 of the Board of Community Services to order at 4.05 p.m., not bad. Pursue it to the government code section 54953E and the recommendation of the Health Office of the County of Sonoma, this Board of Community Service meeting and its members will be participating today via Zoom. Board members and staff are participating from remote locations and practicing appropriate social distancing, if not remote. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. And with that, Madam Host, may we have a roll call? Thank you. Please respond when I call your name. Chair Kwam. Here. Vice Chair Griffin. Board Member Spillman. Here. Board Member Pitts. Here. Board Member Cruz. Here. Board Member Spence. Here. Board Member Boculliani. Here. Thank you. Let the record reflect that all Board Members are present with the exception of Vice Chair Griffin. Thank you for that. With that, I'd like to open the floor for public comment on non-agenda items. This is the time when any person may address the Board on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter of the jurisdiction of the Board of Community Services. Do we have any public items at this time for non-agenda items? There are no hands raised at this time. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to item number four, which is the approval of minutes. I hope you've had a chance to look at the December 8th, 2021 regular minutes, which were provided. Does anyone have any edits or corrections to those minutes? Okay, seeing none, we will approve them as submitted. With that, we'll move on to item number five, which is upcoming events and reports on accomplished events. And we go to Jen Santos. Hi, Jen. Thank you, Chair Kwant. Hello, everyone. Jen Santos, Deputy Director. And you all have your attachment for upcoming accomplished events. I'll just highlight a few things here that upcoming events we're really excited to be moving forward with our sports fields permits. Of course, we've got eight clubs representing 1,000 athletes for baseball and softball coming up on February 1st, which is next week. And then following that in March, we'll of course have sign-ups for soccer. And then as far as accomplished events, it's always hard to select which one, but I think we're really happy with our attendance at the winter break camps we had. We had a neighborhood services camps, had 85 campers. And then we had Camp Watton at Finley and had 125 campers in attendance. So we're really excited about that. And I have a small update for you on Colvin Creek. We note that it would be complete by the end of January. That's because we expected not to have so much rain. We're super excited to have the rain, but it did push the construction back, which we're fine with, we need the rain. So we're looking at mid-February to be opening Colvin Creek playground back to the community. And we'll have a virtual event with the mayor and vice mayor for that. So stay tuned. That is the end of my report. Oh, Chair, you are new. I'm sorry. Thanks, Jen, we'll swing back around if people have any comments or queries on that, but we'll move on to the director updates now as well. Okay, thank you so much. So for director updates, I have a few. I wanted to announce that council will be filling former council member Jack Tibbet's position and interviewing on a temporary basis to fill the rest of his term. And then we'll have a regular election to reelect somebody this fall. But meanwhile, they'll be at council on February 8th to interview live the folks that have put forward interest in filling the position. And so if you're interested in that, that'll be available on the eighth. There also is information on the city's website. If you're interested in submitting questions that should be asked of the future council folks, our council person. I also like to announce that Rosencreek Community Park master plan went to the city council last night. Staffer was requesting to rescind all the approvals we have done, including the approvals, you know, the board approved that Rosencreek Community Park master plan much long ago. The reason that we asked for that and council did approve that was that Rosalind Action and Duane DeWitt submitted a lawsuit against the city challenging the city's approval of the mitigated negative declaration. Claiming it was not the highest level of review for that park. And so it put the city in a, what I call an unenviable position having to decide to either litigate and defend what we've approved, which city attorney's office is confident that it would. However, it would take another three years to get through that process and well over $150,000 to litigate that and report. Therefore we made the decision to rescind approvals and staff will, we are gonna move forward to prepare an environmental impact report which is a higher level of review typically not used for parks of such a natural way. We usually use it for big residential developments and things like that. They're gonna have significant impacts on the surroundings. But nevertheless, we're gonna move forward with an EIR. We estimate that we can get that done in about seven months and we will not be stopping by the Board of Community Services because we do not intend to make significant changes to the master plan. We're rolling back to council in the fall with the existing master plan without significant change with an updated EIR. And after that, then we can start the construction process. It will still take us about a year to get to construction but it's essentially two years is less than four years if we went the litigation route. So it's bittersweet. The council did approve staff's recommendation to go ahead and rescind approvals as painful as that was. So we'll be moving forward with that. And of course, if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me. But we will be moving forward with that with our current environmental consultant and they'll be doing those reviews. On a happy note, all the work we've done for Dutch floor community of neighborhood park was approved last night at council. So they approved the master plan amendment as the board recommended and we'll be moving forward preparing construction documents for that park. And we're looking to go to construction in 2023. So it's gonna take us a while to get there but it's a medium-sized project. So we're gonna need some time to get there. And the other thing I wanted to remind you is that we're still in a pandemic. And so the cities, the county health order has come out with some guidance and restrictions and the city has allowed staff to continue to work remotely if needed up until February 11th and has discouraged community gatherings over a certain size moment, et cetera. So we're back in that restrictive mode with some caveats where, you know when we need to meet, we want to meet with all precautions and face masks, et cetera. We'll keep you updated as that changes but right now the target is February 11th to keep those restrictions in place. The other thing is, you know it's really affected our ability to provide the recreational programming that we usually do. So we have closed the senior programs, Steel Lane and the contract instructor classes are all closed for now but I know staff is eager to move forward with those for spring but right now they are closed because we can't operate them with the current restrictions. We are our aquatic program and the Finley front desk are still open though. So we still have programs running. I believe, please correct me Jeff if I'm wrong with anything here. And then again, the focus is to really look to our spring classes. We want to hit those running and be ready. Hopefully we'll, we've hit the peak for the Omicron and we can come back in and offer these programs again to the community. So we've had to pivot. I know we like to use that word a lot in the pandemic but we had to do the best we can to pivot and the staff are getting geared up for springtime programming and summer as well. So that, that is the end of my update. Thank you, Jen. Any queries or comments either on the accomplishments or the director updates from board members and you can raise your virtual hand or your tab hand. Carolina, Carolina, you're muted. Yeah, I just unmuted. Thanks Carol. I just wanted to thank staff because you have been remarkable during all this between you having classes on and off and come and can't come and you've done a wonderful