Parks and Recreation Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Call to order the 05/21/2025 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meeting. Can we have the roll call, please?

Kenneth Forbes? Here. Michael Guardino? Here. Michael Madigan? Here. Benjamin Nazario Vega? Present. Joel Van Hemmel? Here. Gail Daniel?

Here.

Welcome. This meeting is being conducted with a live quorum physically present. This material for today's meeting is available online at www.coconutcreek.net. Anyone wishing to appeal any decision made will need a record of the proceedings, and for such purpose, may need to ensure that a verbatim recording of the proceedings is made, including the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based. The audio of this meeting may be requested from the city clerk or may be heard online at www.coconutcreek.net.

If you haven't already, please silent your cell phones. If you make a phone call, please excuse yourself and step outside. Input from the public. Was there any input from the public? Heath, that you noticed?

I don't believe there was. If any member from the public are present and would like to address the board, you may do so at this time. When you come forward to speak, please state your name and address clearly for the record. I don't see anybody. We will now do the oath of office. We will now have the city clerk, Joseph Cavanaugh, administer the oath of office.

Good evening, everyone. Please stand up. Raise your right hand and please repeat after me. I do solemnly swear that I will support, protect, and defend the constitution and government of The United States and the state of Florida and Florida and the ordinances of the city of Coconut Creek that I'm duly qualified to hold office hold office the constitution of the state that I will

that I will

well and faithfully the duties of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board the city of Coconut Creek which I'm now about to enter. Congratulations. Thank

you, Joseph. Now we'll do the introduction of board members and staff. We'll go ahead and start with staff. My name is Wayne Toby. I am the director of parks and recreation.

Danielle DeBarris, assistant director of parks and recreation.

Janet Hall, superintendent Parks and Recreation. And then if

we can start over with Gail first and then work our way down.

Hello. Hi, everyone. My name is Gail Daniel. I'm a six year resident of Coconut Creek. I enjoy health and fitness, and that's why I wanted to be a part of this board. Coconut Creek is such a beautiful place, so much greenery, and I really enjoy living here. So, I'm happy to be on the board and to help however I can.

Thank you and welcome.

Hi. I'm Michael Madigan, been in Coconut Creek for eleven years with a one year absence, but it came running back. Happy to be a member of the board. Thank you for having me. I'm very involved in youth soccer over the last eleven years here in town, and I've really enjoyed that and looking to be able to continue to give back to Coconut Creek.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Benjamin Nazario Vega. I've been a resident of Coconut Creek for the last eighteen years. I'm a retired engineer. I've done construction work, work, and recreation work. And, I'm glad to be part of the board.

Thank you and welcome.

Joel Van Hemmel. Been in Coconut Creek for twenty seven ish years, '27, twenty eight years. I have great respect for the Parks Department in Coconut Creek having seen so many during travel sports when my kids were younger. The city does a fantastic job.

Thank you, and welcome.

Kenny Forbes, been a resident

for twenty three years. Coached a lot

of softball along with Joel Van Hamel. Coached recreational travel and Monarch High School, and enjoy the parts department here at Coconut Creek.

Thank you and welcome.

My name is Mike Cordino. I've been a resident of Coconut Creek for sixteen years. I'm the head coach of Pompano Beach Girls High School soccer. I am a board member and the director of All Play Soccer Club, a not for profit here in Coconut Creek. And I'm very happy to give back to my community. Thank you guys.

Thank you and welcome. I also just wanted to point out two other staff members that I have on my team that you'll be seeing throughout the year that aren't here today. Lenora Thomas, she's the superintendent down at the community center. And then we also have Enrique Castro as a superintendent over at Sable Pines Park. But I just wanted to announce them because they'll be in these meetings in the future as well.

Next will be an overview of the city's vision 2030 strategic plan. And we will now hear the agenda item six, which is an overview of the city's vision 2030 strategic plan. And Bernadette Hughes, our government affairs manager, will provide an overview of this item. Bernadette?

