Cultural Commission - Regular Meeting

Today is Monday, June 8th, 2026. This is the regular meeting of the Parks and Rec Commission. This is a hybrid meeting and the meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application just notified you that this meeting is being recorded. Press continue on the app to stay in the meeting. If you're using the hand raise in Zoom, raise your hand to speak on an item and lower it when you're finished. Unmute if called on to speak. I don't think we have any public online. And if you're calling by phone, press star to raise or lower your hand and six to mute or unmute. This is the call to order. Welcome to the Parks and Recreation Commission meeting. I now call to order the Parks and Recreation Commission meeting of June 8th, 2026 at 7.01. Do a roll call, Commissioner Caldwell.

Here.

Chair Chu, here. Commissioner DeMarco. Here. Commissioner Forte.

Here.

Vice Chair Gupta.

Here.

And Commissioner Souza. Here. All here, so we don't need to excuse any absences.

And Gold Star.

Perfect attendance.

I wonder why I found one of those yesterday. Just where you are.

We're moving on to the consent calendar. We have one item. That's item 1A.658. Approval of the Park and Rec Commission meeting minutes of May 11, 2026. Do we have any discussion or comments on our minutes?

Minutes. Oh. That's basically a summary of what we're going to discuss?

Summary of what happened last meeting.

I can make a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting. Second.

That was motioned by Commissioner Forte and seconded by DeMarco. Commissioner Caldwell?

Yes.

Chair Chu, yes. Commissioner DeMarco? Aye. Commissioner Forte?

Yes.

Vice Chair Gupta?

Yes.

And Commissioner Sousa?

Yes.

Okay, the motion passes. We'll move on to public presentations. This portion of the meeting is reserved for members of the public to address the parks and recognition on any manner not on the agenda that is within the commission's subject matter jurisdiction. The law does not permit action on or extended discussion of any items not on the agenda except under special circumstances. The commission or staff may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed and the commission may request staff to report back at subsequent meetings. As a reminder, comments can be emailed to prcustomerserve at santaclarasca.gov. If there is any member of the public who would like to make comments, please fill out a speaker's card or raise your hand on Zoom. To accommodate all speakers, we request that you complete your comments within, I think we've agreed, three minutes for public. I think now we have...

Gail Achivo to talk about pickleball. Yeah, so Parks and Recreation Department, we launched our tennis and pickleball survey for the community. So we are doing an online survey and we did it on Friday at the night market. We actually got 134 responses. So we're doing that. Who are we? Who are we? Parks and Recreation. Yeah. Great. Yeah.

I was expecting public comment. This doesn't feel like a public comment. The department is doing public comment. Yeah, we're doing it. We didn't have a schedule. Okay. Great.

She can't wait till the staff.

And it just launched last week.

Yeah. So it's really hot in the press and we want you guys to know first. We're going to do a bunch of outreach and at the senior center barbecue, the night market, our 4th of July event. And then also we're doing this senior center newsletter and that kind of thing. So we really want you guys to, you know, get it out to the community and get our survey out there and get a lot of feedback for our survey for the community.

So we'll have Gail, we'll make sure that Priscilla has the information. link and email to the survey. It's also live on our website. So we'll send you the website link as well as the survey link. Priscilla will send that out.

Could you send us links to social media as well?

Yep. So we're going to have it on gut delivery. It'll be out on Wednesday. And then I think Thursday, there'll be a social media post. So we're getting all that out. So it's really fresh again. So this was kind of survey detail. Can we talk to people at our booth? So this was some pretty good feedback on tennis and pickleball, like what we love, what we do, and, you know, what we support. So thank you. Sorry.

We're kind of equal, huh?

I know. We're getting close, but you never know. Stickers keep the same size.

Stickers keep the same size.

Yeah.

It was hard to make. We made the pickleball ones, the tennis ones we've got on the whole line. Got it.

So we're launching this.

And the survey will be open for how long, Gail?

Until August. Okay.

And then what's the goal after we've accounted for all the survey results?

So we're going to have a Zoom community meeting, and then we'll have an in-person meeting, and then another Zoom kind of like where we're at. And then by... October end of November, hopefully canceled by December for report out.

So bring it back results here to commission October, November.

And what are we trying to get to?

We'll see.

I mean, I understand we can't understand the interest, but what's the goal?

The goal is to assess possible, right? I mean, yeah. The goal is to assess the pickleball versus tennis needs in the community. And I love volleyball. Yeah. Bracket sports.

I just left right now. I seen him play volleyball for the first time. Yeah.

We also do have, you know, paper copies because not everyone is just up online. So these are out in all of our facilities. So they could just turn that into the front desk. So these are out too. And these are out when we do all the outreach too. So I can leave if you guys are interested now or just take the survey.

Online. Yeah. I'm sorry. Did you say that we'll finish with the survey?

I cannot ask questions in this portion. Sorry.

Got it.

That's it. Thanks, Gail. Okay.

Yeah, so we'll send a link to the website.

And do you want the commissioners to send out the link?

Yeah, and or take the survey. It's really, it's all click through very quick. I mean, unless there is opportunities for comments, but it's pretty quick.

What's your goal for the number of surveys?

Well, we got just under 2,000 for our master plan. What was the other? And we're about 1,000 for our senior needs assessment. So somewhere in the 1,000 neighborhood would be great just to see how many. We'll see how interested the community is in ball or tennis and racket sports.

Did you want to speak?

Did you want to turn that in? Your card?

Sorry. Sorry. No? Yeah, I didn't finish it. I was trying to pay attention to what they were saying.

This is the opportunity for speaking on anything that's not on the agenda.

I just got some stuff. I've been staying at the park. Sorry, guys. My name's Nathan Pavlov. I'm a local Santa Clarion. My grandparents started a business here almost 70 years ago. So it's been dissolved for about 10 years now. We made parts, precision spring and sheet metal parts, real small stuff, for Lockheed the Military and the dot-com stuff. So I have this passion. It's home. It's more than home, you know? And then growing up, I grew up at the machine shop and ran around on the train tracks a little bit and stuff. And then... After high school, I was a diesel mechanic for Acme and Sun Sanitation. It's now Western Site Services, which at the time, back in the late 90s, they were doing really well. We had over a million toilets out being serviced. And I started just washing the toilets and working in the electrical department. And then I ended up becoming a mechanic and then managing the diesel mechanic shop on all the mechanics. July 10, 2000, I had an accident there at the company. Our giant worm drive air compressor shut down. It powered all our mechanics as well as all of our steam cleaning equipment to wash the toilets. So everybody didn't know what to do. They couldn't wash the toilets, really. I got on the phone and tried to locate the breaker. Bay Breakers needed a measurement of the Z bracket. I thought that it would be safe for me to take an accurate measurement of the breaker without touching anything. It arced to vaporize the tape measure, causing a flash, melted all my skin instantly. I got skin grafts on my arms and my legs. My face was melted off my hair, hands, instantly from a high voltage of flash. I had a chance to, my family wanted me to sue, and I didn't know what to do. I had a really good relationship with the owners, and I talked to Diane and Frank Youngblood, and they said, don't worry about it, Nathan, whatever you want to do, we have insurance. And I told Diane that God told me if I was to take that money, I would build a fast car and try to impress some chicken. I just want to go back to work, Diane. She said, okay, whatever you want to do. So I went back to work. It only lasted for about a year. And then they hired me in management and got me a new facility. And then they fired me. After that, I started my own company in construction. My dad is a licensed painter. And I did that for about five years, and it turned into a natural stone and cabinet installation. So I'm a natural stone fabricator, granite and marble all by hand and stuff, and all the hand tools, and installing cabinets, kitchen and models. That was about 2005.

Sorry to interrupt. You have 30 seconds left in your time.

