Recreation Commission

LEOMINSTER RECREATION DEPARTMENT Office: 40 Barrett Parkway, Leominster, MA 01453 Mailing Address: 25 West Street, Leominster, MA 01453 Phone: (978)534-7529 Fax: (978)534-7549 Website: www.leominster-ma.gov Judith Sumner Director of Recreation LEOMINSTER RECREATION COMMISSION September 21, 2021 1. CALL TO ORDER at 4:32 p.m. 2. COMMISSION ATTENDANCE ROLL CALL: Maureen Donatelli, Chairperson; Jeff O’Neill, Vice Chairman; Theresa McEwen (Sowerbutts); John Ciccolini; Judith Sumner, Director of Recreation; Lisa Comeau, Assistant Director. 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM MEETINGS – Motion to approve the minutes made by J. O’Neill, 2nd by T. McEwen (Sowerbutts). All in favor. 4. PICKLEBALL- David LaLiberty – They are thankful for the new 6 pickleball courts. The pickleball players would like permission to chalk 2 of the 6 tennis courts for pickleball as overflow. Typically, on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday mornings are the busiest times. The busiest is Saturday mornings and all 6 pickleball courts are filled with 24 people and 10 rackets waiting. One Saturday 56 total people played. It is working fine but not all tennis courts are being used when they are there. On average on Saturdays 3-4 tennis courts are being used. Those 2 chalked tennis courts won’t be used that much. They will be used for drills or new people. One of the rules is they won’t lower the tennis nets. Nothing will be permanent except for the black marks, which is a paint of some sort, to guide the corners and lines of chalking. Most of the time those 2 courts will not be used. The only times they might be used is on a Saturday. Because what happens now is, someone must take the responsibility to chalk them. J. Sumner concerned we have 185 tennis players registered. They will follow the same procedure in the past. They will always keep a buffer court between them and tennis players and will stop playing in that 2nd court if tennis players come and occupy the 4 furthest tennis courts, keeping an empty court between them. And if a lot of tennis players came in and needed the two chalked courts, they would get off them so the tennis players could play. They would only use them if no tennis players were waiting to play and always have an empty court between them and the tennis players. How are the tennis players aware that you will give up the courts if they just drive by and look to see court availability and see those 2 tennis courts being used? David said there would always be the 1 buffer court open to tennis players and then they would have to give up court 1 because they would no longer have a buffer court. This would always maintain the 1 space between them. M. Donatelli asked how that would be policed and David said it would have to be self-policing and the occasions that would happen would be minimal. David also explained that it would be one of the people responsible for chalking for play that day to see that these rules are being followed and or the person responsible for bringing the balls to the group play. There is always someone accountable and not just a random person. Based on his experience in the past that it may only happen once or twice a month unless it blows out and a whole bunch of people are down there. J. Sumner said that we sold a record number of keys this year, 232 total, with 41 for pickleball, 28 said they play both, 69 total possibly for pickleball. We sold 6 more tennis keys since J. Sumner spoke with David LaLiberty and now at 191 for tennis. J. Ciccolini expressed his concern with the ever-increasing numbers and may have to think of a new facility in the near future. It was suggested that we could add on 6 more courts to the left next to the rail trail. We talked about bocce there. M. Donatelli proposed granting a temporary trial and David can give us feedback on how it is working. J. Sumner’s only concern that if they get there and there are tennis players already playing on those two courts they want to chalk and use they will have to speak to them and ask if after their set they wanted to move over and not just kick them off. J. Ciccolini proposing to grant permission to chalk the two tennis courts on a trial basis, 2nd by J. O’Neill. All in favor. 