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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-07-24 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 July 24, 2018 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Ryan McCauley (arrived 13 late), Don McDougall, David Moss, and Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: 15 Others Present: 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane, Natalie Khwaja 17 I. ROLL CALL 18 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS 19 Chair McDougall: Has everybody had a chance to look at the agenda? Are there any 20 suggested changes or requests or deletions? Do we have any from the Commissioners or 21 from staff? If not, we'll go with Oral Communications. 22 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 23 Chair McDougall: I have one card here from Monica Williams. Monica, if you'll come 24 forward. 25 Monica Williams: Good evening, Chair McDougall and Commissioners. 26 Chair McDougall: Good evening. 27 Ms. Williams: I'm Monica Engel Williams, President of the Silicon Valley Pickleball Club, 28 and I'm representing 340 members to request that the policy for reserving tennis courts is 29 updated to include pickleball players. We founded our nonprofit club in 2016 primarily to 30 purchase insurance to allow us to reserve the tennis courts. Imagine our dismay when we 31 discovered that this privilege was only for USTA and the Palo Alto Tennis Club. Our first 32 appeal to you was 16 months ago, and to date the policy remains the same. Please bear in 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 2 mind that reservations generate revenue for the City. The current policy states tennis courts 1 are available for reservation for Palo Alto Tennis Club and USTA tournament use only. 2 We're requesting an update to the policy that would add only six words and would read 3 tennis courts are available for reservation for Palo Alto Tennis Club, the USTA, and the 4 Silicon Valley Pickleball Club tournament use only. All other guidelines would stay the 5 same. There would be no conflict with tennis reservations because we can be very flexible 6 with the timing of our club tournaments, and forming an ad hoc committee or waiting until 7 we have dedicated pickleball courts for this minor update is totally unnecessary. We're 8 planning to hold a midweek tournament in August, and we'd very much appreciate if the 9 policy can be updated by then because it's very difficult to hold a tournament on a drop-in 10 basis. When the original policy was adopted in 2009, it was on condition that it would be 11 reviewed periodically. It was reviewed and updated in 2012 but only for the field 12 reservations, not for the tennis courts. Pickleball is no longer just for the senior community. 13 Tennis players have joined us and recently a 10-year-old boy, Jacob, who participated in 14 our free youth pickleball clinic is already competing with adults. Besides our City 15 recreation classes that were full last session with 44 in the class and a waiting list, we teach 16 for free anyone who drops by the courts and wants to learn. They do not have to be 17 members of our club. We are all volunteers who want to share the joy of pickleball and 18 improve the health and wellness of our community. Our club includes almost 40 percent 19 of Palo Alto residents, four of whom are on our Board of Directors. We are requesting that 20 you act without any further delay to update the tennis court reservation policy to include 21 the Silicon Valley Pickleball Club. Thank you all for your service to our community and 22 for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you. 23 Chair McDougall: Monica, thank you for your presentation. I would personally thank you 24 for your perseverance. If we have no other Oral Communications, I would invite the staff 25 report. 26 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 27 Daren Anderson: Good evening. Daren Andersen with Open Space, Parks and Golf. I've 28 got a brief Department Report for you. I'll start with the Baylands Boardwalk Project 29 update. This is good news. As you probably remember, this one was fraught with 30 challenges in obtaining permits because the work is happening directly in the saltmarsh 31 and subject to a number of reviews from environmental regulatory agencies. We've got all 32 the permits. We issued the notice to proceed to Vortex Marine Construction on July 20th. 33 They've since ordered the materials. There's an extended time period before getting the 34 materials. Alaskan yellow cedar is the type of material they'll be using for most of the 35 supports, and there's a delay in getting that. They ordered as soon as they start—they 36 couldn't start anyway until the end of nesting bird season, so they'll start construction in 37 September and complete the project by January 6th is the game plan. No work can happen 38 after January 31, 2019. That'll be the beginning of next bird nesting season. I met with the 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 3 contractor; we did the preliminary walk-through. They're confident they can get the project 1 done on time. The Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan is moving forward. I 2 recently received some initial concept designs for the ITT area, and I shared that with the 3 ad hoc committee. Soon they'll be coming to the stakeholders and to the full Commission. 4 We'll come back with some updates. Likewise, I got the initial maps that show the different 5 sea level rise effects for the Baylands, and that went out to the ad hoc members who will 6 review that. It'll go to the stakeholders and likewise to the full Commission for some 7 review. It's moving along. The Foothills trail reroute, I'll be presenting more at the next 8 Commission meeting. Just the other day, I was at an inter-departmental review committee. 9 This is comprised of different members of various departments within the City, all with a 10 sort of vested interest in things. They review your proposal, your permit, and point out 11 different things, tree impacts, water concerns. There's one part of the rerouted trail that 12 passes a very shallow drainage. One issue we're going to have to address is in the report 13 we reference an ephemeral drainage. Apparently, that triggered some things we'll have to 14 resolve. All the other concerns have been mitigated. The proximity to trees has been 15 mitigated. We've rerouted around as many as possible and have mitigations in place for 16 those trees that will be affected. We've distanced our rerouted trail from the middens, the 17 woodrat middens. They're along that area. We pushed them out the necessary distance to 18 avoid impacts to those. We're very close. The planner I'm working with is confident that 19 we'll have our permit in time to start construction at the beginning of September, which 20 again coincides with the end of the nesting bird season. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: For that drainage, would it just be putting in a small culvert or 22 something through there? 23 Mr. Anderson: Hard to say. It's the most shallow drainage you can possibly imagine. We 24 have an existing trail that crosses it without issue. I don't believe it will be one, neither did 25 the planner. It's more semantics and just making sure everyone's comfortable with it. 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is not a big deal? 27 Mr. Anderson: I don't think so. I have a conference call tomorrow with the department 28 person who's responsible for that with our consultant. We'll try to work it out. The 29 Foothills Park 7.7-acre area, just an update. We went to Council with an informational 30 report, both on Buckeye Creek and the 7.7-acre area. I want to keep this brief because 31 we've got a full agenda, but I want to let you know I discussed with the ad hoc—firstly, we 32 informed Council that we will be opening that area this summer. That is the game plan. I 33 met with the ad hoc and discussed a game plan for how we're going to strategize how we 34 do this. It's a little bit of a challenge in that having a lot of fanfare for a parcel where we 35 haven't done any development—there's no amenities on that parcel—feels a little 36 uncomfortable to do a ribbon-cutting to come into a large open area with not much in it. 37 At the same time, we've waited a very long to get access to this parkland. It's not everyday 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 4 you get to open an area that's been fenced off for so many years. After talking with Kristen 1 and the feedback from the ad hoc, we were thinking a low-key event much like the opening 2 for the dog park, a simple ribbon-cutting, perhaps a tour of the exterior of the native plant 3 nursery from Grassroots Ecology. The Rangers could walk you around the area. We've 4 also completed some cleanup around the entrance. You might remember the maintenance 5 shop is right there at the entrance. We've done a number of cleanups there to make it look 6 good. Now, we're in the finally stages of finding out the schedule for our fence contractor 7 to come out and put in the necessary fencing. We're very close. I'll keep the Commission 8 and the ad hoc advised as we have a date, but it's not yet scheduled. I think I'll leave the 9 Department Report at that. 10 Kristen O'Kane: I'd like to add one thing because I'm not sure if Monica will be staying 11 for the whole meeting, when we get to upcoming agendas. At our August meeting, we'll 12 be talking about pickleball and tennis and hopefully bringing a draft revised policy to that 13 meeting. I just wanted to let everyone know. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: Kristen, I'm really glad you brought that up because I was going to 15 ask you during the Department Report when we could move forward on this whole thing. 16 It's been a while. Thank you. 17 Chair McDougall: If there's no other department reports, on to regular business. David. 18 Commissioner Moss: I wanted to get an update on the Magical Bridge. Do we do that 19 now or do we do that at the end of the meeting? 20 Mr. Anderson: Maybe I can just clarify. Do you mean the Matadero Creek bridge next to 21 Magical Bridge playground? 22 Commissioner Moss: Yes. 23 Mr. Anderson: I can just give you a quick update. Progress is going well. Anticipated 24 completion is August 30. A side note, the old bridge was—we picked it up and brought it 25 to the MSC. We're going to rehabilitate it and perhaps, if it works this way, we could use 26 it to connect the ITT area to Byxbee. 27 Commissioner Moss: One other thing. You were not here at the last meeting, but we did 28 talk briefly about the golf course that opened very recently. How's that going? 29 Mr. Anderson: So far so well. We've gotten good feedback from the users. The greens 30 are playing really well. It's so nice to see that parking lot full. The putting green is the one 31 that's really obvious as you drive by, a lot of people enjoying the putting green. Revenues 32 are on target. 33 Ms. O'Kane: We will have a more formal update in August on that as well. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: It looks like we have staff reports available at the meeting now. 1 Based on feedback we got at the last meeting, I just wanted to get clarification. That's 2 something we'll make sure happens and something's changed? 3 Ms. O'Kane: Yes, everything is at the table in the back of the Chambers. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: Also, I just wanted to make one comment. It probably doesn't 5 really belong in the staff report so much. I was dismayed to see the solar panels that have 6 gone up on the fields at JLS. I know that's PAUSD jurisdiction. I certainly support solar 7 and other alternative energy uses and anything we can do to reduce our footprint. Putting 8 panels on grass fields—granted I have some skin in the game here as part of the soccer 9 community—doesn't seem like the best location. Ideally, I would hope that we could be 10 aiming for rooftops or parking lots where the shade is actually going to do some service 11 that the solar panels throw off. I understand the City has minimal leverage here. 12 Mr. Anderson: I share that concern. We saw the impacts and raised it to our contacts with 13 PAUSD. Our rebuttals or concerns were not met with any change unfortunately. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: It's a reminder to me of our role here as stewards of parks and open 15 spaces and doing whatever we can to maintain these for our children and our children's 16 children. 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Is there an opportunity to do anything about it now, Daren, at all 18 or is it just a done thing? Does the City not still take care of the fields? 19 Mr. Anderson: We perform maintenance on the fields, yeah. No, I don't believe there's 20 anything we could do to change what's now in the ground for the solar panels. 21 Commissioner Moss: Can you put a fence around the base of them so that we could play 22 soccer all the way up to the very base of them? 23 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. Our concern is more—I think that's possible. In 24 fact, I think some of them might be tall enough that you could put a goal under them, at 25 least that was what we were originally told. Some of it still is evolving. One concern we've 26 got in addition to it encroaching into the playing area, which is a problem, is the fact that 27 you can't grow grass under a fully shaded area. That's another one we'll have to try to 28 figure out. 29 Chair McDougall: Could we maybe put this on an agenda maybe as a broader topic, not 30 just that one field and that one solar installation, rather than continue here? I think that 31 would be better, if we came back to it when we had a chance to understand what the issues 32 are and had a presentation or discussion on it. Would that be fair? 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 6 Mr. Anderson: Sure. With a little time, staff might have more information. Right now, I 1 don't have a lot. 2 Chair McDougall: Thank you for that. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: Can that go to the City/School Committee that we have? 4 Ms. O'Kane: I would work with the City Manager's Office to get that on their agenda. The 5 school is responsible for their capital projects. We're not in control of what capital projects 6 they do or don't do even on their fields because we're just doing maintenance. What I'm 7 saying is the solar panels aren't the City's project. 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: It could be useful for the liaison to the School Board—don't we 9 have a PAUSD liaison role within the Parks and Rec Commission? 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: To the committee, not the School Board. 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: I would support making a statement on behalf of the Parks and Rec 12 Commission. 13 Chair McDougall: I'd like to once again suggest that we hold off the discussion now and 14 then put together all the action plans and properly load our guns before we shoot. 15 Vice Chair Greenfield: Let's get it on the agenda, and we'll get back (crosstalk). 16 Commissioner Moss: If we could include in that discussion the solar panels that we're 17 thinking of doing in the golf course parking lot as well because that's open space too. That's 18 Parks and Rec … 19 Chair McDougall: David, let me suggest that we'll find a way to collect all the things that 20 should be included in that conversation. If there's no other discussion on the staff report? 21 V. BUSINESS 22 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the June 26, 2018 Parks and Recreation 23 Commission meeting. 24 Approval of the draft June 26, 2018 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Reckdahl and 25 seconded by Commissioner Cribbs. Passed 6-0 McCauley absent 26 2. Palo Alto Recreation Foundation Goals and Collaboration Opportunities 27 Chair McDougall: The next item on the agenda is a presentation by Jack Morton from the 28 Palo Alto Recreation Foundation. I'd like to welcome Jack. I believe everybody here 29 probably knows Jack. Jack has been very involved in the City for a long time as a Council 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 7 Member. Jack, would you like to join us up at the desk here or would you like to stand and 1 present? Your choice, wherever you're more comfortable. 2 Jack Morton: I'm fine. I'm okay here. 3 Chair McDougall: Before Jack starts, I would point out that he spent probably a lot more 4 time sitting on this side of the bench than on that side and has a very good reputation for 5 that and involved in the finance. I would also like to point out that this is probably the only 6 time in Palo Alto I'll ever have a chance to introduce somebody who's a fellow graduate of 7 the University of Alberta. 8 Mr. Morton: With these hidden honors … 9 Chair McDougall: We welcome you here. 10 Mr. Morton: My name's Jack Morton. I'm Cochair of the Recreation Foundation. I do 11 have a connection with Alberta, having grown up there and sort of ended up with a fondness 12 for frozen water. You'll understand that connection in just a minute. The Palo Alto 13 Recreation Foundation was established December 15, 1986 by a current member of the 14 Parks and Recreation Commission, who wasn't willing to sit by and let the impact of Prop 15 13 destroy 80 years of celebrating May Day. That was one of the major concerns. Our 16 sense of who we are is formed by those special things that we do together. A then-special 17 events director took heed of the support that the Children's Theatre and the Children's 18 Museum had and saw no reason why recreation and community events should not have a 19 similar nonprofit organization to preserve the recreational and social activities that made 20 us special. I was probably asked to be a founding member because I had helped to ensure 21 that the only outdoor ice skating rink west of the Sierra would not be bulldozed out of 22 existence and had a clear sense of what needed to be done. It didn't take any of us more 23 than a minute to accept Anne's offer to try to stem the elimination of activities and special 24 events that began as soon as Prop 13 passed. We needed a funding source and decided on 25 a community Black and White Ball to provide the funding that would—which would 26 provide the needed funds to complement the reduced funding that the City budget made 27 inevitable. Our goal as the Rec Foundation has been to keep the range of services that the 28 City offered intact. We have spun off some things that we, if you want, incubated and 29 preserved over the years, things like the chess club and the Bay Run, whenever we could 30 get a partner to take over an activity. We thought best for the community to have somebody 31 like the Palo Alto news group take on the Bay Run, then we can concentrate our efforts on 32 what we can do, things like the July 4th Chili Cook-Off, children's Halloween costumes. 33 That's one of the events that we've added in the last five years, the May Fete Parade. 34 Funding is our perennial challenge. We do not have the same level of support that groups 35 like the Children's Theatre or the Junior Museum have. We haven't had a Black and White 36 Ball for more than four years largely because the two previous balls barely made enough 37 money to make the effort worthwhile. We have a challenge with individuals joining us to 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 8 take part in the many activities and so have taken to partnering with groups like the Kiwanis 1 so that we have enough volunteers for the May Day post-parade, what we call the May Day 2 Fair, and for the Chili Cook-Off. We are currently exploring what we need to do. A big 3 part of the problem is that in the last 30 years there's been a significant erosion in what the 4 City is willing to do and what staff is available for us so that we end up running programs 5 solely with volunteers. Unlike the Junior Museum or the Children's Theatre, we do not 6 have necessarily a core support for some of the programs that we would like to preserve. 