Seattle Park District Board 6/16/2025

...cleared for takeoff.

The June 16, 2026 meeting of the Seattle Parks District Board will come to order.

It is 4.04 p.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth, Council President.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board Member Foster?

Here.

Board Member Juarez?

Here.

Board Member Kettle?

Here.

Board Member Lynn?

Board Member Rink?

Here.

Board Member Rivera?

Board Member Saka?

Here.

Board Member Strauss?

Here.

Board President Hollingsworth?

Here.

Seven present.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now proceed to the election of the President of the Seattle Parks District Board.

Are there any nominations?

I'm going to nominate the name of board member Juarez.

I'm going to nominate council member Juarez, my apologies, for board member, for president.

Are there any other nominations?

Seeing none, the name board member Juarez has been placed in nominations as president.

and hearing no further nominations, nominations are now closed and will proceed to a vote.

Those in favor of electing Board Member Juarez as president, vote aye.

Those opposed, vote no.

Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry.

I'm just reading through this.

Those in favor of electing Board Member Juarez, please vote aye.

Aye.

Wait, does the clerk call the roll?

Do you go one by one?

I think we'll take roll, just to be sure.

Okay, I have this in my script as aye and nay.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Board Member Foster?

Aye.

Board Member Juarez?

Yes.

Board Member Kettle?

Aye.

Board Member Rink?

Yes.

Board Member Saka?

Aye.

Board Member Strauss?

Aye.

Board President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Seven in favor and unopposed?

Awesome, eyes have it and Board Member Juarez is elected.

For the record, Board Member Lynn is present.

We're now gonna proceed to the election of the Vice President for the Seattle Parks District.

Are there nominations?

Past practice has been that the Vice President of the Parks Committee would serve as Vice President of the Metropolitan Parks District.

So I'm gonna nominate Council Member Kettle.

Are there any other nominations on the floor?

Okay, awesome.

Board Member Kettle has been placed as Vice President, and hearing no further nominations, will the clerk please call the roll on Council Member...

excuse me, Board Member Kettle as Vice Chair.

Board Member Foster?

Aye.

Board Member Juarez?

Aye.

Board Member Kettle?

Aye.

Board Member Lynn?

Aye.

Board Member Rink?

Yes.

Board Member Saka?

Aye.

Board Member Strauss?

Aye.

Board Member Hollingsworth?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Awesome.

We have a new Parks District President, Board Member Juarez, and then new Vice Chair, Board Member Cattle.

All I know is the President does not want to move into this seat, so she will start the meeting and run it from her chair colleagues.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President, former President, and now that I'm President, I will go ahead with the meeting.

Let's move on the agenda to approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of the November 21st, 2025 Seattle Park District meeting are approved.

Hearing and seeing no objections, the minutes are approved.

Will the Clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Moving on to public comment.

Do we have anyone signed up for public comment, Madam Clerk?

We have two remote speakers, only one's present, and then we'll double-check.

Right now there's no in-person, but we'll check after the remote speaker.

Okay, so let's do the two minutes each for the two remote speakers.

Okay, our first remote speaker is Peter Bray-Fogel, and Peter, once we allow you to speak, please press star six.

You can now press star six.

I don't see Peter's tile.

Peter, it looks like you're still muted.

Can you press star six?

Okay, while we're waiting, I'm gonna check our in-person speakers.

We have no in-person speakers.

We'll try one more time to unmute Peter.

You know what, Jody, I don't see Peter's talk.

He just, he actually just unmuted.

I think I finally got in.

Yep, you're in.

Did I finally get in?

Yes, you're in.

Sorry about that.

I was punching the wrong keypad, I guess.

Go ahead, Peter.

Can you guys hear me just fine?

Two minutes.

Yes.

Good afternoon, members of the system.

Peter Breyfogle, Good afternoon, members of Seattle Park District Board.

My name is Peter Breyfogle and I make residents of the view Ridge neighborhood in St Seattle and a leader of the fix the Burke gillman a partner project with the Seattle parks foundation.

Peter Breyfogle, I want to thank you for your support you're showing bicycling with the declaration that you sign at the recent city council meeting that I attended.

I hope you receive my invite to the Burke gillman 55th anniversary hiking for September 12th.

I'm here today to remind the Board there's a local, regionally, and nationally significant bicycle facility managed by the Seattle Parks and Recreation.

The Burke-Gilman Trail was one of the first urban trails conversions 50 years ago.

Unfortunately, it has not received adequate capital improvement funding for the northernmost four miles of the Burke-Gilman Trail.

This critical stretch suffers from years of deferred maintenance.

We are currently facing severe route intrusions, crumbling asphalt, and inadequate drainage.

These are no longer just minor inconveniences.

They are active safety hazards.

In the winter months, poor drainage leads to dangerous cooling and black ice, leading the trail unsafe for wheeled users, including children and elderly residents.

The edge is deteriorated, overhung by vegetation, is slippery, and masks a deep ditch that is often filled with water.

Patchwork maintenance is no longer enough.

We need a comprehensive capitol upgrade, full repaving, modern roof barriers, structural drainage fixes, and safer edges with demarcation.

The Seattle Park District has the responsibility and the resources to fund a capital improvement project by Burke-Gillman.

Please do not let the north end of the historic trail deteriorate further.

Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your commitment to safer, more connected Seattle.

Thank you.

That's our only speaker.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Peter.

That being said, public comment period is now closed and thank you, Peter, for calling in.

Let's move on to items of business.

Will the Clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Seattle Park District update, the 2025 financial and operational performance for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So why don't we have our presenters come up and I'll let you get yourself situated and you can introduce yourself.

I'm going to do a brief overview for my colleagues and the viewing public about what we're about to hear today.

There are two items on the agenda today.

The first item on the agenda is a presentation on the 2025 financial and performance overview.

This item is broken into three sections.

There's the annual report overview, the financial overview, and the annual report contents with four subcategories, four subsections, which is healthy people, thriving environment, vibrant community, and building for the future, And the second item, which is in your PowerPoint, I think it's what, 25 pages, is on the agenda, is a presentation of the proposed Park District Resolution 79. This resolution increases non-capital and capital appropriations in the 2026 Park District budget from the $3 million underspend in the 2025 budget.

So the $3 million underspend, I understand you'll break it down to us, it's into capital, into programming.

And again, as I stated, your presentation or your PowerPoint is 25 pages.

And with that, I expect a vote on the resolution today.

I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourselves for the record.

Good to see you, Michelle.

Good to see you, Board President.

I'm Michelle Finnegan, Interim Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation.

I'm Justin Hellyer, Policy Advisor with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

And Carina Bull, Council Central Staff.

Great.

So with that, you're gonna...

I guess you're gonna take us through...

You guys wanna let them get through their presentation, then ask questions?

Can we do that?

Okay.

So...

