Parks & Recreation Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm not holding tons of business. Shall we call this meeting to order? Yes. Doing that for my benefit, are you? Yes. Maybe awkward pause. All right. It is 7:10. 7:07. We are at 710. Okay. I watch it slow. Um we are at uh five Oaks on Warson. This is the part commission meeting on April 16th. Uh call the meeting to order and take the role. So uh you want to do you need to you're taking the notes, right? Uh Kate Pashan Helman present. Stephanie Todd present. Jim Person present. Travis Neil absent. Uh, Bill Hansen present. Thank you. And Beverly Beverly Tucker. Knight's taking my notes. A B director from my computer. All right. Uh, item number two, written communication. We have none. Excellent. Item number three, hearing from citizens. I think we have none. Pull the chat. There's no one in on Zoom. [Music] Discuss certificates. All right. You start the recording. Okay. I see the red button. Okay. Minutes. Uh recommendation is to approve the March 12th, 2025 regular meeting minutes. Uh as we have a quorum, we will do that. Any additions, changes, or modifications? No.

Someone want a motion to make a motion to approve the March minutes. We have a second. A second. Jim J. No. No. Jim, you second it. All in favor? Any opposed? Any absentions? Approved. Item number five, athletic field rental fees. That's right. Our recommendation to approve proposed rental fee increase. and you're going to go ahead. So, um, several years ago, the parks and recreation commission undertook the monumental task of updating fees for parks and recreation services and facilities and fields are the very final update from time of memorial when fees were very low. So, you'll see you saw in your report how just how low they were. Uh we have a comparison here. We were $3 per day. Uh and $9 for non-residents. And then we had a team team fee. So day or per hour? It says per hour. Oh, it's it's per hour. Sorry. It's per hour for the for the day. That's right. Um the other So in other cities they do it every way. So I apologize. Yes, it was $3 per hour. Yes, that's right. It's really up. Yeah, that is a very old fee. It's probably the oldest fee the city has right now, except for maybe snow parking permits. Yeah. And the difference between prime time and regular time. Well, prime time and regular So, different cities do that. Um, so prime time would be your weekends or after school hours when there's really a lot of competition for for fields. Okay. Now, this is to show representation of what's being charged in communities around us. This is not

saying that our fields are on par with the fields in these other communities. So, uh, for example, Clayton has very beautiful fields that were recently upgraded for millions of dollars. Yes. Um, and then some of them have older fields that are maybe more on par with ours. And then you have Brentwood where they had a beautiful field, but it got flooded. So, you know, so there there is a lot of variation and there's v variation in all the communities. So rather than really compete against those, what we're really trying to do is reco re recoup some of the costs associated with um uh prepping the fields for their use that day, not for the value of maintaining the fields because that is a very high number and if we renovate them, it would be even higher. So we're not trying to recoup back the actual cost. What we're trying to do is defay the cost of booking them and then have on someone set it up. So, on average, what's the game length? Uh, it depends on what they're renting it for. If it's soccer, you know, it'll roughly be, you know, an hour or two if they're doing practice or game. If it's baseball, typically what we get are baseball parties. People are renting the pavilion and then they want to play softball or baseball out on the field. Then, um, it could be an hour or two or sometimes it can be the whole day. It really depends on on who's using it and what. Um, if it's a if it's a corporate event coming in where they're doing a a company party, they'll book it for the whole time. They don't really care. But if it's a children's birthday party, they'll only rent it for the specific hours they they use. And we don't have a minimum. We do not have a minimum. An hour is the minimum. Okay. Yeah. And when we prep it, what we do is we put out the bases, we'll drag it, and we'll line it. And the reason we do that is it's much safer uh just having a field out there. If someone's going to do organized games on it, it hasn't been dragged. It can be very dangerous for them. Dragged. Tell me what that means.

It means the um tractor goes out and drags it with a you drag a thing behind it that looks like sand area. Yeah. So it looks like it's freshly groomed. As freshly groomed as all of that can get. Yes. I wasn't going to say that. Yeah. So question with the recommendation. So we don't want to up it for prime time like five bucks. We don't we we we get very low uses. We just wanted to bring it up to be a little bit more comparable, but we don't have a lot of competition for our fields. We're our primary field user. Okay. Yeah. So, what happens during baseball season or during soccer season, other communities and groups will try and rent our fields, but we are 100% occupied with our own programs. So, there's very little time that we can give them. Okay. We do have a soccer group in town that uses our fields and um they play year round so it would impact them and we will start charging them. The recently they were playing soccer here at Worson where there aren't soccer fields but with this coming in with having a structure then we are going to negotiate with them to them to start paying. So a policy question. Yes. So let's say I rent the pavilion and no one's using the field. Can they use it? They can. It's just like the So, it's the same the same policy which is if it's not being used, correct, they're welcome to it. But this guarantees that they have it removed. Yes. Exactly. One other question. So, maybe it's not an issue, but do you need to charge like a $50 or something deposit if people leave a bunch of trash? We do deposits on our rentals and those are already established. We don't have to worry about for for the Okay. Yeah. So then yeah, I would if it's not already there, I would add a line item that if there's

Oh, I got something in my eye. Lots of trash. You're going to damn. Yes, it's there. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We don't need to worry about it. But it's a good it's an excellent point. Yes. The question I see camp, school event, and tournament. Do we charge the new schools for rental? Good question. We do not charge them for Old Bottom's use of Stacy Park. They are out there every day with their PE classes. And then they do specific end of the school year and beginning of the school year rentals where they reserve the park and we do not charge them for that. Any other use, if Leoo's baseball team wanted to come in and use the field, we would charge them for that because they charge us to use their fields. Okay. They do. They do. But what are their rates? What do they charge us for their their fields are? It depends on the field. Well, it depends on the field. Their school fields are not so good. The the fifth grade center and the high school are very good. We don't get access to the high school. Sometimes we get the junior high very rarely. We do get the fifth grade center for soccer and that is a high rate because of the turf field. Okay. Yeah. And they don't charge us for practices at the elementary schools after school, but they do charge us like during basketball season, they charge us for the games in the gym because they have to open the ball. Yes. So, so as I look at these fees, what kind of revenue are we? I mean, clearly the the old fees, but what what's the number of rentals that we we don't know because uh we don't again we don't get we're not able to accommodate a lot of the requests that we get because our programs are on there. So, I would imagine a couple hundred to $1,000 a year is all we're talking about. Once, however, we renovate these fields, it'll be a different story. But the renovations, as you as you all know,

they're are a priority for us, but they're not scheduled nor funded yet. Pat is looking for grants to see if it's something we could potentially do. Um, sadly, all of risen, so we may not qualify for some of the grants that used to be available for underserved and socially, economically challenged communities. collection. A lot of cost is more to put a marker in the sand. Yes. And to say that $3 an hour is silly. It costs us more to enter it into the computer than it does to charge that. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a I think there is future potential and if we were able to renovate our cars, I think we could make some substantial renov revenue on them each year. I don't think the revenue would ever be able to offset the cost to renovate the fields, however, because they are very expensive. But but this is just to bring it up and yes, acknowledge to acknowledge. Yes. And the other thing to think about, too, is that we are going to move in this budget year to having our fees approved annually in the budget. So, this is going into the ordinance because it's going in before the budget is approved this year. But then after that, there's an ordinance that's going to say that the fees are set annually in the city budget. And that will help us. That's, as you know, we've all talked about, we need to be more flexible, be able to move our fees more in accordance with the cost. So, remember the last time we came through, we um we talked about uh charging an after hours use fee for this building because it costs us a lot more staff time to have people here on holidays and after hours. So, we now charge a search charge for that. So, in future, we'll be able to adjust those every year as part of the budget process and not have to go through the laborious process of doing an ordinance and having two hearings and

and all of that. going to be able to be a lot more responsive to, you know, economics and and what our costs are. Okay. So, going back to schools, yes. Do we charge Mariam? Um, Miriam has never asked to use our fields. If they did ask to use our fields, we would charge them. Okay. Yeah. And if we used their facility, they would charge us. Okay. Yeah. So, do we have policy or something that lets the Leoo school not pay? So, in case Miriam comes and says, "Well, we've heard Leoo doesn't." Yeah. So, Leoo um is an interesting agreement as you know, we have a gentleman's agreement. I'm not sure that's the current. We have a human agreement with them for our after school sports. Um, the reason that we do the kind of the quidd proquo with old bottom school is for decades we had free use of their gym and cafeteria for our summer camp program. And the times that the school is walking across and using it is not a time that we're renting it anyway. So, they do not have places for their kids to play outside. The park is their kind of their their playground, right? Um, does that mean I wouldn't mind having a contribution for their use of our parking lot? Sure, I would. But is that a can of worms we want to open? And and I'm thinking less having them sign something and more just somebody else saying why are they getting special treatment, right? Verse us. Yes. Yes. And we do get free use of the schools. So we use all of their fields at the elementary schools after hours for our practices for free. Yeah. The only time they charge us is the astroturf field for the middle school for soccer and then for the gyms. And then the gyms we understand because they

