>> Hello everyone and welcome to the parks board meeting for the 22nd day of February
2021. I am Frances punch, the chair of the parks board. Today we have no board members
absent and we will have one member joining us late. It should be noted that the parks
board did not have a meeting in January 2021 and the February 15th meeting was moved to
today, February 22nd. And before we get started I would like to welcome our newest board member
Jerry Dooley. Welcome and thank you for your service ahead of time.
>> Thank you very much. >> As a reminder to the board, please wait
to be acknowledged by the chair before speaking. First item -- before we start, do we have
any participants from the public? >> No, not today, ma'am. Thank you.
>> Thank you. First item, consider approval of the minutes for December 14th, 2020.
>> Thank you, George. George, you have a question, concern?
>> No, I just -- I motion to approve the minutes. >> Prior to that, are there any concerns or
questions? >> No, ma'am.
>> I'll second. >> Thank you. George, motion has been made.
All in favor? >> Aye.
>> Anyone opposed? All right. Minutes approved. Second item, receive a report, hold a discussion
and give staff input regarding the parks, recreation and trails system master plan update.
>> Good afternoon, Gary Pack and director of parks and recreation. We have some members
of our half associate team, Lenny and Kendall, present to talk about our plan. Obviously,
we started this in January of 2019, doing it internally, and we had some staff leave
and then also COVID hit and we came to a screeching halt outside of our trails planning. So in
order to get this done efficiently and effectively, we decided to hire half to help us get to
that point, and so we kicked that off a few months ago and we're moving right along with
hopefully an anticipation of completion by the end of the calendar year. So Lenny Hughes,
I'll go ahead and let you talk and then we can go from there with Kendall.
>> Sure. Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lenny Hughes, the regional
director of planning and half associates and we're going to be presenting today, giving
you guys an update on the parks and recreational space master plan. This will be a series of
meetings that we're going to be holding with staff and also with the public at large to
look at kind of going through our visiting process, giving the background for the plan,
but also looking at next steps for the future there. So we have a brief presentation at
the end that we're going to open it up to question and answer session here with the
park board. So just quickly, the agenda, we're going to look at the project purpose, an overview,
what's been done to date. Like Gary said, there's been a lot of significant work that's
been done by the staff as well as other consultants, and so we're going to be looking at compiling
this information and developing a planning document for the city. Here we'll also look
at the existing system and just also kind of share with you some of our initial observations
from our citywide tour that we held back in January. Then again, as I said before, go
through a brief vision and exercise. So a little bit about ourselves. Half Associates,
we're a multidisciplinary firm. Our home office is located in Richardson, Texas. That's where
I reside out of, as well as Kendall and the rest of the other planning team. We are full
service company that covers everything from architecture to architectural planning, to
civil engineering and transportation. So again, we are full service and we'll be providing
park planning services here for the city. I myself, I'm the project manager. Also on
the line here today is also is Kendall Howard. She'll be the deputy project manager. And
then we have a whole host of others that will provide support for us from planning to QAQC.
And also we teamed with Mike Svetz of Approach Consulting. They've done some previous work
with the city looking at the aquatics facilities review. And so we're going to be weaving all
that information into the overall planning document. So just a little bit of the plan
on purpose. Again, as Gary said before, there's been a lot of significant efforts that's been
provided in the past. And so we're going to take this information, compile it all into
an overall planning document. There's also been a significant amount of public engagement
that has occurred over in the past as well. And so we want to make sure that we're getting
all this information in, testing it, make sure that people's thoughts and opinions are
same as was initially gauged back in 2019. And also to look at some of the other, any
other upcoming planning and recreational efforts for the city. This will be a guiding document
for park development over the next five to 10 years. It will look at ways to enhance
or improve the existing system, but also make sure that we are in lockstep with the growth
and development that's happening and occurring in and around Denton. There's a lot of things
that's happening in the area. And so we want to make sure that we're planning for parks
in the future. One of the other key components of the plan is an action plan. And so this
will provide guidance on what areas we developed, how much these things are going to cost. And
so this is, we have a systematic way of looking at future development items here for the city.
One other resulting aspect of the plan will be having this plan being compliant with Texas
Parks and Wildlife, or TPWD, but also having this plan CAPRA compliant. So looking at the
planning process, there are basically six different state phases here. The first phase
was really as important as community understanding, where we review existing data, make sure that
we understand what plans are in place, and go through a very exhaustive review of the
current facilities and inventory of the current system. Phase two, we look at the community
vision. Again, there's been a lot of information that's been gathered in the past. And so we
want to make sure that this plan meets those goals, are really and truly what they've heard
in the past. And if there's ways of looking and acquiring additional input, then we're
going to look at engaging the public even further to provide additional information.
Phase three looks at the overall needs assessment. This looks at the overall park conditions
and level of service. I look on it per capita for citizens per acreage there in the city.
Step four will be the parks and recreation trail system recommendations, where we'll
kind of vet out the different areas for improvement for the community, as well as how these things
would start to lay out for future park development. Then once we've already gotten all this information
together, then we'll start to develop a draft plan where we will review this with staff
and also with the park board. From there, then we'll look at plan adoption for final
approval by the board, as well as by city council. We kicked this project off in January
where we had a series of meetings to lay out the plan. We also had a two-day tour of all
your park facilities at the end of January. So right now, we're looking at the community
vision, where we, again, have several meetings that set up over the next few days and extra
few weeks to gather additional input for the plan, and then have other subsequent meetings
or touches to make sure that we're meeting the city's goals for the overall project.
As we had said before, this is probably about a 12-month process, and the project will conclude
in the month of December. As far as this engagement process, we've got several groups. We've got
a master plan focus group. There are three meetings scheduled for that. That looks at
the overall project initiation, a midpoint review, then a final review. This is also
going to happen to occur with the department staff leads, and then also we have briefings
to city council, as well as the park board, to make sure that we are, again, in lockstep
with your goals and vision for the park plan. We have a series of public meetings. These
will be held virtually. I believe the first public meeting would be held sometime in early
March, and then a subsequent meeting later on in a process to present to them our plan
recommendations. Then part of this process, we're going to have an abbreviated community
survey, gathering additional input from the citizens.
At this point, I'd like to turn it to Kendall to talk about what's been completed so far.
Great. Thank you, Lenny, and good afternoon, everyone. As Lenny mentioned, there has been
a lot of staff-level effort to date to assess the existing system and conduct some initial
engagement efforts. We wanted to briefly touch on what has been completed so far and what
will serve as the foundation for this master plan as we work to finalize it.
First we are taking a lot of credence into the existing plans and documents that have
been done to date. Some recent efforts and studies that have been completed include the
trails analysis, the urban forest master plan, and a whole host of other plans, as you see
here. So as we work to put together the finalized master plan, we will be incorporating the
key recommendations from these efforts into the overall park system master plan.
The draft master plan also took a look at the existing needs assessment. So looking
at what parks are within Denton today and how that translates to service areas and level
of service. So these are early estimates back from 2020. So as we work to update the needs
assessment, these numbers will change. They will be refined as we take into account some
additional acreage that has been added to the system. But this is just a snapshot in
time of some of the key needs assessment factors that we'll be looking at. So currently there
are about 4,600 residents per park. Another way to look at that is about 10.3 acres for
every 1,000 residents. So this level of service metric is used by the NRPA to try to start
to compare benchmarks for similar communities. And then parks account for about 2.5% of total
land area with the city. And then also through this process, we'll look at refining these
deficit numbers to determine what the target acreage will be out to the year 2030. Staff
has also created a very extensive design guidelines document for parks. So they worked with lots
of subject matter experts to come up with very specific guidelines related to all these
different topics. So as new parks are developed and as parks are renovated, they will have
a very clearly defined guidance for how to develop and maintain those parks. So as part
of this process, these design guidelines will be incorporated into the final master plan
document as an appendix. And we will work to review and make any final refinements as
necessary. Lenny mentioned there's been a lot of engagement to date for the master plan
process. So we are taking a very critical look at what's been heard and are there any
gaps that we need to go back out and get additional input from the community on. So this slide
shows some preliminary vision characteristics that was developed as part of the draft master
plans. It's really focusing on what sort of key community benefits parks and recreation
can bring to a community. So some of those are community revitalization, promoting tourism,
enhancing quality of life, creating a destination or experience. So these are really serving
as the primary characteristics for the overall master plan vision. So as we conduct additional
engagement, we will look at refining these as we move forward. So in terms of previous
engagement efforts, over the past couple years, staff has done extensive engagement throughout
the community. Back in mid to late 2019, there were five community wide meetings held at
different parts of the city. So they did some dollar voting exercises and then had some
input stations focused on different aspects of the parks and recreation system. In addition
to those community wide meetings, there are also over 35 focus group meetings held. So
these were held with user groups such as aquatics users, sports associations or leagues, recreation
center users to really get targeted input from those key user groups about what they
perceive to be the needs and issues moving forward for the park system. So lots of great
input received from those focus group meetings. And then you'll also likely recall that there
was a statistically valid survey done administered by National Service Research. So this was
done in the first part of 2019. And there were just over 2000 total respondents. So
they were able to respond online or through mailing and paper formats. So we're not going
to get into the statistics or key findings from that survey. We just have a couple top
responses there looking at most frequently used facilities. Those include the natatorium,
waterworks, the dog park, Clear Creek, and then the senior center. And then there was
also some questions related to why residents may not use city of Denton facilities. And
some of those top responses were that facilities aren't conveniently located. They're not aware
of programs or facilities. They don't have personal time and they do not meet my needs.
So these are just a handful of, I think, 20 plus questions that were part of that statistically
valid survey. So as part of this process, Lenny mentioned, we are going to be looking
at doing an abbreviated online survey. So this will help to fill in any gaps from this
original survey and also help to inform how people's use and perception of parks and recreation
facilities have changed, especially since the pandemic began. So in looking at all of the
engagement effort that has been done to date, this slide summarizes some of the top desired
amenities or programs that has been identified to date. So those amenities are trails, open
space and tree preservation, splash pads, nature programs, outdoor events, and then
more from an indoor programming aspect, we have fitness equipment and fitness classes.
So again, as we go through that online survey and additional community input, we'll work
to confirm these top desired amenities and programs.
Can I ask a question if I could? On the last slide or two ago, it looked like the green
was related to things they wanted and red was related to things they didn't. But in
this case, you're just identifying, I'm sorry, blue and red. In this case, it was just outdoor
versus indoor is the color designation on those? Yes. On this one here? Yes. Okay. So
these all seven of these are amenities or programs that are desired. This pinkish color
just represents indoor amenities. Okay, thanks. Sorry if that was obvious to others. Oh, no,
that's a great question. Thank you. All right. So then moving forward, really where the half
team comes in is, again, to look at confirming the overall vision, updating the system needs
assessment. As you can see, just driving around Denton, growth is happening very, very quickly.
So we want to account for all the population growth that has occurred. And also, there's
been quite a bit of land acquisition for additional parkland. So all of that will translate into
an updated needs assessment to really help identify where there are still gaps in providing
access to parks within Denton. Then we'll work to review existing recommendations and
also add in additional recommendations for parks, recreation, and trails based on the
needs assessment and the engagement. And then finally, we'll work to prioritize implementation
actions and compile the overall master plan document. So we're sure you all are very familiar
with the existing system, but we have just a couple slides that gives a brief snapshot
of what Denton looks like today. So there are about 40 developed parks. So these are
parks that have amenities within them. In addition to that, there's about 15 undeveloped
or open space parks that don't currently have amenities within them. And the total park
acreage is about over 5,000 acres of total parkland. And this increased significantly
recently with the addition of the Clear Creek Heritage Center now under the Parks and Recreation.
And as part of this process, we'll also look at access or accessibility to parks. So we
look at, and I'm sure staff has talked a lot about this with you, the Trust for Public
Lands 10-Minute Walk to a Park. So currently, about 47% of residents within Denton live
within a 10-minute walk to a park. So as part of this process, you know, we'll be looking
at some ways to increase that percentage, either through strategic sidewalk or trail
connections to increase access to existing parks or finding where there are gaps within
certain neighborhoods in terms of accessing parks. And then trails is also a component
of this master plan. Currently, there are about 53 miles of trail within Denton. And
with the draft trail recommendations from the trails analysis that was done and completed
in the fall last year.
I think James has a question.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, hi. Thanks, Kendall. Just a clarification. You're saying the Clear
Creek Heritage Center has 3,000 acres. Is that included in the 5,095 or is it not?
It is included in the 5,000.
Okay. That's one. Okay. Yes. That's a great question. Yeah, and in terms of the trails,
the trails analysis that was completed in the fall, it recommends a whole host of additional
trails throughout the city as well.
So something else this plan will look at is to refine the different park classifications.
So the list there are the current park classifications within the city. And so the purpose of defining
park classifications is to really set some predictability in terms of what sort of amenities
might be found in that park. So it can be directly tied to the design standards that
staff has produced in terms of what type of amenities are found in different types of
parks. And it also ensures that as new parks are developed, the amenities within parks
are equitable throughout the system. So as part of this process, we're going to be looking
at refining some of these park classifications to better streamline them and ensure that
they reflect what's existing in Denton.
And then we'll also be taking a deeper dive into 10 parks throughout Denton to do more
of an on the ground extensive audit. So these parks here, 10 parks represent a different
types of park classifications and different locations within Denton. So we'll be taking
a closer look at these 10 parks. Many of these haven't undergone a master plan effort recently,
so we wanted to take a deeper dive at these parks. And when we're doing so, some of the
attributes that we're going to be looking at to ensure that these parks continue to
be quality parks in the future are looking at things like accessibility. Are the parks
safe and comfortable? What do they offer from a social perspective? Are they activated at
different times of the day? And are they maintained over time? So some of the more specific components
that go into these attributes of quality of parks are things like location, connectivity.
Is it visible to surrounding areas? Are there any hidden parts of the park? Is it oriented
to specific types of users like children or adults? Is it meant for different generations
to be able to use? Is it engaging? What type of facilities and amenities are offered? What
type of programming or events are available? What sort of maintenance issues are there?
And then looking forward, how can the park be revitalized or rejuvenated in the future?
