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 February 15, 2022 1. CALL TO ORDER at 4:36 p.m. 2. COMMISSION ATTENDANCE ROLL CALL: Maureen Donatelli, Chairperson; Jeff O’Neill, Vice Chairman; Therese McEwen; John Ciccolini; Tom Bissonnette; Judith Sumner, Director of Recreation. 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM MEETINGS: Motion to accept the minutes made by T. Bissonnette, 2nd by J. Ciccolini. All in favor. 4. ELECTION OF OFFICERS: Tabled until next meeting. Motion made by T. Bissonnette, 2nd by T. McEwen. All in favor. 5. PROGRAM and STAFF UPDATES a) J. Sumner retiring August 1, 2022 – Officially submitted her retirement letter to the Mayor. The city is forming a committee to hire for her position. J. Sumner told the Personnel Director that in the past that the Recreation Commission was involved in the interview process and make their recommendation to the Mayor and they would like to be involved this time as well. The Personnel Director will probably be in touch with the Commission as far as setting up the committee to do the interviews. b) Summer Staff – Nichole Comeau and Justin Murray have agreed to return this summer but not for the whole summer. Justin will be taking two weeks off during June/July for his honeymoon, so Nichole will run the summer programs then but does not want to work all summer. She will help with the hiring of the staff, staff training, getting everything ordered and ready and the two weeks Justin isn’t working but will take the last three weeks off. Nichole usually covers the morning hours, but we have another staff member, Cailin Ball, who hopefully is returning, that could take over those three weeks. Cailin will assist in the morning but then does the Special Needs Program in the afternoon, when the kids get bused to our program from summer school. We sent our returning staff letters and posted the summer job listing. We are also waiting for the assistant directors from last year, Kim Hilton and her brother David Hilton to respond whether they are returning. We do not know yet how many returning or how much space we will have in the schools for programs. c) Pool staff – Ray Faucher interested in coming back to assist as a pool manager but only part time. We need a pool manager that can be there when he isn’t. Ray will work with J. Sumner to revise the pool manager job description and check with the State on the pay rate. The State is paying lifeguards now $21/hr. so we will have to compete with that. The State will train our new lifeguard staff, but we need to get people to apply. d) Program update 1) Basketball – Teen League still playing until March 7th. J. Sumner sent an email to the Athletic Director about an update on the mask mandate as MIAA will be lifting their mandate on the 28th. We’ve kept the 10-day quarantine rule. It’s encouraging that the numbers are going down. Playoffs and the championship game for 5/6 and 7/8 on Thursday night at Frances Drake 6:30 p.m. The other leagues ended last Saturday. Jen Zumwalt was wonderful with the grades 1/2 and Vinny did a great job with the 3/4. Needed a lot of back up coaches because of COVID this year. Challenger League for special needs youth ran by Jeff Connors. L. Comeau has asked him if he would like to run some sort of a summer Challenger Program, possibly here at Barrett Park. Flyer handed out to the Commission. 2) Winter Event – is Saturday, February 26th at Barrett Park from 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. 3) School Vacation Programs – We have Snapology doing programs in our program building in February and April. Right now, that February program is full. We have other programs going on as well, magic lessons, free magic show, free Animal Adventures, and free family game time all at City Hall. The Mayor’s office is also doing activities that week. Cheryl Cuddahy asked us to send her all our program information and is doing a nice write up for the newspaper. 4) Spring & Summer Programs  a) Lisa Comeau, now that she has been promoted to Assistant Director, is also working on all the programs. She compiled a list of all the programs that we are going to have coming up that she has been working on…list was given to the Commission. Lisa is working on putting the spring and summer brochure together. Programs get sent to our webmaster, Betsy Kuba, and Betsy posts them on our website along with Facebook. L. Comeau also sends them out to multiple press in the area. However, some programs fill up while others do not. T. Bissonnette suggested using WLPZ radio to help with marketing. J. Sumner says the Mayor’s office is supposed to be announcing all the activities coming up on LATV, she will check with them. L. Comeau thinks that we could try offering a full day Snapology program instead of the half day programs in August. The full day cost is $250 per child. The commission thinks that it’s a good idea to try offering it as a full day. b) Ron Mazzaferro approached J. Sumner about doing a basketball clinic for four days in July as a give back to the community. J. O’Neill