Great.

So good afternoon.

Thanks for making time for us this afternoon.

As Board President Juarez shared, we're gonna present some information aligned with our 2025 annual report, which we have actually hard copies fresh off the printers for you today.

They're also available online.

I'm gonna do the first kind of high level slides and then Justin's gonna walk you through the annual report part because he project managed that for our department.

So we're excited to hear from him.

Next slide.

As President Juarez said, our two agenda items are a briefing on our financial performance, and then we'll go on to talk about this resolution 79. Next slide.

So for item one, we're gonna provide some context on SPR's approach to annual reporting and our performance framework.

We'll then summarize our year-end financials and provide some highlights for the 2025 annual report.

will end with a reminder of how we stay accountable and how we're looking ahead.

But before we jump in, I just wanna acknowledge that we're gonna be covering 2025, so really the accomplishments as of December 31st.

So we're gonna ask you to do a little time travel back with us to the end of last year as you hear progress You may have heard capital projects in a different state recently, but we're really talking about from the 2025 perspective.

So just a heads up on that.

Next slide.

As I mentioned, we're really excited that we have just published our annual reports.

We have produced annual reports since 2015. This has been part of our enhanced accountability adopted concurrent with the creation of the Seattle Park District.

The requirement for annual reporting is in the interlocal agreement between the City and the Park District, but recognizing the interdependencies of our funding sources with the Cycle 2 plan, we move to reporting comprehensively across all of our funds and all of our lines of business in order to tell you about what we've accomplished with our full budget, not just with Park District dollars.

We released both a narrative report detailing our success stories and a detailed financial and performance appendix that reports budget to actuals and our key performance indicators versus their goals.

Our Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners play a key role in reviewing our annual performance with a subcommittee dedicated to this work.

We appreciate the Board's partnership and they have written a letter that's included in our annual report.

So this annual report marks the halfway point of Cycle 2 and with that we had some review of our key themes.

As you know, Cycle 2 added significant resources to many of our lines of businesses and we're committed to expanding the programs and services as well as our capital project delivery.

Overarchingly through this annual review and report, we found that we are delivering at or above our service goals for the majority of our operating investments and our capital projects are on track to meet our Cycle 2 goals.

Next slide.

Each year, we also include a high-level summary of our SPR financials.

This visual summarizes the adopted budget, which for 2025 is approximately $344 million on both the operating and capital sides.

About 75% of that is on the operating side and 25% is on the capital side.

As you'll, we'll show you in the next slide kind of where we ended the year, but just to be clear, in addition to our general fund and our MPD resources, which are almost equal in terms of their support of our services, and we also have the PARC fund on our operating side that's a primary funding source, which is where our earned revenues go.

So we have about a like amount of expenses and revenues on that.

and on the capital side REIT is our other big primary funding source.

Next slide.

This is our very detailed slide.

I am out of order in my notes.

I won't get there.

Okay.

Sorry.

Thank you.

With the overall budget context in mind, this slide takes a deeper dive into our 2025 year end, comparing the revised budget to actual spending with our operating lines of business at the top and our capital lines below.

On the operating side, we saw a continuation of a citywide hiring freeze and expectations to manage an internal savings goal required in 2025. With that in mind, you can see that overall we are about $263 million spent, or about 94% of our total budget, resulting in about a $16 million underspend.

For the general fund, the savings requirement I mentioned was about $3.2 million, which we achieved.

In addition, we carried forward a little over $2 million in general fund for services provided under the Participatory Budgeting Program.

That's a multi-year investment, so we plan to carry that forward.

And that's providing a pilot on restroom attendance, provided by the Seattle Conservation Corps right now at Cal Anderson Park.

The remaining 1.6 million laps back to the general fund, again, mostly attributable to the hiring freeze.

For the park fund, where our earned revenues cover a commensurate amount of expenses, we anticipated the $1.8 million revenue shortfall, which is covered by a like amount of expense savings.

And finally, the MPD saw a similar underspend as our general fund and for the same reasons.

and with that, we are proposing to utilize the savings in two ways.

One is to address an upcoming annual wage increase retro payment, which is similar to how we handled the last one in 2024 and a remaining $3 million as council member Juarez referenced that we are proposing to reappropriate for current priorities.

Moving to the capital side, As you all know, our capital program is large and complex with more than 500 active projects across various lines of business.

As you can see here, we spent about $93 million in 2025, leaving approximately $218 million in carry forward.

Of this amount, the MPD and REIT account for over half of it remaining amounts are a mix of park fund backed by grant authority and things like that.

Given the complexity of our CIP and recognizing that projects span multiple years across fiscal years, SPR provides a detailed information in the CIP carry forward memo as part of our annual budget process.

So we submitted that to council last year or last week as part of our 2026 proposed budget and that will transit to you guys in September as part of the mayor's proposal.

This next slide details what you'll officially consider in resolution 59, but as we were talking about carry forward, we thought we would walk you through the details of our proposal at this time.

You will experience this proposal both wearing your park district hats today and on the city council side before we would ever spend the authority that you're considering today.

So of our $3 million, about half of it, we're proposing to support our pool renovation program.

This program has had to absorb some unplanned expenses to make structural repairs to the roof at Medgar Everest Pool and to repair the underground piping system at Queen Anne Pool, which is leaking.

This investment basically makes the program whole, which is important since our pools are critical, infrastructure, and are aging.

The next proposal is related to the cultural stage of Beresheva Park in Rainier Beach, which suffered significant damage in the late November 2024 bomb cyclone storm, where a tree fell on it and damaged the roof.

This happened soon after it was built, and the loss disrupted the enhanced vision for community events at the park.

This funding would support a replacement of the cultural stage roof.

The next proposal is related to our draft racket sports strategy.

While we continue to engage with community in the development of this strategy, with additional meetings being scheduled next week, this proposed investment would support implementation once the strategy is finalized.

that could be things like moving up court resurfacing to address goals of that in 2027. The next proposal relates to our childcare licensing requirements.

They have been updated by the state to require voice activated fire systems for all new licensing programs.

So for Seattle Parks and Recreation, that has been triggered with our improvements at some of our recent community centers, such as Hiawatha and South Park, as well as as we consider new providers, such as our Seattle Preschool Program at Yesler.

And finally, in an effort to support access to fee-based programs, we are proposing $200,000 additionally to support recreation scholarships, and that's about a 50% increase over what's available this year.

So as I mentioned, you'd consider these more officially as we move into item two, but I wanted to walk you through that as we're considering this carry forward topic.

And with that, if there's no questions, I'll pass it over to Justin to talk about the annual report.

Let's hold up here before we move on.

Were there any questions up to this point?

Not seeing any.

I do have a quick question.

On the racket sports, $600,000, is that for pickleball?

It is to support implementation of the racket sports strategy.

So it could do court resurfacing for pickleball tennis.

