Town Council - Special Meeting

Thank you everybody for coming to this special call meeting. Did we have anybody? No? No. Some citizenry yet, except two small ones. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved.

Second.

All right, all in favor? Aye. Okay, the next thing is the workshop. We're focused on the recreation. I'll call it a theme or whatever else in the section. But before we start on that, I would just kind of in guidance from my standpoint, we should, I believe we should be looking at this issue more in an aspirational way that's a strategic way not an operational way so if we start dropping down into details and operation and asking you questions about what grass seed you're going to be putting out in october i'm going to stop that if we get too far beyond what i'm going to say two or three councils you know we're out in never never land I'll say, let's rethink that a little bit. And I would encourage, having done hundreds of strategic things, if we have either one of those topics, that we put a list up there. Historically, that was in my term, that was called the parking lot. We said, we'll come back to it. We'll stop discussing the minutiae here. We'll put it up here for further discussion at the end of the meeting or maybe the December meeting, depending on how we go. And if we get too far out of the horizon that this council or subsequent councils can implement or impact, we should probably . The ideas are capable, but it's probably beyond what this council could impact. So that's kind of what's in my head. You might have problems with that, but I think if not, we won't get finished with this first section. Any issues with that? No. Okay. The next thing I would say is, as I turn

um i'll just i want to say just a few words of sort of introduction also we're calling this a strategic plan update i think it's a little more than the update that we've done in the last couple of sessions simply because as you can see a lot's changed and a lot's been accomplished um and priorities may have changed could be that we don't change TO START BY SUGGESTING THAT ALL OF COUNCIL JUST HAVE AN OPEN MIND. NO IDEAS ARE OFF LIMITS. THIS IS ASPIRATIONAL AS THE MAYOR MENTIONED. WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO GIVE EQUAL TIME TO EACH OF YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR THOUGHTS AS WE GO THROUGH THIS BRAINSTORMING SESSION. I DON'T ENVISION THAT IT'S LIKE A YAY OR NAY VOTE. on anything during this session. We move forward by consensus. If it looks like they're nodding heads in agreement, we will start moving forward in those directions. And also just asking to stay on topic. And Jim mentioned having a parking lot. I think it's a great idea. I'll probably tear one of these sheets off and put it up on the wall. And if there are ideas that don't seem to be resolvable in the short term, we put them up there as something we can discuss later. We have resources that we can consult if we need it. The Parks and Rec master plan and the Whitaker Park master plan are both on tabs up on the screen if we need to pull those up. Also the pedestrian plan. There is some discussion about trails in the recreation section. There's also discussion about trails in other sections. So we may or may not get through that today, but those resources are available as well. Sean's here to talk about those. So my thought was today we do a traditional brainstorming session. So I'm mindful of Mike's time because he needs to leave.

Right. I'll apologize up front. The weather's changed my flight schedule and I need to really be out of here by like 1135 at the latest.

So we'll do one brainstorming session. I want to talk a little bit first about our internal operations. So this is a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats brainstorming session. So we'll talk first about what are the things that the town does well in the world of recreation? What are the things that we can improve on doing as a unit? And then talk about the external factors. What are the opportunities that might become available to us in the next five years? And then what are the challenges? Growing population or dwindling demographic elements or whatever it is that you think are external factors that are going to impact how we provide recreation in the future. I'll just go ahead and sort of get started by opening the floor to ask Council to just throw out some ideas and some thoughts on what are the things that you think that the Town of Oak Ridge Parks and Recreation and Administration and Council has gotten right and does very well, and does well, in terms of providing recreation services.

I mean, I'll say that, you know, since moving here, I've been impressed with just kind of the continual evolving and you know additions to the park experience for everyone and you know considering multi-ages it's not kind of just here's our park we have it that's what you get so um adding new elements yeah that's a great point and i think

One of the things we've also done very thoughtfully that I think is a win that I hear from a lot of people about is that we balance those new amenities with a commitment to keeping the parks beautiful in terms of open space and beautiful grassy areas and things like that.

That's an active and passive balance.

Right, a balance. Yeah, and specifically open space.

Inside Oak Ridge or outside Oak Ridge is considered to be, without a question, the best. Whether you're using our facilities or just walking around or whatever, there's no one that says that Oak Ridge Park is, frankly, not the best. I've been to a couple of them. I've been to Stokesdale. I've been to Pleasant Garden. And to me, there's no question. You come here, whether you're here for sports or here for enjoyment, it's a step change from what's beyond us. I haven't been to Bandera since they got kicked off today. I haven't been there.

I was there at the opening, but I haven't been there. And we compete more with the regional parks, and someone pointed that out to us several years ago, that we're not competing with Summerfield or Stokesdale. We're the type of park that's more in the league of, well, Triad Park is much, much bigger, but in quality, we're more competing with them.

I'm going to sum that up by just saying it's a traditional. and what I'm hearing is probably most like maintenance, the upkeep, the elements offered. Is there something specific about what you think sets us apart?

Well, I would just say, you know, it gives this town an overall sense of pride.

Does it mean you have high standards, like you're saying that you'll claim?

Yeah, each individual element is built to a high standard, which is pretty impressive.

Go ahead. I was going to say that I do like how there's been multiple surveys over the years of trying to solicit feedback on things. So public outreach? Yeah.

And in terms of responsiveness, I would say that our park staff is not only present, but always responsive to people who are in the park. So we have a

active presence that i think a lot of parks don't have by our staff well and besides responsive you know just observing at music in the park or the kickoff whatever is that's not only just responsive, they're very personable, there's professionalism, and the pride goes to your team too. And you see that, and to me, that's something that, you know, they're there to do a job, but they're doing the job in a very, very positive way that's a good reflection. They're good ambassadors for our town. something to indicate that they're the park staff. It's not necessarily highly noticeable, but they're there and they engage. I think that's a positive.

You touched on events. I think our events in the park are another big plus because they turn our parks into community hubs and You know, the amphitheater really started that, but then events that are now held traditionally in the park, whether at the Veterans Honor Green, and then the farmhouse adding another community, and the shelters, of course, have long been there, but it makes it a community gathering place that people really respond to and love.

And along that line, I would say, and I think we now have the ability to do a better job of measuring, you know, the events and what's, you know, and therefore with our Parks and Rec Committee, which they can, I think they can make better recommendations to council because I think they're getting useful information from MIREC. that's easy to obtain.

And the big plus of MIREC is that it's easier for residents to use to make reservations. They used to kind of have to a lot of times come in here with their check. They can now do it online. That's a huge plus. But I'm sure the weakness, if you go back over time... Is that part of the active open space balance or adding new elements?

Remind you of experiences? When you get to weaknesses, I'm just telling you a little bit of time I've been on council. You know, there was, we don't do enough for old people is the general theme, and that'll be weakness.

We're just talking about the parks at this point, or are we talking about recreation in general?

I think we're talking about recreation in general.

Well, I mean, then we have to have something up there about trails, the growing network of trails. Okay.

But it's not under adding new elements.

I think it's... Yeah, well... Well, yeah, I mean, it is part of that and part of variety, but... It goes beyond the, those were about the park specifically. It goes, the trails, the network of trails goes from within the park, extends beyond the parks. I think that's. It goes mountains to the sea. Well, yeah, but they're not all MST trails. Local trails. Right.

By the way, it's generally always easier

Parking, more specifically.

Lack thereof. Well, not always. I mean, only for certain events.

Actually, would that be infrastructure or is that recreation? It's recreation.

Yeah, it's a weakness of the park. We don't, for Bridge Fest, some events, we don't have enough park. Or special events.

Well, it's not just special events. Go to Heritage Farm Park whenever the soccer practice is going on.

So I'll say special events and...

Special and sports events. I mean, I think when there's not a sporting event, there's no problem over there. But so far, even for soccer practices, it's crowded. But are they out of parking? I haven't seen that.

