school pressure that Parks and recs under.
At the same time, the adult use is only set during that same period of time to increase by 15%.
So I don't know what the rationale was there or justification for the distinction between
100% for youth permit use.
field use at 15% for adult
But I would just ask you all to revisit that. I know that time is short now, as the council set to vote on uh
on the budget but
Historically, there has been a big separation between youth rates and adult rates and this will narrowed that significantly.
Just want to emphasize, Harlan, I know you sent those comments in at 4.30. Those were forwarded on to the board before.
Great. And next up christopher
Hello, my name is Christopher Hyman, and I live directly across from one of Playville, and I visited multiple times a week with my three-year-old daughter.
I'm here to strongly oppose the Southwest Schools proposed plan to convert electric playfield into a dedicated sports facility.
Let me be clear, our neighborhood strongly supports African-American students having proper athleticism.
They absolutely deserve a place and a feel for their sports programs.
But they shouldn't come at the expense of one of our city's most precious green spaces.
This park is more than just a recreational space.
It's a vital green oasis and we'll have Seattle's densest neighborhoods.
Its thoughtful design allows for an incredible variety of uses without ever feeling overcrowded.
Every day, I watch families from a diverse range of backgrounds connecting nature and each other.
under the mature trees gathering on the grass and finding respite from the increasingly dense urban environment of water.
One, Playfield is centrally located.
several bike and bus corridors that make it not just a neighborhood asset, but an asset for the entire city.
While the district claims they'll preserve or relocate the playground, the reality is that converting this space to artificial turf and implementing a reservation system
will fundamentally change its curriculum.
This will make the entire park, playground included, less welcoming and accessible to the public at large for all kinds of recreational purposes.
The reservation system will particularly impact our most disadvantaged neighbors, low-income families.
and immigrants who are least likely to participate in sports.
I'm speaking for many walnuts, especially those of us living in apartments and townhomes.
with little or no private outdoor space.
We rely on this public green space as our backyard.
our gatherings, our daily revenue. Parks' current design encourages
A diverse intermingling of everyone in the neighborhood.
And it's a model we should be replicating, not destroying.
We should be pursuing options that add to our public recreational assets. Five for a second.
Not trading one for another.
I urge the board to preserve this precious green space for future generations of Seattle panelists. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We have one more introduction online of Amaya. Are you there and could introduce yourself?
Hi, thank you.
Hi there.
Hi, my name is Amaya and I will be on the get engaged seat
Thank you.
Excellent. Welcome. Thank you.
Nice.
Awesome. Well, first of all, I want to thank the volunteers, park stewards, and people who showed up for public comment.
in person and virtually. Literally, this department can't run without engaged stewardship from
people across the community. So thank you for taking the time to make public comment. I want to start out by responding to gene trent
from Birds Connect and Seattle Out of Bound, a great organization
I want to say to you that before we do any conversion of pickleball courts at Magnuson park
that could impact or interrupt the wetland area
We will do an extensive phase one environmental survey
We typically refer to this as an EIS.
And that will go before any decisions are made and there will be a
extensive public meeting.
phase to accompany that EIS.
And then, um.
Gary Christensen uh we met.
but several of your neighbors last week
related to dating park or either Dinny Blaine Park.
A couple of things came out of that discussion.
they committed to contacting the Seattle police chief
And Ann Davidson and the law department to follow up on concerns
They have immediately
following the placement of that sign.
we removed it the next day and was not authorized by the park department. Thank you.
And then there were several people who spoke about Wallingford Playfield, Julie McClelly, Erica Bigelow.
John Smart and Mr. High.
So one of the things that will happen very soon
On November 14th, we will partner with Seattle Public Schools to
facilitate a robust town hall meeting
really aimed at
gathering of the voices and the feedback
from the neighborhood. One of the things we've heard is uh
There have been a lot of presentations and people haven't had an opportunity to share how they feel about this project.
And kind of a good old fashioned town hall meeting setting. So that will occur on November 14th.
I will add that we are a long way from making a decision on Wally. In fact, I would even suggest we are
in the very preliminary exploratory phases of this project.
Okay, so that's the public comment.
commentary, I will get right into the superintendent's report.
APGS or superintendent.
is that COP16 in Columbia this week, and that's why he isn't here. So he's representing our environmental
interest at COP16.
Let's do it.
On October 15th, we held rather the
city council acting in their capacity as the
park district
Board of Governors held a meeting
to really discuss that 35% slice of our
budget pie, which is funded by the Park District.
AP and Michelle will walk the council members through or the governing board through
our budget
City Council is expected to meet again on November 21st.
I believe that is a public meeting hearing date. If anyone is interested in providing comments.
At Lisa Nielsen just said a little correction that just clarified that November 20th is the date for the willing for engagement. November 20th. Thank you, Lisa Nelson. I'm glad you were listening.
Oh, dear.
Okay, well, folks, you hear that? The Wellingford public meeting.
It's going to be on the 20th. Thank you, Lisa.
Okay, moving right along here.
We've been talking with you about the Fort Lauden redevelopment Project. In 2019, the city agreed to redevelop Fort Lauden, a 34-acre former military base
that became part of Discovery Park in 1972.
The reuse plan for this part of the park requires rather calls for 500 new units of affordable housing
and the addition of 22 acres of parkland.
We're in discussions with
the school district who has made a commitment to actually pay for the redevelopment of those fields
And just kind of asking the question, is this location
the best bang for the
redevelopment book.
It's just given the location of Fort Lawton and uh
I think the difficulty
being able to get their various corners of the city.
Magnuson Park Public Safety, I mentioned the last time we were here that we were working with
SPD and
traffic enforcement to remove RVs at madison park
I can report that that work was accomplished.
not only was it accomplished, but we have segregated off
the areas so that RVs can no longer show up and camp there for multiple days so
That's kind of a big win just given how long we've been dealing with the RV camping in the park.
The city rolled out a new payroll platform, better known as Workday, that has come with a fair amount of challenges for city staff and employees. In a lot of cases, it has resulted in employees not being paid, being underpaid, being overpaid. There have been several newspaper articles about Workday.
We continue to work through some of the challenges members of our
HR staff and payroll teams
for several weeks have been found on email at one and two o'clock in the morning, just trying to get these issues resolved.
one of our big uh
priorities is just making sure everyone gets a paycheck so
We have a lot of good people working on this. The mayor's office is deeply engaged with helping departments.
navigate our way through the whole workday implementation.
Next slide.
Okay, so this slide is of a junior
park ranger and um
Our staff met this young person while they were out patrolling. He is kind of on his own adopted a park ranger uniform as a result of visiting
parts all over the state
And took the opportunity to be photographed with a few of our park rangers there. The slide in the middle.
that's an ADA accessible
beach map, it provides a surface for anyone in a wheelchair to have access
from the shoreline to the water.
