PRC 2009 04 28
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREATION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
APRIL 28, 2009
Chairman Daniel called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Jeff Daniel, Elise Ryan, Steve Scharfenberg, Tom Kelly and Glenn
Stolar
MEMBERS ABSENT:
Thor Smith and Scott Wendt
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation
Superintendent, Dale Gregory, Park Superintendent; Dean Schmieg, Park Foreman; Rob Heinen,
Park Laborer/Light Equipment Operator; Charlie Eiler, Park Keeper/Light Equipment Operator;
and Brad Morse, Park Keeper/Light Equipment Operator.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
Kelly: Within new business I’d like to maybe as 3(a) review the potential bike route with the
th
City Council and commissioners on June 24 or whatever that date is. I have a 10 mile ride I’d
like to show everyone. See if you guys accept it.
Daniel: Okay. And I do believe based off of last night as well we were going to talk about old
business, is that correct? I think maybe Glenn was going to bring that up about the student rep,
just to review that as well as I think the commission’s suggestion off of, or of adding a potential
focus group so maybe we should probably add that to 4 under new business Todd or should that
go under old business?
Hoffman: It could go under commission.
Daniel: Should it go under commissioner member presentations?
Hoffman: Yep.
Daniel: Okay, let’s do that. Okay excellent. And now we have the attendance of Commissioner
Stolar. I want to add that to the record. Alright, any other changes? Glenn I did add the, under
commissioner presentations where it talked about the student rep and the focus group. Alright,
anything else? Steve? No? Okay. Move forward with approval of the agenda.
Kelly: So moved.
Scharfenberg: Second.
Kelly moved, Scharfenberg seconded to approve the agenda, amended to include a
presentation of a proposed bike route for the council/commission bike trip and discussion
Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
of a student representative on the Park and Recreation Commission. All voted in favor and
the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Daniel: Is there anything Todd that we should be aware of?
Hoffman: We’ll talk about the veterans monument in item 5. Anything else Jerry?
Ruegemer: The opening day ceremony on Saturday. Park Pride Day this weekend.
Hoffman: Arbor Day celebration. Park Pride Saturday.
Daniel: Are we going to talk a little bit more about that or should we use this and quickly talk
about the, get some details? Have you got them Jerry or are you just going to wing it?
Ruegemer: Park Pride Day, as the commission does know is an opportunity for various groups
around Chanhassen to go through and clean up the park areas. Kind of go through and you know
assemble as a group. Go through and pick up all the garbage and wetland areas or adjacent park
property, the park itself. Clean it up. Bag it and then you know stockpile it and the parks crews
then will go around and pick up. Kind of a formalized way to kind of clean up our parks and
help ourselves during the springtime to kind of give them a shot in the arm here to make them
look really nice. So that goes on Arbor Day. Jill Sinclair of the, with the city puts on a nice
educational, different seminars up here, right here at City Center Plaza. You can go through and
do a lot of different activities and speakers and kind of environmental commission’s involved in
that so that’s been a long standing tradition here as well. It’s a nice program that they
incorporated. Park Pride Day kind of started the whole thing and then it kind of incorporated
Arbor Day into that program. City has kind of a full weekend of activities out at Lake Ann Park.
Our opening day ceremonies and ball games going on throughout the day so it’ll be a busy
weekend.
Daniel: And that’s this weekend?
Ruegemer: (Yes)
Daniel: Okay.
Stolar: For Park Pride Day do you have certain parks that you focus on that people want?
Ruegemer: You know it’s just really kind of a lot of times it’s up to the groups as to what areas
they kind of want to key on. Whether it’s a trail segment or a specific park and then we certainly
have parks that certainly need more attention than others and kind of can guide people that way
as well. I haven’t seen the list…but we can find that out.
Stolar: If you would send it off because there’s groups that are doing it, maybe we can hook up.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Daniel: Is there any announcement Jerry at all as far as, will there be focus on individual
neighborhood parks as well?
Ruegemer: (Yes).
Daniel: Okay. So each, was there notification like in the Connection I assume? Okay.
Excellent.
Ruegemer: City web site.
Daniel: Okay, great.
Hoffman: There’s a variety of groups that come back each year, year after year.
Daniel: Alright. Well thank you Jerry. Are there any questions? Alright.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
None.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Scharfenberg moved, Kelly seconded to approve the
verbatim and summary minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated
March 24, 2009 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with
a vote of 5 to 0.
CITY COUNCIL APPOINTMENT OF ELISE RYAN TO A THREE-YEAR
COMMISSION TERM AND RE-APPOINTMENT OF JEFF DANIEL TO A THREE-
YEAR COMMISSION TERM.
Daniel: And then we move on to new business. City Council appointment of Elise Ryan, which
we want to get a chance to welcome to a 3 year commission and the re-appointment of Jeff
Daniel to a 3 year commission term as well. And we certainly want to take the opportunity to
welcome Elise to the Park and Recreation Commission board here and I know that you’re going
to have a lot of fun. I think we had a chance to talk about that last night at the City Council
meeting and certainly we have one thing as we mentioned, we encourage input and certainly if
there’s some ideas, they’re always welcome so.
Ryan: Great, thank you.
Daniel: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Ryan: Very excited to be a part of the group. Excited to be talking in the microphone. No, I’m
just really looking forward to learning the ways of how you guys do things and making a good
contribution to the parks and rec team.
Daniel: Excellent. And I’ll welcome myself. I’m looking forward, you know the past 3 years
have been fantastic and been an absolute pleasure working with all the commissioners here, and
the commissioners in the past as well. Jack and Ann and Dan and I’m missing also, gosh. Paula
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Smith so obviously it’s, I’m looking forward to the next 3 years and hopefully some good things
will happen and as far as the economy turning, maybe it might open some doors for additional
opportunities for us to look at some of those programs that we’ve discussed in the past so thank
you very much and again looking forward to working with all of you. Alright, moving on to
focus on park and trail maintenance.
FOCUS ON PARK AND TRAIL MAINTENANCE.
Hoffman: Thank you Chair Daniels, members of the commission. We put together a calendar
and we’re going to focus on a variety of different departments and divisions that we operate
within our parks and recreation organization. As you know we operate out of city hall for
administration and recreation programming upstairs, and then the lower level, Sue Bill operates
our senior center. The recreation center out at Bluff Creek Elementary and Jodi Sarles and then
our group here, they work out of two buildings. The existing public works building and then
soon to be the new public works building in about a year in the back side of Park Road. Does
everyone know where that building’s going to be? Behind Prince’s studio. There’s a cul-de-sac
back there. If you have a chance over the next few months as construction progresses, just go
ahead and take a drive back through there. They’re operating on a less than really what they
need for half the space and so it’s going to be over double the size of the existing facility. It will
last a lifetime of our community so when we’re built out we’ll still have room there at the new
public works facility. And then the crew also has the park maintenance facility at Lake Ann, and
that was replaced, if you remember the frontage road was added and the old, little, tiny barn was
displaced by that frontage road construction and then the new facility there was added and it
works very well to have the combination of the whole staff reports to the public works building
and then a lot during the summer and throughout the year as well they tend to go over to Lake
Ann to access equipment and other things that they need for the daily routines. So those are the
divisions. Tonight we’re going to focus on park and trail maintenance. Talk about what our
crew accomplishes on an annual basis, on a daily basis. Talk about some of the responsibilities
they have. We’ll go through a few images. Most of these images that we’re going to show are
capital improvement based. It doesn’t go into the details a lot of what they do on a daily
maintenance and maintenance but there are some of those type of images. And then we really
want to give the commission an opportunity to ask questions. You know what are you curious
about? What’s the day in the life of a park maintenance laborer or equipment operator? Or one
of our superintendents or foremen. So with us tonight, I think most of you know Dale Gregory.
Our Park Superintendent, and then Dean Schmieg, our Park Foreman in the white. And then on
the end we have Rob Heinen who is a park maintenance laborer and light equipment operator
and he works primarily in our parks and trails area. And then we have Charlie Eiler and Charlie
is again a park maintenance laborer and light equipment operator dedicated to our downtown.
When we talk about park maintenance we have 7 employees. Five of them are dedicated either
to management, administration or parks and then Charlie and Brad are downtown maintenance
for the streets and boulevards that are in downtown. So that’s our group. We have not added
any employees in park maintenance in the past 11 years. We’ve added dozens of facilities and
responsibilities and so what we talk about to accomplish doing more work with the same amount
of labor is that we constantly exceed, work exceeds expectations of our residents and our
customers but to do that we have to do first things first. We have to focus on the core
responsibilities because as we get more duties some of those things on the outer edges just have
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
to go by the wayside or we have to look to volunteers or other people for more efficient ways to
do those operations. And then the only problem is, when we instruct this group to go ahead and
do first things first, and do the priorities, we take the phone calls from residents who act as the
squeaky wheel and they want you know we’ve got long grass over here and we’ve got a problem
tree over there so I spend a lot of time making phone calls down to Dale and Dean and others and
stopping their organized work pattern and sending them off to somewhere else to respond to
those residents because again we want to exceed their expectations. We want to meet their
expectations so that’s a real challenge for our group. You switch to the report and you see that
this is a start of what you’ll see in our annual report that we’re working on with the commission
and that they maintain 27 parks. Responsible for our downtown district as 7 full time employees
but the only way they can do the summer work is to add 14 seasonal employees. We had to back
one out this year for budgetary reasons so again there we’re not going, we’re not adding. We’re
reducing our staff levels. 843 acres of park. 460 acres of natural preserve. Our developed
parkland is 383 and we have a budget of about $834,000 for wages, supplies, operating expenses,
contractual services and capital. To give you an idea, that’s just slightly above our street
department and so parks is a large area of our community. Street maintenance is just slightly
underneath that. Gives you an idea of the size of where those budgets come in at. They maintain
all the facilities that are listed there. 22 soccer fields. Baseball fields. Football field. Our 17
tennis courts. We talk a lot about tennis courts. Trying to maintain asphalt tennis courts in
Minnesota, at least we were talking about frost. They crack a lot. We just reviewed, what was
the name of the company Dale? A new company that we’re taking a look at and they put quite a
significant patching network on it so we may take a look at that where they fill the crack but then
they’re putting more of a bandage on top so as those cracks continue to heave, that they don’t
come apart again so always looking for new ways to maintain our equipment. Three fishing
piers. One of them was damaged this spring at Minnewashta. Lake Minnewashta. The ice
pushed it in and damaged it. We worked with the DNR to go ahead and get new supplies
courtesy of the DNR and then the crew put it back together. The shop did some welding on the
ramp that was damaged. We take those piers, as you’ve noticed and we move them and then we
put them sideways to the shore so if the ice does push up against them it causes less damage but
we still see damage from time to time. You know I always like to bring it down to, when you’re
maintaining just your personal property, your yard, you know how many problems you
experience from weather and trees and wind and this crew does that on a city wide basis and it’s
not just what they notice but the calls that come in and the things that they notice so I just try to
imagine them being in how many places on any given day. You know if you try to get 3-4 hours
or a couple of days dedicated, it starts to be a challenge. If you look just at the 2008 park
improvements, that’s quite an impressive list. When we talk about park maintenance it’s not just
the fact that they mow grass and they plow trails and they do all the routine maintenance but we
do an awful lot of capital improvements with our park maintenance division and that has really
helped over the years. We recognized that early on. We went ahead and purchased a Cat so they
could do actual park development. We’ll look at that in the images and it’s very efficient. These
employees know what needs to get done. They understand the construction process. They’re
very talented in surveying and setting grades and doing culverts and electrical work and all those
type of things so they can act as general contractors and get a project done and utilize that service
time in and time again. It saves money on plans and specs. It saves money on coordination,
construction coordination and so we try to do that as much as possible. And of course they built
all that, helped with all the neighborhood playground installs and worked extra time with that.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Just to give you an example of what we’re like this year, overtime is going to very restricted. In
fact now this time, overtime can only be authorized, pre-authorized through a department
director or by an emergency so we start to see those limitations up against some of those
projects. When we’re doing capital improvement projects with our crew, we’re working long
hours and we often run into overtime so with the flexibility just today because of budgetary
considerations has been diminished. That’s not to say that we couldn’t do those projects because
it still is more efficient and effective. So that’s the lesser projects that they accomplished in
2008. We also, most people don’t know that they take care of the cemetery. Pioneer Cemetery
out on Galpin Boulevard. All of our park entrance signs. Charlie and the other crew as well but
Charlie does all the hand carving on our park signs so when you see the maple leaf and the other
things, he’s carving those by hand back in the shop, and then carving out the letters as well. So a
lot of little things like that that the crew takes a great deal of pride in as they go through their
daily work. Contracted out, we do Lotus Lake Park, we installed water filtering ponds and rain
gardens. The council focused, or the mayor focused on that this morning in his breakfast with
the mayor. Re-built and paved trails at the boat landing. Worked in the downtown. We contract
some week spraying so we do some contractual services as well. There’s always a push to do
more contractual services because people think it’s more efficient and cost effective, but that’s
not always the case. Some things are. Many things are not because you don’t have the job
knowledge and you don’t have the same amount of pride going into the job when you contract
things out so we do some of that but not a great deal. Ready for the images? Any questions at
this point of our crew or, that we can help? We’ll also have a time at the end.