Yes. Right. It's a really nice night. It's not blazing hot, and the playground's full, and the shelter's being used, and then they've got this thing going on. There's no parking. So what do people do? They park in the grass.

Okay. Is there a calendar of events? I mean, I know it's not always just kind of a question. Like, is there a calendar to where, like, if I was having my kid's birthday party there, could I see, like, oh, there's going to be a soccer game at the same time? Maybe I want to pick a different time.

my rec yeah calendar all you know with all shelters all runnable spaces so is that like is that easy to see if i were to go yeah something yeah just pull up the general public calendar you have to know to look for it you know what i mean you'd have to know that consciously know that a soccer match might impact

what i mean well that's like to to the point if you really wanted to know if you're trying to avoid the crowd then you would have to look at the calendar to find out what's going on soccer fields and is the shelter rented at the same time and starts making extrapolated guesses yeah that's what i mean it's like an overall you know calendar view of like heritage farm park

It'll say, you know, 2 p.m., soccer game, 1 p.m.

It has all that detailed, yeah.

Okay.

Now, it may not show the capacity of how many people are going to be at the shelter, but you may see, you know, 8 to 12, there's a party.

facilities for now someone doing you could say well you know when you booked your event oh yeah because they have to click on that date in order to pick the facility that they're going to rent and yeah they're it lists everything i mean in you know pretty pretty good detail okay um i mean we're addressing with phase two but active adult elements arms And I would say you could probably expand that to an older team through active goals.

I think one of the things that I hear from people the most, I'm thinking about someone I just talked to at the 4th of July event, is people don't know what's in our parks. For instance, they don't know that there are trails back in the woods necessarily. Some people don't even know that there's another park. I've been shocked by that. So I think... And we don't have any sort of maps of the full, and then someone posted on Facebook that our MST trails are hard to find. I think, so all of this to me tells me that we need sort of maps somewhere. A need for maps and directional like signage so that like a lot of times when you come to a park you see a map oh you know the amphitheater's here that this is that this is oh here's how I get to the other park. We don't have anything like that. Now you can't have that everywhere but I think at main entrances we should have some sort of you know, whether it's a kiosk or something smaller, you know, and then it's mirrored on the website. And this is aspirational because you're not going to do this in a day, right? You can start with having it on the web in a print brochure or something old-fashioned like that and build up to where you are able to do it in the parks. But there's a lot of stuff needed for that.

I'm going to draw the line in a yellow brick road.

What? What's the yellow brick road? I'm sorry.

I'm just teasing you. That's all.

Yeah. Okay. Yellow brick road. That kind of makes me think also kind of what I was thinking of. It's like once we have certain things in the park, I don't want it to be like, all right, you know, that's done. Let's move on to the next thing. It's like how we could improve the user experience. Yeah. right and like yeah that's a great way to put it improving the user experience yes it's like between uh you know wayfinding i mentioned and also shade structures like i know there's a lot of areas that are lacking in shade um like some of the older areas so is is it this is a question is it possible on some of the trails to mark to mark the And then the other kind of related to the strength, you know, having the surveys, but then a weakness is, you know, we have the results of the survey, but then I know we can't get everything at once. You know, there are higher priorities, but I think sometimes things might, you know, jump ahead of other things that were really shown to be of high interest on the survey. So I think kind of using those as our kind of guiding light of, you know, what people want to see. So whether it's, you know, I think it's about the older residents saying, you know, what they need. It just, people say what they need in the surveys.

They're kind of being responsive to that and using that as... More responsiveness to the surveys. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that we found it was a strength, and I agree with public outreach and surveys is certainly a strength, but If we're not doing it at some pace, at some tap time, then we're operating off of a 10-year, I'm just picking a number, a 10-year-old survey, and Oak Bridge has grown. So I think that that's that more responsiveness aspect. responding to.

Well, I think the flip side of that is that when we get those surveys, the council and the staff have to grapple with what can be done and what can't be done. And maybe sometimes the problem is we need better communication. And it's such a tough nut without a local newspaper and without a monthly mailer from the town, which would be just a deal breaker. But we also have to be able to take that information, digest it, which we always do, but then continue to communicate the direction and the rationale.

Right. And I agree with you. I think what I was trying to make the point of is that if we're taking a survey from, and again, I'm just picking a number 10 years ago, and our demographics have changed in that 10 years, and Oak Ridge went from 6,000 residents to 12,000 residents, then if we're not doing this on some regular pace to find out what our new residents are looking for, what drew them here and what are they looking for for their families, for their future and everything, then it's a miss. It's not necessarily a weakness, it's a miss.

I was also thinking, as you guys were talking, I wouldn't necessarily say weaknesses, more so what's the next step or like, you know, what's something, you know, cause it's like, you know, like lack of maps. It's not because it's a weakness. It's just, we haven't really gotten there yet.

I use that word with the, it's a header for things that maybe we can do better. There we go.

our parks and we put our parks in a grid so that we can identify areas for safety response. I'll give you an experience. I happen to be But the guy in front of us was doing down there the water hole and got bit by, I guess, a water bomb or something. It was amazing to see Disney's response because the emergency shifted from grid to grid. So they dealt with this emergency. As they moved him, When they got into that grid, that went back to normal activity and perfection. The activity went into another grid, and everything around them was the imagination world of Disney, but the emergency was contained. We happen to be very fortunate that at our corner down here, many, many of our, and most of our firemen are Most of our firemen are also EMTs and can respond quickly. But I'm not sure that we can tell them that unless we put a grid on safety. We're having an emergency in X, Y, Z space in the park. If they knew it, they could go directly there instead of riding around looking for a problem. And I think that's missing, but it is something that, and we just haven't had the advantage of Our fire department's right down there, and by golf cart or whatever, they don't have to get on their fire trucks to get to some place in the park.

Do you think that maybe we

It's in that, but I would say we need, I would say, I think it should be an extra because it's missing. I would just say a safety response grid.

Sort of like what we have on the trails is we have the place where you can say this is your location, you know, call 911 and say you're in whatever, B29.

But if they know the grid, they should easily communicate. But if somebody's having a heart attack out there, they can probably be there within three minutes.

Yeah, we've actually hauled several people to the fire department. Had a couple times where somebody would fall. And, I mean, luckily, they have an RTV. They have a commoder just like we do. They do annual rides and annual training, if not quarterly, at the park. So, I mean, I think those guys are very familiar.

My point is, and I'm going back to that 30-plus year ago, watching what it is. Fantasy occurred everywhere except in a grid. That's where they worked. And when the grid moved to the next block, that grid went back to fantasy. It was amazing to watch in practice. Obviously, it stuck with me, but we don't have it, and yet we have the advantage that we've got EMTs available by RTV.

And that might be also

So, you know, I'm always thinking about the fire department too.

I want to say weakness. Life is buildable. How are we going to expand the park where we're handicapped on this 20% deal? So is the park expandable after Heritage Farm Park Phase 2? What percentage would we be? Where are we going to grow in the future? So you might say need for buildable. I mean, are we going to buy another 100 acres so we can build 20 acres of it?

Growth plan. Growth plan. Yeah, how are we going to grow it?

I mean, we're here for a vision. Basically, people are saying the park's full. Well, buildable stuff.

It's all on the table. So don't look at what's in the existing plan as something you're about to buy.

I thought the 20% was established for the town park. Not heritage.

I think the only thing, but there's nothing in there that says that. I mean, it says in there specifically, there's going to be left for open spaces and agriculture.

That's that's what I was going to say. That's the limitation on that. So what do we got?

Let's just let's just say. Where are we going to put ours?

I don't even know where we are today. Nobody, but I know I'm just saying. You may know, but I don't know how close we were to 20%. I know when I first became on council, Terry told me we needed another baseball field and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure every man on council has an understanding of what we actually have in either park versus that 20% claim. How did that get established? How did the statement about how did that get done? And I think that rather than go through that, that might be something to put on the parking lot to get those facts so the council understands it.

Well, I don't see that we could go further on a vision if we don't know what we can do.