job. And I just want to thank you all and give you a big round of applause. Thank you. I appreciate that. And really all the credit goes to the REC team, Jeff and his staff. They're, they do amazing work. They're always very flexible. So. Really, it was great. Logan. Thanks Carol. Jen, thanks for the report. I had a question on Rosalind Creek. Are you able to do any property maintenance at all or remind me as it's still owned by Ag and OpenSpace? Just wondering before that moves forward if anything can be done to the property? Right, the city actually owns everything. We are still in negotiations with the Ag and OpenSpace to finalize our recreation covenants and conservation easements. We had two easements and conservation easements previously but when we purchased the very last middle parcel, I think it was in 2018 or 19, both the Ag and OpenSpace and the city thought it would be beneficial to have one covenant over the entire park rather than a multitude of those. So the Ag and OpenSpace is on hold. We've been working with them. They're aware of the litigation and we're working with them to put a pin in the progress we've made and come back in the fall and Rhea. But meanwhile, we are maintaining the site in the most minimal way for fire protection and safety within reason. There are some somewhat unsafe conditions. So we're going to look at what options we have for fencing those. We have a septic tank out there that keeps getting open repeatedly and just different, it's uneven ground, et cetera. So we're looking at potentially fencing some of those spaces off until we can move forward because it's not super unsafe but it's questionable. And we are advertising to community members that it is open to visit as it is undeveloped but it is not developed yet and not really prepared in a safe manner. So we are maintaining it just at a very minimal level right now. That sounds good. Okay, thanks for that update. Sure. I'll wait to see if there are any other hands from board members, but Jen, I have a question on the upcoming events. You list both the Franklin Park Community Park cleanup and also the Arbor Day event which are both right now outside of the County COVID date. Is this just wing and a prayer? Could you or Jeff elaborate on that a little bit? Sure, we'll see if Jeff has anything else to add but we are moving forward with those pending any additional health orders that come out but we were ready. We want to move forward with these items and I don't know, Jeff if you have anything else to add to that. Yeah, it's our hope to bring those programs back to touch on some of the reopening. February 3rd is the start of registration for spring summer with those programs starting February 14th so we're really focused on getting that back and open. Some of the closures that we took now in terms of the letter of the law of the current health code are more on the precaution side and that was intending to line up with the spirit of it that hey, if we all do our part to stay home a little bit here over the next month we can get past this wave and we can get back to a spot where it doesn't over crowd our hospitals and stuff. So we took some measures beyond what was the baseline requirement of the health order and we are using this time with those being shut down to get ready to ramp back up for spring and basically as we have had to this hallway working on three plans. Plan one is the health order does go away on the 11th we're ready to go forward. The health plan gets extended, we're working on what is that rollout of programs that would include all of these things including the events that you asked about and then plan C, the unknown they change something in the health order and we have probably less than 24 hours to then figure out what those changes mean for what we do. So that's what staff are all working on right now but we do have a plan other than changes in the health plan we do have a plan to be able to open and have those events coming back after the 11th. So would it be safe to assume you guys will have things in the ready come the 11th to do say a marketing blitz on Facebook or the city website for, I think Franklin Park is within a week of the 11th. Franklin Park is the 12th. So part of that plan will probably not to be a do a huge I mean, part of that, how do we successfully gradually reopen would be not to do a huge blitz in terms of marketing because if it's a smaller amount of people that's not necessarily a bad thing. And unfortunately, total sense. Any other question for the staff we have on right now about accomplished events or upcoming events? Seeing none, we're gonna move forward to our scheduled events and the first one makes me really happy because for the first time since district elections took place, we are a fully staffed board of people selected by their district elected representative, which is very, very cool. It's horrible that we're still meeting virtually but we can all keep our virtual fingers crossed on that one. And rather than wait for when we can be in person at Finlay Center again, I wanted to take this opportunity for us all to introduce ourselves to each other and that includes staff who's comfortable in partaking so that we're more than just these postcards on each other's computer as best we can. I hope you're all comfortable with this and maybe staff would take some notes and be able to send kind of a little trading card to each of us so that we have a little bit better handle on each other than we currently do. I would really enjoy that. And with that, we're going to begin. Hopefully I haven't caught anybody unaware. We're gonna start with Carolina Spence who is the longest serving member on the board. And then we're gonna go, I had fun thinking about this from oldest in Carolina, that's you because you are the longest standing member and we will go to the youngest. And Guido, you would be the youngest. So you will be the last one called upon. I hope that's all right. And with that Carolina, I turned it over to you. Oh, I thought you were gonna give me somebody young I could influence. I'm Carolina Spence. I am the senior member of the group. My representative, my council representative is John Sawyer of whom we keep in close touch so he knows what's going on with our committee. And I keep asking him if there's something of a concern to him that we could help him with. We're going to keep it very brief. So I'm certainly going to do that in the theme of keeping it brief. I am the last executive director of senior zinc which was a public private partnership with the city of Santa Rosa. So our group raised $7.5 million to build the Pearson senior wing. I say that because I want all of you to go to that building. It is a fabulous building. It is beautifully built and it has so many rooms for you to either use and or tell your friends to use. So once that pitch is over, I'm also chair right now of the Merritt Awards, which is another exciting thing that the city does that I'm going to really pester you about when it gets a little closer. Now that I'll really know you all I'll be able to reach in and do that. Other than that, I've done a lot of activities in the downtown, the ice rink, the museum for the Gala Baron exhibit, the sesquintennial. So I'm very fond of Santa Rosa. I think the city is only as good as its parks. And that's really important to me. So with that, I'm going to pass the hat to who's next Carol? Boy, that would be me. Oh, Carol, I'm going to introduce Carol. Carol Quant. I was first appointed to this board by former council member Chris Corsi and I served for four years as his appointee and then was reappointed by Victoria Fleming when she became the representative of district four. District four is north through Fountain Grove out to Brush Creek, down to the JC side of Four Street and out to 101. I bring up the JC side of Four Street because Fremont Park is technically in district four. It's within, it is the boundary and two other districts are within walking distance, spitting distance of Fremont Park. It's very interesting when you start looking at where the boundaries are, but we are all in this together. I've lived in the JC neighborhood for almost 40 years and along with this board, I serve on the waterways advisory committee as the representative of this board. I inherited the waterways position from my friend and mentor, Stan Gow who I still keep in touch