you you you good evening and welcome to the February 3rd meeting of the parks Natural Resources Commission to start I'm looking for adoption of the agenda can you have a motion in a second second all those in favor all right so moving to our second agenda item approval of the minutes do we have a motion for approval motion and a second and all those in favor all right and seeing that we do not have any citizens to provide any comments today we're gonna move on to Garrett and the parks framework project ok good evening commissioners I'm here this evening to talk about something that I'm pretty excited about that that's involved our Parks and Recreation staff over the last three months and this is our Parks and Recreation frameworks plan tonight we're going to take a look at just a real brief history of our park system talk about the importance of why we went through this exercise the collaboration that was involved how trends and changes in Parks and Recreation over the last 30 years influenced some of the things we'll be talking to you about this evening what staff have is recommendations moving forward how we'll go about implementing a process and the types of communication and engagement that will be involved in with the public as we go through that process so quickly our history I think most of you know and for our public watching our our Parks and Recreation system really started to take off with our first parks master plan in 1981 those efforts along with the funding to develop our park system really took place in the mid to late 80s to establish the majority of our park system today obviously we've made additions and changes over the years as our community has grown and things have been adjusted here and there but the bulk of our park system is really approaching that 35 to 40 year old age and so one of the things that helped stimulate this whole process and invalidation for it as we had the 1981 Park and Rec system master plan which was updated in 2000 but mr. Ryan led us through in 2017 a Park and Rec system master plan development process so a lot of things that we looked at and whatnot for this process came out of the the frameworks of that particular document so the importance from parks trails and Natural Resources perspective lots of documentation out there about the importance of parks in a community they're part of improving property values housing and businesses that are nearby parks and trails have increased property value businesses are often drawn to communities that have control higher quality of life and obviously our parks and trail system plays into that process when they serve a Twin Cities residents they cite that one of the most important attractive features in the metropolitan area in Minnesota is the parks and trail system that our state has to offer and that that's ratio about five to one is the next closest thing that people talk about and then our parks and trails and natural resources get people traveling through burns oh you may be a burn zone resident who wants to experience a certain part amenity and travel across the community you may choose to come to our community for a sporting event or a feature that our park system has that you can't find in another city so as people are traveling around they're using our gas stations they're stopping at stores that they see along the way they're visiting restaurants things like that just want to emphasize that you know collaboration was a big part of this honestly I've been here for 22 years and I'm not aware of a time when we were this intentional about going through an exercise like this that really involved staff of all levels in the parks and recreation system so it had our staff who are out in the parks on a daily basis taking care of maintaining those parks who who can see firsthand the types of usage and you know based on what's left behind and things like that or how the volleyball courts have footprints in them or a ball field has clearly been used and so having those eyes seeing day-to-day the types of uses that our amenities experience we had our recreation staff who works with our different groups in the community that are involved in renting the fields from us or you know if it's an Athletic Association or a group that's calling up the tormenta facility or things like that so we really covered things from from all different angles when we went through this process and what staff were challenged to do we're really to consider what's the relevance of an amenity right now again some of these amenities we're put in in the mid-80s right are they still as relevant today to our community and where the needs are in our community as they were back in 1985 or 86 when they were appointed in took a look at the location you'll see you know our society and and how people feel comfortable using park systems has changed as well as the importance of ad8 considerations and things like that so you're gonna see a playground out in the middle of a park somewhere with no easy access to it surrounded by trees and people may not feel safe in that environment and they may have trouble getting to it so it's just examples like that that we took a look at and then the sustainability that is extremely important to our city these days the less time we spend on mowers and the more we can enhance our Natural Resources is better off for everyone there's a financial savings there's a time savings and it's just better for our environment than our as a whole so those are kind of the the lenses that the group went through as we went through the parts there are 30 different trends that we've been working off of since 2017 and really these four out of the 30 kind of stood out as we are looking through lenses so again designing our park system to meet the diversity of our population again Burnsville population is looks much different than it did back in 1980s and what the needs are of our community are we fostering inclusion with the location and the amenities that I just talked about the visitors feel safe when they're using a different amenity and then the importance of pollinator habitats reducing the amount of time that were mowing turf and how that can enhance our ecosystems and whatnot so you're gonna see throughout these slides for the most part recommendations are gonna be falling into these three categories there are a couple slides where I note an improvement that we have planned but it really is comes down to recommending removing something because the popularity of it just isn't there anymore based on the use patterns that we see or the idea that that amount of time that we spend trying to maintain it or maybe we're choosing not to maintain it and it becomes an eyesore because it's not being used so those kinds of things will play into why something may be recommended that we remove it relocating again talked about how accessible is it does it foster less desirable behaviors and again there'll be examples of picnic tables out in the middle of nowhere that are isolated and then