good afternoon everyone and welcome to the August meeting of the Ditten Parks and Recreation
Beautification Board. First item is Rachel, are there any members or questions from the
public? We have no one on the line today, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. For that information,
we have one potential excused absence waiting approval from the city's secretary. And if
I could take, if you could take your attention to the agenda, the first item for consideration
is consider approval of the minutes for July 13, 2020. And do you want to have any comments,
concerns? If there, if that's a no, may I have a motion for approval? I'm sorry, George
is indicating I need a second. James, James second. All in favor? Anyone opposed? Ayes
have it. Motion passes. Next item is hold, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding
an update to the City of Ditten Parks and Recreation Department COVID-19 response. Who's
going to take that, Gary? I'll go ahead and start this one. I think we're all going to
chime in a little bit. So last meeting, we gave you a pretty detailed summary of everything
that's been going on during the COVID pandemic. As of right now, we still have a lot of staff
working remotely if they can. Obviously, Park maintenance staff are on board and really haven't
stopped working this entire time. We have been short of contract for our mowing and
we're short significantly with our maintenance staff. So Drew's been able to start hiring
a few people back. Unfortunately, we've lost a couple people to other departments at the
same time. So a little bit of erosion under our feet as we make some progress. And we're
going to be going here soon with the contract for mowing. So staff's been doing their best
to try to keep up with everything with the parks and obviously with the heat that's slowed
down a little bit in regards to the grass. So hopefully we don't get any spurts of rain
here in the next couple of weeks. We are trying to rehire staff. We have a process that's
new to the city. Whenever we need to replace somebody that their position has been vacant
or it was a VSP position or someone left prior to or during the pandemic process, that was
frozen and we have to go to a subcommittee to get approval to rehire that position. We
did that back in June and July and we got approval. So we've been getting positions
posted, some of our seasonals interviewed. So we've had a couple interviews here and
there. We were able to add one staff member who's a robot, which Drew will share with
you a little bit later. But that's the quickest way we can add people is through robots at
this point in time. But we'll give you an update on that. But staffing has been a challenge
for us getting us people back for park maintenance. And then as we slowly creep towards reopening
our facilities, North Lakes Rec Center has been open since the end of June. We opened
golf and tennis a few weeks prior to that. And we've slowly started to release some programs
to get more people active. Some of the programs that we're doing, we've moved outside some
of our fitness related activities at North Lakes. They're on the tennis court or on the
driving range. We have last budget year, we got approval to purchase a golf ball dispenser,
which has been fantastic. It's been working great. The only thing that we don't have working
at this point in time is the credit card system. And we're working with finance on that process.
But basically people can buy gift cards in various increments and just go up there. We
don't even have to be open. As long as it's daylight, they can go out there, put their
card in, get the balls and go out and hit the golf balls. So it's been great. Staff
has said that our numbers are up compared to this time last year, which is fantastic.
Obviously, there's a little less things for people to do. So that could be part of it.
We won't know for sure until we go through a whole cycle. But the activity at the driving
range has been up, which is great. That's a good sign. And our parks are still getting
heavy use. Drew and Laura, would you like to add anything to that?
I will. And I'll talk about the robot Gary was talking about. We did put in a Friday
report last week about the robot. It's called a turf tank. And it's going to paint all our
lines mainly on the soccer fields. And it's also programmed to paint lines on softball,
baseball, rugby, football, you name it, it'll paint it. This is the machine that we're leasing
it. We did a two year lease. And it's going to save us approximately 1700 hours of staff
time a year. For those of you that play soccer and football and you see all those lines,
it normally takes us five to six days to start the season off laying out all the lines. And
then two or three times during the season, whether it be fall or spring season, those
lines are redone and adjusted due to either goal mouse needing to be moved for soccer,
you know, or the football needed to be adjusted one way or another due to the hash lines and
the wear of the turf. So this robot, it's GPS run. All the fields have been programmed
into a system and we're using our tablets. And the fields can be moved when those goal
mouse need to be moved, for instance, in soccer. So they can be slid one way or another on the
field and that robot, you add paint to it, you tell it what field to paint. So, you know,
if you wanted to repaint field or you wanted to paint field one and field 17, you can tell
it what to do and it'll go out and it'll paint all the lines and do it. I mean, it's fabulous.
You know, whenever we can get out and tour again, we'd love to take it out and let you
see it. So, but if you do get a chance, it's at North Lakes right now painting those lines.
They painted most of the fields last week and they're going to paint the rest the end
of this week. So it's working really well. The other green machine that is coming and
I know we've talked about it before is our all electric zero turn mower. It's a 74 inch
zero turn. It's all electric and it takes six hours to charge that machine for a seven
to eight hour run time. So it's zero emissions, zero fuel, low maintenance. And so we're really
happy to bring it on board and we should have it by the end of the week.
So these are some of our COVID kind of reactions and trying to find ways to operate smarter.
The robot that Drew was talking about is spot on, you know, to less than an inch. You can't
even overlap or a gap. It's that accurate. And we can share with you guys a video. We'll
have Eddie put it on the next email he sends out next week. And it's pretty interesting.
It's pretty slick. David, do you have a question?
Yeah, just a quick question. When we talked about the robot lawn mowing, it's probably
been a year almost since we talked about that. One of the questions was security and what
keeps people from walking off with them. How does that work with these? Are they big enough
that doesn't happen or do they have some tracking or how does that work?
So this machine is GPS. Not only is the GPS activated, it's GPS tracked. And then someone
will always have eyes on the machine. So this normally, like we said, you know, it takes
four to five guys to measure, paint, get all the lines accurate on the fields. Where now
where that employee can now, you know, whether they weed eat, take out the trash, you know,
do any maintenance to the fields, they're still there with the machine. But they're
not painting. They're doing other tasks while the machine is painting. But it is GPS tracked
and activated. And it's the machine's about three and a half foot by two and a half foot.
So I mean, it's a pretty large machine. Sounds great. 30 minutes of paint. Is that is that
what it was? We just we they told us approximately it's three gallons of paint. So yes, every
30 minutes you got to refill the paint. Okay, James, you have a question. You're muted.
I know you had me muted. Sorry. My wife wish to do that. Anyway, just want to ask a question.
Why not do that with lawnmowers? I mean, if it's is it pretty accurate? What kind of resolution
can you get on it? So I did I did. We are researching mowers. We found some. The city
of Dallas is using Husqvarna autonomous mowers. These are made for small areas. So they work
really good for your yard. They don't work very well for park spaces right now. So we're
working with different companies and studying different companies. The autonomous mowers
are one of the newest technologies on the market at the moment. They're it's very and
you know, technology, by the time you buy it today, it may not be as new tomorrow. So
we're looking at those. We're studying those. There's several different companies that I've
had conversations with and our staff has had conversations with. We're even looking at
a company right now out of Houston of possibly doing a demo and a test phase in a park system
versus your normal yard system. And these mowers are GPS activated. But like I said,
the technology is growing so fast at the moment that we wouldn't want to bring something on
today that would be old tomorrow. So we want to we want to bring something on that's really,
you know, cost effective for us and has the solutions that we have. The mowers that you
see, whether it be, you know, Husqvarna, Greenworks, I know there's several different companies
out there still makes one that's great for your yard. It comes out like your Roomba vacuum.
But it does its own thing. It doesn't go in straight lines. It's not GPS activated. You
have to bury those wires for it to be able to really guide and direct itself. The new
mowers that are coming out are GPS activated, you know, they're GPS controlled to where
they you tell it I want you mowing north and south today. It's mowing north and south or
east and west or you know, it's mowing at 45 degree angles, you know, so they're really
coming along with this technology. It's not there yet for our capabilities and what we
need. James, the the the robots that we demoed were 22 inches plus or minus. Yeah, the ones
you put in your yard and we basically have to get one for each field because by the time
it's being the field is actually being used and then irrigation and then the time it's
going to take to mow it, we we wouldn't necessarily be able to keep up with it. So it's just not
mowing fast enough and in a big enough unit yet to really for it to be effective on a
commercial scale. Did look at some remote controlled mowers and we believe actually
UNT has one if I'm not mistaken that you can use for slopes. You know, we have some on
our dams, but other than that is really probably not worth that investment. But we did demo
it and try it. So we're we're continuously looking for ways to try to improve that. Yeah,
that sounds like it'd be good like for sports fields if they get that technology, which
is relatively flat, right? Yeah, they're almost there. They're they're in a testing phase
for golf courses right now, which you know, the standard for golf courses is normally
higher than our sports fields. And so, like I said, they're in testing. They haven't released
any of these large movers yet. But we're we're staying on top of it. Okay. Thank you. And
Drew, you mentioned at the beginning, how many staff hours did you say would replace
approximately 1700 1700. And yes, ma'am. And almost six equivalents are about $60,000.