So as we go visit these 10 priority parks, we're going to be looking at all these different
components of what makes quality and complete parks. So with that, I'm going to turn it
back to Lenny to talk through some of the initial observations from our tour back in
January. Thank you, Kendall. And a lot of the images
that you're going to see, as Kendall said before, we did a two-day tour with the city.
And you know, really good information, a lot of good background on the types of parks and
amenities that you have here in Denton. But also, as a team, we came out beforehand and
took several photos, visited a majority of your parks during the summer and fall months.
So a lot of the imagery that you're going to see is probably going to be from the summer.
But you know, one of the things that we really highly noted, the next slide, is when we think
about the strengths of parks in Denton, that your parks are well maintained. And so as
we traverse the city and looked at your facilities, that didn't matter if it was in the summertime
or if it's even the winter, you have a well-maintained park system. Also looking at the level of use.
Your parks were highly used. For example, they're here at Fredmore Park. Again, citizens
are out there on different times of the day. And even back in the wintertime, a few weeks
ago, there were citizens out there at the park. It's also a growing trail network. Your
parks are well-connected. As Kendall said, there's about 53 miles of trails that's on
the ground right now. But the city also has embarked and recently completed a trails master
plan. And so as we continue to look at the park development and trail development here,
we want to make sure that we're providing access, connectivity to a lot of your major
destinations here within the city. There's also a very diverse type of group of facilities.
River Creek. Again, this is a hidden gem. This has now become part of the park system
preview. And so, again, 3,000 acres that's been acquired, but has been handed over to
the city parks department. Again, this is a great opportunity to really enhance and
provide better visibility and access to the park itself. There's also a significant amount
of existing partnerships, specifically with ISD with an auditorium. We see that there
is a growing opportunity to further enhance this and provide access to an expanded park
network system as well as expanded partnerships there. You've also really started to include
the educational features such as park signage that looks at some of the different vegetation
and tree characteristics there within the city. We saw this in several parks where you've
incorporated educational aspects into the park network. But one thing that really we
took notice of was the overall tree canopy. Being in the -- next slide there. You've got
such a tremendous amount of trees here. You're right in the heart of the cross timbers area.
And so that is highly reflective of your parks. Again, they're not only well maintained but
also just the amount of tree canopy that's been preserved for your park network. As we
driven all across Denton, there's a lot of roadways very active. There's a lot of roadway
projects that are happening and ongoing. And, you know, we mentioned that partnership earlier.
So you guys have -- parks has really embraced the partnership with some of the engineering
and the roadway projects. And so I really applaud the city and being proactive and incorporating
these types of pedestrian access and connectivity with their roadway networks. Then lastly, it's
a progressive outlook. There's a lot of things happening in Denton with community gardens.
There's a paddling trails initiative that you guys have really taken the leadership
on. And so being -- having that progressive outlook even with the wildfire plantings.
And so that will help transform your current park system to something that will be marveled
by many of your -- you know, competing cities within the DFW region. So with the great strength
there's always opportunities. There's always opportunities for making sure that we address
the significant growth that's happening, occurring with the community. Make sure that we're planning
for parks and trails and connectivity. With that, there's also a demand for additional
recreational facilities. And so one of the things that we've taken a look at is, you
know, what's the -- as Kendall mentioned before, there's those 10 parks that we look at audits.
And so what type of additional recreational facilities are needed? What is the condition
of the current park? Are there rooms for improvement? Then again, also what is the overall vision
for recreation for Denton? There's also the unique amenities with the splash park. And
so other opportunities to really enhance that. And we see that there are plans in place to
add additional spray grounds and splash pads for some of your other park facilities there
in the community. We want to look at, you know, signage. You know, what are some of
the signs that's there? Are there ways to help clean up and maybe modify, look at some
top unified branding or signage improvements for the city? Looking at ways to -- next slide
there. Enhancing pedestrian access or connectivity to your parks. You know, this is Mack Park
here. And, you know, you've got parks on either side of the road. But are there ways to provide
safe crossings for park users? You know, incorporating art and culture. You guys got some really
unique and eclectic venues around town. And so there may be a way to incorporate art into
your parks. And we talked about connectivity earlier. You know, make sure this is well
connected. Providing wide enough sidewalks to handle to the pedestrians and cyclists
or other many users there within your trail network. And are there opportunities to refresh
or enhance your existing rec facilities and aquatic facilities? And so to be competitive
with other communities, a lot of cities are having these multigenerational facilities.
And so they're much larger. It has a larger capacity. But also they offer more program
items. And so, again, as part of this process, we're looking at how do we enhance or expand
upon your current recreation aquatic amenities here within Denton.
The lastly is destination parks. You know, we've had a chance to drive around and look
at your facilities. And, man, you've got a lot of great amenities here within the city.
And you know, for us destination facilities, you know, this is the park here. It's City
Hall, Quickertown Park. And it gets used by for several community events. And so, is there
a way or are there opportunities to really enhance these parks to make it more multifunctional
year round and for multiple activities for the community?
Excuse me, Mr. Hughes. There's a question. Mr. Amory?
Yes. Can you hear me okay? Yes, sir.
Thank you. Yes, Lenny. Thank you on that. My question for you is, did when you were
looking around and at the trails and the connections and so forth, was there a look at what our
surrounding communities are doing so that there are if there are any connection possibilities
with them? And I'm going to use an example. For example, the Cottonwood Trail, which coming
up from Fort Worth and supposed to go all the way up to Oklahoma along the 377 railroad
there. So I just wondered if you guys took a look at the surrounding communities for
possible connections to their trail systems and vice versa.
As far as process, we will look at the internal connections as well as the external connections.
So I know that the trails plan was recently completed. And so we'll look at and evaluate
where those connections are. Really importantly for us, are the other communities talking
to or are we talking to our adjacent neighbors? Then how do we facilitate those connections?
And so yes, that will be part of our process. Hey, Lenny. And staff has reached out to all
our surrounding cities also. Great, great. So now looking at this preliminary
vision concept and we talked about destination parks and we talked about connectivity access.
There's also a lot of significant growth that's happening and occurring in and around
Denton. And so we've identified what we see are really four, you know, as we see these
destination parks, one there is Clear Creek Nature Center, as North Lakes Park, as South
Lakes Park, as Quaker Town. There's also some of the major destinations such as the universities
and downtown. But, you know, the growth and development that's happening and occurring
in and around Denton is just incredible. And so, you know, one of the visionary concepts
we talked about is, you know, how do we provide access and connectivity, you know, specifically
from, you know, from Clear Creek Park in the downtown or to Quaker Town? And what are those,
you know, opportunities to enhance the green belts and provide greater access and connectivity
through the trail network? And then really, you know, something that's really unique for
this region is the paddling trails. You know, and they've done an excellent job of reaching
out to their neighbors and surrounding communities on the lakes to provide, you know, additional
trail access and paddling access, canoe access to in and around the area. And so the overall
vision for the plan is, you know, looking at a series of connection points, access, how
do we enhance and really look at these destination parks? What type of amenities or facilities
should be incorporated into those? And then, you know, look at, you know, how do we provide
parks and access to accommodate, you know, all the development and growth that's happening
and occurring in Denton? So next steps, again, as mentioned before,
we've got a series of engagement meetings. We've got an engagement meeting tomorrow morning
with staff. Then also on March 4th, we have our first virtual public meeting, and we'll
get the invites sent out. And you guys, again, welcome to attend and to participate in that.
From there, we're going to continue our needs assessment of the recommendations for the
plan. Then as part of the process, again, is look at an abbreviated online survey to
reach out to the citizens, make sure that we're addressing any other needs or concerns
and for the project. So before I start on the next phase, are there any other additional
questions or comments that you may have here? >> I have a comment, question, kind of something
to consider. You were talking about adding art and culture into the trails and the parks.
And I would just like to add that I think we should be looking at cultural history of
the areas of those parks, and also making sure that the natural history is preserved
as well. One of the things I worry about, especially with areas like Clear Creek, is
as they become more of a destination, they lose some of the nature feel that they have
right now. So I don't know how to put things in place to preserve that natural feeling.
Because if you go to like one of the big preserves and say like Plano, I think Arbor Hills is
one of the ones, it just doesn't feel like you're in nature. Right now, Clear Creek feels
like you're in nature. And I would just like to know how we could preserve that feeling.
>> You can take that one on Clear Creek. >> Clear Creek is unique in its own because
it is a lease with the core of engineers. And anything that happens at Clear Creek has
to get special permission. Clear Creek is also designated as an environmental sensitive
area on their mapping systems and all their GIS maps. So obviously, most of us know anything
that has to do with an ESA, you can't change. And especially with the Army Corps engineers,
there's no permits to change their ESAs at all, and that is their property. So happy
to say that Clear Creek will stay as natural as it is.
>> What about the other areas that are maybe in the future park area that will definitely
be growing really, really fast with lots of concrete? How do we make sure to preserve
some of that nature? >> So we're working on that right now. Gary
and I and other staff, we work with developers weekly on property, for instance. We hope
to bring you a property soon that's actually a nationally recognized wetlands property.
And you know, so it'll have something like, you know, Louisville has. And then we have
other property, especially like with the, you know, prairie restoration and wildflower
planning program that I brought a few months ago, you know, restoring those properties.
You know, Haywood Morgan, our urban forester, is doing a tree transplanting project right
now to remove post oaks from a property that's going to be developed. And now we're getting
those properties and we'll continuously, you know, try to work on saving as many trees
as we can from developed property into our undeveloped property that we have designated
as undeveloped. And the only thing it'll have there is that experience for you to go like
Clear Creek and soft surface trails for you to be able to go and experience nature. And
of course that includes, you know, the wildflowers, the prairie restoration, wildlife habitats
and wildlife corridors.
A quick question. This is Denona. I'm just wondering, and it just goes back to the last
question that was asked about the preservation piece. Is there a city or a suburban city
or a large city or small town that we're kind of benchmarking ourselves against? You know,
a lot of times when we look at a lot of the plans, you know, it's hard to see the larger
vision of it. And so I'm just wondering, is there anybody that we strive to be like? Or,
you know, of course we want to be like ourselves. We want to be like ourselves. But if we knew
if the vision was more urban versus more sprawlish, then we could, I think as a board, at least
have an idea of where we're all trying to go.
So as part of the process, and we'll bet that with staff to determine, you know, what are
the other comparable cities or cities that you would strive to be like, or better yet,
let's be uniquely Denton. And I think that, again, you know, I've worked with many communities
in around the state of Texas and beyond, but you guys have a such a unique geographic position
and location with, you know, these extensive green belts, but also, you know, the vegetative
quality that you have here in Denton. And so, again, there has to be a strike of balance
and really and truly, you know, the footprint that is that you guys have laid already with
the current parks. And again, I'll go back to know some of the strengths that you have
here in Denton and the quality of trees, the way the trees were preserved. And, you know,
to me, that is what makes your city, you know, unique. And so we will definitely be looking
at now what other cities that are out there, either locally, regionally, or nationally,
that we would compare ourselves to. Then in that same vein, how do we get there? You know,
what steps need to be put in place? What preservation measures are there right now that we need
to enhance or put in place to, you know, to make sure that we're preserving, you know,
the natural character and vegetation here in Denton.
Thank you. Brooke, did you have a question?
Lenny, I was curious in regards to kind of public art, if you guys were looking at any
kind of graffiti art in our interactive art places, we have acne brick, which could build
a really cool wall or Peterbilt, and just kind of like you think about Cadillac Ranch,
or like Peterbilt Ranch, and you can come spray them. It's an idea that I've talked
to Gary about previously and presented to some groups, and everybody seems really like,
"Oh, that's so Denton," and a little Austin as well with Hope Garden there, or Hope Park.
But just throwing it out there, I don't know if that's something that you guys have looked
into as well.
We haven't looked into that yet, but I think, you know, comments like these will start to
spur conversation, and, you know, and look at ways how do we incorporate that into, you
know, the park vision. And really and truly, for me, it's creating the vision that makes
-- you already have such a unique and eclectic city already, but how do we weave that into
the park system? You know, my thought, my vision is, you know, going back to that map
that showed all the different developments and the dust station parks and the series
of trails there that you have in the city, but how do we make this -- yes, that image
right there. So how do we make and weave in, you know, the qualities of preservation, art,
culture, history, connectivity, and so that we can make this uniquely Denton? And to me,
I think that's that overall vision that I have for the system is, how do we create this
series of uniqueness here within the community?
So I think that will start to spur our questions. If you guys want to go there.
>> If I could just add one more comment to follow up Danona's thoughts. We have, in fact,
Eddie has been working on this, identifying the cities we want to be like Mike. And it's
not just one city per se, but we've started to narrow it down to the cities that do trails
best. The cities that do rec centers best. So we -- because not everybody does everything
well. I mean, there's definitely some highlight cities out there for sure. But there's different
things that we would like to pick and choose from different cities. So we started that
and then we've been on a couple projects. So it needs to circle back around and get
some more attention. But that is something that we started to do. And as soon as we get
done with that, we'll definitely share it with our consultants.
>> And can I add to that, Gary? You might. It's Eddie. And just exactly what Gary was
saying. I think some of the criteria we're looking at as well is if there's like a university
nearby very similar to population as well. You know, all very similar characteristics.
But again, just not all cities, just like Gary have said that, you know, some do things
a little bit better than others. So we're just kind of trying to follow that track that
fits Denton, because there's not one particular city that is like Denton as well.
But on another note, I'm not sure who's controlling the PowerPoint, but I think you might want
to pull it down so the public could see, you know, the faces and the people who are asking
the questions as well, just noting that. Yeah, so if it's Kendall, then, right? Are you the
one who's controlling that?
>> Yes, I didn't really understand what you were saying.
>> So the PowerPoint presentation, this is being viewed by the community. We can't see
everyone's face when they're asking a question. So do you mind pulling it down whenever there's
a question?
>> Oh, yes. I got -- yes, I understand.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you. Okay. I think Jerry, you had a question?
>> Yeah, and I want to drag you down because I'm trying to catch up here. But can you clarify
what you mean by connectivity? I mean, you keep bringing that up, and I'm not sure what
you're thinking about the connectivity aspect of it.
