Seattle Park District Board - 6/24/24

Good afternoon, colleagues.

It's June 24th.

The meeting of the Seattle Parks District Board will come to order.

The time is 3.03 p.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth.

I am a member of the board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle.

I apologize.

Jody, please proceed.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Board Member Kettle.

Here.

Board Member Morales.

Here.

Member Moore.

Here.

Board Member Rivera?

Present.

Board Member Saka?

Here.

Board Member Wu?

Present.

Board Member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Six present.

Clerk?

Board Member Strauss?

Yes.

Board Member Strauss is present.

Thank you.

Board Member Strauss?

Thank you.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

Cannot forget Board Member Strauss.

Thank you, Board Member Strauss.

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

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

We are going to now proceed to the election of the president for Seattle Parks District Board through first meeting of 2025. Are there any nominations?

Yes, there is.

Council Member Kettle or Board Member Kettle?

Board Member, Council Member Kettle?

Thank you very much.

As a board member, I would like to nominate Board Member Hollingsworth as chair.

Second.

Well, thank you, Board Member Kettle.

And for the second, the name of the board member, Hollingsworth, me, has been placed in nomination as president.

Are there any other nominations?

There's no other nominations made.

Hearing none, nominations are closed and we will proceed to a vote.

Will the clerk please call the roll on electing board member myself, Hollingsworth, as president through the first meeting of 2025.

Board Member Kettle.

Aye.

Board Member Morales.

Yes.

Board Member Rivera.

Aye.

Board Member Slaka.

Aye.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

Board Member Wu?

Yes.

Board Member Hollingsworth?

I didn't know I can vote for myself.

Yes.

Seven in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, the ayes have it.

Colleagues, I really appreciate your nomination.

I'm president of the Park District Board through the first meeting of 2025. We will now proceed to the election of the vice president for Seattle Parks District Board through the first meeting of 2025. Are there any nominations?

Yes, there is.

Council Member Kettle.

Well, thank you, Chair Hollingsworth, board member.

I would like to nominate board member Sarah Nelson as the vice president of the Seattle Park District Board.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I will second that.

Are there any other nominations for Vice President?

Hearing none, we will move.

It has been seconded.

It has been nominated and seconded.

The name of board member, council member, council president Nelson has been placed as nomination of vice president.

Are there, I already said that.

Hearing none, nomination are closed and we'll proceed to a vote.

Will the clerk please call the roll on electing board member Nelson as vice president through the first meeting of 2025. Board member Kettle.

Aye.

Board Member Moore.

Aye.

Board Member Morales.

Yes.

Board Member Rivera.

Aye.

Board Member Saka.

Aye.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

Board Member Wu.

Yes.

Chair Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Aye.

The ayes have it and board member Nelson is elected as vice president of the park district board through the first meeting of 2025. I'd also like to note the attendance of council, or well, I guess your board member or council member, board member.

Thank you, Amelia.

Board member Moore has joined us.

If there's no objection to the minutes from November 20th, 2023, Seattle parks district meeting will be approved.

Hearing none, the November 20th, 2023 Seattle Parks District Meeting, our minutes are approved.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes on my behalf.

We will now open to the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should be related to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We have no public commenters who are registered remotely or in person.

Thank you, clerk.

There are no public comments.

I'd like to remind the public that you can email the council at council at seattle.gov for your public comments related to this board.

There's no public commenters.

So public comment will now be closed and we're gonna move to the items of business.

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

Agenda item one, Seattle Park district update, district background for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

I would like to invite Christopher Williams and Michelle Finnegan from Seattle Parks and Recreation to the table.

We will be doing a briefing and discussion regarding our district background for Seattle Park District Update.

And then looking forward to having you here.

And then we also are joined by Tracy from our Seattle Council Central staff.

Please, you can go ahead right into your presentation.

Please state your name for the record and you can jump right in.

Thank you, Christopher.

Hi there.

I'm Christopher Williams, Chief of Staff, Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Tech support too.

Hi, Michelle Finnegan, Policy and Finance for Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Thanks for having us.

And Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central Staff.

Park District Board Chairs and congratulations to Councilmember Hollingsworth on your recent nomination to the chair.

Thank you took a lot of hard work with convincing my colleagues so thank you colleagues.

All right, so today we thought we would give you a primer and some background on basically what is the Metropolitan Park District.

And we'd like to walk through a presentation.

We actually have four items that we'd like to cover today.

One is some basic background on the...

WHAT IS A PARK DISTRICT?

THE SECOND ITEM WE'D LIKE TO COVER IS OUR PROGRESS FROM 2023. EACH YEAR WE'RE REQUIRED TO DO AN ANNUAL REPORT, AND WE'D LIKE TO SHARE THAT INFORMATION WITH YOU.

AND THEN THERE ARE TWO RESOLUTIONS THAT WE'D LIKE TO BRING.

ONE IS TO REAPPROPRIATE UNSPENT FUNDING FROM last year and be able to carry that forward.

And then there's another resolution to modify dates.

So, let me get to the next slide.

Okay, so the original intent for the Park District was to enhance the department's ability to basically sustain operations.

Historically, the Park Department has juggled the ebb and flow of general fund support, and the Park District was thought to be a...

to secure funding over the long term.

The benefits of a park district is they were thought not to require an annual vote.

Prior to the creation of the park district, we were on park levies.

So the idea that every six years or so, we'd have to go back out to the public for a vote A park district, again, not requiring a public vote was thought to be more sustainable and more predictable.

So this idea emerged through a citizen stakeholder committee.

We work really closely with the park foundation who did a campaign.

The park district vote was held in August of 2014. and kind of narrowly passed.

Again, the goal was to find ways to support the backlog of major maintenance and to enhance the basic ability for the department to continue to operate, particularly during times when there would be budget contractions.

Fundamentally, the park district levies property taxes that are dedicated to public park and recreation purposes.

So we can't use park district revenues to fund things that are not within the park department's sphere of control.

The vote established the Park District in 2014, and each year, or rather, every six years, we adopt a six-year spending plan or strategic plan.

So the next cycle for renewal of the Park District spending plan will occur just before 2028, when we will go out and engage the public for their ideas on what the priorities for future spending should be.

Next slide.

There was a strong interest by elected officials to incorporate existing forms of governance into the way the Park District would operate.

So...

Previous park leaders went to Olympia and worked with Olympia legislators to get legislation that authorized the creation of a Seattle Metropolitan Park District that had two key characteristics.

One, that it would be contiguous with the borders of the city.

And second, that the park district for Seattle wouldn't necessarily need to elect a separate board of governors could also function as the Park District Board of Governors.

The mayor appoints the department leadership and provides more specific direction within the bounds of the budget and policies set by the city.

We are frequently in a space of reminding people that there's no building you can go to called the Park District.

The Park District is merely a...

merely a fundamental fund source for the Seattle Department.

It comprises about 35% or better of our total funding package for the department.

The department owns and operates facilities for residents of Seattle to further our three goals of healthy people, thriving environment, and strong communities.

The Park District Board, which is really yourselves as the city council wearing a different hat, is the governing body for the Park District.

