City Council — 2022-05-17

Joint meeting of the Parks and Rec Commission and Ojai City Council, Tuesday May 17th 2022. May we have the roll call please Gail?

is trying to get into the Zoom meeting. Council Member Weyrich?

Here

Chair Taylor? Vice Chair Entner, here. Commissioner Firestone is here. Here. Commissioner Walker is here on mute. Commissioner Wilson? Here. Here. And Commissioner Ruff? Here. Thank you.

Thank you very much and we'll move right into public comment. We have two public comments, Bill Miley and Bob Dowell I think.

Thank you for the record my name is Bill Miley. Since there wasn't any agenda I just thought maybe these issues might come up so I'm going to comment on them. Number one, Soule Park. From looking at our council district, Soule Park seems to lie within District 4 making it a logical city managed facility. I understand city and county talks have begun good. I can see expansion of the city recreation activities there too.

One in particular is Pickleball. It's easy to vision having multiple courts with a focus on creating regional pickleball center. The main challenge with pickleball, as you may know is the repeated pop but that's not gonna be a problem there because of the space and I sent you an email with some Google Earth pictures and I measured the distance from the house to the center where I think it oughta be So, also I counted the parking spaces that existed from the Google camera and there were at least 200 nearby. Wow! That's great. In fact we could send some of our people when they're looking for parking out there and they take a bus in.

Annual passes for use of the park I understand exist now. Because city tax revenues will be used, city folks should get discounts on daily and annual passes. If the county contributes taxpayer-supported for unincorporated areas they should also get discounted too. Last one. At the May 11th school board meeting, the Noroff Swim Pool was discussed Location was to focus and I sent you a picture of that too. The majority of speakers would support making this a community pool, city unincorporated areas instead of just one lap lane and competitive pool used on occasion by the public several of us expressed the need for a second pool a recreation pool so that the community can use it all the time and not just when the Nordoff folks are regional, I mean they don't have regional meets or something like that.

Because it's getting hot. And so I would go for two pools. Jane Wild says, boy, I don't know if we can afford that. Key to the success will be operating management and revenue generation. The second pool, a recreation pool, would allow the public to use it all the time. This would be, in my opinion, a major revenue generator. Let's see. That's it anyway. In case you discussed it, I wanted to get my opinion. Thanks.

Thank you Bill. Next we have Bob Dahl. Oh daddy! I'm sorry.

You

gotta dot your i's Bob.

I'm glad someone doesn't know me in town. Oh

I know you.

I'm gonna fire this off as quickly as I can. Um, I took a look at the last city council meeting I watched it twice and I was just distressed I'm going to talk about the infrastructure in the probe that the program and the formats we have for asking for money We asked for money And you don't have any information to make a determination. It's just a giveaway of public funds, we have... Can I

ask you a question? Is this about parks and rec?

No, this is about the city process. Well... It's not about park

and

rec. Okay, sorry. Okay. We have people that are asking for money where we don't have a proper process and program, and we haven't for years. We have people that apply who we don't really know where they are, what they've done, how they're doing it. We have people applying for money or they give money to other charities that they expect the taxpayers to give to them.

Had we used this money a little differently and looked inward to the city first? When we didn't have anybody to write a grant for the prior year, we could've allocated some of that money for a grant writer. We mighta got a $5500,000 removal grant. We no longer have an e-waste program with any of our affiliate 501s and we have a need. Why is the city not filling in their need first? Putting grants out to the public to apply to our needs instead of to their needs.

So when you look at the financial documents that Ron Wilson sent out, we have multi-million dollar endeavors asking for money. We have an endeavor that has a $800,000 salary budget. We have another one that pays $14,000 in work comp because they have extensive expenses. We have a city that did the budget, that said we collected $2 million less. You have a $7 million unfunded pension liability in the future. It's going to take 70 years to retire. You got $40 million in deferred maintenance on the street out of our entire streets because only 1 3rd of our streets are good And since petroleum and asphalt went up another 30 percent, you can just add another $10 million on there. And we're going to go ahead and give away $130,000.

And I've heard this thing it's for the kids. Give that money to the rec department because the kids need more than anybody. That's a dozen summer jobs and 250 participants that we can fund with that kind of money. Thank you.