Good evening. Oh, am I on? Good evening. Congratulations to each of you for being appointed or reappointed to serve on the Parks and Recreation Board. On behalf of the city, I'd like to thank you for your service to our community. I'm here to talk very briefly, I promise, about the city's ten year strategic plan known as vision twenty thirty. You should all have a copy in front of you. Vision twenty thirty is one of the most important documents to our city, to Coconut Creek. It's shaped from community input, and it guides all of the city's actions. It's tied intrinsically to our budget process, and you probably will be referencing it as you go through working on this board.

You may be wondering why am I sharing it with you, the Parks and Recreation Board. So you should be familiar with it because it advises Citi on matters pertaining to parks, recreation programs, services, greenways, trails, recreation facilities. These are all things that are also found in vision 2030 as well as things that you'll be talking about. And most importantly, as a board member, when you're conducting board business, it is very important to remember that you're an extension of the city, and so you're held to the standards in this document, and that includes three things that I'm gonna talk with you about very briefly. Those are our values, our vision, and our mission.

So the values of the city of Coconut Creek and, by extension, you as a board are service excellence, innovation, continuous improvement, ethics and integrity, and fiscal accountability. Our mission, which is basically what we do here in the city every single day, is to provide exceptional, responsive, and sustainable services to the community of Coconut Creek, which is what you will be doing. And our vision is where we wanna be in the future. It's to be an innovative, inclusive, and progressive community with a small town personal touch. So let me say that one more time because it's really important to us as a city.

An innovative, inclusive, and progressive community with a small town personal touch, and that applies to everything we do here. So there's a whole bunch of other things in the vision 2030 document. There's our five key areas of focus. We focus on mobility. We focus on quality of life. I'm not gonna spend any time tonight talking about it. Please take a look at the document in front of you. If you have any questions or you can tell I love this stuff. If you just wanna talk strategic planning, let Wayne know or Janet or Danielle, and they'll put you in touch with me. So again, congratulations on your appointment, and thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Bernadette. We will now hear agenda item seven, an overview of the board mission, guidelines, objectives for the year. This is something that was, I believe, emailed to you. We'll just go over some of them just to highlight them. But please if you didn't already review them, just try to review them so you know what some of the responsibilities are within the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.

But each board member has a specific guidelines, duties, responsibilities within which they have the authority to work, and their scope is limited to those defined guidelines, duties, and responsibilities. And there's four of them, basically. Number one is act in an advisory capacity to the city commission. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board shall review and evaluate proposals to use, change, or create parks and recreation facilities for city residents. Two, assist with review and development of long range plans for new and or improved recreation equipment and facilities.

Three, work to stimulate greater community awareness and encourage resident use of parks and recreation programs and services, greenways and trails, and recreation facilities. Four, serve as a public forum for the discussion of the creation, operation, and maintenance of proposed and existing city parks and recreation facilities. This form shall assist the parks and recreation director in determining what recreation facilities and programs are most appropriate to meet the needs of the community they serve. The meeting schedule, just to let you know, that the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meets three months out of the year. We meet in January, May, and September.

We'll ask if that date is alright when we conclude our each meeting just to get the feedback from you on the dais. Board member communication. To adhere to public record laws and record retention requirements, please limit board correspondence outside of the meetings to email communication. When communicating with anyone outside city staff regarding board business, forward any such communications received or sent to the city clerk @publicrecordsatcoconutcreek.net with for public record in the subject line. If you have an interest in a relationship with anything on the upcoming board agenda, email the legal department or city attorneycoconutcreek dot net, or call (954) 973-6797 if any con consultation with the legal department is determined you have a voting conflict.

You must file the appropriate disclosure conflict of interest form as directed by staff. Board member responsibilities attend meetings regularly, review the meeting agenda and any backup materials provided in advance of each board meeting. To best contribute to the discussion, review the information provided and be prepared with questions and relevant discussion points. Focus on the needs and betterment of the city of Coconut Creek as a whole, adhere to the Florida Sunshine Law, Public Records Act, Ethic Rules, and Parliamentary Procedures, board chair responsibilities, understand and have a working knowledge of the perilatory memory procedures, start and end the meeting on time, follow the published agenda, introduce each agenda item and facilitate discussion, stay on topic, and bring the items to a conclusion. You have a sample agenda in front or you have the agenda in front of you.

