PRC 2004 09 28
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREATION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
SEPTEMBER 28, 2004
Chairman Stolar called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Glenn Stolar, Jack Spizale, Steve Scharfenberg, Ann Murphy,
Paula Atkins, Tom Kelly and Kevin Dillon
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation
Superintendent; Susan Marek, Rec Center Manager, and Dale Gregory, Park
Superintendent
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
Spizale moved, Murphy seconded to approve the agenda
amended to include an Eagle Scout presentation by Josh Iskierka under visitor
presentations. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
None.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
Josh Iskierka: Alright, my name is Josh Iskierka. I have a packet here for, just describes,
I typed up. It describes project description, how it will benefit the community and this
project details.
Stolar: Todd could help pass those out if you’d like.
Josh Iskierka: Alright, thanks. Alright, thank you Todd.
Stolar: If you want to start by letting us know what you’re planning on doing.
Josh Iskierka: Alright. For my project, for my Eagle project I would like to build two
benches. I live by Bandimere Park and, which is right behind my house so I can see the
soccer fields and everything, which is pretty cool, and there are two different
playgrounds. They built, this is a brand new one and that’s where I would like to build
two benches that will go in and I would like them because I think that’s a good Eagle
project because it will help by providing a place for parents and that, and for their parents
to sit. Or like the parents to watch the kids, and I think that it will, and I plan to get it
done and have my local boy scout troop help me. I’m from Troop 330. And pretty much
I would like to go maybe a little into some of the project details. I did talk to Todd
Hoffman and he, we just briefly talked about what I would like to do for my Eagle and
just made sure that it was okay with him to do it. And then I would also, and he also
helped me by giving me a print out of the bench and just numbers about, the dimensions
about it and how big and the concrete slab and it shows just a little, it will help me kind
of show me what I’m doing. Or not show me what I’m doing but just to kind of help me
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
know how to put the benches together and that kind of thing. And pretty much some
details will be that I will be also having somebody who knows about concrete also
because I had to pour two slabs for the benches and I know somebody at my boy scout
troop who knows about concrete and he’ll help me pour two foundations and show me
what to do. Show the other boys that will be helping me from my troop. Or show me
how, or he’ll help show them how to smooth the concrete and have it ready once the
benches are in place and everything and that so. And then I will also have two, or two
groups. I plan on having two groups and I had to build two benches and so I’ll have two
groups build the two benches and I will also have the materials at my house when they’re
ready to come over. And they will, and I will build, so I’ll build two benches and they
will have them built and ready and then once they’re all built I plan on going to, out in
the park. Taking measurements on how far apart I should put the benches, and once I
have that figured out and marked, I will have the boy scouts come out in the park with me
and we will dig it up. We will dig the hole for the concrete, frame it all in. Put sub-grade
or whatever we need to put on it before the concrete gets poured into it. And then once
we have that, I’ll also have the benches out there and we will take the benches and we’ll
put them in the hole that we already made, and I will have the concrete there. I will also
have the concrete ready so that when we have the benches all made up, once we have the
benches made, we will, I’ll make sure that the concrete truck is there and we’ll help, it
will pour the concrete slab and I’ll make sure the benches are there and ready and I’ll
have the boy scouts also along to help me and we will help pretty much smooth out and
make it look nice and I will also be keeping a detail list of who’s there and how long they
were there til so that they get credit because when they, kids work on my Eagle project,
on Eagle projects, it counts as service hours for them. And so I will be keeping a detailed
description of who was there, how long and so that they get credit towards their service.
And then I will make up a final booklet of all my Eagle requirements and pretty much I’ll
just get approval, get a signature that it shows I was done and by that time it’s pretty
much that it is right now so. Any questions?
Stolar: Commissioner members, questions?
Spizale: I guess I’ve got one. The bench will be probably made out of wood.
Josh Iskierka: Yes.
Spizale: And then what kind of finish will you put on it?
Josh Iskierka: Finish? I’ll probably stain them or put something on that makes it look
nice and I’ll probably look for some sort of paint to put on.
Spizale: Okay.
Hoffman: They’re the same benches that are there now. I’m not sure, I don’t believe
they require any finishing so.
Spizale: Okay.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Hoffman: They’re ordered from Columbia Cascade. We’ve gotten Josh the information.
He’ll do the ordering on the bench and the concrete. Coordination of the delivery of the
materials so they’re nice benches. If you recall I picked out the benches at the other
playground as well.
Stolar: That’s right, I remember.
Scharfenberg: Todd, is that lower playground scheduled for renovation at any time?
Hoffman: No, removal. The one at Bandimere Heights?
Scharfenberg: The one, are we talking about the lower playground?
Hoffman: They’re talking about the second playground at Bandimere Park. The new one
that has been just installed in the last month or two.
Gregory: Yeah, it’s not quite finished yet.
Scharfenberg: So right next to the…tower, this is what we’re talking about. The benches
going around that smaller area.
Hoffman: Yep.
Stolar: What is your timing that you?
Josh Iskierka: I hope to, when I talked to Tom he said that they had to finish installing,
putting in a couple things and, but I hope to get it done preferably as, probably as soon as
possible.
Hoffman: Sometime the month of October.
Kelly: Does the park have to be done before the benches go in or not necessarily?
Josh Iskierka: I’m not.
Hoffman: Grading around it. It’s just rough graded right now and I don’t believe…It’s
just a rough grade there that they have to finish up before he can set his elevations for the
benches and place them.
Stolar: Any questions? Okay Josh, thank you very much. Good luck and we look
forward to seeing the fruits of your labor there. Appreciate it. We’d welcome you back
when it’s done. You can show us pictures or we can take a ride out there and look at it
directly.
Josh Iskierka: I’ll do that.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Stolar: Okay, thank you very much. Any other, there are no other visitors that I see.
Without objection we’ll move on to approval of minutes.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Kelly moved, Scharfenberg seconded to approve the
Minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated August 24, 2004 as
presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
2004 LAKE ANN CONCESSION/BOAT RENTAL EVALUATION.
Ruegemer: Thank you Chair Stolar. Good evening the rest of the commission. Go
through that on an annual basis. We do review the Lake Ann Park concession and boat
rental operation this year. It’s laid out in front of you. This year we never could seem to
recover from the cold weather that seemed to hamper us June, July and August.
Typically in the past August is kind of our tail up month and being the second half of
June and all of July typically have been pretty decent revenue generating months for us.
