Parks & Recreation Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Alright. I'd like to call this meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to order. Today is Thursday, January 15. It is 06:30. We're in City Hall Room 244. Roll call. Paul Jackerman, chair.

General Morgan.

Laurie File.

Donald Chavis. Gavin Gray.

Trish Sturgis, staff liaison. Stand for the pledge, please.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Howdy. Do we have any public comment? We don't.

Ms. Gail has joined. I

need a motion to approve. Everybody looked over in a motion to approve the December 18 Advisory Board minutes.

I make a motion we approve the minutes for December for the advisory board. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passed. Approve minutes from November.

Presentations. Presentation of Sunshine Law Training for a city attorney.

Hi. Hello again. Oh, no.

How's it going?

I I had

her know.

Ten days ago. Gonna be a

long January for everybody's approval forged right now. I'm getting my asshole a little bit.

That's what I feel, too.

So Cleveland Coughlin, assistant city attorney here at the city of Northport. I am going to do a very high level brief overview of advisory boards, committee training, Sunshine Law, public meetings, public records, ethics, meeting procedures. I go through it pretty quickly. And I have some good examples in there of more recent advisory boards who have gotten in trouble for violating the Sunshine Law. So I point that out all to say that there are penalties if you violate a certain Sunshine Law and ethics. And so I want everybody to stop me if you have any questions, or we'll have time for questions afterwards. And if you

don't, even better, because that

means I'm doing my job. I'm going to start off really quickly by reading the introduction. So the government and the sunshine manual as we know, Florida is the sunshine state as far as open government. So everything needs to be done in the sunshine. It's a form of open government. And there's a lot of rules that go into allowing for the citizens to have certain rights as well as the advisory board. So I'm going to read this from the attorney general at the time. And it just kind of explains the history of why we have these rules. So this is a public policy of open government. Our system of open government is a valued and intrinsic part of the heritage of our state.

Each day, Floridians use these laws to inform themselves as citizens to attend government meetings and to review government records. As a result of these efforts, government leaders can be held accountable for their actions. That includes advisory boards. The founding fathers of our country recognized this fundamental truth during the nation's infancy and remains as valid today. As James Madison said, knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and the people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Florida is nationally recognized for its strong support for government in the sunshine and its commitment to be reflected in our statutes and our constitution. As the attorney general, I remain committed to the principles of transparency embodied in these laws and the benefits that they secure for our state. So that's just kind of a high level knowledge on why we have these rules and why it's so important, mostly for the penalty phase. Because I know you guys are all taking time out of your days to be here, and so I don't want anybody to obviously put themselves in a position to get in trouble. So what is Sunshine Law? Like I just stated, it's the right of access to government proceedings. Who does it apply to? It applies to everybody in this room as well as member elects. That's important because oh, I didn't hear now. No.

It's not. Okay. It it does it's all city boards. The reason that it applies to advisory boards is because you are making recommendations that could potentially go to the commission, and the commission is then making a ruling on that as well. Public meetings. The most important part here is because there are more individuals on this board is that any gathering has to be done in this room. It has certain meeting procedures have to be done. So what's a gathering? Gathering is two or more in this room on this advisory board. If you meet and you discuss something that potentially is going to be on another agenda, a foreseeable action don't ask me to define that because it is not defined.

There's a lot of case law, but foreseeable action is essentially going to be anything, right? Everything you potentially touch is going to go on the commissioner. You may talk about it a year from now. So any matter that you are discussing outside of this room is a violation. I say that because these are our rules. Meetings must be open to the public, of course. Reasonable notice has to be provided so that citizens can come and watch and or participate as either a public comment or an aggrieved party. And then minutes must be taken and recorded, which the clerk always does for the advisory boards here, which I did not realize doesn't necessarily happen in other counties and cities. So board members are not prohibited, obviously. I don't know if everybody knows each other outside of this room, but I know North Port is small.

I tend to run into a lot of people at a lot of places at the local Publix or Walgreens, for some reason. I run into, like, half the city at. You're not prohibited from doing that. But of course, discussing anything that you are going to make a recommendation on in this room is going to violate the Sunshine Law. The biggest issue with that is the appearance of impropriety.

When I taught this this morning to the Planning Advisory Board, they kept saying, well, you know, we all go to a lot of parties together. If I'm litigating for you and you made a decision let's say you went with the Welland Park developer, right, out to dinner that night does it give the appearance of impropriety? Are you ruling on something that essentially is going to make it look like you're ruling one way or another, you're a biased party in this room? And that's what we're trying to avoid. Other potential meetings is any reflective writings, telephone conversations, text messages, whether you have a private phone, a personal phone.

If you are communicating with another member of this board, that's gonna be a violation. Social media, also, the reason that my amazing paralegal put this in here is because there's been a bunch AGL opinions I'll go through very briefly. For those who don't know, I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence. But an attorney general opinion is essentially giving an opinion on the law. It's not legally binding, but it guides attorneys and other fact finders, on Florida law on how to interpret that.

And this has been some of their I wouldn't say more recent, but just as it applies to advisory and commission boards. City commissioners may not use electronic newsletters to communicate among themselves on issues that foreseeably may become before the board. That's going to be the word of the day, foreseeably may become before the board. Members of a city board or commission may not engage on the city's Facebook page in an exchange or discussion of matters that will foreseeably become before the board. Board members should discuss public business at publicly notice meetings rather than in a series of letters between board members.

To include a reply all we had that question last week. And a reply all the reason everybody always says do not reply all is because your other board members are on there. If you say something substantive, you could be violating the sunshine not knowing. And that's typically the reason for the reply all do not do. A member of the public board may not use computers to conduct private discussions among themselves about board business. And those are just some of the things the AGO has ruled on and people have gotten in trouble for. Same thing with personal devices and email accounts. So if you're communicating the whole reply all issue, just be cognizant that your other board members are on there and you don't want to talk about anything substantive.

Do you mind going back to the previous screen?

Of course. Maybe. Don't know why we have no audio. I'm sorry.

No, as long as you guys can hear, I'm taking the minutes. Hopefully.

It's fine.

Can can you elaborate a little bit on this on the second one for the Facebook page?

Yes. Okay. So I think what they were and I can send the actual AGO opinion because it's gonna break it down a little bit better. But if you are engaging on the city's Facebook page and you are ruling on something, let's say, that was on tonight's agenda, and you are going back and forth and you are discussing those things and other board members maybe not even other board members, maybe a commissioner at that point. Because the commissioner ultimately is going they're taking your recommendations, and they're ruling on those recommendations. Okay.

So it could

be on your personal page or

If anybody in this room can foreseeably see it, you may run into an issue. So all in it depends. It's what looks as if you were trying to persuade somebody one way or another. That's the way I always look at it is that if I had to litigate, if I had to help you, let's say you call up Caitlin and say, hey, I've been exchanging these conversations back and forth. Well, was it on something you were ruling on tonight?

Was it with the head of Parks and Rec? Was it with the head there are certain things. So always look at it that way. Is there going to be something that's communicated about or somebody's commenting to me that's in this room, and now it's persuading somebody one way or another? Or it's showing them that you have your mind made up based on your individual knowledge, not necessarily knowledge that's coming from room.

So if we can get a copy of that, that would be great.