It's very difficult to push a wheelchair through sand, a sandy or rocky beach. This platform creates
access and opportunity for families to have a disabled person actually be able to touch the water.
this next
slide over here on the right is an example of our commitment to install
EV stations across the park department
And what we're responding to right now is a fleet conversion where we want to convert
a majority of the park and recreation vehicle fleet to
to an electric vehicle fleet.
And our target this year is to implement 50 charging station
stations. We have an incredible number of vehicles and trucks across the system. So this is no small project. It's part of our green initiative for the department to electrify
our transportation for staff across the system.
This is a picture of a staff person raking a lead. So from roughly
mid-October through maybe the first of december
One of the
hardcore pieces of work that the frontline maintenance staff are engaged in is leak removal.
And the reason you have to remove leaves is because they will destroy the turf if you don't.
So this is backbreaking work.
We have large crew projects that engage in leaf removal.
But I think it's pretty impressive because you'll see a park one day
that is just covered with leaves.
And eight or nine people will descend on that park and
The next day, there are no leaves. And then the day after that, it's full of leaves again. So it's a continuous process.
Next slide, please. Okay, so this slide is
picture of the Georgetown plumes.
The Georgetown plume
is an SDOT property that we've been in negotiations with
literally maybe 10, 12 years prior to this site
We're right now getting through the stages of
of developing this site
It was owned by citywide
And it's an interesting thing in the city. City departments can't just give the park department
city land.
that we want to become a part because in the case of City Light, that property was paid for with great payer dollars
they have to get fair market value for any property. The same is true with SPU and SDOT as well. So we've gone through
a conveyance process with them and are working on uh
what the future uses for this site might look like. There's been quite a bit of discussion about an off-leash area at this location.
Okay, and then this is a photograph on the right of the Magnolia Community Center stabilization Project.
This was funded in the first increment of the park district
which was funded or rather which the voters approved back in 2014.
We didn't have enough funding to fully renovate community centers and actually have sticker shock.
But what we thought we could do or should do is uh
create enough funding to stabilize some very old buildings. So this building has been there since the 40s and
is getting a facelift and
being stabilized until which time?
we do have sufficient funding to
fully renovate that building. And some of the uh
work going on in this building is seismic retrofit
ADA accessibility
New flooring, fresh paint.
a lot of cosmetic improvements that update the look and feel.
Next slide, please.
Okay, so there are a few upcoming events from October 25th and the 26th we have
Halloween events all across the system
There is a Magnuson iconic house occurring from Friday, October 25th.
through Saturday the 26th from 5 to 10 p.m.
There are tons of Halloween events across our community centers.
we're going to be hosting a senior fair on October 29th at 11 a.m. at Hangar 30 at Mackison Park.
More than 90 organizations and businesses will share resources and services tailored for them.
for older adults.
Okay, so that's a glimpse.
of our world over the last two weeks and questions.
maybe Trisha was trying to jump in.
Might be a Zoom challenge. I think we're okay on Zoom. Okay.
Did Tricia or anyone online have comments?
Okay.
All right. Keep going.
Okay, so I want to introduce this next topic. It is a summary
of the athletic field summit meeting we posted a few weeks ago
And really the purpose for that summit
as a continuation of a commitment we've had
over the years to compete.
user group, community.
for a half day long discussion.
about athletic fields, scheduling, maintenance.
capital development
marquee Blackshire, who is our parks environment director, is going to walk you through some of the highlights. A couple of things that came out of the summit.
I'll share this one. There were quite a few people at the summit who represent different neighborhood
athletic little user groups who
we're pitching the idea of uh
the community, the neighborhood making investment in their local sports field.
And following that summit meeting, we have created an intake process for those ideas we've asked Andy Sheffer
to make him and his staff available.
to actually intake those ideas
ideas frequently are not as easy to implement as they sound. And I think just having
kind of a stunk on the table discussion as a follow-up
to some of those suggestions and ideas is something we really want to follow up on so
With that, I see our friend
Bill Farmer is here also. I think he's going to speak for a few minutes. I want to give bill
a lot of credit for his advocacy for this athletic summit
And gee, maybe 15 years of leadership for the friends of athleticism. Is it 20 or 15th?
Something like that. Something like that. Well, I'm going to turn it over to marquee.
now and uh marquee, you and bill figure out
Who's going from here?
How are we good? All right. Well, thank you, Christopher, and good evening, everyone. I'm Mark Blackshire.
the Parks and Environment Division director
I'm going to…
just give you a brief summary of
what the summit was about.
some of the activities that took place, there'll be a presentation
from Lisa Nelson. She's going to join us as well as Bill Farmer.
Bill, I'm going to bring you in toward the end.
So I appreciate you being here. So we'll get started.
Next slide, please.
One more, please.
Next slide. Thank you.
So about the summit in 2015
The Mary administration conducted the first summit
to connect with the city's nonprofit and recreational teams.
During the event, attendees discuss logistics.
Maintenance, budget, and community programs
In the spring of 2024,
Community recreation leaders engage with park staff
to request an update.
by way of an additional summit in the fall of 2024,
over the subsequent months, park staff worked diligently with community
and programmatic partners to craft
the 2024 summit.
On October 9th.
the Parks and Environment Division
held the Athletic Field Summit at Magnuson Park Hangar.
bringing together parks leadership.
members of city council and their staff
athletic field user groups.
and parks maintenance staff.
Parks Deputy Superintendent, Chief of Staff, Christopher Williams.
spoke and provided context.
to why we are hosting the summit, as well as the history of the summit.
Christopher introduced Councilwoman Joy Hollingsworth.
who shared a few remarks.
with the group and so did the group
Councilwoman Rivera, and I was the facilitator of this event.
So during the summit, park staff and their partners presented several panels of information
and questions and answer questions
sessions over topics including
2025, 2026 budget.
field use and scheduling.
and maintenance and priorities.
Throughout the event, attendees in the audience
of the panel were encouraged to ask questions
For additional context.
And parks provided resources for further interactions on more detailed topics.
at least 80 people were in attendance.
the community attendees
shared the care.
and concerns they have for the variety of systems and mechanisms we utilize to maintain our fields.
While understanding the variety of challenges
we have in the upcoming biennium.
there was an overall theme of collaboration and co-creation to address issues they are experiencing.
Our staff will utilize the data and
comments generously provided to inform our continuous improvement efforts.
So the next slide.
Lisa's going to talk about
some of the panel discussions.
related to scheduling in Seattle public schools.
Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa Nielsen and I'm the athletic and Event Scheduling Manager for SPR. So this
Athletic Field Summit was awesome. It really gave our scheduling team, who is really the main communicators with our playfield users as far as scheduling and also relaying messages around issues at the field and getting that ball field coordinator between the users and the maintenance crews out there. So just really a main point of communication. So it was great for our team to actually meet a lot of these playfield users in person because they do a lot of
Communication by phone and by email, but a really good meet and greet opportunity there. So this is just some of what we heard from the playfield users at the summit. We heard groups wanted somewhere to connect with one another. And so our team has kind of thought that we would like to put together a kind of a biannual playfield user forum twice a year, maybe at the start of the year and
midway through the year, just so we can provide updates on upcoming projects that will impact play fields this upcoming year. So everyone is aware of what those might be and if those are around in nearby fields that they're utilizing.