have staff there. Quit pro. We're getting use of their stuff. We are. We are. And if we have um uh if there are two Leoo schools playing each other, sometimes we don't pay the same amount. So there's a huge hierarchy. So So the last question, but it's an excellent it's an excellent question. Absolutely. So my last question is yes. Is there a relationship or a dependency between renting the fields and running the pavilions? No, it's whatever they want. It's separate. So if someone want can someone can rent the field someone can rent the field all by themselves or someone can rent the pavilion and then also rent the field. Correct. Yeah. And with it's all the same form. So it's where Yeah. But it's two separate what we're treating as two separate rentals combined. It could be one rental and you're renting both places. It's one form, right? But the four or the other, but the fees are separate. Yes. The fees are charged separate. That's correct. There's not a combined fee. No, there's not a combined fee. So there's no dependency. So to which comes back to your question, So there's a little bit of a dependency. If a group of 250 is using Stacy and another group of 150 wants to rent the field, we will not do it. We will not do it. Correct. And so in our software that is a dependency. It has to be clear. Okay. Because otherwise there isn't enough parking and create a bad user experience for both groups. But technically if it's available and and we can accommodate them, we will do it. We we can rent one to 100 and now we don't. Yes. Yes. Gotcha. Okay. One more question. So, and I should know the multiple part question. I should know the first part. What is our fiscal year? Is it June? July 1 to June 30. So, I guess my question is if we make a recommendation today, will it

be through city council by time the budget's implemented in July? Well, it'll go on the first meeting in May. So, we'll talk to the city manager. If she wants to hold off till the budget, we can. Okay. But I really wanted all of you to have an opportunity to weigh in on it and to really no matter where no matter when it goes, this commission absolutely needs to feel comfortable with it. Yeah. My experience has been that the timeliness is um Can you show me the previous one? Sure. Sure. Just put it up on the screen just one more time. Yeah. So, so we are below pretty much every We still Well, we're way below that, but we'll still be below. We'll still be below. Yes. We're kind of All those numbers are per hour, right? Yes. These are all per hour. Okay. Yeah. So, and we don't charge a prep fee. Um but again, those are all things we could do in the future if we had a better Yeah. better uh better product that we're looking at. And if you need to recoup cost in some way, right? If our cost to do stuff, well, you also you don't want like our staffing cost. We we could do that in a prep fee or something. We could. This does not cover staff cost. Correct. This just covers a nominal administrative cost. Gotcha. Sorry, one more silly question. For sure. When you say ball fields, is this all ball sports or just baseball or just soccer? It's baseball, soccer, and we would like to start charging the cricket field. Okay. They use it for free right now. We would like to start charging them. Okay. Cricket field. Yeah, we have cricket pitch. The pitch in between the It's It's not a regulation size. It has a special name. Um I can't remember what

it So, so we have fields in in every park? No. No, we have open multi-use grass areas. The only athletic fields that we have are at Warson and Stacy. Okay. The other parks grass is not appropriate for games. I've seen back in the day they were used for that, but it is not it's not used. It's the the soccer was put in all of the parks, but it destroyed the fields. They weren't designed for it and it overwhelmed parking in neighborhoods and it was very unpopular. Yeah. I thought I'd seen um volleyball at volleyball was out at Side. It was a sand volleyball. It was removed during the remodel. Oh. It was really um Yeah. Okay. So, do we have any action to take other than these are what you're do? You do. We're asking that you uh make a motion to approve this proposed rate change and forward it to the city council for adoption. And to Bill's point, it would be either during the budget process or it would be in May ahead of the budget process. Okay. I make a motion to recommend to approve the rate charges as listed in board to city council for adoption. And I second the motion. All right. Everyone in favor? I. Any oppose? Any abstension? Approved. A few questions. No, but it's You have one more. Uh, it's fine. Maybe still. I know. I can't, but I think we're okay. Four in July.

napkins. It's okay. It's not mission critical, but you're gonna get another chance. Maybe she's saving it for the the big audience. Okay, item number six, international dark sky. International dark sky. So this year for the first time the city has declared um April 21st to 28th 2025 as international dark sky week in all of that. So this is a big deal. It's a big deal for us. So as you all know Stacy Park was um certified as the first Missouri urban night sky place and the world's fourth night sky place. So that's a pretty that's a pretty big deal. Um, will you repeat that? Uh, Stacy Park was Missouri's first urban night sky place and the world's fourth night sky place. Urb of urban night sky. Urban, sorry. Urban night sky place. Yes. I'm almost thinking we were the first in the country. I'm not sure. I can look that up because then I think we were the first fourth in the country, not just Missouri. And then well we were fourth in the world. I mean yeah we were fourth in the world but I think we were first in the country the United States. Yeah the United States. That would be good to know. So if you can find So I will look that up. I thought there was one other city. Uh that's what I want to look up. Shortly thereafter there were a couple suburbs in Chicago but I was thinking you were you were actually fourth in the United States first in the United States too. the artic the New York Times article that's on the website may may look well I can just look it up I can look it up so um part of the responsibility of being an urban night

sky place in addition to us making sure that we're following all of the correct operations to protect the night sky but education is a huge component about of that so as you know each year we do the free star parties and we've had um speakers we've done Lots of things happening throughout the course of the year. We do social media posts, but this year we we have the personnel now. We have a you know department that's functioning well. We knew we could take it on. So this year we're doing actual activities, but the best part is we're partnering with other groups. So we're not doing it on our own, which is fantastic. So I just thought it would be interesting for you to So we had a proclamation that the city council uh declared at their last meeting. They did it ahead of the actual week because um you know there's a lot going on on the next council agenda. But two of the key things in here that I thought what that I would be nice to highlight is that what a lot of people don't know is that 60% of North American song birds migrate through St. Louis and 40% of North American waterfell. And this is an incredible statistic. So that's the Mississippi flyway. We are right smack dab on the Mississippi flyway and it's amazing. So when you go to our website, there is all kinds of fun things you can do in there and the International Dark Sky page actually links you to the bird migration live feed. So every night they show you who's in the air because majority of birds migrate at night. And the reason for this is they use the sun and the sorry they use the moon and the stars to navigate which is unbelievable. Um and then the reason they come up the Mississippi is that because they're following the Mississippi waterways, no mountains in the way, lots of food, lots of shelter,

but along that migration route is a lot of danger. So St. Louis is the fifth most dangerous city to migrating birds. It's higher and it's lower in the fall, higher in the summer. Um, and the reason for this is we have so much light pointed straight up. It disorients the birds. We also have buildings that do not have protection on them. So, they fly right into the buildings. But what the light does is it disorients them, disorientates them. They get confused and lost and they'll start flying erratically and they get exhausted and they come down and then they're trapped in the urban setting without food or shelter. So, or they just die from literally flying they from exhaustion or they hit buildings downtown. Have you thought of doing any PR around this like with the news channel next? Well, we're gonna we're going to start to so during the week we'll put out some information. We every year we put social media posts about this, but it's um Clayton does a much better job. Clayton has declared um they've joined Lights Out Heartland, which is an organization with in conjunction with International Dark Sky Missouri to help educate people. So, that's one of the tenants we have in our park. So, that's why this building has no light shining onto the building. All of the lights we have here shine down and are shielded. The architects wanted to put in all those flood lights that would light up the building, but we said no because we really don't want to be more of a danger to birds. So, our lights out in the parking lot are IDA certified. They shine down only and they don't give excess light above them. So, and the you know, our inside of our building is all of these lights that we have in here are designed to be on the human spectrum to protect us from from adverse lighting. Now, we get complaints about that in the gym because you can

