SPR Boardroom: Okay, welcome. Thanks. Everyone for being here. It's april 10.th I am chair of board of Parks and Rec Commissioners. We'll start with introductions, I guess.
SPR Boardroom: in the room, and then we'll move to the screen.
SPR Boardroom: Brian ball, co-chair boards and commission seats
SPR Boardroom: and commission power hubs as fair staff.
SPR Boardroom: Ben Bertos Seattle Parks and Recreation staff.
Tricia Diamond, PhD: Hi! I'm Dr. Tricia Diamond. I'm 1 of the Commissioners.
Steven Lerer: And Steve Blair, commissioner at large.
SPR Boardroom: So I'll move into the land. Acknowledgement.
SPR Boardroom: Daniel Parks, and recreation acknowledges and affirms the indigenous coast salish people as the original caretakers
SPR Boardroom: of our waters and landscape who nurtured and shaped today's parkland.
SPR Boardroom: We honor their legacy with gratitude and appreciation, and will safeguard their knowledge and stewardship
SPR Boardroom: as enduring treasures to promote community welfare, cultivate inclusive expressions of nature and recreation, and commit to land acknowledgement for each ensuing generation.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, we can't. We can't do. We can do public comment.
SPR Boardroom: and we have 2 people signed up for public comment. So you get your full time today.
SPR Boardroom: Been a little packed the last few weeks. Carrie Christianson.
SPR Boardroom: Denny Blaine Park.
SPR Boardroom: Wednesday afternoon, 3 56 PM. In a busy park. A male gets out of his truck with only socks and shoes on.
SPR Boardroom: he walks to the beach, then back to the parking lot, where he masturbates openly.
SPR Boardroom: Nobody approaches him. A lady walking her dog abruptly changes her direction he gets into his truck and leaves. He was in the park for 10 min.
SPR Boardroom: 8, 45 pm. The chronic masturbator arrives in the park
SPR Boardroom: today at 1258 Pm. The chronic masturbator is in the park.
SPR Boardroom: I call 9 1 1, as he has a warrant for his arrest.
SPR Boardroom: He heads over to Powell Howell Park. I inform 9 1 1. i don't think he was arrested, as Spd. Didn't contact me.
SPR Boardroom: neighbors asking for solutions. The same solutions that were proposed. In 2024 were proposed again parking Enforcement Park Rangers and Spd. Focus neighbors asking for this park to be closed.
SPR Boardroom: Well, by Spr. There would be protests.
SPR Boardroom: I protest, having to see this lewd behavior on a consistent basis in a public park 5 days a week, when at my job, please, please please do something. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you. Thank you, Becky.
SPR Boardroom: I'm Becky, and I'm a resident of District 6, and I'm here to talk to you today about something that I love.
SPR Boardroom: I'm not originally from Washington, but I feel more at home here than any place I've ever lived in my 15 years living in Seattle
SPR Boardroom: 15 years, living in Seattle. I've learned to know cedar trees and vine maples.
SPR Boardroom: salmonberry and thimbleberry, great blue parents, sockeye and chum.
SPR Boardroom: giant moon snails, and the tiny sea slugs.
SPR Boardroom: I've learned stuff carefully around halegrass
SPR Boardroom: at low tide to protect nurseries of tiny foraging fish and eggs.
SPR Boardroom: I've learned how choices I make in my garden.
SPR Boardroom: My home's landscaping and my driving habits impact our ecosystem.
SPR Boardroom: I've learned all these things through Seattle parks and recreation environmental education programs.
SPR Boardroom: I participated for years in these programs to my children, until one day, my 9 year old son, he was like bored of me, asking too many questions, and one of the volunteers, said, Mom, you're such a nature. Nerd, you should just be one of these volunteers.
SPR Boardroom: I was like, you know what you're right. So I became one of those volunteers, I became a salmon steward and a salmon surveyor with heart peak action project, and also as a beach naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium. And these programs truly changed my life. They changed my daily choices, and I hear from countless other visitors when I'm not volunteering that it has the same impact on them. Can't tell you how many times someone tells me like I never knew that. Thank you for telling me that other people want to become volunteers or people tell me
SPR Boardroom: I had salmon in the schools when I was a kid. And now I'm a marine biologist.
SPR Boardroom: Environmental education programs in Seattle help people to really know. The beautiful place where we live.
SPR Boardroom: knowing leads to a sense of belonging
SPR Boardroom: people, will protect the places they feel connected to
SPR Boardroom: Robin. Well, Kimmer says it best in her book, breeding Sweetgrass
SPR Boardroom: being naturalized to a place, and I'm going to keep going. Sorry, being naturalized to a place means to live as if this land, as if this is the land of Youtube, as if there are streams. These are the streams in which you drink that build your body and fill your spirit
SPR Boardroom: here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities.
SPR Boardroom: To become naturalized is to live as if your children's future matters. To take care of the land is, if our lives and the lives of all of our relatives depend on it because they do.
SPR Boardroom: I am so grateful to have been naturalized to Seattle through parks and recreation environmental education programs.
SPR Boardroom: People's not gonna be out of Washington.
SPR Boardroom: help Seattle continue with environmental stewardship by restoring funding for environmental education programs. And I know I'm over my 2 min. But I have to add.
SPR Boardroom: we started with the land acknowledgement, and it was a beautiful land acknowledgement, but I another training that I heard from another person that said, if we do a land acknowledgement without restoration and repair, it's like I feel your bike, and then I just ride my bike around you. And yes, I acknowledge this is your bike. I took it from you, but I don't give you another bike. I don't get you a bus pass. I don't do something else.
SPR Boardroom: I think these environmental education programs are such a beautiful extension of our land acknowledgement because we're raising another generation of stewards and people who are protect and conserve this land. So I think if we're going to start with a land acknowledgement. We should also keep our environmental stewardship in our environmental education programs.
SPR Boardroom: Thanks and thanks for letting me go for time.
SPR Boardroom: Take it past you.
SPR Boardroom: Can you share the quote? It should be required reading for every humanity.
SPR Boardroom: Let's try to get more data.
SPR Boardroom: Oh.
SPR Boardroom: it looks like we got if we can do quick intros for folks who just joined, and then
SPR Boardroom: And then we'll move to our approval and consent items.
John Flinn: Yeah, I can go and then just Fyi, the invite didn't include the zoom link. So I had to fish around a little bit for it. I found it in the agenda, but you might just, if if other commissioners you were expecting, you might just send in a quick email with the zoom links to make sure they have it.
John Flinn: Hey, everybody! I'm John Flynn. I've been a Commissioner since April of 24, and I represent District 3.
John Flinn: Steve.
SPR Boardroom: There you go! Release, at least. Are you there?
Elise Chisholm Clare: I am. Hello! I'll be on camera soon. Hi! I am a Commissioner for District 4. I joined in October of last year, and I, too, had issues with the zoom link. So I was a late arrival. Apologies.
SPR Boardroom: Thanks everyone.
SPR Boardroom: Well, next we'll move to approval, consent items.
SPR Boardroom: And this includes the
SPR Boardroom: this includes the minutes from our March 27th meeting, and today our April 10th agenda.
SPR Boardroom: wondering if there's a motion to approve.
Steven Lerer: Motion to approve.
SPR Boardroom: Second, great, all those in favor.
