We will go ahead and get tonight's study session started.

We have Jasmine that needs to be admitted online.

All right.

So tonight we are going to go over the comprehensive recreation parks and open space plan.

And I will quickly mic pass over to the team that we have here tonight.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us and for giving us this opportunity to share Erie Outside, which is the name that's given to this plan.

It's the comprehensive recreation parks and open space plan.

Before we begin, I'd like to just recognize and thank everyone who contributed to this effort.

This effort represents more than a year of collaboration with our consultant team from Design Workshop led by Brena Laffy, as well as city departments, particularly public works and planning.

And I just would like to recognize the team that we've been working with who are mostly here tonight, and I I love that.

Jason Sayers is the director of public works.

Jeff Gibbons is the assistant director of public works, Hannah O'Leschi in Planning, Gary, Gary Graham, Bureau of Parks, Steve Joint, Deputy Director of Deputy Assistant Bureau Chief of Parks, I'm sorry.

Cooper Moore, assistant planner, and Liz Reyes, who is now in MOCA.

So that has been our internal team working team for over a year and a half and really has been a collaboration between the two departments.

So this plan is more than a vision.

It is a roadmap for action.

And while it sets an ambitious direction for the future of Erie's parks, recreation system and public spaces, it is grounded in the city's fiscal realities and operational capacity.

Most importantly, most importantly, this plan reflects commitment to ensuring that every resident has a safe, welcoming, and accessible public space spaces regardless of where they live in the city.

With that, I am pleased to turn things over to Brenna from Design Workshop to walk us through Erie outside and the key recommendations that have emerged through this process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jackie, and thank you all for giving me the time to speak today.

Excited to go through this planning process with you and answer any questions that you have.

So just to give you an overview, we're gonna give you some background about the planning context and how to navigate the plan contents.

We'll talk through the vision and plan framework.

So that's the strategies and the actions, and then we'll talk about prioritization for investments in projects and an implementation strategy.

Okay, so just where we're at in the planning process.

We're here in the in the fourth column, the last phase of the planning process.

We started in in spring of 2025, really started with a grounding of conditions.

So understanding what parks does the city manage and maintain, what is the condition of those parks, what amenities they have, making sure we had a solid inventory of the parks, amenities, and programs.

And then we pair that with uh trend data, um, analysis on the community profile, demographic trends, um, to take a look at the the context in which the park system exists.

Um then we moved into uh community engagement, and I'll say it's not a totally linear process.

Some of these phases overlap, and an engagement was really a part of the process throughout.

Um we started off with some targeted youth engagement with youth worksheets that were distributed across many different events that the city helped to collect.

Uh, and then we had a celebrate Erie open house uh during that festival uh setup where anybody could walk in at any time and participate in activities and share their thoughts.

Um paired with a survey that was open through the fall of uh 2025 and a series of I think 29 community events that the city helped to get the word out, collect more feedback across the the planning process.

Um we then took all of what we heard from that uh community survey and engagement and analysis to begin drafting the plan vision and themes and framework.

And we uncovered some gaps and areas where we needed to find out more information with a series of four focus groups and about 20 individual stakeholder conversations to understand more specific needs and understanding the partner network a little bit better in terms of program offerings.

And expanded outreach with a youth focused workshop specifically targeting youth and recreation needs.

And then now we are in the plan development phase, so we've wrapped all of that additional feedback into some adjustments and more detailed action plan.

Okay, so we're here at this meeting today.

We have a public comment period that we're anticipating will be June 22nd through July 21st.

That will be when the draft plan document is published online, and there will be some outreach during that time period as well to bring the plan and explain some of the recommendations.

And then we're anticipating based off of that that adoption may happen in August.

A little bit of framework to kind of set the stage and understanding, you know, as Jackie mentioned, this is an ambitious plan, but from the beginning we had conversations that it needs to be rooted in reality and it needs to have actionable strategies.

Something to note is that when we take a look at kind of the condition and quality of parks, there are a lot of parks that are in need of kind of basic upgrades.

So things like ADA accessibility and improvements to aging infrastructure.

And so we've estimated about 17 to 20 million of estimated deferred maintenance across the park system.

There are 50 parks in the city of Erie that are Parks Bureau managed or owned and maintained, and about 350 acres.

We'll get into a little bit more details around benchmarking, but you know, that's a lot of parks, and a low amount of operating budget to be able to manage and maintain that many parks when you compare to your peers, and we'll get into that.

And community expectations are growing.

We've heard from across the community, you know, they want safer, cleaner, more comfortable parks.

Parks are really important to people in their everyday life, but also their memories and what they find important to their families and community.

So ultimately, we hope that this plan creates a path forward to help prioritize decision making, pursue grants, and build partnerships to build this over time.

It also doesn't exist in a silo.

It exists among many other plans that the city of Erie has gone through, some of which are older, and so what we do when we start this planning process is read through everything that you all have to make sure that we're pulling in pieces and understanding maybe something that needs to be revisited or understood more deeply, and making sure that the park system exists within the context of not only City of Erie plans but also the statewide comprehensive outdoor recreation plan and more regional planning efforts like the Lake Erie Watershed Conservation Plan.

And some of those key themes from past plans that we pulled, you know, there's a strong emphasis on environmental stewardship across many of those plans, connectivity and mobility, expanding trail networks, greenways, multimodal streets, including to parks, strengthening neighborhoods and equity.

Many of the plans talk about prioritizing access, culturally relevant amenities and universal accessibility, as well as prioritizing underserved neighborhoods, placemaking and activation, investing in downtown parks, neighborhood green spaces, and the bayfront, partnerships, coordinating across jurisdictions and adopting asset management and maintenance strategies.

Some of these things are mentioned across these different plans.

So the plan document itself is organized somewhat similarly to how I'm going to walk through this presentation today, although I'm not going to talk through all 163 pages plus appendices today.

