Seattle Park District Board Public Hearing - 10/16/23

We are.

Thank you so much.

The October 16th, 2023 meeting of the Seattle Park District Board will come to order.

It is 5.33 PM.

I'm Andrew Lewis, president of the board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board member Herbold?

Here.

Board member Juarez?

Here.

Board member Morales?

Here.

Board member Mosqueda?

Board member Nelson?

Present.

Board Member Peterson.

Present.

Board Member Sawant.

Board Member Strauss.

Board President Lewis.

Present.

Six present.

And council member Strauss has been excused from or board member Strauss rather has been excused from today's meeting.

And we will announce additional board members as they join the meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of the June 26th, 2023 Seattle Park District meeting are approved.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are approved.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes.

Moving on to our agenda today, just as a brief overview, we are going to have a presentation from our parks panel who is online and ready to go.

We will then have a public hearing following the presentation.

So, members of the viewing public who are here for the hearing.

Note that that will be item two on our agenda, public hearing.

Once the parks presentation is finished and questions have been answered, we will proceed to that public hearing portion of our agenda.

At that point, we will adjourn.

I don't expect this to be a long meeting this evening, but we definitely intend to get down into the details with our partners from parks.

With that, will the clerk please read item 1 into the record?

Agenda item one, the Seattle Park District proposed 2024 budget for briefing and discussion.

And we are joined by our superintendent AP Diaz and Michelle Finnegan from Parks and Recreation.

We also have our own Tracy Ratzlaff from Council Central staff online to assist with the presentation.

So why don't we go ahead and allow Parks to do their presentation and then I am happy to open it up to board members for questions and we will then proceed to the public hearing to hear from members of the public.

So with that, I will hand it over to you, Superintendent Diaz.

Thank you for being here with us this evening.

Thank you so much, Board President Lewis, and good evening, board members.

It's a pleasure to be with you this evening, and I'm pleased to be joined by Deputy Superintendent Michelle Finnegan.

So tonight we are going to review and discuss with you Mayor Harold's release proposal for the 2023-2024 mid-biennial budget.

that was released on Tuesday, September 26th, as well as the adjustments, which includes how the city plans to utilize Seattle Park District resources to invest in creating safe, healthy, and thriving communities for 2024, something that I know we are all committed to.

Tonight, we will provide an overview of how the proposed 2024 budget aligns to the Seattle Park District six-year cycle plan.

Which you all adopted around this time of year, I believe last year, and we'll point out a couple of technical changes.

We will then provide a quick overview of how cycle to ramp up is going.

However, we will be providing more additional updates at the November meeting.

So, for this evening, I'm going to be passing over the presentation, the majority of the presentation to deputy superintendent Finnegan to provide an overview of the proposed 2024 park district budget and to specifically highlight a 1 time technical change to the interlocal agreement related to the general fund and park district funding.

She will then walk you through a summary of the park district budget legislation, which is the subject of tonight's public hearing and for your November 21st upcoming board meeting.

And then we will also provide any additional updates to our 6 year district cycle plan.

and providing additional information again that will be coming.

So with that I will turn it over to and I wanted to also thank Tracy Radcliffe for her assistance as always from Council Central staff and with that I'll turn it over to Michelle.

Thanks AP good evening board members.

Thanks for your time tonight.

I'm just going to work on my technology here real quick.

So, as, you know, the city budget office has working to transition our city budget processes to be more in line with biennial budgeting.

Which means more of a technical review during the mid biennium year, which we are in that.

Messaging along with continuing to highlight some potential issues with general fund uncertainty as we come out of the pandemic means we have a pretty.

Simple mid biennial budget to walk through with you today, especially as you just adopted the 6 year plan last fall.

So we really wanted to align with the direction you provided to us.

Then I will, however, walk you through a few technical changes, including.

the 1 that AP mentioned a minute ago about the interlocal agreement.

But before we get into that, just to set a little bit of context, this is SPR's proposed 2024 budget with all of our funds referenced that we're highlighting the MPD in yellow here.

You can see that our total operating capital budget for 2024 as proposed is a little over 320 million dollars across all funds.

with the general fund and the MPD making up about 75% of that total budget.

Moving to the blue pie chart on the top right is showing our operating budget, which is about 228 million or 70% of that total.

About 30% of our operating budget is supported by the park district along with general fund at a little over half and the park fund at about 18%.

That's where our earned revenues go to support a like amount of expenses.

The green table at the bottom is our proposed capital budget, which is about 93Million supported mostly by the park district and REIT.

