 Board members and members of the public, thank you for joining me today, joining us at the Board of Community Services. My name is Logan Pitts. I'm the incoming chair of the Board of Community Services. We also have board members, Terry Griffin here today with us, Steve Spelman, Carolina Spence, Caroline Quant and Carol Quant, excuse me, Guido Focaleone and Madonna Cruz. Anyone, please let me know if I'm not pronouncing your name correctly. Everyone deserves to be called what they want, so please let me know. And we're gonna move on to the introduction of our host, which is Shelly McClure and Jackie Hamon. Again, Jackie, let me know if I'm not saying that right. They will be coordinating all of our comments from the public and assisting during the meeting and taking any follow-up notes. So panelists and presenters, I'd ask you to please silence your cell phones and keep microphones muted if not speaking. Members of the public joining this meeting will have webcams off and microphones muted. If you're phoning in to join the meeting and you choose to speak during the public comments portion of the agenda, for privacy concerns, the host will rename you to caller and only show the last four digits of your phone number. And the City of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment for everyone free from disruption. We will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone's expected to participate respectfully or if necessary, the meeting will end immediately. Let's be nice to each other. Host, will you please explain how comments will be heard at today's meeting? Thank you, Chair Pitts. At each agenda item, the item will be presented and the chair will ask for board comments or questions and then at the appropriate time, open the floor for public comments. The host will lower all hands until the public comment item is open. Once the chair has called for public comment, the chair will ask the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on a specific agenda item. Those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on those who've raised their hands. The public comment is limited to three minutes and a courtesy timer will appear on the screen. Email public comments have been received that have been received by the deadline have been distributed to the board of community service members and uploaded to the agenda prior to the start of today's meeting. Emails received will not be read into the record. Great. Thank you, Shelley. So with that, I call this February 23rd, 2022 meeting of the board of community services to order at 415 p.m. And I also will bang that in with the ceremonial gavel that the mayor was so nice to give me. There we go. We're in a meeting. And I also need to read a little note pursuant to government code section 54953E and the recommendation of the health officer of the county of Sonoma. Board of community service members will be participating in today's meeting via Zoom webinar as we're doing now. Board members and staff are participating from our remote locations and we're practicing appropriate social distancing. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. A host, may we have a roll call? Please respond when I call your name. Chair Pitts. Yes. Vice Chair Griffin. Here. Board member Spillman. Yes. Board member Kwant. Here. Board member Cruz. Here. Board member Spence. Here. Board member Boccolioni. Here. Let the record reflect that all board members are present. Great. And I just, we're gonna go to public comments now. So I'd like to open the floor for public comments on non-agenda items. This is the time when any person may address the board on matters not listed on this agenda but are within the subject matter of our jurisdiction. A host, do we have any public comment items? Yes, we have two speakers at this time. Thank you. Please call the first speaker. Thank you. John, I am going to unmute you. Please go ahead with your comments. Hi. My name is John Quinn. I'm the president of Santa Rosa Youth Soccer League. We have about 2,500 youth playing soccer in our community in our league. In addition to our league, there's probably another 1,500 or 2,000 kids playing soccer. The state of the fields in our city is terrible. They are overused and under maintained for the level of use that the fields experience. Somehow we need to solve this problem by creating more fields or putting artificial turf on fields, adding lights to the artificial turf fields so they can be used into the evening. But the practice for many years has been inadequate for the needs of the community. Our fields are in such bad shape that when we play in higher level leagues, we are not able to play any home games on our city fields. They are not of adequate quality by any objective standard. So I think there's got to be a better program to fertilize them, to water them, to roll them, to top dress them, to oversee them and to deal with the weed abatement. As a general matter, my understanding is the city aspires to cut the fields at a pretty long length, three inches at both their historic spec. That's awfully long for little kids to be playing field games, field sports. And I think we need to evaluate changing our variety of seeds that we use to facilitate mowing the fields shorter to make them more playable for our community. These are long-term problems and it's gonna be a long-term fix, but I think there's no better time in the present to start working on this because I've been involved in soccer in this community for 20 years and for 20 years, we haven't had good fields and we talk about it every, we come to the board of community services, we come to the city council, we talk about it every six months and we don't see any change. We've helped, we as an organization have helped with the cost of maintaining fields and the labor of maintaining fields, but the general program we have to prepare and provide these fields to the community is inadequate for the community's needs. I understand Tim is gonna speak later about the maintenance program. Maybe he has some fresh ideas, I certainly hope so, but we need to do better than we have done for the last 20 years. And with that, I would yield my remaining time. Thanks, John. Thank you. Our next speaker is team Olinberger. Team Olinberger, if you'd like to say your name, I'm gonna unmute you. Can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Yeah, KC Olinberger with FBK One Baseball Training. I'm sorry about the team Olinberger, my wife put that up as a joke. So I just wanna briefly discuss our submission of the Doyle Park project and the renovation of the field. As most of us know, it's the only lit baseball field. I believe in the county other than going out to Sonoma. So our goal is to fundraise in order to pay for upgrades. The upgrades that we have new field dimensions that would bring, it would keep the fences as they are. We'd bring the fences in. We'd add new fences. The kicker is that we'd make it an all-weather field. We would add new dugouts, bleachers, press box. Bullpens and batting cages. And the bullpens and batting cages we propose would be behind the new fences that would be brought in. Once again, we'd keep the existing dimensions and just make a field within the field. As we all know, listen, it's nobody's fault. We understand the city is short staffed and we are out there as much as possible trying to upkeep the field. With the field being closed three months a year, it makes it very difficult to stay on top of the field and keep it to where it's maintain and playable through 12 months of the season. In order for this to take place, our proposal is that we would fundraise the money to do so. We would like to obviously partner with other nonprofits and the city in help with our effort to fundraise money to pay for this. We'd also suggest that we would, hopefully the city would allow money through Measure M to be a part of this project. If so, that would take a huge burden off of both the city and our shoulders in order to get this project done. Something that I think that could happen. I think that this is a place that needs to be brought back to a baseball mecca like it once was. And by doing these renovations and upgrades, I think it's something that it'll be a baseball hangout for families, kids, teams, organizations. We'll be able to host tournaments, CIF championships, be able to bring other teams in to practice to work out. Of course, we'd love to use it for my organization, but right now it's more of a hangout for the homeless. And I think with these renovations and upgrades that we can help get the homeless out. And I know that the neighborhoods would appreciate part of the neighbors and the neighborhood would appreciate that. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. And that's all for now. Thank you for your comments. Do we have any more comments, Shelley? Thank you. We have no other hands at this time. Great. Our next item is the approval of minutes. Are there any edits or corrections to the minutes of January 26th, 2022? Seeing no edits, I will take those as approved as submitted. Deputy Director Santos, hello. Please give your report on our upcoming and accomplished events. Thank you, Chair Pitts. And so I will say that it's gonna be a little bit old fashioned. I have a lot to read for this section because we had a little snafu with our posting. So bear with me. I wanna make sure it's part of the record. So if anybody did miss it, they have the information now. So I'm gonna do a bit of reading so we can know what our upcoming events are. So for February, the recruiting for hiring seasonal jobs for our recreation staff is happening, lifeguards, scorekeepers, camp staff, Howard Park, ride operators, et cetera. So if you know anybody interested, we're looking for that. Also this month in partnership with the Sonoma County Library and interactive story walk at Rincon Valley Park begins in late February. And March 1st, applications for summer work experience program for teens is available. After two years, we're finally bringing this popular program back whereby approximately 300 junior high age teens feel positions such as counselor and training, junior lifeguard, leaders in training, Howard Park aides, and many more opportunities are out there for our junior high age teens. We also have picnic season beginning in March 1st. And so our reservations for picnics will be starting and the first rentals begin on the 1st of March. And then March 1st through 30th, we have the leprechaun treasure hunt in city parks brought back for a second year by popular demand. So the hunt for a paper leprechaun throughout the city parks and return it to Finley Community Center for a prize is happening. March, this entire month of March 1st through 30th. And then on the 4th through the 13th of March, we have a theater for children, presents Wizard of Oz at the Steel Lane Community Center. It should be exciting. And of course, on March 5th, we have the city sluggers T-Ball program for ages five to seven in Rencon Valley Park. And that's back after two years of not being able to do that in the pandemic. And March 13th, we have the St. Patrick's Day 5K presented by Fleet Sports, which benefits the Santa Rosa and Rec Scholarship Program. And on March 14th, we have sport field permits for soccer begins. And we have 12 clubs representing over 3,000 players using the fields. A few more there with me. We got a lot going