And it's all... Because we don't have land. It's all up to council. The reason that my recollection about the discussion on the 20% maximum was based on a review of what was already there that brought us about right. Now, if this council feels like that's not right and there should be an opportunity to expand the development of Town Park, I wouldn't get hung up on the number. I'd focus more on what is it that you would like to see added to the Town Park. You can take that 20% out and define it a different way.

I WOULD SAY THAT THAT DISCUSSION AROSE OUT OF WANTING A BALANCE OF SORT OF OPEN AREAS. THAT PARKS IN THE HISTORIC DISTRICT. SO THOSE OPEN AREAS ARE VERY VALUED BY A LOT OF PEOPLE. and certainly consistent with the historic district. And then the focus in that park was a lot on preserving active farming and open space and the scenic view, which is also in the view shed from Oak Ridge Road, which is in the historic district and one of the contributing thingamajoggers, you know.

I think, like, I guess to their point about the 20%, like, even the fact that we don't know where we're at, it is kind of a hard metric. So I think it would make sense, like, even from your stance, if you said, like, at the town park, I think it's really important if we keep this, you know, like, designate whatever the space is, where, you know, these are the three spaces that we really should keep open. That's, like, easier to do.

That's another way to do it. Yeah, it's easier to kind of discuss. I mean, really, all we've added to the town park since then was we added the acreage of around the then Redmond House, which I guess, no, I guess maybe we probably counted that because we did own that land, but we have now turned that into a facility. So that's the only thing in the town park that I think we've added to the, what was then 17%. So. I know you said it was 13.

came in with a piece of paper showed me in my we're only at 13 and a half percent well that isn't what was presented at the previous strategic plan which is why i'd say don't get hung up on the number because i know the intention was what however it was defined was council felt like you were close to where they wanted to be in terms of active so whether you have whether you say it's 13 14 or 16 i think is irrelevant do you want to build

I would like to know the definition of active space. I mean, there's what, 90, 85 acres over here?

There's 62 acres there. The actual trails are considered active. The sports fields are considered active. The green space is considered passive. Does that fit your definition?

I did kind of a deep dive yesterday because I had that same question. Active record Recreation entails non-consumptive, low-impact activities like walking, birdwatching that need minimal infrastructure. It gives two bullet points for infrastructure and maintenance. Active recreation is high-impact, wire-specialized facilities, ball fields, pools, courts, playgrounds. The passive side is low-impact, emphasizes natural open spaces, dirt trails and benches. Maintenance, higher cost, regular moment turf management facility repairs. and trash removal.

That makes sense.

Some examples, team sports, skateboard, tennis, playground use, organized fitness, passive, hiking, burn washing, picnic, and reading photography. Well, that would be useful. And how do you define for us? It's difficult because, like, I could read a definition and take away something different that you read. Because I even went into... Some, the NRPA, some of these are active. That's what I'm saying. Well, if you're there for a soccer match, it's active. If you're there for a walk, it's not. Yeah, so it's the terminology that, I mean, whoever reads it, how you interpret it.

But who best, I'm saying, I don't know jack about it, but I think it should be defined by staff.

Well, if we all agree on what the definition is and we present you with something that says

I think the other thing we probably need to know is, based on your definition, what do we have now and what are we going to be? But we need to come back to what is possible. If 26 is the top end, that's the top end, unless we start plowing down the other side. All right, anyway, I would just ask for, prepare that and give us your best view from staff.

What's your approach to this? Because in my notes, I was considering the same thing Mike was, is that we need to increase that percentage. Now, after listening to this conversation, I don't think we need to increase the percentage, not one iota. I think we just need to get rid of it. Why do we need a percentage? We're going to build what we're going to build.

Well, I agree that the percentage isn't important, but to me what's important is maintaining a balance of, you know, open space is not only flexible for frisbee games and stuff, it provides beauty, aesthetic Aesthetic dimension to our park and also, you know conforms with the historic district standards whereas you want a balance of that with the wonderful things that come from ball fields and playgrounds and areas that Open areas that can be used for huge events, you know think Ridgefest Heritage Day that sort of thing so yeah, there's a real flux between how you would define those things because the passive open areas can certainly become active areas at the drop of a hat. But what you want is a balance so that you can still do all those things and still, for instance, put up all the luminaries and have a light of the night event. You can still have a ridge fest. And you have that because you have flexible, I think what we want is flexibility and balance. That's

My contribution. Again, my view is that at some point there's a collision, and the closer we can define that, the better off we are. I mean, bring up some real quick.

Do you put together a, basically a 30-year part of the mastermind?

I don't think we can. I mean, I think we can put together a five-year park master plan. I mean, we can look back at the master plans that we have and say, I mean, we could decide whether it's worth our while to update the master plans. But I don't think this council at this minute, I mean, we can talk about 30 years out, but most strategic plans just aren't effective past about five years.

You put that on there.

Very well, we've got this, which I think heritage farm park phase 2 is helping to address. Parking, I guess, would be another element that would need to be considered. But what are there other other? We haven't talked about whether all fields we have are adequate. We haven't talked about. and say we need more, right?

Yeah, I don't know, because several years ago when we did the Heritage Farm Park Master Plan, we were told baseball's dead, baseball's dead, multipurpose fields are all we need. And that's what we did. And you're right, there's a lag between when we do the surveys, but that's part of being a cautious town that moves forward with incredible strength in planning. But now, maybe they're saying, I guess they're saying we need more baseball fields, but I would, based on that experience, I would say, well, Nellie, we're, sorry to be focusing, but I don't know that I want to jump on more baseball fields.

Well, I think it comes down to, like, The whole percentage thing, if we just start, I just feel like we need to move past this because I think we're getting into the specifics of like what people want to see added, what people want to see preserved, and kind of finding the balance of that. Like that's the bottom line, right?

Is balance. Does council think that it would be a helpful exercise for Brock to prepare an estimate of the active

at the top are currently I don't think it is because we know what's there and the question is I don't understand it you don't know what's there I know what's there but I don't know I can't visualize it because I don't you know I don't spend a lot of time at these parks so the real question so I'm sitting here going okay everybody has to evaluate this you know I know about as much as I know from light of the night and coming to music in the park What's defined as active? What's defined as passive? There seems to be an overflow or questionable in there. So yeah, I would like to see. And your understanding is probably the best of anybody in the room. We all will have our opinion. We all think that we know your business better than you do. And I know that. And we tell you so every day.

Well, I think that's related to discussion today. Like, if anything, we need to know that today. And I think maybe as we're discussing elements, if we could pull up, like you said, there's the plans on here. We'd always pull up and look at those and what we have and talk about, you know, that's active. I wouldn't say it's necessarily like homework for Brock for later because we kind of need to. Yeah, yeah.

Since we're asking for it to be done, put it on the parking lot.

Well, Mike and Mike, you think that that's a useful exercise? Or would you stop tickets?

You're talking about percentage? Yeah. I'd like to know what it is. And how much of the land is really buildable? I mean, we can have 50 acres over there, but that doesn't mean it's all buildable. I mean, you've got hills. What can you really do with it?

We've got roughly 12 acres of open spaces between the three open fields. I don't anticipate you guys clearing out the back 40 woods. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Building something back there, so...

that comes back to this percentage thing. It is that if we remove that which we say that we're not going to clear cut or whatever the case might be, if we take that out, then we're left with a smaller amount, whatever that amount is. If we're saying that only this part is buildable, then we're automatically limiting ourselves to But we can't add any more because we say it's 20%. It's 20% of what now? That 20% comes to be less. Again, after listening to this conversation, I'm less interested in the percentage. And just we'll deal with what we have left. We can make the decision today, whatever that number is. We're not going to bill too much. We don't have the money for it or anything else. Five years from now, ten years from now, we're probably not going to be on the council, and that council is going to make the decision on whether they can put stuff in or not.