You'll also see that for next year, the waterfront has quite an investment and that's due to the timing of the project and construction.

it has a big investment as we plan to open it in 2025. And as you know, those funds are managed by the Office of the Waterfront.

I just want to highlight again related to the waterfront is that this won't exactly match the six year plan numbers you'll see in a couple minutes.

And that's just because, as you know, the Seattle Center now does operations for the waterfront.

And so that's not shown here, which is just a SPR view of 2024 proposed.

So, as AP mentioned, our proposed budget for 2024 does assume a 1 time change to the interlocal agreement.

The interlocal agreement between the city and the park district includes a section to make sure the city's continues strong general fund support of the parks and recreation system.

Specifically, it maintains a minimum required level of general fund support.

We, at least in the parks department called the general fund floor.

It was established when the park district started and has escalated every year by the annual growth of CPI.

Under the proposed budget, instead of the floor inflating by the same rate as the CPI for 2024 only, it would inflate by 3%.

In 2025, it would revert back to increasing by the CPI using the new 2024 number as the base.

And this change was proposed to bring the MPD more in line with the inflation rates of other levies across the city to ensure that our floor is sustainable as the city plans for a difficult financial situation ahead.

Sorry, Council Member Lewis?

Thank you, Michelle, just to jump in here because I think this is one of the concepts we want to spend a lot of time with us a board to really understand this and really be able to explain it to our constituents.

You mentioned, and Tracy you should jump in on this to, to provide some clarification that the city is undergoing similar adjustments, given the unique Equally high inflation that we're experiencing right now in some of our other levies, if there could be a little more context as to to specifically how other funding sources that are similarly situated to the are being adjusted to reflect this, that would be helpful for the board to have that context.

The second thing I just want to say really briefly is board member mosquito has joined the meeting so I want the record to reflect that.

But with that, Michelle handed over to you to respond to that and then Tracy if there's anything you want to add afterwards it'd be good to hear from you as well.

So, not being an expert on all the other city levies, my understanding is those levies do set just a flat inflation rate, rather than tying it to CPI.

So example, um, S dots, um, levy sets a 3%.

General fund growth amount and so what we're proposing here as part of the mayor's propose is to match that kind of standard across the city.

Otherwise, as, you know, it's been a bit of a crazy year inflationary wise and so are the CPI would be inflating by 7 and a half percent without that 1 time adjustment.

And.

Interestingly, the general fund is beyond the proposed floor anyway, in this particular case.

So, it is just setting kind of a new base for future inflation adjustments to be built upon.

Tracy or AP, do you want to?

Add anything to that.

I think that's right.

I think you set the calculation at 3%, but actually, the budget reflects a 4.6% increase in general fund.

Again, this is 2Million dollars more than the 2024 endorsed.

And as I understand it, that we're not done yet with the general fund contribution when for the general fund the parks.

budget, parks district budget, contribute when labor negotiations are completed and COLAs are completed.

And so there is the expectation that there will be more general fund that will be allocated to parks once those labor contracts are completed and they figure out what percentage of the general fund budget needs to help cover those costs.

So we're 4.6 right now, gonna be higher once those labor negotiations are completed.

Um, thank you for those clarifications and it's good to identify that this early in our issue identification process.

I mean, we're not here to make any, like, hard and fast decision this evening, but in terms of really digging into this to make sure that that we're maintaining our fidelity to.

having the Metropolitan Park District be an additive resource and making sure that that component of the interlocal agreement is adhered to as an important policy direction for this board and for the council.

Just making sure that this policy is consistent with that, which it sounds like it is from the representations we're making in this presentation, is something that's important context for us.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Tracy, for that added item.

Okay, this is a super.

Oh, sorry.

Council member Nelson.

Yes, council member Nelson.

Sorry, are we going to return to that issue later on and get into more detail or should I ask a question now?

You can ask a question now that I think that would be appropriate.

Well, last year, I spoke of my concern about shifting the burden of a charter departmental responsibility to the to property owners, because that raises the cost of housing.

And I was concerned that the same thing that happened to the libraries.

Would happen to parks and over time, the amount, the percentage of operating fund for libraries paid by the general fund has decreased in relation to the levy dollars.

And so.

This did catch my attention and it says 3%, but Tracy says 4.6%.

And so can you please repeat Tracy what you meant by.

you know, why there is that difference between what is written down and what will eventually be the case?

I'm happy to take a shot at that, Michelle, you can, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

My understanding is that they chose the 3% because they wanted it to mirror what other levies had done in terms of a calculation, most particular transportation levies, so they chose that 3%.

