Parks & Recreation Commission

LACONIA PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION MEETING April 19, 2021 Laconia Community Center Gym 7:00 P.M. CALL TO ORDER: Commissioner Mitch Hamel called the meeting to order at the above date and time. RECORDING SECRETARY: Secretary Liza Kelleher recorded this meeting. ROLL CALL: Commissioner Chair Mitch Hamel called the roll with the following Commissioners in attendance: Rodney Roy, Deanna Guyer, Arthur Kirk, and Laura Ringer. PARKS AND RECREATION STAFF PRESENT: Director of Recreation and Facilities Amy Lovisek, Asst. Director of Recreation and Facilities Matthew Mansur and Secretary Liza Kelleher. ADOPTION OF MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS: 1. Regular meeting minutes of March 15, 2021 Commissioner Rodney Roy moved to adopt the minutes from March 15, 2021. Seconded by Commissioner Deanna Guyer. All were in favor. I. FACILITY USE REQUEST FORM: A. Gilda’s Club New Hampshire- Weirs Beach and Weirs Beach Dock- Saturday, September 25, 2021 from 8:00am to 5:00pm for Dragon Boat Race Festival. Commissioner Roy motioned to accept the request pending upon the payment of $100.00 non-profit charity event fee, submission of the certificate of insurance and final approval from the City Council for raising money on City property. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. B. Laconia Slow Pitch Co-Ed Softball- Memorial Park Softball Field- April 19 th to October 15, 2021 Monday through Friday from 6:00pm to 11:00pm, Saturday & Sunday from 8:00am to 11:00pm for Laconia Slow Pitch Co-ed Softball. Commissioner Roy motioned to accept the request pending upon the payment for the lights, storage, non-resident users’ fee and the submission of the certificate of insurance. A key deposit of $25.00 per key is required at the time of issuance. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. C. Laconia Putnam Fund- Opechee Park- Saturday August 14, 2021 12:30pm to 10:00pm for a 60’s -70’s Jay and the Americans’ concert. Commissioner Kirk motioned to approve the request, a special event fee has been waived and a key deposit of $25.00per key is required if needed. Director Lovisek will verify if their insurance is with the City and what needs to happen with it if anything. Seconded by Commissioner Roy. All were in favor. D. Advantage Kids (Lakes Region Tennis Assoc.)- Memorial Tennis Court- June 29 to August 5, 2021, Tuesdays, and Thursday 6:00pm-8:00pm, July 16 to August 6, 2021  Fridays 6:00pm to 7:30pm for Advantages kids Tennis Plus (Yoga & Mindfulness). Commissioner Roy motioned to approve the request pending upon the payment for non- resident users fee and submission of the certificate of insurance. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. E. TWC Wavemakers- Weirs Pavilion, Amphitheater and Playground- May 8, 2021(rain date May 15, 2021) from 1:00pm to 4:00pm for end of season banquet. Commissioner Kirk motioned to approve the request pending upon the payment of $50.00 picnic fee. Seconded by Commissioner Roy. All were in favor. F. Evangelical Baptist Church- Leavitt Park- June 21 through June 26, 2021 Monday through Saturday from 8:00am to 4:00pm for On Goal Youth Soccer Camp. Commissioner Guyer motioned to approve the request pending upon submission of non-residents users fee and submission of the certificate of insurance. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. G. Evangelical Baptist Church-Opechee Point- Saturday, August 28, 2021 from 10:00am to 4:00pm for church picnic. Commissioner Roy motioned to approve the request and waived the no cooking in the park, the use of propane tank and picnic fee and submission of the certificate of insurance. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. H. The Salvation Army- Opechee Parkhouse, Cove beach and parking lot- Saturday, November 13, 2021 from 8:00am to 3:00pm for Annual Salvation Army Turkey Plunge. Commissioner Kirk motioned approve the request pending upon the final approval from the City Council for raising money in the City property. Special event fee has been waived. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. I. Laconia Little League- Colby Field, Opechee Field A, B, C- April 1-June 30, 2021, Monday through Friday from 5:00pm to 9:00pm, Saturdays from 8:00am to 1:00pm for Regular Season. Commissioner Roy motioned to approve the request pending upon the payment of non-resident users’ fee, storage fee and concession stand fee. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. J. Laconia Little League- Colby Field and Opechee Field B- June 30, 2021 through August 1, 2021 Monday through Friday from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and Saturdays from 8:00am to 1pm for All Star Season. Commissioner Kirk motioned to approve the request. Seconded by Commissioner Roy. All were in favor. K. Laconia Little League- Colby Field- August 1 through October 31, 2021 Tuesday & Thursday from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and Saturday from 4:00pm to 7:00pm for Laconia Little League Fall season. Commissioner Kirk motioned to approve the request pending upon the payment of non-resident users fee. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. L. Laconia Baseball Foundation, Inc. (Muskrats)- Robbie Mills- Monday through Thursday, June 28 through July 1, 2021, and July 5 through July 8, 2021 (rain dates July 2 and July 9) from 9:00am to 12:00pm for Winnipesauke Muskrats Baseball Camp clinics. Commissioner Guyer motioned to approve the request pending upon the submission of the certificate of insurance. The non-resident users fee has been waived. Seconded by Commissioner Roy. All were in favor. M. Laconia Baseball Foundation, Inc dba Winnipesaukee Muskrats- June 1,3,6,10,11,16,18,20,21,23,26,27, July 3,8,9,13,15,76,24,27,29 and 31, 2021 Monday through Saturday from 4:00pm to 9:30pm and Sundays from 2:00pm to 7:30pm for Winnipesaukee Muskrats Baseball Season. Commissioner Roy motioned to approve the  request pending upon the payment of concession stand, field lights and the submission of the certificate of insurance. All aspects of the contract will be upheld. The extension of another week for the tournament is conditioned upon the Youth Soccer schedule. Vendors permit needs to be filed at the City Hall for vending purposes and should notify Parks and Recreation for the alcohol sales. The light bill will be billed later. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. N. Winnisquam Regional High School- Robbie Mills Baseball Field- May 12, 2021 (rain date May 14) Wednesday from 6:00pm-9:30pm for a Winnisquam Varsity Baseball. Commissioner Kirk motioned to approve the request pending upon the light fee payment and the key deposit of $25.00 per key if needed. Seconded by Commissioner Roy. All were in favor. O. AJL Babe Ruth- Memorial Baseball Field- May 1 through July 31, 2021 Monday through Friday from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00am to 4:00pm for Babe Ruth Baseball. Commissioner Roy motioned to approve the request pending upon payment of non-resident users’ fee and submission of the roster and the certificate of insurance. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. II. OLD BUSINESS: A. New England Bassin- Bartlett Beach- Saturday, May 8, 2021 from 3:00pm to 5:00pm for Winnisquam Tournament. Commissioner Roy motioned to remove the request from the table. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. B. Administrative Approvals with regards to Coronavirus – No Update. C. Coronavirus updates- with the new update from the Governors office mask is not required outdoors but will comply if the mask is required in the establishment. City employees still required to wear mask when out of their work zone, however the public is only strongly encouraged. The Commission requested an email sent to them regarding any changes that effect the department. D. Weirs Beach capacity- Commissioner Roy motioned to approve a 1500 capacity at Weirs beach this summer. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. E. Summer staffing- Bond Beach plan will have 2 lifeguard staff that will rotate as lifeguard and attendant everyday and allowing to eliminate the Bond beach attendant. Weirs Beach will be fully staffed with beach caretakers on the weekends and 1 caretaker per shift on the weekdays. F. Laconia Little League-lights at Colby- Commissioner Roy motioned to remove the request in the table. Seconded by Commissioner Guyer. All were in favor. III. ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVALS-ROTARY PARK, BEACHES, WEIRS AMPHITHEATER & PAVILION 1. Brianna Nolan and Aliza Drouin- Rotary Park- Saturday May 15, 2021 from 2:00pm to 6:00pm for a wedding ceremony. 2. Savannah Wells and Jordan Chase-Lund- Rotary Park- Saturday, August 27, 2022 from 12:00pm to 4:00pm for a wedding ceremony. 3. Lindsey Wood and Tristan Norton- Rotary Park- Friday, June 11, 2021 from 2:00pm to 5:00pm for a wedding ceremony.  4. Hopkinton High School- Opechee Cove and Park- Wednesday, May 26, 2021 from 1:30pm to 4:30pm for Senior Class Trip Picnic. IV. NEW BUSINESS: 1. Fourth of July- Fireworks, vendors, band, and 4th of July festivities. Commissioner Roy motioned to resume the 4th of July festivities unless the free covid guidelines change and we must abide by the rules. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. V. ANNOUNCEMENTS: VI. NOMINATIONS, APPOINTMENTS & ELECTIONS: VII. PUBLIC COMMENT: VIII. COMMUNICATIONS: IX. OTHER REQUESTS REQUIRING COMMISSION ACTION: 1. Request to move the meeting earlier that 7pm. The request was tabled and will discussed next Commission meeting. 2. Field trip request- Lately we are getting a lot of request from schools to use our facilities for some games and picnic field trips. Commissioner approved that Director Lovisek would do the administrative approval for the trips request to use our facilities. X. PARK ASSOCIATION REPORTS: A. Leavitt Park Association- no report B. Weirs Community Park Association- no report C. Tardif Park Association- no report XI. DEPARTMENT REPORTS: A. Director’s Report submitted by Amy Lovisek This month has been a very busy month for our department. Spring is always packed full of tasks and this year is no different. We have spring clean ups, ball fields to prep, bathrooms, and irrigation to activate, programs and more! The department is in desperate need of seasonal employees. Currently, we are looking for seasonal maintenance and camp counselors. If you know of anyone over 18 who would like a job this summer, please refer them to us. The City Council recently approved the purchase of some new lawn equipment for the department. We are going to go with a battery powered mower and other tools. These are significantly less expensive, and we are “Going Green”. This will be a trial as we need to see what the equipment can handle. The Council also voted to provide money for the 1 st phase of the downtown tree replacements. We will be removing trees and replacing some. This will be started this spring. Both the equipment and the trees were part of my CIP for next year. However, there is new money that the City Manager recommended for us so that we could use the equipment this year and the trees have time to become established before winter. It does not look like the City will be funding the Transition Plan for our ADA self-assessment. Therefore, DPW and I are prioritizing our own needs for the community. We are in talks with the stakeholders to get their confirmation that what we suggested is beneficial. The parks department is looking