 this day, October 27th. Now that we have a quorum, I'd like to welcome all of you and the members of the public. And thank you all for coming today. And isn't it wonderful that we had rain and it's not raining right now. My name is Carol Quant. I'm the current chair of the Board of Community Services. I'd also like to introduce our hosts, Jackie and Alisa and let you know that these two ladies will be coordinating the public comments and helping us during the meeting and taking notes for any follow-up needs we may have. At this time, the panelists and presenters should please silence your cell phones and keep your 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 comment section of the agenda, for privacy reasons, the host will rename you to caller and only the last four digits of your cell phone number will show. Additionally, please know the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully or if necessary, the meeting will end immediately. And with that, may I have the host explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting. Thank you, Chair Klant. At each agenda item, the item will be presented. 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 comments item is open. Once the chair has called for public comments, the chair will ask the public to raise their hands if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. Those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on those who have raised their hands. Public comment is limited to three minutes and a courtesy timer will appear on the screen. Email public comments 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. And with that, I call this meeting, October 27th of the board of community services to order at 4.09 in the afternoon. Pursuant to government code 54953E and the recommendation of the public health officer of the County of Sonoma, this board of community services meeting and its members will be participating in today's meeting via Zoom. Board members and staff are participating from remote locations or practicing appropriate social distancing if not in remote locations. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the City of Santa Rosa's website and on the agenda. And with that, can we have a roll call? Please respond when I call your name. Chair Kwant. Here. Vice Chair Griffin. Vice Chair Griffin. Here. Thank you. Board member Stillman. Here. Board member Pitts. Here. Board member Cruz. Here. Board member Spence. Here. Let the record reflect that all the board members are present. Great, thank you so much. At this point, I'd like to open the floor to public comments on non-agenda items. This is when people may address the board of community services on matters not listed on this agenda, but that are the subject matter of this board. Do we have any public comments for item number three? There are no hands raised. Great, thank you for checking. With that, we will move on to item number four, which is the approval of minutes from our September meeting. Are there any edits or corrections needed for that? Raise your hand if you need to make any changes. Seeing no changes, we will consider them approved as submitted. Moving forward, upcoming events and reports on accomplished items, we'll turn this over to Jen Santos. Can we have a report on upcoming and accomplished events? And possibly a few words on how parks handled our brief bit of rain over the weekend. Sure, thank you, Chair Cuant. I'm Jen Santos, W.A. Director for Parks. And I'll go over your upcoming and accomplished events of which she received an attachment with the fullest, but I wanted to highlight the upcoming event because our next meeting will be in December. So I really wanted to highlight the annual hand-made holiday crafts fair. That's always really popular and we're looking forward to that happening in some form this December 4th and 5th. And then excitedly, I'd like to tell you about our accomplished events surrounding Halloween. Of course, the Halloween at Howard was fantastic, as usual, as expected. It rained, so staff switched to a drive-through mode for our Halloween at Howard, which was really successful and the families really enjoyed it. And of course, the floating pumpkin patch, both of those were sold out and really well attended. But we also wanted to say it's also a recognition of returning to activities where we are using masks and social distancing. So it's kind of a milestone for us to get back to events where people can actually attend in person, although we still are using COVID safe days, et cetera. And as far as the rain event, we did activate our Emergency Operations Center at the city and city staff from parks and facilities. We're out and about helping with putting up signage and checking out our parks where we have drainage issues. All of our parks did really, really well, but we usually have little areas where we put out signage to remind people that, although it looks fun to play in the river at that point, we definitely need to stay away from it. We do have park maintenance staff on board, if you'd like more details, as well as recreation staff, of course, on board, if you'd like more details of any of that. But they handled it really well, but they've been working all weekend, so they've been really, really busy dealing with that. But we were ready for it and prepared and we activated our emergency operations center. And that concludes the accomplished events and upcoming events. Great. Any questions on either the park maintenance during the rain or anything that Jen discussed? We do have somebody here from the maintenance side. Seeing no hands, we will move forward to Director Updates. Thanks again, Chair Kwant. And just have a few updates today. Just wanting to, first of all, foremost, announce that our beloved admin secretary, Mary Lou Nichols, is retiring from the city. I know you all received an update from staff, but we also wanted to announce it here and thank her live, even though she can't be here due to a family emergency. She has retired and we are really gonna sorely miss her, but we are in great hands. You'll be seeing Shelly McClure is our new recording secretary for the Board of Community Services and she is assisting the team behind the scenes today and observing and she'll be onboard in December to help us. So we're really good to miss Mary Lou and we wish her the absolute best. I'm very happy for her. And we are in good hands here and we're set to start the new wealth in December with Shelly and, of course, Jackie is your host tonight as well as Alyssa backing up there. All the three of them are always gonna be helping out in some way. We also wanted to, just a few little announcements that if you're downtown at City Hall, the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Committee replanted some planters downtown at City Hall right at the southwest corner. It looks great. So if you're out and about there, they've done a good job and they are funding the ongoing maintenance there for that corner to be updated. And we also, just to let you know something behind the scenes, we've been working on an internal system to help get work orders for maintenance out to city-wide staff. So that's not just park maintenance, it's also everybody else providing some sort of reaction to a request at the city when we receive something from the community or something internally. It's called City Works. And some of us have been working in a program that sometimes worked for creating work orders. Other of us, not so much. This, we hope to have a nice cohesive way of sending out staff and tracking the work we're doing because some of the things that are really frustrating for us is we know how much work we're doing, but we don't have a lot of data to back up how much work is happening, where it's happening, where we're seeing problem and repeat maintenance. So this is a system that will help us track that. And we're gonna get started working with that. It's a long process, but we're gonna hopefully roll out this year if not soon early into next year. And we'll have more updates for you, but it's exciting for us. So we wanted to share that with you. And then also a reminder that we're gonna skip our November meeting because it always falls on the Thanksgiving holiday and we're very close to it and we'll have our next meeting in December. And then finally, just a little update as a reminder that staff here at the city are returning to work on Monday in person. And so it still means that folks, staff can work hybrid, they can work from home and at work with approval, but that generally you should see staff returning to work on Monday as usual. And we'll see how things go. We are still obviously doing face masks and social distancing, but it's pretty exciting. And we're looking forward to seeing all of our coworkers back here. And with that, that concludes Director Updates. Thank you, Jen. Any feedback or queries for Jen on Director Updates? Yeah, I have just have one question with the return to the city of Santa Rosa. So does that mean public can come, like safe clients that come to my job and they need to go to the city? Can I say, oh, they're open, you can go or do they still need to make an appointment or email? Yeah, actually, that's a good question. And I'll have to follow up with you for other departments throughout the city as far as public hours, but generally, yes. You should be able to send folks city-wide. There should be full coverage for most of those, but I can't speak for all departments. So we can follow up with some of the details as we start to hear them once we reopen in November. Thierry. Thank you. Just a quick question, Jen, on city works. Will that application have a public portal or will the public continue to use My Santa Rosa to submit requests for maintenance or for other needs? That is a good question. And I believe that you'll still be using some version of My Santa Rosa to do that, but I was going to say, let me turn to our park maintenance staff to see if they have any updates on that. But that's my understanding, is that you'll still be using My Santa Rosa to connect, although there might be some changes in how that operates. Okay, good enough. We're going to move on to item 7.1, which is the presentation and discussion on pickleball at the family tennis courts. And Jen, back to you. Thank you, Chair Kwant. And I'm actually going to turn this over to Jeff to kind of kick off the meeting, but I did want to let you know that we have received a number of public emails for this and as Jackie announced, although they won't be read aloud here, they are part of the record and they are referenceable on the website for the agenda and attached there, if you'd like to read them all, but we did receive over 142 and we had, we did a little internal, there was about 121 support for this proposal that you're going to hear from the pickleball group and we'll leave it at that. And I'll turn it over to Jeff to get us to introduce the topic. Thank you, Jen. And good afternoon board, Jeff Tibbetts, interim deputy director for recreation and our presentation today, I want to first start off by acknowledging that it's a little different than what we've historically done with our presentation. So I am introducing the group that'll be presenting, but wanting to acknowledge that we're traditionally these reports or staff reports. This is actually the community group themselves presenting their proposal to the board with the goal from staff to be able to get some discussion around it and some feedback from the board on the proposal that'll be given. So a little background with the group, it's a group representing Santa Rosa Pickleball. They have been formed for a while, been meeting with recreation, trying to address some of the conflicts of pickleball use and court usage and seeing if there are things that we could do program wise and scheduling wise out there. Ultimately as the group met, we realized that really what it came down to not an issue that could be solved with programming or scheduling, it really is an issue that's related to the limited court space and the increasing demand for pickleball activity. So the group continued to meet and in their continued meetings, they formed a proposal that they sent in to recreation myself. And so I have reviewed it from a recreation standpoint, pulled in Jen Santos on behalf of Park Planning, pulled in Jeremy Gundy on behalf of Park Maintenance and we discussed the proposal that was submitted. All three areas agreed that the proposal does address a current problem with a fairly short-term solution to address the shortage of pickleball courts and also that it was feasible from all three areas. So for recreation, that includes an acknowledgement that the proposal today has to do with dual striping tennis courts to serve as pickleball courts as well. So for recreation, working with the community and helping to manage the court usage and when pickleball, when tennis, those types of things and continue to monitor that with the community moving forward, which recreation is comfortable saying that we're in a position to be able to work with. Jen Santos reviewing it in terms of Park Planning, that Park Planning, excuse me, but this really, it's a minimal project, it's not a capital improvement project, not a big funding source, those types of things. And then Jeremy Gundy on behalf of the Park Maintenance that would continue to review this as either an option if the direction was to proceed forward and when we move forward with the proposal that maintenance staff either through overseeing a contract or through our own city staff would be able to address the needs of the proposal. So with that said, I will go ahead and pass off to the group to present. And I believe I've got Alinda starting so I will pass off to Linda. Hi, so actually we're gonna be starting the presentation with Kathy Kirst. So if we can move it over to her, she will begin the presentation. Kathy, you've been promoted to a panelist. If you unmute yourself, you should be able to speak. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you, Kathy. Okay, thank you, Board of Community Services for agreeing to this agenda item about pickleball. My name is Kathy Kirst and I'm the volunteer pickleball ambassador for Sonoma, Solano and Napa counties. I've played for 11 years in six states and all over California enjoying tournaments and recreational play. I'll speak on four topics and then turn it over to the other speakers. Next slide, please. First, the committee. This past summer, Santa Rosa Recreation Parks asked that a pickleball committee of five be formed to work on court scheduling and court access issues. After several meetings, the committee asked Jen Santos at this board if we could present our goals at a meeting. Today, the five committee members will speak. As for me, see Attachment A for my personal history in pickleball. Next slide, please. Secondly, what is pickleball? Pickleball is a paddle sport played with a whiffle ball on a court, one quarter the size of a tennis court. It is said to be a combination of tennis, ping pong, racquetball and volleyball. The typical game is usually played as doubles, lasts about 20 minutes and goes to 11 points. The game was developed on Bainbridge Island, Washington in 1965 at a family party. Next slide, please. And next I'll tell you the history of Sonoma County Pickleball. It all began in 2011 when the town of Windsor striped two of their four tennis courts at Hiram Lewis Park for pickleball. A few months later, the city of Santa Rosa agreed to strike two tennis courts for pickleball at Finlay in exchange for volunteers running introductory clinics for two months. The city also requested beginners be welcomed and taught. In June of 2012, the wine country games held their first pickleball tournament in Windsor. And in years thereafter, the annual tournament was held at Finlay, drawing over 300 players from California and other states. In September, 2013, the city of Santa Rosa agreed to convert Finlay Tennis Court number three to four dedicated courts if the players could raise $11,000 to pay for it. The donation drive began and the money was raised within four weeks and courts were ready for play in November. In 2015, the city surprised us by converting a Howard Park Tennis Court to four dedicated pickleball courts. And then in July of 2017, the city lined two temporary courts at Finlay for use by pickleball and tennis players. Numbers of players ever since have certainly exploded. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. And finally, pickleball is inclusive. Pickleball represents players of all races, ages and socioeconomic status. During Finlay beginner sessions recently with a player having developmental and intellectual disabilities, we teachers felt joy seeing the player eventually learn and feel a success. Also a local player and retired teacher, Nancy Cartner, annually collects donations for the Salvation Army and another local player, Marty Cassidy, a teacher at a Title I school teaches pickleball. He enjoys seeing the growth of self-esteem and bonding through this recreation. And the pickleball is a sport for all people. And now I turn it over to our seventh committee member, Pat Crabtree. Thank you, Kathy. Could I have the next slide, please? I'm Pat Crabtree and I've also been playing pickleball for 11 years and have been playing and advocating for the sport ever since I started. I'm going to talk to you about the growth of the sport nationally as well as locally and the health benefits of the sport and our goals here today. Please reference the two articles in your packets from the one from the Sports and Fitness Association called the SFIA and the second from the Economist. In 2015, two million people reported to be playing pickleball nationally. Five years later in 2020, that number grew 110% to 4.2 million. Just from the time period from 2019 to 2020, reporting shows the number of players increased nationwide by 21.3%. Now keep in mind that in 2013, Santa Rosa had the wherewithal and the vision to put in four dedicated pickleball courts at Finley when we had 70 players playing here locally. Two years later in 2015, after seeing the benefits of pickleball in the community and the growth, the city added a second pickleball venue at Howard's, putting in another four dedicated courts. Well, since 2015, the number of pickleball players locally and nationally has grown tremendously. We now have about 700 plus players playing here locally, but the pickleball facilities in Santa Rosa have not grown. The Finley courts are now greatly impacted with four year more players waiting to get court time on a daily basis. The Economist wrote an article in February of this year stating that pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the U.S., stating the same tremendous growth rate as the SFIA report. The article went on to report that in March, when the quarantines went into effect and courts were locked down, portable pickleball nets sold out across the United States. What does this say about the future growth of pickleball? 