when our Park staff come across it you can see there's types of things going on in those areas because they are secluded that we really don't want to have in our park system and then just the importance of being able to enhance our natural resource system within the city we in addition to our our Parks and Rec staff I did have a chance to sit down with our Natural Resources team and really went through each part as well as we had identified areas where we'd like to reduce the the mowing or remove an amenity and and just kind of talked about what are the things that you're going to want to be looking at and recommending as we start to implement these types of things and so there's really kind of three different options that they will be considering and it'll really be case-by-case on on what's appropriate for that space but it could be turning it into a pollinator area it could be Lomo fescue where we're only mowing an area once or twice a summer and just reducing the amount of time we have to go through that that's it that's extremely important when we're you'll see in some of these areas where we're mowing in and around trees on a regular basis which is time-consuming and and just a challenge and whatnot so and then possibly in some cases actually converting it to a native Prairie again we'll rely heavily on our Natural Resources team to work through the best solutions in each of those cases I won't really be talking tonight about which one would be in a certain thing area but it would be falling into one of these categories so acorn Park the pictures alone proved I'm not sure why this one turned out this way but this is a picture of acorn park our team has noticed that the volleyball court and the horseshoe pit which are right volleyball court here there's a horseshoe pit here we'd be looking to remove those amenities to not have to take care of the maintenance of it and then restore it as a natural turf area we really do like having some type of structured amenity and then some open green space and just about all of our parks to allow people to throw a frisbee fly a kite have some type of open recreation game that they're coming up with so this would be a good candidate to actually have a maintained turf area I should add that if I'm gonna try to go through this quickly there's about 50 parks that we're gonna talk about tonight if you see something that jumps out and you want to ask a question or make a comment about it please interrupt me and and let me know what your thoughts are because at the end of this evening we're really looking for input from the Commission on how you're feeling about this project if you'd like to see us move forward with it and any questions concerns things like that so maybe I can jump in and just ask some questions as they're going along so earlier you mentioned that there is three types of turf that you are thinking about converting some of these different areas to pollen air a pollinator Lomo and then the native prairie is there any evidence to say that if you convert to a more environmentally friendly turf such as a polynomial on or the low moan option that people are still willing to like use that space like they would a normal turf grass or do you see people avoid it just because it looks different you know when the you know when you're talking about acorn Park it looks like you're presenting to potentially move that over to like just open green space which i think is wonderful but if people are hesitant use that open green space and it may be in negates the the opportunity there but I didn't know if there was any evidence to say that no people use it the same way it's looked at in the same kind of fashion yeah so I went back to the slide here so yeah this this one here is a is a low moe or perhaps a Nomo type situation I would not envision you know it's on a hill you can see in a lot of these scenarios it's gonna be we're having the mower go up a wet hill going around trees doesn't make a lot of sense can people still go up there and and hang out in that space absolutely they can but for the sake of it will look significantly different and be in parts of the park where you you're not gonna want to go out and throw a frisbee because there's very nice turf somewhere in the park that's much better for stuff for something like that okay and I think we'll see in some slides where there'll be some examples of where you can actually see it differential between where it's already existing and maybe we're looking to expand it and you can kind of see a contrast between those spaces great yeah I've got a question about the I've never heard of pollinator lon if it's gonna be treated and it's typically uses for a typical lon why not just go with the Lomo or make a decision as far as if you want it to be a prairie thing that's going to be able to really function with more native species and i think that i think be good of staff discussed that yeah I'd either go one way or the other that's a great question for Darrell Jacobson their Natural Resources staff person and as we get into those scenarios and but I'm gonna rely heavily on him being the expert and working through that but we'll pass that along for sure on a recommendation so good good to discuss yeah yep all right I told you the pictures would improve so this is Ala magnet Park we have a shelter that is up here back in the middle of nowhere again there's types of uses and things going on in this area that it may make sense at the end of life to remove this shelter and not replace it we also have the Ala magnet house which is right here that was part of this park when the city ended up taking or having this land provided to us and so it is it's a it's a maintenance challenge and we think this is a great spot for possibly a large community shelter and in building and whatnot in down the road but the house itself is greatly underused and just as an expense for us for the most part so we'll be looking at that as an option down the road so one of the concerns that I have with this one is so as a Girl Scout leader we it was difficult to find a large enough shelter to accommodate one of our troop events and this was the only one in the city we could find there may have been another one but I think it's Oh at Crystal Lake that are very very busy and so this was the only one that was available and large enough to accommodate our event so removing that would significantly limit some of those events when Crystal Lake is very busy stop be my Oh me that's one of my concerns with that option we have a number of shelters in our park system that are this size so and again if we were to remove it this and we end up putting something where the house is it's going to be much larger and it won't better be able to accommodate that so I think we could we'll definitely be aware of if we're removing amenities we want to make sure that there's an opportunity to provide a similar service somewhere in the city so we'll definitely take note of that then I wonder if there's some issues with