To manage sort of your roles as a city council and your role as a governing body, THE IDEA TO CREATE AN INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT WAS CREATED TO MANAGE THE RELATIONSHIP WHEN YOU'RE WEARING BOTH HATS.

A BODY OF RESIDENTS KNOWN AS THE BOARD OF PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSIONERS PROVIDES CRITICAL PUBLIC OVERSIGHT AND FEEDBACK OF ALL OF OUR OPERATIONS AND HAS SPECIFIC RULES MANDATED FOR RELATED TO PARK DISTRICT PLANNING.

So a little bit more about the interlocal agreement, what's in it, and what it says.

The interlocal agreement accompanied the legislative package authorizing the Park District to be placed on the ballot in order to address other questions and concerns being raised by the public.

So some of these questions included things like City staff would perform the duties that would be applicable to our labor union agreements.

We wanted the Park District funding to kind of recognize and honor that.

We also wanted to work within the scope of the public works agreements that the city has in place and that the city would continue to own any assets created by park district funding.

And then we would apply the I-42 language, which prohibits non-park and recreation uses on park land for capital projects and parks paid for by park district funding.

The interlocal agreement also set forth uh, requirements for the public to be engaged in the strategic planning process, which occurs every six years.

Uh, also, um, uh, I think maybe one of the most important things it did was establish a baseline level of funding for the Park Department.

Uh, basically, uh, uh, it established a general fund floor plus inflation, um, So those are the basic characteristics of the interlocal agreement.

And at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Michelle.

Thank you, Christopher.

As Christopher mentioned, as we approached cycle one, even the first year of trying to figure out what to prioritize in the park district, a lot of it was building on existing services.

People wanted more maintenance of parks, more recreational services.

And through that, we really have continued to have a braided approach to our funding sources.

You can see here that those funding sources support these various lines of business and we set forth outcomes that are partially supported by park district funds that are building upon general fund, earned revenues in our facilities, real estate, excise taxes, et cetera.

And overall, as Christopher mentioned, the Park District in 2023, the year we're talking about today, because we're gonna talk about the annual report for last year of 30, actually it's the same, 37% of our operating and capital budget is supported by the Park District.

As we moved into cycle two, which actually we had a couple of fits and starts along the way with the pandemic, we were scheduled to have our cycle two be 2020 through 2026. We did do a couple of pauses with your predecessors and some of you in the room during that time, but that allowed us to do a lot of internal work, looking at how we wanted to talk about our lines of business.

We actually did a couple of different versions of public engagement.

We looked at our reporting and evaluation structure and we worked with the park district or the park district board, as well as the board of park and recreation commissioners to set up our structure for moving into cycle two.

2021, we did more robust community engagement.

And then in 2022, we worked with the mayor and then the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners to develop a approach and review a number of investments based on what we heard from the community previously.

And then most of 2022, actually half of the year or so, Tracy and a number of people on the central staff facilitated a council review of what the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners set forth.

And a six year plan was officially approved fall of 2022. And we began to implement that the January 1st of last year.

And we're gonna talk about that more in our item two.

But some of the things going into that six-year planning cycle, which we worked with the mayor's office and council at the time, was to develop some financial assumptions that would guide that policy direction, and those things included things like a 4% inflation rate, setting forth what we were calling an operational maximum to have a planning number to think about what level of investment could be made without needing to be surprised by the need to do a levy lid lift or to have to do some real quick reduction of services related to that.

So the plan altogether It's pretty close right now to utilizing all of that capacity within the Park District for our current six-year planned priorities.

This is a few examples of the things that were funded, and we're actually gonna get into this more in item two, so I won't go into it too much, but it did things not unlike cycle one, where we actually developed enhancements to services.

We had a small but mighty park ranger program before this, and the cycle two really did a huge investment in that.

in that program.

We also heard a lot from you all and the community about investing in our urban canopy and trees.

And so there was a lot of enhanced investments in trees.

And then we reworked our kind of what we called our major projects challenge fund that was a cycle two investment into more of an equitable park development fund.

have branded that as the park community fund so that received additional services recognizing that there may not be as much private match in that and then we did do some new things we actually launched our first dedicated vandalism response team that does graffiti and other abatement of vandalized assets to get those back into service as quickly as possible so it was a mix of kind of enhanced services and new And then we've also been building on the goals of the first park district in terms of accountability and oversight.

We actually have utilized some funding that was integral in the first cycle to have some more capacity in terms of data, a couple of our operating systems that are key to our base operations, both our asset management system and our recreational facilities.

registration systems were funded by the first cycle, that information has been utilized throughout that cycle and into cycle two to do more robust reporting to actually develop this line of business structure we'll talk about in the next item, and allowing us to build financial reports that talk about all of our funding sources, which is the way We've now, as we go into cycle two, have been reporting and actually adopted the financial plan, recognizing those lines of business.

And then we continue to do our, well, we haven't yet in cycle two, because it's not mid-cycle, but we'll continue to do our mid-cycle, end-of-cycle reporting and working with our Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners as our oversight team.

And then the Park District Board, in adopting the six-year plan, also set some clear goals for reporting.

We responded to the first piece of that early 2023 with a reporting plan, which is what most of our reporting you'll see in item two relates back to, as well as the park district board at that time as the city auditor to join us in continuing to assess some of our services.

And we're actually kicking off a review of our restroom program with them starting just this month.

And then, finally, just wanted to share one more piece of background is that there's actually a regular cadence of your meetings wearing these Park District hats.

Obviously, the June meeting is typically the first meeting of the year, and we generally cover the prior year financial and operational performance, and then review any appropriate legislation.

As Christopher mentioned, we have one piece related to carry forward today.

And then in October, you tend to hold a public hearing on the proposed budget for the following year, and in November, along with the city structure, you adopt the next year's budget, as well as a resolution setting the tax rate for the following year.

And of course that recognizes that we are often here with council member Hollingsworth and her committee talking about our just general parks and recreation services.

So that is our park district, how we got here overview.

Thank you, it was a wonderful overview.

I'd love to open it up to my colleagues to see if they have any questions at this time.

And I'll pause and just see if anyone has any questions.

Okay, well, seeing none, thank you.

Will the clerk please read item agenda.

Agenda item number two into the record, please.

Agenda item two, Seattle Park District update financial and operational performance for briefing and discussion.

Awesome, we're moving along here.

And then Christopher and Michelle, looking forward to the financial and operation performance piece of the presentation as well.

And I think we're getting set up here.

So I will state how amazing obviously our Seattle Parks is, but how I got to meet the crew chief in the Central District.

God, his name slips me.

Dwight Brooks.

Thank you, Dwight Brooks, and how hard they work.

And I encourage all of our other colleagues, if you haven't, meet the crew chief that is in your district, who is the one managing the parks and making them look beautiful.

So anyways, it was great to meet Dwight.

Thank you for that, Christopher.

I just had his name in my head, and then I flipped out.

Anyways, all right.

Financial and operational performance.

Please just state your name for the record and jump right in.

Christopher Williams, Chief of Staff, Seattle Parks.

Michelle Finnegan, Policy and Performance.

And the Seattle Parks are back.

You're kicking us off.

Okay, well, I guess I'm gonna set the table and kick us off for this next round of presentation.

