Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the Parks Arts and Culture Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us and the parts, Arts and Culture Committee starting now.

Great.

Good morning, everyone.

Everyone, everyone producer, we have a slight echo.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us at Parks Art and Culture Committee today.

Sorry that we're running a few minutes behind.

We had an executive session that went a little over, but really excited for the conversation.

And I'll start with introductions to my left with Councilman Carity.

Sarah Parity, one of your city council members at large.

Paul Cash from Shout Denver District 6.

Savannah Gonzalez, one of your other council member at large.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday.

Chris Hines, Denver's perfect time.

I guess so.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much to Director Clark and Jesus for being here.

We've had some questions.

There's been some media coverage of some of the contracts around the city, so we're really grateful to be able to ask some questions and have you here today.

So thank you so much for joining us.

If you want to introduce yourselves and take it away.

Yeah, I'm Joel Clark, executive director for parts and recreation.

Good morning, Council.

His Su Saranthia, community engagement specialist with Denver Parks and Recreation.

Just want to uh let you know that we have other parks staff here to help uh with any questions that we may not be able to respond to.

Wonderful, thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for having us today.

Um today we don't have any specific action item in front of you.

This is just an overview of our contracting, the kind of contracts, number of contracts, um, how contracts come to be in the department.

Um, because you all do see lots of contracts come through here, some of them on consent, some of them that we'll be presenting on, uh depending on what you have time for and what you you would like to see.

Um so this is the overview.

This is not the action item on any specific contract.

Uh so as a general overview, you can see here that we uh manage around 600 uh contracts across a lot of different types.

So there are lease agreements, there are concession agreements, uh professional services, park use, uh, all these different kinds of uh agreements that what might require a contract.

You can also see kind of the range of some of the types of organizations that we have contracts with, including you know, uh uh big cultural partners like the Denver Zoo, other nonprofit partners, um, and smaller cultural facilities, um, even down to things like the Chris Kindle market uh that happens at Civic Center uh park.

Um and then you you also see that there is a wide range in the duration of these contracts.

We have contracts that are as short as you know 30 days, and we have ones that were put in place for 99 years that have been in place for a long time and will continue to be for a long time.

And so with that, also there's a variety of terms and conditions for when when these contracts were put in place as they um came by.

Um a couple things to highlight.

There are a lot of uh uh requirements that we are required to follow as we work through our different contracts.

Uh many of them live in the city's executive order eight, which uh lays down rules and regulations around procure procurement.

Uh there's the threshold that we have for bringing city council uh uh getting city council approval on contracts, um, also the rules uh around competitive procurement and our DSPO requirements live in there.

And then on top of that, we also have um some unique features in the city charter that define park use.

And so the kinds of things that you can do or contract for uh uh in a park are different, and some of the process that we have to go through uh if a contract is coming to its end to reevaluate are we in line with those charter requirements around park use that are more specific to our charge as a parks and recreation department that might be different than citywide.

Um some of the things that we consider uh with all contracts as they either come up for renewal or if they were to uh be over and we're going back out uh with an RFP.

Um we start with kind of the alignment.

How does what we're what we're doing, what we're looking for align with our game plan uh for Healthy City, which is our guiding uh strategic document for the department, also looking at other strategic plans, whether that's our recvision plan that you'll be hearing more about in the coming months, um other park specific plans uh that the department has done uh with community.

Um we always look at uh that through our equity lens using our equity map um that we've been here and presented on before.

We're also looking at kind of what are our operational needs, what are our programmatic needs, um, and then also looking at uh the internal expertise and capacity, which changes often, especially with some of these longer term uh contracts.

And so whenever a contract comes up for renewal or there's a new contract, we first look, is this something that we could provide that we have the capacity and the expertise to handle in-house, or is this something that we should put out to contract with an outside either nonprofit or for-profit entity?

Um, and then we're also always weighing with everything that we do, and you've seen this uh you know a hundred times in our various presentations, but we have our you know individual benefit versus our community benefit.

And so you'll see on the community benefit side of things like our my Denver kids access to uh recreation centers, and on the other side of that on the individual benefit is kind of uh getting a round of golf, right?

That benefits the individual versus having community benefits.

And so we're also weighing um, you know, when things come up and and spaces come up, uh, what are we maximizing community benefit for what's available in this versus individual benefit?

And if we are doing individual benefit, then are we recouping as much of those costs as possible on the individual side of things, like golf lives in its own enterprise.

So when you're golfing, all of that money stays with golf, but we're also not subsidizing that with money that would be taken away from keeping rec centers open for youth, for example.

Uh so within that, just a couple of uh examples, because it you know, it's a broad range, as you've seen of 300 contracts, and so a couple of just examples that um I thought maybe you would be more familiar with to just give you the flavor of some of the different kinds of so we have lots of nonprofit use and cooperation agreements.

Um so think of things like uh our our contracts with the park people who will both provide um uh forestry uh services for the city and in complements with our our um our tree programs.