on in spring. March 21st through 25th, we have a new spring break camp for kindergarteners and first graders offered at Steel Lane Community Center. And the camp will include daily swimming, water safety talks. And a second camp is also being offered for grades two through six. And same time, March 21st through 25th, Camp Wachama's back. This is held in Howard Park for kids ages six to 12. It's a very popular and very busy camp. And they've got hiking, canoeing, archery, crafts and field trips. Again, same time, March 21st through 25th, all sorts of sports spring break camps at Galvin Park in cooperation with the National Academy of Athletics for ages four to 13. And March 21st through 25th, again, spring break hoop it up basketball camp for ages seven through 13 in cooperation with the National Academy of Athletics. And on March 26th, we have Senior Bingo at Steel Lane Community Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. We have a variety of bingo games and lunch from Chip Filet provided. And last but not least, March 27th, we have a Santa Rosa compost giveaway at a place to play park. So that's upcoming events and accomplishments. Quite a lot. Thank you, Jen. Would you like to move on to your director updates? Oh. Or are there any questions from any board members on those? Great. Please move on. All right. Thank you so much, Chair. And I just wanted to take a minute to recognize and congratulate you for being appointed as our Chair of the Board of Community Services. And many, many thanks to our former Chair, Carol Quant for filling that role very diligently. We appreciate her service and looking forward to Logan stepping into this position. We also have some really exciting news. Today we opened Colgan Creek Neighborhood Park Playground this morning and the playgrounds for youth ages five to 12. And we had the Mayor Rogers and Vice Mayor Alvarez participate in the unveiling this morning. And if you haven't had a chance to see this new playground, please stop by and check it out. It's really great. And we will have some information up on our website soon. There's a news flash on the city's website. We'll have a little bit more information and some more pictures and hopefully a video on the park's website soon. And then on at Council on February 15th, Council approved the release of an RFP to solicit for a new operator to manage the golf course and the restaurant as one operation. So the current golf operators contract expires July 1st of this year. And the plan is to have a new operator to begin service within three to five days of July 1st of this year. So that RFP should be out and available for those interested in operating both the golf course and the restaurant starting March 1st at our purchasing bid site online. And also February 15th, we have Council Member Diana McDonald participated in her first Council meeting of her term, which expires at the end of this year. The Council Member was appointed by the City Council to fill the vacancy in District 3 with Council Member Tibbetts vacated the position. And we also have, I wanted to update you that staff will be embarking on an update to the ordinances and bylaws that govern the VOCS. We'll be bringing the topic to a future meeting for discussion and potentially creation of a subcommittee of this board to coordinate better with staff so we can really get into the details. For the process, we'll be looking into, of course, correcting the amount of members from eight back down to seven. And of course, looking at aligning the ordinances and bylaws with the current and future role of our Board of Community Services. So stay tuned for that in a future agenda. Also, if we've seen really busy this month, we have been busily working on the budget as well as all folks in the city have been working diligently to get the budget updated and moving forward. And we're just about finished here in Park, so certainly circle back with us if you're still waiting for information or need to contact us. We're here, but been a little bit busy with the budget. And last but not least, I wanted to update you all that on or before March 1st, sometime between February 28th and March 1st, our Assistant City Manager, Jason Knutt, will no longer be the Transportation and Public Works Director and the Assistant City Manager. Instead, he's been asked by the City Manager to fill entirely the Assistant City Manager position. And that will leave a vacancy in the Transportation and Public Works Director position, which will be advertised immediately. Meanwhile, that position, the Director position for Public Works will be filled on an acting basis internally by two existing employees for three month terms each. Gabe Osborn, our Deputy Director of Development Services with the Planning and Economic Development Department will fill the role for the first three months. And then Joe Shafoni, our Deputy Director of Water and Sewer Operations with the Water Department will fill the role for the remaining three months for the Director of Public Works. The intention is to fill this position permanently within six months. And so it does take about that long to hire somebody at the director level. We go through a big national outreach to find somebody for that position. We're excited to have our two internal staff come in. I work with them all the time and it should be good to get some work done in the next six months. Of course, our Assistant City Manager net will be involved in things to do with recreation parks that are more of a city-wide basis and things that he's already been involved in, such as the Golf Course and Rosland Creek Community Park and other things like that. But congratulations to him for sure for moving on to the only Assistant City Manager and having to fill that director position. So with that, that is the end of my updates. Thank you, Jen. And thank you for those nice words. I appreciate that a lot. And what I'm gonna do now before we jump ahead is just say a few words of my own as a little welcome as chair. And first I wanna say thank you to Carol for her services chair. Carol is maybe the best volunteer this city has. She gives so much of her time to the city. We're really fortunate to have her help us out. So thank you, Carol, for your service. We still need you. And I just wanna say a little bit about what I intend to do as chair. I think I'll keep this speech short. I'm sure you'll all hear me give speeches. But I've talked about before how important it is to me that we have access to outdoors for everyone in Santa Rosa. As a renter, it's especially important to me that folks get that. I'm fortunate I have a backyard. Not every renter does, not every homeowner does. And I think that we need to remember that in a simple way, parks are everyone's front and backyard. And in a deeper way, it's what keeps us healthy. It's what keeps us together as a community. They serve so many purposes. Parks make life better. And that's really important to me. And I know it's important to everyone else on this board. On the smaller stuff, there is a few things I wanna add onto our board. And one of those is setting up city email addresses. So I've instructed the staff to reach out to everyone. I think that we need to be more accountable to the public. And that means being easier to reach. So I encourage you to sign up for that and use it and give it out to residents so they can get in touch with you. I'm also gonna look at changing our meeting time to 5pm, which not everyone might love. But I wanna align that with a city ordinance that says public hearings need to begin after 5pm. And we don't fall under that. But I think the spirit of it fits with being more accountable and more accessible. So I hope you're not too mad at me for those two things. But it's important to me that we do those. And I also want everyone to just review Rosenberg's rules again, review the Brown Act. I know it's exciting reading, but it's really important that everyone knows our shared set of rules that we all operate by. That's so that the public can keep us accountable and so that they can let us know how they feel. And I think that I will end my speech there and move on. Madonna and Carol, it looks like you had some comments too. Thank you. I just with the city email, is the city gonna give us the business cards too with that information on it? That's a question for staff. Jen, do you have any thoughts there? Yeah, we'll need to look at the cost and get that back to you. So we can get everybody their correct email address and if we can do business cards in the budget as well. Each department budget has to fund the cost for the email address and the cards. So we'll get back to you. One step at a time. Thank you. Carol. Yeah, this city email address, is this something that's being implemented across all the boards or just something that you wanna see implemented for this board one step at a time? And would this be a suggested use, mandatory use? How does that work? As far as I know, it's not a standard thing across boards. The reason that I really thought of it is I'm also in the charter review committee and we got city email addresses for that. And it just sort of made sense to me that people should be able to reach us. It's not mandatory. That's up to you to check it. I'd highly encourage you to check it regularly. But that's your choice. However, you wanna communicate with the public. People of course can always come to the meeting, talk to you in person or whatever they wanna do. So it's up to each board member, yeah. Thank you for that. Thanks, Carol, for the question. And thank you, Madonna. All right, we will move on to our scheduled items. First, we have item 7.1, our adult and youth sports program update, recreation supervisor, Amy Rocklawitz. The floor is yours. Well, hello and good evening, everybody. As Logan mentioned, my name is Amy Rocklawitz and I'm a supervisor in the recreation division. And one of the areas that I supervise is the youth and adult sports programs. I don't know if it's possible, maybe Shelly can answer. I do have Greg Desmond. He's participating, I wanted to introduce him. He's our brand new sports coordinator. He'll get to do this presentation next time, but for now, since he's so new, I didn't throw him into it yet. So I don't know if he can, they can show his face just to introduce him. Is that possible, Shelly? Yeah, I've just moved him over as a panelist. So you should be seeing him any second. Okay, thank you. Nice to meet you guys. So again, I wanted to introduce you to Greg Desmond. I'm thrilled to have him on board. He's been, he was worked with the department for many years as a temporary employee, mostly in aquatics, but he's diving right in. Get the pun to do sports with us over here. So again, I just wanted to welcome Greg and introduce you to him. So with that, I'll get started on the presentation about youth and adult sports. Let's see, the next slide. Thank you. So I wanted to share that we are bringing youth sports back for 2022 after two years of canceling all of our youth sports programs, internal programs, I should say, for recreation, and we're really excited to bring them back. Starting next week as our sliddy sluggers comes back to Rankin Valley Park. For all the details on these, I'm going to assume everybody has seen the new activity guide that came out a few weeks ago and man our enrollments and registrations were a huge hit and things