I ended up having an addiction problem after that. And that lasted for about 15 years. I went to jail a bunch of times. And here I am. And the higher power of God brought me back to where I need to be. I'm an environmentalist for Silicon Valley. And you can reach me at climate2change.com. The site's not up right now. But if you type out my name, that's what you'll see. So I got a master plan for myself and for the city. And he led me back to the park. So I got some input on the park. And actually, I'll just listen. That's what I need to really learn how to do is listen. And if anybody has any questions for me, please feel free to ask. And I'll answer them as fast and as efficient as possible. I appreciate you guys. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. You can move on to general business.

We have a bunch of speaker cards.

So like you said, we have a presentation for the first one. So that's the Santa Clara Police Activities League is first. This is the Action on Applications for Nonprofit Organizations Serving Youth or Seniors in Santa Clara to Provide Volunteer Support for the 2026 Art and Wine Festival. I think everyone's familiar with this, but yeah, these are the nonprofits that help work the parking lots and the kids' kingdom.

That's it, yeah, that's the one. Hey, Mike, take it away. My name's Mike Wacke. I'm the executive board president for the Police Senate Club Space Act Community League. We've been in business, or we were started 56 years ago by then Police Chief Frank Cepina. Go to the next slide, please. You can see that some of the things we're special about, no kid has ever turned away. matter what their ability level, social economics with their parents, their financials, things of that nature. We keep our costs, and I have a slide to help support this. We keep our costs lower than anybody in the South Bay for all of our sports. More than half our sports are 100% free, or activities, not just sports, but activities. One thing that we take 15 to 20 high at risk high school kids, a few from each high school every year, once or twice every year, deep sea fishing. Chaperones are all police officers. Reason? A lot of times those kids are at risk. They see police officers in a negative factor. This shows them the human side of the police. We take 25 to 30 kids from our programs, Christmas shopping every year called Shop with a Cop. Same reason. Go to Target, give them a $250 card. They walk around the store with a police officer, the mayor, a city council person. They buy whatever they want. Then we partner with American Legion. We go down there, feed them breakfast, help them wrap their presents, then they go home. Something we started this year is we partnered with, again, with the American Legion Hall, post 419 and 564, and we give an annual dinner to a vet and guests free. Most of our programs... are free, we only have a few pains towards. And if you go to the next slide, this is a comparison of just our softball pricing with different programs in different cities. And you can see that we are leaps and bounds cheaper than most cities or most leagues in comparison.

Well, that's great.

Yeah. And any family that comes to us says, our daughter wants to play softball, our son wants to play soccer. We don't have the money. It's like, okay, sign them up. We'll get you a scholarship. We give scholarships. Very little questions asked. The only rules that we have. Got to be a Santa Clara student of Santa Clara Unified School District, or their parents have to live in the city of Santa Clara. They have to be affiliated with Santa Clara somehow. But we do work with people outside of the city. From like San Jose, there's a couple of families that played softball here for years, but because of The family needs, they had to move to cheaper areas, but we allow them to come back. We still give them scholarships. We just pay for it ourselves through donations of coaches and executive board members, things like that. So we're here. We come every year and ask to do parking on Saturdays. And this year, because of the changing and the construction at Central Park, We understand we have to partner, and there's four or five board members, three or four, whatever it is, that is on the Parade of Champions board. I was on the board until just a few months ago, but they're also on the PAL board. So we're asking if we could partner with the Parade of Champions and do the parking on Saturdays.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you.

I think up next we have Santa Clara Schools Foundation, Kimberly Williams. Did you send it to Kim or?

Yeah, unfortunately Kim's out today, so. Okay, so yeah, what we'll do is we'll get them and we'll post them to the meeting minutes for the post. But in the meantime, we'll pass this around and then you can speak to it. Thank you.

So my name is Kimberly Williams. I am a board member of the Santa Clara Schools Foundation.

I'm also a parent.

So it's customized for each school site, which as we know, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Every school is unique. So we are busy supporting students and families with the greatest needs. We partner with the Family Resource Center. We support different special education programs, including support for the post-secondary Special Olympics programs. We do college and career preparation where we have a student fellows program, which is actually through the high schools where we have fellows actually come and work at the foundation, do events, project management, gives them real world experience and great resume building as they go off to college. It helps us also kind of amplify student voice in the school's foundation and kind of what the priorities are and what they also would like to see, which I think is important. We always obviously try and engage our young people and the fact that community involvement is important and the foundation work we want to make sure is also very much grounded in what students are experiencing in their schools. And then we also prioritize different STEAM education and real-world learning opportunities. So that includes funding different field trips and different programs that teachers and administrators have identified. So with your support, we hope to still be able to continue doing art and running a school. We have actually identified Santa Clara High School as a potential partner. Santa Clara High School PTSA is also interested in doing parking. And given the fact that we are trying to continue to build bridges with the different community organizations, that includes not only the different PTAs, but Santa Clara Rotary, the Firefighters Foundation, Mission College. And so we think that the PTA would be a great place for us to partner this year.

Any answering questions? Questions from the commission. Thank you very much for your time. The next is the Santa Clara Parade of Champions.

Brought some propaganda with me. My name's Andy Rotterman. I'm actually filling in for Anna Vargas-Smith, who is our president, and she is currently with the... Sister Cities. Sister Cities Exchange Organization. I'm on the wrong end of the power curve, so I apologize. Also, you can pass those around, too. So anyway, the Sister Cities was one of the longest-standing community... festivals that takes place in the city. It started right after World War II by Ed Kuna and Larry Marsali. They ran it for years, eventually weren't able to continue. But in 2018, Anna and a few other people got together, myself, and we brought it back in 2019. It's been running ever since. Even during COVID, we ran a virtual one. It's one of the programs that allows our community to be seen and engaged. It is just a phenomenal activity. You can see in the flyers that I just passed out the variety of activities that take place. There is a sports fan zone that we just introduced last year. where we have a lot of celebrities coming in. We're introducing some special cooking events there. We have the Village, where we have tabling opportunities for local nonprofits. The bookmobile's there. The water department is there. We have a food court in there. And then, of course, the highlight of it is our parade itself, with close to 100 different entries with blokes and balloons and bands. They all have prizes and awards. It takes us about $80,000 or more to put this on. And so we're always looking for fundraising opportunities. And in the past we were in the kids village, but obviously for reasons that can't happen this year. So we have talked to Powell and to several other people and are hoping that we can take part in the parking because we are always looking for additional ways to do it. We do give back to the community in addition. So this year we gave scholarships at Santa Clara High School, Wilcox High School, Kathleen McDonald High School, and Mission Early College High School. We support local veterans. As a matter of fact, one of the flyers you see there is for the Breakfast of Champions. I think we may be at risk for General Foods or somebody for that. But at any rate, that one, all the proceeds from that, we do it early in the morning. A lot of the VIPs, a lot of the marshals from the parade are there, and it's a fun event. But all the proceeds from that go to the American Legion Hall. And so... Anyway, I think that's mostly it. If you go onto our website and just, I passed around my business card or the Parade of Champions business card that I have, because it's got the website there. You will be amazed. There is more data there. It'll take you probably a half a day to get through everything. You can see videos of the past parades, this type of thing. This is truly a marvelous event. We really hope for your support. And as Anna would say, who doesn't love a parade?

It's been around since 1945.

Yes, yes. Well, there was a little gap because the people that started it weren't able to continue. They got too old. As a matter of fact, both of them passed away now, I believe. Yes, still. Anyway, you get the idea.

It's just here locally in our city, huh?

In our city. This is a very clear tradition. I haven't seen it. Yeah, well, it goes right down by the break, goes down Monroe Street, comes up down Harrison and back down through Washington and ends there. The village itself this year will still be on Franklin Street, first two blocks of Franklin Street. And then we're expanding and moving to sports fan zone. It'll be starting at Benton, going east, and then down Jackson Street, where traditionally the Barnes Market is at. And by the way, I'm happy to answer any questions. And I found out I was doing this two days ago.

Well, thank you very much. It was great. I think we're all familiar with the parade. I know.

Sorry, just the question.

