It's okay, we're not taking a vote or anything. All right, let's go ahead and start this.
Good evening, everyone. That's the folks in the room. Hi. Good evening, everyone. I'm Ryan Baum. I'm the chair of the Board of Parks Corporation Commissioners.
And, uh, welcome to our Thursday, April 23rd meeting. I'd like to ask the Commissioners in the room and the Sgr staff present to go ahead and introduce themselves just briefly, and then ask the Commissioners who are online as well to do the same.
Um, and then we'll get started with the agenda here.
James Tonsacker, at-large Commissioner. Kevin Werner, our commissioner, staff advisor.
Definitely.
Brian Baum, at-large Chair. Michelle Finnegan, Interim Superintendent. Elise Chisholm-Claire, Commissioner for District 4. Ben Birdsos, Spr staff.
And, uh, folks online?
I can start. Philip Meng, Commissioner for District 7.
Thanks, Philip. I'm John Flynn. I'm the Commissioner for District 3.
Hi, I'm Trisha Diamond. I am a, I'm sorry.
After you steep. Sorry.
Steve Lehrer at large commissioner.
Hi, I'm Daya, Commissioner for District 2.
Any staff present or later. All right, Annie's been later and Alex is also our staff. I'd like to start by with a land acknowledgement as we do.
All our meetings, Seattle Parks and Recreation acknowledge and affirms to indigenous Oce people as the original caretakers of our waters and landscape.
The nurtured and shaped today's parkland. We honor the legacy with gratitude and appreciation, and we'll safeguard their knowledge and stewardship as enduring treasures. Promote CUNY welfare, cultivate inclusive expressions of nature and recreation, and commit to land acknowledgement for each ensuing generation.
Alright, um, we have just… One item on the consent agenda, which is just today's meeting agenda. Unless there are any objections, I'll just move unanimous consent.
All right. Thank you. Um, so our first order of business is public comment. 1st of all, I just wanted to acknowledge everyone. We have a large crowd here in the room. Thank you for coming out to speak on behalf of issues that are so important to you this evening. It's a very important part of community engagement here. I just want to say that we are going to have a public comment.
Period to 20 minutes, uh, today to have us be able to proceed with the rest of the agenda, and importantly for the Commissioners to actually have a briefing on some of the issues that I know many of you have gathered here to talk about. So… Um, with that in mind, I think we have a list of folks who have signed up for comment here. Ask the staff to go ahead and.
public sword. Great. 1st we're going to do the 5 people that are talking about racket sports. And 1st up I have Greg Duke.
Right here. Right?
Thank you. Two years ago, we were here, and we awarded the Parks Department this trophy for having… for being the worst in the West, uh, in providing dedicated pickleball courts in the community. We were the worst as we surveyed.
towers all across the West Coast. We didn't think things could get worse, but Parks Department surprised us again. And in the last 2 years, 3 things have gotten worse. The first is.
Uh, this trophy is no longer viable. We're gonna get a new trophy, um, which will present to Katie Wilson, uh, the mayor, um, which is now, um, because Parks has done nothing to develop any further.
dedicated pickleball courts. We are now the worst in America, per capita, for providing dedicated supports across the country. So, that trophy will go to them instead of the Parks Department.
Um, the three things that have gotten worse is now that we're worse in America. The second thing is that, um.
The private sector has recognized the growth of pickleball, even if our parks department vote is the fastest growing sport for the last four years, and they've swarmed in like vultures, and now there are, by the end of this year, there'll be four.
Um, private pickleball facilities, offering dozens of courts. Now, some people think that might be a good thing, right? Workboards, but it's more courts for people who have money. If you can afford 1,400 bucks a year, go for it.
So you've taken a sport, the Parks Department has, that is a beautiful example of bringing together people across class, across race, across sex, across age.
Um, kill it. It's kind of an inequity and exclusion plan. And the third thing is that, um, you know, if you'll show this up, I'll finish up with this.
Um, now 36 courts met or share are now going to be eliminated. Pickleball homes by this plan. Now, there's a simple way, my final comment to rectify this. If you took these 7 parks, and instead of turning them into tennis courts.
He just left them as dedicated pickleball courts. We would be an average city. And for us, that's good enough. Thank you, Ray.
Yeah. Over there. you mentioned our for our people who seeded us this land.
And, uh, in Seattle, instead of the, uh… The notion was that we, uh, we're going to we received this place from our parents. But the truth is, we're going to pass it on to our grandkids.
Oh, okay. And I just wanted to use some help.
How many tennis players? Um, 40,000. Pickleball about 85,000.
from AI. I don't know. There's no official in the courts. Well, 10 is 107 and pickleball currently 92 headed to 56.
So, um… players per court.
With tennis, they've got about 400. Low and high average. With pickleball currently somewhere between 850 and propose somewhere around 1500 players per court.
Oh, so let's look ahead a little bit. Yeah, take a look at if our proposed.
56 pickleball courts are going to handle 100,000 people.
Um, pickleball players have about one fifth the opportunity to play pickleball as tennis players have the opportunity to play tennis. Let's look forward four years.
Uh, by looking fast for a few years. Uh, between 2022 and 2023, Pickleball nationwide grew 51%.
But, you know, the last 3 years, it's grown 223%.
But I'm not saying that's going to happen to the future. It's going down slowly. So let's look at the minimal 12% per year growth.
Uh, Seattle, roughly 85,000 by 2030, 115,000. And if we have only 400 players per court, we need 289.
What? Thank you. Thank you very much.
Yeah, Miguel?
Okay. I'm sorry?
We're gonna talk about studies code allocation tonight. And I want to make sure you get a good grasp on how that's working, and I'm going to illustrate it.
Illustrated, uh, talking about tomatoes instead of tennis courts.
I can provide the commissioners into two groups on the left. There's going to be.
The first group, you guys are the good guys who sent the meeting.
On the right you have the cute guys, you see tomorrow.
And… I'm going to allocate 140 tomatoes back.
Amongst these two groups. So it seems that it would make sense, maybe, to start by hitting 70 tomatoes.
Well, it turns out that… My favorite debate of people.
Are you used to getting all the demands? So they won't stand for that. So one way to deal with that would be to store the tomatoes.
from the least desirable to the most desirable. and give the 70 most desirable.
The tomato group, and the rest of the other group.
But the tomato group is used to getting all the tomatoes. They wall stand for that.
Maybe we could give them the 100 most desirable meals, and the rest.
40 for the stomata group. But that's not good enough, so… Maybe we can… do this in a more balanced way.
And declare the 40 tomatoes are really dual-use tomatoes.
They can be used by your group, and by them.
We tried that, it didn't work very well. So… you have… Go back to deciding… tonight a letter to divide the dual use tomatoes into two groups. One group that goes back.
And then one will just stick.
Okay.
have some prepared reports. Hi, my name is David. I'm a Tennesseeur living in Wiscattle. So I'm speaking mostly from that perspective, but I also want to advocate for the needs of the pickleball community.
In West Seattle, I'm usually able to play tennis at my preferred location without having to wait long.
However, I regularly have to wait up to 60 minutes in other parts of the stand.
The idea that two people play tennis is a misconception.
Many people may believe this because they only play at high capabilities for patients, but tennis players have realized are useful to try to play at.
I tried playing conventional in dual language before, and it's very hard because you just don't mind on the court are visually distracting. But line calls, and both sides of the court are occupied by pickleballers anyway.
I need to wait for those sites to finish separately to welcome tenants. I'd rather pay off my dedicated tennis courts.
I've never dying numbers, and the ball has been growing faster than 10,000 years. But tennis has also grown more than before.
more people playing due to the nature of the game, which fits many more people into a smaller space than tennis. That doesn't mean it's better use of tennis court space than tennis.
We, the players, would like to see the usage data supporting the location decisions outlined in the proposal.
Yet they have not been named as pickleball hubs.
The pick of all supplies being taken away for the restoration of old lined courts to tennis courts.
There needs to be more supply probably added to meet growing demand.
tennis and pickleball are two completely different sports. Therefore, they need to exist in dedicated spaces.
rather than forcing players of those sports into conflict with one another.
Therefore, my conclusion on this proposal in its current form that the idea is a good start, but execution falls short actual feasible solutions.
Okay, now, um… Brent? Carson.
Chairman, members of the board, members of the public, including all my pickleball fans!
Most of the draft strategy for many reasons. I've been playing pickleball for a number of years since I retired.
The first is… is simply premature, and the data to support it has not been made available.
I have asked for all the information. The report claims that there's all of this information that was gathered for eight years to come up with a strategy.
Where is it on your website? Nowhere. I have filed a public disclosure request to the parks department, and I've been told that some of the data may be available by the end of September. Okay.
gather information and make it available to the public, including how are these words actually being utilized? Without that information, managing it is a fatal flaw in healthy information.
Secondly, this plan claims it's equitable, but it simply isn't a number of the prior commenters have spoken about pickleball with its growing use.
needs more pickleball courts. I agree with the last commenter that if we could all use the… Our own cortex, we would all be better. Believe me, I'm confused by the lines of tennis as well. But the reality we live in is scarce resources.
And so the idea of eliminating all of the dual-use ports is simply not feasible.
Because by doing that, you're eliminating 40% of the pickleball courts in the city, open, play, public courts, which is unfair to those who… and finally, dual use can be managed. You know, as part of the mission, you manage school use.
On indoor spaces, football, soccer, outdoor spaces, and you can manage dual use.
Next up is Larson. Kimberly Larson. You're right next to Chris.
Passive turnout. I will say Trevor Noah has a really interesting thing about how work.
But I am here for something different. Um, this is just brief, uh… My name is Kendalli Larson, and some of you have seen before, some of you have not ever had a chance to meet, because I know with the change of the administration, there's actually been a change also of some of the roles at this table. So we also want to just reintroduce our issue to you all because there's an opportunity.
to help us, and I represent thousands of people who would like you to say no to the Blue Angels, and just really quickly, we have a petition of over 6,500 people now, and I've said it to you in the past. We send it updated. Others can sign it.
