Seattle Park District Board - 4323

Thank you, son.

The April 3rd, 2023 meeting of the Seattle Park District Board will come to order.

It is 3.16 PM.

I'm Andrew Lewis, president of the board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board member Mosqueda.

Present.

Board member Nelson.

Here in chambers, present.

Board member Peterson.

Here.

Board member Strauss.

Present.

Board President Lewis.

Present.

Five, present.

And just for the record, I want to note that our colleagues, Council Member Herbold, or rather Board Member Herbold and Board Member Sawant, are representing the Council at the Regional Policy Committee and are excused, and that Council Member Morales and Council Member Juarez are also excused for They're pre-notice of being unavailable for the meeting.

So I just wanted to put that on the record.

Approval of the agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Approval of the minutes.

The minutes of the September 27th, 2022 and November 29th, 2022 Seattle Park District Board meetings have been reviewed.

If there is no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Hearing no objections, the minutes will be signed.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Public comment, at this time we will open the hybrid public comment period.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas, the Park District Board reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods if we deem the system as being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently.

I don't see anyone in chambers who signed up.

Do we have any remote public?

We do have two people remotely signed up, but they're not present.

I could monitor that and go back since maybe we got a quicker start than expected on starting the Park District meeting.

or if you'd like, I'll play the introductory video and that'll give us a few minutes to see if they're going to.

Sure, that sounds like a good compromise.

Why don't we play the video and I will hold the public comment period open to give some time for the people who signed up remotely to call in if you're watching the meeting.

Sounds good.

Advertised start time was three o'clock or following briefing.

So we're not that much ahead of time.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Seattle.

We are the Emerald City, the City of Flowers and the City of Goodwill, built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

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That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

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Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

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Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open.

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Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

Okay, our board president, we have no council members and no citizens and chambers to speak and we have no citizens signed up remotely to speak for public comment.

Okay.

If the folks who signed up remotely had intended to, but us getting going 15 minutes later than initially planned had gotten in the way of that, do please email us your remarks.

We do want to hear from you and apologize that we weren't able to hear from you this afternoon.

So I will now close the public comment period and we will move on to our published agenda items.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

Agenda item one, resolution 56, correcting the meeting dates for a Seattle Park District Board meeting in 2023.

Thank you.

So we are joined by Tracy Ratzliff from our council central staff to go over this resolution.

So Tracy, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Well, this is a very simple piece of legislation that just corrects an error in the year of the meeting date that we're supposed to have in October, from October of 2022 to October of 2023. Apologies for the typographical error in that resolution that we passed in November.

Great.

Do colleagues have any comments on the resolution?

Seeing no comments or questions, I move agenda item one, the resolution for board action.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, there's a second that we vote on confirming resolution 56. Will the clerk please call the roll on resolution 56?

Board member Mosqueda.

Board Member Mosqueda.

I'll come back to her.

Board Member Nelson.

Aye.

Board Member Peterson.

Yes.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

Board Member Mosqueda.

Yes.

Thank you.

And Board President Lewis.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The vote has five affirmative, votes and the resolution passes and will be adopted.

Let's go ahead to the next item on the agenda, item two, resolution 57. Will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Agenda item two, resolution 57, amending the bylaws of the Seattle Park District to modify the rules regarding voting on park district resolutions.

Thank you, we are also joined by Tracy Ratzliff on this item.

Tracy, I'll turn it over to you.

You're muted, Tracy.

Thank you.

This resolution essentially makes the bylaws of the MPD consistent with the council rules as it relates to the ability for council members or commissioners in this case to abstain from legislation voted on by the MPD.

To remind council members, per state law, the MPD actually takes action only via resolutions.

And so the bylaws obviously talk about when you take votes on resolutions, what is permitted or not.

In this case, we are silent about the ability to abstain.

But because of some of the changes that took place this past year about related to city council action on ordinances and resolution.

I believe the president desired to have the bylaws of the NPD mirror what those rules say as it relates to the ability of commissioners to abstain from legislative votes.

And in this case, this would all be about resolution.

So the bylaws would, the change that's being proposed here would allow for commissioners to abstain from resolutions, only those that relate to a statement about the board's opinion.

Any other pieces of legislation that actually approved the budget or approved bylaw change or policy changes would not allow for members to abstain from those votes.

Happy to answer questions if you have them.

Tracy, thank you so much.

Are there any questions for Tracy on the item in front of us?

Okay, seeing none, I move passage of resolution 57. Second.

Moved and seconded.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of resolution 57.

Board member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Board member Nelson.

Aye.

Board member Peterson.

Abstain, just kidding, yes.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

And Board President Lewis.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

With five votes in favor, the motion carries.

The resolution is adopted and the president will sign.

Board Member Peterson, with all of the dad jokes today, I need to take notes on that.

I'm in the dad joke market now.

We'll move on to item three.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three report on the proposed performance measurements for the 2023 through 2028 Park District spending plan for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Madam Clerk we are joined now by a panel from parks in a, and it looks like the boardroom at the parks building.

And why don't you guys go ahead and come off mute and introduce yourselves and we'll get into the presentation.

Excellent.

Well, good afternoon, Mr. President, Madam Vice President.

Thank you, Park District Council members.