It could be improving fencing.

It could be improving lighting.

It could be doing different things.

But it is related to that strategy.

What about the outdoor basketball courts?

So there is a court program that's a regular baseline investment.

And so that continues.

This is specifically an additional add for racket sports, is the proposed.

Oh, racket.

I see.

Racket.

OK, got it.

Are there any other questions before we move on?

Oh, Council Member Kettle has a question.

Oh, wait, Vice Chair.

Vice President.

Oh, and Council Member Foster.

Oh, there she is.

Okay, sorry about that.

Go ahead.

Council Member Kettle.

Vice President.

Vice President.

I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you for the update related to pool renovations and reservations.

which are impacted by the need for renovations.

The Queen Anne pool piece is really important.

Every day, not every day, but two days ago in the morning at a coffee shop, I'm getting asked about the pool for a host of reasons, with young people primarily, the kids who are taking lessons.

and I really appreciate this being on here in terms of the carry forward and having it to be frank on top of the list because it is, particularly with the mega evidence pool, something that really needs to be moved forward.

And I'm assuming everything is maintaining its timetable.

Okay.

We are moving forward as quickly as possible on that repair.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I wanted to go back to slide seven, please.

Okay, sorry, maybe it was six.

I think I wrote down the wrong number.

Okay, so you were, I think this is where we maybe...

Sorry.

Okay, so at some point you were talking about just the participatory budgeting and the bathrooms.

I think I've written down the wrong slide number here.

So that's my apologies there.

Let's get to thank you.

Okay, here we are.

So can you just go back to that a little bit and speak to the sort of participatory budgeting process and just how you got to the prioritization?

And I ask because we just had a community group ask us who has currently some short-term participatory budgeting resources for bathroom maintenance and they were inquiring about whether there would be available funds moving forward.

So we wanted to hear more about that participatory budgeting and bathroom maintenance in particular.

Sure, great question, thank you.

So, and I'll get my years wrong, because I'm always in budget years, which is the wrong year.

I believe 2024 was when the current investment in participatory budgeting for us was placed in our budget, and it was the entire amount, which is about $6 million.

was placed on an operating side of our budget.

So every year we are not spending that entire amount.

It's like a three to four year program that we're piloting.

And so the differential we need to carry forward into the next year.

So as we look at, and the way it aligns with this slide is if you look on the operating lines of business where we show our total percent spent was 94%.

that's because we intentionally were knowing that we were gonna need to carry forward some of that participatory budgeting funds into the next year.

And that we are carrying forward, I have it in my notes, about $2.1 million of that is carried forward from 2025. 5 to 2026 and primarily we've been piloting at Cal Anderson Park to date and we are planning to add a second site which we soft opened this week at Freeway Park with the eventual intent that it will move to Hing He when that restroom opens.

So that's our plan for those five.

And you just hit on my question actually which is about Freeway Park and I'd be curious to hear more about Hing He as well but Is it currently planned?

I understand that we're doing the carry forward.

So do you anticipate being able to continue the support for Freeway Park past?

I wanna say I thought it was just a short term like to the end of this year for 2026. So is the current plan to have that carry forward and then continue the bathroom support at Freeway Park in 2027 and beyond?

So the second site that we had planned and had been approved is the Hing He restrooms that are not yet open.

It's a partnership with SKIPTA down there to open that site.

And so we are in the interim using those funds to support access at Freeway Park.

So it is an interim strategy.

Understood.

Thank you for that clarification.

So it's the funds that are not yet available to be, or excuse me, the funds that are not being applied to Hing He.

because there's some more work that needs to happen.

So you're currently applying those funds to Freeway.

And so we have some questions about sort of the future support for Freeway as we get the Hing Hei site up and running.

Is that correct?

Exactly.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have more, but I will do them via follow-up email and communication.

And I'm looking forward to seeing the pilot at Freeway or the temporary support at Freeway.

And I want to also make sure that if that is successful, that we have the opportunity to support its continued success and certainly would never want to take away from Hing He and the restroom access need that's there.

So look forward to talking about some creative options.

Yes, and we've been working well with the Friends of Freeway Park, too, on the plans.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair or President.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councillor Foster.

Yes, it is a new hand.

I just wanted to thank Board Member Foster.

I was just at Freeway Park last week, and I did see the construction on the bathroom, the restroom, and they were buttoned on temporary doors and so forth.

There's a lot of different pieces to Freeway Park, and there's a few pieces that we'll look to follow up working with Council Member Foster because 50th anniversary.

It is Jim Ellis.

It is historic, all of the above, and it has its challenges, so I appreciate bringing it up.

Board Member Foster and the follow-up on that.

Thank you.

Happy to.

We're looking forward to that event in August as well.

Hey, Michelle, can you move your microphone up closer?

Sorry.

And the other question I wanted to ask you, just if it triggers any PTSD about Hing-Hang.

I, again, don't want to go into how long I've been here, but have we not settled the issue with the bathroom, with sharing it with the Hing Hei Park and the bathroom with parks?

Settled is settled.

They are finishing their construction to which we then start the tenant improvements, which is why in the interim we're reallocating those resources to Freeway Park.

That's eight years in the making.

Okay.

All right, so we are on page 11, correct?

And thank you for bolding the stuff that you have featured in today's presentation.

So we can...

Yeah, great.

Well, I'm excited to give you a preview of our 2025 annual report.

We organize it around our core themes of healthy people, thriving environment, vibrant communities, and a section on capital project development.

and as our president just mentioned, the item, this is essentially the table of contents for the whole report and the items that are bolded are what we are telling you about today.

A reminder of what the superintendent just shared that we're reporting 2025 progress.

So we're generally, any data we're showing you is generally what happened between January and December 31st of last year.

and capital projects were giving you their status as of the end of last year.

And in a few cases, there's pretty significant progress since that we'll point out to you.

So just to get started on our athletic fields, all over the city, Seattle residents come together through sports and athletics, and our fields and programs are a key part of that.

As you may know, Seattle Parks and Recreation schedules both our own fields and all of the Seattle Public Schools fields through a joint use agreement.

Across both fields, we scheduled more than 250,000 hours of field time in 2025 for more than 250 groups.

These are kind of our own youth athletics programs, they're school teams, and they're community users, like the Age Up program pictured here.

If you do the math, that represents 700 hours of scheduled field time every day across the city, so that's pretty amazing.

And we keep working on ways to get more folks and newly emerging users on our fields.

We updated our field scheduling policy so that as new field time comes online, we prioritize newly emerging users and newly emerging sports.

And then we keep, as always, we've continued our recent tradition of keeping 10 fields unscheduled for winter and summer for drop-in use and spontaneous play.

To make sure these fields are in playable condition, we are in a continual cycle of asset management across the system.

