Cultural Heritage Board - Regular Meeting

Oh, so yeah. Sir, what? I would imagine.

We have reached our forum. Matter of fact, you can go ahead and use your. Sir, what? We have reached our forum. Once you are ready, I will start start recording and let you know that we may begin the meeting, and we

may begin the meeting. We've already started recording, so we went to work. Great.

So glad you're all here. Welcome to the board members and also the public for joining us today. My name is Carol Quant, and I have the honor of chairing the board of parks and recreation. Today, we have with us vice chair Paul Castillo, Carolina Spence, Keating Vogel, Pam Rivas, and hopefully Jack Pond will be coming through the door at any moment. As a reminder to all present, please silence your cell phones.

Additionally, the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully or if necessary, the meeting will end immediately. Kim, can you explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting?

Thank you, chair Fwan. For those attending in person, if you wish to speak, please complete a speaker card that's on that back table and bring them up here to me if you haven't already. If you already have, we've got them right here. But, yeah, thank you. We need a different speaker card for each agenda item that you wish to speak on. Speaker cards are located in the back of the room. Public comments will be held after each item has been discussed by the board. Each speaker will have up to three minutes for their comments. Any email comments that were received by the deadline were included and uploaded to the agenda prior to the start of today's meeting. Emails received are not read into the record.

Thank you. With that, I call this April 2026 meeting of the board of recreation to order at 04:05PM. Can we get a roll call?

Board member Cruz, you're absent. Do you wanna take Board member Spence. Here. Member Vogel.

Here.

Board member Pond. Absent. Board member Rivas. Here. Vice chair Castillo.

Here.

And chair Fawn. Here. Let the record reflect that the board member Cruz and Pond are absent.

Great. We are going to move on to item number three, which is public comment on non agenda items. We do have several cards. The first one is Deborah Adams.

Yep. Mhmm. Yes.

Hi. I'm Deborah Adams. I'm part of a group of Santa Rosa residents seeking city approval to establish a small community garden with a native landscaped area at Westgate Park. This proposal will convert an underused lawn area into a well managed community asset that supports neighborhood connection, local production, water wise landscaping, and long term. We have already identified more than 20 interest interested residents and have held several organizing meetings, one including Carolyn, Von Wales, or City Rep.

We are asking for approval to use a designated the Boise State Park for community garden and native plant area and for connection to the city water system to do that. They're all so what appropriate structure like a permit or a license agreement so that we're acting appropriately. This would be a community led project funded through grants and donations and fundraising, potentially the city's community improvement grant, but we are not asking for any funding specifically from the city. And we are not asking for any ongoing maintenance. We will maintain it.

The public benefits are it activates an underused park space, builds neighborhood connections towards shift, creates opportunities for mentorship and intergenerational learning, provides food growing and educational opportunity, adds native plants, pollinator habitat, water wise landscaping, reduces water by replacing irrigated turf with more efficient landscaping, and increases safety due to positive activity and visibility in the park. We know that there are 11 houses right now that face their backyards face the park, and we wanna be respectful of those people from the beginning. The garden would be placed with a setback, so it wouldn't be against anyone's fence. So there would be no potential water damage to the Fitzes, and there wouldn't be excess noise to those people whose backyard's facing the park already. And we we don't believe that we will be any noisier with children at the playground that we're right next to.

So and we hope that by getting to know one another through the garden, residents can build trust, look out for one another, and be better in the event of emergencies such as fires and earthquake. If approved, this project would include clear site boundaries, break the garden rules, volunteer oversight, regular keep, ongoing communication with park staff, and a funded removal and restoration plan if the plan is project is discontinued. We are also committed to organic practices, proactive road and pest prevention through good sanitation, compost management, orderly storage, and regular maintenance. We also expect respect the adjoining yards and fences, and we'll work to ensure the gardener remains in an orderly, quiet, and good neighbor presence in the park.

We think this is

a modest, manageable, reversible pilot.

And Thank you, Deborah.

Three minutes are up? Okay.

Yes. Indeed. Thank you. Can we please note that Jack Pond is with us now? Oh, I'm glad. Nice. And board members, for public comments on items that are not on the agenda, all we are doing is listening. We're not asking questions. We're not answering questions, and we are not commenting on them. With that reminder, as much to myself as to everyone else, we'll move on to the next public comment, and that is Nancy Dottie.

I am also speaking about the garden we're trying to build at Westgate Park. And I just wanna say from the really short or brief trying to connect with some people, we didn't do a huge outreach. We got we got so much interest, and people are really excited. And they're excited for the chance of community. It was all multigenerational. We had families with kids. We had elders. It was it it truly seemed to make the community feel different. It's a very disconnected community. Lots of people I talked to say they don't know their neighbors, and that was a key thing that they came back with saying they wanted to be part of this.

They wanted to get to know their neighbors. That we already have set up now for a potluck, and we're gonna have a speaker. So we're just moving forward even before we have the the garden moving forward. We're moving forward doing community things, but we wanna garden together. And we wanna garden with the kids and have that as an opportunity, and it was exciting to see how many people

in the community were really interested. So that's what I want to share.

Thank you, Nancy. Up next, we have Alan Ziff. Oh, yes. Alan Ziff.

Yeah. I'm with, Rainbow Beach Volleyball. We're a, five zero one c three nonprofit. We're looking to redevelop the sand volleyball courts right over next to the swimming pool here. We've been working with, Scott Wilkerson on this for about three years, and recently, we found out what we thought was money is not there or it's in question.

So we wanna get visible with you guys as well as the city council to make sure that we can continue. We've already spent $20,000 of cash and in kind services we have donated to the city. The city has probably spent an equal amount in staff time, and I sent you guys, you know, a backup data on that. So our goal is really just to become visible and find out what we need to do to keep this process that started three years ago moving forward to see if we can get this thing done. We've already successfully done work out with the county.

We added two sand volleyball courts at Regal to the existing two, and the usage there has probably tripled or quadrupled since we put in the additional courts. So

short and sweet.

Thank you, Alan. Next up, we have Eric Smith.

Good evening.

Thank you for your time. I'm with Alan. My brother, Mike, and I founded Regal Beach Volleyball back in 2021. Alan has been an integral part of the beach volleyball community in Sonoma County for decades. It's a worldwide sport, and I just wanna bring a little bit of light to the community that it's building. So out of Regal, we have right now, it's community night. We have once a week. So there's courts full of children, people that have never touched a volleyball before, and advanced players. We every summer, we have clinics for we call it Regal rookies, which is young kids. We have a summer long series of advanced players.

We have players come down from Tahoe, from Alaska, up from Santa Cruz and further south. We've had Olympians out at Regal. So we have the highest players come out there, and we have the people that the community needs the most to be healthy, which is our children. I'm a proud father of three. My wife plays.

It's a really cool thing that we've got going on out there, and we would love to see it happening here. A couple of times, I've tried to play at Findlay, and you don't know if you don't play, but these courts are essentially unplayable. You can hurt yourself if you dive for a ball, it can hurt your knee. And so it's fun to run around, and I'm sure you guys might have seen people are playing out there. But what's happening out there is what we wanna see is if we get four real courts, I'm telling you, you'll see the community grow.

We can have people from out of county comfort tournaments. We can host junior tournaments. Right now, if you go to Southern California, LA, San Diego, those beaches are packed with youth and adult volleyball players. And there's really nothing north of the Golden Gate Bridge until you maybe get to Seattle. And even then, what we're doing at Regal is groundbreaking for Northern California.

And if Findlay could add four state of the art courts. And a great thing about them is once they're built, they're really easy to maintain. And so it brings the community together, multigenerational, multicultural. Everybody has fun running around in the sand. You don't have to be good at beach volleyball to have fun. It's a really healthy environment, and I have seen it really grow the community in ways that, were hard to imagine when we started. And so just echoing Alan's message that we just wanna get this on your radar. We know there's not much that you guys can do for us today, but hoping to work with you guys in the future. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Eric. Next up is Samuel. Thank

you. My name is Samuel Blomberger, I'm here to because a community garden has been proposed at Westgate Park, I'm here to voice my support for the garden and to request discussion to be added to the board agenda and for the board to direct planning staff to approve the concept of the community garden. Westgate Park is a large park that is well used by young children but has few amenities for adult recreation. The park has large swaths of irrigated turf which are overgrown with prickly beads and which provide little recreational, aesthetic, or useful value. A group of community members has proposed at their own cost and labor to plan, develop, and install a community garden in place of a small portion of underutilized turf.

Such a garden will fill a gap in recreational opportunities, promote healthy eating, build community, give access to gardening for those without suitable yards, and provide opportunities for mentorship and mutual learning. The garden has the potential to establish regular presence of neighbors within the park, which deters unlawful and undesirable uses of the park and promotes neighborhood cohesion. Neighborhood gardens are a highly prized neighborhood feature. The presence of a community garden has the potential to boost the attractiveness of nearby properties. A community garden will not only benefit the users of the garden, but will also improve the safety and beauty of the park and will benefit the neighborhood as a whole.

