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Home My WebLink AboutParks And Recreation Board - Minutes - 12/07/2016Parks & Recreation Board Meeting – December 7, 2016 Page 1 of 4 BE A GOOD STEWARD: Protect & Respect your Parks, Trails & Recreation Facilities Call Meeting to Order: Scott Sinn called the meeting to order 5:32pm. Agenda Review & Items of Note: None Citizen Participation: None Approval of Minutes: Dawn Theis made the motion to approved the Parks & Recreation Board minutes of October 26, seconded by Jessica MacMillan – Minutes Approved: 5:0 Meeting Summary  The Board was updated on the Downtown Plan. Now that downtown is revitalized it’s time for a new Plan based/driven by Public Outreach. The new Downtown Plan will update the vision, policy direction, and action items for the next 5-20 years.  The Board was presented information on the NoCo Trail Report by the Parks department. The NoCo Trail Report is a collaborative website project with Natural Areas, Parks & Larimer County to provide real-time updates on trail closures to the public.  The Board recognized & celebrated Brian Carroll’s service on the Parks & Recreation board. ,PARKS AND RECREATION BOARD MINUTES Regular Meeting Wednesday, December 7, 2016 5:30 p.m. Board Chair: Scott Sinn – 2016 scott.sinn@ymail.com Council Liaison: Gino Campana – gcampana@fcgov.com Staff Liaisons: Mike Calhoon, 970-416-2079 – mcalhoon@fcgov.com Kurt Friesen, 970-221-6618 – kfriesen@fcgov.com Bob Adams, 970-221-6354 – badams@fcgov.com Parks & Recreation Board Meeting – December 7, 2016 Page 2 of 4 Full Minutes AGENDA ITEMS: Downtown Plan – Clark Mapes, City Planner, Community Development & Neighborhood Services Clark provided a follow-up to his August presentation to the board. The Downtown Plan was started in 1989 to revitalize downtown. Now that downtown is revitalized it’s time for a new Plan based/driven by Public Outreach. The new Downtown Plan will update the vision, policy direction, and action items for the next 5, 10 & 20 years. In addition, the new Downtown Plan will incorporate recently completed planning efforts and studies (e.g., the Poudre River Downtown Master Plan, the citywide Pedestrian Plan, and the Bicycle Master Plan) into a comprehensive plan for Downtown Fort Collins. The overall vision for Downtown: Unique, Innovated & Inclusive. Inclusivity was a major point brought forth by public comments. The Parks Department is featured prominently in management & maintenance portion of the plan and includes strong advocacy for a Downtown Park Maintenance shop, as well as a map of the parks Downtown & their uses. Discussion Board – Who did you reach out to? Staff – Pages and pages of groups. Farmers markets, chambers of commerce, realtor groups, every board & commission, etc. Board – Does the plan make an effort to disperse big events Downtown? They can be harmful to businesses and Parks has a lot of clean-up. Staff – We do try to do that. Parks blocks out dates to allow turf to re-grow. Board – What does the plan have to say about encroachment into the sidewalk area? Outdoor eating areas are really encroaching into the sidewalk area making it difficult to walk. Staff – There is a section specifically discussing this issue. We require 7 feet to be clear for permits. We are working on language to review the context of the 7 feet to take account of trees, railings, parking spaces, etc. NoCo Trail Report – Mike Calhoon, Director, Parks Department The NoCo Trail Report is a website that allows Rangers & Park Staff to update trail closures due to hazards, such as a flooded underpass, on the fly. Mike recognized the instrumental work of Carol Rankin and John Klingaman on orchestrating the collaborative project with Natural Areas, Parks & Larimer County to put the NoCo Trail Report together. There are future phases planned for the project, such as sending an email notification to subscribers when a trail or section of a trail is closed. Discussion Board – I showed them this at the Bike Advisory Committee and it got “ooh’s and ahh’s” Excellent work. It has provided a great picture of the connectivity of the city’s trails. Board – Would it be possible to add volume of usage, like with heavy traffic volume on a mobile app with GPS? Staff – That would be a great & interesting feature to add. We are looking to add new features in phases. Board – How long has this been in the works? Staff – Parks approached IT last fall about the project. After working with Larimer County it took 3-4 months to complete. Board – Will you be waiting a while between phases or doing