see in the gym, it's fine. However, if you're accustomed to a really bright gym, you think it's dim. And then we have the auxiliary lighting from the skylights to do two things. One, bring in extra light from the sky, but also to, you know, be a green practice and need less electric lighting. Yeah. So anyway, so I just thought I thought as a commission we are um supposed to be kind of educating people too. So I thought it would be good for all of you to kind of hear about what we're doing and there are a lot of great resources out here. So we're some events we're sponsoring. Um we have our star parties that we do with the St. Louis Astronomical Society. If you haven't had a chance to go to these, I strongly encourage you to go. They bring out amazing telescopes. And then at the end of the summer, they're having the Hobsonfest at Stacy Park, which is something they do annually. People can bring their own telescopes and they'll show you how to use them. A lot of people have hops and telescopes and they don't know how to use them. So, and then they set up their big big telescopes. Um, and then on Wednesday, April 23rd, the St. the Challenger Science Center in St. Louis is bringing in their big inflatable portable um planetarium. It's fabulous. It's fabulous. We had it at the old community center. Our first ever uh we had a we had a meteor shower party. Um and that was back in my gosh 2018 or n something. It was before co so it seems like it was forever and it was so cool. It was so coming back here and then our partner agencies will be here as well. Autobon um Sierra Club uh international dark sky the St. Louis Astrological Society. So, it'll be a great time for people to learn about things and the presenter from the Challenger Center is amazing. She tells these great stories about the stars and

gets people very excited and then everybody gets to go into the she does small groups and they and she just does continuous tours inside the planet. So, it's going to be f fabulous. Then we have the special star dancing the next night with um at Stacy Park. So, oops. So, let me back up. Okay. So, I wanted to answer any questions that I could. So, what for the record? Sure. What can residents do to help turn their lights off? Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. And you can also you can shield your lights. We have a lot of information and you can get it at at our night. Um we will have pamphlets for you. We also have direct links on our website about how to learn because what's amazing is if you have lighting that is IDA specific, not only does it save you money, but it also makes you safer if you follow their lighting practices. It makes it easier for you to see things that are going on in your yard to protect your home better and then also protect the the birds and also increase how many fireflies you have in your yard because oddly enough fireflies attracted to lights and the new the new LEDs with the blue spectrum they're even more attracted to and so they they you know it interrupts their reproduction cycle. They think they've met their match their their love and if you know well and then what they also do so they they have to blink to find a mate. So if you've got a bright light shining f in your backyard, they have to blink too hard. And so again, they can't they can't blink bright enough. Correct. And they wear out again or they don't find anyone because they can't your life. Yeah. So if you talk to anybody that grew up in St. Louis, what you hear time and time again is, "Oh, there used to be so many fireflies when I was little." Yep. Yeah. It's the second leading cause of firefly decline after habitat loss. And it

also um disrupts migrating monarch butterflies. Yes. Yeah. Because at night they get they when it's really bright at night they think it's daytime. As commissioners, do you need us to do anything to Well, I would love for you to come to these events because it's amazing to see the different people that come to the star parties. It's very interesting. oftentimes it's just people that are walking in the park and don't realize it's happening and then they may have no other connection and not be, you know, if they don't have young kids, they're not looking at our activity guides. Some of them don't know we have a community center somewhere. So, it's a great time to kind of chat with people. But, but the star parties are getting a reputation and people will drive from like Chesterfield out and and come in just to see them too. But yeah, it's it's it's amazing the the variety. You get families walking up. You get people driving, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes. It's it's really interesting. The police officers stop by. The fire department comes out. And it's what's great is from Stacy Park, I've seen the rings of Saturn. I've seen the moons of Jupiter. I mean, it's amazing what you can see from there. Yeah. Um, so I may have just missed if there was more publicity about this earlier. Um, but I'm I'm worried that we're so close like it's next week. Well, it's in the activity guide. It would it was mailed to every household. It's been on our social media. It's on our website. We've done email blast. We don't. Yeah. Yeah. I know you mentioned at the meeting, but you know, I think especially because of the proclamation, I wonder if it could on Monday. Yeah. Well, Tuesday I can add it more to my report, but what we're saying is on Monday, but it's Wednesday, but it's pushed out on Monday. So, can someone

talk to Kiana? Yes. Tomorrow. Yes. Well, and I was going to say usually Beverly puts uh we have we have weekly we have weekly emails that go out from here to all of our at the bottom she makes a link for the park, but I don't think that's enough. I think it especially because it's it's not just a park thing. Now, with the city proclamation, um I think if it because normally the park stuff is all the way at the bottom of this, at least the emails that come from the city. It'd be great if we could get it bumped up. As as I understand, there's some challenges of getting space on the all of it. I'm thinking if you could as a council member uh chat with Jennifer to see if we can get that going pretty quickly. And I have a question, a recommendation. I don't since the city is making a recommendation or a proclamation, I would ask that all the the city lights be all turned off for during May. Yeah, I I I have control I have control of parks and recreation. I'm ask I'm not asking you. I'm asking Maxi. I can take it back to Jennifer. But yeah, I saying for the month of May, our building was designed with kill switches. Take them back, but they Yeah, I mean I know some buildings they won't I I can tell I can tell you purposes. So what it our building was designed with kill switches. We can turn our lights off. The city center cannot. They do not have the capability to turn their lights off the way we turn ours off. But I but like the Clayton government buildings do. They do. and they uh for lights out heartland but they leave the entrances on and like the city jail. So they they leave certain lights on for safety, right? But as a rule they turn off all the non-essential lights. Clayton joined

lights out heartland. The city of did not. So that's the difference there. I know, but they but Clayton made I think though this is kind of beyond the scope of beyond our scope. I think this is level. Yeah, it would be, you know, certainly something that council could explore in the future. I can definitely uh talk about bumping up the discussion. You and I will I would like to tackle that. I don't want you to Okay. If I need to, but I'll be a backup. So, can I can I add a couple more things? So, like Beverly said, literally thousands of birds are killed in St. Louis. The St. Louis Ottoan Society does a it's really depressing. It does they pick up dead birds during migration in in downtown. And so they it's all backed up by studies and statistics. And so during bird migration, they uh go in the mornings and pick up around the same buildings and they'll do it all the time. So So anyway, so Yeah. Collecting the data and they do it at WashU and um I think Slooh does it too. Yeah. WashU has been trying to reduce their bird stripes. Yeah. So every every little bit helps because yes this the ones pointing up are the worst but somehow the basically the whole sky glow too and all contributions to it. It's like weird. And um there's we if you are interested I have lots more information I can give to you. Um it is it is staggering the changes that have come and it's getting worse. But as international dark sky says it's reversible. Light pollution is reversible. Yes. Speaking of what we can

do, do we turn off the lights in the in the um in the uh fitness area at night? We do. And but when the cleaners come in, they all come back on. But it's motion sensor. They go out. They eventually do. They will go out. They will go out. I'm thinking I mean I think we've had some problems with bird strikes around. Yes, we have bird strike problems here. But that's different than leaving the lights on. Ours aren't migratory. Ours are our our neighbors, our our permanent residents here. Okay. Okay. Right. So I was also We we do we do care very much. We didn't we didn't they're daytime striking. So I was going to check if if the like the community center can be a lights h heartland building because there's there's there's part there's like built partnerships like I don't know why I don't know why the parks commission could or the park couldn't be a a lights on heart. We we are we are the park the parks and recreation department is and we promote lights out h heartland. You could also be uh they call them building partners where you where your buildings participate. And so I was going to check to see, do you really have to turn off all the lights or if you have all dark sky compliant lights, is that good enough to be Yeah, that that would be a good thing to find out because typically what we do is we turn off our patio lights because they really are decorative. They're actually they're down right now because repairing the pole, but um it was very timely. It's during migration time. Um that would be great. Um, and the other thing before we before we go, I just wanted to find out um, do you and Bill have a timeline yet of when you want to start my you guys. We're working on it. Okay. Excellent. Well, thank you. That was

part of my question on do we need to have something at every park? Oh, because then that makes it much longer. Yes. Versus if we can keep doing things at Stacy. Well, you are so lucky too because the first time we did this, the application process was brutal. They've really streamlined it. Yeah, we were guinea pig. So, it was they were Yeah, we did eight applications because they kept we kept turning them in and they kept changing what they needed. So, it was it was very frustrating, but it was good. So, you have all these PhD scientists running this and you know it was they all want something different. It was good though. I mean, it was it was really good. Okay. All right. All right. Are we done? We are done. Thank you everyone for indulging me on that. Item number seven, bicycle ordinance. Okay. Great. Okay. So, bicycle ordinance update. So, I wanted to report back to you. The last time we discussed it, you had questions about in primarily about enforcement. How would it be enforced? So, um I met with the police chief and she really likes our proposals and she we crafted this. She ag she is 100% on board with this. So our primary goal is we want to increase safe operations for riders and safeguard park users. That's our primary goal. So we'll do this through education. It'll be through print, social media, and one-on-one conversations. And the one-on-one conversations are police officers and violators. Um outreach is by police officers to parents of minors. So, as with other ordinances in the city, in the in the code, when minors are involved, the first thing the police officers, the police department tries to do is to outreach with the parents. We don't want to arrest children. They want to, you know, help the family understand what's going on and then bring

