Seattle City Council Civic Development, Public Assets, & Native Communities Committee 9518

Always the best.

And you can catch us every Thursday at 7. Tip your waitress.

OK, let's do it.

Oh, we are on.

Wow.

You might want to tell me when I'm on TV.

OK, let's see.

Call to order.

Good afternoon.

This is a meeting of the Civic Development, Public Asset, and Native Communities Committee.

It is September 5th.

The time is 2.02.

And I am joined, I am the chair, and I'm joined by Council Member Bagshaw.

Thank you all for being here today.

Let me go through the agenda briefly, and then I'll talk about some of the items, and then I'll have some of you come forward.

The Chair's Report.

Today we have two council bills followed by one presentation.

We'll be voting on, first of all, the Jefferson Lawn Bowling Club Management Agreement.

And I understand we have a 10-page PowerPoint.

The second item is Seattle Parks District Green Spaces.

That is an ordinance relating to the Seattle Park District.

in giving them the ability to acquire land and green spaces.

And I understand there's a PowerPoint connected with that as well.

And then we have what we call the Burke Consulting Firm, who we hired a year ago, who will provide us with the Recreation Division Evaluation Report for the Department of Parks and Recreation.

That is a, understanding, 21-page PowerPoint.

And the Burke Report, which I won't go into, is 184 pages.

But if you were so inclined to go online and look at it, I would direct you to section 7, page 152, because that is the summary of the recommendations for how Seattle Park and RECs are doing.

And it's actually a really good report.

Tracy's not out here yet.

Is she here?

Nope.

Oh, there she is.

Tracy, our project manager from central staff will be up here as well to kind of ask questions and any concerns that we have from some of the folks coming up here today.

So with that, let's go to public comment.

And all of you, Nagin is the new Mercedes.

Nagin, you want to go ahead and, nice wave.

How many people do we have signed up?

We have five people signed up.

Okay.

So Nagin, we'll call out your name.

You have two minutes.

Please speak to the agenda and we'll go ahead and start.

All right.

The first person we have is Amber Wolf.

Good afternoon.

I'm assuming I should be at the microphone.

Good afternoon.

My name is Amber Wolf, and I'm a member of the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club.

Please pardon me for wearing a hat indoors, but I thought I should be showing my colors.

Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club is very close to where I live on Beacon Hill, and I hadn't really even used Jefferson Park that much or spent much time in the park until I was introduced to the Lawn Bowling Club.

And I'm mostly part of the Women's League during the summer.

And I have to say that it has been such a wonderful experience to have a community where I can meet women of all different ages and races and job types and economic levels, and to have that be a part of my life and community.

Because otherwise, I might not have the opportunity to connect with those people, with people outside of the jobs that I usually do during the day.

And I find that it is such an important part of the community, and I hope that we'll be able to have another lease for another five years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Amber.

All right, next we have Willie Weir.

Hi, my name is Willie Weir, and I've been in Seattle for 33 years.

My wife and I bought a house on Beacon Hill about 21 years ago got involved in Jefferson Park, which at that time wasn't a whole lot of park left.

And just was in part of that whole rejuvenating experience of seeing that space just become alive.

And our meetings for the Jefferson Park Alliance were at the Lawn Bowling Club.

And we had the president who was a little, you know, he was a little suspicious of why we were there and what we were doing.

And his name was Wally.

Wally Meyer was a, he's still a live member since 1968. And, but at that time, the bowlers at that club, they'd seen their membership decline.

Probably 72, 74 years old was the median age of the club at that time.

And I would say since probably 2000, there's probably only five or six people left alive from that group of people that were at the club then.

But I remember one of the club members saying, you know, it's over.

Our membership has declined every year for so many years.

And I think it's a sport that people aren't gonna play anymore.

And I'm so delightful that they were wrong.

And what they found out is that there was a way to have community with people.

And I started a league called Men with Big Bowls 17 years ago, well, 15 years ago, with 17 guys, mostly from my theater past.

And it's been on Tuesday nights in the summer.

10 of those guys are still in the league 15 years later, and it's now 65 with a waiting list.

And one of the things the gentleman said coming up there, and he says, it's like coming back to summer camp.

I know I'm going to come here and meet people I've seen, haven't seen the rest of the year, and spend a time in a lovely space in a lovely city.

And thanks for letting us continue.

Thank you, Willie.

Nice shirt.

Tom Sunderland.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Tom Sunderland.

This is a shirt from the league that Willie mentioned.

Very nice.

Oh, the men with big balls.

And I am one of the first, started the first year in 2004. It's a connection with Willie.

I lived in Seattle for my entire adult life.

I'm a foreigner.

I was born in Bremerton, but I've lived here my whole life.

And I want to say one of the great things about this, as a Beacon Hill resident since 1998, we talk about cities and in a way, how do we keep them vital?

And Seattle, in its current growth spasm and spurt, how do we make it work beyond just the obvious big economic benefits?

And local neighborhood identity is the way we do that.

And this is one of the purest expressions of that I've ever encountered in my life.

And so to me, as a longtime, as local my whole life, Seattle for my entire adult life, and Beacon Hill for the last 20 plus years, and this club for the last 15 or so years, this is to me what it means to be a meaningful member of a local community and to really grow a city in the way we can create the city, I think in the ways we want it to be.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to say that you all are putting to shame The bowling alone theory.

See, why we're here every comedy, we're here every other Wednesday.

And we have one more person.

We have Gina Talentino.

Good afternoon.

Hi.

Can I give something to the clerk to give to you?

Yes, you can.

And just state your name for the record.

My name is Gina Talentino.

I'm the president of the Lawn Bowling Club.

And I have a little report showing what we've done in 2018 so far.

This will be made available digitally as well.

It's OK.

We'll stop the clock.

OK.

So while she gets her material out.

We also have postcards from a lot of our members and visitors who have enjoyed the club this year.

Nice.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Gina.

So thank you.

I just want to talk a little bit about the history of our club.

Terry is going to definitely talk about that today.

And thank you, Terry, so much.

And thank you for everyone who showed up today.

Our club was built and developed through a lot of volunteerism.

It was built by the Lions Club, the Parks Commission, and the Army Center back in 1942. And for 76 years, members have, like, grown the club from one green to the two greens we have now.

Also have taken over, they appropriated a building that was ready for demolition and turned that into the first clubhouse, then grew the membership and raised money along with the city to develop the clubhouse that we have now and the equipment shed.

Volunteers have given free lessons, coached, managed leagues, tournaments, coordinated rentals, and maintained the green grounds and clubhouse.

So we have this beautiful green space in Seattle that is super special.

And even as the popularity of the sport has waxed and waned, these volunteers were keeping it active.

We love this sport because it's more than just rolling balls on grass.

It's actually a legitimate sport that is actually played in at least 45 countries around the world and 82 affiliated clubs in the United States.

Jefferson Park sends competitors to the national championships every year.

We've, in the last eight years, developed eight champions.

I only have 20 seconds?

No, you got more time.

Go ahead.

Okay.

The National Championships works with something like this, spread over five days.

Individuals or teams will play two games per day.

A quick game could be 45 minutes to an hour.

They usually can stretch out to three hours, so it's pretty grueling.

It also takes a lot of mental toughness.

There's a lot of strategy involved.

It's quite amazing.

Because of that, someone in their 70s can beat someone in their 30s, and you can't really say that about many sports, so it's pretty cool.

So imagine a tennis match with chess moves between every play.

They have to do this at the divisional level before making it to national champions, so we're in the Pacific Northwest Division, and they do the same thing before going to the championships.

Championships are going to be held in San Francisco next year, and then in Milwaukee the following year.

