Public Assets and Native Communities Committee March 3, 2020

Thank you.

So we are going to do a call to order.

Good afternoon.

This is the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

The date is March 3rd and the time is 2.06 and I'm joined by Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you for being here.

Councilmember Mosqueda was on her way.

She'll just be a little bit late.

I'm Councilmember Juarez, chair of the committee, and we will start with the approval of the agenda.

If there are no objections, the agenda will be adopted.

Seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I will go right to the chair's report.

Today we will discuss the reappointment of Kelly McCaffrey to the Seattle Parks District Oversight Committee.

Following this will be a presentation by the Parks Department on the Six-Year Spending Plan and the Metropolitan Park District Strategic Plan.

We're just joined by Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you for joining us.

So at this time, I'm done with the chair's report.

We will go to public comment.

And Nagin, I'll have you read out the names.

And again, you have two minutes for public comment.

Please direct your comments to the two matters on the agenda, which are the reappointment and the six year park department presentation.

So before you begin, make sure you state your name for the record.

Nagin, how many people do we have signed up?

Three people.

Okay, let's go ahead and call those people.

All right, Joyce Smody is first.

Hey, Joyce.

Good afternoon.

My name is Joyce Smody, and I'm chair of the Lifelong Recreation Advisory Council.

That's part of the Associated Recreation Council, and we advocate for seniors programs.

And I have two requests for the park district funding coming up.

We need more hours that the community centers are open to address the fact that by decreasing the hours last fall and actually 10 years ago, it puts seniors into conflict with programs for TOTS.

And so if we had more hours, we could serve everybody, teens, TOTS, seniors.

And consequently, to be able to keep the community centers open, we need more staffing, both to do programming, to reach out to diverse communities, and to write grants and other things that make programming for seniors happen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joyce, and thank you for meeting with us this morning.

Next is Ed Braunston.

I just want to say thank you to staff and council members.

You guys have a tough job, and we know you're working hard, and we appreciate what you're doing for the community.

I don't think you always get the recognition.

Thank you.

But specifically, I'm Ed Bronsten.

I'm executive director with the Outdoors for All Foundation.

Councilmember Peterson's district, but we serve not only the entire city of Seattle, but the entire region enriching the lives of children and adults with disabilities.

And specific to the strategic plan, I also want to thank Councilmember Juarez in particular for your leadership and advocacy for public assets.

One of the public assets that the city coordinates with is collaboration with a number of different nonprofits and other programs.

I just want to continue to emphasize that we are all in this together.

We want to continue to work with the city and continue to emphasize the importance of those partnerships and collaboration.

as a highly effective way to get things done.

City can't be all things to all people.

Outdoors for All was dedicated to this vision 40 years ago that people with disabilities deserve the same kinds of access that others do to recreation.

And we're all about that.

And so I just want to make sure, whether it's Outdoors for All, whether it's a tennis center, whether it's lifelong recreation, whether, whatever the program is, there are a lot of great partners in our community.

I think the Parks Department can lean into those partnerships and be more effective in serving its mission and serving our community.

So again, thank you for the work you're all doing, not just you folks at this table, but folks behind the scenes as well.

Parks staff, we appreciate you.

Our community is a better place because of the work you do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed, and thank you for participating in Dive in D5 and Live in D5.

You've been a really good community member, so thank you.

And last is David Haynes.

Hi.

Is there any park district money for police war on the houseless or more money to prop up corporate real estate speculators?

I hear the decrease in hours with abusive government employees needs to be addressed on all levels, such as social welfare and the library even.

You know, is council aware the libraries are all closed down today for a paid staff meeting?

And given the bad technology at Central Library, you can't even return a book because the loud conveyor belt doesn't work properly.

Why is it the city council is refusing to keep the chief librarian honest?

We still don't have 21st century times at any library, yet out of all the millions of library gets, they only opened up certain smaller libraries that were opening up at 1 p.m.

acting like they're adding an hour when They're now opening up at noon, but they're still closing at five, and that's not even a full day.

All the lights are on at the Central Library, yet there's no service.

The librarians are getting paid a full day, just like on Sundays, yet the library patrons don't get full service.

I'm curious about the half-hearted effort from the homeless outreach that's not there today.

What are they doing?

Are they hanging outside?

No, but all the homeless are lingering outside.

And the thing is, this city council and your oversight of the public assets really needs to take a hard sober look at the key arenas hanging rooftop that's so eerily unsafe and verifying that we're living in a modern third world with the memorandum of understanding with the NHL team meant 21st century that was safe and earthquake prone to let it be known that you cannot cut away all of the foundation of an unsafe 60-year-old concrete rooftop and expect it to be safe while cosmetically prettifying some suites in the luxury section to try and cut to trick and deceive people into believing that that's a qualitative 21st century world-class arena.

You got to have them tear down the whole rooftop please.

Thank you.

Is that done?

All right, well, that concludes public comment.

Thank you, those of you who showed up today and gave us public comment.

So with that, we'll move to items of business, and can I have our folks come up to the table?

Superintendent, is Tracy coming?

No?

Okay.

Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourself, but I'll have Nagini read into the record what we're gonna first tackle.

Go ahead, Nagin.

Item one, appointment 01487, reappointment of Kelly McCaffrey as member Seattle Park District Community Oversight Committee for a term to March 31st, 2022.

Thank you.

Just in time.

Tracy Bradsliff, Central Staff.

Kathleen Connor, Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Jesus Aguirre, Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Great, so we are here for a reappointment, I guess, right?

Is this a reappointment, Kelly?

Yeah, back on the...

So I'll let you go ahead and make your statement, and then we'll...

Thank you, and I'm very pleased to present the nomination for Kelly McCaffrey as a reappointment for the Park District Oversight Committee.

Kelly has been a vital and diligent member of the PDOC and actually serves as a co-chair.

In addition to that, she has a dual role as a valued member of the Board of Park Commissioners, so she's very dedicated to the work that we do.

Kelly is a member that's always well prepared, does her homework, asks great critical questions of the department and of our board.

presenters.

She also has worked to spearhead the correspondence from the PDOC to the department and to the various elected officials in the city.

She holds a master's degree in public administration from the UW and is interested in parks and the environment.

She views parks and parks issues through the lens as a mother, a dog owner, and a disabled park user and bicyclist.

So I'm very pleased to ask you to reconsider her reappointment.

Thank you.

Are there any comments or questions from my colleagues?

Let me just say this, though.

We met with Kelly McCaffrey a few times on a few matters.

Is she the only one on the commission that has the dual role?

No, there are four members that serve on the park board and also on the oversight committee.

Okay, that's what I want to check on.

Okay, so is she not joining us today?

No.

Okay, and she won't be with us Monday?

We'll just do the reappointment.

I'm not sure if she could be there Monday.

Yeah, it's okay.

I just want to make sure.

All right.

Okay.

So with that, we read that into the record and there's no more comments or concerns.

So I move the committee pass appointment 01487 of Kelly McCaffrey.

Second.

Motion has been moved and seconded.

Is there any further discussion?

I saw that.

I was wondering how long it was going to take you.

I actually thought she was from D5, but let that go.