John Flinn: Hi.
Elise Chisholm Clare: Bye.
Tricia Diamond, PhD: Hi.
SPR Boardroom: Peaks. I believe that was everyone. No post.
SPR Boardroom: Okay. Great. That is approved. And next we will move to superintendent's report.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, great. Let me bring that up on the screen.
SPR Boardroom: Happy Spring. Everyone I was asking my colleagues today is it? Is this one of these Seattle moment? No, you're saying, yes, but some people said, no, they think this is the real thing. It's beautiful. So
SPR Boardroom: so wanted to start with some department updates, this past weekend, we were able to open up this amazing cheryl, Chow Park, down in the Rainier Valley. Cheryl Chow was a former Seattle Council member, a community member and just a lovely person. It was just a great recognition, but it was also this park was long time coming, because it initially started as a very small parcel.
SPR Boardroom: But we took time to acquire other available land around there. And you can see in the second picture there's some condominium developments, and there's a lot of development that's going on there, and
SPR Boardroom: what is now? Parkland would have all been snapped up for that. But we were able to acquire property, land, the bank sites and then put together the funding funding with King County, and the Park is now much bigger. It looks small in these photos, but it's much bigger, and it was just a wonderful celebration, and we were really excited to
SPR Boardroom: deliver that to the community. And a very exciting moment. There's some really cool play structures. There's open space, and there will begin new trees. And
SPR Boardroom: Laura behind, I mean. So that's wonderful, too.
SPR Boardroom: I want to just share some of our. We're now getting ready for our 2025 spring programs. Events and summer camp registration is now open for our spring and summer programs, and we have a
SPR Boardroom: wide range of exciting activities throughout the city, as you know, every year ranging from preschool and school, aged care camps, nature camps, camps for youth, with disabilities. And all this information is available to the public online. And we also just want to continue to stress that we have available financial aid and scholarships. So we try to meet everybody's needs as much as possible, and try not to turn away any child or family.
SPR Boardroom: We hosted 2 scholarship nights, one at Lake City Community Center and one at Lake City. Port staff assisted community members with the application process as well as providing information about upcoming spring programs and free programs. We are continuing with the wreck in the streets program and team job training was also provided.
SPR Boardroom: And we look forward to continuing these programs.
SPR Boardroom: We're excited to announce a pilot program extending the operating hours at Garfield, Meadowbrook and Southwest teen life centers that started on December 18th
SPR Boardroom: this expansion aims to give Seattle's youth, aged 13, to 24 more access to fun, safe and enriching opportunities. Spr's teen life centers offer a wide variety of programming, including special events, late night programs, athletic gyms, workout rooms, recording studios, cooking, recreation, and much, much more so
SPR Boardroom: looking forward to that.
SPR Boardroom: we partnered with the citywide athletics and organization called the Run to create an unforgettable experience for teams across Seattle cam wilder. A Youtube sensation with over 1 million followers visited our city to challenge local hoopers.
SPR Boardroom: basketball hoopers in a fun, high energy basketball game. This mission to entertain and inspire young people drew an enthusiastic crowd of teens and young adults from all over the State. We had an extraordinary turnout of about 200 teens, another 250 young adults, all waiting to come in and meet this special visitor, and we were just excited for that kind of activation.
SPR Boardroom: Turning over to our parks and recreational services branch in the recreation category. Our get moving and recreation for all grants. On March 20 second, our Grants team, in collaboration with the outdoor activation mobile recreation team hosted an orientation for the 2025 get moving and recreation for all Grant recipients at Mount Baker, rowing and sailing. The event celebrated the Awardees and their dedication to serving the community
SPR Boardroom: gathering also provided an opportunity for awardees to network exchange ideas and build meaningful relationships which you can see the shit above and at our South Park Community center programming update during the construction closure Spi is hosting programs at Concord Elementary School. While we await the new community center to be opened up down in West Seattle.
SPR Boardroom: The youth drop-in fitness training pictured below takes place twice a week, drawing 15 to 30 participants each session. This program has been highly praised by both the community and its young participants reflecting its positive impact. And so sometimes we do scheduled programming. But a lot of our most successful programming are drop-in hours where people don't have to be tied to a specific time, but know that it's
SPR Boardroom: available to them. And that's often where we get the most youth participation
SPR Boardroom: might decide things last minute. But wanna have available resources.
SPR Boardroom: Some of our youth engaged service programs, youth, employment and service learning is an important part of our mission. During the last 2 weeks over 100 teens participated in a variety of programs focused on life skills, including cooking classes and career readiness pre-employment training focused on active listening growth, mindset resume writing, financial literacy, completing job applications and interview preparation
SPR Boardroom: staff also participated in outreach at the West Seattle High Career Fair, where 60 youth stopped into Spr. Table to learn about opportunities for youth within our organization.
SPR Boardroom: and we even took a group to the fire cadet training facility in Tukwila on March 20, second, to talk about careers in Emt and firefighting. This tour was led by our Sp. Partners, and the youth had many questions, and out of the 7 that attended 3 have decided to sign up for the program in September.
SPR Boardroom: I'm a big proponent. I was just talking with staff about it. I think one of our best things that we can do for our youth is just to give as much exposure as possible to a variety of things, including nature, because you never know what will tick with a young person and spark an interest that one day they are a marine biologist or a firefighter, or maybe we'll come work at Parks and Rec. So by getting them exposed is the most important part, while they're figuring out their life plans
SPR Boardroom: turning over to our parks and capital development. Want to give some project updates. The Willow Creek Fish Passage Restoration Project. Here we collaborated with Sdot on a Restoration and Habitat Improvement Project in Northeast Seattle Project improvements included, restoring natural habitat and eliminating barriers to Fish migration by redirecting Willow Creek away from a Culbert
SPR Boardroom: improving the creek's habitat, installing a new pedestrian bridge and improving stormwater drainage. A community ribbon cutting celebration was held on March 27th
SPR Boardroom: and we have an update on Beersheba Park cultural state shelter. If you remember that
SPR Boardroom: we opened this beautiful park a new stage, and then we had those terrible wind storms last fall, and the stage was completely damaged by a falling tree. In late November we are working with the Community and the Seattle Parks Foundation on Grant applications and fundraising to replace the structure which is estimated at 300,000
SPR Boardroom: and currently unfunded. The community will now be able to program that space at the former shelter starting this May, but we are hopeful that we can hopefully redeliver that to the public soon, and we have lots of people working that are committed to that.
SPR Boardroom: I want to give an update on the Seattle Conservation Corps. They recently completed phase one improvements for the Park upgrade project at Benefit park in the South Beacon Hill neighborhood. This project expanded the existing picnic area, providing new accessible picnic tables, barbecues, and hot coal bins. They installed new trash recycling plans, replaced park benches and rebuilt sand at the sand plate area.
SPR Boardroom: The park is ready now to welcome the park for gatherings, and there will be a phase, 2 coming forward. I just want to highlight to. The real.
