Parks & Recreation Commission

LACONIA PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION MEETING Monday, August 16, 2021 Laconia Community Center Gym 6:00 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 Hamel called the roll with the following Commissioners in attendance: Laura Ringer and Arthur Kirk. Absent- Deanna Guyer and Rodney Roy. 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 July 19, 2021 Commissioner Arthur Kirk moved to adopt the minutes from July 19, 2021. Seconded by Commissioner Laura Ringer. All were in favor. I. FACILITY USE REQUEST FORM: A. Laconia Kiwanis- Rotary Park- Monday, August 23, 2021, from 5:30pm to 8:30pm for the end of summer Kiwanis Club get together. Commissioner Ringer motioned to accept the request and waived the special event fee. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. B. Laconia High/Middle School- Bobotas, Robbie Mills and Risley field, Opechee Park, Track and Smith Field- Fall schedule from August 16 through November 1, 2021, and Spring schedule from March 21st for High School and Middle School interscholastic event. Commissioner Ringer motioned to accept the request for Fall and Spring inter- scholastic event. Seconded by Commissioner Kirk. All were in favor. C. Red Anchor Wellness, PLLC- Opechee Track and southern parking lot- Saturday, September 25, 2021, from 8:00am to 4:00pm (September 26, 2021, rain date) for the Red Anchor Wellness Health Expo. Commissioner Kirk motioned to accept the request pending upon submission of the certificate of insurance and vendor permits from the licensing office. The special event fee has been waived. Seconded by Commissioner Ringer. All were in favor. II. OLD BUSINESS: A. Commissioners’ assignment to Park houses- Director Lovisek will send the list and times for the Commissioner to decide who will be attending the park houses meetings. We only have  2 Parkhouse’s; Leavitt Park clubhouse meeting is every 2nd Wednesday of the month and Weirs Community Park meeting is 2nd Monday of the month. B. Use of fields by non-resident teams- Director Lovisek mentioned to the Commissioner that we have notice there is a league that are not from Laconia playing on our field. This league should be paying a non-residents fee if they are using our field. Next season we will require Leagues to submit the schedule ahead of the games and will require them to submit payment for non-residents of all teams using Laconia as their home field. III. ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVALS-ROTARY PARK, BEACHES, WEIRS AMPHITHEATER & PAVILION 1. TWC Wavemakers Swim Team- Bartlett Beach- Monday, August 16, 2021 (August 17 th rain date) for the end of the season summer party. 2. Laconia Skate Park Board- Laconia Skate Park- Saturday, July 31, 2021, from 3:00pm to 8:00pm for Skate Jam Fundraiser. 3. Anena Hansen- Rotary Park- Sunday, September 12, 2021, from 12:00pm to 5:00pm for Phil Spagnoulo celebration of life event. 4. Heather McIntire- Weirs Community Park Playground and Pavilion- Sunday, August 1, 2021, from 12pm for Eaton’s 4th birthday party. 5. Carole Holick- Rotary Gazebo- Friday, October 29, 2021, from 12:00pm to 1:00pm for a wedding ceremony. IV. NEW BUSINESS: 1. CIP- Director Lovisek presented the Capital Improvement Plan Summary for 2022-2028 to the Commissioners. V. ANNOUNCEMENTS: VI. NOMINATIONS, APPOINTMENTS & ELECTIONS: VII. PUBLIC COMMENT: VIII. COMMUNICATIONS: IX. OTHER REQUESTS REQUIRING COMMISSION ACTION: X. PARK ASSOCIATION REPORTS: A. Leavitt Park Association- July and August Minutes of the meeting B. Weirs Community Park Association- July minutes of the meeting C. Tardif Park Association- no report XI. DEPARTMENT REPORTS: A. Director’s Report submitted by Amy Lovisek This has been a rather busy month for our department. The summer season has seen many visitors to our beautiful city. For the most part, almost all are appreciative of the area and are treating the areas with respect. We lost a full-time staffer this month, which was unfortunate. We have received 7 applicants, which we are going through now. We will call in a few to have interviews, but the pickings are slim. Everyone is hiring and so this is not a great time to lose people. We are also losing most of our seasonal staff. College, high school and fall sports take our people away. For the beaches and camp, this is a normal occurrence, and we just close the camp down and have the beaches open without staff. Maintenance is a problem. We still have just as much to do with significantly less staff. We are to the point that I have been going out into the field and working maintenance to help. We have hired out some help as well. Rakin’It In was hired to sub out our weeding and mulching at some of our parks and Joyce Janitorial is cleaning our bathrooms. This money is coming out of our seasonal salaries budget as we normally would have hired someone to do this job. I had a meeting with the neighbors and users of the Gale Avenue Park last week. It was well attended with over 30 people there. The point of the meeting was to determine what they would like