information gathering then on the size of those shelters and I wonder if we need to improve that thing forward all right this is Arbor Park you can see we have a path coming in off of the road that's nearby to a playground area we have a basketball court in the shade back here out in the middle of nowhere talked about the difficulty of getting to it the it was at the appropriate location things like that we have a picnic table that's up here in the trees that you can't really see maybe moving it closer to the actual playground and whatnot and then this whole area you know again we want to maintain open green space you can kind of see along the edges here where we're not mowing as much where it's maybe that Lomo type situation and versus the difference of a clearly mold turf area and and so we're going to look to reduce some of that still allow opportunity foreplay and things like that but maybe not quite maintain as much turf in that space black dog park so this has always been interesting when our ball fields were being heavily used you can't have a game going on here and a game going on here because people hit into each other so this field by the Athletic Association isn't really used again I shouldn't note that that our recreation staff did spend time talking looking at use patterns and things like that and and have connected with our athletic associations to let them know that this process is underway and and they'll be involved in feedback and things like that as well so we could remove this ball field here we have a path in the trees that comes down this way that's in poor condition and there's routes that are coming through it and things like that that's pretty underused and then we have picnic tables kind of scattered randomly along here that we don't see any use patterns on that would be looking to remove as well burn Haven Park again a low use ball field and just want to touch on that we try to drag every one of our ball fields at least twice a week to keep them in decent condition when you don't that's when we'd start to grow through them and things like that so you can imagine getting a tractor to all of these parks and to go on to ball fields that even if they aren't they they haven't been used you still have to drag them to keep the weeds on and things like that so it's a maintenance drain timewise and just the cost of getting the equipment there and things like that so we've done studies and have worked with our athletic associations and are pretty comfortable knowing that we have a an excess of bat and ball fields and a shortage of turf fields so you can see removing Red Rock in this situation opens up the opportunity to put other turf opportunities within a park and things like that as well so cedar bridge we just did some work at this park we used to have a volleyball court here that was an intentional process working with our the neighborhood in that area this is a very large hill you can't tell from the picture but this is where the player on used to be out of sight in the trees up a hill and now we have accessibility down in the main area and we've got extremely positive feedback from that neighborhood and and whatnot and so that's an example of how things have changed over time and there's there's a bike rack halfway up the hill which is interesting and then we have a basketball court up here which does get some use according to the neighborhood but it is at the top of a pretty steep hill and just from an accessibility standpoint wash to look at what that looks like when it reaches its end to life so again we're not going to go in and when I talk about end of life we're not going to go in and just remove something for the sake of removing it if it's working but when it comes time to replace it because it's no longer in a condition that we want to have in our system well take a look at do we put it back in somewhere else in the park if if that's appropriate at that time so that basketball court may have another 10 years left on it so this would be a long-term type situation shadowind again we have random picnic tables in the woods here we have a hill that I'll get to that in a second we have the playground that is you know there is no path anywhere near this playground so looking at its end of life possibly moving it closer to a path over here there used to be a pleasure rink back in the day that was put in here so you may wonder what were they thinking and it was like you know there were different reasons why it ended up in different locations at the time but we're now in a situation where we can move that we mole a really steep hill somewhere right in the middle that you can't see well actually no it is somewhere in the middle right here rip up the turf there's skid marks all that kind of stuff and we just want to you know get away from that and then there's a lot of mold around trees in this area here that we think we still want to maintain a clean line along the paths on each edge and and keep it neat looking from the street into the park but there's an opportunity to reduce some of the mowing in and around all these trees here as well so all right we're going to begin sharing with the community that we can we have been tracking warming house participants for since I've been here so 25 years plus and we know that some of our smaller rinks just don't have a lot of use at them and that varies from time to time and by location but as as these ranks need to be replaced they're pretty expensive they're probably 40 to 50 thousand dollars to replace rinks plus you have small warming houses that go along with it we're gonna be taking a look at is that the right thing to be doing we know from a community standpoint we have some of the highest number of rinks that are staffed and and maintained and and we also know what the numbers have done over the years so again we'll work with the community on those we've reduced ours and some of them where the patterns are dropping off and we'll continue to look at those opportunities as well but when again when it comes to replacement time that's something we'll have to take a look at so when you're removing warming houses are you considering adding additional bench seating or something along those lines to ensure that people can still use the rinks because I know even when the bar meet houses are closed right now there's often not some place to sit to put on your skates that type things so it would seem like if we're gonna remove a warming hose which makes sense still having the ability to use the rink in some fashion and put skates on slit you're not trying to do it off the floor right so like in this particular case if if we decided to remove the warming house we wouldn't have a rink there anymore it will not be a skated site so if if it if the rink is being used and we're maintaining it for pleasure and hockey type situations we're gonna have a warming house there and do that okay but if we are if you see in this that it's a recommendation that the rink or the warming house go it's