 My name is Carol Quant, and I'd like to welcome all of you and the members of the public for joining us today. I'd also like to introduce our hosts, Mary Lou Nichols and Elisa Rawlson, who will be doing all the magical things behind the scenes that take care of us and make this meeting run as smoothly as possible. At this point, I need to remind panelists and presenters to please silence your cell phones and to keep your microphones muted if you are not speaking. When members of the public join this meeting, they will have their webcams off and microphones muted. If you're phoning in to join the meeting and you choose to speak during the public comments portion of the agenda, for privacy concerns, the host will rename you to caller and only the last four digits of your phone number will be seen. Additionally, the City of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully, or if necessary, the meeting will end immediately. And with that, can I get the host to explain how the public comment section will be heard at today's meeting. Thank you chair quant. At each agenda item, the item will be presented. The chair will ask the board for comments or questions. And then at the appropriate time, open the floor for public comments. The host will lower all hands until the public comments item is open. Once the chair has called for public comment, the chair will ask the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. Those joining by phone may dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on those who have raised their hands. Public comment is limited to three minutes and a courtesy timer will appear on the screen. Thank you, Mary Lou. And with that I call this September 22 2021 meeting of the board of community services to order at 407 in the afternoon. The provisions of the governor's executive orders end to five to zero and end to nine to zero which spend certain requirements the Brown act, and the order of the health officer of the county of Sonoma to shelter in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19. The board of community services members will be conducting today's meeting in a virtual setting using zoom board members and staff are participating from remote locations and practicing appropriate social distancing. And they view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. With that, can we get a roll call. Yes, please respond when I call your name. Chair quant here. Vice chair Griffin here. Board member spillman here. Board member pits. I am here. Board member Cruz present. Board member Spence here. Thank you. Let the record reflect that all board members are present. Thank you, Mary Lou. With that, I would like to open the floor for public comments on any non agenda items. This is when any person may address the board on matters not listed on this agenda but are within the subject matter of the board of community services. Do we have any public comments today for item number three. I have no hands up. We will move on to item four. Item four is the approval of minutes. This is from August 25 of 2021. I have a change that I'll put out first thing and that is that the eucalyptus trees at the county cemetery have not begun being cut down. They have not even gone before the board of supervisors. This is something that should happen by the end of the year and the county will be keeping the city of Santa Rosa apprised but it is not something that has begun. Any other changes to the minutes of August 25. Okay, seeing that. Can we get a show of hands to approve the minutes with that change. Looks good. Steven Madonna, great. Show all of our hands were raised. And with that, we will move on to upcoming events and reports on accomplished events item five. Jen Santos and possibly Jeff Tibbets take it away. Thank you chair quant. Just reminder deputy director Jen Santos and as always, our interim recreation director deputy director Jeff Tibbets will be here to answer any questions you should have any. And you all received your upcoming events and reports accomplished events as part of the packet. But I wanted to highlight Halloween is just around the corner in our world and if you've been out to the stores you've seen how Halloween decorations so just call your attention to the upcoming events in October for our floating events. And we're working on some neighborhood services activities on October 30 so stay tuned for that. Look forward to seeing folks at those events, and they will be done in a socially distant manner we're working on all the details behind the scene. And with those accomplished events I just wanted to highlight that on September 9, there's a larger section that says we released an RFP to redesign the playground at South Davis neighborhood park. And those proposals are due on October 5, but behind the scenes we're always working to try to find grants to fund things that we need to do try to double our money and make our funds go farther. And this is one of those where we can really celebrate that we did receive approximately $285,000 from the per capita funding from the state parks. Yes, it's exciting to see the per capita fund come back and that was our allocation and we applied for South Davis to replace those two playgrounds there so that's coming up, and I just wanted to find that out. And that's the end of the report. Thank you. We'll roll into director updates and then we'll get some comments and questions from the board if they have any. Thank you. So just a few updates tonight. Unfortunately, I have to report that district member board member just from district seven Cynthia rich will no longer be able to participate as a member of the board. And we did send out a thank you and wished her well on her future endeavors but, and we're working with Vice Mayor Natalie Rogers to make sure we're in support of her to find a new appointed board member. I just wanted to share that in this, and I also received an email from me today about it as well. Also some of the emails you received from from staff have been about using phones during the meeting just a reminder that if you are using your phone it is subject to a public records request act. In order to keep our quorum everyone does need to be visible on the screen. And if we do lose a quorum during the meeting. Staff will let us know and we'll have to end the meeting temporarily until we can regain the quorum, especially for those items where we're asking for recommendations so just a little reminder, some housekeeping there. Also, we had a question about what's going on with the pool. As you may recall, we are looking at removing the baby waiting pool at the family aquatic center and replace of a spray ground. And it's going to be a fantastic project I just got a preview of it today. Looking forward to it but it does mean that the pool will be closed for at least about six months. We'll work with the designers and work with the contractors who ultimately will be in charge of the schedule as we get closer but we will have a full season up until summer of 2022. And then we're going to reduce services and look for other opportunities for classes and things like that to continue happening at the JC or something like that we're looking at all those options but we'd like to do a phased approach where we can keep the large pool open. And then phase it in so that it's not completely closed at the end of summer of 2022. But that that's the plan to close in summer of 2022 2022 and open late spring into early summer of 2023. And I am looking forward to do is going to be amazing. And we're going to have lines at the door to to participate at the spray ground. We are working to accommodate our aquatic folks, folks who want to use the aquatic center, and we'll bring you details as we have them but that's what we have right now. We have a little update on the Dutch floor neighborhood part playground replacement that has finished all of its public meetings, all the plan public meetings and that will be coming before this for hopefully on the October 27 meeting. We will follow up on our December 8 me for a presentation on all the collected data, as well as the final design for the master plan. And from there we plan to go to council and start the construction drawings to get that underway. We also have Fremont Park. The RP for designer to redesign Fremont Park is somewhat complete we've reviewed committee has selected a firm and we are moving forward to council as soon as possible. Hopefully in late October, if not early November to have that approved have the design project approved. And then we can move forward with engaging with the community on how they'd like to see Fremont Park redesigned. And of course we have rosin Community Park master plan going to city council on next Tuesday on four o'clock and 28 of September. That concludes my updates. Thank you Jen, a lot of information does anybody have any comments or questions on anything. Let's be real informal at this point. Anybody. Just one quick one, Carol. Jen, do you happen to have a guess on what time in the meeting Rosalind Creek Park will be up. Sure, it's likely to start right at five o'clock or soon thereafter so all public hearings and this is a public hearing need to have in between 5pm and 9pm. And looking at the agenda, it looks like we'll start right on time, depending on any small differences so should be very close to five o'clock. Great, thank you. I did a reminder email on Tuesday. That would be exceedingly helpful. Yeah, it would be wonderful if. Again, we cannot have a quorum or are there any problem with more than half of us showing up Jen. You may view it and listen to it but if you participate yet we don't need a quorum so as you know you will be helping me and participating with this so there's one. So if any of you plan to provide comments, if you could connect with staff and just let us know so that we can verify there won't be a quorum participating, but you can certainly all listen in. Great. Anybody else. So we are going to move forward to our scheduled items item 7.1 is the senior program update and Mickey Remy. Take it away. Hi everybody, I am Mickey rainy with recreation and parks coordinator at the steel lane community center I work closely about richer, who is the coordinator at the senior person wing. This presentation encompasses both facilities. I do want to apologize in the beginning here this first screen I am going to do a little bit of reading because I'll supply me with this great acronym perfectly describes what we do with our senior centers and why we do it. So bear with me here I think this is wonderful. Our senior centers offer many ways to celebrate life. There are four good reasons why learning our centers offer a wide range of educational activities to keep mind sharp, whether taken an art class participating in a book or photography club, learning to dance, attending a history class. There's many opportunities to stay engaged and pursue one's passions independence at our sin centers active adults are connected to programs and people that can provide to choose to. provide the tools to choose their own course in life. We offer convenient access to multiple public services in one location including meal services, legal consultation, travel services, benefit counseling and computer lab assistance. Friends. It's proven that senior center participants have a higher level of social interaction and life satisfaction than their peers. Having great friends is one of life's most wonderful rewards. Our senior centers can be the perfect place to meet new people. We offer many social activities including being those gravel meal craft my job and lots of parties as well. Keeping minds and bodies active not only improves the way we feel, but it also prevents many health problems that come at our age. Our seniors have strong our senior centers have a strong emphasis on health and fitness in offering fitness classes such as aerobics and Zumba and Tai Chi, which are very traditional, as well as evidence based health activities that have been scientifically proven to help people healthier such as balance ping pong and chair volleyball and if you haven't played chair volleyball I suggest it is so much fun to do it at home with grandma and the husband and the kids. Get some exercise. It's just a big laugh. It's a lot of fun. Next slide please reflecting. So I'm going to go back here. I'm trying to give an example as I tell a story here of what where we came from the pandemic and then where we are now and the best I could do to go back to a great years 2018 2019. As we know, we've had a lot of incidents over the past few years. About this time 2019 steel lane had acquired the activities from the Bennett Valley Senior Center before they closed as they closed and person senior wing had been open for a number of years, still building up clientele. So this is a really good year to look back on because we had 200 weekly participants at steel lane at this time and 800 over at PSW and 600 of them were members and being a member came with a lot of benefits for $24 a year. You, which helps support our programs. They get 50 cents