So you're gonna hear more from Michelle.

She's gonna highlight our accomplishments in Cycle 2, or 2023. And what I wanted to do was kinda highlight some of the things we did in 2023 that were very high level.

The mayor hired a new superintendent.

We're fortunate to have him.

AP Diaz came on board right after the city council, you adopted resolution 51 authorizing the next tranche of park district funding.

In response to this massive level of new funding, the department had AP came in and did a couple of things.

He reorganized the organization to be more responsive to the demands of having to spend $320 million each year for the life of the six-year cycle.

And what that meant was he created three deputy superintendents.

Michelle is our deputy superintendent for finance and policy.

We have a deputy superintendent for park operations and a deputy superintendent of capital planning and development.

And it was these structures that AP set up to help us carry out this work of delivering on the park district.

The other thing I wanted to highlight here before we get into the discussion is our capital project delivery historically has followed a very familiar model that I think not only happens in parks, but I think is the city's approach to delivering capital projects.

Typically that first year, in the life of a capital project typically includes a lot of public and civic engagement with the community to hear their ideas.

The second phase of a capital project typically includes the design and permitting phase, which can run several months as well.

And then the actual construction phase is the third phase of the life.

of a capital project in our department.

And again, I think that's important as you kind of consider the timelines on some of these capital projects.

The other thing that we have leaned into by way of exploration of innovation is this idea that there could be new approaches and new methods for capital project delivery.

We are exploring things like design build, capital project delivery.

These are not really traditional models for public sector capital project delivery due to the public works constraint.

But we are exploring those opportunities and are working very closely with FAS to see if all these projects have to happen the same way, or is there some innovation that can be introduced that would reduce the timeline for how long it takes to deliver a capital project.

We're working on that.

I think what you're gonna hear from Michelle is we've been working on siting off-leash areas.

We're working on decarbonization of our facilities.

And we have a great new park ranger program that we've recently launched that we're gonna talk about during this presentation.

So with that, I will hand it over to Michelle.

Thank you.

So I'm super excited today because we actually have for you our first annual report and our new structure, and we're going to use that as the format to brief you all today, and we'll leave you copies.

I want to give a special shout out to Justin Hellyer, who was our project manager for this effort this year and worked with people across the organization and especially with the park and recreation commissioners subcommittee on oversight to bring this to fruition.

So thank you, Justin.

As we mentioned before, some of the things to note and this is that this is the first year that our annual report talks about all of our funding sources.

In the past, we were trying to slice the pie and just talk about the Park District, which as I mentioned was kind of hard because it did all this kind of incremental stuff related to our other funding sources.

We also recognize that 2023 was the first year in this new cycle and therefore was a year of ramping up services and preparing so there was a lot of planning work as well as getting things kicked off and running.

And then as we developed this report, we were also trying to think of different audiences.

So this main report, which we'll hand out today, it was really focused more on a community perspective than having a level of information there that was hopefully interesting and accessible to our community at large.

We also...

you know, for the Michelle's and Tracy's of the world, there's also a very much more financially deep dive into the line of business and detailed line of business metrics.

And unless you're us, you'll probably just look at those online and not print them out, but I'll have a couple screenshots to share with you what those look like as we move forward.

So this is just an attempt at a kind of a table of contents of what we cover in the report.

We used our pillars of healthy people, thriving environment, and vibrant community to share this.

We also, because of the year of planning, we did have a deeper dive in terms of building for the future.

And we won't cover all of these things, you'll be happy to know, but the items that are italicized here today we'll touch on, There's more in the full report for you.

There is also kind of front matter, like a letter from the superintendent and the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners, as well as an overview of our financials.

And here you can see the adopted 2023 budget, which does highlight that the Park District was 37% of our overall budget and Just generally about two thirds of our budget supports our ongoing operations and maintenance and services.

And about a third of it supports our capital delivery.

The other funds referenced here on the operating side is primarily our park fund, which is the fund that's supported by fees and revenues.

Grants go through that fund as well.

and a little bit of smaller funds like sweetened beverage tax.

On the capital, most of the funding and the other funds is related to the waterfront project.

And so the LID and other funds that are supporting improvements to our assets down on the waterfront.

I also want to bring your attention to the note at the bottom of this, that while this is looking at SPR's budget, the Park District also now supports the Seattle Center in their ongoing operations and maintenance of the waterfront park that they do in partnership with us through a MOA.

This is a slightly different vision of the budget that you would see in our report.

We used a different view of it, but this is intended to show that while the budget is adopted annually, there's also a lot of revisions that happen throughout the year, whether it's through a supplemental ordinance if we get a grant appropriated, or most commonly with our capital carry forward.

On the operating side, you'll see that there was a little bit of unspent funding, but you will notice in our next item that we're gonna ask to re-appropriate some of that to support the annual wage increase that came through council with the labor contracts recently on the city side.

And then on the capital, as Christopher mentioned, our spending with our capital programs are not necessarily linear or follow a fiscal or calendar year, so that appropriation does carry forward automatically on the park district side.

And we also report on that as we do our annual budget process.

So as we just submitted our 2025 budget to the mayor's office, we included information about capital carry forward this year, Similarly in 2023, we provided some background on what that capital carry forward references.

But I do wanna just touch on a few things just to give some context to what might happen in capital carry forward.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is appropriation.

It's not necessarily cash.

So an example of that is we have appropriation for reimbursable grants.

So if in 2023, as an example, we had a grant that we received to support the Native Canoe Center down at Lake Union Park for 1.2 million, that appropriation carries forward And until the project is built, which it's under construction now, we wouldn't get reimbursed for that funding.

So there's certain amounts of appropriation that is, you know, going to be reimbursed but isn't yet.

A similar thing happens sometimes on our acquisition program where we can apply for conservation futures tax funding.

It comes in afterwards, but we have the appropriation up front.

So that's just one way that Capital Carry Forward shows up.

Another way is in our partnership projects.

So the waterfront is a great example of that or the aquarium where these are projects that are actually managed by other entities, but because it's improvements done to Seattle Parks and Recreation assets, the project is appropriated in RCIP and goes according to their timelines.

And then there's a number of things that we appropriate at the time that we receive the funds to make sure it's available for the project.

One example of that is the zoo.

You may have heard a few years ago when the night house fire happened, we actually worked with the zoo to get insurance proceeds for that.

and that funding has been sitting in our CIP awaiting their project, which they just broke ground on this year.

So in previous years, that funding would have been carrying forward.

And then there's the more traditional things you think about with project carry forward, such as in this particular year, there was about $20 million of capital carry forward related to projects related to the community centers or South Park project that's happening right now, Hiawatha, underway, and Magnolia, Magnuson Park was under construction last year.

Those sorts of things all have capital carry forward, and I can see you've got something to add, which is great.

I just want to add to Michelle's comments.

I think kind of the first impression when you see capital carry forward is, you know, could be led to believe this is a slush fund somehow, and it absolutely is not that.

These funds are encumbered for specific capital project purposes.

We can't always spend them, we can't always spend the money when we receive the appropriation, and therefore, it needs to be carried forward.