We are pleased to present to you today our Park District Cycle 2 ramp up and reporting plan consistent

with the MPD plan that you all passed in October of last year.

I'm pleased to be joined today by my colleagues and individuals that are becoming very near and dear to me.

And they are the deputy superintendents for our park and recreation department.

And so I'm joined by our chief of staff and the assistant superintendent, who you all know well, Christopher Williams, joined by our deputy superintendent, Michelle Finnegan, Deputy Superintendent Andy Schaefer, and our Interim Deputy Superintendent Mike Schwindler.

Before we get started today on our presentation, do you want me to start now, Mr. President?

Could you say one more time there, AP?

You're coming in a little bit garbled.

I can mostly hear it clearly, but it kind of sounds like you're talking through a radio.

Oh, apologies.

How does it sound now?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's fine.

But what was your question just before we had this?

Was it if you should just start the conversation?

Yes.

Or the presentation, rather?

Correct.

Yes, yes.

I think that that is the course of action we should take.

Thank you, sir.

Before we get started discussing the deliverables, I just want to thank this entire board for your hard work for the past several years, but particularly in 2022 to pass and implement this legislation and the Park District funding.

I've had a real joy and pleasure being able to thrive on the opportunity that

Your action and the citizens of Seattle have made our city among the most funded park agencies per capita than any other city in North America.

And we both understand the important magnitude of this investment and look forward to discussing our plan with you as we begin the implementation for cycle two.

I, alongside all of our park and recreation staff, are eager to get started on our plan roll up our sleeves and begin really implementing these expanded projects and the next phases of programs to better serve the residents of the City of Seattle.

We want to continue to serve them every single day as we commit to sharing our refreshed vision, mission, land acknowledgment, and equity statements that focus on healthy people, a thriving environment, and a vibrant community, indicative of this city's commitment to be a leading city for inclusion, climate action, and economic development.

Starting out today, I wanted to announce with you all, and I've shared with you before, that we've now organized our department into three main branches.

And among our newest branch is the development of our planning and capital development branch, headed by our interim superintendent, Mike Schwimm, who will be presenting a little bit later, answering some questions.

And I'm proud to be supported by them and proud to have a new focus on this important work going forward.

And at this time, I'm going to pass over our presentation to our deputy superintendent, Michelle Finnegan.

But I do want to acknowledge and thank her and her amazing team who have been really working hard to coalesce all of the mandates and the reporting requirements in the ramp up plan that we were able to transmit to you all last Friday and excited to get into our presentation and then be available for any questions that any members might have.

So at this time, I'll turn it over to Michelle.

Council Member Lewis and board members, please interrupt if you need to, because the way we're sharing screens, we have a little technical difficulty signing in, so we can't actually see you while we're presenting.

So please let us know if there's hands or anything.

We are, and thank you AP for that context, we are, Pleased to be here with you today to talk about a key deliverable that you requested as you adopted the Cycle 2 funding plan.

Specifically in Resolution 51, you requested performance metrics for both new and continuing initiatives at the detailed line of business level, and that's our new all fund, not just NPD, but all of our funds reporting structure.

So in implementing and preparing this deliverable for you, we wanted to be mindful about articulating our commitment to the public about the services we're expected to deliver, set clear expectations about our approach to ramp up and service delivery in 2023 specifically, and then establish accountability for how we'll track progress throughout cycle two.

In order to accomplish this, we actually sent over three deliverables on Friday.

Our reporting plan answers the specific Resolution 51 request.

I do want to point out, as you review it, that while there is a ton of work, and I hope you'll see a lot of great work in that product, we're also adopting and continue to adopt a continuous learning approach to our metrics, and we hope to grow and improve those throughout Cycle 2. as we did in cycle one.

We also submitted a ramp up plan, which is really focused on transparency on how we're ramping up services and project delivery in 2023 and beyond.

And then finally, we sent over a few appendices that outline our plans to address other policy direction and requests you've included in resolution 51, recognizing this was just one of those.

as well as to provide more context into our capital delivery approach for Cycle 2, as we know, and take great focus on getting that work accomplished.

And that is informed by an evaluation done during Cycle 1 on that line of business with Burke & Associates.

So that is also included.

So we're going to dive into each of those sections.

First with the reporting plan as it's the item you specifically requested.

And I'm sure since Friday afternoon you have all spent a lot of time going through this document.

Kidding.

So I just want to give a little bit of an overview.

One of the primary lessons we learned in cycle one is that one funding source Reporting on one funding source does not tell the full story on SPR programs and services.

And so in almost all cases, the Park District resources amplify our base budget.

And so truly understanding those require a comprehensive lens.

And so we appreciate you all as the Park District.

forward going with us in this endeavor to look at lines of business and what we're calling detailed lines of business.

We'll go through an example in a minute, but using the activation line of business.

But as you review the plan, you will see each detailed line of business includes the total 2023 budget, the performance metrics that we're proposing, our planned approach, both recognizing which items would be included on our financial and performance dashboards and what additional metrics are tracked in order to include in blogs and annual reports and other communications we do throughout the year.

We identify targets when it's applicable.

We clarify which ones are cycle one metrics that we're continuing or new cycle one or cycle two metrics and some aren't actually applicable to the NPD, but we still wanted to include them.

And then we also wanted to provide an opportunity for people to know how to stay more involved and engaged in each line of business, so we provided that context.

