SPR Boardroom: Hey? Good evening, everybody! Welcome to the Thursday, July 11th
SPR Boardroom: board parks and recreation. That's that's their board meeting. So we don't have form today. So we're going to skip that portion. But let's go ahead and start. Do you have the annotated ones
SPR Boardroom: start off today with the Atlantic office.
SPR Boardroom: Seattle parks and recreation acknowledges and affirms the indigenous coast salish people as the original caretakers of our waters and landscape who nurtured and shaped today's Parkland
SPR Boardroom: we honor their legacy with gratitude and appreciation, and safeguard their knowledge and stewardship as enduring treasures to promote welfare, cultivate inclusive expressions of nature and recreation.
SPR Boardroom: who commits a land acknowledgement of each and saving generation.
SPR Boardroom: And Jess I had mentioned.
SPR Boardroom: that said, we do not have format this moment, so we're going to skip some of those nicelys in the beginning. But let's go around and do some introductions we'll start with commissioners 1st and maybe start online and then go on right. So John, do you want to start us off today?
John Flinn: Everybody. John Flynn.
John Flinn: Commissioner from District 3.
John Flinn: I'm actually on the East Coast this week in Lenox, Massachusetts, at a family reunion.
John Flinn: So joining you guys remotely, but looking forward to the conversation. Tonight.
SPR Boardroom: Steelware.
SPR Boardroom: please do.
SPR Boardroom: Didn't find them all
SPR Boardroom: our secret. So that's our
SPR Boardroom: interact
SPR Boardroom: off camera here. Ben Berzo's sale parks and recreation admin specialist
SPR Boardroom: district of Williams, Arch, Chief of staff.
SPR Boardroom: Paula Hawks, middle part of recreation.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: wealthy plants.
SPR Boardroom: Good evening, everyone David and deputy superintendent.
SPR Boardroom: And then we have one more online.
SPR Boardroom: Marky, awesome.
Markeith Blackshire: Yeah, Mark Keith, blackshirt parks and environment division director.
SPR Boardroom: Excellent. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: So moving on here, I guess it's kind of like a comment.
SPR Boardroom: Right? So we have 3 3 members signed up for public comment today. And we're gonna start with David Griffiths. I do not see David online. So, David, if you're in the room, go ahead and step up to the blue X
SPR Boardroom: Nope on David today.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, next up signed up for public comment. I mean, we can come back if somebody somebody logs on next up for public comment is Carrie Christensen.
SPR Boardroom: I have some pictures I'd like to show, so I don't know. You can. You can hand those around to the I don't want to pass them over. I'll just show them
SPR Boardroom: there. They can be offensive. So Danny Blaine Park.
SPR Boardroom: adding plants and bamboo to the beach, because they don't like them looking at them while they're naked on the beach.
SPR Boardroom: destroying the bulkhead, adding cement and sparkly rocks between the bulkhead to create seating.
SPR Boardroom: digging out sand west of the bulkhead.
SPR Boardroom: This is a chronic masturbator at the park. He's at the park all the time.
SPR Boardroom: This is a masturbating mail at 8 AM. On a Sunday morning he was mad. I took his picture. I called 911. I waited 2 h for Spd. To show up. They never did.
SPR Boardroom: 6, 21 amplified music in the park and electric guitar with Amp on the beach
SPR Boardroom: this lady is giving a show to everybody at the Park. She's very flexible, that's great.
SPR Boardroom: not appropriate in a public park.
SPR Boardroom: I tried calling the Park Ranger phone number said it was after hours when it wasn't called 9 9, 1 1 and asked them to contact Park Rangers.
SPR Boardroom: Public urination, I said, use the port of Poppy, he said. Next time.
SPR Boardroom: 1st parking in Red Zone.
SPR Boardroom: 6, 21,
SPR Boardroom: 14 cars, 6, 25 at 2 Pm. 9 cars, 4 51 Pm.
SPR Boardroom: 14 cars. One man in front of a fire. Hybrid, 7, 5 12 cars, 7, 8, 13 cars, one car in front of a fire hydrant.
SPR Boardroom: 7, 9, 14 cars, 7, 10,
SPR Boardroom: 15 cars.
SPR Boardroom: This is what they think of parking tickets at the Park.
SPR Boardroom: I would ask that when they're ticketing cars at Dan Park that they ticket and told the cars as a deterrent.
SPR Boardroom: The nudity is one thing but safety hazard with parking. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you very much, Karen.
SPR Boardroom: Alright, and Bill.
SPR Boardroom: Hello, Bill Farmer. I'm a Board president, friends of athletic fields, and I saw the presentation yesterday, which is very good
SPR Boardroom: I get. I'm not sure I'll stay for the whole thing, but it
SPR Boardroom: a few things to comment on there. I think we concluded yesterday that it all comes down to the money.
SPR Boardroom: There's lots of plans. There's lots of prioritization of projects. But when it comes down to it.
SPR Boardroom: lots of playing field projects being kicked down for
SPR Boardroom: 5, 8 years, 10 years, and a lot hasn't gotten in the last 5 years. Last new Playfuel
SPR Boardroom: Conversion was Brighton. That was done in 2,019. So 5 years ago.
SPR Boardroom: so there's a few in the works that have got installed.
SPR Boardroom: anyway, that the other reason I I really I wanted to speak to you. I ran into Tom Byers, who was a Parks board member many years ago. A few years ago. Randy met at Arbury, and then
SPR Boardroom: Tom and I talked about having play field users. Come and get a presentation to the board.
SPR Boardroom: You get lots of presentation on the office area and the Seattle Parks Foundation. All these other groups.
SPR Boardroom: Playfield users and sports leagues. It's huge
SPR Boardroom: play equity coalition quoted. I think it was a hundred 1,000 people
SPR Boardroom: participate in sports. So it's a huge constituency. And
SPR Boardroom: in 2 min what can I say?
SPR Boardroom: Really need a conversation like to talk to you and have some dialogue back and forth, so you could understand the view of the people that use the field parks. Those
SPR Boardroom: great job provide fields. It could be better. They've stepped up and installed a lot of synthetic turf, which is great, and
SPR Boardroom: you can look in your your planning documents, populations, increasing youthful kids. It's very active. The recommendation is to provide more opportunities. So that's what we'd like to see.
SPR Boardroom: So I'd welcome a conversation, Justin, if we could, for that
SPR Boardroom: maybe get something on the books.
SPR Boardroom: Feel free to reach out. Paul.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you, Bill.
SPR Boardroom: alright. And I see David did did join us. So, David, I'm going to go ahead and give you permission to talk. You will still need to unmute yourself, and you'll have 2 min.
David G (SYSA - XD): Okay. Great. Can everyone hear me? Okay.
SPR Boardroom: Yes.
David G (SYSA - XD): Okay, wonderful. Thank you for. Let me speak today. Apologies. If
David G (SYSA - XD): I sneeze during this I'm fighting a cold right now. So I apologies. But my name's David Griffis. I am the executive director for Seattle youth, Soccer Association.
David G (SYSA - XD): we are the the largest or the biggest
David G (SYSA - XD): user of fields across the city.
David G (SYSA - XD): We have definitely utilized
David G (SYSA - XD): in a positive light. The dog use agreement.
David G (SYSA - XD): I wanna thank Staff that we work with, including Lisa, who, I believe, is in the room there. Thank you very much for your
David G (SYSA - XD): your work throughout my tenure during
David G (SYSA - XD): for the last 5 or 6 years now. But
David G (SYSA - XD): there's no no doubt that I I want to consider
David G (SYSA - XD): conveying my concern about the number of grass fields that are becoming
David G (SYSA - XD): non playable. They are a huge part of what we do. And and our permit countless of our clubs across the city
David G (SYSA - XD): really, really rely on the quality of these fields. I can talk about dial field during the winter and the lack of lighting
David G (SYSA - XD): the the lack of drainage at that field, too. But in recent months it's been more about bf day Smith Cove and Judkins just being turned into dog parks
David G (SYSA - XD): where you know users will
David G (SYSA - XD): come and bring their dogs, and and these dogs will dig holes. They'll leave the mass all over the field to the point where I've I've spent
David G (SYSA - XD): countless hours and and funds
David G (SYSA - XD): trying to get these fields back up and running including cleaning dog waste and filling holes with with it. So my concern is.
David G (SYSA - XD): you know, the the maintenance on those grass fields. I think it would be wonderful to have
David G (SYSA - XD): a brand new turf field replace all of these grass fields. But of course that's highly unlikely.
David G (SYSA - XD): But you know, for the time being, and and definitely throughout the soccer season. I think it's you know, of paramount importance that we get these
David G (SYSA - XD): these grass fields up and running again to a point where they are safe for users.
David G (SYSA - XD): you know, kids are not.
SPR Boardroom: Mother, ankles.
David G (SYSA - XD): And my final concern is parking particularly with Jefferson.
David G (SYSA - XD): Down in the South End, where the Rv. Encampment is encroaching on the users parking spaces. There's also been a number of break ins down there, too. So like, I said, we're we're a big partner. We've enjoyed working with you. But please let me know what we can do to help improve those situations.
Lisa Nielsen: Got a 1 joint.
SPR Boardroom: Alright. Thank you so much, David. And thank you. Even though the the technology is a little bit tricky. Thank you for taking care of yourself and taking care of us and not spreading your call to us here, really appreciate that, too.
SPR Boardroom: Alright. So I think that wraps up public comment for today.
SPR Boardroom: and I think we'll kick it back over to Justin.
SPR Boardroom: Alright. Thanks everyone for commenting. Appreciate it
SPR Boardroom: like the next topic. Here is the superintendent's report, Christopher Williams.
SPR Boardroom: Great. So maybe I'll comment on some of the public testimony we heard 1st from Carrie Christensen.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you for.
SPR Boardroom: So we're traveling all the way down to California.
SPR Boardroom: We appreciate that.
SPR Boardroom: you know, one of the challenges we have in our system the State.
SPR Boardroom: A
SPR Boardroom: charter laws prohibit
SPR Boardroom: enforcement of public safety.
SPR Boardroom: Bob's Washington State. Unless the
SPR Boardroom: public community is an affront to a person they are willing to testify.
SPR Boardroom: I will please record
SPR Boardroom: that aside.
SPR Boardroom: it is not illegal to necessarily be
SPR Boardroom: a nude in a public park, believe it or not.
SPR Boardroom: On the other hand, there are a whole range of
SPR Boardroom: comment, associated
SPR Boardroom: behaviors that come with that
SPR Boardroom: that are illegal behaviors, such as illegal parking.
SPR Boardroom: some of the lead conduct.
