PRC 2004 07 27
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREA TION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
JULY 27, 2004
Chairman Stolar called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT: Glenn Stolar, Paula Atkins, Tom Kelly, Steve Scharfenberg,
Ann Murphy, and Kevin Dillon
MEMBERS ABSENT: Jack Spizale
STAFF PRESENT: Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation
Superintendent; Susan Marek, Recreation Center Manager; Dale Gregory, Park
Superintendent; and Susan Bill, Senior Center Coordinator.
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Martin Walsh
Lenny Klevan Schmitz
Ann Nye
Pamela Klinger-Horn
P. Zuber
Carol Buesgens
Tony Schiller
Tom Nel
Carver County Parks
Carver County Parks
1641 West 63rd Street
7024 Highover Court So.
Chanhassen
2754 Century Trail
6580 Troendle Circle
35 Center Street
952-466-5252
952-466-5253
952-401-9015
952-470-0305
952-351-1109
952-474-1373
952-474-3278
952-474-6495
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Dillon moved, Murphy seconded to approve the
agenda as amended to include item 10(c), Chanhassen Day at the Arboretum. All
voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously 6 to O.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Hoffman: I'd like to announce that this Friday, July 30th is the dedication of the City
Center Park in front of City Hall. Between City Hall and the library. 7:00 start with
music by the Minnesota Valley Community Band, a 15 member band from the Carver
County area. A free hot dog supper will be served at about 7:30. We'll have a short
program, 15 minutes or so with the Mayor Tom Furlong speaking, Damon Farber, the
architect. Lead architect on the project. The American Legion will raise the American
Flag. The band will play the National Anthem and then we'll perform a ribbon cutting at
the dedication of the park to the citizens of Chanhassen and then follow that, conclude
with an ice cream social. Everyone is welcome.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: I do know some of you are here probably for the dog park discussion. What I
would do is ask, with no objection from the commission, that if that's what your
presentation is about, I'd like to do it with the item as opposed to this point. We'll open
up for visitors to discuss at that point, so are there any visitor presentations that would
like to be made at this time? Seeing none, and again I'll open it up during the dog park
discussion if anybody wishes to make a presentation at that point.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Dillon moved, Scharfenberg seconded to approve the
verbatim and summary minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting
dated May 25, 2004 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0 with 2 abstentions from Stolar and Kelly.
CONSIDER DOG PARK COOPERATIVE PROPOSAL: LAKE MINNEWASHTA
REGIONAL PARK.
Hoffman: Chair Stolar, members of the commISSIon. I'm pleased to have with us
representatives from Carver County Parks. A dog park discussion has been something
that we've been talking about for a number of years in Chanhassen. We know if one is
built, either in a city park or a county facility within our city, or just any area for that
matter, that would be very successful. The level of interest we've had in the community
is very high. The difficulty with our municipal park system is identifying a preferred
location for construction of a dog park. We want to make sure that it has ample space,
access for that type of use. We simply have not been able to identify a location. That's
why we're so excited that Carver County, through their master planning process, has
identified at least the location for a potential site at Lake Minnewashta Regional Park and
they're opening it up to the communities of Carver County a conversation that if we will
joint partner communities with the county, they would consider constructing this facility.
So we have with us Marty Walsh and Lenny Schmitz.... Marty's the Carver County
Parks Director.
Marty Walsh: I don't know if! need this or not.
Hoffman: Yeah, you're on the record. Introduce yourself.
Marty Walsh: Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the commission. My name is Marty
Walsh. I'm the Parks Director for Carver County. As Todd has mentioned, some time
ago, going back to about 2000-2001 we started a master planning process for Lake
Minnewashta Regional Park. It was an update to the existing master plan. There's a
number of element changes inside the master plan for Lake Minnewashta Park. One of
those proposed changes is a possible or potential site for an off leash dog area. Now that
process came about in meeting with the public as we were designing Lake Minnewashta
Park on the master plan for that. We have a history of dogs being in Lake Minnewashta
Park and they need to be on a leash. We have no real folks... As Todd has indicated,
there was a great deal of demand for an off leash dog area and as we went through the
process of our parks, taking a look at where our priorities might be, taking a look at some
operational issues that were related to dogs, how we might facilitate an off leash dog area
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
was strongly considered. And also made it to the our planner. Having said that, there
was a number of things that went into the location of that particular facility within the
park. We believe that we have a pretty good location for it. It happens to be in the north
west section of the park area, and I'm just going to point to it. It' up in this general area
right here. And on the master plan, this master plan is more of a conceptual plan in
nature. It's not a site plan in terms of what we've identified would be the exact number
of parking stalls. It does include... It just basically says, here's a spot that seems to
make sense. It's bordered by Highway 41. It's bordered by a large wooded area. There
is some residential to the north side of the park, so within our plan this particular site
seemed to make sense. It seemed to fit the needs of a lot of dog owners. It's not perfect
with regards to... but it does offer a lot of nice things from wooded areas to some open
areas and so forth. I'll just update you that the area at this point in time is being used as a
maintenance area for the park. We have a small maintenance facility inside that area.
. . . that would be one of the facilities that we'd have to relocate or some substitute space
for that facility that would be ultimately removed. So with that, I'm going to turn this
over to Len Schmitz who has been working on this. He's our park coordinator and has a
great deal of background information. He will give you more of the details as to what an
offleash park is and then we'll open it up for questions at the end. Thank you.
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Park commission, thanks for the opportunity to come this
evening. Again my name is Lenny Klevan-Schmitz and I'm the parks coordinator with
Carver County Parks. I'm just going to pass around a little information for you to look
at. The first item is a couple pages out of our master plan and the very last page is a copy
of this map which copied pretty well, and then the second is some information about what
an off leash dog area is. Some of you mayor may not have an idea of what an off leash
dog area consists of and I'll just briefly kind of give you a quick overview. I've had the
opportunity to visit many of the off leash dog areas throughout the Twin Cities
metropolitan area. Basically the definition of an off leash dog area is an area that allows
off leash or allows pets to run off leash with their owners, either secluded, enclosed by
fencing in some sort of a park or natural area. They range in size from less than an acre
to some of them range 15-20 or 25 plus acres, depending on where you're at in the area.
There's a few pictures of current off leash dog areas on this second slide, and some of the
rules and policies that have typically gone around or gone with those. An example of an
off leash dog area in Burnsville and Bloomington and signage from Three Rivers Park
District and Ramsey County Parks and Recreation. The third slide is just again an
overview of some guidelines and rules that are starting to come fairly regular at off leash
dog areas. A lot of concerns that people have or things that arise as you start talking off
leash dog areas and those that aren't supporters of it are you know, what about accidents
or injuries or who's liable if or what do you do if and these rules and guidelines that are,
like I said, becoming fairly standard, help to answer some of those questions and give
direction if something does arise. The fourth slide is probably the most interesting of all
of these in that it gives you an idea of where the off leash dog areas are currently in the
Twin Cities metropolitan area. They're noted with little dark square and this is
something I received from the Dakota County Parks Department, and as you can see you
can locate, you should be able to locate Lake Minnewashta Regional Park is just to the
right of Lake Minnetonka. Or to the south of Lake Minnetonka which doesn't show up
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
too well on here but Carver Park Reserve is I guess a notable feature in the center of
Carver County there. Lake Minnewashta's just to the right of that. The closest off leash
dog areas are in Bloomington, Prior Lake, Cleary Lake Regional Park and Lake Sarah
Regional Park up by Rockford. So that gives you some idea. It is quite a distance to the
next closest regional or next closest off leash dog area in the community, and the second
to last slide here gives you some idea on who owns and operates off leash dog areas
currently in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. The only one that's not listed on here
currently is St. Louis Park just approved the creation of an off leash dog area, which will
probably be one of the closest in proximity to the current area. And the last slide is an
idea of, give you some idea on how organizations, if they charge for their off leash dog
areas or not. Looking at some of the organizations, they charge a fee along with a
parking pass some of them require, just that you have an annual parking pass. Others are
free of charge. The City of Bloomington, one thing that they did that was quite
interesting is they added 70 cents onto their dog licenses to help support the ongoing
maintenance of their off leash dog area. So that was kind of an interesting approach that
they did there. What the future of Carver County is, we haven't nailed down. We
haven't necessarily said there would be a charge or anything if we did create an off leash
dog area but we list some of the possibilities of working with the surrounding
communities. Fund raising through park users. Off leash dog owners that use our park
facilities, that they would do some fund raising. User fees. Capital improvement. So
that's kind of a very brief overview on what an off leash dog area is. As Marty stated,
Lake Minnewashta Regional Park located between Highways 5 and 7 on Trunk Highway
41. The master plan includes an area that potentially could include an off leash dog area.
I'm going to bring up one more board here. It gives you some idea of the visitor use that
consists of Lake Minnewashta Regional Park which is right at the tip of my pencil there.
The first ring is a 6 mile radius of Lake Minnewashta Regional Park and the orange outer
rings is about a 12 mile radius of Lake Minnewashta Regional Park. According to
Metropolitan Council, visitor use data, approximately 50 to 60 percent of our visitor use
comes from that 6 to 12 mile radius around the regional park facility, and Lake
Minnewashta Regional Park gets an estimated 90 to 100,000 visits per year through the
2003 visitor use counts. Kind of the purpose of a, to consider an off leash dog area at
Lake Minnewashta Regional Park is, there's getting to be fewer and fewer open spaces
where dogs can go and run as communities continue to develop and grow. There's just
less room. There's more development. There's more parks that have other features and
other activities going on and it's getting to be a user conflict. City ordinances and county
ordinances restrict pets from park areas running off leash. That's the way it is in the
county. That's the way it is with all of the cities in Carver County. As Marty alluded to
earlier, Lake Minnewashta Park many would argue is currently a 340 acre off leash dog
area to many but that's not what our ordinances state, is that dogs again must be on a
leash. And the public demand, as you can see by the participants, residents here, is
getting to be more and more demanding for an area where the pets can go. The county's
interest in this is to resolve the pet issue at Lake Minnewashta Regional Park. Currently
the park's getting busier and busier every year and there tend to be more and more user
conflicts throughout the park of off leash dogs and kids and families on trails, other users
near the beach facilities. Picnic shelters. People not picking up after their pets in
common areas, things like that. From a regional basis, as you saw on the map that there
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
really isn't an off leash dog area in this area of the Twin Cities Metropolitan area, and
from a municipal aspect we've talked with many of the communities, park commissions,
park staff throughout the county and they've been approached by residents and staff and
others that there's definitely an interest and a need for an off leash dog area within the
communities out here. Some of the hurdles that we have to overcome in creating an off
leash dog area. For Carver County it's not a top priority as far as funding in our overall
development plan. Our main funding right now is going towards land acquisition for the
future and maintaining structure within our existing park facilities. The second major
hurdle is if we trade an area, how do we enforce that dogs need to be on a leash. And
then the third is kind of getting buy in from the stakeholders, the county, the park
commission, the county board, area municipalities and most importantly dog owners. If
we can get everybody to work together we feel like we can make something work, but we
need to work together with several different types of communities. What we're looking
for is participation. Basically from the county aspect, we're able to do some planning.
We own the land. We can provide some of the ongoing labor and possibly some
development and we can also take care of the ongoing operations and maintenance of an
off leash dog area. That's what we see we can bring to the table. Basically here's where
I bring my dog and pony show and I ask communities and say, what we're looking for
from the communities is money to help create an off leash dog area. As I stated we, it's
not a top priority as far as funding goes for us. We estimate that it would take
approximately $40,000 to create an off leash dog area at Lake Minnewashta Regional
Park. Many of those components are floating figures at this time. How much would it
cost us to relocate our maintenance facilities that are currently at that location that's
proposed as an off leash dog area is one of the significant costs. Creating an additional, or
a separate entrance into the park. So that's the master plan. The proposal is to, there is
an existing separate entrance into the park facility off of Highway 41. The proposal in
the master plan and the idea that we, the park staff would be to have a completely
separate entrance to the off leash dog area, basically separating off leash dog users and
those there to picnic, hike, bike, walk, swim, picnic, hang out with their families, use the
play areas, whatever. It would separate those conflicts of interest with the off leash dogs.
