See you all. I think we'll start with just a little bit of housekeeping and introductions and then we'll really quickly into public comment.
So my name is Amy Brockhouse. I'm co-chair of this board. And I think let's start with some introductions and then I will go from there. So let's go.
Stafford Maze, District 7. I'm John Flynn. I'm with District 3.
Apds, the superintendent. Among Highway Road, District 5.
Police Chisholm cleric District 4. And then moving to folks online, let's start with Whitney and then go to Ryan.
Hi, Whitney Nakamura. I'm a board and commission seat.
All right. And then Steve, then Phillip, then Amaya.
Hi, everyone. Steve Blair at-large commissioner.
Everyone, Philip Wing, District 7. Look forward to joining you in person very shortly.
Hi, I'm Amaya. I'm in District 4.
And huge thanks to Ben and to Todd. So maybe introduce yourselves and then we'll send some gratitude your way Very beneficial.
Hi, I'm Ben Bertos. I'm an admin specialist with Seattle Parks and Recreation, and I'm normally there in person and feeling a little under the weather. So thank you for your patience today as I'm helping out from home.
Todd Burley, I am presenting tonight, but I'm affiliated for Ben as I'm trying to hold this all together.
So thank you so much for jumping in, Todd. Really appreciate that. Because we have so many people and we have so many environmental educators, I'm guessing. So I know we will have very respectful, concise Public comment i'm very much looking forward to that. We will go really quickly if you can keep your spot, Todd mentioned a minute and a half, even to a minute, please do so so we can try to hear from everybody.
So that's it for introductions. I will start with a land acknowledgement and approval, and then we'll get right into it. So the Seattle Parks and Recreation acknowledges and affirms the Indigenous Coast Salish people as the original caretakers of our waters and landscape who nurtured and shaped.
Today's Parkland. We honor their legacy with gratitude and appreciation and will 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. We have just one consent item today for commissioners to vote on the meeting agenda, which was distributed by email.
I have a motion to approve that. I'm going to approve?
Any discussion? Great. Thank you. And now I will turn it over for some public comments. Thanks so much for being here.
And the first person, so Ben is going to be handling the online Other comments may come on and then I'll handle in person, which is most of them. So we'll call your name invite you up to the podium where you can
Say your piece in one minute. So then the first person is Peter Greifable.
I don't know if they're online. Oh, yeah.
Yes, go ahead here. Thanks, Peter.
You hear me? Hello, my name is Peter Brifgl. I was at your meeting back in June 13th of last year.
17 other riders with me talking about the Burke Gilman trail maintenance And Colin, just to kind of update you on what happened there. Ap had promised to take a bike ride with us and we did finally accomplish that on September 17th.
To see the work that has been done and the work that still needs to be done.
Like we saw in 2024 and looking forward to what's going to happen again in 2025. And I was kind of hoping that maybe EP could share his perspective from having taken the ride with us.
Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. In less than 30 seconds. Okay, our next person is Luis Colzer.
Yeah, sure. And can I just move this cable in if no i don't.
Good evening. My name is Louise Coulter. I'm a Seattle urban nature guide.
We're asking for your help this evening in saving the environmental education program and parks.
This program has touched over 20,000 Seattleites and reached over 5,000 students in 65 schools in 2023.
It also provided a 335 programs some of which I led. I recall one program where 15 second grade 15th second graders explored the native plant garden at Camp Long in August. They waited in line while I was able to show them
The stem of a lupine flower which was filled with aphids.
Believe it or not, there were several serford fly larvae, which are ferocious predators. You may not know that.
Eating the aphids. Those 15 kids saw nature in action, not on TV, not on their laptops.
But through their own eyes and through the hand lenses that the environmental education program purchased.
This sort of firsthand experience conveys the excitement of nature and requires one-on-one contact.
Contact that over 100 urban nature guides make possible with support from the environmental program staff.
Okay.
Next, and thank you. Mary Johnson.
Hi, I'm Maggie, also a Seattle Urban Nature Guide. Our environmental education program costs less per year than one baseball infield turf conversion. But when the mayor asked for savings, parks offered up.
Environmental ed. And without one word of consultation or warning to the nine program staff.
The over 100 volunteers. Are hundreds of community partners or a thousand programs.
Thousands of program participants. This year's budget maintains our program for this year but acts as it for next year.
However, several city council members have told us that they believe in the value of our program and they intend to restore our funding When they discussed the budget later this year.
They think the 1 million can be found in their discretionary funds.
But Parks Administration is moving ahead with dismantling our program.
Offering our staff unrelated replacement jobs and planning for a stripped down privatized version that will not have anywhere near the same reach or impact. So here is our ask.
Please put your finger on the pause button. For dismantling our program.
And please talk with us. Start a conversation with the current environmental education staff the volunteers, the community partners.
As well as with city council Thank you.
I'm still farmer.
Bill Farmer. Not to toot my own horn, but I did serve on the partisan Green Spaces Levy Committee in 2008. I was on the the Parks Legacy Committee that put together the pd measure when we did the PD measure.
We did that and I campaigned strongly for that. I'm a great purpose advocate. I love our Seattle parks.
The PD was intended to do more for a part system and the decision to cut the environmental education program Frankly, AP, that's a bad decision. You need to rethink that.
All of these people do and the nine staffers that bring the experience I don't know what this amorphous public-private partnership is but That's not free. They're not going to do all this for free. So where's the savings?
And then all the expertise from the staff They have the connections with all these volunteers And they bring the experience and the knowledge of nature Seattle's always talking about getting people out in the nature, the youth and adults I don't know how many people they lead through our park system.
And teach them about what it's about. All the mental and physical benefits to getting out in nature avoid taking a million dollars and cutting the nine staffers Bad decision. You spent half a million dollars fixing the one stairway at Golden Gardens Park.
I can't believe you can't find a million dollars. To keep this program going.
Great program, very successful. Don't lose all that experience and the value.
I'm a volunteer site guide. I live in District 7. The Environmental Education Department has always operated on a tight budget and applied creative strategies to supplement what was available.
These actions primarily benefit those youth in our city most at risk of having little to no positive relationship with the natural world.
It's through the staff's resourcefulness and care that volunteers can give the city hundreds of hours of work for free.
Most of us volunteers made our cases during the budget hearings and private meetings with city council members.
Though that didn't result in amendment. Being added last year that would preserve the program after this year.
Some city council members have since assured us that they understand the benefit, efficiency, and need for what we do and are committed to ensuring there's no lapse in programming or operation of the Discovery Park Visitor Center.
At the end of 2025. What I'm hoping to accomplish by bringing this up to you all is to form some relationships that would help to create an amendment to the budget for the mid-year supplement review.
That reinstates the funding for our program. I also want to express the need to do so soon as our staff continues to be put in a difficult situation with respect to their employment.
And deserve some concrete reassurance from city council and the mayor's office that an adjustment will be made.
Thank you very much.
Hey, we have Hannah and Kelsey. Thank you, Kasha.
Hey folks, I'm Hannah. And although my height might not suggest it, I'm a beach volleyball player in seattle I wanted to highlight today the shortage of beach volleyball courts and the need to meet the increased demand that we're seeing for the sport, especially for young female athletes.
Right now, if you look at Kirkland, they have an eighth of the population of Seattle, and yet they have five volleyball courts.
So if you calculate that for Seattle's population, we should have 40.
Right now we're at 14 and it's only polls. The other course has nets and it's drop-in. There's no reservations needed.
We also know that since then, CAA introduced beach volleyball as a sport, there's been a huge increase in women playing beach volleyball outdoors, especially in the Seattle area, the UW women continue to win. And I think it's really fostering this
Culture of growth in the sport, but there are just not enough places to play In the summer and peak times of the season, the courts are always split up by different means and different people playing.
And so if we can introduce more courts, not just at Alki and Goldie Gardens.
But at other potential parks or beaches That would be really a huge investment in the community and showing that we look to support female athletes in this space.
I think we're seeing a lot of the growing demand in the sport I don't know if any of you tuned into the Olympics this year, but it's one of the most watched sports.
Beach volleyball. And so we hope that you can continue to support the investment in this space. Thank you.
Good evening. My name is Becca Ryland. I am a Seattle Parks and Recreation employee and I'm losing my job.
Because of the 2526 parks budget. Privatizing the environmental education unit is in violation of our union contract with the city. It's Article 3.
So outsourcing our jobs. So I wanted to point that out and there is an active grievance against this right now.
But that's not why I'm here i'm here Because I think there is a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding of what we do as employees, our scope in the park system and these printouts that kind of give our scope. I'm hoping you will take a look at that information for the details of the scope of our work.
It is all corners of the city. It is every district.
And it's a million dollars. Our budget reduction is also does not support the SPR budget priorities that have been announced, which are people first, enhances revenue.