It sounds like we could have a policy. So, you know, like the goal that we're talking about is having a good balance of open and, you know, used space. Maybe one of the policies could be, you know, do some sort of assessment of, you know, assessment and map out what are some areas that we could develop versus not develop. And that could kind of go towards the implementation of the plan and goal.

Yeah, I think what you're talking about is

that balance is exactly what everyone wants to maintain, a balance between active recreation and open space preservation.

And that's a high level goal to get down to the policy level and say what percentage or what type of new active use, that's a decision for another day. What we're talking about here is a high level strategy

about the percentage, but if you just look at our two parks, that's why I think the exercise is another reason for the ballot is town park, they decided 20% wasn't. In Heritage Farm Park, they just said we want to keep some agriculture in. I don't know what percent that is. It's probably closer to 50%. Yeah, that's right. So it's about 50%. That wasn't done as a percentage. That was just done from the balance standpoint. But there should be consistency about what we're doing from one park to the other. When they did town park, I assume that was done and that was the only park we had. Now we have two sides of the road. Two parks.

I mean the two parks are so different and they were designed differently and intended to be different But still define them you can still define them So one of the things I'm confused about in this discussion because I'm not I'm not concerned about The percentage per se in this park and I don't think a percentage is particularly helpful there I mean if If we want to build out all that open space, man, it's no longer Heritage Farm Park, okay? It's something else. That's a decision. But my question is, I keep hearing the word build, build, build. And you're right, we're already planning a big phase of building for phase two. I'm not sure what else we need to build. So I'm like, what do you want to build, Mike?

I didn't say anything after that. But I think it should be able to be built on if we need to be able to do that.

Well, you were talking about buildable space over in this park.

What is it you want to build over here in Oak Ridge Town Park? I don't have anything. Well, yeah, it's not about what we want to build. It's about what we talked about listening to the surveys. And, you know, I think it sounds like the steps are kind of identify the areas that are available to build, identify the areas that we want to preserve as open space, and then identify from the survey what we can build in the remaining area, right?

That's what it says. It's like a master plan. Right. Bill mentioned the master plan. And if we look at that and we trust the citizens that participated in that survey, listening to that then just like Bill pointed out it says we need a small ball field doesn't it not need a you know a major league ball field we need a small baseball field it I think it lists in there somewhere another not multi-purpose field an open area field similar to what's out here Right, so that's total six fields.

Well, that's not based on the survey, that's based on...

This is based on, isn't this based on...

It's like town size theoretical...

Right, no, this is just data from the big world, isn't it? Like how much you should have.

this and 56 and 57 and 58 but anyway if we if we look at the survey from the residents another baseball field was called out a an open field for for general use was called out. And then obviously there was basketball that was called out, Splash Park that was called out. What was the other thing?

At the time, tennis and stuff.

Yeah. All these things were actually... Yeah, splash pads, small baseball field, zipline structure, not a zipline, but a zipline structure, volleyball pits, fitness stations, these were all called out by the citizens in the surveys. So I'm kind of like Mike, I'm not saying that we build all those things, but what I am saying is that We got a survey that says that these are of interest to those folks. We need to at least be cognizant of we've got 145 acres of land, and we've got buildable needs based on what the citizens are saying. Let's just make sure that we've got the space available.

Can you drag that down just a little bit? Cuz I'm, it's hard to see the headers.

So.

Because what was surprising to me, okay, so what was surprising to me is it really wasn't too much of a way of difference between the 2019 were recommended in 7,400 populations, 82, except volleyball, and volleyball went down by one.

Well, and think about this. That's 2019, Dave. Yeah, I know.

I realize that.

Think about what pickleball's done in that six years.

Well, I think we're talking about that. I'm just saying that if that's 19, that was existing, then certainly recommendations for build-outs for basketball, tennis, pickleball, Pickleball's probably bigger, and I don't even remember volleyball, but I know there's some league volleyball leagues that are, you know, I'm getting crazy. You know, I have one of my best friends plays volleyball, I think. He plays more volleyball than he sleeps.

Well, I guess the question then is do we – this needs more discussion. we need an update to our facilities plans to do a longer term vision build out in both Oak Ridgetown Park and potentially Ayrton's Farm Park even though we got a master plan much more recently for Ayrton's Farm.

What I heard from a couple is that knowing what the percentage of active and passive is would be good. To understand it. But that may or may not come December result in a strategic plan that has a percentage in it.

Okay. So I'm okay with that. And I would also like to know what rules, based on that, what's capable. Okay. All right.

Well, before we leave this section, because I know we've got to keep moving on, just a question for counsel. ended back in 2020 were smaller community and neighborhood parks with maybe a playground and a picnic shelter. Now we do have property that the state is about to close on up here on West East Herald. It's about 40 acres that we could put a playground and a picnic shelter or something like that. Is that a focus that you think should be in the strategic plan? Additional smaller parks located

I think so. How about Meadows Drive? That property.

What's wrong with that?

And don't limit it. Build with sucker out. If we need to. Where is it? It's on Meadows down there where Brady was.

Looking at my purchase, I think we can explore those opportunities when they arise. But I don't see it in my opinion as a high level goal. Like, we need that. I think the discussion back when this got on the plan was this sort of idea that, yeah, you know, a lot of cities and towns have these satellite parts. I just think Oak Ridge, it's not a big city. That's more of a big city. So when an opportunity comes up, like, I mean, that's a really interesting opportunity. Let's explore it. And of course, you know, there's sort of Bandera out there, which, you know, let's follow that. But are we, is that our problem, our project? No.

I agree with you. If the opportunity presented itself, I'd be willing to listen to it. But if you're going to ask me where we're going to put our public dollars, it's going to be, How far do you have to drive to get to the town park?

Say someone, say Jim Horton dies and leaves us 20 acres to the town. That's an opportunity. And we say, what do we want to do with that? Maybe we want a satellite park on Pepper Island.

But the consideration then has to become, it's a progressive thought process. Okay, we've got 20 acres of land that's on the farther western border of Oak Bridge, and what are we going to do with it? And we're going to develop into a park. Okay, who's going to take care of it?

Well, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of questions. That's why you use the word explore as opportunities as they arise. I live rough in my community.

We live on Used to bump into the county line before I sold this property. But I'm that way. And, you know, if I get out of my car and go out in the driveway at all, I'm coming here or Kernersville. You know, I mean, it's less than two miles, you know, to get there. You can see the water tower from Pepper Road. I don't know how far it is.

I think you can reach any point here in 10 minutes from my crew. I mean, you can be as far in.

I would look at those things opportunistically.

Hey, before we exit this, can I just add the improved user experience? One of the things that we're seeing, actually, is Can you say that again? Yeah, so if we're going to improve the user experience, if you come to a music in the park, the amphitheater is great. The amphitheater stage just ain't big enough.

We haven't heard that feedback from anyone.

Okay.

Big enough for what?

What was that?

The band's perspective?

Or you mean the stage where the band's...

Okay, so when we envisioned the amphitheater, we said productions of this type of... to expand the stage area so that, I mean, you look at the Special Occasion Band, there's five guys, and they're, don't vote it, don't vote it, along with the ants and everything else there. Look, they're not going to complain because they don't want to say, well, we're not bringing them back because we're bitching about it.

But the previous week, there were 30 people in an orchestra.

We've had two performances of plates. I haven't heard that. And I'm not saying it's not true.

I'm not suggesting there's anything.

But we haven't had feedback about a lot of these things. I'm just asking if that is, from a user experience, would...

Would that be advantageous? Well, user experience usually refers to the public. So in other words, the vans, that's really a town direction. Do we want to have things that need more space up there? But it's not a user experience.

I mean, we list it out as a tradition of excellence, and I think that that's absolutely correct. High standards. But when you look at the amphitheater, it's not at that same level that you would envision an excellent... Well, it's excellent for what it is.

It just doesn't accommodate larger things.

So you can just sort of think about what are things that are going on outside of Oak Ridge or that we might not have control over as an organization that are going to impact the recreation future.