Thank you,

Bob.

Any public comments online? Dale Hanson?

Yes Dale Hanson I live in the city of Ojai. I agree with all that Bill Miley said and I think I agree with everything that Bob said but I just want to add one thing to the Seoul Park issue and I'm very much in favor of that and I don't know that it was mentioned, I didn't hear if it was. I just want to say that in addition to that I really hope that we close down Thank you, Dale. Any public comments on Zoom Gail?

If there's anyone in the Zoom queue who would like to speak, please use the raise hand function now. And we have one person, Karen Quimby and I will bring her in. Ms. Quimby if you're muted please... There you go. You should be able to go ahead and speak.

Thank you. This is Karen Quimby, I am a resident of the city of Ojai and I'm representing the neighbors of the current pickleball courts. And as you all know if I've spoken multiple times that the daily pop popping sound of the pickleball noise is torturing the current neighbor so we're We're very happy with the job that the parks and rec ad hoc committee has done in investigating the different issues around pickleball in the city and look forward to hearing their report tonight.

And just want to urge the council, the City Council to move with the utmost haste In resolving the noise issues from the current pickleball courts, which means moving them out to Soule Park, which is a great location for everyone. And if you do decide to move forward with a sound I would like to request that the neighbors representative from our neighbors committee be involved in the selection and in the process of that sound report because we want to make sure it's fair and transparent. And we also think that the pickleball people and the tennis people should be involved in that as well. So again, we thank the Parks and Rec Ad Hoc Committee for their work and look forward to the discussion tonight. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Karen. No more. Okay, so we'll move on to discussion item number one the joint meeting with the City Council and the Parks and Recreation Commission And I just want to say a big thank you to the Parks and Rec Commission and each member of you So thank you so much for all your work and time because I know it's very time-consuming also and an insight so much appreciated Thank you all for being here online and in person Thank you to the City Council also and Louise, you're the bomb. So thank you so much for all your work in helping the kids and adults. It's my pleasure to introduce Chair Taylor, Susie Taylor.

Thank you. The commission as well as Luis have put together a PowerPoint presentation to highlight the recreation updates and capital improvement projects, and we've left plenty of time to have a roundtable discussion with Council and the Commission on future park recreation possibilities and options. And Luis?

Thank you, so thank you everyone at PowerPoint presentation has been put together for this evening which includes recreation topics Program offerings capital improvement projects and other topics as we present commissioners. Please feel free to add any comments as we go along Here we have an agenda overview of what will be presented and hope to discuss with City Council. This presentation includes but is not limited to introductions of our new commissioners, recreation program offerings, recreating through COVID, capital improvement projects, and an update on the status of capital improvement projects, what has been completed, and what will be done in the near future.

So we'll begin with the introductions. We'd like to welcome and introduce our newest Parks and Recreation Commissioners, Karen Wilson, Nelson Walker, Youth Commissioner Ella Ruff, and Alternate Youth Commissioner Emily Michie. Currently serving as chair is Susie Taylor, serving as vice-chair Sage Itner, and we'd also like to thank Commissioner Firestone for his service on the commission.

Additionally, we'd like to thank current staff member Vicki Hollingsworth the recreation coordinator who has provided 30 years of service to the city. Next, we talk about recreating through COVID. So during the 2020 and 2021 seasons staff kept a close eye on local health orders as well as COVID-19 trends to determine when it would be safe to make programming available once again.

On March 13th, 2020 the last recreation program was offered due to the pandemic. On May 14th, 2020 Recreation Staff implemented Virtual programming to keep community members engaged and on June 21st limited outdoor program was offered by the department to adhere to public health guidelines. On June 14th the Recreation Department held a successful reopening and by August 31st participation numbers were making a strong comeback.

Next we take a quick look at participation comparisons and this time period is June 1st through December 31st. And we look at years 2019 2020 and 2021 here we really see the pandemic affected programming especially in the 2020 season staff worked hard to make programming available while keeping participants safe as the pandemic began to subside. We see that partition participation numbers started to increase once again.