So but I just wanted to give you some kind.

So there'll be more detail in the context around demographic trends and addressing equity.

We'll go into some of that today.

And then it goes into an analysis of your existing parks and amenities and recreation facilities as well as programs.

And then it goes into contextualizing that within the community engagement process and what we heard from the community before it goes into the plan framework, which is organized around four themes that we'll get into later.

The implementation guidance has additional detail on how to get there, and the actions are then organized with responsibility, timeline, and so forth.

Just to contextualize the plan, it you know, it is a long-range planning tool.

It's intended to be a visionary document and an opportunity to reflect the community needs and values.

I think that's just important to contextualize, though it does make recommendations on you know individual park basis.

And it's not a specific method for approving funding, but it does give you the tools to begin planning.

So a little background on the community engagement throughout the planning process.

So as mentioned, there's 29 pop-up pop-up events, a hundred plus attendees at the open house event during celebrate yearie, and uh 613 survey respondents.

And we also collected about 200 youth worksheets and surveys that are incorporated into the feedback.

And one of the things that we did as we look at you know amenities and priorities, it's not just about what amenity got the most percentage votes on the survey, but taking a look at individual communities.

You also see in the appendices we broke down the survey by neighborhood as well.

Um so if you're getting on a neighborhood planning level, the survey results are organized in that way.

Can I just ask a quick quote?

Yes.

This is I love this.

Well, this is something that we actually get a lot of feedback and pushback when we presented other plans.

So I just could you highlight just a little bit how you went, maybe identifying the collaboration of groups, like where did you find like that's a that's a lot of feedback points.

That's great.

I'd love to see more plans like using this this same method.

So clearly you you've done something, you've you've you found something that's working.

Could you just share just a little bit more on on how you collected and gathered that?

Yeah, well, I'd have to give a lot of credit to the city.

I think a part of it is having really great relationships with the community.

Um we spent a lot of time planning for the engagement on this.

We didn't want to go immediately out and put a survey out there because we know that people get surveys asked of them all the time.

And so one of the strategies that we talked about was we really need to make sure we're going to where people are and not expecting them to come to us.

So we talked a lot about how to, you know, best use our time and events to strategically make sure we're going to get people from different places.

So that was one of the reasons why we chose a celebrate Erie event to be able to get as much people we knew people were going to be there already.

We were not asking them to make another trip for this engagement.

Um we also used incentives, so there were raffle prizes, um, things like that to encourage people to participate and get them interested during that event too.

We also had people with clipboards and surveys to go find people.

So just creating multiple methods, whether you have five minutes or you have more time to spend sharing feedback.

And then again, that strategy to go to neighborhood events, events that are already happening, and uh really using that to push the survey and push feedback.

Sorry to digress us, but I think it is important to highlight that.

I just would like to add just a few things.

Thank you, Brennan.

Um it was from the onset, there was a strategy in place.

It was very intentional, like Brennan mentioned about how we were going to receive feedback.

And it was not only at events, but also to the credit of Liz and Hannah.

Um, it was at the grassroots level, absolutely multiple times the parks plan was brought up at neighborhood meetings, at neighborhood events, and to their credit, they were there asking those questions.

What is missing?

What are the gaps?

What do we need to do?

Um we we knew that the survey, the survey method is not working.

It's not working for us, and we knew we had to pivot.

We had had some experience from the safe streets and roads for all and the safety action plan, and we knew we had to change our methods with this plan, and it was critical to the development of the plan.

So it was a lot of work, but it was absolutely worth it and fed into everything that we that we did that was developed.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that question.

And one of the things that we did then following, you know, some of that community engagement was to then say, okay, what questions do we still have?

Who do we still need to talk to that we haven't?

Um and that's where those individual stakeholder conversations organizations, making sure we're hearing from all different perspectives, um, and the focus groups um that we held as well.

So we had um I think over 60 individuals or organizations represented from across different organizations.

Um some of them are parks and recreation you know, partners, they put on programming within the parks, um, or they have um utilize the parks in some ways for their their services and communities, um, or they're interested in getting more involved in in the year's parks or have ideas around how to get more involved.

Yes.

I was just gonna add also that um we had a initial round of um discussions that we we thought we could bring people together as a group and have the discussions and we did have many of those initially with these stakeholders, but we didn't have as much attendance as we wanted.

So that what we then did is we we changed the strategy again, and we we invited one-on-one.

So we had at least 30, 20, 25 to 30 different one-on-one meetings with Prescale Partnership, Mill Creek Township, Port Authority, Children's Museum, YMCA, where we met with them, we listened to them.

Some of these organizations are already in our parks and rec um programs and work with us.

Some of them want to work with us, they want to utilize the parks plan, and a lot of that information we know that we've we've spoken with the mayor, will feed into the research and the analysis around improving the parks and rec um programs.

So it was was very um, it was very eye-opening for us because these some some of the partners even had not been asked questions over the last couple decades of like, what do you need?

What are we missing here?

And how can we improve this partnership?

So it was very eye-opening through that process.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thanks.

I did just want to mention very briefly that we did start with reviewing um a budgeting survey that happened in 2022.

Um, and so we reviewed all of the comments, organized those.

These are just some very high-level takeaways.

But I think you'll see that some of the themes that were um gathered during that input in 2022 still still relevant to this planning process today, as we heard from more folks.

Um, but that was um one of the things that we did first was make sure we read through that survey, um, or not survey, but uh feedback, um, the the mapping comments um to make sure that we grounded our questions back to the community from there.

Um so some of the key takeaways, um, again, there's a much uh longer description, and if you want to dig into any of the specifics, um it's in the appendices.

Um but overall we really heard from the community that there's a desire for places to relax and spend time in nature, places to gather with family and friends, and really amenities that make parks comfortable, safe, and welcoming.