Daniel: Why don’t we save it for the end.
Hoffman: Okay, great. So this is an example of the crew taking on a capital improvement
project. This is a playground at Bandimere that was added. A toddler playground. The younger
kids. So Dale worked with the contractor here and they’re pouring the concrete for the poured in
place border out at the second playground at Bandimere Park. There’s the drain so you’ve all
seen what poured in place, when you put the poured in place rubber in here afterwards. It goes
down in two layers. That’s again contracted out but the concrete goes in. We do the base
grading and the site plan. The site preparation. You can see the drains that go underneath the
poured in place. This was back a few years ago. Alright, back to Bandimere. Here we go.
There’s the base concrete.
Daniel: Did you guys lay that Todd?
Hoffman: Excuse me?
Daniel: …you guys did as well?
Hoffman: No, that was contracted. Tice Construction did that. This is moving down to
Meadow Green Park. One of the playground. This one was not a neighborhood playground.
This was done by us? Meadow Green? Do you remember, for those of you who have been
around, all of our, most of our playgrounds were that wood. The 4 by 4, 6 by 6 wood structures.
Redwood structures. Each one of these playgrounds is a complex piece of equipment to put
together but the neighborhoods really like the improvements once it’s in. Talk about surfacing
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
for a moment. We had a lot of pea gravel surfacing, resilient surfacing and it’s longevity, it stays
around. It does migrate a little bit within the container but it’s not ADA accessible and so that’s
a challenge so we went to quite a few wood chip, wood fiber. Engineered wood fiber they call it
and then again that comes with some challenges. You have to put a drainage system underneath
and then it rots fairly quickly and you have to replace it so we’re still looking. The industry in
general is looking for the perfect solution. It’s not out there yet. Poured in place is a great
application for these community parks but it’s very expensive. The poured in place that you see
at Lake Ann, Lake Susan, Bandimere, just the base itself and the container is as much money as
the playground, but we think if they last for 20 to 25 years, or longer, that you start to see that
value because you don’t have to go back in and do any short term or long term maintenance. It’s
just going to be there. It looks, Lake Ann looks like the day it was put in. Bandimere looks like
the day it was put in so that’s currently the plan on surfacing is in our community park,
playground replacements. We want to do poured in place. Invest those dollars and then out of
the neighborhood parks we’re going to go to wood chip or engineered wood fiber until we find a,
if there’s a better solution. And the whole ADA thing is the thought that you can get a
wheelchair or a walking device out across that surface to get to the playground. This is finishing
up at Meadow Green. Before surfacing. A lot of rain. Here’s all the pea gravel that was pushed
out. Had to go back in for the drainage? Yep. So this pea gravel would go back in underneath
the wood chips for drainage and then there was a fiber mat that goes over that to separate the
two. That’s back to Bandimere and now they’re surface mining the playground on top of the
concrete before the poured in place comes in. And direct barrier surface mount when you use
poured in place. You use the surface mount when you’re doing the other application. That’s a
direct…into an excavated wall. These are our seasonal workers. Testing out the playground. I
think one got stuck. What’s his name? So that was the castle that, anybody on the commission
when that was selected? Down at Bandimere. That’s not an accident. You’ll see a sequence
series here. Again this is back, cooperating with the DNR. This is the Lotus Lake boat landing.
The boat landing ramp was starting to come apart. The concrete was breaking up. Big holes in
it. We received some complaints about the potholes in the ramp so we contacted the DNR.
Inquired if they would work with us. Help replace the public access. Many accesses across the
state are managed by the DNR. This is not. It’s a city project. This is a LAWCON federally
funded project that the city sponsored, but they did work with us and provide the ramp. They
said we’ll provide the materials. They manufacture it and if you install it so these guys were a
little bit apprehensive. Hadn’t done a lot of these but they really came up with a great system
and had a great success story down, putting the ramp in at Lotus Lake.
Daniel: Little apprehensive putting the Cat... Who drove that?
Gregory: Jim Tice was driving it I think.
Hoffman: Yeah, did we borrow one?
Gregory: No, we’ve got 3.
Hoffman: These are all our’s? Okay. What they’re in right there is the wash out hole for when
they’re power loading and so, is he actually back grading the wash out hole there?
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Gregory: Yeah, he’s back grading and filling that hole.
Hoffman: Yeah. So they power loaded all these access points and we try to get them not to do
that but that causes problems with all the other people that are coming there, because these holes
get very large. They come up and lean on the trailer and then they take their big engines and
they just gun them and they push up on those bunk trailers so power load and that just blows out
the power load hole and it gets to be 6, 8 feet deep at that end of the landing. And then people
are walking around their boat and all of a sudden they just disappear. So he’s filling it there
before they start pulling in this ramp. What are you finding? The old one probably. So there’s
all three pieces of machinery. Here you can see they have the chains. That’s manufactured in
place but that great big plank down near the water, that’s going to end up way at the end and so
they effectively has hooked on there with the chains and their front end loaders and just pulled
that entire sequence. And then did you build it as you went? And it’s on, what’s underneath
there?
Gregory: Two I-beams are underneath there.
Hoffman: Two I-beams are underneath there to run that out. So really an ingenious method.
Great solution to doing what could be a very challenging job. I guess you could build that in the
water and so now they’re just going to pull it all the way out and then finish up the end. Like I
said to Jerry when we were previewing that, I’m not sure the watershed district should be…but it
worked. Sometimes you’ve just got to just.
Daniel: Adapt and over fill.
Hoffman: Yeah. Adapt and over come. Do what it takes. And this is in the spring before
fishing opener. Of course it wants.
Gregory: That was in fall.
Hoffman: Oh it was fall, okay. So we did it in the fall before the next year. Those are the last
three? To go in? No. Still more to go in yet.
Daniel: Now was that installed this fall? Or was it a couple years ago. In 2007?
Gregory: A couple years ago.
Daniel: How did it hold up after the first season? Fairly well?
Gregory: Yeah.
Daniel: Excellent.
Hoffman: Here’s the steel I-beams. Finish product. It looks great and then if you go down and
look at, since the well is drilled and all the new improvements to that, the access is, other than we
have a well now in the park, it’s been greatly improved.
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Gregory: Those two large pieces of concrete that you’re seeing right at the very beginning and
that, that’s the DNR’s way of trying to eliminate the power loading. By putting those two big
heavy pieces of concrete out there and that’s supposed to eliminate it when they try to power
load.
Hoffman: Or at least help.
Stolar: And have we noticed any?
Hoffman: It’s still going.
Gregory: It’s still.
Hoffman: Yeah. It’s out beyond it. Depends on the water level. If the water level’s high, your
power loading is going to take place and it’s just going to his those two big planks but if the
water level’s low, then it still kicks up the gravel behind it. People love their lakes and love
boating so we get, we spend a lot of time, when you talk about the core services. We spend a lot
of time on our waterfronts or our beachfronts and with 11 lakes in town, we have a lot of
properties that are associated with lakes and we get probably dollar for dollar, pound for pound a
lot of calls on our waterfront property.
Scharfenberg: Do we have any problems like that at Lake Susan or at Lake Ann?
Hoffman: Yeah, Lake Susan yes. Lake Ann no because of the no motorized but Lake Susan’s
got a big power load hole as well. We put signs up. I think they took them down right away.
They didn’t like those signs. Most people want you to tell other people what to do but don’t like
to be told what to do. Another great success story. This is back at Lake Susan when we had a
parking problem with the new playground and not enough parking and not enough capital dollars
to tackle it in a capital improvement plan. And so it’s, this is a significant capital improvement
project for our division to take on but they agreed to do it and put together the subcontractors that
were necessary to expand the parking lot. We doubled the parking lot size at Lake Susan and the
finished product, you can’t tell that it was not planned from the get go. Had to move the two
sand volleyball courts over. Do a variety of grading and utility work. Electrical work. You’ll
see that as we go through. This goes about maybe 5 years back huh? 4-5 years back? A lot of
equipment. Jim Tice, our heavy equipment operator. So when you think about our crew, our 5
that are out in the parks. Dale, the superintendent. Dean is park foreman. Jim Tice is heavy
equipment operator who’s not here and that leaves two laborers, Rob and Jerry Chalupsky so
that’s the extent of the crew so when you tie people up, you tie up the heavy equipment operator
up. He needs laborers as well so it’s a challenge to get all your other work done as you’re doing
these kind of projects. Putting the sand back in the sand volleyball courts. There’s a large area
included, finishing the new trail network throughout the park. That came up from the lake.
That’s the cut off for the.
Gregory: That’s for the electric, for the electrical.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: But that’s in the parking lot. Is that the trail? No, that’s down by that sand volleyball.
That’s a storm sewer, right? Included storm sewer in the parking lot. Electrical trench.
Electrical. Street lights. If you’ve noticed Lake Susan is one of two parks I think we have that
has any lighting in it. South Lotus Lake has some lighting in it. Lake Susan, but Lake Ann no
street lighting. Some communities have more of that than basically if you eliminate, you’re
going to produce vandalism. Crime. Loitering. Those type of things, but it hasn’t been one of
the system’s that we’ve included in a lot of parks. It is pleasant to drive through Lake Ann after
dark because it is lit but you’re not supposed to be in there after 10:00 anyway so it’s mainly
after that it’s just for security. The police officers can drive by and actually see if there’s a car in
there. Lake Ann, they have to just about, you know drive through every single parking lot to
find out if there’s anybody in there. Let’s head down to Curry Farms and a playground
reconstruct that the neighborhood. Commission members will remember this included taking out
a ballfield. The swamp hold. The sinking part. Jeff’s familiar with it. Lives across the street.
You watched it all over the years.
Daniel: I’ve watched it all. In fact…
Hoffman: Did you swim in the flood?
Daniel: Yes we did. Rolled the bikes down the path so they could all rust up the bicycles.
Stolar: We added a path there not too long after those.
Hoffman: Added a path.
Stolar: And then you got a half basketball court or something?
Hoffman: Yep. Half basketball court.
Daniel: …that was slightly before we worked on that if I remember correctly.
Hoffman: Just after.
Daniel: Was it just after? Oh that’s right because the wood chips… That’s right. That was one
of the mud slides I’ll never forget. Driving out and looking down and seeing somebody
canoeing. Right through the park.
Hoffman: Yeah, those wood chips were contaminated pretty badly in that water. That park,
what there was 3 feet of water right there?
Daniel: Right there was about 3 feet, yeah because the picnic tables you couldn’t see…standing
on top of something.
Hoffman: And that was during the rain. The Labor Day rain of.
Daniel: ’05.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: Yep, ’05. So this park is a, it was dedicated to the city as park dedication for the
Curry Farms development, but it was back at a time when we should have been a little bit more
picky about the land that we were accepting so it’s worked as a park. Don’t fool yourself. A lot
of parks across the metropolitan area, across the nation are in this same type of situation where it
was the less desired. The undevelopable property. You can’t put houses there so we’ll give it to
the city for parkland and then they won’t have to pay any type of park dedication fees, but it’s
worked out over time.
