 All right. Welcome, everyone. Our meeting format is integrated with members of the public via Zoom. Members of the public who are using Zoom may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. So just want to welcome all of our board members and members of the public to today's meeting of the board of community services. My name is Logan Pitts, the chair of the board. And to my right is our vice chair, Paul Castillo. And then moving along, we have board members Madonna Cruz, Carolina Spence, Carol Kwant and Guido Boca Leone. Thank you all for being here. And our hosts for today are Julie Schultz and Jackie Haman. The host will coordinate comments from the public and assist during the meeting and take notes for any follow-up needs. As a reminder, please silence your cell phones again. And as a another important reminder, the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment, free from disruption. And we will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully or if necessary, we will end the meeting. Please be nice to each other. Host, please explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting. Thank you, Chair Pitts. So as attending in person, I would like to introduce a speaker car for each item that you wish to speak on that are located at the entrance and place it in the basket. After an agenda item has been presented, the chair will ask the board members for their comments or questions and then immediately following the item will be open for public comment. Once the chair has called for public comment, you will be called by name to the podium. Please state your name for the record. Each public comment is limited to three minutes and a courtesy timer will appear on the screen. Any email comments that were received by the deadline will have been included and uploaded in the agenda prior to the start of today's meeting. E-mails received are not read into the record. Thank you. With that, I call this October 25th, 2023 meeting of the board of community services to order at 5.05 p.m. Host, may we have a roll call please? Chair Pitts. Yes. Oh, sorry. Please respond when I call your name. Vice Chair Castillo. President. Board Chair Boca Leone. President. Board Chair Cruz. Here. Board Member Lopez. Board Member Spence. Here. Board Member Cuant. Here. All right. The record reflects that all the president with the exception of Board Member Cruz. Thank you. You upgraded some people to chair, but that's all right. I know, sorry. That's all right. They're great people. So. Excuse me with the exception of Board Member Lopez. Yes. Yes. And our Lopez will not be joining today's meeting. We wish him well. I'd like to open the phone out for public comments on non-agenda matters. This is a time when any person may address the board on matters not listed on this agenda, but are within the subject matter of our board. It looks like we do have one public comment on item three from Mr. DeWitt. Go ahead. Hello. My name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. My name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I'm from Roseland. My Saturday, the 28th of October is Make a Difference Day nationwide. Here in Santa Rosa, we've been doing Make a Difference Day activities at what we call Roseland Neighborhood for over a dozen years. It's on Fairbank Avenue, across from the new Roseland Creek Elementary School. We arrive at 10 in the morning. We stay until noon time. Basically just cleaning up the place and stewarding the place. I want to thank the park staff who in the past have been there sometimes to help us, especially the maintenance folks. Wanted to make sure and get the word out. We're doing it again and hoping that some of the parts of maintenance staff might be able to come by. And when we had help from the creek stewardship folks in the past that give us trash bags and pickers and things like that. I'm hoping that we can get an organized effort going again. We used to work with community action partnership also, but once Vince Harper passed that haven't been interacting with us lately, but we'll try again. In the past, I've been coming here asking about how to name parks. And it was discussed that it was in process. Some sort of a new approach to how you name parks. And I've never heard anything back about that. So I want to make sure that you know, I'd like to hear about it. And you have my address. You have my phone number in the records. So email, telephone number and mailing address are all available for me. So I'd certainly like to be informed when the new parks naming policy comes out. And last but not least, there's an environment impact report process going on right now for Rosalind Creek Park. I'd like to find out where it is in process and when that will be coming out and be released to the public to be able to participate. Some folks in the public have approached me thinking, you know, they'll probably put it out right before Christmas and make it difficult for the public to participate. So if that's the case that it won't be coming around until that time, I'd like to put into the record that we'd hope you'd wait until the new year so you could get as much public participation in the process as possible. This is really important because in the past, many of the members who live out in Rosalind feel that our disadvantaged area has been kind of left to the wayside while other areas of the city which are more well to do and have more capacity for modern technology and things like that are given more interest if you will. So keep Rosalind in mind, give us plenty of time to have public participation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. I don't see any other speaker cards. Do we have any other members of the public who would like to speak on the side? Seeing no one else, we're moving on to item four, the approval of our minutes from the September 27th meeting. Are there any edits or corrections to the minutes of September 27th? All right. Seeing no hands, we will consider those minutes approved as submitted and I will abstain since I was absent. If you could note that. Thank you. Agenda item five, reports on upcoming events and accomplished events. Director Santos, please take it away. Thank you, chair Pitts. I wanted to highlight our upcoming Halloween activities. Halloween at Hearth Park is full already, but we do have 40 spots available at our neighborhood services. Halloween bash on October 28th. And in the attachment to the meeting is the link to get to those registry, register and advance to get to that activity, but it proves to be a really nice fun event. And then on accomplished events, I also wanted to recognize our floating pumpkin patch at Ridgeway swim center was a good success on October 21st. Thank you, Jen. And will you please provide the director updates? Yep. Thank you. Chair Pitts, I'll start by I wanted to introduce this person next to me. Kim Grendel. It started with recreational parks on Monday as our administrative technician. And I'm super happy to have her here at the board meeting. So she'll be filling in the spot that any Hennessy was serving in prior to her moving back to public services. So I'm going to go ahead and talk to her. Kim will be supporting our future administrative secretary, Sarah Costa, who will start with the department on the 6th of November. So I'm really excited. She'll start with us as our parks administrative secretary, Sarah Costa. Welcome aboard. And Kim will be just to kind of roll with that. Kim will be supporting our future administrative secretary, Sarah Costa, who will start with the department on the 6th of November as our parks administrative secretary and be the secretary to the board. And so we'll be looking forward to seeing her at our December meeting because we do skip the November month of November and go straight to December. So look forward to seeing her and as well as Kim participating in the future. And in your upcoming minutes, you have some board meetings or some council meetings that are coming up, but I also wanted to add that on the 14th of November, the Martin Luther King infill infrastructure grant for approval process will be happening at council. And that's going to do the actual final approval for Martin Luther King park to be updated with improvements, such as playgrounds and sports fields. And we've already gotten ahead of that and we've gone out and worked with a consultant already to engage with, to start to engage with the community on what they would like to see at their park. But that's just the official, if you see that on there, that's just the official approval from council for the contract for, with the state for those funds. And let's see, we, there was a request for an update on Fremont park. Fremont park is in the process of receiving an improvement and master plan update, et cetera. And we have received a historic report on the park a few months ago and it's since been updated to final. So staff are going to review that final document and get together