Um when we heard from folks, we asked them um if if they experienced any barriers to either accessing parks or programs, um, and the top barriers were condition, parking, safety concerns, weather, um, so you're not having access year-round and activities and features, so maybe not having the activities or uh programs and features that appeals to them, um, as well as information and awareness.

That was particularly important when we filtered out by underrepresented responses in communities, information and awareness was one of the top um barriers, and uh we heard that again and again throughout the stakeholder conversations as well, just a need to have a place where you can find out about programs, about what the parks have and and the amenities that they have.

When we asked about uh what was most important to people from uh priority facilities and amenities, this looks like a long list, but we asked people about a lot of things.

Um I think what you'll see here is that again, comfort amenities, basic comfort amenities like drinking fountains and restrooms and shade can came up time and time again across all points of input.

Um so really some smaller um in investments can have a really huge impact on on the comfortable uhness of of parks.

Um nature walks and walking trails were also really important.

Uh water play, splash pads, and areas to swim, as well as access to the lake came up time and time again.

Um play for all ages and abilities, yes.

Probably probably too much in the weeds about it.

But when we start talking nature walks and walking trails, I'm thinking green space and natural and less concrete.

Is that something that would have came out of this at a at a time when most communities are tearing concrete out and putting green in?

Are there any of those type of discussions about what our parks would look like in the future?

I think you know, maybe without knowing the full context of what you're thinking, we might talk about this a little bit more in the plan when we talk about the different types of parks.

So while there was a desire for more like nature-based walks, um, I I think walking loops in general or walking trails in general were were high up there.

Um do you just mean in terms of converting?

In terms of climate change and in terms of putting concrete in versus taking it out.

You know, uh most communities are tearing concrete out.

And they're making things more walkable, but they're they're doing it green in a green way.

And you know, any of the stuff that it's probably semantics, but any of the solar stuff that would operate, any of the bathrooms, any of that type of stuff, you know, uh parks and recreation 2040.

Are there any of that, you know, shuttle on shut off water, shut off by self-save that type stuff.

Or am I getting too much into the No, that's right.

You mean recommendations for more um energy efficient and uh climate um climate focused solutions?

Yeah, we want in the instead of creating heat zones by putting in concrete, try to eliminate them.

Yeah, I think in in many ways this plan supports supports those uh strategies for sure.

One example that Renna will talk about a little bit later is we have a lot of um open spaces or areas where Bureau of Parks um will mow.

And instead of having grass, grassy areas, you explain it much better.

But there's there's um instead of having that be grass where we have to maintain it, we could put native plants there specifically for irrigation, or not irrigation, but for um filtration of water.

Something so there's it's mitigating water instead of the city.

Trust me, the last couple of weeks we've had a lot of conversation about native plants.

Yes, we have.

And I'm and I'm sorry if I cut off course or anything like that.

No.

I hope I hope we'll speak to that a little bit more, and maybe um you can you can tell me if you we hit the mark or not.

Um I won't go through the the full list, but I think you'll see here that um there's kind of a mix of of smaller amenities, and then there's also a desire to see some more um uh challenging amenities, uh play for all ages came up often, um, as well as all abilities, and that and that could include just more more challenging play structures or opportunities to be active outside.

We also captured park memories from the community.

I'd encourage you to read them.

I think there is very um touching to hear you know how important specific parks were.

Um that was a another great engagement tool, um another way for people to engage in the process to let us know what matters to them.

Um and we we heard again, I think lots of stories about water and pools and and gathering with with family and friends.

So the the community needs assessment um pulls together all these pieces, the the survey, um what we heard from youth participants, the open house and events, um it also takes into account level of service, which I'm gonna dive into in this next section, um, which is the more technical analysis of the the number and distribution of amenities.

Um focus group conversations, uh stake study committee.

Um we did pull out specifically underrepresented communities from the survey results.

That's cross-tabulated in the appendices as well.

Um, and then trends.

We take a look at national, regional, and local recreation trends to see if there's an indicator for future need.

This is a long list of key takeaways, um, some of which I've already mentioned, but again, uh these small improvements could make a big impact.

Another thing that we really uncovered from this process is that there's a really strong foundation of partners and organizations who are excited and willing to put in, I guess, the work for coordination and alignment.

And there was a I think a lot of really exciting conversations that were had throughout this planning process that had a lot of energy and excitement around it.

That said, the recreation programs and services are currently really limited by staffing funding and facilities, right?

So there isn't an indoor recreation center that the city runs to be able to run recreational programming, so any of that sort is run through partnerships.

And then there isn't dedicated recreation staffing with the city, it's all externally coordinated.

And then of course funding.

And so we take a look at that in the plan.

We heard about cost, that could be the programs themselves are mostly free, but access to equipment.

So you know, people are limited from being able to participate in certain programs because of the cost of equipment.

And then transportation access is a limiting factor, being able to get to where that programming is occurring.

And then just limited options.

We talked a lot about the timing, when uh programs were offered and whether that was suitable for for the targeted audience.

Yes.

So when I look at this, and I've been through other communities, probably the closest to ours, would be Mill Creek Youth Athletic Association.

And they have uh actually buildings so that you know people can actually do or that are when people think about parks and rec, I think they think outdoors here in the city of Erie.

And not in that manner as a programmatic central, like all things athletics, baseball, football.

You know what I'm saying?

Basketball, soccer, seasonal, like Maya, you can just kind of go one place and sign up for it all.

And so that's uh the first thing uh that comes to my mind uh when you when I think about Erie's parks as being you know, not the it could never be the park that was when we were children because things are different.

And so, but like we don't have boys' baseball in the city of Erie, we don't have skating rink or anything like that, things that perhaps we could reimagine our park uh and recreation program being and I understand liability too, but it doesn't seem to stop those other communities from sending home the insurance slip like they did when we were kids and having some uh anyway.

