April 14, 2025 — Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:01] That's no fun like you can't. Would you like to borrow one? Return it. I think, Bernie, at 6. 0, 1, this senior member, vice chair. Just another minute to dispose of refresh.

[1:10] There are. Oh, maybe that'll be thanks for the time. Yeah. So are you checking workday every like 5 min right now to approve. Job offers like, you don't get notifications. Right? I do in your email.

[2:10] Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay, so let's let's get started. My! My name is Andrew Bernstein, better known as Bernie, please. I've been around longest. I get the honor of sharing start by welcoming our new members. It's wonderful to meet you all. See you all in in person for the 1st time. We're grateful to you for volunteering and for We're making a commitment to the city of Boulder and our park system. let's see, typically, we would have a chair who chaired this meeting. But our chair is no longer, because, anyway, in our next meeting we'll have elections for chair and vice chair. And so

[3:06] whoever wins that election will be formally running a meeting, but for tonight I'll I'll do my best to keep things moving along with with the help of our wonderful staff. Just just by way of orientation. I know, Ali you've mentioned, but Staff provides dinner for us when we have meetings. So you know, feel free to arrive anytime after about 5 and you know, be hang out, relax if you can't make it until 5, 58 is is often the case for me. Then it's totally fine to be eating as we're as we're getting into the work that we need. We do. We do have rules that we will. That. We follow in these meetings that we use to run and govern the meetings, and we'll get into a little bit. But we also maintain a fairly informal environment. And if you did restroom or get water. you know, feel free. we also

[4:00] have a tradition of of interrupting staff a lot and asking questions, and I expect all of you to continue that. Probably, of course, but nevertheless, we we keep things conversational which I think is ultimately generally pretty productive. Sometimes sometimes the chairman thinks off. If we're going too long on it. Talking about trees, for instance. let's see. Why don't we have the staff introduce themselves. We'll be seeing a lot of I'm sorry. Let me introduce myself a little bit more. I moved to boulder. In 2,018 I joined the crab in 2,023 and my motivation. I think that many of yours was that I was just interested in investing more of my time in in making boulder better. Park. Seems like a wonderful way to do it, because I'm parks user as are most of the people I know who live in boulder and I see the

[5:00] the impact that our parks and recreation programs have on the city and was eager to find ways to support support that work and also hopefully help the staff see ways to improve the system and system the programs. I live in South Boulder, across right across from Fairview High School on Greenbrier and my my favorite, my favorite part probably, is is for the Platts, which is just frustry for me. So I use it a lot. And I I own a communications agency working in the outdoor and active spaces. Jenny, would you just introduce yourself? Yes, I wanted to ask on the study session agenda. Item, one is approval of agenda. Do we have to do that? We know that you're doing a lot of onboarding this month. Thank you. typically, we have one meeting a week you may get pulled into another ancillary thing or 2. Excuse me, thank you. Yes. One meeting per month so we just want to recognize that you're making a larger type of admit right now, as you get on boarded, and we are grateful that you're doing that. It's a lot to learn. And you know, thank you for for testing all that information, and don't hesitate to ask us questions as as you're learning.

[6:27] I'm Jenny Robbins. I am the second, most senior, somehow person on the crowd. I've been here a year. Really enjoying my time on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. I have spoken to many of you just to say hello and introduce myself on the phone and I became interested in the Parks and Rec Advisory board about 3 years ago, applied once and didn't get on, and then applied again, did so. That was really exciting. Since I've been on the board I have gotten to know Staff a lot better. And they're all really, really knowledgeable, passionate, wonderfully educated people on everything parks and Rec. And beyond. So they're very accessible anything that you need. They're always willing to give it. And you know we always just try to make sure that we

[7:18] understand that. You know, time after 5 o'clock is volunteer for for everybody. Almost. So this is time that everyone's spending here to to make make our parks Rec. System even better. My favorite park is Coot Lake. I like to go walk with my dog there and I'm really excited to have everybody on board. I'm Rob Kaplan. I got on the 1st time by the skin of my teeth. I watched the city Council meet. I'm a retired firefighter. I worked for boulder world fire rescue for 18 years. Retired about 2 years ago. Before that I used to own a bike shop right over here called pro peloton and I sold that. And

[8:04] I just wanted to get involved, because I've always been in the community with firefighting. you know, being, you know out there with the public. And I've never really gotten into I mean, this isn't really political, but just the the volunteer side for this, and if I have to pick a favorite park, I'm going to pick North Boulder Park because I live right next to it hard not to pick that one. It's a good one. So Hi! I'm Kara Siebel so so excited to be joining the board this year. So I moved to boulder around 3 years ago. and just started volunteering, working for in the garden with Osmp, and then also doing the point in time, count, and I think along the way I got to meet a lot of people who work for the City of Boulder, and I was just very impressed and wanted to get more involved. I have more of a strategy and analytics background working in the private sector for different technology companies.

[9:05] So I'm excited to sort of use those skills and translate that into helping support something I really care about. Which is, you know, older parks and recreation. And I think for me, I mean, I do love the parks, but you'll also find me playing pickleball like a couple of times a week, so you know. See me on the courts. Say, Hi. my name is Yvonne Castillo and I moved to Boulder with my 2 kids and my husband about a year and a half ago. but I went to law school here 30 years ago. So I really have always loved Boulder. It's here for a long time, and it's just amazing to be back moved here because of the value of parks. Literally, I mean, that is, that was the driver. We're coming from the East coast. And I wanted access to parks. I wanted access to outdoors to have a good quality of life with my family, and so this is amazing opportunity to be serving in this position, so

[10:05] grateful to be here. My name is Mike Shriner. I've been here since 2,000. I am really interested, or was really interested in joining the the Parks and recreation board just because my family has benefited so much from it. My daughter's 1st job as a lifeguard at north Boulder Rec. Taken all the swim lessons. We've done all kinds of dancing lessons, whatever. And it's just an amazing asset for the city, and it's got some challenges coming up budget primarily along with you know the wish list of things we need to do, and the list of things that absolutely have to get done, and so I hope to be able to facilitate or help with that. I've been an attorney for almost 40 years. I think the last 20 years. Here, with capital and earnest, a local firm, and my my favorite place parks and Rec is the North Boulder rec center, where I go virtually every morning at 5, 45 join the queue to go in.

[11:10] I'm Megan Loman. I'm a recreation manager here. So any questions that you all have about the the Rec. Centers, pools, health and wellness, that kind of thing, and I'll help answer them. And I'm just here to support community. And then I guess if I have to pick a favorite park, I'm going to go to North Boulder Park, because that's where I got married. Nice. hey, folks. I've met all of you briefly in some way, so I'll just share a little bit more about myself. I'm Ali. I'm in my 6th year as the director of the deferment, and 23rd year serving the city always with parks and recreation. It's an honor we have, I hope, one of the things that becomes clear. You've heard hints from Bernie and Jenny is that we have a nationally recognized system and incredibly competent, capable staff to operate it. And so we are. We are gifted in both land and people, and excited to work with you to build on Mike's Point. There are a lot of exciting conversations ahead and so that we can get to them. I'm going to toss it over to Scott.

[12:08] Sounds good. I'm Scott Schuttenberg. I'm the deputy director. here helping Allie on a on a regular basis. We'll talk quite a bit later about organizational structure. But I'm also originally from Boulder graduated high school here. So I went away for a career in higher higher education, and came back a couple of years ago. And and so I oversee our regional facilities. Really, all of our community service areas, recreation, and whatnot. And my favorite park. I guess I'd say the boulder reservoir. Hi, everyone. I'm Clarissa Collins. I've been working here for a little under a year, and this is my 1st prime meeting that I'm running the technology for. So hopefully. And I'll say my favorite part is also border reservoir. Since I went paddle boarding there for the 1st time last year it was really fun.

[13:06] I'm Jackson Height. I oversee our business services team. I've been with the Department for 7 years now. You'll hear a lot about Budget from the next 4 months. This is the 16th local government budget I've been involved with so 16th year, I should say not 16th government agency, and I love what I do here. I think that I love getting to see all the Parks Belmont Reservoir, and Tantra up there as my top 3, and I'll turn it over to Stacey. Yes, Hi! I'm Stacy Hoffman. I am the Senior Budget analyst for the department. I work with Jackson, and I've been with the city for 6 years, and I like a lot of our parks. So I'm not going to pick a favorite. They're all great, and I should note we had 5 open seats to fill. We filled 5, and then, unfortunately, one person had to resign, so we will be hopefully receiving, if not one final 7th member that requires an act of the City Council, which we're

[14:04] hoping will happen at some point in the next month or so. So we're not a full board quite yet. But Luckily we don't have any big boats coming up where you know an even numbers could be. Problem just as far as you can see, the agenda here. We're, of course, already, so our attorney is second. So I'll cover that section on the roles and responsibilities. Let's dive in first.st I just want to note that this is the 1st time we're doing an onboarding like this with the board. It was at the suggestion of the Prab members. For 2 reasons. One, you all join in April when we are diving deep into budget preparation, and it's just a steep learning curve, and we thought some of this, if we do up front, can set you up for success better in that way. Typically, there's a retreat in the fall, and we've covered some of these materials, and the folks last year like, why are we not doing this sooner? And so really, this session now is at the request and suggestion of your fellow Board members, and we're here to help board roles and functions. I'm really glad we're talking about this early, because it's often a source of either tension

[15:17] or frustration, and I'll share more. So sometimes we've had board members in the past who joined because they're passionate about mental health, and they want to start delivering services to the community. And you'll learn an event that's not the role of the services. The charter actually expressly prohibits you from doing the work of parks and recreation. or people are frustrated because of the nature of an advisory board. And so, for example, if a Prab member cure were to say, Ali, I really just, you know, in my neighborhood there's no dog park, and I'd like you to do one there next year, right like that is, that is beyond the function of the prab for an individual member, or even the board to provide direction, to add a service that is outside of the scope of the department plan or outside of the budget that city council has approved, and that advisory piece can can be frustrating and we think talking about it early and often can be really helpful.