SPR Boardroom: wonderful thing about this story is not only the community's improvements for the park, but just to remind everyone. Another amazing thing about Seattle and about our Parks department is the Seattle Conservation Corps, which is where we work with
SPR Boardroom: individuals who have either been incarcerated, or individuals who have had tough life challenges and are looking for meaningful ways to turn their lives around, improve, get meaningful employment and opportunities to do things. And it's 1 of the best programs that we do in our city. And they work on projects just like this. So
SPR Boardroom: just wanted to highlight that
SPR Boardroom: recent pier. 62 repairs. So in the when you're down at the waterfront, remember all of those wonderful things. There's many park assets interweaved with the new waterfront, including the new ocean pavilion of the Aquarium. That's an Spr. Property, the Overlook Walk Park on top of it, as well as Pier 62, and with
SPR Boardroom: owning a pier can be blessings, and can be sometimes burdens. But one of the pilings for the floating dock at the pier broke on March 6, th through the cooperation of sdot and office of the waterfront as well as global diving, we worked together and were able to remove the broken section of piling, secure the flow and reinstall reattach the broken segment of pilings, the flow reopened to the public on March 20, th so pretty quick turnaround
SPR Boardroom: Genesee play field number 2. This turf replacement is complete and open for scheduling and play, as of early March girls. Lacrosse was the 1st to celebrate on the brand new turf field. And we're excited about that. And just another example of
SPR Boardroom: we love our open spaces and our natural areas. And we'll have many of those, but in also the spirit of being sustainable and being responsible stewards. We do need to look some from time to time at what would artificial turf, but are now
SPR Boardroom: there used to be sort of
SPR Boardroom: some health concerns with those, but the type of infill and things we use are all natural and sustainable, and even the infield is now being made out of bamboo. I mean cork. That is obviously natural. So that's exciting gives more opportunities for kids to play in high demand areas where in the past they've sometimes kids been playing in the mud
SPR Boardroom: for years. Just in the the need to have some spaces that are for
SPR Boardroom: field play the same at Mickey, Merriman, Blake, field number 8, which you see below, and this is a sustainably
SPR Boardroom: newly completed field.
SPR Boardroom: and then the Salmon Bay
SPR Boardroom: Park play area. We're excited to announce the reopening of the Salmon Bay Park Play area located in Canoe Place in Seattle. The fencing at the site came down on Friday, April 4.th We are on Friday, April 4, th officially opening the renovated play area to the public. We invite the community to come, visit and join us for a ribbon cutting celebration. Of course all commissioners and the public are welcome. Sunday, April 27.th From one to 3
SPR Boardroom: at the Park Salmon Base Park, New Park play area as a shining example of how fun, design and community input can come together to create a vibrant, renovated play space that offers an engaging imaginative experience for kids. You can't really tell that this is the older. This is the older photos. These are the new photos. Right? Yeah, you can't really tell. But there's a lot of
SPR Boardroom: themed portions of it that reflects the sand in the bay
SPR Boardroom: overtime maintenance with over 100 outdoor tennis courts and the northwest wet climate tennis courts. Cleaning is a large undertaking to provide a safe and clean surface. South east district cleaning is taking place at Lake Ridge, tennis courts and other places. We're now in the period where we're
SPR Boardroom: getting ready for spring and doing dewinterization and taking care of a lot of our assets that obviously, during the wintertime can accumulate dirt and water and things that need to be cleaned. The same with the 2 ponds at Volunteer Park were part of the original homestead design to showcase aquatic plants. The landscape has evolved over time, but the staff works hard to keep this popular feature attractive and well maintained.
SPR Boardroom: and then you can see a picture at Alki Beach. Our district trucks move sand from the plaza that is built up over the winter from the King tide and storms
SPR Boardroom: responding to our natural environment. Here.
SPR Boardroom: Just a quick update on Park Rangers at Victor Steinbrook Park. By the way, I think, since we last met, and if anybody hasn't seen Victor Steinbrook Park is now open right next to Pike Place Market, and I was there last Saturday, because it was such a beautiful day, and I went there after the Cheryl Chow Park opening, and it was so wonderful to see, like I mean
SPR Boardroom: 50 people or a hundred people just sitting enjoying the sun, having picnics, just, you know.
SPR Boardroom: just enjoying a park. And it's really lovely. And now all connected to the waterfront. And we're just so excited to open that up. And you can see our Park rangers engaging with the public, also recently opening, participating
SPR Boardroom: in a public safety. Town Hall and fair and rangers support our Spr mission for creating safe environments where everyone can enjoy our public spaces. We love our park rangers. We now have 28. When I started we had 2, so we're excited to have that cadre on board, and you can also see them. As I mentioned, this was at a resource fair on March 20 second. So they are out and about
SPR Boardroom: so park activation. Our city center city partner. Events are going on. On Tuesday, March 25, th the Freeway Park Association launched
SPR Boardroom: their 3rd illuminated art event in Freeway Park, called meeting at the balance an equinox, art party and installation. The spring equinox represents a time of changing light and shifting perspective, so the event welcome visitors to embrace this balance into their community and celebrate a collective awakening
SPR Boardroom: with art, light, and performance. The program was funded by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, the Hope Fund and the Department of Neighborhoods. Here in Seattle. This program included 10 installation artists and performance artists and teaching artists.
SPR Boardroom: The initial
SPR Boardroom: installations will be in the park through June 21.st So there's still time for everyone to go through them.
SPR Boardroom: And lastly, thank you.
SPR Boardroom: But again, just a reminder of some of the ways that
SPR Boardroom: we are showing up in community. And another reminder of why Seattle is so amazing because of its parks and all the things we do and and we do keep a focus. And I do thank you for your comments particularly because you can see right. There are 3
SPR Boardroom: mission statements are to create healthy people, a thriving environment and vibrant community. So but with that, if you have any questions, but that's our update. For now
SPR Boardroom: I had a quick question, did you say for the artificial turf?
SPR Boardroom: The plan moving forward is that
SPR Boardroom: all green turfing involves cork? Or you said, all of our parks.
SPR Boardroom: all all of our current surface cork. No, not all of our well, all of our. So we have a
SPR Boardroom: we have a master list of
SPR Boardroom: pretend future sites that will be, oh, okay, yeah. And now every product and every design is done in a way that does not have any of the harmful materials. But we also, there are no
SPR Boardroom: fields in our asset system that have the old material. So, yeah, thank you. Yeah.
SPR Boardroom: Okay.
Elise Chisholm Clare: I had a quick question.
Elise Chisholm Clare: Thanks for that update. Ap. I was curious about the Park Ranger program, and I just wanted to flag. I think we talked about having a future
Elise Chisholm Clare: presentation on that. Perhaps maybe when Christopher was in an earlier meeting, and I was curious whether we have
Elise Chisholm Clare: that on the agenda yet I know not for tonight, but
Elise Chisholm Clare: would love to learn more about it, and I'm glad to hear that the number has gone up to 28, now.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, I'm gonna looking over to our team right here and let's find a date to do that. And then also like to have some of the Rangers come down so you can meet them, and we can talk to them, so we will get that on the list. I don't know that we scheduled it yet, but.
John Flinn: Yeah. And I'll just echo that would love to see as part of that just sort of a recap of last year of like where the hours went, where they spent their hours. And then also, you know, evidence of success or future challenges there. So you know, if the purpose of the Rangers is to reduce
John Flinn: vandalism or crime, or something, you know. Did we see a reduction? Or if it's really just, their main purpose is to increase public engagement and
John Flinn: utilization of the park. You know. How how did that go? So just so, I know sometimes when we we get public comments, a lot of our responses, hey? You know, we have the Park Ranger program, and they're in park. So to helping make sure, these things run smoothly. And so I think for for the Board, it's just a chance to to get a report back on. How are the Rangers doing it? Meeting that goal? So just plus one to release his comment, would love to see that soon.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, we actually just looked. And we do have it penciled in for June.