Um, but it's thousands of people who actually are quiet. You wouldn't know that so many people will love you to reject the permit at Genesee Park, so it cannot have your show.
And this includes a lot of people who have loved the Blue Angels and have grown up with them, who are also ready to move on. Veterans who I work with and a lot of our coalition works with health caregivers, folks who suffer from PTSD, myself, which is a different story.
But also, a lot of folks from immigrant communities were refugees, people who suffer from other violent events, including shootings. There are a lot of folks who've worked the night shift, including first responders who signed our petition.
Other caregivers or small ones or furry ones who just can't explain to those that they're caring for the trauma and why they're scared. So we ask you to say no. Seafair has.
implied that they're just moving forward. They have a contract they've said, uh, we know you have the power. We believe, because you have to issue the permit every year, and we think you can pause it. It seems right, given the cost of fuel.
Seems right, given the impacts also air pollution and forest fires and climate, which a lot of our community represents and the neighbors too, it seems right as far as the time to also think about how we want to reimagine our community, have a job fair, have electric boat races, have a bunch of other things that we can all do together that are clients.
And also, safe for all. Uh, so you can hear my voice is a little chunkly just because it was a traumatic event I went through, so it's hard to get up here to talk about, um, but we really ask you to say no to their permit, help us reimagine CFAR together, be a better city, welcome all here as we come to you.
Jenny Blaine Park. Since I was here last. Our regular chose two rocks from the lake, which hits private property.
pull from, uh, 1, 3, or back in the park. No load acts this time.
trend of them laying board members trespassing on private property.
Couple taking photos on the beach. The same photographer from 322.
The face excavator… face tattoo masturbator from 2025 shows up to the park.
Suddenly, nobody wants to be photographed. Park Rangers called 911. Spd arrives.
tells them, you're in public, you have no right to privacy.
Officer Monreal said that this park is a gray area for the laws. This is coming from the top.
down by city officials. Male masturbating in park goes to his car, goes down to the beach.
And smokes a joint! Uh, a homeless male smoking marijuana on the beach.
defecates in the south corner of the park instead of using the sandy can camps on the beach for 2 nights.
Four separate incidents, uh, decent exposure incidents at the park on 418 from 3 p.m. To 6 pm.
Alcohol and marijuana use, too.
This guy, uh, urinated on its leg after this person walked past him.
And what's also, uh, touching in itself. This couple was taking, uh, photos. Hey, Carrie, you're kind of that the chronic masturbator has been issued a diffuser.
Dispositional continuance is to stay 1,000 feet away from any plane park for one year.
If that happens in recent exposure charges will be dropped. We talked about ideas for names for park. Here's some of mine. Masturbator's paradise code of conduct is just a clause.
close the park. Thank you.
Online.
All right. Braco gave you permission to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes when you go ahead and get started.
Yes.
Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you very much. Greetings, Chair Baum and Commissioners. I'm Dr. Brett LaBeg with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Airshow Climate Action Coalition. We're asking you to deny a permit for the Blue Angels to use Genesee Park and the lake to perform at Seafair.
I'm a retired Air Force flight surgeon. I love airplanes when they're needed, but they can hurt our health.
Although some people call fighter jet noise the sound of freedom, the roar harms hearing.
Autistic kids, refugees, and those with PTSD are terrified of the sound of death from above.
Super Hornets are especially loud. I measured F18 growlers, the same plane the so-called angels fly at 110 decibels in Genesee Park.
OSHA require earplugs and earmuffs for work sites at that level.
Seafare provides no ear protection, so WPSR gave out hundreds of free earplugs the past two years.
Although your rules regulate the level of PA music sound systems in parks, the Blue Angels defy your reasonable health noise limits every year. And jet fuel exhaust harms lungs, hearts, even brains. The angles burn 70,000 gallons.
for weekend to make a lot of noise, NPM 2.5 particles. The Department of Ecology identified South Seattle as a Washington health disparities community impacted by air pollution.
The angels fly right over them every year, causing more direct harm to people we're required by law to protect, but don't.
We regulate other health harms in public areas, like smoking, drinking, drug use, like you just heard about. Why not jet smoke?
We ask you to follow the law and the science, require a formal health risk assessment of the Blue Angels performing at Seafair. Stop the noise, the terror in the fossil fuel pollution.
Transform Seafair back into a community celebration that improves, not harms our physical and mental health.
It's in your charter. Thank the Blue Angels for their service and their shows. Say goodbye. Return to quiet, clean maritime activities at Seafair. Thank you for protecting our health. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Good night.
Right. Public comment.
Thank you. For public comment period here. And we're gonna have, uh… briefing later on the outdoor record strategy. But I want to thank everyone who came out. I know we weren't able to accommodate all the public comment we're going to have today. But we do, I want to direct everyone to please, please, um, come, uh, share your passion, give feedback.
Um, at the engagement sessions that are scheduled, or pickleball. The commissioners are having their first briefing on this topic as well. So just like everyone else in the public, we receive.
information, um, and we're gonna have a review here and a chance for commissioners to ask questions, and those who are interested in staying, please do so. Um, and otherwise we're gonna move to our next order of business, which is the superintendent's report. May I just say one thing?
There was not one one. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The noise. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, ma'am.
There was lots of public comment received, got me, uh, writing all about public comment. And I also say that one post person said we were deciding today that it's actually not correct. This is a hearing where the Commissioners are going to learn about some of the background information.
been developing the strategy in a public meeting. There is no vote, there is no decision being taken at this time, and there won't… Sure. Um, since so many came out to hear the outdoor racket strategy.
Would it be possible to advance that now in your agenda, so we can hear that, and then you can continue with… I am willing. I appreciate this. I'm glad to move the superintendent's report to later. We do have a guest, though, that has come to speak, and usually what we do is we ask our guests to speak, and then are you okay? Yeah. All right.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you. We really appreciate the flexibility. One other question is, uh… Or is Andy and is Andy and and Amy willing or able to up there. See? I think Annie's online. Yeah, I just want to make sure you guys are ready to actually get out of order.
Quick introduction. Yeah. First of all, it's wonderful to see so many people interested in healthy living. This is good stuff, and I want to keep it positive, because if we keep it positive, and we collaborate, we work together, we can find a solution.
It's unfortunate that… We're looking at tennis courts as the low-hanging fruit. It is what it is, it makes sense that it is.
Um, and we have a strategy. Again, this is a briefing and integral to the strategy is engagement with the public, and I think together we'll find solutions to really.
on our planning team for getting this out. And they've got details that aren't in the that they haven't shared to date. So they'll share some today, they'll share some more in the engagement, but trust the process. Trust the process. This is good stuff.
And all medical and healthy outcomes. And with that, Andy, do you want to take it? Andy? So this is Annie Hindelwang and Jonathan Gardner.
Amy, do you want to take it away?
Yeah, I just want to confirm, um, everyone can hear me okay. I'm going to try to use the earphones to make it better, but can… good? Is it clear?
Yeah, by the mouth, please. I think that's as loud as we get.
volume up. Is this better if I do this?
Yes.
Okay, alright, I'll do that, that's fine. And, um, I apologize if I was making any faces while you are talking, um, it was, like, cutting in and out because of the noise suppression when people were, like, cheering or laughing when they were talking, so I was, uh, just trying to hear better, so I apologize if it read any other way.
Um, but I want to echo, uh… well, first, I'm Annie Hindenling, I'm the planning manager, uh, for planning capital development at Parks, and I'm happy to see you all here, and I really appreciate all the people that have contacted us and been involved to date, and hope that you continue to stay involved in the process as we move through it.
Um, and I want to thank the board for having us here tonight and letting us kind of take over this agenda. It was kind of supposed to be a, you know, a quick intro, uh, and a lot more in-depth that we were gonna get into at the public meetings, but we wanted to, like, adapt to the, you know, response from the community, and that's what we're doing.
Um, and, uh, last I just want to say is an echo, like.
I recognize that why it might be hard to, um… Here, trust the process and, like, be a part of the process, and see the outcomes, but, uh, this is not a final, like, product that you've seen. This is a draft. Uh, the feedback is key to finalizing everything that is here. It is the data that we… the missing data that we need, and that we're gathering right now as part of this process.
And so, I'm gonna just, once again echo what Andy said. It's like trust the process, be a part of the process and help us, you know, finalize what we're doing here.
Uh, and yeah, and I want to recognize Jonathan as well, who's been a key resource, and uh… you know, I'm gonna… I can't see really well in the room, but if anybody needs to interrupt me for any reason, you know, just say… speak up, and I'm ready to advance the slide, please. I don't know if I have control, I don't think I do. Okay.
So, um, the purpose of tonight's briefing is to introduce the draft strategy to the board, outline the current recommendations, and share our outreach and engagement plan. Following the public engagement process, which is expected to currently end around May 11th.
We will be summarizing that feedback and returning with this topic is an agenda item for the board to review and take action on and where you all can return once again, and then there will be further opportunities to provide feedback.
Next, please. So, I wanted to give you some high-level context for what the strategy's intent was, and then kind of dive into some of the details. I will try to stay high level as much as I can, and I'm sure there's going to be some questions. We can dive into things a little bit further. Um, but we've tried to.
adapt this to respond to some of the things we've heard so far, and the feedback we've gotten so far to kind of give a little bit more insight where we can. So, the strategy's intent, uh, is to increase playtime for both racquet sports. That's why the focus was more on increasing the total number of dedicated courts.
For both sports, rather than looking at the total courts that each sport has access to. Um, I know that's something that people have been talk… like, that's been a pretty constant, uh, point that people have brought up is the total number of courts that people have access to when you count, you know, number of striped courts, whether they're dual use or not, or they're dedicated or not.
Uh, the focus of the strategy is increasing play time.
We also wanted to find a way to enable open play within our system, especially in a way that wouldn't require significant reservations or costs.