During the 2021 season, during the time period noted above, the participation levels is up to 70% of what it was in 2019. Furthermore year-to-date we currently have 1,284 participants throughout all our programs. Our next slide, we highlight the City Centennial. So in recognition of the city's 100 year anniversary a free community event was held at Zero Zodi Park on August 5th. Community members were able to enjoy live entertainment, a concert from the music festival, free shaved ice, games food trucks and more. The outdoor event was a great way for community members to enjoy the company of their fellow neighbors Here we highlight Ojai Day 2021.

The free community event was held on Saturday, October 16th in Libbey Park with a mandala painted around the Libby Fountain area. The event hosted a variety of local-based vendors, local nonprofits, school groups, live entertainment and various other activities. In celebration of the 100 year anniversary, the city hosted a special poster competition where the winner was recognized at the September 28th 2021 City Council meeting and received a $250 prize.

Next we talk about our current offerings. Currently we have 14 different programs for our youth to go ahead and choose from as well as 14 different programs for adults to go and choose from staff is working hard on making more programs available for our community enjoy in this next few slides we highlight some of our programs One of our more popular programs is our gymnastics program. This program is offered year round, offered indoors and outdoors and currently we have 253 participants enrolled into the program.

Yep we recently expanded program and we have anybody interested. We also offer camps this summer. Next we highlight tennis. This program is also available for youth and adults. Currently we have 83 participants enrolled in August 13th quick start once again became available Quick Start Tennis is a simple but effective concept of the sport which gets children interested and engaged with tennis at an early age.

Lastly, we'd also like to welcome our new instructor, Katya Wellborn. In our next slide, we highlight our dog obedience class. Our program—our dog obedience class is available for those 14 and older. We offer multiple classes at different levels including beginners, trick classes, and currently we have 16 participants enrolled in this program.

What park is that at?

So this one is at Zero Zodi

Park.

So next we highlight our adult and senior strength program. This offering is available twice a week Monday and Wednesday's and is available for those 18 and older. We also offer open weight room and have personal training available for those interested. Currently we have 16 participants enrolled into this program Following we have our Kung Fu program. This also is available for adults for youth and adults it is offered indoor and outdoors and we currently have 21 participants enrolled Lastly we highlight our soccer program. This offering is available for youth ages 3 to 11 classes are designated to provide a better understanding of the game and overall tactics in a safe and fun environment. This program is a great alternative to participation in league play and currently we have 29 participants enrolled Next, we talk about our Pickleball Courts.

The courts are located at City Hall Campus. Currently there are forts available which are available seven days a week. At its March 3rd 2022 meeting the commission voted to establish an ad hoc committee to conduct in-depth research to formulate a thorough recommendation for council's consideration regarding the concerns and requests brought forward by the community The committee reviewed previous reports, public comments and actions related to pickleball as well as explored actions taken by other public entities for models and best practices and formulated a 10-question survey as part of their research. The committee determined that establishment of standards The committee determined that the establishment of standards for acceptable sound levels and advisement on potential sound mitigation strategies were essential for further exploration and possible options.

The committee made this recommendation, and the committee approved it at its May meeting. Under the prior direction of City Council, the ad hoc committee is working to identify an acoustic engineer. The committee will provide updates to the commission who will then formulate a recommendation to city council for its consideration. Next we highlight the capital improvement projects.

Here we highlight projects that have been completed and that will be completed in the near future as we see on the list. And I apologize, I realize it's a little bit smaller here to go ahead and see. So some of the projects recently completed was the new artificial turf at the Turf Hill at Libbey Park. As well as the replacement of field poles for Field Light 1 at Zero Zodi Park. Upcoming projects include repairing portions of the gymnasium roof, removing the trash enclosure from the southwest corner of Zero Zodi Park, the multi-purpose sports courts project and Future projects include the Libbey Park restroom renovation, replacing the timber for the Libbey Park pergola.

Additional repairs to the gymnasium roof and a new playground for Zero Zodi Park as well as the ball fields being renovated there So here we highlight the Xerozote Master Plan. The master plan is accumulation of many months of discussion of public meetings with park goers, community members and Parks and Recreation Commission as well as staff over the next several years the city will develop a phasing plan to prioritize each project The first project completed in 2017 was the picnic area remodel, which is now being utilized by our community. The next capital improvement project is a multi-purpose sports court, which we'll cover in an upcoming slide.

