Zionsville Board of Park and Recreation

Summary Minutes of the Meeting of the Zionsville Park and Recreation Board September 11, 2019 The Zionsville Board of Park and Recreation met Wednesday, September 11, 2019 at 7PM. The meeting took place at the Zionsville Town Hall’s Council Chambers (Room 105). Tim Casady, Jeff Edmondson, & John Wollenburg, Steve Bullington, George Abel were present. Also present was Park Department Superintendent, Matt Dickey and Park Board Attorney, Roger Burrus. Not present was Wayne Bivans. Agenda/Meeting Tim Casady made a motion to approve the August 12, 2019 regular board meeting minutes with minor typographical corrections. John Wollenburg seconded. The motion passed unanimously. Public Presentation/Comments -None Identified Staff Reports Superintendent Matt Dickey wanted to thank those on the Park Board that helped at the Fall Festival. The Public’s comments were great and the weather which couldn’t be better. Park Board Attorney, Roger Burrus informed the Park Board that he is working on the bond stuff that the Park Board will be talking about later on. Also, the Town Council is making revisions to their organizational ordinance. This is to ensure the existing rules are codified into one location in the Town ordinances. New Business Bruce Donaldson, from Barnes & Thornburg was present to discuss the legal side of preliminary bonding process to the Park Board. Mr. Donaldson said that he was there to give a big picture overview of the 3 Series Bonds being proposed. Series A is the Heritage Trail Park’s south extension Park & Recreation Complex with a Nature Center, Atrium among other items. Series B is the Overley Worman Park and Series C is the Trail Improvement; including the Big-4 Rail Trail. Because the Bonds are in different amounts, there are different procedures that apply to them. For all 3 Bonds there are procedures under your general Park Statute that require having Public Hearings on the Bonds general projects. And on top of that the Series A Bond has some additional procedures because its dollar amount exceeds 5 million. Under Indiana law a property taxed based Bond exceeding that amount is called a controlled project and is required to have two public hearings; tonight would be the second hearing. Two days ago we had the first public hearing on the preliminary determination on a possible Series A Bond. This is a statutory requirement. Under the Parks basic statute, this goes forward with the initial public hearings on Series B & C. Mr. Donaldson went on to state that everything tonight on the agenda, the 4 resolutions are preliminary in nature and would come back on our October 9th Board meeting, if you move forward tonight, the final public hearing and the final approvals will be on October 9th. Between now and then the Town Council will have two meetings. One is planned for Monday morning and the other for the evening of October 7th. The Park Board may have a general idea of where the Town Council stands on these bonds by our next meeting. Superintendent Dickey wanted to remind the Park Board that by statute, the Park Board can’t bond by themselves. They can, however, make recommendations to the Town Council and ask for a process. The Town Council has final authority. Next up was Becca Zakowski from Crowe Horwath, LLC. Ms. Zakowski was present to discuss the accounting side of the bond process and to give a quick overview of the new debt issuances and the single Park Board Bond that is outstanding today. Series A, the Park & Recreation Complex is proposed to be issued in the par service amount of 9,000,050. Series B; the Overley Worman Park is proposed to be issued in the par service amount of 3,375,000 and Series C; the trail improvements including the Big-4 Rail Trail is proposed to be issued in the par service amount of 4,305,000. This comes to a par total amount of 16,073,000. That equals to an annual debt service amount of 1.4 million. Crowe has included capitalized interest into their structure that would go through July of 2021 and is a 20 year amortization. Also included in the calculation is a $195,000 issuance contribution from the Park Bond itself (if the Town Council approves this Bond procedure) to stay within the debt limit of the Park District. The Park District currently only has one issuance debt outstanding and those are the 2007 Bonds. Those were issued for $5,980,000 in January of 2007. They were issued for the Mulberry Fields Park & Turkey Foot constructions. These Bonds will mature January 15th of 2022 and are currently outstanding in the amount of $1,290,000. This would be five more payments for the 2007 Bonds. The first payment of the proposed 2019 Bonds will come on the same date as those outstanding bonds. So that one year, on January 15th of 2022, you will have interest payment on the new Bond and the last payment on the 2007 Bonds. The Park District does have a debt limitation separate from the Town and that is set by State Law at 2 per cent of one third of net assessed value of the Town. Ms. Zakowski said that they structured