Seattle Park District Board Meeting 6/24/22

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is June 24th, 2022, the first meeting of the Seattle Park District Board and of the year, actually.

So the Seattle Park District Board will come to order.

It is two oh two.

And I am Deborah Juarez, president of the board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board Member Herbold.

Board Member Lewis.

Present.

Board Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Board Member Nelson.

Present.

Board Member Peterson.

Present.

Board Member Sawant.

Present.

Board Member Strauss.

Present.

And President Juarez.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Moving on in our agenda, I'm going to go to approval of the agenda.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is indeed adopted.

I'm moving on to the section four of our agenda, which is election of the president.

So we will proceed to the election of the president for the Seattle Park District Board.

Are there any nominations?

I have a nomination.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

I nominate Council Member Lewis as president.

Thank you.

And we have a second.

The name of Board Member Lewis has been placed in nominations as president.

Are there any other nominations before I go forward?

Okay, not seeing or hearing any.

Nominations are now closed and now we can proceed to a vote.

It's been moved and seconded.

And so those in favor of electing board member Lewis as president vote aye and those opposed vote no.

Madam clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council member Herbold.

Aye.

Council member, excuse me, board member Lewis.

Aye.

Board member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Board Member Nelson.

Aye.

Board Member Peterson.

Aye.

Board Member Sawant.

Yes.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

And Board Member Juarez.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

Congratulations, now President Lewis.

President Lewis will take over as the presiding officer of the Seattle Park District Board.

And I understand that he will, as the new presiding officer, will move forward with the presiding over the election of the vice president.

So I yield to you, Mr. President.

Thank you so much, Board Member Juarez.

We will now proceed to the election of the Vice President for the Seattle Park District Board.

Are there any nominations?

Yes, I will nominate Council Member Mosqueda.

And I will second that nomination.

Are there any other nominations for Vice President of the Seattle Park District Board?

Seeing no other nominations from board members, I would ask the clerk to call the roll on board member Mosqueda's nomination for vice president with ayes signifying a vote in favor of board member Mosqueda to serve in that position and nos indicating not wanting to select that board member.

Board member Herbold.

Yes.

Board Member Juarez.

Aye.

Board Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Board Member Nelson.

Aye.

Board Member Peterson.

Aye.

Board Member Sawant.

Yes.

Board Member Strauss.

Yes.

President Lewis.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

We now have a newly elected board president and vice president, so we can move on to agenda item five, approval of the minutes.

The minutes of the November 22nd, 2021 Seattle Park District Board meeting have been reviewed by board members.

If there is no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Hearing no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Moving on to agenda item six, public comment.

Colleagues, at this time, we will open the hybrid public comment period.

There will be a public comment period before each meeting of the Metropolitan Park District Board.

We will also have a public hearing at 5.30 p.m.

on Thursday, July 14th, so members of the public can share their thoughts on the park district with the board directly.

For this hybrid public comment period, the remote speakers will be heard first, and then will be followed by in-person speakers attending in the council chambers.

Madam Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We have three remote speakers and two in-person speakers.

Today, each speaker will have two minutes.

Madam Clerk, I will now hand this over to you to present the instructions and the public comment recording.

built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when they registered online and used the meeting ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

A reminder, the speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, Please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel Broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The Council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused, or if the process impedes the Council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the City.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in Council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

So we'll move on to the next remote registered speaker, which is Chris Woodward.

Chris.

Good afternoon.

My name is Chris Woodward.

I'm the Community Development Director with the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

I'm providing public comment today in support of increased protected funding for Seattle's park and recreation facilities.

In my role, I'm engaged in conversations every day with Pioneer Square community members, and that's small and large business owners, social service providers, staff, and residents.

On these conversations, community members have expressed positive feedback regarding the consistent programming, staffing, and maintenance of two key Seattle Park and Recreation facilities in the Pioneer Square District being Pioneer Park and also Occidental Square Park.

While the Alliance agrees with the majority of the recommendations from the Park and Recreation Department and the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, we believe there are some areas of the current proposal that could be improved, including funding critical public safety needs.

Active personnel presence in high issue parks is underfunded in the current proposal.

Presently, many private nonprofit and quasi governmental agencies are paying close to $4 million annually to provide security and activation in these public spaces, particularly downtown.

These services are proven to reduce negative behaviors in public spaces.

Currently, there are no long term commitments from the city to address this public need.

and it is unsustainable to expect nonprofits to do this work.

So what I'm encouraging you to do is meet and exceed the recommendations of the Park Commission and pursue an increase in the levy to 40% per 1,000 AV and commit to $200 million in bonding to ensure we have long-term investments in our park system.

Thank you for your leadership of our public spaces, especially during the challenging times of the pandemic.

Your support for this level of funding will help make the critical investments we need to meet the needs of our city's growing diverse population and protect vital community resources for the years to come.

Thank you.

Our last registered remote public speaker is Anne Knight.

Anne.

My name is Anne Knight and I'm a longtime park advocate As you will hear from this afternoon's testimony and the following presentation by the Board of Park Commissioners, Seattle Parks and Recreation does not have adequate funds to carry out its programs at the level that the community needs.

I am speaking on behalf of the trees and developed parks, trees that provide shade and healthy tree canopy in our most important shared civic spaces, our developed parks.

Trees are facing a crisis that is compounding every year.

There is not sufficient funding for SPR to address the growing backlog of dead and dying trees in its developed parks.

Trees are an essential component of addressing equity in parks across the city.

Trees need to be planted now, not waiting another six years.

Trees need time to grow to provide the community with respite from the impacts of climate change.

I'm asking that you find ways to increase the funding for parks and ensure the budget for tree planting and care in developed parks is sufficient to address the compounding loss of essential trees in our parks.

Thank you for your time.

Our first in-person public commenter is going to be Tim Mozer.

My name is Tim Mozer.

a long-term resident of Lake City and an advocate for park district funding.

I want to talk to you about the 33 cent solution and four reasons why you should consider it.

33 cent solution is a pay-as-you-go revenue-based approach to meeting the funding needs for the next cycle.

A 33 cent tax rate in conjunction with a projected property tax base of the city was used to generate the revenue.

A number of adjustments were made to the baseline projects and programs levels to adjust for problems of underfunding, underspending and the budget impacts of COVID-19.

Some of those which were not considered by the commissioners in their recommendation.

Resulting unspent residual revenue provided the funding for a new line item to replace our aging park facilities that would generate $134 million within the next cycle.

Why consider the $0.33 solution?

One, solves the funding problem of the first park district cycle.

$0.33 solution eliminates the practice of using fixed annual maximum revenue amounts that resulted in declining property tax assessment rate from $0.33 to 20.4.

The $0.33 solution requires the interlocal agreement be revised to allow changes to the adopted funding and spending plan.

These problems were identified, but not addressed by the commissioner.

Two, provides a new line item for replacing aging park facilities.

Currently, there is no plan for ongoing replacement of our aging park facilities.

The 33 cents creates a new item that will address that need on an annual basis.

Three, provides a pay-as-you-go alternative to debt service financing.

The commissioner's proposed debt service financing recommendation will only replace five buildings and require a $20 million loan or a 20 year loan of $110 million with an estimated annual pay and I payment of $10 million for the next three park cycles.

Four provides a lower property tax increase than the commissioner's option A recommendation of 37.9 cents while still meeting the needs of the park district.

I want to thank the park district board members for giving me the opportunity to talk about the 33 cent solution and why it may be a better solution.

Thank you.

Our last in-person public commenter is Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you.

Yeah, why you don't show my face, my sign, my yellow David star?

Why are you doing this?

Because I am a Jew?

Are you anti-Semite, a Nazi psychopath?

I don't understand, where is the problem?

Can you answer me this very simple question?

Nobody answer me.

I ask everybody.

Yeah, okay, no problemo.

Nazi is always Nazi.

Seattle number one fascist city in America.

They hire my dirty, damn Nazi fascist man. bandit and psychopath.

I was speaking about park.

Oh, Seattle, how beautiful park.

I live here for 35 years.

I smell sun, you know what this mean?

Ocean.

But that's not happen for thousand and thousand homeless.

Why?

Why you kill every year 200 homeless?

These people before dying cannot go to park.

Smell nice air.

Look people around, be happy, like a chicken happy.

You know what this mean?

From animal farm, yeah, sometimes.

And why Asmer, my lovely, my lovely clown, Harrell, you know what this mean?

Sorry, I mentioned his name because I know him for 12 years.

He's my best friend for 12 years.

Take these people out.

Why are you killing these people?

Each time you move them, you kill them.

You don't understand this?

For this, I told you 3,000 times, you are a bandit, you are a killer, you are a Nazi.

Give people a little bit of air for breathing.

200 homeless die every year is because you are killer.

You each from you, a bandita, a killer, a Nazi, is go for years.