7 My own sense—this may just be simply be because after 30-plus years I'm beginning to 8 wear a little—is that it's going to be a challenge how we keep this organization going and 9 how we find ways. As the structure of the community changes, we have less people 10 available to volunteer because both parents now work full time. It'll be a challenge. That's 11 where we are now. We've struggled the last couple of years to try to find a new footing 12 that will give us the sense that we can go on and do all of the things that we have done over 13 the last 30 years. I'll stop there. I'm happy to answer questions. I'm not sure how many 14 answers I will have. With things like recreation, you sign up for a particular sport or a 15 particular time. There isn't the connection that you have when you join a production at the 16 Children's Theatre or with the Art Center. We don't have a membership group that provides 17 a base support to us. We're constantly looking at ways we can raise additional funding to 18 continue doing what we have been doing. We have worked with groups, the Magical 19 Bridge, Friends of the Parks, to help them set up so that another segment of the community 20 can continue the sense of volunteerism and the need to supplement what the City provides 21 in terms of hard funding by sweat. We're very proud of being able to do that, but over time 22 it does take a big toll on the people who are the ones expected to produce the actual advance 23 like the Chili Cook-Off or the May Fete Parade and Fair. Let me end there and say thank 24 you for asking us to appear before you. To confess honestly, right now we are struggling 25 with how we devise a way forward that involves raising significant amounts of money. I'll 26 stop there. Happy to answer any questions. 27 Chair McDougall: Thank you very much. Jeff, would you like me to start with you as the 28 liaison and invite you to either question or add to … 29 Commissioner LaMere: I would just like to thank Jack for all of his years of service. In 30 this particular time, the challenges that are faced—continuing the threads that the 31 community has had over the years and keeping some of those things that are familiar is 32 very important. It's great to see the May Fete Parade and Fair every year, for example, and 33 to know how long that has gone on in our community. That is something that is very 34 special. Just appreciate all the sacrifices that you've made. The key part you hit on is, 35 besides the funding, can we find the people, where is our community now with 36 volunteerism. That's a huge question for everyone. With us on the Commission, that's 37 something we have faced in terms of finding volunteers to do something or being asked to 38 help find volunteers to do things. We do need to do that. It's something for our whole 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 9 community to really think about. I want to thank you for everything that you've done in 1 all of your years of service. 2 Mr. Morton: Thank you. I concur with you. I think what makes us a community are those 3 little things that we as parents with a 7-year-old or a 4-year old may do once a year for five 4 years until they grow out of it and then they take on soccer. We have a rich variety of 5 things that we do in this community. We send young people away with a sense of 6 themselves and a sense of their community. It's because of the kinds of things that we've 7 been able to do over the years. One thing I shared with Anne is that makes us who we are. 8 It's worth struggling to make sure that we preserve it, that there's another. We've 90-some 9 years of May Fete Parades. We'll make it to 100 and then we'll add as many things that we 10 can that involve people. It's the connection between what people do and what they enjoy 11 doing that makes us a community. Thank you. 12 Chair McDougall: It's only fair, Anne, that I give you the opportunity to speak next. Also, 13 feel free to question and/or add. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: First of all, Jack, thank you very much for everything you and the 15 Board have done over the years. The list of Recreation Foundation contributions is quite 16 lengthy. I'm sure that a lot of people in the community don't know about it. We may be 17 the best-kept secret in town. Such wonderful, wonderful opportunities for kids and for the 18 community and all of that from the Chili Cook-Off to the May Fete Parade. I could just go 19 on and on. It's significant tonight that Monica Engel is sitting in the audience because she 20 had a big hand in the original Black and White Ball from Addison School. It was actually 21 one of her and my ideas to start that whole thing. This is a little history lesson for the 22 Commissioners. At any rate, I'm hopeful, Jack, that in thinking about what you had to 23 say—I know how true it is—to find volunteers and to find people who are committed, I'm 24 hopeful that your Board has been able to review the Parks and Recreation Master Plan and 25 take a look at it and see how we could capture the community's imagination to get involved 26 in making some of those things happen. Every good movement needs a cause, a reason to 27 be, a reason to get excited about something. Whether it's getting excited once again about 28 Cubberley or a new field or some of the open space, there's so much for the Recreation 29 Foundation to do. I don't want to see it just wither away. I think we've got a good liaison 30 here. Again, I'm happy to jump in as well. Thank you for everything. Tell the Board thank 31 you for their commitment as well. 32 Mr. Morton: I certainly will. The challenge is that. Styles of living have changed. We 33 don't have as many free parents that can spend an hour and a half once a month because 34 they work in San Jose or the city. How we make up for that is one of our challenges, how 35 we involve people that have recently joined our community. We have had a large turnover 36 in the last five years. How we get people to reinvest themselves in what we do and in what 37 we do for each other is our ongoing challenge. Thank you for your comments. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 10 Chair McDougall: David, do you have any comments? 1 Commissioner Moss: I've been a resident for 40 years, and I never knew how the May Fete 2 Parade and Fair came about nor the Chili Cook-Off. Somehow I thought it was 100 percent 3 staff. To find out about this best-kept secret presents two challenges, how do you get the 4 word out and not be the best-kept secret and then how do you get volunteers. Our family 5 with three kids, I've known that especially the May Fete Parade you get so many of the 6 school kids and bands and school groups, and all the parents do is stand on the sidelines 7 and cheer their child for the two minutes that they've walked by. If there was some way 8 that we could not only get the Kiwanis or the Rotary clubs but also the parents of the kids 9 and also the high school kids to help out in these things. As Anne pointed out, there are 10 many programs that we would like to see in the Parks Master Plan that the staff may or 11 may not have time to do and certainly would like a core group of volunteers to help with. 12 Not a core group, I meant volunteers. They don't have to be the same people at all of these 13 events. Anything that we could do to spread the word would be really great. 14 Mr. Morton: We welcome suggestions. We have looked at—we all have done multiple 15 things. It's really easy to identify with some of the things that go on in our community. 16 Any of us who have had a child in the Children's Theatre, we're there. We go to the 17 summertime theatre. Somehow for some reason we haven't been able to get the same kind 18 of connection with swimming even though we've funded swimming. We need lifeguards, 19 equipment. It doesn't matter what activity, there's just enough difference that it's very hard 20 to bring all those parents in. Our challenge is to find a way in which to do it. It's not that 21 those parents wouldn't be happy to participate; it's how do we get them so they're aware of 22 the need. 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: Jack, I want to thank you as everyone has for your service to our 24 community. I know it extends beyond this to other organizations as well, such as Canopy—25 one of my favorite groups—and many others. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, 26 so thank you very much. I just want to briefly echo a couple of things that David said. The 27 plague of being the best-kept secret is I'm not sure people know how to get involved and 28 pitch in and lend a hand. It seems like there's some way to improve the outreach through 29 the schools to the parents and to the high school students. We have a big community of 30 high school students that are looking to fill volunteer hours. If there were a way to reach 31 out to them, it's like "I love the May Fete Parade, but I'm too old to want to be involved 32 with that. I can help the little kids?" That could really resonate with them. There's some 33 real potential there. I think that would be worth pursuing. Thank you. 34 Commissioner Cribbs: Could I just jump in for one second? I feel like I need to correct 35 something that you said, David. The City staff does do a wonderful job of helping and 36 putting on the May Fete Parade. The City staff does do an awful lot for the Chili Cook-37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 11 Off. The Recreation Foundation at least in the past has provided support and supplemental 1 stuff to these incredible events we have in Palo Alto so they don't go away. 2 Mr. Morton: Thank you. It is the case that it is an active, participating partnership. We 3 could not do what we do without staff. Our question has been, our complaint has been 4 back in the day we had more staff to help us more. We don't have that now. This is the 5 current reality. Staff does what it can with the resources it has. We supplement those as 6 best we can, and we look for ways in which to involve the larger community because our 7 survival depends on people knowing what we've provided to the community. If they don't 8 know that, they're not going to be there to make sure it gets saved over the next decades. 9 Thank you. 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you again. The programs you put on really change the 11 City from being a City to being a community. That's very important. It really influences 12 the quality of life. I thank you for all your work. I echo Jeff's point about seniors looking 13 for volunteer hours, and that goes on the transcript. That's really big when you're applying 14 for colleges. Outreach to the City would be a very good way to get volunteers. 15 Mr. Morton: We do try to get them for things like World Music Day. We get them involved 16 where we can get them hours. A number of them do help us with the May Fete Fair because 17 it takes a lot of bodies. We're always happy to have them. We do our best to make sure 18 that they understand we have opportunities and we're more than happy to sign off their 19 hours that they need and greatly appreciate their willingness to do so. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: I've lived here for 20 years. Before I joined the Board, I didn't 21 know anything about either the Friends of Palo Alto Parks or the Recreation Foundation. 22 There really is some lack of publicity. Since you do help the City so much—I've spent 23 many hours at sporting events and watching kids for hours and hours. You're a captive 24 audience there. Putting up signs—they don't have to be large signs—either on the outfield 25 or by the stands that say volunteer or donate to the Recreation Foundation would be very 26 effective just because there are so many people out there that don't know about your 27 Foundation. That's it. Thank you. 28 Chair McDougall: I would echo an awful lot of things other Commission members said 29 but also echo things that you said, Jack. I'd particularly echo the fact that the things that 30 you're helping with help make this a community. You said that; Keith said that. I think 31 that's an important thought. The thing you said about the style of living, that the style of 32 living has changed, creates the challenge of the style of communication and motivation 33 relative to funding and volunteer change. I doubt we can sit here and solve your problems. 34 If we were sitting at an Environmental Volunteers Board meeting, we would be having the 35 same discussion. If we were sitting at an Audubon Board meeting, we'd be having the 36 same discussion. It's not an uncommon challenge. Frankly, your presentation, your 37 discussion and particularly the word that you used in terms of partnering, partnering with 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 12 the City, partnering with the Kiwanis. In today's style of living and in today's style of 1 nonprofit world, partnering becomes even more important. You've obviously embraced 2 that for a long time and are acting on it now. I don't want to say anything more or tell you 3 how to do this. I'm certainly energized to do what I can to work with you from a 4 Commission point of view, from a personal point of view to see if we can improve the 5 community funding and participation for what you do. Thank you. 6 Mr. Morton: Thank you. If you wake up in the middle of the night with the most brilliant 7 idea, let us know. We'll try anything. 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: If you had more money and more volunteers, do you know what 9 you would do next? Are there some regrets or some missed opportunities you think you've 10 had, but you didn't have the ability to put things on? 11 Mr. Morton: I think we have preserved those events that impact the community most, 12 whether it's the May Fete celebration or World Music Day or the Chili Cook-Off. Our 13 concern is having more money means you can do more things. How we raise money and 14 preserve it—you want it to be repetitious. The Black and White Ball for 20-plus years 15 served—every couple of years we'd have a major event, took a huge amount of energy and 16 effort. Then, we had funding for a couple of years. Looking at how we do that—besides 17 that, the Black and White Ball is a community event. It's an event for as many parents as 18 we can get a way from the house to join us on a Saturday night. We want that to be a part 19 of the many community events that we have. It's something we've really spent a lot of time 20 thinking about, how on a Saturday night at 8:00 do you get 800 or 900—we used to be 21 2,000, 3,000 people. Now it's 800 or 900 that come out to join in a celebration of their 22 community. That's the sort of thing. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are you saying if you had more money you wouldn't necessarily 24 have more events, you'd just increase the scope of the events you have? 25 Mr. Morton: There's all sorts of funding things that staff will point out to us, whether 26 something is needed for the teens at Mitchell Park. Somebody will say "we need some 27 money," whether it's a sound box or something needed at Rinconada. When they tell us 28 about it, we figure out how we're going to fit it into our budget. 29 Commissioner Cribbs: Keith, very often in the days of the Foundation, we would fund 30 things that were new, that maybe were not in the City budget, didn't have time to get in the 31 City budget. Somebody would come to us with a great idea, and the Foundation would 32 decide to do that event, get it started as a first-year event. When the City would be able to 33 fund it, it would turn over to the City. 34 Mr. Morton: Things like the Bay Run and that sort of thing were perfect examples of that. 35 We'd, again, try to find an outside partner that would be—whether it was the Weekly or 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 13 whoever—willing to take it on and give it longevity, which was a key thing for how we 1 did it. In truth, when we look back over what we have been able to preserve but to continue 2 through multiple generations of youngsters growing up in a community in which there are 3 things that make them understand this is my community and I got to do that. I'm sure my 4 son never woke up at law school in New York and said, "That May Fete Parade," but I did. 5 I thought of a young kid who understood what it was to be community. In some ways, that 6 has something to do with the fact that he's a public service lawyer. His sense of community 7 got built here. I'm very proud of the fact that this community does do that a lot with a lot 8 of kids. Thank you. Thank you very much for hearing us. Again, we're happy to hear 9 what you would like us to do. We'll look for ways to make it possible. 10 Commissioner Moss: One more comment. You're bringing up a point. There are a number 11 of things that we take for granted, that I've taken for granted, that the staff does. I don't 12 know how it gets done, but things like the bands in the park and movie nights at Foothill, 13 things like that. In the Parks Master Plan we talk about a number of those opportunities 14 and a number of those things we just take for granted. I'm hoping that staff will let us know 15 if they need help for those kinds of things so that we don't take them for granted and we 16 don't lose them. 17 Mr. Morton: Things like music in the park and the movies, we start it, we make it work 18 once, and then we figure out how to make it work 100 times. We ran the twilight concerts 19 for ten years and then we got the Children's Theatre to take it over because they had a lot 20 of parents. We just make it work. When staff tell us we've done it again and again, we say 21 hooray. Sometimes we forget to say thanks to staff. We do one thing. We have a staff 22 golf tournament, which is entirely for them. That's one of the things that we make sure 23 gets funded. Those who are willing to pick up a golf club can actually go out now to the 24 new greens and hopefully understand that we appreciate them, even those we often don't 25 say thank you. Thank you again for hearing us. Thank you for all you do. 26 Ms. O'Kane: Could I just make a statement to Jack? Thank you for those words. The 27 thanks should also go to you and the Foundation. A lot of what we do we couldn't do 28 without you. Like you said, a lot of the things we do now you started. We're really grateful 29 for all the years and all the contributions. Thank you especially for the golf tournament. 30 I'm excited to participate in that this year. I'd like to explore a little bit maybe with you 31 and Commissioner LaMere and Commissioner McDougall on how we can ramp up our 32 efforts a little bit and start addressing some of these things. Sometimes we get caught in 33 our regular—we have the parade, we have the fair, we have these various different things, 34 but what can we add to that and how can we ramp it up a little bit? I look forward to that 35 and continuing this partnership. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 14 3. Cubberley Master Plan Community Co-Design Process 1 Chair McDougall: The next item on the agenda is the Cubberley Master Plan co-design 2 process and the introduction of the consultants. 3 Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. Kristen O'Kane … 4 Chair McDougall: I would allow Kristen to provide the introduction. 