a meeting with the design staff and the historical evaluation staff. So we can really understand what our parameters are for the future of that park. What is, what are we able to do and what are we able to communicate with the, with the citizens. And once we know that we'll go back and create a process for moving forward and that will be available too on the website and we'll provide that information to the board as well. And let's see. Yeah, that is the end of my report. Okay. Any questions? Go ahead, girl. Jen, will the Fremont park report be going back to the cultural heritage board for review? Yes, it will. So could you fill in the, it will not be coming to us for review moving forward. We'll be reviewing the public interaction. Could you be a little bit more specific with those steps? Well, once we, once we have an understanding of how much the existing community engagement, do we need to re-engage with the community? That's what we need to determine. Do we need to re-engage? And then that will tell us, do we need to engage first and then go to cultural heritage board? Or do we, can we put something together and go straight to cultural heritage board and then back out to the community? What is our, so we're still determining what the process is going to be. So just like pieces, you don't know how they fit together. Not yet. We'll put it forward at some point at the public record. Yes. We'll post it on the project website for the Fremont park on the city's record site. I'm looking forward to get an email when that's posted. Sure. Thank you. Any other questions for director Santos? All right. Mr. Dewitt, do you have another comment for agenda item six? Yes. Thank you. We do it for Rosemont regarding Martin Luther King park. I'm curious if you folks are working with the Santa Rosa youth athletic field trust that was put together back all 23 years ago, I believe. And in the past, they were raising money to help on different things like this. I'm hoping that they're still involved in stuff of this nature. On the Fremont park effort, I'm certainly hopeful that you'll engage with the public before going to the cultural heritage board. More public engagement you have with the community, better off you'll be for that historic park place. I played out as a boy and was distressed to see when they put in the cancer memorial. When they did that, it actually was kind of frightening to some of the kids in the area at the time because if you don't know what that's for, it's like, why is that there? Anyway, so be it. I'm hoping they'll check into those things. Thank you kindly. Thank you Dwayne. All right. Moving on to agenda item seven, our board member reports will go down the line. See if anyone has any relevant reports within our jurisdiction. Vice chair Castilla. Do you have a report? No updates this month. I attended the mayor's lunch. It was, it was good. Very nice to see all the various goods there and everyone. That was good. As far as parts that the coffee park is still nice. Still doing well. Well maintained. That's about it for me this month. Thanks Paul. Board member Cruz. Do you have a report? Yes. This past Saturday I attended a Howard power park walk with a community equity foundation. So very, it was very DEI, which I really appreciated. Lots of persons with disabilities. A lot of people of color and just some good conversations. The part looked really good. Also attended the luncheon. It's very nice to be in person with other committee members. So that was great. That is all that I have. Great. Thank you. Donna. Board member Spence. Do you have a report? I was at the same lunch. And we had a great time. And I think Iron and Vine is doing a great job in the restaurant and the grounds and the golf course there look back at us. Great. Glad to be there. All right. Thank you for your report. Board member Kwok. Do you have a report for this month? I went to the Chinate community meeting at city council, which was technically not a park meeting, but I think Jen would back me up. The number of times that parks were brought up with no concept of funding was interesting. A lot of passionate people out there. A lot of interesting ideas. Have you sat on this board for very long time now? I know that parks don't happen out of thin air or out of someone's imagination. I also was able to go to the pickleball tennis meeting here. Kudos to staff and also to the community. It was wonderful to see the tennis players and the pickleball players so united. Unfortunately, I am concerned that they too do not have a good handle on what a complex would be, what it would cost them, where the money is coming from. So hopefully as that conversation continues, that will become part of the conversation. I think the pickleballers would have bake sales and fundraisers till the cows come home. So it was lovely seeing them all together. I also was able to attend a southeast greenway community park with this charming woman over here, Thea. And that was great to attend as a community member. Three weeks ago. It was a wonderful morning. I also swung by the history day here at family center. Last Saturday it was jam packed with both people and with vendors. And last but not least, there were at least two dozen people Saturday spreading naked ladies and digging in the rural cemetery. And I told them all to go home and tell their friends that they had a glorious morning digging in the cemetery. Wow. We did it. All right. Good. Thank you, Carol. Board member Bo Callione, I'm sorry you have to follow it. I have nothing new to report. My report for this month was for the luncheon. I kept an eye on our park in Southwest community park. It's busier and busier every day. It's fabulous and the amount of usage of that park is kept up in good condition. That's good to hear. the luncheon so it's good to see folks there. Thanks for coming and representing the board. And yeah the facility looks great so I'm glad to see they're keeping it up and the food is pretty good. So good job of those folks. My new parks that I visited for this month was Village Green Park on Sebastopol Road and Rink and Ridge Park which I think Carol you said you've been to that one recently. Great views up there definitely been scorched by the fire but there was kids using the playground so good to see. And then I'll also give a little update on the renaming policy that we had someone comment on. I also asked about that and where that's at. We are trying to craft a formal policy to decide how parks are named and then farther down sort of how individual monuments and other designations are determined in the park. We never really had any written guidance so I don't know that that's imminently going to be published but they are working on that the staff. We get people asking to rename things a lot. We and people want to put plaques in parks and we feel we need the staff feels they need a better toolkit to address that. So if you want to add anything to that Jen go ahead. Thank you Chair Pitts. I'll just add that we did provide an update at last month where you were absent on the park naming policy reminding the board that they had chosen to wait on any renaming until we do finish that policy and that we once we finish the board ordinance then we'll move into the policy and we're hoping that can happen at the beginning of next year. Okay great thank you for that update. And Mr. Dewitt do you have another comment for us on agenda item seven? Yes thank you Kelly. Dewitt from Roseland and thank you for following up on that park naming situation to understand it better. I wanted to dovetail on what Commissioner Quant had pointed out about the Shinnate meeting and the people there talking about parks. There's a preserve there, Poly Creek Preserve. It was first bought 22 years ago with agon open space monies and has been held by agon open space ever since. That could be the toe hold to get more green infrastructure up there at that site. During the meeting held at the city but not a city meeting it was discussed that there were other possibilities for that site besides what the current owner made proposed and people that I know who live up in those areas many of them have been there for longer than I've been alive are very interested in having it be a green infrastructure type site parks preserves things of that nature recreation type things and I do believe that's something that should be looked into by the board members. Place to play pickles. Think of that that's a fundraiser over at the place to play they can have their pickle ball courts there and they can sell them pickles and the whole thing could go I take off I know it would and they could work with that Santa Rosa Youth Athletic Field Trust it's been in existence for over 20 years also and then last but not least Mr. Boca Leone mentioned Southwest Community Park. The first weekend of this month the Fijian community came to that park and held a festival there. I don't know if you know about it but it was large there were