Because that's what these other levies had done.

And for this one time event, they wanted to use that as kind of the benchmark.

OK, but we're not we're not re-upping the we're not taking action on the transportation levy, so.

So it's consistent with all the others, but you said that it actually will go up to four point six.

once labor negotiations are complete?

No, it's at 4.6 right now, Council Member, and it's going to go higher once the labor negotiations are complete, as I understand it, and the general fund will make further contributions to the Department of Parks and Rec.

I think what we're trying to articulate, sorry, Council Member, is that the floor that future years would be compared to is being established with a 3% inflation.

The way the mayor's proposed budget is currently set and the AWI on top of that will even be beyond, but the actual floor would inflate by 3%.

So future floor escalations where you put CPI on them would be based on this new baselined 4, we can.

We can send some kind of charts to you afterwards if you wanted to see kind of where the floor is based versus actuals, I guess is what we're trying to articulate that very.

Well, we're artificially changing the floor to be 3% and so future budgets are going to be based on a lower amount.

So.

Yes, right would be compared to a lower amount.

They, they aren't necessarily going to be a lower amount, but they would be compared to a lower amount.

Yeah, we're changing the baseline forever.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to add this in because I think it's relevant in terms of context.

The city, the general fund has contributed to the Department of Parks and Rec over the life of the park district on average more than what was required in terms of that general fund requirement.

I think it's fair to say that the general fund has kept up with its side of the bargain.

Not every year, we've had a couple of years during the pandemic was one and this is another where they didn't do CPI adjustment.

But for the other years, confident that we have exceeded what was required in terms of that general fund contribution.

So just to add that as context for you.

And I think that's kind of Michelle's comment about the floor, but that isn't necessarily in future where we will end up.

What the floor requires and what the general fund ends up contributing, of course, depends on the availability of general fund and where we sit in terms of our revenue picture.

So.

Okay, thank you.

I mean, I just voted for something last year based on a set of assumptions so that those assumptions are changing, but I understand the reasoning.

Thank you.

That's a great question.

Thank you.

Okay, so this crazy picture is trying to walk through a couple of technical changes.

I do want to point out at the very top of the slide, both the 2024 proposed and the 2024 revised assume a same level of.

Property taxes, so we're not changing the overall.

Property tax, we're just, I'm going to walk you through about 4 changes related to what we call detailed lines of business just to point out some technical adjustments that we have proposed to make.

So, the 1st item here is related to the waterfront and we have some.

Prior year, uh, underspend, which we would like, we are, um.

Proposing to re, appropriate into the operating budget next year in order to support the Seattle center as they take on the waterfront.

Um, and things continue to ramp up there.

Um.

Again, it's not new money.

It's re, appropriation of existing operating funds.

The 2nd item, which is highlighted in the light green is related to the.

Well, actually related to the park Ranger program at the beginning of this year.

I think council member Lewis, you're on the labor committee and we had made some adjustments with that committee support to the Ranger pay.

And in order to fund that, we have a technical adjustment in the proposed, just.

Switching which line of business some expenses are adhering to where some funds was moved out of grounds maintenance in order to make that pay adjustment without having to change the number of rangers or the investment in that program.

So it's again, a technical adjustment that is not impacting service levels in any of our lines of business.

The 3rd technical adjustment I wanted to point out is related to aquatics.

And the community center operations similar in a way to the Ranger program.

Although this 1 was known last year when we were doing the park district planning, we have reclassified some cashier positions to customer service representatives and we needed to move the funding out to the appropriate project where those.

Staff are located and we had put the entire placehold in the community center operations, detailed line of business.

So it's just moving money to the appropriate.

Place based on position location and similarly, you'll see down below.

There's the team programming.

There's a few of those positions in in that detailed line of business as well.

So that's.

That middle green, and then the very dark green is, um.

A couple of shifts related to the green Seattle partnership and the natural resources.

Detailed line of business, and part of this was simply a technical change where my team mapped a project to the incorrect.

Detailed line of business, so we're just.

Swapping that to make it right.

It's not changing anything except for a mapping error on our part.

And then the 2nd, thing it's doing is moving a little bit of money across those detailed lines of business related to a proposed position that we have in the on the city side related to integrated pest management, which is.

A subject matter expert that helps us with habitat issues or.

pest issues.

You know, that could be anything from heron habitat or beavers or dealing with goose poop or various noxious weeds or that sort of thing.

So, we've Feel like we need a subject matter expert to help us doing that in the future.

So we have a technical adjustment related to that.