Okay, that was my next question. I guess from the leisure. Oh, go ahead. No. Any other questions
concerns? I mean, I guess by comparison, what is the cost of that lease? It's $10,000 a
year. Oh, well, it's no brainer. All right. Thanks. And that does include the equipment
and paint. Awesome. Laura, anything you wanted to add to the COVID update? Yes, on the leisure
service side, as Gary mentioned, North Lakes has been operational since June, and everything
is going really well there. So we feel comfortable in opening up our next rec center, which is
scheduled for right now, just after the holiday. And that's MLK. So we are working on backfilling
the staff that we'll need at North Lakes and then bringing on some additional staff to
help us with the operational hours at MLK. Similar to North Lakes, it's going to have
a very limited at the beginning, very limited operational hours, and then also programming.
And then again, as things begin to open up, and we feel comfortable, we'll also begin
to reopen more programming and extend hours. We're also gearing up for fall sports. Of
course, everything is tentative, but we do have plans for it. And we have already started
up some of our contracted sports. So these are going to be some of the outdoor, they're
all outdoor right now, outdoor sports programs, limited registrations. I think most of them
have a cap at 10 participants. And we've got flag football, I believe some soccer and outdoor
volleyball, sandpet volleyball going on right now, being held by our contractors. And then
we'll be working on reopening our internal sports leagues in the fall.
Okay, thank you, Laura. Brooke, you have a question?
I was just curious if you guys are doing any like outdoor yoga in the parks or anything?
Somebody asked me about that today, and they were in, I guess, Montana, and they had a
bunch of there. Of course, it was a lot cooler. But kind of maybe looking forward to this
fall when we know it'll be a little cooler. Is that something you guys are thinking about
of doing like Pilates in the park or any of those normal classes that you would teach
indoors, outdoors?
Yeah, we can definitely look at that. And Alicia right now has been doing a combination
of that. So we have started up some of our fitness, our group fitness programs, again,
limited capacity, I think the max on those are about 15. We do have one group that's
indoors, but the other groups are outdoors. So we are doing that. And then we have some
of our contractors, our regular contractors that normally have outdoor fitness groups
are also starting back up. Camp Gladiator is a good example of that.
I saw that. It's good to see. We are trying to definitely reimagine what our programming
is going to look like to meet current safety guidelines and requirements and also to meet
the demands and what we feel we can safely conduct.
Understandable. I asked a question to Drew with the whole paint. Does it paint circles?
Yes.
Now like you see all these things where people are sitting around in circle pods. And so it's
crossed my mind and for Dent Parts Foundation to do some kind of sit outside in your circle
thing.
Yes, it does. And then also it is on the verge of being able to paint logos. So right now
it can paint logos, but it's time intensive to plug those logos into the machine. And
another good reason why we leased it was like we talked about that the technology is moving
so fast and growing so fast that to buy the machine and then have to turn around and pay
you know a lot of money for all the upgrades to it. Leasing it made more sense to us for
that way all the upgrades come with the machine. And so they're almost there. We talked about
it last week about painting the different colored logos. So whether that be a flag or
you know one of the school logos or one of our you know our DBBI or you know DYSA.
Yeah, almost any logo. So they're working on it right now on how to program whether
that be you know a picture or JPEG into the machine and immediately for it to be able
to paint those logos.
You know there might be some sponsorship opportunities in that too.
Here we go. Any additional information? Okay, that is not an action item. That is an information
item. The next item is to receive a report hold a discussion regarding the Parks and
Recreation Department fiscal year 2020-21 proposed operating budget and organizational
changes. So Francis, this is Gary Pack and we're going to go ahead and go through the
budget. Since we're doing zoom meetings technically we need to be showing everybody's picture
when there's conversation. So if there's a if there is a question we can pause after
a few slides and then take the PowerPoint down and then if there's any questions or
we can wait until the end and just everybody could ask questions at that point in time.
So Francis if you want to chime in and just let me know when you'd like to pause or we'll
just keep going until we hear otherwise. So typically what we've done in the past few
years since since we've all been here is provide you a draft budget presentation before we
go to council. This year is a little bit different. Everything was was a little bit more hurried
because of timing and COVID and ultimately we really didn't get we didn't go through
our typical budget process and it was just basically moving the same numbers forward
with some minor adjustments with staffing and some some minor costs but we didn't go
through discussions for supplemental increases. We took all our supplementals off except for
one and and we'll go through that but we'll go ahead and start through this. I'm going
to jump in and then also Laura and Drew are going to jump in when there's specific items
related to to their world. The picture if Eddie you can go back to the first slide.
You know two of the biggest accomplishments that we did this year aren't for things that
we're doing today. They're for things that we're doing for tomorrow and really probably
10 to 20 years from now and that's been working on buying land and we've had some discussions
about this over the past year in regards to how we're going about trying to find parks
and we did have an item on our agenda for this evening for land discussion. I talked
to Frances earlier that it needed to be in a closed session because it's sensitive information
and that was pulled. I guess we can't have closed sessions during the park board so we
will have to read that and bring it back next month but two of the biggest things we did
this year was buying the Mills property which is 70 acres. It's a future city park that
is on the east side of the city. It has about a four acre pond a lot of native trees. There's
a lot of blackjack oaks out there that we saw while exploring in post oaks and then
the other one was actually our first and that was a conservation easement over Pilot Knob
which will eventually it's going to be coming in two parts. The first half has not been
recorded yet. It has to be recorded before they start moving anything out at Hunter Ranch.
I think their timeline is October 1 it has to be recorded at the county and we'll share
an update with you when that does happen but that's that's a major major win for us as
well and not just only the conservation easement but all the acreage in the in the parks that
we've planned through the Hunter Coal Ranch agreements. So those parks will be built free
of charge for city residents. They will be maintained free of charge for city residents.
If there's anything specific that we put in there above and beyond the standard like a
library or a rec center we'll have to take care of that but those those are some major
wins for tomorrow not necessary for today. So we'll go ahead and jump into the PowerPoint.
Next slide. And we broke this out into parks with some of the things we've done over the
past year over the past year and then some things that we're moving towards in the future.