We launched a new GIS mapping tool, so using a forum to be able to give guidance on how to utilize that tool, also how to check availability of fields on their own to be able to identify gaps and where they might be able to snag some additional field time in those small spaces that there are. And then also a space for them to connect with one another and for us to also hear ongoing challenges and feedback
a couple times a year through a more virtual face-to-face mechanism versus just email and
And phone. Additionally, we had some questions arise about rugby fields. We have one rugby field in our system. And so just being more mindful about the challenges that come with just having one field for one specific sport, whereas a lot of our other sports have multiple fields that they can get scheduled on. So thinking more about how we do schedule that field five at Magnuson for rugby
And also thinking about future projects such as maybe field 12, is that a field that we might be able to incorporate rugby specs on so that we could utilize that new field for additional rugby use and evaluating the current use that we actually schedule on field five out there for rugby.
Concerns around other user groups hoarding field time and not using it, that's a challenge, but we repeatedly kind of ask for folks to share that information back to us so that we can ensure that our fields aren't going unused. We really want to maximize the use of our fields, knowing the limited supply and the increasing, ever increasing demand
And then also
kind of a process for choosing how do we identify our synthetic field replacements or conversions and what does that process look like? And so our team is kind of looking and rereading the joint athletic facility development plan ourselves so that we can kind of utilize the new tools that we have and then updated knowledge and expertise our team has on the fields to see how and where we can start to
connect further with planning and capital development on maximizing what fields are being converted and disparities in areas around the city as far as what fields they're
what they're able to access.
And also, obviously, Seattle Public Schools is a major
a major partner of ours through the joint use agreement. So we had a district athletic director come and speak for just a few minutes on that relationship and questions that arose from that were obviously concerns around the public school closures that might occur and what are the impacts of that for our playfield users. And at this point in time, they don't quite know yet which schools that might be, what fields would be associated with those potential school closures.
And how those would be used, but we will definitely remain in close communication with SPS on those changes. So those are just some of the things that we heard from our end. And so we're working through our next steps and how we can continue to better serve our playfield users.
throughout the year.
Thank you, Lisa.
So the next slide.
It's just more of a continuation of the panel discussions.
what you see here is we had a discussion over ground maintenance and planning
and development. These are just some of the questions.
I wanted to share as an example of the question to show you the questions that were received by the panelists.
During the event, but also want to take advantage of this space to allow Bill Farmer to
share his takeaways from his takeaways.
from the summit.
You're up.
Bill Farmer. I'm with Friends of athletic fields and
Actually, I think Kristen's really been talking about this summit for over a year. Thank you so much for pulling it off. And Mark Keith and Brooke and all you others, Lisa.
You did a great job pulling all this together.
Set the record straight. I think the first summit was under Mayor McGahn. And there were several during his administration and then during mayor murray until his administration blew up and they're
Hasn't been any sense of normalcy since then.
I'm really glad we were able to do this again.
you know this
Communication, direct communication with staff is just so valuable and then being able to meet face to face
and actually put a face to the names
and figure out who's doing what. And there's just a lot of value
And having those personal conversations. There was great attendance. I want to say there were 30 sports leagues. You all know better, Marquis but
Yeah, lots of tables in hangar 30
So, um.
One thing I did want to bring up is about the sport leagues
and and uh
or whatever you want to call it, recreational athletics is
really valuable. There's so many people
youth and adults in Seattle that this is so critical to them for physical and mental
well-being and parks provides play fits
And in the sports leagues, pay a lot.
And you will maintain those and
To me, that is a really huge partnership
I'm great that parks doesn't really recognize that partnership.
Most of the partnerships within parks
We're all more contractual stuff like
the mountaineers or ring sports and
something where there's money there's a money and
other agreements. But this is, I don't want to say informal but
This is a great partnership. You all provide the place where all these sports activities can occur.
invalid. So for us to be able to get together and talk face to face, really important. And Justin, you and I talked the last time i was here
If there's an opportunity for
feel that and kids to come and talk for
longer than five, 10 minutes, I could probably talk to you all, give me an hour. We could have a conversation because I don't know that you all talk about play fields. There's a lot of issues involved and I can't touch on them here.
throw out a few things. Was it Harlan
You know, the youth fees.
You know, fees are going to go up. We always expect that.
The last time we got into this right
worst situation was 10, I want to say 10 years ago. I went to Sally Bagshaw, who was the city council parks committee chair and
If you've got raised fees.
Don't do it. Don't do it one year. Don't wait.
five plus years and then jack the rates up. It's going to be just a field phase of 80%. Then you throw lights on top. You're probably right about it.
100% increase over two years.
How can any league or anybody
deal with an increase in their budget of 100%.
40, 50% in one year.
to raise fees, you know, do it incrementally, at least every year or two
And keep up with it.
Just raise them all in one year. It's not fair.
So some of the other things, you know, maintenance activities that
How regularly are synthetic fields maintained? That's an issue for us. Irrigation systems on the grass fields.
A lot of those are in really terrible shape. They're like from the 70s and
They need to be upgraded. So those are big issues.
just grass maintenance.
I know there's a policy of no chemical use so
with some fertilizer, no herbicides so
some fields get overrun with weeds and there's really no way to control it.
The main staff aren't going to go out and pull out every weed by hand so
You know, I think there's some ideas. I talked to Clark who's um
the guy with horticulture or whatever. That was a great conversation. He's the thinker, man. He's thinking of ways to deal with that so
Anyway, I could go on and on.
I really appreciate you all pulling that off and it was a great event.
I look forward to having a conversation with you all. Hopefully you'll have questions and
Can't do it in two minutes at the beginning of a meeting. We want to hear from you and be able to talk.
Well, I just want to acknowledge something you said about
you know are you sport leagues and teams?
provide a community-wide service.
that goes beyond
I'm just providing a recreational opportunity for you. There's a lot of social
development and really creating the next generation of capable young leaders.
Every young person playing a sport on our fields at that
I think you're right. We don't give the leagues and teams enough credit for the work you're doing around community building.
Thank you.
And it's hard, you know, friends and athletic fields, we've been advocates since the 90s um
And the leaves are almost all volunteer funded.
So their time, they're running leagues. They don't have time to deal with the political pbs so
We try to do that for them and I try to encourage them to come but
and participate with FAP, but it's tough. People don't have so much time
Well, thank you, Bill. We really appreciate your
Yeah.
Your thoughts, shared comments.
Next slide, please.
You're welcome.
You bet. Thanks, Marquis.
So we wrap this up, but…
So as I mentioned, this was definitely a time for learning and collaborations. These photos
So park staff.
community members
gathering, taking the photos. You'll see the council members in some
And also we had what we called the field lab
set up where we had
different types of equipment our maintenance staff use to maintain the fields. There was a virtual reality session or
station. I think Lisa participated in that. That was one of the photos I wanted to share.