Daniel: All with the exception of the one area on the west side. Dale, do you think that’s
stabilized at all?
Gregory: I think it’s still sinking.
Daniel: I don’t think there’s enough dirt on this planet.
Gregory: I think it’s going to be an ongoing thing forever.
Daniel: Yeah.
Hoffman: Hopefully it doesn’t swallow up the north end of that playground.
Daniel: I haven’t seen any cracks or anything. We’re out there almost every day.
Hoffman: But the playground, the neighborhood loves their park. You have the neighborhood
connection to the north heading up the hill so appreciated. Well used park and.
Stolar: No more losing the right field during the baseball.
Hoffman: Yeah.
Daniel: I suppose if you, especially, I mean I know that we had a huge turnout when the park
was put together and I would hope that was the case in all the other neighborhood parks as well.
Hoffman: Yeah. The neighborhoods really enjoy that process. Got to know each other.
Basically did an extensive playground replacement back ’05, ’04. ’05?
Stolar: ’05. Summer of ’05.
Hoffman: Yep. Couple of years and a lot of them, the neighborhoods went in ’05. North Lotus
Lake, Curry Farms, Rice Marsh. Who else did a neighborhood playground?
Scharfenberg: Lake Susan.
Stolar: Lake Susan was also that year but there was another neighborhood.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Scharfenberg: Sugarbush?
Stolar: Actually that was the one I didn’t make so I can’t remember.
Hoffman: Yeah, and so those were put in. Selected by the neighborhoods at meetings in their
home so the neighbors would gather. They reviewed the playground plan and they selected one
and then they organized their own neighborhood event to install it with the assistance of our park
laborers to help with auguring holes and showing them what to do and keeping them on task and
doing some of their work sometimes. But the basis of that is to build ownership and pride in
your community park and get to know your neighbors and it really served that purpose. The
council supported that project. There was an injury that occurred to a girl in, somewhere in the
Twin Cities and that was caused by an outdated playground or safety concern and so the council
wanted to review our safety. Where we were in our safety and we gave them the audit and said
we have some issues and some concerns and they said let’s replace them. So they financed that.
Just like any remodeling project, when you get going you have to wreck more than, to get and
that’s almost 50% of the park. It’s graded and re-seeded and it takes some time to get these
parks back so we appreciate the neighbor’s patience. For the most part everybody understands.
It’s part of the process. You have some dirt and mud. Culvert projects. Up near Bluff Creek
Elementary. It’s back in, behind Creekside. The culverts were under sized when the
development went in. This trail that runs right through where all the vehicles are, would over top
with water and the parents were very concerned that a kid, a child could get washed away in the
creek during one of these high rain spells. If you got an inch and a half of rain, this was over
topping the trail at very high velocity. If you got a couple, 3, 4 inches of rain you could have 4
or 5 inches of high speed water going over the top of the trail. So working at this time with Lori
Haak, our Water Resources Coordinator and she financed the materials through the water,
surface water management program and then worked with a variety of city maintenance staff to
again do a project on our own to keep costs down. Probably what? 30 times to capacity. Yeah.
Compared to the, you’ll see the size of the pipes. Two of these went in side by side and the old
pipe was a quarter of the size of one of those. Compared to what this is. So here they’ve ripped
through the trail and now they’re replacing the culverts to take the water underneath. There’s
both of them in place. We might bike over this on our route.
Kelly: Yep, it’s part of the route.
Hoffman: The Lake Susan aeration system. Again it’s through a grant by the DNR but it’s now
once we accept it, it’s our property to maintain and operate and our park maintenance division
operates and tests the water for oxygen levels. Dean’s out there routinely and other staff
members checking that. Once it gets to a certain level you’re communicating with the DNR and
they’ll give you the go ahead to put the aeration system in. It requires notification in the paper.
We have to run those ads and the thought process behind, this is a pump and baffle system. It
sucks water with that pump out in the lake. It takes it into the top of the baffle and then just
drops it and it goes down a series of baffles. Agitates an area and then dumps back into the lake,
and the thought behind that is if the oxygen is so low in the lake that this provides a refuge so as
the fish swim around, because they’re searching for a better place to live and they find this little
oxygenated refuge, they’ll stay here and it will at least keep the majority of the population of fish
alive. So this has been put in probably about every third year since we’ve had it?
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Schmieg: Second or third…every year for about 2 years in a row then we had a little break and
then.
Daniel: So how’s the fishing around there then?
Hoffman: It can be great. Fish don’t bite. They don’t make it if they get in a low oxygen level.
This is just again to maintain the fishery. But now there’s another thought about this is that this
may be contributing to the carp issue over time because you don’t have winter kills that could
take out the carp population either so the DNR and the Sorenson Group from the U is also
looking at that. Whether or not this is actually a good idea in the long run for lakes that are
susceptible to invasive species like carp. The crew spends a lot of time maintaining ice rinks.
This is at City Center Park. Probably 6:00 in the morning after a fresh snowfall. Every time it
snows it’s more maintenance for ice rinks. That’s right next to the shelter where the skate park
is. And then go from the blower to a sweeper…that whole process. Dean you can do that. I
mean what do you do after you get to this point?
Schmieg: Well we sweep and then we’ve got to go with this…and then you go by hand with a
shovel around the edges and get the little bit that remains.
Hoffman: And then they go flood.
Daniel: How long does it take, the whole process just on a rink, each rink on average?
Schmieg: Depends on the amount of snow. You know if it’s, if you have to take a big loader in
there and then step by step when we showed you.
Heinen: Well each morning we, even without snow we sweep and shovel and that takes what,
pretty much all said it’s about an hour and a half to two hours breaking up the…shovel and
sweeping, but that’s every morning, Monday through Friday and then on Saturday mornings.
But we also have some of the nicest ice in the Twin Cities.
Hoffman: Outdoors.
Heinen: Inside too.
Hoffman: Yeah, that’s what I like.
Daniel: There’s a lot of things I just took for granted as a kid. Never realized.
Hoffman: Yeah and then that, then the flooding comes after that with a truck. One of Charlie’s
favorite activities in the downtown, that’s a Bobcat and a little V plow and they have to maintain
all those sidewalks that get plowed full of snow from street maintenance and parking lot
maintenance.
Ruegemer: Where is that?
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Eiler: By Brown’s…going up towards the walk bridge. That’s right on the main street, Great
Plains. That corner gets packed in all the time.
Hoffman: Not the smoothest ride all the time.
Daniel: That’s up, that’s heading up towards the water works.
Eiler: Yep.
Hoffman: Again, most people are very reasonable. We do damage sod. Obviously we, it’s
more susceptible to damage just after it snows in the fall because it’s soft and when it has melted
in the spring and the frost has starting to come out on the surface and then you get another big
snow. But again this goes to all extremes. Dale and I met with a gentleman on Lake Lucy and I
mean we’re talking inches of sod and he thought that was just not acceptable whatsoever so
again most people are very reasonable but we do end up in situations where we have to take
special precautions or do special measures simple because of the individual that is more
particular than others.
Kelly: Do you find a lot of residents are putting stakes by their properties to kind of guide the.
Gregory: A few but not too many. We go around and we stake a lot of the trails and we find a
lot of the people take the stakes out.
Hoffman: And both the parks and the streets division do a lot of restoration in the spring but it’s
black dirt and seed and they just can’t go out and sod all these little patches in all over.
Stolar: One time the streets took out, we have this big boulder. Knocked it 10 feet. They came
out. Pulled it back. Because I can’t move that thing.
Hoffman: With a plow.
Stolar: With a plow, yeah. Took the curve a little bit too wide.
Hoffman: Yeah. Those are big machines. So there you can see he’s got a little guide just on
either side. Many times you just can’t see anything. It’s just flat.
Stolar: How’s the equipment? Is it in pretty good shape or are we looking at, did we get
something new recently?
Hoffman: And more this year.
Gregory: The rest of our equipment is in pretty good shape and that. We’re doing real good.
Hoffman: This is this past year. 180 trees or more?
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Gregory: Well, 200. 200 elm trees we took out this.
Hoffman: Dutch elm tree removals. And primarily if it’s going to fall down, if it has the bark all
the way off it can be left in the woods. If it’s going to fall down in the woods but if it’s going to
fall down next to an active ballfield area or a trail or something of that nature then they mark it
and take it down over the winter. And here we share some equipment. There’s only one wood
chipper in the city so that’s shared piece of equipment with streets and utilities. Have to
schedule that. Bobcat with a grapple bucket helps to make that process more efficient.
Daniel: Where was this done at?
Gregory: Sugarbush.
Daniel: Oh, yeah.
Hoffman: Back in that back corner. Good time of the year to do this type of maintenance. Well
there’s some bigger ones there. And that’s it. That’s the end of our slide show and appreciate
the guys coming in. If you have any questions or curiosities about what you see on an annual
basis in park maintenance. We’re here to take your questions or comments.
Daniel: Alright, we’ll start off. Elise.
Ryan: Well I don’t have any questions but I would like to say that the reason why I got involved
in the parks and board in the first place was because I enjoy the parks so much with my two
daughters and you do just a fabulous job of maintaining them and keeping them safe and pretty
for us to enjoy so I thank you because you are the reason why I am here. Without obviously you
guys giving me the vote but, but so thank you. You do just a fabulous job. Really appreciate it.
Daniel: Glenn.
Stolar: Echoing Elise’s comments and a couple of you, I had the pleasure of working with you a
few years back on the playgrounds and that was just so enjoyable and the passion you had with
the neighbors was appreciated and tremendous. They loved having you there and yes you did
cover for a lot of the neighbors that didn’t quite do as much as they had promised but it was
enjoyable working with you. I just always remember that time. It was a great summer. I do
have one question for you. How much do you work with like the streets department and
engineering on these projects that you’re doing? So like if you have engineer stuff, do you use
the engineers from the city to help you do it?
Gregory: Engineering part of it we use them sometimes, depending on like with culverts and
different things like that. Proper sizing and that. Laying out the plans on like the parks that
we’ve developed and that, we’ve done that pretty much ourselves with, working with Todd and
come up with an idea of what it should be and kind do up our own plans and basically built it in
the field. We do work with some of the other departments and that. In the wintertime if we got
bad snows and that, they need extra snowplowers, then some of my guys will take and help out
with snowplowing. Right now Jim Tice, our heavy equipment operator, he’s been working quite
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
a bit now with the new building with Mike Wegler, the superintendent and they’ve been working
together down there doing the, getting the soil restoration done. So we do work together with the
other departments.
Stolar: Great, thanks.
Hoffman: And more and more Glenn now that the engineers are not quite as busy as they have
been in the past.
Stolar: That’s what I was wondering.
Hoffman: Now they’re asking to do more of their engineering work so.
Stolar: I was wondering if that’s an opportunity here for at least getting some plans and ideas
and I know we can’t get to all of them but at least while they’re available.
Hoffman: Absolutely.
Stolar: Also I just wanted to, one final comment that I’m always impressed about when Dale
you give your reports about, oh yeah and the guys figured out how to do this and they fixed that
and they did that so again very impressive. Your talent and appreciate it.
Daniel: Steve.
Scharfenberg: I know you guys have got down here what you did this last year 2008, which is
great. Do you guys have any projects set for ’09 or what are your big projects for ’09?
Hoffman: South Lotus Lake playground.
Gregory: Yep. Playground, South Lotus Lake playground. The border has to be replaced on
that. We’re working out in Stone Creek now. We’re changing the trail. It goes around a little
bit of a pond out there and we can’t plow that part of the trail. That trail will be used for people
going and walking to the high school so the street department and that, they had somebody come
in and take a part of the barricade out and had to, we just met today with the contractor to see
about putting in the pedestrian ramps and everything else that ADA, the pedestrian rams across
the street there and we’ll be changing the trail out there.
Hoffman: Field #3 at Lake Ann.
Gregory: Yep. We did that.