>> So one really good example, and as we did our two-day tour, and, again, I was marveled
by Clear Creek Park, just saying a destination, but also Quaker Town. There's a lot of history,
a lot of culture. This is where the city does their business there. And as we went from
Quaker Town out to, you know, we drove along, right, Mingo Road. There's several other potential
park opportunities there along Mingo. And so if we can enhance that, the connectivity,
if there are roadway projects that's happening and occurring now with the engineering and
streets department, and we can piggyback on that and provide now this pedestrian connectivity
and connect to Clear Creek, connect to Quaker Town, and connect to other parts of the community.
To me, that's connectivity. How do we connect either through our bicycles, pedestrians,
and various ways to incorporate and weave in art, history, and culture, education? I
mean, there's some really nice, cool educational opportunities there along Mingo Road. And
so how do we weave that into, you know, our network, our park system?
>> Well, thank you. That's awesome. Yes, thank you.
>> Sure.
>> I have just a quick question. I joined late. Sorry about that. Lenny, I was just
wondering what organization you are from. Met you before.
>> I'm with Half Associates. I've been with Half now for about 25, 26 years now.
>> Okay.
>> I lead our recreation and planning teams in North Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> Yes, you're welcome. Yes, sir.
>> Yes. Yes, Mr. Freed.
>> Hi. Sorry. I couldn't get myself unmuted there for a second. Hi. Thank you, people
at Half, for your presentation, first and foremost. So this is set to be complete at
the end of this year. Is that correct?
>> Yes, that is correct.
>> Awesome. Blossom. And yeah, I just wanted to uplift kind of what I'm hearing from a
lot of people on the board about I'm all about having those benchmarks like Gary mentioned,
like who's doing the best at this, who's doing the best at that, and then also staying very
uniquely Denton to our own identities and wanting to uplift the preservation side in
that I feel like there can be this marriage of both, right? Where we find parks where
more interactive, very cool Cadillac Ranch style. I've been there, actually. I went during
COVID because it was an outdoor activity where you could just go do something, right? Brooke,
I totally hear that. I went there and went to Palo Duro Canyon and went, you know, backpacking.
But also having those like Clear Creek being preserved, right? Not adding in elements that
kind of take away from the natural aspect of what we want to keep. And I know that we've
had lots of meetings and that you guys have had over 40 was listed in the, you know, the
advisory sheet. So I know that you're doing the due diligence. I just wanted to uplift
that and like keep that as a fun, like, center focal point. But yeah, thank you all for your
presentation and your hard work. So I think there's a few more slides and I think, Lenny,
some of those questions are going to tie into some of this. So why don't we go ahead and
work through that so we can collect that data in your presentation. Yeah, thank you, Gary.
So as far as process, we've got three questions and, you know, I would like, basically, I'll
read the questions to everyone. And if you guys can either jot down your thoughts, you
know, can they be your top three, right? And so they will go around the room, they will
ask everyone to kind of present their idea. And, you know, I know we have limited time
here, so we want to make sure that we use everyone's time as best as possible. But thinking
about the big vision and, you know, there's, we heard a lot about preservation and protection
of our natural resources and connectivity and, you know, how do we weave in our culture,
how do we make this plan uniquely Denton? But how do you envision Denton in 10 years?
What is your, how do you foresee your community 10 years from now? If you had a crystal ball,
can look into it. And, you know, so we've, we've brought this one, what is, you know,
what do you envision for your community? So I'll give everyone, you know, I'll give it
a minute or two for everyone to think about it, jot some answers down. And, you know,
I know this is, we're doing this COVID, we're COVID friendly. But if you can, if you have
something that's on your notes, and maybe you can take a photo of that, email that to
Gary and Drew or the, or to your, actually to your, your cardboard chair, that way we
can still collect all the information with that.
So Penny, I have a question for you. I'm a fundraiser. So whenever I hear these questions,
I assume that cost is no limit. Is this what we're going on the basis? Okay. We're dreaming
big. I'm a dreamer. So you're asking the right person. I just needed to confirm that cost
is no limit. Okay. Thank you. Make sure that, you know, when we, at the end of the day, that
Gary and his folks have funding in place to support it.
Sure.
This is Texas. Everything's big in Texas. Okay.
Right. So everyone's had that opportunity to write their comments down. And so the first
question is, how do you envision Denton in 10 years? And so I want to bring up the, you
want to type here or do we want to bring up the, the full view of everyone? What's your
thoughts on that? There we go. Great. So the question is, how do you envision Denton in
10 years? And so I'm going to start around the horn and on my screen, we have Mr. Whitmore
to the, to my, to my left. And so I'll let, and the rules of engagement. You only give
one answer right now. And then if they're in effect, yes, I know that we have a lot
of overachievers here, right? So, but we're going to give one answer. Then we're going
to go to the next person. They're going to give one answer. But if that answer is on
your sheet, strike that off and go down to your next comment. Okay.
Hey, Lenny, do you just want to focus on the park board, the park board members? Yes. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. So John's a staff member. I'm sorry, John. I'll go ahead. I'll go ahead
and lead it just to help with that. So I'll start with the most important person on the
screen is Francis as our chair. I see Denton a continuous place of growth and education
and diversity. So growth, diversity, diversity and education. All right. All right. Jerry
Dooley. You put me on the spot day one, right? Gary, that's slick, man. No, I'll see. I mean,
there's a lot of growth happening in Denton and I don't want to see that growth inhibited
by any means, but Denton has a unique character with the arts and the culture and the diversity
and the history. So if there's a way we can balance the growth and still maintain the
Denton-ness, does that make sense? I don't want to turn into Frisco. Okay. Okay. Alana,
I should have said you second as a vice chair. So vice chair. Well, since I can't repeat anything,
I see Denton as a place where children can play freely in nature. Okay. Didona. I'm sorry.
I'm at work. So I've got two things going on. When I saw that question on the screen
just a few minutes ago, I thought about, you know, cities that I've lived in before. I
lived in Portland, Oregon. And so that's a city that, you know, has lots of mass transit.
We are developing mass transit with our rail system, our train system. And I love that.
And I would love to see development around that and parks and rec have an influence and
footprint around the train line. Yeah. And that's a very important aspect of it because
again, if you go back to the map, I won't go back to it now, but there's a lot of development
opportunities in the city. And I think, Gary, I pointed out before that there's potential
to expand the DCTA line and, you know, it goes further out. But, you know, one thing
is that, you know, how do we weave in, you know, there may be a new classifications when
we talk about urban parks. You know, I said I have pocket parks or maybe urban parks that
could be part of this new network of amenities and facilities here in the city.
James? Yeah. Well, I, my vision is that we have a, you know, I've also been in near Portland,
Beaverton, Oregon. I lived out there for several years. I didn't know that, you know, but anyway,
but I, my vision is that we have a large, we have one of the best music schools in United
States of America right here. And my vision is that it's a very, very large park, 50 plus
acres in the areas that is most accessible, that these musical groups and talent can be
brought in, kind of like South by Southwest, but a more culturalized version of it, you
know, with more artistic venues and a better, you know, a trail system that comes into that
area wherever that becomes. My opinion is, is that I think that Quaker Town is one of
the most beautiful parks around. The only problem with it is it's too small for a city
to size or don't even be smaller as it gets bigger. So my vision, I wish for, I know I'm
a dreamer outside the realm here, but that we have a 50 plus acre. They, for example,
they have Zilker Park down in Austin, which is huge. And you got plenty of room for parking
and music and all that. I'll tell you, the musicians up here are just low. I mean, they're
just 10 times better music up here. And I think we should take advantage of that.
Sorry, trying to unmute. Okay. I want to throw another angle. What I wrote down was actually
just kind of a short phrase of living and working and experience. And I think that one
of the things that I wish Denton had a little bit more of is the ability for people to stay
in Denton for all of their things. I know too many people who have to leave Denton for
work, for activities elsewhere. I would love for the Denton experience to be everything
that somebody needs. And that requires pretty good balance, right? I mean, you don't want
to turn it into urban sprawl because one of the things that we need is also experience
and that experience being parks or outdoors and all of that. So, I think it's a tough
balancing act, but one of the things I would really like to see is it not, I hate to call
it a bedroom community because there's a lot of people that work here in Denton, obviously,
but there are so many people, myself included, that have to commute 30 miles away for my
job because of specific opportunities. And I would love to see a balance of that in Denton
in 10 years. Thank you.
Thank you, George. I get to go last. What's great about that, thank you, Gary, is I got
to hear all of my fellow board members' opinions. And I think to Dave's point, that brings up
a really great word that Mr. Hughes kept using, which is connectivity, right? How do we solve
a lot of these issues? And it's with connectivity. We've talked about the master plan having
that giant connective oval of Denton from park to park. Eventually, 10, 20 years from
now, that could be a possibility. I think part of it is, and what I wrote down is equitable
availability to green space. And I think uplifting what Dinona was saying, with mass transit
being developed, it's also bike paths, connectivity of paths to get to work. If people could get
around without a car, maybe they would have a different job. They could be in Denton.
They wouldn't have to X, Y, Z. They'd have easier transport. Lower our footprint. Connectivity
to me is the buzzword of this conversation. And I think that that would help solve a lot
of concerns and would also uplift our status on the map of Texas, right? What we hold and
how much value we put in these spaces and how we can connect our community better.
Very good. Appreciate that. Lenny, we have two more questions, correct?
Yes, sir. But before I move on, is there anything that someone wrote down that has not been
mentioned before? I wrote clean our parks only because I clean
up trash in our parks all the time, which usually comes down to the type of trash cans
we have. Some of our parks have really terrible trash cans, but it's very expensive to replace
trash cans and that's a hard sell. Well, I wrote composting. You're fine.
I think Drew and I had a very extensive conversation about cans. Good. All right. Anything else
to add? Anyone? All right. Let's go on to question number two and I don't know if you
could pull that back up again, please. So question two is a two-part question. And
the first part of that is what is the biggest challenge that Denton faces related to parks
and recreation today? What is the biggest challenge that you guys face in parks today?
And then also part of that is what do you anticipate the biggest challenge will be in
the future? So we're thinking about today, parks and recreation, one of the challenges
that you guys are seeing right now currently, but also one of the challenges in the future
that you see parks and recreation having. So we'll leave that up here for about a minute
or two. Everyone can jot down their questions or their answers. But think about what are
the challenges that we face now and what are the challenges that we face in the future.
And this is dealing particularly with parks and recreation. All right. So let's bring
the full screen up. And Gary, you want to kick us off again? And this doesn't have to
be in that same order. If you want to mix it up a little bit, that's fine.
That's okay. I'm ready. I'll get it started. Today, I think the biggest challenge is access.
In the future, I think the biggest challenge is going to be parking.
So talk a little bit about that. You said access. What do you mean by access and parking?
Access, we don't have enough parks yet. We are acquiring them. But we don't have enough
parks yet that everyone can access a park within 10 minutes. And I know that is part
of the plan. And parking in Denton is an issue now. And I think it's going to be a larger
issue in the future. So would you say that either the parks that
you currently have, they don't have adequate enough parking now? Or do you -- or do the
parks -- and I didn't get a chance to do the visit. Probably 95% of your parks. Or do they
not have parking at the parks? So it's kind of a twofold -- two different things. There's
not enough parking. And some of that may be by design. So typically your neighbor parks,
people traditionally would walk there. And so I didn't notice several of that. And so
whether there is parking, it is smaller. But the idea, you know, we talk about this 10
minute walk, is to encourage people to get out and actually walk or bike to a park.
So -- >> That is correct. The future parks seem
to be larger parks. And destination parks. So that's where the parking comes in as an
issue. >> Definitely at Quaker Town, when any type
of events would happen at Quaker, I can see parking be an issue. And also a premium. So
yeah. >> George?
>> I also want to double down on the 10 minute park plan. I think that's -- when I first
heard that, the first time I came out of Gary's mouth, I was like, this is it. You know, that's
exactly what it is, Gary. That's 100% what equitable access looks like. That's so important
and so vital. I think our future goal, because that's our current, our future goal needs
to be along that path, thinking about more adaptive play, more accessible ADA, compliant
or ADA, just being more open to alternative designs to ensure that everyone gets access
to play at these playgrounds that are supposed to be, you know, near their homes.
>> Ms. Taylor? You're still on mute. >> You would think since I've been on Zoom
all day, I would have that down. Okay. So the current challenge I think we face is definitely
funding, especially like short-term. We don't know what's going to happen with COVID and
now all these other things. You know, new parks don't seem as important when people
don't have clean water to drink. So I think that's currently one of our biggest challenges.
In the future, I feel like extreme weather is going to be one of our biggest challenges
as our summers keep getting hotter and we have less shade. I don't even hardly go outside
during the day in the summertime because it just hurts. And the more we develop and the
more we concrete everything, the hotter it keeps getting. So I think, you know, we have
our tree program. That's good. But we also have to think of, you know, other ways to
shade connectivity areas, trails, or they just don't get used for a large portion of
the year. David. All right. I put down that the biggest challenge of today is trying to
meet a very dynamic and quickly moving target. We're dealing with absolutely incomprehensible
growth that the best planners 10 or 15 years ago didn't see. I mean, they knew there was
going to be growth, but who would have ever anticipated what we're seeing today and what's
on the map for the future. So I think trying to hit a moving target and not look like you
had no plan is probably a pretty big challenge. I think for me, what I wrote down for biggest
challenges from the future is, you know, I suspect we might not even know what those
challenges are. They may be challenges that don't even exist today. But one of the challenges
I think is from even from a maintenance side, trying to decide what to invest in, because
technology is moving so quickly, trying to make the right decisions on maintaining our
assets with both bringing in things of new technology, but not investing in the wrong
ones or ones that are quickly outdated. And I think that's probably a pretty significant
challenge in the future. Thank you, James. Thank you. Sure term. I also agree with the
10 minute access. I think Gary summarized that extremely well. You know, that access
be 10 minutes away for anybody in the city, which leads to my, you know, my big thing
is I'm a real big planner on getting this much park land as you possibly can up front.