Yeah. I can send you all four of these too. I don't remember exactly the let me break let me send you a I don't want to misquote by any means. I haven't tried to put this together. But yeah, I'll grab that for you and forward it. Because any AGO opinion is, like I said, it's not legally binding. But it is how I do issue spotting in a lot of my legal work. If I'm looking at a statute and the interpretation is difficult to learn, the AGO, most likely a commissioner or somebody else, has written an opinion on it, whether it be informal or formal. So yeah, absolutely. I'll send that to you.

Personal devices, penalties. This is why we have this training is because there are very real penalties. Let's see if this will play. If it doesn't, I will just explain it to you. Yeah. I'm so sorry to

Let's face it.

I don't know if it paused.

Okay. I'm so sorry to interrupt all.

Let's face

I'm sorry.

No worries. Keep it off that page. So I do have a question. I'm assuming you are the Northport attorney.

I'm the assistant city attorney here at Northport, yep.

So one question I do have is just in municipalities, how are you guys going to pass or motion Sunshine Law trainings, for example, or any legal procedures? Is it different in local government compared to the state?

Potentially. Tend to we being city of Northport, since I've been here and I was with the police department for two years first, I've just technically been an assistant city attorney for a year and a half. What we do is we do the mandatory trainings. We not only do sunshine law training so that you see that it applies. A lot of people forget that it applies to advisory boards because you're making formal recommendations.

So we do do yearly trainings. Obviously, I'm always available upstairs. Our city airs on the side of you asking me legal questions specifically because it could be a conflict of interest. Whatever you're ruling on in this room, potentially if I'm giving you legal advice about it, it could be a conflict with the city. So I'll get into kind some of the other people you can call first before our office gives a formal opinion. But we do it yearly. It's pretty straightforward across the board. I know we go out to Longboat Key. We teach with them. We help them out over there.

But mostly, it's just your yearly your yearly training and stuff. But anytime you need anything, I can always help you, especially with the high level stuff here and where to find everything. Alright. I apologize if this blows your eardrums, but it's important. So

Hi. We're Ken, and we're on a mission to change long term. The operation

I'm sorry. You gotta listen to the whole thing because I

don't know how

to see a bit.

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Ken No.

He's here. Mark, I'm here.

Yeah. I've got him.

Two members of the Holmes

County Community Development Commission are facing second degree misdemeanor charges for allegedly violating Florida's Sunshine Law. Commission member Stephanie Smith Cloud and executive director Joe Rohn are each charged with conspiracy to commit a sunshine law violation. State attorney Larry Basford's office filed the probable cause affidavit at the Holmes County Courthouse. Details the findings of state attorney investigation John Pettis into the Sunshine Law complaints. Pettis says Rooney committed a Sunshine Law violation by providing Platt with a list of names of potential officer candidates and told her to contact other board members and discuss the other nominations.

Cloud allegedly contacted other members of the nominating committee to discuss names and even left a voice mail on other members' phones talking about the list. Both allegedly told Pettis this was common practice among the board. They've been issuing notices to appear in court. They'll be arraigned on July 10.

So something simple that is hidden in a violation, violation. That is a prime example of where somebody made an issue out of something they probably didn't think twice about. Right? And that's why we go over this high level overview just to show you that these things could be hidden in other ways. You networking, you know, there's always there's so much law out there. And interpreting public records law in the sunshine is probably one of the most difficult parts of, I would say, being an attorney because it's not black and white. It's very, very, very gray. So same thing here. And this was a lot larger of a scale. They had a meeting in Sebastian County.

They ended up canceling the meeting. They held their own meeting that night, and they decided that they were gonna fire the city manager, the city attorney, and the city clerk from office, and then remove the mayor from his position. They were given, what, forty five days back in 2023. Public records. So everything that you touch in this board is a public record. You are creating public records with every single correspondence that you have on this board, regardless of the form. It could be a text message. It could be a phone call. It could be a voicemail, as you saw in the last example. Ask yourself, and this is just a little cheat sheet I'll go through pretty quickly.

Am I receiving the material because of my position on this board with the city? Is the material made or received in connection with the transaction of official business of the city on this board? And is the material used to perpetuate, communicate, formalize knowledge. Email or text messages. I tell the police department this all the time.

We'll get a public records request that says, hey, we need to see officer so and so's WhatsApp from this day. I was thinking that maybe they were on their personal phone or they were texting, well, if your transaction if you're doing a transaction of business on your private phone, all of those text messages now come out. And I give examples prime examples of where, you know, you you're harmlessly saying like, hey, can we do this? Can we do this? Well, that's all now a public record because you're talking about something that has to do with the city.

Public records request, obviously, in the sunshine, we have an entire three sixty eight page of the sunshine manual. I encourage everybody to kind of sift through that. I always do control f advisory boards. It gives you a lot of information, when you're bored, of course, because it is three sixty eight pages. But public records are liberally construed in favor of disclosure. That's not to say that there aren't redactions done. If you try and get my home email address or if you try and get my home address I was a state attorney for eight years it's going to be hit. I hope it's hidden. If you find my house, just let me know. It's supposed to be hidden, though.

So subject to redactions and exemptions, of course. But it is in favor of disclosure of everything that we have for the city. That includes this board. The city clerk, thank God, is the custodian of those public records. And they take care of all of the public records requests, obviously with outside help, if they need the other departments. And then if you ever receive a public records request as in your position on this board, you can't ignore it. Either get it over to the staff liaison, to the city clerk's office, and we'll handle it for you. I always call it the elevator thing. It's happened to me for some reason twice. Knock on wood, it doesn't again. It'll be in the elevator. Hey. Can I get a copy of that report on such and such? And somebody's just making a friendly conversation with you. Well, was that a public records request?

What do I do with that? Make sure you just report it to the clerk if it's something that you're doing on this board. Retention, if you create a public record and you maybe have a conversation, make sure that you are properly retaining that and producing that over to the city clerk. This mostly, I will say, does happen more for commission. Think on the advisory boards, unless you have a really hot topic that this may come up, they're going to want those documents. They want to see what you're thinking, where your head's at. What communications have you guys been having? Same thing here. Don't forget about a public records request. It could get you sued.

This is Manatee County for failing to respond. The way the statute reads for public records is that it has to be fulfilled within a reasonable amount of time. There's a lot of case law on that, and the inability to comply is not an excuse. When I first started, I remember the attorney who I took her position, Margaret Roberts. Was She out of town, and the city clerk needed all these records, and I had to go through them and redact them. And I was like, she's on vacation. They're her cases. And she's like, get going. Like, what do you mean? She's not like, hey.

You're not waiting till Monday because that's not in a reasonable amount of time. Just because I wasn't the attorney on it doesn't mean that I don't have to now go through all of these records, get these redactions done so the city clerk can fulfill it. And that's a perfect example of an inability to comply. We can't just all up and quit and be like, oh, we'll figure it out. Because obviously then the city has certain penalties. And then not complying with the public records request can get expensive. Here they were looking for the Manatee County commissioners, and there were $60,000 in legal fees associated with them failing to produce those public records. Ethics, these are not meant to insult anybody's intelligence. But like I said, with even the Facebook stuff and the AGO opinion, these show up in different ways. So I want you to be cognizant of it.

