Parks and Rec Commission - Regular Meeting

The person has a job.

I'd like to call this meeting of the Parks and Recreation Commission to order on Wednesday, August 5th. Please call the roll.

Reeves. Here. Bending. Lesbrook. Here. Torrenson.

Here.

Gertie. Here. Five present, one absent.

All right, moving on to item number two, general public comment. It looks like there are none. We'll move on to item number three, approval of the minutes. Does anyone have any discussion or questions in the last six minutes? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion to approve minutes from the July 1st, 2026 meeting.

I make a motion to approve.

I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Minutes are approved. Item number four, approval of the revenues and expenditures report. Any discussion or questions that needs to be heard about this?

Otherwise, I'll make a motion to accept the revenue expenditures report.

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

The revenue expenditures report is approved. Item number five, campground extended stay request from Brad Olsen. Sue, do you have a little more information on this?

I do. Mr. Olsen had requested an extended stay while he did work on his house. Unfortunately, it was after the two-week period. I believe it was probably closer to three weeks. We did have to ask him to vacate because, of course, he was past the two-week allowed time. He has not been back to the campground. And he also said he would be at this meeting tonight, and he's not present. So I'm not sure if this is even still a request at this point. Okay.

Should we put the table in? Oh, yeah, I don't know. Well, was he, so he was just supposed to move to a different site after the two weeks because of the, after two weeks, you have to vacate the variety hours.

Yeah. So he needed to vacate for 48 hours, and he's not been back since.

And all his things are gone, right? Right. Okay.

Also occupying two sites, I believe, or maybe one, but leading into another, because he was a little bit over on what he was allowed there. You're supposed to be only allowed one camping unit camper, and then in or two tents. He had a camper, two tents, and then I think he had two cars, a truck, and a boat. So it was quite a bit more, which I did . That would be permitted, but I've not heard anything since. How long ago did he take? Oh, goodness. It's been at least a week and a half, for sure. At least, yeah.

Do you know where he is now? He's camping by his house on Ripon Road, to the best of my knowledge. And just to be clear, He hasn't spent any time remodeling his house in the last month or five and a half weeks because he's been at the campground and all of the vehicles are there and there's nothing going on at the house. This is probably the best scenario based on the experiences that the city has had with him in the past.

So would it be safe to I mean, we can approve and deny as we see fit. Would it be okay if we denied this claim, or this claim, this request, because one, he already vacated, and two, he's not here, or?

Yeah, I would say so too.

Plus, my other concern is he's already, there's a violation of rules already, and he didn't show here, too. give us confidence that he would abide by the rules of the future. Because I think, my concern, without even knowing any of that, when this was said, we would be making an exception, pretty significant exception to our written rules and policies already, which was 14 days in a row, 48 hours off, and then starting over again.

I assume he's already had to contact them because he was unpaid for a few days as well. Yeah. So to me, I would support not approving it. OK.

Well, if someone would like to make a motion to not approve.

I'll make a motion to deny the request for the incentive for Brydelson.

All in favor?

All in.

Motion carried. Thank you for that soup. All right. Item number six, discussion on the online rental program for parks facilities. All right. We have more info for us. Well, maybe.

I guess I don't have anything more from last month. I did include the same information that was in last month's packet so that you could compare the MySites to the, and I apologize, actually we can't swap now, the two that we're looking at at this point. So there's nothing new added. And I did, when I sent the agenda out, I did include the links so that you could go out and, you know, see what they look like, which one was a little more user-friendly. To me, I think they are both very user-friendly. They have a lot of the same features, the no contract with both, no minimum sites. They both build with it for us, the oversight for us. So a lot of those are very much the same. The big difference that I will point out is going to be the cost. This is no cost to us. It is cost to the consumer. And I did add an additional sheet to your packet, and that is a cost comparison that will get passed on to the consumer. And as you can see, the only time that can't spot is going to be the lesser in cost is if it is a one night stay at the campground, which are very few. Other than that, Camp Scott is going to be significantly more because every rental through my site is $3. It doesn't matter if you're staying for two weeks at the campground, if you're renting a shelter house for $100, or $150 is also always going to be three hours. You can see the cost comparison.