So all those in favor of the appointment of Kelly McCaffrey say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no.

No.

The ayes have it.

And so can you share that we will recommend this appointment to the full council on Monday?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go to the second item.

All right, item two, overview of strategic plan and six-year park district spending plan.

So as you know, Jesus, we've been waiting for this one.

And I know that this is just the first of many and you've already started community meetings on the six year strategic plan.

And then we'll, as we get further down the road, we'll get closer to actual spending plan.

And you're going to walk us through your PowerPoint.

And I think we have a few questions.

And I think what we can do is if, if you don't, if you have a question, feel free to go ahead and you don't need to look Just go ahead and raise your hand or whatever to, Jesus, we can be conversational here.

I don't want to, I just want to get through this.

Go ahead.

So thank you.

And I will go through the slides, but of course, I'm happy to answer questions as we go through this.

Oh, wait, stop.

Councilor Mosqueda is here.

Hi.

I'm glad you could join us, Councilor Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Jesus was just going to kick us off on the six-year spending plan in his PowerPoint.

It's actually on the strategic plan.

Strategic plan, I'm sorry, not the spending.

The spending plan is sort of the next phase.

I'm excited about the spending plan.

And as you said, we started the conversations last night.

And I want to thank the folks who presented.

Joyce Modi was here, was at our meeting last night at Delridge.

We had about 100 people come and give us some initial feedback on the park district spending plan.

And the themes that came up there were very much in line with her comments around Senior programs, I had individual conversations with folks there and as well as partnerships.

So I was glad to see Ed here talking about the need for more partnerships.

So what I want to do today though is go through and give you a quick overview of the strategic plan that we just completed.

This is a plan that is literally at the printers now and we'll get hard copies to you in various forms as soon as it comes back from the printers.

What we'll go through today in these slides sort of highlight the various components of the plan.

And then as I said, I'm happy to answer questions.

And then towards the end of the presentation, I'll recap again what our process is for the next six-year financial planning cycle for the Park District.

At Parks and Recreation, we completed what essentially has been a two-year planning process that really ramped up this summer.

And it was really designed to create a strategic plan.

And the strategic plan is for the entire work of Parks and Recreation, not just the Park District.

It's important to note that.

And this was really to provide us with clear policy direction for our work over the next 12 years is the time horizon that we selected.

And the reason we selected a 12-year time horizon is we really want to think more long-term, obviously, about the work that we're doing.

But it also aligns with several other planning processes that are in place.

Specifically, obviously, the six-year, the two next, two six-year planning cycles for the park district, as well as pending parks and open space plan that's coming up, as well as the comp plan.

So we want to make sure that our planning horizon aligned with those.

I just want to stop you because you're really going fast.

And we've had a couple calls about this.

So we have a six-year spending plan, but that's down the road.

But what you're saying is you're looking at a 12-year spectrum here.

Right.

So the strategic plan is to cover the 12-year cycle, excuse me, a 12-year planning horizon for all of our work.

So as you recall, the Park District is just a portion of everything that we do.

So this planning is for everything.

Okay.

But we want to align it, obviously, with the Park District.

So that's why it's 12 years.

So we have two six-year cycles within that.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

I apologize.

And so, you know, this first slide kind of, and again, these are actual components from the strategic plan that we'll get to you as soon as it's done, but it's anchored really in this organizational framework with our vision, our values, and our mission, and really focused on the three categories of our vision, the healthy people, healthy environment, strong communities, and I'll go into these in a little more detail.

We added a fourth pillar here that is around organizational excellence and making sure that we're continually striving to the best work that we can possibly do.

And then the other piece that I'll highlight that we added as part of the strategic plan speaks to equity and we've created a pathway to equity that touches on all these four pillars and really articulates the way in which we're going to continue to focus our commitment on equity in the work that we do.

And so some of the information on the slide really makes it pretty clear about why we're planning.

So the city of Seattle has changed dramatically and continues to change.

We know that, for example, since our last plan, the legacy plan that was created that led to the creation of the park district in 2015, our population has grown by over 100,000 residents, which is actually almost meeting or surpassing the original 20-year projection that OPCD was telling us was going to happen.

So we've done that in the first five years.

And then as we were going through this plan, OPCD projects that within this 12-year horizon for our plan, they expect another 50,000 residents to move into the city.

And again, we can see that some of that might even go even further than that.

And so in addition to the growth, there's these other challenges that we feel like it's our responsibility as we serve the residents of the city to make sure that we're responsive to these things.

So including the population growth, there's tremendous job growth, but there's also this growing wealth gap that really faces the residents that we serve.

And of course, the homelessness crisis that we also participate in.

On the support solutions to citywide challenges, is that where you're plugging in the homelessness issue?

Exactly.

So this, the bullet at the bottom is really sort of the principles, the foundational principles for our planning.

And so when we went out and met with folks during this planning process, we sort of anchored the conversation in these concepts so that folks know this is what we're looking at and thinking about as we do our planning and we expect folks to, we hope folks think about them as well.

So certainly the supporting solutions to citywide challenges is about the fact that even though we're Parks and Recreation, we have a clear mission, we also don't work in isolation in the city.

And so we are a part of that.

So my concern is if we're going to have a bullet point for climate change, which is way out there too, that maybe we have a bullet point and make that an actual line item that the homelessness issue.

Because that comes up for parks, whether we're talking encampments, where we're talking using services, when we had to do a response with the snow.

At least for this council, I know that as soon as this will come up again in budget, sanitary purposes, just servicing, we have what, 27 community centers?

Yep, 26. 26, and 27 parks?

480 parks.

480 parks, well then.

Over 480 individual parks.

So I would like to see that as a bullet point to respond to, not as a side note, if you will.

Sure.

And I apologize for not framing this conversation appropriately.

So what I'm hoping to do is walk you through the process that we've gone through, and then I'll share with you some of the strategies that we've identified as part of this process.

And then those strategies are still high enough level then we're in the middle right now of meeting with all of our divisions to then create work plan items that are driven by these strategies.

And so, for example, as we're doing our planning, understanding that we're part of citywide solutions, which include homelessness, of course, but for example, preschool and childcare are the things that kind of fall into this, supporting education, supporting, you know, the health and things like that.

So all of those you will see as we go through this.

Hopefully you'll find all of those are incorporated in the strategies.

And then when we do our work plan items from these, they're very specific items, for example, in our financial plan around things like navigation, things like restrooms and conversations, things like that.

So those are sort of the details of the work.

This is what guides us.

Right.

But I'm for the purposes of community and what we've been hearing and certainly from this council is that even though you have a 12-year horizon, you have a six-year spending plan coming up.

And in the six-year spending plan, those are going to be some of the meat and potatoes on what the budget's going to be asking for.

So I'm just putting that out there now.

No, absolutely.

All right.

Yeah, for sure.

And so, you know, a couple of the things that we remind people as we think about this is that, for example, you know, we serve people.

Even though we build and improve and maintain and activate spaces and buildings, we do that to serve the needs of the residents.

So we have to be aware of what those residents, those needs are.

We do it with equity at the forefront and understanding that we're serving the populations that actually have been misserved.

We're looking to serve them first.