So this is one example.

Again, using activation, we included a summary of what that line of business means to us and more specifically, In this example, the Center City Activation Detail line of business, again, reflected the budget, the performance metrics that you'll see one of these on our dashboard and the others we'll be tracking throughout the year and how they relate to the cycle, MPD cycles.

And finally, at the bottom, you'll see that there's a place for people to stay engaged and learn more about the events happening downtown this year.

So with that, some of our other highlights is just examples is the Park District funds are allowing us to provide approximately 60,000 hours of public operating hours at our community centers each year.

Thanks to the Park District, that's a 8% increase over 2022 levels.

Not specific to either cycle, but one of our key measures that we use in our grounds maintenance is our park inspection program.

We've come to the council a few times to talk about that program, and that provides an overall metric in terms of how park maintenance resonates for people actually utilizing our parks, looking at amenities such as comfort stations, play areas, sports courts, et cetera.

hoping at least 80% of those assets are meeting our goals.

When combined with other lines of business metrics, such as in our facilities maintenance line of business on graffiti, we can really get a sense of how the overall feel and experience is for our park users.

Michelle, can I jump in on this slide for just a moment, if that's possible?

Sure.

Great.

So appreciate this.

Is there going to be, as we go further through the slide deck, a little bit more context, because I understand this is sort of a sampling of some of the broader departmental metrics to just show a couple of highlights, but I do just want to make sure that we're setting an expectation that the ultimate report back on the metrics will include some additional context.

For example, it would be good to know with our tree planting what the net gain of trees is rather than just the raw number of trees planted.

We also need to measure that against trees that have had to be removed from parks because they're too sick or damaged or whatever the issue might be.

Similarly, with the graffiti work orders, I don't really have enough information from looking at this particular slide to know what remediating graffiti within six working days is relative to to a national best practice or something like that.

So I think that additional level of context for some of these categories would be.

would be valuable or context on the community centers, like an 8% increase in hours is great, but what that looks like on the consumer end of the community center, like what are the average daily operating hours and what is the variety of activities that that level of programming lets us realize?

Just putting out there that, you know, having that context of, these metrics is important for myself and the board members to know how we're making progress on the end consumer experience and all these categories.

Yes.

You asked a lot of great questions in there and I can pause my colleagues, but I would say in short, I think the metrics and the reporting plan you'll see is the true metrics and then how we are contextualize those and report on those would be more in the annual plans, the blogs and those sorts of things.

So it's a yes and defer to my colleagues.

I think it's important to know and I think what you're alluding to Mr. President is sort of what are the baselines also that we're starting to work off of in the cycle to ramp up so that we can be able to report back and really understand to your point, you know, when we say 90% of graffiti work orders, how is that comparing to what the current work that's being done or with the tree planting that you're talking about?

So we all are mindful of that and we want to be able to report that back.

able to access the information with context and in easy ways to have measurable goals.

So points very well taken and something that is in our plan to report back on in more depth.

Great.

Which is a great segue to our approach to ongoing reporting.

As just discussed, we will be utilizing multiple metrics.

Performance dashboard is kind of outlined here in the middle and that's online for people to try to look at the financials with these metrics.

We also have annual reports that are broad-based and more specific like this slide, the environment report.

And then we do a lot of stories and contextualizing this in websites, blogs, and social media throughout the year.

And I want to just add for context there, This, I believe, is a really important slide for us in city government, but also for members of the public.

This is a huge investment for the next six years, and I think all of us can agree that sometimes we get mired in the fact of government reporting and trying to find out information.

I know at times it's been challenging for you as council members and also for members of the public.

We're really placing an emphasis on this area and working really hard, and I've given direction to our staff to continue to build out dashboards that are forward-facing, that are easy to access, that have information, timely, updated, and with accuracy, as well as annual reports and the websites, blogs, and social media.

with the overarching goal that they will be comprehensive, but that they will also be easy, right?

No one wants them to be sort of difficult and confusing.

So we're really leaning into being transparent in the next six years and providing something and that can be adaptable.

So I will say that we will lean into you and your staff as well to provide that information back to us so that we can continue to improve on developing these.

But our baseline overall approach is to really be informative But simple and engaging.

Yeah, just to jump in for a 2nd, their superintendent Diaz, or I guess I should still say for a few more weeks interim superintendent, but we're, we're getting close to taking care of that.

I think this is great and I like us being very public facing and transparent about the metrics.

But one thing I do wanna lift up on my daily commute when I come downtown and go past Bell Street Park, it's been very noticeable to myself and constituents in the Belltown neighborhood over the past two months, the significant increase in maintenance and attention at that site.

And I only highlight that because I think, you know, the, you know, the, the best way to to restore public confidence and our ability as a city to deliver essential services is to really get out there and be visible and that delivery and.

Yeah, I just sometimes I hesitate that we over rely on a city of showing the metrics of of the work we've done but if that work isn't visible and tangible and something people can feel it doesn't.

It doesn't help us much in restoring public confidence in our performance.

So I do just want to say that I think in the reinvigorated maintenance that parks has been undergoing has really been being noticed and appreciated in the community.

And I wanted to pass along that feedback, but also say, you know, whatever we can do to make sure that that remains the ongoing cadence of that work, and how we can build and expand on that is something I'm very excited about seeing represented in these dashboards as we go forward.