I'll let Drew go ahead and chime in and then I'll may jump in if he if I want to add something
to his his explanation. Thank you Gary and with our accomplishments our Urban Forest
Master Plan was taken to council we've made the edits and we have a we have a date soon
to go back to them to fully recognize and adopt the Urban Forest Master Plan. The city-wide
IPM plan Laura took that and I know we have a presentation later in this meeting you know
that what that was adopted by council you know our naming policy was adopted our five
year CIP or excuse me our five year CIP plan I can talk was adopted our parks and trail
system plan is we have a meeting soon to finalize it for our master plan our 915 916 ordinance
that we're continuing on and we're really close to having a resolution on that. And
so with Gary talked about with our with our accomplishments with park purchase our land
purchasing and construction so that Gary spoke about the Mills property that we're really
excited about North Lakes Dog Park I hope most of you have been able to attend you know
get to experience that but you know that's been a real big hit we we installed with the
Park Foundation's help we installed the first pavilion out there it looks really nice Dallas
and Teasley that area was completed the ALH American Legion Hall Senior Center that construction
has started the tennis center that construction has started also North Lakes Fishing Pier
was replaced right before COVID around March 12th or 13th Carnegie Ridge and Razor Ranch
properties Carnegie Ridge that park has been completed it's all sodded in the playgrounds
there pavilions been built and so it it's a really nice place if you haven't got to see
it yet also we did replace six playgrounds and more coming I know we brought to that
you know to you last meeting with McKenna Bowling Green Mack and Joe Skals the restrooms
at Carl Young were completed and I know that you know that's for mainly the splash pad
and although that didn't get to use this get to be used this year it will be hopefully
be able to use next year and so the scoreboards are complete so we got all brand new scoreboards
on all our ball fields and so those are those are working out really nice we're in the process
of training the sports groups on how to use those scoreboards now the natatorium the leisure
pool during COVID time we had it completely renovated and it it looks really nice also
green ribbon grant for us 380 and 2499 we are having and seeing more movement on us
380 right now that one that one is started and the design for 2499 is at Tex dot now
to get approved just just to jump in there a quick on on the natatorium before COVID
hit we had a quote from that don't quote me on the numbers but I think it was around
fifty thousand dollars it was fifty four dollars and then yeah after COVID hit we went back
to them and asked for an updated quote because it was a little stale and it dropped significantly
and on top of that we were already closed so we we didn't have to close and lose revenue
on top of that so that was actually a benefit of of COVID there's not many of them but that
is something that we're able to capitalize off of and then the green ribbon grants just
just to remind you the total on these two is about one point three plus million dollars
in funding that we received from text thought for beautification but I think the purpose
of that grant is air quality improvement by putting landscaping on major roadways so that's
an opportunity that that we're able to capitalize on obviously we have to maintain that long
term but all of the installation and construction and product is is being done through that
grant through text thoughts so that's something we've been able to to capitalize on all right
and to continue so our our athletic staff and on one of our last meetings that we talked
about they really helped during COVID time whenever most of their activities were shut
down they helped paint all our restrooms concession stands and our foul poles and then with our
new mowing contracts that will are set to go to council really soon and that will start
our land management program so it's a city-wide mowing program currently there's 11 different
departments conducting the billing and management of mowing whether that be in-house or contracted
and so that's all going to go to the parks department and that'll fall under our land
management program it's also going to oversee our forestry department with our urban forester
and with our contracts contracts and in-house crews that maintain our trees and then of
course our exploration of green equipment that we talked about earlier adoption of our
master plan that like I said that's underway we have some we picked a contractor and we
have some meetings set up for our full master plan the southwest park master plan that those
meetings will start soon in fact on believe that this week we have our first meeting for
our focus group villages of carmel we we're in the process of hiring a contractor for
both both villages of carmel property and bowling green park and then we're still looking
into exactly what we're going to do for the inclusive playground plan so we've launched
an update of the 915 916 ordinance and acquired land being development and agreements and
bond efforts so like gary said that we'll be bringing back to you those areas on where
we're working out with developers on acquiring land through their development process and
then also land that we have earmarked for possible purchase with our bond money go ahead
gary just sorry sorry june we jump in just as a reminder on that so we have uh one million
dollars from the 2014 bond program that we received last fall um then uh we're giving
the go-ahead on it and it was put on hold during covet uh for budgetary concerns that's
been released uh it's it's earmarked for south denton um so we're looking at property in
further south denton not just necessarily just south of 35e um but south then and then
the 2019 bond program it will not be sold until 2021 and then the balance of it in 2023
as of right now now that's subject to change but that's how it's projected as of right
now with the finance department but that doesn't mean we're not looking for land and if something
comes up that's um something we need to jump on you know we we can work with finance try
to get that adjusted and council obviously as directed so just wanted to give you an
update on that funding all right thank you gary and in park improvements we have a we're
going to show you our our new plan for mckenna park soon in this meeting eagle and elm the
contractors for the peck four project they they have they're on they have a schedule
to replace the broken concrete in the area that they disturbed during the construction
of the water and sewer line and drainage that they that they did there at the eagle and
elm in that median uh once they're out of the way we will we will complete the project
that we started at eagle and elm bowling green park we talked about we're we're hiring
a contractor for that for the master plan and the redevelopment for bowling green southlake
park those are with the tennis courts so their design is almost complete and once it's complete
we'll be able to put a contract out to install the tennis courts that were that was on the
on the bond with the lighting for both courts quaker town park we did receive a cdbg grant
to add lighting to quicker town park plus to read to finish the phasing of the playground
replacement so the photometrics for the lighting of quicker town that study is scheduled to
be complete by september 15th and once it's complete we'll be ready whenever the funds
are released in october 1 to be able to put that out for bid uh joe skiles park or mac
park those are playgrounds and then of course the renovation of the lake forest dam and
dredging lake forest project is almost complete we have the last of our comments to the engineer
we gave those back last week and so the specs are being written and we plan on putting that
out to bid late september early october for their construction to start this winter like
we talked about the citywide mowing there are 11 different departments dealing with
operations and billing and management of that mowing and that'll all follow the parks department
and that will be taken care of with our land management program and then gary already spoke
about the 2014 bond program and implementation of the planning efforts for the 14 bond where
we're going through and looking at the land and how we have identified it so and we're
continue to growth in our trail system through partnerships with ds engineering and the mobility
plan so with all this you know we're constantly looking at where development is going and
then where are mobility plans going and how that changes and then where we can add those
10-foot trails and where we can add trail connections whether that be for parks or for
you know accessibility throughout our city and then of course the dedications of alh
tennis center and the new parks here for questions yes eddie if you go ahead take that slide
down
okay questions i see james hand
yeah thanks uh just real quick question on the on the trails uh you know do we have updates
on that master the master trail plan yes actually um we are trying to get a public meeting scheduled
to give the general public an update just to back up a little bit um when when glenn
left back in february the the planning stopped and then march covet hit so
did he freeze for everybody yes we've lost him
it's okay if he doesn't come back in a second i'll i'll chime in
so is somebody working on that
i just texted them glenn no he was frozen
okay while gary while gary comes back i'll i'll chime in on this so we don't have a stance
too long with stand still so what gary was going at is when you know our when glenn left
in february and then covet hit in march a lot of our master planning went on pause we
did go through an rfq process and we're hiring a firm a landscape architect firm to finish
our master plan with that we've continued to work with dr walker with unt like we said
we've been working with development services and the mobility plan to complete to complete
our master plan in our trail space so we're looking at all these developments and with
that we we had a scheduled meeting for a trail for a you know a public meeting for trails
uh that did get pushed off due to due to other you know priorities that have that have come
up we plan on having that that public meeting really soon and you of course you'll be notified
of that so with that we will take and then we have a small focus group for trails that's
going on right now that we continuously contact you know contact stay in contact with those
people to to really go over hey this is where we're going what did we miss what do you see
how we can improve so that'll be something that we'll be bringing to you really shortly
okay any additional questions yes brook i was just curious if you guys took in mind
when you were moving forward with this new kind of contractor covid taking in mind and
kind of the social unrest of how to move forward with the master plan like do you suspect that
that will have an i mean i'm gonna suspect your overall master plan but yes assumption
on my part so i just wanted to hear that from you guys that you think that would change
it yes definitely all right eddie you want to pull the slides back up or we have any
other questions all right let's go on with the with the powerpoint
all right eddie we go to the next slide okay i'm going to take this um on the leisure service
accomplishments uh we have covid related administrative activities um of course we've put together
a comprehensive reopening plan uh with eddie we worked on updating our board manuals and
then also with carly and autumn our ktb crew uh we've updated the volunteer manual and
have actually made that more comprehensive to cover our parks programming as well during
the covid time we've launched a virtual recreation center i hope everyone's had an opportunity
to see that it's it's pretty comprehensive and it's just frankly pretty awesome so there's
been a lot of work done on our virtual rec center um we have existing and new programs
and special events that have gone virtual we work together with arts and jazz and juneteenth
to do a virtual event take their their traditional annual events on a virtual platform as well
as our fourth of july parade and our liberty run so even though our um special events are
