 If this gets too loud then let me know and I will step back a little bit. My voice tends to carry, so I don't want to make anybody's ears hurt. But again, tonight is the public input meeting on the Bracken Ridge Park Master Plan. And so before we begin, I also would like to invite Lynn Bobbitt with the Bracken Ridge Park Conservancy. She is Executive Director of the Conservancy and would like to share a few words with everybody this evening. Good evening everybody. I see some faithful people that have been to almost every meeting. As Xavier said, I'm Executive Director of the Bracken Ridge Park Conservancy. And it was formed in 2009 as a non-profit organization and it was formed in collaboration with the City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Conservation Society as well as community groups surrounding neighborhoods around the park, the witty, the zoo, the golf course and other stakeholder groups. And it was formed to be an advocate and a steward for the park to be the counterpoint actually to the city. Working with them and collaborating but bringing to them ideas from you, the people who use the park and the community. This process I've been listening very carefully as we have had the various meetings. We've had eight total including tonight. And there are things that can and should be done in the park. So as you listen tonight to the presentation, I would like to ask you to please think of some of the things that Vancouver is going to describe to you and see where we might come to agreement. This is going to be a long process. This is not a night for making decisions, but it certainly is a night for ongoing conversation and discussion about what we want for our park. I'm a native San Antonio and have many memories as you do of the park. So I'm here to hear from you and carry on conversation so that we can report back to the professional team that will take your comments to heart. Once you are in the park, you see things a bit differently than you do from plans that we will look at tonight. And so I would like to offer to give you a tour. I did this the other night and I had about 15 people that signed up. It's a little hot right now, but if you give me your name and address, I'll start this clipboard around and I'll be happy to call you and show you some of the things that perhaps that we could agree upon. So I look forward to this evening. Thank you, Lane. So again, everybody, good evening. My name is Homer Garcia. I am the Acting Assistant Director for the Parks and Recreation Department. And it's my pleasure to be here this evening and share with you the really where we're at in the master plan process for Bracken Ridge Park. It all started with the FY15 budget adoption where funds were allocated by council for this project. So some of the questions that we've heard over the prior meetings has been why. Why are we doing this? What's wrong with the park? There's nothing wrong with the park. But our job is to implement the direction of policy of council. And since funds were allocated for this project, the process began with soliciting a consultant team to work on the draft master plan and develop the strategies that I'd be reviewing here with you this evening. I'd like to introduce our project team led by Jim Gray with Rialto Studios. So Jim, you could say hello. He's up here in the front of the room. And we also have some project team members in the back. If I could recognize Jamal Moreno with TCI. And we also have Irby Hightower with Alamo Architects here. So what we'll go through is a summary of the strategies that have emerged today. And then when I'm done with the summary, we will allow citizens signed up to speak three minutes. If it's an individual or nine minutes, it's a group to share your comments. And we've got our project team and note takers here this evening so that everything that's shared is captured as we go back and work on finalizing the draft master plan. But one important thing I want to highlight is not only some of the questions that we asked is why this project, but also how we got here this evening. And through former councilman Betty Osable, she identified the need for additional public input and engaged councilman Trevino so that we can do just that and he's here this evening, councilman. I want to thank you. Do you want to come up and say a few words, councilman? So councilman Trevino is with us this evening. He'll share a few words regarding the master plan process. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to say a few words as I would like to add to that explanation about how we got here today. As mentioned, Maria Betty Osable did contact our office and we began a discussion with a conservancy and so we're very, very appreciative of the conservancy coming stepping up and talking with us and working with us within contacted parks and recreation to really get a better understanding of what this is really about. This is about is parks that belong to the entire city. Brackenridge Park is a much bigger park and we need to address our history, our traditions, our culture and this was really important for us to address. I understand councilman Saldana will be here a little bit later as a previous engagement but I also want to thank councilman Saldana because as we began to address the specific issue, the best way to approach this was to get these kind of meetings out to different quadrants of our city. We insisted on four meetings, we grew into six meetings that you now know of and we wanted to get this out there and this is an important outreach and councilman Saldana was very, very helpful in helping us identify where we hold these meetings and when. I want to thank councilman Saldana's office for that so I'm very appreciative. We look forward to your input. I want to tell you that we're very happy to know that this has been I think a very important process. We're all learning, we're very, very appreciative of all groups and all parties being involved and this is not something that we're going to forget. We're going to want to learn from this process on other projects that we have going on throughout the city. As you may or may not know, there's always an issue about protecting I think our most important asset in San Antonio. That's our history and traditions and so I think that's what this is about. So thank you again and thank you Parks and Rec. Thank you councilman for your words and for your leadership on this issue and working with your colleagues to help facilitate these community meetings. As he mentioned, we're getting out to the different quadrants of the city and so tonight is the last meeting for us to gather the input as we work to refine some of the strategies and so I'll go through and highlight these strategies and then identify kind of just where we go from here. But one of the things that I think is important to note is what you see and I want to make sure that everybody has these handouts here. So if you don't, if you please would raise your hand and someone on our project team will get you a copy but this is what will guide tonight's discussion and we also have some large visuals of this