PRC 2005 09 27
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREATION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
SEPTEMBER 27, 2005
Chairman Stolar called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m..
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Glenn Stolar, Jack Spizale, Tom Kelly, Paula Atkins, Ann Murphy,
Steve Scharfenberg and Kevin Dillon
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation
Superintendent; Dale Gregory, Park Superintendent; and Tom Knowles, Recreation Center
Manager
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Lori Strand 8557 Chanhassen Hills So.
Annette Stock-Lind 8104 Dakota Lane
Theo Kelderman 8620 Chanhassen Hills Drive
Daniel Brechko 8038 Dakota Lane
Traci Yavas 8102 Dakota Lane
Michelle Laurent 8115 Erie Circle
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
The agenda was approved as amended to include the reading of a
letter from Marty Walsh, Carver County Park Director regarding item 3, an Update from Carver
County Parks concerning off leash dog area proposal at Lake Minnewashta Regional Park.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
None.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
Stolar: We have with us Tony Schiller who is the, is it the Director of the Miracles of Mitch
Triathlon?
Tony Schiller: I guess so.
Stolar: Executive Director I believe.
Tony Schiller: No, we don’t need executive.
Stolar: We’ll have Mr. Schiller present to us and thank you for coming and talking to us about
this event.
Tony Schiller: Yeah. I brought along some slides and it might be kind of fun to just view those
if anybody’s interested while we visit a little bit and I’d be happy to just make this very informal.
I’ve changed the, of course this was the second year. When we first came to all of you, I believe
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
it was February of last year and so in the two years we’ve kind of carried the idea of what this
was to fruition. I think we’ve maxed out Lake Ann Park. The idea now is if we’re going to
grow, it’s going to be to more sites rather than to more volume or more space at Lake Ann. I’m
not sure of the exact numbers that we had in the park but we were pretty full. I think really it
cuts it out of the park. We ended up with 700 kids racing and a, this is Jordan who happens to be
the number one fundraiser for the second year in the row. Jordan raised over $5,000 and so some
of these are duplicate pictures I just threw in the piece but anyway. At this point I haven’t seen
the official numbers. We are over $100,000 net though to the foundation so it’s by far the
foundation’s biggest fund raiser. I think we netted more foundation in this year’s race than they
had netted in their whole existence so with everything combined, so now the challenge is to get
the whole gang to appreciate the little jewel that they had in terms of their energies and efforts
because they make a lot of energy, or put out a lot of energy and effort to other things. This has
been just amazing in terms of what we’ve accomplished. The football team of course is involved
and tons and tons of volunteers. I think we had over, well over 300 volunteers counting the
football team so we had Minnetonka and also the Mayor Lutheran football team was there and
they were helping the kids get started on the bike, which was really helpful because they had to
climb uphill to get started. Another one that was involved, Cargill brought over 100 people to
work and they were amazing, plus they were a major contributor of cash, so everything that
played out, I think it really carried out to our total vision. Now the question is really what do we
make of this thing? What do we do with it? And so right now I think the sky’s the limit
although we’ve also tacked out what can be achieved with 100% volunteers so I think there’s a
very good possibility that we could I think reduce the effort that was put out this year. Have one
event and probably come close to the same quality and the same volume of people involved.
Same revenues and all that with slightly reduced effort and maybe that can be achieved with all
volunteers to grow at this point in additional sites and, or even make this one significantly bigger
to tie up all the loose ends. I think we’re going to have to look at some alternative scenarios for,
especially for your’s truly. I figured I put in oh, at least half a year dedicated to 100% time on
this and I want to stay married. You have to look at a way to make a living during that period of
time so, but it’s been a labor of love and we accomplished something pretty neat. And for those
of you who were, you know were not involved in the race, the theme is kids race for kids who
can’t. I think we struck gold with that and there’s some kind of magic having all the kids and
realizing they’re doing something for people other than themselves and kids that are less
fortunate. The cancer kids and it just seems to be this energized day that I’ve never been
involved with anything quite like it in terms of feel good. I’ve been to events all over the world
and over 600 competitions and I’ve never been associated with anything where the people are
just so glad they were there and so I was in those people that were trying to leave the park early,
and I think maybe one resident along the way. I did by the way stop over to see Mike on
Wednesday before the race and visited with him for a while and let him know what was up and
what the timeframe was and I assured him that I fully understood if it was necessary for him to
leave during that time or come and go. But encouraged him if at all possible to leave beforehand
or return afterwards and my understanding is both he and his wife took off right in the middle of
it and came back right in the middle of it so, and were apparently bothered that we were there,
which I’m not really sure what to do if that you know scenario plays out again. I guess but that
seems to be the only I guess resident on the course that seems to be bothered, had to go and so
we tried to cover that base as well. Tried to think if there’s, the only other thing is and I think
Todd felt this pretty clearly too is that we’re just going to make it really, really clear in the future
2
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
that anyone who’s entering the park with their vehicle before the race, that they know they can’t
leave until the race is over because it turned out to be probably about 3 dozen or so vehicles
trying to get out right away, which is a little mind boggling to me because these same people I’m
sure spent hours and hours and hours at youth events all the time but for some reason they had to
leave this one very early in the process so, which we just would not let them leave. Some of
them were ornery about it but everyone’s pretty cooperative, so that’s a challenge that Lake Ann
Park is, the road in and the road out is the raceway so, if you’re at Nokomis, if you have people
walking by, they’re getting in their cars and drive away but here if they’re inside the park, we
need them to stay there so we just need to do a little better job of I think communicating that so.
Those are the big, I guess the big ah ah’s. Other than that I suppose one other big ah ah would be
that on Friday it is a huge set up date and it worked out fine. We would do some things
differently but we were there until about 2:00-3:00 in the morning setting up and I think we’d
request to probably get access to the park pretty much and organized or rented the event say from
noon on Friday because it really is about a 8 hour project with a big team to get set up, so
whereas, and again it wasn’t a problem. There was other events going on. We, I think everyone
cooperated and, but I think it’s a nuisance for them to have all us come marching in on a
company picnic and so I think, just thinking ahead, that might be something we would request is
a noon on kind of reservation for us for set up since it’s such a big event. That’s about it. I had
just overview. Thank you.
Stolar: Thanks. I know Tom’s kid, and I don’t know if anyone else’s, and my kid both
participated in this again. Second year in a row for both of them and we also got a friend who
decided to join in too who lives in Plymouth and they loved it. They just, they loved it. So it
was a great event again. It’d be great to have multiple sites so that it can grow.
Tony Schiller: Well I think the logic there is, is that I think that this site is perfect for about
maybe 75 or 80% of what we had. I think we can manage that. Car traffic. Flow. Everything
would be a little bit, the size of the transition area I think would work out really well. And we’d
be turned away…we’re going to fill up fast so we’d be turning away a lot of kids. The idea
would be to have two more or maybe one more and again looking at other sites right now and
then I think our natural place of, I guess our perfect number would be probably about 500 to 600
kids and I think that’s what we’d get without much effort and a lot of the kids that are doing this,
coming from a long ways off are going to do that at ones that are closer to home.
Stolar: Yeah, I think 500 or 600 would be about right. Or maybe, I don’t know, this doesn’t
seem as easy to do or, spreading it over a couple days because I know one thing some of the
older kids had to wait around a long time before they could start but you know those are little
things as you grow. It’s growing pains.
Tony Schiller: One of the things that I’m considering is having the older kids go first and the
down side or the challenge with that is, that it would put more kids on the course at the same
time. I think it would create much more of an exciting race so the big issue there is safety so,
because they’re doing two laps. The other kids are doing one and so then they’re all merging
and finishing at the same time. But if we can do it and create a safe roadway, that would really
enhance I think the flow of the day. Shorten the amount of time we’re racing. Have everybody
finishing together with big crowds.
3
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Yeah, I think that would help for the older kids because it was kind of diminished for the
older kids. They didn’t have as many people cheering them on.
Tony Schiller: There’s no doubt.
Stolar: Actually I also noted, I think it was the Chaska Dance Team had a whole crew of people
participating.
Tony Schiller: Yes they did.
Stolar: That was really nice of them because they’re, I saw them helping a lot of the little kids
before hand and that was a nice thing with the football team so I think that that was great that
those groups get involved.
Kelly: What kind of breakdown did you get between 7-10 and 11 and 14? I looks like it’s
almost 2 or 3, 3 to 1.
Tony Schiller: It’s really not.
Kelly: Is it closest?
Tony Schiller: Well 7 to 10 is only four groups and then 11 to 17 ends up being more ages. But
I would say…so we were pretty impressed with the distribution. The number one group is 12.
Huge numbers in the 12 year olds, and then we got really small 11’s. Big 10’s. Really small 9’s.
Big 8’s and 7’s, so for some reason the 9’s and 11’s, you know the odd numbers didn’t show up.
Stolar: Well next year you’ll have a lot of 9’s because all the 8’s will be doing it again.
Tony Schiller: Something that’s really interesting is, from a fundraising standpoint, is that we
th
reached, what was it? We reached 500 kids by, I think it was by July 20 or whatever it was.
And those 500 kids raised 90% of the money. So the kids that, the additional 200 plus kids that
came in, actually it should be 90 plus. It’s like 97% so the additional 200 plus kids almost raised
nothing, so it’s almost, it’s kind of interesting with the ones that get involved early are the ones
that are fully involved. The ones that come in at the last minute, they’re usually the ones it
seemed like, they have the most complaints about this or about that and they weren’t really
involved in it for the same reason and the spirit of it a little more oriented to it as a race, which is
fine too. So that was kind of interesting, the statistical scenario. So I think fundraising, if you’re
going to get kids involved in fundraising, get them involved early, early in the game versus late
in the game because they’ll raise more money.
Stolar: Actually my son is interested in trying to be the number one fund raiser so he’s going to
put it in our holiday letter asking people for money this Christmas already for.
Tony Schiller: Well we’re going to have some things lined up a little earlier. I guess I should, a
natural transition here would be to say that it’s, I think it’s our intention to come back and do it
4
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
again. I don’t know if we need to go through a formal process at this point to get those
approvals. If we’re starting that now or.
Stolar: And you have the date already, I saw it in the web site.
th
Tony Schiller: Yes, the 19. We’re doing to make it traditional. Use the third Saturday of
August. And fortunately for the park, once again it’s…much quieter time at the beach.
Stolar: Other questions? Comments?
Kelly: I thought the race was great but I also thought that the packet pick-up on Friday was
really well organized. I mean I didn’t know you guys were there until 2:00 setting things up but
from an outsider’s view, I mean it was really, you really had a nice process of people getting
their numbers and everything on Friday. I thought that was a great.
Tony Schiller: Well it’s a great team and they go crazy with it. That’s another thing that we, I
think we would learn. We’d probably have the registration at the very top hill as you come over.
Form a transition. One of the things we have is we try to set up transition and we have all those
people and so some of the…and I think we have all those people parked up above so then we
could have that area to really start setting up and keep them out. Shorten the timeframe
somehow. Because we had a number of cars, everyone came and dumped into those lower
parking lot to register and there was a burden. We couldn’t set anything up until they all left so
it was one of those oversights. How do you set up with everybody parking there so, but I’ll keep
learning I guess.