But there seemed to be a lot of those tweener days so to speak with the 60 to 70 degrees
this year where it was nice enough for the beach to be open but not a lot of activity down
in there so. And that certainly is reflected within this report. Knowing the weather kind
of the way it was, I certainly tried to keep on top of staffing and try to send people home
and try to eliminate a lot of unnecessary ordering of supplies. And that is reflected within
the vendor expenses that I did try to cut as many expenses as I could to help the bottom
line. We all said at the end of the day so to speak, that we did operate at, in the hole
slightly but you know with the credits that we have coming on with the food service and
the Coca-Cola product that we have, we should be, it should be less than what the bottom
line is in the report so it will be well under $1,500 to $700 mark, which isn’t spectacular
but nonetheless it was something that we certainly tried to forecast and work through for
the summer time. You know and just talking to our, a Watson, one of our vendors who
supplies the food and the ice cream, the hot dogs, that sort of thing, we’re not the only
people in this situation here this year. A lot of the pool operations really have been
hampered by the cold weather as well, and so if there’s any consolation in that. But
knowing that the operation’s kind of laid out in front of you as far as the daily revenues,
vendor expenditures, the staffing costs and so on, and what I did as well is kind of put
that together in kind of a revenue and expenditures. 2003, 2004 for comparison purposes.
And also I did that, basically I think on every report I tried to kind of show what we did
last year and what the expenditures and revenues were this year. As general comments, it
seems we’re trying to keep everything simple as far as for menu options with our license,
Department of Agriculture, we’re limited really to pre-packaged type of items. Simple
type of menu options. Quick point of sale. That’s really what we’re trying to do and
kind of streamline the operation to really appeal to our customers and get them kind of in
and out with quick service here so, that’s basically kind of it in a nutshell. The meal
deal’s always popular down there. I know we did raise food prices the last couple of
years. That may be something to take a look at again but to be careful. Not to really
price ourselves out of the market but it did seem to help raising, to simplify our operation
to rent boats by the hour versus the quarter hour. We did that, this is our second summer
that we’ve had that operation so you know there’s certain things that we can do and best
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
thing for us to have next year is hot weather so, to kind of rebound. But there’s just other
just general comments on there to help with the operation out there so at this time I’d
certainly field any questions that you may have.
Murphy: Not a question, just a quick comment. I don’t think I let anybody know this but
I had some guests in from out of town in August and they were really impressed with the
people working at the boat rental concession. They just, I guess they had some problems
with their kids crying when they rented the boat and then the people behind the
concession let them come back later and they were really flexible with it so, just a good
feedback. Because they made sure to say something to me so.
Stolar: Good. Did you have a question?
Dillon: No, I have no questions. That’s kind of, I mean I wonder if some of the days
where I guess some labor expenditures, you had like no sales. I mean can we keep it, be
more proactive maybe in sending people home? I mean is that an option? I mean I don’t
know.
Ruegemer: Certainly, and certainly we do that and a lot of times we’ve had picnic side
step. Picnic’s down there at the times where we need to kind of keep open and/or school
groups coming down, or a bus load of 60 to 120 kids are coming down to use and to rent
boats or do other types of things, but we certainly are aware of that Kevin. Certainly
we’ll look into that in the future as well.
Hoffman: …10 to 15 days anyway.
Ruegemer: It just, we did have our concession manager with sort of health issues had to
quit his position the first part of, later part of July, first part of August. We had to hire an
additional person at the tail end of it so. At a lower hourly rate which helped, but such is
life. They had to kind of change the operation mid-stream so.
Stolar: Jack?
Spizale: No questions.
Stolar: Steve.
Scharfenberg: No.
Stolar: Paula?
Atkins: How many people staff it usually?
Ruegemer: Typically 3, and that includes the manager. We have a couple, if you look
on the staff report, the staffing hours and that sort of thing. Airin Messenbring was our
concession manager for the past 7 years. She did some subbing on some weekends and
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
week nights when we needed her to do that. And Jack Christopherson was the hire in
August to fill in for Eric Borm who was our manager. So typically 3 people and then we
have some subs that fill in as needed.
Stolar: The number of closed days or cold days that we had, it says we closed. Was that
significantly higher? Because I know the days were never great so we might have had it
open and still had less people.
Ruegemer: Yeah, I guess I don’t have that comparison compared to the 2003. I think
this was higher though this year compared to other years.
Stolar: Plus the general coldness. I like this report. This format would be good then next
year also. I mean last year was close to this. I don’t know if it was exactly this but.
Ruegemer: Oh the report itself? Yeah, I tried to include all the vendor expenses and
staffing costs.
Stolar: Any other questions? Okay, it’s like you say, we’ll hope for better weather next
year.
REPORTS:
2004 DAVE HUFFMAN 5K RACE.
Ruegemer: Thank you Chair Stolar again. We had kind of our wrap up meeting tonight
prior to this meeting, this evening. Kind of went through a number of different things
about this race and future races. The total was roughly around 335-340ish. One bright
note, we did have a new state record this year on our course. Beat the old record by 1
second for Michael Seaman from Edina so that was a real nice thing. It’s posted on
raceberryjam.com and that broke the old record I believe from 1997 so that was a nice
little plug for us and now we’re in the record books, so to speak so. That one second
probably could have been lost with Corey driving in the front but we’ll see what happens.
I’ll have to let him know that. But we did have Vikings involvement again this year with
Ragnar helping out with the medals and that sort of thing with the kids and he certainly is
a draw and kind of a favorite with the kids and with the crowd. He certainly seems to
interact and while he makes some kids cry sometimes but that, he seems to be welcomed
at our event. The kids race continues to be a highlight, thanks to Tom and his committee
for organizing that. We seem to draw that 30 to 40 kids per year and we had well over
100 this year for that and that’s not bad starting with roughly what, 35 or 40 a couple
years ago.
Kelly: 40, 64, 100. It’s going strong, yeah.
Ruegemer: It seems to be going up every year with that, so that is nice to see. People
seem to like the new shirt logo’s and that sort of thing this year and our kind of new logo
that we have there. That seems to help out to change logo’s which is good and Kathy
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Huffman, Dave’s wife certainly liked the logo as well and took about 15 shirts back for
her relatives back in Chicago and Texas so, which was good. But it’s certainly things
that we needed to be aware of. Interior flow by the tent area certainly is one of them with
vehicle traffic coming in and out and I think we’ve isolated that incident and we know
kind of who that is but we need to kind of have some people on the interior kind of
slowing down traffic and monitoring that a little bit better. Having a vehicle in the back
following the last people, which we have had in the past but with some CSO’s kind of
moving on and not being available that weekend, we were a little short on that type of
personnel but we certainly had all of our main areas covered as far as kind of downtown,
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you know West 78 Street and Kerber and more along kind of the high traffic areas, we
certainly had adequate staffing there with Carver County. With our own city workers and
also with volunteers from the boy scouts so. So looking ahead to next year and where
you go from here. We brainstormed about a few things tonight as to where we’re going
to go as the area where the tent is, and everything is right now, with Presbyterian Homes
and all that area kind of growing up right now and kind of getting built up, we’ll have to
kind of re-assess that whole finish area in the future as to do we start and finish at Lake
Ann or do we start and finish somewhere else. We do hear a lot of comments that people
do enjoy the course as it is and saying that really is one of the most challenging 5K races
that they attend on an annual basis so you know, it presents challenges as far as traffic
control. The course that we do have but people do seem to enjoy that do participate in it
so, but we’ll look at that next year and get, the kids race will be back again and maybe
it’s time to expand to a 10K. We’re going to kind of review those type of things as well
as keeping the 5K but we’ll take a look at that and brainstorm and I’ll certainly welcome
any feedback from you tonight as regards to the race. Just as a point of interest, I did
include all the race results for the overall men’s and women’s winners and then the
individual age categories. The winners, their times and home towns. And then I did print
out the results from raceberryjam.com in order of finish and kind of their times and their
pace and all that information too for your information.