SPR Boardroom: and just some of the behavior that's frankly nuisance behavior. So I I wanna acknowledge that we hear you and we are, in a continuous
SPR Boardroom: improvement space. And how we
SPR Boardroom: address the issues at any one part
SPR Boardroom: the other person I want to acknowledge and thank for his long standing. Persistent advocacy, for our athletic ability is Miss Bill Barmer, who's been around
SPR Boardroom: Otc. So 20 years, advocated on behalf of teams, leads families for
SPR Boardroom: better
SPR Boardroom: sports fields and our system.
SPR Boardroom: I do want to say that we are partnering with Bill
SPR Boardroom: on October 10th to have a athletic summit meeting.
SPR Boardroom: This is an opportunity to bring the Leads teams sport bill user groups together
SPR Boardroom: and have a discussion about where the opportunities scale up
SPR Boardroom: our performance and the provision of athletic
SPR Boardroom: maintenance scheduling.
SPR Boardroom: But it is really sort of the reemergence of a conversation used to have these summit meetings regularly each mayor's administration. This is the 1st time we're having this. We're looking forward to that, and we would like to extend an invitation to
SPR Boardroom: some segment of the Park board
SPR Boardroom: to perhaps attend that. We have to be cautious that we don't have core
SPR Boardroom: meeting, but I think it would be helpful for you to hear some of the concerns.
SPR Boardroom: Also, I would co-sign the bill apart that it would be a good idea. Have
SPR Boardroom: the guy.
SPR Boardroom: Bill? You're sure
SPR Boardroom: community come here to make presentation.
SPR Boardroom: You're talking about the issue. So anything we can loop in
SPR Boardroom: to get that teed up, maybe even ideally, before the athletic meeting.
SPR Boardroom: Better. Yeah.
SPR Boardroom: And then, David Greg, you spoke I wanna acknowledge that
SPR Boardroom: off leash dogs at athletic fields are a big problem and just brought on
SPR Boardroom: 25 park rangers in our system.
SPR Boardroom: And they are, gonna be part of the solution for how we enforce more dogs offreach in our.
SPR Boardroom: I was just sitting in this seat and this chair earlier today and made the statement that things sometimes have to get bad before they get good. And what that means is
SPR Boardroom: a lot of people are gonna complain when we start enforcing the office. So
SPR Boardroom: we can't have it both ways,
SPR Boardroom: you know. Have a continuing conversation
SPR Boardroom: board, Sv. And
SPR Boardroom: portion.
SPR Boardroom: So I will start out with the superintendents. Report Apbs. Our superintendent
SPR Boardroom: has been in Washington, DC. At the Nrpa.
SPR Boardroom: Board of Directors meeting all the week, so I'm standing in for 8.
SPR Boardroom: We're in the middle
SPR Boardroom: peak operating season right now. This is our busy season
SPR Boardroom: with the Seattle partner education system. We have a whopping. 2,006 employees
SPR Boardroom: are able right now, that is
SPR Boardroom: kind of an all time high with the level of seasonal employees. Our high water mark previously has been around 1,400 employees we are at.
SPR Boardroom: He's 600 more employees, and that is just demonstrative of the scale of use and the level of staffing required to meet the demand.
SPR Boardroom: It's the system.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, we are
SPR Boardroom: almost 2 weeks out from the greater, greener conference. We hosted the National greater, greener Conference
SPR Boardroom: in partnership with the City Park Alliance from June 21, st through June 25.th
SPR Boardroom: It was a wildly successful.
SPR Boardroom: a conference. We set records for attendance. We sent records for
SPR Boardroom: registration enrollment tours
SPR Boardroom: this conference even made money, you know. The Park foundation
SPR Boardroom: contribute. Both contributed almost a half a million dollars
SPR Boardroom: in kind donations and hard cash resources.
SPR Boardroom: the Associated Recreation Council was a big partner into this
SPR Boardroom: and it was just a really good way to showcase the Seattle parking recreation system. We thought about this as sort of our coming out party post pandemic for the country
SPR Boardroom: and the sale part system lived up in every way and beyond to, I think, the public expectation that feedback has just been over the top. So they're really
SPR Boardroom: proud of our employees. We're proud of our partners.
SPR Boardroom: In the coming weeks we will be growing a big pizza party where recognize everyone is busy. So we're going to be delivering boxes of pizza to every work unit across the
SPR Boardroom: system here, just as an expression appreciation. People work really hard to make the system look really good.
SPR Boardroom: or 1,500 people. Each of the 5 accounts
SPR Boardroom: the volunteer day of service was part of the conference, and
SPR Boardroom: as a part of that, we renovated
SPR Boardroom: play area. So the picture
SPR Boardroom: on the lab
SPR Boardroom: top is the before picture. The bottom picture is a picture of volunteers all over the country.
SPR Boardroom: Data
SPR Boardroom: hope
SPR Boardroom: demolished Greenville community areas before and after the other picture there with bicycles, this bicycle tour that was part of the conference boy, just the range of activities you could engage in at the conference. Everything from walks, the kayaking tours, the golf trips, bicycling tours across the city was pretty amazing that we even have the bandwidth to organize that I want to give a shout out to Joseph Valentino.
SPR Boardroom: He was a 30 plus years to have a partner education boy who volunteered
SPR Boardroom: came back to pitch it and work at the bottom of your table at the conference we appreciate you taking
SPR Boardroom: always a partner. Oh, goodness! I think that's right.
SPR Boardroom: Next slide, please.
SPR Boardroom: Another shout out, Rounds maintenance!
SPR Boardroom: Crazy.
SPR Boardroom: you know. We recently recently received a heartfelt letter of recognition from the Rainier district. For the week
SPR Boardroom: they wanted to give a shout out to our amazing maintenance crews for their hard work and maintaining their
SPR Boardroom: we couldn't be prouder of our dedicated team. It constantly goes over and beyond
SPR Boardroom: the level required them to keep our bills with you. Good and
SPR Boardroom: You know one of the things that this may not be apparent to people that don't work. Here is just the extreme level of pride that Seattle partners, employees take in their work. Whether they are working is free
SPR Boardroom: at a community center, whether they're talking Japanese, not we. Which is the picture up in the corner. Japanese, not weed, is invasive, and I believe that's a picture in Northeast Seattle where we're working with community applying for steps to remove
SPR Boardroom: Japanese. Now, there is a picture of a busker there, Seattle, just celebrated 50 years of busking in Seattle.
SPR Boardroom: And we have lots of busters in our parks throughout the system.
SPR Boardroom: You know, buskers or people we contract with
SPR Boardroom: be in our parts.
SPR Boardroom: we actually pay them
SPR Boardroom: to do performances, and their whole mission is to activate and and live in public spaces. So
SPR Boardroom: we are really happy with our cluster.
SPR Boardroom: The park activation program is in full swing. We have activities such as movie nights. The Calendars Park, recently approximately 350 people attended the showing of the movie Chicago
SPR Boardroom: regress, the Sun Bowl area. There
SPR Boardroom: food trucks were there and the Chicago Esp. Food options provided by blue trucks. Absolutely. Thanks. A lot of time. Excellent.
SPR Boardroom: Okay. So we celebrated Juneteenth
SPR Boardroom: at Rainier Beach Community Center and throughout the system we collaboratively with the Atlantic Street Center
SPR Boardroom: at the 23rd Annual June team celebration on Saturday, June 20 second. The event included performances, local performers, visitors from the Greater Pain and Conference actually got to take in that
SPR Boardroom: a wonderful chimney celebration.
SPR Boardroom: Be sad.
SPR Boardroom: We held an indigenous tree teaching workshop that came along.
SPR Boardroom: We hosted our 1st indigenous tree teaching workshop in partnership with wins of change, alliance.
SPR Boardroom: and the local and local tribal elders. Through a grant they applied for with the city
SPR Boardroom: it was very well received. We had about 30 people in attendance to learn about indigenous practices, stewardship local history, and take tours throughout the park.
SPR Boardroom: In addition, we've also had career explorations, syp and other internal external groups from lots of violence challenge courses.
SPR Boardroom: Our youth employment program is a big deal. For years we have been providing opportunities for young people to
SPR Boardroom: have the distraction of a job during the summer.
SPR Boardroom: And we have 42 of you participate in our summer youth appointment program.
SPR Boardroom: led by 3 facilitators, 3 facilitators, Chris Jones.
SPR Boardroom: December will programs 7 weeks, total, 28 h.
SPR Boardroom: So that's
SPR Boardroom: big deal next slide
SPR Boardroom: alright. This is Jimi Hendrix Park, and special thanks to the Sbr Paint crew, Steve Adams and Chris Ajito
SPR Boardroom: repairing the chimney, and the original wave will continue part.
SPR Boardroom: The amps of the phase was mostly due to vandalism, requiring the crew to do a lot of patchwork through the pivots made metal surface. It took a lot of masking to keep the details and lines nice and clean.
SPR Boardroom: Epoxy was used to finish.
SPR Boardroom: and the result turned out excellent. So one of the things are.
SPR Boardroom: Crews are very skilled, that is, repairing. Handle the support, not destroying the hardware.
SPR Boardroom: That is a very unique skill.
SPR Boardroom: The hut.
SPR Boardroom: See?
SPR Boardroom: Also, we wanna talk a little bit more about the greater beer.
SPR Boardroom: So
SPR Boardroom: just a shout out to our facilities, groups.
SPR Boardroom: power.
SPR Boardroom: and the work they did to get the city
SPR Boardroom: looking good or the greater in the conference. i i i can't tell you. Level
SPR Boardroom: of off
SPR Boardroom: effort and pre-maintenance work that occurred prior to those 1,200 people
SPR Boardroom: people literally
SPR Boardroom: drop in what they were doing. Make sure that our partners really shine
SPR Boardroom: free.
SPR Boardroom: This lower slide here is equipment work
SPR Boardroom: interns the Sale Park recreation facilities. Division
SPR Boardroom: has program called Yaw.
SPR Boardroom: And it's you at work.
SPR Boardroom: Basically, this is a program operated out of the West Bridge facility.
SPR Boardroom: And for the next 6 weeks
SPR Boardroom: participants in this program
SPR Boardroom: are building a tiny home.
SPR Boardroom: and
SPR Boardroom: I don't know if you've ever seen the tiny home villages across the city. But this is a great
SPR Boardroom: construction project hands on construction project
SPR Boardroom: that we do with a cohort, if you
SPR Boardroom: and I think with all of the talk about
SPR Boardroom: high pain.
SPR Boardroom: blue collar trade jobs as a pathway to success.
SPR Boardroom: The park department helps young people, you know, put in the door
SPR Boardroom: and cultivate interest and and advocation
SPR Boardroom: for that career pursuit, facility.
SPR Boardroom: It's probably not appropriate.
