Seattle Park District Board Meeting 7/25/22

you

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The July 25th, 2022 meeting of the Seattle Park District will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Andrew Lewis, President of the Board.

Council President Juarez and Council Members Mosqueda and Morales have let me know that they will not be able to attend today's meeting and they are excused.

Will the Clerk please call the roll?

Board Member Herbold?

Here.

Board Member Juarez?

Board Member Nelson.

Present.

Board Member Peterson.

Present.

Board Member Sawant.

Present.

Board Member Strauss.

Present.

And President Lewis.

Present.

I present.

Approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Approval of the minutes.

The minutes of the July 14th and 18th, the minutes of the July 14th and 18th, 2022 Seattle Park District Board meetings have been reviewed.

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

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Public comment.

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

The clerk will moderate the public comment period, starting with in-person public commenters and then proceeding to virtual public commenters.

And Madam Clerk, I will set public comment time at two minutes, and we can commence starting with the roster of in-person speakers.

Tim Motzer.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Tim Motzer, longtime resident of Lake City.

Below are more reasons why you should consider the 33 cent solution based upon questions and issues raised by board members at your July 18th meeting.

One, several members expressed their concern and possible objection to including the 10 million allocation for supplementation in the next cycle.

The 33 cent solution does not include this expense.

that with continued concern being raised by members regarding possible doubling of the property tax rate for the next cycle.

The 33 cent solution has a lower tax rate than the commissioner's recommendation.

and does not require debt service financing, which will add an additional tax burden for everyone 14 years after the completion of the forthcoming cycle.

Three, concerns were raised by members regarding the funding for lifeguards and aquatic safety.

The $0.33 solution has a dedicated line item for this need.

four the concerns were raised by members regarding the need for climate conscious buildings the commissioner's recommendation has continued to reduce funding level for major maintenance which would fund this need at 11.34 million dollars whereas the 33 cent solution has restored funding for major maintenance to $21 million in 2023. The attached park district spending plan from 2015 to 2022 documents this unadjusted shift from capital to programs due to COVID-19.

Five, another reason raised by most members was about the $2 million funding for the restrooms, whether or not that was enough to open all the closed restrooms and provide needed maintenance to keep them open and safe.

Again, the capital and operating funds to address this needs are included in a 33 cent solution.

Six, President Lewis raised the last concern about funding levels.

by adequate ability to track investments, and the situation was made worse by the fact that the 22 program budget were not evaluated to determine if funding levels needed would be maintained or changed going into 2023. I want to thank the commissioners for considering my comments.

Alex Zimmerman?

The hell, the dirty damn Nazi fascist mob, bandit and psychopath who speak to us from the heaven.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

For many years I talk to you about this park we spend for park a million and million dollars.

You have too many problems.

Poor people, homeless.

Minority, color, we have a ton of problem.

Park can exist before Seattle exist 100 year ago.

You know what it's been three staying in this location like a park for how many thousand years, 20?

You freaking a bunch of idiota, a cretina.

It's exactly what has happened.

It is exactly what as I told many time.

You're primitive, aggressive, and stupid.

It's a typical for female mentality.

We need cut this money.

For one, two year, park and stay in what is have now, without any more money, and cut everything what is possible.

It's important right now.

Look what has happened with sound transistory.

We make many mistake, you know what is meaning right now.

Dozen billion dollars got for nothing.

And we have a tunnel here, you know what I mean?

Yesterday article, very nice.

So we lose a dozen and dozen, maybe a hundred million dollars.

Guys, you need to stop acting like a cretino, you know what I mean?

Like an idiot who don't understand what is need doing.

I understand you go and sit here, but at least you never show us faces because we want to neutralize everybody.

Everybody will be speak from there.

Sky, you know what it means when everybody speaks from the sky.

You can sit here for another four years with $150,000 welfare and work from home.

So by definition, this is not legal and this is a pure crime.

Give money back to people.

Thanks.

That concludes the public commentaries in person and remote.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Can I actually just

briefly ask IT, if you're listening and seeing, if I can get someone from IT to come to the dais to help me with my screen on the dais, that would be great.

Just wanted to do that call out for some assistance.

Will the clerk please read agenda item one into the record.

Agenda item one, discussion of proposed options and priorities for cycle two funding plan for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

We are joined by Tracy Radsliff and Eric McConney from our council central staff to go over proposals from board members or issue ID from board members for items for inclusion in the cycle two investments of the Seattle Metropolitan Park District.

And I will hand it over to Tracy and Eric.

Thank you, President.

Tracy Ratliff, Council of Central Staff, joined by my colleague.

Hi, good morning.

Eric Kange, Council of Central Staff.

So today we will go through what I have gotten from all of the commissioners, except for one, over the last week as the options and priorities that they wanted to lift up today for discussion among colleagues.

I am happy to walk through each one of the slides and then have the council members to be able to.

Speak to their proposals.

Some of them have one or two slides.

One of them just have some of them just have some slides.

One slide.

Um.

Council members, Mosqueda and Morales and Morris are obviously not present, so, um, can walk through those but really can't speak to them other than just describing what their proposals are.

So happy to do it that way versus allowing the The commissioner's happy to proceed with me walking through those and then having the commissioners speak to each one of their proposals.

Yeah, Tracy, I would propose that we go through slide by slide and that after you queue it up, we give the opportunity to board members to speak to their particular items.

I think that works fine.

So moving to the first slide.

So let me just orient you to how we've structured these slides.

So you will see on the first column, you will have a brief description of the proposed option or priority.

The middle column references whether there are any existing proposals that we've heard about that might meet that priority or option and what the funding amount is for that particular proposal.

And then if it's something new or requiring an increase of an existing proposal, what we know in terms of the cost estimate for that, if there is any.

So moving to the very first slide for Commissioner Herbold.

The first item is to provide funding for new off-leash areas.

So there is no existing proposal, either new investments from the BPRC or the baseline funding that actually provides funding for new OLAs.

There is baseline funding of $130,000 that funds existing improvements to existing OLA.

So this would be one, that would be a new addition to the spending proposals and cost estimates would be TBD.

Moving to the next one, increased funding for trees and developed parks with a strong equity focus.

So there is funding in the proposed investments from the BPRC of about $400,000 for restoring and increasing urban canopy.

My understanding is that that funding along with baseline funding of about $2.3 million, or I'm sorry, $3.3 million from the Save Our Trees initiative can be used to plant trees in developed parks, but certainly not exclusively.

And so I think this might be one in which there would be some increase funding that would be specifically focused on planting trees in developed parks.

Moving to the next item, provide funding for the Mara Desimone play area project.

There is funding included in the equity fund initiative proposed by the BPRC that actually has the Mara Desimone play area named as a candidate project for that funding.

I think the question here is whether there would be adequate funding in that fund to support all the things that the community might want to see happen at that location.

So funding a cost estimate is TBD determine whether the equity fund has sufficient funds and would be able to allocate the funds required to to support that project.

Council Member Wood proposed to support the proposed Accessibility Barrier Removal Initiative, which is an initiative that was proposed by the BPRC at $1.3 million, but she would add in as a fundable item, hearing loops in community center meeting rooms.

I don't believe that this is currently what the Council Member is anticipating spending money on, but this could be one of those things that could be discussed as a fundable item.

should the Park District Board desire to move forward in that way.

And then finally, council member supports the proposed unreinforced masonry retrofits initiative that's funded at $1.5 million proposed by the BPRC commissioners.

This is one of those new initiatives that they are proposing.

So there is not a request for additional funding to that item.

Thank you so much, Tracy.

Board member Herbold, do you have any comments on these requests?

Sure, thank you so much, Tracy.

And thank you, what are you, council member Lewis, in this capacity?

You are not just a board member, you are the board chair.

Thank you, board chair Lewis.

In my district, district one, the West Seattle dog, Connecting coalition is calling attention to the fact that only one off leash area exists in all of West Seattle at the southern end of the district with increasing housing density in the north.

It's just completely insufficient to only have one location.

and tensions are flaring around off-leash dogs at parks and schools in the north as a result.

The coalition has mobilized volunteers to identify and vet a number of significant proposed locations for a new off-leash area, and they've been so successful in that work that the Seattle Parks and Rec Department is currently assessing a subset of the locations they've identified for suitability to build a new off-leash area.

what is not alone.

I've also received significant advocacy, as many of you have, in favor of expanding the number of off-leash areas using park district funds.

And the commissioner's report indicates that a full one-third of public comments about the park district mention off-leash areas more than any other category, including pickleball.

I want to also just lift up the support on the tree development issue.

Really interested in responding to the call that we've all heard to ramp up efforts to increase the canopy and focus on replacing dying trees in our developed parks.