Uh, the hub concept that was introduced in 2024 was pretty popular at the time, uh, and it's… we'd like to… it's also become a tool that we think can be really useful for our long-term planning and working with, you know, establishing good community partners, and so we wanted to identify additional locations for hubs throughout the city for both sports.
There was a desire to see some streamlined communications and regular communication structure for both sports, for the sports working collaboratively together. So that's another thing we addressed. And finally, planning for expansion, uh, hopefully for both sports, um, and seeking opportunities for that.
I know there's been some questions about, like, is there a plan to, you know, effectuate this, or a date that it would happen? There has been a question, like, if we want… if everyone loved this plan, there was no objections, like, when could it possibly be implemented? And we looked internally, like, what it would take for our systems to be updated and staff to be.
onboarded and moved, and yeah, it could be implemented. It will have to be phased irregardless, like, regardless, sorry. Um, but it could be implemented in the first phase, it really is June, but, um, would likely take longer.
Next slide, please. If you're not familiar, though I think most people are, we call a dual-use site one that has been dual stripe for both racquet sports, and those are pickleball and tennis.
What we have done is we've taken a dedicated tennis court and our system, and we've added pickleball courts, usually 2 to 1, sometimes we've been able to get additional pickleball courts if the site allows it. And this was a really effective initial approach to quickly add a significant number of pickleball courts to our existing system.
Next slide, please. Um, but there are already a lot… there's already a lot of pressure on our tennis courts, um, and then adding in pickleball, we kind of doubled the pressure of… on a single court. And that's… and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's great to have these facilities used, it's good to have.
Um, people getting out, being active, attracting folks to our parks, uh, the building the community. Like, we love all those things.
But what we were finding is that even though they're dual-use sites, at best, neither sport was really getting.
part-time access, right? Like, between, as you'll see here, uh, public and private school needs, which tend to overlap with, uh, especially during the week and during the school year, uh, peak hours. Uh, the demand, uh, and the difference, the com… kind of the, I'll say competition, but I'm not trying to say that negatively, but.
between the different types of pickleball play, which we'll get into later, whether it's, like, in more open play style or more closed. Uh, the competition that then was created between tennis and pickleball for the same courts.
The fact that both sports are growing sports, Seattle is a top market for tennis, but it is, you know, within the home of where pickleball was founded, and it is a well loved sport and we're well aware of that. I hear your data points. We're not.
uh, ignorant of that, we know that it is a well-loved sport here. Um, it's a… both sports are great introductory sports for youth development. We have a lot of coaching programs. We have a lot of organizations that serve frontline communities, that provide coaching.
Uh, and then we have things like… it's not a top goal of ours, but it does help if we're able to generate some revenue, especially through, like, private coaching, tournament events, uh, to keep adding additional programming and support our staff. Uh, and then we also have.
folks around these sites who sometimes in the summer want to have their windows open and not hear anything. Um, so all these freshers are coming into these… this one site that we've, like, kind of doubled, uh, the, uh, the market for, if you want to say, or the potential users for by putting dual use in.
And so with all that in mind, that's… and thinking about the fact that we want to provide more playtime for both sports, that's what we looked at. What is a way that we can do that, and also help our internal staff be able to better manage the sites.
Uh, and the reservations, and protect those reservations, and that's why the main focus of the strategy was eliminating dual use moving forward. You can go to the next slide, please.
This is the proposed slide. I'm also now worried that it… Might be an older version, but we'll see. Um, so the, again, as I mentioned, this is proposed. This is a starting point with the information we've had to date.
As you're as a planner, I'll tell you, like, no data source, whatever it is, is complete. You shouldn't rely on one thing. You always keep filling in the gaps with more and more types of data that you use, and the last data, like I said, is that we need is your all's feedback.
This is where we currently are proposing dedicating these dual-use one or the other, at existing dual-use locations. These are our 18 dual use locations.
9 of which are proposed to be dedicated for pickleball, 8 of which are being proposed to be dedicated to tennis, and then observatory courts, which is currently dual use, would have one court that's dedicated to pickleball separated from one court that's dedicated to tennis.
And the dual use remains at SBS courts. We're not making any recommendations for changing their sites.
Please continue. Thank you. So, uh, there's been some questions about what was considered and, like, what informed this, and where we are today. We have, as I mentioned, the goal was maximizing the use of existing facilities in order to provide access to both of the sports for both reserved and drop-in play.
Um, one second, sorry.
Um, because we want to be able to provide… you know, people to have some predictability and to be able to go when they specifically want to go, but we also want to have some free open access for folks. Um, you know, schools have priority with our joint use agreement, so that's a big piece of what inform which locations. If it was a heavy school use site, we wouldn't recommend it for pickleball because we wouldn't want you all to constantly have to compete at peak hours for school time.
Um, that's just where we started. Uh, we looked at equity priority areas where, um, high density is, or low access to open space generally is, where we have parks with high pressure. Uh, we looked at historic user groups, we looked at existing site conditions, the differing needs of the two sports, and generally tried to look at geographic distribution to try to balance out where things were being designated.
Um, but as I mentioned, the last thing we're considering, and that is going to inform what we… want to propose, finally, to the board is what we hear from you all.
Next, please. If we were to move forward with the strategy, we would propose doing it in a phased approach. The first would be interim site changes. So, the sites themselves would stay dual-striped until they are up for resurfacing on our current schedule.
But they would… but use would immediately be stopped. So what that means is… Like, let's just say, because I don't want to pick a certain site, let's just say Jefferson was dual striped, um, they then a sign would go up that said, this is now a pickleball-only site. Um, we would remove the tennis nets. Uh, active net, you could only reserve pickleball.
And, uh, until it was due for resurfing, let's say it was due for resurfacing next year, the next year would be resurfaced with only pickleball striping.
Not Jefferson is not subject to the strategy, I'm just using it because it's neutral ground. That would be the first approach that we, because we want to, like, keep responsibly using our capital dollars. A note that whenever and if ever this occurs, if there are any active approved pre-bookings, they will be honored through their pre-booking.
So, for example, we have pre-bookings through September 1st right now. If for some reason this was approved June, then all the existing ones would continue to be honored through September 1st.
Next slide. And then, as I mentioned, as the courts are due for resurfacing, they would go back to being dedicated use and would be able to be resurfaced for the dedicated sport. This is another thing that drove the locations we chose. We wanted to pick.
courts that had a little… maybe a little bit more, uh, surface area for pickleball, because they… we could fit maybe additional courts in, whereas, like, tennis, you couldn't really fit more in a certain foot, uh, square footage. Um, so that was also consideration.
Next slide, please. Uh, the other thing that we've been trying… that we know we probably… wanted to communicate, and that we've been trying to share as we've been communicating with folks, is that, you know, we're looking here, like, if you see the red line, this is 2026, and this is the assumption, like.
If the strategy went forward as it is today, uh… Yes, there is an immediate… loss, and our count is 32, but we can, uh, we can, uh, we can provide details about that, and that, that'll… that we can dive into that. We're going to be providing a frequently asked question, uh, tomorrow that will kind of dive into the details of that. But, uh, there would be an immediate loss in the total number of.
Yeah.
courts of pickleball courts that people would be able to play on, but the total number of dedicated courts, so you're going from… part-time, at best case, but usually probably closer to, like.
less time, uh, 30 to 50% time on one court to 100% time on what we… what will immediately be, and hold on, I just want to make sure I… Say the number, right? Um… 65 quarts, so it would be going from… and I know, and again, it's a proposal, and we have to talk through that, and I know that has impacts, um, but that is the proposal that immediately you would go from 7-day, uh, pickleball would go from 7 dedicated courts to 65.
And we do have several proposals and opportunities, but feasible options to get back to 90 courts by 2030. And that does not include the dual use sites at.
Sorry.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. There was a lot of reaction to that comment, Andy. Please continue.
I can't hear, but um… Okay. Okay. Okay, okay, sorry, I didn't know if someone was saying something. And so that 90 does not include the dual use courts that are still on the SBS properties. Just an FYI. And I think just something to keep in mind. The reason we're having this engagement.
is to figure out, you know, where the final sites will be, and, like, what the final approach will be to that.
Next slide, please. And we just want to show kind of the similar thing for tennis. They would again lose some additional courts. They would get down to 114, um, and they would stay there.
Oh, yeah.
Um, sorry, it gets… I don't… sorry, if someone's said anything on the board, I apologize. Okay.
The way the microphone's work in this room, it mutes everything. They actually can't hear, and the presenter can't hear that comment, or unfortunately continue.
Okay, okay.
So, if we can get through the presentation, please. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. Alright, alright, okay. I'll just, uh, Benjamin, how about maybe just raise a hand if it's actually, like, something I should stop for? Okay.
Yeah.
Is that good? Okay, all right. So in this, but again, in this circumstance, there are some delegate courts that remain with for on SPS property.
Next slide, please.
Uh, and for some folks who do not play, and I'm not an expert on this, Jonathan has been great at teaching me about this, and I have learned a lot, and I have played, um, but I know that sometimes when we talk about open versus closed plays, when you're considering this, if some of the board members are not familiar.
Open Play is a style of play that really does kind of necessitate its own structure and its own facilities to support.
how it operates. Um, people arrive at court locations and kind of rotate into play with people that are already playing, and they kind of do so with the way that they stack their, um, paddles. It's like a first-come, first-served basis, and uh, you know, you.
you… it's like a… you run in and run out, like, and it's not like a long-term continuous play, but if you go to the next slide, it gets a little more details.
Uh, so, we use the terminology and the strategy, open and close plays. We're not indicating that that's anything official, um, but because the two styles kind of diverge so much, they, uh, tend to just… need different types of facilities and different types of, um…
kind of amenities where they are. So, for example, you know, having a two-court pickleball location for open play, not ideal. Uh, if they need more space, need larger groups, they're open to having people come in, have a high turnover rate, they probably need more access to parking.
clothes play, you know, maybe two to four players, they play an hour or two, but, you know, those two to four players keep playing in each other, and it's kind of more organized. Um, and getting open play into the system, uh, and trying not to too much impact, like, how we manage our reservations and stuff was kind of a key feature, again.
of the strategy. Next slide. Yep.