That would be another significant cost. Signage. Possible fencing in some areas are all
costs that would go into creating an off leash dog area, along with educating the public on
the use of that area. As far as from pet owners, we could also see, you know $40,000 is a
rough dollar amount that Marty and I have come up with by looking at the master plan
and some rough design ideas on what might be feasible. That might not have all the bells
and whistles. That might be just the basics of an off leash dog area. We've been meeting
with local municipalities. We've met with the City of Waconia, Victoria, Shorewood,
and now Chanhassen and meeting with Excelsior next month to talk about how we could
possibly partner together, if there's an interest to partner together to create this, and if
there is, we would be interested in going forward with doing some planning, public
meetings, site plans in the future to see if we could get this created but without some sort
of a commitment or vested interest from the communities. We don't think we could see
that happening. If we could come up with X number of dollars and through the planning
process we decided, and the residents spoke up and said you know we'd really like to
have features A, Band C, then we would probably turn to the residents, the dog owners
and say, okay well we've got this much money. This is how much we need for A, Band
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
C. Go out and raise the money and we'll add those features, whether they're today or 5
years down the line once the basic amenities can be created. So that's, it's kind of a 3
part process. One way that the cities kind of a proposal that I've outlined to other
communities as far as getting their monies back, if they decided to participate in like a
one time contribution would be to increase their off leash or their dog licenses within
their communities. Say by a dollar or two dollars. Some communities have several
hundred dogs that are licensed throughout the community every year. Some communities
only have 50 to 100 depending on the size of the community and how much people abide
by those city ordinances, but in the City of Chanhassen did a little bit of research and they
did a buy licensing process where it can be every 2 years or every year and they've sold
somewhere around 500 to 700 dog licenses in the last 2 years. Some of them are 2 year
licenses so it's a fairly significant number in the community here. And again, just to
reiterate, some of the benefits to consider, as a park commission at the city is that
basically a facility could be created sooner. As you've heard, as Todd mentioned earlier,
that's within the city of Chanhassen there doesn't seem to be a space. A lot of
communities the problem seems to be everybody wants a dog park but not in my back
yard. We've got a proposed site in our master plan. We've got the land. There's no cost
for that and basically to the communities there wouldn't be any ongoing operational
costs. That would be absorbed by the county. So again I'm here just to provide this as an
opportunity to see what the city of Chanhassen and commission, if they have an interest
in and I'll hand it over to yourselves and if you have any questions, if! can answer those.
Stolar: Do you want to ask your questions now commission and then we'll have the
audience participate or do you want them present first?
Kelly: Questions.
Murphy: Lenny, regarding the separate entrance question. Are you talking about still the
dog park users would have to pay the park fee in addition to a dog park fee?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Right now from talking internally staff wise, we would envision
having an honor box type system up there where people who use the off leash dog area
would be required to abide by the same parking policies as everybody else that comes
into the park. We don't see adding, envision adding an additional fee to be in the off
leash dog area, like some organizations have done. We would just be consistent with
what's already established for our park system. Again that gets back to enforcement. We
have a hard enough time having our regular parking daily entrance fees, annual passes
enforced in the park facilities to add an additional fee that wouldn't be enforced doesn't
really seem reasonable.
Murphy: So it would just be the park entrance fee?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: That's what we would anticipate right now.
Kelly: Does that $40,000 estimate take into account adding that separate entrance or is
that over and above the $40,000 estimate?
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: The entrance is already existing. It's currently existing, but it
would need significant improvement. And what we would anticipate right now is
probably like an aggregate or gravel entrance and parking lot, similar to that at the current
park entrance. Paving would be significantly more.
Kelly: But the $40,000 takes that into account?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: These are rough dollar amounts but yeah, we would, Marty and
I would, based on experience and the redevelopment of Lake Waconia Regional Park and
seeing what things cost there, have kind of put together some estimates on what a parking
lot may cost. These exact dollar amounts haven't been figured out. Like Marty
mentioned earlier, the master plan isn't a specific site plan. It does give some very rough
dollar amounts. I think the overall off leash dog area in the master plan I think went up to
$80,000. I believe it was $80,000 for all the bells and whistles and things like that but,
and that's just rough dollars that, figures that they pull out that other communities have
created them for significantly less. Like the City of Bloomington but that dog park could
eventually disappear because that's where their water treatment facility would go so.
Scharfenberg: How many acres did you say it was?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: The master plan current states about 15 to 20 acres in size. Is
what we have up there. The whole park is about 340 acres. 341 acres in size.
Dillon: Lenny, what was the response of the other communities that you've talked about
this?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Everybody seems interested. But everybody has their concerns
also. Like I said, we've met with Victoria first. They're the first ones and their response
is kind of, great idea. Who else is interested? They didn't have a quorum at their
meeting so no official, nothing official has passed but they're the next closest, larger
community besides Chanhassen. Waconia says you know we're interested but we're a
long ways away to be able to contribute to the same amount as somebody else might not
be fair. City of Shorewood said we're interested. We don't have any more land to
develop but we're a community of 7,000 people and we're not going to get much bigger
or much smaller but they're definitely interested in being involved. Is kind of the feeling
that I got from them and the residents that were there and meeting with Excelsior first
part of August, August 10th I believe and see what their thoughts are, but again another
smaller community so everybody that we've talked to seems to have some interest. It
seems to make sense from the impression that I've gotten, received so far. But exact
dollars hasn't been hashed out or, whatever we really would like to have everybody at the
table. And even if it's at different levels, great. Ifnot, we'll see what happens.
Atkins: I'm just curious about, is there 15 to 20 acres that you have, that you're looking
at near the water at all?
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: There is some wetland area but there isn't an existing like pond
or lake that's in that area. Right now it's fairly heavily wooded with a few open spaces.
What would become of that if potential of creating a pond or some sort of water feature
could certainly be there I would think, if that's what the public said they needed. This off
leash dog area is different from this area, in looking at it when I visited it as a potential
off leash dog area is much different from other communities that I visited in that it is
heavily wooded with the potential for some trails and some open spaces for dogs to play.
Which I think brings a whole different feature than having a large grassy open area and a
swimming hole in the middle like some of them have. Which may be a different feature
that people would come to but I know when I was with Ramsey County, water was
always, we want our dogs to jump in the water but they found a lot of the water holes
turning to mud holes so I don't know if it' s a good thing or bad thing but people like it so.
Murphy: Lenny, is the fencing, just an estimate. I know it's just a rough estimate. Did
you say partial fencing?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Again there hasn't been a site plan done. I've got my own
thoughts in my mind as a dog owner I look at the area. I visited back several years ago I
worked with Ramsey County when they established some off leash dog areas, and
they've got two completely different off leash dog areas. One that has absolutely no
fencing at all. And another one just has fencing along McKnight Street over by the 3M
plant over off of 94, and it's in a semi-residential area. I would envision this possibly
being something like that with maybe an entrance area where people enter into the dog
park would be fenced. There's plenty of natural wooded features up there that would
provide like a natural boundary or natural fencing. If you visit the area, there's lots of
buckthorn which we don't like but it would work really well as a natural barrier, and
maybe where the off leash dog area would meet up with the trail, the wooded trails up
here. Possibly having like another entrance or gate type entrance that would prevent dogs
from running onto that trail or onto where visitors are, but allowing access to the potential
area with, as they walk through the park with the dog on a leash and once they enter into
the area, they could go off leash.
Scharfenberg: How far away is the nearest residential area?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Just to the north of the park. There's some residential housing.
It's kind of hard to see but it would be just north of the map that's on the master plan
here.
Scharfenberg: Would you anticipate any objection from those homeowners?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: It's hard to anticipate. I know that they do have some self made
trails that come into the park from that direction. But I don't know. I wasn't part of the
master plan process so I haven't met those landowners but I'm sure they were involved
with the master planning process to some extent.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: What I'd like to do commissioners, let's give some members of the audience
some time. And we may ask you to come back for some more questions after we hear
from some of the residents.
Pamela Klinger-Horn: My name is Pamela Klinger-Horn. I live at 7024 Highover Court
South in Chanhassen and my neighborhood is directly across the road from Minnewashta
Park and I do walk these existing trails right here on a daily basis. Sometimes a couple
times a day with my dog and having spoken at great length on this subject to the other
dog walkers that I encounter, what people actually are interested in is a plan that would
be much less expensive to the city. This area is what people are hoping would become
the off leash area. It's naturally segregated from the rest of the park so it wouldn't
require any type of fencing.
Murphy: I'm sorry, could you point to that again. Thank you.
Pamela Klinger-Horn: Oh. The existing, it separates... It's segregated from the rest of
the park by this inlet. It has a separate parking lot and it's not near any of the homes. It
wouldn't require any fencing to keep the dogs away from the rest of the park and
bothering people. It has it's own parking lot so if you wanted to require a special parking
permit or user permit for that area, it would be easy to check and maintain. I know
someone who had a ticket from walking their dog off leash. It was $90. And some
people I've spoken to, they would be more than happy to pay $90 just to have an area that
would guarantee as an off leash site that they could use. And this would really require no
more funding from the city other than the new signage up in the area stating what the
rules were, and the fact that you had to have a special parking ticket, and I know that
there is a very large desire to have something like this in the community. When I walk
the trails I would say maybe only 5 percent of the people I encounter are there without a
dog so this is a trail that's very, very heavily used by dog walkers and I know that it
would be very much still worth while to them to have a place that they could know they
could unleash their dog without any problem. And if it' s at their own risk, and they know
that, then that's a chance they take when they come on the trail so that's what, as an
unofficial spokesperson of the dog walkers that I know. It's a very large core group over
there that uses it on a very frequent basis. And having spoken to them, these are the
kinds of things that we're looking for.
Stolar: Any questions?
Kelly: I just want to make sure, is this what is called the marsh trail? The prairie trail. I
can't remember the name of the trail. Is that the area you're talking about?
Pamela Klinger-Horn: Yeah, the first place where you can turn off as you enter the park.
Just before that boat launch number 1. There's a little road that leads down to a parking
area and there's an open courtyard.
Kelly: A picnic table there.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Pamela Klinger-Horn: Right. Moves off to the walking trail.
Kelly: Okay.
Stolar: Anyone else?
Murphy: So you're talking about more of a trail, like a winding trail rather than a park?
Pamela Klinger-Horn: Right. The existing areas that are there are what people are
interested in being able to continue to have a place to walk with their dogs while the dog
is off leash. I mean this is nice if you want to throw a ball or something like that but if
you really want to get out there and exercise yourself, it's not as practical as the trails that
are existing already. And again it doesn't cost the city anything because they're already
there.
Murphy: They're just required to be on a leash right now.
Pamela Klinger-Horn: Currently, yes. Thank you.
Stolar: Any other comments? Yes.
Ann Nye: My name's Ann Nye. I live at 1641 West 63rd Street and I'm the, I don't
know if you, did you bring the petition? I'm the person that got that started and got all
the signatures so everyone, I have a book store in Excelsior and then we had the petition
there and we had it at the pet store next door and people were so excited when the
possibility of having a dog park you know became maybe a reality and I just wanted to
say that the interest is there and we would use it and we'll pay a fee and people, I've been
to a couple dog parks in the cities and people are so much better about picking up their
dog poop and making their dog behave at these dog parks. It's kind of, it's strange how
everybody's really on you. Boy, hey your dog made a mess over there. That type of
thing so it's a fun thing. It's a social thing for people. I mean the dog owners get to
know each other and everybody's dogs and it's just a really fun thing to have so I just
wanted to say that I hope it happens whatever you do. The big area, that would be, that
would be the dream. You know to have the whole big area. The small area, hey if that's
all we can get, I'll take it but ideally the trails that are already there would be fabulous so
thanks.
Stolar: Any questions? Okay.
Mary Cunan: Mary Cunan. I live at, what's my new address? 6693 Brenden Court and
we're also very close to the park as well. I kind of come in with a different background
in that I was involved in a grass roots committee out in Highlands Ranch, Colorado to get
a dog park up and running there so I went through the whole process of the pros and
cons, the worries, the, by residents and others. The parking issues. The concerns about
wildlife and all of that and we successfully worked through all of those. Like anything
else when there's something new, there's always the up front concerns but we worked
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
through those and obviously many other parks have. And I would just concur with the
other speakers that, you know a park like this would really put Chanhassen further on the
map I think. I mean it would be of a state of an art thing and it did in Highlands Ranch as
well. They were looking to do just one and they ended up 3 because the population
expanded to about 80,000 and so they had one on the west, middle and east side and the
traffic is tremendous. I would also agree with others that with something like, people are
screaming for, people don't want to be breaking rules. We don't want to be looking over
our shoulders and worry about that $90 ticket. I have 3 dogs so you know the price ticket
increases dramatically. I am at Minnewashta at all times of day. Periodically a couple
times a day. I have never encountered anyone on those trails other than other dog owners
running their dogs so those are the users in my opinion and I think others would agree
that are using these trails and it could increase. What else did I want to say? I think the
pride, there's a pride element of wanting to maintain it. There is a community involved
and we all want to keep it clean and respectable. We don't want it to infringe upon the
other non-dog owners. I mean it's a way for everybody to live in harmony and not have
these, you know you'll see the encounters decrease, not increase and that's been my
experience with the park that we put in place out in Colorado so.
Stolar: Any questions?
Murphy: Are you familiar with ROMP? Responsible Owners Mannerly Pets. That's an
organization in the Minneapolis area.