So we hosted it in 2011. We'd really love to do that again with a long lease.

So this year we've really redoubled our outreach and marketing efforts.

So we have been, we put rack cards in all of the libraries in the King County.

That was actually a suggestion of Gonzales, I believe.

And we always do flyers and posters for any of our events.

We just didn't, we just relaunched our website.

So it's a lot easier for people to navigate.

Do I still have time?

Yeah, if you could just wrap it up.

Well, in closing, I asked you to consider all of these things.

And please look at your report that I gave you because it has a lot of good information in it.

And if you're ever interested in discovering a new sport, please give me a call.

I would love to show you how to play the game.

Nice.

Thank you.

Is it like land curling?

Well, the bowls are weighted.

They have like a bias, so they actually curve while you roll them.

So it is similar to curling in a way, but...

Okay, well, Sally now, I mean, Counselor Baxter will be there.

You guys have to come up.

It's so much fun.

I like it.

Long curling is great.

But I want to say thanks for these postcards.

I was just looking through them.

And this one is addressed to me.

So I'm particularly happy about Alexis saying, I'm heading to nationals.

Thank you, Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club made such a difference in my life.

Awesome.

It's very cute.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And thank you all for being here.

That wraps up our public comments so we're going to go to items of business and do you want to read the first item into the record?

Council Bill 119343, an ordinance relating to the Department of Parks and Recreation, authorizing the superintendent to enter into a management agreement with the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club for the purpose of renting rooms and teaching lawn bowling to the public at the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Facility.

We'll have a briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Great.

And so we already have our folks up here, and they will, for the record, introduce themselves, and then you will walk us through your PowerPoint, and then we will move to vote on this matter.

Tracy Ressliff, Council Central Staff.

Christopher Williams, Interim Superintendent, Seattle Parks.

Terry Burns, Parks Concession Coordinator.

Gina Tolentino, President of Lawn Bowling Club.

Thank you.

And I'll let you go ahead and start.

Okay, so maybe I'll kick this off and I'd like to acknowledge the great staff work and also acknowledge by thanking the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club for their vision, stewardship and support for the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Facility.

They are a diverse, welcoming community of people who come together under the common interest to enjoy lawn bowling.

They exemplify the Seattle Park and Recreation commitment to provide something for everyone.

And we're here today to seek authorization to enter into a five-year agreement with two five-year extensions or options.

So with that, I will turn it over to Terri.

Well, thank you, Christopher.

We are here with the Jefferson Park Lawn Mowing Club to present to you an ordinance, the Use Oxygen Maintenance and Agreement Renewal for the Jefferson Park Lawn Mowing Facilities and Greens.

Jefferson Park Lawn Mowing Club is a non-profit 501c3 status, 100% volunteer run organization.

They maintain and promote the greens and they're not for profit.

You're gonna take us through a chronology, aren't you?

What's that?

Because you know I love chronologies.

But she left out 1968. 1968?

I think that's when they got the property.

It's in the ordinance, after the donation.

You should probably keep moving because she left.

In 1942, the South District Lawn Bowling Club formed a group and petitioned the Seattle Parks Board to build a lawn bowling club in Jefferson Park.

Completion of the greens was finished in 1944, making it the second publicly owned lawn bowling facility in Seattle.

In 1945, the club officially changed their name to the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club.

Late in the 40s, the city moved the green to its present location and added a second green.

Prior to 1958, there was no facility near the greens, and the bowlers had to run to the car during a rainstorm or had to use nearby stores or facilities for restrooms.

In 1958, the club members asked the city if they could have a decommissioned tool shed that they were going to demolish.

The city agreed, as long as there was no cost to relocate.

Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club soon outgrew that clubhouse and in 1970s they raised funds to match the forward thrust funds so that they could have the current clubhouse.

The picture up above shows the first clubhouse that the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club purchased.

The current operation is in Southeast Seattle on Beacon Hill on Jefferson Park campus.

It includes two lawn bowling greens and a clubhouse.

The activities permitted in the park include lawn bowling, league play, and rentals.

It's a year-round operation with a peak season play from April to October.

In off-season, they mainly do rentals and some play depending on the weather.

The rentals can vary.

They've had corporate functions to wedding receptions.

In the new agreement, you'll find an increase in revenue and an increase in public benefit.

The previous agreement's revenue with the minimum was 1,000 per year or a percentage of the rental income, 25% without lawn mowing and 10% rental with lawn mowing.

We streamed that and increased the terms for the revenue for the city.

The minimum that we expect from the club is 1,500 a year or 15% of all rental proceeds, whichever is greater.

We are asking or proposing a five-year lease with two five-year extensions.

The Jefferson Park is still responsible for all green maintenance.

They're also responsible for routine maintenance and minor repairs of the premise and all building systems.

And Seattle Parks and Recreation is responsible for major maintenance.

They're responsible for the common areas adjacent to the greens and the clubhouse.

The Jefferson Park's current agreement provided public benefits.

It had access to the Greens and Clubhouse.

It required that they maintain the Lawnda City Standard, pay an annual revenue of at least $1,000 per year, provide rental access to the community, and provide free rental space to nonprofit organizations.

Clubs that participated in 2017 were the Jefferson Park Alliance and the Beacon Hill Food Forest, to name a few.

They also hosted community events at the center.

They did an Oakman Mikes at the Green.

They did Beacon Hill Festival.

They did a 75th anniversary celebration of the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club.

They did a Crow's Drive for youth care.

They also did an impromptu opening for snow days for the community to come in and get warm.

The new agreement enhances the public benefit.

Sure did.

We strengthened the public benefit with the collaboration with Tracy Radcliffe's and Councilmember Waroff's office when we were working on the Woodland Park lawn bowling legislation to provide meaningful service to the community in exchange for the use of the facility.

That process forms the basis for the Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Club.

We didn't stop there.

Jefferson Park and Seattle Park Recreation modeled this agreement to match or exceed Woodland Park's lawn bowling expectations.

But we need to make sure that the community is aware.

And I went out and asked Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling what groups that they would like to work with.

And they came back to me with 28 different organizations that each year they will meet with to let them know about lessons and community spaces that they can use.

Can I just stop you right there?

I know you skipped over a little bit on your slide on slide six, and I just want to give you just a little bit of credit and back up a bit.

I know that we talked about a lot of these issues before, but I just want to commend you for, and particularly the club and yourself and Tracy, working and Christopher, I know we pushed hard on the outreach and that has been very powerful.

And also that Seattle Parks and Rec would use the clubhouse at no charge, which I thought was great.

And when I looked at the, you can go to the next slide, on all these organizations, on these 28 organizations, as the city of Seattle, we work with most of these organizations.

And what I like about this and why I was so happy to see it, is like with Rewa and ARP and El Centro, you guys really made a focus to focus on children, on elders, people of color, community organizations, immigrant, new Americans.

These are the things that some of the issues Council Member Gonzalez brought up too.

And we brought them up in the last committee meeting, not to pick on you, but to show, because believe it or not, we've had some criticisms from the other communities, like, why are we giving this group money or time?

when there are other bigger problems in the city of Seattle.

Not knowing this history, and I'm hoping they're watching, not knowing this history, that how far it goes back and what it, this is what community does.

It has events, it has a sense of place, it has brick and mortar, it has community, it has longevity, and it reflects the people that they serve.

So with that, I just, again, I just want to thank you.

That's, I was just very impressed with that.

So thank you.

And thank you for bringing that up too, how important community is.

And we were accused yesterday of wasting people's time.

And I just think this is the essence of what our community can be.

So thank you.

Yeah, definitely thank you for Jefferson Park coming up with all the different groups to work with.