everything into compliance. And then a citation is the last worstc case scenario. It's important to have because it could be someone who's an adult that's a frequent violator. And so finally, a citation is what's issued to really hammer the point home. But their goal is not to site first. Their goal is to educate first. And then the parks and recreation department, we would be partners in that education to help get that the word out. of articles in all of it life posting things up in the parks pushing out through social media and maybe some engagement with the schools. Um so I wanted to you all to know that um you had a very you know an excellent observation how would this be enforced and how it be used. So I wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable with that. So the proposed ordinance updates would be the same as we went through in our last report. So it would allow the class one and two ebikes in the parks. Can can you remind us the difference between one, two, and three? It's their the speed at which they can go and the power of their motor. Yes. And that would the definitions would be in the code is what those are. Um it would prohibit the the class three which are the the bigger ones that can go faster and have the larger engine. It would prohibit bicycles and ebikes on all unpaved park trails. This is language we don't have right now. So yeah, like sassifrass. Like sassifrass and cottonwood. Yes. And it would adopt a maximum 15 mile per hour speed limit for all bikes on paved trails. And then as we talked about at the last meeting, we would post these signs. We make sure that we um did outreach for everybody, particularly in the spring to make sure everybody understands because some people um have no idea how fast they're going. If they don't have a speedometer on their bike, they don't know. you know, you can you can get up to pretty good speed in some of our parks if you're really pumping

hard and going down the hill. So, um so it's good good education for everybody. So, I have a couple questions. Yes. So, does it apply to the path from whatever Mansfield down to Deal? Yes, that path was already posted that um that motorized vehicles are not allowed on that. So, we would put the same. So, ebikes would be allowed on there, but we do need to put up the speed limit signs for bikes, and that includes both pedal bikes and both pedal bikes and ebikes. Yeah. See, I don't think they Well, whatever. We don't have We don't have any We don't have any speed limits up on there right now. So, and I was looking I took a picture of it. So, in Florida, of all places, in Miami, in their they have a big huge park and they have like the little um whatever signs that that say that say no no no motorized like scooters or I mean you'd have to say but they actually have a nice sign that's low right along the path. Yes. That says that. And that's those are the the signs we talked about in the in the report that follow our wayfinding. We have those designed. They're in our wayfinding schedule and um the park crew has started. You've seen the signs they've put on the trails. So, we're going to start doing that along the pathways. And then the signs that the trails already have signs, we're just going to put a little medallion that says bike and then a circle and a slash through it. In all of our park signage, we really try and use icons because they are um translate to all languages. Yeah, that's essentially what they have. Children. Yeah. And it's one of those what do you call it's like a standup sign. It's not on a pole. It's a it's a it's a this triangle. Triangle. Yeah. Triangle. Yeah. So, um so as with anything, we'll

we'll phase them in. Um, we want to watch our cost. So, but we we now that we know we can do them in house, it's a lot easier for us to do them. Yeah. So, what do you what do you recommend? Um, because police aren't they might be in Stacy Park. They're not going to be sitting around watching. Well, it's it's so as with all of our ordinances like smoking in the parks, it's complaint driven. So if there is someone who is doing a systematic regular violation, we work with the police department. So we had particularly during construction of this park, we had two kids on dirt bikes that were coming through this park consistently driving through construction and it was the same time of day every day. We let the police know. They came out, they found them. They found their parents and it stopped it. Okay. It turns out their parents worked in the industrial park and the kids would get off school and then they would come through. So it it it's community policing and it works. Yeah. Yeah. And that that was my point. So I guess if we see kids we need to call the police. So it depends. So can I give my example? Sure. So this happened today about 3:00. I was walking on the path got on at Dealment. I probably got maybe three or four minutes into the path and coming straight at me were three dirt bikes flying, right? And I simply stepped into their line, put my hand up and they stopped. I mean, they were far enough back and they were just flying and I and they stopped and I said, "You guys need to get out, you know, get off the trail, but more importantly, you need to slow way down to get off at Dealman and stay off the trail." And they're like, "We're sorry. We're sorry. We'll do it." Okay.

Not everyone's as brave as you, right? Well, it's community policing. So then I said the three women that were walking their dogs turned to me as I walked by them and said thank you right because I said and they said can yeah you can do it too you know I said anyone could there's no bikes powered dirt bikes allowed on the trail tell them tell them that and nine times out of 10 they'll go away and not come back I mean you're going to have the kids that are going to do it over and over again but these kids were clearly getting away with it right and and They thought they got away with it until they saw me and they did not get away with it. One of our former one of our former commissioners called me because he knew we were discussing this and he said the big thing at his son's middle school right now is the boy scander bikes. He said it's a big fad in Loo right now and that's great but they can't run them on the be on the parks. Can't be in the park. Well, they're actually not supposed to be on the road. Yeah. Well, that's so so my other question on the roads because they're underage. So, so my other question was, okay, so you see them on the trail, direct them off. How do we do that without causing more of a problem? Right. Well, you you probably were a little more aggressive than most walkers would be. Um, I just told them to slow down. Yeah. Get off the trail as soon as they could. Again, the education, letting people know that they're not legal. They're not supposed to be out there. And it's not a good idea for a child under 16 to be driving a dirt bike on a community suburbs, suburbs, you know, roads and sidewalks. It's just it's not It doesn't go well with the dog walking. I can agree to that. Now, when you say a dirt bike, are you talking about the ones that are less than 49 cc's or what? There are all kinds. There's, you know, large ones, small ones. Are they powered? Oh, yeah. Powered. Okay. Well, and I was wondering if they're like little

mini bikes. They're quiet. They're way quieter than the ones we had when we were that age. Yeah. But they're bigger, too. Yeah. Right. And so it's it's a mini motorcycle. You see a lot. There there's a lot I mean there there's two things that I see in this isn't so I mean how it is that I haven't seen many gas powered ones but I've seen a lot of the uh the almost fat bike tires the the really big that with the uh with Yeah. with that are electric powered and I mean the different ones I see flying up and down Villa. Yeah. Uh you know in other places that's you know they and I'm not sure if that's what this was or not because I didn't look that closely. I just wanted to slow down before they hit a dog or a person. I mean, they're I mean, the kids that I these youngsters that are out there, um, get off my lawn. Get off my lawn. Even though you're on the road. That's why I felt like I pair, but they're I mean, they're I mean, they're doing I mean, by federal law, they can only do 28 miles an hour, and they're doing 28 miles an hour. I mean, they're going as fast as they could be. my but I blame the parents cuz where where are these kids going to what are they thinking of buying this for a 10year-old in a to neighborhood where do they think they're going to ride this flip side not to defend the kids but as somebody who when I actually am in shape and and cycle when I have my road bike out it's not unusual for me to do 30 miles on a road so I mean I'm going to be careful that we're not saying oh absolutely you got to do some you know I know yeah it's appropriate it's appropriate but No, again the trail is different than Yeah. Can I ask one another question or sorry go ahead Jim a question go back. It seems to me that somewhere in allow class one and two ebikes. I will that we need to put some something in parenthesis in terms of speeds because

well that's what this is right here. Whoops. Number four is the maximum speed period. because they're forbidden on the unpaved. Okay. But when you say you're going to prohibit a class 3 bike, somebody who's not in the biking world does not know what a class 3 bike is. That's correct. But someone who is in the biking world and owns a class 3 bike, they know what it is because remember we use the standard from the industry. So when they sell the bikes in the stores, the the class is on the bikes. But from an ordinance standpoint, shouldn't there be something for each class of bike? Well, from an ordinance standpoint, this is this is the way it was recommended from other ordinances in other cities. We're not reinventing the wheel and the ordinance now will be worked on between the police chief and myself and then looked at by the city. Okay. So, this isn't the final. Then you are you are recommending that this be a be the standard sent to the city council. Okay. And then they will create the code. They will create you don't have to create the code. Yeah. And my point was calling the police is great, but they're going to be long gone. So it's it's got to have community policing. People have to I don't know that I would have stopped and done that if they were on Dealman or one of the roads, but clearly when there's people on the path and there's these bikes flying down the path, it it's up to us because if you call the cops, they're going to be long gone before the cops show up. They're doing 20 hours. It's you can call the cops when you see repetitive if you get a photograph. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because the problem with self-p policing is first off, I don't think I would not stand in front of them like you did. I mean, that's fine if there was plenty of distance, but um but the other thing is