And I know that money and all that good stuff. But I think that the city's doing now buying
land and hopefully buying some more in the future is the way to go. Because, you know,
you can't I know the we all know that the demand is going to be changed very dynamically
if you say David, David, but if you don't have the land, it doesn't matter what you
want, you know, your needs are you have no land to do it on. So to me, I'm just a fundamental
kind of guy, get the land, get the land, and when in doubt, get the land. So that's where
I stand. That's my future. That's where I'm at. And Jerry. Well, I'm going to piggyback
on George that like, yeah, the bike trails to give access further access to it will alleviate
a lot of the parking if the connectivity is there. The biggest challenge in the future
is I see the growth. I mean, you can't you can't stop the growth. And I don't want to,
but it's inhibiting the green spaces. Clear Creek is dear to my heart. I spent a lot of
time out there. There's a lot of talk about development out there, which I mean, there's
got to be a way to balance. And as one Elena was talking about the heat, if you had the
trails through the protected green spaces, as well, let people get out more. So it's
balancing the growth against retaining the green space. And like James said, yeah, by
the land protected, however you can. So I'm just going to give a thumbs up to all the
questions and answers before me and say it was my idea, too. Well, I will say something
that, you know, again, when I first saw Clear Creek, it's a marvelous property that you guys
have. And, you know, it's it's me thankful that you guys is now parks preview. And it's
really is one of the largest green space areas in a Metroplex. The other one that that's
kind of comparable to that is Lila. Yeah, Lila. Yeah. Lake Louisville environmental
learning area. And you think about the footprint. And again, it's a core property core facility
is leased by the city of Louisville. And, you know, if you look at some of those same
principles there, they've got the core road access, they got designated parking areas.
It is gated. So you start to limit the amount of traffic and, you know, that that happens
in an internal property. But again, just knowing and understanding how the core works. It is
a very light footprint that's there. And so keeping those that ideology in mind, you know,
keeping those same principles there of, you know, treading light, land, preserving what's
what's important. But, you know, how do we make it accessible to the public? Lenny, we
have one more question. Yes, sir. All right. Last question. We pull that up real quick.
And so we talked about, you know, and some of you guys have brought this up from your
previous stays and living in other communities. But what park and recreation amenities have
you seen in other communities that you think would be feasible or would like to see in
Denton? Now, what park amenities and recreation amenities would you like to see within your
community? So again, I'll give it a few minutes. You know, one of the things that I do is whenever
I go on vacation, you know, I'll look and see, well, what parks can I go to? What trails
are out that are out there? You know, how can I see what the city is about other than
restaurants and shopping? You know, there's a lot of great nature and recreational areas
in a lot of communities. But, you know, what is what is unique? What is what is it that
you'd like and what would you like to see here within Denton? All right. We'll bring
the screen back up. Francis? Amphitheaters. Amphitheaters. Now, is there one in particular
that you like or have seen before? No. No. Okay. You just want an amphitheater in town.
I mean, I've seen several, but yes, but none that I have to have here in Denton. I just
think we would benefit from more amphitheaters to tie into the music that we do have access
to. Great. Great. Alana? So I have a favorite amphitheater, but there's no way we're going
to get one like it. And that's the Red Rock Amphitheater in Colorado. Okay. So for me,
I said I would like to see more natural play things like big boulders to jump on and equipment
that mimics trees and things that you would see in nature. I kind of sound like a broken
record. We heard you. That's the next presentation. You're consistent, Alana. That's all. Danona?
You know, going back to the whole having the parks, and parks has a great footprint right
now along the rail. We've got some education signage along the rail. We've got trails along
the rail, but even a larger footprint from parks and recreation along the rail. Maybe,
you know, trees and tree canopy, something like that. But going back to Frances's amphitheater,
even an amphitheater with, have you ever seen those amphitheaters, you know, where the stadium
or the audience is layered and it's made from the ground? And you've got, I don't even know
how to describe it. I'll have to draw a picture of it. But I'm sure you've seen those at,
you know, the ground is not flat. You know, it goes up. It's at a diagonal at a 45 degree
angle. And, you know, all of the seating is just grass. It's like a grassy area. So that
would go in your amphitheater, Miss Punch. Like a coliseum? Yes, like a coliseum. I like
to go out. James, you want to go ahead? Sure. Well, I'll just say that one of the things
I really like as far as parks is, a lot of people don't realize it, but the river walk
down there in San Antonio, it was started as a park trail. And it was a linear park
trail and had, they started putting little playgrounds along the way so that parents
could, you know, bring their families. So the businesses down there said, where's all
the people? And he said, they're down there on the trail. And eventually hotels and restaurants
and, you know, taverns and all sorts of things start showing up along the trail there. I
wonder why? Because that's where all the people were going. So I'd like to make a destination
trail. I just have a trail system that connects together, but also that has destination trails
to go to that could be like a river walk. That's a great analogy there, James. And I
think what you just, you know, having destination trails, I mean, that's not only trails act
as a way of conveying people and pedestrian and bicycle traffic, but now these trails
have become a destination. It's branded. You know, if you have the signage, the educational
components of it, areas for interpretation, you know, to me, that is what makes that a
trail unique. It's not just, you're actually stopping on the trail and enjoying it versus
passing through. George. Yeah, so I lived in Brooklyn for a little while. And one of
my favorite things to do would take the train and go to the West side to the Highline Park.
If you've ever been in Manhattan and you've been to the Highline Park, you know, it's
up, it's elevated. You walk, you get to see a bunch of plants and greenery along the way.
You see art that's been graffiti on all these different buildings or art projects commissioned
by the city. You know, you see industrial elements, industrial play elements, industrial
elements that look like nature. You know, you, you get a whole mix. Plus you've got
places to rest. You've got places you could exit and go eat. You know, it's a, it's along
the line of a train. So like you've got your, your city feel to like that urban park kind
of feel, you know, like to what, you know, what I was saying with like these urban parks
near transit, like this would be a really great idea to kind of pair with that. And
also with buildings that are being built around this park, encouraging them to take part of
it, like how foliage growing outside of, you know, one side of their building that faces
the sun, you know, helping produce more, you know, foliage to look at or art.
Love it. David.
Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on, on a little bit of all of that. I think the, the one asset
that I was thinking about that, that I wish we had something like is, and that, that I
would actually go travel to today, if it was still open, is the greenbelt trail that's,
you know, just down 380. There's something really fantastic about that trail. It's so
well maintained. Well, not now, but it was, and you know, 75% of the time you're under
huge tree coverage and you only had to go about a quarter mile in before you felt like
you were in the wilderness and you lost the sound of 380 and suddenly you had a river
next to you. That is an amazing asset. And if we could have something like that, it would
be that, that would be ideal for me. Great. And Jerry, you know, the only thing I can
add to that, uh, the amphitheater ideas are great because we're just stupidly blessed
with music and theater where we are, you know, and I, and I flashed back on how many people
I know would just go play one afternoon, just had a space to go play. And then at some of
my age now, I remember my parents taking us to drive in movies and there was a playground
under the screen where my parents could watch the movie and they were watching us play and
we were occupied. Not, we didn't care about Elvis Presley. So we wanted to go play right
while they watched the Elvis Presley movies. So it's just a thought, you know, I mean,
we, we should take advantage of the stupid amount of talent that we have here and just
give people a chance to play. And, you know, it's one of those, if you build it, they will
come things. I think. Okay. Lenny, that's everybody. Again, there's a lot of good comments
and I really, I enjoy the energy that everyone has. Everyone is engaged, creative, imaginative,
but also you guys are really grounded with, you know, the happenings and occurings here
within the didn't park system. So again, I applaud you all for, for one being on a board
and participating, but I mean, to me, this is what makes a good, healthy quality park
system. And so if there are any other questions or comments or thoughts that you may have,
please share those with us. Share those with Gary and Drew and his, and his team. And again,
thank you all for today. And Kennedy, do you want to add anything to this? Oh, I'll just
echo the, the thank you. Got a lot of good input. So thanks for your time. Absolutely.
Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much for the information and all of your hard work. No,
thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Shall we go to the next item, Gary? Yes. We were going
to skip item C and come back to that. That is correct. Yeah. We're going to move to item
D and receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff input regarding the Southwest
park master plan for the city of Denton park system. So two, two major discussions here
today. One is the park system master plan. The second is, you know, potentially another
one of those future destination parks, depending on how it's designed. So we hired TMP along
with some of their consultant team to help us start to outline based on our needs assessment.
Some of the items we just talked about and start incorporating those ideas into a park
plan for the 195 plus acres down in South Denton. So I'm going to turn it over to Bill
Smith. He's our lead consultant on the project. We worked with Bill on a couple other projects
throughout the year. The TMP does a lot of work with the city. So Bill, I'll go ahead
and let you drive the presentation and we'll go from there. Hi, everyone. Can everyone
see the map on the screen? Yes. Okay. So I just wanted to go back in time a little bit
to our last meeting and some of the things we've discussed and give a little context.
This is the site here and this is I-35. This is 377. We're on the southwest side of town.
These green blobs I'll zoom in in a moment. These are protected forest areas. There's
pilot knob there. So we've got over 200 acres of that around the site. Fortunately, we don't
have a developed forest on our site, but we're going to work on that. And you can see the
protected forest areas, which I think is important. I just read an article today that somebody
was proposing that kids should have three to five hours of outside time every single
day and that's really healthy for them. So with this, in addition to the protected forest,
that will help you move towards that. So we met with you all and met with the focus group
and met with the public and solicited input and came up with a list of priorities for
the park. And then from that, we developed a plan. You can see the, I just heard the
last presentation, they did a really good job, but they were talking about the growth
that's happening. And already these two on the south side of our site and on the north
side of the site are two subdivisions that are one of them is already platted, the others
in the process of being platted. So over here, Hunter Ranch on the west side, that is probably
also getting ready to plow. We don't know what yet, but you know, probably eventually
this will have to be developed all the way around on the site, even though right now
it's kind of on the edge of town. So this also, just to give you, remember this road
here, Rush Creek Road is going to come in, merge into Allred and this will connect to
35, which it does not do today. But eventually this will be a connection to 35 and this will
be the main road coming in and out of the park from the interstate. So for any historic
regional event, if someone drives in, they'll come down Allred here and then they'll turn
into the site. Perhaps we suggested this dash lines are all future roads and you might have
a future road that comes through the Hunter Coal Ranch, Hunter Ranch property into our
site here. It's about 200 acres. Here's of course, Bonnie Bray and these purple dots are
pedestrian paths, which will tie into your trail system master plan, which you're working
on now. Of course, all these streams are extremely good places to put a path because you're in
the forest and it's also the right away acquisition is easier. So from that, we've developed a
series of bubble plans, we call them. And there's three, we developed an A, a B and
a C and let me just kind of go back over that real quickly. The rec center here, the red,
you see that's buildings, okay. The bright green, that's like a baseball complex, maybe
synthetic turf or something. And these other, the other green you see is open space or forest.
So when concept A, we had a baseball complex up here on the north side and the rec center
on the south side. On all of the concept, we kept the rec center because it's a high
traffic. You'll get a lot of cars come and going. We kept it on the south side so that
it would have easier access to all red and also to the interstate. And that doesn't gum
up your streets with traffic on other sides of the park. So concept B then flips the rec
center over here on the south side and has the baseball complex in the middle. And concept
C has a rec center back here on the southwest corner. So it's the closest to the interstate,
easiest access and has the baseball, softball complex here on the southeast corner. Ultimately
in talking to you all in the focus group and the public, we realized the concept C was
really the one that you all were asking for because it allowed us to create a big natural
area up here on the north side. And then this baseball softball complex, it sort of shields
the park X as a buffer for the neighborhood and allowed us to do the purplest parking.
So by putting parking here in the middle, it allows it to serve not only the baseball
softball complex, which isn't used all the time, but also serve the open space here.
And so that also allowed us to create a big great lawn between this rec center and what
we might do a pavilion. And then you can see this dark green space here. There's an existing
drainage canal and an ephemeral stream. It's only wet part of the year, but there's a couple
natural ponds here. So I'm sorry. There we go. Here's concept C. There's a couple of
natural ponds here and the stream. And so that allowed us to preserve that and then
start to think about this as being more preservation and open space. So from that, then I'm going
to show you the master plan. So we concept C was the one that made the most sense for
y'all. It's a big image. And so here's, here's concept C fleshed out in more detail. So again,
you see the recreation center here on the Southwest corner. This is all red connecting
to I-35 to our left. And this is the sage brush development that's being planned for
the South side. And there's a development on the North side also being planned and entrances
there. And you'll notice we lined up our ends is good traffic playing one-on-one. You want
to, you don't want offsetting intersections. That's dangerous because you have people turning
into each other. So that's why the entrance is where it is there. It's a sort of connect
to make a safer intersection. But then you come in, we have a rec center. There's a big
great lawn for events here, cause I heard you all talking about how, and this was also
what we found in our, in our polling data, that concerts and outdoor movies and theater,
all of that was really important to the cities and city of Denton. So this plan is what we
call a balance plan. It has about 60% of the land up here is what we call the natural phase
or in the natural area, about a 35% or so is this active use here. And about 15% is
the indoor use. And I'll show you what that looks like here. And before I get into the,
let me show you a big picture of what that looks like. Sorry, it's just taking a second
to load here. I don't know why it's just a lot of, a lot going on in this image. Okay.
You see the natural area here, the green is out blinding green, the active area outlined
in yellow and the indoor area outlined in red. And this may or may not be decide how
you decide to phase the park. In other words, you can decide, well, we've got funds available
now to do the natural area first. Or that's not, we didn't necessarily do it. Or you might
have, you know, we want to have, we have a bond for the, for the recreation center cause
that's most important. Or we want to do a bond for the active area, you know, cause we
have that, but those are generally how it's divided up. And I just kind of wanted to show
you this so you can understand it conceptually. So in the, in the active area here, let's
go over that. Sorry, this is the, the indoor area, the recreation center. Zoom in a little
bit. So again, sorry, it's a little laggy. There's the rec center and this is not a design
zone. Okay. So let me, let me, you're going to see some images here in a little bit. Nothing
on this plan is designed other than the things that are going in the park and about how big
they are. Okay. So if you see the shape of buildings, I don't like that. Don't worry
cause that that's it. That is a decision for future that you all in the future is just
saying we have a building here and we think it'll be about, um, 85,000 square feet. I
believe it was something 138,000, sorry, 138. So we have a field house at a rec center 100,
you know, about three and a half acres, um, and an outdoor rec and we know that we want
it to look out over a lawn that can be used by the public and there'll be some parking
here and we think that there might be a playground here, an inclusive playground here off to
the side. Uh, so that is, that is what you should infer from this plan. Don't, don't
read too much into the details is what I'm trying to advise you on. Okay. So then, um,
so that's, that's that phase. This will probably be the most expensive part of the whole park
here, right? This, in this building and everything that goes with it, that'll be the most expensive
part of the park, even though it's the smallest phase, right? It'll be the most expensive
and we'll, we'll be working on some cost estimates. Not yet. We want to hear your input and we'll
start working on those cost estimates soon. Right? So here's the active phase here. Going
to look at that and talk about some of that. And then we'll look at the overall, um, this
is the, uh, baseball softball complex. So this is one of the, the, we talked about the
bigger, putting rocks in a jar. I'm going to pick the big jars, the big rocks in first.