SPR Boardroom: please.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, in our planning and capital Development Division on June 30th the Department invited the community to help shape the phase, 2 improvements for he or she would park
SPR Boardroom: a phase 2 will include play area renovations.
SPR Boardroom: renovate the existing play area to Svr standards
SPR Boardroom: and ancestor Ada accessibility.
SPR Boardroom: We'll create a fitness zone installing fitness zones with exercise, equipment, and accessible. The blocking path
SPR Boardroom: in printing
SPR Boardroom: resurface basketball court replaced damage to missing equipment
SPR Boardroom: the in person engagement or the initial community feedback or phase, 2 renovations it.
SPR Boardroom: Here's your part.
SPR Boardroom: Jim clearly demonstrated that Seattle parts might be Asian commitment
SPR Boardroom: for community input project, direction engagement, which included both online and in-person opportunities, allowed the community to share your vision for the next phase of innovations.
SPR Boardroom: So this was kind of a big step we had some workshops, lots of opportunities for people to share their ideas.
SPR Boardroom: We really take hard for the new hardware numbers the idea that we should really be going
SPR Boardroom: over the top when it comes to public engagement and creating the space to hear
SPR Boardroom: community ideas. So the PC. Staff did a lot of work here
SPR Boardroom: and then in another part of the city, the Lake City Floodplain Park Development Project was awarded half a million dollars. From June 28, th
SPR Boardroom: the Department of Ecology's Centennial Clean Water Program.
SPR Boardroom: And this is a huge sum of money that will
SPR Boardroom: be leveraged to
SPR Boardroom: create
SPR Boardroom: Adam
SPR Boardroom: Fish enhancement project
SPR Boardroom: in the creek. There will be a lot of great pairing appetite at work
SPR Boardroom: and managing on-site stormwater mitigation.
SPR Boardroom: It's probably the scope for that project
SPR Boardroom: next slide.
SPR Boardroom: Okay. June 24th Michelle, and again myself. Deliver the presentation to the City Council.
SPR Boardroom: Wearing their cap is a part District Board of governors.
SPR Boardroom: We've provided a thorough heart district 101 or in council members
SPR Boardroom: to the role, also gave an update 2023 financial operation performance. This update aligns with our just release, 2023 award which I believe is being passed around.
SPR Boardroom: It also highlighted the relaunch expansion Ranger program
SPR Boardroom: efforts to increase downtown park activation program
SPR Boardroom: strategies, keep park restrooms clean and accessible
SPR Boardroom: and to accelerate innovation and replace older restrooms.
SPR Boardroom: we highlighted electrification building decarbonization efforts throughout the department.
SPR Boardroom: and we
SPR Boardroom: give a highlight on the 45 completed capital projects. Up to this point
SPR Boardroom: I also want to
SPR Boardroom: call out, last year
SPR Boardroom: we spent something like a hundred 36 million dollars capital money
SPR Boardroom: in a single year. It's just a huge match, right?
SPR Boardroom: That suggests that we really are moving capital projects forward
SPR Boardroom: somewhat. Time and Shepherd will come here and talk about that.
SPR Boardroom: I'm talking about online picnic schedule after 2 months.
SPR Boardroom: launch online self reservation picnic options, 291
SPR Boardroom: permits have been created for total revenue of 40,000
SPR Boardroom: oral.
SPR Boardroom: $40,400. In addition to this revenue, this has saved our unscheduling countless hours processing physical applications, and has allowed their time and energy to go forward to a more complex reservation application system. So this idea that we are engaging
SPR Boardroom: and a continuous
SPR Boardroom: process improvement strategy all over the department is the really thing that's happening, particularly where we can engage technology to make
SPR Boardroom: and piecemeal work that a person or group of people used to do. Kind of a self-service function of telephone keypad
SPR Boardroom: that is happening
SPR Boardroom: right now. And they
SPR Boardroom: scheduled reservation.
SPR Boardroom: So next slide.
SPR Boardroom: okay, there are some upcoming events
SPR Boardroom: couple of things that aren't here this Saturday.
SPR Boardroom: recently
SPR Boardroom: renamed
SPR Boardroom: Jefferson Golf course. The Bill Wright. Of course Bill Wright was the 1st African American
SPR Boardroom: a person to play
SPR Boardroom: legally at Tennessee golf course. He is also a pro and golf pro chandler.
SPR Boardroom: That's quite a footprint in the local golf community.
SPR Boardroom: It's taken us a long time. Get here to rename this part
SPR Boardroom: and really want to give credit to the local
SPR Boardroom: African American golf community. We're pushing that people like
SPR Boardroom: happy Colombo Bill Porter to
SPR Boardroom: kind of spearheaded. This effort is difficult
SPR Boardroom: to propose a name work card.
SPR Boardroom: It is 10 times more difficult to change the name of a plan so the community was very thoughtful, and making the proposal to find the documentation and making the argument.
SPR Boardroom: making the case. So on October 10th
SPR Boardroom: we're having a
SPR Boardroom: they'll write a where we will roll out the formal renaming of that part, and I'm sorry developers, and we'll send invitations to this group to participate in that.
SPR Boardroom: On July 11.th
SPR Boardroom: We have native indigenous presentations at City Hall Park.
SPR Boardroom: chilling through September 20
SPR Boardroom: in September.
SPR Boardroom: We are proud to present a series of new time, events, and performances in partnership, when, to change alliance
SPR Boardroom: until I, 16
SPR Boardroom: Tony Blue House will perform Dakota, Sue Powell style songs and dance.
SPR Boardroom: and the Pilot
SPR Boardroom: go to our Parkways, block, find out more information about that.
SPR Boardroom: On July 16th and other dates
SPR Boardroom: you could join us for dancing to a desk. This is literally a program. Bring out a sprung
SPR Boardroom: the onscore and everything
SPR Boardroom: dancing in the park. We have locations at Freeway Park, Community Park and Chinatown, Id.
SPR Boardroom: Alan Anderson Park, Westlake Park. Here 62 and Dallas. So
SPR Boardroom: allow your Dan shoes and encourage everyone to go to our park ways.
SPR Boardroom: Dot seattle.gov website. There are a list of activities and events from now, through the end of the summer, that you could legally participate in every day.
SPR Boardroom: With that I will pause, and
SPR Boardroom: her back to the lower chair and ask a good question. Excellent!
SPR Boardroom: Great presentation, as always, super thorough. I have some comments and questions for one of those made up to other commissioners to see if anyone has something they might offer.
SPR Boardroom: I'll do the.
John Flinn: I have. I have one. If that's okay.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, go for it.
John Flinn: Good. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that, Christopher. I was curious. If we could start to review the park Ranger.
John Flinn: Schedule in some way. I know, just in your presentation there were a couple
John Flinn: community concerns that we've sort of said will be significantly improved by the Park Ranger visits dog park policing and Danny Blaine monitoring
John Flinn: but I feel like it's a little bit of a black box, just to actually how the Rangers, where they're current what the current staffing level is against target, and then where they're actually committing their time to. So I think would be helpful for the Commission to have some visibility into that
John Flinn: so that as we respond to community members, we can actually show.
John Flinn: you know. Oh, in fact, Park Rangers were in this park, you know this many hours or these days last month? Otherwise I think it be it. It feels a little bit like a a false, or
John Flinn: I'll say an empty promise. That's harsh, but I think if we don't back it up with statistics about the utilization of the Park Rangers, then it doesn't have as much weight. So I I'd love if that were available to the Commission in future.
John Flinn: And then just congratulations on the hosting of the conference. It sounds like that was a huge success, and
John Flinn: great to have our park shine through for that. So thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Yes, and we will definitely get that on future agenda. We have assimilated a lot of data already, so we'd be happy to count
SPR Boardroom: shared employment philosophy schedule
SPR Boardroom: our assumptions about how we're staffing the program where we want people to use their time as park rangers. We'd love to come. Have a discussion here with you about that.
John Flinn: Thanks, so much.
SPR Boardroom: Great comment. There, John, I appreciate that.
SPR Boardroom: I'm going to go ahead and Piggyback on the greater, greener shadow. I attended conference. It was an awesome conference, and just to reemphasize how much of a lift of staff it was. Well, Christopher was out there, given to us, so everybody had a hand in the work.
SPR Boardroom: You know all the partner groups were out there. And I just wanna say that as a participant in the conference you hear what other participants are saying from around the world. And they were just in our system. So I just wanna emphasize. You know, it's really easy. When you got to all start system that like, look for all the kinks in the armor and kind of cut it down. But you know, when folks around the world are coming here saying, Wow! How do you do that?
SPR Boardroom: This this is amazing. The next one I think it took with 10 years. Yes, to get that conference here, and any part system in the nation kind of puts that up as a trunk at the top. Shel said we were a Host city. So just really wanna emphasize how how great of the turnout that was? How well the staff did all the part of the groups, and how well it was received and like folks around the world. So
SPR Boardroom: just had to put my 2 cents in there. Other thing I wanted to comment on is really love to hear the emphasis on improving the online reservation efforts. That's a great thing. I use park system a lot. I saw a picture up there the Jefferson Park shelter I actually had my daughter's 3rd birthday there, my 1st daughter and I think that that is something that really improve our ability to share the system with public
SPR Boardroom: making that sensibility through the reservation process a little bit more smoothly. So I was happy to do that.
SPR Boardroom: and also wanted to do one comment, the annual report, I think I've been on the board here now
SPR Boardroom: 4 years and
SPR Boardroom: The report would probably be quadruple this size if you saw all the appendices that go behind this those appendices are available online. And I just want to say what a deep dive transparency with the numbers behind everything the parts is doing. So if you want to see where those dollars are going.
SPR Boardroom: invite you to go online, look for the annual port that Tennessee's are on there, and you'll see where everything is going for every business line. Not just the Metropolitan Park district money, but it's higher. So
SPR Boardroom: again, I've been a part of a lot of organizations. The transparency shown there is really great. I just wanted to again put the half parts for letting people see everything.
SPR Boardroom: Susan.
SPR Boardroom: I think
SPR Boardroom: so. I forgot to do this earlier, and I looked over and saw Manual here. I would like to introduce a future cohort to this board, a manual
SPR Boardroom: finally, new book
SPR Boardroom: who said it? Sitting back here, we took this Confirmation
SPR Boardroom: notes to the City Council meeting yesterday, and I would like to introduce your new colleague. He's a native of North Seattle, grew up attending programs at community centers all over town, which is a product of the Sale Park recreation system.