4.2 million pickleball players represents 1.38% of the U.S. population of people over six years of age. Of that number, 1.4 million are core players, which represents 0.33% of that population. This demonstrates the tremendous potential growth of the sport going forward. Santa Rosa was the first in the county to build dedicated pickleball courts. The statistics clearly show that the city needs to provide additional pickleball facilities to keep up with a heavy demand. The courts are so impacted that we are not able to take the sport and the community to the next level, which would be to hold round robins, ladders, leagues, all levels of skill building, inter-community play, and tournaments. To do this, we need additional courts. The monetary benefit to the city would also be increased due to the increased traffic in hotels, shopping, and restaurant business. It's a win-win situation. Next slide, please. I want to speak about the health benefits. It's pretty obvious any kind of sport is good for your health, but pickleball is really a part of a healthy lifestyle. It's a multi-generational sport played by all ages from six to 90. Pickleball helps not only keep our bodies fit, but also our minds. It can be therapy for many individuals and needs to be part of any community sports and fitness program. Middle schools, high schools, and colleges are now implementing pickleball programs. I've personally spoken with retired PE teachers who tell me they wish they had known about pickleball when they were teaching. And I really have to ask, you know, what are the boys and girls gonna do after school when they wanna go play some pickleball and they don't have facilities to go play it at? Next slide, please. So our goal here today is we are recommending to this board a fast, inexpensive, short-term solution to help release some of the stress on the highly impacted pickleball court venues in the city of Santa Rosa. To make clear, the cross-line striping of the six additional pickleball courts on the two West tennis courts at Finley would not impact, would not impact the full functionality of the tennis courts. The temporary pickleball nets would be moved over only when tennis play was not occurring. I wanna thank you for your time and consideration and now turn this over to Linda Hoffman. Hello, can you please go to the next slide? Thank you, Pat. So I'm Linda Hoffman. I'm actually here at the Finley courts now. And I am thinking back to when I just started. So I had to do a search in my Amazon account to actually figure out when I started playing. And it turns out that in July 2019, I bought my first pickleball paddle. It took me about two weeks to work up the nerve to actually go out and play. But after I played my first game, I was obsessed. In my part of this presentation, I went to talk about the faces of pickleball. You see that pickleball is not so much a sport as it is a community. The special community is multi-generational, racially diverse and all-inclusive. As someone once told me, if you can walk, then you can certainly play pickleball. To help you see and hear a few of the passionate local players and understand the impact that pickleball has had on their lives, we asked Rob Olmsted, a local player, to compile a set of current video clips. While you watch this video, I would like you to think, what would these people be doing if they weren't playing pickleball? I can tell you that most of them would be non-active at home, many of them by themselves. Here's the video now. And presenter, if you want to click on that, I will mute myself. Presenter, you would click on the link. Yes, I'm getting it now, because it's just a moment. All right, thank you. There's lots of people to play with. We are so hooked on this new economy to have such a wonderful group of people that play pickleball. It's really changed the whole environment of exercise. It's a people of all ages who play, and it's a united type of sport where you get to know people and have a wonderful time in and around. It's a great sport, and it's not very technically difficult. It's a great sport I can pick up. I love being outside, getting some exercise. I love meeting new people my age. I'm 23. 26. I want to take it out for my life, maybe a little bit, definitely addicting. But it's a good community, and it's a great way for a lot of age groups to get out and play a sport. But it did change my life, too. Going through a big weight loss journey and getting it to shape, and just a big motivator for that. So yeah, absolutely. It's been a treat for me to get to play with my son. You just meet all sorts of people, super friendly, and it gets me moving. I started pickleball because a friend wanted to organize a fundraiser for Council on Aging. She called out. It was so much fun. More fun than the tennis that I used to play. The people are very social, very friendly, and for newbies, they can pick this up very quick and have a lot of fun. I'm 20. It's gonna be 21 and too much. How long have you been playing pickleball? Like almost a year. And why do you play pickleball? Because I love it. The community is great, and it's five, I don't know. It's good vibes. So I've been playing kind of consistently for about six months, and I've been on a long time in tennis players. We're new to the area, so I've had people, and it's been like a social. My friends thought I might like it, and I tried it, and quickly became addicted to that. Eight years ago, we started very friendly, and now the old sport is just blowing up. We need a lot more courts. People love this game, and there's many different levels of play. So I play tournaments, and we like to have a couple courts with tournament preparation, but you need a lot of courts for all the different levels, because many people are playing. I'm a recreational player, and we love playing out here. It's a terrific crowd. It's socialization and healthy exercise, and we could use a few more courts. The more courts we have, the more people will come out, and the more people will come to Santa Rosa. It got me through COVID, it got me sane, and it's just probably the most fun way to get a workout in. Well, I just came driving by one day, and started watching, and the captain invited me to play, so I came over and started playing. Pain's my life. I absolutely love football. It is my community, and I've met a lot of friends who pick a ball, and I think new people should try it. It's an easy game to learn, but it's a hard game to master. I gotta say that it's the most fun sport that's out there today. I've played basketball until I was 38. I've played tennis for 25 years, like golf for six or seven years, and when I found pickleball, I never went back to any of those things again. Anybody can play at any level. It doesn't matter what sex, what age. It's a lot of fun, and I play almost every day. It's an all-encompassing sport. It's great exercise. There's camaraderie. There's people that you could always play with when you step on a court. It's just a wonderful game, and I'm gonna play it until I die. The beautiful thing about pickleball is that multiple people are using the facility, rather than two or four people reserving a court and using that court and those are the only people on the court. You can have four pickleball courts on one tennis court, and the group comes together and everybody plays, no matter how many people there are. I actually started about four to five months ago, and you know what I love about it is it's a fun game. Most people can pick it up fairly quickly, and the people out here are fabulous. So nice, so welcoming, happy to help you, and so it's a great environment, wonderful for the community. We need more pickleball courts. Lately, it's been very, very, very crowded, to the point where we're waiting 20 minutes, 30 minutes, just to find some court time. We have the perfect weather around here for pickleball. It's so nice to play. You can play in the mornings and the evenings. In the midday like this, it's wonderful. We need more facilities because we're growing so fast. Fastest growing sport in the nation right now, so everybody almost said I talked to us, picking up pickleball and we're looking for places to play. Presentation, so as you can see, players come from all walks of life and have many different reasons for playing. One thing they all hold in common is that they are obsessed with pickleball. In every pickleball community, you will notice that the majority of players are recreational. That means they enjoy hanging out on the courts, talking with other players, getting some fresh air and exercise and being a bit competitive. This makes up the majority of the local community. But in addition to the recreational players, we have the competitive group. This often includes a larger number of younger players in their 20s and 30s. And all the way even to those in their 70s, as you will see by our next speaker. One of our youngest players is a two-time national champion. First when he was aged 14, his father, a three-time national champion, now plays at the senior pro level. Santa Rosa boasts several other competitive players at all age levels who regularly medal in tournaments all over the country. These competitive players are looking for play at their level and opportunities for lengthy drill sessions and tournament prep. Our local lack of courts has cut out opportunities for this group, which now causes our highest level players to have to travel over an hour away to the East Bay for court access. Next slide, please. If you head over to Howard Park on any given afternoon or evening, you'll notice families and friends playing together. I recently saw a group of teen boys engaged in what I might call wild pickleball, getting very physical and being very vocal with raucous laughter in between. This group of players is also very impacted by the lack of availability. And finally, I would like to address a growing group of players. I am a principal at a local K-12 school and I'm currently involved in getting middle school level pickleball as a league sport. Kids pick up pickleball at an amazing speed. And often those who feel uneasy about trying the more regular sports find pickleball very easy to be successful in a short time. Where will these school players play? Next slide, please. So I hope I've been able to adequately convey a collage of who it is that plays pickleball. So I'm over here now at the family pickleball courts and a few minutes ago, we had over 100 players gathered together in support of this presentation and proposal. These are our taxpayers, our workers, our volunteers and our local citizens. And our plea to you is to please allow us to add some additional court space at a very low cost with very little impact, allowing a more comprehensive use of currently available recreational facilities. And now up, we have Joanne Cohn. She's actually sitting here next to me, so you won't need to change over to her computer. I lovingly call her Santa Rosa's Pickleball Mayor. She plays more hours on the local courts here than any other local pickleball player that I know. And here's Joanne. Sorry, hold on one second. There we go. Hi everyone. My name is Joanne and just like the rest of our group, I love pickleball. I love pickleball because I get lots of exercise. I'm out in the sunshine and it's a very social game. I've made lots of friends. I've lost a couple of COVID pounds and I've managed to stay relatively sane during the last couple of years. But I'm not alone. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of others right here in Sonoma County who are saying the same thing. And that's why we are here today. Next slide please. Let me give you an idea of why we need more pickleball courts of Finley. On almost any morning of the week, especially Monday through Friday, there are lots and lots of people who want to play pickleball. In fact, when I go there, we have so many people waiting for courts that we have to have a sign up board. So as soon as one group of four goes off the court, another group of four goes on. And as we wait for pickleball courts to open, we notice that almost all of the time there are no tennis players on the courts. We need more pickleball courts in sunny Santa Rosa. And specifically, we are here to ask your help in getting the two West tennis courts at Finley striped with pickleball lines so that both tennis and pickleball can be played. By the way, two tennis courts can be converted into six pickleball courts, which is awesome because that enables more people to use the courts at any one time. And just in case you were wondering, we aren't asking for more courts at Howarth or Galvin in this presentation because we realize that long-term repairs are needed to the court pads in the tune of 300,000 or more each. Next slide please. We knew that casual observation would not be good enough for this presentation. So we decided to count the number of people playing on the tennis and pickleball courts for a week. In this way, we could have solid data to back up our observations. On this slide and the next, we have a table for the week of July 25th through 31st of the number of people playing pickleball and the number of people playing tennis each day from 8.45 to noon. As you can see on the pickleball attendance slide, there are regularly 30 or more players at the courts. And ever since July, we are now regularly seeing 40 plus players on most days. Next slide. And now on to tennis court attendance, you will notice a lot of zeros. During Monday through Friday, there are just a few times when one or two players show up. The weekend mornings are busy with eight to 12 regular players. We are not seeking play on the temporary courts during this time, only when players are not present. Next slide please. We are asking the city to cross-line six temporary pickleball courts on Finley's two West tennis courts. They're marked court one and court two on the diagram. This means that these courts can be used for both tennis and pickleball. This is a key point. We are not taking away any tennis courts. We are just adding pickleball lines. High quality, safe pickleball nets would be rolled over to the courts only during times when no tennis players are playing. This proposal will create extremely needed pickleball court accessibility for waiting pickleball players. And we will encourage the city of Santa Rosa to post a sign stating tennis first for those two courts. Next slide please. How much will this project cost? As you can see by this slide, current paint costs with labor runs around $650 per court as provided by a local striping company, Adam's Surfacing, used before at Finley. The mobile cabled minimal footprint nets run about $1,500 each, of which Sonoma County Pickleball is prepared to assist with this cost if necessary. The overall cost for this efficient and short-term solutions runs under $15,000 to allow up to 24 additional pickleball players to be on the current empty courts. In full disclosure, I'd like to add that I don't think this is a perfect solution. As a pickleball player, I would love to see the courts just painted and used exclusively for pickleball seven days a week. I know it's much more fun and easier to play pickleball on courts lined just for pickleball. But I also know that there are some tennis players who want to be able to play tennis, especially on the weekends at Finley. And they don't like the idea of playing on tennis courts that are cross-lined with pickleball courts. So instead of a perfect solution, we are proposing a compromise, which overall gets more people on multi-use courts, be they pickleball players or tennis players. Next slide, please. So on behalf of our pickleball subcommittee, I'd really like to thank each of you for your time this afternoon. Our fellow pickleball players have all been asking us, how do we go about getting more courts in Santa Rosa? And we've been able to say, we're on the agenda for the Board of Community Services meeting in October, and this is our big opportunity. So thank you for this opportunity. We all appreciate it. And just as importantly, join us for a game of pickleball. Actually, Mayor Chris Rogers has already come out and played twice, and he's currently setting up a third time to come out again. Now it's your turn. We'd be glad to set up a specific time for y'all to come out and play, or just come out any morning, and you'll find a whole group ready to welcome you. We have paddles and balls. Just let us know what works best for you. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. We're now gonna open this up for questions to both staff. That would be Jeff Tibbets, and also to the pickleball representatives. I assume the pickleball representatives can still come online. And if someone references to a slide in the presentation, it could also come back up. So a simple visual raise of hands, a logo raise of hands, whatever you wanna do, and I'll call you by name, Terry. Thank you. I have several questions, so I'll try to get through them as quickly as I can. Just for clarification, I wasn't clear whether tennis, I believe it's tennis court number four is still being used for tennis, or whether it's exclusively being used for pickleball. Can you clarify that? Yeah, I can address that question. So it is still available as dual striped and still available for tennis and pickleball. What happened during COVID, when we first brought things back, is we didn't wanna be moving the nets back and forth. Everyone was still trying to figure out what was safe and how to operate. So it was set up during COVID to be for pickleball use only to leave the net out there. And it's kind of stayed that way right now, but we do have the ability to adjust that back in the future. Okay, thank you. Did the subcommittee reach out to the tennis community and how did those conversations go? So we did talk with the tennis players on the weekend. They are concerned about the lines on the courts. So we did discuss that with them. Over at Sunrise Park, over in Roanart Park, we do have a very similar situation where we have six courts cross-lined. And we have not had any issues or complaints from the tennis players over at Roanart Park where they actually are using courts with these lines. So to be fair, the tennis players are concerned about the lines on the courts. We did communicate to them the tennis first policy, most definitely on courts one and two, and we intend to completely stand behind that. So if tennis players are present, we would not be putting up any of the nets for the pickleball courts. Thank you for that. So I did actually go over to Sunrise Park and look at that striping because, as you know, Santa Rosa just has two courts on one tennis court and I wanted to see the sixth court configuration. And one thing I noticed, it was very nicely done, I thought, but they have adequate room between the two courts so that there's no overlap in the two center pickleball courts. And then the outer two or outer four pickleball courts that looks like they are as far to the left and right as possible. So it looked like there was minimal striping interfering with the tennis courts. I'm assuming that in our case, the two courts and the West courts are too close together to fully have pickleball courts in between without some overlap. Is that correct? So the pad runs about 92 feet wide. I'm actually sitting right outside of it now. It's 92 feet wide and about 120 long. So when we configured it, pickleball courts are 20 feet wide. So we would be looking at 60 feet within a 91 or 92 foot section. I do believe if you look at the diagram that we had on the slide, it looks to me like we could align the left and right sides of the outside courts. So there would be minimal interference with the outside lines of the tennis courts. And you're correct, as you saw at sunrise, we would have two courts that would kind of straddle the middle section of where the two tennis nets kind of come up together. And I know ideally you would like six additional courts. Did you consider a configuration of four similar to the two courts that are existing in court four to minimize that striping? We have not considered that. Our biggest dilemma is 45 or plus pickleball players standing on the courts in the morning when they are generally zero tennis players. And so with a long-term project of getting permanent courts, you know, pretty far in the future and with pickleball exploding as it does or as it is right now, I think it's in our best interest if at all possible to put as many courts and as temporary courts as we can. And one of the communications we received raised some safety issues. And I think the gentleman was referring to pickleball being played right next to tennis without any separation or fence. If the West courts are being used or if one of the West courts is being used for tennis, would the other courts still be used or courts still be used for pickleball or would you just let the West courts be used for tennis and recognition of those safety issues or do you have any concerns about that? At this point, if there were any tennis players on court one or two, we would not put up any pickleball court. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Terry, real quick, I'll speak to that as well. The same concern with recreation use of how to manage those courts. And that's also going back to your previous question. One of the reasons that we wouldn't see it as efficient to only do one of those courts is because the fact that the two sports don't necessarily do well when they're right next to each other. So it wouldn't, you know, you would either, you're still kind of in that state, it's one or the other still. So even if you left tennis, one tennis court alone and only did them on one other tennis court, it would still kind of be a one or the other situation. Okay. And my last question for now. Are tennis courts available for members of the public at Santa Rosa High Schools? So I can speak to that one as well. I did reach out to some Santa Rosa City Schools personnel waiting to get more details back. So basically I asked about Comstock Middle School, if the courts were currently closed, was that just COVID protocol or is that something that's ongoing? And then if that is a school policy or if that's a district wide policy, so if we should have conversations with those other areas. As far as recreation is concerned, would love to continue those conversations and try to help facilitate because we acknowledge that tennis space across the board, tennis and pickleball space across the board for our city, there's a lack of resources. So if we can utilize some of those resources for the public, we would love to help manage that. But ultimately that is something that could, they could tell us, yes, it's open to the public today and they could determine for some reason that they need to close it or they decide to rent it out to a group or something. So ultimately it's something that we do not have control over and could not predict what the status that will be moving in the future, but certainly happy to do what we can and within recreation from the city's perspective to help facilitate some of that collaboration and ability for the public in the future. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Logan. I'm sorry, one more thing I'll just say with that is also acknowledge that that's a conversation I intend to push forward regardless of the recommendation of today's meeting. Because again, this is a situation that we know that there's a shortage across the board. So sorry for the interruption, Logan. I just wanted to add that in. That's all right, Jeff. I'm going to you. So are you looking for us to do a vote of a recommendation to take to the city council? That's what you're asking from us today. I'll go ahead and let Jen answer the specifics on that because I roughly know but she's much more experienced than the board of community services. Okay. Yeah, we're not looking for a roll call vote. We're looking for enough feedback so that staff know whether we should be moving forward with this or not. So yeah, no roll call but we do need enough feedback so we know what the board would like to do. Okay. I will add onto that a little bit that one of the areas when we evaluated it again with the accessibility or the feasibility of this being a short term solution. One of the areas where the city had a tough time supporting it in terms of a short term solution is a lot of the community outreach that we generally do for these types of projects. So utilizing this as a public forum to hold some of that and get some of those comments and then get your feedback. Okay. Great, thanks. I will say before I go to you, Jeff, I'll say thank you to the subcommittee for having the mayor out there. I know you enjoyed it a lot and hello to my former colleague and friend, Joanne. Thank you for putting that together with your usual energy. And Chris is also a tennis player though so he hasn't picked the side. And I actually have been out to Finley and played pickleball myself so. But I wanna ask some Finley questions but put that aside for a second, Jeff and ask about Howard and Galvin. So I know those are slated to get repaired. Can you just give us a short update on that and then how many courts are at each park right now? So, yeah, I'll let Jen speak a little bit to that. So the difference with those projects is that those are capital improvement projects, much larger projects to address the infrastructure issues that are out there. So I don't know, Jen, if you wanna comment on that or I also know that that's actually not an agenda item. So I don't know how much we wanna comment on that either today, but Jen, anything you wanna add to that? Right, right. And so if you've been out to Howard Park, we have four pickleball courts and five tennis courts. There are three tennis courts in the middle, I'm sorry, two tennis courts in the middle that have structural damage. And so we know we're gonna be coming back in with a larger capital project in the next two years. It's not a solution right now though. As part of that outreach, when we do come back for those capital projects, we'll be outreaching to the community about what sort of configuration they wanna see there, tennis only, a combination of pickleball and we'll have that larger conversation that Jeff was talking about. But we know that's a ways off and we know the pickleball group has needs right now. And is pickleball used at all or are the Galvin courts used at all for pickleball right now? Oh, yeah, they're not used at all. There's a small kind of experimental that's been using with, so there's court 10 was converted to the youth tennis courts. And so there is some pickleball usage out on those courts as well. It's actually, it's actually very. Sure, go ahead. I'd like to hear from the subcommittee. Yeah, what are your plans for Galvin, if you have any? Yeah, so as far as pickleball use of those courts currently, it's minimal mostly because there's so much damage to the courts right now. They're actually unsafe to be moving very quickly on at this point. We have talked with actually Kathy Kirst and myself are on the Galvin kind of community project. So we're on a subcommittee with them. We have also asked if we might be able to cross line those junior tennis courts once the pad is repaired with four pickleball courts. They're very similar in size. There's some slight differences, but they're pretty close. And so far the tennis community at Galvin and those associated with the subcommittee are in favor of that. But everyone involved acknowledges that that's probably a three year project at this point due to the pad being in such a state of disrepair. Okay, thank you, Alice, or sorry, Linda. So we have two long term efforts, I guess, and that's what the short term effort is needed at Fenley. Okay, and I think Terry had a lot of my questions. So good job, Terry. I feel like though we have a simple solution, maybe it's too simple, we have two tennis courts. Can't we keep one as just tennis and turn the other one into pickleball? Is that too logical? Jeff, do you say has that been looked at as an idea? So again, it could be looked at as an idea. I'm trying to look at the cross-striping. Again, one of the issues with it in terms of just efficiency and getting the most out of limited space is that the two courts are so close to each other that it would still be one or the other. So you wouldn't have tennis taking place and those pickleball courts being used, which is one of the complaints that we've heard about the dual striped on court four is that when it's pickleball, those courts are kind of used for pickleball because tennis wouldn't be interested in playing in those close proximity to pickleball. I get that. Is there any way to fence it in some sort of not expensive way or temporary way? So those safety concerns are alleviated? It'd have to be looked into a little bit further. I do know the cross-striping of the two courts. If you only did two total additional pickleball courts, but if you tried to put four on the one, it would probably be difficult to get four courts and then, because it goes a little wider than the tennis court, so to be able to do that plus the fencing would probably put the fencing too close to the tennis court for safety reasons. Okay, my recommendation just personally is to explore some options to present to the city council just to at least to be able to answer those questions. They might have similar questions. And I do have concerns about some of the public comments who said that they have a dedicated group of folks that use those tennis courts. So I am concerned if we completely get rid of a pure tennis court and that some of the local residents won't have anywhere to go, which they clearly use it. Not at the same level though. So yeah, those would be my thoughts and thank you to everyone for the presentation. Thanks Carol. Thanks Logan. Before we move forward, except for background information on the other tennis slash pickleball courts, let's remember that we're dealing specifically with Finley. And point of clarification, does this go to city council for restriping or is this a park matter? And this is the parks park and rec department is the end of the line. And we will get to you Steve in just a second. Okay. Sure. Yes, that's correct. It's a parks decision. However, as Jeff explained earlier, this is a point where staff could support whatever decision is made with restriping if that's what the board would like us to move forward with. So it's not necessary, it does not need to go to council at this point. The other, I know we're gonna focus on Finley but just one sidestep into the other courts. Those are larger projects, they will need to go to council, but the restriping of this would not need to go to council. So it's a decision here tonight to either to strike or not, or to wait or some version there that that's helpful. Thank you for that clarification, Jen. Steve? Yes, starting with the big picture, it seems fairly clear that the demographics break down in like the 20 to 50 years olds who are similar to golfers are looking for sports that are easier or can be played in not three to four hours like pickleball and tennis. And the 50 to 70 year old cohort, which I put myself into are looking for ways to socialize and keep fit like the pickleball and tennis. I mean, to personalize this, I think there's a lot of folks like me in this cohort who find it a little more challenging to get to the net, to get to the baseline. The lateral movement isn't quite there, but when I play pickleball, I certainly have a cardio workout. There's no question about that. And it seems like everyone's having a good time. In addition, the nationwide statewide, countywide, even citywide trends are quite clear. And it seems like Santa Rosa needs to catch up a little bit on this. And that really means more pickleball courts. And it seems like the solutions suggested can accommodate that and maybe get ahead of the game a little bit without impacting the need for the tennis players to have their time on the courts. It seems like there's a reasonable, very cost-effective solution to the issue that we're talking about. And that solution actually has been presented so that we can accommodate both the tennis player and the pickleball players. But one of the question I have for the subcommittee is really more future-looking. And that is, does the pickleball community have any plans to make Santa Rosa the epicenter for the Bay Area Semiannual and annual pickleball, annual tournaments that can help put Santa Rosa in the leadership position of the sport? Absolutely, right? We would love to be the epicenter of the North Bay tournaments. So do you have plans to do that? So this is our first step. We're definitely looking for short-term access because the community is exploding. And immediately after this, yes, we are definitely planning on pursuing some sort of a location where we can have a pickleball community of multiple courts like a place to play. Yeah, would be wonderful. And I think most everyone appreciates the sensitivity that you have apparently, your team has apparently given to the tennis players. Apparently, there's been some miscommunications or kind of missing each other in a little way. But what I'm gathering is that there is a good cooperation between pickleball players and tennis players. It's really not acrimonious and that there is a solution that everyone can live with and that this board can support. And I thank you for that. Madonna, Carolina, I don't wanna put you on the spot, but questions? I just, a couple of things. It was said, if you could walk, you can play pickleball. Do people in wheelchairs not play pickleball? I think it would be great for Kathy Kirst to take that question. I know that she's actually looked into that. Kathy, are you available? If not, I am Pat Crabtree. No, I'm here, I'm here, can you hear me? Okay, yes, indeed. I'm a member of a national USA Pickleball Ambassadors website. And several of the people over the past few months have been talking about the tournaments they've been having and the play they've been having with wheelchair participants. And sometimes these tournaments and just recreational play are just done with maybe one able person who's not in a wheelchair would be able to play with someone who's in a wheelchair. So I investigated further and I found out from one of the women who is running this in another state, I believe it was North Carolina. She said that it's helpful that the community raised funds to get these sports wheelchairs for people who are wanting to participate in the sport because you have to have a special kind of wheelchair. And so it is one of my goals that as time goes on and especially I'm 73, I think I last time I checked. And so it was one of my goals to indeed, I'm playing until I'm 90 or 100 years old. And if I have to use a sports wheelchair, I'll help many of my friends who are the same age to have this come to Santa Rosa. Awesome, okay, thank you so much for answering that. And on the slide, one of the slides said temporary court. So how long is temporary? This is Pat Crabtree. If I can go back to Steve's question about do we have a plan. I'm also a member and so is Kathy of a nonprofit organization called the Sonoma County Pickleball Club. And we've been in existence for a couple of years now and the long-term plan is in fact to find facilities and build a pickleball complex. So yes, there is a long-term plan that a group of us have. Thank you. Yeah, that was kind of falling into my next thing. We have trioning, we have place to play. My daughter was a competitive soccer player. So, and I've never played pickleball or tennis. So I am ignorant to what you guys do, but I thank you for the video and the enthusiasm and I am an able-bodied person. So I do hope to come out and try to play it. So thank you very much. Adonis, just to add on to the temporary clarification of that is I think it's really the answer is it's a matter of continuing to assess our facilities and the need in the community because this is a fairly minor project of just striping, right? It's temporary in the sense that that's something that could probably be redone again in the future if needed, but would certainly require if other facilities are developed, what happens with Howard Park, what happens with a future complex, those types of things that would then put us in a situation where it would be deemed the best role to move back to remove that striping and repurpose those again as tennis only courts are. So it's certainly a to be determined based off of what happens between now and the next three years, five years. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification, Jeff and for your questions, Madonna, Carolina. I first wanna thank the committee for their wonderful presentation. It was really very good and very clear and you totally, totally sold me. It looks like it's temporary slash certainly timely and I for one would like to suggest that we follow through with it. It looks like such a good way of getting these additional courts without costing a lot of money and everybody is going to be really happy with it or certainly satisfied enough. And who knows? The tennis players may decide they wanna become pickleball players. I mean, you could have a switch here and Linda's laughing about that. We have a lot. I'm laughing because we have so many tennis players that are now pickleball players. That's why I'm laughing. There you go. Thanks Carol. You're welcome. So I also wanna thank you for your presentation and I want to applaud you for the letter writing campaign. I tried to get through, it was over a hundred, it came in two batches to us and so I had my eyes to my iPad for hours on end which makes me think that you guys are not only a group of pickleball players but you have email lists, you have probably Facebook groups that you are connected six ways for Sunday. And because you're connected six ways for Sunday, I'm wondering what efforts you have made to, and I don't know if it's the same 30 to 40 people coming multiple days a week. I have found if I hit my head against the same wall often enough, eventually I say it hurts when I do it, I stop doing that. Have you used your email and other connections to say, hey, if you come at noon with your group, the courts are gonna be open or do they come 30 and 40 at a time because there is no communication because they like to socialize whether they're on the court or not. You guys just seem really organized. Could you elaborate on what efforts you've made to alleviate the situation using that path? Yeah, I'm gonna pass this over to Joanne so she'll talk to that. Hi everybody. We don't organize to get people to Finley in the morning. I must admit, a lot of people like playing in the morning but I have groups that play in the afternoon and it's not just my groups, everybody who's smart says, hey, you guys, let's meet at Finley at one o'clock and the courts are busy but not as busy. And we also meet in the evenings at Howard. I mean, we're there so here you can't even drill. So I like to play tournaments, I've gotten into it and so I have to drill with just one other person so I can increase my skills. I could never do that at Finley in the morning. So I get a group and we play and we drill in the afternoon but the truth is everybody's coming out to drill now in the afternoon and then we go to Howard because there's lights at night. So it's not that we're trying to get everybody here in the morning. In fact, we do try to spread it out but there is a group that likes the morning better but for us, some of us, we know that we can try to sneak in a game in the afternoon and the evening but the evening courts are busy too. I was at Howard, I'm gonna say, I don't know if it was Thursday night or the last Thursday night when there wasn't rain and I bet there were 20 people waiting there too and that's without exaggerating but I couldn't even drill with a person, Andy, who I was supposed to drill with because you can't just use a court for two people. You have to use it for four people so you can get four on, four off. So it's not just that we all wanna be here in the morning. Thank you for your answer. I don't really know if you answered my question which was for an organized group, have you tried to discourage people who come, if they come repeatedly, they know they're not gonna get a court right away but they come anyways for the social atmosphere, for the blind luck, maybe they think somebody's not gonna be there. This rolls into my next question which is how long is a pickleball game match? How often do you turn over the teams? How many, there are four players in a game so far so good? Yep, yep. How many times do you turn over each court in a course of, and I'm gonna let you do the equation. You guys know this. Yeah, so a game lasts between 10 and 15 minutes and so we do have a four on, four off policy so as soon as a game is complete, they're gonna come off and then those that are waiting are going to go on. Kathy Kirst has set up a whiteboard for those busy mornings so that people can actually sign up for a court together and be ready to hop on as soon as people come off. And so the turnover, if you're talking about an hour, you get maybe four to five games per hour on each court. And then just to go back to your question about why do so many people come in the morning, especially in the summertime, it's difficult to play when the temperatures go up. The temperature on the asphalt out here in the sun, it's about 10 to 15 degrees hotter than the air temperature. We've had several actually end up at the ER with heat issues when we've tried to play in the afternoons when it's hot. So that's one reason why a lot of players come out in the morning. It is also a social aspect. They like to see each other. It's an obsession aspect. Once people start playing pickleball, just like this woman next to me here, they're obsessed and they basically say they just can't stay away. So they come even knowing that they may wait 20 to 25 minutes in between each game. So I hope that addresses your question about the mornings. It does. Can you talk a little bit about the social? I know that it's both a social game that they're socializing during the game, but there's also socializing while people are waiting their turns. Are they chomping at the bid? Are they doing other things? Do people schedule other activities pretty much on top of pickleball and they're watching their clock because they have to be across town in an hour? So I would say that most people are scheduling their time to be at the pickleball courts. It's not unusual for people to stay two to three hours just so they can get some games in. And so what was your other question? I'm sorry. What kind of socializing is done while they're waiting to be on the court? Does the social aspect take over? You describe your sport as being bold, a social network and a sport. Yeah, so people are talking obviously when they're waiting to get on the court, but the court access is so impacted that as soon as the court opens up, people are jumping to get onto those courts. And so no, the social aspect would not ever take over. They wouldn't get so distracted when a court opens that they would leave it open. It's a commodity right now. And so when the courts open, people are running over to get onto the courts. That was not what I was trying to imply that you were being distracted. I see this as being a multifaceted activity and just trying to explore all of those facets in an impacted space. Correct. So those are my questions. I'm just going to come right out and say like Logan to have no dedicated tennis courts on the west side of town. Just doesn't sit well with me. The west side of town has fewer facilities across the board for recreation and parks than the east side of town. And to literally cut in half the number of dedicated tennis courts. To be polite, I'll just say it doesn't sit well with me. What I would love to do is find a solution where we tip our hats to the tennis players who live and or work on the west side of town to say you are important. One court. We're keeping one court for you. With that as a jumping off point, my thought was could we do backboard walls so that tennis drills and or pickleball drills could be done by a number of people. People who are waiting to play a game, people who need to do drills, people who are learning. Could we reasonably priced do backboards? Are backboards used at other facilities for either training purposes or one off? I can remember as a kid, you're out there with your tennis ball up against the garage door. Because you could. Has that been considered at all? Is that something you as a community would like to explore along with the tennis community potentially exploring that? Kathy, would you like to address that? Kathy, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Yes, we have had the opportunity to meet with people and talk about whether or not we could have a backboard installed. That would be a wonderful way for people who are waiting to play that they can. Both tennis and pickleball can in fact then utilize time by doing that. In fact, I've even seen some of our pickleball players who have experienced the netting on the tennis courts while they're waiting to play pickleball. So if there would be some way for that to be orchestrated, that would be fabulous. Thank you. Those were my questions. So we'll go back to the board for any follow-up questions or comments. Steve. Yes, one quick question about the statistics of the tennis players and pickleball players during a specific week. I'm curious if that's indicative of 52 weeks a year or is this an anomaly? It is definitely indicative of 52 weeks a year. But we're out here morning and it's rare that we'll see a tennis player during the Monday through Friday timeframe. I'm curious if that's indicative of 52 weeks a year or is this an anomaly? There are eight to 12 players. They're regular players that come out on the weekends on Saturday and Sunday. It's the same players. And they are somewhat of an exclusive group. They do take the two ports. And they are the same ones that are there. And just I would like to say like, I live in Southwest Santa Rosa as a number of the people do. They're the same people. They're the same people. They're the same people. They're all players that live around here too. I don't know. There just haven't been that many tennis players that show up for tennis. Especially when we're asking, we're not trying to take away tennis court. We're trying to cross-stripe. So they can play tennis and or pickleball. And whoever's there gets to play. They're the same people. They're the same people. They're the same people that have priority. We just haven't seen that many tennis players here, especially Monday through Friday. You get people on Saturdays and Sundays. It's the same nice group of people that play on Saturdays and Sundays in the morning. But like Monday through Friday, if there's hardly anybody from tennis there. I mean, if a tennis ball goes on the pickleball side, you throw the tennis ball back and stay with a pickleball. It's not like an either or situation that I see. I will say staff have not done an evaluation of the usage, but obviously Finley is a location where we have our community center and a number of staff that are located there. And so the, the weak results that they showed there seem to be representative of general usage out there. So I see one of the committee's members hand is up. Kathy, do you have a comment to piggyback on Linda's comments? If so, could you please go next? Yes, I do. I wanted to say that at Finley, I've played every day for about 10 years. And I, except Sunday Sunday, I go and play at Windsor. And they just wanted to say that I have noticed that. There are very rarely any tennis players who are there to play. So this one segment, the, the chart that you saw is, is indicative of what I see every single day. And even in rainy days, for example, we get out there, let's say it's raining the night before we get out there at nine in the morning and then indeed people arrive. We have towels and squeegees. It takes about 45 minutes. We get the courts all dried off. We blow every day with our blower that we had purchased and, and we're ready to play. So I, you know, I, and then the tennis players on the weekend, they come out and then they use our blower and they use our towels and squeegees and everything too to get their courts ready. So there's kind of a nice community between the two types of players. And that's, that's very refreshing. So indeed this is not unusual. We see this every single day. Thank you for the clarification, Kathy Madonna. Thank you for that Kathy. That's a very respectful and just community. What you just talked about there with the blower and the squeegees and stuff. What was the name. So it's Sonoma County pickleball. I think I didn't hear the last part of that. I think Pat had said that. And then if I wanted to take some of my staff over in, in, in look at this game and try to play it, who would I contact? Hi, this is Pat Crabtree. Yeah, the, the, the full name of our nonprofit is the Sonoma County pickleball club. LTD. And I think that the person you'd contact to play at Finley would be Kathy curse for the most part. And I think that's the best way to do that. And I think that would be a great way to go and or Linda also could help out there. Thank you. So just for reference, I think both those ladies. Email addresses are on one of the earlier slides. And if we wanted an org. Listed that could be put in the chat. By somebody with that, would that provide the information that you're looking for Madonna. I'm not asking because at my job at disability services and legal center downtown. I and three other coworkers when we were able to work there, we would play badminton. In the back. So I'm thinking, you know, we might want to put a little pickleball court back there for us when we are able to go back to work. Yeah. Yeah. We can put that in the chat and just a reminder to the board. Their contact information is also in the attachments to this presentation. The letters you receive have both those contact information as well as they. Sonoma County pickleball club link. Thanks for that, Jen. If we're done with our queries for now, I think we'll do a quick discussion, but I want to get back to the board for further discussion. Do we have any public comments at this time about this issue? Yes, I do see hands raised. So I am going to, I see eight hands, right? So we have quite a bit of public comment. I'm going to go ahead and a call you by your screen name. like. You can please state your name and then you the timer will begin. The first person I'm going to allow to speak is Johnny Seraf. Go ahead, Johnny. Okay. Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you, Johnny. Thank you. So I want to say that when the line I play tennis at Finley, I play typically, you know, late afternoon. I actually get there well ahead of the scheduled time that my friend and I will meet just to ensure that I actually get a tennis court. So it may be quite in the morning, but I know in the late afternoon or the evening there are tennis players and they do take up both courts when I've been there. I know that on one of the courts where there are lines where it's on the eastern side, I guess, of Finley, those extra lines make it impossible to use for tennis. You can't. It affects your depth of perception. It affects your ability to focus on obviously on the lines that you need to for that sport. And so it's not really feasible, because I tell you as a tennis player, having the courts that would be used for tennis, but also having lines on it for pickleball, it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work that way. And I will say, you know, I mean, we have the limited courts ourselves on the west side. I live nearby, near Finley, as you know, it's limited as far as tennis. And so to have just the two courts that have the possibility of losing those is just a shame, I think. Pickleball is growing. I know, of course, as you mentioned, as the presenters mentioned, it is growing as a sport. Tennis is one of the foremost plate sports in the world. I think I've read somewhere a lot of billion tennis players globally. So let's not lose sight of that, that there's a long history of a beautiful sport in tennis. And we're not talking about taking over pickleball, of course, we're just talking about sharing the facility equally. Thank you. Thank you, Johnny. Our next speaker will be Zeng Hun. Go ahead. Hi. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. So first of all, I'd like to thank you the ball for giving me the opportunity to speak and then listen to our voice. My name is Zeng Hun. I live on the west side of the city about more than 20 years. And I've been, you know, coming to Finley Park and play tennis, seeing kids and family play, then enjoying it for a year. I believe that in this community, you know, we trust equity and inclusion and that would make the community a vibrant one, right? So I echo Johnny that, you know, we need the equity, you know, the asset to tennis player. And then especially it happened as a nation minority here. And then, you know, our community very, you know, we have low income level and then asset to the park, you know, and play the game that we love is very important to us. So I think in 2013, we've been losing, you know, two tennis court from four tennis court that were the result in a major disproportion of asset to tennis for the, for our community. And yes, you know, we're talking about, you know, striking, you know, on the left, we meant two tennis court. Obviously, right now it's, we have six football court, six pickleball courts and only two tennis court. And you can hold 24 pickleball player as one, why, you know, maximum tennis only eight players. And at Johnny point out, it impossible, it impossible for us to play on the multi-use court. So I think we should treasure the equity oriented approach than the, you know, the equality based on the number player and not talking about, you know, I don't think we, we should get misled by the number also because we are working class, you know, low income and then we don't have the luxury to come there every day to play tennis, which we love to. So, and then talking about the number of tennis, you know, in USA alone in, we have 21.64 million tennis players. Why is when we have 4.2 million pickleball players? So yes, I'm happy that, you know, the sport is growing, but in a sense of inclusive, you know, and then equity for this community, especially our, you know, West side low income people, you know, it's very, very important for us, you know, to have this two tennis court the way it is so that we can enjoy the, you know, the tennis, you know, and we can feel like we included, you know, we have the same asset level that we need, you know, we'll do a lot of it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be screen name Nancy Ferrick. Please go ahead, Nancy. Thank you. Five years ago, someone mentioned pickleball to me, although I was almost 60 years old, I'd never played a sport, but convinced a friend to go to Finley with me. Although we were interested in the fund we observed on the court, our ambivalence went out and we turned to leave. Fortunately, Ken Kerr saw us, encouraged us to come in, loaned us paddles and spent an hour introducing us to the game. I was hooked and currently play five to six days a week. I've made many close friends and we support each other and spend time together on and off the courts. My husband started playing pickleball soon after I began, and it was the first time in 30 years that we've been able to play a sport together. To say he is addicted is an understatement. We're thrilled our grown sons and their friends enjoy pickleball now and join us when they are in town or when we travel together. In fact, my 64-year-old husband and 28-year-old son recently partnered and won a bronze medal in a tournament in Sacramento. This is just one example of the inclusive and multi-generational nature of pickleball. The pickleball craze is hitting the country by storm and Sonoma County is no exception. Courts are sorely laughing throughout the city of Santa Rosa. While our longtime ambassador Kathy Curse has always welcomed and instructed new players at the request of Rexon Park, she now offers organized clinics two mornings a week. The upside is that many community members are learning the sport, including longtime tennis players, and based on our local Facebook page, more than 30 community members joined our ranks this month alone. The downside is with all the interest, lack of courts is an even bigger issue. I hope this forum is a step forward in a positive direction. In the short-term, adding lines on existing tennis courts at Finley is the best option and makes better use of an underutilized community resource. So often, as you've heard, that tennis courts stand empty during the week while 40 or more pickleball players take turns waiting to play. Additionally, it seems prudent for the board and city to line other underused tennis courts or best-case scenario to have more dedicated courts as pickleball interest is only going to increase. Now that my husband is on the tournament circuit, we've traveled around California and other states and have seen the surge of new public pickleball courts and complexes large enough to hold tournaments which generate income for the city and accommodate the growing interest by community members of all ages and backgrounds. We hope the board will support and advocate for the growth of the sport in our community by converting underutilized tennis courts and adding more multi-use courts so we will be able to continue to welcome many more pickleball enthusiasts of all ages and ability levels to our ranks. Thank you, Nancy. Our next speaker will be Marty Cassidy. Please go ahead, Marty. All right. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Marty Cassidy. I am a fifth grade teacher here at Helen Lehman Elementary School, which is considerably close to the Finley courts. I've been an educator for 25 years, entirely on the West Side, Roseland School, L.C. Allen High School, and now here at Helen Lehman Elementary School. I hear loud and clear the concerns about West Side inequity. I've spent my entire career facing it and trying to overcome it. And I'm also a pickleball player. I spend a lot of time playing. I also spend a lot of time sharing my passion with my students who are primarily minority underserved economically and socially economically disadvantaged families. Here at our school, our PE teacher does have one unit that focuses on paddle tennis or paddle sports. I have begun to expand that and have pop-up pickleball nets that I use here on our black top during school hours when available. It's limited. And I have been encouraging my students that are interested in playing to also check out Finley and their families as well. I recently needed nets and paddles. I reached out to the pickleball community and immediately had everything that I needed. Pickleball is a great sport for my students. Many of my students are students that struggle with health issues honestly and also with just finding activities that are suitable and enjoyable. So I've seen great enthusiasm for pickleball amongst my students and I'm encouraging both my students and their families. It's an affordable, easy accessible activity for all ages and ability levels. And I just want to, in my few seconds left, I do want to acknowledge both the speakers, Johnny and Zhong that did speak. There is a tennis community. I've been out there. I've said hi to them. I used to play tennis. And I would hate to see them lose their courts. It's not a great situation having multi-striping. But we, I personally believe we need in the city more courts, not just on the west side but throughout the city. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Marty. Our next speaker will be screen name Anna Huang. Go ahead, Anna. Go ahead and unmute, Anna. Hi, can you hear me? We can hear you now. Go ahead. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for letting me speak my voice regarding this matter. And I want to let the board know that, you know, I've been introduced to the tennis game through my husband who has passed away four years ago. But my kids and I, we still enjoy the game of tennis. And my daughter is playing for the UC Santa Cruz for the tennis team. And my other daughter is playing in the high school. So this is a family game for me. And it's very close to me that tennis court is not available for us on the other side of town to be able to play. And we cannot come out to play in the morning by most seniors that are there in the beautiful community because I have to work to support my kids. My kids have to go to school for their future to be an active, you know, in the community. So we cannot come out there to play. So their chart is not accurate for the represent the tennis players like us in the West Side community. And I find it's very unfair and unjust that they are trying to push the tennis players away from the course that only available for us, the two courts. And the court number four, we cannot play because they're always there on the weekend. They're taking over the court number four. And on top of that is only, you know, destructing the life cannot focus. And we have to practice our games just as much as they do to practice their games. So I believe that the tennis game has been in this community in this United States all over the world for years. And it's a beautiful game. It's a game even that even happens for the wheelchair tennis association. So it's for all people, even young and old, everybody that come out, I have my niece come out and come to visit me to the city of Santa Rosa and play with me and she's four or five years old. So why are we pushing those players away? I know I understand that the game is is exploding, expanding. But don't forget that our tennis sport has a history and is still enjoyable. And it's still a beautiful sport and we still love to play. So it's not a dying sport. So just don't kill all the players that want to play out there. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Anna. Our next speaker will be screen named Phillip Stepanek. Go ahead, Phillip. Hello, can you hear me? We can go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Many of my comments are in line with what many of the other tennis supporters have said. I just want to reiterate some of those. Finley courts historically have been a hub of that local community and it really is wonderful to have local courts that you can go on that are at your neighborhood with familiar faces and even the reduction from four courts down to two, like when they say that these numbers aren't as spectacular as they used to be, is because they used to be more four courts and these drop-in matches on the weekend mornings which are the same times that pickleball players want to play for the same reasons. It's just a lovely day to start the day and so reducing from four courts down to two has already diminished that community. Reducing them down from two to zero, it's going to kill the community. Even reducing down from two to one is going to kill the community. And then the claims that the lines that the multi-use courts, the courts are basically useless at that point. Like you can hit on them, but any competitive play is basically destroyed at that point. And then I'd also like to emphasize that this is not a conversation about the merits of tennis versus the merits of pickleball. All the statements about pickleball being multi-generational, multi-ethnic, different skill levels, wonderful way to burn calories and get exercise, these things apply to tennis as well. So it should not be a competition between the two sports. It should simply be a question of fairly allocating resources. On the west side of town there are six pickleball courts and there are two tennis courts. This is already skewed. Skewing it farther to accommodate a vocal and affluent subset of the community isn't a fair answer. The non-vocal majority should be considered as well. Government shouldn't be run by squeaky wheel. It should be run by fairly considering all the needs of the group and the community and allocating the resources the best you can. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Phillip. Our next speaker will be Ken Kirst. Go ahead, Ken. Hi. My name is Ken Kirst. Oh, Ken, is there something on? There you go. Thank you. Okay. I've been playing pickleball at Finlay Park since tennis courts three and four were striped for pickleball, one pickleball court on each tennis court. That was in September of 2011. I've played from nine to at least 1130 every morning, Monday through Saturday, that the weather was good. I didn't have to work or I was out of town. Thus I've been at Finlay the great majority of weekday mornings for the past 10 years. During this 10-year period the tennis courts on weekday mornings are not used very much. There is an occasional couple playing singles. Rarely both courts have been used. Most weekday mornings the courts are empty. Saturday mornings the courts are definitely in use by the same group of eight to 15 players who have been playing together for at least the last 10 years. The proposal to strike pickleball courts take this usage pattern into account. The courts could only be used for pickleball weekday mornings and only when no tennis players wish to use the courts. I admit the lines could be somewhat of a distraction or would be a distraction, but I think most athletes would answer one press that they intuitively know the boundaries of their playing area. To sum up, number one I can say with absolute certainty from my own observation experience that over the past 10 years tennis play on weekday mornings at Finlay is weak to non-existent. Number two over the past 10 years tennis usage at Finlay Park on weekday mornings has stayed the same. It has not grown and has remained minimal. So much so that it would make sense to convert the entire complex to pickleball courts, but I digress. That's not on the table when I know it. Number three tennis courts are not being reduced or taken away. The proposal is to share a resource currently reserved for one sport which is underutilized by that sport. These are public courts funded by taxpayers. The more they are used the more citizens are served. The small distraction of some lines on a court is grossly outweighed by the sensible use of expensive public assets by the greatest number of taxpayers. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Our next speaker will be Ta Deng. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ta. Ta, are you available? We'll go ahead and come back to Ta. Our next speaker will be Peter Tran. Go ahead, Peter. Please unmute yourself. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Go ahead, Peter. Okay. Thank you. Yes, my name is Peter Tran and I'm here to give my two cents worth in favor of keeping the tennis courts the way it is. I agree with the pickleball community is on a rise and there's a huge demand for the courts. But in terms of the west side that already have four courts and two already is taken up by the pickleball communities that leads to courts left and playing tennis is a fast-paced sport. The balls travel much faster and by stripping the lines it is much harder for tennis players to make the right call. And therefore it makes it, you know, not as competitive and a lot of players who are tennis you know, a proponent would don't like the kind of courts that are hybrid like the proposal pickleball communities. So in terms of that, it is so much harder for the tennis players to make the right calls and therefore it is not, the game is no longer as competitive like we would like to have. On another hand is, you know, they're calling for pickleballs, calling for efficient use of the finley courts for pickleball players. But you know, we're not building, you know, we're not making any more courts. So I suggest maybe that you can consider like high school tennis courts striping for pickleball players because they're claiming that there's going to be a lot of costs involved and there's not many courts. But you see finley already has given up 50% of the courts for pickleball and there's no for you to, for pickleball players to add more lines and hybrid courts is very confusing for tennis players. And the one thing is the fourth, the number four court that they have hybrid it is so much harder to play there because every time the tennis ball hits at an angle, a couple of times players can get hurt because they're trying to return the ball and there's that net that pickleball net post it's in the way and several times a couple of tennis players almost hurt themselves because of the hybrid situation on tennis on the court number four. And if you hit it at a certain angle, it's very hard to hit back because of the because of the situation of that, the way they lined up the courts. So there's got to be a better way to solve this and not just take the remaining two courts from the west side and there isn't a whole lot of tennis courts available now for the tennis players. And thank you for your time. Thank you, Peter. Our next speaker will be Billy Andre. Go ahead, Billy. All right. My name is Billy Andre. I'm the lead pastor at the Bridge Church in Santa Rosa and I lost my home in the Tubbs Fire in 2017. In addition to losing my home, we had 30 families in our church loose homes as well. And so I went through this season of just overwhelming grief as I walked with family members, my church and even with my own family, I've got three teenagers at the time. And I went through a bout of depression and PTSD, started getting counseling, but I just kind of was in a pretty dark hole for a little while. And I remember one day I was just taking a walk and that's about all I could do at that point. I couldn't really exercise. I could barely get out of the house. I went over to Pioneer High School when I saw this guy and he was over hitting a wiffle ball against the wall with a paddle and I go, man, what is that? You know, and I walked over to the guy and I said, hey, what is that? He explained it was pickleball and he asked me if I wanted lessons. And I said, I didn't have money for lessons. So I, he said, I'll give him lessons for free. And so his name is Hung and just a really cool guy from Vietnam and just a really, really sweet guy. So we started meeting weekly and it got me out, started exercising, started teaching me the game. And for the first time, and I would say about 10 months, I started to actually look forward to doing something. And I started playing and about, so that was in 2018. I think it was like the first day of 2019. I went out and actually played some games. And I'm a, I'm an athlete. I'm 45. I, but I used to wrestle so I can't do that anymore. And so I'm thinking, okay, this, I'm a little embarrassed to go after with a paddle and whiffle ball. Am I really going to play this sport? But I'll probably dominate because I'm a, I'm an athlete or whatever. So I go out there and there's some 70 year old women out there and they just demolished me. And it was awesome. I was like so humbled. And I'm like, okay, there's a lot more to this game than just the physical part of their strategy and all this kind of stuff. And I just got absolutely hooked on it. And, and so it has been such a huge part of my mental health, my physical recovery. I've developed a ton of new friendships in the pickleball community. And I just wanted to kind of offer this big idea that I think we're sitting on an incredible healing part of our community by getting people that are depressed. They've gone through COVID, they've gone through fires. Now, you know, we've got flooding happening this past weekend, but our community has experienced so much trauma that I just know from personal experience that I have benefited so greatly from pickleball that it has actually healed my, my mental health issue. So I just think expanding the pickleball community any way we can is going to be great. And thank you for your time. Thank you for that. It looks like the next speaker is Tim. We've been able to hear you. Oh, hi. You hear me? We can. Thank you. Oh, hi. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak up here. I believe that any sport, they're all beautiful, very good for everybody. I don't want to compare to which one to which. The point here, we, the meeting today, I'm thinking that we're talking about throwing the yellow line on the tennis court, have the effect on the game of people playing or not. And like Billy, he just mentioned earlier about Hong To. Hong To is a pickleball player. He's very famous. And he's also a trainer here. I talked to him the other day. He also mentioned to me about the court, even the court number four with the yellow light, the paint on it. Most pickleball players, they don't like to play on those courts. Imagine in our tennis court, it's more complicated. I would say tennis game is more complicated than pickleball. Like Peter mentioned earlier, the ball goes fast with the high speed. It's very hard to navigate, to look at the lines. And it's very confused for tennis player. And Hong To also talked to me a solution that if pickleball people, they can organize their time to come out, it would be great because they have more space, more chance to play. Instead of, they all come out at the same time. And we are tennis players. We just come out on the weekend because we have to work. Most people have to work. And another solution Hong To mentioned, that if they can use like you said, they arrange the time for people to play. And the other thing is they've been using the temporary tape to tap over the tennis court when no tennis player over there. So maybe they can find a better solution than painting on tennis court. That's the only two tennis court in the west side of Santa Rosa. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Christopher Williams. Go ahead, Christopher. Thank you. Hi. I bought my house close to Findlay Park 22 years ago because there were four tennis courts because there was a pool because there was volleyball. When pickleball came into existence, I mean, I understand that we need to share resources, but you've taken one quarter away at Howard. So that's only one, but maybe one seventh of the facility at Howard. You've taken nothing away from Galvin Park, which has two tennis, you took over two tennis courts there for junior tennis courts, which I never see anyone use. You could take over two to three, even four courts over there, and you still have 10 courts at Galvin. Here at Findlay Park, and those are all on the east side of the courts, on the east side of the city, we have only two remaining public tennis courts. And when you start redrawing lines on tennis courts, it makes it really hard to play. It's not as fun anymore. I've been playing for 50 years and I hope to be playing even longer. I didn't buy my house because there were pickleball courts here. I would have thought differently if I couldn't have walked to my tennis courts, I would have bought somewhere differently. Well, I'm not rich. I don't have the money that I can just up and go. And so now you want to take the two remaining courts that affect not just me, but it affects a lot of working people. The people that can play pickleball, they're not all working people. And if they are workers, they can come out in the afternoon. I just think that you should be, you should think about the whole community, not just because pickleballers, it's a growing sport. Spend a little money. Go take over some of the courts over at Galvan Park, but don't take everything away from Finley, which for me, I can tolerate two courts because we have to be, we have to try to incorporate everybody. But I don't know why we don't want to spend, maybe maybe need to spend some more money. Instead of taking the, at the expense of tennis players, why not spend a little bit of money? If it's that important, put a little bit of more money into the park, put some lights in there, but don't just do it at the expense of tennis players. Thank you. Thank you, Christopher. Our next speaker will be Ta Dang. Go ahead, Ta. Ta, we cannot hear you. Ta, we still can't hear you. Unfortunately, Ta, your, your voice is not being heard by us. It does appear that you're unmuted. I'm not sure why we can't hear you. Okay. Well, unfortunately, we are not able to hear you. You can still submit an email, the BOC email address, if you would like to have your comments from today heard. Thank you. Chair Kwant, I have no additional public comments. Thank you so much. Jen, I'm going to ask one question that I asked you before that was brought up and that is lights on the courts, on all the courts at Finley. Is that an option? Not at this time. That's not a short-term solution. Plus, we also have an agreement with our neighbors. Next door, the residential units for noise. I would have to check that to see if lights are included in that. Thank you. So thank you for that clarification. I'm going to bring it back to the board for further discussion. Let's not state our stance. Let's, let's have a discussion. And yeah, simple raising of hands for discussion or clarification for the clarification. Anybody? Okay, so maybe we are ready to move forward and I need some help from staff in our position on what we think should happen. Do we need to align? Is it majority rules? Where do we go on something like this where we're providing advice to Park and Rec Department? You know, we're not technically taking a roll call vote. We will be looking at a majority to move forward with double lines. If we, if we don't see that, then we're going to keep going with our plans to look at other options. Okay, not what I would consider ideal, but we can work with this. So if you've got your ideas together and would like to present something for the other board members to consider, raise your hand, no particular order, Terry. Well, I have actually a couple of questions just for clarification. Is there no temporary vinyl or tape system that