who nurtured and shaped today's programs. We honor their legacy with gratitude and appreciation, and we safeguard their knowledge and stewardship as enduring treasures to promote community welfare.
Cultivate inclusive expressions of nature and recreation and commit to land acknowledgement for each ensuing generation.
And I'll just take this moment to say, as I really like to do, thank you to all of Park staff for a working wonderful group of people. A special shout out to those on the ground up on our folks every day.
So back to you for consent items, Justin.
Excellent. Thank you. So for consent items today, we have the
Meeting minutes from the
September 26th board meeting as well as the
Meeting agenda for today. Is there a motion to approve?
So move.
Second.
Excellent.
All in favor, raise of hand?
All right. Looks unanimous to me.
Thank you.
Consent agendas passed.
All right, moving over to public comment, hand it over to you, Ben and Paula.
Great, so we as a reminder, we have two minutes for public comment, and I will try and give you a warning if you're getting close so
First up, we have Margaret Colt.
Okay, Margaret, I see you online there, so I'm going to give you permission to talk.
Once you have that permission, you will still need to unmute yourself. I cannot do that for you. And then you will have two minutes to go ahead and speak.
Okay, can people hear me?
Yes, go ahead.
Thank you very much for public comment at this meeting. We've been wanting to
I'm in the Wallingford neighborhood.
And I've been wanting to speak further to parks
people since the September 19th meeting at Lincoln High School.
When it was reviewed that Lincoln High School is the only high school in the district without an athletic field.
And that the new practice field was included in the project specified in the 2022 capital levy approved by voters.
And
It was identified through that meeting that Wallingford Playfield was their preferred location
for the siting of a new field.
After looking at some other um
some other parks that were fairly quickly dismissed.
Currently, student athletes have to travel mostly to Ballard, but to other fields around the area.
Some are closer and only take, you know, 20 to 30 minutes to get to.
But like, for instance, the football team, which is going to be, you know, I think the primary user of the field, they have to commute almost an hour each way to Ballard, which is pretty unsustainable and really tough on the kids.
However.
It has come to our attention to that
there was a field at the north side of Lincoln, which was removed and is now a parking lot.
We would like to advocate that the field
not be cited at Wallingford Playfield, which is a heavily used green space in our community.
And that the field go back where it belonged. Because right now it feels like we're being asked to prioritize a parking lot
over
a field that the school deserves and needs.
So our number one consideration, we'd like parks to think about is putting the field back where it was originally sited, either in place of or on top of the parking lot.
Meridian Park was fairly quickly dismissed as a potential site. However, it is much larger by percentage.
And could accommodate a field in the southwest corner.
And still have grass areas that can support the Wallingford Farmers Market at the north end of the park.
Margaret, your time is up. And so unfortunately, I'm going to have to stop you there. You are welcome to submit written public comments to the board at the pks underscore BPRC at seattle.gov email address, and I will forward those to the board members.
Thank you for your patience there.
Carrie Christensen.
Denny Blaine Park. Things are slowing down at the park as the season changes.
Yeah, people are still touching their cars in the red zones.
It's going from the overrun carby park
to produce and produce her
Moving into the fall winter season.
If you decide to get the Friends of Demi Blank Park up to $800,000 in funding from the Perks Community Fund.
I would ask if the money goes towards restoring the bulkhead.
We'll have that Perth users have altered and destroyed over the last few years to conform with how they see fit.
If any waterfront property owner or contractor did what has been done to the beach at Denny Blaine Park.
they would be fined thousands of dollars.
I've reported my concerns about the bulkhead over the years.
This was the last response in regards to the bulkhead from Samantha Birkin on April 5, 2024.
Someone will address this as soon as time and resources permit.
Both tests are to protect and benefit
Fish and wildlife habitat.
At the beginning of every meeting, you start off with reading a land acknowledgement statement
Please repair the bulkhead. It's any blame park.
Thank you.
Next up, we've got
Keep Citrus Tucker.
We were a little unclear as to who was going to be speaking here, so I'm going to start with Citrus Tucker.
And I will give you, I will allow you to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes and then we will move on to Keith Tucker afterwards.
Hello, my name is Citrus Tucker and I am a human resource and program manager for Hip Hop is Green, and I am a part of this
part of the Parks Community Fund.
I'm actually one of the partners that was a part of the process and I'm on this call tonight in this meeting to make sure that funds are not redirected in any way. There's no adjustments made to the funding that has already been proposed.
And that's all I have to say. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
And then moving on to Keith Tucker. Again, I'll unmute you or allow you to unmute.
Hello, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Great. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm Keith Tucker. I'm the Executive Director of Hip Hop is Green. We are the first, if not only, climate change organization that serves BIPOC youth in Seattle and surrounding areas.
We participated in this because we believe that this really matters for our community.
Place matters, as you guys well know.
And we would like to make sure that the budget that's allocated for the central region
It stays in place.
So that we have nature and good surroundings
In places that young people could
enjoy for their mental health.
And their well-being.
to be
Thank you.
purposely
put in places that are needed most.
And so that's why we're participating. That's why we're on this call. And that's why we exist to make sure that we have places for our young people to enjoy spaces in the outdoors and things like that. So I would really urge all of you to make sure that we ensure that these places
exists for our young kids.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next up, we have Cesar Garcia.
And Cesar, I'm going to give you permission to unmute yourself.
And so you're unmuted.
Okay.
Cesar, we're going to move on for now. We're going to come back to you at the end here. Oh, I see you're muting and unmuting. Do you want to go ahead?
Yes, can you hear me now?
Yes, go ahead. Perfect.
Thank you. Sorry, I don't know what happened.
Well, thank you so much for this opportunity to talk in front of you.
On this Thursday night football.
When the Seahawks are playing, but you know, we are here and I really appreciate your time and dedication.
I'm part of an organization like City Collective.
We are one of the organizations as well, one of the frontline community partners that
participated during this process with the parts
community fund. And I'm here to support the projects that were included
In this effort.
It was a very involved effort. Really kudos to the parks staff that led this work.
It was an external, internal effort
involved also you will hear from them you know in community delegates and also the public at large was able
also to participate during the selection process as well.
And just, you know, just to reiterate that
There are projects like, for example, the one in holler Lake
where there is no furniture, there is not recreation for two very important under invested communities within walking distance. So this will mean the world for them.
There are other very cool projects that involves art
And so I really, really encourage you to support this and not
to try to
you know to seek them the more amount, you know, the most amount of funding that this program needs
And hopefully not less. So I really appreciate your time and please support these projects that are included in this program. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, sir. Next up, Mary.
I'm going to give you permission to unmute yourself. And again, you'll have two minutes.
Yes, my name is Mary Hodder and I'm a resident of Wallingford. I want to talk about the 50 or so additional events that we saw this summer at Gasworks Park that you and special events allowed.
It was a huge increase over the number of prior events that we've dealt with in the summer in the neighborhood.
Typically, with these large events, two-thirds of the park is closed off for up to eight days at a time, preventing the public from using the bathrooms or getting to the water's edge.
from the picnic tables on the east to the
East, I'm sorry, on the west to the east area of kite hill
events that you and special events approve don't appear on your public calendars. For example, yoga in the park, which typically sees 2,500 attendees every other Thursday night, where these people drive by themselves frantically after work trying to get to yoga, racing around our neighborhood at 50 miles an hour so that they can park illegally and rush down to the park.
Last minute permits for loud dance parties after yoga in the park are tacked on, also not on the calendars, nor are we able to see the permits and they are not being held to the 45 day minimum. Event organizers are refusing to show their permits during the event so that we can see the rules that they're governed under. And we don't even think they're reading their permits because they are
violating all sorts of city rules. There's nobody there to enforce anything.
And we're seeing that two-thirds of the grass in the park has been trashed
by this huge increase of events in the summer, we have videos and photos of all the events where giant trucks
are driving around trashing the grass, and now we have a giant
park full of mud.
I want to point out these problems and ask that you create a single calendar of all events in our parks so that every single event is visible to the neighborhood well before it starts. And I want to ask how you're planning to enforce in the future the rules that are laid out by the city for these permits. Because the permit organizers
are not following the rules at all. And there's nobody there in evenings and weekends and there's nobody to call at the city because you're not open.
Also…
Okay, Mary, unfortunately, you did go over to two minutes there, so I am going to need to cut you off. But again, you are welcome to submit written public comments to the PKS underscore BPRC
at seattle.gov email address, and I will make sure that gets to all the commissioners and staff. Next up, we have Harlan Boyd.
Thank you, commissioners. Just
My name is Harlan Boyd. I've been a stay-at-home dad essentially since 2006.
And about that time, I started promoting youth baseball.
for four years and the scheduler for four years, and I founded City Baseball in 2009.
We have a 15,000 square foot indoor facility in the fisherman's terminal area
We're essentially like Seattle United, but we're baseball
We're probably about 25 or so, Seattle United.