because use numbers just indicate that it's not a good option at this time oh okay thank you for asian colonial Park so again we'd be looking to remove the Red Rock and so here's just another thing to think about as we talk about some of these situations you're gonna see ball fields that are a significant distance away from the parking lots and when the athletic associations have a need for fields and they can get those needs met at places where the field is close to the parking lot you know you think about grandparents trying to get from the parking lot all the way down to the field or coaches hauling equipment and whatnot some of these situations it's like it's just not an ideal ball field to be using because they can find one that's similar that's much closer and more convenient so we have a basketball court right here based on use patterns and we may look to move it to a different location at the time we'll just evaluate it but again it's just kind of distance and things like that away from where the traffic is so in that case when are you moving when you're removing the red walk Rock would you assume that you put in a turf field there then or would it just be open on the green space so in some of these situations we will evaluate so you can kind of see the Lions for a turf field in our park and rec system master plan we talked about creating a home for like lacrosse or having opportunities for a rugby team or an Ultimate Frisbee group or whatever so as we're even exploring the opportunity for cricket and some different things like that so as those opportunities become available by not having the Red Rock there that'll create this space in some cases we may you know leave like if in this case I don't remember when this backstop was replaced but we may leave the backstop there for a while because it's in good condition and a mom or dad and a kid can go there and they can stand next to the backstop and and take batting practice and hit out into the grass and that's fine but it saves us the need to pull a tractor into this park and take it all the way back here and drag this field one time and then get out of there right so that's where you can still have some of those similar experiences and it will really be case-by-case on what's the condition of the backstop what is the need for turf field at the time and is this a good place to consider that based on the neighborhood around it how much parking we have things like that what methods would use to determine the frequency of youth you know for an area sure are you is there a specific amenity that you're talking about like the ball field yeah generally just generally a lot of it is just it's so for the ball field it's it's how many times is the you know from a recreation side we know how many times an Athletic Association is using it for practice or game okay so and they're our primary users of this type of situation on ball fields from the parks use side they're going to go out to a ball field and there we will have dragged it on Tuesday and there might be 30 foot prints out on there and they can see that nobody has been here doing anything except the person that cut the path and walked from here over to there right so it's kind of a combination of how are we scheduling it with the community and how is it being used and then our maintenance people are in the parks every day and like I said you can in a playground situation you're gonna see wood chips that are missing from under slides and under swings and they're raking them back in and you're gonna see trash around certain amenities if it's a shelter or whatever that has to be hauled out in other cases there is no sign that anybody's been anywhere around right so it's kind of it's a combination depending on what the amenity is of how you can see you know if it's a soccer field there's lots of wear patterns and stuff in the goal areas and things like that so thank you yeah all right Coventry Court this park in general is it's just we're half the masterplan the park out it'll be coming up in the park CIP in the near future it's got a playground on a basketball court and we'll just be working on how we handle that there's nothing super exciting to report but we just want people knowing that area that that is coming down the road Crystal Beach so our playground is split between this path crystal Beach is a park and the use of the shelters and how many people come to the beach that just creates in my opinion just a great opportunity to have a really amazing playground there it could be a combination of wet and dry playground we we do have some water type Beach feature equipment on the beach and whatnot but for the amount of use at that park gets I think we need to be really intentional about creating a great playground in that space and that's coming up in the very near future and then you can see that we have a lot of trees right here on the south end of the parking lot that again our mowers are going in and around and we're probably looking at 10 to 20 feet of letting the and I've just become a little more natural again maintaining a nice path along the parking lot edge but kind of letting some of that go back Crystal Lake West our Park staff indicated this center island is a real challenge for the type of turf it looks terrible in there it doesn't grow well and we just want to look at possibly converting this whole island into some native plantings Keller or no Rudy Cramer Nature Preserve has a center island that would probably try to model it off of that prevents us from having to come in here with a molar and mowing dead grass and weeds and things like that so looks like looks like it's ripe knowing the slope of where the water runs off the parking lot that could be some additional storm water treatment coming off of Crystal Lake Road not the parking lot so it's it's right for it to change the curb situation that would be you know and then you wouldn't have to mow it so yeah we'll work closely with our Natural Resources Department on how best to handle that situation and what the needs are for sure all right this is Echo Park again we got looking to get rid of Red Rock here I would keep the backstop it's it's in good shape and you know the playground again so here's the parking lot playgrounds way over here if we remove this the Red Rock when it's time to replace the the playground it may make sense to bring it over probably right where the we're in the Red Rock is because you have some shade natural shade there and it's close to the parking lot and the tennis courts and so your sight lines and things are much better here we have Green Haven Park again remove over the Red Rock but keeping the backstop we have a horseshoe pit right over here and again so how do you know we go to horseshoe pits and you can see that the clay hasn't been touched the boards are in good shape there's no dings on them we go to other horseshoe pits and you know we're breaking them and getting them back to playing condition on a regular basis so that's just