Parks & Recreation Advisory Board

Burlington Parks & Recreation Advisory Board MEETING AGENDA Tuesday, 7/09/2024 | 6:00PM Meeting Location: Burlington Parks & Recreation Zoom Login: 900 E. Fairhaven Avenue https://tinyurl.com/48t33jnp North Entrance (off Fairhaven Avenue) ID: 822 6181 3901 Passcode: 376131 AGENDA ITEM PRESENTER TIME ALLOTTED ACTION CALL TO ORDER Marylynn Baker • Approval of Minutes Marylynn Baker 6:00-6:05PM Motion (06/18/2024) UNFINISHED BUSINESS • Rotary Park Inclusive Playground Travis Schwetz 6:05-6:15PM Information • Maiben Park Update Travis Schwetz 6:15-6:25PM Information NEW BUSINESS • Amenities Approval: Rotary Park Sarah Ward 6:25-6:35PM Information • Community Needs Assessment Sarah Ward 6:35-6:45PM Information STAFF REPORTS • Parks Report Travis Schwetz 6:45-6:50PM Information • Recreation Report Christi Kinney 6:50-6:55PM Information OPEN COMMENT Marylynn Baker 6:55-7:00PM ADJOURNMENT Marylynn Baker 7:00PM Next Scheduled Meeting: Tuesday, 08/13/2024 at 6:00PM ENCLOSURES: 06/18/2024 Meeting Minutes FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS: November – December 2024 • Recreation – The Art & Science of Recreation • Policy Review – Donations & Memorials • Recreation – Current Offerings • Recreation Evaluation Tool 07/09/2024 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Agenda Packet - Page 1 of 5 (This page left intentionally blank) 07/09/2024 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Agenda Packet - Page 2 of 5  CITY OF BURLINGTON PARKS & RECREATION ADVISORY BOARD Tuesday, 06/18/2024 Meeting Minutes (The board meeting is conducted in-person and via Zoom) Attendees: Board Members: Marylynn Baker, Karly Gruendle, Orlando Macias, Chadd Tripp City Councilors: Elizabeth Turman-Bryant, Dr. Jesus Perez and Jamie Weiss City Staff: Recreation Specialist Kati Klerekoper, Facilities and Streets Supervisor Travis Schwetz, Library and Recreation Director Sarah Ward MEETING CALLED TO ORDER: by Chairperson Marylynn Baker at 6:00PM MINUTES: Chadd Tripp/Karly Gruendle make a motion to approve the minutes from the 5/14/2024 meeting written. All in favor, motion carried. UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Rotary Park Inclusive Playground – Travis Schwetz shares that the work that Trico is completing is underway at the park. The underground work is done which includes sewer, water and power. Currently, they’re backfilling that area with gravel to get the new subgrade built for the concrete work. Once Trico’s work is complete, Travis’ Crew will pour the slab, get power and water hooked up, install the light pole bases and poles, and pour the sidewalks. The concrete will be fully cured within four weeks. The playground equipment was delivered to the City on Monday and Tuesday and is currently staged and ready to install. The original install date was pushed back slightly to account for appropriate permitting. The playground will be installed by the playground installer in September. Jamie Weiss asks if the RCO Timeline was impacted in any way because of the delay. Sarah Ward states that while we’re behind the milestone timeline that we created, RCO is thrilled with our progress, and we are well within the timeline for project completion. Next, Travis addresses the landscaping needs of the project and mentions that Rotary Club will assist with the landscaping. Sarah mentions that Rotary Club has given a very nice donation of three pieces of musical equipment to the park, a roughly $20,000 donation. NEW BUSINESS: Vice Chair Board Member – Karly Gruendle makes a motion for Chadd Tripp to be Vice Chair of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. All in favor, motion carried. STAFF REPORTS: Parks Report - Travis reports that Berry Dairy Days was a success. There is a lot of staff work necessary to get Skagit River Park up and ready to go for the festival weekend. His crews did extra work on landscape clean-up, re-striped parking lines at Skagit River Park, worked a lot on Fairhaven Ave and the Visitor Information Center, and put in extra effort into making sure the City was looking its best. During the festival weekend, his crews also helped with traffic control for the parade and festival, and worked with the Lawnmower Races event as flaggers, parking lot attendants, in addition to providing safety for the drone show. Travis states that spring turf maintenance is now complete. The Parks Crew has aerated, sanded, and fertilized the fields. It takes mowing about three times a week to keep up with the rate at which the grass grows now; the fields are looking great. Soccer tournament season is beginning and there will be a 270+ team tournament coming to Skagit River Park in two weeks. The field layout and vendor layout are being finalized. He mentions that parking is always a big concern for 07/09/2024 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Agenda Packet - Page 