[Music] Chaza Park and Recreation Commission, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. Call to order. Uh, roll call, please. Mary chair Jason branch present Elizabeth
vice chair here Zach here Harley Whitner here Michael Hower here Kevin Hill thanks Mary Okay, next item number three is
adopt the agenda. Um, does anybody have any changes or any um anything to say about the agenda this evening? Hearing none, I'll entertain a
motion to adopt the agenda. A motion to adopt tonight's agenda. Hi, he I second. and Whitner. Agenda is adopted. That moves us to visitor presentations. Seeing none and nobody
online. No. Okay. That moves us to item number five, approve previous meeting minutes. Is there any discussion on the previous meeting minutes from March 11th of 2025?
Okay. Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the previous meeting minutes. I move to approve the previous minute. You know what I mean? Second.
Sure. The previous meeting minutes have been approved. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Same sign. Approved. Okay. That moves us on to item
number six. Receive city council and planning meeting minutes. Uh this is for 6A city council meeting minutes from March 3rd, March 17th, and April 21st. Is there any discussion on the
council or planning meeting minutes? I thought it was interesting that um backyard chickens are being revamped again. They're brought up again. It's a hot topic. It is a hot topic. It'll be interesting to see what the next work session brings and if anyone's sentiments change or not.
It's kind of a a neat one to follow along. Notary services are going to be free at the Chesca Library this summer, I guess. So, that's pretty cool. Excellent. Just want to show up late to share that. So, very much appreciate. You're
welcome. Um, any other other discussion on the city council or planning meeting minutes? Did I see Did I see um I'm so sorry. I did not write it down, but did I see discussion in one of them about um
ebikes or am I misremembering? It was there. It was there. Um I drove through Excelsia the other day and they actually have up one of those road signs that flashes information and it has all the ebike rules like you must be 15, you must be wearing a helmet, you can't go over this speed. I thought that was very
interesting to see them proactively um flashlight I saw them giving tickets out a couple of weeks ago too to kids on ebikes uh without helmets and such. Um so they're getting serious. I understand that community has a lot more ebike use in a very confined space compared to
what Chaska has. Um but yeah, it's still a interesting discussion and it'll be interesting to see what the state decides to do. What does a ticket like that look like for Yeah, I wonder. I don't know. I mean, they looked pretty serious. The kids looked pretty unhappy.
Yeah. So, I just I just wonder about speed limits and stuff like that. Somebody came cruising through my neighborhood last night and I was like I'm yelling at him like, "Slow down. There's kids." I'm like, "But it's a biker, you know, and I'm like, "Yeah, wasn't an automobile."
But anyway, yeah, I think that'll be an interesting interesting one to follow. I think a lot of communities are going to be keeping an eye on how best to educate and enforce ebikes out on the trails for
everyone's safety. Was it like one of those like digital wayfinding boards and it had like the rules of the road on it then? Um I don't even know what you would call them. Like the ones that we're about to have up on 41 saying this is closed starting this date flashes it. Oh, a message board. A
message board. Thank you. Where were they posted? Uh this was just a message board right on like water street right there as you come into um just before the library that's where it was. Interesting.
Okay. Anybody else? Okay. We will consider the council and planning meeting minutes received. Um, that moves us on to item seven, reports and 7A, Chesca Community Center staff
presentation. All right, chair commission. So, tonight, um, happy to have Jill Johnson, our community center manager, along with her amazing team representing the community center division within our department. Um, you know, earlier
throughout the year, we've got to hear gotten to hear from our recreation team. We've heard from our curling and event curling and event center team, and tonight we have the community center. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jill and presentation. Thanks, Jill. Thank
you, Marshall. Good evening. Good evening. Thanks for being here, Jill. Absolutely. Thanks for having us. Let me put this in the present mode here for us and we'll get the full screen activated. There's showing up on the screen and not
on the Sorry about that. No. Who runs tech support for the community center? Are they here? Yeah, it's man of many. There we go. They cut they cut the fan out of that
shot of the aquatics area. They didn't want the name of the fan on public view. Maybe it's like my favorite part about walking down there. Girls, look up there. You ever just look up at the sky? Dad, does that I think it says on the
fan. Like what kind of a citation would you give somebody for not wearing a helmet like a kid like that? Like what could you literally do? Oh, I don't know what the state law is. I think just finding trying to find ways to like like I I would assume that if a
kid is on a manual bicycle versus one of the powered scooters. I think they're targeting like the scooters and stuff everybody's ripping around on them and you have to be a certain age to ride them. I don't know what the I don't know what the penalty is. I'm curious if that falls on the parents like it's, you
know, like if your if your person that you're an illegal guardian for violates whatever the state statute says for that law. I wonder if the parents are liable for that though. I I would imagine so. for us.
Actually had someone in our neighborhood on the trail ask about regulations for ebikes. Yeah. Because of the trails in that park. I mean, some of the speeds I see people even just on the roadways, some of the speeds I see them get on some of those bikes. It's just it's
incredible. Even 15 on those trails would be a lot, you know, just I mean there's some places, you know, on trails where there's straight shot like a old railroad line where you can do that, but I mean it comes back to the manufacturers making them able to go
that fast. Yeah. I don't know. Would you put would you put speed limits on like a pedestrian path? I think you like posted like Yeah, I think that's in other states they do that. Yeah, if
it's a shared with a walking trail. I think in Minneapolis they have 10 max posted just spray, you know, spray it onto the road. I want to say at least the last time I was there 10 like around the lakes and stuff. Yeah. Makes sense.
That's so interesting. And those are separated, too. So, do you have to be of a certain age to have it then? I think you have to get licensed for it. I can't remember past but they were looking into that like you can you have to be at least older sold
to you right now but I think they were debating that you had to be that's what I would imagine because yeah actually yeah all Thank you for your patience. Yeah, no problem. Again, thank you for having us
here this evening to share about all the information and all the good things that are happening at the Chesca Community Center. Again, my name is Jill Johnson and it's my pleasure to serve as your Chesca Community Center manager and most importantly uh alongside of this amazing
team of professional and talented park and wreck leaders that are going to take you through the information this evening and all the different ways that we take good care of our patrons and our community as a whole as we work to focus on their overall well-being. As you can
see, our Chesca Community Center, we have beautiful facilities, beautiful amenities in which to program and to provide all of these wonderful services. But what really truly makes our community center the place that everyone considers their gathering place are the
people. It's not only the staff, it's not only the patrons, but it's all the different experiences that we get to share as neighbors at the Chesca Community Center. And it's because of this dedicated staff here with us tonight that we'll get to explore how
many ways that we get to celebrate all the amazing activities and and fun activities to uh take part in here at the CCC. Our community's gathering place is based on our park and Rex mission. We're
here to serve the community. We're here to serve others. We're here to make sure that everyone can enjoy not only being a part of something they are passionate about, but a part of something that's bigger, their community, their neighborhoods, their overall uh Chesca
experience. So, we really dive in. Our our team really embraces this mission and our vision to provide lifelong opportunities for lifelong memories. And it's so fun to hear about all the different memories that we get to share and hear from our patrons coming in
sharing how they they came in and they were learning how to swim when they were just a tot and now they're bringing their own kids in to learn how to swim or maybe some of those fitness instructors that come in and are giving back because they once were a part of the group fitness classes that that uh
we offered back then. So really a team that embraces our our mission and our vision to provide opportunities for others. Very serviceoriented staff for sure. Along with being dedicated to our mission and vision, our team has really
dove in and committed to our focus statement. Our focus of create community, respect, energy, willingness to learn, teamwork, excellent, and of course having ideas. how we create that value uh excuse me that vision and that
mission and make it come to life. Our team has dedicated themselves to come each and every day with these values at at their heart. Giving 1% better every day. Making sure that they take care of one another as a teammate. Making sure
that they're present for all of the great ideas that are happening within the room or within uh the community. That provides us feedback. Our staff gives us feedback. our community gives us feedback and they take that to heart and and work to implement so many different programs and opportunities to
reflect all of us as as one. So I really appreciate all their dedicated efforts to our focus on a daily basis. our Chesca team and again made up of incredible professionals. Our team
here are our full-time uh staff supervisors and coordinators. As you can see, their responsibilities are immense. But all of the experience that they bring from just a few years to more than 28 years of experience to our team have
really provided um exceptional positive experiences for all involved. for not only their team members but then again for our patrons. They are really dedicated to offering different opportunities, creating ideas and making
sure that we take good care of our facilities. We've got some feedback. really hit like a Oh jeez, I'm getting too [Music] something. Somebody's got the live
stream on the sound of the I'll ask that test one, two. There we go. All right. But as you can see, our our dedicated staff that are also here with us this evening that you'll get to hear from, I think one of the best parts of
of getting to work with with our team is their their passion. Uh it comes out in everything that they do. uh I've only been with them for a year, but while being able to work with them and serve with them and learn from them, their
passion has shine through in everything that they're that they're bringing forward and and trying to do. So, it's just really been a joy and a really a remarkable experience to be a part of a team that that cares for one another and cares for for serving others in the way
that they do. jumping into um our extended team. Um as you can see, we have over 200 staff that help make all of this happen at the CCC. These are staff members that have been there from
anywhere from just starting out to over 30 years of dedicated service to our community. their knowledge, their experiences, all of the all of the different personality styles that they bring to bring into all of our our fun experiences at the CCC. These
individuals have committed time and efforts, but most of all, they're all doing their best to provide that experience that we so uh so much need that we want to make sure that each and every one of our patrons leave with this this experience of I want to go back
there. And so many of the testimonials you'll see tonight reflect just that. All of these hardworking individuals, we we hear that and that's such a blessing to be able to hear all of the great things that they're experiencing while they're at the facilities, but then also
being able to say thank you and thank you to our staff. This is why this is all happening here at the CCC. Our employees shine because of their commitment. You can see that just this year um our one of our part-time
staff u members were was named city employee of the year. Something again to celebrate and give a yahoo to because indeed Shell has put in 12 years of service at the front desk. Everyone knows her when she walks in the door in the 4:30 5:'lock hour. She knows
everybody's name too. She knows everybody's name. And doesn't that just make a huge difference in in making that uh home for so many that walk through those doors? The experience that we all enjoy providing. Again, other a half dozen more of our staff were nominated
for this recognition. Again, it just shows the commitment level of our of our team members. Kevin Lingren, highlight him, been there for 20 years in our facilities department. It's just amazing um retention and it's just it goes to
show again I believe they enjoy their job and I believe they take a lot of pride in how we keep our facility safe and clean and hopefully a fun experience for everyone. So hats off to our entire team and those that we get to celebrate here with these types of
honors. Again, we get to serve. How how wonderful is that to share that we get to provide a service to others. How that we get to team up to make somebody's day to hopefully make somebody's day happier or more enjoyable. Maybe they reach a
PR. Maybe they come in for the first time and and swam a lap. Whatever it was, this entire group of population that we get to serve, all ages, all ability, but they come in and they connect and we connect them together.
