Parks and Recreation Commission

PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES MEETING DATE: May 25, 2021 LOCATION: Recreation Complex CALLED TO ORDER: 7:02 p.m. MEETING ADJOURNED: 7:48 p.m. NEXT MEETING: June 22, 2022, 7pm ROLL CALL NAME PRESENT ABSENT David Addison, School Board Liaison X Josh Bowlin X Tracy Downing X Ben Eckler-Chair X Dana Gilgrist X Mike Johnson X DR Kate Krieger Lindsey Michaud vacant Sarah Richardson, Council Liaison Scott Davis, Staff Liaison APPROVAL OF MINUTES X X X X Eckler moved to approve the minutes. SOMEONE seconded. Minutes were approved by voice vote with no dissent, abstention. VISITOR COMMENTS None OLD BUSINESS Davis: July 4th race, sponsorship? F Downing: we split it up and what I found was a lot of people willing to pass things along and highlight the important parts – like t shirt sponsorships. Everyone was super enthusiastic, but no one signed on the dotted line. I’m not sure about Lindsey. Davis: I appreciate y’all doing this, but after this week, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to pull this off this year. City budgetary issues, etc. I think we can make it happen in the future. I haven’t put in enough on the backend to make it happen. From a staff perspective I think we need to pass on it this year. Eckler: staff like police? Davis: my staff Downing: you don’t have the staff or they don’t want to help? Davis: yes Downing: would we have the staff for a non-community days event? Davis: yes, on a different day when there aren’t 23 other things happening. And less short notice would be good. I can’t dedicate the resources this year. Downing: that’s disappointing. But we threw a lot of ideas out there when talking about events. I would love to have an event for Webster that highlights the rec center and gets people excited about it. I’m also open to other things we could do. Michaud: Did we get any responses re: sponsorship? Davis: I really appreciate y’all doing this Michaud: I went out for an hour and a half and did a soft sell. I highlighted banners, etc. so their businesses would be seen. Downing: when I said we were doing a 5k, I spoke with some folks who looked like runners to get some feedback. I’m not a marketer, but post-COVID, I would think people would want to get involved in something that brings about normalcy. David: on the other hand, we’ve had two years of reduced business and income. Which isn’t to take away from your point, but something to consider. Davis: I hate bad news and I’m not one for quitting Michaud: But we want to do it the way we want to Davis: let’s get ready before we pick another activity so we can really run with it. DR Josh: I understand and recognize. Thanks, y’all for your effort. We all knew it was going to take basically a miracle to make this happen, so better to be better prepared for the next idea. Michaud: there is def interest in a 5k though NEW BUSINESS Johnson: I saw fundraising directly at the site of the park in D.C. They had a QR code in the park for folks who wanted to support the park. Maybe also an opportunity for sponsorship? Businesses may want to support a beautifying effot. One cool thing they had there was a community journal that folks could write in when visiting. Singage costs of course, but it’s an idea. Davis: I’m headed to DC in 3 weeks so I’ll check it out Eckler: was it more than a QR code? Was there information? Johnson: yes, there was an explanation: this ist he park, these are the improvements we want to make, play structure needs so-and-so.People want to know what money is being used for. Downing: I think it’s a great idea Michaud: it reminds me of video games where kids pay to choose what they want to see in a video game. Downing: and with a QR code we could link to any other information we want to give folks. I think we could highlight raising money for more water features at other parks than Southwest. Davis: looks like DC has a whole site F Gilgrist: I also have some new business. Maybe picking a day later in the summer and doing a park clean-up day. I was in Lockwood the other day and was picking weeds. Maybe we could each pick a park and have a list of to-dos from Scott and each of us are the leader of a park. We can recruit our friends to help, Scott can post it on social media, keep it simple and get it done. Davis: I love this idea. We’ve done a few stream clean-ups, but nothing like this. We have a pretty good volunteer group, btu getting a different demographic to get in would be wonderful. I’ll talk to my park staff. Do y’all think a weeknight or weekend? Gilgrist: I think weekends are hard with travel. Do you want more hands or more detailed work? Davis: more hands. I say we pick a park or two and see how it goes. We could roll for a few weeks and cover all the parks. Downing: not to complicate things, but should we reach out to Rolling Ridge? That would be a great photo to have in the Webster-Kirkwood Times. Davis: I don’t think we need a partner to do this. Downing: they could give garden gloves to attendees and that brings up customers into their store. Eckler: we could bring in the boy scouts Gilgrist: our girl scout troop picked up all the trash in Larson in like 10 minutes. Johnson: doesn’t Webster U have a day they send out students to work? Davis: they used to have Webster World. It’s a great idea. Let me talk to my park staff so we can get it going middle of June. Gilgrist: just let us know through email. COUNCIL REPORTS-presented by Sarah Richardson Representative is not here to report, so I’ll report on the budget. The city is upside down on several million dollars. Some of it is lost revenue, some salaries Parks & Rec took a hit. FD needs a new truck - $1million- and they took money from P&R – ABOUT $300,000. That’s legal. We already pushed $170k out of our fund. For next year we’re looking at spending $1.7 million and only bringing in $900,000. This means down the road we’re going to miss out on a $300k project. DR Council also asked for an additional million dollars of cuts from departments. Dept heads have put in some suggestions for us, which I can’t talk about. It’s loss of salaries, loss of employees, loss of services, lower facility hours. The hours aren’t a terrible loss: we’re open to 9:30 but no one comes in after 8:45. It’s pretty drastic for Parks & Rec. I’m worried about our parks: surviving instead of thriving. We’ll have to wait to see how it plays out. None of it is fully in the budget yet. June 7th is the vote. All of these ideas are great because we’ll need money and extra hands, etc. I’m struggling with it as is my staff. APR funds: council has dedicated about half of the fund, but there are a few million left to be assigned. City Hall infrastructure and HVAC, new firetruck, moving to electric vehicles and charging stations (get that infrastructure in place now so the future generations can benefit from it). The rest is an unknown. We don’t have to allocate it until 2025 and send it by 2026. They don’t want to use the money to slap a Band-Aid on the budget, but to try to improve things for the coming years. It stinks. Gilgrist: park clean-up sounds good. We’ll help however we can, Scott. Johnson: maybe it’s ongoing? Weekly. Davis: and whoever shows up shows up. I’ll keep y’all in the loop on those changes. We’re all working on making do with less. I don’t think folks will notice until this time next year. Josh: are other departments facing similar scenarios? Davis: every department is, mostly with staffing issues and money loss that leads to reduced services. Parks and Rec is the biggest non-uniform department so we’re taking one of the biggest hits. STAFF REPORTS-presented by Scott Davis PARKS & RECREATION The pool is opening on Friday! Great weather next week so get on out there. F David Addison report SET NEXT MEETING The next regular meeting scheduled for 7 pm. Wednesday, June 22. Mike moved, Downing seconded. No oppositions. ADJOURNED Eckler moved to adjourn, Someone seconded. Approved by voice vote with no dissent, abstention. Meeting adjourned at 7:38 p.m. DR F