3 of 5 our tournaments. Jamie asks about the changes that could be implemented to help traffic flow more easily. Travis mentions that increasing signage is an option, and making one side of the road a fire lane only so that parking is not permitted to increase road access. The upcoming Firecracker Tournament brings in roughly 12,000 people to the City, with a huge influx of people at the park. Travis states that the next project for Skagit River Park should be finishing the roads and putting in proper parking. Elizabeth Turman-Bryant asks about Maiben Park and the progress on project improvement for the park, including irrigation. Travis mentions that the spray park is up and running and he’s working through the proper permitting process for the necessary concrete work and bathroom upgrades. The plan right now is to heal the grass that is currently there, to aerate the turf, to sand and to fertilize. Effectively, Maiben Park will also begin to undergo its own turf maintenance program. Chadd Tripp mentions that the turf at Maiben is looking great, and he likes the idea of maintaining well established green space that we currently have at this park. Jamie asks about the RCO grants and progress on those submissions. Sarah states that we’ve submitted three grants for this biennium cycle and have undergone the Technical Review for the WWRP Grant. The final presentation for the WWRP Grant will be in August. Marylynn thanks Travis for the new basketball nets at Maiben Park. She asks about additional details regarding the basketball standards, backboards, and a possible three-foot fence to keep basketballs in the court. Travis stated that he’s not certain what fits in the budget for these projects, there are many options and possibilities. Recreation Report – Kati Klerekoper shares details about Berry Dairy Days weekend. The Friday Night Kick-Off in the Park was a success, despite extremely rainy weather. We were able to fly the drone show, the first of its kind in Skagit County with 200 drones taking flight at Skagit River Park. She mentions that the night included partnerships with Burlington Library as they were able to host their Summer Reading Program Kick-Off at the park at the same time. Additionally, Kati mentions that Kaaren Flint with Burlington Healthy Communities Coalition partnered with the Recreation Department to run a Teen Zone at the park, which was a great addition to the evening. Next, Kati talks about the success of the Lawnmower Races on Saturday. In total, there were 17 lawnmower entries this year, up from 12 the year prior. That growth is great, and really represents the community’s interest in this event. Additionally, she mentions that the Berry Dairy Days Lawnmower Races did receive an award at the Washington Recreation and Parks Association (WRPA) Conference this spring for Spotlight Excellence in Special Events for cities under the population of 100,000. Kati and Recreation Coordinator Christi Kinney accepted the award at the 2024 WRPA Conference in Vancouver, WA. Elizabeth asks about the Lodging Tax data collection methods that we use to find out how many people come in from out of town to our events. Kati states that for this year, they used a data collection method that’s tied to a raffle. On both Friday and Saturday, attendees were asked for their name and zip code. If they give us that info (which was on a raffle ticket attached to an event schedule), they would be entered into a raffle for giveaways that were provided by sponsors. The method was successful in the fact that we collected more responses than year’s past. The Recreation Department will be going over that data in the coming weeks. The event brought in $8,000 worth of sponsorship support from various businesses and organizations including B-E Kiwanis Club, HF Sinclair and Fire and Iron FFMC. There is a lot of community interest in the event, and it is continuing to grow. Jamie asks about communication to the public regarding cancellation of events in cases of inclement weather. He suggests that the City create a webpage where citizens can go to get live updates as to whether or not an event might take place, or be cancelled. Then, Kati mentions that the Summer Nights Concerts Series is next in the queue for our community event line-up. These concerts take place Fridays in July and August and feature bands at the Visitor Information Center on Fairhaven Avenue from 6-8pm. She talks about how the Fall 2024 Recreation Soccer League is in its registration period now, and that period ends on June 30. The program is at about 75% registration, which is a good place to be. She mentions that all teams have been covered with sponsorship, and 40 businesses and organizations have chosen to sponsor a team this year, helping keep program costs down for Burlington families. She mentions that this year our teams will have blue and gold jerseys, in response to the feedback that she received from soccer families last year through the 2023 Soccer Program Survey. 