major things that people may see, you know, when they visit park or involved with the city or the community services?

Because a lot of them may be behind the scene, like, how integrated processes are, but that's not something that a, like, a resident would necessarily have knowledge of or can't see. But I'm just kind of curious. If it's not credit a city, which most of them are not Mhmm. Or there are things they just don't get or don't see

Mhmm. I'm happy to answer it for you. Yeah.

So I wasn't here when Bellevue was first accredited. Put that back on Patrick Forn as the real push behind that. I worked for Seattle Parks and Recreation for many years and the largest parks agency in the state is not accredited. And I'd say part of it is it's really having all those plans and procedures in place. I think sometimes to go back and put some of those things in place is such a high lift that it keeps a lot of parks agencies from even starting the whole process.

I mean, it is a lot of work, especially when you start the whole process. I mean, you're starting from score one, even though I'd say most parks agencies have recreation program plans and they have parks and open space plans. Those are kind of base plans. But I think this takes it to a much greater level. And I'll say I think some of the differences are that I think we as an agency are much more intentional in what we do.

I think there is probably additional outreach in being connected with the community in all those different planning efforts. So I think there's probably much deeper engagement on all those levels, whether it's historic resources, even beyond recreation. I mean, there are so many pieces of accreditation that, you know, I think some parks agencies don't spend a lot of time thinking about. And so I think that's that's one of the differences. And I'll say just because every agency doesn't choose to take it on doesn't mean they aren't doing great work.

So I I I think for us, this is kind of the gold standard that we sought. And it's just not in the cards for some smaller agencies, but I don't necessarily criticize them for not choosing this path.

Thank you, Eileen. Oh, Eric?

So aside from the obvious benefits, you know, higher quality of services that we end up providing to the community, probably alleviating some liability by having safety protocols in placement, Does accreditation get us any, like, benefits related to any of our insurance, you know, or you know? I I know some other accreditations for cities allow them to get discounts on insurance and everything because they're meeting best practices, which lowers the liability for that insurance agency. I didn't know if there's anything that would be the equivalent in this for Bellevue.

It does not lower our insurance, to to my knowledge, and the city is self insured. Some added benefits I think it would bring so to add to what director Shiyosaki was sharing, the kind of lure that I've heard in my seven and a half years is that it is a standard the city has set for itself. And that was a driver for accreditation as well, that there's a expectation within the city that if you can be accredited, that we would like for that department to pursue accreditation. And one of the added benefits and reasons to my understanding is it demonstrates to the public good stewardship of their money. It demonstrates that when you are your money is going towards this effort, we can demonstrate to you that it is accomplishing good because we can meet these best standards through the investment that you have shared with us.

So so that is something. I will say I was fairly new to the department in 2020 when I was a part of that process in the lead up to it and had some of the same observations that our CAPRA review team did. I was just stunned by the level of knowledge in every one of these areas and the level of passion that staff had. Not check, did we meet a box for a standard? But they were passionate about the frequency of our playground safety checks and passionate about how frequently we go through and do our renovation plans, passionate about the standards that we set for ourselves for preventative maintenance versus repairs.

And so, you know, my feeling is we now have this standard established in our department that our staff are themselves driven to meet. And so I don't know if it was the chicken or the egg because I wasn't here when it happened, Whether accreditation set the standard and now we are just passionate staff that wanna keep it, or whether our passionate staff made it possible for us to to meet that standard to start with. And then we get access to trainings. PS, we get access to trainings. So that would be another thing through CAPRA and NRPA.

Appreciate that.

Thank you. Thank you. Steve, do you have any questions, comments? Okay. Oh. More assistance for one.

Does CAPRA do anything at the state or federal level or mainly at the city level? This credit

They I don't think they do accreditation for state agencies. I don't know if there are state parks and recreation agencies. They did expand to doing military agencies as well. So I to my knowledge, it is mainly Cities. Cities and counties. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Yeah.

Anyone else? I have two questions. I really appreciate that there's this demonstrates continuous improvement. So I was just curious if you happen to have any information about some, like, interesting new standards that we met or if there's something coming up that's really interesting.

