 I'm going to say 359 is close enough and welcome to the March 24th meeting of the Santa Rosa Board of Community Services. I'd like to welcome board members Terry Griffin, Carolina Spence, Pamela Van Halsema, Sandra Wandel, and our new board member Logan Pitts, welcome. I'd also like to introduce our hosts, Mary Lou Nichols and Emily Anders, and explain to anyone in attendance that the host will be coordinating any public comments and helping with the meeting and taking notes as needed. I need to let both panelists and presenters know that cell phones and microphones should be muted if you're not speaking, that the members of the public who are joining this meeting will have their webcams off and microphones muted. If you're phoning into the meeting for any reason and you choose to speak during public comments, for privacy concerns, the host will rename you to caller and only the last four digits of your phone number will show. Also, please know that the City of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully, or if needed, the meeting will end immediately. And with that, I'd like to ask our host, do we have any public comments for today's meeting? Actually, I'll explain how the public comments will be heard. 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 comment, the chair will ask the public to raise their hand 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. We did receive one email comment, which was posted by the deadline and will be addressed later in the meeting. Thank you. And with that, I called this meeting on March 24 of the board of community services to order at 401 p.m. I need to read the following statement, given our current and ongoing situation, To the provisions of the governor's executive order N2520 and N2920, which suspend certain requirements of the Brown Act and the order of the health officer of the county of Sonoma, to shelter in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19, the board of community services members will be conducting today's meeting in a virtual setting using Zoom webinar. Board members and staff are participating from remote locations and participating using appropriate social distancing. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. And with that, may we have roll call. Yes, please respond when I call your name. Chair quant here board member Griffin here board member haze board member pits. I am here. Board member spends here board member Van Helsima here board member Wandao here. Thank you. And with that, so wonderful to see all of you and a new face Logan, would you like to say a little bit about yourself and we'll all give you a wave. Thanks Carol. Hello everyone. First, thanks to Mayor Rogers for appointing me to this board. It's an honor to serve the city again. I've served on the measure oversight board and the community advisory commission for the downtown specific plan. So I love the city. I've served it before and I'm glad to do it again. I think parks are really important for everyone in our community. But as a as a renter as a lifelong renter, I know they're especially important for those that don't own a home or might not have a yard. They're really most important for those with the least among us. So I'm looking forward to helping make the recreation and parks department all its programs better, more equitable and thank you again for having me and it's an honor to be here. Well, you are most sincerely welcome and I'm sure I extend all of our appreciation and welcoming to you. Thank you. That will open the floor for public comments. At this time, any person who wishes to address the board on matters not listed on the agenda, but which are appropriate to us can have the floor. Do we have any public comments? There are no hands raised at this time. Great. With that, we'll move on to item four, which is the approval of minutes from the February 24, 2021 meeting. Do we have any corrections or edits to the minutes? Seeing none, I will say that we approve the minutes and we will move on to item five, upcoming events and accomplished reports. Jen Santos, could you fill us in on what's going on? Thank you, Chair Kwant. I also want to introduce my deputy director for recreation. She's going to be available for these updates in case there's any questions related to recreation, so she's available. And you also have all received the correspondence for upcoming and accomplished events. But I just wanted to highlight that tomorrow we have our last in a series of quadrant meetings related to measure and parks for all, starting at 5.30 and its focus is for the southeast part of the city. And that will wrap up all the quadrant meetings and on the accomplished events, we've got so many things going on in the accomplished events, but I did hear that the senior car bingo was quite the hit on March 3rd at Franklin Park. So with that, I will stop there and see if you all have any questions for us about the upcoming events and accomplished events. Quick question, Jen. Is there any chance that the volume of cars will be increased at those bingo events? I know they're really popular. That is an excellent question for our recreation deputy director. So I will turn it over to Kelly to respond. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm hoping you can hear me. OK, yes. So we are hoping to increase cars. We started with 20. Some people came together, so we had a few more than 20 participants. And I think we can go up to about 30. So we need to keep some parking spaces open for the parkgoers. But I think we can increase it. In fact, I think we're trying to increase it this week or for next week. We're not doing it this week. We did it on St. Patty's Day and we had a theme and that was really cute too. So the people are really enjoying it. We've got some great prizes and it's a lot of fun. I have a quick question on the upcoming events document. You said something about guidance for places of worship and cultural ceremonies is coming up in April. And I was curious what the outlook is for those regulars who rent space from Parks and Rec. Are we hearing from them? Are they coming back or did they find something else? I'm just curious what that revenue stream is going to be looking like in the near future. A little of both. We're expecting some of them back. Our larger church and staff unstoppable that was in the auditorium. I