You know, the example that Michelle used with the reimbursable grant, I think, is a great idea.

I just wanted to emphasize that.

Thank you.

So these, sorry, going back real quick, as you can see, these we structured in terms of what we call lines of business.

So recreation facility operations is a line of business in our nomenclature.

And then when we get to the more detailed appendices, we're talking about more of the detailed line of business.

And so aquatics, community center operations, those would all fall under that one line of business.

But here in the appendices, we go into much more detail about what the actual revised budget is made up of, what those funds are, how the spending occurred, and then some of the performance metrics that we use that money to provide services to the community.

each line of business or detailed line of business has at least one metric that we included in our reporting plan submitted last year, and then under the other accomplishments, we've taken some other things we think would be interesting related to this particular year for that line of business.

In different years, it may be something else we want to highlight related to aquatics or another.

Maybe next year, we'll highlight what is happening at the Rowing and Sailing Center as that's really kicking off this year.

We have this for each of our operating lines of business.

And then on the capital side, we have a very similar approach, although in this case, as we talked about with capital not being necessarily an annualized body of work, we're actually doing six-year goals and then reporting the progress to those goals.

for each of the six years.

So next year you would see the progress through 2024 or two years of progress related to those six year goals.

Going back to the main report and it's more applicable to the general public.

We wanted to do a couple of deep dives on some key initiatives or investments that we think you might be most interested in, but there are many, many more things highlighted in the overall report.

Park Rangers, as we mentioned a couple times, this is one of our big efforts last year, was to reestablish the Park Ranger program more robustly in 2023. Up until almost the end of the year, the agreement with SPOG that limited the Rangers to the downtown or center city parks was in place, but it did allow us to really work with our new cohort and training and launching that program within that smaller geographic footprint.

By the end of the year, we had deployed rangers at various times at 31 parks, finished the onboarding of them, and then we were preparing to get ready for 2024 with the whole citywide approach to that program, which we just finished the training program to get all 28 staffed.

And we're now deploying citywide with kind of this first phase being a real learning and kind of continuous improvement approach to that program as we hear from community, as we hear from you all, as we hear from staff in our centers and how we can best use that program with those 28 great new employees to make the best impact that they possibly can.

So we're excited to be out there with that one.

Relatedly, as we think about Center City Activation, the park ranger program was also supported by activation, robust activation as kind of one of our pillars along with the rangers and great maintenance of our parks downtown really support the city's effort at downtown revitalization, activation.

And so last year as part of the cycle two, we enhanced our approach to concierges.

And then we added two new parks with the Downtown Seattle Association to really have that entity support our activation efforts in addition to Occidental and Westlake.

So that is a great add.

And then, you know, you can't work in parks and recreation very long without talking about public bathrooms.

It's just something we talk about a lot.

And this was something we heard about a lot from our community during the park district planning cycle, that people wanted more access to cleaner restrooms.

And so I'm going to start on the bright side of this slide, talking about our expanded daily maintenance.

I think April of last year, our maintenance teams had fully staffed up in order to provide maintenance of our restroom facilities later into the evening and weekends.

And that is now year round.

Previously, we only ramped up for what we used to call peak season.

But now we have launched that program.

It continues seven days.

Returning back to kind of the left side, another real goal we wanted to have was we have had about 60 restrooms that closed each winter.

part was because we didn't have maintenance staff year-round to support that number of facilities, and part was because they're designed to close each winter and have the pipes drained and, you know, not burst and things like that.

And so we have a goal...

Well, we had a goal in the Park District to get all 60 of those to be able to be open year-round, and actually our teams are trying to get all of that done by 2026, so they think they're on...

On that pace, last year, we added 10 more sites to be open year-round.

They're listed here, but I will just...

My colleagues would not be happy with me if I did not say that there are still weather events where we have to close them so they don't have pipes bursting all over town, but it's not a seasonal closure from October to March, so just in case you wander by one on a very...

cold weekend or something, that is part of them trying to still support the infrastructure as they are still open air in a lot of places.

And then that effort is also being supported by our ongoing kind of renewal programs.

So if you've been into some of our restrooms, they seem like they've been there for a while and need some new tile, some new...

some new flooring.

And so our renovation program is on pace to renovate or rebuild 27 of our restrooms by the end of cycle two.

And you can see the ones that were under construction last year and most are reopening this year.

And then we have about 11 new facilities in design.

Excuse me, I have a question about this slide.

So I know through the participatory budgeting that there's been discussion about adding restrooms and hiring with organizations to do the maintenance and the cleaning.

And I'm just wondering how that fits into this.

So the things that we've been proposing with the participatory budgeting is to actually staff three locations in parks.

Freeway is the one that's sticking out to me right now.

When Freeway Parks restroom reopens to have it actually staffed.

We're like a concierge that, yes, they would do cleaning, but it's really more like having a staff presence.

So Cal Anderson was another site we were looking at piloting that approach with the participatory budgeting.

And then we have a proposal to have two more sites that could be like a mobile approach to restrooms so that those could move either on the right of way or in parks.

So it's...

It's enhancing, I guess, this, either with doing some staffing and kind of a new model for at least three park sites, and then we'll be adding two additional sites citywide.

It will be mobile.

Okay, thank you.

Board Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I was just going to add some additional context.

Michelle, thank you for all of your work, and Tracy, Christopher, of course, especially around restrooms.

Restrooms came up a lot during our second round of funding, and thank you for being gracious with me.

Colleagues, some of the restrooms and parks in my district are the same capital condition as when I used them as a child.

And you have done an amazing job keeping them up to the highest level, highest standard possible for what you're working with.

And I think If I'm correct, you have 21% of Seattle's land mass within the parks?

About 12%.

12%.

Sorry, I got those numbers mixed.

But still, it's a very high percentage of our city's land mass.

And 26 community centers, is that right?

All right, I didn't switch those numbers around.

Didn't get 62 community centers.

And that's not even considering all of the restrooms and all of the rental spaces or the golf courses that are on public land.

And so...

This is me just saying thank you for keeping those restrooms, you know, that come to my mind in my district are at Salmon Bay Park and Gilman Field that are still those concrete cinder block restrooms, brick restrooms, right?

And you do your darndest to keep them up into a high standard of excellence.

And because of the second round of MPD funding, we now have a pathway to maybe replace those.

Yes.

So...

just wanted to tag on to my good colleagues' comments about restrooms because it came up so much last year.

Thank you for your support, Councilmember.

And I may use that as an example in an upcoming slide, because my colleague here did share some input on those two sites, so...

Okay, another place that we- Board Member Rivera, go ahead.

Thank you.

Just on the additional three locations and the two mobile, is that part of the Parks District levy funding?

Sorry, I'm just trying to- No, great question.

Sorry, that's the participatory budgeting process that was PET?

Okay.

I think it's payroll expense tax, but I had to get back to you.

So is that ongoing or is that one time or multiple years maybe?

One time $39 and we will be, I think we are expecting a proposal from the executive formally about that in the coming weeks.

One time money.

And the piece we've been talking about is using the allocation for a five-year program.

So it wouldn't just be a one time and done.

For five years.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, you probably remember another hot topic during the cycle too, and Council Member Morales on the decarbonization was a topic we talked about a lot.