Can I ask a question? Question. Sorry, we're not able to take questions from the audience during presentations.
Oh, okay. So the other thing is, is, you know, one of the biggest complaints that we have heard is like tensions between open and closed play styles of pickleball, whether, you know, both sides. And just the conflict of the two and the difficulty we have of kind of.
managing and enforcing… Like, both of those groups' ability to play at a single location. Um, so that's one of the reasons we've separated the two, and as I mentioned, we've targeted open play to sites that can kind of better support the more communal, larger group play, and these are the six sites that we've targeted. They are also the hubs.
Their Georgetown, Beacon Hill, Magnuson Park, which is the new, uh, site that's currently under development, uh, design development, Bitter Lake Playfield, Green Lake Park East, and Discovery Park.
Next slide. And currently it's proposed to not be reservable at all. But again, up to open to feedback and discussion.
The closed play sites are all the remaining sites, um, they, and they will be available for reservation or drop-in only.
Uh, so just another thing to point out is… you know, open play courts, free and available to everyone. These are also free and available to everyone, but they could be reserved if people would like them. Next slide, please.
The other thing was we wanted to identify some hubs, additional hubs. We tried to put geographically distribute them when we could throughout the city for both racquet sports, and this kind of just shows you, as you, as I mentioned, they're in line with the open play facilities. We looked for.
sites that could have a significant number of courts for both racquet sports where we could, um, and we'd like to use these in the long term to kind of establish good community partners and work together on long-term planning and capital investments.
Next slide, please.
And, uh, the last thing is, like, we want to make sure that, like, everybody knows where they can go, um, when they have an issue, and… Even if they don't know where they go, that there always is somewhere where they can go. Um, so we want a very clarify, like, you know, you have a site issue, use Find It Fix It. Um, if you have an issue with your reservations, we have Amy Tennis Center. We are proposing, and we're hoping to work out, and we want to kind of discuss this with the public and get some feedback, but.
having hub advisory groups for the hub locations so that there is a community-led, like, kind of… effort, like, uh, energy and, uh, organization to these kind of key sites that are already kind of communal in nature, um, and we'd like to use that as a tool to have regular engagement with those sites.
For long-term planning, that would be, um, mine, Andy, Jessica, uh, Jonathan's group, Planning and Capital Development, but we will be hosting, like, into perpetuity. Uh, if you've gone to our page right now, a engagement hub that will kind of.
hold all of this information, as well as direct you all to anywhere else you may want to go to find out more about the sport.
Next slide. And lastly, this is our proposed in-person engagement opportunities. We have one kind of north, central and south. And we would love everyone to come and attend.
We also have online survey that opened up and will close on May 11th. This recording today is basically the same presentation we're going to be giving at those meetings.
Uh, so that we can post it on the page, that people can kind of get a similar context and background, uh, and hopefully also hear some of the questions and answers and feedback you all had. Um, but we would love if you all could take the survey, show up to these meetings, uh, or, you know, there is an open forum that we, like I said, we're going to be posting the FAQ tomorrow that kind of addresses all the.
comments we've heard to date and questions we received. And then at the end, uh, after engagement is over, we'll be collecting all the questions we heard at public meetings, and then again from the survey, and… the forum and updating that FAQ to respond to the public once again. That's all of it. Sorry if I…
A lot of time.
Thank you, Annie. We're actually, we're running a few minutes later on schedule, but I did want to, uh… I have a give commissioners a chance to ask.
any sort of broad questions with the, you know, understanding, of course, we've got a lot of community engagement.
Um, so to come to help shape this. Um, but commissioners, either online or in the room, if you have any questions for any Kevin.
I have two questions. Thanks for the briefing, Annie. At the beginning of context.
You identify the criteria that I… strategy is trying to maximize or optimize for. So want to check that I understand that.
Wanted to know where those criteria are coming from. So that's my first question.
Yeah. Um, so there's some things that we, you know, kind of have… we have to accommodate for, uh, for example, but we like to, right? Uh, so school usage is driven by our joint use agreement with the school system, and they have first right and priority, and to use the courts.
nearest to the schools to reduce like the travel time and all that for students. Uh, so schools are kind of, like, the first thing we accounted for. There is generally a equity priority kind of mapping that anyone can go and look up. It's called Outside Citywide.
It has information about park pressure, park access, and, like, high equity priority areas. And that is another item that we've we regularly use in our planning and kind of the citywide uses for planning. Um… site conditions, uh, were related to, like, whether… how it supports the type of play.
Uh, I'm… Gonna bring up… Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, sorry. Okay.
I think you answered my question. You mentioned one of the other criteria was playing time. It's how you're trying to use a metric for playing time rather than the number of ports, and all the data you've got is number of reports. Can you…
wanting to measure playing time. You guys can give a test for conflicts.
Um, so was… could someone repeat the question? It cut out when people started clapping.
Yeah, now I can. It's just when people start clapping and stuff.
Can you hear me?
I'm hungry with the same slide. So the same slide you mentioned, like, the contact center, that you… the strategy wanted to get away from a number of ports for client time, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I know I didn't see any data on plan times, but I was just curious, like, because that's what you are optimizing for. I saw a lot of data in the reports, but it's good data.
Yeah, yeah, um, so playing time is the… the top thing we use to inform that is our reservation data, and it shows, like, when the schools typically have used them historically. We also know when they'll be moving, you know, in the future, if they are, like, if something was temporary. Um, so we know.
school usage time, and then we know if there has been, like, long-term, uh, historic user groups, and so we know, for example, like, GreenLake East has had a long-term, like, uh, group that has had a big reservation, therefore, that uses it at a high rate at a certain time.
Um, so we looked at the biggest driver was reservation data. And then we looked at, you know, how many daylight hours are there, and… basically, like, if you… after you account for all of the reservations, and you account for available hours that are remaining, and the programming that we have at community centers, and the programming that we have for youth and everything, how much does anyone outside of those programs have access to the courts?
And we looked at how to reorient those to increase that out, the amount of hours that the average person in Seattle would have to play, like, just walk up and play pickleball, or reserve, or open play.
Or tennis, yeah.
Steve?
Thank you, Annie, for the presentation, and thank you to all the public for coming and voicing their opinions as well. I wanted to check my understanding of the transition plan you talked about. From what I heard, you said that if, hypothetically, a plan were approved in June.
signage would go up. court nets would come down if it's a transition away from tennis, but you would still honor reservations until reservations end. And that is accurate. It sounds to me that we would have signs up in some courts where reservations still exist, so that.
Nets shouldn't be able to come down, so I'm wondering if that would cause confusion or conflict on the ground in real time, and if there's a thought about.
You.
putting signage up at the end of reservation periods and waiting till those exhaust before we transition courts.
Yeah, yeah, that's… well, there's two things there. One, we are aware of where all the pre-bookings are, and there are some where they would have to stay, but some of those locations, actually, they, uh, it's like summer programming, and they roll the nets out as they need them for the reservation.
Um, from, like, a community center, but the… but also, again, like, as I mentioned, not finalized, and that is some of the feedback we're hearing, is like, can we just hold till September 1st? Like, this is all the things that we want to hear and consider, and it is… is… as being part of this process, yeah.
Thank you.
Right. I had a quick question. Oh, sorry. Hi, Annie. Thanks for the presentation. I had a question on the hub strategy. I just want to circle back and make sure I understand.
uh, the kind of characteristics that a hub would have, the kind of resources I'd have, how that's differentiated from other, you know, single-use.
places.
Yeah. So this is kind of related to our larger capital planning efforts. But we recognize that we get certain requests like over pretty regularly, and that there's limited amount of dollars for major capital investments. You know, we we do capital.
Uh, maintenance and capital, like, development, and the way we differentiate between those two is it's, like, regular stuff that… Keeps the court open and usable, and then there's stuff that expands its capacity, like lighting, or covering, or something like that. Um, and we wanted to look at locations where if these investments were to occur, especially, like, through partnership.
Uh, which is a key piece of a lot of these things. Uh, where would they provide the greatest level of service to the number of residents? And so we looked at, like, high-density areas, equity priority areas, places where there's already a lot of existing park pressure, and that's why we aligned with the two. Um, so, for example, like, if we.
chose a hub area that was a single tennis court. It would not serve the greatest.
As great of a number of residents as it would a site with 4 tennis courts. Um, so that's kind of how we aligned the two, is that we want to… geographically distribute, you know, the long-term investments that we work on with diff… with these community partnerships and different, like, group… user groups, uh, so that they provide the greatest level of service and opportunity throughout the city.
It does, yeah. So it thinks like lighting and other enhancements that… space.
Does that kind of make sense? Okay. Yeah, if feasible at the site, and if, you know, we can develop a funding strategy, uh, then this is the best location in this area to serve the greatest number of residents, yeah.
Got it, thanks. And John, can we go to you for the last question on this topic?
Yeah, there's no more amongst the commissioners in the room.
Go ahead, John.
Okay. First, I just had a comment. I think the public comment period is about 2 and a half weeks from tonight seems brief compared to the amount of time spent developing the strategy. I would just ask that if the 3 community engagement meetings are.
way oversubscribed, or hard to get all the feedback in to consider adding some additional dates at additional regional locations, just to make sure that we hear as many voices as possible.
Mm-hmm. Got it.
Um, and if you've thought about that, but have reasons why that's just not possible, happy to hear those two.
Okay.
And then, as I looked through a lot of the feedback, I do think sort of this question of data.
Um, is one that keeps coming up. And a couple stuck out to me, but the one is court utilization data. It's one thing to say, here are reservations, but because I think a lot of pickleball is open play or non-reservation.
Feels like it's undercounted. So I'm just wondering if there was any any.
Analysis by just observation and click counting, or some method of manual counting, to sort of give parks an understanding of, okay, this court is actually vacant 12% of the time, and this one's actually vacant. Nobody playing.