Parks planning staff has rejected the proposal. A request for this board to reverse that mistake, to direct staff to approve the proposal in concept, and to authorize the planning for a community garden to move forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Samuel. The last card I have is from Nancy Lowers? Nors? Nope. Excuse me. Lynn Nors.

I'm here representing myself as part of the South Park Coalition talking about how grateful I am for the passing of the rehab for the park. Martin Luther King Park is very much used in the community, not just for soccer. And I wanna bring up the idea of not using turf, not using plastic turf. Wanna bring it to this board's attention that five high schools and at least two junior high schools are removing their tertiary as of now. And it doesn't make sense to me to put something in that the others are taking out.

It's a waste of money that can be used in other for Westgate Park as a as an example. This just came up as a press Democrat article within the past week about the removal of the turf in the high school. And if I remember correctly, South Park soccer is mostly high school students. What kind of doesn't make sense? I'm asking you to do that, please. Regular grass, normal grass, sod, lacrosse, MLK. Thank you.

Thank you, Lynn. Seeing no other cards, this concludes public comment on non agenda items. Next, we will move on to the approval of the minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review minutes or any corrections or edits necessary, board members? If there are none, we can take public comment on the minutes. Seeing none, can we get a roll call on the approval of the Yes. Can I get a motion to approve the Thank you, Jack?

Second.

Thank you, Paul. Can we get a roll call for this agenda item?

Yes. Board member Cruz is absent. Board member Spence? Yes. Board member Vogel? Yes. Board member Pon?

Yes.

Board member Rivas? Yes. Vice chair Castillo?

Yes.

And chair Pond?

Yes. The minutes from 02/25/2026 are approved as written with a motion from board member Pond and a second from board member Pond. Great. And carried by yes vote by all.

Thank you. With that, we'll move on to item number five, upcoming events and park projects. Emily, Jeff, James, it's listed that you're all gonna give us some information this afternoon.

Thank you, Carol. April is National Volunteer Appreciation Month, and Recreation of Parks is blessed to have an abundance of dedicated volunteers, including the seven of you, six tonight. Volunteers contribute to our parks, to our camps, our trails, our classes, tours, our redwood landscapes, our sports programs in big and small ways each and every day. Our park system would not be what it is without you all. So thank you very much.

Speaking of volunteer recognition, if you know a volunteer who should be recognized at the city's highest level, please nominate them for a merit award. Applications are available now, and the nomination deadline is June 12. Moving on to park planning project updates. A handful of updates on MLK Junior Park. Council approved the use of a design build contract model rather than our typical design build contract model to renovate the park, and we're currently soliciting qualifications from design teams and intend to hire a team by early fall.

At that same meeting, council approved the use of synthetic turf for the soccer field and requested use of the most environmentally friendly turf materials. They also are interested in seeing the turf be recycled or returned to the manufacturer at the end of its lifespan. So they're considering what that looks like at the end. You also may recall from the public comment during the MLK master plan presentation that safety and lighting were of significant concern to the neighborhoods. In order to help address those concerns, transportation and public works electrical section has installed six new light poles along the North end of Newhall Trail, and that happened in early April.

Installation of new play equipment and surfacing will occur at Cook School Park. We're expecting it to begin next week and be done by the June. Regarding the Southeast Greenway, we have reviewed proposals and consult and interviewed consultant teams and expect to request approval from council to hire the top ranked firm in June and then with community engagement then beginning in the fall. And finally, a general contractor has been hired for the Galvin tennis pickleball ball court project, and construction is slated to begin in June. So I'll turn it over to Jeff for recreation updates.

Hello. Jeff Tibetz, deputy director with recreation. Thank you, Emily. So on the topic of volunteers, again, just reiterate our appreciation for all of our wonderful volunteers here in Santa Rosa. Being in recreation, you get to see so many different areas, whether they're volunteering for the city or just neighborhood groups and associations, fundraising projects that have given us buildings, all sorts of things.

So, in the recreation area, it's really most of what we deal with is less of, like, the ongoing and more for events. So for example, one of the events or one of the programs that we have a lot of volunteer help with is our junior giants, baseball and soft, softball program that will be coming up this summer. So we're currently recruiting, volunteers for that. So a lot of our volunteer appreciations isn't necessarily year round where it's like, okay. It's April.

Now we can we can appreciate because it's more of a it's a summer program, and, obviously, it takes place along those times. But we did Kim Hatch, recreation supervisor, who is the one of the key ongoing year round, groups that recreation supports. She's the staff liaison with the rural cemetery preservation committee. So, they have a monthly meeting, and, the the city staff signed up to be the the sponsors of their snacks and everything for their meeting at the beginning of this month. Again, as a a small token of our appreciation for everything that that group does, not just in on the recreation side with programming and tours and and all the wonderful things that make the rural cemetery so special, but, obviously, also all the maintenance support and everything out there as well.

And then the other one that's a little bit of a tweak to that, but I wanted to give you an update because I've been texting staff earlier in the week about it. Our work experience program where we have hundreds of teenage volunteers that help us run all of our summer programs. Looks like this year, we're gonna be over 300 participants in work experience for the first time since before COVID. So, it hasn't been a small program by any means. We've been at about 225 to 250, but it's nice to see that we are jumping back up to those historical numbers of 300 plus.

So that's really exciting. Outside of volunteers, I also wanted to touch on the, upcoming community events, and I'm gonna cheat a little bit. Last time, I I gave you a sneak peek that we were piloting the egg hunt the aquatics egg hunt over at Findlay Pool. So we ran that pilot program. It was amazing. We had all the painted rocks as the eggs in the pool all over the place. We had two groups of 60 kids come in. So total with that was just the kids that registered. So it's probably around 250 people or so that came through for the day. For a pilot program, been involved in a lot of pilot programs.

I think it's the smoothest thing we've ever run as a pilot program. It'll certainly be back in the future, so that was very exciting. And then looking forward on your list, you saw the kids to parks day, And so I just kinda wanted to highlight that again as a free community event for families out at Howarth Park. Kids to Parks Day is a national day that we participate in, and this is the event that that we run. And so it's a scavenger hunt out at Howarth Park. They get clues and find the next clue and then kind of get to the end where they get their prize for completing everything. So, again, that's a free event at Howarth Park. Kids National Kids to Parks Day is May 16, and that event will run from eleven to two. That concludes my updates.

Thank you. James, are you

gonna hold off and do yours all later on? Great. So we're going to ask the board if they have questions for Jeff on recreation. He's not actually leaving. Or Emily on the parks updates. Any questions from the board? I do have one question, Jeff. And that is I have yet to make it to a junior Giants practice or anything else, and I would love to try this year. Could you send board members an email, on where the practices are, when, and if it would be appropriate for us to

Yeah. Is it? Yeah. I'll need a little I'll get that information out. We're in the registration process right now, and we have lost some of the fields that we were planning on using. So we're in the process of figuring out exactly what that schedule and field, but I don't remember exactly the the start date

of that event, but we've got

a little time. But as soon as we have more information of where it's gonna be, which nights, I'll I'll get that out to you.

And starts in June?

I believe. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's one of our summer programs. I believe it doesn't start until after our in service week, which is the June.

So I'm sure there are board members who who might be interested in checking that out. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. With that, we'll ask for public comments on this agenda item.

Seeing none, we will move on to our next item, which is chair board member reports and committee updates. I don't think we have any subcommittees, but we will start with Caroline.

Oh, we have time again to talk about. They will be at the Findlay Center on September 21. There are flyers on that you can get at the front desk, and you can nominate people in your neighborhood. Very simple to do. It's a wonderful. And once you come once, you will never not come again. So I hopefully, I I will remind you every month about this so you don't need to worry. You're gonna forget. And and we'll see you in September at the awards.

Thank you, Caroline.

You bet. Pam?

Yeah. I had a little update slash question, I guess, so maybe Citi can help

me answer my question if

So this is the board report section? Yes.

So half a report, half a question. I was informed in doing some just community engagement that there was going to be some there's, like, a call for volunteers for the, park, that is in honor of a a Japanese, community member. I forget the name of this park. Nagasawa.

Nagasawa

and I was just approached by community members if we could, just get the word out that they're looking for some reoccurring volunteers to come take care of the the park and the space. And so I don't know where community members can get that information, but that's what I was told, and I'm I'm bringing it up now.

So I'm seeing nodding from our superintendent of park maintenance, James Castro. If you have additional information, you may wanna confer with him later. Thank you. Jack, anything to report?

I just wanna echo the, appreciation ceremony. I went last year, and it was amazing to see all these young kids that have done amazing things in the community and for themselves and for others. It really was eye opening to encourage people to go. Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to the other end. Paul?

Just a couple small park visits while

I was out there. South Brush Creek Park and then North Brush Creek Park, I believe. The North is very interesting. It's more kinda like a trail area. I I found that great. I encourage members of the public and everyone to check it out. It's a great city park to utilize.

Thank you, Paul. Ketan?

Well, let me just say I'm a tax preparer. So until a few days ago, I was chained to my desk and didn't go anywhere. So I will try to make up for that before the next meeting.

Well, welcome to the other side of April 15.

Thank you.