still currently on pause under state orders and a state proclamation we are able to continue
to have some of those activities on a virtual platform uh we have a reopening process for
uh golf tennis north lakes recreation center all which have been introduced and are going
well during this time we've also uh gone into some partnerships with our summer food program
uh traditionally we have a contractor sthp but we also joined forces with disd this year
seeing the overwhelming need over the um springtime for food and addressing food insecurity throughout
our community we transformed our summer food program into a grab and go service that continues
to operate and it was recently extended due to the late reopening of school as well we
have operating agreements with unt and disd now we've had standing kind of partnerships
with them but those have been turned into actual formal agreements for our services
that in programs that we do together if you've been out into quaker town park you've probably
noticed a little bit of construction going on just behind the library and that's the
new nook which is a partnership that we're doing with our rotary a local local rotary
group the library and the library foundation we held a virtual groundbreaking on that our
very own francis was in that video so um that was also another great accomplishment that
we got started on during this time frame and then as drew mentioned we have our uh we're
working with you and uh you and t and dr walker on the trails master plan and uh stay
in contact with our focus groups during that process during this uh last several months
too we've really um trans kind of transformed ourselves into social service providers uh
staff has operated a hygiene station at the civic center pool we've also assisted non-profits
in their day-to-day operations when their volunteers were unable to come in and then
we also reimagined our uh inclement weather station normally our uh our recreation centers
serve as inclement weather stations during the summer but because they're closed and
north lakes is is kind of an out-of-the-way location for people to use we opened up the
civic center under those um specific conditions when we would open for an inclement weather
we actually were open several days last week and they're able to continue to provide that
service to our community during this time and then on the grant side we have received
some um some very good news and not official but some strong indication that the um tennis
usta uh grant that we applied for um will be awarded to us so again we're waiting on
official notification on that and then kind of what we're looking to in the future um
of course we're relaunching our facilities in safe and efficient ways and as outlined
in our reopening action plan that's really where the majority of our resources are right
now and where we're focused on is is opening back up and i think it's going to take a little
bit before you know we get back to those pre-covid days but we're we're certainly working towards
that goal in mind during this time too we're also evaluating each program that we start
back up based not only on our cost of service model but also again evaluating the safety
of those programs and the resources that we have available to stand those back up we are
looking at uh or of course continuing to work on our accreditation our capra which you've
heard a lot about uh and we're also merging our kdb civic center and special uh event
area into one this is going to be again with autumn and carly coming on board and a lot
of what they do um really fits well into our special events um they bring a lot of experience
into this area again carly with the volunteer groups and then both of them have done pretty
large events uh in their kdb role so merging these groups together will give us a more
focused and comprehensive group to help not only with our internal programming but also
with our external programs and events as well and then we're also working with our economic
development group moving forward to bring forward some public art projects that include
the installation of a mural on robeson this is going to be the mural that was originally
on mr hudspeth's building on oak street and that's going to be repainted in an underpass
on robeson kind of in that entrance to southeast denton and then we're also working on several
sculptural projects at vela the tennis center and some other locations laura that's robertson
underpass not robertson oh i'm sorry i'm yes robertson robertson same letters different
yes and then um marketing and promotional efforts are going to play a huge role in relaunching
our facilities and our programs not only again are we going to have to communicate what these
programs are looking like a little bit different in the future but equally safe and certainly
in terms of the the level of performance in them but also making people feel comfortable
in coming back and getting the word out that again we're we're reopened for business and
so getting information out on programs but also encouraging our our regulars to come
back and then also hopefully getting some of our getting some new customers in the door
so marketing and promotion is going to be very important to us over the next year and
then with the alh schedule to open in the spring of next year that'll give us an opportunity
to also revamp programming there it's uh it traditionally been very passive uh programming
but this new building will allow us to do more active programming in the future so we're
excited about that can we pause here for questions
francis if i can jump in real quick my uh my wi-fi battery died and i had to plug in
um and i it sounds like drew had provided james an update but just a real quick uh add
on to that um we are we're working try to get a another public meeting conducted on
the trails plan to share the planned trails that we have laid out um we have a very detailed
spreadsheet that has uh two over 200 miles of trails that are conceptualized across the
city that are broken into three sections one are side paths which are 10-foot trails you
know maybe sometimes a little little less than that or more along major roadways such
as bonnie bray or what you see out at mayhill today that's a side path internal trails within
our parks uh drew's going to talk about mckenna loop that's an internal trail and installing
those within our park system and then along our creeks and drainage areas where we could
connect through greenways uh connecting city assets neighborhoods those types of things
so that's that's a real major uh web of the master plan that we've really been working
on during the pandemic to try to get that uh so we plan on trying to get a public meeting
approximately within the next three or four weeks um but we'll have a draft share with
you guys for the next meeting uh and we'll try to get that ahead of you uh so you can
look at a little bit and you can call if you have any specific questions but it's kind
of complicated um with with all the phases so it might be hard to follow but we'll definitely
walk through the map with you at the next meeting at our next agenda um so i just wanted
to kind of add to what drew had mentioned if he didn't say all that already okay okay
laura i have a question uh you said there were some virtual partnerships and um is there
one plan for the blues fest not that i'm specifically aware of i don't know um what level of communication
jennifer has had with them but i do know that she is communicating with all of our um kind
of annual events to go ahead and start getting some general information from them if and
when we are able to reopen special events or those are allowed to occur so i i'm sorry
i don't have any any more information on that but i can definitely ask her and get back
to see if she's had an opportunity to talk to her if they've reached out and have wanted
to to plan for doing a virtual option okay thank you you spoke about the social services
the hygiene station and the civic center is that mainly for our homeless population yes
ma'am that is um those services were open for our residents that are experiencing homelessness
again primarily because the direct service providers in our community um you know had
been shut down or their own operations uh were restricted and limited so we were trying
to fill the gap um to kind of carry us through until they could get back into full operations
just just add to what laura mentioned um during this time carly basically organized uh volunteer
efforts for our daily bread as well so we had parks and recreation was a major contributor
in that as well as staff throughout the entire city basically propping that open because
a lot of their volunteers are older and were that vulnerable population and was were concerned
about volunteering so um staff that were working from home uh or even if they were just finding
time throughout their day go over there and helping out from uh 8 a.m to 1 p.m every day
uh helping make make lunches and meals for people and then we also had people delivering
meals at the hotel in which the uh some some of the individuals uh the residents are living
at right now and delivering meals to them as well so and then we helped a little bit
with a child care facility that was up and running for a little bit and it also helped
with some interpretation assistance as well so the city really reached out and provided
a lot of support in some aspects we still are but we are not doing uh the the prop up
of the volunteering for our daily bread and now so that that has ceased um but we were
very active um helping out the community in various ways which was you know totally different
from our typical business thank you thank you so much for that information any additional
questions i was just gonna say thank you for doing that working in the non-profit sector
i'm just saying like i have been at those agencies and it's terrible so i just appreciate
you guys stepping up because i know you're not social workers and you didn't necessarily
sign up thinking you were gonna be you know giving out food or you know helping out shelter
so thank you for doing that and keeping your people employed yes good job one other good
thing that you just you helped me remember was our senior center staff was reaching out
to our senior members and just chiming in with them and calling them up and seeing how
they're doing because some of them you know don't have family especially if they can't
come visit them so they are really isolated even if their family you know down the street
they might do a drive-by but we had some drive-by you know birthday celebrations and those types
of things and so we had staff reaching out to them and if they expressed some concerns
some issues we tried connecting them i mean we're not social workers but we tried providing
them opportunities to where they could get some additional assistance and then we also
still helped with Meals on Wheels as well and those are ongoing efforts too so our staff
does continue to to reach out to our seniors they actually conducted a survey to see what
their needs were because their needs at the beginning of this pandemic are very different
than the needs that they have now and some of them overlap so we wanted to get a feel
for where they were today versus where they were four months ago and then as Gary mentioned
yeah we've done some some of those parades so that they can continue to stay connected
with each other and then we have some online bingo activities and things that they normally
like to do in the rec center but we've also provided a lot of educational and information
educational information online such as videos on how to zoom and and that sort of thing
to help them stay connected on their own with their family and their friends so again those
those are continuing efforts that we're doing with our senior center staff thank you lara
thank you so much and your work is to be commended i agree with brooke it is um let me see 357
we're scheduled to be done by five so if we could go back to the powerpoint speed it up
there's a lot of good information here to share with you guys it is
i'll go ahead and take this one um you know like we have been just talking about change
is is something that we've experienced quite a bit just like everybody on this call and
everybody in our community i mean we're no different um but we tried to adapt as quickly
as we could um parks and recreation adapted differently than what leisure services did