40% of the time. Like, it feels like that kind of data of, hey, here's how we're going to increase utilization of each court, while we also just increase play hours, would help, um… I think everyone accept the strategy a little more. So, maybe just speak about data collection, and in addition to feedback, what are your gaps, and how could you fill those?
Yeah, yeah. And kind of like how I said at the beginning, like a good planner like keeps going as they're gathering data until they feel like they get a very a good clear picture of the situation. And.
So, yes, starting with reservation data is like something that we had easily accessible and that we have, like, a comfortable reliability on that it's accurate. We know the man, like, we manage it, but that's only partial of the picture. We have access to another software that's called Placer AI.
And we have access to, I think. all, like, almost two-thirds of the sites, uh, and it literally tells you the number of people there by hour, all the way back to 2019. Um, for the 18… for all of… if we want to look at all the co-locations, but we focused on, uh, the 18 locations.
Um, and then if you… but again, there's that blank spot of the sites we can't get because… There's sensitive data information and therefore cannot be released. So we take that a step further, and then we do those site visits and those site observations. But even for us.
What if we're there on a day that, for some reason, the local group that's always there has decided to go on a trip somewhere else, right? So we have to take that final step of doing the public engagement to hear, like, the lived experience and, like, that final feedback. So, I know people want, like, data and numbers and, like, but for planners, like.
Public engagement is very key to getting a full picture and for making, like, final recommendations. So for us, we feel like we've done as far as we can with the information that we have access to, and this is, like, the last piece of data.
That's pretty important.
Yeah.
All right. Thank you, Annie. And just on behalf of the board, we would really look forward to seeing some of the summary of what you did here through this engagement sessions and how that shaped the plan and being able to hear in a future meeting about what the recommendations are.
Uh, and how they changed, uh, as a result of the public.
Yeah, definitely.
Oh, sorry, Philip. That's all. All right.
Oh, all good. Thanks for the presentation.
Right. Thank you very much. All right.
Yeah, thank you all so much. Really appreciate all of your time. Everyone in the room.
Thanks, everyone, for coming out. We're going to move on to our next agenda item.
Is there a time that there will be a public hearing where everyone will have a chance to speak to the board? We haven't scheduled a hearing yet, but you are correct if we do have a public hearing and a possible vote, there would be open comment, support that at any time. So no one hasn't been scheduled yet.
I look forward to, uh, fellow commissioners hearing back from SPR staff what they've heard. And as I said, so any adjustments to the plan and moving forward during that update. Thank you for your passion and advocacy for something that clearly matters so much to you, um, and coming out tonight, um, and.
Um, please do continue to share your feedback. We do get it. And Sam is trying to summarize all that information for us as commissioners. We've been reading the comments that have come in already. So please keep it up and engage at your local community sessions. Thank you so much.
Seth, are you up next? Thank you so much. Sorry, we've got a little bit of an awkward transition here.
We're gonna move on. We have to move on to the next presentation.
We're moving right now. So, thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Right, Seth, do you have, uh, slides you wanted to queue up?
Thanks for asking questions, Kevin. I need more data. I want to see the data.
All right. Happy constituents. All right. Thank you so much for the time, Chairman, commissioners, staff. My name is Seth Muir. I'm the executive director of sales. We are a 501c3 nonprofit partner of Sketball Partners Rec out here at Magnus.
And we're, uh, beneficiaries of a 30-year lease agreement. Um, out here. Our mission is to bring the joy, and I'm not advanced.
Yeah, it's just going. We're not trying to rush you that badly. I'm a fast talker anyway. Our mission is to bring the joy of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities, essentially to make sailing in small boats accessible.
We have about 15,000 plus people participating every year. Many of the folks who live in the low-income housing development, local communities, Lake City, North Seattle, all over the place.
Let's see if I can actually… I cannot. Rogers. All right. Give me a second.
So we're gonna just… stop share for a second so that I can back out and do this again.
My apologies, everybody.
Oh. You can just go to Slideshow at the bottom.
I hope so. Well, we're not sharing the screen.
technology solutions. I'm gonna shade at least in my mouth.
Uh-huh. Alright, it's sharing.
Yeah. Hopefully this is…
I'm not sure. But, uh… I'm not sure why.
I think, you know, it's just going. Okay. You give me one second, I'll share.
Apologies. Oh, this technology.
In short, we're a 501c3 that does a time rate stop. And we've recognized facilities, anybody who's been out to the Max Park knows there's a lot of different maintenance. There's aging facilities, many of which we lease.
Manage, um, for the benefit of the public. starting in about 2019, we took a look at the facilities of the Reddit and recognized, in particular the boathouse, where our fleet is based on completed power loads protect all the people, not a whole lot.
um, was in particular, uh… Correct. It's aging the pilots underneath it are decaying, and we recognize that we were going to need to go ahead to solve for that. So we did a feasibility study. We did a major project grant to do that. Sorry.
Seth, what if you just left it in this view? Yeah. So it's not distracting. Sorry, sorry, Seth. I'll just have it slightly less fancy, but… Yeah, you'll still be able to use your slides. Okay.
You just have to share it with you online. You'll have to use the arrows on the right. Or I can do it on the takedown.
Here we go. Yeah, I can do that. Okay, keep going.
I'm gonna go like this. Lots of cute kid photos.
Kids in the park, adults. Keep going folks with disabilities, we modify sailboats to get them out of the water. And we host regattas with over 250 to 300 local kids, biggest high school programs in the state.
Pretty much all of the boats that you see on the web app is smarter, one way or another.
Um, some highlights from 2015. We served over 15,000 people, gave away $15,000 in scholarships, and we completed the first phase of a capital facilities improvement plan, raising and spending about $700,000 on opening a new workshop facility.
next door to us. You have to do a lot of repairs, work with student groups to fix up the folks. That was last year. This year we moved everything into that space, and in the off season we raised and spent another $800,000 renovating all the classroom space.
And our office is connecting them inside, making the PDA compliant, etc. And we began planning for Phase 3, which is the boathouse.
All of this got bundled into one capital campaign, right? Expecting that we're gonna have to raise $10,000 and $12 million for a total 3-phase project. We're a small nonprofit. We have 5 FTEs, we have a $1.2 million operating budget every year.
But we're optimistic about getting this done, because we've done it in a phased way, and we're growing our capacity as we get. Laurie raised about $1.5 million. Um, we also have a $5 million pledge in County Parks lending, which we got. So I should say we spent $1.5 million dollars.
And we have another 5.1 pledge for Phase 3, meaning we still have a significant delta, but we're making real progress and we're growing our capacity. All right.
Oh, no. Oh, is it this one? It just had to catch up and not get too far.
all right. So sales endpoint has a whole bunch of spaces. Keep going.
In 2019, we did a feasibility study focused on the boat apps, right, which is now phase three. We knew it was the 900-pound gorilla. It's the big project. We were concerned about our ability to fund. Parks have limited capital capacity. It's within a historic district, it's overwater, it's the most complicated building in the system to imagine.
And we did our feasibility study in 2019, so the timing wasn't great, right? As we… at that point, we pretty much knew the price for some reason behind. I was looking at, like, a $15 million project.
sales standpoint, have never raised any money, but for scholarships.
In some ways, the pandemic was a blessing for us, because we were able to step back on this project, put together a three-phase process so we could build our capacity and come up with a plan to move forward.
So basically what we did, I spoke to this one, this is the building at the end of our offices and classroom space are. That's the boathouse, and that space is born from the yard over here for folks. We basically, phase one completed, opened up a new workshop.
Moved everything into it. Phase 2 completed just in May, opened it up to the public, and now we're moving on to phase 3.
So, in Phase 1, this was a mess. There was hazardous material, there were creosote soaked wood corn, there was lead paint, there was all sorts of nasty stuff. We got it out of there, we cleaned it up.
We shifted our slide, and we created a beautiful workshop where we're going to be doing all of our boat repairs with and without volunteers and the public. We installed boat lifts so we can pick up outboards and pair them. It's a beautiful space.
And we put in fire suppression and conditioning federal permitting.
Um, we cut the ribbon with Rob Dembowski, one of the most famous sailors in the area, and a bunch of community members.
Then we moved on to Phase 2. We have been operating in suboptimal conditions.
We took this whole inside space, the whole north end of Building 11, and we completely renovated it. So, spent $800,000 to open it all up. Removing all the old nasty roofing, and turning it into a classroom, John.
We took an old storage area, created a second community classroom and gathering space.
We took our office that was just packed with junk, had one outlet over here and extension cords everywhere, wasn't completely code compliant, and completely renovated it, made it accessible through to the back so that our staff would have to go outside into an alley into the lane.
Um, we're all sorts of nefarious activity happens to go to the restroom.
We took our rental shop space and pushed a wall out and added a handicap lift.
put in conditioning… There's the ADA handicapped list which we're thrilled to have. In fact, our disabled founder came and was the first one to arrive. And we finished a bunch of spaces that weren't completed within the program.
All the rooms now are connected for safety and accessibility, and we covered it just a couple of months ago.
So, we're gaining capacity as we go. You're learning how to partner with the folks in the planning department, how to partner with our friends like Ben, Joanne at Magnusson Park to get these projects done. We've gotten funding from Washington State, King County.
the Murdoch Trust, Norcliff, Radcliffe Foundation, and a couple of $100,000 from folks in our local community.
So what's next? This is our 900-pound gorilla. If anybody's been out to Magnuson and look out the pier building right on your left there is a storehouse. It was built in the 30s. It had a whole bunch of different editions stuck on it over time.
The building has had wings taken off of it. It's had… the inside reconfigured, and it's landed in a place when we took over in 1998. A rectangular space where a bunch of boats are stored. That's just essentially covered porridge.
A triangular space with a bunch of random tiny little dark rooms. There were 15 toilets in here at one point.