I'll get off it.

Thank you.

Appreciate that comment.

Um water access again when we take into all of those factors, um kept rising to the top, as well as trail and greenway connectivity between parks, but also neighborhoods and regional destinations, um specifically talking about you know the distance to Prescale, especially for the eastern portion of the city of Erie.

So, how can we create more connections to the water and easier ways for people to connect to the great assets that already exists?

Um expanding tree canopy and restoring natural systems and uh and making sure that parks better reflect Erie's history and cultural diversity.

Um we had great focus group conversation around cultural art and history and ideas about uh community um uh engagement as as part of that process.

Um we also talked about tourism.

So we met with Visit Erie in particular as well as some other organizations and how could we leverage the city parks as a potential visitor destinations, what parks could be more visitor ready or calling more attention to the park system as amenity and a draw for people.

And then awareness of parks and programs.

So we'll move that.

So benchmarking.

When we do benchmarking, we do this through a couple of different metrics.

So we take a look at NRPA agency performance review.

That's the national recreation and park associations agency, and they take a look at parks and recreation agencies across the nation, and then they collect information and then provide that in a report every year, and then you can dig into it to find specifics.

So we use that as one benchmark.

They organize it by population ranges.

So we took a look at the population range suitable for Erie.

But that's a lot of park agencies, and there's a lot of differences among them, so that's just one.

They have a park serve platform which takes a look at access and equity indicators percent of residents with a 10-minute walk, and that's how we're able to see how Erie compares to other places.

And then we take a more custom approach to the city, and we've selected six peer cities for various different metrics that relate to the city of Erie.

And so I'm giving you a snapshot of some of the quantitative aspects of this benchmarking.

But there is a longer memo, if you're interested, that goes into more kind of best practices, specific projects.

So when we take a look at the peer cities average and the national average and where Erie is, this is just a snapshot of some of the things that stood out to us.

So when we look at park acreage per 1,000 residents, that's one of the metrics that NRPA looks at.

The city of Erie is on the lower end, 3.8 acres per 1,000 residents.

When you look at your peer cities, it's more like 13.7 and national 9.2.

But when you look at the number of parks, it's higher.

So what that tells us is that you have a lot of parks, and a lot of them are small, and you have a couple of bigger parks.

And so there's nothing to say that Erie should be at a different phase in that.

It's just a benchmark understanding where you are as compared to your peers.

Typically, about 5% of your peer cities are of land is dedicated to parks and recreation.

National median is actually about 15%.

So we were trying to look at places that have a little bit more similar density to the city of Erie, whereas currently City of Erie, about 3% of land is dedicated to parks and open space.

10-minute park access is also a key metric, and this is where Erie has incredible strength because of that number of parks and the way that they're distributed throughout the city, as well as other public open space.

So we're including other parks in this metric.

It's 87% of residents have access to a park within a 10-minute walk.

And even when you take out the other public parks, it's still 76%.

So it's very high when you look at that compared to your peers in national median.

But with all of those parks and in acres, the budget is significantly lower.

So you've got 26 dollars per operating expenditure versus 99 and 126.

So you can kind of see that that delta that the city is operating off of constrained resources.

And staffing as well.

So that 20.5 is full-time equivalent positions, and when you look at that compared to your peer cities and national median, which is much higher in the 70s.

Something of note as I mentioned earlier, because there aren't any indoor recreation centers, which most of your peers have for population this size, it's more typical to have that.

So they do have recreation programmers in most of those peer cities, and that does account for some of that increase in staffing.

But even when you take a look at the kind of typical breakdown of a parks and recreation department, there's still a delta that 51.3 is without programming staff.

Okay, these are just the same information, but in map forms you can kind of see how they're distributed.

I won't go into too much detail there.

Getting into park types, part of what we do in the plan is give some big buckets to the park types that you have because they're not all the same and they don't all need to have the same amenities.

But you what we've organized the parks into is natural areas, neighborhood parks.

Those are really your your parks that are around two to ten acres.

They tend to have a playground and maybe maybe a park shelter, some seating and amenities for nearby residents.

And then your destination parks, we've broken that into three different categories, community parks, such as Roger Young Park or McClellan Park.

They're a little bigger, they have more specialized amenities, downtown civic park like Perry Square, and then regional destination that might have a more regional draw or have a wider mix of amenities such as Frontier Park.

Here's just a map showing that 87% of residents within a walk to a park.

So this is using street network.

And you can you can see here in dark gray, those are residential areas without a 10-minute walk to a public park.

But we also take a look at quality, as I mentioned.

And this is not just the condition of park amenities.

So it doesn't just call into account is okay, there's a park here and there's a playground, is the park in in good condition or not, but it's also the quality of that park experience.

What's the mix of experiences?

Does it feel safe along the edges?

Does it have appropriate access?

Is it accessible from an ADA perspective?

And so it goes beyond just condition to look at several factors of quality.

And so we're just showing here this is not a scaled map, but each park is then kind of given a score across those different categories, and we've included here the kind of good to great quality.

And so it, you know, it does cut down your your 10-minute walk to equality park to 53% of residents.

We also take a look at metrics.

I won't go into too much detail on this one, but we take a look at the number of facilities per population.

So how many playgrounds do you have, or how many residents per facility?

And this is another metric that NRPA uses to compare.

Again, it's not a suggestion that Erie should match that metric, but it just tells you where you are, and then we pair that with community input about what their priorities are, and it tells us well, maybe we should adjust that level of service for that amenity because the community is desiring this, and we don't we're not matching also what's typical.

So it kind of just tells you kind of the capacity for each of those facilities.

And you you can see here that you have a really good distribution of playgrounds, and it's it's more a matter of the kind of quality and experience of those playgrounds.