Following this is a ball field renovation, which is in the CIP for 2023 as is the new playground for Zero Zodi Park. Lastly, we conclude with a water element feature which is yet to be determined. as far as construction date. Next we talk about the multipurpose sports courts, this is one that we are very excited about and it's slated to be built in the southeast corner of Zero Zodi Park. This new amenity will provide users a combination of outdoor basketball as well as futsal. The project is in its final planning stages. Stantec, the engineering firm, is currently reviewing soil studies conducted for the project and once complete Staff will work closely with Santec to move the project onto its next phase. Staff will continue to go ahead and provide updates on the project on a periodic basis, and with that we come to our last slide which we'll go ahead and discuss priorities and options as well as commission recommendations, and with this I'll go ahead turn it back to the Commission.

Thank you. Any questions comments. Yes

sir.

I don't have that number right off hand no not right off hand.

We did talk about it at our last meeting. We can certainly include those in our future discussions to make sure we have the membership participation.

Chair Taylor? Yes. I want to thank your ad hoc committee for the research on that motion that was made to go ahead with that acoustic contract that you guys discovered. That was just before the pandemic hit, so thank you for your institutional memory and it resulted directly in the city manager moving ahead on that, so thank you.

Thank you, thank you for that. Did you have a question ma'am?

Quick question what is the water

element That's part of our master plan. I'm not sure if we have a specific can you highlight that in there?

Excuse me, it's going to be this feature here so that has not yet it's part of the master plan but it has not yet been designed. It's supposed to be a water feature where children can actually go ahead and play and interact

I think sometimes people call them like a splash pad, might be a better more common term. Splash. Like I think they have similar ones down at the... Sometimes you see them at the malls where the water shoots up similar to that.

I don't think it's ever gotten to that level of detail. It was identified as definitely a priority for the park and for the city to have one but nothing farther has been done with that element because we haven't moved toward prioritizing or getting that going.

Just on the wish list?

So on your CIP budget for next year you have a playground renovation. Are we relocating in the master plan, the location? Or what are we doing because I don't necessarily see it on your drawing

Well at what you see there are two different playgrounds for different age groups with the shade structures over the top it's the red with the yellow sails. Has anything been done for the actual plan for that? For what we're going to do and nothing has been discussed at this point beyond that is on our list of projects and priorities in that first Sarasota Park but in that plan there you see too it's for two different age levels right And then there's actually a third under the trees that's for teenagers. But I think the ones that we're focusing on for the priorities are the, is it up to five and over five? Correct. The two different types of.

So you're still in the process of. We haven't started. Selecting

design. No, I don't think we've actually started that process yet.

I think we identified some of it in the master plan but we haven't had any detailed discussions on moving forward yet.

Yes. If I can add to that. I was going to ask for the CIP slide to be pulled up, but it's hard to see so it might not be super helpful. Kind of the, to piggyback on what Bob Dahl said a couple minutes ago. You know you can see kind of the trend and this was, the CIP tonight is like the preview for our full citywide CIP discussion next week and so it's kind of exciting. This is like the sneak peek and we're going to go through all the projects citywide next week But as we started to put those, the CIP together you start to see like the impact of the pandemic and like the two years of like not being able to afford to do things or not having the programming to do things.

And so there were Luis mentioned the projects we got done the last couple of years, pretty minor in scale. We did some of the things like the turf hill at Libbey Park. We kind of focused on the minor projects but there's some big projects coming and they're starting to stack up And so when the commission asks like for kind of priorities for the coming year, like one recommendation I would make to the to the council to make to the commission is there's some big design work coming up. We've been focused over the last six months on the multi-sport courts That's come to the commission multiple times and it's come to the council multiple times because of all the, you know we had funding and then the costs went up. Then we went and got more grants and then the cost went up more so we finally went to council and said let's just you know can we just agree this is a priority and let's use some Measure C funding to do it?

