Good afternoon.
This is a special meeting of the Seattle Park District Board.
It's November 13th, and the time is 5.05 for the record.
I'm Councilmember Deborah Juarez, chair or board president of this committee.
I'm joined by Councilmembers O'Brien, Councilmember Bagshaw, Councilmember Johnson, and Councilmember Herbold, the very dedicated people to Seattle City Hall.
Thank you for being here.
I understand we have a presentation today from the Park District.
So the presentation from the Department of Parks and Recreation on the Seattle Park District midterm report.
I understand you have an eight-page PowerPoint that we're going to go through.
We will be having public hearing after we hear your presentation, but my understanding is there is no one signed up for public hearing.
So we will just have the presentation and for that I'll hand it over to the people at the table to introduce yourself and then we'll start.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You want to go ahead and read into the record now?
Go ahead.
Oh, if there's no objection?
Yes.
Can I approve the agenda?
Okay.
The agenda is now approved.
Sorry.
Thank you.
All right.
With that, can we now read it into the record?
Oh, excuse me.
Yes.
Item number one, a resolution amending the 2018 Park District.
No, I'm reading the wrong, I'm reading the wrong one.
I don't have it.
Do you have it?
This is the Seattle Park District midterm report, agenda item number one.
Thank you, Council Member Johnson.
Such a versatile young man.
Introduce yourselves.
Tracy Ratz of Council Central Staff.
and Christopher Williams, interim superintendent, Seattle Parks.
Michelle Finnegan, Seattle Parks and Recreation.
Okay, well, perhaps I'll jump right in there.
So we recognize you've had a long afternoon, and this presentation has about a 10 or 11-minute run time.
This is a briefing.
No action is being requested at this time.
I think by the number of people who are here to testify is consistent with the good news story that we think we have to share with you today.
Next slide.
We're here to talk about the Seattle Park District Mid-Cycle Report, but first I'd like to provide a little context.
As you know, the Seattle Park District was approved by the voters in 2014 as an ongoing funding source to provide ongoing funding and stable funding to maintain and operate and improve parks, community centers, pools, and other recreation facilities and programs.
The intent, when it was established, wasn't about building brand new facilities or shiny new things, but was instead to focus on taking care of what we have.
As such, the $50 million approximately each year is to provide Seattle Park and Recreation with funding that's intended to be deeply integrated into the overall budget of the department in order to meet our mission.
The park district, fund source makes up about 8% of our operating budget and about 50% of our capital budget.
Because the Park District exists in perpetuity as a taxing authority, there was understandably some concerns about accountability at the time of its passage.
An interlocal agreement was entered into which included accountability mechanisms that included a six-year planning cycle, regular reporting, a citizen oversight committee, as well as other principles on how the city would manage the district, compliance with other laws, establishing baseline levels of general fund support, et cetera.
The midterm progress report is one of the accountability measures outlined in the interlocal agreement.
I will focus today mostly on themes and lessons learned, but will want to provide a short summary of the finances.
And as a refresher, through a thorough financial review of the Park District mid-cycle covering 2015 through 2017 was completed this past spring after the books were closed on 2017. The data gathered through the process inform that the 2019-2020 budget development process, which is the topic of the conversation next week, so we'll be back here same time next week to have a more in-depth conversation about the budget.
But to quickly summarize, in 2015 through 2017, the Park District provided more than $34 million to support programming, maintenance and operations, and more than $73 million towards capital projects, which include both major maintenance and improvements to existing parks and facilities, Together, these investments provide critically needed support for previously underfunded services to help meet the needs of our changing community.
This equated, again, to 8% of the operating budget and about half of our capital budget during this time.
So some of the themes and lessons learned.
The first two themes about performance management and related systems.
Park district funding has allowed Seattle Parks to improve data systems, business processes, and staff development programs.
These tools help us to manage the work more efficiently, assess and improve our back of office processes, and improve and make us better as we sort of grow and experience the use of park district resources.
