 Thanks everybody for joining the rec commission. It's Thursday, January 18th. We're a little off cycle here. So a short, a couple of members of the committee, but we do have quorum. So knowing we want to get through this agenda as quickly as we can, let's start out with the first item, which is approval of minutes. Matt, I know a circulated minutes for all of us to take a look at. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes? This would be two. We'll run them as we'll run them both together. So Chris got a motion to approve. Second, Jonas. All right. Any questions, comments, clarifications required for the minutes from Matt? Yeah, I mean, I've done a great job. I can't thank you enough that you're doing this for us. And it's very clear reading through that. I remember like every part of the meeting, so awesome. All right, then motion to approve. Any, let's see who can I get all in favor of approving? All right, unanimous. Cool. All right. Do we have any members of the public on? I have no members of the public. All right, so no public comment and let's jump over to Winterfest. Becky, you wanna fill us in? Oh yeah, could you promote Becky? Yep. Nope, one more. I gotta promote her to panelists. And Becky, are you here? I had told her I was gonna let her know I had a time when she was coming up and I just let her know. She may be sprinting over to, oh, Becky's here. Hi, Becky. Thanks for joining me. I pushed you up even farther than I thought I would be able to get you your first stop. All right, thank you all so much for having me back. I'll give you the Winterfest update. Winterfest starts in eight days. Hoping it warms up a little bit, but we get a little snow. We do have plans for snow and no snow. The only thing I don't have a plan for is rain. So fingers crossed, we don't have that. We've been doing a lot of social media and posturing around town. Our Winterfest page has, I was just looking at the stats were up like, what is our stats? Sorry, my phone shut down. We're up 2.4K over last month for page view. So definitely getting the word out on all our activities. We're really fortunate. We have 20 community partners and four business sponsors. So we're more than paying for Winterfest, which is great. I feel like I've kind of pulled you all in on what's happening with Winterfest. Did you all have any questions specifically about it? I have the schedule ready to be shared on the screen if you would like me to do that. Yeah, that would be great. And Matt, I see you've got your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to say I got the reminder newspaper today and it was on the front page of that, which was really good. Just a little note at the end of the article, that referred people to the AmherstMA.gov website, but there's no banner currently on the front of that website. Well, it's one of the banners on the front of the website, Winterfest, but there's been a bunch of other things going on with the survey launch. I don't know if you shared with you, I think I shared with you a couple of months ago that I was working on a community survey. So that launched on Friday. We were, Friday afternoon, the survey went out in English and in Spanish through the school district as well as- Oh, I guess it is in the rotation. It's just- It is in the rotation. It's just you can't lock it, kind of. I wish he had linked to the Facebook page. I sent him, but it is there. I did go around and repost her because they take down posters. They spent like an hour visiting different shops and places in town posturing this afternoon. So you can see the events. We have 33 events, 20 of which are free. And the overall, all of the events, or I should say most of the events are getting as expected interest, levels of interest. We have a ton on our Winterfest Amherst page. We have the link to the program as well as I created events for everything. So I can see how many people are interested. So, kind of keeping track of that. One thing that's happening over Winterfest that I do wanna highlight is I've been working with the public health department. We're launching a mental health series designed to not only teach people about ways to improve their mental health, but to give them activities that build upon informative workshops. So it's like we're telling people ways to help improve their mental health and then giving them explicit opportunities to do it. So they don't have to seek them out. So that series is launching on Tuesday, January 30th at 3 p.m. We have a UMass professor who's gonna be doing a talk about the winter blues and how to deal with the sink of emotions that can happen after the holidays. We're gonna have, that's gonna be the first of hopefully a six part series and Cress is going to be co-sponsoring some of the events with us, which is I know not quite related to Winterfest, but it's a great way to get people to start thinking about all of Winterfest is about building community and getting people out there and helping people feel connected and in a good mental space is an important part of building community. So. Like, Ray, can you send this document to the committee? I will. I think this is the updated version, right, Becky? I wanna make sure I have the right version here. Okay. Yeah, I think that's a live document. That's Google Docs. So it's like- Yeah, it is a live document. Got it. Is there anything, Becky, you need from the committee here any, like any events in particular, you'd like to see some representation of that? I mean, I don't know how people schedule works. Hopefully everybody can get out to one or a couple of these things, but- Yeah. People wanna be at the Winterfest games. That's, well, it's not launching. Hitchcock Center is launching the 10 to 11 and that's the reminder picture, which I have right here. With Flakey, our mascot at the Hitchcock Center, they're kicking off 10 to 11 on the 27th, but if anyone's available for the Winterfest games from one to four that Saturday, that would be great. The craft fair is looking