could be utilized? I recognize that it would be time consuming probably to set it up and there may need to be some scheduling involved, but other than paint, permanent paint, is there any temporary system that the pickle ball groups could use on the tennis courts? So that would allow the tennis players to use the courts without additional lines? I don't know the exact specifics of it. I believe there's a tape product that has been used out at Galvin for some of the sharing there. My understanding those, I don't think that that's, you know, probably the time consuming aspect of it is I don't think that's something that's done just for day of use. I think that's something that's been put down and has remained out there for continual use, but would be more temporary than the paint would be. I actually did some online research about the tape and read that tennis balls react differently when they hit the tape than they do when they hit concrete. So it's an inconsistent game, tape versus concrete. I don't know how much effect, but I did read that in one of the reviews of tape versus paint. Right, and I will say that when I was visiting with the pickle ball team, they had put down temporary tape that was being removed by the tennis players, we're assuming because again, it was probably not the best for the tennis, for the tennis play, but we're, we're not sure, but we, I did observe that happening. Terri, were you through or I am sorry for now, I may have additional questions, but I'd like to hear from other members of the board. Great, Logan. Thanks, Carol. Jen, I'm still not clear. So is this going to go to the city council with basically the same presentation, but they're not casting a vote? Oh, yeah. No, I'm so sorry. No, this is, this is it. This is the stop for this. It is not traveling to the city council. We're not looking for funds. The, if the board would like to see something like this happen, we're looking to the pickle ball groups to fund ways for that. And they have great to that. So, so this is the end of this discussion so far. Certainly we could take anything to council, but that wasn't the intention here again, because we're looking at a temporary solution. Okay, so whatever direction or advice we give, there is going to be more opportunities for folks to comment before you actually make these changes or this is the last chance for the public to comment. This is the last chance for this, for this item. So folks can still submit an email comment that will be included in the record, but it's not going to be heard tonight. And then I guess we didn't hear this. What is the timeline if for doing this work? When would it be completed? Jeff or Jen? Yeah, I don't know if we have, I don't know if we have Jeremy on Jeremy Gundy with with park maintenance, but it's a project that they would be taking the lead of of actually doing the lineage of the lining of the courts. But I would assume I mean obviously whether I hopefully we continue to get rain, I think we would all like to see that. But I think this is something that we see feasible in people playing dual lined courts by spring 2022 and would refer to Jeremy if I misspoke there. Okay, I'll just go ahead, Jen. Oh, I'm sorry. I just want to let you know we do have James Castro present if you would like to talk about timeline more. Sure, if James has a has a more clear answer than Jeff, go ahead, James. If not, if there's nothing to add, no need to topple on James. I don't have anything more to add. Park maintenance is ready to go when we get green light. Got it. Okay, I still feel some discomfort like Carol indicated with going forward with this right now. Because I just it doesn't feel like we've heard from enough of the community that wants to keep a tennis court. I think a solution could be to change one tennis court and keep the other one. But I still think that that hasn't really been presented to all the users yet of the of the facility. That seems like a simple solution though to me right now is to keep one and change one. I think I still would like to see a little more information on how that would happen. Like a fence between the two or some sort of safety precaution since that was brought up. But that's where I'm at right now. Thank you, Logan, Steve. I think we have a wealth of information in front of us and we've had all the board members that have ample time to research this nationwide statewide locally, thinly specific. I think we should make a recommendation now. And I'd like to make a motion that we recommend to the city council that they accept and fund the recommendation that staff and the club made to us today. So Steve, you're kind of jumping the gun again. I know, but you can make a motion anytime. Let's let the rest of the board weigh in. I know, but a motion can be made at any time. So if there's not a second, I understand that. And I'm more than respect the other board members. I just might think that we've heard a tremendous, we have a tremendous amount of information. All of us have had opportunities to go over to and watch the pickleball courts play at Finley. We've had opportunities to do that. I think it's time to make a decision and then recommend something to the city council. So staff, staff, could you weigh in on points of procedure, please? Is there a second? Right. And I'll just clarify with you council, board members fill in that we are not looking for a recommendation to council. We're looking for a recommendation back to the community and back to staff. So we know what to do. If you are wanting to change that and wanting this to go to council, we can open that discussion, but we are not intending to go to council with this at this time. I understand what staff is recommending on that. And my motion is that there's a tremendous amount of information that we all have available to us. We've had many weeks and months to research it ourselves. We've heard it a lot from various folks in the community. And I just think it's time to take some action rather than postpone it one more time. Great. I appreciate that. And I will clarify too that, like Jeff mentioned in the beginning, we're trying something new because this is an urgent thing that's come up in front of us. Normally, we would take our time and go back out in the community and do our thorough research. Certainly, that's not going to happen until sometime next year if that's what the board direction would be. So just so you know from a timing perspective that if we're looking to come back at a later date, it's not going to be until sometime next year at the earliest. I can appreciate that. But I was also it was somewhat concerned when we were talking about Creekside and it took us 11 years, 11 years to make a decision. I mean, I don't want to see being another 11 years to make a decision on a sport that is accelerating tremendously and Santa Rosa has such an opportunity to be the epicenter of this sport in the Bay Area and we're behind the ball with regard to the demand and the supply. The city is providing the supply and our citizens are demanding it and we can't meet that today. I think we can make a recommendation to City Council. So again, this is not going to City Council. I could count on both hands and both feet and still need more digits for the number of things we are not supplying to our park and rec users. We are behind the curve on Jen. What do you think? Pretty much every sport. Pickleball is not alone in being underserved. I'm sorry. I appreciate your passion, but it's not alone. Could we hear from Madonna or Carolina and Steve, we can come back to you if you have additional points to make? I will have no additional comments to make. Thank you. So I'm kind of, you know, where Logan's at with, you know, sharing. And I appreciate the comment from the public in regards to mental health and trauma as a Lakota and Pomo woman. That's something I am very aware of. And, you know, with Steve, you know, the 11 years on the creek, the Washington Redskins was something my grandmother had already died before she could see that that was a fight she fought her whole life. She was not able to see that change made. But I'm somebody who wants to be fair. I want to be fair to both the tennis players and the pickleball players. And I live fairly, I live less than a mile from Finley as well. So I want to, I want to share like Logan says, you know, and Carol, you know, not just giving it all to the pickleball ballers, but, you know, sharing it. Thank you. Carolina, did you want to say anything? No, I would like to try the temporary fix for the restriping and see how it's going to be a couple of years at the max. And I would like to try that rather. And, and I appreciate that the presentation that the folks met in it looks like they're trying very, very hard to get along all of them. So why don't we give them a try? Point well taken. During the presentation, I put down a couple of new notes thinking outside the box because the box is very small and there's too many people trying to play in the box at the same time. One is might it be affordable to put up sun netting over some of the courts to extend the pickleball day? One of the presenters said it gets too hot in the summer that there's only certain hours that the pickleballers could play. Is that something that could be considered? Another point that was mentioned in the comments was dual striping. It doesn't work. Could it be that these particular colors do not lend themselves to dual striping? Are there other combinations of colors that are used in other courts that might be more conducive for one or two dual stripe courts? I'm looking for compromises here. I'm looking for everyone to feel that they're part of the included community, not part of the excluded community. Having said that temporary painting, I don't know what that means. I have to fall back to the position. Whatever changes are made are going to be with us for a while and may require some staff monitoring. This means time being taken away from other projects that our limited staff is working on. I know the pickleball community is well-intentioned, but we need to have a third party examining the situation and talking to all the participants, not a vested interest, no matter how diplomatic and unbiased they try to be. You cannot step outside of your own position. I would love to see a dedicated tennis court at Finley. We have options. As I see it, and I'm going to put this up to staff to either shake your head furiously or not, one option is, oh, I see two hands raised. We'll go to Madonna first this time. Thank you so much. Just really quick, the stripes. I was thinking in my head, okay, we have more land. What is a small San Francisco place or New York? What are these big cities with no land? How are they doing it with the striping? What colors are they using? I have that thought. Then also what you mentioned with the shading. Yes, let's buy some shading. Simple fixes. Those were just my two thoughts on what you just commented. Thank you, Carol. Terry. Thank you. Sorry. Where I landed is, in looking at this proposal and hearing the presentation and looking at the usage of the courts, the proposal makes perfect sense to me. Where I got hung up, I think where we were all hung up, is the fact that there are only two tennis courts on the west side of Santa Rosa. I did not anticipate that the lines would make the courts unusable as the tennis players represented. I guess for me, what I'd like to hear is there some way, in addition to perhaps exploring a different color scheme for the lining that might work better, could the pickle ball community and the tennis community meet and see if there is some agreement about what striping might work best for both players? When I stood on the tennis court for that family and looked at the pickle ball lines and the tennis line, now I did not play tennis regularly. I haven't played tennis in years, but it looked workable to me. Like I said, I don't play tennis every day. Is there some way of mining the courts in a way that works for both groups? I would really like these groups to come together and see if they could explore that a little bit more. On top of, can we find additional courts at schools perhaps that could be utilized for the tennis community on the west side of Santa Rosa? That's where I've landed in terms of going forward. Thank you, Terri. I'll go back to the nodding and the shaking of heads. I see we have three options. One is we're not ready to make a decision, more research needs to be done, and hopefully it's winter. I know the pickle ball community, I too have been out there in the mornings and seen the squeegees and the towels. The pickle ball community will play rain or shine. Tennis players, you've either got to be crazy or real died hard to be out there getting a sopping wet tennis ball to play. One option is to use these wet months to do some more research on how things could be augmented, be it netting, be it a backboard, be it different colors, be it the two communities getting together and working something out. That's one. That's kind of a pause. Another is to go forward with the presentation as it was presented and dual stripe the far west courts. A third option is a compromise of some kind where one court, one tennis court is taken out of dedicated tennis play. The other tennis court is left in dedicated tennis play. Potentially a backboard dual marked for both tennis and pickle ball drills, which could potentially accommodate a number of single players or people waiting for a dedicated court or needing to do drills. Those are the three options. Hit reset or study, go with the plan as it was presented, compromise. Would it be fair for us to take a show of hands for those three options? Have I left something out? Carol, I believe that covers it pretty well. The one thing I would add is that I would say in some ways the first and third option are the same in terms of what staff would be receiving. A pause on it or looking at other options in some ways are both a pause on it to do further evaluation. So it would just be the future direction of what possible options to look into. Teri, it would be possible to, what would be a good time frame to do this on a trial basis? I hate to spend $15,000 for a trial basis, but I'm wondering would it be possible to maybe add four courts in the West Courts and revisit whether this is working for both communities at some point down the road, whether it be six months or is the expenditure of the money really intended to bridge until we have a more permanent solution? Do you want to go ahead? I would say this, that if we're going to put paint down on a court, it's going to be there for a long time because the maintenance to remove it is pretty intense. So I would say if the board can provide us essentially with a, either we're going to move forward with the striping after today or we're going to look at other options and come back next year or whenever the pickleball group can regroup and come back with something different. That would be really helpful. Okay, that's pretty harsh, but that's reality. So let's put feet forward and do a show of hands for people who want to move forward with the plan as presented today. And we have one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, six. So we would need four hands to go up, correct, to move forward as presented. Okay, we just made four hands. Again, could you guys put your four hands up one more time, all at the same time? So we have Steve, we have Madonna, we have Carolina, and we have Terry saying let's move forward with the plan as proposed. I assume that the park and rec department still has the ability to do some fine tuning, be it paint colors, where the nets are stored, all of that, which is outside of our purview. Is that correct? Yes, we'll definitely continue to work with both the tennis and pickleball players and try to make this as beneficial to both groups as possible moving forward. Great, and I'm going to be optimistic yet again and hope that we have real winter and ask that sometime early summer, depending on weather and conditions that staff gets back to us and reports back on how things are going. And perhaps we can all be eyes and ears on the pickleball court and the tennis court to see for ourselves how it's going. Yes, so with that, I want to say thank you very much to the presenters and to staff and to the board. It is 637 and we still have another item on our agenda. We're going to take a break. We all deserve a break, but I'm going to ask Jen, how much longer do you think we're going to need to discuss Dutch floor? And if find out if any of our board members have commitments, prior commitments, and how many members we need to maintain quorum? And Steve has a question, so I'm going to jump over to him. Yes, I had prior equipment an hour ago. So I need to go to the hospital to see. Anyway, that's details, but I got to go. Thank you, Steve. Here, probably we'll still have a quorum. Yes, we still have five. Hope you are needed. Thank you. How many people do we need for a quorum? Five. Okay, so next question, how ballpark? What do you think we have for additional time commitment? Because once we start, if someone else leaves, we have to start over, correct? That's correct. If anybody else leaves, we'll have to do this again in December. So we usually leave 40 minutes for master plan presentations, but I think the presentation itself is relatively quick, about 20 minutes. And then just depending on how many, how many, you know, how much discussion we have after that. So it could be anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes. So it would be comfortable to say that we should be done by 730? Oh, no, I'm going to say 745 because we're going to take a rest stop. Is everybody good hanging out for Dutch Floor Park until 730? Yeah? Oh, yes. Yes. Carolina? I was curious, is our December agenda really jammed that we couldn't put this in December? I believe we probably won't have a November meeting because of Thanksgiving. Is that right? That's correct. We will not have a meeting in November. Our meeting in December is already pretty full. So this would make more sense. Okay, no, okay. I was just thinking when we're, when we start earlier, we're fresher. That's all. But, but if we can't do it, then we, in December, then we need to do it today. Jen, is there a date for when a Dutch floor does need to go to City Council? Correct. That's correct. We're looking for a roll call vote tonight for Dutch Floor and then moving to Council. And has that been scheduled on their calendar yet? No, we need to, we need to do this first and then we'll schedule. Perfect. Okay. So it is 640, five minute break outside. This is going to take an hour. Is everybody good to hang until 740? If you are not, we need to know now. So show a thumbs for good till 745. All right. Okay. So awesome. See you all back here in five minutes, 645. Great. Thank you. So Carolina, I saw you with a great big printout of the master plan. Where did you get it? Was I mistaken? You seem to have a big color master plan. Did you print it out? Yes. You mean a Dutch floor? Yeah. Oh yeah, I printed it out. Oh, good for you. Well, I like to kind of read it, you know, and I like reading off of paper so I can flip it around. So yeah, I've done that with all the parks. So I did a little black and white one and put little tags on it, but yours is awesome. Well, it's easier to read, Carol. Yeah, good job tonight. So when I went on the parks board, I had the