over 180 cars on that site there's only a paid parking lot for about 40 45 cars that's something you should keep in mind because people park wherever they want to park they were out there all over the place there were hundreds of people there it was a good time I went and talked with folks there very interesting situation and then last but not least on these types of updates on this Village Green Park you know that was put in by a guy who was really smart man named Alan Strahan and he built Courtside Village out there in the first place and that was a park dedication he provided it then the city got it that's how the parks used to be in this town is that developers put the parks in when they put their housing in but that has since not been the case and we're not getting as many parks as we need so I would hope that you folks would advocate that that policy get reinstituted anytime new housing is built they build the park rather than an aloof fee because we're not getting enough money to make the parks thank you for your time thank you Dwayne all right we are moving on to our first item 8.1 that is the southeast greenway update director Santas will provide an update on that project in conjunction with the southeast greenway partnership thank you chair pits and I just wanted to kick us off and let you know that the city is the major partner of the greenway partnership and we are actively working with um thea and a whole group of folks that she'll describe in the presentation but uh I'm here if you have any questions but really I you know want to turn it over to the theater really talk about the history and what's been going on with the greenway since then thank you and thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk to you about this I know that Carol's been on one of our walks I know that Logan has two so I would like all of you to join us at any time and I can give you a car tour if you don't want to walk the two miles but if you feel like getting some exercise we do them on Saturday mornings in the spring and the fall and I say that because just looking at pictures or just looking at the map doesn't give the full impression of what this land is like and what the potential is okay it's clicking okay there you go so you can see from that well-worn path that people have been using this land for a very long time it's owned by Caltrans and it has divided the neighborhood in half and theoretically you are trespassing if you go on the land but there are two places this is near Carmel and there's another path behind the freedmen's center that people have been using forever and um and they're going to continue using it next slide please yes oh thank you okay oh yell down to you so the green slice that you see there is the greenway it's um we had a group of people come study it and they said very rarely do you find at that point it was 57 acres of land with nothing on it and frequently when people have the rails to trails program or something like that they're pulling up railroad tracks to put some kind of a linear park in a community fortunately for us we were told thank Caltrans for preserving this park land for us because it can hold infrastructure in it as well as being an amazing park it starts at Farmer's Lane and continues up it will be a new entrance into spring lake park for people who ride their bicycles and walk it will not be an auto entrance so if you've ever gone in spring like park through Nahuanga you know how dangerous it is there are no sidewalks there um the visibility is terrible there are ditches on both sides a bit so we're really excited for that and right now the only thing that is planned on that land is in 2011 the update to the bicycle used to be called the bike pad update put a class one bike lane in there so that is written in stone right now our goal on the whole greenway is to have two lanes one for cyclists and one for pedestrians because you know there's always a little bit of tension whenever you have bikes and pedestrians together in a in a narrow space so that's sort of like what we're hitting considering the gold standard of the planning for this process it's got three main streets across it franquette which is not very busy except when schools in session elopa and summerfield there are seven schools which which are within walking distance of this land and we feel like it is just right for outdoor education there are three creeks on the property there is a teacher at montgomery high who would just love to get out there with her students and and do some science and biology work on it it's going to be a great place for classes to do field trips for schools to do service learning projects and to do cleanup on it too so we're excited about that part of it the other thing is the green spaces that you see in that area are primarily playgrounds associated with schools frequently they're locked at night and on the weekends and so while people always think of that neighborhood which they call bennett valley i call it inner bennett valley it's not as rich in parks because you have to get in your car and drive up to howard for example and so the parklands that are there the green spaces aren't always accessible so this will truly be a neighborhood park as well as a link into connectivity both east and west okay excellent thank you there's lots to see on the land obviously most of these pictures were taken in the springtime when it was nice and green it doesn't always look like that um there is a walnut grove on there and about 50 of those trees are still active alive viable so that presents some sort of an opportunity when we're doing our planning it is definitely a wildlife corridor east of summerfield coyote deer red fox um wild turkeys unfortunately but they're everywhere and so there are lots of other things we also see it as a wildlife corridor for things that we forget about the birds the bees the insects because they're all over that area which was an oak woodland and an oak grassland down on the flats and there are some nesting birds that also like that habitat as well so when we go through planning we want to make sure that we're having conversations about how can we restore this to its natural state in a way still having areas for active transport recreation but also making sure that we're taking into consideration such things as low maintenance low water because those are two things that we feel are really important um three creeks I mentioned you see a view of just one of them now and there's also a beautiful view shed from the flatlands looking up at the all the hillsides that surround that area okay next slide please we've been lucky to have three different studies the first one was done by a design graduate school program from Cal the second one which I referenced here was done by the American Institute of Architects in 2011 and the third big robust community one was when the city hired consultants to do the general plan because this property had not been zoned it was just a blank slate of state property in the middle of the city so that was a critical component for us because we could not appraise the property until it was zoned but anyway through all of those three outreach programs we had as well as early on we went out as a group to say is this we kind of did beta testing on it we contacted everybody we could think of in the neighborhood and said would you be willing to invite your neighbors and let's find out what people want to do with this land so we do a little dog and pony show we hand out a piece of paper and we'd say right down on one side what you want on the property on the other side what you don't want on the property those funky little studies that we did turned out to be very similar to all of the three big robust programs that we had to find out and this sort of gives us an outline I added the last one on the bottom addressing climate adaptation because I think as we look at parks and building sites in the future we are going to have to take that into consideration but those are basically the things that people wanted to see no pools on there but anyway we'll see next slide please we've spent 16 years developing relationships with people and getting community involvement we have the running club and the cycling club from the city of Santa Rosa who not only are big supporters of us but they've also given us financial support through the years which has been important we table as much as we can we do watermark every year we go to the earth day celebration and everything every place we can do outreach to a community in front of rei for example we're trying to do that to get the message out and some people say people never heard of the greenway and I said well that's why we keep doing what we're doing because we want everybody to know about it it's taken a lot of strategy meetings on our park to make decisions along the way to say how do we keep the project alive and how do we keep it successful and so that's some of the pictures that you see