Stolar: Tom, want to add anything?
Kelly: Oh no. Any chance of flattening that hill? I think it’s a great course. It might be
nice, I know the cars were, there were a couple incidents where people just kind of going
through a little fast, honking their horns. So I can see how you can, it was getting
congested there so maybe we looking at, has the library been thought of as a potential
start and/or finish? The library park.
Ruegemer: I don’t know of anything recently but I think it’d be more advantageous if we
start and finish at Lake Ann somehow to kind of keep it out of downtown and eliminate
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some of the areas. Maybe we can go up through Greenwood Shores or go out West 78
Street to the west somehow and connect on our trail system somehow. I haven’t looked
in great detail on that but we’ll explore options and worst come to worst, we certainly
can, we have a decent course to do right now. And the pedestrian bridge gets used.
Stolar: Makes it worthwhile. Yeah, and I was one of the cars that had to go into the race
because my kids had lessons at Foss so the police officers were very good trying to
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
instruct you. Let the runners go. Giving up space so at least over at that corner there
they were very good at trying to tell each car how to try to not interfere with the race and
moved it along.
Dillon: The only thing, I don’t know, I guess Tom for you. In the form I didn’t see
where it talked about what the kids groups ages were. For the kids race.
Ruegemer: I thought that was on there.
Dillon: I don’t think it was.
Stolar: That might be something, because actually you still don’t know what the ages
are.
Kelly: Young and old but that’s a little vague, yeah.
Stolar: But like does it go down to 7, 8. 2 year olds.
Kelly: Was Great Clips, were they happy and do you think they’ll return next year as a
sponsor? Or not necessarily.
Ruegemer: That’s still in negotiation Tom. I think to be honest with you I don’t know
that they felt that they got their bang for their buck so I think they’re still having some
conversations about what the dollar amount’s going to be on their sponsorship.
Kelly: Oh really, okay. Okay.
Hoffman: For this year?
Ruegemer: For this year.
Hoffman: Are they kind of locked in or what?
Ruegemer: One would think.
Kelly: Do they pay for the numbers for the kids? The number 1, do they, I guess I’m
wondering what they even spent.
Ruegemer: I can have a conversation with you about that…
Stolar: Alright. Paula.
Atkins: Well I ran it and it was tough. It’s a tough course. Yeah, I run a nice 10 minute
mile. And we ran the James Page Beer Run the following weekend but beer was our
registration fee, which is a suggestion. But this, our’s was a lot tougher than that one
downtown, and they do mark kilometers in that, which is kind of fun. When you’re
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
running a 5K. Because here we mark the miles, right? So I thought that was interesting.
It was a great day.
Scharfenberg: Any thoughts of ever making it a 10K race?
Ruegemer: We talk about that annually but we’re certainly going to have to have
probably a separate course. Unless you do it twice but that’s kind of hard. But we have
looked at routes. When we initially developed the race we looked at routes to the south
of that particular area to get our 10K. I haven’t looked at that recently with the
development and different trails and that sort of thing here but that’s a possibility.
Dillon: It was well done, and then coming south, I was running south on Kerber right
near Byerly’s and most of the drivers were pretty cool…little bit a delay or something
like that, I don’t know.
Stolar: Jack, anything?
Spizale: No comments. Other than I wasn’t there but neighbors, people I talked to said it
was great. Said it was a great event.
Stolar: Ann, anything?
Murphy: No. I worked the registration. I thought it was really easy to work. A lot of
people volunteering so it went well.
Ruegemer: I want to thank all the commissioners who did help and participate. It’s nice
to see everybody out there to help and to give us comments on the inside so to speak.
Along the race course and that sort of thing too so it has been kind of a nice event for us
and nice beautiful you know fall day, so it’s a good event.
Hoffman: I think 6 commissioners, past and present run the race.
Stolar: Cool.
Kelly: Let me count. There’s 1, 2, 3. There’s 3 right here, and then I know Mike ran it.
That’s 4.
Hoffman: Rod Franks.
Kelly: Rod Franks was 5. Who’s the sixth?
Hoffman: I’ll come up with it…
Stolar: Todd, did you run it?
Hoffman: No.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Stolar: Your kids did right?
Hoffman: Whole family.
Stolar: Whole family. Seeing no other comments, Jerry. Are you speaking for Corey on
the Halloween party?
2004 HALLOWEEN PARTY PREVIEW.
Ruegemer: Since Corey’s in Las Vegas, I am speaking for him tonight. Annual
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Halloween Party is coming up Saturday, October 30. 5:30 to 7:30 at the Rec Center. I
don’t have the volunteer sign-up sheet for you but either I or Corey will either e-mail that
to you or bring that to our next. We’ll probably e-mail it out to you and get kind of the
information out to you. I’m sure Corey’s going to be working on the KEY Club again for
volunteers. They always seem to come up with 30 to 40 volunteers that are willing to
dress up and help out with the tables and the hay ride and all that sort of thing so it’s a
great resource for us, and again we’ll draw approximately 500 to 600 people. Parents and
that sort of thing, probably a little bit more than that so it’s a great event and flyers are all
done. Been sitting in our office for oh about a month now I think and Corey will be
taking those out to the schools here the tail end of this week.
Stolar: Can you register on line for this?
Ruegemer: We’re going to do that, not with the.
Marek: No. I believe there’s an announcement on line but we’re not allowing on line
registration for that. It’s a $4.00 fee per person and people would get tagged with a pretty
high convenience fee if we allowed them to register on line. So we’re asking that they
send mail, or call in their registration. We can take care of that without that convenience
fee.
Stolar: Okay. Any questions? For those of you who weren’t there last year, it was a lot
of fun. It’s a blast. You can sign me up for handing out candy again.
Ruegemer: On the friendly hallway?
Stolar: Yes.
Hoffman: It was Jim Manders.
Kelly: Jim Manders, okay. Thank you.
Stolar: Well I’m glad we didn’t have to keep the meeting going so you could find that.
Alright, next.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
REC CENTER REPORT.
Marek: Well the recreational center went back on our winter hours. We stay open until
10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday and 8:00 p.m. Saturday and re-opened on Sunday.