That's the agenda, pretty much how it's set up each time we have our meetings. And then the board liaisons are myself and Danielle, if you happen to have any questions. And like I said, the other thing is you can reach out to the city clerk's office as well. That's agenda seven. Next will be the election of the chair and vice chair. So nominations are now in order for the position of the board chairperson. I'll nominate Joel. Nominate Joel? Okay. Let's see.

Unfortunately, Joel is not eligible because he was the chair last time, so it's gotta be another recommendation.

I'll recommend Michael Gardena.

I'll second.

Are there any others? Alright. Being that there are no other nominees, there is no don't believe you have to do a roll or anything, so no vote. So we're good there. So now I'm gonna go ahead and give this to the chair, and then we're gonna nominate the vice chair. Right?

Nominations are now in order for the position of vice chairperson.

I nominate Benjamin.

I second the nomination.

I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?

I will second the nomination. Okay.

Thank you.

Are there any further nominations for Vice Chairperson? If not, nominations are closed. Are there any corrections or revisions to the minutes from the 01/15/2025 meeting? If none, is there a motion and a second to approve the minutes as presented?

I motion to approve.

I'll second.

All right. I'm gonna take a vote. Kenneth Forbes? Yes. Michael Guardino? Yes. Michael Madigan? Abstain, I wasn't at that meeting. Okay. Benjamin Nazario Vega?

Yes.

Joel Van Hamel? Yes.

City staff will present agenda item 10 regarding updates on recreation and athletic leagues and programs. Good

evening and thank you for being here. I'll give a rundown of some of the major programs and I'll get into the individual programs of each location. We have our Mahana Junior Theater production. It will be Thursday, June 6 at seven with performers ages nine to 14. This year's production will be held at Monarch High School.

If you haven't been to one of our youth theater productions, they are amazing, so I encourage you to go. July is National Parks and Rec Month. The theme is Build Together, Play Together, Building and Maintaining Sustainable Parks and Green Spaces, Building Thriving Communities Focused on Health and Well-being, and Helping People to Play and Connect. Our staff will be running programs throughout that month. We always have a lecture series, and this year's lecture series is on sustainability.

Our first series was in April and focused on solid and food waste with an interactive pizza to compost event where we showed you when you're done with your scraps how to compost them. Our next series is on edible landscaping and will be held on Thursday, May 16. We'll have two more series take place later this year, one on extreme heat and the other on Climate Smart Floridians which is a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Science program. These will be held here at the city commission Chambers, it's free. You just need to preregister.

Our summer day camps are right around the corner, June 9 to 08/21/2025. The parent camper orientation will be held on Friday, June 6 right before camp. Registration is full with a 190 campers at the rec complex and a 127 campers at the community center. Programs at the rec complex include men's 18 and older and 30 and older basketball leagues, which begin in June. Girls basketball leagues for ages seven to 17 also begins in June, and we have an indoor volleyball club, which is ongoing on Tuesday evenings, is great.

Everybody seems to love that one. Programs at the community center, we have boys basketball league, 17U and 14U divisions. Championship game is on Thursday, June 5, so see if you can make it. The youth volleyball league ages nine to 17. There's four divisions. Practice starts the week of June 9 and games begin on July 8. We also have youth flag football league that's starting seven on seven registration is open. Ages six to 17, five divisions. Practice will start the week of July 14 and games in August. And we also have a special needs bowling league for ages 18 and older. It will be held at AMF Margate on Mondays in August.

Chair, through you, I have a question. I just didn't get your name and role.

I'm sorry, it's Janet Hall. I'm superintendent at the Recreation Complex.

Okay, Janet? Yes. What's your last name?

Hull, h u l l.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding recreation and athletic leagues and programs?

I just wanna add, think that, your team is doing a great job promoting these with through signage, social media, email blasts, all that. So just wanted you to encourage you to continue to do that.

Appreciate it. City staff will present agenda item 11 regarding updates on Creek Fit. Hall will make

this presentation.