when I'm walking on that trail, they don't they're so quiet they zip up right behind me really, really f close and scare me to bits. Yeah. Well, that's just poor cycling skills. Well, that also reinforces the point that I wish we could ban headphones. Well, and the other thing is they probably passed a bunch of people walking the other way that didn't slow them down or stop them either, right? Because everyone thinks someone else is going to do it, right? And you got to at least try. Can I ask one more question? Sorry. So, I agree with everything we've talked about and as somebody who's an e scooter, I don't want to say this, but I'm still going to ask. I mean, I still see lots of people on e- scooters, on whatever the onehe thing is. Yeah, I see that guy on old bottom. I was super There's a couple kids now, too, that are and again those youngsters, what are they doing? Uh, do we need to expand this beyond just ebikes? Because it's by definition my e- scooter. I can go out and u Well, I'll ask. Okay. I'll ask and and we won't doesn't have to come back to you as long as you get this in there. Um so when when um Beth and the police chief starts really looking at it, it's not a bad idea to put to just because we already have the code for everything else. It's just adding we're just adding this classification in there. Yeah. And I think we just I mean again we just more than putting like ebikes just the speed limits 15 whatever you're on. Whatever vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. I you know that may because then the next trend that comes out is hoverboards, right? You know, in somebody's Right. Right. Right. Right. You know, now we're your jetpack. Yeah. I want one of those by the way. Didn't you run the bird? Yes. Yes.

So, do we need to make a motion? We do. It's right here. That's why I forgot it was there. I'll make a motion to approve amending the municipal code to defi define ebicles and limit access in parks and forward the recommendations to the city council. Second. No, Jim. It's Jim. All right. All in favor? I. All oppose. Any abstensions? Pass. Have we ever had an abstension? Huh? Have we ever had somebody abstinent? And yeah, occasionally. Well, occasionally something where someone's got property or something property on their street or something. Um, okay. A park work plan. Yes. Green team. Green team. Green team. And we had some exciting excitement from green team. Um, you want to share it? She's like, can't be that exciting. We signed We signed up for the 2025 challenge. Okay. Did something more happen that I don't know. No, we're we're entering for 2025. Woohoo. Participating. Yes. So, it'll be great. It'll be grand as they say. Okay. Okay. And I don't know if we said this at the last time when we talked about green team, but our focus is waste reduction. Yes, that'll be our focus for 2025, too. We did a really good job with Holy Festival. We did. There was no waste for me for Holy Festival. So much recycling. Unbelievable. and the water just went away and the volunteers that came out. We did try at least. So, at least we've

gone through the steps to use the recycling services from Earth Day 365. So, now we can gear up for it for um the park. So, yeah. Um if when I do my report to the cons to the community from the council meeting the green team you got approved for 2025 or you just got No, we entered it's just the department. It's not the city. It's the parks and recreation department is has entered the That's what I meant. Yeah. Share with the city. Yeah. So we're participating again. We are continuing on our we're continuing in the challenge. Yeah. And then the focus is waste reduction. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Excellent. All right. So, we have some exciting outreach opportunities coming up for the whole commission. The first is May 3rd from 9 to 11:00 here at uh Five Oaks out on the on the Centennial Greenway is the official opening celebration. There's a lot of activities planned. It's going to be pretty cool. There's a lot of partnering agencies coming in and there will be remarks by the mayor and by um a board member from GR, excuse me, from GRG which is very exciting. And then there's a whole host of things happening. The stream team's coming in. They're going to do a cleanup. There's a tree tour. There's a history tour. Um a professor is coming I think from to talk about the displacement of the families from um um Elwood. So it's it's going to be kind of a fun day. There's different stations along the trail to get people all the way out and then someone's coming from the uh Missouri extension, Missouri University Extension will be there which is exciting. And we may be doing a um uh we

may be doing maybe not on this day but in conjunction with um um a biob blitz where you use your full die naturalist and you and you do species identification along the trail which will be pretty exciting. And then um there'll be a booth uh will be a table where people can do some uh do a nature craft or environmental ed craft and that will be staffed by uh probably by me and I would love to have parks commissioners there to assist but it's u probably what we need to do is go back to that sign up that worked so well the signup thing again. So I may ask Kate as one of her final duties as a commissioner to help me figure out how we did that. be happy to help with that. Thank you very much. Um, so that was a follow-up question is for some of these things, uh, volunteers needed from this group, are there also opportunities where you would want me or Patrick, whoever to reach out to the National Honor Society students? You know, I'm not sure. Um, I am just kind of a accil accessory to this program because GRG is running it um with Bruce McGregor and then I'm I'm supporting Bruce on it. So, I know my staff's doing the snacks that we're doing have cookies and lemonade. So, probably it might be a good idea. So, is Bruce the person I should contact? Well, he's out of he's out of town until there's a woman that's been reaching out. Well, it's Elizabeth Simmons is is the coordinator. So, let me reach out to Elizabeth and see if she needs volunteers because I think that part of it too is I had just like had one little email with Bruce about doing a stream cleaning. Um, but if like is there it sounds like there's people from stream team like the organization. The organization's coming. Yes. And then we're going to have um extra tables and

pop-up tents out there so that because all of it in Bloom wants to come out. I think all of us sustainability advocates just to do interactions with anybody that shows up with these types of events, they never really know how many people are going to be here. So, we're thinking if we get 100 150 to 200 that it would be a raging success. Um, and it's weather at a really pretty day. It could be a if it's like today, we'll probably have a lot of people, but there is a strong chance it'll rain and then we might not get anyone. Is this going to be a um an event where signs will be put up? Yes, they're going to have little signs to to point you to things along the greenway because um they want people to walk the length of the greenway. There'll be someone from the Army Corps of Engineers down by the um bio retention basin to kind of explain how it operates. I had an amazing picture to show you that puppy full and um it fell out of the Google file that Bruce had put it in so I couldn't show it, but I'll show you our other ones. Um I meant signs like that go on. Yeah. The street sign are there. Oh, there are not. We are not doing yard signs for this event. They the Great Rivers Greenway has been pushing out through all of their channels. The city um has been pushing out through the city channels and they'll post on social media. We have a poster up in the building here. But um Great Greenway has kind of a broad reach. So they're, you know, it's their baby. They're they're pushing it out. Yeah. Yeah. I do know that there will be some of us saying you can't be there a lot of people can't be there Saturday my last day of Shabbat school and um but we didn't have to say in the time GRG GR yeah because it's GRG's event so they have the time multiple events that day so um I know that um I feel bad that I don't be there because I'm really excited about it me

too finess I know it's it's you know It's It's spring in St. Louis. It's a jam-packed time. Absolutely. What What time do you want to stay there? Um I would think if you were there, um let let's let's get the signup sheet going and that what you sign up for will determine the time we need you there. How about that? Okay. Because I I'd hate to tell you now and then be wrong. And um Okay, very quickly. Um the 60th anniversary. Yeah, we have the 60th anniversary and we have Party in the Park. Partying in the park is Friday, May 9th from 5 to 8. We would absolutely need your help for this. Again, it'll be another sign up. We need help. We are the city staff are doing the food. So, there's a couple reasons for this. Number one, we could not get a food vendor. Number two, we're really trying to reduce our costs of our events and recoup back costs. We had a sweet ride while we were developing these projects. We did a lot of uh decentralized outreach into all the parks to get engagements for the park master plan. But now with our operations of this building and feeling pinches in the city budget, we're really trying to rein in the events and start recouping back operating costs. So you'll see changes in the events throughout the year. A lot of the underperforming events we've we've we will not continue. You'll start seeing fees come back. We used to charge for harvest festival. We're going to bring back those fees. Um and then party in the park. We will do the food. The staff are excited about doing it. We did a test run here. We did an event for uh city employees to test it out. It worked well. We did an opening day for the Cardinals and we cooked the the staff cooked the lunch and served it and met all of the food handling protocols and it was a su success. So we we were going