Is that three hours, so if you're doing two nights, or whatever two days, is that three dollars for each day, or is that three dollars for the transaction?

It's just three dollars.

And we don't pay, that's income then through it. Or that whole fee goes to my site. Correct. That's what they get out of it.

That's what they get.

there is no minimum no minimum you know we can have one reservation all the year and there's no minimum i in my opinion if either site is comfortable to you because you're the person who's going to have to use it essentially my vote would be for the my site site because it just does seem like it's not it's not overly expensive for the consumer. They're still able to do just about everything that the other one is supposed to do. And I think it should be pretty easy just judging by what we saw when we did that.

We'll point out the one plus over MySafe that Can'tSpot has is Can'tSpot.com. So if somebody would happen to pull that site up, they can type in Merlin, Wisconsin, and it would run up our information. So it's a marketing piece. But they've got to find a spot.com. Right.

I think you could probably just do our due diligence to share, once you have one of these picked out, to share the website with the community and anybody else.

And it could be on our website, but it could also be like, if they have to drag the account, we can do a QR code there.

Yeah, absolutely. I would like to do that. I'd like to do a QR code at the campground so somebody can call in, make their reservation. I think with some additional marketing, I think we need to invest in some additional marketing.

Does it allow for us, and it's like the next agenda item, rules or whatever, we can set our own rules regarding cancellation policy and that, right? Absolutely.

All that's still flexible, isn't it? It is, it is completely up to us.

I agree that my reference would be my site, but you don't need to feel comfortable.

Anyone else have any comments or questions for Sue?

Jessica, did you look over these? I'm sorry. Do you have any?

I mean, I agree with you. Sue's probably the one that's going to be administrated. I will say that I thought the campsite was a little bit cleaner, more professional looking. But I don't agree with the fee that you're charging.

Well, especially, you know, us being a municipality, it's a little different than being an actual campground, too. We can't just go around just

And I think another point of this is that none of these contracts are for specific times. They just go until you're done. So if you ran into the fact that we didn't feel that my site was living up to its name and you wanted to switch, I'm not suggesting that would be easy, but it's not an impossibility either. Right.

Yeah. Because you get a real cancellation policy when it comes to that. There's no contract.

My understanding is that we can cancel at any time. And again, they both bill the sites at no cost to us. So if we decide my site is not right for us and we want to cancel and go to CamSpot, we can certainly do that.

I agree with everybody that it's going to be Sue's decision. I think at this point, what she feels most comfortable using works best for her. I've used CamSpot. It is a bigger name. We wanted people that use GoCam to know that site. So they do use it for searching and stuff like that. So you get the marketing and a little bit of searching for it. So I can see where there is some price increases that covers some of that cost, but for what we have here, I don't think it's necessary.

All right, any other questions? Does anyone want to make a, is this a recommendation or a motion to approve one of those? Does this have to go to council or anything?

It does say council. Okay. But if you guys can make a recommendation to council, I'm sure they'd very much like to hear your thoughts on it.

Okay. Would you like to make a recommendation for one of these to council?

I'll make a recommendation to send my site online to a regional government and council. Is there a second?

I second that.

All right, all in favor? Aye. All right, approved. Great. Now we are on item number seven, rental procedures discussion. First come, first serve policy for insulation policy for all.

Let's start with the deposit. So right now, we have a $100 deposit on the rental shelter policy. I spoke with Andrew, and he said he doesn't remember ever, you know, not granted signing on their deposit back. He was very good about it. So in speaking with, I think we went through seven demos, Jesse and I, it was brought up to us that really deposits are a thing of the past. Because people are paying with their credit for debit card, Just like when you rent a hotel room, you have the terminology in there that if there are any damages, it will be charged to your card. So we could put that on the website as well. So we could move away from that policy of a deposit.

Do we have the ability to do a hotel or whatever to charge and then credit card back, credit deposit. A lot of them will do that. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't know how exactly it works.