says Grutchfield is running his basketball clinic this summer at LHS, so LHS gyms will not be available in July. J. O’Neill thinks his program may conflict with ours in August at LHS, which the location was confirmed by the athletics office today. That could be three different clinics which could take away from our existing clinic in August. J. Sumner will ask him to come to our summer programs and do a basketball program with them. J. O’Neill said he could come and speak at our basketball clinic or come in each day to help with a particular skill. c) Adult exercise is still going on in the program building on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the spring and summer yoga in the park is also coming back. J. Sumner is concerned about the geese and the mess they have been leaving behind all over the grounds. 6. MAINTENANCE REPORT- written a) We just got the prevailing wage rates to have a Modine heater installed in the maintenance garage for the winters. DJ has been working on insulating the garage. We are going to use propane and maybe in the future we can figure out if we can get the gas line hooked up. b) At the new Laurel Street/Mechanic Street Park there has been complaints from a couple neighbors about a pond filling up, in the Wells Ct. area, with water and they are concerned that a small child could drown in it. J. Sumner contacted A. Leonard and he said that there aren’t any pipes to drain that out to and too far away from drainage. The only thing to do is pump it out. It froze over the winter and some of the neighborhood kids have been skating on it. T. Bissonnette says it’s about 50’ around. It’s about 2’ deep and come spring we might have to pump it out or investigate fencing in that area. A. Leonard said fencing won’t look good and kids might climb over the fence. c) We sent a request to the Purchasing Agent last September to purchase a tractor, which we haven’t heard back yet. As part of the Brooks Pond Development, there was an agreement that the development would donate $25,000 to the Recreation Department to be used for recreation purposes. We had earmarked that money to purchase a tractor. There will be a check presentation when John Souza, Planning Commission Chairman, comes back from Florida. DJ did a nice job on the ice on the pond this year and it’s the best it has ever been. DJ put a 55-gallon drum on the Kubota and made a makeshift Zamboni to spread water on the ice. He also plowed all the way around the pond so they could skate around the pond. 7. PROJECTS/GRANTS- UPDATES a) Frankie Fortuna Skate Park & Pump Track – Design given to Commission - Greg Chapdelaine put it out to bid last week. J. Sumner sent him a couple of addendums to add to that so that there was a little more description with the design. J. Sumner sent him a list of 10 companies to send the bid information to. Still must do the parking lot area. Kept those two projects separate, the skatepark/pumptrack and the parking area. There is a petition before the City Council to transfer that land to the Recreation Department. Because of all the wetland restrictions with storm water we are only going to put in nine parking spots. They can’t back out of a parking spot into the road, so the parking lot is getting moved in, allowing for them to turn around and drive out of the parking area. Moving the parking lot is why the project snowballed with the cost increase and time constraint because of the cost of a drainage report that needed to be done. J. Sumner said she is working with DJ and JR to help coordinate with the DPW to help with some of the grading and fill. We need gravel parking spots as part of the grant by June 1st and hoping to get CDBG funding to pave it after July 1st. We also must put in some turf, some bark mulch, and some trees. We can either hire a landscape company to help with all that or do it ourselves to meet the tight budget and deadline. b) Engineering and permitting for Colburn Pond Dam – Just waiting on Greg to issue a purchase order on that. J. Sumner sent the scope of work to Greg in January. We need that purchase order soon  because permitting could take months to get. It’s already six months behind on the project. That must be complete June 30th. c) Barrett Park Improvements -Phase II – The first design had a lot of climbing features and it didn’t fit in with the natural setting of the park and have enough features for all abilities. J. Sumner and L. Comeau worked on changing the design and incorporating features that would gear more of the features toward handicap accessibility. We added a communication board, several play panels, wheelchair swing, log slide and a message board with animals that are hidden in the playground to find. Commission thought it was a great design. Whitman & Bigham will do all the permitting and wetland marking. Andrew Leonard has submitted a scope of work on the 7th. He will do the design and prepare the bid documents needed to put that project out to bid July 1st. Waiting on a purchase order from Greg. All the designs and permitting