to move forward with that party in the park as our first roll out of that and then we'll do it again festival. It saves us thousands of dollars. That's what I was going to say. If you could do that every time that would be like amazing. Yeah. So we're really we're um fingers crossed. Again, it's tough because you never know how many people are going to come. Last year, we had about 300 because it rained before, during, and after the event, but then we had moments when it didn't. Um, but, you know, it should be it should be pretty good. We're we're excited about it. Fallon will still do the alcohol sales. We're not ready to do that. Um, then the Saints throwback. This we are charging for. There's there's two separate components. If we get the the numbers we're targeting, uh we will recoup back the cost of all the skates and then we hope to make um make back probably double what we spend on food costs for that. And then we will be selling alcohol for the 21 plus. Your VIP ticket will get you a drink ticket and maybe some other chachki. We're still working on that. But um we are going to cap the numbers of people too because we do not want it to be truly like Saints when the building was totally over over capacity and overwhelmed and yeah it'll be Saints throwback. It won't be an actual recreation. And where's the skating going to actually? In the gym. In the gym. In the gym. Yeah. And we're renting uh standard quad skates and inline skates. Yeah. So it's it's it's going to be fabulous. But we really miss I was going to ask the paramedics to work. Are you bringing in a floor? We are not. We are not. We actually we checked with the manufacturer. The reason we chose this floor is because it is multi-purpose. You can walk on it with heels. We put tables and chairs on it and it's fine. Okay. So, we are renting the skates from companies where they don't go outside and they'll be cleaning them. And if someone has their own

precious pair of skates they want to bring in, they'll be checked and then the wheels cleaned because we just Grit is our enemy. No grit. Yeah. Um but for Party in the Park, it's a 60s theme. So start thinking about any costume. Better be a good one for Bill Hansen. See, it should be the 70s. I've got a work party that's 70s themed. So I' got to figure out the mitzv. The Saints is going to be 70s. So it's going to be pretty exciting. So, the um they're going to start heavily heavily pushing out the party in the park information because we want to have costumes for dogs. They're going to do flower crowns as the craft for the kids. It's going to be really cute. We know the hours for the skate. It's right on. It's 1 to three for family and 6 to 9 for adults. Okay. Oh, nice. Oh, I got you. Yeah. Are you gonna have to What is a VIP? VIP will get you a drink ticket and something else to be determined and we'll push out more information. We're hoping to have a disco ball. We're hoping but you know our budget is had one. I know. We're really hoping so. Um we did find one of the old Saints actually two of the old Saints DJs. So we're in negotiations for that. We don't know. Uh it'll it'll be exciting. It'll be pretty exciting. There's there's some buzz around this. People are Yeah. So, you know, the time isn't on the map. No, it is. I couldn't pick it out. Family skate one. I wish they put different I can't read. I'm blind. What's happening between 3 to 6? Uh, everybody's resting. Okay. Setting up for the night. The kids go home. So, when you need us, well, that will be determined probably. Um, again, it'll be on the list probably throughout probably we're building

monitors because we're gonna have we people are not going to be able to take drinks into the gym. There's going to be all sorts of stuff and and we're hoping that there'll be like a little VIP lounge. There may be kind of fun something fun to do in there. So, there'll be a lot of jobs. The staff uh is meeting next week to start hammering out, you know, all the places because this is this is a big event. We are hoping to recoup back all of the expenses for having this event. So that's our goal. Um um so any any other questions about these two? It's pretty exciting. Okay. Um I wanted to thank you all for doing your park walks. The form's working and not everything can go in the form. So I wanted to kind of highlight the three best photos that came in between last meeting and this meeting. So, we have uh the tree across the trail. That's awesome. We have the tree that has I don't know if you can see there's a giant I was going to picture of that. Oh, somebody's already done it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You see the yellow throughout the If you see it from the other side, there's also some white rope up there. White rope on the truck. Yep. And then we have the cute dog pointing to the fact that the uh air regul the wind speed regulator got blown apart in the storm. That's George. Say I recognize that, D. That's George. She's not barking in that picture, but normally Pardon me. So, thank you for doing that. Keep up the good work. Jim pointed out today that we need to add veterans to the list. Well, that was on my list. Oh, but you couldn't. You said you couldn't get the I thought you wasn't in No, I I couldn't even get to the document. Oh, you couldn't get to the document? No, because I I took the document that we had before and so just the URL or or whatever. I I could not find the document. Okay. Okay. Okay. I I went back to the emails. Okay. And so so you need the Google doc. Well, the for the form didn't seem to be working because

when I got to something, it showed all the names, but it didn't show drop downs in some of that. Oh, well, there's two different forms. Oh, show the names of the parks, not the names of the commissioners. Both the drop. So, anyway, I just need to know where where to go. Okay. So, your gym. also on the drop down, right? But but there weren't problems on the document that I had. So were you on your phone or you on your computer? Both. Okay. Okay. So there might have been a little hiccup today. Yeah. Right. I didn't know whether it's in Google Docs or or Okay. Um well, let's Yeah, we'll investigate that. Thank you. Okay. Um Oops. Going back. Uh any other progress updates from the working groups? Uh you guys kind of gave your Yeah, we're kind of working through that. Excellent. For the trying to think. Is there a longer list like for the rest of the year of activities? I know you know for like the the dark skies to like add that to our agenda or not our agenda but our plan. Um you guys are doing well on your plan. A lot of it's checked off. A lot of it's the stuff that's done annually. So the the lowhanging fruit you've like the parking was done, the soccer parking was completed, the fees are done now. Um you're working on the dark sky green team did a Yeah. So there's a lot on there that's been completed. So at next month I can come in and bring an update. So yeah, I'll add that for future agenda items. Add that right now. Yeah. So, uh, put on there in May we'll have the work plan update so we can show you can check off all the good stuff. Okay.

Okay. Okay. And you might have a new commissioner by then. Okay. Um, all right. What news to you? Yeah. In by May you're in July. Pardon me. No, we have Oh, a new commissioner. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Okay. I was thinking you were talking about yourself. I'm like, what? What? Where are you going? I'm not commissioner. Okay. Commissioner. Okay. I thought you might. Yeah. Or No. No. We have We haven't We just been interviewing. No, they've just interviewed. They haven't appointed anybody, but I think No, by May you will have, won't you? They're going to be appointed to Okay. All right. Great. Okay. But that's for Mike's position. Yeah. Then there'll be another one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's what that looks like. Excellent. And then we'll go through the process again. All right. So, I'm going to go very quickly through this. We have number item nine. We have very exciting stuff in here. Okay. So, uh, our typical membership update. You can see we've added 56 people since the last meeting. We're up to 1582. Um, now I have something very, very exciting here. Let's see if I can figure out how to do it. Um, my concern is I'm going to click this link. It's going to take us to another website, but I think I have to reshare my screen. So, let me I can send this. Why is 4% and 70% in the same triangle? Um, he wants the yellow. Yeah, it gets it gets it gets squeezed by the when we put it into PowerPoint. Um, I'm going to stop the share and then I'm going to Are you not sharing your desktop? Well, you have to share the individual screen. So, let me get You need a drum roll.

I knew this was going to happen with your electricity. You're back on that. Did you lose your internet? Can you can you right mouse and open it in the same browser windows? Just open it in there. It's already shared. I have to do controlclick. There it goes. And open it right there. All right. There we have the share. All right. Now, let's get back over to Zoom. Then I will share my screen and it's already there. There we go. Okay. So, we used to do this really fun thing with participate. It's not there. Why is it not there? Why you not Something just changed. It went from blue to purple. Why are you not seeing that? Let me see if I can. Yeah, there you go. Okay, there we go. All right. So, back in the day, we used to map out where our participants were coming from, and then Google turned off that that um that function. However, now, see if I get there. But now, we found a new way to do it. So, we now can show you where our members come from for Five Oaks. Yeah, this is really exciting. See if I can get see if I can get this over here. Hang on. You need to be able to see this. Somebody from Wville. Oh. Oh, did you not somebody in Phoenix? Did you not see Arizona? Okay. So, that they live now. That pickle ball. That pickle ball is significant. Let's see if I can Oh, because they're old. Okay, that's one way to look at it. Before I zoom in, let me let me show you this. We're being recorded. When I when I zoom