Hoffman: Moved the fence in.
Ruegemer: Built a mound the last couple days on Field #3.
Gregory: And after the baseball is done with then we’re going to change the infield to grass.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Daniel: And then also I suppose Kerber Pond Park too. Finishing up. Is that going to be you
guys’ work?
Hoffman: That’s a contract.
Daniel: That’s going to be contract?
Hoffman: To be awarded at the next council meeting for the rain gardens and all the plantings,
and then there’s a boy scout, Rogneby that’s working down there on his Eagle Scout project.
Daniel: And then the trails, aren’t they going to take care of the trails too?
Hoffman: Trails are part of that project, yet. That whole project was incorporated into the street
project and it was a surface water management program for storm water improvements so we
leveraged those dollars and then we are very involved in trying to make sure that the plan, we
always say the plan has to make, you can utilize the park property but the plan has to make the
park better when you’re all said and done and so they go through the same neighborhood
process. They were here at your meetings to talk about that.
Daniel: Is the boy scout project taking care of the bridge?
Hoffman: Nope. Plant, all tree plantings.
Daniel: Okay. But as far as the, what are we doing about the, was the old bridge taken out?
Hoffman: It’s long gone.
Gregory: It’s gone, yep.
Daniel: Okay. What’s there now?
Hoffman: Culvert.
Daniel: Oh a culvert. Just a walking path straight across now?
Hoffman: Yep.
Daniel: Okay. Gotch ya.
Gregory: We did that, the bridge was starting to get bad in there and we couldn’t get across it
with anything to mow grass or anything. We had to go so far, turn around and come around.
Instead of redoing the bridge and everything else, it was a lot easier to take it out and put a
culvert across.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Daniel: Well I mean I think the gap was about this high by the last year of it probably. As far
as that I think the frost was lifting it up or the ground was settling. One of the two.
Gregory: And like with the projects like you were asking, what our plans are for this year and
that. One thing you’ve got to realize, a lot of these programs and projects that we’ve done never
were planned. It was something that came up through the year and we seem to follow them and
that and work with Todd and everything else and did the projects. It wasn’t a planned project to
begin with.
Scharfenberg: And I know this may change on a daily basis but what are some of your biggest
obstacles that you face on a daily basis?
Ruegemer: Don’t look at me.
Gregory: This time of the year it’s Jerry. Getting some good and honest answers out of us.
Otherwise and that a lot of our things and that is just the things that pop up and that. I mean
we’ve got our day to day projects to do and it’s like Todd said and that, a resident will have an
issue with something and that and Todd will come out and want us to stop what we’re doing and
go about doing another job and that. It’s sometimes not like well can you finish this today and
we’ll do it tomorrow and that. No, we’ve got to do it today so.
Schmieg: And spring is on the biggest busy times because there’s 7 of us and we’ve got all the
ballfields, soccer fields and what not. 14 irrigation systems to start up plus all the mowing in all
the parks. Garbage. Everything hits all at the same time so it’s time constraint is huge and job
priorities.
Gregory: This year we’re having quite an issue with irrigation start up’s. We’re having a lot of
issues with leaks in different areas and that with the systems. The monument area down here and
that, we drove stakes through a bunch of the irrigation so Brad’s been working on that and you
guys have had quite a few leaks.
Morse: We just dug a hole underneath the irrigation cabinet today. Tomorrow we’re going in
and fix it but the hole is, well I was completely in the hole so that tells you how big it is and I
was swinging two pipe wrenches this big under there so that tells you how big a hole we got dug.
Hoffman: Which park?
Morse: Lake Ann right underneath irrigation pad and cabinet. Right next to the giant electrical
panels.
Daniel: Alright, anything else Steve?
Scharfenberg: No.
Daniel: Okay, Tom.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Kelly: I’ve always been amazed at the snow removal. On 70 miles of trails and you guys seem
to have that stuff off before the roads are cleared and it’s, that’s been fantastic. Question I had is,
how often do you plan on doing trail inventories? I know I think a couple years ago you made an
inventory of the conditions of all the trails. I’m just curious how often you plan to redo that.
Gregory: We did it a couple of years ago and that, and then actually it got turned over to the.
Hoffman: Pavement management program.
Kelly: Okay.
Hoffman: Their inspection was data entry for the pavement management program so it’s
included with the streets and the trails. This year they’re inventorying the southern third of the
community and so each year a third of the city’s trails get re-inventoried and re-scored on the
pavement management program.
Kelly: Okay.
Hoffman: They give them a PSI. A pavement score. Pavement condition score and then as you
see that fluctuate, go up and down on the 100 point scale, that starts to tell you when you need to
take a look at re-doing some trails. The trails in Bandimere Park for example are not in real good
condition right now but once we get the report back, then we are incorporating somewhere
between 50 and 70,000 dollars annually out of the pavement management program for trails. It
fluctuates up and down depending on the length of the segment. This year in the pavement
management street recon program, the trail from Highway 101 north of McDonald’s, all the way
over to Eden Prairie, so it’s. Or excuse me, Highway 101 north of Highway 5 and then all the
way east to Eden Prairie. That trail’s being reconstructed.
Kelly: Okay.
Hoffman: So a segment, a couple of segments a year as part of the pavement management
program.
Kelly: Okay.
Hoffman: And that’s a consulting review process now where they go out and take a look at those
trails.
Kelly: That’s all I had.
Daniel: Alright, thanks Tom. I guess one question I have is, how long does it take to clear all 70
miles? I mean Tom hit it right on the head. The amazing part about it is, I leave in the morning
and I can always see a few more trying to be cleared. By the time I get home it’s done and I
assume, I mean they’re already black as well from the sun usually shining on them and melting
what’s left. On an average, let’s just say a typical 4 to 6 inch snowfall, how long does it take to,
and how many people are involved in that? Dedicated strictly to the trails.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Gregory: If you look at strictly the trails, you know we could maybe do all of our trails, if
everybody was on their trail route. We’ve got 4 routes. It would probably take us about 4 hours.
If we, 4 to 5 hours. But what we do and that is, we will start at 4:00 in the morning when we’ve
got a snow and basically we also take care of the rec center, all the plowing out there. Around
the school and the rec center and the parking lots. We take care of the fire stations, city hall and
that’s the first parts or areas we’ll hit. Start doing parking lots. Then we hit the trails around the
schools for kids walking to the schools. While this crew is out at the rec center they’ll also start
working on the hockey rinks and you’ll start cleaning snow off of that and we’ll get 2 guys to
kind of start working that. The rest of the guys will go onto the trails and start plowing trails and
we work together between trails and hockey rinks. When it gets down to the point of shoveling,
the guys all kind of merge and, I mean it’s down to scoop shoveling and going around the last
time before we can get the water truck in. And this whole process, by the time we get all of this
done and that we’ll start at 4:00 and it will probably go to 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening so we’ve
probably got about a good 12 to 14 hours before we’ve got everything done. And that’s if I’ve
got the full crew of 7 guys.
Daniel: Wow.
Eiler: To me it’s, out here I’ll be working the sidewalks. I have generally about 3-3 ½ hours of
hand snow blower and shoveling and then anywhere from 8 to 16 hours of Bobcat work and
usually Brad joins me and we both take Bobcats and do our part and that’s 8 to 16 hours of
Bobcatting for sidewalks.
Daniel: Just within the downtown area.
Eiler: Yeah. Well we go all the way out to 101. Up to Lake Drive. Lake Drive all the way back
to the public works shop. But I usually spend about 8 hours just in the downtown with a Bobcat.
Daniel: That’s amazing. Well and as Tom said before, it’s something that a lot of us don’t, I
guess I don’t want to say take for granted. That’s one of those things that a lot of people go
unnoticed and certainly it is appreciated because to say it’s not appreciated would be a complete
false statement. And the biggest thing on behalf of the commission, and I can speak for
everyone here is thank you. The job that you guys do is fantastic. You know one of the reasons
why, as Lisa stated, and I think a lot of us are here today is because of the parks and the
recreational opportunities that we have here in the city of Chanhassen and you know as a citizen
here that pays their taxes and just goes about their everyday life, you kind of go, it’s one of those
things that goes unnoticed but certainly like I said is not, it certainly is appreciated. So from our
perspective and on behalf of the community we definitely thank you very much for all the effort
that you guys do and not only with what you guys do in the winter, but the festivities that we
th
have. The 4 of July. I think a lot of people see you guys running around during the, especially
rd
the 3. When that night is very chaotic and during February Festival, all the hours spent having
to drill and this year thankfully the weather was somewhat cooperative but a few years ago it was
god awfully cold but you still, you know you guys were out there drilling holes and getting
things set up and again it goes, it’s one of those things that when people show up, things are
already done. Just like the trails. Just like park maintenance. All the fields. Everything and
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
again from that perspective we, I want to say thank you and continue the great work. And
certainly if there’s anything that you guys have any questions, or anything that we can help you
out with, certainly don’t hesitate to contact Todd or contact us directly. We want to do what we
can to help you guys out and from our perspective it’s going to make this community better and
hopefully at the end of the day make our parks great. That’s one of the reasons why we’re voted
one of the best cities in the United States and a large portion of that’s dedicated to you guys so
thank you.
Scharfenberg: I had one other question. If you guys had one piece of equipment on a wish list
that you could get, what would that be?
Schmieg: It depends on which guy you talk to. Right now today I could have used a mini
backhoe.
Gregory: I guess I don’t know that there’s any one that I would say that we would really have to
have. I mean we’ve got good equipment and I don’t know what I would really need. I mean
there’s some attachments and everything else for the Bobcat that would make some of our jobs a
lot easier that we don’t have. I don’t know if I could, is there something, I really can’t come up
with something that’s any particular one that I could say that we really have to have.
Hoffman: If they need something that we don’t have, we often rent it. But we bought our Cat
for what? What was the cost? Do you remember?
Gregory: About $65,000 I think when we bought it.
Hoffman: Yeah, and we’ve owned that for 15 years or so, so we’re gotten our use out of the
$65,000 Cat. One of the most jobs is we filled a giant Curry Farms hole. Did you ever know
about the Curry Farms hole?
Daniel: Oh my kids played in that Cat too so…and it became a short term public playground…
so it definitely has gotten it’s use and you know I think with Curry Farms, the only thing that you
could do to, the next major road construction project you just might want to send, instead of just
leveling out and grading just create one great big dome hill. Seed it and then just you know in 10
years it will be level again. It will swallow itself right up.
Hoffman: Okay, thanks everybody.
Daniel: Oh also, one more thing I would like to say. This has been fantastic and again thank you
guys for coming here. I hope we can do this on an annual basis and again it’s you know we
understand that Todd and Jerry get a chance to show up, and Dale you talk about some of it on a
quarterly basis. The projects but I think for you guys showing up here, it at least gives us some
insight and hopefully some opportunity for you guys to ask us questions as well. So thank you.
PROPOSED ROUTE FOR THE CITY COUNCIL/COMMISSION MEMBER BIKE
RIDE.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
th
Kelly: I put this together for a bike ride with the City Council on June 24 and one criteria is it
had to be about 10 miles and the criteria I threw in is I wanted to pass as many of our great
features in the city as possible and I did not want to touch pavement twice so I wanted it to be a
true loop. I had us starting at Lake Susan but also start at Lake Ann because we are going
through both places. I kind of want to step you through mile by mile to see what you guys think
and the highlights and stuff so, I need us to start at Lake Susan and we would take the Lake
Susan trail and then show off our new underpass for 101. Go underneath 101. Take the,
continue on the trail behind St. Hubert’s and then here’s where we hit our first neighborhood
park. The park where we recently replaced equipment. Rice Marsh Lake park. I don’t know if
Todd wants to comment on things as we’re going by but maybe stopping at the park for a couple
minutes. Take it in there and then go up through the parking lot, down Dakota. Up Marsh
Drive.
Daniel: There by my leg burning.
Kelly: Yeah, so around here is where I will lose my commission and one of you guys will have
to take over the route. This is the hill right there. It’s a pretty steep hill but I think people can do
it. I don’t want to go all the way out to Lake Drive because I don’t like, this road’s a little busy.