another example then we have a planter box over here we're trying to remove planter boxes in general but there's one over here that is really not serving much of a purpose it wouldn't like to remove Heritage Park again turning this one over to there's there's not really anything at Heritage Park there's like a picnic table over in this area but it's just open green space and just going to work with Natural Resources on what's the best option for how this park transforms over time Highland Forest this is I think I'll talk about three hockey rinks this evening that are from use patterns could be considered for removal in the down the road this is a heavy practice location for our football program and they do use the the warming house so in this case it may be just not replacing the hockey boards when they're when they've reached there into life then you can see the basketball court again is way over here we'd probably be looking to bring it over into this area closer to the to the parking lot and whatnot so Highland View Park talked about an example of I come in here and park in this parking lot and then I have to walk all the way across over here to get to this ball field just it just doesn't happen the Athletic Association doesn't have a need for it so this you know if we someday have an issue where we lose a soccer facility that could happen down the road you can see there's a lot of turf space here where we could add fields possibly to help ease that loss so we have a volleyball court way down here again you have a few houses that may use it from time to time but and for the most part people aren't traveling to this park to come here and play volleyball and then we look at this used to be a pleasure rink up in this area so there's an opportunity again you can see we talked earlier about where's the line between a Lomo and an actual turf you can kind of see it all along this edge so we may be looking to bring that into this area here and then if the volleyball court is removed and then we have all these trees that were mowing around and so there's some opportunities in this space to let some grasses get a little more natural and whatnot so in this particular Park I know that there was a lot of the refuse from the rehabilitation and Conley Drive and some of those other areas was actually parked in that area that you're suggesting for additional less mowing essentially so is that still looks like it needs to be rehabilitated in terms of how how that was staged during that rehabilitation of the roads so is this something that you plan to move forward with like pretty quickly so that you're not planting turf grass and then planting native grasses or something on those lines and kind of double doing it instead of just doing it once I'll talk about implementation towards the end on what a process may look like but we'll make note of that now and then if I don't mention it later remind me that you know we'll talk about how a situation like that may be impacted so a good point hollows Park there is this huge stretch of green space right here that is kind of on a hill that we are mowing and there's just an opportunity to kind of let that become a little more natural here's Howell Park you got a very underutilized and we don't have anything like this in our system where it's I think it's about 10 feet high and it is probably about 15 feet wide with these two little things there was supposed to be a mini backstop it the condition is deteriorating and I think we'll just plan to remove it when it reaches its official end of life interlaken park another example of a ball field way across the way so we have a huge opportunity to reduce all the mowing over here we have plenty of green space in this area we already have trouble with turf growing in this park as it is it's just a really challenging piece of property so there's there's a huge opportunity to really change the landscape of what this space looks like so when I space like that where you potentially be putting in quite a bit of native Prairie or whatever that is would you consider like walking paths or something along those lines to be able to navigate through the area and be able to truly see kind of some of that that natural kind of environment instead of just happy nights be growing up it seems like in some cases right it's just like an extension of the normal kind of border but in cases like this if you're truly thinking about expanding that it seems like there'd be an opportunity to allow some walking past or something along those lines through there I think for our entire park system and we want input from groups like this and from the community on what visions might be obviously a staff we have a pulse on the parks and recreation world and we see it through our lenses but we want to collaborate and intentionally engage the community to try to come up with you know where is a need for something or where would be a unique situation to provide an opportunity for something so those ideas you know I for us and again we'll get to the implementation piece saving money for the city and time for staff and removing this the Red Rock here is probably the most important thing that we do right and then starting and then we'll have time to vision out what what does that get to down the road here's Kelleher park should be a park that this group is familiar with we kind of had a fun little exercise during one session this is going to be a trailhead that comes in for the Lake Marion Greenway and it's going to connect into our trails and ultimately go through the wetland area and so there's a huge opportunity in this park to put in a to look at possibly putting in a large shelter building with restrooms possibly natural resources nature type space things like that and so pretty excited about that again another underutilized ball field and a volleyball court over here that we'd be looking to remove and that might be prime space for a future building down the road and then we have a lot of miscellaneous tables and our picnic tables you know the benches we we love having them along the trails and stuff but the picnic tables just don't seem to get the use and tend to create other things that we don't necessarily want so we'd look to be removing some of them and then I know our group talked about there'd be an opportunity to allow this area to maybe be more of a buffer to the wetland area as well so killer Lake Park just nice simple one where we have actually a lot of our basketball courts we're going to look to start to get lines on them we believe that that is something we've heard that the users want to have so I'd be putting in the free throw and the three-point line type thing and something that we want to look to start doing that at all of our basketball court locations so that's why this one's in there Nob Hill again line the court and reduce mowing and challenging sections along the park hillside so I think it is I can't remember exactly where it is it might be over in this area down here where there starts