 free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions, everyone is expected to participate respectfully or if necessary, we will end the meeting. Hosts, will you please explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting? Thank you, Chair Pitts. At each agenda item, the item will be presented. The chair will ask for board comments or questions and then at the appropriate time open the floor for public comments. The host will lower the hands until the public comments item is open. Once the chair has called for public comment, the chair will ask the public to raise their hands if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. Those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on those who have raised their hands, public comment is limited to three minutes and a courtesy timer will appear on the screen. Email public comments received by the deadline have been distributed to the board of community service members and uploaded to the agenda prior to the start of today's meeting. However, we have no notes at this time and emails received will not be read into the record. Great, thank you. With that, I call this October 26th, 2022 meeting of the board of community services to order at 4.05 PM and pursuant to government code section 54953E in the recommendation of the health officer of the County of Sonoma. Board of community service members will be participating in today's meeting via Zoom. Board members and staff are participating from our remote locations and practicing appropriate distancing and members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. Hosts, may we have the roll call, please. Thank you. Please respond when I call your names. Chair Pitts. Yes. Vice Chair Spillman. Yes. Board Member Griffin. Here. Board Member Kwan. Here. Board Member Cruz. Board Member Cruz. Sorry, I'm here. Thank you. Board Member Spence. Here. Board Member Boccaleoni. Board Member Boccaleoni. Let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of Board Member Boccaleoni. Okay, and we are expecting Guido, right? Shall I? We are unconfirmed, unable to reach him. Okay, we'll hope he joins, but we do have a quorum, like you noted. So I'd like to open the floor for public comments on non-agenda matters. This is a time when any person may address our board on matters not listed on this agenda, but are within the subject matter of the jurisdiction of the Board of Community Services. Hosts, do we have any public comments right now? We have no hands raised at this time. Great. We will move on then to item four, the approval of the minutes we did meet last month. So we're going back to August 24th. Are there any edits or corrections that anyone would like to make to those minutes? Great. We will have those submitted, approved as submitted, seeing no objections. And now we're gonna move on to item five, Deputy Director Santos. Hey, Jen, please give us your report on upcoming and accomplished events, please. Thank you, Chair Pitts. We do have quite the long list. So I'm only gonna point out a few, but definitely check it out. We have a lot of upcoming and accomplished events on there. We've got Halloween just around the corner, so check out what we've got there. But also I definitely want to mention the holiday craft fair. It's a huge event every year for the city as well as their Burbank home and gardens. There's a connection there with the trolley. You can attend events. So I wanna mention that it's a great place to get holiday gifts, et cetera, and meet some friends. As well for accomplishments, there's a ton in this list, but I wanted to point out something that's often not as celebrated in the organization is our Redwood Empire Life Steamers Railroad at Youth Community Park. It operates a little railroad out there and it's run by a bunch of volunteers. They put in a ton of hours every year. It's a fantastic little train. And it's easy to think of Howard Park and the awesome train we have up there, but we have another opportunity for train rides on the west side of town. So just a kudos for that accomplishment. This, you know, they run spring through fall. So, and lots of other things to check out, but that's my report for now. Great, thanks, Jen. Any questions from board members? And then we'll move on to item six, the director updates. Jen, please let us know the updates that you have for this month. Great, thanks. Just a few little updates, a reminder that the Bennett Valley Golf Course restaurant is now open. We had a soft opening with getting geared up and it's open seven days a week up until 7 p.m. at night. So, and we're trying to expand the hours little by little as it becomes more populated with staff and supplies, but it's exciting. Please go check it out and feel free if you have any feedback to let the golf course know or, you know, feel free to let me know as well I can pass on comments to them. We definitely wanna see this restaurant be a success as well as the golf course. And a little side note on a smaller project that I just wanna point out that we'll have six new picnic tables at Bear Neighborhood Park and Gardens, probably by the end of next week. We've had a lot of vandalism on the picnic tables there. So we're looking forward to getting some new picnic tables. Some good and bad news. I'm happy to announce for Alisa, our host, Rosson, that she'll be moving on to the police department as of next Friday. We're really excited for it. We have a promotional opportunity to stay within the organization and work with the police. So I wanted to let you know this will be the last time we work with her tonight for the board meeting, but we're happy for her sad to see her go from parks, but really happy for her for the promotional event. And we'll be looking to replace that really critical position as soon as possible. So I'll keep you posted on that. The other thing was just a small mention that we do have the ability to operate virtually now in the Cypress Room at Finley Community Center. So we'll be taking our direction from the city manager's office about when we can get back in person. And meanwhile, we'll be practicing as a staff and look for that opportunity to maybe include a few board members as we get closer so we can make sure we work out all the details of how to meet in a hybrid situation where some are in person and some are virtually. So I'm glad that the technology is there. Now we just need to, we're on phase two to learn the technology. All right, that's the end of my report. Do we have any questions from board members for Jen? Well, let me say to Alisa, congratulations on the new job. We're sorry to lose you, but I'm glad you're staying with the city. So thank you for your continued service. And that's great about the Cypress Room, Jen. I'm really looking forward to us doing that format. And then can community groups also use that for meetings or anything? It should be available for anybody to use as far as I know. I don't know, Jeff, do you have any update on that room for community groups? Yeah, so that room is one of the rooms that we rent out. We still have to do a little bit of work of figuring out how that works fees and set up and the support that's needed and some of those things to make sure we've got everything in place to do it efficiently and make sure we're taking care of the equipment and all those types of things. But yeah, it's definitely part of the plans that that'll be a rental facility when not in use for boards and different internal meetings. That's great. Yeah, obviously a lot of folks are using that format. So I hope that makes it more attractive as a space. Okay, thank you for those updates. All right, we are now going to move on to item seven. These are our chair and board member updates. So just real quick, before we get into that, I wanted to just bring up an item that the staff asked me to raise and that's the use of our official city email addresses. Some folks are using them and others aren't and that's okay, it's your choice. I'd prefer if we all used it, but it's up to you. If you're not going to use it, we're asking you to let the staff know if you're just permanently gonna never use that because it does have a cost to our department. So you don't have to make a decision at this moment. You can contact and separately. Again, I hope you want to use it, but if not, that's okay. It makes us a little more transparent and responsive and just me personally, I like having separate inboxes but maybe not everyone feels that way and that's okay. So I just started off that. Let Jen know if you're gonna be disabling that, please. And if you don't say anything, I think she's probably gonna disable it anyways. So let her know soon, because it does cost money. Okay, after that disclaimer, do we have any updates from anyone? Or rather, I'll go around. I think we're just gonna go around and ask folks for updates if you don't mind. So we'll start with our vice chair, Mr. Spillman. Do you have an update for the last two months? No, I do not, thank you. That's okay, no update needed. Carol, any updates for the month? Yeah, I'll start with my city email stopped working months ago, probably well before I noted. And when I finally found out courtesy of Shelley working with me for a prolonged period of time, I let Shelley know. I don't know if that got conveyed to Jen or not, but I do not use my city email, please forego that expense and use my personal email. Thank you. As far as events I participated in over the last several months, I wanted to mention that Creek Week, which was, I think back in September was a huge success and over 60 people, including a lot of groups showed up the most people I've ever seen there. And I think that part of the reason it was so successful, besides the fact that it was part of a worldwide Creek Week event, was that it had more coverage on city social media than any other Creek cleanup. And I mentioned this to every agency that I'm connected with in regards to Creek cleanup, but I thought I should hit parks as well. The other thing is I was honored to participate in the Merritt Awards and hats off to you, Carolina Spence. It was great again. I thought it was a wonderful presentation and I was thrilled that my nominee who was Robert Ash who does an awful lot of Creek cleanup, not only was pleased to see me, but let me sit with his family and with his right-hand man whose name is Jordan. So aside from way too much cemetery stuff, that's it for me. Chair Pitts, you're muted. Chair, you were muted. Who were you calling on next? We didn't see you. I am muted. There we go. Carolina, sorry about that. Yes. Well, I thank Carol for giving me an intro into the Merritt Award event. It was wildly successful. It really worked to have it at Finlay Center and it felt like it was certainly well attended and lots of picture taking and just such good feelings. So next year, I'm going to hang about it for months in advance, so you'll all be there and we'll introduce you from the podium if you'd like and it's just a little sweet in the pot, but that was great fun. The other thing, so thank you, thank you Carol for the intro. The other thing is I went to the new restaurant at the golf course and it was delicious. The food was very good. The servers and everybody seemed so happy to be there and so welcoming and friendly. I absolutely recommend it. In fact, I know there's a couple of folks who are going to do an event there. So if you all think about this, get a party going. Give a party for anything and you can all go there. So that's my report, party. Oh, that was a fun report. I do plan to go to the restaurant soon and I plan to be at the Merritt Awards but I was feeling sick that day. I'm sorry, I really wanted to go and I woke up not feeling well and I heard it was great, the mayor had a good time so it looks great. Good job, Carolina. Thank you. Yeah, Terry, do you have an update this month? I do, thank you. So I was prompted by an email we received from Reckon Parks to visit the five of the six fire damage parks up in Fountain Grove, two of which I had never visited and I don't live that far away. And I learned some things after I visited these parks. Fur Ridge was under active construction so I didn't really get a chance to get out and actually walk