First, I wanna report that the waterways committee, which I sit on as a representative of this board, did have a meeting late in February to review a new fence in one of the industrial parks that backs onto Roseland Creek. So we reviewed that project. And that committee, like so many others, is moving to an as needed meeting calendar, which saves staff time and, makes our budget dollars go further. As you you all may know, I hang out at the rural cemetery, and I'd like to report that we had a very successful dark side, a week ago, Friday. It was a dark and stormy day.

There was thunder and lightning and torrential rain as we were setting up, and the clouds did break. And we went out without a hitch, and everybody showed up. Soon thereafter, we had so many members of the park maintenance comp team come and do weed whacking of the cemetery. Our average volunteer age is about 70, and some of our slopes are very slopey and very dangerous, and park maintenance came and spent the morning with us. Not only did they make every volunteer who was there extremely happy, but there were members of the public who were stopping them and say, if you work all day, I will feed you dinner.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So it was truly a joyous, and productive morning, and we are so appreciative. I was also able to attend the Brush Creek Park a month when it did start raining again the following day, but it was wonderful to, to see everyone who was volunteering joyfully in the rain, trimming and, weeding and picking up garbage, and then they were treated to a hot dog barbecue provided by the city afterwards.

And, it was wonderful to be able to connect with other volunteers who take personal responsibility and care of some of our most important parks. All of our parks are important, but, it was wonderful to see the volunteers recognized for their ongoing efforts. And, and that's about it. I I will talk to you later about how wonderful it is to volunteer and how much satisfaction appreciation for life I get out of doing it so that perhaps others will want to pitch in as we move forward. That's the end of my way too long presentation.

And with that, we will ask for public comments on this agenda item. Seeing none, we will move forward to schedule items. And now it's time for James with park maintenance volunteer program updates.

I'm gonna start by getting 200 copies of our park month calendar.

Thank you.

It's written in both English and Spanish. There's a different event, second Saturday of every month, that we would love to see you guys attend if you're avail

K. You're fine

for me.

But Yeah.

James, can I have to Sure?

Make one available? I'll look for.

Of course.

Okay. We'll try them.

Of course.

I know. I'm gonna take over the next.

Thank you.

Alright. Hello, everyone. Chair Quant, Vice Chair Castillo, Board Members. My name is James Castro, and I'm the Superintendent for the Parks Department. I am here to present a presentation that's not actually mine. I'm standing in for Lorenzo Perron and Tim Finnegan. They are two parks maintenance supervisors, and they run the operation of park maintenance. So unfortunately, they cannot be here today, so I'm going to present in their honor. Before I do, I would like to just acknowledge that today is Administrative Professional Day. And this meeting, like many others, is run by our administrative professionals, including Kim Grindell.

I just want to show a level of appreciation to all of them for everything that they do. Alright. So let's jump into this. Park volunteers make life better. That is not the right slide.

Gotta gotta credit Lorenzo Perron. He's one of our parks' tree supervisors. He threw this in here, park volunteers make life better. It's a spin on the parks make life better slogan. But this is true. Right? In the city of Santa Rosa, we've got 23 employees that maintain 1,100 acres of land. We could not do it without our volunteers. So it really is true to say that park volunteers make life better. What has been what we have found the most success in with our volunteer program, is Measure M, Parks for All. We could not do what we do with our volunteers or our programs without the utilization of Measure M. So that's my my plug. Please help us keep Measure M. It's gonna get renewed in 2030. I think it expires in 2029.

So, we really need that in order to keep going. Let's move on. Okay. Volunteer program vision. So I'm gonna read this to harness the skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm of community members to strengthen and improve our city parks, programs, and events. I really wanna emphasize enthusiasm. Without the enthusiasm of our volunteers, none of it exists. You cannot force somebody to volunteer. It's volunteering for a reason. So we appreciate everything that's done, but it's really on the backs of the enthusiasm of the people that do it.

Next. This one's fun. What we need versus what they want. This is a good reminder to all of our volunteers, which I'm one of them. The city can't possibly match the volunteer efforts and how much time and enthusiasm we put in. Like I said, 23 staff members, a 108 parks. We need to find a common ground where we're all getting what we want and need from that. And so what we do is before every one of our park a month events, we meet out at we meet out at the park. Our next event is on May 9 at Howarth Park. Hope you're all there.

Staff will go out week or two beforehand, and it's the management staff, it's the maintenance staff to take care of it. Sometimes park planning attends, sometimes we have recreation. And we walk the entire park and we make a checklist of everything that we see, every single deficiency. This is this serves us in many ways. One, obviously, we're we're self auditing. We're going through the process of what do we want to see in our parks, what where can we improve it. We may never get the funding to do it, but at least we're acknowledging that it's there. We take that list and then we separate it into many lists. One of them being, what can we ask our volunteers to do? So the volunteer, make our volunteer list, then we have one that says, this is what park maintenance staff can do.

And then some of it, we have pass on to our parks planning team because it's a capital improvement that needs to be included in future planning. So really, what what does the city want? What does the what do the volunteers want? And then what do both of us need helps us get to where everyone wins. Next slide. Okay. Park a month. So I wanna do something here a little strange. I would like to ask each one of you to stand up if you don't mind. I'll stand up with you.

I'd like you to sit down if you've never attended a park a month event.

Oh.

Oh, come on. Thank you for standing. We

can all sit down. Carol, Caroline, thank you for attending our park a month events. Thank you all for attending our park a month events. I know I've seen many of you there. We go to great lengths with staff to create a park a month schedule, the one that I've put in front of you. This schedule rotates each park in each district. Each one of you represents your district, and I would like to respectfully ask for you all to try to plan and attending one of the park a month events in your district. We would love to see you there. It happens on the second Saturday of every month. Rain or shine, we're there.

As Carol was saying earlier, we had our previous park a month at Brush Creek, and it was pouring rain. And there's nothing that makes volunteers happier than the ones that are there in the rain because we're a certain type of people, and it was really great to see. We had 44 volunteers in pouring rain taking care of our park. Our park a month includes our it's not it says here MLK Day of Service. I wanna just point out that's not a city sponsored event.

That's a city supported event. In addition to that Arbor Day, our annual tree planting, forty seven years running, we've been given the Arbor Day Foundation's recognition of being Tree City USA. Over that over those forty seven years, we've planted almost 2,000 trees just for just city in Santa Rosa. And in addition to that, it's our volunteer appreciation barbecue. So every April, we host at our park a month a volunteer appreciation barbecue. We'd love to see you all there next year. Thank you all that were there for this year. It was a really, really fun event even though it was wet. Slide. These are just a few quick stats on park a month.

Last year, we had 339 volunteers. We planted planted almost 70 trees. We have a snow cone machine, might sound crazy, but we give away hundreds of snow cones every year. Over a thousand hours of service, I'm not going to read them all. You get it. These are good these are good stats. Next slide. So in addition to our park a month event, we have ongoing volunteer projects. And I'm sure Carol is gonna give me some crap for not having the rural cemetery on this list. However, the rural cemetery has its own slide coming

up. So,

these are just a few. I wanna acknowledge Martin. He's here. He he pretty much takes him and his wife pretty much take care of Juilliard Park for us. Luther Burbank is our nonprofit. We couldn't maintain Luther Burbank without them. They have a huge volunteer group. We've just acquired the Southeast Greenway. Thea is here. Great to see you. But we have many, many groups. One of our newer ones is the Friends of Prince Memorial Greenway, which has been spearheaded by Robert Ashe. It's it's nice to see the network of rural cemetery volunteers and friends of North Park volunteers all coming together to create other volunteer groups. So it's been very successful. We appreciate all that you guys do.

Next slide. MLK Day in Service. So you'll notice that on our park a month volunteer schedule, we don't have an event in January. When I took this position, made the mistake of putting MLK Day of Service on our brochure I was quickly reminded that it's not our event. We don't sponsor this event.

However, in partnership with Community Baptist Church and the Community Equity Foundation, the city has come together with those groups and we have created a very, very successful volunteer event. We've had over 300 volunteers for the last two years, all in one park doing great work and it's really, really good to see. Next slide. Here you are, Carol. So Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, this is really the model that we're trying to replicate in all of our volunteer groups.

The rural cemetery has been going for thirty years, about thirty years, and was, I believe, spearheaded by mister Montgomery, Bill Montgomery, who was previous deputy director of the Parks Department in the city of Santa Rosa. This group is out of the volunteer almost seven days a week. They all get up. They have fancy little vests. They go out there and they maintain one of our beautiful park spaces. And since their inception and growth, other groups have now formed and used their formula as the standard. So really just wanted to recognize the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery and thank you, Carol, and all that you guys do.

I'll pass that on.

Here are volunteer stats that are not just park a month, though we've had three thousand eight hundred and fifty four one time volunteers. The ongoing volunteers are little groups that we talk about, over 7,000 of those in total over eleven thousand hours of volunteer time put into our park system, which is fantastic. Where do our volunteers do their work? It's really wherever they're needed, and that's what we've seen from these groups. They were needed at the cemetery. The cemetery forms. They're needed at the greenway, now the greenway is forming. Railroad Square is forming. Everything's forming. And it's really it's I I'm honored to be part of it, not just from a as a city representative, but as a volunteer and community member.