with and consider a dear friend. I also serve on the Sonoma County Fair Board as a district director for Chris Corsi who is now my county supervisor. I wrote this down and I'm gonna say it with a straight face. I am overly involved with the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery Volunteer Group and essentially live at the Rural Cemetery. That is actually an understatement. It's right up the street from my house and if you ever see me on the street and I apologize to you for having dirty hands from digging in this cemetery, I'm telling you the truth. Anytime you wanna come visit the Rural Cemetery which is the most serene and fascinating place in the city of Santa Rosa, let me know and I will take you on a personal tour and either entertain you or bore you. But I think it will be the former rather than the latter and you are always welcome to come and volunteer with us either getting your hands dirty or learning how to lead tours or acting in the upcoming events that we're hoping to be able to do. Before I retired, I worked in publishing and I had very little if no time for this volunteering gig. Say that because I so admire the people on this board and all the other boards who find the time in their already busy day Madonna. I follow you on Facebook. I know how many things you're doing. You and your husband are so cute together. You've got your kids and yet you're here as well as everything else. So I really appreciate the diversity we have in this group and look forward to great things to come. With that, I am introducing Terry Griffin who's not here. I bet she is out on some birding event, which is her passion but she was kind enough to write something up and I'm gonna read it now. So Terry wants everyone to know that she was appointed by council member Schwedhelm in January of 2019. She represents district six. She previously served on the measure O Citizens Oversight Committee. She was a staff member for the city of Santa Rosa for over 19 years and retired from the city in February of 2016 after four years as the city clerk. And Terry is a great point of reference whenever I get befuddled about the workings of the city of Santa Rosa. Terry's lived in the city of Santa Rosa since 1990. She and her family have been active users of the parks, pools and recreation programs for more than 30 years. She says, and this is a quote, I know from personal experience that well-maintained parks and diverse recreation programs play a vital role in the physical and mental wellbeing of community members of all ages. She goes on to say that she's committed to ensuring that our parks and recreation programs are accessible and equitable and continue to be a priority for funding development and enhancement. Well said, Terry Griffin. And with that, here's where it gets tricky but I think the next appointee is Logan Pitts. What say you, Logan Pitts? That sounds right, we'll go with that. Thanks Carol. Yeah, so I was appointed by Mayor Rogers and I first met Chris working on political campaigns a while back now, more than a decade ago now. And I've been working for the state legislature for 13 years, so that's a big part of my life, volunteering on campaigns and bringing that knowledge of where policy and politics meet to this board. And I've also done a lot for the city already. I served on Measure O, I was on the downtown specific plan Community Advisory Commission. The mayor appointed me to the charter review committee. So doing a lot because I love Santa Rosa and I think it's the greatest city I've ever been to. And I say that because I didn't, I was born here and raised here but I moved away for a while and I got to see how amazing it was when I came back. And one of the things that motivates me a lot is how I grew up, which was my parents split up when I was young and my mom had to move around a lot. And so we didn't usually have a backyard. Sometimes our backyard was just a slab of concrete. And that's why it's so important to me that we have amazing parks in the city for everyone to use. I'm still a renter to this day. I have a little bit nicer backyard but it's still important to me that everyone has that resource. The park I visit every day is Creekside. I walk my dog by it, one of our smallest ones. But I think I'll end with where my favorite park is and that is actually Courthouse Square, which a lot of folks don't think of as a park. But I really love the new redesign. I think it's beautiful. Can't wait to see more of the great public arts that's gonna go into it. And if you haven't been there right at sunset, that's really when I recommend hanging out in Courthouse Square with the white columns. It's just a beautiful scene. So I'm glad to be here. And thanks Carol for the opportunity to introduce myself. And I think I'm going to Madonna next. Thank you, Logan. So yes, my name is Madonna. And I'm in district five. I was appointed by then city council member Eddie Alvarez. Now vice mayor. I'm pretty new to this board, but I've been enjoying it tremendously. I'll just share the Sonoma County boards that I currently am on KBBF radio, Sonoma County Indian Health Project, aunties and uncles program and their opioid coalition, Yakima Indian Education Center, City of Center as the Indian education. And I'm trying to get on the Sonoma County Mental Health Board, total statewide in other counties. I think I'm on about 16 currently. I work full-time as a project director, Native American Liaison and outreach coordinator for disability services and legal center downtown. And one of my coworkers is really involved with the cemetery too and is always trying to recruit staff to act in the place. Her name is Anne. You may know her. And so I've been wanting to do that, but the COVID stuff has stopped us from doing that. And when I am free, me and my husband like to go to our gym, ride our bikes, hiking. We love supporting our local restaurants. I feel like I personally have kept them open during COVID and the little coffee shop aromas. And yeah, like my two kids. So thank you. Thank you for this time to share. I think next we go to Stephen. Thank you so much. I have a passion for giving back and for the past well over a decade. I've been serving in a variety of civic roles, chairing, planning and transportation commission, chairing investment commission, been on the other community services commissions and including this one, this board. I also chaired his city's pension fund, board of directors pension fund and water conservation committee. Before that, before the past 10 years, I lived in mostly in Chicago, New York and Boston, but I grew up in a small town in the Midwest. During those years, before coming to California 35 years ago, I was a developer, real estate developer for large projects that were in the inner city, excuse projects. And prior to that, I practice architecture. I still have my license, but haven't really practiced it a long time. But Jack Tibbets thought that I might be able to add some value to this board and I really appreciate him giving me the opportunity to do so. As an architect, as a matter of fact, I have designed several parks and really enjoy giving back to the community however I can. Who knows, this might be my last board meeting. We all know that Jack's resigned and whoever the city council appoints to replace him has the opportunity to appoint other people to all the boards and commissions around the city. So, but I hope, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to continue now that I've got some ground under me and because I've been the new kid on the block with a learning curve that's straight up and I appreciate the patience of all of my fellow board members because sometimes it takes a lot of patience to work with me. Thank you. Thank you. And Steve, thank you for giving me the opportunity to go next to the new kid on the block, Guido. Take it away, new kid. A new kid, learning how to do Zoom. Well, hello everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Guido Ray Baccalione because everybody in Petaluma knows me as Ray and I was born in Petaluma. I served in the U.S. Army and when I got out of the Army I got into the transportation business, worked for Airport Express for 15 years and then I started my own company and so on. While I served in Petaluma, I was on the board of the Chamber of Commerce for a while and then I ended up being on the Park and Recreation