An average of 700 trees per year are recorded lost in Seattle's developed parks.

With further loss, anticipated increase as a result of climate change, the aging of trees and related shifts in disease and pest vulnerabilities to trees.

This effort should have a strong equity focus if it moves forward to ensure that neighborhoods with fewer trees and parks to begin with benefit early.

canopy is now inadequate in equitably distributed, such that neighborhoods with people of higher health risks, based on racial, social and health data, also have less access to parks with healthy trees.

The program seeks to address this by prioritizing tree planting in areas that need it most and advocates with trees for Seattle confirm that funding request for this item is $637,000 annually from the park district, which will combine with additional funding sources from the city and be matched by private donors for a total of $2 million annually.

Moving on to the equity fund.

I'm really excited that the parks commissioners have included an equity fund and they're encouraging it to be more generously resourced.

where community members can apply for projects in their local parks, like adding a play area, but without requiring significant fundraising from communities that can't afford it.

I'm interested in more details about this fund, including the size and cost of projects that will be eligible.

There's been some talk about making, creating sort of a cap for project size.

and interest in learning the prioritization that will be applied to applications.

The slide that Tracy has produced has kind of blended the equity fund with a possible eligible project.

But I would like to highlight that I think the Mara Desmond Park Phase 2 is a really important project to fund, whether or not it's an eligible project for the equity fund.

So I'd really like those two things broken out, increasing the size of the equity fund, potentially a project like this could be an eligible project.

But even if it's not an eligible project, this is a park that has a long range plan for development dating back 2007. Phase one has been completed and phase two includes a play area.

interpretive way finding a pavilion and harvest station raised beds and other projects.

I've been hearing from community members who are eager to see the play area added in, and I'd really like to see that there's funding sufficient for all phase two projects included in the park district cycle two funding plan.

Again, the long range development plan goes back to 2007, and it's not moved beyond phase one.

Hearing loops was mentioned, appreciate that there's accessibility funding in in the budget for for a VA focused improvements.

And I would just like to make hearing loops, and eligible use.

And as Tracy said, I don't have much to add on the unreinforced masonry retrofit funding.

I'm just really grateful that there's funding included in the recommendations and want to make sure that that funding is retained.

These buildings were constructed, unreinforced masonry buildings were constructed between 1886 in 1957 with brick or clay tile-bearing walls.

And their walls and parapets are not secure to the floor.

They're especially susceptible to damage by earthquakes.

And when we are turning to our public buildings as places to go in emergencies, we have to make sure that those buildings are safe.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, board member Herbold.

I have a couple of questions for Tracy and, you know, really appreciate all of these issue IDs, particularly the off-leash areas, which I'm sure all of us are getting a significant amount of constituent outreach and interest in as council, as board member Herbold indicated the public comment for the parks and rec commissioners overwhelmingly was requesting an increased number of off-leash areas.

Do we know on average, Tracy, what the cost of developing and designating new off-leash areas is in terms of the building out of those sites and the double, you know, the double-gated entrances and everything that's involved?

Like, what kind of line item are we talking about on average?

on a project by project basis for what it costs parks to develop additional off-leash areas?

Very good question, Council Member, and one that we anticipate to ask the executive when we submit the next round of questions.

So we will try to get a ballpark understanding of that.

It probably is gonna vary depending on the size of the OLA, but we can see if they can provide us some ranges even there regarding the size of an OLA.

Great.

On the unreinforced masonry, and this is a question that is gonna be within the four corners of some other board member presentations later in the meeting.

Like, I have questions about the overlap between a lot of the capital projects we're envisioning in cycle two and this unreinforced masonry line item.

It would be helpful to know how this 1.5 million interacts, for example, with major retrofits for the Green Lake Community Center, or the Loyal Heights Community Center, or some of those projects we're envisioning.

Is this money intended to do unreinforced masonry upgrades separate from those initiatives, or is this intended to also be a source of funding that would be attached to some of those other capital projects that are envisioned?

Do we have any insight into that yet?

So my understanding from the write-up is that this is a separate pool of funds that will be targeted for a separate group of buildings that are in the parks facility portfolio.

It is not, as I understand, going to be used to do some of the URM improvements that might be required at Loyal Heights and some of the other pre-commitment projects that are looking at additional dollars and separate dollars.

Thank you, Tracy.

And that being the case, like a lot of questions I have from some of the recommended Board of Parks and Rec ads, I want to know what these numbers are programmatically attached to in terms of the metrics of what we can expect this to deliver.

Is this $1.5 million going to retrofit one building, two buildings, three buildings for seismic upgrades?

Is it going to be a bigger system-wide thing supported by bondable improvements?

I think that I flagged this already in an email to you, but I would really like to see metrics attached to what 1.5 million gets us in terms of retrofitting buildings, because I have not seen that context yet from the department.

And I think that's gonna be important in determining how we engage on doing unreinforced masonry retrofits.

I think this is also one counselor that I will just raise up is one that's going to require assessments of the buildings that are likely suspects for you are improvements, and that those assessments actually can't happen until the Department of Construction and inspections issues their final guidelines and we are we have one question into the executive to say when are those guidelines going to be issued because it seems to me you can't start doing the assessing of the buildings you need to do and then the repairs until we know what those guidelines are unless they have some sense about what those guidelines are and have already the idea about being able to move ahead with those assessments but there may be a little bit of a lag on this one just because there is awaiting those guidelines to be issued by SDCI.

Yeah, and maybe Board Member Herbold's gonna jump in on this, but I guess I would just say that I think it is odd.

for us to have a line item request for this when those assessments haven't occurred and we don't really know what 1.5 million gets us.

But I'll turn it over to Board Member Herbold to, and I don't want any of that to be misconstrued that I don't want to do on reinforced masonry upgrades.

I do, I just want more context behind this particular number and what this number is going to do.

So Board Member Herbold.

Just real simply, I don't know that the word assessment is the right is the word that at least I would use as it relates to what we're waiting for what what we're waiting for from STCI is an approach for retrofitting in different approaches.

have different costs associated with them.

And there are some new approaches that they're evaluating that are less costly and that deliver many of the same safety benefits.

So that's one of the things that SCCI is looking at is what will the code requirements be and what is the technology and the engineering that will be necessary to achieve those code requirements.

Of course, we have existing, you know, URM retrofit requirements now, but for a larger citywide program, we're looking at making some changes.

to and that's a report that I think we're going to get the first one in August.

I don't think we're going to get this far as far as they're mostly going to be reporting on hiring out I'm not going to go into the details of that.

I'm not going to go into the details of that.

I am staff.

I am staff.

But the point being is there is a frustrating but good reason for for this number is a placeholder.

And it is really important though to recognize that it is our public buildings in the city's sort of phased and we are gonna be focusing on buildings where people gather first.

And so it's really, though it's frustrating to have a number that we're not really sure what it's gonna buy, it's important to have some placeholder dollars to express our commitment to retrofit our buildings because we are going to be making it a code requirement for folks, owners of private property to do it as well as other public institutions.

And just to clarify, the assessment part is the assessment of SPR of their, they think that they have about 25 buildings that are URM candidates.

So it's once the guidelines get issued, it's SPR that has stated in the write-ups that they have to do an assessment of those individual buildings to figure out what needs to be done to come into compliance with those guidelines once they're issued by SDCI.

But helpful information, Council Member Perlbold, about SDCI's process.

My apologies, I thought we that was a known number of properties that in parks.

That was my understanding from the last report I read.

But yeah, appreciate clarification.

I can only provide you what I've been provided in terms of the write ups.

And that's what they're saying right now is that they think there's about 25, you know, most immediate candidates that would would be needing to be assessed and potentially repaired.

Thank you, Tracy, and to that point, I would like to see the overlap between the 25 identified buildings and the anticipated major capital projects and improvements so that we have a good idea of those 25, what is already being provided for through some of the other capital projects that are in the pipeline, and then what do we need to plan for that isn't there.

Totally agree with Board Member Herbold's points.

I just spent this morning with with a group of people at the Queen Anne Community Center talking about the unfortunate and ironic fact that the Queen Anne Community Center is the designated emergency muster point in the case of a earthquake, and it is also a non-reinforced masonry structure.

So that seems to pose some significant public safety problems.

But going forward, I do just wanna make sure that we get our head around like a project list and a good idea of what this line item is gonna buy And it sounds like we have a process for that with Tracy.

So a lot of interest in this line item from my office.

I just wanna make sure that we're building a plan for this.

Okay, any other comments or questions from board members for board member Herbold's presentations here or board member Herbold, if you have any additional clarifying remarks on some of these before we move on to the next slide.

Doesn't look like it.

Okay, thank you so much.