I don’t like biking on that sidewalk there so that…was to take Hidden Lane as far as we could.
Then pop out onto Lake Drive and take the bridge over Highway 5, so that’s.
Stolar: So after you kill us on the hill, we now have to cover a bridge.
Kelly: But I’m going to guess that there’s been, there’ll be some council people that probably
haven’t been on the bridge and maybe don’t even know how to get to the bridge. So we’ll take
the bridge over and then by the water treatment facility. I think they’ve done a great job with
how they’ve done that bridge now. The little turn around road there and everything. Then I
debated okay, how do I want to head over to town and I debated. I think I want to go the longer
way because I just think crossing these railroad tracks and in town it’s kind of dicey, and this
will also show the council, this is kind of a troubled area you know in Chanhassen once you
cross that bridge. It’s not very easy to get into downtown but I wanted to take this trail all the
way to 101. Left on 101 and then hit part of, the best part of the Huffman course. The downhill
part of the Huffman course.
Daniel: Frontier Trail.
Kelly: Yep. It’s a great, I mean they’re going to cruise. This is about, I believe this is the
Frontier hill right here. We’re going to cruise. Unfortunately when you go down you do have to
come back up but this, take this hill down there on Frontier. To Highland, I thought this would
be a good time to take Highland over to Laredo and then stop and look at the progress that’s been
happening on the access path and the culverts or whatever is happening there.
Hoffman: And feel a smooth street.
Kelly: And feel a smooth street. Yeah I ran that street last night. It was really nice.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Daniel: My only comment is, as a kid I used to take Frontier and Highland and wanted to die.
Kelly: Yeah, well yeah. This isn’t.
Daniel: Thank got I’ve got gears now.
Kelly: …in the city and there is really no flat ground in this whole city. So then take…I thought
okay then we can hit another property. Either go through City Center Park, but if that’s too
crowded we can take a parallel route through Santa Vera but I thought we can kind of show off
yet another park. Going through City Center Park. Then hit Kerber. Come down Kerber.
Again we’re passing the entrance to Chanhassen Pond Park. Then go into Saddlebrook. The
Saddlebrook neighborhood and there’s a very nice neighborhood connector that gets us to our
second neighborhood park, Meadow Green, which I think it has be one of the larger
neighborhood parks in the city and again there’s brand new equipment there that was part of the
replacement so that’s park number 2. And then once we go through Meadow Green Park, come
out of the parking lot and then just take Pima Lane to Kerber. This is the one part that I’m not
crazy about. We’ll have to get across Powers but there really is no better way, and at least here
as opposed to some of the other things, there’s a street on both sides so we’ll take, on the other
side of Kerber I always butcher the name. Tec.
Hoffman: Tecumseh.
Kelly: Thank you. So we’ll take to… And then we’ll take this to kind of the what I think is the
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best kept secret in Chanhassen for 4 of July we’ll take the back route into Lake Ann. I was
wondering if it would be possible to open up that gate so you wouldn’t have to kind of go
through.
Hoffman: Yep.
Kelly: So then we’ll circle around Lake Ann. We’ll go right by the new shelter. Getting out of
Lake Ann you just stick to the road. If you want to get closer to the ballfields, we can take that
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new trail either way will work fine. Then we hit Park. Take this nice cruising trail on West 78.
And then we’ll go underneath so we can go over by that…go underneath 5 at mile 7 ½. Getting
us to the rec center. I actually prefer going towards that little industrial park here. There’s a nice
little trail that goes, as opposed to going on the sidewalk. I just have a thing about running on
sidewalks but so we can kind of then get back out to Coulter. And then at Coulter we have a
choice. We could either show off another underpass and go under Coulter here, or we can cross
right onto Stone Creek Drive, but I do want to get on this Chanhassen nature trail and take this
nature trail all the way going underneath the railroad tracks and new high school, if the
commissioners or the council want to go up to the new high school, we’re right there. We can
take a half mile and go up to the high school. And then we’ll continue on this Chanhassen nature
area with what we call, go pass the weather ball to Audubon. We could go up this road here. It’s
a little steeper here and then you’re going through an industrial park. I kind of like this, it’s a hill
coming up this route too but it’s nice. And then take this trail all the way to Lake Drive. You
can cross pretty easy. Audubon here. Take Lake Drive to Sunset Ridge. Hit neighborhood park
number 3. Cut through Sunset Ridge. Lake Susan. Cross Lake Susan and then there’s a nice
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trail access in Lake Susan. This nice trail access that gets us right down to Lake Susan and we
complete the loop all the way back to the parking lot. So we go under 5. We go over 5. We go
to our two biggest parks, Lake Ann, Lake Susan. We go through 3 neighborhood parks and I
think that Chanhassen nature trail is some of the nicest trail we have.
Hoffman: And the high school site.
Stolar: Is that the new part of the nature trail or is that the…
Kelly: I couldn’t get I tried to get us over to the new trail but you go so far west and you’re
stuck there and you have to end up back. It wasn’t worth it.
Hoffman: The two nicest trails are Rice Marsh, Lake Susan and Bluff Creek so you’ve got them
both.
Scharfenberg: Tom it might be nice, will the bridge, the wood bridge that they’re building, will
that be done probably by the time that we do that?
Hoffman: Might be.
Scharfenberg: Just ride to it and then ride back.
Kelly: Yeah, because we’re going to be right, we’ll be right there. We can do that. They’ve got
that road closed now I saw. Audubon’s closed again. Or whatever.
Daniel: Just to continue on the hill side. What prevented you from having us go Power Hill?
Kelly: I thought about that… I was trying to get too, you know when we’re here we want to
have it Sunset Ridge Park or do we want to maybe go down Flamingo and take a stop at Power
Hills Park to kind of show off the sledding. I kind of went with this way only because it’s
difficult to cross here. I don’t think, I think you’ve got to kind of walk your bike across the grass
here as opposed to here we have a nice break in the curb or whatever.
Hoffman: I think we’re going to work in an amazing race theme with clue boxes and.
Kelly: This is the elevation starts, you know Rice Marsh Lake. Climb out of that. Nice
downhill in Frontier and then you go right back up. Maintains pretty steady. You’ve got a nice
downhill. We’ll climb around up there but I think it’s a nice round. And there’s water. We can
get water at, we get water at Lake Ann. At mile 5.
Hoffman: This is going to be a multi group and so the invitation, staff will work out the
presentation. The safety. The crossings. Those type of things but this is Environmental
Commission, Planning Commission, Park and Recreation Commission and City Council and
there may be some staff members that go along as well, and so there’ll be presentations with
short discussions on a variety of snippets throughout the route. There may be people positioned
just for a stopping location so the Bluff Creek meandering projects and talking about those, and
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
then we’ll put a time line on it. This will be on an off meeting night. It will be a special event
for our commissions and council and then those friends and family members that don’t want to
bike will be back at Lake Susan preparing the picnic for when the bicyclists come back in and
then there’s a group, family picnic there for them so.
Scharfenberg: And what day is this tentatively set for?
Hoffman: Sometime in June. Later half of June. After graduation and it’s been a goal for a
couple of years. Never pulled it together but this year’s the year and I think it’s just a great way
to put elected and appointed officials out on the ground with staff and talk about success stories
and then set the path for the future.
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Daniel: Like, I mean especially if we do it on the week of June 24. That will get everyone in
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shape at least for the upcoming July 3 festival. No Tom…the route is fantastic.
Hoffman: Nice job.
Daniel: I mean it is what it is. We have to deal with elevation in this city.
Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. The only reason I chose Lake Ann as, or Lake Susan as the starting point is
because there’s baseball going on at Lake Ann and I thought the parking would be easier at Lake
Susan.
Stolar: I have a question for you. Can you go down a little bit there. Can you send us that
graph, keep going down. Oh I’m sorry. Show me where the elevation graphic is. Can you send
me that graph because I’ve got to plug that into the bike so I can practice it.
Kelly: It’s mostly trails. We really aren’t on any roads that much. I tried to keep it to the trails.
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Stolar: Is June 24 the date or we don’t know for sure?
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Hoffman: Is June 24 our meeting date? Then that wouldn’t be the date.
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Stolar: Is the 24 a Wednesday?
Hoffman: Did we have a date scheduled? I don’t believe so but we can.
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Stolar: Yeah, June 24 would have been a Wednesday I believe.
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Ruegemer: June 26 is our meeting.
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Hoffman: 26 is our meeting. That’s Haley’s swim practice. Calendar anybody?
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Scharfenberg: 26 is a Friday.
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Stolar: Yeah, 23 I think is our meeting. The 24 would be a Wednesday.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: Want to do it on a Thursday? A Wednesday?
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Daniel: Let’s do it on the 25. A Thursday. Or Wednesday. Which one’s better for the council
and the rest of the commissions? When does Planning Commission meet? On Mondays?
Hoffman: Mondays. Are those two days looking good for you guys?
Daniel: I think Glenn, how does it work out for baseball?
Stolar: Wednesdays are more difficult for me but I think we might be close to being done then.
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Daniel: I know South Tonka’s done by the 19.
Stolar: But Thursday are definitely easier for me.
Hoffman: Let’s look at Thursday then.
Stolar: I don’t know, what about you Steve? You’re coaching.
Scharfenberg: My schedule I think will be out on this coming Saturday or this weekend so I’ll
have a better idea this weekend.
Daniel: That will be exciting. Especially all the commissions at Lake Susan. Are we going to
be doing some potluck too? Do we?
Hoffman: We’ll coordinate that effort.
Daniel: Excellent. So as we get closer to that date.
Hoffman: We’ll put together the plan.
Daniel: Tom, great job.
Kelly: I enjoyed doing that.
Daniel: Alright. I think that’s it for new business Todd, is that correct?
Hoffman: Yes.
RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS:
2009 EASTER EGG CANDY HUNT EVALUATION.
Ruegemer: Thanks Chair Daniels. It seems so long ago that the, that we were doing the Easter
Egg Candy Hunt, but it was a nice day. We had it outside. Certainly this year’s event beat last
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
year. I think we had a foot of snow on the ground last year so it was really nice to have it outside
this year. Total number of paid kids, 226 with that which is, looks like 2 less from last year so
we really tried to take a look at the event and kind of maximize experience and minimize
expense so to speak. We kind of really looked at the, really the program as a whole. Get some
decent music at kind of a cheaper price. Also we kind of combined the candy and really tried to
keep the cost down for that program. Had a number of coloring entries for that this year. A wide
variety of talent levels on that so it was nice to see for that. Had another great event with the
Key Club from Chaska High School volunteering for that. They really helped out hanging
posters up in the entertainment area. Helping out outside to distribute candy in the area north of
the rec center, out by the warming house area. So all in all it was a great event. A fun event.
Per the memo as far as staff planning that work for the event so had a great event with that. Kind
of a breakdown of recommendations on the back. We’ll look for additional people for the future
as far as if we can incorporate more sponsors into the event to make it more profitable as well is
certainly an ongoing goal of the recreation division. Take a look at all the programs as well for
that so that’s kind of it in a nutshell. If there’s any questions.
Daniel: What was the, Jerry as far as the participation, how does this 158 compare over the last
5, 6, 7 years?
Ruegemer: Well there was 200, I think down a little bit with that but you know a number of
years ago we did start instilling a program fee for that. And you know in this time of year there’s
a lot of activities going on as well with different events going on on the same day as well so
that’s just the paid kids. Certainly with their parents and that sort of thing we certainly had
higher numbers but you know we’re kind of holding our own you know for the most part. Pretty
comparable over the last couple of years.