We closed on Sundays for the summer but now we’re back open on Sundays. So we’re
all stepped up for that. On line registrations, you mentioned that earlier. We continue to
run somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of all registrations we get are happening on
line right now. Obviously we want that number to grow and I think that it will. It just
takes time for people to find it and understand it and use it. And I am able to track how
many new people we have doing that so people are stumbling across it and doing it, but
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it’s still hanging underneath 15 percent. September 1 was our cut over date from using
our old room reservation software to our new room reservation software, and that was a
bigger project. But it is complete and running well out at the rec center. I still have to
work with Jerry a little bit and Sue Bill in the senior center but it is running well so we’re
all into the new software so another 2 weeks and that project’s going to be checked off as
done. The staffing changes at the rec center, wow. Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve had
to talk about that. But we did lose Lisa Anderson as a facility supervisor. She’s up at
Roseville Park and Rec, but still coming down to Chanhassen to teach dance. So we
didn’t lose her completely. To replace Lisa we’ve added Marvin Puspoki and Kristy
Mock, and you see how we just recycle these employees. I wonder if we ever really get
anybody new out there, so these two people come to us with significant experience in the
Chanhassen way of doing things and they just slid right in there and are doing real well
out at the rec center. And also Tom Michel joined the rec center as well as the facility
supervisor so we’re all set with staffing. And programs, Dance for Fun program, that’s
still the biggest program we run here in the city of Chanhassen. We’ve got about 180
participants this year. It is down from last year. You may have noticed all the inserts in
your newspaper, your local newspaper for a new dance studio is opening. So certainly
we’ve lost some people to the new studio. It will be interesting to see how many of those
people we actually get back in December, when we have winter registration. I think
we’ll probably get a few of those back, but we’re doing pretty well. 180 participants is a
really good number and we’re happy with that. Also on a brighter note for registration,
I’ve got a bazillion little soccer players out at the rec center. Are you out there? 240 kids
playing soccer every week.
Stolar: It seems like they’re all on the field at the same time too. It’s a blast.
Marek: Yeah, it’s been a real good soccer season for us so we’re.
Stolar: The YMCA staff has been really good this year. I mean it’s been a few years
since my older one went but they seem very, really active in getting the kids active.
Marek: They’re very engaged with the kids and they just rolled out a new, I want to say
their little training session on respect and responsibility.
Stolar: Yeah, the four pillars.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Marek: Yeah.
Stolar: Yeah, it’s very nice.
Marek: So they’re doing a real good job with that part of the program. And preschool
basketball’s coming up and unfortunately we only have room for about 100 kids in that
program so register early. Let’s see. Oh, last but not least, Friday night we had the barn
yard boogie out at the rec center. I missed you all there. But the star of the show was
this little you know 6 pound pot belly pig with black hair. The cutest thing in the whole
wide world, and we had about 300 participants out at the rec center Friday night petting
the animals and dancing and making their craft and snacking and throwing chickens.
Ruegemer: Rubber chickens.
Marek: Rubber chickens. So that was our latest special event and we’ll be helping Corey
prepare for the Halloween party shortly. That’s it.
Stolar: Any questions for Susan? No? I just had one question. I think I left you a voice
mail. Do you still need judges?
Marek: Not yet but I have your note there. I think I’ve got it arranged. But thank you.
Stolar: Okay, great.
PARK AND TRAIL MAINTENANCE REPORT.
Gregory: Good evening. Well, as you can tell another summer’s passed. Our seasonal
help is basically left us or left with pretty much all of the seasonal part of the work out
there. Cutting grass. I do have 4 seniors that stay with us until the end of mowing that
really help us out a lot. They’ve taken over pretty much all of the mowing of all the
parks, all the ballfields and everything. So far they’ve been able to maintain and keep up
with everything in that aspect. The regular staff and that, they’ve been pretty much tied
up with installing play equipment. They’ve been working on, they’ve got 3 different
structures that we’ve had and just an update, the Meadow Green one is complete. That
one is pretty much finished. They’re out there right now. They were working on the
trail. They have to realign the trail. Bring it up to the concrete. Make it accessible and
everything else so that, they’re working on that. The Bandimere one is basically
complete except for the pour in place. Hopefully, if all goes well, that is tentatively
scheduled for next week. To do that. The Lake Ann one, we had some problems with
that through the manufacturer. They had some problems with their slides and the week,
we got our part of it up but the slides do not fit the way they were supposed to, so they’ve
been working with us and trying to get that rearranged and getting it taken care of. And
like I say, hopefully that will be taken care of this week yet. Like I say tentatively
everything is planned for pour in place next week so. Hopefully we can say we can get
them done next week. The, Jerry had his State Regional Softball Tournament again this
year at Lake Ann. I wasn’t able to be there but I think you had a pretty good turnout.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Everything went pretty good on that weekend. The guys like working that one and that
because they’ve got a lot of softball players among the guys so they like to work out there
and that so they enjoyed that. Also this year we’re running about 20 soccer fields that
we’re maintaining and on a weekly basis, and two softball fields. We’re striping and also
still doing a couple of the ballfields we’re striping. I think softball’s over now just about.
Ruegemer: Thursday.
Gregory: Thursday so, but again this year Jerry was organized enough and that was able
to take out another, took out North Lotus Lake so we were able to re-seed that one and
that’s coming along real good so hopefully that thing’s had a quick growing season this
fall and it will be in pretty good shape for next summer when we get started again.
Update on elm disease a little bit. I’ve been going out. I’ve been marking trees on all of
our parks and certainly where they are and everything else and roughly I’m between 40
and 50 trees right now that I’ve got marked in parks. I have not even started on trails yet.
I haven’t gone down trails and anything that’s close to trails and hazardous to trails will
be marked. But the Dutch elm disease is bad and it’s definitely a real problem. So
luckily a lot of these tree are 10-12 inches that we can run a lot of that through the
chipper and that so. But our plans are for, with fall and winter we’ll work on the Dutch
elm disease and start taking them out. That’s pretty much all I have.
Stolar: Okay, any questions?
Scharfenberg: Is the Dutch elm disease trees, I mean you said 10 to 12 inches. Do you
have like chain saws and stuff to do it or do you have to get like a service?
Gregory: We can handle pretty much any size. It’s just that the smaller ones and that we
can run through the wood chippers and we can get rid of the wood chips a lot easier. The
other ones and that, I’ve still got to talk to Jill and figure out what we’ve got to do
because we have to some how they have to get rid of it,. They can’t leave the bark on the
trees, and I’m not exactly sure what Jill and what we’re coming up with on that so, but if
we can run it through the wood chipper than we’re okay. Then the bark comes off. But
like I say, I’ve got to work with Jill and figure out what they want to do with the ones that
are too big to do that. Because we really can’t just take them to a dump or something.
Scharfenberg: So if you walk around and you see a tree that’s been affected by this, I
mean like once a tree gets infected, how long before it starts to show it? I mean might
there be some latent trees that.
Gregory: Oh I’m sure there’s going to be the Dutch elm now that’s not showing the
disease, so we won’t see that until next summer. I mean it’s kind of an ongoing thing and
that. I mean you’ll see them right away in the spring starting and you’ll see them all
summer long and then all of a sudden ones will start to die and I’m sure we’ve got that
now but we can’t really tell which ones they are. I’m sure next year will be another busy
year with Dutch elm disease. And one other quick note, I just, I got bids in. Notified the
contractor we are overlaying a bunch of our trails this year. We had $35,000 in there so
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
we’ve got a lot of trails that will be overlaid. And I don’t have how many miles it is or
whatever it is, but that hopefully will be starting next week.