Like I was telling how do you say it? Omie. Omie? Okay. I love that. The best place to start if you feel that you have a conflict of interest or an ethical concern is going to be the ethics hotline. Because our office is city attorneys, ours is for the best interest of the city. I never want to create a conflict of interest where I can't help you out later on if we need something. So your best bet is going to be to utilize these Florida Commission on Ethics. That's why they're there.

I utilize the Florida bar all the time if I run into an ethical issue. I took an oath. So I utilize that all the time. It's confidential, and they can help you out. So prohibited conduct, not accepting anything of value, favor, or service based on an understanding that your vote, or official action will be influenced. What does that look like in the real world? It could look like a de minimis gift, right? It could look like you're going to get coffee with a colleague who all of a sudden starts talking to you about something that you're voting on, and they bought your coffee. Well, when I have to litigate for you later on, what did that look like? Did it look like that was a de minimis gift and it was social gap just me and this person?

Or did it look like that my vote's now being influenced from my well, now coffee's like 7.5 my $7.5 coffee. So that could look different if you're out to lunch or you're out to dinner or you're out to drinks with somebody. Same thing with unauthorized compensation. If you're getting any value that you should know or do know is going to influence your decision in this room, and that's going to apply to your spouse and your minor children. And then misuse of a public position, any special privilege or benefit.

I mentioned I was a state attorney before this. And the best example I have is that they give you this cute little badge. I'm sure you've seen that before. Like state attorneys, we get a cute little badge like this big. The first thing they tell you as a new attorney at the state attorney's office is don't flash your badge, your baby badge, when you get pulled over. I can't tell you how many new ASAs flashed their baby badge when they got pulled over, then they got fired. And they're like, what do you mean? I thought this was, like, the benefit I get for working here as a DA. And it's not. So that again, could look completely different out in the real world.

Abuse of a public position, you cannot have any disproportionate benefit being on this board. And then any information, mostly everything's going to be discussed here out in the open. But if you obtain information that could otherwise be confidential or harmful, that's not something that you want to disclose. Prohibited relationships, doing business with the city. You can't lease, purchase any services or goods from your own business.

That applies to your spouse or your child. Any conflicting employment or contractual relationship, you can't hold those relationships with businesses outside of here. The cure for a lot of these and the reason that I go through them is because of voting. You have certain rules from voting. If you feel that you have to abstain from voting, that's where the ethics hotline's going to come in.

But you can only abstain from voting if a conflict of interest exists or in a quasi judicial proceeding to assure a fair proceeding free from potential bias or prejudice. Only you in this room will know what your potential bias or prejudice is based on those ethics, and that's where you would utilize that. And then you're prohibited from voting from state law if you have any financial interests, if a public officer has a relative or business associate. And then the cure, like I said, it's not like you're going to get in trouble because you know everybody in the city, you're not going to vote. That's the cure for it.

So we have rules in place so that you're protecting protecting yourself yourself as as well. Well. We have rules. I didn't write the rules, but the Florida Legislature has rules. And here's what your relative would be. Penalties. Why we teach it is there's a lot of penalties that go into public records law. Lastly, meeting procedures. We all know this. Again, not to insult anybody's intelligence, but because it's mandatory. Quorum is a majority of members. You all are here. I love that. I know you're taking time out of your night. You have to do a motion. That's a clear statement about a decision. It does require a second. The discussion will open beginning with the person who made the motion, and then the board will debate the motion. Stay on topic. Anything else is out of order.

That's the only time, you see me in PZAG really up. It's because, you know, the petition is on this or whatever you're talking about. You really don't wanna get off topic because citizens were not notified of that. It goes back to the meeting procedures that we talked about earlier. Timeline's per person. They can be modified by a two thirds vote. And then each board member speaks once per motion unless somebody else is waiting to speak. I put this in here just as a cheat sheet if we ever run into it. The city code breaks down alternate members, and we'll help you out with that, though. And then lastly, if you're requesting something that's not a public record, you have to do it through a unanimous vote in this room.

And then whether it's from my office, the city clerk's office, the city manager's office, whoever we need to delegate it to, we'll get it over to you guys as long as everybody's in agreement. But that's something you need to look at. If you have any questions, let me know.

I'm going

to send you the AGO while I'm sitting here. I'll send it over. And then that way, you guys can read it at your leisure. If you think of anything later, I may tell you a call to ethics if it's something that may be a conflict. But don't be mad at me. It's just so I can protect you in the long run. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

And I'll

see you next year or maybe in like a week. Don't know, Paul.

Thank you.

Moving all the presentations of presentation by the Northport Police Department traffic unit regarding e bikes.

One quick second. I will introduce you if you'd like.

Good afternoon. I'm officer Mackey with Northport Street Department. Been with the city of Northport a little over twenty years now. Worked for Charlotte County before I came here. Spent about twelve years in major crimes and been with the traffic unit now for a couple years. So I do traffic homicides. I was also tasked with coming up with some of the e bike regulations and rules to train our department and our officers on that. Am I loud enough?

Yeah. I

just Okay.

She says she can hear it, so I

just wanted to put her next

to you just in case. So, anyway, I was last year, I was tasked with looking into these z bike problems because we're having an uptick in accidents, complaints, kids at Coco Plum, running through and running people off the sidewalks, all kinds of different issues that we can run into. So that's I've been asked to come here today to look at some ordinance changes that may be helpful for the city with Parks and Rec, some damages we're having to park property and things like that as well due to these e bikes.

So based on your recommendations for future agenda items, we were able to get Officer Mackie in pretty quickly to talk about our first look at this and where it's at. As we go through it and we see some options that we have towards the end, I just want us to really this is a big picture. It's not something that we take five minutes and we say, this is done. This is something that the department's working with, our areas around us are working on, and there's challenges in different ways. So today is going to be the main focus is to educate and then see what our next steps are as a board.

Thank you. I am getting in there for you.

All right. So I made this a little simpler than this slide, but this is a statute that regulates the class one, two, and three bikes. I gave you a color chart. I did not make this. This was made by state court.

It's great. And it makes it simple. You can look at the class one, class two, and class three bikes that we're dealing with and on the roadway. And it gives a definition here and a breakdown right underneath each column of where it can be operated and how it can be operated. One thing to note on these, the the magic three are 750 watts, whether it has pedals and a max speed of 28 miles an hour.

That's your class one breakdown. They all have pedals. The class one, class two does 20 miles an hour. Class three does 28 miles an hour, and they're all 750 watts for the motor power. And that can be break down broken down towards as well.

I won't get into all that with you as far as that, but under brake horsepower. But that's the way state of Florida is. Now my biggest concern our department's biggest concern is, you know, bicycle, a class three bicycle that can operate on the sidewalk, maybe six feet wide. Some of them are a little wider. But at 28 miles an hour, so almost 30 miles an hour, we have somebody traveling down that path.

They're not giving warning. They don't have bells or horns on them a lot of times. They're not wearing helmets. So you can see an average bicyclist may do 10 to 15 miles an hour max. Your road cycle guys may pop up to 30 here and there unless they're part of a Peloton and they're not racing around here.