John Flinn: Awesome. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Interesting.
SPR Boardroom: I had one brief comment, great to see all the activity. Thanks for the update. I spent a bunch of time browsing the summer camp line up. I'm very excited to see that it looks great this year. I'm sure there's a lot that goes into this. But one of the challenges is that almost all the other summer camp programs come out early.
SPR Boardroom: So I just went through scheduling this for my my job this summer. And departments are amazing. They're well priced. They will be available.
SPR Boardroom: But they're announced later than almost all the other summer programs in the area.
SPR Boardroom: So if there's any parent who's
SPR Boardroom: My! I was told by the person who runs community Center that many years ago that that was to allow working parents time for scheduling. Let's say
SPR Boardroom: it's unusual that you, as a dad, might be doing the
SPR Boardroom: registration. I hope that's okay to say. And so the other camps usually schedule in January, February. It's very, very early. And so it's hard for some working parents to be on top of their schedule. Yeah, it's less about the registration date. It's more about communicating what is out there and available. There's obviously a lot of concern. Will I get in? Will I schedule what's available to me, but even the chance to have some knowledge of
SPR Boardroom: what's out there as early as possible. So there's a lot that goes into this. But it's it's a horrible thing. It's like Christmas retail. I have it as well. So, my friends, it's ridiculous. It's awful, and I understand. I'm sure there's a lot in it and hiring and making sure it's as much as possible you have to communicate, hey? These are offerings that we think we're gonna have
SPR Boardroom: this year as early as possible, I think helps
SPR Boardroom: get engagement from a really broad. There's a lot of different moving parts to get the goods out
SPR Boardroom: programs in place. But I could definitely look into the timeline. Appreciate that. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Okay, great thanks. Okay. Well, that moves us into the 2025 park operating hours.
SPR Boardroom: Did we have anyone sign up for? We did not. So our public hearing today is very short. And so I'm going to turn it back over to you for the the public hearing commentary recommendation.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, again, I was just gonna lean in again last time and just give a really high summary of what was proposed. So again, we are seeking recommendation from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners regarding a proposal to change hours for selected parks and boat ramps. And so again, these are changes to operating hours for our popular parks and boat ramps, and again
SPR Boardroom: we shared the briefing memo last time, and then we went over the Powerpoint. But just for a quick refresher we have 3 categories. The 1st one was around park hours, particularly around Alki Beach and Golden Gardens. We want to create a permanent seasonal change for the hours, which would be 4 Am. To 1030 Pm.
SPR Boardroom: We spoke about Homemade Park. And right now we want to put in a 207 day pilot, so that the hours are reflecting. 7 am. To 7 30 Pm.
SPR Boardroom: second category is all again around. Boat ramps. All of our boat ramps right now proposed to have an opening of 4 am. And locking and closing by 1030 pm.
SPR Boardroom: And then
SPR Boardroom: our last category is just a technical change around 2 of our park amenities, one about Hamilton View Park and the other one is Magiston Park program, and making that to a 6 am. To 10 Pm. Hour change again. This is to support and manage
SPR Boardroom: the beach fire programs specifically at Alpine gardens. This is also us responding to community concerns. We're hearing around illegal behaviors at our popular songs.
SPR Boardroom: We also want to establish a seasonal hour for certain programs to help us manage late night noise activities and any unnecessary related activities that have nothing to do with boat launches. And then, just finally, finding a place where we could align hours consistently so we could maximize our effective collaboration with the Seattle Police Department, our park rangers and our private vendors that could help lock and unlock these facilities
SPR Boardroom: with that being said, I also just want to share how we got the word out about the proposal and the public hearing. We did post it in the Djc. We also posted it in our parkways blog, which several local media sources also receive these posts, and it's also posted in the West Seattle blog.
SPR Boardroom: So with that being said any questions, oh, I see John's hand.
John Flinn: Hello! There! Thanks for that.
John Flinn: And
John Flinn: Really incredible, very supportive of the idea. I wanted to note that Ben sent around some late correspondence that came in. He sent it this afternoon, so I think it came over the last few days, maybe
John Flinn: but there was just one comment from a community member, Gloria Pumphrey, concerned about the
John Flinn: they've she said, that on Harbor Avenue, southwest on the Alki trail
John Flinn: they have put in no parking from 11 Pm. Till 5 am. And so then, if we open the park at 4 4 30 Am. Will it create sort of an opportunity, or at least some mixed messaging there. I don't know if where she's talking about is officially part of
John Flinn: Alki Beach, because I'm not as familiar with that. It was 1 0 0 5 Harbor Avenue southwest. So I just thought that was worth a look to see, you know. Are we being consistent in Alkai on those opening hours, or if there's not a boat ramp there like, should we move that one up to 6 as well? So it's after the no parking zone?
John Flinn: And then, just on a positive note. The correspondence also included a heartfelt thanks for the new hours from 2 other community members in Alki Beach, so nice to see that. But yeah, just keep an eye on that. No parking. And do we have a conflict there in Alkai.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you, John. That actually was something that came up in a earlier meeting. And again, kind of going back to the last bullet point. That is something we're going to do in partnership with S. Dot and Spd, so we can find the consistency. So thank you for sharing that.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah.
SPR Boardroom: Sorry I had a question. Can you clarify for, like Magnus and Park, for example, because the boat ramp hours are different than the park hours? Is that is there like a clear separation where, like a section has, is is gated. And there's different signage. Is, is that how that works? Yeah. So we all know how large that area is. We're talking specifically around the boat boat ramp area.
SPR Boardroom: Don't quote me because I'm gonna have to remember the actual street. But there's like a lakeshore drive, which is kind of the main. There's a gate there. Okay? And then there's another gate
SPR Boardroom: past that that actually goes directly into the boat ramp. So those are the areas we're speaking of. We're also working in partnership right now with Spd and Sd to see if there's other areas to consider. But that is really solely because there's still I want to believe it's the north end of it that still needs access
SPR Boardroom: because of the other tenants that we have and other programs. And you also have a housing area in that space. And we're trying to minimize really around that boat ramp parking lot area, where we're getting consistent concerns about amplified music and illegal driving okay, thank you, that was a good question.
SPR Boardroom: thank you, everyone. Oh, I'll just I'll just say I also read the
SPR Boardroom: discussion on the on the blog and you know, obviously a little bit mixed. But good to see that we're trying to take some action. And
SPR Boardroom: I hope people are able to understand that we're doing this really should be in strong partnership with the police department, and hopefully they'll allow to be a lot safer environment for everyone down there.
SPR Boardroom: And then I'll I can only comment the last one as well. I think it's a really good 1st step, but urge us to keep thinking about how to be a little bit more comprehensive that we think about hours, so that we're not having to make lots and lots of
SPR Boardroom: ad hoc changes. I know this, is it. This is it for this season. But
SPR Boardroom: I think I asked earlier, why did these every hours get set at 4, 30 to 11? It seems kind of odd, so I do think there's opportunity for thinking about what's the right policy overall rather than having lots of different hours reports if we can avoid it. Yeah, for sure.