think they're doing a lot of virtual services now. They can come back to our room starting June, the week first week in June. They could do services now at the Turk round barn. But since we have distance learning going on in all of our community center rooms, we can't cross over and do other types of events on the weekends. But we've reached out to all the churches that were coming here prior to COVID and have invited them to come back starting the first week of June. Excuse me. Shall we move on to the next item, Director Updates? Thank you, Chair Cuant. So I do have a few, maybe not as many as I typically have. And from all of us in record parks, just wanted to welcome Logan, our new board member. Super excited to have you on board and looking forward to things in the future. Just wanted to give you all a little bit of an update for the improvements we're doing at Dutch Floor Park. Located in the, where am I at? Northwest quadrant of the city. We had finished up our virtual meetings, first series of virtual meetings, and we finished up our actual online survey last Friday. And we had 52 responses, which was really great. We had about 45 folks attending the previous public meeting outside of the school board meeting. And we're looking forward to analyzing all the data and we'll let you all know when we have our next meeting scheduled and send you all invites to that. So that is going really, really well excited about that. And we are also, last night I spent some time working on a community development block grant. It's been years since the city's seen something like this come around, especially for parks. We don't have any memory of submitting an application for a CDBG grant, a block grant. And so we looked at Martin Luther King Park as an option for providing improvements. And all of this gets sent over to Congressman Thompson's office for a review. And the congressman will decide what sort of projects he would like to move forward and we'll keep track of it and see how it goes. Either way, I just wanted to let you know about this exciting opportunity. We'll see where it goes and I will definitely keep you updated if we ultimately get selected to be funded through the grant. We would receive about somewhere between 500,000 to 1.2 million potentially. And we're still working on the details of how much it's gonna cost us our end. So working on that right now and we hope to have that information back over to our city consultants soon and on to the congressman's desk next in the next week or so. And with measure M, the Parks for All, we are finishing up our last meeting, as I mentioned earlier, tomorrow with the Southeast Quadrant. So if any of you need, I was gonna say an invite to that. We can certainly do that if you need a personal invite, but it's also on our website, srcity.org slash Parks for All. We are also gonna be considering another city-wide measure M meeting targeted after we do the first round of analysis. There was a request from certain quadrants to have another meeting. So we thought it might be good to just do a sweep of the entire city so that if there's anybody that has any lingering questions, it's the opportunity because staff are available versus submitting questions through an online spot. So we're gonna be looking at that, although it will have to happen after we do our first analysis so that we can keep to our timeline of returning to council, returning to the board next month and returning to council as part of the budget session. And then the other update was the Finlay Aquatic Sprayground Project had our kickoff meeting. And if you see anybody, if you're a swimmer and you're out there at Finlay, we do have some engineers out there working and taking measurements and topographic surveys and technical testing going on. So keep your eyes peeled for that. That project schedule was updated to be complete and available to the community as of January 2023. And we also had our kickoff meeting with the folks that are doing the deferred maintenance condition assessment of all the parks in the city as part of the Measure M initial priority projects approved by council. That's a lot to say. But that was really fun to get that kicked off on March 2nd. And we hope to have something available by January 2021, if not sooner for that. And last but not least, I wanted just to put a little reminder out about merit awards. And so I'll get a little spiel here about that just to remind anybody. And so since 1978, the city's annual merit awards have acknowledged and celebrated the outstanding work being done to strengthen neighborhoods, serve people in need, expand our artistic and historical culture and beautify the community. The nominations form is available online at srcity.org slash merit awards. Or if you need any help, certainly reach out to any of us in recreational parks. We can help you get connected. The deadline for merit award nominations is July 10th, 2021. So we've got a little bit of time, but now's the time to start thinking about it. And the merit awards will be announced on September 20th, 2021 at a virtual Zoom ceremony. And anyone can make nominations. That is the end of my updates. Thank you, Jen. Do we have any questions from the board for either Jen or Kelly on either the park or the rec side of the report? Terry. Just a quick question. And maybe this would also be directed to Carolina. If by September circumstances permit in-person award ceremony, is that going to be possible? Or at this point, is it something that would be challenging to flex? We've tried to keep it as flexible as we can as we've gone along. We're saying virtual now, but we would like very much to make it in-person because that's the full impact. And I was actually, thank you, Terry, for asking me something because I was going to encourage you all to think about merit awards and encourage your neighbors, any boards or commissions you're sitting on, any groups you're in to get people to get organized on it. Logan, do you have a question about it? You got rid of your mic. I had a different question, but thank you. Oh, okay, sure. So yeah, so don't forget merit awards. It's a fabulous affair. We really would like you all to be there. So no matter how you come, virtual or otherwise. So thank you for the question, Terry. We're hoping. Excuse me, go ahead. Jen, I had just had a question on the deferred