Seattle Park District Board - Special Meeting - Public Hearing 101722

Thank you.

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

It is 5.40 PM.

I'm Andrew Lewis, President of the Board.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Board Member Nelson.

Present.

Board Member Peterson.

Present.

Board Member Strauss.

Board Member Herbold.

Here.

Board Member Juarez.

Here.

Board Member Morales.

Board Member Musqueda.

Present.

And President Lewis present six present.

Moving on to approval of the agenda.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Approval of the minutes.

My notes indicate that there are no minutes today.

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

Madam Chair nodding in the affirmative.

There are no minutes to approve.

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

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

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

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

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

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

And after the presentation, we will open a public hearing.

to hear from members of the community.

I'll hand it over to the panel.

Great.

Maybe I'll get started here.

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

I just want to comment.

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

for the department.

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

It means a lot to us in the Park Department.

Let's see here.

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

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

Let's go to the next slide, Michelle.

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

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

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

So thank you for that work.

Next slide here.

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

I'll provide an overview of the investments in the next few slides.

But as you can see here, the green, that $67 million will be used to support operations and maintenance, including a new BCL for the Seattle Center, who will be taking over the operations and maintenance of the waterfront.

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

Next slide.

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

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

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

regular tree planting and maintenance work, community center operations and programs, programs for teens, older adults, youth learning, and people with disabilities.

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

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

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

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

This is a great second chance program.

increase access and maintenance of community centers, as well as an increase of community engagement to ensure programming and services are relevant.

Also, the reestablishment of the Park Ranger program, coupled with increased activation resources for both our downtown and neighborhood parks.

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

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

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

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

These are some of the highlighted areas.

On this next slide, you can see in the draft resolution associated with the proposed 23 budget, these investments equate to a tax rate of approximately $0.39 for $1,000 of assessed value.

OK, I'll pause here for any questions.

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

Do not.

Okay.

Are there any questions from board members?

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

Seeing no questions from board members.

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

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

And we're familiar with the general instructions for the public comment period, so I'm gonna dispense with the public comment video.

I will give each speaker two minutes to speak.

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

One person.

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

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

David Mooring, if you can please unmute.

You may have to hit star six, David.

We'll hold the timer until we can hear you, so don't worry about it.

And you may need to physically unmute in addition to star six.

David, we still can't hear you.

Oh, it looks like you just came off mute here.

Say something so we can see if we can hear you.

Okay, we can.

Great.

We can hear you.

Um, so we'll start your timer now.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Uh, David Murray with cheap back a few numbers to write down, uh, 80, 255, a thousand, a hundred thousand and a hundred million.

So really happy to see the budget in there for parks.

There's roughly 80 trees for every acre of tree canopy.

And we have lost, as you know, 255 acres of tree canopy in the last five years.

According to our comp plan, which was established in 2007 for the tree canopy to reach 30%, We need a thousand more acres to be growing into place by 2037. So with 80 trees per acre, that equates to about 80,000 trees.

And then you add up for that, for natural tree loss over 15 years in survivability trees, that's about a hundred thousand trees that the city of Seattle needs to plant very shortly to get mature in 15 years.

And finally, the last number, $100 million.

At roughly $1,000 per tree, my understanding for planting and maintaining a tree, that's a budget of $100 million that the city of Seattle or public or private other sources would need to provide to reach that 2007 goal for 2037. Now there is, my understanding, some grants that have come out through the federal government, especially for urban trees.

So hopefully we can take advantage of some of that.

Thank you very much.

David, thank you for your testimony.

As we have no additional speakers, I'm going to close the public hearing.

And that leads us to item seven on our agenda adjournment and concludes today's meeting.

If there's no further business before the Park District Board, we will adjourn.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Park District Board is on November 22nd, but colleagues should please note that this date may change due to the fact that it closely coincides to the council's anticipated date of November 21st to adopt the 2023 and 2024 budget.

Please note this possible date change and appropriate notices will be provided well in advance.

And hearing no further business, we are adjourned.