Library Board - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening. I will call the Monday, December 15, Park Recreation and Forestry board meeting to order. We will begin with roll call.

Alderman Camacho? Yep.

Oh, wait.

Here. Sorry. Eric Hummer? Here. Steve Johnson? Here. Sarah Roth? Here. John Schmitz absent. Alderman Wells absent. Jennifer Walner absent. And Erica Yas.

Here.

We will now open the floor for public comment. If you wish to speak, please come forward. Hearing no public comment, we will close public comment and move on to item number three, approval of the minutes.

I move. To approve.

I'll second.

Motion has been made by Steve Johnson and a second by Alderman Camacho. Any further discussion? Hearing none, we will take a vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. And then moving on to discussion and recommendation items. We have our first item number 25 dash o twenty six nine zero, review and possible action on recommendation to the common council for the twenty twenty six Jamboree fireworks event.

All right. We have our one exciting item on the agenda tonight, fireworks. Yes. And Jamboree is right around the corner. Hopefully, everyone's seen the promotional brochures out of this world. So the fireworks are gonna be out of this world. But Joanna is here to talk about the program, and, take it away.

Thank you, Ron. So yes, fireworks with Spielbauer, typically we have fireworks on Friday nights. So this would be for a contract to approve the fireworks. We are in the process of an RFP right now for our, the next few years for fireworks, but this is outside of that. So that's why you have the contract for Spielbauer, to provide the fireworks. The cost of the show is $6,000. That's a little bit of an increase, from previous years due to the tariffs. And, it'll be about a fifteen minute show on Friday night as we open Jamboree.

Any questions from the Board?

It is because it's so cold that's about what everyone can handle. All

right, we have a motion by Aircomer and a second by Alderman Wells. Then any further discussion? We can take it to a vote. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously.

Thank you.

And then moving on to item number six, the board president report. I don't have anything to report at this time. So then we can move on to the director and staff report.

All right. Thanks, Sarah. Lots of things going on and on the end of the year, we're trying to close the books out. That's really exciting. And though we do have projects, we made great progress on a lot of our CIP and capital projects that we'll be hearing a little bit in the other reports coming up.

So our focus has been on that, evaluations at the end of the year staff wise. So kind of the typical things toward the last tail end of the last quarter of the year. For next year, you'll be hearing a lot about our Park and Recreation System Master Plan. That's the new name for our Park and Open Space Plan. That's the terminology used through accreditation, but that's all the parks in the city in addition to items that are related to parks.

One of the areas of interest, for example, would be indoor facilities and opportunities that may exist, etcetera. But we have 1,200 acres of parks, 50, depending how you wanna count it, fifty, fifty one parks in the system. And the last time we've had a real revamp of the plan was back in 2007. So we've had a lot of mileage and we made a lot of progress out of that old plan, but it is definitely time to refresh that. So that is one of not only in our strategic plan, but it's also in the city's strategic plan.

And so that's gonna be one of our top, top goals for 2026. I gotta get used to saying that. So 2026, again, a lot of other projects we're wrapping up with. Sure Melissa Melissa, you're able to talk tonight. Right? Yes, I did. There you go. She lost her voice for, like, a week. It's been wonderful. No. I'm just kidding for the record. I couldn't resist, though. So anyhow, we'll get going with it with Mark Schramm and Minh and activity guide.

Alright. Thank you, Ron. So to kick it off for the admin report, I wanted to highlight the activity guide. I put a copy out there for all of you. So now you can see the infamous, turn or flip book where you have the activity guide on the front.

And on the other side, have the Waukesha Current section. So a one stop shop for all city information. And also wanted to highlight that in 2026, we are celebrating a hundred years of our park system. So in 1926 was when our park board first got established.

That is correct.

We'll have much more to come throughout the year on how we're we're celebrating and and the inside of the cover that highlights some events and where we'll have some neat swag and and things for for celebrating with the public. Also wanted to mention that registration for winter spring twenty twenty six began last week. Very smooth process with our office staff outside of activity guide and registrations, updating of Jamboree website, and some marketing. And from a CIP end, since we last met, we have now completed, keyless entry and cameras at David's Park, Predomin, and then we also wrapped up at EB Shirts and then Buckner Park. So there was a few odds and ends for EB and Buckner that we needed to get taken care of.

So those four projects for keyless entry and camera have been completed. And that is what I have for an admin report.

All right. Thanks, Mark. Now we'll move to Mark Thompson.