the park. Like I did Rink and Ridge and Francis Nielsen which was a lovely, lovely little park. I'm gonna be doing some burning up there as well as Nagasawa. But the things I learned about a couple of these parks are number one, Rink and Ridge is being actively monitored by our local chapter of the Native Plant, California Native Plant Association. And there are two endemic species of plant that only occur in that location, the Rink and Manzanita and the Rink and Cianothus which is our California lilac. So I thought that was pretty cool. And then the other thing I learned about Nagasawa is that it is listed as a burning hotspot by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. So birders have a site they like to go to and when they're in a particular area and hone in on the burning hotspots. And Nagasawa Park is one of those in Santa Rosa. And I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there have been 123 species of birds I did in that park. And since 2017, since the touch fire, 116 identified. So I think that speaks to the resiliency of our parks. And I think it also speaks to the importance of biodiversity in our urban parks. So anyway, that's my report for this month. Thank you. I did not know that either that we had some native plants here. That's cool, Terry. Thanks. Madonna, do you have an update this month? Hi, thank you. I'll make it quick since I am in the car just for the community to know Sonoma County Indian Health Project will be hosting a GONA, a family GONA which stands for Gathering of Native Americans. So the public is invited to this. Registration is required. This will be at Kaiser Park this weekend, 29th and 30th from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with food, traditional stories, fun activities for the family and raffles. And people can call Shady at Indian Health at 707-521-4554. Thank you. All right, thanks, Madonna. Yeah, so my update for the month, I talked a few months ago to folks about an issue that I was following up on which was the plaque at Flat Rock Park. So I wanted to give a short update to folks on that. It's remained a priority of the mayor and of mine. So I've been trying to get that figured out if you remember, this is a plaque that accounts the myth behind how Santa Rosa got its name. It has an offensive term on it and it's historically questionable. I've had residents tell me they're offended by it. So we did have staff look into this. This is what we could do about this. And it's pretty complicated legally. So apparently when that land was deeded to the city, it said via the private owners that that was on the condition that there would be a commemoration of this naming at the site. It also said that that was on Highway 12. So it may have been moved at some point but the whole creek path is still city property. So wherever that was would have still been city property. And we obviously don't want that to revert to the original owner. This was over, this was about 90 years ago. So that would also be difficult to figure out the estate. And so we're trying to figure out what to do next. And the city attorney I think is looking into it and city staff because this does involve a legal land issue. There might be other documents we don't know yet. And it's possible that we can still honor the spirit of that with something else there but we're not at that point yet. So we're still doing our homework. It's still a priority. And I just wanted to share that with everyone. I actually got a chance to see the memo from, again, maybe you remember the year 1937 or something like that that deeded the land and had the actual coordinates of it. I don't know what those are but I didn't look those up but I assume it's nearby. So I wanted to share that with everyone. So we'll keep on that, make sure we have a more representative plaque or commemoration. Jen, did I miss anything from that update? No, I really think that covers it all. We do as part of a larger project to identify all plaques and all the city, we are having our GIS staff member out there looking for all of them and he's tracking this one down as well. So hopefully we'll have a better update as we move along. So thanks, Chair. That's great. Having an accounting of everything is very helpful for moving forward. So thanks for continuing on that. So that's my director update for the month. And we will now move on to agenda item eight. That is item 8.1 is day camps and work experience. Recreation coordinator Ryan Shepherd will provide an overview of the traditional day camp programs WACOM, UCHI and Doyle day camps as well as the work experience program for teens. This overview will include pre and post COVID information as well as their current program challenges. So take it away, Ryan. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Good afternoon, board. My name is Ryan Shepherd. I'm also known as Mr. Big in the camps world and summer 2023 will be my 35th year working for the city and running the camps and working with the camps programs. Today I'm gonna talk about traditional day camps programs in our summer work experience program for teens. First, I'd like to familiarize you with the regular programming aspects of each and then I'll follow up with some challenges we encountered last summer. Next slide, please. Gonna start with our traditional day camp programs where they're located and a little bit of information about each one of them. Next slide, please. So we have camp watch on which is kind of our crown jewel of our day camps programs for parks and rec. It's held in Howard Park. We serve about 1,100 kids annually. It's a great program trying to give a kind of an outdoorsy, kind of almost a residential camp feel in a day camp setting. We have Camp Yuchi, which is held in Youth Park. 440 kids served at least each year. It was our Howard Park, our Camp Watom on the west side that we put in in 1996. And it's a great camp out there. And then we have Doyle Adventure Camp which is held in Doyle Park, also serving 440 kids. And Camp Yuchi and Doyle Park are kind of a working situation for working parents where we tried to provide the camp experience for working parents who couldn't meet the hours of Camp Watom. Next slide, please. So Camp Watom, it's been around for over 50 years. We're home to 130 campers a week. We have 40 volunteers working each week with those campers. Monday through Wednesday, kids can be there from 9.30 to 3.00 p.m. And with extended hours, they can be there till 5.15. Thursday is the big day and night of the week as we put on a show for parents' evening program where we're doing skits and songs for the parents. We're also getting our t-shirts, which usually gets stolen. It's part of our program activities. We've got to retrieve those. And activities we do at Camp Watom include songs, skits, games, crafts, canoeing, roasting and occasional s'more, archery, et cetera. They do a day of swimming on Tuesdays at Spring Lake and we hike there and back. And we have special guests that are pretty much go along with our theme that we have. We have a different theme each week. Anything from Super Duper Hero Week to Shark Week to Pirate Week. Next slide, please. We opened Doyle Adventure Camp in 1992, as I mentioned earlier, is kind of a day camp experience for working parents. Parents can drop their kids off as early as 7.45 a.m., Monday through Friday, and they can be there until 5 p.m. They also are doing songs and skits, games and crafts. And they actually visit Camp Watom and Howard Park on Thursdays to use the amenities in Howard Park, such as canoeing and archery and share their special guests. They swim a couple times a week at Ridgway Pool to have a nice partnership with Aquatics and making that happen and we appreciate them. And then one of the great things about Doyle Adventure Camp is we utilize and educate on public transportation while using the City Bus Transit System. So City Bus will take us to our different locations over the each week, such as the pool, our field trip destination and our trip to Camp Watom. Next slide, please. Camp YouTube has started in 1996. Again, it's a great, these are great daycare options for parents. Again, hours are 7.45 to 5.15 p.m. They're affordable and we keep the kids busy and active. They have their own archery range. They're doing songs, skits and games and they do a couple of field trips each week as well. They do swim twice at Finley Pool. And again, we have a field trip that's usually lined up with our theme for the week and we always have a special guest. Next slide, please. Some program challenges that we ran into and pre-COVID, during COVID and things that we're working out this summer after a couple of year hiatus is limited support from maintenance because of staffing reductions and no longer being parks and rec. It's a little bit more bureaucratic to get things done and then now we have to pay for these projects which we're not really budgeted for. So it kind of impacts our budget in that sense and it takes us a little bit more time to get these things done. Dealing with COVID in the past summer, 2022, dealing with COVID exposures with our participants who we gave full refunds to and even more impact was the COVID exposures that we had with staff. When staff, we would lose staff and it was difficult hiring staff this past summer. Normally I'm done hiring staff. Staff process is over in March and I was hiring well into July to deal with some of our COVID exposures and the lack of staff applications. Increase in displaced persons has been challenging as well. We are finding dirty sharps in places they shouldn't be such as playground areas, et cetera, but we do scan the areas before and after our program each day. We also have some issues with aging infrastructure. Some things are gonna need to be replaced and we're hoping we can find some money in the budget to take care of those. Next slide please. Other challenges that we have, Camp Watson is so wildly popular that it literally filled up in the first eight hours it was open for registration. So we have some challenges there and then some parents are booking out through the whole summer and then when they find other activities dropping and then it's a little bit challenging to rebook those spots, especially with parents who are trying to find activities who may have already found something else if they're on the wait list. And hiring staff as I mentioned earlier was a real difficult process this summer. We look like we're set for next summer so we feel like we've kind of cleared that hurdle. And then of course we have minimum wage increases, pushing camp fees upwards, though parents have been pretty understanding about that so far. Next slide please. So at the end of each summer season, we do a survey monkey where we reach out to all the participants who came to our camp. We got pretty good feedback from all the parents. Most of our ratings survey responses were in 96 or above in a positive way. We love that parents are recommending our camp to other families. It's a great free marketing or word of mouth by the parents. And so we're pretty pleased with our survey results this summer and how the public were viewing us. Next slide please. Okay, I'm gonna talk for a few moments about the work experience program, the summer work experience program for teens. It's a volunteer program and we took a two-year hiatus. We did not run the regular program in 2020 or 2021 just because so many of the components of the work experience program require gatherings and in-person get-togethers. We did, however, a next slide please, we did, however, allow the program to run for veteran CITs, CITs who had participated in the program previously, knew the rules of the city were familiar with our policies and procedures. We did not charge them and provided them with a uniform. And even though we only had 20 volunteers in camps compared to 200, it was just a huge help for us to get through the summer. So what is work experience? It's for teens age 13 to 17. We do collect a fee for the program. It pays for their uniform, their training, field trip expenses and meal expenses when they're involved in their programs. And regularly we have 200 to 300 volunteers. They each put in 60 to 300 hours during the