Yeah. If you want to fill out a card, you can speak on the item.

So full disclosure, I'm part of the, so this year is the 75th anniversary of Santa Clara Swim Club. I'm part of the organizing committee for that celebration. One of the events that the club will be participating will be the parade. They're going to have a float there. I just wanted to let you all know.

Good luck. Win the big prize.

Okay, and our fourth ask, I'm sorry, real quick, just to be pedantic. I didn't actually hear, I heard lots of information about the parade. I'm assuming that the ask is to partner with.

The ask is to partner with how, whatever commission decides is the appropriate way to do it. I don't know if this is a competition, so I'm trying to be a little, I wear a lot of hats. A couple of my hats might get in trouble if I'm not careful.

Yeah, you can't compete with yourself.

That's right.

We take all the applications and find a way for everybody to have a successful art and wine.

So we're relying on the commission to get the right answer.

And we're relying on staff to get the right answer.

So everybody, it's a... My face has been on a lot of dark boards, so I'm good. Okay.

And our final application is Santa Clara High School PTSA. All right.

Two speakers.

So thank you, everybody, for inviting me. Abby, we are from the Santa Clara High School PTSA board and the president, she's the VP of fundraising. We came last year actually to talk about applying for the KidZone. So traditionally for many years, our high school students have been running the KidZone and that money goes in turn back to the students for them to use to run their activities, their leadership groups. Now, with the parking situation that's going on this year, we were told no kid zones. And after being on the board for this year, we also realized that fundraising is a little bit difficult at Santa Clara High. We support about 1,600 students. 50% of them are actually below the median income and would qualify for free lunch if there was free lunch. But thankfully, we are getting free lunch for everybody. So with this money, what do we do now? If you go to the next night, yeah. So this is some of the programs that we run. The biggest one, of course, is our grad night, which just finished on Friday, Saturday, where we celebrate the senior class of students. We throw a big on-campus party, which is safe. We bring in a lot of vendors, like a casino, a hypnotist. We have a laser tag. We give food. And we had about 180 kids attend this just on Saturday. We spent about $30,000 to run that activity. So, you know, we need funds to do that. In addition, some of the other things that we expanded into this year was the school now runs a diversity week. And we give grants to all the various diverse clubs. So for example, the LGBTQ club, the Vietnamese club, the Taiwanese club, the Latinos club. And they put on a concert and they take pride in who they are. And there's cost involved, right? Because they want to put on a booth to give free food to the public. So we give them grants. We give each... each club a $200 grant. So again, that's where our money goes. And we've been taking care of our teachers. This year, we've expanded it. In addition to Teacher Appreciation Week, we've thrown in two breakfasts, a lunch. Because at high school, they're not that many. It's not like elementary school, where parents are there all the time bringing in cakes and snacks. parents tend to be a little bit more distant. So we try to show our appreciation, not just once a year, but throughout the year. And another big thing that we did was we celebrated Gratitude Week. I don't know if you can see, but I think in that corner, we made a huge wooden cutout tree and we got kids to just celebrate what they're grateful for. And it's a permanent tree, so they can use it for other events as well. Like they did it... Recently, they had it for Wellness Week. They just, you know, in preparation before the exams, just to take pride in what they're happy about. You know, just high school is stressful. I have a sophomore, so does Abby. You know, the kids need to find a way to relax. And I'm grateful to say that we gave a $20,000 donation last year as well to fund a second wellness counsellor. Because, you know, Santa Clara, there have been a few things happening at Santa Clara High, and our kids need to be well taken care of. So if you look back at our finances now, well, this is just some of the flyers for the many activities that we do. We spend an annual budget of close to $50,000 a year. This one will show you, if you look back at the financial budget for last year, It's close to 50,000 of total next page or to the right. So we spent 65,000 because of the 20,000 grants that we gave to fire the Wellness Council. So it's more like 50,000 a year. Having the opportunity to partner with Santa Clara Foundation to do the parking will definitely help us do more for our student community. Kimberly is actually the chair of our PTSA council, so she knows what PTSA is all about. I don't know. work together well you know we've been since elementary school together so we all know each other it's a small community uh abby she wears two for many years too like you know it's always the same people so yeah we respectfully you know would really like the opportunity to do the parking with someone that you know we can work we know we can work together with and So thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you all for finding flexible ways with this year being an interesting art one. Thank you for working it out among yourselves. I know Kim will probably come back with the final decision, but do we have any discussion with the commission?

The way it's working this year is just going to be parking only. So everyone is basically sharing that pool of income that comes from parking. Is it an equal share basically among the four groups or five?

Some days we'd have two on Saturday, two on Sunday, and some years when it rained on Sunday, it wasn't a lucrative day.

So it's two days split in half. And then the goal is that the groups that collect the monies while they're working are the monies that they keep, correct? So historically, because we've done it for years. Yeah, that's why I'm looking at you.

The money we collect on Saturday is ours. Yeah. Okay. The money they collect on Sundays is theirs. Yeah. So this time it would be... This time it would be like Al and Parade of Champions and... And PTA.

And the other P at the teacher. Yeah. All the money's pulled from both. Do you guys already negotiate the days and times that you all wanted to work? Or was that being spoke to them?

And we wanted to do Saturday and you guys wanted to do Sunday. But how, if I remember correctly, um, We work it out ourselves, like how we do the split. Okay, that's fine. In all honesty, my mind is simple math because I like simple math. Being an engineer, it's like 50-50. It's real. No-brainer. You bring 20 people, we'll bring 20 people. We're good to go.

Get the whole day covered. Yeah.

Yeah.

Works good. I think that's the simplest one.

Is there any possibility of raising the parking fee?

They just raised it last year. Yeah, we just raised that, you know, and the church chart is more. It's something we'll review. You know, there's a lot. This one year is tough. We're happy to still provide this as an opportunity. We and since we have the four applicants in the room. staff went back and forth whether or not it would be beneficial to use that space as part of the event space. Instead, we're going to pack it all as much as we can into half the space. And it was important for the city to maintain still an opportunity for the groups. And we appreciate Powell and the other groups that are normally doing just the parking, and they do make decent money. It's tough, and it's long hours, but hopefully, we're hoping next year, Art Wine 27 will be back in business, up and running. So, yeah.

Can you remind me how much is the parking?

Fifteen?

Fifteen. Fifteen? How much is the church? Just a quick observation for everybody on the left. I've been doing this for years. The people will come in and say, how much? You tell them, I'm not paying that much. And it's always the people driving the $90,000, $100,000 car. You'll watch them drive around for 20, 30 minutes until a free spot opens up. I'm like, you can afford a $100,000 car, but you can't afford.

Only because they're not paying for it.

Do they know up front the proceeds will go to non-profits? Yes.

We're allowed to hang our banners at the entrance that say PAL created champions.

So that is when they know that it's going for a non-profit, they still look at it.

really good at saying, Are you sure you want your $5 in change? Or would you like to make an additional donation to the Santa Clara Foundation?

Yeah.

Oh, make the move. Big smile. Okay, just keep it.

Yeah. Emily, after all, you don't need that increase. You can get it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's on parking cash only.

No.

Okay, you can actually... I can see how you're thinking about it.

And do you guys have your own card readers?

Yeah, I will say Mike tried to charge me for parking the first time I met him. He goes, I don't know who you are. I say, you know what? No one's above the law. I said I was on a list. He goes, we don't have a list.

If my memory serves right, last year you guys lost some revenue because I think we got free parking last year.

That's true. We did get with it. Yeah. Well, we were supposed to get free parking at the CRC lot. We weren't supposed to get free parking there.

The only thing that we typically allow free is the Rotary guys. Two of them beer and wine.

Those are the VIP guests.

The tennis coaches. Because they still, and I don't understand, they still have lessons and things that weekend in bed versus saying hey we're taking a weekend off so we allow the coaches to park we've had a few parents dropping their child off very upset because they had to pay and i'm like okay look if you just drop your child off park right there yeah you got 10 minutes to walk down there and five minutes to walk back and leave Because they were just so upset. It's just like, okay, just just go here again. It's not worth an argument.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, we're not here to upset the community. That doesn't get donations.