I think that would bring a smile to your face. But we had a great time.
And it was awesome.
to share this space with the community.
something to grow on, to build from, become better partners both ways.
And hear each other's concerns and try to find solutions.
to the issues. So the successful execution
of the 2024 Athletic Field Summit would not have been possible
Thank you.
without the help of our internal staff and community partnerships.
from our panelists to our logistics and event staff, to our community partners.
I just want to thank everyone for their earnest participation to make this event happen.
Together, we continue to strive and exhibit what
Once Seattle truly means.
Next slide, please.
And do you have any questions?
I just want to recognize Marquis for his hard work. Marquis manages the division of maybe 300
employees and found time to make this summit meeting happen. So thank you for your hard work marquee.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Brooke. Yes, broke.
That's right.
Folks have questions, comments?
Okay, all good stuff.
Maybe just a huge thank you to Marquis and Lisa and Bill and the team.
Thank you, Lisa.
I'm just going to keep giving it back to you, Christopher. Okay. So this next presentation
will be led by Monica Hagan, Tom Diamond, and Elise Gabbatz. Elise, I say that correctly? It's okay. Anyway, this is our small team, small but mighty team of outdoor park programmers.
And one of the things I would encourage you to pay attention to is just the statistics related to participation.
They have come up with some kind of secret sauce that gets 800 people at a time to
show up at an event. We haven't ever had levels of community participation like that or a park event.
I think it's pretty amazing what they're doing.
So you've got at least.
I'm sorry. That's okay.
Wait.
This is new.
That's what you like to hear. Monitor number one.
So maybe a little bit about Monica. It does all kinds of Martha Stewart stuff. Monica stuff. Yes, Monica stuff. Monica. I'm going to scroll through here real quick.
Good.
But I can do a quick introduction then while we're my name is Monica Hogan, and I am the Center City Parks Coordinator. Neighborhood Parks Coordinator, and then Elise Dobbins, who is our program coordinator.
It's not going to let you escape that one.
As we're figuring the tech stuff out, I'll just go over. Thank you all for letting us be here tonight. I just want to share a little bit about our team and what our vision is in our work. So the park activation vision is to provide safe, positive spaces for community connection and enjoyment. Our work aims to create parks that community want to be in and want to get involved in activating.
Leading to safer public space. This in turn also leads to increased social and community connections. We work in community with nonprofit and neighborhood organizations.
to meet the needs of each individual neighborhood. This is our entire team and we work citywide. So we want to make sure we're leaning on our neighborhood partners who know the best about their individual neighborhoods.
All the events that we host that we're about to share with you all are free and open to the public with the zero barrier entry. You can come up, come and join Moody. There's no RSVPs.
And we are really excited to share.
All of these great photos and statistics from our events over this past summer.
I just play it in and see if we can swing it? I think it would cut off the Zoom.
But I think there's another way we can do this. So give me
Two more seconds.
do something else.
My apologies here. I want to add one more upcoming event because that is what we do. I have a moment. We have tomorrow that outside near Magalay Communic Center. It's closed, but we wanted to support the team up there. So we are showing the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the final Harry Potter movie. We have a…
giant movie screen that you're about to see amazing photos of, but if you are interested after a presentation and want to see it live in action tomorrow, 6 p.m. I'll be hanging out.
That's my plug.
Playfield next to the community center? Yes, the north one, yeah.
I know there's a lot of play fields up there.
It's going to be Panela, Mexican food truck. They have a butterbeer special and everything.
You should all eight movies all around the city. So this is the finale.
While we're waiting, I'm curious, do neighborhoods often pitch you ideas for activities?
Yes, a lot of neighborhoods reach out and walk through the screen, but it's very finite. We get a lot of requests in internal and external but um
The screen is made in our culture. And so there's always sharing work. Is there a formal request process for folks to reach out to you? A lot of it goes through the general email.
I focus on downtown. I know. I'm not sure why it's failing to do this, and I apologize for the delay.
We also have a park activation email, park activation at Seattle.gov if you just have ideas and things that you're like focusing in the park. I'll speak to the yeah
But that might bump the Zoom meeting.
Yeah.
Always have backup plans.
It's all right. It's fine.
Perfect.
Okay, so we already did that. Oh, yeah, I'm sweating about that. This is a formal vision slide that I just did this version of it as well. The writing positive part programming, increasing community involvement.
increasing diverse social and community connections and leveraging public and private partnerships.
Center City Parks are
funded uh funded parks are parks that we work with partners and there's a couple extra. We work through product association we work with the downtown Seattle Association.
And we work with in-room.
And so these are the parks that are currently included. We do some extra programming at additional parks.
Next slide.
So I am in the neighborhood park, so that's essentially everywhere outside of the downtown core. So that's potential anywhere between the 485 plus properties we have in our system. So for just myself, I tend to focus down and really prioritizing a lot of that can be
the priorities of our department based on equity zones, underserved neighborhoods in their city, and other priorities at certain levels within our department and the city.
neighborhood parks primarily focuses at the background level with community, with organizations with
individuals to lend expertise for activation being led and kind of the agency of it is by the community. So it's not necessarily always parks department is going to lead those activations. I'm going to go into the community and I'm going to uplift the community's capacity and ability to activate their parts. The forums can take a lot of
work with organizations in the area, working with permit, how to navigate our permit system
developing fee waivers, bringing in funding for folks to bootstrap activations so that down the line they're
handled. For 2024, the priority locations are Dollar Commons Park, Cal Anderson Park, Beersheba Park.
Lake City Mini and Eller Davis are from the same area. But again, I'm able to kind of
branch out all over the city at a smaller capacity to offer consultation.
various levels of support and help based on kind of what the needs are of that neighborhood, of that community and that park.
Excellent. So Center City Cinema, this is the big piece and it's no longer Cider City. We are all over the city.
And for some of you who've seen some of our movies, we got a range of big movie screen
We have 45 planned events. We've had about 40
or so by now, we've had a 15% increase in attendance over the year. I think our attendance right now stands at about 9,000 or so people have attended our release since the beginning of the year. And all of our movies are supported by the parks concierge staff. There are troubleshooters. They're the people who make sure the screen is working, troubleshoot things, make sound.
all that good stuff. This next slide is this picture is from Kyle Anderson and the Sun Bowl for mamma Mia.
And then this next video is the ending credits. There was about
1,500 people throughout that night.
We'll play.
We'll see. We'll see.
You're aiming high with the video. It really captures it more than the photo, but I think you all saw the little sneak peek of it, please. People were dancing, all hundreds of them. Yeah.
Okay.
So this is at Kinghead Park, and we partner with the Seattle Asian American Film Festival Group. We help select the films. They add additional cultural aspects to the films. Some of them are in different languages, so we provide translation. And it is a very popular site.
And so you can see our screen.
Up there.
And this is Denny Park. And this year we saw a 78% increase in attendance at Disney Park movies. We did increase from two movies to five movies.
And you can see our park rangers are
their current.