Mary Cunan: No.
Murphy: No? Okay. I just wondered if any of the people in the Minnewashta were. It's
an organization that put together a lot of dog parks. I know Lenny, you're familiar.
You're a part of that organization, right?
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: Yeah. I'm on the west side...
Murphy: Yeah, there's a west side... They give a lot of guidelines for people who want
to organize dog parks and they do recommend that there be a core group of 5 to 7
volunteers I think it is that actually help to run and maintain the dog parks.
Mary Cunan: And I think there are plenty of people to do that. And I would also say that
the little area that's filled with wood chips and you know you toss a ball, I've got a pretty
nice sized yard. I don't need that. I want to, I really would prefer a trail that we can
really exercise our dogs and you can get into the whole healthy dog thing but better
exercised dogs, they're happier. They're not as, their personalities are happier so.
Thanks.
Stolar: Anyone else?
Penny Zuber: My name is Penny Zuber and I'm at 2758 Country Trail and I walk that
trail pretty much 2 or 3 times a week. It's heavily, it's wooded. It's a bumpy. It's hilly.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
The only people I ever encounter in that place, if I encounter anybody, is another dog
walker. I've never seen a family even go near that place because of the terrain. Again, I
would be willing to pay the extra fee to use that area. I know Three Rivers has an off
leash dog program where you pay an additional fee. You pay for your dog. You dog has
to have a good citizenship. It has to be maintained. You know has to be off control and
like she said, you'll see these instances decrease in having an off site area where you can
walk your dog and not always be looking over my shoulder or wondering what's going to
happen or if I have to wonder about a little kid running around or something, even though
little children would be over there. Would be greatly a benefit to the whole community
because I don't see anything going in over at the Carver Park or Three Rivers. They're
deciding not to even, it's been very anti-dogs there. We haven't had...and like I said,
you're going to be probably the break through area for the western suburbs so thank you.
Stolar: Questions? Okay. Sure. Something... for anyone who wants to speak.
Clair Tometz: Clair Tometz. I live at 6690 Mulberry Circle and I would echo what's
been said. I won't spend any more of your time but just going to add that because we
again, as I said, we want to respect the rules that exist now. In order to have your dog off
leash, we're actually driving to Lake of the Isles. There might be something closer but as
far as a 20-25 drive. To go into the park there where a dog can be off there, so we've
observed that in fact they said, beforehand, the behavior and the etiquette in those places
really does work and is upheld by the users of the dog parks and the dogs are happier and
healthier. They're able to really be exercised in that manner and so I really think that I'm
seeing where it is working in the Twin Cities and wish there was something close by that
we could use and I think that it would be truly an asset because we would really be
benefiting the citizens. Dogs would have a place to go and so there wouldn't be the wear
and tear that there is now if you have a designated area so just adding that and supporting
what everyone said before so thank you.
Stolar: Thank you. One more? Okay.
Carol Buesgens: Carol Buesgens. I live at 2754 Century Trail and I just want to repeat
what everybody else has said. I have a sister that lives in Madison, Wisconsin and they
have added the dog parks and they keep adding more because they're so wonderful and
the people really like them. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for our community and
I'd like to see it, thank you.
Stolar: Thank you.
Tony Schiller: I'm Tony Schiller and here for another purpose but I snowshoe in the park
and I know the trails and so there are people in there without their dogs. I do it but I
know that there must be a cost associated with grooming because the cross country ski
track is put down and it is the worst cross country ski track in the metro area. Right west
of there, of course Carver Park has a phenomenal cross country ski track and of course
the Arboretum has a phenomenal cross country ski track, and so I snow shoe over it and
the dogs run on the track and it ends up being a dog track, so I would vote to eliminate
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
the cost of cross country ski grooming and allow people to use their snow shoes and what
not.
Stolar: Thank you Tony. Are there further questions for either Lenny or Marty?
Scharfenberg: Yeah, it seems like the first speaker from the public, was there kind of a, I
mean, I'm sorry, Pamela. Was what Pamela describing, does that like differ a lot from
what you guys are proposing? Just kind of help me understand the difference.
Marty Walsh: I guess I'll answer that because it will get back to kind of the initial master
plan and as you've kind of seen here, just with some conversation, we have a pretty good
group of dog users. There's are a good group of cross country skiers. There's a good
group of walkers. There are family folks that I get calls from that are not willing to run
their kids back on those trails just because dogs are off leash. So there's a number of
users in the area. What we're trying to come up with is something that balances. It may
not be the best for anyone particular group, but it balances the system as well as we can.
So what we're talking about here is a sizeable area. Somewhere between 10, 15 or
possibly 20 acres. That's the equivalent of 10, 15, 20 football fields. It's not a small
area. It's a pretty good sized area. For us to say that we're going to dedicate somewhere
between a quarter, one-fifth of the park an off leash dog area, I do not think is something
that's realistic from the county's perspective. And is inconsistent with the master plan.
Scharfenberg: Marty, for that to happen would there have to be a change in the master
plan?
Marty Walsh: Yes, that would be correct but it would not be a change that would be
supported.
Scharfenberg: And are there trails currently back in, or would there have to be trails...
Marty Walsh: New trails, and again I guess that'd be part of our cost and I can
understand when people have a tough time envisioning this because this is an area of the
park that's not utilized at this time. The only use that's going on back there is essentially
our bone yard for maintenance and a small maintenance storage building.
Stolar: So does the $40,000 include the trails?
Marty Walsh: We would hope that it would include some of the trails. Now our favor
and staff, we'll do what we can deciding on the cost of things but there's going to be
some things that we're just not going to be able to buy now.
Scharfenberg: And again, just to clarify with respect to moving of the maintenance
facility, is that something that the county would take care of and not part of the $40,000?
Marty Walsh: That needs to be included in our overall budget figure because we have to
replace that space.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: Other questions?
Murphy: What kind of maintenance is done on those trails today? Is there any
maintenance other than the cross country ski maintenance?
Marty Walsh: They're mowed during the summer months. If there's wet areas, they're
either taken care of wood chips are filled in, but it's primarily mowing and grooming.
Murphy: Is there a dog waste problem there on the trails?
Marty Walsh: Yeah, I'd say yes there is.
Stolar: Thank you Marty, appreciate it. Commission members. We've had an
informational session.
Lenny Klevan-Schmitz: ... continue on with your meeting. Again Marty kind of touched
on the master plan and Pamela I think mentioned the existing parking and that eventually
will become a boat access. That parking lot is located right here and that's the proposal
to relocate the two boat accesses. Again it would eliminate the parking, which is part of
the reason of looking at a new parking area. One of the features that the residents did
point out is that dog owners are very much self policing, especially at off leash dog areas.
They are better than any paid officer I think I could ever think of because they take
ownership in an area and if somebody is abusing it, if their dog's out of control or if
they're not picking up after their dog, they'll let them know. That's what I've observed
as a dog user, dog owner I mean, and as an off leash dog visitor around the Twin Cities
so that is a really interesting point. If it's in a common area of the park, it's amazing the
number of times I see a dog squatting and nobody having a bag in their hand but you
walk into a dog park and everybody's got a bag in their hand or in their pocket or tied to
their leash or whatever. Dogromp.org is the web page for ROMP which is the
Responsible Owners of Mannerly Pets. It's a non profit organization that's worked with
many of the communities, especially Ramsey County with the creation of their off leash
dog areas. Working with the City of Minneapolis to possibly do some fund raising, now
that there aren't as many dollars readily available to create areas like this they're starting
to look at how they can work as a fund raising organization or to pool the communities to
do fund raising. And the other thing that I may have forgot to touch on before is that
from the county perspective, we don't want to be the sole providers of off leash dog areas
in the entire county area. But we see this as being an opportunity for communities to
partner to get something that's built sooner than later. As people have stated, that when
you build it they will come and they may come and it may be a very busy place and we
may find that there are other areas that maybe need it throughout the community or the
dog owners will say, we need another area and, but it would be a start, I would say is
probably the best way but we don't want to be looked upon as being the county and the
only people that would go into the off leash dog area business either so. I think those
comments kind of answer some of the questions and some of the thoughts but we do want
dogs in our park facilities but we just want them on a leash right now so people are more
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
than welcome to walk wherever they want as long as it's not signed, no pets and our staff
has done a pretty good job of signing that. Those areas are like beaches and playgrounds
and picnic shelters so otherwise the trails and open spaces are, people are certainly
welcome to bring their animals so. Thank you for your time.
Stolar: Thank you Lenny and Marty, appreciate it. And members of the audience,
appreciate your time. Wanted to quickly just have the commission members give a few
comments and thoughts if they'd like. I'll start with you Steve.
Scharfenberg: I think it's a great idea and I'd like to kind of see what the input is from
the other communities. I think if they can get a time table and start putting together input
from other communities to maybe setting aside dollars, that would be great.
Stolar: Paula.
Atkins: This is wonderful to know that there is so much support for this. We really
needed to see something like that and I'd like to thank you all for coming.
Kelly: I believe with those trails, I mean before my dog came down with arthritis, I took
my dog over there a lot and I agree, they are ideal trails but you know it's, Lake
Minnewashta Park is not a city park and since I joined the commission I think 4 or 5
years ago, we've been looking for land to build a dog park and there seems to be land
here now. The issue we had up until now was we just couldn't find an appropriate park
and it seems like here's a good chunk ofland. While it may not be ideal for everyone's
point of view, it's the land that we've been looking for for years. At least 4 years that
I'm aware of, and I just think it's a great idea and hopefully we can come up with
something and some of the other communities can pitch in to finally help take this off our
wish list.
Stolar: I'm just going to go in sequence here so I'll give my comments. I agree with
everything my colleagues have said. I think it's a great idea. I think the idea of Carver
County offering us the land and making it available so that our citizens can use it as they
want is great and we appreciate it. I'd be supportive and I do think they're two different
things here. One being the trails, and that's the Carver County Parks master planning
which we don't necessarily get involved in, but then there's the second of the, the offer of
the dog park space and I would like to see us supportive and involved in that. I would be
very interested in our participating in those discussions. I think it's a great idea. I think
then we, this commission need to determine a little bit about how we want to be involved
and how we would fund any contributions. I think that's a matter should take up at a
separate meeting. Working with you Todd to figure out what our approach is but I'm 100
percent supportive of having the dog area.
Murphy: I would agree. I know for some time there's a big push in this community to
have a dog park and there's a big need for it and hopefully we can stay, keep this one nice
and going and stay organized. Again, dogromp.com, or .org is the site and they're a good
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
resource for, they've been open and behind a lot of the dog parks in the metro area so
hopefully we can stay together as a group and keep the momentum going.
Dillon: Yeah, I would just echo what everyone else has said and thanks to all the
speakers here. The other point I'd like to make is, I mean I, the $40,000 give or take,
whatever it is price tag certainly doesn't seem insurmountable and if you're approaching
you know 3 or 4 other communities, because Waconia doesn't, I mean that is kind of far
away but the other ones certainly would have a vested interest in this to their citizens I
would think. And plus, just from the enthusiasm we've heard from the dog owners, and
you know relative to the price of a ticket, it would seem that this could be, you'd get
some initial seed money and then make it pretty self funding moving forward I would say
like it shouldn't be much, very hard to do that so. And then it would be promoting it a
little bit, you could be you know I think the map that you showed without too many parks
nearby, I think that'd be a wider area then we think that it would draw from.
Stolar: So commission members, we have, Todd we probably need to provide you with
some direction on this. I'm not privy to motions on the fly. May I suggest that one of us,
and I know Ann this is an interest of your's, or if you could even draft a motion for our
next meeting to discuss this further but I think you've gauged and hopefully the audience
and we again appreciate you taking your time to come out here. Realize the commission
are very supportive of a dog area in that region and I think the details, we still have plenty
of time to work with the Carver County Commission and park directors and you have
your chance to give input to them as well as us about moving forward but I think it's an
idea that we've got a lot of support on. So if there are no objections, would everyone be
supportive of us bringing up a motion together for the next meeting? And Ann, will you
work with Todd?
Murphy: I will.
Stolar: Todd, is that okay?
Hoffman: Sure.
Stolar: Again, thank you to everybody who's participated in the discussion tonight. It's
great and I hope you move forward. Yes, there is a question.
Audience: I just thought of something I think I should have said during the public
announcements. Can I say it now?
Stolar: Sure, please.
Hoffman: Come on up.
Stolar: We're not prone to formality here.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Resident: It has nothing to do with the dog park but I have lived in Chan now a year and
a half and I think the trail system is absolutely wonderful and it's amazing how quickly it
is plowed and taken care of and I think it's great and I want to thank you for that.