Commission for 10 years, which I just loved. We built and planned out a lot of good parks in the Petaluma area while housing was being built. And after the Petaluma and having four boys, I told my wife I want a little girl but she kept giving me boys. So that was fine too. Now I have a bunch of granddaughters and we moved to Santa Rosa approximately 15 years ago and I've been working with and watching parks and recreation movement here in Santa Rosa and I'm glad that I was finally appointed by Vice Mayor Rogers to help out and it's my pleasure to be here doing that. And my big passion is working to alleviate the homeless situation. And I'm working hard on that and trying to get the city and county to listen so that to my ideas and it's starting to work and that's kind of like where I'm at right now and now I'm working here with this wonderful group and hope that I can be a plus, that's about it. Thank you, Guido. Jen, I'm not gonna let you off the hook. You're gonna get a little bit on you and then we will go to public comments and then finally move on to the aquatics item. Thank you so much, Chair. I think what I might do is I will pivot and say it might be interesting to hear how we're organized and what we do over here at the city rather than hearing about a bunch of stuff about me. I will say I've been with the city for seven years and I am now the deputy director for parks, specifically the focus, my focus is park planning and development. Of course, I've got my fingers into all kinds of stuff but that's the focus of where I'm at. And then we have interim recreation deputy Jeff Tibitz who is supervising all of the recreation activities and programs that go on in the city. Jeff reports directly or he's in the planning and economic development department. So he reports to a director in the planning and economic development department and I report directly to Jason Mutt, the assistant city manager. So we are definitely recreation parks got separated by departments even beyond, I'm in public works and Jeff is over in planning and economic development. And then you all have met Jeremy Gundy, he's not here tonight but he's the deputy director for field services. And he's got quite a few things under his belt including park maintenance. And he reports directly to Jason Mutt as well for public works. And then you've met our appointed park superintendent James Caster who's here tonight as well. And that's how we're organized right now. Who knows what the future holds for recreation parks because we all used to be one department before this. So we're all always holding our fingers crossed that the city will put us back together because that phrase we're better together definitely applies here. There's so many things that we do that are completely integrated. So it's really hard, it makes it more difficult when we have to make meetings and we have different lead assistant, two different city assistant city managers giving direction, one to recreation and the other to parks. So we're hopeful but the original intent of the city, the way I understand it to divide up recreation parks was in order to balance the budget at the time there were some budget concerns. And so they looked at this opportunity to this one and many others to help align things in the city to better serve our finances. And so all of us are of course hopeful that we'll get back together but we all work together either way no matter what day to day on our projects. And of course, I'm your liaison to this board right now and I'm here to support you and whatever you need. And we are super excited to work with this board and very excited it's a full board now finally. And we're hopeful that when we get out of the pandemic we can do some more stuff in each district that you represent to get out there and meet you on a more personal level. So hopefully that gives you the well-rounded picture of us and certainly staff members are welcome to come forward. But I think that everybody is willing to have our big picture out there. And if you have any questions, of course we're here. So thank you, Chair Cohen. Thank you for that, Jen. Before asking if there are any public comments anyone on the board have any points of clarification or maybe some rousing they wanna do of one of their fellow board members just to keep the spirit light. Virtual hands or real hands. Okay, with that any comments from the public on this little expose? We have no hands at this time. Okay, then we will move on to the next item which is 7.2 where we will get a program overview and program status update from Don Hicks who will start with hopefully a little bio on himself because I've always wanted to know at the minimum about his accent. And with that I turn it over to you, Don Hicks. Chair Cuant and members of the board, can you hear me? Good, good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to report on our aquatic facilities and programs. My name's Don Hicks and I'm a recreation supervisor responsible for the two city facilities, aquatic centers. And to answer your question, I'm originally from Australia. Chase the lady out here that lives in that other country called Texas but that's another story. So a year ago I reported to you on how we were able to open our facilities in early COVID through a collaboration with other cities and agencies. We created a safety plan and presented it to the Sonoma County Health Officer detailing our COVID safety plans and procedures for operating our pools safely. They liked our plan and accepted our plan and we were able to open our pools. Soon after that, the CDC state and county recognized the importance of aquatic programs and thus the governor declared that aquatic exercise was essential to the continued health and wellbeing of Californians. And as a result, we were listed as an essential service. I'm happy to report that we have been able to successfully and safely operate our facilities through the whole COVID turmoil. You know, obviously we've been making small changes here and there as needed as the CDC state, county adjust COVID safety protocols and mandates. So through all that time, it's been challenging and sometimes difficult at times to try and to accommodate and navigate all the customers suggestions and recommendations and sometimes complaints and different interpretations of the COVID restrictions and mandates and also managing all the fears out there. Thankfully, we've had an amazing aquatic staff team working on all of this. We have six full-time staff and depending on the season, 30 to 70 temporary staff like lifeguards, swim instructors, front desk, et cetera. At Finley pool, just like to introduce us a team, at Finley pool, we have coordinator, Brie Arthur. We also have specialist, Michael Marx and senior maintenance worker, Aaron Ramirez. At the Ridgway pool, we have coordinator, Brandon Hammond, specialist, Joel Strasse and skilled maintenance worker, Jim Mizucatelli. And boy, what an awesome team they are keeping our facilities open. So their ideas, hard work, flexibility, dedication, working long hours has enabled us to stay open and provide this essential service to the community. One of the team members that's here with us on this Zoom meeting has gone above and beyond these last two years and he's with us today. And he has a PowerPoint presentation to share with you. He will outline where we were before COVID, how we operated during COVID and the plans. Hopefully moving forward. So with that, I wanna introduce Brandon Hammond, our recreation coordinator at the Ridgway Swim Center. Are you there, Brandon? I'm here, thank you, Don. Like Don said, my name is Brandon Hammond and I am the aquatics coordinator for the Ridgway Swim Center. I've been a coordinator with the city of Santa Rosa for just about 20 years. And today I will be talking about aquatics and programming in Santa Rosa. So first, Finley Aquatics Center. It's located at 2060 West College next to Finley Community Center. And also we have Ridgway Aquatics Center which is located at 455 Ridgway Avenue next to Santa Rosa High School. Finley has a 83 degree 10 lane lap pool and also a shallow L pool that we use for instruction. At Ridgway we have a nine lane competitive lap pool, a water slide and a splash pool and toys. So, oh, next slide. So before COVID, we had roughly 48,000 visitors to our pools, 14,000 cambers and over 200 rentals and birthday parties. This last