to get several smaller items off the list to have some areas completely ADA accessible. We will then need to get into the bigger conversions. We will be putting these into our CIP for this coming fall. We have a new employee who started Monday, April 12 th. His name is Justin Tivey. Justin used to work for us seasonally and has now come back for a full-time position. Welcome Justin. We have the netting up at Memorial Park to help prevent foul balls from entering the neighbor’s properties. The nets are 20’ high on both sides of the street. We also have a 30’ net along the 1 st base side. In addition to the nets, we have also required all teams who use the field to hold batting practice as close to the backstop as possible. As you all are probably aware a person hitting during batting practice will swing at any ball thrown. Therefore, many were leaving the field and crossing the street. Now the only time anyone should be at the actual batter’s box is during a game. With both measures the neighbors will see dramatically less balls entering their property. We could not prevent all balls from leaving. There are no Capital projects happening right now to give you feedback on. This will change for next month. B. Assistant Director’s Report submitted by Matt Mansur Greetings! The Governor’s announcement yesterday (Thu 4/15) has changed a lot of things, so I will try to add them below. Summer Preparations Opechee Day Camp Registration has begun for Opechee Day Camp. Parents weren’t battering down our doors on April 1 st like I thought they would, but we’ve had a steady stream of registrations. We are currently 94/180 camper weeks this summer – this comes out to 10.444 campers out of 20 per week. This is great, however, there is a good chance we will open our registration number up to our normal max of 40 because there will no longer be Day Camp Guidelines come May 7 th. Instead there will be Universal Best Practices – I’m not sure if these best practices will be broken down by industry again, or if the term “Universal” means this will be a blanket document that covers ALL industries. We may wait to see what comes out on May 7th before making any official opening. That being said, we have been prepared for this to happen for a couple of weeks now. Our biggest limiting factor is indoor space on inclement weather days. Kathleen, our long time Camp Supervisor, will be stepping away from Camp this summer. Which is a bummer because her experience will be sorely missed during this year of transition. We also now have an additional opening to fill, which would be on top of another position we would need to fill if we decide to go to 40 campers. Alex will be able to fill in as the Camp Supervisor this year and this will allow for new staff like Alyssa to take on more leadership responsibilities. Beaches Our plan for Bond this year will be to guard it with two lifeguards who will rotate throughout the day with one checking car passes and the other watching the water. Ideally they will swtich every 15 – 30 mins, thus providing us with the time away from staring at water, while allowing us to eliminate the Bond Beach attendant position. We are also planning on doing some swim lessons down there, but this needs to be flushed out a little more. One of our guards is excited to become a WSI and teach the swim lessons. Meanwhile at Weirs Beach, we will staff it out on weekends very similarly to how we did it last year. However on the weekdays we will have one Beach Caretaker down there per shift as the travel should not be as bad on the weekdays. Our goal this year is to work symbiotically with the PD to “do what we say we’re going to do” down at Weirs Beach. If we can than that is one more box checked off of our checklist to get Lifeguards there. Unfortunately, at a Zoom meeting of Lifeguard Instructors around the Northeast, the general consensus is that best practice for Lifeguard-to-swimmer ratio is 1-to-25…. Which is a ratio we cannot meet. Website Redesign The website design has been approved and we will be moving on to DHP’s shortly. This means our specific Departmental website. It will be a little stressful because it is lining up with camp and beach opening, but that will help us gear the website toward summer…… right? That is what I keep telling myself anyway. Community Center Programs Finally, our Community Center Programs have found a groove. Now we will need to change them again. On May 7th, we will have the opportunity to change how we do things here at the community center. Do we keep sanitizing after group programs? Do we need the half hour in between? Do we keep the 10-participant maximum capacity? Can we play competitive basketball? It will take our whole team to answer these questions, which is why the Governor announced it three weeks before it goes into effect. I think we are in for one more pivot season here and we will feel the squeeze a bit, but I am not anticipating it being like last summer. C. Foreman’s Report submitted by Tim Ford Check walks daily Turn lights off on sledding hill Prep out-buildings plumbing (install meters, backflows, flushometers, etc.) Temporary patch heating return lines in LCC basement and fishbowl. Open WOW trail Install tennis nets on courts Open track for season Lower / raise flags Prep athletic fields for High and Middle school games Install fence around dumpster at City Hall Park spring clean-up – on going Start putting out trash barrels Remove snow fence from ERP Remove ice rink for the season Move fencing supplies for Memorial baseball Cut and remove fallen trees XII. PRESENTATIONS XIII. ADJOURNMENT: Commissioner Roy motioned to adjourn at 9:09pm. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. Respectfully submitted, Liza Kelleher Mitch Hamel Secretary Commissioner Chair