Elise Chisholm Clare: I just wanted to echo that as well. I know that I spoke about that in our last meeting, too, but I would love to see a comprehensive approach to this. I think there are numerous parks right now, with limited lighting and safety concerns. Where ours go until 1130.
Elise Chisholm Clare: Ravenna Park is one of those options that I shared as an example. So yeah, I would love to hear some follow up on broader strategy for this.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: You have to.
SPR Boardroom: 2 folks have any more questions, or do we want to discuss this further, or
SPR Boardroom: or bring it to a vote?
Steven Lerer: I think we can vote.
SPR Boardroom: Great.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, can I? Is anyone of
SPR Boardroom: I don't know how to word this. Does anyone
SPR Boardroom: able to articulate the motion? They would propose.
John Flinn: I can. I motion to accept the proposed revisions to park operating hours.
SPR Boardroom: Proceeding.
SPR Boardroom: Great thanks, all those in favor.
Steven Lerer: Bye.
Tricia Diamond, PhD: Hi.
SPR Boardroom: Great. That's everyone. No opposed. So the motion passes. Thanks. Everyone beautiful.
SPR Boardroom: Alright, yeah. Rachel Schultan can give us our public affairs. Division update.
SPR Boardroom: Hi, everyone! I'm Rachel Shulkin. I am the communications and public affairs manager for the department. I've been here for around 7 years, I think.
SPR Boardroom: and it's really, it's an exciting and wonderful job. It's a delight to be able to share this work with you. I have a small but mighty team who really cares a lot about how we communicate out to the public what it is. We do connect people to our programs and services and make sure that people feel kind of engaged in the work that we do, and it's just a delight to be able to elevate their work here if you did it.
SPR Boardroom: So communications. What we do. We do all of the media. Interface. That's myself personally. And we put out a variety of press releases about important changes. We also manage our departments branding all of our external communication channels, which includes our website blog. And we have a monthly newsletter. We have a variety of social media platforms that we're on. We answer our main phone line.
SPR Boardroom: We have an email correspondence pks_info@seattle.gov.
SPR Boardroom: we manage our internal communications, our messages to employees. We support speaking events of our leaders, and then we report all of this information, and then also manage the reports that go out to the public and manage the reports that go up to our elected leaders as well.
SPR Boardroom: So I'm just going to go through some of our facets and our analytics. We do a really a really good job, but our web page is one of the biggest fleet of web pages that the city of Seattle has, you know, with over almost 500 parks now in a page for each park and page for each programs and services, a lot of work, making sure that it's as up to date as possible. So you can see, we get a lot of visits.
SPR Boardroom: These are our most visited park pages, and I think they do a really good job of talking to us about some of the things people, what people want to visit. The most. One interesting thing about this area is that
SPR Boardroom: we've seen a decrease in overall page views. And that's because of that little box on Google that's scraping from our website and providing people with a lot of the information they need before they get to our web page. And that's actually a good thing, right? We want people to get what they need with as few clicks as possible. And Google does a fairly good job. We actually control those Google listings. We can close things when they're closed. We can change phone numbers. We can change assets. We can change photos. We can respond to comments. And we do own those for every single park and facility
SPR Boardroom: in the system, and we actively utilize them to update information. And we do the same on yelp, because yelp is the source for apple maps, so we make sure that those are up to date as well, so that people who are getting this information much more readily from those sources than they are from our website are getting it accurately as possible.
SPR Boardroom: yeah. And then you can see in the summer, obviously, our summer beaches go up the analytics of the website, also mimic park usage. We see big spikes of usage in the summer, and then they go down with most interestingly small, tiny spikes over holidays. So Thanksgiving and Christmas both have holidays, showing that when people kind of have a sexist family time or people in town they're getting out to our parks even when it's cold and rain. So it's kind of exciting to watch it that way.
SPR Boardroom: and then you'll click in the. So we have 40 plus Facebook pages, which is a lot. And I can go into the pluses and minuses of that. But each community center and pool has a Facebook page. Our community center staff manage those pages with also support from my team. We'll post out. Oh, a new it's swim lesson times. We'll post that to all the pages for them, but they might post something like, Hey.
SPR Boardroom: the slides not working at Rainier Beach, or we have a. You know, our pools actually rely on some of these additional communication channels really? Well, because I mean my favorite one, says someone pooped in the pool. My team is not working 24, 7, and they need people to know there's an 8 Pm. Swim session. That's not gonna happen because they got a drain the pool, or do a bunch of chlorine stuff to get that together? And so they rely on a lot of great. We've kind of
SPR Boardroom: skilled up in a few different communication areas that have really enabled them to give out those in the moment communications, because before what we relied on is telling people to call the pool before they came, just in case it's closed, or seeing a signpost on the door that's closed. Our pools have really gotten good at getting ahead of these things which I really appreciate.
SPR Boardroom: But again, I can talk about pluses and minuses of 40 plus pages. But I do think it's the way we have it, and we're using it to our best abilities. Our main page does pretty well. We gained over 2,000 followers. I like to communicate to people that Facebook remains the most popular social media platform all the platforms. Still, despite a lot of people, maybe in your individual circle who've walked away from Facebook many times. Staff say, why are we still using Facebook? It still remains the most popular platform. So we're going to be where the people are
SPR Boardroom: and we continue to grow on it.
SPR Boardroom: So our most popular posts are often before and after. Say, everyone loves a good makeover. So we love to post before and afters on our social media pages, and they get a lot of good likes. People also love events, and they love some of our park opening posts. But I did want to highlight. I just picked the top 3, but we do. We do a big push on publishing pictures of staff.
SPR Boardroom: We really want to humanize the people who do this work to help people understand. There are real faces behind this work. We actually had a picture this week that had a ton of great engagement on Instagram of one of our employees cleaning a restroom and tons of good stuff, and we just sent it right on to that employee's crew so that they can see that people are seeing that work and embracing it. And as you've seen many articles about
SPR Boardroom: how bathrooms could or could not be better. But it's good to also explain to people that there's a real human who does this work, who's kind of wants to do a good job of doing best they can. To help people understand kind of the nuances that are in this discussion. This is
SPR Boardroom: Pete, who was the longtime gardener at Japanese garden retirement post, and got tons of one of our most popular posts, and it's nice to see that the public can embrace kind of this wonderful moment as someone who really put his heart and soul into a beautiful asset in our system. I think there's 1 more. Oh, okay.
SPR Boardroom: Instagram. Obviously. Now, it's owned by Meta. So similar. Platform. But you know, much more picture based, a little more engaging. We're seeing a ton of more. Our engagement. Really, Skyrocket, 13,000 new followers this year. Similar things are popular. An interesting thing that's popular
SPR Boardroom: on this platform is safety notifications, which is not really something we can control when we have a safety notification, but we see it as well. This is one of our events pathway of lights. My team took a deliberate work to do a more artistically focused poster this year that we've noticed people like it's a goal to develop some more civic pride and kind of having these flagship events.
SPR Boardroom: This is one of my team members. Where's Edward? If you on our Instagram. You've seen that we kind of went a little mini viral for these
SPR Boardroom: twilight post. I think the hilarious story behind here is that she
SPR Boardroom: called me, you know, work teams call and said I purchased a small Edward figurine.