Daniel: Okay. Any questions commissioners? The only, maybe as we get closer to next year in
2010, a couple suggestions that you may want to take a look at because I know with Excelsior’s,
which I, which we ended up working as well, the church sponsors it but I mean that’s, that this
year was incredible. Last year obviously with the snow was certainly down but I mean you’re
talking acres of candy laid out that was consumed like locust. I mean it was amazing. But you
know certainly I think there’s a lot more activity that Chanhassen offers. I think one of the ideas,
and maybe what we ought to consider, what we may want to consider, if we are going to be
charging is, with the Easter Egg Candy Hunt, is it very similar like what they’re doing in
Excelsior where you just kind of got candy laid out and they just gobble it up? Since we got the,
you know depending upon weather, maybe we ought to put like a grand prize out there that they
can go after. Hide an egg. Maybe put 3, 4, 5 eggs throughout the whole facility outside that will
give the kids, kind of with their family to go search for it. Yeah outside you know. Just put 3,
4, 5 eggs out there that have some prizes that maybe co-sponsors that if anything they spend a
couple bucks on the kids and they go run around and find on the east side of the playground area.
Ruegemer: A scavenger hunt.
Daniel: Yeah, a little scavenger hunt. Then if nobody gathers them you know where they are
Jerry and you can get yourself a free meal. So I mean that’s just an idea. I mean something that
mix things up because that’s one of the things that they talked about within our church that
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sponsors one in Excelsior. More so than just having like…of age group kids consuming eggs at
an astonishing rate of full candy so at least give them something to do. And as far as
recreational, maybe it’ll get them out and start running around and wear off some of that candy
that they’ve already started to consume on the way out there as far as exercise so just some
thoughts. I mean we can talk a little bit more about that next year as we get into January-
February before we, so I think that’s about all I have.
Hoffman: I really think we should bring back that craft project of making an Easter basket for
226 kids before the event Jerry. They used to do that.
Ruegemer: I totally forgot about that one. Oh boy.
Hoffman: We used to make Easter baskets before they went out to go look at eggs, yeah. There
was a lot of crafting.
2009 CHANJAM EVAULATION.
Daniel: Too bad John couldn’t be here today to talk about that but from what I’ve heard and
people I’ve talked to, it was fantastic.
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Ruegemer: We had a very successful event out at the rec center on Friday night, April 17.
Second annual. I was there all night and amazed at the talent level of the bands that were there.
Had 9 bands this year and we had representation from every high school that we invited so that
was really great. A band from Chaska High School, Minnetonka, Southwest Christian and Holy
Family this year so. Obviously our numbers increased with attendance and also with band
members and all that sort of thing so we were up around 450 with everybody so. The bands and
the gym and all of the hallways and community rooms were buzzing with people and were
certainly I think very pleased. I think hopefully the food vendors were as well that we kind of
brought them out of the community rooms this year. Kind of put them out in the main hallway.
Created more of a kind of a break during the bands so people could go get some food and I think
they were happy with that as well, to get some more exposure. Some more new food sales in
there as well. We had a great band choice and selection this year. The band from, actually two
Minnetonka bands were first and second this year with that and it was really a hard choice but
the crowd chose the winning band this year and that was the Full Hand from Minnetonka and the
Traveling Bartlett’s were the second place winner from Minnetonka.
Scharfenberg: Wasn’t there a tie? I was there for the voting. There was a tie at the end.
Ruegemer: There was a tie and they had to redo, it was amazing. It’s based on decibel levels. It
was a tie and then they had to have kind of a applause off so to speak so that was pretty cool, so
last year two Chaska High School bands won it. This year two Minnetonka bands won it so
we’re hoping, very hopeful that next year we’ll be able to get a new Chanhassen High School
band or two in the mix so it’s really a great, a great venue. We really try to target market
through our E-Blast and other communication materials to really incorporate not only the
students them selves but also family members and we kind of expanded our market I guess this
year a little bit too and had a lot of parents there videotaping and taking pictures and you know
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
the younger kids, family members were there as well. Just really it was really kind of a nice
family event. We didn’t have any trouble with any you know students out there. We had plenty
of police cars and stuff out there just to be visible with the kids and the kids were very respectful
that night so it was a great event this year. Dave Ryan, KDWB DJ is a Chanhassen resident. We
approached him to see if he was interested in possibly being the emcee. He gladly accepted and
he lives not too far from the rec center so he’s there actually quite a bit anyway so he was more
than happy to come out and he kind of emceed the event and had a little bio, a little Q and A with
the bands before they started so he really kind of engaged the crowd and the band members on
there before they got started. Threw out prizes. Very, very, very nice man. Brought his family
with him so they were there all night long and he said you make sure you call me next year. I’ll
do it again so he must have been satisfied and happy with the event. It is actually amazing
though just the talent level of the kids that were participating in that. Dan Scott with Partners in
Entertainment provided all the sound and the lighting. He’s really the brains behind all the
music equipment and the stage and all that sort of, you know the band. Or actually Dan started
setting up the stage and all that kind of stuff about, between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning on
Friday morning. By about 11:00 or noon the stage was set up and then kind of all amps and all
that kind of stuff was kind of a continuation throughout the afternoon and everything was done
pretty much by 3:00 in the afternoon and kind of ready to go. He brought pretty much the drum
set, you know amps, that sort of thing and basically a lot of the kids had to do was just basically
plug in so that was really a nice event. I think the kids really got a kick out of having a venue,
you know kind of where to play and you know it’s pretty obvious that a lot of them have had
experience on other stages. A lot of them had very good stage presence with that so really it’s,
we’re really growing this event. It’s getting talked about and talked about even more and more
and it really is a fun event. It’s a fun event to be a part of just with the energy of the students that
are out at the rec center. We’re certainly taking over pretty much all the rec center now with that
and it certainly is our recommendation for the future just to have you know just pretty much the
whole rec center will be dedicated to that event for that day. Surely there are people coming in
and out and doing the fitness room and that sort of thing but left…but like I said, the kids were
very respectful. I think we took, I think 85 to 90 cans of food or other type of food items down
to the CAP Agency so they got a dollar off their admission if they brought a food item so I think
the CAP Agency was happy with that and we certainly were happy with that too so just
everything is really just kind of continuing to grow upon that event and getting you know kind of
a tidal wave behind it and pushing, pushing it higher and higher so we’re very pleased with that.
Had great volunteers again with the Chaska Key Club. They really kind of staffed kind of the
front area and took, collected money from the people coming and the participants. Stamped
hands and made kind of the accounting for the, reconciled the cash boxes and did a lot of that
sort of stuff as well. Hung up posters. Helped to carry different things so, so all in all it really
was a great event and John did a great job on start to finish on it and we were all pretty tuckered
out. We pulled out of the rec center about midnight that night so just to tear down the stage and
all that sort of thing so, but it was well worth it.
Daniel: Roadies. Chanhassen Roadies. You had the bandana going and everything didn’t you?
Rolled up sleeves and a t-shirt.
Ruegemer: Yeah, so that was fun but you know just a, you know always looking for ways to
improve it. Whether we’re going to go with a panel of judges next year versus the decibel meter
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and we certainly try to, you know talk to people at the event. What would you like to see and is
that going to be kind of that way kind of like what I’ll call an American Idol type of a panel of
judges. Whether that’s, if that’s the way we’re going to do, we’re just going to investigate that
from now, between now and next year. Whether it’s city park and rec commission members.
City Council members. CBO. Whoever it’s going to be, we may go that direction as well. So
we’ll kind of take all that in and kind of plan for the future so you know we’re certainly looking
ahead to have the new high school in town. I think that’s another volunteer group that we could
pull from as well but we’ve had great volunteer dedication from the Key Club for years and
years and years so again, we couldn’t do all of our events without them so from Feb Fest to
Easter to this event, it’s just a lot of different ways that they really help us out so.
Daniel: Wow. Well thank you Jerry on that and I think there’s going to be some questions.
Steve, you have anything?
Scharfenberg: No. My daughter attended and I came up at the very end and it was a wonderful
event. She had a great time and so I know the kids that were there really enjoyed it so.
Kelly: I think it’s fantastic. Great use of the rec center.
Ruegemer: We had middle school kids this year too. We marketed that area you know to try to
thth
gain some momentum, whether 7, 8 grade to get them to put together bands and for future you
know kind of starting our feeder system so to speak so.
Scharfenberg: Well like we talked about with council last night. You know to try to tap into
some programming and things for those kids in that middle school to high school range, that’s
very difficult to do and I think we’ve really tapped into that anyway. I think that’s wonderful.
Kelly: You go the name too. You got a great name for it. ChanJam. I mean it’s really a great
name.
Daniel: Elise.
Ryan: Well if you go to the Idol panel, as long as I don’t have to be Paula I’d do it. I do have
two questions. Is it in April every year that you do it? Same time.
Ruegemer: It’s pretty much around that time frame and we kind of selected that time frame. We
kind of selected that time period. We kind of looked at a number of different months over the
course of the year and that really seems to kind of fit in with a lot of different schedules that are,
you know with your district activities and, or other types of you know, you know kind of battle
of the bands so to speak. They’re kind of scheduled in other regional areas kind of around us so
that seems to be kind of the timeframe.
Ryan: And when do you start kind of marketing and communicating that it’s happening? Right
when they get back from the holiday break like January or?
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Ruegemer: Yeah, probably February probably. Yeah, yeah. Kind of getting stuff out. You
know John’s in communication with all the high schools music teachers and you know letters are
going out to, if the bands haven’t graduated and that sort of thing, kind of going out to different
people. Some bands change from year to year you know. A couple band members may leave for
whatever…and that sort of thing so yeah, John does a nice job of contacting everybody.
Ryan: Great.
Daniel: Glenn.
Stolar: Good questions. What did the second place band do again? You said there was a first
and second. Do we invite the second to do…
Ruegemer: Yep. They usually are invited, first place is obviously you know up for CBO.
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Second place band we try to incorporate them into the 4 of July.
Stolar: That’s what I thought, okay.
Ruegemer: And they normally play after the parade is complete.
Stolar: Okay, because I didn’t see their name, unless I missed it. I only saw the winner.
Ruegemer: Yep, and then a third band then was invited to play at the State Fair. That’s all kind
of part of this whole.
Stolar: That’s what I thought, there was more than just the first band that gets invited. Did Dave
Ryan do this comp?
Ruegemer: Correct. I paid him off with a Chanhassen History Book.
Stolar: Huh?
Ruegemer: I paid him off with a Chanhassen History Book.
Stolar: For something like this, for someone to do that, maybe even just a little motion here at
some point, or I think we’ve done something for recognizing him in front of the board here and
thank him.
Hoffman: Absolutely.
Stolar: And then as far as judges, a couple ideas. One was the music departments. Maybe they
would you know get 3 volunteers from the music departments to serve as judges along with let’s
say a park commissioner or a city council member or something so we have some professionals.
And then the other thought is, you know texting. Maybe going back to what City Council
suggested about trying to get in some of the more you know everyone has a phone now it seems
like in high school. That you could set up you know each band has their own number that you
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text to and then you, people who have their, in addition, you could do that in addition to the
judges.
Daniel: Excellent, thanks Glenn. Obviously it looks like, you know when you’re talking about
an increase of like 50% over last year. The good news is that obviously now we’re becoming
professional, at least bookies. Not bookies but, we’re making a profit on this and $588, that’s
fantastic. That covers the other events essentially, the smaller ones that we’ve done this year. I
think this is something that’s going to grow much larger than where we’re at. When you’re
looking at now we’ve got 5 high schools. I mean Southwest Christian, Holy Family,
Minnetonka, Chaska and Chanhassen. Now they’re going to participate in this down the road. I
would just anticipate that this is going to be much larger and I probably even presume that these,
the community center could even handle.
Kelly: Well your memo said 10’s the max and you got 9 this year so you really can’t grow the
number of bands.
Daniel: That’s right, and I think that’s, essentially that’s 2 from each school.
Hoffman: Yeah, and like he said. They evolve. The seniors graduate out and new ones come in.
Daniel: Absolutely but it gives them something I think, I guess first question I have is, what type
of feedback did you get from the bands as far as excitement, or did John, I mean was this
something that they’ve been practicing for and anticipating?
