This transcript is for a meeting of the **Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee**. Based on the dialogue, the primary staff speaker is **Eric Carlson** (Parks and Recreation Director). The public speakers identified themselves during their testimony. [0:00] [Music] [0:56] [Music] [1:08] **Committee Chair:** There, there we go. There you go. Thank you. Who are all those? All right, are you ready? Good evening and welcome to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee here on, uh, what is the day today? October 3rd. Um, we will start—I call this meeting to order and let's start by, if you're able, please stand and rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance with us. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." [1:58] **Committee Chair:** Thank you. Um, and again, welcome everybody. Make sure you sign in in the back. It's great to have you here. And we will start with our agenda. And the first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda, and I think everybody should have the updated agenda. Um, so is there any changes or additions to the updated agenda from staff or from committee? All right, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. [2:33] **Committee Member (Randy):** Move we approve the agenda for this evening. [2:40] **Committee Member (Dave):** Second. [2:42] **Committee Chair:** There's a motion and a second to approve the agenda. All those in favor signal by saying aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We have an approved agenda. Um, now this is the—the fun part that we enjoy, and again, welcome everybody here. Um, this is time for audience to—oops, sorry, I'm—oh, last meeting minutes. No, we have audience first... right? Don't throw the gavel, my gavel. [3:04] **Committee Chair:** Um, again, sorry. Um, this is the portion of our meeting—we have 10 minutes allotted for items not on the agenda. Um, so if there's anybody who would like to come up and speak at this time, um, we'd like to invite you up to the podium. Um, if you're here to talk on the draft amenities plan, that is on the agenda, and so we will allow time there for people to come up and speak if that's specifically what you're here for. Um, so this time is for anything that is not on the agenda. I welcome anybody to come up and speak. All right, everybody's rushing up at once. [3:51] **Committee Chair:** Okay, um, now Mark, uh, we'll move on to the next item—you're just so excited—move on to the next item on the agenda, which is approval of the September 2024 minutes. Um, has everybody been able to review the minutes? Is there any changes or additions, um, edits from the minutes from September's meeting from staff or committee? All right, hearing none, seeing none, I will entertain a motion to approve the September 2024 minutes. [4:30] **Committee Member (Randy):** Moved. [4:32] **Committee Member (Dave):** Second. [4:34] **Committee Chair:** We have a motion from Randy and a second from Dave. All those in favor signal by saying aye. Opposed? Hearing none, the September minutes are approved. Moving right along to our agenda items. Um, this is the public comment period for the draft Parks amenity plan. Eric, are you going to speak or give anything— [4:51] **Eric Carlson (Parks and Recreation Director):** Why don't you let everyone that wants to talk and give feedback do that first. We'll see how that goes and we can figure out the next step after that. [5:05] **Committee Chair:** Okay. All right. Well, then at this point, I would certainly welcome um, anybody who is interested in speaking on the draft amenities plan—Parks amenities plan—to come up to the microphone. Um, couple things is, one: make sure you sign in in the back, and when you come up, please state your name and your address. And you know, if you can keep it to about two or three minutes just to make sure everybody has an opportunity to speak, that would be much appreciated. So at this time, we invite anybody to come up and speak on the draft Parks amenity plan. [5:54] **Nicole Bartle:** Hi, Nicole Bartle, 149 Chapparel Drive. Um, based on my address, obviously you know I'm here to talk about our Chapparel Park and playground. I am one of the moms that spearhead everything in our neighborhood. We run our Nights to Unite. Um, we do a Halloween get-together. When COVID started, we did a bike parade for St. Patrick's Day because everything had just closed. And our neighborhood has so many small little kids. Ours are now growing up and getting older, and I just don't want to see them lose this safe space. That Chapparel playground—I mean, the park will stay, but with us having such a direct circle, kids don't need to cross streets. They can get out there earlier on their own and build independence. We can trust them to go down to Chapparel playground rather than all the way down to Belmont. And Belmont's beautiful and it's great, and the big kids now have somewhere to explore further. But my daughter babysits in the neighborhood and it's nice just to be able to walk the little kids down there. Sometimes, you know, it's a 20-minute walk from the top of the hill with the little kids. I'm sure you all have grandkids and you try and get them to walk somewhere that's a 20-minute walk and then play—lucky if you get down there and they don't have to go to the bathroom then you have to walk them back. Now you're calling someone to come and get you to drive you home. But I just want to say thanks for considering our thoughts and what's going on with the playground at that area. You know, you guys have a small amount of money to work with, but we love our park. We'd like to keep the playground. Thank you. [7:34] **Committee Chair:** Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for being the first one. [7:42] **Connie Kesler:** I'm back. Um, my name is Connie Kesler and you may remember me from last time that we had this meeting. And I just wanted to um, give you a few thoughts that I had with my children tonight at dinner when I told them that I was coming to this meeting. And all they kept saying to me was, "But what about Eileen? What about Eileen?" Eileen is a little girl who lives about five houses down from us—sorry, I live at 153 Chapparel Drive, I don't know if I said that. But um, Eileen is a little girl who lives about five houses down from our house, further away from Chapparel Park, right at the cusp of where the hill starts going uphill into the hilly part of Chapparel Drive. And Eileen's mom is pregnant with her second child. Eileen is about three years old and Eileen doesn't like to go to bed when Eileen is told to go to bed. And so Eileen walks her mother down to the park to for her mom to tire her out. And she gets to about our house sometimes to pet our dog, who's her best friend. And sometimes they get all the way down to the park to do the swings and the slide and do all of those things. But my kids are incredibly worried about Eileen. My seven-year-old daughter—Chapparel Park is the furthest that she is allowed to go. My nine-year-old son is now allowed to go all the way to Belmont Park because he's older and now more responsible in our eyes to go a little bit further and explore the territory of the neighborhoods. But just what Nicole was saying is, you know, the further that you go, the bigger the walk. And Eileen can't get all the way down to Belmont to walk her mom to sleep. So what about Eileen? That is the overwhelming concern with taking our Chapparel playground away. And Eileen's not the only one, but she's the one that stops at our house to pet our dog. So we're worried about the Eileens in the world. So thank you very much. [10:19] **Committee Chair:** Connie, anybody else like to come up and share comments, thoughts, input? Yes, please. Please come forward. Welcome. [10:35] **Nathan Rooney:** Thank you. Uh, Nathan Rooney, 930 Courtland Drive. Um, so personally I'm here to advocate for Duchess Park. We live—we border it. We see all the activity that happens there during the summer on a nightly basis. Um, but I realize we live adjacent to the park; we see what happens there. I don't live next to any of the other parks, so I can't speak to—you know, I'm sure everybody that comes up here could say the same thing about their individual park. Having never been to one of these before, I guess I'm not sure what the dollar amount would need to be to maintain all of the parks we currently have at least at a safe level. Um, so I guess I would just ask that question if there's been any study on that. And then if the dollar amount that is allocated for this could not achieve just maintaining what we have, can we get a look at how often are the parks used or what is the usage rate? So that again, for me, I can advocate for my park and I think it's highly used, but where does that compare to the other ones to try to be as objective as possible? So thank you for the opportunity. [11:53] **Committee Chair:** Great, thank you Nathan. Um, I think some of that will be addressed. Um, I think you'll get some of your answers to your questions um, when Eric gets a chance to speak. So if not, let us know and we'll follow up on that. Thank you. Anyone else? Welcome. [12:15] **Brenda Fryer:** My name is Brenda Fryer and um, 5841 139th