Tracy, why don't we move on to the next slide?

Moving on to Board Commissioner Juarez, who was not able to be present today.

She had one priority that she wanted to lift up, and that is the proposed funding for the Lake City Community Center redevelopment projects.

Project this is included in the pre-commitment projects with a potential funding amount of 20 to $25 million.

And so she is supportive of that as proposed in terms of the funding level.

Great, and this would be part of the bonding commitments that were intended to make.

That's the proposal, yes.

Excellent.

And I imagine per our previous conversation, this would involve seismic upgrades to the site.

Well, this is going to be a totally new building.

So I don't think there's going to be meetings.

I think they're planning to chair down the existing building.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, exactly.

But a building that will be one less on that list of 20. That's right.

Reinforced masonry structure is what I meant.

So that's good.

But again, I just want to flag it.

I think it is important when we're looking at some of these line items, how some of them interact with each other to make sure we're as we put together the capital component of this levy, how all these capital investments kind of speak to each other.

So.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

Great.

Next slide.

Board Commissioner Lewis.

So the first would be to increase funding for the Smith Cove Park development to include development of Phase 2. So there is proposed funding for Phase 1 included in the pre-commitment projects, but this would be adding approximately $7 million to assure the completion of Phase 2 of Smith Cove Park.

Second is to increase funding for the community center rehabilitation program, including support for the Queen Anne Community Center.

There is baseline funding from the first cycle of about $400,000 of NPD funds.

Primarily that money, I understand, is to be doing some of the planning and assessment work that is needed.

So funding would need to be added to do the actual construction of work.

Just as a historical note, the community center rehab project was one that had gotten about $10 to $12 million, maybe even more.

MPD originally, but in 2019, the executive proposed a funding swap to bring in REIT as a funding source for that project, and it was used to then free up MPD to fund other activities that then freed up General Fund.

So the amount of the MPD for this particular proposal from the beginning of the cycle one did decrease, but it was because of that fund swap.

We would anticipate seeing that continuation of the REIT funding for the community center rehab, but that is part of what we will see when the mayor proposes his spending plan and the adjacent budget related items as it relates to this particular initiative.

Next item would be to provide funding for new off-leash areas, including an OLA at Upper Queen Anne.

Again, as I said before, there is no baseline funding for new OLAs, but there is existing baseline funding to improve existing ones of about $130,000.

So this would be additional funding that would be needed to do new OLAs.

The next would be to increase funding for the new park development initiative, including funding for McLean Park and East Queen Anne.

The new park development initiative includes $1.8 million a year.

I do not believe McLean Park is listed as one of the candidate projects so likely would be looking at needing to bump up that funding amount to incorporate that park into that initiative.

The next one is proposal to increase funding for the play area renovations initiative to support additional projects citywide that include the installation of turf fields.

So the proposal from the BPRC is to increase play area renovations by a million dollars a year.

My understanding is that was not anticipating doing any turfing of fields, that is quite costly endeavor itself.

If I remember correctly, the latest was over a million dollars to install turf.

So this is one that if the council members wanted to increase and to allow turf fields to be a part of that initiative, that this would also require an increase in funding.

Thank you so much, Tracy.

Just to go through these briefly, Smith Cove Park, we've talked extensively about Smith Cove Park as a board, not only in this cycle, but in previous cycles.

I believe Council Member Strauss in particular is very, very, very familiar with this project from his work with Council Member Bagshaw in advancing this and appreciate his leadership and Council Member Bagshaw's leadership and really bringing people together to keep moving the Smith Cove Park project forward.

There is an envisioned second phase to the Smith Cove Park project, which as I understand, would have been envisioned as something we were talking about funding in cycle two, if parks had been able to follow through on the cycle one promise to finish the phase one development of Smith Cove Park.

It's unfortunate that we're not in a position to be able to do that, given that Smith Cove Park is still an unrealized project.

So I do want to look at the possibility of including the second phase of that project in the cycle two investments.

And so flagging this early for issue ID purposes and to work with the community and the stakeholders who have been given extensive promises and indeed, you know, if you go and talk to some of the folks in Queen Anne and Magnolia, one of the big promises during the campaign for the park district that we are now sitting on the board of was that Smith Cove was going to be one of the marquee projects and it is still a promise that has not been delivered on and that we need to work hard as a board to honor along with the other phase one preexisting commitments.

So looking at ways that we can enhance that and move on to phase two is going to be a priority.

Community Center Rehabilitation, I wanna lift this category up, Tracy, to say that I would like to do an entire meeting given the extensive interest around community centers that we heard at public comment from 350 Seattle, but also that we hear from our community councils and other stakeholders in this work, that there's a lot of interest in really leaning into community centers.

And we've touched on this a little bit with our discussion just now about unreinforced masonry.

We've touched on this through a couple of ads that are already within the four corners of this cycle two list of investments, including Green Lake and Loyal Heights, which we'll get to, Lake City Community Center, which we just discussed.

And I think that there's enough scope here where maybe we have a bigger conversation and have a meeting dedicated just to what a community center capital plan within cycle two might look like.

These are all major improvements that, as I understand, for the most part are bondable projects.

It gives a little bit more flexibility.

to the Metropolitan Park District to see how we can really lean into having the cycle be a very robust cycle for our community centers, both to make them seismically sound, but also climate resilient spaces.

So I think that it would warrant potentially a separate meeting where we just talk about a large capital component to the Metropolitan Park District, dedicated to community centers and what that might look like and what that impact might be so the board can decide if that's something they would want to pursue or not.

Given that as we go through the slides, this is gonna be a fairly common area of ID from board members.

On off-leash areas, we had this discussion with board member Herbold earlier.

I think this is going to be a fairly common area of interest among board members and certainly among the general public.

So look forward to learning a bit more about how much on average those projects cost.

On McLean Park, this has been flagged by the Queen Anne Community Council as a potential site for an additional dog run.

It is currently a underdeveloped park asset.

So I see this line item as sort of linked.

to the off-leash area conversation and just wanna flag that that's how I'm envisioning it and how a lot of my constituents in Queen Anne are looking at this.

So a little more conversation with the parks department on what that might look like and if that could be a shared priority going forward.

would be required to flesh this out to have a detailed proposal and a ballpark and what it would cost the park district if that were something to be pursued.

And turf fields, Tracy, can you maybe remind the board what the average, we sort of went through this just now with the Seattle Prep conversation, but can you remind the board what the average life expectancy is for a turf field?

I think about 10 years.

About what, sorry?

About 10 years, depending on how heavily it's utilized.

Yes.

So I think it would be, you know, because I know that there's also demonstrated interest from some other board members on turf fields, and that might be a separate line item all in its own for, how many additional fields we want to, we would like to upgrade to have turf.

and what the sustainable cycle of those assets are, not quite a long enough lifespan for bonding to be a viable option for this kind of infrastructure improvement.

So I think it really is not only a conversation about installing a turf field, but also the expectation of having a sustainable cadence to that work where that field can be replaced in 10 years.

So that's something I'm interested in having a discussion on.

We definitely have a very organized contingent of community members advocating for an increased amount of athletic turf fields.

And I know I see Board Member Nelson's hand up.

I know this will be an item that she has identified too, and I look forward to working on this with her.

And I'll go ahead and recognize board member Nelson for a comment.

Thank you, I will wait.

I just have a brief question, but I can include it when I talk about my turf issue.

No, this was perfect.

This was the, that was my last line item I was gonna discuss.

So if you have a question for central staff, this is a good time.

So when we talk about life cycle of turf, et cetera, I think it's also important to keep in mind the trade-off between the cost of maintaining turf fields and also the ongoing maintenance costs of ensuring that our fields are in a state where people can use them if they're not turfed.

So I don't know if that analysis has ever been done.

Tracy?

Not to my knowledge, but I will ask just to make sure.

It is possible that they have done some cost benefit analysis of turf versus natural grass.

Yeah, and the delta between those two things would be really helpful for establishing what a 10 year replacement cycle would look like.

So I appreciate board member Nelson identifying that.

And I'm sure the athletic fields folks are watching.

So just to say a number of us are including turf fields as potential ads.

So we're certainly listening.

want to work with you on how we might be able to put some of that in in this renewal cycle.

So thank you.

And can I just comment on your request about the community center proposal and additional funding there?

I think we should specifically ask the executive when they come in with the mayor's proposed spending plan, which should also address these budget adjacency issues to talk with us specifically about what their plan is for the community centers going forward, both the ones that are the named projects, so to speak, in the cycle two proposed spending plan, as well as the ones that are not necessarily named and what their plan is for moving ahead with further improvements to those community centers.

And I think we have to ask them at that time because we won't have time and have the information, frankly, between when they submit their proposal and you have to adopt a six-year spending plan.