5 Ms. O'Kane: Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I'm happy to introduce our consultant 6 for the Cubberley Master Plan co-design process, Concordia. The Council approved our 7 contract agreement with Concordia last month and also a cost-share agreement with the 8 School District. As you probably recall, the School District and the City are collaborating 9 with the community on this co-design process. The School District and the City are sharing 10 equally in the costs to do this. To my right are Bobbie Hill and Connor McManus from 11 Concordia. They're in town this week, so I thought it was perfect timing for them to 12 introduce themselves, share a little bit about the past project that they worked on in 13 Emeryville and the process for moving forward. It's not going to be your typical 14 community meetings that many of us have experienced in the past. It's going to be a lot 15 more fun and exciting and productive than the days of old. I'm going to turn it over now 16 to Bobbie and Connor. 17 Bobbie Hill: Good evening. So delighted to have a chance to meet with you all tonight. I 18 have to say hearing of pickleball was a first for me tonight. It hasn't reached to New 19 Orleans yet, but maybe it will. It sounds pretty fun. Just to make a comment about this 20 strong sense of community and commitment to community that we heard from the previous 21 presentation, we so believe in that and hope as well to illustrate community-building and 22 how we intend to approach the planning for the Cubberley project. Maybe there's a chance 23 in that process to recruit volunteers for some of the work that you spoke of tonight. We 24 are Concordia. We are from New Orleans, Louisiana. Concordia is our one-word mission 25 statement. It is the Latin root of the word concord, which is harmony and agreement among 26 people and things. That is who we are; that's what we're passionate about; and that is our 27 approach to doing planning and design work in projects all over the country. This is who 28 we are. We're not a big firm. We're small in part because we work closely as a family and 29 as a team. Also, this allows us when we work in other places to work collaboratively. We 30 don't have to have a big organization that's going to do everything. It's very important for 31 us to find local partners. We'll talk a little bit more about that and what we plan to do in 32 Palo Alto. Just to share with you our flexibility and our experience across the country and 33 in some other countries as well. The diagram on the right really explains our approach to 34 doing work. We call this our nexus model, which is a framework for systemic planning 35 and a framework that we will use when we pick up the ball at Cubberley to think about the 36 creation of a holistic community center that serves the whole community, thinking about 37 the physical, cultural, social, organizational, educational, and economic components that 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 15 make a whole community. We do this through a co-design process. That means we work 1 with local folks, and there is no limit to how many people. We do this in a process that 2 happens under one roof and is iterative. We do not work where we have a meeting with a 3 particular constituency and get their ideas, and then go to another constituency. We believe 4 that needs to happen altogether and people working collaboratively to develop those 5 recommendations. We've done a number of projects much like what we anticipate here at 6 Cubberley. This is some quick slides from some of those, everything from central 7 Wisconsin to—some examples of what our activity sheets look like, what the participation 8 looks like at tables, and how we're actually getting people involved in doing the real work. 9 This is another project in Houston, again a similar process where the community came 10 together and designed this entire campus. The same with the project in Alexandria, 11 Virginia. The one that I'll highlight for you tonight is the Emeryville Center for 12 Community Life just up the road a bit. We think probably sometime after the first meeting 13 we'll see if folks are interested in taking a little trip up to Emeryville. This is an 8-acre 14 piece of property, not nearly as big as what we have at Cubberley. The city and the school 15 came together and jointly funded this project and planned this project. While it does hold 16 the entire school district of Emeryville from TK-8 to 12th grade, it is called the Emeryville 17 Center for Community Life because it is so much more than a school. The way we could 18 do this and do it efficiently on such a small piece of property was to look at understanding 19 utilization and making sure that all the spaces were utilized as much as possible to be 20 efficient and also to look at the cost of operations and maintenance and such. We ended 21 up saving the overall project costs and operations by 20 percent less than what it would 22 have been if everybody had acted independently. This is a site plan of all the different 23 things that are contained on this project. Again, created in a community process where 24 they determined what was most important, what they needed, and most importantly what 25 supported students and families in Emeryville in creating a real there-there for this 26 community. Again, these are just some images of the project, a pool that serves the students 27 and the community, fields, a performing arts center and such. Again, this was completed 28 in Emeryville. Now, I'm going to turn it over to Connor, who's going to share a little bit 29 about the timeline and the process. 30 Connor McManus: Everybody, thank you for having us. I'm going to walk through 31 essentially what our general plan is for the Cubberley project. What you see right now is 32 the timeline for the next year. We do have our meeting dates pinned down, which will all 33 take place at Cubberley starting October 4th. Actually this is an outdated slide. Our first 34 meeting will be October 4th, one in November, one in January, and then one to cap the 35 whole process in May. Essentially the first two meetings are part of the programming 36 phase, and we'll be working towards getting a final—we're going to work towards three 37 program scenarios that will explore how the new community center and a potential new 38 school site can integrate. Based on the outcome of that, we're going to work towards 39 developing three to six real conceptual, 3-D master plans for the site. That will ultimately 40 be honed down into one preferred recommendation. This project is a little bit unusual in 41 APPROVED Draft Minutes 16 that we essentially have two clients. We're working with the City and PAUSD, so 1 everything we're doing is going to be based on their mutual needs as well as what we hear 2 from the community stakeholders through the engagement process. Just to begin, for the 3 past month we've been digging and reading as much as we can about past efforts for the 4 Cubberley site and for the City at large and what has come out of PAUSD as far as planning 5 for future educational needs, enrollment, and their ideas about Cubberley. Just to pull out 6 one of these I'm sure you have particular interest in. We did look through the Master Plan 7 for parks, trails, and open space. The first thing that jumped out to us is this list on the 8 right of some of the things that, based on everything we read, Cubberley could support. Of 9 course, we haven't made any decisions about it. At least several of these were also 10 mentioned in the CCAC report from the 2013 plan. Right now we're really just looking for 11 synergy across all the existing work that's been done, so that we can hone it down and 12 present it to the community in an understandable, digestible way so that at our first meeting 13 we can base future planning work off what's been done before. Just as an example of some 14 of the GIS mapping that we're doing right now to consolidate a lot of the different 15 information we're finding in different plans, this is essentially the existing bike network 16 overlaid with the future bike plan in the parks and open space plan. In this slide, other 17 community assets are organized in our nexus framework. We're also looking similarly on 18 the site itself, and we're also going to be looking at the scale of walking distance, 19 particularly with Mitchell Park right there, to make sure that what happens at Cubberley is 20 planned in coordination with what's immediately around it. 21 Ms. Hill: We want to check in with you and see if you have any questions so far. 22 Commissioner Moss: I just want to make sure that—this is great that you've looked through 23 all this information, and you're not going to start at square one. You're going to take a 24 tremendous amount of input that we've already gotten and the Parks Master Plan, which 25 we spent 2-3 years working on. Maybe you can explain how you're going to keep it to a 26 manageable timeframe. 27 Mr. McManus: At the meetings you mean? 28 Ms. Hill: We have four public meetings scheduled over this next year, between September 29 and May. We are very used to having meetings with anywhere from 80 to 300 people. 30 Sometimes we've actually had a meeting with 2,500 people. Just as a little aside, we 31 designed and led the post-Katrina recovery planning in New Orleans. You can imagine 32 the tension and the stress and the dismay and everything else. There wasn't a person who 33 attended those meetings who was a very happy camper, and rightfully so. We're very used 34 to working at such a scale. Also, I might add, that plan was started from scratch and 35 completed in 7 months and was approved, first of all, by the people who did the plan and 36 then the city planning commission, the city council, the mayor, and then the governor, and 37 then sent to the Feds. That was the key to having federal funding and beginning to roll. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 17 By the way, that plan was the third attempt at conducting a plan. Not only was it 1 challenging post-Katrina, but there had been two failed attempts. We were really up 2 against the wall in that. We are used to a sense of pressure. As Kristen said in the 3 beginning, our approach to doing this work is fun, and a lot of work has been done. Our 4 very first meeting is to honor that, to consolidate it and put it altogether, and understand 5 where everything crosses, and where there's some really significant opportunities. We fully 6 intend to take advantage of all the great work that's been done. Frankly, that will have a 7 lot to with why it shouldn't take as long. We're very committed to having this done in our 8 timeframe. Any other questions? 9 Chair McDougall: Anne, do you have comments? 10 Commissioner Cribbs: First of all, thanks for the time table. Again, I'm pretty excited 11 about having a vision in May. I'm excited that you're going to incorporate the past reports 12 but certainly not be bound by them. That's a really good thing. I'm hopeful that we all 13 come out of this with a really cool vision about what this site is going to be. As we said in 14 the ad hoc committee, people really love Cubberley, and they're very invested in it, and 15 they have a lot of strong feelings about how it should be used. I'm just interested to know 16 how you're going to get the word out that people are welcome to come to any community 17 meetings. It's great that you have 80-200 people and sometimes up to 2,500. We have a 18 community of—what are we now, 60,000? We just want to make sure that all those 19 different groups and all those different voices feel like they have a chance to be heard. I 20 would love to see this move forward quickly. 21 Ms. Hill: Thank you very much. In this last slide or maybe second-to-last slide—I 22 appreciate you bringing that up, Anne, because getting the word out is probably the most 23 important upfront work. We are working with Claudia from the City, the City's 24 communication office, as well as PAUSD. You've given us in the ad hoc committee some 25 good ideas. We'd like to get in front of the news that's out there. Opportunities to be in 26 front of editorial boards or whatever is appropriate to get people excited about this. 27 Obviously, there will be a lot of social media. We will have some opportunities for people 28 to participate online, but that will never replace the face-to-face. Just to say, we're really 29 committed to that, and we know that's where the real work gets done. Oftentimes, it's very 30 easy for somebody to sit back in the comfort of their easy chair and offer ideas or complain 31 about one thing or another. We expect that to happen, but the real work will happen in the 32 larger community meetings, and that will all be recorded and made available online and 33 available for people to make comments and such, and social media and any other tools that 34 we have. Getting the word out, we'd like to lean on all of you to help do that. We do have 35 a flyer that can be distributed electronically as well as by hand, that really outlines the goals 36 of the project and a timeline. I think it's about two pages that we've collaboratively created 37 with the City and the School District. One other thing to mention is—I think it was 38 mentioned a little bit earlier—we have done this all over the country. We bring on 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 18 community fellows. In this case, we think it will be six to eight people. I want to be sure 1 to explain that our community fellow program is not the same as what you might typically 2 see, where you have an advisory committee where six or eight people are selected, and 3 they're supposed to be representative of the community's demographics. They have 4 meetings, and then maybe they go to bigger meetings. That's not what this is. This is a 5 team of people who we will identify and select in collaboration with the City and the School 6 District. These are people who are seen as leaders but, if you will, behind-the-scenes 7 leaders, people who don't come with an agenda, people who have networks, people who 8 really care about the community and don't necessarily have super strong opinions. They're 9 here because they care, and they will work side-by-side with us as citizen planners, and 10 they will help us develop culturally appropriate agendas and activities and those kinds of 11 things. We're not asking them to come with any other, if you will, ideas or agendas. They'll 12 work with us to help recruit people to participate. That'll be a significant role that they 13 have. They'll also act as table hosts when we actually conduct the meetings. It's a chance 14 to leave behind another group of people that are invested in a special way. We are now 15 looking for four or so representatives from the community. The School District will also 16 offer up four or so representatives. We will likely have a couple of high school students, 17 which we think would be fabulous. We love having the youth voice in this. We would 18 welcome any recommendations from any of you. Maybe Kristen can send the two-page 19 fellows packet so you can get a stronger sense of what we're looking for there. If you have 20 any recommendations, you can contact me. I'll either meet people in person or pick up the 21 phone. We'll determine that before we have our first meeting. That's another way you 22 could really be helpful to us spread the word. Again, we want to also say that we are 23 reading your Master Plan, and we want to make sure in whatever way the Cubberley plan 24 can support your goals and objectives, we fully intend to do that. If you have any other 25 questions, we welcome them. 26 Chair McDougall: I'd like to give some others—Jeff, you're also on the ad hoc. Maybe 27 you'd like to comment first before random people do. 28 Commissioner LaMere: Thank you, Don. Certainly very excited. As has been said before, 29 the potential for Cubberley is amazing. The thought of what can be done with it and what 30 we haven't thought of is really incredible. Thank you for participating in this. We're 31 excited to get it going. One quick question. How much did that Emeryville center cost? 32 Do you guys know what that ended up costing? 33 Mr. McManus: $96 million. 34 Commissioner LaMere: Again, to underscore getting that community involvement—I 35 know we've had other projects that go forward. At times, there isn't the participation that 36 we would want for the impact that it's going to have on the community. I also think the 37 more people we have involved—this is something there is going to need to be funding for 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 19 it. The more critical mass we have going in terms of people being invested in the planning 1 of it or people being invested in giving their ideas—you have a lot of different 2 constituencies that this serves. The more people that we do get involved the better chance 3 we have of pushing this forward. As Anne mentioned previously about how long this 4 project has been going on, to see it have potential to come to fruition would be quite a 5 major accomplishment. It could have such impact upon our community. To take what 6 Jack was talking about and what Keith said, how does your city become a community, this 7 is one of the ways. I appreciate what's happening and excited to see it move forward. We 8 do certainly, all of us, still have our work cut out for us and a long ways to go. I am very, 9 very excited to see this happening. 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm not sure if this is a question for you or Kristen. How are we 11 working the budget for this? Are you giving them a single number for a target or are they 12 giving a range of targets and they can give us trade-offs of for this amount you get this 13 design or this amount you get this design? 14 Ms. O'Kane: Do you mean for Concordia's work? 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: For Concordia. When they're doing the design, do they … 16 Ms. Hill: You mean for the cost of the plan? 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: No, the cost of the design. Not making the design, but building 18 design. 19 Ms. O'Kane: Included in the contract is their scope of work. It's divided by task and the 20 cost associated with each task. 21 Ms. Hill: We will, if we need to, bring in cost estimators. That's certainly a consideration 22 obviously. This is not the moon or an unlimited budget. Once we confirm the program, 23 we make considerations for that program and cost implications, and use that to develop 24 scenarios. Obviously, that's a very important part. 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: You're giving us multiple scenarios with multiple price points? 26 Ms. Hill: I would say … 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: Potentially? 28 Ms. Hill: Yes, yes. 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: You may find that you don't need (crosstalk). 30 Ms. Hill: Obviously, with the major consideration for cost, yes. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: One of my big concerns is that we have champagne tastes, but 1 our budget is not champagne. My personal opinion is that one thing that needs to be taken 2 into account is expansion. Right now, maybe we do something that is good enough, and 3 20 years from now we want to expand it. If that expansion is in the design, that could be a 4 much more elegant expansion than if you have to hack something in that looks like an add-5 on. 6 Mr. McManus: One element of our scope as it is planned is that we will be looking at the 7 site in terms of phases. There will be some consideration for short term, medium term, 8 long term, and that will play into it. 9 Ms. Hill: Let me also add that in Emeryville there were buildings that were kept and 10 restored and renovated for cost savings as well as new construction. It's not often that we 11 work in a community like Palo Alto that has more resources than most places. Cost 12 considerations with school districts, with other municipalities is always front and center. 13 You can be assured that we're well aware of that. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for your presentation and joining us this evening. This 15 undoubtedly is a challenging project, at least from our perspective. It's good to hear you've 16 certainly dealt with challenges before. I'm wondering if you've ever worked on a project 17 with dual clients as you (crosstalk). 18 Ms. Hill: Yes actually, on a number of occasions. Emeryville in particular was joint; it 19 was the school district and the city. They co-funded it. 20 Vice Chair Greenfield: A similar structure as we have here? 21 Ms. Hill: Yes, yes. 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's great. The approach sounds very encouraging with the 23 public meetings and all. I'm sure you've been to a lot more of these meetings than I have, 24 but the important key is to make the participants feel heard and valued as opposed to 25 managed. I wonder what your tricks are on that. 26 Ms. Hill: You know what our trick is? We don't give anybody the microphone. I will tell 27 you that. It's not that kind of meeting. People are going to be sitting at tables of six to 28 eight people, and they're going to be doing work. This is an iterative process. People can 29 come at any point, and they can find out what happened previously and get caught up. 30 Anybody is invited to come any time; however, we really encourage people to come and 31 come back and see their work. They will see what they've done. They will recognize what 32 they've done. They'll understand the synthesis and then move to the next phase. This is 33 not where somebody gets the microphone for 3 minutes and they get their chance to get 34 mad or get glad. That's just not how we do it. It's very different in that regard. It's team 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 21 building; it's community building because people have to hash it out together. Again, we 1 say we have scars all over us because we've done this kind of work in some very 2 challenging places. I think I might have said to the ad hoc group that we've worked in 3 Camden, New Jersey, and West Philly, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and places like that. 4 I will also say that oftentimes communities that do have a lot of resources with highly 5 educated people can be even more challenging. We have some of that experience as well. 6 It's not to say that somebody might go off. That could happen, but we've seen it before. 7 What we see over time is that people recognize this is a different way of getting the work 8 done, and they become really engaged and focused on getting the work done. It ends up 9 being a great thing. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: We're certainly all very interested in resolution to this valuable 11 resource within our community and really looking to make it shine. Just one final 12 comment. As the community garden liaison on the Commission, I was quite happy to see 13 you called out community gardens as a potential for Cubberley. It'd be great to see 14 something carved out in that area, something that isn't there right now. Thank you. 15 Chair McDougall: Thank you for your presentation, and thank you particularly for running 16 through the first part quickly so we could get to the discussion part. I really appreciate that. 17 A couple of things that I would worry about. Number one, I'm glad you think it'll be 18 challenging because that's the only thing we can promise you, that we'll help make it 19 challenging as a City. Also recognizing that we may be a rich community, but we're not a 20 rich community. Funding is always a challenge. When I'm at Mitchell Park or when I'm 21 at Cubberley, the one thing I notice that's different than a lot of other locations you go to 22 in the City is the amount of diversity. There is a much more diverse community in those 23 two locations, and that needs to be an important part of your consideration. Another 24 important part of your consideration needs to be the north/south thing about Palo Alto. 25 There is a north, and there is a south. Cubberley is clearly south, and that needs to be a 26 consideration. I'm not trying to tell you what kind of consideration, how you deal with 27 that. I think that's important. I'm glad to hear you say phases. What might satisfy Keith 28 is if you fundamentally came up with a basic design and then options as opposed to give 29 us four different designs. Maybe the phases provide that for us. The last thing is as much 30 as we talk about community and involvement, the last time we did some community 31 outreach at Cubberley, it wasn't that big an event because it was just a lighting issue. We 32 set up 30 or 40 chairs; we waited half an hour, and two people came in by accident and 33 were willing to talk to us about it. You do need to really focus. We'll commit that we'll 34 help get people there, but it would be insufficient to rely on us to fill your room. You need 35 to worry about the other kind of media and activity and whatnot that you do. 36 Ms. Hill: Absolutely. I do want to reiterate that probably one of the biggest challenges is 37 making sure that we recruit people to participate. The more people there, the better the 38 product will be and more of an opportunity to get support for funding and implementation. 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 22 I will say when we were last in town we put an email out or Amy who runs Cubberley put 1 an email out to all of the Cubberley tenants, and we had quite a few people show up. 2 Obviously they would because they're very interested in what's going to happen to them. 3 We had a fantastic meeting with them. No promises. They're there; they're very invested. 4 They have people who come to their programs. They'll be a great source of people who 5 will participate. That job is never done frankly. Even when we have the first meeting, we 6 still need to work hard at getting people to come and continue to come and bring in new 7 people. 8 Chair McDougall: I'm sure you understand that if you mostly listen to current stakeholders 9 as opposed to what it could be, that is dangerous as well. 10 Commissioner McCauley: Forgive me that I missed most of your presentation. The one 11 question I have—if you've already covered this, then I'm perfectly happy to catch up with 12 you after the meeting or at another time. I'm curious about places where the needs or goals 13 of the School District and the City diverge and how you plan to bridge that gap. 14 Ms. Hill: I think a couple of things. We highlighted the Emeryville project, which is 8 15 acres. Here, you have the School District with 27 and the City with 8. We managed to put 16 quite an exciting and diverse program on that 8 acres. As planners and designers, we have 17 ideas and solutions that typically people don't think of around solving these kind of 18 problems. I would say that with that acreage there's plenty of opportunity to come up with 19 design options that will satisfy both of the major partners in this. I really don't think it's a 20 problem. What we understand so far is that the City and, I would say, the Cubberley 21 community who are conducting the programs probably are clearer about what it is they 22 want and need than the School District is because they're still wondering about their 23 demographics and do they have a shrinking population or if there's new housing built are 24 they going to have more people. Maybe their need is not as immediate and as pressing, but 25 I don't think we'll have a problem figuring that out. When you do have diverging opinions, 26 the best way to solve that is for people to be in the room together and not separately. That's 27 really our goal of how we will approach this. Whenever we have meetings, we have Kristen 28 by our side, and we have Bob Golton or other school representatives. They have to be in 29 it with us from the beginning. Everybody needs to make sure they're there and hearing the 30 same thing, and we're being fair and equitable in all these conversations. It's not to say 31 there won't be some diverging ideas, but we can figure it out. Like I said, we've dealt with 32 some very challenging issues, again post-Katrina that would be maybe as challenging or 33 more so than what we might face here in terms of diverging opinions and stuff. We're up 34 for it. 35 Chair McDougall: Do you have any final comments you'd like to make, Kristen? 36 Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. A couple of things I wanted to say. One, we're not just relying 37 on Concordia to get the word out to the community. It's definitely a team effort between 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 23 the Community Services Department but also the City Manager's Office and the 1 communications office. We've already posted on the City's webpage recruiting community 2 fellows. That also was sent out via Nextdoor. Did anyone see it? No. You did, okay. 3 That sort of thing will continue and also through the neighborhood groups, the existing 4 neighborhood associations. It would be helpful the more people we can get the word out 5 to. If each of you tell whatever groups you're in or organizations or neighborhoods, that 6 just gets the word out more and more. We're going to tap every possible resource we can 7 to get people to come to the meeting. I apologize, Steven. I failed to introduce Steven, 8 who's also a big part of the team. Steven Bingler with Concordia is a founder of Concordia, 9 and he has a lot of wonderful experience just like Bobbie and Connor do. I'm really excited 10 to have them onboard. I wish we would have had more time to have them talk about some 11 of the other projects that they've worked on. If you're interested, the information is in the 12 PowerPoint, and you could research those if you wanted. If you have any questions about 13 anything on those projects, you're more than welcome to let us know as well. I'm really 14 excited and am really hopeful that we'll have a really exciting product come out of this 15 process. Thank you. 16 Chair McDougall: Do you have case studies on your website at all? 17 Ms. Hill: Oh, yes, lots of them. 18 Chair McDougall: I would encourage people to spend some time researching it. I am very 19 confident in Kristen's choice. This is going to be a very, very exciting project. I think you 20 have our support. Let's go do it. 21 Ms. Hill: We're thrilled and honored to be here working in Palo Alto. We look forward to 22 seeing you all. Thank you so much for this opportunity. 23 Chair McDougall: Thank you very much. 24 4. Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Overview 25 Chair McDougall: Now, for the exciting part of the evening. 26 Ms. O'Kane: As you know, Council recently adopted the budget for fiscal year '19. I 27 thought this would be a good time to bring in Daren and Jazmin to talk about not only the 28 budget but also the CIP budget process, which I believe someone had requested a little bit 29 of information on how we develop the Capital Improvement Program and plan every year. 30 Daren's going to touch on that. We also have some changes to CSD's municipal fees and 31 also our fee reduction program. We've grouped this altogether to try and cover any 32 important and pertinent information about our fiscal year '19 budget. I will turn it over to 33 Daren and Jazmin. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 24 Jazmin LeBlanc: Thank you. I'm Jazmin LeBlanc with the Community Services 1 Department. I'm going to start the presentation talking about the operating budget and 2 municipal fees. Daren will take it over and talk about the capital budget. Our operating 3 budget. CSD, the Community Services Department, is one of the largest departments in 4 the City and has an operating budget in fiscal year 2019 of over $29 million. There are 78 5 full-time positions and 298 part-time positions in the City, which equates to about 51 full-6 time positions. 7 Commissioner McCauley: Jazmin, excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt you. Maybe you 8 can give us a little bit more breakout in terms of the full-time positions and the part-time 9 folks. Where are the majority of the division's resources being spent? 10 Ms. LeBlanc: Let me come back to that after I look. I've got my folder of Q&A things. I 11 can't say right off the top of my head. I can tell you the part-time hugely is related to 12 seasonal employees. A lot of that is camp staff in the summer. I will get back to you on 13 the full-time. On the major year-over-year adjustments, the biggest change is that the golf 14 course has reopened. Now, we have one golf course operator, so a different contract 15 structure. The different contract structure has resulted in revenue and expense increases 16 that are over $1 million in both areas. We also were asked to make some reductions in the 17 budget this year. We were able to find about $90,000 of cuts in non-personnel expenditures 18 across the department, mainly in program areas that we call recreation and housekeeping 19 and administrative expenses. We've got a $90,000 cut across the department in that area. 20 We also eliminated 11 vacant part-time positions. Those vacant part-time positions totaled 21 $180,000 in savings. One position was related to golf course maintenance. Six were 22 related to building maintenance, and four related to open space and parks maintenance. 23 We do not expect … 24 Chair McDougall: What was the last category? I'm sorry. 25 Ms. LeBlanc: Parks and open space maintenance. We will be monitoring these cuts very 26 carefully this year, particularly in the parks and open space positions that were cut. We do 27 expect this could have some negative impacts on our ability to respond to non-urgent 28 requests in open space preserves. We'll be tracking that to make sure that it's something 29 we can manage. If we find that it is problematic, we'll request funding again. Before we 30 move on to municipal fees, another thing I wanted to point out is the operating budget was 31 approved as proposed, but the City Council also approved a recommendation to reduce the 32 General Fund budget by $4 million in this fiscal year. This would be across all City 33 departments, not just the Community Services Department. The Council has requested that 34 this budget reduction proposal be brought back to City Council later in this calendar year, 35 2018. We don't have details on exactly what the direction is from City Hall or City Council 36 yet. We expect we'll get further information on this in the fall. I'm going to move on to 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 25 municipal fees. The next few slides give a brief summary of how CSD sets fees for service. 1 There's more detail … 2 Chair McDougall: Jazmin, maybe we should divide this up. Before you move on to the 3 fees, maybe I should see if anybody has any particular questions relative to the budget. 4 Ryan asked one question about more detail and granularity. In fact, we shouldn't expect 5 you necessarily to come back here immediately or sit there and find the number for us. 6 Maybe we can make a list of things that we could get an email or some follow-up later. 7 Ms. LeBlanc: Absolutely. Another thing that Kristen just whispered to me. The 8 organization chart in the beginning of the operating budget gives a sense of how our staff 9 is divided. It's relatively even across arts and sciences, parks and open space, and 10 recreation. 11 Commissioner Cribbs: On the major year-over-year adjustments, could you talk a little bit 12 about the elimination of the vacant positions? These positions were not being used, and 13 they didn't get filled, so they got eliminated. There were three categories. One was the 14 parks and open space. What were the other two? 15 Ms. LeBlanc: Building maintenance and golf maintenance. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: Will any of that be contracted out like you do for parks or is it … 17 Mr. Anderson: Maybe I could help answer that. The temporary position that worked at 18 the golf course was really a position associated with the old course. That position was fully 19 focused on addressing mainline breaks. The entire mainline has been replaced with the 20 new project, so it really wasn't necessary. We've built everything into that new contract 21 that we would have gotten out of that employee. Regarding the open space and parks 22 hourly positions, it was really on the parks side. The open space side is interesting. Even 23 though it's comparable salaries for this entry-level, seasonal position, the open space seems 24 to draw folks who have a passion and a long-term interest in being Rangers and are willing 25 to accept that rather low wage for the kind of work it is. Sometimes their education level 26 is relatively high for that kind of work. Contrasting that with the parks temporary positions, 27 we were not able to draw people. We'd interview and interview, and people didn't want 28 that job. It was a real challenge. We've conducted over the last several years multiple 29 interviews. The candidates weren't qualified enough to hire or weren't interested once they 30 found out the rate. We ended up giving up those salaries in this reduction. We'll be 31 monitoring it. The biggest impact in addition to the obvious one of being able to tackle 32 extra work and get ahead on things is that's what we draw upon when we want to promote 33 people. You get to see them in action and train them and really pick a solid team to 34 promote. We lose that, and it hurts because we will have people leaving in the not-too-35 distant future. We'll have to strategize on how to fill that in different ways. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 26 Ms. LeBlanc: The building maintenance is custodial and janitorial. Similar to what Daren 1 said, we had these part-time positions that were very hard to fill at our community centers 2 and that were consistently being held vacant. We've recently reorganized the structure, so 3 we're using full-time custodians who we have been able to recruit and retain to the 4 community centers. By using the full-time custodians, we feel like we're getting a better 5 quality of service, more consistent staff people showing up every day. We were able to 6 make that cut where we don't think it's going to have a negative impact on the department. 7 The main area that we're concerned with and want to monitor is in the parks positions that 8 were cut. 9 Commissioner Moss: That's a good segue to my question. You made a major change last 10 year in hiring Team Sheeper to take some of those part-time, very difficult to fill positions 11 and contracted them out. Obviously, this budget has taken that into consideration, and the 12 number of part-time employees reflects that. Do you feel in light of the budget issues that 13 we're talking about that you would do more of that in the future, maybe on the maintenance 14 side or in some of the other—camp counselor side, something like that? Are there other 15 organizations that you would be looking at versus full-time employees with pensions and 16 healthcare and all that kind of stuff? 17 Mr. Anderson: Maybe I could address the parks side of that. Can we address it with 18 contracting out? I'd say we have addressed that over the years. An enormous amount of 19 our parks are maintained via contractors, the vast majority in fact. Aside from irrigation 20 and the athletic fields, it's all done via contractor. At some point, the amount of resources 21 it takes to manage that contractor, especially when you're talking about the 180 sites we 22 have, is enormous. With the way the bidding process goes, if you aren't watching like a 23 hawk, you are going to get poor service, I don't care how great your contractor is. In my 24 experience in 20 years with the City, I've dealt with a lot of contractors. They're going to 25 cut corners. Unless someone is watching, you're going to lose out. The other big cost is 26 continuity. Those employees that I've seen are really quick turnovers. There's no 27 institutional knowledge passed on, which is really dangerous when you're talking about 28 expensive infrastructure that's buried under the ground. It's just not enough to pass 29 someone a map and expect them to fully understand all the intricacies of the irrigation 30 system or the back stories of residents who have concerns and they want you to weed whip 31 at a certain time. These are all nuances that are lost on contractors. We've contracted out 32 intelligently where we could, where it doesn't negatively impact the community and drawn 33 a line to say, "these are the services that you need a more in-depth experience with 34 longevity, better supervision, and better continuity." 