So we don't have to worry about that. But that kind of speed is almost triple what we normally see with So perception of the vehicle coming at you or coming up behind you, you look back real quick and you go, oh, it's gonna be ten seconds and it's three seconds and it's on you. You know? So if somebody rolls off the side of the sidewalk and catches the the front tire back coming back on, you now have a 28 mile an hour crash compared to a 10 mile an hour crash. So those are some of the things that state of Florida has has broken it down.

Every e bike in that class one, two, or three is what this is talking about has every right as a bicycle and a bicyclist. So human power or electric power, as long as it falls under one of those categories, can be operated anywhere a bicycle can be operated. Bicycles and e bikes are also considered a vehicle once they hit the pavement. So they have to follow stop signs. They have to follow using a hand signal.

They have a fancy helmet or something with turn signals on it. Those need to be used and utilized. So once they hit the roadway, then we can get involved as far as violating a stop sign. Same as I write somebody a ticket for running a stop sign or stoplight or not yielding to oncoming traffic, those kind of things. Or operating a motor vehicle on a sidewalk, if it's outside of the range of these bikes, then we can start looking into that as well.

We have state statute for that. I think our biggest concern right now as the city is looking at also producing some city ordinances, I'm sorry, to regulate these vehicles in our park systems. Think it's one of the other issues we're going to touch on. This is just a quick breakdown. You'll see these scooters around a lot. They're motorized. They're only supposed to go 20 miles an hour. There's a lot of them that are going way over that. We had an officer pace one at 45 on some or on 41 in the bike lane. Oh.

You know? So that issue got person got stopped and educated on that. These are some of the state statutes that we can use. We probably have another 20 that we could use as well. But the same as bicycles, you got to have a helmet on.

If you're 16, lights and reflectors are required as always. Same with bicycles after dark. We can educate the parents or find parents that are allowing some of these regulations to be violated. Traffic signals, traffic stops, walk walk signs, those all can be enforced, obviously, a DUI. And one big thing too that a lot of people don't realize,

can't

wear headsets when you're riding as well. The earbuds that can I think it's the Pro two earbuds that have sound enhancement? If you add that on, it's hard to know if it's picking up sounds or if it's playing music in your ear. The biggest thing with that is you can't hear the ambient noise around you. So somebody blowing their horn or, you know, coming up. A car is coming up really fast on you, you don't hear it. And then you get hit or click by it. That's one of the reasons for that.

So these are kind of just things that right now they can do. I have out anything beyond where we are right now. This is kind of what we can do right now.

I don't see any of these kids on these e bikes with helmets on.

Right. And that's one of the things, bicycles as well. You've been around a long time, so Lieutenant Sullivan Yeah. From back in the day. Oh, yeah. Probably one of the people that wrote more helmet violation tickets than anyone else, and they

He had a reputation. Yes.

But he was a big, proponent of educating first, writing warnings, and then writing tickets to the kids for this is before he bikes. He retired several years ago. But, again, yes, that's one thing that we're addressing. When I'm stopping these bikes or anyone in the city is stopping these bicycles, you know, you gotta have helmet on. You gotta have a light on. You gotta have a rear light so we can see you after dark. All those things that are very important, we try to educate the parents as well. Call them up and say, hey. Stop your son. He needs to have a helmet on. Or your daughter was riding. She didn't have any lights on the bike. That's something we've been and again, you're right. Almost every one of them doesn't have a helmet on.

So some of the things after our conversation and me speaking with our PD that we looked at, or what's really happening right now in other parks. Because this is, you know, it's reasonably a new challenge. A lot of people have looked at it in different ways. Charlotte County is currently in the process of writing an ordinance. I'm waiting on some information from them.

But like in the state parks, you'll see here that they can't really restrict access because of legal implications in the state parks. So they're kind of an outlier from what we're looking at. But they have still allowed some controlled use and not on trails that are designated specifically for pedestrian or equestrian. So that's where they've kind of taken it and said, Okay, well, this is a no e bike zone. This is a no electric scooter zone.

But as a whole, they're not prohibiting them. So some of the things that they're doing to be able to allow this, not only in state parks, but in some of our regional parks that you'll see around here, Sarasota County with the Legacy Trail has implemented, and Officer Mackie can speak a little bit more to but a speed limit. So there's at least a speed limit posted. It gives them some enforceability as well as some of the challenges that we've seen with them getting onto our sports fields, ripping up the turf is when we have designated areas like that, we can prohibit the motorized vehicles, e bikes or scooters totally from that area by signing it. To take that a step further, we can also have, you know, violators would be trespassed so that we could get to that point.

And that's kind of an easy fix that we could do right now. Wouldn't take a whole lot. These are some examples of concepts for signs that they have and they're currently using in areas around us.

And on that as well, Sarasota County right now is revamping their county ordinance for the Legacy Trail because the way their law is written right now, their city ordinance is a misdemeanor to violate the speed limit. They kind of looked at that and went, well, we don't really want to criminally cite someone for doing 16 miles an hour on the trip. But they are having an uptick, a huge uptick in e bikes that are going that are not class one and class two or class three. But obviously, any one of these e bikes can go over 15 by statute. So that's what they're trying to regulate.

But they're going to make it a civil violation instead of a criminal offense. And they're revamping that now with Sarasota County. I'm sure Charlotte County I know I ride rails to trails down in Charlotte. And they have a 15 mile an hour sign that's been there for four or five years now as well trying to regulate their park trails. It'd be a good idea.

I know missus Morgan and I talked a little bit before the meeting started about the Greenway Trail having issues with speed enforcement. And currently, I can't enforce anything on that trail because we don't have an ordinance to regulate that. So I can catch them before they get to Appomattox coming northbound or on price and deal with some speed issues and things like that. Once they enter that park, that's where unless they're doing something egregious and criminal that we can deal with from a state statute point of view, we need the ordinances to be designed to cover speed issues and also tearing up the fields. We've had numerous criminal complaints on that, criminal mischief charges.

It's costing the county and the sorry, keep saying county. They're costing the city a lot of money, thousands upon thousands of dollars to fix these issues.

So that's where we kind of look at what have some of the other areas done with ordinances. So yes, we can put up the signs. And probably going to be the first thing that I'm looking at, especially on our fields, is to get those signs up right away. And that gives them enforceability and gives us the right to trespass. Does it do anything more than that? No. Does it give him the right to go on the Greenway Trail? No. So that is where the state has permitted local governments to regulate e bike operations on paths, trails and other areas within their city and jurisdiction and consider this as part of a park ordinance. So the city of Jupiter passed updated park rules restricting e bikes.

They may not be ridden in fields or on anything unpaved. This rule is about safety, speeding and the other people that are using those areas, right? The city of Weston amended its city code to restrict e bikes and e scooters to roads, parking areas within city parks and then often doubled that up so you can't be on an unimproved area and you can't be going over 15. So even though if you went into Butler Park right now, it's posted at 25 miles per hour, I believe, your e bike would be posted at 15. So there would be like a double speed limit there.

And it wouldn't be allowed on the grass or in those areas. We did have a child airlifted out this year from Butler Park, driving on the grass and hit a parked car, drove straight into it on an e bike. So it would prevent a little bit of that stuff as well, which is not just the enforcement part but the safety part. City of Parkland adopted on a first reading so far, so it does have to come back for a second reading, an ordinance limiting e bikes and similar devices in city parks except on designated roads and parking areas. That is consistently when I researched this for you guys, consistently what I saw was limited to improved surfaces, limited with speeds in parks, and enforceable by that ordinance.