Yeah. So what's needed now? A motion to approve the for nonprofits. Yeah.

I'm sorry. Are we waiting? Are we waiting for Kim?

I think Kim will make the final assignments, but we have, we can just say that we have, we've heard the, we approve the applications. Yeah.

So I'd like to make a motion to approve the four nonprofits to provide parking services at the Park and Wine Festival.

I heard, I heard Fisher Caldwell, so I'm going to go Caldwell. I was going to let you have it.

We're too slow on the drive.

Okay. So I don't have my eyes on the ball.

So the motion's on the table. Commissioner Caldwell?

Yes.

Chair Chu, yes. Commissioner DeMarco? No. Commissioner Forte? Yes. Vice Chair Gupta? Yes. And Commissioner Souza? Yes. So the motion passes. Thanks for realizing. Thank you for all your work.

Yes. Thank you, you guys. Thanks. A, thank you for coming down, and B, thank you.

Thank you. Really appreciate you coming down.

And you're welcome to stay, but you're also welcome to leave if you're not interested.

If you don't want to hear our work plan goals, that's the next item. Watch your step. Watch your step out this. Andy, say hi to him. Next time, Teddy comes by. Step out that door, please. Not too much. Thank you.

So now we're moving on to item 3, 26647. We're going to discuss and update the Park and Recreation Commission's fiscal year 2025-2026 work plan goals and activities.

This is the year that's just ending now, not the future year. And then the next item is the future year. So I guess we'll go through our current goals and then talk about our future goals. yeah the exciting part okay so our goal number one is review park site facility condition assessments recommend priorities given existing anticipated surface levels and available resources um we're supposed to go out and visit parks and report on findings um i think this is going to be continuing for next year any comments we uh we upped this right we have now 12 facilities a year We used to have three.

How many do we have, Gina?

Over 20. Almost 30, I think.

Yeah. 30 sounds more right.

I've got my list.

I can count them. We're agreed on the new form that may or may not have gone live yet.

The form has not gone live yet. It hasn't gone online. So we're doing an internal inventory of our parks this week.

So we're finalizing it and then the form will go online and then we'll send it to you. Perfect.

I'm keeping track and I'm going to get credit for these. So I will enter them after the fact. I have gone to all of them but seven. Wow. I'm making progress.

Very good. So do we have somebody specifically that focuses just on that?

So all the commissioners are expected to go to parks so we know what we're talking about.

Right. Right. Makes sense. Yeah.

Do you, this is, this is jumping the gun, but it seems silly to, to isolate them. Is it worth considering adding that in a commissioner's given term that they visit all the facilities?

I think that's very valid for next year.

Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. Like we go through these, like that was right.

Yeah. I think it's reasonable.

And in fact, encourage because each park is different.

Yeah. So let's keep that in mind for our revamp of this one. I think it is essential we continue to visit parks and facilities because that's the only way we know what's going on. Okay, goal two, review and solicit community input on existing park rehabilitation projects based on the CIP and schedule. Review residential developer proposed schematic designs for new neighborhood parks that serve new residential developments. I think we continue to do these pretty well. I do want to say with goal to be, I went by the new parks over in North Santa Clara, the Cali de Luna and Calamundo. There's not a lot of park signage. It's hard to tell that they're city parks, the new ones.

When you say rehabilitation, for example, what would be the example?

You should fill out a speaker card. But when we redo a playground.

Oh, okay, great.

So like Westwood Oaks was redone in the last two years and there was a big ribbon cutting at the park that just opened across from the Costco in Pullman for the new apartment development. Anything like that new or old that's been fixed up?

Yeah, like at Central Park we've done it as well.

Yeah, the rehab ones are like Westwood Oaks, but the old one got torn down.

Okay.

We still have the data. There was the geofencing data that... Yeah, I don't know.

I don't think we're going to be getting that onboarded as a city.

We're not going to pay for that service?

Yeah, I think there's too many privacy concerns and issues outstanding that can't be necessarily addressed by the company. So we're still talking about it. As a as a city, the city manager's office had an interest in potentially using it during to track attendance in the city or activity in the city around the major events this year in particular. But an ongoing basis is what the the. the data versus the privacy are our concerns. So we may need to come up with alternative ways and there are also, that was hard to say, excuse me, other companies in that space. So it might be worth also Looking into some of the other companies to see what their services provide and what kind of safeguards they also have relative to the contracts with with either our city or other cities and how that data is being used.

It would be interesting to see how other cities use it. I know there was some concerns because ICE was using the data.

Yeah. And so this particular company, Placer AI, has alleged that they're working with other cities, but haven't produced the names, contacts or contracts yet. either in whole or in part or redacted for those relationships with the other cities. That's suspicious. So, you know, as the commission knows, that company was in place as a trial prior to my tenure with the city. And in looking at the renewal and also the questions that were asked by both legal and myself at this time, we're taking a pause on whether or not that's the best path forward.

Yeah, makes sense. Although, you know, as long as the privacy and legal issues are addressed, I feel something like that would provide, you know, because you want hard data to be able to make good decisions and you know just be it events like art and wine or be it visitations to parks or other facilities like the swimming pools or senior center and all that right so Having that data would be very useful. We got a glimpse of it. And we, you know, when we met, our just started, you know, so many possibilities on what you can do with it. Again, as long as privacy can be maintained. Yeah.

Yeah, we have lots of parks and lots of competing resources.

So it is not like what parts to rehabilitate. Like, what's the next thing on the. So if you have our data, surveys are great, but, you know, surveys can be skewed. Just depends what what it got in front of and so forth.

Yeah, but there's other factors. In terms of rehabilitation of parks, you know, there's the infrastructure needs and safety issues, not necessarily what gets used the most versus what needs it the most.

Yeah, but it would be good to have another data point.

Data is always good. Yeah.

Okay, so either we'll decide to take that off or not. And we receive our presentation.

Maybe we just take it off. I mean, this year is over. Maybe we take it off for next year until such time as the city determines that they then have the ability to provide the data.

Yeah, I mean, there's... Yeah, there is when we go to the...

um goal setting for the next we can also create some action items or some some subsets um and we can keep some of these or change some of these or create new ones all together yeah yeah like we could i mean we do this in other contexts you could have a parking lot list of things that we are not necessarily tracking on a monthly basis but so don't forget maybe six months yearly whatever right okay

The last one is act as ambassadors and go to council meetings or park meetings. We should all fill out the pickleball survey, share the pickleball survey, and attend the pickleball public meeting.

Yeah. I filled out the senior survey. Everybody you know, hopefully. I filled out the senior survey. Felt really good. Acting like a senior.

And I think the pickleball survey would be, we should get a wide group of people filling out. Because I think surveys tend to skew older people.

I'm sure the community, you know, we've had a few presentations, right? That community must have already received information.

Yeah, well, we just rolled this out middle to end of last week. But all of those pickleball playing community is on our target outreach. So if they haven't yet, they will be.

Sounds good.

Okay, so that was goal. We're still on goal two. Okay. Has anyone been going to city council meetings?

Once in a while.

I've been watching them. Is that what this is? No, this is Parks and Recreation Commission. So on that note, and I was going to give it a public comment, but since we're talking about it on, and we'll send out an invite, but June 23rd city council meeting is going to be, council's going to recognize uh july as parks and recreation month so um i had june 23rd for july for the coming yeah because otherwise it yeah it's already started it's always like do we do it in the month and then you're it's like july 7th is the first one so you're like a third of the way yeah a third of the way through the month so i had asked to have it move to the last um calendar meeting for june um and we'll try to do that in the future that you get out in front of it a little bit to let council know of all the fun things in the community know of all the fun things that are happening like the concerts and the movies and the parks and um this year we also have um yeah it's good to have it before fourth of july yep fourth of july all there's a lot happening in july and it's good to kind of like get it out there rather than oh hey we just had fourth of july so And we'll send a formal invite out to everybody. And again, it'll be a really quick, because it's a ceremonial item. So it's the first 30 odd minutes of council. And we'd love to have everybody there. We've also invited some key staff members to come and represent. And as part of that also, um the chair will have if if the chair or vice chair able to make it or if another stand and give you a couple of minutes to say a few words at the at the podium i'll say a few words um and then we'll have a photo opportunity with council on the stage

Like in previous years, like when we all went there with props. Was that the same thing?