So I think we will, if you're in agreement, we'll ask them to specifically address that when they submit their proposed spending plan.

Appreciate that, Tracy.

Yep.

But I do still think it would be good for us as a board to be able to have a session where we go through and talk about how the board could structure a major initiative around community centers.

know, as part of our process and working with the executive on on how they might pursue that work.

But we can we can talk more about that.

Agreed.

Agreed.

We and we I my point is just that we need them at the table to tell us the information we need to know about the anticipated projects that they see in the pipeline and what they think the ballpark costs are so that we can get ourselves to an understanding of what that line item would look like.

We kind of are getting a sense about that on the climate conscious building side, but this would be in addition to obviously the climate conscious as well as the URM side.

So get your, absolutely get your point about wanting to understand the overlap that might happen among these various initiatives as well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yep.

Next.

Moving on to Board Commissioner Morales.

So she would like to provide funding for the Lake Washington Boulevard and other walk, bike, roll improvements and options that would connect city parks, trails, and neighborhoods via the Olmsted Boulevards.

I put that there was no funding in the existing proposals.

there actually is funding in the baseline budget for greenways of about $240,000 a year, but I'm not sure that this item is exactly what that funding is about.

I think it might be, but I need to clarify about that and make sure that there isn't some funding, at least about $240,000 a year in the baseline budget, presuming that were to move forward, that could help address what her desire is there.

Moving next to providing funding to complete the improvements at Bexar-Sheva Park, There is no initiative that I have seen that has called out Bear Sheetal Park as one of those parks that would be an improvement, so this would also require additional funding.

Providing funding for security at playgrounds for toddler safety.

This is one that possibly could fit under the park safety initiative that's being proposed by the BPRC at $850,000 to remind folks part of the funding there would be used for additional park safety and presence of a potential uniformed park staff at various parks.

This is something that's the subject of a RFP and consultant work to identify what would that kind of initiative look like.

So it's possible that some of the funding from this initiative could be used to address part of this request.

Moving on to supporting and increasing funding for the equity fund initiative, including funding for the Rainier Beach skate park construction, as well as other community requested projects so this is really two things one, wanting to make sure that the Rainier Beach for the equity fund, which includes the $1 million proposed increase by the BPRC.

I failed to mention that there is also baseline funding of about $1.5 million as well at the equity funds for the council member or for council members, they may want to do more there.

And then finally, support funding for the Play Area Renovation Initiative, which includes funding for Hutchison Playground.

So there's a million dollars a year slated for the Play Area Renovation Initiative.

The Hutchison Playground is named as a candidate project, so it is seen by the Parks Department as a potential project that would be funded with this annual funding.

Next slide.

The next ones are just support for the proposed initiatives as they were submitted to us by the BPRC.

Council Member Morales supports the Aquatics Safety Initiative at $625,000 a year.

She supports the URM Initiative at $1.5 million a year.

She supports the Climate Conscious Buildings Initiative at $2 million a year.

She supports the Teen and Youth Program Initiatives, $520,000 for the Teen Development Program and $400,000 for the Youth Mentorship and Employment Program.

And then finally, she supports the Urban Food Systems Initiative at $700,000 a year.

Great.

Happy to take any questions about those, if I can answer them.

Do board members have any questions about board member Morales' request?

Okay, don't see any.

I think we can move on, Tracy.

Moving on to Commissioner Mosqueda, who is also not present today.

She would like to increase funding for the equity fund to support additional community proposed projects.

Again, that fund has a million dollars proposed bump up by the BPRC, as well as the $1.5 million in baseline funding from cycle one.

Provide funding for a new staff to explore partnerships with childcare providers desiring access to park playgrounds.

So my understanding of this is, that there is a desire to help childcare providers who need outdoor play areas to be able to operate their facilities.

Having somebody at parks who could help these providers to perhaps access some parks properties or playgrounds to meet that outdoor play area need.

This is not a currently proposed initiative.

So it would be a new initiative requiring additional funding.

And then finally, a council member supports the, and possibly is interested in increasing the funding for the climate resilience investments.

That includes the $2 million for climate conscious buildings, $300,000 for community center electrification.

And then there's a few others, including the urban canopy expansion and a couple of others that have to do with climate friendly investments.

And the funding amount there would be to be determined.

Thank you, Tracy.

Are there questions from board members on board member Mosqueda's requests?

Don't see any.

Tracy, I think you and I have discussed this, but now that we've seen this a couple times, and I agree that climate conscious buildings should be a big priority of the cycle to investments, I would like to get a bit more visibility into what exactly the 2 million a year is envisioned to programmatically do to realize those goals.

You know, is that 2 million that's envisioned to you know, support debt to make a bunch of improvements, 2 million to make a couple improvements every year for the six year cycle.

It would be good to get a bit more visibility into exactly how that money is envisioned to be programmed by the parks department as we continue to work through this process.

Same with the community center electrification for that matter.

Yeah, so I think the climate conscious buildings, there is much conversation to be had, especially in light of the Green New Deal oversight committee that has Pledged or proposed about $4 million starting in 2023 to do climate conscious buildings that could easily include some community centers.

So there might be some funding that Provided by the MPD Some planning, as I mentioned before, is also anticipated by the Green New Deal to even figure out which city buildings and or school district buildings might become those resilient hubs and then how do we coordinate that among the various funding sources for this particular effort.

Thank you.

We can go on to the next slide.

So these next ones are Board Commissioner Nelson's.

So the first would be to provide funding to install turf at Judkins play field and as I mentioned before there is no initiative that funds turf installation so this would be a new item and require some additional funding.

provide or increase funding to expand the presence of parks personnel to activate parks, provide general assistance to park users and address safety concerns.

Again, I think there's a proposal to fund the Park Concierge Initiative at $650,000 a year that was proposed by BPRC, as well as that $850,000 for Park Safety Program Initiative that could provide funding to address this specific need or additional funds could be needed depending on how expansive one wanted to have presence be at parks, concierge or a uniformed type of presence in parks.

Moving on to support or increase funding to expand access to community center facilities.

So there is a proposed initiative from the BPRC that would provide $3.7 million to expand community center hours on weekends and evenings, using a specific racial equity lens to distribute those hours in places where there is greatest health disparities and where there has been a greatest request for those hours.

So a portion of that $3.7 million would be used to expand those hours at selected community centers again with the equity focus.

Next proposal would support funding proposals that insure cities parks community centers, bathrooms, et cetera, are open, clean, and safe year round.

So there are a number of different initiatives that have been proposed by the BPRC that get at this issue.

The $4.7 million in baseline funding for providing clean, safe, and welcoming parks.

That was a part of the cycle one funding initiatives.

$794,000 in evening and second shift maintenance initiative.

That's been the new proposal from the BPRC.

And then the $3.7 million of community center operations initiative also gets at this issue of providing more access to community centers, cleaning of those community centers that have expanded hours.

The next proposal would be to support funding proposals that ensure public use of all swimming pools and beaches.

So there's a couple of initiatives that have been proposed by the BPRC, $1 million for pool major maintenance initiative, and then $625,000 for aquatics safety.

initiative.

That looks like it has an extra zero in there.

Sorry about that, folks.

That would try to get at providing additional staffing and training for lifeguards.

Then finally, requiring SPR to provide more details on the scope, design, and cost of proposed pre-commitment projects before funding or bond issuance.

And this is specifically related to those 11 projects that have funding that had been proposed as pre-commitments and just a desire that we have more details about those projects before the actual funding is appropriated or bond issuance authorized.

Thank you, Tracy.

Commissioner Nelson, if you wanna add to any remarks.

Yes.

So the guiding principle behind all of my priorities is that it's our responsibility to maintain the assets we've got.

And for parks and community centers, that means ensuring they're safe and clean and in good working order so that our public can use them.

And that's just the minimum that our public expects from us.

And central staff has indicated the proposed programs and funding amounts that can get us there.

In my mind, this shouldn't require a significant increase in property taxes to meet.

An editorial from the Seattle Times on June 24th refers to a survey from the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department that was completed and presented in February.

and says the number of residents who awarded Seattle Parks an A dropped by half since 2019 from 23% to 12, while F grades more than tripled, according to a Seattle Parks and Recreation Department survey.

And looking at the actual survey, 60% of residents of survey takers identified improving safety as extremely important and 50% said that improving maintenance and cleanliness is extremely important.

So be it bathrooms or the actual, the rest of the facilities in our parks and community centers, I do think that my priorities numbered, let's see, the second and third and fourth, get at that.

And so that I will be looking for the funding proposals that go a long way to getting us here at a minimum.