Street West. And uh, I live next to Muller Park and uh, we do have a lot of people use Muller Park too. It's very nice. And I um, but I understand—I'm not—I haven't looked at the draft plan at all, I don't know anything about it—but I understand that uh, they're going to replace the playground there and um, new playground equipment. And just kind of interest—I mean, talking about taking some parks down—to me, I love Muller Park the playground as it is, you know? And I don't know, maybe my neighbors would disagree with me, but a lot of them are pretty old so I know... but I go there a lot because I have grandkids I take over there. And uh, I'm just a little afraid that because I have seen parks—my son lives in Eagan and they just live next to a park that was just renovated playground and it's not as good as the old one. I'm just, you know—so um, I'm just a little worried, you know? Every time you change something, seems like there's maybe a 50% chance it could be worse. I don't—I know like I said, I haven't seen any of the plans, I don't know, maybe it's just fantastic. But um, that's just uh, just my two cents I thought I'd throw it in there because I really—it's a great park, you know? The kids love it, and it seems to be in good condition too. I don't see anything on there that's broken, busted. Um, maybe it's—it's probably 20 years old, but I feel it could probably go another 20. It's good sturdy stuff anyway. So just my two cents. [14:13] **Committee Chair:** Thank you, Brenda. And again, I think we'll make sure that we address that with Eric's comments um, as well. Hi, welcome. [14:32] **Madeline Fairley:** Hi, I'm Madeline Fairley and this is my sister Ann Fairley. We live at 149 Chapparel Drive. And this is what we have to say: Chapparel Park is the playground we grew up with and it's what we've always gone to. And now that me and her are older, we get to explore farther and stuff, but there's so many little kids around the neighborhood that can't go that far yet. And like, if that playground is removed, then like what are they—what do they have to play on? And what are the parents going to do for them? [15:15] **Committee Chair:** Do you have anything else you'd like to say? Thank you very much. They are great questions that you're asking and um, appreciate your concern for your your friends and people younger than you and and making sure that they have somewhere to go and play. Thank you for coming up and speaking. Anyone else? Hi. [15:35] **Christy Maxwell:** So I'm Christy Maxwell. I'm at 128 Chapparel Drive. And I didn't think I was going to speak, but I have one more point. As we are bringing up um, just for all of the parks, I think it's really important to keep the neighborhood parks for an additional reason of um, we're living in a world with tons of technology and it's coming at us really fast. And for a lot of us parents, we are trying very, very hard to not have iPads and tablets and phones and special watches. And I think with the removal of neighborhood parks and playgrounds, um, we do need to send our kids further and that's forcing me as the parent to have a decision of: am I going to buy my child the special watch that makes phone calls? Am I getting them a phone way earlier than I wanted to so that they can have independence, ride their bike a little bit further, but out of my eyesight now? And out of where I feel comfortable that maybe another neighbor I know has eyesight on them. And so I think keeping in mind too um, where technology is now—it's not really been brought up—but I think a lot of us are seeing the ill effects of it and it's scary. And I don't want to have my kids having a phone until much, much, much later. So I appreciate consideration of keeping the neighborhood parks for the reason of even though we're talking about little kids and them walking, I think it also applies to our older kids who are trying to stay off of technology or their parents have made that decision and then they are unable to reach the parents. And so that's a consideration as well. So thank you. [16:53] **Committee Chair:** Thank you, Christy. [17:02] **Jennifer Rogers:** It's a very tough act to follow those little ones there. Uh, I'm Jennifer Rogers. I'm at 14126 Garland and I'd like to advocate for Scott Park. Um, my understanding is that the playground was not going to be replaced at that park. And since our last meeting that some of you all were at, um, I've been trying to kind of track how often I see kids at that park. I work from home, so oftentimes I hear kids during the day. Now that school's back in session, um, you know it's typically after school hours, but it's at least every other day. And that's what I'm catching—that's not um, you know, probably all the time because I can't supervise it all the time. But I think in our neighborhood, we have Largen Park which is a little bit further down the road, but it's an older neighborhood and we're having a lot of turnover with the older neighbors moving out, younger families moving in. We have a lot of people—unfortunately, I don't see anybody here today—but we have a lot of people in the neighborhood that have little kids. We also have grandparents that have little grandchildren that are coming. So I would ask that you uh, strongly consider to replace the Scott Park playground. Thank you all. [18:32] **Committee Chair:** Thanks, Jennifer. Anyone else? I'm kind of staring down people who haven't come up so I'm—you're welcome to, but you don't have to. [18:55] **Desmond Farley:** My name is Desmond Farley. I also live at 149 Chapparel Drive. Um, so since since this um, this plan has been announced um, and we've we've watched and tried to understand how how you're going about it and what are the what are the questions that you have to answer, what are the processes that you have to go through—um, I've I've tried to look at it like like what would I do in your situation? Like what are what are the things that that you have to achieve? So so one way we're looking at this from from—and and this is just as I see it—so a lot of the the information we've seen, we've seen maps of the city, we're looking at this park and and whatever that park has, a playground, um, a ball field, whatever it is. And we're looking at a radius and we're looking at distances and and population densities and like this is like like like the data, the things we have to analyze to it. And and now I understand that we've—I say "we," all of us—we've we've hired a consulting firm. So I I would assume, you know, they're looking at this data and like crunching the numbers and trying to figure out like this is the budget we have to work with, we have to try to get as much out of that as possible. These are the things we want to achieve. But when you look at a map and you look—you look at a half-mile radius, you know, I I can use our neighborhood as an example. There are two parks, two playgrounds about a half a mile apart. But if you eliminate one of those and you look at our neighborhood—and and the reason why we all love our neighborhood is we're we're lucky, we have bigger yards, it's a little bit more spread out—but but when you're looking at a you know, a a challenge like this, that spread-outness creates an obstacle for for people. So now instead of that half a mile, you've you've got—we we were playing around with the map—you know, you've got a mile each way for people with kids. And and I know we've we've we've been been down that road. But but I'm I'm just trying to to look at it from like a like a non-scientific way. Like you guys know the city, you know the neighborhoods, you know you know how different it can be. You know we we drive around to to friends and neighbors houses and and there are neighborhoods that we we drive around these parks and and the neighborhoods all the houses back up to that park. You know that's that's super accessible. So so I'm just trying to I I guess ask you to to advocate for for the different challenges some of these neighborhoods face. You know you know I I understand the the how and what we have to—you know you're looking at a map, you're looking at density, you're looking at distances. Um, the the park that's on the other side of Palamino—there's no great way to to run across Palamino to to run down to uh, Belmont Park for for those kids. So so it—I I understand the challenges, but but I I just ask that like whether it's it's it's through your plan or when you get with the the planning consultants, you know that that there's a human element to it too. It's not just black and white: "we crunch the numbers, this is the data, this is the best we can do," you know, and and just start eliminating playgrounds or eliminating ball fields and things like. I know there's a bottom line, I know there's a cost to everything. We can't do it all all the time all at once. But you know that that was just my way of thinking it. You know our neighborhood is literally like "over the river and through the woods." You know? So you know a half mile on a a flat street, but you know drive down our neighborhood, take a look at it. Like, are you—are you going to—are you okay asking—you know, I guess I guess my point is like like we need you to advocate for us. You know? Like like like don't just look at