So the multi use trail would be part of that as well as an improved area they could ride on. But that's where we need the speed limits to be able to be enforced. Right now, the Sarasota County on the Legacy Trail is using their motor officers with their lasers or radar, and they're sitting out on the Legacy Trail and trying to curb some of the speeds that they're having now. And anything pushing 30 plus, they are issuing the criminal citations until they get that ordinance change where they can do civil infraction instead. But we don't want to rid a 16 year old or a 60 mile an hour violation and make it criminal for a 14 year old child to be on a e bike.

I don't think the direction that the city wants or community would really want. But we do need to do something for the safety of our people that are using these trails. And I don't know what the numbers are, but just by working here, we have a lot of parks and we have a lot of people utilizing every one of them.

Well, just got the numbers from the Legacy Trail North Port Connector. And over the last year, there was over 60,000 people that were on the Legacy Trail North Port Connector. And our Greenway Trail right now, I pull on average 3,000 to 4,000 people per month on our people counter, just our small Greenway little town. So there is a lot of traffic. And with the increase, I mean, after Christmas, I'm sure you've all seen many new e bikes came out last month and they're kind of taking over.

So with that said, we talk about an ordinance. The ordinance process is specific, specific, right? For this board, you make recommendations to the commission. And if you so wish, that would be the motion that you would be looking for, is to make a recommendation to the commission to consider an ordinance in the regulation of the e bikes and scooters in parks and on parks property. That being said, that would be the first step in that.

The ordinance would then have to be written in conjunction with our city attorney, Caitlin, who is sitting here with us, or her team. We would have to then have it introduced at city commission meetings. It must be approved by them to go that way that they want us to pursue it first with your recommendation. And then it would be public notice, public hearing, the voting, the adoption, the recording. It's a long process. That's kind of what I was preluding to at the beginning was this is the first step for you guys to take this information. We're here for any questions and then decide if that's which avenues you would like to pursue or have us pursue.

I can't speak for the chief or what his direction is. But I've been tasked with these e bike dealing with e bikes and various public and things like that. I can say that, you know, we wanna regulate them as best possible for the safety of all of our residents here in the city. One of the biggest things I would see as a traffic officer is the importance of the 15 mile an hour on the trails and to be able to enforce that, have our motor unit out there running up and down the trail every once in a while to just make people aware that, hey, we're out here. We're doing it.

The other thing we're seeing and this won't really have an effect on your ordinances other than speed and then tearing up of the fields is we're seeing much more powerful e bikes that are on the roadway. Most of them that you'll see in after I say this, you'll probably see more. The ones you see with no pedals and they look like mini dirt bikes, those are the biggest problem we're having. Some of those manufacturers are producing bikes that go over 100 miles an hour. They're no different than a straight off road gas powered two fifty cc bike or something like that, for an example, able to tremendous speeds, a ton of torque, the amount of power they have or the reason that they're tearing up the fields, things like that.

So we want to be able to enforce that as well. And we can enforce some of that with the criminal mischief. But if we have the signage properly displayed through our ordinances and all, that way we can't do And

back the next question.

Versions of them that aren't street legal, or allowed to be on sidewalks, those are the ones we're having a huge problem with. And, there is state statute for all those as well. You can't drive a car on a sidewalk. You can't drive a golf cart on a sidewalk. You can't drive an e bike.

One of the ones that are outside of that category on those roadways and we can enforce that. But once they hit that trail, then we don't have the power to enforce that part of it. And that's what we'd like to see the city and parks and recs be able to have that power as well so we can help them enforce it. If we have 3,000 to 4,000 people on our sidewalks on that small stretch every month, then we're lucky we're not working more incidents. And I had no idea it was that high.

I'm surprised we're not working more injuries, especially people that have dogs and dogs on leashes. And unfortunately, people that walk their dogs with no leashes and then an e bike comes screaming by and you might get somebody taken down or a dog injured because of that as well. And so we need to have some regulation in there.

Think we should do whatever we can do because my husband and I are on these trails a lot. And I will say the price corridor to the Legacy Trail and all this stuff, I don't see that as much of a problem because it's wider, okay? So I've seen them on there and they're fine. But it's wider, so it's not on the Greenway Trail, though, I mean, as I say, there's a couple, and they're like 08:00 on Saturday morning, and they're going fishing, and they have just about mowed people down. But it's really hard for you guys to be in the middle of the Greenway Trail.

You know, they can look nice on both ends, you know, if they see you. But in the middle, you know, where there's these people, and you have a lot of people with the dogs, with the little kids, with the scooters, and what is it you know, somebody's gonna get hurt, number one. And the other thing is you don't want other people to think, I don't want to use that trail anymore, because they love it. That thing is loved. Yeah. You know, and you don't want them to give up that and along Northport Boulevard too, man. You know, we've seen people just about get mowed down and you don't hear them coming, you know? And they won't say anything, you know?

Supposed to have horns or, give a verbal response like coming up on your left or Yeah.

No. No. These kids and that will not do that. I mean, they're

You know, those kind of things are statutes as well.

Yeah. They're entitled, they think.

The way we can enforce it once we have an ordinance for the speed is when I say motors, I mean our motorcycle, unit. They can ride up on those trails and then go and enforce it. That's what the county is doing as well with their motor unit. So when I said motors, it's their motorcycle unit. They can because they're two wheel, they can fit in between the stop bars that we have up in place for the trail to keep other larger vehicles off. And then they can go up there and and cut down on some of the speeders and some of these problem juveniles that are Yeah. Becoming an issue there.

I I

know,

for off roading?

So the bicyc the e bikes, I wanna call them e motorcycles, they fall under that ATV realm. The class one, two, and three do not. And that's under the seven hundred seven hundred and fifty watts or less pedal assisted 28 mile an hour max. That range? No.

They're considered the same as a bicycle. So they can be on the trails and on places that so they're not considered a an I I that I was referring to, the much faster bikes, that's most of them without pedals. And there's a ton of regulation on those as well. They are no different than an unregistered motor vehicle. So they have to, technically, if we wanted to go the criminal side on enforcement on that kind of stuff, we have a lot more violations that we could imply or use on them, unregistered motor vehicle, driver's license required, registration required, motorcycle endorsement required.

Those are all criminal insurance helmets. And those are all things that can come back on the parents as well. So that is an avenue we sometimes use. I have a couple repeat offenders that are starting to I catch one of them, I know for specifically, I've already told him and his father that his son will face the criminal charges next because he's just an ongoing issue. Sold one bike and got a new one that's faster that's running 60 miles an hour down our sidewalks, and that can't happen. That's just too he uses the green way to go home every day.

I feel like too parents are thinking this is an easy way for their kids to get home and get from place to place. So this way, they're not driving them. And they're after school to get to school and those sorts of things. So this way, they're not taking the bus.