Um but there are some other amenities that might be lower.

There's also that first column I wanted to note there, you know, some of these are more specialty, like ice ranks, not every park system has an ice rink, only 17% of park agencies that the NRPA looks at.

Um, and so you might be lower, but that's not necessarily something that is is typically offered all the time.

Okay.

And then we also take a look at the distribution of those amenities in their service areas, and this can help serve as a guide and a tool as you're planning, you know, improvements to a new park, planning uh improvements to a new area, using this as a way to identify where there might be gaps in specific amenities.

Then we overlay all of those service areas to understand where there's a higher mix of amenities, so the variety of experiences and types.

The darker areas in the map have more overlapping amenities within a 10-minute walk, and the lighter areas have fewer.

We also took a look at equity indicator factors.

Um, this builds upon the trust for public lands equity criteria and customizes and updates it for ERI and the date to be updated for the timing of this plan.

Um so it takes a look at population characteristics from percent of low-income population, um, older adults over the age of 64, youth under age 19, adults with less high school diploma, and limited English speaking proficiency, percent of people with a disability, percent of people of color, percent of households without access to a vehicle.

Health characteristics include higher rates of physical inactivity, which is a data point that we're able to use, and higher rates of poor mental health, higher rates of sensitive populations, which includes rates of chronic health conditions, as well as neighborhood characteristics, taking a look at where there's higher vacancy rates, environmental justice characteristics, taking a look at the percent of tree cover, as well as proximity to contamination and environmental exposures for brown fields and pollution discharge sites, as well as the urban heat island index.

Okay, so all of those are given each category has its own map and then an overlapping map together.

And so when we just take a look at that data, one uh lens of priority, um, this is where the darker areas have a higher equity score, and then the lighter areas have lower.

Yes.

I mentioned uh about equity that this plan from the outset was really rooted in that.

Um, even from when we were awarded the grant through DCNR, um, it was specifically addressing those challenges.

And so throughout this planning process, and we have uh we have zones here, but throughout the this planning process, that was the lens in which one of the lenses, but priority lens that we looked at our challenges, looked at our priorities and strategies around around that.

Just following along this seems pretty intentional.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

We also took a look at conservation priority areas.

So, where is there already, you know, habitat from an important habitat for birds to wetlands?

Um, we took a look at soils, uh, lake buffers, streams, and all of that aggregated together.

This can help with grant funding and an understanding where you know what might need to be protected.

And then we looked at remediation and restoration, so areas that might uh there's many brownfields, as you can see that top little uh map there.

Um buried streams, there's a lot of places that um are daylighting streams, and there's great opportunities for recreation and restoration, um, areas of high erosion.

So these are areas that are targeted towards restoration needs.

So it needs some care, not just conservation.

Just because I like to do this every now and again, is highlighting the there's a few points that you just made that I think are really critical, and I want to make sure that that just we as council hear them, but that also the public notes.

When you line up where the brown fields are, and also a few slides back where the the inequity uh whether the they line up perfectly, right?

So we can see, and those also line up again on the east side, right?

So just for us to note where we're seeing people don't have safe spaces to play or family safe places to gather.

We're seeing also where they're where there's a lot of remediation that still needs to occur.

So just for us all to put those together to be able to do that.

I can just add Dr.

Titus.

I think we all we all know, right?

I mean, and anyone who lives in City Erie knows what's helpful is then you see the data, and you see the data point to it in multiple ways.

Yes, right, different things being measured and all coming out with that same.

I think it it helps us as we make decisions, things we already knew, but on paper it just makes it blundantly clear.

Okay, now we're gonna get into the vision and plan framework.

Um I just wanted to mention that there is a mission statement for the Department of Public Works property and parks, um, which is where the the Bureau of Parks and Recreation sits.

I won't read through that, but it's a you know, somewhat of a foundation of understanding um where the park sits.

Um this is the vision statement that we put together through uh the community engagement and planning process.

So Erie parks are connected, welcoming, resilient, and accessible to all, honoring our cultural diversity, natural environment, history, and vibrant neighborhoods, while supporting a thriving local economy and ensuring every resident has safe, inspiring places to play, explore, and belong.

And this is really intended to be that that big vision statement when you think 10, 20 years and beyond of where you want parks open space and recreation to be.

So to support the outcome of that vision, we've organized the planned strategies and actions within these four themes.

Umwardship and maintenance, there's a goal statement for each theme, um, ensure Erie's park system is well cared for, financially sustainable, and supported by the staff, partnerships, and tools needed to operate effectively over time.

Access belonging and connectivity is that all Erie's all Erie residents have equitable access to safe, welcoming and inclusive parks, programs, trails, and the waterfront, regardless of neighborhood income or ability.

Active and vibrant places to create active, flexible year-round park experiences that bring people together, reflect Erie's diverse cultures and history, and support community health and well-being and nature and resilience to protect and enhance Erie's natural systems and habitats, expand access to nature and education, build climate resilience, and repair lands shaped by industrial paths.

So we won't dive into every single strategy and action item in this presentation because I know we're already running short on time, but this is how the plan is organized.

So each each theme has about five or six buckets of strategies.

And then each of those have a series of action items, and this is just two examples.

So for example, strengthening staff operations and organizational capacity has an action item to establish a youth recreation coordinator position, and then there's some greater detail underneath that action to describe what that means.

And then you know, improving financial sustainability and funding strategies.

There's a suite of strategies, it's going to take creative uh funding solutions and layered approaches.

One of them is to develop a tiered fee structure aligned with community priorities.

So when you take a look at park agencies, sorry, this light is shining directly in my eye.

No, I'm okay.

Just if you see my knee squinting, that's all that is.

My God, it's we're getting to the good stuff now.

Oh, I'm good.

Yeah, I just needed a little tweak.