It's really complicated for us, though, because we have to pay a percentage of what is paid back. So if you did a deposit of tourage or whatever, they end up getting $190 something back unless we paid that portion that the credit card company keeps. So it probably makes sense in the volume for the hotels, but for us, we

So is it clear though, like let's say there's a case where they left it in really bad shape, like is it clear, like we could charge their card up to $100 or whatever, or is it written as capital damage, or like how's it written?

We would have to come up with very specific language on that, and it would be put onto the website, website would basically be a checkbox, you know, a checkmark in a box that they would have to do before they could move on to the next page. to acknowledge it and accept it.

There's got to be some rules about that, right? I know if you're renting, the rule is up to the full nuns. There's got to be some rules about how much you can actually charge them. Like, say, burn the whole thing down. I certainly didn't want to do that.

I don't know the verbiage, the specific verbiage.

Other than that, I think that just having a credit card makes sense to me.

And I mean, not everyone has a credit card or wants to What I like about moving away from the deposit is that this makes it more accessible for families in the community. I mean, there's a lot of families that can't afford the 100-hour deposit and the rental fee, and I think it makes their parks get a little bit more use from families, and I really like that idea. They'll still be able to use cash or check,

um they can still come to to you parks facilities office and we can actually do the reservation for them okay um and they could pay with cash so if you're going to cash your check will you require to have a credit card on file for damages otherwise that's the way to work

I think you could make them sign that they're responsible.

A waiver.

They would still be going through.

So let's say somebody did come in. I would still be going into my sites and I would be going through and filling it all out. That checkmark would still have to be a NAPA.

From that standpoint, we already have their name, your license. I mean, if you take off and you leave a mess, You just don't pick up leaves the next fall, right? I like my other idea better. But I'll take it. Okay. It makes sense to me. Yeah, I like that. Do you have to make a motion on that or something? Okay, I'll make a motion.

to forego having the deposit required for KSI.

Or is this just for shelter house? Just shelter. Shelter house. It's just shelter house. Perfect. And is there a second? I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Motion carried.

Okay, cancellation policy.

Question, do you want to include a motion to say that they will still be responsible for any damage that we'll have.

I think it would be a safe thing to do.

To just say that we'll have a policy that they will have to acknowledge and accept responsibility for damage.

Okay.

I'll make that motion that we charge you with kind of the policy that the individual who rents the shelter house will be responsible for damage.

Is there a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carried.

All right, next. Cancelation policy. Right now, the campground does not have a cancellation policy, which I'm sure has hurt us with revenue in the past because they'll make a reservation for, let's say, a week, and then they just don't check. Well, we could have rented that out to somebody else, but we put the reserve sign on it because they had made that reservation. So we have no way to collect any money off of them at this point because everything is paid with cash or check. So in the future, when we do go to this online, I don't know, you know, where do you want to go with the cancellation policy? Shelter House right now has a cancellation. return of the rental deposit if they make the cancellation within six weeks prior to the requested reservation. How often does that happen? Very rare. Okay.

And if you turn to the next page, I did put a couple of examples in there for the cancellation policies other

other campsites are using. So if you want to take something from there, make up your own, however you want to do that.

I think it would make sense to do the cancellation policy. That's maybe the 24-hour rule. 24 hours before the thing, so they'd actually have to pay the cancellation fee. only because I feel like then you don't have time to prepare and get a new reservation in. But if they do it, say, a week out, then they're fine. You can still find somebody else to take their spot.

And with MySafe, the three hours is also refundable.

OK.

So with these other examples here, I'm assuming if they cancel, shorter amount of time, like the day before, but the policy goes two days before, they're getting charged for that campsite in full, aren't they? Isn't that the way I understand this?

Actually, these examples, they all have different rules or policies. What was it? I think one of them was if it's prior to their reservation, they get charged some kind of fee or a certain percentage. So, Again, it would be completely up to you as to how you would.

What I'm trying to understand is what's written here, because I believe that, for example, if you cancel even before the two days or the seven days, there's still a cancellation fee to get your other money back. You're not charged the other, right?

Correct.

