Parks and Recreation Commission - Regular Meeting

going to begin our meeting at uh 5 28 monday the 21st um in the room there's myself commissioner green and mckay going to do approval of minutes from july 20th corrections to or additions to the minutes are there any corrections or additions to the minutes no moved by consent they have been approved um public business from the floor nope there's none all right moving on to new business uh we have the celebration or celebrating the passion and contributions of commissioner meg weaver

yeah i just um wanted to have a little time for everybody to reflect on all of the work meg did for this commission um both when it was a commission and back when it was a task force and

Okay, so I didn't serve a lot of time with Meg, but the time that I did serve with her, I really enjoyed. I mean, she's a class act, very kind, caring person. I mean, she cared about her community and this commission, and she's just an all-around good person. I've known her for many years, and I'm very happy to know her a little better about the year that I spent with her.

We will move on to the review of adopted public art policy and next steps.

This was postponed from the July meeting. The goal of this discussion was to just kind of go back over the policy that you all had put together with the working group that had been approved and then to brainstorm on where it goes from here so how that gets implemented if there's things that are missing how that works with parks and recs different separate policy so

i know that i didn't really have anything to add was there any comments or notes i didn't have any notes i can't remember what kathy um said last meeting there was something but i don't know um how far that got i know when we as a collective group when it was put together and in the end i mean I was happy with the end result myself, so I don't have anything to add.

I was happy with it too, but you're right.

There was something that Kathy had brought up, but I cannot remember.

Did she have a note? Do you have a note of anything what that was?

Specifically, I think it was to loop Meg and Magdalena in because they weren't as involved in the process. And then also, I think the other thing to look at is that the, that Parks and Rec monument naming policy that is included in your packet too was adopted a few years ago. And there's some parts of that that don't necessarily jive super well with the public art policy and it touches on public art, but and not really. So how do you make those two policies work together? Um, and then also, um, you know, where does it go from here? Cause the policy high level outlines who is responsible for kind of which part of, um, of any potential public arts project, but how do you, how do you get to that next step of whether it's a mural program or, uh, you know, um,

a public art project so how do you implement that i guess this kind of stuff so should we try to bring it back to the next meeting when everyone's present then we'll have cassandra on board too by then so i know that i read through it i know i read through it but i can't remember so then we have sports it's gonna be fairly casual i just wanted to give everyone um a quick update on the city has finally

started the implementation of the ClearGov software that they've been talking about implementing for the last couple years. I just wanted to pull this up for you all and show you kind of what it looks like on the inside. So the software they're using is called ClearGov. And so basically it has an internal facing part where you guys are familiar with like Nate's giant spreadsheet of capital improvement projects that he had when he was capital facilities director. And their goal is to basically that spreadsheet becomes integrated into the software. Every project ends up in the software. So I've put four in here that have been, or three in here that have been mentioned by this group before. And they're all fairly high level. So Snow Pole was one of the projects I put in here. Doug Flint's Boardwalk. And these are, of course, really preliminary. And then Egan Street decorative lighting, you need to work with building maintenance to make sure this is a little bit more fleshed out. But basically, the thought is that all of the projects start living in this software. And as more information gets gathered about projects, if we know what funding sources are, or we get other items about design, it gets put into here, and the status gets updated in this software. And there's a public facing, I'm just trying to see here, but yeah, so they have public facing project pages.

So this isn't the best example, but basically there's the, it can show, so like,

Basically, there's a public-facing site where the public can go to it, click on the project, and it can say, you know, this project is this percent done. Here's some of the concepts of it. Here's where we're at in the budget for it. So it's pretty cool. I'm not that familiar with it yet, but everyone's learning it now, and all projects are going in through this now. And they've been talking about it for I think it's been about two years that it's taken to get to this point. So I think we're finally at the point for the 2027 capital budget that everything is getting put in there. So if there's projects that you want in there, even if they're not ones that this group has fully decided on, it's better to have it in there than not in there. You know, it's better for it to exist on the list than not exist. So that was the big thing I had to share. Any questions about it?

Well, it would be kind of cool to, if it's connected to like, is it part of Cassell or that's different?

It is not part of Cassell. No, and I don't know how it integrates. I have to ask Casey, our fiscal analyst, if it integrates with Cassell.

because you have expense tracking here.

So you don't want to . I don't know if they have a integration built out with Cassell or not.

That's a good question.