exact same information in the back of the room and upon conclusion of this oversight and summary and listening to everything people here have to say there's the opportunity to ask some more detail and specific questions at these stations where we have project team staff and they'll provide you with a dot and at the bottom which you don't see on the handouts in front of you but is in the back of the room is a scale on the bottom that allows you to indicate your level of support from strongly support to in the middle and strongly do not support and so the color of dot depending on what you get makes no difference but make sure that you have the dot so that you can go up and look at these up close and indicate to us the things that we are kind of doing right and we're on the right path and you know maybe not and so that's what we want to get from everybody this evening by no means is this a done deal no decisions have been made the only decisions that's been made is we needed to do more public engagement and parks wants to be responsive and make sure that the end of the day the draft master plan that's ultimately presented as reflective of the community's input so while this is not an implementation plan it is intended to be a guiding document, a vision plan if you will for Brackenridge Park which the goal is to protect, preserve and restore the cultural and historic resources of the park and as we go through these different strategies and specific elements you'll see how they kind of borrow on each other and may bleed together a little bit but that's kind of the pivot block if you will making sure that what we're doing is protecting, preserving and restoring the rich and cultural assets of the park now unfortunately while there was funding for a project to come up with a master plan there is no funding identified for any of the strategies that ultimately move forward for recommendation to be implemented that remains to be seen, that is unknown yet and whether or not any of these end up as potential 2017 bond projects we don't know it's a possibility but at this point it's premature because we're still at a point that we need to make sure we've captured the necessary input so that at the end of the day we can put forth a quality plan that is supported by the community so as we go through these strategies and because it is only a vision document there are no design elements in place here these are merely concepts and from those concepts should any of them move forward then we have more fruitful discussion about what does that look like and how do we implement this so we're not working with the plan to slate unfortunately which quite frankly would be a lot easier for my park development standpoint we have the existing park, the existing footprint and that presents some opportunities as well as challenges at the end of the day through the master plan park use will not change nowhere in the plan does it talk about charging for camping on Easter weekend or increasing fees in a specific area for park use at the end of the day the way the public gets to use and interact with the park today is what will still be in place in the end this does not address any programming either you'll notice there's opportunities when we go through these different vision elements where there could be programming this doesn't address that and how that will be delivered so what I'd like to do is begin reviewing this handout that hopefully everybody has and if there are questions upon conclusion of my presentation as I indicated we'll be heading into the citizens that signed up to speak but I assure you I'm not going anywhere and so after the citizens signed up to speak I won't address any questions that you may have either ask me or again any of our project team members that are here this evening so the first strategy is increase visibility and pedestrian access to and within the park within this strategy there are three component elements the first one being creating a common park kind of look at that as maybe another way of branding the park if you will so for example people who maybe don't visit the park as often may not know what's the best way to get to the park or what's the park entrance or if you're a tourist heading maybe north on Broadway you drive right past the park and they don't know they see the witty and then they think oh witty's at the park so we must be at the park and then they circle back around so the thought behind this is because there are multiple ways that the park can be accessed if we had a common theme so that people know when they're there and something they can look for and identify with depending on which entrance to the park they utilize second element increase park connections to neighborhoods and the Broadway corridor one of the opportunities that the team has identified is how we can increase pedestrian connectivity to the park from the immediate neighborhoods and surrounding neighborhoods those connection points are relatively weak and so as we look at increasing park safety and allowing people to say passage into the park this is the thought behind that concept and how do we deliver that third add multi-use pathways to increase pedestrian flow so that's the theme again of pedestrian safety and how people move about through the park north and south east to west through this master plan no park roads are being removed and torn up but there's opportunity to look at maybe modifying some of those roadways and how they're used on a daily basis maybe versus a special event basis that would allow greater safe passage for people on foot bikers, runners, what have you and this inset which there's a much larger one in the back that red path identifies one example of where that can be implemented within the park as it exists today the second strategy recaptured green space in lieu of impervious cover and parking and this has been one of the items that has generated a lot of discussion and input and I want to make sure that remind everyone and encourage everybody to provide that input here this evening because again I will reiterate nothing's been decided at this point so the thought behind this is how can we recapture some green space it's not because we would be going and acquiring more property but in effect if green space where there's some parking spaces for example if those parking spaces are removed that's an opportunity in effect to kind of enlarge the park within its existing footprint and allow that space to be repurposed that's kind of the thought behind this general strategy or concept and one of the things the project team noted was one-fifth of the park today is impervious cover either through parking lots asphalts, rooftops 20% of the park and that's an astounding number and if that's something that we look at that the public wants it's just how do we implement that secondly, established parking garages outside the park perimeter so in this inset here and again it's a lot easier to kind of see in the large boards in the back the yellow dots or the yellow circles if you will identify potentially where parking garages could be located none of these are on city