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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPark Board Minutes 04.29.2013 City of Laurel Park Board Minutes Monday, April 29, 2013 The Park Board meeting was brought to order at 5:35pm. In attendance were: Chairman, Mark Mace, and Park Board members LuAnn Engh, Gretchen Paulson, Amy Pollock, Hazel Storck, Bruce McGee, and Chuck Dickerson. City employees in attendance were Mayor Ken Olsen, Heidi Jensen, Monica Plecker, Kurt Markegard. 1. No public comments regarding parks at this time. 2. Tonight's special meeting was held to talk with Jolene Rieck from Peaks to Plains Design regarding questions of a Park Master Plan Proposal. Jolene had worked with Bill Sheridan in the past and made an a la cart plan at their 2008 pricing, which is was we were using to discuss Master Park Plans tonight. Jolene said she could get us updated pricing if we were interested. Some of cities Peaks to Plains Design has worked with creating Master Plans are Williston, ND, Sheridan, WY, Bozeman and Colstrip, MT. How has Williston, ND, paid for their parks? They have a Park district. They also passed a $0.01 sales tax specific for parks, it nets $6 - $7 million/year. Tasks Peaks to Plains Design can do: Inventory parks; decide if the parks are equally distributed throughout the town; identify policy issues, such as cash in lieu of land; identify structures currently under the Public Works. In the recent history within Laurel, most new subdivisions have given land only and no funds toward parks. This leaves the city with several undeveloped parks donated but no funds to develop or maintain them. A Statistically Valid Survey is able to reach a more diverse range of citizens within the city limits, it is a less biased survey because there are no special interest groups. We could also use census information to determine if low income families use more of one part of town/park than another. The survey would e able to answer questions such as "What would you be willing to pay extra for these developments ?" Chuck wanted to know if Method #3 from the Peaks to Plains Design would give us answers and direction to creating the Parks Master Plan. Jolene answered that Method #3 would give us the most useful response. She expects a 40% response rate. We can identify the amenities that the citizens want in our parks, and identify the priorities to work on within the parks. There was a long discussion on if we could tax land outside the city limits for parks, such as the school district boundaries or the fire department boundaries. It was this decided that those citizens requested to be included in the fire department boundaries, the county and city have an agreement to add taxes to the county tax bill for those services. Jolene recommends that we use the city limits for park district taxing. The discussion turn toward budgets and the fact that the parks suffer first n a budget pinch, as we have seen in recent history. Currently there are just enough funds to maintain the current parks, but not enough to develop new parks or add new amenities. We need to determine how much it does take to support our current parks, to determine how much taxes to assess per parcel. Should the city sell some park land and use those funds to help maintain parks? We need maintenance funds dedicated to support the parks through Kurt and Public Works. We need Capital funds to make future improvements and when those improvements will take place, to show the citizen why and what we are saving for with the park district taxes. For example, 2017 we could have tennis courts, or in 2020 we could have a splash park, etc. How long does the Method #3, Statistically Valid Survey take? Here is the high level timeline Jolene laid out for us: • Prep time with city staff - 2 weeks • Survey itself - 3 weeks total (2 weeks out to citizen and 1 week for mailing) • Collate - 2 weeks to gather data and present it to Park Board • Then Town hall meeting to present results and decide on a plan. Where to start: Jolene said Peaks to Plains Design could start by having the city staff and Park Board members create a list of questions. These questions could possibly be on the survey. Another avenue to start would be to go to the county assessor and find the boundaries for the survey. This would help us determine if we should assess any fees on a per lot basis or by the square feet of the lot. Further discussion on whether this should be on this November 2013 ballot or on the May 2014 ballot. If we did the survey and compiled the results, we would be rushing to get the data and compile it before the November ballot. If we wait until May ballot, we would have more time to inform the citizen through public media and city meetings. Either ballot, it would take a full 3 years before the income from the taxes is available to use on park projects (in 2 years we would have funds available, but in 3 years we would have sufficient funds for projects per Heidi Jensen). This would be 2017 before the full funds are received and projects could be started. This means even though it might pass in 2014, there will be no benefits or improvements until 3 years after the ballot passes. Where do we go from here? Jolene will provide a current estimate of services for the Park Board to review. Then the Park Board would send it to the city council to add to the summer Capital Improvement Project Budget process in June. This would allow the city to approve and pay for Peaks to Plains Design survey and get the ball rolling. Next meeting Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 5:30pm in the FAB. The Park Board Meeting adjourned at 6:45pm. Submitted by Gretchen Paulson, Park Board Member.