The one new funding proposal that I have, which is turfing Judkins Park playfields has been a priority for central district families and community leaders for years and years.

This is the home of the CD Panthers, but there are also baseball facilities there as well.

And I believe that, REAP funding, as I was reminded by Mr. Mozart, who gave public comment this morning, might be a more appropriate source of funding for this.

When I first identified this, I recognized that I didn't know what would be the best funding source for this capital project.

I do believe, though, that scoping and generating a cost estimate could be appropriate for the first year of this new six-year cycle.

So those are my comments right now.

I do want to say that when it comes to our facilities that are used in the summer, everything from wading pools, swimming pools, to water features in our parks and swimming areas that are natural beaches, increased staffing for, you know, to ensure that people are, can use those safely is in order.

So not all of my maintenance and other priorities necessarily require simply capital improvements that we're also talking a bit of staffing as other council members have identified here.

And finally, one thing that did not make my list but falls in the maintenance category is ivy abatement.

We talk a lot about the importance of our urban canopy and we own a lot of trees in parks and I just want to make sure that the item that addresses or urban canopy in this cycle will go a long way toward ensuring that ivy is reduced in our parks because that will kill our trees.

Thank you.

Thank you, Board Member Nelson.

I appreciate the highlighting of a lot of these ads, and they're definitely ones I have more questions on.

Tracy has received my email on this, but one of my frustrations, and I do appreciate Council Member Nelson echoing my clean, safe and open phrasing of what our goal on our park should be as part of this cycle.

I totally agree with board member Nelson's comments that fundamentally this park district cycle needs to be an exercise in making sure that is true.

if it's not true that our parks are clean safe and open all of the other programming that we're proposing becomes superfluous because members of the public are not going to want to use the parks or if they use the parks and have a bad experience they're not going to want to go back so focusing fundamentally on the basic services is essential in that spirit uh on the um community center operations funding and the the bathroom evening and second shift ad.

Um I've submitted a bunch of questions to central staff because some of the metrics that we have received from parks frankly don't really tell us much in the current form of where they are.

Um I believe and Tracy can can correct me that that the $794,000 in second shift cleaning is expected to get 12,000 additional hours of cleaning for bathrooms.

I don't have any context for what that number means given the current situation.

My direction to the department is I want the number in terms of hours that you think is connected to making parks clean, safe and open.

I don't want to just fund an arbitrary number that sounds big, that is implied to mean parks will be clean, safe and open, but in practice does not meet the public's expectation for the level of service that they're expecting for this investment.

So I want it to be more of an outcomes metric driven discussion than just here's a number and how many hours does this translate to.

It's the same I don't see it in here.

Tracy but there's a line item for something around like vandalism.

or like graffiti abatement, which I think is responsive to board member Nelson's remarks and would probably fit under that line item of support funding proposals, ensuring parks are clean, safe, and open.

Again, I don't really see how as presented that number is connected to, giving me confidence as a board member that there will not be graffiti in parks.

I get that it's a number that will increase the amount of removal of graffiti, but what I haven't really seen is what the business plan is gonna be connected to these investments that is going to lead to what, we want to see in our parks being clean, safe and open.

So that is more the interaction I would like to see from how Parks and Recreations interacts with the board is instead of having a dollar number, and then just a number of hours that's connected to, I wanna more see the business plan on how parks is going to adapt, to make sure that we have clean, safe, and open parks, that vandalism is repaired expediently, that graffiti is removed, that bathrooms are clean and open and safe.

And when we look at this, it's scattered over lots of different line items.

I don't understand why it's not more centralized in terms of how parks and recreation does this work.

I don't get why we have this 4.77 million baseline.

And then there's this like separate community center operations line item and the separate evening and second shift maintenance initiative.

I wanna see all of these things formulate into what the on the ground business plan for realizing the goals is.

And I've sent that direction to central staff.

Similarly to the Park Concierge and Park Safety Program, trying to get more visibility into what that uniform service would be like and how it would be activated.

We have an existing park ranger program.

you know, and I'd like to see how whatever these services are lean into that.

I'd rather improve and bulk up existing services than create new and potentially redundant ones.

And I am talking to, you know, Director Myerberg in the mayor's office about how safety initiatives funded through this park district cycle are going to be able to interact with the other public safety initiatives being planned to avoid redundancy.

But certainly a shared area of interest with my office.

So I appreciate these ads and board member Nelson, I'll turn it back over to you for your comments.

And then actually Tracy, we should circle back to you at some point to comment on some of my remarks about the cleaning and getting more context for what it is and a connected, you know, integrated plan of how this is gonna realize the overarching goal of clean, safe and open.

But I wanna turn it over to board member Nelson first.

to respond and then I'd like to hear where we are on some of those questions I have that are out to the department.

So board member Nelson.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that what we're both saying is that this shouldn't, what we're talking about shouldn't be an extra.

And it should be easier for us to identify how maintenance is being funded right now.

And this is a point that I made last time.

And so however we get there, yes, but I think that this is information that we do need before we start making decisions, you know, on actual amounts in these different categories.

So, and I did want to speak just briefly to the 3.7 million community center operations initiative.

What I hear from people, particularly in the South end is that they would like their kids to be able to use our community centers more flexibly and longer hours.

And this is an equity issue to me.

And so I don't know if 3.7 is the number that it will take to add for staffing as you were noting.

how much will it cost to keep those community centers open for a few hours extra during the day, add more staffing so that indoor basketball courts are clean and accessible, et cetera.

So, but that is the principle behind my priority of expanded access and the associated cost in this table does need some digging into.

Yes, thank you for that clarification board member Nelson.

And I do think we're saying the same thing.

It's that I don't, I have not gotten enough insight from the department yet on programmatically what these numbers are gonna materialize into on the ground, right?

I mean, like- Where we're existing funding is going right now.

Yeah, or how existing funding is being prioritized.

So that's why I was mentioning earlier, you know, what, what is the business plan to realize the goal of clean, safe, and open totally acknowledge that that might require additional investment in the department.

I'm not saying it doesn't, but what I'm saying is, is based on the numbers we've been presented and the metrics that have been attached, the answers that we've gotten back so far are the numbers of hours that these numbers produce in terms of additional cleaning and whatever else.

What I haven't really gotten a good sense for is, is that the number of hours required to actually make things clean?

And that's what I wanna have a conversation with the department about.

Because we certainly, you know, need to be doing a lot more to ensure that our parks and open spaces are maintained.

But it's a matter of whether these investments are envisioned to actually do the trick.

And also just how all these investments, like I mentioned earlier, talk to each other.

Like we have several line items that seem to bleed into each other.

I'd like to see, get a better idea of how in the business plan that is organized to deliver these services, which is what I think is currently missing.

But Tracy, if you have any additional context for that.

Only to say that you all have raised very good questions and we have submitted a number of those questions to the executive to try to get answers.

Some of these obviously you can say crossover on a number of different initiatives right to meet the intended goal, and I think the message is coming loud and clear that one of the key goals for you all that you want to see as a result of this next spending plan.

is that we have parks and we have community centers and we have bathrooms that are open, clean and safe.

And so we need to hear from the executive fundamentally, how does the next spending plan that they will be submitting to the board for approval, how does it get to us?

How do we get to that goal?

And for each of these initiatives, kind of what's the specific outcomes related to each one of those initiatives that get us to that overarching goal?

And so we have put forth those questions to the executive and we look forward to their responses when they submit their proposed spending plan to the council.

Thank you, Tracy.

Okay, I think we can go to the next slide.

Next slide is for Board Commissioner Peterson.

So he has indicated he would support continued funding of the Cycle 1 initiatives, which in 2023 dollars would total about $58.2 million.

He also has indicated support for debt financing the pre-commitment projects.

and these are those projects that we have, the 11 projects that include the land bank sites, Loyal Heights Community Center renovation, Green Lake and Evans Pool Project, Lake City Community Center, Amy Yee, and then the 8th and Mercer tenant improvements for the new community center.

And then finally, he has indicated he would be supportive of partial funding of the proposed funding for the Climate Conscious Buildings Initiative, which again, has about a $2 million annual appropriation that is proposed.

Thank you.

Thank you, President Lewis, for the opportunity to speak to these items to support our parks and community centers and and for your leadership in moving this all forward.

I want to thank City Council Center staff for pulling together these various items that focus on the parks district source of funding, which is approximately 20 percent of the total budget for parks and rec department, I believe.

And as I mentioned at previous meetings I am concerned about the proposal to double the parks district portion of property tax bills across the city.

Increases in property taxes as we know can be passed along to renters and we have several additional property tax levies coming, including increases for affordable housing and transportation.