I'm really grateful for all the work the volunteers do. Alright. Mister Ashe. I joke with Robert because Robert has been one of our outstanding volunteers, and we're highlighting him, this year. He has received the merit award before. There's been a press democrat article of him. For those of you who don't know Robert Ashe, Robert Ashe spends the majority of his time, I'm joking, but kind of, the majority of his time down on the Prince Memorial Greenway cleaning the park space and the waterway, which is more than we can say for any of our volunteers. So I can't say enough about you, Robert. We appreciate what you do and you are 100% a role model to all of us. And when I grow up, I wanna be just like you.

Next slide. This is it. I'm ready to take questions. We appreciate everything that our volunteers do, including all of you board members who are volunteering your time to be here. I'm here to answer any questions if you have them.

Thank you, James. Robert, would you like to say anything about the Greenway and what all you do? Can we do can we do that?

I think I'll take a moment. Okay.

Hold no. No. Hold on. We'll get there. Thank you, James. Questions for James from the board? Anyone? Great. Comments for James from members of the board. Great work.

It was a very informative presentation. You know, someone works at a park, you know, down in Petaluma, I could say we couldn't do it without our volunteers as well. And there's never enough words to say to thank, the volunteers for their service. So thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Just like to echo that again. Thanks for your work. Thanks to all the volunteers. It really does make a huge impact for the city. I I do want a an asterisk next to my name. I did try to go to the park with the. I think we showed up at 04:00. We showed up at ourselves. We picked up trash on our own. No, thank you again for all your work and to all the volunteers.

So, James, of course, a couple of questions. And you kind of already addressed this. How many volunteer groups do you think there are, and can you name some of the, parks or their sizes that have them and and how this stay with Martin. How the city interacts with the volunteer groups?

I would say on record, we have about two dozen different groups. Off the record, just as many. There are people like Martin and his wife that, you know, don't maybe don't officially fill out and adopt a green space agreement. They just go out there and do the work, and we support them however we can. DeMeo Park has a very strong presence.

Tres and Sheila, really kind of run the way that that DeMeo Park goes as well as DeTurk, Park. We have, the rural cemetery, obviously, all the ones that are listed in in this presentation. And I wanna say it's probably a couple thousand people that are part of all of our adopted green space and all of our volunteer park programs and growing. And, you know, we see it especially with the Southeast Greenway coming on. We're we're very excited about taking a formula and plugging it into there that is specific to the needs of the Southeast Greenway. So yeah.

And a follow-up question. What do you think would be the easiest way for someone to begin exploring or experiencing volunteering for the park system?

Talking to a city staff member. Yeah. I think that, you know, that we we all play a different role, in this wild machine that is the city of Santa Rosa. But some of us are plugged in in areas that others are not. And, specifically, park maintenance recreation, We've got a pretty good grasp on the volunteer program. We partner with storm water and creeks as well because they do a creek cleanup twice a month. So, yeah, we're always expanding and evolving the program. We're getting organic syrup for our snow cones, you know, whatever whatever we're asked to do, we we we try to accommodate.

Thank you, James. With that, we will open it up to public comments on this agenda item. Robert?

Thank you for acknowledging the volunteer program. There's this part month program that is mentioned is absolutely incredible. There are a 100 ways you can volunteer on just going to those part of month programs, and they're a lot of fun. So I I would highly recommend going to one of those. I think you'd be blown away by the organization that goes into this, and and it's it's very depressing.

As far as all the volunteer work, I it's a blessing, if you ask me. Get to do a lot of great things, meet a lot of great people, and it it couldn't be more fulfilling. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Robert.

Thank you, Robert.

Any other public comments on this agenda item?

No. But what if I have two late questions?

Can we bring it back to the board?

Pam.

First would be, I'm curious just to know, like, how old the parks a month, volunteer program has been kinda going on?

How long the park a month program?

Yeah. Yeah. I think you covered it, but I I I don't think I wrote down the

It started in 2012. Right? Specifically in recreation. And I took over about five years ago. We all have services that we need to reduce, and it just became too much for recreation to handle on their own. And so when I got the position, it was presented to me, and I took a hold of it. And now our park maintenance staff, are the the main contributors contributors to Park a Month. That doesn't mean that recreation and parks planning, everybody else doesn't stay involved, but park maintenance staff is really running this show now.

Yeah. That's awesome. So for the volunteer programs that we're talking about today, they're really centered around, like like, the parks maintenance and

parks maintenance.

Is there any other volunteer programs that are more, like, programmatic, I guess, I would say, or is that, like, a separate category?

No. I think park a month is the the highlight. Once we kind of get our bearings, we're gonna start really promoting our adopted green space volunteer program, and that is available to any green space that exists in in Santa Rosa that the city of Santa Rosa is responsible for. So we have over 400 green locations that are outside of our parks, And our next step in that is to start putting out signs. You may have seen them friends of the cemetery, friends of the greenway. We we have purchased the signs utilizing Measure M. We'll be putting them out in our green spaces to try to encourage adoption of those green spaces.

Mhmm. Okay. Thank you. Jeff, would you like to add to that?

I'm gonna mess with the process of these meetings, and not let James get away with that answer that he gave about parking lot. Because a little history is, Jeff Tibbets was a brand new recreation supervisor in 2018 when the volunteer coordinator position became vacant and we were not allowed to fill it. And so they said, oh, we've got a new supervisor that will get it too. And that new supervisor did his best to just maintain the program and keep it running. But over time, as we kind of built back and we've been through different restructures and everything, the opportunity for James and his team to get really take the lead on it.

And a part of me hurts my pride a little bit because I'm the recreation guy, but also very proud of, you know, the park maintenance that we've bled a little recreation into them. They've turned it into such an amazing event that, like, I can't believe I handed something off to park maintenance and they made it a better event than what I was with the snow cones and everything. So his answer was accurate, but it definitely left out the amazing work that the park maintenance team has done to really make this not just something of, oh, we'll get volunteers together. And and it's it's it's a community event now, and it's awesome. If if you haven't made it out to one, make it out to one. It's really a great day and an awesome thing to see our community come together, and it's a testament to to James and and the entire park maintenance team. So I wasn't gonna let him get away with how he just kinda dismissed what they've

done with it. Thank you.

Do you also wanna highlight the other kind of volunteer opportunities that are available through recreation?

Yeah. I know you

talked about the junior giants, but it it where is that

That's what I was wondering.

To get out. Yeah. Yeah.

We really kind of recruit as things come up in recreation. It's difficult in recreation, a lot of stuff. Right? It's it's supervising kids, and Yeah. We can rely on volunteers a little bit less. Obviously, park maintenance still needs to be out there. You know, they're providing tools and support and those types of things. But in terms of supporting programs, right, obviously, there there's all sorts of requirements when we hire our temp staff with background checks and fingerprinting and different things. So it's really kind of individually as as opportunities come up or or volunteers come to us, you know, the the senior center, you know, the the library is kind of over there. We did the the tour, so you guys are familiar with that facility.

The library is kinda run by volunteers. There's things that kind of pop up, or when we do community events or something, we'll we'll put we do a lot of recruitment through we we have a lot of ways in recreation. We have 98,000, maybe over a 100,000, people in our database now from our registration software and stuff. So it's really more kinda isolated individual as things pop up than kind of a to your program. Also, obviously, work experience is 100 teenagers that are gonna be volunteering in all of our programs, and we'll provide about thirty thousand hours of of volunteer service for us this summer. So

The craft fair is another

Yeah.

So opportunity.

Yeah. Some of that.

Members of the

volunteers. But yeah. So that's kind of, like, one of the tasks of some of our pre event planning things will be recruit for volunteers for certain things. But it's a little less of, an ongoing program piece, and it's a a component of different program. Junior Giants is a big component of, but other programs, it's not a component, or it's just work experience. So very, very individualized with the different opportunities.

And let me be clear that these programs don't exist without parks and recreation.

One of my favorite parts is the kids who probably have never had a shovel in their hands before getting to dig a hole, and they plant a tree with their family, and no kid is ever let go without being told, you come back. This is your tree now. You come back to this park and you visit this tree, and you can say with pride, I planted that tree. And it is, just so fulfilling on so many levels. We also have, community groups, service organizations that will come out in mass and participate at different.

And sometimes I think they're getting their hands dirty for the first time too. If the board is ready, does this need to go back to public comment? Any further public comments on this agenda item? Seeing none. Hello, James. We're gonna move on to item 7.2, park maintenance updates and insights with James Castrov.

Okay. Well, I think it's been about a year since I've been back to present specifically on park maintenance. A lot has changed in that time, including having new board members. So I don't need to reintroduce myself. You just met me, so I'm gonna jump right into this.

Since last time I saw you guys, we the city has done a reorganization. When I got hired into this position five years ago, we were under the Department of Transportation and Public Works. I'm specifically talking about park maintenance. Then there was a reorg that happened a couple years later. We became part of Rec and Parks, and now we're back with Transportation and Public Works.