A new asset management and work order system has been implemented as of January 1st, and more than 300 employees are using the system to track maintenance performed.
On the recreational side, a new registration and facility booking system is scheduled to go live in about two weeks.
These systems support our ability to make data-informed decisions.
However, developing a robust performance management system takes time and is still ongoing.
This is new muscle we're learning to use in the organization.
I think the other theme is the impact of Seattle's growth.
Increased density and redirecting maintenance employees to focus on encampment removal is having an impact on the park system that is sometimes hard to quantify.
In the case of basic grounds maintenance, more people means increased cleaning frequencies.
It means we may be cleaning a comfort station, what we refer to as an outdoor bathroom, four times a day instead of twice a day, which means we may be paying less attention to the horticultural imperatives around our work.
Providing a aesthetically pleasing urban park system is a big part of what our staff is tasked to do.
But this impact has meant more focus on basic custodial litter and garbage collection and less focus on beautification, plants and flowers.
On the land acquisition side, basically acquiring land for new parks, we frequently have found ourselves in a binary competition between land for affordable housing versus land for public parks.
This is a false set of choices as we need both.
We recently tried to acquire property in the Lake City Urban Village.
However, the estimated value was over $10 million, which would be a full six-year allocation for the acquisition initiative, a portion to offset reimbursement from King County Conservation Futures.
The last two themes, the park district has generated much excitement as communities and stakeholders consider the prospect of having new community centers or park in their neighborhood.
Although the fix it first was a slogan of the park district campaign, SPR feels increasing pressure from the community to deliver new recreation facilities and parks.
There was a category of investment called community center rehabilitation and redevelopment.
This was mostly to keep the community centers operational, new roofs, electrical systems.
While we are committed to doing this, the public expectation really has been for brand new facilities.
I'm sorry, I didn't, go ahead, Council Member Johnson.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Just briefly, Mr. Superintendent, I got asked a question by a constituent not too long ago that relates to the Parks Department and I didn't have an answer for it, but it's about community centers themselves.
You know, we've got the community center model where we've got a specific number of hours that we intend each community center to be open on a weekly basis.
And this constituent asked, well, you know, how come we're not in a position where we are opening community centers for more hours every week, but then charging things like athletic facilities or teams to be using some portion of that facility and then keeping it open for the rest of the community.
The frustration there by this constituent was generally, if we've got community members who want to pay for that space, can't we take some of their resources and open it up to everybody?
And the benefits are shared by all.
The community members who can't afford to pay get access to a space that's being subsidized by somebody who can.
And we all get more hours that may not exist today.
I wonder if you were in my shoes when this impassioned individual cornered you at a farmer's market, what would your response have been?
Well, first, I would agree with that person.
However, I think the story is a lot more complex.
So back in 2011, 2012, we modified the community center staffing model for community centers.
Prior to 2011, every community center across the city had five staff.
That allowed us to be open a minimum of 40 hours a week.
Today, we have some community centers that are open 38 hours, 40 hours, 70 hours.
And what that does is create this difference in hours.
So what we are doing is when people are coming to a community center and they see people engaged in public recreation activity, but the doors are locked, we are basically communicating that we can't deliver 80 hours of a community center program with 30 hours of staff, for example.
So there's this conundrum where we have facilities that for all intents and purposes appear to be open, but they're not open for public use.
They're only open for registered use because we don't have adequate staffing to have them open for the entire 40 hours.
So that's one of the pressure points we are trying to manage.
So the other theme is equity.
Additionally, the Park District supports SBR goals around creating healthy people, healthy environment, and strong communities, and does so in a way that leads with a focus on equity.
Through investments in community centers, athletic fields, urban forests, play areas, and recreation programs, we are better able to ensure that all community members have access to the best of our city Investments in performance management is promoting accountability for all SPR goals, including those focused around equity.