maintenance conditions assessment, which sounds really exciting to me, honestly. I guess I'm on the right board. You said that that's going to be reviewed next year in January. Just curious, has the city ever done that before? Or when was the last time, if ever, that happened? Never. So this is really exciting for us because as record park professionals, we have a pretty good handle on the deferred maintenance, but this will be an objective review, prioritization as well of the conditions in the parks and recommendations for prioritization. So we're super excited about this. We have not had this information for parks. The city conducted a survey not too long ago, a few years ago in for city-wide facilities, buildings. It did not include parks. So this will be really exciting for us. And we hope to have it completed by January. Great. And I'm sure that's very technical, but do you also get any public input in that? We have it in the consultants package to look at community input if we get to a point where we need some input on the prioritization. But because it's part of the larger Measure M project overall, it can be combined with the current outreach we're doing for Measure M. The outreach for Measure M is coming to a point this Thursday, but it's going to continue over the next few years until we spend all the money. So either way, we will engage with the community either directly through that project or through the Measure M outreach process. Just thinking they could be helpful knowing where that whole and right field on the softball field or whatever is. So yeah, that's great. Thank you. Of course. I had a question back to the Merit Awards. I assume one of you will know, has a marketing campaign been started and will it be showing up on either Facebook or other social media so that we can promote it and hopefully encourage our city council members to promote it on their Facebook pages and also to engage the community advisory board who also have a lot of outreach to really start promo-ing it. Carolina, if you think that would be appropriate. Yes, and it has, it started. We have met once. We're going to meet now in April and we're very aware of it. Thank you, Carol, but we're very aware of needing to have a pretty heavy marketing program now. So I'll keep gently reminding you about that. So you can pass it along to everybody. I'm hoping that we'll get links so that we can pass it along to people. Right. And also encourage them to pass it on to family fashion. Exactly. Perfect. Yeah, we really want a nice showing this year because we were very sad that we had to skip last year. So we're making up for it. You're going to just love us by the time September comes. So. I had a question that not concerning merit awards and that was about the potential block grant which is so exciting. How long does it take something like this? Let's say we get it. Let's say we got it today. When would we actually potentially start seeing something come to fruition? And I know it's a number of years. So I just want to expand my bubble right now. Well, I appreciate that. It's a little different than some of our other traditional state parks, record parks grants where you have years to complete it. So this one needs to be fully obligated within one year. So we need to finish the project within one year. We can do the city's portion of that if it is awarded prior to the actual start date of the official start date when we get the word we'll be receiving the funds. That doesn't happen until next year about the same time. But I understand that as the process moves through we'll start to get initial feedback on where it's at if it's installed or if it's moving forward because part of this equation is we are one of hundreds of people submitting things to the congressman's desk. So I can't imagine the process that has to happen there to sort through all of those. I'm sure very well deserving requests for these funds but it's nevertheless it's very exciting for us. So we will have a full year to do things in advance if we feel like this funding is coming to us. And so we'll be able to do some of those preliminary community engagement types of needs prior to actually receiving the funds and the funds would be used on the construction only. So that part of it would be completed. Sorry, that's a lot of information but it's really exciting for us to be even considered for this funding. Do you know how many of these awards are granted typically? Is it a one only? I don't know but I don't know that yet because I'm still learning things even just before this meeting about the whole process. So I'll report back to you next time we meet with any additional updated information because it's super exciting. But I do believe it's a pretty narrow amount of funding when you look at the entire district of the congressman. So I'm sure we're gonna be competing widely across the district and then on a statewide basis as well. So I'll keep you posted on what I learned. Thank you. Pamela? I have a question and I can't think of where this might be. So do we have one place where we can look at all the different grants that Parks and Rec is now either applying for or has been awarded and are in process for the services and for the facilities? I'm curious if there is a one place where we can look for funds granted? There isn't anything on our website that's moving forward that looks like that. We're discovering things that the city has applied for in years past and trying to figure out did we receive the funds? So we're doing a little research on our end for past practices. And we typically applied it to two or three grants a year depending on a lot of factors as well as availability of staff to outreach which is a huge component of most of these grants are requiring you to do enormous amounts of outreach and specific outreach, which is fantastic but it does limit how quickly we can move on some of them. So anything that is awarded or anything like that would be coming back through this board. So that's one way to find out but right now we don't have a one stop shop so to speak. Might it be possible to do just a quick synopsis of grants that are applied for so that we just know as things are happening would that fill the bill Pamela? Yeah, I know it's so much work applying for these grants and then sometimes you don't get them and then sometimes you