So, those, because we're now in this detailed line of business format, we wanted to be very clear when we were making some adjustments across those and.

Thank you, Tracy for helping us summarize it clearly in a very busy slide.

So.

Moving on to our.

Next slide so, as, you know, we're in the midst of 2023 ramp up just 2 weeks ago.

We closed out Q3.

so I wanted to give you a.

Real quick update from a financial lens, which we do have financials through Q3 and then the next slide we are still working with our teams to assess our programmatic ramp up related to Q3.

So we'll be back in November with more.

But here, we just wanted to point out that we are making quite a bit of progress as we go through our ramp up program on the operating side.

The 2nd bullet here.

We're on track with spending, although we will have about 8% of our at this point, we expect to propose about 8% of our operating funds carry forward to next year.

And that will be a future legislative decision for you.

But that is in part based on.

Known ramp up activities, such as ordering vehicles for maintenance teams that.

They take a little bit more than a year to come in.

So those actual expenses will hit next year and some other kind of known expenses related to labor, the zoo contract, that sort of thing.

And then the next thing we wanted to just point out is related to capital ramp up and that we are.

Making good progress on our capital ramp up these 2 charts on the right are actually looking at all funds because most of our projects are funded.

By multiple funds, but you can see here, both on the projects out to bid as well as accumulative spend that we are definitely ramping up as these figures are comparing full years.

The last 2 years to 3 quarters of 2023. so lots of good things to report there and we'll have more details at our November meeting.

And of course, after the year concludes as we meet next year.

On the programmatic side, we just wanted to highlight a few things we have.

Had good progress this summer with employing youth who actually exceeded our goal of 80 youth employed.

We also were on.

On target on time for expanding our community center hours, teen center hours this fall as the school year launched.

Um.

We have had.

A lot of great work on our tree planting crew.

There's actually some great visuals we'll hope to bring back to you and in November that we just were briefed on, but that work, while most of the tree planting that will happen in Q4, because this is the great weather to plant trees in, they've actually been doing planning work all year round, all year long to get prepared for this moment.

And people are out there all.

I'll fall as as of now doing that tree planting, so they're on actually the target to to exceed that goal.

Similarly, as you all know, because it just happened in September, we were able to get the expanded DSA agreement passed and that includes adding Bell Street and Pioneer Park.

Um, and actually earlier this year, actually, in the end of Q1, we were able to expand our evening and weekend park maintenance before peak season and that is now a year round expanded service.

So we will not see the kind of traditional reduction in the, in the winter, which we're.

Very excited about we also wanted to highlight a few things that are underway.

We're still working with the mayor's office to align our.

Proposed youth opportunity fund and mentorship program with the mayor's vision there and we're hoping to be able to launch that very soon.

We've been doing some preparatory work with engaging youth and lots of events, but kind of that 1st, kick off of the opportunity fund is still pending and you'll probably see some proposed carry forward related to that next year.

I mentioned the vehicles are ordered already.

We also have made great strides getting ready for the equity fund framework.

It's actually been rebranded as the parks community fund, and they are working with that staff is working with the park board right now to establish criteria for the 2024 funding.

And as, you know, the 2023 was fully allocated in resolution 51. so we feel like we're on Target there and then we have, um.

The park rangers, the phase 1 group was fully operational on.

And as planned at the end of Q2, and we are now making plans for our.

Phase 2 hiring and finally, because we know you're all very interested in our restroom winterization efforts.

We are on.

On plan to get 10 of our 60 that need to be winterized winterized in advance of this winter so that those won't have to be closed.

So I feel like we're making good progress on those.

And then.

Council member Nelson, do you have a question?

Yeah, could you please go back to that previous slide?

I was really interested in the expanded community center hours.

So, um.

Has everybody been hired so that those hours are actually available for our community members?

I guess I don't understand what ramp up, does that mean we're on our way to getting full?

We actually fully implemented them in September.

There are still staffing being hired, but the actual hours are currently staffed.

Great.

And then for next summer, How are we planning for ensuring that none of the.

That all the lifeguards can be there.

That's a great question and we are doing a ton of work on that.

I don't have details at this moment, but I don't know if you have had recent conversations of that.

If not, we can get you some updates on that and especially highlight it at our November meeting.

If that would be.

Yeah, I, I definitely would love to spend some more time with the board in November on this issue.

It's something that's very much on our mind and something that we're trying to look at some alternative strategies so that we don't continually find ourselves in this.

So, again.

I'm happy to present some of our approaches and ideas for that in November.