And with this, we get to serve, but it comes with a great responsibility that our team really takes to heart. And that's the fun part about seeing that all come to life. Again, filling the spaces with people and people that are enjoying what they're passionate
about. We've really re remolded and renewed our focus on customer service. And again, it's not something that's new, but that's something that's embred in each of what we our areas that we get to offer. Every way and shape and form
that we can provide customer service, we're doing. And our motto, let's do it with a smile. Let's find a way to say yes and really make an incredible experience for our for our members and patrons and for our team coming in each
day choosing to be happy. At this time, I'd like to dive into the different areas in which our community center services our our community. And I'll bring up at this time Zack Bowman. Zack is
Come on up. Uh Zack is our facilities and operations coordinator. But in this interim, we've had uh our guest services supervisor, that position opening for a while. So in his role, Zach has taken on a great responsibility of helping with
memberships, taking good care of good care of our guest services team as well. So thanks to Zach, uh we continue to offer uh great information and opportunities for our memberships. Again, just highlighting some of those CCC membership amenities. We have a
variety of ways that people with a membership can experience our CCC. Obviously between drop in daycare, uh indoor playroom, they have the raetball courts. We have open swim and skate and open pickle ball is definitely popular
and also a priority enrollment in some select programs for our for our recreation team as we combine efforts. Our membership options now Zach will be able to share a little bit more. Sure. Hey everybody. I'm Zach Bowman. I'm the fitness and operations coordinator. So,
this kind of ties in, like she said, into my operations portion of my uh job here. And we kind of have a few different options in terms of memberships for our community members. So, the ones that you see here on screen are the options that are provided to a majority of the individuals coming into our facility. So, we have a few
different options in these. Uh, one is our monthly membership options, two is our annual memberships, and three are the prepaid membership options. With our monthly and annual, these ones run for a lot of different uh types of packages. We have our adult just single adult
person, dual our family. Then we have single youth, single senior, single military, which we just added in military this last year as well. Dual senior and military and the military family. And there are a lot of different benefits for the differing membership
options for the people who are coming into our facilities. Number one, for our monthly membership options, there's no real long-term commitment that you have to have for these. you come in, you have it on automatic renewal every single month and then at the, you know, on the last day of the month, you get charged for the next month coming up. If you don't want to pay for the next month
coming up, just cancel it. Pretty easy for people to come in and select that kind of option. It's kind of one of the more prevalent ones that we tend to see at our front desk that people are wanting to look for. Also, with one of these, uh, you'll be able to put your membership on hold for either two or three months, which you are going to see a lot of around this time of year
because everybody is outside doing all the activities while they can before we go back into the cold months. And then also, like I said, just the automatic billing on these is really nice for most people. For our annual membership options, these are a lot more of our lowest cost per month options. you're
paying a lot of this all upfront at the beginning and you get that discounted rate for being someone who is providing us, you know, that opportunity for you to come in every single time for the whole year. Um, year- round access for these people also, you receive six guest passes so they they can bring in other
individuals into our facility for a day for completely free. Maybe those individuals will then want to come and sign up for a membership at our facility. And then also on these, there's no administrative fee which you get on our normal monthly options because we do have a little bit more time that we have to put in for those monthly options to be able to offer all
those benefits. And then our last option is our prepaid memberships. So these can range from our one-day pass. So if somebody just wants to come in, use the swimming pool for the day, go to the fitness center, they can just come in and buy a day pass with us. Then we have other options which are our 30, our 60,
and our 90-day passes. So, if somebody's coming in a little bit more of a short-term time frame and this might work out, let's say our college students that are coming back for the summer, they don't want to, you know, have a full year membership because they're going back to college again. So, a 90-day pass is really great for those individuals who are coming in. So, it's
just really great for those short-term options. Oh, one thing I did forget, um, our employee memberships through the city, all everybody here is eligible for an employee membership at our facility. If it is a single membership, it is completely paid for, but if you are
looking for a dual or a family option, that would be 50% off for any city of Jaska employees. All right. And then other options that we have, we do have our specialty and assisted options as well. So, these are kind of a little bit more niche scenarios. Uh, number one, we have
our scholarship memberships, which are for people who are eligible within the community. And this allows for 50% coverage of a membership option on either a single or family 90-day membership. To be eligible for these, you do have to meet one of the two requirements. One is our county
financial assistance such as SNAP, our medical assistance and MFIP or be on Social Security disability. And number two option is our financial hardships due to any unexpected circumstances such as medical expenses or loss of a job or taking care of somebody with special
needs. So, this is just a really great opportunity for us to give back to those individuals who are going through a hard time. And this is all funded through our NickMason uh fund as well. So, it's just kind of great to be able to give back. Also, for kind of our older population, we have insurance-based membership
options. So, for anybody who is Medicare eligible, we have these insurance plans such as Silver Sneakers, Silver and Fit, Renew Active, or One Pass. And if they qualify through those um through those Medicare eligible plans, they can come to our facility completely free as long as they stay stay an eligible member
through that insurance plan. And then we get a little bit of a kickback for the time that they come and spend with us. So that kind of works out for both of us. And then lastly, we have insurance reimbursement options. So let's just say I'm not 65 years old, but I still want to have a little bit of assistance. If you have a job and you work for a
company that can really help with um that is also partnered with the NICA program, you can come into our facility and as long as you meet a specific number of visits for uh the month and we report that over to those companies, they then get a usual stipen back about
20 to $30 for those individuals. So, as long as they meet that company required standard of how many visits they need to come to, they do get a little bit of a kickback for that. So, it just kind of helps out with the membership option for a lot of these individuals. And the great thing about NICA programming with all these companies, it is always growing every single year. So we are
continuously seeing more and more companies being uh added on into this program. And so we are continually seeing more and more people sign up for these as well. All right. You want me to talk about this one? All right. So in 2024, we had um some really good numbers for
our our memberships. A lot of pretty much almost all of our membership options have been at an increase over the entire year. So you can kind of see in the bottom lefth hand side there our total household membership options went from 22 2270 up to 2419 about a 6.56%
increase. We also had the revenue part going up about 4.3%. And then for our annual membership options those have gone up over the year so about 2.6% increase. Our monthly options gone up about 8.8 or 8.08%. And then our prepaid actually went up quite
a bit. It's one of our newer options for those individuals. And you can see that's been up about 27.6% over the last year. And this is just for the year of 2024. And so we are continuously seeing that this is the trend that we are going to see throughout the years that we are going to be getting more and more
members coming into our facility. So that's total number of memberships or that's total number of members. Total number of membership units and that does not include any of the specialty packages. So about 2400 include all of the monthly and annual membership unit
packages. So it doesn't include, for example, if you have a family membership and have five members, it's only counted as one unit. So if you had to ballpark like how many people actually are active members at the community center right now, what does that number look like? Well, our current um membership units
are around 3,700 including that specialty unit. So we're probably around 6,500 to 7,000. Cool. good numbers for sure. And most of the people are Chaza residents or some of those like Carver residents or residents. I'd say mostly
Chaza Carver residents. Um we do get the individuals outside of that as well, but I'd say majority of them are kind of catering more towards the people in the surrounding areas mostly. That's awesome. Excellent. And also taking advantage of I wanted to make sure that we
highlighted Zack. And something I appreciate most about Zach is how he's always been willing to go above and beyond. Couple years here with our team, but indeed that's one trait that I really admire about about Zach. So, thank you. Uh along with that, uh the employee membership benefit that he
highlighted, we actually have 180, excuse me, 171 employees taking advantage of that employee benefit, whether as an individual or a family package. So, that's a great uh wellness opportunity for our our staff. I wanted to just highlight a couple promotions
and special events that uh took place here kind of throughout 2024 and into 2025. We talked about the 90-day prepaid sale. We offered that last summer. Sold 124 90-day prepaid paid um memberships. Then we offered a free trial week in
November with a Black Friday sale kind of culminating that event and added quite a bit of of membership uh burst there for the month of December and 182 monthly and and 51 annual memberships added during that free trial re boosting
into the Black Friday sale. And all of our social media posts when we put out, hey, come try out the the CCC for free. um I saw about 1,400 clicks on on that and again a financial impact just in that uh time frame alone of over
$40,000. In January, together with uh Southwest Metro Chamber, we uh offered the health and wellness expo where we offered free swim assessments, free free demos on some fitness classes along with then the the chamber offering the vendors on site and so bringing our
community together to offer that event. And then also in January, we uh celebrated our members by offering incentives. So, they went around with a little bingo card and and tried to accomplish some unique goals, including, you know, try this out or try this
fitness class out or speak with a uh a maintenance staff member or whatever it may be, including bringing in a a food donation. And indeed, uh the the nice part about that, our members, because of their generosity, we were able to capture 513 pounds of food that we
delivered to Bountiful Basket. So, a great representation of of how giving and our members are for sure. At this time, I'd like to bring up Joe Jagger for our aquatics programming. Good evening everybody. Like Jill said,
my name is Joe Jagger. I'm the aquatic supervisor at the community center and also at the beach just down the street that looks like it's already open, but we're not staffing yet. So, uh, when I drove by, I kind of went like that for a second. I saw people
going over there the other day. Yeah. The bridge. So, a couple highlights for the aquatic, uh, during 2024 was over the past year by teaming up with Aaron Link, we were able to successfully schedule once a
month um, adaptive open swim during the school year. And this was designated to uh patrons adaptive swim time uh that would come to our adaptive swim time uh that would provide a welcoming sensory
uh quiet area kind of um of sensory friendly. So we would close the entire pool for this demographic and they would come and enjoy the pool with a moderate to low noise. Um and by offering this program during this last year we saw
about 90 visits within that program alone. So, we're looking forward to 2025 and having that word get out there and excited about that program. Uh, staffing and training. So, in the aquatics program here, uh,
there's three life support aspects of the pool. Number one is the lifeguards. Number two are all those great individuals that want to teach everybody else's kids to swim. And then the other one is the beach lifeguards.
Um with that we also established a couple years ago uh we would hire somebody precert certified and then go on the basis of a certification outlying aspect and that helped us quite a bit because in aquatics it's the only one
you have to go get certified in in high school to be eligible to work. So we started with that. Our numbers are looking pretty good for me. I could always have more. So, um, and then like Jill said previously in the celebration of the employee breakfast, Aquatics was
fortunate enough to have, uh, three nominees, Emma Ross, Joey Peterson, and then just quick to point out, you could see the first two names, how recent they were. They made a great impact right away. But Eric Anderson, a daytime lifeguard, who has started since 2009,
so he has been employed at the CCC for uh, 16 years. So that was a pretty big honor for him. Um, so at the community center, we try to hit all ages, all demographics. Everybody want to have fun in a safe environment. So we offer open swim, t
time, lap swim, and then we kind of float that around the schedule to try to hit all the different areas of that. Um, the aquatics kind of run on the school year calendar. unfortunately uh that has a lot to do with it. So we try to give every grouping a time or place to do
that with. And then of course at the facility we highlight our black pool, the hot tub or hot spa, the steam room, the sauna, and then new not like we didn't sneak
one past you guys. Um the leisure pool is now called the kitty pool. And just a little background, we accommodate our school districts. So, um, Chaza Chan High School, when they do not have school, we open up a modified open swim during the day. While we've noticed that
more and more kick, uh, non district days are coming over to our pool to utilize that. And when we called it leisure, kids from all ages would come with their grandparents, grant, whoever it was, and they would get there and wait, whoa, hold on. So, uh, we wanted
to, uh, help them out to understand kind of more what that pool is designated for and help out with that communication with our front desk staff as being that line of that front line person to explain it more to say it's a kiddie pool. Kind of lays it out there what age
or grouping would have fun there. And then down just down the street, like I said, at Fireman's Park, we have Clay Hole Beach. Um, that opens up. Obviously, it's open. We don't actually have the possibility of closing it, but staffingwise that will start the
day of graduation. So, here June 6th will be the first day of staffing. We will still be running a modified beach patrol at the end there. Uh we've discussed that with Marshall. We're weaning off of that a little bit, but uh along with the beach, uh we also have
concessions with our great ice cream that I'm hope you guys all made time for. But um we also have paddle boat rentals there throughout the day. So another aspect like I said in the previous two slides, one of the the main highlights of the pool is swim
lessons. And each year we go through four seasons of or four sessions of swim lessons. We break it down into winter, spring, summer, and fall. And these uh classes uh vary in class sizes based on
time of year. So we have I have the pre-planned holidays. We like to keep all classes eight weeks for our instructors, but if we have something goofy, I may have to cut that down a little bit. So that's based on the calendar year and then obviously instructor availability.
The main thing that with these swim lessons is providing a positive experience for both the swimmer, the parents and the instructor is our top priority. So when putting together class sizes or what we offer, I present to the
public what I can promise I will run. Everything above that is the wonderful staff and part-time staff uh coming together and helping saying they're opening up their availability. So it's very very common that a class may be
filled meaning the enrollment number has been filled and then I have a waiting list of double. Very very common that either I can accommodate all of them or add more of them. And as you can see from this chart here just taking winter um for example when I sent out the
brochure I offered 170 spots. So 170 kids could use that swimming lessons. By the time that that started, we were able to offer 213 kids actually in the lessons. Um and
then spring obviously the same thing happened. And winter, a little background with that, winter is I mean summer, excuse me, summer is the summer season of school. So we run daytime lessons which offers eight classes within two weeks. So we bump five
sessions with that. So what we tend to see is parents have vacations, kids pass through. So the train of going through that kind of wittleles out here and there. So that number um we offer 359. That is a very large amount
of uh swimmers, but we hit just shy of 300. Um so with this, I credit a lot to my employees. It's um a wonderful thing to have these numbers here and hopefully this next school year, the next group of staff coming through the city will
exceed these numbers. And then a little bit of impact testimonial. I'll leave it up here for a second. Um, but uh, one that stood out to me the most was besides the excellent fitness opportunities, my family was able to attend many family oriented
activities for our children such as swim lessons, ice skating, and the staff is always welcoming and programs are fantastic value. So, that kind of goes back to what Jill said at the beginning. We our building accommodates the whole spectrum of the family and just not
niches or age groups or anything like that. So, thank you. Thank you. Joel, you got time for a couple quick questions? Absolutely. I'm gonna assume it goes back to this one. Yeah. Um, no. Okay. I
bet you got a fantastic staff there at the in aquatics at the community center. I have three daughters and they've all been through swim lessons there. We've had a great time there. I have two questions though. Yeah. One is what is the temperature difference between the kitty pool and the other pool? Okay. So,
we say it's a range of the kiddie pool is about 84 to 86 and around 82 for the lap. And if Dowin's making a face, that means I'm wrong back there. So, I actually keep it slightly higher. So,
we keep it a range just based on right now. If you were to be at the pool in this environment, how hot it is outside in the greenhouse effect, it gets pretty sticky in there. So, they might be skewing here and there. Yeah. Okay. I was always curious about that. Uh Kitty Pool just a little bit warmer. Yeah. So,
it's noticeably warmer. Y um um and then also no goggles in the deep end. Is that because of not having to fish them out of the deep end? No, that is for safety concerns. So, if a swimmer is reliant and can only swim in over their head water with goggles for any circumstance
that the goggles may come off or flip on their face, they may not have the skills or capability to get them out of that situation safely. So, we like to say jump in there without goggles because then we don't have to worry about the unexpected. Yeah. So, no, that's cool. I just every time I've been going to there
for over 10 years now, that's like every time like get like keep a counter going like how many times people get the whistle blown. I'm like you can't have goggles in the deep end. Yep. No, we like to take away that that uh I can only swim with the goggles because if they come off then we like to be
preventative, not reactive. No, that's great. I appreciate I had no idea. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any other questions or anything? Thank you again. Thanks. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Joe. Uh, one thing I wanted to share in regards to Joe, I respect Joe and how he has such a great relationship and continues
to develop relationships with his aquatic staff and how diligently he works, as you saw on that uh swim lesson uh slide to to really make sure that we maximize our opportunities with our staffing and with our with our patrons.
