Olivette Parks Foundation - Regular Meeting

All right. I would like to call the meeting to order for the City of Olivet Parks Foundation here in the Olivet City Center City Hall on May 26, 2026. Can we please have the roll call?

Mayor Lewis?

Yes.

Chairman Pro Tem Sean Hellman?

Here.

Council Member Solomanov? Here. Council Member Jurgel? Here. And Council Member Clark is absent with an excuse.

Very good. So just to note, you are now acting as the Parks Foundation and not as council members. So you are acting as chairman, vice chair, secretary and treasurer, which leads us to the first item on the agenda, which is selecting officers for the next year.

All right. So our item here is to assign officers for the roles that are displayed here on the screen. And my understanding is that the officers are outlined by position in the bylaws for the Parks Foundation. And we do need to vote. We'll just vote for the entire slate of officers rather than voting individually. they displaying anything right now i don't see anything showing oh one moment okay so let's we'll pause to have that shown on the screen are you able to see that now it's thinking about it since you and brian are listed there it is two different positions

We don't have to assist in those, do we?

So the way that the Parks Foundation is set up right now is it's in its infancy. And I don't know that we'll have a full discussion of it at this meeting, but there are plans for the council to have a work session so that we can look at the setup. of the foundation, both in terms of the officers, the makeup of the board and the functioning of the foundation in greater detail. So, yes, as you as you pointed out at this point in time, the mayor and the mayor pro tem have multiple positions, officer positions on the board. and then the secretary, treasurer, assistant treasurer, assistant secretary are staff positions. If they're happy to entertain any other questions as they relate to that slate of officers.

Should I make a motion to approve?

Yes, if there's no further questions.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the... the suggested officers. Officers. Officers. Thank you. Thank you. As listed. Second.

All right. Can we please have a poll of the members?

Am I doing this as director?

Director.

Yes. Okay. Director Jurgel? Yes. Director Solomonov? Yes. Vice Chair Pashon-Hellman? Yes. Chairman Lewis?

Thank you. And now for item number three, assigning the executive director. This is similar in that the city manager is listed as the executive director in the bylaws for the foundation. And this is an annual assigning or reassigning as the case may be. If there are any questions, and if there are no questions, we'll entertain a motion.

I'd like to make a motion to name city manager Jennifer Yackley as the executive director per Article 7 of the bylaws. Second.

Could we please poll the board members?

Director Jurgel? Yes. Director Solomonov? Yes. Vice Chair Pashon-Hellman? Yes. Chairman Lewis?

Yes.

Motion is passed.

Thank you. And now moving on to item number four, financial reports.

Evening, board of directors. really happy to use our logo that was painstakingly adopted last year and present a little real quick annual report. Only small amounts of donations were received, but the bigger revenue item that we had in the last year. So we're kind of looking back a 12 month period from last, I guess it was about a 10 month, eight months from August, last August when we talked last up until, until May 20th. In any case, the, Successful trivia night was held that netted $2,731. And then on the expense side, if you remember a year ago, the board approved the purchase of some soccer goals for the soccer program and then an in-body scanner. So you can see there, good program. Those purchases were made shortly after the meeting and then reside with the city. good use on the in-body scan. And then of course the soccer goals were put to very good use right away. This does leave us with started the net position for the year at 65,000, a little over 65,000 after those expenses leaves us in the neighborhood of 34,700. And so there is a small reporting here. If we see the annual report that you'll see here versus what's in the bank account, we'll get that fixed up with the audit $250. uh was put on the kind of in the general fund or the sorry the grants from the city we'll get that reporting figured out but the cash on hand remains what we would be able to spend uh in the future but there are no requests um at this time in front of us for budgeting or for any requests that i know of so that's all i have are there any questions no questions i'm just curious if there were any other donations received yeah a couple small a couple uh What are they, DF? Donor-assisted funds. A couple donations here and there, $150, $200. We did get a very generous donation from a campaign committee that had closed down just recently.

And then on page two here, there's, I was just curious what that last is that from enterprise. That's the little interest.