get them and then they take a long time. So, because I do that kind of work myself it just be cool to kind of be able to track where are we at on this? And that's such a different kind of funding it's very specific what we're trying to accomplish. So for the transparency of government piece it seems like it would be a cool thing to have. Sorry to put that on you, Jen. Oh, that's okay. I actually appreciate that. I mean, certainly all of that information will be coming to you all and I can be sure to touch on that at every director update to make sure I give you all just a synopsis of what's happening or if there's any changes since the last time we've met just as a reminder, which is a great opportunity to do that. Anything else on the updates? Okay, then we are going to move forward to our scheduled items. And the first item is 7.1 which is the nomination of a new vice chair for this committee. Do we have anyone who would like to nominate someone at this point? Kamala? I'd like to nominate Terry Griffin, please. Okay, do we have any other nominations? I'd like to nominate Sandra Wondell. Okay, I'm going to need a clarification from staff and from Sandra. Sandra, are you in the process of being reappointed and you're on mute? That must mean she accepts. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I was on mute. Yep, there I was. Actually, no, I am not looking for that, but I thank you, Carolina. Well, I think you'd be fabulous. But so will Terry if she chooses. Or we could do the ultimate and nominate Logan then make it work right away. I was worried you were going to do that to me. So I think Terry would be a better candidate right now. Unless Pamela is interested. Pamela, are you interested? Well, I'm in that weird situation too. I was Julie Combs appointee, and Julie has left the country, so. Yeah, left the building. That's a little awkward. Happy to serve while there's a need. I often say that the Board of Community Services is playing a game of musical chairs. And in this particular round of musical chairs, which is called the nomination for a new vice chair, what I'm hearing is that we have one nominee who is in a position where she could serve if she so chose. So, Terry, does this interest you? Yeah, I would be happy to serve as vice chair for the board. Thank you so much. Thank you, Terry. Thank you. I think we need to take a roll call at this point. So, host Nichols, could we have a roll call? Thank you. Please respond aye or nay. Chair Kwant. Yes. Board member Griffin. Yes. Board member Pitts. Yes. Board member Spence. Yes. Board member Van Helsema. Yes. Board member Wandao. Yes. The motion has passed unanimously. Thank you so much. Any questions or comments from the board on this? I'll say, Terry, I can think of no finer person to fill the bill. You straddle so many phases and parts of what we need to do and are capable of doing and are just such a great asset to the board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have any comments from the public on this item? I see no hands raised at this time. Very good. Then we are going to move forward with the next item, which is item 7.2, the update on the neighborhood services. And with that, we welcome Juan Flores. And I turn things over to you. Hello, Juan. Hello, board. Let me just set up my PowerPoint here. Hi, everybody. My name is Juan Flores. I'm a recreation coordinator with the Neighborhood Services Division. My presentation is going to be a little bit different. We want to take everybody kind on a journey that Neighborhood Services has been on for these last about a year and a half or so. But first, I want to provide you a little bit of background on Neighborhood Services. Our programs are funded by the city's general fund, Measure O and Change for Kids. We provide early intervention and prevention programming that promotes positive youth development through recreational, social, and athletic activities. So we do this through afterschool programs, camps, family events, and sports leagues. So the way I want to start off is showing you a typical year may look like for Neighborhood Services and the types of programs we run. So afterschool programs run year long on a typical year. We partner with Burbank Housing for neighborhoods that are in need. So six to eight locations where we serve 15 to 25 youth at each of these locations on a daily basis. So if the kids are in school, we're providing help with homework afterschool, recreational activities, and social activities. When the kids are not in school, we provide camps. So fall break camps, winter break, spring break, and summer break. Summer is our biggest camps where it's recreation sensation. We have four locations serving over 500 youth. Again, this is what a typical year would look like for us. And this is really what we strive for. Our family fun time events, we spread them out. Our Splash Bash is kind of to really end our year, our summer, sorry, with a bash really. At the Ridgeway Swim Center, we invite our families to really have a good time at the end of the summer. Our Halloween Bash, which has been one of our most successful events. Three on three basketball tournament where we partnered with the Violence Prevention Awareness series with the partnership there. We have everything from elementary to high school players come out for this event. Our sweetheart dance, where we invite families to come out, dress up and really have a good time in the month of love, which is February. So that's a sweetheart dance that we host as well. And our spring fest, where we have egg hunts bring our bunny mascot out to the Family Community Center and really have a fest for the families. And our sports leagues. So on a yearly basis, we run a fall and a spring Junior Warriors program that coincides with our cheer and dance programs. In the fall, our Junior Warriors program will host about 150 youth. Our cheer program will be 50 youth. In the spring, our numbers go up a little bit where we have additional teams, 180 youth for Junior Warriors and again, 50 youth for our cheer team. We run a winter futsal league for over 90 youth and we run Junior Giants where we provide baseball and softball activities in the summer for ages five to 13. So everything from T-ball, minors baseball, softball and majors baseball and softball. So this is what a typical year would look like. Obviously