35 Ms. LeBlanc: That's a very good answer that Daren gave. Each year I suspect for the short 36 term at least we're going to be asked to make more cuts and be really creative with money. 37 We're constantly reassessing lines of service and if there's a better way to do it. There may 38 be more in the future that could result in more contracts. With regard to the inhouse 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 27 custodial for example, they also are there as the only City employees onsite when we're 1 holding private events like weddings at Lucie Stern. It's really nice to have someone who 2 has been there for years, understands what is expected, and is a City employee on the 3 ground. That's not something that would make sense to contract out at this point. 4 Chair McDougall: Let's move to the … 5 Commissioner McCauley: I have one last quick question. I think we're all in consensus 6 that Daren had a great response on the contractors. Well done. It seems as though the golf 7 position totally makes sense why you removed that. Same thing on realigning the custodial 8 positions. What about these folks that were in the parks? I appreciate that they haven't 9 been filled for the last several years. Is there a need that's going unaddressed? 10 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. You could legitimately say there is a need. We would like them, 11 but we had to make concessions as a department. Every division offered up something, 12 and it was a reasonable accommodation because we had to meet these cuts. We'll do our 13 best (inaudible), and we'll advocate to get them back, at least I certainly will. At some 14 point, I would like it but when it makes sense for the City to do so. 15 Commissioner McCauley: What's the plan in the nearer term? Are you going to shuffle 16 staff to have full-time people handle these tasks that used to be handled by the seasonal 17 folks? 18 Mr. Anderson: I think that is how it's been. At some point as the seasonal staff gradually 19 dwindled down over time—I think it was more robust before I eventually joined the parks 20 department—the supervisors took on more of a role of a working supervisor with the 21 Rangers too. They're not just supervisors, not just managing; they're definitely holding 22 weed whips and picking up trash and doing all those things. That's one way. Others are 23 through partnerships with volunteers. We've got great relationships with Friends of Parks 24 and Kiwanis. In my Department Report, which I cut a little brief, we're having the Kiwanis 25 Club right now come out monthly during the summer and redo a fence for us, which is two-26 fold. One, I don't have enough staff to do it. Two, the CIP that did the construction project 27 to rebuild that park at Bowden was insufficiently funded. There wasn't enough to do that 28 fence, and so we found a different way. We adapted and overcame. 29 Commissioner McCauley: How long do you think you'll need to do without these 30 positions? 31 Mr. Anderson: I don't know. I think it's really difficult to say. You just heard about that 32 $4 million cut. It's something I anticipate we're going to have to deal with for quite some 33 time, but I don't know. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 28 Chair McDougall: It sounds to me like you'd already dealt with that flexibility because 1 they were vacant positions. To me, the scarier thing is what part of the $4 million will you 2 have to fund. That's a bigger risk that we would look forward to appealing at Council or 3 whatever else we might have to do to help you. Now, I'm going to invite you to go on to 4 municipal fees. 5 Ms. LeBlanc: The next few slides talk about municipal fees. There's more detail in the 6 memo that's attached to this agenda. I'm just going to quickly talk about the fee setting 7 process. We have several policies and procedures that guide the process. The City has a 8 Cost Recovery Level Policy, which outlines how fees should be set across the City. Our 9 department has a procedure to implement that policy with specific direction for our 10 programs and services. All the fees are approved in the Municipal Fee Schedule every year 11 by City Council. They're maintained in the City's Municipal Fee Schedule. 12 Chair McDougall: Jazmin, can you say that again, and can you move the mic a little closer 13 to you? 14 Ms. LeBlanc: Just the last part? 15 Chair McDougall: Yeah, just the last part. 16 Ms. LeBlanc: All the fees are approved annually by the City Council, and they're adopted 17 and maintained in a City Municipal Fee Schedule. This next slide—I apologize—has very 18 tiny writing. These are the cost recovery level groups that the City policy categorizes all 19 of our programs and services with a fee associated into. We have low, medium, and high 20 cost recovery groups with various policy parameters guiding staff in how to set the 21 assignment. You can see, for example, in the low cost recovery level group you have 22 programs where there may be no intended relationship between the amount paid and the 23 benefit received. Whereas, in the high cost recovery group, you may see programs or 24 services where the use of that service is specifically discouraged by the City. Those are 25 some of the parameters in the Cost Recovery Policy. The next slide shows you how we 26 typically assign different types of programs and services within the Community Services 27 Department into those low, medium, and high categories. For example, in the lost cost 28 recovery, we've put special events. We see this as a majority community benefit where 29 we're not trying to recover a high level of cost versus in the high category facility rentals 30 for private events, for example. Our programs and services in general are all available for 31 residents and nonresidents. Residents support CSD's programs and facilities through 32 ongoing General Fund contributions, so we prioritize residents above nonresidents 33 whenever possible. What this means to us is that residents are in general paying a lower 34 fee for programs and services and are given access to book programs and services ahead 35 of when they're open to nonresidents. The nonresident premiums that we currently utilize 36 aim to increase cost recovery levels while still maintaining prices that would actually be 37 attractive to nonresidents when there are spaces available. About 20 percent of our class 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 29 and camp participants are nonresidents. We typically charge about 15 percent more for 1 nonresidents to participate in classes and camps and anywhere from 15 to more than 50 2 percent more to book facility rentals dependent on the location and day of the week. When 3 we have taken looks at other neighboring communities, we've found that this is pretty 4 typical. A typical nonresident premium is set at 15-25 percent; although, there are some 5 communities that don't have any nonresident premium at all. I wanted to talk to you about 6 the fee reduction program. Since 1996, the City has had a fee reduction program for low-7 income and disabled residents of Palo Alto to reduce the cost of classes, camps, and 8 community garden fees. There have been several modifications to the program in the years 9 since 1996. The most recent change is that effective this July 1 we were able to add a group 10 into the fee reduction program. It previously was available to low-income youth and 11 seniors and disabled residents of any age. We've been able to expand that to include low-12 income adults as well. It now is available to any age low-income person residing in Palo 13 Alto and any age disabled resident. There's either a 25 or 50 percent discount off your 14 program registration depending on your income level. For the majority of the participants, 15 there's a $300 subsidy cap per year per qualifying person. This year, as we've just rolled 16 out the low-income adult program access, we have capped the subsidy to $150 to start. 17 This will give us an opportunity to gauge the level of demand before we increase the 18 subsidy up to what it is for the other participants. Finally, these are just a few—this is a 19 little bit about the actual municipal fee changes effective fiscal year '19. Typically, City 20 staff will determine how much salaries and benefits are increasing across the City and give 21 each department guidance to increase fees to correspond to that increase in cost to provide 22 services. This year that was 2.6 percent. The average salary and benefit rate for City 23 employees is going up by 2.6 percent; therefore, in general fees should go up by 2.6 percent. 24 The idea there is that you maintain the cost recovery level by increasing the fee at that rate. 25 That is the increase that we applied to many of the Community Services Department's fees 26 but not all. There were some larger increases including on community garden plots, across 27 at the golf course, and in the middle school athletics program areas, for example. With the 28 community garden plots, we have not raised the fees in quite some time. It's going up 29 almost 7 percent but that is from 75¢ per square foot to 80¢, so it's relatively hard to do 30 2.6 percent and still have a whole number. We did that primarily due to increasing potable 31 water costs. The golf fees, as you know we have a whole new operator with new 32 expectations, which is why golf is changing so much. Middle school athletics was also a 33 program area that had not had fees raised in more than 5 years and was starting to see 34 diminishing cost recovery levels. Finally, we have added a new corporate facility rental 35 fee in response to feedback from the public, City Council, and this Commission to make 36 sure largely private-benefit events that are occupying our facilities are paying more for that 37 privilege. We've set up a new fee that would provide a $4,000-$8,000 corporate facility 38 rental fee on top of our normal facility rental fees for users who want to book large amounts 39 of space for extended periods of time at our facilities. That is everything about municipal 40 fees. I was going to say we could … 41 APPROVED Draft Minutes 30 Commissioner Reckdahl: If it's not long term, if some corporation wants to have a 1 Christmas party and rent Lucie Stern, there's no additional fees? 2 Ms. LeBlanc: That would not be something where this fee actually sets in. It is use of at 3 least 10,000 square feet with at least 1,000 people attending and over several days. It's 4 pretty narrow. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: That makes sense. They're impinging other people's project 6 where, if someone's just renting one room, they're not really impinging on the public. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: Don's asked me to allow questions from the rest of the 8 Commission. Jeff, do you have questions, comments? Anne. 9 Commissioner Cribbs: I had one about the middle school athletics programs. We have 10 raised the fees for 5 years. Will you be watching the participation numbers to see if they 11 stay the same or go up or down? I'm just concerned about middle school athletics because 12 I believe the City runs that whole program. What about the kids that can't afford to play? 13 Ms. LeBlanc: Hopefully they would take advantage of the fee reduction program, which 14 this would cover. Yes, we're always monitoring for dips in enrollment or increases and 15 taking a look at our total revenue. One thing I didn't mention but is extremely important 16 in our department is we're market-driven, even middle school athletics. We can't do the 17 same type of evaluation of our fees that the Development Center is looking at or the Police 18 Department, where people don't really have a choice but to pay that fee. That's why we 19 don't always follow the guidance that City Hall gives of increasing fees at a certain 20 percentage without other consideration. We have already started to get the word out in the 21 middle schools. 22 Commissioner McCauley: Where do our fee dollars go? Do they stay with the division? 23 Ms. LeBlanc: No. They go into the City's General Fund. 24 Commissioner McCauley: What general portion of the fees that go into the General Fund 25 are generated by the Community Services division? 26 Ms. LeBlanc: The Community Services Department recovers overall, if you look at our 27 revenues versus total expense, about 30 percent of our costs. That would be around $10 28 million in this upcoming fiscal year. 29 Commissioner McCauley: Do you have a sense for what that is relative to the City more 30 broadly? 31 Ms. LeBlanc: I think I can safely say we have to be a drop in the bucket compared to fees 32 associated with development, for example. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 31 Commissioner McCauley: Sure, but that's unique. 1 Ms. LeBlanc: If you're looking at other departments that are General Funded, we're 2 recovering a very high percentage through user fees. 3 Commissioner Moss: I have two questions. I'm pretty sensitive to resident versus 4 nonresident. You have a difficult job in wanting to service the residents, and the people 5 who are giving you budget are expecting you to support residents primarily. In some cases, 6 you wouldn't even have a class if you didn't have a certain number of slots filled, and it's 7 okay to have nonresidents in order to pay the salary of the teacher or camp counselor. 8 You've got this delicate balancing act. How sophisticated is that? Do you have dynamic 9 pricing or things like that? Do you identify classes and camps that are in great demand by 10 residents and some that are marginal and should have nonresidents? 11 Ms. LeBlanc: The most effective way for us to make sure that residents are getting access 12 to these really in-demand programs is by giving them the opportunity to register before 13 nonresidents. We do that right now. When you register for a class or a camp, nonresidents 14 have to wait. Typically the first week of registration is only available for residents. 15 Actually, it's the first month or so for our camp registration. We really try to encourage 16 residents to sign up early so that they can fill up as many slots as are in demand by residents. 17 When we see that we still have five out of 20 slots available for a particular class, 18 nonresidents have the opportunity to fill up those remaining open seats. 19 Commissioner Moss: If you find that a class is pretty full and you've covered costs, can 20 you get away with charging more to nonresidents because for some classes you really don't 21 need them? If they want to get in, could you charge more than the 15 percent? In my mind, 22 the 15 percent seems pretty low for some classes that are very in-demand. 23 Ms. LeBlanc: That's a good point. We have looked at increasing our nonresident premium 24 to be as high as 25 percent, and that is something we could look at, having a range rather 25 than a flat 15 percent. We could encourage our staff when they're looking at setting prices 26 to see what happens in those programs that have a high demand if we go up to 20 or 25 27 percent premium. We do have to be careful always that we're not setting the price so high 28 that nonresidents will choose not to sign up at all. That's the hard piece. 29 Commissioner Moss: That was my point. If we don't need them, then we don't really care. 30 You're right that that's bad publicity or it could come back to bite you later. With the rents 31 so high, many people who have a decent income may not—it may go all to rent. Therefore, 32 they will need more help than that same income at another city like south San Jose. How 33 do you deal with that? How many slots do you give—do you have a set number of slots 34 that you give to low-income or not? 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 32 Ms. LeBlanc: No. Theoretically, we could have a class that's completely filled with low-1 income residents because we're not restricting access. If someone qualifies for the fee 2 reduction program, they just fill out the form and come into a community center to register 3 for a camp just the way that any other resident would. There isn't any kind of limitation on 4 how many low income or disabled residents could participate in a program. Something 5 that's nice about our cost recovery policy is for the most part our camps and classes are not 6 expected to fully recover costs, so we can try to keep our prices relatively low for all of our 7 users. Our goal is to get more people in our programs. 8 Commissioner Moss: I want to make sure when you have your budget cuts and when you 9 have to go before the City Council they understand that we're providing these incredible 10 services to a large low-income population, even residents. 11 Ms. LeBlanc: We will be fighting to keep all of our programs and services intact as much 12 as we possibly can. 13 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. In 14 the finer print, there was a reference to different fee schedules for different types of groups. 15 One of the groups highlighted was the friends groups. I'm wondering how many of these 16 friends groups are there. We've heard about one that's not so well known today already. 17 I'm wondering what else we might learn. Is there a dozen friends groups? 18 Ms. LeBlanc: No. I think what you're referring to actually is in the Community Services 19 Department's response to the auditor's report. One of the things the auditor asked us to do 20 was make sure any exception to the table that you saw, that said here are our target cost 21 recovery levels for different types of things, be called out. What they were talking about 22 specifically was participants in the Children's Theatre shows do not pay any fee to be there 23 as performers. Friends of the Children's Theatre actually pays to cover the costs of the 24 participants. They collect donations that they remit a gift to the City of that donation to 25 cover the costs associated with having those children participate. That's in the fine print 26 because the auditor identified that as being something like a class or camp and pushed that 27 we would charge children to participate. That's one of the things that we called out. If 28 we're going to have a group, like a friends group, donate money in lieu of charging a fee, 29 we think it's acceptable not to charge a fee in that case. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Maybe I misunderstood it. I thought it was more talking about 31 nonprofits or friendly type groups that would lower fee rates as opposed to for-profit or 32 out-of-City groups. I was just wondering. What are the friends groups that the City is 33 benefiting from? 34 Chair McDougall: It says in the Community Services Department fee slide that it's a low 35 recovery if friends participate. I would like to maybe not pursue a specific answer right 36 now. What I've just heard is there's a $29 million budget, but we pay $10 million of that 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 33 ourselves. There's money that may go into the General Fund, but it comes out of the 1 General Fund. It's really a $19 million budget. Of that $19 million, I'd be really interested 2 in understanding, relative to Jeff's questions, how much of that the collective friends 3 provide. What is it that offsets the $19 million or is the budget actually bigger than $19 4 million because that funding isn't visible? I'd be interested in how much—you've got these 5 categories, consistent with what Jeff's asking, of low, medium, and high. How many 6 programs are in the high, medium, and low recovery? I'm disappointed with the policy that 7 there's not a fourth category, which could be the golf course eventually, for 100 percent. 