Stolar: I also, I don’t know if you have any feedback. The practice sessions that you had. I
thought that those were good. I did hear for the swimming one, the lifeguards were caught off
guard a little bit. They didn’t know about that. At least they were saying that. I could hear them
talking about it, because they didn’t realize you were going to have so many people at the beach,
but I thought that they were good for the kids because it helped, at least for the friend of our’s
that had never done it before, he felt more comfortable than the day of the race and it made it a
lot smoother for him.
Tony Schiller: All the kids seemed to enjoy those, and the swim one was just, we just weren’t
prepared for the numbers. Who knew 125 kids wanted to practice, and that was my most I guess
touching surprise of the whole thing is the number that were just fully involved and they came
each week. But you’re, you know tremendous feedback about do that again and it’s true, getting
them out there…pretty neat. And then I guess as far as that goes, we quickly as you remember,
we quickly organized there. Our bus people were pretty amazing and it was very safe. The
lifeguards were, were caught off guard, just like most. They didn’t even know, it’s a learning
lesson for me too. That they didn’t even know that there was a race coming up when I talked to
them that night. They said we’re miracle kids and they said what’s miracle kids? So I guess we
need to probably have some kind of a better communication with that aspect of it.
Stolar: But I thought the practices were a great idea though because there was a lot of people
there for those.
5
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Tony Schiller: Yeah. Yeah, well it answered a lot of questions, so I don’t know… I also have
some posters if anyone wants to take a poster home. So it’s kind of fun.
Stolar: Well thank you for giving us a great event.
Tony Schiller: For the record, at this point is there a follow-up process we need to begin to, you
know to I guess get approval going again or are we basically?
Hoffman: We’ll sit down and go through a public gathering permit so, put the date on.
Tony Schiller: So, do I need to do something myself or is that kind of in the works?
Hoffman: We just need to talk and get it started.
Tony Schiller: Okay.
Stolar: From a commission standpoint we’d just love to hear from you, you know before the
race and promote it and I think it’s been a great event for the city and I think great event for the
park. Like you say, a lot of people who have never seen that park came out there and saw it and
thought it was great. So thank you Tony. Appreciate it. Are there any other visitor
presentations from members of the audience?
Michelle Laurent: I think we all represent the same issue. My name is Michelle Laurent and I’m
from, I live on Erie Circle next to the Rice Marsh Lake Park and we’re just here with regard to a
request for redoing the skating rink at that park in the winter. I know that they were stopped due
to budget several years ago and the demographics of our neighborhood have changed. We’ve
got lots of little kids that would like to use the ice skating rink and when we had it, it was used
all the time. So that and also the fact that our school now finishes an hour earlier so they have
more, they can actually play in the daylight now. They’ll be home around 3:00 so we’ve got a
list of interested families that have signed a list that just says, you know we’ve got children that
are of the age that would like to skate and we’re really interested in utilizing our park all year
round. So thanks.
Stolar: Thank you. If you don’t mind staying there. I just want to ask if anyone has any
questions. Michelle and I, as well as other members of the neighborhood have talked about this
and I asked that they come and talk to the commission. We also received a note, as you guys can
see in your packet from Chanhassen Hills. It seems that the playground structures brought out
neighborhood interests in their parks more recognizable interest that they want to look at this.
Todd, when are we going to be talking about the skating rink season? In our October meeting?
Ruegemer: Well typically we had discussed that in the August meeting in the past. A motion
was made last year that we would revisit the addition of rinks only as requested and needed.
You know August kind of came and went and there wasn’t any request so therefore it was not
put on the agenda for that so.
6
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Okay. So in relation to this, would any member of the commission, and I don’t mean to
put you on the spot. Do you think we should discuss it in October or is it more appropriate to
talk about it now and put it on the agenda?
Ruegemer: Well certainly it’d be timelier to do it at this meeting so we could get information
into the city newsletter.
Stolar: Okay. What I’d like to do then, if there’s no objection is why don’t we put this under
new business. 2., or 2A or however you want to number it, and we’ll talk about it. I’m not, just
to caution you on it. There’s a lot more probably that has to go into this that the staff will have
to prepare for it but at least we can bring it up and then if we have to, follow up on the following,
on the October meeting. Because I know Dale you might have to look into some things also.
Not to put you on the spot but I did ask that they come in. I think this is something, we did say
we’d bring it up if the neighborhoods asked us to. Okay, thank you. So if you want to stick
around, it won’t be very long.
Michelle Laurent: Okay. Do you want my list of people?
Stolar: You can give it to Todd.
Audience: …like to talk?
Stolar: Come on, it’s open.
Lori Strand: I’m just taking, my name is Lori Strand and I live by the Chanhassen Hills Park.
We just moved here last year and it was, we were disappointed. Someone said there’s an ice rink
at the Chanhassen Hills Park and we found out later that that had been changed. The one thing I
was surprised at in the e-mail from Martha Newell was the cost to flood the rink, even without
the warming house and I just wonder how that breaks down. The $3,000 to $5,000. If that’s
accurate.
Hoffman: Labor. They flood it on a daily basis.
Lori Strand: Oh on a daily basis, okay. And I know, my husband and I it would be okay, we live
very close so we wouldn’t need the warming house part if that helps at all. We just would be
very excited. We have two little boys that would like to skate nearby there so that’s it.
Stolar: Anyone else?
Dan Brechko: Hi. My name’s Dan Brechko. I also live in the Chanhassen Estates
neighborhood. I’m new to the area. I’ve been here about a year and a half. Moved up here from
South Carolina. I grew up in New York. Experienced winters as a kid growing up. We always
thought how great that was. Had the opportunity over the past couple of years to do business in
Minnesota and just talking to the people I worked with up here, they’re saying Minnesotans
really enjoy winter and it’s great, all the kids learn to play hockey and it’s a good time so that
was part of my reason to come up here was to get winter back into my life and to the life of my
7
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
children. And then moving into a neighborhood and we had this great park. Been using it a lot
and to find out that you know back in the old days when there was a lot of money, all the parks
had skating rinks. It was great. All the kids played hockey but now with budget cuts, I mean
everything’s a little tighter with money, it doesn’t happen as often so I just would like to have
that opportunity to have a park, skating rink in our neighborhood. Thank you for your
consideration.
Stolar: Thank you.
Traci Yavas: Hi, I’m Tracy Yavas and I live in the Chanhassen Estates neighborhood also and
we’ve lived there about 8 months. I have a 5 year old and a 3 year old and before we moved into
this neighborhood we lived in Chaska and we did have a neighborhood ice skating rink that we
used regularly. We moved in the spring so we didn’t miss it last year but we’re really going to
be looking for something this year so I hope that it would be nice if we had something this winter
to use without having to drive somewhere because that really is just so nice to be able to walk
down and get out and skate and we would really enjoy that. Thanks.
Annette Stock-Lind: Hi. I’m Annette Stock-Lind and I live at 8104 Dakota Lane and the same
park that we’re talking about, Rice Marsh, and what’s been really fun in the last couple years. I
have a 7 and 9 year old boys, and they’re hockey players so do I need to say more? No, I will
but the, I’ve been in the neighborhood for almost 15 years and I’ve seen the skating rink be used
when it was there and now that we have sons that are hockey players and they wouldn’t be down
there when kids are not playing hockey, as far as using their sticks and pucks. I mean we’d be
very careful about that, but just skating in general and using the park and one of the things that’s
really cool this year that happened was we had the opportunity to get new equipment in our park,
and that was just wonderful and we’ve had play nights on Friday nights that we go around and
get people to come on Friday nights at 7:00 and then again on, I’m not around during the week
but I know for the families that are, they went down on Tuesday mornings as well. So the park
has seen a significant usage increase, as well as the kids love it and it’s gotten the neighborhood
really close. That month that it was closed when we couldn’t play on it was terrible, okay. We
had to keep our kids off the equipment for 30-40 days, I don’t know what it was but, and what
was really, really nice too, we had two picnics in the park. One the day we built it and then the
one follow up one when we had, we had leftover food from the vendor so we had another picnic
and the mayor stopped by, which was really great too so all the neighbors got to meet the mayor.
Oh, was he there? I didn’t mean to but I’m glad you were there. It was a fun event and it was
just really great to see all the kids playing. And they were also very enthusiastic the day we were
building it. Todd was there, and you know just wanted to help in every way that they could and
they really appreciate the park so if we can get the rink back, it would be a great thing. Thank
you.
Theo Kelderman: I guess it’s my turn. My name is Theo Kelderman and I moved to
Chanhassen a year ago from Virginia where we would be lucky if we’d get to skate one day a
year. I’ve heard great stories about ice skating rinks up here so I would really, I would love to
have a chance to skate, and so would my kids. And we really do like the park, the new park in
Chanhassen Hills. Thank you.
8
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Thank you. So like I said we’ll have this item for discussion and appreciate the
comments and your taking the time to come out. Any other?
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:Murphy moved, Kelly seconded to approve the verbatim and
summary minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated August 23, 2005
as presented.
DISCUSSION OF NEIGHBORHOOD ICE SKATING RINKS.
Ruegemer: Chair Stolar, if you would like to move item 2A up, in the interest of the audience,
we certainly would, I would be okay with that if you would like.
Stolar: That would be great. Thank you very much. So let’s actually talk about the ice rinks
now. Item 2A under new business, and I guess the first, Todd would you want to provide some
background so that we have the appropriate context for our guests to understand both what you
experienced. What we saw and then what the commission did, as Jerry had highlighted.
Hoffman: Absolutely. Thank you Chair Stolar. Ice rinks and neighborhood ice rinks,
neighborhood hockey rinks, they have a long standing tradition in Minnesota, in cold climates.
You think back to the days of your childhood and ice rinks were everywhere. They were down
the street and they were highly… Rink rats was a popular term and kids spent a lot of their
waking hours after school down at the rink playing outdoor hockey. Slowly that trend has paved
the way or the advent of more sporting leagues, association, indoor hockey rinks but that long
standing tradition of having outdoor flooded rinks was maintained in a variety of communities
around the metropolitan area, and in outstate Minnesota. As an association of service providers
we started having a conversation about the fact that we still flood all these rinks but we’re seeing
diminished use at outdoor rinks and what should you do to try to maintain that use? General
consensus was that you should maintain rinks where you have hockey boards, warming houses
and lights because this is a winter activity and you have limited time during the daylight to skate.
So as Chanhassen continued to face budgetary downturns, doing more with less, we took a look
at our ice skating program and said, let’s do an evaluation on the sites that we currently flood,
and some of the sites that were closed include Chanhassen Hills, Rice Marsh Lake Park, both of
the, we have audience members representing this evening. Carver Beach Park, Meadow Green
Park, Pheasant Hill Park, Minnewashta Heights Park, and those were all pleasure skating rinks. I
don’t know if I missed any Dale as I went down that list.
Gregory: Sunset Ridge.
Hoffman: Sunset Ridge was closed?
Gregory: Yep.