this has not been a typical year. So I really wanna start our journey back in 2019 in October. So Sonoma County, we were rocked with the Kincaid fire. So this changes a lot of things for folks in neighborhood services and the recreation department. We have to remove our recreation hats and put on our emergency evacuation shelter hats. Neighborhood services itself has shelter managers, assistant shelter managers, registration and dormitory staff. So we really have to refocus where instead of focusing our neighborhood services families and serving the underserved communities, we're now serving the entire community and putting our Santa Rosa Sonoma County communities first opening up an evacuation shelter at the Finley Community Center. This was for the Kincaid fire where we opened up. We unfortunately with this, we had to temporarily close our after school programs. We had to cancel our Halloween bash. So this was actually the day of our event when we decided we had to open up a shelter. So unfortunately it was all set up where we have great decorations for our families, have a dance ready to go, food ready, but unfortunately it had to be canceled. We were midway through our season with cheer. That again had to be canceled during our fall season in 2019. The same went for our junior warriors. So we got through it. We were resilient, just like in past years we were ready to move forward. We started our after school programs. We were looking forward to 2020. We got our junior warriors program for the spring already. We started that. We started our junior warriors cheer and dance team. That was ready to go. Of course, 2020 wasn't what we all expected, right? Even though we wanted to run all of these great programings for our youth and our community, we were thrown for a loop. We were rocked by COVID-19. So again, we were forced to cancel our junior warriors, cancel our cheer, cancel our after school program, cancel our spring fest, our spring break camp. So this has kind of been the ongoing trend really for us is we started our programs and then unfortunately we're rocked by fires in Sonoma County, we're rocked by a pandemic here. So it has really shown the resilience within neighborhood services, within recreation, within our families. And when this occurred, we really had to put our thinking hats on, what can we do to serve our community and keep on helping? So what we started with was just checking in with our families, checking in with our neighborhood services families that we weren't able to serve face to face. We were now finding other ways. So we called, we called, we checked in, we gathered information and resources and we were there for them as much as we could. Over 300 phone calls to neighborhood services families during the first couple of months of the pandemic, we thought we were coming back in a week. Obviously that wasn't the case. As soon as we noticed that that wasn't the case, school started giving packets out for homework. We again saw that there was a need. All of the after school programs were providing homework help for these kids, classroom help. So now we noticed that a virtual tutoring program was needed. Virtually nobody had really gone into this realm before. So Zoom was new for everybody. We had to learn Zoom, learn the platform, teach our staff, teach our families. And this was a great opportunity for us to really begin to learn, seeing where we are now, how to use this platform because we're training our staff, we're training our families. And we were providing tutoring for kids from kindergarten all the way up to eighth grade, right? Everything was different, but we were getting a little bit used to it now. We were finding ways to serve. And it really got us going, our thinking hats going. And we logged over 320 hours of virtual tutoring. This brings me to what our summer was like. Instead of serving over 500 youth, we had to downsize because of the different rules that the CDC, the state, the county, the city had to provide the safety guidelines in place. Only 12 youth per cohort. So instead of serving 500 youth during the summer, we're now serving under 100. And we're spread out, we're at eight different locations. We're having to do these daily health screenings. When I say routinely sanitizing disinfecting all surfaces, I'm talking every 15, 30 minutes, every activity, we're cleaning, we're disinfecting our hands and every surface there is. We had hand washing breaks. And all of our activities provided social distancing. As you see in the photo here, they're at the pools. Even our trips to the pools were socially distance. Our guidelines did allow us to bring our cohorts together and not necessarily always have to be socially distance, but we always strive to make our activities as socially distance as possible with tag being tags on the back or wearing flag football flags and ripping off a flag football flag instead of tagging a person. So we were implementing different ways to remain as safe as possible, not only for our youth, our staff and ourselves. And I believe this is what really got us going for what came next. We saw that schools weren't going back in session that they were virtually gonna be schooling our youth. So both neighborhood services and the entire recreation department got together and said, what can we do? School of Rec was our answer. So School of Rec is a distance learning camp and care that I'm sure some of you have heard about. We have 7.