You cannot fix this problem.

Give people a little bit fresh air in the park.

You know what this mean for everybody.

This is constitutional right.

It's America, not German Nazi.

That's our last public commenter today.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

We will now proceed to hearing from Superintendent Williams and I believe the Board of Parks and Recreations Commissioners.

Superintendent Williams, are you still with us?

Yes, I'm here.

Yeah, I just want to commend Jessica and Marlon, whom you're gonna hear from reporting out.

They led a very, uh, good exercise with the board of park and recreation commissioners.

They started the process in about March and, uh, led the committee through an exhaustive process to evaluate, uh, Park district cycle two funding options.

And, um, I just really commend them for their leadership and, uh, just all of the work they attended meetings on weekends and evenings.

And, you know, some of this information as you're about to hear is pretty dense.

And we were just impressed with the entire park board's ability to grasp the level of information to digest it and to make some reasonable recommendations.

So we are honored to have Marlon and Jessica as our co-chairs on the committee.

With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Council Member.

Superintendent, thank you so much.

We do have Tracy Ratzlaff from our council central staff on the line.

And so I'll hand it over initially to Tracy to give us an overview of the process along with Eric McConaghy is also joining us.

And then we can have a discussion with the commissioners as well.

So thank you for introducing the panel.

So Tracy, how about I hand it over to you?

Do you wanna actually have the clerk's office read in the agenda items?

And just to remind you, we had one more item that needed to be acted upon and that can happen at the end of the meeting, which is the resolution for our meeting schedule.

So just to put a pin in that, that we need to actually have you act on that resolution as well, but that can happen at the end or it can happen now, but we need to have at least the agenda items two and three that we're gonna talk about read into the record, I believe.

And agenda item one needs to be read into the record.

Yes, so agenda item one is board resolution 48. And if the clerk would please read it into the record.

Yes, agenda item one, resolution 48, a resolution setting the Seattle park district board meeting dates for consideration of the 2023 through 2028 park district funding plan and the remainder of the meeting dates for 2022. And this is for briefing discussion and possible vote.

So with that queued up Tracy I'll hand it back over to you.

This is the resolution that we adopt every year, this year a little bit later this year now in June, since we did not know exactly when we would have recommendations for the spending plan to begin to, to work through in terms of district meeting so It sets out the schedule that we have planned for July.

And then it also includes the two meetings that we have during budget, the required public hearing date of October 17th, and then the formal Park District adoption of the budget, which happens on November 22nd.

And with that, I'm gonna move to adopt resolution 48. Second.

And having heard a second, are there any comments on the resolution before the board?

Hearing no comments, will the clerk please call the roll on resolution 48?

Board member Herbold?

Board member Juarez?

Aye.

Board member Mosqueda?

Board member Nelson?

Aye.

Board member Peterson?

Aye.

Board member Sivan?

Yes.

Board member Strauss.

Yes.

President Lewis.

Yes.

Six in favor, none opposed.

Hearing that margin, the resolution 48 passes.

And we will now move on to the next item on the agenda.

Yeah, will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Agenda items two and agenda items three.

Agenda item two, background and context on the Seattle Park District.

And agenda item three, Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioner's recommendations for the next park district cycle two funding plan, both for briefing and discussion.

Okay, we will now return to our panel on this agenda items.

So I will start us off, Tracy, that's a council center statue by my colleague.

Hi, I'm Derek McConaughey.

Good afternoon, board members, with Council Central staff.

Wonderful.

So today begins the process of the Park District's review of the proposals that will serve as the basis for the Mayor's proposed six-year Park District funding plan.

The intent of these board meetings in June and July is to help you all understand what these various proposals entail, to take public comment on these proposals, and to provide input on these proposals, including any items that you believe might be missing.

which will hopefully help to inform the mayor as he begins the process of reviewing these proposals and preparing the proposed six-year funding plan.

We are expecting that the mayor will submit that proposed spending plan to the Park District Board on target date of September 6th.

It is our intent that the Park District Board would then review the mayor's proposal in September and adopt a final spending plan on or before September 9th in advance of the budget.

We first wanted to just provide a little background and context for council members or for board members and for the public.

So just to remind folks, in 2014, the Parks Legacy Citizens Advisory Committee recommended the creation of the district to address the key issues that you see in front of you.

A couple of the key ones, a significant major maintenance backlog of aging facilities that needed to be addressed, the lack of funding for operations and maintenance of community centers and parks, particularly during peak season.

meeting the recreation needs of a growing population and one that is rapidly changing in terms of the demographics.

Providing support in the event of fluctuating general fund revenues.

Leveraging funding for partnerships such as the zoo, the aquarium, ARC, Friends of the Waterfront to provide recreational activities just as the Seattle Parks and Rec does.

And then finally, the acquisition of additional open space and land for development of parks.

Next slide.

Tracy could ask a question on that previous slide real real quick if you could go back.

Would you please distribute to board members if we have this in writing I imagine we do those written recommendations in the original form from the parks legacy citizens advisory committee from 2014. I think that would be an instructive foundational document as the board reviews and considers the scope and scale of what we want the park district rate renewal to encompass.

And I appreciate the summary here.

I think we would benefit from reading the entire set of recommendations in their original form as well.

So just submitting that request to distribute that to the board.

Absolutely.

No problem.

Thank you so much.

Next slide.

So, the district was approved by the voters in August of 2014 that ballot measure authorized the collection of property taxes, up to 75 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value.

The district is governed by the park district board which is you, the city council sitting as X official members of that board.

We did enter into an interlocal agreement between the city and the park district that was adopted by resolution number one in 2014. That ILA governs the operation of the district.

It establishes the oversight board, which is the board of parks and rec commission and the role of that commission.

It requires that the city work or use Seattle parks and rec to carry out the activities of the district.

And it also required a minimum support of general fund to the park Parks and Rec Department, which just for record has occurred every year except 2020 and 2021. Next slide.

Tracy, going back there, could you remind the board what the required minimum general fund support is?

How is that measured?

Is it a percent?

Is it a number?

How do we determine the required minimum general fund support?

Sure, so it started at the baseline year of 2015 and inflates every year based on the CPI you for Seattle, and so every year it was adjusted by inflation, and I can if people are interested in those numbers I can actually send them that information as well.

So then to summarize, it would be best characterized as the general fund appropriation in 2015 for parks and recreation operations.

And that number adjusted for inflation is what we consider to be the baseline for the purposes of the park district.

Yes.

And to be very clear, every year that amount got inflated.

So whatever the inflation rate was for 2016, that was applied.

The base was adjusted.

And then the next year, the inflation rate for that year was applied to the base.

And so it was increased every year based on what the rate of inflation was every year.

Thank you.

In terms of district funding, so the tax collection actually began in 2016 and started out at $47.7 million.

It rose about 2.5% every year to a total of $54.6 million by the time you got to 2020. The first funding plan supported over 30 initiatives.

As we know, due to the pandemic, we weren't able to have in front of us the next six-year funding plan, which was supposed to be delivered in 2020, but has obviously been delayed until now.

To make up for the lack of that next spending plan, we basically took the district budget that was adopted in 2020, and in 2021 and 2022, adjusted that budget by 2.5% to reflect the inflationary costs while we awaited the submittal of the next cycle two plan.

On average, if you look over the six years, district funding represented about 21% of Parks and Rec's total budget.

The pie chart that you see in front of you is the budget for 2022, in which you actually see that the Park District represented about 19% of total funding in 2022. And that amount that the Park District contributed in 2022 was $56 million.

Hi, and I'll jump in here to continue on with our presentation.

This slide here shows a graph of the district funding and the dollar impact to a homeowner of a home of median assessed value over the years from 2016 through 2022. This represents actual values.

And you can see that the number starts in 2016 at close to $48 million for the total amount of the levy for the MPV.

rising to about $56 million, just a little more than $56 million in 2022. For the homeowner, the value started at just a little more than $140 per year and rose to just shy of $155 per year over the same time.

And just by way of clarification, the Y-axis on the left-hand side, the dollars, the scale for the overall levy, And on the right hand side, the dollars for the impact of the homeowner.

This next slide just puts the Seattle Park District levy in context with the other levies that are Seattle levies.

So you can see here the Seattle Park District is 20 cents or $0.2 per assessed value.

And then the other components of the levy that add up to What is for 2022 overall for a property in the city of Seattle is about $8.83 per thousand dollars of assessed value.

And this slide is to present to you all expected levies in the coming years.

We are having no guarantees that these will be run to the voters, but we have strong expectations that they will be.

And I won't read through them, but you can see that they range through King County levies, Seattle levies themselves, the Seattle library.

And this is to give context for the MPD as another component of the property tax that folks pay in the city.

So Eric, I want to pause for a moment.

Councilmember Peterson has a question.