So the indoor area, the rec center is a big rock. This is the other, probably the biggest
rock in the whole park. And so this is a complex of 11 fields and, uh, we've shown, uh, baseball
softball fields here of different sizes. You have different age groups and different abilities.
Youth fields over here with parking lots, uh, be able to access those here and here.
And then, uh, I made, this is a very important building here and maintenance building was
something that was important in polling. And that would be here so you can access these
fields easily. It's kind of hidden. So you've got your storage area behind it. Um, and then,
uh, parking, this was one of the things that we really liked. The parking here serves both
the great lawn and the soft baseball softball complex. So you can see there's a large pavilion
here and I'll show you some images on that in a minute, but then you have this large
axis that goes through this, through the park here that sort of helps organize the site
visually. And as you go through it, it helps you make sense and kind of determine where
you're going to go. And then also as part of the active part, we have these multi-use
fields here. You can have up to three soccer fields or it could be overflow parking for
a large event. Um, or, you know, if you've got these large tournaments, this, this type
of facility, you could have very large tournaments here that can bring people in from out of
town and provide revenue for the city. Um, so that would be, um, that would be, you know,
something that is very popular. Um, but if it's not being used, you still can use the
parking for this great lawn here. And this is about a quarter mile. Okay. This is about,
I think about 1300, 1400 feet from end to end here. So give you an idea. It's very large.
These are full size baseball softball field. So it's, it's very large. A quarter mile is
about, you know, size of a long golf hole, for instance, it's, it's, it's long. And then
behind that there's a place for a little, we want a different size spaces. So you don't
have every space to be a big space. So we have a little special event garden here. You
could have weddings or smaller events back here. City, again, could use this as a revenue
generator to rent this space out. Um, so that, that can be very popular also. And then I'm
just hitting the highlights here. Then let's go to the natural area and let's look at some
images here. The biggest part of the park is the natural area.
And so this is, we left this as forest. Now some of that will be restored for us. You
restore that over a period of years and even decades to what it was before. But that's
a process and that's kind of fun to see things change and see the rewilding that we're envisioning.
That will take some time, but you can see and see this axis that runs through the site.
There's a, there's a, there's the stream that's there. There's a fountain and pond here with
a couple of docks with very natural soft edges, pavilion on that side, which will reflect
into the pond, which will be really nice. And then going beyond that, we have restored
Blackland Prairie, which is what, you know, if you went back 150 years ago, Blackland
Prairie was what was, you know, 60 or 70% of this area. In addition to that, you had
post oak savanna. So we're, we're, we're proposing for storing post oak savanna up
here on the upland part of the highest part of the site, a restored Blackland Prairie
here and then forest play here. And so we might have some very wild places here at the
play. So I'm going to go just to the whole overall plan here and we'll look at some images
here. So a big part of this northern part is educational. We've got a lot of places
to where you can have natural learnings, outdoor learning pavilions. We've got two of them
here on either side. And, um, let me just go through some of the images we've got here
on the side. Again, I think, I don't know, I think I'm going to blame Zoom. I didn't
have quite this much lagginess when I was just looking at the PDF, I apologize. So there's
some ideas, but they, and again, stylistically, don't worry, we put one modern and one more
traditional in here. The idea is it's something large and it's a focal point at the far end
of the lawn for you to look at when you're, when you're looking here. That is the, what
we, you know, that's that large. So it's a large, it's a large building, but it can provide
like a band, it can be like a band shell. And then you can have this very large lawn
out here to look at. And this is again, about a quarter of a mile. So you can get several
thousand people out there, which would be great. All right. So let me go back here.
The pond, this little small pond, we envision a little, this is about the size with a lighted
fountain in the middle right here. So with a pavilion on the other side, I don't have
a picture of that, but you know, a smaller version of this over here on this other side.
Nature play, we envision that in the forest where you might have some natural playgrounds
and Gary was alluding that earlier. And that would be a great place for kids to, you know,
in Germany, they allow kids to play outside for several hours and they give them hammers
and nails and saws and all kinds of things that we wouldn't do here. But these let them
kind of go do what they want and let them, they don't program it at all. These give them
a bunch of stuff and let them play. Let them use their imagination. Outdoor learning area.
We just had a couple of ideas for that. You know, you could have, it could be indoor,
outdoor, it could be completely outdoor. The small, special event garden, this was set
up for a wedding or you could have outdoor education there. But again, it's the idea
of a smaller space. Again, we want a balanced park. You have active and passive, small and
large, natural and refined. So there's something for everyone all the time. And that helps
just like a healthy ecosystem. Healthy park has a diversity of uses. Dog park, this is
a grapevine and this little dog park here has synthetic turf. It is extremely popular there.
The bark park and grapevine is extremely popular and it gets a lot, a lot of use. And the one,
they have one with natural grass, one synthetic, the synthetic grass gets a lot more use. It's
got a splash path, the dogs and everything. So it's very, very popular. So let me go here
to this side. We'll go, don't worry. We'll go back to the plan here a little more. The
soft baseball, softball complex, including an inclusive field is something we were thinking
about. Trails, both paved and unpaved is important, I think, to have, again, a variety of trails.
Some that'd be accessible for regular bikes and pedestrians. And our trails, this orange
line going around is 12 feet wide is what we have, which it looks like it's about eight
to be wider than this. And that main trail that goes around the park, that big loop is
two miles. It's almost exactly two miles. Accessible playground as well as regular playgrounds,
outdoor activities of all kinds. Outdoor exercise, some programmed and some unprogrammed. This
could be, we have some outdoor exercise areas outside the rec center and those can be programmed
with all sorts of HIIT exercise or whatever. And then Blackland Prairie. And of course,
if you don't know, this is what Blackland, this is what Texas looked like in spring for
millions of years. And then we proposed a large part of the site being restored to that.
And that's always very popular with the public too. And it can be an educational system.
Hopefully minus the mesquite trees, is that true?
Yes, yes. And so you've got a lot of mesquite, you've got a lot of thorny trees, honey locusts
and things. They're there now. And that's a sign of a site that's been disturbed. And
by that we mean it was farmed. It was cattle, it was ranch land for a while. And so soil
gets disturbed and things get out of balance. And so you get mesquite trees and you get
honey locusts and other things. And those sage orange or boat arcs. So the restoration,
the rewilding, that's a process. You can't do it overnight, but that's something that,
you know, once the public buys into and they understand, they really get behind it. And
that's something that will happen over a period of years and decades. You know, you can't
create a forest overnight. But so again, you see this Blackland Prairie here with the wild
flowers coming all the way through here. And so that is something. And one of the features
of a Blackland Prairie is it is a fire dependent ecosystem, right? So you can try to mimic
fire by mowing down and cultivating, but if you can burn it, you know, and the fire department
is right there and do that, you can have an annual event every year or every other year
where you do a, because that's really a low intensity, frequent low intensity fires are
what is healthy for it. If you wait too long, you get a large catastrophic fire, it kills
the soil and kills everything. That's what you don't want, right? And that's what we
saw in California where they had did fire suppression for 80 years and you get these
huge catastrophic fires. If you do the low, the frequent low intensity burning, that's
very healthy for the, for the prairie. So we have a little parking lot here so you can
come in and to get this outdoor learning pavilion in the middle of the post oak savanna. Again,
I apologize for the blur as it just takes it a while when I'm painting around for some
reason, but in a post oak savanna, which is, you know, it was not a lot of that left, but
it's beautiful and those post oaks live for hundreds of years and we can restore that
there. All right. So from that, let's see, uh, nature play area, another one, and we
have one here and we've got another one over here, forest play and prairie play here next
to this outdoor learning pavilion. Um, let's see what else we've got a big drop off area
for this active play here. So you can come in, you can drop off and go, you can go park.
And then this kind of, it also has a big sort of entry plaza coming in here. So it signals
and this is where you drop off. This is a center of the large concession stand here.
So you know, when you, when people, families that do these softball tournaments, they'll
tell you, you know, often you have a child that's too young to play baseball or softball.
So you want a place for them to play. And so that's why we have these playgrounds located
here centrally where the parents can keep an eye on the younger ones. The young ones
have something to do. And you have warm up areas between the fields. So this is envisioned
as a, a top flight competition, athletic complex, smaller parking areas over here with drop
off. So you can sneak into the youth fields. Um, and then we also have a, we put a buffer
here on Bonnie Bray and all red. It's about a 75 foot forested buffer to soften from the
future and existing neighborhoods. Excuse me, Bill, we have a question. Yes, ma'am.
Yeah, thank you. Just real quick. Why not? If, if you're a mother and you've got a lot
of kids, right. I'm just thinking out loud here, wouldn't it be better to have the playground
up towards the concession stand? We can, yeah. A multiple kids play on different fields on
some complexes they can. And we discussed doing that. We, we, and this is very large,
we could put some smaller ones up here or we could spread those apart. If y'all want
to put the playground there, we certainly in there. And then that is a popular option
too, is to have the playground here. Sometimes they'll even put nets over it. So foul balls
won't hit the heads and kids in the head, right? So yes, if you guys, that's all. Yeah,
right. Shade nets. So you got to hate too, right. Which is very important in the summer.
Can I jump in here? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Dooley, I will tell you that I've been to these tournaments
like for baseball and especially soccer. And a thing that bothers parents is if you have
it up too close to concession stands, I mean, it's a, it's a win lose. I mean, pick your
poison, right? There's a lot of people floating in and out of there that you don't know near
the kids. So some parents feel like it's better to have it kind of away where there's, I mean,
I'm not saying where this will happen, but it's 2021. So they like having the kids kind
of separated so they know who's coming in and out. You know what I mean? It's just another
thought that I've heard parents expressed in the past. Can I call on Drew Huffman who
does this, lives this every spring and summer? And he's also on staff, of course. Drew, you
live this, what, just, Jesse was a citizen now. What's your opinion about that? It, it's
really, it works out how it's planned. So if you've been to Oak Grove, Oak Grove, the playground
is close to the concession stands, but it's reset into the ground. So therefore the kids
are playing, if you walk next to that playground up to the concession stands, you know, you're
six to eight foot over the playground and it works out really, it works out really well.
You have another like where Nikki, you know, came from over in Mesquite, the playground
is away from the ball fields. That works really well too. You know, typically, you know, there's
times between games where parents will take the younger children over, play on the playground,
let some energy get loose and then you're back to coloring and playing UNO and whatever
else. Cause most of the time little ones don't, they, their attention span doesn't last an
entire baseball game. So it's all going to have to work out exactly how it's planned
and laid out the way it's laid out. Now they can, the playgrounds, you know, especially
that larger playground would probably work to where people in with smaller children are
going to migrate either between games or even, you know, in the middle of a game, you know,
if their child is maybe resting, you know, and not, not in the game at the moment or
whatever the case is, or, you know, mom or dad may get up and take the little ones. Okay.
It, you know, I may miss the inning or two. It's okay. We'll go play for, you know, 15,
20 minutes. So it, it's really going to have to work out what, what we see fit in the end
on where this goes. So Bill, do you mind taking the PowerPoint down? Sure. You mean to stop
sharing? Yes. So that, that's the plan. So the, the, obviously if we had all the money
in the world, we could, you know, build that at one time, but the thought process is how
could we face this? So it was, we unintentionally had it come out in the three separate areas
in each one of those areas could be faced. I mean, if you wanted to do phase one and
two for the building itself, you could do that. You could build four fields every five
years as the demand in South Denton continues to grow. Or you could say, Hey, we're going
to start off with a natural area. It's probably the most affordable. We could start cutting
and pass, you know, sooner than later. And then build this parking a lot, build this
parking a lot, you know, a little bit of a time. So we haven't gotten to the detailed
phasing part of it yet. And once TMP gets some of our budget ideas together, that'll
probably help that process as well. But ultimately we need to make sure that we're on the right
path. So we're going to be having another focus group meeting soon to talk to the focus
group about it. And then obviously park board. What are your thoughts in regards to what
you saw from that concept? Is there something that we've totally missed or are we on, on
the right track? Where, where do you feel we are? Bill, I have a quick question. You
can't, you said you fall down to exhibit C and that was based on the survey, the information
you received from surveys, correct? It was the one that accommodated the request for
all the uses the best. Thank you. May I share the screen one more time, Gary, just to show
these? Sure. So I want to share, we're working on some three dimensional perspectives and
can y'all see that? What are y'all? Yep, I can see that. Okay. So this is to give you
an idea of the scale of the Great Lawn. This is that in the pavilion here and that's about
a quarter mile back up to the rec center. There's the pond to the right. So parking
for the softball complex to the left, but you can get a sense of the scale of that space
is really large. And I'll show you one more. And this is the looking northwesterly down
that axis. This is the baseball softball complex. There is the Great Lawn in the back. There's
the rec center, the pond, the Blackland Prairie back here. We're not fully rendered that yet,
but those are the soccer field or overflow parking, but you get a sense of the scale
of the park. It's really grand and large. There's a lot going on. The maintenance building
would be over here to the left and I-35 would be way back there in the background. So that's
the last thing I have, Gary, on the images. Okay. I think we have still a couple of questions.