quite big, getting a lot of attention. I think we have a nice variety of sporting, skating and other things happening during Winterfest. Sorry, I'm not more prepared. No, and so one of the nice things that I think Becky's done an outstanding job of doing here, she mentioned about community partnerships and building community through our programming here is that a lot of the things that are on here are our promotion of people's activities, people's winter activities. And so we don't have the need to have our commission say do anything for the college games to start with that. We don't have the need for commission to do anything for those college games that we're posting and saying, come and see Amherst College basketball at versus whoever. Hockey and women's basketball, that's Saturday to open. We're helping them and trying to provide as an option their programming or our partnerships with the library, our partnerships with ancestral bridges, those are things that we're not particularly, we aren't necessarily running here. But Becky- We are doing extra things with, there's the winter fest games that we're doing something special, like that's all us, the craft fair is all us, the polar bear is extended hours, the power of bear splash. The ice harvesting history, we're involved with helping plan and organize. Can you scroll down for me so I can see. Oh, the second page. Okay, so scroll back up. So we're working with the improving mental health. I've all scheduled, been working with the facilitator on that ancestral bridges. I've been working with the college, we're gonna have refreshments and other things there and I'm gonna introduce Anika. Silver war tablets, we're doing refreshments and she's gonna have some additions to the exhibits for that day. The Madenskis doing a life during the Ice Age. I don't know if you have kids that love fossils, but Fred does the absolute best field trip for kids about fossils. Like I've taken preschool classrooms there and he has like kids walk like tyrannosaurus rexes through the exhibits, so they're not touching anything. He's awesome. He's doing a special Ice Age kind of presentation for us and he is absolutely fantastic. The snowball intergenerational dance, we're partnering with the senior center. On that, we're gonna have a photo booth. We're having lots of different fun things happening during that. The Meade Art Museum is doing postcard making, which we will be at with Blakey, our mascot. And then the finale is always the Luminaria and Fire and Ice, but we're also been partnering with Amherst College to do a National Girls and Women in Sports Day event. That's gonna be free and open to students in grades four through six. So that's pretty exciting, but it's gonna be a very busy eight days. So there are already happening, but we do have a hand in planning. I think it's like 13 of the events I'm directly involved in day of. Great stuff. Thank you. So what I was hopefully was trying to get across here was that Amherst Recreation and Becky in particular have been working tirelessly to try and elevate these other organizations, to elevate our programming to make sure that we put them all together on the same page and present them as part of a common theme. And so I feel like this is a huge step towards making Winterfest again, a large cultural event that Recreation can steer and play this large role in. Fantastic. Any other thoughts, questions for Becky or Ray? I'm just curious, Becky, it's amazing programming. How did people come forward to you? Like for instance, the Fred, the Amherst College, the Vanneke Museum, tying it to Ice Age, was that you or him or? I emailed a bunch of groups and kind of tried to find community partners. Like Kestrel, I did a pitch to them. They're doing guided nature walks at the Winterfest Games for us. So that was a partnership. I've been working on for a couple of months of trying to get them to run programming for us, for free in, not up in South Amherst, but kind of in the community where the community are. They're actually gonna be doing another event for us in April at Gruff Park, along the Mill River. Where part of my outreach goals this spring are to do programming within like where people already are. So like at Gruff at Mill, like going there as opposed to having people come to us at some location kind of hitting people where they are. And then if I can switch off Winterfest, the survey launched, we have over 200 people if you haven't seen it. I'm sure Ray can send it to you, it'd be good to see. We have 200, this afternoon we had like 210 responses. Really interesting, lots of written comments, which is good. So we'll be filtering through those after Winterfest. And hopefully getting some more, it's going out again tomorrow in the superintendents update as well as some other groups that we're sending it to. So, hopeful on that. The sensory initiative should that we talked about previously should launch, I'm waiting for a couple quotes on things but that should launch in the next week. We should, we've been given clearance from the town manager to purchase the training and move forward on that. And yeah, I think that it's been a very, very busy period since last time I saw it. Well, thanks for all you do. I think, I didn't see any other hands. I think we're good and hopefully we'll see you and each other at a whole bunch of these events. All right, thank you all for taking the time to speak with me. Thanks Becky. Thanks Becky. All right, I can't remember what we said next. Do we want to just jump to the rink next and just keep the wishes on? Here, we can take anything. There are two things that Amy could do. One is the rank. I think the rank is the fun one. Let's start with the fun one. And then we'll sort of, I don't think we have a long presentation or anything but to talk about pickleball and CPA. Sounds good. I'm going to elevate Amy Rezeki now. Good evening, Amy. Hello. Hey, Amy. Let it adjust to my light. There we go. It's like you're perfectly, you've got whatever painting