[16:02] Because where you are advisors, we find it incredibly valuable. Board member. Input critical questions, strategic thinking can help us do better work. And so a lot of you have already heard me say this. The best more board members are asking us hard questions, to make the work better for the community and doing it in a way that honors the expertise and passion of ourselves. Our staff so constructively. So your roles are all spelled out in the city charter, which is our constitution. Basically it can be only changed by an election of the the community. And it's the ultimate oversight over the role of city council, the role of the advisory boards, the role of staff. The boulder revised Code is the ordinances that then implement the charter. It can be changed by city council. So, for example, if we were to say, you know what we really need? 9 folks on prep. Nope, that's in the charter trying to think of something for Prab that would be in an ordinance, it would be around your authorities and approvals. So we'll get into that in a minute. So Boulder revised Code Boulder Charter, they're both online. And it's actually somewhat searchable as far as if you wanted to find something specific to parks. In your handbooks are the specific charter sections where it talks, where it's pulling a reference from the Charter or the Boulder revised Code.

[17:22] So this language here, on this slide, this is the language from the charter, and anywhere it says, Shall, this means this is a must. It's a gotta gotta of your function. And so if we were to dispose of Parkland any expenditures from one of our funds. You'll learn more about those later. Those those require the support of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, so we could not sell a Park without without the approval of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, and make what you shall make recommendations regarding the protection and maintenance of park lands. And then our attorney has added below here there's just other general advisory board functions around just a diverse perspectives, and we'll talk more about that with some of the Mays, other shalls you approve permits or licenses on park land that are greater than one year, and so, if a lease of parkland is less than a year. It's approved at the staff level between one and 3 years. It's the purview of crab. If it's beyond 3 years, it requires prab plus City council.

[18:24] So if we sign a 10 year agreement for a lease at Flatirons golf course, you all would be a part of that review process, and one of your functions is that you shall make recommendations concerning our annual budget. So that's why you all are involved heavy. Now. April, May, June, on developing the budget so that what goes into the internal city budget development for a budget to council has your approval feel free to ask questions at any time, and I'll pause at certain moments, too. This is where we get into the maze. At the request of city council or the department, you may prepare and submit recommendations on other matters. This is the bulk of your agenda. We're developing a project. We're developing a new policy, and we want your input as the appointed representative to the community.

[19:10] And so that's the bulk of what we'll bring to you areas where we really want your advice and counsel on something that we're developing. You may request information from us. and as that's a May, we may say, yep, we'll get that calendar, and Bernie will talk in a minute about what that looks like. We might also say we're not going to be able to do that. So, for example, all examples always get me in trouble. There's an issue in our community in the last few years regarding property in South Boulder called Cu South. That involved a purchase of property with the University of Colorado Annexation, and then land use parks and recreation and department had no function in that process. We might in the future, as recreation amenities are developed. It was very contentious in our community several ballot issues. We had a member of crowd who wanted that to be brought onto the parks and record agenda so that they could discuss it. And so we just worked hard with the chair and vice chair to say, That's that is not the purview of the crowd. We're not going to be bringing that to this board.

[20:09] So that's just an example of I could. That's the one I've been working closely with the crowd for only 30 for over 13 years. That's the one example I can think of where the Board wanted to discuss something, and then it was just a flat. No, often, sometimes it might be a board member is interested in something, and the calendar is full. And so it's more about finding time for it, which is when we'll work with the chair and vice chair to figure out how to fit that in the agenda any questions? Alright! Alright legal cautions. These sounds so much better. Coming from the attorney. Andy was really sad. He mentioned me yesterday, he said, Ali, I've been so sick for days. There's no way of making it. Tomorrow night. We said, fine! You have questions I can't answer. We're gonna ask Andy to come back and do a spotlight. I mentioned this earlier. You cannot perform any administrative functions, the department, and so you know you you

[21:03] You wouldn't operate as a lifeguard, you wouldn't, you know, jump in and do Gis analysis of something like those are the functions of staff and there's a risk. If you were to get too involved with administrative functions. You don't have the same protections as city employee. You are protected in ways, but it's different. And then the other thing, Andy would say, is just as members of the prab. You are representatives of the city which can create risks and responsibilities. And so one of the things. That will come up a little bit later in meeting management communication, is talking about open open records, compliance, and the chain of communication, I believe who's been to the clerk's office orientation already. They cover that a lot in that one. Okay, I'm not going to duplicate it here. So there's another orientation coming up from the clerk's office, where the city attorney herself, Teresa Tate, I think, gives that overview of open records, compliance, open meetings, compliance which are really important to uphold the public trust. So thank you so much for your time and just paying attention to those.

[22:00] So the department's role is also spelled out in the charter we shall supervise, administer, and do all the functions that you're going to learn a lot about. So executing. I tell people city Council is the legislative branch, and in our council manager form of government we're the executive branch. So we are the doers of the policy. We submit written recommendations on those matters that require your approval. So if we were to be disposing of Parkland, you would get a full staff analysis to help support your decision making on that matter. At the request of grab, we can prepare and submit information for you. and we might request, inform your advice on really any parks and recreation map. So organization and procedure. This is also spelled out in the charter. So this part you have a handbook in front of you, and it spells out the charter. And then some of it is just your modes of operations which are not in the Charter or the Builder revised code. They're just the ways in this approved handbook that the prab has said. This is how we're gonna operate. So in the charter, you select a chair.

[23:05] You have a regular meeting once a month. If you are, gonna have a special meeting for an emergency nature. This has happened once in my 13 years. 3 members can call that with at least 24 h. Notice to both board members, and the community takes 4 members to make a quorum. We ask that if you're not gonna make a meeting, you let us know as soon as you know, so that we can plan accordingly, especially if there's an action. Item, but we can't even have a meeting with it out at least 4 folks. That's why the 7 is really helpful. But we also try and make sure that we avoid major holidays. We're thoughtful about summer, and what that means for families proud can also has the power to make reasonable rules for the conduct of its business. That's your handbook. That's 1 of the powers that you have in the charter is that you can make reasonable rules for the conduct of your business. I would just add to this that we do sometimes have meetings like this one where it's it's not a regular meeting. It's not an emergency meeting. We find it in advance. But it is additional to the other meetings.

[24:03] It has to be noticed right? Yup. And so that's why, we will always have the meetings available through Zoom. That's 1 of the benefits that we've learned since 2020 is we actually get better public participation when we don't tell folks you've got to come downtown at 6 o'clock on a Monday night. Okay, so this next section is yours, Bernie. We pause on just roles. Were there any other questions on any of that? I'm just curious. What was the emergency measure? In the summer of 2021 there was concern around a lease we had for a restaurant operation at Boulder Reservoir, and there had been some threats and actions against some special events that were going to be happening in the prab, called a meeting and passed a resolution to support the work. Of the department in that partnership. So so maybe this will be covered later. But communication wise, it all goes through you. So if you're talking to our staff, I always want to be copied for 2 reasons. One, I'm officially, is on the board, but second, as the director, I'm the one who can help say

[25:10] I appreciate you wanting that information from Megan. I'm aware of her workload, and that's not on her work right like. So it is a if if you, if you are needing information from staff, you'll start with me. Yeah, if it's an administrative question, you all have that Prab Admin email. And the reason we use that email versus say, Clarissa's is because if Clarissa's gone, if she's sick, if she's on vacation, there's multiple people who have that email address and can support you with whatever that might be. And if it's the community it doesn't have to be. You don't have to copy anybody. You can just. But that'll come up later. Also rules. Go along with that. Right? Say that again, around the just open records compliance. Is that what you're talking about? The community? You don't have to copy staff? No, yeah. You can just have that communication. Yep, but the rules for that communication they're covered in their onboarding with the clerk's office. We don't get into that here because it's how to communicate open records compliance, that's all in the training. Yeah. Good. More like, I guess.

[26:10] you know, in our last onboarding kind of something that I thought was interesting was. if you have a very strong opinion about something, and you're speaking to a community member, maybe even either in person or online. you're representing the Parks department. So if you say something like, I completely agree that you know we should. There's we have to like South Boulder rep is one where I feel like you want to be very careful what you promise, because you might say, we're gonna get this on the agenda. And we're gonna we're gonna get it built next year. You can't. That's not part of our agenda in the budget, or, you know. So those kind of things you just have to be careful with what you say to the public. You can't. You don't want to promise anything that the staff can't deliver or or is not even nearly close to the plan. And of course we understand that. You know, we all have personal opinions. Right? I certainly do. And I think it's okay to represent those if you're talking to members of the community. But it's just important to distinguish what is your opinion versus? What

[27:13] is the perhaps consensus opinion and just differentiate what you're gonna be saying for yourself versus behalf of the prop couple of years ago. But I guess I just. or whatever some point in my time in the property we were asked to weigh in on whether or not central brush be landmarked. And we? We came up with a consensus, opinion and position, and then I was asked to go to city council and relay that not my opinion, but the consensus position, and that's sometimes that is, something will come up or may come up periodically. They're just something to keep in mind. So I'll build off that example. So on Central Park historic district. On the same night Rob could go to public comment and say, This is Rob Kaplan. I'm a member of the prep. Speaking on my own behalf, and not representing the Board, you do not lose that 1st amendment right to speak to city council, or to speak to people you just cannot portray. This is Rob. I'm a member of prep. Here's what we think right, because Bernie is speaking in a few moments to what the Board has agreed is their consensus opinion.

[28:19] and I will say like for what it's worth. I don't. I can't think of a time last 3 years that I've been around that there's been a like a highly divisive issue. I think generally we've been able to come to consensus, which is not required, but it is certainly helpful when we can speak with one voice and really mean it. especially when it may may be controversial. Should we move on. Yeah, no more questions. One last quick one. I think Maria was talking about getting emails, specific emails for us, so that we didn't have to use our personal ones. It was on one of the onboarding she just mentioned. Yeah, let me follow up on that. I know some members create a different email address. So that because to Jenny's point, if you're emailing with community member Gina.

[29:11] you can say whatever you don't want, you don't have to copy staff. It is public record. And so if there were to be an open records request saying, I want any advisory Rec. Email, there might be an open records request for emails of advisory boards related to the South Boulder Rec Center. That is, subject to open records compliance. They would have access to those emails to make it easy, like, I know. I think Jenny has Jenny Robbins Prab, and that's the email she uses for prab business. But if Nuria mentioned a city email. Let me look into that and follow up. I do also have a Prat email that I just made a Gmail for myself. It's very easy to do that. So we'll talk a little bit about the way that these meetings run. We go to the next slide. Yep, there you go? So the as I mentioned, we will in our next meeting, be electing a chair and a vice chair. The chair vice chair Director of production. Rec and our our support. Clarissa, make up a agenda setting meeting. Typically, we meet Monday and the agenda setting meeting happens later that week, Wednesday or Thursday.