Stolar: Our Park Superintendent is right there. Well thank you all very much. This is
great and I look forward, we'll have announcements, public announcements about the
agenda item in our next, for our next agenda and hopefully if you're interested, please
come back and talk to us again. Thank you. Thank you Lenny and Marty. Appreciate
your time. It's a great idea.
MIRACLES FOR MITCH TRIATHLON.
Kelly: If I can ask a question while you're doing that. Those shirt SIzes on the
application, are those kid sizes or adult sizes?
Tony Schiller: Thank you. Actually a lot of the kid events don't offer the youth sizes
because kids love baggy shirts and so I think we're about to place our order this week and
so I'm thinking small ones would be adult sizes. An adult small or small-small unless
you would.
Kelly: No, no, Ijust want to know which one to circle.
Tony Schiller: Yeah, because the youth size, I think we'll have basically they show up,
and we like to have an idea ahead of time what to order but a lot of kids want just giant
shirts so it's hard to say, but I've been told that when you order a lot of youth sizes, you
end up with a lot of shirts left over, or people get upset. It's too small so. Well I guess it
would be a nice to update. We have got our posters. I've been having a blast and have
been rejuvenated in a lot of my work. It's been fascinating. I've learned how important
it is to wake up in the morning and be unbelievable passionate because people just jump
on board. I've only had a few rejections and I'll give you the one recent rejection which I
found fascinating. I went in and made a very nice professional presentation, in the event
of over flow traffic that we might be able to use the southern parking lot for the Eckankar
and they said they would bring it up under consideration and I received a voice mail last
week stating that it would not be good to park cars on the new blacktop as the blacktop
would not be ready yet until October. So I've been rejected by Eckankar for parking lot
in the event that heavy cars would cause their blacktop to bend or something, so I thought
that was interesting and so, at any rate. But other than that people have been just
incredibly responsive and everyone that we've talked to is jumping in. I believe we're
going to, we're about to receive some really excellent media of the major media
hopefully and that should help a lot. So web site's up. It's a lot of fun. It's expanding
and we are in a lot of places and ready for a big event. I think we're at 60 some people
who are volunteers now, which is wonderful to see and every day I get more people
saying I want to volunteer so we're going to have a lot of people, although we're always
welcome to have the park board, anyone involved participating. And right now I'm
competitive with our event the week before in Edina. The Iron Kids, only in that Iron
Kids is about competition and it's about promoting a grad and in the City of Edina is
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
behind them in a huge way and they're promoting them everywhere they can which I
don't understand because essentially the City of Edina, as I understand it, is not receiving
any money from this but it is in their... pool, but everyone we're talking to is excited that
we have a swim in a lake. I should say everyone that's knowledgeable about the sport
because kids never get to have this kind of experience. A lot of kids are raised in a pool
or been in a pool, and then there's a lot of kids that are afraid to go into a pool, so I think
that's going to be one of our neat features. ...1' d be happy to answer those. I'm not sure
where your interests are tonight.
Stolar: Well my interest is giving... it came back from the post office for whatever
reason.
Tony Schiller: It did?
Stolar: Yep, but my son wants to participate.
Kelly: I was going to mail mine today.
Tony Schiller: Yeah, that's right. Interesting. I wonder if we're getting any more of
those. That would be, and you probably mailed it here at the local post office?
Stolar: I don't know. Sometimes she mails it wherever.
Tony Schiller: I don't see where the stamp is from. Oh, Minneapolis. You would think,
55308. It should sure. I'll take care of it.
Stolar: But any questions? Want to start Kevin?
Dillon: No questions.
Stolar: I have one. Do you have, how many people have, now that you have 2, how
many people have signed up?
Tony Schiller: I'm going to do a classic, and avoid the question. No, I'm not sure. I
think we're approaching the 65-70 range, which I've been told, I've been talking to all
sorts of people. It's very typical that people register late. It's a whole $5.00 penalty for
waiting past August 1 st so, but we've been getting, in the last few days been getting 6 of
7, 8 a day in the mail and a few on the internet and so, and then there's the big push is
coming in terms of distribution of information and what not. So I think it's, at that rate if
we don't have any growth at all, we'll hit 200 but I still am pushing for my dream
number of 500 kids and that would just make, it would take I think some media at this
point and I've got my fingers crossed on KARE 11 doing an extra on it. It sounds like
that might be coming. Where we're going to actually be in the park and filming some
kids training, getting ready for it so that will be fun. And some other things that are in
the works. The media's a classic, they want to do something like the Wednesday before
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
the race. You know no, no, no. We need it a month before the race and here's why but
that's kind of how they think so I'm trying to push up the time tables.
Kelly: Yeah, I know my son participated in the Life Fitness one on Sunday up in
Plymouth. I think they had 107 that signed up and it was distributed 107 at 10 and 37, 11
to 14. Less than that showed up but definitely 3/4 of the participates were in that lower
age group.
Tony Schiller: Younger group.
Kelly: Yep, the younger group, and it was a great. It was, I mean every kid was just so
excited about it, yeah.
Tony Schiller: Yeah, and that was a pool swim.
Kelly: It was a pool swim. It was 50 yards. It was half of this one. It was 50 yards for
the 7 to 10 and it was 100 yards for the older and the bike was 2.3, 4.6 and the run was a
half a mile and 1.3 miles.
Tony Schiller: Okay.
Kelly: Are you going to do chips for this one?
Tony Schiller: The chip timing?
Kelly: Yeah.
Tony Schiller: I'm still looking into that as a possibility. I don't want to spend any
money on it and so I'm doing my best, what's amazing, we're not spending any money
and so the foundation's doing really well. And we just got a call from Charles Schwab in
New York. Said can we give you $1,500? Someone forward on your web site about the
race and we're interested in supporting it and I said yeah, so we're getting 1,500 from
them. But we're doing everything on the cheap and it's amazing. Maximum Graphics on
the poster. The banners are coming from Color Trek and should be reach in a day or two.
Another Chaska operation's doing a bunch of printing for us. The race brochures came
free from Priority and locally now the Culvers in the area are all getting together to do the
picnic for us at no charge and so it's just over and over we're getting more and more
people involved and so that's important to me because we're basically in a positive cash
flow now that TCF and some of our sponsors and we won't lose money on it in the first
year, which is huge. And next year hopefully a lot bigger so, but I think, the one thing
that I'm discovering, which just blows me away is the number of parents who are
wooses, and over and over again I hear the same thing. Oh I talked to my kid about that
and they're afraid to do it so, and the parents are just so quick to let the kids say I don't
want to do it. And so I just added a page for that on the web site today saying you know
come on. Kids don't want to, no. They don't want to do it. Kids are lazier and fatter
than they've ever been in history right now and given the choice of sitting in bed on
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Sunday morning, they don't want to go to church either and the parents sometimes make
them do that. They don't want to do a lot of things. But, so the real challenge is the
parents because when I talk to kids, they're all over it as soon they kind of get the idea of
what it's about and they can't imagine that there's going to be, the swim lane they're
going to go through on the lake and they can't imagine the finish area that we're going to
build and they can't imagine the music and the whole scene and the party afterwards. So
all they can imagine is probably going out with their parents on a bike and exercising and
it sounds boring. And so it really is a sales job this first year to, if a child hasn't done one
and for them to imagine that it's going to actually be a fun experience. And so I think
visually once we create our imagery that next year it's going to be that much bigger so, at
any rate, I would, I don't know what access or what availability you have as a
commission to continue helping us get the word out but that's the biggest challenge right
now is just having people see a vision. It's like climbing a mountain. It's going to be a
lot of work. You're going to get to that point where you say I don't want to continue
climbing this mountain but if you make it to the summit, it will change your life. And it's
that kind of thing kids need goals and so, and we just have to plant a lot of seeds and
then, I'm literally planting seeds everywhere I go and it seems to work but it's, maybe it's
that human fear elements that we have to overcome and the lazy element of people. It
just sounds like a lot of work so, so at any rate that's the challenge that we're coming into
so.
Susan Marek: I'm Susan. I work at the Chanhassen Recreation Center and I'd like some
of your registration materials at my facility.
Tony Schiller: Okay. I've got some posters and applications with me. Right now, we'll
do it. Thanks Susan.
Stolar: Paula, you have any questions?
Atkins: I was just wondering where the registration forms are available?
Tony Schiller: There is also a link on the web site. We have distributed 5,000 so they're
all over the place, but, and quite frankly I'm not sure if we distributed them as well as we
could have because they're gone. And I'm not sure where they all are.
Kelly: I got this at Culver's.
Tony Schiller: Yeah, Culver's has been moving a lot for us and hopefully they're not
being round filed when the parents grab them. That's the challenge. I thought 5,000
would be a lot of brochures and we're learning it's not that many. So it's, but we also,
you can download it on the internet too which is a big help and so far, but I'll be happy to
get you some for starters and I just went up to this run called, well coming here
Minnetonka Running Club. 110 kids and presented to them and they all want to do it and
the parents are wow, this sounds great so I find that it's word of mouth. It's talking to
people and creating a vision that by far is the home run. Having them sitting somewhere
for people to grab, I just grabbed yesterday about 100 of them from Dunn Brothers in
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Excelsior and I think maybe 6 or 7 were picked up since July 1 st when we got these so
I'm thinking hum, it's not good to put them in a coffee shop. I would think people would
go, oh this sounds cool as they're sitting with their kids but no. You really need to be in a
place with a captive audience of kids and get in there and talk to them and so anyway.
Hoffman: It's important to have them out there once people learn about it because then
they'll be looking for it.
Tony Schiller: And that's where, I think obviously the media is the real home run if you
get a KARE 11 to say we're going through KARE 11 on our web site for links and you'll
find it. From my understanding, when the Miracles of Mitch had a piece done on KARE
11, the next day they had I think it was 7,500 hits the next morning so. That's how
powerful they are so.
Hoffman: Maybe you want to get some lawn signs. If anybody aware that there's a
music festival going on at the State Capitol?
Tony Schiller: Well I think it's going to be a fun day for the city. I can tell you that a
majority of the applications are coming in right from the area so we're doing really well
here. We're getting a lot of them in Excelsior and Minnetonka and Hopkins and Chan
and Chaska. That whole area and so it's, and of course it's really a fun group of people
that are on board. Almost everybody that's jumping in is volunteers happens to be a
professional, which I'm really impressed by. So individuals that are busy people but they
want to be involved so any who.
Kelly: One more question?
Tony Schiller: Sure.
Kelly: In terms of starting, is it going to start whenever they can get there or is there a
defined waves?
Tony Schiller: Oh yeah, we're going to have the waves start going off. I'm, and you
have the situation with the numbers that you did, if they weren't huge numbers and so
you might have had some smaller waves.
Kelly: We only had 8 lengths in the pool so it was waves of8 spaced 5 minutes apart
Tony Schiller: Yeah, and that's also, what's going to be neat about this and what the kids
will love is that the waves are going right on top of each other and then, we have the
potential for some really big waves which is really fun. The vision is basically have all 7
to 10 year olds, and by the way we're not checking birth certificates so a really mature 6
year old tries to sneak one by us, we probably won't catch him. But I figure if you're
letting people park in the park when they're not supposed to, that's okay too. But
anyway, as far as we're going to zing right through all of those. There will be 8 waves. 4
for boys, 4 for girls and they'll all be on the course at the same time and quite possibly
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
the first kid won't be done biking when the last kid's already out of the water. That was
what we wanted and then move the whole crowd of people over by the transition area and
finish area, and then when the kids are coming in, there will be large crowds cheering for
them. And so anyway that's the vision. And so then we'll have a little break. All the
kids will finish and then we'll start the older group of kids and so, but that has a better
feel to it then that feel of a pool swim. Those 8 kids go and then the kids chase out of the
building and are gone and they're watching their kid race and then they've kind of gotten,
and then there's all these other kids that have an hour to wait and so when they do that
event, and then they come and do this, they're going to be thrilled to see that they're all
racing at the same time. And visually it's much more stunning to observe so. So thanks.
Stolar: Was there anything else you want from the commission? We're supportive.
Been supportive. Put some signs up?
Tony Schiller: I understood that we aren't allowed to have basically any equipment that
the park system might own. That's really not meant for use by an outside group or
whatever so we're working for, we're looking to go outside Chanhassen to find
equipment of sorts. You know cones, orange fencing, if there's things like that. A
number of things just because the system is, or the procedures aren't really set up for
such use of equipment. So that would be nice. Anything that you would have available
in those regards, if that's something that's within your capacity to support us on. We do,
Jerry I think and I are going to need to visit at some point and meet up with some of the
utilities people that week to identify where we're going to need some posts pounded and
just to make sure we're not puncturing through any lines. There won't be a lot of that but
most of that would be basically to put up some fencing in certain areas. So some of those
things will be done. But anyway, I guess other than that, access to anything that could be
supportive of such a day would be great and so that's where, you know we want to avoid
going to a rental center and renting things that are sitting in a shed in Chanhassen if we
can, but I understand also there are some rules so I'm not sure how that all works so.
