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PRC 2005 12 20 CHANHASSEN PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING DECEMBER 20, 2005 Chairman Stolar called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m.. MEMBERS PRESENT: Glenn Stolar, Paula Atkins, Tom Kelly, Ann Murphy, Steve Scharfenberg, Kevin Dillon and Jack Spizale STAFF PRESENT: Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation Superintendent; Dale Gregory, Park Superintendent; Tom Knowles, Recreation Center Manager; and Susan Bill, Senior Center Coordinator APPROVAL OF AGENDA:Kelly moved, Murphy seconded to approve the agenda with the following additions: Todd Hoffman added item 7(a), Recreation Supervisor update and discussion of the approved 2006 Capital Improvement Program. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:Dillon moved, Murphy seconded to approve the verbatim and summary Minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated November 22, 2005 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0. PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION ICE RINK MONITORING SCHEDULE. Ruegemer: Thank you Chair Stolar, Park and Rec Commission has made recommendation to the City Council to approve our test sites. We talked about that back in October for that. City Council did approve a recommendation made by the council. At looking ahead we did add 3 family rinks sort of as a test site at Chanhassen Hills, Pheasant Hills Park and Rice Marsh Lake Park. I believe those are up and going right now with kids skating on those. Dale and his crew have been very busy keeping up and adding additional ice, basically on a daily basis so they’ve been real busy with that. We’re going to take a look at adding that, it talks about you know as we have in the past with keeping track of data collected at these test sites so we can kind of formulate a good decision on the conclusion of the ice rink season to see if our test sites were a positive thing within our neighborhood. So we’re going to take a look at that. Staff did develop a, kind of a schedule with dates and random times to go around to these test site locations. We’re asking for the park and rec commissioners to take a look at that and kind of fill in their name where appropriate to cover the necessary shifts provided on the schedule. Park maintenance crews will also be out there when they’re flooding at the different locations and kind of keep track, as we have in the past, where we say kind of a light, medium or heavy use based on skating patterns and shavings on the ice and it’s real scientific so. So Dale’s crew will Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 keep track of that. There is a blank form within the tractors and the flooding vehicles that we can keep track of information and report back to the commission in March sometime so, we can take a look at that. We also did include again for the commission’s information a listing of all the warming houses and skating rinks and hockey areas within our park system for the winter of ’05- 06. The square boxes are not the proposed rinks anymore. They are part of the rinks that we will be maintaining for the season along with these circled areas. So there will be 4 warming houses again within our park system this year at Roundhouse Park, City Center Park, the Rec Center and th North Lotus Lake Park so. We did open all of the warming house locations last Friday. The 16 I believe and so we are fully staffed and open on a daily basis at this point so. And as well we will be for the remaining of the season for as long as we can go, so if the commission would like to take a look at the schedule on that, we can take a look at the necessary columns. The dates are listed. The attendance person, whom that may be at the time. And then the 3 locations that we’re going to be monitoring throughout the winter season. So at this time I guess I’d like to open the schedule up for the commission members to start filling in their names. Dillon: And I take it Jerry that if we take a slot that we check all three rinks, am I right? Ruegemer: Correct. Dillon: Okay. Stolar: If people want to share a day though I think we could do that too. To take a rink, you know. Hoffman: You just need to make a note. One would go to Chan Hills and the other person would go to the other two or something like that. Stolar: Exactly, however you want to do it so. Murphy: Do we stay there for any length of time or is it just go and see at that point in time? Ruegemer: Yeah, I kind of think the, you certainly can stay longer than that time that’s listed on the schedule because we’re going to take that random sampling. Just kind of give it kind of broad…so if you’d like to stay longer, you certainly can do that. I can e-mail the point schedule or I can mail you a stack of however many appear on the schedule. stthst Scharfenberg: Jerry I’ll take Saturday the 31 of December. Saturday the 7. Saturday the 21. Hoffman: It’s about 3 per person. th Scharfenberg: And I’ll even take February 4. Stolar: What time does Feb Fest start? Ruegemer: Feb Festival starts roughly around 11:00 or near noon that day. 2 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Stolar: I can take this Friday. I