And in 2023, as you can imagine, figuring out how to decarbonize pools and community centers, pretty technical work.

So we did onboard consultants to help us work through feasibility for a first set of facilities, including Garfield, Van Asselt, Rainier, Jefferson, and the Genesee crew quarters.

We do want to see how we would do that effort with our various crew quarters as well as we look at electrification of fleet.

And then we also, so that's been a lot of technical work.

We also did some what we would call low-hanging fruit last year where we did some pre-electrification at Rainier and Miller where we, try to go in and make smaller improvements that will reduce the load, the energy load.

So moving to LED infrastructure, that sort of thing.

And then another goal in the cycle two is we actually have four facilities that still operate on oil heat.

And we really want to get out of that.

So last year we were able to move both Victory Heights playground facility and Woodland Park lawn bowling off of oil heat into electrified.

And we were able to put in heat pumps and remove underground storage tanks and that sort of thing.

So those low-hanging fruit continue as well.

And then we're working...

in partnership or being part of the interdepartmental team working on the resiliency hub strategy that is being led by Office of Sustainability and Environment and the Office of Emergency Management.

So if our facilities get denoted as that effort, we would be prepared.

And then here, as we've spoken to a couple of times with the park district, we are certainly thankful for the increased investment in the parks and recreation system.

And on the capital side of the house, the team for last year did a lot of work to onboard new team members.

And you can see here based on the spend that they're really ramping back from some pandemic pause of projects.

And as Christopher alluded to, they also dug into our processes and approaches as a way to think about how to deliver differently on cycle two investments.

And Christopher spoke to some maybe approaches to do some new capital delivery models.

But on top of that, in the project delivery realm, they worked on a couple of different ways to consider packaging of projects.

So one example of that is looking at one park and making sure that we're touching multiple assets.

And so the park district really does allow us to think about a longer term And so where we may have a public restroom that was due to be replaced in 2027, but the playground needs to be replaced in 2025, how do we realign the funding to have that all happen at the same park at the same time?

And so they did a lot of work within their asset management plan to look at that by location.

And at the same time, they thought about it by asset.

And Council Member Strauss, your example of the restrooms at Gilman and Salmon Bay is a place where they're looking at not wanting to impact many restrooms in one part of town at the same time.

So they're looking at packaging and bringing on one design consultant to do, a slate of one asset in an area of town in a timed, aligned way.

So you would have Gilman down in the six months and then that would come back online and you'd do Salmon Bay or that sort of thing.

So they've been thinking about those projects both through those lenses as well on the capital, the public engagement side, that can take a lot of time.

and is very important in many of our projects, such as playground renovations and things like that, but probably not as important in an irrigation replacement project.

And so they're trying to be clear about which projects will receive what level of community engagement and being upfront about that, irrigation replacement project may just have an information level of engagement to say this your park may be down during these months or that sort of thing whereas a playground renovation they really want to get out to farmers markets and community center events and whatever to get a robust input on what the community would like to see for that And then we are continuing to work towards a mapped-based dashboard so people can go in and learn more about the projects underway, since most people want to know what's happening nearby them.

And so that work is still underway.

In the interim, in our annual report, we are mapping what projects were completed last year.

We had completed 45 projects.

And this map, I like to call it the confetti map, that over the years we will add more confetti to this map as we add the projects that get done in 24 and 25 so you can eventually see the full six-year cycle of investments made.

And then as we spoke to before, there was also a lot of work done last year, planning for the future.

As I mentioned, we were projects challenge fund to a more equitable park development fund.

And that is a specific role that's named for the board of park and recreation commissioners to be a part of that process and the selection process.

So the team worked with the, that board last year to develop the approach and criteria for that.

They've now, spoiler alert, 2024, have launched that effort and are getting input from community now.

Similarly, as Christopher mentioned, with off-leash areas, there was a lot of work last year, as you know, that the Park District funded two new off-leash areas and designed for a third.

And so the question that would first get asked is where?

And the resolution 51 said at least one of those would be in West Seattle.

And so we need to determine where in West Seattle and what the other one was.

So there was a lot of work last year in that arena.

And it went to the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners in Q1 of this year.

And those sites were...

determined to be West Seattle Stadium and Othello Park, as well as design and planning for a third at Ravenna.

So a lot of planning work was also underway last year.

And that concludes our update outside if we want to give you these before you leave, so.

Awesome.

Yes, board member Morales, and then we'll go board member Moore.

Thank you.

Thanks for this.

I'm curious about the performance elements here.

You talked a lot about the project delivery and capital issues.

I'm in my neighborhood park a lot.

I see crews out there all the time doing maintenance and cleanup, so that's all great.

I also hear from community members very often about frustration with some of the administrative stuff.

And I think we've talked about this before, but trying to get administrative questions answered or challenges with the reservation system because they can't get through to sign up for a swim class or the summer camps are always booked or trying to use...

Organizations that are trying to access space for tutoring after school feel like they're always at the bottom of the list, right?

Because it's the same organizations that get to come every year.

So I'm wondering if there are, if any of the funds that you receive through the district, parks district revenue are things that you can use to try to address some of these, I don't know if it's technology challenges or staffing issues, but I've heard the same issues for the last four, five, six years from folks, and I'm wondering if there is some plan to try to address some of those challenges.

I think part of the response to that is just the fundamental supply and demand and this limitation of resources that we have.

We do have a scheduling and reservation system.

I think we are open to exploring.

If there's new technology out there we should be using.

If there are different approaches, for example, we've got a conference in town this week with 1,300 park and recreation professionals from across the country, and we're using that as an opportunity to learn what are the best practices being used, other places that grant more access, particularly for BIPOC and diverse communities.

That's part of our strategy, and I think, as Michelle would describe it, it's a braided approach to listening to the community and to also being opportunistic when those opportunities arise to actually make changes and serve the community better.

You want to add anything?

Yes, and this isn't a perfect answer to that, but one investment that was part of the Park District was an investment called a customer service unit.

So taking what had been more of a systems administration approach to that registration system, that we're actually, we added some staff to that team to enhance the ability for them to actually take calls directly and not have it all have to go through community centers or places that may be closed that time of day or this time of day.

So that's been stood up.

They're actually about to take over the main parks information lines, so the same team would be hearing themes and that sort of thing from what we're hearing from the community.

And they have started to work on some process improvements for the first time earlier this year, we started to permit certain picnic locations online so people could self permit.

tables and a few shelter houses.

It's not widespread yet because we wanted to test it out and make sure that there aren't unintended consequences of that.

So we're building in the continuous improvement effort, but I know it doesn't answer all of those.

And I will say, I think as...

is we're able to ramp up more lifeguards.

And, you know, honestly, the change in wages that we just have with lifeguards is helping us onboard more lifeguards.

I think swimming programs will get better as we go forward as well.

So that's exciting for us.

Thank you.

Board Member Moore, and then we'll go to Board Member Saka.

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you for the presentation.

I was just wondering if we could go back to slide 13, Thank you.

So I'm just really curious about public engagement.

And I know you said you've established evidence-based framework with specific outreach approaches for each.