Yeah, same thing. Hopefully we'll bring some props this year, I ask. Staff, you know, lifeguard and senior center stuff.

Have that hammer stress doll thing from the... Oh, that's the prop. That'll work, yeah.

You should come in your swimsuit. July 31st is World Park Ranger Day. July 31st is World Park Ranger Day. I put it on top of my jeans. That's my big day.

Oh, great.

Yeah, it was helpful.

Because there's a lot of events, so it's good to know.

There certainly is.

Okay, so that is three. Four is art and wine, which we did tonight. Yay! It was helpful, was it last meeting when Kim presented the financials? To know that we're not losing that much money. $54,000. But who's counting? That's if you count the staff time. Or you just, do we write off the staff time as that's what their mission is? That's why we have staff. Didn't count the staff time. That was.

That includes staff time. 71,000 for staff time. Yeah.

And I really, we said it to them as well, but I'll repeat it at the cost of repeating. It was really nice of them to come and share what they do. I mean, I think we are all very familiar with what they do, but for them to come and lay it out again, and talk about how they're cooperating about it. This is really wonderful.

Yeah, the cooperation part is big.

And they could have been competing, but instead they've decided to team up.

That's exactly how the community should be. Fantastic examples.

City events, everyone should go. We have the now list of all the events that are coming up, so everyone can mark their calendar. What else do we have? Oh, we're going to develop new There's a lot. There's a lot already existing.

And I was trying to do one and put in a lot of effort a couple of years back. And it kind of almost happened.

I mean, you were trying to partner with the culture.

Yes. So yeah, good effort.

Okay, next.

Keep trying. Participate in the master plan process. The master plan has been accepted, so I think our work here is done. We will get updates regularly. We talked about maybe adding that as a future goal to not lose sight of the implementation of the master plan. That's it, right? Budget related. Annual budget.

So we did that last meeting.

And then Wade Brummell, we get.

Did that too.

Yeah, and on Wade Brummell, one of our council members pulled the, it's usually on a consent calendar item for, you know, Parks and Recreation minutes. the council members pulled the minutes and they wanted to make a point of uplifting or lifting up the efforts that put, that Wade Brummel brings in monies and puts back money.

Council member?

Council member Jane. And Cox made comments also. Cox had some comments. Yeah.

Kelly had a lot of comments on Woodbrum.

Yeah, well, she was part of the Parks and Rec Commission when it was designed. Ed's been watching.

I've been watching. It's the second Gold Star.

Yeah. And that's all of them, correct? Yep. Okay.

So we have no motions to make. That is just the review of our existing goals. And now we move on to item four, discuss and develop Park and Recreation Commission work plan goals and activities for fiscal year 2026, 2027.

We'll put back up this year's goals so you'll have it as a point of reference. What staff also did is printed out the five main goal functions so you have as a point of reference. If you wanted to keep these or rework them, you can. We also provided, staff provided commission tonight We have white boards, flip charts.

Flip charts?

Yeah, to create suggested goals so we can do it. And then we can also, we brought dots if we wanted to. The other thing was is you can go, we could do this any number of ways. You can write big goals, little goals. We brought however you'd like. If you'd like to take a couple of minutes. write down some goals, pop them on a board, then we can dot them or we can, I'm happy to also, in my not so best teacher penmanship, take notes as we throw goal ideas out and then we can vote on them. Any number of ways. I wanted to try to do it a little bit like a working session and visual.

If I may suggest. So I would love to hear what staff thinks are their challenges and where they need the most help. Whatever it be. I need more staff. Yeah, we can help you with that.

For hire.

No, I think these are good goals, the original ones. I think, I mean.

And I have a question as you think through your answer. I feel like last month, someone, I can't remember who, referenced some bylaws or working guidelines for this group. with whom does the authority for that document live? Is it council? Is it this board? Is it the council council? Is it?

I think that came up during the charter discussion. I don't know if you were here during that meeting.

We were filling him in on what he missed. Oh, yeah. My question of what is an excused absence was we should have that in the operating documents, but we don't know who's in charge of operating documents.

Yeah, some of them live in... Legal? No, clerk's office and or by charter. And then where it's not, you could create it, but...

Anything that's not explicitly referenced could be the debt.

Yeah, it's like, how do you, yeah, it's like excused absences, but it doesn't get into the details as to.

And I think we all got the binder from the city clerk when that came on board.

These are our responsibilities in the city charter.

Yeah, we have that further up on our goals.

Okay. Yeah.

So maybe you know this already, Demarco, because you were not present that day, but they went over the charter. There's a charter review committee, right? And they're trying to update the charter because it's not been updated in how many decades. And we did point out something in... What is that? Like one of the final items in the thing which said supervise recreation manager. We said, you're not supervising. So that language needs to change. So they took that as input. But then there's questions around other things. And should they be part of the charter? And I think the The feedback and also maybe the consensus was that, no, it's the charters like the Constitution, right? You don't want all the different things there. And things like attendance or other stuff is policy. And that's for this body to decide. And that becomes the operating manual. And I remember reading it long ago, but I don't remember what it has now anymore. Maybe we should all, that could be one of the goals, review it every once, every annually.

This is absolutely what I'm driving at, right? I don't even know that it's necessary to require the entire commission to review the thing. A subcommittee to review the operating procedures. You know that it needs to be a subcommittee, right? But we have a chair identified, we have a vice chair identified. You could imagine delegating that responsibility to a member, whether it's chair, vice chair, or even vice, sergeant at iron this operations officer something right that that would be the person answering that question what is an excused absence the person whose job it is is to know the operating and make recommendations there too because i imagine that if someone did a fully comprehensive review of that they would maybe say things like oh this looks like it's 20 years old maybe we should tweak that like a typical board would have the secretary do that job right right So that is what I'm driving towards, that maybe someone should tackle that.

Well, let's go back to the structure. How do we want to define new goals? Because that sounds like it's a new goal. Do we want to take a minute, everybody writes on Post-its? Do we want to just yell things out and have Damon write it down for us?

Could we go back to Damon answering the question I asked? Other than hiring staff?

Oh, yeah, that was just... I think... I think there's some good ones up here. I think the assessment of parks was a good one. One of the ideas of the... of the charter is to have you all also review our programs and events and things. So I think it talks about visiting them or it also talks about, like one of the goals was about attending events or maybe creating new ones, but there's no real receive an annual report on participation on new programs or program success. There's no metric. And then also whether or not you want, that's a report out. So it'd be similar to receiving a report out on on the events but we should have an annual report on event event attendance costs right so so realize you're adding work for yourself that up for you all to see the work well i think in addition to events there's also the other recreation programs how well attended our classes correct so there's and there's drop-in and then there's uh There's senior center membership. There's drop in programs. There's registration programs. So like teen center has drop in every day and then summer camps have pre registration and senior center has drop in programs as well as we have their lunch. So there's a lot of programs and then we can we can do it by. by unit so it'd be really good for me also to review but it would be good for me as a we owe it to you um to report out on annually as long as it's useful for you it feels like

to fulfill our curiosity and create more work for staff might not.

No, that's not. No, I think we should look at year over year. So you can see how we're doing in terms of, and then we would have to create SOPs for how we're pulling this data. So that year over year, when we report on the data, It's from the same well of information.

Do registrants for registered programs get an opportunity to submit evaluations of the program that they attended?