Thank you, sir.

This is a great segue to our ramp-up plan, because I think you're seeing some of the success of the maintenance teams being able to hire some more staff and get them on board in the spring, and they're doing a lot of great work out there.

So this, our ramp-up plan, we thought once you, to your point, once you've got our reporting plan, you might have more questions about how things are going to be looking on the ground.

And so we also sent over on Friday what we're calling a ramp-up plan, which is also by our same line of business, in detail lines of business.

And for those, detailed lines of business that got additional cycle two investments.

We reflect what that investment is.

We then share a little bit about our approach to getting to full service operations for each of those.

And in most cases, that really does relate to cycle two investments, but there's some of our lines of business that are still recovering from pandemic impacts to service.

And so we try to reflect those as well where applicable.

And then we included milestones, which I'll give a few examples here in a minute, on when you'll see that full service delivery or in the capital realm, which is not as easy to say on a 12-month cycle.

Within the first few years of the cycle, what to expect, and then in the second three years of the cycle.

Using an example that was near and dear to everyone's heart.

Last fall, as we were talking about the Park District investments, as you recall, a lot of the investments was to provide funding to winterize our comfort stations in order to have them available for use year round.

And there was an investment, companion investment to increase maintenance staffing so that that was also available year round.

The team worked really hard, having heard your interest in this and the community's interest in order to figure out how to do that as quickly as possible.

When we were talking last fall, we were sharing that it would take the full six years to get the 60 or so comfort stations that do close seasonally available for opening, and the team has worked through a an approach that will get us there by the end of 2026, so two years early.

And they're starting with some low-hanging fruit, but also trying to make sure that we're looking at our equity zones and geographic distribution as they develop that schedule.

So that's one example of some of the important work people have done in ramp-up planning.

In addition, you'll hear a few minutes more about our Park Ranger ramp-up plan.

We won't go into that here, but let's take AP's thunder a little bit.

By the end of June, we should have our phase one Park Ranger expansion program operational.

We're also working towards having our expanded community center and teen center hours launched at the beginning of the school year next year, following, I'm sure, what will be another busy summer at our facilities.

Which will include the full year of our youth employment program, bringing 80 kids in over the summer.

And that program will have our vandalism team fully operational and piloting some new metrics in the fall.

One we also wanted to highlight is, I think you all recall that some of our Cycle 1 land bank sites got paused during the pandemic as funding was reallocated to emergency recovery.

And so with the Cycle 2 investments, we have those relaunched, and the team is wanting to get those parks open to those communities as quickly as possible, and at least by the end of 2026, I believe those will all be open.

And then we gave, you know, no reports properly submitted without a couple of appendices, at least from my public policy side.

So we included a couple of appendices.

One was directly related to Resolution 51. You had put forth a number of spending restrictions, statements of intents, and accountability measures.

And we did a crosswalk of that to try to explain how we plan to Adhere to those that policy direction either by directly implementing capital projects as a number of those relate to certain capital projects.

Reports back to the Park District Board such as the one that we sent you on Friday.

And then some of the updates may happen through a annual budget process.

One specific example is there was a request to provide more funding to the waterfront in 2025, I believe, so you'll see a budget ask related to that.

And any other kind of impacts from multi-funded changes, we will try to reflect how it relates to these metrics and ramp up through the regular budget process.

And then in addition to that, we have a capital delivery strategy.

We recognize the importance and the level of funding that was provided to us to provide a lot of capital projects, asset management projects, and new development projects to the community.

And so in preparation for this, the team has been reflecting on lessons learned and is pursuing a project delivery approach that we hope that you will agree with and instill confidence in you and the members of the public that it is both focused on being timely and providing quality project delivery.

This approach incorporates finding recommendations and actions resulting from the 2020 FERC evaluation, as well as some additional outreach and subject matter expertise that we've engaged with since that time.

I guess we'll probably want to be talking to you more at the Council Committee more about this approach, but it looks at how we're prioritizing and packaging projects to be most effective and efficient.

It also explores alternative approaches to design, fit, build in partnership with FAS that helps us actually fit out those projects.

And we're also assessing Numerous other ideas for efficiencies and close coordination with other city departments and outside permitting agencies, as well as looking at the final slate of investments and if there's any adjustments needed to our staffing.

And finally, again, looking at our performance metrics, the life cycle costs, or life cycle metrics we've discussed with you before, Board President.

And we're even looking forward to pursuing a map-based project dashboard to help community members look more closely and easily at what we have going on in our current projects.

And then finally, we want to recognize that while we have been working diligently, we do need to acknowledge that not every aspect of implementation is finalized, and we will continue to work through some strategies and some critical areas, whether that be as our new programs evolve and we develop metrics on those.

There's a lot of interdepartmental work.

An example of that is the resiliency hub work with OSC and Office of Emergency Management.

That will be a longer term coordination, but we are continuing to work through our decarbonization process.

While that's happening concurrently, And then working with some community partners on some other projects.

The Equitable Park Development Fund, as you know, in our local agreement, has a very strong role for the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.

So we'll be engaging with them next month to try to work on criteria and approach to that work.

And with that, we can pause for any other questions.