All right. Thank you very much, Ron. So at our last meeting, you guys got to meet our new Recreation Supervisor, Logan Kine. So we have been continuing to bring him up to speed. In addition to that, Logan was actually at Wisconsin Park and Recreation's Leadership Academy last week with several other members of our department, just learning about best industry practices and how we can apply those moving forward.

Jamboree is coming up right around the corner. So I know Joanna in particular, in addition to the rest of the recreation staff are all just making sure that we have all of our ducks in a row and all of our signage requests, volunteer requests, supply requests, all that is done and we're pretty much just moving into implementation mode now. So pray for snow, maybe? Think we've had snow one of my nine years that I've been here. We'll remain optimistic for that.

Last week Monday, we hosted our annual holiday party at the Shih Tzu Recreation Center for our older active adults. We did have over 200 people who were signed up. Out of those 200 people, we did have 180 in attendance. So this is our free holiday gathering that we offer to anyone who doesn't have a place to celebrate. So you come and you hang out with us. We had a singing pianist that was there. Lou Melnati sponsored the event. So we had free pizza and a show. So can't argue with that. Concert was very well received.

We had great testimonials coming out of it and we look forward to next year's event. In addition to that, this last month we had two interns, potential interns that reached out to our department expressing interest in interning for the department this summer. So we set up some phone conversations with them, gathered their interest and we're going to put together what their internship programs are going to look like this summer so we can get them a nice robust skill set as they enter the workforce. And while we're talking about summer, we are definitely gearing up. So we are meeting with our summer instructors, we're putting in all of our holds for pickleball courts, outdoor playing surfaces.

So we are definitely in full summer mode right now, even though it's December. And I know that one of the things Logan is working on right now is going to be our preseason training schedule for all the first aid needs, lifeguard class needs, lifeguard instructor class needs, water safety instructor class needs, so just ramping up that training schedule. And then in all of our not so free time, the recreation team is strategizing how we can best serve the community and fill the gaps for when the YMCA does move out of town. So we know that there are a couple of programs that are unique that the YMCA offers that we don't duplicate the service. One of the big ones would be a recreation based indoor basketball program.

So we are just taking a look at what they're offering, the gap that it's going to have when they move out of town and then how we can potentially fill those needs. So indoor space is definitely a premium right now of how we can continue to offer these services when they do move town or move out of town. So that's what we have going on in the Recreation division. Thank you, Ron.

Yes, you bet. Thanks, Mark. And last but not least, Melissa. And again, as I alluded to when we started here that we have quite a few projects that we're wrapping up and quite a few projects that were got started. The Minuola Pavilion and one we had a kickoff meeting on that, so we're excited.

We'll keep you posted. And when that progresses a little further, once we have more tangible things to view. And I know Prairie Park is another facility that we're doing a lot of focus on in projects with the ball fields, tennis slash now, hopefully, pickleball included in that mix. But, Melissa?

Thank you, Ron. So he's correct. This is much better voice than I had before, which was nothing. So if you've been around town, the snow did hamper some of our CIP projects. We're making some pretty good progress on, ones that are completely wrapped up, the Shutesy roof along with the new fascia gutters.

That was was done very well. There was quite a bit of rotten wood that was replaced underneath. So we should have a good roof now for the next, let's say, fifty years, but we'll see what we get out of that. The Horeb Springs Aquatic Center retaining wall is progressing. If you've been over there, looks a little bit like a like a disaster zone.

It's a very large project, some of you may recall. And each of those, I'll call them Lego blocks, weighs about 2,200 pounds. So it it takes some time and finesse to get those in there and not hit the slides that were just refurbished. So that's moving along well. The same contractor that has that one also is working on the Frame park formal gardens.

Again, making good progress before we had some snow. They were evil even I think it was the last week or week before over shoveling snow to get some additional items done, getting in the metal edging, the stone base for the pathways, things like that, finishing up some of the subsurface drainage, storm sewers, those items. So those ones kinda wrapping up rotary windows and doors and floors. If you haven't been to the Rotary Building, so it's got all new doors, windows and floors. So the doors are keyless and on the Bocci Court side, We do now have an ADA compliant automatic opener button.

EV shirts or excuse me, rotary building that have one before because the door, old doors could not be retrofit. So we're now compliant in that fashion as well as having keyless. The blinds are no longer on the outside of the window. They're now in between the glass. So gives it a much cleaner look.