Yeah. A recent standard that was added for this accreditation cycle was a concussion policy and protocol. And, again, I would say, I think our staff are are already very responsive and sensitive to the impacts of concussions on our program participants. But it was new for CAPRA to add that as an expectation of a demonstration of best practices. And so it led us to create the documentation, which I think also kind of cements that practice in, so that, we now have an official policy about concussions. We now have an official training that's, reoccurring in people's training expectations, and that leads to increased safety for our program participants.

Wow, that's so awesome. Yes. And then my final question is, where can our board members get a copy if they're interested in reading it?

The the link once again.

A SharePoint site. And we would be happy to try to get you access to that link, Chairclima, if you would like to dig right in. Okay. If anyone's interested Just let me know.

We'll let you know. Okay. Alright. Oh, Eric.

Just one other thing. Actually, there's a question for Dave. I am quite certain you'll bring this up in your council report, the accreditation. However, this being twenty years of accreditation and being accredited yet again and a perfect score. I didn't know if there's other things that the city could do aside from just mentioning it at a council to really recognize this achievement. I mean I mean, this is above and beyond.

It's a good call out, Eric. Go ahead, babe.

Something to look into. So, yeah, I think that's a great idea. So but and also too, I'd I hate to interrupt into your meeting, but this is gonna come to us as a part of the city manager's report. And so we don't typically have a chance to talk about it. We just get it reported out. So as long as I'm here, I'd just like to say just a couple of things about it. And, Tony, you kinda touched on this, but I think this accreditation process every five years is a really good organizing force for the department, and and there does seem like a lot of buy in consistently over a long period of time. We talk about being a city in a park. I mean, that's that's our calling card. That's something that we present to residents.

We sell it to visitors, workers, employers. I mean, that that is so important to this city and to our reputation and to living and visiting here. This accreditation is really helpful in that. And you also touched on this, but it's it's a really good use of our limited resources. It's proof of that. We can, you know, give that to anyone who's interested, and not the whole report, but, some who are. But, you know, the executive summary and to say, yeah, we've we've accomplished this, I think is great. And it's just like an insurance policy for us, and it's an insurance policy for council members. It's like, we don't really have much to worry about with parks. We know you've gone through this.

But for customers, people who show up, they know they're gonna have a great experience. It's it's already baked in. They're gonna be taken care of by great people. So it's just like worry free park experience, and it's worry free management and worry free use of our limited resources. So I think this is a huge accomplishment. We're super lucky to have such a competent parks department supported by such a good park board. So we just it doesn't get much better, and I'm just really proud of what you've all accomplished and really appreciate living and working in this city and and having such great parks.

Oh, beautifully said, council member Hamilton. I guess with that, thank you so much for joining us. Floor, Stephanie. Joining us. Thank you.

Okay. So next item on agenda is the park naming process and guidelines. And joining us today is Betsy Anderson, senior park senior planner for the Parks and Community Services department. Thank you for joining us.

Well, good evening, everyone. It's really a pleasure to be here with you all and hard act to follow the accreditation celebration, but it it is really just a a huge achievement. And I'm I'm pleased to be here to share an update on park naming guidelines that staff are developing to help us better implement council's naming policy. And, you know, as was noted earlier, this builds on a number of discussions that you've all had recently and, in particular, at the meeting last month with the discussion related to the the new Eastgate neighborhood park in that name. You know, there were a number of really insightful questions that were posed by the board and related to additional history and context for park names.

And so in addition to working to to better operate operationalize our our city policy, we're also hoping to help to provide more of that background information for you all as you consider name options moving forward. So today's, this evening's presentation is for information and discussion, and we're really looking forward to hearing your feedback given your very important role in this process. We'll provide an overview. We know it's a refresher on the park naming naming policy for the city. A discussion of the current park names in Bellevue, a snapshot of our our nearly a 100 parks open spaces and facility names, discuss some of the process modifications that we're considering, discuss next steps, and then leave open some time for discussion and some questions that we have for all of you because we're really looking forward to having your feedback inform this process.