summer which brings in 20 to 30,000 community service hours brought in by our young people each summer. It helps the kids a lot. It keeps them out of trouble. They're working with mentors who are leading along the way. And one of the main things with the work experience program is getting them job application interview and actual on the job experience. And there's a catch 22 if we all remember back to when we're applying for our first jobs. You go to get a job but you can't get it because you don't have any experience but you can't get any experience because you can't get a job because you don't have any experience. So work experience kind of fills that void. And I know that's true. I write dozens of letters of recommendation each year for volunteers who performed in our program and they come back and let us know what kind of jobs they got even if it's not working for us. Next slide please. So here's some of the purposes with it. One is filling out an application and we're evolving to a fillable PDF that the kids can submit online. We're hoping to have that ready to rock so that the work experience program remains relevant to current job application processes. They're getting tips on their interviews. After their interviews we meet and tell them what they did well in their interviews and also things that they could improve upon. During the summer when they work they get a mid-week evaluation on things that they can work on and improve on. And then a final evaluation at the end of the week and to be fair we also let the volunteers evaluate the program. They learn the importance of embracing your community and being a part of the community and giving back to the community. The hours that they earn in our work experience program satisfy college applications and most of our junior high, middle schools and high schools have volunteer our requirements for graduation. Next slide please. And then again depending on what program you're actually in you can get anything from customer service skills, positive discipline with camper skills, valuable skills, animal husbandry if you're working at the animal barn. So we got a variety of areas that they can choose from and we'll get into those in more detail in a moment. Next slide please. So who benefits from work experience? Next slide please. We think it's a win-win situation a win-win-win situation. Pardon me. Parents are winning next slide please because their kids aren't at home driving them crazy they're not watching TV or playing video games all day not messing up the house they're doing fun stuff outside. The kids are winning because they're enjoying the program they're gaining valuable work experience and we know they're having a good time because in camps at least they literally will beg for more weeks to work. They regularly volunteer to work extended hours which is a 10 hour work day and they're begging to do that. So we know they're winning and Santa Rosa Recreation in Parks we're winning they increase our staff to participant ratio to give us more eyes and ears out there to provide a better program and a safer program for all the kids and one of the most important things that this program does for Parks and Rec and we really felt it over the two years that work experience was not running is that work experience funnels employees to us in camps programs I have 55 employees and regularly 48 to 50 of them were part of the work experience program. And so without work experience we were desperately searching for staff we didn't have that base to rely on and there's a cycle that happens in our camps programs you get 1200 campers a year that wanna be work experience or CIT volunteers and then those 300, 200 volunteers wanna become staff and it leaves me with a situation where I'm hiring five to 10 staff a year but I get to pick from over a hundred applicants and so we're getting the best of the best out there to represent us. Next slide please. So these are the steps on the work experience program as I mentioned earlier we're moving to a fillable PDF to have that as an option so we can remain relevant with the workforce that's happening today. They participate in a group interview and then are let know what they did well and what they could do better. Then they're put in a program placement with usually 10 to 12 programs to choose from 90% get their first choice and the 10% that don't get their first choice usually end up going back that program the following summer because they ended up having such a great time but if they don't enjoy that program we do give them first choice on their second year. Then we have an orientation and at the orientation they're getting their uniform they're meeting their work supervisor for the summer and they're getting their schedule for the summer and their work manual which kind of shows them city policies and what'll be expected of them at their different job. And finally we have training before work begins in their program area and the training consists of anywhere from six to 27 hours of on the job training without participants where they're learning exactly what they'll be doing in a non-pressure situation so they'll be ready the following week and the rest of the summer. Next slide please. So what kind of programs do we offer? Next slide please. In camps, like I said, we have over 130 kids that end up at Camp Wattom and 40 of them will work every week. We usually have about 40 applicants to Doyle Adventure Camp, 15 to 20 work there each week and the same with Camp Uchi. 15 to 20 are working each week with a total of 40 CITs at that camp. Next slide please. In aquatics, we have three different program areas as well. We have swim aids who assist women instructors with swim lessons and they're actually doing one-on-one with the kids in the water, helping them learn swim lessons. We have junior lifeguards who assist with deck supervision and many of them take a junior lifeguard training class which is a class that's like a step towards getting their lifeguard certifications and then we have concessions workers who work with customer service and learn safe food handling practices. Next slide please. Neighborhood Services has their version of a CIT and a CIT is counselor in training but for Neighborhood Services, they're calling them leaders in training and they pretty much perform the same types of duties that CITs do, assisting the paid staff with dealing with one-on-one issues with the campers, being a friend with the campers, helping the campers through the games and playing with the campers and just generally being their friend. Next slide please. In Howard Park, they have three different job opportunities. They can work in the boathouse and assist with customers getting in and out of boats, set up of the boathouse for the day and kind of keeping an eye on the lake and making sure everyone's following the rules. In the Animal Barn, they're learning to feed the animals, take care of the animals and most importantly, clean up after the animals at the end of the day. And then they also have a concession and amusement area where they get to work with customer service issues and help the staff with the train and the merit around. Next slide please. Work experience, as I mentioned earlier, was canceled in 2021 and it really impacted hiring. I actually don't think that can be set enough. We're very grateful for the Work Experience Program and how it filters staff into our programs. It was back in summer, 2022. We had over 200 participants and we're excited for next year to get it rolling back up to 300 again. Next slide please. We also do a survey with the parents and participants. We did get a couple of work experience participants replying themselves with some not so flattering things. Maybe mom or dad pushed them into it, but we do have some overall high ratings. Kids are enjoying the program. Parents are thinking their kids got something out of the program and that's what we want. I mean, you can see some of the different survey results that we have there. Next slide please. And that's what I have to present about our day camps programs and work experience program. Is there any questions that I could answer for you all? Thanks, Ryan. So just to go over our format again, we're gonna do our board questions and then public comments if we have any and then comments from the board. So we'll start off with those board questions. Does anyone have questions for Ryan? Terry, go ahead please. Thank you. Ryan, did I understand you to say that some parents book Camp Watom for the entire season? So they book consecutive weeks? Yes, you did hear that. And we've actually done a couple of things to deal with that. One, we're limiting it to four sessions for the whole summer. And we're also putting on Camp Watom only a non-refund unless we talk to you in person to figure out why there is a refund. Because one of the issues was happened is we had quite a few parents, like I said, book throughout the whole summer when they camp for last minute, right before the refund, we have desk staff scrambling to fill those spots, frustrated parents who if they had known a few days earlier, they could have taken it. And unfortunately it resulted in some non-fills over the summer. And what is your wait list like for Camp Watom? If you mean length, the wait list for Camp Watom is regularly 30 to 50 kids can be as high as 70 or 80. Okay, thank you. Carol, do you have a question? And I see you too, Carolina, you'll be next. I do. First, a follow-up several of my questions were what Terry just asked. Is that 30 to 60 a week or 30 to 60 over the course of the summer? 30 to 60 a week. It's a very, very popular program. And this was our best enrollment year at all three camps since I've been here with Parks and Rec. So a couple of follow-ups on that. Do you get any crossover where kids will go from one camp to the other that they'll mix it up or? Absolutely. And we find that there are some kids that actually prefer the smaller, more homey camp environment that we have at Camp Hucci and Doyle Adventure Camp. They're about half the size. Where Camp Watom is a pretty big camp and it pretty much runs like a well-oiled machine and everyone kind of knows what to do and where to go. There's a little bit more intimacy at our other two camp programs. So to follow up on that, I assume that Watom is at max capacity. How about the other two? Yes, all three are at max capacity, yes. So to have any more slots would mean not more staff at existing three, but a fourth. And have you surveyed two parts on surveying the families? Have you surveyed families about willingness to go to another location? And also, do you do any tracking of, say, by ZIP Code? What families are using which facility? Yes, we actually have some information. I might need to be reminded on the questions, but I'll answer the last one first. On the ZIP Code, Watom literally brings people from out of state and brings people from Southern California, et cetera. When school was in on the last week, week nine of Camp Watom this past summer, we had over 80 kids in the camp still. And it holds up to 130. Doyle parents and Yuchi parents tend to be working parents who live locally and use that as their daycare service, like a fun daycare service. And then the previous question, maybe would you mind reminding me please, Carol? I think one of the questions I asked was surveying parents about willingness to use another facility. I know we've talked about this over the years in this annual meeting, if that is still something that's being kicked around. And then I have a maintenance question after we finish the programming. Okay, well, we have not asked that specific question. When parents do call with frustrations at Watom School, we normally try and point them towards Doyle and Yuchi. One of the complaints parents have about Watom are the hours aren't working for working parents if you have to drop a child off at 9.30, which is why we created Doyle and Yuchi. I think one of the things that makes our camps better than other people's camps, other cities programs, other organizations programs, is they have the same counselor and the same counselor aide and the same volunteers that whole week. And they establish a rapport and they bond. And