And supports other city priorities because our programs reach tens of thousands of people So this is not a people first priority. It lays off nine people who are deeply skilled in their fields of environmental education. They are protected Their job walls are protected and cannot be distributed to just any other staff. There are education that goes behind that.
Our programs bring in over $750,000 in revenue every year. We have 900 nature day campers who go to Parkey Park, Discovery Park year round for this.
Plus across the whole city. So if this is a If this budget is to enhance revenue, why are we reducing revenue by $750,000?
I have more that I can email, but thank you.
Already done.
You can guess who I am. I'm a volunteer Seattle Urban Nature Guide.
Whoa, I love, I love, I'm also a semi-retired biology and science teacher.
So I made up a little red poem. I want to believe that Seattle is green.
Save environmental programming, if you know what I mean. The answer is not privatization.
Which has a non-accessible vibration.
We need nature for our youth. It's therapeutic. I'm telling the truth.
Being in the forest for our teens, we are mentoring connections that can be seen.
Connections, not rejections to the great out of doors Seattle green reputation soars.
Field trips to our parks, beaches, and tidal pools. Can't do that stuff in the buildings of schools.
So give our community equal opportunity. So urban nature programs For teachers, seniors, scientists, we are all volunteer So Parks Board, lung and ear.
Seattle needs all environmental programs to be here. Thank you.
Brandon Turner.
Thanks for doing your best. Take the time, everybody. Hi, everybody. I'm Brandon Carter. I'm also one of the probably a few of the volleyball community members that you guys hear from tonight.
I'm here to talk about the raise in the fees for the volleyball court.
Alkiron Golden Gardens, the fee has gone up from $8 to $15 per hour. While this might not seem like a lot of money per hour, what we are continuing to see is we find nails, glass, and other things embedded in the sand.
We see the polls continuing to degrade. And we aren't seeing a lot of upkeep from the courts. There's a lot of bottoming out on the courts at Golden Gardens, there's a set of poles that have been constructed that aren't even usable considering they're too narrow
So the big gripe that we have is that the fee is going up, but we're not seeing a continuation upkeep and maintenance of these pieces.
Fields and like you've heard from Hannah that we the community is growing and you're going to continue to hear that how much the community members really care about continuing to play.
And with this big increase in price, it's really closing out a lot of people to the sport I'm part of the Seattle Beach volleyball community. We're a nonprofit that looks to expand and teach people how to improve their volleyball.
And this is since we're a small community, we're getting priced out of this and we can't You're going to hear from other people tonight about how there's larger groups that are going to completely rent out all the courts and it really prices out the small people in the small groups.
So we're looking to hear about what is going to be done with the increase in the fees.
And if there's going to be upkeep in the polls and the courts, because those are Frankly, a safety issue. We found nails and glass, and that's just Completely unacceptable.
Hello, my name is Andres Montes. I'm also a member of the volleyball community.
And I don't know if any of you have been to Greenlake or Gold Gardens on a sunny day.
But there's a lot of volleyball that's like pop-up nets that people bring And there is limited space also.
As great as the Seattle parks are, there's a little bit of a lack of infrastructure for volleyball players.
And then in light of the proposed fee increases for the reservations, it's really like rubbing salt in the moon.
Doesn't make sense on a community that's a little bit, you know, underserved And I just want to thank the volleyball community is great and it's very welcoming For newcomers, it's a great way. And I think it's overall really beneficial thing for the um for the city.
And I'd just like to see a little bit more Infrastructure built.
You know maybe some sand cords built on inland parts that would be great so you don't have to go all the way to gold gardens And yes, also, I want to echo what others have said about the conditions at Golden Gardens.
It's dirty there's there's hazards in the sand. And then also there's only one bathroom that's also pretty dirty so it's just taking all this into account and a fee increase, it just doesn't make sense. So I really would like to see that increase going and more
Would be much appreciated. So Joshua Motor.
I'll talk fast. How do y'all job. I'm also here to address the proposed price increase for outdoor volleyball courts.
First, if the city is planning to raise the fees, the members of Radal Co-op, of which there are several here tonight.
As it would like to see tangible improvements in the courts. As it stands, there's been very little maintenance done over the past year, as you heard about recently. The courts often contain trash or rusty nails from beach growers burning pallets on the sand.
And that leads to people injuring themselves also when they bottom out on the court if the sand isn't retilled or replenished at a regular rate.
And it hasn't been, at least in my experience. Secondly, the scale of this increase is concerning.
A jump from $8 an hour to $15 an hour represents an 88% increase, whereas all other programs from the city's own document Of which there are approximately 200 experience an average increase of 23%.
So our big question is, why is volleyball courts increasing by 88% while the overall average is only 23?
I urge the CD to consider after Excuse me, either keeping the fees more reasonable at 20 to 30% increase, or at least ensuring the prioritization of maintenance of these courts to ensure safer play for the community.
That's it. Thank you.
Dr. Melanie will be carried. Thank you. My name is Melanie Winneke and I am also a SunGuide volunteer naturalist and I have been a naturalist for the city parks for 12 years and I've served over 2,000 Seattle residents.
And I am also here to ask you to please support us as we ask the city to amend the budget.
To save the Discovery Park and Clark Nature Centers and keep them city run save the staff and save the program save lives.
I have done hundreds of programs and I love all of them, but my favorite is the Seattle World School.
The Seattle World School is a high school for newly arrived students and most of them are refugees.
These immigrants children have gone through a lot of trauma to get here.
And each summer we take them out to the city and we take them on field trips all around so that they can see the beauty of their new home And so that we can show them how welcome they are here. We are glad they are here.
We need to preserve these programs because they protect our natural wonders and our environment. They welcome and renew and refresh our citizens.
And they maintain and build our communities And the very important part about accessibility and inclusivity. We make sure that everyone knows that all of these spaces belong to everyone.
Thank you. Ben was Perry online.
Oh, you're good. Okay. Dr. Carey will be William Suarez.
Denny Blaine Park, October 30th, it's raining. There's a male masturbating on the beach. He has a beach chair and a flat blanket.
Call 911 November 6th and November 7th. A chronic masturbators at the park.
November 8th, the chronic masturbator is at the park. He's masturbating at 1 p.m. Call 911.
2.07 p.m. A text from fcd says they are investigating but never saw him.
3.45 p.m, chronic masturbator leaves the park November 10th, chronic masturbator is at the park.
November 20th. The beach chair masturbator is in the park. He starts masturbating. Call 911.
1114 a.m, he talks to a park regular in the parking lot.
At 503, SPD says they can't find him. November 27th.
The beach chair masturbator is at the perk. He starts masturbating at 1219 p.m.
December 9th of her regular on a screaming tirade kicks in from the fence on private property.
Call SPD. They take a report. This per curricular returns to the park on December 16th. Let's hang out.
November 21st to January 8th, SPR survey crew jeff and michael are out in the park.
They don't know what they're specifically. Surveying for but it's a community thing, a neighborhood thing This is why neighbors are afraid of retribution.
If speaking out about Denny Blaine Park. Thank you.
I really haven't miss it. Yep.
Oh, good evening. My name is Will Suarez. I'm out of Seattle was in Seattle.
Call us on each other. And I'm also a business owner.
So my business is running coordinating outdoor volleyball leagues and tournaments And I'm just here to also express disappointment.
On the fee increases. Specifically for leagues.
Volleyball bees. They've gone up by 175%.
And that's mentioned by whether B12 players, the increase was minimal for others.
Other sports like soccer soccer field.
Fees went up by just 15%. As a comparison.
This makes it much more expensive to offer these tournaments for the community.
And since certainly, you know, I wouldn't mind the height in prices I paid Park over $7,000 in rental fees.
The past two years, not to mention there are no taxes to the city.
Licenses and permits. I wouldn't mind that if more was offered for the community.
But, you know, that's not the case. I was here two years ago.
Spoke about how we're probably the only sport that doesn't have an input cord. We don't expect soccer players to bring their own solar goals or like tennis players who like set up their own like tennis sports But you expect that from us.
You don't offer any nets, no dies, no antennas. Deleting products and right followers polls, I'd say.
Thank you, Will. Thank you very much.
Alex and then Laurie is the last five.
We can't even queue up if you want. Hey guys, my name is Alex. I'm a major, but I've been here for over 20 years. I play a lot of soccer and play a lot of volleyball. I'm here with the volleyball community.
I'm here because I would like to talk more about the more the reservation system for beach balloons.
We know that there's only two beaches, which we have Golden Gardens and also Alki.
And My main topic is basically talking about Wonderful, I think.
Alka. A beach level courts by a private company called ABA.
I think they get… I think five to seven months prior to be able to reserve courts.
And they basically take them all year round, like pretty much the entire summer, it's all taken by them.
We don't have a lot of places for us to play ourselves.