needs to be done by June 1st. d) Trail Mapping updated-Montachusett Regional Planning Commission –. The Trail Stewards are working with Regional Planning to update the mapping. They are also trying to coordinate and add in the mapping segments for Trail Adopter’s and the ability to comment on maintenance needs at various segments. e) Hill Street Trail, parking lot and kiosk – Dick O’Brien has been working with Lisa on this grant. We received the PO but waiting on the company to chip up everything. Once that is done the DPW will bring in the grindings to finish the parking lot there. The report is due on the 17th and Dick O’Brien sent the completed report and pictures to J. Sumner today and will be sending it off to them tomorrow. The Hill Street parking lot is not on City maps, so the Trail Stewards will have to work with Regional Planning to get that done. J. Sumner was hoping to get the trail brochure done before she retired and the Trail Vision Plan but will have to get back to that. 8. OLD BUSINESS a) Pool MOU – J. Sumner and Ray Faucher made their recommendations, just waiting to have a meeting with the Mayor and get back to the State on what we want to change on the MOA. 9. NEW BUSINESS 10. FACILITY REQUESTS – Center for Excellence – Barrett Park – They used it last year. T. Bissonnette made a motion to approve the request, 2nd by T. McEwen. All in favor. 11. OTHER 12. LICENSE AGREEMENTS – Chuck Sargent, new President, Leominster Lassie League; Elijah Martinez, President, Leominster Flag Football; Jack Reed, past President of Leominster Flag Football. The past president of the Lassie League, Curtis Ruby, passed away in September. L. Comeau emailed all the leagues their License Agreements on January 31st. The Commission went over all the points to discuss regarding using City property with the leagues. Lassie League parking lot in the back the city had put in regrinds. No one is plowing in back and the concession stand flooded. There is no paving up there at the top field, just regrinds, and they are not ADA compliant. That’s why T. McEwen mentioned it to J. Sumner, and we are trying to get American Rescue Plan money to pave the top parking lot. LHS also plays their games there. Then the Lassie League has been talking about doing fundraising to finish paving the parking lots. T. McEwen said that years ago DPW dropped off a truck of regrinds and the league wasn’t given any instruction on how to spread it. At that time, it wasn’t the Recreation Commission but the Conservation Commission. T. Bissonnette said in the hot sun, you can roll regrinds and compact it back down. There was a drainage problem at one time and the Neighborhood Grant through the City Council was going to be used to have DPW assist with that on OT. This was pre-COVID and hadn’t gotten done. J. Sumner asked DJ to follow up with DPW and Lassie League to see if we can get that drainage issue resolved. There is a huge rut between field 2 and 3 that also needs to be addressed. J. Sumner said we would need to follow up with Wendy Wiiks about the American Rescue Plan money for the paving because J. Sumner had sent it to her after she had already put together our Capital Improvements list. Elijah is working with AYF on who is doing the maintenance on the field. It’s a little bit of a challenge because their facility is in a public park. There are always issues with trash etc. J. Reed said one of the biggest challenges has been the adult softball players. They have a good relationship with the league, but the players leave a lot of trash with beer bottles etc. T. McEwen said she was with Pop Warner many years ago and what they used to do is empty their trash barrels and then put the empty barrels in their concession stand. You knew that your barrels didn’t have someone else’s trash in them. Flag Football has a dumpster with a lock people tend to put trash all around it. Flag Football concession needs a new roof. Just keep the office up to date with that and obtain the permits needed. On the new lights that were installed at LAMSA’s field, it is set up for cameras at some point. Jack Reed says the old lights are still on the side of the upper field that need to be removed. J. Sumner asked if the older light posts on the football field got taken down, Joe Poirier was going to address that. Jack Reed thinks that was addressed and they were taken down. There was a concern that those old  poles weren’t safe and needed to come down. The old wooden bleachers at the softball fields are on our Capital Improvement plan to get replaced. Email any issues that arise to J. Sumner and L. Comeau. Thanks to the Presidents for volunteering all their time. We need to know how participants can register for their programs. Elijah was a participant in Leominster Flag Football when it was under the Recreation Department and is now the League President. 13. MEETINGS and EVENTS a) Next Regular Commission meeting will be held Tuesday, March 15, at 4:30 pm. 14. ADJOURN – Motion to adjourn at 5:27 p.m. made by J. Ciccolini, 2nd by J. O’Neill. All in favor.