if we were to change the hours at Camp Watom, it would totally infringe upon that bond and that connection that's made. I think it would totally change the camp experience, which is why we went to Doyle and we have Yuchi as well. Thank you, Carol. Thank you for that. My last question, I found your maintenance concerns rather distressing. Could you give an example of the kind of maintenance that the camps are having to pay for and especially highlight whether or not these are things that need to be dealt with for the good of the park as a whole or if they are specific to the campers' needs only? Thank you. Some of them are camp-specific, such as putting up the archery ranges each year and taking the archery ranges down, bringing out the picnic tables, installing the fire pits at Watom, for example. We need to take those out and put them in each year so that they're not used or abused by the public. So those are camp-specific, but there are some things that can be done that everyone would benefit from, such as in the Doyle Adventure Camp, it's in the clubhouse, the floor has huge cracks and it's a little bit dilapidated in some areas. I understand we're in a drought, but having the kids check in on weeds and stuff like that is kind of a bummer, especially for an area that can be used so much by so many people. Things like that or general park maintenance that get water fountains that get broke, but take too long to get fixed, those types of things. Thank you. As always, thank you. Thank you. Carol, I just wanted to add to the portion of a potential fourth program and location and getting information regarding that. One of the conversations internally we're having is the infrastructure and development of that group measure M potentially down the road. As this group may recall from the presentation that we brought forward before we went forward to council with a 50%, 40%, 10% plan, is that recreation is planned right now with that money is to let it build up a little bit while we kind of survey coming out of COVID and some of the other things that we're dealing with and recreation to get programming back up to pre-COVID levels and those things. So at this point, there has not been a public outreach of what that interest should be, locations, those types of things, but it is one of the things that we're monitoring internally if we have some parks that may be potential good sites for that, what the infrastructure requirements would be, what the costs that would be so that we then have enough information that we could potentially go out the surveys or those types of things to see what the interest level would be in different areas of the city. Great. Thank you. Does anyone have any other questions? I had a few questions for you, Ryan. Could you let us know what the cost is? I guess there's a lot of different options for people, but what is the cost of each camp program? Camp Watton is usually $10 more than Uchi and Doyle just because of the high demand. We've found that it's pretty much any elastic demand there so we're able to charge a little bit more and still help support the program. It's at, last summer was at $200 and $210 for non-residents. Per week? Per week and which is an effective cost of about $5. I'm trying to remember about $5.20 per hour, which is very competitive with all the other programs. I did a fee survey throughout the county and different programs and we're very competitive still. Yeah, that sounds pretty affordable. That's great. And sorry, what was the breakdown between residents and non-residents? Non-residents have a $10 non-resident fee or you can say, another way of saying it is residents get a $10 discount. Yeah, and so what percentage of campers are non-residents? Do you know off the top of your head? I'd be making it up, but I feel pretty confident. For Watton probably has our highest non-resident and I'm gonna say it's about 85 to 90% resident and then Doyle and Uchi are probably more like 95% resident. Okay, is there any... It sounds like maybe this isn't an issue then, but is there like a guaranteed amount for residents? Like a floor or something? No, like did at least 80 or 50% of slots would go to city residents? No, that hasn't ever become an issue to my knowledge. Like I said, I don't ever see that because when we put the rosters together we can see their addresses. And so I just kind of like to know like, gosh, how many of us Watton pulling from such a popular program when people move out or they bring their friends to it is what that happens there. Yeah, okay. And then another question. What point can I add to that? Sorry for interrupting, but just to clarify, the $10 is not a camp specific. That isn't across the board recreation, $10 discount for Santa Rosa residents on all of our programs. Great. Thanks, Jeff. And then another just last question, Ryan, on the neighborhood services, tell me a little bit more about that in the leaders in training program. Well, so what happens is I run the whole work experience program and when summer starts and training starts I pass the LIT participants which is regularly about 20 to 25 kids to neighborhood services. And then they are their supervisors for the rest of the summer. And then I keep all the camp people. I also pass the aquatics people on the aquatics I pass the Hauer CITs onto Hauer. I'm still in touch. I'm still in communication. The reason why I say this is I have less input on what their day looks like than their direct supervisors. But I do know that they work at four sites usually and they show up and they work with the staff assisting them just like a CIT does helping the kids playing games with the kids, helping the kids when they need a rest or break or water break, et cetera, those types of things. Great. All right, thank you. Those are all my questions. So do we have any comments from the public on this item? We do not have any hands at this time. Okay. Then we'll now give any comments if the board has any other comments or opinions they wanna share with Ryan or the staff. Great. Well, Ryan, thank you. That was, I really love the work experience program. So I think that's really clever that you found a pipeline for your own employees because those are pretty hard to hire nowadays. So, especially for lower wage jobs. So I definitely commend you on that creative approach and getting experience for our young residents is great. So thanks for that. Thank you. Yeah. And I'm really glad to hear the cancer capacity. That's a good problem to have. And Jeff, I also appreciated you letting us know that there is hope for maybe more slots to open in the future. So we'll stay tuned for that. Keep us updated on that. Okay. We're gonna move on. Thanks again, Ryan and Jeff. All right. We are gonna move on to our next item, 8.2, the parks condition assessment in prioritization report update. Tough to say. And we are gonna have our wonderful assistant parks planner, Emily Ander, will go through our comments that we submitted at our August meeting. So remember folks, we went through this. It was pretty lengthy. And we gave her some thoughts, gave Emily some thoughts. So we're gonna go back over those and hopefully be able to move this on, discuss next steps. And like I said, provide more comments. So this will be just the discussion and providing feedback. So take it away, Emily. Thank you, chair Fitz. Good afternoon, members of the board. As Logan said, I'm Emily Ander, park planner assistant. In August, Grant Wong and I provided the board with a presentation on the parks condition assessment and part of the nation report for your discussion and feedback. At that time, the board requested that staff come back at the next meeting to allow the board more time to review this important and substantial report for the board to provide staff with comprehensive feedback. So I'm here today to briefly summarize the report and respond to the feedback that you provided today. After that staff would like to hear any additional feedback that you have on the report and your input then will be shared with the consultant and incorporate into the final report and move forward to city council as part of their annual measure M parks for all update. Next slide, please. So as you'll recall in September of 2020, the city put out a request for proposals to hire a consultant firm to provide the recreation and parks department with three things. Condition assessment of all the city's parks and some of its roadway landscapes, a deferred maintenance analysis of these spaces and project prioritization of the spaces. We asked that those three elements be encompassed within a final product, which is the parks condition assessment and prioritization report. The report is a tool to help rec and park staff prioritize our work and funding, including measure M funding into the future. The objective data it contains will help staff determine which parks have amenities that need attention now versus in the future. We will use it to answer questions like which playground is in the highest need of replacement in the Northwest Quadrant or is rehabilitation of the baseball field at a place to play or Doyle Park a higher priority or which playgrounds are in need of more five bar mulch, et cetera. We'll weigh the answer the report gives us with subjective data, like our park amenities equitably distributed across the quadrants or if a park is in what the state considers a disadvantaged neighborhood, allowing it to qualify for grant funding or something like a professional baseball team's use of a field should make that field rise to a higher priority. Next slide please. Today, as Logan said, I'd like to respond to the feedback that you shared with staff today regarding the report. And I'm just gonna go question by question. I'll say the question and then provide a feedback for you. So the first question was, has the report been updated with the board's feedback since the August meeting? No changes have been made to the condition assessment since the board saw it in August. In fact, no changes have been made to the report since staff and the board were first received it from the consultant in June. And the project team's intent was to receive all the comments on this version of the report and then provide all the comments to the consultant at one time so that it can make the changes all at once. The second question was, will the report come back to the board before it moves forward to council? And staff did not anticipate that the report will come back to the board before it goes to council. However, the board's feedback will be incorporated into the report and then it will move forward to council as part of the annual update on measure and parks for all. I will say that the assistant city manager was able to review the report and he has requested additional analysis be incorporated into the report. And staff will be working closely with the city manager's office as well as the consultant team to figure out how to incorporate that data and we need to incorporate all of it and whether or not those changes rise to the level of needing to become back in front of the board. Question three, will the report be made available to citizens? And the answer is yes. The report will be made public once it has been reviewed and finalized by council. It will be available in electronic form on the city's measure and webpage and hard copies will be available at the Family Community Center and Still Lane Community Center. The draft report, which is what we're looking at now and the appendix are currently available for the public to view either via the city's measure and webpage or through the BOCS agenda just posted on the city's website. Question four was, or it's not really a question just more of a statement but there's a disconnect between the parks that receive a low ranking and being a high priority for improvement. And so we definitely hear that and they've had some of that happen for us personally during the process. So we're gonna work closely with the consultant to add greater clarity to the graphics as well as greater explanation to the text throughout the report in order to address it. And we're also looking to create some sort of infographic that better explains the relationship between those