If we want to rent courts. It takes us about, I mean, we'll probably get about a week And that's for just private.
People. If there's any way that we can change the reservation system that we can get access to to more rentals. And also people have that talk about the fees, which is definitely an issue as well.
My main topic is just talking about the reservation system and why we cannot.
You know get them in advance and if we And if we do only get about five to seven days for rental If we can just open it up to everybody and not have one company literally taking everything for the entire summer. Thank you guys.
Okay. That lawyer will be Jean. Okay.
I'm Lori Ross. I'm a Seattle urban nature guide. I have been since 2016.
I'll hold up with email. I'm sure this was much longer than it's going to be So I volunteered as an interpretive guide I just wanted basically to summarize, I want to talk about the quality of this program and why it's going to be hard to
Reproduce and replenish if it is dismantled. I volunteered as an interpretive guide for the school programs and forests and insects, community-based programs focused on gardening.
And disabled adult outdoor experience, parks events such as the powwow at bay break star My personal special interest is mushrooms.
And I take several bucks out every year, always sold out. People are very interested in the topic.
That's a general public walk. As a resident, not as a volunteer, I feel that as a I see. I don't think it's more crowded and expensive. It is the city's business to make sure that people have an entryway to connection with nature.
Nature of bounds throughout the city in our amazing variety of parts all written down. Many people still need an invitation.
To make that connection with the family that's around them. And the environmental education unit here does providers invitations through programs in every neighborhood throughout the city.
The thing that has kept me coming back year after year through all the turmoil and all the changes in the department that aren't always that comfortable.
Is the rock solid depth and consistency of the training that we're given.
And the unwavering support of the staff. This is really an amazing program.
So I just wanted to say it's a well-functioning group. Oh, well, that was it.
Dean and then sienna. Oh, yeah, you guys should come to one of our programs.
I'm going to answer a guy too. This is a bug box. One of the things we use. If they ever have insects, you can look at Amazon.
Twice a magnetization before that. Pretty cool. And the kids, I just thought a lot of students that already, but we did 570.
Programs last year with the sales schools And they show up with the bus you know there's like 45 of these First, second, third graders. And they got the bus and we're there to meet them. There's like four times each take 15 of these kids
And then you walk through, it can be a forest talk it can be a insect talk, seashore talk, birds but they really like is boats. They like that.
And if you take a spray bottle and spray it on the bark of the tree.
These cobwebs jump out. The big grooves. And there's literally thousands and thousands of these things all up and down the tree. So the amount of life is amazing They look at the woodpecker holes anyway um It's Seattle kids and Seattle schools and Seattle parks.
Been going on for 30 years. We had a meeting with Dr. Councilman dan strauss And he said that when he was a kid he did this program and he remembers it fondly. And then his staff member Joel, he did the program. He remembers it fondly. So he said it had an effect on them he remembers
How good the Seattle parks are as a kid. It was cool.
A lot of these kids have never been at a park.
This is kind of strange, but they come from all over the city.
I also wanted to say is pretty much… And then our last speaker will be reading.
Good evening, and thank you so much for joining us today.
Science and your attention. I'm also a Seattle Urban Nature Guide. My name is Emma Geo. I live in Magnolia. I chose that area specifically because of the proximity of Discovery Park.
As a resident and as a nature guide. I am asking that you restore the budget to environmental education citywide and that you also maintain park heat.
And Discovery Park and all of their programs as city services.
I want to specifically focus on experiences that youth have with us because I know that the city and the parks value our youth our youth mental health and equity.
I want to highlight a program I've been a part of for the last three years that's taking place at Cleveland High School. We're doing what's called a tree program. We're working with high school students there to restore the maple ravine, which is a green belt that had been overcome by Himalayan.
Excuse me, Ivy and Himalayan blackberry. We did have some help from Green Sam Partnership to clear out the aerial parts. That's the above ground parts of the Blackberry, but then our youth came in And high school students who were too cool for school and sitting on their platforms when you're in the classroom
Got out there and started having competitions to see who could get the biggest pile of corns.
Which is the only way to eradicate the Blackberry. And they loved it. We taught them how to use a shovel. Some of them had never used a spade before.
Tell them how to use the shovel. We got them in there. They started planting.
They started seeing the results of their work this last year when we stood on the slope and watch a hummingbird with high school students for over 20 minutes.
They were riveted. So please consider restoring these programs because they're really critical to our community.
Fast everybody and we've also a beach volleyball player. We're a group that represents hundreds of people in the city representing a sport that touches thousands of people We're a very tight-knit social group.
We take care of the beach every single morning. Because you have to pick out twigs, rocks, glass, garbage.
And then every night it kind of cycles back into that.
Every visit to the beach, it brings us first aid kit And every time we play, someone needs to use it because the courts are in that kind of state.
We're simply asking for more places to play, better sand, and a little bit of care to take care of there because that's what we do every day.
We also try to invite a lot of new people into the sport. Most of us are from other places.
I'm from here. We're all coming together kind of like beating the Seattle Freeze. And I think we're um what the given fee increases and that we're paying more for this privilege to be an open group was hoping for better facilities.
Thank you all. Thank you, everyone.
Thanks very much, Peter. We don't have any other online ones, right?
Okay, perfect. First of all, thank you. I think we didn't get a chance to go to the time, but everyone I wanted to thank you guys for serving on the board.
That's a real sacrifice. I mean, everybody agreed to that. Just playing.
Well, thank you. Thank you. We all echo that comment. And thank you all for showing up because you're really speaking from the heart And you're very passionate about the issues, whether it's volleyball that we talked about tonight.
Or the importance of nature education for children And how we take care of our land. What I love about Seattle Parks and what makes this job to me some people see it as a challenge, but to me it's kind of a privilege is that
I feel like in order to run this department, you need to be in tune and know all what I refer to as the love languages of Seattle parks because there's many like bill is here even though speaking about nature tonight but
Also is interested in fields and athletics and people, some of their love languages are nature and environment and the particular bug that you talked about and things like that. And our other fine folks here who play volleyball, they probably think nature is cool too, but their love language right now is volleyball and the social aspects of it. So all of those things are important. So I just want to thank you for showing up because
This type of advocacy is really important. I know it's important to the commissioners. And I just want to speak just briefly to some points so you know first of all.
I agree. Thank you for also highlighting volleyball as a new thing that normally we get inundated with pickleball A nice and refreshing reminder to know that there are other valuable, important, well-loved sports and growing which is really great. Just so you all know too.
For me a particular passion point and something from my last job is really the importance of gender parity in sports. And I believe we've seen increases and And we're going to be focused on things around the world cup even though that will be the men's World Cup.
I want to work with our teams. We're already talking about ways to increase And raise awareness and get more girls involved, continued involvement in soccer. Obviously, it's very strong, but we still have more to do in this space. And so when you talk about
Volleyball as being another sport that amplifies and highlights the ability for gender parity in sports. We're all in on that.
It is not unreasonable at all to ask for more places to play and better facilities and cleaner and safer facilities.
We want to connect with you and we want to also join with this public messaging also Golden Gardens is a very well is a very used park in many ways and sometimes a lot of nighttime activity And then you see it the next day. So we are always mindful of that in playgrounds and everywhere too it's hard
To sometimes manage the public use of these parks and we wish that our neighbors were a little bit more courteous and would to clean up after themselves. But we know that doesn't happen. So we definitely want to make those places and they're limited right now. So to your point, they should be as
As clean as possible. And so we pride ourselves on safety and maintenance. And so if we need to do better in these spaces.
We certainly will. And then we want to lean into, we have a great team here and again about things that are popular and growing We want to try to plan for that and we have strategies to try to plan for things beyond just the limitation of only the two beaches in Seattle.
I think there's other opportunities and we want to continue to be on the pulse that some of the same strategies we're trying to do to manage pickleball and a ton of other sports that people have interest in so um
And we will connect with you if you give us your information. We're happy to connect with you and Particularly first and foremost i want to say on the facility conditions and the safety conditions. So that's something that we can work on.
As well. For the Burke Gillman Trail, I just want to say, is he still on?
Ryan, I'll be able to see him, but he might be upset.
Okay, Brian, thank you very much. I enjoyed and learned a lot doing writing. I went bike writing if you ever want to go on the Burkillman Trail, you probably all have gone.
But I really did enjoy it. And at the time that we went on the bike ride with you and your fellow biker community members and our staff We were talking about the then pending SDOT levy, which passed and they're, as I had mentioned.
If the levy had passed, there are funds in the levy specifically that we can work with has started to begin trail improvements.
So we're excited about that. A lot of the issues raised were also about the safety of trails.
And pavement and a very well used trail that could use some more attention and love.
And so we're excited that we're going to start working with SDOT on a bunch of priorities and that will be one that will be included.