possibly can take Saturday. I have to check for sure on that. But I think I can. thnd Spizale: Jerry I’ll take Monday, December 26. And Tuesday, January 2. Let’s see, Saturday, th January 14. Hoffman: It’s really going to give the commissioners some first hand experience on just what’s going on out there in the park system so. You can talk to people at the rinks. st Stolar: I’ll do January 1 also. Sunday. nd Murphy: Jerry, I can take Thursday, the 22. You’re taking Saturday? Stolar: Yes, I have Saturday. Murphy: And I can take that Monday at 1:00. Stolar: Monday at 1:00? Murphy: Yeah, or did somebody else already have. Oh wait, no I won’t be here. Okay. Ruegemer: One that we may want to add is the Monday, Martin Luther King Day. I think the th kids are off on school, I believe that’s the 16. We’ll be open all day long at the regular skating rinks, if that’s one that the commission would like to entertain adding. ththth Atkins: I’ll take Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the 28, 29 and 30 of December. Ruegemer: Steve, which ones did you take? stthstth Scharfenberg: The 31, the 7, the 21 and February 4. th Kelly: I can take the 28. Hoffman: Of January? Kelly: Yep. Ruegemer: Who was that, Kelly? Hoffman: Yep. thth Kelly: And I can take the 8 of January and the 15. nd Atkins: I can also take January 2 too. Hoffman: Jack’s got that. 3 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Atkins: Does he? Okay. thnd Ruegemer: I think we’re still looking for Tuesday the 27 of December. Sunday, January 22. th Sunday, January 29 and 3 in February. ndth Murphy: I can take those Sunday, the 22 and 29. Ruegemer: Thank you. th Dillon: And I’ll, Tuesday the 27 and what else? th Ruegemer: You’ll take the 27? Dillon: Yeah. th Ruegemer: Okay. And then that takes us up through, there’s 3 left at Sunday, February 5. thth Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February 12. thth Dillon: I think I can do the 5. I mean if I can I’ll let you know. And the 12 will be fine too. th Stolar: If you want to put me down for the 11. I need to check something but I think I can do that one. Ruegemer: All filled. Thank you. Dillon: ...just kind of shoot you a message as we go that day or. Ruegemer: Yeah, probably just hold onto, I don’t know how we should do that. Stolar: Actually, can I make a suggestion? If you can e-mail us a schedule with the names, we can just mail these back with you. We’ll fill it out on our computer and mail it back to you with the numbers. Or print it out if you want to fax it, whatever but. Ruegemer: Okay. We’ll update the schedule tomorrow and I’ll do an e-mail to everybody tomorrow. Stolar: And a side note question, Dale we’ve got the rinks up and running through this luxurious cold that we’ve had for a while. Has it helped us? Gregory: Well it’s helped to…when we got the cold weather we’re able to flood… Then we got a little warm weather and snow and that kind of goofed us up. We needed about 4 days to flood and that, but they were…but now we went last night, I went out last night and a few guys are going tonight so hopefully after that it’s going to be warm. We’re going to have to shut down. We won’t be able to flood at night anymore because it’s going to be so warm. 4 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Stolar: But it’s giving us a good base. Gregory: We’re getting a real good base and everything. Where we’re running into trouble is on the north end, the hockey rinks where the sun. If the sun is out, it beats down on the boards and then it melts right along the boards. As soon as we get enough base where the blacktop…and we should have that within the next couple days. Stolar: So we might cross our fingers, we might actually have a holiday break where we can use the rinks. First time in a while that’s been nice. Gregory: Last time was 5 years ago that we were open this early and then it went back another 5 years again before we were open this early. Stolar: Great. Thank you for your crew for getting out there and taking advantage of the weather. Any other questions or comments on this? Hoffman: A couple comments. Chanhassen Hills, very easy to find. Has a parking lot right off of the main residential street. Rice Marsh Lake, a little more difficult. You have to wind your way all the way back down behind McDonald’s and then there’s a small parking lot off a cul-de- sac. Pheasant Hills, the most challenging to find. There’s a Pheasant Hill park sign just off of Lake Lucy Road and Lake Lucy, Lake Lucy Road and what’s the other, Lake Lucy Lane? You need to go past that and wind your way back around in the neighborhood, and then there’s just on street parking with a pathway that goes there. Kelly: So if you’re going off of. Hoffman: You’re going west. Kelly: You’re going west to Lake Lucy Road and there’s a path that goes up. You can see the path and then it kind of sudo forks, and you kind of go right at that sudo fork. Hoffman: And then you continue up, just keep taking the rights then you’ll get back to the park which will be on the north side of the park instead of the south side. And there will be a trail access there and that will come right in. If you park on Lake Lucy Lane that would be a long walk. Stolar: At the very least we’ll all find our ways to get to those parks. Hoffman: Thank you everyone for doing this. It will be exciting to hear your findings. Stolar: Great. Anything else on this item? Okay. 5 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS: 2005 TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY EVALUATION. Ruegemer: Thank you again Chair Stolar. Again our annual tree lighting ceremony was rd December 3 from 5:00 to 6:00. Mayor Furlong did officially flip the switch, not only for the tree but for the entire park, down here at City Center Park so when it lit up it was absolutely beautiful. Dale and his crew did a wonderful job of getting all the lights coordinated and all the electrical problems figured out and all that stuff so we’ve heard many positive comments from the general public and also staff on how people feel the lights are this year so it really was a nice event. It was not too bad of a night with a lot of people sitting around the campfire. About 100- 125 people showed up that night. Santa Claus arrived again via fire truck so that was kind of fun with that so. Chamber was involved with that and staffing and serving refreshments. Was a nice event. Kind of a nice old touch so the Pillsbury Dough Boy was here and it kind of was a little fun thing for the kids. Get your picture taken. Of course Santa was handing out candy canes for everybody in attendance so it was a nice event. I certainly over bought candy canes. We still have candy canes left over so I need to make a note of cutting back next year. But a nice event. Just getting people out. Just another kind of extension of the holiday season. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. It’s a quick event. Relatively easy to pull off so it’s certainly our recommendation to continue to incur for under $300 I think we get a lot of bang for our buck for the event so, it’s a good event. Stolar: Any questions? Okay. WINTER PROGRAM UPDATE. Ruegemer: …following through on a lot of these activities so. The Timberwolves game is next th Monday night the 26. We have around 20 people going to that so it’s kind of a special kind of a Minnesota Recreation and Park Association night where we get special discounts on tickets for that. All the kids get to go down on the Target Center floor and shoot a basket at the free throw line and that sort of thing. You can kind of be down on the general area so that’s a lot of fun. Non-School Day Adventures are another big one. We’re full at capacity on the Wednesday program, or the Wednesday trip and then we’re pretty close with our numbers on Thursday trip as well. Those trips we combine with the Cities of Eden Prairie and Chaska so we’re going to go snow tubing one day. Ice skating. Swimming. Chucky Cheese. McDonald’s. A number of different things so, that’s always a popular event with that. Daddy Daughter Date Night, the Friday night has been filled for quite a while with, I think we have 49 couples that night, and Thursday is rapidly approaching full status so I think we’re getting down there on that one too. th Ice skating clinic we have our capacity on that and that starts next week on the 27 through the, Tuesday through Friday. So our teacher that’s going to be teaching that as well so that is full with that so. Just a lot of different activities going on. We have different craft classes as we’re going on with kind of the holiday theme with that so those have been popular as well. The Chan/Chaska, the Turkey Shoot, that’s a program that we do with the City of Chaska. We have close to 80 to 100 kids participate in that as well so, that’s another good program for teenagers down at the community center. So we have fun again with that. So just a lot of different things going on within our system this year. 3 on 3 basketball is going to be starting another season 6 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 th after the first of the year, around I believe the 9. That Monday. First Monday of the month. I think we have 14 teams signed up for that right now so it should be a good season so. A lot of programs filled to capacity so a lot of people are taking advantages of our wonderful program here in the city. Stolar: Thank you. Any questions? No? Murphy: If we get a warm up in the weather before that ice skating clinic, does that just get cancelled and then. Ruegemer: It is weather dependent but I guess I don’t foresee that happening at this point so. Stolar: Okay. RECREATION CENTER REPORT. Knowles: Well the Rec Center is coming along pretty good. We’ve had a noticeable up tick up activities since the weather started cold. People coming inside so that’s a good thing. We had the camp out here a couple 2-3 weekends ago. We had about 25 people camping out over night raising funds for the Afghan, or Pakistan earthquake relief. Then followed by the Breakfast with Santa which a big crowd there again this year so that was successful event. We’ve been able to add a fitness instructor to conduct a Thursday morning class, which I’m real optimistic will be a success. It’s a good time to have a class at 9:15. So I’m hopeful that that will catch on and we’ll be able to keep that running. Jerry kind of filled you in on the programming activity