Stolar: I'm not sure either so.
Hoffman: Tony and I have had conversations early on and basically how I presented the
event is that if the city would want to be a sponsor of the event, it would take a longer
time frame to get the event on the ground. And in order for us to donate equipment,
labor, materials for the event, the city has to be a sponsor of the event. Tony asked the
question, can we just borrow these facilities and pieces of equipment and my response
was no. The race committee made a choice to go independent of sponsorship of the city
to speed the event up and thus we said, great. We'll facilitate the access to the park. Do
the special event permit but after that you're on your own so that choice was made by the
committee fairly early on.
Stolar: Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. It was an issue of timing for this year. For
next year, if we work together ahead of time we might be able to get a more.
Tony Schiller: Comprehensive.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: Yeah, and I think from what the commission members prior statements, they
would be interested in potentially doing that.
Tony Schiller: I think overall that's, overall there's been surprisingly few growing pains
going through this other than just huge amounts of time and energy. But people are
jumping on board and what not, but I think we're going to probably be able to watch and
observe the event and realize there's things we could have done better, but overall we're
going to be pretty happy with what we've accomplished the first year. And then I think
from that, there's going to be a sit down. A creation of look, okay how do we really get
something great dealt for next year. You know we're getting the classic, from the big
companies in the Twin Cities. You know that's all budgeted a year in advance so the
Target's of the world, the Best Buy's of the world, they just open their hands up and say
sorry. Send us for next year. And so, and do it before the calendar year so we can plan.
And so there's a lot of things that will be different next year but we did, we achieved the
really quick voting to get it done and to get our things rolling and anyway, I think it's
going to work out really neat. Overall the whole park is, I still say it's the nicest facility
in Minnesota for this kind of a thing. I think people that come, especially if they're
parents, if the parents are triathletes themselves are going to be saying, why don't we
have an adult triathlon here. This is a great site for such a thing but, so it should be good.
Stolar: The other thing I would add then Tony is maybe September-October come back
to us with some of your thoughts and assessments so we can start the planning process for
next year.
Tony Schiller: Sure.
Stolar: So we can have a much bigger crowd next year.
Tony Schiller: Perfect. Thanks.
Stolar: Thank you again for all your time. And we'll see you on what, the 22nd is it?
Next item, CIP process.
Hoffman: If I could make a recommendation that we move this item to 1 O( d) to allow
our staff members to get on with their reports so. . .
Stolar: Any objection? Okay. So done.
RECREATION PROGRAMS: 2004 FOURTH OF JULY EVALUATION.
Ruegemer: Thank you Chair Stolar and the rest of the commission. I would first of all
thank everybody for who were there. Was there to assist with all the components of the
celebration. The third, I'm sure you're still drying out from the July 3rd as I am, but it
was nice to see that we did have a lot of nice participation from the commission. It was a
fun event. Surprisingly there was a lot of people still there at 11: 00 despite the conditions
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
and the water so, CBO certainly does pack a tent and it was a great event. I'm not sure if
you want me to go through every component for the essence of time here. Kind of the
highlights as we go through each component or schedule out of the 4th of July with kind
of the evaluation, recommendations for the future. And kind of goes through July 3rd and
July 4th. You know really the highlight, some components despite the weather on July
3rd, we did obviously miss a few scheduled activities, the... and that sort of thing. It was
somewhat condensed but it seemed like the people that were there, we didn't have a lot of
food lines. Water Wars, you could get right in but really part of, some of the highlights
certainly was the parade was certainly a highlight again this year with the planes flying
overhead, the Taste of Chanhassen for a first year event. It was very well received by the
public that were there. Great participation. We had I think 13 local businesses that
participated in that event. Having an event like that within our new City Center Park was
a great thing to get exposure to that event to kind of go through and all the planning did
payoff in there. It was a pretty nice venue for that area. So really despite the rain, like I
said, July 3rd the event was very smooth this year. No hiccups. No bumps in the road so
to speak and with that everything really went off without a hitch and was really capped
off by I think one of the better fireworks displays that we've had. It was a great event as
a nice way to end it. So with that, if you have specific questions or comments, I'll
certainly entertain those at this time.
Stolar: Okay. Steve, why don't we start with you.
Scharfenberg: No questions.
Stolar: Paula.
Atkins: I thought the Taste of Chanhassen was great.
Stolar: I just have a couple quick ones. I thought again everything was done really well,
even thought despite the rain so another great time. Corey should be commended, Jerry,
Todd, you guys all did a great job and Dale and everybody. The farmers market, do we
know if that, I noticed we did not do the tie in like we had talked about when the farmers
market presented. It wasn't a part of any of our publications as far as another activity.
How did they do though? Did they see any up tick do we know?
Hoffman: I don't think so. They're happy with what they've got going on. They had 3
additional vendors this past weekend so.
Stolar: Okay. And then I do have a question about the Taste of Chan, the Chamber of
Commerce. Do we pay anything for those? Do they pay anything as far as those tents or
is it just you can set it up and we'll just supply power?
Hoffman: We ordered the tents, they paid for it.
Ruegemer: You talking about the trade fair?
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: The trade fair. And then two different.
Hoffman: Both the Chanhassen and the Rotary paid for all those tents.
Stolar: They paid for everything there so.
Ruegemer: That was included within their $150 that they paid to participate.
Stolar: Okay, so basically we incur no expenses for that for all practical, I mean
obviously people have to help do things but we do that regardless. Okay. Alright, that
was it.
Murphy: If I can just comment on the mosquitoes. Spraying must have worked because
the mosquitoes were better, it seemed like this year at Lake Ann and City Center. That's
it.
Dillon: We were out of town and sorry I missed it.
Stolar: Great. Well again, Corey did a great job as usual and another fun event. I will
say that it was kind of fun how many city people won, city employees won at the raffle.
It was, fire department guys won twice and it was a lot of fun. You won didn't you?
Hoffman: Once.
Murphy: You won didn't you Tom?
Stolar: Tom won.
Kelly: My son actually picked...
Stolar: But it was a fun event. I always love doing the raffle.
SELF-SUPPORTING PROGRAMS: FALL SOFTBALL LEAGUE.
Ruegemer: Fall softball league is kind of an FYI. We start on the 1 ih and 19th of August
out at Lake Ann Park. They're pretty much wrapped up here at the next week, week and
a half with the adult summer leagues. With the majority of the leagues over 40 on
Wednesday night, those and 3 weeks into August with an in-house tournament, but the
fall league will start right around the 17th and 19th of August. We've been getting many
phone calls on that. We did add a Tuesday night league last year and we're getting a lot
of phone calls on that again so we'll for sure do a Tuesday and Thursday. That league's
out there. Double header leagues which is different from the fall. We do have the
capacity field wise to do that in the fall time. Since we have less, I guess less teams
playing we can facilitate that request a lot easier. We kind of condense a little bit for,
among time limit and we do do a 3/2 count without a courtesy to help speed up the games
so it's a great way. 6 weeks and we're done. End of September and it's a great playing.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
People enjoy it. People are really passionate. I've been getting a lot of phone calls on it.
So I'm sure we'll get 16 teams for sure.
Stolar: So this topic actually also going back to 4th of July, I know one of the comments I
think that was put in the box was related, are we going to get a list of the comments put
into the box at the trade fair? Did you guys see those?
Hoffman: Yep, you'll get those.
Stolar: And one of them I thought was about softball, wasn't it?
Ruegemer: I haven't seen the comments.
Stolar: At least a person talked to me about and I asked them.
Hoffman: We'll present them tonight.
Stolar: They thought the league was great. They just thought it was a little expensive.
But it was a positive comment on the league. They said it was great.
Ruegemer: It's the new sales tax we have to cover.
Stolar: Yep. Any questions? Okay.
RECREATION CENTER REPORT.
Marek: I'm Susan Marek. I work at the Recreation Center and some of the new faces I
recognize, but some of you I'm not sure I've met so I'm the person who's hanging out at
the Recreation Center. I'm behind the front desk so come on in and visit us. If you just
have your report in front of you, I'm going to start at the bottom and work up. We did
prepare this report in June, but the recreation center's pretty slow over the summer so we
don't have a whole lot of updating to do. I will say that the biggest program that the
recreation center runs is their Dance for Fun program. That concluded in May with our
annual dance recital, and again about 1,200 guests were entertained by that event, and
we're well into the planning for next year's event. It seems like there's just not a break.
That program it just keeps going. So next May our recital theme will be Dance Across
America, and I bring this up at this time because I will be looking for two judges for the
dance recital in May, 2005. This year we had Councilman Brian Lundquist and Corey
Hoen do the judging and I'll tell you that Corey's a very talented person. I bet you didn't
know he can judge a dance so let's just say I owe Corey. But it was a fun event and came
out just fabulous as always so. Huge program for us. Over $50,000 in revenues a year.
Well over $50,000 so it's a big program. Moving up to the staffing issues at the rec
center, you know everything's pretty stable at the rec center. I continue not to have a
whole lot of turn over out there. I keep waiting for it to happen but people keep hanging
around.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Ruegemer: In a good way.
Marek: In a good way, yes. But we are at the lowest staffing level we've been at since
we opened and there are several hours throughout the day when I have one staff person at
the rec center. That provides some challenges in terms of you know getting the phones
answered and messages returned, as well as getting our furniture set up for our rental
business. Over the summer it's not so challenging but it does become more challenging
over the winter months, so we continue to be at that low staffing level. It's just
something I think we want to keep an eye on going into the busier months ahead of us.
Stolar: Is that because of budget or because of.
Marek: It's a budget issue.
Stolar: Okay.
Marek: This is a budget issue. And then probably the biggest thing that has dominated
life out at the recreation center has been the change in our registration and reservation
software, and back in April.
Ruegemer: March-April.
Marek: Yeah, our department purchased an on-line registration system from Active.com
and by default I'm the system administrator and have taken on the role of configuring the
entire database. For which I'm glad I have that responsibility and have found it a bit
challenging, but we've completed the registration database. It is all configured. People
can register on line from their homes, or in person. Either way is still good. Right now
about 10 to 15 percent of registrations are coming on line. There is a bit of a deterrent for
registering on line in that you get a 6.5 percent adder if you register from your home on
line versus if you come into the recreation center and do it in person. So we hope to build
that and get more people registering from home. We'll keep an eye on that and see how
much feedback we get on that added cost.
Stolar: And why is that?
Marek: It's in our contract agreement with active. com, right. Purchased the software
package, it's more like a user. So the registration component is complete and went live
on May 4th with relatively few problems.
Stolar: Does on line registration go before in person registration so there's a value added
to that fee?
Marek: We can do that. I did that only on one program in May. We were pretty tight
when we learned how to use it versus when we needed to implement it. So there was
only one program that had advance registration. Going forward we'll have more than
that. I know that Sue has a couple of programs that she's putting on earlier. I'll have a
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
couple that will go on earlier, but that certainly is a feature that is very amenable to an on
line system. And those popular programs we can get some advance registration. Second
part of that software involves reservations and that's reserving all of the facilities we have
at the recreation center, and also our field amenities throughout the city. And that system
is a little more complicated and I have completed that as of this week. So as of. . . system
into the data base. So that's been a big project for us. The rec center is just getting used
to all of this new software. And that's all I have for today.
Stolar: Any questions for Susan? No questions, thanks you.
Murphy: Susan, is there any chance you might bring back child care for mornIng
aerobics? I think I'm the only person.
Marek: You know I would like to refer you to many, many verbatim notes here from the
park commission back in oh, 1999, '98-99. It was an ongoing issue. Yeah, unfortunately
that program has a little problem being self sustaining financially and we continue to look
at individual programs and want them to be self sustaining. So although it may increase
some of our fitness revenues, we can't count on that to offset the cost of a staff person in
child care. That's just simply not the way our accounting is working so we're unable to
make that balance. For a while we were able to but it was always really, really close to
break even and any drop off in participation put us into the red pretty heavily. I'm sorry.
Hoffman: Early on in the operations of the rec center we did a full blown child care
program.
Murphy: I remember that.
Hoffman: Yeah, 20 some thousand dollars. $25,000. Full time coordinator and they
were making $5,000 to $7,000 a year. It wasn't going to work. And so then Susan took
the challenge upon herself to make it happen and she did it for a number of years.
Marek: It was like 3 years we had that thing running.
Murphy: Just in the mornings, right.
Marek: $300 to break even.
Hoffman: And it just wasn't, didn't make it.
Stolar: Thank you very much. Sorry for the delay in the reports.
Marek: No problem.
SENIOR CENTER UPDATE.
Stolar: Do you prefer Susan or Sue? Sue. Welcome Sue.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Bill: Thank you.