are filling up quickly, which is a great sign that the public really wants our programs back. So we're excited to be sharing these. So for the details on these programs, I'll let you look at the activity guide and all the details, but I wanted to share what we're bringing back and what we're doing. Brand new for youth sports is we've decided to contract with National Academy of Athletics. They do a lot of programs with neighboring communities in Petaluma and Windsor, and we thought it was a great way to offer more programs since we don't have the staff or the time or the equipment to do all these different programs. So we're going to give it a try this spring. So as you can see here, we have 49 contracted camps and leagues. We're going to be offering this spring and summer and see how it goes and a whole variety. New things that we've never offered before is pickleball for the youth, the cheer and dance, volleyball and soccer or typical multi sports camps just to do a little bit of everything and flag football is a new one. So excited to see how that goes this spring. And then of course we brought back our sports parties in the hub, dodgeball, basketball and soccer, the hub room at the ceiling community center, which we call our sports room. And those are popular Greg got to do his first party this past weekend and a dodgeball party. So that's what's coming back for youth sports. Next slide. We also offer our adult softball league. And I wanted to share up there that this program's been around since at least 1968, that's as far back as we can find it. It's probably one of the oldest programs that we do in the recreation division that has been around the longest and it's incredibly popular. We did bring it back last summer and fall for 2021. We had 155 teams representing 2,300 players, which was about 80% capacity, which was pretty good for bringing that back during COVID. We're hoping for full capacity this summer in 2022. Registrations for teams will start in April for that program. Takes place at Northwest Fields, Howard Park, Galvin, Franklin, softball fields. And it's a very popular program. Next slide. So probably going to spend a little bit of the most of our time on this field or on this field. Feel like I'm out on the fields on this slide. And this is something that is behind the scenes is pro-doing all the sports field league permits. I shared with you the sports field rental guide and I hope you got a chance to look at that. One of that was, the reason is just it's a very labor intensive program that we do reserving and renting all of our sports fields to all the variety of clubs that use them. And I think it's not understood. I mean, it's a two month process to get all their applications, to try to assign them the fields that they want. Nobody ever leaves completely happy. Rarely do we make everybody happy because they don't get enough fields. They want more fields. They all want the same fields because there's certain fields they don't feel safe at. There's certain fields that aren't in good condition or worse condition than the others. So it's a whole process working with all of our soccer clubs, little league clubs and the adult clubs that also rent the fields from us. But 2021, I should say, was a huge success for renting our fields, actually a bigger success than in the past. I think during COVID, it was one of the few things people could do was get outside and recreate in our fields and they were ready to do that. So when we went above and beyond trying to find more additional spaces to offer, we kept our fields open longer. And by doing that, we served more people in 2021, more clubs and leagues, kids and adults and increased our revenue made almost $92,000 in just sports field rentals, which was pretty big for us. But again, that was the one thing that we were expanding during COVID was our sports field rentals where everything else was closing down. We were opening more up and trying to make more available. And then on that note, then we put the challenges of doing the field permits. And I think you heard a few of the speakers tonight. They knew we were speaking Tim and I and so wanted to join and have their comments. And so you've heard these same things probably but for all the youth that we're representing and all the adults that are out there playing sports, the demand exceeds what we have available. And not only what we have available, there are some places that people just won't play because again, feeling of the safety or the fields are in such bad condition, they're not usable or safe to play on. So it's a constant battle when we do these sports field permits of not having to turn people away, not giving them the field space they need for the number of kids they're serving. And it's one of our challenges. The drought is also gonna be our challenge. Fields are already, they already clubs feel like the fields are already not safe, that they're hard. There's lumps, there's bumps, there's holes and with the drought and if we're not able to water and do the maintenance that are needed on them to roll them and aerate them, which we're hearing right now as part of the concern Sophocles season does begin March 14th and right now the fields have not been aerated or rolled because of the concern with putting any water on them and they're very dry and hard right now. So safety is a concern of some of our teams. So there was a letter from Adolfo that I think John mentioned that, that we can't bring teams to our city anymore that won't play on our fields. That's the reputation we're getting. And I think that's something the city needs to consider. It's not a good reputation. We're also one of the few cities that does not have any all-weather fields with lights to accommodate the year round play. I think that's been the biggest change in the last 20 years is soccer and baseball aren't seasonal sports anymore. They're year round. And with that, that means we don't have any fields they can play on when they're wet and it's rainy and winter season. We have nothing when it's not daylight savings and it's dark at five o'clock. There's nowhere for the kids to go practice after five o'clock because our fields don't have lights. A lot of our neighboring cities have all done that and run our park as four or five fields, pedal them as six to 10 fields. And so our clubs are driving to city facility, other city facilities in our neighboring communities to play. John also mentioned our fields are overused and under maintained because it's year round play now. We really only close them down for the three months in the winter. So they are getting utilized nonstop seven days a week for games and practices with probably too many kids even practicing. They'll put three or four teams on one field for a practice just because it's the only space available. We haven't put a lot of money into our sports facilities at 20 years. You know, we're just doing the minimum to maintain them but no big investment in them. Our fee structure for charging the clubs and leagues also should be evaluated at some point. It's a challenge. Again, the structure for charging per player fee was set up when sports were a seasonal activity. It's no longer seasonal. They're playing year round and yet we're still charging the per player fee which is again a great asset for those. It's for the youth clubs. It's a great benefit for them but it needs to be analyzed and looked at. Other cities are starting to do it differently. And so we need to rethink how we're doing that since we're permitting them differently now. And the other thing that's not on this list is lights that just came up recently is a lot of our light systems. Again, the handful of fields that we have lights on which are our softball fields and one baseball field at Doyle. Those lighted facilities are very outdated. The lights themselves, we have many lights out and we don't have the maintenance to get up and to repair them. They don't have the time. Parts are falling. They're still on an old automated system. Someone needs to be there with the timer or the key and press the button. Besides Doyle, Doyle is one of the only automated systems that's been set up so we can program those ahead of time for people that have rented that. So the lights themselves need to be looked at and evaluated and upgraded at some point. So next slide. So wanting to end on a good note, we do have some exciting things coming up. We have Pico's professional baseball has put in a proposal to offer some professional baseball at Doyle Park this summer. It would be eight weeks, two nights a week and an incredible opportunity for the sports community to be able to go out and see some great games. There are baseball groups that rent Doyle have all shifted their schedules to make sure we could accommodate this again because it's a great opportunity for their clubs and kids and families to come out and watch some good baseball. Where we're at right now is the proposal is still going through the process of getting approvals. There are some requests from Pico's that we would have to accommodate. And so we've made the facility available, we're hoping to be able to offer it but there's still some hoops to jump through to make that happen by June. And we're hoping we can do that. And then you heard from Casey tonight from Fastball Strike Baseball. He offers a great program in town and wants to work with us in bringing Doyle Park back to its heyday of being a great facility. The same thing with Pico's, they said they would also assist with doing some improvements to the field so that again, we can offer some exciting baseball on one of our best fields that we have that just has not been maintained. So some exciting things coming that we could possibly be seeing in the future. And I think that's it. So with that, are there any questions about the youth and adult sports or permitting fields? Can we go back to having our board members up on screen? Thank you. Any questions, comments from any board members? I have a couple of questions. Amy, thank you. And I really appreciate the frankness of your presentation. I was making notes that you essentially answered when you said that rate comparisons will be looked at. Will you be pursuing that in 2022? Will you be coming back with information to us? I assume the fee structure is going to be potentially adjusted, fees never go down. They just go up. We'll be seeing you again. Yes. I think in 2022, that would be one of our goals is to do some fee comparisons, see what other cities are doing and how they're charging. Again, part of the problem with doing field permits is to maintain those permits takes more time than just doing the permit themselves because people call and cancel a day or time. They add a day or time. Oh, now they need more space. So it's not just like we create the permit and they're good for six months. It's a constantly changing. And I think there needs to be some adjustment made to that on how in the fees on setting that up. So it's not taking so much staff time because we just don't have all the staff to maintain these like we're having to do right now. Terry, did you have a comment or question? Actually, my question was about the timing of the look at the fees. So Carol's covered that. Thank you. Any other board members? Amy, can you tell me? So Doyle Park is the only lighted baseball field. Which parts have the lighted soccer fields or other fields? We don't have any lit soccer fields. We have some softball fields that have lights which are Northwest softball fields that have three fields there. Franklin softball field, Galvin softball field and Howard Park softball field. So those are five softball fields that do have lights. We use those for adult softball program but we are now renting those softball fields to the Little League teams for practices under the lights right now. We also last winter in making space available used some of the outfields of those softball fields to let the soccer groups have some practices. We were taking whatever space we could get, whatever time we could get, and trying to set some parameters and rules around it so they didn't damage the baseball or softball fields but giving them a place to play under the lights. Yeah, I played softball at Northwest and I will admit there were some holes in the outfield that are a little scary. And I did get injured but not the city's fault. I was sliding into home plate. So that was my bad. Yeah, they do need some love, that's for sure. Thank you. I think that was my only question. Any last questions or comments from the board? Great, we'll see you again later this year. I think Guido has his hand up. Sorry about that Guido, go ahead. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, I just had two comments. Number one, the city has gotten a lot of money from PG&E because of the fire and so forth. Why can't a little bit of that money be diverted to help light some parks? Number one. And number two, do we ever use any of the high school facilities for games and so forth like soccer and baseball? So that's been part of the evolution of how things have changed. The soccer or the high schools have now, their sports are year round and all on their football, all weather-lighted fields and they're very unavailable to all these clubs that need them. And when they do need them, in fact, Adolfo, who is with Athletico has some very competitive teams that he has and it's like five or 600 bucks for them to rent it for a few games to bring these competitive teams to Santa Rosa to play his teams if they wanna have a home game. So the high schools are charging a lot and they're very unavailable because they have their own high school teams on them almost seven days a week now too between track and soccer and all their football and their programs that are on their facilities. And during the pandemic, the high school fields were not available at all. I'll just chime in regarding your PG&E funds question, board member Vocalione. The council last night did assign all of the funds from PG&E last night. So those are no longer available for these particular uses, but we are always looking for opportunities, for grants opportunities. We have the grant with the Ag and Open space that we'll be looking at to bring new artificial turf fields to a place to play and we're hoping to get some lighted fields in there. So we're working on it and we're always looking for opportunities to find funds to double our money, so to speak. So if you hear of anything, we're always all ears as well, but we are keeping a close eye on it. We are working with our state and federal legislators to let them know this is an important topic for Santa Rosa. And so we're keeping an eye on it and we'll keep this board posted. Good. And then chair Pitts, I didn't know if you wanted to, outside of our group, if you wanna check in with the public for questions. Yes, do we have any, I'm sorry about that. Do we have any public comments on this agenda item? We have no hands up at this time. Thank you, Shelly. I'll learn how to do that correctly eventually. Okay, thank you everyone for your comments and questions. And thank you, Amy. Thank you, bye-bye. And to Mr. Desmond who also appeared, thank you. Thank you, nice to meet you guys. Take care. Thanks. Okay, we are gonna be moving on to item 7.2. That is the Sports Field Maintenance Update. Tim, are you still with us? Tim, the floor is yours. I am not hearing Tim. I can see Tim is still with us. Tim, I don't think you have a microphone that's working. There we go. There we go. I got you, please proceed. Okay, sorry about that. Thank you for your patience. Good evening, Chairman Pitz and other board members. I'm Tim Finnegan. I'm a Park Screw Supervisor for the City of Santa Rosa. I work alongside Elio Toronto as a supervisor. So, most of us together oversee the park system along with its employees. Next slide, please. So, this is just a little outline of the sports field. And when I talk about sports fields, I'm talking about soccer field, ball field, old sports fields in general within the City of Santa Rosa that we maintain. This is just to give you an idea of the locations of these fields and the number of fields that we're overseeing. So, if you look at the bottom there, the totals, you know, we have three baseball fields, 11 classified as baseball or softball field, excuse me, 19 soccer fields that are officially soccer field. And then if you wanna look at the courts, tennis and pickleball, that could be a probably into an interpretation because a lot of our, some of our courts are, our tennis courts are used for pickleball. So, they can probably go either way on some of those. But again, this is just kind of give an idea of the field numbers that our staff is working on and where they're at throughout the city. Next slide, please. So, when we're, again, when we're talking about sports turf maintenance, we're talking about all turf regardless of whether they're soccer field or softball baseball field. And when we're talking about, again, field and turf, we're talking about a plant and a plant like any other plant, you know, has the life cycle. And when we were as the maintenance crew, that is, that's what drives our maintenance is where they're at in their life cycle and where we can get the most benefit from these activities and to provide, you know, a healthy turf or a healthy plant that can provide the elements for a good playing field. So, you know, a few things, you know, when you're dealing with plants, of course, you know, when we're looking at the wintertime, a plant is going to be slowing growth. It's not going to be taking up a lot of nutrients. Generally, it's a lot colder and, you know, there's not as much maintenance needed. It's not growing. The mowing is not needed as much. The plant is pretty much dormant. And, you know, and it's just weathering the storms, weathering the water. So, again, it's a plant that has a life cycle. And as that moves into spring, you know, it starts to grow. It's going to start taking up nutrients into the grass, blades. Mowing is going to be increased because of the growth. That is the time that we want to be out in the field doing the maintenance that's required. And then, again, as plants grow and go into fall, they start slowing down nutrients and starts slowing down and so forth. So, again, it's a whole, it's a plant. So, like any other, like any plant, you know, it needs breaks, it needs water, it needs the sun, it needs all those elements to be successful. And as a maintenance crew, that's what, that's our main goal is to promote that. Along with that, you know, the goal is always for us as a department to have safety, safety to the end users and a healthy turf, you know, usually that falls coincide with each other. So, healthy turf equals a safer field. That is how it correlates to each other. So, our normal, our operation normally starting in winter, when we talk about our maintenance and what we try to do as a maintenance crew, given the time, given the elements that we're dealing with, starting in winter, usually, you know, turn off the irrigation. That's the time that hopefully, you know, we get normal rainfall. We turn off the irrigation. We do a cycling of the valve to help exercise the valve. So, the seats of the valves do not get stuck. It's just, it's a general checking of the system, operation of the system, making sure that, you know, there's no breaks that happen. Because even though we're not using the field, things happen out in our parks that we don't necessarily have control over. So, we're always kind of doing those checks of irrigation systems. It's not as extensive as the other times, but it's still something we visit. Another thing that we deal with is gopher control. We do have a contract with a outside party to check our field for gopher's. This actually is a year around event that we have scheduled for all of our sports turf fields for safety reasons. So, that goes on year around, but it's something that we always have to stay up on. Wintertime, we also do some aeration if the weather and conditions are conducive to that. Generally, that can happen. We would like to have that all kind of completed by the wintertime, but it could carry over into the first part of winter, depending on field use, availability, that we can get in there and do the work and conditions of the field. This is also a time that we would want to do some overseeding. And what that means is basically, we developed a mix through experience over time, throwing down extra seed to help strengthen those weak areas in our turf. It just gives a little bit stronger growth. All those where areas, our hope is that we can get some seed down prior to temperature drops into soil so we can get some good germination. And hopefully with less play during the wintertime that that new seedling can get started and get established with the rainfall naturally. And then come springtime, we got a stronger stand. But that is the hope. Along with that would be a top dressing that would be put over the top of the turf to help protect the seed, provide a little cover for moisture covering the seed so that seed doesn't dry out before it can put down a root. So that's very helpful if we can do that at the same time. Other times an ideal situation would be doing some soil testing or fertilization. This is more of just a maintenance period. And given the weather, this may or may not happen. And like for example this past year, you would not be able to do any of this because we had such a heavy rain that are not over that. All of that stuff would have been washed away and we definitely don't wanna have leaching across the field, we want the plants to take it out. So unfortunately this time, this year that didn't happen. As we move out of springtime, moving into springtime, that's when we start really starting up our irrigation, checking things out in the normal season, making sure our irrigation heads are working properly, doing more checking of coverage and just spending a lot more time looking at our irrigation systems and our controllers. Again, gopher control is the year round thing. Generally this time of year that you get more activity with gopher's because again, they're an animal that's sensitive to heat and when it warms up, they get a lot more active. So it becomes a lot more, bigger importance that we keep up on those. Again, some aeration could happen during this time given the weather conditions. And then overseeding, top dressing the same thing and fertilization as well. As we go into summer, the summer heat put the big strain on our turf, the heat. The amount of daylight that we have, of course is a lot greater, our watering windows a lot shorter. So all the work that leads up to summer is basically at this point is trying to hold that as much as possible