8 The goal ought to be 100 percent, and that ought to be a category that's called out here. 9 That goes to Ryan's question of more detail. In general, we'd like a little bit more 10 granularity. Is that fair from everybody? Maybe I could sit with you, Jazmin, and we could 11 work up some granularity that we bring back. 12 Ms. LeBlanc: That would be great. I do have to give a little nod to Kristen. She and I 13 have a lot of the answers to some of these questions. We've prepped for any question that 14 could possibly come up in front of City Council over the last several months. We certainly 15 can come up with the answers and report back to this group going through all of those. It 16 might be helpful to flesh out exactly what would be the most helpful thing. 17 Chair McDougall: I would vote in favor of a written response with more granularity rather 18 than trying to answer the questions tonight. Is everybody agreeable to that? Kristen, do 19 you have a comment on that? Are we crazy? 20 Ms. O'Kane: That's fine. For process, you want a written response to your questions 21 tonight? 22 Chair McDougall: Collectively, between what Ryan and Jeff have asked, there's a theme 23 of the kind of question. Maybe I could sit with Jazmin and help collect that theme. Maybe 24 we could come up with a collective answer. She can come up with the answer, and I could 25 help collect the question. 26 Commissioner Moss: How do you disseminate that? Do you disseminate that in the next 27 meeting or do you do it privately outside of the meeting? 28 Chair McDougall: As long as it's from the staff to the Commission, they can do that with 29 a simple … 30 Ms. O'Kane: What we might do is include it in the packet so that anyone who might be 31 watching this meeting or interested in some of those answers would have those answers as 32 well. 33 Chair McDougall: We can disseminate it before, but include it officially in the next 34 meeting so it's publicly available. Is that fair? Is that correct? 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 34 Ms. O'Kane: That is fair. Just a reminder that no serial conversations on the topic. 1 Chair McDougall: I wasn't proposing that at all. In fact, that's what I was trying to avoid. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm glad to see that we've added a corporate facility rental fee. 3 Certainly, there was a call for that. I'm curious how the $4,000-$8,000 per day rate was 4 decided upon. 5 Ms. LeBlanc: There was a huge range in what's charged when we looked at other cities, 6 as low as zero or $1,000 or $2,000 and as high as in the millions. In general we try to set 7 a fee relatively low initially and see what the reaction is before raising it. This was towards 8 the middle of the range, a little bit on the lower side, so that we can raise it if necessary. 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: I would encourage and request you in the future to engage with the 10 parks and facility use policy ad hoc. We're here, and we'd like to help when we can. 11 Commissioner McCauley: This is a little bit tangential. Do you perceive the opportunity 12 to increase rental fees at Lucie Stern or other facilities? 13 Ms. LeBlanc: The short answer is yes but not yet mainly because of construction at the 14 Junior Museum. We have a lot of demand for weddings there. Once we have a parking 15 lot again, we'll be able to increase the fees and still maintain a lot of happy customers. 16 Commissioner McCauley: Do you do any marketing around availability of those spaces? 17 Ms. LeBlanc: We do, and we would like to do more. It's something that I'm hoping we'll 18 be able to build up in the 2 years that the Junior Museum is under construction. 19 Ms. O'Kane: One of the ways that we advertise, especially Lucie Stern because that's our 20 main location for weddings, is through wedding websites. It's listed as a facility, so people 21 hear about it that way. 22 Commissioner Moss: Like Gamble Garden? 23 Ms. O'Kane: That's another one. People who are getting married can go on a website and 24 look at all the possible venues in the Bay Area. Lucie Stern Community Center comes up 25 as one of them. 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: Fees, none of them are controlled by Prop 29? 27 Ms. LeBlanc: No. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: We can charge whatever we want? 29 Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 35 Commissioner Reckdahl: Cost recovery isn't mandatory; it's just a tool we use for helping 1 us determine the right price? 2 Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: How do we set the price? Do we look at the market price and 4 say "what will the market bear" or do we look at our costs and say we'll mark up our costs 5 by 10-15 percent? 6 Ms. LeBlanc: It's generally both of those things. If we're going to have a new program, 7 we need to make sure we can recover a reasonable amount of costs if the market is really 8 low. If it's a very expensive program, that might not be something we can afford to fund. 9 We really need to look at both of those things. Our staff that sets fees is generally in tune 10 with what the market will bear. They have specific knowledge and keep that in mind. 11 We're also constantly looking at the total cost to make sure it makes sense to keep doing 12 the program the way we're doing it. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do we also adjust costs based on how well the class filled last 14 year? If it filled up right away, do we consider raising the price? 15 Ms. LeBlanc: Yes, we do. That does happen. Conversely, if it's not filling up, that's a 16 reason to consider adjusting the price, adjusting the schedule, all kinds of things. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: In the packet, it talked about direct costs. How do you calculate 18 direct costs? Is that just the labor of the person who's teaching the course? 19 Ms. LeBlanc: Each of our programs has its own cost center in SAP. It has it's own special 20 code, and it includes the salaries and benefits associated with staff that provide the services 21 and any other costs like supplies. We determine the City overhead rate and the 22 department's administrative costs and dole that out as a percentage to apply for the indirect 23 costs. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: It was 15 percent for the department and 20 percent for the City. 25 How did we come up with that number? 26 Ms. LeBlanc: The City one is what we get billed, these indirect charges that are generally 27 tacked onto the Community Services administration cost center. The City does it. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: You look at that tax then. How does maintenance come into 29 this? 30 Ms. LeBlanc: Maintenance is generally an indirect cost from Public Works. We can see 31 that line item added to our department. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 36 Commissioner Reckdahl: If you have a class that's being held on a grassy field or one that's 1 inside a building or at the aquatics center, those will have vastly different maintenance 2 requirements. Yet, we still charge 15 and 20 percent. 3 Ms. LeBlanc: It's just a matter of practicality to come up with a number without spending 4 too much time figuring out what it should be for aquatics versus the Art Center. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: Back in the days of Prop 29, it really was important to get all 6 that because you were limited by Prop 29, which meant if you understated your costs, your 7 hands were tied. You definitely didn't want to understate your costs because that overly 8 burdened your flexibility. 9 Ms. LeBlanc: That's true. We're the only department and possibly the Library not subject 10 to Prop 29. The other departments are, and they've paid for consulting studies and things 11 to make sure they get it right. Our department was left out of that to save money because 12 it's not subject to the same restrictions. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: One of my problems is if we're just going for this target of 100 14 percent or 115 or 135 depending on which category you're in, and we are understating our 15 costs—we don't pay rent on that; it's just the labor that it costs—should we be raising our 16 rates and trying to make money on some of those to pay for other classes where they may 17 not be as popular, but we still want to hold them because of the community good. We 18 really want to make sure that we get those community good classes in. The ones that are 19 personal good, we should be trying to make a profit on it. Right now, our target is 135, 20 and our cost is more than 135. We're still losing on that category where it's personal benefit. 21 Ms. LeBlanc: The City's policy does have in the high cost recovery range a cap at 100 22 percent, but that's not how we do it in our department. Golf course, we aim to more than 23 recover the costs for the golf course. When people book a wedding with us, when they're 24 taking personal local lessons, we're trying to charge as much as we can. Those are dictated 25 by what the market will bear and not based on the cost. We want to know what the cost 26 recovery level is, but those are things we're charging the market rate. 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: You're saying right now the cost recovery is trivial, a piece of 28 … 29 Ms. LeBlanc: In those cases where we're aiming to get beyond 100 percent, the main thing 30 we're looking at is market rate. 31 Commissioner Reckdahl: The last category that had a target of 135, what do we get in that 32 category? Are we getting 135 or are we getting 150? Do you know? 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 37 Ms. LeBlanc: It would depend on each specific thing that you're talking about in that 1 category. Perhaps I should come back with some specific answers on some of these things 2 such as the golf course. The things that pop into my mind are golf course, facility rentals 3 for private events, singing lessons. We have the private swimming lessons. Those are the 4 main things I can think of. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: If we're just targeting 135, we are not soaking them. We are still 6 subsidizing them because we're giving them free rent. They're using our facilities. All 7 they are paying for is the labor and the tax on top of that labor. They are still being 8 subsidized. I would encourage us on that last category to try to make more money. 9 Especially with these budget cuts coming up, we're going to lose the ability to have that 10 best category. We really have to protect that, and one way to protect that is to charge more 11 in that higher category. 12 Chair McDougall: Thank you. I'll look forward to a conversation where we can (inaudible) 13 to bring back. (inaudible) 14 Mr. Anderson: I'll briefly provide some background on our capital budget process and 15 mainly focus on our CSD projects. Let's start with what we mean by CIP. It's helpful to 16 have a little definition. The criteria on this slide lists that the minimum cost has to be 17 $50,000. If it's below that amount, we're typically asked to fund it through our operating 18 budget or perhaps through some of our CIPs that are ongoing and annual. Sometimes those 19 are used to fund smaller one-offs. It also has to have a useful life of at least 5-7 years or 20 extend an existing asset to that time frame. I should note the City plans its capital budget 21 in 5-year cycles with only the first year funded. It's done so by Council in June. Our 22 current 5-year cycle—I'm going to explain this over and over because some people get lost 23 with the fiscal year thing, so bear with me. Our current 5-year cycle is now fiscal year 24 2019 through fiscal year '23, if that makes sense. Only FY '19—the one I'll show you in a 25 minute—projects are the funded ones. Those remaining years are used for forecasting 26 planning, and they can be reshuffled each year as we look at it anew. Just a little bit on the 27 prioritization. Our big funding book, our budget book, is a really cool tool. I encourage 28 you to take a look at it; it's got a lot of information. One bit about it is on the prioritization, 29 and it mentions Council Priorities are a big piece, aligning with the City's infrastructure. 30 Our Blue Ribbon Commission, the IBRC, was a community and staff endeavor in 2013. 31 They looked at every bit of infrastructure within the City and analyzed where it fell into 32 these categories of catch-up, meaning it had been identified before in a previous report as 33 needing attention, and it was not done so in its proper time. That went into this catch-up 34 bucket. There was an enormous number of projects that fell into there, and we're whittling 35 away as we go. I'll come back to that term catch-up, and you'll see it listed in a couple of 36 project descriptions. The next category was keep-up. The intent of that bucket or category 37 of projects was the lifespan's coming due. To keep-up, you're going to have to make sure 38 it happens in a given year. Let's say the lifespan of a playground is 15 years, and it went 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 38 in in a certain year. By 15 years from that date, it's allocated in this IBRC report to be done 1 in that year. If you didn't, it would fall now into catch-up. You'll see that come back and 2 forth a few times. Other priorities that are often used to prioritize things are health and 3 safety implications. Oftentimes, an unforeseen event, neither in our 5-year cycle nor on 4 our list of projects waiting to get into a CIP, might be out there looming that we didn't 5 know about and becomes an issue. The next opportunity, the next year, it can jump right 6 into the front based on sometimes health and safety, historical spending, and certainty over 7 feasibility, scope, and level of resources. That last bit about is there a scope, is there 8 adequate resources, have you figured out the project is a good question. Lots of times we'll 9 have projects, and the Commission or even the Council will say, "I really want you to move 10 on this," but there are certain steps that have to be done before we can make it a project. I 11 think the 10.5 acres is a good example of that, where it's just not ready yet to put forth for 12 a CIP. We don't have a scope of work; we haven't done the public outreach; we don't have 13 the conceptual plan, and we haven't answered the land-use questions associated with it. It's 14 premature to go forward with the CIP yet, but it'll be coming. Here are our FY '19 projects. 15 Some of them aren't specifically for CSD, but it's in this funding cycle. The one I wanted 16 to point out is the Highway 101 pedestrian bridge. It's a large project. It really isn't driven 17 by CSD but certainly connected to us. Once it's done, you'll have a connection to the 18 Baylands that's vastly improved. We've been involved since the beginning, both in the 19 design, somewhat in the public outreach process. In the end, we'll be maintaining an 20 element of the bridge itself, that is the landscaping and some of the irrigation on either side. 21 The FY '19 projects here are approximately $19 million that you see just in that FY '19 22 category. As I mentioned, some of them are kind of one-offs that are rather exceptional. 23 The $13 million for that bridge is not typical and again not exclusively CSD. $19 million 24 for FY '19 doesn't include the recurring projects that I'll show you on my next slide, which 25 account for about $1 million annually. On this slide, I've also included, as you can see, 26 various funding sources. We've got General Fund that you see, Cubberley Fund, and the 27 Park Development Impact Fee Fund. The General Fund is this catch-all for non-designated 28 funds, that is, there are no strings attached. There's no specific use. That's funding most 29 of our projects. The Cubberley Fund is obviously for Cubberley ones. We pay into this. 30 Kristen shared with me that the new Cubberley lease includes how much the City should 31 put in, and it's approximately $1.8 million a year connected with that lease that we put to 32 this fund and could be used for improvements at Cubberley. An example of that will be 33 the Cubberley synthetic turf fields and track improvements coming up relatively soon. The 34 parks development impact fees, I know you've heard about that a lot. That also funds 35 projects like the dog park or our park restrooms. That's new amenities, non-maintenance 36 oriented. That's an example of those three funding types. Here are our recurring CIPs. 37 These are really valuable to staff. The first one is a good example, the benches, signs, 38 fencing. It has a really long name because it's intentionally broad. It allows me to use it 39 to supplant other CIPs that maybe are underfunded and don't have enough to pay for 40 benches or maybe fencing. Sometimes, I've got enough funding in that one; I could help 41 that CIP out and make it a little more robust, a little more of a complete project. It's also 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 39 used everywhere, every park and open space, sometimes even around Stern, community 1 centers. The off-road … 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: That includes both repairs and also new benches, for example? 3 Mr. Anderson: Yes, yes, it does. The off-road pathway is for our paved bike paths. This 4 is often rolled over. Sometimes you'll see, when we get to the individual project page, a 5 given year that's much higher than another. It's kind of confusing why that happens. 6 Oftentimes, it's because we intentionally saved the money and rolled it over to the next 7 year to allow us to do a cost-savings into a bigger project. Sometimes, it's even a couple 8 of years because we try to time it with a Public Works project where they have a big paving 9 contract, and we can tie in to have an economy of scale where we save. The open space, 10 trails, and amenities, some of these seem a little redundant. You'll hear trails maybe a 11 couple of times. They each have their own specialized use. Sometimes there is a little 12 overlap in flexibility, usually to our benefit. That particular one funds our trail contract, 13 where all our open space trails are groomed and maintained through that CIP. It funds the 14 contract. Our parks emergency, open space repairs project is an important one, often 15 underfunded. We requested to have it increased, and it will in future years. It goes towards 16 obviously the unforeseen emergency work, which is often things like an arson fire that took 17 out a playground at Hoover about 8 years ago. Often, weather related or just unforeseen. 