But you're charged the amount, just like your hotel, right? So they'll say, oh, you can cancel up to seven days before. After that, whether you show up or not, The day of? Yeah. You're gonna charge your credit card, right? Yeah. And I support something like that. I'm not too crazy. 24 hours is fine.

I would say 24 hours. And then, um, you might, like, if there's a catastrophic storm coming or something that they want to cancel because they don't want to, you know, camp in a monsoon. A river tornado coming. I would say that would make the most sense to me too.

Yeah, but people, that is hard because other people's idea of catastrophic differs from person to person. I have no idea. Yeah. You're going to know. Right.

Because some of them are two days of separation.

I don't think we

I wouldn't do any for up to two days. But because if it's 24 hours before or 48, there's a good chance that a last minute person has done it. The only question is, let's say it's 24 hours before and they cancel. How do you allow for a last minute? So if you arrive that day and there's three sites available, could they go on to, I forgot the name already, my site? and go right away with a credit card and reserve it right then? I think so, right? So as long as the system allows that, then 24 hours would be fine.

I would think so.

As soon as the person would cancel, it would show as open and available. So I'm fine with 24 hours. This law is a new site. This is working. So it could go in instantaneously if that's fine.

And just for clarification, this won't go into effect until next season, correct? Well, my thought is January 1st. Well, next year, yes.

We already have people calling asking if they can reserve campsites for next year in shelter houses. So, you know, I think opening it up on January 1st and putting it out, getting some marketing out.

It would be nice on the website, I don't know if we get too much detail here, but if the website actually showed what 24 hours meant. So you can do like at 4 o'clock on the day before, anything available that was canceled would be shown up. Some people that are really wanting, let's say it happened to be a busy time of year, they could watch, like, hey, I saw two sites available. Sometimes it's canceled or something. It's kind of know when to look, because if it's so hard to get proof.

Yeah, that 24-hour period. That's right. Like while we're open hours, so that we can speak to someone.

Yeah, 24-hour midnight of the day. Yeah, so it's probably like 4 p.m. of the day. Something like that.

Because then you can, those are the last minutes we'll know when to look and say that party has just spotted a woman on the ground. Sure.

so going back to the shelter houses are we still giving we're still giving special preference to like events yeah i i guess that would something be something we need to discuss but i believe that you could block those dates off probably yes yeah i'm not exactly sure i would have to talk to my site to you know figure out how we would put the special pricing in for them just want to make sure their events don't get hurt or dates don't get sucked up by somebody for sure yeah we would have to put them in before january 1st before we open it up to the public i would think they have plateau tapes they could put out there yeah i'm assuming you would have access to like as an administrator over like you could go in there manually like block the date or put something in yes or they just test it right

So 24-hour cancellation. Now, is there going to be a fee associated with it, or are we going to give them a full refund?

I don't think there'd have to be a fee. There should be something where we're recouping a little. Recouping something from that not being used. I think a $10 fee sounds fair, because we have such.

If they cancel a week before, There is no fee if they cancel 24 hours before.

I think if they cancel less than 24 hours before, we're charging them all the time.

Yeah.

The question is, so if they cancel 20 hours before, we're charging them a little bit over $30. Because they got the spot and nobody else can pay.

Yes. I think. Yeah. The $10 cancellation fee should probably be within what though? Or is the cancellation fee surely...

So essentially what we're trying to do is we're trying to prevent, because there's not a lot of cost to us, the cost lost, the revenue lost is if they just cancel and they don't have to pay anything, right? How often is it going to happen that they're reserved all the way up until the day and a half before? How often is that going to happen?

Say that again.

How often will people cancel if they're, I don't know. I think the issue before was more people just not showing, right? Right. Right? And so we're kind of preventing that by the cancellation thing. Right. Right?

By taking their money right away.

People are committing. They already have their credit cards and they can charge them now if they cancel or try to cancel after. Yeah, that's just charged. Your self-service is charged.

Yeah, sorry for that.

The only benefit to a cancellation fee that I see is, for instance, if I was considering going camping, I'm like, ooh, I'll book for the week.