So if you could un-share. Yes, sir. Okay. Who had a question? Atlanta. Hi. So first
of all, I love seeing those ideas have images to go with them. That's awesome. But I feel
like one of the big rocks is missing and I'm surprised we haven't talked about it yet,
but I feel like a water feature is missing for people to play in. I'm thinking like at
Highland Village where they have the Amplitheater, there's like this little creek looking splash
pad kind of thing. And it's great for kids. It's great for parents. And I can just see
something like that being really beneficial at that park because like we were talking
about earlier, it's really hot. And when you're waiting for a concert, you and your kids can
go play in the water or in between baseball games or after the baseball game. It's just
a great place for people to cool off. And when you were showing us the different areas
of the park, I was thinking it would be like awesome if it was near the inclusive park
and nature play area towards the pond. It could be like a pond or a creek that they
could walk in. Just an idea I feel like we've missed out.
Do you mean north of the rec center there with an inclusive gas? Okay.
So there was a space we could bring back up that was on the outside of the rec center
that was kind of outdoor structured play. Give me a second to get to that.
I think part of that was kind of a placeholder for a water feature. It could be an outdoor
pool if you wanted to go that far and that area. No, the hashed area down the bottom
right. Oh, yeah, here. Outdoor rec. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that's kind of like flex
space, whether we wanted to put a large splash pad or an outdoor pool, per se, or a pool
and fitness space. So I think that was what the intention for that was. But we could definitely
go back and look at a nature related splash pad, maybe on that north side.
Is that what you meant, Alana, splash pad? Yeah. So have you ever seen the amphitheater
in Highland Village? You know, they have kind of like, it actually goes along the amphitheater.
I don't know if that would work here, but that's kind of what I was thinking. Like around
where the inclusive playground is towards the pond. I don't know how, like, it's hard
for me to understand the scale or how that would work. That's just kind of like a vision
I saw whenever you were talking about it because we my family loves going to that splash pad
amphitheater back when we used to go listen to live music. Great. Great idea. Thank you.
Questions? Yes, I have a question, Madam Chair. Maybe I'm asking a silly question and maybe
I'm asking it way too early. So please, Bill, be like, too soon and I'll help you. That's
okay. No bad questions. This is massive, right? This is like 190 acres, right? This is huge.
So those open spaces, those green spaces, which are great. I also like, I'm going to
say something that Atlanta brings up a lot. Like, can we talk about shade and like these
seeded areas? Are there going to be more places to sit, you know, along the way? Because it's
so massive, like walking around all those spaces, especially during the day, it's so
hot. Just putting that out there. And then also another silly question. I would assume
there would be restrooms on the baseball side because you've got a concession stand, you've
got, you know, a bunch of fields, people need to use the restroom somewhere. Could that
also be said for the other side of this 190 acre? Every red building you see could be
a restroom because you've got, you know, we've got two on the north side. We've got a million
here in the dog park. I think we definitely would want one. Okay. Good. Yeah. We'd love
to hear it, Bill. So yes, very important. Yes, absolutely. Cool. Okay, great. So you've
thought about that in all the red areas. I love that. Thank you. Every red dot can be
a can be a restroom. Cool. Thank you. Those are my questions. I appreciate it. Oh, yeah.
Thank you. I have a quick question. And I know there was some talk about having food
trucks having accessibility to parks and looking at that parking lot. Do you suspect that there
is an area specific to food trucks? Yeah. Good question. We didn't mention that. Yes.
So yeah, this here for the baseball, softball and sorry, just loading here, the Texas food
truck parking here and also here as well as along here that we have parallel parking along
this road here. So if you have a big thing in this, this big great lawn, you've got an
event, you can have food trucks lined up all along here. So you come right to the edge
of the lawn there. So yeah. And we also part of that was planning for teams that are going
to be staying all day. If they have breaks, they could pull over and tailgate and kind
of set up their tents and have their cookout going and go get food from the food truck.
All that kind of excitement. Yes. So we tried to, we tried to be, whenever you're trying
to do a part, we tried to be as flexed, tried to design space. It'll be as flexible as possible
as you get as many users as you can. Right. So that way you can program more things. We
did, we did have some green, some previous pavement in here too. There's a couple areas
that we've just shaded green. So that, that could be increased as we go as well down here
overflow parking, you know, so you might just, it might be all grass or it might be paved
aisles and grass parking that reduces runoff. Also, also overflow parking over here. So
you can have more or less, you know, if it's, if it's five years before you do, you can,
again, when you design this, you can actually go to construction documents ready to build
and you can, you know, you can add more grass or take it away as you need, as your needs
change. Okay. Bill, if you don't mind taking that down again before. Yes, sir. Yep. Concern
about the food trucks. Is that in not indirect competition? I like the food trucks. Is that
not indirect competition with the concession stand? It is. That's a happy medium. You know,
we're not sure what the business plan is for the concession stand. If we are going to run
that ourselves or farm it out to a third party that would operate it for us. Typically they're
not providing full service amenities. It's more like more of the basics, but if we have
a larger event, we could definitely have a couple food trucks supplement that, especially
for the concerts. If there's something going on in the great lawn, people aren't going
to walk all the way to the concession stand in the ball field. The convenience of having
those trucks mobile is you can move them around as you need them and still generate some revenue
from them as well. Okay. David, thank you for waiting. Yeah. It looked like there was
a perimeter trail that went all the way around the park. And I'm just curious. We're talking
about scale. Does anybody have any idea what the distance of that is? Yes. It's two miles
almost exactly. Okay. Thanks. Bill, could you tell them what the total mileage of all
the trails in the park is? Yeah, I think we have about three miles of paved trails and
another mile or mile and a half of unpaved and paved. You know, it depends on how many
someone could create while just creating a footpath, but two mile perimeter, another
mile of trails within paved and then about a mile, a mile and a half of unpaved trails.
So I'll give you an idea. I think we have seven and a half acres of trails in Clear
Creek, if I remember correctly. So that's about half of that. And there's 3000 acres
over there and we have 200 here. So there's a good amount of trails based on this plan
as we see it. I do have one more comment. It's okay. So
given the options of the, of the three sort of general layouts that, that were given and
the feedback that was taken, I think you guys did a really good job capturing that and coming
up with this plan. I think that it definitely encompasses much of what was brought up. And
I think it's, it's a good picture of what was discussed. So thank you.
So I guess our next steps moving forward would be to take this back to the focus group, have
a similar discussion with them on this, provide some feedback that you've provided as well.
And if we need to make some changes, we could, you know, talk about the splash pad and making
sure that's identified there. There's still some small rocks that aren't necessarily on
here that we can add. And then from that point, go back to city, go to city council and get
their ideas. And if they approve it, then, then we're kind of at a holding pattern at
that point in time until we identify a funding source. Once we have funding, then we would
move forward with construction drawings of whatever that phasing plan is. So that's something
we'll come back and talk to you about at that point in time. But we'll, we'll go through
that before it's adopted. So we could go back to everybody and say, okay, here's how, here's
the plan to build this. What do you think? The natural areas could be done sooner than
later. Obviously, if we wanted to get people out there and the property open, get out there
and see the space we could put, you know, you are here type of signs out there so they
can understand what this park might look like down the road. And we'd have to find a funding
source longterm for that, whether it's phase one, or, you know, multiple phases at one
time. Can I ask one quick question? Okay, Mr. Dooley. I noticed I'm a soccer guy, and
I'm not like going to preach at you about the beautiful game or anything, right. But
I noticed like we're baseball heavy here with just a little area for the soccer. Is that
on purpose? Or do we have numbers to back that design up? Yeah, we talked about that
specifically and there's some other locations that we may look to put some of those other
square rectangle fields in. The challenge there is while it's still 195 acres, we didn't
want to, you know, end up stuffing the box too much. There's a little bit of a balance
there that we're trying to provide. And Drew, did you want to add anything? No, no, I totally
understand. Like I said, I'm catching up. So sorry if I'm wasting your time. Great question.
No, it's a good question. So just to add to what Gary says, Gary's always looking at it
from a park system. So the soccer is very important, and it is a growing sport. So not
all the soccer may be at Southwest Park. There'll be other places too. We'll have two city parks
over in Hunter Cole Ranch. And then we do have some city property just north of this off
vintage that we thought, well, maybe if that's not going to be used for all municipal purposes,
we might be able to put, you know, four or five fields back there at some point in time,
which would just be in the south side of vintage. Yeah, well, that's great. I'm just catching
up on your guys discussion. So if I waste your time, I'm sorry. Not at all. And one
more quick question. Are we, you do consider like ADA compliance about these trails? And
I mean, yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not so much at this phase, Jerry, because this is master
planning. However, in design, yeah, 100%. You have to, the site's relatively flat. It's
not going to be that difficult to have accessible trails. But yes, they will have to be accessible.
Excellent. Thank you. Any additional questions or concern? Oh, see, George has one. I apologize.
I wrote my notes down. I read through this all yesterday, so I might've missed it. I
thought funding was coming from the bond package. Am I incorrect? No, we did have bond funding.
That was for the master planning process. Understood. Okay. I was like, did I write
that down wrong? And we do have, there's $800,000 in that account as of right now. It's more
than we need now, but it's not enough if we're going to do construction drawings at that
point in time. So we, right now we moved it over to the tennis center just in case we
need it for the tennis center to make sure we complete that. We took that to the bond
oversight committee and it's there as a holding pattern. And if it's not used, we'll bring
it back and use it for either this project or recommend for something else. Wonderful.
Thank you for that clarification. Very good. Any other questions, concerns? All right.
Mr. Smith, I want to thank you for that presentation. Thank you very much. And are we ready to move
on to our next item, Gary? Yes, ma'am. All right. The next item is we back up to C. Receive
a report, hold a discussion and give staff input regarding nominations for membership
on the Parks, Recreation and Trail System Master Plan focus group. Gary Pack and Parks
and Recreation. When we were working and kicking off the Southwest Park Plan, we put together
a group of residents, tried to get everybody that was involved in different aspects of
our park system and not involved in our park system on that group. I think John, we have
about 25 or so people on that group. And for ease of sake and time and effort, we thought
we could try to flip that group to see if they were interested in the Park System Master
Plan. So we sent an email out to everybody. And I think we got maybe half or a third of
the people that were interested in doing the next step. And in that time frame, I had a
discussion with Frances. She expressed some concern that this didn't come back to the
board. So I told her that we definitely put it on the board for an agenda to see if there's
anybody that the board would like to recommend to make sure that we had a good cross section
of the community. So this is here for that discussion to get a general sense of kind
of where you feel we need to go, if there's people that we need to recommend or organizations
that we should reach out to to get some people to participate.
Are you looking for nominations at this point or are you looking for us to follow up with
nominations after maybe talking to someone? Frances, did you want to say something real
quick? I was getting ready to call on George. I'm sorry. No, no, Dave. Dave asked a question.
Please. Yeah, absolutely. We're all good. If you have somebody that you think would be
a good fit and a good ad for that process that would provide good input on whether it's
a specific topic, item, need, interest, or it's just someone that has, you know, vast
knowledge of just generalities that you feel would provide some some really good input
and envisioned for the city. That would be great either way.
Okay, George. Yeah, I absolutely feel like after this meeting, I might put out something
on like all my channels, right? To be like, hey, calling on those that really wish to
like be more involved. Here's an opportunity to serve. And I also, this also brings up
it within this same vein, like anytime, you know, there's like a, once these meetings
are decided, like, hey, there's an interest meeting about Southwest Park. I know I've
seen it before, but if we could get maybe an email saying, hey, parks board members,
there's an interest meeting about Southwest Park that the city's holding next week. Y'all
need to blast this, help us get people come to this, like help get interest out, help
get the word out. I'd be happy to like keep hounding folk to show to these things. So
I know that I also need the push sometimes too. But yeah, with that, I will start reaching
out to some people because I know I've heard people want to be more involved.
That was actually something I wanted to bring up is at the end of the meeting is exactly
what George just said. Thanks, George. I have a question. Do we have anybody who is under
the age of like 20 on that group? Cause I think we need more input from the children.
I think that's funny you say that. Gary, you can answer this, but that was brought up in
our annual meeting for the parks board. And one of our board members suggested making
a second kind of faux parks board, but for kids so that we could kind of take their input
and then share it back with you all and other folks. But just something along those lines,
I totally am down with that one. We definitely could add a children's group
as part of that, or maybe it's just a separate focus group that we could bring in and pull
information from them. That would be fairly easy, especially in the summertime when we
have some of our camps going, we could sit down with them and have those, you know, Hey,
here's some cookies, but you have to answer some questions first.
And it's civic engagement. I'm curious. Have you had any response from parks board members?
You mean the foundation board members? Yes. No, I have not. Okay. Let me back up. Yes.
There is the finance. Okay. Yeah. He's on there. Perfect. I can't remember. Am I on
that one? You are on this. Yes. You're on the South. You're on the South. Did I flip?
I thought I flipped. I don't know. I don't remember a lot. I've got you down for both.
For what? Okay. We can't hear you. We can't hear you, John. Okay. Is it too light or I
have to yell at it. Okay. You can hear me now. All right. Good. I have you down for both of those
focus groups. Okay. Thanks. I thought so. I just want to make sure. Okay. Mr. Dooley,
did you have a hand up earlier? No, I was just like agreeing with what Eleni was talking about.
I'm all in for cookies. I'll send my boys, my grandkids. So, okay, George, you have a question.
Yes. One I should probably should ask first was when are you looking to secure these folk
to help you, Gary? That would be a deadline would be good for me to give up. From a timeline
perspective, we'd like to start having a meeting in March if we can. So we do have, I think,
Eddie, we have another park board meeting in two weeks. So maybe if we could put it back on the
agenda or if you could have that to us within two weeks. Yeah. So by the eighth. Yes, sir. Thank you.
That's a great deadline. Thank you, Gary. And we can send that in a follow up email.
Okay. That's that was my question. Do you want us to just send information to you via email for
nominations? Yeah, that would be great. If you know who the person is and their email and phone
number, that would be fantastic. So that way it's easy for us to pick up the phone and call them.
We definitely want to get a little bit extra people on the group and have a little bit
larger because everyone's schedules, it's tough to get everyone to show up all the time. So we
understand that. So, you know, we could have a little bit extra, you know, 20, 25 people is
probably a good number. If you think not everyone's going to show up to get some good feedback and
we'll continue to do our focus group meetings and pull information from those groups as well.