Area growth is both an opportunity and a challenge.

Yeah, staff meeting today, what are we here? We're 70% filled out. But I think that that is exactly the opportunity and the growth because the challenging growth is that those people that are out there at that apartment complex at Sheets are going to come here. And we're talking about recreation. They're going to be coming here because that's the closest place.

If they want to go to a park, the closest park to that apartment complex is here. I don't know. Triad Park isn't too far from there. They just go down.

Well, if you're on 68, and you can shoot straight up 68 to here versus... All I'm saying is that that growth is going to add pressure to us. And that's more external growth.

I think we need to put a border wall.

I mean, one of the challenges is certainly, you know, like the Part F grant money was reduced in the new state budget by $2 million. So we already know that, you know, availability of grant money from all sources is going down. Funding is going to be a challenge in the future.

Actually, that we get from throughout the department for sure.

But I mean, that's a state source. I mean, everything coming from the state is reduced. Everything coming from the county is reduced. But it's also the directed grants. That's why I think it's better just...

Yes, state and county funding is just driving it.

this is which category this is but we currently I think we currently know from most of our builders that they're not built they're not building anything less than a million dollars I was going to say three quarters of a dollar but it's probably a million dollars which which puts a from an opportunity standpoint. It puts a different kind of residence in place because not many people could afford million-dollar homes. So you're saying that the demographics are continuing? Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how.

I think that's

I think it tells you whether or not your demographics are going to drive adult use or children use.

I think it also tells you that I think the demographics who move here, people who move here, increasingly are interested in more events, more engagement, more recreational opportunities. I mean, I hear this from people. I came here for the trails. I came here. I'm so excited that you have these events. I'm so excited that you have this park. I came here for the park. That sort of thing.

Yeah, I think it also speaks to the high standards we talked about that they appreciate the high standards and we need to maintain the high standards.

There's an expectation of high standards.

So I think it's an opportunity that people want more.

There's an expectation of more of the recreational opportunities.

I think that's an opportunity, not a challenge. The expectation of wanting more. In other words... our parks even if you did nothing to them beyond what we've planned for phase two there is room for so much expansion of community engagement and bringing people in you know so we can handle more you're talking about more

More facilities. Facilities and events.

Yeah, I'm talking... More amenities. I'm talking more about events and engagement.

Well, I'm thinking... It's both. It's both, yeah.

Expectations of more.

Yeah, there's an expectation of more. You can just stop there.

Just more and more.

It's more amenities, more events. That's, I mean, I see that as both a burden.

Yeah, you're right. The challenge is... When you talk about wanting more amenities, that's a challenge.

Yeah, especially when you've got this.

And of course, even more events is a challenge because that has implications.

On the challenge side, your expectation is limited by your second point of funding. No. What you drew at the bottom

I think another opportunity that's kind of, you know, outside of our control, we could kind of leverage that is Bandera Farms Park to where it's not ours, but we could, like one of the policies I was thinking of, we kind of addressed it in here and had talked about trail access. And I think even just looking beyond just trails, it's, I think we need to kind of, you know, evaluate the options for the connectivity from Oak Ridge to Bandera Farms, whether that's trails or side paths or paved shoulders or what that looks like, that we can use that to our advantage.

In other words, to open up Bandera more to our residents. Exactly.

I know there's going to be an adventure playground in Bandera eventually, so for Oak Ridge to utilize that and fill that need from our residents if we improve the access down there.

And I don't have an issue with Bandera Farms itself. I've got a lot of and things like that. My issue with Oak Ridge, though, is that Bandera's not in Oak Ridge. If and when Summerfield expands Bandera trails up to our border, then we have an opportunity to expand to that point for the connectivity. I don't want to I don't want to get caught up on the fact that what are we going to do to develop Bandera?

Well, even like talking to DOT about a paid shoulder project, like right now Oak Ridge goes to I think that bridge down there, and the bridge has kind of the wider shoulders that if we were able to put on here to kind of work with DOT on it. Is that a bunch of them? Yeah. Okay.

Before you just to explain that whole bandera thing back when it was planned and when we gave money for it, there was there were serious discussions about. Joint operation of that part that even though it's outside Oak Ridge that we would. We were providing that funding and we would help manage it. And then the way Summerfield has proceeded has basically been, yeah, no, you don't have any say in it. Because we said, we don't know if we can do that. We kept saying, we don't know, we don't know. But we'll think about it. But the way they've proceeded is not in a way that would suggest that we have any sort of role at all in planning it. And certainly, therefore, no interest in helping operate it. I think that's changed.

I'll also say another big reason we were involved was because there was

The question is true.

Because it is Heritage Park Park. This isn't big enough for, you know, you go a mile around Oak Ridge, your horse doesn't break a sweat.

My thoughts are I don't want to be involved with anything in Summerfield.

Well, right. It's just not going to work anyway. The other thing I wanted to bring up as an opportunity is.

Summerfield is not Summerfield that it was when you were talking. Yeah. It's a different Summerfield.

Totally different Summerfield. And we recognize that even at the time that you can't know how things are going to move forward. So you don't want to make that kind of commitment. But the other thing I think is an opportunity to better serve like older adults and also all sorts of groups is we could at some point start doing programming. out of the town i don't see us being able to do that well we certainly can't do it today but say we want to offer you know chair yoga for seniors and instead of just letting a chair yoga teacher rent the farmhouse and put out the word we say to that person you provide that you pay us but we put out the word maybe there's a some sort of frisbee team out on the you know we we start organizing the programming There are all sorts of things that people want to do in our park. And then they look at us and they say, I said, well, you can propose that and you can do that. And they say, no, I want you to do that. I'm like, well, no, we don't do that. We don't do programs.

That's the problem of growth. It's a challenging growth. It is that when I grew up in this area, working on tobacco farms in this area. It was all about community, it was all about sharing, it was all about volunteerism, everything like that. And now, it's what are you giving? Right, what have you been doing?

So I think it's part of that more is programming, but I think the challenge to that is staffing and tax dollars.

Actually, you've got enough time to do all that.

Well, the other piece that Mike was just talking about that as we grow, there are the demands are becoming, I will say more fragmented or more numerous. Why don't we have croquet in the program? Or since I lived in Europe, why don't we have moogles? And the old men would basically sit up there with a glass of mark and throw bocce. Most people don't hear bocce. And they would spend the entire afternoon getting sloshed But it's a big pass stop over there.

Well, so the opportunity is, one of the opportunities is if we have growth, we potentially have more volunteers and more ideas, more opportunities for engagement, okay? So you've got an opportunity for more engagement as we grow. But on the other hand, one of the things that typically happens as towns grow, and we're already seeing it, is your volunteers, just like your staff, get burnt out. And you don't, like there isn't that, who said that? One of you two said the tradition of volunteerism is dying. So I think the challenge is no other town that I have ever heard of has the volunteerism that we have here. But a challenge is maintaining volunteerism even though there's a There's a parallel opportunity that as we grow, how do we, maybe it's all a challenge. How do we keep getting?

Well, that's part of the reason. And apologies for not setting it up. I get a new computer tomorrow. My keyboard doesn't operate correctly. But the new people coming in don't realize the history of volunteering, the importance of volunteering, because those people, you know, particularly if they came from where I moved, all this stuff was done, but it was paid for with taxes. You know, they don't understand that volunteering helps keep our tax rates down. And that as volunteerism either burns out or ages out, you know, it's got to go somewhere. And that probably means that we'll have to hire people.

But also volunteerism can really only take, can really only go so far. So far, right. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like helping to set policy and so forth, yes. Helping in special events, yes. But beyond that, that's a realm of faith.

love our volunteers and the older volunteers i am one but the thing about it is that respectfully it doesn't have much to do with our strategic planning if we're going to rely on our volunteerism for strategic planning work is a huge miss Unfortunately, that may not.

Well, no, we can't rely on volunteers for strategic planning. But that's what we're talking about is volunteers. But we're talking about our park and our events and our park and everything that happens in our park. And losing volunteers is a challenge. It is a challenge. Yeah.