Nope. That's just, that's the donation amount that that's the last transaction. And then you'll see the amount in that amount matches the, the bank balance. So we get a little cashflow and we get a little net and there's no net position statement. Cause there's really nothing to report as far as the net, just the net assets and then the net assets that we're reporting as of today. And then we see a little cashflow where the money come and go. It's kind of a reminder when you do a fundraiser in that sense here, it all nets together into one. We have the detail provided. We decided not to provide it here, but there's a detail behind that that we reviewed in kind of internally with the executive director and staff to get to that amount. Yeah.

How widely known is this in all of us?

It's very new. It's in its infancy, as Kate said. yeah so do we do how did you find out about it um being a big part here yeah good i like with any about it before with anything kind of word of mouth right now there's been no uh kind of projection for it any talks of like kind of highlighting it sure i think that's more like we're going to the staff report next yep good thanks for teeing that up thank you no problem good anything else

No, there's nothing we need to vote on for the financial report. Yeah. Okay, thank you. All right.

Item number five staff report. Okay, I do have a relatively brief staff report that is going to kind of talk about the the background and Give the council some options to think about for where you may choose to take the foundation moving forward. So as background, the idea of a foundation had been something that previous city councils had talked about, but it really sort of came and I would say took legs in March of 2018 with the Parks Master Plan. And the idea of a foundation was put into that as a potential funding mechanism for future parks improvements that had been identified in the parks master plan. And then the city chose to go for Prop C, creating community, which funded not only Five Oaks, but funded specific park improvements from the master plan for all five parks in the city. And so energy towards the creation of a foundation was was put on the back burner because everybody was focused on prop c and asking the voters to pass prop c and then the voters were generous and they did and so then it became now we have to implement so again that energy was put on the back burner until about june of 2022 um whoops a potential donation I came forward to the city and through those conversations the donor made known that they were uncomfortable donating directly to the city and so. The foundation came back on the front burners. And through that time, they started in November and December of 22, documents were drafted for this creation of the Parks Foundation. And then the city created the Parks Foundation and their first meeting was March of 2023. So that's how new the foundation is. In July of 2023, our tax ID number from the IRS was assigned. And then in March of 2024, we officially got our determination letter calling us a tax exempt entity. And then in October of 2024, we established a bank account. So that is a really brief kind of history of the Parks Foundation. And the structure of the Parks Foundation, so when it was created, it was created as a corporation exclusively for charitable purposes, so a 501c3. And the city resolution 2023-235, which established the Parks Foundation, says that the foundation is to accept donations and maximize grant opportunities. So the intent at that time by the council at that time was that the Parks Foundation would be sort of passive, right, and would be a vehicle, like, you know, it says right there, to accept donations, be utilized, you know, for grants, but not necessarily something that was going to be very active, right? That was that council's intent. So council is different now. And since last year, there has been some desire and some thoughts of maybe changing the structure of the foundation. So this evening, I just want to plant some seeds in your head about what the broad structure options are and maybe get some relative direction from you on what you would like us to bring back to you as Vice Chairman Pashaun Hellman mentioned to a future work session, right? So that you can have a much longer conversation, staff can give you a much more detailed report so that you can think about things and make decisions. So three options in no particular order, but option number one is the foundation stays as it is, right? It is this passive organization that receives donations and as money allows, authorizes expenditures for improvements to parks and recreation. Okay, which is exactly what the foundation did last year when it purchased the soccer goals and the InBody scanner. It had received funds and it chose to allocate those funds. The second is developing an MOU between the foundation and the city, which would allow the foundation to be more active. You could do fundraising activities. The council could remain as the board and city staff would do the work of the foundation. The MOU is necessary because it needs to outline the specific relationship between the foundation and the city. It's really important to remember that the foundation is a completely separate entity from the city. Yes, sir.

What does MOU stand for?

A Memorandum of Understanding. Okay. Big fancy word for an agreement.

Yeah, yeah.