Definitely Jefferson Park and Seattle Park will work together to increase the access and opportunity for all to participate in lawn sports or use of the facility.

Seattle Parks and Recreation realized that it needed to change how we write up the expectation and roles in the agreement to ensure that the community is aware that this is a public facility and the public benefits Jefferson Park provides and how they can access them.

This new agreement defines the priority audience to match what Seattle Parks and Recreation is.

Low-income youth, underrepresented communities, seniors, nonprofits, low-incoming housing providers.

All organizations who serve the priority audience also can receive free lessons and rental space at Jefferson Park Lawn Bowling Greens.

We just need to make sure that they're aware.

So Jefferson Park's role is to manage the site, promote the sport, oops, sorry, to promote the sport and to provide opportunity for the community to gather.

But we don't expect that they have the resources available to promote the public benefit to a far-reaching audience.

Together, we will ensure that the marketing material will include signage, websites, social media posting, promotional materials posted in public spaces such as community centers and libraries throughout the city and neighborhood blogs.

Seattle Parks and Recreation's role will be to oversee and to assist Jefferson Park's Longbowling Cubs' outreaching marketing effort.

We will review facility signage that the club will purchase and install.

We'll post opportunity on our website and review the club's website.

We will do social media campaigns.

We will ensure promotional material is posted in public spaces throughout the city.

We'll do posting in neighborhood blogs and in newspapers.

And Seattle Parks and Recreation will work with Department of Neighborhood to inform the community about the public benefits of the meeting spaces and lawn opportunities.

Annually, the Jefferson Park will submit an annual public benefit report.

indicating all their outreach efforts to document and show their accomplishments.

I will review this report to see if there's additional support needed from Seattle Parks and Recreation to make sure that the marketing benefits are available to the community.

So let me just say something about this slide as well, because again, it caught my eye, not because I'm that smart, but I just happened to be looking at the Burke report at the same time I was reading your...

So I said two things before we actually were on camera to the group, and that was that, looking at the public benefits package really aligned with the mission and the value and the goals of Seattle Parks and Rec in a strong community, healthy environment, access, working with low income, low opportunity, marginalized neighborhoods, getting other, all those other organizations involved so, you know, so they have more than access.

They can actually participate.

But one reason what caught my eye on this, and this I believe is one of the recommendations in the Burke Report, is the sharing of the marketing duties.

That is actually a recommendation that's being made to parks from a group that we hired, and you're already ahead of the game.

You're already doing that.

So again, thank you very much.

It was just happenstance that once in a while I connect the dots, but I just want to thank you as well.

This next show side is a comparison of the agreements from the current to proposed.

The previous agreement required public benefit.

It expected the club to provide access, maintenance, youth lessons, and free rentals, but there was no set minimum expectation.

It did not define the priority audience, no expectation to do outreach, and no minimum value was set on any category.

In the far right column, this new agreement shows or this slide shows that we've defined the priority audience to match the cities.

We require outreach and marketing of public benefit.

We set minimum requirement of time dollar and dollar value in all categories.

I do want to point out that I've made a few slight calculation errors.

They are slightly higher than the chart, but they are in the agreement.

The minimum free rental value that the club should perform should be 1,450 and not 1,400.

And the minimum annual volunteer hour should be 729. I too want to applaud the club for coming out to really valuing the public outreach and the public benefits that they want to provide and the number of community organizations that they will work with.

I'll now open it up for any questions or concerns that you may have at this time.

It looks good and thank you for all your hard work.

Do you have any closing comments before we move to a vote?

Tracy?

I just want to applaud Seattle Parks and Rec and the Jefferson Park Lawn Building because it takes the combination of the two to get this right.

This is the first lease agreement that we will be bringing through this committee that isn't requiring us to go back and to rework the public benefits piece that you absolutely nailed it.

And it took both parties willing to do that work.

And it's appreciated, and I look forward to it being, in fact, as you said, a model for the other leases that will come forward, because it is, you nailed it big time, and so it's much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tracy.

And it's, a lot of people wondered why we changed the title to our committee.

It used to be Parks, Rec, Zoo, Aquarium, I don't know, it was everything.

And we changed it to civic development and public assets.

And the public asset piece is that we manage public assets.

And so we have to show and we are accountable to the public when we have particular organizations that use those facilities.

And part of the public is that it's public.

So we have to have that public benefit piece.

And we've, thank you, Tracy, you work really, Tracy's been phenomenal keeping all of our departments in line and keeping these agreements and these leases and these ordinances in line so they line up with that public benefits analysis.

So with that.

I do have one quick change to make.

And this is just for the public record.

You might look at the caption on slide 10. You might want to add an L.

Oh, I missed that?

Well, take a look at mine.

pubic benefits.

I just would suggest that.

I just wanted to point out that one of our members found this postcard downstairs at the coffee shop, and it's an event that's happening that's raising money for the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

So that was actually kind of a nice little find.

Yeah, that is nice to know that's out there.

Yes, we will fix that.

I did not see that.

Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw.

You earned your pay for the day.

Okay, so we are going to move forward for a vote.

I move the committee pass council bill I put my glasses on for this one one one nine three four three second motion has been moved and seconded There's no further discussion all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

No's no's it passes Therefore we will move this and recommend this to for the full City Council on Monday.

Thank you very much.

Great job Well done I

Look at that.

What is that?

I know it.

I highlighted it.

Did you see?

I didn't see it before.

I just think we just ought to fix it for the record.

Yeah.

All right.

So let's read our...

Oh, I lost.

I went for a new game.

Our second item of business is Council Bill 119340. You can finish, because you have the real title.

An ordinance relating to the Seattle Park District authorizing the superintendent of Parks and Recreation to acquire real property and property rights within the city's green spaces.

We'll have a briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Okay, and you guys are still who you are, but we have a few new people at the table, so let's do introductions, and then we'll go through your PowerPoint.

Council members, good afternoon.

I'm Max Jacobs.

I manage real estate for Parks and Recreation.

Hi, I'm Lise Ward.

I acquire.

I have the fond job of acquiring land for parks.

I'm also in property management.

I didn't catch your first name.

I'm sorry.

Lise.

Lise.

We've been working together for almost a decade now.

So maybe I'll kick this off.

Sure.

We're here to seek authorization that would allow the department to We're seeking blanket authorization to acquire green belts and natural area property adjacent to existing green belts without having to come to the council committee.

as when we're entering into negotiations, time is generally of the essence.

Previous levies like the Pro Parks Levy and the Park and Green Spaces Levy authorized the department to move forward with acquisition of green belts.

And we're here kind of seeking the authority to, or reauthorization of that authority that we had with prior levies.

I thought that that was in the initial initiative in 2014.

So we've been coming here every meeting.

That's right.

So now we just wanted a blanket approval so you can acquire this property in the green space.

That's right.

So, Max?

I'm sorry.

Quick question.

Does this go forward as well?

Not just for these spaces?

I mean, these...

So, we would come back for property acquisition in urban villages and acquire the same authorization.

Okay.

So, what this does is give you authority in advance for these particular ones, right?

Yeah.

At Thornton Creek?

Yes, for the very specific green spaces that are outlined in Resolution 28653. So it's a pretty limited area that they can acquire, which is part of the reason why I think delegating them that authority is just fine.

They're also obviously constrained by their budget, so they can't just go out and buy up a storm, so to speak.

They're limited to what the resolution that was passed in 1993. Exactly.

So we know the perimeters of your power and authority.

Yes.

And the areas where they can actually acquire property is pretty, it's limited by those.

Can't wait to get to Thornton Creek in D5.

Thanks so much for having us, council members.

I'm just going to kick it off and then hand it to my colleague, Lise.