Right. And if they follow the rules of by the class one, two, and three and have helmets and stop at stop signs and give notice around people that are walking, then that's great. The problem is they're not doing that. The parents aren't educating their kids Or on the parents are buying the ones that are outside of that class one, two, or three classification. That's where we're running

As well as the enforcement on the streets is permissible. In the parks right now it's not. So that's kind of where we're bridging at this meeting is, like he said, he can take care of it before they get onto the trail. But as of right now, once they get on that trail, there's nothing he can do about that.

Yeah. That's where we're trying to be able to enforce my and enforce the Greenway Trail and enforce any of the other parks.

Even City Center Green. I mean, I've been out here, the Poinsettia parade, and I was trying to put things away. And they were circling me. There was like 15 of them on bikes, and they were all over the place. And you know what it's like at night there. It's dark, and kids are not lighted. They weren't on helmets. They were all over. I was worried about people loading things in. These like, I literally babysat 12 kids on e bikes for an hour.

And we've had damage to the fields in the back as well of the parks. So the alternative football field that they use

Larry T. Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

That's had damage as well on it. Yeah.

Butler Park was ripped up.

Yeah. And with us also that as a cut through for the bridge for emergency vehicles. And we have these kits back there on those on that path back there as well. They're creating an issue because we we know and the fire department knows that we have to be extra cautious because one of these kids with no lights is gonna pop out around the corner. And they're not gonna win, unfortunately. It's gonna be a bad incident.

Alright. So we need to do that motion.

So yeah, anybody else with any questions or comments around the table? Then if not

him up.

Is he Okay?

He's fine. Do you have any comments or concerns on the e bikes? Mm-mm.

No? Okay.

We're good.

Well, it's not nap time. Okay.

Are you okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

You wrote down

No. I didn't write down. I just No. No. I didn't write down an order. But yeah, yeah. We want to go with the 15 miles an hour. Want to go with anything we need to to help the sports field and all anything we need to protection in the park.

Suggest it? Yeah. Okay. Suggested motion would be to pursue park signage to enforce speed limits and restricted areas on the short term basis, followed by the pursuit of an ordinance that regulates the use of e bikes, scooters within parks in the city of Northrop.

Go for it.

Okay. Whatever she said. I'll go with what she has.

Is it okay to ask a question?

So this would be a public comment on this issue. Tiff, I have a public comment on this issue. So she usually would ask for a public comment, and then you could say it. But we're just prompting it for you for now.

Okay. Thank

you. Is

it possible

to put something in place that would actually restrict the use of it in places like Myakinhaatchee, where there's forests and nature trails and such?

Absolutely. That could be part of the ordinance that would state that some of the environmental parks, the same as the state parks did, would have restricted use at that in those locations. So as we begin to develop the information from the area, we'll have to put that all together. It'll go to our city attorneys. They'll say what we can and can't put in there and how to do that. But yes, absolutely. So maybe just an amendment to that motion.

Amend it to what the Miyakahatchee and any of our parks.

So the amendment that we're looking for, Tif, would be to amend the motion to include restricted use in specific environmental park areas.

What she said. We're going with it. Yes, definitely. You are right because all of a sudden, they're showing up there too, and they never ever were there.

So now you have to vote on the amendment first and then on the motion corrected? Amendment first.

Amendment first.

And then Amendment first. Okay. Anybody seconding?

Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Okay. The original motion?

Mhmm. Okay.

Second, anybody? It was made by Jones. Yeah.

Second. Second. Second.

Second. Second. Second.

Second.

Just glad that we're doing something about the safety of our citizens.

Okay,

sorry. I'm just glad we're

doing something about the safety of our civilians because obviously with new technology, there's going to be dangers to that technology. So having ordinance displaced is definitely going to be a nice big step towards keeping everybody safe.

Anything else to that one? No? Is there any other public comment? No more rent? Okay. All right. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, officer Mackie, for being here. Appreciate the time away from your family to join us this evening.

I'm actually going out to work.

Can you write your name?

Sure. Alright.

We can move on one moment.

Then have a safe night.

Thank you.

Thank you.

New business. Discussion and possible action regarding election of new chair and vice chair. So I cannot run for chair.

I

am going to nominate Donald to be chair. Donald. I

appreciate that, but I'm kinda busy right now with some other things that I would not be able to.

Anybody else have the nomination?

Hello?

Yes,

I have a nomination.

Yes, Oh. Speak. Oh, sorry. Yes.

I thought I was talking.

Yeah. You gotta speak up.

I'm like,

the thumbs aren't working.

Got it. Yeah.

I have a nomination for Ms. Morgan to be chair.

Thank you. I love you too.

No? Okay. Alright.

I told him, you know, that if anybody else wants it, that's fine. But if not, I'll do it.

I second the motion to

You're Tiff. Joan Morgan chair. Morgan, chair. Who's vice chair? Nobody yet. Nobody yet. It. Open for nominations for vice chair.

Who wants it? You want it?

Well, Jim, I'm a student member.

I don't think so.

I think I wouldn't believe they would either.

I think so because you have to be able to sign on the minutes in the absence of the chair.

So I'm open to be

a vice chair.

And I'll nominate Donald for vice chair.

There we go. There

we go. I help you out a lot anyway. I try try to give you guys the as much as I can.

Well, you're doing a pretty good job.

Well, thank you.

Alright. Donald, accept that?

Yes.

Okay. Vice chair. Vice

chair. Yep.

That's right. Alright.

Moving on. Done.

Perfect. I'm done.

Updates.

Alright. Yeah.

You finish up this morning.

Thank you. And you're off the hook that in.

Review a discussion of recent and upcoming park and recreation department events.

Oh, we don't do much around here.

December accomplishments.

All right. Well, Swim with Santa was a huge success, over 300 people, resulting in 700 people on the pool deck for the Swim with Santa. The Lazy River project finalized this week. We have it back and have taken it back to get it up and running for spring break. We're looking forward to that. And Warmineral Springs plans continued. We got 50% plans for redesign this week for review. And it's looking like the construction at Warm Mill Springs will begin in July. Good.

Very So

they've already been out doing some predeterminations on the selective demolition that they have to do to preserve those buildings. So they've already been out there doing that. So that's very exciting news for us on the Warm Mineral Springs front. We also hit record numbers this year for budget purposes. Warm Mineral Springs brought in nearly $2,000,000 and the Aquatic Center was at 1,600,000.0 So very good numbers on those.

So you'll be seeing that stuff come out very soon. We'll be putting out the impact report, which is a report we do each year at the end of the year once we get all those numbers back in that says how many kids were served in different capacities, how many dollars were made, how many community services were provided, that type of stuff. On the front of recreation, I want to start a little bit with DeFi. Kevin has been working diligently with the Hendrie Collier Charlotte Sarasota Drug Free Youth Coalition. And we're planning at this point in July holding the first youth drug free summit here in Northport.

So the kids will be able to come, have education. There'll be kids coming from each one of those different coalitions and we'll be the first one to host that. So we're looking really forward to that. As well as he's created a program called the Drug Free Youth Ambassador And we'll be looking for nominations. There'll be a peer to peer nomination where other kids can nominate a Drug Free Youth member to be an ambassador.

And they will take on some of the peer to peer training and representation at some of our events. So it's more youth to youth as opposed to adult to youth interactions. So we'll be working on that. We obviously had over 70 parade units at the parade with over 35 different vendors at the marketplace. We achieved winter camp participation record at two twenty one campers for winter break camp.