07/09/2024 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Agenda Packet - Page 4 of 5 OPEN COMMENT: Jamie follows up on progress made on getting the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board documents uploaded onto SharePoint. Kati mentions that she will make it a priority to populate documents into this shared use space by the next board meeting. All board members will then have digital access to Parks and Recreation Advisory Board documents. Jamie asks about updates on the city-wide Community Needs Assessment. Sarah mentions that she and Community Development Director Brad Johnson had a meeting with the consultant who will be leading work, identifying the scope of the work requested. There is a large priority on getting information for the city-wide Comprehensive Plan update. She is hopeful to create a city-wide strategic plan for this information. Sarah mentions that if we can’t do the strategic plan on a city-wide scale, at a minimum she will be working to create strategic plans for Recreation and for the Library. The consultants are on board with her vision for gathering data that will lend itself to strategic planning. Jamie asks about an update for the future Parks and Recreation Foundation. Sarah mentions that she and Christi are working and to have a Foundation Board formed, and paperwork filed to begin running the Foundation by January 2025. Jamie follows up on some of the reported graffiti that was happening often a couple months back. Travis comments that the graffiti has let up a bit, but it comes in waves. Jamie also asks about any progress made at Jason Boerner Park, given how much of the play structure is in a state of disrepair, including the broken slide, broken tic-tac-toe board, and the flooding issues around that playground. Travis mentions that his Parks Crew members that have playground inspection certification have advised that the whole structure needs to be removed. Sarah mentions that she’s gotten one quote for a replacement playground structure, and it came in at $125,000, and comments that it’s quite expensive to replace. She’s continuing to pursue quotes from the MRSC list to compare pricing. Lastly, Jamie asks about an update on the flooding at the SR20 Trail. Travis states that there is no immediate plan to fix this area at this time, and his desire would be to pave the trail completely. Elizabeth brings to the attention of the board the existence of Burlington Bicycle Coalition. There was a meeting held with the coalition a couple weeks ago where 12 people were in attendance. They have started a Facebook Group which now has 42 members. She mentions that the group has interest in a pump track. Jamie mentions the possibility of a public/private partnership as an option for maintaining a track like this. Elizabeth mentions that there is so much interest that there may be parties willing to build and maintain it, they just need to identify placement. Marylynn talks about Burlington’s sand volleyball courts at Rotary Park. She has friends and neighbors who live near these parks who are wondering if there’s a guideline that we can put up about quite time past a certain hour, as there are user groups who use this area late into the evening who often use profanity and vulgar talk. Additionally, Marylynn asks about the Tami Wilson Trail, and if there has been any progress on a plan for a play area near that trail, to become safer and more user friendly. Sarah mentions that the Community Needs Assessment may show the need for trail connectivity in that area, and possibly transportation improvement. Currently there are no plans to improve the area around Tami Wilson Trail. Jamie asks if we have indeed received the Title for Maiben Park. Sarah mentions that we are working on obtaining the Title for Maiben Park, in addition to working on vacating the right of way that exists within the park. Both of these will be necessary for pursuing the grant process with the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO) with which we currently have open grants. Lastly, Jamie asks about the status of referees for fall soccer, knowing that there was a shortage in year’s past. Kati states that we’ll know closer to mid-August the status of referees, and Skagit Referees Association is the one who ultimately manages referees. Skagit County is now competitive with Whatcom and Snohomish Counties regarding their referee compensation which will help retain referees in Skagit County. ADJOURNMENT: Chairperson Marylynn Baker adjourns the board meeting at 7:05pm. NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, 07/09/2024 at 6:00pm Minutes transcribed by Kati Klerekoper, Burlington Parks and Recreation, Recreation Specialist 07/09/2024 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Agenda Packet - Page 5 of 5