[30:18] barring scheduling changes. So the the agenda setting meeting will take in input, that happened during Monday's meeting, but also if if Rob has an item he really wants to be on the next month's meeting, you would want to make sure that you told a member of the agenda setting committee. Yeah, I'd really like to discuss the support this summer or next meeting, or whenever you know, and then it would be up to the chair or the vice chair, or whomever you told to bring that to the agenda setting meeting Dallas Point from earlier. Not everything we want to discuss has gets onto the agenda as quickly as we would like and it's kind of it's up to the agenda setting committee to

[31:06] prioritize and look at, look at what else we have coming up, and what other projects may be. Maybe plan to discuss how much time we have to get to the budget, whatever else may be, but generally well, I I should say, as when I was the vice chair last year. I I made it a priority to make sure that everyone's interests were represented on the agenda. we should do that. We are able to do that, and also balance the things that we are obligated to discuss like the budget. But that's that's just kind of a process, and an overview is make your request to the agenda setting committee. The committee brings it to agenda, set a meeting, and then it gets onto the agenda hopefully, within a meeting or 2, sometimes 3. It's perfect. The piece, I would add, is that the limiting factor is time. We have found this board meeting starts at 6, and that after 9 it's it's not productive. And so this this I mean some meetings no longer. Right, like council goes, is a 4 h meeting almost every time, and sometimes they vote to extend their meeting even later. Planning board almost always goes till 10 o'clock. This board the business, the cadence, the enthusiasm. We have

[32:15] drops drastically. Between 8, 30 and 9. And so we're really trying. We do our best to project. How long is a presentation going to be for this? How long do we think the Board's gonna talk about it, and that's the meeting management piece of oh, we thought this was going to be a 30 min discussion. We're going on 45, and it just means whatever is calendared later in the meeting isn't going to get the attention and and brainpower that we want it to have So you're always welcome to email, Ali, if you have questions about a particular topic, or you are like wondering when something may come to us. Ali may bring that to a future meeting. She may bring that to agenda setting. And then the actually measure what we mean by private information discussion. I think it's the verbal under matters from the app that'll come on the next slide, too. Let's go to the next slide. Let me just add one note also

[33:09] those of you who are, you know, customers of the Recreation Center or pickleball players. Please continue as you as you would any community member. If there is a broken door in the bathroom email. Anyone anytime? Right, don't hold that for a proud meeting. Sometimes I, you know, would hear from a proud member, I noticed. But you know a broken door in the bathroom. That's not a proud matter. That's a customer matter. We want to know right away. If you happen to have an experience while you're a customer in the parks or recreation facility. So just know that don't don't hold those for a proud meeting. We would expect any community member to let us know anytime if they're having an issue. Yeah. Okay. So agenda overview each each month, you'll get a packet the week before our meeting. Sometimes it's quite long, so you'll want to be prepared for that. I was. I was shocked when I got my 175 page packet. Read this. So the the top of the agenda is the consent agenda, which is, as you can read, you know, simply pretty straightforward items that are more for awareness.

[34:14] you're always welcome to bring questions about the consent agenda to the meeting, and we will discuss as needed. Typically, Allie is the staff member on that, and she's always prepared to answer questions and and the discussion but the hope is that the items contained in there are are not controversial, and we can just kind of quickly adopt and move on. I would I would go a step further to save something consent, agenda, that generates a lot of discussion. It probably shouldn't have been there in the 1st place, and that's something that we can think about in agenda setting that hasn't happened in a meaningful way. Public comment is pretty straightforward. It's the public is always welcome to our meetings to trust us. Talk about issues that are concerning them. In the past couple of years we've had a lot of comment about South polar rec about pickleball.

[35:04] Those are probably the 2 most common. Oh, and like aquatics. Yeah, that's what I was. Gonna say, I will say, like this. Isn't this isn't planning board where we get hours and hours of testimony from the public. Typically, it'll be a couple of people, I think one time we we listen to like an hour and a half of of testimony about about the Rec center. let's see action items, and I guess I will also mention outside of meetings. You are likely to get emails from from the community. your should you receive one? Don't do what I did when I 1st got when I got my 1st one and forwarded it to each member, support forwarded to Ally. And staff can distribute it. We we're not allowed to communicate peer to peer in groups of more than one to one to one person that'll be covered in the the clerks training.

[36:00] let's see, action items are are things that we are going to be voting on. We don't have these every meeting, but when they when they come to us they will get their own spot on the agenda. We'll have plenty of time for discussion. We will have relevant staff expertise in the meetings with us to help with those discussions. and then we'll and then we'll vote as needed. Matters from the department are usually update will not. Usually they are updates on larger projects. You know, for instance, we have a substantial update on the rec future of Rec center work. That's happening. I think I think that's calendared for our or maybe yeah. So coming up soon, and that will, you know, will be Megan and and other members of that project team will be giving us a a lengthy presentation about where that project is. What's planned. What's what's scope to top line budget estimates. We'll have plenty of opportunity to grow, Megan, with all of our many questions. Including our own questions, questions. We're getting from the community questions that that the presentation brought up, etc. So that will be a substantial agenda item each month. And and there are will be months where we have multiple

[37:11] matters from the department that we need to give a lot of consideration of weight to and then matters from the board is usually how we close the night, and it is fairly informal. It's an opportunity for us to just bring whatever we'd like to the to the prep. It is often a time just for us to talk about how we've interact with products lately. And it's not tied to any specific action in that meeting. It may generate an action item in the future, but it, you know the close of business of one being is just an opportunity for us to say, this is my prep thing that I've got on my own mind this month so that's a quick agenda overview any questions on how the agenda runs. So just question about the consent, agenda. Is it possible to ask that something be taken off the consent agenda?

[38:03] Or does that then become an action item it is possible to do that. We. We start each meeting by approving the agenda, and if there was something that we wanted to amend, you would have the opportunity to say, actually, I would prefer that we take Item 17 B. And move it to the matters from the board for more discussion, and we could then vote to do that or not. Do that. Okay. as a courtesy to Staff. If you see something when the packet comes out that you think you'd want to talk out a heads up would be great, so that we have the appropriate subject matter expert, available, or just to to help prepare for whatever the the interesting conversation is. What other questions do you have? I want to call it? We missed something. Discussion items. If you are going to take action on something, so is it June or July that they take action on the budget. Now, is it July? So so in July you will be. This is a big meeting. You will be approving our capital improvement program, which includes certain expenditures over which you have authority. We will pose the June item as a very robust discussion item. It is always our goal that when we bring you something for action, it's what we call a clean read meaning. You had plenty of opportunity to ask questions. We addressed your concerns.

[39:19] and so when you bring it for action, it's it's a brief conversation, and you're prepared to take action, so we'll always try and proceed it with a discussion. And it's very rare that you would see something on action that didn't have that discussion opportunity at a meeting prior, and it would be a reflection of some kind of sense of urgency. Thanks. So sorry we missed that. Is there anything else in this section? Or are we done with the meeting? Yeah, that's it. That's that's it for that section. So any other questions on how the meetings operate, how things get on the agenda or anything else we've talked about so far that yeah, we're doing good on time, folks. So if you have a question, someone else might be thinking it.

[40:01] I was just gonna give an example. Kind of the consent agenda So the consent, agenda, just to clarify since that was brought up. So the consent agenda is usually the approval of the last minutes updates from ally operations updates, and then our planning design and construction updates. So that's all. It's usually page like 3 through 11 of the agenda. So it's like they mentioned. It's pretty, you know, non controversial items and stuff like that. So to me, that was the most confusing part, and Elliot told me it was his fault. It was so confusing to me. He moved everything into the consent. Agenda. Just kind of move. The meeting so gives you the opportunity upfront. As you look through the agenda before the meeting. You could take a look at that, you know. Page one through 11, ish, decide if there's something you want to ask questions on and kind of familiarize yourself with that. So that's kind of the consent agenda. And that stays the same almost every time. It's almost the structure of content. Yeah, it gets longer or shorter. Yeah.

[41:04] And the intent really is, we we find we've gotten input from board members. People find out you're on crab, and they're gonna expect you to be experts on all the things. Or you. Now, as a member of Crab, you care more about all the things. And so you want to know about events, we have going on. We wanna let you know about operational changes. So, for example, in your April consent, Agenda Megan and Scott are working on an update on Swimmer safety that has been implemented. That you that you we think you should know about and so it's it's things that we think are either operational. But we think you want to know about it. And so that's what when we say non controversial, we don't need your input we, we find, you know, we've had requests from board members. Can you give us an update on every site and every project and every program we cannot. Right? Like that's just not a doable do. But we certainly can try and give you updates on notable activities, events or changes. Last month was all the summer hiring and all the positions. And so it's just really informational good stuff.

[42:08] So Scott has a connecting movement activity for us for a few minutes. and I know we already did some introductions which is awesome. But I'm gonna ask everyone to move out into the main hallway if we don't, Clarissa. I see only 3 participants. We have no members of the public watching. Right? Okay, good. So we're not making sure that we need to move the computer. I think we're good. What's that? Yeah. all right. Well, everyone has already started to look at the postcards. So these are postcards of the 63 national parks that the United States has. And so I'm sure, in your your time here on this

[43:06] advisory board, and obviously parks are a big part of what we do, and so what I wanted to do to connect a little bit more deeply is, give you all about 3 min to pick one of the cards. You can pick a card that you just like. Picture. You can pick a card that you've been to, or you can pick a card. You know of something a place you want to potentially go to at some point. So we'll give you about 3 min to pick a card staff. You can pick a card as well if you'd like. Knew right away. Okay, okay, if this is your card. No, you don't need to hide it.