5. PROGRAM and STAFF UPDATES a) Maintenance staff – Darryn Hume is going to the Mount for Environmental Science and most of his classes are online, so he is still available to work for us. The other PT person we had also has a PT job at BJ’s and started back to college so left to concentrate on his studies and couldn’t do two PT jobs. We still have Bill and he’s been a great help to DJ. We have had a lot more requests from the school  department to mow Carter and Fallbrook fields, school property, more frequently than we have in the past…now twice a week. The grass for the school’s field hockey program has to be 1 ½”. b) Office/Program Staffing – Deborah Mathieu has been hired for the Program Assistant and Office Support position and will start September 29th. She works PT at Exit Realty and will work PT 3 days a week for us. Lindsey English and Daniel Ducksworth will be running our Basketball Program this year as Co-Coordinators. They have run the Teen Basketball League in the past. Neal Wynne will not be returning to be the 1-2 grade coordinator. We will have to find a replacement. Vinny Palermo will be continuing to do the 3-4 grade league. Lindsey will put the teams together, do the game schedules and any paperwork. Daniel will work with the coaches for training, work with the referees and get the equipment ready. c) Program update 1) Basketball will begin the week before Thanksgiving. Spectators and players are probably going to have to wear masks in the gym and practice social distancing. 2) Lisa has been working hard to get the new online registration system, called MyRec, set up and ready to go, putting up all our data, information, and pictures. It will be more user friendly. Then she will set up all the programs. 3) Adult Exercise is still going on in the program building. 4) For the Arts Lottery Grant Program, we got an extension to do an adult trip to Concord and Lexington because of COVID, so we can do it in the spring. And we also got an extension on the grant for the Summer Scene program to do it next summer. We can apply for another grant if there is something else, we want to do. The deadline to apply is October 15th. 6. MAINTENANCE REPORT- Written update by DJ Munroe. The UV light and brand-new control box was put in at the splash park. Problem this summer with algae growing on the splash pad because of all the rain and lack of sun. Plus, the tank needs to be rinsed out periodically. JR helped DJ close the splash park for the season. We are trying to get a new John Deere tractor but waiting on Greg to look over the State Contract to see if we can purchase it. We will also purchase a trailer to transport it to work locations. The mayor approved us using the Revolving Fund to purchase it instead of using capital funds. 7. PROJECTS UPDATES a) Frankie Fortuna Skate Park & Pump Track – At last night’s school committee meeting they voted to transfer a small parcel of land on the right edge of the skatepark to the Recreation Department. This piece of land will have the parking lot for the skatepark on it. The final design is on our Facebook page. Still having problems with budgeting for the parking lot. The last estimate was $300,000.00 with drainage etc. This is what’s holding us up and then it must go out to bid. J. Sumner may need to get a variance from the State because she put in a paved parking area in the grant. We may have to go with a gravel parking area and finish it in a second phase. J. Sumner needs to work with an engineer on the parking lot. A rain garden could help with drainage as well. There was another fundraiser with skateboard art at the Great Escape this past weekend for the skatepark. Looks like it’s going to be a spring project and a very tight schedule. Everything must be done by June 1, 2022. 8. OLD BUSINESS a) Pool MOU – J. Sumner put in a request to Michelle in the Mayor’s office to schedule a meeting with the mayor and have not heard back from her yet. J. Sumner hired Ray Faucher PT, who worked as a fill in pool manager at the end of the season. He is retired from DCR and has a lot of management experience. He is working on cleaning the pool, pressure washing the bathrooms, fixing locks, and taking out squirrel nests out of the roll up doors etc. He has a lot of contacts at DCR and he is going to be our liaison between us and the State right now. We must see if the mayor wants to continue with that partnership where we just staff it after J. Sumner retires. Water bill just came in for the last quarter that ended August 5th for $9,728.00. We will have another large bill for the draining of the pool, which closed August 14th. The electric bill has been running between $1,000.00-$1,400.00. We don’t have a pool manager for next year. The Assistant Pool manager now is not 21, yet and we don’t think she has enough experience and maturity for the Pool Manager position. Ray does not want to work full time but will help train someone. We had trouble with water leaking again this year then we had flooding. Connie is posting all the numbers and will be doing a report. Open Space and Recreation Plan-Final comments needed before Nov.1, 2021 – Last night the Open Space Committee went before the Planning Board, and they accepted the draft plan with one revision that John Sousa made. J. Sumner couldn’t go to that meeting because she was at the School Committee Meeting. The Open Space Committee will also do a