Well, thank you so much for that presentation and really appreciate this engagement with the board to get feedback on these performance metrics.

I asked some questions during the initial presentation, so I'm happy to hand it over to other board members before I get in to some of the other details.

Are there any board members who have questions for the parks panel?

Okay, it doesn't look like it.

We're gonna pivot to another presentation on the Rangers, yes, after this.

So we're gonna hold questions on the Rangers until that agenda item.

But especially some of the initiatives in the presentation regarding vandalism and remediating vandalism, there was an indication of quarter three of this year being the deadline to stand up the vandalism mitigation team.

Can we talk a little bit about what the vision is in the department for how to structure that?

How that team can get activated by a citizen complaint?

Will it be find it, fix it?

How should we engage with constituents to be able to utilize that vandalism remediation service?

Sure.

I'm Andy Shuffer.

We've recently integrated the Find and Fix It app.

It's our work order system.

So all inquiries that are entered into the Find and Fix It app go directly to the specific crews.

And vandalism response is a combination of the trades able to react a lot quicker using the Find and Fix It app as the main line of communication.

Really appreciate that clarification.

This is really exciting stuff, guys.

I really appreciate the work that you're putting together on this.

And if there's other feedback that board members want to submit, what are some of the deadlines to kind of finalize some of these considerations?

There's really no deadline.

We're happy to, we met your deadline and we're happy to continue to work with you and your staff or Central Services on how we could add things, but this, this isn't also meant, I should say, to be an ongoing, you know, uh, work product, uh, with you all as oversight council members, um, and the community as we continue to build out some of the reporting mechanisms back to it.

But, um, we're happy to do that at any time.

And, uh, outside of the, I know there will be normal reporting schedules and mandates, um, that our staffs will keep us organized on.

We're happy to meet with you or any of your colleagues or staff at any time throughout the process as issues emerge day to day.

And we'll also be taking this to the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners later this month to get their feedback as well.

Excellent.

I do think it would also be a useful, a good use of time to work with the Office of the City Auditor on looking at some of these performance metrics to maybe get feedback as we shape them to help look at how we can evaluate as we go forward.

But on the whole, I think this is a really good start and really appreciate the department being proactive.

Tracy, you have some feedback?

Members, you were sent a very big packet of information on Friday, but I want to call out one specific part of that packet, which is Appendix 1, and it specifically includes the responses to a number of the statements of legislative intent, as well as spending restrictions that we included in Resolution 51, which adopted that next six-year spending plan.

So I want to call out that particular part of the materials, because it does provide some of the responses back on some of those items.

related to things like turf at Jenkin Parks that I know council member or that Commissioner Nelson had an interest in.

And you had some interest in some of the benchmarking industry standards nationally.

There's some information there about national standards and benchmarks for completing certain types of parks related activities.

We just wanted to call that specific document out for council members.

I don't think that parks is probably going to go through that today.

But I just want to make sure that you know that it's there and that they are in that effort making a response to those requirements that were in resolution 51.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from colleagues?

Seeing none, I think we will close out that agenda item.

And we're keeping the same panel, but we are pivoting to another agenda item.

And will the clerk please read item four into the record?

agenda item 4, report on park ranger hiring, training and activities for briefing and discussion.

very important and near and dear to all of our city leaders and indicative of the investment that, again, was made through the park district funding, which was recently passed.

So we were invited today.

We presented back our report to you in January 31st of this year, discussing our park ranger job duties, recruitment strategies, and training.

And so I'm pleased to walk you through

our approach to this, particularly with an emphasis on 2023 and going forward, and then be available to answer any questions.

So just as a reminder, the investment strategy given through the district funding was the allocation of $3 million, which adds up to 26 rangers for a total of 28.

Currently, the Parks Department has two full-time rangers,

And the purpose of the Ranger program and the regeneration and growth will be to enhance safety and promote voluntary compliance of our park rules throughout our downtown city parks.

Right now is where the program is focused and authorized to do work and with the potential to expand to other parts of the city, subject to some labor negotiations that are currently pending.

The program is overall structured to support our One Seattle vision of this thriving, healthy city, and also to create a vibrant downtown.

And particularly coming out of the pandemic, I just want to note that parks continue to prove themselves to be essential infrastructure that have seen us through in and out of the pandemic, that one place that we could all go to and be part of when the entire world was sheltered.

to continue to provide safe and welcoming park spaces to really build up this sense of community pride, but the health and wellness that parks provided.

We want our citizens to be utilizing our parks, in our parks, have our parks active, and again, to feel this semblance of safety and a sense of welcomeness.

And I want to also expand on a point here that in the park ranger program, we will be implementing this no-wrong-door approach to city service.

And it's also a way, what that means is that all of our employees, but particularly our park rangers who will be working alongside the community, alongside our staff, day in and day out in our parks as visible members and representatives of our city government, will be trained to ensure that citizens are afforded the right answers the right connections and the right ability to find results and solutions to their problem.

And quite simply, sometimes in government, we tend to do finger-pointing.

That's not my jurisdiction.

That's XYZ Department.

We don't handle that.

You need to call here.

And citizens are sometimes left, in my experience, with sort of a feeling of dissatisfaction and really don't, you know, care if the city sidewalk or the street or a tree or watering issues are part of another jurisdiction.

They just have a right and a need to get responses and to have action done.