Hoffman: So those were all closed. To give you an example, Jerry’s going to start handing out
the numbers. They’re hard to keep track of them, provide them to the audience as well, but it’s
listed on the second sheet of these numbers that Jerry’s handing out. In 1997 the community
approved a referendum and one of the items that was included as a hockey light for, a skating
9
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
light for Chanhassen Hills. Not a hockey rink but just a pleasure rink, and that was again
because the rink was removed from Chanhassen Hills. The neighborhood came in and said we
would like to try to have the rink back. We talked about at that time what would improve
attendance and they thought, talked about a light and then putting a portable warming house
down there. A couple of the warming houses that we use are a satellite office building so it’s a
tin shed on wheels. It’s typically used as a construction shack, office and we bring them in for
warming houses. They worked very well for that. So we installed the light at Chanhassen Hills.
Brought down a warming house and then once Jerry hands these out and you flip to the second
page you’ll see some attendance numbers. Do you know what year this is? 1999-2000 season.
Chanhassen Recreation Center was just over 2,100 visits. City Center Park 1,300 visits. North
Lotus Lake, 900 visits. Roundhouse Park, just under 500 at 492 and then Chanhassen Hills 263
visits. So you can see we added the light. We added the warming house back at that time and it
did not, the response in the neighborhood and the usage was not there. And it comes down to
basically how much effort and money are you going to put into these facilities versus the use that
you’re going to realize on an annual basis each winter. The time that goes into flooding a
pleasure rink, these are a ballfield or a piece of grass is all labor costs, and then obviously you’re
using water. We pump city water into trucks and then flood all those rinks and so you’re using a
natural resource for recreation and then also the labor that goes into it to maintain those on a
daily basis. Typically to start the rinks up we flood all night long or 24 hours a day if we can in
three shifts. So there’s a great big start up time. And then there’s a daily maintenance schedule
that goes into these rinks. Where we have seasonal melts where they melt down, then there’s
some additional start up time to get them up and running again because often times we have had,
once or twice during the season, and if you’re not seeing the use on the rinks, it is hard to justify
the replacement of those facilities in the parks. The rinks that we have kept include a hockey
rink and a pleasure rink at City Center Park with a portable warming house that we bring up, and
those facilities are lighted. The hockey rink and a pleasure rink at North Lotus Lake Park with a
portable warming house. Two hockey rinks and a pleasure rink out at the Recreation Center,
which are fully lit and then there’s the permanent warming house out at the Recreation Center.
And then a pleasure rink out at Roundhouse with the round house building being used as a
warming house, so we have those rinks located generally centrally throughout the community in
strategic locations asking people to drive to those locations if they cannot access… Dale is our
park maintenance foreman and it’s his crew out there flooding on a daily basis so if we can
answer any questions.
Stolar: Okay. First I guess any questions from the commission of Todd or Dale?
Hoffman: Or Jerry who operates the rinks.
Kelly: There was a year, I can’t remember which year it was, that we were going to do a test.
That we were going to actually have the commission members go out on weekends and actually
see what the attendance was going to be like at some of these pleasure rinks to determine going
forward if you wanted to close those rinks or not. Was that my mistake, was that test never
completed because it was so warm that winter that we never flooded the rinks in the first place?
Hoffman: Correct.
10
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Kelly: You remember what year, was that 2000?
Stolar: Paula, Jack and I had just joined so it was about 2001-2002. No, 2002-2003?
Spizale: I think so.
Stolar: Either that year or the following year.
Kelly: So those rinks closed that year and then we made the decision not to even open them the
next year. I don’t think we received, we received minimal responses from the neighborhoods
because the rinks weren’t open. You didn’t get a lot of calls the following winter either.
Ruegemer: No, because I think the following winter was warm as well. So I think people were
kind of…warm again. It wasn’t conducive to flooding ice and therefore it was passed by.
Stolar: Any other?
Dillon: How much were budget dollars saved when we made the decision to not open a few of
the rinks?
Hoffman: Dollars really saved or invested in other activities throughout the park district? Much
of that labor was just diverted to doing other things. So you’re not flooding ice rinks, you’re
doing other things throughout the winter to maintain your system.
Dillon: Dale, if we went back to flooding those pleasure rinks again, would you have, would you
need one person and how many man hours would that take during the course of the day to do all
those rinks?
Gregory: You mean extra man, or extra manpower?
Dillon: Or would you have to take, I mean would you designate one person who you’d normally
have working doing other stuff, would one person be doing that kind of as a full time or even
half?
Gregory: Well when we go on a day to day basis, when we do our rinks, we send out two
tractors to sweep and we send out a couple of guys, about 3 guys coming behind it to do all the
shoveling, blowing the rinks and everything else. And the other 2 guys do the flooding for us.
So we basically use our whole crew of 7 people on a day to day basis. And on a, when we do it
in the daytime it takes probably until about 1:00. We start at 7:00 in the morning and by 1:00
we’re running around to all rinks and that just to get them cleaned up again and ready for the
next day.
Hoffman: And that’s the rinks that we currently maintain.
Gregory: Correct.
11
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Dillon: Okay, so that’s just our current. So if we added all these other pleasure rinks it would be
significantly more time?
Gregory: It would be more time if those, the pleasure rinks, the tractors and that all go and
sweeping all of that so we wouldn’t have to actually have to shovel but we’d still have to take a
set of tractors around so in that sense it takes a good day for our crew to do that.
Dillon: And do you flood every day?
Gregory: At the beginning of the year we do. We don’t really slow down on flooding until later
on. We try to keep building up as much as we can. When we flood, start flooding, it takes us
about a week. If we can have a week of straight flooding, 24 hours a day, we’ll have good ice.
And after that we will try to flood as much as we can because if we get one warm day, we start
losing it right away so the better base we can get built up.
Stolar: Other questions? I guess I have one. Are there levels of effort? One of the things that
we’ve talked about off and on in this whole discussion is there a different level of effort that can
be done to these rinks knowing that there’s a risk involved in the quality of the rinks, depending
on the weather and some other conditions, that’s kind of an inbetween? So to start them we
know you have to focus on it but for example slowing down the maintenance of them or.
Gregory: Well actually we do that. Like when we were maintaining the other rinks and that, we
would, our initial flooding, yeah we’d be doing…flooding and really trying to do a good job.
Later in the year we would take and actually break off the recreational rinks and we’d only hit
them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday’s. And we’d skip those 2 days and if they weren’t
used very much we didn’t even go out and do them. That’s where we were starting to see, the
guys would go out and sweep and they’d get out there and there’s, you know there was no use on
it and that so we started…and doing the flooding at night. At that point they weren’t being used
much.
Stolar: Paula.
Atkins: How many, I was wondering how many pleasure rinks there are that we eliminated.
Hoffman: 7 we eliminated.
Atkins: Because I think we had the discussion about continuing to keep a couple, but then how
do we choose which ones. I think that was the.
Stolar: For the record the audience is waving their hands.
Atkins: …a couple years ago and I was about to suggest that again.
Stolar: That was what we talked about is there a way to keep some open.
Hoffman: Or re-open.
12
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Re-open. And I would further add to that, is there a way to do it on a pilot basis to see
what the usage is, and if there are lower cost ways of maintaining them for trade, and then also
understanding the trade off’s, so we understand that, though sometimes they give the appearance
of having endless time and energy, your staff is great. They don’t have endless time and energy.
Gregory: Well a lot of it depends on snow. If we get snow here and there, but then we’ve got to
go out and do every one of them. Then we’re back to cleaning them off and flooding them
again. So I mean even if we do them 2 days a week and that, if we get rain, or snow the other
days and that, we’re still maintaining them.
Stolar: And you mean plowing them off.
Gregory: Plowing them off, right.
Stolar: Which is a question of, is that something the neighborhood can, in a pilot program,
adopt. The rink and. I mean we talked about that. I think when we were talking about closing
them, what things the neighborhoods might be able to take on to do. And if it’s snowing, if we
get to it great. If we don’t, they can shovel it off themselves. Obviously 12 inches of snow
makes it a little bit more difficult.
Hoffman: Yeah, that’s always a slippery slope because once you put the note in and if there’s an
expectation that you’re maintaining the rinks uptown. Why isn’t our rink maintained? And
people will call. It’s difficult to say we’re going to give you a rink but you’re going to have to
do half the maintenance.
Stolar: There were some hands raised.
Audience: Yeah, I was just going to say a light snow I think the neighborhood could take care of
it. I think if it were a heavy snow.
Stolar: And Dale, just to make sure we have the perspective. What would your perspective be
for any, I mean we aren’t talking that we’re doing this necessarily but if we did ask the pleasure
rink to be open, what things would your team not be able to get to that you had in mind, since we
are already kind of getting towards that point in time.
Gregory: Well some of it gets to the maintenance of our equipment, which we do in the winter
time. We do building of soccer goals in the winter time for Jerry. I don’t have a list of
everything we’re doing in the winter time this year and that but it’s just basically an ongoing
maintenance items.
Hoffman: Primarily, probably the biggest shift would be from maintenance of the trails. So
typically we get, ice comes first and then trails follow. Typical day in the winter time.
Gregory: Typical day, if we get snow would come, the elementary school and the rec center
would be plowed and I have 2 trucks out doing trails in the morning, around the schools and that.
13
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
That area, that we have it plowed so the kids can walk to school. On a snow day like that, we
will spend pretty much the whole day trying to get all our trails open. As soon as the guys are
done with the rec center plowing, then they head for the skating rinks. And they’ll start plowing
those out and sending the tractors out. On a day we get snow, we probably wouldn’t even get the
chance to flood rinks. I mean we’re lucky to get them opened up by the end of the day, and we’d
end up going back the next day to re-sweeping and then start flooding.
Stolar: And the flooding, you do it til, how many weeks do you do it or you try to do it
throughout the whole season?
Gregory: We do it through the whole season. We will flood, when we start flooding we’re
flooding with 2 trucks going 24 hours a day and like I say, if we can get 7 days, it’s great. After
we get into our regular maintenance and that, we’ll have one truck that will flood strictly every
day from when we sweep, he’ll be flooding all day long trying to build up rinks.
Stolar: Other thoughts? Any.
Murphy: How often do we evaluate the rinks that we’re currently maintaining and flooding as
far as their attendance because it looks like some of these numbers are, there’s variations in some
of the ones that we currently have open. I’m looking at Roundhouse.
Hoffman: Well we keep the numbers annually and the Roundhouse, obviously always the lowest
attendance. It’s maintained in the current system because it’s isolated on the western half of our
community so we were trying to serve that specific neighborhood west of Lake Minnewashta.
Gregory: One other thing that’s kind of played into some of this and that is, I’ve kept records of
when we opened rinks and when we closed them. I think I’ve got it for the last 15-18 years and
that. Back 10 years ago and 7 years ago we always had our rinks open anywhere from a week
before Christmas, before Christmas for sure. Now it’s getting to the point where we can’t even,
the weather is changing and we can’t get them open even, I mean they’re done with school
break, winter break and that and we don’t have the rinks open anymore. So I mean they’re
missing a big part of when the kids can really use them. And it’s all weather related. We can’t
get out there until it’s cold enough.
Stolar: When was the last time you had a good solid, you put it in before the holiday break and it
stayed open.
Gregory: As far as staying open, it hasn’t. I mean we’ve had some where it really got cold.