the details. You know, think think about like if you lived here, if if your kids lived here, if your family lived here, you know you see a little kid run down the street. So that was just my thought on you know I just don't want it to be you know like like an analytical process and and you take away the the the advocacy for the people that live in Apple Valley. So thank you very much. [23:44] **Committee Member (Randy):** Thank you Desmond, thank you. I'd just like to comment on on that Chapparel-Belmont—I've uh, I've jogged through that neighborhood and forgot how huge... there's hills in there and it's just—there's a reason I don't jog in that neighborhood anymore. Uh, so uh, the last—at the last meeting when that the hills were mentioned, you know, the clue bird landed. And uh, you know obviously as I provided feedback, took that into account because they also seasonally—one of our... yeah, right. So so thanks for that feedback in that area. [24:32] **Desmond Farley:** Gotta try and ride a bike in there. [24:34] **Committee Member (Randy):** Yeah, I do. I have. I hear you. [24:36] **Committee Chair:** We have a few more additional comments so um, please come on up and welcome. [24:44] **Brad Blackett:** Hi, uh, my name is Brad Blackett and I live at 457 Reflection Road. A longtime resident of Apple Valley, before it was Apple Valley. And one of the observations I've made—and I don't feel like I'm addressing the right right people for this question, but please listen. Um, so the western side of Apple Valley was pretty much developed first. The northern-northwest corner kind of gradually moved to the east. And while Apple Valley was growing, they took on um, the philosophy or change philosophies about the park dedication fund. So developers were now more able to, in exchange for setting land aside for parks like they were required to do in the early days, they could just pay off the city some money and not have to put in Parkland. So now you don't have neighborhoods being developed with parks. That's why there's the dis disparity today—is because the philosophy of our city council moved to the—and I'm not sure when it happened, why it happened—but it seems like the priorities went from providing neighborhood community development where neighborhoods could coalesce and gather and do things within their own neighborhoods, not having to travel to go places to within the city to do that where their kids could grow up knowing one another. And that really in my neighborhood as I grew up was important. I've seen many generations of kids playing together, they bonded, the parents bonded, everybody got together. These days everybody's jumping in their cars and racing back and forth to different activities and everybody's busy, busy, busy. The kids don't really get along with one another, they don't know each other. And it's because when the zoning or whatever controlled where and when parks were put into the neighborhoods, money was spent was taken from the developers and then spent into building athletic fields and supporting that rather than supporting the neighborhood things. But it comes back to the park bond issue. We're here because today we have money that was set aside in the park bond issue. Why wasn't that money allocated in the park bond issue for maintaining and operating the parks in the neighborhoods? All of a sudden now we're having to steal from the neighborhoods things that make their neighborhood a neighborhood. And it's just—I don't understand the logic why this all kind seems to kind of snuck up on everybody. And "oh my gosh, now we have equipment it's failing." What—why wasn't that budget ahead of time? Why isn't that a a long-term capital type of improvement plan that's in place so that today we're not having this conversation? We're not having this conflict between neighborhood and neighborhood. And and you guys end up being the ones that catch the brunt of all this. And I'm sorry for you guys for having to do that. And that's a horrendous um, decision that you have to make. And you're being um—I don't want to use the word "coached," but you're having all of it explained to you by City staff to what the reality is. And what is the reality? The reality is that the park bond issue was a failure to support neighborhoods neighborhood parks. And at some point you had a say in some of that. You had the access or opportunity to see that coming down the road and it should have been in the park bond issue in a larger amount of money instead of spending it on all these other things that we need to glorify our fields to make it ready for tournaments and to do all this and do that. You forgot about the neighborhood parks and now it's coming to bite us. And that is my comment. Thank you for listening and I hope you can give me some more background as to why this situation is being having to be dealt with today. You know there's something missing here about the planning process and it doesn't lie necessarily with you folks. Thank you. [29:33] **Committee Chair:** Thank you Brad, thank you. Anyone else who wants to come up and and speak? Yeah, final... maybe maybe. Nice job by the way. [30:05] **Paul Soufall:** Hey, good evening. Good evening Adam committee member, committee members. Uh, Paul Soufall, D10 Redwood Circle. I grew up on Redwood Drive. I was one of the first families—my parents were the first family on Redwood Drive on Keller Park. And so I've returned to—I raised my own family. We have a couple customers here tonight, a couple customers at home sleeping. Um, couple comments actually on three different parks. Redwood pool number one: uh, Orrin Thompson built the west side of Apple Valley, over a lot of Apple Valley, but he did not design the homes. It was actually a different architect. And the architect is very famous—so famous I can't recall it right now, but you do recognize one of his buildings—me to go down to downtown Minneapolis, the Hennepin County um, center. And so um, number one: when we look at the pool, the original plans kind of showed something very modern. That modern building will not fit in to an old neighborhood. So I would just like some consideration architecturally that form follows function in that area. That building has served that corner really, really well. I was a customer for many years of that pool also. But what do you really need? Community just wants a pool. Keep it simple. You don't need a fancy pool building, you don't need a fancy pool—you need a nice pool for families to go swimming in. That's it. Keep it simple. Whatever you design, whatever you build it, fit into the community just like the Orrin Thompson building uh, architect originally did. Number two: the entrance to Redwood Drive is Redwood Park. And now uh, I don't know that people always know this, but red fades very quickly. Number one. So I would uh, implore the city of Apple Valley to not use red in their parks anymore because ours has turned pink. Uh, it's quite ugly. But in it—in its days when I played ball down there, it was a nice park. We actually had a water fountain. Uh, we had very large swings—the risky swings, the tall swings where you actually had some risk when you fell off those swings. You jump from the swing, see how far you could go off. Now nobody wants to get hurt on swings even though they're sand below them. Keep the park. We need the park. I live right between Keller Park on the other end and then Redwood Park. These guys need a place to go. But any further or beyond 42, as a parent, that's a little scary. Even if there's a tunnel underneath, psychologically that's just a line that I don't want my kids to cross. I know other parents don't want that either. I know I'm just speaking for myself, but please consider that in your plans that that park remain. Keller Park: in the plan it says that there's going to be a fishing pier and a canoe rack. Previously was a canoe rack there. What ended up happening is it was a great idea at first—canoes were put there and then they stayed there, never used. Then they were damaged, vandalized, the rack rusted, and it was finally taken out. Nobody uses—it's not a very good fishing lake, it's shallow. And the people, the residents around the area anyways, just have the canoes at their homes. The fishing rack serves no—or the canoe rack serves no purpose. Need some clarification on the fishing pier: is it just replacing the platform or are you actually going to put a fishing pier out in the lake? When we had the park representatives at our our meeting, it sounded like it's just going to be replacement of that platform and I would highlight that. I would too would like just to see that platform replaced only. Uh, finally couple things actually: the consultants. I assume that the consultants are just that, that they're insulting in telling you their suggestions. My concern is that this is what the French would call a *fait accompli*—that is, already been determined of what is going to happen with all of our parks, including Keller, Redwood, Duchess. And I played at Duchess when I was a kid, so I know that park very, very well. But again, a *fait accompli*—has this already been decided? It feels like that to me when I read the literature about what's happening. It's great that you had consultants