Next slide. The next slide is at Albert Davis Park. This was Wally.
probably the slate Sydney neighborhood was a new neighborhood we wanted to create these two. So this is one of the films
at Albert Davis Park, the screen is actually out on the street because there was no easy way to get the screen into the park. So we were able to block off the parking and
I have the screen right there and display out the ends of the park.
Next slide. This is Valor Commons. I think this is CARS. I'm not sure which one this was. There's a lot of other cars. And so you can kind of see
folks bring everything with them. They bring their blankets, they bring chairs. We had one person
brought like a whole like charcuterie board table it was really interesting. It's a big part. It's a big hangout. Folks really enjoy it
Excellent. This is at Freeway Park in partnership with Freeway Park Alliance.
And or sorry, association, I keep doing that. This is actually FedElement. We have a huge social kind of engagement with our social media around the element. And this is a higher than normal attendance
And it kind of reflects the hard work that Elise has been doing with our social media.
Next slide. And this is at Suffolk Union. This is our first dive-in movie.
Henry Parkinson's Center for Women Votes.
And so we had 35 personal crafts on the waterway watching Jaws. And then we're planning on doing the same film again next year and hoping we were trying to work with someone to make a shark so that we can try it tomorrow.
I didn't have a sushi truck though. We did.
So next slide, please. So another large program that we do is called Dancing Till Dusk.
This program started in 2008, so it's our longest running program for downtown center city. We have expanded
into additional parks this year.
We had 16 fun events. We made 15. One was a ring out. We have live bands and DJs.
So it's one hour of dance lesson and two hours of music.
And this is, of course, Brewing Park.
And again, you partnered with Freeway Park Alliance.
to perform the dance. Next slide, please.
So this is at Lake City Mini Park, right there on 125th and Lake City Way. This was the first Dancing Till Dusk event at Lake City Mini. This brought in around 250 folks.
came out and danced the night away in the park. It was the first one we held there. It was great too
get the space just right and have a great night.
Next slide. And then this one is Ballard Connors again.
incidentally, Valid Commons is actually the smallest dance
floor footprint out of all of our Dancing Till Desk events just because of the way that the cement
pathways are set, but as you can see
Folks still turn up and find a way to meet you.
Make the dance.
And here is our dance central desk at Freeway Park, which is also a very popular location. Oh, sorry, sorry.
Who, yes, it's also a very popular location. Next slide.
So in partnership with GSA, our Downtown Seattle Association, this is at Westlake Park, and I want you to remember this photo because we talk about how our photos come about.
I don't know it's embedded. It's embedded.
Thank you.
Wow.
a rocking force.
Are you wrong?
And it's really exciting.
Great.
Next one, please.
So we partner with Winds of Change to bring additional Indigenous programming to the park. This includes storytelling, music, the drum circle.
Next slide, please.
And our newest art installation is the Coast Salish Prayer Panels. This installation is crafted by a Tulip tribe member, Thai, a juvenile.
So the pieces honor the Coast Sahelish people embodying spirit, physical, mental, and emotional illness.
They're placed in four directions.
And he is a renowned horror storyteller.
He's also very active and strong.
And so this installation will be in the park until January 17th.
So they're in the trees at sea level.
Which we like to do a lot. Spirit Kantrum.
And we also did the Monuments, which was the production of the three places.
local indigenous people who are impacted in times.
Next slide, please. We also…
work with bike works and they come to City Hall Park to advertise for free and also provide bikes to those in need.
You will have 18 total events for the year with QuickBooks.
Next slide. So again, beyond just, you know, those cornerstones of dancing till the desk and the movies and stuff like that, we do so many activations in the neighborhood parts. These are some photos from the Beersheba cultural stage. The cultural stage was completed earlier this year after a longstanding requests from the community for something like that in the neighborhood.
before the ribbon was cut, I worked with the Bear Sheba and the Rainier Beach community to basically
have about a year's worth of accusations and events already on the books.
And this was primarily led
almost entirely led by the community. I worked with everyone involved to get permits in to make sure everything they needed had. I provided the contracting and ability to
put on all the events led by Adam Hayu, who's actually pictured here in the middle, by Skylet Designs. They've been putting on stuff
all year since that thing opened up, there were about 40 events so far and still going. So this is kind of one of the forms that outdoor neighborhood application takes. And these are some photos from some of those events. Next slide.
This is another photo from the Othello Festival, another kind of community historical activation that's happened in our city and in our park.
for a long time. So I also helped the Fella Park Alliance put this event on. Same thing, bringing in expertise about how to run an event at the scale, how to they had a petting zoo for the first time this year.
How do you have a petting zoo in a park?
We need water. Where's the water? Bring those parts eyes into it. And when their camels started to eat one of our little trees, I was like, can we move the camel away so it's not eating our tree? And so one of the drill teams that was out there.
just fun event stuff. Next slide.
This is also from Cal Anderson as well. We held a dj
roundtable event. So basically just kind of offering the space up, providing the space for the community to activate. I let it open. I was like, who all wants to BJ this? And so they created their set list. They created their set for it, put the stack out, had a great night.
Next slide.
This is a photo from a yoga class over at Ballard Commons Park.
We partnered with a newly opened yoga studio called Practice Yoga to offer six Saturday classes in July and August that were free to the community. So this is another great example of how we also support local businesses throughout our applications.
Excellent.
Park rangers. So we do enhance by weekly meetings with the park ranger team in support of each other because we're all part of the community service branch, which is also under POE, which is also key
The Park Rangers play a really active role in our park concierge training series by presenting and increasing the collaboration between our co-sharing program and the repeat program.
Next slide, please.
And just a fun picture of the ranger supporting one of the Seattle Asian American film festivals released selection happening.
We've been talking a lot about the park concierges. We want to take a moment to talk a little bit about the park concierge program, which is a really key facet of what we do.
This program is in partnership with the Associated Recreation Council to staff several parks for 60 hours per day. So park concierge just activate the parks by setting up tables and chairs. I don't know if you've ever seen here out of Denny, they're out there setting up those tables and chairs every day, as well as outdoor games like our giant chest, giant Jenga.
Okay.
They also serve as a friendly face in the park, providing information to folks.
and reporting issues to our maintenance and facilities team so that we can keep the parks in really good shape.
This year.
concierge to have presence at six different park locations. One of them is a neighborhood park, Ballard Commons. The other five are Center City Parks, City Hall Park, Denny Park Freeway, King Kay, and Pioneer Square Park.
These staff members are also saving lives. They are equipped and trained in Narcan administration.
And this year to date have administered Narcan eight times and performed CPR four times to successfully revive
different people. They also contact emergency services when there are violent acts, threats of violence, folks with weapons in the parks to make sure that all park patrons are staying safe.
Again, they also support all the special events that you just saw photographed. They are a huge support to our efforts.
We get a lot of requests for concierge presence all around the city, more requests than we are funded for. So really limited resource that has a dramatic impact on how people view the park.
Concierges are seen as part of the park and their presence is really transformational for folks feeling safe
And welcome to our public spaces.