choice of several and I picked parks because it was non-controversial. We don't want to bring that up. So I think we're all back. Hopefully you had time to take care of some business, get something to drink, and we are moving on to what should be a real joyful presentation, which is a presentation of the Dutch floor master plan. Joining us tonight is assistant park planner Tim Bernard, who's going to go through the design package with us, and also Hailey, Hailey from the design consultant who's been working with us for a very long time. And on that, I'm just going to turn it over to Hailey and Tim. Okay, good. Away you go. Hey, Tim, just quick question for you. We see that Carrie's listed as an attendee. It's not allowing us to promote her as a panelist, so if you're wanting her to show up, she may need to log off and re-log back on, so we can attempt to do that when we see her name popped back up. It will just be me tonight so you can, she was my backup because my wife is 39 and a half weeks pregnant, so. Perfect, thank you. Yeah. Good evening. Chair Kwant, vice chair of Griffin board members and public attendees. My name is Tim Bernard and I'm an assistant park planner. I'm also the project manager for Dutch floor master plan amendment, and that's why we're here to, that's what we're here to keep to speak about tonight. We started this project in February with a main objective of updating play and fitness equipment as well as accessibility throughout the park. We had three public meetings to gain comment and feedback along the way, and after seven months, we are happy to be here to present the master plan amendment. We have been working with Hailey Watterson and her team from plural landscape architecture studio in San Francisco. She is going to walk us through the design process we took to get to this point in the master plan amendment. I'd like to turn it over to Hailey. Good evening, everyone. Hailey Watterson with plural. Thanks for staying late for us tonight. I'll try to get through this as concise as I can. All right, next slide please. So this has been our team. Myself, Carrie and Mariam in our office in San Francisco, working closely with Jen and Tim, and then was also wanting to just give a special thanks out to Principal Tran in the school at Bayela Elementary. Next slide. So Dutch Floor Neighborhood Park is located in the first quadrant. They're highlighted in yellow. It's located near the red star here on the map. Next slide. A little bit of background on the park. The park was formed in 1983 and 84 when a school and two subdivisions were being planned, and they both dedicated space for this park. And in 1989, the park was completed and named Sunburst Park. And the park that's there today is the original park that was completed in 1989. It is 2.8 acres. It has two children's play areas, adult fitness equipment, and a few picnic tables, which I'll point out to you on existing aerial in the following slides. And then in 1992, the park was renamed to Dutch Floor Park after the city's longtime police chief, Melvin Dutch Floor. And then in last, I guess, yeah, last year, an RFP was put out for a landscape architecture team to update the master plan, which would include the play areas, fitness, and upgraded park infrastructure and accessibility. So we are now nearing the end of this first master plan phase of the project. Next slide. So this is the existing master plan. This plan is actually rotated counterclockwise with north onto the left. The rest of the images and graphics of the plan will be rotated with north up, just so you guys know. During this master plan, the triangle wedge that is there today was not yet included into the park. It would be on the left side here. The school by Ella is up in the top left corner. And this master plan represents more or less what's there today, the two locations of the two play areas, the one on the left is the five to 12 play area. And the one on the right is a top lot, around two to five age area. There's many mature trees that are planted at this time and still exist today. And also nice perimeter trees that provide good buffering to the neighbors. Next slide. All right. So we were kind of looking sideways at that one. And this one is now rotated face up. And the rest of the plans will be this orientation with Exeter drive on the left, white chapel way on the bottom here. And pink, the pink line is representative of the park outline. So it shares an edge with Biola elementary school. It's a completely open edge currently. The yard and the black top are kind of continuous with the lawn of the park. It's a gentle slope from Biola elementary school down to a corner of Exeter and white chapel. You can see the two playgrounds represented here. And we can look into them a little bit more closely on the next slide. Next slide, please. Here we go. So the image on the right is a photo of the existing park. It's very beautiful. It has many large, healthy, mature trees. It has a nice kind of open quality to it. The two play spaces are outlined on a diagram on the left. There are the two pink pink shapes. The pink shape on the top is the existing five to 12 play area. And the pink shape on the bottom is the two to five play space. They're currently about 150 feet apart from each other, which makes them makes it quite challenging for parents or caregivers to observe children in these two different age groups and also causes some older kids and younger kids to play in the other play spaces. Just north of the five to 12 play space, there's an existing fitness equipment. And the fitness equipment and the play equipment are original to that 1989 with some modifications and adjustments here and there. But they are at the end of their lifespan. So this project really needs a new playground equipment. And there's a couple of picnic tables that are scattered throughout the park. And then a seating area to the west of the five to 12 play space where there's a planter and a drinking fountain there. Next slide. So starting this master plan, we wanted to outline clear goals and objectives. The goals are really high level things we're trying to achieve. They are to create a safe and welcoming park and playground first and foremost. We wanted to improve the connectivity and accessibility and really the usability of the park. There are some paths that don't meet accessibility codes. So looking at making those improvements. And then enhance the park's beauty, which is a very beautiful park. So we want to enhance that and build upon it. And getting more into the specifics and other objectives in that are to update the two playgrounds and to create more connectivity between the two. To update the adult fitness area. To update the paths to make sure they're all accessible. And update the park infrastructure, including drainage irrigation and some of the site furnishings. Next slide. Since February, as Tim mentioned, we've had three community meetings. They were all held, unfortunately, remotely on Zoom. Following those meetings, there were online surveys. The presentation and any survey questions that happened in the Zoom meetings were then put online. And we had anywhere from 17 to 34 participants in the community meetings. And then the online survey respondents for anywhere from 53 to 64 respondents. We also engaged the Piala Elementary School. We originally met with Principal Tran and she was very excited about this project and the potential to get the students involved. So we came up with this idea of a school-wide brainstorm where the classrooms had a I think a week and a half long project where the students got together and worked either together as a class or independently and came up with some ideas for the playground. And we'll see some of those sketches in the following slides. So that was really fun for us. We presented to each of these grade groups and talked a little bit about what landscape architecture is, how park master plans work, and then invited the students to dream about their playground. Next slide. At each one of these community meetings, we asked a series of questions to get a sense of who we were able to connect with during these community meetings. And these are graphs from the first community meeting, but they're pretty representative of all three of the community meetings. Seeing here on the left that 80% of the participants lived in the quadrant of the park and that almost 70% of the participants were used the park weekly, if not daily. So we felt pretty good that we are reaching the real users of the park. Next slide. Our approach to the community meetings was to really start with the community, the first community meeting, with some of the macro decisions, how to start to lay out the park. And as we moved through the community meetings, we started to get down into the more micro decisions that we were working through. So during community meeting number one, we focused on primarily three things. One, the site organization. Second is the playground look and feel. And the third was the playground components. So for the site organization, we put forth these three options and they were really looking at the main amenity program elements and how they are related to each other and the way that they're next to each other within the park where they're laid out. And we discussed the kind of pros and cons of relocating playgrounds and moving fitness equipment. A lot of these schemes were trying to take advantage of some of the flat grading pads that already exist, like for where the current playgrounds are today. For the look and feel of the playgrounds, we shared a series of kind of characters of the playground that we could go after knowing that in the master plan phase, we would not be kind of fully building out and selecting all the components of the playground. But we wanted to understand enough to help us give the right shape in the form to the playground. So we asked folks about that. We also asked about playground components. Again, knowing that some of the larger components do take some planning at this level to fit, like a zip line, for example, which the community got really excited about, is going to take up a good amount of space. So planning for those early would be important to the master plan. Next slide. These are the feedback that we received. So we took, after every community meeting, the results we heard from the meeting and the results from the online. And we combined them and we shared them back with the community. So these charts are representative of the combined results. So it was a very strong preference for Site Organization C, which had the two playgrounds right next to each other and had the picnic spaces just south of the bottom of the playgrounds and then had the fitness equipment scattered around the park versus a kind of centralized location. The look and feel feedback that we got was, there was no kind of clear winner or a clear, you know, desirable approach to the character. You know, traditional and natural were up there in the votes, but we decided to kind of take another step in the next community meeting where we looked at combining some of these ideas and actually providing multiple options for playgrounds to try to get a little bit closer to what folks were after. The playground components are the slides and gliders, swings, climbing, and motion where the big things that came out and specifically the blind was mentioned a couple of times. Next slide. Then through the bio elementary school, we received dozens of wonderful sketches and drawings and even some writing. So we kind of collected them all, we reviewed them and came up with this word cloud below as a way to kind of gather all the information where we just took the elements that we were seeing and kind of populated them together to make this word cloud. So in the way that word clouds work, the biggest word represents the most occurrences of it in these drawings. So swings and climbing were in there and I was also really happy to see that kids are really value trees and grass and bushes and really want their parks to be green. Next slide. So we came to community meeting number two. We presented three master plan options and each one of those options were paired with three playground options and we presented this in a way that the playgrounds could be kind of interchangeable to the master plans, but we wanted to try to get to the character of the playgrounds a little bit more because there were such kind of even voting on the previous round. All of these schemes took a starting place from the site organization C that had the two playgrounds close together. So each one of these options has the two playgrounds taking advantage of that existing five to 12 playground location where we have you know a large kind of flat graded area already and brings the small the five to 12 the two to five next to it. It has the fitness equipment along the north side. Some of the options added a like option B added a group picnic area where larger groups could be accommodated. There could even be barbecues there. The other differences are in the way that we were treating the stormwater treatment gardens that would be required for this project which we were looking at at the kind of natural low point of the site which is at the corner of Exeter and Whitechapel. So these are some of the kind of subtle differences that we provided in these options and the three playground options we call Dry Creek Loops and Enchanted Forest. The Dry Creek option was really inspired by the Santa Rosa Creek that's a few blocks away and was really pulling from that natural character that that folks were interested in. The Loops playground concept was looking at more of a kind of artful graphic approach looking at a way to provide a kind of chasing loop through the playground that would correlate to some interesting playground structures that we found that also have this kind of loop character to them. The third scheme was Enchanted Forest. This was looking at providing more tree canopy and providing a playground and environment kind of in and around that canopy that had a kind of whimsical theme to it. Next slide. The feedback that we got from Community Meeting Number Two was a pretty strong preference for master plant option C and those those main differences were the stormwater garden had a way to get into it and had a path and a bench. There was more adult fitness stations than the other options. There was more shade and trees in this option and there was no group picnic area. We heard pretty strongly that there was a preference to not have larger groups gathering in the park. The dry creek play option here is a little bit larger so you can see it a little bit better. The dry creek option was the preference and this option was looking at using a boulder edge along the main path. There's a little bit of a grade change here so we use this kind of boulder edge to create that grade change and inside that there are a few sand pits with kind of hand operated water pumps. Along the southern side of the playground there is this kind of beige meandering path. It's partly meandering to give this idea of the creek but also to dodge existing trees that we're trying to keep and that becomes the place where we fold in the picnic tables and benches and places to kind of inhabit. We can get into this a little bit more detail when we see the developed option for it. Next slide. For community meandering number three we took all the feedback that we collected and presented this refined plan that had these refinements. So it had the storm water garden with a path in the bench. We heard a desire for more structure and a more defined edge around the Biola elementary school so we looked at providing a low fence and a gate that would be operated by Biola and some seating that went along with that and that would all operate within their property line so you can see the red dash line here represents the the lines of the park. Again people were looking for more shade so we brought in some more trees in the playground that people liked from from some of the other playground schemes. We brought in some street trees along Exeter and Whitechapel way to provide more shade on the sidewalk. We heard requests for adult games like cornhole, chess, and table tennis so we created a place in the playground in the center where all the games were kind of collected together. We heard that there was actually a desire for some of the games to be inside of the playground and some to be out so that's something we worked on after this. There are the more fitness stations there are seating options inside the playground and outside and then there really thinking about clear lines of sight through the park there was you may recall there was shooting incident that happened between community number two and community number three so we there was some concern about safety in the park. Tim reached out to police department and they gave us some things to think about which were really around visibility and clear sight lines to the park for police cars patrolling along the edges making sure our trees are limbed up which works well for us because we have these mature trees that already have their canopies up high and then making sure park signage is clearly visible and located adjacent to many locations in the park. Next slide and at community number three we asked a bit more specifics on the play the fitness equipment the games and the existing monument sign the existing monument sign that is there now is a large kind of timber painted sign that was very much part of that the time that it was built and so we asked folks if they felt like they liked it it has a certain charm to it or if they were ready for it to be replaced and 47% said they were interested in it being replaced we asked a little bit more about the fitness equipment what type of equipment people were looking for multi-generational equipment that had a mix of strength training and cardio and then again talking we talked about the games quite a bit in terms of should some be in should some be out and which ones made the most sense to be in the playground versus out. Next slide so this is the proposed master plan where it lands today it is formatted a little bit differently from the other attachment just in terms of space on the slide but I can just kind of walk through it in a little bit more detail at the corner of Exeter and White Chapel we have this idea for a stormwater garden which is something will be required to treat a certain amount of the runoff of the site it's located at the the low point of the park the natural place where water gathers it also becomes a kind of beautiful entry garden with the monument sign placed within it there could be educational signage telling people how this garden is cleaning and infiltrating water runoff. The path alignments come from Exeter and White Chapel or not unsimilar from this current circulation and movement today you know there are a lot of caregivers and parents pick up children from the school along Exeter and White Chapel so we wanted to make sure there was redirect paths from the school to those edges. There's we moved the chess and ping pong tables outside of the park and placed them where we previously had fitness equipment we moved another fitness equipment up to the northern side of the play so it's now kind of consolidated to the north of the playground. We had this idea of a continuous path around the playground that would not only kind of represent