So, thank you, Joe. Next, I'd like to introduce Missy Goff and also our our fitness instructor and also bring back up Zach Mo. All right, I'll first. All right, so let's talk about fitness,
kind of the main portion of my position here. So, I'm going to just go through a little bit of the fitness facility as a whole and kind of what you can expect if you've never actually been to the community center before. So, for us, we have two main fitness areas within our facility. We have our smaller functional
fitness area as well as our overarching fitness center. We don't really have like a specific name for it. Um, in our functional fitness area, we have two functional trainers which are cable machines in our corners. But the rest of the equipment that we have in this part of our facility is mostly free weights. And kind of why we call it the
functional fitness area is because it's a little bit more spread out as compared to our fitness center. So people like to do a little bit more movement based activities and functional movements. That's why we call it such. So, you can usually see our free weights like dumbbells, our TRX bands, other bands. We have the battle ropes in there if
you've ever seen someone do those. Um, medballs, all those types of activities are usually done on the functional fitness side of our facility. On the other side, we have the fitness center. This is where a majority of our equipment is going to be housed. So, we have about 45 pieces of cardio equipment in this side of our facility. These
include two different types of bicycles. So, we have our recumbent bikes, those laid-back ones, as well as our upright bikes. We have three different types of um what am I think ellipticals, three different types of ellipticals within the uh facility. And then we also have
treadmills, stair climbers, rowers, and an one arm cycle erometer. So, a lot of different options for people to come and try out. You'll see a lot of the time during our winter months that almost all the equipment is completely full. Um nobody wants to go outside in the snow. So, we have a lot of those pieces of
equipment to kind of accommodate that need we see in the winter months. We also have as of last year um we kind of did a weeklong shutdown of our facility and in that time frame we were able to buy all new strength equipment and all new flooring on this side of our facility as well. So, you would have
seen if you've ever been there in the past, we had carpet under all of our cardio equipment and some kind of old blue uh under most of the strength equipment. It was getting a little old. So thankfully we were able to replace all this with shock absor absorption uh flooring that you'll see in a lot of
fitness facilities these days. It also brightens up the area because it's nice and bright and it also cuts down on all that sound that you hear from people dropping weights even though they're not supposed to. So with this we also got brand new strength equipment in this part of our facility as well. So all of the strength equipment in the back half
of this is brand new as of last year. kind of the what we had in terms of mentality for the strength equipment is we wanted to find things that were dual functionality so that we could provide more pieces of equipment in our facility. So kind of combining two pieces into one and then we can add one more thing in. A lot of things we used
to hear was oh we only have one squat rack. I wish we had more. Now we got four. You can't complain about it anymore. So, you know, just kind of finding new and uh innovative ways for us to provide more fitness equipment in there has always been something that Missy and I have worked very deeply on in this uh
facility. Lastly, in this part, we also offer free equipment orientations for individuals who are coming into our facility and they aren't sure how to use this new equipment. We had a big turnout for people when we got all the new strength equipment that wanted to come in and figure out how to use all the new stuff. So, just to make sure that
everybody's using the equipment safely in the manner it is supposed to be used, answer any questions that they may have, maybe like some training tips, um, just basic ones. And if they want to go a little bit above and beyond for that, we kind of refer them over to our personal trainers, which I'll talk about here in a second. In other terms of our fitness
facility, we also have two fitness studios uh, to where we offer our group fitness classes. Missy will talk a little bit more about the classes themselves here in a second, but I'll talk about the studios. So we have studio A which we changed over the naming on. This is our larger studio that houses most of our classes in this
part of our facility. We have our cycle bikes in there. We have a large storage area in the back that people can come and grab equipment out of for the classes. So any of our strength training classes where you need a lot of pieces of equipment tend to be held in this part of our facility. We also have our studio B which is our smaller studio
which serves as the backup when we have simultaneous classes happening at the same time. So this one doesn't have as much equipment in it, but those types of classes might not need them like yoga or something might not need as much equipment for them. This also serves as a place for dance practices. If the Chesca Dance Center uses this for their
dance practices sometimes, we use it for our taekwond do classes that we offer through our contractual um obligations through uh Chad Fig there. And we also have some adaptive programming uh that goes on in there as well to make sure it's a little bit more sensory friendly for those individuals as well. And then
lastly, last thing I want to talk about today is our personal trainers and nutrition coaches. We have five great personal trainers on staff that do one-on-one training as well as small group training for individuals who have very similar goals in mind. We don't want to have people who one's training for a marathon and one's doing
powerlifting competition trying to train them at the same time. Um, with these individuals, you know, they they we have them in the facility on a constant basis. A lot of them like to wear their personal training shirts to kind of promote themselves. And we also as of this last year started adding in nutrition coaching into this with Shai
who you can kind of see in the bottom right hand corner training one of our clients. She's one of our personal trainers and nutrition coaches. So if you were looking for a little bit more background to the nutrition side of health and wellness as a whole, she can sit down and help you out with that as well. And then lastly, one cool thing
that we also started offering as well is adaptive personal training sessions. So, for those individuals with disabilities that might need a little bit more hands-on attention and and training, we are able to offer that now through Tanya, who does pretty much all of our adaptive and inclusive um uh things that we have going on in our facility. So,
that's kind of one of the big things that we started doing this last year, and we've seen a lot of great feedback from that as well. All right, any questions on my part? What is the age requirement for the fitness center and or the functional fitness center? Yeah.
So that would be 12 with a responsible adult and if they are by themselves it would be 15 years old. We want to make sure they know how to use equipment. Any other questions for me? All right. Well, I will introduce my
supervisor, Missy Goff, and she will help you out with the rest of it. I wouldn't have had Zach talk so much if I knew he was going to do a lot of the membership stuff. So, thank you, Zach. Um I am Missy Gooff and I am the fitness supervisor at the Chasset Community Center. Um I oversee uh the personal
trainers, group fitness instructors, um the fitness areas and then work with Zach as well. All right, I get to talk about group fitness classes. So we offer a drop in group fitness classes that is included in our memberships. Um we
roughly average about 35 classes a week ranging from cycle to bar to pilates. um you name it, we try to stay on top of the trend. Again, if you hear something new and different, bring it to my attention and I'm more than happy to look into um some different offerings as
well. We also offer specialty group fitness classes. So, a little bit different. Those are really um specified into a specific maybe uh group of people. So, maybe pregnant women or think uh children or um so some of the
classes include or larger body athletes. This is a really popular one that we um have started with um uh our instructor Sin. She um has a lot of experience working with um people of all ages and abilities, but she really loves to work
with um heavier heavier set uh abilities. Um so she has created a class um especially for people who may not feel comfortable in a a group a regular group fitness class setting. So she has um provided them with a range of of
exercises they can do standing, maybe seated. Um so really hitting that population that might not feel comfortable coming into a regular class. Um other popular specialty classes that we offer um include um Aquafit as well as intro to strength training. That's a
very popular one. Come January 1st when everybody wants to try to um learn how to do something new or work on their health and wellness. Um starting uh as of last week, we started some free outdoor fitness
classes um ranging from Zumba to family yoga um to also flow yoga. Those m the majority of those are held at Fireman's Park um on the stage. They're free to our community. Um, open to all ages and abilities. Um, just a good way for us to
showcase what we offer. Um, a lot of the times from those classes, we have gained memberships. Wow, I really like this. This was a really fun class. Where can I see more of this? Join us at the community center. So, we have definitely picked up memberships from offering
those classes in the park. Um, with group fitness, we have a diverse team of about 25 experienced and certified instructors um that teach those specialty and group fitness classes. Um, moving on, we offer seasonal programming
um throughout the year um different events and challenges and programs to keep people motivated um to keep them challenged, keep them interested in uh health and wellness. A few challenges um that I'd like to just point out. We're currently doing a run 100. It starts It
started May 1st and goes through May 31st. Run 100 miles in May. Put that in perspective. That's a 5K a day. People do this. How many?
We have 66 signed up. And we're going to have 66 that are going to finish it. Yeah. Right. Okay. Anybody in this room? Wow. That's awesome. Um, some other fun things, Walktober. Um, similar concept
except for walking. Um, that is 62 miles in 31 days. Just fun ways to get people to engage in activity. Make it fun. Have some prizes in there. Everyone likes a good prize here or there. Um, other popular programs that we've ran, New
Year, New You. That was started um actually uh during COVID. Um, it was just a way for us to still be able to communicate with people who didn't want to lose that connection. Um, and just we ended up turning it into a six-week
program to really help people uh hone in on those healthy habits of exercise, nutrition, mindfulness. Um, so that has been a really popular program ran virtually. So it's a private Facebook group and we do all of our challenges
there. um do some live classes for them as well. Um other fitness events that we offer. Um does anybody know what a wad is? W workout of the day. Thank you. Yes. So we do with with this new hire, I
shouldn't say new, she's been here about about two years. Um she comes from a background of um a CrossFit gym and that's what they call workouts is wads. Um, so she's really we've really incorporated that into our uh programming as well. Um, we have one
coming up uh next Saturday. I'm putting a plug out for the memorial wad. Um, it is an a chance to just um offer our condolence to those who have put up that sacrifice for our lives. Um, and we will do a challenging workout uh together at
Veterans Park. Um, includes running or walking. Um, as well as air squats, uh, pull-ups. If you can't do pull-ups, you can do bent over rows. And what am I missing? Push-ups. Thank you. Push-ups. Um, such a fun atmosphere. We pull in uh
different military sources as well. Um, again, that's next Saturday, 10:00 a.m. at Veterans Park. We would love to see you there or just come come enjoy the atmosphere. The atmosphere is amazing. Um, moving on to some other things that we offer or that we have.
Uh, we have a private Facebook page called the CHASA Community Center Fitness and Wellness. That was actually started during COVID. Like I said, we wanted a way to continue to connect with our people even though we were um having to stay home. Um, and we started online
uh fitness classes. So, with we our us instructors, the community center instructors um kind of just bit the bullet and we're like, "All right, we're going to go live. we're going to do this thing which no one had an idea on what they were doing or you know sound quality, music quality, all of the things. So that's kind of how that page
started and now we are over uh 650 members on our page where we offer a lot more than just um some virtual classes on there as well. Just a way to stay connected. Um we do educational um and wellness classes. Uh for instance,
there's a picture of Shai, our personal trainer and nutrition coach. She was leading a eat this not that um presentation. Um I just led one a couple weeks ago which was uh the secrets of living a happy
life. I might do that one again because we could have a better world if we were all happy. Um and then we do work with Joan and Nikki in the lodge um to offer specific AOA programs,
classes, uh events as well. also specifically for 55 plus because they're always, you know, looking for maybe their goals are a little bit different than what the general population goals might be. Um, finally, our goals, Zach and our goals, um, is to regularly assess and update our fitness equipment.
I mean, that's an ongoing thing we do daily. Um, have our preventative maintenance coming in on Friday to do eight hours of just maintenance on our equipment. So, that's uh, top priority for us. Um we continue to um evaluate quality and consistency of fitness
programs and services all while increasing retention of customers. So keeping our customers growing that as well as just checking you know what what worked well about that program? What can we do different next time with that program? What what are we missing? What part of health or wellness are we
missing in our community or do we see that we need to have more of? Um we want to continue to expand offerings as a whole and stay up to date with fitness trends. Um, a good example here, um, in the last year we have added, like Zach had mentioned, the adaptive personal
training. Um, we've added a family yoga class. So, that was kind of a big one. We heard parents are wanting to do these these activities with their kids. Well, what can we do to to bring the two together? So, family yoga was started. Um, we have also started sports specific training. So, we've worked with a couple
of different sports teams within Chaza. um small group setting where we led them through a six to eight week training session um to help them condition for their sports as well. And then last but not least um we strive in providing top
quality fitness classes and amenities um all while delivering exceptional customer service. Um I cannot speak highly enough about that last one that is true to my heart just offering the best possible customer service that we can. I always think how would I want to
be treated if I came to into a place or into a group fitness class. Um and just really portraying that out to our customers. All right, our impact. Um few of many um awesome things that we have heard from our community, from our patrons, from our members. Um I think my
favorite is going to be um the the last testimony which is from um Nate Kat. So Nate um we held a fire nice family fun run last year um and he had two of his lovely girls um join in on the
family fun run and um I just I was blown away by the email that he had sent me the next day on how he felt how his girls felt from that event and that that to me is that's what we do here is we we want to create those lifelong fun
activities and memories for families. questions, concerns. You can bring me the tough questions. I don't have any questions. No, no. I remember we did the open house. We worked together at the one of the open houses for the community center master
plan. I had a great time. It was fun just being around you. You've got such great energy. You're a great ambassador for the community and for the community center. Thank you. Yeah. Do you feel that you have enough room like enough studio class rooms? I don't
know how to ask that, but I think you know what I mean. With the increase in memberships, it it's it's hard. It's becoming very challenging today. Um I mean again, we have to set limits on our fitness classes to keep a safe environment. Um, so for instance, uh, we
have a limit of 42 in our, um, our bigger studio, studio A. And unfortunately today, I saw a woman walk out because we were at 42. Breaks my heart, but we're offering two classes at one time. I I I'm not sure what else we can offer.
So again, we're offering two classes at that very same time, and we've already ran out of space. So it's happening. It's a great great problem to have. Yeah. I I feel like the group fitness, at least for me, the group fitness
classes are kind of what keeps you coming back. You know, you if you stick with it and go on a weekly basis, you get to know the other people in the class who consistently come and you feel bad if you miss, which I'm sure helps with
membership and keeping people come back. Absolutely. It's accountability piece and creating that relationship with our uh patrons that yeah, when we don't see you, we may reach out to you in a nice way. In a nice way, but like you mean
something to us. It's not you're just not a number or a face. Yeah. So, I wish you guys had more space to have more classes. Marshall, we're working on that. We have a really nice plan. I know. I know. What is the where do we sit with
the current community center master plan with fitness center? I knew that would come up tonight. Yeah. Um it's we're just in a holding pattern, you know, and for funding. Yeah. Um the you know the option a local sales tax
option is still kind of in a moratorum state through the legislature. Um, so we're waiting on that. And then, you know, the other one that could potentially provide um some revenue
towards this would be um whether or not a large data center uh moves forward here in Chesca, you know, and just the um basically the hosting fee through our
electric department um for a facility that size would generate some new revenue for the city that I I think our administrator has identified would you know allocate some of that revenue towards the community center uh master
plan. So you seen the latest sort of you know renderings of what the new like the latest and greatest community center master plan looks like. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah. That would suits your needs. I can
use another building. Yeah. It's very exciting. Yeah. I have a friend that is taking the larger body athletes class and I have not tried a class at the community center because I have intense feelings about personal space, but her description and how it's
changed her life has made me want to. So, um, it's been transformative for this person. It's been really, really cool to see. I remember when it first was introduced and this person was talking about it and they were like, I think I think I could jump back into working out. This could be the thing that gets me there. And it has it's been
really cool. That's awesome to hear. Thank you so much for sharing that. We can work on that personal space thing, too. No, respectfully, I do have one question about um younger like uh teenagers. I'm hearing a lot and
I know you said they're sports specific and you're kind of getting into that. I'm hearing a lot of like and you guys probably know more about this stuff than I do, but like ETSs and these specialized training for, you know, a lot of younger athletes. Is there any thought of trying to I don't want to say
compete with that or kind of draw off that? I mean, in our in our own way, we we still want to keep it very community- based and and um I think the feel that you get coming into the community center
and and taking one of our sports specific classes or doing a personal training session, the feel is just so different than um than elsewhere is is what the feedback I'm getting. Now, could we do it? Absolutely. Um, I think we would just need to look at uh
potentially looking at uh employees that have those certifications that we would need to really expertise. Okay. Those areas. What is ETS? Uh something I just learned WAD a little. Elite training. Elite training. Elite training systems.
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of I know a lot of softball players. Okay. baseball multiports, but it's kind of on the side deal, you know, additional go. I think a little bit of it is is a space factor again, too, right? To bring in an entire
team. Yeah, sure. You know, and they're doing squats and, you know, and benching and using some of that traditional weight equipment. Okay. It would just overtake our entire fitness center, which would disrupt our members. Okay.
But as far as could you route and again not here to tell any of you how to do your job because I love how you do your jobs. You're all very awesome. But could you know what I mean? Is there any way that um I just it just seems like a huge market and I think that's maybe so with
it being so like again the sports specific personal training that we have offered um we worked with a soccer team as well as a swim team. Um, both of those were super successful and we had such great feedback. I think it's a matter of getting that word out there
that you don't have to go elsewhere. You can still get that here. Um, so maybe that is one of Zach and I's challenges in this upcoming year is just to really get that information out that we can do it on a smaller field like typically we would bring them into our studio space
which would be a smaller space. Um, so they're using more functional equipment versus like Marshall said, we would interrupt our members if we brought them out into um the fitness areas. Yeah. Okay. So, it's kind of an interesting concept though idea. Like in my hometown, they had the acceleration
institute where they would like literally have like professional athletes come in to learn. They have specific protocols, training protocols for their specific sport. And then I went there just to try it out. And I was there training for a marathon. This is about 50 pounds ago, but I was training for a marathon. But there was somebody
else next to me that was literally come in, they had like it was almost like writing prescription for their specific needs. Like this guy wanted to go hiking in the mountains. So they like wrote a specific training program for him just so he could get used to carrying his pack going up in the mountains to go hunting with his friends out in like
Idaho or some place which again I feel very confident that the personal trainers that we have like they can they can write that they can figure out. I have that much confidence on that they, you know, but that's more one-on-one, per se, than your entire sports team.