We also think about the fact that all of the things that we've done, the way that we've done things in the past aren't necessarily the ways that we need to do them now and in the future, because again, the world has changed.

So we have to sort of retrain ourselves and reset expectations in the community about how we do our work.

A couple of others, you mentioned climate change.

You'll see that throughout this plan as well, that there's some very specific items that respond to the idea that we are, because of our footprint in the city and the connection we have to residents in terms of education, we absolutely have to make sure that climate change is at the forefront here for us, or at least mitigating those changes.

And then the last one on excellent service, making sure that we are able to and have the capacity to do the work that we're being charged to do.

So I'll kind of go through these, and I mentioned in addition to the pillars of healthy people, healthy environment, strong communities, and then organizational excellence, we've also created a new pathway to equity that understand that we're still learning, we're still growing, but making sure that every aspect of what we do is anchored in equity.

We understand that we play a role as an institution that was part of the institutions that have created systemic racism.

We have a responsibility to undo some of that in the work that we do.

And so as we go through the planning and the articulation of these initiatives, we're doing, we're rethinking our engagement where, for example, our Park District Oversight Committee will have some guidance through an equity scorecard, an equity framework, that as we start to make these investments, they're driven by the communities that need the most first, and we'll go through that process.

And then we're really committed to making sure that our staff continues to be trained and understand how these issues really play out in everything that we do, every policy, every program, every investment that we do.

And so as we go through these, I'll try to go through these relatively quickly.

So we framed it out, again, these four basic pillars.

We established a vision.

So for healthy people, we envision a city, we envision a Parks and Recreation Agency where the folks that we interact with have access to recreation, that they feel safe, they feel connected and are active in nature, that they participate in programs that help them build healthy habits.

And then of course they're able to do it in parks that are designed to help them feel included in that design, that they're well maintained and connected.

And this is for all people.

So you'll notice here we don't talk about the specific populations yet.

This is for every, all of the work that we do is driven by this vision that we're hoping to accomplish.

So for each of these we created a vision and then we created strategies that come from that vision.

So for healthy people, some of the strategies that then we're going to build work plan items around is really focusing on equitable and healthy programs.

Again, for all folks.

Increasing accessibility and affordability.

Maintaining the high quality system of spaces.

And I'll highlight a few of them and not read them all.

But, you know, we heard, for example, even in the meeting last night, how it's really important for us to enhance the awareness around what we offer to our communities and how they can participate and how they can engage and tell us what they need.

and really connecting people to nature.

One of the public testimonies today talked about community centers and how many hours, and we're really looking at sort of rethinking our community center model to make sure that we're serving the needs of the residents and doing it in a way that is responsive to the changes in the city, including the growth.

Hey, Jesus, hold on a minute.

Council Member Herboldt has a question.

about what you mean when you say rethinking the community center model?

Sure.

So a couple of things.

So the broad vision here is that we have 26 community centers.

It's difficult to add more community centers, and although we're adding one in Mercer, but those are opportunities that don't come very often.

So we have to rethink the way we program these community centers, making sure that every community can expect a certain level of service, where we provide programming and hours that are transparent, that everybody has.

sort of a basic level of service.

We want to do it in a way that those hours are at a time when our residents can use them.

So on the weekends and the evenings and things like that.

And then we also want to understand that, want to shift the fact that recreation doesn't just happen in the community centers.

It can happen in the parks adjacent to the community centers or in other parks and open spaces around those.

So really it's sort of this dual approach to standardizing the hours of operation, but really thinking about what we're offering and where we're offering it.

And then we'll move a little bit as we dig more into this.

We also understand that it's impossible for us to provide every single recreational program in every single community center that everybody wants.

So again, we'll focus on a core service that we offer, and then we'll select facilities that have the capacity.

to create these hubs that have additional programming that folks can then, you know, if they want their regular programming, they'll go to the one that they normally go to, but then they could go to a hub if they want enhanced programming.

And that's not a programming approach that we currently use for community centers.

They don't all have a certain basic level of service and then...

It's not standardized.

You know, we have various tiers of community centers in terms of the hours.

And then we've created a system, I think unfortunately, where communities that have more resources that folks can pay for programming have more programs because it's a pay for play model.

And then we also have other situations where communities who have resources can pay for a building monitor, for example, to add hours to the community center.

And I think those were acceptable responses to challenges, but I think we need to move beyond that and really standardize this so that, you know, we start with a sort of an equal playing field and then we enhance as necessary.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Can I ask you a quick question, Jesus?

HP9, what does HP stand for again?

That's our healthy people.

Oh, healthy people, got it.

Strategy number nine.

Oh, I see.

HP, got it.

Why do you have grow and share healthy food?

You're not doing pea patches, are you?

Well, we work with the Department of Neighborhoods with the pea patch program.

We have some pea patches that are on our property, but we also have our food programs.

We have a lot of mainly educational programs in some of our community centers where staff work with participants on growing and preparing healthy food.

You mean it's more preparation, though?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

But we also have orchards and produce many, many, many, many pounds of apples and other things on our property.

We have orchards?

Yeah.

Did not know that.

Two urban farms as well.

That's right.

We do?

Yeah.

Probably should be.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Let me write that down.

So we do a lot in very broad sort of portfolio.

Moving on to sort of the second pillar is healthy environment.

And our vision here is, again, a parks and recreation system that supports a thriving ecosystem, continues to support a healthy urban forest, that we have resilient green infrastructure in the work that we do, whether it's through trees or stormwater retention, that we move to become carbon neutral.

And then again, on our educational programming, continuing to push the idea of sustainability and mitigating climate change.

And then also we think it's important to contribute as much as we can to a healthy marine environment.

And then we heard this a lot during our engagement about the balance between passive recreation spaces as well as active recreation spaces.

People want to be out and be able to also appreciate the passive side of things.

Oh, I'm sorry, you had your hand up.

Are you sure?

So that was the vision for healthy environment, and some of the strategies that we selected here in terms of that we're going to then be working on is, again, continuing to steward our water and our urban forests, really work to reduce our carbon footprint, and obviously complying with the mayor's Green New Deal executive order.

And really, we want to be a leader in climate change mitigation.

Hey, so let me ask you a quick question again, if we can slow down just a tad.

What is your participation in the mayor, in the city council's new Green New Deal commission and all that?

What kind of role are you guys playing?

So a couple things.

So the Office of Sustainability and the Environment is creating a sort of a sub-cabinet of this, and we're going to participate in that.

They met with us last week under Council Member Sawant's leadership.

So we'll participate in that.

And then specific to the things that are in the Green New Deal, we're doing an analysis and we're figuring out what it's going to take, for example, for any new building or any substantially renovated building to make sure that we're complying with that in terms of being carbon neutral.

And we've got some opportunities there like Lake City and Green Lake that are in the pipeline, but also some others.

So we would want to build green?

Yes.

And we're not using natural gas?

That's correct.

Yeah.

Okay, is there any other?

And we do have some challenges.

So our swimming pools, for example, are tremendously inefficient and use a lot of energy.

And we want, those are sort of opportunities for us as we think about this planning cycle to address those.

I have Councilor Muscata, then I have Councilor Sawant.

Thank you.