Yeah.

But it's only a 20%. I'm not going to sign up if I know I have to pay a cancellation fee. There's no cancellation fee. Right. decide for sure as the day before, you know? I don't know how often that happens, but that would stop me from booking unless I was sure.

So that would almost be a per day cancellation fee of some amount, right? So if you are going to come in and say, I want to reserve that week in August, and then a month later you decide, I'm going to change my mind. There's some fee for changing your mind. But if you just... ignore it all and you're like trying to cancel us too late you're going to be charged for it is it is it more important to us that we recoup somebody who doesn't show that's what i think i think so too yeah especially if they're allowed with the system even instantaneously to like show up there's a site available it's available on the online we give them that right because it's signed up or they could be there yeah just take for instance this

She was someone who wanted to reserve a site for the rest of the year. They reserve the site for the rest of the year, you're holding that for them, and they don't come back after their 48-hour rule. Could you still charge them for the rest of the season, seeing that they already had told us that that's what was going to happen?

Well, that's something that I've heard our rules, that if you're, if we were to allow that, he, I think our rules said that they pay by the week, right?

Yes.

Yeah, it was a week for $108 or something.

So then you would have to pay for that following week, but then cancel after that.

So if you went into that week, I would say we charged $108 if you didn't cancel, right? Right.

Because it was a buyer per week basis.

Yeah, they don't cancel prior to 24 hours.

Before the start of that week that they were charging. Yeah, so we charged $108. So that's fine. So you can't really play that game. There's a little bit of game plan, but generally, I think.

But I feel like we would improve something from that, especially if they're, you know.

So the question will be this, too. So let's say that scenario happens, and they reserve it for a week. They don't show the first day, so we charge $180. Does that site become available for somebody else to rent, even though that person, no. I think the answer is no, because it could show up the next day, and they've already paid for it. But we don't lose it.

That question's gonna come up.

Let's say it on the nice side. I realize the rule, I'm just letting you know, I'm not gonna be there, so if somebody else wants it, you're gonna get that scenario sometime. If it's a nice person that's like, yep, I know I did that, I made that decision, but I don't wanna keep a spot unused, there needs to be a rule about that. Because somebody may do that.

I think we need to have, I'm not saying table this, I'm saying like move it on to a point where we have some kind of procedure written up for the cancellation policy before the next date, like where we can kind of collaborate on one to see what works best for us as a park, and then also just to make sure we have everything covered, because it's all that we're covering a lot, like we're trying to put together an entire legal document right now. So. I think we got started on that, right?

Yeah, yeah. I like the idea that they bring back like the actual, there's the language.

Yeah. Something to think about too is that they were reserved for a week. They looked at the weather forecast the first two days of the week with no crap. If they make a phone call saying that we'd like to show up on Wednesday.

But we'll still pay for. Right. Yep.

Yep.

I think there's a whole lot of loopholes from them.

Yeah. One of the hotels where if you don't show up, they're going to charge you. It's still your room. They can't have that. So you could show up in the last three hours in theory and jump in your room, take a shower, and leave. Because you're paying for it. So what if they do just show up quickly? Yeah, totally.

But I think if we looked at a few other cancellation policies where they give full legal verbiage, we could probably figure out how the best can talk to ours.

But I think it could be safe to say

we could have this discussed at the next meeting then when we have something prepared for a cancellation policy.

I think the website already has like stock cancellation policies already probably written, so if we just put three on one of those, it probably means it's pretty simple.

Sure, I can present information. Or just find out what they have to if you go back to my site and see if they have something that's canned for us to use, you know?

But I think we definitely support, or I support, whenever you get past that, you can't cancel now or whatever, then beta charts are full now.

That was one of our biggest issues, is that they're losing revenue because the spots were empty enough. Yeah, I agree.

Okay, sure.

I'll bring that back at the end of the meeting. Great. Anyone else? The next? Oh, yeah, the next one. This is the big one. This has caused more problems than I've seen. I mean, again, my first year, but holy cow, this has really been an issue this year.

So do you think this site will alleviate all that if we just get as much?