and facility notes, we’ve allotted time again this year to some of the youth sports associations for their usage. Currently the…Tuesday nights, CAA basketball is in our gym and the CYSA softball group is on our gym also Tuesday nights. Mainly pitchers and catchers who are working on…so it’s a small group but they’re there every week so it’s nice to have the space for them. Stolar: Great. Okay, thank you. Any questions for Tom? And this is your first report so. Scharfenberg: …batting cage up in the third gym. Is that for the CYSA? Knowles: Yes. And then they get usage in the spring before they’re ready to go outside, like in early March and stuff they’ll bring the batting, pitching machines and so forth in there. They throw carpet down on the gym floors so it doesn’t get…so yep, that’s what that is. Scharfenberg: Okay. Is there going to be any usage if you just wanted to come in and use that? I mean we don’t have a pitching machine but if you wanted to go in and just pitch balls and hit and that, is that available? Knowles: It’s…as traffic allows. If we have just a huge crowd of people playing basketball, we’d probably have to say no, but if there’s not much business going on, we could throw up the nets fairly quickly. Scharfenberg: Okay. 7 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Stolar: Any other? Hoffman: …holiday times real quickly. th Knowles: Oh, this is off the top of my head. December 24 we’re open 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.. thst December 25 we are closed. Then the next weekend, December 31, that Saturday it’s 8:00 st a.m. to 4:00 p.m. again and then we’re closed Sunday the 1. Stolar: Okay, thank you. SENIOR CENTER REPORT. Bill: To echo what Jerry was saying, all of our programs and last summer and throughout the fall have been filled to maximum capacity. We’re operating every one of them just about has waiting lists. I don’t know where everyone’s coming from but it’s a good sign. A couple things I want to highlight was our holiday party and we got a co-sponsorship by the Community Bank Chanhassen… Anyway, holiday party. Bill Traxler from the Community Bank Chanhassen gave us $880 which took care of the cost of the food so we had a catered meal, which we were able to serve and we charged participants $5.00 and that covered entertainment and door prizes. People had a great time. Bill and his assistant came and we presented them with a plaque of appreciation. They were very, very appreciative and indicated they’re looking forward to it for next year. I’ve also started a Meet and Greet Coffee is now we’re going to do them on a quarterly basis. We’re seeing a lot of new people come into the Senior Center so four times a year, we were doing it every other month but now we meet 4 times a year. Send out an invitation to any new participant and the Senior Advisory Board is there so we have coffee. We talk about activities. They get to know someone and we fill them in first hand on activities at the senior center. I think our first one we had, oh we had 22 people and we’ll have one in January so they’ve been well attended. One other thing I want to talk about is one on one computer training. Last, end of last summer the Senior Commission talked about they’d like to volunteer or give back and do something for the community. Curt Robinson, Bobby Headla and Dave Headla, as well as a couple other people are now…computers. From the old senior center I have the computer set or hooked up to the internet so now we offer one on one computer training where if people call in, they want just basic computer instruction and once a volunteer will make a connection with a person and they go over the basics, emailing, setting up mailboxes, word documents, some things like that. Reception on that has been great. We’ve trained 29 people so far and it’s just real nice because what I hear, basic computer classes like through District 112, they’re in a group and we’re talking about some people that don’t even know how to turn on the computer, so they’re a little overwhelmed when they’re in a class. Plus the senior center volunteers really enjoy helping… friendship, he e-mails that gentleman every day and calls him any time he can’t figure something out and…but they both enjoy that. Then the last thing I want to highlight is Medicare Part D. I don’t know if any of you have heard about Medicare Part D. State of Minnesota has 76 different Medicare Part D plans, which is horrendously overwhelming. We’ve had two presentations that I’ve had State Representatives come in. Talk about basic information. The one in October we had 85 people, so as a shoot off of that I now have some volunteer State Representative volunteers that do one on one computer counseling. We use the 8 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 computer in the west senior center, we have access to the Medicare web site so we can do plan comparisons. In December I think we did 15 one on one counseling where, I get a lot of solicitation calls from like Medica or Blue Cross Blue Shield, Health Partners wanting to give presentations. I just felt it was better having a non-biased party inform people and I’m already full for January and February, so that’s really been a great benefit and people are real appreciative that we can offer that. So all in all it’s been a busy year. A good year and we look forward to 2006. Stolar: Thank you. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. PARK AND TRAIL MAINTENANCE REPORT. Gregory: Thank you. Well this fall has proven to be one of our busier ones again. …shut down for all of our parks. Soccer fields. Dock, fishing piers, everything else we normally do here in the fall and that. We also try to keep up with some of the play equipment, finishing up what we could on those. Lake Susan hasn’t got everything up installed, but we ran out of time. Did not get the poured in place in and we did not get the sod. We had several of our parks ready for sod and we had a guy hired and everything else and that, and for 3 weeks and that, he was so backed up he couldn’t get to us so he ran out of time so that’s one of the things we really hoped we would…this year and it would have been a great year to get the sod down this fall. We had rain. We had everything… It’s one of those things where we’re going to have to get him right away come spring and finish them up and get them completed then. Also we’re going to, this fall we’re going to get stuff ready for flooding. Trucks, plows, all that sort of stuff. Got kind of caught off guard on that. Did not have our snowblowers and everything ready when the snow got here and that so guys did a lot of walking behind the snowblowers trying to get everything out of the hockey rinks and that instead of using our trucks. And with the snow we’ve had, we’ve got enough right now to basically…this early in the year but we’ve already had to go out and blow all them off, just so it gives us more room for the rest of the year. So we’re, they’re pretty busy with that and again we’re working getting as much done as we can as the rinks and that, as the weather will allow us. They should be in real good shape for the holidays and that’s pretty much been our fall. Just keeping, keeping getting everything ready for the winter so. Stolar: Okay, thank you. Questions? Okay, thank you very much. ADMINISTRATIVE: 2005 YEAR END REVIEW. Hoffman: Thank you Chair Stolar, members of the commission. During an opportunity to recap some of the things that we accomplished in 2005, really the parks are you know the attribute which many people move to this city for. And not just only parks but just open space in general, and as you travel around the community and you witness the construction in the 2005 MUSA, the Highway 212, these open spaces are disappearing. That only reminds us that places like Bandimere Park, Lake Ann Park, the Fox Family Woods and these other places will become just that much more valuable as the city continues to urbanize and these roads are constructed so. Our work is important and we have future acquisitions to accomplish yet within our park system and so those are going to be some future important milestones to accomplish. We talked about the 2005 playground improvement project. I think you all were involved in some fashion and 9 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 it’s just going to be a real memorable event for the community and for the staff, elected and appointed officials so again thank you for that. We would benefit from an additional covered picnic shelter, because Jerry’s always booked up and I think Lake Ann Park probably on top of the hill would be the best location. If you have a chance to take a walk up there next summer and go ahead and visualize that. We’re considering slab on grade with a covered shelter type of a situation up there so we can have additional group picnics at that location. And then again we touched on the acquisition. The 2005 MUSA area, park acquisition. You’ll probably see some activity in these chambers at your level in 2006. It’s going to be a heated debate, without question. The acquisition of that property is going to be difficult. We had selected a site in the Degler property. You saw those plans or those proposals probably 6 months ago, and we had to pass on that acquisition or continue negotiations for acquisition due to the fact that we needed to acquire some easements for the sewer lines and they would not sign those easements for those sewer lines. If we continue to pursue that acquisition on a park, and so the administrative staff, council and myself made the decision to leave that site and so we’re onto a future site and that has the other property owners very concerned because they thought this park issue was settled on the Degler property and it is not. And so you’ll see activity on that acquisition again in 2006. Talking about trails, the most prominent information on trails is that the snowmobile club has disbanded in our community. There will no longer be any snowmobile trails in our community. Snowmobile club actively sought out easements on properties since 1980 in this community, so they’ve been around for 25 years. So we are going to have our share of snowmobile issues this year. We’ve already had many calls with snowmobiles on pedestrian, asphalt pedestrian trail which is irresponsible and illegal and complaints on private property. They’re out, when they’re on these pedestrian trails