[44:03] It's really out there in the middle of nowhere. We are there for spring break. So is it really. But I do love national parks. And so one of the things that I wanted to do. So we've done introductions. We've heard a little bit about you all, but we want to know a little bit more about your card. So you've all made the conscious decision to pick a postcard. Tell us about what that card means to you. It might be just

[45:27] something simple, something cool. And then we want you to talk for just a minute about parks and what Parks mean to you, and a little bit more of why you decided to join the board. So, Michael, would you like to go first? st Sure. Great. Yeah. I picked Grand Canyon National Park for me. It's an almost mystical place. We can sit on the rim and we'll watch the colors change. It's just an incredible place, really soothing to. And it's amazing to get there, too. Go back from there looking at the bases and everything else. So parts to me. Need

[46:04] just just a place to, you know, like refresh yourself to become aware of, maybe more- more aware of what your surroundings are, and just catch up on the beauty of it. And what can be a really meditative, almost experience. So I picked Isle Royale. I don't know if you guys have even heard of this one. So this is the least visited, the most revisited national Park in the Us. So it's in Michigan, a small island, so you have to take either a boat or a seaplane to get there. So convinced some friends to go on a backpacking trip here some of the friends it was their 1st time backpacking, which was an adventure in and of itself. But it was just such an amazing experience like, I love backpacking. I love being just like completely remote at peace in nature, especially for

[47:13] doing yoga as the sun sets over the day. It's a very memorable trip to me, and I think that says a lot about what's an experience of being in nature. And it's like that mindfulness that I think you can really get when you just feel really surrounded. And I think the other part of it is that feeling of connection you can get with other people when you're experiencing nature together. Okay, I picked arches. I don't even know how to articulate how I feel about it, but it's when I go to arches. I feel so small. And to me like, that's an amazing question.

[48:03] It reminds me of just like we're just lips on the screen right now, like the world. The history of the world there's art is just reminds me that I'm here for a moment, and it's barely with on this time scale, and it just makes me feel so. Appreciate that, appreciating the moment being in the moment and realizing, like my life just barely anything. And it's so so important. That's why Parks, nature are so important to our mental health to help us understand and appreciate the world around us. And it's not just humans that are on this planet, but our ecosystems. And you know the tiniest little bug little ladybug that you encounter. It's just an amazing thing, and just reminds me. more efficient as well.

[49:00] They can't even have any time. National Park. I was there last year for the 1st time. I have a deer friend. Fortunately that has a little bit over the last 15 times. but we did some extensive hiking in there, and I remember. every time you go out you're drinking hairspray. And I actually just love being low on the food chain. It just felt so primitive and like real and broad. I just I ate it up. And you know, some of like you guys said, no matter what's going on in your life. you go to a national park, or you go to one of these beautiful places. It's such a reset for me, and it just gives me perspective. And it is like

[50:01] the most beautiful meditation I could ever all of that. I have 2 kiddos. They're teenagers now, and we do our family visits a lot of parks together, and I chose redwoods for all the reasons you all have said, and if if you've not been there, it's not just the trees. There are the most beautiful fern canyons and just magical pikes. One of the things I love about that trip is it's actually not one park. It's a connection of a lot of disconnected state, and then the National Park areas, and then a visitor. It felt seamless. and I appreciate it. Just like that, to me is the magic of parks. They're supposed to be free. They're supposed to be accessible to everyone that we all get to benefit from all that they provide. And

[51:01] and they're amazing. One of the one of the best parts of our jobs is that we're not experts in one thing. We have folks on our team who are experts in soul injuries and Yoga. And you know just a million things. And it's A- it's a pretty methodical. okay, perfect and petrified Forest National park. And so a few years back, my partner and I went. We did like a whole National Park tour, and went to a lot of different forests and parks and whatnot, and we went. We went to Petrified Forest National Park, and we it was just like a stop along the way. It wasn't. We didn't say the night there, or anything like that, but it was actually probably her favorite park, because she loves like rocks, and she loves the desert, and if you look there like you would just look around. It's like nothing. But i. 1 thing that really connected with me there is that if you think about the amount of change a space like this had to go through to go from having these massive trees and life to just being.

[52:00] You know what it is now, which is a lot of dirt. And so it kinda just it kind of sits with you like how small and really are. I chose Arches National Park in St. Louis. My wife is from St. Louis, and we this happens to be the last National park. I visited nephews there last Christmas. A, and thinking about parks. My own time in parks, and these postcards, like most of the national parks, are about the the great outdoor places, and this couple Park is a reminder that parks are also intermixed in our urban spaces, which I think is very special, because we all need places to get away and places to connect with our neighbors and our neighborhoods, and together as a community. And in our urban parks are an amazing way that we do that national park. I got engaged there, so it is special to me. It was supposed to be at the top of Angels Landing, but it was full of ice on the top, which we were not aware, so tried to go up slim down. But yeah, that was a really beautiful place, and Parks better to me because I grew up around them. And it's the perfect place to get.

[53:26] So that's pretty much where my- my get together. So it's something special. Well, hopefully, I've picked a very home State favorite right now. National Park, many times. This is our go to Park, which is just a great place to connect with family friends, connect with nature, and show up in Spain a little bit so chosen, so many national park. About an hour and a half from the valley floor. So

[54:04] a lot I worked as a backpacking guy just outside of the park in high school. Over at Summer Camp we go into the partner portal. Fun day of activity, I think what I love and hate about Perks is they are loved to death. I can't say that there's a lottery permit system to get into Perks. But I understand how important it is to protect your valuable assets. So close. Great question. I picked Great Sand dune National Park. Hopefully, we'll hopefully. We were just there, like 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks ago, for spring break. We came. We stopped on the way up from Taos we went skiing, and I took. We have. I have 2 kids for 12 and 14, a freshman at Fairview, and a middle schooler, a 7th Grader Platt. and we took our 90 town Golden Retriever, who had never been on sand before, and if you've never been to Great Sand, it's a little bit of a pain, because you have to kind of walk a long way in sand before you get to the actual sleds and the girls sled down. And it's really, really fun. And to me, Parks, I love what everybody kind of shows, because when I think of parks, people think of it as like a grassy space.

[55:24] But really it's big hills of sand, or a gigantic structure, or trees or forest in boulder. It's Pearl Street Model Park, so there's so many opportunities to look at Parks as more than just a place where you might just play on a playground or something like that. And it's good to. I think it's good to appreciate all the different ways in which we can enjoy from our parks and rectors, and as a city boulder, and then across the United States as well. It's interesting. That's a great transition. Thanks. One of the things that I noticed as we went around the room is the smiles on faces. Parks bring about emotions that are so positive, or I mean, you got engaged in a park like things like that are really really cool, and one of the things that we try and do in boulder parks and Rec is break down those barriers and create those same kind of experiences for all of our community members. And so, as prime members, you're going to have the ability to really help us influence what we do in our park system.

[56:25] There's a lot of great projects going on that we're going to get a dive into here pretty soon. And that passion those emotions I want to. We hope you bring those to the meeting, share your opinions, share your ideas, and really we're excited to have you all here because you make such a big difference. And we have some amazing parks and spaces in our community. And we want especially for those that maybe don't have the resources to get to national parks. We want to bring those experiences right here into our community. And so I wanted to just share this activity and and get people thinking in a positive way, and just I hope you all are so excited for the Advisory Board and all the great work that you get to do so.

[57:07] and you can take your postcard if you want a couple of things that you might want to think about. I've had people do this before, but if you want to write anything on your postcard and hand it back to me at the end of the night. You're welcome to, and I can give it to you in a year, or when you get off the board, we could share that. If there's things that you're wanting to accomplish as a part of the board or the impact that you're hoping to make feel free to write it on. There. You can address it to yourself, and I can hang on to it. and we'll send it to you in a year, or 2, or 3 or 4 when you get off the ground would recommend. We're ahead of schedule folks. 5 min movement, body break if anyone needs to. Refuel. Does that work for you? Okay, so 6, 58 bodies and chairs at 7 0, 5, sure. Okay, that makes sense.

[58:02] You can take your other ones feel free to have more parts in that. So the popular 1, 18 bucks. So.

[59:08] But it's not the best picture. So did I tell you about next. So I got next day. He's sitting at the window in my backyard, and it's early in the morning, and I look over, and right outside the sliding glass door is a fox, and so the fox is. And I took a bunch of pictures. But yeah, we had a

[60:08] right there in the backyard, but he was right on the back deck, ready to ready to pounce. So yeah, the fox came running across the yard. But, I just made me think I can't let nix out. I let him out. He's gonna be toast, but yeah. and I haven't seen a mountain line yet. Thank goodness, we're there yet. It's crazy.

[61:12] Okay, yeah. You know everybody.

[62:00] It's such a cool area, even throughout that whole San Francisco area. Yeah, I think I've driven through it. So yeah, that's like

[63:16] one of those cities like, I went to their web page and the big.

[65:17] It was one of those

[66:07] they're not worried about it.

[67:21] Let's get started. The next item on the agenda is going to be a boulder parks integration overview. There's a lot in our department. We've got all the parks. We've got all the recreation, and there's so much underneath each of them. It took me a very long time to even feel like I was just starting to get to know how it all happens. So there's no expectation that we're gonna learn everything tonight. We're gonna get started. We'll get an overview. We're gonna try and keep this discussion to 45 min. I'm sure that you all will have lots of questions, so we'll do our best to Ali. We'll do our best to address them while keeping on track, and then

[68:06] If you're not, there will be endless opportunities for more questions and discussions in future meetings. And the other thing I'll note, you know, I think all of you have scheduled a 1 on one with us where there's even more, we want to just share with you and provide opportunity for questions. And so if we do start to to get deep on something we could just table it, for when we have that one on one, Rob's the only one I've met with at this point. So, Rob, you're welcome to email me if you need more time today. Alright, let's dive in so what we're gonna do in this section. One of the things proud members often want to know about is the structure. How are we organized? Who's in charge of what? And so we'll give you that jackson and Stacy are going to give you an overview of the budget which is super helpful because we're diving in at your 1st business meeting in April. We're gonna talk about our work plan for the year and and what we have planned so that you're aware of what's coming for us and for you and your agendas, and then you're gonna wrap up with a conversation on just board liaisons.