They do.

Yes. Like on a five point.

Yeah. So we can do something like that. So we can do a we can do a like in beyond like youth program. Youth programs, events, teens, seniors, sports, you know, sports, facility rentals. Like how many times, how many picnic rentals? Because we're trying to also bring more picnic rentals.

And park building rentals.

And park building rentals, right? Yeah. And then here's the question. When you see the data, then you can ask questions like, what are we doing to promote them? What are we doing? What are your, then you asked, how do you streamline the process? How do you streamline rentals? How can you do better? And it's like, I don't have staff, I have staff. I don't have... And it's how to identify what are we looking at? What are our service delivery areas? And then how are we meeting those?

So that sounds like a brand new...

I love that idea.

How do we articulate it? So... It's a great idea.

Yeah. I've heard a couple folks want to protect your crew and Is this the kind of thing that in initial brainstorming, like should this be a subcommittee that helps with the initial tooling of language slash deliverable slash organization that gets turned over to staff after it's been created? Or is this something that you all want to own from day one?

It feels like the staff should present what information they have available.

So on a monthly basis, evaluate the success of programs,

It's monthly to fund. The annual basis.

So, yeah, I was going to do an annual report out.

Let's start with annual.

Okay. Let's start with annual because we don't have it yet, Ed. Yeah. Yeah. So then we can build. Create something. And then it'll be.

And maybe we divide it. So one is an event and one is a program. So you don't, you're not putting it all in one meeting. And maybe it is semi-annual, but different topics. Yeah.

So Damon, how you do it, of course, with staff might be your choosing, obviously. But while the event is fresh in people's memory and they have the information at hand, it might be better for them to collect it and create some reports, whether you present it or not is your choosing. And I think... Semi-annually or annually is fine, but- And this might go to- But just like what you're saying, like for that month's programs and events, just gather up the data, whether you make it presentable or not is up to you, right? Otherwise, it'll be more work at the end of the year to go back and 11 months back, it was this.

And then that's also, if you can use the commission as a subcommittee and just give us the data and then we present it, I think that might also, if that makes it easier for you.

I recognize the importance of having continuity of the problems.

And so I understand that things might... Yeah, I think it would be good for you all to receive the report and... and either ask questions or provide feedback.

I don't think you can stop us from providing feedback.

We may not have access to some of those systems.

Yeah, we wouldn't.

And I heard you say build SOPs.

Satisfaction. What's our expense? Revenue.

Trendline over time of engagement.

Revenue may be hard because it's hard how we track it. Because right now, finance doesn't track. And I want to get some discrete revenue tracking. And we don't report. Because all of our revenue goes to the general fund. So we're talking about teasing it out. And I've noticed it two budget cycles. So I'm talking to finance now. But long term, when you see general fund revenue and other, we're in like the other. When it's like

transit occupancy tax and utility and you know and then there's other and we're a slice of the other but we're sometimes we're half of we're half of that okay in addition to the outcomes i think like just in total number of classes offered what drop-in programs are offered because i don't know if we know all of them yeah i know some of them yeah Did you know there's an adult ballet class for multiple levels?

I'd love to do that.

You can be in the adult point offered this year. Well, it sounds like a good way to break an ankle. No, it does. I'm not.

I do not participate. What was it? Adult point. What's that?

Where you dance on your tippy toe.

Special shoe. So here's what I have proposed for this year. So what I would propose for this year will be our goal is that we will create this because we don't even have this report on. So for the first year with Parks and Rec, we'll bring back. So part of the discussion on a monthly basis will be what should be what should this be? yeah what's going to be included is how do we bucket it is it seniors is it membership nutrition drop-in programs is it for youth is it drop-in is it camps um swim lessons is it swim is it by or is it by sports so we have like six discrete units it's like marketing and events seniors enrichment um youth and teen, sports and aquatics. One more I'm not sure how to play. Oh, the arts. So performing and visual and performing arts, right? So we have six. So we could do it by, we could do it within six and there could be within the, so out of all visual and performing arts, this is how many classes we offered. This is how many participants we had. This is our satisfaction rate for all performing arts and visual arts. So we could, but what we'll do as a group for the next year is come up with And then create upon the way to track these.

Yeah, that sounds perfect.

And then for the record is then you can go retrospectively and pull reports on everything except for the customer satisfaction unless for sure we're, because some people, sometimes we're doing a good job of this and sometimes we aren't. But I can tell you participants, revenue, total classes. I thought you couldn't tell us revenue.

Yeah.

I can pull it from our registration data. How much it costs? I can't tell you to drop it. I can't. Lunches, senior lunches are by donation, not required. Drop-in programs, I can't tell you that goes in general. So I can give you some. I can't give you a breakdown. I can give you what I could do is for all six units, this is our total income. And this is our total expenses, which is in the budget document. But then long-term, we can start looking at it programmatically. But I don't even have the budget designed that way yet. And I'm working with finance. I'm hoping. So these are all things that work.

And I think that's a good start. We'll start course and then refine as we go.

The goal would be to create, to work with staff, to create that, you know, program that program um program and event reporting analysis um sops like what's going to be included

I think this goes a long way of fulfilling our charter duty to supervise.

That's where we're going.

That's what supervision would mean.

And it would be good for, A, it's good for us to do, and B, we'll build it together. Then, not that you won't all be on the commission forever, but it's not unlike Wade Rummel or anything else. It was a point in time that was... It was negotiated or agreed upon and evaluated by the Park and Rec Commission, and then that's what we report out.

Have you seen examples of other cities doing this?

Yeah, I saw this in every other city. Okay.

So, so then where I was going with that is like, we, we could actually look at comparative data. So I don't know if you want to include that as a, as a metric in the report.

You can't because the program offerings, the facilities who has some people have aquatics, some people don't, some people have a youth, some people have a senior center.

We could tell us how many non-senate clarins are taking advantage of some of the classes, right? We could, cause you have a non-resident resident

If that's a metric you want to track, then we could. I can tell you it's not that high because what we do is you're either a Santa Clara resident or you're a student in one of our schools. And then outside of that, it's not a windfall. Okay. It's more of a blip than it is something to track to.

But I would say if we're drawing in from nearby cities.

That would be an interesting point of comparison, right? To look at the percentage of participants external to the resident population and see how that tracks or compares to Sunnyvale, Campbell.

Yeah, that sounds like next steps.

Sure. But that would be a useful thing to compare if you're looking to try and...

It is, but again, so to your point, Campbell is surrounded on all sides by other cities, and it in and of itself is a small city. So people come in and out to get services. their parks and recreation program is pretty small. Sure. So, like, and I live closer to the recreation center in Campbell than half of Campbell's residents, and I have a San Jose address. So, I'm just... Sure. You know what I'm saying? So, it's an interesting one. But, like, Sunnyvale and here, closer. I would just caution the commission that sometimes... You're not looking at an apples to apples.

When we were looking at the geocaching, the geofencing information, one of it was from what zip code are people coming in from? And that was interesting because there are some destination parks. Just curious here if there are destination recreation programs that people are coming from all over, you know.

Yeah.

Do we have, is ballet the draw or is it just Santa Clara people? You know, that's.

further questions yeah i can get it i can get you generally speaking um we could potentially drill down on program area so um registration would wouldn't we be able to pull non-resident resident from from registration okay yes we can but there's only a couple of zip codes in santa clara so it's not bad it's pretty good so what we'll do is um so what you're doing now is you're starting to like we're working on it, we're developing, right? So the subcommittee will do what you're doing now, right? One goal is to create, right? It'll be to create an annual program and events report analysis.

When do you think realistically you could run it for the first time?

I think within months of what the product is, because when we register everybody, we're getting this data. This is in our registration software.

It sounds like he's eager to see this first run of it.

No, I want to make it a realistic goal, right? And he thinks that the report is going to, we're going to massage it for two years, right? It doesn't make sense. I'm saying with the intention of running this in fiscal year 2017.