Navy ships would come in, and they would… some of the guys would sleep at some of the service members would sleep in the building, some would sleep on the ship, they'd use the restrooms, they'd use the shower, they'd switch crews. But in the renovation process, it just became this awkward and unusual space where we stash.
sales and stuff, it's not a very usable electrical space. And then, um, these folding docks, which are temporary, belong to sales standpoint, and they're being talked to here.
This is independent of the peer. Sales Handpoint does not render VR, despite what a lot of people think. We don't lease it, we're technically not responsible for managing, although for the adults in the room, safety equipment.
thousands of people come and recreate here. They swim, it's a great place to do that.
Despite the no swimming signs, it's a swimming ball. And we're happy to protect that. We're happy to have staff that are trained to do rescues. When the college kids get themselves, you know, a little too enthusiastic and end up in a floating unicorn and get blown out into the middle of the lake and rescue.
We're thrilled to do that. We want to be that hard. But the floating… but the boats in the covered mortgage are critical to that. Additionally, this is where we store a number of the votes that the high school kids use. We have an adaptive scale vote for handicapped folks down here, and this is our primary center for a fleet of.
rental loans. So this is a really important zone to us, but it's independent of the pier, and the reason that's really important is I'll let you know. This is the current view. The buildings seen better days.
The rouletted windows that just got covered in plywood. It's not accessible, it's not particularly attractive. People climb on the roof, kids jump off of it.
um, boats that we have protected inside, boats break in and vandalize those. We've had a lot of theft, vandalism. We can improve this for safety, we can improve it so that we can manage it, and we can do it in a better way than we looked at in 2019.
Underneath the building, this has been repaired thanks to all of its leadership. I know you know this meeting very well. This is what we're dealing with in 2017. There's isolated spots like this. Now the building is not at risk of collapse right now.
But it's going to be if we don't deal with this. Just like all the buildings that were built in the 30s in Puget Sound, they are running out of runway.
Um, what we're proposing is a solution. It's not only more cost effective than $15 million quotes that we got in 2019, which is probably 20, uh, sorry, which is probably 20 or 22 by now.
Um, we're proposing a solution that's more environmentally friendly, it's more accessible, and we're going to be able to get it done. And what that is, and this is the way that you would build any modern marina if you're installing it is entirely.
So rather than… right now, there's 140-ish piles holding up this building. The building's on piles and piles of product. When we initially looked at this in 2019 historic, we're very concerned about us doing this in exactly the way that it hadn't been done, determined that we needed to.
replace all of those piles. Take the building off.
replace all of the piles with scale piles, put the building back on in exactly the same weird configuration that it's in now, which isn't particularly useful, or isn't optimized.
Um, and what we're suggesting is a solution that only puts in about 10 miles. It's floating, it rises and falls from the lake, it's cheaper, it's more environmentally friendly. It's just the way we can do it.
Now, we've talked to historic and gotten very positive feedback. I mean, you're referencing historic, you can be more precise about Landmarks Commission. We're in a historic history. Yep. Sorry, this is a contributing. When we initially went from the feasibility study.
And they said we would only enforce one of them. We came up with five or six plans, right?
They said we would only endorse the plan that basically brought it back exactly as it was. Now, with a different board.
And a different time, and a better plan, and a bunch of money, I think is helping our case. Um, we got very favorable feedback from the local and the citywide groups that we briefed about this plan.
The reason why we think it's so welcome is for several reasons.
Um, first, it separates the building from here. Kids can't climb it.
People can't break in and vandalize. We can also pass down through the buildings to get to our safety equipment to manage it. There's a couple of different looks that we took to the landmarks group. One was a gable roof. They're very interested in the sight lines and this thing.
So this was preferred. The other one, same layout and configuration, just a shed.
Despite the fact that it's cheaper, it wasn't as endorsed as the ape.
Keep going. And basically what we're looking at is making a floating structure that pulls away from the mirror.
The peer may well also have problems down the road, and not be something that the city is interested or able to necessarily maintain and repair. This would ensure that sales standpoint operations continue, even if the pier was.
condemned. And, you know, that's been discussed in the past. Right now, we have to go down there and get into it.
This would pull us away from that, it would protect us, would still be in the way, the weather blows everything forth. This is a pretty normal solution to the next slide.
Um, there's also a space, a covered classroom space down on the docks, which we no longer have. We did have it, but we had access to one building. That's gone away now. But this allows us to conduct classes next month.
Which is just the public benefit. Um, and then, if this works, if you click that, this is just a… Cool AI fly through their architects have developed.
floating boathouse covered more inch. Couple of slips per kilobots. This is an observation tower for a lifeguard potentially for our staff and the kids, and the staff go out onto the lake. When the lake is low, you can't do that.
computers up high. Um, if you can skip to the next one.
Same idea, only this is walking down. We have some historic interpretation here. We can now walk down independent of whatever's going on, or if there's no access to the pier.
It rises and lowers the lake rises and lowers about 6 feet. So through the summer.
Creepy AI kids. But this is our proposed alternative. So, uh, you know, we know that it's going to be a big lift. We're already in pro view, so we've, uh, working with David Graves and.
planning department. We've got ourselves into preliminary, uh, we're in pre-design. We've done ProView, which is sort of pre-permitting.
Um, we're gonna be using our funding to finalize this to get our budgets in place. We're gonna raise the money to do this. Where Spr can help besides already being supported in that information side.
And Joanne is there are a lot of state grants that you can't apply for.
Because we're the non-profit concessionaire, not the owner. Once we get prioritized.
Which we're hopeful for through Romeo. Um, we would ask SPR to partner to submit some already.
But I can't submit them as not the owner. If there's an opportunity for park district to capital budget support down the line. This is a big project with a huge public benefit.
$15,000 to 16,000 people in the biggest selling center in Seattle.
And this is a relative. Drop in the bucket of the capital budget, and we're gonna need some help for that. And then there's project managing… management components to it, where I'm going to be pretty saturated, and I'm going to need the support of David and folks department.
should this ever come to a, you know, a different visa rate concessionaire agreement, it may well find its way to your desk, certainly to the city council. I've been socializing Rivera and several of the other commissioners meeting with the mayor's office.
Um, we're full steam ahead of us. We don't want the building to collapse. You don't want people to, you know, be in an unsafe environment, or be out there recreating without us.
No, thank you. Pretty good, especially given that time. Given the, uh, technology challenges. I guess if there's any questions.
Super quick question. You said you want to hear?
Second, who owns the pyramid Parks? for NOAA for 26 years, and know that, hey, I know peers. Everybody thinks of the sales standpoint, for better or for worse. We're happy to protect it.
Thank you. I do think it's an interesting point that you brought up about the grant and that parks or the city is the landowner that I think that that's a great point of coverage, and.
You know, if that can even be expanded, um, increases on projects like this. We had some success working with the grants group to the arboretum.
So I'm really glad to hear that. Yeah, thank you. I mean, the King County money is part of that massive deal for our supporters.
But it's, you know, reimbursement. I can only get out of a million a year as the tax money. And so we're gonna have to raise a lot of funds, too.
Um, and, you know, sailing has this image of being fancy and kind of expensive. Worthy antithesis that we're not a yacht.
People can find day passes. They can work trade.
The boats we have were modest and humble and expensive, and the people who participated in our programs do that because there's no other place to do that.
Puget Sound. And you didn't mention your loan program for the life jackets. Yeah, there's lots of stuff like that that we do. The kids, you know, we're there swimming hole in Magnuson, 75 of families live there.
They come throughout our life jackets, and suddenly it's safe for them to participate. When they get themselves in trouble, we're the ones that rescue them. Love that partnership? You take that really, really seriously. But we need those resources available so we can make those rescues.
Thank you, Seth, for coming. Yeah, and you know, sir.
All right. Next up, I think we have plenty of capital development. Yeah.
You don't have to stand up there. You know, sitting is actually not that sweet. Okay. Whatever works best for you.
And, uh, I am going to give you an update today.
What we… what we've been doing across the board, largely on our KPIs, and I'll just kind of help me fill in whatever I miss, uh… Been here once or twice already, but I'm still pretty new to HARP, so good to see you many familiar faces.
So if you want to look to the next one. We're going to do our update on our park district commitments, and then just a few project highlights and all interspersonal.
things in there. Michelle and I went out of order. Maybe you, Jessica, I'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. And then, uh… We'll talk about some upcoming events.
You know, cool things we have going on online. Sound good? I'll try to go fast, but stop me in the middle.
Okay. All right. So you have seen these graphics, these slides before. I'm going to go through 3 slides of.
the of these things with blue and green dots. So here we are looking. But the green means we're good, and the blue means we're monitoring. So we are.
Awesome. I'm in a restroom going on right now. Um, so, so many working and completed it in construction, and our new department sites. I didn't take me being here long to know that these have been hard.
Uh, but we're making really great progress, like Amy Ernst.
It's just getting awarded. Terry Pettis if I could go out to bed, 48th and Charleston Boy, West Hale Junction. I hear these names, and I hear people tell me they've been around for a long time, and we're really close. We're making good progress, and… We are watching them all very closely. They are some of our oddly most complicated.
projects, because they have a little bit of everything in a very small area, and saw you came from big, mega, complicated projects. I have. I can really tell you there's a lot of problems.
So we'll flip to the next one. I'll just highlight a few things along the way. The slides are available to you read them all.
That's not my jam. Uh, here, you can actually see the, uh… Legend, which I apparently missed all the slide. Lots of green. We're doing. We're doing great. I wanted to talk a little bit about facility electrification and decarbonization.
We've had some great successes in that. In fact, you may have seen us talking about most recently our Hiawan Community Center versus fully decarbonized Community Center. We are headed into our South Park opening, which is also another one.
We are… Uh, actually, Alki is opening the school district is running that, and we are working on, kind of, the next batch of them. This is this… particular effort has turned out to be one much more complicated, technically, and much more expensive. So we're working. We're in the very early phases on.
the next rounds with Genesee, Garfield, community centers, they're in early design.
We have a GCCM contractor on board. So we're getting really good.
Estimate during the design phase, so we're having our surprises now, and not later, which I appreciate. Something we're more closely.