off of each registration that they do if they come multiple times a week. It's a great savings for them. We send them a zest newsletter quarterly, which is full of what's happening heads up on some things that are coming resources some fun activities. And also we have numerous events and our members do get a discount and some events they can come for free, but at least a discount for those as well so it definitely is a cost savings for active members to purchase the membership. This was a time when we were really growing. We were coming up with new ideas, we were getting new participants every week, things were moving wonderfully Alan I were thinking of all these new events and activities that we can bring on. Next slide. Then COVID hit. So, when COVID hit we had to obviously cancel all activities until summer 2021. One thing I noticed when COVID, when we did close for the pandemic, and nothing was open that some of the seniors are very proud of them did take it upon themselves. A couple of the instructors started some learn zoom and started some classes, some seniors got over their fear of computers and join those classes. And as soon as the county allowed us to go back out into the parks. With social distancing and wearing masks or seniors were meeting out there for balance class and so forth so doing a good job taking care of themselves but we need to do more for them. During the pandemic unfortunately how and I were redesigned so we didn't have 100% attention on the seniors at that time because we were supporting the distance learning program. One floor is giving this presentation a couple of months ago on neighborhood services and all the amazing things that they've been doing to help with the use in the community. We, Alan our staff ended up giving them 100% of what are of our time to help with their programs, help with the facility any facility means they have checking the children in, checking the children back up to their parents, checking in snacks and lunches, covering the fillboards when needed, if there's a situation that needed be dealt with and so many things that we can think of but we couldn't forget about the seniors so one of the, excuse me one second. One of the, I would say, most important things that we did during the closed down were care calls. We did it in three different bouts but we called many seniors many more times than that, and we had a team together, thousands of calls, and we had a script together how are you doing. Do you have people checking on you, do you need anything, and we had a whole list of resources so we can give them resources do they need to find rights to the doctor's office. So numbers for friends that they haven't talked to anything that we could do to help them out and the little things are the most important and you're going to kind of notice that during this presentation with seniors and one of the ladies that I talked to, I called her and she said, you know making you the first person I've talked to in a couple of months. That itself says how important it is for us to communicate with our seniors and make them feel welcome with us and check on them regularly. It is especially during the pandemic, and I went on a 45 minute phone conversation with this lady while she just simply talked to me about what she would plant in a garden if she was able to plant things in a garden. We mailed out newsletters to all of our members. Oh, the care calls were not just for members. We called all of our participants we ran rosters we made we called a lot more than our members. But we did send a newsletter out to our members with lots of resources where we're at right now with the pandemic what here's where you can get the most up to date information. We shared what we're thinking about opening back up and this is what it's going to look like for us. We had some ideas of, oh we sent him a little care package. It was a pair of fuzzy socks because it was wintertime when we did this and it was just something warm it was almost best we can do for a virtual hug. I partnered with the Council on Aging for five day meal packs and that's happening still over here at the Stealing Community Center on Thursdays from 10am to noon, 60 and over. Very, if not an intrusive registration they can just make a simple phone call or a little half sheet of paper with your names and show up and pick up frozen, five frozen meals that are sealed and packaged and the popular trunk and the volunteers from Council on Aging will put that in some milk and some fruit and their trunk for them help them get through the next week and they come back next week and get some more meals. Carbingo. Al and I have been participating in both the California Cities and CPRS conferences and their meetings and based on recreation and hearing a lot about what the other cities are doing and during the pandemic all of these ideas there are so many caveats to why they can't happen or how to make them happen. And it was nice to be able to share with all the different cities and one of the cities did a Carbingo, it was a one day event and it was successful and we got some information on that and I said hey if that's successful, we have Bingo players let's do this every week. And so we called and found out we did have the interest, we secured the parking lot and the Franklin Club house there at Franklin Park and bought an FM transmitter and really quickly learned how to be radio show host. We were very lucky that this program was supported by the local businesses from In-N-Out to Coastal Creamery, some of the local senior home care homes, made care packages to get us gift cards to Starbucks and everybody who won got a great prize from the community to help them when they were ready to come back and that they would come back to their store so it was a great relationship that we have. We also mailed a holiday card with staff photos and well wishes and we got some calls back on how wonderful it was to receive those from some seniors that we were thinking about them during the holiday season as well. Next slide please. We also had some events. St. Patrick's Day lunch that was actually canceled the day before the event. It's on here for an honorable mention because we had lots of ham and lots of packaged food that we were unable to use so we in turn I wanted to share with you has donated that to the nonprofits out there that could use it which in turn you know are the same resources we were recommending the seniors to and so forth so that worked out really well. We held a carnival to Candyland and what that is is a Halloween event was so much fun at the family center and at the time neighborhood services had eight different youth cohorts in the family complex. And so we had the kids come out one cohort at a time so they didn't cross each other and kind of line up at the turnaround. So when the seniors came in, they were dressed in their costumes in their car. They would be able to slowly go through and wave and see all the costumes and the kids waved at them and that was by far the best part. And as they got through they got to the end where we had a great booth with a wonderful fall to four such as pumpkins and hay bales and scarecrows and the booth was manned by a couple of Montgomery High School volunteers who ran it first they did a fabulous job. And they spun a wheel for each of the seniors as they pulled up in their car and everybody got a bag of candy but when you spin the wheel it would tell you if you got the regular size the medium size or the big bag with the prize in it. So that was a lot of fun as everybody really for the big little more excitement to with the big prize. We had a Kentucky Derby lunch. Celebrating Kentucky Derby it was another drive through event at the family complex. Everybody wore their fun hats and came through and lunch was donated by Chick-fil-A. And I think Caroline had about 100. And they were so happy to be out that was the one of the first events that they could have after the pandemic this drive through. The Kentucky Derby was great I think you have about 60 participants in it and again donated lunches and tastic the communities been great. Also with our Carbindo we have St. Patrick's Day coming up so we did a short little impromptu celebration through some decorations out all the seniors dressed in their best green attire with their little hats and so forth. And we were having fun taking lots of pictures and of course they're all in their cars and local hold the leprechaun starts skipping through the parking lot and greets all the seniors with a baggie of gold covered chocolate points. So that was a lot of fun. Next slide please. Then it came time to reopen. We took a lot of notes from our meeting again with the League of California cities and the CPRS meetings. What are other cities doing what are the cities in our county doing what are other cities outside of our county doing a lot of communication and when it was time to move forward with one of the first cities to do so and we did do it in phases. With the goal of fully reopening in September which we did do. Finley, I'm sorry the person senior wing opened in four phases. Because we were coming out of the color tier thing at the time we didn't open we're going to go backwards. We wanted to make sure that the programs that we were offering where the programs that we're going to work for that tier. We didn't want to open everything up and they have to backtrack everything. So, we were able to open up in June, the first set of classes, July, August and then September, they were fully open. So, still lane we did a little bit different because we had a youth program in the building during the summer but we opened up billiards for the billiards players and bingo we brought bring the bingo inside in the large auditorium, where we can turn flow the air and social distance everybody apart, and it's working great. And they're still there now enjoying it. We did fully open in September of still lane that. I have to say it was quite touching on September 1 when I was standing at the counter and I was watching as if the patrons came in, and we'd recognize each other through the masks and eyes would well up with tears and my eyes well up with tears and missed you so much so glad you're back and I wanted to have that we've got partitions and masks and everything between us but it was a really, I, it's hard to have find the words to explain how important it is, because our seniors are the most sensitive demographic during the pandemic. It is so hard to find things for them to give them that life that they need given the social interaction. I'm so glad we opened back up. We did a couple things differently, we have some courses now, but our pre registration option that allows us to kind of social distance in the room, limit the number of people. We also require all participants to have accounts. Now it seems a no brainer or emergency service workers so obviously we said yes great idea let's do this because if there's an emergency we want to know the name and emergency contact with every single person in the building. But on top of that it's important for contact tracing so it's a little bit slower for the seniors to get through the building to stop at the desk and to their activity but it is well worth it and they completely understand it. We also continue to provide resources to seniors such as, you know, access to meals and rides and mental health we have a resource guide in each front counter and we probably open that book at least two or three times a week somebody asking if how am I need help with my trust. Who do I get a hold of. I have a bunch of little medication I need to get rid of where do I bring it egg the list goes on and on so we're definitely. Because there's not a lot of options out there for them right now they're probably getting a little bit more and it's been a year and a half since they've left their house lots of questions so we're definitely doing everything we can to be one stop for them so we don't send them somewhere else to get a little bit of information that we could have found out for them. And if I don't have the information I do ask them to have a seat now look it up and I'll call make calls and get the information for them. And that's a practice that we have at both centers. Next slide please challenges. Well, as you can imagine the list of challenges. Much much much longer than this but we'll stick to just these ones. It's so hard to know what the work you're putting in if you're going to go backwards or forward or grow bigger or just read it down a little and what's going to change so. I'm at the number of participants provide social distancing. So what that means is in rooms where we had a lot of participants, we can't have that many right now so. And also some of the smaller rooms, we really just want to make sure that people have their space. It's a little bit of a challenge because, for instance, our billiards players they. They love to meet together it's a social room, it's you know it's they're not coming into exercise and to leave they're there to socialize and spend the day