We're really glad to present this to you because this is a continuation of something that's been working really, really well for 25 years.

So as the superintendent said, this is a continuation of a previous authorization under previous levies where we can move really quickly and get some acquisitions done that not only serve the parks and recreation mission, but also very frequently really help property owners who are looking to do a quick transaction.

And if I may, I'm just going to hand it over to Lise, who is the expert on this.

And I know we've lost out on a couple opportunities because you weren't able to move quickly.

Right.

Right.

And this conversation from a few seconds ago has actually reduced my comments somewhat because everybody's got the gist of what we're trying to do here.

You can still shine.

Go ahead.

We like pictures.

So we're requesting renewal of the previous Acquisition Authority, which was originally granted in three programs, the 1989 Open Space and Trails Bond Program, the 2000 Parks Levy, the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy, So we received separate ordinance authority in each of those programs to be able to purchase property within the green space boundaries without having to come back to council each time.

So over that 25-year period, we've assembled acreage, replaced private ownership gaps, which I'll have a couple of examples for you in a few minutes.

in the green spaces that initially only existed on paper in 1993. And we've been able to build these green spaces over time.

So in a general sense, just to give you some idea of how these green spaces were listed in the original resolution and to give you a snapshot of how we sort of rank acquisition opportunities, we look at every opportunity based on resource value, urban form, corridors, buffers between land uses, linkages to existing or future parks, shoreline access, trails, or other open spaces.

In a riparian habitat, when there's a creek running through it, we look at water quality reduction, potential for reduction of stormwater runoff in urban streams, wildlife habitat corridors.

Contributions to the continuity of the entire green space, significant vegetation, opportunities for low density recreation, public accessibility, and restoration potential.

Do you include golf courses in that?

No.

These are, they're not manicured.

They've naturally occurred.

So we're trying to preserve, you know, what was originally there.

Is it one of the things that you look at?

You just listed a bunch of stuff that you look at.

If it buffers or borders.

That's what I'm getting at.

Right, right.

Okay.

Exactly.

Well, look what we have here.

So this is one of my favorites.

I honestly never thought this would happen from beginning to end in my tenure at the city, but it did.

We partnered with SPU.

This is a stretch of Thornton Creek on Northeast 100th Street off Lake City Way.

On the picture to the left, you can see a lot of riprap.

The creek was channelized.

There were a lot of flooding issues.

We ended up partnering with SPU on acquisitions.

Well, roughly eight to ten year period, we acquired six properties over time, and SPU was able to follow up with a drainage improvement program that relieved flooding, but it also left us with the photo to the right, which was a part of the drainage enhancement was to allow the creek to meander through this long stretch of property that we had assembled as opposed to having it channeled.

And that meandering slowed down the water, improved the flooding, but provided incredible opportunities for fish to come back.

This is the South Fork.

of Thornton Creek.

We actually went on a field trip with SPU and SDOT and the whole Thornton Creek Alliance folks.

I actually walked on that bridge.

And the South Fork is much better preserved.

Well, actually, I think the North Fork is more preserved because that runs up through Northgate Mall and then where you put in the little part where they had the beaver part and all that.

This is actually one of the hidden jewels.

I know, a lot of people don't know.

That's a great walk.

It's beautiful.

Yes.

So if you can go back one.

So the area down at the bottom there, this is one of our sort of potential acquisition maps.

But the bottom area was the restoration area.

So you can see Northeast 100th is sort of the last identified street.

The red box is on Northeast 98th.

That's an opportunity.

These green space areas, we try to create relationships with property owners.

It's a voluntary program.

We check back with them periodically and then we get a phone call and they say we're ready to sell.

So in this particular case, this is an old map from several years ago.

We tried to acquire this property, I believe in 2006 or 2008. The property sold.

The seller told the new owner, hey, the city came calling a while back.

You might want to check in with them.

And sure enough, a couple weeks ago, I got an email from the new property owner saying, oh, we got this vacant lot next to our house.

You guys want to buy it?

So in terms of the entire relationship of the acquisitions over the past 25 years, plus this most recent restoration, the purchase of this property on Northeast 98th, if we're able to acquire it, would just be the cat's meow.

So I'm not able to see what the north-south streets are.

Am I looking at 10th and 11th?

Is that what?

20th, I believe.

So the north-south street next to the red box is 20th.

There's a pedestrian bridge.

So a lot of school children use that crossing, that bridge, to get to school.

Are you talking about Bob Eagle Staff?

What school are you talking about that kids go over the pedestrian bridge?

Um...

Sacajawea?

I believe it's the middle school in that area.

I'm not positive.

I'm disoriented too.

I'm trying to figure out where that's at.

It looks to me like I'm looking at 11th and 12th, but you're telling me it's 20th?

It's 20th.

What's it by?

So we're not that close to...

What's the major...

It's by Northgate Mall.

The landmark, the old...

Oh, it was the old Italian restaurant on Lake City Way that was there for a million years.

Yeah, yeah.

The spaghetti place.

Yeah, that one.

So anyway, just a couple more quick examples.

Sometimes we look at these for management and restoration potential.

So we recently purchased an inholding in the West Duwamish Greenbelt, which is also attached to West Crest Park, so West Crest Park's to the south, the Greenbelt's to the north.

So that cutout area on the bottom is the SPU reservoir and water towers at West Crest Park.

The property in red was just a homeowner, one house on one acre.

We developed a relationship with him over many years.

He wasn't ready to sell.

He wasn't ready to sell.

And then we got the phone call he was ready to sell.

And we were able to- Is this one of the ones we did recently?

Is this one we did recently?

Last year, yeah.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I remember this.

So that's an acre, which is a pretty significant acquisition in this town.

Another one, Kubota Gardens Natural Area.

So Kubota Gardens is to the north.

The natural area joins Kubota Gardens.

In the open space bond issue, we had purchased a conservation easement over the gray area.

There is a creek that goes through there.

It's called Mapes Creek.

That conservation easement did not reduce density.

So what happened, a developer attempted to put all the density on the unshaded side.

And this was a case where some of the city's experts felt that there could be a risk to the health of Mapes Creek just from the sheer volume of houses at that location.

So we made a play to purchase the entire property, and it took some doing, but we were able to acquire the property.

And that ended up being five acres.

Did we do this one as well?

Within the last couple years, yeah.

I remember the first one.

Where is that located?

Caboodle Gardens.

What neighborhood is that?

The diagonal streets, Renton Avenue South at about 55th.

Upper Rainier Beach.

Upper Rainier Beach.

OK.

Darn close to Renton.

Yeah.

OK.

Excellent.

Questions?

And you'll report back after you've done.

Final decisions and absolutely oceans just to tell us how we'll have to come here Is there anything else you guys want to add?

Okay Let's move forward then I'm with the committee pass council bill one one nine three four zero All those in favor say aye aye those opposed ayes have it it passes.

We'll give it to full council Monday.

Thank you See you max Oh, hey, while you're here, Christopher, I want to say thank you again to you and your staff for the work you've done in City Hall Park.

It has moved forward.

It has garnered momentum and support from not just all of those who go down there, but it is done.

It's activated that park.

It's a place where people can go.

The food trucks are in.

The lights, oh my goodness, who knew that if you just wash the big globe, wash, how much better it looks.

And because of the work you've done, SDOT and the county have agreed to make that little alley between the courthouse and the park into a festival street.

So they're going to add some cool lights for us.

But then that also gets us into the whole neighborhood effort about what do we want to do going westward.

So the Prefontaine Fountain, not alone, but with the other things we're looking at.

And DESC has been involved, and I'm just very respectful.

You got it started.