uh like we mentioned they were short 16 people with seasonal and uh seasonal and full-time
employees uh but with the same expectations from the community our parks were the heaviest
probably they've ever been used uh for just typical drop and outside of you know arts
and jazz or major events uh and without a contractor um we had to pick that up um and
then in the spring it was raining a lot so that was a major challenge for us and then
on top of that we spread all of our maintenance staff over four or five different locations
to try to keep them in smaller groups uh that did impact our service levels and we're still
seeing that but we're working aggressively to try to do that i've mentioned earlier about
our approach in park and trail planning that really hasn't slowed down um we continue to
try to be as aggressive as we can to pick up with that we are working aggressively in
land acquisition with our development community to try to get free land specifically in key
locations along our proposed trail system uh and then our 915 16 ordinance which will
help significantly uh and then we talked a little bit about all of our planning efforts
with the urban forest plan uh the implementation of our ipm philosophy um you know we we really
haven't even got going on that yet in most most ways um and then our city-wide land management
um drew had mentioned we're taking on uh land management mowing for the entire city uh which
is a major challenge for us and we're creating a new team which i'll share with you here
in a future slide in regards to some some staff changes from a leisure services standpoint
uh and really across the entire organization we put job success profiling together to help
staff uh realize what their personal goals are and make sure that's communicated and
give them some reach opportunities and and identify key areas in the strategic plan that
they can be involved in and obviously just adjusting to remote work lifestyle everything
from getting laptops to people getting them set up getting everybody to learn how to use
zoom and and teams and all that was was a big challenge um in just changing the way
we operate and then social service change we talked about that in virtual programming
uh rebuilding all of our businesses in some aspects we're going to have to start from
scratch because we're not going to be right back to normal on day one and we realized
that some organizational structures which i do have in the slide i'll share with you
in a second um and then ultimately what does our business look like in the future are people's
recreation needs going to change to their they're more outdoors they're not using indoor
facilities are they in smaller groups is it more self-guided and self-motivated you know
we just don't know yet because we're still in covid and we're not post yet so uh we're
still trying to keep our our eyes to the future on that next slide uh just just some recap
here and this is and we kind of said most of this already this is you know where where
are we going to be at post covid um our recreation centers right now are more or less just membership
and pass holders and and limited programming um we're mowing our parks based on priority
basis as opposed to class classification schedules and it's more response uh driven um we we
had a multiple multiple number of projects were on hold that were starting to to get
back on track and then obviously we had a huge increase in our general open space in
our park usage next slide so our reopening plan um laura had mentioned a lot of this
already so i won't repeat this we're still planning on the civic center denia in in the
senior center to open probably towards the end of the year or the beginning of the year
um you know that might that's obviously going to depend on the health of the community and
what's going on with covid but also demand the services too we're not going to necessarily
open everything up just to have them open uh we need to make sure that we have uh specific
plans related to that so we're working on all that some of the things that are some
of the high high button issues that are out there after school action site uh you know
just like our summer summer camps we didn't offer those programs because we're concerned
about uh propping something open haven't have people depend on those programs and then something
happens someone gets sick and we have to shut it down for two weeks now everyone's scrambling
for services um so it's really a double-edged sword in that and it's it's a difficult decision
uh so that as of right now that's delayed um our full-time preschool uh we anticipate
that being canceled but council wants us to look into a little bit of more of that so
we're working on that and then obviously senior programs and events are delayed until further
notice next slide so uh from the parks or charts everything you see in yellow are still
frozen positions uh and i don't expect to be able to read all these titles but uh those
are positions that were vsp'd for the most part which took our voluntary separation program
or that we didn't have an opportunity to rehire yet and then some of our seasonal positions
the items in blue or the light blue are positions that we received from that city city manager's
office committee to replace so we're in the process of replacing all those people the
the group in green and orange is a new group to our team um we've added our mobile response
team we're going to take on the mowing of the cemeteries that's been a major issue for
our contractors it's very difficult and time-consuming um and a reason why some of those uh contractors
haven't been successful not the only reason but they contributed to it um so we're going
to take on that responsibility as well as hire uh mowing some high-profile areas that
we want to make sure are done right and not done incorrectly and then the two green positions
are going to be managing all of the contracts throughout the city um so those 11 departments
that were mowing and managing all of that this team is going to be taking care of that
the land manager is similar to craig and russell's position as well with just the focus on land
um that person is also going to oversee our ipm program so we have a person that's going
to be dedicated just to that effort as well as the contracts so that's going to be their
two main focus areas then the next chart is our leisure services group oh if i can i can
back up one time uh one more we did promote drew to assistant director so congratulations
drew with some of the uh additions and in positions uh we it was an opportunity to for
him to take that step uh so he'll be over all of this plus planning our park planning
efforts leisure services uh org charts uh again the all the positions in yellow are
vacant and are not being filled right now those will be systematically replaced as we
continue to drip open our facilities so we didn't want to bring a bunch of people on
board and just have people sitting around so we're bringing them on as needed so we
kind of have dominos that we have set up that will start falling in a systematic uh routine
and then the items in blue are those seasonal positions that we're starting to get ready
uh for the natatorium to be open when the isd is ready to go um and that discussion
is is taking place right now and then also um opening of the mlk junior recreation center
so from a park revenue standpoint um you know we don't know what our revenues are going
to be we we know where they were so the light blue bars are our 1920 budget that's we started
this fiscal year off with that we anticipated on acquiring um the kind of the mid blue color
is our 1920 adjusted estimate so you could see the amount of revenue that we lost it
was significant um and we don't anticipate that revenue coming back just because the
budget flips to october 1 so as as a temporary measure to just get a starting point we took
the facilities that are not going to be open through the first quarter and zeroed out all
of those revenues for that first quarter then we took everything else and cut it by 25%
that may not be aggressive enough um but that's our starting point each month staff will be
going back and looking at their budget and read uh readjusting their revenues and expenses
based off of what's going on at that time so we can give finance an update every single
month on where we feel we're going to be projected our revenues and make adjustments accordingly
so they have that forecasted uh every every 30 days our fee schedule um heather's going
to jump here in a second but i'll go ahead and take this one obviously with a pandemic
in the economy the way it is we're not proposing to increase any fees we really don't even
have any programs that are for the most part up and running if anything we're going to
reduce a couple fees so um we're going to make some adjustments to our cemeterial burial
permit late fee and drop it from a 500 to 100 that was primarily put in place a number
of years ago just to get people to um appreciate deadlines for the most part uh and not having
staff to scramble and try to get things set up quickly so we're we're going to drop that
down and then some wording in regards to the the burial permit in regards to um the the
wording changes in regards to the late fee and and within 24 business hours as opposed
to i'm sorry 48 hour notice as opposed to 24 hours that just was confusing to people
so uh we're going to make those adjustments uh moving forward for this coming year next
slide heather do you want to jump in on this or you want me to take this i'll go ahead
okay all right good afternoon um so this slide is our fte summary so fte stands for a full-time
employee um and you'll see that we have some some percentages here so basically uh this
includes our full-time professional employees as well as our seasonal positions so since
seasonals don't work a full 40 hours a week that's why you have these point um points
of an fte so um if you look at that first column the 1920 budget for our fte's was 164.63
um at some point during uh covid we had 84.88 vacant ftes we've been approved to refill 73.88
um gary mentioned that on the org chart slides those were the positions that were in blue
that have been approved for refill so going into 2021 budgets and we are adding 8.16 new
fte's those are coming in with keep them beautiful officially moving over to parks as well as the new
land management and citywide mowing positions that will be coming over so our fte's for 2021
are actually going to be um budgeted proposed at 161.79 um if you take into account that's
actually three less than we started this fiscal year off and we added new positions so we're
actually short um 11 positions from what we started this fiscal year with um and those are
positions that were either frozen because they were vacant or they were frozen after the voluntary
separation program so you'll see the summary here we have currently we'll have four frozen positions
in park maintenance two in aquatics and then five um in leisure services so we'll look to refill
those hopefully in the future as more of our programs are returning and more of our facilities
are opening all right next slide please so this is our proposed revenue for the general fund side
so just for clarification we have a general fund side of our budget and a recreation fund
so this is the general fund side of our budget the revenue is divided out by area in the first column
on the left you can see the actuals totaled for 1819 were about 2.3 million and then our budget
for 1920 was just a little bit over 2.3 million however as we showed in the previous slide on the
bar chart our 1920 estimate is significantly lower than what's budgeted we're estimating about
815 000 and then our preliminary estimate for 2021 is one point around 1.8 million
okay next slide please and this is our general fund expenses by category
so just to kind of sum them up at the bottom our actuals for 1819 were about 10.4 million
and our budget for the the start of this fiscal year for 1920 was a little over 12.1 million
and as you see our estimate for 1920 we're about 9.4 million so we do have some significant savings
there and then our proposed budget for 2021 is fairly close to what we started with 1920
and that's at about 12 point sorry 12.4 million and i'll get a little bit more into why that
increased in the next slide so this is still the general fund expenses but this is broken out by
division so if you look we have an increase from 1920 budget to the 2021 proposed budget