In cycle two, we set goals around what we wanted to do in terms of capital development and asset management for our athletic fields.

in that 2023 to 2028 period.

So we set a goal to replace eight to 10 synthetic turf fields.

As you probably know, every 10 or so years, an artificial turf field has to undergo major renovation.

And so we set a goal of replacing eight to ten fields by 2028. We completed three of those in 2025 for a cycle-to-date total of eight, so we're confident in reaching that goal.

We set a goal to convert two new fields to artificial turf, so taking kind of grass fields and making them artificial turf for the first time.

Those are going to be South Park and Soundview, so in the time machine world of this report, they were in construction.

As you know, they've since come to completion.

So we're hitting that target as well.

And then we're also committed to a newly established goal of renovating, of converting seven infields.

So think baseball and softball infields.

Four are done so far.

Two of those were at Ballard in 2025. And just want to note that when when we do these kind of field conversions or improvements, it opens up new playtime that we didn't have before.

So if you put artificial turf on a field, it gets you more wintertime play.

If you put lights, it gets you more evening play.

So both at Soundview and in South Park, we've done a lot of work to try to connect community users and newly emerging sports to that new field time.

So we're excited to tell you about that as they roll out in 2026. Looking at our programming, Lifelong Recreation is our programming for older adults 50 and above, and the program celebrated its 50th year this year, so it's finally old enough to go to its own programs.

As you know, as parks, we don't operate senior centers or social service programs the way some parks and recreation agencies around the country do.

That's done really well by the city's human services department and nonprofit partners, but we really focus on kind of the quality of life and social connections programming for older adults.

So things like arts activities, fitness classes, social events, field trips.

And so we have a goal based on our staffing level of 5,000 hours of programming for older adults every year.

For the last two years, we've accomplished that and beaten it by enough that we're taking a look and probably going to increase that goal.

just wanted to share a couple of standout programs from last year.

With the Seattle Theater Group, we hosted the Dance for Parkinson's at Garfield Community Center, which is a free dance class, so it's good exercise, but also movement helps reduce Parkinson's tremors, so it's just a nice way to connect folks to their bodies and a good experience.

With the University of Washington's Memory Hub, We lead experiences in Maud's garden, a garden, a green space on First Hill, with a goal of connecting people living with dementia and their caregivers to that open space.

And, you know, for people experiencing dementia, sometimes that comes with a lot of frustration and sadness, not being able to remember the past.

And this program's really geared around keeping people in the moment in a beautiful and peaceful place.

Moving on to the Green Seattle Partnership, which is our innovative urban forest restoration program.

It celebrated its 20th birthday this year, and for those two decades, GSP has nurtured a pretty unique network of volunteers, partner organizations, and restoration professionals to use ecological restoration as a tool for community health.

In that time, we've put more than 2,000 of our 2,500 forested acres into active restoration in 120 different parks.

And we're working toward our cycle two goals of 50,000 native trees planted and 360,000 native plants installed.

And at halfway through cycle two, we're halfway to the goal, so that is looking good.

And the GSP also, released a new strategic plan to guide it for the next 10 years.

So if you love this program and you're excited about where it's going, take a look at the strategic plan.

Also in the environmental realm, in Cycle 2 we committed to, because of strong community interest, to decarbonizing our facilities as a part of that.

We committed to including decarbonization in the scope of four major community center redevelopments, and as you can see, those are proceeding with three sites in design and one in planning.

We, at this point, anticipate all of them to begin construction in 2027 or 2028, so that's a big step forward in electrifying and decarbonizing our facilities.

We also budgeted to decarbonize eight additional facilities and with Magnuson Community Center completed in 2023 and Hiawatha and South Park completed in 26. We're well on our way there.

I do want to point out that as we complete our first decarbonization projects and we dive deeper into this design work and cost estimating, we're learning a lot about what are fundamentally pretty new technologies.

And we're seeing higher costs than we anticipated when we initially estimated this work for cycle two in 2022. So we're continuing to study full electrification at a variety of sites and are working to decarbonize these based on project costs and available resources.

And on to childcare.

So for decades, SPR has partnered with the Associated Recreation Council to serve as one of the largest providers of licensed childcare in Washington State.

SPR holds the license, manages the registration process, and makes sure our physical spaces are compliant.

And AHRQ recruits, trains, and leads the programs.

I want to celebrate that, as you know, the pandemic caused a lot of trouble to the whole childcare model.

And I'm happy to say that attendance in our licensed childcare programs, both school year and summer camps, has grown each year since the pandemic.

And in 2025, we were serving a little more than 1,100 kids during school year and a little more than 1,000 in summer camps.

In Seattle, just like everywhere else in the country, childcare programs are seeing some challenges around staffing costs and increasing program fees that are a real strain on working families.

So we distribute childcare scholarships each year to help bridge that gap.

And I'm also excited to say in 2025, we became an authorized provider for DEAL's City Child Care Assistance Program.

So for the first time, we're tapping into another resource to help families connect to care.

Arts in Parks.

As you know, we continued our collaboration with the Office of Arts and Culture to put arts installations and programming across parks in our city.

We do a variety of other things you might not know as much about in terms of arts, too.

We host 35 artist studios in Magnuson Park, so part of the whole transition from a military base to a community asset, there was a vision to put artist studios there, and so those have been built out.

and have been hosting artists for years.

By policy, we cap our fees at 75% of market value.

So these are some of the most affordable art studios in the city.

So thinking about some of our upcoming and bigger capital projects.

In cycle two, we committed to the development of more than a dozen new parks.

And in 2025, we made a lot of progress.

I'm excited to say that in September, ground was finally broken on the first phase of Smith Cove Park.

So this is the western half of that site.

It includes an athletic field, an off-leash area, paths, benches, and some green stormwater infrastructure.

We also made a lot of progress on our land bank sites.

So in the 2010s, we used resources from the Parks and Green Space Levy to buy a variety of future park sites across the city and keep them as kind of land bank sites to be developed into parks once resources were available.

Some of these got delayed by pandemic-era financial issues, but when we adopted cycle two, we recommitted to development of all of these.

And in 2025, three of them opened to the public.

Cheryl Chow Park in D2, South Park Plaza in D1, and Caton Corner in D3.

And...

Community center major maintenance, so we committed in cycle two to have six major maintenance projects completed.

By the end of 2025, we had finished two projects, those at Magnuson and Magnolia, and of course, Hiawatha and South Park were in construction and have since finished and opened up.

Smaller projects at five other sites are in various stages of planning or design, so we're confident we'll meet that goal as well.

My last substantive topic for you is restroom improvements.

We have some cycle two goals around restroom renovations.

We're committed to renovating or rebuilding 27 of those restrooms in cycle two.

We completed eight in 2025 for a total of 12 so far.

We're also working to weatherize nearly all our restrooms for year-round use.