two pieces of information. Question five was, will the report be a living document? And yes, it will be a living document for staff. And staff is gonna keep a list of all the completed capital improvements that we make using the table that is on page 11 of the report. And then these lists will inform the holistic updates that occur to the report which staff is recommending occur about every 10 years. Question six was, why is Prince Memorial Greenway characterized as a neighborhood park instead of a trail park? And this is just an error unfortunately that staff made when we put out the request for proposals and we didn't catch it till this past summer but Prince Memorial Greenway will be moved to the trail park section of the report. Question seven was, does the Santa Rosa marathon count as recreation programming for the Prince Memorial Greenway? It's currently in the report, you'll see that the revenue or the recreation programming number for the Prince Memorial Greenway is a one because it doesn't bring in revenue even though events happen on it. And so my understanding and Jeff feel free to chime in on this one is that recreation does not have revenue generation data on the Prince Memorial Greenway and that's for two reasons. One, events that happen on the Greenway generally don't begin or end there. They just go through whether the event would start at a Juilliard Park or another park facility and it would end at another location. And so then if it happened, if the start or end location was in a park then that revenue generation or that revenue data would go along with that park. And then the, I also understand that most of the events that are programmed through the Prince Memorial Greenway are generally programmed and permitted through the Planning and Economic Development Department and not recreation. That's correct. That's the piece I was gonna add, Emily. That's correct, yeah. Some maybe Juilliard Park but for the majority of those they're technically not running through recreation and parks permitting at all. They're operating through the special event permits. So that is correct. Great, thank you so much, Jeff. And the last question, question eight. How are parks with the same overall priority rank then sub-ranked within that park category? So for example, in community parks on the table, in the table on page 29, there are five parks that have the same overall priority ranking of 2.5. What determines the listed priority order of those five parks? So this is where that subjective data comes in. So staff will have to use that subjective data like equitable park distribution across the city, amount of use that a park gets and the available funding for a particular type of capital improvement to determine which park ranks higher. So they will continue to be in the report with the same ranking and then we'll have to use additional data to determine which one is a priority. And but within the report itself, we will list the parks that all have the same priority ranking in alphabetical order because currently they're not in that order and we're gonna do that so it matches the rest of the report. And as I mentioned earlier, following tonight's meeting, your feedback will pass it along to the consultant as well as all the feedback that was received from staff and then the consultant will update the report and we'll take it forward to council as part of the annual measure and update. Next slide, please. So with that, I'd like to open the floor to questions. We're interested in hearing any additional thoughts or feedback that you have on the overall report. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Emily. Do we have any questions from board members? Carol, please go ahead. Thank you, Emily. First, you said that the report will get updated every 10 years, approximately 10 years to me seems like a very long time. So I obviously don't have enough scope. Could you explain that? And my second question is, I know our park maintenance staff is out at all 67 plus existing parks on a regular basis. Have they had time to review and provide input to this document, which once it goes to city council will not be updated until 2032? Thank you. Correct. I'm gonna start with your second question. The parks maintenance team has been involved in the creation of the report from on the beginning. I might even help to review the RFPs or not RFP, but the proposals that we received to the RFP. So they have been, they have been intricately involved in the report. I do hear you about the 10 years, how that, it is a long time. It doesn't just feel like a long time, it is a long time. However, we have so much good information and within the report and also capital transfer projects take a long time. And so we have more than enough work to do with from the report that we have today to last that five to 10 years. And additionally, we are keeping up internally with what we have accomplished. And so that will inform the, it becomes part of that subject, I guess it's subjective data that we use to make the decisions about where funding goes for the next project. Jendi, have anything to add to that? I think that's a really good explanation, Emily. I would just add that this is very much in keeping with a lot of large planning documents. This is a huge comprehensive document that we use in many, many different ways. And like Emily said, it's going to last for us for a long time, even those 10 years does seem like a long time. There are other planning documents the city may look to for additional more detailed updates about how we operate and all of those things. But for capital projects from master plan to construction documents to actual implementation is at least three years. So that's about three generations of projects. So it really is a realistic timeline if for whatever reason we feel as an agency that that's just not working for us, we can always rethink that and really look again. But that's the recommendation right now. Great. Do we have any other questions from board members? A few questions, Emily, for me. Maybe this is a question for Jen. When does that go to the council? As far as I'm aware, we haven't determined the date yet. We'll work with the city manager's office to finalize that date. We want to incorporate their interests in some updates to the document and then we'll work on whether that goes as part of the budget process. It'll likely go before though so that we can get that processed early as early as possible. Just, okay. Probably a few months out though, at the least. Yes. Okay. And I had one question about this, maybe this is more of a comment, but there was a typo that was raised by Carol at the last meeting. And I actually had an eagle-eyed city resident notice the same thing about some parks, neighborhood parks being referred to as community parks. So I know you said it hadn't been updated, Emily. Did you, I didn't hear that in the comments that were captured. Do you have that down? Okay, I appreciate you bringing that up. I will also say that there were very specific comments regarding the rural cemetery and also more detailed questions on the Pennsylvania Memorial Greenway that I did not specifically state because that information is directly going to feed into the condition assessment and the appendix. I don't expect any of that to change the park rankings, but it's just like extra information that was either incorrect or adds more detail to the condition. Okay, so you did flag that all the neighborhood parks are referred to as community parks on each page? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good. And then, great. And then Martin Luther King Park also has a typo. This is minor, but it's ranked two out of 50 on its own page. And then in the big table, it is ranked three of 50. So some sort of discrepancy happened there. That's great. Great, thanks for keeping those. And then do we plan to publicize this at individual parks? Is there gonna be any sort of sign or like maybe a QR code someone could scan? How is the public gonna access this, I guess? We have not talked about doing something at the individual park level. Right now, we're just talking about having it on the website and having it at the community centers, but it's a good question about how we could market it to the people that are actually the park users. Yep, okay, great. I'm glad you're thinking of that. And I'll just add a real quick, one of the things if I recall when we did measure and outreach to the community, we had community partners as well. So it'd be one of those things we definitely wanna check that box that we're reaching out to our community partners. In the city, they helped us gather folks together to these meetings and make sure that we had meaningful connections in the community. So we definitely wanna filter this report back out to them. It did such a great amount of work for us in the beginning as well. Great idea. Will that go back to them? Yeah, will that go back to them before city council, Jen, to get incorporated into I guess the final version for council? Not necessarily. We've had a ton of input from them already. So at this point, I feel like it's really just down to that fine level of teasing out any last minute issues that might have come up. We really spent a ton of time on this and we wanna finalize it and get it back out there for community members to utilize and to ask questions and think about projects. So at this point, I think we've collected quite a bit. So we'll just run it forward to council. Unless like Emily said, we start working on it and we realize we need to come back out to those groups as well as the board. But the plan is to go straight without any, unless there's significant changes which we've done. All right, any of the other questions from board members? Not seeing any other questions. Do we have any public comments, Shelley, on this item? We have no hands raised at this time. Okay, just a final comment from me. Others can share their thoughts too. I'm just really glad this is moving forward. So thank you, Emily, for continuing to stay on this and taking all our comments in. I'm sure that you could continually get feedback forever from the community. So I get that you eventually got to cut it off and send it out, but it'll be available for people to comment, of course, at any time. So it's a living document in that way too. All right, any other comments from folks on the prioritization report? I had one other comment, sorry, then I'll go to you, Teri. Yeah, I would love some sort of signage of parks and this is just my silly idea. Maybe call it like the report card. Something, the public-facing aspect, I think when it's called a prioritization report, is a little bureaucratic for folks. So something, I like the individual park cards. I think that's great for a lay person. And I know this is a bureaucratic document, but I'm just trying to think about it that way. When you're presenting it to the public, something that's easily understandable, like the number or the letter, and then somewhere they can go to dig into more info if they want. So those are my two cents on that. And now I'll go to you, Teri. Thank you. I just wanted to express my appreciation for all of the time and effort that went into this report. This is major in money used at its best, in my opinion. And I know it's going to be invaluable to staff, but I also think it's going to be a wonderful resource for members of the public. And I kind of liken it to the street index, pavement index, because I get frustrated with the condition of Piner Road and I can go to the street pavement index and I can see that street in the context of the whole city and how it rates and that there's a plan to address it, that the city recognizes its condition and that there is a plan to address it at some point and that there are a lot of other factors that play into the timing of addressing that problem. So this report, I think we'll do the same thing for the public in terms of the parks and which is going to be just invaluable. The only other suggestion I have, it's entirely up to you, placing it on the major M page is great, but I wonder if it might be more easily accessible if you put it on the main parks page as well. So people don't