So, as as you all know, council resolution one zero one five one guides park naming in the city. And, again, I know this is familiar content for the board, so the next couple of slides are really just going to be a reminder of the content of that resolution and our naming policy. So as you can see here, resolution one zero one five one establishes four broad categories of names that parks and and parks and recreation facilities can fall within in the city. And it also, as you can see in criterion number five, establishes an overarching requirement that that the names that are put forward should also meet city goals and priorities, including diversity, equity, and inclusion. And this fifth criterion was added in 2022, so relatively recently, and it's that one that we're really focusing on as we seek to better meet this this new guidance through the addition of new parks and open spaces to the system.

And so as you all know, council designates the names of parks and facilities, but but council may seek a recommendation from the Parks and Community Services Board that's informed by public input. And so in order to more effectively operationalize this existing policy, staff are are are building guidelines that will provide more support for community members as they suggest names for potential parks, for staff as we review those names for compliance with the naming policy, and also for you as the board as you seek to make a recommendation to council. And so why are we looking at this at this moment? Well, the current list of park names in Bellevue showed that as we look forward to adding more parks, open spaces, and facilities to the system, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us to meet this new guidance in our in our naming policy. So there was a list included in the board's packet of the nearly a 100 parks, open spaces, and facilities in Bellevue.

First of that's that's a really exciting number. I mean, it's broken into to six broad categories of name types. And just wanna note that, you know, this is this is a high level grouping. It's not scientific, but it is intended to give us just a snapshot of kind of what the current state of our park system names looks like. And as you can see, more than a third of Bellevue's park's names are are naturalistic, and more than a quarter are place based or named in reference to a location.

So, for example, a neighborhood. And so together, that means that nearly two thirds of Bellevue's park names reflect geographical, natural, or neighborhood elements. And in that way, we're doing a really excellent job if we look at our full body of park names in meeting those first two naming policy criteria that are focused on natural, neighborhood, geographic elements. One thing to note in studying the the names that we have in the system right now is that, you know, we do inadvertently end up, in some cases, with repetition of park names because of that reliance on neighborhood elements or natural elements, and that could potentially, in some cases, cause confusion depending on on the situation. As we look at the names of individuals and families and places, we see that this is really a large area of growth for us and an opportunity as we add new parks to the system.

You know, the council policy that we we really emphasize other city priorities for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And, you know, the individual and place based names in the system do tend to derive from Anglo European sources. A lot of these are named for historical settlers, you know, as as we were discussing earlier, or housing developments that were created after World War two, and they were named after that development. So they tend to draw on those naming traditions. And as an example, we see very few indigenous names in the system, so that's not reflective of tribes' thousands of years of presence in this area.

There are not very there are no there are no really other names that represent other community groups in the city today, and there's one name, for example, that that is named for one park named for a woman. So, you know, there's there's an opportunity kind of as we look more broadly at this list to find to better reflect really the diverse communities here in the city today and also the diverse cultural histories of the land and just recognizing and acknowledging that. So in terms of in terms of supporting this opportunity, staff have reviewed naming policies and guidelines from other peer agencies and have identified operational steps that that we would like to take to better implement council policy. Core elements of the current process that the board is really familiar with will remain the same, so council will continue to make those name, decisions, and public input opportunities will continue through the board's role in making recommendations. And, really, at the heart of this effort is the acknowledgment that when we name something, it's it's intended to be a permanent gesture, and it's intended to reflect our values, the histories of the site, the histories of the communities who've lived there, and also our relationships with it today and the people who are using those spaces now.

So process identifications that we've identified are largely focused on ensuring that the names proposed for consideration are thoughtful, that they're well researched, and that they help us advance the city naming policy. So that would include requesting more information about proposed names from community members when they suggest them so that we have a bit more background information and history to inform the evaluation of those. That we may rely on additional sources for proposed names in addition to community members, but we might also look at environmental or cultural histories of a site. We might also consult with cultural groups that have a connection to a site, for example, or other subject matter experts. Providing more background information to the board as you review these names to to address some of the types of questions that, you know, emerged, for example, in the meeting last month so that that you can feel informed and and have, you know, a deeper dive on some of those options that are presented.