Well, I just want to acknowledge everyone from our finance director, Donny Grabowski, Victoria Schoenberg, Lisa Nelson, Robert Stowers, John Hyenga, truly an all-hands evolution to make that work.

And I just want to acknowledge that publicly, too, that I recognize that, and thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Thank you, guys.

You can't go anywhere.

Where are you going?

He thought maybe he was going to miss.

Nice try.

We got a Burke evaluation report.

And we're not going through all 184 pages.

Go ahead and read to the record.

Parks and Recreation, Recreation Division Evaluation Report, the Briefing and Discussion.

OK, this is our third item today.

So let's read everybody's.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Be quick here.

We're moving.

The train's moving.

I'll just wait a minute.

Because Nadine won't read it.

Can I just talk about Brian for a minute?

Sure, go ahead.

We've worked with Burke Consulting for the last 15, 20 years.

And I just can't say enough about Brian and his team at Burke Consulting.

They do really good work.

They have a really good partnership with them.

And they're just one of the outside consulting firms you really enjoy working with.

So thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

I recommend it.

Let's do introductions and let's begin.

Tracy Bradslip, Council Staff.

Christopher Williams, interim superintendent, Seattle Parks.

Brian Murphy, principal with Burke Consulting.

Great, and we have our PowerPoint in front of us, and I see your picture on there, Brian.

That's me.

Unfortunately, I'm here alone today, but I should absolutely recognize all the work that went into this.

So, well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to present.

We're excited to, I'm excited to be here and kind of encapsulate our findings here.

So, I was a project manager.

I'm a principal at Burke.

I was supported first by Jason Hennessy and Melanie Mayock, both of whom aren't able to be here today, unfortunately, as well as other staff at Burke.

and we really enjoyed this project.

The focus of this work was really to provide voter accountability in following the adoption of the Metropolitan Parks District.

I believe this is the second performance audit or performance evaluation of Seattle Parks and Recreation, the first around parks maintenance.

So the purpose of the study is really multifaceted.

First, it's to describe what is the focus of Seattle Parks Recreation, and secondly, to evaluate that performance, and thirdly, to make recommendations for improvement.

So it tackles a lot, there's a lot here, and that's why the report's rather lengthy, and we'll do our best here in this presentation to kind of hit some of the high notes.

So for the study, we engaged with park staff.

We had the guidance of Tracy Ratzcliff and others with council, budget office, and SPR staff.

And what I'd like to do here is kind of talk through what do we mean by recreation when we talk about a performance evaluation of Seattle Parks and Recreation's recreation function, and then describe our evaluative framework, and then get into our key findings and recommendations.

So on the screen you have in front of you Seattle Parks and Recreation's recreation mission and vision.

So I'd call out an element of the vision that I think speaks volumes here, and that is to provide high quality equitable recreation programming opportunities for everyone.

with an emphasis on underserved communities.

And really, we and our team found that Parks and Recreation is doing a good deal to try to reach those Seattle residents who might not otherwise have access to recreation services or recreation opportunities.

They view that as an important quality of life and even a right of Seattle residents is to have the ability to exercise, to meet, to engage.

And some folks can afford to go to clubs or athletic facilities, private athletic facilities.

Others prefer to go to or opt to go to a public facility or perhaps don't have the financial ability to go to a private facility.

The goals that Seattle Parks and Rec calls out underneath this vision is to serve more people, to emphasize access for the underserved, as I mentioned, to provide neighborhood gathering places, and to manage those capital facilities that are an important bricks-and-mortar foundation for providing recreation services.

So this slide tries to describe what do we mean when we say recreation.

So first, services may be delivered through specific places.

Community centers are an easy place to focus, but we also have the pools, the spray parks, the wading pools, teen life centers, environmental learning centers actually used to be with recreation and now they're elsewhere in the department.

So there's lots of physical places where recreation may happen.

There's also recreation programming that's really tailored to specific populations.

So we've got children, youth, and teens.

We've got older adults.

We also have people with disabilities and their families, as well as specific populations like Seattle's LGBTQ population or refugees and immigrants.

So it's tailored programs to try to reach those populations.

A third lens is who's providing the programming.

And so here we have recreation programming that's provided by SPR staff.

We also have a partnership with ARC that I'll mention in a moment, and even some grant-funded programs that provide recreation through existing community partners.

So it's a pretty diverse book of business, so to speak, or services, and covers a lot of ground.

This partnership with ARC is really fundamental to the Seattle Parks and Recreation service delivery model.

So, ARC is a non-profit organization, and the partnership was actually encapsulated in the Seattle Municipal Code, stemming from 1976. And it's pretty unique in the country, and I think Parks gets phone calls from others in the country asking about this partnership with ARC.

It provides a lot of flexibility, the ability to tap into community volunteers, and even to do some fundraising.

So, in general, this relationship is governed through a master services agreement and annual agreements, and those are in the process of being revised right now.

They get adopted by city council, so council has direct impact on how that relationship gets shaped.

In general, Seattle Parks and Recreation staff serve the role of being recreation specialists.

So they help design and help deliver in sort of a overall management sort of way the services that may be provided through ARC-based instructors.

So they design, they schedule, they set the evaluation criteria, and then they manage that relationship with the customer.

Arc, for its part, will hire and manage the instructors for some of the Arc provider programs.

So, quick overview here of some of the finances and staffing.

So, the Recreation Division represents about 25% of Seattle Parks and Recreation's overall expenditures.

It really hasn't changed a whole lot in terms of order of magnitude.

These are year of expenditure dollars, so if you were to adjust for inflation, I don't think you'd see that the recreation function is gaining.

that much in purchasing power.

So you see in 2016, I was about $40 million devoted to recreation services.

That came from a number of different sources here on slide nine.

Some of that is revenue that's generated by the recreation division, and so these are fees paid by participants.

Recreation service is kind of a classic public good that you can actually charge for, and so generating some level of earned revenue is a common practice nationwide.

That's also supported or subsidized by the public money that comes through, in this case, the general fund, and in the past couple of years through the MPD, although most MPD dollars are focused more on the capital side of the house than on operations.

And our focus in this study was solely on the operations side.

Slide 10 here describes that earned revenue and the mix of different services and where that's coming from.

So you see that aquatics plays a big role in that earned revenue portion of SPR's recreation revenue.

People are willing to pay and able to pay for access to aquatics.

Other chief contributors here include What is that?

Community centers and then out of school time.

Christopher, please.

I'd like to point something out on this slide.

And Councilmember Baxhaw will recall when we went through the sort of change to community center operations in 2011, one of the goals we were striving for was to generate more revenue in the community centers.

And if you look just after 2011, when we made those changes, the revenue, we actually began to generate revenue on the community center side.

And that was an intentional change that was part of a budget reduction strategy.

that involve some cuts but also intentional efforts to generate more revenue.

Right.

And Christopher, I really appreciate the fact that you remember how much fun we had in 2011 trying to figure out how we were going to keep parks operating and be responsive to the community.

One of the big concerns that we've had all along is to make sure community centers are open for people who can't afford to be using them if we're charging fees.

And you've done a great job of being able to figure out ways to make it make it easily open for people who otherwise couldn't afford to go.

And I'm grateful to you for that.

No, thank you.

So I'll jump ahead to slide 11 here.

This started off really as a sketch on a whiteboard in our office because we had to kind of understand how does this system operate just in terms of cash flow.

So here you can see that partnership between SPR and AHRQ and some of the funds that come directly to SPR, other funds for those programs that are provided through AHRQ.

First go to AHRQ and then there's a Down on the bottom of that chart, that sweep back towards SPR comes by way of a 4% par fee sharing that comes back to SPR, as well as numerous contributions to both operating and capital support from AHRQ that is coming over to support SPR operations year to year.