And we hope you all know about Creek Fit. You know about Creek Fit? Okay. Good. We we have two locations, one North, one South. There are currently 2,141 members which is I think probably the most we've ever had. Recently, all the equipment and flooring was replaced at CreteFit North, so it looks beautiful. You need to stop by if you haven't. CreteFit programs this summer include National Senior Health and Fitness Day, Family Health and Fitness Day, and specialty holiday group exercise classes. Always available are group exercise classes and personal training along with Creek Fit three sixty five.

Thank you, Janet.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding Creek Fit? City staff will present agenda item 12 regarding updates on city parks.

Janet Hall will make the presentation for the parks update.

Courts are in progress of being resurfaced including Wimbledon Park, tennis, pickleball, and racquetball courts and also courts at Winston Park. Winston Park should be completed by May 28 and Windmill Park will follow. George S. Gerber Memorial Park East And West Fields remain closed from recently being resided, expected to open the July. At Sable Pines Park, Field 2 received a new perimeter fence in March. Field four lights are being replaced with new LED lights. Projects should be completed by the May. And fields one through four scoreboards were replaced in March.

Thank you, Janet.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the from the board regarding updates on parks? City staff will present agenda item 13 regarding updates on special events.

Jenna Hall makes presentation for special events update.

The Memorial Day ceremony will be held on Monday, May 26 from 9AM at 9AM at Veterans Park. We'll have a senior vendor expo will be held on Friday, June 6 at the community center in the morning. Attendees will have access to vendors providing the most up to date resources, information, programs, and services available to seniors and their caregivers. Although geared toward residents 55 and over, the entire families are welcome. In celebration of Juneteenth Juneteenth, the city is proud to host Juneteenth Freedom Day celebration.

It will be held here at City Hall on Saturday, June 14 from 6PM to 9PM with African drummers and dancers. At 7PM, featured musical act O Town Motown will perform and food trucks will be on-site. Our Hot Rods and Hot Dogs car show will be held on Saturday, June 28 from 10AM to 2PM at the community center. And Groove and Grub is a new monthly event that combines the concerts and food trucks together on Saturday, July 12 from six to 9PM at the community center.

Thank you, Janet.

Are there any additional questions or comments from the board regarding updates on special events? We will now hear communications and reports. Does city staff have any communications or reports for the board?

Yes. We have a couple. I'm gonna have, Danielle DeBarros, our assistant director. She's gonna make a short presentation.

Good evening, board members. Once again, congratulations to you all. I would like to report on some of the grants. The city makes every effort to maximize funding assistance with capital improvement projects by way of applying for grants. And here are the status of some of the grants that we've applied for and awarded.

At Lakeside Park, the city received $200,000 from the Land and Water Conservation Program. Oak Trails Park, the city received 1,300,000.0 from the Florida Communities Trust Parks and Open Space Florida Forever grant program. And we've actually submitted for another grant for that same park through the recreation trails program. That grant is for 350 doll $350 350,000, but we have not had a response yet from from that organization. And then we also received for Sunshine Drive Park, a $315,000 grant from the Department of Commerce.

Thank you, Danielle. I'm also gonna let you know with some of the park master plan projects that we have going out there. Sunshine Drive and Donaldson Park improvements. The contractor currently is mobilizing at Donaldson Park. So we should see some work happening within the next week probably, with them beginning.

And this project's gonna take up to six weeks to complete or six months to complete. So that's a good thing that we're doing with those two parks. Lakeside Park Phase 1, that's going to the commission for contractor award on June 12. The work should start in late summer sometime, and will take the whole year to complete. Lakeside Park is the one that's off of Johnson Road up near Traywins Elementary, just in case you're not familiar where that's at.

Oak Trails Park expansion, the designs are at 95% and are being reviewed by our building department. We're in we anticipate advertising the bid for this work late summer. Oak Oak Trails Park is located off 74th Street up at the north end of the city, a little north of Hillsborough Boulevard. Did you mention the Red Complex? What was that? Okay. That's what I have on the master plan, and then you all have something else talk about.

I'm just gonna touch on a couple of smaller projects. I know Wayne touched on the large ones in the city, but some smaller projects that we work hand in hand with our public works department. They do a fantastic job of overseeing the contractors in our facilities and in our parks. One of the projects that they're actively working on is the recreation complex ADA accessible all inclusive playground. That will be the first all inclusive playground in the city of Coconut Creek.