Councilmember Peterson is right, or Board Member Peterson is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I was just wanted to ask a clarifying question.

I'll have additional comments and questions at the end, but appreciate this breaking this out for what would be the typical homeowner.

Could you also confirm though, that landlords can pass these costs on to renters?

I can confirm that as a, for sure, as an idea, whatever cost the landlord may experience for the property, sort of include as part of their calculation for the rent they charge, if that's the intent of the question that I think anecdotally happens.

So that's a yes.

Landlords can pass on the cost to tenants.

I just don't want the audience to think this is just about people who own homes, but landlords can pass the costs on to tenants.

Yeah, my understanding is that when landlords are running their properties, their business, that they will do their own calculations based on their own determinations and include all kinds of costs into the rent that they charge their tenants.

The property tax certainly could be one of those costs.

Thank you.

Are there any questions on any of these slides that I've covered to this point?

I'll move forward to the next one if that's all right, Chair.

Yeah, I don't see any further questions, Eric.

So please proceed.

Sure.

And this is just to preview more of what we'll talk about today.

There are four components to the Cycle 2 plan.

When we talk about Cycle 2, if that's not a familiar term to folks who are viewing, that is the next six years in the spending plan for the Municipal Park District, sometimes we'll say MPD, excuse me, for the Metropolitan Parks District.

And those four components are some new investment proposals, what are known as pre-commitment proposal projects, continued funding of the components of Cycle 1, the Cycle 1 initiatives.

And then the fourth component would be COVID recovery and sort of economic recovery funding.

With that, I'd like to pause in central staff's presentation and make as graceful a transition as I can to the folks from the BPRC and give them the space to share the recommendations and do so now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tracy and Eric.

Are there any questions for central staff before we move on to the panel?

Seeing no council members indicating questions for central staff and Tracy and Eric, I don't know if that slide deck has been distributed yet, but if you could also distribute that slide deck to board members for our future reference, I think that would be helpful as well.

Great.

So we will now turn to our Board of Parks and Recreations Commissioners.

For the viewing public, maybe just to clarify in advance, this might be a little confusing on first blush.

We are convened now as your city council members in our ex officio role.

is the Board of the Metropolitan Park District.

That is distinct from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners that have an oversight role of Seattle Parks and Recreation, as well as an oversight role of the Metropolitan Park District.

So I know there's a lot of terms being thrown around, but our commissioners in front of us now are assembled from folks who have been appointed by the council and the mayor to serve in this role and advise us in everything related to parks as citizen commissioners.

And with that explanation, I will hand it over to our presenters today and Superintendent Williams.

So please take it away.

Thank you, Board Member Lewis.

My name is Marlon Herrera.

I use he, him pronouns, and I am co-chair of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.

And I'll pass it to Jessica to introduce herself real quickly as well.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for having us here.

I'm Jessica Farmer, co-chair of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, and I'm traveling today, so I'm going to turn over the book, the presentation to Marlon.

Wonderful.

So yeah, we're pleased to provide you with an overview of the commission's recommendations related to the 2023 to 2020 bundle cycle of the Park District.

We're really proud to serve as commissioners advocating on behalf of our communities, and we're excited to support a really comprehensive funding proposal that's designed to provide clean, safe, and welcoming parks, enhance access services and recreation programs, and invest in the future.

We would like to thank the Seattle voters as well, as you heard, for their support of the Park District when they first abused and butchered in August, 2014. Thorough community engagement helped shape the first cycle of projects and programs funded by the Park District from 2015 to 2020, and they absolutely have continued to inform our recommended decisions for the next cycle of proposed projects.

We'd also like to thank you all, the Park District Board, for stewarding these important resources in alignment with the interlocal agreement between the Park District and the City of Seattle.

Next slide, please.

So right here, you'll see a timeline of the process the Board of Park and Recreation used to get from where we were in 2019 to where we are now to where we're going.

The Park District started investing in people and parks in 2015, and we began planning for the second cycle in 2019. Today, we're gonna be focusing on that green bar you see on the screen, which is the development of the commission's recommendations before you today.

That said, we recognize there is additional considerations still come from the superintendent, the mayor, and the city council acting as the Park District Board.

Next slide.

Here we drill a little bit deeper into that green bar.

We began this process of prioritizing investment proposals towards the end of March.

We split our commissioners into subcommittees who dove deeper into specific proposals.

Me and Jessica, the commission co-chairs, attended every single one of the subcommittee meetings.

All these meetings were open to the public.

We also held a community check-in to hear from them throughout the process.

Based on all this work, Jessica and I put it all together to the chair's recommendation A public hearing was held on the Chair's recommendation in May.

That very same month, May, the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners unanimously approved a recommended slate of investments, which is what we're talking to you about today.

Next slide, please.

In making our recommendations, commissioners considered the following guiding principles.

We wanted synergy with the Seattle Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan, the SPR Action Plan, and the agency's values, which are healthy people, healthy environment, strong communities, and organizational excellence.

We also realized that we had to respond to the parallel crisis facing our city, public health and well-being, economic recovery, climate change, and the fight for racial justice.

We balance all of this with other priorities like community responsiveness and return on investment.

We're also very mindful of the impact to our taxpayers, given ongoing affordability challenges and economic uncertainty facing many people here in Seattle.

As such, we're supporting a six-year spending plan below the park district's maximum levy authority.

This also means we will not require a public vote.

Next slide, please.

Now let's talk about community engagement.

We began in 2019 talking about big ideas leading to development of our 2020 to 2023 strategic plan.

In doing so, we engaged over 10,000 Seattleites, centering those who are typically not able to participate in public meetings and formal processes.

This is what we heard.

We need to support Seattle's growth and density.

We need to embrace new trends.

We have to make parks safer.

We need to provide more access and we have to engage more with community.

We're going to continue maintaining the system we have, and there is a deep desire for more, more, more.

You can read more about this in our letter of recommendation.

Next slide, please.

And then, as you well know, the pandemic happened.

We took a pause in the planning process so Christopher and the entire Parks and Rec team could focus on delivering critical service in this once-in-a-generation crisis.

I applaud their work, which centered on supporting all communities, and especially the most vulnerable.

In 2021, we picked up again, this time focusing on investment that responded to the parallel crises that I mentioned before.

Staff and commissioners heard from over 9,000 community members in developing our recommendation.

Right here is what we heard We need to build meaningful relationships with Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities.

We need to mitigate climate change.

We have to restore access to parks and rec spaces.

We have to bring our services to the people and meet them where they're at.

We should be investing in our most popular assets, and we absolutely have to improve park safety.

And more importantly, we have to look to the future.

Again, you can dig deeper on Community Voices and our letter of recommendation.

Next slide, please.

Here you'll see the big picture framework of a recommendation for the next round of park district spending.

The commission has an oversight role, as board member Lewis said, in the park district for the interlocal agreement.

So we're intimately acquainted with the importance of baseline funding.

Our recommendation is in addition to the blue box at the bottom of that bar graph, continuing cycle one services.

Further, we strongly support the pre-commitments and ongoing COVID-19 recovery efforts.

Related to Loyal Heights and Green Lake Community Centers, we support preserving and improving these historic buildings rather than building new structures.

Not only does this address cost impacts, it also aligns with our climate goals because the greenest buildings are the ones already built.

Now projects at the Amy E. Tena Center and the Lake Community Center, Lake Community, Lake City Community Center, and the six remaining land bank park development sites serve communities have been at the table for a long time.

They've been vocally communicating their needs to the commission and the park staff.

It's important that we fulfill the commitments we made to the voters at the outset of the park district.

We're also really excited to support development of a new community center at Mercer Mega Block, which is at 8th and Mercer.

The city is only on the hook for tenant improvements, and the space was given out as a public benefit of the development effort.

We really want to push the city to pursue more public-private partnerships that will stretch our investments further.

On the next slide, we'll talk more about the very top of that bar graph, which are new investment that we are going to propose.

Next slide, please.

Drilling down, you'll see three big categories that I mentioned before.

Number one, enhancing access and services.

Two, restoring clean, safe, and welcoming parks and facilities.

And three, investing for the future.

The commission considered an array of investment under 12 listed strategies on the screen.

We understand that central staff will walk through the details later in this presentation.

So we'll get into that later.

Next slide, please.

So the commission strongly urges all of you to include the full 30 million of additional investments we recommended in our final plan.

These last few years, we've seen a public health crisis, several major climate events, and a racial reckoning.

In each and every one of these, our parks and rec system has been front and center in responding.

As such, we owe it to our communities to meet the growing demands on the crown jewels of our public realm.

Our proposal also centers racial equity, stays true to the voter approved vision of the park district, and leverages opportunities for external funding, supports innovation, and deepens our commitment to community engagement.