The park concierges, sorry, next slide, also support our park buster program, which is also in partnership with the Associated Recreation Council. Buskers are performers. They might be musicians. We have a ballet dancer. We have an acrobatic team. In the past, we've had jugglers.
They come out to the parks to do two hour sets during lunchtime, and they really just change the vibe in the park.
They perform at eight different locations regularly, most locations daily.
And we have a group of about 30 different buskers that are all that are culturally and racially diverse, some sing in different languages, play instruments that are from their home countries.
And again, the park concierges support these buskers for their performances by providing equipment and also just keeping the space really, really safe.
And these are totally free performances as well. It's like our tagline. Free and open to all.
So you met most of us. I want to introduce Carl Phillips, who's the Park Activation Manager. We appreciate the support and leadership he provides us to do our best work.
Next slide, please.
This is the end and I wanted to show how we get those feminized. This is Philip Kraft. He's our concierge supervisor. And so we get up on all sorts of things to get the picture so that you can really see the breadth and how many people are attending and just the interaction. So thank you.
Great job.
I mean, how many events total did you all…
over 75. And we're not counting the bear sheep things. This is just our
We'll get back to you at the end of the year with the total. A lot.
How many total participants do you thank you?
This year, it's been over 15
and our movies and fitness programs. It also has to factor in like
Apollo Castle and everything across the city that is either supported itself or other things like that as well. My partner's downtown dsa freeway and um
interim provide their numbers at the end of the year because they also do additional programming at different locations
Tai Chi and yoga and TSA does a lot of different events and concerts and such. So, I mean, and last year with our partners for Center City, we did over 50,000 hours.
some of that new passive being christmas lights
But a lot of it was back.
I just had a comment. I just wanted to say what you guys are doing was amazing for the city, and I love it. So I just wanted to
Thank you, Christine Lee. Ryan, you want to jump in?
Oh, I just wanted to uh
Echoes. Well, thank you so much. And really can tell from your presentation how you're pushing yourselves to come up with creative
And increasing culturally diverse ideas that really came out in your presentation, your tone and how the group was thinking about it. So thank you so much. Can't wait to see what you've got on tap for next year.
And John, did you want to jump in? Thanks, Carl.
Okay.
Thank you very much. It makes a huge difference.
Okay.
All right, so I will introduce this very last topic for today, and we'll invite Brian Judd, our Acting Recreation Division Director, who is going to provide a highlight of all of the summer recreation program activity we provided.
across the system this summer. And I think it's notable that this is the first year since the pandemic when we've been fully staffed. Following Brian, we're going to hear from Romel Weatherspoon, who's going to talk about one of the mayor's priorities, which is
the Seattle Mentors Program.
Romel has a passion
that you will hear about this program so um
Thank you, Brian and Romel, for staying late. So Brian, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Christopher. Happy to be here. Before we dive into the presentation, I just want to give a shout out to a team member who's on the call, Dina Schuler. She's going to be listening in on any questions that may come up. There's a chance you may ask me something that I don't have an answer for, but she'll make a note of it and we'll make sure to circle back on anything that I don't have.
So just so you know about that. I also want to set a little bit of context that 2024 was a pretty challenging year budget wise.
And so as you walk through and see, as I walk you through this PowerPoint, I just really want to have that be a framing and a commending of the team for what we pulled off with reduced resources this year. I'm very, very proud of them.
You're going to see a lot of information on the slides. I'm going to mostly let the slides speak for themselves. I'm going to verbally speak to a few highlights, but really the slide deck is kind of somewhat of a reporting to you for what we did. You'll see what they do as we go through.
Next slide, please. So our first slide here really focuses on our summer day camp programs. We had in our summer day camps for school-aged children, which is ages 5 to 11, 4,791 enrolled.
We had about 2,100 engaged in activity camps like pottery, engineering, sports. Our preschoolers were at 273, and our specialized programs camp, which serves children and teens with experiencing disability, we have 226 enrollees. So many different activities were covered in these programs. There's so many more things to show in this slide, but we're very
proud with the enrollment and the quality that we provided in our summer camp program.
And I also want to acknowledge that with our subsidy, over 50% of school-aged care camp enrollments utilize a scholarship subsidy.
So our scholarship fund was in demand.
We actually didn't have enough so
We're happy that we cut those dollars out.
Next slide, please. We have a very robust summer youth employment program. You'll see some of the program names along the bottom there. The Career Explorations Program.
It provides mentorship and training and internship opportunities to those aged 13 to 21 years old. And we had about 31 youth involved in that program.
The Youth at Work program, which is a paid internship opportunity in partnership with the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and the local NAACP was also very, very successful. We had an employment element with the teen summer musical that I'll talk to a little bit more. We actually have a slide for that particular program.
And our offspring program, the opportunities in specialized programs, employment for youth, which is employment opportunities for young people with disabilities, we actually had nine interns who worked in our specialized programs camps.
So a lot of really great youth employment opportunities here this summer.
Next slide.
After activation and summer of safety, some of the highlights from this slide is we have a program that's called the Summer Meal Program. It's the Summer Meal Playground Program within our parks.
Where we host drop-in summer programs offering free meals and recreation activities
8,000 meals were served, around 5,500 snacks were served. And you can see all of the different categories of programming that we had, including something that was new. We had field days, which was actually an intergenerational program where we invited families to participate in this program. This is a long-running program that we have had where we provide activities and parks for kids who are in our parks
unsupervised, providing them the same place, a meal, and making sure that we have them connected to adults during the summer break.
Next slide, please.
And our very famous teen summer musical. It was our 35th year. This is definitely one of our legacy programs.
And the title of it was Snow White and the Seven. My husband and I went and saw it. It was tremendous at Benorway Hall.
We had a talented cast of 70 youth, including 16 that experienced disabilities.
And new this summer, like I mentioned before, we actually had 14 youth employment interns between the ages of 16 and 24. So a new employment element there. Five performances where we had over 5,000 attendees at Venna Royal Hall.
With over 200 volunteer hours. So a really big success this year. And we look forward to this programming growing and changing and continuing in future years.
And then another signature event that you may know about, the big day of play
We had 97 vendors.
With 600 people attending.
And along with this being our flagship kind of
big central event for the department. We actually had a new element called the Mile Fun Run with 141 people participating in that. I worked that day and I can tell you, as I was walking around, I was like, boy, we've been doing this for roughly about 15 years and it just grows and grows and grows. And it was great to see everybody back after a few years of having to retool the event during the pandemic.
So big success for the team.
Next slide, please.
specialized programs. Again, these are programs for youth and adults with disabilities.
We serve 226 youth ages 4 to 21 at both day camp and overnight camps over a period of nine weeks.
And as I mentioned before, the Osprey High School internship program employed nine interns.
And you can see some of the other deliverables here. This is really one of our, we really have a core
in this recreation service delivery, and we want to continue to see it grow and succeed. And so it's one of the jewels of the division for sure.