they’re running over our…that we installed to aid us in plowing so we had some damage already, so we’ll be working with the paper. You’ll see an article this week on snowmobiles. There really is no legal place to ride them any longer in the community, although you see a lot of tracks out. By state law you can ride in a county ditch, in a state ditch but you have to be in the bottom of that ditch or on the outside banks and you’d be hard pressed to find a county or state road in our community where you can stay in that type of a situation, so. You’ll see increased enforcement by Jackie Glazer, our DNR law enforcement, Carver County sheriff’s has been out already this last Saturday and Sunday. Marty Walsh is not quite sure what he’s going to do out at the regional park because that was similar to Lake Ann where they would go through Lake Ann on trail. They would go through Lake Minnewashta Regional Park by trail. The trail is no longer there. We will be closing Lake Ann snowmobiling. Lake Ann Park snowmobiling and then Marty Walsh will have to, is also considering closing that park to snowmobiles as well. Atkins: So they can’t snowmobile on the lake? Hoffman: Sure they can. Atkins: Yes? Hoffman: Yep, but you have to get there. Atkins: Drive it on a trailer and put it onto the lake. 10 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Hoffman: Yep, put it on the lake. Kelly: Can I ask a simple question? Does that mean you’ll be plowing the, how about the south LRT trail, south of Pioneer? That used to be open for snowmobiling. Hoffman: We still have it open for snowmobiling. We have the permit already this year, so we have a permit authorized by Three Rivers for snowmobiling and so if people find their way there, or you’re on the neighbors, they can still go up ahead and snowmobile this year but next year we will not pursue that acquisition of that. And then you’ll have to decide if you want to pursue it for some other use, either walking or cross country skiing. Again our trail system is 44 miles and growing. Residents really appreciate it. It takes a lot of time to maintain and build those trails. We always try to build them concurrent with the road projects, but I can guarantee you as you can see yourself, people appreciate the nature trails by far the most. They enjoy the walks through the woods and the areas along the creeks and the swamps. Rec programming continues th to be a highlight. We talked a lot about it. I heard people say that the 4 of July celebration’s their favorite thing of this year in Chanhassen, and I’ve heard dozens of people say they used to go out of town and now they stay in town simply for the celebration, so I think it is a real highlight in our community. We plan on accommodating another outstanding crowd. If you were there last year you saw that we were overwhelmed with people. Continues to grow. This year it will be on a Monday night. So the…will be on Monday night. Fireworks will be th launched on Tuesday the 4 I believe. The remainder of our special event program is the senior center filled to capacity. Talk about waiting lists, even a waiting list for the Christmas party so looking for even a larger spot for that event. Youth and family and adult programming is a staple to our department. Look for more programs to focus on outdoors and natural areas. We feel it’s one of our strong points. In our system we have, we are so blessed with our outdoor facilities. Rec center’s alive and well. We’re not for sale. To many people that believe with Lifetime here we’re going to pack up our bags and move on, but that’s not the case. There was talk in the community that if we would ever open a community center of our own, that we could use that as a bargaining tool that we could sell that building for…back to the school district. Take that money and use it for our future community center, but the players are pretty well set. The rec center will stay. Lifetime is here. Chaska’s expanded. Victoria has built. Waconia has built. And so there’s been a lot of new recreation service providers in the west metro. Stolar: And Eden Prairie’s redoing their’s. Hoffman: Yep, Eden Prairie’s going to remodel, so. Tom is ready to put some exciting modifications to the schedule so we look forward to that. Park and trail maintenance, our crew maintains 32 parks plus 44 miles of trail and then our downtown. I talked to Charlie Eiler today. He said he spent most of the last few days bouncing around in a Bobcat trying to scrap sidewalks clear in our downtown because they’re all iced up so, those are things you don’t realize that our crew does on a daily basis. There’s just 7 of them. I talked about, imagine the work you do, 2 of you at home at your yard and imagine what these, this crew is faced with on a daily basis and so I just commend what they do year in and year out. It’s a lot of good work. The future, the park and recreation, we’re excited about the future. There’s really some principles that we talk about. We like to exceed our customer’s expectations. When they show up, we want them to say wow. This is more than I anticipated. More than I thought I would get. We want to do every job well, 11 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 which