So this is just to give you guys kind of a quick highlight on what that looks like and some of the changes that that we've made, and we'll jump right in. So organizational chart, you guys have seen these before. Bottom line is we report to Dan Hennessy. He's the head of our department now, and I report directly to Jeremy Gundy, who's in the crowd. I'd like to acknowledge him that he is the wizard behind the curtain of Park Payments.

So I I really wanna point out Tim Finnegan and Renzo Perron again. These are our two parks crew supervisors who run the operation. They are tasked with maintaining all of those 1,100 acres of park land as well as the 73 acres of roadside landscaping that we're in charge of. I wish they were here to us to acknowledge, but I I just wanna point out that those are the boots on the ground seven days a week, day to day operations. They're the ones taking care of things. So alright. Okay. Here are some statistics, not good ones. National average for one full time employee, that's what FTE stands for, is 12 acres. City of Santa Rosa staff are overseeing 47.8 acres.

That's quite a bit different. If you look at the the chart below, you'll see that in 2008, we were at the national average. And as times have changed and services have been reduced, we've gotten to a place that is very, very difficult to maintain at the level that we would like to maintain it at. So I have a question. How many of you remember conversations about reducing park staff?

My guess is none. Right? So if there was a call to action that I had for this board, it would be to please plug into park maintenance, attend our park a month events, advocate for us because we need our staff, and we need your help to keep our staff. And whenever these conversations come up, council and and exec staff, we don't see the board participating in those conversations. So I am pleading to you to help us keep our numbers and increase them.

Because whenever we get new land, we just acquired almost 50 acres of new parkland in the Southeast Greenway. There is no talk of increasing maintenance staff. So please please be our advocates. Next slide. So after the reorg, we did a restructure within park maintenance.

The map on the left that you're seeing is a district map. So seven districts, seven council members, seven board members. The way that we did business before the reorganization was that we had one senior maintenance worker in each one of our districts overseeing the operation. What we found was that there was a community desire to increase the level of service in specific areas, and that's what you're gonna see in the red. Downtown, our sports fields, and our landscape crew.

And with the help of Deputy Director Jeremy Gundy, we were able to implement a new system. So now where you see the quadrants on the right, similar to how Park Development impact fees are collected, we now have one senior maintenance worker in each of those quadrants overseeing a team that maintains them. In addition to that, we now have a dedicated downtown crew, a dedicated sports field crew, and a dedicated landscape crew, which I'm gonna talk about on the next slide. So our downtown crew, it's pretty straightforward. They're helping with the revitalization of downtown.

It's Courthouse Square. It's Railroad Square. It's the Prince Memorial Greenway, kind of everything that encompasses the the core of downtown. There's another level of maintenance that's there because we have a four person crew that is specifically watching over those areas and available to address things as they come up from city hall or anywhere else. Our sports fields crew is full time on our sports fields.

That means it's a 160 a week that we have a four person crew dedicated to our sports fields crew. Right now, we're in kind of phase one of that, which is kind of goal line to goal line. They're making the playability of all of our sports fields better. It was okay. Now it's better.

And as soon as they get a grip on it, then we're gonna start moving outside. So beyond the goal lines, outside of the warning track, outside of the sports fields, newer bleachers, newer backboards, we really wanna take our sports fields up another level, and that crew is helping us to do that. And then the last one is our landscape crew. I'm sure we've all seen over the years, the weeds that go around the city. We now have a dedicated crew to help us maintain those 73 acres of roadside landscaping that the city is responsible for.

Next slide. So Measure M, he's always got questions about Measure M. Just a nice friendly reminder, this is not a Measure M presentation. I'm just going to give you a little brief. We've been doing with Measure M. We've already talked about the volunteers, which is the two pictures you see on the bottom. And one of our Boy Scout troops that's done some volunteer work and building split rail fences and different parks for us. And you've got kids on the right planting trees, their own school event. Purchase some new equipment. You'll see that on the top right is a mini sweeper, which is exactly how it sounds.

It's a mini street sweeper that goes up and down the greenway once a week or more if needed. So you might see it counting around downtown with the Measure M logo on it. And then, our bread and butter, I always like to display is our Measure M trailer. We bring this to all of our park a month events. We even loan this trailer out to other volunteer events that are happening with storm water and creeks.

This trailer has got 50 shovels, 50 rakes, gloves, snow cone machine, everything in there. So we're just ready to hook up to a trailer and go wherever we're called. This is a picture of our Arbor Day proclamation that we had a council last month. I was hoping to have a picture of all of our staff. They are a small but mighty 23 staff members, but here's just a snippet of them.

Can't say enough about them. They are on call twenty four hours a day. Anytime a tree falls in Santa Rosa, they respond whether it's ours or not. And, yeah, I'm I'm I feel very fortunate to be part of this team. Here's some contact information that you guys may or may not have.

And that's all I got. Next is for questions. So if I can answer any questions, please let me know.

Thank you, James. Questions or comments for James on this topic from the board?

Yes. I have one. The could you specify a bit what the landscape crew does specifically? Yeah. So as I said,

we have 73 acres of roadside landscaping. Much of that is in the medians between the roads, but some of it's along the sides too. And there's actually no straight formula to tell you which is which. It's a hodgepodge around the city. We maintain the medians in Fountain Grove. We don't maintain the frontages in Fountain Grove. So it's kind of all over the place. But their job is to keep the weeds below a foot and to make sure that all the vision triangles and every intersection are safe so that the visibility is what it is, and that's it.

And then how do you distinguish between what goes on the sides of the roads and what is in the median? Specifically, you mentioned that you did the medians, but you don't do the?

Frontages. We call them frontages. That's on the sidewalk side. Correct.

Tree lawns in other

words. Right. Right. So city codes as adjacent property owners are in charge of the landscaping on the frontages next to the adjacent property. The city does have some of those, but for the most part, we're talking about Fountain Grove. The HOAs own the sides and the frontages where the city owns the medians. Okay. It's a lot of red tape. Yeah. It's it's all over the place.

Thank you. Uh-huh.

Good question, Jack. Anyone else?

So James, can we go to the organizational structure?

Sure can.

There's a lot of names here, and these are all real people to me because so many of them show up at Park a month. I have done one on one work with Dan Hennessy. I've heard reports that Jeremy Gundy tackled Ivy as Memorial Greenway. Did you win? Yeah.

Top. Tim and Lorenzo, they are real people who are at every park a month with a smile on their face, helping out. The maintenance workers, I don't know how many I know by name. I asked if Sierra had had her baby and yes she has because these are great people who are there on Saturdays interacting with people becoming, hi, Dan. Becoming, part of their maintaining their relationship with the community and with the parks, and it's just a tremendous opportunity to get to know them as real people, which is what everyone in this organization is.

I'd be remiss if I didn't, in the parks maintenance staffing, which you know, I harp on people about all the time, but we do have contract workers which do some of the ongoing landscape work, specifically mowing. Do you know approximately how many full time employee equivalents we have in contract workers for park maintenance?

For all of our contracts or specifically to the landscaping?

I don't know.

So our landscape contractor that maintains our turf, they've got eight full time employees to manage all of the city's turf. We've got over 30 contracts. So I unfortunately, I don't have all of that information. But specifically to the landscapers, we have three different contracts. Two of those contracts are with the same contractor. And the third contract maintains all of our tax districts with a group of four. So 12 total contractors in addition to our 23 maintenance staff are in charge of the maintenance landscaping across the city.

But we're still well under the national average and especially with our parkland increasing on a regular basis. That is true. Thank you. I don't know what all kinds of sports fields we have. Can you, go down the list?

Well, we have soccer fields, we have baseball fields, we have softball fields, we have pickleball courts, we have tennis courts, we have bocce ball, we have petonk, we have horseshoes, We have spin the bottle in some of our parks. And I think that's about

it. Basketball. Basketball.

Thank you. That that I didn't know all that. So that's all the questions I have. Any additional questions from the board? Yes.

Oh my gosh. I totally Yes. For the park staff, I know we're comparing to national average, which is obviously the national average. But is that even, like do you know if that's even, like, recommended? Like, is it even more staff, Craig, or that's, like, a recommendation of, like, this is, like, what's recommended to maintain spaces or parks? Or do you

There's a model.

I know that. Yeah. Probably.

There's a model that we look at, and we call it Disneyland versus basic service. Really, Disneyland, if you've been there, you'll see people out before the park opens, picking all the little weeds, taking care of it because they have the funding available to do that. We're at basic service in Santa Rosa and national average is one thing, but all park systems across the nation are hurting. Yeah. It's the easiest section to reduce when it comes to general fund.

So when my bosses over there tell me to reduce services, I come to you guys and plead for you to plug in. Right? So, yeah, everybody's hurting in the parks world, but the pandemic really changed the face of parks because it's continues to be a free place for anybody to go and recreate, which is what we want.

Thank you, Pam. Anyone else? With that, we will open it up for public comments. Do we have any public comments on item 7.2? Seeing none. Oh, Tia.

I was gonna talk, but I just wanna say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that's being done. And I'm not gonna feel guilty about adding 49 acres. That said, we our goal for the campaign was to get the property, and we did that.