Hoffman: Just a couple of sections that are being totally reconstructed. There’s one on
Highway 7 and there’s one on Powers Boulevard. These are both in an area of retaining
walls where you’ve seen sloughing of the, settlement of the retaining wall material, and
that sheers the trail so you get these separations. And so those will be taken out and re-
compacted and hopefully the settlement has ran it’s course and then will be a better trail
in the future.
Stolar: Go ahead Tom.
Kelly: Is the Meadow Green Park open.
Gregory: Kids can play on there.
Kelly: Kids can play there?
Gregory: They can play on it. When I was out there yesterday, and there was got to be 8
moms out there with 20 kids. It’s just been.
Murphy: I was out there too.
Gregory: …and you feel bad because we put them up and we’ve got some of these
barricaded off and that but like I say, the poured in place right now is holding us back on
the other ones and that and this one like I say, they got all the wood fiber in last week and
again it’s just the trail has got to be moved over on that one. We’ve got Lake Ann and
we’ve got Bandimere and we’ve got trail issues that we’ve got to move the trails so they
get up to the play structures and that blacktopping should be done at the same time as the
overlaying.
Kelly: With Bandimere too I know you took out that climbing structure. Has a new one
been put in or is it just sealed up?
Hoffman: It’s still on order. I don’t know if it’s going to deliver. Climbing wall instead
of the net.
Kelly: Okay, does that need to go in before it gets poured?
Hoffman: Yes.
Dillon: Do we do anything with respect to the Dutch elm, do we need to do any
replacement of trees of stuff that we take out?
Gregory: At this time we haven’t. The majority of the ones that are being taken are
along the woods. Going into Lake Ann, it’s along the wooded areas. Bandimere, I’ve
14
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
got a lot of them down there again along the wooded areas that are out of the natural park
structure where other trees are planted and that, or along the trails. So far we haven’t
done any. It hasn’t impacted us really being…
Hoffman: They’re not boulevard trees or specimen trees or even ground trees. These are
just trees that area long the wood lines.
Stolar: Any other? Paula?
Atkins: None.
Stolar: Dale has always, I forgot where I was but I heard a compliment again about the
quality of our parks and the grass and stuff so thanks. Okay, thank you.
COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS.
None.
COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS.
Stolar: If anyone wants to ask any questions or talk about the meeting from yesterday,
the joint meeting with the City Council. It was good that we actually had it. I thought an
open dialogue. A lot of good questions. For those of you who didn’t make it, we talked
quite a bit about the dog park. And some questions there. As it relates to that. I guess
I’ll ask my fellow commission members were there. Ann, if you want to start. Some of
your thoughts.
Murphy: Well, there were a lot of questions brought up about liability concerns and a lot
of detail questions that we really didn’t get into with Carver when they were here, so I
think they’re looking for more information from us I guess and we scheduled a work
session.
Hoffman: Staff at Carver County as well.
Murphy: And so we would need Carver County because I don’t think we can answer all
the questions that came up last night but I mean, I think they’re all questions that we had
as well but we just had not gotten to that point yet with Carver so. I guess I’m still
confused about what their answer was exactly. If we’re going to donate that money or
not.
Hoffman: No, we raised more questions than we answered last night. At this stage in the
process, that’s not unusual.
Stolar: And Todd, do you have any thoughts? I took down 3 questions. A solid cost
estimate, which I think we all, maybe the verbiage here doesn’t say it exactly but we all
had that belief that we wanted to know what we’re going to do for the money and make
sure that we’re a part of some of that understanding. Do we need to limit ourselves to
Carver County? Can we look at Hennepin County or elsewhere and then the liability
15
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
issues were the 3 main ones I heard from them on the dog park. Any thoughts on any of
those?
Hoffman: Well I spoke to Lenny today, Lenny Schmitz who was here from Carver
County and then Marty called as well. There’s a group that, well the building believed to
be demolished or it may just be vacated. And so it’s just a large 2 story garage that they
have some maintenance equipment in and you can either adjust the area of the boundary
of the dog parks so it’s not included or you can just leave it in as a part of it. What they
don’t want to see happening is this building becoming a focal point for activity where
there’s both maintenance people coming and going and a bunch of people gathered
around the dogs. So that’s an unanswered question as of yet. And then these other
questions, I just told both Lenny and tomorrow when I talk to Marty I’ll just say you
know, we’re going to have to get together with the City Council. They want to bring this
back to a work session. We can bring some park commissioners into that as well, and
staff will prepare a report. Probably Carver County will prepare a report and we’ll take
that into the council work session. There’s a group that is attending the last, that has
attended the last 3 Carver County Board meetings and requesting that something happen
at Minnewashta Regional Park. As you recall from our meeting, it’s actually quite
different from what staff is proposing. It’s just let us run in this one whole section of the
park like we have been doing to this date, even though it’s against your rules. And so I
have a feeling that the Board is going to try to respond in some fashion to those requests
from these folks that are attending the meetings, and so I’m not quite sure how that’s
going to play into our conversation with Carver County at this time.
Dillon: What are these people advocating?
Hoffman: They want to use the entire wooded area of the park, as you drive into the
entrance off the right hand side where the cross country ski trails are. Many of them use
it today, either on leash or off leash, and they would just like to not have a fenced area at
all. Just say that portion of the park is designated off leash area for dogs and their
owners. And the staff is not supporting that. There’s too many conflicts of users. You
have cross country ski trails in the winter, and I’ve cross, I’ve been skiing there in the
winter when you know here comes the dogs running down the trail and a block behind
them is the owner, and it really doesn’t bother me but there’d be a variety of people that
wouldn’t like that situation. And in the summer as well, when you’re out there walking
with your family and here comes the dogs around the corner. That can be very
intimidating for small children especially.
Murphy: What meeting is that, that they’re having the Carver Board?
Hoffman: Oh Carver County meets every Tuesday morning I believe it is, and the Carver
County Board, it’s the Board of Directors.
Murphy: Is it open to anybody?
Hoffman: Oh sure. Just like all public meetings. They meet Tuesday mornings.
16
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Stolar: I read the article that they were talking, they really just want a no leash
opportunity in Minnewashta like they mentioned to us, for a section of it be. The only
other question I had, it seemed that this did cause a lot more questions than answers. Do
we, and I’ll start with you Todd. Do you think it would be beneficial for us to have just a
couple of our people working with you from the commission to look more detailed into
those answers or are you fine just, you’ll get the answers? Because one of them was
limiting to Carver County and that might be a little bit more of looking at what are the
other pros and cons of other location alternatives.
Hoffman: Sure, if there’s a couple commissioners who’d want to go ahead and volunteer,
I’ll work with them and we’ll come up with some of those.
Stolar: I guess I would ask the commission if that’s something you think is worth while.
Had a lot of discussion about this item.