Stolar: Sorry we delayed you one month in your first presentation.
Bill: Not a problem. Well first of all I had a pretty lengthy report and I'm not going to
go over it all with. First of all I just want to introduce myself. Sue Bill and I'm excited
to be the new senior center coordinator, and I do have to say one thing. Even though I've
got early on line registration, I don't think many of my seniors know how to use it.
We're going to try it out so, anyway I do also want to thank the park and rec commission
for their commitment and dedication to supporting all the programs in the senior center. I
know they're not all revenue or money makers but come on a Monday or Wednesday
afternoon, get in a game of bridge or bingo and you'll be thanked over and over. A
couple things I want to highlight and probably the most important thing going on is the
excitement over the opening of the new senior center. We do have a date set of
September 18th from 1:00 til 4:00 p.m. as the grand opening celebration. We're going to
feature a number of our different activities and clubs throughout the afternoon. Mayor
Tom Furlong will be there to do a welcome and dedication, and it's going to be pretty
much a drop in open house type of program so if you're available, drop in and see what
we're all about. Next I just wanted to highlight our participation on our extended trips
are really going well. We had 12 people go to Nova Scotia for 2 weeks. They had a
great time. We've got a Mackinaw Island trip coming up in September. Got 12 to 14
people going on that, and we've got a real nice situation where we partner, I think both of
these we partnered with Travel Ease out of Waconia and we start out with a number of
seats. We book originally the number of seats on the tour and get a kick, a 10 percent to
15 percent kick from anyone of our people that go on the trip and all we have to do is
promote it. So it's really a nice kind of win/win situation where we don't have to sell an
entire trip and Travel Ease in Waconia has been wonderful to work for. We're looking at
a trip plan in, to plan in next spring. An extended trip. We're going to do a Spain trip but
the number of people were a little leery about going to Europe right now. We were
talking about it right after the train bombing in Barcelona and Madrid so we're going to
do a states trip then. So those are kind of the big trips. Our day trips go fairly well. We
do partner with Chaska and Eden Prairie on a number of them so we can share
transportation costs and that's really worked out very well. And it's nice for our people
to interact with people in Chaska or Chanhassen. And then the last thing I want to
mention, as of the end of May the Senior Center has a weekly column in the Chanhassen
Villager. It's called the Senior Spotlight and it's really, really been well received and has
brought people into the senior center. Every week I send a digital picture and do a press
release and sometimes we get about a third of the page, and a third of a page and that's
unpaid advertisement, and we promote all our programs and activities. We had a
program last Monday, I don't know if you want to hear it. We've got a couple people
from Victoria. You did get one from Chanhassen that had never been there, and
somebody from Chaska. We had somebody talking on alternative therapies, so that's
been really, really a nice thing and my vision with that was to get that to build up to the
opening of the senior center. Kind of fine tune this thing for, you know what's going on
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
and trying to draw some new people into the senior center, so that's kind of what's going
on in our little corner of the world here. Thank you.
Stolar: Anybody have questions? It was a very good report. Thank you and welcome
and look forward to see you in our meetings every quarter.
Hoffman: That column has been a wonderful addition and you can't under estimate the
value of that free advertising because once we start taking ads out, it's just, the costs are,
money's not available to do that so it's very nice of the paper to accept that invitation and
proceed and going ahead and putting it in there each week, and it really builds on a
variety of things. Not just the users but the speakers that were there. They get some
recognition in the paper and that gets them excited about coming back around to speak.
They're seeing that they are getting that acknowledgement. Then the people are
informed themselves. They say there we are. It's a happening...
Bill: One thing I do, I send in 3 to 4 photos a week and let the editor pick so I don't get
like, one was a...
Stolar: Thank you. You already had your compliment tonight but I'll add, you did a
great job.
PARK AND TRAIL MAINTENANCE REPORT.
Gregory: Thank you. My name is Dale Gregory. I am the Park Superintendent for the
City. The report that I had gotten, that is from back a ways but it's early spring so it
covers a lot of early things that really get going in early spring time. Trying to get
softball fields, soccer fields up and running. Jerry likes to start softball a little bit earlier
all the time so it makes it a little more time all the time but we've been getting the
swimming beaches and everything up and running at the same time. All in the same time
we're trying to get fertilizing done and swimming and everything else so it is, spring is
kind of a hectic time of the year when we're really, we've got a lot of things going on and
we don't have the summer help yet, and so we start getting into grass cutting, our
maintenance guys have to take some of that responsibility besides and that so, like I say,
it's kind of a hectic time. For the guys downtown, they're trying to get irrigation up and
running and that. They not only take care of our downtown but they take care of all the
parks that have irrigation. Bandimere and Lake Ann and all of them and so. I have two
fell as down there that pretty much take all that responsibility and that so come spring
when things aren't up and running right, things are frozen and that, they also have a lot of
things going on there. But everything worked out pretty good this year. Got going, got
everything up and running. We did get the volleyball courts back in operation down at
Lake Susan. The archery range went back in right away this spring. We had a lot of
comments from people calling wanting the archery range. It's really amazing the amount
of people that use that archery range down there so, and actually talking with Jeff over in
Victoria, he was one too asking right away this spring and wondering when we were
getting it going and that because there's going to be a lot of people in there wanting to
know what's going on. We did have the opportunity to use the STS people again. The
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Sentence to Serve and some of the new commissioners probably don't realize it and that
but we have a Sentence to Serve system in Carver County where we can actually call, get
help from the inmates. They will send a supervisor out with them and they'll send
inmates out. We use them in the spring for cleaning our downtown. They rake the
downtown. They use blowers. They get all the sand off of all the grass. Clean
everything up down there. We've used them for painting soccer goals. Wood chipping
around our trees. When we get into doing all our parks and that, we call them up.
They'll come up with anywhere from 6 to 10-12 people and we've actually expanded into
Scott County now. We're getting calls from Scott County once in a while. They want to
know if we have jobs. So it's really a big asset for us and, to bring them in and that and
they do a pretty good job and that, and they're supervised pretty much. They watch over
them and so it's just a matter of working with them. Wondering what this and that, this
was just when we were getting all the seasonals and everybody here. We've actually got
a lot of new seasonals this year. Some college kids and that and we really got a good
working crew this year. I've really been impressed and that. They've done a lot of extra
work for us. They've worked for Jerry on some of the weekends when we have softball
tournaments or things are going on and they do a real good job and that, so I've been
really pleased with the help we've got this year coming in so. That's kind of up until our,
the second quarter. What I want to do too is just fill in a few quick things and add on
what's happened since then. The Bandimere Park, the play equipment. We've had the
bases all ready. We've got the concrete in. Basically that one is ready to start putting
play equipment on, so that site is ready. We have removed the play equipment from
Meadow Green. That's gone. They are doing the installation on the new play equipment
right now, and our plans are to get that play equipment in and then we want to bring the
concrete contractor in to put the curbing around it. While he's doing that we want to
move over to Lake Ann and pull out Lake Ann, and start getting that ready so we can
have the contractor move over to there and put that concrete base in. We've held offwith
Lake Ann simply because of the regional softball tournament that's coming up this
weekend. We didn't really want to everything tore apart or bad stuff and that as long as it
can be used yet, we'll let the kids use it and we're going to try to work around it so. So
once this weekend is over and that and we get the play equipment into Meadow Green,
we'll be up there right away and be tearing that out and getting that ready. So we're
moving along pretty good on that. The other stuff we worked on that since the report and
that is, we would need help with the prep work for the 4th of July. There's quite a bit that
goes into that in our end of it as far as the prep work and that and again I've got a good
crew of guys that work for me. We've had a couple of them and seasonals have put in
15-16 hour days through that whole 4th of July celebration so they're really dedicated to
helping do a good job there. And this week and that now, we're in the process of getting
everything ready for the regional tournament. They're out there today. We're measuring
every base and every home plate and pitchers mound and making sure everything is the
way it's supposed to be so we will be getting that all ready. And that's pretty much that.
I've heard, sure a lot of you have heard in the news lately and that, the Dutch elm disease
craze that's going around. We're not exempt from it. We're getting calls like crazy and
that from people on Dutch elm disease. Along trails. In parks and all over, and it is, it's
right now what our plans are is to document where they are and start keeping track, a
record of them and then hit them in the fall when the weather actually turns cooler that
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
we can start to removing trees. Because it's just no way we can really get at it now. And
if we were to really have to go at it, it would set back your play equipment and
everything because that's right now we've got everybody working on play equipment.
But I talked to Jill and she's satisfied with that. That we can move in in the fall when it
cools down. Hopefully some of the bugs, maybe mosquitoes, get rid of some of that stuff
and so that will be pretty much our fall is going to be nothing but tree removal.
Stolar: Is there any particular area you've seen that's been worst than others?
Gregory: It's all over. And I have, nobody has a reason why it's picked up so much. I
just came back from Door County yesterday, we were up there fishing and that and
coming through Wisconsin, it's all over Wisconsin. It's the same thing. It's not just
Minnesota but it's all over. Really everybody thought it was really in check and that.
There was kind of, you know it's gone through but for some reason, whether it be
weather or what, nobody really can give an answer. It started up again so fast. That's all
I have unless anybody has any questions.
Stolar: Questions?
Scharfenberg: I don't but I think maybe the next report maybe it'd be good to get another
update on the Dutch elm thing and if that's, if tree surgeons or outside professionals.
Gregory: I talked with Jill and she's our tree, the gal from the city and that and at this
point she hasn't heard of any reasoning or anything for it. What the real cause is
happening. I talked with some other people and that and like I say, there really isn't
anything yet, and hopefully there will be a reason what's causing it. Nobody really
knows.
Hoffman: Minneapolis Park system was cutting trees down by the hundreds. They're
cutting, what was the boulevard? Victory Boulevard. They cut down mature trees to
stem the spread of the disease but... successful.
Murphy: So is Meadow Green the first one that's going to be done with playground
equipment or Bandimere?
Gregory: That will be the first one that will be done, yep. As soon as it's, we've got the
wood fiber, where that's coming from. That's on order. It's just a matter of when we get
close we'll have that delivered. And like I say, our plans are as soon as we got the play
structure in, we want the concrete contractor in there to put the curb in. And then it's just
a matter of putting the basin in... and it will be ready to go.
Murphy: So they're on schedule with all playground where we thought we'd be or?
Gregory: We're pretty close. With our hopes, was to have Meadow Green in to the point
so that that would be in and we could move right over to Lake Ann and tear it down as
soon as this weekend is over. And it's probably not going to happen right away, right
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
after this weekend. Tear Lake Ann apart but we're about a week behind in that right
now. So it's pretty close though.
Murphy: I saw the equipment the other day when I was walking by. It looks like nice
equipment.
Gregory: It's going to be a nice play structure. Real nice.
Murphy: Yeah.
Stolar: Thanks. Thank you Dale. And again, thanks to all three of you for staying late.
ADMINISTRA TIVE:
NEW HIGHWAY 212 TRAIL PLAN AND HIGHWAY 101 SOUTH GAP
PROJECT TRAIL PLAN.
Hoffman: Thank you Chair Stolar, members of the commission. The first two items we
looked at as part of our work session last week and so I had the maps upstairs again so
those who are interested at the conclusion of our meeting. Big aerial photograph of
Highway 212 and the 101 gap project which will be between 212, the new 212 and
Highway 5. So the upgrade of 101... part of that project. City's involved in those
improvements in areas that the commission would be involved in is the over size study of
the trail sections. We're adding those into our CIP tonight and so it's important that you
understand when we're adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to our CIP, and
potentially then what the ultimate source of revenue ends up to be, that you understand
what those expenses are likely so I'd like to look at those maps again for those who have
not had the opportunity. Third item is the Chanhassen Day at the Arboretum. That is an
initiative taken on between the City Council, staff and the management out at the
Arboretum. You'll find this, it's common in any community that has a world renowned
or locally renowned facility in their community. People just end to naturally not place as
much value on that particular facility when it's in your own back yard. We see that with
the Arboretum. We see that with the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. They do not have the
membership response rate that they really should for being right here in town, so the
council observes this. They would like to promote the Arboretum. Staff met with the
Arboretum folks a couple weeks back now, and August, Thursday, August 26th will be
Chanhassen Day at the Landscape Arboretum. The park commissioner is invited to be a
part in that event. Any time during the day. The Mayor will make introductory
comments and some refreshments at 10:00 so if you would like to come at the beginning
of the day, you're certainly welcome. Or Jill Sinclair, our Environmental Resource
Coordinator has invited you to come between 4:00 and 8:00 hours and pass out our park
and trail maps. Talk to citizens and gather some input. So you have a couple
opportunities there to participate and we'll send out some information for you so you can
make some choices on if you'd like to participate. First 500 people in the gates will
receive a free watering wand from the Arboretum and a free Chanhassen Centennial book
from the City of Chanhassen. So some nice incentives. Those two incentives are worth
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
about $45 for those people who drive into the Arboretum that day. Questions on that
event?