these bonds in order to maximize that remaining debt limit of the Park District. Currently with the 2007 bonds outstanding, the issuance projects was $16,730,235M. If the accountants plug in the estimated 2020 net assessed value for the Town into their calculations, the issuance margin cap would increase to $1,039,000. Note: This is the value amount of cap left as the Bonds would not use all this. The 2019 bonds would be based upon the Town’s higher net assessed value. Since 2007, the Town has reorganized and brought in more territory so the next assessed value has gone up. Crowe Horwath LLC predicts the Town’s Park tax rate will decrease. Old Business Mr. Dickey had an update for the upcoming Town 2020 budget process. Tricia McClellan from Rundell Ernstberger Associates (REA) was present to discuss upcoming projects that are currently ongoing. The first item is the Elm Street Green Adventure Playground and the Zionsville Parks Tot Lot next to Lions Park. REA informed the Park Board that these projects are being advertised today and again next week. Bids are due October 2 at 1 PM. Construction is projected to start on October 23rd. Completion is expected on the Tot Lot is November 22 and ESG Adventure Playground is expected to have completion by the end of May. The May date is because of the weather; the poured-in-place surface cannot be done in cold temperatures. Again, REA reminded the Park Board this is all dependent on how the bids come back in. They did add an alternate for replacing the poured-in-place surface, with engineered wood fiber mulch in both projects and an alternate for the Adventure Playground to put off completion of the planned steps. Matt Dickey reminded the Park Board that in their 5 year Master Plan, there were a variety of projects looked at by the Park Board. Some were discussed in the bond level and some were discussed as being yearly budget items. The instruction to the Park Board from the Town Leadership was to take that list of projects and start many of the smaller projects in various yearly budget requests. Mr. Dickey said that Town-directed approach is where these two projects came from at ESG and the Tot Lot. The Parks was given a target number when this was presented to the Park Board President and to Superintendent Dickey. So Mr. Dickey wanted to remind the Park Board that when the Parks budgeted for these two, we were pushing that limit quite a bit, as a total cap the Board President was told to keep projects under was not enough based on the estimate from the consultant’s side of the equation. However, Mr. Dickey reminded the Park Board that they have a non-reverting capital allotment fund that monies can be pulled from and that allotment goes into the regular Parks budget at the end of that year and then it is shifted to the regular fund. Once it’s shifted to the NRCF (215) fund, then specific spending will have to be checked with Council before it’s spend. So the Superintendent brought this up to help the Park Board remember one of the projects on their radar screen, but for which it was not originally anticipated that the Park Board would have to act so quickly on, was the land acquisition for extending the rail trail both ways, in particular the south end. So the Park Board needed to recall in the August Board meeting the non-reverting allotment was tapped and 2/3rds were spent of it to acquire one of the two remaining pieces of land necessary to extend the Rail Trail to Zionsville Road. That should leave enough in the 2019 NRCF allotment in the 216 budget and probably cover everything related to the playground. But we have to wait to see what the bids actually come in at. REA also informed the Park Board that the other piece of this is a Flood Plan Permit is being required by the State for the ESG Adventure Playground and this has been submitted. Tricia McClellan (REA) showed the Park Board the results of the land survey done on the Tennis Courts area next to the Tot Lot and Lions Park. This shows that the property line is on the fence line. This would rule out one of the design concepts on the resurfacing project. The other potential concepts will fit, even though some may be less feasible than others. The Park Board discussed the other concepts and agreed on not wanting moveable parts and having a storage facility for those parts. The Park Board desires that when REA meets with the tennis and pickleball stakeholders, one concept will be presented. REA updated the Park Board on the Overley Worman Park. REA is under contract with a surveyor and has received a preliminary boundary and topography outline. REA is able to use that info to start laying out the sheets and taking up the preferred concept and putting it on the survey and making it work. Along with that REA will have updated preliminary cost estimates. Mr. Dickey informed the Park Board that this Friday morning will be the initial Town budget presentation to the Town Council and this will be open to the public. Final approval will be in October. Our general Park budget was $87,500 under what