So that's where that's at. We are finalizing the design on the multi-sport courts But once that's done, and that's big. That's an outdoor basketball court at Serzodi Park. But once that's done the next thing is going to be the playgrounds. So to Commissioner Entner and Chair Taylor's points, we haven't gotten to that yet but that's going to be a big one that I imagine there's going to be a lot of public input and a lot of discussion on. So pretty exciting because to me looking at Sarzotti Park and what it could be like that's a key part of it And so we're excited to finally get there but it's like we're seeing when you look at the CIP, we have that. We have the Libbey Park bathroom remodels which is another huge project that's kind of been on the wish list for years and years.

The Libbey Park sewer pump system which is in progress not as fun but still a really important project and My eyes are bad I guess, but so there's a lot coming up this year. So I think for me one thought I had for my staff or for our staff is like we're gonna have to focus on these projects and starting to get them moving and getting them done. So my suggestion is that we also let we all focus on those in this coming year.

I was

just wondering what in terms of water conservation as we move forward and, you know, the prediction is that we're going to have less and less water. And as we move towards ridification and the need to conserve what we have, is there is that part of the plan? And also is going electric in terms of the renovation

I think as far as conservation of water, the commons are so important. I think as you look at conservation, you then focus back to trying to use your resources as wisely as possible and the wisest way to use that for recreation is to take care of what we have for a community benefit. So I think we're always trying to be economical with water. I mean it's come up at our meetings not recently but we've had many discussions about trying to be as efficient as possible. There may be room in there to do more, I don't know that's very much you know that's a more public works side of things but I think we need to be sure to invest in what we have and keep it as nice as we can because what we're hoping is that we can have people recreate on the commons and not have to have as much on their own space so From that standpoint, I think we actually it's an integral part of trying to save resources is to make sure that we provide those recreational areas that kids

need. I also mayor if you look at the master plan there is a large reduction of turf on the backside of the recreation building in comparison to what is there obviously there's no there's nothing electrical that's happening and any other facility improvements at this stage until we get to the building I travel, I'm working in Camarillo and I travel by a park on the corner of Las Posas and where Las Posas makes the right turn. And that's why I asked you.

Yes the Pleasant Valley District but they've got a beautiful children's play area that's got more new innovative toys and play things and there isn't a day I don't go by there that it's not packed. They got swings where a child, a baby is on one side of it and the mother's facing it. And it's so interactive. It's just... Playground

design is fun! Getting those catalogs and looking at all that

stuff. So that's why I thought you were doing it and I was gonna say have you looked at some of these other cities and what they're doing? And all of the new available play equipment So and then I'd like to comment you know during the last rain which was who knows how many months ago but someone actually went in a rotor tilled to sand in that play area and there was fluff for the first time my grandchildren are there three or four times a week.

Right here. And whoever did that maintenance, I just want to commend them because I had never seen that done

before

and it was just incredible when the kids didn't know what to do there was rows of sand you know from I guess he wrote or tilted it they were just they had so much fun so and usually it's not the best kept but it was well-kept and has gotten better

And to the electrification, the only thing I would point to is the skate park lights or LED lights. I think that the basketball multi-sport courts as we look at that, LED. The field is a really different... What we've been told and the research that's been done that's provided to us That field as it is now and the way that it looks using it as multiples. It isn't there isn't an LED solution yet then that's the feedback we've gotten from staff is that it's not there yet to light that big an area with LEDs because of the number of poles you'd have to place And I don't have any great knowledge about lighting. That's a whole other area, but so we're not there yet to do that. So when it becomes available, I think it'd be a great project.

Yep and then I have one more comment. I'm not sure how deep we're gonna get into pickleball. I hadn't planned on getting into it too deeply but if Sarazote comes to Fruation and happened to move there. I would sure like to see these courts used for our youth program. Yeah, so if we move there I'm not saying we are or we will but. We've got some beautiful courts here it sure be great to have a quick start pickleball program getting the youth engaged in this sport early and then two having pickleball classes here actually program something here or there.

We have the courts let's use them let's discard them they're beautiful There are a lot of people come here to use them. So I just think instead of discarding them, that we actually take an opportunity and repurpose and utilize them if they're moved.