And as to ELC, this is, first of all, we can't address everything right now, but I do want you to know that we hear you and i want you to know that we do value.
Education and nature and the environment. I know that's hard to hear right now and maybe receive But please know that one of the reasons why these effects don't take place until 2026 is that it gives us an opportunity to try to find solutions. We too value
These programs and we value them for many reasons and all the reasons you stated.
And so like the council, when they passed their budget uh we express to them that we will be using this year to try to find as many solutions as possible. As you all know, at the very beginning of this year.
And to the staff that are here tonight and that work in this the ELC world, we call it, environmental learning you know you had the also devastating news of waking up as we all did and learning that camp long
Had burned and you know what a terrible thing when already this unit is facing this you know potential budget cuts and job reductions and other threats to this wonderful program. And then we have to now figure out what to do here
And what other opportunities. But we are committed to rebuilding that to rebuilding center that camp as much as possible And we're working through those bevy of insurance issues.
But again, there's many issues here. All of what you're saying is valuable all of that we hold near and dear to our heart and We have time to try to figure out. And I don't want to get into nuances because I don't want to diminish
What you're saying and try to say well you know there there's certain things that I think perceptions about privatization some things that are accurate and some things that aren't and some things that are valuable but bottom line.
The message that we need to take away and that we hear is just the important value of what is provided through Seattle Parks and Recreation and the bevy of volunteers. I want to thank you too, all of you. I've benefited from your programs as well.
You're not SPR employees, but you work to the public you are. And to me, that's kind of how I think about you. I brag on our department in many ways and we'll talk about the people who you can go out and to Kharkiv and learn about
Tide pools and you can go out and learn about you know different parts of the city and nature and environment.
And largely we're talking about you all that are doing that work with our employees.
I just want to say I can't express that enough and i know it I hope it's somewhat received.
That as genuine because it is. And I wouldn't be a good superintendent too. I mean, it's not written here but our three pillars and thriving environment is one of them.
So that's a good question to say, how is this happening if one of your pillars is thriving environment?
So just know that. And there's more to come on this. So we can perhaps figure out a better time to have more in-depth conversations.
I think the opportunity to move money in 25 is great.
But I did hear about some pressure to start dismantling the staff element simultaneously, which doesn't really make sense so i think I don't know anything about the union contract so excuse me. But if it's at all possible for parts to come up with a way to provide some reassurance to that staff
About opportunities, like similar opportunities down the road to sort of give them some job guarantee.
That sounds reasonable if you also truly think that funding can come through.
It does not make sense to dismantle a program while you're trying to save it. And that was quite kind of dissonant for me.
The other thing is just speaking, I'm fairly new commissioner. I joined in April.
But I think one of the roles of the commission is to provide a checks and balance on parks to provide some outside perspective.
And in the six months I've been involved or eight months, this was not really presented to the board as a challenge that Parks was struggling with.
And I would love an opportunity to dig deeper into the privatization proposal and how many hours it funds and what the budget trade-offs are.
And I think we did look at fee increases and I think we had a bit of a discussion about The pushback that would come from that and you need to make sure that we can justify fee increases with service increases
But I don't recall this being a topic. You probably had 100 topics that are just as difficult and passionate But I would encourage the staff to use the commission to help talk through some solutions and some alternatives to big changes like this because it feels like a missed opportunity to have gotten in front of this a little bit more.
We had some previous comments in our last meeting. I did send it to the district three city council person joy um and i'm trying to keep it on her radar even though The main parts here are not in district three but you know she
Is our council representative for parks Definitely think there's more to be done here and to really give it a better look. And I appreciate the big turnout tonight at home.
Thanks, thank you for messaging to joy because um so i just One, I am not on the clock right now. I'm here on my own time as an employee, just to make that clear, I do not say that before. But our union, and I'm a shop steward for my union representing myself and all of my coworkers who are also getting laid off. We have not been able to get, Joy has not accepted
A meeting with my union. Joy has not reached back out to us. We reach out to her. So I appreciate your advocacy and sharing this with joy and um with uh that subcommittee because we are really trying hard to get a meeting and to discuss that with her. So thanks. Thank you.
Thank you. We are obviously way behind time. So I wonder if we can do at least a brief review. Yes, absolutely.
You are, of course, this is public. You're all welcome to say, but also you're welcome to be excused too. Oh, and thank you for the wrap.
Thank you.
Okay, I will get started going on our report and ask her to give an abbreviated updated version here I will say that we can get.
Slide.
Sorry, I'm trying to… Bottom right corner, just to the left.
Yep.
Okay. So since we've all met on November 21st, the Seattle City Council did approve and adopt the final 2025-2026 budget. It's up by annual budget so it goes in periods of two years, although some adjustments can be made for next year.
And, uh. Following is a summary of the key changes in the 2025-2026 budget.
As a result of the city council budget deliberation. So the mayor presents his budget and then the city council can augment or change the budget as necessary so there was an additional input of $4.5 million for field turf conversions at Garfield.
Fairmont and lower woodland there were additional funds added to support artwork for the Garfield Superblock project And there were exploratory funds for a portal park at Battery Street Tunnel.
Additional ADA improvements at Mohai, additional funding to support the late night team program, and additional graffiti abatement funding for the park system.
There's also funds to support a restroom enhancement program at Cal Anderson Park.
Landscape and irrigation improvements at First Hill Park and the Marvin Gardens Bergen Place Public Park and Kiosk improvement.
Plan. On November 25th this City Council convened as the Park District Board to pass the park district portion of our 2025 budget and this is a good time to celebrate the existence of the park district which is a funding source fully dedicated to parks and recreation services.
Having this fund source helped us make it through the 2025 budget process with some degree of integrity.
And we can give you some more detailed responses on that. And just as a reminder, we are in the cycle two portion of our park district levy.
And in another year or two, we'll start planning for the cycle three Which will come online around 2027, 2028.
So, okay. Keep going forward. In our Parks and Recreational services and environment section, the big windstorm in late December impacted many Seattle parks.
We want to give a huge thanks to our incredible crews for their hard work and dedication in responding.
To the aftermath of the recent winter windstorms. We had many trees down we had many impacts to our community as some of us did in our own neighborhoods and we're really grateful for the ongoing efforts. These are some of the unforeseen
Things that happen in our system like the fires and camp long the windstorms and natural disasters. And so we have to be able to pivot at any moment to try to get these things back online and as safe for the public.
As possible. We have more expanded late 19 programs, which is really fantastic. This is last month I was there to celebrate the 40th or 50th.
Anniversary of the Seattle Teen Late Night Program, 40 years i think And it's really just fantastic and amazing. And our community centers offer late night programs. Sometimes it's late in the summer as 12 at night or 1230.
Keeping kids off the streets and giving them opportunities to thrive with through sports and art and music and all kinds of really fun things. And so we were really happy that The budget included some continuation and expansion of hours at our teen center. So we're going to be continuing that through 2020.
Five, which is pretty exciting. Okay. We also always are participating and up for good community celebrations and as a continued tradition, we led over 175 youth participants through the annual Martin Luther King Day March and celebration, which was around different parts of the city. There was many festivals and activities and youth-led marches, which were fun. We were there to kind of support them and shepherd along the way, but that's something that our Parks and Recreation
French really loves to do and really proud of that continued community celebration this year.
And… Briefly, we talked about some of the park, the Camp Long fire damage. So we'll have more reports on this we are we have fully clear, not fully cleared fully uh fully fenced and safeguarded the site and working with insurance adjusters and working with other
Remediation to start getting some estimates and to look at the full scope and survey of the damage.
And it's been stabilized. That's the word I was looking. It's been stabilized.
Obviously not for public use, but we are keeping our eye on this facility and we're dedicated to come up with a plan to bring it back as quickly as possible and not have it be a site that's just taken offline for
Years and years. So we are working on that. I want to give some updates on park projects. So you can see some enhancements continuing here on the South Park Plaza the new 0.85 acre park is at the gateway of the South Park community connecting to a growing pedestrian and bicycle trail system in southwest seattle
And it has lots of art and landscaping and an overlook in three areas of play and tiled seat walls and lighting and it's expected to be substantially completed early this year. And so we're really excited about that and would love for any of you to come out and celebrate when we do the big community mailing.
So community's been waiting a long time for this project and we're really excited to begin to deliver it.
Thank you. We did some prayer paddle installations this year last year at city Excuse me, late last year at City Hall Park and an installation of prayer paddles created by the tulalip tribe an artist, Ty Juvenal was a prominent display at City Hall Park.
And the paddles honor the Coast Salish people, which is often underrepresented in our region cultural landmarks. And so we were excited to be able to display them here.
Next slide. Some upcoming events for the community. We have our Bitter Lake at Bitter Lake Community Center. We'll be having pancake breakfast.