kind of have to dig down into major M to find it. So those are my comments and thank you so much. Great comments, Terri. Yep, transparency builds trust in folks and they've already trusted us with their tax dollars. So we want to keep that going. And I'm really excited too about this. It's a big step for our department. So thanks again to everyone. Okay, we are going to move on to item 8.3. Pull up my agenda here. That is our Board of Trinity Services Ordnance Update. So we're sticking with Emily. We'll introduce the ordinances that govern the BOCS and all those related documents and discuss our needs as to why we need to update it and get feedback from folks and have a discussion. So Emily, take it away again, please. Thank you, Chair Pitts. I'm here today to introduce the topic of modifying the city code related to the Board of Community Services through the creation of a new ordinance. Next slide, please. So one of the first projects that I was assigned when I started with the city in the end of 2019 was researching the Board's governing documents to see if they accurately represented the role and function of the Board. In my research, I discovered that the Board is supposed to have eight appointed members, yet the Board functions with seven members. This reduced number of members places a heavy burden on each of you because five members are needed at each meeting to achieve quorum. After conversations with the city clerk's office, it was determined that a new ordinance would have to be written and adopted to amend the city code to align the Board membership with the city charter and council policy. Next slide, please. So this diagram shows how the Board's five governing documents work together and relate to one another. The city charter is the overarching document. It's like the city's constitution. It provides the framework for how the city functions. It sets forth the main principles of the city government and can be amended at any time with approval of the voters. The city of Santa Rosa's charter has sections in establishing the seven member city council, the selection empowers of the mayor, key staff positions, rules on board participation, et cetera. The charter is reviewed and updated at least every 10 years. The most recent review occurred this year in 2022 and a couple of changes that came out of that review will be on the November ballot, I believe. Falling under the city charter are city council policies. Council policies establish standard practices and procedures for the city council, for city boards and commissions and for city staff and they express the general intention and directives of the city council. Policies provide specific language to implement the charter and they are adopted, amended or rescinded by city council, by a resolution of the city council or two things. The city code is the collection of all applicable laws, codes, regulations and ordinances of the city. It provides like suspenseful language that describes and governs the city. It's written at a higher level and with less detail than the council policies. The city code should reflect and align with both the city charter and the city council policies. City council ordinances are municipal legislation or local laws. They support the city code with additional specifics. Ordinances are created to either update or amend the city code and they are adopted by council in a two-step process. There are currently five ordinances that provide specifics as to how the board of community services operates and those five are listed here. Finally, we have the board of community services bylaws which are the regulations and rules established by the board or your internal management. You can also think of them as your operation manual. They provide the greatest level of detail to explain the nuances of the board and its role. These are developed by the board and updated by the board. Next slide, please. Now I'll go into a little more detail on each of the five governing documents and how they specifically relate to the board of community services. So city charter section 11B participation and diversity in boards and commissions is the only portion of the charter that I found that relates specifically to board of community services. It states that individual council members shall appoint one member to the board. That member term shall coincide with the term of the appointed council member and that any board or commission with less than seven members shall be increased to seven which is a different problem than the board of community services currently have. No changes need to be made to the charter but a new ordinance needs to be created in order to amend the city code to align it with the number of board members that are stated in the charter. Next slide, please. City council policy 000-06 is appointments to boards, commissions and committees. It was adopted in 1976 and has been updated 12 times with the most recent update in 2021. Section G sets forth appointment procedures for boards and commission members. It states that all boards and commissions accept those excluded by the city charter shall be comprised of one appointee selected by each individual council member. No changes need to be made to the council policy but again, a new ordinance has to be created in order to amend the city code to align the number of board members with this policy. Next slide, please. So then we have city code 000-04 which governs the board of community services. It covers establishment of the board, rules of procedure for meetings and the board's powers and duties. Changes are necessary to this document to align with city code, I mean to align it with the charter and the council policy. Section 10 must be updated to reduce the number of board members from eight to seven to match the number of council members. Section 20 must be updated to reduce the number of members needed to achieve a quorum from five to four. And if any additional updates are determined by this board to be needed, the city code would also be amended to reflect those. Next slide, please. So as I said, there are five ordinances that provide guidance for the board. The first ordinance is number 1832 and it was adopted in 1976. It established the board of community services by abolishing the Recreation and Parks Commission and the Community Relations Committee and combining them into one board of community services. And the powers and duties from those two that from that committee and commission were combined into one. So there were 10 powers and duties associated with the BSCS when it began. It also designates the number of members of seven, set the length and staggering of terms, create a structure for meetings and establish rules of procedure. Next slide, please. The second ordinance is number 2735 and it was adopted in 1988. It reduced the number of powers and duties of the board from 10 to five. And this actually was driven by city council. I think they felt that the board's role from when it was established in 1976 was not aligning with what they needed in 1988. So they established a subcommittee to discuss the role of the board and determine that the powers and duties needed to be updated to reflect what the board currently did, which is also kind of where we are today. So anyway, staff worked through the board and with the council subcommittee to create an updated list of powers and duties and that was eventually supported by the board of community services. The third ordinance is 3104 and it established the uniform for your terms for all of the members. The fourth is ordinance 3114, which established procedures for removing members. And there weren't any board minutes to show that there was conversation at the board level about either of these two ordinances. There was just, these were ordinances that went to the council on consent and were passed. So my thought is that these were changed because either the charter was updated or city council policy was updated and we needed to, or the board needed to align with those documents. Next slide, please. The most recent ordinance is 3579, which was adopted in 2002. The major change, which is the driver of this topic that I'm talking with you today was the increase in the number of board members from seven to eight. This was approved by council in September of 2002. The reason council increased the number of members is because there were two high quality candidates who applied to be on the board and council was unable to choose between the two individuals. So instead of choosing, they increased the number of members to eight, which also required the number of members needed for a quorum to rise to five. The board had eight serving members for approximately four years from 2002 to 2006. In 2006, with the resignation of Vince Harper, the board went back to seven members and it has remained at seven members for the past 16 years, but still needing five members to achieve that quorum. Next slide, please. The final of the five governing documents is the Board of Community Services bylaws. They were created in 1989 and it's about three pages long and they've never been updated. The bylaws currently cover the topics that you see on the slide here. Next slide, please. So of the five documents that govern the Board of Community Services, three could use updates and while two don't require any modification. So the city charter and council policy six are both don't require modification but the other three could use that. So a new ordinance will need to be written to change the number of members. The city code will then be updated to reflect the changes contained within the new ordinance and then Steph is also would like you to consider updating your bylaws to reflect what your role is today and what you do today. Next slide, please. So our goal is to amend city code to dash zero four through the ordinance process so that it aligns with the city charter and council policy six and reflect what the board does today. In order to achieve this goal, we have two objectives which are to amend the city code by creating the new ordinance and reviewing and updating the Board of Community Services bylaws. Next slide, please. Okay, so I'm gonna get into the specifics of how this process works. So to amend the city code, we need to change the number of Board of Community Service members to match the number of council members. So we go back to Kevin. We need to change the number of Board members needed to reach a quorum from five to four. We also need to fully review the bylaws to determine if there are other areas related to the Board that need to be updated. We'll accomplish this by writing, reviewing, vetting and recommending a six ordinance to council. The ordinance will be introduced and read at a council meeting. And then at the following city council meeting there will be discussion on the ordinance and the council will vote to accept it. The ordinance will go into effect 30 days afterwards and the city clerk's office will then take on the responsibility of amending the city code to reflect the ordinance. And the city clerk's office works with a codifier who does that actual work. And my understanding is that amendments to the city code occur one or two times a year. Next slide, please. So the second objective is to take a deep dive into the 1989 bylaws to determine if they accurately encompass how the Board serves both the city and the recreation and parks department and reflects what the Board does and how the Board function. Next slide, please. So our next step is for the Board of Community Services to form a subcommittee of three interested members to meet outside the monthly Board meetings. The group will become the Board experts on the Board's governing documents and will make recommendations for the documents. The subcommittee will meet regularly with staff over the course of up to a year or however long it takes and we'll report back to the full Board and the community at regular Board meetings. Once ordinance language is drafted the project will be brought forward to the full Board for consideration for discussion and for recommendation to council. As previously mentioned, it has been a two council meeting process to adopt the ordinance and then another 30 