Yeah. Oh, I have a quick question then. Um, do does Park and Rec the Community Center have guidance on whether employees are allowed to use AI to help them write training plans?
Because didn't you say Eden Prairie has a maybe didn't you say Eden Prairie has like a moratorium like no AI assistance? Yeah, but you have to have permission from your director. But per permission from your director. Do we have any sort of guidance yet on AX? I think it's a huge tool in the fitness industry. Like
if you have someone putting in the correct prompts, vetting it, it can really save a lot of time. No, we I guess we have not even really dabbled in that yet per se. Um, and I think like you said, it would probably be something higher than I would be able to make that decision or say yes, let's do it. Yeah,
Marshall. I mean, you obviously I just want to say I support someone who has the correct certifications vetting everything that's gets spit out and that's the whole purpose of like it enhancing someone's job. I am in no way ever saying AI should replace a human.
But thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You with the personal space issues. Thank you very much. Thanks Missy. Thank you very much. And just to share obviously the appreciation that I have for Missy is just her passion for people and their
well-being and then just that that lead by example positive attitude that she brings to each and every day. So and then thank you too for sharing uh in regard to the group fitness classes. That's exactly what we're going for. That our our community center is a place where you feel you belong as part of a
group fitness center or whatever you whatever brings you there. Absolutely. We're achieving our goal in that. So, thank you for sharing that. Next up is our ice arena manager uh David Wabby. He is our supervisor and David Wabby is
actually at a conference here uh today. So, we're gonna have him come to us virtually hopefully. Let's try that again. My apologies. I can't be with you tonight. I'm currently attending the US Ice Association as well as having the
ability to network and connect with a variety of ice skating arena staff vendors and personnel from all around the country. This will complete my certification. Uh by attending this course, completes my certification as a certified ice manager in the industry. I
oversee all aspects of the CCC arena including scheduling uh staffing program and ice resurfacer and ice maintenance as well as working alongside David and his team on any capital related projects general of the
ice. During the 2024 year calendar year, we had 446 unique skate lesson participants participate in at least 105 skate lesson sessions of which 285 or 64% for city of CH residents with each session ranging
anywhere from 8 to 10 weeks in lifeline. For the 2024 calendar year, we brought in over uh $45,000 in rental in revenue from skating lesson. Uh currently in 2025 in
2025, we've had 302 unique skate lesson participants uh in either a winter session or spring session of skating lessons of which 199 resident uh and both uh years the
average age in which skate lesson participants have been uh ice rental revenue. We offer prime time and nonprime. Your prime time hours are more of your uh winter season and then your non your slower season through your off
season. Um as you can see in 2025 here we'll increase our prime time ice rental rate to $50 $250 per hour as well as increase our nonprime ice rental rate to
19 $190 per hour. Um, in 2024, we surpassed over $759,000 in ice ring rental revenue. Uh, and currently so far in 2025, we'vecliped over
$315,000 in ice rental revenue. based on how I feel our summer ice schedule is shaping up to be certainly believe uh eclipse surpass that mark 2024 mark a partnership that the city of
Chesa entered into in 2024 was withite advertising network uh which has resulted in 31 dashboards in arena one which has resulted in $17,000 in revenue generated to date. Um
also in 2024 uh we updated renewed our lease uh with great way academy which has resulted in 767 hours of ice use during the school year during the school day. Um in March of
2024 we also uh converted a 20 by 20 foot uh room that was leased by Brinkway Academy to what we now call the ringside room. The the ringside room has uh been a great
success. Uh it's hosted many team dinners, uh youth hockey association gatherings, birthday parties, and more. As well as video sessions. To date, we've had 23 birthdays. So I would say
about to ice skating themed birthday parties for uh some t uh facts on facility use in uh during the winter season. We
offer special themed open skates, one of which is called our cosmic skates. Uh in uh this past year from December through February, we had six skate uh cosmic skate sessions on either a Wednesday night or a Friday night. Uh on average
we had about 56 participants paid participants at each skate at each of our cosmic skates. uh with Wednesday, January being January 29th being our most well populated attended cosmic skate
session with 85 paid some information on some youth hockey tournaments. Uh we offer we are a host site for the annual Brick City Youth Hockey tournament uh and during
Thanksgiving each year which brings in lots of money from the Twin Cities metro area as well as uh throughout Minnesota. Um and a couple of more tidbits over the last several weeks where we've been a
host site for two larger youth hockey tournaments that have taken place uh throughout here in the southwest metro. The SDP invitational and play hockey, Minnesota meltdown youth high tournaments. Uh these tournaments brought families of skaters not only
from around the state, Twin Cities metro area, but also from Ontario, Florida, Maryland, New York, and Colorado. Uh this was the second year we were a host site for the STP hockey tournament. And the first year we were a host site for the play hockey uh organization. Uh we
had a number of compliments of our friendliness and general of the building in addition to in addition to comments on what a unique facility the CCC is with so many recreational amenities
under one roof. Uh several weeks ago uh we the chass skating club hosted a competition that brought in over 1600 participants in a single day just under the arena doors. Uh, this figure skating competition lasted all day from 8 a.m.
to 7:00 p.m. and featured 175 utilizing both sheets of ice and featured 175 skaters from 29 different skating clubs throughout Liid West all the way from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Watertown, South Dakota and everywhere
in between almost uh during a winter season winter season weekend uh we average about 1,200 200 participants, 1200 spectators or individuals coming through just through
the arena doors. That goes to show just how busy we were at. With that, I want to say thank you for taking the time to uh listen to me and I sure hope I see you guys on the ice soon. Thank you.
That was our ice arena supervisor. Cut that there. All right. Awesome. Thank you. And uh one thing that I I really appreciate from David Wabby is that he really works really hard to provide what he calls the Chesa experience and talks
a lot about how people come in and expect the Chesa experience when they come into the ice arena. very similar to how uh all of our facilities are maintained and all of our programs are run. But David really takes that to heart and works extremely hard to
provide that Chesca experience. Next, I'd like to invite up David Dowen, our facilities maintenance supervisor. David, thank you. Hey, good evening folks. Again, I'm David Dow. I'm the maintenance supervisor at the Chast Community Center.
Um, so we've got a big facility over there, two roughly 210,000 square feet. We have two pools, two gyms, two sheets of ice. We have multiple classrooms, a theater, banquet hall, senior center, daycarees,
preschools. There's a bunch of stuff that goes on within the facility. And within those two, we have the two pools, the hot tubs, the sauna, well, dry sauna, the steam room. Um, for you, the we keep the pool. Right now, I've got the kitty pool at roughly 89 degrees.
The lap pool 86 87ish, and I keep the air temp roughly 82 degrees. I mean, if you look at by the book, the air temp should be, they say 10° above water temp. That would be way too hot. So, 82 83 degrees
we've normally found to be pretty good. Um, some of our updates from 2425, the rinkside room that David Wabby talked about. We went in there, it was a bare room, concrete floors, very high open ceilings. Uh, we had to adjust the
sprinklers and drop those down. We put in drop ceilings with new lights, new paint, a large uh um big screen TV that we can use to hook computers to and stuff like that. We put in rubber flooring. That way we can do ice skating parties and there's no need to take your
skates off. you can just go right in there, do your pizza, cake, and all that to get right back out on the ice. We also put in plumbing in there with sink and stuff so people can wash up, plus new tables and chairs. Um, where it talks about adding CO2 to our hot spot. We were having an issue. The hot spot is
only 1,000 gallons. So, the chemical compet chemical composition changes very quickly throughout the day depending on the number of people that are in there. So what we found is by adding CO2 we actually cut down on our acid and sodium bicarbonate use. So and with the price
of acid and sodium by carb right now are very high. The price of CO2 is quite low. So it's actually saving us. I think we're probably averaging somewhere between $500,000 a month in chemicals by adding that CO2 that I spend roughly $200 a month on. So that has helped us
one to maintain our water quality better, but two is cutting down on the cost of of the chemicals that we're using. Um the arts lobby and and conversion. So we had the uh Carver County arts consortium that was in that little storefront area that was there. Once they moved out, we went in and we
cleared everything out. We put tables and chairs in there right now. I'd like to get some better stuff eventually, but we've got some temporary tables and chairs in there. also using some of the other areas is storage because storage is at a premium at the Chasta Community Center. So, wherever we can get stuff
in, that's where we're putting it at. So, that has made a a nice new seating area, not only for lunches and stuff, but for parents to overwatch their kids whenever they're doing swim lessons and stuff like that. Um, lighting in the lodge, we have recently, we're almost complete. We had to order a few more
lights, but working with uh Nick Hartwig in the building building maintenance department from public works. We are replacing all the lighting in the lodge from incandescent to LED lighting. So, that's going to help one, it cuts down on the heat in there. Also, it's going to cut down on our electric bills, and
we should get more life out of those LED lights. Uh Arena 2 heat, I don't know if any of y'all were in Arena 2 this winter. It was quite cold because the heat exchanger, our main heating unit for ring two had gone out. We finally got that replaced just at the end of
winter, but it's nice and warm in there now. So, we'll be looking forward to as it gets colder this year that we will have that heat kicking back in. U Brick City and our meeting room updates. So, the tables that we had in our brick city room and pretty much with our red maple
and white oak rooms were most of them were original, if not late 90s. So they they gave a good life to the community center, but we went ahead and decided to replace those. So now in our in our Brick City banquet room, we now have new rectangle and round tables so we can
offer different options and new seating in there. And in Brick City and in sorry, red maple and white oak, we have added new tables and new chairs are going to be in the future that way. And we have gone from the old metal style tables to commercial plastic tables.
They're lighter, easier to store, and a heck of a lot cheaper. Um, we were looking at costwise on the metal tables from the ones that we had to replace them with the same ones. They were roughly $800, $850 a piece. And on the plastic tables, we can get those, if I
buy them in bulk, which I did this time, we can get those for roughly about $90 a piece. So, I can get nine tables roughly for what we were paying, eight or nine for what we were paying for the cost of one. So, that will help us in the long run. We may have to replace onesies and twzies every once in a while, but it
will not be at the cost as to what it would be if we were trying to replace those metal tables and the metal chairs. Um, and then the lower gym storage. So, again, we talked about storage being at a premium at the community center. So, what we did, we had a huge storage room in our lower our lower gym, but it was
always very cluttered. So, last year, me and uh one of my employees, Annie McDry, got in there and we added shelving to both sides. So, we were able to take different areas around the community center that we had stuff stored in and actually consolidated it. So, now instead of having to go up to the track to find something or go to one
of the boiler rooms to find something, 90% of parks and recreation stuff is stored all in that one storage room. So, it's making life a heck of a lot easier when we're moving stuff around for events and things like that. So, any questions so far before I get to
the testimonial section? I know I talk a little bit fast. I may have a slight accent and I've got a little scratchy voice right now. So, might not be the easiest person to understand. Seems like you're giving a testimonial. So, it's good. That's good. So, I always try to impress on my staff
that we want to make sure that we're providing a a good, safe, clean environment at the community center and not just in our gyms and stuff like that, but in our swimming pools, in the ice arena. So, we try to do a very good job of
making sure that we're we're maintaining that environment, keeping that environment. Like Marshall has said before, it may be old, but it's going to always be clean, right? It will always be clean. It will always be wellmaintained. So, we can't be we can't be old and dirty.
I'm adding that to my vow renewals. Oh my god. Is this Is this being taped? I'm good. And I and I have some of the longest running staff at the community center. I have three of my full-time employees that have all been there for, I
believe, 17, 18, and 20 years, respectively. Then I have two newer staff, one for full-time. One has been there for three and I've got one that's working on a second year and I have one of my part-time employees that is she's been there 30 30 30 years 31 years so
roughly since the community center open. So we maintain we've got some staff that have been there for a long time. They know the public very well. So we want to make sure that we're providing that. I I I will bring my you know I love bringing my kids down here, right? And I I can tell you that it's a safe environment
when I walk in and let my kids go, right? I feel that comfortable that nothing's going to happen to my children and I want everybody else to have that same feeling whenever they visit the Chesa Community Center. And I just I like to talk to when we have new members come in, when we have people come in for tours. If I'm free and somebody needs a
tour, I'm happy to do that because I love to talk about my facility, right? This is this is what I do. I enjoy it. I'm excited to come to work every day. I have great co-workers. We have great managers. We have great leadership. So, I'm excited to to have other people come into that. So, yeah. Any questions? I
worked for 24-hour fitness for several years, and I am constantly impressed with how clean our facilities are. Anything that has water or sauna, it's just you have a recipe for ick. And our facility is so clean. And that is that is 100% true. And that's why especially
like hot tub and stuff, that is one of those that like our pools are big, right? Our lap pool's 96,000 gallons. Our leisure pool is kitty pool, excuse me, is roughly 42,000 gallons. So, it takes a lot to sway those either way when it comes to
chemical composition, things like that. But if you look at our hot tub, which is only 1,000 gallons, it does not take a lot. So, the pools only get drained once a year, but they get drained. Everything gets deep cleaned. We refill them. It's a week-l long process because for me to just to heat the pools back up from from
tap water to whatever temperature we keep it, it takes roughly 3 to 5 days, right? So that takes a little bit, but the hot tub doesn't take that long. So every week it gets drained, sanitized, scrubbed down, refilled, rechemically treated, reheated, and all that is done
Sunday morning between 4:30 and 8, and it's back open by 8:00 when our patrons show up. So we definitely make sure that we we're taking care of all this stuff. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you'all very much. Have a great night. Thank you so much. And just to share how I respect
the pride that that David D has in the facilities and how well he collaborates not only just with his staff but throughout all the different departments we get to work with. So thank you David. Next up we get to meet Jamie Wyman our
resource and events supervisor. Hi everyone. I'm Jamie Weman. I was sitting back there looking at the wall and realizing I have worked here through three mayors going on our fourth. So been here since uh 97. So clearly I
enjoy my time here at the city. So um so I am the resource and event services supervisor. I take care of reserving all the facilities within the community center. um that is about 13 facilities, one of those being offsite. So, I'm just going
to touch on a few of those tonight. Um some of the highlights that you can see here of some of the things that we've done over the last year in into this year. Um quite a few things, some new things. Um couple ones to touch on would
be our church group that uses our facility every Sunday morning, Cross of Grace. They have been with us now for 19 years. They started I believe in 2006. Um so every Sunday they are in our building from about 8 to 12:30 and they
use pretty much almost like the whole west end of the building with all of our meeting rooms. And they use our theater for their main Sunday service and then the rest of the spaces are used for like their um Bible studies or you know youth adult Bible studies and that sort of
thing. Um, we also have our byianual quilt show which is presented by our local Chesa area quilt club. So they're here every two years. I think from what I remember it goes as far back as at least the
early 2000s that they've been doing their quilt show at our space and they are definitely growing. So that's a really great thing to see. Um, so they were here last year and then they'll be back for their bi-annual show next year. Um Jill kind of touched on this early
on, but we had our first uh partnership with the Southwest Metro Chamber where we did um in combination with their expo, we did a community center openhouse. Um that was really successful. So we're making that an annual thing. Um so that'll be back in
January of 26. And um during this expo for my area, I do like to try and offer some special discounts if you book a facility with me. doesn't matter, you know, how far out it is, you can get a discount on that rental if you book it
during the open house. Um, and then some exciting and unique happenings that happened over last year and just recently were we had um we were the site for two separate
filming occasions. Um so one being um a commercial shoot that was shot both outside the building and inside and it was a commercial that was encouraging Minnesota voting. So it was that commercial ran during um the campaign.