And just to understand the legend there, closely watching is, you think that there's still an opportunity to be successful in the goal. Yeah. Okay.
That's what that seems to imply. And the next the next slide, the four of these green and blue dots.
Uh, we heard a lot tonight about pickleball, uh, but what we haven't talked about is we are actually working on our magazine news site. It is proved.
challenging to try to find the right stock over there, so the design and the planning of it taking a few iterations to study technical feasibility, but that's moving, so that's great.
and full major maintenance. We had a whole presentation about pools and our public premium pool, which is really unfortunate. But what?
doesn't get understood as… how much need there is in investment in our pools, and how much we're doing, and how it's… We have 6 sites in our design. I wrote them down 4ms, Madison Meadowbark, Munger and.
Edgar Evers, uh, and Coleman is another one in the HVAC at Greater Beach. So we have our pool program, and we were just talking about it today. It is on track. We're going to do renovations and do much-needed maintenance in a bunch of pools across our system.
We still have nothing else breaks along the way while planning those. And a quick note about Med Forevers, because I know it's also closed, and people have been clamoring to know when that's going to be open.
That is coming soon. We're targeting to get that open this summer, early in the summer as we possibly can. We'll announce the dates for more able to, and if you didn't.
Know a little bit more about these details. We have a structural… issue in the roof that was actually pretty scary, so we were able to undertake emergency contracting to take that fixed. But what that also meant is everything else we were trying to do to, like, do our routine maintenance in the pool had to stop.
And so, we're just coming up, uh, early next month, finishing the.
structural work, so bad things don't happen, and then we'll finish that routine maintenance, so we'll get target rates on that, too.
The last, truly the last slide I wanted to talk about, and.
Is… we have our… new park development sites. I wanted to talk about our off-leash areas. I thought there was a question about that earlier. Our new ones designed our West Seattle Golf Course down Othello.
and Georgetown flume is about to open the summer. South Park recently opened in Smith Cove is opening.
and on our park community fund process. 15 projects have been selected, 3 have been completed, the rest are in varying stages of design.
Um, and we are… we're getting ready to come back to you soon. We want to re-engage the board, relaunch the subcommittee on the next round of our community fund. We'll talk about.
process, how to engage you, what that looks like, and continue to update on the Route 1.
Uh, I wanted to note something not in the dots and not in the key performance indicators that we have here.
It's the outside projects. I know you've heard from public comment on Pullman Adaptive.
Michelle will speak to this more, but what we call that is an outside project. Indeed, we have a process for it. Sales and Point is actually, you know, kind of coming through the partner, but these are projects that come to us that are in our portfolio of what we're.
tracking and committing to do. And these are great because they they get to do more things in the parks, but they are a drone are our resources. So we're looking at that closely trying to identify it.
So it's a lot. So we're controlling staff resources.
you know, because every… Every little bit takes a little bit of time. So it's something I'm looking closely at, you know, I I care about.
Do you know what we said we were gonna do?
And I want to take advantage of opportunities when they found themselves and we need to find breakdown of that, so… on that topic. Since it was recent in your mind.
And then fun fun photos that time. Our project highlights our community center. I.
Hope you can get a chance to come down and not only May 9th event at some point and just see the amazingness that is that site, or I think we did want everything we do down there, except for, uh… And then the next one…
I love a good before and after. So we've got Soundview last fall and sound view last month.
Uh, that is… getting close enough, fast enough for you, but we're working towards completion and opening that on the other challenges and applications. And then the next one.
Smith Cove, so one of those long, long, long time projects. It's underway. It's going great. It's gonna open this fall. The field won't open, but… and then a Northwest Native carvings and pull that from very recent photos.
And it's nearby, so maybe you see it. I want to highlight those things, and then… Gotta give love to the projects that aren't in construction yet. Big news on the Lake City Community Center, which is our partner project of mercy housing public engagement a couple of months ago, and.
open agreement signed with them. So I felt like a big milestone to me, and those of us who have read all those pages too many times. And our Queen Anne Center Community Center doesn't get talked about as much as.
The one that's not in this photo that's in this green lake, but we're on track with that. All of these community centers.
uh, wild heights, green. Loyal Heights, Lake City, Brington Lake, and Queen Anne are all playing for construction start next year. A note about relay. I'm very aware you guys.
The OU updates we heard from one of the guys on that. That's coming up in our SR.
Loyal Heights and Green Lake. are also using our GCCM contracting, so we'll cover the estimates of those. And we just onboarded our contractor for GreenLake.
I'm not supposed to have favorites, but I have favorites, uh, Hoffman Construction, who has been a great partner in multiple city projects, built the city original city hall down 4th Avenue. They call it overlook Project Waterfront. They're very reputable.
We're looking to have a lot of competition. Okay, I'm going through here, and other things that don't get highlighted as much, uh… in planning and design, so Annie was here talking about pickleball tonight, and… but her team does so many other things. We have around 3 public meetings on playgrounds that are under concept design.
Uh, in your… And Perla and Romano.
Um, so we have really successful public meetings in the parks about a month ago. This is what that looks like if you haven't attended one. It's just a really great way to engage with the people.
use that part on a daily basis, and the kids are like, I like that one, I like that one, I want the pirate theme, and, you know, it's just a… it's just a great moment, and I love that.
It takes a lot of effort and staff time to do this, but it is very well worth it and appreciated.
Oh. like to celebrate things, urban headings coming up heard a lot about urban sports. I don't know any more about that. We are inviting you to all of our ribbon cutting events.
are coming up. And. If you wanted to know more about anything that's going on, we do have our engagement port hub live. This is just a few of the, um.
tiles in the web world that are on online. And see all these projects on our engagement site and get all the information that one would ever like to see about what's going on.
take surveys and such provide feedback. And lastly, if you didn't have enough of the blue and green maps, and you wanted more.
We do have our Cycle 2 patients online, and this is an awesome map. And I we use this for this stuff. We made this for a presentation like a week ago, and the numbers is 175. I clicked the link today and announced.
I don't know what those five were, but we're making progress. I know, I reckon. Uh, and that is… that is my last slide.
Other questions that Oliver. Okay.
since court strategies kind of the theme of tonight. You know, I was looking at the metric, the 23 toward the goal of 45, and I assume that includes restriking.
And, like, it's the concept of possible increase in capacity within the court. Like, is that being considered as part of that? I'm not sure what met which metric you're pulling. But we have the resurfacing program.
Just resurfacing this, and it's not increasing. It's basically the maintenance program with new development report development.
That's in parallel to the strategy that's pushing everything around, so… And I was, like, things that are happening in all three categories and everything where we thought we could squeeze in more people to the strategy. Yeah. But there is a connection between the two, because where we…
We'll finalize the recommendations for… single-use sites as they come up for resurfacing, that will be your opportunity.
a permanent.
So if… If maybe it has two paperball chords on a single tennis court now, it's going to be a dedicated pickleball court in the future where you could convert that.
And that is…
Quick question as well. Thanks for the presentation. I was curious. You touched on Magnuson projects. I get the question all the time from the community about new construction of restrooms there. Were any of those involving new restroom sites?
Yeah, we're building a new restroom. So like the park for the playground is, and all the sports goes to be a new restaurant.
Amazing. Like, near field five if you know where that is? Okay, I'm there twice a week. Is that… that's happening this year? Yes. That's amazing.
We've already opened bids, awarded it. It's fine for paperwork.
Great news. Thank you. Oh, any more questions?
Okay.
Oh, yeah, I was just asking if the… in the… presentation at the, uh, when it says the number was revised, if it was revised up or down.
Um, in a lot of cases, the numbers have been revised.
See, which one you're referring to? About the blue and green dot numbers.
Yeah, in some of the green dot numbers, it says we're 15 towards the revised goal of whatever. There were a lot of revised goals, and I couldn't tell if those were revised up or down, because that matters.
Yeah. Most details were revised.
Let me get an example. In a lot of cases, we… underestimating the number of accessibility barriers.
synthetic turf placements. There's a handful in each category.
And then in get to the annual report and the… for the wonks in the room that want to click the thing called appendices. The appendices actually articulated if that number went up or down for each parents about if it provides.
doesn't necessarily say why, but it says it revised from whenever. Yeah.
We're not trying to trick anybody.
Thanks, Jessica.
Thanks, BCD. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Great to see all the all the progress.
So much going on. It is. It is a lot of programs. All right. Michelle, who do you want to update us on?
I don't remember. That's what I was worried about! She'll ask, should I go… should I go last? I'm like, I don't know.
I'm trying a slightly different format tonight, which is me learning and trying to see if any of the structure helps us all communicate as we do this dance together and following the retreat and stuff, so… Uh, feedback's appreciated. Um, I'm gonna start with some department updates, and then I've…
added this new category called Feedback Loop. And then we're trying to build out more opportunities for you guys to have… Be out and about and run into people, whatever that looks like. So, um… The pickleball people are very good at finding us. Good! Good. It's been fun, I've been teasing people, but, um… Teaching people that there's a lot of people, apparently, that.
Michelle with two L's is a real thing, and they then don't get to me, and then maybe a week later, with, like, all caps, I get it back that says, how dare you, I have not responded, but it has 1L now.
Anyway, so I keep, like, wanting to forward them to my mom, and just be like, this whole 2L, 1L thing. They finally caught up with me on my interim job, but um… So yes, if you see something that has my name on it with two L's, I probably didn't get it, so please forward. Okay. Department updates. Jessica just did these, but I just want them in your calendars and not wait for us to make sure that we.
Send you the invite, I'm telling you again that we have two really exciting.
Um, Westlake, we have a… Meeting that day on the 28th?
Well, see, right before, you guys sat by. Okay, we should do that. Um, I also want to let you know, if you haven't seen it in the news, that we have the contractor mobilized.
Gasworks, so you may find some… And put in your next packet of… They're working actively, is that? They're mobilizing this week, and then they start staging. Okay.