SPR Boardroom: He he had his 1st job at figuring community Center
SPR Boardroom: as the summer waiting call attendant
SPR Boardroom: through these experiences a manual soft 1st and the live, altering impacts recreation could have for kids families. As an adult
SPR Boardroom: he has dedicated his life to the betterment of his community and his professional work as a public health expert and housing advocate. He works on creative solutions through the homelessness, crisis issue in King County and maintains an extraordinary level of compassion
SPR Boardroom: for the individuals he says he serves while definitely navigating, funding and administrative challenges. Afterward you can find them back at Bare Lake Community Center.
SPR Boardroom: volunteering this time with you. Basketball
SPR Boardroom: fashion programs are offering after school tutoring support, Assembly helping wherever he's needed.
SPR Boardroom: If appointed to the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners.
SPR Boardroom: Oh, hello!
SPR Boardroom: Will be steadfast, will be a steadfast advocate for you
SPR Boardroom: recreation and equity in park spaces, and has demonstrated a commitment to this neighborhood and to the entire city of Seattle. It will be an outstanding addition to the board. We are confident a manual will bring a unique and important perspective
SPR Boardroom: to the work of the board. So I said, if
SPR Boardroom: appointed, he was voted on yesterday unanimously by Oregon.
SPR Boardroom: You're 99% of the way congratulations
SPR Boardroom: welcome manual. And it's always great making sure that we round up. You know the perspectives. Here we have a lot of folks that are familiar with the park side. But no, I think
SPR Boardroom: now I do join, and we're the only recreation foot background. So it's great to again. Make sure we cover all facets
SPR Boardroom: monthly present
SPR Boardroom: on the right.
SPR Boardroom: I think we're right on time or the chance. Alright, I will jump in here, and you would kick this off
SPR Boardroom: so a little bit about public recreation. You know, it's 1 of those lines of business in our department where
SPR Boardroom: we know that
SPR Boardroom: our ability, our ability to reach young people can have a positive transformational impact on their lives
SPR Boardroom: and had a
SPR Boardroom: we sometimes struggle with the empirical data sets that demonstrate that that's really happening.
SPR Boardroom: You know. I mean, we know it's it's happening. But
SPR Boardroom: the costly observations about
SPR Boardroom: about the efficacy really occurs over a long span of time. It's hard to measure sometimes like a young person that doesn't engage antisocial
SPR Boardroom: behavior after school because they were in community center program.
SPR Boardroom: or the young person that didn't drop out of high school because they had some positive recreational activity to do. It is tough to make that one to one
SPR Boardroom: relationship about.
SPR Boardroom: You know some of those empirical things that happen.
SPR Boardroom: But on the qualitative side
SPR Boardroom: we know that a caring adult person
SPR Boardroom: who shows up genuine, sincere.
SPR Boardroom: relatable to young people
SPR Boardroom: can provide a qualitative set of protective factors for young people as they grow and develop.
SPR Boardroom: make good choices and decisions as a growing young people and young adults.
SPR Boardroom: and a person who's been doing that work for over 41 years in our department
SPR Boardroom: 10 years as a temp, and another 31 years as an Sbr. Regular employee is Ron Brown.
SPR Boardroom: you know, in a world where we are always forced to show
SPR Boardroom: performance metrics.
SPR Boardroom: I'm putting my money on people like, because ron is the difference that makes the difference in terms of that qualitative
SPR Boardroom: impact. I mean, the kids keep coming to the community center because of the person
SPR Boardroom: by far.
SPR Boardroom: you know, they they feel comfortable. They have a relationship.
SPR Boardroom: and Ron has just been steadfast.
SPR Boardroom: a persevering leader in our department, and I have here a little letter that I'd like to read, and this letter comes from
SPR Boardroom: his peers who actually nominated for
SPR Boardroom: this award, so that
SPR Boardroom: I see candy petish, showed up here in part of way, that you have some people that love you here, Ron Seattle Park, and recreation is pleased to announce that Ron. Brown is the 2024 recipient of the John C. Little spirit award for his dedication, including lives for Seattle.
SPR Boardroom: John C. Little Senior served the community as a member of the Seattle Board of our Region Commissioners.
SPR Boardroom: 1990, to 1997
SPR Boardroom: he was known for his careful consideration of proposed policies would affect you.
SPR Boardroom: This model was in order to improve the life of all people, we must 1st improve the life of young people.
SPR Boardroom: Ron demonstrates that model every day's interaction feet
SPR Boardroom: both his role as a recreation leader that will connect to unison and outside of work.
SPR Boardroom: Ronald Ron Brown started working for Seattle Parks recreation in 1,983 as a temporary employee serving youth
SPR Boardroom: in the Kids Place pro apartment. The kids I've been around.
SPR Boardroom: He then went to Rainier Beach Community Center, working for sprout public schools as a mentor.
SPR Boardroom: a call monitor
SPR Boardroom: and South Shore and Rayneries High School were all the same. From there Bron went on to run the Sbrd programs at Hutchison Field House, the Baker, Royman and Salient Center, 1993, Bron was hired by Sbr's permanent
SPR Boardroom: team development leaders, serving teams at Reinier, investor, Miller, Royal Heights community centers and he continues his role today Ron Brown has worked for Sbr for 31 years now, serving as a youth and team manager his entire career.
SPR Boardroom: Brian has been caring adult role model for thousands of Seattle youth and teams.
SPR Boardroom: but above and beyond
SPR Boardroom: each and every day for the youth of Loyal Habits, Community Center
SPR Boardroom: for Al Ron's career as a recreation leader spanning over 3 decades he has demonstrated an unparalleled dedication, unwavering commitment to empowering Seattle chief
SPR Boardroom: from the numerous nomination letters that we receive from colleagues and adults, we met with us. And as youth.
SPR Boardroom: Ron has had a transformative impact on many lives.
SPR Boardroom: that
SPR Boardroom: it's had a transformative impact on new lives, and that working with you is truly calling
SPR Boardroom: Seattle Park and recreation. So there's
SPR Boardroom: truly this Collins, said Ap. As superintendent.
SPR Boardroom: This quote from a nomination
SPR Boardroom: says it all, Ron is positive, honest, authentic, and extremely dedicated
SPR Boardroom: Seattle parents couldn't find a better role model for their kids. He is a hundred 10 committed to sbr
SPR Boardroom: his job, and especially these things he serves.
SPR Boardroom: This is the 21st year this Sbr. John C. Little spirit award has been awarded
SPR Boardroom: past recipients of this award include Chicani, Salisbury at Warburg, Elaine, Dunn.
SPR Boardroom: Don Guatechori, Dennis, coach from Isaac Anderson, Peggy, Peetish.
SPR Boardroom: Velhasa.
SPR Boardroom: Physicality.
SPR Boardroom: Royal Ally Barnes, Bronner, Wayne Willie Rogers, Dave Gilbertson, Team Lee Tiny Williams.
SPR Boardroom: John Passinger, Damian Higgs, Daisy, Peggy.
SPR Boardroom: But we can't really have free work when you're saying so. I just want to.
SPR Boardroom: The Santa Rosa
SPR Boardroom: with this
SPR Boardroom: lucite plaque here. And this letter.
SPR Boardroom: The other thing I want to say about Ron is he is a humble.
SPR Boardroom: authentic.
SPR Boardroom: I'm a little guy, and we're just lucky to have him work in our department for all these years, and this award is literally made for the kind of person Ron is. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: If we're going to have a short little break, they have a little exception to zoom during some treats out there. And it would be really great to give you a picture of everybody with Ron Collins who wasn't here for folks online. I'm going to go ahead and pause the recording so you're welcome to stay on there. But I'm going to pause and mute while we're recording here.
SPR Boardroom: And now. Okay.
SPR Boardroom: alright, thank you. Everybody online, for
SPR Boardroom: give us that opportunity to do a little bit of a celebration there for the John C. Little word. We are added back on time with the agenda, and we are going to jump into our presentation about.
SPR Boardroom: And I believe that is going to be led by Kim. Do you have any? Well, I mean, okay, so this is, probably a really long, at least. Yesterday it was scheduled for 20 min. That went
SPR Boardroom: about an hour.
SPR Boardroom: It might be great to the end to get through the presentation, so I might propose that I am joined by Marquee Blackshire. Our facility, our Park Maintenance
SPR Boardroom: Division Director, and Lisa Nelson are capable.
SPR Boardroom: athletic and special event permitting manager. And then Ken Baldwin, who is our director of capital planning and development for the department. We're going to make a presentation here today on our approach to athletic fields, which includes an overview of scheduling practices.
SPR Boardroom: maintenance practices, capital maintenance.
SPR Boardroom: and
SPR Boardroom: I think, observable trends Athletic bill scheduling space.
SPR Boardroom: We have a huge inventory of athletic bills. Over 200 fields
SPR Boardroom: across the system spread out over the city.
SPR Boardroom: Demand is sort of a big temporal problem with the deals.
SPR Boardroom: There's a demand for use between the hours of 3, roughly 8 pm.
SPR Boardroom: And on weekends. So if you want to use an athletic deal, and
SPR Boardroom: 9 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday, have it? There's lots of time available for that.
SPR Boardroom: competition gets really stick on a Saturday morning or
SPR Boardroom: 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
SPR Boardroom: Been around this problem.
SPR Boardroom: everyone wants more field time.
SPR Boardroom: We use the historic use model in our system. And that's a model that recognizes that if you are profession, or rather a league or team.
SPR Boardroom: you need kind of the predictability. It's hard to establish a lead. You don't know if you're gonna have access to the field here. So historic use is a big part of the philosophy.
SPR Boardroom: Another big deal is the joint use agreement with the Seattle public school district. We have a 104 year old child's agreement.
SPR Boardroom: We were among the biggest public park and recreation departments in the country to establish a joint use agreement with a local school district. Our joint use agreement has been in effect since 1920,
SPR Boardroom: and it allows for
SPR Boardroom: the park department and school district use. In some fields.
SPR Boardroom: We use their indoor spaces for programming
SPR Boardroom: they use our indoor spaces. It's kind of a a symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial to both parties. Park department schedules the fields for
SPR Boardroom: school district and the park department feels we pass on their revenues.
SPR Boardroom: We'll talk more about. And I mentioned earlier that we are planning an athletic field summit meeting would be good for some
SPR Boardroom: portion of the hard board to think about attending that.
SPR Boardroom: there we will do a deeper dive into some of the issues you're gonna
SPR Boardroom: hear about today.
SPR Boardroom: Next slide.
SPR Boardroom: So
SPR Boardroom: not letting us okay, awesome.
SPR Boardroom: So I mentioned some of the things that will cover the art of scheduling bills, and I call it an art, because
SPR Boardroom: I think Lisa's got the toughest jobs in our department, and that is just
SPR Boardroom: dealing with all of the demand for use and all of the schedules. Quite frankly, I don't know how she
SPR Boardroom: disable to kind of keep all the build availability in our head. Figure out what's available, how to get new groups and new uses on our fields.