together, and they'll have a base and sometimes we can have the 12 people in a room with two full tables. Well, we can't do that now I don't have a in that room, because I want to keep them safe. And so that's for each full table, and then. Well somebody they start to complain because well so and so can't play so so can't play so we we come up with the plan instead of eight people from nine to two. That's the time of the billiards rooms open. Let's have them pre register, and they can lock in their spot, and we'll have nine to noon, and then for the morning and then noon to 3pm for the afternoon and it's working well and everybody's giving their chance to play. So kind of working through these challenges to find what will work. The mask requirement, especially exercise type classes are obviously a challenge. We're going to talk about that a little bit with the instructors but it's working okay now but it was definitely a challenge a lot of phone calls saying do I have to wear my mask all day. It's very difficult for seniors to for certain particular seniors not everybody to, especially the older ones to wear a mask for two three hours at a time. And when they found out yes you have to wear the entire time you're participating in your program. So, that was a little bit of a challenge. We have multi generational programming right now which means neighborhood services as all this wonderful youth programming is we have a kinder care program now over at steel lane so in the morning to the beginning part of the day it's mostly all senior activities, and then they kind of meet in the middle and the afternoon it's the kindergarteners from stealing school. And so we're working both those in the same facility and it comes with a lot of challenges that the separate bathrooms, a sanitation routine has to be in place and kept up with every day. We have to make sure that we lock up. Have the kids in specific rooms and so they're not crossing past the seniors and so forth and it's all working fantastically now that you know the challenges getting all that setup. Definitely took some brainstorming. Low attendance many instructors did not return low attendance due to the pandemic that's something we're hoping as we're open longer and hopefully this new variant kind of fades away fingers across that will have a lot more of our seniors coming back. There are four more of them showed today that haven't been here yet that decided to come so I'm super excited to see them and instructors that haven't returned. Some of them are just waiting, maybe they have a type cheap class where it's specific to a certain they want to breathe with it and it just doesn't work with the mask so they want to wait, and then some instructors have found some other things to do and just said, you know what, I'm not coming back, for instance, one says you know I'm great. Maybe sitting my grandkids now and this is fantastic so I am seeking additional instructors though so if anybody is interested and has a life skill get a hold of Nikki it's still lane support staff is a bit of a challenge. Alan I lost almost almost all of our tips out during the pandemic so opening back up and hurry up hire people and get them trained. This is a challenge in itself. We both also are wearing many many hats right now. We both no longer have an essay at the front counter. And the essays primary responsibility was to run the front counter to check people in to their activities and run the reports they did a lot of filing because a lot of stuff and it's Alan I are filling in as best we can with that with a little bit of help from some temp staff and I also are specialist at stealing that also was kind of a backup to the front desk is also also moved on. And so we are in the process of hiring and give it a couple of months and hopefully we're back on track with the team at the facilities again but you know those being a challenge. And then those experiencing homelessness obviously all facilities deal with it and sharing. We do have a plan we have a facility staff that comes into stealing pretty early in the morning so we can make everybody up and let them know it's time to gather your tents and your blankets and so forth and let it move and we're going to open soon and they do pretty good to get some out of there and then he does a big cleanup and some scrubbing at the entryways and a sharp pick up and we do that multiple times a day because they do come back multiple times a day and with the kids coming in the afternoon we don't want to find a place where we missed or somebody was congregating that we hadn't seen the kids find something. So, and then trash pick up is huge and constant there too. So with that, I think we made it through our challenges. We found out through all of these challenges again how to make things work, instead of what's not going to work. Next slide please. And so how is it going now. Well, we have fully reopened everybody smiling. Everyone's wearing their masks and we hope to be 100% by spring 2022. I had a just about two weeks ago I was checking some ladies in for helping no program and the lady stuff and she said you know making. I go to a couple of different senior centers and a couple of different cities, and I love coming here I walk in, you guys greet me by name. Always offer any service that I'm looking for you're so welcoming and friendly says when I walk in I feel like I'm just came home like I walked in my front door. And that's exactly what our goal is. Again, we have to remember the seniors were the sensitive ones during the pandemic and we were trying to be so careful with them but without forgetting about them. And it was quite a task and I think we're pretty successful with that. We'd like to grow back or hopefully getting our events back in the spring again at all just depends on where we go with the pandemic hopefully we'll have our events back we can, you know, kind of change them up a little bit if we need to make them work with what other guidelines are put out which is fine and bring in more and more programming as we're finding what does work it makes it a little bit easier each time. Questions. Questions from the board. I don't have everybody's face up if you comment for questions just raise your hand and Carolina, Carolina you're muted. I'm fascinating when I muted. The project has a special place in my heart, as I know you all know, and I got to tell you, the staffing is fabulous I, I took some folks through on a tour last week, you know, because I'm always looking for money for that. And they were dazzled by the building and what was going on in there and I want to thank you. You're doing a wonderful job. I think you really have hit the button on all of it. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. I have a question, Mickey. I know the city put out a mandate staff and contract workers have to have proof of vaccination as of October one for the senior population, just like the children. There are vulnerable is your department on point for this and are you doing anything to monitor the the health of your participants. Well, we do make sure now we have emergency information on all of them. We don't ask them until we receive guidance to do so we're not asking them if they are vaccinated or not, but again we are keeping them separated separate bathrooms and they do have to wear masks the entire time even thing goes for three hours long we have to learn their masks the entire time that they're in the building. And then the bathrooms are sanitized regularly and all the high touch areas the entire time. And that's the best we can do for now unless the guidance comes otherwise. Thank you Mickey. Anything else from the board. Terry. Thank you Mickey for the presentation I'm always amazed at what staff is able to do under such trying circumstances and to get so creative. And I was particularly impressed with the care call system that you set up do you have plans to continue that until the senior centers are truly fully back in operation without limitations in terms of attendance because I can imagine. There are people that either can't get in because of those limitations, or people that are reluctant to come back, you know, my own parents there in their 80s, they're reluctant to participate in certain activities out of fear so is there any intention to continue that. Yeah the next plan that we're discussing right now and haven't solidified but we're discussing right now is to call the participants that are not showing up for the classes that usually do and touch base with them make sure they know that they got the message that it's an option make sure they're okay and then see if, for instance we had a lady who came to be no quite often and she stopped showing up and when they asked one of the other who she was, we decided to give her a call and she lost her right, she no longer had a right so we now have another senior that comes and picks her up along the way every day. So with that we definitely said we need to do some more of this and we'll be making some more calls to the seniors that are not showing up for the activities that they normally do whether their members are not. Great, thank you. Any other questions from the board. Do we have any public comments on this item. No, I see no hands raised for public comment at this time. Okay, with that we are going to move on to item seven point item 7.2 and item 7.2 is the meat of the matter today it is the measure and review. It is 10 minutes to five. At some point, Jen is going to offer a break. This is going to be a shorter presentation from Jen. That doesn't mean the discussion that follows will be shorter, but if need be we will take a five minute break. There's no indication that that five minute break is eminent and you want it to be eminent. Wave your hand, we, we don't want to leave anybody in desperate straits, especially with such an important topic as measure M. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jen Santos and Jeremy Gundy and Jeff Tibbets. Thank you chair quant appreciate it. I know the staff are getting the presentation ready but just to introduce ourselves as you all know I'm deputy director for for parks and I'll turn to my colleagues for their introduction as well I believe I see Jeff's here. Yeah. Hello, Jeff Tibbets and I'm deputy director for recreation. And Jeremy Gundy deputy director of field services and transportation and public works. Great, thank you. And so we've been here in early in April to have this conversation it was a very lengthy conversation about our early data results from all of the community outreach we've done with measure and so we're coming back with a small update. And also to check in with you all about our strategy for moving forward. We're not necessarily here to ask you about specific projects to do. We want some input from you all about our strategy our approach to moving forward with this, because we will be coming back again but we want to make sure we're actually going the right direction before we continue on so next slide. And just a just a little bit of a overview again to remind those board members who weren't able to attend the meeting earlier this spring or may not have been board members at that time. And for those of you that have heard it before. Thank you for your patience, but just a reminder this is actually a community voted tax measure with 72% support which is really amazing for a tax measure. It's an eighth of a cent sales tax for 10 years. It started collecting tax on April 1, 2019, and ends on March 31, 2029. But I also want to say that, while we collect the tax from that, we're not required to spend every diamond that by March 31, 2029. That is simply when the tax will be collected, and how we spend it and what path we take is up to the city. So, what it does is it provides, it's a countywide tax and our city portion of that is estimated about 1.9 annually so about $2 million. And that's been spot on that's how much the tax has been collecting over the last couple years so we expect to have about 19 million overall over 10 years. The tax measure does require a baseline commitment of staffing. So whatever our staffing was, and actually we selected as, as a group as a county and city agencies 2017 as a baseline. So if we put too far below that then it could be considered that we are using this these funds to supplant what we're doing instead of supplement these funds are used to enhance and supplement what we already do. And we do report to a fiscal oversight committee, I was just at the fiscal oversight committee. And so just by a way of a little bit of background, again, we have been to this board before, and the board approved in July 24 2019. Just by a way of a little bit of background. Again, we have been to this board before, and the board approved in July 24 2019 three things for the funds to be spent on and recommend this to council. So the first two years of funding could be spent on fire recovery of parks and landscapes destroyed by the 2017 fires. So we have that as well as that first two years where the funding could be spent on conducting a we call it