And some of that support from AHRQ actually increased after our 2012 experience as well.

That was one of the great partnership agreements that we came to, which is them sharing some of the costs.

They actually agreed to cover the cost of half of our assistant coordinators.

So they're still doing that to this day, to the tune of about $800,000.

I remember at one point they offered a million dollars up at a time when we were really under crunch time.

And then over on the left of that slide, you can see the general fund and MPD dollars coming in as well.

So here's a description of the organization.

I think it sort of describes, again, that focus on places and specific populations that programming is tailored for.

So the community centers and the aquatics focus on places.

You also have the special units, the out-of-school time, and other units that focus on programming for specific populations.

I should add on my notes on here I wrote excellent flowchart.

Okay.

So I'll be keeping this for part of my note.

You'll need it too because trying to figure out what's Seattle Parks and Rec and what's MPD and what's capital and what's programs and where the money comes and then being able to translate that to voters and constituents about where their park money is going whether it's from the general fund piece or if it's from the Metropolitan Park District.

Yes.

And as a chair of both I have a hard time and Tracy actually did a flowchart for me once but Thank you.

It is complex.

It is complex.

I think this is the last slide of what is Seattle Parks and Recreation.

It's really a numerical way of describing the people, which of course are a huge asset to the city.

And this is how services actually get delivered.

This is just the public sector staff over at SPR.

You can see temporary staff constitute about 30%.

And then down along the bottom, you've got the full-time FTEs.

So that has increased a bit over the years with a consistent about 30% participation by temporary FTE.

And then this would be augmented by ARC staffing of which there's a core group of full-time staff and then just a whole lot of part-time instructors who may teach one class or may teach many classes.

So we don't know in, it says 394 of temporary and regular, we don't know, it says 69% regular permanent FTE, how many employees that is?

We know roughly that that is about 200 to 300 employees 250 to 300 at any given time.

Are you like the third largest employer for the City Department next to SDOT or SPU?

Something like that, yeah.

A portion of you, or maybe you have about a thousand?

Yes, about a thousand employees.

So this is close to 400 if you add the temporaries as well, but it's just one division.

That's right, and we saw earlier it's about 25% or so of the expenditures of the department overall.

So it's just a portion of SPR's overall services.

Got it.

Thank you.

All right.

So that's our baseline of what are we talking about when we talk about recreation.

So let me describe a little bit how we went through our evaluative assessment and then our key findings and recommendations, which I think are of the most interest.

So there is no real scorecard that exists for how do you evaluate a public recreation program.

So we needed to create this.

And what we did is we really looked at what is the city asking of SPR?

What's public asking?

And then what are they promising?

And then how would we sort of describe that?

So up on the top, we see that first of all, we want to see that the recreation offerings provided by SPR are used.

They are growing as our city grows.

And that they're accessible to that population that SPR is targeting, group that doesn't necessarily have access to other resources.

So that's usage overall and access.

Then we want to make sure that they're delivered in high quality and that customers are satisfied and that they're actually having the results or the outcomes that they would like.

So here, PARCS has done a good deal of work using the results framework to describe for some portion of its classes what should be the outcome, what should be the learnings or takeaways or skill development for a participant?

And so we've looked at some of that data as well.

And then, of course, we want to make sure that resources are being used efficiently, that where we can generate some revenue, we are generating some revenue, and then that the expenditure side is kept efficient, and that we're underpinning all of this with strong operational practices.

It's a complex organization, and it needs to be well managed.

And then, right in the center there, we have quite a few recommendations around performance management, primary of which is to kind of retain some of the tension that you can see there in our framework, that you want to maintain highly used programming, but it also has to be very high quality and it has to be delivered efficiently.

So performance measures can help triangulate in on the department's ability or the division's ability to hit each of those notes.

Our key findings in five bullets, so the partnership with AHRQ is essential and you can't look at recreation without looking at AHRQ and the functioning of the advisory councils as well.

Data collection is really key to continuing to ensure that the division is functioning well.

I'll say also it has to be balanced with the desire to provide free and open access to participants, and there's some natural tensions with collecting each and every bit of data that we'd like to have with making sure people feel welcome.

And there's some natural tensions there that are being navigated across the country.

There are opportunities to strengthen the system.

Customer service, I think, is something we can always work on.

And then, as was alluded to earlier in the conversation, bringing forward more of the best practices that may be seen in marketing or other functions across a pretty large system and making sure those practices get centralized and disseminated throughout the organization and then training for staff being key to that.

Oh yeah, I got a lot of questions about this next slide.

Okay.

I'll let you talk, but I do have some issues.

So this particular slide is a recap of the recommendations.

There were 12 throughout the report that were presented sort of in chronological order, so to speak, over the course of our are working through the report.

The slides that follow, I'm gonna speak about different categories of recommendations and kind of organize them in three different categories.

The report does have some suggestions for how these recommendations get advanced in terms of timeline and priority and resources.

And we worked on that with both park staff and with council staff.

So the first category of recommendations is around Advancing as a Learning Organization.

So this bundles together four different recommendations that kind of popped up as we worked through the report.

This is largely around the use of data and insight to inform practices of the division.

So making sure that the department is using data to the best of its ability to inform what kind of programs are being offered to the community.

to be able to report out to council and to the public on how it's doing at a high level.

And I recognize the challenges here, but I think there's a lot that can be done to simplify some of these measures and present a high level dashboard of how many users are using the system, what kind of, what do we know about the users of the system?

How does that compare to the Seattle population?

Let me just stop you there, and I don't mind going through while I was looking at the 12. Can I ask why, like recommendation number three is number one, they're not in order, a numerical order of, why aren't they in order of importance?

Like why is your number one really number three, and your number two is number eight, and your number three is number nine?

So I was like, why wouldn't you just put them in like one to 12?

So the reason that they're in this order is that they, we wanted to have the recommendations arise in the report where the reader would first encounter them.

So if you begin reading the report at the beginning, you're going to first come across, it's sort of a foundational issue around the SPR and AHRQ partnership.

I see, but it's in your report on page 151. Thank you, Nagin.

Now I see how you grouped them.

Now I get it.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

I was getting confused.

Now I see that.

So what we did in the body of the report is we addressed some issues that are really fundamental to the whole organization, and then we looked at community centers, and then we looked at aquatics, and then we looked at the special programs, so kind of in that organizational framework.

And we identified recommendations as we went.

When we got to the end, we realized that just listing them in numerical order sort of misses the point that some of them are interrelated.

And so we tried to group them in these three themes.

And that's presented in the report as well.

So we have an opportunity, I think Parks does, because they have just launched, I think, or are soon to launch the new class registration system that will be so much more robust in terms of the kind of information that can be gathered.

Now, obviously, there are going to be, again, this balancing act between what kind of data we want to collect.

But when they say that they want to be out serving people who are not served either by income or other demographic information, and we haven't collected that information, we don't really know, well, how have you done in terms of achieving that goal?

And this new system would allow us to collect that kind of data.

And we've not really had that ability to do that with the former system, which was clunky and malignant, it's functioning at best, to say that lightly and kindly.

But the new ActiveNet system will be phenomenal, I think, in the ability to collect some of this data so that you guys can show who it is you're serving.

Absolutely.

I think Tracy's absolutely right.

We will have a wealth of baseline information after the first year that we can begin to measure against.

So this group of recommendations is around using that data to make sure that the organization continues to learn and continues to then implement based on that.

So that's the theme for these recommendations.

There is absolutely a connection to marketing and to practices that actually happen at the community center or the facility center level.

Seattle's a pretty diverse community by neighborhood, and some of the staff and the facilities have evolved to naturally serve that local community.