On February 23rd, as well as Loyal Heights Community Center on March second. And then we will have a public meeting at Beersheva Park Play Area Design.
On February 8th to begin discussions about the Rainier Beach urban farms and wetlands as part of that.
Continuous improvement of this area down at Vership Park. Unfortunately, related to the windstorm damage, their new amphitheater was I don't know, crushed is too strong a word, but a tree fell Right on the roof. Yeah, it's a stage yeah the roof covering and you're correct there was any update on whether that insurance will cover i was just thinking like in time for the summer
There's some time element there of getting it fixed in time for something there. Yeah, I think we are using some of our what we call um major maintenance or emergency funding to try to improve that and bring that online before the summer, the repairs to it.
And that's our report.
Yeah, I just wanted to make one comment about the late night opinion.
They made the late night Hall of Fame and honor like all the staff.
That was really a beautiful event to be able to celebrate all the people that are doing this work in our city and our system.
I appreciate your presence, you and Christopher, the year to celebrate all the people that are doing that work to you.
I told everyone they're there. My job, they're the ones who have created labored and loved this program for the past 40 years. And it's my job Is it 40? I keep saying that. Yeah. I'm looking at Michelle, not you. This girl's like, Michelle, why are you looking at me? Yeah, so 40 years.
But I set my job. Our job is to make sure that it can take for another 40 and Yeah, thank you for saying that. That's a great event.
So. Okay. All right.
All right. Athletic facilities? Yes, I'm going to invite up my colleague, Lisa nelson have our athletic scheduling an event scheduling
I was going to introduce you. I can't find my notes, but I will turn it over to you.
Walk us through this presentation.
Hi, everyone. I'm Lucy Elsa. I'm the athletic scheduling manager, and I've joined a couple of times virtually, so it's nice to meet you in person this time and actually quite perfect because hearing all those volleyball comments, it's great to be in the room and hear those. So I would plan on following up and touch base with them and we'll circle back and remember those issues. So glad they were here.
And so we're here to talk about the use and scheduling of our outdoor athletic facilities policy. And we have done a number of things over the last two years to really try to bring changes forth, but basically align what we are currently doing with the actual policy that is on file and official and transparent to the community. So we're here today to present a little bit of kind of what we've done and how we've kind of worked with the policy.
And share why we revisited it and why it was time to revise the policy itself. And ultimately here to kind of present this so that you all have an opportunity to provide feedback and then determine if it is something that you want to suggest that superintendent signs and moves forward so we can formally update that at the city clerk's office.
As I said, I'm Lisa Nielsen and folks that were a part of this were a couple of our senior athletic schedulers that were formerly with us for a number of years are no longer, one of which William was actually in a different unit. So he's still here, which is fantastic because he actually helped us dig into the data for our athletic field use policy data analysis when we were looking at all of our field
Field hours and how they're scheduled. And then Chris and Shalandra are current senior athletic schedulers and Shalandra works as well as volleyball folks and scheduling volleyball fields.
And then Shawnee Anika McElroy got us to this point in terms of fine tuning everything that we had put together over the course of the last two years and ensuring that it was in the right place to bring it here tonight and to our directors a couple weeks ago.
So why update the policy? Frankly, it's an updated policy. It is from 2002 and it is over the course of the last 20 plus years has moved into a direction that a lot of the things that were in that current policy are just irrelevant and they're very specific and they identify things differently than how things are currently functioning. And so we wanted to better align the policy to our current use and provide transparency to the public and to our community field users for how things are actually scheduled and kind of name how those are happening right now.
So wanted to create clarity for our organizations as to like, as I said, the process of scheduling and how we allocate our field inventory time.
And five of the critical points that we address are maximizing our fields. As you know, we have a very finite supply and we have a very, very high demand. And so want to be as efficient as possible and maximize the use of all of our playfields across the city. Historical use governs a vast majority of how our fields are allocated. And so that had a one liner in the previous policy, but really governs about 80% plus of how our fields are scheduled and rolled over year to year and season to season. And there are capital improvements obviously have different impacts in displace depending on SPS projects and SPR projects and reallocation of fields accordingly during those time frames.
Our joint use agreement with Seattle Public Schools felt like that needed a little bit more transparency as to kind of the rules and regulations of that and also referencing that in a way that is more general so that the joint use agreement itself can be the dictating document as that currently gets updated every three to five years.
And then scheduling prioritization, just naming for the public kind of what happens and who gets first priority on these fields as we go along.
So part of this, as I mentioned, 20 plus years old policy so we uh part of, I think, the way the policy unit here at SQR is moving forward is taking a look at these policies and determining what needs to be in the form of policy and what can then be in a procedural document. The procedural document can then get updated a little bit more regularly without having to go through the vast hoops and processes that we need to for the formal policy itself. So we really parsed it out. So what is in the policy itself
Is not as specific, but then there are references to these other documents that actually have all of those specifics named.
As I mentioned earlier, clarifying our historical use policy and then our scheduling prioritization and also incorporating our capital improvement project accommodations and kind of what we do when those projects take place and displace our field users.
So the disaggregation of policy and procedures. So what was retained in the policy document itself was prioritization of youth programming that does govern a majority of our use on our athletic fields, over 75% on both our synthetic fields and our grass fields is use and then scheduling prioritization thereafter kind of naming well if people come at the same time wanting the same exact time and same exact field and they get their applications for that time and space and at the same exact time.
Then who does it go to and how do we allocate that and being specific there. Again, just naming and clarifying how the historical use is in kind of goes through our process and what the specifics are for how our schedulers say and who has had this field for the course of the last couple of years, giving them that first historical use.
Priority on that field, and then just general scheduling guidelines that work really particularly named in the policy 20 years ago. And then what we moved out of the policy into the procedural document is It's more of the regular special hours of our field, more of those more granular in the weaves details. Our permitting seasons and the various seasons of sports that take priority in fall would be soccer and spring would be baseball, softball.
And expanded detail of some of those joint use agreement dates and times and prioritization for SPS.
Expanded detail of our historical use and then kind of a new field time allocation process that I'll address in just a little bit.
So the use and scheduling hierarchy, Seattle Public Schools, our joint use agreement kind of is one of the bigger partnerships that we have. We get to let our community users use SPS fields.
Till a certain time and SPS gets to use our fields until a certain time. So that governs the majority of our field use from about 3 p.m. As far as after school until 545 on our fields and then 7 p.m. On their fields. Sps has priority during those times.
After that is when it goes to community use. And so that is a majority of hours in a partnership with SPS. And those details are, as I said, negotiated about every three to five years for the joint use agreement.
Our historical community historical use. So once we get outside of the JUA times, then it's a community use that get priority and historical use essentially if you've had that field and that date and time during that season, if you continue to have that two years in a row, that essentially kind of becomes your consistent time throughout so and each spring, that those times will just get rolled over year to year. As long as you have them and you keep them and you continue to say that those are the times that I would like
So getting a little bit more in the nitty gritty there. And then the remaining field capacity, which quite frankly is very little after both of those two, then it goes priority goes to SPR use programs, community youth programs.
Spr adult programs and community adult programs.
So this all kind of kicks off in 2023 when we went through our strategic plan um equity analysis in our fields and dug a little bit deeper into who are the user groups that are utilizing our fields and who are the participants that are making up those user groups utilizing our fields.
So we surveyed our top 100 historical user groups and gathered some demographic data from them. From there, we kind of did a full analysis of the hours used on the fields and kind of the racial makeup and potentially underrepresented folks that are a part of these different groups, how many hours are allocated to those groups versus the other. So I have presented a little bit on that. I think it was a About a year ago. And so there's some reference there. But one of the things that came out of our analysis of the field use time and also the user groups that are making up or participating on the field during those times
Is that our historical use policy as it is, is a little bit challenging. It's pretty rigid and it's not necessarily super equitable, frankly. And so it leaves us little room to build in equity and an equitable procedure for scheduling new and emerging user groups. So what we were able to identify were when we have opportunity and where we have opportunity to be intentional about scheduling folks into that new time that might come into our inventory is when we convert a natural grass field to a synthetic
Turf fields. So in our system we close down our athletic fields that are grass in mid-November. Then they reopened March 1st. So that's three and a half months right there that we don't have anybody having historical use during that time. But when we make it playable year round, then That's new time that comes into our system, which is very, very rare and a very, very hot commodity. So we didn't want to just say, well, flippantly, we'll just give it to the groups that ask and that want more time and have a lot of time already. So what we've done is we've kind of created a new field allocation process where we'll kind of go out to the communities and
Work with our communications department to hopefully reach communities that historically have barriers to accessing any new field time. And when I say field time, I mean regular recurring field time that you can count on.
And that you could maybe build and structure a new lake farm or something like that. Not a two hours here and a two hours here every other week.