SPR Boardroom: Can you reimburse? Can work, reimburse me for it, and I was like, No, what are you talking, Edward Doll, for work that doesn't feel like part of your work. And then she described the campaign. One of my strategies with social media is to have as many of my staff people get to have a role in social media because the things that are most viral on social media are really niche
SPR Boardroom: to people's interests, and we all have different corners of the Internet that are exciting to us. And so the more I can have different people's personalities and viewpoints in the social media. The more people we can reach, and we see more things. So this is actually championed by this. Where's Edward is championed by my staff person, who does all internal communications.
SPR Boardroom: This was her idea. I am not a twilight person. She was. People loved it. The the band who recorded the theme song to twilight, liked the post and commented on it so many of the craft, and reached out the libraries reached out. Everyone wants Edwards.
SPR Boardroom: but it's it's a it's delight. This is another one we've done is these bucket list posts? They're very popular, and it's a great asset where people share them with friends and neighbors, so I didn't know that I could do whether it's pottery we're sharing, or a haunted house that we put pumpkins in the pool, or whatever people share these with friends. And I think it's a great way to build community build engagement.
SPR Boardroom: This feels out of order, maybe click, and then we'll come back to this one. So
SPR Boardroom: other channels, I will just rattle off. We're on X, we're moving to additionally include blue sky. We are on Tiktok. We're also on next door, so kind of across all the channels. I don't know that I need to get in the details of all of those but just did want to mention them as well.
SPR Boardroom: And we're working to get on Reddit, which wash dot has really kind of led the way of how to be a government entity on Reddit, and has some really great best practices there that we're looking to follow.
SPR Boardroom: So we do have a blog, which is where we post a lot of
SPR Boardroom: event based content things that are a little more temporary than would be website content. And then we have, you know, a very robust newsletter that we send out usually seasonally, somewhat more, where we're pushing out content to people as well.
SPR Boardroom: Let's see what's next. Okay, let's go back to the other one.
SPR Boardroom: There we go. Okay, so this is a good moment to say that we have a huge focus this year on accessibility. So the Federal Department of Justice at the end of the Biden Administration released an Executive order directing all all government entities to have every single digital access
SPR Boardroom: digital asset accessible to people with visual impairment.
SPR Boardroom: And for us, it's great. One thing that happened a couple of years back is that our department was doing some staff creative initiatives, and they championed this as one of them. And so we actually have been doing all text on our on all of our images. And then we picked kind of a day in the sand. 2 years ago, a date where from then on every single Pdf was accessible.
SPR Boardroom: This order, though, requires that we go retroactively better. Everything that's ever anything that's on your website must be accessible. The mayor, recently, about a month ago, put out his own executive order underscoring this directive as well.
SPR Boardroom: So my team is undertaking this this year, but I think it's a really big thing I wanted to point out. That's important to our team personally, but also a project that we need to respond to rapidly as it's a priority for the city. Another thing that the city is focusing on is plain language, and that's a part of the Doj's.
SPR Boardroom: They don't direct, but they discuss it as well. And it's really trying to simplify the language we use. It's better for communities with limited English proficiency. It helps with translation apps.
SPR Boardroom: And it just makes things accessible to people at variety of reading levels. And it helps accessibility tools work. So it's really one of those universal design strategies that the more simplified language we use, the better
SPR Boardroom: people can digest our program services and get access to the things we have. So we're working with a variety of departments. We're working internally. We have a plan, but I think before the end of the year we will have accomplished this kind of retroactive work. I have a very ambitious temp coming on board. We used to be retired from my team right here back. But yeah.
SPR Boardroom: ricky calm.
SPR Boardroom: So just some things about our phone. We get
SPR Boardroom: 2 to 500 calls a month. Our general line. Most of them are about lost and found. Did I put that one noise? Complaints? Is the bathroom open? Questions about community centers and pools where we need to transfer.
SPR Boardroom: But we want to be here and available to anyone and everything. You know, the trend we are seeing is that phone usage is slowly going down as people are getting information from web based sources. But it's still an accessibility tool. It's the main tool for a lot of variety of populations, and we want it to be available to people. I am
SPR Boardroom: continuing to talk with it about chat bots and text
SPR Boardroom: text tools that we can have as well. So as we can start moving into different technologies that are more utilized? And then we answer our general email line, those things are a little more. Usually media conversations. Why are you maintaining the park in a certain way? How can I get information about? I have this idea. I want to hold this picnic for everyone who lives in ball. Or how do I do it? That kind of meteor topics. And we can spend some time with people really working that through
SPR Boardroom: And we do that. We're here to answer kind of anything and everything that people have questions about.
SPR Boardroom: Again, Media, we probably get one to 3 media inquiries a day from our local paper. Sometimes some of the national ones will reach out. I put some of the top stories of the last year the
SPR Boardroom: the we had a really big freeze that made these lumps on some of our field, and everyone was just kind of perplexed by the science behind it. So there were some stories about that. You guys probably are aware we've had some bronze theft in our parks, and the peace statue was one that got even covered. I believe the New York Times picked that one up for a very small piece.
SPR Boardroom: and then I put our camp Long Fire there, but those are some of our major stories over the last year
SPR Boardroom: our accomplishments. So I have a great team that does a lot of has been really taking it on to share out the things that we've learned, and taking that on as a goal. And we've presented at many a conference, and we're presenting it a couple more. We have, like, I said, made really great strides in making our Pdf. Accessible for the last 2 years. Up until now everything we've posted has been accessible.
SPR Boardroom: We have a new internal sharepoint site, seems a little administrative, but it was quite a feat to get there. So we're we're feeling good about it. We are on Tiktok this year. We've created some really great social media that we're really proud of. And then we have pulled in canva as a tool that's available to over a hundred staff people as they create flyers. And we've seen a lot of improvement of the content that our staff are putting out around egg hunts and things.
SPR Boardroom: And then I just think we've really leveled up in both the use of video and all kinds of design
SPR Boardroom: and the things we do as well.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, I always just want to end this presentation with saying at the end of the day, I want you guys to know that my team is responsive on all of these channels. So it doesn't really matter where people reach us. We we if you write to us on Facebook message, we write back
SPR Boardroom: and if you put a complaint with us in the comments of a post, we log that I do a weekly
SPR Boardroom: email to all of our leaders that has every single complaint and suggestion and compliment we got. When I say I'll elevate that to leadership. I do elevate that to leadership, and it doesn't matter where it came to us.
SPR Boardroom: So I want to encourage people. Sometimes folks who are in leadership, roles or liaison roles for our department are often, how do people get a hold of you? And it's like, how can they get a hold of us? Really try any of them, we answer them all. So I do want to encourage people. We have these little cute little cards, too, that our staff people have that I encourage them in the parts they can give out. That has all these contact information, too.
SPR Boardroom: And yeah, for this year, what's next? So like, I talked about. We just got on blue sky. We are moving to Reddit as well. We're working on new branding guides kind of reinforce some of our branding principles. We continue to have a lot of ambitious goals about leveling up in our social media world and continuing to keep people engaged.
SPR Boardroom: Keep updating our our sharepoint site. We talked about the plain language and accessibility.