So for parks, I would support a reasonable back to basics proposal that includes three main investments here shown on the screen existing programs, new projects we've already committed to and retrofitting some community centers with environmentally friendly heating and cooling pumps to address heat waves, a customer herbal and I recently secured funding for similar.

building upgrades at a West Seattle library and a library in my district in Northeast Seattle.

And I support doing that for more community centers as several of you have spoken to earlier today.

So perhaps, and I appreciate Council Member Lewis, you asking for additional details on that perhaps.

These could be financed through bonding to do those retrofits.

My modest proposal would increase Park District's funding from today's 56 million to approximately 70 million, which would be a 25 percent increase instead of a 100 percent increase proposed by the Parks Department.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I do have a clarifying question, or Board Member Peterson.

I do have a clarifying question for Tracy.

On the previous slide, when we were discussing Board Member Nelson's items, it was remarked that there was a 4.77 million baseline on the cleaning.

Can you clarify, I was gonna ask on the last slide, when you say baseline, is that a cycle one investment or is that general, from the general fund baseline?

Sorry, I should have, yes, I should have been clear.

It's the cycle one initiative spending plan.

Okay.

Yeah, sorry.

Yes, because there is also a baseline.

There is additional funding, obviously, that's not, that's not very good, actually.

That's what I mean.

Could you go back forward then to, back to board member Peterson's list.

So, You know, I appreciate board member Peterson, you know, identifying cycle one and kind of putting a magnifying glass on it because we.

There are a lot of really important things in cycle one that we need to continue, but I'm not necessarily opposed to like a hard look at looking at some of those items and how they interact with the Envision cycle two investments.

For some of the reasons board member Peterson is raising, like we just discussed, we have a nearly $5 million cycle one baseline for some of these cleaning and maintenance ads.

they're proposing the board of parks and rec commissioners, and I guess by extension, the parks department are proposing 760,000 more to essentially go into that baseline.

That's important context for talking about all of these things.

I want us to, And as board member Peterson also noted, we're talking about the cycle one initiatives being 20% of the overall budget of the parks department.

And I want us to start getting more comfortable as we go through this process to look comprehensively at all of the assets and resources of parks as we're having these discussions and how they all interact with each other.

mostly to have a conversation around accountability for how well parks is executing on the basic clean, safe maintenance part of their mission and responsibilities.

And I wanna make sure that as we are considering cycle two investments that can get those services to the point of where the public expects them to be, it's being done in the context of what's already being spent toward those things and how we can derive more value from them and be better as a board and a council in holding parks accountable for those goals.

So I just wanted to point that out to take this opportunity since board member Peterson has identified this cycle one line item that we'd be thinking about you know, the cycle one and be careful about kind of how we define baseline, you know, because my expectation is baseline is it's like what parks has completely independent of MPD investments.

But it is also important to note there's sort of this additional baseline of cycle one initiatives.

And if we're adding on to the cycle one initiatives, what are the metrics what do we expect from parks to add on to it and how can we have that discussion that is really outcome-based instead of just you know metrics that don't really translate into something members of the public are gonna see as enhancing their experience in the parks.

So I just wanted to give those comments and clarify that baseline question from the previous slide, but I did just wanna flag for central staff that I think we're moving into the phase where as we look at the different buckets of funding, we need to be really, really clear about what they are, where they come from and how it interacts with potential cycle two investments.

Tracy do you have a response to that before we open it up to more board members.

I don't only just in terms of the, the focus and desire for outcome measures for.

what you all decide to approve in terms of the new proposals as well as the continuation of cycle one.

That is a body of work that we can request and will request of the executive through the adoption of the spending plan.

I anticipate they have begun that work on the new set of proposals, have not seen them propose outcomes for the continuation of those cycle one investments, and we would expect to see them and request them to come back with those specific outcomes in discussion with the board in January, once a final spending plan has been adopted.

And I say once the final spending plan has been adopted, because when they know how much money they have for each one of those initiatives, that is when I expect that we could could have some serious conversations about expected outcomes.

And that I don't expect that we're going to get a whole lot more play from them on this before that happens.

We have some in the, in particular in those new $30 million of investments, have some outcomes, not probably all that what we might want to see.

But just putting for you in front of you that that that will be a body work that they will likely have to come back to us with, hopefully in January, so that we can see specifically for all those things that are proposed to be funded or included for funding in.

the cycle two spending plan, what those expected outcomes are.

And that would include looking at those areas.

And there are a few from the first cycle of spending plan to the second where there is some marrying up, there is some layering on of some funding that we would expect to see outcomes that incorporate that funding for both those two kind of spending plans, I guess you would say.

Okay.

Are there any other comments from board members on board member Peterson's items?

Okay, seeing none.

Thank you, board member Peterson.

Next slide.

Moving to board commissioner Strauss.

He would propose to increase funding for the Green Lake Community Center and Evans pool project.

There is $50 million in the pre-commitment projects.

He is looking to request an additional $50 million that I believe would be funded through bond issuance.

would be to provide bond funding for the interbay athletic complex improvements.

This is not an initiative that is included or proposed in, um, the baseline or the new, uh, proposals from the B.

R. P. P. P. R. C. The requested amount would be approximately $10 million.

There is a request for additional funding for the following park restoration projects.

Woodland Park Pergola restoration replacement, Ballard, Playfield, Turfing.

Sandell Park waiting pool improvements and the Ballard Commons Skate Bowl features.

None of those park projects are listed as candidate projects, to my knowledge, in the proposed initiatives that have been put forth by the BPRC.

So those would all be requiring additional funding.

And then finally, I would like to propose adding funding for renovation of bathrooms at Salmon Park at Salmon Bay Park and Gilman Park.

There is $1.2 million for comfort station and shelter house renovations initiative that's been proposed by the BPRC, but those two particular bathrooms are not listed on the candidate projects, which doesn't mean that they couldn't be put on that list or that they might not be there in longer term future, but they are not currently listed as candidate projects and so would likely require some additional funding to complete them.

Commissioner Strauss.

Thank you, President, Board President, whatever the title is that we're using today.

Thank you, Tracy.

That was very helpful.

As many of the viewing public have watched my comments regarding how the Green Lake Community Center renovation or replacement has been characterized up until this point is not adequate for what the Parks Department and the community have understood as the promises made to date, and we need to be able to keep those promises with the community for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, the community has at other points in their history, rather than putting their request forward to the top of the line, has stood back, stood aside and waited for other projects throughout other parts of the community to be put forward.

We've done the renovations to the community center to date, We are now at the point where even those renovations are not meeting snuff.

We need to, the boilers are not, they've been replaced and they're still not working to capacity.

I'll tell you colleagues, this week I'm holding my in-person town hall at Green Lake and due to the inclement weather with the heat, we're looking at places that we can go inside the AC.

Green Lake Community Center would be my first choice and it's not an option as today.

So the parks, Department has put forward the proposal before us saying that $50 million is enough with renovations.

In the Seattle Times, Council Member Lewis, I've read that they wanted to do 49% renovations so that they didn't have to meet the building standards that we passed earlier this year to help combat the climate crisis.

Frankly, what I know is that the Green Lake Community Center is the hub for all of North Seattle.

That's D5, D4, D6.

There's people from all over the region that come there.

It's the most heavily used park in our city.

And at times it feels like the community center hasn't been upstated since the Olmstead brothers built it.

What we know is that the pool needs to be fixed and that the instruments for attending to the pool are cased in concrete.

What we know is that we don't have childcare there today.

What we know is that we don't have adequate space for the community to gather, much less to be able to come together to weather out the storm when we have climate crisis events like this week, we don't have a space for folks in the North end to come together at Green Lake.

And so colleagues, that's why I know it's a big number, five, zero, $50 million addition to this line item.

It is less than what the parks department has stated in the past.

The parks department and their renderings and currently on their website say that the project's $120 million.

Candidly, I think that that's probably too much.

What I know is that we need to use the existing building to the greatest ability possible by, you know, anything's on the table, you know, completely gutting it and rebuilding.

But what I also know is that the current footprint is not large enough to accommodate the childcare, the community event needs, and then the programming needs of what is the most heavily used park in our city.

Moving on to talking about, and I know Tracy, thank you for writing the words bond funding.

Just noting that those are central staff's words, not mine.

I'm again, agnostic as where we find the funding, but let's talk about the inter-bay athletic complex for a moment.

This also, and not even in my district, Council Member Lewis may be a little help out here on this one.

I know that Council Member Lewis is trying to do his best to keep a neutral negotiating point for this entire process, which is part of why I'm bringing this forward.

What we know about the Interbay Athletic Complex is that the softball fields are the ones that get rained out the most in the entire city and that there are some upgrades that are needed to the soccer pitch.

The soccer pitch is Seattle's best soccer stadium at this point.