We've got a goal of 60. We did an additional 10 in 2025. which altogether means that 103 of our 129 restrooms are capable of being open in all seasons.

In addition to those cycle two goals, as you know, there was an audit released by the city auditor in February of 2025 that called on us to make some changes and improvements to our restroom management.

So just wanted to really briefly update you on where we're going there.

So around strengthening daily maintenance, We've piloted new cleaning standards in 2025 and trained 100 field staff on them.

And we deployed kind of new hot pressure washing equipment for faster and more consistent cleans.

It's now in all seven maintenance districts.

We also implemented a crew chief or grounds district leadership monitoring program where our crew chiefs or other district leadership are out in parks on an ongoing basis monitoring the work that's happening there.

And in 2025 crew chiefs and other leads made more than 300 visits to parks to monitor restrooms and other assets.

And then our park inspection program continues and park inspection volunteers, so this is community volunteers also inspecting parks, they also monitored 48 parks to help provide us information on how we're doing.

Lastly, our design team developed comprehensive new design standards for park restrooms.

This was really to reflect lessons learned from recent projects and operational feedback, and really these updated design standards are about emphasizing vandalism, resistance, material durability, maintenance, and operational safety concerns.

And lastly, as we mentioned before, we're piloting staffed restrooms to great success at Cal Anderson Park.

You can see a photo there, and that'll expand, as you heard before, to other sites in the near future.

This is a reminder, we showed you this in November, but we've got an online map of all of the capital projects that we complete in cycle two.

So if you're curious about what capital projects we're finishing in your district or elsewhere, or you can also search by kind of asset type, so restrooms, playgrounds, if you're curious how those things are going.

This only shows completion, so it's not gonna show you everything that's in planning and design, but it'll show you what has been completed.

You know, we did look that up.

It looked good.

Oh, great.

I'm always this council district and then we pulled it up today.

So good job.

Awesome.

Great.

So I just want to remind you this pretty report, which don't let us forget to hand you before we leave.

The narrative report is released today.

In a little less than a week, we'll release that very data heavy appendix that shows you kind of budget to actuals and KPIs versus goals across just about every part of our organization.

And then looking ahead, this time next year, we will not present an annual report.

We're called, based on the interlocal agreement, to present a mid-cycle evaluation to you.

So per the interlocal related to the park district, four years in, are called upon to assess progress on the cycle so far, identify changes we need to make in the last two years of the cycle, and draw any lessons that would inform us all in planning for the third cycle of the Park District.

Just really quickly, what is the tax now at $0.31?

34, I'm hearing.

Is it 30?

44, I'm hearing.

44 now?

44 cents.

And will there be one more update for the Metropolitan Park District after budget this year?

During budget.

During budget.

So right after we do the budget, then we'll do the MPD.

We'll do a public hearing on the MPD budget in October, and then we come back in November to have you consider it.

So this PowerPoint will be updated?

I mean, not this one, but it'll tell us what you did for 2026.

We can give you a progress of where we are at that time, but it obviously will only be in October.

So it's really more focused on where we're headed for 2027.

Okay, but when you do the budget or the MPD end of the year right after budget of 2026, as soon as we vote on the budget, then we slide right into MPD, and then you tell us where we're at for the next year, in that presentation, I can't remember, would you have something that would just let us know where you're at on some of the capital projects?

Yeah.

Okay.

We have updates at that time.

It's just not, since we haven't completed the year, we don't have this level of detail.

But yes, we give you some updates at that time.

Yeah, because I know that Green Lake and Lake City, and there's some other stuff, as you know.

Queen Anne.

And Queen Anne, we can always bring it into committee as well, but I just want to make sure, because after Thanksgiving I'm out, so I'm gone.

So I just want to make sure I understand what we're on track for.

and we should be at committee on Lake City a couple times this summer.

Oh, I'll still be living there.

Don't worry, I'll be walking down there to see how it's going.

No, I mean this summer we should be at your committee on Lake City.

Yeah, okay, good.

Are there any questions, or I'll let you guys wrap up before we go to item two.

Are there any questions from anyone?

Yeah, you, Councilman Kettle?

Vice Chair, Vice President Kettle.

Thank you, President Juarez.

Quick question.

My ears perk up every time, so I have to ask the direct follow-up, or I see different pieces.

I'm noting, because there's a schedule of all the things that are happening in District 7. Smith Co., by the way, I do want to get out there and check it out.

I see on slide 16, can I, on behalf of the Madam President, say thank you for having slide numbers on this briefing?

We would never come without slide numbers.

We have learned.

We have learned.

On slide 16, it's talking about decarbonization and, you know, decarbonize for community centers in scope of redevelopment and so forth.

So it's in design, Queen Anne is listed in design for the Queen Anne Community Council.

But then when I cycle down to slide, sorry, I'm There it is, slide 20. And it talks about smaller, you know, community centers in planning or design.

In fact, my entire district is blank.

And I don't see Queen Anne on that slide.

We have those major projects, those big five in what we call our capital development line of business.

And then kind of these are our major maintenance projects that sit in a different line of business.

So it's just how we report on things.

But they're all important.

Okay, I just wanted to confirm that.

And just lastly, on slide 15, in terms of natural areas, I just asked Parks, and in the past, even before I joined the council working with Parks, some great people responsible for Queen Anne, for example, the West Queen Anne and the East Queen Anne Greenbelts are a constant challenge, you know, Kinnear Park.

So my ask is, my hope is that those are still part of this Green Seattle partnership.

They are.

I'd have to get more details on where we are on the restoration, but.

Yeah, which is an ongoing challenge because the ongoing degradation of the environment.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

With that, Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much.

If we can go to slide 17, please.

I would love to just hear a little bit more information about the child care grants, excuse me, the scholarships rather.

And, you know, so just what AMI they're designated for and the amounts for those.

I'm just thinking about obviously there's so much need in the child care space and trying to understand the parks approach compared to some of the other departments that are working on child care subsidies.

I think it might be best if I get you that offline just to get the details.

We have that all, but I don't have it all at the top of my brain in terms of the annual salaries that people need to show.

But we have it all, and we are actually pretty generous of the different versions.

We accept state money, we accept the CCAP, and then we have our own program.

So it's the same application and qualifications you would do if you're going to childcare or if you're going to a yoga class or whatever, you qualify once and it's available.

That's fantastic.

And I would love the follow-up on what the AMI cutoff is as well as what the average subsidy or scholarship is per family.

If you can do that by follow-up, I would really appreciate that.

I would say most of our people are close to the 80 or 90 percent level, but we can get you the details.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And then if we can go to back to sorry to be the restrooms person today, but if we can go back to slide 21. just so thank you for this update and also the you know bringing in the the report from the auditor's office I just I want to ask a little bit just to kind of ask do we think we're roughly on on track for where we want to be towards 2028 just I really appreciate seeing that the the 2025 actuals that we've got you know 12 renovations done the goal was 27 Can you just share more about do we think there's the capacity to get to the remainder of those in the next two years?