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. camping care for the youth. Monday through Friday, we are there for them providing them assistance with their homework, classwork, providing them arts and crafts activities when they're out of class, when they're out of their zooms. So again, we worked with the schools and we started this program. We have eight groups of 12 to 14 to this day. We're still continuing and we plan to continue throughout the rest of this school year, even implementing a different, somewhat of a different program with the hybrid model coming back. We've had to work with the school to successfully keep this going. We're at the Finley and Steel Lane Community Center. All of our registrations were referral based and we are serving the highest in need. So we've worked with principals, office staff, counselors of our schools. We chose schools that we've worked with together in the past because of the needed communication that it takes to run this program. So BL Elementary School, Helen Lehman, Lincoln, Meadowview and Steel Lane. I can tell you I am on the phone with the elementary school I work with every single day, whether it's a teacher, a counselor, office staff or even the principal. Luckily for me, I'm at the Steel Lane Community Center. I can also walk right over. Troubleshooting on a daily basis, whether it's additional counseling needs, behavior situations or even home visits. These are the type of things that we've had to really work with our kids in order to provide them this camp and care location where we're focusing on their schoolwork from eight to two and then providing them a recreational outlet from two to five. But that's not the full day because when they're not in Zoom, we have to find ways to keep them entertained but keep them quiet. So here you see one of our students. He's ready to go on his Zoom but he's also trying to finish his artwork, making sure we're providing a space for all of our youth to have Zoom meetings with their teachers, be safe, but have fun and we got good at it. The kids are having a great time but being that we're in Sonoma County, we face different challenges. Here we are in the pools, socially distanced, smiles on their faces and this is awesome. But again, we're in Sonoma County, September, October come around and we have to start to worry, right? And this year was the same. So glass fire came 2020. Again, forced to shut down. Thankfully we were only shut down for a week but I do want to give it to the entire recreation department where we broke down all of our school classrooms and within hours we were ready to open an evacuation shelter. All of our recreation staff really came together with neighborhood services being part of that. Completely pausing and for a full week, we had to shut down but it really, it only took us a week to shut down, serve the rest of the community and then be right back up for distance learning. So we kept it going and we're continuing here in this 2021 and we'll continue until the rest of the school year finding new models with the schools to assure that they can continue with the hybrid model if they choose to or continue distance learning full-time with us if they choose to. I can speak on the Steel Lane Community Center where one of our groups is going to go to school Monday, Tuesday. They'll come to us for aftercare and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday they'll have their normal day. The other group there will go to school on Thursday, Friday. So it's gonna be opposite but we're still finding ways to provide for our community, for our underserved and for our most at need within neighborhood services. Whether that's PE at school, just additional dancing to get the wiggle worms out. We're there for the kids trying our best to provide them an outlet. Halloween, we didn't stop this year. We had our activities even if it was just in their group of 12 or 14 they had their activities of Halloween. If you see here in this photo that was just from St. Patty's Day we had a little leprechaun run through. So we're providing these kids with an outlet with an opportunity to really come together with their distance learning but also have fun. It's almost like a little escape from what reality is and what it's been like for this past year. And with that, does anybody have any questions? I'd like to say personally, I'm sure for the board what a phenomenal job the entire staff has been doing. I wish Mother Nature had not thrown you such great events to have to rise to but what do you think, 2018? When was the last quote normal year for you guys? Man, well, I mean, we have 2017 with the tubs and I feel like ever since then that has been our new normal. And that's unfortunate. We've learned to wear these new hats and we've been resilient within the recreation department and it's just continued. And we've had to find new ways to remain resilient to be quite honest. But seeing the daily faces on these youth has been a big part of it this year. I know for sure. Well, again, thank you. Questions from the board for Juan? Comments? Juan, I had a question for you. Can you tell us about change for kids from your first slide that helps fund some of the programs? Yeah, so that is a small percentage from our water bill that people can elect to contribute to. Not a lot of our programs, I believe junior giants uses some of the funds for change for kids. For the most part, we're general fund and measure. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah. Gala. Thank you so much Juan. It's just unbelievable the challenges you've had to face and it's remarkable how you and your team have been able to continue serving with flexibility and creativity. So thank you. I wanted to ask a couple of questions. I was curious about now the way of going hybrid in some of these schools. It's only for a little bit of the day. It's not for the whole day. It's only a couple of days. So are those same kids gonna return back to the center so they can get the full day experience? So I can tell you that this last week, so we've been working with the school for months, but this last week has been refocusing on how to make this work on the hybrid model. We've had to rearrange our groups where, you know, we have spring break right now. So this was the perfect time. Everybody who is at the Steel Lane Community Center who goes to school on Monday and Tuesday will now be in group A. And everybody who goes to school on Thursday and Friday will now be in group B. Thankfully for me, I'm only working with Steel Lane and Lincoln Elementary schools at that site. But I know at Finley, we've had to get a little bit more creative in the form that we did it. We have one group who has, is choosing to remain distance learning where families opted to not go back. And that group will remain there Monday through Friday. But for the most part, we were able to find ways to move our groups around where we have the mornings off and we're working with the school districts to provide transportation for them when they are out of school. That's one question I wondered because how are they gonna get to and from if their parents are at work or something like that? Yes, Center of the City Schools has been on top of the transportation issues with