Um so this strategy is really about looking at it's not you still want to make sure that everything's affordable, um, but there is there are ways to get some revenue to support park operations, and so having a tiered structure for that where you're you're making uh you know essential services and and parks uh programs, cost effective at a at a certain tier, and then as you get up in the specialized uh nature of that, you might have higher costs or or some cost to them.

Again, access belonging connectivity, it has five strategies to support it.

A couple of samples here to support design parks to be safe, comfortable, and inclusive for all.

One of those is to expand access to drinking water across the park system.

Um so there's a specific strategy for that.

Um developing a universal design toolkit for park improvement projects and new park projects.

So anytime you improve a park, making sure that there's a universal design kind of checklist when you're considering improvements, and then any time there's a new park, making sure that that's also part of that checklist and guidelines.

Um there's a couple big idea spreads in the in the plan, some of which capture some kind of long-term visions and big ideas uh to achieve over time.

One of those is to reconnect Erie to the waterfront.

Um, and so this looks at conceptually thinking about connectivity across the city of Erie and regionally, um, connecting to Presque Isle, connecting to the Bayfront and to the parks in each other.

Um so we took a look at existing plans as well as uh potential opportunities.

So certainly this would be a very long-term vision to think through, and it's not intended to be exact alignment.

Lots of planning would have to go, you know, into this, but just thinking about these larger connections that could be made and whether or not there's opportunities to daylight streams as a part of a larger strategy for connectivity, and just reflecting what that big idea might be like.

These are just some examples across different projects of what greenways look like in different contexts, um, whether that's with art along them or along a waterfront, a multi-use trail.

Active and vibrant places.

We'll just highlight a couple of actions here.

So one of those is uh one strategy is to expand your round programming and park use, and so one of those action items is to begin evaluating the feasibility partnerships and funding strategies for new indoor recreation facilities.

Um that came up in a lot of stakeholder conversations.

There's a long way to go to get there to make that happen, but it is an action to get that conversation started.

Dr.

Titus, can I ask a quick question?

Is it your recommendation?

And maybe it's spelled out that those would be owned and operated by the city of Erie.

Are you suggesting that they could also be partnerships owned and operated by another entity?

They could be operated by another entity.

The point is just to have them and make sure that we're doing it in cooperation with another there's some you know programming recommendations.

One of those is to develop targeted programming for underserved age groups, including teens and older adults.

Another action item is to develop cultural and historical trails and guided experiences.

So layering in multiple uh benefits into these projects.

What does that mean?

Um so uh it's really thinking about we had a lot of conversations um both on a community scale, but then also on a kind of tourism uh conversations in the stakeholder meetings around uh integrating um potentially guided tours or self-guided tours, um connected routes that highlight history, neighborhoods, um, cultural assets, but also partnering with local organizations.

So there's a lot of recommendations to make sure that's coming from the community up, um, but just to think intentionally about if you're making improvements along a trail, um, could that also tell a story along the way?

Yeah, because this city kind of has its own kind of unique story.

Yeah.

You start talking about inclusivity and equity.

And so I was just imagining wondering what that statement meant.

I'm still curious as to what that statement means.

Yeah.

I don't want to get off.

Yeah, it doesn't prescribe what that history is in this plan, but um but just talks about the the potential to explore that.

And um we recently through this grant.

Yes, it is blinding.

Through this grant process, um we were actually able to apply for an early implementation project.

So it's additional funding to do another kind of project.

And one of the one of the things that we've applied for is to actually um understand the history of our parks, why they're name that way, what the cultural relevance is, how it was used historically, what kind of things might be in the ground at some of these parks.

And so um that's the narrative and the story that we want to build upon.

It has to do with tourism, but it's also placemaking.

It's also it's our story, and we should know what it is and then celebrate it and also make sure that we're educating the public on maybe there's an art piece piece of artwork there or something that signifies the history of that park.

Uh just trying to get where the intersectionality of it is as uh as it's presented uh with the intentionality and clearly you can almost place like a facility uh where the brown fields are and what your data presents.

So when that statement comes out, the questions is basically what does that mean?

So you kind of touched on some of the some of these parks.

You just don't have an ink one of who they're named after.

And we're no longer celebrating civil war heroes around here.

So I'm glad that we're at least willing to approach those discussions.

Yeah, to that point too, there is an action item to kind of establish a process for park naming and renaming um and to have guidelines around that.

Okay, shifting here.

Around it.

Um so one of the big ideas that we highlight in the plan, and we had some great conversations with stakeholders about the possibility of this as well is um potential for mobile recreation, so something for the the city to consider and explore in the meantime when you're maybe looking to have uh an indoor recreation facility.

Um cities across the country um have uh mobile recreation programs that brings recreation to communities that might not have access to programming.

Um, and so there's some examples here with um Asheville's Rec and Roll Program, um, Nature Tracks Mobile Outreach Program in Cleveland and the uh playful learning landscapes and in Philadelphia.

Um experience uh children's mobile museum is right here in Erie, and so there's opportunity to build on partnerships where they're already kind of taking um uh activities out into the community.

Okay.

Another one of those kind of big picture ideas is um considering uh a long-term uh idea to think about a signature winter experience.

Um people want to get outside more um in the winter, and and some uh uh smaller investments like maybe uh sled rentals or offering you know sleds for people to go outside are easier to implement.

Um, but we wanted to include some of the big visions that we talked about with um community and stakeholders around thinking about um ice skating.

And so uh we wanted to share some examples across the country.

Um these are places um that have successfully uh revitalized areas and um and drawn in visitation, but also created these uh really interesting water and ice parks or skate ribbons as some people call them.

Um they can serve as roller skating or rollerblading in the summertime or walking paths in the summertime, and then they actually convert them into a rink um in the winter time.

So something to think about.