we also talk a lot about because it becomes more and more difficult as we grow bit we maintain a fairly flat budgeting and staffing operation. And then we like to seek out the involvement of our citizens. We believe strongly in bringing them into this room and getting them involved. It provides buying into our programs and is the secret to secure of our future. So I want to thank the commission for your important role in advising the City Council on the operations of the department and for continually seeking to make things better for our citizens. It’s my pleasure in serving as Park and Recreation Director for the community and I enjoy working with the commission on a monthly and an annual basis so thank you for all you do. Stolar: Thank you. Comments? Points. Dillon; You and your staff do a great job. I mean it’s obvious that we do exceed expectations on a regular basis, all of you and it’s great to be associated with you. Hoffman: Thanks Kevin. Stolar: Those words, I’m sure it echo’s everybody here. Thank you. Great. We’ll look forward to a very active 2006. The next item. The rec supervisor update. Jerry. Ruegemer: Just to update the commission. We have hired a replacement for Corey. Went through, we had 59 applications overall. Interviewed 5 from that. Brought a couple people back for a second interview. With that we did offer the position, him name is Nate Rosa. Nate has worked a little bit with the City of Moorhead. Also the City of St. Louis Park and most recently with the Carver Scott Coop down in Chaska. So he comes with some experience in special events. Some programming. Not only with youth but teenagers as well and likes to fish and do some of the things that we like to do. Certainly seems energetic and ready to focus on having his th first full time job and seems to be very excited about that. His first day will be January 4 and he’ll work 8:00 to 4:30 every day. He’s plugged in and really wanting to do that extra mile. Work long hours if needed and is real excited to start and look to the future so, and I’m ready for him to start. He can walk right into the rink program and Feb Fest and so be baptism by fire so he’ll be busy right away so. Hoffman: It might be known that he’s a semi professional football player so he’s a big guy. Big, strong guy. Stolar: Awesome. Okay, well we’ll meet him I’m sure at a future meeting. Ruegemer: I’ll have him come to the January to introduce him to the commission that evening. Stolar: And ask us to volunteer for Feb Fest at the same time. Ruegemer: That is correct. He can give you a report on the Feb Fest. Stolar: Great. 2006 CIP approved program. 12 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Hoffman: Council, City Council approved our 2006 CIP in December. Two weeks ago and last time the commission look at this was back in August so I’d like to just bring you up to date. To give you an idea of the $19 million dollars in CIP items approved by the City Council for the community next year, park and trails represent 1.4 million of that. Major equipment, the dump trucks, front end loaders, lawn mowers, those type of things is $998,000 or a million dollars. Sanitary sewer improvements of a half a million. Street improvements are the big item, 12 ½ million dollars in street improvements for next year. And then a million dollars in surface water management. The fall storms brought that issue more to light and the community has a lot of conversations about that. And then water system improvements at 2 ½ million dollars to our water system. So those are the capital improvements slated for 2006. A brief rundown of parks and trail improvements. $6,000 for picnic tables and benches. $5,000 for trees. Off leash dog area contributions of up to $50,000 and so again all of these will be approved by the council when the time comes so if you get into a project with the County, you make a recommendation and you have the dollars available. Lake Ann road and parking lot rehabilitation, $395,000. We’ve been attempting to secure these funds for up to 10 or 15 years for some work out at Lake Ann so we’re very happy about that. These are non-park dollars. $400,000 in road improvement dollars so we’re very happy about that project. You’ll see a big improvement by the end of next year. This will be scheduled late in the year to coincide with a slow time at Lake Ann. Obviously there’s only one way in and one way out so it will provide some inconvenience to our patrons but we’ll work around that. There’s a big item, the largest in fact on the list, the west water treatment plant parkland acquisition for $540,000. This has already been spent in 2005 so this item will come off of this list, the 2006 list. The land that we acquired out on Galpin Boulevard at the Lake Harrison project, Jerome Carlson. $80,000 for the Highover Trail with the Crestview Addition coming through. You want to go ahead and complete that trail under the power lines. $60,000 for athletic field improvements. You remember the people here talking about athletic field improvements. We’re going to invite them all back, all the associations at your January meeting and start entertaining a conversation about what they would like to see happen with those dollars. $60,000 