that. Okay, I also have a question about how illnesses may have impacted these pods and if there were quarantine situations or your staff or kids or family members who had suffered from COVID. I can tell you there's weekly scares. For the most part, we serve predominantly Latino with the Latino community and it has been impacted really heavily in Sonoma County. But I am very thankful to say that we haven't had a ton of issues where cases have risen from the youth itself. We have had, you know, the occasional, we've had to shut down a few cohorts. We have scares all the time with secondary exposures, even primary exposures where those shutdowns happened. But thankfully, and I'm knocking on wood here, for the most part, we've run the program successfully, assuring that we keep our masks on at all times, that those hand washing breaks and hand sanitizing, you know, it's the little things I feel like we've been doing, going around, cleaning all door handles every hour. It's definitely been a team effort, just stepping in to assure that we're providing the most safe environment possible, because really it would affect everybody. Like for myself, I oversee two cohorts. I cannot join those pods. I can talk to them at a distance and try and help how I can. But if at one point I joined a pod and that pod shuts down, you know, I definitely, everybody has to remain as careful as possible and follow all the guidelines to assure that we continue running the program successfully. One more question. As the leader of this program and the person who has heard it all, it sounds like, and your observation over a whole year of this, what are some of the things that you've noticed in children's behavior or the things that they've said that is a mirror to how this is impacting them, either emotionally or how they interact socially? I mean, I feel like the small amounts of social interaction that this program brings to them has been a huge help, but I also believe that teachers will have to, will have a lot to work with when the youth come back to school. Some of the kids that I see on Zoom are at home with their blankets on, their social interactions have changed, even for kids within our programs, where the structure that the school provides on a day-to-day basis is missing. I mean, we saw our kids go from perfect little angels to very comfortable within a couple of weeks where, again, the daily contact with schools and counselors has been needed. I think when they do go back to school, there's gonna be a lot of issues that arise with their social interactions, just learning to just reintegrate themselves in a world of structure. Not all families have been able to stay home and work with the kids. So I think we'll see a lot of social and behavioral things come up for the youth when they do return, as well as just them being able to learn on Zoom. I can tell just from our kids alone is very difficult. Sometimes our staff have to work with them one-on-one for a good hour and just for them to complete an assignment because it is very difficult to focus for hours and hours. I mean, we have college staff who are also taking courses and they'll talk to us about what it's like for them. I can only imagine what it's like for these kids being asked to focus for so long without social interactions for everybody else who's not in these programs. Thank you. Hopefully, as a Parks and Rec department, we can address those needs even as we come out of the pandemic because you're not suddenly flipping a switch and everything is normal, but we'll have to recognize that there's some healing that has to take place for these families and these children. Yeah. Yeah. Probably for our staff too. One other question if I could, Carol. And Juan, yeah, thank you for all the flexibility you've shown. That's really impressive. And on that note, have you digested the new guidance on the three-foot separation, the County Office of Education just updated that yesterday? Is that gonna change any of your plans in the near term? I got that email yesterday. I need to read it through and have a conversation with the rest of the team and see how it's gonna affect us. So I can't answer that yet at this moment. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments from members of the board? I have a quick question. Juan, thank you so much for the presentation. The work that you're doing is truly amazing. You mentioned that the School of Rec program will continue through this school year. I'm not asking you to get out your crystal ball, but do you have a sense of what will happen with the program going forward? Might it continue through the summer or resume in the fall? And what are the plans around that? So I can tell you right now that I along with my supervisor and neighborhood services are in the rest of the team, we're planning on camps during the summer, but that can change. I mean, we've learned within this last year. I mean, recreation staff as a whole, we like to plan six months ahead. We like to plan our events, our programs. We're now at a point where we have to plan and adjust very quickly. So I'm planning for camps in the summer. I'm planning for sports in the fall, after school programs in the fall, but also in the back of my mind, and I'm sure in the back of everybody else's mind and on our team, just from a flip of the switch that can change either a new wave coming in or guidelines becoming looser, allowing us to do more. So currently we're planning for camps, planning for after school programs and possibility of sports in the fall, but ready to adjust when the time comes. I have a quick question. Just, I mean, obviously you've been doing a hybrid approach now. Is that something that you're going to consider or maybe put into the after school programs or the programs for next year? Is that dependent on the schools or is that something that you just might incorporate? When we, when you mentioned the hybrid approach for the kids going to school the two days and, or can you allow me to question? Yeah, I mean, there's, or will you offer something that's more support online or virtually as, you know, that you've done before? We'll have to explore that option, definitely. I mean, we typically run these after school programs with Burbank Housing, but, you know, something else may be needed for the community. So we always have to go where the highest