It's not uh uh it's a big vision idea that would take lots of creative strategies, um, but I think it is is something that um is suitable for the context of Erie.

Okay.

Uh nature and resilience is the the fourth theme, and uh again, a series of strategies and action items, um, one of which is to set a measurable citywide tree canopy target for parks.

Um so that begins with understanding your existing tree canopy and setting a target by park type.

Um converting underused lawn areas to natural landscapes that Jackie was bringing up earlier.

So that's identifying low-use lawn areas, so not areas that um people are using for recreation activity, but areas that maybe are underutilized and could be better served or transitioned to a meadow or pollinator habitat, rain garden reforested area or other low-mo zones, and that can uh reduce the the maintenance expectations and needs, but also support biodiversity and habitat goals.

Um and then transforming brown fields and underutilized spaces.

So there are many funding programs for taking brown fields to parks and a great opportunity in in Erie to think about that.

Also, brown fields are sometimes redeveloped for other purposes.

So uh the plan, you know, is uh suggesting that there's a toolkit and approach for assessing parcels of land that might be suitable for for park um conversion.

Just a big idea around that.

Okay.

So how do you make this happen and how do you prioritize projects?

Um, as mentioned earlier, there's you know 17 to 20 20 million of deferred maintenance.

And so um, as you're thinking about reinvesting in existing parks or new parks, um, setting a kind of living criteria and framework is is what we've put together for the plan.

So it's not intended to be a rigid, this is what you must do first, and this is what you must do next, but uh a framework of decision making that supports the outcomes of this plan and and the uh uh analysis that went into it.

So uh the criteria is equity, uh, quality, level of service and park experience gap, access, nature and resilience alignment.

So does the project align with community input or other city priorities?

That's really focusing on things like priority neighborhood investments where you're grouping investments together across different, maybe you're you're repairing streets or investing in bike lanes, and that's a great opportunity to pair that with investments for a park.

Um, and then feasibility is it owned by the city?

Um, what's the land use, available funding and partnerships?

So really pairing the the realities with the park projects.

Yeah.

I asked a bunch of questions.

My mother couldn't stand the SQ.

Um going back quite a few slides earlier, and it talked about most residents living within 10 um 10 minutes walk from a park.

And it gave some percentage numbers, but one of the numbers that in one of the columns was that we were really, really healthy, and we had like 50 parks.

You know, I'm talking about we have like 50 parks or like 87% under what we were above the national and the medium or whatever.

Uh was this plan or does this have any recommendations about uh making fewer parks?

Uh perhaps repurposing some of those parks if they decide to make fewer since we're because without knowing anything.

I'm thinking 50 parks and most of us within 10 minutes.

And I was just wondering was there any consideration into consolidation or I don't even know what the question is, but I think you get where I'm going.

Yeah, definitely.

We we don't go into the level of detail of saying you should remove this park because it you know is redundant to this other park within 10 minutes, but the data in the plan can help you make those choices, should that you know be a consideration.

So then you can kind of take a look at, you know, would would we lose level of service?

So you can kind of use the same criteria.

Would we lose level of service if this park were to be transitioned to something else?

Would would you know uh residents not have a park within 10 minutes walk from that?

We lose level of service if we put housing there, opened it up for development and still have them 10 minutes walk from a park.

Yeah.

No, no.

I think that's a great point.

Um so each each uh existing park project was scored using this criteria to organize priorities.

Um and so uh there are four tiers.

Again, this is a flexible framework, but it's intended to kind of give some some guidelines.

Um six park reinvestment projects kind of have the the greatest score across all these different categories when we add that up, and then uh tier two is another 14 parks, tier three is another 15 parks, and then tier four is another 17 parks, some of which might just be kind of monitoring for for reinvestment, they might not require um major investments.

So that question becomes even more relevant because maybe it's not uh 17 parks, maybe it's 13 parks.

Maybe it's not 14 parks, maybe it's 10 parks.

And it could have a very significant could be a very significant variable in those 57 to 121 million, or even the 17 to 20 million, depending on what parts you prioritize.

That's right.

Yes, if I may.

Thank you so much.

Great presentation.

The history of our city.

Most of our playgrounds were built around clubs, taverns in Sol.

That's how second wall was we game there.

I'll tenth and has all wonderful.

Other good news, mere spoke you maybe a past support.

So folks already have some connectivity already.

I plugged you from hardware you put in.

It's gonna be safe.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

We're almost done.

Um this is just kind of a uh high-level summary of this chapter, um, but really just some of the principles that go into thinking about it.

So beyond the prioritization criteria, you know, working to figure out how to maintain what you have, um, building capacity, um, whether that's through their staffing, programming grants, project delivery, um, advancing those priority projects, um, a lot of uh recommendations around how to set up a capital improvement project process and making sure that there's an internal process for that coordinating investments, um, expanding partnerships.

It's going to take a lot of partnership and diversifying funding.

Um so uh there's some recommendations around creative strategies and diversifying funding sources, including uh potentially exploring the idea of a parks foundation, a nonprofit organization that's able to raise money for parks or a park conservancy.

Those are some strategies that other places have used to be able to build capacity for parks.

Um and then tracking progress.

Um so revisiting these priorities at least on an annual basis and reporting progress out over time.

So each of those actions are organized.

There's a time frame, uh suggested time frame, uh responsibility.

We've uh are working through the you know who would be responsible within the city to lead the charge on that, knowing that there will be partners involved, and then the type of action, you know, is not every action is a physical project.

Sometimes it's a policy or a planning improvement, uh funding and partnerships or operations and programs.

And this goes into more detail in the plan, but again, just looking at diversifying the funding across different sources.

I wanted to add before I just move on from that last one.

Oh no, I pressed the wrong button.

Okay.