So that is kind of one of the larger main things that comes out of our transition from not having time and putting hand out or kind of landlocked by the amount of fields that we have and the demand that we do see.
I won't spend too much time on this. I know we're already running behind, but this is a little bit of the breakdown of some of the demographic data that we've asked and gathered via our survey. So in the bottom left, you can see the number of organizations
That offer different sports, obviously baseball, softball is a major one and soccer are many of our major users, but not far behind that is lacrosse. And we have very, very limited number of lacrosse fields. And so that, you know, presents an interesting challenge with demand and supply.
I think it's less than a dozen of our fields are aligned for lacrosse. So as that has continued to be a new and emerging sport Additionally, one of our questions was asking our historical user groups to identify what percentage of their participants are serving an underserved population. So that could be BIPOC, LGBTQ, low income.
And as a part of That we can see here, a number of organizations with percentage of underserved. Right here is kind of identified. Most user groups, unfortunately, 24 of our, I think it was 94 respondents didn't respond to that question. I think because frankly, they don't gather that data and information and they didn't feel comfortable giving us an arbitrary number on that front, which we do appreciate. But the other ones were able to answer. And so as you can see kind of the breakdown there.
But this just gave us a little bit more information about our user groups and the age groups are there. Blue is our youth. So as we said, it is about over 70% of strictly youth groups are utilizing our fields and
And there's obviously that gray is youth and adult so nearly 80% there.
So then what we did, I know this is a bit busy of a slide, but we just brought both the utilization of the hours by all of these different user groups and then kind of referenced it around what their response was to participants that are underserved in their
And then we can kind of see over the course of the last 10 years of data how that has increased for certain groups and how that has not increased much for other groups and the participants that they serve.
With 2020, COVID. It was. So we really didn't utilize 20 and 21 as a part of this. So it's 10 years, but it's really minus 20 and 21 because those are very, very unique years, of course. Great question.
So ultimately, what we found out of this was that the policy, as we started to dig into it, is just really outdated and irrelevant to how our current scheduling processes happen.
We took a little snapshot of one of our highest utilized seasons is spring. And from March to May, weekdays between 4 to 9 p.m. On Seattle Park's lighted synthetic fields The utilization breakdown is there. So on average, about 88% of our field time is being used in that season and any of those gaps, the other 10% is like a 15 minutes in between a reservation. It's not meaningful recurring time that somebody might be able to count on on a weekly or seasonal basis.
So the wrap-up is ultimately, as we dug into this further and further, we were trying to identify where can we do something that starts to make this a little bit more equitable in the ways in which we can, knowing that the rigidity of how things have evolved over the course of the last 20 plus years
I think back in 2006, we were scheduling 140,000 hours a year. And last year we scheduled 252,000 hours on our athletic fields.
And I think our athletics team this year is going to try to determine, well, what is the ceiling of hours that we can offer? You know, we've increased over 100,000 hours in the last 20 years.
But where do we have to stop? Because we just frankly don't have any more hours to give. So that's an exercise we're going to look into over the course of the next year. But ultimately, getting clarity for our historical on historical use for users just feels like the kind thing to do. Clarity and clear is kind, right? If people don't know how this thing is functioning, then like, how are they supposed to like get their needs met? So we wanted to align our policy more with how things are actually functioning and have transparency around that.
And then as I mentioned, just trying to build in that new process for allocating and being intentional about our new field time that comes on into our inventory and our next upcoming project is our sound you play field up here in Northwest Seattle District. So that will break ground in April and we're hoping to simultaneously kind of run this call for interest so that we can get a new and emerging group, some meaningful time starting in the winter season of 2026. So that is our critical path moving forward and
Certainly a little bit of an added process for our scheduling team, but one we think is well worth it to ensure that we can get some new folks into the system.
And I think that is it for me. Very thorough and very thoughtful approach so thank you One comment I heard about volleyball was like the private company hooks up a lot of the courts all year long. And it made me wonder about accountability for those reservations like
Are they utilizing all the hours they reserve? Is there any check and balance that is possible for your team to actually make sure that they're not just squatting on reservations that they're being utilized?
Yeah, I mean, that's a fantastic question. I think the reality is we don't staff all of our courts. We don't staff all of our fields. So we don't necessarily have the eyes on it as the users that are out in the field, you know, either participating or seeing, you know, side by side.
We tend to know that most of our user groups that are booking those fields are using them because they're accountable to people that are also paying the fees for using those of those fields. And so they tend not to grab and just go unused. We certainly encourage our other field users or port users that are out there. Hey, if you're seeing somebody that is recurring or a date and time that you're seeing somebody there and we're telling you it's booked and you can't have it, but you're not seeing anybody out there every week at this date and time.
Please let us know because we want to hold that user group accountable too. So we do communicate that as much as we can with our playfield users and our court users. But there is an element of also wanting to be mindful as that other Playfield user, I don't want to be the tattletailer, but we're all kind of fighting for this limited time, right?
But we certainly encourage them reaching out to us because we will ask, you know, we'll say, hey, you can't just grab and not utilize. We want to maximize the efficiency of our system.
Thank you. Yeah. Super quick. Again, appreciate the thoughtful, helpful approach, especially around around making sure that underserved communities are able to access these spaces.
A fund that will first underserved on the first slide with underserved, the previous one. Underserved populations represented the second chart.
Does that mean the proportion of organizations that report any participants that are in these groups.
So that one right there, I believe, is the count of um the count of user groups reporting, because in the survey they were able to kind of check a box whether whether it be and they can check multiple at a time so it's not unique. They could only choose one of these but if they have an organization that has a makeup of, you know, BIPOC LGBTQ, then they would put both of those in there.
That's probably a little bit less straightforward of a slide, frankly, in a graph because I think it's saying that most, so 60 of these groups did say that they had Black Indigenous people of color are part of their participants.
Of the 115 organizations? I think that was 94. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Thanks.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
No, I had my hand raised here briefly, and I think Tricia might have had a comment first.
Tricia, did you want to? Wayne, I saw you had a comment in the chat.
Oh, sure. So yeah, I had a couple of comments. So one.
I wanted to find out what was the data in terms of how you were able to address the inequity in 2024 so I did hear you you know offer an I guess one example but one example does the actual qualitative and quantitative data show that what you did was successful in 2024 in terms of
Addressing the inequities because it sounds like you identified that there were inequities Earlier than 23 but what was the actual plan and did data prove out that it was successful?
And also, are you drilling down more in terms of BIPOC or is that all throwing us all together? So Black, Indigenous Asian, everyone together, Latino, Black of Latino origin. So was that for all of us or specifically for black and indigenous.
Yeah, thanks for your question. So to start out with the first one We began this evaluation in early 2023 and i don't I was, I think I got here mid-2022 in this role. And so I'm not aware of any kind of longer
Evaluation or analysis of this nature that may have taken place prior to the beginning of 2023 that was kind of set forth in our strategic action plan.
To do this equity analysis to better understand that the hours used on our fields. And so that's when and where we started to dive into it.
So there wasn't any real action taken, I would say, yet as far as based on this survey.
And the information that we've We gathered. But through that process.
Process it was identified that where we might have an avenue to go ahead and implement some sort of change But we, you know, in all candor to make this equitable, we would have to burn the whole thing down and start from scratch. And so truly to make that an equitable system there would be
There would be a much larger, much more broad process to start everybody on the same level playing field.
And so that's where the challenge over time of 20 plus years where historical use really started to, it seems, take hold as kind of the governing way of which groups could have continuity season to season, year to year.
So are fighting this sliver of a road is essentially kind of what we're putting forth in terms of updating this policy and also having that be incorporated.
In a way that we can start to carve out some intentionality versus just having historical use continue to govern the direction that we go.
So I hope that answers a bit of your first question.
Then as far as the second question. Yes, that did lump any BIPOC group into the same category. We didn't break that out and drill that down even further.
Because we were fortunate to at least get some sort of data. I think a lot of these user groups don't necessarily gather that demographic data in that detail either. I think we were at least trying to gather something along those lines. It might not have been everything and
Certainly didn't drill down into those specific categories further.
Okay i just want to clarify so we're saying that there were not any strategic plans to address inequity before 2023 Because I understand that you started at a certain point but nor I want to say normally i'm saying fairly confident in Seattle that there have been plans before 2023.
Three to address inequity. And I know when you're starting, you probably looked at that information to develop the strategic plan for 24 so that's what I would just love to know if there's any longitudinal data or some sort of data to show that there's been progress.
I'm… I guess I do have wonderings in terms of not dividing Not dividing or identifying more based on our different I'll say as being people of color, particularly because I, you know, you know, having worked with King County, we address black and indigenous
For a while and because there was a focus on inequity there So I would just love to see more data and if you do have, I understand that you said that we don't have enough time to you know go through this now but if you could have anything that
You could share with us so that we could review And hopefully serve as a thought partner.
