Seattle Park District Board - Special Meeting - Public Hearing 10/17/22

Thank you.

The October 17th, 2022 meeting of the Seattle Park District Board will come to order.

It is 5.40 PM.

I'm Andrew Lewis, president of the board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board member Nelson.

Present.

Board member Peterson.

Present.

Board member Strauss.

Board member Herbold.

Here.

Board member Juarez.

Here.

Board member Morales.

Board member Musqueda.

Present.

And President Lewis present six present.

Moving on to approval of the agenda.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Approval of the minutes.

Um, my notes indicate that there are no minutes today.

Madam Chair, can you confirm that we have no minutes to approve?

Madam Chair?

Uh, nodding in the affirmative.

There are no minutes to approve.

We will move on then to item one on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Seattle Park District proposed 2023 budget for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, and we are joined today by a panel of presenters.

So I wanna welcome Deputy Superintendent Christopher Williams, Michelle Finnegan, and Tracy Ratzliff from our Council Central staff for the presentation this evening.

I would ask that board members please hold their questions until the conclusion of the presentation.

And after the presentation, we will open a public hearing to hear from members of the community.

I'll hand it over to the panel.

Great.

Maybe I'll get started here.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis and Park District Board for staying late this afternoon for this presentation.

I just want to comment.

I've been in the Park Department for 29 years and I have never seen a more favorable budget situation for the department.

So thank you to you, Council Member Lewis, for your leadership and to the rest of the Park District Oversight Board.

It means a lot to us in the Park Department.

Let's see here.

Okay so today's presentation will start with an overview of the timeline and process that got us here today.

We'll then summarize the 2023 proposed budget before you hold a public hearing.

Let's go to the next slide Michelle.

So after a great deal of planning we started this journey way back in 2015 when the voters approved a park district and Uh, we had a six year cycle.

Uh, we were, uh, had intention of ramping up, um, the next six year planning cycle in 2021. However, because of the pandemic, uh, we had a two year delay and, uh, the park board of park and recreation commissioners met earlier this spring to make recommendations to the department.

which we transmitted to the mayor and which you ultimately reviewed and made recommendations and actually adopted a budget on September 27th.

So thank you for that work.

Next slide here.

Okay this slide summarizes how the 2023 proposed park district revenues will be appropriated by budget control level.

I'll provide an overview of the investments in the next few slides but as you can see here the green that 67 million dollars will be used to support operations and maintenance including a new BCL for the Seattle Center who will be taking over the operations and maintenance of the waterfront.

The blue chart On your right, that shows $51 million in support for capital, primarily fix it first types of investments, including, rather, which was part of the original intent of the park district and confirmed in the community engagement process for cycle two.

Next slide.

Okay, the adopted six year plan includes continuation of cycle one services.

This is roughly $58 million worth of baseline funding that will carry over.

As we've discussed before, and you can see here, these resources are integral to almost all aspects of how we operate the department and our capital programs, including major and regular maintenance, cleaning and other services to keep parks clean and open.

regular tree planting and maintenance work, community center operations and programs.

programs for teens, older adults, youth learning, and people with disabilities.

Also included here is funding for activation of parks downtown and citywide.

We've included the partnership with the zoo and the aquarium and the Friends of the Waterfront.

And then other operating support and smaller capital projects are included here too, such as the investment in an equity fund, off-leash areas, pea patches, and greenways.

In this next slide, some of the new and expanded services include new resources to support youth mentorship and youth employment, as well as an expansion of the Seattle Conservation Corps program.

This is a great second chance program.

Increased access and maintenance of community centers, as well as an increase of community engagement.

to ensure programming and services are relevant.

Also the reestablishment of the park ranger program coupled with increased activation resources for both our downtown and neighborhood parks.

This includes increased enforcement of off-leash and scoop laws in partnership with FAS, increased access and maintenance of park comfort stations, and a new dedicated team to reduce the time assets are out of service due to vandalism and graffiti.

Also, additional resources will be added for forest reforestation, as well as new resources for planting trees and develop parks.

Okay, here you can see new capital projects that received funding in 2023. And those projects include things like the Amy Yee Tennis Center, capital improvements, substantial capital improvements at Queen Anne, Community Center, Green Lake, and Evans Pool.

Other examples include a focus on unreinforced masonry projects, off-leash areas, Kubota Gardens, and Lake Washington Boulevard.

These are some of the highlighted areas.

And then here on this next slide, you can see in the draft resolution associated with the proposed 23 budget, these investments equate to a tax rate of approximately 39 cents for $1,000 of assessed value.

Okay, I'll pause here for any questions.

And before we switch to questions, Tracy, do you have anything to add from Council Central staff?

Do not.

Okay.

Are there any questions from board members?

We just spent several months discussing this, so I don't have any questions myself, but if board members have any questions.

Seeing no questions from board members.

So thank you panel, appreciate the presentation and the update and appreciate the intensive amount of work from the spring until the end of last month that went into this and look forward to continuing to work on implementation in 2023. So thank you so much for that presentation.

So at this time, we are going to move into the hybrid public hearing, which is our fifth item of business.

And we're familiar with the general instructions for the public comment period.

So I'm gonna dispense with the public comment video.

I will give each speaker two minutes to speak.

Madam Clerk, how many people do we have signed up to speak?

One person.

So I will give our one speaker, who I believe is Mr. David Mauring, two minutes to speak.

And once we have him connected, I believe he's testifying virtually, he may commence with the two minutes.