was planned for last year. The Golf Course budget was $8-10,000 higher. A request was received from the Deputy Mayor about 10 days ago and this related that they just got the Account’s report. The new account report estimated that if the entirety of the 202 budget request was spent (something no department does), the golf course would utilize more money than it generates (based on a 10-year average of gross revenues). This year the Golf Course utilized more money than budgeted. Mr. Dickey met with the golf course staff to find $97,000 (as requested) and remove that from the budgets. This was split into saving $43,500 in this year’s budget and cutting $54,000 from the 2020 budget request. To help explain this, Mr. Dickey introduced Mark Adams, from Crowe Horwath. Mr. Adams explained that the money earmarked in for the golf carts was never in the budget. Beginning of 2019, $240,000 is the beginning cash balance and estimated revenue is $220,000. The expenses including the encumbrances from last year to the tune of $453,000. So the net operating receipts for that year 2019 is $232,000. If the budget is 100% spent that leaves $7,000 in cash. Projecting that the golf course will be spending their entire budget. Park Board discussed options and decided to approve the Golf Management Staff’s suggested revisions to the original 2020 budget request of the Golf Course. Steve Bullington motioned that the Park Board revise the Golf Course budget to reflect the directions of the Town leadership to a new budget total of $294,404.78 for the 2020 budget. This was seconded by Jeff Edmondson. Park Board passed this motion 4-1, Tim Casady opposed. The Park Board unanimously agreed that they would like an explanation from the Town Leadership on this revision. Other Board Related Items Mr. Dickey informed the Park Board that Maplelawn would like to start bee-keeping. In the past, there were two instances of bee-keeping being turned down in the Parks. As of now, no Park Board action is needed, but Mr. Dickey wanted them to be informed of the situation. After discussing this, the Park Board asked the Park Board Attorney, Roger Burrus if there is anything in the lease agreement with Maplelawn that would prevent bee- keeping at Maplelawn. After looking over the lease, Mr. Burrus said that he didn’t see anything that would prohibit Maplelawn from bee-keeping. Another item Superintendent Dickey needed to discuss with the Park Board is confirming the past Park Board discussion on regarding potential staff-titling nomenclature. The Town is reviewing and cleaning up their ordinances and referenced a change in some titles. Mr. Dickey asked the thoughts of the Park Board on changing the title of Assistant Superintendent for the Maintenance Services to Director for Maintenance Services. Joint consensus among the Park Board is to make the change from Assistant Superintendent for Maintenance Services to Director of Maintenance Services. No formal motion was made. One last item to discuss, came up in the later in the day. President Jeff Edmondson and Superintendent Matt Dickey were approached by Whitestown concerning the Next Level Trail (NLT) Grant. They had asked the State’s NLT grant people if Zionsville and Whitestown could submit a joint application in the second round of the NLT grant application. While technically allowed, the State sent back a list of pros and cons for this idea. The pros would be a) more mileage within the project b) more partners c) more strongly connecting cities & towns d) not competing against each other and e) likely close a larger gap in a single project. The cons would be a) would not be collaborate project, i.e., would lose that preferential factor b)asking for a larger size for the 25M in regional funds, would take longer to reapply. If implemented as a joint application, the Parks’ portion would have to start a totally new application, someone would have to lead, and the needed significant definition work mean lawyers needed to refine. Also, Mr. Dickey informed the Park Board that if they decide to do this joint NLT application with Whitestown, a motion would be needed tonight as the deadline is in November and we’d have to start immediately, scrapping some of our already completed work to apply. The Park Board gave the Superintendent the authority to do this, if needed. The Park Board realize that this gives us not guarantee (that a joint application will increase the chances of securing the NLT grant). Claims After Board member’s reviews, Tim Casady made a motion to approve the claims as submitted. George Abel seconded and the motion was passed unanimously. Adjournment The meeting was then adjourned with a motion made by Park Board Member Steve Bullington, seconded by John Wollenburg & the vote was unanimous at ~9:45PM. The next regular Park Board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 9, 2019 at 7PM, at the Zionsville Town Hall’s Council Chambers (Room 105). ___________________________________ ____________________________________ John Wollenburg, Secretary Jeff Edmondson, President