Ruegemer: Absolutely and I think a lot of them expanded the stage size this year so versus being
kind of cramped on a little stage. A smaller stage last year, they expanded the stage at least 4 to
5 feet out front so you had room to kind of move around and you know kind of engage the crowd
and that sort of thing. I mean the kids love having a venue to play. I think they were impressed
with the level of production and the level of equipment that was there. I mean before the bands
would start they were working with Dan Scott and he’s doing sound checks and all that kind of, I
mean I think they thought this was pretty big time. This wasn’t just playing in the garage for the
neighborhood. This was you know, yeah exactly. I mean they’re up on stage and Dan’s got the
big sound board and everything in the back there and they’ve got head phones and they’re
talking to everybody and they’re doing this and doing that and all kinds of stuff. I couldn’t even
tell you what it meant but I think they really were I think very thrilled to have kind of a more of a
professional environment and a fun atmosphere to play in.
Daniel: The second question I have is, how was it as far as the balance of the school? I mean
was it mostly Minnetonka kids there and that’s why they won or was there some pretty good
representation by Chaska and Holy Family?
Ruegemer: As far as audience members or bands?
Daniel: Audience members.
Ruegemer: You know.
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Daniel: And what would it…I guess is the best way to ask.
Ruegemer: It is kind of hard to tell. I mean I think when going through the selection process
you’re certainly trying to kind of even it out but obviously Minnetonka, Chaska are going to
have more bands there, just because of the sheer numbers and Southwest Christian I think had
one. Holy Family had one so, unless they brought everybody in their family, you know.
Daniel: It’d be hard to get that big of a cheer. And I guess that’s one of the reasons why we
ought to consider next year having a panel versus.
Ruegemer: That’s certainly something that we’re aware of.
Daniel: So it levels the playing field down to actually performance versus crowd support.
Stolar: Who won last year though?
Hoffman: Two Chaska bands.
Daniel: And then thirdly, was there any consideration of possibly getting you know the audio
visual club involved from one of the high schools, whether it be Minnetonka or Chaska or
Chanhassen coming up here to possibly to record the event and convert it to a DVD or convert it
to a CD that they can market themselves and if they want to do something with that. Was there
any discussion on that at all?
Ruegemer: Not this year. I was the videographer this year so I had my ear plugs in front of the
stage with a video camera. Vibrating. So I pretty much had probably 3 to 4 hours of footage just
from, raw footage because I’m not an expert by any means, but so I pretty much recorded all the,
you know a lot of different snippets of the band and the crowd and a lot of that sort of stuff and
we plan on putting it together.
Daniel: Well you know based off the level of audio equipment that’s there, I mean they have the
capability I assume to record and get good quality recording and I’m sure that’s something that.
Ruegemer: …it’s hard to record within a dark space but with the equipment that we have, that’d
be a good way to go.
Daniel: And that’s why I mentioned the audio visual club because I know, I assume they still
have them because, at least I know Minnetonka does. And that gives them the opportunity to
have Mediacom or some other local cable channels to replay that and not only have the
excitement of playing live but then you know these kids could see themselves on TV down the
road here if they live in Chanhassen or Minnetonka.
Hoffman: Have you checked You Tube? Did any of it make it on You Tube through the bands
themselves? I would imagine it probably did.
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Ruegemer: I know there’s a lot of like parents videotaping. A lot of other videotaping going on
so.
Daniel: Well we’ll have to check that. And then last, what was the best band name? That you
could remember.
Ruegemer: Oh wow.
Daniel: I know, because there’s always some classic ones that you certainly can.
Ruegemer: Now you’re really testing my memory.
Daniel: Don’t worry about it. That was just one of those things.
Hoffman: You’ll see the posters. They’re all on there.
Ruegemer: Yeah, we’ll have to get you a, there’s really kind of a cool, kind of a piano band
where the kids had really a big keyboard and stuff like that and they had a guitar and a drum
player and they had kind of a unique name and I’m drawing a blank right now so.
Daniel: Ah don’t worry about it.
Stolar: Have we ever thought about having them do one of the concerts here? As a venue for
them. One of the.
Daniel: Concert in the parks?
Stolar: Concert in the park.
Ruegemer: We’ve talked about that certainly but I suppose what we could do, the summer’s
schedule is typically set by February or March.
Stolar: Oh yeah that’s right, yeah.
Ruegemer: What we could do is just have.
Stolar: ChanJam winner.
Ruegemer: Yeah.
Stolar: And you put that in and say okay guys, and if they can’t do it, then the next one. I think
you’re going to find, and playing along what you’re saying Jeff, I think you’re going to find
there’s probably going to be copy cats coming up and what we have is an advantage because
there’s so many venues for the bands, they’re going to want to come.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Ruegemer: I want to give you a heads up. Shorewood called John I think yesterday or the day
before pretty much asking for the blueprint of our event and they want to host something at
Freeman Park in the summer this year.
Daniel: I think that’s a great idea.
Stolar: You’re going to find that all over. I mean it’s such a success.
Daniel: But you know that’s why I mention this, the more we get the schools involved, the more
this can really be a top notch event and the best part about it is it’s limited to just you know the
high schools that serve this community and all the kids and it gives them really for those who are
aspiring musicians, to really focus on something. Especially the popularity of American Idol and
American Got Talent and all those programs. I just, I know next year, this year I couldn’t make
it but next year I’m going to well out of my way to make sure that I can attend it.
Stolar: Is this something that…for the MRPA or the Minnesota Recreation and Parks
Association conferences, something to present to them? Possible.
Hoffman: It could be. It’s not a new program. It’s been around.
Stolar: I know.
Hoffman: It’s been around. It’s been around but we could present it.
Stolar: It’s a great program.
Hoffman: Go after the Award of Excellence.
th
Daniel: Excellent. Thanks Jerry. Then moving onto the 4 of July.
TH
2009 4 OF JULY CELBRATION PREVIEW.
Ruegemer: Just an update for the commission as to kind of where we’re at right now. Just been
meeting with Chanhassen Rotary, talking about a lot of different things from the Taste of
Chanhassen to the parade with that. Another meeting is coming up. A lot of the food vendors
have been confirmed. Food items are being confirmed. We’re working on kind of the power
layout and the kind of the food layout. For the most part will remain the same, up in the
horseshoe north of the path. North of the big tents. We’re going to be adding another 150 foot
kind of those big, thick cords with the new panels to kind of service, you know kind of spread
the power out a little bit to maintain a good energy flow kind of going through the system so
we’re kind of working on ways to kind of improve what we’ve done in the past as well as make
it more convenient for our food vendors that will be up in the area. And plan. Just make sure
that everything runs smoothly that night. A lot of the, you know obviously the parade route’s
going to be the same. I believe now that the Chanhassen History Society, or what’s it? History.
Hoffman: Historical Society.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Ruegemer: Historical Society’s going to be doing kind of an event, open house at Old Village
th
Hall, St. Hubert’s in that little courtyard area on the 4 itself. So that will be something kind of
new along the parade route this year as well. Logo and that has been kind of put together with
Mark and he’s been kind of put together, John’s been working with Southwest Publishing again
to put together kind of a, you know kind of a glossy schedule of events. It’ll be kind of a
th
downsize of our 25 anniversary. Probably in about that 12-14, 16 page range versus we had a
little bit more last year so I know John’s been working hard on getting together with Chanhassen
Rotary, the Chamber. Other different components of the event to get kind of an interview or
kind of the individual groups kind of overview of why they’re involved and kind of an
advertising article and stuff for them as well so, that’s all been done. Their schedule of events is
going to go in there. Advertising. And what is nice is that certainly there is work done on city
staff’s part to put that together but it’s nice that Southwest Christian, or not Christian. Southwest
Publishing does a lot of the coordination of that event from the printing to the selling the
advertising and it’s you know, it’s a money maker for them and it’s really a benefit to us that it’s
really not a lot of our money out of our pockets for that, for the advertising so it’s been a great
th
partnership that was developed last year during our 25 anniversary and that really carried into
this year. They were more than happy to be involved again and that makes it really easy to have a
willing partner so that’s a great event that they do for us and it certainly is a big benefit to the
community as well that we can share resources on that so. Just a tentative schedule of events is
connected, along with the memo. Just kind of an overview for everybody. We’re going to go
back down. Melrose Pyrotechnics, we’re in our second year of our three year contract this year.
We’re going to kind of scale the show back again from $30,000 down to $23,000 again to kind
th
of, you know we made it kind of extra special for our 25 anniversary. I know John’s had
conversations with Melrose and the show’s progressing nicely. We’ll be all set to go for the
event. And he’s been talking with CBO and all that kind of stuff so all of that is ongoing. Tents,
tables and chairs has been, the contracts have been awarded and coordination of that has been
taking place so we’re really, Midwest Rides, we also signed a 3 year agreement with them as
well. They actually approached us after last year and wanted it to become a multi year contract.
There obviously first 2 years, I think they were satisfied and pleased with the progression of the
event for them as well and they can stay in town on a busy weekend from Elk River, up in that
area so it’s a win/win for them and for us so.
Stolar: Are we looking at the arm band situation? Remember last year we were talking about,
because it wasn’t really worth it for kids that were only going to stay let’s say until 8:00 to have
a full night.
Ruegemer: Yep, and discussions have been, Jamie and a lot of the crew right now, they’re down
in southern United States right now so they’re not really in town yet. I know staff has had
conversations with Midwest Rides about streamlining the process so to minimize you know
waits in line or that pre-sales. We certainly talked about pre-sales for this year. That people
could come up to city hall and not have to wait in line out at the event. Also have you know
ticket people kind of going through the line selling tickets. We’re really trying to kind of look at
that whole you know situation, process and improve that customer service and improve that
waiting in line experience for the people so.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Scharfenberg: And are they open to that Jerry?
Ruegemer: Yes.
Scharfenberg: Okay.
Hoffman: And then specifically getting to Glenn’s comment about timing is they don’t, they
younger kids, parents don’t want to buy an arm band when they’re going home at 7:00-8:00 at
night so we talked about a two tiered.
Stolar: Right, they get a different color for the, you know if you’re only going to be there for
half a day. It’s a little bit more than the, you know half of the full arm, wrist band but still a
better situation. And it does prevent them from having, yeah they go on a couple of rides and
now I have to go back to the line. Go to a couple rides, Now I want to go back to the line and
this way they just flow through.
Hoffman: Other comments or questions?
Kelly: Are we at maxed space for rides or can they add more rides?
Ruegemer: We did add some rides this year. Certainly if we want to expand to the north of the
trail, we certainly can take a look at that for the future. We’ve kind of maintained that trail, east
to west kind of trail segment just for kind of transportation flow through the park but that is
something that we can expand to the north as well.
Daniel: Do we have the logo picked out? Oh, there it is. That’s going to be on the t-shirts?
Kelly: Here or, I mean how’s it going to, is it going to be up in a corner or?
Ruegemer: I know there has been talk about like a kind of a breast logo.
Kelly: Yep.
Ruegemer: And looking at that. I don’t know if that has yet been determined at this point but I
know it’s been in discussions.
Scharfenberg: And where did I see they’re going to do the softball tournament the weekend
before?
Ruegemer: Correct. That’s also part of the piece for the advertising. John’s had conversations
with Paul Plummer, the tournament director to kind of get that component into the schedule of
events and the kind of a promotion for that event.
Daniel: Thanks Jerry.
ADMININSTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS:
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
CHANHASSEN VETERANS MONUMENT DEDICATION CEREMONY.
Hoffman: Just want to remind you to keep a watchful eye on the newspaper and all the articles
that are coming out talking about the upcoming dedication ceremony. Get involved. Volunteer.
There are numbers out there you can contact the dedication planning committee. Jerry’s a
member of that. You can give him your name and you can work that particular day. You could
come down to the next couple of weeks and put pavers in and stack pavers and shovel gravel so
there’s all sorts of ways to get volunteer, or to get involved. Just contact us and then most
importantly talk to your neighbors, family and friends about the dedication ceremony on May
th
25. Memorial Day at 5:00. It allows people to go out of town for their 3 day weekend and still
get back in town for that important event. We anticipate at least 1,000 people at the event. It
may go even larger than that.
Ryan: Is this unique to Chanhassen or do other cities have.
Hoffman: Many other cities have veterans monuments. Eden Prairie recently installed one.