So I'm particularly curious about what that looks like with community centers.

At the moment, we have a community center that's under development for Lake City.

And frankly, I have to be really blunt, I don't think the public engagement has been terribly robust in the way that I would like it to be.

And so I'm just curious, but there seems to be a lot of back and forth between my office and Parks about what how we really reach out beyond tabling at a farmer's market, that's not going to reach many of the people in the Lake City community who are going to be customers.

So how do, what does that look like?

So that's a great question.

And we are really at the very front end of the Lake City Community Center public engagement cycle.

Most capital projects, say, for example, a play area project, might have a one-year public engagement timeline.

The development of a new community center is going to have every bit of an 18-month time horizon.

difficult.

I want to acknowledge from your office maybe to convince you when we're just getting started that we really are kind of setting the table for what is going to be a very extensive engagement process.

One of the things communities care about the most in our system is the creation of their new community center.

So it's important to get that right.

It's important to to create a citizen advisory board or a project advisory team.

We call that a PAT.

It really is important to go through an extensive listing exercise.

And the reason that's important is because community centers are huge capital projects that invariably require some value engineering when you get to the point of permitting.

having input from the community on which community center features they want the most is going to be really important when we have to make difficult decisions down the road about cost engineering.

So I'm hoping that over time, as we lean into this, this picture will begin to look different and better to you, Councilmember.

All right, thank you.

Board Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam President.

And wait, is that your title now?

No, no, no.

For President?

No, no, no.

Madam President.

I'm just a board member, thank you.

Sounds terrific.

So thank you for this kind of overview and both the presentations so far and interesting to know the 12% of Seattle's land mass includes parks, land and space.

And I think where my esteemed colleague council member Strauss was he had that 27%, percent figure in mind.

I think, don't quote me, but if I'm recalling correctly from one of the briefings at my committee, SDOT, I think public right-of-way land currently comprises roughly approximately 27% of the city's land mass.

Don't quote me, but that might be where you're getting that number from.

Regardless, 12% is a huge number, huge opportunity we have.

And as an aside, thank you for the work on reopening Hiawatha, or at least starting the work.

Really, really important.

I would agree, that is a priority and very important.

So, two questions.

First question...

and both of them kind of reflect a few of my priorities for parks.

And I don't have the pleasure of sitting on the parks, the regular committee at the council level, but I'm honored to sit on this district board.

But, you know, the first question pertains to restrooms and drinking fountains.

So with respect to restrooms on that, going back to what is it, slide 11 there, am I reading the slide correctly that there's currently currently 60 restrooms that are closed, that are not open year round.

And there's an effort underway to phase in over time to make them open year round.

But today there are 60 parks restrooms that are not open year round.

Is that correct?

Friendly amendment.

There's 50 now because last year we got 10 of them.

Ready for staying open year-round.

Awesome.

So we're down to 50. There's an effort underway to modernize and, you know, winterize or whatever the other remaining so that they are ultimately with a longer-term goal of keeping those other 50 open year-round.

Correct?

Great.

That is excellent.

Also, access to drinking fountains.

And...

Is the, do we need the, are those things connected?

So access to drinking fountains at existing facilities and, you know, winterized or non-winterized restroom facilities, it is important for me and I think the city that we have access to basic amenities, including restrooms and drinking fountains.

And I know during COVID we, before in the early days, we shut off as a policy matter, you know, but now are those things connected?

And is it true now that we have a hundred percent of our I guess, parks facilities that have drinking fountains, are they functioning now?

So a lot of our indoor communities, well, community centers have drinking fountains.

Comfort stations and drinking fountains are not necessarily in the same sphere.

We have a capital improvement program where we replace existing assets that are failing.

So we would replace a...

water fountain that has failed.

One of the things I think we grapple with is...

not having a specific water fountain budget necessarily.

We'd love to partner with the utilities if they would like to say, hey, parks, we'd like to site and fund 10 more water fountains in your system.

I think the other thing that is a reality is people are very speculative about their sources of water.

and show up with water bottles a lot.

So not a perfect response, but we would entertain the idea for water fountains.

Yeah, no, I mean, people who are able to bring their own water, definitely, and others don't have that benefit.

And so I guess I'm not referring to necessarily adding net new water faucet capacity.

I'm talking about the existing capacity water faucet infrastructure that we have today at parks facilities, you know, it is a priority for me, from my perspective, that that is operational, you know, 24-7, 365. And I say that because I was visiting one of our parks about a month, month and a half ago, Judkins Park and President Hollingsworth's council district.

And there was...

And then I later sent a note to Superintendent Diaz because some constituents there were like, hey, the...

the water faucets aren't working.

And at the time it was one of the hottest days of the year.

And so, and we later learned that because of construction there, there was construction of, I think that is why.

And so that makes sense.

But my broader point is, you know, we do restrooms and access to existing drinking faucets are important.

And, you know, it's a priority.

So a point of clarity, water fountains do get shut off during the winter months, and we'll probably be going through that same process to figure out how they can not suffer the ravages of winter and need to be shut down as well.

Got it.

So with respect to the 50 today, restrooms that are winterized and closed during that period, but there is an effort, as we talked about, to modernize and winterize or whatever we're calling it, to make sure that they have, like, year-round capability.

In parallel with that, the water faucets will also be able to be, you know, restored and year-round.

Great!

Good to hear.

All right.

Second question is softball fields.

So...

I am a firm believer in the power of youth sports to unlock youth's potential in life as one of many things arts whatever it is to to uh to give youth to do and to to unlock their potential and help them achieve the true the best version of their their true self whatever that is uh and and um you know soft baseball fields around here in seattle like you You sort of have to get comfortable playing baseball or softball in Seattle with the fact that you're going to be playing in spring in Seattle in some rain, some mist at best.

But, yeah, you can't cancel every game because you'll never play baseball or softball this season.

But we also know, so having converting exists sometimes.

Existing grass fields and dirt fields to turf will help better address playing conditions, so you don't have to at least you know, like cancel rescheduled games for playing conditions purposes.

So I support that effort on that front only.

And then it's even more compelling though, when you understand, and I learned this from Vice, or excuse me, President Hollingsworth, that from a gender equity perspective, more of our more girls have their home softball fields or baseball fields, whatever it is, in grass and dirt rather than turf.

And so their games end up being canceled more than boys.

And so from a gender equity perspective, it's also important and compelling.

And I personally have three youth recreational sports leagues in my district.

I have the Southwest Little League, the West Seattle Little League, and West Seattle Baseball, which is Pony League.

Personally, my kids have played in two of them, but all three have spaces and have games and practices within my district.

So, you know, like I just want to better understand the effort and the motion to convert some more of our dirt and grass softball and baseball fields to turf.

It is a priority for our department to work with the school district.

We have a document called the Joint Athletic Facilities Development Plan that we developed with the school district probably 20 years ago.

This plan calls out the benefit of turf fields to, or rather grass fields to synthetic turf fields where possible, where you could add lights and increase the playability.

The park department does the scheduling for the school district.

We're aware of sort of the Title IX implication and the disparate, I think, sense of fairness when a girls softball team gets rained out as a result of playing on turf.

We've got...