Um so they they just had people uh acting like they were coming into the building to vote and that kind of thing. So it was kind of fun. And then the other one most recently probably about two or three weeks ago is we had a filming crew come in. Um, if you're familiar with ABC's, uh, journalism show
2020, um, Crime Junkie. So, it was kind of exciting. Um, they came in and used our building to shoot an episode of 2020 um, that they'll be doing. They're going to let me know when it comes out. So, but that they used our theater, our
banquet room, a couple of our other smaller rooms. They set up um one of the rooms as an interrogation room where they were doing an an act reenactment of They weren't after a suspect here, were they? No. Okay. But one of those pictures there on the
bottom left is um kind of the back shot of them doing one of their scenes there. So that was really exciting. So um be sure to share that with everybody when the episode comes out so you can see the community center in the background on national TV.
So, um, yeah. So, those are some exciting ones that came through. Um, one of our bigger facilities is our brick city banquet room. Um, so that room can accommodate up to 200 people and there's a sun room adjacent to it that can
accommodate another 40 people. Um, and there's also a cing catering kitchen in there. So, it's a great room for um, larger events that have catering and that sort of thing. Um, as you can see from the list, um, it's a space for all types of cultural expression, very
diverse list of events, ranging from your typical gettogethers, um, uh, to many different multicultural events, um, some of the numbers that you see listed by some of those events are how many of that specific event we've
held in that room, but I would say a great majority of our events are multicultural, which is a great thing to see coming through our building. Um we have affordable pricing and we're inclusive and welcoming to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to celebrate their special moments within the
community center. Um and then as David mentioned, we did just recently include roundts over the course of my years. That's a question we always got asked is do you have roundts? We always only have banquet tables and um people still had their event, but you know some people would rent rounds and that sort of
thing. So, it's really great to be able to offer those roundts to our events. Um, another one of our bigger spaces is our theater. Um, we added the theater in 1996 as part of the arts edition
expansion. Um, uh, a expansion of the original community center and the theater can seat up to 200 people. Um, just like the brick city room, as you can see on that list, the space can accommodate a wide
variety of events. We've had, again, many multicultural, like more of the dancing um, types of events in there. Um, and then as part of their, well, I kind of alluded to that already, as part of their rental, the Cross of Grace does use that space every Sunday morning. And
then we also have Chesca Dance Center who's actually been holding uh dance classes at our building pretty much since it uh the theater space opened. So they've been here for a very long time and they are in there every Monday through Thursday night during the school year doing um dance classes.
So [Music] um another big one for us um is our birthday parties and our party packages. Um, our biggest one of course is our pool party. Uh, that one is very
popular. I went back and we had about 184 pool parties alone just in 2024. Um, people love that water slide and we are unlike some community centers. We are very flexible with our packages. Um, you
know, you get unlimited swim time. We're not just holding you to just an hour in the pool or two hours and then you can the package price includes an hour, but you can add on. So you can really make that party as long as you want. There's just like a base price to start
from. Um and then one party in specific to touch on would be our Jazing birthday party. Um, with that package, you get uh our upper gym area privately for one hour and then we set up our bounce house. And that gym also
has a kids climbing wall. So, it's a fun little space for kind of the younger kiddos, but you get this whole gym to yourself. You can run around, jump in the bounce house, climb on the wall. We put out a bag of miscellaneous activities that the kids can do too while they're in there that typically aren't out during regular open gym time.
And then that package also includes a room rental so you have a space to go for your food and gifts and that sort of thing. Um in addition to our birthday parties, we also offer overnight lockins or after hour lockins. Um so what this
includes is you get our entire building to yourself for um after hours between 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. We do have staff on site. And then um the base package for that is
$2,000 and what that gets you is the banquet room so you have a space to gather and do food and that sort of thing. And then um you get swimming, the gyms, one ice arena for skating, and then the two raetball courts where you
can do raetball or volleyball. Um and then the option is there to add on other rooms if you wanted to do that. Yeah. Are you allowed to share the wildest lockin story? I am I had no idea that the community center did lockins. That
sounds amazing. Um maybe when we're not recording the I think I'll reach out to you privately. That's a really good point. I do know that with some of the with some of the senior ones that
you see there on the list, um I think they come like the day before and they hide things so that they have access to it the next night. So, okay, contraband. Um, but their chaperons, we've always had such the these groups
are so great with their chaperonss and they're very good about keeping a good eye on the kids. But yeah, that's awesome. But we do have the list that you see there are repeat groups that have been coming um from many Bellplane is kind of new to
our uh uh repeat ones, but um so those other ones have been coming for lockins for a very long time. You have church youth groups, senior senior graduations, um prom and postprom um just general middle school or school outings and that sort of thing. So yeah, it's a great
thing to offer. Um we obviously do have staff on site to keep track of all that and um yeah it works out well. So it's a great room they use for like a postp prom like where they um so some of the things that they would rent the separate rooms for is we've had like caricatures
or Hannah tattoos chair massages. Um they take like a whole side of the community center then like all the rooms and all the rooms and then they sometimes in the gym they'll set up they'll bring in inflatables or casino. They'll set up a casino um photo booths
um game area, coffee bars. Yeah, they really some of these go all I mean they're here. Yeah, they set up and these kids come in and Yeah. So they come right from graduation. So yeah, that's cool. That's cool.
Um yeah and then so for financial for impact my lucky for me I am a revenue maker and not much of an expense in my area. So these are the the four spaces that um I would say generate the most
revenue to um kind of make us successful financially. Um, and then as you can see, we have some testimonials from renters. I think my favorite one is probably the bottom one where they say they would do a party here again and
recommend it to friends. Um, I like to hear that because I and I know people do because I have people call to book a party and they'll say, "Oh, my friend my daughter was just at a party or my my friend told me about the party they had." So, um, yeah, sometimes you feel
like a party planner because people don't really know like how do most people do it? What do people normally do and this and that and it takes a few emails and few phone calls. But yeah, I mean we've I think the record from what I can remember is on one Saturday we had 16 birthday
parties. So yeah, I it can get pretty busy and keep Dan's staff very busy. [Music] Um yeah, but other than that, I just to end with to just just to say that the facilities at the community center serve
the park and recreation's vision as a um place to make lifelong memories. And what better space to do that in these amazing places that we have where you can bring in your family and your friends and gather and make those memories. So yeah, it's definitely been a pleasure working here
for 28 years almost. So yeah, great. 28 more. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for be wonderful. I I just respect Jamie so much for her dedication to excellence and how she treats all of these rental groups and as
an extension of her family and really takes care of them in our facilities. So, thank you Jamie and with all of our testimonials and you see all of the impact, all the positive things that our team has accomplished together uh throughout this past year. many of them
touched on here uh this evening in in their and their shared stories, but so many good things happening with with our facilities and within our team and it's because of all of their efforts that this has happened and there's still more to come. A couple odds and ends that we
haven't touched on. Uh we went online membership. So, uh, November, excuse me, at the end of November, early December, uh, was the first time that we provided that opportunity for our community to secure a membership online. We added, um, like like Zach shared, a couple
different, um, discount uh, opportunities for seniors and military. We added the signs if you've been in the facility, and I hope you all uh, if you haven't taken the time to come in, new directional signs. We've added some action photos that represent all of the
fun things happening within our park and wreck department. We've added a communication tool at our front desk so that it's called one note. Now all of our teams uh throughout our department can share, hey, this is happening today or heads up for this for our guest services staff and kind of a log for
them to have the information readily available to them. So that's been a great tool here uh just this uh past winter and spring. more to come. As far as uh I mentioned earlier, uh we are in the process of hiring our customer service supervisor. Uh so they'll
oversee all of the front-facing staff uh for our front desk as well as then extending out to our concession stand out at Fireman's Park. But really that position working to really set the culture and the tone for internal and external commu uh customer service
relations. So looking forward to securing that position here in the month of June. Uh we're going to be looking to offer food trucks at the community center front door. So maybe you need that coffee uh in the morning before or after your workout. Uh that might be an
opportunity to to make some additional partnerships with our community. Expanded marketing opportunities working with Chris Lindall in our department to really continue to promote all of the great things that are happening at the community center. And
here this year, uh, we've got some financial support from the council to, uh, make some updates to our indoor playground. So, with that, again, a huge thank you to our team for all that they do on a daily basis, and thank you to
all of you for your support as we continue to help uh, promote our recreation and and, uh, leisure activities within our community center and the overall well-being of our community. So, thank you so much, Any questions? Yep. Hope I'm Yes. No.
Um, this one's a question for you slash probably more, Marshall. So, and I'll just start by saying I personally am of the opinion that the community center should is a service to our community and it should not have to financially sustain itself. Like I really am a big
fan of like our community funding it and it not having to be an enterprise fund. That being said, um, Chan hasn't closed on their 13.5 acres and they have they are have the intention of building their community center and once that's built, I did not see in any of the articles I
read how they intend to fund their operations. Uh, but they will fund it somehow and that will draw from our pool of users. Um, have you thought about how we're going to try and weather that hit
so that we can continue to provide all of these opportunities? That might be more of a Marshall question, like how are we going to I'd just start initially by saying continuing to do the great work that we're doing. I mean, we talk about customer service being ingrained in all that we do and making it a place
that you feel like you belong. That sense of belonging and that I get to see my neighbor there and that community spirit. hopefully we can continue to thrive and help shine. Along with that, being aware of, yes, there are definite um things that we need to continue to
improve upon uh services and programming and opportunities for our community to continue to to draw them in and continue to reach out to them and to share that what how are you you're moving into the area. Let's tell you all about the great things that we're doing and how we're
marketing that as well. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, and just to sort of piggyback on what Jill said, you know, we got to just be able to control what we can control. And to me, that's exceptional customer service and keeping the facility clean and safe and providing a variety of
programming, you know, which we're already doing, but you know, continue kind of through that um process of improvement where we can. I think we've just created a lot of that maybe what I call muscle memory for
our community members. I think they identify with our facility. We're probably going to see some go to Chanhassen. Um but I feel pretty confident that, you know, the majority of our members, which are CHASA and Carver residents, will um likely stick
with us. Um but also in the spirit of you know staying on top of trends and reinvesting I think um having a nearby facility only pushes us to you know really think about our master plan and how we're going to
implement that into the future. So, I have a I have a followup question then. Um, they have a 300,000 foot facility that's been designed for them for only 80 million and our remodel of our 210,000 square foot facility, which I
understand that also 10 million of that would be for a small addition, but we're looking at 70 million and that that was shocking to me. Do you get a sense that they are way underestimating what it's going to cost or I mean that I think it's going to be a hard sell for a
community to say look at what they built for only 10 million more and I know they won't have pool facilities. Yeah. But do you have any sense to why we're so close in numbers? That I don't know. And I Yeah, I kind of had that same reaction. You know, it's
a large brand new facility. um you know, but I think it from what I understand that's a high level cost estimate. I think they're just bringing on um more of the architectural design and starting to get into the the design process.
So, you know, I think it'll be interesting to sort of see where the the actual number comes in as they, you know, get into the more definition of what that facility is going to be in the future. I think we're gonna have to have a really detailed and very nuanced
response to people's questions. And I mean, I think it'll come back to pool facilities a lot because that's so expensive, but um that's not going to help our case. Yeah. I think we just have to be on top of that. Yeah. Well, and if you remember, 25ish million of it
is just deferred maintenance alone, which you know, things we got to do, but it doesn't, you know, feel like you're add any adding anything, you know. So, yeah, good questions. Thanks.
They're going to be shiny and new, you know, but you know, the the thing that makes the community center special is, you know, what you all do and what you all been talking about here tonight. You know, Missy doesn't work at the new Chanel place. You know, neither does Joe and Jacob, his loyal underling I see
pictured right here. You know, I think there was an earlier picture with him having grown a mustache, which was an interesting addition. But um you know I I think it just comes back to all the things that you've been highlighting here. It's the culture in in the community center. You
know there's history there and um I think Erin Erin um uh has even talked Mayor Hubbert has even talked about how she grew up around here and going to the community center and having parties there when she was like in high school and you know now having you know a child
of her own and being being involved in our community still and being able to see that next generational thing carry forward. You know, that's the special thing about the community center. I moved here in 2014. It was one of the reasons why I moved here. You know, I'd heard about the community center and I used to live in Egan where you used to
work. But no, it's uh it's it's it's wonderful. But I think that that's the thing that you're creating is the culture inside the community center. The facilities matter, the programming matters, all that stuff's important. You know, that's super important. But it's all about, you know, who are the people in there tying it together. You know,
Rebecca who works, you know, I'd bring my kids every Friday night to go swimming. She was always there. Rebecca and Amanda. I just saw Rebecca a couple weeks ago. I still say hi to her and we still talk about things. She asks about my daughters, you know, that's the kind of stuff I can't get at the new Chan place, you know.