And then in terms of naming a park or a park facility after a person or a family, we recognize that that's a very special designation and that merits additional care and scrutiny. And so to that end, we would, you know, like to establish additional guidelines for additional research there. Optimally, that research would be conducted by the person proposing the name and also additional criteria so that, you know, we can we can kind of work through that in in a clear way and and and be as informed as possible. And that may include consent of the family member, for example, if it's an individual who's proposed. Because we're better focused on applying the or more intensively focused on applying that last council criterion to focus on additional city priorities, diversity, equity, and inclusion, know, that necessitates that we need to to go out and spend more time communicating and consulting, engaging with other cultural groups that may have a specific connection to that site.

So that might include tribes. That might include other other groups who who have relationships and and long term connections with an area and and other experts just to ensure that those proposed names are culturally appropriate, sensitive, and relevant to the site. And then lastly, there are a number of other situations that are foreseeable that it would be helpful to have guidance for. So that includes for non for non English park names that are proposed, how how what what's the guidance for transcribing those, for instance, or translating those? How might we how might we want to move forward with that?

How do we address proposed names that might be repetitive in the system? And when and why might the city consider renaming a park? So in terms of next steps, we look forward to hearing your feedback, this evening, and we will incorporate it into these guidelines as we develop them. And then, we'll begin to implement those and phase those into our naming processes as we move forward. So you'll start to see more of that context information as named decisions come before the board.

And so as we move ahead, as noted, your feedback is very important to us, and we've identified a few discussion questions that we'd very much value hearing your thoughts about. And and so with that, I'd like to turn it back over to Chair Khalima to to walk us through the questions and any any questions you may have for us as well.

K. Thank you for your presentation, Betsy. It looks like we'll go over three questions tonight. Maybe I'll read them out loud, and then we could go around and open it up to questions and discussions. So question one, as a board member, what is important to you about the park naming process? Question two, what do you like about the current process? What aspects could be changed? And then bullet three, any other comments or feedback to share? Betsy, would it be most helpful if we kinda did one bullet at a time or since they all meld together? I think

if they meld together, you know, we could go around around the room one by one if that works, and then and then maybe a round of any other comments if if things occur to folks afterward. Alright. Sounds great. Agree with that process. So with that, who would like to jump first with their thoughts?

Oh, Steve.

Quick question. So I'm not very familiar familiar with the the process of naming parks, maybe in partly because I missed the the meeting last month. So can you kinda go over you know, let's say I I know the city council makes a final designation, and the board has inputs. But let's say somebody like, you know, somebody a resident in Bellevue, how would they decide to propose a name to name a park? How how does that process? Maybe you can detail it a little bit

more.

That's a wonderful question. So in terms of new parks or parks which were, you know, identifying a new name, for example, the East Gate Park, often that process will happen in conjunction with something like a master planning process, and it's typically conducted via a community survey. So there's a survey that's put out to residents, and, you know, the department does a wonderful job of of sharing that information as widely and in as many different formats and languages as possible. We receive a large often, you know, larger at least a moderate number of suggestions for park names, and then staff reviews them for compliance with with the naming policy and then typically sends it out for another kind of community survey almost vote that that identifies, you know, what the the favored community names are. And then that's typically used to compile a shortlist that's then presented to the park board for your consideration.

And, you know, in some cases, we receive, you know, quite a bit of background information about a proposed name. In other cases, you know, we don't necessarily. And so, you know, looking for a way to to have additional documentation for those named proposals, especially from the proponents, would be really valuable for us as a department because in some cases, we may not have as much familiarity, for example, with an individual.

Thank you.

Thank you. Great question. Elizabeth, did you have a question?

I had a question.

I was gonna

I have a comment. Okay. Go for it.

When we're ready.

Okay. Great.

So this is this is great to hear because I do feel like we sometimes get stuck on the details, so I'm glad we'll have some more guidance around, like, here are our next steps, and we have more guardrails to work within for naming parks. And I'm I also think it's very timely, Steve, that you talked about looking historically at some of those names. I am so interested to learn about them. I noticed Wiona Park here was under place names. And based on my very novice googling, I think that's actually not a place name.