So maybe then like, you know, as with all goals, right? Like let's put down when in the year do we see this report? Is it at the end of the, our annual year or is it mid-year? Maybe mid-year, right? Like,

I don't know. It depends. If you're collecting any information...

It all depends on Damon's staff.

If everybody's stressed over R&Y, we don't want them also pulling data.

You must have it by September 15th. Good luck.

Yes. Follow the final report by July 22nd.

There you go. July 2027.

Design and report by July 2027. Perfect. This is the high level. We can come back and work to... be here all night if we're trying to, let's get the goals down and then we can action item out next time when you see the goals and we can wordsmith them and then we can add a few actions within them and then we'll finalize them at the next meeting.

What might be good is, I don't know, sir, you're in June. Maybe by December, whenever it works out, it'll be good to see a template, like not actual data, but just a template of what the report might look like. That way, there's an early input into what you guys are thinking, what the commission is expecting, right? So that way, there's a sync up. And come July, it's not like, oh, this is what we thought you were going to present, but this is what you actually presented.

I don't know that I put it specifically in December, but sure.

Yeah, I don't know December. It could be February. It could be sometime before July. A template.

But I think we're going to work. We're going to work on it. It's a goal of yours, right?

Uh-huh.

Okay. So you're going to see it happen in real time.

So they're not going to go away and come back.

Oh, I see. Next month, we're going to refine. And then we'll do, you guys, if I recall. At whether it's all commissioners or a subcommittee, we'll create that. Yeah. Okay.

I think we can decide that later. I think we move on to our next people.

I'll bring back and we're going to, we'll call them performance measures. And I think we have some already, but we'll look at them. And then I know that we had them in the last two. So we'll, we'll pull what we have and then we'll look at them and then see how we can also refine them to meet the mission of this commission's charter. Okay.

Okay. I have a suggestion because I think the parks and rec master plan implementation is too broad. I don't think anyone knows what we're doing here. So I, I vote to. to have new goals that are more focused. Like one of the suggestions in the master plan implementation was develop better relationships with schools and other facilities.

Yes.

And I don't think we've done anything as a commission and like seeing Maywood, that's just half school that's fenced away. Like there's opportunity there, but I think if that's one of the implementation, it should be called out as its own goal.

I like that. Yeah.

I don't know what other implementation goals we have under master plan that we could help with.

It's really up last night.

I also wrote that into the charter update. Yeah.

So I think it should be a goal.

It should be a goal. In general, it's building relationships with the community.

And we might want to expand it to the fundraising that...

Fundraising, yeah.

Commissioner DeMarco mentioned last time. But these are like top level goals, right? That's number two on the board, right? And so you're not, what you've described as an example would be a sub-goal like the placer data was in one of the other tools.

Or we could elevate it to a goal and then have sub-goals of meet with their school board. Right. More directed. Because I feel like it's too general just on where it's listed. Some of them are super specific and some are super general.

So I guess one could think about the goals as how much impact the top-level goal creates. It sounded, at least when we had the discussion last time, it sounded like that was a big thing, the collaborating with school district or other organizations. So yeah, I would favor having it as a top-level goal. Reviewing the master plan can continue to be another top-level goal.

So you want to see what so review the implementation of the master plan. To keep that as a simple just as a, you know, maybe. An update every six months or so, twice a year, implementation of how we're doing as far as implementing the action plans in the master plan.

But what I'm hearing you two say is that you want the school collaboration specifically to be a long term.

Yes. And it can be in addition to. I don't mean to totally cross off master plan implementation. But if there are things that we really want to see done under that, I think it should be elevated to its own goal.

Yeah.

And we can expand it to be fundraising partnerships, the nonprofit, right?

So I won't scratch out participate because that's a more active involvement in what you're saying versus just review.

Well, this is the overall... Cool. And then the action items. Okay. So, yeah, you're talking. So one is, so the overarching is that we're going to do an annual review. Yeah.

Sure.

Annual review of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Yeah. And then as part of that, you're going to do... Action items. Yes. Right? So within that, you wanted to... What was the one you were... You wanted to strengthen or work on the regular relationships with school and community groups. Yeah.

And potentially companies, right? In addition to community groups. Yeah.

So for that, I suppose we would need subcommittees, right?

I don't think we're all going to be listening to this.

Yeah, right? So we could have a subcommittee for engaging with the school board. We could have a subcommittee that engages with, for example, these people.

You have a school board.

Yeah, yeah.

PTAs.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of the master plan was leaning on the facilities of schools that we can't achieve it without.

Exactly. Without partnerships.

And that would be more than 88. It's more of the administrators and the board.

I have a random question. Baseball fields. Does the city, is that the city owns them or are they owned by?

What baseball? In Central Park. I think that's the city. Which one? Central Park.

That's the city. Carly. Yeah. We have the park next to it.

Westside Little League. Homestead Little League is on City Park.

The Little Leagues own their own individual field?

There are no... What park is that?

Homestead Little League is on Earl Carmichael Park.

So they come out there with Westside?

Oh, they are?

Yeah. Okay. The Little Leagues have combined. Okay. So Carmichael is a Little League field for Westside Little League. Same Little League that plays in Carly.

So they're next to the parks, but independent.

Some.

Some.

But, and or a majority.

And there's some that are school fields, like War Memorial is next to the middle school.

But that's school district property. Right, that's school district. Yeah.

Okay. So it depends.

Yeah.

And then... Carmichael City. And then... You've got Elmer Johnson, which is a cooperation between school district and city.

So all of the above. Yeah.

At least that's what the sign says.

Expand the facilities.

I think the school district's taking it all over 100%.

Yeah. Well... You want to keep annual review parks and recreation master plan expectation right now, we have one so we can come back to this up with another one, I want to keep these how about which of these do you want to keep.

And I suggest I don't know but not kind of jumper on it but. So we have enough events already and I don't know whether we really want to plan new events. We can just do a better job if there is room for improvement with the existing events.

Coordinate with other city events.

As part of our annual report, we'll tell you there'll be one on events, one on programs. It'll tell you what we did, what our estimated attendance was, what our expense sheet was.

So I'm suggesting to just scratch out the planned new events.

I'm going to argue what we'd say and coordinate with other commissions on their events.

Why?

Like city concerts. It's cultural commission, but at parks.

I'm not going to be smart. But to what end? Like what upside do you want to them?

We go to them. We help advertise them, you know, making more of a joint city activity rather than just a cultural commission.

I want to be careful not taking on too much. That's not what I'm suggesting. You know, the idea sounds great. It's just more work and we might fail at it.

I mean, you can, if you want to attend events, You can put something about, you know, I mean, you don't necessarily attend programs. You can attend an event. You can visit parks. I mean, it's not unlike, you know, visit park facilities and attend events. and recommend, you know, and provide input on experience and recommend, you know, something like you could, you can do something along those lines. So not, not too similar to where we have a list of all the parks that you want to visit or a certain amount of, you could say, here's, we just sent this giant list of events. So you can attend, it could be that similar goal where it's like you attend a you visit eight parks and go to two events. Right.

I mean, they're symmetrical.

Yeah. So it's just, and you provide feedback on your experience. Yeah. And helping staff, you know, look for opportunities for improvement.

So I like the language you were using to rephrase that. So you want to put that down?

Visit parks.

You said visit parks and events. Yeah.

This is parks and that's events.

Share a user experience. I like that.

But then I think changing the art and wine to be more general, participate in events, right? Not just art and wine.

So that captures what we just did.

I think you could get rid of this and roll some of this into this is what I'm suggesting. Because this is a new goal. Right. Over here. So one, two, three, four. You got five here. One new. This is refined and we'll keep refining it.

Yeah.

This, we could, you're going to take where it's like, you're going to visit parks and recreation facilities.

And citywide events. Yeah, and, yeah. Recommend some services and resources.

Yeah, there's about 10 citywide events and recommend.

Priorities and some services.

And share, you said share experience. Yes.