this dry creek concept but also give accessible route around the whole playground in particular to the to the sand boxes the two main entries to the playground are right where that Y is the way the two paths come together and then on the top left and then also an entrance coming straight in from Viola elementary school and so the the five to twelve area is where that number one is we will have space for a kind of medium play structure swing set and the big zipline and just to the south of that they're separated by a path it's the two to five playgrounds where the number two is located we'll have room for a small medium structure swing sets and a couple of spring riders and springboards each age group has a city area a picnic area associated with it the picnic area that is associated with the five to twelve has the cornhole set located with it at each park entry there's a bench a bike rack and the park rule sign will be located there as well there's also a bike rack at the entry at the corner of Exeter and Whitechapel and there is still the the edge of Viola still planning on a low and a 42 inch tall fence that has a good porosity so you can kind of see through it it's low but it creates kind of a clear boundary to the school edge and some new trees within that planted area try to get some shade on the that existing black top at the school all the perimeter trees would remain and be protected most of I think we were able to save almost all of the existing trees I think there's probably two we might need to remove due to some of the grading and then the accessible ramps at the corners of Whitechapel and Exeter will all be improved to meet current accessibility standards along with the continental crosswalk striping and I think that is it oh there's an existing perimeter fence that's right underneath those existing dark green trees that fence will remain and there is one bench that has a memorial plaque on it that would be relocated to an instance to a to a new bench in the park that is the summary thank you all happy to answer any questions pass it back to Tim thanks Hayley that was a great presentation I hope everybody enjoyed that we'll have time for questions coming up but first I want to let you know what next steps are pending the board's approval we will place the Dutch floor master plan amendment on the city council agenda for December of this year or January of next year plural will begin construction documents following um council approval I guess we need to go to next next slide I'm sorry thank you um construction of the park improvements will begin after the completion of the construction plans currently scheduled to begin May 2022 and then a park reopening celebration is anticipated in December of 22 or January of 23 next slide please it is recommended by the department of transportation and public works parks division that the board of community service approved the dutch floor master plan amendment to include two revised playground areas public tables pedestrian pathways fitness equipment and addition of such games as cornhole table tennis and chess and recommend council approve of the same thank you Hayley and Tim uh Jen I'm going to ask you a very broad question I have a tendency to go directly into minutia only to be told no this is a master plan we're still painting with rather broad strokes with our questions um can you provide some um give us a guide for how detailed a question as opposed to broad broad stroke questions we should be asking at this point well certainly I don't want to necessarily limit your questioning per se but I will uh I appreciate the the moment to remind the board that master plans are definitely not construction drawings we'll be working with Hayley's team to refine the design um and and and and make this work for the actual site this is the big picture this is a graphic that's representing general locations of things and generally what type of things we want to see in the park it's it's not um what colors the playground what sort of um where is that pathway going to be exactly what type of trash can the picnic tables are you thinking of none of those decisions have been made yet we're just really working with the community about locations and types of amenities and this these are the things that we heard most from the community so certainly question questions around that are probably more appropriate just because we're at this you know big picture scale but certainly if there's something that we can clarify I'm sure that Hayley and Tim or I can can help with that as well great thank you for that um could we get the master plan graphic back up and is there any way to zoom in on that graphic you can say no I'm going to turn to our host I'm not sure if that is possible I'm going to turn to our host to see if they if they have an answer and as we get that possibly taken care of um raise your hand if you have uh questions then we will go to public comments and then we'll come back for uh board discussion so we will go to Terry thank you first of all I just want to really give kudos to Hayley and the staff for these series of community meetings I had the opportunity to attend all three and I really really liked the way they were structured I thought it was really helpful for the community and making decisions to start with that sort of 30 000 foot view conceptual view and then kind of hone in with the success of meetings so kudos to you for that I thought it worked really really well um just two quick questions you mentioned benches on the school side of the fence what is the purpose of those benches were those requested by the school or were they requested by the neighborhood thanks um they were not requested by anybody I think it was a suggestion on our part just noticing that there's um no place to sit along that edge to to provide an amenity for the school and then um my question is sort of a minutia question so sorry um I'm not sure if this is something that gets mentioned in a master plan or not but when parks if we were to add a dog waste dispenser a bag dispenser would that be an amenity that would need to be included in a park master plan and is there any reason why you wouldn't want to include that as part of a park master plan I can help a little bit with that from the perspective of the city and then I'll turn it to Hayley from the design perspective for the for the city usually we don't label things that are that small very often but we can especially we label things if it was specifically requested so that community members can see it often but it's not necessary we can include it later on if we want we typically do not put dog waste bags at um parks without a dog park just from a cost savings perspective um because we do have a tendency for people to come and take them all um so it's it's a lot but we we can put them in and um we can we can we can make that happen if we have a significant problem there but I don't know Hayley the other design perspective you might add I think I think you covered it Jen we can um I think that some of the the smaller things that we have labeled like the park signs um are things that that came up through the conversation um so some of those smaller things are labeled on this plan um but yeah I think it's it's a it's an operation question in terms of the dog park bags okay great that answers it thank you anyone else from the board have uh questions for Jen or Hayley so Hayley I have a couple of questions um I actually know the answer to a couple of them but I want you to review it anyway in walking the park from one side Exeter from Exeter over to the tree line on the BLS side three minute walk five minute walk it's pretty quick walk two minutes map max yeah perfect top to bottom maybe five minutes if that yeah okay and um sidewalks under the trees on Exeter so there is a continuous that's great great that's right um I noticed there's only one drinking fountain over by the um Exeter cornhole area if you were down at the um water feet not the water feature the drainage feature you're still within like five minute most to drink a water and that would be one of those new fangled this is minutiae too but one of those new fangled multi-purpose water bottle filling stations right perfect yeah last but not least I'm a little um concerned about the number of features over by the um end of the zipline cornhole garbage cans bike rack bench and I've got a second monitor so I've got it blown up I can see can you give me some dimensions for um how how much distance there is between the zipline say and cornhole or the bench and the bike rack or is this all stuff to be worked out there's plenty of room once things start going down yeah they uh we do have this drawn and um and dimensions like in CAD um so it we do believe that it it all fits um the distance between the cornhole and the um that side of the zipline is maybe 10 feet so those picnic tables that you see there those are like six foot long picnic tables that helps you with scale and how about the bench and the bike rack are they pretty much adjoining there's space for a bike wheel to overhang um at the bench and then on the western side of the bench there is um 36 inches um there for a companion seating opportunity so there's about um 36 inches minimum between the bench and the bike rack for that wheel overhang and and all of that could be worked out yes yeah great yes we'll we'll definitely be looking at that closer um as we start to draw it more um definitely yeah thank you sure uh anyone else have any other questions okay then we are going to open this up for public comments do we have any one waiting to do a public comment no it does not look like we have any public comment okay then we get to move forward um with discussion and um we have a bit of breathing room I know it's late but this is uh an important part for an important neighborhood so um I would love for everybody to weigh in any takers Madonna sure yeah I just want to say uh thank you for the presentation um in you mentioned uh towards the end there that you know the the ramps will be accessible for the the wheelchair population uh so I apologize for interrupting we uh actually have two attendees who have raised their hand for public comment okay interrupt you and allow them the chance to speak you you definitely okay thank you so I need to do this little formal statement that says um to the caller that your speaking permission is going to be enabled and um oh god that's not me that's you excuse me okay no problem so uh I do have a speaker uh it looks like Kyle quink I'm going to allow you to speak go ahead hi can you hear me I can thank you go ahead you have three minutes briefly just say um thank you to Haley as well I was in every single community meeting my husband and I and um we live here in the community right next to Dutch Bloor Park um for over a year now and it was just wonderful to have Haley um and everyone else who participated and put on the presentations and um the public forum and all of that and I just want to applaud her her uh help thank you thank you I have a second speaker um whose screen name is V you may now speak hi my name is Valerie uh I'm also a neighbor I just want to repeat um exactly what the last person said but also um talk about um the shooting I'm sorry V can you please repeat what you were saying uh yes can you hear me now your speaker cut off we restarted your three minutes go ahead I apologize okay can you hear me now we can hear you now thank you okay I just wanted to um echo the same thing that the last person said that this has been a great uh community building thing it feels like neighbors have really been heard um there was that shooting that happened uh between the two meetings that was addressed just a few minutes ago but there was also another shooting just this week in the same general area that really concerns us neighbors um and just keeping safety in mind with at all times um if there's anything that can be done um I don't know what the solution is but it makes us very concerned letting our kids run around the park when there's um drive-bys happening more and more regularly thank you for your comment we have no further public comment thank you um so Madonna back to you um I think I covered it just being accessible to uh persons who are in a wheelchair or maybe um you know a heart of walking I really appreciate you touching on that um since the disabled community is my community as well so I appreciate that thank you Carolina I want to unmute first I want to thank um Hayley your team is like magic this is one of the reasons why I love this board is I loved being able to be on the beginning and and how the park started the children get to participate it's a fabulous feeling um I love the whole thing and I'm not like Carol I don't drill down into the details because she does it so she does it for me uh but um thank you again this is looks like it's going to be a terrific park Al Biela was an old friend of mine and he's going to love it Logan thanks Carol uh thanks to the staff and the consultants for the for the good report and a special thanks to the members of the community for showing up to the meetings and calling in that's really important that we hear from you for something you're going to use basically every day or at least every week according to the data um I do have one minutia question for Tim um Tim are those water bottle filling stations standard part of any new park or or how uh how did that get decided as opposed to a older fashion drinking fountain I think the decision was made because there's exercise equipment there and it made sense um to have that sort of filling station great I take my water bottle everywhere some people refer to it as my ba-ba so I love that and I wish those were in every park so thank you for having that Gary I'm just very supportive of the plan and excited for the neighborhood it's a beautiful park now it's going to be even more spectacular once it's done so I'm really really excited about this master plan so thank you all for your hard work I echo that I think um the neighborhood is going to really enjoy and use this park and that it will be a community asset um and a heart for this community and that is very exciting um I'm going to jump to the conclusion that there's a very good possibility we will move this forward today if we move this forward today will this come back to us at all or will this be the last time we see Dutch floors improvement package trying to unmute there sorry about that so um this will be really the last time the master plan will come back but we I will bring you director updates um at all times when we had some action on the project such as construction bidding and things like that so that you're kept up to date and we will keep our website up to date but otherwise it's not necessarily returning but we can certainly um return at any time for an update but after here we'll go to council and then if council approves then we'll start the construction document process and you know kind of rolls from there into into construction so will the community be engaged at all as far as the look of the equipment that goes in certainly if they would like to be um we we encourage folks to reach out and you can contact myself or Tim or just reach out to recon parks and I'll put you in the right direction oftentimes the community is not necessarily involved in the nitty gritty decisions but we certainly welcome that at any time if anybody would like to be involved in that decision making process it's it's certainly easy to do what we usually do is go through a process based on what Haley's already done and present that online before we go out to construction so folks know exactly what play equipment they're getting which is what we've done with the fur ridge park so we had the neighbors there gave us some feedback because we had an HOA it's pretty easy to reach out and gave us a little bit of feedback and so we posted the design that they selected online and so if this community is interested we can do that or if the board would like us to will we reach back out to the community and see if there is any interest on a certain type sometimes we get stuck and we'll reach back out to the community and say is there a preference so it can it can happen either way um we haven't heard any anybody from this community in particular very interested in it but we're happy to work with community members we love it because it really makes our lives a lot easier to have some feedback so my thought if Haley's willing to come up again would be to um re-engage the school re-engage the kids at Biela it's both an educational and a creative endeavor for them and and also a community builder that's that would be my hope we can do that great so would that would anyone like to make a motion to recommend city council that we approve as a board the dutch floor neighborhood master plan and send it forward to city council i'll make that motion i move that the board approve the dutch floor master plan amendment to include two revised playground areas picnic tables pedestrian pathways fitness equipment and addition of games such as cornhole table tennis and chess and recommend council approval of same would anyone second i'll second you can have it carolina you knew you said you knew out i did thank you thanks love can we get a roll call vote now please respond when i call your name chair quant yes vice chair griffin yes board member spillman oh sorry he's left board member pit yes board member cruise yes board member spent yes let the record reflect the motion passed with five eyes awesome well done guys um committee reports uh the mayor's lunch a lot of discussion about the affordable housing that's being done um in the downtown corridor it's actually starting to go up and it's very exciting uh waterways committee did not meet last month and it is not meeting again tomorrow jen do we have any written or electronic communications none at this time great i am going to share that alissa was kind enough to send me images that are the city park map with city council district lines drawn over it which i would be very happy to ask her to share with the entire board and possibly to share with your city council person i'm not saying that we act just for our district but there are a lot of parks that are right there on the borders that i have in a clue whose district they're in these maps actually show it would you guys like those they're in jpeg form awesome alissa can you do that for us yes well they're perfect thank you um future agenda items we are meeting in december right i don't know if there's anything slated for december and then we'll be done for the year and picking it up again can i say in real life maybe in real life maybe in the new year i like the the word maybe uh just a little add on to that we are trying to get the room set up so that we can do a hybrid meeting and so that's our target and we'll keep you posted and we do have um the deferred maintenance measure and i'm sorry deferred maintenance cap condition assessment for parks coming to you um in december as well the neighborhood services program so what say we have a short meeting in december and we did that oh everybody everybody i know i want to spend more time in zoom madonna did you have your hand up okay um any agenda items to add for next month then i'm going to say at 7 39 with six minutes to spare this meeting is adjourned thank you all so much we did good things tonight thank you goodbye bye