Could I add on to that comment please? It's Karen. Yes. Thank you Councilman Haney for that suggestion. I've got two points i'd like to make one The city of Ventura and other recreation districts in Ventura County and around the country are doing exactly what the councilman just suggested, having classes and quick start and so forth. It becomes a revenue stream.

And to that point, the question was asked about pickleball participation. Now these are unofficial, these are not parks and recreation numbers but based on contemporaneous recordings by people who have organized pickleball, the number of participants, people showing up to play on the pickleball courts right there at City Hall in 2021 exceeded 11,000. That is more, almost three times the total participation in all of the other parks and recreation programs.

We need official numbers, but I want to point out that this is one of the most, this is the most popular recreation activity in the city of Ojai. And I said two points may make the third point. The third point is Soule Park It belongs to the county. I understand there's conversations, but I've worked on big projects like this. I've fundraised for big projects. I've written grants for big projects. If tomorrow there was an agreement between the city and the county allowing city programming in We are minimally five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars away from having Pickleball courts and courts multiple.

So I think we need to start putting some reality around some of these expectations, and I appreciate your interest in this. I appreciate that pickleball now is part of the parks and recreation presentation because last survey we weren't pickleball was a part of that. There's not a space on the Parks and Recreation website yet, but it's the major recreation activity in the city.

Thank you.

I'll comment on that.

I've

raised

my hand for a long time. Can anybody see me?

Oh, I'm sorry. I couldn't see you because I had the slide up. I'm sorry.

Gail, did you notice I came in about a half hour ago? I finally got in. I'm sorry, I started to get in at quarter to six and I figured out finally what was wrong and I will watch the part I missed. Okay, I would like to make some comments for the last seven years. I've been going both to Sarzotti and Libbey Park on a regular basis with my little granddaughters And I want to advocate that there has to be, I would hope that you would make some kind of water play a top priority in the summer months. And I want to find out how the misters and the fountain are the two most popular activities on a hot day in Libbey Park? Okay, unofficially the fountain. But the misters I don't know if they they don't seem to use very much water and I think the water is recycled and that would at least doesn't have to be a fancy water play But some way to cool the kids off and preferably where the water is either recycled.

I don't know if it was recycled, but that it also waters the grass or plus insects gather around it as well. The bees are thirsty on a hot day. The other thing is that Other probably just as popular as pickleball and its recreation is bicycle. Bicycle riding, it's becoming increasingly popular by you know there's more and more people riding their bikes both for transportation and recreation and so I wanted to suggest Of to work with, for example, the Green Coalition or the Mob Shop so that we have bicycle education at the recreation department. Because I noticed that you have driver education in my opinion, bicycle riders should be licensed so that it's taken seriously every bike should have a light. I cannot believe the number of children that are riding in Without lights, it's just appalling.

It needs to be taken seriously and I would love to work on that with you. I know there is at least one person in Ojai that was a professional bicycle instructor not just like the rodeo but where you really teach the kids how to obey the rules of the road And at some day that will be part of the school curriculum. But until it is, I hope it could become a part of the recreation department. It would be a perfect fit, wonderful fit. And then the other thing is that under playgrounds what Randy was saying, what Mayor Pro Tem Haley was saying, There's so much innovation and that includes playgrounds for seniors. It's just, it's amazing so that seniors can use the same where you're stretching and moving and having fun. And they have that for seniors as well.

So maybe that could be down the road but I would say that of all the things I've said, the top priority is figuring out ways to keep the kids cool on a hot day. And the misters, water guns, whatever. I don't really like those because that adds to the trash but please do investigate if the misters like we have in Libbey Park are a possibility. Thank you.

I feel like we're talking too much but there's a lot to be said here. Suza, I love that idea of bicycle safety. You know I preach it all the time what I see I don't see people riding safely but I appreciate that and I think obviously starting at a younger age is beneficial. Also wanted to touch on what Mr. Daddy had to say about youth or at youth Children are at risk youth children in our community Louise do you know how many children where you think or how many young adults we're gonna hire this year for the parks program? Do you have any idea

I hope minimum 12

So when we look at funding and we look at community, Mr. Daddy hit it right on the head. Why aren't we figuring out how to fund our young adults and our young children In our community and actually keeping that money in that resource of money And create some type of you know, there used to be a program called comprehensive the CETA the Comprehensive Employment Training Act.

