This transcription identifies the speakers based on the provided context of city officials and staff, as well as internal cues from the roll call and dialogue. Note: Timestamps are provided in a sequential format as they were not present in the original text. *** **[00:00:00] Chair:** Good evening. Welcome to the April 16th Oakdale Parks and Recreation committee meeting. Welcome to all that are here. Julie, would you please take roll? **[00:00:10] Julie Williams:** Yes. Commissioner Berth? **[00:00:11] Glenn Berth:** Here. **[00:00:12] Julie Williams:** Commissioner Cunningham? **[00:00:13] Commissioner Cunningham:** Here. **[00:00:14] Julie Williams:** Commissioner Jack Aletto is not here today. Commissioner Gianini? **[00:00:16] Jan Gianini:** Here. **[00:00:17] Julie Williams:** Commissioner Meier? **[00:00:18] Mark Meier:** Here. **[00:00:19] Julie Williams:** Commissioner Moore? **[00:00:20] Kari Moore:** Here. **[00:00:21] Julie Williams:** Commissioner Shaw? **[00:00:22] Commissioner Shaw:** Here. **[00:00:23] Julie Williams:** Thank you. **[00:00:24] Chair:** Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. **[00:00:25] Group:** 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. **[00:00:35] Chair:** Thank you. All right, Commissioners, did you have a chance to look at the agenda for today? Can I get a motion to approve? **[00:00:40] Kari Moore:** So moved. **[00:00:41] Chair:** Motion by Carrie. Second? **[00:00:42] Glenn Berth:** Second, Glenn. **[00:00:43] Chair:** All in favor? **[00:00:44] Group:** Aye. **[00:00:45] Chair:** Opposed? Motion passed. The approval of minutes—did everybody get to look at last month's minutes? Any questions or concerns? Can I get a motion to approve the minutes from February 20th, 2024? **[00:00:55] Jan Gianini:** Motion, Jan. **[00:00:56] Kari Moore:** Second, Carrie. **[00:00:57] Chair:** All in favor? **[00:00:58] Group:** Aye. **[00:00:59] Chair:** Opposed? Motion carries. All right, now we have the Open Forum. That’s three minutes to anyone in the public that would like to say hi or raise any concerns. Is there anyone that would like to come up and talk to us? Okay, no one’s here, so let's move on to Old Business. Is there any old business that anyone needs to have around? Very good. On to the New Business: we have advisory body training, and I'd like to invite Administrator Volkers up to tell us what's happening. **[00:01:20] Christina Volkers:** Good afternoon—good evening, I should say. I'm Chris Volkers, City Administrator. I haven't met some of most of you but thank you for having us today. We are here to talk about Robert's Rules of Order, proper meeting information and etiquette, and open meeting laws. We've got our City Attorney Jim Thompson here and Sarah Lewick, our City Clerk, and we're going to kind of tag-team this. Please interrupt me and ask questions; I'll pause every once in a while because I tend to just go on. We'll make sure that you have a chance to ask any questions that you have. Really, what this is about is for years and years we've been asked how are we supposed to run the meetings. We come into these rules and we just don't know, and government follows very strict rules and guidelines. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to do it once with every commission. You're our second one out of five, and then for any new members that are appointed every July 1st, we'll do a separate one. This is your one—you can always come back, though you might not ask me to do that! [Laughter]. With that, should I just jump right in? Thank you, Mr. Chair. *[Christina Volkers proceeds to present city mission, values, and organizational charts]* **[00:03:00] Christina Volkers:** Sarah will take these next sections and then I'll be back at the end to wrap it up. Do you have any questions so far? Okay, thanks. **[00:03:10] Sarah Lewick:** Thank you, City Administrator Volkers. As much as I'd love for you to take this, this is my section in the slide deck. So I am going to talk to you about the boards and commissions. Up on the slides here we have five advisory bodies for the city: the Tree Board, the Planning Commission, the Parks and Recreation Commission, Economic Development Commission, and the Environmental Management Commission. We also have staff liaisons for each. We obviously have Recreation Superintendent Julie Williams and Park Superintendent Jeff Koesling, who are the staff liaisons for the Parks and Recreation Commission. *[Sarah Lewick explains roles, work plans, and meeting procedures]* **[00:05:00] Julie Williams:** Sarah, yes, one question. Can you go back to that slide? The "summary of what happened"—I guess we don't really do that transcription style, so explain that a little more? **[00:05:10] Sarah Lewick:** Yeah, so I know that one's a little different. For us, we like to do a little bit more of high-level or questions that were asked and answered, also any sort of next steps or action items. We're not giving you a "he said, she said" back-and-forth conversation. Does that make sense? **[00:05:25] Julie Williams:** I just didn't know if we needed to do anything with that while the meeting's going, or summarize anything at that time. **[00:05:30] Sarah Lewick:** No, you're good. Julie can handle that if needed. Typically, unless there are questions, it’s a very high-level summary. Any other questions so far? **[00:06:00] Chair:** Just a question I should probably know the answer to, but for a quorum, how many people does it take? Is it four people, is it six people? **[00:06:10] Sarah Lewick:** Yeah, so it's over half—51%. **[00:06:15] Chair:** So in our case, four? **[00:06:17] Sarah Lewick:** Yes, four. Thank you. **[00:06:30] Sarah Lewick:** With that, I will ask if there are any questions, otherwise I will turn the time over to our City Attorney, Jim Thompson. **[00:06:40] Jim Thompson:** Good evening. I'm Jim Thompson, I'm the City Attorney. My main goal tonight is to just make you aware on a high level of four different laws that govern you now that you're a member of a board. First, we have Robert's Rules—it's not a law, but it's what you run your meeting