And so we're really leading out on that effort to ensure that our staff is trained to give those individuals the right information to do our own self-reporting to other city departments.

And we're beginning to build more alliances with our other city program.

The park ranger duties are going to be focused on what we are calling the three E's, education, engagement, and enforcement.

And the education prong of a park ranger's duty is really to be there to educate our community members and our visitors about our Seattle's lush park system and the associated rules of conduct and city resources that go into maintaining our near 500 park sites that we have here in the city of Seattle.

We also will be doing engagement.

Because we are going to be in the community, in our parks, we want our rangers to be visual ambassadors.

They will not be there just to walk around and not talk to people and not interact.

To the contrary, they are going to be trained and they are going to be recruited.

based upon their desire to be community stewards, individuals who have a desire to import a sense of welcomeness and attract people into the park and to provide them information and to teach them about our park system here in Seattle and about the preservation of our natural resources and how we are establishing ourselves as a model city for parks.

So we really want them to be engaged people to be talking to them, seeing if they need help, being useful where they can.

And again, just continuous advancement of a safe and welcoming environment.

And of course, as park rangers, they're also going to be required to do enforcement.

So supporting compliance with our park regulations is really important.

Issuing warnings or citations.

They will be trained on how to confront and approach certain situations that might arise in an urban park assisted city system like ours.

They will also be trained and will know how to act and when they are not to act.

And what are the other available public safety partners that we have in the city?

Should we need services from our other city partners like the police or our paramedics or our fire departments or some of our unified care response team.

So it'll be this overarching approach, but it will be rooted in these three E's to really deliver a comprehensive program that's meeting the needs of our citizens and city government on multiple levels.

Superintendent Diaz, can I jump in for a second on this slide before we go forward?

Is the department envisioning an expansion of the role of the park rangers?

These things look like they're within the confines of how the ranger program has historically operated, but I do just want to confirm since that was a matter of discussion when we did the Metropolitan Park District renewal, and just want to make sure that that is the current, that what is being proposed is not necessarily an expansion of the current parameters of the duties of the park rangers.

That's correct, sir.

There is no deviation from the Envision model that you just spoke to and what was key among the members in your collective approval of this program.

This is simply taking the program and preparing it for expansion, expansion in terms of hiring, and also a focus on the duties.

the way that we believe you all envision this program.

But this is our now taking that and putting it into a program that we can then grow and expand upon in the year to come that will best serve those needs.

Great.

Thank you.

So I want to talk about Park Ranger recruitment, which is really vital to the success of this program.

There are is a concerted effort

the members to really feel comfortable and aware of how we're approaching the types of individuals that we are recruiting into our park ranger program.

First and foremost, they have to be community oriented.

They have to have a desire to be among the community, among the city, and be sort of that, as I keep talking about, this ambassador representing the best of our city, ensuring that they are community facing, that they have a real understanding of how our community works in Seattle and the unique challenges that we have.

And so we really want to focus on individuals that have a passion and a desire to do that work, as well as a passion and desire to be part of our amazing park system and to be sort of have that national or excuse me, that local love of parks the way that some of our national park rangers have of the national park system.

We are blessed state and this Emerald City and there's much pride there and so we want to make sure that we're getting individuals that have that sort of sweet combination of both and a desire to lead out to improve the park system.

Among the minimum qualifications will be a one year of experience in parks or recreation or some related field of security that then can combine with an education or training experience that provides equivalent background required to perform this type of work.

They need to be committed to public safety approaches at faceted levels, right?

There is no one approach to public safety as we know, and it's really important that our Rangers are trained and recruited to understand the nuances and to understand the best practices to ensure our city is advancing those in the most socially just way that we can.

As I mentioned, excellent customer service skills.

We want them to be individuals that you all and your staff and your community members will get to know and can call on and that will be reliable to meet your needs, just as many of you rely on some of our excellent park and recreation staff that we have working at our community centers, in our urban parks, in our natural regional park systems, they will be an extension of that modeling excellence at all levels of their work.

And there will be an education-first approach with all of the work that they're doing.

And, again, they will need to be also able to pass police-level background checks so that they can be there to do the work that's needed of a park ranger.

And I just wanted to share with you We have partnered with a consulting firm to really get out and ensure that our approach is wide, varied, and broad, and bringing us a diverse set of candidates.

On park ranger training, so once we have selected the first tranche of park rangers, and I should report, actually, that as of today, we have over 100, if not more, applications from that recruitment that we've been doing.

I was pleased to participate in a town hall recruitment event with some of our staff about a week and a half ago to answer community questions and to better lean into that.

And the result has been really, really positive.

So I just wanted you to know that we are on track and we feel comfortable that we have a good cadre of people that are interested in applying.

Once they are hired, the Rangers will complete a six-week in-house training academy, which will be a combination of classroom and field work.

They will be trained by our individual staff members, as well as some partner agencies who have stepped up to do this effort with us, among them our SBE Communications Center, the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, and Portland's Parks and Rec.

So I want to give a shout out to our a neighbor to the south who has a wonderful park ranger program.

And our staff has been in communication with them and they have committed to helping us build out this program, which is really exciting.

And also when we talk about the communication center training, it's really so that the rangers have direct lines of communications with the individuals in our city that may need to respond to a park situation or a life and safety health matter.

they will have the ability to do that.