and mainly the changes are due to adding keep dentin beautiful officially into parks and recreation
adding that budget over into parks and recreation as well as we added the city-wide land management
the mowing and land management into the park maintenance budget so that's why there's an
increase there and you'll notice a little asterisk on park maintenance we will have some additional
funding coming over from community improvement services to help fund the the mowing for the
city-wide mowing program okay next slide please this is our recreation fund side of our budget
this is a five-year forecast so if the top portion of this slide is our actual revenues
or our resources so you'll see on the rec fund side this is broken out by area and for 1920 we
had adopted revenue of approximately 2.3 million and then our estimate for 1920 is dropped down to
745 000 but then with our preliminary for 2021 we're predicting roughly around 1.9 million
and that says about a 25 reduction with additional reductions for any facilities that won't open in
quarter one as gary mentioned it it may not be aggressive enough but you know we're just
not sure what the future holds it'll just depend on what we can get reopened what programs return
and and what when programs return what does that capacity look like how many people are going to
come back out and participate and then the bottom section of this slide is the total expenditures
for rec fund so for 1920 we had an adopted budget of about 6.7 million in expenses but our estimate
at this time is only around 4.6 million so we had significant savings due to covid most of those
savings were not hiring and paying our temp seizo employees just because we didn't have many
programs operating this summer so that's where most of those savings are coming from as well as
program supplies for programs that weren't in operation so you'll see our preliminary budget
for fiscal year 2021 is about 6.5 million which is still a savings over the 1920 adopted budget
you'll see in that last row the voluntary separation program we have about three hundred
and ten thousand dollars in savings just from frozen positions starting the 2021 budget
and then the next five years on are estimated on here basically at a two percent increase per year
that's just a starting point we hope to make up our revenue and bring it back up to the 1920 adopted
quicker than the two percent increase but it's just going to depend on how how things how quickly
things return to normal for us next slide and I think that concludes the presentation
so just as eddie's taking that down the the one thing that that we didn't mention in specific
regards to the budget was the merging of the kd group and the special events that is also
going to be including the staff from clear creek so we parks and recreation has received a portion
of the sustainability team that's the educational coordinator which is one full-time position and
then basically 1.5 fte's of interns or seasonal staff that help do some of the work on property
so between between that 3.5 fte's all those expenses are staying in the sustainability budget
at this point in time was just too late in the game in regards to moving things and it just became
very complicated and we're working on the budget up until the day before council trying to get
everything finalized so as of right now that's going to stay where it's at similar to how kdb
was operated this past year and then they came over in a final general fund kind of increase at
that point in time but drew's team and the interns are going to be helping with park maintenance
and then we'll also be working as a group for all things special events whether it's kdb special
events city special events like the egg hunt or internal events that we're hosting and people are
renting or even like the blues fest that group will be taking care of all of those activities
as well as events at clear creek all of the regulatory items that that sustainability does
is going to stay with sustainability we're primarily taking the the programmatic aspects
and merging that into that group so with events being closed right now it actually gives us an
opportunity to step back and get things organized and have a systematic approach on how we're going
to to organize staff and give them certain assignments so that is all in the works right
now and we'll be working on it this fall so when events do resume we'll be ready to go from that
perspective we've already had some meetings with a master naturalist out there and staff taking
tours of the property we're going to be meeting with the army corps of engineers in the next week
or so so we're we're starting to get things lined up for those operations
wow thank you so much gary any questions that's a lot of information
and i know we have a cover still but you can always give us a call or send us an email we
can kind of give you some specifics if you need to and and kind of go from there okay thank you
heather thank you gary if there are no questions this that was not an action item that was an
information item the next item is receive a report hold a discussion regarding an update on the
integrated pest management plan
okay i'm going to take this one um just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with the
integrated pest management plan this is ipm you can do the next slide
so just a quick recap of what actions have been taken over the last probably six to nine month
period early or at the end of last year 2019 we had a peer reviews conducted of an ipm that had
been reviewed by this committee our focus group and also by our city council and we'd been given
preliminary direction to move forward with and then during that time it was also transformed from
a park ipm to a city-wide ipm that was mainly driven by several of the things that
we've talked to you about here today with bringing city-wide mowing under one group bringing our
land management under one group and then just looking at how we maintain city-owned property
in general this final document was reviewed by our internal focus group in january and the
recommendations and feedback that we got from our peer review group and also from our focus group
were all incorporated into a new draft that was presented to city council and a park board
on the same day march 2nd a couple of months ago and then it was officially
adopted by resolution on june the 16th by our city council
so as i mentioned the three peer reviews we were really looking for some recognized experts in the
field to give us some input and feedback into the draft that we had put together it taken us about
a year almost a year and a half working with our focus group to put that draft together
we really wanted to get kind of different perspectives from each group and to give us
that comprehensive and a broad overview so we had texas a&m agri-life ipm institute of north
america and non-toxic neighborhoods all take a look and give us their input and their recommendations
all of their recommendations and inputs with just a few exceptions and we can definitely
go over those um were incorporated into the revised document and then ongoing we've got some
evaluation tools in place that include goals where we can design some specific objectives
and ways to monitor the work that we're doing that includes extended record keeping
and then we now have our focus group as a standing committee moving forward
major recommendations that came from those peer reviews were to incorporate two new goals
supporting pesticide use reduction and plan continuity and then the prioritization of
interventions and pesticide use which is really kind of the practice of the first bullet
is if you'll take a look if you had an opportunity to take a look at the plan again
the plan actually has a step-by-step priority of what types of pesticides
would use in what order depending on the land type another recommendation that came out was
converting our strategies to standard operating procedures what that really did for us is it broke
our document into two the plan acts as our policy and the standard operating procedures act as our
operating as our operating handbook for our part maintenance crews and also for our contractors
we also took a different look at how we approve our products and then also how we list them
so it's a little bit more transparent by listing the active ingredients in a product rather than
just listing the names that allows us to do a little bit more comprehensive review
of those ingredients since that's really what's important in what's being introduced into our
environment rather than the product name because the product name you may be familiar with the
product but not know exactly what's in it and then we included a process for evaluation and reporting
i think probably all three of our peer review groups gave us some input on an evaluation and
reporting process which have been included in the plan we also added soil testing as part of our
regular maintenance program and then last this was kind of peppered throughout the document
but we had several comments about defining or providing some specific detail in those procedures
moving forward for our part maintenance staff so they'd know exactly what to do
in carrying out maintenance protocols i'm not going to go through all of this but we went we
did go through it back in march we actually put together a matrix that summarized all of the
comments from each group the comments in red specifically are comments that were made by two
or in some cases all three of the peer review group so those were common comments that were made
in those in the feedback so this is texas a&m agri-live you can see the next one
ipm institute of north america gave us a pretty comprehensive feedback on different things that
we could do to look at different ways to look at our ipm process and just again a different
perspective but they they're one of their recommendations and it's actually twofold in this
that we would look for we would look at long term it's not necessarily under parks but under a
different city department was to put together an ipm program for our buildings so this ipm program
is just for outdoor land management it's one of their recommendations was to actually take the
next step and putting together an ipm for inside our buildings next slide non-toxic neighborhoods
also gave us some feedback again kind of a list of what what they proposed one of the recommendations
that they made again that we could look look at in the future was to hire a third party to conduct
regular site visits and put together reports based on their monitoring and again that's
something that we can look at in the future so what we're doing now is we've put together a
training program for our park maintenance crew so that they can get a better understanding good
understanding of what our philosophy is in ipm and then certainly what the expectations and the
practices are in putting that together exploration of practices and products you know druze talked
about some of the technology that he's testing that would go hand in hand with our our philosophy
of ipm and then we are also staying in close contact and communication with field advisors
and surveying what other cities are doing as well this is particularly handy when we're looking at
products seeing what other cities or other parks are using in terms of the products and the
effectiveness of it before we look at it evaluate it and determine to either test it or use it here
and as i mentioned before we'll have a standing ipm focus group it's going to be similar
to the structure that we had in putting this group together to update the ipm we'll have a minimum
of eight members meeting annually that's all part of the plan so it's in our policy and then we'll
definitely bring the group together on a more regular basis as needed and then one of the last
things that we'll will be doing moving forward is setting up a second pilot site at avondale park
this is going to be in partnership with non-toxic neighborhoods we are talking to them about having
a site visit as early as next month for them to come into denton visit this site and then put
together a program for us that's specific to avondale park for an organic maintenance plan
so that's really the update and where we are on ipm just just to add one other thing that
i mentioned earlier in regards to some of the org changes that land manager will be dedicated
uh not not a hundred percent but one of their primary goal