[69:03] So that's what that's what's ahead. We're gonna dive in and we sent you all this this Powerpoint. Right? You have this. That's great cause. This one might be handy for you. So we have 7 service areas. And I'll tell you about some of them, and then Scott will cover his unit. And so park operations is one, and they? They take care of about 18. Well, no, about 1,100 acres of Parkland, because they do not have oversight for the Boulder reservoir. So our park system is divided into 3 zones. north, central, and south, super complicated. And and so each of those has a team of folks that do everything from the turf maintenance to trash removal to some of the plant care to clean up in a variety of maintenance, and we have a specialized irrigation team. So most of the folks in the zones can do basic irrigation repairs. We have a highly skilled and specialized irrigation team that can design irrigation. They can adjust it. Most of our irrigation is on smart systems that not only has water sensors, but let's say Pd. Needed us to turn irrigation on in the middle of the night to disrupt some youth activity. We can do that. We have a horticulture team. We have a much smaller flower program than we had 20 years ago. That's 1 of the services that was reduced

[70:21] in the recession 20 years ago. But we do still have a lot of flower beds throughout the system. More and more have native plants, their waterways, their 0 escape demonstration gardens, with the exception of the Pearl Street Mall, which, for the design codes, they contribute so much to the economic vitality. If you've not been to pearl in the past 2 weeks, I'd put it on your radar. The north side is completely in bloom, and the south side's coming in hot. It's it's it gets a lot more building shade this time of year. So they come in second and that is our central zone. We have a team of 4 that exclusively works on the Pearl Street Mall.

[71:00] We have a sports turf team, and they take care of the specialized turf at Mapleton Pleasant View Stasio, as well as the satellite fields that are located throughout the system, such as at North Boulder Park, where we have 2 little league fields, and then, finally, we have a group that takes care of just asset management. So we have an in-house carpenter. So if we have simple repairs or projects, we try to get to those right away. So let's say, someone drove through a fence that happens, we can often just fix that ourselves. A sign breaks, and arbor, or an arbor breaks somewhere a lot of that. We try to have the in house skill. We can repair it quicker and often cheaper than outsourcing that Jackson is going to. Actually, he'll tell you about his team in the Budget section and all the functions that you all do. If that works, we have a planning team in house. So this is a group that focuses on planning, which is looking at the system over the next 5, 1050 years. What do we need to meet the needs of the community you heard mentioned? Some of you are familiar with the future. Recreation centers project that mark

[72:01] Megan and Scott are working closely with his market with Mark and his team to see how we make sure the Rec centers serve the community for the next 50 years. So they also do the capital improvement program. And that's how we any project. Over $50,000 is considered a capital project and one of your purview items as part of the budget. You'll look at that capital spending for the next 5 years you approve the next years of spending. So in the budget process 2026 actually gets appropriated or approved for spending everything else is just a projection. We do. I mentioned long term planning. They do even more in asset management. So imagine in the zones they're looking at individual sidewalks through the asset management program. We're looking at sidewalks across the system and trying to organize and bundle the work so that it can be most efficiently done our Gis system gives us the data for almost everything we do in in the system. As it relates to asset management planning. So it gives us data. On how many benches do we have?

[73:04] We have an incredible Gis data system for our trees. We have over 50,000 public trees. Every single one of them is mapped and tagged in our system and has information on its health, its diameter. We do a tree survey every year where we update that information. And then we have an In house construction team that goes even beyond what the the carpenter and park Ops can do. And they can actually do small projects. We have a natural resources team. So forestry. You've heard me talk multiple times about trees. It's the city has over 50,000 public trees, from the parks to the rights of ways to what are called street trees. So if there is a tree on your private property that is within I believe it's 5 feet of the public right right away. That's actually considered a public tree, and we will take care of it because of the impact on the public realm. The natural lands team. This is our undesigned system. So think of Wonderland Lake.

[74:01] That's a bad example. Because that's open Space Mountain parks. I was thinking about that as an ample example, where you could see the developed park on the north side, and then everything natural around it. But open space manages that one except for the stuff to the south. So between Wonderland Lake, and if you can picture where the water storage container is right at Linden, and 4, th if you bike or walk in there, that whole natural area is parks and recreation managed. The Urban Park Rangers. This has been a program that returned to our department as of 2022. We have 3 full time Rangers and 2 temporary rangers who are with us 9 months a year, and they specifically work in the urban park system to help promote safety in the parks. Their most frequent complaints are around off leash dogs and unticketed, unplanned, unpermitted events or activities, and we do often have challenges with illegal camping in the parks. That is you'll actually get a deep dive on that topic this summer.

[75:02] and then this area also specializes in climate resilience. And how do we make sure the urban park system can stand up to and mitigate against the challenges of climate change. And so those 4 folks and Scott all report to me. And Scott's going to talk about his area. Okay, sounds good. We'll come back to Jackson later, when perfect. So I've got 3 senior managers that report to me, and I'll let Megan. Talk about her area a little bit further in depth. But the 1st one is led by Brian beary, and it's community building and partnerships. And this is a lot of our programs that we offer within the department. Hopefully, you've heard of our expand program. Our expand program serves a huge portion of the community with disabilities, and they are very involved. In fact, they've got a tremendous reputation, and we have people coming from all over the region to come and participate in our expand programming, which is really neat. We have an incredible staff that are really talented and and do a phenomenal job of working with folks. Our Ysi program is our youth services initiative. That team is really activating spaces throughout our community. They actually go out and meet people where they're at. You'll hear quite a bit more about Primo's park later on. On this, when we talk about Cip, and they were very involved in the process of

[76:23] really trying to help determine the name for that space that prep actually approved, which is really exciting. We also have youth camps and youth programs that we're hoping to to do some work on. I'll talk about it a little bit later on with some of the programming work that we're going to do this year, but our camps are extremely popular, and they fill up very quickly and certainly a great resource for community members. Then we've also got. I'm trying to look at my writing here. My glasses. Oh, volunteers! So volunteers is the next area. We have a lot of volunteer opportunities within boulder parks and recreation, and I will say that we've had, I believe, over 1,600 volunteers last year that come out and participate and help us throughout our entire park system and the community in general. So that's really exciting. And then partnerships. And we work with our play foundation.

[77:20] which is our philanthropic organization. Jenny actually sits on that board and and we're really excited to work with them and work very closely with them. We've also got a partnership committee that we're focused on this next year to really try and expand partnerships throughout the community and really try and break down some of those barriers for community members, not knowing where to go to find different services within the community. Aaron Simone is our senior manager over regional facilities. Our regional facilities include the Boulder reservoir. Hopefully, you've all had a chance to to check out the boulder reservoir. It's an incredible location. You've heard a little bit about rowing and and some of the things that have happened out there. Bernie mentioned earlier our Ans. And our Eurasian water milfoil that we're

[78:09] actively trying to to treat out there and and manage, and there's just a lot happening here. In the last month we signed an agreement with Rocky Mountain Paddle Board to provide concessions and and food service for the summer out there. So we're super excited about that. And always a lot of great things happening at the reservoir. They do a ton of events. And really a popular location. Flatirons golf course. So just today we started a new director of golf started with the city of boulder. David Dimartino joined our team today, and he will be leading the flatirons golf course. We opened a facility out there last. Excuse me, September. beautiful Restaurant, Ironwood bar and Grill. It's open to the public all the time, and so if you haven't had a chance to go out there and eat yet, I would encourage you to do so. It's phenomenal. So really good food, really great environment. And and a great place. And the course is is really top notch. We're doing a really great job of activating the space. We've got a ton of tournaments, and we're looking to expand some of our our lesson play out there as well.

[79:13] The next area would be Belmont Bike Park. And so Belmont is an incredible bike park. Ellie, what year was that built 2012, 2012. It's still one of the premier bike parks in our State. And really across the country. It's a phenomenal location, and it's free to the public. And so we do offer programming out there quite a bit in the summer. And it's just really a beautiful location. The next areas that we have on, there is our sports and events. And so this also includes our sports field and our turf that we manage to maintain. And we have quite a few adult sport programs. And then we have a lot of contracted programs that we work with to provide youth sports. We have groups that rent our fields, and then we have groups that we work directly with in contract

[80:01] to provide services for for youth in the community. And so the other piece of that is special events and activating our spaces and having different movies in the park or different happenings throughout the year. So those are the areas that I oversee. And I'll let Megan talk real briefly about what she does with recreation. Sure. So I get to help provide the services at the recreation centers. And so the North Boulder Rec center on this side of town serves a large percentage. It's the closest rec center to a lot of the public here, the East Boulder Community Center and the South Boulder Rec Center, and then in a few weeks here we'll have Scott Carpenter pool open for the start of like the shoulder lap. Season out there and then once we get into the heart of summer, roll the leisure pool and the lab and leisure Pool at Spruce Pool. Open, too. So And then all of your health and wellness stuff. So if you ever come to the centers and do drop in classes. Whatnot. That's that's my team that gets to gets to do that fun stuff

[81:05] any questions on that before we move on. This is extremely helpful. I did not know half of these things. Yeah, I mean, that's actually, I'll build on that 80% of what we do. You'll never hear us talk about, because it's it's what we do, right? It's the operational nature. And what you hear about are the plans, the projects, the budget. One thing that I think would be helpful. Scott is, you know, you use the term regional park. You just kind of like define broadly what that means as well as then, the 2 other levels of parks that we have. Yeah, absolutely. You know, regional parks are really a kind of a destination location that people come from all over the State to go to the Boulder Reservoir, to play golf at Flatirons golf course, or to visit Belmont Park. And so you know, those are originally, our real regional areas. I would also say our civic area is is very much a regional location, and the Pearl Street Mall. People come from all over Colorado to come visit the Pearl Street Mall, so we can really, I don't know if you want to break down the different levels of parks. So regional parks, we have what we call a park classification system. And it's important because it determines what we build there. How much we invest in it, how we staff it levels of service.

[82:18] So below, regional parks are community parks. We have East Boulder Community Park, Harlow Plattes and foothills Community Park, those parks you'll if you think about the 3 of them. They have parking. They have restrooms, they have significant amenities. And what's where we schedule a lot of activity. So practices and games. North Boulder is in between with a neighborhood park and a community park. It doesn't quite have the parking in the way that the others do. And so we don't schedule activities in the same way. It's like a weird hybrid, a special hybrid, I should say. So those parks also see a higher level of maintenance. I'll note this. Someone brought up Pearl Street earlier. Pearl Street is up there in that mode. One category. We are out there every morning, making sure that the bricks are clean. That is not the same level of service we provide at the community parks or the neighborhood parks. So below a community park is a neighborhood park, and those range in size. And so in my neighborhood. Or someone tell me where they live in boulder.