Which is about a $2.2 million gross for city baseball at the moment. We have 34 teams, softball and baseball.
We are a stakeholder in
In Seattle Parks and Rec to the tune of about $30,000 a year.
and permit fees, we pay another $30,000 a year in permit fees.
to Bellevue and other places.
Because, well, essentially their fields are so much nicer than ours.
Okay. I attended the Seattle Parks and Rec Field Symposium conferencing at Hangar 30 yesterday.
And I found it to be a rather inspiring experience. I learned a lot.
What I essentially learned was that Seattle rep
Parks and rec is underfunded.
And that there's a tremendous need of mentioned being from Colorado, Colorado as well
The Parks and Rec Department in Denver, Colorado segregates
fuel maintenance. So Jason, who's responsible for maintenance all across North Seattle, he has
Fields, bathrooms, shrubs.
playgrounds, trash. He is responsible for all of it.
in Denver, they have a
adjacent just for fields.
So I really think there's some structural issues out of the symposium. I think a group is starting to form to advocate for this. I was a lobbyist before I was a stay-at-home dad.
So anyway, I appreciate our time.
And look forward to.
working on this a little more. Thank you. Thank you.
That is a public comment for today. Thank you all for coming in person and online to come and speak to us.
Excellent. Christopher, did you want to
do some responses at all today?
Well, thank you to Harlan for attending the summit meeting and we embrace innovation.
be willing to listen to your ideas. In fact, on October 24th, the Park Board is going to hear a briefing regarding the ethical summit, which was a huge success that occurred this week. So we'll have an opportunity
Come back if you wish to.
hear more discussion about that.
Carrie Christensen, Demi Blank Park, we're still working on that meeting.
And it's going to be an in-person meeting in this room. So stand by.
citrus and keep thank you for your public comment. We're going to talk about
the community fund
So I won't necessarily address that here because there will be a presentation on it. And Mary.
I'm going to ask that paula
Ben, get your number, contact information.
And maybe have Lisa Nelson or Carl Burquist in our
special about permitting office reach out.
hear a little bit more about the concerns. I think she brought up some good
So I want to follow up on that.
And then Margaret Holt brought up the discussion about Wallingford play field
And we had heard a little bit about that parking lot
that was built for the school. But you articulated it so eloquently
the trade-off between a parking lot and public open space ought to raise a lot of questions so
we're interested in that and at some point we would like to have the Wallingford playfield
discussion.
maybe just come here for a briefing at some point. It's a big deal in the community. You've probably seen a lot of email and we want to just kind of have a transparent conversation about the backstory and what's really cool.
Okay, so maybe I'll jump right into the superintendent's report
We have an abbreviated
report, I kind of felt like the last time we were here the superintendent's report just kept going
A lot of good things to report. All right, why don't we get to the next slide here? So this is a slide of a Japanese garden and what it reveals is all the ball colors.
throughout the system here and
We've got leaves turning colors that are great for photography
are just experiencing open space about a garden, car key park, volunteer park, sewer park, Green Lake. It really is a great time of year to get out with your family, kids.
Just for a walk in the park. That is the number one
activity that people enjoy in the park systems it's just a simple
walk through the park. The City Council budget process
is still in process here about a week ago, AP and Michelle, whom you'll hear from a little later, made a budget presentation to the city council
regarding our budget and Michelle is going to come up here a little later
in the evening and basically walk through that same presentation at a higher level.
I mentioned the athletic field summit meeting, which was a huge success.
It occurred yesterday at Magnuson Park. It was really an opportunity to bring
people together with common interests who use our athletic skills
leads, league managers, directors, coaches
And I think the thing we are most struck by is not just the fact that these volunteers manage all of these youth
with all the sports activity, they are really building a community
And really working with our youth in ways that
really teach young people how to become capable members of our community.
And that doesn't get stated a lot when we talk about the value of youth sports, but I just saw a lot of passionate
caring people who care a lot about kids and families and great to hear from that group on October.
We're working with some of you to plan a
BPRC retreat on November 14th. That retreat will be held at the Seattle Aquarium
the big exciting part of that day will be a tour of the new ocean pavilions.
Okay, so this is a picture of the Discovery Park North Beach trail. And we really like to highlight
the maintenance work that happens in our system. This is a picture on your left of a staircase
at the North Beach Trail at Discovery Park that was rebuilt by a couple of carpenters. And when you look at the picture.
on the lower right there or left.
You know, those stairs were completely rotted and uh
our staff hauled in the materials
And went down the slow and capably installed this
a new set of stairs. I think it's pretty impressive.
They go out to work, our staff do.
On the right is a picture of pool maintenance. This is a pool, an empty pool.
And that
what you're seeing there is essentially the pool liner.
An interesting thing about big recreation swimming pools is they can't go too long without water in them. Otherwise, the liner separates from the
concrete surface and you have to replace the whole time rather the whole thing but
You know, we've got like a 72 hour
period of time, sometimes a little longer
Depending on the condition of the liner tube.
have the pool be without water.
the weight of the water is really important, keeping that cool.
So this is just an example of some of these work being done by our crews.
Next slide, please.
park and recreation services branch, the recreation Division.
So about twice a year, we shut down community centers for an end day of service for recreation staff. This occurred on September 26. It's our third
service day actually this year and it's where we give staff the opportunity to reflect on their work, to reconnect
And it's really important because we have sites, we have 26 sites across the city
that are all separated. I mean, the staff literally don't get a chance to talk to each other or see each other or you know practice training
sharing of ideas. So these days of service are really
doing that now for four or five years it's worked really well
staff training.
The Camp Long Rock. We finished…
are free drop-in Tuesday rock climbing program
at Camp Long, and we'll be reaching out to volunteers to plan for next summer. So this is an exposure to an activity
that a lot of young people would not otherwise have an opportunity to practice were it not for the climbing rock.
The Seattle Mentors Program continues.
We held a training for 16 mentors at Rainier Beach Community Center, our fall cohort.
will launch at various community centers and team centers throughout the city.
Program staff will provide a more complete update of Seattle Mentors at our next park board meeting.
that's something that Romel
Witherspoon will show up here. Romel is an excellent speaker and an excellent spokesperson for this program.
Next slide.
North Rainier landing site. So when the park department acquires land
We call that an assemblage of parcels of property toward the development
in a lot of cases of a larger part, it's taken years to assemble the land for uh raynard
for the North Rainier Park site, this is a 1.2 acre
assemblage and the park is nearly complete and will open in late 2024
after grass has had a chance to become established. So this has literally been
Oh, probably 10 or 15 years in the making.
Which I think really speaks to the
Long time horizon.
cars have not just in their development phase, but over the arc of the span of life
Yes, it will have a name before it.
It opens.
So thank you for stopping by.
TT minor play area was renovated.
And that in part was a donation.
from…
play structure manufacturer, landscape play structures. That's an example
of the result of hundreds of volunteers spending a day in that park during the
a greater interconference, a building and assembling that place stretch.
We have to.
Okay, highlight some upcoming events. We have a family Saturday, a walk at Japanese garden that's available for
people choosing to take in on October 12th.
We have a Meadowbrook pool challenge course on October 13th. And of course, Bill Wright Day, which we've been talking to you a lot about over the last few meetings is occurring on October 19th. And that will be a big deal with likely a lot of media turnout to
support that day. And then there are Halloween events all over the park system. So if you have little ones kids
We encourage you to take families to our Halloween events across the system.
Okay, wrap.
Let's get that thank you page.
All right. Thank you for that, Christopher any
Comments from my fellow commissioners.
I'll just add real quick.
Great work by everybody involved.
Discovery Park trail braces i
Within the last two months or so.
Recently, I've been hiding in, you know, you pass people and everyone's like, just, you know, everyone's sort of word of mouth, be careful that was it was
super dangerous super tricky
situation so to get everything hauled in there it's
It takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. It's going to be well appreciated. That's literally.
back-breaking work. Yes.
I want to offer up
It's amazing work. It's always such a such a delight to see
the maintenance work that's been done. I know a lot of work has gone into
North Rainier Park. And I also want to briefly touch on you mentioned you mentioned the retreat at the aquarium and it just reminds me
Living in downtown through the summer and this fall.
This has been just a game-changing year in terms of
The event programming at Westlake Park in terms of
the developments, developments along the waterfront, and it's really made a big difference in quality of life.
That's great to hear. Thank you.
No, we talked last week that the was about to open, but I'm surprised he
A few notes. That's right. How great it is. My parents were visiting.
They've been to Seattle a number of times before, but it was a highlight to take them down.
waterfront Park and just see the how it's changed over the years and all the events have been going on in 362
So it's just a, well, I had to say something about what a great asset.
And that's been well celebrated, but wanted to
sort of offer thanks and everyone who's worked really hard on that and getting that open.