Both the Get Moving and Recreation for All initiatives provide funds, support, and spaces for recreation activities that are community-based and community-led.
We have seen great returns on these investments.
and other park district funded programs and numbers of community connections, participants, and community events.
Park district funding also allows SPR to reduce barriers to participation by eliminating drop-in fees at community centers during operating hours and providing $400,000 a year in recreation scholarships, in addition to the existing scholarships for licensed childcare.
So Seattle Parks has over a million dollars in scholarships that we allocate to vulnerable families and children across the city.
Funding is allocated, this next slide, programming level highlights and challenges.
Funding is allocated to four investment areas.
I'd like to bring your attention to a couple of highlights and challenges.
There is a more full report that will be coming your way on the mid-cycle report.
Maintaining park and facilities initiatives funds day-to-day maintenance of parks and facilities We've implemented a third shift crew the park district funds a new approach to preventative maintenance the third shift this crew comprises journey level trades people electricians painters and carpenters essentially what this third shift crew does is go in and overnight to do the kinds of things that a facility would need to be closed for maybe two weeks.
Well, they get in there and they do the work at night and create sort of the seamless level of service level maintenance that happens.
It was a great innovation.
The Seattle Conservation Corps, SPR, is leveraging two of our smaller maintenance initiatives, improving our dog off-leash areas and rejuvenating our pea patches by using the Seattle Conservation Corps and thereby supporting another SPR and city priority.
Again, the Conservation Corps is a program that gives people second chance opportunity.
to learn a job skill and we have dedicated some of the investment areas to be specifically dedicated to conservation core employees to do the work and to generate the revenue from those projects.
fix it first.
This initiative addresses park and recreation systems major maintenance needs and supports the Green Seattle Partnership effort to preserve our urban forests.
This also focuses on community center stabilization projects that are intended to address critical major maintenance priorities at eight community centers.
However, the community had expectations that these projects would also address centers, more aesthetic look and feel of community centers.
These stabilization projects, such as, or rather include things like seismic retrofits and roofs and electrical systems, improve the building soundness.
They allow us to keep the doors open, but include very few of the nice to have improvements the community center may have anticipated.
In 2018, SPR engaged a consultant to further refine cost estimates for these stabilization projects before project design began.
We are learning that these facility conditions have deteriorated significantly since the original cost estimates were made.
Some were made back in 2008. Based on this information learned through this evaluation, the scope of work to be completed by the end of 2020 may need to be adjusted and some projects, some project elements reprioritize.
So what we're saying here is that some of the community center rehabilitation projects are costing more than we anticipated.
Programs for People, this initiative supports community center operations.
It funds programs, classes, services for the community.
It focuses on providing access to recreation for all.
Leveraging community partnerships is a big component of this area.
Three new park district funded initiatives put approximately $600,000 per year in the hands of community organizations and individuals to provide culturally relevant, engaging programs.
and events and experiences.
The recreation for all and get moving supported culturally relevant programming for underserved populations.
Essentially what we did here was recognize that there are a handful of communities across the city that we should be partnering with and we use these grants to create seed money opportunities to leverage the numbers of people we serve with public recreation across the city with these grants.
And these grants went out in the amount of $10,000 here and there to different communities across the city, and they really leveraged how many people we're serving through public recreation.
Building for the Future.
This initiative prepares us for the future by developing new parks and acquiring new parkland.
You may recall that the 2008 Park and Green Spaces Levy provided funding for acquisition of new parkland, but did not provide funding for development.
We are using the investment, or rather investing for the future initiative to invest in parks that we acquired in 2008 as land bank sites and making them complete, fully developed parks.
In fact, we just opened one of those parks on 14th Avenue in Ballard.
Yemen's Gap Park was our latest park opening.
Next slide.
So basically what this graphic shows you is that 89% or 24 projects are on track.
Those are highlighted in green.
We've assessed some projects in yellow because that means we're closely monitoring those projects.