At this point are the key words because the speakers are not working.

There's safety measures within the complex that I won't go into that need to be addressed.

And we have a larger desire today for people to play soccer than ever before, especially coming with the World Cup coming in 2026. We need to be prepared to handle the soccer desires of our future generations.

Just I know Ballard is as Ballard is, but the Ballard Youth Soccer Club has been having five generations of people playing soccer, and I think that that's why there's so much interest up in the North End.

We've had boomers, we've had Generation X, Millennials, Y and Z all playing for Ballard Youth Soccer, and the latest iteration has been, you know, Ballard FC.

uh, semi pro soccer team that just one are, um, going to conference quarterfinals this week.

So won an overtime yesterday.

What we know is that at this pitch, there are four hours that are used for non-soccer and that's for Frisbee.

And if we are going to be a soccer hub as we are already moving to be, we need a facility that meets the needs of the soccer community here in the city.

And so, candidly, the back of the envelope estimations have been $25 million to redo the complex with additional seating, re-turf the softball field so that folks that are outside the soccer community can also have a benefit here.

The reality is that these costs are going to go up when we have real pen to paper, which is happening this week.

And what we need from our body, the Metropolitan Parks District right now, is to demonstrate some earnest money into this project.

I'm not gonna come to colleagues and ask you for $50 million for this project.

I am gonna ask the community to come together.

And so the United States Soccer League, League Two is very interested.

I've had good conversations with Seattle Pacific University.

We know that we have more partners out there.

We know that private fundraising will have to be part of this redevelopment.

And what we need right now from us colleagues is some earnest money to get the project underway.

So that's what's going on there.

Last two items provide funding for the following park restoration projects.

This is where I asked central staff Ratzliff if, you know, what is already contained within the parks district funding package, because we know that, you know, when I was doing my work at Woodland Park earlier this year, I found some of those pergolas might be originals.

And that land was annexed in 1891. The Ballard playfield was committed to be re-turfed during the pandemic and we took those funds to use in the general fund and so that needs to be finished off.

I know that at Sandel Park, the waiting pool, it still feels like 1981 out there.

It seems like it could use some, some good improvements for the north end there.

And Ballard Commons what we know about the skateboard features when Ballard Commons was originally um being transitioned from a safe way into a park there was an extensive skate park there with street skating that would anyone of any age could get on a skateboard with a helmet and and and learn learn the sport This was well before skateboarding made it to the Olympics, which they are now.

When the park transitioned from being a Safeway parking lot into a park, what was taken away were all of the elements that somebody who was new to learning how to skate could participate in.

So what was created was a deep bowl that really only experienced skaters could participate in.

We have an issue at the Ballard Commons right now where we have a spray park that's appropriate for five to seven year olds.

And we have a skate feature that's appropriate for 15 and above.

And so there's eight to 10 years of a child's adolescence that the Ballard Commons doesn't work for them.

We are working to get that children's playground put in but even still that would get somebody you know maybe age up to age 11 to play in and then we need this park to be for all ages and abilities and that, and really what we need to be.

And we've got the space right adjacent to the skate bowl where additional features for folks that are learning how to skate can be, this is important.

And then finally, you know, when I'm looking at bathrooms in the parks in D6, what is very apparent to me is that the bathroom at Salmon Bay, it was, How do I say this colleagues?

It was old when I was five and it hasn't gotten any younger.

And so there was definitely a different way of building bathrooms in the seventies with cinder blocks and metal facilities that are not welcoming, comfortable, And I'll leave it at that.

And so Salmon Bay Park is absolutely one of those restroom facilities that needs upgrading.

Things have changed in 50 years.

And the same for at Gilman Park.

What I know is that the Gilman Park bathrooms also have not been updated.

They might've been built a little bit sooner than Salmon Bay, but this is just, as I'm taking a survey of my district, what I'm hoping to find are small ads that we can make, Chair, so that we're not hoarding money in the North end, but that we're making strategic investments to ensure that parks are, as Council Member Nelson said, clean, safe, and open to all, that they're meeting the needs of our constituencies, and that we're able to equitably distribute the funding throughout the city.

So I just wanna really focus in on what are the specific needs of our district so that we can reserve other funding streams for other places.

And I'd be remissed if I didn't add it here.

And Tracy, my apologies for not putting it on the list formally, childcare.

I think I talked about it during my discussion of Green Lake.

Child care throughout the city, both for programming and for physical space, is a huge priority of mine.

Chair, with that, I have nothing further to say.

Thank you very much board member Strauss.

And Tracy, I think it may be starting off with just a couple of questions around the bathroom renovations.

That is a line item where we got a couple of metrics from the department in terms of what they envision that 1.2 million to be able to do every year, correct?

Can you remind us what that is anticipated to produce?

I'm looking really carefully, because I don't want to try to base it on my memory.

I want to say, on average, the cost of a renovation is about $540,000.

That's what I think it is.

One moment.

So it would allow about 2 and 1⁄2 additional renovations for each year of the cycle.

Correct.

Correct, and then with the baseline funding, additional, several additional improvements that can be done, correct.

And again, when we say baseline, do we mean cycle one or do we mean the general fund?

Now, in that case, I'm meaning the general fund.

Okay, good.

Yes, correct.

Thanks for clarifying.

Thank you for keeping me on point there.

I think this is good.

This is a perfect category for the discussion we had earlier of looking at this 1.2 million investment in context.

And I think board member Strauss's addition here, and this was within the four corners of a few other board members requests to really focus in on bathrooms.

What I would really like to see, what I would really like to see is an overview of our comfort stations and bathrooms within the system and how they are triaged in terms of a project list for parks to be moving through and what their capacity on an annual basis to do renovations is within baseline funding and cycle one.

and how this investment would help to accelerate moving through that work plan on bathrooms and comfort stations.

And then we could see with some transparency, you know, where Salmon Bay Park and Gilman Park, in the case of board member Strauss's additions here, or where some of the comfort stations in other districts and other parks around the city are in this overall list that is being worked through and what the stated goal and metric is of the department to be able to work through that list until everything that needs to be renovated is renovated.

It also introduces a potential additional thing we could do here which is maybe we can work with the city auditor to do an audit of the city's bathrooms and comfort stations and parks to make a determination and assess the renovation and maintenance needs similar to the bridge audit that we worked with council member Peterson on two years ago.

So just flagging that as a potential thing that would be helpful as well.

And board member Nelson has a comment.

Well, could we also just throw in basic cleaning to the body of work that you're describing?

Renovations is one thing, but just making sure that I would like to know more about how are we ensuring that they're clean with toilet paper, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Working locks on the doors, but cleaning is the minimum.

Yeah, absolutely.

Board member Nelson, like that, my comments earlier around, you know, what is the business plan, right?

For like the maintenance and cleaning of bathrooms definitely goes to that.

I mean, it's evident that, I mean, this is just one of the fundamental ways that people interact with parks is comfort stations, severely limiting to your ability to make full use of parks if you have to leave the park at the point you need to use the bathroom.

or if your experience using a bathroom in a park is unpleasant.

So like, I think really leaning into this as part of our cycle two work is warranted.

And I think we need more from the department to realize the goal of clean, safe and open.

Chair?

Yes, Board Member Strauss.

Thank you, thank you.

Just to, I appreciate the line that you're going down with this conversation because at Salmon Bay Park in particular, we've had the children's playground replaced twice in my lifetime.

The first time for good reason, the second time, was it a nice to have, or was it a real need for a replacement, right?

And like, this is the conversation where I think that we need, I believe, and I, and I'm here for having the playground meet the needs of our children, and if we're going to undo work that we've just done while we skip over replacing the bathroom.

We're not seeing the forest through the trees here.

And the last point, and I'll pass it back to you, President, for the remainder of the time, but in my conversation about Green Lake Community Center this morning, it really is what I heard from so many people calling into public testimony about the resiliency program through Healthy Through Smoke and Heat campaign, is this is exactly the moment that it becomes so crystal clear.

In a moment where I've scheduled a public meeting during a pandemic to be as safe as possible to do so outdoors.

And now we have another crisis layered on top of it, which is the heat this week, where I have to make a decision on how to keep my residents who want to interact with me as safe as possible.

And there's nowhere at Green Lake to do that.

because we haven't adopted the healthy through smoke and heat campaign.

And if we were able to pair these different projects where we're able to create a climate resiliency center for people to be able to survive these crises, I just highlight the fact that Green Lake Community Center is a place that we really absolutely need to be doing this.

and because we haven't adopted the metrics of this campaign, we don't currently have a place in the North End.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

The next point that I'll make about these proposed ads on Board Member Strauss's slide, and maybe, Tracy, this is the right time, because I think we're through all of the Commissioner's slides, aren't we, at this point?