We’d go out there and we’d flood for maybe 3 days and all of a sudden we get a warm spell and
then we sit there again and wait until after Christmas and New Year’s before we get going again.
So it’s really, it’s kind of difficult and that. It used to get cold and stay that way so we could
keep going. It doesn’t work that way.
Stolar: What has been the most consistent time you’ve had where the rinks have been able to stay
nd
in January basically? In January 2 and been able to stay most of January?
14
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Gregory: Consistently January. We’ve had some January’s where we’ve actually closed for a
week in January too and we open. Again I don’t have the numbers with me and that. I didn’t
realize we’d talk about it.
Stolar: yeah, and usually you get those to us.
Gregory: Yeah, and I do have them and that. You can kind of look at it to see what’s happening.
Kelly: Do you remember what the date is for our pleasure rinks? When they, isn’t it a city
policy or a rec policy that after a certain date if the rinks haven’t been started, they will not be
open all season?
Hoffman: Correct.
th
Ruegemer: Yeah, something like the 12 of January I believe.
Kelly: Okay.
Stolar: It might have even been last year where it got warm and we decided it just wasn’t worth
redoing. Was that last year or 2 years ago?
Gregory: Two years ago.
Stolar: Two years ago. It got warm and we decided the season would be too short to even.
Gregory: Right, by the time we’d get them back in shape again you only have a week or so left
before it’d start again.
Dillon: Help me out. So what’s our goal here? I mean it sounds like we’ve got some capacity
issues in terms of being able to support more rinks, so even if we say like by…we want to open
more rinks, well it doesn’t do us, I mean that’s not going to get it done necessarily. There’s
another, other things that have to be done then. Other people hired or equipment or something
like that.
Stolar: I think it’s deferred activity on other things is what it comes down to.
Hoffman: For the most part, with the exception of, if you have warming houses or attendants,
those are a budgeting issue.
Stolar: Right, but just to flood the rinks it would mean, slower addressing of trails and delayed
addressing of some maintenance. You know that’s done during the off season for some other
areas.
Hoffman: It’s a policy issue. If you want to recommend today that the City Council authorize
the flooding of the 7 rinks that were deleted, you can do that and send that up to the council for
15
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
their consideration. Or if you want us to write a recommendation for your consideration at your
next meeting, we’ll do that.
Stolar: Would that be too late for Dale’s planning purposes if we, I mean we’re getting close to
getting late in the game here but, if we asked you. I’m just, if we asked staff to come back to us
with some thoughts given this discussion and the citizen input of what we could or could not do,
and we did it in our October meeting, would that be sufficient time? If we were to ask?
Hoffman: Sure. What Jerry was talking about earlier is we’re missing deadlines for some
printing for some publicity.
Stolar: And when did that go out?
Ruegemer: It’s gathering input right now and scheduled to go out about the first part of
November.
Kelly: It’s not necessarily an all or nothing thing though. We don’t need to do all 7. We could
just do 2. I guess my mind, 2 or 3 years ago the commission was of the mind set to do a pilot test
to see you know how really well kind of these neighborhood rinks are and we never got the
opportunity to do it because of weather so, I mean given capacity issues and, you know I
wouldn’t mind having an opportunity to actually do that maybe on a subset of the original 7
rinks. To help with the capacity issue and to make sure that, because I think your group does just
a fantastic job with the trails. I think the trails get plowed faster than the streets. And I wouldn’t
want to see that really, I wouldn’t want to see that really affected that much but I think that’s
just, I think our trails even in the winter are probably our number one asset that we bring to the
community. So, but I would be willing to not go all the way with 7 of the rinks but maybe try to
put in a pilot program with a few.
Stolar: Building on that, I agree and I think that was what we had intended a couple years ago
when we talked about it. It would not again to do wholesale. Let’s do all 7 again but to have
some pilots of some neighborhoods, because we talked about, and it’s one thing to talk about is
changing demographics of neighborhoods. If the neighborhood started getting older kids, less
likely that they’re going to be using it. If they’re getting to 13’s getting to more organized things
as you talked about whereas if they had the, I don’t know what the right age is but let’s say the 5
to 8 year old group, that starts getting more usage. So we want to be able to have that option to
maybe adjust where we put things. We also, I do have another question related to that and that
is, does it help to take potentially one of the, we have 3 or 4 pleasure rinks out here currently
being done. Did that help at all so, and I’m not proposing this but for example would it help if
you didn’t have to do North Lotus pleasure. You just did a base rink there.
Gregory: It isn’t going to make too much difference because we’re up there anyway. And if we
take a pleasure rink off and that, that’s minimal because it’s a matter of plowing it off with a
truck or sweeping it off and…per person. The hockey rinks are the big ones. I mean that’s
where we’ve got to go in and shovel everything by hand. That’s where it takes the time. So like
I say, the pleasure rink at a hockey, you know one of those areas isn’t going to make much
difference to do that.
16
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Okay.
Atkins: That was my question.
Stolar: I don’t know, look for other comments or Tom, if you wanted to put a motion on the
table. It is new business. We’re allowed to do that.
Kelly: So are we ready to recommend something to City Council or are we ready to actually,
maybe ask staff to go back and actually see how many man hours they estimate would go into
maintaining a pleasure rink. Just to kind of get you know if we do 1, 2, 3 to how many hours are
we talking about?
Stolar: What would be the impact of a subset? Let me seek a consensus. Would that be
something that we’d be interested in getting from the staff? Just an understanding, knowing that
we wouldn’t be able to publicize it in the standard brochures, given the timing.
Ruegemer: It could go on the city web site.
Stolar: City web site plus maybe you know we’ll call the press or whatever, Villager… Is that
something the commission would like to see?
Murphy: Just to clarify, we’re talking about just flooding the rinks, not a warming house with an
attendant?
Stolar: Let’s clarify that. I would say that’s my intention is that, you know if we can go with a
minimalist approach. The easiest approach of piloting a couple of rinks, pleasure rinks in some
of these neighborhood parks, and then one of the things Todd mentioned, we as a commission at
that time had said we would take turns looking at the rink. Trying to tag how many people were
actually there…
Kelly: We even went so far as.
Stolar: A schedule, right.
Kelly: Of which commissioners would go to which rinks on which weekend days.
Stolar: I think Todd what we’re looking for you is just an understanding. Does that make sense?
And then with all fairness to the people in this meeting. Yes, you’re here and you’re proactive
and I appreciate that. I do think we need to publish it on an agenda though to allow some
discussion if other communities wish to participate in the discussion. But that doesn’t mean, I’m
looking to staff to make some suggestions potentially on which ones to…
Hoffman: You could get this many people from every neighborhood coming asking for rinks.
Now I’m not sure how we’re going to classify which one leads to subset and which one does not.
Pheasant Hill was very interested in a rink 3-4 years ago when we started that discussion so.
17
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: But we’re going to have to make a choice if we do this, correct?
Hoffman: The easiest one to pick is Chanhassen Hills because we have a light there. So…
Gregory: But you have to turn it on manually so that was turned on when we had a warming
house.
Hoffman: By the attendant. We could install a timer if we wanted to do that.
Stolar: Well why don’t we just say under the impact of doing them and again the commission at
the next meeting will have to make some choices of do we do it and if so, where do we do it?
Kelly: Is that something you can, is it possible to put together an estimate of hours it would take
per rink per week?
Gregory: It’d be tough per rink. We did it, I’ve got estimates on when we were doing all the
rinks and when we started doing the ones we are now, so I’ve got cost estimates on what we
spend to do all of them and the other ones, and actually man hours and everything. Got that
broken out but I don’t have it broken down by rink. That would be tough.
Kelly: If you divide it by 7 like a reasonable estimate or not?
Gregory: Not really because the ones where you have the hockey rinks and everything else we
spend a lot more time there than at the neighborhood ones.
Stolar: If I can just try and summarize. We’re asking staff to come back to us next meeting with
just an outline of recommendation or perspective of doing this pilot of having a couple of rinks,
neighborhood rinks without a warming house or any other extra features but to be able to have
some pleasure skating rinks at a couple neighborhood parks. And then also with that we would
review a schedule with the commission members will help review. Is there anything else you
want from us? Do you want us to say which parks now or should we leave that for that
discussion?
Hoffman: No, I think we’ll come back with a per rink estimate. And we’ll publish it so other
people can come forward if they’d like. One thing to remember is that right now we’ve got
fairly clean lines. Rice, or excuse me. Roundhouse and North Lotus are classified as
neighborhood parks but we treat them a little bit differently because of their location in the
community so they’re almost sub, they’re small community parks if you would. So we brought
community parks presently, City Center, Roundhouse, the rec center and North Lotus. All of the
other rinks that we’re talking about are classified as neighborhood, true neighborhood rinks
where it’s just a pure pleasure skating, so it’s going to be difficult to say you’re going to put 3,
pick these 3. You could say we’re going to pick these 3 in a pilot and see if they work or they
don’t work. Then you have to establish some criteria. Well what is going to be the standard that
you’re going to base it on because if you look back in the years, for instance when Chan Hills
was around 2000-2001, 2001-2002, these are like 5 hour shifts we’re talking about and if you get
18
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
into January, February, March, you’re talking a lot of 0’s when not a single person came to that
rink for 5 hours day after day. 0 after 0 after 0 after 0, and this was a warming house, a beautiful
sheet of ice and a light shining on that rink. And so if you believe that things have changed that
much from those days, from 2000-2001.
Stolar: I guess that’s one of the bases we can use is that we have some statistics there to be able
to compare against and see what usages, knowing that we aren’t going to do a full boat of a
warming house. The light is still a question but, and I also want to see what we can consider as a
minimalist approach. I mean it’s, to not do it every you know if we do it once a week, right?
Maybe flood it once a week. There are risks and that’s what I don’t, I know you know better but
it would be, you know if we do it once a week, what it costs us to do, it may not be as great of ice
but if it works. That’s the other thing I want to understand about, if we pilot it, are we also going
to pilot different approaches to the rinks.
Gregory: Then you may also want to consider if we get the warm days and everything else
where they really fall back, that you may want to stop, eliminate them right away. A lot of these
are put on infields. A line ballfields and if the sun comes out, they start to go real quick. So I
mean that’s another thing to think about is if they do start getting bad, you may want to just call
them right away then and, otherwise we’re going to be spending several nights of over time
trying to get these things back in shape.
Stolar: …I’m looking to you because you have to tell us what makes sense for your team, but
yet maybe we get the standard rinks done. Once they’re done, we start looking at these, which
th
also can be if it stays warm up until January 10, then you’re not doing at all like we have for the
other rinks…because we just couldn’t get them done. So I do want to consider, there’s options
with a minimalist approach too. One that has these type of criteria so that we aren’t spending a
lot.
Dillon: The total number of parks that could potentially qualify for this?
Hoffman: A dozen-15 probably.
Ruegemer: I think we had 14 or 15 rinks before we had reduced the number…8 or 9.
Stolar: So we have these 7 right, that would be the neighborhood ones.
Hoffman: Then there are other neighborhood parks that have been added since the time that we
have eliminated rinks that would still qualify for being a neighborhood and having a location
where you could put one.