behind you. Yeah, it's a cow and it's, I always perfectly center. It makes me look like I have horns. I know, I suppose I should zoom from somewhere else. Good to see you guys tonight. And I feel like I'm going to have way less impressive of anything to say compared to that presentation on all the stuff you guys are pulling together for Winterfest. That's just outstanding. Becky works really, really hard. So we're very proud of her. Yeah, no, it shows. That was just, that was phenomenal. The two things I was going to talk about. So first thing was just the ice skating rink. So my understanding is that's something that came up at one of your recent reccommission meetings that we wanted to try and bring back that community ice skating rink again. And so as of earlier today, that is officially open for business. It's installed on Kendrick Park. It's a relatively small rink, but unfortunately we're not allowing hockey play on it. It's really supposed to be a place where, families and kids and everyone can skate around and have some fun downtown. So weather permitting, we will keep that going all winter long. And with this, I'll say, you know, partnerships Sanjay's been a huge supporter and he's worked really hard on this. Obviously the reccommission and DPW work together, but also Amherst hockey, just kind of want to recognize them. They supplied a lot of the materials and then a bunch of their volunteers met with our staff to construct it. And so certainly it's been a real, wonderful collaborative effort and we're glad to have it out there. So I don't know if anyone has any questions or comments about that. The only thing I was going to say is, Ray, can we reference that in the Winterfest? I didn't look over it quickly, but that would probably be a good thing to put in there as well, that there's free skate, or there's skated mulling, so there's also free skate in Center Townsend. I, that definitely makes sense to do. So I will, I'll talk to Becky about putting that up live onto that document and to highlight it for our services here. Great. So I've not, I've been like homebound. Oh, sorry, Jonas, you go ahead first. So I had a question on, I used to live in Boston and there was a rink in Newton that I think three winners in a row never froze. So I was, I was just running by Kendrick and I saw that. So wondering, are there any, is it just water? Like, is there any way to, like, I mean, the worst would be antifreeze, but like, is there any kind of additive that could make it be not, you know, probably out of my depth of science. I mean, to stand the season is basically what we're saying. Just the way to make it so it's not gonna melt right. I guess, I don't know. Yeah, keep it out of that water. Yeah. Nothing to rush. No, and I'll say that certainly I think that's not a bad question. That's probably not, you know, certainly this year that's nothing that we could make happen, but what I'd love to see, like even this year, this conversation on this kind of got started a little as we were getting into the winter season and then with everyone being gone for the holidays, really it was like the fact that it's not on the winterfest schedule, it's just kind of a product of, this has been a little more thrown together at the last minute, but I think that it would certainly be appropriate for you guys to maybe, you know, talk about longer term solutions, you know, is the town interested in potentially having a more hard-scape site that people can do roller hockey or, you know, roller hockey in the summer and, you know, that we can use for ice in the winter that's a public facility. I don't know, but those are sorts of things that, you know, or are, you know, is there anything that we can do to extend the season on it? I don't know, but certainly if this is something that's of continued interest, it would be worth having some real conversation about kind of longer term options. I'll send a name of a company to Ray that he can look at. I went ice skating in New York City and it was on a stage and it was warm out and it's on, it's on like a cold plate. I don't know how much cold plate is, but this company literally handled it. It was literally $10 for 45 minutes and $10 to rent skates. And the amount, I mean, don't get me wrong, we were under the Manhattan Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge lit up on the Sky Rail, send you a couple of pictures, not of me skating. It's not a pretty thing. But I mean, just the amount of sheer amount of people that were there was unbelievable and then the pictures are unbelievable. So, but it's a cool company. And, but like I said, it was, it was raised up about three feet and you were literally, it was a cold plate. So even if it was 55 degrees, you were able to skate. So, but. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, I think future-wise too, do we want to have any sort of marketing opportunities on the dashers? I like, have the materials been given to the town or this is like on loan from Amherst hockey? It was, it was donated to the town. It's my understanding is one of the, you know, previous Amherst hockey members had a backdoor rank, but his kids have all outgrown that. So he essentially donated the rank and purchased, I think the association purchased a new liner. And so it's, I mean, it's I think 28 feet by 40 feet is what we have the materials for. If we wanted to be a little bigger, then we'd have to kind of purchase a couple of more materials. And every year I think you need a new liner. Those basically have about a one year lifespan. But that, that's relatively small, small money on what you can get. So again, like I'd love to see the conversation happen for future years and maybe happen with a little more heads up so we can make some of these really great decisions. Well, thanks for turning around as quickly as you did. I think we brought it up in our December meeting. So to have it up and running through holiday season is really great work. Thank you. Amy was really receptive to it in