And we can follow up about that.

I just want to make sure that we're understanding what you want us to take away from this, the progress to date here.

Yes, I think we feel confident we'll get to the 27. We have a few projects coming up now.

We did a couple things in part of planning that made it less linear where we did some groupings of bidding with construction partners in order to have them not have to bid each of the 27 out separately.

So it took a little time to ramp up, but we're feeling confident that we will get there in this cycle.

Perfect.

That's really helpful.

Thank you so much.

And thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Foster.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam President.

I appreciate your presentation here from the Department Acting Superintendent Steve Finnegan, really always a pleasure to connect with you.

And thank you for sharing a little bit more about how you all are approaching this vital, important work.

Would love to turn for a moment to slide 13, please.

And when we started talking about restrooms, my ears perked up.

When we started talking about turf field conversion projects, my ears perked up.

And in a moment, I'm gonna ask you the current status of the infield turf conversion project at Fairmont Park Playfield, but in a moment I'll share my, but for now I'll share that my ears perked up because as you all alluded to, this is ultimately about enhanced playability, it's about supporting our youth, it's about doing so, it's about supporting gender equity in sports, it's about doing so, all those things and more.

And one thing you all didn't harp on, but I'll I'll beat the drum here for you, doing all those things in a very eco-friendly, environmentally friendly manner.

The type of cork or whatever material that we use is the best in class, the best for our environment.

So we're doing this vital work supporting our youth.

and sports and empowering them and empowering communities and empowering healthy and thriving communities and working families and so much more and doing it in an eco-friendly manner.

I guess first, would love, so all those, the listed Cycle 2 projects, eight through 10 synthetic turf field replacements, two full field, and seven infield conversions.

Would love a list offline of those specific projects and locations, so we really appreciate that.

Now, with respect to some of the infield turf conversion projects, so a couple years ago this council passed a a set of appropriations to fund three infield turf conversion projects.

One, I think, at Garfield, one at, I believe, maybe it was Woodland Park, and then another at Fairmont Park Playfield.

And my understanding is at least and correct me if I'm wrong, but construction at either Woodland Park and or Garfield is already underway.

We're about to begin shortly, maybe.

Again, correct me if my understanding is off in any way.

Can you help us better understand the current status of the Fairmont Park Playfield turf conversion project relative to those other ones?

So I went to slide 13 and I said, oh no, I don't have an update on Fairmont Park.

So I'm gonna have to get you that offline.

I know we gave you an update at our last meeting and I don't have a further update at this time, but I definitely will.

And I know it's been a priority project for us.

So it is not forgotten for sure.

The Garfield project is part of the Garfield Superblock and Lower Woodland is just getting started.

So I apologize that I didn't come prepared with that fact, for you before tomorrow.

Yeah, my office has been asking about that offline since yesterday.

Oh, sorry.

To your department, that you didn't come prepared for it is kind of disappointing.

But, okay, Garfield is part of a broader project.

Okay, understood.

Woodland is already underway, but Fairmount is not.

Why do you think that might be?

So I think Lower Woodland had partial funding ahead of time, but I will check and get back to you.

They were all funded equally during the same Council budget year two years ago.

I apologize, I don't have that information.

I'm very keen to understand more about Vermont Park in particular.

I will provide you a written update tomorrow.

Thank you.

No further questions, Madam President.

Thank you.

We also have Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Madam President.

I'm going to start off with my moments of gratitude and then I'm going to ask about a couple of specific parts.

A moment of gratitude with Smith Cove.

Councilmember Kettle disagrees with me but I call it the disputed territory because we've been watching after Smith Cove for so many different years and I'm just so happy that it's underway.

I also want to thank you for Sound View which used to be in District 6 and then was taken out.

Just really appreciate your work there on Sound View getting that underway.

You brought up the Ballard Community Center infield renovations.

Can you remind me during the pandemic, I believe that this was an entire field turf replacement, but because of some of the pandemic challenges, we reduced it to just the infields.

Can you remind me of what happened there?

I would have to get you more details on that.

My recollection is that the outfield is a grass turf renovation coupled with the infield synthetic conversion, but I'll want to fact check your memory as well.

That's why, you know, we can't just go off of memory on this.

It would be helpful to follow up because we are receiving reports that the infield improvements are making the outfield drainage worse.

And so just want to check in on that.

These are the Metropolitan Parks District cycle is really important.

Six year cycles, sometimes unanticipated issues come up.

For instance, we have the visitor center at Discovery Park that had a flood and took out the electrical system there.

I know that it has been closed for some time.

Do you have any updates on what is required and when we're scheduled to reopen?

I know it's going to be a couple of years, but what are your updates there?

So with that project, we are working through the materials needed for permitting.

It includes an electrical and HVAC repairs.

We're looking at doing it in kind and we're hoping to be in construction in early 2027. Okay.

That's better news than I thought.

So that's a great update.

and want to check in about A.B.

Ernst Park in Fremont.

I know it is, it feels like it's been on that perpetual cycle of it's going to happen this year.

Do you have any updates on that park?

Construction at A.B.

Ernst edition is supposed to start in July.

So we have the contractors on board and they're ready to get to in two months or two weeks.

Well, maybe that's fantastic in July.

Okay, okay, that's fair.

I see what you got going on there.

I appreciate that so much.

And in the last round of Metropolitan Parks District funding, there was, I would just call it a disagreement, tension, maybe difference of opinion between the Parks Department and community about Green Lake Community Center, whether it should be a leave the current community center as it is and build a new pool house or you know some amalgamation of that we put in the Metropolitan Parks District funding that it had to be a full renovation or expansion or rebuild since that time the parks department has started talking about phasing but in the budget last year it was shared with us that the funding that was added from the general fund would be sufficient to unfaze that project what is the status of the parks department's perspective on phasing or unfazing have we are we able to live up to the commitments that were made last year

Yes, so on Green Lake Evans Pool, we have selected and are talking with our GCCM contractors, so we're really excited to have that type of partner on that project with us.

They are helping us get much better estimates on the various options there, and I think we're scheduled to brief you next week and then go to the public in July, but the intent is to do it as one project.

to not having to phase the pool house and the community center.

Correct.

All as one project.

Fantastic.

Well, I'm just going to come back and say some of these parks like Smith Cove Park, like Soundview, Man, I know that there's a whole list of other parks out there that have just, it has felt like it's taken a long time.

And as soon as those projects are done, it's felt like we didn't wait a moment.

And so I just want to, I'm going to end on that positive note of thank you for getting these things done.

Because, you know, as I went past Soundview the other day and kids were playing on the field, I totally forgot about all of the years of tension and You know, we have the moments in our budget where we say we're going to fund this thing and you know it's a little, you can't touch it, you can't feel it, you can't sense it.