Stolar: Was that, so to wrap up consensus if we can have some options and you know if the
options, say in your analysis you come back and you want to recommend to the commission that
we just not do a pilot, please feel free to do that. We’re looking to you for guidance. What we
did in the original discussion to eliminate these neighborhood pleasure rinks we said we want to
potentially look in the future at doing a pilot and counting. Okay?
19
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Scharfenberg: You don’t ever clear Lake Ann do we? For skating.
Hoffman: No.
Spizale: I’ve got one comment as I sit and think about it. Unfortunately if you don’t have a
light, you only get the time after school before it gets dark, which is what? 2 hours. And
Saturday and Sunday, which isn’t much time to skate.
Scharfenberg: And I understand the concern with, that Chan Elementary now is the early start
time, early finish time. However, Bluff Creek isn’t. Bluff Creek now gets out at 4:30, so some
of those kids that are on that west end elementary, they’re not going to have a chance to skate
because otherwise if you go up to the rec center, because those, all those parks, those kids will be
getting home at 4:30 and there won’t be any light.
Spizale: So basically we’re talking Saturday-Sunday. Whereas our other rinks are lit with
warming houses. I’d look to have a neighborhood rink too but I basically drive my kids to a
place where we have lights and a warming house and we can spend the evening.
Murphy: But I think you do see the majority of the use, at least up here on the weekends. At
Chan Rec. I don’t see that, especially when it’s cold. I don’t see that many people out at night
skating up here.
Hoffman: We’ll bring it back… We’ll talk about a cost per rink and talk about all the locations
that potentially could be flooded. Some of the past history of the rinks and we’ll let you.
Stolar: I’m just going to throw out, one of my considerations we talked about this has always
been geography and proximity questions too. You know is there a longer drive for this group of
people which has been some of the stuff…with Roundhouse and North Lotus. There’s a large
population there that has a further distance to get over to the central rinks.
Hoffman: Okay, thanks.
Stolar: Thank you. Thank you for coming. We appreciate it and obviously you’re more than
welcome to join us again next month. I’ll apologize to make you come twice but this is a hard
decision for us, as you can tell. There’s a lot of process gone into in these past years but I do
appreciate you taking the time, and it will be on the agenda. Thanks.
2005 LAKE ANN CONCESSION/BOAT RENTAL EVALUATION.
Ruegemer: Thank you Chair Stolar. We did have a warmer summer this year, which was
certainly helpful. We did have however with the, some of the other things that were going on
with the increased general re-cost and increase in price, it seems like Coca Cola keeps going up
about every other month here and that made it tough to make a profit on that which was tough. I
know we had a lot of people coming down where it seemed like we needed coverage and staff
down there but it seemed like a lot of people were buying or purchasing down at the concession
stand. So we can take a look at looking at all the equipment and rental…stuff again and food
20
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
rates again to possibly raise those to increase our revenue source coming in for that. One of the
things that was difficult this summer certainly was, we have an aging fleet of watercraft and it
seemed like 1 to 3 possibly might have been down on a daily basis. It seemed like Dale’s park
maintenance staff were down there daily trying to put chains back on or re=bend rudders. Fix
steering. Peddles. A lot of the type of things where you know we’ve been open for quite a while
now and things are just kind of wearing out. Currently in the ’06 budget I do have monies in
there for a new paddle boat to try to replace and that is, it is in still at this point but certainly the
council has that option to eliminate that if they would like to but, that made it tough. You can
see kind of the number of boat rentals from 2004 to 2005. We actually went down on a warmer
summer, and that was really due to, a large part of having a lot of the watercraft kind of non-
operational I guess at that point so, that really made it a little bit difficult. And you know a lot of
people do like the service down there that we do provide. We certainly are going to investigate
looking ahead to next year. You know possibly expanding the hours you know an hour or so
from 6:00 to 7:00 to see if we can keep generating revenue that way to cover staff time. That
would provide longer boat rentals and that sort of thing. We’re going to investigate that a little
bit more. We certainly look for new ways to cut cost. I think one thing I’m going to do next
year is put an RFP out for the kind of food items to see if we can get some better pricing from
some companies and food vendors. The Coca Cola contract we’re locked in to 2007 so I can’t
do that necessarily for the soft drink portion of that but certainly the other components to that.
Ice cream. You know candy bars. Nacho chips, that sort of thing. We can get maybe some new
pricing. Maybe a little competition wouldn’t hurt, and would help our bottom line with that.
Still I think the biggest thing is keep it simple down there. Quick point of sale so it’s easier for
staff to keep up with one line. We have had Minnetonka Explorers come down quite a bit.
Different YMCA’s. Daycare facilities. School groups come down. We have basically you
know it goes from 0 to 100 kids so that’s why I really did need a lot of coverage during the
course of summer, and certainly look to eliminate or send home staff as much as we could but
with, Dale’s in the same boat kind of we all are. We have to keep paying our seasonal help more
to get qualified applicants to apply so we’re kind of escalating labor costs and steady or you
know steady revenues and something’s got to give here so that’s kind of where we were at for
the summer. It did help having a warmer summer again certainly and that helped everybody’s
operation I think from not only our’s but other communities as well. Kind of the back page is
kind of a total of all the boat rentals and the paddle boats, that sort of thing. Expenditure’s kind
of broken down per vendor. Total wages and total number of hours. We did kind of a
breakdown of all that. I did also include kind of an analysis from our concession manager, Nick
Hawthorne about kind of what was the, kind of the main items as far as you know nacho chips or
snack items, candy, ice cream, that sort of thing which was helpful I think to get perspective on
kind of what’s popular and what’s not popular at the concession stand at Lake Ann. Also just
kind of a breakdown of our total daily sales. Kind of where we’re at for boat rental and how
much sales tax we need to pay the Minnesota Revenue Department so that’s kind of all included.
Also kind of the boat rentals on a daily basis.
Stolar: Questions for Jerry.
Spizale: It looks great. I just noticed in here, I think the math on the total boat rentals is off.
Kelly: 2004 right? For 2004. I think it’s actually less than 2005.
21
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Spizale: Right. By far.
Ruegemer: We’ll take a look at that.
Spizale: So you think about getting new paddle boats then?
Ruegemer: Well I certainly would like to. It seemed like the one that we’ve got a lot of trouble
with is one of our oldest in the fleet. The Sea Rider. The white Sea Rider and also that yellow
kind of… Those are two of the original paddle boats that we have. It seemed like steering is a
constant problem with those and you know, and the rest of the boats they get a lot of use and…
careful with them as they might be at their cabin or other types of places and a lot of our aqua
cycles and stuff we’ve had there from the mid 90’s. ’95-96. Probably the newest ones.
Probably what, ’01 or ’02. Some of the bigger, larger kind of 4 by 4’s I think is what they call
them. And that’s what I have in the budget for next year is a brand new aqua cycle with kind of
a bigger pontoon. The 4 person or those bigger ones seem to be the most popular and they’re
more stable for people that are using those. We had a little trouble with one this summer tip over
on some people so. If we can eliminate those type of situations it’d be easier for us. For our
operation.
Spizale: Jerry, what does a bigger one rent for?
Ruegemer: It’s $10 an hour.
Spizale: Compared to the smaller?
Ruegemer: They’re all the same. Yeah, we used to fix our rates on quarter hour. We used to
have kind of a grid. You know here’s your price. It just seemed like going flat, hourly rate was
better for us. It kind of, it was easier for the concession staff to keep track of. It seemed like a
majority of the rates, the rental rates were, they weren’t going a quarter hour or half hour. They
were an hour or more so that was where we certainly we could spike our revenue a little bit and
that helped initially but now maybe it’d be time to possibly raise those again.
Stolar: Questions?
Hoffman: ...buying a new boat is that they never pay for themselves. In fact…
Stolar: I guess one of my questions would be, this is part of a recreation service too so do we
budget the loss or do we try to budget…
Hoffman: No, we budget the loss.
Stolar: Yeah, because it’s part of a recreation service. Plus the investment of new boats is part
of the budget. I am in favor of the kayaks.
22
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Ruegemer: Well and that’s really you know, we’d like to use those monies maybe to buy a
cheaper paddle boat of some kind and reallocate some of those dollars to a kayak or two. We
certainly could take a look at that as well.
Stolar: I’ll trust your judgment but we put those away for the fall, right?
Ruegemer: Yeah, they’re out shortly after…
Stolar: …because there was Three Rivers just this past weekend did a fall kayak tour on Lake
Minnetonka. My wife went on it and said it was wonderful. So I don’t know how easy
something like that would be from a recreational program standpoint and like a recreational
canoe trip program if you would pay significantly more than just the rental rate and ask someone
to just guide them on a trip around Lake Ann in the fall. Catch the colors and just bring them out
for the one day. But something worth looking at for next fall too. They really liked it.
Murphy: Some other resorts too, if you go up to like Ely and you use the kayaks, they’re more
per hour than the paddle boats or the paddle boats are a little cheaper so the kayaks would be
more.
Stolar: Something to think about in the future that might be worth beyond just the rentals in the
summer but to use them as a programming tool. Okay. Alright. So there was no action for us to
take on this, correct? It was just a report.
UPDATE FROM CARVER COUNTY PARKS CONCERNING OFF LEASH DOG AREA
PROPOSAL AT LAKE MINNEWASHTA REGIONAL PARK.
Stolar: Old business we deleted. We’ll talk about in the reports. Or in the commission.
Hoffman: Just if I could read Marty’s letter at this time. In keeping with the item. Originally I
talked to Marty Walsh and asked him if he’d be interested in coming. He expressed that he
would. And then he called back later and he sent an e-mail in the interim. He said Todd, I asked
him what the $40,000 would purchase. The initial investment. That was a question that came
up. He said the initial $40,000 would be used to provide the basic site clean-up, fencing, parking
and we talked about site clean-up. Cleaning up what they had to dig to make it a dog park.
Fencing, parking, trail construction and signage. The cost estimates for these items if the work is
contracted is approximately $75,000. We would also work to include the pond feature in the first
phase which is estimated at $2,000. We are intending to do a good portion of the work ourselves
which would bring the estimated cost down considerably. In order to apply our labor force we
are looking at doing the work if weather conditions would permit during the fall, winter or early
spring time work program. Realistically it may be difficult to accomplish a large portion of the
project during the summer with our activities. Other activities. However we would continue to
work on the project as time would allow. If there are not further contributions by others,
meaning either the city or Shorewood, their $10,000, the County parks department would
continue to seek funding for the off leash area. I cannot say when additional features would be
added. Only that a request for funding…on an annual basis. So that was the initial response.
Then he just said, until we know more information he doesn’t feel that it’s necessary to come and
23
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
talk to you again. He’d be giving you basically the same report that you heard 8 or 10 months
ago.
Stolar: Any questions? Okay.
RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS:
2005 DAVE HUFFMAN 5K RACE.
Ruegemer: First of all I want to thank all the commissioners that worked on it, either
participating or helping or there visiting the event that day. We did have a very nice day for the
event. Heard many positive comments about the new course, except for the last hill. Little hard
Tom? But I think people really enjoyed the new course. It provided some new challenges for
the runners. Made it probably easier from a logistical standpoint as far as managing traffic flow.