SPR Boardroom: we are really trying to not just use short form video. But my goal is to make it feel not burdensome for us right now we can create videos, but it feels like a feat to create them. But video is the way people communicate. And so we need to be able to do it like, it's our regular work. So we're working on that. And then I always want to be in the space of innovation? And where can we be creative? Where can we be exploring new tools?
SPR Boardroom: How can we be training additional staff, bringing people in what are new and different ways to be getting the word out.
SPR Boardroom: You guys have any questions, thoughts, suggestions.
SPR Boardroom: I've gotten a few great suggestions in this group in the past.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah.
Steven Lerer: I just wanted to make 2 comments. First, st just to recognize the amount of effort
Steven Lerer: it takes to ensure that all of the documents on the website are fully accessible as someone who's had has done that work in my actual work. I know that it is a lot to make that happen and super important. So I want to applaud your team for the efforts they've done over the past few years, and we'll continue to do to go back in perpetuity. And then, I have just to mention, have noticed a significant uptick in the past year
Steven Lerer: from my local pool in terms of closures and class changes and all sorts of stuff to keep us up to date on on what's going on. So definitely notice that shift which has been really helpful, and I'm sure others have seen that as well.
Steven Lerer: So thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Alright. Thank you. Yeah. Our. I didn't mention it. But we have a a newsletter tool that our pools really into. And so they're utilizing it to send out last minute closures, updates on closures. It's working really well. And I'm really happy that they're embracing it.
SPR Boardroom: John, I think you were next.
John Flinn: Hey? Thank you. Thanks for that presentation. It's great, and your team is clearly doing really good work and very well managed. Feels like a pretty well smooth operating machine. So and I see a lot of the posts, and they're great.
John Flinn: So kudos. And then really, the only idea is I was thinking about additional engagement and short form video.
John Flinn: There's definitely a trend of Grwm, get ready with me. Videos on Tiktok and Instagram.
John Flinn: Usually they're fitness Co ones. I see fitness coaches, models influencers who are just sort of like inviting you into their day, and it's usually like a 30 second to minute video. And I was thinking, if you have any willing park, either maintenance people, head gardeners, or even rangers who you could sort of like
John Flinn: every week. One of them could do an update or something, I think sort of giving the public insight into what is a day like for a maintenance person like I start over here. I I get called to go. Do this thing. I I finish my day here.
John Flinn: or you know our head gardeners. I do a lot with Volunteer Park, and just sort of seeing the range of what those head gardeners are responsible for and do is really fascinating. So that might be an interesting one, for some of your video savvy staff to work on is is giving us some more personality and insights into a day in the life of
John Flinn: various park employees. So that's my suggestion.
SPR Boardroom: I love that idea. Yeah, I will tell you, is not easy to get employees to be in front of the camera.
John Flinn: Yes, I'm sure.
SPR Boardroom: We actually
SPR Boardroom: I had a nice chat with the public health King County social media manager and
SPR Boardroom: she was. I was talking to her about this issue, and she talked about how she kind of started to kind of get small wins. You kind of need some people to go to be the 1st ones, and for it to not go bad. And then the momentum starts to build. So we're trying. But I love that idea. It's a good one. Thank you, John John. I thought you were going to for a second suggest. Oh, gosh! Take people through my coffee routine.
John Flinn: While you opened the box. Ap. I guess I guess you might have to be the 1st one.
SPR Boardroom: Getting a lack of attention.
John Flinn: Good idea.
SPR Boardroom: Make a suggestion of a community. Metro had this amazing video
SPR Boardroom: to roll out their metro go program, and it was
SPR Boardroom: maybe metro employees redoing chapel ruins had to go, and that was, I don't know how successful it was, but it was certainly
SPR Boardroom: will look it up, and Elise, Elise.
Elise Chisholm Clare: Yes, thank you for the presentation and all the great work really impressive. I wanted to ask from on a more practical note going into the parks website as you go and look at individual parks. I've noticed an inconsistent approach to digital mapping of parks, and particularly some parks with trails
Elise Chisholm Clare: that don't have digital maps accessible or physical maps. In some cases. Are there thoughts there on expanding and making that consistent? Just curious about how people can digitally access really, good map information.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, I will say that I don't believe I believe that kind of every digital map that we have made has been kind of an ad hoc individual project, meaning that in the department there is not necessarily like a funded ability to create those maps.
SPR Boardroom: 4 parks.
SPR Boardroom: I also will say, it's 1 of the areas that Google is doing a decent job at figuring some of that out, though I will tell you. Well, there are things we can control about Google. One of the ones we can't control
SPR Boardroom: is when you zoom into a map and you see the amenities within it. And you see the path lines and things. They accept very little feedback about that, and they are not responsive to the feedback we give them. So like we just added Cheryl Chow into the system, and so we'll tell it an address.
SPR Boardroom: but it is very hard to give them a an image file, or like the CAD file, or whatever of it, so that they can upload it with the amenities. It's kind of. There's a place you can do it, but it's very black box like you don't necessarily get a response. I think the last one I saw go from
SPR Boardroom: Gray with a.to was Gessler Terrace Park, and I think it was like maybe a year plus. And then all of a sudden it popped up with all the amenities. So we're trying to kind of continue to push on that process and figure out and probably talk more with our friends at Sdot, who, I think, have better channels, and Google feels more dependent on in entities like s.to keep things accurate.
SPR Boardroom: but trying to understand that more so at least what people are using is accurate. But I also have heard what you are saying, at least that, like these maps are useful to people. And that this is an an asset people want. I haven't checked in a long time with some of our Gis mapping folks to see if
SPR Boardroom: they're able to produce these in an easier way than they used to be. 5 years ago, 5 years ago it might have taken more of a deliberate effort to work with a file, and then a graphic designer to translate what might be complex into something that's more user, friendly. And maybe now it's a little easier to pull away certain layers. So it's a good tag for me to kind of check back in on. How can we provide these? I know there was an effort to make a trails map
SPR Boardroom: back in the day, and I think that got on off. I know we're on some Wta trails. So I think there's something there. But I appreciate.
Elise Chisholm Clare: I would love to see that, and particularly in the parks that have trails. That are difficult to navigate, and I think there is a presentation by
Elise Chisholm Clare: the team that you mentioned. Is it Gis mapping early on when I was on the board, maybe last fall? And I had asked.
Elise Chisholm Clare: could that be integrated with the find it fix it, app. So that, you know, when people want to report in a park where there's not a convenient grid
Elise Chisholm Clare: is that integrated to help, you know. Better identify specific locations. And that person said, We'll look into it so hopefully, we connect all these dots.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah, yeah, I like that.
SPR Boardroom: I have one follow up thought to John's point about on social media
SPR Boardroom: and and I follow up to your
SPR Boardroom: thought as well about having a having difficulty getting Staff to be involved in that. I think. I'm involved somewhat in, I believe, across Seattle parks and regulation
SPR Boardroom: Seattle parks and recreation. There are a lot of brilliant youth and young adults that are employees of these community centers, 1819, 20 years old, and then also, I think it might to start with them, because they're experts with this thing. You know, they can do that stuff in their sleep. And then also, it might be like a really interesting project for youth engagement service, like a social media campaign, or some of those youth programs that you guys already have and operate. Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah, we have. We have
SPR Boardroom: done back and forth. We had a youth intern one summer, and we haven't done it every summer, but I think it's a good thing to restart our planning unit has a little 1. 2 coms people that work there, and I know that they've been using
SPR Boardroom: youth photographers at our events and working on a youth videographer as well. And so I think they have are a little ahead of us, so I might talk to them about how they're getting in there. But that's a great idea. I appreciate that.