And so as Mr. Mann mentioned earlier in the financial report, when the trivia night was done, in order to account for all of the expenses that went into that trivia night, staff had to keep track of that. So any city staff time, either preparing for or working the event that evening, any supplies that were purchased, all of those things would have been purchased with city funds. And then, you know, we either have to get reimbursed or we definitely need to keep track of that, right? So that MOU will need to outline all of that. There will be some fair labor standards, right? You can't require staff to volunteer for things that are very similar to what they already do. So we would definitely need to set up good tracking mechanisms for that. So option number three is that the foundation essentially becomes independent of the city, meaning the members of the board are public members. They wouldn't have to be residents of Olivet. You could make them residents of Olivet. You could put someone from the council on the foundation. But again, that would all be outlined in a memorandum of understanding between both the foundation and the city. We would still need to keep those very strong accounting and tracking mechanisms in place so that we can make sure that we stay on the right side of the IRS and we fill out any of our tax documents that we would need to fill out. Just the main, I would say the main difference between number two and number three is where do you want the foundation to sort of live? Do you want it to maintain, do you want the council acting as the members of the foundation to do that? That would be option number two so that, you know, there's kind of more say in the activities and expenditures. Or number three would make it sort of one step removed from the city and from the council because the board would have members of the public on it and they would get to, you know, make the ultimate decisions. So not asking you to make you know, a decision this evening, kind of food for thought, but I would like some general direction as to where you would like to go. And then Chairman Lewis has his hand up.

Number three, would that mean then the foundation wouldn't have arguably the protection of the city or i'm thinking about what mr man does to help with financials does that go away and it's literally run as like an independent 503 whatever it is you know like independent group that the whoever is elected to would have to own and the city basically steps away from it

No, with the MOU in place, the city would not have to totally step away. So the city could continue to provide certain services because, as I see it, the Parks Foundation, even though it's a separate corporate entity, it still serves a public purpose, and it works with the City of Olivet in order to serve that public purpose, and that is parks and recreation projects and that kind of thing. So with an MOU in place, even though they had a governing board made up of citizen members or members of the public, we would still have an MOU in place that would allow the city to perform certain services. So you could even have the finance department providing you with the financial report, keeping the accounts and that kind of thing.

And if we keep it unchanged, we can still do fundraisers for this, right? I mean...

If you keep it unchanged?

Yeah.

If you keep it unchanged, no, because the intent and the way it is designed is it is passive. So as in it receives, right? So if you really want to do the fundraisers... we would need to do either number two or number three. We definitely need that MOU so that everybody understands the role of the foundation and the role of the city. So just as the council, the board, right? And by extension, the city council are kind of new to having a foundation, so we're staff. So did we do the fundraiser? Yes. Did we do it without an MOU? Yes. Should we have had the MOU? Yes. So we would need to do that because... what you have essentially is city staff who would then be working for the foundation, which is its own entity. And conducting fundraisers. And so you do have some of that, you know, city staff on our own in our normal job don't fundraise per se, right? So we definitely need to have that MOU.

I guess, let me maybe ask a little bit of a different one. Can we still accept donations for the Parks Foundation if nothing remains, if it just stays the same?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because that's, if you do nothing and you leave it the way that it is, we can absolutely accept donations. That was the original intent and purpose of the foundation was to receive a donation. So if someone decides that they want to donate through those directed funds or Just, I really love parks and all of that. And I want to give to, to the foundation. They can certainly do that.

But we are limited in how much we can do any kind of outreach to acquire donations.

Correct. We can do awareness, you know, like a piece in the newsletter that just lets people know that this exists. Right.

I think I would still want to have the MOU because you're now using city resources, the newsletter. and city staff time for this private charity this charity that's going to do public service it is you you should not think of the foundation as another city department like fire police public works planning you need to think of it as this sort of cousin of the, of the city that has its own tax ID number and its own bank accounts and its own.

Yeah, but we might do a story on Aldi, you know that it's opening, you know, we don't ask them for money, you know, to pay for that time and efforts, I mean this is a separate entity. So I still think we could be able to at least let people know that it exists.