come in, but let the community decide what ultimately happens in the parks. Don't let them take away parks that are being used. Redwood Park is used, Keller Park is used. I've met many of my neighbors through being at Keller Park and at Redwood Park. It's a meeting place. We love it. Don't take it away. It's actually in really, really good shape. Thank you committee members. [34:55] **Committee Chair:** Thank you, thank you. Anyone else? All right, at at this time I I'm going to open it up to—really, Eric, before you come up—I'm going to open it up to committee members. I think we've heard a lot of comments and a lot of feedback and I just want to um, give it—give a committee members a chance to respond and and comment and follow up on anything that we've we've heard. So it's kind of open it up to the committee to... [35:10] **Committee Member:** No additional comments from me. Just uh, good to hear directly from the community um, uh not only what they want but why. Uh, because that always helps in on the decision. [35:28] **Committee Member:** Yeah, I would echo that too. Just gratitude for engagement and people being willing to speak up. I love the amount of people that are here tonight, it's great. [35:46] **Committee Member (Randy):** I think a lot of the comments people brought up are going to be addressed very clearly and directly and I think positively from your perspective very shortly as to: is this a *fait accompli*? Everything I've seen from the inside this process would say the answer to that question is not in any way. The city has bent over backwards for over a year now with opportunities to get input. There there have been still no final decisions made of any sort. We're still very much information gathering, editing, and not just editing but improving, upgrading, making what the plans are going to be fit ever more closely with what people say they want to have in their parks. I I I want to reassure you that from inside the process in my position, I don't see that at all. [36:44] **Committee Chair:** Randy, that's nice to you. So thank you for confirming that. Yeah, I just want to—would just add that, you know again, first our appreciation and gratitude for you coming up and speaking and sharing your input with us. This is really important for us as an advisory committee to the city council um, to make sure that we're hearing your comments and concerns and we take them very seriously and to heart because we we are the Parks and Rec Advisory Committee. We're here because we really love our parks and our facilities and want to make sure that we're serving our community and our neighbors um, as best as we possibly can. And I I just want to just clarify—I know it's been said a few times that I just want to make sure for the record: we are not removing parks. Um, I people keep saying removing parks and and I I know—I know everybody here, we're talking about the playgrounds in this case. Um, it is lending a little confusion publicly that people are thinking that entire parks are disappearing. Um, so I just want to um, clarify that no parks are going away and that again, the parks are important and and just echoing that we need a place to start and it was a draft plan that we were presented with. We got a lot of great feedback. I know Eric will talk in depth and and share more about that with everybody here um, and and watching and listening. But again, we we—repres—we know and you know, we we care about Eileen and all the—all the people who use our parks deeply. Um, so let her know we care and we're we're listening and we hear—we hear that um, from everybody here from and especially you know young ones who who spoke up and and shared their experiences with the park. So we really, really appreciate that. And um, with that, I know that there were some questions that were asked here and I'm I'm not going to tackle those questions. I think this would be a great time to invite our Parks Director Eric Carlson up. [38:47] **Eric Carlson (Parks and Recreation Director):** Madam Chair, members of the committee: just going to try to go through a little bit of a PowerPoint presentation based on um, uh I'll call it a second draft of the plan we did. And want to—want to make sure that um, that you and those in the audience and those that might be watching at home um, understand that we we did take a lot of time to look at all of the comments that were made, um, to listen to all of the feedback that we got at at our—at all of the meetings that we held, and we are doing our best to respond to the feedback that we we think we heard. Um, it's—but it's also safe to say that not everyone may be happy at the end of the day, but we're trying to do the best we can to respond to the comments that we heard uh, throughout the process. So gotta turn that on. [39:41] **Eric Carlson:** Um, just want to start with just the—the mission of the City of Apple Valley is to is pledge to promote and enhance the health, safety, and general well-being of all of its citizens who visit the city. Um, there's a number of goals that the city has, and the ones that are highlighted kind of pertain to Parks and Recreation. We're trying to provide a full range of Municipal services. We like to experiment with new ideas in the delivery of public services—and some could argue that's kind of what we're doing. We're we're trying to explore what's what's acceptable to community and what's not acceptable to community. Um, and we want to make sure that we're trying to transmit uh, for future citizens that this—a this is a better community and a beautiful community. Um, and then we have a number of keys to success uh, that as a City staff that we strive to uh, accomplish. And we want to try to make Apple Valley a great place to live. We want to make sure that it's safe. We want to make sure that people have parks to experience and that that people can be healthy and and live an active lifestyle in in Apple Valley. Um, so that we can be sustainable and accessible in every way that you would define the word accessible. Um, and we want to make sure that Apple Valley is a community for the life—for a lifetime. [41:05] **Eric Carlson:** So um, the folks within our department that are a part of this entire process are on the screen. Um, and these are the people that are trying to help listen to the comments, understand what our needs might be, looking at trends within the Parks and Recreation industry, and making sure that we're doing right by the community—at least recommending what we think is right by the community based on both of our—both our professional judgment and experience, um, the education that we have, and then what we're hearing the community tell us both verbally and in the Social Pinpoint comments, etc. So as a reminder, um, voters went to the polls back in November and they passed uh, two different questions. The first question um, passed by uh—there was about 25% of the population of registered voters that voted, and it passed by about a 66% margin. And that was for $66.7 million which included investments in trails, natural resources, the Apple Valley Community Center, Senior Center, the Aquatic Center, the preservation of our park system—that's kind of what we're talking talking about tonight is that $16.7 million plus the $2 million for trails. But it also included um, a revamp of Kelly Park, Hayes Arena, the construction of a youth baseball/softball complex, and um, basically a complete remodel of Redwood Park. [42:19] **Eric Carlson:** Then there was a second question included in the referendum um, and the first question I had to pass for the second question to to pass. And again about 25% of the registered voters voted. Um, that question passed by a 60% margin and that was really uh, the question was uh: "do you want to rebuild the Redwood pool?" And so between the two questions, they both passed. We have about $73 million uh, to invest into the park system which um, should um, do a great job of updating, upgrading, and enhancing the Parks and Recreation system. And we tried to make sure that there was something in the referendum for everyone, if you will. Um, and not everyone got what they—everything they maybe wanted, but hopefully everyone feels like they got a little something um, out of the referendum. And that was a key to putting the referendum package together so that it would potentially uh, be successful. It couldn't be all weighted towards youth athletics or all weighted towards playground equipment. There needed to be something for everyone so that the community as a whole would support it, and ultimately um, by their vote, they did. [43:22] **Eric Carlson:** So tonight we're talking about the general Park improvements. So that includes playgrounds and court improvements—to courts, lighting, irrigations, trails, pickleball courts, skate parks, our park system signage, etc. Um, again, the the blue circles on the map represent where parks are located in the city. I would say that the City of Apple Valley is fortunate in that it has a lot of parks that are spread throughout the community and people generally have pretty good access to parks um, within the community. You see where it might be a little bit a void in this part of town, but this is County Road 42 and