there and then as Carol mentioned before we have done these walks and they I think we probably had over 400 people who've attended these walks since we've started them and that's kind of nice because they've been out there with us looking at the property coming up with ideas themselves okay thank you very much could you flip the next slide thank you so this is the official map that came out of place works study and zoning of the property the three orange and yellow spots you see there have now been taken out of the property when we first started talking with caltrans it was 57 acres it's now down to 47 because those 10 acres that are yellow and orange are our zone for development mixed use and medium high density housing which are nice because they're sort of on the outside edges of the greenway but we hope when caltrans sells that property to developers that we will be able to put a little bit of pressure on them to integrate whatever their designs are into the greenway itself and because we feel like it's going to be a major asset for whatever happens in those areas everything else you see on there that's green that is going to be the new park and I think it's going to be maybe the fourth largest park in san rosa if acreage is what we're talking about next slide please so I don't think any of us who started this in 2008 would realize that it would take this long and that was because we didn't know what we were doing and we were pretty naive and fortunately we were able to get a whole bunch of people who had technical and political expertise and fundraising expertise to come on board through the years and help us and that has been invaluable to us so I have a list of all the dates on there of what we have done and accomplished some of it has been with the various city councils we've been in front of and some of the board of supervisors a very important two very important things happened to for us one was that sonoma land trust adopted us and they are our fiscal sponsor so they've been very helpful in raising money and then the other thing is that the open space district gave us a million dollars in a matching grant because we always said to the city please provide the staff time and please provide the technical support we will raise the money to buy the land so right now we have raised all the money to buy the land we have the appraisal the city has agreed to it caltrans has agreed to it and so if you look at that bottom line in 2024 it's going to be done and so finally after all these years we're looking forward to that next slide please one of the things that we learned early on when the architects came and they said develop a public private partnership for this project because it's too big for you to do by yourselves and so we have already asked these people to be supporters of ours but to be partners was a whole other story but we did draft an mou with all of them you see their logos there and through the years we have had meetings you've attended a lot of them that are monthly by monthly sometimes weekly when we had critical things where all of these people sent representatives who gave input and technical support and we never could have accomplished this without all of those people participating in one way or another and each one of them has made major contributions along the way that has been really important for us so okay so this is just a larger aerial you can see how with park there spring lake park all the mountains surrounding it and in the scheme of acreage it doesn't look that big but when we start talking about a park it is big and we think it's critical not only for the area that it is in but just the linkage and connectivity that it provides for the east west connection to the Joe Rodota trail and beyond and up into annandale park and beyond in that direction so that's it for now i gave you a brochure it's a little outdated we're waiting because we don't know what's exactly going to happen next year let's put a new brochure together my business card is on there and as i said if any of you would like to get more information boots on the ground i'd be happy to give it to you so if you have questions i'd love to thanks thea a brochure and a nice bookmark great so just as a reminder to folks we're not voting today but you can feel free to ask any questions uh of thea make comments so um who wants to kick it off grito go ahead yeah i have one i have a few friends that live on hoenn who were not who said that yeah it would be beautiful but the traffic on hoenn is getting so bad that they were looking forward at one point for that to be a a freeway a freeway to get all the traffic because he says if i pull out of my driveway and i said that's about that wait five minutes before i can make a left turn because the traffic because he said on that side uh he said it's just it's just terrible traffic and uh i said well you know they're going to take that it's supposed to be a freeway but now they're talking about making a park and he goes and it's going to be even worse he says you know i have nothing against that but but i'm curious about is the people that live because when i live in petuloma on lombardi avenue we have the same situation between our behind our property but are the people that live along the back rows there are they going to be in favor of of something like that and we talk to them before they go i wish they'd have talked to me because you know now it's people are over here screaming and hollering playing and you know i mean it just to make sure everybody's happy with that greenway there in their backyard really i think there's still about seven people who still want the freeway and i think there are about um i don't know how many some people still talk about housing on the greenway and none of those things are going to happen except the orange spaces will be reserved for building and housing in 2012 and 13 tell trans did a study they do studies periodically all over the state every 20 years they study a highway and in 2013 and 14 they studied highway 12 from the coast all the way out to Rio vista which is beyond highway five this little section of it tell trans determined through traffic studies that they were not going to continue that freeway we have a feeling they might have thought that in uh in um 19 uh what we say 1970s um because they were buying properties to build the freeway extension from the 1950s through the 70s in 1973 they stopped buying property and there's one little pinch point on the greenway where we think that's what they must have known they weren't going to continue with this but but they keep property on their books for a very long time somebody at caltrans said well we don't get rid of a property for 100 years just in case we need it but they decided at that time they didn't need it the city was then asked if they were in favor of extending the freeway because originally it was supposed 12 was supposed to extend out to Sonoma but then all of a sudden spring lake was there too so there was all this conversation about should we go under spring lake should we go around spring lake what would happen to it and so that was a decision that was made on the state level to not extend the freeway and that won't happen one of the problems that we know exists on hoenn is so many people driving their kids to school and if you look at the traffic at school time in the morning and in the afternoon it's much heavier than it is at any other time of the day so one of the things that we are hoping is that things like the back to the safe routes to school program which is already in existence i think in four or five of those schools in the neighborhood are going to alleviate some of that traffic not all of it because in san rosa you know you can go to school anywhere and so that's a little bit of a that's a whole other problem but we do think that we our goal is to make that bicycle path used all the time and we know that it'll cut down some of the traffic i can't promise that your friend will get out of the driveway easily all the time but we're working on reducing traffic in the area yeah for sure thank you thanks to you carol did you have a question i did yeah you i wish there was many passionate people on all of our parks as you are on this one and knowledgeable as well i truly appreciate your investment in this and my questions may be more for jen than for you but if you know the answers the first one is the housing that's being built will there be a park impact fee will some excuse me some funding be generated by the two parcels that are going to be housing they they will not necessarily have to pay their park impact fee fees we're going to look at that and evaluate whether or not they have their requirement but the answer is maybe right now and there's nothing written that says they won't need to do that but will evaluate when they come through to see if they need to pay their park development impact fees but they won't have to dedicate land for sure second question