And when that project gets open, it just makes a world of difference for the whole community.

So I'm going to end with gratitude.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member.

All right.

So are there any more questions before I make some final comments and we move on to item two?

Okay, so I think you have your work cut out for you, what you can get back to us on.

Certainly, we heard loud and clear from Ballard, and Discovery Park, and Green Lake, and the Lake City, and the bathrooms in Cal Anderson, and the pre-K, and the AMI, and of course West Seattle.

so those are a bunch of updates that we're going to need and if you I'm guessing you're taking notes and you know what what council members need what if you could provide that in a if you do it in a memo or an overview if you could copy all of us so we all have it and I have it so when we talk to other council members in parks and also in the MPD we're not we're all on the same page so to speak because I know that you're trying to like give us an overview and not zero in on each particular project and what we said we would do and what we've done and it is mid-year and we are moving forward.

So I'm going to kind of end with what Councilmember Strauss did on a note of gratitude.

I know you've got a lot of things going on here and a lot of capital projects, a lot of operating expenses, but I am also happy to hear that you're working with Deal on the pre-K stuff and that's something that I think we have always done that or has that just been more formalized?

So we've partnered with them in many ways, including being part of the SPP program.

Having our facilities be accepting CCAP money is new, so that took a new MOA to figure out how we would move money around and how we would make that

Yeah, I think, I think customer Foster's question was a really good one on getting back to us, how your, how your, the percentage on the AMI and how many kids are being served because we're also under the FEP stuff and FEP money in the pre-K and using city assets, building brick and mortar structure and how we serve deals.

We're all working together.

Yeah, we had a great briefing from our staff recently, so I can envision the PowerPoint slide in my head, I just don't have it in my head, so I don't think it'll take long to get a memo back to you all with these updates, and I apologize.

We know you have priority projects, and I was not prepared to answer all of them.

Well, I know you will be in our next committee meeting, so we'll be ready to go.

All right, I don't see any other comments or any other hands up.

I'm not seeing anything on the screen.

Okay, with that, we will move on to our second item of business.

Madam, oh, it is Madam Clerk, it's Jody.

Will you please read, I was gonna say, Paul, can you please read item two into the record?

Agenda item two, resolution 79, a resolution relating to the 2026 Seattle Park District budget for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great, so we have in front of us the proposed Park District Resolution 79, and I've had a chance to look at that in the appendix that came with it.

I'm sorry, the attachment A, so now I understand where it came from and the money.

I will let you go ahead with your presentation, and then I will ask my colleagues if they have questions.

It's only one page, right?

Yes.

Sweet.

All right, go ahead, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

So we walked through the content of this carry forward earlier, but I would like to provide a few reminders.

So the park district related legislation requires approval by the city council acting as the MPD governing board, as well as the city council.

We therefore also included these items in the mid-year supplemental budget on the city side.

And our understanding is that the city That city side legislation will be transmitted to council tomorrow and you'll see these same items for your approval wearing your city council hats.

SPR recognizes we aren't authorized to spend these funds until they're approved by both sides of the house.

With that, unless you have questions, I wasn't prepared to walk through it again, but I can certainly do so if you would like a reminder.

Well, I just want to point out, and I know everyone can read a PowerPoint here, but for the viewing public as well, $2,800,000 is for capital, and $200,000 is, as you said, for recreation facility programs, which is operating.

And so that adds up.

I was hoping there was more underspend than $3 million, but is that unusual?

So there was some more underspend, but we are recommending to hold that for a planned annual wage increases.

That was in the former, present on the pages back when I was looking at the lines on the underspend, but this is the three that you pulled out that you want to do the resolution so we can get that, start that process.

Okay.

Okay.

So with that, council members, before we move forward, are there any questions regarding resolution, MPD resolution 79?

So, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

I guess this first question is for Karina.

So, Karina, I've read the, unless I'm missing context, the short one, two page, or two or three page resolution 79. I'm looking at the last page of the or the last slide, rather, of the presentation from Parks, slide 25, and it says there's a racket sports strategy implementation, $600,000 item in there, which is not specifically called out in the resolution.

Can you help me better understand that?

So the resolution is dividing the, are you talking about the second page?

It's dividing the carry forward money into operating in capital.

So the sports racquetball, racquet sports strategy implementation is included in the capital funds.

Included in the capital fund?

Yes.

So we've got 200 for operating, and that is in the recreation facility programs.

That's for the scholarships.

Everything else falls into capital and the fix it first.

OK.

And was the racket support strategy implementation, was that previously an express or explicit council or board authorized expense, or was that just something Well, I'll stop there.

Was it an express authorized expense before?

I think parks is going to be in the best position to answer this, but my understanding is that it's part of parks' broader budget, and so they have many programs within that.

So council isn't necessarily going to be voting on every single program because there's so many of them, but parks will elevate certain ones.

Yeah, so I guess my question to you in parks would be, if it wasn't part of a, or was it, just confirm my understanding, and if it wasn't previously and you have full discretion to do those kind of things at the program execution level within your existing budget, why would we elevate it now to specifically require council or board authorization?

So what we were proposing, we have an ongoing program for court resurfacing.

So that has about $250,000 a year in it.

And with this moment in time with the racket sports strategy, we are, Parks is proposing to increase as a one-time add some additional resources to help us implement that strategy once a final is adopted.

So it goes into a program that already exists in our CIP.

but it would be additional funds, similar to the additional funds for the Be'er Sheva stage.

Got it, got it.

So additional, you already have existing authority and another capital budget to do things like this and other capital projects as well, but you're seeing express board authorization for the unanticipated sort of additional amounts for this one item, not the other items.

besides the ones specifically called out?

Correct.

Yeah, okay.

Can you talk a little bit more about this?

Because this is a spicy topic in West Seattle, as we know.

The racquet sports strategy, you know, Park's proposed racquet sports strategy.

Can you talk more about sort of the genesis for that?

and I'll just use this opportunity to share my point of view because I've heard a lot from constituents in District 1 about the plan and proposal.

You and I have had a chance to sync offline about this in one of our regular chats and I think we have general alignment.

A lot of constituents in West Seattle feel like this was a proposal that was essentially just thrust upon them that would completely redraw the boundaries and what's allowable, especially as it relates to pickleball.

But in West Seattle, there's a very vibrant, active pickleball community, but also tennis players as well.

I've met with a lot of constituents about this one issue and during one office hours session in particular, a constituent drew this very helpful diagram that showed on the, I wish I would have printed it out, but it showed, I might have given you guys a copy or showed it to you, but shows the current allocated sort of uses as between tennis, pickleball, and then the dual use, and then under the proposed plan, and it basically leaves one area, the proposal would leave essentially just Delridge for pickleball use and preserve SWAC, which is currently both use and then both uses.