days before the ordinance goes into effect. The city code itself should be amended within one year of approval. Next slide, please. So tonight we seek preliminary discretion from the Board as well as your feedback regarding an update to city code chapter two dash four via a new COCS ordinance and request establishing a subcommittee of the Board to guide the update. Next slide, please. Thank you so much for listening to that level of detail and I'm going to open the floor to questions. All right, thank you, Emily, for that detailed presentation. So this is just we're gonna discuss our subcommittee after our questions and after public comments. So let's just hold off on that unless you have any questions about the subcommittee but let's just try to hold those off in general. Do we have anything else, any other questions for staff? Carol, please go ahead. Hi, Emily, I'm hoping you can simplify things because that was a lot. Yeah. The changing of the number of members I had never known where the eighth one came from. Little quirky. Could these be tackled separately or do they, the two phases, could we advance a package deal? And best case scenario, if they could be separated out given and how government works, what's the soonest, the changing of the membership to eight to seven could potentially become a working reality for this Board? Okay, you did cut out a little bit when you were asking your question about separation. Many, I repeat back that you wanna know if we can separate out just changing the number of Board members versus looking at all the documents. Yes, you know, as a staff, we've gone back and forth on how to handle that. And I don't know what the time difference would be. I mean, we still have to write the ordinance and take it forward to council in a two-step process and then we could start back over and I guess form a subcommittee and really dive into the documents and then maybe have to go through another amendment process to the city code. I mean, we just felt like doing it all at once would be the most comprehensive way to do it. Cause I mean, we've been sitting on this right for 16 years, although I guess we didn't really have knowledge of that for that entire period of time, but it's a great question. And we can't- Let me help. Yeah, Emily, let me answer it too personally. We could only do that Carol in the subcommittee. It's up to the subcommittee what we want to change. So if we only want to do the quorum requirements, that's all the subcommittee would do. So that's a question for after it's formed. So just to clarify, they couldn't have two tracks at the same time. They need to be addressed either sequentially do one completely and then begin the second or have the one subcommittee address them at the same time, which is a larger and I would assume longer process. Let me just chime in. I would say, you could potentially run these two tracks simultaneously, but it's gonna get complicated and confusing at some point. If you start having two different groups talking about two different topics, all of these things, as you remember, Emily's slide in the beginning, they're all interrelated. And so we talked about let's just go and fix the issue with the amount of folks we need on the BSES, but we recognize there's been hints of information amongst board members over the years about different things that they'd like to see here and there. We don't anticipate a massive significant update with this. If we get into that, as Chair Pitts mentioned with the subcommittee and we start to realize where we have a bigger update than we can maybe make that decision of the time to simply go forward with that part of it. But in looking at everything holistically, it is better to go as one. So it's less confusing for the community, for the council members and for ourselves to work it forward. If that helps, I don't know if that helps define why we decided to move this way forward. Thanks, Jen. Do you have any other questions, Carol? Not right now, thank you. All right, Terry, go ahead. Thank you. I was just curious whether there has been any discussion on the part of the council or direction from the council about the board's current ordinance and changes they would like to see. I suspect not, but I thought I would just pose the question. Not that I'm aware of. No, and we have posed this to the city manager's office and they are going to track what we're doing and as we have updates for them, we'll see at what point maybe we want to stop and check in with the council and have meetings with them about this, but nothing yet, as you suspected. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Terry. Do we have any other questions from folks? Okay, I had a few questions. Emily, do you think that after you take an even deeper dive that you might have more recommendations or do you think that would be it? I personally feel like there are things that should be updated. Could be updated, sorry. Yeah, so those aren't your final recommendations. What's in this PowerPoint? One of the presentations? Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah. So that's just the basic information. Okay, well, I'm encouraging you to keep deeply diving. So thank you. And let's see, okay. Those are all kind of my questions there. Let's go to public comment and then we'll kind of dive more into the subcommittee structure and I'm gonna ask questions on that too. Do we have any public comments, Shelley? We have no hands raised at this time. Okay, so I'll start off with some clarifying questions. Maybe it can help people think. Is how often do you think this would meet, Emily? That's entirely up to you. If you wanna do like fast track it and you wanna meet once every two weeks for I don't know, three months or whatever. But I think Jenna's interested in it. It would take about a year. Yeah, it's up to you, the subcommittee. Okay. And will you be able to send, I think it'd just be helpful to send the copies of all those ordinances and our current bylaws to all board members as soon as possible. At least the subcommittee members, but I think it'd be helpful for the rest of the board just to have those on hand. So can I ask that we do that? They were attached to the agenda, tonight's agenda. Oh, they were. Oh, they're in all the, each individual ordinance was in those links. Oh, okay. All right, I'll go back and look at that. There's one document that has the charter, the city code, the city council policy six, it's the five ordinance and the five ordinances in the board of community service bylaws. With a little talk. Oh, okay. So was it, it was just those ordinances separated out. Okay. Sorry, I'll take a closer look at that. And okay, I think that that was it for my question. So now just wanted to discuss with folks what their thoughts are on this. So the way that the city council does it is the mayor forms the committee and in the boards it's similar for the chair. So I'm going to be forming the subcommittee and appointing myself chair. I just want to open it to folks to see who else. So we only can have three members cause we can't achieve quorum although maybe we could have four because our numbers eight but we'll just stick with three just to keep this consistent with a non-majority subcommittee. So I'm looking for volunteers. I can just make you do this if you want but I really hope some folks will step forward and volunteer. And if we have more than two people we can do some sort of voting procedure if people really want to do it or they can withdraw their name however we want to do this that's most efficient. So Carol, go ahead if you have a thought or you would like to serve on the subcommittee. We can't hear you Carol. Apologies. Number one, would this subcommittee be meeting in person by Zoom yet to be determined? And second question, second question is staff provided? You the subcommittee can determine in what format you want to meet and staff will be present. And yeah, those are good questions Carol and this doesn't require a Brown Act notification because it's a subcommittee. Is that correct Jen? Right. Okay, you're nodding yes. Yeah, sorry, any final decisions, et cetera like that subcommittee will not be making any decisions. All of those will be coming back to this full board. So it's just work with details and kind of having those conversations that we can bring back to the board. So yeah, we'll be in good shape. My preference would be to do this in person if that's an issue for folks for whatever reason we can stick to a virtual only format. I think in person would be helpful because we're gonna be doing some deep dives probably even needing to take maybe breaks or something like that. So I'd recommend that we do this in person just to keep that in mind if you're gonna step forward. So I'm looking for some volunteers to step up and help us make a better ordinance. Is anyone willing to do that? I'm thinking this would be a once a month meeting. I don't think we need to do more than that unless we're really eager. Carol, are you stepping up as a board member? So can you remember? I would love to entertain the idea but as an appointee in district four, I will say, I don't know if I will still be on the Board of Community Services come February and I don't know if this is something that would start time has not been talked about at all. Is this something that would love? Who determines when the first meeting is? Would that be Chairman Pitt's decision up for determination? It's an awkward time for me right now, shall we say? To throw my hat into the subcommittee ring. Okay, Jen, do you have any thoughts on that that you wanna share? Right, there's a lot of ways we can think about this but historically, not that that's an entire measure of how to move forward with this but historically, there hasn't been a huge change of board members when there's been a change of council members, it does happen from time to time but on this board, usually there's been a tradition of moving forward. It does happen sometimes. So one of the things that we were thinking about behind the scenes of how can we move forward with this is to look at creating a consistency of a subcommittee that has two members that maybe are not up for re-election and maybe their council members are not up for re-election or changing out, what should be happening in December of this year or just going forward with it and then pivoting at the time if we need to replace a board member but definitely I think that the biggest thing in my mind for this is interest and time because we do wanna keep it moving forward. So I don't wanna entirely get hung up in the election process that's happening and the reappointment process but I know it is out there as something to consider. Yeah, thanks Jen for those thoughts. I agree with that. I think we should move forward because this needs to get done as soon as possible even though it has been lingering for 16 years. I think we still wanna get it done ASAP and sometimes when there are new council members they don't appoint someone for quite a while. So Carol, I'm very sensitive to that and in my professional capacity my job is dependent on election results so I know that feeling but if you'd like to serve on it we'd really like you to step up. So was that an affirmative that you wanna be on the subcommittee? I am flattered that you'd like me to be can we wait and see who else wants to step up so that I am not stepping on somebody else's toes who may be interested? Absolutely, Terri, I saw your hand earlier I'm hoping you wanna sign up. I would be happy to serve on the subcommittee and I think we could get this done a little quicker than is anticipated honestly. So, but yes, I would be glad to serve on the subcommittee. Thank you. I think your experience will be very valuable and I think we can get it done within a few months. So do we have any other interests? I'd Steve, Carolina, we don't have Guido or Madonna on here, unfortunately they could always watch the subcommittee and comment, I guess just comment on it if they want. So we'll Carolina or Steve, any interest in doing this? Well, I can say that I have a lot on my plate right now in addition to the general plan update and just coming down to the end I have 11 other volunteer jobs