Okay. And you will review this again and next month. Yes, we'll put it back on the agenda.
Okay. Any additional questions or concerns?
Okay. Next item. I'm sorry, I have a question. So someone who's a teenager.
I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? Can I nominate someone who is a teenager?
Sure. Yep.
Danona, did you have a question of concern?
No. Is there a specific age range for the nominees or
no, I mean, we're two teenagers.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, we'll definitely try to pull the younger kids from some
of our programming and maybe some from the library programs once things get started back
up hopefully in the summer, but we definitely need to have people of all ages and abilities.
Okay. Any other questions or concerns?
All right. Thank you all. The next item is item E.
Received nominations and elected chair and vice chair for the parks recreation and beautification
board. And I have a question before we do that. And can somebody clarify why we are doing this?
And since my term is not over until August.
So we have a special guest, Rosa Rios from the city secretary's office to provide a little bit
more insight on the process and the fact that we have been doing it incorrectly.
Rosa, could you put your speaker down, your microphone down? There you go.
You know, and as many of these as I've been on, I should know to do that.
So this provision has actually been on the boards and commissions handbook
since its original adoption back in like 2012. And the way that the records are stipulated,
it stipulates that after the appointment process for boards and commissions, or annually as soon
as possible, that the officers of a board and commission be elected. And so what that means,
normally the election cycle kind of dictates like when the board appointments come into play,
depending on whose terms come up in a given year. And that will normally happen around the
appointments kind of come in about, you know, about September, October. And so the officers,
meaning the chair and vice chair, because there is a secretary by each administrative department
that kind of takes over that one specific position. And so the requirement is that the board
officers be elected as soon as practical. So it is the appointment is not term related. It does not
apply. It does. You have to kind of do it annually every year because some members do come on board
each year because we have staggering terms for all our boards and commissions. So it comes into play
every basically every year. It is not that a board member will be appointed when elected as chair or
vice chair, that it is based on their term as far as the length of service and that as a board
officer. So it's really that it has to be done, you know, at least annually. And I know that,
you know, some boards, because it did come, this isn't the first time that it's come up about,
you know, why are we electing, you know, officers now? But again, it is not based on the term
of the officer, but rather that it be done as soon as practicable after the appointment process
or annually. And as you know, last year for the 2020, what we call the 2018 through 2020 term,
members remained in holdover due to the elections having been postponed due to COVID
situation. And our runoff election was in December, and we immediately began the appointment process
for what now became the 2020 to 2021 through the 2023 term. So I might be confusing it a little bit,
but so now the need exists to go ahead and elect your officers for what remains of the 2021 term.
And then as we enter, you know, the next appointment cycle, which is going to be around
September, October, then again, at the first of the next year, then you'll have to do so again.
Again, it's annually, it is not based on the term of the member who is elected
as one of your officers. So going back, I think in parks and recreation,
I think before I even got here, we were following terms. So Alana, I think you're probably the one
that's been here the longest. And Francis, yeah, Francis and Alana, both of you, if you can remember
the prior term, if you have any input on that, please chime in. But that was our mistake for
not catching that. Yeah, I've been here the longest. And I, from prior to you, prior to
everybody on the screen, actually, except for you, I don't know, John. And this has never come up,
it has always been termed because, well, many things come to mind. If we're selecting someone
every year, I think it interrupts the flow of the board. These are my personal opinions. And
it just generates, I think prevents continuity. Not that I'm trying to remain the chair,
I'm speaking from being on the board since 2015. And I see that it may, I see a lot of potential
problems, really, with electing someone every year. After you've been a chair,
they do, they just leave the board and you then you have to replace somebody.
After being a chair, you go back to being a member. What happens?
If I may, so I know that for city council, because the appointment process kind of is the same for
the mayor pro tem. After every election cycle, after every election, we do elect a mayor pro tem
and the process that we're going to use tonight is basically the same. So we elect our mayor pro tem,
every year we will have a new mayor pro tem. It is not to say that that person could not continue,
or even as a mayor pro tem, or be it chair or vice chair, you can also, of course, nominate yourself.
And so it's kind of like the same process. And I think from the council standpoint,
it affords everybody the opportunity to serve in that official capacity to kind of
allow for that, you know, kind of each member, an understanding of what the role is. Again,
I'm going for mayor pro tem. So it gives each member an equal opportunity to serve, you know,
kind of in a full capacity, not just as a board member, but also possibly as a chair or vice chair.
But that's not to say, again, that it couldn't be, you know, the same because again, you know,
you can serve up to technically, you know, six years on a board. So it's not to say that
the same person couldn't be elected time and again, every, you know, every time that this comes up.
But there's the different viewpoint that it affords every member to gain that experience
in the event, you know, for some reason, the chair or vice chair can't make it,
then other board members would be able to step in, you know, as a presiding officer should the need arise.
Yes, Mr. Schuch. I guess I've got two questions from the from chair's comments. It almost sounded
like we're trying to debate whether or not we're going to do this, but there's no choice, right?
I mean, this is this is rules as established with the city. If I understand right, we're not going
to decide as a body whether we do this. That's my first question. I got another one. Sorry.
The second is you mentioned that we would be doing this annually. And but we're doing one now in
February, we'll do another one after September. And I guess the the intention is we would stay
on that cycle of September, barring any weird election scheduling like we've had this past year.
All right. So as far as and just so you know, so I can, you know, I can tell you this again,
this provision has been there and it is adopted by the city council. So yes, it is you are required to,
you know, remain in compliance with the requirements set forth in the handbook
because it is council adopted. But again, kind of considering the issues that have come up.
And you know, chair punch makes a lot of viable, you know, points to there's always, of course,
you know, two sides. So to further clarify the term of, you know, that what does annually is,
I will I am scheduled to present some proposed changes to the boards and commissions has
had book. Most of those changes will be relating to, you know, we've added a couple of boards
and named the, you know, renamed another board. So we have to, you know, kind of get the handbook
caught up with some recent decisions by the city council. And one of the things that I'm going to
seek is to really clarify, you know, what is annually rather than leave it kind of like as
soon as practical after the appointment process is actually just go ahead and say that every year,
no later than the end of January or, you know, some time period that actually will make it really
clear in the event, a scenario like this comes up. So we are to address that.
I'm sorry for interrupting. You mentioned the updates and the changes. And can you explain to
us how these updates and changes are communicated to the board? Because frankly, I hadn't received
this information until now. Yes. So I will. Okay. So after the the boards and commissions handbook
requires that the city secretary's office send the boards and commissions handbook
to all of the board members. I cannot speak for my predecessors. Okay. But I've been here
about a year and a half. And, you know, there was the need to review the handbook to make sure it
was consistent, you know, with state law and some of the the current practices and there was some
changes that were made. And so this handbook after it was adopted, the most recent handbook,
and again, keep in mind to this provision has been there for a while is have many other provisions
have as well, is that I did send it out to all of the board members. We have, you know, mass email
group for all of the board members. Everybody was blind copied on that. And what we also do is,
as individuals are appointed and or reappointed, it has become part of a reappointment, you know,
appointment packet that we sent to everybody all over again. So we would have sent that not I know
that I, I did send it via, you know, via email, everybody was blind copied because of the, you
know, the need to not disclose everybody's email to everybody else. So it was distributed. And I'm
sorry, Chair Punch, if you know, maybe you didn't get it. But I know that, you know,
we use the same email group that I've used, you know, for other notifications to board members.
Now, I'm sorry, I did receive it, but I received it recently. Right. And my understanding that the
updates happened last January. Yes, I read somewhere. So I, I, that's over a year ago. And,
and I'm just now receiving it. All right. Update. Okay. Well, and again, you know, I can only say
that I did send it out not long after the council, the city council sent it out. And it was sent out
to the same distribution list that I've sent other notices to. But, you know, we'll certainly, you
know, we've gone to an electronic board record keeping system. And that's what we'll be doing,
doing now. Again, you know, so now it is a little bit more automated, but I'm not sure why you
wouldn't have received it. I do know that it was provided to you recently, but again, not long after
the city council adopted the newest version, it was sent out again to whoever would have been on
that board. And I'm just sorry that if by chance, maybe you didn't get it. And if you didn't get it,
it certainly was not intentional. Okay. And so you're saying that you, your plan now is to go
before the city council with some, you said, can you repeat what you said earlier?
Yeah. So, so every year, you know, we're going to be reviewing kind of just to see if we need
to make any changes. So, you know, we've added a couple of boards. There's been a couple of boards
and commissions that have been added and that we need to add into the boards and commissions,
you know, manual. So, you know, there's a need to kind of update and then put that membership
information in there, what the purpose of those boards are. So this is kind of just a routine.
There's not anything major. However, you know, in discussions with Gary, you know, I do agree that
the appointment process for officers for each board and commission kind of really does need to
be a little bit more clear. So that is one of the changes that I'm going to recommend that wasn't
initially on my list, but, you know, to make sure that, you know, we do clarify the timeframe
that officers should be elected. Rosa, if a board member wanted to make a recommendation on,
on an operational thing in a manual, do they talk to their council member that has appointed them
or do they send a memo to city council? How do they communicate concerns, questions? I know we
did that on the agenda item that's next in regards to absenteeism, where the board wrote a letter,
but is that the same process if an individual board member would like to communicate a concern
on a process? Yes, sir. As you know, everybody has a nominating council member, so you can certainly
communicate with them on any changes that you as a board member kind of feel that maybe, you know,
need to be addressed. The council members are very open to that receiving input from their
representing appointee. You can also, of course, reach out to the mayor individually. We would,
of course, ask that not as individual board members, you're not reach out to the full city council,
because this is an item that will come up for, you know, their decision making as a quorum, and you
could get into some legal concerns there. But certainly, we do encourage you to communicate
directly with, you know, your nominating council member. And, you know, as you did with the
attendance policy, you can certainly, you know, place an item on the agenda and decide if there's
some, you know, recommendation that the board as a whole wants to take, in which case we would
present it to them. So my concern is this, my nominating board member is no longer here. It was
Mayor Chris Watts. Yes, and I'm sorry, yes. So by, just by practice, then your nominating
council member would become our newly elected mayor, Hutzpeth. And so he would be, if, let's
just say that if your term was up, and you were coming up for reappointment, he would be looking
at those individuals that, you know, that Mayor Watts possibly had nominated and appointed before.
But you could certainly reach out to the mayor as a whole. He's available. Keep in mind,
you know, he represents the whole city. And again, you know, if you choose to, you could
certainly communicate, you know, with another member. But since he's representing technically
place seven, you can certainly communicate with him. So what are we doing tonight to behalf,
we have to move forward and are we going to wait for you to go to the council and come back to us?
What are we doing? So in order to stay compliant with the requirements of the handbook,
we do need for you to go ahead and elect a chair and vice chair. Again, there's no saying that it
cannot be the same, the same people. And, and because we do, we have notified all of the boards
and commissions as they've been submitting their agendas for their first upcoming meeting this year.
We've asked all of them to put this item on the agenda. Council committees that comprise,
you know, of at least three council members, they're also appointing, you know, putting this
item on their agenda to make sure they remain in compliance. So, so yes, um, again, in order
to stay compliant, you would need to take action on this item. Mr. Shook.
You're on mute. David, you're on mute.
I was speaking so elegantly too. Um, I, I moved to nominate Francis punches chair for the board.
I think that's in order. I second.
There's no motion. It's just by majority vote.
So vote. Rosa, did you, do you want to, is there a rule or something you wanted to clarify?
You don't even know how to do this. No, and it is, it's a little bit new to everybody. Um, so,
um, what you can do again, you know, there's a process that the city council had established
for election of the mayor pro tem. Some boards have opted to kind of follow that. Um, the key
is for the chair, the under Robert's rules of order, the chair would, would open nominations
and acknowledge, you know, whoever wants to make a nomination, um, one nomination per board member.
It does not have to receive a second. Um, you would ask the, whoever is nominated, um, as chair,
and then again, later as vice chair, uh, if they want to accept it, because obviously you want to
consider somebody that does want to take that position. And once it's accepted, then you would,
you would go ahead and ask for, are there any other nominations on the floor? Just in case somebody
wants to come up and maybe nominate somebody else. If you hear nothing, uh, or you, maybe you
might get some, uh, you know, other nominations and sometimes very rarely will you at the board level.
Um, then if, if, you know, you clarify, are there any other nominations when the other nominations
on the floor, the nomination process is closed. And, um, then you would go ahead and take for,
uh, election the nominations as they were submitted. So for right now you have received
a nomination for yourself, uh, chair punch and, um, and then, so you would be the first one that
would presented would be presented to the board for appointment or election. So right now there
is one nomination. So you would want to ask, are there any other nominations for the position of
chair? And then if there's none, then you would go ahead and say, you know, kind of ask again,
are there any nominations for chair? And if there's none forthcoming, you go ahead and close
the nomination for chair. And then you would, you would present yourself for the board to vote.
It's a given, obviously there's no other nominations come in and you only have one
that that is, you know, the board is kind of in a consensus, but you would want all of them to vote
and then you would go around, you know, and do voice vote for your reappointment as chair.
And we would have to do this again in August or September, correct?
No, it would likely be in January. Again, I'm, I'm going to be taking the boards and
commissions handbook around, around April to city council. So you would likely have to do it again
in January. But again, it's not to say that council will concur with my recommendation
that we established January is kind of like the appointment month for officers, but you would need
to do it again after all of the, the 20, we would have the 2020 2021 to 2023 terms that we would be
doing in, you know, kind of like September, October timeframe. So yes, you would need to do it again.
Josh, am I allowed to speak right now? Because we're in this voting pattern.
All I want to say is I want to kind of uplift this confusion. And I also would like to like
validate the chair chair punches feelings and also say like, if we're nominating now,
because Mr. Dooley has joined, which welcome. Hi, you know, we have three members who are going
up for reappointment in August, because their term ends in August. But because these new rules might
change, it might always be January. It just, it just is a lot of confusion, I guess. And then also,
I just checked the website and Mr. Shuck is listed as expired. But, you know, so it's like, I don't
know, I just, there's a lot of confusion. I just want to validate that. And then I'm also confused.