Thank you. Yeah, and thank you for bringing that up. I forgot to mention that.
that project is another example
of just the arc of time that the development of these community legacies
projects that will last for the next 100 years that literally define water in Seattle. So we're really proud
to have been a part of that project.
Oh.
Just kudos to him. Good work.
Excellent. I also have one comment and then I'll follow up with one request.
I think it was…
Last month, John Flynn and I had the opportunity to go out and do…
some inspections with
one of the park staff and it was such a great opportunity to do those inspections and to see the work that's done by folks on the front line.
You know, people really put their heart and soul into going out there and making sure our users and our taxpayers are getting the best experience they can. And I just, again, the vastness of the system that they have to operate and maintain is just very overwhelming. So got to give props for props is due on that.
And then my second piece here is really request. Maybe I had missed it, but will the
commissioners be able to get kind of an update on the progress of capital projects in upcoming board meetings?
Yes. So we want to be providing that update at least twice a year, maybe more. And I will
be looking at Michelle and Paula
To make sure we get something on the calendar.
And the good news here is I think you will be really impressed at the reporting structure that Andy Shepard has set up for
that branch so pretty impressive.
Awesome. Thank you for that, Christopher.
So with that, I guess we can pivot here where
Moving right on time to the Mission Moment Trail Maintenance.
Would you like to do some opening remarks for that, Chris?
I will do some opening remarks for that. So we have a lot of high visibility initiatives that are going to
come before the…
Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners. And then we have some initiatives that we
intentionally made an effort to highlight that you'd never hear about them.
But the work is equally important and
I'm going to ask Justin Hillier and Amir Williams, Senior Gardener and Justin as a strategic advisor
to highlight our trails maintenance program
Which, you know, earlier I said that walking is the number one
activity in the park system where do people walk? Do you walk on trails so
Justin and Amir are going to
shareable presentation.
Okay.
Give me a second to hide the control through there.
Just ended at a conference, so he's virtual.
Ask us that time.
We're going to get this to play for you.
Oh.
All right.
I apologize. My computer is telling me I can't make this play.
Despite the fact that I made a play earlier
I'll have to share it again.
Thank you.
a low BPRC. Hope you're doing well.
This is Justin coming to you from Atlanta, Georgia, where Seattle Parks and Recreation is one of
hundreds of parks and recreation agencies across the country.
attending the National Recreation and Park Association Conference.
You'll be excited to know that some of our Seattle Parks and Rec colleagues are presenting
Throughout the week on topics ranging from pickleball
to inclusion and pretty exciting week here. So that's why I'm not joining you live.
in person or live in terms of time because it's going to be about 1030 my time.
When you're hearing this. So I don't want to take too much time because I want to leave plenty of time for Amir, who's got an awesome presentation for you.
But we get to talk today about the trails program.
So let me just quickly introduce
this work.
So…
I am super excited to tell you about
trails program expansion. One of the items in cycle two that we that we worked on and you some of you may remember prioritizing this one
So this falls under the natural resource management detailed line of business.
that whole group
which includes things like the Green Seattle Partnership.
heavy equipment crew, you know, more, far more than just
trails, the urban forestry work, all that.
have an adopted operating side budget of $10,500,000.
The trails item, the way we measure their success is
a goal of
linear miles of trail maintained.
So they had a 2024 goal of seven miles.
As of the last time we checked in with them halfway through the year, they've pretty much already eaten that goal.
doing great work. And then they've also got a six-year goal
of 5,000 linear feet of trail restored. So that's kind of more technical and complicated work than just kind of maintaining.
So some of you may remember the Park District investments really focused on
maintaining and preserving the trail system, and then creating kind of a dedicated capital fund
for asset management of trails. So Amir is going to tell you the rest. I don't want to spoil too much, but
He's been an awesome leader of this program from the minute that we got this additional budget and staffing.
And thanks so much, Amir, for being willing to
Tell the folks about your work.
Okay. Down.
All right.
Well, buddy.
Thank you for having me and giving me this opportunity to come and talk to you about trails.
your first slide had some of that.
trail work, I actually built that staircase.
Yeah, Pat said, I'm just out of class. I'm a senior gardener with the landscape crew, but I've been doing the out of class trails coordinator. Excuse me, for…
going on two years.
Previously, I was the senior forest maintenance worker for a year and a half, so I've been with the trail for four years
And yeah, previously we were
A crew of two and we take care of basically 130 miles of soft surface trail
all the structures.
We were able to hire three new maintenance waivers with some extra funding we got. In 2022, we were able to hire them in 2023.
So this is our crew. This is me, the trails coordinator
Zelvin is the Senior Forest Maintenance Worker and then we have
maintenance labor sopan, um, maintenance, labor, Ian Cappert, and maintenance labor, Henry Rabulovan.
Next slide.
This is just kind of some of the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years.
Most of this, what you'll see is over the last year since we got new workers
we had to train them. They came from districts where they didn't have any
Trails, bath rails. We had to train the lua to the basics and did
trail maintenance with the resurfacing the pruning
make things feel safe
Here's some before and afters. The top is the before, the bottoms are the afters. Just different trailheads around seattle
improvements for access builds visibility safety
You can go to the next slide.
Here's a handful of the structures. We've done a lot of them. The four years I've been on the trail
built a lot of bridges, boardwalks, most of them have been a discovery.
Here's a couple of them. This is a staircase that was
at discovery and Tremont will be in the building boardwalk
another boardwalk replacement here's the staircase that we were talking about earlier
And then this is a…
box set, 27 sets or 27 steps, box step uh
that we did a replacement. And then last year we did this bridge with the staircase at Discovery going over a creek
Yeah, we hike all that stuff in by hand. There's no equipment that will go on little trails
So the first batch of people we hired
One of them said he's been there a year, he's great. And then the three other guys who got
Been there for eight months and it seems like we have a really good team. So I'm really happy with what's happening.
This year. Next slide.
And then this is just some basic trail maintenance where the grass had overgrown and
you know gone over the gravel trail so we're just reestablishing the trails
different trailheads in Seward Park, Pigeon Point.
This last one is pond natural area by north kay
Just making everything more safe.
you know not with all the mud you know our standard trail is four feet wide, four inches thick of gravel
with a little bit of the slope so the water runs off. So we want to provide that tab
Easier walking is there any it's safer.
Things of that nature. And next slide.
And then…
since we've been, I've been on the trail i
I've tried to implement a lot of community work
done a lot of work with scouts to get their eagle badge.
Two years, I think. I've done five projects with different scouts
That's what this first project is Schmitz Park, a tree fell on a bridge and just completely crushed it
And a group of scouts built a bridge in two days.
It takes R3 two days, like in work experience these are
kids that were 14 to 16, like it was pretty incredible
And then WTA, an organization, did some box up replacement. Another Eagle scout
project of gravel path where there wasn't one so an entry to
Father Roy Park was not very comfortable. A lot of people slipped around there so
We got that going. And then this other one is Magnuson where we
the wetland area would, because of the beavers, the water would rise. So we added these outslope logs
gravel to fill up
you know to bring up the level of the path so
it wouldn't overflow as much. And we did that project with rei
160 person volunteer work party
over five hours of room.
We did 200 feet of those logs.
Next slide.
And then this is another big thing that we're doing.
All of our trails
they have been mapped with a GIS technology
The last couple of years, that technology has gotten a lot better so
We have got one of the DA2 trimble
units and we are walking. This is Lincoln park
The orange is all the arterial trails and the purple
our social trails.
So this is a way that we
contract our work.
where a tree has fallen down or where a bridge is broken all the yellow
circles with the stars represent a structure like a box steps or bridges, boardwalks, different things like that.
So if there is an issue.
we can send the crew directly to it rather than say at Lincoln Park or the south side we can
label that trail and give them
something like this, a map where they can directly go to
And I have been this year been working on
making this public facing so people that are going to parks and green spaces can pull up their phones and be able to navigate these trails and know whether it's ADA accessible or not.
We're real close to putting out a couple of the
bigger parks, sewer park discovery park
And hopefully beginning to hear some of that starts to roll out.
Next slide.
And this is some of the work and uh
This is our trail we're completed.
2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
So 2021 and 2022 is when I'm a two-person crew.
And we did three miles of work in 2021.
And then I came on in 2022, still a two-person crew. We ended up doing nine miles of work.
We got the new maintenance labors. We increased our work to 14 miles of work in one year.
A lot of that, like I said, was the general maintenance of pruning and cutting back with hedge bars, making the trail wider. So you get a lot of in your feed
per eBay.
But still, it's a big success. And 2024 as of the end of September, we had 14 and a half miles of work
we should probably end up around 20 to
22, I would say.