Scharfenberg: Well I think it’s, I mean there’s no harm in asking the questions. I mean
that would be prudent. I think that we should do that. But at the end of the day I mean, I
find it hard to be a better deal. I mean I don’t know why, I don’t have any empirical
evidence to support that but it just seems like you know what Carver County is proposing
is so close. Reasonable, and if $40,000 is the right number I guess, on that assumption.
If, and the new ongoing fees associated with that, I mean yeah sure. We should look
around but is there going to be a, how much time and effort and other stuff do we want to
do when we live here in Chanhassen. This is right inside our borders. I mean the other
ones probably aren’t going to be.
Stolar: And I think you’re hitting the point that I’d like the, you know if we had a couple
of people looking at it and saying, you know here are the other alternatives. This is our
best deal. It doesn’t mean the City Council necessarily will support it still but at least
we’ve done due diligence for lack of a better. So I guess we would either need a motion
to set up a committee or you can just e-mail Todd if you’re interested.
Hoffman: Or a couple volunteers.
Stolar: A couple volunteers right now.
Spizale: I’ll volunteer.
Stolar: It doesn’t have to be limited to 2. If 3 people want to work on it but I just think,
you know just again like we talked about in one of the first meetings. Just kind of
framing out the question like we have here, and then taking into account the input, which
is what we want out of these joint meetings with the City Council. We want to know
their input. What’s it going to take to get them to, not necessarily agree with us but to
understand the issue from a perspective that they can make a decision. What are the
things they need to know to help, and that’s what I think our kind of charter of this
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
committee is to work with Todd and the Carver County to figure out what are those
answers. Great.
Dillon: Todd, did Marty or Lenny give you an indication today in talking to them, what
the response has been from the other cities?
Hoffman: They’ve been around to a number of cities, and in fact they were going to
Shorewood again I believe today for the second time. They’re all waiting to see what’s
going to happen in Chanhassen because if the city of Chanhassen is not on board with a
facility that’s within their own borders, then they’re going to be less interested. They’re
all aware that Chanhassen is considering pledging the $20,000 of the 40 and if that
occurs, then Carver County believes that some of these other folks will come on line.
Probably closer in the area of a $5,000 contribution if you’re a city of Excelsior or
Shorewood, Victoria. Those kind of communities.
Stolar: And how much do you think we’d save if they do adjust it, like we talked about
it’s a pretty big park. If they move it a little bit, even if it’s a little smaller and don’t have
to include the cost of that facility being torn down.
Hoffman: Yeah I wouldn’t know at this time, but we’ll find out.
Stolar: That’d be one of the, I think one of the other things I sensed was is they were
looking what are some options? Is it automatically in getting to some solid cost estimate?
Almost a break down of what are the different components of that cost to what are the
alternatives.
Dillon: Well and I got the impression too that the council would like to know eventually
what the other cities are going to put up as part of this and I think when you go back,
when we finally do go back to them, we’re going to have to have numbers from those
other cities, at least before I think they commit to a number.
Stolar: It’s a vicious circle but you’re right. I mean you are right, and I also think we
need to think about, is there a percentage aspect of it too. Because we talked about, if it
turns out that no one else does it and they decide okay, they’re just going to make it with
our $20,000, that wasn’t what we intended. We intended to contribute half to that
budget, not to exceed $20,000.
Hoffman: Yeah, please recognize they may abandon this $40,000 plan altogether. If the
Board and staff may decide we’re just going to enact a no leash regulation on a certain
portion of the park. You know there’s a number of ways to do this. As I mentioned last
night, the City of Minnetonka has off leash areas in all of their natural resource park
areas, and so if you would consider the Chanhassen Nature Preserve or Bluff Creek
Preserve, any of our nature areas, they allow dogs off leashes as long as they’re within
voice control of their owner. And Chanhassen can consider that as well. Carver County,
Lake Minnewashta, they could designate a certain area and say, this area of the park, it’s
a fairly large park, is off leash as long as your dog is in voice control, and then people, as
18
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
long as it’s posted to other patrons of the park and have the option of whether or not they
want to use that area of the park or not, or if they want to stay away from it. I think
Carver County is opened up a can of worms here. It started to squiggle a lot more than
they ever anticipated and I believe they’re going to kind of retrench and look at a variety
of options regarding off leash dog areas.
Dillon: How long do you think that whole process might take?
Hoffman: That could take years.
Dillon: But in the meantime, what do we do? I mean if we’re proposing this dog park
and they don’t know, I mean I don’t necessarily want to say here’s $20,000 and then you
know within a couple years they say we’re going to go off leash.
Hoffman: We’re going to wrap them right back into the conversation immediately here
so when we get together with the council again, which probably will be in a few months
here, we’ll have staff here from Carver County and we’ll bring in our folks that were
working on the park commission and sit around and have a work session with the council
to talk about those options.
Stolar: And I think that should be our target that by the next working session, you know
probably what in January time frame? Early in the next year we should talk about, have a
recommendation and options. I think they wanted both. Not just a recommendation but
they wanted the different options and that would include what if Carver doesn’t go into
this, do we have other thoughts such as the approach Minnetonka’s taken or setting a
place. I know we don’t have many options there.
Hoffman: And these things, these public debates take on a life of their own. The Carver
County meetings, we don’t…kind of take on a life of their own and can really take off in
any one direction… The recommendations and ideas come from all angles from the
Board of Commissioners, from the council, from the citizens and staff and what comes,
it’s kind of like a meat grinder, sausage grinder. What comes out at the end is going to
look totally different than what goes on within the process so.
Stolar: Other points from the meeting that anyone wants to discuss. From the joint
session.
Atkins: I hope that they’ll give the farmers market another chance.
Stolar: Oh that’s right.
Atkins: Well Bob was awfully disappointed in the results. I think it was not so bad for
the first year.
Stolar: It seemed like there was a little bit of split opinion of the you know let’s give it
some time to get going.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Hoffman: I chatted with those folks all year long. Talking about vicious cycle. That’s
another one right there. If they don’t get any more vendors, they’ve got to pick up the
tempo a little bit I think at one point and so I think with that, but it’s all, to try to find
some more vendors for the market. We drove by the Minneapolis one today. They go 7
days a week Dale?
Gregory: Yeah. It’s a big one.
Hoffman: Yeah, it’s a big one. So it’d be great for the community. They obviously
wanted us to look at our existing programs and put some measurements in there so if the
commissioners have comments in that area, where you want to start. We consistently
look at programs on a seasonal basis. So if you want to take a little more in depth look,
please let us know which ones you think. We all have an opinion on well this one’s
growing and this one’s not growing and so if you want to take a more in depth look at a
particular program or service area, please let us know. I think if you didn’t recognize it
already, you may have recognized it last night. The current council is very concerned
about maintaining service levels but they also want the services that we’re providing to
be, providing a service. When you’re making that investment they want a return on that
investment. And so they want to look at those. They’ve also been ratcheting back the
certain service levels in some areas. One example is the goose removal program that is
not, it did not occur this year. If you want to say well, if we don’t spend the money, you
know what is the opinion of our citizenry going to be and we took just a couple of calls
this year and so I think this council will say well a couple of calls versus the $4,000 in
contractual fees, not a bad trade off and so they’re going to continue to challenge staff
and I think the commissions as well to take a look at those service levels and say are there
things that we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing. And as a staff we do that all the time.