I just have two questions.

So as somebody who plays soccer on the fields in Seattle, has been about two years now, but I still count myself as an active soccer player.

I know you went through a big process to try to convert all of our old dirt and sand fields to the rubber chips.

Are we monitoring the runoff from those fields as well given the rubber that's used there?

Yes, we've had a couple of studies done looking at the conditions on all of our fields for grass and the synthetic turf.

We're currently looking at, we looked at Bobby Morris.

That was a pilot project using new infill material with, it was cork instead of the crumb rubber.

And so we were able to see from the baseline from the year before, before it was built, what the environmental conditions were.

And then we changed, we looked at them afterwards and things are better.

So things are better with cork?

With cork.

Okay, so is that something that you all are recommending that we transition away from the rubber astroturf to cork field?

Yes, right now that we're approaching it and as we renovate them, it's about every 10 years we will be going through them and then replacing it with a different kind of infill material.

Is it an urgent situation that requires us to act faster than that though?

None of the data that we've seen is sort of recommending that we move to that, like different jurisdictions are looking at it differently.

We decided even though there isn't sort of any data that clearly says that we shouldn't be doing this, we're moving away from it anyway.

That's why we're sort of doing it anytime we replace.

Any new field will use something different.

Anytime we replace the carpets, we'll use a different kind of infill.

Okay, because I'm thinking about the fields next to my house, which is right next to the park in North Duwamish, where we have salmon that run there.

Walt Hundley?

Yeah.

Longfellow Creek.

Yes, and it's right next to the creek there So I want to make sure that we're not doing anything to harm the salmon And then the second question that I have related to environmental protections We know that there's a number of parks throughout the city that have committed to having pesticide free parks I know there's been a number of concerns especially up in customer response district the park right on Capitol Hill and It's supposed to be pesticide free and I think there's Cali Anderson Park When I did a tour with some of the folks who work in affordable housing around there They had some concerns about how it was being maintained and whether or not pesticide free chemicals were being used Can you give us an update on those parks?

Sure.

Our Agency wide commitment is to move away from any glyphosate.

So it would be pesticide free We also work with the city's city is sort of a working group around I'm spacing out on the on the name of this group that deals with the No, sorry, it's it's about it's about sort of the city's own work around pesticides and other other chemicals and so anytime there's a decision or a Proposal to use some pesticides we would go before that group and seek an exemption.

We haven't sawn an exemption, but we really look moving forward.

Glyphosate, the roundup is essentially what we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think I think The fact that the city has a virtual ban on glyphosates I think is a little bit different than the maybe more aspirational goal of expanding that to other pesticides.

And for instance, I know that there's the interest in moving some of our golf courses to the, there's a, I think it's the Audubon model of golf courses.

And it's more expansive about, than just being about pesticides, it's about water use and other, other asset management principles that are considered green principles.

Along those same lines, and this might be something that has already been done and is no longer an issue, but I seem to recall there's also an effort to move away from gas-powered engines as it relates specifically to the equipment that the Parks Department uses to maintain park property.

I'm just wondering where that's at.

Yeah, no, we're definitely working on that.

We're doing some piloting, trying to understand.

And when we first started thinking about it, our concern was that the equipment that was available wasn't quite enough for commercial use.

It's okay for residential use, but not for the eight-hour shifts that our folks do.

That's gotten better, so we're piloting that.

And I'm also happy to report that, for example, as we roll out the maintenance plan, for the new waterfront park, that's going to be all electric.

And so we're working to do much more of that as those opportunities arise.

And so is there, I mean, it's great that that is the commitment for the waterfront park, but is there a goal and a timeline for the entire park system?

There is a goal to move away on the small engines, you know, the blowers and things like that.

So we're piloting that now and are trying to understand what it's going to take to move to that.

So part of it is getting the right equipment.

Part of it is also making sure that there's the right infrastructure at the park so that things can get plugged in and charged and things like that.

I don't have a timeline yet, but we're moving pretty aggressively as part of the Green New Deal order as well.

That's going to be part of what our commitment is going to be.

And of course, we're also moving to on the broader fleet.

So we have many vehicles as well, as you can imagine.

So we're looking to electrify as many of those, reduce the mileage, you know, in as much as even looking at our operations to make sure that we've reduced the miles that trucks need to drive to serve a specific park.

So we're very focused on that part of it as well.

Council Member Sawant, I'm sorry.

Are you sure?

Oh, okay.

Two quick questions to follow up.

I thought we were, are we using gray water on golf courses and soccer fields?

I'm not sure the answer to that question.

Do you know?

We need an answer to that one.

I don't think we're using it on golf courses though.

Excuse me, on fields.

On fields.

We're using regular irrigation.

We need the irrigation question answered.

And the second part was, I learned this from Council Member Sawant's committee before when she had Seattle City Light.

When we were looking at the industrial and business and individual home models, how much electricity is being used, do we have a count?

Because I remember when Seattle City Light came, they kind of broke down, this is how much industrial, this is how much business, this is how much commercial, this is how much, what is it for homes?

I don't know, I can't remember.

Residential, what they called it.

Do we have a number for parks?

I don't have it at the top of my head.

We have lots and lots of data on our usage across our buildings, both from the electrical side as well as water.

I get these charts and graphs on a regular basis about all of the usability.

I just don't have those numbers, but I'm happy to share them with you.

Can we get an approximation on that, particularly when we start up well before the budget cycle?

Sure, we can get you that, yeah.

Okay.

If we can be more efficient, that's great, but I don't have a baseline to work from.

Yeah.

Yeah, I probably should have brought this up to you a while ago, but it kept slipping my mind, so Casimir Herbold brought that to my attention.

But part of that is why it's important for us to move towards shifting some of these older buildings, right?

Yes.

We have older buildings that aren't efficient.

They're not efficient.

And again, I mentioned our pools.

Our pools are significantly old, and, you know, so yes, the efficiency isn't where we want it to be, but we have the data there.

And that's the perennial issue we come back to when constituents come and my colleagues come forward, is that we have a lot of buildings that are inefficient in energy and use.

And we have a lot of buildings that are just need to be retrofitted and old.

And the brick and mortar piece, if we can't keep throwing good money after, I don't know what that saying is, good money after bad money, is that what it is?

Whatever.

We can't be throwing money at stuff that don't work anymore.

I mean, if it were up to me, I'd just bulldoze it all and build all brand new stuff, but I'm not the queen of the city.

I like to build big stuff, so, and they won't let me.

So, that's why I'm trying to get a baseline on this well before budget, and I actually have spoken to the executive about this, and so I'm going to try to, I'm giving you, we've had these conversations, Stacy, it's what I'm sharing isn't, completely brand new to you, but we've never really got a grasp from parks just on the brick and mortar that we own, including golf courses and fields, you know, how much of it is, how green, if we had a spectrum, how green it is.

We don't have that.

And so if we can start looking at that, and maybe that's part of our six-year planning, maybe that can become a piece of that, that that's a data point that you report on to us, particularly now that we're in districts and people want to know how many community centers are in their district, how many parks are in their district, what's efficient, what's not, because a lot of times we have to tell people no, and it's hard for me to say no or yes when I don't have a lot of information.