Like I said earlier, we maintain 130 miles of soft surface trails around Seattle from the parts department
So our trail system that really ties together our community
provides equitable access to schools, services, green spaces in our neighborhoods
And some examples of trail work is brushing and corridor, which is like opening up the trail so it's not so closed off narrow
corridor like trail resurfacing, which is fresh gravel
trail clearing, which is the big trees and woody debris. We try to keep eight feet off the trails.
clear big logs so everything
stays open. Trailhead renovations
That's a project that started to
try to a lot of trailheads. I live in West seattle
While the trailhead's there, you can't see that they're trailheads so
I've gone in and made it, started last year renovating 12 trailheads per year
to basically completely renovate and rip everything out, new plants
stones, logs to say, hey, I'm a trail, like here i am you know i want to try to work with local schools or artists to make
trailhead markers that represent so that's something that we've been looking into
And GIS trails and basically…
beautiful and warm.
So try to do
as much as that as we can in the next year.
Next slide.
This last slide this is a
our equity index map uh that this is
kind of how I plan our work.
In 2021, seven of 14 jobs were for 50% were in equity zones
2022 was 45.
Last year, we did 67% of our work in equity zones.
And this year so far, 41
And then, yeah, 2025 and in the future, we want to try to
keep our equities over at about 75% to keep those areas maintained, get those structures rebuilt, because that's a lot of the areas where things have been
you know left to uh to
grow over and the structures have rotted
We want to improve access to connector trails like in West Seattle to Rocks Hill, you know, grocery stores, the Rocks Hill School.
the natural area target
things like that where it connects different parts of the neighborhoods
continue to improve the visibility of trailheads so that people know, hey, here's a trailhead you know
And also look into improving our volunteer and trying to develop a trail steward program
like GSP has forest stewards
We don't have that many people on our crew. There's a lot of trails, so we're trying to develop maybe a trail steward program where people can volunteer their time to
learn trail work and do some trail work
And then this GIS public facing
mapping system that people could use to navigate the parks and
Another cool idea with that, I thought if people were walking on the trail they had this, they could report if there was an issue like
before the clock broken or a tree over the trail and we can get to that quicker
Because a lot of times it's district staff or
We happen to be walking the trail and we see
It's hard to get out there and see all the trails to take care of all the maintenance issues.
And I think that's it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Good stuff. Good stuff. Thank you so much for that. Great presentation. I see a bunch of hands. I'm sure we're going to have a ton of comments, so I'm going to sneak mine in first.
130 miles of trails with what a five, six person crew
Wow. Wow. Right. Amazing work. And thank you for everything you do. And I'm sure those before and after pictures are really only a small sample.
of all the things that you're going to continue to accomplish.
So that said, let's start going around. I think
John, your hand was up first.
Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, really great to see the work. And I think your passion for it really helps
As well, because you just clearly want to get more done and that results in more getting done. There's no way around it.
I had a question. I'd like the stats around the equity investments. How far out do you plan these projects? And I guess, you know.
what's your main intake for knowing about problem areas to put on your list?
I was just curious about that lead time on when something comes in and sort of when you're able to slot it in for work.
Good question.
It kind of depends on
I try to plan one structure, like a staircase or boardwalk or large box step replacement
try to plan one of those a month
And I try to plan six months ahead and you know you can move things around if the plan doesn't work.
But, uh.
We get a lot of projects from since I was a senior gardener on the landscape crew, I worked in all the districts and I know a lot of the crew chiefs and senior gardeners and people who work in the district so
When I came to the trails crew, I just sent out the word like, hey, if you see anything in your district, let me know
worked on it. So it's kind of just grown
like that also in the landscape crew
The landscape crew manager would send out a notice to all the district managers and crew chiefs to like.
give us a list of the six
Cool. That's great.
biggest projects you'd like us to accomplish in the district.
Bye.
Yeah, those folks seem like they're the closest to it. So that's a great resource. Cool. Thank you.
Yeah, find it, fix it. Forrest Stewards, uh.
once in a while, I'll get an email or a call from a community member.
Very cool. Elise.
Hi there. Thanks so much for all the work you're doing. It is much appreciated.
I was curious around the GIS system and the reporting capability.
How do you see that, if at all, integrating with Find It, Fix It?
That would be something that I don't see why it would be possible because I know like locating something is not very easy.
it has gotten better, I've heard but
Yeah.
I don't see why that
could be possible. The trails layer is separate from a lot of the other layers and I don't find it fix it when someone reports
On that, it goes to a centralized dispatcher and then they send it to the right
department or unit
But some of that is, I'm sure it possibly could be worked on and tied together
I think that would be fantastic. I live here near the Ravenna Ravine and, you know, most of those trails
don't have names or they're not labeled. So people have a lot of challenges reporting
anything since they can't drop a pin super precisely. So I would love to see that integrated. I noticed the visual that you shared that it looks like
it would be, you know, much easier to locate.
your specific spot on a map.
Thanks for considering.
Thank you.
Awesome. Any other comments from PAL members, Ryan, go for it.
I think I saw the truck on Longfellow creek this summer.
And I was super excited to see that we had a trail department with my first exposure to it. I just wanted to say thanks to the crew who's working down there. I think a lot of areas in trails become really overgrown and hard to find and you can't even, to point for the way finding, you can't even find where the access point is. Work your way through, then you see the sort of trail going. It was really bad. Yes. You know, our forefoot.
trail was down to one foot and then we have a buffer that's supposed to be
eight feet and 12 feet canopy and it was completely rocky too like that so
Yeah, we just want to say, Bridget, because you made a great call out about how trails can be connectors in the neighborhood
So you're not walking on sidewalks or busier streets or whatever. So with you as an excellent excellent example really appreciate it.
the work to create those pathways for people to be able to join nature
It's a pretty convenient connection when it works and it's clear yeah
So I've been 10 years, I think, since then
clear in there. We'll do West Seattle for since 1992 and Longfellow creek has always been pretty dark and
Yeah. It's been fun.
Awesome. Philip, Josh, if you can do yours kind of quick, we're running a little behind. Go for it.
One a second then, too. Justin, you brought up the number of 130 miles for five people. That's like 26
26 miles per person, right? Something absurd. I want to, I'm just absolutely amazing
I want to ask about the plans for getting the GIS data
to the public. Are those PDF maps? Is it something folks can push
pull up in our GIS. Yeah, it's going to be…
like on their phone, they can go to like the city's website with
probably go to the Trails website and then it'll have a link
or if we want to do is put out signs and say, hey, this park is now online
to view maps and have a QR code with the website and then once that sign is
you know you put them around the trails, we can put them in the kiosks and stuff and then
contact somebody at the Burton.
the different social media people are putting out on social media.
I think that that would be really helpful. As a park is finished and completed, edited, it automatically gets uploaded so we don't have to then go do that. We're real close to starting this.
Great. Thank you.
And then real quick, I saw you said you're up to five people out in one position
was open yeah are you actively looking to
Are you actively looking to fill that right now and then like
like philip said like if you just do like the linear math.
It's like 11 years of just
mile by mile, assuming no repeats, right? Yeah, I mean, you should be, in my opinion, you should revisit a trail for general maintenance
every three years at most like every two to three years is ideal that it's safe it's open
You don't have extra maintenance to do but
With four people out in the field, that's…
I've been on it for four years, I haven't seen all 130 miles of trail. If you get up to six, you'll obviously feel more comfortable. But I'm curious, like, what is…
to the right size working group.
For a system this big. I've been asked this.
that we're doing, like…
I think that if we had
12.
crew workers whether they are whether it be maintenance laborers, foresters, and then two leads
So 10 workers, two leads, I think you could have
multiple ways. You could have one big crew building a bridge in two days you could have
Different crews go into different parts of the city to do general maintenance. You can break them up into groups of two.
you can go work in you know go
a group in every district every day so you're doing
equitable work that way like
If you had 10 people, I think you could get
pretty close to meeting the 130 miles
Every three years, you kick this one up.
Let's get it.
Excellent.
Awesome. Great questions. Thank you so much for that presentation. I'm going to be bad cop here, cut us short because we are 13 minutes over and I do want to give the Park Community Fund
the time they need. So thank you.
All right. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. You got…
That said, um.
Christopher, did you want to do some opening remarks? I had something to say as well.
You bet. So Rachel Banner and Shaquan smith
our co-managers for the community
fund. This is an initiative within the Cycle 2
of the park district rachel and Shikwan are very passionate
about this work, have worked really hard to develop a set of recommendations that you're going to hear about in their presentation.
Some of you serve on subcommittees, one of the subcommittees
is the community concept committee so following rachel
and jaquan's presentation, we're going to ask the members of the subcommittee
to lead the rest of the board in a discussion. In the interest of full disclosure, because there was some public testimony.
about potential budget impacts and just want to remind the board that the department was facing a $20 to 30 million dollar
budget shortfall. It didn't turn out to be that bad. The mayor's proposed budget was really in the neighborhood of about $9 to $10 million. You're going to hear more about that from Michelle. But in the interest of
transparency. There are some potential adjustments that are just part of our reality given the state of the budget. So I want to be transparent about that.
the city council ultimately has the choice to adopt the budget to see a couple sets of numbers and that
Shaquan and Rachel will explain what those options are. But ultimately.
the funding level will be decided by the sales and councils.