okay you may have been wanting to talk about the land manager so moving forward again we'll have a
dedicated uh staff member that will oversee the implementation of the program and really be able
to work day to day with our staff members on it coordinate what kind of activities and maintenance
projects will be going on in our parks but also to coordinate with our contractors which will be
a big piece of this because we do have not only you know different contractors but they're
also taking care of all different types of our city-owned property so everything from
you know rideaways to um our actual you know playground areas and park areas
so it'll be important that they um know and understand what our philosophy is on land
maintenance have that information in front of them and then have somebody actually monitor
their performance and ensuring that they comply with ipm thank you laura for providing that
clarification james you have a question yeah just real quick i you know we had the uh uh the mule
program i guess i'll call it two weeds instead of using uh sprays and such uh the goat program
the goat program sorry you had a mule and a goat sorry i'll get them both i'll get it done so how
did that how did that work out so so i'll chime in on that one because the goat program did really
well so not only did we look at that as i could be you know a a grazing area for them to control
the weeds and and really what we what help was what help was i don't know what happened there
but what help was control the privet in that area so also we partnered you know we're city-wide so
we partnered with the environmental team that we have they came in and did assessment of the
area before the goats and then after the goats and so it worked really well to where uh there's
there's a really good space of a riparian effort that's rebuilding upon itself at the moment you
know not only were they there eating all the weeds and privet but they were also fertilizing
the area at the same time and so it has a really good stand of inland sea oats and we have some
really nice saplings starting to grow in that area where they were so oh wow very good so are we
going to continue the program we may i'm working on that at the moment any additional questions
wants to start a farm sorry i can cut off but uh i don't know if drew added but i just wanted to
chime in again um that you know trying to put more emphasis on this we spent a lot of time
getting to this point and a lot of resources um and that ipm land manager is going to be it's
going to be a major focal focal point for them uh implementing this training staff training our
contractors to make sure they're following our ipm which laura didn't even mention but that's
that's a major uh process as well as getting them on board and um in trying to stay up with
technology and and what's going on in that industry with with so many changes that are always
you know coming about so that is going to be a major uh focal point for them
okay alana you have a question you're you're muted no it's funny doesn't show her as muted
but we can't hear billy is there is is she muted by us by chance she's not it might just be a
connectivity issue but a lot if you want to keep trying or if you want to put something in the um
in the chat well actually we don't have that feature here on these but um i'm happy you wanted
to to take an email or anything that i might be able to help you with
okay any other questions
okay uh again this is not an action item this is an information item so the next item is item e
receive a report hold a discussion regarding kenna park improvement updates
who's going to take that one gary
okay i'll go ahead and start this and i'll let drew chime in eddie if you could bring out the
the design the map of the park um we'll see how that shows up on the screen so back in um the
spring of 2019 uh we went to council we came to park board and we um had a public meeting and had
a lot of discussion feedback in regards to improvements that that we are looking to make
at the park with the opportunity really with scripture and bonnie bray and thomas all three
roads around that park being rebuilt uh how could we use that to help improve the park um so with
with those three roads being built a lot of construction going on they did use a part of
mckenna for the whole dirt so they could get that uh roundabout uh constructed and reopened as
quickly as possible uh instead of having delays of having to truck that off property they put it
there um and then it was also a cost so that's something that we're working with them and drew
will talk about here in a second but also taking the opportunity instead of putting sidewalks
directly down the side you know 10 feet inside of curb on three sides to really use that as an
opportunity to pull those sidewalks into the park a little bit uh work with the topography and and
use that funding to create a loop trail so we're really um you know two birds one stone type thing
and taking that opportunity at the same time we had planned to replace the playground as part of
the 2014 bond program that's the last playground as part of that bond effort uh to be replaced uh
so i'll go ahead and and pause here and let drew jump in all right thank you gary so the first
slide that we have up here i got late friday evening and so this didn't get to be added in
your package but this is one of the things that we wanted to show you so well you can see eddie if
if you want to put your cursor over where the playground the new playground yes in that area
so that's where the new playground is going to go and as you can see the trails will be connected
to the new playground so eddie can you go the next slide to show the overall view of mckenna
it's on our agenda presentation from mckenna
while he's doing that you can see the new so you can see we're like what gary said we work with
capital projects they helped us design where the trails are going to go and so in your packet you
could see that the trails aren't like gary said right up against the you know right up against the
the road and so with this i i know it's kind of hard to measure on that map but it's it's really
close to a half mile loop so runners for instance mr shuck you know you know if you you go out and
you run that that trail you know we plan on hopefully in the future putting signage on there
so you can really keep track of you know your distances on you know you'll have a new running
spot or a new walking spot there at mckenna so with like what gary talked about and we'll show
on the presentation here in a second when eddie gets it pulled up so those trails except for a
small spot on the very north end all of them are 10 foot wide and the only reason they're going to
narrow down to eight foot in the areas where the trees are is to protect those trees so and they'll
be that that area will be elevated just a little bit and it'll have retaining walls with with railing
on it now where you see and if you've been out there and you saw in the presentation where it shows
there'll be where the dirt is now it's 6 000 cubic yards of dirt around 200 to 300 cubic yards of
dirt will be removed it's spoil it's non-usable so we'll remove that you know i'm sure you saw
there's there's chunks of asphalt and concrete and old pipe all that will be removed the good
dirt will be placed it'll be leveled out where it is now and then moved over to the area
excuse me eddie it's on the presentation we have
for park board pull up the website the website eddie just pull one of the exhibits up i'll continue
to talk while eddie's pulling that up so where the dirt is it'll some of that dirt will be shifted
over in an open space that right now has a little bit of elevation change to it so it's more of a
flat play space we will not lose and i took gary out last week to really show him what's going to
happen on there we will not lose ski mckenna typically ski mckenna is from where the fence is
there at the north i guess it'd be the northwest corner of the water tower from there to the first
set of trees is approximately 200 feet normally most people ski to about the trees stop and then
walk back up the hill so what'll happen is if you go past the trees now while you're skiing mckenna
is you'll come to a slightly you'll come you'll come to a slight pause and then go back down
so you'll you'll ski 200 feet go past the trees you'll still have some a smaller elevation change
there it'll be a little flatter not quite you know as steep you'll come down and then it'll go to back
to a three to one or a four to one slope to the next set of trees so all this dirt is being moved
in and you know it's being moved around the trees so we don't impact those post oaks and trees that
are there at mckenna and then what dirt doesn't get used in mckenna park so thank you eddie for
pulling that up so what dirt doesn't get used in mckenna will be moved over in a mogul style
at the south i guess the southeast corner of scripture and bonnie bray where those houses came
down so i guess just to add to what what drew has said what we what we're trying to do is balance
the expense for the city to haul that dirt off i don't know if i remember the exact the exact
number but i thought it was ninety thousand dollars true it was close to a hundred thousand
dollars yes sir to truck that dirt and see if we couldn't kind of lose it in the park
in some form or fashion and trying to improve some of that space so if you see that rectangle
kind of up towards the north section of the park we tried creating a plateau that could be used for
soccer or just open play that was more flat on that section of the park you see the grade levels
as they get tighter it gets steeper i think drew you said it's one to three
yes sir three to one to a four to one slope depending on the grade in that area yes
so so that so i i think we've accomplished everything that we talked about in the public
meeting and we we provided the notes and kind of put some comments in there so you could see that
the only thing it's different is the dirt because we didn't have that as a challenge or opportunity
and we're trying to take a challenge and turning it into an opportunity so drew and i talked about
having another public meeting for mckenna just to share this because we because this this is kind of
more a destination park because of the the i don't know how much skiing is going on there but uh
sled riding but schema canna we don't want to uh we don't want to disrupt that and make sure that
the community still uh is is understanding of what we're trying to accomplish and these uh the plus
plus i guess in regards to if you had any thoughts or feedback on that um and then turn around and
take it to the public and meet with the neighborhood again uh to to gain some feedback from them in
regards to uh that soil being on property so that i would have and then we did put a parking lot
got that go ahead so we did move the old parking lot we moved it up you know to the the far east
side off of thomas street instead of being off bonnie bray where it used to be so there will be
a parking lot there and then you can see that the trails will lead to the playground and then you
can see the the two x's we have on on this map here shows where the where two pavilions are those
two pavilions will be removed one of them has an asbestos roof so obviously it needs to be taken
out and it'll be taken out soon and then those two pavilions removed to a better area so the
pavilion up on the north east corner it it'll be put back but in a different location somewhere
near that pavilion the pavilion kind of in the middle of the park that one will be moved closer
to the playground so i know alana brought up you know last time about you know we would we would
like to have shade near the playground for parents to watch our our children play on the playground
well that'll give the opportunity we thought that would give the best opportunity for to have shade
in that area so we'll move that pavilion well actually it'll come down we'll build a new one
you know near the playground so there'll be a pavilion near the playground versus you know the
old playground didn't have a pavilion near it so the basketball court is staying the all those
trails in and around the basketball court and the old playground all those trails will be replaced
with 10-foot sidewalks and then there'll be a 10-foot sidewalk from the old playground which
doesn't show on this map to the new playground so that that trail will continue up so