That said, the commission is also recommending that the city consider increasing parks and recreation investment beyond this level through other funding measures.

Next slide, please.

Now just a quick reminder, our Parks and Recreation System touches every soul who steps foot into this corner of the world.

We're built on a retaliatory vision that's critical to our health, our environment, and our communities.

As you see on the screen, we're so much more than benches and basketballs.

We provide critical services to youth, elders, folks with diverse abilities, houseless communities, and so many more.

It's critical to our quality of life.

We know that the demand for our services extends beyond the capacity of Park District funding.

And that's why our commission is urging adoption of the full $30 million and asking you to consider more through various funding measures.

Next slide.

I'll wrap it up with a little gratitude.

Jessica and I are deeply grateful for our fellow commissioners for spending their volunteer time, evenings and weekends, and developing a recommendation.

The hardworking public servants at Parks and Recreation also provide stellar facilitation and support.

I'd like to also recognize the work of the mayor, the council, and the superintendent for everything they do for communications.

We know that you all have a lot of work to further refine this recommendation before it becomes law.

Your commissioners are here and ready to help if you have any questions.

Additionally, there's a wealth of information on our website, which is on the screen, and I'm sure staff will send out to you as well.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for that presentation.

Can we go back to the slide which showed the bar of the proposed investments from the commission?

This one, excellent.

So where in this bar would the proposed $10 million a year of supplanting of general fund revenue land?

Is that in the pre-commitments and COVID recovery category or new investments?

I see Tracy nodding at once.

Just make sure you also speak at once when you respond.

Tracy, I guess if you wanna take it, you go first.

I don't want to speak for Marlon, but it is in that pre-commitments and COVID recovery bucket.

So that's a combination of, I believe, the anticipated debt service of around $10 million over the life of the six-year plan and the $10 million estimated maybe for the first couple of years for that COVID recovery piece.

Yeah, and Tracy, can maybe I start with you to ask another question about that.

As we discussed earlier on where the baseline is set that the voters were acting upon in our initial promise for creating the Metropolitan Park District to be a system that augments rather than supplants park services.

Can you maybe give an overview of where the general fund support that we passed in the fall stands relative to that 2015 level and how that corresponds to the discussion around the 10 million in supplanting that is in this initial recommendation?

So in 2022, the general fund actually provided not only the required amount of general fund support, but it actually went a little bit above that.

And I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I can get that to you.

It's in the information I was gonna actually send you that shows historically what was the required general fund contribution and then what was contributed, because I actually have a document that shows that.

But I will tell you that I know that the general fund met its contribution and actually exceeded it in 2022.

Tracy, I could wade in while you're speaking.

I was able to pull up the table that Tracy may have access to, and I can speak to that.

So 2022, the required amount for, you know, for the base inflated from 2015 by CPI year over year, the required amount was just a little more than $106,000.

Yeah, 106 million, but what was supplied was nearly 110 million.

So in excess of about 3 million, 3.3 million in 2022. Hopefully that's helpful to give you some sense of context on that.

Yeah, Eric, thank you for clarifying that.

I just want to cue this issue up as one of my questions and an area to talk in this initial session, because given that we are, in a sense, stewards of a special taxing authority that was granted by voters with very clear parameters on how they were expecting this augmentory fund to be used and given that I know my board colleagues and I have a lot of things we would like to see realized as part of this process, I do want to drill into the proposed 10 million in supplementation and given that it sounds like we have exceeded what that 2015 baseline is for general fund support for parks.

I do want to have a discussion about that.

And so I want to start now by talking to our commission colleagues about that and kind of how that fits in.

And then I want to open it up to other board members if they have questions.

So I'll hand it back over to Marlon and Jessica to dig into that a little bit more.

Sure.

Can you repeat your question for me again?

The general area that I'm trying to delve into is we have a recommendation where $10 million, at least for the first two cycles of the six-year cycle that's in this gray part of the bar, is going to be $10 million to supplant general fund support for the Parks Department.

And I'm just trying to reconcile that with the fact that a central staff just indicated general fund support is exceeding the 2015 baseline.

So I'm wondering how that squares with the plan going forward.

Sure.

What were the deliberations of the commission that led it to recommend $10 million in general fund support, given that we are not below the baseline for the 2022 appropriation?

That's the cleanest way to ask the question.

I can help out here, maybe.

This is Christopher Williams, acting superintendent superintendent Williams, I would love your assistance with this question but I want to I'm asking the commissioners about their recommendations first, and then I'd love to hear from the department as well.

But if the commissioners can answer the question and then I am happy to.

turn it over to the department as well and have everyone on the panel weigh in.

But I would like to hear from the commissioners.

Sure thing.

So we focus a lot on the new investments.

When it came to that gray box, you're talking about pre-commitments and COVID recovery, that came to us as a recommendation from the department that we're fully behind.

As far as the $10 million in details go, I don't want to misrepresent exactly what was proposed.

So I want to throw that back to Christopher.

Okay, Superintendent Williams, I will hand it to you now.

Thank you.

So, Marlon is right.

We provided information to the park board as context for what we anticipate as a future state for the city's budget situation.

And this was proposed to anticipate, I think, the situation the city could be in in 2023, and how the park district could provide post-COVID relief to the city's general fund situation.

So we were forward thinking in providing this information to the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners.

So would an accurate way to phrase it be that due to the inflation that we are currently seeing in the economy, we anticipate the 2023 and 2024 baselines to be at such a place that some level of support from the MPD would be warranted to reach the baseline?

Yes.

Is that a good paraphrasing?

That's a great paraphrasing.

OK. appreciate that answer at this point early in the process.

I do wanna hand it over to colleagues to ask other clarifying questions about the recommendations.

Council Member Nelson.

Yes, so this is regarding the same slide here.

So it looks like with the additional investments, we'll be pretty close to reaching our maximum levy rate, if that's correct, which I believe is 75 cents per $1,000 of value.

And if that is correct, then to adjust by inflation in the next go round.

Does this anticipate that we'll have to change the authorizing legislation to increase the base that we're allowed to go up to?

Whoever knows the most about this can answer the question.

That may be best answered by central staff.

I'll speak up for central staff and say I think that we will, board member Nelson, I think we will address that as we move forward.

But to speak briefly to it though, for the moment, the planning as we understand it, central staff's understanding it going forward, assumes that there would not be a new vote of the voters on the MPD to change that rate.

and the 0.75 per 1,000 is the maximum allowed under state law, but the NPD has never come close to actually levying that rate year over year, and we'll talk about that as well.

I hope that helps for the time being, and we do have some more information.

Yes, that's fine.

Yeah, thank you, yeah.

A follow-up, Council Member, or Board Member Nelson?

I'm finished, but if anybody else wants to add to that, you're very welcome to.

Great, well, Board Member Peterson has a question, so I'll hand it over to him.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Just wanted to clarify, are we going back to the PowerPoint that's going to show the maximum impact to homeowners and renters?

Because it looks like we're, it looks like they're proposing to double the tax that people are paying.

And when that's stacked up against all the other property tax levies, I just, I think it's important to get, to that context that this is a proposal to double the tax burden.

We all support parks and we want to continue to have a sustainable, fiscally responsible investments in our parks, even expanding that.

Doubling though concerns me and I think that gets back to the question.

I really appreciate Council Member Lewis, you bringing this up about the $10 million.

I don't, it sounds like the city budget office sort of inserting themselves into the mix here from our volunteer park commissioners and then what they're then in turn proposing to us.

And then there are even more amounts added onto that.

So I think slide 25, I think gets to the impact, but hopefully we can get to that soon.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Peterson or Board Member Peterson.

Do you want us to pull up that slide for further questions or?

If we're going back to the central staff presentation that continues their slides, I think they do get to that, which shows the cost impact or the tax impact.

Yeah, I think that is in the previous slide.

I can wait for that.

So, If there's no other questions from board members, I have some questions about that as well.

And maybe it might be warranted to go back and look at that slide deck, given board member Peterson's line of questioning.

And I assume it is now.

If people are done with questions for the, the border parks and rec commissioners we will actually go forward with the rest of our presentation that will incorporate or will include the information about impact a homeowner and what we might be looking at in terms of a total overall proposal.

Tracy, I appreciate that if it's sort of a changing gears and I see now what's going on to this cycle too.

So what I would just say maybe then to cap it, if there aren't additional questions from board members for the commissioners, you know, appreciate these recommendations that have been queued up for the board's consideration and the board will be engaging as we're about to go into about with the cycle two investments over the course of the summer in advance of the anticipated September 6th date, where a plan from the executive will be promulgated on their recommendations, which may compliment or diverge in some respects from the recommendations you've shared with us today.

Definitely want to stay in touch with the board as we go through this process and really appreciate you appearing today.

you are more than welcome to stay for the cycle two presentation and continue to participate as panelists today.