We're still assessing a few things and I've just returned from a national conference where, unfortunately, this is a phenomenon that is affecting a lot of urban cities and still trying to figure out why, but very much something that we want to be prepared for so that we don't have the Beach closure issues and lake swimming and all the other things that we love so much in Seattle.

So.

More to come on that.

Okay, thank you.

So, then our final slide before your public hearing tonight is just to walk you through the actual budget resolutions that will be talked about tonight.

And then, of course, you'll take up at your November meeting.

Resolution 59 is related to the waterfront carry forward item that I outlined earlier.

So that's a very specific.

Resolution.

Carrying forward that to 2024, and then it goes into the.

Seattle center's budget at that point, you'll probably notice there's a gap here.

There was going to be a resolution 60 that we were working through related to something that was happening on the 3rd quarter supplemental side on the city side.

And we recently learned from law that that was not necessarily.

Necessary to do on the park district side, so we have just skipped that number resolution.

61 amends the ILA per the conversation we had earlier about the general fund floor.

Resolution 62 is the standard budget resolution that adopts the MPD budget by budget control level and it has an updated 6 year plan.

attached, including those technical changes that we walk through tonight.

Resolution 63 is the standard short property tax resolution that references the increase of tax collection over last year, which was about 3.4%.

And then resolution 64 is the standard long property tax resolution that sets the amount to be collected about 122Million and references that would equate to approximately a 41 cent per 1000 assessed value level.

And then resolution 65 sets your board meeting dates for next year.

Thank you, Michelle.

Is that the conclusion of the presentation?

Yes.

And thank you for that summary.

Superintendent Diaz, do you have any final comments to add?

And then Tracy would like to turn it over to you if you have any additional context you want to provide in advance of board member questions.

No, thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

And again, thank you, Park District Board members.

We're excited about the progress that we're making and the programmatic as well as the capital areas.

I'm really excited to share that with you more in depth than November 20th, because that's really will be the proof of what this whole MPD is about and the objectives that you've all outlined for the city.

So just that we're making good progress and that these Budget impacts will continue or these budget alignments and some of the actions tonight.

For your consideration will help us continue on that progress, but we're very much pleased with the progress and we hope you will be too.

So, and thank you Michelle for that excellent presentation and our entire budget team is listening.

Thank you so much.

Tracy anything to add before we open it up to board member questions.

I really don't because as you saw here, the changes to the spending plan are very minimal and really technical in nature.

So I really and I had lots of conversations and make sure I understood all that was going on there so I really don't have anything to add in terms of any issues or concerns about what is being proposed for the park district in the 2024 proposed budget.

Great, thank you so much.

I will now open it up to board member questions.

If there's any follow up, are there do board members have any questions based on the presentation?

All right, hey, great guys seeing none and we did ask a few as we went along.

So so that tracks, I think that we're, we're good for this initial presentation.

As I said at the beginning.

This is just the start of our discussions around the intersections of the park district board with our budget process.

And we've queued up some area identification from some of these questions, aquatics, learning more about the inflation floor.

So these are good things for central staff or parks to note, to be very prepared for as we go into the next hearing on this and continue through the budget process.

And very much appreciate this initial overview and that chart summarizing the legislation that is being proposed.

Board member Nelson.

Was the increase from a tax rate of 37 Change to 41 anticipated.

It was anticipated a bit because, as you know, the AV has gone down a little bit, but it was not what we expected when we are doing the.

The 6 year plan last year, as you can see.

Here, sorry, I didn't touch on this earlier.

The.

Planned amount we assume is going to be 37 as we went into.

The 6 year plan.

Um, when the very smart people in the, in the revenue forecasting team helped us actually calculate the long and short property tax, they're estimating it will end up being about 41 cents per, um, but because of the, also the change to the median home price, um, it's only about a $9 estimated difference, um, annually.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

With that, we will close the panel and we will move on to our second item, which is the public hearing.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Yes, item two is the public hearing.

Currently, we have no remote or no in-person speakers.

We'd still would like to open and close it officially.

Given that we have no speakers signed up for the public hearing, I will officially close the public hearing, seeing as how there are no speakers that are signed up.

Madam Clerk, is that sufficient for making a record?

That works.

I'm going to use that.

We opened at 6.08 and closed at 6.08.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And with that, board members, we have concluded today's meeting of the Park District Board.

Thank you all for being here and look forward to following up on these topics at the next hearing.

Are we adjourned?

Yes, sorry.

And we are at 6.09 and the Metropolitan Park District Board is adjourned.

We can go now.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

you