need is. It may be that schools need additional support. That'll be a conversation that's had to, I would have to go through our deputy director and the supervisor for neighborhood services. But again, just ready and flexible for whatever comes our way at this time. It did really depends on what COVID brings us in these next couple of months. And that's, that's the unfortunate thing. It's just whatever COVID brings, we have to adjust. Again, we can plan for these, you know, Zooms and different models, but that can change really quickly. You're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else from the board? So I would like to say to an untrained or to someone who hadn't watched your presentation, a question might have been, gee, how many people did you have to lay off from recreation because there was nothing for them to do? In reality, it was, oh my God, were you able to find more people or more funding to increase your staffing because there was more than ever for you to do? So I can tell you that I just got a new order for T-shirts midway through the year, which has never happened. We went through all of our inventory because of all of the staff that we had to hire on for this program. This was definitely, School of Rec was a recreation program. We all removed our division hats of neighborhood services and working with seniors where this was our focus. So it was all hands on deck. It's been all hands on deck and it's been hiring more and more staff. Some have come in from going to UC Davis, Santa Cruz, moving back home because they're distance learning and luckily they are now working with us providing distance learning help. But yeah, it's been all hands on deck. It's been one journey. Does this mean that the city's come up with extra money in the budget to support this program? I'll let Kelly answer that. Kelly, if you wanna. Hi, what we did was we redirected funds because we weren't able to open the senior centers. We weren't able to do as larger programs as we were normally doing. Like we had money left over from last summer's day camp because the numbers were decreased by so much. We didn't spend all of our temp staff funding. So we carry that over with our facility staff budget. And so we were able to put, like Juan said, all hands on deck but use the different funds to fund it or we would have never been able to afford it. So we did it because we couldn't offer senior programs or traditional summer camps last year. And then as you know, the pools were hopping. They were full all day, seven days a week but they're still not making the money that they need to make because we can't serve as many people. And it's kind of the same way. We're spending a lot of money on the distance learning and then the summer programs. You need extra staff for sanitation, extra staff for the supervision of the kids. So we were actually lucky there were other funds that weren't being used so we could direct it towards the distance learning. So it all came out okay. It wasn't perfect but it worked. Well, your versatility and your thinking on the feet for the entire staff is just amazing and so commendable. We thank you. Do we have any comments from the public on this item? I don't see any hands raised at this time. Thank you. Thank you. So with that, we will move on to committee reports. I will tell you there was a virtual mayor's lunch on the 10th of this month and things that might interest this board is the downtown Creek, the Prince Memorial Greenway, which is a city of Santa Rosa Park has been extensively cleaned up. The staff that's been doing trash cleanup has done a remarkable job. I know it's a day-to-day affair. The last time I was down there, it was clean and that was remarkable. Logan, did you get to go on that bike ride? Was it clean for you? That was about two weeks ago and it was looking great. So that has been something that definitely caught my attention when the mayor was giving his information. He also, Mayor Rogers also said that there is a hope for money from the PG&E settlement. And I'm hoping that the PG&E settlement is like straw and can be spun into gold in back rooms that it just multiplies. That some of the PG&E funding can hopefully go into improving and bringing the parks back to their pre-COVID beauty and usefulness. They've taken such a hammering. Did he cite any figures? No. Jen, I don't know if you know more about this, but it was something that was spoken, that the parks were going to hopefully benefit from some much needed TLC after COVID is over for the good of the community, because I think City Council does realize how important the parks are, along with everything else, I really do. There was no waterways meeting last month. There is one scheduled for later this week. So I will have something on that next time, but that's it from that. Do we have any written or electronic communication or any questions on the mayor's lunch? So any electronic communication? Staff? Being there, thank you. Chair Kwant, we did receive an email, electronic communication from Melissa Feldman, titled public comment regarding Doyle Park Drive. And I'm happy to read the entire email if you would like to have that or it is also attached to the documents for this meeting in the city's website as well. And so I'll look to you, chair, and board, if you would like me to read it, otherwise I just wanted to draw your attention to that comment we received. Because it's not something we can address in this meeting, if it's all right for people to read it on their own. Any objections to that? Great, we'll move on to future agenda items. Open for ideas, Terry. No, sorry, I didn't, wasn't raising my hand. No, no, you have to come up with one anyway now. Anyone else? So I will tell you as we get some new blood on this board and hopefully everybody is gonna stick around until all of those seats are properly filled in this great game of musical chairs, board of community services style. I think coming out of the pandemic, this board can do a lot of good and engaging more and more with the community. And that's something that I'm hoping we can have as an agenda item as the board continues to transition and move forward. If no one has anything else, I would like to say excellent seeing you all. Logan, welcome. And at 506, I am going to say, thanks guys. We'll see you next month. Stay in touch, stay active.