a deferred maintenance park priority project this, but it's essentially we're looking at the condition of our parks. We're providing a priority ranking list for projects related in the parks that need to be completed such as and the condition of them so we have a good sense of where our worst issue is and where we could, we could wait a few years. So we also approved to do citywide committee outreach within, which we've been doing over the last two years. And that's what got approved in 2019 from the board we went through to council who approved the same expenditure plan the priority plan. So we've had another eight meetings, six of what you see listed here this is all during coven so we've had a long stretch where not a lot was happening because city staff were involved in responding to the emergency, as well as the glass glass fire emergency. But we did have a meeting per quadrant in the city, as well as several other meetings at all sports meeting, etc. And so the next slide is going to show the last two meetings at the very end there April and June of this year. We had a citywide meeting, another citywide meeting just for anybody else who may want to participate in these meetings and hear the discussion have conversation with community members. We also conducted the same meeting in Spanish as the primary language. So those folks who felt more comfortable with that had that opportunity and backing up on the slide a little bit there. The Board of Community Services we came back to this board in April of this year went through our preliminary data analysis, and we recommended some options for how to move forward. And we promise to return as we are right now with an update and just to solidify our path forward. We also, what you don't see on here is left the survey online for three weeks so that folks could participate in that survey. So we ended up there as long as we could before we had to start analyzing the data. We started the data, Analyzation back in April eight. We recently added the last two meetings and so we're back now to give you an update. Next slide please. And so, again, thank you for your patience in advance for those of you that have heard this but the tax measure itself has several categories of spending that you can use for anything record parks but they are specifically described. One of the categories is to maintain parks and recreation facilities to ensure safe, clean accessible visitor experience. Funding can be used for maintenance and you can see some examples there. Next slide. And we can also use the funding to improve and develop athletic fields playgrounds restrooms picnic areas and other visitor amenities. Next slide please. We can also be used to create and expand parks trails bikeways, public art and recreational and historical facilities. Next slide. And again can be are also can be used to plan and develop bike paths and trails with connections to schools community spaces and regional trails. And we can also use the funds for providing recreational educational and health programs for the community. Next slide. And we can use the funds to decrease future fire risk fuel loads and invasive plants on city owned open space parks. Next slide please. Last but not least, the funds can be used to improve the trails along waterways and riverian areas to benefit fish wildlife habitat and water quality. So that was just a little reminder of the specific categories that are listed in the tax measure. Really this is a tax measure to support recreation and parks enhancements overall. Next slide. We're going to pause here for a second to let you know we do have results from three categories so we had our live zoom meeting polls during the meetings we were collecting data live people were responding electronically was showing up on the screen so we have those zoom meeting polls. We also have the survey results from our city website so anyone who couldn't participate during the meeting go and take the survey online or they could choose to wait and participate in the survey. The survey online was a little bit different in that it asked it had open ended questions. And in an online forum and a live online for me had, we would have a very difficult time asking open ended questions the meeting would be four hours instead of two. So we limited to answers we could get quick selections from but if you went online you could participate and write whatever you'd like, and we would interpret that. We also had a very early meeting before COVID. And we had a different version of that called box votes, it was in person but taken electronically, and the results showed on screen during the meeting. So just wanted to let you know about that. And we combine those result all those results to to what we have for you today. Next slide please. And so, just a reminder I know you've all seen this slide many times and if you haven't welcome. This is our planning area for the city and you can see our four quadrants where we utilize that to look at funding areas within the city for park development impact fees. We really use this as a way to engage with the community. And one of the things we were seeking was not only just a city wide city wide results but results from specific quadrants. And what we learned in this project, a process was that the results did not really vary significantly at all between quadrants, it's, it's really not worth even recording it's almost identical per quadrant there was a few minor differences in the city. It was comforting to know that city wide these are city wide responses and maybe we didn't have any one particular quadrant that wanted something more significantly than the next so when you see the data that comes up. Note that it is, we did collect it per quadrant but we mashed it together to be city wide because the quadrant results were very similar. So I am just going to check in now with chair quant to see if you would like to take a break this is a good point or we can continue on. I'm just going to look at faces. Good to go. Shall we just keep rolling. Keep rolling. All right. Next slide please. Here is our updated slide. What you're not seeing here is all of the other questions that we asked not necessarily related to priorities spending. We had multiple and we'd be here for another at least 45 minutes going over that. Those results really aren't completely changed, but what did change were the end results here the prioritization. We didn't have a huge change here, but we did have a mild change. And so this is the combined response from 1676 responses. The last time we came before you had about 950 responses. So it's a bit of a jump from the last meetings and the open ended survey we had online. And the last time we came before you. The request for maintenance was the highest request. Something to do with maintaining our, the condition of our parks was coming up at the very top so those categories that I went over previously are abbreviated the very bottom of this slide. And off to the left you can see the percent of requests sitting wide. So what's happened with the last few, few meetings we've had as well as the open end survey was that the request to prioritize and park amenities improving park amenities jumped up ahead of park maintenance slightly. So again, if you look at this, it's not a huge point spread. Everybody wants everything. And the request to really show that while there's not a huge distinction here, there is a distinction that the improving our park amenities jumped a little bit ahead of maintenance. Everything else is pretty much identical. There's a few, few changes here and there but everything else is pretty much the same those two cons on the left are the only thing that that changed over the time. And we've had a lot of additional responses so it was surprising but interesting, given that we did survey quite a few more people. So, just to go through the, the request to improve park amenities was the highest priority requested. Next was anything to do with maintaining parks. Next at 133% was creating expand parks. Developing trails was 1010.4 and just following his 10.2 with decreasing future fire risk, attending to our waterways and repairing areas as 9.3 with recreational programs coming in around 7.2 and previously a little bit over 9% for the program so we had some interesting priorities there. Next slide. And so here's just another way of looking at the same information some people like to see it in different methods and, again, same information. But you can see it in the pie chart here where you can really see that improving park amenities and maintaining parks will heavily requested whereas the others were a little bit less. It's not surprising that really we're looking at a group of responses where people would like a lot of everything that more importantly would like to see park amenities improved as well as enhanced park maintenance. Next slide please. And so here I just wanted to pause and take a take a reminder where we're going to go we're going to look at the analysis portion of it. And we had a lot of ranking that you saw previously one through, I think we have one, two, three, four, five, six and eight. We also heard from those open ended questions that we asked the following, we, we got a lot of requests for increasing general maintenance. We got a lot of requests for more weak control, especially over sports fields and Broadway landscaping. We had a lot of open ended requests that ended up in some sort of park improvement project. Next we had a lot of open ended questions that related to park expansion or creation of a new park. Safety was also a high priority although that's not a category per se it was it came up as an open ended question topic. We also had a lot of topics, a lot of responses related to assisting with cleaning up leftover between from folks that use the park for overnight camping and other type of park issues. We also had requests for more natural landscaping and to approve the aesthetics of the park. So although it doesn't, it's not necessarily included in a priority per se, we wanted to remind you that those were the, those were the big picture items from the open ended questions, including all the new open ended questions. Answers we received to the questions. All right, so let's go ahead and look at the analysis next slide. So just a reminder, this is a key slide here. If you take away something definitely take this away when you're giving us your feedback. If you look at those three blue items. They're, they're the strategies we brought to the board last time we were here in April, where we're looking at how should we slice up the pot so to speak how should we move forward with it with a strategy of spending. And it doesn't have to be any one of these it could be something really different so this is where we're asking for your input. I'm going to start at the top so we took just raw percent total from each category of spending. What we end up with is about $2 million of one time funds per category. And let me just back up a minute too because when we came back in April we also determined that we want to target around $14 million as our potential remaining funds to be spent. So we subtract the first three years of spending for the first two years of spending as well as removing forward with a full time park plan of position. So what we determined was that when you're looking at these, we're really thinking of the last nine, eight years as $14 million. Overall, so with that you're looking at about $2 million. If we just did gave everybody every category $2 million. That's what we end up with we have very little funds to actually do anything with that per category. It wouldn't really result in anything shiny and new so to speak but which we heard at the last board meeting. We could definitely you know $2 million is a lot of money but in the schemes of in the scheme of record parks. It won't go very far if we do it that way so we looked at what if we grouped like things together. So grouping is a percentage of the total so we took the percent from the you know we wanted 28% park amenities 21% maintenance etc added that up, and then group them, or group them together so if you look at the three categories there in the middle of grouping maintenance slash decrease future fire risk. The next one is capital improvement categories, and then our recreational category. We decided if we group these three things together what we end up with this approximately four and a half million dollars one time funds for responding to maintenance needs, as well as decreasing future fire risk. The funds there are averages, sometimes we're going to have more funds sometimes we're going to have less funds, we might not spend the first two full years of funding as dedicated we might not need all those funds for the fire recovery. So this is a very fluid discussion so we're really looking at the strategy here, more than the dollars. Next at the grouping percent total if we look at grouping, all the capital improvements together. The categories would be improving and developing, creating and expanding, improving