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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes Parks And Recreation Advisory Committee - 10/14/2020 PARKS AND RECREATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE Regular Meeting * Wednesday, October 14, 2020 5:30 p.m. Webex MINUTES I. Call to Order by Chairperson Alissa Mejia at 5:30 p.m. II. Roll Call of Members: • Present: Jacob Dryden, Lawrence Heatley, Mandy Cox, Alissa Mejia, Casandra Lorentson, Howard Schauer, Florence East, Hannah Husby and Twila Stevens, and Diego Solis. • Absent: Amy McCoy • Quorum was met. III. Public Comment • None IV. Adoption of Minutes • Regular Meeting – Adoption of Minutes from September 9, 2020. Minutes from September 9, 2020 were passed unanimously. V. Police Department Report • None VI. Old Business and Possible Action • None VII. New Business for Discussion and Possible Action • Bond 18 / GameTime Grant Playground Installation – Assistant Director Joseph Johnson presented the Bond 18 / GameTime Grant Playground Installation item. This presentation had been distributed to the board members previously to seek their feedback and approval. The feedback received was positive and all feedback was gathered and sent to City Council individually. Community feedback was also gathered to send to Council. The Community expressed their concerns regarding the conditions of existing playgrounds. This item will be presented to City Council on November 10, 2020. The funding for this project will come from the Bond 18 funding coupled with grant funding. The grant funding being provided is a 70/30 match. A total of eleven playgrounds will be installed along with new shade structures for each playground. • Jacob Dryden: Beyond the balancing between the districts, what was the driving factor for choosing these specific parks? • Joseph Johnson: The age of the equipment and the issue that some of these parks don’t have any amenities anymore. Johnson went door-to-door at Carroll Lane Park for community feedback. The community members talked about how kids would always go to that park when it had amenities. It’s currently one of the parks with no amenities left. • Dryden: Are we passing up any neighborhood parks so we can add playgrounds to some of the niche parks that are listed? • Joseph Johnson: Yes, however, the niche parks receiving playgrounds are parks that we’ve received multiple complaints about. Also, if we were to install more neighborhood parks, we wouldn’t be able to install as many playgrounds as we’re planning on. Neighborhood parks have more expensive playground structures with larger pour-and-play zones and shade structures. That would limit us to about seven or eight installations. • Mandy Cox: Provided her thoughts on wanting to see more investing in parks that already have amenities. She would like to see maybe one neighborhood park per district with more amenities such as distinguished playgrounds for both younger children and older children and areas that are fenced in with benches. • Joseph Johnson: We have installed older children playgrounds before in Lamar Park and Captain Falcon Park for children about twelve years and older. Those parks received a lot of negative feedback, so we’re not pursuing those types of playgrounds for now. We are looking installing some nice toddler parks with the funding from the Bond 2020 though. • Twila Stevens: Will the fourteen playgrounds that are currently being installed be receiving shade structures? • Joseph Johnson: Yes, they will all be receiving shade structures and those should be installed over the next month or two. VIII. Committee, Liaison/Staff Reports – • Island Strategic Action Committee (ISAC) – Liaison Twila Stevens: Question was posed to Twila whether a splash pad is planned for the island. Nothing has been reported to PRAC regarding splash pads. Discussion was had regarding damage from storms around City beach parks. Question was posed regarding why showers had not been installed at Zahn Road. City hasn’t had the manpower to perform those installations due to beach cleaning tasks. Water lines have been installed and Zahn Road is open. Showers will be worked on during Winter. Question posed regarding why the beach area in front of Mike Ellis Park is closed even on weekends. City replied that the beach is open but it’s too narrow to accommodate vehicles while keeping pedestrians safe. City has been moving sand there to widen it. Discussion was had about Village_Billish Park having an annual cost of maintenance of about $80,000 per year and the City reimburses about $14,000 per year. • Joseph Johnson: The three splash pads that the City recently installed cost about $600,000. These splash pads were installed in parks with pre-existing restrooms and water facilities. There were already water, wastewater and stormwater drains installed in those parks making it easy to tie into them. A lot of the splash pad requests coming in are for parks that don’t have pre-existing water facilities. Installing splash pads at those parks would mean tearing up roads. It would cost roughly $250,000 to $300,000 to install a s plash pad at one of those parks. Additionally, the code indicates that restrooms and other water facilities are required to be installed along with a splash pad. • Jacob Dryden: Is there a map that lists which parks have these amenities to look at for splash pad installation? • Joseph Johnson: Yes, we know which parks have restrooms and water facilities. In reference to the Master Plan, neighborhood parks don’t require restrooms. Some of the older parks do have restrooms and those have become areas heavily used by the homeless population. We’re working to remove those restrooms since they aren’t required. Building a splash pad in any neighborhood park would not set a good precedent. Splash pads need to be reserved for City parks and regional parks. • Watershore & Beach Advisory Committee – Liaison Howard Schauer: First meeting was cancelled due to communications. Howard