has to do with the status of a greenway i don't know if prince memorial has a status as a greenway i'm familiar with neighborhood parks i'm familiar with community parks i'm familiar with the process of neighborhood park goes through for adjustments to master plans and amenities i'm familiar for what a community park has to do for the same process what is southwest community and where does it fit into those two points so all this time to what thea says when we own this next year part of our process is to evaluate that very question what should we do with it should it be some sort of trail park should it be some sort of combination of different types of parks should it be just its own single new type of park and in the city what should we be doing with that and a lot of that will happen as we engage with the community and find out what does the community really want because we've done a lot of engagement well thea and the greenway team have done a ton of engagement to find out well what are they what do they really want and spend on going and we have a land use zoning plan but we need now to have the full master plan at the southeast greenway developed as well as the corresponding environmental documents to support that so we'll be asking and as we start getting answers from the community we'll be deciding is there a place where a new neighborhood park could go or parts of that what are those options going to be so it's going to be exciting to discover that i mean certainly this is entirely unique in the city so we're asking the same questions as well and so we'll be coming up with some answers as we engage more with the community so this the community could be both a neighborhood park community and an entire city of santa rosa community engaged in the conversation entire city of santa rosa will be engaged in that but as thea mentioned like if you want to go to a neighborhood park and there you know your nearest community park is howard which is pretty impacted as well so there might be some opportunity there to provide a mixed use of of different parks type different park types in that in the same area there so and i'm a little bit i'm not as familiar with the technicalities of all these different kinds of parks but i will say that in the flat lands because it is flat it is open and it is highly visible we see most of the action happening there whether it's the picnics or the active and passive recreation it lends itself to that because it's surrounded by a neighborhood by neighborhoods once you get to the east of summer field it's on a rise it has a lot of rock outcropings it has a vernal pool it has a seasonal stream it has amazing vistas and it's also going to be a new entrance into spring lake park and so we see that as very different than what's on the flat land so so maybe that's where we're talking about two different things i don't know but one of the things that we want to do with all of it is to restore as much of it to natural as possible to require the least amount of maintenance thanks thea go ahead madonna hi thank you so much for your presentation um so my my question would be so restoring to its original um my question would be have you had any discussion with the local tribal people here on maybe they would want a arbor there um or have they been involved at any capacity of what they may like to see i know when i talk to elders that are public that were born here you know they would like to see a traditional arbor at a park has that happened it's it's interesting because i was just having this conversation with somebody yesterday at sinoma land trust and i said we've got to sit down with with tribal people and say what's here i come from new york and we used to find arrowheads all over the place and all sorts of clay pots and things and on this grant land nothing has been found yet that doesn't mean it's not there it's it was a migrating area and and so there weren't really any settlements on the property as far as we know i would love to have some interpretive center there or whatever people want i don't know but i think having some native indigenous um recognition should be there and and i think again having schools surround this property it lends itself to be a healing place and an alerting place for sure so if you have any contacts for me please get in touch with me thank you i'd love to hear from you thanks paul yeah it's a quick question regarding the pathways and these main streets that is in our second summer field and whatnot uh are there going to be bridges or kind of what's the idea for the pathway are there going to be something from one side apart the other or is it going to be more like a crosswalk i think or do we not know yet well um it's too expensive to do a bridge over a tunnel under that's cost prohibitive um i think this could be rob sprinkles problem but he's going to have to come up with some clever ideas about that the traffic people will um franquette is a much narrower street frankly the city's going to have to do a lot of work on franquette because there are no sidewalks there it floods there that's that's what have been a neglected area right behind montgomery high school where the fields are but the other two streets we are going to have to we've had conversations when when we did the master plan for um the zoning plan but um it's going to require some some real information and and there's a group in uh i don't know if you know them bikeable san rosa who are looking at innovative things that are happening all over the world for for crossings and we were just talking about that the other day because there is an update to the active transportation plan and so we're looking at what can we include in that plan that makes it safe for pedestrians and cyclists to go along and we just want to bring maybe some new different ideas to san rosa that they haven't looked at before so yeah we don't have the answer to that yet thank you yeah thank you thanks paul um yeah i think that 2011 report the it was the first time i started looking at this is the project and probably when we met or first talked about it and my own history goes back further because i used to go to summer camp at camp high and preschool and play in the orchard so i don't know if they still let kids do that but uh if cow trends let's them do that but it's definitely a place i love and spend a lot of time as a kid um i'm really excited and um so i just i just wanted to have a few questions um it would look like it was the parcel just west of the lupa that might be housing is that correct yes okay and then there was like a blue chunk near montgomery high school what was that well that so so when they did the plan one of the things that was a repeating theme is get the schools involved and as you look at all of those little colored blobs don't hold them to that spot so what they did was there was a blue blob that says i don't know what it says in the key but it's schools identification and all they wanted to do there is to say can we have some place that could be an educational hub not necessarily in that spot but could that be when we do those the parks master plan could there be some sort of an educational uh we don't know what it is we're we're looking for bright ideas but making sure the schools have input and a presence when the planning happens great thanks for that um well again thank you for your time um you really are dedicated to this and we need people like you um i bet you didn't know you'd learn all those acronyms either so you're basically a bureaucrat at this point um and yeah um you probably know more than some of us and again thank you for being so welcoming bringing people on the property working with our staff um and and doing this uh for the amount of time you've done it and it's not over yet like you said so just want to say thank you and thanks for coming in today thank you i just want to say too that we know it's not over yet and when the school when the property gets transferred from the state to the city we don't see that as a handoff we feel like we are going to continue stewarding we are going to continue having input the people around the area call it their greenway if the various things happen they get on the phone and they call the police so the sheriff or caltrans or me and so the eyes are already on the greenway and we want to continue that stewardship great thank you we do have one public comment on agenda item 8.1 thank you sir please step up thank you kindly it was uh going away from rosen it was inspiring to listen to that i'm hoping that that uh file would be available to the public this is really inspiring because there are other opportunities within the city that don't have as much uh capacity i think it's in term as this organization has been able to put together i was actually a part of the cal berkeley studio in 2011 because i was a graduate student at cal berkeley finishing up in 2008 and my thesis chair michael southworth was the person in charge of that