One thing I was looking at my notes to make sure I didn't forget anything. I forgot to mention in the weakness, if we could go back, or yeah, I guess it'd be weakness, it's not challenge. The maintenance setup at Heritage Farm Park, how you had said it's a safety issue. The, how, you know, the access to shop and all that. So I think that could maybe be a weakness. How we talked about, you know, long-term finding a new location for that potentially.

in the midst of all the let me add that and I didn't know I thought this might go on infrastructure but here's just as well I agree with Lindsay that that maintenance building you and I have had this conversation but as we grow and as we do other things we probably need to look at is our our maintenance facility set up what we would expect to have in a world class park in that excellence. Having a maintenance facility that's right beside a playground is probably not the tradition of excellence. It's what we have, but if we're looking at a 10-year plan or a five-year plan for strategic planning, that might be one of those things where we go, is our, and again, this is probably infrastructure. Instead, is our infrastructure in the right place, the right amount of it at the right time?

And from our current shed, I can take you 80 yards north and east, And the fire department just built a replacement maintenance shed. And that was roughly a quarter million. $200,000. I missed what Mike said.

What did you say, Mike? Where are we going to sit?

I don't see us doing that in the next five years. Because we don't have any money. I think that's related to overall planning. Just the amount. If we're going to address parking, it would be great. Yeah.

I think the placement of our parks in the sort of the town core gives us opportunities to develop, deepen our relationships with places like the elementary school, the credit union, even CrossFit to help with parking. I think that's an opportunity that we're right close to these places, even the commons. Because, you know, we could have, we could say, man, we don't have enough parking, but we also don't have enough money to build a parking lot. But we have enough money, possibly, to rent a shuttle for the really big events and shuttle people back and forth.

I can't see it happening at Tacoma's because they're full.

Maybe not. I'm just saying. They're pretty much full. We're near a lot of places now.

Well, and Mike, I agree with you. It wasn't too many years ago that we were having a conversation with Phillip about just putting a trail in from the commons, from the sidewalk. It would come down the side of Sam's property and that went absolutely nowhere fast. And it was simply because you're gonna take up space for an event at the town park and my shoppers at Lowe's can't get in there. I get it. I didn't understand that. What am I missing? You remember when we had that conversation about adding in a walking trail off of the sidewalk on 150 so that we'd come down and you could walk to the town park.

You mean sort of through the field, the septic field? Right.

And we were talking and said, you know, Phillip could have a few engineered things done to where the spray fields you're not walking through when it's spraying and everything else. But we could have that. But... Phillip's position was that his tenants don't want to give up their parking spaces for a town event.

Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine, fine, fine. I just threw that in there because it's also nearby. It depends on the event, the time.

But your idea about if we fill up at Bridge Fest, that maybe... Right. With elementary school, would you have a shuttle going back and forth? Sure.

Yeah, school or churches or things that are as utilized in the evening. Right.

Do I? Yeah. Anybody can call Mark Smith up and ask him, except for me. I might ask him. Well, give him a call.

Chad's always been very open.

I didn't say Chad, I said Mark.

I don't know who Chad is, but I think Mark says it.

Yeah, I'm just not hearing what you said. What about Marksville?

Just give him a call and ask him if we can use the parking.

Well, I mean, we could. I mean, we've been good neighbors to them.

Certainly that. I think that from these, there are some clear themes. There's not consensus agreement clearly on everything that's on both all three of these sheets. So I think what staff will attempt to do, and again, and I also want to move this sort of tradition of excellence and just making sure everything we do is high standard. There's some other elements like the weight-binding and maps and directional signs that I think has some consensus support, but when we start putting these goals as drafts and share with council, about a little bit more. I can see three or four kind of overarching goals that are coming out of these opportunities and strengths and so forth. So give us a chance to kind of compile those ideas and put them into something that's more actionable.

But I would also say that through the discussion, I did not hear anything that would cause a food fight or anything that was discussed.

Well, I think the one that's going to need I think that bears fruit mostly in consideration of the master plan.

I THINK THERE MAY BE SORT OF OVERALL AGREEMENT THAT THERE SHOULD BE A BALANCE, THERE SHOULD BE FLEXIBILITY, MAYBE THERE SHOULDN'T BE A HARD LIMIT, BUT I THINK WHERE WE MIGHT DISAGREE IS ON WHAT TO PUT IN A MASTER PLAN, BUT THAT'S SIMPLY A TASK FOR LATER, RIGHT? TO CREATE, OKAY, SO THAT'S NOT PART OF THE MASTER PLAN, I MEAN, STRATEGIC PLAN PER SE.

SO WHEN WE START PUTTING THE DRAFT TOGETHER UNTIL WE ALL AGREE ON KIND OF WHAT EACH OF THOSE TERMS MEAN, LIKE THE GOALS How do you get there? So if you want to have a balance, well, then one objective is to maybe prepare a master plan that lays out what that balance looks like.

And another thing, sorry, look at my notes again. It's hard with all the highlights. So I guess an area for, again, an area for opportunity, not much of a weakness. But when I was on the trail walk with Anne Steele, we kind of discussed, you know, coming to an agreement on, you know, the trails and all that, and that they're great, but it could, I think everyone could benefit from having standards of like just how they're, how they're put in, you know, any buffer, you know, being good neighbor. And she agreed with that. And we talked about, you know, coming to some discussion and compromise, like even just for, it'd be good for the town to say like, Hey, you know, the council worked with MST and we came together on what these standards are just to that, you know, certain rules that support trail development, but also that people in the town know, okay, if they put this in, like the house that they're dealing with in, was it Pemberley, that fence or buffer, whatever it is, just to have those defined standards, because that is a weakness. It's like, we kind of just-

Standards. Construction or location standards. Ann kind of alluded to that at the town council meeting, that the conversation you guys had. And it does make sense that if forward-looking, when we decide to put trails in, if there's sufficient buffer and sufficient width and things like that, then certainly that helps MST. It helps the town. Again, it says that standard of excellence or tradition of excellence.

If you write a slash and put guidelines. Yeah, guidelines, standards, whatever, yeah. Sometimes all you need is a guideline, not...

Coming off of trails, I think that the other thing that comes out of the pedestrian plan and out of the strategic plan as an opportunity is continuing to foster connectivity in our town. And I think that encompasses for recreation that encompasses a lot of things connectivity not just between our parks but between our neighborhoods between the trails just i just think connectivity continues to be an opportunity so yeah that's a maybe like just growth and expectation of more 90s that's a good place to just or even put that into a strength that's been a policy of the town yeah It's true too, yeah. Policy of connectivity has been a strength. I mean, it's why you look at those sidewalks and you think about how those sidewalks are connecting to sidewalks that go to our parks.

I mean, it's amazing.

I think this one kind of goes in both areas.

But connectivity to our parks and to our trails strengthens is a strength of our recreational offerings in other words how does somebody get there that's been a big discussion in past years but maybe not so much with this council but i think it's big well yeah i'm not shutting down i'm just saying is that an infrastructure discussion or a recreation discussion i think it kind of like straddles both it just straddles and a lot of issues struggle yeah and that's fine should we uh i'll leave it up to

Mayor and the rest of council if you want to take an opportunity to go through the markup. Any comments?

I think we should, but I look at people whether or not they need to take a quick time break.

I think given that Mike's leaving, it's hard to do.