And if you're saying we as in the city, then yes, I would agree. But if the park foundation then wanted to put out its own and use the city newsletter or use city staff in order to do it, then that would be a different question. But if you're sitting as a council member and you say, I suggest that the city put some kind of blurb out there or something that says, look, there's this park foundation and they um can receive donations and then turn it into some type of project for our park or purchase something for our park using those donations then i think that that would be fine and could could time and energy be considered a donation in kind from the city to that foundation as if as in staff worked the fundraiser yeah um

having staff work the fundraiser or any type of fundraiser, you run into the fair labor standards, right? And you can't ask staff to volunteer for something that's very similar to the work that they already do, which are public events and public programming. So Probably not. Like we would need to make sure that they got paid or that it became part of their, you know, regular 40 hours. And then they were able to take time off, you know, earlier in the week, which is why we absolutely need to have that tracking system.

Go ahead. Well, I, I mean,

the benefit to me of number two is it allows us to do fundraising and help um i am concerned to how we keep staff whole and ask them and i'm thinking i'm just sensitive to the over extra work of having to track that and you know ask staff to do something um my concern for number three is we're now asking then for more members of the public to be on the board and it's another board and we already have multiple board positions open I don't think this one's going to meet as often. So maybe it's easier to fill. And there were definitely people I can imagine and all of it and bloom and, you know, that probably have a vested interest in wanting to be on this, but that's my other concern is now we're asking for people to serve on the board. Um, and I think, you know, my opinion and you asked for direction would be lean towards number three, because it frees up staff, but, um, Probably does limit a little bit of the fundraising because it requires that the board, if they're going to run a trivia night or something like that, or do something unique, it's more public driven than it is all of that driven. But I think that's okay because that's kind of the goal of this is separate than Parks and Rec. This is separate than the city.

Could you do a hybrid approach where in five years it turns into number three, but in the meantime, the city has a little bit more control to help get it off its feet?

There's no reason you couldn't in five years. There's no reason you couldn't start at a number two, right? And in five years, if it has gotten legs and we believe that it can stand on its own, that you do what we're suggesting, you know, to do now, which is, uh, restructuring. Right. Cause where, um, the board and, you know, by extension, the council. seems to be that they you want to land somewhere either in two or three um because you want the foundation to be more active as opposed to kind of its original intent so the answer the long answer to that is yes

well and i guess i personally i'm leaning i lean more towards three um because i i really see the opportunity that exists for this foundation to really do some good work for the community through the fundraising potential fundraising mechanisms um that can provide a lot of benefit to our parks um in a variety of different ways. Um, you know, I think a lot of that is yet to be seen. And, um, I think that, I guess I'm less concerned with filling the seats of the board with the public, um, perhaps because of being on the parks commission and, and seeing the involvement of the, uh, parks commission members, at least at the time that I was on, um, My, as I kind of envision this board, it would be still with, you know, at least one council member, at least some one person from the parks commission. And then maybe somebody from the general public. my sense is that we have some flexibility in creating the bylaws to say, like, we only want five members on the board, which is what we have right now, which means it'd be a very small, a small board for trying to find additional members. And I think that having the members, having more people from public, I think is a good thing. I struggle a little bit with the optics of the council being the Parks Foundation board, because I feel like it's a little bit too keeping things tight. Not that I think that's how we are operating, but how I can see it being perceived. And because it serves the parks, it serves the broader community. has the potential to really serve the broader community. And for that reason, I think it's good to have members of the community involved. All of that being said, however, what I would find really helpful in a potential work session, future work session, is to hear thoughts, ideas, concerns from staff, from park staff, as well as from you know, the attorney perspective, the city manager perspective to help kind of point out some of the things that maybe we're not even aware of or thinking about yet, different things that might complicate with either number two or number three, that just from a staff perspective, you are aware of and know of and want us to be thinking about as we're forming this board.

Is there any other cities?

Clayton.

Clayton?

Off the top of my head, Clayton has one.

And how did they start out? Did they start off independent or are they tied to the city? I also know the Ladue Educational Foundation.

A number of school districts have foundations. I don't have the depth of the history of Clayton. It has been around for a while. It is very well established. But whether or not they started, you know, much like Olivette is wanting to start, off the top of my head, I don't have that.

That would be good info to kind of know, you know, a little bit some history.