then you'll lose this. So what I mean is like if youird snow if you have renew active you can join everything. Correct. So we have people that are here part of the time of the year. That's what I mean. Okay. Because I'm members I'm a member of a college. So there's each I can turn I'm going to turn off renew active for right now just so that you see the page and these are only right now go away. Okay. All right. So this each one of these colors is a different type. So when you click on it you can see this is an adult non-resident member and month who pays monthly. And then over here you have this is a 60 plus non-resident household who paid the annual fee. So they're they're colorcoded, but you can see our outreach is pretty amazing. And then when you zoom in and these are all paid members there no none of the um you know the employees that get What about are the corporate mixed in here? So corporates aren't here too. So some of these are workers. Some of these are workers. Yes. So what's interesting is you start to see distribution is fairly even as you look around the city north of all versus south and it looks fairly even and of course there's more houses down here but I was worried when we first did it that we would see clusters and we would see areas that are not participating. So, I would say um you know, it's pretty representational. And what's really interesting is when you get down into some neighborhoods and you have like three houses in a row that are members, which is really cool. Now, when I add onep active renewed, add on active renew renew active. Then you see the reach of this is pretty

amazing. That renew active. Look at that. Yeah. Um and people do come, they come to play pickle ball mainly. Yeah. Um the pickle ball is a big draw. So each one when they come we get five five bucks or Yeah, we get five bucks for them. But I mean it's better than nothing. But can you pull it down just a little more how far north those are? It goes pretty far north. Yeah. Yeah, it goes pretty far north. Yeah. It's interesting to St. Charles, too. So what I'm thinking is there people that probably work in all of that. Exactly. Yeah. And there's no way Well, there is because it says resident. So that means that they work in all of that because if you work in you, you get resident rate. Okay. Yeah. That's that's been the city's policy for programs going back. And that is part of the fact that swells by 40% during the day because we have all of our industrial parks and businesses here because if they lived in, they would have an Alvette address. Correct. So we're getting their address of their residence, not of the business. The other thing that's pretty interesting is let me turn off for new active again. Um, what's interesting too is when you see the concentrations really are within all of that and then you can start to see we've done some targeted mailers over into CRE core and you can see they're working. So this tells us we should probably do so we have not mailed over here. We could because there is no community center here. There are private clubs, but there's no community center in here. Now, Leoo, we typically don't mail past Leoo Road, but perhaps we should consider doing a mailing to Leoo Road. Traditionally, we used to send mailings down to 6440, but we really didn't think there would be much merit to to mailing past this. But then you look, we do have Leoo members right here. So, it's in it's interesting because again, Leoo doesn't have a

community center either. They have the private golf clubs. They have the racket club down here. Um, and then they have Front Knack has the tennis center over here, but that tennis does not have a lot of pickle ball. The racket club does, but those are pretty pricey. Well, you have Does the Clayton Center and Lifetime's right outrageously expensive? The Clayton Center is over here. But when you put on when you So when we put back Renew Active, you see we have quite a few concentrations in Clayton right by their community center. Oops. Come. Okay. Yeah, because I can't remember does I can't remember if it if the Clayton Center has I don't think they have pickle ball. They do. They do. They do. Yeah. Now the the one thing that we've been impacted by is U City reopened. Oh. So City reopened. They have a lot of pickle ball, a lot of pickle ball hours. Um, so there are some of our regular players are going over there. They've been unhappy with them um for various reasons and they've been hammering them pretty hard. I'm glad I don't work for you city right now. Um but uh they do come back to us. Free coffee. Big draw. Well, and Clayton's annoying. You got to put up with all those students. Yeah, people don't like that. They really don't like that. We have people that join here and say they left Clayton because of that. The other thing that's interesting is we have a lot of embers over by the Jay. I noticed that. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, we're a lot cheaper. We don't have the pool. Oh, right. Yeah. So, anyway, so this we're we just got this today. So, you're seeing it before some of the staff. So, it's very exciting and we'll really be using this for some of our targeting. So, this is really helpful. Yeah, a question on pickle ball. Do we have some way that people can join and get pickle ball as part of

their as part of their membership? Pickle ball is included in your membership when you Okay. So with all of those pickle ball folks, are they all on a daily basis or are they if they're pink, they're renew active, which means that they join for free, but every time they swipe in, we get uh money. So every time they come to play, so the the lab I guess it's pink, it's pink. So that is it's it's the it's the United Healthcare version of silver sneakers. No, I understand. So some of them some pickle ball players join but a lot of them are using we do have uh we do have pickle the younger younger pickle ball players tend to tend to be paying yeah yeah so that's why we tried to do the mixer to charge money to get a little more money out of these pickle ball players the clinics are very successful right now we have a new pro um I took the workshop last night she's very good so that's that's bringing in new we had we have two people that have never played ever before taking the beginner one and I think those two will join as members. Got it. Yeah. So, it's it's been really good. Um, okay. Now, let's see if I can get back out of here. Get back out of here. Okay. So, now I need to stop my share. My screen sharing is paused. Yeah, it's weird. I I was going to say I just saw that you had the post Zoom. Are we still on Zoom? Yes. Okay. Yeah, we're we're still So, yeah, that I don't know why that's there, but we're still on. Here's here's your active Well, you can't see it, but we have a I'll I'll move it over. We have an active Zoom window, but it's still going. It's still recording. Okay. All right. Yeah. So, rental statistics. Um, you asked for to know at the last meeting what's happened and what's coming. So

Pat pulled it out for you. We've got So so far this year we've had 568 multi-purpose room sessions. 31 are upcoming. Same with So playground rentals. We have five upcoming, 10 upcoming for the kitchen, one upcoming for the private gym, and seven for the studio. So the upcoming rentals total over 20,000 in revenue. And is this for this year only? 2025? Yes. Or from July to July? From July to July. Yeah. Okay. And you know with facility rentals coming spurts um we had some sunny days so all of a sudden picnic reservations are going up the the after the big storm when we had that beautiful day that was 80 degrees we had like five sorry what are you doing over there you wanted to see what what people were saying behave yourself dude you need to run this meeting with an iron fist Oh my gosh. Do I need to turn it off for you? Need to censor it. Need a tutorial. All right. All right. Are you done? Do I need you to go turn off? I need to slow. We can talk about him and he can show you this. Oh my god. All right. Facility rental. We done. No. Um Maxine, item number 10. Um item number 10. Well, first congratulations to Kate Bashan Helman. Thanks. And I missed that at the beginning and to Brian Lewis. She'll be a wonderful addition to the city council. And I'd like to invite everyone Tuesday night because we'll be the

changing of the guard and um the um the swearing in of Kate and um we are going to have a little reception afterwards like for um for commission members and family and friends. And um with Missy uh I say stepping down, she's not really stepping down. what did you sign? Um she did not run for reelection. So Missy and Rick um as a way of honoring them as well as welcoming members. That's Tuesday at 7. Um and then um this past few meetings we've really been just kind of we've started a little bit of the budget process because um we've learned that like if we start and and do it in bits and pieces. So, we just had like some basic intro stuff with um with Darren Man to look at like capital improvements and certain trends going on in the city, but the there was really more of a pause because we want to wait for the new people to be on board and so that everyone can be on the same. Um we had an update that uh Jennifer Yakley gave us about um the crossing and um we should see some mud moving. I haven't been down Olive in the last few days, but there should be some earth moving in the um in the the the lots. Uh is it moving? I I saw Okay, there's been people out there. There's trailers out. And so that is the starting of the building of Brass Tac and um Paris Baguette. And there will be a third like restaurant kind of in there. Um and they'll have a patio outside and then that will also include the the finishing of the basin of the um the detention

basin. And so that should all be um enclosed by the fall so that they can be finishing it up the interior during the winter and hopefully open by uh next sprint. Um I'm hoping it will move a little faster. Um, all these I hear amazing things from people where everywhere I go out in the community just how much people in Alvet are loving it. People that are getting off 70 are loving it. Um, and um there hasn't been any major changes or anything going on. I know that EDC will be soon announcing who the winners are for the uh best business and best or or favorite business and favorite restaurant and um but we're just looking forward mostly to the new changes with the concert. All right. Oh, and can I add one thing? not part of the council, but you know, Sue brought refreshments tonight and to honor Kate and Michael, but the truth is we should be honoring Sue because Sue retired last Friday. Thanks, Max. That's the That's the Which is why I had time to do this. tell you that thing and oh I did a whole walking the park and terrorizing e biker there's the angry retired personally laughing at we're gonna give you a sash or a badge I was laughing because I'm like what are the odds that I'm going to be walking and here come three of them flying at me I'm like that's good but but seriously a uh thank