SPR Boardroom: We'll cover 2 types of bill inventory that we have. Of course, bills and synthetic turf bills. Grass bills have come online for some portion of the year without the turf to recover.
SPR Boardroom: That impacts the ability to play on those fields and takes bills out of inventory.
SPR Boardroom: I will cover turf conversions and the velocity around when we do turf conversion projects.
SPR Boardroom: We can
SPR Boardroom: quadruple the playability and play timeline bills embedded curve and that light. So
SPR Boardroom: you'll hear more about that.
SPR Boardroom: We'll discuss routine and capital maintenance
SPR Boardroom: and next slide, please.
SPR Boardroom: So yeah. So I mentioned the joint use agreement, and we'll go through
SPR Boardroom: that slide very much other than say, I think we have a great relationship with the school district. There has been a lot of. There was a lot of public custody about title Ix
SPR Boardroom: and girls softball being rained out
SPR Boardroom: and the park department schedules.
SPR Boardroom: after school.
SPR Boardroom: Recreational use for the school district, based on what they so if they say to us, no longer want that
SPR Boardroom: pro softball to be branded out. You want to schedule
SPR Boardroom: those rooms on.
SPR Boardroom: We would do that, I think. One of the things that is hard to explain to our role scheduling
SPR Boardroom: field spring district.
SPR Boardroom: We are literally taking direction of the district outgrad.
SPR Boardroom: Lisa will get into that. So I will pause right there.
SPR Boardroom: turn over to the very capable institution
SPR Boardroom: yourself with your show.
Lisa Nielsen: Okay, can you guys hear me? Okay.
SPR Boardroom: Afternoon.
Lisa Nielsen: Awesome. So yes, so we'll keep moving here as far as talking about the joint use agreement that we share with Seattle public schools and
Lisa Nielsen: a part of that is obviously our athletic scheduling team really works closely with Sps to try to help accommodate all of the things that they're trying to navigate, and the puzzle pieces of all the various programs and teams and fields that they have, and sites where they have fields on site and schools where they don't have fields on site and trying to navigate figuring out where to put them. But as part of the relationship, here is our
Lisa Nielsen: athletic scheduling team
Lisa Nielsen: schedules all the fields we schedule our fields. We have about 89 spr. Or we would call field sites at some of the sites. There's multiple fields. Some sites are unique and just have one field there. But Sps has priority per the joint. Use agreement on Spr fields until or yeah on Spr. Fields until 5, 45 Pm. And then they have 43 Sps. Field sites and there are on their fields. They get to have priority until 7 Pm.
Lisa Nielsen: So we do the scheduling, and then what we do is quarterly. We actually remit the revenue that we generate at Sps fields to Sps, and then we send them a bill for staffing costs associated with the work our team does on scheduling all of the fields Sps use on fields, and then sps fields in and of itself
Lisa Nielsen: down there at the bottom. It kind of gives a breakdown of of what our field rates are so. Youth in our system are paying $16 an hour to use a synthetic field 1050, an hour for a grass field that obviously jumps significantly when you're an adult or a private school utilizing our field. So synthetic is $81 an hour and grass fields are $60 an hour
Lisa Nielsen: kinda to circle back to the relationship with Sps and Spr. You know it. It is a big, a bit of a puzzle piece right where they're trying to navigate, putting everyone everywhere, and I'm sure most of you probably saw the Seattle Times article obviously raised by the advocacy of one of the Lincoln High School softball players around
Lisa Nielsen: softball, having dirt in fields and to play on and really being impacted by weather. And then we have baseball field high school baseball programs having less impact because a lot of the infields and or fields that they're playing on actually have synthetic. And so the weather does not impact them as much. Those questions were asked, and it was actually really fun for our team to kind of dig into the data around. How many fields do we have that actually serve high school standard
Lisa Nielsen: and high school standard baseball? And after digging into that data a little bit, we were able to find that spr in our field system. We actually have 17 synthetic high school softball fields, and we have, 11
Lisa Nielsen: synthetic high school baseball field. So although there there feels and and is a very real impact to high school softball
Lisa Nielsen: playing on dirt fields and having their their practices and games more impacted by weather. You know, as I said earlier, we kind of take the request from Sps as far as where they have determined which programs are going on, what sites? And then we kind of plug that into the system. Certainly, when we have fields that go offline due to capital projects, or, you know, replacement of the turf or things of that nature. We use our skills and expertise and
Lisa Nielsen: and knowledge to really make suggestions of alternate sites where we need to relocate and re kind of reallocate that use for their teams and try to take into consideration proximity to the school where those student athletes are coming from Sps is obviously taking that into consideration, too, is, they're trying to, you know, limit their transportation costs associated with that but what it all boiled down to was, oh, gosh! Turns out we actually have more synthetic softball fields than we do
Lisa Nielsen: baseball fields. And and really it's more about kind of who's going where and how Sps tends to determine that.
Lisa Nielsen: So as far as field demand. Right? Obviously, I know our team feels the demand is ever increasing as far as who's who needs to use what fields
Lisa Nielsen: we in the fall and the spring are by far heaviest seasons as far as scheduling on our fields and kind of utilization. There in the fall we have football, soccer, slow pitch, ultimate, and in the winter that kind of cools down a bit. Obviously, as the weather starts to change, we close down our grass fields, and our synthetic fields are the ones that are utilized during that time soccer and ultimate our sports that can continue to play during the rainy and the kind of inclement weather of Seattle in the Pacific northwest. So those continue on.
Lisa Nielsen: and then we roll into spring, where we have heavy heavy baseball and softball, and then lacrosse tracks, soccer and ultimate, are all also kind of competing. During that season.
Lisa Nielsen: In the summer we have adult softball, beach, volleyball, cricket, soccer, ultimate. So a number of sports that do kind of tend to play mostly year round. Here in in the Pacific Northwest.
Lisa Nielsen: as far as demand. We also have high demand for our synthetic fields. Of course, as I mentioned those allow playability year round in our system here, and of those we tend to see a lot of demand for the complexes so lower woodland park, although, yeah, so lower woodland has a few different synthetic fields in addition to the clover leaf dirt ball fields. There we have Magnuson, Genesee, and then some of our standalone fields, like Miller and Washington Park.
Lisa Nielsen: our grass fields, the ones that are in more high demand than others, are ones that are lit so particularly, giving a little bit more playability in the evenings, in the seasons when we can have our grass fields in full utilization. So lower lower woodland cloverly fields. We have doll that is partially lit, and then we have Green Lake, which is just kind of a naturally popular field in our system overall.
Lisa Nielsen: And then so field utilization. The cool thing was in early 2023, we had an opportunity to really dive deeper into our play field data. So who's using our fields? And how often are they using our fields, and who who are the participants that actually are a part of the field user groups that are booking our fields. And so we went out to our top. 100 our kind of our yeah historical users that utilize a hundred. You know the top 100 users of our field
Lisa Nielsen: as far as organizations, and just tried to gather some more of that information. So as a part of that. We also drilled into the hours and the data as far as
Lisa Nielsen: U utilization of the fields when they are booked, and we took a little snapshot of our heaviest and highest peak season of spring.
Lisa Nielsen: which is baseball, softball. We looked at March through May, our weekdays between 4 and 9 Pm. And all of our Seattle parks lighted
Lisa Nielsen: synthetic play fields. You can kind of see the breakdown of the field utilization. So of the potential bookable hours on on those fields the utilization was 83% on Mondays. And you know, all the way up to 91 on a Thursday. And and what's also interesting is that we kind of took it a step further. And we looked at kind of that, you know. On average, that means it's 87, but that 10 to 13% that is not utilized is actually 15 min here and there in between bookings.
Lisa Nielsen: We we don't really
Lisa Nielsen: intend to have time between bookings, because we just naturally have to utilize every minute out there to give everybody as much time as we possibly can. So one permit might end at 6 pm. One permit starts at 6 pm. And so we don't tend to use to leave gaps. But when we do, it's about a 15 min, maybe a 30 min rarely, but that will not be available the next week. It's not consistent. It's very sporadic when and where those gaps come.
Lisa Nielsen: So of the community user hours. And specifically, this field study was only about our community use. So it didn't take into account Sps use
Lisa Nielsen: of the primetime hours of 4 to 10 or 11 Pm. Depending on how long we can keep the lights on at some facilities
Lisa Nielsen: of the time booked on our fields. 98% of that time. And of those hours we're actually booked by what we call our historical users. And I'll get into that a little bit more in the next slide. But
Lisa Nielsen: our historical users are users that use that have a recurring reservation. So in the spring of 2022 they might have Tuesday, Thursdays on a specific field, and then they roll that use over into 2023 spring season. They have Tuesday, Thursdays. On that field. Once they have established a couple years of
Lisa Nielsen: history in that same date and time and season we call that historical use, and so they are kind of entitled to that time, and we roll over those reservations, obviously adjusting a little bit for the calendar year. But
Lisa Nielsen: That means that our field scheduling is pretty rigid and with 98 of time going to historical users that, that only leaves 2% of time allowable for kind of one off uses and folks just submitting to
Lisa Nielsen: find a gap in time for a couple of hours for their use of the play field. So that was a really interesting statistic. For us. Additionally, field utilization is is primarily youth. So that was really great to see. Obviously, as a community service organization and wanted to enable youth and play and activity. 78% of our hours booked on our synthetic fields were youth organizations. And then 88% of that.
Lisa Nielsen: we're youth organizations on grass
Lisa Nielsen: field utilization has increased incredibly over the last decade. We are also able to take a look at that. So a 27 increase in hours from 2013 to 2023. In 2013 we had 114,000 h on spray fields, and in 2023 it was up to 145,000 h on playfields. And that's again, that's not
Lisa Nielsen: tennis courts, that's not, you know, Sps use or or volleyball courts, or anything like that. This is actually specific to our play fields.
Lisa Nielsen: A little bit deeper dive into our primary users. So, as I mentioned, historical users is how we start to define folks that kind of have reservations year after year, season after season, at a particular location, we were able to take a look at all of our organizations that booked with us in 2023, and we had about 3, 65,
Lisa Nielsen: and of those 365 organizations, 276 of them actually qualified as historical use organizations. So if you think about that, you know we have. As I said, 98 of our hours are kind of taken more or less by these 276 organizations and their recurring reservations
Lisa Nielsen: on the right hand side you'll see the primary users by field type. So as we start to look at field type by sport that that field accommodates. You know, you'll see that baseball is typically our community youth, little leagues and high school programs. Football is community youth and high school
Lisa Nielsen: across community youth, high school Rugby community use and adult use soccers, community high school and adult leagues and softball has community youth, little leagues, clubs, high school programs, and then adult softball as well in Frisbee as a combination of adult and youth use
Lisa Nielsen: what was interesting. As far as the observations of you know, a lot of our larger older organizations are the ones that have the most time in our system, because over time they've been able to acquire
Lisa Nielsen: and grow themselves and grow into more time that was available. And so, after, you know, a long period of years, being able to have those recurring reservations and grab more and more as they grow. It's now very challenging to get into our system and grow because we have really maximized and utilize. Again, you know, most percentage of our field time. So
Lisa Nielsen: as a part of that, our field study led us to find one opportunity where it feels like we can really provide some meaningful access to fields for folks that are struggling and kind of fill barriers to accessing our field time.