I struggle a little bit with... deciding what belongs in a city's budget versus a parks foundation i know we talked about that a little bit last year yeah you know like for example the soccer goals i'm very thankful that we're able to fund those out of the parks foundation budget but my question would be why is that not a city expense versus a parks foundation expense right where do we draw the line is it the parks may be looking to do something in five years and this would speed it up to be next year? Or is it just something that's completely out of scope that we would never do and the Barks Foundation is able to support it? Those would be some of my questions. I think that would also help us define which way you want to go.

I wonder though, and I don't disagree with you, but I do wonder if that would be a challenge either way, regardless of two or three, because the group anyone could bring something to the parks foundation and ask, will you fund this? Um, and it's really then up for the foundation to choose maybe number three, at least allows an independent body versus this group here, which in theory controls both. Um, I do tend to agree with, um, um, chairman pro temp is that I think having staff tell us, you know, their thoughts on two and three would be helpful. And I'm wondering, uh, exactly if we, if doing something similar where we talked about the groups coming forward, we could combine this with that coming towards us in July or August, unless there's a more urgent need to have this decided.

There's no urgent need. I I would recommend not doing it in July because you have the interviews for your commissions and they're off the top of my head. I don't remember, but we also had something else in July, but I think we could probably get something together by August. So it sounds like to me, what we might be able to bring you in August is the structure of an MOU, right? Like which would include, um, Whether we go for two or for three, we probably will have some of some very similar concerns, you know, from a staff level. If there is something that is unique to either number two or number three, we could bring that forward and then leave sort of blank. who belongs on the board, right, for the foundation to decide. But if we can bring you sort of a draft of an MOU for you guys to think about and talk about and have staff concerns, I think that at least would get your conversation started. And you've given us some things that we should think about, you know, that you're interested in. But I think that could inform your conversation.

Another thing that's related, whether, you know, regardless of which number we end up going with for the structure of things. And I don't think given how infrequently we meet as a foundation, I don't think it's something that we need to fully worry about before the next work session. But I would like to see if it's possible to include in the foundation Structure of the meeting an opportunity for public comment I don't know that it would even be called public comment but i'm just recognizing that like there we don't have a mechanism at this point to hear from the public, should the public want to offer their thoughts and ideas.

yep we can include that in the agenda Okay, thank you. Okay. I think from my perspective, I have some good direction for what you all are thinking, and I think we can put something together for a more robust discussion.

Okay. Thank you. So then we have item number six, approval of minutes. Are there any corrections or changes to the minutes?

No.

Nope.

Okay. But I have a motion to approve. We have, do you have that on there? The two dates for the meeting?

I'll make a motion to approve the July 8th, 2025 meeting minutes, as well as the August 5th, 2025 meeting minutes.

I second that.

Could we please pull the board?

Director Jurgel. Yes. Director Solomonov. Yes. Vice chairman, uh, Sean Hellman.

Yes.

Chairman Lewis.

Yes.

All right, thank you. Minutes have been approved. So then item number seven is establishing our next meeting. Do the bylaws, As they stand at this point, is it requiring an annual, semi-annual?

You're required to have an annual meeting. So you could establish that your next meeting will be at least in May of 2027, but you clearly will meet before that.

Yes. Do we need to establish an actual date at this meeting or can it be something that is based off of conversations that happen at the work session?

Yes, that's fine. You do not have to establish a specific date. Okay. Okay.

talk on the work session and then see how depending on the decision we probably we may need to meet sooner so it sounds like if i'm hearing um you correctly missy actually that august would probably be the first work session that would have time i believe so yeah to address this yeah okay um and then with the hope that we would have something be able to meet shortly thereafter well shortly being a relative term okay um am i understanding the impression of the other board members that we would like to meet more than just the annual that we do not want to wait until may okay Just kind of having that be made clear.

Late summer or fall.

Okay. Late summer, fall 2026 is when we will aim for the next meeting for the Parks Foundation. All right. If there is nothing more, then we are at item number eight, adjournment. Can I have a motion to adjourn, please?

I'd like to make a motion to adjourn.

Seconded. All right. The Parks Foundation will now adjourn.