to be a hill behind the ball field and it becomes a challenge for the mowers to get up the hill and not slide when it's wet and things like that so all the sides of the park on all yeah I guess it is Knob Hill so there's there's hills every Chris Wood Park we have a ball field that's not used we'd be looking to stripe the basketball courts since it's still in good shape and then we have a playground right here and I have talked to our Forestry Department to look at opportunities to just remove some branches and things like that to open it up for to let some sunlight in we have run into some challenges with mold growing and things like that on the play structure that has to be cleaned off because there's just not enough light to get in there to keep it in good shape so lack of on park so some of you may know that this used to be a guarded beach back in the day and so we had a playground here and there was a lot of traffic and over time it became an unguarded beach and now it's not really a beach much at all anymore that people wouldn't you know you're not gonna see someone going there and swimming for the most part we have cristal right down the road here as our primary Beach so we have a large playground here and then this is our large picnic shelter that is heavily used and we have another playground right over here and so both of these playgrounds are scheduled to be renovated about the same time and so the vision is to remove this large playground which is not used at all very often and then to expand the quality of this playground which because that shelter can we can put a hundred plus people at this park in the neighborhood's use this this playground a lot the people renting the facility do it as well so seems like a good opportunity to combine resources and and have a nicer playground instead of having two separate ones we have two sets of horseshoe pits we notice that one seems to get used the other one doesn't which would indicate it's worth keeping one there and then we have random picnic tables in in the woods over here along the trails just looking to remove some of those as well they're going back [Music] there's a fair number of informal trails along along the different water edges and jumps and what-have-you how does that fit in with staffs vision for the farm for the park that was not discussed as part of this process but we again would certainly be open to feedback on the park throughout the year on what people would like to see and if there's opportunities to adjust stuff for sure thanks this is Lake Park and there's no parking lot at Lake Park so but we do have a basketball court right here so when that reaches its end of life we're gonna look at removing that you you can't really tell for sure but this park is underneath powerlines and it just seems like a good opportunity to to kind of let some things go natural back in this area this is Nicollet Park spent some time with people in this area during national night out or night to unite I mean sorry about that they use the horseshoe pit a lot there they they thoroughly enjoy their park and and and we're pretty pleased I didn't had lots of good things to say about it the only thing that staff could identify in this space was again lots of trees and a hill over in this oh it's over in this areas where the all the trees are that we tried them all through so if there's a way to kind of minimize that in that space North River Hills it's one of our primary soccer locations the ball field because their soccer going on here all the time is not used very often and so we just see an opportunity to remove that Red Rock and one of the things you'll see at soccer fields is especially when there's tournaments is the lack of ability to warm up and things like that so this area it could be prime for just being nice turf where teams can go and warm up or there's a kickboard or things like that as we move to the west of the park here we have a random volleyball court so this is the parking lot and then you have a hill here up to the tennis court and then kind of over the edge back down to a volleyball court out in the middle of nowhere we have a picnic shelter I believe somewhere right in this area and it's just there's just a lot of things that are on this side of the park that aren't used and are kind of off the beaten path so be looking to remove those items when they reach their end-of-life and then this whole area becomes prime for reducing the type of mowing that we do because as you can see right now we're spending a lot of time weaving in between maintaining this type of space Northview this ball field is heavily used by our Athletic Association and for reasons I mentioned earlier this one way over here is not used at all so you'll be looking to remove that the basketball court is up here in the corner along with the playground so you can see if we remove this that we may have some opportunities to kind of again this is our skating rink and and whatnot so where we'd relocate that I don't even know right now I just know it's not very except of all for the moment so with the ball field that is heavily used you got to be careful not to put it in you know people in danger of getting hit by a ball so we'll have to figure out what we do with that it's just kind of odd over there at this time Oakleaf East again path in we got access right in this area or the basketball court and the playground with the path here's some pretty flat green space which is nice to have and then this starts to turn into a hill that we're maintaining that just opportunity to reduce that mowing Park would you can't see it so opportunity to remove some trees and just let some day lighting but there's a playground right here opportunity to reduce some of the mowing in this space red oak we are redoing that playground this year it should be in the middle of June when our inclusive playground is open for use for the public so we're pretty excited about that that may create a need to kind of expand with pickleball and the inclusive playground and all the uses in this park probably going to be looking to expand this parking lot a little bit we've talked to staff about that opportunity to maybe look at that down the road but you can't really see it but there's a bunch of so you come into the parking lot some pretty heavy trees right here and then a bunch of random picnic tables back here that we have to then go back and mow and things like that so just out in the middle of nowhere and looking dream over those rolling meadows have a ball field here that's underutilized so if that was removed we stow have enough good turf out here probably allow some of this to become a little more natural skyline Park so this drops down into a hill this is really tight right in this area this ball field is not used in our basketball court is way over here again you got to go down a hill to get to here and then our playground is way over here so depending on what we do with this park down the road when these things reach into life and