Oh, I'm sorry you provided us with that's right knowing that I didn't know that I had this type of timeline now, but knowing that I was going to have a tight timeline. What I did was took the mark up and then. In green is just comments and suggestions. that i'd like for us to consider you know everything's on the table obviously but um that's these were my notes that i was going to work from depending upon how far we got into this thing so we're telling a council 20 years from now that you can't do that i i don't you know that's the only reason that that i'm not i'm not opposed to preserving it and conserving it i'm just opposed to limiting future town council's decisions. In 1.2.3, the only thing that I would add, Bill, to your comments about the completion of phase two is that we add in the investigation of the phased construction for heritage. farm park. And so that again, we understand we've got a money issue. So if we have to do this thing in phases, at least it's in the strategic plan because there are other things in the master plan that aren't in here that, you know, and that would give us that opportunity through a phased approach. On the second page, two policies that I was thinking about that we could add is that small increases of active heritage farm part accommodate coverage. Okay, that goes back to the conversation about the 20%. I would suggest that it's going to be resolved one way or the other with the other conversation so that one can come out. And then 1.2.6 is what I numbered it. The future amenities that are listed in the comprehensive plan. Let's make sure that our strategic plan whether by listing out these individual elements or just referencing the comprehensive plan says that future amenities may include these things.

I think what we've said though is we want to reconsider those master plans. We want to take a fresh look at them.

Agreed, but until we do, then at least we would be referencing that as funding becomes available and we're moving forward, that this is the reference document that we go to, what do we add? Because the citizens have already spoken.

We consider master plans and use them to guide future development.

Well, and I do want to caution against too many updating plans, updating plans, because I already kind of have, I guess before I joined the council, a little survey fatigue to where it's like, you know, you do these surveys and then you see the same things being top answers and the same things not being done. At some point, people are starting to fill out surveys because they're like, well, council's going to do what they want anyways. So I don't know that we necessarily need to do... bunch more surveys on it and we just need to honor what the results have repeatedly been and the tail leaf brought up again that was based on population I want to caution against just listening to what you know some advisor says our town needs versus what people have repeatedly said that they want in the town and so that's where you know we kind of spoke into

And then finally, policy 132 and goal 1.4 is, in my opinion, it was all about Bandera Farms. I don't have a problem with once Summerfield decides that they want to extend mountains to seed to the Oak Ridge town limits, that we do something to connect there. But I'm not interested in putting any money or time into Bandera Farms.

I think connectivity, exploring connectivity.

Connectivity is huge, but... Good. Yeah, so like, because we did talk about getting trails to Bandera Farms Park, so is that... Well, but again, Bandera Farms Park is in Summerfield, and I'm not suggesting that... I would oppose Oak Ridge building a trail to Bandera Farms. We'll build it to the Summerfield line, but if they're not going to connect to us, we're sure as hell not going to connect to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trails within our jurisdiction. Exactly.

That exploring connectivity often involves conversation. We can get this far. You guys can do this far. That's a discussion.

And encourage Summerfield to do the same.

That's something we could work on that isn't big and operational.

I apologize for having to dart out. This was not my intent. This is being... recorded, right? Okay, so whenever I get to Chicago later on, I'll take a look at the rest of this. I appreciate your tolerance on a jacked up travel schedule.

Well, thanks for being here. Can we have a bathroom break while he goes Oh, were you? Okay. Excellent.

And then come back and finish.

Get everything all forward again. I'll leave the break. I've got 45 minutes to go on the air. Wow. I think he's got the airport down for science.

Go ahead. Okay.

Okay. Any one, I mean, I guess the intention here was to simply review the draft of the changes that I proposed, just updates and any comments on the existing goals and policies.

I would come back and wonder if they exist. they're separate parks than the different parks, but I think we have a park system that's attracting people in the county. So I think goal 1.1 and the Heritage Farm Park goal and stuff should probably be part of a bigger goal about parks and park systems.

Well, but I think we, even if we say something broad about the park system. I think we do have to say specific things about the two different parks.

I'm just saying that these things to be become a sub policy, I guess, of an overall park. I think if you're coming, I came into 10 years ago, but I'm a new interloper from Japan. but people are now coming not just for town park they're coming and some people have preferences over they i mean they only come to heritage farm park to walk other people may go over here to play whatever so you have to keep them separate but i think we now have what's vital is we have a the jewel that we have that's vital is the fact that we have a expanded park system that's 100 rough numbers 140 140 acres, right? Right. And then we talked about what needs to be better defined. So that's just my two cents on that.

Yeah. And I think it's, yeah, in terms of what are our recreation goals? And then we'd have different policies depending on specifics, right? Like, yeah.

There are a few things I think that came out of our discussion that could be added and I don't I'm less interested in wordsmithing today than like sending you back to say try to try to address some of this stuff you know, so you know like the maybe what we add is You know continued commitment to public outreach or something and responsiveness, you know and Maybe we add something about the maps and directional. We want a better user experience so people know where they are and access to, you know, like access to maps, directional information, and a better user culminate with the goal of a better user experience.

You include safety.

Yeah, and you could put in their safety. You could, because safety could be part of, like if you did wayfinding, safety could be part of the wayfinding just as it is on the trails.

I think also shade would be in there too. That's kind of like, I see it as we have the parks and then what can we do to hold it to a higher standard? Like wayfinding, shade, and safety.

Well shade goes more in continued development of amenities. So user experience is really about how people come in and out, right?

I see it as how people are using the spaces and how can that be improved.

But how we develop the space is responsive to public needs, public input. That's about developing the space itself.

Are you talking about adding to open green spaces?

No, I'm just talking about if you wanted to add shade, you can't do that through wayfinding signs and directions and maps. You have to do that through further development of the amenities of the park to serve. People want more shade. People want more benches. We don't know what they want.

I think just if we look back at just user experience, as users of the park, what can elevate that experience?

Shade can mean more trees, too, right? I mean, more shade trees.

I think we do a good job of planting shade trees. I don't think that's an issue.

But in strategic areas, like around benches. Can you define what you're talking about with shade? I mean, I don't get it. But I'm, you know, I'm an old guy and I don't use this part.

Are you talking primarily about playgrounds or benches? Both. Yeah, all of the above. I think everywhere, it gets so hot. And I know we can't just clean for the summer. I'm not saying that. But, like, it really adds to user experience. Like, I don't go to certain places.

Although in the winter, having more shade. It makes it colder because you can't sit in the sun. I mean, I think we have to, there's a balance to everything.

I don't think you need everywhere.

So help me. So you're talking about a place, station, I'm going to say stations, where you can get out of the sun, which would also, they're not shelters in the sense of shelters. They're many. They're almost like a bus stop almost.

I think just looking at our existing recreation areas and seeing, is there enough shade here? And where we can maybe add some shade to some areas. You know, even like music in the park events, it is right next to that playground where if there were certain shade structures around, that could kind of serve the purpose where people might congregate over there a little more. and watch it. You know, I don't know.

I think realistically, like some, you know, where the sun transited certain times a year, some strategically placed trees can go a long way.

If you go back to, and you, I think you were there.

And it's not just for kids. Like, I know elderly people or people with medical issues can't be sitting in the cellar.

Fourth of July, fourth of July, one of the things that was helpful was the fact that the amphitheater

area closer in was under shade at that point. The sun had gone beyond the trees.

If we had been out there at 2 o'clock, we would have all been melting because it was 100 degrees and probably 115 heat index.

But then it dialed out. It was still incredibly uncomfortable, but it wasn't as bad as it had been, and

30 of them that we were their third we were their third concert of the day yeah here's what I don't maybe you can do I don't know exactly what you're talking about it's a safety thing

That it's not just, it's kids, adults, people with medical issues.

But it's some kind of station. It's some kind of station.

I'm not saying... I'm just saying, I think we should have a policy. We're talking about the goals of improving user experience. I think one of those should be investigate where we can best utilize more shade in our existing amenities. That's it. I don't want to discuss where we need a certain bench.

Moving on, we could say also explore solutions for parking during high traffic times or something like that. So those solutions could be additional parking. Those solutions could be additional relationships and shuttles or something, but We know we have a problem for high traffic periods. We don't have a problem every day, but let's look at that. When are those high traffic? To get a solution, you'd have to sort of document what those times are. Another thing we could put in is... I don't know if we want to go this far, but explore... future opportunities or something for programming for a variety of audiences. And that includes all sorts of things. What do people want? Maybe there's a survey. How do we do that? Can't do that now. We'd have to have more staff. I mean, something like that. But I think we know that's one of the things that it seems like people want. We would need to codify that.