because this is the time that turf takes a beating. It's gone through spring, maybe some wet conditions of play in our fields by teams, by clubs. And so at this point, you definitely want to try to keep it maintained as much as possible, keep water on it as much as possible when we're allowed to do it. And so it takes quite a little bit of time. And this is when we noticed probably a few more irrigation problems just because of the use of our irrigation along with, which was interesting that a lot of our fields are adobe clay. Galvin Park is a field too, the upper field at Galvin. That's been known to crack. And this time of year, that is one of the hardest places to keep those cracks from opening up. And what's happening is that underneath the ground in the subsoil, that soil is drying out and it's creating the soil to become tighter, it's contracting and so it's pulling apart. And that all has to do with moisture. If you add water to it, it starts to expand and those cracks disappear. So our main goal in that case is to try to keep enough moisture and a strong root with our turf that hold that ground together so those cracks don't open up and create a safety hazard. And unfortunately, we're not able to keep enough water and so we supplement a little bit of soil into those cracks to help try to bridge them, to hold them and to prevent injury. So again, it's a challenging time of year, especially with our adobe soils in this area. As we get into fall, we start turning down our irrigation. This is a very, very tricky time for our maintenance crew. The biggest reason is because you have cooler nights, your daylight is shorter, your nights are longer and you start seeing a lot of wet spots because we're not getting the evaporation as in a normal day or a normal summer time. And so the fields become a lot wetter, we have to do a lot more adjustments and you get a lot more dew over time because again, just the moisture level is rising. So there's quite a little bit of adjustments during that time. Again, go for control happens throughout the year. Erroration can start again at this time. We definitely don't wanna aerate during the summer time because the idea is to hold the moisture. When you aerate, you promote air into the soil, you allow air to get into the soil, which then drives out the soil. So during the fall, when we know we have the right conditions, things are cooling down, this is the time that we can aerate help with the upcoming winter rains for water infiltration and erosion and other factors. So this is a great time to start doing. And if we have time, again, later in the fall period, we would try to do some overseeding with our grass mixes. Next slide, please. So the next one, our next big focus when our maintenance is is the ball fields and the infield maintenance. Now, this is just strictly when we're talking about, we're talking about dirt. This is the infield and the softballs and of course the dirt of the baseball field. And again, our main goal is safety, a safety for the players. And why we don't necessarily always able to meet those goals, that's our job is to provide the safe playing for everybody. We've had a lot of, why we do try to check on them on a daily basis. It's definitely hard to get around physically and look at every single spot. And I greatly appreciate the clubs that use our fields. We have great communication with them. So when they see issues as far as safety, they're welcome to call us. They call Amy there at the recreation and we address those as soon as possible. But when we're looking at our infields, we're basically looking at three times of the year that our focus is on. And that's pre-season where we try to do some weekly drags where we're trying to get the field in the shape after rain events, after long wet spells, times that we can't necessarily be on the field because we've actually caused more of a mess. I mean, it's might and we don't want to, we don't want to make more of a mess by trying to be on or trying to do something. But once we know that the weather has turned in the spring, we start our pre-season, which includes toost dragging, some weed control, which includes some mechanical types, which is a regular drag or toost drag. We also have been using, in some cases, some organic herbicide applications to do some, the burning of the top portion of the weeds as a contact herbicide, all organic. We don't use any synthetic type applications in any of our chemical applying applications. And then we then check out equipment, bases, base pegs, look at those highway, high wear areas around bases. And then we try to start inspecting for holes. For that, we know basically you're walking the field and filling them up with some help mended loan. We do, when we do that, we try to throw down a little seed at the same time to help promote a little bit of growth in that grass to get reestablished if we possibly can. During the ball season itself, that's when we go into a weekly mode. This is supporting the programming for recreation and their softball and leaks. And that includes the daily prep, which again kind of follows what we would do on a weekly basis, but tightening it up to a daily activity checking the places around home plate for a second to their base, packing some new infield around those areas, checking for bases, making sure they're tight, they're snug to a point as far as safety-wise. And again, just kind of doing the mains period. And once clubs get on these fields, it definitely helps out on the weeds. Ball season, we usually don't have a problem with the weeds because there's enough play on it. There's enough people, kids, sliding activity that we do not have to work as hard in the weed control. At the very end of the post-season, again, our goal is to try to have year-round activity of weed control in these fields so they don't come overly grown. Doing some tooth-dragging if weather is conducive, repairing some transition areas, and that's the area between the dirt and the side. Trying to get that cleaned up a little bit. Over time as clubs and as we do the maintenance, dirt gets pushed out and then we come to a hump in that transition area. So our goal is to try to keep that pushback cleaned up. Sometimes you end up having to dig them out and reestablish turf in those areas, but the best practice is to try to keep them clean going into it so it doesn't become a bigger mess later on. And again, just kind of general equipment repair, visual repair on these things. And again, just trying to stay up on these items so they do not get too overwhelming or when someone's out playing a game with their kids or something that no one gets hurt on the equipment that's out there. All our fields are open. All turf is open year-round with the exception of some of the ball fields that we do try to lock up just to keep the area maintained and keep it safe and from vandals. But all of our fields are open for the public year-round soccer field. So it's not uncommon that you would see on a weekend someone playing soccer. And again, that's our goal is to provide a safe playing area for all of the residents of Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. So some of the challenges that we face, weather is a big one. Of course, everything is dependent. You're talking about a plant and us being on dirt side during wet or dry periods that can cause us problems. If the field is wet, if it's soggy from a long cell of rain, we can't be out on the field doing the aeration. We can't be doing the things that would promote a healthier turf. The best thing is actually is to stay off the field and let nature take its course. It's really sort of deceiving though, in this area and what we found out, especially this past year is that after big rain events, the fields are saturated, you walk out there, you feel like you're walking on a big sponge. And there's absolutely nothing in our maintenance department that we can do to prevent that. The best thing is for naturally the fields to dry out and it can dry out because of the air temperature, wind, sun, or just percolating through the soil. When we're on clay soils, it just takes longer. Water doesn't percolate through clay very quickly because of the pores. The pores of sand are a lot bigger so water can travel through that. Clay, they're a lot smaller, they're tighter. It holds on to the moisture a lot longer. So unfortunately, when we have a big rainy event and then next weekend we have 70 degree weather, everybody wants to be out in the field because of the beautiful weather. Natural turf and dirt, it doesn't dry out. So you just have to wait. You cannot get on there and start playing on it, you will start tearing it up. So it's a really challenge for us as a maintenance team dealing with the weather, especially wet, cold weather and doing anything with fields and then being able to predict what the weather is gonna do. We plan as best we can, but we don't have control over the rain and when it happens, how much it happens. So we're pretty much at its mercy. And the next thing along with the weather is the drought. Amy touched on it a little bit and this is something that's, it's not, well, looking out the day how sunny it is. It's something that's gonna be a really challenge for us this coming year. Currently, we are following the guidelines set by the state and our water department on water use. And currently, they're requiring a 20% reduction from this time. And how they're doing that is they're looking at two years ago when we weren't in a drought and they expect that we follow the same rule. So what that means is if they say like, they'll look at the records for us at this time last two years ago and they'll want to see that it's 20% deducted at this point. Well, if two years ago we were wet and we weren't doing any watering at this time, so we're basically at zero today because we didn't use any water two years ago. So it's been a really challenge and I think it will be a really challenge going forward as we look at where the levels of the reservoir, the lake is, what we have available for water that these restrictions will only get tougher for us moving forward. So we are working with water use efficiency, talking with them, showing them our fields, working with them and showing our maintenance problems related to the drought. But this is a lot bigger problem than just the city of Santa Rosa. I mean, this is a state problem and I don't know what the summer's gonna look like, but if we don't get any rain, serious rain, it could really put our field and our turf in a real bad shape. So I just want to let everyone know we're doing the best we can, but we are like every other individual in the city that we're expected to follow the rules as it's presented to us. And so it is a challenge for us. Another challenge that we're facing is resources, the labor and the funds. All of our labor is shared throughout the city with every other task that we're assigned to do. If we have a tree emergency, we have parks crew doing tree work, taking care of those. If we have playgrounds that need inspection, need repairs, it's the same crew that does sports fields that do the repairs on our playground. It's the same crew that does the restroom cleaning. So there's a lot that we're spread out on. We try to focus on the seasonal stuff and try to make that our priority. But again, we're spread out across the board. We have 67, 70 parks across