So don't feel like moving on is turfing you out of the meeting.

But I think at this point, we'll close that presentation because I don't see additional questions from board members, unless there's a last call here to pivot to the cycle two slide deck.

I don't see any questions from board members.

Okay, Tracy.

Oh, sorry.

Did someone just speak up?

No, okay.

Central staff.

Go ahead with the cycle two presentation, which the clerk previously read into the record as I believe agenda item three.

Beautiful.

So as we just heard, the Board of Parks and Rec Commission issued its recommendations for a number of different components to what we expect to be included in the mayor's proposed spending plan.

The first was a new group of investment proposals.

There were 38 proposals totaling $30 million in annual costs and would result in about 84 new FTEs at Parks and Rec if those proposals were all adopted and incorporated in the spending plan.

Next slide.

So what you're going to see in a number of these slides going forward as we drill down into these 38 recommendations is a table that shows kind of a description of the investment proposal, the baseline funding, which is really the kind of program funding in which these investments would be sitting, and then a column that shows where relevant, where new FTEs would actually be a part of that proposed investment.

So the first investment is an additional million dollars for the equity fund.

This is a fund that used to be called the major projects challenge fund now called the equity fund that provides grants for community supported and proposed parks improvements.

The second investment option is $605,000 for inclusive outreach and engagement.

There's two things that this kind of funds.

One is additional funds for the grant programs, the Get Moving program and the Recreation for All program, and then staff to help do additional outreach and engagement with community organizations who might apply for those funds.

$900,000 is proposed to expand the Seattle Conservation Corps.

This is the training program that SPR runs for formerly homeless individuals.

It would provide the ability for 10 additional trainees to be incorporated into that program on a yearly basis.

The base funding of $4.3 million now allows for the service of 50 trainees per year in this one year training program.

$700,000 and six FTS would be used to provide a dedicated staff to maintain harvest and distribute food from the 20 orchards and eight gardens that exist on SPR properties.

There are now no such dedicated staff and this proposal wouldn't actually establish that dedicated crew to do that work.

Next slide.

Continuing to fix it first, this is along the lines of continuing to take care of the assets that we have.

So $780,000 would be targeted to major maintenance improvements at Magnuson Park.

This could include stabilizing the roof on building two, seed funding for the sales standpoint boathouse, and then design and construction of a barrier-free loop trail.

$1 million would be added to the play area renewal program, and this would be able to accommodate the additional renovations of play areas.

There's over 151 of those in our city system.

So this would help to provide additional resources to do more of those renovations.

$1 million is added for pool major maintenance.

So this would address items like accessibility improvements, need for repairing of roofs, locker rooms that have not been touched since they were built initially.

$886,000 and one time non MPD funds of about $1.6 million have been proposed for racket sport maintenance and expansion.

So this would allow SPR to do restoration and renovation of outdoor tennis courts and also include the construction of two new pickleball courts, which are designated for pickleball with lights and so forth.

The next category has to do with enhancing park assets.

$350,000 would be added to the acquisition program that would allow for the acquisition of open space as well as land that could be developed as parks.

$1.8 million is added for new park development and this funding would be used to do the planning and design at eight additional new land banked sites.

This is similar to the program that was actually funded in the first spending plan that resulted in five parks being designed and constructed and four that are in process of being designed and constructed.

Next slide.

Next slide has to do with improving life safety and regulatory compliance.

So $1.3 million would be added to provide funds to do further ADA improvements in SPR facilities, reminding folks that we had an audit by the Department of Justice that identified a number of improvements that we needed to make to be compliant with the ADA requirements, and this would provide the resources to do more of that.

$625,000 would provide additional training for lifeguards, additional staff during swim lessons and other classes and staff to help coordinate the training and the staffing of the city's beaches and pools.

$977,000 would be added for the facility maintenance, life safety and regulatory compliance.

This really is to do further preventative maintenance of SPR facilities and also to allow staffing who can address emergent repairs that are needed at SPR facilities.

$335,000 would be added to the human resources, safety, compliance, and training.

And this would provide the funding and staff to implement more robust training programs for parks staff and to do a better job of tracking, assessing, monitoring, and addressing incidents that actually happen on job.

$1.5 million would be created to do the assessment and to begin repairs of SPR facilities that are unreinforced masonry buildings.

And SPR does have a number of those facilities that are anticipated to need repairs to bring them up to what is to be anticipated regulations from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

Moving on to enhancing recreational facilities and programming, $380,000 would be used to create a centralized customer service group to provide better customer service response as relates to scheduling facilities, providing refunds, registering for various programs that parks operates.

$3.7 million would be added to community center operations to do a number of things.

One, to extend hours for evenings and weekends at selected community centers, to provide the maintenance that would go along with those extended hours, and to fund the reclassification of front desk staff at community centers and pools whose positions are in the process of being reclassed because the job descriptions and the job responsibilities that they are doing have fairly dramatically changed from when they were first classified.

$400,000 would be provided to support increased demand for custodial services, particularly at SPR facilities where there's high utilization.

This might include the community centers that have a homeless shower program, as well as Camp Lawn, Magnuson Park, and some of the other places that have rentals that happen.

I'm sorry, Council Member Herbold, did you have a question?

I don't know if you wanna handle these, Council Member Lewis.

in the process, or I'm happy to pause for a question from board member.

Um, chair, um, do I call you chair?

I'm not sure what I call you now.

You call me president.

I think in this context, as a board member, president Lewis, um, I have several questions about several pages.

I'm happy to hold them.

I thought maybe we would go, I have questions as we go, but maybe that's not how you're preferring to manage this process.

So I'm happy to take my hand down and wait till the end.

That's a good process question, Board Member Herbold.

Why don't we go slide by slide given the pacing of how central staff has distributed these investments?

So if you have a question pertinent to the slide, why don't we take that now?

A couple of slides back.

I'm just interested to know for the equity fund, I just wanted to hear what I thought I had heard before that you're also looking at changing the maximum size of grants available to individual projects from the equity fund.

I believe there's a lower cap, so more projects could have access.

That's one question I had.

as it relates to the Seattle Conservation Corps expansion.

I'm really interested in knowing whether or not that expansion is limited to just hiring more people or whether or not we're also looking at a plan to broaden the skill set that is available to participants who are hired by the Seattle Conservation Corps.

And then just moving down to some of the questions around slide 13, enhancing life safety and regulatory compliance.

I think this is actually a parks workforce question generally, not just the life saving and regulatory functions of the parks department.

But we're hearing not only are we having a hard time hiring lifeguards, but parks has reported in constituent emails that I've been copied on that the maintenance parks maintenance crews are at 60% right now.

So really interested to know what we're doing to address retention and the need to recruit parks department employees.

We know parks is one of the departments that has been hardest hit by the great resignation.

And so just wondering whether or not there's anything that we can do through this funding mechanism to address that.

And then lastly, also on that page, on the issue of accessibility barrier removal, accessibility to our community centers.

I'm hoping that the goals here are not just about physical barriers associated with the ADA, but we're thinking about removing other types of barriers.

In particular, I've been an advocate for the city's successful move to add hearing loops, both to the city's board and commission room, now up at council chambers so that people with hearing issues can participate in meetings.

I know a lot of community centers have meetings and would love to see hearing loop capacity at our community center meeting rooms as well.

Thank you.

I can respond to the question about the equity fund.

My understanding is that it no longer has to be a major project, that it can be a project of a smaller size.

And I don't know if Acting Superintendent Williams would like to add further to that.

And then I think I actually need to have SPR respond, if they could, to the next three questions, because I just don't know the answer to those.

And we have them here.

So if they would be willing to provide some information, that'd be very helpful.

Okay, great.

So maybe I'll start with the equity fund.

So I think the big news here is this will not require a match.

And we're really focusing on underserved neighborhoods.

In terms of accessibility barrier removal.

This is an equity so we did an equity centered strategic plan, and we're really looking at a whole variety of levels of access everything from extending hours on evenings and weekends at two community centers to really a full spectrum of access particularly in communities where we've got these multi-million dollar facilities and have relatively limited access so we want more people and more use in our community centers and Then you also mentioned, you know, kind of what are we doing to on the human resources side.

So we're working with SDHR to tee up a class compensation study for lifeguards, for example, right, you know, there's a regional or rather national crisis and what lifeguards are being paid, which we think contributes to the desirability for that job, just given the level of training and expertise that a young person needs to have for that job.

So we're not a private business.

We can't simply pay people more.

We have to go through a class compensation study that has to be legislated through the council process and authorizes us to pay more, but we're going to job fairs right now.

We are doing recruiting, we're calling up friends, nephews, uncles, and asking if anyone has their lifeguarding certificate.

So we're really making an effort there.

And then let's see here, unreinforced masonry retrofits.

This is something we've been working on for years.