I think that's people called it we own a park. And so, like, maybe the place is named after the park. So, yeah, I think it'll be really helpful to understand what we've already done and what's already out there. In terms of what is important to me, I love that the community has a say in naming the parks. However silly suggestions may sometimes seem like the Parky McPark face phase, you know, that I'm sure parks departments around the country went through, it's still important to get that feedback.

And this is their opportunity to name something, and they get way more opportunities to do that than they do anything else. There's not a lot they can name about that. So people put in a ton of work, and I wanna make sure we continue to really respect that so they get their little park that they have worked so hard to carve out and put their time and thought into. That's very important to me about the per current process. I do like the idea of other suggestions, but I just wanna make sure we we continue to respect that. Even if it it gets repetitive, we have Google Maps. So that's my 2 cents on these questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Elizabeth? Eric? Sure.

Hi. Thank you so much for the presentation. Let's see. Okay. All I have for reference is the last couple barks that we've gone through.

I think we've been pretty thematic in that we've all enjoyed names that kind of represent some particular thing about the geography where the park was placed. I've heard comments about you know, usually, the name of the park helps folks find it or know where it is. It kind of places it in your mind in, like, either the neighborhood or, you know, the the subdivision where it's closest to. As a parks user, the geography also helps me. Like, when someone talks about a park, I can kinda place it also.

Sometimes there'll be a park where, again, completely different name than anything related to it, or it might have a name for, like, a different neighborhood that or I thought geographically was closer. So I I think what would be helpful for us, right, because it just doesn't seem to be, like, an obvious better answer. Like, we also wanted to respect, like, the naming convention or, like, the recommendations for the neighborhood, you know, figure that was brought up. I remember, we discussed that at length. Mhmm.

But we didn't have the information needed to you know, how could that if somebody googled it, we wouldn't be able to find information on who that person was or why that park was named that. So I I know it was important for us to have more information. Again, just for that historical kind of context and kind of giving that a little bit more power through time. I think, again, the process was very good. You're seeking all this input. You know, you're getting the community feedback. I think it's about how do we take that and then, you know, what are the values of the park? You know, I think you've done a great job with, you know, the statistical analysis of these categories. It sounds like we feel like there are areas of opportunity. Right?

You mentioned there's only one name for a woman. Maybe there's an opportunity for a second. And in our consideration, right, when we pick a short list, we probably wanna consider some of these categories that are probably underrepresented. And I know we love plants. I know we love nature, and that seems to be our number one.

But we might wanna veer and try to get some variety. Otherwise, we probably start repeating, a lot of green everywhere, but we know that. So, yeah, I think honestly, I I'm I'm trying to think about, like, other particular situations that that we discussed. Maybe somebody else can remember another piece of the debate. But I think you've proposed what you've proposed is probably a good improvement. Right? If the parks is gonna provide more information, then I think that probably makes for a better discussion and then a more conscientious decision. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Eric?

Yeah. I I concur with the comments that have been made already. You know, when you're naming anything, let alone something that is going to be memorialized for the community. It you can't it it's a subjective thought process. However, in prepping for the meeting and reading the materials that were provided and the recommending recommendations for tweaking some of that really was just put into fruition a couple of years ago, lets me know we're always looking for improvement.

And so adding enough in the process to actually establish a little bit of objectivity to something that is so subjective, helps us be thoughtful of what we're trying to do for the community. And with that, it also provides focus and direction for this group here. I think everybody I was amazed and shocked last month when we discussed the naming that we we so quickly came to a recommendation for council because I truly believe it was the process that staff have put in place, and the naming protocols that help guide the whole process and the community that are providing the names. And so for that, I'm thankful, one fold. It makes our job a little bit easier easier, while at the same time, it is being inclusive of the members of the community and all the things that you bring up provides us for a framework for making really informed decisions again on something that's so subjective.

So I appreciate all the work that staff does, and I I can't I couldn't think of any other suggestions because I think the staff has done a good job of refining it so far. And I I look forward to seeing where we evolve it even more as time goes on. So thank you.

Thank you. Eric? Oh, Aileen?