Synthetic turf fields.

The school district, however, in this case, is sort of in charge of deciding where their girls' teams play.

With that said, we want to move towards more equity in baseball fields and softball fields.

It increases the playability year round when we can create more of those.

So we are sensitive to that and I think are looking for opportunities where opportunities and funding kind of come together to be able to do that.

Thank you, and that makes sense.

I guess friendly amendment from that.

Yeah, that makes sense for all those instances and scenarios where owner or whatever of the underlying baseball or softball field, which is not always the case, parks owns a certain amount of those two.

And so that would be our decision, but yeah, it makes sense.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you board member.

Sokka, I see a hand up down here.

Board member Wu, you're recognized.

Thank you.

So I wanted to ask a question about slides nine and 10 regarding park rangers and concierge.

So I want to learn more about the program, especially the concierge program.

So it's taking place in a few parks.

How many concerts you have?

Are they there most days of the week?

I noticed that they also are trained in Narcan.

But also that two new parks are being activated or added to the program.

And how do concierge differ from park rangers in terms of presence, deployment, and are there any public safety issues or any tents?

What's the response?

So do you want to take the part about the concierge program?

Sure.

So the concierge program is a partnership with the Associated Recreation Council.

So they're actually what we call ARC staff.

And they are in place where rangers kind of go from park to park.

The concierges would be in the park for certain hours a day.

So it could be 11 to 5 or whatever the program plan was for that park.

They usually work in pairs downtown.

And they do things like set up tables and chairs, bring out games.

When there's buskers, they would be there to support the buskers in their delivery of that service.

And they actually get to know a lot of the regular park users and have that relationship with them to support positive uses of the park and inform them of any potential issues.

activities that are against park rules.

So it's more that welcoming, engaging piece, and then the rangers would support that more intermittently as they're coming in and out of the various parks.

Park Rangers have the authority to enforce chapter SMC 18.12, which is a set of park rules in the SMC.

They also serve as kind of a friendly reminder to the public about the rules, and their main role is to make sure that everyone in a park gets to enjoy the park, and that there aren't any behaviors that would impede another person's ability to enjoy that recreational experience that comes from visiting their favorite park.

And then just one other key piece for the downtown is we, even in cycle one, we had resources to partner with the Downtown Seattle Association to support activation at Westlake and Occidental, and they actually have some permitting functions and other authorities with that agreement.

In the cycle two investment, we added two parks to that, So they are also overseeing Bell Street and Pioneer Square Park.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Board Member Kettle and then we'll go to Board Member Rivera.

Thank you, Board President Hollingsworth.

Thank you very much for coming today and for the presentation and the backgrounder and just the baselining.

I'm reminded of the time when the district was created and there was a lot of angst around it.

And there was a lot of angst in the community because things weren't getting done, bottom line.

And so I hate to tell my fellow board member more here, but I remember being in community meetings on the Queen Anne Community Center literally almost 10 years ago.

And it still hasn't been this major renovation for Queen Anne Community Center.

It still hasn't started.

And I think it was 2015 when the initial meetings were going on in terms of stakeholdering and community engagement.

So those are the timelines.

And that was a little bit behind the frustration that led to the movement to the district system to have that stability.

And I'm happy to report that things are moving forward on that.

And similarly with the big, how otherwise known as the West Queen Anne Playfield, which has been on the books for about 26 or seven years for, you know, major renovation.

So with planning to start on January of 25. So thank you.

I just say that as just, you know, setting expectations, you know, this is, this is what we're dealing with.

And hopefully with the district system that that's taken, you know, we're not saying these in decades anymore that we're coming down into years.

Cause that's really what's needed.

And, and for other projects too, like Smith Cove, Another one that's not recognized the pandemic has had an impact as well.

So thank you.

And we look forward to new ones too, in terms of, you know, with our new waterfront, connecting our waterfront to Myrtle Edwards Centennial, that whole project, you know, market to Mojai, Portal Park, which is the working title.

You know, to move forward and do again, do it in a tight frame, particularly with the World Cup coming up in two years.

So thank you for that.

And we'll continue to engage on those in District 7. And tied to that, too, thank you for the notes about the pool, because like the Queen Anne pool is basically District 7's pool.

You know, the Magnolia pool is not in District 7 anymore.

And it's really it's named that way, but it's really in the entire area's pool.

And having that stability going back to the lifeguards and the water and the physical structure and some of the issues with that is important to be maintained.

And so appreciate any and all efforts along those lines.

One thing that's new from the startup of these districts is the public safety challenges that we've had.

And I'm really happy that, I remember having a meeting on public safety in parks, park safety, if you will, I don't know, again, a better part of 10 years ago, maybe a little bit less than that, about how the green belts weren't really accounted for in the park's budget process.

The green belts have to be part of the discussion.

It's really important related to public safety, as is the, I really appreciate the vandalism response, you know, taking, you know, the graffiti piece.

It's got to be all hands on deck.

We just had a discussion about Alki earlier this afternoon regarding the sad events over the weekend.

We need SDOT to be engaged because that may address some of the issues with the street racing and the like that's happening.

It needs to be more than a public safety.

We're having a meeting tomorrow and bringing up a bill on street racing, but we have to bring, in that example, SDOT.

But having parks bring in an effort regarding graffiti also helps on the public safety side.

So appreciate that.

And restrooms is something that creates the challenges.

We had an incident.

As you can imagine, us district reps particularly, we get told of everything.

So David Rogers Park's restroom had an issue with an individual over the weekend.

And that was of concern to the neighbors and the community members.

But we're thankful also for the park rangers because this combination of effort and bringing parks into this effort even more is so important to the overall city approach and efforts related to public safety.

So thank you.

And I just wanted to also second or triple the point regarding youth sports and particularly for young girls and young women, you know, the softball, baseball question and the like.

And As my in-house counsel notes, this is not just Title IX because that's education-focused, but it's also state law, to which she quickly corrected me on.

And so, we need to make sure that we do have this balance in moving forward in terms of gender equity.

And so...

Thank you very much, appreciate it.

And I really appreciate too, we had some meetings with the parks team with district seven questions in mind and in the engagement like the canoe carving center at the South Lake Union Park.

Having this kind of partnership with the parks department is vital and we really appreciate your participation in meetings such as that and some of the others that I mentioned earlier.

So thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Board Member Kettle.

Board Member Rivera.

Thank you.

I just want to thank Parks for their partnership with the Pathways Park.

And I know you all did extensive community outreach and worked with community on that park.

Very much appreciate that just reopened.

I think it would be helpful for a future meeting maybe in the Parks Committee to have a presentation on how you go about doing the outreach when you're doing these capital projects because you're hearing a lot of feedback on the importance of that outreach and I'm not clear how that goes, what the plan is and I think it would be helpful to hear what your plans are when you do this outreach when you talk about the 18 months worth of outreach, what does that look like?

And I think that would be really helpful.

Similarly, I think it would be helpful as you hear many of us really concerned about gender equity with our play fields to have a briefing on you know, how you go about doing that work with SPS and how things get prioritized, I think would be really, really helpful.