Lightning. Should we investigate? I mean, I think it's a pretty cheap thing. I don't know.

What is it? It's an alarm.

It's an alarm when lightning hits a certain point.

Usually it's 85 or something like that. At least it is at Wake Forest.

I don't think we've ever had anybody struck out here.

Well, that reminds me of something else that I would love to see in our park that we've talked about is a speaker system throughout the park so that if there is a safety issue, it could go out on the speaker issue. If there is, you know, like fire trucks coming in for a A kid, you know, no worries, but a fire truck's coming to help a person who fell or something like that. And all the way to helping with events. So better, a way to better get the word out on multiple levels within the park.

Through a speaker system.

in charge of speaking that or like i guess it would just be someone that like park staff had access to or probably there would probably be i mean i know these have these sort of systems have multiple opportunities you know but probably you know like the concession stand you go inside and you know you know like the guy across the road can't do it but rock can do it um And maybe on a special needs basis, Jim Martin has access to it or something. But yeah, no, you don't open it up to any Joe.

And that could also be, it sounds like instead of just user experience, maybe just safety overall. Because it's, I mean, all these could be safety.

It's also communication. I guess safety. Because community, you know, it could also be, you know, ticket sales at Ridgefest are closing in an hour or something. I mean, Ridgefest, there's so much noise you might not hear it, but. you know, line up for the 4th of July parade now.

Yeah, I don't think it should be overly utilized, because then, I guess it depends what the intent is. Yeah, it would basically be for events and safety. Yeah, we'd want people to tune it out. Yeah, I'd say, sorry to list out all these.

Yeah, it's helpful to hear. I mean, there's headings, and then some ideas within those headings, yeah.

Is it an automatic thing? So they don't know. They can send out a signal. There's a sensor probably all over the building area. And it starts making this when it gets really close. You can... It's a weird tone that you can hear. I mean you can have it here and here. Both directions. Because you can hear it.

Like a tornado siren in the Midwest. You know that.

I'm just thinking, you know, it's an early warning system.

So, Ann, would that be something that Adrian might know something about?

Oh, sure.

Adrian is so busy right now.

Yeah, he is. But there, he can, one thing he's good at is referring us to people who can help us. So, yeah, I mean, we have, but I mean, you guys have good resources in some of the tech contacts you have or something like that. And certainly there are companies who make their hay out of providing this sort of thing to towns and cities.

And you would only want an operational from like 7 to 9 or something. So, yeah.

I want to keep driving back here to, you know, I still maybe on this. Can you use the word sure? in my head was the need was for a cooler space, but the need was really for ultimately a safety spot. You know, you mess with the older people, you know, someplace to get out of the sun. I don't know, I still don't know what that is, but if there was a smaller space, I mean, I know that we thought about it. It was wonderful, the 4th of July thing, because we had the fire department guys on top of the hill. We don't have that all the time, right, in the music at the park. They were there, and I made mention in the discussion that we're happy to have them, and they're all, almost all those guys that were up on top of the hill are trained EMT. So if you're distressed, get one of those guys. That's kind of what I said. But if you go back to my grid, maybe along with my grid, if we have identified that maybe if your concept is safety and recovery instead of just shade, maybe that becomes part of the grid that we identify a couple of spots where we have them in our park in the future. Not immediately, but work toward that.

And that could maybe be like some of the shaded benches. Like obviously we're not going to shade every bench because that would be super expensive. But maybe there could be like certain shaded benches that you go if you're, you know, I don't know. But that's where, again, we don't want to get into all the details of how exactly, but I think just saying that that's something that we need to investigate.

Well, unlike the Heritage Farm Park Master Plan, there are three or four different spots where called small shelters, and I think it's similar to what you're talking about.

It's like, it's not a picnic table.

It's like a place to sit under a shelter. Oh, I didn't realize that.

Yeah, there's something to where it's... Good point. I think they were at the tennis courts, or no, at the pickleball courts. Yes.

I don't think he's talking about that. I think he's talking about other places. want to hear too but yeah i think that's maybe similar to what you're seeing we're not putting those in phase two no okay no that's one of those that we didn't one-offs that we can add as we see fit okay and that's yeah and i don't want heritage park to just get all the new fun stuff there right but that's some of the old that's the idea yeah just have more shaded resting areas or trees

Anything else you need from us?

I do. One other question before we...

adjourn so one thing that make on this on the existing strategic plan we haven't really touched on is policy 1.2.4 which is at the bottom of the first sheet evaluate the long-term viability of farming the open and undeveloped portion of heritage farm park that's something that's got to be addressed at some point yeah

I would say not evaluate, I would say continue to explore. Because right now we have a great solution, but one of these days that solution isn't going to work anymore.

It's either that or, you know, you might have to contract somebody that's 10 miles away to come in and cut the hay and mail it and then carry it away and keep that deal.

I think we could make a lot of money off of it, at least in the dollar. Brock, don't you think we could get income if that ever ends?

I get in the fires all the time, especially when he mowed that last year. There was 200 rattleheads out there. People were calling me asking if they could buy it. I explained to them that we had a contract with somebody who farms it. They asked kind of just the details on that. I mean, you could get... So much for equity. Yeah, I mean, a good chunk of change for somebody to come in and plant some wheat beans, corn, hay, whatever. I mean, there's a market for that around here. I don't know if I agree with that.

Kind of from experience with my family.

In what regards? Of people wanting to do it?

You can find people that want to do it, but you're not going to make any money off of it.

They're not going to pay you much.

Okay.

That was our experience. We can evaluate that and how it says.

We have a current situation. I was surprised and happy to find out that Kyle was out to running the baler or something the last two weeks. Oh, really? Yeah, he was at a camp, but he was actually, he was thrilled to be back out. To be out, yeah. But, you know, you can't, he had to be in the camping, but long term, you know, and I have the same issue up down the road. I mean, we'll grab what he's doing with ours, and we're happy to have a relationship with him. good neighbors and stuff. I've had discussions with my son-in-law saying at some point you might have to learn how to bale hay and you and James. We have more acreage than you have here. It's hard to get people to come much more than 10 miles to

And the Grammys aren't getting any younger. So, and a lot of people that would be farming.

Yeah. No, and they have a nice little niche.

Yeah.

But I'm sure there's no one at Northwest High School that's studying agriculture.

I don't think they teach agriculture.

They don't have that to pay anymore.

I don't know. Not there.

Not in Northwest. They teach turf and golf course management.

give you anything. Personally, I had that issue. I'm good, I think, for plus or minus 10 years, maybe my lifetime, but I've been pointing out to my son-in-law, this might be your problem in 10 years if you're still around.

yeah so i guess what's the plan from here is it going to be so you'll take this feedback come up with the draft and then we'll discuss that via email or just our next meeting yeah i'll put something together with the help of staff and we'll work on the defining the active and passive that'll go out in the next packets before the next or maybe hopefully a little earlier than that for the next special call meeting for you to review and then we have the next special call meeting before we get into the next one.

What's the date? Remind me, what's the date of the next? August 13th or something?

I forgot where you're taking that. I did have a question of what section it would go under if we talk about tree preservation, tree dedication, just kind of like trees in general. Would that be in?

Wait, I have August 14th.

I think that was one of the previous dates. What is August today? What do we change August to?

I think that could go in their goal 2.1.

We're not there yet. We're still talking dates. So it's the 14th of August.

Yeah.

At 10. At 10. Okay. I'm sorry, what date is it? August 14th, yeah.

All right.

All right.

And that's only going to three and a half weeks. All right.

Thank you. That came to my house for some reason.

Another honorable.

Okay.

The council meeting and I forgot. They think I live with your house? I guess.

I live with your house.

Okay. What was that motion?

I made a motion to return.

Amen. That's the second.

All in favor?

Let's see what they said.