Closing down the downtown area. We certainly seemed to have less of an impact of people
going to the post office or to a bank. That we didn’t have downtown closed as long as we have
in the past so that certainly was one of our goals. To not kind of impede on that Saturday
morning errands run for our community. Got through town real quick. It was real picturesque to
go through Frontier Trail, along the lake. I think it gave it kind of a nice feel that you could see
the lake inbetween houses every now and again and the runners felt safe being on neighborhood
types of roads or thoroughfares. We had very good coverage from city staff, park maintenance,
street department, utilities and also from the Carver County Sheriff’s Department so we really
did provide a very safe course this year. You know being our first year, we really wanted to kind
of step that up again just to make sure that people kind of knew where they going. It was
different starting on grass versus on the kind of asphalt as we have in the past. I think people
liked starting and finishing from the same location. It was probably easier for us to kind of
manage. That way we didn’t have to worry about kind of the logistics of buses dropping off or
getting turned around at Lake Ann Park and that sort of thing, so it really, from our aspect, from
the race committee’s standpoint I think everything was nice to do that at one location. City
Center Park. You know plenty of opportunity to large areas for gathering. Plenty of places to
put up tents. We have power in all the right places. We can eliminate the noise of the generator
so there’s a lot of positives for hosting the event here. It was certainly scheduled ahead of time
to have the soccer games and that not going on at the same time, which certainly was a plus.
Possibly looking ahead to next year. Looking at possibly starting the race on Kerber Boulevard
and heading south between kind of the library and Byerly’s on Kerber Boulevard. And then
th
heading east on West 78 Street versus at Market Boulevard. That way it may be easier doing it
that way to accommodate some of the wheelchair entries. We still have hard surfaces for all of
our wheelchair entries. We had 3 this year, which is the first time we’ve had wheelchair entries,
which was great. And they were really quality wheelchair racers that participated this year. The
first one that came across the finish line at about 19 minutes, which was very good. Very fast.
So just to do that, looking at possibly looking at that. We certainly would impact the kind of the
main street channel a little bit more but we could kind of get through town pretty quick that way
as well so the race committee will take a look at that. It was nice to have the kids race kind of in
that general area. We upped slightly. Our numbers were about 103 kids participating in that this
year, which is a good number. We started I think with about 35 or 40 a couple years ago so that
number seems to increase a little bit every year. So that was good. Certainly looking for new
24
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
ways to kind of rejuvenate and revitalize. With the new year, moving it to a different location,
we kind of get people used to that area again and I think the race committee’s intention to stick
with now this course for a while and kind of see what people thought about it. We heard a lot of
good comments about it and everything just really seemed to kind of for the most part overflow
pretty good. We reduced the number of t-shirts we have so we don’t have any left over this year,
so we tried to cut costs as much as we could. To try to donate as much away as we could. We
increased our contributions, the number of contributions. …around $2,000 but we also
contributed this year, actually we did about 25 I think. Here to Hurricane Katrina. The Red
Cross. We gave a $500.00 scholarship to the Chanhassen Chamber of Commerce this year to
give to a student for next year. Part of the student scholarship’s program for that, so there’s
some different areas where we try to kind of spread the money out. Have more of a purpose or
kind of a broader sense I guess within our community. So we ended up about, roughly about 307
which is down about 20 or 30 runners from last year. The race committee kind of went around
the table and you know, we came up with 30 plus that we know of that didn’t, that participated in
the first 3, 4, 5 years but had something going this year so you know, I think we could probably
do a better job on getting information out there and getting those people back in again.
Stolar: Questions?
Kelly: I guess the only thing I was going to ask is, besides flattening the hills, the only other part
of the course that I thought was a little tough was at the very beginning. That first right hand
turn, or left hand turn as you’re coming off the grass, because everyone is still pretty much
bunched up and I think that was probably kind of a clog, but it sounds like if you change the
course, that will go away. I thought it was great. Great day and I really liked having it end at
City Center Park because it makes a more enjoyable I think. Your kids run I thought was a lot
better than it was over at, they’re not running through weeds and on wobbly bridges… I have no
one to complain about that but myself because that was my idea for the run so. But I thought it
was great. Thanks a lot.
Stolar: Thanks, and thanks to commission members who either volunteered or several runners.
The entire Hoffman family ran. One we know didn’t.
Hoffman: Mike, yeah. And my daughter who cannot. She’s in cross country.
Kelly: She can’t because she’s in cross country?
Hoffman: No. High School League rules.
2005 HALLOWEEN PARTY PREVIEW.
Ruegemer: Just kind of an FYI. Kind of give the dates out there for the commission. The date
th
is coming up Saturday, October 29. 5:30 to 7:30 at the Chan Rec Center. We’ll pull out the
same types of games and stuff again. I know staff has been talking about kind of adding and
kind of come up with a couple new ideas. We’re going to try to refigurate the flying witch
picture thing from a couple years ago so, so staff’s excited about that. We’ll be doing that again,
also looking to add a couple different things to the scary room if you will. I know Corey’s been
25
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
in contact with the KEY Club again to get a number of students again volunteering for that. So it
should be a good event again. I know Corey’s been busy distributing flyers to all the area
schools. Both School District 112 and Minnetonka school district to kind of get that information
out there for that, so things are progressing. I do have a volunteer list for tonight that Corey had
given to me. Corey’s note here, I need costume, candy distributors or registration table
volunteers so if you want to focus on those two areas we can fill in with KEY Club members.
With that there’s kind of the refreshment area or the scary hallway. They seem to like the kind
of the scary area where they can dress up and pass out candy to the kids coming through that
area. And we’ll supplement KEY Club members also for the games in the gyms and help out
with the general hayride information and sort of thing so.
Stolar: Just a quick question. We’ve talked about this before. Target you know never really
donated things, or made it easy for us on these types of events. With Cub Foods coming in the
area, is there any chance that they might be more inclined to participate?
Ruegemer: One phone call. You bet.
Kelly: Target does a lot.
Stolar: Yeah, in their general Target Foundation. Not specifically for Halloween. But I think
that’s something to think about with Cub new in the neighborhood, if they want to use it as a
promotional vehicle for that.
Ruegemer: And certainly we’d give them exclusive rights and they can be the official candy
supplier for the event.
Kelly: It was great last year having that one person with the backpack full of candy running
down. Helping us refill our candy. That helped out tremendously.
Ruegemer: That’s happened quite a few years. Charlie, our senior advisor for the Halloween
party, has always done a great job with that. He loads up his backpack and just.
Kelly: Yeah, he always seems to find you just as you’re running out.
Ruegemer: Yep, Charlie’s got it very good. He’s got a huge heart for Halloween.
Stolar: Okay, thanks and we’ll send the list around.
RECREATION CENTER REPORT.
Stolar: Real quick, Rec Center report. Before we do that, will you make an introduction please.
Hoffman: I certainly will. Members of the commission I’d like to introduce Tom Knowles as
our newly appointed Recreation Center Manager. Tom has worked for the city for 8 years as
facility supervisor out at the building and with Susan’s departure, we put Tom through a grueling
one month interview process and he successfully came out on top so here’s Tom and I’ll let him
26
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
introduce himself. Tell the commission a little bit about his background and who he is and then
he’ll go through his report.
Knowles: Well thank you Todd. He’s pretty much hit on the highlights. I do have an
educational background in park and recreation administration that is serving me well. Prior to
coming on board here at the Chan Rec Center I was also employed at the Northwest Health
Clubs for about 9 years in the gym programming area so I feel pretty comfortable in the whole
area of rec programming and facility management and so forth. Currently I’m getting up to
speed on the administrative details that come with the managerial status that I now have and been
very pleasantly surprised and pleased by the help I’ve gotten from city staff across the board,
both in the recreation department and city staff in general. It’s coming along. It’s a huge
learning process but it’s something that I very much welcome the opportunity and it’s something
that I’ve hoped for a long time to get involved in something like this so I’m very excited about it.
I want to stress my thoughts that I’m going to do everything I can in the weeks and months ahead
to justify the confidence that’s been bestowed upon me and I’ve been very thankful for the
opportunity so thank you very much.
Stolar: Thank you and welcome and congratulations. And I guess if you would like to make
your report.
Knowles: Well my report is kind of short and sweet this time. Basically a reflection that we are
in fact up and operating again after our closure period at the end of August. Hours are stated
again. We’re back open on Sundays as we always have been, except in the summer. Staffing
has been…and our programming season is off and running and fairly encouraging. Our two
largest programs, the Dance for Fun and our preschool soccer program are showing very good
numbers as well, so we’re pretty encouraged about the programming so far this fall. I think it’s
been mentioned that our winter programming has gone in for data processing. We’ll have
another good programming season in winter I’m sure. Thank you.
Stolar: Any questions for Tom?
Murphy: Are the aerobic classes continuing to drop or is that?
Knowles: We’re having some trouble, both staffing the aerobics classes and drawing numbers.
We’ve had to eliminate a couple of our classes that we had previously offered. I think that that’s
one area that we may be getting hurt a little bit by Lifetime’s presence. I’m pretty sure their
aerobics classes are free to their members so it isn’t any extra expense, so we may be getting hurt
a little bit there and I think we’re probably, I’d like to find another instructor to try to bolster
some of the classes but I think again, Lifetime coming on board. They’ve probably hired up a
half dozen or more instructors and it gets harder and harder to find people, so the impact from
Lifetime is I think maybe noticeable there probably more so than our other areas of operation.
Scharfenberg: That was one of my questions. Since Lifetime has been in, has there been
fluctuation in terms of numbers? In terms of use of the facility and that.
27
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Knowles: My feeling is that the recreation center has a core group of 200 to 250 regular users
that are in there a lot. For fitness classes, fitness room, open gym times. I don’t think those
people are going to go away. We’ve seen them coming back already since we’ve re-opened.
The areas that we might get nicked a little bit in is like in the aerobics. People are interested in
aquatics. We don’t have anything to offer those people. But I think our core group of people are
going to stay with us. Also the other thing I’m encouraged about is I see a lot of bookings
coming in for our meeting rooms. I don’t anticipate any changes in that area. In fact I’m
booking several reservations every day so I’m encouraged by the usage I see there so. You know
I think the entire environment’s getting a little competitive. I mean you think about since we’ve
opened up, they’ve opened a facility in Waconia. They’ve opened a facility in Victoria.
They’ve expanded now in Chaska so I mean it’s a tough environment. But I really think that
we’re going to hold our own. I think our daily fee structure here is a big plus for us. I really do
think we’re going to hold our own. I really do.
Hoffman: And a good portion of our business is unpaid to begin with, so athletic associations,
many of our customers walk in the door seeking, expecting a community facility that they paid
for and now they have access to, so we’ll maintain that. The building, the recreation center was
really built for public meeting space. Those four community rooms, that’s what the original
intention was, and then we added on a gym and a fitness room and our aerobics room, and our
primary cash driver is the fitness room and the aerobics room… We still think, as Tom stated,
we’re going to have those core users but some of the specific areas, aerobics fluctuated even
before Lifetime and now with Lifetime and Chaska picking things up there, and also our personal
training. Personal trainer has left to go to Lifetime and so we’re still looking at picking that area
up as well. There are still customers that are interested in going to Lifetime and they find the
recreation center very comfortable for what they would like to see, so we’re confident. As a
department, as a city we appreciate that Lifetime is here. We think it’s a good service for our
residents. So we don’t always characterize it as a competitive environment. It’s just we’re going
to find our nitch and continue to serve those customers that want to come to the rec center.