So this is one of those multi, year strategies where it's probably going to take multiple cycles of park district funding to mitigate.

Thanks.

Just to restate, my question about the equity fund is I appreciate knowing that there's not a match requirement anymore.

Appreciate Tracy knowing that smaller projects could apply.

My question, though, is whether or not there is a different cap on the funding available for interest.

I understood the old fund made very large awards.

And so I'm wondering, are we putting a cap on the number so that more projects can?

Yes.

Yes.

So you're on the right track.

The $1.8 million large project challenge fund cap was out of reach for a lot of neighborhoods and communities and we want to make this accessible for smaller neighborhood projects.

We haven't determined what the cap is going to be yet but the intent here is to serve communities that have a hard time or difficulty fundraising.

So no cap yet but you're looking at lowering one and creating one and then appreciate the question the answer to the question on HR as relates to the lifeguard need.

My question is Are we doing anything around recruitment and retention and putting any money behind it for other job functions within the parks department?

It's not just lifeguards, right?

We know your maintenance staff is at about 60% filled right now.

You have 40% vacancies.

So recently, just probably in a matter of two or three weeks, We are back up to the full compliment of park maintenance staff.

It took us a while to ramp up and complete those hiring processes.

So, um, I think for the first time since the pandemic, we are fully staffed on the park maintenance side.

Uh, a lot of the problem we've had has not been necessarily a problem.

The staffing or funding, it has been a problem with, uh, resources in our HR section.

just to recruit and hire, and we appear to be turning the corner on that.

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you, Board Member Herbold.

I think we can continue with the presentation from the slide where central staff left off.

back.

There we go.

Good.

Nope.

There we go.

The final investment proposal on the slide is the $850,000 for the rec and the streets program.

So this is the program that delivers recreational programs into different neighborhood parks and street ends.

It's the mobile rec van that was started during the pandemic to try to get to communities that don't have community facility or community facilities or community centers.

but have a desire for recreational activities and activation.

And so this will provide funding to expand that program.

Georgetown and Licton Springs are two areas that have been mentioned as potential targets for those expanded activities.

Next slide.

Related to youth employment and mentorship, $520,000 would be provided to expand teen programming to Mondays at teen life centers.

These are the Garfield, Meadowbrook, and Southwest teen life centers, but it would also expand teen programming in Southeast Seattle at some of the existing facilities where they don't necessarily have a teen life program, but they could certainly provide recreation programming for the teens.

$400,000 would be used for the Youth Mentorship and Employment Opportunities Program.

So this would do a couple of things.

One, it would provide wages to support the employment of 40 youth who will be employed by SPR, and that amount is about $240,000, and would also fund a staff person who would work to coordinate SPR's youth employment with other city departments who are involved in that work.

Related to park safety and activation, $200,000 would be provided for the Neighborhood Park Activation and Park Commons programs.

These resources and staff would work with community partners to activate neighborhood parks to provide safer, more inviting parks.

This is primarily focused outside the downtown area.

It has historically included such parks as Othello, Mirashiva, South Park, Cal Anderson are just examples of a couple of parks where they have worked with the community to provide activities in those parks to make them more inviting for a broader number of people.

$650,000 would be provided to continue the support of the existing concierge program that now serves about eight parks.

Ballard, Hing Hay, Victor Steinbrick, Cal Anderson, and Denny Park are examples of parks that are serviced by that program.

And then $850,000 would be used for the park safety program.

So this would fund a number of different things.

One, it would fund two additional animal control officers who would be dedicated to doing off-leash policing of SPR property.

and then funds, remaining funds could also be used for community center programming, activation efforts, closing of beaches, and it could also be used to support recommendations that are expected to come from a consultant who is working on a park safety plan for SPR that could include uniformed park personnel, such as park rangers or other type of uniformed personnel that are similar to what is going on in other jurisdictions.

So Tracy, can we stop on this slide just for a moment?

Sure.

So it indicates right now $1.7 million in new safety investments, but only three total FTEs.

It sounds like from your presentation just now that on that park safety line item, there's the potential that that could lead to more personnel being produced under that line item.

But at the moment, what's been confirmed is two, off-leash enforcement folks, but that there could be more.

Maybe this is, I see Superintendent Williams nodding.

Maybe this is a better question for the department.

But to dig into this, I do have questions.

I'll just get them all out at once here.

So one would be some clarity on the total impact of that $850,000 proposal on park safety programs.

But then also on the park concierges over half a million dollars, there's no FTEs attached to that.

Then maybe just a little bit more visibility into what that $650,000 will allow parks to do and how that is implemented.

So I guess I'll turn it over to the superintendent.

Okay, thank you so much for that question.

Um, so I'll start with the park safety program.

Uh, we are, uh, proposing to, uh, assuming this gets funded, go out in January, engage the community in a community process around, uh, I think the question, what the, what do safer parks look like and feel like to you?

Uh, we know that that can't always be a uniform police officer.

Park rangers have worked downtown, but due to some stipulations and agreements with the police skill, we don't use them outside of the downtown core.

So we're in search of a new public safety model to help our public parks feel safer.

In fact, all of these activation strategies and public safety strategies are to help the public park system feel safer.

The reason the park concierge Uh, we are hoping to, uh, Uh, I think come back after the first quarter of next year.

actually gets funded with a concrete proposal for our safety plan going forward.

Okay, and we will be having additional hearings and discussions on digging into these issues in particular, which we know are high on the priority list for members of the public and members of this board.

So appreciate that general overview in this session.

Are there any other questions from board members?

Seeing no questions, Tracy, you can continue the presentation.

Thank you.

So moving on to restrooms.

So $174,000 would be used to support the installation of auto locks in SPR restrooms and to provide the staffing to operate, manage and facilitate repair of those locking mechanisms.

$1.2 million would be added to the comfort station and shelter house renovations program.

And this funding would support the renovation of additional comfort stations a year.

Just so folks understand, we have, I think parks has about 94 comfort stations and 30 shelter houses.

So they have quite a number of restrooms that are in lined to be renovated and this would provide additional resources to, I guess on average, improve a couple of conversations per year ballpark average cost of what that looks like is about $540,000 from the materials that we have.

$794,000 would be added to fund two evening second shift maintenance teams to provide year-round seven-day comfort station maintenance.

So that would be this effort to try to expand the availability of those restrooms year-round.

And I'll jump in and describe the parts of the proposal that fall under the heading of responding to climate change.

would be about $2 million for climate conscious buildings.

This caption describes moving from systems that rely on fossil fuels to electricity in terms of heating and cooling when buildings are renovated in the system.

Community center pre-electrification.

The pre-electrification term refers to doing what can be done before the primary systems are electrified.

Of course, there's electricity to the buildings, but you can think of this as being replacement of lighting with LED fixtures and more intelligent controls.

These sorts of things that can be done before a deeper refit of some of the systems.

The next one is replacing fossil fuels in small mechanical systems.

This caption involves changing out oil heat in some of the small buildings in the parks to electric heat.

Restoring and increasing urban canopy, the urban canopy refers to the trees in the parks, and this would add $400,000 to this baseline funding of about $8.7 billion in that part of the parks work.

The next two items have to do with water, the first one having to do with sustainable irrigation.

This would mean that parks could do more when they maintain and repair irrigation systems to find and stop leaks and put in more intelligent controls on them that would be more highly tunable to changing climate.

And the last one, water reuse, would be to capture stormwater, capture rainwater and use that in the parks.

Board member Herbold has a question followed by board member Nelson.

And board member Herbold is on mute.

Thank you.

Yeah, so really, again, appreciate the information here.

Just wondering whether or not there has been consideration of doing some climate resilience work that looks a little bit different, namely, you know, addressing the fact that so many of our community centers do not have have AC and are actually being used by members of the public on when we have, I guess we call them warming events nowadays of really hot heat, our community centers are being used in that in that way.

And just just wondering whether or not there's been a consideration of looking not just at solar and water, but really taking the opportunity to build resiliency into our community centers.

So our current capital program includes the addition of air conditioning units.

I can get you specific information on how many community centers we're talking about.

And we recognize that this number won't address the scope and size of the problem, but we are working on that strategy right now through the regular capital CIP program.

Yeah, thank you.

I just, I think one of the models that has been noted to be a really great one for the the city to to to continue to to replicate in other locations is um the one at um at miller oh sure yeah thank you appreciate that uh board member nelson thank you

So I'm all about zero waste, reuse, et cetera.

So I am looking at the bottom line there, $315,000 for the water reuse partnership.

And it says new funding to evaluate potential water use projects.

So the word evaluate indicates to me that we're gonna spend that much money continually studying.

Um, so, uh, you know, for six years or so, but, um, you know, to really reuse water, that's going to require cisterns and capital funding.