Thank you. Just a clarification. These guidelines are not to look at renaming some of the parks, right, mainly just for going forward and how do we kinda achieve better consistency. Is that correct?

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely.

So, I was I was thinking, like, I've been on the board for a little over two years. I've been through two naming park. One is the Valley Creek, and one is the last month Eastgate. Valley Creek was a bit different experience because there was, like, a neighborhood rally. They came with, wow wow, you know, pom poms and say, hey. Name this. Name this. And so I think we really took that into the consideration. Consideration. And then I think I even made a comment last month with Eastgate. Nobody came. So we felt like, you know, that means the neighborhood didn't have any very strong

Mhmm.

Opinion on on any particular names, especially there was one who was named after the person. And but we did some research, like, wasn't sure. There's I guess there wasn't even no family members around, and so it just maybe a suggestion from neighborhood. So so I felt like that honoring neighborhood's wish, I think it's something will be just naturally happen. I think if a neighborhood cares enough, they will be here. I I I trust that. And I was looking at some of my notes from, you know, the six months I went around the parks. I think I asked a couple questions. Maybe I'll bring them up again. One is, like, some parks, we call it mini park.

Sometimes we call it neighborhood park. I think at a time I asked, is there any kind of rule? Like, if it's certain size, then we call mini. I think the answer I got is not always. So maybe that's something if we wanna be more consistent with that. There's some guideline on when we call something mini, when we call something neighborhood parks, when when sometimes we just don't have mini neither meaning nor neighborhood.

Mhmm.

Right? And I think another thing, I think I'll just look at my notes here. Another thing is especially when park is named after individual, it would be great, I think, even at the park, at the the physical side park, we give some recognition. I know it takes more time to do, but I think, like like, when I go visit those parks, I would love to know, like, have some read up. Like, oh, that's why this park was named, like, Zumdiak or, you know, something like a wise because it's not I know the neighborhood is not you know, it's not a neighborhood.

It's not a it doesn't reflect the geographic location. But, you know, who is this person? Why did was the significant enough to be named after? So, let's see. I think some words are more overly used,

forest. They're fat, maybe. Right? Like, forest

hill, forest Glam, Forest Ridge. So so now even look at this, like, where was this park? You know, it's a little bit hard. So, like, even these may be overly used words, we could try to avoid them in the future unless it's absolutely necessary.

Yeah. I appreciate that that input. And also heard the recommendation for additional historical context potentially on the website too, so it might be an opportunity for us to use that research work in more than one direction.

Yeah. That'll be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Eileen. I'll give a few comments, and then we could go around again. I agree with, like, Elizabeth and Eric and everyone when you mentioned that it's great we give the community a strong voice in the park naming process. I really appreciate that. I would actually be I guess if I was going to propose a name, I'd love to see this list of names because that might change my perspective. Like, if I see that there are two Newport Hills parks already, I wouldn't want to recommend the names.

So maybe when we have a form or something that Mhmm. People could input their suggestions to, they could have access to view the current list of names. We had a discussion a while ago about the names of parks maybe getting creeping into becoming too long. And I was curious if we had a character limit that was, like, practical practical or anything like that, or the sky's the limit. Could

might So much fits on a sign, fits Phil. Yeah.

I think it would be useful to know what could reasonably fit on a sign, perhaps. And then I love the idea of when people submit park names, they should also submit a detailed description, like some kind of, like, few couple sentence description of what it means and why why why they're proposing it, I would really appreciate that. And then looking back at our last meeting, I think I would have liked to get some of that information about survey results maybe before the meeting took place, if possible, to really kind of digest it a little bit more, maybe even as early as the board packet or something. I think we got some of the survey results at the meeting. So I think I would prefer to or appreciate getting it a little bit beforehand so I could dig into some of that results.

And then oops. Sorry. I talked too much. And then one more thing. I think a lot of people love members of their community and wanna honor them in different ways, including a park, but perhaps maybe we could also put somewhere different ways we could also show how we could honor people in a park, maybe with a bench, or I'm not sure if there's other things we could suggest as well so that it's not just all or nothing, I guess, if that makes sense. Alright. Sorry. I chatted a lot. I guess we'll go around if anyone has additional comments. Oh, Eric?