Lisa Nielsen: And one of those is when we do these projects where we convert grass fields to synthetic fields that opens up a large amount of time in our system that historically, is not entitled to anyone else. Right? So we.
Lisa Nielsen: as I mentioned a little bit earlier. We close our grass fields when the weather starts to turn here, so some point in November, depending on how weather resistant that field particular field is, we will usually close our grass fields off mid November through March first.st So when you convert a grass field to synthetic that opens up essentially 3 and a half months of use
Lisa Nielsen: that was not available prior, and was not committed to anyone. Prior. And again, as I mentioned, our winter months have the less use because most of our fields are grass, and then we are shutting those fields off during that time of year. But as we convert these fields that allows more use to occur. And we're adding thousands of hours for community use into our system.
Lisa Nielsen: And actually part of what we're doing right now is we're in the process of looking at. How? What does that policy look like to get new use into our system? So we're looking more towards kind of an Rfp or an Rfi. We know when these pro, when these projects are happening, we know in advance that we're gonna convert X field to grass, from grass to synthetic in in certain years. And so then that gives us time to kind of go out to the community hopefully, get out to folks that
Lisa Nielsen: have historically been, have a barrier to entry and and ask them to tell us what they would do with that time, and we know that we have meaningful recurring hours each week to be able to allocate to whatever use they might present.
Lisa Nielsen: In addition, we might have some groups that are in our system already, but they're they're really kind of handcuffed by the amount of additional time we could give them, even if they wanted to grow as a league or as an organization. We don't have additional time, field time to find or give to them except in these opportunities. So those were kind of 2 areas where we felt like we might be able to provide some more opportunity and access to our field.
Lisa Nielsen: And then our top top 10 users. So this was interesting, too, as we started to drill down into the data, who is actually user utilizing our field.
Lisa Nielsen: And as you can see Seattle youth Soccer Association is one of those, and I think Dave Griffiths was here earlier, having a little comment here at the top of the meeting and Seattle Youth Soccer Association is an umbrella organization, and so they schedule on behalf of all the little neighborhood associations that roll up into Seattle youth soccer. And so, if they were to kind of break out like the little leagues are, they would have a very different share of time in our system. But.
Lisa Nielsen: as you can see here, the top 10 users, historical user groups have 51% of the primary use hours of kind of that 4 to 10 or 11 timeframe in our system.
Lisa Nielsen: And and what that then means, of course, is you know, these are 10 user groups. We said, we have 265 historical groups. So you know, 255 of those are making up the other 47% of time that goes to historical use. So that was a very interesting statistic. As we were evaluating this data.
Lisa Nielsen: an athletic field scheduling weather impacts, you know, as as we said that the Seattle Times article brought forth by that Lincoln High School softball player of saying, Hey, you know we're feeling
Lisa Nielsen: far more impacted by weather than our baseball counterparts. Right? And the reality is they are baseball. Softball is one thing that one sport that can't be played safely when it rains. But the least impacted fields in our system are our full synthetic fields. Activity can continue on those. Rain is really not
Lisa Nielsen: an impact on fields. There our hybrid synthetic grass ball fields, where we have a synthetic in field and grass out field. Those are also rarely impacted by rainy weather, except for lower woodland one which happens to have a
Lisa Nielsen: a clay mound for baseball, so that definitely gets impacted. And that's where you would see a rain out on what we would call a synthetic ball field. But our rectangle grass fields that are synthetic again, very little impacted. Soccer football ultimate, those are all sports that can safely continue in the rain, and it would be rare for any one of our staff members to kind of call a rain out on a synthetic field.
Lisa Nielsen: or sorry on a on a grass field.
Lisa Nielsen: the way our rainout process works just for disclosure. There is. We have our maintenance district staff in the field, and they will do the rounds in their district in the morning. They'll communicate to us which fields are playable at that point. In time we send out a rainout bulletin at 1230, and and then you know what what fields are close.
Lisa Nielsen: at least for now until that point, and then they do another set of rounds in the afternoon, and we send out another rainout bulletin at 3 30, and we get to
Lisa Nielsen: Send that out, and then that kind of tells the public which fields are usable or not, and after that it ends up being up to the community users. So you know, in the evenings or in the weekends. We're not out there, and so we kind of take their word for it, as far as what fields are
Lisa Nielsen: playable at that point in time in which they go. Obviously weather shifts
Lisa Nielsen: quickly here, so it might be playable. At 3 30 they arrive at 6, 30, and the field is just too wet to play. So those are scenarios where we trust and rely on our community user groups to communicate with our team accordingly.
Lisa Nielsen: So, as I mentioned, the most impacted are our dirt infield ball fields, significantly affected, also most impacted by field closures, or when we, when we have to take these fields offline to do these improvements, whether converting from grass to synthetic, which in the long term is going to be a big improvement for playability, taking that field off for, you know, 6 months, 5 months, depending on how long that process takes is a really significant impact for the folks, especially historical users, that
Lisa Nielsen: have a majority of their field time at that field. We're having to reallocate and relocate and slide them in where and when we can, and that certainly isn't going to give them the same amount of time that they're accustomed to.
Lisa Nielsen: And then, lastly, as we can all agree, and we know that just hopefully, dogs are wreaking havoc on our play fields, and and in particular our grass fields, although we all know that
Lisa Nielsen: dogs on synthetic fields also has its you know.
Lisa Nielsen: important things. Why, we don't want them there. They leave things behind. Nobody wants to see and play on, and obviously potential for damage there, too. So those are our impacts that we're seeing.
Lisa Nielsen: In addition to our Seattle public schools joint use agreement, we do have a couple of other agreements with user groups that have kind of made significant and substantial investments into our facilities. So Seattle prep.
Lisa Nielsen: Turfed Lake Playfield for almost a million dollars. And as a part of that agreement there are a lot of additional community public benefits because they have turfed that field. And so they have a little bit of a scheduling priority system there. But it doesn't similar to the Juas. It's a certain timeframe that tends not to be super impactful to the community user groups that want to be on the field, too.
Lisa Nielsen: but turfing that again opens up that field for a lot longer time throughout the year, which is a major benefit to Community
Lisa Nielsen: Seattle Arts and Sciences, Academy of Arts and Sciences, obviously fully funding the South Park project to conversion from Grass to synthetic. There again, similar lots of community benefit associated with that, in addition to just the turf field conversion
Lisa Nielsen: and then Interbase Stadium, our partnership with Seattle public Universal Pacific University, the full funding of that soccer stadium, and all the amenities within it. And then we have a 25 year agreement there where they are obviously having some scheduling priority throughout the school year for their competitions and teams
Lisa Nielsen: where and when we can, we're doing our best to increase equity and and field access for users. So one of the highlights, there is our drop in field use program. You know. It's been said. It's kind of tough when you live in a neighborhood, and you have a field right next to you, except that that field is programmed minute to minute. And so when are you gonna be able to actually jump out there and play on it? Right? So in our, in our lower season use we have.
Lisa Nielsen: which is summer and
Lisa Nielsen: winter we actually have 10 fields that are planned, programmed, permitted, so to speak, or just drop in spontaneous and organic use for folks to jump in there with family friends, throw the ball, kick around, do what they would like to, and have that access, as sometimes going through the rigamaru and process of scheduling is challenging and can be a barrier in and of itself, but also just finding the time to get out there and have it be available.
Lisa Nielsen: And then, as I mentioned our ongoing field study and trying to find where we have those entry points and new access points for user groups to get into our system, and then we also have fee reduction waivers, where, if the fees associated with using the fields are a barrier, someone can put in an application. Tell us about their program, and we can offset some of those fees for them to gain access.
Lisa Nielsen: This is a fun one. We just
Lisa Nielsen: kind of completed a year and a half Gis athletic field mapping tool. And this is the beginnings of it. So when we were able to start digging into the data around our baseball fields, softball fields, turf, and grass. We got to map it out. And so the questions are.
Lisa Nielsen: do you know how many fields we have in our system, or how many you know? Do you want to know that? Well, the question is, how do we define that? And how are we using? What criteria are we using for that? Are we talking about field shapes? You want to know how many baseball diamonds we have? Do you want to know how many rectangle fields we have? Or do you want to know by sport, baseball, soccer softball?
Lisa Nielsen: So it starts to get a little tricky when we ask those questions, it has to kind of go a little bit more granular. So as you look at these, these were just the top top and most common sports that we use our fields for, so adding those numbers up might be a little bit misleading, but we do have
Lisa Nielsen: 120 ball field diamonds in our system, which is baseball, softball, t-ball, we have 87 rectangles for adult and youth, soccer, football, ultimate Rugby lacrosse
Lisa Nielsen: And so altogether, we have a number of fields in our system. And, for example, we're going to just take a quick look at Magnuson, as you can see, there's 13 fields over here.
Lisa Nielsen: And as we take a look at that a little bit more granular, you'll see that upper right hand corner that's a batch of 5 grass fields in the north or upper meadow, and then down below, we have 3 synthetic rectangles to actually synthetic infield diamonds and grass out fields, and then a couple of other just full dirt infields and a and a cricket pitch. So very unique sites in our system that are housing a number of different sports activities.
Lisa Nielsen: The next site is west magnolia north. So this is what we would kind of call 2 sites. We have actually 5 ball field diamonds here 3 rectangle fields. And you know these are softball size, base path, and that means 60 foot base path. So actually, baseball high school baseball could not be played here, although you looks like you can with 5 baseball, diamond or ball field diamonds. But when you're scheduling baseball or softball here, you know, we can't schedule.
Lisa Nielsen: we can't schedule soccer or rectangle sports. So there's overlap. And and you know, these aren't all unique fields. But they're all kind of impacting one another.
Lisa Nielsen: Here's a map of our grass fields.
Lisa Nielsen: We have a lot more of those in our system than we do synthetic. As I mentioned.
Lisa Nielsen: we have sites that are lit that are brass, and we have sites that are synthetic that are not lit, and so trying to mirror those up and and maximize the assets we already have in place. How do we add to those to add more hours to our system for users?
Lisa Nielsen: And then, lastly, here is our synthetic sites.