get the Red Rock out now and then look at maybe moving some of these amenities back to a little more accessibility South River Hills this is the third of the hockey rinks that we would be considering down the road to possibly eliminate and then here's an example of again some Lomo type situation where we may allow some of that drift here the ball field is used and so we want to maintain that but just looking to reduce things whenever possible sunset pond this is a great park heavily used area the trails and all that it's going to be tying into the Lake Marion Greenway so we're excited about what that's going to provide as an opportunity to on the road one thing we just talked about is that there's a bunch of little shelters off beaten paths usually up a hill you can't really see if you're down on the path what's going on there and you know then it may be a shelter with one picnic table underneath it so it's it's not large at all and it just doesn't seem like we need as many of those around here and if we do replace the shelters maybe it's more in a visual space off of the path Terrace Oaks we have this whole area along here that we could look at reducing the mowing that we do at that particular Park so I think there's something similar there where they had tore up just about all of that so is that an opportunity to do that earlier rather than this is an older picture so that that has been restored to my knowledge if it hasn't then yes we would definitely want to look at that but I think that's what you're seeing right there is the well I know that even like october/november that's when they had finished up some of that utility work there so I'm guessing that nothing's actually growing there so if there's an opportunity to because even those that tennis I don't you remember if those are pickleball courts there's lots of room around there that you could potentially allow for that to just grow over yep yeah so we'll definitely look at that what's been done here in this whole area is primed for some type of adjustment to our mowing patterns for that one would you ever consider expanding the parking lot as well I feel like that park is used quite a bit in the summer and often parking becomes an issue there or people start to park long the the entrance to the parking lot here would you consider expanding that at all yes I think if we have the space to do it and if we have demands in our parks that the parking lots are not meeting we want to be looking at that opportunity for sure Terrace Oaks West getting tough picture to work after Google here but we have what was really a ski chalet down in this area and when we were talking about shelter rental opportunities and whatnot there's just there's a real opportunity to do some renovation within this building and to have it has a shelter that comes off of the building as well which in my mind I was thinking about that would have been a great opportunity for with so much natural space Rea in that area for the type of group you were talking about but anyway it's it doesn't get near that you know we have a Neill building is our most popular rented building in our park system and we just really have a need for having some additional buildings that with those types of opportunities and this one's primed to do some renovation and and maybe do some different things out of it so taiyaki Park this is our fishing dock here which is in good shape and I just mention it because you'll see later on I'll talk about another one but this one was upgraded recently but we have a lot you know again talked about having some nice green open space but we just have a lot of open space for the there's a basketball court and a playground here and for the type amount of use that this part gets we just don't have a need for all this green open space at this time fist of you in working with the Athletic Association and looking at their use patterns the ball field closest to the parking lot is the one that they use all the time and so we'd be looking to remove this Red Rock in this area Westview yes we have a playground right here on the edge and these are power lines that run up above here there was some thoughts about doing some things in this era area there might have been a pleasure rink at one time that we just flooded and in both both the North and South present opportunities to reduce the amount of mowing we do in this area would Park you have random picnic tables on the path through the trees here similar to before we have a horseshoe pit right up here that shows little to no use again playground location I think we might have done some pleasure ring type things in this area which is why the playground was not put there but at end of life it might make a lot of sense to get this picnic or this playground up in this area obviously keeping in mind that we don't want to put them foul balls and things like that in jeopardy for people using the playground but some things to think about down the road and then here's one of our older fishing docks that would be looking to upgrade to the one that you saw a little bit earlier at taiyaki park again this is a pretty heavily used fishing dock and that is it for the parks from an implementation process as I mentioned here this evening for the first time to kind of share what we've been up to publicly then we want to use the rest of 2020 as an a commute the engagement process we have a number of exciting community events going on throughout the year we have polar fest coming up on Saturday we have party on the plaza international festival fire muster different things where food truck festival you name it we can be out at these events with boards and let people have the opportunity to see if their Park has something scheduled to have something going on at it either immediately or in the near future in the years to come and then to provide feedback and say hey you know what I see people using that all the time or it'd be really nice if we had this or whatever just to allow us to collect feedback we might not be able to do everything but it's important to hear what the people that live in the area are thinking about their parks as well as far as an implementation process so I talked this is kind of where I was referencing before some of these things are gonna be really easy to do we may just stop mowing I talked about that hill we're just gonna stop mowing that we may remove random picnic tables that are out in the middle of nowhere things like that it may already be part of the park CIP project list for 2020 so obviously we're going to keep doing those things or the condition may be such that it's deteriorated in a way that we just need to get rid of a type of thing so some of those things are just going to happen because it makes sense to do it and they're pretty easy to do and then we have the long term projects 2021 and beyond where if it's a complex project or you know I mean removing a ball field from someone's part is kind of a significant change right so we're gonna want to engage