the city that our staff maintain along with landscape areas, trying to keep vision triangles and median clean for safe passage. So there's just a lot going on that our crew has to do. And ball field turf maintenance is one of many. Another challenge is the animal damage, gopers and weeds. I mentioned about our contractor. Unfortunately, we don't have control over gopers, where they run, where they start their home. And so it has to be a year-round process for us. We've had spells where gopers has been more of a problem and less of a problem. And when we know that we have more of a problem, we make sure that we communicate with our contractor to make sure that those areas are hit and monitored and that the gopers are treated, along with that, the weed controls. Like I mentioned, we use mechanical means, whether that's mowing the weeds down using some pillage type equipment, mechanically to take care of the weeds in the infield and use of organic pesticide to try to burn some of those weeds down. So it's a combination that we try to use an IPM approach that one thing is not going to fix everything, but we want to make sure that we do it responsibly and look at what the best option is, given the time that we're trying to do that work. Another challenge is just human damage, vandalism, graffiti. There's just maintenance needs that we don't plan on and the picture there on the bottom there shows, someone decided to take a joyride on one of our soccer fields. And so again, that takes extra work on us to try to repair that and get that back in playable condition. And again, you're talking about a living, a grass, a plant and unfortunately, you can't fix something like that overnight. It takes time, it takes seed, it takes water. And unfortunately, some people feel like that's something they need to do, but it definitely doesn't make our job any easier when we have to deal with that. And then one of the other things is just time. Grass needs time to rest. And the ideal situation that you would let it grow, you let it get stronger, and then it can withstand a lot of play, but three months out of the year in a time that the grass in any plant is not growing because it's not the season for it to grow, it's really hard to establish and get a good grass growing in a three months period when the plant is shut down and basically it's dormant until the springtime. So that's a big challenge for us. I mean, we work around what we can as far as supporting recreation. We've done some field closures that kind of give a little bit more time for that to grass to grow, but when we do that, we take fields out of playability and then it puts more stress on some of our other fields. So there's definitely things that we're doing to try to help out in all these cases, but it's definitely every year is different. Every year is a challenge. And while we have a lot of goals and we try to perform on all those goals, unfortunately it doesn't always pan out the way we plan. It's just factors that we can't control of. Next slide. So I'd like to finish by just thanking all of the board for your support. I definitely want to thank the support of getting us some groundskeepers and that we were been able to add onto our staff to help out with some of these ball field maintenance needs. Our plan is to use those temporary groundskeepers as maintenance in our ball fields. So I greatly appreciate your support and your communication with the city council and the members on giving us the support and being a voice for us because without your support and your help, we would definitely, it would be a lot harder to do our job. So I just wanted to say thank you. And with that, if you have any questions or comments, I would try to answer them for you. Thank you, Tim. So I'll do this right this time. We're gonna always try to go to public comment right after a presentation, but before that, if anyone has any clarifying questions. So no comments or deep inquiries, just kind of a clarifying question on that presentation. How many board members? Steve, was that a hand raised or a light adjustment? I'm gonna go with light adjustment. Okay, let's move on to public comment. Do we have any public comments on agenda item 7.2? We do, we have one hand. John, I'm gonna go ahead and ask you to unmute. Again, I just wanted to thank the park maintenance staff for their diligent work trying to keep these fields in these parks in as good a shape as they can with the limited resources they have. I wanted to comment that on your list of challenges is one that you failed to put in there is the overuse of fields. And, you know, these grass fields, they're underlain by living organisms that have a ability to repair themselves and they have an ability to withstand a certain amount of use. What we find is oftentimes we are scheduling, the city of Santa Rosa is scheduling so much use on these fields that it exceeds the capacity of the turf to heal itself. And so over an extended period of time, the turf breaks down. As was suggested earlier by the city staff, you know, one of the solutions we have is to build more fields. So any individual field would get less use. And in the light of the drought, we would be inclined to support building more artificial turf fields with lights. The artificial turf fields generally don't require water. You can have lights, you can have them in the evening and relieve some of the overuse of the natural grass fields. So, you know, it's a big integrating problem where you have to look at your field maintenance practices along with the new field, trying to get a mixed field that will allow you to get more use of the fields and the natural grass fields to some extent. We said that we're in a drought environment here by putting in, I think there've been 225 recent years. And that just- I'm sorry, John, do you keep cutting out? Oh, I do. I'm gonna change to a job right here. Wait, what's that? Is that better? Yeah, I think so, yeah, go ahead. I was just saying that the city of Las Vegas put in two, the greater Las Vegas area. I think some of them were in Henderson and some were in Las Vegas. They put in two very large artificial turf complexes in part to relieve their water demands. And that's something that in the long run, we may have to do. And the long run may be shorter than we think if this drought gets worse or continues for a long time. And again, thank you, Tim. I would just ask, Tim, if you could comment on how many times and say the last three years, you've done these three seasons of aeration and overseeding on the 19 soccer fields, because my general understanding and observation is that stuff hasn't been done regularly in recent years. Thank you, John, for that comment. We are gonna move on to any board member comments or questions for Tim. Terry, you're up. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation, Tim. So Mr. Quinn, our public speaker actually brought up my big question, which is the pros and cons from a maintenance standpoint of artificial turf or all weather turf versus natural turf and setting the cost aside, because I know installation of those fields or conversion of those fields is really prohibitively expensive, but just from a maintenance standpoint, can you help me understand the benefits or even the cons of an artificial turf field? So as far as the maintenance of artificial turf, there are still maintenance required for artificial turf. Some of those are what they call like combing, where you have to basically, it's a dragon machine kind of combing the field, to keep the material in the right place, because it can also move around underneath the top layer of the surface. Other things that happen as well as is going through and actually with the magnet and picking up any metal objects whatsoever. Again, anything metal that gets into that could cause damage to it. So you want it continuing to like, they have them set up as this basically big magnets that you have to drive over them to pick up any metal pieces. And so like, can I mention the combing and the grooming? Again, a lot of it's just, it's not probably as extensive as say a turf, regular natural turf, but there are still the maintenance requirement and even the maintenance, even there's irrigation sometimes required of the artificial turf because it does get hot. So there is possibly could be some irrigation required to water it down. The big thing it does, as it mentioned, it does save on water usage. But as far as the maintenance, there is still a maintenance requirement associated with it. And again, depending on the play of the field, you would have to do the combing or the grooming more often or less depending on the play. Because again, when you invest that much money, you wanna make sure that it lasts the longest as possible. So it probably would be more, it would be more a schedule, more of a priority to make sure all that happens because you don't wanna damage that turf, that artificial turf and shorten its lifespan. And so that would probably have to be put a priority, whereas the natural turf would be, it's more forgiving overall because you can fix that. It might take a little time on these spots, but you can fix those areas, those high-wear areas, but you don't have that option. If you make a mistake or miss something or if that artificial turf gets damaged, then it's a bigger, a lot bigger expense in the long run. And after a wet weather event, is the artificial turf field more playable sooner than a natural turf field? Oh yeah, definitely. It's set up for that. I mean, it's set up to be playable on rain and wet conditions. There's drainage associated with it that takes the water away. But yeah, it's all weather. So it doesn't matter if it's rainy, sunny, you can play on it anytime. Okay, thank you. Carolina, go ahead. I wanna thank you for the wonderful job that you're doing on all those fields. I'm always amazed how many there are. And whenever you go by them, and it's pretty easy to go by a park or any kind of a playing field in Santa Rosa, and they really look terrific. And I wanna thank you. I know this just doesn't happen. I just wanna thank you for staying on top of it and giving us the wonderful opportunities for the kids and the families to play. So you and your guys are great. It's our pleasure. Our whole crew is very proud of the work they do. They take a lot of pride in the field. You can tell. So I will definitely pass that on to them and they'll greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Good. Any other board comments or questions? Carol, go ahead. Hi, Tim. Hello. Several questions, go figure. Going back to the sports turf maintenance, four seasons. From what I can tell the fields, not necessarily the baseball fields, but the open fields, they're in use year round. They don't really have off seasons. I know that individual fields are sometimes put fallow and marked. Sometimes those signs are respected and observed. Sometimes they're not. Do you, regardless of the weather, regardless of the use, or is the third slide kind of more of an ideal than a practical reality? It's more ideal than reality. We're definitely kind of at the mercy of the most part of our field usage. Our goal is to have fields available for everybody regardless of the time of year. And we can't necessarily police, keeping people out of them. And so we do the best we can. There's row groups that play in fields that can tear them up in a