and this is just not a good time for me. So I would think that I would really be doing the subcommittee at disservice by trying to squeeze it in. I appreciate that. Thanks, Steve. Carolina, do you have any interest in serving? I would like very much to see Carol and Terry be on it because I think the job will get done quickly and efficiently. So I absolutely, I mean, I'm happy to pitch in if you need me, but you would have a real A team if you could have those two on with you, not discounting you a little bit, but they could really make it happen. We are the A team. All right, then it is settled. Thank you, Carolina. So I will, of course, then I will officially be appointing board member Griffin and board member Quant to our subcommittee on ordinance update. I don't think that's the proper name, but we'll call it that for now. And me serving as chair. So I think that getting it done faster is I absolutely agree, Terry. We could also, well, let me ask the staff, when are you ready to begin this? I'm ready to begin. I've been working on it since 2019. Wow, okay. Let's all discuss amongst ourselves. I don't think we need to do scheduling right now in this meeting. Unless, let me defer to staff on that. Do you want us to set meetings right now or can we do that over email? Email, yeah. Sorry, I mean to jump in. But I think that that would be better that way we can work out all the finer details and maybe set a couple meetings instead of just the first. Okay, Carol and Terry, are you okay with meeting in person? I am, I think it's, I think it will be better to meet in person, honestly. Vastly, more productive. Okay, great. So how about staff, please find us a good place to meet. Wherever, maybe the Finlay Center would be nice, but if it's a tiny little conference room in some random city building, that's okay too. We can work on times. I'm thinking this might be a weeknight or even weekend thing. I don't want to intrude on people's schedules, but I think we can get this done pretty fast if we just do a few like Saturdays or something. But I don't want to make staff work on the weekend if that's harder for you. So let's all talk about that via email, but find us a place that we can meet that could have probably some sort of projector capability so that we can see the stuff on a screen would be helpful beyond that. I don't know, other subcommittee members, do you have any other needs you think we'll have for the meeting space? No? Okay. So yeah, with that direction, oh, Carol. One would assume- And Carol. Oh. Terry and then Carol. Oh, I was just going to ask staff if perhaps we could review at our first meeting that I understand the planning commission just updated their bylaws. It might be helpful to have access to those as a recent example. Good suggestion. Carol, go ahead. One would hope that any supporting documentation that we would want to digest before the meeting, we would have say a full week ahead of time in PDF. Not going to ask you to print anything out but to have time to digest information and then to have staff available to clarify potentially things that might be a little too technically written for the late person, that's me, to digest to be able to hit the ground running at all of our mutual meetings would truly be appreciated. Great. Terry, do you still have a hand up? Do you have any other comments? Nope. You have an Aaron hand. Okay. Okay. So good comments from everyone. Please do me a favor of attaching all the ordinance is again in the bylaws to our first email where we start discussing the planning. I think it'd just be helpful to have all that again on hand. So Jen, please have the wonderful city staff reach out to Terry, Carol and myself. Maybe suggest some dates. I want this to work well for staff. You know, let's try to make this efficient but also not encumber you too much. So let us know times. I'm open to, let me say post election day. I'm open to more weeknights and weekends. So just give us some time. So maybe like I said, Saturday afternoons or weeknights. If it has to be during business hours, let's try to plan that a little farther ahead of time for us working folks. But yeah, do you need any more direction from us? Great. Okay. I love ordinances in bylaws. I was on charter review. I love this stuff. So it's super important. So thank you, Emily, for your long work on this and we're gonna get it done. Yeah. Okay, cool. Thanks everyone for that. And we now are moving on to our committee reports, agenda item nine. So that's me, the update from the mayor's lunch. I did have a few updates. We did get a chance to, so this was our first one in person in years, literally the first one the mayor Rogers has ever done. I think he's only gonna get to do one more. So that's too bad. I was looking forward to bugging him more at city hall, but I guess I got about two months left to do that. So we did it in person in the mayor's conference room. It was good to see all the board chairs in person, get to know him a little more. We went around and did introductions. And we did that also because we had our new assistant city manager there in addition to the city manager. So our new city manager is Dariel Dunstan. Dariel started about a month and a half ago, I guess his first day on the job was our earthquake. So he got to learn all about the EOC and not a California native. So, but then here awhile, he worked for the city of Oakland. He was their first director of homelessness. He went to UC Berkeley and got a master's of public policy from the Goldman school. So just a very accomplished and impressive person and I'm looking forward to working with them more. And then we also got some other updates from the other boards. Like Steve said, the general plans being worked on right now, I'm glad you're involved with that Steve, huge deal for the city. So that determines the future of our city. I always tell them to keep parks in mind, which is part of it. And the other update we got was from Bicycle and Pedestrian. They're working on some different road designs, safe street designs. And I encourage them to look at maybe more of those around park facilities. We really want people to ride their bike to a park and they actually do take into account bike paths and paved paths through parks. That's considered part of the bike network in the city, which I didn't even know. So I think that's a cool interaction we have with them. And then another little stat that was great to hear from the housing authority. I think I got this right. We have about 600 units of affordable housing being developed right now in the city in addition to a lot of other market rate units. So a lot of activity there. And that's great to see after years of not much going on. So like I said, first time in person and hopefully we'll be back there next month. And now item 9.2. Carol, do we have an update from the waterways committee? There were no meetings of the waterways committee. Okay, thank you. Like you said, there was Creek Week. So thanks for going out for that. That's always a big deal. Okay, and then item 10, Deputy Director Santos, do we have any written or electronic communications today? Thank you, Chair Pitts. So we have our Zest newsletter that went out. It's attached to the agenda. If you're not getting it directly, you can get it from the agenda from there. So check that out. That's the end of the report. Thanks, Jen. Now for our future agenda items, is there anything that someone would like us to look at in the future? The pressing issues? Harry, please go ahead. I don't think I would characterize it as a pressing issue, but I would at some point as time permits, better understand how when parks are developed, how landscaping choices are made. And obviously, you know, my interest is in native plants. And so I would just like to understand the decision-making behind plant selection in parks. I'm also interested in that. And let me just expand in how maybe we could partner with some folks who could help us get more native plants. Great question. So we'll see that in the future. Carol, do you have any items for a future agenda? Yes, I would like to again go over the park updates, the parks that are currently being worked on, or in the process of potentially being worked on. I went to the website right before this meeting to see if there were any updates. And I guess the website is also under some update. The only park that came with a link was Bennett Valley golf course. So I typed in things like Roseland and Kiwanis just as a search term and was able to link to them, but they were not on the working page. But it was nice to see the page was being updated. Again, for staff to do, it doesn't have to be an extensive exhaustive. I'm not asking you to do a lot of work, Jen, but to do just an update of the many parks which are currently being worked on and being either brought online or being brought back online would be helpful. Thank you. Steve, go ahead, please. Yes, we just chatted a bit about the general plan. And it's really coming down to the final document. The committee is finalizing its public presentations now on the preferred alternative. You may recall there were three alternatives that were presented. One was basically concentrating for future development in downtown. The second was similar to that, but in the neighborhoods and those transportation quarters radiating from downtown. And the third one, in my view, it was more like the Los Angeles sprawl alternative, which was rejected. The preferred alternative is a combination one and two. And I believe that within probably five, six months it's the process is going to be completed. It might be a good time or it might be the final time that this board could have some input onto the general plan for some refinements, not revisions that impact our purview. Everything from land use to parks or where future development may occur and therefore additional parks may be required. So a brief update from the general plan team might be useful. Jen, is that possible to have planning staff come in and give us that update? Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that my director's update. We've been working really hard here behind the scenes to get that general plan updated. And we had a scheduled meeting with the planning staff so we had to reschedule for next week and that's one of our questions. We have expressed the board's interest on getting how can the board get involved in this. So we'll hear from them on how you can, particular as a board become involved. But meanwhile, we're waiting for that answer and if I have a better, more definitive answer before we meet next, I will make sure to send that out to the board. But meanwhile, if you go to Santa Rosa Forward, that's where all the information is at for the general plan. You can search around there and provide feedback right now on what's happening there. Take a look at what's happening on the bigger picture that board member Spillman was mentioning. We're looking at alternatives to the big picture of how city looks in 2050. We're on the other hand drilling down really deep into the park section. So absolutely, we'll bring you as much updates as we can and see how we can get the board in particular involved. We'll bring out that. Great. All right, any future items from any other board members? Okay. Well, that was a dense meeting. We've got done with a lot of important stuff. So thank you staff and thanks to all the board members for your time tonight and for your great questions and comments. So with that, I will, the next meeting is, oh, there we go. Okay, the next meeting is not the fourth Wednesday of each month at 4 p.m. Unlike what the screen says, the next meeting is Wednesday, December 14th at 4 p.m. So this is because we do not wanna meet the day before Thanksgiving. We wanna give people time off and then later in December it would also be close to some of the holidays. So we do not have a meeting in November. Our next meeting is December 14th at 4 p.m. I'm confident our subcommittee will have met before then and hopefully we'll have something substantive to bring back to you folks that can help shape our further work. And with that, I am going to adjourn this meeting of the Board of Community Services at 6.02 p.m.