And importantly, take away pickleball at a lot of locations currently in West Seattle, including where some of the most competitive pickleball in the city of Seattle has played today, not just West Seattle, but at High Point.

So the most competitive pickleball, come on down to High Point.

And after this process, I hope people continue to come to High Point to play pickleball.

And then it delineated what must be reserved in advance versus open and just kind of pickup games.

I'll share that if there was ever a plan to make or require people to reserve basketball courts in advance before an actual pick-up game.

That would be completely unworkable.

And so in any event, there's a lot of community conversation right now, understandably, going on around the parks plan its impact on racquetball sports in West Seattle.

Pickleball is the state's sport, and I've seen firsthand how it can bring people and communities together, very inclusive.

And by the way, I play both pickleball and tennis, and my family enjoys playing both.

But can you talk a little bit more about that specific plan, especially given like the the way the current proposal has landed

Yes.

So we're internally calling it the April 6th draft, which is when it was released.

And we are going back out next week to talk to community and say, we heard you.

The April 6th draft is not what we're going to take to the park board or anybody else.

We're going to confirm what we think we heard.

from people.

We're going to share some additional information because they've asked for more of the backup.

So the conversation about the ultimate approach to racket sports is not at all determined.

It is not the draft that people have seen.

We will be taking this additional feedback coming up with a revised draft.

My intent with this was to have, once we had a strategy that we generally felt good about and the park board felt good about recommending us moving forward with, that we would have some funds to leverage to make some things happen for community.

So as an example, not every site, but in some sites, because of the size of a tennis court and the areas around it, if it was to be transitioned to a dedicated pickleball court, you could actually get four courts in that same area as opposed to two dual striped.

And so if we had some funding to make a difference, we could maybe provide some more capacity for pickleball by doing some early striping that we're not waiting five years to get that site prioritized.

So that was the intent of putting this money, not to say that the plan's finalized, but just to have some some resources available at the time to make a difference and to be able to tell people, like, we think we could do these things earlier if there was community agreement that that transition might be beneficial.

Got it.

Well, thank you for that additional clarification.

And from my perspective, whatever, if there is a need to kind of revisit the allocations among sort of racquetball and court usage across the city, 100% would support that effort.

At the principal level, I would just want and expect, as this community, any of those decisions that parks make to be 100% data-informed and data-driven would appreciate a very robust community and stakeholder engagement process and working with community to drive those changes.

And so to that end, really appreciate you all, because I brought up these same points and also some literature from some of my constituents and shared it with you all in our last meeting offline.

But I appreciate your thought and sort of deliberative process that you're now going about.

And I think we agree.

And definitely, so I appreciate request to accommodate my request from our constituents at a new West Seattle community listening session.

So living up to the espoused values right now.

So really appreciate your engagement on this.

In terms of a specific timeline, what can people expect for that and final decisions from parks and next steps?

And then would this money also include?

It includes capital, so presumably that also includes money for re-striping.

There's a lot of courts across the city, but you can speak to a few in West Seattle that need a dire need of re-striping and resurfacing.

So timeline, next steps, and then Would that include, can you clarify if that would include re-striping?

Yes, so our hope is that we get more feedback from community next week and try to take that in over the next month or so to develop an updated strategy that we would bring back to community early after school starts type of timeframe.

And then if we're feeling okay about it, we would take it to the park board to make a recommendation to me, whoever's in this chair at the time, to adopt a strategy.

And precisely, the idea is to have this be for restriping.

I made my team very uncomfortable, because I was like, I know every site is a special snowflake, but if you had to tell me what a $600,000 investment could get in terms of restriping, They said they could live with me saying about $60,000 per tennis court area, so it would maybe get us 10 additional sites.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate your thought you're putting into this from you and your department and sort of the revised approach, the collaboration, listening to the perspectives and feedback of my constituents, residents across the city of Seattle and appreciate your partnership.

Thank you.

No further questions, Madam Chair, Madam President.

Councilmember Saka and just for the viewing public on when we're looking at page 25 the first four columns are on capital projects and the last one is operations as Councilmember Saka highlighted and that adds up to three million and then I think what kind of threw a few people it I knew it through me anyway is when it said racket sports strategy and then it was when you start talking I went back and looked at it and it isn't just a strategy about, it's resurfacing, reconfiguration, re-striping and so I think that's what kind of threw people as they thought it was like more programming.

Yeah, not actual physical, you know, like I said, resurfacing the courts, reconfiguring if you can make more courts, re-striping and then giving yourself enough room, 600,000 as a cushion if indeed that's what you believe you can work with, with what you already have.

So that's what I understood from the other plan anyway, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Are there any other questions?

Oh, Councillor Foster.

Thank you so much.

And I just wanted to ask, so thank you so much interim superintendent for the comments about the plan for pickleball.

My lighting is really bad.

I just saw myself.

Okay.

I just wanted to ask if you would send over to our offices.

I know you're doing a lot of follow-up already, and thank you for that.

Just that updated community engagement plan that you just went over.

We've gotten a lot of constituent emails about Pickleball, and I want to make sure that we're able to share back what you just shared with us, and I want to make sure that we share it correctly.

I'd appreciate if you can include that in your written follow-up as well, so I get it right.

Yes.

I might send the blog for that separately, just because the meetings are next week.

I'll repeat it in the memo, but just so that you have that blog post of where the meetings are, if you could help us amplify it, that would be appreciated.

Yeah, that would be helpful.

Then we can let people know.

Yep.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Oh, sorry, Councilmember Foster.

You done?

You okay?

I'm done.

You good?

I'm good.

Thank you.

All right.

I'm looking down the aisle here and I do not.

Anyone else?

I'm not seeing any other questions.

Okay.

So with that, let's see.

I'm going to go ahead and move this.

I move that we adopt resolution 79. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council President.

It is moved and seconded to adopt the resolution.

And with that, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Board Member Foster.

Yes.

Board Member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Board Member Kettle.

Aye.

Board Member Lynn.

Yes.

Board Member Rink.

Yes.

Board Member Sacca?

Aye.

Board Member Strauss?

Aye.

Board President Juarez?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Great.

So that means the motion carries and the Seattle Park District Board adopts resolution 79. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the resolution on my behalf?

All right, that concludes today's meeting.

If there's no further business, the board will be adjourned.

The next meeting for the Seattle Park District Board, are we not calling it the Metropolitan Board anymore?

Is it Seattle now?

It's Seattle, but not SPD.

Okay.

The Seattle Park District Board is scheduled to be held on October 20th.

Oh, that's why you were saying October.

That threw me.

Now I know what you're saying.

I apologize.

Should have looked at the last page on my script.

Will be held on October 20th, 2026. Hearing no further business to come before the Board, the meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Michelle.

Thank you, Justin.

Thank you, guys.

Oh, I forgot to thank you.