And we realized that if we walked away, we were leaving a big problem on the hands of the city. And so we're in there for the long haul. We're gonna try to do the best we can with as many volunteers as we can, and our hands are always gonna be out looking for money that we can utilize in any way we can. But it strikes me that because I think I've been I think I've been going to council meetings and other meetings with the city for at least fifteen years. And every time budget comes around, there are two departments that get lots of funding, and parks always gets cut all the time.

And so each one of you has been appointed by the city council person. You have their ear. You have their attention. So I'm just gonna make a louder pitch than you did because I'm just an innocent citizen. Right?

I don't know anything.

Tell them how important this is. I just got back from the trails and greenways conference that was state parks all over the you know, from all all of the city and counties. And everybody has the same situation. Our budgets get cut, and since COVID, attendance has gone way up. So where is the balance? There has to be some park equity in this, and we need to keep our parks clean and maintain. So please talk to your city council people and say,

we need help. All of us do. Thank you.

Thank you, Thea. I don't know if Thea properly introduced herself. She is one of the spearheads from the Southeast Greenway. Do we have any other public comments? Seeing none, we will move on to our next agenda item 7.3 city council policy asset naming and renaming. And just to be clear, policy is already in place, but we are being informed so that we have adequate information for when this comes before this board. And Luke will be giving his presentation. Welcome. I don't know if you've presented to this board before, but we're happy to have you here.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me here. It is my first time here, so I appreciate that. My name is Luke Fazer. I'm the administrative analyst for the city manager's office, and I'm here to talk to you about a policy that was in place starting last November for how to name or rename any city owned asset.

Could I ask you to speak a little louder?

Absolutely. Thank you.

Would

you

be comfortable in your own cooker?

Yeah. I'll take it. Okay.

So I'm not trying to hide behind my computer, but if I don't have my notes, I will ramble, and I don't have James' charisma. So this will help me keep on task. So today's presentation focuses on the role of the board board members in the city asset naming and renaming application process. This is not necessarily supposed to be a training on the internal tools or the administrative workflows that we do, but rather to provide you all with an overview of how the naming applications will become available to this body and what decisions you will be made to ask what decisions you will have to make and how your recommendations will be moving forward to council. So during this presentation you will have the opportunity to see how the full application process works from start to finish.

But I will highlight some sections as they apply to this body itself. So council policy zero zero seven five, was adopted by city council at the end of last year to to provide, guidelines on how city owned assets may be renamed by city count city of, Santa Rosa residents and business owners. These guidelines were established to help promote equity and consistency with how proposed names are considered. This includes an application packet and a petition that must meet certain criteria based on what type of asset it is and how it's going to be renamed. And to make sure that that proposed name supports the city values that we have.

And it it's supported by the community at large. So a completed application packet must include the application that describes the city asset that they wish to rename. The naming criteria to be considered. So if it's for an outstanding individual, if it's for renaming it for a park that they found endangered species and they wanna rename it after that endangered species for what's called a themed asset or or or similar things like that. The the application packet must also include a petition that has 1,000 signatures from City Of Santa Rosa residents business owners within a half mile of that asset just to make sure that the people that will be most impacted by that name change have their voices considered.

Not required, but also recommended is a letter sharing oh, sorry. Justification letter is also required sharing a compelling reason why this board should approve that meeting. Applicants are also encouraged, but not required to include supporting materials like letters from community leaders, acknowledgments or awards, photos or press democrat articles, anything that helps build their case when they present it to you.

I have to say that this replaces the park naming policy and procedure that was adopted, like, 1989. So that's been rescinded. And so this policy covers what that policy did and a lot more.

Thank you. I also wanna acknowledge Emily's help for all of her insight and her expertise in helping develop some of these protocols and procedures. She's very helpful. Yeah. Helps me keep in mind.

So before an application reaches this board, it's reviewed by the city manager's office, the the city manager staff, and the city manager themselves for completeness completeness and eligibility. So this board won't be reviewing the eligibility guidelines. Those should be already well reviewed. So the names for petitions and making sure that someone a half a mile, that won't be under this board's responsibility. You're just this board's responsibility would just to be making sure that the established guidelines for making sure that the community is heard, that it is part of the mission values of the city.

But here is just kind of a workflow snapshot of where where it starts. Once the application is assigned, then it goes on to meeting number two. There can be up to three board and commission meetings with you guys, depending on the complexity of the name, how many, alternate names might be suggested, which I can go over later. And also the public outreach that has to be done to make sure that the community again gets their voice in the naming of that asset. Afterwards, after after you have all made your recommendations, then it goes to city council study session.

And then after that to a city council public hearing. The sorry. So this slide just really goes over the the city staff roles that are involved here. I wanna highlight that the staff liaison, most of the work falls on them to do a lot of the work to make sure it gets ahead of you guys and it all makes sense for you. Alright.

So these next few slides are gonna represent the typical path submitted application we'll go through. I'm not expecting you guys to fully, you know, absorb this this path because it is very comprehensive. But I did wanna present it to you guys so you can kinda see how the sausage is made. And just for transparency, so you know where it starts and where it finishes. So for an example, we'll just say that the city manager's office has received an application to rename, Juilliard Park after an outstanding individual named, Bilbo Baggins.

And, so the city the city manager staff would review the application, make sure it has the required documentation in there, the, the petition, and they would review the eligibility guidelines laid out in the policy. Then it would go to the city manager to decide what board it would just would would go to. So if it's for Juilliard Park, it would come to you guys. And then the the staff liaison would would schedule all those meetings. So moving forward, we would go to meeting number one, and that's where the staff the staff liaison repair staff report and present that to you to you all here and follow the procedures of a report item.

And we'll go over those in a second. Meeting number one, the board's role here is just to understand what the city asset is, to make sure that you understand what is being renamed, if it's a small little section of a trail that's being renamed or if it's an entire building, and to understand the applicant's justification for that that renaming. You're also there to hear the applicant's rationale for that proposed name through the presentation. And this meeting is not a decision about the final name or its recommendations of counsel to really just to be a discussion that determines whether the application, the name should advance to public outreach to just move forward or not. So in our example of Bilbo Baggins, let's say Bilbo Baggins wants to rename Juilliard Park.

They would come at item number the yellow one there, and they present it to you. You're able to ask questions about why they wanna do that. And they would emphasize how Bilbo faced adversity and selflessly defeated evil. And then there would be a call for public comment. There would be a motion to either move to the outreach step, or if the council decides this isn't part of a recommendation that you wanna wanna make, you could say we can't recommend Bill of Baggins moving moving on in this case.

And in which case, it would go to the city manager, back to the city manager, and then they would, present that to council that your recommendation. Moving on to public outreach. The public outreach is designed to reach people beyond the standard meeting notices and intentionally engage a broader and diverse cross section of the community, and it may result in alternative names either suggested by staff or through additional applications. And this involves community engagement staff distributing a survey to a neighborhood or the business that may be impacted by the name of that, Juilliard Park. They may also set up a community event community events to gather more feedback.

And then, the staff advises those community members how that they have sixty days after the close of that survey to submit their own application to be considered by this board. Again, I don't that will be all be handled by the staff liaison. That's not necessarily this board. And then at meeting number two, this follows the same it would be the same format as meeting number one, but they you'd be presented with all the public outreach results that were happening. So if there was a public outreach event and they said, Bilbo Baggins was a dirty hobbit and I don't want his ugly feet touching the name of Juilliard Park and whatever it happens to be.

And you guys can all weigh in on those decisions and then make your recommendation to either gather more information about if there's other alternative names you want to explore or if you feel that the applicant then it present their materials in the best light and you want to get more information about how to justify that naming of the application or the naming of the park. And just to be clear, this you'd be an advisory in this case. You wouldn't be making the main decision. It was just to advise city council on your recommendations, making sure that it represents the city in its best light. After then, it would go to the city council study session where they discuss, the pros and cons, and your recommendations before a formal, public hearing.

And then moving on to the City Council public hearing there, where the staff liaison again would present the staff report including all the research outreach considerations and recommendations that this board has made. And city council has the ultimate final decision in this case, and they may accept, modify, or reject the recommendations by this board, just so you're aware of that. So in our example, I believe that Bill O'Baggins would be found to be a fictional character and has no impact on the outside of Middle Middle Earth. And so city council rejects the application proposals, and it will be re remain as Juilliard. To close, I I think it's important to remember that the city asset naming and renaming process is designed to be thoughtful, transparent and community driven.

This board's role is not to champion or oppose individual proposals, but to apply the policy of council consistently and evaluate whether applications meet those adopted criteria. And ensure that the community input has been meaningfully can meaningfully considered. Your recommendations help maintain integrity and how assets are named, ensuring that names reflect the shared values and that the endure over time. The city asset naming and renaming page here at the, city's website provides valuable resources for the public and the members of this board to help you navigate this new process. It includes a link to the city policy and the application packet as well as a comprehensive guide of everything to expect.

So I appreciate your your time with me going over this dense, flow of of how the application will proceed. I hope you have a clear clear understanding of how the these applications are developed, what applicants are asked to provide, and how the board's role fits into this whole thing. I'm happy to answer any questions, that you may have about this framework and how it will how this will apply to future naming requests.