the gravel pits, so no one lives there. So we really don't need to provide all that great a park service to the Gravel Pit in County Road 42. But in other parts of town where the neighborhoods are and where people live, um, people have pretty good access—and if if not, they have great access uh, from my perspective to the park system. [44:10] **Eric Carlson:** So when we look at um, improvements to the park system, we're looking at investing somewhere in the neighborhood of about $23 million. So if you go back a couple slides, there was the 16.7 uh, that was a line item for parks, um, and then there was $2 million for trails—so that's just short of $19 million. We get to 23 million—we can invest about $23 million because we've been fortunate as a city to receive some federal money and some state money through grants um, that helps us um, supplement some of the investments that we're making and it allows us to spend about $23 million on parks themselves. And as we look at the the different line items, we're planning to invest about $4.9 million in playgrounds, um, about half a million dollars in basketball courts, about $2.8 million in tennis courts, about $1.3 million in the backstops that we have at our ball fields, about $2.2 million in parking lots, a million uh, for some additional pickleball courts at Johnny Cake Ridge Park, um, about a million dollars in a concrete skate park to replace the old uh, um, modular skate park equipment that we have, about a million dollars to update all of our park signage, um, about a million 7 to update some of our lighting and go to LED technology, about $2.8 million in our in our trail system, about a million to in an irrigation system—and really that's just for Johnny Cake West. Um, and then to put all that together and to put together the plans and specifications and be able to get that stuff out to bid and everything, we have to invest about $3 million in in that part of the process. So that all adds up to about 23 million. [45:50] **Eric Carlson:** Um, as a part of this process, we've um, we've kind of divided the community, if you will, into these um, Park service areas. They're—they range from a half a square mile to a square mile. They're de—demarcated by major roadways because we really don't want people to have to cross—cross County Road 42 or Cedar Avenue to get to a park um, in in roads like it. So um, there's—there's 49 parks in the system today. We have about 54 playgrounds, 21 basketball courts, 22 tennis courts in the park system. We've done some comparisons to our peer communities to see if we're in line: "Are we a little short? Are we a little long on something?" And that's what these numbers represent. And so again, we've spent—I believe we spent quite a bit of time um, trying to get feedback from the community and wanting to engage the community in the process. And we purposely went and scheduled a meeting in every single park in town to try to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. We know that if we would have held these meetings at City Hall, if you will, very few people would have taken the time to get in their car, drive to City Hall on Tuesday night at 7 o'clock to tell us what they think. But when we said, "Hey, we're going to be in your park at 5:30 on Tuesday night," people came and they gave us feedback. And we—we appreciate that and that was valuable and we listened to that. [47:11] **Eric Carlson:** We encouraged people to go to Social Pinpoint and get online and and leave their comments there because it was an easy spot for us to collect all the information, make sure that we didn't miss some comments. Other people could see what everyone else was saying about a particular issue or about a particular park. And so we had 2,300 visits to the Social Pinpoint site, we had 546 comments uhu made on Social Pinpoint, we had over a thousand people attend uh, the series of public meetings that we held. Six of those meetings—you know, we—so we scheduled those meetings on the calendar back in July, no idea what the weather was going to do. Six of those were impacted by weather. Not a bad batting average—we'd get in the Hall of Fame if we if we did that. Um, and here's kind of what we heard: generally at a high level, people really value their playgrounds in Apple Valley and they don't want to um, feel like they lost their playground in their neighborhood. Um, we heard that people would like—they would appreciate basketball courts that had two hoops on, one on each end of the court. Um, people value tennis courts in in neighborhood parks, they want to see pickleball courts in neighborhood parks. It seems like sand volleyball isn't as important as maybe it once was in some of our neighborhood parks. People wanted to see some off-leash pet areas a little bit closer to home—we provide two areas right now at Delaney and Huntington. Um, and then um, again it's been a strong message through the um, statistically accurate surveys we did before the referendum and now even post-referendum: um, people are really interested in making sure that we do a good job of of protecting and enhancing the natural environment. And so if you look at all the Social Pinpoint comments you have, and if we do a a word search um, in all of those comments, this is just a graph of how many times the word "playground" as an example shows up in a Social Pinpoint con—um, Social Pinpoint comment, or the word "tree" or the word "tennis" or the word "basketball court." So you can kind of see what was important, if you will, um, as a part of the comments people made. [49:03] **Eric Carlson:** So again, we've got today we've got 54 playgrounds within our community—that's about a a playground per every 1,64 residents. Our neighbors have about one in uh, 1,400. As a part of this updated plan based on our listening of what the community said, we're proposing that we would have 48 playgrounds in our community. That means that there would be a playground in every park that has a playground today. All right? In the parks that have multiple playgrounds—like Alamagnet, using that as an example—there would be one playground there, not two. That's—that's the example. So every park that has at least a playground today would have at least a playground at the end of all of this, if you will. All right? [49:46] **Eric Carlson:** Um, 83% of our playgrounds were installed um, prior to ADA. Um, a lot of our playgrounds were installed—23 of our playgrounds were installed in 1998, which makes them 26 years old. Our goal is to replace playgrounds at at 25 years uh, once they've reach 25 years old. So a lot of what we have—83, roughly 83% of what we have is um, is is around that age and or will be 25 years old by the time we get done with this in five years. So our—our playground equipment really does need to be replaced. We need to bring it up to safety standards, we need to bring it up to accessibility standards. Um, and we're hoping that this—well well, we're not hoping, we know that this will do this, that. And we are planning for an inclusive playground at Redwood Park. [50:41] **Eric Carlson:** So what what what we're proposing this evening is that we um, have a—we'll call it a playground classification system. So spread across town we'll have 15 local playgrounds, we'll have 24 neighborhood playgrounds, we'll have three area playgrounds, four community playgrounds, and two destination playgrounds spread across town. Again, every park that has a playground today will have a playground in the future, but if it has multiple playgrounds in the park, it won't—it'll just have one. Um, and so this is the map that shows the investments that we would propose to make within all of the parks and related to playground equipment. Um, generally playgrounds would be within a 10-minute walk like they are today. Um, each playground—again, every park that has a playground would keep the playground. We're trying to replace them at 25 years. Um, we to this classification system, and it's going to take us at least 5 years to get the ones that are that old. There's um, about eight eight parks in town that the playground equipment isn't 25 years old yet and won't be 25 years old within the next 5 years. So it'll be a number of years until those playgrounds reach 25 years old, and that's the point in which those playgrounds would get replaced. [51:53] **Committee Member (Randy):** Could you uh, before you go back—I just want to make one comment on that second bullet point there. I think that to me looks like a key—a key point, um, a key uh, su—part of success that uh, has been developed for this plan. So um, that looks great. [52:13] **Eric Carlson:** All right, thank you. So what we've told—what we've said to people is that as a part of the process, neighborhoods will get a chance to give some input and some feedback about what actually happens at playgrounds. In working with a playground vendor, we said we said, "How much—how—what if we invest x amount of dollars, what type of how much playground equipment can we invest in?" And so this is an example—this isn't what's going to happen at the local playgrounds that have been identified as local playgrounds, but this is—this is a representative example of the investment we would make in a local playground. All