I have a question. I'm not as smart as the others, and I may have missed it. What does it mean by unknown? So these are unknown parts. I know where they are, so they're not unknown to me. But what what what do we mean when we're saying it's unknown?

Good catch. Unknown provenance of the name. So we're not quite sure where those came from, but that's a that's a research exercise for us. So we can, you know, we can continue to look into those.

Thank you.

Good clarifying question.

And oh, Elizabeth? I

on the one hand, I'd like to plus one to a couple of comments that Aileen made about the naming of the parks. It is very nonstandard. What is a neighborhood park versus a mini park versus an open space, etcetera? I don't know that adopting something going forward would necessarily help, right, because there's a lot of confusion within the existing, like, naming conventions. But I I still think it's a really good idea, and we should keep that, like ideally, we should find some consistency there so people know what to expect when they get to the park.

That was that was probably the the top of mind. And you made a lot of other great comments. I forgot the other one that I wanted to add on, but I I appreciate the fact that you went to all of these parks. And so you saw what the name was. Oh, the second one was the historical context on names is doubly important, not just because people want to know, but because people can have the same name.

So on the last call after I left the meeting, I realized, you know, it's a good thing we didn't adopt this person's name because he has a super common name. And if we're not prepared to inform people when they go to the park and make it very easy to find out why it's named that, it could be really easy to mistake that for someone else. I think I googled it, and, you know, crime records come up, things like that. And for very common names, that just happens, unfortunately. Yeah. So it's something else to consider when we look at naming parks after someone and giving context.

Those are great points too. Thank you.

Know, one add on many and neighborhood. I think you have to remember over the seventy some years that Bellevue has been a city, different standards and parks have come up. The conventions have come and gone. I don't think we have a category for mini parks. We once did. And so you gotta remember this is over many years of time. And so I I think that's one of the areas of context I would have you think about that I don't think that mini word is necessarily relevant today, but it was at the time they were named. So And

I think if I recall, like, most of the time, mini or neighborhood, they're actually not on the sign. Like, they may be on the website. It's called, you know, Cherry Crest Mini Park. But if you go to that park, it might not even have mini on it. And and so but I but I just remember when I first looked through the list and checked which ones I've been to, which one haven't, would you know, make plans of, okay, I'm gonna go to this cluster this weekend. And I'm like, oh, mini. That means really small, obviously. But then, like, oh, she's not as that's not that small. Or you know? And then now I'm just thinking, like, oh, there's a consistency. And so that's just, like, some of the questions that that came to my mind.

Yeah. I appreciate that. Oh, Eric?

Yeah. Sorry yet again. And, I just wanna preface this with I am not recommending we rename anything. That being said, as there's discussions about many prior ways that things were decide, it made me think about, okay. Well, maybe there are opportunities for us to consider renaming.

And you had mentioned that even though we don't have protocols on renaming and that it it was brought up of, okay, we need to start considering these things. I I think that we as a group should be looking here relatively in the near future as to putting some protocols into place as to how would we go about renaming, what would quantify us justifying renaming a park, and give that some consideration, not to throw more work on your plate. But and, obviously, it's not a priority right now, but sooner or later, the question's going to need to get answered. And there are a bunch of things that were brought up that made me think, well, should we rename a park? So drop the mini, drop the neighborhood, or add the neighborhood here, but drop the mini.

You know? So just some thought.

Yeah. Appreciate that. That's a that's a common type of guideline, you know, that exists in other agency policies and implementation practices, and, you know, has happened at least once to my knowledge in Bellevue that a park was renamed. But I think the helpful aspect of those is to describe really clearly under what conditions would, you know, we choose to undertake something like that.

Standard of a policy on that, obviously.

That's true.

There will.

Hope I didn't just jinx you. Anyone

else?

I guess I have one more of a question again. So it it let's say if I wanna go and nominate a name, is there on the website or maybe some form in terms of guidelines, and these are the things that maybe the city council is considering. Is that is there anything that somebody like me can get?