couldn’t attend the second meeting but was able to provide information about the 2020 Bond projects to raise awareness. No feedback or questions have been posed. • Flour Bluff Advisory Committee – Liaison Florence East: Meetings took place and now the online open house is taking place. Once the open house is over, there will be another presentation in the spring to provide further updates. IX. Director Reports – Tracey Cantu, Interim Director • We appreciate all of you getting the word out to the community about Bond 2020. Parks has several projects on Bond 2020 on our website. The Community Engagement staff, Lisa Oliver and her team, have created informational signage that has been posted at the included parks and an informational video that will be shared on our social media pages. We are also preparing for the beginning of the recently passed 10-Year Master Plan along with the Bill Witt Site Plan. We are preparing a utilization plan for Heritage Park to use that park and the surrounding area to its upmost potential. We are working on bringing everyone back for in-person PRAC Meetings. I will continue to serve as Interim Director for another couple of months while they’re searching for a candidate. • Florence East: Has land been designated in the London area for a park? • Tracey Cantu: Bart Braselton is looking to develop another residential neighborhood out there including some park land, so we have been having preliminary discussions with them. There isn’t a specific location designated at this time. • Mandy Cox: I would like to recommend we use any park of your choosing to have the next PRAC Meeting in-person. • Tracey Cantu: We will look into that as well as any other alternate locations we could utilize in case of inclement weather. Becky Perrin, Assistant Director • Games of Texas was postponed this summer. They’re starting to meet again and establish a schedule. They’re planning to start up again in July 2021 and we’re looking forward to hosting the games once again. We’ve been working with an agency for the Heritage Park Business Plan. They will be helping us create a plan to utilize Heritage Park to the best of our abilities. Community Senior Centers are still closed currently, but we are continuing to expand curbside activities. Lunch provisions has still been expanding. In January we were providing about three hundred lunches per day and now we are providing about sixteen hundred lunches per day. For children we have continued to expand Facebook activities. We are working on a plan to start bringing people back in while following proper social distancing procedures. The Governor’s order has allowed us to start bringing back the Athletic league and we will be moving forward with outdoor activities. We are currently processing the Community Youth and Development Grant to start providing those services. We renamed Latchkey to After Hour Kid Power. School just went back into session last Monday, so there has been a lot of excitement. We currently have the After Hour Kid Power program in ten CCISD schools and three Calallen schools and we are looking to hire more people to bring the program to four more schools. We will be hosting Vacation Station during Thanksgiving with our Recreation and Community Center at three to four sites to provide all-day camps for needy children. • Jacob Dryden: How has going from providing three hundred to sixteen hundred meals a day impacted your budget? • Becky Perrin: Fortunately, we have received CARE money to utilize for the additional lunches. Without that money we would not have been able to do it. We could have shifted the budget slightly to do as much as we could, but the money we received has been a monumental help. • Jacob Dryden: Who at CCISD are you working with? • Becky Perrin: We have been working with Karen Griffith. Joseph Johnson, Assistant Director • No further reports. X. Committee Member Comments/Announcements/Agenda Requests • Mandy Cox: What parks does the Parks and Recreation Department have in mind for installing splash pads? • Joseph Johnson: We aren’t planning on installing any other splash pads. We have concerns that if we do install another splash pad that we will need to budget for and hire another mechanic to our staff. • Hannah Husby: Is the recirculation causing the maintenance issue? • Joseph Johnson: There are a lot of intricate and sensitive computer components and shutoff valves. For example, at Bill Witt Park, the splash pad there continually senses rain when there isn’t any which is shutting the converter off from the valve to the tank and it’s pushing all of that water out and flooding the ditches. They aren’t ideal and should be reserved for our larger parks instead of the neighborhood parks. • Alissa Mejia: Is there a possibility that the salt and sand environment we live in is causing a higher cost of maintenance compared to other cities throughout the country? • Joseph Johnson: The salt air isn’t really that big of an issue. The most difficult factor is maintenance on the computers inside of them. Vandalism is also a major issue. Not long after the splash pad at Bill Witt Park opened someone tried to steal the pumps and motors out of it. Right now, running maintenance isn’t too bad because our pools are shut down. Once those are opened while we also have three splash pads running, things will be much more difficult. • Jacob Dryden: People are asking questions about the angels at Cole Park. Can you provide some insight into that? • Becky Perrin: We are currently evaluating what we need to do to get everything running again. We have more research to do before we can move forward with a plan. • Alissa Mejia: During our last meeting we had received a public comment about creating walking trails along the canal going to Webb Elementary School. Can we have that item placed on the next agenda? • Tracey Cantu: Yes, we can add that for next month’s agenda. We have been working with Public Works to see what improvements can be made. XI. Adjournment at 6:28 p.m.