No, we're happy to provide that for you.

All right.

Council Member Schada.

Thank you.

I'm gonna raise this in the healthy environment section because I think it can fit nicely in there.

We mentioned golf courses already and there's a number of questions that I know our community members have about the use of golf courses.

I'm gonna direct this to trying to expand how we increase the public's use of this space.

Chambers Bay allows for people to walk around the golf course and use it as a running facility, walking facility.

I'm going to set aside the question about whether or not more of the land that's currently used for golf courses should be used for things like affordable housing and child care.

I'm going to put that aside for the second and now say of this land that is currently being used, we already have paths that are embedded into our golf courses.

It would be wonderful if we had not fences but doors that allowed for people to come in and walk around those facilities.

There's a golf course right behind my new house that I have in West Seattle, and I can see the path, and I can see the trees, and I can see the green space.

I can't get to it.

So what has the conversation been about opening those golf courses?

I understand there's a liability question that would probably be raised about golf balls hitting people in the head or something.

But if Chambers Bay can figure it out, what have we done to try to move towards that?

Yeah, no, that's an issue that we also are very, very focused on in understanding how to diversify the activities.

And whether it's just walking or we also do disc golf, we do track meets with the state and things like that.

But we need to do a better job of balancing the regular golf operations with additional activities.

That's something that we're looking at as well.

And we are doing that at Jackson Golf Course.

But when you say we need to do a better job, how do we do that?

Because I know, I mean, the community in the junction has really wanted to have more multiple uses for a very long time.

And you know how frustrated they are that that golf course counts.

as against sort of their open space, anytime we talk about adding new open space to that neighborhood, people point to the golf course and say, that's your share and it counts against, you know, and puts you lower on the list of priorities of other communities who also deservedly need open space.

So we can't have it both ways.

It can't be an exclusive use for golf.

And we still tell the community, no, we can't consider other, adding more multi-use open spaces.

We need to figure out ways to make that space multi-use.

I agree, and this might be a frustrating answer, but part of the challenge is that, and we've done a couple of studies to kind of get at that answer, because unfortunately, a lot of this is driven by finances and driven by the model that we created for golf and expecting both to pay back some of the debts that's in there and sort of looking at the very specific models.

And some of that we actually are required by council action to do certain, have certain fiscal policies that make it harder for us to bring in activities that aren't meeting the revenue goals.

So part of what we're doing is some of this analysis is thinking about how do we pilot some of those things so that we understand what we can do so then we can come back to council and change those policies so that we're not as reliant on sort of having to operating under a certain fiscal model.

And so that's part of the process.

And then just working with the operators of the golf courses to make sure that we can find the sort of the right, because they're going to talk about liability, they're going to talk about balls and things like that.

How do we do that?

So it's driven a lot by the financing model, but we'll, you know, we want to pilot some things to get away from that model so we can do more.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

So I feel like this conversation has been happening for longer than I've been here.

And I appreciate you signaling that there's also a fiscal generating request that came out of this council.

But you would also imagine that it would be a financial benefit to have, let's say, one individual from a family out there golfing while the other individual from that family goes for a walk around.

the golf course.

I could see that generating more interest and usage in the neighborhood for the green space that we have.

And as we create denser city, these green spaces are the backyard for our community.

I don't have a backyard, right?

And I would love to be able to walk in the neighborhood.

In fact, Longfellow Creek, for example, has some great walking paths that end at the golf course.

And I can't go into the golf course.

I have to go about a mile around the golf course and then pick up with the trail again.

That makes no sense.

And I know the same is true in a number of our neighborhoods.

This is not just something that's in District 1. So I am hearing that what we need is councilmatic action to make sure that the use of that golf space was not sort of prevented from being used because it's not revenue generating.

And I would love to work with this council to see if we can get more folks out there using it as a walking or running space.

I'm jealous of our friends in Tacoma who can just go to Chambers Bay and walk around and have that beautiful public space.

So I would like to do that.

Okay, says the chair.

Consider it done.

We're on it.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Jesus.

Okay.

Moving on to the third pillar, which is about strong communities.

And again, you know, we talked about parks and recreation system that supports these citywide priorities and We'll talk about homelessness and things like that, of course, but also continuing to provide affordable and culturally relevant services for our communities.

Looking at, you know, we do a lot of community building by just bringing events together, either Parks and Rec led events or other community events through permitting.

Programs that build community cohesion and lifelong learning, including you know, limiting social isolation that some of our senior populations have to contend with.

And, you know, again, focusing on that gathering space model that we do in connecting youth to the work.

So that's sort of the vision and in terms of the strategies.

Yes, I'm sorry.

No, that's all right.

On the Connecting Youth and Community Gathering Spaces piece, I know that the late night program has recently celebrated its 30th?

40th, I think.

30th year, but it's a great program.

It's on Fridays and Saturday nights in most community centers.

I think there's still a couple community centers that's only on Friday nights, but I recently met with a person who has been really involved in civic life in the city for many, many years.

Phil Fuji used to be an aide to a council member a child many, many years ago, and was for a short time a deputy mayor.

And he talked about the fact that there was once upon a time a vision for late night to sort of have a late night too, and that it not be focused away from recreation, but it be focused on the things that kids still would enjoy doing on a Friday or Saturday night because, of course, the priority is getting kids to go to a community center on a Friday or Saturday night than being elsewhere.

So you want to make sure that you're not programming it in a way that makes it, like, not cool.

But they talked about the kinds of skills development things that kids like to do.

And I see that there is a great night program at one of your community centers.

It looks like it's only at Jefferson.

And it's on Saturday nights.

And it's focused on, I think, a little bit of an older age.

demographic, but it's got to focus on job and life skills.

And so the question from Mr. Fujii was, whatever happened to that late night phase two idea for programming that is still fun and cool, but also useful?

And just would like to know whether or not there are any thoughts about doing that and whether or not that's, you know, transforming the space into a recording studio one night, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think, again, you know, back to your question originally about sort of how we're shifting community center operations in general, there's a lot of that programming that, concurrent to this planning and the Park District financial planning, our recreation division is also doing a lot of planning and rethinking a lot of the specific programs, so really understanding what are the types of programs that we will offer for each of the sort of age groups And certainly the teens and young adults is a big part of that.

And so how do we go from something successful like teen late night programs, how do we build on those through some of these other strategies around, I think, job skills development.

I think certainly all of the STEM and technology pieces, mentorship opportunities, all those things.

So that's part of what that team is also putting together to continue to grow that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And then going through some of the other strategies here that, you know, so we just talked about youth enrichment and other opportunities.

You know, and looking for other ways to leverage some of the amenities that we have for things like preschool and childcare that we already do.

Actually, the majority of our community centers, for example, already have some version of preschool childcare or out-of-school time that's provided there.

We think it's really important as we build these strong communities to continue our focus on free or low-cost programming, continuing to build to create sort of the opportunities for scholarships.

And a big part of this piece is just supporting communities in whatever they need.

So out-of-school time, public safety, you know, in terms of our cleanliness of our facilities, job readiness, employment, all of these pieces that really support what our communities need.