[83:20] So in gun barrel gun barrel was developed with a lot of hoas. And so there is Eaton park. There we also own property in the unannexed portion of gun barrel. Should they ever the rest of it, ever want to be a part of the city will be ready with a park. They've said no, lots of times the parts that are not so in the table. Mason, neighborhood. Gosh! Which corner of table, Mesa Broadway, or you're oh, you're in the South Folder neighborhood. So you're right by Harlow Platts. But in that same neighborhood is Bear Creek, Park, right? So Bear Creek Park does not have restrooms, does not have parking. You won't see a schedule activities at that park. It is meant to serve people walking by close to home neighbors. Some of those have trash cans, some don't and so just the level of amenities you have. The park classification is really important. So when I get an email from a community member saying.

[84:15] I noticed there was gravel under the bleachers at North Rollder Park. I say, yeah, I hear you. You know it's March we we thought the park looked great. It's not our expectation that those walks are clean every day, nor are we funded to provide that level of service. It's just a really helpful way to explain to people our expectations because the community's expectations are very high. Another, I got an email from someone who wanted to know why we hadn't edged the grass in Palo Park recently. That's a small neighborhood park. It doesn't get that level of service. Thanks, Holly. Yeah. And Scott. Alright, just a quick question like on Pearl Street, around Pearl Street. If there's like a sidewalk issue or

[85:00] a tree issue. That's a parks. Or is that utility? So trees? Yeah, if they are on Pearl Street and they're on city property. It is our forestry team that takes care of them. And there's a lot of them in the central business area that are public trees. There are also others that I'm a property owner. I developed a property code required me to plant irrigate trees. I'm now responsible for the care of that tree. Something we're working on is improving the enforcement of that, because what happens is 10 years down the road that irrigation broke that tree died. And now there's just a dead tree, and that that's not serving anyone. Well, sidewalks. Also, it depends, just like, just like our private property in our homes. There are areas where the sidewalk is your responsibility. And there's areas where it's the cities downtown is really complicated. We're working on making it less so because there's just a lot of attention on conditions downtown. Yes. great. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else.

[86:03] Alright. Jackson and Stacy are going to give an overview of the budget. This chart is one I would recommend just keeping handy. because it is really helpful to know. As we talk about the different funds they they do have different uses and restrictions, and it's 1 of it's 1 of the critical factors that inform what and how we do perfect. So we're gonna go through it really quick. You don't have to stand out in front of you. We also have some slides that we'll talk to talk to it as well. Up here is just a reminder as far as the one boulder approach. Everything that we do with the budget on the next slide is really informed by all of these different plans. But Ali is gonna give a little bit more of a overview on later on the next slide. It really talks about budgeting for resilience and equity. The long term financial strategy is the Ltfs and 22 Vpr. Plan.

[87:04] Is the department plan that was adopted by Prab and city council back in 2022. That is something we'll give you an overview on as well. It looks like so within this there's all sorts of different things that we relate. All of our budget requests back to basically making sure that we align with everything that was on that diagram before. That is the city wide. Strategic mission, the department master or the department plan and then everything that we also talked about in the charter. yeah, municipal code, Jackson, I was just smiling on page 101 of your department plan is an acronyms list. So we our team works really hard on plain language and translating acronyms. And we do not always remember, and like good government people that we are, we love a good 3 letter acronym. And so you see a few up here. There are others that are on this page of the department plan, and we try to always. The 1st time we use those. Explain it, and then the rest of the memo. You'll see it just in its

[88:04] acronym, for what's vre that is budgeting for resilience and equity. It's the citywide approach to budgeting, making sure that we're considering sustainability, equity, resilience, and everything that we're doing. It's outcome-based budgeting. And it was a plan that we are on. Our 4th year took 3 years of implementation. We've gone through the implementation phases. And now it's a standard practice for the study. Sarah goals are sustainability, equity, and resilience. There are 7 goals that the city has tried to identify everything around. We fall within livable and environmental sustainable. There are other areas that we touch. But we'll touch on that as we get into the budget process. This is the high level overview today. Why is it? 1, 2, 3. Those are just different things that we are relating back to now. One's more important than the other. No, not at all, I think what you see at the bottom is, everything goes back to citywide strategic planning. So that's related back to what's on City Council strategic plan for the next 2 years. What is coming from the city manager's office? What is coming from our Central finance department? So there's a lot of different considerations that go into creating the budget

[89:13] on the next slide. We really get into our funds, and we're going with Perm. Parks, first, st permanent Parks and recreation fund, second to the last column on the right hand side. This is our dedicated property tax that the board does have purview over. It is one of the shells that's called out in the charter. All of this is a dedicated property tax point 9 mils that has to be used for the acquisition, renovation, or improvement of Parkland. So this is our probably most restricted fund that we do rely on. I know a lot of folks will complain about property taxes do want to clarify that for every dollar paid in property taxes, 1% of that goes to person recreation for this month. You will hear most about this. It's predominantly used for capital improvement plan. So you'll hear about it as part of the cip. And this is what we'll be asking for your recommendation and approval of those funds, for at the July meeting

[90:12] and the 4.9 or 4.4, that's that's the amount of revenue that's received, and then the annually correct. So the top part on your fund chart is budgeted or completed revenue for 2025, and it will highlight on those pie charts where those funding sources are coming from, and then on the bottom below that those pie charts and numbers are showing you what is appropriated for our expenses. So our uses of our funds. So what about the rest of it? So the 1 million? So there's 4.4 that comes out of the parks and permanent parks and recreation fund, and then 3.3 spent correct. Yes, so projected. Revenue for 2025 budget is that 4.4 million? And then what was actually put in for expenses, and what the Department expects to spend in 2025 is the 3.4 million. And where does the other 1 million go?

[91:14] You'll see. With most of these. We don't do a true budget balanced budget between revenue and expenses on a yearly basis, because we are looking 6 years in the future. So with this fund, just because we have capital expenses, we will save up for a year or 2, and then rely on that for a bigger project. It's savings. It will still be used. It's not being taken back to the general fund or put towards other purposes. It's truly programmed in now years for a larger cip project. So, for example, the building at the Flatirons Golf course was about 7 million we saved for 3 years to be able to spend it in one year. So you'll see years where you know we bring in 4.4. But we're going to spend 7. And it's because we're using fund balance also to to budget the next that year. Okay, what's what's the fiscal year? January one to December. Good! Thanks.

[92:05] great questions. And I will say that within the Department plan we do have all 5 funds listed out on pages 88 Scott wins for bringing it so that we can remember the pages off the top of their head. Yeah, it is 46, and 47. I think it's last year's plan. But the same summary of sources and uses is in the plan, and you could just hold this and walk around with it always information at your fingertips. So that does really go over our 5 different funds. We'll talk through the other funds that the Prep. Is still has purview over, but not as much purview charges. So the general fund is shared with all city departments, most city departments. This is the most flexible source of citywide funding, and it really supports more of our Forestry park operations, our open Ranger program and then department administration, which includes business services and the director's office.

[93:05] This amount is really requested in comparison to all other city departments on a basis. Jenny, back to your question. This is why revenues and expenses are aligned in this fund. Whatever we're awarded from the general fund is considered as revenue, and we are expected to spend the same amount. What is the percentage out of the general fund. What is parks and recs percentage 6% and this is split with 1821 different departments. I think my numbers confused. But that 6% has been very consistent year over year. Okay. also appears lottery fund Lottery fund is the second from the right. This is another one where the revenues and expenses do align. Revenues are received from the State each year, and they're distributed to every municipality based on your population. On a per capita basis. Really, I think that all of this really does have to go towards improvements of Parkland.

[94:09] and it does require a report back to the State each year. So we do. This funding has historically been split with parks and recreation, open space and Greenways Departments starting in 25. I'm sorry starting in 26 parks and recreation will get all of this funding for cip projects for the next 5 years just given the priority needs of the department that was decided by the executive Budget team. There's a citywide leadership team that basically works to look at all of the funds citywide. There's 41 funds citywide. We have the most number of funds that support our department individually. So there is kind of all this. Money is a different color, and you can shuffle it around to make it whole. Okay, I just missed what you said you said split with open space and greenways. So

[95:04] is how it used to be prior to 2024. In 2024, we said, can we time out utilities? Is fully funded by the rate payers? Open space is fully funded to the highest levels of their plans. Could we have some more, please? And and they looked at it through that executive budget process and said, Yeah, we agree with you. And so now we have the full allocation. So that's why it increased from the master plan, where it's like around half a million. Ali did some great advocacy work for the department on the next slide we have the point 2 5 cent sales tax fund. You'll see this abbreviated as the point 2 5 st. This is our dedicated sales tax fund. That's really towards the operations and maintenance, and also can be used for capital within here you will see that. We collect. What is it? 6, 3 cents for? Every sales tax dollar collected in the city? So not a whole lot. But that does add up to almost 1 million 12 million dollars a year. And this is what the most flexible funding is that we have within the department that we have

[96:11] control over. So it's really used for a wide variety of things. Everything from the horticulture. So the flower beds to our snow removal to special events, volunteerism. And then it also does support our capital projects. As we get into our capital projects, you will see that we have capital between 5 different funds. So it is a mix and match to come up with all of the funding and making sure that it is being used on the allowable uses, so I know that it can get confusing the General Funds. The point 2 5 and the Recreation activity fund are really our predominant operating funds, and then everything else is a combination of capital on the next slide we really get into the Recreation Activity Fund. You will hear a lot about this. This is our Quasi Enterprise Fund. So all user fees and participation fees are going in towards this as well as the cost to provide those services. So it is both revenues and expenses for recreation services.

[97:08] Everything from a entrance to the Rec. Center to a camp for your child is out of the Recreation Activity Fund. You'll hear this referred to as the Raf. We do spend a lot of time on it just because it does require more attention. Like a business, you are balancing revenues and expenses. This fund does receive a subsidy from the general fund on an annual basis that has historically been around 1.6 million. It was that way when I started several years ago. So I will say that this is something that hasn't caught up with inflation. And therefore we do have higher user fees than other surrounding municipalities. And that is something that you will hear about. That is how Boulder has chosen to fund municipal recreation. So we are very grateful for the subsidy that we do receive. But you will hear complaints about our funding structure compared to others, and it's very difficult doing a true apples to apples comparison. Just because we have this broad depth of different dedicated funds in the department.