the very beginning and I took my hat to DPW and the folks that constructed it because we had a plan to get it ready here pretty quickly, but then it got really, really cold in the last couple of days. And so they actually sped it up. The, we were planning opening it this weekend, but they were able to get it all put together for the freeze here. If you guys woke up and walked outside this morning and sort of felt the air on your face, that that was, hey, today's got to be the day we have to do this now. And it's basically a dusk to dawn or a dawn to dusk arrangement. Yeah, I mean, there's no, I'll say there's no specific lighting, although we didn't necessarily post hours. So either, you know, I think. So it is what it is. Certainly I don't think anyone's gonna chase you off if there's little kids there as it gets dark cause daylight hours are pretty limited right now. So. Yes. We were a little bit worried for the same reason that I'm sure I wasn't here when it happened, but when Kendrick was first put in and being right in between downtown and sort of UMass and the frats and stuff that you're a little bit worried what happens if, but we're hoping that signage and a very active public space which makes it very attractive for all the right reasons. We hope that that also curbs the wrong reasons. Sure, it will. All right. Great. Dr. Rankin, I'm sure you've got an equally positive pickleball update, am I right? Absolutely. I mean, the big update for those of you guys that don't know, you know, so pickleball was one of four CPA proposals that we put forward this year. And ultimately, you know, there was a very big public response on a lot of sides regarding pickleball and really kind of what that caused us to really, I guess our reaction to that was, let's pull the funding right now because clearly we need to do a little more research. We need to make sure that we have one site. We don't wanna keep having to go back again and again and again. And so right now we're kind of in pause mode while some other things are moving forward, but rest assured, like there is a meeting on the books in just a couple of weeks for Ray and Dave Zomak and myself to start the conversation on continuing it move forward. So, you know, kind of the bottom line on that is, you know, right now it's, we took it out of CPA, it's not moving forward, but it's not forgotten. And it's gonna be, you know, we're gonna be having that conversation again soon. And, you know, you guys as the Wreck Commission have provided a lot of valuable input and we certainly will be talking to you guys about it as we, you know, kind of understand all that public input and start to kind of think about what next steps might be. So I will probably be back at your next meeting to talk, you know, talk about the next steps, but for now just know it's not forgotten. It's just kind of understood. Okay. But I'll take any questions or comments on that. No, I mean, I would have a question for you specifically, but for broadly other folks, like, I've never played pickleball. Is there any, does anybody know, is there a movement to like make quieter equipment? Like, there is actually. Yeah, I'll go ahead Matt. Oh, I don't know any more than it has been announced fairly recently that there is a new paddle, which is designed to make a lot less annoying noise. Okay. I think there's both paddles and there's balls from what I understand. Yes, paddles and balls. I went way down the rabbit hole on pickleball noise at some point. So there is equipment. The thing is, even communities that have said you can only use like the newer paddles and the lower sound paddles. It's really hard to enforce that. And so until that's the universally accepted equipment, it's not something you can rely on to alleviate the noise concerns. Yeah. But at least if the. The industry in general, yes. They've like kind of drew the corner in recognizing. Yes, for sure. Perfect. All right. I think I mentioned this towards the end of our last call. I don't know if you were on it. Just my question was about any kind of private, private public cooperation. So I'm not a business owner and I'm not, but I was thinking like that great ice cream stand on, it's Hadley, I think technically. So that might mix the whole thing. But a Valley Road, like what a perfect place. You've got the ice cream. I think that farmers seems like he's divesting from the dairy because he's sold land for that, that storage space, the big storage space I went up and it's almost like you put it between, there's the bike path leading to it. Bike there, you have to play a pickleball, get your ice cream. I was thinking maybe we'll talk to this farmer. We'll talk to the Hadley Road Commission, yeah. Right. Yeah. Then it's like, I don't mean we don't need an Amherst pickleball if we've got one. If there's an. Like as an idea that is a pivot that we've got to be thinking about. Andy kind of said it tongue in cheek there, but we can't use CPA money obviously to develop in Hadley. Right. But that idea is, I think that idea is the sort of thing that we need to start thinking about and seeing is there a public-private partnership that we can explore? I was also wondering about just unused buildings. And I realized it might just create an echo chamber, but like, I think I've brought this up before, Bramble Hill Farm has a pretty much unused, big, it's kind of semi-unclosed. It's this big barn, they just store stuff in it. And I was thinking for that, you'd have to like enforce, there's actually like a little yoga center, yoga, right off, you can see it from Southeast Street. And there's parking there. So you'd have to say park there, walk, don't drive up because people walk their dogs there. But I just thought maybe, yeah, unused buildings that can go to waste. No, and I think Jonas, what you're hitting on is like Ray said, that's exactly the sort of creative thinking that we're exploring now as we're going back. And so, yeah, I think all those suggestions are good and they're definitely in alignment