right? And so as you as you go from local to neighborhood to area to community, we're going to be investing just a little bit more each time. But again, these are spread across town um, so that people will have fairly decent access to all of these types of playgrounds. [52:58] **Eric Carlson:** This is an example of the of a neighborhood playground investment that we would make. This is an example of an area playground exam—uh, investment that we that we would make. And this is an example of a community playground example uh, investment that we would make. I don't have the destination playground uh, examples because that's just a whole another category. But these are the four levels of playgrounds and the investments that we would make across the park system. And we're trying to give um, people within the community access to all of the these um, but not all at the same park. [53:40] **Committee Member (Randy):** Question: yeah, I'm not sure I'm the target audience for the four pictures you just showed, Eric. [53:45] **Eric Carlson:** You're not. [53:46] **Committee Member (Randy):** But since they're here, I would like to ask the two young ladies who spoke: what do these look like to you? [54:01] **Eric Carlson:** The the difference between the different categories is the amount of money that we're going to invest in each playground. So so if we go—if we go to this map right here um, we we are trying to—where where parks are closer together, we might have more local playgrounds, but then still in the same neighborhood we have neighborhood-sized playgrounds. So if we go to the Northwest area here, we've got two local playgrounds at Chapparel and at Her—um, Heritage. And then we have neighborhood-sized playgrounds at Belmont and at Palamino. That's—that's an example. And then if you if you were to go to the Southwest part of town, we've got Keller as a local, we've got Lac Lavon as a neighborhood, we got Long Ridge as a neighborhood, we've got Pennock as a area, we've got new Greening and Green and um, Duchess as locals. Um, and so again if you if you live in this—where'd my mouse go?—there it is. If you live in this southwest part of town, you have fairly decent access to three different size playgrounds. Some of them you might want to walk to, some of them might feel like is a little far to walk to, but they're still in the neighborhood, if you will, at least from my perspective. Yep. [55:18] **Eric Carlson:** Where was I? I was through these pictures... so then so then getting to tennis courts um, we haven't—we're not prepared to make a recommendation on what to do with tennis courts. We want—we think we need more feedback from uh, neighbors uh, neighborhoods about tennis courts and and basketball courts. These are where tennis courts are listed today. Again, from our perspective, there's excess tennis courts in our community, but people said that they really appreciate having it. So the approach we took in the first draft of the plan was to try to reduce our number of tennis courts—was to take tennis courts out completely out of a neighborhood. The approach that—that we're hoping happens through listening to what people have to say is that instead of taking both of them out, maybe we'll have a tennis court and a pickleball court in the same footprint. And I'll show you that here in just a second. [56:17] **Eric Carlson:** This is where we have basketball courts located in town. So so we have a couple—Belmont, we'll use Belmont as an example. There's a single tennis court there that's 120 by 60 foot—120 feet by 60 feet uh, footprint. It could end up being a tennis court. We heard plenty of people that said, "Hey, we wish we had a basketball court and a pickleball court that could fit in the same footprint," or "We wish we had a tennis court and a pickleball court that could fit in the same footprint." We're not going to necessarily decide that for the neighborhood; we'll let the the neighborhood tell us and vote on what option they think they want. And that's through this next round of public engagement that we're going to be doing when it comes to tennis courts. When it comes to dual tennis courts that we have in neighborhood parks um, it could be it could be uh, double tennis courts. It could be dual-striped. But also in that same footprint we could fit a tennis court, a couple of pickleball courts, and a basketball court. We could fit a basketball court, a single pickleball court, and a little bit larger basketball court. So again, we're trying—what we heard was bigger basketball, pickleball... we still want to see some tennis in our neighborhoods. So we're trying to respond to what we think we heard, and the only way we're going to find out for sure is we'll put it back on Social Pinpoint and people can tell us that we're right or that we're—we missed it. And maybe we did, we'll see. [57:46] **Eric Carlson:** And then for those parks that just have basketball courts um, we'll give people the option of what we'll call a modified half court and a modified full court. Want to point out here, and it's going to be in the plan and as we go along the way, um, what we need people to understand is that while people want pickleball courts in their neighbors—neighborhoods, they need to understand that there's a noise factor that comes along with having pickleball in your neighborhood. And for some people that's an irritating noise and um, we just need to make sure that people understand that if we end up with a pickleball court in a neighborhood, that they need to be comfortable with the noise that comes with that. My personal opinion: a single pickleball court in a neighborhood park probably won't create the kinds of issues we've experienced as a city as we did at Redwood Park, where there was six pickleball courts in one location. I think that noise and the fact that it was up against the concrete wall of the community center and the noise just bounced off and into the into the neighborhood—I think I think that was really the issue. I think if it would have been a single pickleball court without the concrete wall there, things probably would have been a whole lot better. [58:55] **Eric Carlson:** But we need people to understand that there is a noise issue that comes along with pickleball courts. The other thing we want people to understand when they ask for a basketball court with two hoops: it probably brings a different kind of user to the basketball court and things become probably a little bit more competitive. And if the neighborhood's okay with that, we just want them to realize that that's probably what will happen. That's been our experience and and so we want people to recognize that up front because once we build it, it's kind of there and we can't really go backwards once we build it. [59:28] **Eric Carlson:** Um, another thing that we want to do through this process is just confirm um, the parks that we have in this community. And—and the city's guilty of having documents that call Kelly South a park separate from Kelly Park itself. There's some documents that that have um, Redwood Sou—Redwood South a park separate from Redwood Park north of County Road 42. So we want to confirm what our parks are, what the addresses are, and we're suggesting that Green Leaf Park North and Green Leaf Park South be separated because they're separated um, and and we'll be doing that as part of this process. [1:00:10] **Eric Carlson:** People talked about wanting to have off-leash pet areas. Uh, we have—we provide them in the summer—in the spring, summer, fall—at Delaney and Huntington. To respond to that, we think we can do the same thing at Apple Valley East, Galaxie, Sand Hagemeister if those neighborhoods um, want to see that happen. And again, that'll be part of the feedback that we get on Social Pinpoint. So we're not telling people that's what's going to happen—we're responding to the feedback we think we heard and finding out is—and confirming, "Is this what we heard? Is this what you really want?" [1:00:46] **Eric Carlson:** Then we've got natural resources and trees um, obviously a very important issue. We've been removing all of the ash trees and I think by the end of this year, we will have removed all of the ash trees in the maintained areas of our park system. We'll start um, doing replanting of those trees using a diverse species so hopefully we don't run into an issue where, you know, we lose 75% of the trees we have because we planted all the same variety. Um, we are also working on implementing a natural resource management plan for Alamagnet Park, which is going to take uh, a number of years for us to really get established. But we are listening to what residents have to say about protecting and enhancing natural resources, and so that's something that we're doing in Alamagnet Park. And then we're also working on um, using more natural plantings and installing rain gardens, etc. [1:01:43] **Eric Carlson:** Um, we heard from some folks about um, wanting to have dog waste stations or pet waste stations uh, located uh, in the city. And I think from the city's perspective at this point, that's not something that we're interested in doing because it's not just installing one—it's installing 100 or 150 of them. Because if you do it once, you're