trails, and creating a plan for bikes as well so those are the four categories that you'd see there when I say when we say, all capital improvement categories. That's what we mean those four categories. All together be about eight and a half million dollars one time funds, and again a fluid number. We really just looking at the strategy, and what that leaves is about a million dollars or a little bit over a million dollars for the recreational category. What I have off to the right there. As the parentheses numbers is what we presented last time, not a huge difference, but that's what the change was since we came to you last time you can see the dollar amounts there. Again, not as critical to us because we know that this the funding is somewhat fluid so. But you can see where we came to you last time it's very similar. And then if we move to the next blue kind of the third category grouping and ranking. So what we did was we took the grouping from the grouping the percent totals up above in the middle, and then looked at factoring in a percentage. I do have to apologize I do have a math, math error in this one. So if, if you look at all capital improvement categories and look at 50% or more of the remaining funds used towards capital improvements that number would be closer to $7 million. It's it is a typo so I apologize for that. If you look at spending 40% of the funds on maintenance and decreasing future fire risk you're looking at about $5.5 million of one time funds again these are very fluid fluid numbers so we're just trying to show you so you can get an idea. But again, this could be more if the taxes doing well if the taxes aren't doing well to be less. And then the recreational programming category is around 10%. We looked at those when you look at the overall open ended questions, as well as just the percent total of what was requested. This seems to make sense to us since now we know that capital improvements are one of the higher priorities. We look at well then can we spend approximately 50% of the funds on that 40% of the funds for maintenance and future fire risk. 10% of the funds overall on programming recreational coordination. It's just three different ways of looking at strategizing moving forward, and we're recommending one of the bottom two, rather than just doing a straight percent of the total. One of the bottom two is going to get those categories more funding overall and we can have a better impact of what we could do moving forward. And I know that's a lot of information piled into one, but really if you're just looking at those blue categories are really looking at what sort of strategy should we should be looking for we had more strategies when we came back so this is what we've narrowed it down. When we were back when we came to you in April, we had a few more strategies and a few more slides that broke it down but really this is the core of what we need to discuss today. And we really want to look to you all at what you think is our best strategy moving forward. Next slide. And so, with this I just wanted to take a minute and let you know that before we move into what we mean by maintenance capital projects and recreation programming. That we're looking at $14 million overall for what we have left again we hope it's more, but that's what we have. We're looking at the percentages, either a you know a grouping and percentages or just the straight grouping of similar categories as, as, as feedback from you all tonight. And let's see, I'm sure there's something else. The other thing was that. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. I won't get ahead of myself I'm getting at myself. I'm going to turn it over to our deputy director of field services, Jeremy Gundy, and he's going to go through what we mean by when we say maintenance and fuel reduction, etc. What do we mean by that just to kind of bring that to your forethought and we'll go through maintenance capital projects and recreation. Thank you so much for joining me. Good afternoon chair clock, vice chair driven and board members. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss some of the funding potential projects that we're looking at through our maintenance division and parks. So as Jen mentioned earlier in the presentation, the city's currently undergoing a parks condition assessment that we're expecting the results of an early 2022. So, in the meantime, our maintenance team here in house has been working diligently at putting together just some basic concepts and some ideas and lists of what items we're seeing out there that could potentially benefit from this funding of course from measure in. So, some of the things that we've come up with are enhancing our current landscape contract so currently, we have a landscape contract that the handles and covers the mowing of all our turf over fields, but it does not include week management throughout the parks. So we're looking at some of the big medians and then our roadway landscape parcels. We're looking at that as a potential enhancement. And as I continue to go through this list of items once again these are just areas that we're looking on looking at and we're, you know, we're hoping to get some some influence and guidance and suggestions from the board and the community for more specifics. We're looking at invasive plant species throughout our parks and our open spaces. As many of you know, our open spaces are designed to be more natural, but over time, those invasive species plant species start to accumulate and take over and grow throughout those areas and work out some of the native plants that should be there and we're intended to be there originally so we're looking at ways to potentially reduce some of those those plant types throughout throughout our parks and open spaces. We're also looking at the Howard Park tennis courts. We are well aware of some of the cracking that's occurred through those courts and that has caused the closure of those courts and greatly impacted the public in the tennis community. So we're looking at whether or not that will be small enough project that we consider maintenance. And if not, kind of like what Jim was talking about the difference between maintenance projects and capital, you know, larger capital improvement projects that will go out to contract. We're also looking at the tennis courts at Galvin Park. So currently, the way that we've been handling the light outs the burned out lights that are lighting those courts. We've been investing in the newer technology with the LED lighting. So it's a lower cost to operate and then it's a lot longer life span for those types of fixtures. So we've been redo replacing those with LED fixtures as they burn out, but we could potentially move forward and replace the remaining fixtures with the with the use of measure and funding. We're also looking at various sports fields improvements for our sports fields. You know, include soccer, baseball softball. And so some of those improvements that we're thinking could be anywhere from installing, you know, shape cloth over the dugouts. You know, improving drainage features of some of the infield areas. Maybe even possibly some upgraded irrigation systems that may improve some efficiencies out there. And then, and then we're also looking at our playgrounds. So we do weekly playground inspections in house we do that to ensure the safety of the public and the children playing on those. So some of those playgrounds we'd like to see upgraded to like some newer technology as far as the fall protection beneath those playgrounds. And so what that that looks like is changing out some of those areas from sand to like an engineered wood fiber material which is a little bit better fall protection. So we're looking at that as a potential area to enhance throughout our park system. And then, you know, the forefront of this year is obviously the drought and, and the 20% reductions that were that were working hard to achieve throughout our parks. And so, you know, we're, we're working with our conservation teams here or water conservation teams throughout the city to identify potential improvements to the irrigation system whether they be newer technology and controllers we do have some newer technology but it's not system wide so we're looking at what that would look like. And that would obviously benefit you know ongoing operating costs and, and reduction, you know, and water usage beyond where we're at today. So those are some of the areas that we're looking at. And we do want to just, you know, kind of put that out there and let you know that we are still waiting for that, that condition assessment to come back to really get the full view. And then these are some of the areas that we are starting to identify and some of the direction so we thought it would be important to present that to you today and, and we welcome the feedback. Thank you for your time. It's Jeremy. Let's go ahead and move to the next slide. I'm going to go over the capital project priorities just as a reminder. So this is just a written version of what we've seen a grouping all the capital project priorities together, and their percentages capital projects like Jeremy mentioned sometimes when you think of the maintenance project, a trail that's splitting that's really beyond maintenance. We really, that's a capital project so those are things as well it would be included in this category, those things that are, they're going to help maintenance, but they're also going to be a capital project, because there's going to be less constant maintenance from the maintenance team to do that. So if you look at, if you look at these capital improvements overall together improving and developing up by fields playgrounds creating spending parks and trails, etc. Planning and developing bike paths and trails and trails along waterways those are some of the, those are the key categories from the, from the tax measure itself. So if you look at the grouping scenario for capital projects, it's about eight and a half million dollars. If you look at the grouping and ranking process that we showed you back on slide 17 it's about $7 million overall. And again, I, I hesitate to use those numbers, because they are fluid but right now if we have to do it right now that's where we're at so I just wanted to remind you all about that. Next slide please. And so, I also thought it would be important to talk about what is a capital project, and it's those new brand new projects. Coffee Park was a brand new project even though it was burned and we restored it nevertheless as a brand new park pretty much deferred maintenance I just spoke about like a splitting trail that's an example. So many of your placements you've got an example there we're putting in a brand new picnic table at. Actually that might I thought that was door apart that it might be somewhere else might be the Tansas Creek but anyway that those are capital projects to because they have to be compliant with building codes, you can't just pop a picnic table down so they become a capital project in a picnic bench, or a bench along the trail is a capital project because that bench must be 80 compliant, all the way back out to the sidewalk. So, when you when you think of capital projects it's all over the place but anything that isn't maintenance or programming is likely a capital project. Super tiny from picking table to huge new constructions like their park and coffee park. I thought I'd verbalize some common capital project costs. So you can kind of get an idea of when we talk about capital costs, how far will our funding actually go. And so, if you're looking at a new community and neighborhood park. Coffee park was about four and a half million dollars as a, as a reference this big projects often end up about a million dollars an acre. Just just by comparison, and if you do if your park is really packed with amenities that can be even twice that much. And if you do a new, if you're looking at a new playground we're looking at $447,000 for a new neighborhood playground $846,000 for a new community park playground, that is everything inclusive design construction management oversight and construction itself. So that's cradle to grave as we say in the construction industry. So if you want to install a new lights soccer field or sport field. You're looking at $1.9 to two and a half million dollars per field, depending on what sort of infrastructure is already at the park. A dog park, the coffee park dog park forward and $71,000 for a new dog park. So in addition, our most recent acquisition happened when the real estate wasn't as high as it is now and we paid about a million dollars an acre for park land. And of course something small like a monument sign we're looking at $25,000. So, I just, I don't expect you to remember all of that. But when we look at the amount of funding we have every year, and look at how many rules and regulations that we're looking at, and look at how much everything costs, I just want you to be, I wanted you to be aware and have that in your back pocket as you're thinking through