Thank you, Luke, for having an accessible and oftentimes humorous presentation. I personally was concerned that it was going to be dry, and you definitely added some flavor to it. The questions for Luke from the board? I do.

We'll start with Katie.

Do you have any applications? Have you received any renaming applications?

That's a very good question. Officially, we have not received any applications right now. There have been interested parties, but they have not formally submitted an application yet. I imagine this board will see the majority of applications, but that's yet to be seen.

When was the last thing that was renamed? We I'll come back here on the date, but because it did took a while to happen. But Creekside Open Space in the Southeast Quadrant is now called Mary Traverso Open Space.

This was during COVID?

We did do some of the outreach during COVID. I'd say 2021. So I did I'm

looking that up for you right now, actually.

But that was the last time at and that request came in 2018 to the board and the city. Very shortly after we received that one, we received another one for Oak Lake Green Neighborhood Park, and we've been working with that gentleman for many years. But we didn't have, like, a a clear process. And so we were working on that to update the ARC Navy policy and procedure, and then it was the city manager wanted to up look at it from a, you know, a citywide perspective. And so they took on that, but there have been other parks that have been requested to be renamed in that time.

And we've said, and we're not gonna do any more renaming of us until we have a point that's adopted. And so now we actually have a structure to receive these app like, an application and a structure to evaluate them and a process to make these decisions. So it's a huge win for for city staff because it was so so vague. We had to kinda create our own process. Batch the

last training

It must have been a huge undertaking to develop that process. Yeah. To read between the lines from what the board meant when they put together the policy in the eighties. Because, again, it was three pages. You get the the new new one, which is, like, 12. Mhmm.

Yeah. The new policy is pretty robust and it's attempt to be transparent for how it will work, but also to make sure that everything's treated fairly and equity and equitable because that's really our main goal is to make sure that one person doesn't get say on how it how it's named for the entire community.

Thank you, Katie. Pam? Yeah. I have a

few questions. Emily kind of alluded to answering some, but I know now that there's a process, it's a little different. But I'm gonna ask the most annoying question, which is the one that I think I'll get asked on community is how long will this process take? And just so that I know it's gonna be hard to answer because it depends on probably, you know, a specific application and the and whether or not, you know, it was complete or they need to go back to the drawing board and all those things. But, typically, I guess, the past, it's it's taken minimum of a year. Yeah.

Years. Yeah.

It did. I mean, that won't begin to I don't

think that

will happen now.

Yeah. I'm guessing now with the process, there's

I think with this established process that we have real guidelines to really go off of and to fall back on, it's helpful for you all as people making recommendations. But it's also helpful for the applicants knowing what they need to provide to you and that the application packet provides really detailed ways of how to construct a compelling argument for you. So you don't have to ask for a lot of like, oh, have you considered this? Have you reached out to these people? Have or what is the community leaders say?

What about the businesses they're at? Those are a lot of questions that kind of came apart came along when Emily and other staff members had been doing it previously. That's what's drawn out those process so long. So this is an attempt to streamline everything. I hate using the word streamline, but, hopefully, it will be faster than yours.

But since it is new, I I can't give you a time frame. There are, you know, gatekeeping. There's some portions in the the process that do have a specific time frame, like, after after an application is submitted, they have sixty days to submit the petition. If it's not if that petition is not submitted, then their application is rejected and they have to reapply. And there's other placeholders like that too. So, I hope that answers your question to the best of both.

Yeah. For sure.

Jack? You know, at first glance, this does seem complex, but not knowing a thing about the previous system for renaming. I think, look, renaming could be a very sensitive issue, and I think that this process seems like it would account for the necessary input, proof, discussion, public input, etcetera. So I I think this is pretty good.

Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. I I think that renaming any asset would would be a hard undertaking, and there's sensitivities involved in that that have to be considered. And I think that this policy that was developed, helps, make those converse difficult discussions go a little bit easier.

It can't be done with just a wave of a

Bilbo Baggins wand.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I had additional questions. I had more than one.

So it's okay. It's okay.

So I was curious in application intake, that's when we would see there would be a decision on which border commission it would go to for specific renaming. To give an example, if it was renamed Mineral Park, it come to us. I have kind of a two part. If it was something where it was, like, a historical name or place of historical significance, is that something that would probably go to, like, a historical preservation committee or something else?

That determination would be made by the city manager during the intake process. It would be who maintains priority over that asset, generally, but it would be the city manager's decision on which board to assign it to. Yeah.

Okay. So not But that would be like a

list of, like, these are the examples of things that they would different boards or commissions that would go to. Like, obviously, ours makes a little more sense because it's parks. Wonder if there's any other things that would come to Park Sport that is not so obviously a park. And that's what I I was I guess, what I was curious.

If they wanted to rename this new this this room for the instance, that would come to you guys as well. Any acts or statues or anything like that would come to you as well if it's within a park. Yeah.

Yep. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good to know.

But in the policy, it it tells you which board or commissioner committee, what they oversee. Like, which

Yeah.

Which naming requests

Okay.

Board. Oh, okay. Okay. So it is just in the in the details. So yeah. So okay. If I wanna nerd out

and read the whole thing or something. Yeah.

Yes. Okay.

And then in the section for meeting two preparation and execution, this is where we see that what the border commission's recommendation is, it gets moved to council. And I'm wondering if in the past so it goes through it goes from board slash commission to staff to council. And I'm wondering if there's was ever instances where the board or commission's recommendation is presented personally or directly to council, or is that not usually the process or how things are set? Because if we had, like, a recommendation as the board to the council, we've presented to them personally? Or

It would be done through the staff liaison. So your it would be through Emily. Emily would take all of your recommendations and present them on your behalf.

But can I just know, you can always attend the council meeting Yeah? Yeah. And make people come in and participate. You know? So there's avenues for participation, and that is something that you might interested

in. Mhmm.

Thank you. Anyone else?

So, Luke, I have do have a couple of questions. Would this also apply to, in our case, new parks or new, recreational facilities when they're built?

Yes. So they it would also apply to that as well.

It could be as large as a new park, and it could be as small as a trail or a set of pickleball courts.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And everything goes through the same process.

Correct. It doesn't matter the the scope or the scale of the the facility or or whatever is being renamed. It still goes through the same process. The application might just have more to sift through. But, yeah, it'll all go through the same same same way.

And Mary Traverso, this came before the board when I sat on it, and we discussed whether or not signage would be put up. In this case, it didn't. Also, whether or not park literature would be updated and who bears the the burden of those financial costs. That's something that would be reviewed also on a case by case basis.

Yeah. So if so, let's say Bilbo Baggins wants to come here and say, want a plaque or a statue, and I want this to be be on display. They would have to present this board with the proposed language of that plaque and perhaps a mock up of what they wanna have done. But the cost would be on them Unless city council decides to waive that cost, they have the option when they approve the the the naming. But, yeah, that it would be on them to present that to you.

And my last question, there's, one park that is in, rather drawn out redevelopment. And if that park was to be renamed, I don't know if there are a thousand residents within a half mile radius. Is that something that's looked at That would be cons by case basis?

That would be be considered in that application process by the city manager's office to make sure that the petition threshold could be met. In that case, if it's a a not rural, but a place that doesn't have can't make that 1,000 threshold that would be something that may be considered yet.

It's good to know there are nuances as things come forward.

Yeah. And since this policy is so new, we wanna have strict guidelines to fall back on. But, you know, at the end of the world at the end of the day, this isn't

It's hopefully not. It's

alright. It's hopefully

not. At

the end of the day, you know, there's flexibility.

Thank you.

Could I ask one

more question?

Of course. Where does, like, memorial benches or that kind of thing fit in? Does that fit in under if someone wants to, you know, pay the cost to have a memorial bench for someone, is that part of this, or is there a different place for that?

I believe that would fall under a a separate process because they would be providing the bench themselves in that case. I could be wrong. But

It's it's in the policy. It's the right. And that we don't eliminating and have eliminated the memorial Oh, yeah. And plaques. There isn't that. I see. Okay. I do encourage you to read the exact language.

Thank you. Anything else for Luke? Then I'd like to open this item up for public comment. Seeing no one step forward. Thank you, Luke. That was both informative and entertaining.

Thank you.

And you are invited to come back and, perhaps give us an update, sometime in the future. Or we would be would we be seeing you when a parks or recreation specific item came? Would you be the one presenting to us, or would that be staff?

I would not be presenting it to you, but I would most likely attend just to see how it goes.

Very good. Very good. Thank you, Luke.

Thank you.

And with that, we'll move on to item eight, written and electronic communication. Do we have any to share, Emily?

Yes. Four email communications were received and included in today's agenda packet. All communications have been researched and responded to by recreation staff.

That is very good to know.

How do we see what the responses were? I mean, I saw the incoming pieces that were attached, but how do we see the responses? I'm happy to talk with you about you about them. Oh. Or you can answer specific questions. But if you have a lot of questions, I'll be happy to name a few. So not talk about it here, or if I ask you now?

You can ask me. Yeah.