with a lot of the kind of tongue-in-cheek ideas that then we say, huh, maybe, that we've been thinking about. So, absolutely. I mean, if public works, we do say tongue-in-cheek. You give us a new DPW facility and you can definitely put pickleball in the front. You don't mind the noise. But I don't think that that's gonna get us one as fast as we want it. The fire station is coming up here, right? Right, right. Yeah, maybe the fire station wants pickleball as a neighbor. Well, Ty, if you moved it indoor, it would certainly raise awareness for the pickleball players as to the volume of it, right? They may not necessarily be as cognizant of the noise that they're making, but if they're in a room, they would certainly hear it. I think though, there's a lot of indoor pickleball play at Hampshire College at the Multisport Center. And so there's a lot of people that play pickleball in there. So I think they're aware of that, although outside the bit, like at least the noise is contained to only the pickleball. And so, again, it might be a possibility to look at, for sure, and those ideas have been kicking around. So. Yeah, and as of this past weekend, we're also experimenting with winter pickleball in space and makeshift space that we can offer, basically it's Sandlot Pickleball. We're embracing the idea of Sandlot Pickleball right now and bringing people in. There's a little bit of an issue as to how accessible is the demand is a lot more than the space that we have right now, but we're setting up. We're using the side gems at the middle school. We have it now, and we have that space. Unfortunately, right when we did it, one of the side gems ran into a little bit of water damage, and so it's off limits for a little while. So we have small spaces, now smaller, and folks showed up. So we're working on trying to streamline the efficiency of doing that a little bit better here. We know it's makeshift, it's Sandlot, and it's a real spirit of Sandlot, but we are trying to get a little bit of access, indoor access over the winter months. Since. All right, any other questions, comments for Amy or can we let her go? All right, Amy, thanks as always for joining and keeping us up to date and do you grab something in that ring set up and we'll see you next month. Well, I'll see you guys next month. Have a good one. Hopefully I'll see you guys at Winterfest and around. So. Yes, even better. What's the pleasure, Amy? Thanks. All right, I think next up last year's lost money agenda. It's the survey, Ray, the next couple of updates are you sort of OSRP updates on registration and then Matt, I do have you on here for just any kind of CPAC updates after that and then we'll give some of her. That's where it is. I have to one second. I've got to. I'm missing my tab. One moment, sorry. Got it. Now, is this the survey Becky was referring to or this is a different survey? No, it's the second survey. This is a different survey. It's outside of our department, outside of our department. So there's two community engagement surveys that we're involved in right now. This one is that. Yes, share. Okay, so this is the open space and recreation plan. Am I on here? Okay, the open space and recreation plan survey. This is every so often the town is expected to update its open space and recreation plan. What it does is it essentially, I'm going to read the intro paragraph here. The town of Amherst is committed to providing you with the best open space and recreation experience possible. This survey aims to gather information about the users of Amherst open spaces and recreation facilities so we can address resident concerns and community needs. This information will also be crucial in updating our open space and recreation plan, which allows for the town to receive grant funding to maintain and improve parks, recreation and conservation areas. We welcome your input and comments. Please fill out this questionnaire and return to Town Hall Dropbox. What this is, it's two parts. Number one, we're looking for community feedback into what we're doing for our purposes, what we're doing in recreation, the spaces that are available, how we use them, what our mission and our goals are, the involvement of the town. We're looking to see what the relationship is between the town and those spaces that are marked as recreational spaces. Same thing is being said right now with the conservation department and for conservation spaces, what is it that, what is the relationship between our town and the public spaces that we manage and control? In order, the second part of this is that in order for the town to receive any grant fundings to maintain or operate those spaces, parks, recreation, conservation, this plan, our OSRP needs to be updated every, I believe it's seven or eight years. And so we're right now in the process of trying to update that plan. I was introduced to it a couple of months ago and the planning department is sitting with conservation and with recreation to try and make sure that this survey allows us the best information to put that together. We are, of course, a significant part of the survey. And so opportune time, this is the right time for it to come out because we have a meeting tonight and I was hoping that the document would be available to be shared with you all. If it wasn't done today, then I would have just told you basically this is what the plan is, but I was able to share with you all as the commissioners earlier today as soon as it came to me that this is the document that we're starting with. I've had a couple of you all forward. Go ahead, interrupt. So is this going to be mild to all households? Is that the plan? This is going to become available to all households. I don't know if the plan is to mail it to everybody. I believe that the access, we want wide access so it may be a canvas mailing. But it is going to be pushed through our, where we are right now is we want to make sure that recreation and the commission has a chance to look at the survey, to offer any feedback