That's the highest enrollment we've ever had for that one. Usually with that week of Christmas, we end up that week's pretty small and then the next week's pretty big. But this one, they were full. We had 35 participants in our K9 Connection with Rescue Garage at the K9 Club. And they had a lot of fun socialization for the dogs and some training stuff going on at the same time out there.

So that was a new program that kicked off and went very well. We've reinstalled some wood chips at several playgrounds, just bringing up that fall zone to regulation. Rebuilt a broken bat house at Butler Park, and football field lights were repaired so all of the football lights at this moment are working in Northport. Thank you, Ian, and let's get through another hurricane season without any damage. That being said, today I walked Dallas White Park.

The ADA transition plan is going really well. The new field renovation is awaiting the Musco lights arrived and it's awaiting the sod coming in to around the twenty sixth. You should see Dallas White really pick up and come into the homestretch there. And then Boca Chica I was out to last week and it's coming along so very well. It's making me very happy. It's waiting delivery of the playground equipment now. But it's going to be open book. Chico, we're going to be looking at probably a ribbon cutting for that in February. So mark it on your calendars. I will hope you would all be there to open Yeah,

let us know. Went fast from beginning

to end. Know. That's because it's such an uninvasive park. Like, it's just we took that nature. We went around what was there, and we created a usable space. So it's the future of parks for Northport, in my opinion. And as long as I'm sitting here, that's what you're going to see, a lot more of them. Because it's just a really good way to keep that balance with the development we have going on and keep those natural areas preserved and have a place for those gopher tortoises to stay. I don't need to move them to put a park in. Maybe three houses down had to move them, but they can all move into the park.

In administration, we did have the master plan approved on December 9. I guess we talked about that a little bit. The master plan is approved and went very well. That was a big lift in a very short time, but we got it done. And I think we have a great future working with developers as well as our own stuff because it gave us some good guidelines and standards that when we do have developers come in who want to put a parking in their area, now we've got something to say. This is how it has to be and this is how it has to go. Some of the things we have upcoming is we have the rock, run, and roll coming up. We have 197 yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. On The Green on January 30, Wolfstock on February 7, Community Yard Sale Newcomer Day on February 14. So those are our current I I

just got a couple of things to add. I mean, I tell you what, what the parks and rec did to hire Kevin Mace as a DeFi thing has changed the whole world. Truly, it had. And we have now a DeFi unit under his help because he's working really well with you have the DeFi Northport, okay? And then you have the DeFi club at Northport High School, okay?

And they're all working he's working with these kids, and they've set up a DeFi unit in Heron Creek Middle School and at Woodland, okay? It's coming along very well. In fact, the students there are saying that they're getting a lot more than they expected, so it's really coming along great. And now the DeFi in the high school has over 90 members, which is amazing, okay? Also, on January 20, starts at Northport University, which is going to have students.

It's going to have them from Teen Court and from, the DeFi. And also, we started the retesting for people who are members of DeFi, the retesting of drug tests, all right? And also, there's a new teen room that's really developing in the Morgan Center, which is phenomenal. Open as Monday. Oh, my gosh. I mean, you want to be a kid again, you know? I want to go back eighty years. And and I'll tell you what. It's a whole new world. We have a new administration at Northport High School.

It's not just that. The school's the school, and we are what we are. But what is so great is the communication. It's becoming a lot better and the cooperation and the concern. The new principal is going to be at our next DeFi testing. He's already said he would do that. So it's kind of like a very the two way street is becoming much easier, much nicer. So it's very, very, very encouraging.

Yes, ma'am.

So I do have a

question about Welland Park. Welland Park is part of Northport, right?

So yes.

So I think there's like a downtown area there. Is there anything the Parks and Recreations plans on doing with like Welland Park for the New Year?

So Welland Park and Winchester Ranch, which section of Welland Park that's being developed, are annexed properties to the city. They're under an annexation agreement and there's very specific things that we do with them. They have their own recreation and special event team. Where we kind of get involved in it is when there's property and they need to have parks and rec access to the general public because it's very different when you have HOAs with gated communities. And they can provide things inside them, but we still mandate that they have publicly accessible spaces.

So we try to work with them. It's been a give and take and sometimes good and sometimes not good, depending on how their litigation has gone because they've had some legal issues with the city. But we look forward to working with them. We did put them in the master plan. In the master plan, it identifies that in the first agreement, there was 15 acres of parkland that was supposed to be given to us for development of a park.

In the new development for this Winchester Ranch annexation, there's additional stuff. So we're going to work with them closely on what what does the city need in that location based on what our current inventory is. So recommendation would be, like, more sports fields would be something we would wanna put out there. Another, like, community sized park would be something we want to see put out there. And so we would work with them on how that works. Thank you. And

also another thing with Welland Park, okay, we also already have a DeFi coordinator who's going to be working with Kevin Mason at Jennifer Stringer, who is the one at North Point High School, but she's going to Ella Park. So that is already established. Alright.

Review next thing is review and discuss parks and rec department agendas with the upcoming city commission.

Yeah. We don't have a lot on the agenda right now. The first one we have is on 02/02. We have the Warm Mineral Springs Park fee structure discussion. It was an item that was asked for us to bring back.

When we talked to them last spring, we had made some suggestions on implementing some fees. They've asked us to bring back with some more information this year. Kind of the Parks and Recreation Department's position on fees right now is we would really like to not touch fees until such time as the buildings are complete. We think that aligning that with the opening of new buildings and then at that time have fee increases or fee changes would be ideal. But based on the fact that it was asked for us to bring back to commission, we're bringing them back some information on Tutu.

The other thing is changes to our citywide sponsorship policy we will be addressing on Tutu. The current sponsorship policy has been in place for a number of years. It's kind of antiquated. When you see, for an example, at the Freedom Festival, it'll say American Irrigation presenting sponsor for the fireworks. Fireworks cost Trish $40,000 The fireworks cost American Irrigation $2,000 to be a presenting sponsor.

There's a big discrepancy in that. So we are trying to look at a way to kind of broaden the sponsorship program, not maybe use the word presenting unless you're responsible for more than a certain percentage of the cost of that thing that you're presenting. And then find ways that we can actually increase ways for people to sponsor. So maybe, which we don't currently have, say at the Poinsettia Festival, we have the bounce houses. Well, your company wanted to sponsor the bounce houses, you could actually just sponsor that amenity at that event. So we're trying to broaden it open to see that we could get more of that and reduce the amount of money that it costs. So you'll see that coming up

on twotwo.

And then on twoten, we have our licensed training provider agreement with the Red Cross. That is just a re up. We've had it since we opened the Aquatic center. It is the training agreement that we are under that allows me to train lifeguards, teach water safety instructors, run the junior lifeguard program. Everything that we do under the Red Cross has to be under that agreement that says that we are utilizing their to be able to do that. So it's just a a renew of that one. And that is what we have. Alright.

Thank you

very much. And finally tonight, review and discuss possible direction regarding Dallas White boat ramp options.

So this was another one that from your agenda items that you guys had. We're kind of at the early stage, and attached to the agenda tonight is the survey responses we got back from the the community. I don't I don't think she printed them off for you guys. But we can I they're attached to your agenda so you can see them? So the thing that we've we've got right now is there's basically, we can fix it or we cannot fix it.