So that I'm assuming, I guess I would like your confirmation is not included in the 315 or can that eventually be converted or what, how does that work?

Yeah.

So I, you know, I actually would need to get back to you on more detail there.

Um, OK.

I think we are studying this and exploring which options work best.

So your point is well taken.

Thanks.

Any follow-up, board member Nelson?

No.

OK, great.

I think we can move on with the presentation, Tracy.

I muted myself.

Moving on to the next category of restoring parks and facilities, $269,000 would be provided for the park beautification program.

So this would intend to provide weeding and grooming, flower beds and hanging baskets to make highly trafficked parks more appealing.

This effort would be primarily focused on downtown parks, but my understanding is there's a commitment by SPR that they would also expand that activity to would be provided to create a new crew to respond to the need to do repairs and maintenance in response to vandalism, and this would also include graffiti abatement.

$352,000 would be provided to give This funding would also help to support the development of a management plan that would cover all 16 viewpoints.

Question?

I believe that hand from board member Nelson is left over from the previous question.

Yes.

Okay, continue.

Moving to restoring our trails so $650,000 will be used to fund large scale trail restoration projects.

This could include capital improvements like bridges, steps, steps, elevated walkways, that kind of capital improvement that might be needed at our over 116 miles of trails that exist.

$400,000 would be added to increase the staffing for the trails program support, which is the program that does provide the maintenance and preservation of the trails in SPR properties.

That completes the discussion of the 38 new investment proposals.

If there are no further questions about those, I will then shift to the discussion about these pre-commitment projects that were mentioned by the co-chairs of the BPRC Commission?

Nope, okay.

So these pre-commitment projects include a number of things.

One, they are projects that were slated to be completed in cycle one, but because of the pandemic and the need to reallocate resources to other core facilities were not completed.

Or two, were projects that as scoping went along in those projects, costs were higher than what was allowed for or what was budgeted for to do those completions of those improvements.

And then the second big category is projects that have been discussed by the mayor and by the city council as candidates for funding in the next secure spending plan.

So this totals about 11 projects.

The idea, the proposal that is in front of the mayor would have a concept of maybe $25 million in cash financing.

and maybe $110 million in debt financing that might equate to about a $10 million annual debt service.

This is the proposed idea about how these 11 projects would be funded.

And the idea being that perhaps for some of the lower cost projects that maybe the cash would be used in the first few years, and then a bond might be issued as the years progressed to address those bigger ticket improvements.

Next slide.

So here are the list of those 11 projects.

Six land-banked park development projects that were not completed in the first cycle and that had funding redirected because of the pandemic.

This includes things as Smith Cove, phase one, Westlake Junction, 48th and Charleston, Morgan Junction, Wedgwood and A.B.

Ernest Parks, 10 to $23 million would be targeted for the Amy tennis center renovation, this would fund such major maintenance items as adding heat to the courts re roofing installation ventilation and lighting and replacement improvements there.

Any was actually a recipient of a major challenge major project challenge fund award.

But due to, and it was gonna, I believe, used to some heating at that facility, but that happened at the same time that we were changing our policy about what kind of heating would be appropriate.

And so the cost of that and the feasibility of that improvement was one that could not be pursued.

And so that remained undone as one of the key renovation projects.

And so this one is on the list because of those issues that arose for that particular project.

Up to $23 million could be provided for the renovation at Loyal Heights Community Center.

This is one of those community centers that was in line to have funding and was had funding provided for stabilization.

But as they got further into assessing that building found that the cost of renovating that project and that building and stabilizing it because of the seismic repairs necessary of this very lovely brick building were higher than what was allowed in terms of funding.

So it was not done in the first cycle of funding and would be in line for some additional resources to complete that.

Lake City Community Center redevelopment.

So this is a project that has been talked about for many years as being a recipient of additional funds in the next spending plan.

And so there is a proposal that 20 to $25 million would be allocated to that project.

Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool project.

This would be in line to receive up to $50 million in funding for that facility to go through a process of replacement.

$10 to $15 million would be allocated to tenant improvements at the new 8th and Mercer Community Center.

So this is the building that was a part of the Mercer Mega Block property sale.

And one of the recipients of the property committed to providing space for a new community center free of charge.

But we have to do the tenant improvements and cover the operating costs.

So the $10 to $15 million would do those tenant improvements at that new facility.

Moving on to additional elements of the proposed spending plan.

So next proposal would include continued funding of those initiatives that were funded in the first spending plan.

This would total about $58 million.

And we get that figure by taking the 2022 adopted budget of 56.4 million and adjusting it by an inflation factor of about 4%.

We've had some conversations, initial conversations with the executive about inflation and what factor makes sense.

The previous spending plan had about a 2.5% inflation factor that we applied every year.

4% has been the number we have talked about initially.

I think we're going to need to see how the conversations go and what we see in terms of our current environment as it relates to inflation and whether that 4% is really going to be the right number as it relates to applying an annual inflation factor to the cycle 2 spending plan.

And then the final component of the anticipated spending plan would include this potential $10 million that would be provided in at least the first few years to address the ongoing economic impacts to the city revenues from the pandemic.

I would suggest to you once again that all of these proposals that are in front of you that we are discussing today are things that the mayor will have the opportunity to take a look at and decide to what extent he concurs with those proposals or wants to make changes.

But we are giving you kind of a sense for what's in the universe here of the proposals, knowing that the mayor will have his opportunity to go through these proposals just as you are doing right now, as he develops his plan that we will see in September.

Tracy, thank you.

We have some comments on this.

If you could go back.

Sorry.

We do have some comments on this slide.

We need to make the first one I did during the initial presentations.

really zero in on the supplementation element, which I think is something that this board should really scrutinize and grapple with throughout the course of the summer.

I will say at the front that in general terms, I am a skeptic of supplementation through the Metropolitan Park District.

And that is in no way to say that we don't have a challenging looming budget cycle.

But I imagine that over the course of the Metropolitan Park District being a partnership institution with the city of Seattle, because they are separate governments, even though here we are in council chamber as council members serving on the board, Undoubtedly, even though that park district was passed by voters in times of generally low inflation, it is an institution that's going to be expected to survive and weather times of crisis that it's gonna be expected to be conducting its own programming and not necessarily being a source for the council budget office to be in a position to expect and anticipate a unique ability to balance the books on the general fund obligations of parks with a special resource other departments don't have access to.

So I'm open to having this conversation, of course, given the pressures that we're facing, but I do think we need to be mindful of the four corners of what the voters who created this authority in the 2014 election were promised.

And to really look at how exceptional the inflation situation we're facing now is, certainly exceptional in the short lifespan so far of the Metropolitan Park District.

But I do think we need to be cognizant of the fact that you know, crises will emerge, crises will come.

And we need to be really careful the precedent we set on when we do and don't dip into the MPD to help balance the general fund situation.

So, you know, definitely an agenda item that I want to spend more time on over the course of the summer.

And I just want to make sure that whatever precedent is set is defensible and doesn't open the door to, an undue amount of mixing of funds between the general fund and the Metropolitan Park District to an extent that would be potentially inconsistent with what our pitch was in 20, well, what the pitch of the council at the time, I should say, because I wasn't here, to the voters in 2014. So just with that statement, I wanna pass it over to board member Nelson, who has a question.

Your statement answered my question, thank you.

Well, thank you.

Okay, we will move forward.

Oh, board member Herbold.

Thanks, I'm just trying to understand what you're getting at President Lewis.

So there was in the original chartering of the MPD, limitations on our ability to supplant funds, specific instances, Um, and oversight for, for when, when we can and required our vote.

Um, we did that.

Um, and I, and I think we needed to do that.

Um, and so what are you suggest, are you suggesting we need to tighten up, um, the conditions under which we under a state of emergency.

use that authority, that we should eliminate that authority.

I just, it sounds like you're suggesting there's a problem and that we need to use this as an opportunity to solve.

And I really don't understand.

No, let me, thank you for that opportunity to clarify board member Herbold.

I certainly agree that in the last couple of years when we had the massive roller coaster dip in the general fund, instigated by the sudden and sharp recession induced by the onset of COVID, that is exactly the kind of scenario where supplementation is an appropriate policy response.

I think what I'm more getting at is the question that we're faced with here is we have a general fund that we established earlier, level that is in excess of the baseline.

Central staff confirmed it's at 110 million in general fund support.

Perspectively looking forward to the rest of the budget cycle where we do have a, you know, we have an established hit to the general fund that we've been discussing publicly and in the finance and housing committee, I think it's going to be a discussion of whether in balancing those books for this prospective period of fiscal tightening and potential exploration of new revenue, whether this fund in the MPD is a balancing tool under those circumstances is something I want us to discuss.

Because I mean, we're not We don't sit here today with a general fund that is lower.

We anticipate that inflation is going to make it more difficult to hit that general fund line, which was the discussion we had earlier with Superintendent Williams.