weekend. And it is a challenge because they are open to everybody. For use, but yeah, it's more ideal situation as the slide I'm showing. And that's our goal. That's what we tried to get. Thank you. My next question had to do with perspective on how many hours a day. Again, this would be more soccer fields. How many groups can come through? How often the turnover is? And if any of the groups that use them ever do a bit of maintenance between events, be it replacing divots. Can we ask our users to help out a challenging situation? I'm glad you brought that up. So on the soccer side of things, we have not had a group or volunteer. Well, I actually take that back. Once in a while we get a group that would volunteer to do a divot replace. We provide soil for them that they can go out and do some replacement. Generally it's the younger clubs that are willing to do that, aspects of it. Not so much maybe the older teams are inclined to do that. But we've had members step up and offer some help and give us support in some ways. We get that more support probably from the softball and baseball leagues. They are very good because about volunteering and helping us out maintain those fields. And so I guess I wanna make sure I thank them because we do get a lot from them. They take a lot of pride in their fields. And as baseball players and as younger age group, they definitely get involved with that. So we do work with a lot of the groups more so on the baseball softball side than the soccer. Again, it kind of goes with the age and what they're willing to do. But we don't necessarily require that as far as their agreement. A lot of times they just volunteer to do it but there's no requirement for them. Thank you. And my last question was a soccer field. How many hours a day could a field be getting hammered by youth with youth? On the weekend, it's probably all day from probably from eight o'clock or from sunup to sundown that a soccer field can be used. That's probably a better question probably for Amy because of the scheduling that she does. But we can definitely tell a weekend separate from a weekday on our field views because come Monday, Tuesday, when we're out there seeing checking out the damages, you can definitely see the wear over a weekend period of time. Generally like during the weekdays, maybe in the evenings because that's when kids and stuff are playing. So maybe they can get a game in there in the evening but on the weekend I'm pretty sure that they're probably sunup to sundown. Thank you. I'll add to that Carol that they are rented on the weekends every field from nine a.m. to about six p.m. on the weekends and if there's sunlight hours and when they're done, if a game ends early there are row groups standing on the side of the field ready to take the field. As soon as sanctioned team with the permit leaves there's other teams and row groups showing up to take the field. As Tim said, use seven days a week from morning till night. Any other questions or comments from board members? Right Tim, I had a few. We got a presentation a few months ago from a consulting firm that's doing maintenance assessment and I know that's not the right term. So Jen or Tim, whatever that study we're doing. So tell me the right term and then what's your interaction with that? So I mean, you're correct in the term they're assessing the park use. So yeah, in our communication with them they provided us kind of with a outline or a survey that we took around to all our fields in evaluating those items that we are involved with. A big one was irrigation. Because we're in there, you know, hands on doing our irrigation repairs knowing the age of the system, knowing the problems of the system. We gave that input to them to put into their metrics and seeing where everything fits that. So and then along with that irrigation, that kind of goes hand in hand with the turf. Usually if you see poor looking turf it's generally associated with poor irrigation. So those go hand in hand. But we worked hand in hand with them and determining what was wrong with certain parts and what needs to be fixed and repaired and where are we having challenges at. Okay, that's great. I think that's a really important effort that the public will actually be able to see those scores and all the information and hold us accountable. And you'll keep doing a great job. I had a question too on the drought issue. How about how much, what percentage of the city's water use is our acreage at parks? Do you know that on top of your head? Like the average park size, is that what you're kind of? No, in the total out of a hundred percent what percentage is used on our parks? As far as our water usage? Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of our parks, I mean they were designed with a lot of turf. It's not until here recently that they kind of switched over and having smaller turf panels and so forth. So as far as the water that we use it's probably 90, 95% of the water that maintenance uses is turf. Well, I was gonna say, I can try and just let you know, we don't usually track comparisons by department. We certainly have a water budget for how much we use in parks and we can get that information. We can get that information to you as a comparison but it's not something we necessarily would get from who's using water and facilities if that's what you're asking No, that's no, sorry. And maybe Tim, that question wasn't for you. That was more, I know it's not a lot is what I'm getting at. I know it's like in the single digits of the city's total water use. And I think to members of the public they might think it's a lot more. So I think it would be helpful to broadcast that more widely to folks that, you know all these fields, everything. So for example, single family homes were like over 80% of the city's water use. So out of that 100%, 80 is people's houses. I'm just trying to figure out how we can communicate to the public because I hear that from folks is how much water we're using at the parks. And so I just wanna be able to go back to them and say, well, actually only 7% of the city's water waters our parks or whatever it's doing you know, flushing toilets or anything. Yeah, Carol, would you have a thought on that? Yeah, I have an anecdotal comment on that at a recent park cleanup someone came by and asked staff why everything looks so green. They weren't allowed to water their lawns but everything looks so green. And staff said, well, it's winter, we don't water except for the ballpark, which the ball field Jen, you can correct me or Tim there was a safety issue where certain fields in use have to be watered as a safety accommodation but the parks themselves are not watered. And I thought maybe some courtesy signs along those lines that said something like note water is not being used on word it properly people didn't like thinking that the parks were getting to do something that they weren't. And a little bit of information could potentially go a long way. Yeah, great point, Carol. And Tim, by the way, I was at that cleanup I think Carol's talking about too and so was Madonna at Franklin Park. So I wanted to say good job to your crew on that. It was fun to come out and do that. Anyways, if you want to respond to Carol, go ahead. All right, well, thank you. Carol, I mean, exactly right. I mean, we are not watering the parks and the time of the year things are green. This is still winter. And so, I mean, we are doing some watering now currently that as far as safety wise and for seeing some of the areas that are being dried out that we can put a little bit of water on. But for the most part, everything you see right now is all natural, you know, morning dew and so forth, the moisture's drawn up during the night. So everything looks wet. And so it's a little deceiving right now. And again, I understand it here, you know, middle of February we had, you know, close to 80 degree weather. And so it does feel like spring, but it is still winter and the plant is doing what it does during the winter time. It stays green because the conditions are perfect for it. Yep. Okay, thanks, Tim. Those were my questions. Oh, Terry, go ahead. That's one quick follow up question actually to your question, Logan. Are we using reclaimed water on any of our parks? Yes, we are. I can answer that. So the fields that we're able to have reclaimed water actually is just the one is at a place to play. That's as far as the system has been designed to handle another, we have a few other little parks and family parks has reclaimed water on it. But that's as far as the system has been brought to it. A lot of the water, of course, is going up to the geysers. And so as far as expanding the system, I think they've talked a little bit about that at the higher levels of how much water we're giving to that operation that we couldn't possibly make available to some of our other operations. But currently the only, say, ball soccer fields or sports fields that we got reclaimed water actually happened, is that a place to play? Okay. Yeah, I remember the days where we couldn't give it away and now it's quite the commodities. Thank you. Carol. Tim, correct me if I'm wrong. Don't we also have well water used specifically out at Galvin? I don't know if there's any other that's on well. So, well, at Galvin, the only probably well water that is for the golf course, the park itself is domestic water that waters that field. And we do have some other well, Jennings Park and Southwest Park have some wells that we're able to pull some from to water those fields. So there is some out there, but the majority is domestic water. All right. If that is everyone. We have a follow-up question from John, if you have time. Yeah, we can entertain another public comment. That's fine. All right, John, we'll give you one more minute. Great, I started that raising my hand on the artificial turf maintenance thing. I have been involved in artificial turf fields for, I don't know, 17 or 18 years now and have maintained artificial turf fields for 17 or 18 years. They require maintenance, same order of magnitude as natural grass field if you wanna maintain them at a high level. FIFA recommends that you groom a artificial turf field for every 40 hours of use by 22 players. So if you're typical youth environment, you're gonna get between 40 and 80 hours of use per week on an artificial turf field. And somebody was talking about usage. One of the things I would say is on a natural grass field, the field will probably sustain about 20 hours of use a week. You get about 15 hours of use after school and you get about 16 hours of use on the weekends. And so you're breaking down the field over time. Thank you, John, Sue Sink, and right on time. Chair Pitts, you're muted. I am muted, thank you. Thanks, John, for that comment. Just one other thing I'll add is I don't know why there's some people that really hate artificial turf and have some conspiracy theories about it. So you might get that sort of interaction, Tim, if we ever go down that road. But thank you for that presentation and thanks to Amy for helping out. All right, have a good evening, thank you. Thanks you too. All right, thank you everyone for the great questions in the discussion. Next on the agenda is item eight, our committee reports. Item 8.1 is our mayor's lunch. I attended that and as did Carol and I don't have any major updates. I think one that is not gonna surprise