continuous improvements? Staff – We’d love to do continuous improvement, but it does depend on the budget and working with other communities. STAFF UPDATES: Parks Updates Parks & Recreation Board Meeting – December 7, 2016 Page 3 of 4  Cottonwood trees in urban core are at the end of their life. We recently worked on some on Lemay, South of Harmony. We could only prune one and had to remove 7-8. We are starting to see decay in a lot of our cottonwood trees. We will continue to see more and more cottonwoods reaching the age in which they need to be removed. We are shadow planting whenever possible. Recreation Updates  Winter Registration was on Nov 30th. There were 2,315 unique enrollees. Revenue has been lower than the previous year due to changes in Youth Basketball. Top 5 Program Areas were Child Development, Aquatics, Fitness, Ice, Outdoor Rec. 68% of registrations were completed online.  EPIC re-opened! The Grand Re-opening & 30th Anniversary Celebration is on Saturday December 17th from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM. At 10:00 AM City Manager Darin Atteberry & Mayor Wade Troxell will be there. o There will be free ice skating, a winter skating performance, and more. o The therapy pool is not yet complete. Updates will be provided in the future on the status of this project.  Downtown Skating Rink o Open Monday – Friday 3:00 – 8:00 PM, Weekends 10:00 AM-8:00 PM o Recreation is operating the rink. We are using synthetic ice this year. We had used real ice in previous years, but it took 3 weeks to setup & take down, required a lot of maintenance & was expensive.  Senior Center security policy has been implemented. We still have a couple patrons who are upset about it. We have been working with larger rental groups to make arrangements for their events. We identified 20 expired memberships that not been renewed since they had been coming in the side-doors.  Action Plans for 2017 o Life-cycle Replacement Schedule o Rental Policy Standardization o Internship manual o Inter-Government Agency with Poudre School District o Program plans & summaries: Plan, Do, Check, Act o Reduced Fee policy o Onboarding process for staff Discussion Board – Is offline activity registration a burden? Could we go 100% online? Staff – Because of our Reduced Fee Program, there are some who cannot register online. We also had a snafu where some staff forgot to enable online registration which lowered the # of online registrations this season which prevented registration for these activities online until the error was corrected. Our process has also been adjusted to prevent this from occurring in the future. Board – Are you changing qualifications for Reduced Fee Programs? Staff – No, we are just changing how it is implemented. Changes to the program are still in the works, but we would like to go away from having some activities that are discountable & some that are non-discountable and instead offer tiered discounts depending on the type & level for the activity Board – Is there an action plan update? Staff – We will present at the next meeting. Park Planning Updates  See Monthly Operating Report  Longview Trail 30% plan design  Started boring for the Fossil Creek connection  Added Pickelball Courts to the SE corner of Twin Silos Parks & Recreation Board Meeting – December 7, 2016 Page 4 of 4 Bicycle Advisory Board Liaison Update  Pedestrian & bike trails counts list in September o Trends - 70% of users are bikers. Discrepancy from automated counters. This year the most used trail was Spring Creek by Lilac Park. Almost the last 4 years 66% of those that ride bikes are men, 35% are women. 60% of the people on the trails wear helmets; ~30% on roads do not. o E-Bikes account for less than 1% on the trails. There are varying regulations between cities on use. Discussion Board – Tell us about your automated trail counters Staff – We’ve got them on several places. We get reporting online but as far as we know reporting is not available for public access currently. Schedule of Articles/Calendar  Bruce Henderson’s article for the Spring Recreator was reviewed and approved.  Annual report will be due at the end of January. Board will review at next meeting. Bullet Points  Downtown Plan  NoCo Trail Report  Brian Carroll retired from the board Adjournment: Meeting adjourned 7:33pm Respectfully submitted, Coleen Elliott Board Attendance Board Members: Ragan Adams, Mary Carlson, Brian Carroll, Jessica MacMillan, Scott Sinn, Kelly Smith, Dawn Theis Staff: Bob Adams, Mike Calhoon, Carol Rankin, Coleen Elliott Guest: Robert Kingsbury - Observing