And I think that's great, but there's also an opportunity to bring some of those ideas home, some of those proven practices back to the center of the organization to be shared out to other parts of the organization.

I'll ask a quick question here.

And Christopher, you can help me with dates.

I think it was 2011, maybe 2012, and we had done something similar at that time.

And I think Cedar River Group had done some work prior to that, but then we built on that.

We brought in an expert, maybe Denver.

So Leon Younger was the guy from Indianapolis and he sort of went through kind of the same model that we borrowed after 2011 and began to implement some of these strategies.

So can you just talk a little bit more about how are we building on Mr. Younger's work?

Because sometimes I look at this and I think, gosh, we're doing the same study over again as contrasted to implementation and action strategies.

So Mr. Younger's work really focused around revenue generation.

We borrowed a lot of his ideas to focus on maximizing revenues at community centers while still keeping the facilities affordable and accessible for people who couldn't pay.

That was one of the main things we did.

We also looked at a model that allowed for innovation and creativity.

in as much as community centers shouldn't be cookie cutter facilities, that they're all unique and special because of the people that make up that advisory council in that community.

So how do you kind of overlay this idea of generating revenue and having a community fully embrace a community center in a way so that Rainier is different from Meadowbrook and Meadowbrook is different from Queen Anne and so on and so forth.

I think the third thing we did was look at what it really takes to operate a community center.

So we came up with a staffing level that was a minimum staffing level and a minimum, you know, you need baseline five staff at a community center to operate a successful community center.

So a lot of that work really focused on the Leon Younger work where we were really pressed to find some outcomes and to reduce the level of staff in order to keep the doors open.

Yeah.

You've taken that work and looked at the future and your recommendations.

Are you finding the work you've been doing consistent with that work?

Are there things that we should be focused on to help build or help raise revenues without impeding the work that we're trying to do, which is to make the facilities available for everybody?

No, I think the principles are largely the same.

We have some specific recommendations that may or may not be similar.

I'm actually not certain on the details, but for example, looking at fees for non-Seattle residents, we identified that as an opportunity for increased revenue.

As you're going through these recommendations, if you have something new for us, if you'd highlight that.

So this second group of recommendations focuses on that focus, that SPR's vision and its focus on target customers.

So I think this is a continued, you know, challenge for the department and for public sector in general, which is to reach those members of the population who are traditionally underserved.

There is, I think that the division has, within the year that we've been working with them, done better at articulating who it is that they are trying to serve.

They've been able to articulate it to us more clearly at the end of our work than at the beginning.

And I think there's work to be done to make sure that that understanding is percolated out through the whole organization.

And then that directly informs that question around fee setting and recommendation six is that you're aligning revenue opportunities with scholarships and discounted access or free programs to make sure we don't create barriers for those who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford access.

The number five recommendation around reducing barriers and encouraging has ties to both marketing and customer service.

which are the customer service pieces picked up here.

This is about strengthening the system.

The third bucket is really the basic operations of the organization.

So we have made some specific recommendations about how to refine that SPR-ARC partnership and the functioning of the advisory councils.

We think there's, with the advisory councils, immediate short-term actions that could be taken.

And then we would recommend kind of a wholesale look at the advisory councils and whether they're performing as designed across the city.

I think they certainly are in some neighborhoods and I might wonder if they are as well in other neighborhoods.

Is it, and again, I didn't go through the whole 184 pages, but on the advisory councils, how subjective is that?

I mean, I know you're looking at data too, but what advisory councils are working in some neighborhoods and some others, is there a trend where in some neighborhoods just because of capacity, you're not gonna have like what you would have in some advisory council or neighbors where people are just more engaged?

Absolutely, I think that's exactly right.

There are some communities where there is that community capacity to come out and come to meetings.

And there are other communities, parts of our community where that capacity is harder to find.

So just looking at participation, the regularity of meetings, the level of engagement, It varies considerably across the community.

So I might ask if that structure requires that level of capacity and engagement, if that's the right structure really then to support that community connection.

Wouldn't that correlate with whether or not that community has brick and mortar and actual community center somewhere to go?

I think it gets down to a lot of times to time and excess capacity within a household to make kind of community contributions in that way.

So you could have an actual brick-and-mortar community center but not a real active advisory council?

Absolutely, absolutely.

in which case we are asking the question, does it make sense to combine some advisory councils across the city?

So for example, environmental education, we've got environmental learning centers at Discovery Park, Carkeek and Camp Long.

Would it make sense to combine those?

We're going on to want to remind us that we're closing the Belltown facility and There are good reasons for that.

A, the lease is up, but also it was not utilized by population as much as we had expected.

But I would love to know what are the plans for the next year.

You don't have to tell me now because I don't want to interrupt the flow, but I do want to bring that back.

because we hear from our Belltown and our South Lake Union neighbors all the time.

And I just want to remind people it's the fastest growing neighborhood in the city by numbers.

So we can't forget that that's going to be an important resource at some point.

And I would just add, which I thought was very innovative with the Jefferson Park Management Agreement, that SPR gets to use their building when they're not using it as a community resource.

Right.

I think that that's a real wonderful innovative tool to look at other public spaces or places where the city of Seattle has partnerships, where they're not exactly community centers, but when they're empty, we can use them.

Absolutely.

I think that's it.

And we have over the years, when we have contributed to the construction of certain facilities, secured a long-term easement or use of some facilities.

And there may be some possibilities for us to use those spaces that were supposed to be made available to us on a regular basis for community meetings and so forth that perhaps have been underutilized over the years.

Absolutely.

I think Mohai is a great example of the city's investment yielding use opportunities across the city.

Oh, Mohai is one?

Mohai is a great example.

Is there another example?

Oh, geez.

I don't want to put you on the spot like a game show if you don't know the answer.

I would call your attention to recommendation number 10. An interesting part of our work, I think, was talking with staff about how they spend their time.

And around page 78 or 80 in the report, you can kind of see a chart of how do community center staff dedicate their time.

And I'd say it varies pretty considerably by center.

But some of the more compelling or poignant statements were that, 70 or 80% of some staff say that their time as a community center coordinator or assistant coordinator is spent supporting people with social service needs.

And that varies tremendously by community center, by neighborhood.

And I think SPR staff are there acting in some ways, in tremendous ways, supporting youth, supporting individuals, and that that You know, that person walks through the door, it ticks the people counter, you see a one person like came into the center.

That demand on staff time and the impact that could have on the resident's life can vary tremendously across the system.

And the training that's necessary, the emotional intelligence and smarts that's necessary on the community center staff really can't be underestimated there.

Isn't that what AHRQ is there for?

Isn't that what we contract with them to do the value-added and not so much the social services, but the human element of what you're saying?

You're not just walking in the door, you know what activities and programs are being provided?

So AHRQ really functions as our agent in the delivery of programs.

So they are actually going out providing the instructors, rather instructors, I think what we're really talking about here is the care and feeding of individual young people who may not have a backpack for school or may need to find some social service connection because they haven't been to the dentist ever in their life or something like that and they have a toothache.

It really is this embracing young vulnerable people in our community centers.

And our staff do that every day.

And it's just one of the jobs in the city that I don't think the people who do that work really get a lot of credit for.

Right.

And we have the same issue with libraries.

Yep.

Same thing.

As you know, MT deals a lot with the social services and actually has a full staffer that does social services for people.

We have the same thing with our food banks, where that's an entry level for not only food, but for healthcare, eviction prevention, signing people up for Medicaid.

I think whenever you have a public space and a public place where people are going, it kind of makes sense that you should have those kind of services there because they're going to come.

You're just saying you can't measure that.

It's hard to measure.

It's all qualitative and it's based on interviews with staff and there's no way we could put a number to that.