[98:10] The 14 6 is that all? And and I'm I'm sorry if you said it already, but that's all revenue. We have 1.6 million subsidy and then other small subsidy from the point 2 5 on sales tax funds. But yes, so it's about 12 million in user fees and revenues. Is that right? Like the 14.6, does that include the subsidies? It does. Yeah. So I think the revenues are about very typically around 90%. Okay, it's about 10. Okay, thank you. Every $5 balls. $65 paddle board permit. All of it adds up and does come up to a lot. The last thing that we don't have a slide for, but I do want to call out is other capital funds. Voters have approved different funding sources for kind of little midterm projects or things that get us to the action level within the 22 departure plan.

[99:09] This has really supported some of the the pocket parks that will be going in at Boulder Junction. The Capital Development Fund individuals pay as they are building new construction, and that goes to supporting new and enhanced assets for Parkland. So we've used it for the expansion and Scott Carpenter pool. It's being used for Primo's Park, just creating a new park that didn't have an existing funding source. And then, finally, in 2021 voters reapproved the community culture, resilience and safety tax that provided a list of different projects that was supported. We are paying for civic area phase 2 Pearl Street Mall and is that another project? A whole lot of it. I I want to say collectively, 60 ish 1 million out of about 100 to 12 million over the next 10 years.

[100:16] a lot of it going towards the area. This chart I recommend just keeping as a nice, nice summary to know what is available. Just you'll see your other capital. We will only call out the revenue as what's getting programmed. So those numbers also matched up. Okay, great. So something else you'll hear about is the long term financial strategy. This is a multi year project that City Council finance department, city manager's office is leading basically the revenues that the city has are very restricted to different uses. We obviously benefit from that, but it creates challenges across the city when we are trying to provide services for the greatest municipal needs

[101:01] as opposed to special needs that are really carved out in those dedicated funds. So that is the long term goal. As far as how we get there. There is a multi year strategy to focus on different service levels or work streams to get there. All of these work streams are focused on the financial sustainability of the city equity and then resiliency, and how we deliver our services. Do you mind going 2 slides ahead? So within that there is a long term financial plan, and this is really citywide policies. On what are our reserves? How do we rely on our reserves? Then the second one is the alternative funding mechanisms. 2 years ago Prab approved a fee policy and then annually approves the different fee schedule for all of the cost services that we do provide. This is being rolled out to all city departments to make sure that these are being updated on a regular basis, and that there is a clear inventory or menu of what the fees are for any service that the city provides. Core services is really trying to benchmark our services compared to like cities.

[102:08] To verify that we are in line with what the recommended service level is. We do know that Boulder has very high expectations, and just wanting to clarify. If you have high expectations, what it costs, or what comparable cities can do with a comfortable budget. And then, finally, there will be about measure strategy 2025 will be focused very much on taking care of what we have, and 2026 will be focused more on the longer term changes. So the ballot measure strategy for 2025 is going to be an extension of a tax right and something else. There's 2 measures on the table. One is to extend the Ccrs through 2050, which would give us more capacity for major capital projects, and the other is a consideration of this Perm. Park funds broadening the uses and expanding it mills so that it both brings in more revenue and could be used for more things like right now, we can't

[103:06] charge snow removal to this fund because it's so restricted to acquisition and development. You can't charge snow removal to which fund parks. That's the one that's being proposed that it be renamed to public realm so that it could be used for a lot more uses to benefit the community. And that's the increase of the mills to 15 is that 1313. And that's to top level. Right? Okay? And right now, we've taken 0 point 9 9.9. The department for the parks. One gets 0 point 9 mills. Correct. Is that our total mills, then citywide? It's no for parks for parks. Yes, yeah. Okay. Citywide. It's whatever the top is. Right? Yeah, thank you. Alright. I'm looking at the time. And so, rather than Scott my speed talking, I might just skip some of these and come back to you later with them. The intent is to let you know what's on the work plan for the year. You're gonna see that in the next agendas. And so we'll might just but building on what Jackson said and what you're hearing. There's nothing that comes to you

[104:10] that hasn't been carefully and thoughtfully planned by work from the community engagement at the direction of city Council, or through this plan that was unanimously approved in 2022. That's a 5 year. Plan 5 to 7. We have it in the cip to start planning again in 2027, and so that's that's what this graphic is showing. You'll see us here. You'll hear us on the right. All of our decisions factor in what does the community say, what does the data say? And what is the policy from council in the community say? That's another reason why we just can't. You know. You'll hear lots of good ideas from people we can't. Every community member, 104,000 people don't have an individual vote. We have to think of the collective. And so that's just we love this graphic on the right, because it really helps us answer some of those questions. A key takeaway, though, that we do want you to know as we move into budget season when this plan was approved. This is the graphic that we showed the crab that we showed the planning board and the city Council

[105:07] without additional funding. We will be decreasing service levels. Cost escalation is outpacing revenues. It is. We have a robust, amazing system, and it's old and it's expensive to operate. And so we will be facing that. We're not sure yet with 20, if it'll be with the 26 budget or 27. But it's coming and we're working really hard to identify other sources of revenue. We have a team that works on brand and philanthropy. We're looking at additional subsidies. And we are working on revenue generation. So all adults in our system, basically, unless you qualify for financial aid. You will pay full price for the service that you're getting. We provide discounts for young people, for older adults, for people with disabilities and people who need that financial discount which means based discounts and so that's something to Jackson's Point, you'll see. Come up in the tension. We're looking at non resident fees. We're looking at what the businesses who operate in the parks pay, and then just continually looking at being entrepreneurial, for example, at the golf course.

[106:08] based on time. I think we'll skip the work plan pieces. And because I think it's important that you all get to introduce this idea of topics and major projects. And we'll figure out a way. I can loop it in on my one on one, on boarding with you all, letting you know the major work plan items. We had it organized by each of the 6 key themes. So the strategic plan of the Bpr plan starts on page 68, everything before it is background and really helpful information about our system. But the strategic plan itself starts on page 63, and we were going to give you an overview on just what's the data we use to track performance? What were our big accomplishments in 24? And what are we working on in 25. You have these slides also. Right? And so you all can reach out if you have any questions for us. I'm sorry. Can you say when you sent them, because it should have been in the packet you got Wednesday, or maybe we didn't send you the Powerpoint. If we didn't, we'll send it. Yeah, it's just a link to the agenda. So basically, you have to click into it and then

[107:16] look at April, and then you'll see this meeting, and then you can click and got view the slides. Thank you. Perfect and I can touch base on our one on ones. The one I want to make sure to talk about, because it's such a big deal is that one of our major initiatives in 2025 is to become accredited. So there is a national organization that set forth 154 standards that define a high performing agency. and over the last year and a half our department has been in pursuit of those. We had an official visit by a trained group of visitors in March, and at our National Conference in September we will sit at a hearing for that accreditation. Less than 2% of agencies all over the country have achieved this. We think it's a key step in showing the community that they're they're funding a well organized high performing department. We hope it helps, as we talk

[108:07] about additional revenue possibilities. As we look at, you know you'll hear folks say, Well, why don't you? Just why don't you just work harder, or why don't you cut expenses? And we want folks to know we're working really hard, and this is a national standard. So we're pretty proud of that. Is that your whole staff? No, that's the folks who were at our State Conference last year. Okay, yeah, no. It's just a fun picture from State Conference to show that we're learning. And actually, we have several teams present the State Conference. How many staff do you have? 153 full time fte and hundreds of non standard? So Jackson mentioned. He's approved 25 job offers today. It takes hundreds of lifeguards, camp counselors, instructors, and more to provide maximum and safe summer fund. And so we're in. We're in peak hiring mode right now. So 153 is full. The full parks permanent benefit, either, you know, 2030, or 40 h year round.

[109:02] Does the accreditation open up other sources of revenue like grants? Not directly, indirectly, we think, in showing that we're a well run agency. It'll it'll help with some revenue generation. But it doesn't directly open anything. Yeah. This is a map of capital projects underway orange is when their ribbon cutting will happen. And so you all will get to see a lot of exciting projects come to life during your term the biggest ones. You've heard East Boulder Community Center. We have 50 million dollars in approved funding for renovation of that facility that'll make it more energy efficient and also modernize it for current and future uses. North Boulder Park together with utilities, will be spending oh, 5 to 6 million on that park. The civic area. We have 19 million and approved funding for our key downtown park. We're talking to City Council Thursday. If you're sitting around at 7 30 and have nothing to do. You put some headphones on and vacuum. It's it's gonna be a great meeting, and it's a really exciting project. So all jokes aside. If if it would be a great meeting to listen to, to get up, to speed on that project.

[110:16] And with that we can just introduce this idea. You're not deciding tonight. but we have established board liaisons to some of our major projects. They have helped either because it's a passion project or because they just so, for example, a great example is, Bernie, was our liaison on our court system. Plan 2223, we sure were hearing a lot from the tennis community and the pickleball community that we did not have enough courts. Both sports had grown by double digits in the pandemic, and we had no plan, for where could we add courts? How much would it cost? Now we have a court system plan, and throughout that project Bernie was a liaison and help guide process and helped with engagement. And so, as a liaison, you don't have any additional authority on the project, you don't have additional decision making. But you you do help support some of that. And, Bernie, I don't know if you want to add anything

[111:08] key important projects. I don't play tennis or pickleball. So I took my disinterested position as an opportunity to learn about the needs of both groups and as well as the system that we had in place and the work that was being done to address it. And then I got to have a lot of coffees with a lot of people community who were eager to tell me about why the tennis courts were deficient or the pickleballs were deficient, or some combination and then I was able to bring those conversations back to prab and support the conversation that we were having here. So yeah, so it's it's sort of an opportunity to become a subject matter expert in one subset we will be. These are things, these are projects that we have currently major projects that we're thinking about. Currently, we will assign ourselves to them.

[112:03] things like major things like civic area rec centers like, they will probably warrant 2 members of the prep to be liaisons to those projects. Other areas. are, are sort of less critical. We may also want to revisit this list. I think this is a little bit older. Do you think so? I think it's maybe it's good. I don't know. Is there not a self folder? Well, that's that would be contained within the future of Rec. Oh, gotcha Or rec centers future as it's would that be broken out then? Maybe probably not. Because it's kind of within one holistic project. I guess if it needed to be, we would absolutely consider that. This also I would say that this is not a particularly formal list like we can evaluate this as needed. well, I guess so. Well cause South Boulder recs, not funded right now, but East. But East Boulder, so would East Boulder have its own line

[113:09] or no. That's really up for discussion. Right? So east border is going to move into design and construction development. There won't be community engagement at that phase. Right? We've done well. It's around just process and engagement, and where there's going to be something coming to the board for approval at some point. not requirements like none of us is required to be liaison to the project. I enjoy diving in with Henison my 1st year of the crowd, because I got to know much more about the park system and the park staff very quickly, and also to meet lots of people. Unity, who are very passionate about parks front system. So I do encourage you all to think about what projects you may want to assign yourselves to or volunteer for, and then we will. We'll make us. We'll assign ourselves at our next meeting, but we just want to kind of introduce this concept tonight.

