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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPark Board Minutes 08.01.2013 City of Laurel Park Board Minutes From Thursday, August 1, 2013 In attendance were Mark Mace, Chuck Dickerson, LuAnne Engh, Hazel Storck, Amy Pollock and Gretchen Paulson. Kurt Markegard from Public Works and Jolene Rieck from Peaks to Plains Design also attended. Called to order at 5:26pm. 1. Public comment: Ira Li came to the park board looking for an Eagle Scout project. He talked with Kurt about city project needing done and Kurt suggested a few projects in Riverside Park. Those would need approval by park board prior to starting. Ira will come up with a project and plan then return to the September park board meeting. If he continues on this path, suggestions were made for projects such as painting the exterior of buildings at Riverside park. He could look for donations of supplies from area businesses to help fund the project. Otherwise, the city would provide the paint and supplies. 2. Park Master Plan - Jolene Rieck, Peaks to Plains, came with the first draft of the citizens' mail survey for us to review. Jolene walked us through all the questions and we discussed each one in detail. Some survey items just had discussion or clarification, others had real debate. I will make notes on those items where we suggested changes, Jolene was also taking notes regarding our suggested changes to the survey. Survey question 1. It asked about the parks ad how often the park was attended in the last 12 months. LuAnne suggested we regroup the parks and identify them as "developed" vs "undeveloped" or plain land so as not to confuse the participants. Also, we asked Jolene to rename or put another name in parenthesis on this item. For example, Kiwanis Park would also have "(Kids Kingdom) ". Survey question 2 is asking how satisfied are the participants with the current parks. This will be revamped from the first draft to show a sliding scale of how satisfied they are with items a through e. Survey question 3. Chuck suggested removing the word "age" in the question and adding "Handicap" or other such grouping to the end of this item. This would help us gauge if we are providing enough parks opportunities to all different groups. Survey question 4. This will be a sliding scale of satisfaction with our current facilities. We clarified with Jolene that in item a the "indoor /outdoor pool" and splash pad would be separated, not lumped together. Also we wanted Dog Parks and Horseshoe pits added to the current listing of facilities. Survey question 5 overview: this gives a brief summary of what we are trying to do and how the public wants us to do that within the city government structure. In paragraph 2 there is a summary of what the Public Works Dept is responsible for. Kurt asked to have cemetary and Storm water added to the short listing included here. He also suggested to Jolene to get a chart from Shirley Ewan that shows the city's general funding sources. Question 5A: this refers to the Governing body. We asked for more clarification on "Newly created Special District, independent of City government ". Jolene said this would be a Park Board to govern the parks and then Park District employees, not city employees. We asked her to give an example of what this would be similar to, such as the cemetary or library boards. Question 5B. This was discussed at length and finally we decided to remove this item from the questions. We thought it was very confusing and didn't know how we would follow through on this if the public chose option 3, which was to have an independent board appointed by County Commissioners. Questions 5 C & D were discussed quickly and no suggestions for modifications were made. Question 5E. It was suggested that a pie chart be added to the first option to help the public see where the parks funds are in respect to the whole city. Or use the pie chart for the public to show us how much of the general funds should be used on parks. Question 6. This is similar to question 2 in the fact that it will have sliding scale for the participants to fill in on what the people's priorities for parks would be. This will be revamped from the first draft to show a sliding scale of what the people want to see in future parks /lands. Question 7 . How much would the participant be willing to pay additionally to support the city parks? Suggestions were to have a set dollar amount for choices such as $10 or $20 or we could have "up to 2 mils ". This last option would allow for the value of the funds to increase as property values increase. PLus if we give a option for a set dollar amount, this would help those on fixed incomes decide if they would be willing to add this into their budget. Question 8 is about Demographics. This is listed lastly because it has the least useful information, it's information we could attain in other ways, to show the general population of Laurel. Other suggestions to include in the survey in general are asking if participants would be willing to volunteer in the parks or cleanup or other facilities. What about asking for picnic area with grill stations? The survey's will be mailed to the water bill payer. Chuck was wondering why we were not surveying the taxpayer in the case where there may be renters, would the renters take the time to complete the survey? The answer is that renters use city services too and those renters may pay for any additional assessments to the household through the rent itself. Jolele reminded us that this is a Opinion Survey, not a ballot survey. We can take this input and read into what the public would like to do with parks. Kurt will get address listing to Jolene for the statistical selection. 2300 households are in Laurel city limits. 800 will be selected for the survey. Peaks to Plains will draft a letter to be signed by the Mayor. This will be mailed out before Labor day weekend and it will inform the citizen of the upcoming survey and for it to be completed if they receive it. Then the survey will be mailed out the week after Labor day, 1 week later a follow up postcard will be mailed to those addresses that did not send in the survey. 1 additional week later, if the survey still has not been returned, then a second survey will be mailed to the household. It will take roughly 2 weeks to tabulate the information received, 1 week to generate report. At our October board meeting we should get the rough results of the survey and have final results by the November board meeting. Extra surveys will be located at city hall and the library for those interested but not receive one at home, and the forms can be left in those respective drop boxes. These will be marked separately since they are considered a "special interest group ". A press release will be sent to the Laurel Outlook when the Mayors letter is sent out so that everyone in town in informed. Kurt suggested that a notice could be added to the city water bill. There is room for 3 sentences at the bottom of the bill. Wording could be: Look for Park Survey in September! Fill it out and return. This needs to be added before the August 24 water bills are created. 3. Notices to ask non - profit groups to sponsor a small park parcel for cleanup. Action: Cindy, who added this to the agenda? None of us were aware of this item and didn't know what needed to be discussed. Would you please provide us further information for our next meeting so we can take necessary action? Thanks! 4. Other: Donation for signs at Chamber park (MRL owned land) was discussed. Since it is not city land to be named, we can't make this happen. Gretchen will go to the Chamber and talk with them to see how to handle and what we can do to make the donation and historical signs happen. Could we ask Jack LaFlesch to use the donation for historical sign and build a shelter in the name of the first resident if we can't get the park named for him? Action: Gretchen will work with Chamber on issue and bring it back to next meeting on what was discussed. Action: LuAnne and Gretchen will meet with the Mayor Ken Olsen to discuss the possible donation of county land to Laurel. More information at the September meeting. The Park Board meeting adjourned at 7:13pm. Submitted by Gretchen Paulson, Park Board member.