I have some concerns. Thank you.
Yeah. We can definitely go back in the books. I don't know what I don't know prior to my arrival, but we'll definitely dig deeper and see what else has been done prior to kind of early 23 or even 2022.
Ryan, you want to jump in really quickly?
Yeah, and just I'll try to be very brief. Just to echo Trish's concerns I really encourage thinking about how to create more space, both in pursuit of equity and then also to accommodate new and growing sports. So one thing I might suggest is trying to gather some data from your historical use providers around is their usage in terms of
Participants actually going up year over year, going down And trying to think about a way to perhaps question or push pack a little bit more where you don't have, we have historical users whose usage of those fields Is it growing or is it growing as rapidly as other sports in order to create more space
To improve equity. So I realize that's controversial, but I'd really encourage you to look at not just Are they booking the same hours? But are you actually being able to benefit the most people out of that limited resource?
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a great point. We do have those numbers in terms of what was reported as far as at least in the year that they filled out the survey, how many users are part of their organization. And I remember looking at that at one point too and it doesn't
Necessarily equate as far as the number of hours that some organizations hold and the number of participants that they serve. So yes, there's definitely some
Yeah.
Yeah, and I understand sports are very different in team sizes and their need of space and all things like that. But just thinking about how to accommodate and maybe trying to push a little bit on some of those historical users where they're not growing as much and maybe even trying to get that as sort of on, there is a self-reported, but ongoing data that might help you.
We're trying to manage that. And then I just had one super brief process question at the start of this You said one of the outcomes of this is that you were looking to seek approval. Is that basically You're looking for do
We need to vote on this in a future meeting. Is that the request?
Yeah, there will be a vote on this in a future meeting after, I believe, a public hearing that is scheduled
Great. Look forward to that. And I look forward to actually seeing the actual wording proposed changes and just being able to skim through that before.
Vivona, so thank you.
Did I miss something? I apologize if I… Yeah. Okay. Sorry.
I thought that that had been sent out prior to this meeting, so my apologies. We have those documents that we'd sent in, so I'm sorry I didn't make it your way before this meeting. So we will use
It would be great to see always in advance. Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. Is Ben still on or Ben drop? Ben dropped off. But we can easily send that. Thanks. I'm sure.
Thank you, Lisa. We started with Todd and we're going to end with Todd. Really quickly, I'm Thank you for that you're here. I want to acknowledge and I want to apologize that I didn't reference your public comment about Denny Blame when I was speaking about
The other two, it was on my list that wasn't intentional. So I was glad that you we're here. And I just wanted to say to everyone uh Thank you. We take those concerns very seriously. And I hope you're also
Sharing that information with SPD as well. Of course, yeah. Yeah, we can yeah unfortunately Yes. And I understand there's bigger issues fentanyl and all of that and crime stuff of a sexual nature at this perk in particular is Not acceptable yeah so
That's helpful. I have a good dialogue with some of the SPD, so I will be following up with them about that, particularly the daytime use and the times. I noted that so Anyway, I wanted to acknowledge that, commissioners. So yes, so Todd Burley, our sustainability advisor, and Stephanie Shelton, our natural resource unit manager
Are here and are going to go through the native plant policy updates as our final presentation for the night. All right. We will try to be snappy. That's a little longer than 90 seconds. That's not a good word when you're talking about trees. I'm snapping.
For all the storm damage that was done. Yes, I agree.
So just some little bit of background. We've had to name a plan policy for some time now. It's been about 15 years since it was last written, though.
And I'm so sorry about this. I hope it doesn't leave in the middle of this.
So as part of our review, which Lisa mentioned, just looking at our policies, this was one that we thought, you know, with some of the considerations of climate change and equity and other things that are much more present for us in the city right now.
This would be a good one to look at and also a good one to help us reass and move forward with best priority in our department. We'll talk about why But the process has been going on. I think I may have presented to a previous group
At one point in the past, but it's taken a while and we've had some staff changes and other hiccups. So this is Really excited to be here on the pre-public hearing meeting to move us through the process.
So my hope is to provide a brief overview of our current policy and the implementation.
Summarize some of the updates that we're proposing and modifications, which are not substantial luckily And then share some of the issues that we're aware of and some of our plans and then get your feedback, of course.
So as I mentioned, the policy is 15 years old. We try to update our policies every five years or so if we can do it. And so this one's one long overdue. And I mentioned some of the considerations that climate change we're thinking of, but also things change in 15 years.
Different standards that are out there, the different reference documents and organizations that we collaborate with.
And we've, as a city, made a lot of commitments toward biodiversity and ecosystem health.
And other things that we wanted to ensure were incorporated into this.
So we brought together a group of people. It has shifted over the years, but this is the most recent group As you'll see, we have ecologists, we have gardeners, we have our greenhouse supervisor, we have landscape architects, crew chiefs, water managers. We're trying to bring in all the subject of
Subject matter experts that we could without the group getting too unwieldy.
And it was just a really robust conversation over this time to get the policy to where it is at right now that we're presenting to you.
The only person that's not here anymore is Michael Yetter. He moved down to Tacoma that caused some trouble down there.
But he contributed a lot, so he gets a spot still.
So I'm going to pass it over to Stephanie now. We talked a little bit about you know first subject matter expertise.
Thanks for having me. Thank you, Todd. Yes, we are sadly missing medley objects, so thanks for that. And it was a lot of cats to her, but I really want to give Todd credit for the fact that we were here a couple of years after we started, just really doing a robust process, getting input. So thanks for having me. I'm Stephanie Sheldon, the National Research Manager and Parks and Environment.
I'm excited to see this policy update happen. You know the land care work that we are involved with, with maintaining and restoring urban forests and parks citywide this is really, this is our value this is the work that we do. So the idea here is to really, in a really intentional way, pull this work into some of our developed parks in a more meaningful way.
The plants that we're talking about in this policy are really, I want to flag, are really part of complex ecosystems.
Really not just talking about plants we're talking about soil microorganisms, soil mycorrhizae, birds, mammals, all of these things have co-evolved together as systems.
And when we talk about regenerating ecosystems, we talk about systems that make those things self-sustaining.
Seeds generate a groin. Big trees, older trees, and you have all generations of plants happening together with a minimal touch. So we also understand that indigenous cultures who have lived here since time immemorial have been managing these ecosystems historically. Coast Salish tribes were active stewards of the land they cleared.
Burns. They supported food systems on these landscapes. So we tend to think about these things in wilderness as being non-human, but these have been very much managed systems historically. It's important to point out.
I was joking with Todd that I got to have the cute chickadee on my slide and that reminded me. I looked it up. Chickadeas.
This is kind of a case in point to the ecosystem approach here is the chickadees um requires 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars when they feed one clutch of babies in one season. And so where do those caterpillars come from? They come from
Hawthorns the alders, the native roses, beet hazelnuts so Understanding that native plants are part of ecosystems is a critical thing and we do that. We look at these systems collectively, not as individual plant pellets to support biodiversity.
And then last, you know, I think we think about the aesthetic quality of plants, but sense of place is really critical. When you walk out of our houses and to our park systems or out of our offices and the park systems.
It shouldn't look like Chicago. It shouldn't look like Atlanta. It should look like Seattle. That's why so many of us live here. We love this this place and planting native plants and really leaning into that in order to build parts help us to kind of root to an understanding of place. And I think that's really critical. Next slide.
Oh, sorry. Thank you. So our climate is changing for the warmer. The trajectory is really sobering. I know KP and I had benefit of getting some really sobering news out of COP16.
Scientists are now planning for a three to read. Three degree temperature range over the next three couple of decades as opposed to 1.5. So being prepared for that, being resilient is really part of building kind of our ecosystems in our urban systems as well. So making sure park landscapes have thoughtfully established robust landscapes and we're
For this in 2040, 2050 is really part of why update to this is really important.
We know there's strong public support for strength in our commitment to native plants. We've also shared these updates and done tribal engagement through, I know Todd, I think a year ago, presented to the Urban Advisory Council.
There's a lot of strong support for the work that we're doing to improve biodiversity in our park systems.
Next slide. This is my last slide and then Todd's going to wrap up. So just want to circle back on some of the core concepts that are in the policy update.
First, we really want to align our understanding and our definition of native plants.
We have Seattle Municipal code that we reference that we want to be in alignment with. So we sort of reiterated that We talked a little bit, a lot of conversations right now in the scientific community about assisted migration. You may have heard of the idea of people bringing bread foods and planting them in the Northwest. So we really kind of clarified what our
Position is around that, leaving some wiggle room. We really are looking at assisted migration in a pretty narrow way, thinking about it from more of a population standpoint. So we think about Douglas first, for example, extending from Northern California up to Canada, we're really looking at doing genetic sourcing from the southern part of our region and
Using those more locally as kind of a way to prepare rather than kind of moving things up. And we want to align with best available science and work with other regional folks in the Department of Natural Resources on those things.