for rec center hockey rink rehabilitation. $40,000 for the parking lot expansion at Lake Susan. We started that project with Dale’s crew. We said now is the time to do it. We’re here ripping this park up. Let’s go ahead and plan the future expansion so we’re going to continue on that. Performance stage for City Center Park, up to $35,000. We want to make a formal location now that we feel it will be a successful venue for the community. $25,000 in rec center trees. $25,000 for Bandimere park athletic field netting. And that’s for the soccer fields. Stop those soccer balls from going off into the pond and into the woods. Rice Marsh Lake neighborhood trail around the park for $20,000 and that came up as a part of the conversation of the installation of the playground, so we’re down there working with the neighborhood and they said, we’ve seen these trails in other parks where when I’m playing with my young child, my older child can take the Big Wheel and go around in a circle. It’s just a way of really utilizing fully the park areas. We have good examples at North Lotus Lake Park. That’s what I would call a park trail. It’s an internal loop in a park which really adds value to the purchase the property. South Lotus Lake, we have a similar trail planned for $15,000. Then we’re doing some master planning update for our $10,000 for all of our park master plans are outdated. We want to get those up to date so we can have best planning possible. Bandimere Heights, this is your half court basketball court, $6,000 to replace the playground that we took out. And then tennis court resurfacing for $19,500. And then an item added late in the game, up to $30,000 as a matching contribution to the Chanhassen Elementary School playground. 13 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 Parents have been coming into my office for a number of years and then also working with the principal and the school district, their playground is no longer up to safety codes, similar to what we experienced, and it was a joint partnership early on and always has been and so they’re going to work between the district and the APT to come up with the other $30,000. And then we’re going to allow them to manage that project and then they’ll come to you and ask for that $30,000 contribution. Bring a plan down here and say this is what we’re going to do. You can make a recommendation to the council on how you’d like to do that. That park acts as a school playground during the day and a community park at night, so that’s the list. A lot of work to do in 2006 so we’re not out of the woods yet. Scharfenberg: Todd, who will be invited for the athletic field improvement discussion? Hoffman: All the ball associations. So CAA, soccer. Scharfenberg: Probably Lacrosse. Hoffman: Yeah, lacrosse. Tonka United. Both, all the groups. If there’s anyone in particular, just send us an e-mail and we’ll get a mailing off to them. Stolar: …the amount of discussion, do we need to maybe consider having that meeting start a little earlier? Or you don’t think it will be that, or is this just to open up the idea? The discussions will actually occur a little later? Hoffman: No, yeah. Hopefully we can get through it. Stolar: Okay. If we have to postpone something. Hoffman: Or extend it. Stolar: Okay. Any questions for Todd? Dillon: So for the final approval of the capital budget, was it pretty much like a rubber stamp type of thing? Did they give you a lot of push back on some of the items? How did it go? Hoffman: It went very well with the council this year. They had a number of questions overall in the budget for the City Manager, but in general the process went very smoothly and they did not scrutinize your recommendation items. Took your word for it and approved it. Scharfenberg: Any update from the County on the dog park issue? Hoffman: Yes. Well the best update is that Marty skied in the park last Saturday and saw more dog walkers than skiers so he understands the issue clearly and from a personal perspective, but he’s just continuing to talk to the other municipalities and we’ll get an update from him later this winter. 14 Park and Rec Commission – December 20, 2005 COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS. Stolar: Okay. Then committee reports. We only have one committee going on right now. It’s a surface water management and there’s really not a lot to report. I know we’re going to be working with both the environment and water departments to do some activities that will help surface water management in some of it, in Lake Ann? Hoffman: Lake Ann. Stolar: When we do the street resurfacing. So that will be a nice showcase also for some surface water management practices. Todd mentioned that to me so that will be next fall basically. Hoffman: And the watershed district is interested in participating. Stolar: Great. Any presentations? Well then administrative packet, any questions on the correspondence? COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS: None. ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET: None. Spizale moved, Kelly seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously 7 to 0. Submitted by Todd Hoffman Park and Rec Director Prepared by Nann Opheim 15