if there's any changes or anything that you feel like absolutely has to be added to this. It is, we're looking for your feedback into the questions on the survey. Some of the feedback I got already was basically that, in distinguishing between the things that we offer and distinguishing between the spaces that, where was it? To be able to pull out the uses of Cherry Hill and to separate them, so it's not just looking at large things. You use Cherry Hill, are you looking to try and maintain Cherry Hill? What Cherry Hill means a lot of different things and to identify them as paths to let people identify their use of it being the paths and nature aspects for them to look at cross-country skiing, to look at it as golf, to be able to identify all the different versatile purposes for our spaces is one thing. So this is not directly us because there are recreational spaces that are involved in this also. I haven't programmed or done anything with Puffer's Pond. I haven't done anything with the trail services. There are pieces in here that don't necessarily affect us directly, but those parts of recreational spaces that we do overlap with, we spent the last month basically trying to look at the wording of these and to try and get as much of a sense from the town as to how those spaces are being used right now. I know it just came to you all today. I know that you all just had a chance to look at it. Maybe some of you all are looking at it for the first time now in the meeting here. I don't need you all to vote on anything right now, but as you look at it, as I did share it with you before, I'm sharing it here if there's anything that you wanna go and find on here for numbers, I can find it to go over them. But what I need you to do inside the next week because the final draft after concom and the rec commission get finished with our feedback, our final draft should be available at the end of next week. And so if there's anything in here that you'd like to see questioned, asked differently, if there's anything in here that you have reservations about the town asking or anything like that, you certainly can address those with me or with Rob Wachilla with the planning department. You can talk to the folks that are actively putting this together or you can send those that feedback through me, which I would be happy to share with them in the process. But we'd like for it to be able to go live in time to gather and do some data analysis by March. A couple of quick thoughts. I'll send you an email afterwards, but one of the things that I don't know whether this was intentionally left off or not, but in terms of which open spaces do you use, it also seems like this could be an opportunity to sort of advertise, which of, here's the list of public spaces that you have available to use, which ones do you use? Cause I expect there's a lot of folks who have no idea how many opportunities there are and may just be focused on their neighborhood trail. So that might be a kind of an opportunity to help generate some interest. And then I will shoot you some feedback. I think just the age ranges and the income ranges, there's like some federal standards for stuff like that. It might make sense to align more with that. Certainly if we're going to use this to get, trying to get some federal grants or things like that, allow us to slice the data in a way that makes this a bit more future proof. Okay. Any other quick thoughts, folks? I know I do want to try to get us done by seven who's dropped. Chris. I don't have a... This is Matt. This is Matt. So I just took a quick look through it. It's all, it seems to be organized with the open space in conservation laying questions and then the recreation questions. I'm not sure that everyone who receives this will clearly understand the difference or will understand that it's in two parts. Like in the first part you're saying, list your three favorite open spaces. I'm sure a lot of people are going to say, grove park. Yes. And I think you think that grove park is a recreation area. You know what I'm saying? Yes. So I don't know the solution to that, whether it's not to make the distinction in the survey or whether it's to somehow make it more clear what the distinction is. I think that's an outstanding observation. I, maybe to just let it go. That last question, maybe that you just let it go or maybe that you emphasize with the distinction between the two that this is recreation part. Chapter the survey and say that there is, you know, this is the recreation part of the survey. This is the conservation part of the survey. Yeah. Or at least when you say conservation, you mean natural undeveloped lands versus developed parkland. Correct. Yeah, I would say, I think that's a great call out too, Matt. I think if you could, if there's a way to combine to shortness as opposed to section one, section two, seven, I mean, that would probably be the ideal situation is to just combine it. But I don't know if there's a requirement for you to separate it. Okay. I don't know if that's a requirement either. I haven't heard anything about the requirement there, but I at least is worth having that. I can share that feedback, certainly. So give us a date. I know you've mentioned we want to get this out by the end of next week. So what's the, what's sort of the next week? They told me that we should have any corrections or feedback in by I'd say next Thursday. Feedback. So feedback to you by next Thursday. By next Thursday. Okay. Would you mind actually Ray also just send you an email to the tender? I also have a small suggestion in climate change. There's also an issue potentially of invasive species, both flora and fauna. Invasive species. Like that would probably be pretty high on my list. What number is that? Oh, in climate change questions, at the end of the survey. Number 30, question 30. So there could be an issue with invasive plants and animals. All right, I think that's a perfect example of feedback Ray's looking for. Folks can read this, get