Next slide. Lifelong recreation for those that are 50 and better. Christopher was saying earlier this week that he's looking forward to being a part of this program at some point. And instead of going through some statistics with this slide, I'm going to give you two anecdotes that I'm actually going to read out to you because my team wrote out some really good
If he were to come to our dementia friendly programs or outdoor recreation, he would need paintings.
A woman in her early 50s who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at an age that is far too young.
It's a gut-wrenching diagnosis to receive.
But she is able to find a new community to connect with through us. She is finding support and understanding in who she is becoming.
She knows she is not alone.
She can go hiking and connect with others and still be her as she struggles with her diagnosis.
And then the second anecdote is, if you were to come out and experience a field trip with Lifelong recreation.
any field trip and ask why someone came, you'd most likely hear, I like being around others
I can't do this on my own.
I like to experience new things and I get to meet new people.
Lifelc gives older adults in the community a place to connect with others, a place where they are known, a place where they matter, a place to play and to be a part of something.
So that was a lovely highlight from the Life Rock vaccine.
Next slide.
Environmental education.
The team here wrote Nature Daycasts. Now that's a wrap, 872 campers were provided nature daycaps at Car Creek and Discovery Parks in July and August.
Naturalists also led environmental education field trips with 173 campers
And a very popular part of this team are the shuttle rider. The shuttle rides at Discovery Park to go down to the White House. We have about 4,600 people take advantage of that very popular amenity. Thank you to ARC for partnering with us on the funding of that. They too had five summer interns and 33 volunteers who provided 1,400 hours of
volunteer time. So a very successful summer as well for environmental education.
And that is kind of this part of the recreation division. Before I pass it over to Romel for Seattle Mentors, I'd love to know if there are any questions about this.
Before we kind of turn it a little bit of a page.
Hello.
Thanks, Philip.
Sure. I apologize to join a little bit, but quite late today. I'm very sorry. But thank you so much. Thank you so much for the presentation.
A couple of quick questions. One, are the teen interns paid
Yes, they are.
If only I knew about that in high school.
Yeah, they're paid in 100 seats.
That's great. And thank you for sharing about lifelong recreation.
Thank you.
wasn't very aware of those programs i i noticed
In the bottom left.
Thank you.
There is information on program impacts. What does that mean?
That is a good question. I think I need to re-look at the slide.
It's a one volunteer drivers
0.5 reduced FTE.
Okay.
Oh, yes. So one of those, what they were outlining a little bit of the budget impacts that we were talking about at the beginning of my presentation. And I think they wanted to demonstrate that they pulled all of this off at a reduced capacity.
Yeah.
Got it. Well, really wonderful, wonderful program and great to hear how
Parks is helping people
enjoy enjoy seattle and live dignified lives. Thank you.
Thank you.
Any questions?
A huge thank you. Congratulations. Thank you for having me. I had the baton here. Fully aware that I'm batting cleanup tonight. So all I need to do is keep the ball in play and we'll be going to go ahead and get this walk off. I know some of you all haven't played much bad, so I don't want to remain at the time. I do want to add a little bit of context to see how the mentors before I dive into our slides.
that this is a mayoral initiative that Seattle Mentors is, and it had no life, it had no legs. So this is the derivative of what we've created.
By way of the mayor's vision, and he was very adamant that he didn't want any of you to feel like they had to leave seattle
in order to be successful. And so with that in mind, I realized that all of a sudden.
I'm a product of the Rader Beach High School, the University of Raider Beach High School. And I was always taught to take a few sets of notes when I was in class. One, to make sure I passed the class.
In the other to make sure I knew how to be made applicable once I get outside of the classroom. That's what Seattle Mentors began to bridge the gap. And so what you're about to see is what I realized that once you make an observation.
there is immediately an obligation.
I lived in New York for seven years and you would hear the howling system on the subways, you see something
say so. So that's kind of where we are right now. So you can proceed to the next slide. Thank you.
So Seattle Mentors is we have four different cohorts in FCIO mentors. These are some of the young men who are in our mentorship program. We took a field trip to the Seahawks facility and we weren't there for the sports aspect. We were actually there for the business aspect. How does this get run? How do the uniforms get printed? Who is upstairs? How do they get paid? We took that approach. So the evolving entourage cohort
is a mentorship cohort that we created that is in-house with our staff late night.
These are kids that we usually use for our youth advisory council. They're coming to late night every week, week after week after week after week. And so now they have an opportunity to be poured into by an in-house staff. And what we did was is we surveyed over 250 kids and asked them.
if there was a membership cohort, what would you like to be taught?
And so we took the collective data from that and we started to hone in on some target perspectives. But what I realized along the way, and I believe Les Brown said this best, but he said some people don't aim at something you miss, they aim at nothing and get nothing dead on their head.
So I wanted to be very, very, very judicious in all of my approaches that I'm not just throwing stuff up here for it to look the part, but I want it to have a very specific target. So that's how involving entourage was built. The visionary voices, that is the cohort that's a one-off. That's when you bring in someone prolific like Christopher Williams. And you say, hey, Christopher's going to come in and speak, and he is the
He's the chief of staff. And so these kids get to hear someone who holds a seat in the city to help the city run to get an inner perspective, an intimate space to be able to walk away with a little bit of information, to possibly even want some interest in that. There's been a lot of testimonials there.
Our empowerment Exchange Corps, which I'll get into in a bit is the
cohort that you want to know about in Seattle Mentors.
So what we do with Empowerment Exchange, the words kind of speak for itself. The way that I gave birth to this was I was thinking about if you had a candle and I had one and mine was lit and yours wasn't.
When I light your candle, I lose nothing, but you gain everything.
And so that's what I wanted our youth to be able to get involved with people who are empowered when they give it, they lose nothing. But when we receive it, they gain everything. We are in 12 different sites. We have over 60 mentors. We have 15 specifically, and we partner with two different entities. We decided to make the number not be above six and not be below two. So these are intimate spaces.
at all of our different sites and we took those surveys and we went out and got some of the best mentors from the chief of the fire department to police officers to high priority chefs who work. And Chris, you name it, from top to bottom. We had a Feels Like Summer event and we housed over 240 youth for our back to school. Our professional development where we partnered with Urban League.
as well as our youth at work. So every Friday, we were there, I mean, at Garfield High School, excuse me. And those are some of our partners there. Next slide, please.
These were some of our visionary voices that we had come in. So David Washington is actually one of our empowerment exchange mentors after he was a visionary voice, he came in and said, this was so awesome.
that I think I want to do a cohort. So his cohort is Mondays at Raider Beach. There are two young men.
who have decided they are determined that they want to be firefighters
they don't want they they said school i want to go to school, but I'm not sure. One of them in particular was battling the ideology between dropping out of school
And just trying to figure it out.
After I invited him to come to this cohort and we're doing a documentary show, I can't wait to hear his testimony, he now knows what it takes to pass the physical test. He knows all of the things that he needs to have, all of his prerequisites. He is getting mentored by the chief of the fire department. And so now let's do this front and center every single Monday. This is an eight-week cohort for two weeks, and we got two people who was about to walk in the street who are now about to walk in purpose.