Very proud of the team in that fact. Yeah. And I think things like um you know the theater and the lodge and some of the rentable spaces um they create different opportunities within that facility that brings in more
of those um different cultures and you know that's what I love about that facility is it truly is a community center you know more than uh you know some people some cities call them recreation centers and I think that would be missing the boat because it's
more than just recreation um that we're offering there. There's a lot of different enrichment activities and just the socialization and connecting people and all the different benefits that come with it. So, I think that's unique
about the Chaza Community Center. Well, thank you Jill. Thank you all for the excellent work you do. Definitely appreciate it. Thank you all for working very late. It's like 8:30. Thank you. So, thank you for extending your work day. I appreciate it. Missy, what time was your first
class this morning? Um, I didn't teach till 10:45, so I'm good. But I'm usually in bed by 8:15. So, we're past your bedtime. Thank you for being here past your bedtime. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much. I think I need you to hit this
share. Have a good night, everybody. Good job. Yeah. Chess movie center. Seniors. Yeah. Like what time did that's awesome. I think I went to one lock when I was a kid. I don't remember
when it started. You had dinner there. I think we had dinner. Go all throughout the building. I thought that was cool. Yeah. And at 6 in the morning, parents came and picked you up. So Yeah,
okay. It's gonna be one of our next uh that brings us to item eight, discussion items and 8A, park updates. All right, there's the canvas right there. There it
is. Look at that. All right, so we got uh got a few park updates for you tonight. So, starting off with the um Southwest Chaza Park, just coming off of the Park of Palooa event. Um just thought I'd sort of reel back time a little bit and then just
step step us up through the that Parka event we had last Thursday. Um you know, and then touch on what's coming next. Um, so throughout the throughout kind of the entire kind of end of winter and
early spring, we've really been focused on getting organized um, for this park project and the development of the master plan. Um, and then transitioning into what I call phase one community engagement. Um,
and you can see there was a variety of things we did from um, having a presence at the community center carnival event at the community center. We've got the project website up and running. Um, and within that we had an online survey
available which I'm going to cover some of the results from that. Uh there was an idea board um where people were able to go in and uh upload pictures or just type up different ideas um that people were able to engage with. We met with a
variety of different focus groups. Um I think there was eight different groups that we met with um and then we worked with Pros Consulting to develop a market study. So, um, a lot of effort went in to really try to engage the community,
uh, inform them about the project, get them excited about this new park coming, you know, and generally starting to understand what do they see, um, in in terms of ideas for this future park. And, um, we've had some awesome
engagement um, as a part of that. So, like I said, jumping in just with a little bit of the online survey, um we ended up having um over 3,000 unique visitors go to that project website and
um 1,400 surveys, online surveys were taken. Um I'll share with you that Confluence, the consultant that we're working with, was pretty blown away by the amount of engagement here in Chaza.
Um I think it actually tops any other community and any other project that they've done which they've done some some large city projects. Um so that's just a great um testament to um our community being enga being
being engaged and also I think you know our our strategy and our and our approach on the staff side too and the intentionality that we've brought to this process um has helped shape
that. Um here's just a makeup of the um respondents of the of the survey. So, as we would expect, about 70% were Chaza residents and then the other 30% were generally our neighboring um communities
that responded to the survey. Um here's a question we had asked within that survey, which park trends should be considered at Southwest CHA Chaza Park. And um these are just kind of a variety of the trends that our consultants are seeing out in the field
as they're uh developing parks. And so um survey respondents were able to select up to four different options. And here you can see um the top four that stood out were um nature trails, um
splash and spray pad, um enhanced food, um like concessions, restaurant, and then I would say there's kind of a a close tie there with health and wellness and um pickle ball.
trails. Um, we had a question within the survey that asked people, you know, what type of features would they like to see at a park building? Um and so there you can see kind of the overwhelming response or desire would be
to have yearround restrooms along with a covered open air um shelter and then you know for that um that park building to serve as a winter warming house as well. Do do we
have any place that has year- round restrooms right now? Like what facilities do we have? We do not. No. So, all of ours are generally kind of Memorial Day to Labor Day um seasonal restrooms. Yeah. But you're starting to see that more now where um parks are putting in more
modern park shelters that have heating and air conditioning um within them to be able to have year-long rest year-round restrooms. It's almost like a rest stop kind of an environment. [Music]
Um we'd ask questions. Um again just thinking about the design approach to the park and trying to um make sure that the park also has some winter activities within it. So, um, just ask that question. What would
encourage more people to visit it in the winter? And you can see sledding would be popular along with, um, ice skating or an ice trail, which you'd kind of expect when asking that question for the most part,
but good information to see there. And then um we had asked a a a set of questions that really got at the different themes um um to be looking at to incorporate
into the park. And rather than going through every theme and every question, I built out this slide based on the responses um which is really highlighting um kind of the when people ranked it,
they had the option of ranking it as either a high priority, priority, neutral, uh low priority or not at all. And so I was just building a slide here to showcase generally what were people viewing as high priority and
priority. Um and so the the blue bars represent um the percentage of survey respondents um for that particular theme who selected it as high priority. And then the orange would be the respondents um
that selected selected as a priority for that theme and kind of added it on. Um so it's kind of ranking um top to bottom there based on high priority. So the way you would read that for instance on the
bottom for the theme of play approximately 55% of the respondents selected that as a high priority and then about another 30% selected it as priority. So kind of a total of
85% would rank play as you know a priority to to put in the park. So, um, so you can kind of see there the top ranking kind of additive themes are play, sport, nature, and then kind of a kind of a tie between those top three of
water, move, and gathering up above it. Um, so I think this was sort of the mindset of um the landscape architects going into that park of Palooa event trying to honor the the themes that the
community was generally ranking as um priority and high priority and really it's kind of striking a balance um with all with all of these themes. So that all of that um engagement and information led up to the fun event we
hosted at the community center within our brick city banquet room uh last week Thursday. Uh it was our park palooa event. Um it was an all day event. Uh the conflu the staff from confluence showed up at about 8:00 that morning to
set up. Um and then they began the process of starting to um draw out concepts. There were three different groups because the goal of this um exercise was to develop three different concepts um for the community to um
react to going forward. And then throughout the afternoon um we had um invited staff pretty much from every single city department. um we scheduled them to come in um throughout
the afternoon and intentionally had it set up where there was some overlap of different departments. Um but it was a way for staff to be involved in the process generally kind of see see the process of how they're drawing it. Um,
and there was just a lot of good interaction between the landscape architects and staff in terms of, you know, what do you think of this or what are we missing or, you know, and especially as it would relate to our park um park maintenance department
within public works. I think they found that, you know, very beneficial to just sort of understand um what was getting factored or considered into the park. Um and then um at about 4:30 we wrapped up and then sort of transitioned the
room and got it set up more for a presentation um format in which we then invited um the park and recck commission along with city council um to see what had uh kind of the the end product of that day was. Um,
Confluence did a good job of just kind of going through and explaining each one of the concepts and the thought process behind them and I think there was some good just discussion um that came out of that and provided us as staff with some
good direction um going forward. I think the thing that I would reflect on on sort of where we landed was it was interesting to see that across the three different concepts there is starting to be some
commonality I would say on the layout you know and generally kind of where things go and to me I think that's speaking to just maybe the the understanding of just what fits where based on the topography of the site um so I think that's good to
Um, but then I I think there's a nice variety of ideas and some differences between the three concepts, which is really good because we want to put out three different things to be able to get reactions and comments um back from the
community um to sort of continue to shape the plan going forward. So, kind of going kind of kind of next up for us uh in working with Confluence, some things we'll be doing is updating
the project website. Um we want to get a lot of this um survey feedback up onto the website, the results from the market study up onto the website. Um and then
um working to refine the three concepts. So the three concepts that they did during that Park of Palooa event were handdrawn. Um so I think they go back and digitize them. Um get them a little bit more for like an online preparation.
Um and situated where they'll have a little bit more of a similar look across the three. um a little bit more I think labeling so people can understand you know what is being shown in the concepts
um so they'll be working on that and then they'll be uh doing some highle cost estimation for those three concepts uh again it's it's high level because we're not into the the detail stage of it um but they should have a really good
understanding of generally how much things cost and associating a range for what that would be. I think on a staff side, we want to make sure that whatever we're going to show is within our, you know, generally within our budget. We
wouldn't want to show something that's, you know, radically above and beyond and and then, oh, you know, we're not able to follow through on that. So, we need to have that understanding. Um, so there'll be a kind of a next
level review with staff um to to understand those refined concepts and the cost estimation um before we we would take them back out to the community. But then the intent is those three concepts will go back up
onto that project website. They utilize a really um interactive platform called social pinpoint. Um, so it'll be uh community members will have the opportunity to go in and really zoom in
on the plan and put in like pinpoints on certain things and um type up their comments and suggestions around them and I think others can then interact with those comments. Um, so based on the amount of
feedback we just got through the online survey, I would expect we'll see the same or more with the interaction of the concepts. And then we'll also um print them up on large um display boards and be bringing them out to both fire and
ice and our river city days and having a booth presence and you know engaging people at those events to tell us what they think about the concepts. So, that's kind of where we're at in the process. I'd turn it over. Any questions
you have or, you know, just um because not everyone was at the park of Palooa, I it might be good to bring those larger concepts um to an upcoming park and recck commission so we can really review them a lot closer. A Yeah. Yeah. As a
group. Yep. Agreed. Good thought. Because they are cool, but there are some neat differences, too. And and to have them call those out a little bit more, I think would be helpful. Yeah.
Yeah. And what um what I'll probably ask of Confluence is maybe even to type up a little narrative for each of them so that as you're looking at it, you sort of understand Sure. what it's showing. Y we having a regular meeting next
month. So I think what I would probably do is next month consider having a work session where you can really you know where by then they're probably going to have them to more of that refined point as well. That'd be great to be able to
just go through them and Yeah, I'd love to look at them. Kind of make sure we're all feeling comfortable about them before they go back out because we're, you know, you're going to get questions from your friends and neighbors and you want to make sure you feel familiar with them. A lingering thought that I had after
Park of Palooa, not Park Palooa, but the the meeting that we just had last week, uh, was people brought up tournaments a few times and then parking concerns related to tournaments. Um, and that wasn't brought up a ton, but it was brought up enough that I thought about
it afterwards. And there's no iteration that was shown to us that actually shows field space that would ever ever ever host a tournament at all. And so it I kind of left that aside. Then it's like, well, We don't need to talk about tournaments. We don't need to talk about tournament parking because there will be
no tournaments at this park. Um I just don't see how there could be unless I completely misunderstand how some sports are run. But yeah. Well, there was one Yeah. one concept that showed a larger, you
know, field arrangement that could house up to four different four youthsized baseball fields on it. So, you could in theory have a little tournament there. Um, I think we're probably more set up though where the city would host a
tournament and teams would be at multiple locations. You know, I don't think I see this as an intense single location site. That makes sense though. Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah.
Any else? Anybody questions? All right. Well, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ashley and she's gonna give an update on Meadow Park. Oh, our park planner. Thank you. So, as Marshall said, I'm here this evening uh just to give an
update on Meadow Park. Uh back it was either end of 2024 or early this year. Gave a very brief overview of Meadow Park and what our process was going to be uh
for uh I'm just moving this out of my way. Marshall um for how we were planning to move forward with the development of that park. So since then we've been chipping away at that. Uh so majority of the work that we've been doing back in
December we had our first steering committee meeting. Uh at that time we had two residents uh who were part of that meeting. Since then we've had a third resident who's joined our steering committee. Uh the rest of the steering committee is is made up of city staff.
Uh so members from park and wreck uh the police and fire chiefs uh myself and then also uh some members from public works and I I don't think I'm missing anyone. I think that's that's everyone. If I did I publicly
apologize. Um and then a bulk of our community engagement uh happened in February. Uh so we sent out 921 postcards uh out to the households. You can see here in the middle of the screen kind of that red area is uh the the area
that we targeted for that park. And really it was getting to it was slightly larger than uh just our typical neighborhood park radius. Uh and then we picked up just a few additional properties uh bringing up 2212. So you can see that postcard that went out just
there to the right uh to that those households. And then we also did um attend and promote the survey uh that I'll talk a little bit more about here in just a moment at two open houses. Uh so the first was at the Highway 41 and Angler open house that was very well
attended in February. And so we had a booth there that talked about both city facilities and and some of that plan, but then also Meadow Park because it aligned with the kickoff of that survey. Uh Marshall and I also went and set up a table at the Chesca Place Apartments uh
just to the west. Uh we were there for a couple hours. Uh brought cookies and and had some great conversations with some of the residents there uh who asked uh a number of questions. Some of them, you know, talked fondly about Meadow Park and how they use it. And some of them needed to know where Meadow Park was.