going to end up having to do it in a lot of other parks, and that just becomes a um, a maintenance issue for our staff. It's going to be time-consuming because we're going to have to go and replace or or replenish garbage bags all the time. We think dog owners or pet owners should be responsible: carry their own bag, take care of their own dog waste, deposit it in a trash can that we have out there or bring it home and deposit it in their own garbage can. I don't think we want to get in the business of providing dog waste stations in our park system because it'll become expensive and time-consuming. [1:02:40] **Eric Carlson:** When it comes to uh, tennis court and pickleball lights, we have two courts in town that um, um, that are lighted right now: Scott Park and Hagemeister Park. The feedback that we get seems to be that they're not used very frequently and that maybe we should consider um, an investment um, at Johnny Cake West uh, where the pickleball courts is—is there they're concentrated. There's eight there now, there might be another um, six to 10 more courts there. Maybe we can work with the school district to light the tennis courts—so that's something that we're investigating. And so we'll likely not be lighting the the courts at Scott and Hagemeister in the future. Um, and we did get some feedback back from mostly at Scott Park that um, people don't appreciate the the lights at Scott Park. [1:03:22] **Eric Carlson:** Great. And then so from a next steps perspective, you know obviously the committee is here this evening listening to feedback. We've provided you with an updated version uh, of the plan, you've provided some feedback on that. Um, you've got some comments from the public this evening. What we want to do is take take the the additional feedback that we've received since the 13th of September, update the plan that you saw. We want to put it back out on the website probably around the 15th or so of October. We're suggesting that the Parks Committee cancel its November 7th meeting and reschedule to the 21st um, so that that'll give the public time between the 15th or so of October to the first week or so of November to review the updated plan, make comments on the Social Pinpoint site, vote for this basketball court or that tennis court or, you know, those types of issues for us to be able to make sure that we got it right and make some small adjustments if we have to. So that on the 21st, the Parks Committee can meet, look at what we would hope that then would be the final plan, you would hopefully adopt it and recommend that the City Council do the same. Then our goal would be that in December, the Council at their first meeting in December would review the plan that you would recommend to them, and by the end of December they would adopt that plan so that we know what we're going to be doing starting in 2025. So with that, I'll conclude my comments and answer questions that you may have. [1:04:47] **Committee Member (Randy):** Can you confirm Eric uh, it's officially going to be called the "Draft Number Two" of the amenity Park plan? Do I have that right? [1:04:54] **Eric Carlson:** Um, I don't think we're going to call it "draft" anymore. I think we're just going to call it the "Proposed Park Amenity Plan." It'll be available to the public via the City website a week or so from now approximately. [1:05:05] **Eric Carlson:** Yeah, our—our goal is to have it on the website on uh, by October 15th along with o—other updated information and and a fresh Social Pinpoint site. [1:05:13] **Committee Member (Randy):** Okay, where they're going to be able again like the old one, click on a park. In some cases they're going to have options to vote on certain things, and in some—and in all cases they'll have a chance to leave comments. [1:05:22] **Eric Carlson:** Okay. [1:05:23] **Committee Member (Randy):** And "proposal" I guess tells me everything I want to know about that. Can I assume that for that public document then will be something like a page describing the plans for each park and timeline there? [1:05:33] **Eric Carlson:** Is... yep. [1:05:34] **Committee Member (Randy):** Okay. So okay. So a lot of those questions people had tonight, for instance, that kind of information would go a long way towards "here's exactly what the current proposal is for when and what for your park" to the best of ability. [1:05:44] **Eric Carlson:** Yes. Yes. [1:05:46] **Committee Member (Randy):** Okay. Um, any other questions, comments from committee open? [1:05:52] **Committee Member:** So I have a question. I don't know if it's logistically possible or not, but um, for especially keeping in mind that in some parks we're trying to get feedback on: "do we want a pickleball court, a basketball court, a tennis court?" Um, I feel like there may be some potential to incidentally gather biased feedback from the people who are really interested in this one sport, and other neighbors may not be as aware that something's going on. Would it be possible to get some sort of just like a postcard mailer? I know that we had a big pamphlet that we put out prior to the referendum, but just like a postcard that says, "Hey, the the plan's out there, we're looking for feedback on basketball court versus tennis court—December 1." So I don't—I don't know if that's possible or financially feasible or or anything like that, but I just want to make sure that as we're gathering feedback from people around these parks, that we're reaching as many people around those parks we can. Because we had uh, on one of the first slides you showed, we had 500 stakeholders or something like that—that's, you know, what, 1% of the city population? Um, so anything we can do to improve that I think would be good. [1:06:54] **Eric Carlson:** Well we have—um, I have 4,300 emails that over the course of the last year and a half we've collected because people have been engaged in the process. Um, and that—um, they'll be getting an email um, from us that says, "Hey, the plan's been updated, please go to the website, please tell your neighbors." Um, it sounds like some of these neighbors are neighborhoods are relatively connected um, if you will, and they probably have their own way of communicating with each other via Facebook groups or emails or whatnot. And so hopefully people will share and ask their neighbors to get involved and get engaged. Um, I I don't know that we're going to be able to mail out postcards though, because where do you—where do you draw the line at mailing out a postcard if you don't do it to everyone? And yes, doing it to everyone is cost prohibitive. [1:07:44] **Committee Chair:** Well, I would just add to that—I I think that there's a a logistical issue of, you know, how far do you reach because people go to different playgrounds and—and how—you know, one postcard is asking about tennis courts and another one doesn't. So I I think this is where I I would just echo that. I again appreciate everybody being here tonight and and taking this back and sharing this information and and making sure people are checking the website and looking at the at the the proposal uh, the proposed plan um, when it comes out. Because I think this is where again we we can help each other as neighbors. [1:08:26] **Committee Member:** So not just—not every park is being voted on, though, right? Could we just stick a sign? Like we did at—we did—we did put a sign at every park. But can we just put a sign at the parks that are being voted—that have a vote, saying, "Hey, your park is has a vote coming up"? [1:08:44] **Eric Carlson:** We'll—as staff, we'll we'll kick—we'll kick around some ideas and see what we can come up with. [1:08:52] **Committee Member:** And just to clarify, I wasn't proposing that we tailor postcards to individual parks, but more say, "Hey, we're we're considering between these options at parks around the city. Go to Social Pinpoint, we want your feedback." [1:09:07] **Eric Carlson:** Gotcha. Thanks. [1:09:08] **Committee Member:** I misunderstood that. [1:09:09] **Committee Member (Randy):** Eight bucks for a sign. Um, any other comments from committee? Questions? [1:09:17] **Committee Member:** I guess my comment is just that uh, I think the—we've been migrating from a draft plan to a proposed plan. I think it uh, does an excellent job of incorporating community feedback. So uh, I know there were people who were concerned that we weren't listening, but I think it shows that the city was listening. So thank you for that. [1:09:41] **Committee Chair:** I I would just echo that. Appreciate again everybody giving their comments and their feedback. And City staff really taking a deep dive on this and and coming up with a—you know, a a solution or a proposal that I think is hearing uh, the majority of what we're hearing from residents. Um, I know that's not easy, especially again um, people are very passionate about their parks. But again, as a city—as a as a committee, we also are chat—you know, kind of challenged to make sure that we're looking at it as the whole system-wide piece as well. So um, again, I just want to say thanks to that. Do we need a motion to move the uh, meeting to November 21st? [1:10:35] **Eric Carlson:** Yeah, that'll be a separate agenda item when we get