Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Nydien Olsen, the chair of the Parks and Public Works Committee, and this is the July 21st, 2026 meeting at three o'clock.

With me, I have a council member Chris F, who is also primary on this committee.

The ex officio member, uh, council president Dutch, and um and director Angie Fesser, who's um up for the first item on the agenda.

So um with that, um, I've called the meeting to order and we will go on to the committee business.

The first item is the capital improvement plan, first reading for parks, rec and human services.

As a reminder, we have already seen the first draft of the capital improvement plan for public works.

So this is the park side.

Right.

Yeah, this is parks catch up, basically.

So um, I'd also like to um introduce um Shannon Burley, our deputy director and Rob Freeborn, our parks project manager.

They're on the call and um watching today's meeting as well.

So they're joining me off camera, I guess is a good way to put that.

So I agree.

Yeah, so um I want to kind of talk about three things today, primarily.

One is just talking about how parks projects are selected and which ones do we choose to work on and the reasons behind that.

Second, I also want to talk about um funding sources for uh our park capital projects and the different ones that we use and some of the restrictions related to those, and then um happy to kind of talk about um any or answer any questions about the materials that were provided in in the packet.

Again, similar to what Public Works did, we're just kind of introducing our capital program, getting council members comfortable with it and understanding it a little bit of the background before we move into September's work related to the capital program, provided is uh our recommended um projects and programs for just 27 28 for right now, kind of a small snapshot.

We'll build that out for September, but it gives you an idea of what we're focusing on based on our limited resources plus the funding sources that associate with them.

So, first and foremost, kind of big picture.

Um, where do the projects come from?

How do they get on the list?

What happens to that?

It's primarily grounded in the 2022 parks recreation and open space plan.

We've referred to that as the PROS Plan.

And that was a large community engagement process where we established priorities about our park system and the amenities that we have combined with the existing inventory that we have.

What do we have?

What is the public want, and how do we get to that point?

And what new things do we need to do to get to fill out those basic goals and recommendations of that plan.

And that came with a very detailed capital list back in 2022, which we have been kind of updating and working off of every year and updating that plan and bringing that forward to council.

Keeping in mind too that um resources play into the projects that we select.

What do we have as far as staff resources and funding available to do that?

So keeping in mind we have one full-time staff, Rob Freeborn, who's our project manager earmarked for all of our capital projects, and that includes the big ones all the way down to emergency things that happen at in the field.

So, perfect example.

Last week we had a big piece of a maple tree fall on the gazebo at City Park and cracked a beam.

That is now a project for Rob, right?

To figure out how we fix that and all the pieces that come together for that.

So he does everything from little stuff using the parks maintenance crew up to big projects that require bidding and contract management.

I also work on some of the capital projects.

So as you're well aware of, I'm involved with the park impact fee study that's happening, the buoy project that's going on.

And so I delegate some of my time to those projects as well.

And then Shannon helps us also with supporting.

There goes the lights.

Hold on, there we go.

Right, sorry.

Energy efficiency happening right here in our office.

And so Shannon helps us and supports us too with a lot of that work as far as the budget side of it and the funding and is a great resource for us to move forward.

And then the third piece of how we select projects is sometimes opportunities come to us, right?

So we'll have a donation of property like the Johnson property a number of years ago, or land comes for sale, like the addition of the Me property Math A Ballinger.

That was an opportunity by that landowner for us.

And sometimes things will line up with community partners like the school district will have an opportunity to work with them.

So shifting into how do we fund all this and how do we make that work?

We have a handful of funding sources that we use.

We have REIT one and two.

Those are funds 125 and 126.

And those used to be a little more separated.

When those were first created by the state legislation, there were very specific uses for them, and one was allowed to use for land acquisition and the other one not.

And that was kind of the biggest distinction between the two.

So as a side note, for REAP funding, actually, Rob's 90% of Rob's salary is paid from REIT funding.

And when I or Shannon work on projects, we bill that to REAT funding as well.