And so that was uh really fun to engage in that conversation and also uh see you know get to know and see some of the residents uh that live uh within that uh apartment. So kind of looking forward uh
tonight I'm going to talk about uh the survey kind of how we're moving forward. Uh this summer we plan to continue to refine the plans uh for the plan. I should say not the plans like uh Southwest Community Park, but refine the plan. And then uh we're targeting
construction to allow to align with the opening of the public safety facility. But there's a lot of things that uh could influence that timeline. Uh some of which happen with slight logistics happening with the public safety facility campus. Uh but then some things
that are also out of our control like the weather uh we just don't know what that will do. Uh so if it doesn't happen uh for fall for completion uh in December uh the goal is then to target uh early next spring uh to allow for a summer of
play. Uh so moving into who to summarize just who took that survey. Um I would say 75 or 75% of the respondents uh lived within a 10-minute walking distance. Uh which is really interesting and great to see because that's really the the targeted audience that we have
for me or for neighborhood parks. Uh another 15% identified as living within that neighborhood. And then there were a few respondents uh that took the survey because they plan to hold events uh there at the park. Uh generally those respondents uh
noted that they came from households that contained uh mostly people who are 18 plus so adults uh and then also kids within that 6 to 12 year uh age range. And then additionally uh 10% of those who responded uh did note that they had
a mobility limitation or a disability that uh may impact how they utilize or access the park. Uh so one of the things that we really wanted to understand to start the survey is what did you like about Meadow
Park before before uh the playground equipment and Yes. Uh, so the word cloud there really gets to uh the the respondents and their answers, but you start to see some of those themes rising to the top, really getting to the
playground and the play equipment uh and the the variety that was within uh that equipment. And then also, you know, the amount of green space and open space that that park provided. Uh there was a lot of uh green area that a lot of the residents would utilize. Uh, and then,
you know, sidewalks and some of the seating areas. And we saw a lot of, uh, a lot of the residents that we spoke to at the Chesco Place Apartments really talked about how they utilized that trail uh, because it created a nice little walking loop through in the neighborhood where you didn't have to cross any streets. And and if I remember right, it was about a quarter mile uh,
to a third mile when they completed that loop. And so they were that was a lot of the questions came down to is the trail coming back because that's we really want that to come back. So you kind of see that start to rise in that uh those survey responses as well. And then also
just you know the interesting connection to that uh fire station and then the future uh police station. So then on the flip side uh we wanted to understand you know what could we have done better or what could this
new design do better that would encourage you to visit the park more. Uh so some of the things that uh were mentioned of those that did respond for dislikes and not everybody provided dislikes. I just want to say it was a pretty small demographic but uh some
mentioned that there was a lack of seating. They wanted to see more um and they wanted to see that seating happen in the shade. Uh and then again kind of that just lack of overall shade within within the park. Uh playground surfacing which I think we do see that comment
happen uh often. So getting to that and then also uh there is no sport court or or basketball court within that that park. Um I think what's interesting is uh you know some improvements to encourage visits to the park. Uh there was kind of three things that rose to
the top there. More bike amenities, updated playground and parking. And all three of those I I hope that we're able to achieve as part of this this redesign. So uh so I mentioned earlier uh that there was 10% of respondents who
mentioned or who noted that they had uh some sort of mobility limitation or a disability uh that would impact how they would utilize the park. So we asked that sub group uh what could help make this park more accessible or accommodating to you as an individual. Uh so some of the
things that you see um I don't think we're too surprising again you you know inclusive playground really getting to what is the surfacing within that park and how uh are we able to utilize it and then providing seating. Uh one was very specific and got to just how it's
located and what its proximity is to other amenities. Some as simple as just the garbage cans and and just how they're able to interact with the park as a whole. And then again, uh, shade rising to the top as we continue to get warmer and warmer
days. So then we moved into, okay, so what does this new park look like? Help us, you know, identify what's the most important to you. Um, and the, you know, the top three, we allowed them to pick three from this list, uh, to really
narrow down to what is the most important. We have a limited budget, so what does that look like? Uh the first was play equipment for 2 to 12 year olds. Uh which again, you know, aligns to the target ages that we usually design the playground equipment around uh for those neighborhood parks. So it
was good to see that that really rose to number one. Um and then it got into, okay, what does that play equipment look like? So there was a few questions uh that honed in on that uh as they moved through. So you see kind of a preference for nature-based playground with a variety of heightened towers and slides
and climbing equipment. Uh and then you again see shade kind of rising to uh the top of that and then also just overall gathering spaces uh and seating. We brought in that. Okay. So what else uh should go into the park? Uh
again you see shade, open turf um and then basketball and uh the multi-port court and a shelter uh came in tied for the third place. And you also again on the open-ended part of that question uh
start to see some of those same themes uh popping up. Uh so I think the the of the 96 responses which doesn't sound as impressive when you hear it compared to Southwest uh community park but we are really we are really impressed with that
number of respondents and and you start to see that there are some some commonalities amongst what they are wanting within that park. So from there uh the city's been working with HKGI so Hoisington Quigler Group uh
incorporated and they uh have provided a concept plan uh based on that the feedback that they heard from us as a steering committee and then also uh from the survey results. Uh so this is the most recent rendition of that. Uh it
gives about 4,300 square feet of play area. I think Marshall's also going to be talking about uh Hickory Park. So, when you're looking at those plans to compare it, uh that has about 4,100 square ft of play area. So, you can kind of compare and contrast the two. Uh
there's also a gazebo uh kind of picnic shelter that's up in just uh to the northeast of the playground. Uh also getting to some bike racks uh within uh the park and where they would be utilized probably the most, you know, as you're coming in from uh the north. and
then also uh providing some that would serve a dual purpose both for the public safety facility as well as the park. And then again, you can see that trail wrapping through and then a series of sidewalks uh to provide some internal uh
walking. Uh there were some landscaping requirements uh that happened or that were required and kind of shifted over to this park that were needed in order to make the public safety facility work. So, this park is starting to pick up some of those uh those trees that were required. So, you see that in this plan
and then again uh benches. So, you know, when we first met with our steering committee back in December, uh those neighbors really advocated for some sort of sport court or basketball court here. Um when we put out the survey, uh that
didn't rise to the top nearly as much as I think we expected based on their feedback. Uh but you can see that down on that south end of the park, uh there is an alternative that does include a sport court. And I'll get to why that's that's an alternative here in just a moment. Uh so I'm I'm going to look for
some of your feedback should you have any um that we can again continue to use to refine the plan. There is a little bit of a butt statement in in what I'm about to say though. Uh so we went into this project with about $500,000 budget
uh in mind. Uh and about 175,000 of that is allocated just for that playground equipment, which is, you know, pretty consistent with what we see for uh neighborhood parks. Uh and then the rest of that would sort of be spread around for, you know, site prep, um some
sidewalks, and all of the other amenities that would fall within that. Uh what we have found is that uh that money went pretty quick. Uh and so you know that 5,000 or that $500,000 number uh really gets to site prep, the
required landscaping and really that playground equipment in some of the sidewalks. Uh so that sport court listed as an alternative, you know, a lot of those park amenities that you typically see uh weren't included in that. that's
part of it that all of those additional things uh ran about an additional $113,000. So, we were coming in over budget. Uh so, we're setting up a meeting next week uh with R.J. who's working on uh the public safety facility
to see if there's some overlap uh within what those budget scopes are from that project and this one. uh if there's some opportunities to utilize some of their contractors and kind of overlap some work to bring that cost estimate down.
Um and then if we're not able to get closer to that number, you know, based on what your feedback is and and uh we either have to go out and get some more money or uh we'll have to make some changes to the plans and make some some
decisions uh that will be hard. Uh, so I think with that, uh, do I miss anything, Marshall? I think you covered it well. So with that, you know, I'll take any questions. If you have any comments, I'm happy to hear those, too.
I don't know how all of this is oriented related to the public safety facility, but is there has there been any conversations about like if there could be a dedicated spot in the back like in a back parking
area to have a basketball hoop set up or something like that? I know I think Hopkins has a couple basketball hoops behind their fire station that I know a lot of I've seen firefighters out like playing with kids occasionally.
Yeah. So, our uh the police and fire chief are on our steering committee. It sounded like they were open to that. Uh there is it's a little bit difficult to see, but this is kind of this is a fenced in area um where it gets into more of the police access. So, I think
there there is an opportunity to do that. Uh committing to it though is a little bit difficult until they're they're occupying that building and we understand a little bit more about how traffic is going to circulate through that site. Um just because how they're
anticipating to use that is that this this entrance would serve as some of the access to that police department. So, you know, you don't want to promote having children playing in a parking lot that's frequently used. Uh however uh that said you know they may get into
that building and find that circulation uh is a little bit different than they than they planned and maybe there is an opportunity to do that. Sure. But that is it's a good comment because it's something that we've we've been thinking about and talking about. So the basketball court didn't make it.
Would that change anything as far as your design or would that just be left as green space? Yeah, the idea is that uh it would be green space. Um, you know, I depending on how uh our next conversation goes and where that budget
lands, I think there's still maybe the idea that we set it up where it could be added at some point in the future. You know, maybe not as part of this project. Um, but there's also if you put it out there on the plan that it's going to be there, then there
is some level of commitment that you're going to do it. But the idea is that you know it would either be shown as open space, green space uh or that's what it would be till such a time that we'd be able to implement it. And was that a a sport court or was it just a simple
asphalt? Well, I think the the initial ideas and the concepts that we were be shown were probably a wedding dress we couldn't afford uh from the onset, if you will. Uh they were pretty immaculate uh and very exciting, but they're uh I think
the cheapest most cost-effective option is to black top it, right? And then uh so putting down the asphalt that in when they're doing the parking lot, right? Well, right. Like that's you know, I think there's also a conversation of uh you know, is that
something that we internally can do at some point in the future? Uh, but Doug knows how to do that. Yeah. Could they do the trails and allocate more money to the the playground and and
get rid of um or at least limit the wood chips, which aren't real great, and put more accessible surface on it and drive that budget up a little more because I know that's the thing that does drive them.
But um but it might be worth exploring whether um either public works can do it or whether they can do it as a add-on to the overall project rather than taking it out of the park budget. Yeah. Yep.
Well, and I think that's that's one of the things that this conversation with RJM uh will help us refine, you know, since the building project eliminated all the trails in the first place. Well, the the this large this large
trail uh it was anticipated as part of the public safety facility that that trail would come back, right? And so there is um we do know that there is some uh work that was included as part of that budget to put that trail back. Um but it it's a little bit it gets a
little unclear as to the extent of that preparation. you know, are we just talking we're removing the soil pile that's there or are we doing some of that subgrading and that sub work and all that's left then is putting the black top on or did it ever get to the point where it was black topped and and
that's the part where it gets a little bit fuzzy and this new this next conversation will really help refine that. How how much is the overall cost of the project of just the public safety campus itself? I know that's publicly
available. I just Yeah, I can look it up. I don't know offhand. Um, wasn't it mid20s maybe? No, it's more than that even. Are those all water or holding ponds?
Yeah, there's there's Yep. There's storm water uh to the west and then um I know there was some concern about the proximity of that to the playground. What is that slope like?
Uh it there is a slope. We are um looking at you can you can barely see it on this plan. U but providing a fence barrier. Is it going to is it going to is it going to keep people out of the storm water pond? Maybe not. But the goal is to slow them
down. Right. Um, so we're, you know, we're looking at as we understand the extent of that sloping and what the fencing will be like on the south side. Uh, what opportunities do we have to provide some
of that that fencing? And was that fencing was that a requirement or was that just something like you said? Just it is. Yep. It's not a requirement. So that the slope doesn't meet the the threshold uh it doesn't exceed that threshold where fencing is required. This is more of uh just providing again
that that buffer. Sure. Okay. So, you think that you could just like for lack of a better term rough in for a court there to be put up at a later date? Is that what you're saying? I think the
we have to first understand how far we how close can we get to to what our number is because what we would hate to do is to put a concept plan out there that shows that it's a possibility and then not be able to execute it. Um but
yeah, I think the goal is hopefully we can get to a point where if we are not able to put it in, we can at least set it up so we could do it in the future whether it be inhouse or it gets bid out. just put a sign up. Then I think the
other thing though that plays off of that though is the the feedback we got in the survey. There was actually more more interest or value above and beyond. Yeah.
overall quite a bit. The big picture here is we're constrained with space and we're constrained with the budget and we're we're doing our best to maximize all of that best we can.
So, you know, I don't I think it it's not that bad of an idea to keep it as open space and even how it gets used. Absolutely. Whether or not there would be value adding a court down the road or like Kevin mentioned maybe once we
understand the flow parking lot or a basketball hoop within the parking lot. Yeah, I think that's that's probably a good point. you know, not necessarily setting up a barrier uh to preventing it in the future, but
um maybe not exactly setting it up 100% either. So, finding what that balance is. That west side of the public safety campus is that that's a there public restrooms there. Is that Yep. Yep. So,
the the public access is uh right in here. So that the idea is that this access would provide and that goes into that main lobby area where there is publicly accessible restrooms. It's going to make Meadow Park a hot hot
draw. Bathrooms. Mhm. Yeah. I think what we've heard too from you know from safest bathroom you all as a commission in the past try to increase the play value thatort of working towards that. And
then the second thing that stood out was the gathering which was Yeah, I think that was one we weren't expecting. That'd be awesome. Does that apartment complex have like an outdoor like any sort of covered outdoor area? They do
have a they do have like a it's an outdoor amenity space that's that their residents are able to to utilize, but it seems like a lot of them still came over to Meadow Park to be able to use it. But there's there's I don't think there's a
playground there. They just kind of have an outdoor Sure. amenity area. Provides a lot of the usual outdoor apartment amenities. Yeah. Well, that's what I I assume that's probably big driver of people wanting to have that outdoor space for birthdays or
family gatherings and stuff. They have an indoor pool, too. Yeah, they do. Which I didn't know until we were there. Um, you know, I think some of the the respondents
the I anticipate some of them were probably like daycarees or preschools. I did target some of them just because they often will bring uh their students or children to tour these types of facilities. I know in the year and a
half that my daughter's been attending preschool here, she's gone and toured the fire station three times and she she's been to two different daycarees in that time. So, but and she loves it. And so, you know, how do you also then provide a space for them to eat lunch out there and uh experience that as
well? So, I think that's maybe some of those um respondents that plan to to host events here. And also uh you know, Martin from the police department, he's he's advocated for an outdoor space uh to be able to congregate and and meet
with people in an informal way. And so, you know, he's really excited about having that outdoor gathering space as well. That' be awesome. And it looks like uh the projected budget for the public
safety facility is like 41 million 41. Just saw an article that said it was preliminary estimate was 47. So, ARC is representing about 1% of that budget.
Thanks for doing the math. That's not my I'm good at ballpark math, the city manager. All right. Well, thanks, Ashley. Thank you, Ashley. One um one thing I'd point out w within
Ashley's update is all of that survey information she shared with you. She designed and engineered that survey herself. So awesome. That was big compliment to her for doing all that. She had like built-in logic and all this
stuff. So pretty cool. Pretty cool. Who needs AI when you got that is A and AI. We got [Laughter] All right. Uh just a few more, you know, quicker updates uh regarding our parks.
Um so back on Saturday, April 26th, um there was a tree planting event that um involved our local Chaza Rotary Club and the Chesa Lions Club along with um public works and city
staff. Um what was 124 new trees were planted um 80 in community park and 44 at Friendship. So, just a big shout out and thanks to those that helped out with that event and um planting more more trees within our park
system. Great team effort there. Um Hickory Park update. Um so, as you know, um Hickory Park, uh neighborhood park on the um west side of downtown
um kind of along the um the ravine trail there. was um on our list of playground uh replacements for this year. So um if you recall, I think two three months ago um Scott came. I think that was the meeting
I was I was not able to attend. We had a great time. Yeah. Yeah, we really did. You guys had a great work session looking at um a variety of playground options. Um, I think that was helpful for him to um, get that feedback from you and then from there he took that out
to the neighborhood um, right after that got some feedback and ultimately landed on um, the playground you're seeing there on the right. So on the left is what exists there today. Um, and then on the right is going to be what you'll see
in the future. I I do have a board here. I didn't have all of the digital imagery, but there's going to be more than just the tower. Um there will be the um two to five year old um play
structure, a spinning apparatus, and then a swing bay as well. So really kind of a a full redo of that entire um neighborhood park. Yeah. I think all of them had multiple things to it other than just the one large structure. Yeah,
that's the feature of it. Um, and then in talking with Scott, sounds like that is um on the schedule to start uh June 16th. Oh, wow. Um, so a little earlier than we've seen in the past, which is great um to get that replaced and then
kids will have um entire summer. And then uh Lions Park pickle ball courts. Um picture there showing the expanded courts. Uh just an update that those
still need the surfacing um done on top of them. Um in talking with Scott, um we don't have an exact date yet from the installer, but um the understanding is it should be sometime relatively soon.