Knowles: If I can just add to that a little bit. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily mutually
exclusive about a membership at Lifetime and using the recreation center. In past years I’ve
found that a lot of people who’ve expressed that they’re members at Flagship or Northwest come
to our facility from time to time because it’s easier. More convenient, whatever. I think we’ll
see the same thing at Lifetime, and that’s why I think our daily fee structure I think is just a big,
big plus right now. I don’t know if there’s ever been a discussion of having a membership
structure out there but I would strongly discourage that notion. I think the daily fee structure is a
big plus for us.
Stolar: Okay, thank you.
SENIOR CENTER REPORT.
Stolar: Senior Center. Do we want to just ask questions if there’s any consensus? Any
questions or comments about the senior center report?
28
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
PARK AND TRAIL MAINTENANCE REPORT.
Stolar: Sorry Dale, sorry to make you wait so long and put you in the spotlight early. If you
wouldn’t mind doing your park and trail report.
Gregory: Thank you. Well, the end of summer is coming way too quick for our department.
We’ve got a lot of jobs to do and that and I don’t know if we’re going to get them all done.
We’ve lost most of our summer help already and that. All the kids have gone back to college. I
do have 3 senior guys again this year that are mowing grass for us, but the grass isn’t cooperating
either. They were having a tough time staying ahead of it. Soccer fields, some of them are not
as good as I’d like to see them at. They’re getting too long and that, and we just can’t get around
to everything with those 3 guys. They’re doing the best we can. Actually I was out there riding
the lawn mower…but I’d say we’re plugging away at it and that. Just park staff and that, we’ve
got 22 soccer fields up and running this year and we also got 2 football fields going. Those 2, I
mean those are a weekly maintenance and that. We’ve got to stripe those once a week and that’s
a full day’s job. A guy will come in at 6:00 in the morning…stripe and it will take him all day to
do that. We were able to take Bandimere number 2 soccer field out which is going to help. We
over seeded that thing and it’s coming along real nice so that will be in good shape for next
summer again. Little bit on the playgrounds. Currently we have Curry Farms, North Lotus,
Chanhassen Hills, Rice Marsh and Minnewashta that have the border in. Playground is in and
the wood chips and everything and they’re playable for the kids. We have not done any
restoration around at all yet. We haven’t had the chance to do that yet. Currently my crew is
working at Lake Susan. We poured the concrete for the border at Lake Susan yesterday, the last
2 days. Thursday they’re coming in to pour the center part of it and that will be ready to start
installing play equipment. I think the play equipment was scheduled to leave the factory
yesterday or today or tomorrow, so we’re hoping to see it Friday or Monday. The guy that’s the
contractor that’s doing our concrete work, he’s already moved from the one. He’s moving now
to the little play structure. He’s going to have that one ready to go too in the next few days.
He’s going to pour concrete on there I think like Monday or Tuesday. So we’re going to be able
to move right into them and that. The thing that’s really pushing us is the poured in place. It has
to be put in before the temperature hit a certain temperature at night or they don’t want to put it
in. And we’re looking at trying to get our part of it all done for those two structures within 2
weeks, and our thinking on this is it will still be okay to do it. If we run into rain days and
everything else, it’s going to be tough. I’ve talked to my foreman and that today and that will
work for some of the projects and everything we’ve got left and that. We may be asking some of
the guys to work later in the evening or some of them actually expressed interest, they might
even work on a weekend if we had to and so we’re going to do what we need to do to get these
in. So anyway they’re coming along. And along with the playgrounds and that I really need to
thank my crew and that because they did take several weekends and spent their time on
weekends and that putting in play equipment. They were impressed with the help they had.
They had a lot of help and they said that they really did a good job. The volunteers so, they were
impressed by their work. Trail wise, this year we re-did the Minnewashta Park trail. I was out
there today. It is just about done. It’s about 99% done. They’ve got the trail all done and all the
handicap gutter wraps are in. The one section where they had to take a retaining wall out…a big
stump and lower the trail, they were grading and everything today so it looks like we should be
blacktopping here in the next day or two and that if everything goes, so we’re getting it all ready
29
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
so then that will be completely finished. That part of it out there. Other than that, like I say,
we’re just kind of going along with everything like that and I sat down the other day and talked
with the guys and that and came up with a list of things that we have to do yet this fall. We’ve
got, I’ve got a list of 25 things, including all the playgrounds we have to take care of and that,
but along with just all of our fall maintenance stuff. I mean from taking buoys in to piers in to
docks in to you name it and that, so that’s why we’re looking, we’ve got a lot to do before we
freeze up here and that, and I’m hoping we’re going to get the majority of it done.
Hoffman: We’re still adding Dale.
Gregory: I know, you keep adding too. And then Jill, she’s getting a list together for us for this
winter ready and that. I mean we talked about our winter things. We’ve got Dutch Elm disease
we haven’t touched a tree this year yet and they’ve got a list of that stuff coming up for us and,
for this winter, so that’s sort of a winter job and also all of our trails again this winter so. That
goes along with our winter maintenance and that with our skating rinks and everything else too.
So that is all I have. If anybody has any questions.
Stolar: Thank you Dale. And can’t echo enough the gratitude to your team for all they did for
the, in general but then also specifically with the playgrounds. Just a tremendous job.
Gregory: And really we were lucky because we had four playgrounds and we have four
beautiful weekends.
Stolar: Thanks. Anything else for Dale?
ADMINISTRATIVE:
2005 PLAYGROUND REPLACEMENT PROJECTS.
Hoffman: Unless there’s any questions from the commission I’ll just leave the report as it
stands. Dale talked about it. We continue to work hard. Try to get them restored. Seeded and
sodded. It’s a challenge both with our work load and then also with weather, but we’ll do what
we can.
Stolar: And hopefully we won’t need another report like this for quite a while. Done for a
while.
Hoffman: It’s been a great project. The Mayor mentioned it today at his State of the City
address specifically that the summer of 2005 playground project was a big initiative for the
community and so the fact that we’re holding the line on taxes in the community does not mean
that the projects are not getting completed. That new equipment is not coming into the parks and
I think the Mayor visited a couple of these sites as well and I think he felt very, he enjoyed the
project and he enjoyed the process.
30
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
2005 TRAIL PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAM.
Stolar: Did you want to talk about anything additional?
Hoffman: I included this trail, we have 42 miles of trails that need to be taken care of on an
annual basis. If you let all 42 miles of trails continue to age, you’ll just start losing chunks and
when I say chunk, you’ll lose 3 or 4 miles a year as the community ages. So we have a
pavement management system put in place for both our roads and our trails. We work with our
engineering department to have trails included as a part of that. We have evaluated with our staff
every section of trail. Every lineal foot of trail in the community. That’s entered into a data base
which spews out an annual, or a yearly basis, which trails are in the worst condition based on
their analysis. Then we take a look at those. Put those into the budget and this year it was about
$50,000 out of the pavement management program that went to Minnewashta and if you see the
budget number that came in, it was $66,753. We had some additional budgeting money in there
to make that happen, and so for that $66,000 we had that entire trail spruced up. Overlaid. They
included now, whenever we touch a second trail, we have to put in a truncated domes at the
concrete, all the intersections. So when you have a ped ramp and you get transition from street
to trail, you have to put in the concrete transition with a truncated dome. Little domes, and so the
same…folks can know the transition between street grade and trail grade, and if you look at that,
those are a lot of them, fairly reasonable. There’s 20 of those. $500 a piece, that’s $10,000 for
the project. And if you take a look at trails in the overall portion of the project, while the trail
did come in under the $50,000. It was $46,000 on this sheet with all of the different contractors.
GMH Asphalt came in at $46,000 where the engineer’s estimate was $66,000. And then if you
look at the total program, it’s a million 4. So Lake Lucy Road that you’re seeing out there today
is a $740,000 investment in the community, which by the way also includes a very nice trail that
was built as an off street trail rather than on street. People are already starting to appreciate that
trail so just something to keep you informed on what’s going on with pavement management
construction.
Stolar: Thanks Todd. I think Kevin you put it best where next year seems to be the theme trails.
Hoffman: Is the trails.
Stolar: It seems to me you’re welcome to think.
Dillon: It’s a good investment.
Kelly: Can I ask you a question about the trails in terms of maintenance? 101 north, I’m sorry,
south of Highway 5 which will probably be called old 101 once 212, once the new 101. What
happens to trails like that where right now they’re on a thoroughfare but after 212 comes through
and 101 gets straighten, does that, do we still maintain those trails as well because that now
becomes a less used road, does that trail kind of lose some of it’s priority? Or will it be
destroyed?
Hoffman: It will be destroyed. Portions of it. As you travel south of the barn right now on 101,
on the trail, it will, the trail will continue down past the entrance of Chanhassen Hills, and then it
31
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
will be cut off. Terminated. You’ll have a big highway in front of you. No more trail but that
trail’s going to turn right and head down behind the sound wall, down behind Chanhassen Hills.
And then connect back up over to the other entrance to Chan Hills off of Lyman.
Kelly: Okay.
Hoffman: Alright, so that one will be diverted. Where it gets chopped off coming north, down
near Bandimere, it gets chopped off right there at 101 where it meets the S curve, that will go up
and over a bridge and then right up to town so there’s going to be some things that are transition.
I’ve got a map upstairs on the wall if you’d be interested. We’ve got maps of the 101 gap project
which includes all the underpasses and new trails, and you can take a look at it after the meeting.
Kelly: Thanks.
COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS:
OFF LEASH DOG AREA RECOMMENDATION.
Murphy: Okay, the off leash dog area committee, which consists of Jack and myself, would like
to make a recommendation based on more research and discussion, we would like to recommend
that the $30,000 which is part of the funding for the off leash dog area, we donate $30,000 to the
Carver County effort at the Minnewashta site. And the reason we believe that is because we
believe the site is the best site we’re going to have in this area and the fact that they do have a
plan in place, although we know it’s not perfectly down to the last dollar. They do have a site
plan and they have gone through the process of planning, determining what features are going to
be there and how they’re going to implement those. So that we believe is the best use of our
$30,000. And we are also setting aside $20,000 for the Lake Ann site that we had discussed.
Stolar: Any questions?
Dillon: Is $20,000 enough to get the Lake Ann site done or started? Is that all that will be
required to do that?
Murphy: That all has to be determined yet. We do not know that.
Hoffman: It’s primarily fencing cost at that location so, we can run those numbers.
Atkins: Which site is at Lake Ann?
Hoffman: The woods.
Murphy: The woods…
Spizale: So when Dale has the time he could do the chips.
Murphy: And take trees out.
32
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: Can we scoop up the chips that flooded away over at Curry Farms.