program and at that time there was discussion that there should be housing put into that linear area so there would be eyes on the prize if you will and it's something that people may want to continue to keep in mind because anytime you have open spaces you get people in there who begin to make them perhaps unwelcoming places this has been happening in other parts of the city where larger parks people who have perhaps less interest in maintaining those parks come in there and hang out there and they make those spots harder to actually enjoy i know of a number of spots that have been degraded because people go in there and when no one's around they just set up shop and start doing what they do by thieves i don't know if you're familiar with that but they get back into the bushes in different places along parks and they run bike theft rackets they do all kinds of stuff and people live back in these different parks and areas we've got them in our area which we call the rosalind neighborhood and we go in there on our own and help try to get them out with the police and parks staff and i'm so enthused about all this is going on i just want to let you know you're all new to the efforts we've made out there in rosalind but we've been doing it since 2004 when there was a rosalind creek concept plan put forward by the city after a one hundred thousand dollar grant from the city and that's still on the files and we've been referring to that area as the southwest greenway and we've been talking about it and going to meetings where miss pencil's at the point now that if we work together we'll be able to get that full connection across the city with the southeast greenway to the southwest greenway and make all kinds of good stuff happen so we're going to definitely have people at these meetings learning even more from these pioneers if you will they're getting that good buy-in of different agencies supporting what they're doing and then we'll be participating in the community meetings also thank you kind of for your time thanks dwayne i believe that presentation just had a technical issue and that's why i wasn't in the agenda are we still going to upload it or july it was uploaded uh what's uploaded last night so check the updated agenda first thing this morning excuse me we can go over to the parks department i have a home internet i go to libraries and stuff we can go to the parks department and get a print out uh you are able to get a copy of the agenda i believe if you request it ahead of time jen can you thank you so much okay at the community center right here at the community center all right you're great so moving on to eight point two howard park highlights from the park and maintenance of the park we're going to have our recreation supervisor leah hernandez and the park's crew supervisor tim finnegan will provide an overview of howard park welcome i'm going to start off um many fleet of hernanism recreation coordinator overseeing the howard park operations um and then i'll pass it off to tim we will talk about maintenance of howard um so uh do you mind going back to the slide we have an issue oh there we go all right all right so um part of my duties is overseeing the operations um out at howard park including the attractions the events and programs um out there at howard's so uh we have a pretty big team of temporary staff who support me and those endeavors i definitely couldn't do it alone um so you can next slide please next slide we have about 40 uh staff on on crew most of which are students high school and college students um who help us run the animal barn operations the attractions the vote voting programs and or special events um and then uh myself and my supervisor raw feel who overseel them next slide i was going to start with um an overview of our main operations um starting with our attractions on the next slide so we have um from march to october is our main season um we're open weekends uh and then in the summer six days a week for about eight weeks and um one of the main parts of our operations is our attractions so the terrain the carousel and the concessions um here to date we've had about almost 80 000 visitors and pull those numbers from our ticket sales and about 200 birthday party packages with about 2500 kids participating in those on the weekends um and then the pony express has not returned to howard's yet um as we contract out with her and she's still recovering from some fire damage so that's a big question for the public is when the pony is coming back and hopefully next year she has made progress um every year the last couple years our animal barn is open in the summer season it's um one of a really great program um just like all our other attractions for two dollars you can come in and get a tour of the barn this past summer we had um actually 39 animals nine different species and we had about 10 000 visitors between um members of the regular public the camps and field trips um this program we heavily rely on our work experience program that um Ryan Shepard presented about in the last month and the animal barn is one of our greatest examples of that program with uh we had 18 youth volunteers and they dedicated 1400 hours of volunteer service um to help make it an enjoyable experience for the public we also have a barnyard adventures program that we run in the summer um it's one to two sessions based on the age and on friday it's the only day in the summer we're closed we run a program for kids to come in and help our staff and learn about taking care of the animals feeding grooming and just really getting more up close and personal than a typical visit and those have been a really big success the kids um really enjoy it and gain a lot from it and um just get a closer view and learn about how to take care of animal switch um i know hearing from past participants oftentimes triggers a new interest um for them so let's find a successful program um our boat house is another huge operation that we run also seasonal for march 2 just ending a month earlier than the rest of our attractions in september um this summer we had uh 18 teen work experience volunteers that helped us with our busy summer schedule we have camp watch home that comes three times a week dole adventure camp and our neighborhood services youth as well so over a thousand campers canoed this summer including about 150 underserved youth in addition to our rentals we also have boating camps so those are mainly offered in the summer currently we're offering boating camp for youths which is basically the basics of boating for um introducing kids to paddle boating so kayak stand-up paddle boards canoes and then we also have beginning and advanced sailing we received some grant money from the dbw to do some scholarship classes that are scheduled hopefully in the spring or summer we um this past year we had some challenges with blue green algae in the lake and um it was a pretty bad summer for that so just for the safety of the youth we had to cancel um that session that was supposed to be uh during a week that we had bad blue green algae so that is one one challenge that we face um running our voting programs and we hope to um come up with some solutions on how to deal with that as it becomes more present okay let's know which state agency dbw is well um division of boating and waterways thank you as i mentioned we have a pretty big crew of temporary employees and we've really had to rebuild uh post pandemic um this is my second year in the position so when i took it on we were pretty skeleton crews so this past year in addition to um all the normal in-service training that the city does um as a group we did a lot of additional training to kind of breathe gain some of those skills that have been lost with some of the veteran staffs that had moved on and um for example our lifeguards participated in over 60 hours of training between the spring and summer so um there's just a lot that goes into running all these areas with young people but they did a great job um i'm really proud of them and um we did a for example mock day for our animal barn for the first year we ran them through a full day of what the barn operations are like before we opened um which proved to be really helpful so um just building on that each year as i become more familiar with everything myself we offer field trips and this past year those started to pick up um in comparison with last year so we do a lot of um school field trips in the spring um after school programs we had um napa county you know uh napa county office of education which is um cool schools and a lot of the Bellevue roseland district youth came and it started with one and then they told their colleagues and we had four or five trips from that district so it's really great to get kids back out to the park um and you know we we have them ride the rides but we also told them a little bit of a history of powers and um in addition to that our summer camps like i mentioned Doyle adventure