folks since the Board of Public Utilities is looking at more drought-related restrictions. Basically, if the city does not get a lot more rain, we're gonna be entering into what's known as stage five. And the highlight of stage five, there's a lot, but it would put a new building moratorium, new housing moratorium into effect. So this is an ordinance from the 1990s that's never really been updated. I think the council will definitely be updating that part of it and maybe others. But you know, could be in for a long, long, hot summer. The other update was from the Charter Review Committee. The chair, Patty Sisko shared some of our work. I'm also on that. And we're definitely looking at some interesting stuff. We've gotten through increasing council member pay. That's gonna go to the city council to possibly place on the ballot. We debated an at-large elected mayor. That was more mixed. Kind of a basic, almost a split vote. So the council can take that up or not and ask the voters to approve that. And these changes would go in the November 2022 ballot to change the charter. And then the other one was about ranked choice voting. So we have nine more topics the city council assigned us. So I'm sure I'll have more to update folks. And that's some interesting stuff. If you want some hardcore political science stuff, go watch those meetings. It's, I love it. And item 8.2, any questions on that? Any comments? All right. Item 8.2, Carol, do you have a report from the Waterways Committee? I do. Last month we were presented with a proposal from the Hyatt down on the Santa Rosa Creek wanting to rather drastically update their fencing because of problems with the homeless issue. And the presentation, it wasn't as fleshed out as the board had wanted. So it's been revised and is coming back to the Waterways Committee tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. As a result of this 800 foot long fence on the Prince Memorial Greenway, I've had even more cause to go down. I visit it regularly on my bicycle, but I am pleased to report that currently the path is amazingly clean to the point where last Saturday's river cleanup the river community cleans it up. I wanted to go, couldn't email to friend afterwards and said, sorry, too cold for me. And she reported back, that's okay. It was a huge turnout and very little to do. Now, I have never heard anything so wonderful as there was very little to do on the creek. So we'll see what happens tomorrow. We'll see what happens moving forward with this project and many things are starting to pop on the downtown section of the Santa Rosa Creek, more on that at a later date. Thanks Carol. I rode my bike down there on Saturday and it was looking good. Thanks for that report. Okay, we are moving on. Any questions or comments from the board? No. But director Santos, we are moving on to agenda item nine. Do we have any written or electronic communications? So the board received two electronic communications, one from Adolfo Mendoza regarding park and field maintenance, specifically regarding soccer and another one from Casey Ohlenberger from regarding Doyle baseball field. Thank you. All right, we are on to agenda item 10. This is our future agenda items. Normally I would go at the end, but I wanna kick this one off with something that's important to me. I would like us to discuss in the future a plaque at Flat Rock Park. And for those that aren't familiar with this plaque, it's pretty old. It was put there in 1936 and by today's standards, it's basically, it's very offensive and basically racist. It glorifies a myth about how Santa Rosa was named. And just putting that aside, whether that happened or not, it uses the term Indian made to describe the event. Anyways, what I've done is I've directed staff to look at how we can possibly remove this plaque. It definitely does not fit our modern standards. It does not fit the city's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think it should be taken down. What happens after that, I think is a broader discussion and I wanna get folks' thoughts on this one now or when we talk about it in the future. But I also wanna broaden this conversation to other park sites that could use an addition or a subtraction to recognize some of our marginalized communities. For example, we have Comstock Mall downtown where there used to be a historic Chinatown and there's no recognition of that right now. So I want folks to use your imagination, use your heart and try to figure out how we can do better as a city. So I've spoken with board member Cruz about this and with staff. So we'll be talking about Flat Rock Park in the future. It's near and dear to my heart. I grew up nearby playing there a lot. And I'll just tell you, I've had city residents bring this up with me too. This isn't just my own issue. They're deeply offended by it. And that's not how folks should feel when they visit our parks. So we'll see that in the future. And Madonna, go ahead if you have some thoughts. Thank you, yes. I want it torn down as soon as possible, but in a respectful and professional way, the research and wants from the native community is where I would want to go. Who would I give that information or suggestions to, would that be to Jen or would that be to you, Mr. Pitts? Jen, go ahead. I would say please feel free to send me any information you have or if anybody else on the board has comments or questions, please feel free to send those to me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, and most, you know, and to me it's reaching out to the natives that were here, you know, the Miwok. So and I am not Miwok, but my relatives are. So I know who I need to talk with. Thank you. Thanks, Madonna. Carol, go ahead. Yeah, I'm wondering if there are any protocols in place for this kind of thing. We would be usually in my long history, we would usually be at the end of this process reviewing it. Good for, good on you for spearheading this, but I'm wondering if there are city protocols or steps in place that we should acknowledge. And the other thing unrelated is in looking at the presentation schedule that Shelley presented at the beginning of the year. Today was scheduled for Park Planning 2022. I'm wondering if that has been moved to a different month. And I would move that on my calendar if that's been decided. Thank you. Thanks, Carol. Yeah, on the first point, that's a great question. So Jen is looking into that and I'll let her speak to that and working with the city attorney's office on how we would do that. It's also sort of adjacent to our update to our naming policy on Parks. So those are good questions, Carol. We need to probably make better procedures if we don't have them, but they are looking into that. And then also on the scheduling, I'll let Jen answer that one too on the scheduled items. Go ahead, Jen. Sure, and one of the things we're looking at is there doesn't appear to be any particular policy relating to something like this. So one of the reasons we'll be bringing this back at a future date is that it's more than a discussion for this board. It's a discussion for city and city council members on the city attorney's office. So it's going to be a much bigger endeavor. And so we want to make sure we're having that discussion with our elected officials and our executive team at the city and we'll be bringing back updates here to the board when we have them for discussion at the board level. And then yes, we often do move things around on our schedule depending on different things that are happening. And the budget team was a little bit behind in getting us the numbers for our capital update. So we're moving it to March. It'll give you a capital update in March. Yes. Yeah, and I'm fully aware this is a process that will probably get political and controversial. It will definitely have to be handled by the city council. But I've spoken with Mayor Rogers. He's fully in support of removing the plaque also is deeply offended. So we've got our back on this. And I know it's also not going to be quick, but it's the right thing to do. So yeah, those were my future agenda items. Does anyone want to add anything else for a future agenda item? Steve, I thought you might have an idea. What idea might that be? I was told you had a good idea and I wanted to give you credit for it about us giving our own updates. Oh, well, thank you. It's just something that's done in most board meetings, commissions and city councils around the state, around the country. And it's, I think it's going to work out quite nicely. You know, you've got an opportunity to share things that they're thinking about in addition to putting things on future agendas, many times things don't make it to the agenda. And I think it's good for the public to also hear that their board members, commissioners and city council folks are, you know, thinking beyond the agenda that's in front of them. I agree 100%, great idea. And you deserve credit. The city council does that. So we can model after them and already spoken with staff about that. So I hope that'll start next month. Let's try to get that going pretty soon. Eric, go ahead. Not a future agenda item specifically, but I'm just curious for Jen, has there been any discussion at the city about resuming in-person meetings in the near future? Not in particular. I know that there's been some guidance for us that we may start attending in-person meetings, but for the board itself, we are still working on the technology to make a hybrid meeting happen. So that's where the discussions have been around hybrid because this model works so well for members of the public that cannot physically be in attendance. They can attend this. It also gets recorded. So if they couldn't make the meeting, they can come back and look at it. So we're looking at options for us to use technology in the location where we used to have our in-person meetings at Findley. That is on schedule to be updated so that we can conduct hybrid meetings. It's not moving as quickly as we had anticipated. We thought it would be a little bit easier than it has been, but it's moving forward. But staff and others at the city are allowed to now attend meetings in-person or meet people at sites, et cetera. So we're starting to do that again and we're all back in the office. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, Tara, I asked about that too. And I would love to see you all in-person. I think it'll make our discussions better and more robust. I also want to make sure that we still have a virtual format. So like Jen said, people have really gotten used to this in the last two years. I think engagement's increased and gotten better personally. And so I'm committed to us doing a hybrid format. We can't do it in the council chambers. There's more pressing business probably, but maybe someday. But Findley would be great. And thank you, Jen, for keeping the pedal to the metal on that one. Any other future agenda items that anyone would like to see? Okay, well, I hope I didn't mess up my first chair meeting too much. Thank you, everyone. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the board will be held on Wednesday, March 23rd at 4 p.m., still at 4 p.m. for now. Stay tuned for that change. And I'm gonna pick up my gavel again. So I can actually bang the meeting out. And with that, I adjourn this meeting of the board of community services at 6.10 p.m. Thank you, everyone.