Kelly: Can I ask a question on B? Since the trail does exist already between Bandimere
Park all the way to Highway 5 on 101, is it still the city's responsibility to rebuild that
trail? Wouldn't that fall on MnDot?
Hoffman: Any existing section, it's on their ledger. They're paYIng for it's
reconstruction. New additional trails are on the city ledger.
Kelly: And that's what this gap trail would be? This gap project is actually a new.
Hoffman: It's half and half. So half of it is new and half of it's existing. And then the
underpass cost would fall under the state ledger. For the underpass taking from Lake
Susan to Rice Marsh Lake Park underneath Highway 101. Okay.
2005-2009 PARK AND TRAIL ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CIP).
Continue to work on the CIP. Both of our budget documents on an annual basis, our
operating budget, which primarily is a staff driven budget from department heads to the
city manager and then our capital improvement program, which the commission is more
involved in. They're a volatile document up until the time they're approved by the City
Council and so the things we'll look at again tonight, we looked at them back in May, are
for discussionary purposes and we had not attached dollar amounts to some of the ideas
you came up in May, so we'll do that this evening as a part of our discussion. It's a two
sided document and if you start on the front side. It's labeled 3 and then pass that down.
We'll go through it. We're going to do some priority ranking as well so, sparing your
vote. Priories. Take a look at this at our May meeting, we talked about additional picnic
shelters. Additional ballfields. Park shelter warming house at City Center Park. Even
further accelerating playground replacements. Possible tennis court at Round House Park
and then a dog park, which is a timely discussion this evening. Over the next couple of
months commission will need to determine which of these improvements should be
included and staff will be programming the following items. Some Highway 212 trail
construction costs and then in addition to that, Highway 101 gap construction costs for
trails, and then the rec center fitness equipment. That's going to be programmed in their
operating budget so you'll see that as a part of their operating budget for some capital
items there. If you flip this over, this was done late in the day today so there's some
typos which I corrected on behalf of accuracy. The top 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 items have been
added since the last time you've seen this document. The Highway 212 pedestrian
improvements. That's slated currently at approximately a million dollars, and have been
lobbying hard on behalf of the park dedication fund to see that reduced. A vast majority
on our say, from a majority of that cost has to do with bridge enlargements to
accommodate trailways and I would like to see that under roadway construction costs and
bridge costs and not the, saddled onto the park dedication fund for bridge enhancement to
accommodate pedestrian trails. But that's where the number is floating right now.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Approximately a million dollars. There's a variety of options to fund that. It could be
funded fully out of park dedication, if that's the case. We're going to have a cash flow
issue and we're going to have to be backing off some of our other improvements to make
that happen. There's a loan that can be obtained from the state to allow that to occur, and
then there'd be, what I talked about first is that some of these costs could be allocated in
other locations. Second is the 101 gap at $300,000 currently. Those are the costs to the
side, to the city ledger and those include such things as our participation in the underpass
and then the trails which are on the maps that we looked at. The Arboretum Business
Park Lot 12 trail is the final segment of that trail loop that's being built out at the nature
preserve. Chanhassen Nature Preserve. The 100 acres adjacent to Chanhassen, the
Arboretum Business Park. Just south of the Holiday Inn Express that is going up. The
Holiday Inn Express is currently building the trail on behalf of the city, the value of that
is about a quarter million dollars. This trail is slightly more expensive because it includes
a bridge that's crossing the waterways in that area. And how those are being constructed
as a part of the development contract, when the city enters into a private development
contract with these developments, it states you shall do this, this, this, this and this to get
your development contract approved. One of those items is you shall build a public trail
during the completion of your public improvements. Streets, sewers and other things,
and since that is, that section of public trail is a part of our comprehensive trail system,
we will reimburse you for that but it's your responsibility to build it. We don't tag those
items into the CIP until we have a pretty good idea of when they're going to happen. We
think this lot is really becoming much more marketable because there isn't a lot of lots
available. Especially if Lifetime Fitness builds, it's going to be highly desirable and so
we want to put that one in there. Village Hall court yard improvements. That came up
today. We had a Chamber picnic down at the old village hall and if you recognize, if
you've been walking that plaza, it has exposed aggregate and then limestone pavers and
those limestone pavers have settled causing an extreme tripping condition. Hazardous
tripping conditions. City manager asked that I include some dollars in there for courtyard
improvements in that area so we have not done any official estimates but with that much
concrete, pavers, $50,000 is a good starting point. So those are the additions and then we
would, as a commission and staff need to add some dollar amounts for anything on the
opposite side. The number that came to mind for the dog park in Chanhassen was about
$20,000. The great thing about that proposal is that if you can get in on anyone of these
developments that you do not have to pay the maintenance costs or operating costs.
Stolar: Yeah, that's what I liked about it.
Hoffman: You are money ahead and so if the City of Chanhassen can spur this on with a
$20,000 allocation, I would think we would be in a good position next year... And then
the other... we can talk about if you feel those are some priority rankings that we should
start tagging them into a location. And if nothing else, we just want to get them into this
document. We can even just list as unfunded or unallocated at this time. So with that I'll
turn it back to the commission for some discussion and then we'll again look at this
potentially in August or September.
Stolar: Why don't we start with Tom.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Kelly: One question. The one question I had was on number 4. I'm sorry, 3. The Lake
Ann Park building and park improvements. That was still going to come out of park.
Stolar: Probably come out of certificate, that's out of the general fund.
Kelly: Alright. And the other question I had was, I know, I think in December we had
talked about building another public ice rink in Bandimere. Would that fall in the CIP or
is that a totally separate funding?
Hoffman: Depends on how we would manage it. What would we do if we need some
capital improvements. If we need a set of hockey rink boards to put up there, we would
include it in here. The increased maintenance cost would have to go into operations,
which has been a difficult sell. We've backed down 10 percent on those operation
budgets over the last 2 years.
Kelly: Good, thanks.
Stolar: Paula.
Atkins: The playground replacement at Lake Ann Park, that's what's going on right
now?
Hoffman: That's in the 2004, $90,000?
Atkins: Yeah.
Hoffman: And Meadow Green as well. And then other items not listed in 2004 on this
ledger would include the Highway 41 connection trail, which we opened bids on
Thursday. Last Thursday. Bids were very favorable. The estimate was $233,000. The
highest bid was $208,000 and we awarded the contract at around $147,000. So, and
that's coming out of park dedication so you can add that $147,000 into 2004. Then the
other item is the Holiday Inn Express trail. That quarter of a million I talked about.
There again, that's currently bid by the contractor at an estimated $225,000. We
demanded that they receive 3 quotations for each one of their activities, grading, asphalt.
I've reviewed those bids from the developer and we've... will be coming from the, some
of it or all of it could be park dedication. There's also some opportunity for tax
increment financing maybe to go in that dedication for that trail. But it's still an
unanswered question between the city manager, finance director and some of the bonding
consultants so when I know that I'll bring that information forward. What we're seeing
now on the expense side, as we get closer to August and September, I'll be bringing some
of the revenues statistics that I've been working on for where this fund is actually at. It's
currently at 600 and some thousand dollars in cash, but as we start to see these big
proposals, for investments in our community, that thing's going to start to bounce around
and we want to make sure we keep track of that. ... my supervisor, the city manager and
the City Council and the park commission as well, we're not going to drive that park
36
Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
dedication fund into the hole so with all these good ideas, you just have to make sure you
get your cash managed as well.
Stolar: What about Bandimere?
Hoffman: Bandimere?
Stolar: It's no on here. The playground.
Hoffman: Yep. That's a replacement, yeah. It's not on here. It's just a typo. Is it listed
anywhere?
Stolar: I don't see it.
Hoffman: Okay. Does it list it later on and then got missed? Yeah, it's just a typo.
We'll add Bandimere back in there.
Dillon: Wasn't it end up being $80,000?
Scharfenberg: $45,000.
Stolar: Oh that's the smaller one. Okay. Paula, any other?
Atkins: The playground replacement at these parks, is that in order of how much they're
needed?
Hoffman: Yes. We went through a priority ranking based on the current condition and
then how much they're used.
Atkins: Okay. That's all.
Stolar: So with respect to the dog park, would we pick a particular year to put some
money in?
Hoffman: Yeah, I would think we'd pick 2005.
Stolar: Okay.
Hoffman: Off leash dog area contribution. Carver County Parks. The flip side of these
joint partnerships is there's always a real fear of dedicating cash over to another entity
without some controls over is it going to happen. Is it going to be invested. Is it going to
happen for one year and then go away so those will be some conversations both at this
level and then council level about what assurances are we going to receive.
Dillon: On the front page of the memo you talk about, over the next month you'll be
programming the following items. The 212 trail construction cost and the recreation
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
center fitness equipment. Is that replacement equipment, is that new equipment? What is
that?
Hoffman: Replacing the worn out equipment in the facility. There's been minimal
replacement since we opened the doors in '95 so.
Dillon: Ballpark, what are you thinking something like that would run?
Hoffman: Depends on how extensive we go. It will probably be in the range of, it's hard
to say. $15,000-$20,000.
Stolar: Anything else?
Dillon: I guess the only other thing is, in my eye's mind I don't really understand the
Highway 212 pedestrian improvements or the Highway 101 gap pedestrian
improvements. Could you just walk through them once again. Or would the map
upstairs.
Hoffman: Yeah, we'll grab the maps. Grab those. They're right on my desk. Behind
that chair. . .
Stolar: Just high level, for background for some of our new commissioners. How the
trail process works for us with these fees, give them a couple seconds on that.
Hoffman: The city maintains a comprehensive trail plan and comprehensive park plan
and the trails plan is really more definitive. It's more defined. It's actual lines on the
map, and parks we say, we want a park within a 1Iz mile of everyone's front door. As
land starts to develop where there's not a park, then we're going to actually out there
actively seeking trying to acquire some parkland in that area. These trails, our
comprehensive trail map plan which says they're going to get the residents to these park
sites, to their neighborhoods, neighboring residents and to businesses, and if a section of
trail is on the map when a development comes through, a road, a housing development,
either the city's going to build it, the entity building the road is going to build it, or the
developer's going to build it, but in the end the city's going to pay. It's our responsibility
to provide for that funding and maintenance of that trail system as a comprehensive plan
element. And then we collect park dedication fees at the rate of $2,800 per single family
home, $2,200 for multi-family housing development, and then $7,000 per acre for
commercial to pay for those improvements over time. And so what we're telling our
residents is when you move into town, you have expectations for recreational services.
We have expectations that you're going to help pay for those so you're going to have to
pay this park dedication fee. And so in this, the state's saying we're building a state
highway. We're certainly facilitating the construction of these elements... This is in
Chaska. This is the intersection, this ballfield right here is the now new Chaska
Freshman Center, so this is the intersection of Pioneer Trail and Audubon Road. And
then you'll start to see, here's a section of trail... It's located just on the north side of
Pioneer Trail and it goes all the way down to Powers Boulevard, so that's the section of
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
trail that the state says we'll build with a 10 foot trail section as a part of your
comprehensive plan and you're going to refund, reimburse the state for that trail. The
second one they picked up is the section of trail on Bluff Creek Drive, and so the city,
that's our only conduit to the Minnesota River Valley trail system is Bluff Creek Drive,
and so we want to get people off of the bridge underpass which is located right in this
location. This is Bluff Creek coming right through 212. This is where we have the
underpass at the bridge so you take people from the northern part of Chanhassen as you
move down underneath that bridge, down to Bluff Creek and then into the Minnesota
River Valley trail system and the LRT. So this will dead end right here and future, the
city and the commission will have to pick this up in a future capital improvement project
to finish the trail down through the remainder of Bluff Creek Drive. For our new trails in
the right-of-way at Highway 212 proper, and then you just build... You go to the next
section of roadway and you're, this is the new extension of Powers Boulevard, so Powers
Boulevard and currently it dead ends here at Lyman Boulevard, so you have trail, one
trail on both sides of Powers and then we'll get down to this location and the state has
facilitated, not the construction for the preservation of the right-of-way to take that trail
into the Fox property, which is 35 acres acquired by the city so we have that future access
to that open space. So again these are the bridge that they're talking about. This needs to
be widened. Somebody needs to pay that cost for that widening. And those are some of
the variables that are currently, I don't... So two of those big projects we'll be talking
about pedestrian improvements... We move farther to the east and you have a trail on
Lyman Boulevard which is currently shown on the south side, has been flipped over to
the north side, and so again they show a pedestrian improvements at that location. And
as 212 continues to veer to the east and north towards the Eden Prairie border, this is just
the bottom side of Powers Boulevard as you connect up with Pioneer Trail. So it shows
these two trails going right down to Pioneer Trail. Construction of this roadway, a lot of
the major impact to the City of Chanhassen, as long as you're going through all that
work, we want to provide these trailways and accesses as well. . . . continues with the
application and this one is actually starting from Bear Path. So you're picking it up in
Eden Prairie. You hit the Eden Prairie border. Bear Path, Eden Prairie has an underpass
of the highway at this location. This is Rice Marsh Lake Park, and so now if can think
you're coming the opposite direction or coming from Eden Prairie into Chanhassen, these
are the Rottlund Homes at North Bay. And you pick up some trails down at the
intersection of Highway 101... section of trailway which is currently existing on the, what
will be the old Highway 101. The State's taken out a large section of that. They pay for
it's replacement for the new 101, and then in addition, following what the state, as we
said, we have this brand new trail. It stops here and then the next section picks up here
and you're going to dead end it and so we want it to continue to make this loop outside
your fenced right-of-way so we can get some access to our park here at Chanhassen Hills
Park. When we go out in the neighborhood to again at least continue to utilize that cross
section by creating a loop trail system through their neighborhood. So on an evening
they get home and after supper they can take a very pleasant walk around the
neighborhood and just continue to use that trail. So that will come up here. This will be
demolished and then will pick up an existing segment down south Lyman Boulevard to
Bandimere. Lots of trailway. . . And then the gap project is again very extensive trails.