Thank you, Christopher.
I'm Saquon Smith. We are the program manager for the Park Community Fund.
So today, if you're going to…
Good slide.
For our agenda, we'll go for a brief introduction and overview of the process. We do understand we have a few new board members, so we're going to quickly kind of go over that very quickly over overall of our process. We'll be here afterwards as well to explain more details, but we do want to get to the bulk, which is the recommendations, and we're sure we're going to have a lot of questions as well. When we do get to our recommendations, we will pass it off to our subcommittee to give a brief introduction.
Before we go into more detail around that.
So we can go ahead and begin.
So to start off, here are some key terms for those who may be new.
to others me. I've heard this multiple times explained, but we often explain or talk about frontline communities and priority areas. So to give some more context around that, frontline communities is what we define as communities that experience high displacement risk.
Disproportionate exposure to environmental harms. And history of disinvestment and lack of green space access.
And these include and are not limited to Black people, various indigenous communities and tribal communities, people who are trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming, so forth, and priority areas are essentially geographic areas where a lot of these world-led communities live.
Next slide.
The purpose of the program is to advance price equity through a community-led funding process, and we do that by expanding inclusive access to clean and safe parks that foster healthy people, thriving environments and vibrant communities.
Closing gaps in access to quality parts of parked facilities had disproportionately affect frontline communities and studying efforts in partnership and transparency with communities to build ongoing trust, relationship, and investments. And essentially, we really want to have a true partnership with community through our program and not have it be transactional.
We want to really build true relationship and really make sure that the products that we promote and advocate for through our program are actually reflective of the needs of the community.
Quick overview, we have various small and large scale products that will be done through this program. We utilize various participatory budgeting and grant making practices. Over there, our funding is done through the Seattle Parks District, which was allocated originally around $14.8 million over the course of the next six years, up to 2028.
And then our main focus and bulk of what we'll be discussing today is our product selection process, which includes three phases of idea collection, product development, and biome selection.
All right. Thanks for calling. I'm going to go over our process just a bit to give context for those who are new to the conversation.
So this is our overall cycle of the program. So last year we really did program planning and design.
And then right now we are finishing up the project selection and I'll go into each of those phases a little bit more, leading us to actually being able to implement the projects, really begin them. And we'll also do an evaluation workshop series next year as well. So starting with actually project selection, stay on the slide for just one more minute, we started with idea collection and we collected over 240 ideas
from communities across Seattle around what projects, capital projects they wanted to see in their communities. And then I'll now describe project development and you can go to the next slide.
project development ahead of getting to what you're seeing here. Juan and I did some combing through of the proposals to understand what was actually eligible for the fund, and we narrowed it down to about 100 projects.
Through our proposal development process, frontline community partners and delegates, along with some of our city Seattle commissions, took those 100 ideas
and narrow them down into 55 proposals. So in that narrowing process, some of the project ideas actually got combined into proposals.
And some continued to be vetted out of the process for various reasons.
Want to give a huge shout out to some of the folks we actually heard from today that helped us do this. It was a huge lift.
Africa Community Housing and Development, CHON Refugees Community, Hip Hop is Green, Lake City Collective, Mary's Place Seattle, Rainier Beach Action Coalition, and then our commissions that supported us, the Indigenous Advisory Council, the Seattle Disability Commission, and the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.
From there, those 55 proposals then got reviewed by both community and internal staff. They were reviewed in each category by at least two people. And in addition.
there were scoring criteria that everybody agreed upon. All the reviewers agreed upon ahead of entering the review process.
So our community review was done by those frontline community partners as well as the LGBTQ Commission, and then the BPRC subcommittee also participated in this process.
And our feasibility review was done by our internal landscape architects and architects, our planners, capital project managers, and even our landscape architect interns.
And once they reviewed all the proposals, we had a big meeting in July where we reviewed and selected the projects that would move forward in our process.
And these four priorities were identified by our frontline community partners as the criteria for how we would select the projects that moved forward. So the first was that we were given projects priority
projects that were in priority areas priority
We looked to make sure that there was a geographic spread across Seattle. Given the amount of time that our partners invested in putting together the proposals, we wanted to ensure that there were several projects from each of the partners in their development process. And then finally, we did look at that review.
score to see which projects rose to the top.
Next, we then moved into final selection.
Let's go to the next slide. The first step of that was community selection, and that was in August. It was a public-facing. In the process. We attended nine different community events.
This is me attending an event in at Lake City Collective, hosted by Lake City Collective.
And then also people could select projects online as well.
That ended at the end of August. And in September, we had conversations with our frontline community partners as well as the BPR subcommittee
to put together a set of recommendations that you're going to see today.
And move through the approval process with the full
BPRC, and then that will go to our superintendent for final approval.
And with that, we're going to share our project recommendations, but I think I'm going to hand it back to Justin quickly to just give us a brief little intro here because these recommendations are actually from the subcommittee.
Right. Thank you, Rachel. As a commissioner who sat on this subcommittee, I just want to reiterate the work that was done by staff and community together was excellent. The earlier public comments were a testament to the support they garnered through the process.
And they should be really proud. And so what we're going to see here is kind of the
the recommendations as they stand
Given kind of external factors and
Just keep that in mind as we go through the remaining slides and then we will open it up to additional comment and discussion after we finish off the presentation.
Sound good?
Great. Thanks, Justin.
All right, we'll go into our project recommendations. Next slide.
Thanks.
So this is an overall summary of the recommendations and kind of the results as well from community selection. Nearly 2,900 people participated in this community selection that happened in August.
Overall, we end up selecting around 15 total projects. 11 of those landed in our tier one, which is essentially projects that were up to 150K.
These are our smaller projects and four are landed in our tier two, which is projects between 150K as well as $1.5 million.
How we pretty much try to decide how to break out the projects. We want to at least have three to four projects in each region. And these are not no official regions to Seattle or parks. We just how we kind of break things up for our community selection process to make it easier to communicate out to the community. So in terms of our north region, that essentially was the northeast and northwest.
as well as best of our Central West as well with Daybreak Star. Central includes the Central District, downtown, and also Chinatown International District.
The West is essentially Southwest, and then the southwest
And then our recommended overall we're based off of the top voter on projects during community selection, as well as advisement from our current community partners and our VPRC subcommittee to truly ensure that the project gets selected actually reflect the priority and needs of our frontline communities.
And next slide. So here I'm going to go very quickly. We'll go in more details to the products themselves.
But essentially, these are the products that are selected for tier one and tier two. As you guys may see, there may not be products in the West region for tier two, and that was simply because when we listed out, looking at our tier two projects, the ones in the list is simply that we're not one of the most popular projects. So essentially for that, these projects here were the top priority and they just so happen to be interborn.
Next slide. And for the central region, we have exercise equipment replacement at NK.
So there is equipment already at Hinhei. However, it's underutilized. He is not familiar with it. So instead, it's to replace that with more equipment tailored to the eastern side and exercise of that community. A lot of our refilling station at Garfield Teen Life Center, access improvements and plan for Danny Blaine Park, which includes a study and also some small improvements to enhance transportation access.
accessibility, restroom feasibility, also I believe a parking, a study as well, and other amenities.
And we also have a Black Lake City. Black Legacy Committee pricing master plan in the Central District.
This is something that's been mentioned over decades now and basically focus around the Central District and key parts that are tailored to the Black community and our staples and have a larger plan around that and also small improvements as well.
Next slide. And for the North region, there is a bathroom study in Northeast Seattle Parks. There's a huge gap in bathroom access in the Northeast region. So this will focus on trying to prioritize and assess where bathrooms could be placed there.
culture space at Greenland Community Center. There's been a constant ask to add more inclusivity to our online and BIPOC communities in spaces that are a bit more fluent. And this was a request added at Greenland Community Center. Access improvements, a Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. The Daybreak Star is a central and pivotal piece and safe space for Indigenous communities, and there are various accessibility and visibility improvements that also needed there.
And then we have committee gathering improvements at how to lake
As I already mentioned earlier, this is a very small community in Northeast, and there's a huge mobile community there that doesn't have a lot of green space. And this is the one green space that this community has.
So it's best to kind of add improvements with committee gathering and possibly some play elements as well.
All right. I know we're running through this very quickly. The South recommended projects, art installations and signage at Hutchinson Playground. This is to make the park more welcoming with a sculpture and welcoming signage that will go along with the capital project that is being planned there. Spray Park feasibility study in Rainier Beach.