So why don't we create the Ojai? Comprehensive Training Act and why don't we think about funding through maybe through the recreation and Parks Department a way for businesses to come in and request youth to come maybe work in their businesses, and we figure out how to subsidize that. I think that'd be beneficial. Like I look at myself, I could use a 16-, 17-, 18-year old in my office part time filing.

and at minimum wage $15.50, in thinking about how we could match it or you know like grants 50-50 but there's a multitude of ways of doing this and I think we need to think about that. How can we take this money and actually provide it as a resource to the young people in our community that actually need it? And actually provide them job training And interactive activities. I mean, look at how many senior centers have senior folks who don't have anyone coming to see them or any activity with young people. I mean it's just a multitude of things to do with our youth and I don't have a problem waving that carrot of matching funds with them so I think Mr. Daddy is on to something and I think we as a community need to look at that

Love it. It's a great idea and I would imagine that the school system, there is a program already in existence so let's check in looping with them and so we can coordinate collaborate together

We actually talked about it at our meeting last month, about looking at some models because I can't remember exactly what the topic was but it had to do with when I was in high school. And then later on in my career, I hosted some of her students as interns. And they came over during their school day and worked at the lake in the office doing clerical work and several of them went on to become actual employees so they came I think in their junior or senior year and then it turned into a summer job and then it turned into many, many years of service for one particular person. So it was very productive program and there is already a model for it with I think we said the city had a model for it, we just aren't using it right?

Correct. The city does have an internship program for college-based students and we're gonna go ahead and look into possibly modifying it for those in high school.

I think we asked for it to be on the agenda for next month

or... We have a raised hand online

Oh,

sorry. If I could also offer, I support this idea so much and I think the collaboration with the schools, school district would be great but the park, you know, the city parks and rec deals with the youth for the city already and so I think it's really a, it would be a real natural fit and I can offer, I've worked on employment programs work study programs and so forth getting grants and actually hiring Students and so forth. So I'd be very happy to participate in investigating this idea more and see what we can do with it, because I do think this would be a real benefit to the city and to the young people in the city. And I know other recreation departments also have programs similar to this that we could take a look at as well. So

good idea. Can I put Ella on the spot and ask for an opinion? Are there kids that need service hours or a way to get more involved that could use that kind of additional support to do that?

Yeah, so first of all, I think a lot of students would be interested in something like this. I think for experience, I think a lot of kids are getting to the point I'm going to my senior year, so we're all a little stressed about college apps and moving out and all those things. And I think a lot of people are getting to the point where they feel a little bit not ready to get into the real world.

So I think having an experience or an opportunity where they can kind of get some experience would be really good. Another thing that we can think about is reaching out to our clubs that are more service-oriented clubs at like for Nordoff, we have CSF which is California Scholarship Federation and we like require a certain amount of service hours to be in that club. So if we can reach out to those clubs, you can probably get some more participation, especially from those students

Thank you Ella, and I just want to say I think from she's taking away from the public comments. I think the point is is that there's a program in place of the concern rather but there's a program in place and it's not real clear on how the city is allocating funds and maybe that is something that since this is a type of program that is I just wanted to say thank you for your time.

Allocated towards recreation needs to support a program like that in-house versus being gifted to a nonprofit to go elsewhere To us maybe even a smaller group. It would certainly I know as chair, I would support the Commission doing that work for the council

Obviously I'd be a hundred percent behind that and like you said it some form of matching fund because we've all received comments after the last council meeting regarding monies to the public and how we what's the process? And to be honest with you, we don't have a process. What we have

is... And there is some funds on the table it sounds like or some requests? To be determined.

Right Mayor?

And I think to add to the list of things that we could do. It's very motivating for the park staff, go ahead. Well and I think I'd add to the list of things that we could do to serve the community is after school programs like almost a daycare type program those are things we should be looking into because I think we could run them and they might be in available space for us to do that but again this comes back to What's available for funding because it depends on how hardcore we are about cost recovery. I mean, and what we're trying to accomplish with our money and how much we're willing to subsidize programs so that we have a wraparound service for families and we're giving them ways to safely provide these.