Lisa Nielsen: We have about 42 kind of unique fields ball field diamonds and rectangles that are lit and they are scattered across our system. As you can see, though, there, there is a bit of a
Lisa Nielsen: disparity in the Central West. And so, as we're talking about projects and prioritization and stuff. I think these are. This is some of the data that's helpful. And to inform us of, where do we go next, and and what? What areas of the city have, what type of field? And who is that serving, and what is that doing for the community? So
Lisa Nielsen: with that, I will actually transition, and I will hand it over to Kim Baldwin, who's going to share a little bit more about asset management of all of our fields in our system.
Kim Baldwin: Great. Thank you, Lisa, and good evening, everyone. It's good to be here.
Kim Baldwin: So this slide shows a graphic that we created a few years ago to help explain what is a complicated and continuous asset management and capital planning process in a more simple way. So that's on the left hand side.
Kim Baldwin: Every asset class in our system which runs the, you know, the gamut of irrigation lines to restaurant, to play fields has a life cycle that we monitor for renewal.
Kim Baldwin: This is a 4 part system, and it includes it starts with the asset management planning phase, and it moves into the capital renewal phase when
Kim Baldwin: priority projects are identified, funded, and designed, and then next the asset commissioning phase where assets are installed and replaced, and then, finally, when the assets come back online.
Kim Baldwin: And the goal of this is to be able to predict when
Kim Baldwin: failures may occur, so that we can avoid them and keep all of our assets in play
Kim Baldwin: as long as possible.
Kim Baldwin: The asset management planning portion actually has 3 phases in and of itself, and the 1st is a condition assessment where we identify the needs and document them. And the second is the asset class specific plan, which is a phase where we prioritize the projects and establish measurable goals and provide recommendations for implementation.
Kim Baldwin: And then, finally, once we have a plan.
Kim Baldwin: a plan of what projects need to be started. We create details, scopes of work and cost estimates and schedules.
Kim Baldwin: Thank you. Next slide. Lisa. Alright, then this is an overview of our planning criteria.
Kim Baldwin: So the way that we prioritize projects is really a comparative analysis of assessment, as it relates to condition and safety against the 4 other criteria equity, regulatory regulatory opportunity and deficiency.
Kim Baldwin: So if several sites appear to be in a tie in terms of their condition.
Kim Baldwin: we will give more weight to projects that help us to meet our Rsi goals or provide more efficient use of public resources
Kim Baldwin: or meet regulatory requirements.
Kim Baldwin: And then, once all of these criteria are considered, we have our finalized prioritization list
Kim Baldwin: next slide, please.
Kim Baldwin: Alright. So our assets. So this is our our a map of our current field inventory.
Kim Baldwin: So our asset management condition assessments also provide us with this opportunity to create maps that help us to record new data and put it into our asset management work, order system. And this slide shows the current grass and turf assets throughout the city.
Kim Baldwin: and these mass become invaluable for us in order to help establish our levels of service and use them for requesting grants, etc. So mapping and gis is
Kim Baldwin: a wonderful tool
Kim Baldwin: next slide, please.
Kim Baldwin: Okay, so this one is a grass field renovation program. So when we complete capital projects we.
Kim Baldwin: we try to bring the entire site up to current standards. And so that might include things like renovating the irrigation system and upgrading the drainage, replacing topsoil, reseeding, replacing backstops, etc, and especially accessibility. Accessibility is woven into all of our projects.
Kim Baldwin: So on the slide. There's a list of projects that are underway and planned
Kim Baldwin: and these were identified through the process that I just explained the last couple of slides by going through that evaluation process and coming up with our list of priorities.
Kim Baldwin: And this work that you're seeing on here. These projects are primarily funded through park district funding
Kim Baldwin: next slide, please.
Kim Baldwin: Alright. So this slide is of our synthetic turf renovation program
Kim Baldwin: and so synthetic turf renovation cycles have more predictability.
Kim Baldwin: Given the fact that they need to be replaced roughly every 10 years, mainly because the fibers wear out and they stop meeting that fall attenuation.
Kim Baldwin: This also gives us a chance to upgrade to the latest standards and to best practices for synthetic fields. As you probably know, we've recently been using cork and fill, and we no longer, and have it for a long time. Use rubber, and we continually try to utilize new and updated systems and materials to improve the usability of our fields.
Kim Baldwin: So we've been going through a lot of replacements. So just super quickly on the last one.
Kim Baldwin: Lisa. You can see the the dark gray, or you can see how we have kind of replacements stacked and in that one year we install a lot of these fields at the same time, when synthetic turf became popular. And so that meant the reason we recy replacement cycle became heavy the next 10 years. And so we have been working to start to stagger that more. So you can kind of see that we have a lull.
Kim Baldwin: And then at 2030, our next kind of big cycle comes along, but it is more staggered than originally.
Kim Baldwin: Okay, next slide, please, Lisa.
Kim Baldwin: alright. So this is so once again. So this is a list of our recently completed underway and future turf renovation projects.
Kim Baldwin: And for this work the funding is split mainly between the park district and reit.
Kim Baldwin: because they're, you know, the synthetic turf is expensive and
Kim Baldwin: and the the cost exceeds the capacity within the park district. So we find other ways to fund
Kim Baldwin: next slide, please.
Kim Baldwin: and then we have synthetic turf conversions. And I know Lisa mentioned the the value of these and this work earlier. So thank you for that.
Kim Baldwin: So we'd like to, you know as much as we can convert the existing grass fields. To synthetic in order to increase the capacity. And we, Miss Lisa also mentioned. We utilize our joint athletic fields or facilities development plan that was developed with Seattle public schools to help guide us.
Kim Baldwin: And that document really analyzes the field usage and the lighting and the number of sports that a field can can carry.
Kim Baldwin: And the goal of the program is to provide quality, durable facilities, increase capacity, and respond to all of the demands that Lisa very clearly illustrated earlier, we have very high demand.
Kim Baldwin: And so funding for this work really relies on mainly on reit grants or donations. And, for example, South Park Community center. The the conversion that is going happening there right now is through donation. But other.
Kim Baldwin: you know. That's that's an example of a donation. But many others are through through. We
Kim Baldwin: next slide, please
Kim Baldwin: alright. These are. So this slide is, we've got investments that reduce
Kim Baldwin: rain outs and expand the playing season. So our planned investments which cover
Kim Baldwin: the years up until the last year of our current park district, cycle are split between maintaining existing capacity
Kim Baldwin: and opportunities to expand capacity. So, for example, converting, as we said earlier in infield
Kim Baldwin: to synthetic reduces. All those brain notes, and it improves that quality of play.
Kim Baldwin: So we spent 20 million in the last 6 years, and we'll spend 50 million in the next 6 years just to maintain what we have.
Kim Baldwin: And with that I'm going to turn it over to Lisa to talk about the right hand side of this slide. Thank you.
Lisa Nielsen: Yeah, thanks, Kim. So yeah, we got a lot of inquiries, of course, around the rainouts in our system. And and how do those happen, and I mentioned a little bit kind of the process of how we as Spr. Call rain outs and then communicate that to the users. But this is just a little graph that shows our 90 foot ball fields, which are high school baseball size, standard fields and the rain out numbers for those in 2022 and 2023,
Lisa Nielsen: and then grass and synthetic, of course, and then 60 football fields are our softball high school standards, and also the size that little league plays on, so you can see the number of rainouts there almost double that of the grass, 90 foot fields. But again, we have far more grass fields in our system. So naturally, that's going to be a bit of a higher number across our system. So just wanted to clarify what that table is saying.
Kim Baldwin: Right.
Kim Baldwin: and then we'll hand it over to Marquis.
Markeith Blackshire: All right. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Lisa.
Markeith Blackshire: So the next few slides just talk about our routine and preventive maintenance schedule.
Markeith Blackshire: You'll see what we do daily, and the tasks that we administer.
Markeith Blackshire: To make sure the fields are maintained in a safe manner.
Markeith Blackshire: We maintain all natural, synthetic.
Markeith Blackshire: and hybrid fields within the city.
Markeith Blackshire: maintaining these fields require different methods of maintenance. Different types of equipment.
Markeith Blackshire: and all the fields require routine maintenance to keep the field safe for players and spectators.
Markeith Blackshire: In 2023 our staff contributed 5,050 h to general maintenance and repair of all of our athletic fields.
Markeith Blackshire: Next slide, please.
Markeith Blackshire: Thank you.
Markeith Blackshire: We maintain 125 natural surf surface infills 141 acres of grass, athletic fields.
Markeith Blackshire: All the fields receive daily, weekly.
Markeith Blackshire: monthly, seasonal, and biannual maintenance.
Markeith Blackshire: and 2023. We had 6,800 and
Markeith Blackshire: 2 h of labor contributed to game prep.
Markeith Blackshire: and 11,212 h
Markeith Blackshire: to maintaining natural turf areas. And you can see by each interval whether it's daily, weekly, monthly.
Markeith Blackshire: It tells you what type of tasks we would deploy
Markeith Blackshire: to maintaining those fields
Markeith Blackshire: next slide, please.
Markeith Blackshire: And finally.
Markeith Blackshire: we maintain 50 acres of synthetic turf ball fields
Markeith Blackshire: within the same maintenance intervals of our natural turf
Markeith Blackshire: feels.
Markeith Blackshire: which are daily, weekly, monthly, and Biannually.
Markeith Blackshire: Our labor staff contributed 2,078 h to maintenance of our synthetic fields in 2023.
Markeith Blackshire: and that's it.
Markeith Blackshire: Thank you.
Markeith Blackshire: Any questions.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: let's get into some questions
SPR Boardroom: at that time here could start out commissioners. Do you have any questions amongst the group?
SPR Boardroom: I have one, I I guess. I guess. Address it, Lisa. Really appreciate the call out about for organizations or merging uses and sports. Really struggling to find time. That
SPR Boardroom: high degree of historical consultation was surprising. I guess there's a there's really catch 22 problem here where, if you can't get the space. You can't grow because you don't have the space to grow. So I'm just sort of curious. Other than Turk conversion. Are there other things that you
SPR Boardroom: considered or batting around, try and think about
SPR Boardroom: how to accommodate. And maybe this isn't as much of an issue. But you know, sports interests
SPR Boardroom: change over time. I don't know how many across
SPR Boardroom: things were scheduling out here 10 or 15 years ago, for example. And just sort of think we'd love to hear what you think about
SPR Boardroom: as sports sort of interest in demand changes. How? How you think you might be able to
SPR Boardroom: and give opportunities for some of those new sports
SPR Boardroom: or hire just works to grow. I don't have anyone in particular thinking of.