Gregory: I don’t know, did you hear that we, down at Chanhassen Hills, that that wood chips out
there flooded out of that. They had a water holding pond there that flooded and all the heavy
water and everything else that came through that, it washed them out of there and they went
north, past the holding pond into the neighbor’s yard. We had two yards that were solid wood
chips. Perfect wood chips. Almost from their lot line and they came in front of the house and
they came out about 75 feet and there was a perfect line there. They just, right there they had
about this thick. So we spent a day in there raking wood chips and taking them back over there.
I never would have though it was going to happen.
Hoffman: And then Curry Farms...
Spizale: I think back to the dog park, I guess one time we thought it’d be really nice to have one
really nice dog park which we talked about. But we also thought it’d be nice to have a dog park
where the people are. You know that would be the Lake Ann one. Hopefully they’ll get
something going so we can get the Minnewashta one started. I think we’re all anxious to get a
dog park in the city. So we thought diverting the money in those two areas. We have yet to find
out what it’d cost to fence Lake Ann and to get that started, but then it’d probably have to be
started and maybe built through the next couple years.
Gregory: There’s going to be some labor there just in, and even size of fence and that. I mean
you’re going to want trails, walking trails through there. There’s going to be some clean-up of
the woods itself.
Spizale: That’s where you come in Dale.
Gregory: Should I put that on my list too?
Spizale: Number one.
Gregory: No, Lake Susan Park is still number one.
Spizale: You know and that’s kind of with the Lake Ann one, Ann and I both walked that and it
is, there is a really nice natural path going through and yet it does need some clearing. It does
need some chips. It does need some work but.
Gregory: We made a trail through there several years ago where we were actually in there
cutting down all the Dutch Elm disease trees, and there is a kind of a loop trail but it’s never
really been maintained.
Hoffman: My initial thought is that fencing the whole area would be considerably more than
$20,000. So then you’re going to be left with the decision well, do you even start or do you
make it smaller?
33
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Spizale: The whole area is how many acres? The whole square.
Hoffman: The whole woods at Lake Ann, is probably 20 acres in size. That day that we walked
with the commission it ended up being 3 or 4 acres…
Spizale: So what do you think it’d cost to fence?
Hoffman: It’s easy to find out the numbers. We’re talking a 6 foot chain link fence for that area,
it’d be significant. I’ll send you an e-mail…
Stolar: And this is something we wouldn’t even be pursuing though until some point next year,
of looking at what we want to do, correct? It’s not something that’s immediate on the docket.
Hoffman: Well in the CIP is $50,000 for dog parks.
Stolar: Right.
Hoffman: How you want to spend that is yet to be determined. It would be a future
recommendation. Once an item gets into the CIP, if the council approves your $50,000
recommendation for a dog park, they still have to approve any expenditures. So we can do some
research for you when you talk about what it would cost you at Lake Ann. Then you could make
further decisions as the year goes on and then if you wanted to, let’s say it cost $40,000 for Lake
Ann, you decide you want to do Lake Ann and drop Carver, you can do that but we’ll bring that
information.
Stolar: From a recommendation perspective though, I’d like to kind of just get consensus on,
how we want to pursue it and then add direction. Then at a future meeting, I’m not sure we have
a specific time line that we need, talk about what it would take to do Lake Ann, and then also at a
future meeting, and what you have with Marty, at some point getting an update from them. Do
we have?
Dillon: Well just a little more discussion. I mean I know that there’s probably a lot of people
out there that have had dogs that they would welcome a dog park closer into the city, you know
like the Lake Ann location but there’s a lot of people that use Lake Ann that don’t have dogs and
would they welcome the dog park in their park? I mean I don’t know do we know? I mean
because I for one might object.
Spizale: It’s pretty separate though.
Murphy: The reason we chose that site out of, compared to Lake Susan and some of the other
parks, it is set apart. The parking is set. The parking lot divides it from the ballfields. It’s across
the road from the ballfields so there is a separateness to it. But you don’t see other sites in the
park.
Dillon: Right, I think I’m, I know the parking lot that you’re talking about. I mean there’s still a
lot of overflow parking that happens there.
34
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Hoffman: Commissioner Dillon is right. There are going to be people that don’t like it.
Absolutely. Many people will like it. People that don’t like it.
Stolar: It would be my understanding though, what this is doing is saying, this is kind of an idea
and a framework. What we specifically talk about doing something at Lake Ann, we will make
it an agenda item that would be open for public. It would be a published agenda item that would
be open for public input. So there isn’t a let’s go ahead and make it a dog park. This is what the
committee has found is the best area. Then to take it to the next step includes estimates and then
an agenda item that actually says, here’s what we’re proposing. Citizens do you have input? Is
that what you’re wondering?
Dillon: Yeah. I think we need to do that.
Stolar: We still have stuff to do. I would think so Todd. I mean I would think that we can jump
right from here to, even if we came in with the cost going without putting it on an agenda.
Hoffman: Yeah…public hearings. Park commission…true public hearings but we have public
meetings and…
Stolar: Other questions?
Dillon: If we’re going to, if we’re going to approve the recommendation on the Lake
Minnewashta site and we say approve the $30,000, and that goes to the council then, as long as
they’re approving what the $50,000 in CIP money?
Hoffman: Correct, yes. This may be, make a recommendation to the council may be a little bit
premature at this time because they haven’t approved the $50,000. You might want to sit on this
until January and see what the council does.
Stolar: This is just a recommendation from the committee. I think this will spawn action once
we see what the CIP is. That sounds like forced consensus but yeah okay, does this make sense
based on we saw Lake Susan. We talked about putting signage in neighborhood parks. We
talked about whether we want Carver or not. What Jack and Ann have come up and saying,
based on all of that research what seems the best is joining with Carver at Minnewashta and look
at Lake Ann.
Scharfenberg: I would guess I threw out the question, is the $30,000 going to be enough? I
mean we don’t know what they’ve talked about doing the work themselves.
Murphy: Well they have another 10 from Shorewood.
Scharfenberg: Right, I understand that, right. Right, but is that 40 going to be enough to do even
the basic amenities? What if we approve 30. We’ve got the 10, that’s 40 but they say you know
what, it really is going to cost us 50. And we’ve taken that and we’ve said 30.
35
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Murphy: We’re going on their estimates.
Hoffman: Yeah, we’re working on what they brought to the table. Whether they need 40 to
start.
Stolar: And I think that’s a valid point. Again we’re going to take this and then when Carver
actually comes back and says, here’s exactly what we need. Can we have your money? That’s
when we’ll know and if it does come back at 40, then yeah we’ll make a choice. We might say
well yeah, let’s go ahead and do 40 there and for Lake Ann, now we may do 0 and then we may
come in at 40.
Murphy: Right. I mean we had the same questions but we only have estimates from Carver
right now.
Stolar: So that’s what this assumption is. That doesn’t mean that’s what our final decisions.
Hoffman: …from what I understand he told us was that the $40,000 and then in his e-mail, he
doesn’t know what exactly that’s going to get him but it’s going to open the park so it may or
may not, depending on how far…
Stolar: So I think first of all thank Jack and Ann for carrying the ball on this, and I know Ann
you did a lot of research. I don’t think we need action. I think this is just a guiding principle and
without objection then I’ll take, for lack of a better term, closure of the committee’s
recommendation and then we’ll take this forward, like we told Todd. Look at the costs at Lake
Ann and follow through with Marty to see what the actual costs would be at Minnewashta.
Dillon: So I guess I’m still kind of confused. What is the time table that we, we’re tabling this
until?
Stolar: A few things have to happen. Council has to approve the CIP of 50 grand.
Dillon: And that would occur when?
(There was a tape change at this point in the discussion.)
Stolar: Based on that, if there’s no change, the next step would be at some point in the spring,
late winter or early spring, because I do think we need to get Marty in here and you and I talked
about this. So he says okay, so here’s what I’m going to do with the money. With all the
caveats…people are available, as long as it doesn’t rain, as long as we don’t have to close
Minnewashta Beach, whatever he wants to put on a caveat of it, and here’s where we, what we
think we can have by doing it ourselves with this time table. At that point I think we need a
recommendation directly of saying, based on what you told us Marty, City Council can you
please approve the money. Is that correct Todd? Does that, at that time we then say, in addition,
concurrent with that, Todd’s going to give us some estimates.
Hoffman: …you’re still in the research stage. We’re just trying to design.
36
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
Stolar: But it’s much narrower. It’s not, well what can we do at Lake Susan? What can we do
at Lotus? What can we do here? Lake Ann and Minnewashta, that’s what we’re going to look
at.
Kelly: Based on what Marty said about not being able to do much in the summer, it’s very
optimistic to say that the dog park could be opened at Minnewashta in the summer of 2006. If
our City Council wouldn’t recommend…can give money to Carver in January or February, so
it’d be optimistic to say that there’d be something at Minnewashta in summer 2006?
Stolar: Oh yeah. I would say if we can get it in 2006, that’d be good. It’d probably be more like
late fall as the earliest. From what I read in his memo.
Dillon: Do we want to make sure then that we have somebody at the council meeting in
December to talk about that? I mean if questions arise.
Hoffman: You have the schedule so.
Stolar: If anyone needs a copy of the schedule, we should have somebody there. Now in all
fairness right Ann, if you feel that’s something you should be at, maybe you can swap with
someone. Or Jack, one of the two of you from that committee.
Spizale: Maybe we should both be there.
Stolar: So if you want to do that and whoever’s scheduled for the meeting when it comes up, we
can swap it out.
Scharfenberg: I don’t know that I ever got that schedule.
Hoffman: Okay. It’s the City Council schedule and then when you are scheduled, if there are
items on the council agenda pertaining to park and rec, you are mailed or delivered an agenda
and the items.
Stolar: Two of the times I’ve had to do it, nothing ever came but. Great. Anything else then?
SURFACE WATER MANAGEMENT TASK FORCE COMMITTEE REPORT.
Stolar: I’m on that. It’s very interesting, especially with the massive rains we’ve had recently.
Brought together some interesting information. What I’ll do is I’ll just send an e-mail. There are
a couple of documents that Lori Haak had put together that I thought were very interesting
describing some of the issues related to water management. It is very technical. I’ve learned a
lot more about water than I ever thought I would learn. But I will bring forth to you anything
that we need to. Right now the only impact on parks that I’ve seen come about in the discussion,
we’ve had 2 meetings so far, is one of the things they’re talking about is better water
management through the use of natural plantings versus some of the grasses and things that
people put in. And one of the discussions was, should we be doing that as a showcase in our
37
Park and Rec Commission – September 27, 2005
downtown to start with. So we consider having where we have grass, maybe put some natural
flowers or plant growth there that wouldn’t need care and also do better surface water
management. That’s really the only thing that’s come up so far and it would be great to set an
example then of here’s the types of plantings that are better for water management. So as that
comes about and if it starts coming through our recommendations, I’ll let you know. Any other
items? If not, we’ll move to adjourn and we’ll have Jack do the next meeting so we can do it a
lot quicker.
Hoffman: Any questions on the correspondence?
Stolar: Okay, motion to adjourn?
Spizale moved, Dillon seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion
carried. The meeting was adjourned.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman
Park and Rec Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
38