And I think that we should have a discussion to what extent the MPD can be a supplementation tool.

Because once that precedent, we're in the second cycle, and I think setting that precedent of, a $10 million annual subsidy to the general fund, you know, I think we need to have a conversation about whether that policy is consistent with what this was intended to be used for.

So that's all I'm saying.

I'm saying that I don't think that our perspective position going forward is necessarily analogous to what we had to do in the heat of the pandemic in delaying the cycle renewal and authorize emergency supplementation.

I think that was in keeping with what the park district was designed to do.

But going forward, I don't want us to be in a constant cycle of using this as a subsidy to allow us to go below the baseline and have the MPD bail out the general fund.

Thank you.

President Lewis, it's very, very helpful.

I appreciate you entertaining my question.

And I understand a little bit more now why you were trying to get that clarity from the board of commissioners on what their thinking was about this as well.

So super helpful.

Are there any more board questions?

Seeing none, Tracy, I think we can continue forward.

So I'll jump into this slide.

This is, you know, a picture of graph representing what we presented today that stacks up the estimates of the pieces, the components, the four components we've talked about so far in color and stacked up in one bar chart.

So $58 million for continuing the cycle one initiatives.

That's the amount inflated from the current funding.

This would be for the year 2023. $30,000 for new investments.

That's where a lot of the recommendations from the board, the BPRC landed.

the 10% of the debt service for pre-commitment projects, which has been discussed earlier, and then the $10 million, which is that yellow color.

That's the part of the stack here that President Lewis, you were just referring to and had questions about.

So stacking these up, you get to something like $108 million.

Again, this is before this board has received the spending plan as recommended by the mayor, but it's our best estimate of what that could look like.

if it hewed really closely to the recommendations from the BPRC.

And here's a chart that shows some numbers you've seen before.

On the left-hand side of this graph, you'll see the actuals from 2016 through 2022 that appeared earlier in our slide presentation.

And on the right-hand side from 2022 moving forward, what we see here are the numbers from the estimate going forward shown on the same chart.

As I mentioned in the previous slide that was similar, the axis on the left hand side running up and down, those are the millions of dollars for the total in the NPD levy and the right hand side is the scale for the impact to the homeowner of a home that is a median assessed value.

I'll draw your attention to the middle of the chart.

We move from in 2022 the actual of about $155 of the impact to that median house value up to about $307 under this estimate.

And then moving forward, that line is the raised by inflation year over year up to about $411, just shy of $411 in 2028 for the impact to the homeowner of a house that would be under the estimate for median value.

There's a lot here on this page and I'll pause here in case there's some questions.

Yes, board member Peterson.

Thank you.

This slide is really important for the public and I want to thank City Council Central staff for putting it together so that we can see the significant impact here.

It's basically doubling this property tax on not only homeowners but also renters because we established earlier that landlords can pass these costs on to renters.

And so I'm concerned about this amount.

I do appreciate the previous bar graph breaking out the different components.

Seattleites love their parks.

We're excited that a lot of them have been restored and we want to sustain that, I know, and look at expanding.

I'm just concerned because we've got this proposal would be doubling the property tax, and then we have other important levies that are coming up, property tax levies for low-income housing, for education, for transportation, and it will have a cumulative impact.

I know others are considering substantially increasing the property tax levies for their issues that they're passionate about, like housing, education, and transportation.

So I think that at least over the next couple months as we're discussing this, I'll be really concerned about the impact of people on fixed incomes, seniors who are still homeowners, and so their property taxes are gonna go up substantially.

This is while they're also experiencing inflationary impacts to their household budgets.

So I wanna be very careful about what we're looking at here.

I support a lot of the pre-commitment projects that were mentioned earlier that would be paid for through $10 million in debt service.

I'm concerned about supplanting the city's general fund going forward with this measure.

And we need to take a hard look at the new investments that are being proposed because this is passing on substantial costs through the property taxes to both homeowners and renters.

So I just want to confirm that what this graph is showing is that it essentially would double that property tax.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct.

That's a fair reading.

Thank you.

I mean, I can put a finer, you know, just slightly finer point on it.

It would be doubling the component of the property tax that is made up of the MPD.

Not the overall.

I know you didn't mean that.

I keep wanting to say council member.

But yes, a doubling is shown there right in the middle.

There's a jump.

Thank you.

My we wanted to share this graph to be able to illustrate the change.

Thank you.

Thank you central staff, you can continue with the presentation.

So, um, this, this, the next.

The next picture, the next slide of the deck will illustrate this, but I'll speak to this momentarily.

So one of the key sort of assumptions or considerations that we've been working with is that the parks district would not go back out to the voters for a vote to change the amount.

So that would be necessary if we exceeded maximum level of funding that's authorized and also the state rules that govern the amount of the levy can increase year by year.

So based on the state law, information from the King County Assessor, staff, and CBO believe that an estimated maximum levy that could be collected in 2023 would start at $119 million and go up to $145 million in 2028. And that assumes a 4% inflation rate year over year.

And I'll show you the next slide.

So the easiest way probably for me to describe this to you is to think of 2028 as being sort of maxed out.

And so if during the six year period we operate under the assumption that there won't be a vote on the amounts for the NPD, then we get that maximum number at that nearly $145 million.

And then we work backwards with the 4% to get to 119 for next year in 2023. And this just demonstrates that progression, which is a straight line.

With that, we're on to next steps.

These dates have been mentioned earlier in terms of next steps, things that are happening for the Parks District.

There'll be more discussions on the 11th.

There is a public hearing on July 14th for folks to weigh in.

On all the things that have been discussed today, there'll be a number of meetings for discussion of the Park District Board.

On the 6th, we anticipate and sort of expect, but with SmartCare's tentative, because we have not yet received it, the mayor's proposed spending plan, following some discussion and leading up to a September 19th vote on the six-year spending plan by this body, the Parks District Board.

Thank you so much.

Are there any final questions on process for central staff?

We will have plenty of other sessions to discuss this as they just indicated, but board member Nelson.

For my information.

And first of all, I want to say that I do appreciate a board member Peterson's comments and also yours president.

So, Everybody, I've said before that I want to turf Judkins Park, that's the home of the CD Panthers Youth Football League.

There are, but it doesn't seem as though these programs allow for big projects like that, with the exception of the pre-commitment.

So is something, is an item like this, and this is informational for me because I've never had this conversation before.

With that, with that kind of project belong elsewhere in the parks budget in in totally apart from this, because the the nature of these expenditures seems to be small and spread out amongst many different programs, et cetera, not big chunks of money that can go for major maintenance at one place.

So would that be in the capital budget?

I mean.

Am I correct in that?

So maybe I'll jump in here.

I think one important reminder to you is to remind you that the park district component of our $288 million budget is about 19%.

So we'd be happy to sit down with you and have a discussion about opportunities to include your vision for Judkins Park into our regular capital program.

Okay, thank you.

You bet.

Board Member Herbold.

Thank you very quickly.

I just want to lift up the fact that I personally have received a lot of advocacy from District One community members and I know Parks Board of Commissioners have as well in favor of establishing new off-leash areas using Park District funds.

The report indicates that a full one-third of public comments about generally the park district funds mention off-leash areas more than any other category.

So I'm just wondering, is there any recommendation that would allow for developing new off-leash areas in the commissioner's recommendations?

So I believe we have a baseline level of funding in our and what's considered the baseline, but there isn't any new funding being added to off-leash areas here.

There's about $123,000 in the baseline funding for off-leash areas.

And that's not for new off-leash areas, that's for maintaining the existing ones.

It, you know, so depending on the needs of the site, it could be used for new off-leash areas.

Okay.

It beat out Pickleball, so.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, and you know, just to echo those remarks to Board Member Herbold, you know, given that there are line items for increased enforcement of not complying with having dogs in off-leash areas, I would just maybe end our meeting today by saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in providing spaces for those dogs to be.

Typically, people are using parks in an unsanctioned way for dogs off-leash because for the very reason we're just stating, there aren't a sufficient number of off-leash areas to accommodate the demand.

So figuring out ways that we can provide that service is probably gonna go a long way to maximizing whatever enforcement resource we put in by diminishing and mitigating the amount that actually occurs.

Any final remarks from board members?

Okay, seeing none, thank you everyone for a great kickoff to our Metropolitan Park District Board process for 2022. And thank you so much to my colleagues for electing me as president of this board and for the election of Council Member Mosqueda as vice president.

Really looking forward to continuing these discussions with the commissioners who are present today, Superintendent Williams and all the other stakeholders who are advocates for our parks and open spaces.

and seeing that it doesn't look like there's any remarks for the good of the order, and it is almost four on a Friday, a beautiful Friday, I'm gonna go ahead and say that this meeting is hereby adjourned.