And this is, again, a long time ask to have a place to cool down in the summer. And so this would be a study to identify locations of where either a spray park or water play could go in the Rainier Beach area, covered in lit basketball courts at Bereshiva. This is to cover the existing court basketball courts that are there now. And light them at night.
And then kids basketball hoops at Southeast Parks. And this would be to replace one of the adult size hoops in several of the parks in the southeast with kid size boots.
And then moving to the West, the covered shelter at Rocks Hill Park. This would be a shelter for educational purposes related to the Rockstill Bog so that they could do lessons all year round and also include artwork and signage.
The Duwamish Art and Signage at Herring's House Park, and this would be to install cultural artwork and environmental education signage at Herring's House Park that in tribal consultation that reflects the importance of the river to our native communities.
And then finally, outdoor exercise equipment in South Park. There is no exercise equipment there currently. So this would be to add a
fitness area in Southbrook.
Justin, did you want to do an intro on the budget or should we just keep rolling?
Okay.
Yeah, Keith, sorry.
As Christopher nicely stood up for us, the mayor did have a proposed budget cut to the Park Community Fund. And so
We have been preparing all of this and then found that out. So we're sharing the BPR subcommittee recommendations, which is at the original amount that was set out for the fund for these next two years. And then the adjusted recommendations are based on the mayor's proposed budget. And then the one thing I'll point out on this slide, and we can come back to these numbers as
interest lies is Shaquan mentioned about the West only having the small projects.
But in that case, we did want to make sure that each of those projects was at the max budget so that they could be accomplished fully and make up for some of what they didn't get in the
Larger size watches.
Next slide.
And here for tier two, this is where you see most of the budget cuts. So essentially what was adjusted was removing around 1 million from, so I'll say this, for this cycle here, that's allocated between 2024 and 2025 funding.
So we currently have 2024 funding, but you're still waiting to get approval for 2025. So the adjustments that were made is to reduce our 2025 funding by $1 million. So to cut that.
However, we also did, luckily with our leadership, I was fortunate to get around 250K added back through our community response fund, if that is adjusted. So essentially for this cycle, 750K will be reduced from the overall cycle. In terms of reductions, you will see that primarily in our tier two projects.
tier one is because those are so small, we didn't want to touch those as much because it's very likely those products would not even be able to be implemented if that was the case. And how we kind of assess the budget cuts here, we wanted to still make sure we can cater to the primary focus and the need of the products themselves.
So as you'll see for the north, access improvements to Daybreak Star, that was cut roughly by 200K essentially.
But we are still, if needed to be adjusted, we'll try to figure out some ways and work with other programs and teams within our department to see if there's stuff around maybe life that could be accommodating elsewhere within other programs that are happening.
For the social region, that's where you see the biggest cuts
For small products, whether they're around community gathering or accessibility, the actual construction projects, they may be reduced at this point if these adjustments are moving forward. In terms of the South, a few dollars will be cut as well.
It was trying to cut as much as possible just because lighting is pretty expensive. And that is something that's kind of sometimes an unknown factor. So we did try to keep that as much as possible to, again, make sure the overall project itself is still implemented. And that was cut around 75, 700.
50K? Yeah.
So yeah, so in total, as you guys see, that's the breakdown there. And yeah.
Let's do that quick. I think we're going to pass. Oh, we'll do next steps and then we'll pass it back to Justin to lead us in discussion or Josh or Steph.
So next steps are that you're making some decision here today or in future as need be. And then AP would approve the final list of projects and funding, and we'll do an announcement and celebration event.
As Shaquan mentioned, we have the 2024 funds already, but we are pending city council approval for the 2025 plans. And so we wouldn't begin projects until we had that confirmation of funding. But the project
Projects would generally start end of this year, beginning of next, but have phased starts all the way through August of 2025. And we're committed to providing public information about those project statuses by the spring for all of the projects, no matter when they are starting. Concurrently, we'll be doing an evaluation and workshop series, and then the next round of funding will open until 2026.
So we'll be able to kind of take a pause
evaluate how everything went, see what we want to adjust before we go back out in 26.
More ideas.
Thank you, Alex.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Appreciate that, Rachel and Shaquan.
As you can see, we paraded a ton of information past y'all and
You know, if we want to pull those slides back up, feel free to ask but
These projects cover a range of areas and there was a lot of intentionality around the original recommendation selection of those projects.
It was equitably distributed amongst the system.
We work with community partners. A lot of process was laid out. And while there's reductions, I do want to emphasize that no projects were actually eliminated. And so the areas where those reductions were placed was very thoughtful to make sure we try to get the biggest
bang for buck in that case.
So with that, Stafford, I'm going to lean a little bit on you.
Kind of want to open it up for discussion from the commissioners
And if we feel like we're ready, then perhaps we could do a possible vote to push forward.
I thought they were fiscally responsible
with the redemption?
We still made reasonable accommodations for especially the West.
I thought that was super for the group.
Were there any
glaring things that you guys saw.
In the presentation, you want to question it in the presentation?
One want to start, again, acknowledging the incredible work the subcommittee and part staff on the fund. Just one point point of curiosity
I see that only one
God has made in the tier one programs. It's a relatively small cut
in absolute terms, 50,000 for the Green Lake Community Center.
but a relatively large one proportionally, right? That's a third of the
the subcommittee proposed funding.
How does that impact, how does that impact what they're able to do there?
So essentially for that and what the main piece of that funding that
was cut potential or could be cut is around having a garden space
So to do that, there are still some questions internally of how that'll be implemented.
And so we say there is so much because that have to be figured out, we still need to have a conversation on one, how that would be maintained, who will be maintaining it, what community partners will also be leading that work. So if there are cuts to be made, that will leave us some time to have larger conversation with the community and also our staff to kind of better assess how a guardian space will be maintained there.
Thank you. And I want to recognize, you know, we're working within
within constraints that it looks like it's been just such a thoughtful and responsible process to get that going.
Elise question there.
Don't worry.
Thanks. Thanks for sharing that information. I was curious, the bathroom study project that was, I think, for the Northeast
What exactly does that hope to accomplish and how were priority parks determined?
Yeah, so that one was actually put together from a number of different proposals that we got or ideas, I should say, that we got from that northeast part of Seattle. So the
parks that you currently see on there are actually from all of those individual proposals that were submitted and then combined. So Hubbard Homestead Park, Virgil Flame, Matthews Beach, and Matthews Beach would be to convert that one to single user, all gender family restroom.
I'm missing one.
So the study aims to just assess for that region the needs for improvements of
park bathrooms. Is that right?
And all of those parts that I mentioned, except for Matthew's speech, there are no restrooms. So if you go for northeast.
Got it.
Yeah, it would be to kind of assess where do we need more public restrooms.
Okay, my question was just…
is it possible to expand that scope a bit to
other highly used parks that may have bathroom
challenges right now or insufficiencies like, you know, Magnuson is an example
The study would help us determine beyond those parks already named if we needed to look anywhere else.
It was.
I also, we thought out of the box.
When they went to the, I can't remember if it's Howler Lake Holler Lake.
And did you say there's a mobile neighborhood there?
Which, if you've seen some mobile computers.
no recreational parks or relax.
Relaxing here. That was huge, I thought.
You know, we're making
some type of accommodation.
just adding on before we get that.
Yeah, I just wanted to make a pitch for Magnuson to be in consideration because I know it's, you know, there are thousands of people using that park.
seemingly every day for all those activities and porta potties are one of the main solutions there so
Thank you.
I actually had a follow-up question about the Haller Lake.
project and specifically because that's my area but
I know the mobile part, but also where the lake is situated is kind of like residential
how the accessibility
piece will be
how that would work out for
Speaking about the residents of the mobile park accessing
some of these, whatever's going to be created here and like how that
how that process will go or what that looks like.
Yeah, I'll say for that one, could we actually get a site visit? Because even for most of us, we hadn't even been there to see it for ourselves. And it's a very small park area. And I think a lot of it's set around like in terms of accessibility, there's a lot of pathways needs improvements. And just internally, like they're just a lot more community gathering space. There are some like, you know, vendors and things like that, but even all of those needs to be updated as well. So I think in terms of
how we're looking to kind of navigate that. There definitely will be some community engagement
that would be it to kind of do some like really outreach, especially with that mobile community. I think that's also a community that's often left out from the voices that get brought into the table. I think they'll need some at least some intentional outreach and engagement needed to kind of incorporate what's the best needs and improvements for that specific site.
idea was identified by residents of that neighborhood. So we're already connected
to them through this process, that relationship piece that Shaquan was mentioning is really critical, not just now, but now that we have projects.
And we know that they use that part and are wanting more.
Put a question in the chat here.
Wondering the folks who provide public comment, should they be directed to the council if they are advocating for the original recommendations versus adjusted here?
I don't see why not. I think there was a question about it was about how you think the equity zones. That was about trails, I guess.
somewhat different question. It might actually be to the subcommittee
I'm trying to think about how
recommendations to fund studies.
will be received by the community who i'm guessing
were advocating for actual, like Preston's a good example
I doubt a community member was advocating for a study.