I'll say this has come up multiple times when you have come to present on other things, and I think maybe we're due for an actual briefing on this particular subject

We're scheduled to come back to the Parks Committee for a briefing specifically on our approach to athletic field scheduling.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I'm looking forward to it.

Yes, we're looking forward.

It will be our...

one of our main agenda items.

And that's why we moved it from the meeting this week, because we have a full agenda with our Seattle Public Utilities and want to give Parks the amount of time, because I know my colleagues will have questions.

Are there any more colleagues?

Are there any more questions, colleagues?

It's Monday.

I apologize.

One thing I will say, I really appreciate Parks.

I know you all have a ton of programs and a ton of assets in our city.

One of the main things that I'll be working on with our executor and I'm gonna also work on with our colleagues is the late night programs that you all have.

How I know that it helped my life to be able to have positive things to do at night but also it was a more robust when I was growing up we had food there was activities there was adults that were in the neighborhood that volunteered their time to spend with us it wasn't just park staff it was the grandmamas and the you know the aunties and the uncles as well that helped with a lot of those activities and I think that really um that really helped because I know that we are understaffed a lot of times with our Parks Department, but it takes a community.

And one thing I'm very passionate about is bringing that here.

And then the second thing I wanted to say is I want to thank the Parks Department because South Park Community Center is such a jewel.

It's closed.

And so I know you all moved to the elementary school that's on the hill for activities, but I don't know if there are late night activities that are there for South Park, but...

Anyways, how important that is, because I know a lot of activity this summer is probably going to be moved to Alki.

And so just putting that as a note, I know that's not my district for District 1, that's Council Member Saka, but just wanted to throw that out there as well.

But looking forward to developing some type of outreach that's really captivating for our kids to be able to access late night programs.

I don't know if it's cool posters with QR signs so they know which community centers have them, and they can be able to go do late-night activities.

And I'm gonna tell y'all, it's gonna be food to bring kids.

They wanna get fed, you know, and just bringing them there.

um did you have a question question board member oh no i mean thank you madam president i'll just plus one everything yeah we need we need to we need more evening after hours youth programming and resources and uh and facilities and space for for kids to channel their energy in a productive manner and you know when i when i was growing up in high school in kent for example there's a lighthouse program i personally benefited from a lot of my partners going to like a place, a safe space for kids to get off the streets and then, and, you know, and into in playing basketball and on court and gossiping about whatever's going on, but, you know, in a productive way.

And so, and I saw a great story on recently in one of, uh, one of our local media, it might've been King five, but talking about some efforts that they're doing at Tacoma, the city to fund these kind of, uh, afterschool programs, whether it's through the wire or whatever.

And I, you know, I'm personally interested in building out and expanding those here in Seattle, uh, and given, you know, safe space for our youth to congregate after hours, you know, up until midnight or so, whatever it is.

And yeah, so plus one on that.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Without any more further questions, we'll keep plugging along.

Will the clerk please read agenda item number three into the record?

Thank you.

Agenda item three, resolution 67, relating to the 2024 Seattle Park District budget, increasing non-capital appropriations in the 2024 Seattle Park District budget corresponding to unspent funds from the 2023 Seattle Park District budget for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And time check, we are 90 minutes into the meeting, so I want to keep plugging along here.

Thank you.

And we will go over, I know we'll go over the resolution 67 and we have, everyone's still here to present about it.

Thank you.

No new voices.

I got y'all.

Sorry.

I'm just doing tech support, which I'm not very good at.

That says item three.

That's good.

I don't even think you want to kick this one off, do you?

This is a quick one, I hope.

And Tracy, I may turn to you if there's anything you want to add.

But item three, I'm going to wing it, is what we spoke of a bit earlier related to 2023 spend.

And one of the places that we underspent last year was in part because we didn't have the annual wage adjustment implemented.

And so as you all recently, I believe received or passed legislation on the wearing your city hats related to the labor contracts.

One of the pieces that we need to do technically is to reappropriate some fund balance from the park district.

into 2024 so that we can do our retro checks next month.

And so it's about $3.6 million that we're asking in resolution 67 to appropriate.

You'll see it on the city side in a different piece of legislation, but this is the mirroring action on the park district side.

Nothing to add other than the parks district pays a portion of the AWI as does the general fund and other fund sources.

So what you're seeing today and approving today is the parks district portion of the AWI retro payment.

And you will in fact see legislation that comes to pay the other parts of it with the other funds.

Thank you, Tracy.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

I see Council Member Strauss, you pulled your microphone, so I'm assuming you have a question.

Thank you, Madam President.

parks district is not in the select budget committee this is similar to legislation that we will be seeing in the select budget committee as part of the mid-year supplemental package again i call it a package because there are three bills this if it were in our body as a city council would be a part of that packet package because this is a separate body it is here before us today thank you colleagues

Thank you board member Shouse for that explanation.

That's good.

I love it.

Does anyone have any questions at all?

Other questions?

Okay.

Well, thank you.

I moved to adopt resolution 67. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the resolution.

Are there any final comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of resolution 67?

Council, excuse me, Board Member Kettle?

Aye.

Board Member Moore?

Aye.

Board Member Morales?

Yes.

Board Member Rivera?

Aye.

Board Member Saka?

Aye.

Board Member Strauss?

Yes.

Board Member Wu?

Yes.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Awesome.

The motion carries, resolution 67 is adopted.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the resolution on my behalf?

Will the clerk please read agenda item number four into the record?

Agenda item four, resolution 66, changing a meeting date for the Seattle Park District Board in 2024 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Awesome, and we have our wonderful presenters here that will talk about resolution 66.

Council members, I will speak to this one.

So this merely changes the meeting date for this board to align with the new budget calendar that just was dispatched today from the council president.

Dates were changed from the 25th of November to actually the 21st of November.

We aligned the board action on the budget with the final action by the council.

And so this now aligns it to those new dates that changed about a week, four days earlier.

Thank you, colleagues.

Do you have any other questions about this technicality?

Awesome.

I move to adopt resolution.

Thank you, Tracy.

Sorry.

Let me thank you first for all your hard work.

Really appreciate you.

Thank you.

And I move to adopt resolution 66. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera, to adopt the resolution.

Are there any final comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please...

Well, hold on.

Will the phenomenal clerk please call the roll on the adoption of resolution 66?

Board Member Kittle.

Aye.

Board Member Moore.

Aye.

Board Member Morales.

Yes.

Board Member Rivera.

Aye.

Board Member Saka.

Aye.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

Board Member Wu.

Yes.

President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Sorry.

Again, it's Monday.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the Resolution 66 is adopted.

Will the phenomenal clerk please affix my signature of the resolution on my behalf?

I definitely want to thank Michelle and Christopher for coming today and doing a phenomenal presentation and then also answering our questions.

Thank you, Tracy, for all the explanations from central staff.

You all do really, really great work and we really appreciate it and all your help.

Colleagues, thank you for letting me stumble and fumble over words today.

I know you all are ready.

We have reached the end of today's agenda.

And if there's no for the business, if there is any business, I will pause.

Seeing none, great.

The board will adjourn.

The next scheduled meeting of the Seattle Parks District Board is scheduled to be held 2024 hearing no further business to come before the board.

The meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.