I think that if you would say all 22 will now be online, reservable, if you will. No more first come, first serve.

Problem solved. And make it known that they can come reserve in person at the parks facility office. Because there are campers that don't use the website or their phones are online. So just as long as it's known that it's accessible for every type of camper, I think it's great.

I think the reality is that more and more people have a credit card, more and more people have a smartphone, right? Even from a school site, even our poorest families, they know that it's very difficult about those. So that's going to help more and more people, but there should always be some way, like you cannot do it this way. During working hours, you can go back to the office and that's better.

Accessibility is important. And some people, you know, putting their credit card information out.

I like that all the sites are reserved the same way.

Do we need to make a motion for that one? Yes. Okay. Who would like to make that motion?

I'll make a motion. I'll make the motion to forego having the first go first serve rule for the Caleb Grimm as of January 1st, 2027.

And a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Motion carried. Thank you.

And thank you, Sue, for all that research, abundant information.

All right, now I got to take my agenda.

Here we go. All right. New business. I do have a little letter here that I would like to share. This is from the ABC group. And it's dated July 23rd, 2026. Park and Rec. We want to thank you for all your help in setting up our Freedom Running event. It was very generous of you. We appreciate your support. Thanks for all you do for the community. We could not do it without your amazing generosity.

Please save the day for our 41st annual holiday parade and light the party for November 19th.

Sincerely, Achieving a Better Community. Thank you, Scott, for all your hard work. I'm sure it was a lot. It looked like it was a great event. I wasn't in town.

I was not in town, but I know there's a lot of people who enjoyed it.

I heard it was one of their biggest or most attended this year. That's wonderful. I did see the fireworks. I was here for that. They were probably some of the best fireworks I've seen here since I was a kid.

I did hear that.

They were great. We did upsize some of the diameters. It showed.

It was great.

so my dad was a forester and he taught forestry for 30 years and he kept his blasting license all through the years so every once in a while for fourth of july as legal as possible wonderful does anyone else have any new business is there a process i'm kind of new to um where we review just like and status of our city parks, like how are they doing, and like what are the things that you're working on Scott, or how signage, think about that. Is that part of our purview?

Or should we just get an update on our facilities?

Do something like that.

I was wondering. A lot of times it should be pretty specific. Because if you leave it general, like an update.

Or even if it's just like, you know, here's three priorities where you have like the city right here. were i don't know the shelters that you're working on or uh vegetation issues like i mean you're planting the trees that's not absolutely working i don't know i just don't know yeah so one of the possible reminds like i think you replaced or covered up some of the side dates in strong park a year or two ago right i have two more that i'm doing okay so that that's the question is popular in line we can even talk about history yeah that's right no so those are honestly thinking about what we can talk about in the future So technically your new business, you can only ask for things to be put on agenda in the future and your old business.

You can ask for things that have gone on previous agendas to come back around.

So I'm asking if this could be in the future, having agenda item that's just updates on the physical.

It's that specific updates on physical. But you can't just have like general staff update.

No, that's not right.

If you have something that you want an update on, absolutely I can go on the agenda. You just have to be careful because It can't be perceived that we're basically allowing ourselves. So, but yeah, it's specific. Absolutely.

It's just when I go by the parks, I'm just wondering, I was like, hey, what are the next physical update things that are being worked on in the parks? Well, they're all out there. We can't work on that right now.

We'll put it on the next agenda.

Put it on the next agenda. It could be really short. You can see me because I can't work on it. Yeah, just maybe twice a year we do that.

Like upcoming projects.

Because this season, since our charge is around our parks and we're going to take a closer look at the city, right? Right. It might be nice to do something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Great. We'll see you this springtime.

I do want to hear about the fall amendments and where we're at with those. We have all that on our CIP. We should give you guys a copy. Oh, that would be great. That would be helpful.

That could be part of what we do. Here, let's just go over the next time we're here.

Yep. Thanks. Great. All right. Any old business? If not, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Aye. Aye. We are adjourned.

Yes, we do want this.

Oh, sure. Never mind.