We are, and I have a little bit more information on conversations that might be helpful in terms of some of the context here, but go ahead with what, you're gonna go ahead with it and I can provide that.

And actually maybe we're thinking of the same thing.

So I know that we anticipate having a pretty good year for REIT, for real estate excise tax.

And I know that when we start talking about the capital, improvement projects that are present on this slide and honestly on all of our slides.

I'm not singling out Board Member Strauss' slide and priorities that we all share in wanting to realize major capital projects, especially for infrastructure that is that is well past the end of its useful life and that is still being used.

And this interfaces with our earlier conversation with board member her bold about the seismic retrofits and everything else.

I the reason I would like to convene potentially a separate a whole MPD discussion dedicated to the component of this work that is. community centers in particular, is to talk about how cycle two investments could interface with things like REIT and the general fund and some of the other sources of funding that go into parks to realize some of those goals.

because my understanding is parks is anticipated to get a decent chunk of REIT investment this year.

And I just wanted to flag that here so that we can queue up a discussion that's not completely in isolation within the four corners of the property taxing authority, the MPD, but something that is envisioning and thinking about that REIT money too, as another input to this discussion.

But I'll turn it back over to you, Tracy.

That is exactly what I meant when I said earlier that it will be important for us to see not only what is included in that next six year spending plan, but the adjacent funding that is going to be included in the budget, the general budget, which includes general fund and REIT.

And again, you are absolutely correct in that Parks has been a recipient of a good amount of REIT.

from year to year depending on what the needs of that department are and what is what the needs are of other departments for sure.

So, we will hopefully when we have that six year spending plan proposal from the mayor.

When we receive that, we hopefully will also see those adjacent proposed investments that we will see in his proposed budget for the parks department to be able to fit together, understand the total picture there, particularly as it relates to community center, but to a number of these other areas of investment.

As it relates to comfort stations, so the existing budget is about $1.6 million a year, and they think they can do about three renovations a year.

So that coupled with the new MPD funding gets you to about five per year.

They have a list of Canada projects that now is just about 10 bathrooms.

So you can see that there is more to come in terms of that list.

I understand that you actually will have the Department of Parks and Rec into your public assets meeting on the 17th of August, specifically talking about bathrooms.

And I think one of the reasonable questions that could be asked of them to present on is what's the plan for the bathrooms in terms of renovations and the candidates that are in line and how you are approaching those proposed renovations coming up in future years, presuming not only just additional money from the NPD, but also assuming the baseline funding continues.

Yeah, I mean, if Parks is watching, in preparation for that meeting, what I really would ideally like to see as it comes to the comfort station discussion, again, is really just getting some context for the scope and scale of the system, you know, how many comfort stations we have, you know, how many bathrooms we have.

Obviously, there's a lot of overlap here where it's very common for, you know, I mean, a lot of the comfort stations or bathrooms in a park to be in a community center or some other asset like that.

So again, there's overlap between some of these, some of this different work, but it would be nice to see an overall list of within the park and recreation system, an overview of the type and nature of bathroom and comfort station that fall under the entire system and how those renovations and improvements are triaged, working down that list would just be really useful information for us.

Because if you're saying Tracy, like we can, and the number you said, was it five to six a year?

Like if this line item, this 1.2 million line item went into cycle two, it would be five to six a year.

Correct.

Yeah.

So it would just be, again, it would just be interesting to know what that metric is buying the MPD.

Like if it's five to six a year, but we have 300 falling apart comfort stations, you know, it, you know, that context I think is important when we're talking about what the metrics is of what, what we're getting for this investment and what the public is getting.

But what we know from the information that they have provided is that there are 94 comfort stations and 30 shelter houses now, I don't believe that those include bathrooms and community centers and environmental learning centers we can we can, again, we will ask them specifically to address that at the meeting on the 17th and we will also just get that information for the council members who can't be there.

So we know that that's what they have in terms of those existing bathrooms.

We know that right now they're on a renovation life cycle of every 42 years.

And that with the investment every 42 years, yes, to Council Member Strauss's point.

And so that they would hope that with this additional money that they could bring that down to an average of 34 years in terms of replacement cycle.

So I think it will be good to hear from them about how they've done those calculations and whether there's any possibility of trying to speed up that process.

I know that they have a general approach to how they do asset management and decide what facilities overall are improved upon that has to do with equity issues, but also life, health and safety issues.

But again, it'll be good to have them specifically address that at the meeting on the 17th.

And we can provide that information to council members who can't be at that meeting as well.

Tracy, I'm just glad the Civilian Conservation Corps built them really strong the first time.

You know, we need another Works Progress Administration, Tracy.

But no, that's good to hear.

But I'd like to see, again, I'd like to see that list of the comfort stations like triaged in terms of what their condition is.

And I mean, you're sort of answering that with that information now about what the, anticipated average renovation cycle is, but I imagine it's not the best practice to have 42 years be the renovation cycle for a comfort station.

But are there any other board member, board member Herbold?

Thank you.

I just want to flag as it relates specifically to the conversation that we've had around community centers use as cooling centers and as a place to address the city's need for a location to go to in heat emergencies.

In this time last year, the council passed the Office of Emergency Management's All Hazards Mitigation Plan, and we included language in that plan requesting OEM include in their development of the All Hazards Mitigation Plan, it's a plan they update every five years, that they include an effort to identify approaches and projects which can mitigate the impacts of excessive heat on vulnerable populations in Seattle, The Office of Emergency Management should engage multiple city departments, community-based organizations, private sector partners, and other subject matter experts, including public health and OSC, to scope realistic and implementable strategies and approaches and identify needed public and private funding for these strategies.

Suggesting that if we are going to be having a focused meeting on the strategies relevant to our community centers, we should check to see whether or not OEM has done any of this work and has recommendations for this particular group of municipal-owned assets that we're talking about here today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Board Member Herbold.

And Tracy, we can move beyond Commissioner Strauss's slide now.

I think- I'm sorry, can I just confirm that that- Yeah.

That, Tracy, that you'll help run that down?

Yeah, I was about to go back to that, Board Member Herbold.

I just wanted to move to the questions slide here.

But then Tracy can, yeah, if you can respond to Board Member Herbold's questions.

We surely will include OEM in that question again.

The Green New Deal Oversight Committee just provided some additional funding to do this kind of planning, as I understand it.

So your point is well taken to say, and how are they going to work with OEM that is also working on a similar plan for where we might have these climate resistance centers?

And do they, it's been a year since we approved the plan, the resolution asking them to begin the planning effort.

So my specific question is, is do they now, today, as a result of this year's long work, have recommendations?

Thank you.

Thank you, board member Herbold.

Are there any other comments from board members now that we've reached the end of overviewing?

I mean, I'll just briefly say to kick us off, I think this was a very useful exercise and appreciate central staff and queuing this up and really laying it out.

There's lots of strong areas of commonality that I think can queue up for the stretch between today and when we leave for August recess, a couple of additional sessions to really dig in to a few areas of common interest to board members.

really dig into some of these questions around metrics from the department, things that we would like to see in terms of realizing a vision of clean, safe and open parks, and really making sure that that process is not siloed to only being within the four corners of the cycle two, but being cognizant of all of parks resources.

and a driving force for what that business plan is to realize those goals.

I think a lot of questions have also been raised about how to structure the capital project component of the work in the Metropolitan Park District.

How do we build a capital project list for what we identify as board member priorities?

And then how is that capital project list work through and funded cognizant of all of the different funding opportunities that are at the disposal of the parks department and we had a brief discussion today about real estate excise tax.

we're gonna receive from members of the viewing public, a formal revenue update, which will include the real estate excise tax in August, which I think will be helpful for this discussion, particularly around our discussion on capital improvements.

I think it would be useful, Tracy, maybe even in anticipation of that, if we could distribute to board members a brief summary of the scope and scale of the things that we discussed today that could be REAP eligible items would be perhaps a useful exercise, just also useful for queuing up budget this fall.

But I think that context is important for talking about.

particularly the capital side of these investments.

But I think this was a useful discussion.

I appreciate board members being patient and really working through a lot of this.

And it was nice to see lots of areas of commonality, which should make reconciling a lot of our requests an easier process.

So with that, are there any other board member comments or questions before we adjourn today?

Okay, seeing none, I am going to go ahead and conclude this meeting of the Park District.

The next scheduled meeting of the Seattle Park District Board will be held on Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 at 2.30.

That is potentially subject to change if there's some additional things we might want to look into.

But at this time that currently the scheduled meeting is September 6th, 2022 at 2.30 p.m.

It is 11.23 a.m.

and we are hereby adjourned.