They were looking for the restroom, right? And similar thing with the master plan
Essentially, it was a little bit different, but I'm just sort of interested about how we think
And how we sort of best explain back to the community that we're recommending
We're going to be able to fund this study and why we think that's important
I don't know what they cost to build a one bathroom would be.
But I'm guessing it's more than a lot more than that material so
I'm just trying to be conscientious of giving the community feedback on sort of how the fund is structured. It's supposed to be too
actually delivered on those facilities. I just sort of wanted to hear, I guess maybe from justiner
So I've heard about sort of like, hey, why we feel very comfortable as a
making the recommendation that, hey, these are the really right thing to do and that we can really own that community like here's how we're going to be over responsive to what you brought up.
But I mean, I think it's easy to go from zero to 60
See, we have no bathroom. We want a bathroom.
But the reality of that is when you mentioned cost
The reaction from Christopher is the reality of building a fully conditioned and plumbed and electric building so like
Okay.
the work that Rachel and Siobhan have done. I can't stress enough how much they have done. I mean, this process started with an open call to anybody from the city of Seattle.
All of the filtering, the review, the checking back against metrics and data and all these different like these
These two have been sort of shepherding this little child project along and
So I think I, you know, I have a lot of trust that
they'll convey that the next logic step is, okay, we're going to not only identify gaps in, say, restroom, but we're going to identify gaps and understand where are the best locations where those are going to be both in terms of
service area
costs and things like that.
Sure. There's always going to be somebody who goes, just fill the bathroom.
But, you know, it'll come. And I think having a study will help accelerate
actually having physical results too.
Obviously, I'll wait. I don't know if you wanted to chime in, but we're
we also get this question all the time. Very common question.
Just for a second.
I'm happy to jump in here. Studies help us determine also, yeah, cost, scope, location, which
we didn't necessarily have for all of these. And yes, they want to see the physical improvements happen. But in some cases, we don't know if it's even feasible. And so in order to make projects get to the next step, we've got to do a study and other communities, not in frontline community, not in priority areas.
Probably can fund some of that. Maybe they know a friend.
But in Rainier Beach, they haven't been able to get a feasibility study done
for a spray part. And so this is like that first step that we can take to get them there.
And there's more funding to come. So if we identify that a stray park is priority is
feasible somewhere. It could be a project idea for the next site.
Yeah.
Exactly. That was the answer almost more than anything else. And that is actually how we think about it as more comfortable making the recommendation. Thank you. And I just want to piggyback and emphasize the piece that Rachel just mentioned is that for certain communities, they can just throw money to it and they don't just have to focus on just the feasibility study. They can do it all because they have the cushion and money
do it all. Unfortunately, our program only has a certain amount of money. We've been trying to figure out ways to still, like I said, elevate and push certain products forward, knowing we do have very limited funds. Bathrooms cost an extreme amount of money. We can't fund a bathroom, but we can farm a feasibility site that can help possibly get a grant to get a bathroom done. Or like the Central District plan there
That was a combination of multiple projects into the central district. And instead of trying to have a
one or two projects kind of competing against each other.
where we know these are multiple parts that are very much important to the Black community there, let's create an overall long-term master plan that could possibly even include conceptual design and schematics that, again, we can get grants later on in the future to accomplish not just one, but multiple parts at a time.
It's like I said, unfortunate in some ways that we don't have the full funding to do actual implementation of certain products, but this will definitely significantly impact and help out a lot of these other communities that typically don't have the funding or resources.
I got one last comment.
I just wanted to say I really appreciate the equitability in that lens that you guys approached this entire project with and kind of the delicacy that it took to
navigate, you know.
budget cuts in the end and also balancing the communities which are going to be affected by it.
these cuts. So I just wanted to say i appreciate that part
Thank you. You did a great job.
What are our next steps now in this meeting?
I'm comfortable recommending the code if you do are.
Jean in motion?
just in your motion?
Yeah, if we're comfortable voting here, we can go ahead and if someone wants to make a motion.
We could do that. So do we have a motion on the floor to approve the recommendation as stands?
Motion.
Do we have a second?
Second.
Motion has been made and seconded
All in favor
Raise your hand, please.
I don't see any opposed, so it looks like it passes unanimously.
Congratulations, Rachel and Shaquan. Great work. Thank you.
I was going to say the subcommittee wasn't my most worried.
But I think working with your Stafford, Josh, Justin, they've been amazing and like really truly understand the vision that we have. So we appreciate you as well. Justin, just a
process point. For these type of things where we're having a vote
Is it possible to get just like
just a recommendation or sort of whatever the summary
from the subcommittee is basically those three slides post or just out to commissioners in advance
Yeah, I think it's just helpful like
just to literally know what the names of the parks were so not seeing some of them for the first time. Some of them I happen to be familiar with that gone through the site other ones
It's just, you know, the only question is Tiffany's work or anything like that, just more, hey, here's a recommendation you're going to see for a possible load.
Yeah, absolutely. We could definitely do that. And I do want to just be really clear. In this particular moment, we could have
punted to a next meeting if there was feelings that we kind of wanted to dive a little bit deeper. And that would be totally possible too. But yes, I think, you know, in the future, if we didn't get this kind of last minute adjustment, we would have gotten these things a little more in advance. So.
I don't think they need to hold for another meeting or something like that but it's sort of
useful way to read. Oh, here's a recommendation oh this project, know what that is. Thank you so much.
Sounds good. All right.
We're at 810.
Looks like we still have one more thing to go.
So, uh.
Christopher, did you want to tee us up for this next topic? I know we're kind of behind schedule here. What do you want to do?
I am not even going to take any time.
So the best thing about being on the park board is talking about budgets. You guys hear it from me every single year at least, and it's great to see.
faces I've seen before and i realized
And then the Thursday night slacker. There's lots of new faces. So I'm sure it will be around with you more so
Thank you for having me tonight. I will go relatively quick, but I also want to thank Williams, who is
Here with me, I actually left my
Binky, which is my mind are full of facts back there because she's here, so I can turn and ask her random questions or you can. So Amy and her team are
the ones that make all of this actually happen. So I'm going to try to do a
abridged version of AP's presentation that went to
City Council a week ago Monday and then give you a kind of where we are for next steps in terms of if people have comments or want to participate in the council
review process just to catch us up, we're talking about a two-year budget, so 25 and 26
But almost all of the changes that we make in this
budget are ongoing so they would be setting the baseline for future years
The next slide.
Many of you that were part of the park board cycle two planning process knows that when we did that
that effort we had done in a total review of our baseline funding and worked with CBO and mayor's office at the time to decide our baseline truly was what we thought was most important to continue in the parks and recreation system and then cycle two built upon it.
So as Christopher said, as you're coming up with proposals in the range of $20 to $30 million, earlier this year, it was tough because we really felt strongly that everything that you heard tonight and that our staff do every day is incredibly important. So we tried to keep
our outcomes and our goals ahead of us as we were
navigating these waters. Next slide.
Overall, we attempted, and as Christopher also mentioned, it wasn't
quite as bad at the end as we were concerned about earlier this year but
We believe we have a people first budget that is for preserving our critical services programming and our staff resources.
We're working to enhance revenue while keeping equity in mind as we do that and making thoughtful investments in our
mayoral and city priorities.
This is a picture of our funds that drives us crazy. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because we're going to talk about the details, but we have a lot more funds than this. This is the city council's template.
We can come back to it if you want but um
Generally, yeah, I'm just going to come back to it if you want because it doesn't integrate
story. So I will tell a better story, I promise.
Overall, AP really wanted to highlight that
our goal of keeping parks open and then focusing on some of these
current priorities like youth mental health and downtown.
activation were also kind of key objectives in our
process and some of the investments. Next slide.
Going forward, we are part of a $15 million investment of payroll expense tax that the mayor proposed.
That's largely in the Department of Education and Early Learning, but we have a couple investments in our world related to that.
One is, I think you guys were recently briefed on Red Barn Ranch with Andy. And so there is a $600,000 ad
over the next two years to support programming out at Red Barn Ranch in partnership with this is a photo of the Buffalo soldiers but there's been many other partners and we would build up on that in the next few years with an RFP process to bring partners in.
And then there is some one-time funding for a youth mental health
connector uh connector
is going to be created by the Office of Policy and Innovation
we would be maintaining it longer term and so would have a staff resource to kind of represent our department as we think about how that design and maintenance of that investment, which could
make access to city programs, not just in parks and recreation, but supporting youth mental health
across the system.
Bye.
Hello.
We also have investments in downtown activation
an ad, so we already have a lot of center city activation, but one is a capital investment in Westlake Park.
And while this really focuses on downtown activation where there is a KP finding element of this and that we are hoping if we get these funds identified quickly, that we will be able to make these improvements to Westlake Park in advance of the World Cup.