We're really excited about this program or this playground. The new playground is currently under construction. It will have a nature theme to include animal, butterfly, and insect design designs. The play space will be accessible to children of all abilities between the age of 12 two and 12. So there'll be two separate areas, one from two to five and one from five to 12.

It will have a variety of equipment including ramps and bridges, theme poles and panels, climbers, and ADA interactive freestanding ground components, just to name a few. It's gonna be phenomenal. The project completion date has been delayed slightly due to a misordering of equipment by the contractor, but we are hopeful that that project will get back on schedule and be completed before our summer camp program because we have about 200 kids coming in at the North End that will really wanna use that playground, so fingers crossed that that happens. We have also at the rec complex some interior and exterior doors that have been identified as being beyond repair, so they will be brand new with also new hardware. So the public works will be overseeing that project as well, and and the last thing at the rec complex is the outside light poles.

I'm not sure if any of you have been up at the North End. That parking lot can be a little bit dark in the evenings, so lucky for us, we will be getting new light poles with LED lights and it will be very safe in the evening hours moving forward once that project is completed. The community center is the South location and we just recently installed a new sound system inside our A B And C room, our tar room, which is the teen activity room downstairs, and then also in our gymnasium. It's a phenomenal sound system. They're just final finalizing the permit now.

It's what you do in one room can be heard in all the other rooms. So they connected it via WiFi, and we're really thrilled with this project. Hopefully, you guys will be able to join us soon at one of our events, you'll be able to hear the music or the announcements come through the whole facility at the same time. And in addition to the sound system, we got new scoreboards at the south end in the community center. New scoreboards and shot clocks in the gymnasium. So so those are some of our smaller projects throughout our cities and our facilities and parks that Public Works is basically overseeing for us.

And one more I just wanna mention that I just thought of now that we have another small project getting ready to start, we're redoing the playground over at George Gerber Memorial Park. The theme for that playground is gonna be an airplane. It's it's really neat and really cool looking, the design. It has the fluffy butterfly logo that makes Coconut Creek Coconut Creek, butterfly capital of the world. It's gonna be on the tail upward wing of the airplane. They're gonna have a logo of fluffy on it. So they're getting ready to start that project. We just received word that we can go forward with it. Public works is gonna be overseeing it. But we are excited to have that playground begin, and we are gonna have some tots swing.

We are gonna have a tots swing in that playground as well. We were able to put a tots swing within the footprint of that playground which some of the residents in the area had asked for. So we're excited for that as well. But that concludes all of our communications reports. Do you have any questions or comments on anything?

I just had a general question about the grants that you received. Were they for specific projects or just to generally execute on our strategic projects?

Well, they were they were for specific pride the the the park projects, they were specific to those particular parks is what they were put out for, to my knowledge.

It depends on the grant. To be honest, some of the grants like the recreation trails program will be specific on the walkways, but other grants that we've applied for are general for just improvements for the parks.

Is there an easy consolidated way to see all these initiatives and some sort of high level summary I'm missing? So you listed off a bunch of projects and initiatives, and I know they're scattered throughout the websites and other public notifications and all that. Is there some sort of I'm sure you guys have some sort of consolidated project

I believe on the website schedule and all that.

Might be on that.

So Yes. There's a there is a page on our website for city projects.

I've seen that.

That's

okay. I just clicked through each individual one. Okay. Fine.

Any members of the board have communication or reports to share?

Yep. Next, agenda item number 15, we're gonna set the date for our next meeting. Our next Parks and Rec advisory board meeting will be Wednesday, September 17. Do I have a consensus from the the board to meet on that date?

Yeah, I'm fine with that.

All good? Okay. And obviously if anything comes up prior that where we need to make any presentations to the board, we will call a meeting prior that. But these are just set meetings that we have, the three meetings. So that's our next one unless something else comes up that we need to hold a Parks and Rec Advisory Board meeting. Thank you.

If there are no further comments, I'll take a motion and a second to adjourn the meeting.

A motion to adjourn.

Second.

Thank you and welcome.

Thank you.