feedback to Ray by next week. And then Ray I was wondering if you could just send a note to Gene, Jeremy and Sanjay as well to be here from now. I certainly will. All right, very good. Any other quick thoughts? Otherwise, please send those over to Ray in the email. I appreciate you guys attention to it. Got it, all right. So next up we have, let's talk about just status of spring sports registration. Just I know we mentioned last month during one of our meetings. Feedback. I'm sorry, Andy. Do you want to do the summer camp piece first? Cause you know, Chris is leaving. All right, well we're going to lose quorum also when Chris leaves. So let's just try to go through everything quick if we can. How about let's just let Ray talk without questions. And then Chris will reserve some time for you at the end for your specific ones. I can make the registration piece really quickly. I can make it really quick. Jose has submitted all of our information for programs to our registration. And so if they aren't up immediately, if they aren't already up to be for families to register for spring sports, then they will be momentarily. Our spring schedule is very similar as it was last year. So the things that are sort of in flux are sports that may be pulled up to the high school places where the high school may have needs for their JV programs or for the, so we're looking at La Crosse in particular in terms of what the numbers will be for our spring sports. Are we offering spring sports for La Crosse? Are we offering middle school age sports for La Crosse? The other piece that is just sort of in the back of our, not in the back of our mind anymore, it's moved to the front of our mind now is the Fort River Project, which is scheduled to begin in early March where they shut down much of the fields in Fort River. And so we've already been working to try and schedule space for the sports that we have that will be displaced are La Crosse softball, adult co-ed softball and ultimate are three important. Is La Crosse displaced from Fort River? Not from Fort River, not from Fort River, but it affects La Crosse because of the space that we have there. It's gonna, and Andy, I can talk to you. Any outdoor fields, any outdoor field space. Sorry. Ecosystems collide. And so we've, I think we're coming up with a plan that allows us the least inconvenience for everybody. And so scheduling that space is another thing that affects the sports that are being registered for, but it does not affect the fact that we have the registration information, the sports that we're offering should be posted and available. The next step that we have to have here, and I started to talk to Andy about this, is that we wanna give opportunities for those coaches in the programs to do a little bit of advertising, to do a little bit of, hey, these are the programs that we have here, and to do a little bit of advertisement for those programs. And so that may be a little bit of marketing for our programs to get out there and encourage kids to sign up, do something active, be out there and participate in recreational programming. But in terms of our sports programming, we are in line to be up a little bit earlier than we were last year, and certainly have a chance to hire and put together strong programs throughout. All right, do you wanna hit the summer CIT stuff? Certainly, that wasn't one I was on my agenda for preparation, but so I know that Andy and Chris sort of mentioned it when they were coming into the meeting today, so I can actually wait and see if there's a question or a proposal that you have that I can respond to, I think it would be easier if I respond to it. The question I have is I know we didn't have the program, we had it two years ago, we didn't have it last year. I mean, obviously I think it was a good program for my daughter, but I also think it was a very good program for two things, it was to build community, it was also a good way to some extra income and also for future counselors. You know, you're pulling from an area where you already kind of know the person. You know, I mean, I've been really struggling lately in this interim season with my daughter and finding her stuff to do. She's 15 and you know, she's not across countries here, it's just like I've asked people, even if she can donate her time to an after school program, and you know, it's just, I don't understand some of the no's I get very quickly. Not from you Ray, not from you. It's not a Ray thing. I'm not blaming Ray, I'm frustrated because here's a kid that should be able to go to an after school program and donate her time to some younger kids or girls or whatever and help. And people are looking at me like, I get six heads, like, what do you mean? It's just like, guys, what do you mean? Like here, take some of the high school kids, send them to, I'm not even looking for her to get paid. I said, donate time, you know. So that's perfect, you were on my mind the last week or two here as we were going through this because I've heard you before you were on the commission and I've heard you since you joined the commission that this is one of the points that you're looking at. This is one of the primary points that you're looking at both for inside of your own house and also for rec programming and what the use is for us. I wanna make it clear that last year there were a number of different things that you don't have to convince me or us that the CIT program is worthwhile. I saw it firsthand two years ago and I thought it was one of the best things that our outreach program provided over the course of my first go-round through the recreation. I love, the teacher in me loved the generativity, loved the creating the next generation of counselors. We had a great batch of kids that were there. So last year because of the timing of our outreach turnover and also because it would have destroyed our ability to do it well if already, like if Marion and I were the ones that were responsible for interviewing and bringing them in and