I know that we have the youth enrichment and the preschool and I think we do need to have and keep reminding you about being age-friendly in our elder services.

I'm not seeing it anywhere in the PowerPoint on all the pages.

I'm not trying to be critical.

I'm just trying to highlight that.

Besides parks, we all work hard to make sure that our elder community can age in place just across the board, everyone's committee, in the disabled community.

So that when that's not on there, I know that you care about those things as we've worked on a lot of those issues together.

And so again, I wanna make sure that we have a place for that, that that's a commitment that we have in your strategies and your overall 12 year goal and plan.

Absolutely, and I will say that I'm just, as an example, so this PowerPoint is sort of trying to summarize the entire document, so there's many more words that are in here that specifically deal with all of those issues, including a focus on our seniors and, again, combating things like social isolation and things like that.

So it's in the plan.

I apologize that it's not front and center in the

It's not so much front and center.

And I'm sure the other council members that represent districts get this.

I know that with our community centers, they're not just places where people go to play basketball.

We feed our elders four days a week and we, you know, provide, I mean, just, you know, so it's important.

That's all.

Absolutely.

Okay.

I completely agree with you.

Thank you.

Thank you for highlighting that.

Thank you so much on item number two here provide preschool and child care.

I've seen some of those facilities.

They're amazing It's a wonderful way to make sure that folks are getting into our community centers.

Can you remind me sir?

How is that management done?

Is it certain organizations that we contract with?

We have a little bit of many different things that happen.

So we have, for example, ARC, our programming partner, runs some of these programs.

We have some of our own out-of-school time opportunities that we do through, for example, 21st Century Learning Center funding that we get.

And then we also have other facilities like the Miller Annex, where we have a third-party provider who comes in and actually operates the preschool.

So we have, in our 26 community centers, I believe 23 of them have some version of programming, and we have lots of different models.

We also have several programs that are part of the Seattle Preschool, the SPP program.

So part of what we're trying to do is not necessarily become experts in preschool and the need, but really working with our partners at DEEL to make sure that they help us identify the providers.

And then another one that you probably know about as well, for example, is the Tiny Trees Preschool that's outdoors.

And they're a really creative, innovative program that actually is working with us to try to figure out how to license programs outdoors.

And they work with the state to get some of those rules changed.

So there's a little bit of all these things happening across.

the portfolio.

If I might, thank you Mr. Chair.

So recognizing the partnership model that we have with some of our community providers for child care and preschool, one of the things that has come up in relation to the coronavirus has been a number of entities, organizations, service providers have proactively decided to sort of shut down for the day to do sanitizing activities or out of an abundance of caution if there's any concern.

around maybe a potential kiddo or family member that they just want to make sure that there's no viruses being transmitted at the organization, and we applaud them for that work.

We want to be extra vigilant, especially right now, to make sure that we're not transmitting any diseases, and especially in places where we have vulnerable community members attending.

In doing so, we also recognize that our sick and safe leave policy doesn't currently provide for parents to be able to access paid sick and safe days when a childcare facility, for example, closes down out of an abundance of caution and not at the direction of an elected official or a public official.

For example, if a school were to close because the superintendent or the mayor or the county exec decided that it was really important out of the public health concerns to close it and ordered it to be closed, parents can access sick leave to make sure that their day's wage is paid.

But for some childcare providers, including those, I think, that are working out of our community centers, right now our current statute does not say that those parents can access paid sick and safe leave.

Our office, I just want to make sure our colleagues know this, our office is working on a legislative fix that would make it so that if any organization were to close its doors, it doesn't require a public official making that closure.

One of our great organizations could decide out of an abundance of caution that they wanted to close it down for cleaning purposes or health related concerns.

And that would be a qualifying event for any of our parents to be able to access sick leave.

So that's something that we'll be talking to the council colleagues about, but it does relate to parks in terms of your partnership with those childcare providers and wanting to make sure that no parent fears that they're not going to earn a day's wage and that they can access those sick leave.

It's just a small tweak that we're prepared to make in the next few weeks here.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll sort of, I only have about 30 more slides here.

I'll keep going very quickly.

So the last piece here is on organizational excellence.

And again, this is a recognition that as we do the work, really focused on this vision, that both we have the expertise, the capacity, and the resources to do the work.

So we envision our agency as we achieve this is to, again, making our decisions grounded in equity, continuing to engage with our communities, recruiting the best team possible, training them, maintaining them, developing them, but also working on decision-making process that's inclusive so that the folks on the ground, on the front lines, are able to participate in these really important decisions that we do.

So that kind of articulates the vision that we have there.

And some of those strategies around this piece, again, I've talked about equity and doing this equity analysis and this equity scorecard that we're talking about.

You know, we're also going to be pursuing national accreditation through the National Parks and Recreation Association to ensure that, at a minimum, we're meeting the standards that parks and recreation agencies should be talking about.

And we'll, of course, do that through adding sort of an equity component.

But things like our systems and our technologies, and we're doing a lot of work around continuous improvement, making sure that that becomes part of our practice.

And then the other piece just I'll highlight here is on the continuing engagement.

You know, as we work to serve people, we want to make sure that we'll create this great plan, we'll publish it, we'll roll it out, but it doesn't do any good if we don't go back to our communities and ask them again to make sure that what they told us is what we're doing and then that's actually still what they need for us to do.

And sorry, and I forgot to mention each of these strategies, or each of these components has a commitment to equity call out because we're working on this pathway to equity.

So for example, on this one, it'll be really important if we're making these decisions and investments that we're doing it through a racial equity framework.

And then we think about continuing to train our workforce on these issues.

This is Nagin's favorite slide, just so you know.

Great.

She has favorite slides.

That's impressive.

So this just kind of, you know, so all of the, I went over sort of the vision and some of the strategies just to give you a little background on how we got to this plan and then how it's going to lead into the Park District six-year financial plan, at least this next six-year financial plan.

But, you know, we've done a lot of engagement.

As I said at the beginning, it's been a two-year engagement process, really ramped up here over the summer.

But we've done everything from looking at all the plans that we've done over the last five years, the legacy plan, the community center strategic plan, our parks and open spaces plan, off-leash area plan, et cetera.

We've got a lot of plans that we've really looked at.

Spoken a lot with our own staff about what they see happening, what are the best practices.

Of course, our two advisory boards, the oversight committee and the park board.

And then as well as lots of engagement with the community.

And that really ramped up the summer with online as well as event.

participation in citywide events, and we held two parks and rec fests to really get folks to come out and understand what we do, but then ask them what they wanted to do and what they wanted to see.

And we did lots and lots of surveying across the city, both from, we did a statistically valid survey that represents the demographics of the city, but also lots of smaller surveys, online surveys.

door-to-door surveys, surveys at kiosks and our community centers, and really did everything we could to just hear from folks.

And then the blue components here talk about some of the task forces.

So in addition to the general planning and listening, you know, we had folks who are interested in various items like stakeholders around viewpoints and Olmsteads and trails and had them do, they went off and did task forces and worked to come back and advise and provide some guidance to us.

So, you've done two community meetings, Delridge?

We've done one so far.

What was that at?

Well, I'm sorry.

So, for the Park District.

Park District planning, yeah.