camp comes from across town via city bus and um this summer recreation which is neighborhood services summer camp for underserved youth each of their camps came and visited um visited the barn did boating which was um a great addition because they're not always able to come in the summer due to transportation so um it was a great great year for field trips uh however and then wrapping up um with our community events the past couple years we've offered three main community events which have been really successful um kids to park day is one of my personal favorites because it's free to the community um it's a nationally recognized event through the national parks trust that celebrated on the third Saturday of May so Rec and Park celebrates it by doing a scavenger hunt throughout Howard Park uh partnering with local organizations that um focused on either the environment or outdoor fun so um for example this year we partnered with REI um some of our own like Santa Rosa water and creeks um storm during the creeks and mosquito vector so they follow clues around the park and um interact with these activities and then get free train tickets at the end so that was a really successful event this year over 400 people attended next thing movies in the park um was another really successful event um attendance picked up this year from last year and um thanks to the parks maintenance who also joined us on these events um they're offered for five week uh Friday nights in the late summer and um I estimated about 1500 people attended average 250 to 500 a night so we have activity booths food vendors we did some theme train rides before and it was just a really great time I got a lot of positive feedback from the community I'm just talking to people even some emails that thank us for putting the event on it's also free um thanks to some local organizations that we we that sponsored co-sponsor with us and lastly coming up this Saturday as Jen mentioned is our Halloween at Howard's event it's uh sold out with 550 children and their families signed up um it's a trick-or-treat event through the park and then leads down to the lower lawn where we have some activities face paint photo booth um and live music from uh the local school of rock house band which we added last year was a really fun addition just to have live music in the park um definitely better than a playlist or kids bop so um really looking forward to that this weekend and um just love our events out at Howard's um definitely a great community feeling and um that this weekend is also our last weekend open with the attraction so we're wrapping up a lot with the fame next site and then we did receive the best park bogeyman award which would be a good time to transition to parks maintenance as we definitely um takes a village to get that type of award let me actually let people ask questions of you yeah um before you go to finance any questions or comments from board members well say that's all awesome i wish i was a kid in santa rosa right now um and it's really good to just see the huge crowds of people in the park so that's always what we want to see um people loving in and uh definitely was my favorite park once upon a time and um you're keeping it up so thank you great work yeah um sorry to interrupt you tim but uh take it away now okay yeah thank you yeah um sorry um thank you um thank you chair betz other board members thank you um i'm tim fendigan i'm a parks crew supervisor that oversees the parks crew that maintains uh how was parked next site please um how was park we're able to staff uh how was park seven days a week so whatever's happening up there we have staff available to maintain the park we do have a switch schedules a little bit depending on the season during the the winter times we tone back the times uh to 430 but during the summertime the busy time when when families are enjoying the park we're able to have its staff later to that 7 30 p.m. time to help facilitate a lot of activities that happen after after uh 4 30 p.m. um the district's staff is um is is set up um in district 3 it follows the same as the city council districts so the the team that's up at how was park is also the crew that takes care of other parks in that district which includes rink and valley um five other uh neighborhood parks along with some of the other um park uh responsible uh areas of responsibility as well we have one senior maintenance worker one uh skill maintenance worker two groundskeepers and one temporary groundskeeper uh roughly they spend about 50 percent of their time at how was park depending on the job that they're doing um that that varies just a little bit so when they have bigger jobs of course they're going to be more um in how was park or they might be less at how was park because they're doing work in other parks um we try to uh facilitate the workload with those areas so because of how was park and the way that it's set up we try to put a little bit more emphasis in our staffing numbers to help uh support that an area to make sure that we get everything covered um so we do flex away a little bit but again they are keeping uh keeping the grounds that how was park clean and being able to rotate some staff in there it's definitely helpful next up next slide please so our staff maintains everything that he's possibly have at that park we have some hand in it from the tennis courts the pickleball courts the reservable picnic sites party areas softball fields the carousel pms which is basically reducing that doing checks on it every two weeks making sure the parts aren't more working with recreation staff if something comes up that we can help out with as well of the train tracks inspection is repairs we're involved with the annual inspection that's done by the state to make sure that the train track is is up to state code they treat it as an amusement park so the state will come in with their independent inspector and check out these individual items to make sure that as far as safety it's all covered they'll point out things that need to be maintained things that are out of alignment on the tracks and so forth and it gives us an opportunity to get those repaired if they seem seem up to do so next slide please we also maintain the land of imagination the playgrounds turf and irrigation five miles of trail the dam inspection and maintenance the lady aquatic weeds and coordinate with other departments as needed we can't do everything in our in our department so we rely on our partners in the streets department creeks other areas that could help us in these areas to maintain it next slide so one of the big events that we had here this past year was the park in months that we had at powers park the project included tree planting a playground cleaning trail maintenance painting and weed pulling this year we had 67 or 56 excuse me volunteers we were able to plant six trees we did seven yards of playground sand we collected 12 yards of green waste and two yards of trash this is a program that we're very proud of we get a support from our crews and everyone enjoys it we are going to bring out snow cones and and this time because it was at powers park we had not only the volunteers take part in that but a lot of the park patrons also took advantage of those levels next slide these are just some items that we've been involved with the last this last year kind of the crew and action and so forth next slide please so some of the things that we were able to complete this past year and these are just some of the high eyes and so forth organizing into the districts into having staff there seven days a week so we were able to given being able to get some temporary staff hired to help us out we're able to do us set up the the districts following city council districts to help us align with where we need this need at this past year we had quite a few winter storms that we were dealing with kept our crews very busy coming off out of the drought and some of the drought stresses that the trees had endured for the last few years we had quite a few tree calls and given the pathways around powers park that kept our crews busy getting there early in the morning finding you know down trees down limbs and clearing those so they would be open to the public as soon as possible it just kept us busy it was consistent it was never really a slow time it seemed like there was always something that was coming up and so having those crews there to be able to handle that was very helpful another project we were both with our help that was was clearing some of the lights of branches around some of the lighting and then having our electrical department assist in putting in the new led lights around the tennis courts this is something that we're doing across the board but because of the use at powers park this was a priority for us to get those new lights in there a lot more efficient a lot better lights for the courts we were involved in helping park planning install a new ADA swing