Um, so that'll be exciting. You'll see the the shade in there and the bike rack and um, yeah, it's looking good over there. Just down there the other day and um, seeing a lot of people out there with this warm weather already. It's
cool to see. And that is it for park updates. Okay, that closes out 8A. And that takes us to 8B department happenings. All right. Um so I'll go through just got a few slides here. Um always like to take
the opportunity just um highlight a few other things going on um within our parks and recreation department. So first one we got up is what the wreck is [Laughter] happening. This is a fun thing that um
our staff um put together. This is actually a video. So, go out onto our Facebook page and the intent is generally once a week putting out a video that uh tells you what the wreck's going on around here um with some
exciting park and wreck um things just highlighting like the next upcoming things within the week and then steering people to the website to learn learn a little bit more. So, um I think it's fun to see staff having fun with this and dabbling a
little bit more in um video within our social media. Um then we've got the um summer music schedules uh coming out. So, the kids entertainment series will be
starting on Tuesdays with the first one kicking off June 10th at Fireman's Park. Um that June 10th event is also uh a free ice cream social to sort of kick off that Tuesday concert series. Last
year when we did this it was you know huge turnout. I think we ran out of ice cream and I think thousand some people attended the event. So we're looking forward to that. Um and then we've got the Clay Hole Concert Series which will be part of the community market. Um, and
I mentioned community market, that being formerly known as the farmers market. And so this is our kind of partnered event with the Southwest Metro Chamber. Um, that puts on more of that. They're going to be put on more of that community market component. Um, but
you'll notice too that we're switching the day of the week we're doing that. That typically used to be on Wednesdays. We're uh moving it to Thursdays. Um, and so we're hoping that makes a difference. Um, I think up until this
point we've always held our summer concert series on Wednesdays, you know, and then the farmers market um had come over to Fireman's Park. Um, you know, ever since we've um kind of moved on from City Square holding
that event. Um, yet I would say thus far we do not really see big attendance at our summer concert series. And I'm I'm still a little baffled at trying to understand why that
is because you go to any other community and it's sort of a, you know, a band you've never heard of. It's just casual, but yet it draws in lots of people. just families wanting to picnic and hang out
in the park and enjoy time together. Um, but a lot of communities do do that on Wednesday nights, including some of our neighboring cities and um, Shakip does put on their rhythm on the rails, which is um, you know, draws in a lot of people on Wednesdays. So, we thought
maybe if we switch it to Thursday, um that might um attract more people to come out here within Chaza and not be as kind of competing with others. Both um Excelsier and Shot
bring in bigname bands that are well known and that's why they attract as many as they do. So, Yep. Yep. I think their budget is much higher for music. So, yeah. and we're working on that. So, partnering with the chamber and, you
know, trying to get more sponsors um to bring in a little bit, you know, quality entertainment. And we and we're doing a little bit of that within this concert series this summer. There's a couple couple of dates, you know, where we've got
um like uh the Church of Cash, if you've heard of that. It's absolutely good Johnny Cash cover band. usually huge can be on one of them. So I think you know trying some of those things out to see whether or not it makes a difference will be very telling to us going forward
and in and kind of programming it. And then I think, you know, I really like the direction that the Southwest Chamber is going to with expanding it to be more than just a farmers market and calling it a community market and bringing in businesses and you know just other other
types of vendors um beyond just the traditional um farmers market. So, and then we also um through our uh recreation agreement with Carver do programs some concerts in Carver. Um we
just have a few dates um throughout July and the early part of August um that occur on Wednesday nights at their gazebo park. Uh the month of May here is National Bike Month. We've been doing a lot of things around um biking.
Um a little over a week ago we had bike to school day um partnering with the local um elementaryary schools and um had another awesome turnout um for that event which was great to see. Uh last night we hosted um the Chesa Bike Rodeo
up at Veterans Park in collaboration with our police department. Um and talking with Martin with police, I think there were about 40 or 50 kids that attended that rodeo last night. Um which is awesome to hear. Uh
this coming Friday is uh bike to work day. Um, so we're promoting that within um the city and encouraging employees to um bike to work and utilizing the community center as sort of the the place to go when you arrive. And we're
going to have some snacks and if people need to take a shower or whatnot, those will be available. We'll see. The weather's not looking too ideal for Friday. But what a great day to bike to work. I know. We we've had awesome weather and then you know that that one um isn't looking so
good. Well, maybe it'll feel refreshing. But maybe we'll on the way to work. Maybe we can maybe maybe we can pivot that day and do bike at work and encourage people to come to the fitness center. Yeah, there you go. Go on a go on a exercise bike over lunch or
something. Um we also have the Carver bike rodeo that's going to occur on Saturday. Um from 9 to noon at the Carver fire station um throughout the entire month we've been promoting bike bingo. This is
through the um League of American Bicyclists. Um so there's a variety of things where you try to complete uh on the bingo card. Um and then you can email that in to one of our staff and u be entered in for a prize
drawing. And then lastly, we are offering a new um Chesca Bike Club. Um so that is um free um registration um was required and we're actually filled um with 25 um people signed up.
We do have some people on the waiting list and we we may consider expanding that. we just don't know, you know, at what frequency those 25 are going to participate every week. Um so we'll kind of feel that out as we go. But um big
thanks to um Bob Lincoln um at the library, one of our local bike advocates, and then also Lynn Gregory, who's another local bike enthusiast. He's a volunteer coach on the local mountain bike club team.
Um they're going to be the primary leads of this bike club. So feel really good about the the safety and level of education they're going to provide um for people. It's really intended to be a casual bike club. It's meant to kind of
explore the trails around Chaza, generally 60 to 90 minutes. Um, but you know, nobody would be left behind. Um, but kind of more that just encouragement to get people out on the bike and explore what we have to offer.
Marshall, I know one of these two is going to ask this question, so I'll ask it. Are ebikes allowed in this bike club? Yes. Okay. Rude. I'm still traumatized from that. Yeah, they are, but you know, again, people under the guidance and I think it's an
opportunity to educate people about how to how to use them in the right way. So, um, won't touch on this a lot. Missy covered it in her presentation with the community center, but throughout this month, we've had the annual run 100
going on. And then again, looking forward to the Memorial Day workout um at Veterans Park on Saturday, May 24th. Uh Family Fishing Academy in partnership with the local um Chesa Area Fishing with Friends. Um so this is an
organization that um we partner with um and they really provide a lot of awesome opportunities um for people to get out and try fishing. Um they actually um also program trips utilizing a
pontoon out on Lake Minnitonka out of um Howard Bay. Um and so if you're not aware, the city actually, I think it was 10 years ago now, actually helped finance the original pontoon for them.
Um, and then they paid the city back within a 5-year period as they were able to obtain sponsors. And so we're working with them again because it's 10 years old now. Um, you know, needs a new motor and they want to do some just kind of
renovation um of their boat. They did find that um refurbishing it was actually a better way to go than just completely buying buying a brand new one. So, we are partnering again with them on those um
refurbishments. And then they um they take people out on trips um veterans to people with disabilities that live in um assisted living homes to um different youth groups um to get out and
experience, you know, nature and water and and fishing. So, it's all volunteer-led and um really appreciate kind of that type of programming that they're able to provide um um the
community. So, but within that, they always kind of kick things off with this um family fishing academy over at um Fireman's Park, which is going to be on Sunday, June 1st. Um so, if you've never been, I encourage you to go and and
check that out. And then lastly, I would just finish uh finish here with um the fact that our youth programming is just taking off. Um so Extreme Kids, which is our summer
camp, we put it out um on March 3rd for registration and it filled within a matter of minutes. Um, so we've got 90 kids signed up for the full um full five day week plan. Um, in the years past,
we've never filled the full five day week plan. So then we opened it up to some options of like morning or or afternoon. Um, so it it filled quick. Um, which is great to see.
um our our Chesa Community Center after school care program that we do dur um um throughout the school year. Um we opened up registration on April 1st um for next fall that filled right away. Uh so we
got 30 kids signed up with almost a 25 people on the waiting list. Um and then our parents night out program that we offer at the community center that occurs every second and fourth Friday of every month. Um as we
you know as we open them up they're they're filling up. So, it's really cool to see um you know that we're meeting those needs and um we as a staff are really trying to figure out ways we can you know expand some of those
opportunities within the community center just knowing we got people on waiting lists. I mean, just one idea I had is parents night out. If that were to turn into like one of those lockins we were talking earlier, parents weekend, you you won't get staff
to staff that. Yeah. So ordered parents come back and just hang out all night. My kids go to every parent side out. I love this idea. You leave the kids at home and the parents go to the lock in. Yeah, you're
talking. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, that's all I have for updates. Thank you, Marshall. Yep. Okay, that moves us to 9A roundt. Kevin, start
uh just utilizing the fields for youth soccer and started biking to work once the weather started getting nice enough. So, that was nice. I did have to bike home in the rain a couple weeks ago. It's not that bad. So, it's just like a
refreshing shower. Exactly. I smelled nicer. Uh it's great that Creek Road is like closed off and just a trail now. Um, I like biking back there. So, yeah, that's all.
Um, I saw this on the morning news that Minneapolis Park and Rex now has a bus available that can pick up kids whose parents are working if their kids want to attend
some sort of sporting activity or programming, but their parents can't because they're working. I just thought that was interesting, kind of neat. um probably expensive to fund but
um I just like I know that's even a challenge for myself like I can't do anything that starts earlier than you know 4:30 maybe you know 5:30 at best but um just thought that was neat. Yeah,
that's really cool. It's a very real thing though. I I can't sign my kids up for even a fraction of the things I want to because of rights. It's a real problem in the summer because that's when you know you need a lot of care and there's cool clubs and different summer
camps and I'm like, "Yep, nope. Can't do it." Partnership with Southwest Prime. That's it for me. Marshall's a good bus driver. Yeah, you could add that to your job.
Yeah, I rode my bike over to um what's the future of, you know, roundabout row. It's kind of interesting going and seeing all that stuff like what's causing all these traffic backups and the changing traffic patterns. And I
rode my bike over there last night actually and I was like it's really interesting. I just wanted to hang out there and just look at everything because like there's a lot of earth moved around. Yeah. like everything looks so different over there right now. It's it's I can't wait to see it get finished. Then I want to watch the
next one get built. Got a couple years of watching roundabouts get built. Um I had one question for Jill. Um but they they were here and they needed to get going. But um she had mentioned something about that guest services position being open for a long time. What's been the big challenge of being
able to fill that? I don't know if you've heard anything or maybe no challenge. Just um we really like to take time, you know, um when there's a vacancy to really kind of um think about whether or not there's an
opportunity to adjust the role or the responsibility and not just sort of react and rehire it right away. So um and we had the staff capability to, you know, do that. and
so took our time um shifted some of the responsibilities uh within it differently. So the the previous um the previous uh uh job description included oversight of the drop in
daycare within that customer service function. um we transitioned that um away from that position and now that actually reports into um Sandy who does all of our youth programming. So we kind of merge just
youth programming together um to to us that made more sense and then they're able to share resources. Um, and then we added in um concessions into this role. So that's
something different. Um, but they'll oversee not only the front desk operation at the community center, but then the concessions out at Fireman's Park. So, it's kind of aligning more with like front-facing customer service, but you know, thinking a little bit
broader than just within the community center and having staff sort of realize they're part of a bigger department and supporting other buildings. So, it took us some time to make some of those changes, update the
the job description, and then, you know, just the hiring process in general takes a while. No, that makes sense. Appreciate the explanation. Yeah. Um, are you going to do fireworks at uh big fireworks display again this year? Because I think last year, what what happened last year between Fourth of
July and Fire and Ice? Like I can't remember what it was. Something got pushed off and then there was some Yeah, it got rained out on Fourth of July. Okay. Yep. But yeah, so we'll still plan to have them at Fire and Ice both nights. That was awesome. Yep. Although I saw on the news there's quite the
uh increase in price due to tar tariffs potentially on fireworks. I hadn't noticed I hadn't heard anything about tariffs on the news at all. Where where you getting that information from? I hadn't heard that at all in the last like six months. Um just two quick things. One was um that the Chesa Human
Rights Commission is doing the Pride Picnic on June 21st, Saturday 3 to 6 at Mcnite Park. I will be there allegedly DJing, but um I would highly recommend I was at that two years ago. It's a great community building event. And then also
it was wonderful seeing the community center staff here tonight. And I couldn't help but notice what wonderful swag they have that had the logo on it, all that stuff. couldn't help but think that maybe a certain commission, volunteer commission in the community could maybe get their hands on some swag
at some point that would rise to that level of reverence. That's all I got. Um I I don't have anything. I've just been getting out and about looking at stuff.
Uh we biked to school to Clover Ridge the last uh about three days last week. Maybe we'll do it tomorrow. Um but it's been really nice having I think Kanan Creek Trail, the trail that goes by Sunset Park to now that that's paved, it's infinitely easier.
But also Bike to School Day always makes me rethink how did our elementary boundaries end up the way that they are? Because there are kids that cannot participate due to distance, which is so interesting to me. But is what it is. That's all I have. Did your kids have
fun biking? They did. My daughter went down a nine foot ravine on the first day. It got scratched up. We were really lucky that she was okay. Um, but she got right back on and I was like, "You're going to school now." And she did. And then she did it again the next, not the
falling, but the she to next day. Which happened first? Did you ask her if she was okay, or did you tell her that she was going to school no matter how she felt? I dragged her out first and she was crying. Meaning she was breathing. She was okay. Like her helmet was on. She was okay. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. Brought her dry
shoes when I got home. It's awesome. We've got a cool trail system though. Really? Great. Could have been a car, you know, like we could be biking and crossing. I did hear of a kid that was biking to a neighbor kid that was biking to um middle school west and they got
hit by someone turning right onto Angler at 41 in Angler. He was fine because his dad didn't even know apparently that he got hit by a car later. But um he still got hit. People are I think about calling the police to have them like set up when middle school west comes out and
to just nail everybody that takes that right-hand turn without even looking. But with all these roundabouts, we will have a trail right there and the kids will be safe. But I didn't mean to talk for that long, but I'm done. I don't think there's a time limit of
any kind. Okay, it's late. It's just bedtime. It's late. Kids are getting hit by cars. I don't know. It's late. I'll be quiet. No, it's fine. Sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm just going to say
get out into a park for no reason other than to get out into a park for the million people that are watching right now. Um, that brings us to Mary. Do you have anything? Thank you for all attending this
evening. Appreciate that. I'm going to assume that somewhere in the notes next month, you'll be noting that I was late today. Absolutely. I I just I I can always count on you, Mary, watching that clock. No, don't
worry. You're not alone in that one. Okay, that brings us to item 10, adjourn. And I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Our motion to adjourn the meeting tonight. Hi. Hi. Second. Second.
Hill. All in favor say I. I. I. Same [Music] sign. We are turn.