Recreation Commission

December 16, 2021 Recreation Commission Meeting Minutes There was a quorum and Chairperson Null called the meeting to order. Due the fact that the Commission did not receive minutes for the previous meeting, PRE Director, Todd Brown suggested to provide those minutes to the Commission along with the December minutes and seek approval for both at the January meeting. The chairperson agreed and notified the commission of that plan. Under public comment, Brandon spoke as a member of the Idlewind HOA. He notified the group of the efforts of a 12-year boy in the neighborhood that wants to put a park with some park features. PRE Director commented that he met with the young man and his mother prior to the meeting and discussed some ideas including a playground. It was determined through GIS that the land proposed was not City land. There were no other public comments. In reference to the submitted reports, Chairperson Null commented that she could not print out the budget sheet. There were not questions or comments on the reports. The Christmas Parade was discussed as part of the Director’s comments. Commissions members remarked that the parade was very short. They felt traffic and parking was much better than in previous years. So was closing off the roads. They said there was less bottlenecks and people were parking much farther out. They felt the cleanup efforts were very impressive. In reference to the topic of lights being added at the hockey rink at Dixon. Director mentioned that he, Mike Ward met with Brandon at the site and agreed that there needs to be a public meeting or two on this topic. Director commented that public concerns may not just be on light pollution in that area, but also why the hockey rink may receive lights and the rest of the park does not, especially the soccer fields. There was additional conservation about field availability, Futsol facilities being added in the park system, and the need to reach out to the Hispanic community to seek their needs and opinions. The Director offered to meet with Mr. Keeler before the next meeting. The Director briefly spoke about a few ideas such as “Pop up Parks” and maybe trying to create a better method of offering programs at different locations to best reach diverse audiences. The Director reports on the progress on evaluating and developing a plan to improve and sustain quality operations for the Midnight Madness program. Director reported he met with police on two different occasions and now is seeking additional meetings with schools. These meeting will lead to redefine the roles by all partners. One suggestion was to include the Vice Mayor in the meetings. Also to possibly break it down based on different age groups. Another possibility was to get different youth groups involved to possibly help run different activities. There was discussion on memorials and some recent requests to have new memorials at certain park sites. It was brought up that the Director’s Fund may have bene created in part to assist with the financial logistics of having memorials placed at parks. It was also questioned of why parks are requested for this purpose and how does the city decide on if and location of approved requests. The Director said he has been tasked with creating a SOP or policy on memorials and will work with Mr. Dorsey and the Memorial Commission on this tasks. After some discussion, it was decided that the Commission will meet every other month in 2022, unless there is a need for more meetings based on a timely matter.