public presentation before the City Council. Once that is done and all comments in, the adjustments will be made to the final plan. J. Sumner handed out the goals and objectives to the Commission and the top ten of the action items with  their costs. The plan recommends an increase effort to raise funds for land protection. The city is already working with Forest Legacy to get some money to purchase land to increase open space. Also, there was feedback from the public survey on people wanting a dog park. Thoughts were to have it where the old Italian American club was. The Leominster Land Trust owns that property and there are trails up in there. The city can purchase the land from them. That is a great area out of the way from homes. The mayor said that we need to form a committee and they can run it and maintain it. M. Donatelli commented to be sure there were no corners at an enclosed dog park…must be round fencing. J. Ciccolini recommended adding an action item to extend the amount of pickleball courts out to the grassy area to the left at the Doyle courts. All agreed, so J. Sumner will add this to the final plan. Dick O’Brien thinks that there should be bocce courts in that area to the left of the pickleball courts because two courts are not enough to hold a league. Brooks Pond has three courts. It isn’t part of the Doyle Foundation master plan. We may need to revisit this. There is also indoor bocce under Don’s Diner. Email J. Sumner with any additional action items or comments anyone has after reviewing the plan again. b) $163,500.00 grant received- Engineering and Permitting for Colburn Pond Dam – that’s on hold right now. It must go out to bid. The scope of work for other dams in Leominster, Rockwell Pond and Morse Reservoir, is already in existence and we could use that to help with Colburn Pond Dam scope of work. Need to get to work on the scope of work but if we must hire a company, that may have to go out to bid and Greg in Purchasing has been extremely busy and back logged. c) PARC Grant Application submitted for Barrett Park Improvements -Phase II - Today J. Sumner went to Lowell and we got a grant for Phase II of Barrett Park to replace the playground, put in a volleyball court and handicap access to the pavilion etc. Also, keep the view of the pond open. The grant is for $400,000.00 and the city will match it with $188,000.00. A new playground for 2–5-year- olds and one for 6–12-year-olds and handicap access. That grant begins July 2022. Andrew Leonard has already done a conceptual design. We will work this winter on getting everything together and the design. 9. NEW BUSINESS a) Trail Mapping updates-Montachusett Regional Planning Commission – The City gets 8 free hours of mapping services and the Planning Director said they wouldn’t be using it this year. The mayor gave us permission to use it to update some of our new trails. The Trail Stewards have been working on new trails all along Hill St. and marking them. And they have been putting in trails at the end of Mt. Elam Rd. to the left all along there all the way up that go to the top North Monoosnoc Hill. We really need to have the trails near Notown Reservoir on a map because people get lost in that area. Once we get all that mapping, we can apply for a grant to get them all put into a booklet and have them printed out. We also want to put in accurate distances. 10. FACILITY REQUESTS – They have already been granted and met here earlier in the month. a) Hannaford – Managers Meetings: September 22, 28 and October 13, 2021 – Barrett Park b) Hannaford – Softball Outing at the Lassie League Field on October 8, 2021, subject to Lassie League approval. We are still waiting on them working out a date change with the league. Emilyne said she could handle working on something where we can start charging a fee for permitting and using the facility. This must go to the city attorneys first, but this is something we could have her work on. 11. OTHER – M. Donatelli let us know that the Doyle Field Commission will be having a meeting to discuss the use of the facilities and the concession stand. If you are opening it up to all departments that we may like to use it sometime in the future and would meet all their regulations of cleaning etc. T. McEwen – does someone from AYF have serve safe to run their concession stand? There were a lot of kids in there over the weekend and she was very nervous about it. That would be under the Board of Health. We don’t have anyone Serve Safe Certified any longer if we wanted to use the Doyle concession. J. Sumer also gave the Commission the 5-year Capital Improvement Plan she submitted to the mayor. 12. MEETINGS and EVENTS a) Next Regular Commission meeting will be held Tuesday, October 19, 2021 13. ADJOURN - motion to adjourn at 5:51 p.m. made by J. Ciccolini, 2nd by J. O’Neill.