We're waiting on a cost for that. The people that we did pull and this survey of responses, we did have 198 people take the survey which is actually significant because when we put out surveys in other areas, especially widespread, our annual needs assessment we only get from the entire city about 400 responses. So to get 198 on this is pretty good. And of those 198, 98 people felt that that ramp was very important. So that being said, obviously the way that the use is there, the public wants it to be there.

The problem is going to be it's unfunded. The damages are not they're not a funded fix. So it's going to once we get those those estimates back for how much it's going to cost, any time we touch the water, the Marine Corps of Engineers is involved in it. It ends up jumping our costs through the roof. So once we get it back, we have to look at what those options are.

One of the options they said was just completely take it out and riprap it and don't have it as an access point. One of them was to try to repair what's existing and then another one was they were going try to take out the existing concrete and redo something. So we're waiting on costs for that. But at that point in time, when we get the cost back, we will have to go for some type of budget amendment or funding source. Because as you know, the surtaxes have been really eaten up with things that are happening for capital development throughout the city.

Parks and Recreation really heavily relies right now on purely impact fees. And our impact fees are governed on how we use them. And impact fees means I have to show growth. I can't use an impact fee to do a replacement or a repair. So this is going to have to come back in front of commission with some type of prioritization and have them make a decision on what they want to do budget. So you wanted the information on it. We can take it as just information tonight. When I get the costs back, I can bring back again. And then we can kind of say, do you want to endorse one way or another? Or you can endorse it now if you'd like without that.

It's up to you guys. Or not. My suggestion would be let's wait for weeks until

we go to this site.

I agree with waiting.

That is all.

All right. Future agenda items?

Okay. One thing too, we talked about last time, the cost of the bounce houses and all the stuff connected with the festivals and that parks and recs and then it was said, well, it's too late, you know, festivals here and all this stuff. Well, now it's not too late. You know, now we're talking about next year, and I see two possibilities. Either you have, like, sponsors for these bounce houses in that, and these people put big signs for sponsoring, you know, blah, blah, or else we charge them. You know, people are used to being charged for doing these things and that. And so if you want your kid to go to all the bounce houses, you spend you pay $5 or whatever, then that's being absorbent. But, you know, try to recoup some of that money. So I think if we're going to do something about it, we can't wait until next November and say, hey, we got another problem. We need to do it now.

No. You guys did make a motion on that. And that recommendation to add fees for use was there, but we were post the citywide fee ordinance. So it is in our notes to bring that up and put it on the citywide fee ordinance to be able to charge for use on those services. So we do have that in there from our last motion when we made last spring. Okay.

Maybe I'm thinking this in just my head. It didn't happen. But I thought last meeting we had a motion on the agenda to go over this meeting about the acquiring the going before the commission again and revisiting for that property that's

Yes. For the environmental On the agenda item, you asked for us to research the process to do that. So I haven't got the answers back yet. I put it through the city attorney's office. And when I make a request to them, it can take up to thirty days for that request to be responded to. So I don't have an answer yet. So I'm hoping to have that for next meeting.

Okay.

So we can put it

on the agenda for the next meeting? Yeah. So well, we have it because we're only every other month now. We should be fine for the next meeting.

Yes. So I had a question about the Poineta parade or Poineta. Sorry, Poineta parade. Is there any public information with whether the Parks and Recreations gets anything from that? Because I know we had a judge, but does that money, I guess, I think the city made does that go to us, or does that go to the city?

Does that make sense? Do you mean us by Parks and Recreation?

Yes. Sorry.

So I'll explain a little bit how that works. So Parks and Recreation is what's called a general fund department, which means we have to take the money that comes in from taxpayers, it gets into the general fund, and it gets distributed out. Any revenues that we bring in so even with exception of Warm Mineral Springs, because it's a different type of fund goes back into the general fund. So I don't if I if I spend $10 and you pay me $20 to do it, I don't get it directly back, but it does go back into the general fund to offset my costs. Okay. Makes sense? Yeah. Warm Mineral Springs is a different fund. It's called an enterprise fund. It's run more like a business. So the money that goes into Warm Mineral Springs comes out of Warm Mineral Springs, and it stays in its own fund.

So even the water park is a general fund? Even the water park is a general fund. Okay.

I would assume it costs a lot more to run the festival than you make from people.

Yes. You look at, really, vendors who may be paying $20 person to participate as a vendor, it costs us way more money than that. And you have to remember, when we look at the Poinsettia Festival, it's not just a parks and recreation cost. Think of how many police officers were there. Think of how many firefighters were there. It's a very it hits almost every department. We have public works there. We have solid waste there. We have utilities there. We have everybody has a role in creating that because of the quality of life component for the city.

So as Ms. Morgan said, so is there any way we can offset some of those fees for the parade without ruining kind of like the life aspect of the parade?

A parade is a really tough one to recoup costs on. Because if you charge your participants in the parade, they're not going to participate if it's too high, right? They're already committing their time to purchase decorations and put their vehicles in and do that stuff. So doing that is really high. There's really no way to charge admission for people to be able to come and watch a parade because they're just going to go outside of that area that you're paying for and do it somewhere else.

So that's one that's really not an easy one to recoup. Where when we have the bounce houses, if we were going to have a charge for that, that potentially could at least bring back the cost associated with that amenity. Because that is a big cost. When you look at the bounce houses that were there at the Poinsettia, it's about a $12,000 night for bounce But now you've had I mean, we don't have our numbers come our numbers should be coming back in here anytime. We have a a data pool that gives us our numbers.

But I'm gonna say we probably were eight to 10,000 people here that night. So easily, you know, the amount of use, it's worth it. But how much do you recoup on that? You're going have to sell maybe you're going to sell a pass for $10 Kids are going to bounce on everything. It's going to help, but it's not going to completely cover. There's still in those types of free city events, there's still going to be a loss.

May I make a motion, or is there any way I could kind of ask if we could analyze those specific data reports once you get it, just so us as the Parks and Recreations members could just see the fees and everything.

Sure. But you have to specifically give me the directive in your motion that you want. So I have the data of how many people are here. I have the data of somewhat demographically fees. Unless we implement them, I don't have any data on that yet. We would have to try it to get the data on the fee side. So if you have a specific set of

data you're requesting, you can absolutely request that from me. I make a motion to ask for the data set of fees regarding the point setup parade whenever that comes out.

I will second.

Who second?

Vote. Vote against us. All in favor?

Aye. All

opposed? Aye.

Work with that. Yeah. I'll work with that. Okay. I get you. I know what you're

talking about.

Yeah. Thank you.

Let me ask. Isn't it when those bats, the folks that have those contraptions, that's an opportunity. That's like free advertising for them too when they're out there, right?

Yeah. When we procure them, we put it out for bid. And then they bid on the job. And once they did the job, we go with the lowest bid and get out of there. So yeah, it's for them. Now some of them do a really good job at bringing extra stuff because they know it's a big day and they have that. But it's definitely a business opportunity for them.

Make So some

they aren't charged like a flat fee to be there.

No. They actually we hire the bounce houses. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Any other public comment? All right then. It is 07:54. I adjourn the meeting. Hey.