I'll forward to those to tell you what we've done.

Oh, did you do that while I was out of the room?

Yeah, so that was still a strategic planning process.

In terms of the, you know, we'll get to the punchline here on the Park District planning process.

So, this sort of gives you the very sort of tight timeline that we're on here.

The little bubble on the left of 2019 tells you everything we've done in the past to lead up to this.

But really between February and May is when the work of the Park District Oversight Committee really ramps up in terms of them listening from the public, digesting all the things that we learned and have been sharing with them along the way.

and then make recommendations to us.

I will note that we've also been meeting with council members.

Of course, we've met with you, we've met with Council Member Peterson and Herbold, and have meetings scheduled with others, and I would like to meet with all of them to sort of hear from them, feedback that they've been, from what you've been hearing from your communities, as well as any input you have on the next six-year cycle, as well as the strategic plan.

You'll be in Lake City Thursday.

Yes, we'll be in Lake City on Thursday, and then we'll be at Van Asselt on Saturday.

So these meetings will happen in March, and then between March and May, the Oversight Committee will take all of that and begin to put together some proposals.

Concurrent to this, we're also working with the mayor and her office to identify her priorities and make sure that we're thinking about sort of what's next for the Park District.

Once all that work is done, the mayor will transmit to you all in your role as the governing board for the Park District in August, sort of the next six year financial plan, then you all will have the opportunity to have hearings.

We're trying to schedule that well before the recess.

Yep.

So we're not jammed like last time.

But this is a big deal because it's the six year of set spending.

pushing the executive hard to get the numbers and all a lot of the detail well before the recess so I can share some of it and start talking to my colleagues and what what the needs are and what kind of like we did the library levy what the needs are.

how much room we have here or there, based on the information that you bring back to us from committee.

And Tracy, help me out here.

We're trying to schedule a couple meetings before budget.

So after the mayor submits her recommendation in August or late August.

Um, we are actually going to schedule two Park District meetings, one, uh, the very first, uh, week of the two are back from recess, I think the 10th, and then one on the 24th, where we will actually take up the spending plan and have discussions about Council's interest in that spending plan and potential modifications.

We'll also have a public hearing here in Chambers the week of the 14th of September, so the public will have an ability to come and to weigh in on the Mayor's proposed recommendations before the Park District takes any action on that spending plan, which will happen, technically will happen as we adopt the budget at the end of November.

You could begin to make some decisions as early as the end of September.

Am I doing that public hearing here?

Yes, that's what we had talked about.

Well, let's think about something different.

Okay.

I was just trying to make sure.

Okay.

So needless to say, everyone is anxious about the six-year spending plan that I'm trying to get a little bit earlier so we don't slide into budget, but Council Member Muscata is going to have her hands full.

And like the last years, we've seemed to always have these park meetings where we vote on the budget in the middle of budget.

And I don't want to do that this year.

Yeah.

And to make your work even more complicated and give you more to do.

So part of the creating a six-year financial plan obviously includes our regular biannual budget.

So we will go through that process.

And we've got to do that budgeting work at the same time as we're doing this so that, because it all has to align and it all supports some of the same programs.

I think the difference in, again, I'll say this and then we can move on quickly, is keeping everyone, reminding them what the voters passed in 2014. what we can and cannot do on the Metropolitan Park District side, keeping those kind of separate, but knowing that the MPD money is part of the park district money.

And that's been the area where people get lost.

So, and then sometimes, quite frankly, if Tracy didn't do me a flow chart a couple of times, I'd get lost too.

So we just want to be ahead of that.

So thank you.

And then I thought as you mentioned councilmember we have we have two additional meetings this week And sort of in response to some of the some of the the questions some of the concerns people have shared with us around participating in large public meetings, we're also going to set up sort of a a a an electronic town hall next week for folks who don't want to come to a meeting but still want to share information.

And then we'll do a similar type of town hall for our staff to make sure we get another opportunity.

And then all of that information again will be shared with the oversight committee members.

But these meetings are structured so that the park district oversight committee members are there leading the discussion, listening, really getting a chance to interact with the committee members so they hear directly from them as well.

Yeah.

On slide 19, excuse me.

On slide 19, there's also a web address so you can write to us at any time as well.

So please feel free to share that with everybody.

And there's a survey.

I think we've had over 700 people already participate in the survey.

There's also an online survey that we would encourage folks who can't or even if they come to these meetings, they can also take the survey and continue to give us more.

I will say that we're documenting all of this.

So at the meeting last night, we had note takers for everything.

We're going to document all that and we're going to publish it to make sure that folks have that, know what the communities are asking us for.

Are you, when you pick these locations, were you, are any of my colleagues, can they ask to have some of these community meetings in their community?

Because I know like, how are you spreading this around and deciding?

So the intent here, so these are meetings that are actually Park District Oversight Committee meetings.

They're not necessarily like meetings when I go out and meet with communities.

What we try to do is normally these meetings all happen downtown in our office, in our boardroom.

So rather than do that, we wanted to at least get out into the communities and give folks an opportunity to participate.

So in terms of coming out to other meetings, I'm happy to come out.

I'm happy to bring my staff out.

What I can't commit to is having the Oversight Committee convene a meeting there at other communities.

But I will also say that as I'm trying to convey as part of this presentation is we've had lots and lots and lots and lots of robust engagement.

People told us, people are aware of the Park District and shared with us a lot of the things that they wanted to see as part of the Park District already.

So we have all of that documentation and we've been sharing that with the Oversight Committee.

So I think, you know, I feel like we've done a pretty good job of getting some pretty robust engagement.

Again, that's not to say that I'm not happy, I'm absolutely happy to come out and meet in any other council district to talk about this work.

I just, you know, there won't be the official Park District Oversight Committee meetings.

But we'll share that information.

Let me just say this and I'll just be candid.

Some of the same people come to the same meetings and know about this stuff.

And so like if Council Member Peterson said, look, can you do one at Magnuson Park?

Or if I said, could we do one at Bitter Lake?

It's good that you're doing one on a Saturday.

You get a better turnout, quite frankly.

What I've learned in the last four years of chairing this committee is often we get the same people and the same voices and that ends up with the same issues and the same, I want this.

Nothing against golf and pickleball, so I'm hoping to get a bunch of letters, or soccer.

But there are other things like what Council Member Herbold brought up about having the community centers open at night for our youth.

So a lot of the things that we know are more anecdotal in hearing from our colleagues and our constituents.

So if there's an opportunity to say, look at, you know, we can do that, right?

I can say, hey, could you do a meeting on a Saturday, let's say, at Bitter Lake, or Magnuson Park, or give me a park out of West Seattle.

I don't know any.

But we can do that.

I'm happy to come out and meet with anybody.

I just put the timeline back here just to reiterate.

So again, you know, these meetings aren't So we've got a pretty compressed timeline, but we've had a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of engagement.

Again, not to say that we can't get more.

And to your point about the same people coming to the same meetings, we've actually worked really hard to try to do things a little bit differently.

So for example, for the meetings this week, we have been contacting community-based organizations across the city and asking them to make sure that they understand that we're having these meetings, getting them to come out.

We had translators available last night.