by. I'm just going to play a short simple video. *[Video plays; Jim Thompson explains the Open Meeting Law, Data Practices Act, and Conflict of Interest]* **[00:10:00] Mark Meier:** I’ve got one on just a conflict of interest. So, I'm not the president of OAA [Oakdale Athletic Association], but I'm on the board of directors. So if they came to ask for something, I should exclude myself from voting on that? **[00:10:15] Jim Thompson:** Yes, I would say that's the best option because of the question of what hat you are wearing. You don't have to leave the room, but you should abstain from participating in the discussion and the voting. **[00:10:30] Chair:** Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it. **[00:10:35] Christina Volkers:** Thanks Jim, thanks Sarah. Regarding communications, what we're talking about here is how do you get information from the city and how do you give it to us. *[Christina Volkers finishes the presentation]* **[00:11:30] Chair:** Thank you, very informative. Thank you, Chris, appreciate it. **[00:11:35] Christina Volkers:** Thanks for having us. Reach out to any of us if you have any questions. **[00:11:40] Chair:** All right. Next we have the Park System Plan presentation. Stuart Crosby. **[00:11:45] Stuart Crosby:** Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Stuart Crosby, I am a Landscape Architect with SRF Consulting Group. We're very happy to be working with the city on the Park System Plan update. *[Stuart Crosby presents findings from the community survey and future goals]* **[00:15:00] Kari Moore:** I just think it's really great work and I'm excited to watch the progress. So thank you. **[00:15:05] Stuart Crosby:** You're welcome. Thank you. **[00:15:10] Chair:** Thank you, Stuart. Hannah, welcome. All right, thank you very much. Moving on, we need to go through the approval of our 2024 work plan. Julie, would you like to speak to that? **[00:15:20] Julie Williams:** Sure. Hopefully everybody had an opportunity to take a look at that. Nothing has changed since we worked on that last year and discussed it with the Council last November. It's back here for you to formally approve. **[00:15:35] Chair:** Has everybody had a chance to look at this? Any questions? Can I get a motion to approve? **[00:15:40] Kari Moore:** So moved. **[00:15:41] Chair:** Motion by Carrie. Can I get a second? **[00:15:42] Jan Gianini:** I’ll second, Jan. **[00:15:43] Chair:** Any discussion? All in favor? **[00:15:44] Group:** Aye. **[00:15:45] Chair:** Opposed? The motion for the approval of the 2024 work plan passes. Thank you. Moving on to our staff updates. Jeff, you want to start? **[00:15:55] Jeff Koesling:** Thank you, good evening. Spring's finally here. We've got adult softball league starting next week. Crews have been busy; we pulled in 108 picnic tables, made repairs, and got them back out. We are also sanding and repainting the park signs. I’m meeting with the school district tomorrow regarding field permits. I'm hoping tomorrow I get that info for Mark [Meier] so they can get their schedules made. **[00:16:30] Kari Moore:** Jeff, I just want to mention one thing—you all did a great job on the sign at Tanner Lake. **[00:16:35] Jeff Koesling:** Yeah, it was down for quite a while. It had split in the middle, so we ordered a new one and replaced it. I was glad to get that back up in place. **[00:16:45] Chair:** Thanks, Jeff. Julie? **[00:16:50] Julie Williams:** Thanks, Commissioners. I do have our March/April update. Summer programming is available online with registration starting April 25th. We had a great turnout for the indoor garage sale—between 700 and 800 shoppers. Our community walk is underway with 130 people signed up. Park cleanup is next week, and we are still hiring for summer recreation instructors. **[00:17:30] Chair:** Thank you. Commissioner updates? Let's start with Glenn. **[00:17:35] Glenn Berth:** I just want to say that Citywide Garage Sales are set up with the Maplewood Oakdale Lions Club. They will be the first week in May. Check out our Facebook page to register. **[00:17:45] Jan Gianini:** I'm just going to refer any interest in Wellness 50 Plus activities to look in the Oakdale Update newsletter. **[00:17:55] Mark Meier:** Nothing this month. **[00:17:57] Kari Moore:** Nothing this month. **[00:18:00] Chair:** I'd like to have at least one commissioner at each of these events. Julie, you want to tell them what you want to do regarding the work plan? **[00:18:10] Julie Williams:** Sure. In regards to the work plan, I was thinking I would work with Jeff to come up with education opportunities and send those out via email so you can choose what you would like to attend. **[00:18:25] Chair:** Perfect. Council Member Morcomb, how you doing? **[00:18:30] Andy Morcomb:** Doing well, great. Thank you, Commissioners. On May 7th, we've got a development tour that the city is hosting; all commission members are invited. May 21st, there is a ground-breaking for the new Willowbrook Park at 4:00 PM. Also, Summerfest is around the corner—it's our 50th year, so we want a big parade. Please share that on social media. **[00:19:10] Kari Moore:** Is there information about the parade and opportunities to engage that we can easily share out? **[00:19:15] Andy Morcomb:** They've started sharing details. Julie, the recreation group is still running the parade, right? **[00:19:20] Julie Williams:** Correct. Laura Lind is the coordinator, and she will make that available very soon. **[00:19:25] Jan Gianini:** Are you aware of the Summerfest committee? An organization called OSCO has been posting quite a bit on their site about the parade. **[00:19:35] Andy Morcomb:** Thank you, yeah, great. Thanks. **[00:19:40] Chair:** All right. That should do it for the evening. Can I get a motion for adjournment? **[00:19:45] Jan Gianini:** Motion, Jan. **[00:19:46] Chair:** Can I get a second? **[00:19:47] Kari Moore:** Second, Carrie. **[00:19:48] Chair:** All in favor? **[00:19:49] Group:** Aye. **[00:19:50] Chair:** Thank you very much. Our next meeting will be May 21st, 2024. This meeting is adjourned. Have a great night.