And then Lake Union, which is, um… And I won't call it an outside project because it came from the city council, but it was a priority project that was funded for early 2026, and it's a mix of capital with.
Where's Julie over there? Is he working, and our operating team, so the gardeners and the… arborists and the tree trimmers, and it's been a spending.
A well-loved and team-building opportunity that Andy has been coordinating.
snuck out. But so if you and you can also see the progress on the the native canoe Center. If you end up going down to Lake Union anytime soon, stop by on that.
Next slide then on the operating side, just because can you believe it? Next week's May first start of our new summer hours. So that's happening.
We also have, I want to point out the beach fire program does not start on May 1st. It starts Memorial Day weekend, so we'll have all of our staff and rangers and everybody.
Alki and Golden Gardens for beach fire starting Memorial Day weekend. I would encourage, if it's a sunny… Afternoon, between May 1st and Memorial Day. They also might want to swing by. And just reminding for the public, it starts officially Memorial Day when we actually have fire pits.
on the beaches. Um… Another fun one coming up, Coleman and Munger start their preseason May 9th, and that goes until pre-season hours are until school gets out, and then it goes full throttle for the… Rest of the season, then we do a little…
post-season, slightly constricts again as many of our lifeguards go back to college and things like that, and we have a few last weeks and in September.
Um… Maintenance updates team is working on a lot of things, but I just wanted to point out.
We see it out here, and I'm sure it's see it around.
city, and maybe you're experiencing it in. your own living situation, but the… a lot of wets.
and growing grass, and not able to get your big fancy mowers out there operating makes things start to look unkempt, and I just want people to know we realize that things are looking a little unkempt, and the mowers need to… get out there, and so as the weather's warming, you'll see a lot more mowing, um, and our… we always have this, like.
Mother's Day weekend that we need to be sharp. So give us… Give us a couple weeks to get now that we're drying out a little bit to get those those more going. But there's a lot of everybody's out there working on working on getting our stuff ready for for peak season.
Another fun part of the wet season, however, is that in, um, Seth, thank you for mentioning the Lake Washington goes up and down about 6 feet at the Arboretum, the lake level is.
It's been rising, and our arboretum trail is not as accessible.
Um, so we do have a project coming up there that mitigates.
Based on this summer. We're working on this.
Yeah, so… but for right now, we have signs up and stuff on our website that that trail is… Close to the lake level.
So this is, uh… Trying out with you guys tonight, but I wanted to get some feedback on things that we've heard in the room where I wasn't able to answer directly, or we wanted to circle back with the person. So these happen to have both happened last month. I'm not promising that every time it'll happen exactly the next month.
Something may take a little while to work through, but, um… We had our… One of our key volleyball… organizing groups here talking about the impacts of weather, and how to maybe adjust how we deal with weather for their tournaments are different than how we're currently dealing with some of our other sports, and so they did meet with our athletic scheduling team.
And we're going to be revising our standard operating procedure for volleyball tournaments, where the… up to two times a year, the organizer can kind of self-declare that the conditions were not.
safe, and we'll do a refund for that, so… That change is happening, um, and then the… Seattle Children's Play Garden, which I'm… I know a lot about this site. I just didn't know anything last month about the project that they were talking about because it was an outside project that was starting this conversation in PCD, and I'm like, cool, let's learn more. So, uh, looked a little…
Whatever. Dear… deer in headlights in the moment, but it's, uh, it is a community-generated partnership. It's also in partnership with the Parks Foundation and the Caroline new staffer at the Park Foundation. Thanks for being here.
Um, so they're working together on this project, and the team is giving some feedback next week, which will get them ready for the pro-view process that Seth mentioned in order to actually get more direct feedback on what design and changes we're working through.
you know, it's a ball field. So there's stakeholders that are currently like using the ball field. And so we're working through that part of what would be the impacts of that site for that use. And but… an exciting project to work through, and it will continue to evolve and, um…
They are connected with the right folks in our system. So that's happening. And then just kind of a tracker on the side over here on.
They've heard you that we have some future briefings. Sounds like I should have added GreenLake.
On there, and yeah, so I must have missed that one. So just… We're working on them, we don't have them scheduled yet, and then, actually, as always.
6 minutes after I told Ben that this was set to go, I heard back from our comms team on the Parkways blog sign up, and they checked the Seattle IT, and there's not actually a way to subscribe, so we're looking at two other options. Okay.
More to come. This was me, um, because when I discovered is that sometimes the way I find out about parks announcing something is local media or actually my neighbor involved in pickleball like walking down the street.
Have you seen this? Like, minutes after, it was… posted, um, so it was asked for some way that if we wanted to be aware of, at least this is what has been published as Commissioners, right? We're not when it goes out to the public that we wanted to look at it, we wanted to follow it.
We could be able to do so. You don't have to refresh every otherwise looking at this every other day and that's not a process.
So… Something. I have 6 minutes of… thinking, but there are some other options. We're still working on.
Um, and then opportunities to get engaged. We have a blog post, Ryan, on all the beautiful games opportunities, so if you would like to engage, there's outdoor watch or parties, indoor watch parties, soccer jamborees.
many different things. Oh, and you got it. We also have bicycle weekends, so hopefully folks can maybe get down and roll or roll in the summer.
April Pool's Day is the annual event our aquatics team does to encourage, especially this time of year when the, um.
The outdoor water is very cold, and even strong swimmers can quickly get.
in trouble, they like to do April Pool's Day to do cold water awareness and other promotions like like jackets, either fits with kids or, um… Connecting families with life jackets, so a couple of the events were last weekend, but there are a bunch this weekend, too, at our pools. And then, um…
The Department of Neighborhoods actually hosts an annual neighbor day, and they have. You just go onto their website, it's highlighted. It's May second. We are participating in a couple places, but it's really just.
Hey, neighbor! How are you doing? Take that day to maybe be a little shelf it again, but a little extrovert hat on and get out there and practice, practice engaging with your neighbors.
Participate in Neighbor Day, and… Oh, and this one actually… I actually have words I never use. But on this one, I not only want to say thank you to all of you, but I wanted to thank our carpentry crew.
who, um… Always do outstanding work, and this is just one example of what they do to keep our communities based welcoming, functional, and safe out at Camp alone, and we had some tree damage, and they were out there quickly removing an old.
and installing a new replacement, and um… Just, you know, the little garden gnomes in the middle of the night that come in and do these things.
Safe and accessible for all, so thank you. Take any other questions you might have for me. I saw the the Washington bicycle weekend.
Except for those where we have two public comment for her today about the.
You talked about like, is that that… parts of the process. Seafare is a citywide special event, so the Parks department is actually the one that signs that permit, but it's the global.
What is the organization called sea bear? What are they allowed to do? Where is part of the citywide special event committee process?
Um, so I… I believe… I believe they've talked to city council members and others.
before I'm not there. I have to reconnect, but that would be the OED facilitates the citywide special events committee. I'll confirm later, but I believe this year's already signed. So wouldn't be at this year change. I love the report.
Hmm.
Continuous improvement. Keep giving me feedback. We want to be responsive and have you guys have the information you need to do your roles.
Go ahead.
Yeah, two quick things. Thanks, Michelle. Ditto on the feedback loop. Feedback is that I love it, so it's so great, and I think the public will appreciate it.
And then I was just curious, we haven't seen much feedback on the bicycle weekends, although we have been very inundated with other feedback. But has the feedback on the expanded weekends been kind of quiet or generally positive, or really mixed? What's your kind of top-level overview of how.
the new bike weekends plan has been received.
Well, unless they're going to a 2 mile Finnegan that I have not met yet, it hasn't been a lot. There was a little bit right away, and it was, I think, primarily from.
There's a group that not a group of individual organized people, but a group of emails that were concerned.
That it was every weekend, I think that they felt like that was maybe too much.
And it precluded just being able to take your visitors on a drive down Lake Washington Boulevard, which is also a nice thing to do. And then there was… Another kind of group of emails that were about why just there? Why aren't you doing it in more places? Why isn't this spread around? Why does this community?
Have to take all of that, you know, versus other boulevards or whatever, so, um, I think… There's some other opportunities to have that dialogue going forward, too, about is the model that would maybe be good to bring to other communities.
Yeah, that could be a really good expansion opportunity to think about, like, what are some other scenic drives that could be closed? So that's great. It's good to hear. Thank you.
Yep.
Do you want to do all of that? Briefly, I'll mention it. So we're at time. But I do want to close the loop back. Come back around on.
Yeah, we put it on, um, committees. Uh, and the… this is the best commission ever, because, uh, everyone is literally getting their first choice.
It just happened to work out that way that there was no need to move to a second preference.
of voting, so you all expressed your preferences and every single it laid out that every single person, their top preference is.
I believe that there's capacity to be a side dog, and thus the staff and talking to the chairs. Let's just do that then.
Um, because it was so obvious. So we'd like to get these started and in place. So.
Um, unless anyone's having second thoughts about what they said they wanted to do. I'd love to move forward and try and establish these committees before we break today.
Yeah, I don't understand, but I had to leave early because there was discussion around version that evening community. We did have a discussion on that. Um, the… and there are some folks interested in in.
Naming, um, and there are going to be some names coming up, so, uh, we do think there's gonna be… if the naming isn't active, we do need to revisit that. But the idea is there's so much work on the policy.
review committee that might be too much to load onto that one committee. So that was the the thinking behind it. We are going to go ahead and keep those separate, so… Um, I actually guess we have to technically vote approval.
on this of us sort of approving we that we want to do the thing that we said we would do.
We formally have to. So there. Yeah, woohoo. Um, so is there a motion to approve the subcommittees?
So moved. Seconded, a motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the subcommittees. Please say aye or raise your hand.
Aye.
Okay. Any opposed? Motion carries. The subcommittees are established. And of course we can revisit this as needed. Thank you all for your time tonight and attention and working through all the wonderful comments we have in the room, and look forward to seeing you all again.
And then, um, as the subcommittee is established as well. Thank you.
ThanksThanksThanksThank