Mean, how did you respond to the girls' soccer field? Or Jeff so Jeff wrote a so that went to city council, the request from the softball field and Softball. The softball league. And Jeff wrote a response back. There are no sports leagues, clubs in the city that have dedicated fields and park properties.

The ones that were mentioned in the letter, they have agreements with the schools that they they play at dedicated fields in schools. And we don't we don't dedicate fields for particular groups because it has to be And that's what's in but he did share a letter and share that with me.

As a follow-up to that, can we be fairly confident that you have read the correspondence that comes to this board probably before our board meeting Oh. In which it's presented?

Yeah. The the intention is to respond week of receiving. Like, depending on how much research is needs to be done and that the emails go to parks planning, parks maintenance, and recreation so that we're all on the same page because requests come to individuals. And they'll if one person says no, they might go to another individual. So we all need to be on the same page and that we're responding with the same message to the community.

So I guess so the the public at large can see these things that came in because they see the agenda and the attachments, But then they have no way of knowing how it's resolved.

There are mechanisms. I mean, we can talk about too whether, you know, if there's some sort of inclusion on here, but there are mechanisms like the Public Records act request. So if someone was interested in finding, you know, whatever these are, these aren't public records that are appropriately requestable by the public.

I mean, is there a reason why the responses are not just made as available as the inquiry?

I don't know about if there's a history about it, but we can also talk about the legality of whether it could or could not be released. I don't see it. You know, I I have not read these for personally, but I don't see a reason why they would not be able to be released in part you know,

part of this. And, yeah, if there's a standard that the council follows that the board sort of and commissions and committees should also follow. I don't I don't know. Yeah. With that, it's sort of the interest. Yeah. I mean, I would think well, I would think that if the comments have come in and been responded to prior to the meeting and they're they're not gonna be discussed, they're just there, that why not put the response within to let people know how it's been resolved?

Can I respond to that? I hear what you're saying about the responses. I'll put my personal opinion forward. I don't think that they need to be in the agenda. It would be nice.

And if it that happens, I'm not against it, but I don't know if that additional work every meeting and every agenda for every because the intended party who who made the inquiry got responded to, which is the most important piece. Right? You're talking about, like, public visibility that there was a follow through to the response. And I think there as Hannah mentioned, there's other mechanisms to request that if you're so inclined, but I don't know if it needs to personally be in every Well, I

think I

Yeah. I I see where you're

coming from, but I disagree. It brought up issues for me that I hadn't been aware of, and so I'd

like to know how those issues were resolved. Another way potentially is to treat the correspondence like public comments, and we do not respond or interact with public comments. But you are, of course, welcome to bring it up as a future agenda item if only to say, I would like to know how this was resolved. And that would be a a way to do it, necessarily at the same meeting, but at the subsequent meeting. It was would is that possible?

And what could I clarify? So I I feel like there's two issues here. One, if you have a specific concern about one specific piece of correspond or two, when, you know, harmony. You have an issue with a specific correspondence. Two, there's the concept that you overarching what a policy is of how we interact with correspondence generally.

Right? So two different pieces. I think it sounds like we maybe need to touch base either come back, but overall policy, I I'm not familiar with what the overall council does on process. So I think we maybe can touch base on that and come back and say, here's the process, and this is why it is. On the individual pieces, until we come back and get that, if there are concerns about these individual pieces of correspondence, I think now is an appropriate time to raise them. We're obviously happy to talk about them too individually if needed. Is that sufficient?

Yeah. Okay. And

and just so long as I make sure I understand this. So since the responses, Emily, come from the board, from you, but on behalf of the board response. Is that that is not correct. Okay. In light

The comments just come to the board, and and we're required to share them with the board. We should share them with the board. That's the intention. But staff then has to take on the responsibility to research and respond to them.

But I can't help but thinking that the that the board members should be aware of what the response was because it could come up in in just in in general. I'm specifically and I won't ask to bring it up here, but the one about the bicycles. And, and I, you know, got to thinking about that. There are places that that have such things, and I was just curious to know what the what the, response was from the staff. So but I Yeah.

Yeah. We'll feel free to,

to contact you if I may.

Yeah. Okay. Absolutely.

And then we can chat, bring back some information about the overall policy, what it is there it does include or if there's ways to change it. So

I'm happy to help. Yeah.

I mean, I'm wondering if there's also, like, a impact to just staff time or preparation for and collecting all the responses and putting them in the packet. And that's why I I was I understood where everyone was coming from and ultimately disagreed because I wasn't sure if it was just another piece of staff time going to prepare them when maybe we're not at every meeting looking at every single response, and it's only when a few things come up. And if that if that's the case, then maybe we can correspond directly with staff to inquire follow inquire about that follow-up. That's that was my only reasoning of maybe suggesting we don't have the

considerations too.

I wanna hold the policy before. I mean, I think it's a public record no matter what. So that, you

know discussion here doesn't turn into a brown act separation.

I wanna look into it first before I comment on that. Sorry. I don't have any answer for you guys.

At this point, if there's no other comments from the board, I need to open this up for public comments. Oh. Any public comments on this? Then we're going to move on to future agenda items, and our previous discussion sounds like a potential future agenda item. Thank you, Hannah. Any requests for future agenda items from members of the board? Paul?

Yes. This is based on public comments and the rights have come in. A little bit, if possible, some background on community gardens, what that looks like, how those are implemented, that falls under as far as is that maintenance? Who's taking over? Like, just a little bit of background on that, I think, would be helpful.

Anyone else on the board? So I would like staff to get maps for us that show where all the parks are in our individual districts so that we can pay more attention and maybe communicate with our respective city council person. Not that I don't encourage everyone to go across town and visit parts and other neighborhoods because that's important also. Also, is everyone pretty fluent in measure m and what all it means to the city and the county?

I thought we were going to have a

I again would request a measure m update in a a timely fashion. And third, presentation on the difference between a neighborhood park and a community park, the size, the assets, what goes into one and not necessarily the other, but the options for the smaller park because each of our districts has both neighborhood and community parks, and it it's a good thing to be fluent on.

The other item I wanna raise during this, if y'all are done throwing out your ideas, is related to a parks tour. I would like for that to become part of an an annual an annual thing that the board does. And I would suggest since we've gone and I may have said this at the last meeting, but since we've gone down to six meetings a year that we look at adding it as a special meeting and either doing it in May or doing it in September on, you know, on a off month, but keeping it as the fourth Wednesday of the month. And was wondering if I could get a show of hands. You may not actually know the answer to this right now, but if you would prefer May or September this year.

And then I would kinda like to get that on the calendar and keep it at that in that same month every year so that it is on your calendars and you can plan around it.

Would you like to flush that out

a little bit? Talk about Rosie, and is it a morning, an afternoon, how long it lasts?

It be this time.

It would have to be at this time slot?

Or A social meeting doesn't have to have the same timing limitations, but, I mean, I would recommend just if this is a time that most are available, probably would be easiest to be at the same time.

We have done it earlier starting at three in the past because of traffic concerns getting across town. But the idea would be to do only parks on, like, the West Side or only parks on the East Side so we could visit, you know, three or four in the in the couple hours that we'd have together. We would be using Rosie, the trolley, and I do have to apply for that in thirty days in advance to make sure we have a driver,

which we may be running on time limit if you wanted to do

it in May. Right. But we do have we're we're real close to that, but that's what we just need to make a decision really by Monday, I think, if we wanna go with May. But I'm open I'm open to either. Can I ask each of you if you have a preference? If I just start with Carolina and go down the line.

Probably September. I would like to know if if this is, too expensive for all the budget. I'm a little concerned about I know it's expensive to use, Rosie. And do we have that money that we could spend that on? You're looking

I think that it's important to I think it's important for the board to get out and see our parks and that it is a good investment. I can tell I don't know exactly how much it costs, but

I can get back to you. I like that. It's not. It's a volunteer driver.

No. It's not that I said. Or, no, it's you're right. For his minimal pay, it's really low

for Zoe. I just don't wanna spend money that we don't have. That's I appreciate that. And we're talking about budget now, and I just I have concerns about the budget.

$150 for three hours.

Oh, thank you. Caroline, I

share and appreciate your concern. Oh, yeah. But there are several board members. You and I are the only two board member.

Paul, did

you go on the one?

I was there. Yep. It

it is a lot of fun, and we do have certain board members.

No. No. I understand. I'm more concerned about our money right now than I am about what's fun or not.

Pam?

May or September work? Maybe September so staff doesn't feel so crunched.

Either. I prefer September because we'd be further along the line in certain projects that we might be visiting.

No. Okay.

I'll go with September. And if possible, as far as meeting time is concerned, perhaps a little earlier does make sense. Maybe even 02:00, avoiding traffic, things of that nature. So yep. I'm I'm flexible, September is better.

Is your schedule flexible, Pam? Do

I was told in advance.

Yeah. Far enough in advance.

The hot season.

Thank you very much.

Have we finished the future agenda items? Because this is pretty remarkable. It is Hi. 06:00, and I would like to adjourn this meeting of the park and rec board. Our next scheduled meeting is June 24 at 04:00, and I look forward to seeing you all there. And with that, I adjourn this meeting.

Can you press that microphone button?