summer, we brought back Rec Swim after being off for one summer. Instead of having one session each day throughout the week, Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday, we had to switch to two sessions at both pools, Monday through Friday and actually three sessions on the weekends. The reason that we had to do this is we had to limit our numbers. We had to be under 150 people in the pool area. So we had to stay under that 150 max for each session. But with two sessions a day, we were reaching up to 300 during the week. Saturday and Sunday, we had evening rentals at both facilities this past summer. They were in the later evening. However, we could not accommodate any birthday parties or any kind of rental during our Rec Swim. Next slide. So with water fitness, before we had roughly 25,000 drop-in water fitness each day, or excuse me, each day, each year and no limit to class size. Last summer and before that, we had online reservations where they were registering through our Perfect Mind Registration software online and they were reserving specific swim times at both facilities throughout the week. We realized that the water fitness community, they needed an outlet. COVID came, we were closed down for three months and in that time, it came to our attention that we needed to come up with a plan, a safety plan to incorporate and bring back these programs, especially water fitness. And so the way we were able to do that was to bring safety protocols into play, six feet of distance in the water, six feet of distance on the land, masks were not in the water and we slowly filled up and were able to accommodate more as time, we quickly filled up, but then we were able to, as time went on, to accommodate more water fitness in the water. Next slide, lap swim. So before COVID, we had a variety of times offered at both pools. They were drop-in times and we really didn't have a max before COVID, as many as we could really fit in the pool. We did, we never really hit that max, but again, the need for exercise when we were closed for the three months was definitely, definitely pressed upon us. So again, we opened up for lap swim. At that time, we had lap swim entering through side gates, going through safety protocols, temperature checks, COVID checks, and everyone was wearing a mask into the facility and out of the facility. And at that time, at the beginning, we just had two restrooms. So we weren't able to do too much in the way of accommodations. We also had a long online reservation system for lap swim, for reserving your space. And safety was definitely and is always a major focus, especially as we continue. Procedures remain in place as we open up. That has been to a lot of us key for what we've been able to do is we've realized that our safety procedures and the things that we've been enforcing over the past, now almost two years, have really made people feel safe, coming to a place where they can get in exercise and then get out. A key to that success is our staff and their commitment to safety and procedure. It's very, very important moving forward that the staff understands the importance of it. So what that means is a lots and lots of training. Next slide. So that segues into our lifeguard training. Before COVID, we had 50 to 80 trained and certified lifeguards or lifeguard training or LGT as we call it each year. And then when COVID kind of hit, we started by working with the Red Cross and getting extensions for our guards. So a lot of our guards, their certificates came up in June when we were planning to reopen. However, we were able to work with Red Cross and get most of them extended for a couple of months and it got us through the summer. But then we were running into a new problem, our problem of now we have to, the extensions are done with, now we have to figure out a way to train or recertify our existing staff. And then also, most importantly, to find a way to train, to bring in new staff, to bring in new lifeguards. So staff worked and worked really hard with Red Cross and coming up with different ways and different methods that we could utilize. Our old version of 20 hours in a classroom and pool isn't gonna work during COVID. Having a person to dive in and rescue wasn't going to work. So all of our staff worked together really hard at coming up with what is called a blended learning. And blended learning is, half of it is done online through Red Cross. It's basically the same information that was given in the classroom, but now it's done online. And then the other half is done at our facility. And that is the rescue skills and in-person reviews and testing. And so that has done in-person at the pool. However, we still needed somebody to rescue. So what we came up with was rescue mannequins. And they are our two newest staff members. There are no dummies though. The first one is Bob Lee. That is the rescue mannequin for out at Finley. And then Bob Wei, who is the mannequin, rescue mannequin for Ridgway. And those two mannequins really helped I myself recerted with one of them a year ago now. And it's a really great way. Guards are now being trained incorporating the safety procedures even in our EAP or emergency action plan. We use masks, goggles, gloves, a bag valve mask for doing resuscitations. And whenever the guards are near each other performing a rescue, they reach in the EAP and put masks on. So it's been very successful. And we've been able to in the past year train quite a few lifeguards and research even more. Next slide. So before COVID, we roughly served 5,000 swim lessons each season at both facilities. Last summer, and actually last spring, we were able to bring back in spring, we brought back spring lessons to Finley at Finley when we first brought them back. Of course, we were small sizes, but then also the instructors at that time were teaching from the pool deck, which was very difficult. So after time, we realized that this wasn't gonna work. So summer came around and by the summer, we had roughly 90% of our swim instructors were vaccinated. So we ended up moving into the water. Trust me when I say that it's much easier to teach in the water with the children than from the pool deck. So a lot of our instructors were very happy that we made that movement while still keeping safety procedures in mind. So the last time we ran Vamos Nana Dar, which is a learn to swim program for the Latino community of Sonoma County, we ran the last one we ran was in 2019 at Finley and Ridgway Pools. However, we all know what happened. And so it has been suspended for the past two years. However, the Sonoma County Safety Committee is still meeting every couple of months discussing different procedures that are going on in Sonoma County, getting a lot of different ideas. And then most importantly, I'm very excited to announce that coming back this spring of 2022, we'll have Vamos Nana Dar again at both Ridgway and Finley Pools. So we're very, very excited about that. Next slide. Oh, one thing I forgot on the Vamos Nana Dar side is when they attend Vamos Nana Dar, thank you. When they attend Vamos Nana Dar at the end, the parents are there with the children who are getting a quick lesson in the water and then they all qualify for subsidized swim lessons. So they fill out the paperwork at the end and then they're able to come and take swim lessons at either Finley or Ridgway community or Ridgway Pool and they are able to do that at a subsidized price. Next slide, thank you. Swim teams. So for those of you who don't know, we do have a swim team in Santa Rosa. It swims at Ridgway Pool and that's a Neptune swim team. They're a very popular program. They swim early mornings and evenings at Ridgway and Santa Rosa and Neptune's has produced Olympic and collegiate champions over many, many, many years. So we're very, very proud to have them with us at Ridgway. And when we shut down for those three months, we were very involved with Neptune staff. What can we do? What procedures can we put in place? So we worked with them. And when we opened up and brought back lap swim and water exercise, we also brought back Neptune swimming as well. So we're very proud of that. They're very proud of that. And there was a lot of work involved. We also have, there is no high school pools, none of the high schools have their own pools in Santa Rosa. So both pools are responsible for being the home water for where my list for