We'll have them at each of these meetings.

And we're, you know, as part of the engagement for the strategic plan, we did door-to-door surveys for folks in up to 12 different languages, again, to try to just make sure that we go out to the folks that don't always come out to us.

But that's not to say that if we can provide additional opportunities for additional groups, I'm happy to support that.

Thank you.

Council Member Muscata, did you have something?

As you look at the six-year plan here, one of the things that I would love to know more about is whether or not the financial plan needs to be adjusted to address any new workforce challenges.

So I'm thinking of safety for the workers in the parks.

I'm thinking about moments like this where we have an outbreak and perhaps workers need additional materials to feel safe and cleaning, you know, jungle gyms and maybe park access points.

What kind of new workforce challenges have we seen given maybe changing public health issues in our community and also changing workforce dynamics so that we can continue to recruit and keep, retain a robust workforce for our parks?

I know it's something that you have been a champion of in the past.

And if there's any way that our financial planning needs to address how we fund specific activities for workforce development and retaining folks, I'd be really interested in that aspect.

Yes, it is really important.

So another thing that's happening, concurrent to all of this is all of our divisions internally have been putting together proposals on some of their priorities and particularly around this organizational excellence piece which speaks exactly to your point Councilmember is this idea of how do we make sure that the staff have the resources that they need how to make sure that we have the right level of staffing for the work that we're doing and then making sure that they're prepared for these new issues whether it's members of the navigation team and whether we have the right number of folks doing that, whether the folks that are cleaning our comfort stations, and even just basic things like we have some situations where we have some crew chiefs that are managing a whole lot of people that it just doesn't, you know, isn't enough.

So we've got all of those in place.

And then another set of proposals and that we're getting from our workforce development team, our HR team to make sure that we address some of the challenges that you're talking about is how do we provide the right kind of development?

Where do we set up sort of a place to provide access to professional development for all of our folks?

The folks that are out in the trucks, the folks that are in the community centers, the folks that are in the office.

So a lot of work there and we're really looking to try to build on what we already have to make sure we do that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So my inbox is getting full of e-mails.

There's a new round of advocacy around Meyers Way as periodically happens.

And I've been asked next time I meet with you to talk to you about Meyers Way.

And I just, we touched upon Meyers Way the other day.

But I want to get specific if I could.

Members of the public wanted to use your efforts to solicit input on the strategic plan on the six-year park spending plan.

They want to use that as a vehicle for their advocacy.

What advice would you give them?

doing what they have been doing, and certainly speaking to you and you've been conveying those.

I had several people at the committee meeting last night who came and expressed their interest in that as well.

We've had folks throughout the years since this became an issue testify in front of our Park District Oversight Committee, in front of our Board of Park Commissioners, and then also have lots of folks who send information and I've got lots of those things in my inbox as well.

And so the result of that is certainly that it is absolutely an issue that's on our radar, that's on the list of things that we know that eventually can become a challenge or can become something that we need to solve.

So as part of this planning process, our Board of Park Commissioners, excuse me, our Park District Oversight Committee will know that that's one of the properties that certainly we have interest in it given our parks and open space goals and sort of What do we, how do we start to move that process forward?

When and if that property then becomes under the...

But what is the public's ask of you as it relates specifically to the strategic plan and the spending plan?

What should the public be asking you to do?

Like put it in the strategic plan.

Sure, so well...

I think it's what they've asked.

So I've had asks to say, well, they want to make sure that this property becomes a Parks and Recreation property.

So that's one ask.

And that's one that I currently don't have control over.

The next step is, when and if that happens, to put some money into the development of that park.

And again, that's the one where I have heard that ask, and that ask is documented as something that we're considering, and that ultimately the Oversight Committee will need to make recommendations, and then the mayor will make recommendations to you all.

You know, I spoke to a committee member last night where they're also talking about, well, you know, do we have to treat this as an all or nothing parcel, right?

There's two, you know, there's several portions there.

There's one portion that has limited development value, that's under power lines, and it's got, you know, lots of steep grades.

You know, is there an opportunity to treat that differently?

So those are sort of the asks that I've been documenting, that I'm aware of, and we'll continue to think about that.

Thank you.

Okay, so.

That's really all I have.

I really appreciate your time and certainly invite all the council members and the public watching to participate in these meetings, to email us with any thoughts that they have, or to take our survey, and we really want to hear from folks.

All right, thank you very much.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilor Mosqueda, before we move to adjournment.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Do you have a quick update for us on pickleball courts and how we're doing with transitioning those tennis courts to pickleball?

No, no, he doesn't.

I don't know what pickleball is.

I'm kidding.

Oh, my gosh.

I apologize.

We're going to get tons of emails about that.

This is a public forum.

I was kidding.

That's not true.

I actually had joined a group of pickleball players a couple of years ago over at Yesir where they taught me how to play because it was very, very exciting.

And they did much, much better than I did.

So in terms of pickleball, you know, similar to the question Councilmember Herbold asked, like, that is something that's on our radar.

In fact, we've already done a lot of work.

One of the planning processes we did, we did a pickleball plan that really looked at how do we stripe additional courts, how do we look at sort of the community center time, indoor and outdoor time.

So it's absolutely on our list.

We're looking to, whenever we have the opportunity to provide more access, we will.

What we talked about even last night was that the idea is that, again, we still have a finite number of community center hours, finite number of courts that can be striped.

So we have to find the right balance.

I believe, and this has been shared with me, some folks in the pickleball community want us to do all of the tennis courts to become pickleball courts, right?

So we've got to find the right balance.

That's not really, I don't think that's something we can do, but we want to sort of find the best way to have this shared use of these facilities.

And you'll share with us, like, the number and the goals.

We have all that.

I don't know, Kathleen, if you have anything off the top of your head.

But any of the new stripe.

And when we're resurfacing the courts, we are including pickleball lines as well.

And we ended up, it was the difference between three courts two years ago to about 26 that we have.

And we understand it's a very social sport.

And so I know, like, at West Green Lake, we only striped one just to kind of get a flavor to see if people were You know, we just didn't know how the tennis players were going to react.

And it's actually been quite a good situation.

I think it's worked out well.

So I think we do have plans to stripe those courts, more of those, I think at least two more of those courts.

Okay.

But I will say, Council Member Juarez, to your point about the need to continue to provide programming for our seniors and our older adults, I think this is a great opportunity.

So we are very supportive.

So again, we're just looking to find the right balance.

Well we will end on the pickleball plan note and you'll get that back to council member a plan pickleball plan.

Yeah we'll get that back to councilor Mosqueda ASAP.

So just stay seated for a minute.

So we're going to move to adjourn but I just before I do that I want to note that the next meeting of the Public Asset and Native Communities Committee will be Tuesday April 7th at 2. And then also we're working with the tribes that are gonna come and present.

The Snoqualmie tribe, Muckleshoot, Suquamish, Tulalip are gonna come and present either in committee or down in the Bertha Knights.

We're gonna do a series because we do have a government to government relationship with tribes and they have a lot of social services and housing and education and healthcare issues that we can leverage and they certainly wanna work with us.

So that's gonna be exciting.

And with that, we are adjourned.

Thank you.