We're now replacing blinds every year. It is also to a safety concern with having children programming in the building so that checks a lot of boxes for us and it's got new vinyl plank flooring So it gives it a hardwood floor look without having the maintenance of a hardwood floor. It's a little softer too. I know some of the fitness classes prefer that to the ceramic tile and grout that we had in there before. So it's been well received.

Those ones are wrapping up. As Ron mentioned, with ISG, the city's architectural firm, that they have contract with the engineering department, contracts with several consulting design engineering firms for structural engineering, architectural items like that. So we had a kickoff meeting. So we're working through kind of the conceptual design process right now. The bike ped wayfinding signage project that one is moving forward.

We're looking to possibly have a public information meeting sometime in January But January is coming up very, very close soon so we're gonna have some some internal discussion and see if that timeline is something we're looking at. One thing we're also looking to do in the winter is have our public input meeting for next year's playground. Greenway Terrace is the park that's getting redone. So we'll look at getting that one designed a little earlier in the year so we're not cutting it quite so close to fall. This fall's project though did turn out very nicely over at Minaca.

If you have not been, you cannot miss the colors coming around the corner. So we've gotten some some nice rave reviews from some of our our staffs and our our friends' children that enjoy the colors on that very much. So those I think are the main CIP projects. Been working alongside Mark Schramm to retrofit some of the doors in shelters. So in some of them you'll see inside Banting restrooms and Fox River North you'll now see what we refer to as crash bars push bars on the doors that is a cheap much much much cheaper solution they're replacing the entire door frames and strikes They are kind of a maintenance headache

a

little bit and we are going to kind of test them out to see how they hold up to vandalism things like that and some of the some of the shelters before we use them universally. On the operations side, we now unfortunately have two arborist openings. So if anyone knows of any arborists, we are hiring again. Grounds maintenance we may actually have an accepted offer soon didn't even get to tell her on that one so we have an offer letter out to a candidate that we are very excited about Also, I have an offer letter out for a building maintenance specialist. So, we have had good conversations.

So looking to bring some good people on board hopefully. Snow plowing as seasons very much here. This year, a lot of the main parks buildings are being contracted out. So the Shutsi Rec Center, the Rotary Building, Eby Shirts, and Aviation, all of those buildings are contracted out with Jake's Landscaping. It is for kind of the duration and right after the storm.

So post storm cleanup. So for example, like when crosswalks things get buried back in, that still falls on our staff. But our staff currently is all plowing streets for public works department. So we've just got some changes in some priorities. So we've been seeing some things that have been been perhaps getting missed with some of the the news procedures.

So if anyone does get any of those, if you could please let me know and we'll let Travis know and we'll get we'll get those addressed. So we're just reworking some of the routes and things of that nature. And then last but not least, buildings crew. Tony, our building supervisor has been making sure that all of our heat is working as during these sub zero temps. So couple gas valves, couple dampers, just odds and ends all over the place. So that's been keeping him busy. So that's projects and operations for me. Any questions? Okay. Good. Because I need a cough drop.

Alright. Melissa, thanks for the detailed report there. Very good. One item that, escaped and give you a heads up on that you'll be hearing about, I would anticipate January, February is you may already know and it was fairly out there as far as the newsworthy is the community garden site that was adjacent to the Huber Building off of Northview. That's no longer.

So that was a long thirty plus years of being in existence. That property, the county is looking at selling. And part of that mix means the community garden plot program that they have would be it's looking for a home. So we've been approached by the UW Extension on that as the brainstorm, try to find some solutions, potentially be a partner with that. So just to give you a heads up, that will be an item one way or another that we'll be talking about.

And again, has our understanding is most of the people that utilize that program live in the city. So it's heavily resident generated and so there's a niche there. But we've open minds, really a matter of finding a good alternative space. And they're looking for about like five acres of land with that. But much more to come, just to give you a heads up that side on that very well might be seen in the first quarter of the year.

I know it's not a discussion item, but Woodfield Park has a nice parking lot and a fairly large open area right off the parking lot.

Yes. Again, have lots of land and how they use and what makes the most sense with the extension. That's kind of the key, what they're looking for. But access, having the ability to get to the plots. I don't know if anyone's been to the former site or not, but fairly simple.

It's like a gravel loop and allows you to get there's a 100 plus plots. But they're looking to expand that as well. It's on currently it was a little over two and a half acres and we've got a waiting list of people that would be interested in doing that. So we see it as a potentially a nice partnership, between the city and the county extension, and, we'll see where that goes. Alright. I believe that concludes our report.

If there is no further discussion, we are adjourned for our holiday party. Thank you everyone.