Maria Creole High School, Montgomery, Pioneer, LC Allen and Santa Rosa High. And actually we're coming up, their season is February through May and they swim at the pool every day and then they have weeks, meets, excuse me, at both of the pools, typically on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Next slide. Water polo. So before COVID, water polo was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, evenings, went from about seven or a little before seven till about 10 o'clock. And that was, like I said, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sundays. It was a very large, very popular program. It was growing, growing and growing. But then situation hit and they didn't come back until we weren't able to get the water polo program back in the water until the fall of that year. However, the numbers of course were smaller. A lot of what's happening is more practices. So they're not as close to each other. However, we are growing or we're, that's what I'm looking for. We're moving forward with it. We're getting back to a little bit closer to our numbers that we were before. And then also we are very involved with the Cardinum and water polo team. We are their home water over at Finley. So we're always working with them, trying to get them time in the water. However, with our personal water polo programs, basically they're still operating practices. And next slide. Floating pumpkin patch is a, this is a 10th year. We took a year off last year just to rest up and get ready for this year. So what we decided to do this year since numbers were a concern for us is that instead of having one floating pumpkin patch, we had two sessions. So we had two of them very long along the lines that we did with Rec Swim. We had an early and a late session and we had games and lots and lots of candy and lots of decorations and most importantly, floating pumpkins. The procedures were set out, sent out to all people who participated beforehand so that they were aware that they could show up in costume. They needed to wear a mask inside. They needed to try to maintain six feet of distance and follow all the COVID protocols that we have in place here. It was a fantastic event. It went off great. We had a lot of staff, a lot of help and I'm glad we did. It rained and poured on us. It was October 23rd and that was the start of the big October storm. And it hit right as we opened up the doors but we had so many pop tents set up and things set up that they were able to hide from the rain and it worked out really well. Next slide. Back to Don. Okay, thank you, Brandon. These next few slides I want to show you I'm really excited about. I'm excited to report that an amazing new addition and improvement project at Finlay Aquatic Center is happening. It's currently in the hands of a design company and it's for a new spray ground and then also pool deck ADA improvements. The tentative schedule has the Finlay pool closing for construction in August of this year and opening early 2023. I have a few slides here of artist renderings that I want to show you that show what the finished project might look like. Next slide. This new feature will revitalize the 28 year old facility and bring in new revenues through expanded birthday rentals and weekend group rentals. So we're really excited. This is one view looking from the south fence of the facility and it shows a variety of those play features there. So it will offer something different from the water slide and play features that are at Ridgeway swim center and have elements that will attract the younger families. The slide, you have to be a certain height to ride on the slide. This is going to be a zero depth facility with features that will be really good for the toddlers. So next slide please. As you can see from the renderings we have a variety of elements, ground level sprayers and bubblers, mid height elements like spray cannons. I'm really excited about those. Higher elements like streaming palm trees with water streaming from them and a super soaker that's going to dump water on the excited children below. And we also have an interactive play table for creative minds. Next slide, that'll be on the next slide I think. Yeah, see there's that interactive table that'll be fun for those creative kids. But what these photos don't show is that we will be replacing some of the old landscaping with tropical themed plants and palm trees. So we will be creating our own little tropical paradise. So I'm really excited about this project as it's been a dream and the works for years and now becoming a reality. So I've been really working closely with Jen on this and I know she's excited about it too. So that's just a brief little introduction to it. We'll keep you in the loop as the project moves forward. Next slide please. There you go, there's another view of that big soaker that dumps water on the kids. Next slide please. There we go, another view. Next slide please. Okay, and then this slide, I just wanted to touch on a few of our challenges and achievements. As I said that Finley's 28 years old, Ridgeway had a major renovation in 2008, 2000. So that's getting older. So we're having pump issues, we're having both pools need some plaster work and tile work. Both pools need a bit of concrete deck work. So there are some challenges that we're gonna be working on over the next year or two to try and replace some of those things. The minimum wage, we had a minimum wage increase. It was voted in by city council a couple of years ago. And so minimum wage went up quite a bit and our biggest expenditure budget item on our budget is our temp salaries. So that's had quite an impact on our budget and just the challenge of finding ways to keep our staffing levels as well as having to pay the extra amount of money. But it also helps us to attract more staff having a higher hourly rate. So that's been good too. Staff shortages, Brandon touched on that a little bit in the presentation, but that's been a real challenge is staff shortages. As we've had limited numbers and we've scaled down programs, we also did some scaling down of staff. But now as we try to open, we're quite concerned about trying to attract enough staff for our facilities. And so we're gonna start up a hiring campaign here in February and March to try and attract more staff to our facilities to get more lifeguards, swim instructors, front desk, concession workers, et cetera, et cetera. So if you have any friends that have those 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds, please send them our way. We're looking, we do a lot of training. We'll provide the lifeguard training. We provide all the training to become a swim instructor. It's just a fun environment to work. So send the young people that you know our way so we can train them and hire them. Another challenge, operating costs just got word recently that our chemical costs are going up 25%. We have a chlorine generator at Ridgeway and that's starting to fail and it's old and we need to try and replace that. So there is some ongoing operational cost increases that we're dealing with and we have to work with through our budget and some achievements. We just introduced a new aquatic membership program and it's $25 a year per family and it becoming a member gives you access to all of our discount passes. And so that's already, we've already sold over 500 of those and it's generating some new revenue for aquatics. So we're excited about that. Definitely an achievement has been keeping the aquatic centers open. Most other places were closed quite a length of time but we were only closed about 13 weeks during the beginning of COVID and then we've been operating limited and slowly increasing or changing programs as the mandates change. And so we've been busy, busy, busy through most of the COVID and that's quite an achievement. It's been some hard work for my team. And then I'm so excited about this spray ground that's gonna be a great achievement opening up in 2023. So with that, the next slide is asking for questions but I'd like to throw a question at the board asking the board if you have any creative ideas on how we can market this new spray ground once we open, we're exploring all possibilities to really have a nice grand opening and marketing of that, of that spray ground. So I'm excited about it. So always open to getting feedback and suggestions from people like yourselves on how we might be able to market that successfully. So that's a question to you. And then I'd open up to any questions from you for Brandon or myself. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon and Don. I don't know if board members want any of the slides put back up but I'm sure staff could do that. If there is a slide you want brought back up and you remember its number and could reference to it, that would be great. I'm gonna say Bob Lee and Bob Way. I would like to see their picture because that didn't look like a dummy to me. I don't know if they're twins or not Bob Lee and Bob Way. Madonna, I see your hand up. Anybody who wants to weigh in with creative ideas for the marketing pitch is also welcome to do so. Madonna. Yeah, I just wanted to know the weight of the dummies that were used. Were they just plastic or did they have some body weight to them? So they are full body mannequin and they have the ability to add some weight in them if we're gonna be doing submerged victim rescue where the mannequin, the body would be at the bottom of the pool or they can be stabilized where they float on the surface or halfway in between. So they are designed specifically for water rescue training. And so we ended up buying three of them because we really wanted to make sure we had something in place that was gonna be safe to be able to train our necessary staff that we needed. So yeah, so Bob Lee was one of our guest speakers at our in-service training for staff and he didn't say a lot but his motto was be safe, be smart, don't be a dummy. So that was his motto through our training. So. Thank you so much. And then as far as like your question to us for me when I'm doing outreach so if I'm wanting to look for kids I would go to clinics because kids get sick. I would email like preschools, Head Starts, daycares and reach out to the newsletters. So like the JC, they have whatever school has like parents and stuff like that. And what I do is I will like call like so if I'm trying to reach elders I'll like say I wanna get them some information I would like call big HOAs like say Oakmont and say, hey, I have this can I put this in your newsletter? So those are some ideas I have. Thank you. And you could always email it to me and I'll share it with all my people. I'm honored. Thank you Madonna. Any other comments? Guido. Yeah, I just had a question. I've got a 15 year old grandson here in Santa Rosa and what is the age group for the training for life guards? So Brandon can answer that. It's 15. We started at 1514 for swim instructors and 15 for life guards. Great, he's 15 and he'd be excellent. I'm gonna talk to his mother. I'll send them to Finley or Ridgeway and we'll get an application in his hands for sure. Great, thank you. And you can get applications, applications online at our website, sandwichthewreck.com at the job site. You can download an application there too. Thank you. Anyone else? I have a couple of questions which will give everybody else time to think if they do have any questions. Can you reserve a slot if you don't have a computer? Is there an alternative way? That's my first question. Second question is just generic information on safety in the dressing rooms because swimmers get wet. So they definitely are using the changing rooms, right? That's my second question. The third question is do you have any reported cases of COVID and how you handle that since you are both open when you're outside and closed when your people use the dressing rooms? And last question is on the Finley update, whether the news flash zone will be using recycled, reformulated water like the fish downtown at Prince Memorial or if it's once and done water. And I didn't catch whether the entire complex is being shut down during that remodel or just the L pool where the update's going in. Thank you. I think I can answer all those questions. That last question, the spray ground construction, the project is including improvements to our concrete pool deck to meet new ADA rec slope requirements. So there is a good portion of the deck that some of it's aging and needs replacement but because of the amount of deck that needs to be replaced to meet the slope requirements, we will be closing the entire facility. It may be phased in such a way that the training pool might be out of open a little bit earlier, but we just have to see how that pans out with the construction company that's selected for the project. So there's that, the spray ground, the spray ground in California health code by definition is a swimming pool and has to be operated as a swimming pool, which means it'll have an underground 4,500 gallon tank. That water will be circulated through a filter and through two forms of sanitizing, probably chlorine and UV sanitizer. So it has to operate as if it was a swimming pool with the same code requirements. Let me see the other questions. We are not in a reservation system now for our programs. We've gone to a drop-in program. We're monitoring all of our programs daily to make sure there's safety and numbers and there's no programs are overcrowding. It seems like most people are self-regulating to a certain extent. When we did have the reservation system, we had wait lists and then it got to a point where there was no wait lists at all. And so the reservation system was very cumbersome through our software program. And so most people are excited not to have the reservation system to be back to the drop-in program. And from what I've seen is it's just as safe if not safer than when we had the reservation system right now as far as numbers are concerned. And locker rooms, there wasn't a written guidelines specifically for pools when it came to locker rooms and showers and things. So they said, for swim centers, we need to go to the fitness club guidelines for locker rooms and showers and we'd be following those closely. We have not, a lot of other places have opened up their showers and we have not, the showers we have are communal showers. If we had showers that were separate shower cubicles, we could probably be open safely right now but because they're communal set showers, we have not opened up showers. We have some warm showers outside on the deck where people can rinse off. And we have opened up our locker rooms. It's a mandated mask area there. So they go into the locker room with their mask on, must have their mask on the whole time. And we're monitoring the numbers of people going through our locker rooms. Right now we still consider it being maintained safely. We are sanitizing high touch areas. Our janitors at night are sanitizing high touch areas. We have hand sanitizer available and dispensers all over the place and good signage everywhere. So, one comment that comes back to us from our customers frequently is, oh, I wish other aquatic facilities were operating as safely as you guys are because I don't feel safe at that place or that place but I really feel safe at your facilities the way you're running it. So we get that sort of comment frequently from our customers in the way we're running things. And we've been a little bit on the conservative side rather than opening up too soon. I'm not sure if that answered all of your questions. The only other question I had was whether or not there were any COVID exposures and how that's been handled, whether or not you communicate it if you have a tracking system in place. Yeah, so early on we had a couple of little scares of someone said they'd come down positive for COVID and then we were able to track which other swimmers might have been in the facility at the same time and notified other swimmers. And then because we had a reservation system we were able to trace that. Even now that we don't have a reservation system we're still able to trace because I would say most people are members and so we are able to, if there was an outbreak trace that. We've had more recently more scares with staff and we've had staff needing to be quarantined or tested because of potential exposures outside in their private life. So we've had challenges where someone's called in and said, oh, I think I had an exposure and so they've had to quarantine and we've had to find scramble to find other people to cover those shifts. So some of my permanent staff have been working. I've actually life-guided a couple of shifts myself just so we can keep the facility open. But we haven't had to close down our facility because of any COVID outbreaks reported at pools. Okay, there was one other piece of your question I just wanted to touch on. You talked about the accessibility of the online registration. That is something that we ran into early on and so we did, even though we're not doing it now we moved additional staff to the desk of the aquatic center so that they could handle the incoming phone calls so people could register my phone as well if needed. Thank you for that. Before I go to potential public comments anybody else on the board have a follow-up or think of anything else? Okay, not seeing any. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you. Thank the Bobs for us, please. And anytime they wanna come to a meeting, they're invited. Do we have any comments or questions from the public? We do. I'm gonna call on Beth. Beth, I'm gonna unmute you. Go ahead. Beth, can you hear us? I can, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Thank you so much. I wanted to say thank you so much, Dan and Brandon and Jeff for your presentation and everything that you've done to keep the pools open and safe all this time. I'm a very grateful swimmer at Ridgeway. I have been since you opened after the pandemic. It's kept me sane and it's kept me healthy. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. I appreciate the staff and their positive attitude. I really found them to be a blend of friendly and professional. I know they're kids, but they are awesome. And I can't even imagine how challenging this time has been for everyone who's working in aquatics with the city and all the changing health orders. And I just appreciate it all so much not just from me, but everyone who enjoys it. I appreciated all the safety guidelines that were followed after, you know, during the pandemic. I was really disappointed when you decided in January to open up to more open swim. And I know I've communicated with Jeff and Don and appreciate your responsiveness. It seemed like the wrong time to do that because this pandemic variant has just been, you know, wreaking havoc. And I'm one who's vaccinated and it's really important to me that I stay healthy. I have a family member who's immune compromised and health issues. So I keep, I'm on the more conservative side, if you will. So I haven't been swimming since you guys changed the plan in January. I have two questions for you. How is social distancing being dealt with when there's like three or four people per lane? I heard Don say there haven't been that many people but I'm sure as the weather gets nicer that's probably gonna change. So what ideas do you have or what procedures were you put in place to make sure we stay safe? If there's four or five people swimming in a lane and also as we move into summer and other variants hopefully that won't show up but they might, would you be willing to keep one or two lanes open for those of us who are more concerned and just want two people per lane? Thank you so much for answering my questions and thanks for all you do. So thank you, Beth for that question. We are monitoring daily, you know, and January, you know, we were sort of somewhat nervous but then because we hadn't had any wait lists in our reservation system, we felt comfortable in opening up to a drop-in program and but monitoring it closely. And I checked with the staff every day, you know, have we had to go to circle swimming which means more than two a lane have we had? And so there's been a couple of times where there may have been three in a lane but we've not had any situation where there's four a lane or more and in fact, in a lot of our time slots, the numbers have been less than when we had a reservation system in place which is that somewhat confusing to me. But so if we find that numbers increase and we're still in a scary COVID situation we will make necessary adjustments and be watching and listening to what our health officer has to say and what we have to, you know, the mandates we have to meet but I feel confident right now having observed the lap swim especially and the water fitness classes that we're operating safely. And there's lots of opportunity where there's still lots of swimmers swimming one or two a lane. And so our staff also at times might say, hey, come on, we've got to keep distancing in the water or on the deck. Because if they're on the deck, they've got to, you know we really want them to be a good distance away from anyone or have a face covering on and in the water when they've got their face covering off we will still remind people you're getting too close that's maintain a distance there that's safe. So I think we're meeting and we're exceeding what the recommendations are from the CDC and the county and the state currently. Thank you, Don. Do we have any other public comments on this agenda item? Madam chair, we have no additional comments at this time. Chair, you're muted. Sorry, many reports at this time, mayors lunch. There was no virtual mayors lunch last month. The waterways committee last month project, which is a large medical facility that's being proposed for Brookwood, the section of Brookwood before Sonoma Avenue that fronts on Santa Rosa Creek was presented to us that had a wonderful section along the creek that both had plantings and a path. It was kind of like a park that was part of the presentation for this massive, I think it's 90,000 square foot medical office building that will be in walking distance of Fremont Park, Memorial Hospital. It's downtown specific upgrade where the Santa Rosa Creek was treated as the jewel that it both can be and is. So that was really exciting. Tomorrow is the next meeting of the waterways committee and we're being presented with a change to 800 running feet of fencing, a long part of the Santa Rosa Creek and the Prince Memorial Greenway. And that will be a very interesting presentation and discussion since it's also part of the downtown specific plan and one of our Santa Rosa parks that may not be a park in true classification, correct, Jens and Santos, but is definitely part of our recreation program and the future of Santa Rosa. So those are the waterways updates. And with that, we move, any questions on that? Okay, we move on to written and electronic correspondence back to you, Jen. Thank you, Chair Kwan. And of course, you all received your zest newsletter. That's the only correspondence we have. And not only, it's fantastic. A lot of information about what's coming up and what's going on, even though we've had to, like we've mentioned earlier, put the hold on some of these, we're gearing up for spring. So take a look at that newsletter. Great, at this point, we're to item number 10. I want everyone to realize we have not gotten past 530, which is pretty exciting. We've had some long meetings and I thank everybody for sticking around. Future agenda items moving forward. Anything anybody wants to make note of for February or coming up. Okay, keep your hats on. Don, before I let you go, I was thinking about the welcoming for the spray park. How about some open houses maybe based on elementary school districts? Something where kids, especially kids from possibly lower income groups could be invited wholesale or given vouchers for their families. I don't know what it costs for a family of four to get into the swim center, but under challenging financial circumstances, it might be something that families might enjoy being either given hardy discounts or free passes for this new city feature. So future agenda items. Anybody have anything they wanna bring forward? Okay, Jen, before I let you go, do we have anything coming up before our next meeting that might be highlighted? Any park updates? Is the next Fremont Park before the end of February? Anything to heads up off the top of your head? Yeah, our next Fremont Park meeting is on February 15th. So it's coming up a virtual meeting and we'll send you all a link to that. It's also publicly available on our parks project webpage. You can click on that link as well. So coming up soon. That's what's coming up for Fremont. And yeah, that's the biggest thing we have coming up next. Great, and Shelly is really good about getting us email correspondence. So I appreciate that tip that I had to you, Shelly. And with that, 533, thanks everyone for being here. I adjourned this meeting of the Board of Community Services. Be safe out there.