The primary curriculum of the training will include the welcoming and onboarding strategies, how to work best with the public, knowing the City of Seattle, knowing our communities, understanding safety, first aid and emergency response, enforcement protocols, really important, how to effectively properly, lawfully, and justly engage with community, respectful of all members of our society, and will be trained in de-escalation, and will really be trained on what you can do and what you do not do as a park ranger.

And then the sort of deeper dive is the sort of evolution of things and issues that you can encounter.

There's a myriad of issues beyond the three E's that come up every day in a park system.

and connected with every part of our working operations so that they can also be the sort of eyes and ears and letting us know about infrastructure problems or vandalism or graffiti or a maintenance issue or an errant water system.

They can also be able to sort of deep dive into that and be problem-solving solution-oriented in that approach.

So this is, in a nutshell, is our ramp-up program.

Did I miss a slide?

Maybe there is.

I knew there were more slides here.

Training and accountability in consistent with what we just stated to you earlier about the cycle to ramp up.

We want to be continuing to be transparent to the community and work with the Park District Board as well as our Park Commissioners on reporting out on the work that is being done.

So some of the things that you all asked for and for us to report on are the number of verbal warnings issues and the reasons why.

So we will be training and tracking those issues.

Also the number of written warnings and citations that are issued and why and things that perhaps are being referred over to the police department.

And we will be having metrics for that.

We also will be, I'm going to also be asking our rangers to report out on positive interactions with communities as well.

And I anticipate that there will be significant number of what we call positive interactions, but really being helpful and problem solving and connecting people in that spirit of no wrong door.

So we're going to sort of track that internally.

And if you all would like to see that, we will track that back with you as well.

And then continuing to work with you on the number of park rangers that we're hiring and where they're being deployed.

And then the additional metric will be an annual

Park Ranger app violations that can be reported through our park code, but online and consistent with other ways that we're trying to be more forward facing.

And then I want to just sort of end on our.

Talk about initial deployment here, and some of the members have asked questions, so I just want to clarify here.

You saw this in our report back.

The initial deployment will focus on 21 downtown parks.

That's over 46 acres, and you can see there on the map some of the parks that will be highlighted in our downtown neighborhood.

They will work seven days a week from 6 in the morning to 9 p.m.

at night.

They will work and rotate in three daily teams in cohorts of two.

So there should never and ideally there will always be two rangers working together in the downtown areas.

And there will also be an additional emphasis consistent with your direction at Cal Anderson Park, which you know has gone through great renovation and really thriving right now did a walkthrough there with Council Member Lewis and community members, and I've been there several times at night, and it is so well activated and really thriving in many ways.

We want to continue that sense of activation.

And we also, in the emergence of City Hall Park, which I know you are all tracking and we are working hard on with a plan to sort of reopen this spring, we want to have a dedicated crew with providing emphasis work through our park rangers at City Health Park.

And then deployment considerations will be shaped by the following factors.

You know, sometimes there will be a special event going on in our city.

It might be a pride parade or a particular permitted event that we know is going on and we'll want to put additional rangers to support that park to ensure that public safety and assistance is being given as needed.

There could be incidents being reported to us by some of our public safety partners telling us about particular locations or we see an uptick in crime or uptick in reported vandalism.

So we might deploy rangers to work in those particular parks while easing them back from others from time to time.

We will also be shaped by public complaints and information that we're getting from your staff as well as the community so we can kind of develop a strategy of where we should be focused the park code violations, graffiti, vandalism, and hot spots.

We want to keep a concerted effort on ensuring that we are meeting those and then reducing the numbers of those activities before we sort of focus on other areas in the system.

And then also being in communication with our existing concierge and park activation teams, supporting them in their work so that they can feel equipped to do their work and really feel safe together.

So this will very much be a collective team approach to the work in the community.

And here's our expansion timeline focusing on 2023. So in January, we began Phase 1, and we did our recruitment and onboarding with a goal to hire 13 new park rangers, and that would include the existing And so we are currently in that phase right now in Q1 from January to April.

As I mentioned, we are very much into the recruitment process now and acquiring the applications.

We'll be doing the vetting and the screening.

And then in the mid-May to July, we'll be focusing on our training academy and getting those individuals onboarded and trained up.

And then towards Q3, we will look at beginning our first deployment of phase one of the Ranger Expansion Program with that seven-day coverage.

And then at the end of the year, we will then evaluate how we will go into phase two, going, ramping up to the 28 authorized positions, being shaped by what we learned also in phase one.

So we've kind of set up this timeline really pleased to report thanks to our staff who is working really hard to deliver a model program that we are on track for meeting our goals and feel really confident in speaking with you today that this timeline should work.

With the caveat that we have to go through obviously the hiring process and as you all know that can take time to ensure that we get the proper applicants in place that they fill out their forms correctly, that we do the background checks, that we find the right candidate.

So I just want to point out that although we feel confident about that, we might need to adjust that a little bit, but hoping not to.

And with that, that is our report.

And just want to thank you for being so supportive of this.

This plus the cycle two ramp up, this is part of the cycle two ramp up, but this undergirding the capital improvements to our park system, is really going to be a positive for our city of Seattle and our parks department.