Some good planning early on. I'm afraid to say that the first meeting held on Highway
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
212 with Carver County was on trails and pedestrian access. And all the park directors in
Carver County got together and had, Mr. Jon Chiglo who is managing this project for the
State of Minnesota, he came out of the Carver County parks building, Marty was there
and we started very early on. The first coordination meeting we had was pedestrian
access crossing and paralleling this road was very important. This is the gap project.
That's an interesting improvement. If you focus your attention, can you zoom in Jerry.
This is the underpass. So Lake Susan is here. Then your trail link to the east to Rice
Marsh Lake. The existing trail is shown here and here. And so we're starting to make
these movements in the pedestrian blacktop to accommodate this underpass which is
going at an angle to maintain grade underneath Highway 101. So you can, if you're
coming south on a bike, you can continue right over and continue on south. If you're
coming north, you can do the same thing. Take the by-pass lane. If you want to utilize
the underpass, either from the east side or the west side or if you want to continue east,
excuse me, west or east, then you have to use these clover leaf trails to get you onto those
locations. The existing trail that's here, will be replaced on the State's dime. The other
trails, this new trail here. These other new trails along under this proposal are shared
cost. The most exciting thing about this gap project and pedestrian trail system is that if
you want to walk around Lake Susan, you do not have to cross Highway 101. This new
section of trail will take it right back around into the park. You can come up around to
the neighborhood. Come right back down 101 and continue on the west side of the
roadway.
Kelly: People cross 101 all the time right there because you've got, my opinion that's
the, that area is probably one of the best sections of trail in the whole city because Lake
Susan is so nice to the west, and then Rice Marsh Lake is so nice to the east but crossing
101 is tough. Eventually if you have kids in a trailer and stuff.
Hoffman: They cross here and they cross here as well. This crossing is, and those cars,
you know they're supposed to stop for pedestrians but they're at highway speed. They
don't stop.
Stolar: And the reason for slating that for 2007 is because that's when the improvements
will be done with the highway, correct?
Hoffman: There's some real difficulties in making this road adjustment. You have to
move a creek and that creek movement will probably take place in 2006 and the State
Department of Natural Resources is saying, potentially you're going to have to let that
creek re-establish itself for a year before you can move forward so this project's starting
to march out. And they have to move the creek right here. So they take the creek out
from where the road's going to be. They move it to the west. They recreate Riley Creek
and then revegetate it and then move the creek over.
Stolar: The 212 stuff though, when's that supposed to be done?
Hoffman: Start in the spring of 2005 and hopefully they think opened, at least to some
degree in the fall 2007.
40
Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: So I was just looking on the years here, we have it in 2006 for us. Wouldn't we
wait until after they're done or stagger it. Not necessarily wait the entire time but stagger
it across.
Hoffman: It's hard to say when the exact bills would be coming in. We may wait to the
end. We may pay up front. A couple of ways to look at that. You either make the
contribution for beyond or you wait for the final costs and hope that they'll come down.
City Manager and most engineers like to. . .
Stolar: But I guess part of it being the timing because some of this we are building our
own, correct? Of the million. Then it wouldn't necessarily be reimbursements so.
Hoffman: That's all.
Stolar: That's all of it, okay. So we have no way, so at the earliest it's 2006 but it might
be later?
Hoffman: Yeah. If we take out a loan and we pay it back and if we use park dedication
to pay it back, this could stretch out, it could be a payment plan. So we just don't know
yet.
Stolar: Okay, because we'll have the trails there but the residents actually won't be there
yet. That was my only thing is, if we push out so when the residents are there, they
obviously pay.
Hoffman: The existing residents are going to be here, but yeah.
Stolar: The bulk of the activity that will support that. Anything else Kevin?
Dillon: No.
Stolar: Okay. And so you'll come back to us Todd with this with some of the sources of
funding at a later meeting, correct?
Hoffman: Yeah, the sources of funding and then are there any that you feel strongly on
the front page that you want to get into the mix? Or some that you would just as soon
leave out.
Stolar: Well we didn't have the hockey replacements that we just talked about from the
rec center.
Hoffman: Correct. And they may, if we do capital, they would go in there. Ifwe just do
an in-house project, we'll present those options to the commission. I'll just put a price on
all of them and we'll do some ranking in our August or September meeting when we
have some additional time.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Scharfenberg: I think also if there's that we kind of like don't have much choice with
them, I don't know. Some of the playground things. Throw out a code or whatever the
deal is.
Hoffman: Yeah, they're going to... accelerate those up so we're at kind of over the next
couple of years to get them done. Then we'll get kicked out. The safety improvements
we talked about.
Stolar: One other question, and I know we weren't going to talk about this but some of
these things also may vary as we start thinking about future, I mean such as even the
dome or any of the things that we talked about. So just so everyone knows, these are
layouts now but we're going to be, we may talk about, I think both Steve and Kevin
mentioned, do we want a bubble over, something if we decide we want to do, we want to
put it in these. So I think there's another activity we've got to do which is get our
thoughts around what other things we'd want to see. When would we want to see and
then how much do we think they'll cost, with a dose of reality saying money's not
necessarily that.
Hoffman: Have some brainstorming. Obviously it's your charge and responsibility to
make proposals which you think benefit the community. Those that you think are ranked
higher and other things that you should be investing your money in and you make those
proposals to the City Council. They give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down and you...
And that's how these items get whittled down year after year to what these are the
priority items. These are what... and obviously it's based on the funding sources as well.
Stolar: Any other questions?
Murphy: Todd, if we do do the dog park, which seems like there was a lot of interest
obviously from the community, before we present or push that to the City Council, we
would be, would we be the ones that would review with Larry and that committee on how
we're going to, who else is going to contribute besides the City of Chan, or how far do
we get before the City Council gets involved I guess?
Hoffman: Well, you know, that's the chicken and egg conversation. What I would
propose that you do is, is you, if you think it's a good idea. You make a recommendation
to the council that you, whatever you set that amount at. Whatever you feel is
reasonable, but if you look at they're asking for $40,000. They're not going to get big
numbers out of Victoria, Shorewood, and so Chanhassen has to be a significant
contributor so I think $20,000 is a good starting point. And we'll make a report back to
the commission. Make that recommendation. Send that up to the City Council. This is
one of those things again where you don't have to get explicitly involved because as the
county said, they'll run with it. They'll manage it and so it's simply.
Murphy: But they have to get the money first.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Hoffman: Yeah, but to make a recommendation, that's all you have to do. If council
supports it, we'll support it and we'll put some strings on there that it has to be approved
by every commission or the council has to approve the final plan. It has to be all in place
and some of those things... Not anything more complicated than that.
Stolar: And I would also suggest if there's particular things that you would like to
recommend that they look at or consider in the planning of it, that we can put that in our
recommendation of what we would, things we would think would be important, within
either a budget guideline, whatever, and same thing I think, I think maybe too strong of a
word but the governance. Big question right. Should there be a citizen association that,
like you saw in ROMP that has you know advisory capacities of what types of things to
be in there and we might say that. We're going to spend $20,000 on it. Maybe one of
our commissioners sits on that advisory. I mean those are things we can say as
recommendations or thoughts I would think.
Hoffman: It's really one of those items where you look at a quarter million dollar facility
tonight that is in poor condition and gets very little use and gets a very low return on the
investment we made. You give $20,000 to the county and they pull this thing off, you're
going to see such a high return on your investment, it will be absolutely just amazing.
The other thing to realize is that Minnewashta Regional Park is about $100 million
facility with the property and the value of that facility and so for these residents to walk
up and to start saying, just take this whole park and make it a dog park and for us to say
we're going to give you $20,000 and we want umpteen strings attached, you have to put
it in perspective. We're going to give them $20,000. They're going to take it and you
have to provide some trust over to the county as well, but we certainly want to make sure
that we have it. That $20,000 and would they welcome your participation? Absolutely.
Stolar: Yeah, that's what it sounded like. That they were looking for as much help as
they, not, again just suggestions. Not, and help but not dictating because they made a
pretty good offer to us tonight.
Hoffman: Absolutely great offer. And the residents, you know bless their heart. All the
emotion that goes along with this, but the master planning process they went through was
a very involved process and they had ample time for public opportunity to highlight the
needs. Folks did comment and the staff took that into consideration. The county
commissioners took it into consideration. This is the master plan that they came up with
and so it's kind of like now you're just trying to take a last chance at getting all of those
trails, I don't think the county's going to revisit that as a possibility. If they have other
users in the, you know cross country skiers is in there. There are dogs in there during that
time... designated cross country ski trails. The trails aren't all that bad. I'm not sure what
Tony said but they aren't that bad. They're pretty nice actually.
Scharfenberg: I would guess after they present this to Excelsior, probably Shorewood
too, I mean those are pretty, similar demographics with dogs and all that stuff. If those
communities were to hear that someone like a Chanhassen was willing to belly up for a
chunk of this, it'd be like almost a slam dunk I would think they'd be. I don't know if
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
their budget is stretched or anything like that but it's a very small amount of money to
get, like you said, a big huge return so maybe it just takes one to get the whole thing
going. I don't know.
Hoffman: You might get $5,000 out of those communities. Those type of communities,
but.
Stolar: But then that adds up. Ifwe throw 20 in and...
Hoffman: Their budgets are very limited and they don't have, Chanhassen's got direct
access to the facility. So we're...
Stolar: But I would hope that maybe in August we can get something, because I think
that would give them some momentum is if we have some definitive recommendation
that we're putting to our City Council. That will give them momentum when they talk to
people, because it sounded like everyone was waiting for the first one to make the jump
and I think we ought to do it.
Dillon: I mean if what they're saying, it's really only $40,000, that's cheap. I don't
know why but I thought it'd be like some hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hoffman: Well it depends on what you do. There's a park, dog park profile in your
magazine you received recently and that was a $400,000 park.
Dillon: I didn't hear them mention the City of Chaska. Are they talking to Chaska too?
Hoffman: ... on their list. They didn't talk about them.
Stolar: One other thing on the capital improvements, and this is just a couple of park and
rec magazines ago. They talk about not water parks but these spray parks, which those
were pretty cheap too. Those were inexpensive. Have we thought about one of those at
all?
Hoffman: Yeah, Commissioner Franks championed that cause for that idea for a variety
of years and the water problem out in front of city hall is acting as a spray park...
Stolar: So we've got one.
Hoffman: It's not filtered water... We've got moms, dads in blankets and towels and
kids come in bathing suits and it's not intended for that use. So again, it's location and
the type of, a spray park needs to go somewhere that's fairly public and so we talked
about it.
Stolar: Is there a location that we would be able to do it, like one of the city parks at all?
Hoffman: Well Lake Susan or Lake Ann.
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Park and Rec Commission - July 27, 2004
Stolar: What about Bandimere? Is that not.
Hoffman: That's not a, it's many of these parks were adding the water parks, and it's just
a change in mentality. Both those parks are fairly busy a day...you need to make them
more congested more busy by adding another feature that's going to be every more
popular so just coming up with the right mix and I think it'd be popular but is it a venue
the city wants to take on?
Stolar: I was just thinking about the capital program, that might be one thing. You know
as a future one. I was surprised at how inexpensive those were.
Hoffman: Yeah, very popular all over. They're very huge.
Stolar: Alright. Any other items? Alright, can I have a motion for adjournment?
Kelly moved, Scharfenberg seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and
the motion carried. The Park and Recreation Commission meeting was adjourned.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman
Park and Rec Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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