Lakeville. They’re around the country. Very popular. Again, Google You Tube Veterans
Monument Dedication and you’re going to watch 100 of them. They’re just really special events
in the community. Remember the most important thing about this is not the monument itself but
it’s about the community gathering one day a year, Memorial Day to remember the veterans.
Honor the veterans and then just continue to build community. When you’ve got 1,000 people in
a public space for an event of this kind of emotion and it’s just the formality of it is just really
wonderful so it can only spawn off positive things in the community.
Scharfenberg: Todd is there, what are they doing? Will that be lit at night?
Hoffman: It will be. It will be most dramatic at night. It’s going to be tremendous as far as the
flat. POW flag will go there. That holds special significance for the veterans monument.
There’s not a POW flag displayed in a public place in our community, other than the Legion, but
at a public building. This will be the first location for that.
Ruegemer: Schedule of events is all set. That was finalized this morning. We were kind of
rustling around and kind of jockeying and positioning different components of the schedule of
events so all that is going to be finalized here I’m sure today. Poster’s and that are going to be
emailed to me tomorrow and that sort of thing so we’ll get that information out. There’s going to
be banners and stuff made, 4 by 8 different panels to get the information out to the community.
So a lot, like Todd said, a lot of it is progressing with that. I’m kind of working on a lot of the
logistics part of the event. We’re going to have an aerial fire truck out taking photographs.
Capturing the event from the air. From the aerial fire truck. Kind of overview of the event with
the thought of using all that promotional material for future I guess advertising and different
things so yeah. There’s a lot going on. A lot of different components of the, of the veterans
monument, not only the, obviously the construction but also the program and all that’s going to
kind of, you know kind of go ahead on Memorial Day for a nice event so.
Hoffman: Congressman Klein is one of the keynote speakers. An invitation has also been sent
to our Governor.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Scharfenberg: Is it the hope Todd of the Legion to have a ceremony there every Memorial Day?
Is that going to kind of be the center piece for Memorial Day program?
Hoffman: Yes. Annually.
Ryan: And I apologize if this is back tracking but for the design of the memorial, was it
designed by a veteran or what’s the?
Hoffman: It was designed by the architect that created the park and so this all started with our
Senior Commission and when the commission met with the council just previous to your meeting
last night and they mentioned to council that it would be nice, we don’t have a veterans
monument in town. Council contacted the Legion and said would you be interested in working
on this. They said yes. We have a local volunteer, Mark Undestad who happens to be on the
Planning Commission who is the volunteer coordinator for it. Most of the labor has been
dedicated. All the labor’s been dedicated except for a few things that they had to hire. The stone
work was just over $30,000. The stone work that you saw delivered here the other day so that’s
how it’s come together and then all volunteers planning the dedication.
Ryan: Great.
Daniel: And it started out last year on Memorial Day a year ago with the kick off.
Hoffman: Yep. The ground breaking.
Daniel: The announcement. The ground breaking.
Ryan: Okay.
Daniel: And before that there was what Todd? 4-5 months of planning just before that.
Hoffman: It’s been almost 2 years in planning.
Daniel: And if you’re looking for, you know as far as other memorial, veteran memorial parks
or areas, Excelsior has one right in that, right by the rose garden by Maynard’s. Beautiful one.
Ryan: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Daniel: That one’s really something very special for Excelsior so I mean that’s obviously
Chanhassen has, it was one of the first things I brought up when I came on board 3 years ago. I
talked about really Chanhassen, something that I think was missing from Chanhassen. Now it’s
come to fruition and this upcoming Memorial Day so. You know I guess what I’d like to see
Todd is, certainly hope all the commission will be attending. I know that we’ll come home early
for that so we can attend as well at 5:00 it starts?
Hoffman: 5:00.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Daniel: Yeah. So that’s going to be exciting.
Hoffman: Picnic coming right?
Ruegemer: Yep.
Hoffman: Community picnic afterwards.
Scharfenberg: Oh they are going to do that again. Okay.
Daniel: Great. Alright, well thank you and we’re looking forward to it. I suppose we have one
more meeting before the dedication anyways so.
Hoffman: No.
Stolar: The Wednesday after.
Daniel: Oh you’re right. Okay.
Stolar: Memorial Day’s early this year.
COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS.
None.
COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS:
Daniel: This is the area where I want to kind of bring up old business, like Glenn and I were
discussing yesterday and that was, which came up based off our meeting with the City Council
and that’s to talk about where we’re at right now with the student rep position here with the, a
student member on the commission. To get some of the feedback, especially with the youth age
group. And then one of the recommendations of the council and the mayor was for discussion on
focus groups for specific events so I’d like to open up the discussion. Open up the discussions
on that. Steve do you have any thoughts?
Scharfenberg: I don’t.
Daniel: None at all? You’re tired.
Hoffman: I can probably keep the conversation shorter.
Daniel: That’s even better.
Hoffman: The desire of the mayor is really to keep it to task force or focus groups.
Daniel: Okay.
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: And so they’re not, the challenge there is if we start applying junior members on this
commission, then they want us to talk about other commissions. Should be. And the Planning
Commission and other commissions so their desire is to really see these be focused on, if you
want a special project, is the skate park in need of improvements? Let’s get a task force together.
Do you want to do a focus group on things? We can either go to the school as commissioners
and staff and do a focus group there at one of the schools or we can have kids here and do a
focus group. They just think that’s going to be more effective over time than bringing a person
onto your panel on a monthly basis.
Daniel: Okay.
Stolar: Is that, but when we discussed this last we said we were going to try and bring, did that
go to Todd and the Mayor and they said that they didn’t want to do that?
Hoffman: On an informal discussion basis, yes. Not on a formal recommendation.
Stolar: Okay, you’re right. No, we were, I think we were only advising at that point that yes, we
were conceptually in favor. I don’t think there was a vote but, or anything.
Hoffman: And I think it will be highly effective to get those kids, especially a group of them,
they’d be more interactive. I think they’d be more responsive to getting feedback.
Stolar: And the only thing we’d lose about that though is the opportunity for the kid to get the
participation right and that’s the part that…I mentioned you know in Eden Prairie we had, we
had 2 I think.
Hoffman: Two, yeah.
Stolar: And it was hit or miss. We said that but I know in the school board, Minnetonka School
Board, they’re always there. They always come to that. It’s an opportunity for them to get some
experience and some input. And again all they had was an advisory role in Eden Prairie. It
wasn’t like they were part of it. It was an opportunity.
Hoffman: And they’ll continue to explore it. If this works out and it evolves into something else
but.
Stolar: Maybe that’d be the first focus group.
Daniel: I think what we ought to be doing as a commission, certainly if there’s some ideas based
on feedback from our neighbors, children, whoever it may be that then we ought to take
advantage of a task force or a focus group and certainly bring those ideas to the meetings. Then
we can certainly task or work together with Todd and Jerry to try to bring this select group that
we can certainly have discussions with so. Todd, was there anything else that you want to go
over on the administrative packet?
ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET:
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: Answer any questions on Admin packet.
Scharfenberg: I see that there’s a thing in here called the Booster Club. New Booster Club. I
will…you guys, I’m a member of the membership committee. That you now can become a
member of the Stormchasers Booster Club. The price points to join are $25, $100, $250 or $500.
Some of those come with amenities depending upon what you want to, what membership level
you want to choose so I think if you go on the web site I think you can, I don’t know, I think the
membership form might be on there now so you can print that off and join up if you want to
become a Stormchaser.
Daniel: Catchy. It’s really good.
Hoffman: Do you want to take a look at a piece of property that we acquired? Let you know
about that. Familiar with the Fox Woods acquisition?
Daniel: Yes.
Hoffman: And just north of there, if you look off of the, if you look off of Lyman Boulevard.
So the Fox Woods is 32 acres of property. It’s located right here. And there’s this big ponding
area and this was acquired last night by the City Council. Excess right-of-way. It’s all a ponding
area and then this trail will be built along the side of it in the future with a sewer interceptor line,
so this was excess right-of-way from the Highway 212 project owned by the State of Minnesota.
We made application through the State and it was appraised at $88,000. The surface water
management fund and park dedication fund split that amount so we invested about $44,000 in
park dedication. It was put on the consent agenda last night to the City Council and approved by
the council so that will expand this nature preserve, park from about 32 acres to 50, just over 50
acres. So it’s a wonderful acquisition.
Stolar: And the only thing left on that is, was the, is it the Erhart property when that goes?
Hoffman: Yeah, the Erhart property is right here. The trail’s connection there.
Stolar: Trail connections to be able to round that up.
Hoffman: And so as this neighborhood develops into the future you’ll have this whole trail
system around the outside of that neighborhood so if you’re a runner or a biker or a walker,
you’re going to have that whole outside loop without having to cross a major road and you’ll
have obviously the internal trail loop through the roadway system as well.
Scharfenberg: So Todd where that dashed line is, there’ll be a trail coming off of Lyman to go
around that wetland area?
Hoffman: Yeah. Beautiful area.
Daniel: Is this something that just came up out of the blue I take it?
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Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
Hoffman: No. This has been on the radar but it did just come out of the blue with MnDOT. We
made application. Made what I would say overtures years ago when 212 was up and coming and
they said we’ll get to you when we get to you and then they said okay, we’re willing to work on
this particular one. They sold us a fire station site along Lyman. Right at this location. Now
this piece and now the next one we’ll move off to is these two parcels south of Rice Marsh and
north of, but we think these will be more expensive but we don’t know just yet. These are two
excess right-of-way parcels again for the 212 project that we’re interested in.
Daniel: Real nice piece of property right there. Really nice.
Hoffman: So those are the next ones. So I wanted to bring that to your attention and thanks for
the comments of the Stormchasers. Obviously a big item coming to town and we will on our
tour take a look at that facility and continue that conversation. People are interested in hearing
about those athletic fields in addition to the school and what’s going on there. And I believe the
bridge will be done. We’ll go take a look at the board walk and the underpass at that time as
well.
Daniel: The fees that you’re talking about, the park dedication fees that come out of our CIP
then?
Hoffman: Yeah. It takes your cash reserves down from $3.3 million down to $3.2 and change
so.
Daniel: Okay.
Hoffman: At $44,000, the council was very supportive. Good acquisition… You’re not going
to buy any 20 acres for $88,000.
Scharfenberg: I was going to say, it’s such a beautiful view when you’re up on Lyman looking
out over those ponds. It’s pretty.
Hoffman: Yeah, and it’s just a great thing. You know the future of that nature preserve could be
a variety of things. It could be an actual nature center. There’s a lot of, you know a nature
center on 50 acres is a lot more valuable than a nature center on 30 acres. It’s just a great
acquisition for the city.
Stolar: Yeah, is it wooded up there before you get to the ponds also?
Hoffman: There’s a big chunk of woods relatively speaking on the one corner. A majority of it
is a wetland and then there’s all that embankment on the, and when you walk along that
embankment, you’re not even going to know that highway’s on the other side. It’s so far away
and so removed from the trail section. It’s really going to be a nice nature loop. You’re going to
see, if you live in Springfield or you live down in these other neighborhoods, you’re going to
walk that. You’re going to see all sorts of wildlife and it’s just going to be another beautiful
amenity for the community. It was interesting before your meeting with the council, the senior
43
Park and Rec Commission Meeting - April 28, 2009
commission all they wanted to do was talk about parks and trails so the council got two doses of
parks and trails last night. The senior commission was advocating for active older adults…in
Chanhassen so.
Daniel: Excellent. Well that’s exciting and, is there any plans Todd for like a natural trail
through those?
Hoffman: Through the nature preserve. Most of those will be woodchipped. There’ll be some
asphalt but those plans aren’t totally developed as of yet but the exterior trail will be an asphalt.
Daniel: Okay, great. Alright, I think that’s about it then. Thank you Todd and Jerry. I suppose
we move onto adjournment if there’s anything else the commission members would like to add.
Okay. Motion to end our meeting.
Stolar moved, Kelly seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The Park and Recreation Commission meeting
was adjourned at 9:05 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman
Park and Rec Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
44