to see at the park. New amenities and such. The consensus is that they would like to see the area left “as is”. They would like to see the erosion controlled, some signage and a better way to launch car top boats. That is all they want. They don’t even want more benches or picnic tables. The design of this park will be in my CIP for this coming year. We had a product demonstration done at Rotary Park this month. The product is called Elephant Armor and it is a stronger concrete mixture to fix areas such as cracks or tripping hazards. We had 3 tripping hazards completely resolved with this product and they showed us how to use it as well. I will be putting the stairways for the Community Center, Library and Rotary Park in CIP to have this company come and repair them with this product. The area between the City Hall parking lot and the Belknap Mill was an adopt a spot that was destroyed by Eversource when they put in a new transformer. They have left this area looking poor for 2 years now and we are now on top of them to get them to fix it. They are going to be given a landscape design and we are asking them to pay for and install the plants. What we are asking for will match the beds behind the Mill. We had the walk-through for the downtown tree replacement project. We found out that the tree availability is slim this year and that we should wait until next spring to do the job. That is what we decided to do. The Timberman is happening next weekend and at this point in time they have about 1800 registered participants, not including their families. This is going to have a huge impact on our city as well as our park. Opechee is the hub of all and is the transition area from each of the three events. They are still looking for volunteers to help.  B. Assistant Director’s Report submitted by Matt Mansur Summer Time! Continuing with the plane metaphor, we have had a smooth July at our cruising elevation, but we will soon begin our descent. It will be a crash landing, but our goal is to crash land it as nice as possible. We are losing staff pretty rapidly, but we are getting creative in how we are managing it. Beaches Saturday was the last day of having Lifeguards at Bond Beach as both Lauren and Josh are beginning their college career. We do hope to have them back again next summer. Stephen will reprise his role as Bond Beach Attendant for the remainder of the summer. Unfortunately that will pull one more staff away from Weirs Beach. We will roughly lose one staff member a week for the rest of the summer at this point. We are seeing an increase in requests “to let me cook just for today” her while the weather has turned up a bit. Our staff are doing a great job of remaining vigilant. Most comments about how the No Cooking rule keeping people away have disappeared since the sun has come out. Bartlett Beach has taken a beating over the last few weeks. We haven’t been able to clean up after the big storms from a few weeks ago. We are also seeing an increase in the presence of homeless individuals over there. Bond tested high in E.Coli bacteria for the first time since I have been working for the City. I believe it is because the bathrooms are not operational and patrons do not want to use the porta-potty. Don’t miss the opportunity to come see the Weirs this summer! Opechee Day Camp We will be losing staff during our final week of summer camp as well. We have capped our registration for that week in preparation. Amy and myself will need to fill in a few hours here and there. Big shout out to Stephen, our Day Camp Supervisor, who has been very reliable all year. Seasonal Maintenance Its been a tough summer. The team has been really spread thin. Between keeping up with the grass (with all the rain at the beginning of the summer) and special projects that have been handed down from City Council, they have been stretched. They will continue to be stretched as some of our seasonal staff end their season in the next few weeks, one of our full timers is on paternity, and we have some much needed vacations going on. Community Center Programs We are beginning to see an uptick in requests to use the community center. All of them are unique and require a little digging to figure out how to facilitate them. It is currently a balancing act facilitating the end of summer and the pickup of community center activities. Thank you for all your support this summer.  C. Foreman’s Report submitted by Tim Ford Prep field for Muskrat games Prep field for Noreasters Mow and trim parks, fields and cemeteries Clean up homeless camps York rake beaches Weed plant beds / tree rings Spread bark mulch in beds Spread compost Robbie Mills Soccer Deliver bark mulch for contractor Prune trees at Opechee Set up soccer goals and nets Line soccer and football fields Remove broken slides at Wyatt Remove material from Gateway bed Demo Elephant Armor product XII. PRESENTATIONS XIII. ADJOURNMENT: Commissioner Kirk motioned to adjourn at 7:07pm. Seconded by Commissioner Ringer. All were in favor. Respectfully submitted, Liza Kelleher Mitch Hamel Secretary Commissioner Chair.