If not for anything else, the whole entire institution was for them, if not for anyone else. We have Angela Rye, who's on CNN bi-weekly. She's a product of Holy Names. David Washington is a product of Garfield High School.
We have Dr. Albertus Brooks, who's a product of Franklin High School, who is now doctor, as a matter of fact, who that he has a company called Learn With Us Now. That's one of the groups that we partner with. So he has 10 acting athletic directors right now, randomly each cleveland, Garfield, that are running cohorts to teach kids about sports who may not be good in the actual sport.
But they want to be the people who run the score. So that's an incredible opportunity. And then we have Council Member Joy Hollingsworth, who came in speaking about politics and a couple of people would be interested in that as well. Next slide, please.
As you can see, I'm hitting y'all with the five Bs right now. Be brief, brother, be brief. I'm moving quick. I'm moving quick. So this particular slide right here, and I'll kind of sum it up. This was the group that we took to the Seahawks facility. This is what we were doing at professional development every Friday. This is the paid opportunity. You have to come to every single one of these to receive your full payment. Top right, this individual right here.
is Dwayne Eskridge, and he was on the set. He was on the team for the seahawks
And he was traded. We were meeting him on a Sunday, which is the time that he had every Sunday at Rainer Beach. It was six of us that was there. And when he got traded, he was so infiltrated with the group that we still do it via Zoom.
Even though he's not with the Miami Dolphins.
But in my infinite wisdom as a mentor by trade, I explained to the youth that sometimes life is going to propose a trade.
But when you are who you are, you will grow wherever you're planted.
If you're talented here, you're talented in Georgia, you're talented everywhere. However.
Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. And that's when we started to pivot our cohort in that direction based off the real life aspect. So we have all of this evidence-based stuff, but we also want to keep the life perspective in front. The bottom right is took a field trip to Microsoft.
We took 75 kids to Microsoft and Nikesha Griffin at Microsoft is going to be one of our mentors in the winter, starting in January. And she's the head of HR at Microsoft. Once we got there, she got a chance to see our kids and see what we're about. We have some of the people who made the city go around who want to be a part of it. And so we have budgetedways documented part of it is the act
by trade. Like I said, I'm a product of the city and I knew what I wanted to do from the beginning. And this city afforded me the opportunity to then go to New York and be on over 20 television shows. Now I'm coming back with skin in the game to give back to prove to them that if you want to know what a man will do, you want to follow him home and see what he's already done so that we can use it as a product. The bottom left is one of the main cohorts that we used that Sunday also with Duane Ashford.
to give other youth a chance to be a part of it. Next slide.
And yes, I wanted to make sure I left room for questions. But we have evidence-based curriculum. We use our 40 development assets. We've also did a very intense five-day training requirement tops curriculum, which is a national loan curriculum, and we are now certified. It's nine of us that are now certified to teach. But just to put it in perspective, whenever you have all this information.
it's one thing, but being able to make it applicable and having the engagement process, that's what we hang on. You don't walk in and see how mentors one way and lead the exact same. And so we always pose these three questions that I actually want to take the moment to mentor you on. And if you take these three questions that I'm about to ask you.
you can actually leverage your life wherever you are.
What do you want? What's in the way of getting what you want? And what will you do to get it? Those are called stakes. So if you've ever seen the movie John Q with Denzel Washington, you got to ask yourself, what did his character work? He wanted a heart transplant for his son.
what was in the way of getting what he wanted.
money and insurance. What was he willing to do to get it?
anything. He said, I'm going to take my own life. You're going to take my heart out of me, and you're going to put it in my son. That's how bad I want him to live. So the stakes were greater because his risk was greater.
So what do you want in your life?
What's in the way of getting what you want?
then what are you going to risk getting?
If you're willing to do that under this kind of tutelage where we can catch it when we fail.
Now we have something on our hands. And that, in a nutshell
is how we mobilize the mayor's vision for Seattle. So I hope that kind of sums it up and at the same time left uh
That'd be two minutes for questions. Wow.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Stanley. It's my pleasure. Thank you all so much. Appreciate you.
presentation. Thank you. Thank you.
Well, that is a great note to end on. A lot of energy there, right? I know. It's amazing. Really amazing. We do have just a couple of dates to talk about. Before that, does anybody have older new business?
Okay. Next.
month november 14th.
This board, we are speaking a retreat and the really cool part about that will be the retreat itself and the aquarium tour. You get to see the new bank and everything.
I think almost everybody is able to be there. I did want to let everyone know, because I'm not sure everybody knows that I will not be there. I'm really, really sorry. It's very disappointing. It's literally the only night of the entire year that I'm
have to be at work with 500 dinner guests into a program that I'm responsible for. So I will not be at retreats. I will miss you. I will not even get to see everybody in person. So that's a bummer for me, but you all will have a good day on
November 14th, be sure to let Paul and Ben know about any changes. Anybody have any questions about that?
And then we just wanted to take a little poll about the next meeting, December 12th, because I recall last year we had a very light attendance and very bad traffic and other things that happened. Does anyone
who will be at the VPRC meeting on the 12th of December?
And if it's everybody, fantastic. So at least for getting to a quorum okay yeah great yeah yeah okay so
Be in touch with Paul in a minute.
Go Seahawks game that day.
No, I'm good. Thank you. Just again, thank you for all that effort.
Thank you, John, ask a question, please. Go ahead.
Hey, sorry, I did have one piece of, I don't know, business. And also I did put in, I was going to put in the chat, but I will be able to be there December 12th.
Okay.
I was just wondering with Christopher, I think last meeting there was the commentary about the number of events at Gasworks Park.
And the request to make sure that or try to get the events committee team
to publish a public calendar of permitted events so that
There's more visibility of what's coming up in each park.
I didn't know if that had landed at all and whether you were able to refer that over to the events
office or what the status of that one was.
So we wanted that issue referred to Lisa Nelson, who was here today, manages our special event office. So Paula, can you pull out the notes from the
last meeting and make sure that happened. Thank you.
Thanks, John. We're on it.
Thank you.
Cool. Thank you. Especially because it's a good like
Yeah.
quieter time of year for events. It's a great time for them to do some infrastructure work to see if they can
you know, put that in place for next spring, summer would be perfect to have it then.
Yeah.
I do have a question as well. I know the park ranger program was mentioned a few times tonight.
Some folks in my district have questions about that program and how we might be able to leverage them for some travel spots. Who is the manager for that program? So his name is John Hayanka. It might be
a good agenda item to bring the park ranger program here
This is, we're probably…
14 months into a rollout of this program. I think people do have a lot of questions about how park rangers get dispatched, how they get signed
how do you call it a problem? Is there a portal for the public to
express a concern or identify the need for more park rangers at a certain location. We would love to have that discussion.
That'd be great. Thanks.
recap of summer solvent.
Okay.
All right.
The business meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Oh.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for coming in. Take care.