there. Yeah. And I don't know if if anyone in the audience at this point wants to make any comments based on what they just saw or not, but... [1:10:41] **Committee Chair:** Yeah, perfect. I know there—there was a few questions... I think that Eric might have answered a few of the questions that people had in their first round of comments. But I'd like to definitely welcome anybody else with any other questions or feedback from after hearing um, Director Carlson. [1:11:00] **Paul Soufall:** Yes, thanks for that. Can you come up to the mic again? You are correct, I said "parks" and I meant playground equipment. So thank you for clarifying on that. Grateful for saying that. Uh, I would just stress that "hope is not a plan." So that we say that we want hope that uh, neighbors communicate this stuff out to one another—we have four kids, we work 60-hour jobs, and we are not online very often. And neither are uh, the people in in our community either. So I would hope uh, those signs that we had by the parks were relatively small. They were also dark, so they're about one by two, and they were posted by the park. I did not even see the one on Redwood Park, and it was actually on street side—it was low to the ground. Uh, I think it was out there for several months before I actually saw it. And then we had road construction at Keller Park—or by Keller Park too—and so that one was obscured. I would just ask that um, make those signs very evident, whether that's the size or the colors. Keep them simple so that people see that. Oh yeah, hey, there's a QR code on there. And for those that are not technology literate uh, another place that they can go besides just using the QR code, because I think that was the only option on that sign. So uh, grateful for that. And then uh, finally on Redwood Park South: uh, that ball field is really, really important. When Southview was added on to, they actually removed three baseball diamonds there. So we've lost baseball diamonds. I don't think we need another natural area. That whole area—Alamagnet, Redwood, Keller Park—is a beautiful natural area. We don't need no more natural areas. We just—we need more baseball diamonds and more areas for the uh, kids to recreate. Community members, thanks for your ear. [1:12:42] **Committee Chair:** Thank you, thank you. [1:12:44] **Nicole Bartle:** You're all welcome to come up together if you want. We—on behalf of Chapparel Park, thank you. We would like to say thank you, Eric, for—I know—taking the beating that we gave. The beating... we're a lot. Um, we're a lot. We get it. We've been here a lot. And um, we want to say thank you for listening to us because we've probably been the most vocal of everybody. Well, we feel like we've been the most vocal of everybody, and we appreciate that you've listened to what we've had to say. And this is a very nice compromise that you have given us. And um, I don't even know if it's a compromise—we feel like we've won the lottery. I know we're very excited. Thank you so much for... [1:13:30] **Committee Chair:** Thank you, thank you to you all as well. So thank you, thank you for being a part of the process and and giving your input. This is—this is—this is important. Um, so again, thank you. And Eileen will be pleased, I think so. Yes. Great. Anyone else? Okay. I think—oh, go ahead Randy. [1:14:04] **Committee Member (Randy):** If we happen to come across someone in the community or whatever that wants to be as up to date as they can and hear about things as they happen, I suspect that a good recommendation would be for me to tell them: send you an email and make sure they're on your park users list. Because nowadays email is how things tend to work, and that would be a reasonable thing for us to spread the word about. [1:14:32] **Eric Carlson:** Absolutely. [1:14:33] **Committee Chair:** Okay, great. And and again, when you're at the playground, talk to—at these playgrounds, let people know. Um, and again, I I understand people are busy and appreciate again whatever you can do to communicate this. Um, one other thing that I think you know we talked about: that when this—when it's finalized um, that we'll be back to kind of ask the—I guess this is a question—um, we will be back um, to ask the residents when it comes time to replace the playground. There will be an opportunity for them to give some input on that based on that local neighborhood, area, community—the options that are—are available at that time, correct? [1:15:00] **Eric Carlson:** We don't know exactly how that's going to work or what that's going to look like, but there's going to be more opportunity for people to be involved in what actually happens um, with regards to playgrounds. So... and just um, based on some comments so going through my mind, um, we'll—we'll probably develop another sign that we put at every playground too, and we'll change the colors, we'll change the look of it. It—it—l—it seems to be the most effective way for us to make sure that people know what's going on. We took them down—hopefully if they—if—if people notice that another one went up, it's a different color, it'll hopefully draw their attention. There's only so many things we can do to try to get people to pay attention. You know, the local newspaper doesn't reach a lot of people. Um, you know we have our website, but if you don't go there—if you don't have—feel like you have a reason to go there—you're not going to see what we put out there. Um, we can use and we will use our social media outlets um, you know uh, Facebook and Twitter, etc. But we'll also put signs out and we'll send out emails. So hopefully that will get to the people that we can. And um, we just don't—we don't have the wherewithal or the uh, the budget to send out letters to everybody in town or postcards to everyone in town. We just—just not—can't do that. [1:16:21] **Committee Chair:** Yeah, and and unfortunately the—the next version of the City newsletter doesn't come out until December, early December. So that's a little later than what we would want it to be. So right. Thank you very much, Eric. Um, again, thank you to all of you. I know we've spent a lot of time on this uh, this evening, but it's been really important. And um, again, this is part of the process and we're really appreciative that you're all a part of it, especially our our younger members of our residents. It's great to—great to have you here and being a part of the process. So thank you for that. [1:17:05] **Committee Chair:** Uh, the next thing on the agenda is the uh, to schedule a special meeting. Um, Eric commented about—we explained uh, looking at cancelling our next regular scheduled meeting on November 7th and um, scheduling instead of a special meeting on Thursday, November 21st um, at 7:00 PM, so that we can um, give enough time for people to look at the proposed amenities plan um, get some feedback on Social Pinpoint, and hopefully again welcome you all back at that date. But um, I need... [1:17:40] **Committee Member (Randy):** Move to change the meeting as described. [1:17:43] **Committee Member:** Second. [1:17:45] **Committee Chair:** There's been a motion and second. Um, all those in favor signal by saying aye. Opposed? Meeting is—the next official meeting will be the uh, Thursday, November 21st at 7 o'clock right here. So thank you all for that. Um, the next item on the agenda is committee and staff discussion items. Eric, is there anything else from staff at this time? [1:18:03] **Eric Carlson:** I think we covered enough for tonight. [1:18:04] **Committee Chair:** All right. All right. Um, anything from the committee? Any comments or updates from the committee? [1:18:10] **Committee Member:** I just uh, have one comment. We uh, we just got off the one of the driest Septembers in uh, in the—the recent history. Um, and lo and behold, I had a chance to go out and use the Valleywood Golf Course uh, October 1st. And uh, despite having that dry weather, that new irrigation system really seems to be successful and uh, really doing what it uh, was meant to do. So it looks like it is achieving its goal, so wanted to pass that on to the uh, to the golf uh, staff. [1:18:42] **Eric Carlson:** Thank you. We had an awesome uh, September as far as the number of rounds played. [1:18:46] **Committee Member:** So great. Good. Look forward to that update, end-of-year update. [1:18:52] **Committee Chair:** All right, and with that uh, input from committee members on next agenda: we still have items on the agenda for updating the park dedication and more information on Park facilities fund and Joint Powers agreement. So those are on the agenda for future meeting items. And if anybody wants, we can add things on that in the future here. Anything anybody wants to add or right now? Okay, hearing none. The next one—next item is uh, I think—I think we did it. Is there a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting? [1:19:28] **Committee Member:** So moved. [1:19:29] **Committee Member:** Second. [1:19:30] **Committee Chair:** There's a motion and second to adjourn the meeting. All those in favor signalize saying aye. Those opposed? Hearing none, motion carries. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. [1:19:38] [Music] [1:20:25] [Applause] [Music]