in the upper and lower play areas this was something that was brought to our attention by a side party that worked with us purchasing these these swings and we were able to get those installed so make it more accessible to our members or probably the crew worked on repairing split rail fence in the lower in the lower oak grove this was a fence that's it's right in the open a lot of traffic goes by the fence was originally put in by scouts and over the years it just deteriorated to the to where we needed to do some maintenance and they took that project on and it was able to fix it up and again make it look very very neat and very professional another project that we were the last project kind of the main project was restriping the parking lot we worked with with the streets department who has the the equipment and the technical knowledge to do this type of work and do it quite efficiently and actually do it quite quickly given the size of the project but we coordinated with with recreation and and doing the scheduled and a good time and then being able to get in there redo the lines and kind of again just clean up the area make it look like it's it's a place that you would want to visit and doing a lot of improvements improving the the striping on the curbs for red for no parking the fire planes as well as ADA parking lots and so forth getting those re-established and retained it which they were very faded and it was kind of embarrassing really because here we have these spaces reserved and you could even tell where you were supposed to park so it's very good that they were able to assist us on was that testing the my presentation hopefully for any questions thanks Tim any questions or comments from board members I was struck by the maintenance staff and counting up the number of people which is five which would be about a quarter of the entire part maintenance staff it's not five people there all the time as you explained a mixture of proactive and reactive work could you give us a scenario of a typical day who's there from park maintenance and what they're doing if there's not a crisis it's okay so that we're only going to have I mean the person there at six thirty in the morning that's where we start out with and so forth and it does vary across the board we because of the limitations of hours that we have in the day those are split apart throughout the entire week so we would have like we have full-time working on Saturday we have a full-time working on Sunday along with some temporary staff and then we fill them in was to senior maintenance worker during the weekday during the weekday we usually do more of the repair type work when we're big enough repairing our gation lines that's more technical stuff and dealing with the crowds and dealing with the people up there in the weekend that would not be conducive to doing that type of work at all so it does fluctuate across the week but typically our priority is getting the restaurants opened up as soon as possible that's their first and number one priority we get a lot of people there that's early in the morning and unfortunately we deal with the vandalism vandals that come during the nighttime and so at one time we did open those up have those restaurants opened up by our security that goes through early early in the morning but given that we have to deal with that element in our parks we we like to make sure that the restaurants are clean and open clean and open to the public and not have an open dirty bathroom and then that way we can check it out and make sure everything is safe so that's the first priority and then it's just depending on the crowds and what's going on we try to do maybe that noisy stuff you know when the park is not busy trying to a little bit under the radar yet making sure that everything is safe and so forth so again that kind of typical of the mornings and so forth and this stuff comes up they try to schedule projects as much as they possibly can to get work done but you know things come up other priorities treats down and because it's the same crew that does the maintenance work that deals with these trees down so if we get a tree down on mcdomery drive blocking both lanes of the traffic that's the crew i'm going to call first they're they're closest they could be the quickest to respond and then therefore you know it takes them out of their regular standard work thank you for pushing that out you know questions or comments from the board uh tim thanks for going over all that i'm guessing that being able to mow a lawn and fix a train track to a state standard is a pretty wide range of skills so good job you and your crew uh that sounds tough but you do a good job i was just hiking around lake ralphine last weekend and looked great everything um i did have one maybe weird question what's with the house in howard's park what's up with that and i live there yeah really what is going on with that um i i mean i can tell you what i know sure um not much originally i think it was on the plan to take down and we had a bunch of buildings that were scheduled at the time that the model i should remove that was one of them and then um it was there was interest from the community on the historic value of that house and whether it could be moved and you know can we possibly sell it can we get someone to live there um and then but what it came down to is our facility maintenance staff felt like the mates of that was just going to be too too great um to do that and the historic things didn't pan out um and there it sits so unfortunately um yeah no no plans right now to do not not anything okay i'll just add i'll just chime in that the real estate services is uh generally managing that and it is available to community members on profits um so council made a decision to keep that for that purpose and so like is a meeting space or um potentially as an office space and so there's been some interest although uh nobody has completely um taken a lease or anything like that yet but our real estate team is managing the space to see if it's if it's possible and we'll you know together we'll keep an eye on it and if it needs to if we need to make another come back to council or come back to this board to say here's what's been happening we can we can do that but right now it's out available but not being leased yet okay excuse me does that mean it's been upgraded into a usable facility it has not been upgraded it is as is okay all right thank you for that background uh always wondered so um great any other questions or comments no all right thanks Tim thanks Lynn appreciate it thank you thank you keep up the good work um it appears our only public commenter for that item has left Dwayne DeWitt so we will move on um to agenda item nine committee reports uh 9.1 the mayor's lunch did not uh happen last month or i didn't attend i'm not sure i think they sent the invitation then the wrong email address but it is tomorrow so i'll go tomorrow um 9.2 the waterways advisory committee carol do you have an update i do not think we've had a meeting since our last meeting and our meeting tomorrow has been cancelled okay thank you 9.3 our governing documents subcommittee we basically wrapped that up last month and we now are in the process of having the city attorney's office look it over in the city manager um and we will uh after that i believe bring it back here to vote on and after we vote on it'll go to the city council so just a reminder that'll change our name to the recreation of parks board or whatever the city council decides to do it's their decision it will also change a quorum requirements very importantly to four members um um which is standard for a seven person board and then some of the other interesting things it'll possibly add a youth member will be the first board to have a youth member so we're looking into that and how that would work um and then also we are going to be the first board to take the city's equity report from last year and incorporate that into our bylaws so we are just uh at the cutting edge of city government right now tell all your friends um and seriously brag your council member that we are doing stuff no one else is doing it's what they want to hear um and carol do you have any update from that the subcommittee anything else no okay great it's all done so um we'll we'll get it back here after i said after all the lawyers look at it um now we are on agenda item 10 uh director santas do we have any written or electronic communications we do not have any written electronic communications all right thank you gen uh agenda item 11 future agenda items any item that the board would like to see on a future agenda okay um and not seeing any of that uh we will have no meeting in november our next meeting will be on the second wednesday in december so that's wednesday december 13th at five p.m right here in this room uh with that i adjourn adjourn this meeting of the board of committee services at six 29 p.m thank you you made it