Well, I think that maybe that's the bullet. What we do, we share, we visit, we attend, we share.

I agree. I think that part of the sub-language should encourage commissioners to solicit other feedback and not just our own, right? It's really Lindsay for us to say.

Yeah, be the voice of the community.

Right. Solicit. Well, when we're at events, we should be talking to people. Right.

And having those conversations, I don't know how much you want to document, right? But having those conversations also leads to the inevitable. Well, I saw this and it wasn't working and I don't know who reported to me. Well, it's good. It allows us to be a conveyor of information as well as a receiver of feedback.

Goal two, I'm already. I think that's great for goal one. I like that. And so we're cutting out our goal three.

Yeah, we can scratch that out. Just incorporate the language in there.

Goal two, I still like that we review community input.

This is important because every time we do a project.

But maybe eliminate the CIP budget because now there's so many different kinds of budgets and projects. It's not based on CIP budgets, because it's also the bonds and MFAM.

So to me, when I read this, it feels like this belongs in here, because it doesn't feel like we're doing this without reference to this. That's what it feels like to me, that if there's a master plan guiding to the element of facilities, That's what it is, right? It's saying we want to do these parks. We want to do this past land. We want to do, they're proposing a massive recreation center. Like all of that development is that, but it's in the master plan. And I don't think it's important for us to hit a certain number of goals, right?

We just want to speak comfortably. So technically speaking, now that we have a master plan, Any time we do a park rehab or a new developer park is being proposed, it needs to follow the guidelines that are outlined within this. So we can, what I can do is this, we can take this.

We're more general than CIP because it's not a CIP.

It's not just, I mean, but there's Measure I now. So we could say, so rather than, Rather than based on developer funded 1. yeah, I'll just say we have we have. We have developer. We have measure I. And then we have. We have needs assessments. Okay, I think the reason it says. I think the reason they did this was to tell you that unless it's in the CIP budget, we don't even think about it. Yeah, if it's not that because we're doing those in two, four, six year plans. And then therefore, what I'm asking you is to give me ideas on what's in the five year CIP plan, not on like every park in town. So you can do that. But like next year, the same parks that you visit are going to have the same. So let's look at the five we're going to do and really dig in on it. But like this is this is definitely that that's going to be over here. OK, this one stands. Yeah.

Money's money.

Yeah. Yeah. uh we could do this earlier uh if we can um it'd be good if you guys had the opportunity to provide feedback prior to i'm gonna say something funny um you know the budget presentation felt uh

Underwhelming and overwhelming.

Yeah, it's still capital operating.

So I don't know how to verbalize what I'm looking for.

I think what we're looking for is performance measures rather than overall budget.

Yeah, I was struggling with whether or not I thought... Yeah, maybe that's what it is.

Yeah.

But... I think they're separate because this is the budget.

This is service-based. We can give you a budget as a part of this, but this is services. This is just budget.

And this is out of the charter. It does say we need to make comments about the budget. Do we have any ideas for new goals? We've got four blanks.

Um, I think so. Um, where was that? Go ahead first.

So, yeah. Yeah. So we should also, we shouldn't just be doing this and we shouldn't just be doing that. We should give you an annual. So, like, this. Should be. No, that's fine. This should be. It should be a little bit more specific because we do a biannual. Yeah. So one is operating, one is capital. But every year we do one, we're also updating the other. So it should be an annual operating and capital. And the capital should tell you what we're going to be doing for the next three to five years. And then every... year, we're updating that. We just finished that. We're in the middle of Schmidt, Central Park, ISC, and then we're also planning... Maywood. Maywood's going to come up so we can talk. And then, boom, Schmidt's going to be done this year. Central Park's going to be done next year. So by the time we get to... The annual review of the budget. Central Park will be almost done. Schmidt will be done. And we'll already be on to the next things. So we should be reporting to you like, hey, we finished this project. It's all done. You're going to come to the ribbon cuttings and what have you. But that's all good and well and done. But what's coming?

And you do that in the staff reports. This is just formalizing it. Looking at part of the plan.

Well, we don't. There's no, we don't do it intentionally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not out of the park. We've got the contract for finished bed.

You're approving and you're seeing it. Then you're like, then you can be like, Hey, where are we at on that? Or when are we going to do this?

So do we want to have a bullet that says, we'll, we'll do the operating every two years. We'll do the, um,

It's almost like the two-year look ahead with the one-year true-up.

Yeah, it's what are we, and what are we... And then the third bullet is like progress on major projects, right?

Well, that's all part of capital.

Right, okay.

It'll be like...

I didn't hear what you said, Bernie.

Progress on major projects, like percent done on Henry Schmidt.

Progress five-year plan. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so... I just want you guys to know this is coming, and I want to hold us accountable to say we're going to tell you what we're working on, what we're budgeting to, and what's in the out years.

We should know what's in the CIP. Yeah.

And if you're doing sub bullets in the operating, we should be getting... have been with your tenure, but staffing reports. We should know what the vacancies are, what you're facing in terms of you can't get this title approved, you can't get this transfer approved because that is informing us about how we can leverage counseling.

And I should be able to tell you what our revenue is. I should be able to know what our revenue is.

What is that second line? Second bullet?

Rather than using expenses.

Sure.

I'll know what it says.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I got it.

I got it.

400 goals. So because I was having a snarky I'm fine with community engagement. I also know that this group has talked in the past about hosting these meetings in parks. And so if there is interest in engagement with other councils, other commissions, if there's interest in engaging the community more directly where they are, you should have a goal that's talking about stakeholder engagement or something. Right. And so I'm going to put some of it as a sub-bullet for one of these master plan things. And I'm offering that. Do we want it as a sub-bullet? Do we want it?

So I would. So, you know, reminding and looking at a big picture, what I find frequently is when I talk to people, they have no idea how the city works. What is the commission? What does it do? You know, who to contact for parks? What do you do with it?

But water fountain's broken.

And we were talking about like these subcommittees to engage with different stakeholders, but it almost feels like it needs to be at a higher level and incorporate what you just said, right? So And that's where, you know, like what I keep bringing up about hosting, maybe, and that could be our goal, hosting a PRC meeting at a park and putting it out there in front of people. Like, this is what we do. Come and participate, you know. Learn and understand how your government works.

Yeah, we had to be ambassadors of the park.

But how do you operationalize it? How do you make it?

Do we want to make it a full goal or just... Council was trying to do it.

They have more difficulty because of the meeting management.

Or Brown Act too.

It's Brown Act, but it's also managing the call-ins. And they televise. We don't. Yeah. Televised. Public. We're web only. So wherever we host, we just have to have a strong internet connection is really.

You know, we can, we can get a hotspot. Yeah.

So, I mean, we can do that. We could try one. You like at least one a year, but we have to post. We have to look into that, but we just have to post it and make sure we post there, post here.

Well, I think we should be more general in our goals.

Because he's brought that up before.

Well, I think stakeholder engagement is worthy of a goal. Maybe not host a meeting, but that seems like a bullet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just one way to achieve what we're saying. Yeah.

And, you know, we had surveys and stuff as a sub-bullet, which I don't know where I would go now.

Sorry, just one.

Review community input on park rehab.

One quick point on what we were just saying. So there's the stakeholder engagement, which is good. Like, it's more focused, you know, like, for example, with the school district, etc, etc. But the community, right, like the broader citizenship here, that is more amorphous and it will require different ways to approach it, right? And so I feel, and I do feel like people need to be more engaged with their government, right? Like they need to understand how to bring about change. And so I almost feel like that should be a top level goal.

What's hard is that if you structure a goal around We're going to improve community engagement. How do you measure that, right? We want to set ourselves up to be able to assess our- Sure.

Many commissions ago, Kelly, now City Council Cox, was very engaged in trying to get more surveys filled out for these parks. Because at the time it was like 100 or 200 surveys. And she wanted us to be out there getting people to fill out surveys to get a larger population. You know, that's one way of community engagement.