these processes. Things do cost a little bit more when we're in a public setting because there are so many rules and regulations associated with them. And we have to do everything very hyper compliant, of course, and we want to do that. Next slide. We're looking at analysis again. We're not asking you to give us feedback on these analyses necessarily or at least I'm not on the capital projects version but you can get an idea of what you could afford with some of the scenarios we're talking about here. So if we look at eight and a half million dollars for one time funds overall from this then you'd be looking at over $2 million per quadrant. I just wanted to throw that out there for you so I know that that's a question sometimes well just divided by the quadrant see what we get well this is what you would get it's not a lot. If you do it per quadrant necessarily. So I looked at some scenarios for you just to kind of throw them out there so you can kind of get an idea of what we could afford. So if we looked at installing for community park playgrounds for neighborhood park playgrounds and one lighted artificial sports turf, that would pretty much get really close to the $8 million mark for that. That's what you could afford for about $7.6 million. So then we have a little bit of change left over for other projects but this is just a scenario to kind of bring it to the forefront of what things actually cost. If we looked at a two quadrant equitable scenario where we actually installed two lighted sports fields and two community park playgrounds and two neighborhood park playgrounds, you're looking at about the same amount of funds about $8 million. You have less community park playgrounds and neighborhood park playgrounds by to each, but you have one more lighted soccer field or sports multi sport turf field. So those are just, again, I'm not asking for your feedback necessarily on those I just wanted to throw those out there so you can kind of get an idea of what it means for the cost of things. Other considerations we also have other funding sources for capital projects we have the park development impact fees. We have grant funding to consider so definitely keep that in mind as you're thinking through this process there's a lot to think about here. We also have a long list of things that folks have requested over the years. The most recent thing that came to this board was a half an acre of the top. So things like that that aren't even captured on here are things that we need to consider. We have many incomplete master plans sitting out there. There's all kinds of things we have the deferred maintenance projects that are in these scenarios. And so, as Jeremy mentioned, we're looking at that parks condition assessment to really help us. And that's due in early 2022. We still have one more small set of community meetings to go through after all this and I'll cover that at the end of the presentation but I just wanted to remind you that we're stopping by the board of community services to get feedback. We're going to go to council and then we're going to go back out to the community. So with that, I am going to turn it over to the next slide and over to Jeff to go through the programming slides. Thank you. Good evening board. Again, Jeff tippets interim deputy director for recreation and looking at the funds there's really kind of one of the things I wanted to propose today is there's a couple of scenarios. As Jen mentioned earlier in the presentation, we're looking at the last eight years of funding under the current measure. So scenario one is to look at that as an eight year spending plan. And with those estimates again with fluctuating numbers that are constantly changing and then actuals obviously won't exactly meet projections would be looking at something like $173,000 a year. The other scenario I really want to talk about in terms of recreation and the direction that we are looking at and would be interested in your feedback on is a six year scenario, where then we would be asking to receive approximately $230,000 a year. So to get into a little bit more. And again that's this money. It's not like the general fund budget where it's allocated per year this is this is money that would build up so by by holding off from doing eight years to six years that money is not lost so that's why it accrues to more money per year. So why is six year plan for recreation there's there's a few reasons one is coven uncertainty. We've recently received reports from recreation and the different things that we've been doing. We've been one step forward two steps back a step to the left spin in a circle. And the reality is we're still doing that. We were on our path to being back and getting programs back to some semblance of normal. But two days before our last registration the new mass quarter came out and we had to have two days to figure out what does that mean on the impact of our operations before thousands of people start signing up for activities and recreation. We still weekly are issuing a number of refunds through different programs for different reasons related to coven so the idea of trying to still figure our way out of coven while also throwing in a substantial programming budget like $173,000 a year is just more uncertainty that quite frankly I don't feel like recreation is in a place to best maximize and utilize that resource right now for the community so that coven uncertainty is a reason to to delay for a couple of years until we start spending those funds. The other one is sales tax uncertainty we've talked about these numbers being flexible, allowing those funds to build up for a couple of years when you're talking about programming. When we get established a program we have a program running for three years and then sales tax plummet. There's not a lot you can do to adjust a program other than to cut the program to, you know, reduce the program to do those types of things so for us to spend the money as it's coming in. There's some uncertainty there and there's some concern that we will have to take steps back with our program a year three or four and try to project what sales tax are going to look like for the next eight years is certainly a risky game whereas if we give it a couple years that money builds up. Then we're spending and playing catch up and as there's a down year and sales tax or different things happen throughout that time. We have a little bit more time to fluctuate that spending over two to three years of program as opposed to having to make that adjustment in one year of programming. The other aspect of this is preparation and I hinted on this a little bit with the COVID uncertainties for staff to really be able to prepare for where is this money going to go, what are the programming needs, where are we going to develop infrastructure that might be needed to expand in those areas. The staffing plan to handle it a couple years to prepare for that and look at that and strategize is going to mean a better product and a better program for the community. I've recently in the last week been asked twice how what I consider success and it's not registration number of registrations that the other there's quick ways to look at success. Oh this program sold out it was successful, but it's really to dig in and look at what's the quality of the program, the safety the satisfaction results all those types of things and so really focusing on that and making sure that we're we're providing good high quality program safe program for the community. And then the last piece of that is community outreach right I mean the other aspect of that is is does the community want it does the community need it is there a desire for this programming so giving us a couple years using some of those funds. In those first two years to do some community outreach specific to recreation recreation was captured in in a broad aspect of the community means of currently been taking forth and and what the desire is for community, or for for recreation programming, but there's nothing in those results that really tell recreation, what is the community looking for. How should we be expanding our senior program operations are aquatic operations summer camps use sports adult sports. Now really where is recreation going to really look to expand and increase the programming that we're offering with this resource. So those next steps again with the six year proposal would be a couple years to evaluate that do community outreach be able to assess internally with the city what's possible and one of the things I really want to focus on with when you look at the amount of money per year which one time funds don't really work in recreation and programming so we're certainly looking at as a yearly budget how to one type fund, the amount of money that it is right now 173 230,000 a year. We can make a we can do quite that's a big budget for programming, but one of the things that we need to evaluate and prepare ourselves for is, how do we make sure as much of that as possible is going directly to the program budget. It's a great budget to run a program. It's a lot of money to add on to our current staffing load and what work people will to take on a cable cable offer, because if we bring on staffing using that money. Then we're going to have the staffing top rate it and we're going to quickly have a very small program budget so it's, it's weighing those two things so making sure that we're taking those next steps to get ready for it is, we're adding programs in the right spaces were set up and organized in a way to be able to grow. Again, certainly over these last few years from from fires to to the pandemic. Growth is exciting. But again you've you've seen all the ways that recreation has has pivoted and adjusted, and quite frankly recreation needs a little bit of time to put all those pieces back together you know we took apart the puzzle and we want to complete the action and the next step is we need to put that puzzle back together and get our infrastructure set back up so that we're ready to expand and offer more programs to the to the public so we'll be curious to hear your thoughts on those kind of scenarios and and recreation looking at it as a six year approach and giving a couple years to continue that recovery from coven and establishing that foundation for us to proceed with these funds and in the best way. It's Jeff, and let's go ahead and move to the final slide. And so, we could move to the next slide please like Jeff and Jeremy server really looking at making sure that part of our next step is to reach out to the community. The next big step I should say reach out to the community, again, with more specific topics you know certainly from a capital perspective, the capital projects perspective we are looking at feedback. The next step would be to receive the parks condition assessment, which will also contain a priority list of projects in it that can be completed in the city which used to do so we're receiving that early in 2022, hopefully January, or at the latest in February we should have a good version of that by January. We wanted to have another small meeting series, maybe one city wide and one city wide Spanish as a primary language meeting to reconnect with the community on more specific items at that point, especially for the capital program. As you heard, Jeff to this is really looking at you know maybe a delayed scenario but for the capital project we want to get rolling with something. We want to start some projects with those funds so we're looking to gain community feedback on specific things we could roll forward with and take as action back to council later that year. Connection with the community again would be really great for capital projects, as well as the recreation team and the maintenance team, as we strategize about specific priorities and funding, funding tasks and projects that we could spend the fun funds on. We'll set and analyze that community input will develop a final priority plan for capital spending a little bit as far along as we can with maintenance and recreation, and we'll return for a priority plan setting in summer of 2022 and return and then move forward with your council with a priority spending plan again, a much more refined plan than what we have right now, and then following that will begin implementing capital projects, any sort of maintenance spending strategies developed, as well as any recreational programs when we're ready to have those come online. So what we're looking for you tonight is feedback on this overall strategy, are we going in the right direction. Have we thought about this, the right way, have we analyzed the data that we've collected in a, in a manner that's easily digestible to move forward with to the community. We presented you options with the, you know, 50% for capital 40% for maintenance 10% for recreation, and something very similar comes out of that when you look at just grouping the categories together it's a little bit more funding for capital, a little bit less for and about the same amount for recreation programming. So