It’s one of the things we talk about consistently. What shouldn’t we be doing so you
don’t invest, not only cash resources but staff and energy and commission time on those
things so we can make the other programs even better.
Stolar: And I think definitely, I speak for myself but commissioners with respect that use
us as sounding boards, like I said last night. I mean I think that’s one of the things we
can provide as a service to you guys is if you have things you’re thinking about or you’re
not sure what it would mean, feel free to use us as a sounding board and I think when we
put it on the agenda, then people in the community can comment on it and it would help
out. Because that’s one of the points they made, right? Not only informally, or not only
formally talking through this meeting but informally so as you bring it to us we can try
and do that. I also, I liked the point they made about getting involved with, a couple
questions on the survey. We’ve got to think through those and again use us as a sounding
board for some of that. I’m not sure, as far as how deep you want us to go with that, but
things like the report that you just produced for the Lake Ann concessions and such.
Those are things that are helpful at least to me as you ask us to give those opinions.
Those things. Just like we did with the ice rinks, those sort of items.
20
Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Scharfenberg: I’d agree. You know we need like data to, there’s numbers like in Susan’s
reports she has numbers of people that have participated and things and Jerry’s got a lot
of data is in him. So I mean those help me kind of get a feel for how big a, how many
people are taking advantage, like 330 some people at the race. Well that’s a lot. You
know 180 people dancing. I mean those to me are not insignificant numbers of people in
the community that are using something that we offer. But then there’s also, I mean I
don’t know how the sporting, I don’t know. I mean we just, we don’t give visibility to all
that stuff so maybe instead of bringing a whole bunch of numbers and just inundating us
with stuff, maybe we just pick like a section for the next meeting or two and kind of send
out and we can just kind of look at it and start to see if we feel those are you know worth
while programs being utilized enough and stuff we want to continue on with because you
know just asking our neighbors isn’t going to do it. You know just the antidotal evidence
I don’t think is sufficient. In my opinion.
Kelly: I thought what we saw for the skate parks a couple years ago, that was broken
down by each park and the usage by day. I thought that was great because that allowed
us to come to conclusions, but I think a particular program to measure the next year how
each of those parks can be used then…but at least the data I thought that was presented
for that was great because it gave us a really good idea what parks were popular. What
parks weren’t.
Stolar: Skating rinks. And the other one I couldn’t remember yesterday was, we also
took out a couple of playgrounds right?
Hoffman: We’ve taken out playground at Bandimere Heights.
Stolar: And so, as we said yesterday, I mean compliment you guys because you’re
willing to make those choices and bring them to us and I think that’s the right way to do.
If we think it’s just not the right service and replacing the, using the Bandimere Heights.
Replacing it wouldn’t increase usage for any noticeable amount, then let’s just do, you
know get rid of the one that’s not as good and just leave it. So I think their message was
clear to us. And I think that we can help there. I also don’t want this to be too great of a
burden but even if you think about, you know even just kind of, as you do now with the
programs, maybe just an annual thought process of you know staff has gotten together.
Here are things we think we would be interested in enhancing. Here are the things we
think probably don’t belong. Again as you need. I don’t want to make that a requirement
that you bring it but as you need, that might be a way to help us think through it.
Hoffman: Some of the things Kevin are saying are right on. You need, and Councilman
Ayotte, you need data in certain situations when you’re really taking a look at it but you
can’t spend your entire time assembling data so some of the stuff is antidotal, as Kevin
said. When we take a field trip on a summer night and you see with your own eyes
what’s going on in those parks, you can tell yeah, these are good things. These parks are
not empty. They’re active. There are things going on and so you kind of have to start to
say okay, well which ones do we think are on the upswing and then the ones that you
want to take a little bit closer look at, we can certainly take that time.
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
Stolar: Yeah, I would use some judgment. I mean certainly we don’t want to catch data
on everything that’s just going along fine every year. It’s the same thing. Little bit of
growth, but those things that are…that you want to hear and those things that are
struggling and I use Susan’s example with the daycare. That was struggling. So, would
the new system help too with her new registration system?
Hoffman: Oh yeah.
Stolar: That should help produce the data pretty easily.
Ruegemer: Yeah, we just started using that late spring, early summer but.
Stolar: So in a couple years there will be a more regular.
Ruegemer: You bet it will. And we certainly have numbers through evaluations, that
sort of thing for programs. We get that. We’ll have our recware pro system still
available to us to check numbers from our past programs so.
Stolar: Good. Any other questions?
Scharfenberg: Well you know I was there last night and I heard Brian ask for that. Type
of feedback from this group and what’s working and what’s not, but I guess what is the
role that you guys play and that we should play in terms of kind of coming up with like
more strategic plan and vision for the parks and rec? I mean is that, where does that
responsibility lie and how can we help? I don’t want to speak for myself here, how can
we help that? I mean how can we be a part of that, or what’s the process I guess.
Hoffman: Alright. The commission is an advisory body to the City Council. Staff,
we’re here representing the city manager on behalf of the council to support this group.
And so there’s not as much cause link as you would believe between this staff and your
commissioners, this body, in strategic planning. Your link for that is right to the council
and I think what you heard the council say last night is they want you to participate in
that process as part of the comprehensive plan. Comprehensive plan update. Our charge
is to effectuate and administer and bring to life parks and rec per the comprehensive plan.
Our charge, they’re the lead agency for the city. They’re go to person is the city manager
who then instructs, gives instructions to the staff… So that’s what this current council,
that’s what they’re telling us is how they want to operate and that’s basically how our
government structure is set up so. Commissions are a great idea. I’ve lived through a
variety of commissions and you make great things happen, but you’ve got to take that
through the City Council as a conduit to make it happen. In 1993-94, ’93 a commission
was feeling frustrated in land acquisition. They thought we were falling behind. They
made a recommendation in about ’94 to come up with a referendum, maybe it was ’95.
In that referendum, and council agreed to it at that time. The referendum didn’t happen
until 1997. It was like a 4 year process to make that very significant moment in our
history occur. And so if you have great ideas, you’ve got to send them on up and we’ll
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
do that on your behalf through the city manager. Send that on up to the council and they
give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down so. Don’t at all feel stifled by the fact that the
council wants you to kind of manage what we’ve got going on today. If you think there’s
a wonderful opportunity, they absolutely want to hear that as well, and that’s more of a
strategic area. There are certain things strategically if you don’t attack at certain times,
the opportunity’s lost and there’s, we’ve met a number of those watersheds in our
community as we’ve continued to develop. We’ve just probably just passed another one
with the building of Lifetime Fitness. That watershed would be there. I don’t believe
this city will build a Chaska community center, or Waconia community center. That
opportunity has come and gone and we’re moving on in a different direction and so all of
us, for the benefit of the community, we need to make sure that we recognize those.