But I think it's the analogy to library staff is a great one.

If you go to the iSchool or if you go to a school and become a recreation specialist, you're not necessarily getting the training that might be needed on a day in the life in certain community centers.

point that we're all talking about right now I think is especially well taken because as we're going not just into budget but into a special committee that's going to be focused on human services and housing needs that we give credit to parks for the work that you are doing there but also I would hope that Christopher you'd think about do your does your staff your team need additional training or do they need additional resources I mean, like just the point you were bringing up right now, the library does have an individual that helps folks find housing.

I mean, it's certainly not in their job description when they started, but thanks to the Seattle Library Foundation, they hired somebody, and now I believe it's on, that individual's on staff.

But I would love to make sure that we're coordinating in a system-wide way that these individuals aren't just, you know, after they pass through the people counter, then what?

But they actually have tools or they have the resources or the information that they could hand out or whatever.

So maybe they have it.

I don't know.

I guess my question to you is if you believe that your folks could use some additional support in some way, as we come to budget, let us know.

Absolutely.

Great.

Thank you.

And just remind you, we did Two years ago now, opened up some of the community centers showers for folks to, so that has, yes, so that has added some pressure and again raises this expectation of, you know, people coming through the door that maybe people haven't necessarily been trained from the maintenance workers to the front desk staff to know how to deal with folks who may have issues that are just not about getting a shower.

So thank you for raising that.

And then again, budget time, I would love for you to be able to speak to that.

How's it going?

How many people have used it?

Are you having problems?

Are people beginning to recognize that, hey, we're all neighbors here, we're going to figure out a way to get along?

But if there are problems or if there's support or we want to do more of this, if you'll let us know, because it's a resource we have.

And the cost of opening up shelters and shower facilities are, I mean, it's a tremendous number.

So if we can use what we already have in a smart way, that's really going to be a value to hear in the next month or two.

So our last, pardon me, our last recommendation there on the page, I'll pause for a moment and say I think this is of particular interest or it was to us as we did the work.

And Council Member, you asked me to call out sort of where I think there's particular value add here.

One of the things that Parks said they want to do is focus on underserved populations.

There's a piece of an analysis there around community centers and where are public dollars being concentrated and where are participant fees being leveraged.

And you do see a higher proportion of public resources put into lower income portions or neighborhoods within the community at the geo level.

And so I think that's an important finding.

And I would want to be asking the Recreation Division as they go forward to continue to track that disproportionate use of public resources specifically to support access to a public subsidized good for the benefit of those who wouldn't otherwise have access.

We would also recommend continuing to leverage the ability of some to pay for these services to keep the buildings open and to use them absolutely as much as possible.

The capital system is there.

There are challenges.

If we use non-public dollars to keep the facilities open and how that works, I don't mean to say it's entirely easy, but I think Parks and Art can continue to work on that and use these facilities for the benefit of the whole community.

which means basically potentially having them open for rentals when they are being used for recreational purposes.

So looking for those opportunities maybe in a centralized fashion to be able to offer those community centers more for rentals when they're not being used as community centers.

Like you mean like Daybreak Star?

We're the lessor, they're the lessee, they rent it out for events.

Correct, correct.

And Parks does some of that already?

Yeah, it's just there's probably more opportunity to do more of that looking at when the centers are being utilized.

We don't do that with the aquarium, but we do that with the zoo, don't we?

So actually the aquarium rents out space almost every night.

Yeah, I know, but we don't get any of that.

We don't get any of that.

Well, we benefit because we don't give them any revenue.

What about the zoo?

I know they rent out the zoo.

Do we get a revenue stream from that?

No.

Okay, where do we?

I'm just trying to get to the point.

So we rent out our community center multipurpose rooms and we recover a lot of revenue from the rental of community center spaces for family reunions, anniversary celebrations, you name it.

And they're almost all booked on weekends.

All right, so our last slide here is really around what would be needed to implement the recommendations that we identified.

I've called out, I think, staff training already.

We would say additional capacity around performance management and organizational learning is a key theme here.

And it could be the use of existing resources and staff time or new staff time to devote to this.

But gathering that data, digesting that data, disseminating the learnings throughout the organization is a core theme.

It has the staff capacity implication and also the technology investments.

So the replacement to the people counter and then, as Tracy mentioned earlier, sort of that replacement.

that's called ActiveNet that will provide access to greater data for the good of the division, I think will be an important investment.

So that's a quick summary of a lot of work.

Love to take additional questions as you have them.

Yes.

Yeah, good job.

I apologize for not reading the whole 184 pages.

Yet.

I'm sure you'll get to it.

I'll get to it tonight.

I promise.

So with that, is there anything in conclusion?

Well, first of all, thank you very much.

I had went through the summary part and had tagged some of the sections.

The part that I mainly went to, which thank you, Nagin, is when I just went right to the summary of recommendations on page 152. That's the part that I was like flipping through to make sure I understood when after I went through the PowerPoint.

I would hope are we looking at another follow-up?

What are our next steps here now that we have this report?

What are our next steps?

So we are committed to continuous quality performance and improvement.

Well, yes, we know that.

I think what we want to do is go back and have this executive summary inform opportunities for change.

I think particularly on the On the technology side, we cannot achieve a lot of the recommendations that are being proposed here until we get ActiveNet up and running.

I also think the looking for more opportunities to leverage different kinds of revenues from community centers is a big one.

And training for staff.

And I really like what Council Member Bagshaw said.

I think too frequently the work of a staff person who works in a community center is a job that is difficult to relate to people when you are dealing with a young person or a senior person in some level of distress.

And people who were not exactly trained for that work, but who do it very well, I think continue to need support.

Well, is, first, second of all, is the Burke, I'm guessing, and I said it this morning, maybe I made a lie, actually yesterday, I said it Wednesday, is the Burke report up on your website?

Is there a link for it?

I'm not sure, I don't think so yet.

Is it supposed to be?

Yeah, but we can do that.

You will link that, okay.

We can make that available, you bet.

Is there something you want to say, Tracy?

I was going to say, and I think just like with the last consultant report, I think it would be great to maybe Christopher sit down and talk through kind of implementation on some of the key changes.

Again, I think you're correct.

The act of getting up and operating is a key piece.

And I can't tell you the extent, I think, that that technology is gonna help.

Not only from being able to track who are helping, but simple things like sending out email reminders to people about classes coming up, using that as a marketing tool for folks, as well as customer surveys after they've taken classes.

We have some of that work going on, but not as much.

And I think that's gonna give a capacity to get some feedback on

How much traffic do you get on the website?

Have you been able to measure that?

Is it healthy?

Almost 100% of the registrations are done online.

So getting to the next phase where we have a more functional registration system is going to provide a lot of information.

And the feedback tool, so after people go to a class, being able to tell us, hey, how did you like that class?

Did that class fulfill your expectation?

is part of the performance management that is difficult to do right now.

Okay, and where do we get ActiveNet from?

Who recommended that?

So, ActiveNet is a continuation of a registration system we're using right now called CLASS, and we will have that up and running by January 1st.

Okay, that's what you reported to us last spring, right?

Yes.

Was it last spring?

Yeah.

Okay.

Is there anything else?

I want to thank Brian and your team.

Good job.

Thank you very, very much.

I know that we had asked for this and you delivered, so I want to thank you for that.

Was there anything in Council's request last year that you want to bring to our attention that maybe we haven't asked?

No, not at this point.

Okay.

Thank you, as always.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Okay, so let me move forward here.

You guys can just hold tight for one minute so I can adjourn.

The next meeting for the Civic Development, Public Asset, and Native Communities Committee will be on September 19th, and with that, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Christopher.