we aren't gonna be the ones that are using them or whatever, it would have been, it potentially is creating too much management and too much management nightmare for us in order to bring that in at that time. So the timing was terrible for us last year despite the fact that we wanted to keep it going. This year we are fully committed to bringing it back. Marion, myself, and Becky Demling who is now in charge of our outreach program, we're all, it's an echo chamber in there that we really want the CIT program to be successful for all the reasons you said because it gives kids a chance to participate. There's that gap that gets placed between kids when they age out of camp and then for a couple of years before they go to high school, what do you do with your summer times? What do you do with summer camp? Maybe if I don't wanna do a sport, we know that there's space for the kids that needs to be answered and there's also a need that we have to put people into the pipeline. So we're talking about bringing CITs and also potentially junior counselors which would probably be in the area that Maisie would be moving because of her age but we're talking about doing junior counselors and CITs that allow us to manage our ratio but the two of them actually help us imagine the ratio. We may end up doing it for, we may have a small group of rotating people into the CITs but we've already started the conversations that Becky was there with us because we need to post for registration for summer camp coming up. So it was an emergency that we talked about what the summer camp registration was gonna look like, all getting kids into the camps but you can't have that conversation without also saying, are we committed to the CIT program? Is that gonna be a part of our program? And right now the answer is a resounding yes. And so we just have to find out the numbers and the interview process. One of the things that I thought we did really well was a service that we provided those kids that were coming through. We wanted to make sure that we're giving them interview experience. We wanted to give them feedback on the interview. We wanted to give them a chance to do all of that. It's an educational practice that in addition to them being able to help us we are committed to making that CIT program a central part of our summer camps. Again, and most importantly, Chris, I hear you. All of it. It's just a lot of her friends. I mean, there was the summer camp friends out of that too. And that group, it's a crucial, this age group from like 12 to 15 is like forgotten. She can't drive. I know it's not just me. There's other parents out there that have the same issue right now and it's just frustrating. Yeah. That's the same gap that my early conversations with Sanjay about getting middle school baseball were based around, look when they age out of this program then there's this gap that hits them here. Same thing happens with soccer kids. Same things like this, this gap that's going across the board here for kids. It just so hits them when they reach the middle school. That middle school experience is complicated for a lot of different reasons. We don't want to add to it. We want to make sure that we have that opportunity. But I think to be honest with you, I'm sorry, Matt, this is my last thing. I think this is where Wreck can hopefully pick up, not just for the CIT and other programs in that gap thing. And then it's a great program. And so I'm good. All right, thank you. What you got, Matt? I was just going to say that some of the private camps in town, like the multi-art summer camp and the Rattlesnake Gulch do actually have these pretty well-developed CIT and junior councillor programs that my children have participated in. And those were paid. Well, once you got to the councillor party, they were paid. We're looking at page junior councillors. We're definitely looking at page junior councillors. And that's, they help us towards ratio anyways, but we're looking at page junior councillors. So we're developing that program. It is generative. My focus is generativity. We're trying to make sure that kids learn how to step up into that next phase. All right, well, Ray, you have all my information. If you need any help with any of that program, you have my numbers and my email. Please reach out. Appreciate it. All right. Hey, Matt, anything on CPAC to report? Otherwise, I know Chris has got a role here. I can just give you the result. So obviously there was, we had to, there was a pretty, we had to cut from the overall number of things that were asked for. We didn't have enough money, but recreation actually came out very well. Recreation was asking for 1.1 million and was granted 980,000. So other than, other than the pickleball, which the town decided to withdraw their proposal because of the nature of the conversation that happened there. The tennis courts were funded. The softball facilities was fully funded at all three locations. The revitalization of War Memorial pool area was granted the 750,000. And the trail restoration enhancement was granted 86,000 of the requested 100,000. Great. Fantastic. Thanks for that. I think that's a very good result. Thank you for another great season there, Matt, because that's... Well, it's really Dave's IMAX, you should thank. He's really the engine behind all this. That's great. Thank both of you guys. All right. Good. All right. I see Chris moving. Ray, any other news for us in business? No, nothing, nothing for me either. So why don't we call it? We can adjourn here at 7 06. Don't forget to get your feedback to Ray before next Thursday. And I put out there by the February 12th right now as kind of the next one, try to get us back to the sort of the Monday, you know, monthly cadence. So hopefully that works. I'll float that out for the folks that aren't here also. All right. Just to make sure that they're in. Cool. Yeah, and then hopefully we'll see folks at Winterfest. All right. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. Take care.