Lisa Nielsen: Yeah, no, I I think it's a fantastic question, and I think part of it is right. Like the the place we found. The the largest opportunity is going to be in those kind of bigger projects of converting the grass to synthetic.
Lisa Nielsen: It's going to be in the projects where we already have synthetic, and we can add lights to that. And that's going to add some more hours of use and time in our system. And beyond that I think it's a rare occasion. But it has, and it does happen where, for some reason, we have a group that has a significant amount of hours in our system that no longer has them or needs them or uses them, and and
Lisa Nielsen: for some reason kind of collapses or relinquishes those hours. So those are kind of the top 3, I would say, where we have that opportunity to to give and and try to be intentional and strategic about how we're allocating those hours.
Lisa Nielsen: Outside of that. It's a big challenge, you know, as I said, like as you saw, our system is so rigid. And I, you know I joke as we. As we went through this field study. It was like, Gosh! If we could just burn it all to the ground and rebuild it, we would be able to build in so much more equity and reestablish priorities on how we're allocating use. Right?
Lisa Nielsen: That's just that's just not gonna happen. And so like, how, how, and where do we find these places where we can be intentional, about who we're bringing in to our system, who we're providing new access to.
Lisa Nielsen: as far as it relates to your question around new and emerging sports. That that's that's an interesting one, too. I mean, again, it's like as as rigid as our system is, it makes it tricky to account for those types of nuances right where soccer is booming. Here it has been, and and kind of continues to grow. But you do have a lot of those other sports that are that are growing as well. And
Lisa Nielsen: you know. I think some of it is
Lisa Nielsen: when we're doing these projects, and we have synthetic rectangle fields. Are are we maximizing the use of that by having all the appropriate lines on those fields for some of these other different uses in sports. Right? So it's
Lisa Nielsen: I think there's a certain extent where you don't wanna have too many lines going across the field right? But also you know how and where and when does it make sense to, as we're adding a good grass to synthetic. Well, gosh! We didn't have these lines before, but now we're we're having synthetic. We we can put down additional lines for this field, and so I think those are some opportunities to try to address that, and be more mindful of
Lisa Nielsen: the various uses of our fields, and not just the kind of more popular traditional sports. But we do. You know, we do have couple of cricket pitches in Seattle, and that's a bit of a unique thing to have. And and we want to maintain. You know, those types of things, too, for the the groups and the communities culturally, that are using those types of sports.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, I guess that you touch on it. Because what's underlying this is
SPR Boardroom: it sounds like, you know, you have possibly some equity concerns
SPR Boardroom: with how we've been allocated over time.
SPR Boardroom: And you know, wherever possible, trying to
SPR Boardroom: address that as it comes up. I guess. Do. Do you feel you're getting
SPR Boardroom: clear signals back through this community surveys surveys where you see that there is demand. Or those rare occasions, you get data back where it's like, yeah, we I sign up for these hours. But we actually don't need X percent of them anymore. Do you get any of those signals back at all?
Lisa Nielsen: You know we do have some people relinquish some time or or cancel. It's rare. But we do see it, you know, as a part of the survey. We did ask the question of like, What's the the biggest barrier to field utilization? And by and far the biggest response to that was
Lisa Nielsen: availability of fields, and that's of our top 100 users, you know. So it's like, if those are folks that are feeling the pinch of not having access. Goodness gracious! Who who else is feeling the pinch of not even being able to have any access or or minimal access compared to those that that have a lot
Lisa Nielsen: in our system. So I think, yeah, it. It's definitely definitely tricky. And we.
Lisa Nielsen: you know, it's not often that folks are giving back time. But it is often that we're hearing people wanting and needing more time.
SPR Boardroom: Ryan, and the time thing is always gonna be tough because everyone wants to use the fields during rush hour. I also see John has his hand up. John, do you have any questions.
John Flinn: Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Lisa and team. You know, there's you do use a lot of data. So I hesitate to ask for more. But in the one thing I thought was missing was that quantif quantifying the over demand. So I think if you're able to track a number of hours rejected or like contested
John Flinn: permits denied, would help, especially by like region or playfield, would help you. Just determine, like, where do you have actually a lot more demand than you can schedule
John Flinn: in terms of a prioritizing future investment, conversion, etc. That was the only thing I kind of felt like I didn't see is like, Well, how many people are you turning away? And how many of those forming leagues can't go forward. But you know it's a nitpick because you're doing a great job of using data to
John Flinn: manage your decisions and also provide a perspective. So just one, maybe additional opportunity down the road is just start to quantify those areas where there's
John Flinn: you can quantify the over demand or the the lack under supply would be really helpful. But thank you.
Lisa Nielsen: Yeah.
Lisa Nielsen: yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great question. That's kind of a great point. I know our schedulers themselves could probably provide for you a little anecdote, you know, anecdotally, it's not going to be hard data, but they could definitely give you anecdotally and and I have asked them to to begin
Lisa Nielsen: in this last year. Kind of begin tracking. Who? Who are we turning away, or who are leagues that are coming to us, wanting to do some things in hopes that when we implement our new process we can be sure to email those those groups when we're asking for Rfps Rfis for some of this new field time, and allowing them to be able to opt into that.
John Flinn: Yeah, that's great. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: I actually have a a couple of questions, and they don't have to be real lengthy. But again, wanna
SPR Boardroom: also echo what John said, I love that during conversations
SPR Boardroom: that said, I see all the work that Spr is done looking at our utilization numbers kind of how we're spread across the system places that we have efficiencies where we're well utilized. But I also heard early on in the presentation that also a lot large number of these assets are actually so? Have they also done an analysis on their end, and put our numbers together? Say, Hey, is there any type of efficiencies
SPR Boardroom: we can gain by maybe working a better process, or maybe have it being a centralized kind of resource allocation. So that's 1 question. I got.
Lisa Nielsen: Yeah, so we yeah, we do. Obviously, through the joint use agreement, do our best to try to maximize the relationship there on utilization of their fields and our fields, and some of that at times is trying to ensure that the Seattle public schools stay within their times. Priority times established by the Jua, because that then protects and and allows our community user groups to have kind of all of the time they're at
Lisa Nielsen: after. And sometimes that can be a challenge as far as you know, different uses and and so forth. There. But we we definitely are, you know, wanting to
Lisa Nielsen: maximize the the fields that we have in our system. We have far more than they do. We have nearly, I think, around 200 and some fields, and they have about 57. So we are definitely the the higher of the the field numbers on that front. And
Lisa Nielsen: you know, obviously, our community users use their fields. As well as you know, sps, uses our fields. And yeah, I, you know, we we kind of have the data of the community users
Lisa Nielsen: regardless of whether they're on our field or Sps fields. We're kind of the ones scheduling all of those and communicating and having the relationships with us with those community user groups. And so I don't necessarily know. We could certainly look into some data around Sps field users and sport teams kind of utilization and and their feedback certainly of our fields and Sps fields.
Lisa Nielsen: But yeah, I don't know if that necessarily is kind of answering the question you're looking for, but maybe just rather a bit of a clarification on kind of the field numbers for us and them, and and the uses the community use of both ours in their fields.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, I think that kind of answer the question, and you know, if I
SPR Boardroom: have a little more head scratching you, I can come back. But I do. Wanna PIN a couple more here?
SPR Boardroom: looking at total cost of ownership between synthetic fields and grass fields like, is there one that kind of is there like a no brainer, clear winner there? And if there is, or if not, what then becomes a long range vision for replacement of conversion to a certain ratio we're trying to hit. So that's a really loaded question. So I'll let you all kind of take that where you want.
SPR Boardroom: Maybe I'll let.
Lisa Nielsen: I know, Christopher, do you want me to answer? I know you kind of answer that a little bit. Yesterday at Council.
SPR Boardroom: Why don't you go first? st Say, yeah. So you go first.st
Lisa Nielsen: Sure.
SPR Boardroom: Jury note at the end, though.
Lisa Nielsen: And so, you know, I think one of the questions that was raised at council yesterday was just really like, kind of what's a side by side. Comparison of our our grass fields and the maintenance associated with that and the investment, and and having a turf field and kind of as Mark Keith outlined the the regular daily maintenance monthly. Even weekly maintenance is gonna be less hours. It is less about 2,100 h versus kind of 11,000 h right for a a rectangle.
Lisa Nielsen: Synthetic sex, synthetic versus a grass synthetic or grass rectangle, so that in and of itself is going to be a significant number of labor hours, right? That we're talking to cost savings.
Lisa Nielsen: But it's not cheap to have a turf field right, as Kim obviously attested to. You know, those can vary depending on size throughout our system and square footage of whether that's a million dollar investment or 7 or 8 million dollar investment, inclusive of lights as a part of the project, too. So it you know the the I think the replacement cost of of a turf every 10 years is a 1 to 2 million, depending upon size.
Lisa Nielsen: So it's that's not a small investment either. And yet I think we can't necessarily just do apples to apples, as far as the comparison goes, with regards to labor hours and expense of maintenance and the cost of the turf in and of itself. I think also, that has what has to go into that equation is the value of having more year round
Lisa Nielsen: year round, hours to allocate to community users throughout the course of the year, right? That it? There's a huge
Lisa Nielsen: value on of that for our community. And and that should be also a quantifiable financial component that we're embedding into that equation as we're trying to calculate the cost, benefit, analysis of one over the other. I think we kind of o council that. So I think we're gonna have to really drill that and itemize that down and and get a more a little bit more in the nitty gritty, but that's what I would kind of share on that.
SPR Boardroom: I would just add to that that
SPR Boardroom: you know it's not just the one constant cost for the fuel. Those need to be in place that you can use if we are buying a financial liability into the future
SPR Boardroom: right now. But they have 30 to 40 million dollars per replacement projects on the books and those eat into
SPR Boardroom: future reit, you know, which is our basic cip
SPR Boardroom: rooms, roads irrigation systems. The basic resources we use to fix things that break the system, keep the system usable to the public. So there really is a balancing. There's not a 1 to one comparison. I think our big fear is that this group is going to have ambitions for the next cycle of orchestra funding. And
SPR Boardroom: how much of the flexibility
SPR Boardroom: are you gonna want? Kind of future maintenance costs? Right?
SPR Boardroom: Right? Hmm.
SPR Boardroom: well, appreciate the responses. Obviously a lot more conversation dive into sound. There's more planned meetings on this. But I do want to be cognizant of time. Here we are, real close to 8 30. So I want to give a moment to say, is there any good of the order? Items from anybody?
SPR Boardroom: None here? So that's it. I would like to join the meeting. Thanks, everybody.
SPR Boardroom: Welcome, everybody.
Tricia Diamond: There's more.
SPR Boardroom: Thanks.
Lisa Nielsen: Thank you all. Have a good night.
SPR Boardroom: Much.
Tricia Diamond: Thank you.