[114:05] And you know, to Jenny's point. If there are other things that you're aware of or the things you've heard about tonight that you think ought to have us a liaison. We can absolutely discuss that right like this slide has the list of key projects we're working on. If there's something that you want to know more about, that's something you could bring to a 1 on one. Or, again, Rob, you follow up. What is pearls? What does scoping mean for Pearl Street? We are getting all the information we need to launch the project. So before we start a project. We do a bunch of background to make sure what's going to go into an Rfp. For consultant support? Who are the staff that are going to be on the project. What does the charter look like? So as we get to decision making, it's it's the prep. Okay? And if anybody else wants to sit on the play Boulder Foundation. You're welcome. Good job. They're recruiting. They're recruiting.

[115:02] does that. That's, I think, should be the end of our agenda. Right. We did it. We did it. We thought we'd have 10 min for this part. We're at 5, but I think we can, and if we need extra 5 min. We can have it. Does anyone have any thoughts, question reactions? Anybody worried about what they committed themselves to? Was it a 5 year term that I got or I'm I'm very grateful for all of this. I love the breakout. Thank you so much for putting this all together, even being here a year, I was, gonna say, does it hit differently a year? Absolutely. I feel like I can ask budget especially. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I have questions that I think might be good ones. We're not reading your questions. There's no grading process. Afterwards I talked to Rob. I told him when when we 1st started. Like my very 1st meeting was the milfoil conversation in the reservoir. and at that point I I was asking

[116:02] like I was Googling like how to get rid of milk oil. We don't want it in the reservoir, but it's not my job to figure out how to get it out of the reservoir, so that, like that was a learning curve for me to realize what questions were necessary questions or good questions, and what were not not in my wheelhouse, not questions I should ask so but this was to me, I thought, really informative and helpful. The breakdowns were really nice. I love the organization charts. and Jeff, and I see it every time you have the best crafts. So I I really appreciate you guys putting the time in to to further educate even somebody who's been here years. So it all hits different. So I really appreciate that. And if we want to take a like a deeper dive into like budget. I can contact one of you and Yup, happy to do a sit down. Walk through this. I have the quick resources. Where's the citywide budget?

[117:07] If more than one of you is interested in that, maybe we could group it just to to save Jackson's time. But we are diving in on budget in April. That's a really good idea. Maybe wait for the April meeting where we're gonna do. because we'll be spending significant time on the budget. Yeah. hopefully, a lot of your questions will be answered. Then. Do we have a field trip scheduled August? August. Great, I think. Oh, it's a field trip is. We hop in a van, and we travel around to different key sites, where we have projects underway together and get to talk to you, and I mean it's a different experience talking about it in this room versus talking about it in the middle of undeveloped primo spark. Sounds great.

[118:03] So probably see primos and East Boulder again. Maybe probably not primos, just because, maybe North Boulder Park, because we've not walked through that with you all. Just that's a really exciting project that we've not walked through. I'll need to get with the planning team, I'm thinking. I mean, Pearl Street and civic area could be valuable. But just, oh, yeah, yeah, we'll have construction underway there courts, courts, courts, courts are coming we have, yeah, I mean, I want to consult with the team on where it's I mean, we'd love to spend hours driving around with you and showing you off the work right. But we try to be really thoughtful about like, where do you have work upcoming? Or is it helpful for you to actually see the site together? And typically we do that in place of our typical meeting. So it would be like normal time, normal time, normal place, and we just don't kind of have a regular business meeting. That month of August is flood mitigation at North Holder Park. Part of what? Yes, sir, you do. Yeah. Got it.

[119:04] Yeah, we're really excited for this project, because that site doesn't absorb water. Well, and there's a whole lot that's gonna happen in partnership with utilities to improve the drainage and grading. I like the ducks there when it rains. Well, I mean, then, the problem is, yeah. Used to be a lake. Did you know that? Really? Yes, I did not do that. That's why it's a park. The very 1st city plan said. This area is kind of bondy. It's pretty wet. You probably shouldn't build any houses here. You should just make it a park. I know. That's why it's great for the Nordic scheme, because the snow really sticks there. It's funny. Other questions do you all have. I have a lot, but I feel like it's they're specific to just my own not having the knowledge yet. I think once I do again. Oh, well, I mean no, it's just like random things like, I'm you know. I'm thinking about how we make decisions. And again, this is just off to my head, so has not been thought through. But like, how do we make decisions on prioritizing high intensive carbon development projects. For example, like, do we balance in, for example, golf course that require a lot of water in an area that's sort of going arid, you know in this part of Colorado. But do we have?

[120:19] Do we engage with climate modelers, do we, you know, is there is there? It's almost like, I'm thinking, in the back of my mind, like carbon taxing. Are we making sure that we're spending money or investing in projects that perhaps are more sustainable than others for me. I'm not a golfer, so it's just not my priority, but others I know, love it, and I'm just thinking, you know again, just off to my head like how we make those kinds of decisions. I'm gonna try and address that briefly and hopefully. So one of the things I'll just share about flatirons, golf courses that similarly, that sits in the flood plain, and it serves an incredible site of stormwater detention that does protect a lot of the area nearby homes. And in a developed area. It's

[121:06] there's an incredible amount of trees. It's an Audubon protected golf course. And so it's a bird sanctuary. And so it provides a lot of benefits that folks don't necessarily understand. And and that's why the city of Boulder continues, and it's the only golf course meeting. If it didn't operate and it's public, it's actually an accessible sport in boulder. And so, without it, anyone in our community wanted to. Golf would be driving. And so there's there's a lot of factors there. But as to how we design and operate parks, climate is a lens, as is equity on everything that we do, both of them in increasing ways every single year, as we get better and better at it. As it comes to climate. So Primo's Park, you'll learn we're testing something called the Sites Initiative that looks at from material construct selection to construction methods. How are you doing the least bit of harm as far as building on embodied carbon. How are you mitigating against climate change? That's a bit of a test, so that in 26 and 27. And along with other projects that are, you're going to be hearing about something called the future of parks. And that's where we are going to develop and update design standards, operating manuals to ensure that parks are providing the benefits they can. So, for example, again, when we look at water consumption.

[122:14] let's say that Boulder were to follow other communities and and disallow any turf in lawns. Well, parks are even more important than because they're everybody's backyard for active recreation. And so in the city's drought plan parks are actually protected now, because they, the irrigation, is critical for the trees and for the active recreation spaces, whereas you know someone who never uses their backyard, that turf has a lot more individual benefit the park community benefit. But the whole park doesn't need to be turf, whereas it's edge to edge. Now, maybe there's more native plantings and less irrigated areas. You're going to hear that conversation over the next 2 years as we mature in the methodology, there's some really great stuff happening. That was a fantastic answer. We're thinking about it. We have really smart people on our team. You didn't meet Mark Davison tonight. He's our senior planning manager. He's excellent. He's very good. He's helping us get to this place because our community expects us to do great work, and and we do have some work to do to make sure that our park system is is doing what it should to serve the community and the social benefits, but also, what does it do for resilience?

[123:20] Can you speak to fire a little bit? Or you know I again, I'm not educated enough to know how the city of Boulder is managing that. But I have grave concerns about what's happening at the Federal level in terms of restrictions and funding and saying, you can't use the, you know, climate change words and defunding investments for emergency response. You know all those things that are happening at the Federal level. Is there? Can you give us sort of a high view that one's harder to do a 30 second sound bite on other than to say, the city has recently finalized the Wildfire mitigation plan. I encourage you to Google and read on about it the biggest impacts to us. What's that?

[124:00] The biggest impacts to us are where the parks are in the Wildland urban interface, the Rui Evange find some of those in South boulder. And and really, the parks are already doing. Okay, they're irrigated. We have ways to protect again. But our forestry team advise that a lot, because what does it mean for the urban forest? And how are we looking at tree selection, and other things, but that one's probably to do it justice? I it would be a good one to do more. Yeah, no, it's a great question. It's that one's hard to do a sound bite on. And then we they're actually doing community outreach on that right now. And it's really good information. So you might want to look just when you look that up through the city of boulder. the not the fire chief, the chief one of the Anyways, they do these great presentations about all of the resilient efforts that they're making. I have a lot of homework to do. And Yvonne, that one is a partnership. What's cool about that is, it's climate initiatives and boulder fire rescue working together on the wildfire mitigation links. It's not just about it is, I mean, there's such incredible climate impacts with the wildfires.

[125:08] I hopefully, in closing, I just want to say, typically, we would have one or 2 new prep members a year. And typically those 2, 1 or 2 people have been kind of just toss in the defense. I'm glad that we took this opportunity for new members to have this meeting. Thank you again for your time. I'm gonna volunteer also, typically when we have one or 2 new members, we have assigned mentors to our new members. With 4 new members. I think we should both consider ourselves the mentors to all 4. Right? So Jenny and I will reach out to each of you next week or so, and hopefully with my time to get coffee and just kinda recap and answer lingering questions. And just talk more about what does. And if you say, look, we're doing a lot of onboarding right now when you push this coffee off a month. That's fine. We gotta be respectful of time as well.

[126:07] but I think we can probably close the meeting with that right. That's up to you all. Thank you so much. This has been really helpful, really great overview. So thanks for taking your time. Thank you all for your time in a typical month. I mean we. It's, you know, a meeting in prep for that meeting, and you're going to have a lot more as you on board. So just thank you. The only other thing I'll say before closing is are we gonna do a retreat again in the fall, maybe, for like something that we have done in the past is is things that might not be on the agenda for the year or for 5 years. If there's something that you feel passionate about, that, they that the staff can bring in dedicated staff to talk about just keep that in mind. So if we decide to have a retreat, maybe at the end of the year, just to talk through those things. Staff, making sure that people are able to talk about that because sometimes something you might be passionate about isn't just.

[127:08] It just keeps on screen. Thanks, everybody.