So I'll give you an example of one of the projects we assessed in yellow to kind of share a little story here.
So last year in 2017, we were gonna implement the class registration system, the new class registration system, or ActiveNet.
This is the software that allows the public to register online for community centers.
However, we thought with bringing on SRI, the city's new accounting system and budget system, that we should manage the level of complexity we were exposing the staff to and the public.
So we decided to delay the implementation of class until this year, so class will go live on November 27th.
And that's an example of where we made a conscious decision to delay a project.
There's another example where the Office of the Waterfront is completing Pier 62 renovation, and you've heard about this.
So that's another example where we had to delay or move a timeline.
But those are some examples of areas that were highlighted yellow.
I just mentioned the community center commitment to do redevelopment projects in community centers.
We are having to go back and recast some of the scope elements, and that's why we've highlighted that in red.
Overall, we feel this is a good news story.
and we are on track to deliver on the park district.
So this slide represents a quick overview on where we are in finalizing the mid-cycle report.
SPR spent the second and third quarters of the year assessing each initiative and our overall implementation.
This included engagement with the Park District Oversight Committee, including three topic-focused areas, the financials, the themes, and the program-level highlights and challenges.
We briefed Mayor Durkin last week, and we're here today to brief you.
And we will discuss the full midterm report with the Park District Oversight Committee in December, after which we will finalize and publish the report in a web-friendly format.
So I'll pause right there for questions.
Any questions from my colleagues?
I just have a quick question.
Christopher, what is the status of our Seattle Park District Oversight Committee?
Are we full up?
Do we have any districts that are not represented?
Yes, so I think we have two districts that are not represented.
I know we're working with Council Member Juarez on a representative from D5.
And where's the other one?
Council Member Harrell.
And then Council Member Harrell has a position that we're working to
Thank you for that.
I know that while we were working leading up to our August 2014 date, there was a lot of concern about how do we know, how do we believe you?
People were concerned that maybe we would go off track, that We would not be living up to what the projects that we said we were going to and like to fix it first that you mentioned earlier.
But I would just like to say the importance of getting that oversight committee and the board full.
And if you are having problems, let us know.
Because I think just for the sense of people knowing that we're being accountable and that in every district there's people who are looking, I think it's good.
I appreciate your paying attention to that.
And Christopher, I want to thank you and your staff.
You guys have been really good about having the geographical parity and putting names forward to us.
I think some people are under the impression that individual council members were coming to you and saying, put this person on the board.
But indeed, it was the other way around.
There is a process, and that process is on the website.
You guys have your own process, and then you forward the names to us.
So I just want to clarify that.
So thank you for doing that.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for your support.
Good.
Absolutely.
So, with that, is there any other questions or concerns my colleagues may have or want to bring up at this time?
Are you about to adjourn?
Yes, I am.
Oh, well, then let me just say thank you.
What?
What, Ms. Jody?
She probably just opened the public hearing.
She does need to do that.
Okay, great.
Well, I do want to say, again, thank you, Christopher, in particular.
You and your folks are so responsive, and I know that, at least I can say for myself, There are a lot of times that I'm calling and asking for things to happen and have to happen quickly.
I just want you to know I recognize the work and I appreciate the work and I appreciate you very much.
Thank you so much.
So before I adjourn, I have to make the announcement that there is nobody signed up for public hearing.
So open it up to public hearing.
Seeing that there is no one here for public hearing, public hearing is now closed.
Are we okay?
Good.
Okay, so with that, and thank you all the way around for all of your hard work.
Thank you too, Tracy.
The next meeting of the Park District Board will be Monday at 2.30, and we will have a better, more in-depth briefing, and we'll have the report, or the, I'm sorry, the analysis.
The financial, I'm sorry, the financial piece.
Budget adoption that we need to do once the full council adopts the base budget, yes.
Okay, great.
Okay.
With that, we stand adjourned.
And thank you, my colleagues, for showing up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you for wearing your hat.