we wanted to see if that strategy itself is a viable solution for moving forward and if you have any specific feedback or questions, and also the schedule as a strategy does this does this work or is there something else we're missing. So we're really looking for feedback from you tonight on all of that before we roll into our next steps. So I'm going to stop sharing and turn it back to Chair Quinn. Thank you Jen, an awful lot of information. So I usually wait till the end as the chair but I'm actually going to start a point of clarification that I would like addressed is the formula and we'll call it the 5040 10 formula. Could that be applied for the remainder of this 10 year term, the eight remainder remaining years. That's that's a strategy we're putting forth that we can for your consideration so yes that could be something that we look at for the remainder of the years we need something especially the capital and the maintenance programming to so that we can start developing more specific plan needs some feedback on that. So it could be a given it could be a set in stone the 5040 10 for the duration of the funding. Generally, again, the funding is fluid and there might be those projects that benefit both maintenance and recreation that we bring back. We're not looking at specific funding strategies but looking at the fund structure. So it's not an absolute 50% will be spent on this it's we'd like to look at a strategy that uses approximately 50% of the funds, but we need some flexibility. So we don't look at it as some stone stone per se that we look at it as a strategy to aim for that still allows us some flexibility to pivot as they say and strategize for something new that comes up, or that we didn't consider two or three years from now that comes up that we would like to send the funding on. There's lots of things are where the funding can benefit all three sections but when you look at those categories grouping them together makes sense to us, and we really like your feedback on that strategy for moving forward. Thank you. My second question is you shared with us the 2019 2020 County. Report. Would you quickly review how the other towns are using their money, bearing in mind they did not get hit with the same fire costs that we had, and also Santa Rosa is the largest city so it would get the, it would get proportionally more money than even pedal to share what we've been talking about tonight with how how the other cities are moving forward with their share. I am going to look that up and see if I can share that to the best of my ability. Again, that's for the previous fiscal year. We have let's see. In line, are we grossly different is every city unique. I don't need you to drill down real far. Well, I think probably what would be better than to look at the funding is looking at what cities are doing overall. For example, every the other thing I would say is that each agency within the county receives a percentage of funds based on their size so Santa Rosa receives the most amount of funding in the city comparatively. Where's the county receives the bulk of the capital tax, the tax funds. So, let's, for example, Sebastopol has done a lot of tree work for removal replacement of hazardous trees. They were placing a pathway in Ives Park, which is their central park. The city of Sonoma is invested funds in the Monteney Preserve contracting with the Sonoma Ecology Center to manage the preserve. Their projects include maintaining trails assessing hazardous tree trees managing vegetation to reduce wildfire risk. The City of Sonoma Center is in negotiation to acquire land for the Expansion of Kaiser Park, and they're looking at balancing those funds with future for future pop park initiative so we can save in their funds. Let's see, runner park. They have a full time services, community services supervisor to enhance their recreation programs and special events. They use the funds for Halloween trick or treat. And other outdoor at the, they also did it for treating towards the end of the King cave fire so a special treat for folks affected by that fire. They're also updating swings at a popular park in the park. Thank you. Yeah, you can kind of get the idea that we're very similar. Some folks are spending it, you know, they're really looking at themselves internally, like we are tonight, and what we need to spend it on. So any other questions or clarifications before comments from the board. Terry. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Jen and Jason and Jeremy. Just a couple of quick clarification questions, Jenny mentioned the ballot measure requires us to not supplant the 27 baseline for staffing, but to supplement that. What about in terms of contract services is there any requirement to not supplant contract services that may have been in effect in 2017. I believe it would be somewhat similar. It's, it's really, they look at it from a staffing base. So if we decided to remove a giant portion of our staffing to replace it with contracting service that would be considered supplanting. Okay, you can use contracted service to enhance what we do. Okay. And then under maintenance was listed. We'd removal and I believe some maintenance for park for medians and street landscaping. And I was unclear whether that referred to median and street landscaping as it relates to a specific park or just city why I'm going to go ahead and answer that for you. Thank you for asking that question. So the way that we do are we debate meant throughout the city is a combination through our departments we debate meant program and then our also our city staff. And due to the recession back in 2008 we, we are only able to do the lead abatement on those landscape parcels roadway landscape parcels and center medians, once, once and hopefully twice a year so we'd like to enhance that city wide through the use of the measure and funds, if that's, if that's the direction of the board also agreed to that. Okay, thank you. And I was on that same topic I was just curious whether there's any relationship between maintenance of medians and landscape street landscaping to the city's stormwater assessment. Not that I'm familiar with at the time. Okay. All right, that's, I think all the clarification I needed thank you. Anyone else Logan you look ready. Yeah, I had some questions Carol do you want. This is just questions and not comments. Okay. So I think, well, I have to make a comment I'm sorry to make my question. Parks condition assessment is really important for us to make those decisions on maintenance so I think it's going to be difficult for us to have a strategy there to Jeremy and Jen on that. We need it's obviously a huge priority of the community. So we need to make sure that we know more before we can do that. I'm sorry if you hear my puppy running around in the background there. Another so that's just sort of we need more information on that and the, do you know if that's early 2022 is that the first quarter or the first half what, what does that mean, Jeremy or Jen. We're looking at receiving that in January, and there might be some follow up final dress in February, January. Okay, that's great. And then that kind of influences the rest of that funding breakdown, which I think makes sense but it's hard to know what the needs going to be. And on that in that 40% that is maintenance, there was fire reduction, put into that. I guess my question is, that's a broad category of work is some of that also funded by the fire department city wide or is all of our fire reduction work coming through measure M. So the fire department has their own budget that was approved by council for fire reduction throughout the city and they have parcels already identified for that. It doesn't necessarily include areas throughout our parks and our open spaces so that's what we're looking at adding to that as a possibility for using the measuring funding. So if they're doing so the fire department is doing a project at a park, we're not, would we be involved at all would we be supplementing that or are we just doing it at totally different locations. How does that work Jeremy. So if they currently have have an area in a park under contract and then we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be duplicating those efforts there. So we would refocus our efforts to another area and maybe an open space or wherever the existing need is. And so just to be clear, part of their contract services to the minimum requirements to meet the fire code and, and we debate met throughout the city and the wildland urban interface areas and and other areas throughout the city so those would be the minimum like 30 foot 100 foot clearances. And so if we were being above and beyond that that we would be looking at would be in addition to what their contract covers. Okay. Thank you. One last question. So those maintenance, we want we're looking at these capital projects, and those are going to have maintenance costs if we, if we build a new sports field that has maintenance costs right. Is that 40% have any interaction with that 50% are you planning, if you're going to use 50% on capital projects is is part of that 40% just for those. You hear what I'm saying and maybe just to Jeremy again kind of that nexus between those two categories. Can you explain that a little more. Just with an analogy that that I look at so any, you know, if we're looking at replacing existing sports field with, you know, something with a newer technology such as all weather sports field I see that as something that spans all three of those categories and it's an enhancement for the recreation programming, which helps generate general fund revenue, which is a plus. It also provides more opportunities for the public to go out and use sports fields outside of, you know, regular programming without recreation so I see that as a plus I also see, you know, reduce level of maintenance within all weather sports field, you know, given there is no regular routine maintenance but generally it's less than a traditional field so I see that as a plus and then, you know, I see it kind of a collaboration between all three of those areas and the funding that we, you know, funding breakdown that we've been receiving so I don't know if Jen would like to comment also. I was going to say I thought you did a great job there's always those projects where when we enhance something like Jeremy was talking about earlier. It changes the maintenance now we don't have to run out there every five seconds to fix something. We're just doing our routine maintenance and then the recreation team could programming it without refunding people because something didn't work. So, I think it's a win win where we can enhance what we have. Okay, and then this is my last one Carol I swear no more comments or questions. Maybe if we can figure out a way to represent that some formula or number that's easy for people to grasp that when you fix something you do you pay less to maintain it. I think that's logical, you know, to most people, like when you replace your roof or whatever at your house. So, if we can figure out a way to demonstrate that to folks because they're telling us all the time we need more maintenance right so let's show them that by building things, we actually can make it be better long term. So that's just sort of a part of the strategy, let's find a more tangible way to show people that connection. And now I am done. Thank you Carol. Good questions. As always, anyone else questions or clarifications before we move on to comments. Okay, and Jen, I think I would like simply stated direction for the kind of comments you're seeking from us at this point. Yes, I can do that so what we're looking for you from tonight as a recommendation to counsel to look at the strategies presented tonight and move forward with the schedule strategy as well as one or a version there of all of those strategies. If they look good to you, especially the last two strategies. I'm not being very succinct in my, let me let me start again. We're looking for a recommendation to, to counsel to approve one of the two spending strategies as well as the schedule strategy that we've presented to reengage with the community etc. So Jen, I think, can we get that slide back up. Sure. Give me, give me one minute. And then I'm hoping everybody will will weigh in. So we're, Jen is that what we want. This is the strategy for moving forward with the next steps and then I can go back to slide 17 which is the funding strategies. So we're looking at grouping and ranking or grouping a percent of total and again these are very similar. We just gave you some options to think about here. If you, if you can't pick one or the other will move forward with a version, you know, a modified version of these two that's fine but if you have, if you have comments on which ones you like best, that would be fantastic. Okay, I'm going to start at the top of my screen and Terry you're on top. Thank you actually I just raised my hand to see if we want to take public comment before we do our comments. Terry you are so wise. Let's see. We do discussion input. I think we've done the discussion put part we have not done the input parts. Then we move on to public comments. This is, this is how my script reads. Jen discussion or public comments. You can do, yeah, you can roll into public comments as long as you're done with your comments but usually it's public comments and it comes back to the board. Sorry. I think if you want to roll into public comments first you'll, you'll hear what you need to hear and then the board can make their comments from. Great. Be patient with me. Thank you board members do we have any public comments. No we have no hands raised at this time. Mary Lou you'll let me know if that changes. I will. Great. Stephen. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the tremendous, tremendous amount of effort put into this and the creativity obviously you've put in a lot of time and resources doing analyses and thinking about strategies and such. And I'm guessing that it's going to take each of us on the board some time to weigh through this and considers things possibly just in private one on one. I'd like to have some time to think about it. And if I understand it, staff would like the our board's decision by January. And I'm guessing, you know, before the holiday start would be a good deadline for the board. So that gives us two more meetings to kind of get to a conclusion and a final recommendation maybe in November. I'm hoping we're not thinking about making a decision this evening that we can have at least another 30 days and one more board meeting to consider everything that's been offered to us. And Barbara board members still know if I can clarify, yeah, we're not looking for a final decision on how to spend the funds. We're just looking for a recommendation or we headed in the right direction. These are either one of these strategies or one of them, a good strategy we should put forth to continue moving on. And that includes re engaging with the community in early spring of next year and coming back to the board for a final, more final recommendations and more project specific recommendations. So we're, we're absolutely not looking for any sort of recommendation for specific projects or specific spending we're just looking for our recommendation for our straight, excuse me, our strategy moving forward so that we can keep going with the process we have originally developed with the board. So that's the continuation of that. And if you don't want to have a recommendation based on these strategies that's fine as well but we, we are looking for some sort of recommendation and feedback, so that we can go to council. For example, there was a six year strategy and eight years strategy for maintenance if I recall. What about a three year strategy. I don't think. Right, the, the recreation team is looking for a little bit more time before they come back with specific recommendations so they're looking for a six year plan versus rolling into enhancements right away. We're looking for more time as well. And all of us need more time before we come back with anything specific. We're really just looking for the big picture strategy, are we moving forward by looking at grouping capital projects together maintenance and field reduction together, and recreation programming together is that a good strategy, maybe I should say it that way. So I think that that's one of the advantages is not really important tonight. It's more important that we're looking for you have is the grouping that we put together working for you, or should we look at a different strategy going forward so super specific tonight. Jen, excuse me. Are you looking for information from us tonight that you take forward to city council and then bring back to us at a later date. We're looking for a recommendation tonight that we can take towards council, based on strategies again of grouping capital projects together, recreation projects together and maintenance type projects together. But this would be coming back to us. Next year, it will become, yeah, we'll be going out to the community and then coming back to you all. Yeah. Stephen any other questions or comments. Sorry that I have only three more minutes. Sorry. You're you're on you. Excuse me do we have quorum if Stephen has to leave. Yes, we do have quorum if Stephen needs to leave. I have a question from anyone else. So I have a further comment, and that is in looking at the background information. I was a little confused at first that the zoom meeting that I participated in and did my survey was much different than the online version. And I'm hoping moving forward. Everyone takes part in the same survey, especially if we're still in a virtual setting. The other thing is I'm wondering if the city had a way to make sure that people were not weighing in more than once. And at the comments, you go on to your Facebook group and you have everyone who writes your same sports activity, fill out this survey and suddenly you have 50 people weighing in and stacking the deck. I would like to see more scientific practice in the next survey, which will truly be dealing with real things. I can answer a question about repeat folks repeating their survey. So we can tell when folks are using the same computer. But we have no way of knowing if that's for people in a household using the same computer if it's the person, same person taking the survey twice, although we did receive unique surveys and every situation so or individual responses from folks. So we're not participating that we have and we did not receive repeat computer addresses very often. So, significantly, the data is showing independent responses. Thank you for that. Madonna. I'm sorry. Did you, did you want to say something. No. Okay. Can we move forward to city council. With anything is, is anyone comfortable. Terry, I see your hand up again. Yeah, thank you. I was just going to offer a couple of quick comments if I could. So I am very much in favor of the recommendation for a six year plan for recreation, for all the reasons that Jeff described it makes perfect sense to me to move forward with a six year plan as opposed to an eight year plan. And generally supportive of the 5040 10 split, given that there's going to be great flexibility that it may be that what starts as a maintenance item ends up being a capital item. So I'm, but I'm comfortable with that approach. Moving forward. And you didn't ask for input on the, on the quadrant equity, but I'll just say, and all that would be wonderful if each quadrant received. You know, a relatively comparable portion of the funds. It's, I'd rather see equity and in other ways and maybe the parks condition assessment will elicit where the improvements or monies are both best spent with, without worrying too much about equity among the quadrants. So I'll just throw that in there too. So those are my comments. Thank you. Excellent point and perhaps that can be included in the refinement of the survey. Yes, Carolina clarified that we did collect information per quadrant and we will, as we move forward continue to collect per quadrant information so that we can share that with you in the future. I think Terry's point was more that rather than have one quarter in each quadrant that the funding go to capital improvements in the area of the city where they were most needed is that correct Terry. Yes. Carolina. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for all the work. Thank you. The comments. I'm, I must say I did read it once through, because the comments are fascinating. I'm glad that we're able to go out and ask those questions and and be able to read them. You sit down in a quiet space and read them. But so far, I think your strategies of the six year plan is the most realistic. Eight years is a really long time to start this kind of a strategic planning. And I like the 5040 10 plan also it made the most sense to me. And, and so I, I, of course, life as we know in Sonoma County is pretty interesting so we have to kind of always remember that. Logan, stop me if I'm wrong, but this is going to appear on a ballot. Right. You're the political guy here. Eventually, this isn't going to I mean measure M is going to pop back up. When it has to renewed your I think you're right Carolina but this would be for the current tax that people have already voted for. Yeah, right. So we have to remember that we're that something else that we're dealing with that we have to really remember that when we're out in the community and talking to people that we want to be sure that people understand that that is something that is coming up and these things are going to depend on what the outcome there is so I just want to throw that in. Thank you. Another way to say that is to make sure that we use this money wisely to begin with, or it will not get renewed, and Santa Rosa is the majority of the county votes. So, as goes Santa Rosa, perhaps goes the future. No pressure Jen. I appreciate it yes I know it's it's, if you think about what we've heard over the course of collecting this input, we could probably spend this over 10 times this this funds easily from what we are hearing requested but that's why it's painstaking to do a priority process it's not easy it's complicated it's messy. But we just need a strategy to move forward so we can start taking those first steps into projects and recreation programming and maintenance. Well thank you I appreciate all your time to read it I know it's a lot that I appreciate it. So I also would be comfortable going forward with the 5040 10. The 50 capital improvements is fairly self explanatory with the asterisk that maintenance goes down with some of these capital improvements, the maintenance 40% I think will need some clarification. So that it is not doing the work that the city should already be doing. I'm just going to come right out and say the fact that we're not whacking down the weeds in our park. Because we should be whacking down the weeds in our park and we're going to use this special money to do it is awful. It is just awful. I wish the city could step up to the point and say, we're going to take care of the weeds. We found that money in general funds. I would love the maintenance to be enhanced maintenance rather than baseline maintenance and taking care of the weeds is baseline maintenance in my opinion, and I will say that over and over and over again, but I would be comfortable going forward with that 5040 10 as well. Do we at this point do some kind of a show of hands or a roll call to say we're comfortable moving forward with that or not. Is this something that majority rules. If you could make a recommendation and we could take a vote that would be appreciated. I asked Terry Griffin who's so good at this to make a recommendation. Sure, I'll make a motion that we forward to counsel the proposed strategy of 50% of the funds for capital projects 40% of the funds for maintenance and fire reduction and 10% for recreation. Second that motion. Staff or do you want to do a roll call or a show of hands. I will turn to our host to see what they prefer. We'll do a roll call vote. Please respond. I or nay when I call your name. Chair quant. I vice chair Griffin. I board member spillman board members. Oh he had to leave board member pits. Okay. Board member Cruz. I. And board member spins. I. The motion carries with five eyes. The motion carries. Great. Thank you all. Thank you. We are almost done. We're going to move on to committee reports. There was no mayor's lunch again. The waterways committee revisited a project that we have seen once already. Creek week is coming up. And because of COVID it is essentially a virtual. It is a virtual meeting with staff to see if we can go pick up garbage as a committee or unofficially as a committee. One day in October. And if anyone would be interested in unofficially joining and picking up trash. At Prince Memorial Greenway, which is the waterway and also a city park. It's a virtual meeting. That's it for that. Moving on to written and electronic. Sorry. Could you please email me that date? I would. I would like some information on that. Thank you. So it's not set up yet. When I get it, I'll, I'll try and send out an email. Thank you, Madonna. Written and electronic communication. Future agenda items and Jen, we have how many more meetings in calendar year 2021? We have two more meetings. So we'll have a meeting October. 27th, I believe, and then we'll have another December 8th. Thank you. Anyone have anything at this point? It's been, it's been a long, it's been a long meeting. Thanks everyone for hanging in and doing such a bang up job. I think we are ready to adjourn again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It looks like you may have skipped over. Item eight committee reports. No, there was no mayor's lunch. And the waterways committee revisited a project that we had seen. We are not having a meeting, but we're talking about going and cleaning up the greenway. So we're going to have a meeting. Thank you. Thank you. At 626 on Wednesday, the 22nd of September, I say good night all. Bye bye.