Stand up to those ideals and let your opinion be known and then see where it goes from
there. Strategically that’s how you make things happen. You make that
recommendation. We carry, staff carries it forward. As a group we don’t sit down and
do strategic planning on behalf of the City Council or the city manager.
Scharfenberg: That was helpful.
Stolar: Just a couple of things. Todd, you sent this out to me being our part of the
comprehensive plan. I think it’d be beneficial for everybody to see that. And then
there’s this thing called the 2020 Land Use Plan. Is that also available electronically? I
think it provided me with good background. I found a lot’s been done. A lot’s been
thought through. I’m glad they’re updating this because actually some of the park stuff
here is a little bit outdated. That they have listed here. You know from, when was this?
’97 I believe.
Hoffman: Yep. ’97-98.
Stolar: And it’s not been updated since then. It’s every 10 years they update it?
Roughly. Okay. So this was very helpful also. I think as Todd said, you know as we
come up with ideas we should bring them forward. I still, although we aren’t necessarily
in the strategy or visioning role, as they talked about yesterday, that doesn’t mean we
can’t have our own guidelines for how we view things. For those of you who are new I
mentioned to Todd when we used to do capital planning in Eden Prairie when I was on
that board, Park and Rec commission, we had 5 outlines of priorities for how we decided
what projects come first, with safety being number one. And then so various, those type
of things we can easily do with staff, and we kind of do it anyway informally. But I think
as we come up with ideas and we just like this dog park, if we think it’s warranting
discussion, I’ve not seen that the City Council is against our bringing it up. I think
they’re in favor of it. They’ll just give us a bunch of questions, which is absolutely the
right thing to do to help them make their decisions. And I think as we work with them,
it’s been the playgrounds is great you know. We need to do something. Can you help
us? Sure. Here’s how we’ll help. So, but I do think we should continue to try to be
creative in visioning in where we want to go within the guidelines of what the City
Council has given us and city staff has given us in the reality of the budget situation. The
reality of staff’s time. All those things should guide us in how we approach that. Does
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that sound accurate? Fun meeting. Any other points? Any other commission member
discussion?
Murphy: Just a quick question. How have parks and rec commissions handled those
types of reviewing all the programs that we’re doing now in the past? Have they divided
those up amongst the commission or when the City Council says it’s kind of our role to
review what’s ongoing.
Hoffman: Just as you see it today, when we bring these programs to you. And then it’s
really the composition and just particular interest of the commission on how they get
involved in those. How in depth they want to get involved in those program reviews.
And if there’s something that we’re not taking a look at, if somebody has an interest in
that area, they bring it up. We bring in maintenance, rec center, senior center. Senior
center twice a year. The others, all of our other functions 4 times a year so we’re trying
to bring you all of the different factions of parks and recreation. Make sure we have a
conversation about those areas and it’s really helped the communication top to bottom.
This council is meeting more with their commissioners than ever before in the history of
Chanhassen, and so that’s a great communication tool for our community. It just helps
keep things going. They’re talking a lot, these council’s talking a lot about trail
maintenance. They understand that we have $11 million dollars in trails in our
community and those trails wear out and if you start to take a look at the depreciation of
that $11 million dollars, it takes a significant amount of investment on an annual basis to
keep that infrastructure up. They’re recognizing that and so they’re starting to have those
conversations with staff and with commissions. These playgrounds that we’re replacing,
they were strung out for years to get those 10 wood playgrounds replaced and now we
think we have it down to 2 years that they’ve replaced the remaining ones this year. The
council wants to accelerate those replacements for safety reasons. So this council has
been very responsive. They also want to challenge us. You know they’ve challenged us
as a staff the past few years to reduce some of our expenditures and then they say alright,
not only do that but take a look at what you’re spending to date, just like we talked about
earlier, and could it be invested somewhere else in an even more effective manner for our
community to receive their services. And that’s why the conversation amongst
commissioners and the community is important. And if the people like what we’ve got
going on, I’ve seen tremendous things happen both from the commission standpoint over
the years, and from the council as well and so when you banter those ideas back and
forth, it’s just a wonderful thing. The referendum before the ’97 referendum, the
commission set it up for the council, and they said to council, they were ready to approve
the language which the commission had worked so hard on coming in, establishing this
language for a referendum. And there was a council member who said, who had a lot of
history in parks and recreation and said but hadn’t we talked about, didn’t the last
community survey say the citizens wanted to see more land set aside in southern
Chanhassen for parks. That’s nowhere on here, and just like that another council member
said yeah. I think we need to make that happen. Alright, let’s add it onto the ballot and
so hey, they had the attorney write it down on the ballot. Well what’s the number? Well,
how much do we need to spend and they said, $300,000. And so they, in 2 minutes put it
on the ballot. Shall the City of Chanhassen acquire land in southern Chanhassen to the
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Park and Rec Meeting – September 28, 2004
amount of $300,000. And it went on the ballot and it passed by 4 votes and for that one
thing to happen and that 4 vote victory, Bandimere Park was acquired. And so it just
takes little things like that in our history to make these things happen. Lake Ann has the
same story with Al Klingelhutz and Bandimere Park also with Mr. Klingelhutz. He’s the
one who cut that deal for us. Lake Ann Park, Al Klingelhutz, former mayor, former
planning commissioner. That was the only, the person who had that land, that was the
only person she would talk to. The only person I’ll talk to was Al so send him out here
and…Lake Ann happen. So it takes individuals to make great things happen and all of
you have the capacity to do that so, keep those ideas coming.
Stolar: Okay.
ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET.
Hoffman: The gentleman who has adopted the bluebird houses at Lake Ann. Noticed
that. And he’s modified our layout quite a bit. We changed it on his behalf so he can
continue to adopt and monitor those blue bird houses. Lot of great picnic feedback.
Spizale: Jerry was extremely helpful… Always the same hand writing too.
Stolar: So one of the things that we’ll see later in the fall is, like we were talking about
data report on the shelter usage…
Kelly: But you don’t think the increase in fees really reduced the demand for the
shelters.
Ruegemer: It seemed to be, you know we didn’t have a whole lot of the non-resident
business at the highest amount at $305. We don’t have a whole lot of those type of
situations. Some, but a lot of people decided to go Monday through Thursday versus the
Friday, Saturday, Sunday rates. Save a little bit of money.
Stolar: And that didn’t cause any capacity problems like un-used times on Friday,
Saturday, Sunday. So I mean which was basically some of our objectives, right. You
pushed somebody to some of the open times because we had a back log in the other
times.
Hoffman: I think we get this new playground out at Lake Susan, there will be some
increase in usage as well. People are really starting to hang out at those playgrounds at
Lake Ann…
Stolar: Alright, anything else? If not, then a motion for adjournment.
Kelly moved, Atkins seconded to adjourn the Park and Recreation Commission
meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director Prepared by Nann Opheim
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