park land and this doesn't reflect that there's seven yellow dots there'll be seven garages this again is just a theme, a concept is it one garage, where it'll be located what we do know to be consistent with what the first strategy is trying to achieve by increasing pedestrian safety these garages would be along the park perimeter and yes, so I'll go through some detail so one of them on the southern limit and again I'll go I'll highlight some of these but we have our project team here that at the end where the larger visual board is which is much, much easier to see we can provide better visual I guess you see basically better where it's located but in this inset the most southern location is near the museum and up in the far kind of left corner that yellow one there on the far left that's school district property so the idea is to strategically possibly have these garages located that allow people to access points of interest as well as the park and then the red line there which I talked about how some of these elements borrow and leverage on each other that red line is the potential route for what is being identified as a people mover or a tram or a shuttle of sorts so in this one letter 2C convert St. Mary's parking lot to a grand lawn this is one of those opportunities where we talk about recapturing green space and Louvain Pervious cover this area in particular is the large parking lot by the Bracken Ridge Eagle the train depot and so if in theory if that comes out you recapture green space where you got to have parking where does that go and so back to potentially garages along the park perimeter would be one of those options correct, yes ma'am so nowhere in the master plan does it talk about removing the Bracken Ridge Eagle removing the witty removing the zoom the train would stay in place this is intended only to identify where the grand lawn conceivably could go which in terms of the master plan is kind of referred to as a grand lawn or a heart of the park this is one of the areas where previously we've been asked well what are you going to do there and you know it's summer in San Antonio and it's hot where are the trees going back to nothing has been designed and you know people talked about the lack of there not being picnic tables or recycling bins here this was just intended to identify a location where people could congregate in the heart of the park but of course with that should something like that move forward then that's when those design questions come into play potentially a question no the train track would not be removed and that amenity would still be there and before I go on to the next slide gentlemen Brady yes sir that includes rooftop structures and they are within the footprint of the park so that's an accurate statement it's within the footprint of Bracken Ridge Park yes so pervious cover basically is an example would be an asphalt parking lot that does not allow water to kind of run through it and drain into mother earth if you will strategy number three and I if you yes ma'am one more question another building because there is nothing that is set in stone or has even been discussed so as I indicated before through this master plan process park use will not change having a condominium structure or high rise or anything like that would be changing park use so that is not something that would come out of this master plan process the thought and again an intent here was to provide a focal point within the park where community families could congregate and you know whether that becomes through special event programming or other items are yet to be determined again this is only intended to provide a vision for how the park could look not so much talk about what hypothetically could happen but again at the end of the day there's no existing living spaces in the park and so that's not going to come out of this that would be changing park use that is not something we want to do we want to stay true to the basic premise and goal of preserving, protecting and restoring the park's cultural and historic resources so I move on to strategy number three kind of just hits on what I just indicated and I'm going to ask ma'am I will come back to you I want to get through this next through this next sheet it ties directly to thank you ma'am and we're making note of those comments and again I want to encourage anybody if you want to sign up to speak we do have signing sheets in the back so feel free to sign up and again we'll allow you three minutes for an individual and nine minutes for groups so number three restore natural park features and improve water quality so there's four primary elements here this talks about restoring and stabilizing the San Antonio river banks the river runs throughout the park and you know one of the things that you know is identified which you know we've always known but kind of like when you see it written on paper you tell a different thing but because there's such a vast array of assets in this park it's costly to maintain and one of those is the San Antonio river and so while we do have current efforts underway to do this where the most need is this highlights the opportunity to do even more and not only in restoring the the banks but in the end helping to improve water quality through those efforts on the park is the parks department is responsible for the river banks that is maintenance that we perform the second element in this strategy the goal here in this strategy is to look at things that we can do that restore the natural features of the park as well as how we can do that to impact the water quality so of the San Antonio river and again I want to encourage everybody I want to be sensitive everybody's time so I want to ask that we hold all questions until after I'm done with this presentation and again if you have questions, comments we have citizens sign up to speak and our project team as well as myself will be available to answer any direct questions any of you may have so the second element in this strategy is restoring Katapa Pershing channel to a natural design with pedestrian walks so this is a man-made structure along the east side of the park and what you see in the inset is what it looks like today but how it could be restored to a more natural design that again lends itself to improving the water quality not losing the functionality of the Katapa Pershing and having it become an aesthetic and attractive part of the park as opposed to kind of what it looks like today as you drive by or walk by along that area number 3C remove invasive species this is not something that is unique to Bracken Ridge Park we have this in many many of our parks and it is something that the Parks Department strives to try to focus on where we need to recapture and restore and preserve our natural areas and so there are natural areas within Bracken Ridge Park where invasive species exist and so again it presents opportunity going back to preserving the natural landscape of the park this lends itself to just that and then lastly 3D Incorporate Low Impact Development features this identifies the opportunity where through any part