18 What we typically use it for is assets that have prematurely aged like a surfacing for a 19 playground. You'll put in rather expensive, important play rubber around the playground, 20 and the high-use areas fail early, especially at places like Magical Bridge playground, 21 vastly premature aging. No mechanism to fund that, so often that's one I'm heavily reliant 22 on. It's also really important to extend the life of an asset. When we look at certain things—23 the Boardwalk is a good example at the Baylands. We talked about had we funded repairs 24 more often, would it have gone to complete failure or could we have extended the life. 25 That one's maybe a little more difficult one because the repairs are more onerous. Some 26 of these things, the answer is yes, I can extend the life of a given asset if I can take care of 27 it more frequently. This kind of CIP helps me do so. Lastly, the open space, lakes, and 28 ponds is used primarily at Foothills Park for the cattail and pond weed—it's annually 29 cleared out—and also at the Baylands duck pond where we occasionally do treatments for 30 the aeration down there. Here's a project page in this big capital book. If you went online 31 and looked at it, every single project has a page like this. Aside from the obvious stuff 32 about description and justification and funding schedule, it also has information—if you 33 look on there, it'll tell you it's a keep-up or catch-up project like this particular one is catch-34 up, which means it was identified by the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Committee. Some of 35 the project pages, you'll notice the funding is spread out over multiple years. It doesn't 36 always give you all the details or explain why that is. Most frequently, especially if the 37 project is somewhere in that $300,000 or up range, it's a design element in the previous 38 year. It's usually somewhere between 10-20 percent, and then the next year, which is the 39 bulk of the money, is the construction, although not always. When we look at the ongoing 40 APPROVED Draft Minutes 40 one, you'll see every year populated throughout the 5-year cycle. Sometimes, they can be 1 confusing. There's a lot of guidance in the online document for our capital budget. This 2 next slide—I'm sorry. This is the second page of that one, which has a little bit more detail 3 just to give you more guidance on the project itself. Here's our CIP identified needs that 4 are currently not in the capital 5-year plan. Some of them you're familiar with. We talked 5 a little bit about the 10.5 acres being one of them mainly because it's not ready for that. 6 We have a CIP for the outreach and planning process, which will start this year. Then, 7 once we've got a plan, the idea would be to populate that somewhere in that 5-year cycle, 8 certainly a step that the Commission would weigh in on and play a part of. Some of the 9 projects ideally would have been a project. We would have had them happen already. In 10 fact, for my own personal opinion, I would list them as catch-up. A good example of that 11 would be the Foothills Park restrooms. They're in bad shape, and we wrestled—there's 12 only finite funds—and we had to pick and choose. The other piece to that is, even if I had 13 the money, which is often a question I get both from Commission and Council Members, 14 if you had the money would you do it. The answer is probably not. When you look at that 15 FY '19 page and the number of staff I have to implement those projects, we are at capacity 16 to say the least. We're really pushing it to try to accomplish what we already have on the 17 table. If you gave me another $500,000 and said, "see if you can do these," I could tell you 18 without hesitation I don't think it's possible given our existing resources. We'll be very 19 hard pressed to do what we already have on our agenda for FY '19. The timeline process 20 is important. We typically start this planning process in October or November and ideally 21 meet with the ad hoc and talk about—again, we're looking at the (crosstalk), and you have 22 an opportunity to take things that aren't even on the 5-year cycle or maybe not even on our 23 identified list and say, "what about this need" and wrestle with it and see where it should 24 fit in. Really, everything can be reshuffled at that point. We take that information, and 25 come December and January we're submitting our 5-year budget to the Finance 26 Department. Every year, it seems to be a little different. They're not quite so hard and fast. 27 Sometimes there's some give and take. They'll analyze it and say, "Sorry. Some of these 28 are going to have to go. We'll let you horse trade a little bit." In prior years, we've had 29 opportunities to meet with the ad hoc committee. Because the timeframes are usually short, 30 I'm looking at a couple of weeks to say, "We want to keep that one. We'll trade you, and 31 we'll give up this other one." Sometimes, that's not on the table at all; there's no dialog at 32 least that I was privy to or a part of. Finance just had to make some hard decisions and 33 said these are out and made them categorically. In April, we go to the Planning and 34 Transportation Commission. Their role in this is to make sure the capital plan is consistent 35 with the City's Comprehensive Plan. In the past sometimes, a member of the ad hoc or 36 Parks Commission would come to those meetings. I've been to the last ten. I don't think 37 I've ever gotten the chance to say anything. They've never had a question for me. I don't 38 think it's the most fruitful discussion for our purposes of which park project is important. 39 That's not the nature of that conversation. It's strictly does it comply with the 40 Comprehensive Plan. When we do our submittals, you'll see that they're—in the 41 documents it'll say "this is connected to goal such-and-such and policy such-and-such in 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 41 the City's Comprehensive Plan." Most of ours fit very well. I've never had a problem with 1 that. That's part of the process. In May, it goes to the Finance Committee where they 2 discuss and ultimately make their recommendation to Council, which makes their decision 3 to fund the capital budget in June. We met with the ad hoc, and I shared this information 4 with them. They may have some additional comments. With that, it ends my presentation. 5 I'm available for questions. 6 Chair McDougall: Jeff, do you have any questions? 7 Commissioner LaMere: No. 8 Chair McDougall: Keith? 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: You made that remark that even if you had more money, you 10 don't have the full-time employees to do more work, which is sobering considering that we 11 just put this Master Plan with a whole bunch of work in it. That means if we have any 12 illusions of implementing the Master Plan, we need to hire people while our budget is being 13 cut. 14 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. Kristen and I have talked about this before, as have 15 Public Works who often do the lion's share of capital projects, managing them. They too 16 are at the same level we are. They're constrained and have reached capacity. It's 17 frustrating. We've talked about—oftentimes we'll hire—El Camino Park is a good 18 example. We paid a lot of money to have a project manager run that. Even with that, it 19 required a lot of my personal time. I half wonder if that isn't part of the solution. For some 20 of these projects, even through the public process, even through the outreach process, is 21 there a way we could hire a consultant for the project, build it into the CIP cost. Let's say 22 it's a new restroom, and they do that. The consultant leads those public meetings and comes 23 to the Commission and makes the presentations and writes staff reports and does those 24 kinds of things. I think it is feasible. There was one example where Environmental 25 Volunteers, when they did the Eco Center project, hired someone who was really talented 26 and fairly familiar with the City process. She ran almost all of it herself. It clued me into 27 maybe that being a viable option in the future if there was funding available and you built 28 it into the CIP. 29 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm curious why PTC does the review of the capital plan to ensure 30 it's compatibility with the Comprehensive Plan. Do you have some understanding why it 31 falls under their purview? 32 Mr. Anderson: I'm sorry I don't. I can look into that and see what the history is. It's a 33 good question. 34 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for your presentation. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 42 Commissioner McCauley: Daren, I believe that I read somewhere that it's a City Charter 1 requirement. Does that sound familiar? 2 Mr. Anderson: It may well be. (inaudible) 3 Chair McDougall: After the Comprehensive Plan committee, then the PRC [sic] has to 4 approve the Comprehensive Plan. They're in charge of the Comprehensive Plan. Ryan, do 5 you have questions, comments? 6 Commissioner McCauley: Daren, I'm curious. In the CIP process timeline, would it be 7 beneficial to you if you had the input and perhaps the more formal support of the entire 8 Commission on the prioritized list so that you could actually use that to hopefully advocate 9 for your own capital projects that you want to push forward? If you actually had a 10 resolution from this group? If you started that conversation on the CIP process a month 11 earlier so that you could then have a resolution from this Commission that said here's what 12 we think should be the budgeted priorities on the CIP side for the next year? 13 Mr. Anderson: I've never pursued a resolution. Maybe it's a good conversation for OMB, 14 to ask our budget office is this appropriate, would it be helpful. It's certainly helpful for 15 staff. One of the challenges I've always had with it is, for some reason—it was always my 16 intent to come to the full Commission and have the robust discussions that Keith and I had 17 for so many years, but for some reason the timing was always such that I could not get it 18 to the full Commission in the timeframe that OMB, our budget department, wanted it. It 19 was really helpful having the flexibility of the ad hoc. Unfortunately, despite my best 20 intents, I didn't get to the full Commission. I would like to do that. I think it makes it just 21 more robust, more eyes on that kind of thing. To guide staff would be helpful. I will try 22 to do that. I think I can do better, so I'll give it my best shot to make sure this next go-23 around it gets a full Commission discussion. 24 Commissioner McCauley: Totally appreciating that when it comes crunch time, it may not 25 be timely in order to have the entire Commission weigh in, but it might be fruitful or helpful 26 to you. I would encourage you to think about some mechanism by which this Commission 27 could be helpful to drive forward the push for the CIP projects. 28 Mr. Anderson: Sounds good. Thank you. 29 Chair McDougall: Anne, do you have any questions? 30 Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah, just one or two on the fiscal year '19 project criteria. There 31 are two listings for turf management plans, one three lines down and one at the bottom. 32 How are those … 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's because it's really important. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 43 Commissioner Cribbs: I know it's very important. I thought we were going to get a double 1 shot at it. 2 Mr. Anderson: I think it was an error. Sorry, only one plan. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: How do you decide which park is going to get which restroom and 4 when? 5 Mr. Anderson: Good question. I think we'll be starting that with the ad hoc committee. 6 We'll get the ad hoc who's working on that together, and we'll look at a lot of the samples 7 and make some site visits, have some recommendations. Then, we do public meetings for 8 those communities, starting with our most promising one. If that's the winner and gets 9 support, that's the one we pursue. If the ad hoc or the Commission felt differently, that we 10 should do multiple community meetings, we could. My recommendation is we get the ad 11 hoc together and brainstorm and think it through and make some site visits, utilizing some 12 of staff's experience. I've got field inspectors that spend a lot of time in parks. They just 13 are constantly hearing from folks that this is an important one. Eleanor Pardee strikes me 14 as one where I've got a park inspector who must have told me 100 times how many times 15 he's heard from people saying "we've got to have a restroom here." I know it's a challenging 16 site. That one will bear for lots of discussion both with the ad hoc, the Commission, and 17 the community. It's one good example where I've heard loud and clear from visitors via 18 staff that it's necessary. 19 Commissioner Cribbs: The Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan, is that the 20 ongoing study, discussion, outreach or is that a thing? Is it something that's getting built 21 or is it we're still discussing it? That's $94,000. 22 Mr. Anderson: It's carry over. We started that one in FY '18, but it wasn't done in FY '18. 23 The project continues in FY '19. That's the remaining budget. 24 Chair McDougall: David, do you have questions? 25 Commissioner Moss: No. 26 Chair McDougall: Daren, thank you for the presentation. It gets everybody's funding and 27 financial juices going. I have a curiosity. That FY '19 list, as you said, is about $19 million. 28 There's about $17.5 million that is in those two major projects, which leaves $2.5 million. 29 There's almost $1.5 million of planning projects in there and about $900,000 in restroom 30 projects and $1 million in the Boardwalk replacement, which is in the maintenance 31 category. It was the undone maintenance category. Everything down below is 32 maintenance. You've got these three buckets of restrooms, planning, and maintenance. 33 That's really what it's all about. Is that a fair characterization? That's the challenge that 34 you're dealing with. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 44 Mr. Anderson: I think that is a fair characterization. A lot of the CIPs, especially as we 1 talked about the ongoing ones, are used for maintenance. In fact, at one point I remember 2 we were looking for something similar to benches, signs, and fencing. I forget what the 3 particular thing was. I had proposed to OMB another CIP for this. We don't do that 4 anymore as CIPs. CIPs should be buildings, infrastructure. What you're talking about is 5 routine maintenance that should go in the operating budget. Operating budgets get touched 6 a lot, and these ongoing projects for me have been stable for the last decade, if anything 7 they've gone up. They're really valuable, and I don't want to mess with them. To your 8 point about planning, park visitors get frustrated with how much money goes towards 9 planning projects. They say to me often, "Can't staff just do this? Can't you just put 10 together this plan?" Sometimes, the answer is yes, I think I can. Oftentimes, members of 11 the community really appreciate going through the process of outreach and having the 12 independent party do it. It's valuable and important. I don't know if I fully answered your 13 question. 14 Chair McDougall: It did. It more than answered the question. Thank you. It also speaks 15 to what Ryan was talking about in terms of could the ad hoc help create and analyze this 16 bucket and then the whole Commission have visibility of some of the variables. When I 17 look at this, I say some of these things aren't really variable. For us to spend a lot of time 18 discussing them, you've got a reason you're having to do it. The amount that's variable, 19 that we can influence, would seem to be much smaller. Rather than the whole thing, if 20 we're looking at the variable part, maybe the whole Commission can get behind what you're 21 trying to do, to speak to Ryan's point. Maybe that helps. Does anybody else have any 22 follow-up questions or whatever? I think this has been very complete. Thank you very 23 much. 24 5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 25 Chair McDougall: Are there comments, announcements, follow-ups from the ad hocs that 26 didn't get touched tonight? An awful lot of the ad hocs got touched tonight in one way or 27 another. And from the liaison groups. I'll start with David. 28 Commissioner Moss: A question for Daren. We had a discussion in the last meeting about 29 the Renzel pond, the work that they're doing, and how it will influence the Baylands 30 Comprehensive Plan. I noticed that—there was some discussion about whether or not there 31 should be an environmental impact study. I was noticing that there's almost no work that's 32 been done since our last meeting. I was wondering if our discussion had something to do 33 with that? 34 Mr. Anderson: No. They were on hold until the end of nesting season, I think is their game 35 plan. For the next meeting, I'll come with an updated report or have Karin come, who 36 works in that area of Public Works, and give you a briefing on where they're at. The intent, 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 45 as I understand it, is to leave the remaining vegetation there until the end of nesting season, 1 and then they'll continue work. 2 Chair McDougall: Are there any other comments or questions or ad hoc or liaison reports? 3 We had the opportunity, by the way, to have David speak about the hike that he took. With 4 the agenda we had tonight, we decided we didn't have time for that. Next meeting, we have 5 more of the Foothills Park on the agenda, and that would be complementary to that. We 6 look forward to that next time, David. Thank you. Anne, do you have anything you want 7 to add? 8 Commissioner Cribbs: Quickly, it was good to have the ad hoc before the meeting today. 9 I think we learned a lot in terms of the Cubberley consultants. That was a really good thing. 10 Nothing about dog parks right at the moment. I'm anxious to have something about dog 11 parks, but nothing … 12 Commissioner McCauley: We might have something in terms of restrooms to talk 13 (crosstalk). I think that's part of the dog park and park amenities (inaudible). 14 Commissioner Cribbs: That's true. Finally, I'm delighted that we have pickleball in August 15 on the agenda. 16 Chair McDougall: At the next meeting. 17 Ms. O'Kane: We'll need to meet with the ad hoc before that obviously. 18 Commissioner Cribbs: It's not on the agenda? 19 Ms. O'Kane: No, we will. It's on for August. The ad hoc will need to meet with staff 20 before that. 21 Vice Chair Greenfield: Just a quick update on the community gardens. I'll be attending a 22 meeting next week where—previously I mentioned there were a couple of community 23 gardens outreach meetings with the gardeners. This is going to be a summary meeting 24 where we're looking at rule changes that would eventually come to the Commission here. 25 VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: I have a question for Daren. I was up at Foothills Park and 27 bumped into some people from Friends of Foothills Park, another friends group. They 28 were taking out hemlock there. I was just chatting with them and asked what we could do 29 to help them. Their big concern was volunteers. They're a small group; they're getting 30 smaller. They don't have the connections to get volunteers anymore. Is that something the 31 City can do or can we coordinate with Grassroots or some other nonprofit? We heard the 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 46 same thing out of Jack Morton, his desire for volunteers. There seems to be a common 1 thread here. 2 Mr. Anderson: The Friends of Foothills has dwindled as an organization in my time with 3 the City. It was more robust; they were really active. They've aged out and have not 4 recruited very well. Most of staff's endeavors to recruit volunteers—I don't think 5 intentionally—were funneled towards Grassroots, Acterra at the time and now Grassroots 6 Ecology. They offered more programs that were more attractive to more people with more 7 opportunities and a greater organization. The friends, while extremely passionate, were 8 just smaller, less appropriate for your one-off volunteers or maybe slightly less committed 9 volunteers. Those are hardcore, driven folks. It just seemed to be less of them interested 10 in that kind of work. Still valuable, still supported by staff. We were with them recently, 11 working over by Boronda Lake to remove some lily pads. Someone had dumped an 12 aquarium into the lake a year ago, and some invasive lily pads were coming up. They were 13 helpful along with staff to get it out of there. We still work with them, and that's a valuable 14 organization. Occasionally they get a new person. Sometimes it's a Grassroots Ecology 15 person who really wants to take ownership of an area. They have a lot of autonomy, and 16 they'll cycle over. By and large, Grassroots is our recipient and mover towards 17 volunteerism. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Can we try to integrate them so they can help each other? 19 Mr. Anderson: There certainly are on elements, but they have somewhat different 20 philosophies and different perspectives. Again, one group is just hardcore, set in their 21 ways, "this is the way we want to do restoration." Grassroots is just a little different. 22 There's certainly a common denominator. They certainly collaborate on some things with 23 staff as the liaison guiding them. They're definitely two separate entities. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you think there's a role for the City here or do we think just 25 let them handle themselves? 26 Mr. Anderson: It's a good question. I've talked to the Rangers for many years about this 27 process of fading out. We're 10 years into this slow, steady decline. As much as possible, 28 when we find someone who's interested in that—independent of either group, the Rangers 29 will also occasionally lead volunteer projects. You'll come across someone who's very 30 passionate. Of course, we direct them when possible to the friends but also to Grassroots. 31 We do support that organization. Do I think it's going to make a huge turn-around? I don't 32 think so. It'll probably continue on a very small scale is my anticipation. As much as 33 possible, we will support it. In fact, I just got a long-term—this gentleman's name is Bob 34 Roth, a really fantastic volunteer. I've worked with him closely now for 19 years. He told 35 me the relationship between staff and the friends has never been better right now. I'm really 36 happy to hear that. Our Ranger staff is supportive. It just hasn't equated to growing the 37 group. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 47 Commissioner Reckdahl: One possibility is the Commission goes out and spends a 1 morning with Friends of Foothills Park. That might be an option for … 2 Commissioner Moss: I think I'm supposed to be the liaison, and I need to do that. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: Our Friends of Foothills Park? 4 Commissioner Moss: Yes. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: Both of them? 6 Commissioner Moss: No, just Friends of Foothill Park. 7 Mr. Anderson: If I can be of help, let know. We'll set you up with a meeting or whatever 8 would be helpful. 9 Commissioner LaMere: I was at an event at Magical Playground maybe about 2 weeks 10 ago and received a number of comments about the restrooms there. It came from parents 11 of special needs children. Some of it was about the fact that now we have Magical 12 Playground there are so many more people visiting the park. There were some comments 13 about the maintenance and upkeep and also do we have an appropriate number of 14 restrooms. There was some concern there with the impact that Magical Playground has 15 had on that park and the unique visitors to that park. One question about restrooms is do 16 the Hoover Park restrooms have hours or are they ever open or are those still operational? 17 Mr. Anderson: Yes, Hoover Park restrooms are automated. They open at the beginning 18 of the park hours, 8:00 a.m., and close at 10:30. To your comment on the restroom facilities 19 for Magical Bridge over at Mitchell Park, from the very get-go, it was really obvious that 20 now we're underserved in terms of the nearest restroom, which is across the bridge close 21 to the tennis courts. We've been brainstorming whether to enlarge that one or build a new 22 one next to the Magical Bridge playground. I'm not quite sure. That's probably a great one 23 for our ad hoc to discuss. As we say, we've got this pile of money to use in FY '19. Is it 24 best served there or perhaps a site that has no restroom whatsoever? It's a challenging one. 25 The other consideration is as new universally accessible playgrounds come online—there 26 are a number, as you probably know, both north and south of us. In the near future, it's 27 going to reduce—at least I'm hearing this from Olenka, who's the head of that 28 organization—some of the load that we bear. Will those reduced numbers maybe allow 29 that existing restroom to suffice? I'm not quite sure. It bears thinking through as we ponder 30 where that next restroom should be. 31 Commissioner Moss: Just one comment about Magical Bridge playground. There's no 32 water or facilities on the other side of the bridge today. To put a bathroom over there, you 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 48 might need to bring water while you're doing the bridge re-do. Otherwise, you have to 1 update the bathrooms on the other side of the bridge. 2 Mr. Anderson: I'll certainly look into that. It's entirely possible to get potable water to the 3 other side and do that. Even if it's post-new bridge in place, I think it's doable. 4 Chair McDougall: I will add one comment on Friends of the Palo Alto Parks. Kristen and 5 I have met with them and had some discussions. I've subsequently taken Roger Smith's 6 daughter, who is also on their board, to meet with Environmental Volunteer people to try 7 to create a triangle that might help us. The result of that is Elliott Wright is actually 8 securing a major portion of the funding that the Friends of Palo Alto Parks committed to. 9 That's not a done deal yet, but it's pretty close to that. We may have that signage funding 10 in a round-about way that worked in terms of creating these partnerships that we've been 11 talking about. It almost makes me think it would be really interesting to try and get a lot 12 of these friends in a room and have a conversation about who has what strengths and what 13 kind of policies are they using and practices are they using and what kind of funding. The 14 other thing that I didn't say when Morton was here is it's a—the challenge is everybody's 15 competing for the same dollars. When you're talking about EV versus Audubon versus 16 Acterra, everybody's trying to get the same dollar. If there's a way to divide that strategy, 17 that might could make an awful lot of sense. 18 VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR AUGUST 28, 2018 MEETING 19 Chair McDougall: The last thing is the agenda for August. Kristen, do you have comments 20 on that? It's in front of us. 21 Ms. O'Kane: I do. There's a lot on there. I have it up on the screen. We'll do a 22 pickleball/tennis update for sure. The Foothills Park trail reroute project. Amendments to 23 the parks rules and regulations is just cleaning that document up. An update on the golf 24 course. Commissioner Moss was going to give a presentation on his hike from Palo Alto 25 to the sea. If we feel like that's too long, we can move some of it around to September. 26 Chair McDougall: I was thinking of adding to it. 27 Ms. O'Kane: That's fine with me. 28 Chair McDougall: We did raise with Jazmin the question of an update. If we're going to 29 have an update, then we should make it public. Maybe we should have on the agenda the 30 operating budget update. If we could add that as a 10-minute item that could be distributed, 31 maybe that would work. Anything else that people would like to see on there? 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: This isn't for August, but it just seems to me that we're not 33 making the progress with the Master Plan that I would like. Do other people have that 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 49 same feeling? Would it be appropriate to cancel one of these fall meetings and have a 1 retreat where we can talk about how we can get more traction with the Master Plan? 2 Chair McDougall: We should absolutely discuss that. The September meeting—once you 3 start talking October or November, you're into the timing that Daren was talking about. 4 We may need and want those meetings. The possibility of a September meeting that was 5 somehow a retreat to discuss what's happening, are we spinning wheels, what are we stuck 6 by, maybe we could do something like that. Maybe we could help staff. What I don't want 7 to do is make this another big burden for staff to create a big offsite meeting. Maybe 8 somehow we set up an ad hoc that helps create that or something. 9 Ms. O'Kane: One thing that I've been working on is providing a report on what has been 10 accomplished in the Master Plan. There's a lot we're doing that is in the Master Plan. It 11 may not be the new big thing, but the dog park was one of them. Maybe if we start there 12 with what we have accomplished and what is set to be accomplished in the next year, that 13 might be a good starting point. 14 Commissioner LaMere: With the results of the polling that came back, what did the 15 Council decide to do? What's happening with any bond measure to the ballot for anything? 16 Has there been any movement on that or decisions in regards to that? 17 Ms. O'Kane: I'd have to go back and look at the last Council meeting where they discussed 18 that. I'm not positive. Council's on break right now, so nothing's happening on that. I do 19 believe it's coming back up, so I'll get back to you for certain on that. 20 Commissioner Moss: The Palo Alto Parks Master Plan—you have $19 million worth of 21 CIP projects for 2019. We really ought to highlight all the things in the Master Plan that 22 are being accomplished by each of those items. To say that we're not doing anything 23 towards the Master Plan would be false. They're providing a tremendous amount of 24 traction for the Master Plan. It would behoove us, when you go before the CIP committee, 25 to specify here are all the things in the Master Plan that this particular line item is 26 accomplishing. Not only that, but there are some that are not being funded. Wait, before 27 I go to that, there's maintenance stuff that's also in the Master Plan. They should be 28 highlighted. There are the things that are not funded, the 7.7 acres, the 10.5 acres, that are 29 mentioned in the Master Plan. We said that they would get done in the next 10-20 years. 30 They don't have to be done tomorrow, but it would be nice to highlight, maybe prioritize, 31 those things that are not funded based on the Parks Master Plan items that they refer to. 32 Do you need some help from an ad hoc committee or somebody to go through that effort? 33 Ms. O'Kane: What I plan to do is come back—it might have to be September—with a 34 report on what's been accomplished in the Master Plan. This is parks, this is recreation, 35 both pieces. Parks would include CIPs assuming they're in the Master Plan. Also, provide 36 a report on what we plan to accomplish in fiscal year '19. 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 50 Commissioner McCauley: Keith, there's certainly always more to be done, but there's been 1 some significant progress. Having that catalog of the process will be helpful. Don, you've 2 worked on this in the past as well. That'd be a great thing. I actually don't know that we 3 would need an entire meeting. It is an agenda item, but I don't think it's necessarily 4 something that may necessitate a retreat. I don't know. Perhaps we see what Kristen comes 5 up with in terms of her work product and go from there. 6 Chair McDougall: That would be my recommendation. In September, let's have Kristen 7 come back. If that causes us to create an ad hoc to pursue or to have a retreat or something 8 that we can have a different kind of discussion, then we can do that. If we let Kristen come 9 back with that kind of result—as you think about what we've gone through in the last few 10 years, all of a sudden we've got a golf course, a dog park. We've got some things that are 11 done. Last year, we were making a bunch of decisions. We were putting recommendations 12 forward to Council. We haven't done that this year, but we have celebrated completion of 13 some projects. There's some sort of magic cycle that we don't quite understand the 14 movement of the planets around the sun or something that's going on here. Maybe Kristen 15 understands that and can give us an insight into that. That would be great. 16 Vice Chair Greenfield: A concern I have—maybe it's touching on what Keith's feeling. It 17 feels like there isn't so much in the pipeline right now as far as what's coming to the 18 Commission and how we're being used. We are making accomplishments. It's cyclical in 19 nature, and we're getting completion of the golf course and the dog parks. We have some 20 successes to celebrate. It's the process and what's coming up next. Perhaps some of it is 21 communication with what's being expressed to the Commission as well. 22 Chair McDougall: Part of my observation on that is when you look at the CIP list and take 23 out the bridge and the JMZ, I go back to there's $1.5 million worth of planning. We're 24 getting to participate and hear discussions of lots of planning, but the planning isn't 25 resulting in the conclusion and action. Hopefully, we're influencing—even with the 26 questions tonight, I hope we've influenced and made progress on that. Jeff's point is a good 27 one. Are there enough things at the right place in the orbit? I think that's your point. Let's 28 see if we can look at that. 29 Commissioner Moss: Looking at the Baylands Comprehensive Plan and the Cubberley 30 Master Plan, we're at a certain stage, early stage, in projects that will take 5 years to 31 complete. Again, we're at a certain stage in that, but it's not a very exciting—it is an 32 exciting stage. You won't see results for quite a while. 33 Chair McDougall: I don't think there's any reason for anybody to be embarrassed about 34 what we're doing or not doing. The whole range of things that we have exposure to—one 35 of the biggest things we need to worry about right now is the funding and the various 36 friends organizations and their ability to get volunteers. Funding and volunteers, whether 37 the Commission can help with that or not is unclear. We need to be participating in that 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 51 discussion because that's one of the things holding back what's happening in our 1 community, if we can come back to that expression. Is everybody okay with that? 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: Back to the agenda, I would like to consider having some 3 discussion on placement of solar panels. I don't know if this is going to fit in the August 4 agenda. 5 Chair McDougall: I wrote that down and didn't come back to it. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: It is a timely issue right now with it just happening. I'm not sure 7 what else is in progress that we might have an opportunity to influence. If we can't get it 8 in August, let's at least pencil it in for September please. 9 Chair McDougall: That's fair. 10 Commissioner McCauley: I had a couple of questions concerning the August agenda. 11 Daren, do you think it would be possible to discuss the 7.7 acres at the August meeting and 12 what you're planning to do in terms of public outreach? 13 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. I think that's fair. My hunch is it will be the very end of August or 14 most likely early September that we open the site. That's not a reason why we can't discuss 15 our concepts and ideas. 16 Commissioner McCauley: I appreciate that the August agenda is already fairly full. If you 17 think it would dovetail nicely with the other Foothills update you're doing, that might work 18 well. On the amendments to the park rules, you said these are cleanup items. Is there an 19 ad hoc that's working on this or what's the … 20 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. It's typical that these get updated every 3-5 years. 21 We just go through and say, "This rule has changed." For example, the dog park dog on 22 leash rule. We don't have one that says it can only be 6 feet, something like that. We need 23 it. Every other municipality has something comparable. We want to change that 24 regulation. Enough have accumulated that we have a decent number. If there's an ad hoc 25 or you choose to form one to help review those, we haven't done that in the past. We 26 typically just bring it to the full Commission. I'd welcome an ad hoc to discuss it in advance 27 if that's what the Commission would like. I could just bring the whole thing to the 28 Commission. Whatever your preference is is great with me. 29 Vice Chair Greenfield: Maybe we need more information on what the detail is. Does it 30 fall under the Park and Facility Use Policy ad hoc? If it's rules for dog parks, maybe not 31 so much. I don't know. 32 Mr. Anderson: I'm not sure. I could see it being its own thing. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 52 Chair McDougall: At one point, we decided not to have a 7.7-acre ad hoc. Maybe we need 1 to constitute one. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: We have a Foothills Park … 3 Chair McDougall: We have a Foothills Park one. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: … and the 7.7 acres is part of that. 5 Chair McDougall: As long as we're considering it as part of that as opposed to separate. 6 Commissioner McCauley: I was wondering specifically about the park rules amendments, 7 whether it might benefit this group if there were a committee that was willing to work with 8 Daren on those revisions before it comes to the entire group. Daren, tell us if you think the 9 revisions are going to be so minor that that's not helpful. If it would be a waste of time, 10 that's fine too. 11 Mr. Anderson: We haven't done it in so long. Maybe with the exception of one or two, I 12 don't think we've discussed the rules and regs with this Commission at all. In which case, 13 maybe it's worth having an ad hoc to go through it. There might not be a lot of familiarity 14 with the rules themselves, so we could talk through it and see what makes sense. I'd be 15 glad to work with an ad hoc on that even if it meant deferring it a month or so to have time 16 to go through it. 17 Commissioner McCauley: If it's not a time sensitive amendment that you need to make, 18 then I would suggest that we do an ad hoc. 19 Ms. O'Kane: I've received feedback that some Commissioners don't like the meeting to go 20 this late. I feel like we're going to have to split up some of the things on the August agenda 21 anyway. That might be one of them. 22 Chair McDougall: The one thing we could do because it's late is—would there be 23 volunteers for a park rules amendments ad hoc? 24 Mr. Anderson: Chair, may I add? If this is going to be an ongoing one, perhaps we could 25 include the Municipal Code. We have Title 22 in the Code that pertains to parks and open 26 space. That way it's a little broader in case we want to look at that later. 27 Chair McDougall: I'm going to ask if there are volunteers? I'll put Ryan down. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'd be interested. 29 Chair McDougall: I wasn't going to pick the ad hoc right now, just say who would be 30 willing. Maybe we can meet with staff and say "here are the people who have done it." 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 53 I'm going to leave it at Ryan and Jeff right now. I'm going to, number one, say we've 1 covered everything, unless anybody's got anything burning. 2 Ms. O'Kane: Was it Commissioner Greenfield or Commissioner LaMere? When you said 3 Jeff, which Jeff? 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Greenfield. 5 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 6 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Reckdahl and second by Commissioner 7 Moss at 10: 17 p.m. 8 9