Well, we have, you know, posted that information historically in association with specific naming efforts. So for example, the sign actually that you can see up on the slide has a QR code that that would then take you to the page where you could learn more about that effort. But I do think, you know, what we've heard tonight is that there's really an opportunity to provide more information, you know, for the community as they suggest names. We wanna hear more information from them, but we also may wanna share, you know, information about the names of our existing parks, you know, additional guidance for how we would like them to suggest names. Because we've seen, you know, some community members provide a lot of context even via email.

Others just, you know, put in 10 different ideas. You know? So we see kind of the full range of of input there. And the idea would be, I think, to to just enrich the information that that we're receiving from from the public.

I I think I would add, we don't have the generic park naming web web website up and running. In other words, these are related to specific naming situations for a park. So we're not just waiting for names to come in for parks. So that isn't done separately. So that's why there isn't kind of the generic website for that. It's related to a specific site we go through this process.

Good clarification. There is a bench naming website, though, so if folks are excited about that, we can at least point them to that opportunity.

That'll cost you that.

Yes. That's true.

I had another comment. At our last meeting sorry. At the last park naming, people recommended some names in foreign languages. Mhmm. So I'm I I was kinda curious how to go about that. So my first thought was, like, the intellectual house at the University of Washington as an example. I know that for the pronunciation, it's I I have trouble pronouncing it, but there's a place on their website where you could click and then someone says the name. So perhaps, like, that approach, if we ever do decide of adopting some foreign languages, like indigenous languages. Mhmm. And I think these they actually have, like, two names for the building sometimes.

I don't know if we'd be open to an indigenous name and then kind of an English version. But I guess my suggestion is to maybe turn to the UW as an example for if we decide to use an indigenous word on a Parshi name. Oh, go ahead, Elizabeth.

Yeah. Thank you, Reina. That made me think, actually, of a recent visit to San Luis Obispo, and they have a lot of indigenous names. And you can go on the website to find those. But knowing that we don't have an official language in in The US or an official language in Bellevue, I I would love for us to be able to recognize the different languages that people use for our places.

But many people, the majority, do speak English, and it would have been so helpful to have the phonetic pronunciation under whatever language it was. Whether it was a modified English alphabet like we have in some languages or whether it's Chinese characters, just to be able to say it aloud and read it phonetically would be fantastic. It'd be very helpful because I don't want to be disrespectful, but sometimes I also don't want to pull out my phone at a park. So that would be my request. I don't know if that's the example that they have at UW.

I know in San Luis Obispo, they did not. And so you had to pull out your phone. You had to look it up. You had to have data and watch a whole video, which was mildly I don't know. Took longer than I wanted. I was like, I could just read out the phonetics if you had it here. That's great feedback. Yeah.

That's

great. Good It's point about

Yeah. I'm trying to remember if Snoqualmie Falls. I know, like, the floor by the waterfall has some indigenous language in it. I think they might be spelling some of the the words on the yeah. In English phonetics too down there. So that's a good point. Thanks, Elizabeth. Any other questions, comments, thoughts? If if we have additional ideas that pop up, is the best way to email you? Or

Well, feel free to. No. This has been really this information has been really helpful to us as we refine these and work through them. So I really appreciate everyone's thoughtful comments and and recommendations. Thanks. Thank you.

Oh, thank you so much. Alright. With that is the next item on our agenda is new business. So I'll turn it over to Ryan. What agenda items do we expect to cover during the November meeting?

Yes. Thank you, chair. And, just as a reminder, the November meeting is our our last official meeting for the year for this board. We are expecting to have a report on the levy, the 2022 levy, and we may have an item related to naming. Based on your feedback this evening, which is very helpful, we will digest and see whether, that all fits together for a November, item.

If not, that may be early next year. But that's what we have, working up right now, and we will have those ready or have that ready for you.

Any questions for Ryan? K. And then, one more item under this. So our next meeting is nove Wednesday, November 19. And just checking to see if any board members, wish to request remote participation for that meeting. Nope. And then you have until, like, noon the day prior in case your plans change. And so with that, we've completed all the items on tonight's agenda, and so I will call the meeting now adjourned. Label.