and of course everything will be you know sotted and planted back nicely and we'll have new trees
we'll put in and also uh you know new landscaping along bonnie bray just on the southeast corner of
this property uh just south of that roundabout uh there's a number of houses that have been
purchased as part of the construction though that will be integrated into the park uh we're calling
it bonnie bray linear park as that trail is is coming north on bonnie bray there'll be some
additional green space uh there's going to be some some great elevation in there too for the soil
that that's being stored on that uh section yet but that'll be additional uh beautification
efforts along bonnie bray uh just south south of the park itself
okay gary did you need info information from us or our opinion if you about the
additional public meeting from mckenna park yeah absolutely would love to hear any feedback on the
the soil because that's that's the biggest change that that wasn't um anticipated on property
um i'm not sure if we talked about the pavilions or not but those are good positive add-ons uh for
sure and then um the the meeting uh you know if you guys feel that that meeting's needed we'll
definitely move forward with that as well is this a good time to to go back to us as a group
or yes i believe so yes that'd be great eddie can you take that down please
thank you oh who was first james and brooke all right james uh ladies first okay you're too sweet
i'll take it though go forward brooke i want to know what my mother did if i if i wasn't that way
okay thank you for keeping the sled future i did that when i was a kid um i was curious is it best
practices to have the sidewalks more integrated into parks versus just around the edges it's
something um that i've noticed when i'm visiting different parks about kind of where the sidewalks
are and what is best practices and then second trash cans are they gonna have the little foundation
slab underneath it and the cover and all that yes well how is that determined is that best practices
is that best practices and all that will be updated in our master plan along with our our
maintenance plan that's going with the master plan so obviously we we we can't go out and replace
every trash can we have in the park at the moment but as we install trash cans and as we move forward
those trash cans we're getting away from those 55 gallon drums that are green and blue and you
know don't have a concrete foundation underneath them to you know nicer trash cans with with our
our recycle and trash features there okay thank you what's an estimated cost of that maybe we can
talk about it's a challenge so i think we figured out some numbers last year to to change all the
trash cans to a higher graded you know more aesthetically pleasing it was i think pushing
a million dollars with all the trash cans we have so it's just it's a i mean that's got to be at the
bottom of the list you know it's not safety it's yeah it it's trash can i and i know hard to spend
that much i know it seems it's just something that will we'll have to try to balance maybe removing
some making sure they're in key locations instead of having 20 out there maybe we have 12 but they're
in better locations uh and that way we can kind of scale back a little bit uh and then regards to
the trails you know uh scripture is a good example the topography that goes from the park down to the
curb is pretty steep if they were going to put that um sidewalk you know within a typical 10 foot
right away of the curb they would have to almost run a retaining wall down the majority of that
that hill right there so by pushing it into the park and getting it a little bit more on the flat
area it reduces that need um and we're they're trying to do their best to play with those
gradings and get that trail in there um and work around the trees at the same time but making that
more enjoyable for uh um the users now if someone's just trying to go from one corner to the other
they're going to have to meander a little bit uh there might be a cattle path there at some point
time like you see on a university type of deal but at the end of the day we wanted to try to
you know merge instead of having a sidewalk
and then a loop trail just inside that to try to preserve green space and that was one of the
feedback i think we got from from one of the council members is try to cut back on the concrete
in the hard surfaces and we reduced the parking lot down from 40 down to i think 15 or 16 drew
i can't remember how many spots are in there but we cut that back with the balance of you can park
us as well there's parking on both sides of thomas uh so we
we can just preserve more more turf instead of putting in more more parking lots so we're
actually adding green space to the overall net of the park i think at the end of the day
so thank you all right james your question well it's actually just statement um for gary uh
appreciate you doing to put the soil back and getting flat area in there that's going to be
you know uh previous park we had uh once upon a time we put in about 20 acres of flat land
just any general usage any people wanted to use it and it became the most pock everybody was
well we should put something else or that on it and an event but eventually they stuck to the 20
acres and it turned out to be one of the most used places in the whole town for fairs you name it
sports or whatever so flat land is just flat open space grassland or whatever is uh you know we don't
know all the uses today but i guarantee you they'll find uses for it if you put it there they'll come
so i appreciate your uh your vision on that okay thank you and um so we
go ahead gary going back and forth on that in regards
to do sorry
i was just gonna i was just gonna say that you know for as much as how much we have as
uh here compared to how often that flat area could be used you know 360 days a year so there's a
balance and wanted feedback from you guys as well okay well the feedback personally i think yes we
definitely need another public uh meeting that would be my feedback a thumbs up from elana anybody else
george kent james looks like another public meeting here even though when the formal motions
our feedback is any other questions for gary or uh any of the staff regarding the canna park
okay if there are no more questions uh next item on the next and last item on the agenda is uh the
ditton parks foundation updates thank you guys for being here today and for having me happy birthday
to george uh thank you um so i thought i'd put together a little something so you guys could see
kind of what the past year entailed um it was a good process we raised over forty thousand dollars
for parks and people that included um updating eureka when the kids had a good time down there
one evening um we did 50 parks and rec scholarships now that's honestly half of how many we would have
liked to have given this year but when you consider that we really couldn't give out scholarships
since march not too shabby and 11 dog park benches and then one dog park shade structure to the left
there our other area of impact is advocacy so helping make parks better for all we used our
outside voices for the bond election this year we maintained four fiscal sponsorships um that
included juneteenth cinco de mayo data and the senior center we had two parks and play campaigns
where we went to parks every single day during the month of may and i think that one was in february
it was a lot colder and then ten on tuesday weekly um just trying to promote people getting out there
it's a little easier now because i think people have found comfort in being out there um i go out
every tuesday and more recently we have tried to go to other parks this is why i'm asking all these
strange questions um because typically i've gone to my own park so that's been really enlightening
and then we engaged over 50 people in volunteerism and now that's not including juneteenth and those
others um just us specifically so there's just the past year just looking at it um i thought i'd also
give you guys kind of an update of what we're looking forward to um we are looking at parks
packs we think that's probably the best thing we can do right now that would help people because
people are outside more than ever um and certainly going to parks and we've heard a lot of people say
well we wish that the city provided hand sanitizer and again we've had this conversation of like well
the city doesn't provide sunscreen so um we are going to help step in for those who are on a money
crunch and we get it to help provide those park packs we have bandanas we'll include some hand
sanitizer we're just trying to work locally to invest our money locally and then park equity so
this was a huge topic for our board and the question really was how do we do park equity
and the answer was we start with ourselves so our four main areas for park equity is understanding
who we serve um that means our whole community and not just part of it um we also will measure
our efforts um so we have a lot of scholarship recipients however we don't know who those kids
are and i could not tell you what percentage of children we serve that were black or white or
girls or boys i just need to do the work um but we just haven't we've just said we serve this many
kids with scholarships um but being able to really understand who we're serving better helps make
sure we're being equitable um how we fund also we um kind of did an evaluation of the things that
we've funded and i'd say looking pretty white so we are trying to make sure that we are funding
equitably and across our community and then finally just to be a colorful organization
both in our leadership our board and recruitment our community committee engagement and then
marketing and events and making sure that people see themselves when they see us and they see our
parks um that's hugely important and so for us that starts with us um so it's it's been an effort
that we've really tried to move forward um part of it is i'm the staff member i'm white and so i
typically use my photos um and so i have really been pushing to get more photos from our community
and going out to different areas and straight up talking to people i feel like hey i know i'm the
awkward lady can i take your photo um and more times than not they say yes there has been one
girl who looked at me like i have lost my mind and she told me no and that was okay so um kind
of moving forward we're looking at grants and i'll be honest with you a lot of the grants i had
anticipated being able to apply for in may changed because of covid um they were no longer supporting
dog parks or they were halting their um grant process in general until 2021 so a lot of those
have kind of gone to the side and we're doing more research um we're looking at texas health
presbyterian grant co-serve and north texas cares for potential um grants to help cover either
um construction projects or again this service side to help increase services of dpard like
uh parks and play libraries so people could rent out items and be able to use utilize them in an
outdoor setting without having to invest their own dollars to doing it and then finally we're still
moving forward with our campaigns um the dog park campaign will still be huge and then arts are park
or parks our art is another one that we are launching this year and it's really to ensure
that designated donor funds are utilized where they want and we just want all types of people
to see themselves in parks and there's a huge group of artists in our community who may not see
parks as them but we have a lot of art and so we're going to start getting a little more creative
um with promoting art and parks that's all thank you so much brook and in the sake of time quickly
for the next meeting we have talked about the land acquisition for next time uh we mentioned trails
an update of trails uh could we include the razor property development gary stop me if that's not
okay and oh are you there gary okay and um we did we talked about in july a safety and security
signage so if i am uh if we can include that for the next meeting so those are three items
anybody uh have anything else they want to add okay may i have a motion to adjourn the meeting
oh you have a question james no oh james making a motion to adjourn the meeting may i have a second
david second all in favor all right anyone oppose all right i have meeting adjourned at 458 eddie