the community we want to go through this whole process so I don't really see us going into too many places right in 2020 and removing Red Rock and things like that unless we have some type of engagement process before we get to that right so we have some limited funds in the budget for 20:22 address changes to our park system that we're talking about tonight not allocated to anything but just knowing that we want to start doing some of these things that can provide some immediate feed to improve things for us right away so and then we'll just have to look at starting to budget I mean the less mowing doesn't cost anything removing Red Rock putting in picnic buildings things like that they cost money removing amenities in general cost money so we have to we have to budget for those types of things from a communication standpoint I'd you know once we've gotten feedback from the Parc tonight and as we're getting feedback from the community we're gonna want to create a web page that kind of allows people to go online and see what's scheduled for their park they have access to this PowerPoint things like that but I also reference we have City events that you belong here look at the year we have a calendar and we're gonna try to be present as many of these as possible and then similar to what was done with cedar bridge we reached out to a certain radius around the park and sent a mailer out to them to say if you want to provide feedback on your Park here's a chance to take a survey things like that and that's how we went through that whole park with moving the playground or down the hill removing the volleyball court things like that so that's what I would envision for some of those more significant changes and that's what I have for you this evening so yes my only comment is as I noticed that there is a lot of picnic tables being removed and while I agree probably no need for the actual picnic table I think mmm you know like benches that type of thing become highly Hughes commodity around the parks so anytime you're considering removing picnic tables I would encourage us to think about it as a bench make better sense even if it's allowed along a path or something along those lines even if you can move it so it's more optimal I just hesitate removing C name from parks when we know that you know whether or not the picnic table is used a lot because people obviously don't go eat there having a place to sit whether they're wandering around is always valuable thank you for that and and we agree in our Park and Rec system master plan actually encourages us to be putting benches in we've found and heard from people that whether it's along trails or near amenities whether it's playgrounds or tennis courts or whatever is where benches and picnic tables are very valuable the ones that we're targeting to remove are really there's a mode path eye shadow Lin comes to mind where we have a paved path and then there's a mode path that goes through trees into this mode and grassy open area and there's a picnic table sitting right in the middle of it that no one wanted to know was there and you can't see what's going on there and it's like those are the types of ones that we want to be removing is they're just they're randomly out in the middle of nowhere and they're creating opportunities for behavior that we don't want to have in our park system so I agree with you a hundred percent that seating is a is a much appreciated amenity in our system and we want to be aware that we're keeping those available but just one - yeah so one of the other themes as well as putting facilities closer to parking and access for for folks which makes a lot of really makes a lot of sense these I think systems developed over time sometimes get pieced together and sounds like comprehensive is really the way to go there's a lot of this looks like a lot of push towards naturalizing as many areas as possible and there's some upsides to that you know pollinators nature trails wildlife benefits less less maintenance some of the downsides is sometimes those areas when they get less direct attention end up with more invasive species I think if every woodland where we're ever stop mowing and some bucks are not everyone but certainly there's a prevalence towards that so making sure that you're gonna save some money but you're not going to it's not going to be you know you're not going to go from a bunch of costs to zero cost because there still be needs for maintenance you know you might even be using prescribed fire in some of these areas or maintenance mowing on a less frequent basis to mimic fire effects and then the cost of plantings which is mostly a one or maybe two time kind of things so but you know the other another benefit would be the making it more eliminating some of the fragmentation that occurs you know some of these little donut holes are great you know great spots for some species that may be more generalist wildlife species whether they're starlings or something like that or and so filling in some of those holes is really makes a lot of sense more contiguous habitat to for migrating birds whatever so but it's not a zero it's not a we save everything kind of thing and I know the staff doesn't think that something that'd be a good message to get out yes thank you for sharing that this evening and I'll tell you that Darrell Jacobson made me very aware yeah when we were we're talking is like oh if you want me to do some of this you better make sure that we have the resources to do it right so that's why this is you know there's some low-hanging fruit obviously we're gonna try to take down right away but there's there needs to be a long-term intentional plan about how we go about this but this is the start of it right yeah thanks any other questions from the commissioners our comments well thank you for that presentation very thorough and and pretty nice to see the pictures and kind of the thought put behind some of our parks moving forward so we appreciate it thank you for your time and support tonight all right with that do we have anything staffed to mention commissioners I would like to remind you that tomorrow night our chair mr. Newman is going to be presenting our our plan our to 2020 work plan to City Council that meeting starts at 5:30 tomorrow so if you are interested you are more than welcome to attend and show her your support further for our Commission and the works that we do and then I would also like to remind you that Saturday is the polar fest at North River Hills Park it's from 11:00 to 2:00 please come out to that should be a great time providing the weather cooperates I think it's starting to turn back to winter now so it might as well have ice and then our next meeting is scheduled for March 2nd our next parks Natural Resources Commission 6:30 on March 2nd right back here in this room great with that I think our agenda is finished so any motions to adjourn future ii say all right all those in favor very good thank you for joining us tonight have a good evening