So I think this one is keeping Andy up a bit at night. I'm trying to figure out how to get all the permits and planning in time to get construction and out of the way of
of that park becoming kind of a hub with the
for the World Cup.
Next slide.
We're going to focus on the general fund for a minute. One of the key pieces, as you know, as you were working with us on the cycle two of the park district is that was really set up
to be a flexible funding source is the city kind of had ebbs and flows previously when we had very
kind of strict levy funding
we would end up having to cut DACE funding, but we would be building a new playground or we would be adding a new community center, but our base budget would be
cut at the same time. And so as we went into the park district
one of the key reasons that the community group that helped establish which type of funding source we could go
we should go forth with recommended a park district is because it can be flexible during these times.
And we did lean on that a bit and then walk out of it a lot in this process, which I'll walk through in a minute. But it's a little over eight
close to $9 million of park district flexibility that we're using, and I'll show you what that
means in a minute.
We also do have some efficiencies
Take that word as you see fit. And we will show you some flexible funds sources with some other city funding that we're using to mitigate any impacts on parks and rec programming.
and
We'll talk about a change related to citywide graffiti that we're stepping into to provide some
general fund relief as well. Next slide.
So then the park district, you heard one key change that we're uh
we've proposed.
A few things. There was a few things
some of the one-time things that we did was kind of shifting debt
schedules related to projects that we had planned in the park district so we have a
a redevelopment of Green Lake Community Center is an example of the park district and we're not quite ready to go issue bonds
to fund that capital project yet so we pushed
the funding out a year, which freed up some funding in the next biennium so that's not
And I said earlier, most of what we're doing is ongoing. There are a few things that are one time so
related to Lake City's project schedule and
Green Lake and a potential new facility at Ava Mercer those um
project timelines
have allowed us to slide
the debt financing out we also
took um
the opportunity to utilize some interest earnings to mitigate impact to the general fund.
in the next biennium.
Ongoing, we have reduced major maintenance by about 10%. Ongoing, it's $2 million. It's a little bit more in the first year to balance the budget, but it does continue.
about 25 million to preserve major maintenance funding, which is also I know, a big priority for
As we looked at the park district to fix it first to maintain what we have before we build new and things like that.
And then there's
As you heard from Siobhan and rachel that
our community fund annual
production of a million dollars in
as well as acquisition funding.
It retains about $1.5 million annually for the Park Community Fund.
And the way that we established
that fund going into the second cycle was that the staff folks are not charging to the fund so that funding really supports program
and projects and we fund the
the staff, great staff in a different way and then
This also preserves about a million dollars annually to support acquisition funding and that allows us to either do lower costs, you know, green space acquisitions or to leverage CFT or other funding sources, state grants to acquire land.
Next slide.
a mix, a little bit of a mix within the park district flexibility.
Not related to the Parkes Church, we are proposing a reduction of about $600,000 in
grounds maintenance that's about
seven seasonal positions, I guess is probably the best way to describe it. The FT gets a little weird
It's about a two and a half percent impact on that staffing.
model.
We also have added some outdoor cement center city but neighborhood park activation we had
increased our
investment in that and cycle two and this takes that program back to cycle one levels
We don't.
Because we're proposing to consolidate the rec for all
And get moving grants that are park district funded programs and reducing some of the granting dollars associated with
those two programs, it leaves about $400,000 left to support programs in those areas.
Which isn't too far off from what we
issued in terms of grants last year, I think we're about 440. So we're hoping to keep a
a similar level of service.
And then, you know, as you're looking at cutting
other types of programs and services. We also have to look at the leadership and administration. And so we have about a $500,000 cut
there, which is
an impact on my policy team, the communications office, and what we call our business service center, which is kind of the behind the scenes
program registration system is the bulk of that
And then in 2026, we have
a pretty significant impact in our environmental learning programs. This would close the Discovery Park Visitor Center.
and reduce programming there at Carpe Park and in the Sun Citywide.
service delivery models where they work with the schools and with
Jenkins Park might have an environmental learning program where they're out in the community of those
programs with um
would go away starting in 2026.
we would look in the interim year to do an RFP to activate those
spaces and potentially see if somebody wanted to step into
that type of programming.
Next year. Next slide.
As I mentioned, we also, as part of this program the
The mayor's office asked us to look at one Seattle model at how we're doing some
services that cross departments in one place that there's many departments working in is the space of graffiti abatement.
the two largest
groups doing that is parks and Recreation and SPU, which does um
currently manages graffiti abatement on the right of way and some other areas and so
with this proposal, we are actually taking that work on
from SPU, so that would transfer here
And it's a really technical change, but it actually results in a general fund savings for the city of about a half a million dollars to do that.
We'll get to learn a new line of business. And so that'll be an exciting transition.
the budget passes as proposed.
Next slide.
And then similar to the flexibility of the park district allowing us to not take more cuts
to our operations
We were able to look citywide at other funding sources, payroll expense tax I mentioned earlier for some things, but also there's a new
source of
revenue supporting arts and culture, which allowed the city to look at how we use admissions tax and for the proposed budget
We have a transition of our downtown busker program moving from
a mix of Park District and General Fund to becoming fully admissions tax.
funded the art in the Parks grant program that is currently operated in partnership with Arts and Culture funded by the Park District would move over to admissions tax
team performing arts, which is the summer musical hopefully some of you got to see that this year. That would add text and then a portion of centers for the activation so
about a quarter of it would move to payroll expense tax and the mayor's proposed budget.
And then…
Nobody likes to talk about the park funds, but we also have a park fund which is
kind of the um
the fund that's paid for by fees and charges.
So Hugo.
I take a tennis lesson, you know, take a swimming lesson.
those types of things.
that funds part of your utility costs at the pool. It funds part of the staff, all of those things so
as all these expenses, cost of doing business for every other fund is increasing and all of us in our private lives, it's also affecting the park fund and our ability to continue services.
Without increasing revenues there. And so we did propose quite a few
fee increases as part of this budget to not have to cut services instead of raising fees.
our aquatics programming
We are increasing fees pretty much across that line of business by about $1.5 million.
We are, as part of that, we are um
increasing our swim equity fund that supports swim seattle
by an additional $50,000.
We do also have and have had since, I don't know, since you've been here, Christopher, but at least since I've been here, we've had a low-income swim team so almost every
to me that's in the aquatics program is reduced by 15% for people. So this one equity fund actually supports it going from 50% to zero
those low income fees are still there at the amy tennis Center, there's fee increases and we're creating kind of a similar scholarship program
specific to the tennis center as part of that. It's just kind of being incubated at about $10,000 for that
Our special event permits and facility rentals are also being proposed for increases
athletic field permits got to have this conversation quite a bit yesterday over
the way that we actually agreed with the field users from previous athletic field summits is
that those fee increases don't
start until July of next year in order to have the league not get surprises or already advertising their spring sports and so
That's why kind of a big part of why it jumps from 400,000 to 1.4. There is also an additional increment in 2026 but that's
It's not the whole million dollars you see there.
And then there's…
what we call revocable use permits, which is when people want to use parkland for non-purposes
And we have
a pretty passionate group of staff that are working on that team right now and they feel like they can get a lot more revenues out of people that are using Parks for non-park purposes.
So we are leaning into that and uh
doing some fee increases, but really just looking to
get additional revenue out of that line of business.
Next slide.
And so that is pretty much what the council is considering for our budget right now.
The next steps are these are you can do written comments just like you can submit stuff to the cardboard at any time, but there are three public hearings
related to us. So their first one is on the 15th, which is specific to the slice of pie known as the park district
And then the 16th
Oh, that should be a 10.
That should be October 16th. My apologies. October 16th.
There is one on the whole pie.
Every funding source. And then there's another one in
November, we'll get that slide fixed.
Growth.
So council takes their conversations as well as that public comment and proposes amendments to the mayor's proposed budget and
the middle of November and then they are the first time in my career hoping to pass the budget before the week of Thanksgiving, so I might be able to take a
a couple extra days into Thanksgiving off, which will be exciting um or
They won't. Take pets later on how that's going to go.
There goes…
Wow. Thank you.
Thank you for that, Michelle. Very thorough as always. We are at 830, so I do want to be respectful of time, but do we have any questions and comments?
Thanks, Michelle. It's tough work.
All right.
For what it's worth, look forward to the… Yeah, you're a little wonky. I just want to give a shout out to Amy and Michelle. I wasn't…
I said, I think we have the finest budget in the city and they are creative
innovative. They look for solutions that
Other people wouldn't even think of looking for.
We're just really fortunate to me and Cheryl.
Thank you.
All right. So with that.
like to entertain a motion to adjourn.
Second.
All right. Awesome.
All right. Motion passes. Let's get out of here. Thanks, everybody. Have a great night and take care.
Thanks