Firstly, we want to use best practice. The motto here is source locally.
And we have exemptions that are part of this policy that I really want to call out that are important that are places where Native tasks are not appropriate where we have land uses or land management uses that are different so
When we have park spaces that are managed for sports and recreation, for food production, we have a landmark status park spaces and we have horticultural collections so we really called out these exemptions and the policy to make sure that we were doing them
Where appropriate. And we also have some language to give us a little more wiggle room with our native with our tree or her canopy, we want to align with the urban forestry management plan and make sure we have a more diverse palette to make sure that we're prepared for climate change
And our urban trees. So I'm going to turn it back to Todd.
Okay, so with all that in mind. As Stephanie mentioned.
We had a lot of conversations about what is a native plant and how do you find it where then we discovered what's actually in the municipal code. So that's what it is as a city apartment. So we aligned with that within our policy And the current policy has an 80% goal.
And one of the points on the previous slide was that data is really hard to get. So we realized that there was really no way to measure how many native plants we have in there. Just as an example.
Let's say we have about 500,000 trees in our park system, but we don't know what all those individual trees are, what species they are, anything like that. So it was a unrealistic goal because we couldn't measure against it and track our progress.
So instead we move towards prioritization and just really making sure that through all of our design and landscape architecture and all of our work that's done in the parks physically that we are leaning into natives that that's native plants and that's our goal.
Stephen talked about the population migration, which is bringing that dug her from Northern California or the Mona Valley.
Up here as a way to keep the native species, but also to adapt to climate change so that's integrated within the policy. And then we did allow as kind of like a, and if you can't do native plants like that, then maybe you can start doing some species migration in a thoughtful way like bringing a redwood
That's just outside of the range or incense cedar or something like that. I'm looking at stuffing my convenience.
Not quite. She'll correct me there. You guys can argue, of course. Yeah. So… We're leaving a little bit over there, but it's like leaning into native plants Seed sourcing, she talked about that.
Exemptions, she talked about that. And then the rest is just kind of administrative stuff, you know, updating who's responsible for doing what, making sure we've thought about that comprehensively And also just updating the references and the definitions like I mentioned at the beginning.
And so if you do not have the policy in front of you, we will make sure that you do get that.
As I mentioned, there were not significant changes to it. Just a few tweakings around the edges, but a lot of rewording, so it's hard to do a red line version, but we can send the old and the new one to you.
And we look forward to having a public hearing and a vote in the future.
Okay. Thank you. We need to work with Ben to make sure that policy gets sent around. Yeah. Okay.
Okay, thanks. Any quick questions for me?
I assume since you're aligning to the municipal code definition of native, it made sense and you guys were happy with it or is it like I guess what, in a nutshell, how is it aligned to what you thought the definition would end up being?
Yeah, I would say they're in the discussion over the years. This was actually one of the big points. There was one line of thinking that was what we had in there before, which is lower Puget Sound trough.
So if you think of a map of the rest of the Cascades down the water that sort of That's kind of the region that was mentioned.
And then there was some desire and conversation to expand it to all of the Cascadian bioregion, which is southeast Alaska over to Montana.
Down into Northern California. The municipal code is more that lower puget sound trough. It doesn't use that exact language, but that's more the essence of it.
It's fairly generally worded. It's naturalized in the Puget Sound region.
And frankly, changing the municipal code definition as a city council action requires that's beyond our scope and our policy so And it sort of sets the baseline for us, but we can certainly, you know, departments can do I mean, we have so much touch and different things that a lot of times the municipal code looks at you know other public rights away and things so they're more limited and should just kind of maybe generally be like
The Puget Sound area, like it says but i think in parkland we have so much that we can do even more It's just a minimum of trying to put lines of it.
Is there anybody online? We can't see the Zoom call? Anybody who had a question in the panel?
So let me stop sharing. I apologize about that.
All right. Thank you very much. Michelle. The types of palm trees.
Not quite yet, right? I know.
Thank you all for, I'm going to do a little bit of housekeeping from the retreat. But first, I want to apologize i think Paula heading out on vacation.
And that feeling great we had this communication about what should have been attached to your agenda so we do have briefing papers on both these policies and the old and new version all packaged together sitting somewhere in purgatory. So we will uh
I've done that. Bye. I'm not going to bug then tomorrow, but on Monday we'll hit send and that will all be preparing you for a public hearing on February 20 or something i don't remember the date um whenever that next
In-person meeting is. And then we'll list it as a public hearing and possible vote. So if you feel comfortable at the end of the public hearing and what you heard tonight.
You can juice to vote on whether or not you recommend AP.
Go with that policy or you can table it if there's more dialogue or deliberation you want to have at that meeting.
So thank you, Stephanie and Todd. Heather Home. Similarly, somewhere in purgatory, I think, given what your blank faces are looking at, I believe we have updated slightly updated the operating procedures from our conversation and November at our retreat. And one of the key points is that when we're ever going to have a possible vote, we're going to send stuff out in advance so
Funny to be me today. So I will get back to you all also on Monday.
And the thing I'm going to give you on a piece of paper, and I'll read it out, it's not too hard. It's just which subcommittee each of you are being recommended to be on.
Don't have to move forward with this if you have to move forward with I don't know if that alarming thing I couldn't see for me.
Thank you. So at the retreat, one of the things we had was which subcommittees folks want to beyond and as we set our schedule for this year, we have our for sure meetings And then we have holes for subcommittees or maybe issue specific
Meetings and so we we took all of your preferences and came up with a draft recommendation, a staff recommendation based on what we heard from folks in I think everybody got their first or second choice except for Philip who wasn't there. So you get what
And then we'll have an awkward conversation about our exec committee, which is Another big topic for the next couple months.
So on the naming committee, this helps And we have new parks or issues like that, we want to have a group to help us with naming we have recommended Stafford, Elise.
And Amaya. On the park community fund uh whitney steve In the manual. And on the performance group that justin is painted the bit to get some time to schedule, but we're recommending Trisha, Ryan john and john Ella.
And then right now our tech committee Mostly Justin and Amy, whose term ends at the end of March and April.
So just to share any news? And we were just asking if it went to the whole board. I don't think so.
Sure. Justin also will be leaving the board, I think, right at the same time.
At the end of March. So that leaves two blank slots on the executive committee and in the co-chair so that is something to be adapted.
So yes, so we would like you all to Amy, ponder if… That's an interest area for folks to step into a co-chair and contact me if you have questions or Paula next week if you have questions.
Chat more with Amy and And maybe I'll just add real quickly to the executive committee is a very short, quick half hour, but it's a really helpful pre-look at some of the things. So some of the questions that come here, sometimes we can address them.
Ahead of time at that meeting. So it's been really helpful and interesting.
And we've sometimes had more than two, more than just the co-chairs, so it's possible to have an extra personality on that puzzle?
So… for folks on the call just so I can say it again for you guys. So Ryan, we are recommending you on the performance Team, Steve, the Park Community Fund.
Team, Whitney, Park Community Fund. Trisha performance and then maya park naming so
I don't know if it needs an official vote or if anyone has
I had a quick question just for Amy. Any… Is your term as chair?
Up or you the board up.
Oh, sorry. My turn. On the board at the end.
So that is all of a sudden very soon. But if we vote to re-up her.
Sound like maybe not. All right. I tried to sacrifices.
If the hour like if these hours Would you prefer five o'clock start time you know as opposed to 630. Yeah. I mean, I know all of you somebody's work, you have responsibilities, but we also don't want to like on tonight it's late and
You know, so sometimes with things, but be a good time to to talk about that too. We didn't. Yeah.
We're here, but I'll leave that up to you all. I suspect I'm in the minority with this opinion, but the later the better.
Yeah, this time works really well. Five o'clock would be untenable.
Just because I have kids and need to do a transition after work hours i think it's helpful to do later. Okay.
Yeah, there's no way I'd be able to get to a meeting at five.
Someone just said that online.
And I do think the public comment would probably be harder earlier for people to also have to get here after work so Don't fix it if it's not broken.
I just wanted to offer that just in case yeah we're here. Turns out that was a good decision.
Okay. So we're going to move.
I just want to say I appreciate AP and the staff all being available in the evening. I do think it helps for better public engagement.
So we will send the operating procedures on Monday as well.
And writing so people all have it but if you have any concerns about this that you don't want to share publicly tonight Please let me know. I'm happy to.
I don't succeeded. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody, and thank you to the staff for pinch hitting on all this stuff. That's really an interesting evening.
The things that you do. Amy, JP, can I ask a question about the names I think we can… And then you can ask. So we're just going to, in case people won't go, but you can.
Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, folks, online.
Thank youFirst meetings