you to for all you do and now you have more time to do more now. Exactly. Excellent. Yes. With all of the the Doge talk and talking about, you know, federal cuts to different budgets, has there been anything that's impacted all of that? Um not that I'm aware of at not yet. Okay. I know where I work there have been like with security grants and things but um not it'll probably be forthcoming but not yet nothing's official. Thank you. All right. Item number 11. Okay. Department reports. Here we go. Let's see how fast I can do this. Okay. Bio retention pictures. Woohoo. Also called BMPPS. So this is behind us. So that's seven. That's 7 o'clock at night. And then the one on the right is nine o'clock. This was after the six in June. This was April 4th. Yeah. The you I sent you the storm report. I put it in this update, but I didn't want to go through it because you all had a chance to read it. Um this is the April 4th. So that's the bio retention as you leave out going out uh the drive. It worked. Yeah, it really it really worked. It's amazing. So a lot of people see these and don't know what they are and then all of a sudden the rain comes. Um this was during our art gallery opening. Yeah. Yeah. Are there it'll fill in with plants though. Yeah, we have plants planted in there. It takes a while. There are not as many plants planted in here as there are Stacy's. Stacy's is beautiful. If you go by and see Stacy's, it's really filled in. And then I went after this, I went to check Stacy's, and it wasn't near to the top. Stacy has been overflowed in the past, but not this time. How did the Indian Meadows? It did really well. There's some erosion around the intake, but that usually happens the first time. Yeah, it's and the Indian Meadows one has filled twice now. Yeah, it's massive. It's nice. Yeah. Okay. Um baseball's off to a start. Have a little again rained out start. It's coming

along. You can see a lot of field conditioner around home plate there to soak up the water. Um that's opening night for David. That's David Charles who was um born and raised in all of that and he's moved back into the region. He comes and works out here quite a bit and his photography's on display. We had our uh performance for the circus camp, huge hit with families as always. And now the summer one is is filling up. Um parks is really busy. This is a very busy time of year. So they're doing trail maintenance. They've this is the beautiful new fence, new old fence, repurposed fence u down along Bottom Estates. The residents there are very happy about it. That green post at the end is going to be painted black and then you really won't really know that it's a it's a new fence. Thank goodness. And so they're almost done with the stretch above the retaining wall in Old Bonum and then they're going to move on to cleaning up all the playgrounds because the playgrounds all have to be powerwashed and get the leaves off all of them. So question. So I noticed I thought you were leaving the fence along the retaining wall along bottom. We are. They had to take down the barb wire chain link, but we're putting this type of fence. We're putting the prettier fence on it. All right. Yeah. Okay. So, it's h I went by this morning. It was half done or 2/3 done. And they're they're all finished. So, the 1960 bar wires going away, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank goodness. Uh that's our new water dog. You guys all got to got to hear about that water dog before council voted on that and it already came. It was amazing how fast it came. And Brian, I don't know if you can tell, he's got He looks very shy. He's so happy. Thrilled. He is so happy that you guys, seriously, this is a game changer for him. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and then I I wanted to do something. I wanted to share kind of some fun stuff. You know, it's a great time in the parks. We getting amazing photos of things coming into bloom, but we have, you know, with our habitat restoration,

we also have some species that have been clinging on and now it's being rewarded. So, this is something you'll see so you can see where you are because this is Get my mouse over onto the right page. There we come on. There it is. Okay, that's Old Bonum School. This is so right if you This is the U bushes around that old memorial in that little sad corner. Bottom Estates is like right here. This is a field here of um solitary bees. I can never pronounce it correctly. It's andid. I don't think I'm saying it right, but they're also digger or mining bees. Now, what's really cool about these bees is number one, they're not dangerous. They don't sting. Um, number two, they are a they're a species that's tied to a specific flower. They emerge exactly when that flower is blooming. And that's the only thing that they will pollinate. And there's a little closeup over there. Almost looks like a little spider in there, but that's a little that's little bee coming out. Um, so they dig down and the eggs are buried, you know, the previous year. So these guys will be going around getting pollen, mating, and laying their eggs for next year. So it's very shortlived. And there's a lot of them in Missouri. But what's interesting is they don't always know what the bee is. They're very hard to identify. So the way they identify them is what flower they're going to. So we have um scientists and grad students that come from Usel and Wu and other places to Stacy because we have these types of species little white. That's No, he's got little feelers. It's fur. It's hair. It's hair. The little like a little skeleton. Yeah, it's hair. Yeah. And then the pollen hair sticks to the pollen sticks to the hairs. It's got a helmet on

like a minor. So some of these bees in um Missouri are critically endangered. So having these types of colonies at Stacy Park are phenomenal. So we have we've identified so far we have hibiscus bees. They aren't out yet because the hibiscus aren't blooming yet. But I I don't know what these are. Um because there's nothing blooming around there. So like the hibiscus bees goes to the hibiscus in the prairie in the pond, but they actually nest way up by the ball field. So where these bees are going, I don't know, but it's I it's fascinating. I thought you all might get a thrill out of it. So do you need or should you kind of fence off that area so people aren't chomping on them? No. Um, you know, people just tend not to go over them. Well, and that was my next question. Yeah. Do you need to put up a sign? People, some people freak out. Like bees. I'm sitting there weeding my garden and there's if you don't if you leave them alone, they're they they're not going to attack you. But some people really freak out. So, what we tend to do is we put up signs when we need to. So, okay, at the old dog park, we had a whole bunch of cicada killers. So, we put up signs there because they're very frightening looking. They're huge. They cannot sting people. They're physically incapable of stinging people, but people got frightened by them. And then if we were to try and dig them up and exterminate them, which you wouldn't want to do, um it would then poison any dog going into the dog park because you would the amount of of pesticides needed. So, we put up signs to tell people what they are. Do you remember those? Yeah. Well, we don't need the sign anymore because we've relocated the dog park, but you know, last year during the cicada hatch, I really meant to go over there and see how many there must have been a bumper year, but um but anyway, doing these kinds of fun things and and pushing this out, I think, is really important. So, we're going to do a post on social media, tell people what

they are. We will probably wait until they're done. Yeah, that's what we put now. People go over there and look at it and cause problems. Right. Exactly. So, you know, people just see it and, you know, to to someone just walking by on the trail, they think, "Oh, yeah, it's really not. There's really isn't a lot of grass over there." Well, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's re it's really cool. So, I thought you um you know, I I love this kind of stuff. So, I just wanted to share. A question with this. If we've got that kind of habitat there, when we do our prairie burns, are we are we destroying some? We're not. That's why we time the prairie bird when we do. And then that's why they we So they're still whatever's there is still way underground. Way underground. Exactly. So we don't go into, you know, very far because if we were to burn like at this time of year, we would be burning turtles, frogs. Um but you know, we just don't. So that that's why the burns happen only in the winter time. Yeah. Now in the summertime when a when a natural wildfire occurs, yes, animals do perish, right? Yeah. But they've survived and so these guys underground, they'd be totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh so that's everything. That's everything. Okay. Personal update. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Personal update. I apologize. Personal update. I don't have a photo of Dave to show you. Dave Ricard started last year. He was seasonal. This year he is now part-time or as they used to call permanent part-time. So instead of working 40 hours a week just for two months in the summer, we now get him 29 hours a week year round. So he can't work more than 1,000 hours, but this is phenomenal because now Brian can have a horicultural assistant year round eventually. Yes, we would absolutely like to have that be full-time. He needs at least two assistants, especially when we take on the new extension of the

green light. Yeah. So, um, yeah, because we were victims of our own success and you can tell it's summer time because look at everything happening. Lots going on. So, it's pretty exciting time. So, everyone can see that, right? And item number 12, you can see the list of things. Yes. Uh, 13 future agenda items. Annual habitat res. Next month, Brian will be here to give you his animal annual animal like that's a 40. It is there will be animals. Uh, his habitat restoration report. So that'd be pretty exciting. All right. So I have one comment or question for Beverly and I, you know, it's public knowledge, but I just want to make sure um I am planning on sending your proclamation because it is so good. Um it's better than all the other proclamations I've seen because Kansas City did one and theirs was like nothing compared to yours. And um I was going to send it I found a typo. So let me get you the I think I Yeah, I think I saw it. Anyway, I was going to send it to like Brentwood, Clayton, um core, Kirkwood to tell them they should do it. Oh, don't do that. I'm ask That's why I'm asking. If you don't want me to, I won't. Well, I won't do it. Let me think about it. Have that conversation offline. Yeah, I'll have that offline. Not being thank you for your compliment. I appreciate it. I I move we adjourn. Second. Anyone have a second? Second. All in favor? I. Any oppose? We're out of here. Kate, is that your last second? You should have done it first. Okay, thanks. First, last second. Okay, hang on. Let me let me let me pause the recording. Amazing. Congratulations on your retirement. Yes, you can tell us what it's like. Thank you for everything you did that you pushed.