Elise Chisholm Clare: I was just gonna say, bye, bye!
Elise Chisholm Clare: And now for lifeguard recruitment. I've heard of that being a big challenge in the past getting some of those youth folks involved in that on social might be interesting as well.
SPR Boardroom: Yeah.
SPR Boardroom: I had 1 1 comment following up on that sort of restroom post, I think there might be an opportunity to celebrate maintenance with a little bit more.
SPR Boardroom: we. Obviously you open yourself to a lot of commentary when you do that right about why not? But just in the spirit of showing how much work is put into the capital improvements and really driving home the amount of work that is being done. I I mean a fixed, a bathroom that was down and is now up and operating is a big deal.
SPR Boardroom: and it's not just a filter replacement, or some.
SPR Boardroom: you know, beautiful like wh. What the right channel is, how to do that. But I would encourage you to think about it. Yeah.
SPR Boardroom: And the other one. I'm a little curious. Ask it in the context of the Reddit conversation, but it's a bit more general question, a little curious with the vision for Reddit. And then I'm also interested.
SPR Boardroom: Are you trying to foster dialogue, community dialogue.
SPR Boardroom: or or because most of the posts in the nature of looking at the in general are much more pushed at communications, and if dialogue happens, that's great, but that's not the intent, right? It's inform and sort of distributed Reddit doesn't have that nature. It it generally intended to to engage this for dialogue. So I was curious
SPR Boardroom: where you're going with that, and then more generally, do you want that dialogue? Are you looking to social media strategy to try and do that? Or are you comfortable with? No, we're we're going to provide information. We're going to highlight great wins. And yeah, so I will say that,
SPR Boardroom: we like to pull community engagement efforts that are happening in person onto online. So when we did our department strategic plan, we did like a month and a half long campaign of pulling out individual questions. We specifically went out to parks, asked people those questions, took a picture of them.
SPR Boardroom: and then wrote like we ran into Dean and his son at bitterly, and
SPR Boardroom: they said that they'd love to see longer hours for the bathrooms. What do you think would make parks more useful? And then people would contact them. So I do think we do that, and we want to do more of that. One thing I was saying is that watchdog is in the
SPR Boardroom: reddit space, as mostly pushing out information, not necessarily bringing it in. And so that's why I'm kind of like there are partners before us going that way. I think again, this is probably not the right platform to speak to. But the social media world is very much changing, especially in the spaces that people feel like. They have more trust.
SPR Boardroom: Reddit is becoming readily a space that people are having a little more trust in what's happening there, and so
SPR Boardroom: I wouldn't have thought of it if some of our government partners hadn't gone ahead of us. I do think there's a space there, too, though again, one of the things we love about
SPR Boardroom: even the shares is right. It's like, how do we engage people? Some of our posts will do is like best places to see the sun, watch the sunset, and it's like, can we do a thread where we're putting snap? But we're encouraging people to share with amongst themselves best places to see the sunset right? So that we're fostering some community and some dialogue. It's not necessarily
SPR Boardroom: critical or inquisitive about ourselves. So I think that's how we're intending to show up in the space. But I hear you. You know I'm on Reddit myself, and that is usually what people are utilizing it for. But I
SPR Boardroom: what I'm hearing, too, from some more experienced reddit users? Is. People talk about us in the space in ways that are less than accurate? And so how do we show up to be able to provide accurate information in the space where already people are interested in having those conversations, I think, is why we potentially want to be there?
SPR Boardroom: If people are so, in that case something's going wildly astray, not true. Whatsoever show up and say, Hey, this is actually the accurate information, or you know, people were confused about what time bonfires started, or whatever we can put it off. Okay.
SPR Boardroom: yeah.
SPR Boardroom: Fantastic. Well, I just want to thank Rachel for coming tonight giving that really great report. She is very accurate when she says her team is tiny but mighty, and they really are. They do an excellent job. And one of the things I've been so impressed about in my time here is that they
SPR Boardroom: really do respond to every single constituent inquiry which is really impressive for a municipal agency like ours. And so there are so many ways to engage with the public. But
SPR Boardroom: you and your team do that amazingly. And we're really lucky to have them. And yeah, I just wanted to say, Thank you. It was wonderful to meet you all. And if you do have thoughts, ideas, or ways we can collaborate. I always appreciate email, send it my way. Happy to talk.
SPR Boardroom: Thank you. Thank you.
SPR Boardroom: Great. That moves us to old and new business. Do we have any?
SPR Boardroom: You know 2 of the hours or not?
SPR Boardroom: Oh, that's right. Oh, that's right. We do have some so I know. I know several. I believe it was several meetings back. There was some discussion around hours. And
SPR Boardroom: If there's any interest in adjusting our meeting time or not.
SPR Boardroom: I wanted to revisit that.
SPR Boardroom: We are a different group than the last discussion. And yeah. And
SPR Boardroom: I, personally would love to join more of these meetings in person, and if we started a little bit earlier, like 15 or 30 min earlier, that would make a huge difference. So I was just wondering if if folks were open to discussing this thinking about this
SPR Boardroom: and and maybe bring it up again next meeting
SPR Boardroom: know we had some concerns in the past. I would also be in favor of 6 o'clock, I mean, I know we- we keep the staff
SPR Boardroom: here late. It's a long day for them as well. So if we're really helpful on that. But I don't know if there were folks who had. That was a specific problem, for
SPR Boardroom: should reach out to you. And yes, we can.
Phillip Meng: Do if if I can. If I can add, we can do just a quick census of whether whether folks prefer earlier or later times. I'm very, very sympathetic, very sympathetic to the idea that
Phillip Meng: look for the
Phillip Meng: lots of lots of folks in the public, for certainly for for Spr. Stuff. We don't want to keep folks too long last time around later worked better for for more people, for me. That's still the case. But let's see, let's see what's the what's the view view of the current composition board?
Steven Lerer: No, I think we need to have this conversation with a large part. I think we're missing a ton of people. It feels like.
Phillip Meng: Yep.
Steven Lerer: But I I know, for me personally earlier, is very difficult.
Steven Lerer: Just in terms of the traffic trying to get down to this space earlier makes it even harder. And just in terms of childcare. It would be a challenge to get out of the house in time to get to the meeting on time at 6.
Steven Lerer: Ever? So I it would. It would require a virtual visit every time, which is fine. If the board needs to change the time it would just. I would have to shift some of those things around. I like to be in person. But the earlier we get, the harder it becomes.
SPR Boardroom: We could do. We could help you, too. And again, this could be something that maybe either next meeting or the one after we can have a more robust discussion when people have some time to eliminate on that. But in the meantime I can send out a survey monkey monkey monkey. Okay.
SPR Boardroom: everybody. And that way everybody has a chance to weigh in before having a more fulsome conversation. Does that sound reasonable?
SPR Boardroom: Okay, great thanks.
SPR Boardroom: And Ryan. And thank you, everybody for making it an app.
John Flinn: Buddy, I'll be back in person next meeting.
Elise Chisholm Clare: Alright good to see you all same. Thank you. Bye-bye.