And I'm just so pleased to be coming in at such a pivotal time with your direction and providing me and our entire team here the ability to deliver great things for our parks.

So just want to thank you on that.

Thank you so much.

I see that Council Member Peterson has a question.

I'm going to ask a maybe a brief question first and then hand it over to Council Member Peterson.

Can we go back, Superintendent Diaz, to the slide where we're discussing the training?

Right, yes.

So how much does this represent an enhancement of the current training regime that the department has been using to train and retain our current ranger service?

Well, you know, as you know, we have two park rangers now.

So with the goal of ramping up to 28, this is an enhanced curriculum, I would say, you know, we'll have more people working together.

So I again want to point out it's not deviating or changing, but I really see it as expanding more on what our current rangers are doing now.

So those individuals are well trained along with our security services teams on doing this work, but I really want to emphasize, especially starting out with my tenure here, so that my approach and direction of this program is to focus on these three things,

really an enhanced focus on public engagement, really forward-facing community interaction that's positive, and building connections and alliances more with our partners in the police department, the fire department.

I've had really great conversations with my fellow directors of to be responsive, and also we're really going to be teaching our rangers to learn more about city departments.

So nothing's really deviating or different, but I would say it's going to be much more heightened, much more sophisticated, and really expansive in the sense of within the city.

It's this one Seattle vision we talk about, but park rangers will only be successful if supported by all of our other city partners to do their work.

Great, thank you.

Board member Peters.

Thank you, Board President Lewis, and thank you, Superintendent Diaz and your team there.

Look forward to your upcoming confirmation as well.

And thank you for these presentations.

My question is about the, I believe it's slide eight that has the map of the city.

Thank you for providing map.

My concern here is that it's focused just on downtown.

And I know that that was some sort of informal arrangement to roll out the expansion but I just.

want to make a note that, you know, there are parks throughout Seattle that would benefit from the Rangers.

I know when there are issues that crop up in parks in my district, like Gasworks Park, the last couple of weeks, the executive will say, well, fear not.

We have park rangers that we, you know, we're expanding the program and then When I look into it further, there's this caveat of it being downtown.

And so it's a little bit of a mixed message to my constituents and people throughout the city.

So I just want to encourage that the sooner that there can be flexibility and where they're deployed so that they can be strategically deployed where there might be the most need to have eyes on the trails, so to speak.

I think that'll be really helpful because because we know that SPD is not able to respond to certain calls if there's just something going on that's not criminal in nature, but there needs to be a city employee to look after the situation, the park rangers would be an obvious choice for that.

So I would encourage the executives quickly as possible to figure out how to get that flexibility to have a more strategic deployment citywide.

Thank you, that's just a comment.

Yeah, Board Member Peterson, thank you.

I wanna give Parks a chance to respond, but my understanding is we are currently somewhat hamstrung by bargaining constraints that the department is trying to fix to give us that flexibility.

And I'm very supportive of us getting that flexibility, but I'll give the department a moment to respond to that question.

Well, I just wanna say first and foremost that we recognize the need to be responsive, safe, and welcoming in all parts of our city, right?

In every single council district and at every single Seattle park.

So no one park is more important than the other, in our opinion, and the residents have a right to feel safe in every single park.

And so we concur that we want to work through the proper channels

There is an existing labor contract in place that restricts the park rangers to the downtown core.

And that is why the program is built out as such.

And we will be working with the executive and asking them to continue to work with the labor negotiation teams to see if there is a possibility to expand the program.

But I will point out that we are ready to adapt the program to grow out and build out based upon the model that was just shown in slide seven.

So some of those informed decisions that will go to the downtown areas when we talk about special permits, as an example, or a special activity, or a tick in crime, a hotspot, an area that has more vandalism, that model can be applied to any part of the city should we be authorized or expand further, that we will use this model to grow that program wherever we see fit.

So it's building this program now, recognizing we are under the constraints of downtown, but hoping to really learn the best practices of that with the goal of being, as you mentioned, reachable and serviceable to all parts of our city.

So that is our approach.

That is our goal.

And we hope to be able to realize some of that.

Uh, yeah.

Thank you.

Just to, I, I know the issue of bargaining has been mentioned.

I just, since, you know, some of us are on the labor relations policy committee, I'll look forward to drilling into that a little bit.

I've not seen anything in writing about it.

I've just heard that word banded about, but I've not actually seen in writing where there's this restriction.

So I'll be, um, I know we'll sort of confirm that when we have some, some bandwidth to do that soon.

So thank you.

Are there any other board members with questions or comments?

Okay, seeing none.

Well, thank you to our parks panel, really appreciated the opportunity to get an update on some of these topics from last fall and check in on how they are coming along and the implementation timelines.

We will of course continue to be engaged as a board and as a council in the development of the promises for the six-year Metropolitan Park District and we will continue to do so in partnership and almost certainly discuss some of these themes and topics Superintendent Diaz during your confirmation hearings on Wednesday.

I don't have any other items of business for this afternoon's check-in.

So if there's nothing for the good of the order, I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn the Metropolitan Park District Board.

The next scheduled meeting of the Metropolitan Park District Board will be held on Monday, June 26th of 2023, following the council briefing meeting at approximately 3 p.m.

There will be no further business and we stand adjourned.

Recording stopped.

Thank you.