We'll see how it goes, but that's what it's gonna look like for projects moving forward. So it's kind of nice, I think, for this group too, because then if there is a project you're wanting to get public support for, and we have information in this software, you can say, hey, go look at it on the project page. Otherwise, I just wanted to give a quick update on 2026 beautification grantees. So Magpies will be asking for AN EXTENSION. THEY HAVE NOT GOTTEN THEIR FINANCING IN ORDER THIS YEAR. THEY'RE FINALLY GETTING THEIR FINANCING IN ORDER FOR THEIR PROJECT AND THEY'RE PLANNING ON MOVING FORWARD WITH BREAKING GROUND NEXT SPRING. SO I KNOW THAT ONE IS GOING TO BE COMING TO ME AND I CAN APPROVE THAT ADMINISTRATIVELY FOR ONE YEAR. IF IT GOES BEYOND ONE YEAR, IT WILL HAVE TO COME BACK TO YOU GUYS. RADIO SHACK IS GOING TO BE GETTING DONE. Abe Herschel, who's going to be doing their siting, has reached out to make sure he's good on timelines. That one's moving forward, so that's good. Burry, I do not know if that one will be completed or not.

Do you know anything about QuadShot?

QuadShot, they got an extension last year, but I have heard nothing from Sonia either. get the extension they got an extension last year she reached out to request an extension so they were supposed to be doing it this season but they have not done anything in the beginning of the summer I saw that they started to use small things but then it kind of yeah so that's a good question I'll have to follow up with them and see And 2027 budget. Three projects are in here as far as the capitalizing the reserve fund. Everyone in city administration is good with going with the status quo of capitalizing it up to the $150,000 amount from what had been spent in previous years. If there's any other funding needs that you all are able to think of between now and the end of October. they can probably be incorporated into the budget. But that's kind of the timeline. And these projects will be in there in the capital budget bucket. But I think the only one that we're looking to actively fund is going to be the light replacement on Eagan Drive. And then it sounds like everything, all the other ideas need a little bit more work.

so is that it for reports that's all i have any any other questions or can you explain to me again with the um with the beautification i mean with the art policy and the naming of the monuments and what was the um discrepancy that can you explain that to me again yeah so that all the the um

parks and rec policy is fairly broad on the naming of monuments and they have a specific discrepancy is that they they talk about public art pieces being approved in a certain way and And we talk about public art pieces being approved in a different way. So I'd have to look at them side by side again to get it better. But basically it's, they say it goes and they're not super different. We basically say the beautification commission, you know, weighs in, brings it to city council for funding approval. It gets executed by city administration. They have that. And they basically have that being the parks and rec commission. ways in, but there's parks specific, right? So I think what's really outstanding is if it's a park specific question, of course you want them involved. If it's a Ports and Harbors specific question, of course you want them involved. So like who, but of course, if it's anything art related or aesthetic related, you guys want to be involved. So I think that's really the question is who approves specific projects. projects and how you make sure that there's something kind of cohesive between the different commissions okay because ultimately like any commission can say this is a great idea but the council does have to fund it so yeah okay because we did you know we went over and we formed the art policy and it went through approval and all that and you already have the parks and recs so what would be the next step so we could look at both of them and then figure out

But the conclusion would be, how would you figure out the answer? What would the steps be for that? Does that make sense? I mean, you know, there's discrepancy, but how do we come to a conclusion where they're both, where they both work with each other?

And I think that's the conversation. That's the whole conversation right there.

I know, but that's what I'm asking. Committee, I mean, who decides that? I guess is what I'm saying, because they're both already in place. So, I mean, who has to change or where do you find a medium?

I would, this is just my bias.

Yeah. Who's going to change?

Yeah. Well, my bias would be that the monuments and naming policy changes. And that's because it was true. It was, that was something driven by a director who's no longer with the department and the is older and hasn't been revisited in a while. So that would be my personal bias would be that that changes and gets tweaked a little bit to incorporate what this group has come up with. Because I also think that the public art policy working group was a little bit more of a thoughtful process than the development of the other policy, which was more just the department director saying, oh, let's do this thing. And let's put it in a policy. So

um that would be my bias would be to see if we could make the other policy change but that's just me so i was just curious yeah i was just curious because i get nervous when i have to ask questions but i you know i was trying to understand a little bit better so we know there's an issue so how you know how does it get resolved i guess okay thanks

okay so now we're moving on to commission business from the floor anybody have anything um okay i don't have anything either so i guess we are good for this meeting and it's uh 5 46 And we're done.