And I'm glad that we're seeking clarification now. And I, you know, I just, I also feel that confusion.
Yes, I had a question earlier before we started the nomination process. Since we've already been
doing it wrong, and we're off, who's to say, like, why can't we just extend this until August,
and then we can just be back on track beginning in August? That's just my question. Why can't
we do that? Well, there is no provision for the board to determine that they're not going to take
action on the as soon as practicable the language in the handbook is specific that it should it reads
election of officers shall be annually as soon as practicable after the annual appointment process.
And we have just passed that recently, especially for the for the park board, because as you know,
you you know, all of the the barring that you have a new member, and that's only because the
other member did not want to continue, you know, that your board is now ready to to do that
appointment. So there's no there's nothing in the handbook that says that, you know, the board
itself has the authority to put aside that requirement at this time. And so if my
reappointment in August, then we would have to nominate a new chair. Well, again, because
you're doing it annually. And today is like right now we're in 2021. So the logic would say that
you would go ahead and do it in like in any time in 2022. But by then, I'm hoping, you know, we
would clarify with City Council, that, you know, they would do it and it would, you know, we would
make sure that stipulates the language properly, that it would be like, you know, that it shall be
in 20, like, hopefully the January, it might be the January, February timeline. So really,
you would still do it not in 2021. Okay, my recommendation is you do it in 2022. And that
would be my recommendation to counsel. So it's not to say that you would do it again in 2021.
But my term, my term is up in January, in August. Yes, but you could possibly be reappointed.
I think, I think she hits her six years. Oh, so you're termed. Yep. So she's termed up. Yeah.
Right. Okay. So then what would happen is that the, if you would elect a vice chair,
right. And then if, let's just say, you know, you're termed and then they would come in. So
you would stay as a holdover. Let's just say that, you know, you stayed over as a holdover
for however much longer. And then the vice chair, you would still remain chair again,
because you're still holdover and you are the chair until such time as you come in and you
elect a chair. So the vice or the vice chair could take over, but you would wait till 2022 to elect
a new chair. Cause as you know, I mean, we've had, although, you know, members are really supposed
to kind of like be reappointed. You know, some members are known to hold over for a year and a
half, two years. So some members will hold, hold over. Yeah. I'm confused by that last series,
because I think what you, I think she just said her term would end and at six years,
which ultimately would result in another person being chosen from that member. So there would be
another member coming in. How would a holdover work when there are two people in that position
and she would still be the chair that that makes very little sense. Well, no, she, so, so if, if
she, if she was a board, she would, it is not to say that she, she would be immediate a replacement
for her seat would immediately happen come, you know, September, you know, August, September.
It's not to say she could literally sit in that seat right now where she is at like for a year
until let's just say, you know, Mayor, Mayor Hudspeth appointment it would be. So she would
actually be there. It's not that somebody else would come in in her place. She would sit there
until he finds somebody else to replace her. And that would be only because obviously she's termed.
So she just could not be reappointed, but she could hold over. It's just the same as the members. I
think what happened this time was not no member on the park board that come whose term ended this
year. What, or last year in, in, in August 31st of 2020, nobody was termed. So the issue didn't
come up, but you continue to hold over. You, you sit there until your replacement is appointed,
or you choose to resign sooner than that. So, so, so if the mayor finds a replacement
and council approves it in September, that person would start immediately. And the vice chair would
be, would elevate to the chair until the, all the appointments are done in January. There'd be a
vote. Is that correct? Okay. So, so the vice chair would then become what we call the presiding
officer. So yes, they would, even though maybe not entitled and the board could make the decision to
go ahead and appoint a chair, or you might choose to, because you've already done it annually,
right? You could actually come in and you have the option of either going ahead and doing a new
chair or waiting till maybe the rest of, you know, the, the rest of the members that are up for
reappointment are either elected or, you know, or something. So it would be up to the board
at that point, because you've already at least met the responsibility for 2021. But normally,
yes, in the absence of a chair, the vice chair would take over that role. Okay. Sorry, Francis.
Go ahead, Alana. I just feel like if we get on this year where we're voting every January,
we're going to run into this over and over and over again. And I just, I really feel like we should,
maybe we need to talk to city council and see if we can just get an extension this year and like
get it on track so that August, September is when the year begins and ends annually.
Okay. Yeah, I'm going to write a letter
of this concern. This is weird. And this feels kind of icky to be like super honest.
I just don't, I don't like it. So I'm going to talk to my council member about it. Thank you.
Thank you, city secretary. I want to like first uplift the fact that like you're sharing this
information because this is your job to share this information. And like, I want to respect that
and uplift that, that this is, this is just weird. And I want to reach out. I'm going to,
I'm going to do what you said. I'm going to reach out to my council member. Thank you.
And thank you for your time. You're welcome.
So part of the, part of the challenge is that this, the appointment, just the general appointment
would have happened in September, like historically, but since COVID hit and they delayed the election,
it got pushed and Jerry was appointed in January. So this is, you know, four or five months delayed
from when it should have happened. So that's why now we have January and September coming
potentially so close with new members. That's kind of caused the compression in that process.
Yeah, because, yeah, because I'm good to go till what? September of next year. And then we have a,
we're juggling dual appointments, which I'm not really, I'm not getting here.
So maybe we get on the same page. But I don't know, like I said, I'm new, so I don't want to like
cause any, any, any ripples, but you know, but your insight is valuable. Your insight is valuable.
I mean, it's just odd if we're, if we're changing board members and then three months later,
we're electing a new chair. Let me, I don't understand why we're juggling two different
timelines. You know, I don't know, but I didn't realize we have 10 minutes.
Yeah. Yes. Mr. Schick. If I could just make a recommendation. It sounds like we are at the,
you know, we're subject to the rules that are citywide, right? And I think ultimately
we are to determine a chair and a vice chair based on those rules as they exist today.
I also don't think that we have a lot of political turmoil amongst this board. And I have a feeling
that we're going to see a very similar set of chair and vice chair moving forward. And if I
could just recommend that we just move forward with the appointment and let them hash out the
rules with the city council, let's contact city council people, but let's just do the job tonight
and appoint our chair and our vice chair. That's just my opinion. Can I, can I second that
nomination really quick? Just wasn't necessary. It was just a, they said second. Yeah, we don't
second, which is also weird because that's Robert's rules of order. Oh, well, silly me. Sorry, man.
I thought we did. Yes. And again, we're following this. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.
I may throw another wrench in this equation because it just seems quite convoluted. And if we,
elect someone other than myself as chair and vice chair, then we could start anew.
Is this correct? Cause I will be gone in August.
Well, again, you, you would hold over, you would hold over, you could possibly hold over until
January, February, March, April, who knows, depending on, you know, what mayor Husbits decides to do
on, on place a seat seven on the parks board. So you could continue to hold over,
but it's certainly your purview, you know, to, to, you know, if, if you, again, you've been nominated
as you've been nominated for reappointment as chair. So it's up to you to accept it or not accept it.
And you would, you know, again, under the process, and we're following the same process that,
you know, we were using for the mayor pro tem with at the council level and the attorney
reported that there was no second for the nomination required. And of course we always
defer to legal. And so you can accept the nomination or not accept it. And it looks like,
you know, the board would love for you to accept it. And then you would just to clarify, you know,
are there any other nominations on the floor? And then if there's none forthcoming, then, you know,
I mean, that's great. If there are, that could be great too. And then if there's none, then you
would go ahead and present yourself. Okay. You know, by acclamation, you know, all in favor,
or you could go around and have everybody give their voice vote in support of your re-election
as chair, but you wouldn't, it's very important that you accept, you indicate whether you accept
or you do not accept the nomination. It's a lot to process in this moment. It really is. And I just,
I really feel led to decline and pass my responsibilities on to the people who are very
capable. So I decline my nomination and I nominate Alana Taylor as chair.
So now, Ms. Member Taylor, you need to indicate whether you accept or you do not.
And would the chair would continue? I accept the nomination and I do feel like
we need to find out what is going to happen in council to get our terms more consistent with
our back on track. Once we all recover from the weird cycle and just, I would like to figure out
so that this never happens again to be in this situation because it does, I'm, I am excited.
Thank you, Frances, for the nomination. I would love to be chair, but it feels kind of weird to be
brought in, in this kind of way. So I just wanted to make that clear.
And so now does she nominate a vice chair? No, so what you would do is you would go ahead
and open the floor for any other nominations for chair. Any other nominations for chair?
So the nominations close. Nominations are closed. All in favor? Anyone opposed?
Okay. Motion passes. Okay. And now Member Taylor now becomes the chair and therefore takes over
the proceedings for the meeting. And she will open the nominations process for vice chair
and takes over for the rest of the meeting. Okay. Oh, my hands are all sweaty all of a sudden.
Sorry. Is this effective immediately? Yes. Okay. So I open up the nominations for vice chair.
Can I nominate? Yes, you can. And I would like to nominate George Ferry as vice chair.
Yeah, I also I accept that nomination. And I also just want to like reiterate that I would really
like to look at this language and like circle back to this conversation when it's decided
by council so that we have some resolution to this and get some closure on this icky kind of feeling.
And just for clarification, this is happening all across all of the city boards right now at
this same time. This is not specific to the parks board. This is happening on the ethics board,
on all of the other nominating boards. Yes, they're having the same conversation this month.
Yes, they are. They have the same agenda item. Again, I don't know what their specific
conversation is. And we're also doing this with council committees, which are comprised of council
members. Because it applies to also this requirement also applies to council committees. So yes,
well, just just just as a little like, again, an outsider, but my mama always said, you know,
just because everybody else was doing it, don't make it right. Yeah. But yeah, let's get the
language straight. Because I'm done. Go ahead. I guess I'm trigger happy. I don't know. Are there
any other nominations for vice chair? Now, what do I say? Open for nomination.
Um, I'm sorry, I did not do we vote. Right. So there's been no other nominations, correct?
No. Yeah. So then go ahead. You officially close the nomination process and then ask the board to
to cast their vote. Okay, I closed the nomination process and it is time to vote.
If you're in favor of George as vice chair, say aye.
Aye. Any opposed?
Congratulations, George.
Thank you. And I will report back on what the city council takes on this item.
Thank you. Thank you. Take care. I'd like to thank Francis. Yes. Great. Thank you, Francis.
You're very welcome. Before you leave. Did she? Did she leave? I have a question about the next
agenda. Eddie, Eddie, could you get her back on, please?
I also had this is a schedule, right? That's what we're about to go on to.
Let's see. This one is about, yeah, the schedule. And we've, we've done this year.
We've done this last year. We've done that.
Yeah. Do you guys all want to just do that? Are you, you guys want to vote for that one?
I'm sorry. It was item G, not F, but it's, it's, but I'm sorry for interrupting.
Sure. Well, what do you want to do, Elena? You want to do item F? Chair Taylor?
We can move to, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. G. What do I do when we get down to four
minutes until the meeting is supposed to be over? Cause we don't have that much time to
talk about anything. And I know we're like, we have to be finished at six.
Your items would just continue. You, what you would do is you would say that items,
these items will be postponed to the next meeting.
Is everybody okay to postpone the rest of this agenda until the next meeting?
So that we will have enough time to talk about it.
Do we vote on that? Do we say aye? Okay. If you.
I support the motion to, or I motion to table the rest of the items until the next meeting.
That's it. Where we will also be bringing our
nominations for the master plan. Okay. All in favor say aye. Okay.
Opposed. Thanks. I'll get there.
Okay. No opposed. So I guess that brings us to the end of this meeting.
Do I ask if we want to bring anything else to the next meeting sites? What's tabled?
I'm asking. I'm not asking if I asked that.
Maybe I'll send it as an email to Gary in the meantime, but I had somebody bring something
to me about signage at the Frisbee golf course that, that it's no longer accurate
and it can be helped. And I just want to bring that up.
And real quick, I know Rosa, you were supposed to go to the city council about ordinance and I,
codes code of ordinance. Is that happening this week?
Due to, there were a lot of board meetings and council meetings that were had to be canceled
because of the, you know, the, the inclement weather. So it's going to be in April when I'm
going to take the handbook as well as the attendance policy to them. And then we'll come back.
Okay. I'll send an email. I'll send an email with my concerns.
Thank you. Does anybody have any other items that would like to be addressed?
Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say something I was going to mention as part of my item is that
the Denton parks foundation board is looking for additional board members. And we did nominate our
board and we do not have representation from district one. And so we are looking for folks
in district one to join our board, whether they are a business in the area or a resident,
or even an employee who works within district one in Denton parks and rec. So just throwing that out.
Thanks. Jerry.
Yeah. So two things for nominations to the trail focus group, pretty much saying that
because I know somebody that would be great.
You could just email it to you. Yes. Yes, sir.
Okay. And George, just for duck on the side, I miss wine squared, man. I just realized who you were.
So see you again. Thank you, Jerry. I appreciate you.
I miss you. I miss you, man. I miss it too.
Gary. Just just a quick comment. I know we have an agenda item on this and we can get into detail
next, I guess, in two weeks when we have our next meeting. But I wanted to introduce Nikki Sassenes.
She's our new Laura Barron's, our new assistant director. She joined us last week and Monday was
her first day. So she was a trial by error on dealing with emergency services that we provided
pretty much all of last week. So she, she had an interesting first week, say the least baptism by
ice and snow. Yeah, that's hilarious. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here and
be with all of you and serve the city of thin. Welcome. Impressive. Very impressive.
We'll have to spend time with you to do like a quick interview and introduction
on the parks board or parks foundation website and Facebook since you're the new Leslie Knope of town.
All right, sounds great. Happy to do it.
Okay, I'd like to in the meeting again, Francis, thank you so much for all you have done as our
chair and hope I can fill the big shoes that you've left. Does anybody have? My pleasure.
Thank you. I move to adjourn.
Second. All right. I think you have to vote. Who seconded? All in favor of ending our meeting.
Who's second? George. I did. Eddie. Still waiting. Who? Motion. George Ferry. Dave. I made the motion.
George did the second. We're all voting. All in favor voting. Great. I'm going to go home.
I'm going to stay home and read up on my Roberts rules. Got you, girl. I love you, Francis.
Bye, Francis. Hey, reach out to me if you want to be on the parks board.