Um of the key things when you're thinking about any new projects that are coming in to the city, you know, building a new park, um, really important to make sure that it's evaluated through the lens of operations and maintenance.

So not only the cost to build that thing up front, but um, I think it's a three to four percent is typical uh projection for the cost to maintain that over time.

So building that in um and understanding that there will be future costs to keep that in good condition is a really important part of planning.

Um so you don't kind of overbuild what you can what you can maintain.

Okay, okay, there we go.

So uh again we're here, and any other questions or um comments I'm sorry, Mr.

Troop spoke, Mr.

Because my comment was just gonna echo uh my colleague uh Mr.

Brzewski's and uh this is uh quite uh a document.

I kind of looked over it a little earlier, so thank you.

I apologize for not being able to go through it completely.

Uh but man I look at it and I just think man, what would it be?

It must be nice to be a 25-year-old 30-year-old in the city of Beerie.

Uh if all of these many of these things are manifested in uh the quality of life uh presupposes that your quality of life will improve and they have some stuff to look for.

And I tell people all the day, all the time that I believe that Erie's best days are ahead, and it's because of people like you and the staff and and um so I want to thank everybody that's in the audience that had a part to uh play in this document, and I look forward to uh being able to help in any way that I can help some of this stuff come through uh to a reality.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Um yeah, nice presentation.

Thank you.

Um so most of you know I I uh I work at I work with teenagers in high school.

So one day I was in a classroom, happened to go in the classroom to do what's called a walkthrough for one of the teachers, and one of the kids said, Hey, I saw a sign in my yard, this Mo Troop, do you know who he is?

I said, Well, I met him a few times.

Um pretty nice guy, you know.

And so um the teacher said, Well, Mr.

Troop's an elected official, and they were talking about elections.

So I brought up parks to I said, here's one of the things that we talk about.

They were really interested in that.

So I don't know if you're still doing surveys with youth.

I mean, they they gave me no cars just filled with like you know, ideas of hey, I think we could do this in the park, do this in the park.

So if you're still looking for youth engagement, the school's a good place because this really sparked a lot of interest with teens.

Um, one of the ideas I guess came up with kind of what you were saying with um Mr.

Horton about when you talked about kind of like do we need 52 parks?

Um kid was like, hey, do you guys have a way of measuring which parks are used more?

You know, like and then maybe you could put more in that park, and then one person said, Well, you should try to find out why the other parks aren't being used, you know.

And so they had a lot of a lot of ideas.

Um I asked them about you know, if you had this amount of money, should you put all the money in one park?

A lot of them didn't like that idea.

They like money spread out, you know what I mean.

So um if you're looking for more engagement, I think the schools is also a place to and it they really care about this issue about parks.

So that's that's just a thought.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um, I loved it so much this morning.

Back for uh tonight, and I really appreciate you.

So about a year ago, I was in Wilmington, and uh we have to, I think, be aware of like what we want and don't want in parks, and we do have to have some signage.

Like welcome and we want you to enjoy yourself, but uh no smoking, no illegal drugs, and um making sure that you have appropriate uh conduct so that the peaceful enjoyment of others can be continued in this park, and please properly dispose of food, other refuse in designated containers.

Um please uh go uh keep the streets um clear from obstructions and things like that, and then at the very end of it, thanks for visiting and welcome back.

But I think there was a lot of good points in here that uh people you can't assume anymore because there are parks that have the trash and I love walking and seeing birthdays being celebrated for the young kids, the old kids, and uh you know, through all the parks that have the shelters to do that, but you know, they need to clean up, they can't just leave those balloons there.

So um thank you so much again now.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions for my sorry, I just want to make uh real quick statement.

Um I I cut some of your uh some of this this morning um on the city website, and uh I'm glad I was able to to pretty much get the whole thing.

It's very interesting, and I did um last year during celebratory uh when you were at the Boston store.

I was very impressed with how that was handled, and a lot of people seemed interested, and I think I even put one of those sticky ones on there.

Um but um and then you have to make people aware we do have a lot of parks.

We do have 50 parks.

We have another one going in on 6th Street.

Um we lost one overnight um at the Fortish Tauqua.

I went down there this morning.

It's it's very sad, it's very it's horrible.

Um, especially all the work they put into it last year, um redoing it.

Um we have a lot of parks, but they're not all swing sets and slides.

They're you know, just little spaces sometimes in a neighborhood where people can go and just have a little picnic or sit on a bench and you know, like talk where you just sit on the bench look at the water.

Um so and that doesn't need a lot of you know upkeep.

You just cut the grass and you know, hope everybody keeps everything clean, and um, yeah, it's this is I'm looking forward to this project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I I think the last thing I would say is if I can Dr.

Titus.

Mr.

Horton had a good idea.

Uh he talked about communities with these like centralized athletic facilities.

I mean, I see those I go visit my brothers down in Pittsburgh where we're like different communities have these little and we talked about tourism.

I mean, those are ways to bring people into those communities, and then they use everything else around.

That's that's just something maybe it's a big vision idea, like you said, but it is it is a good idea though.

Yeah.

I could just I agree with you, Mr.

Troop.

In fact, we met with Visiterie and the Sports Commission.

They talked about how many you know tournaments and things will come in, and I said, well, how many do you locate in the city of Erie?

And they were like, well, none because your facilities aren't where they need to be.

So yeah, there's real benefit there, and I I agree with you, that's something we should explore.

I also just wanted to thank you uh for making the trip and really um thank the planning department under the leadership of of Jackie Spry and Cooper Moore and um with in close collaboration I know with public works.

I think we all agree this is such an example of um real community engagement, and I think we have a lot to learn from this as we move forward, and I think you've shown us how to do it well.

So really want to thank you for that, and I think it really shows um in the product.

So I'm on the behalf of the administration, just really truly thank you.

Thank you.

That means a lot.

I think one of the things that I've noticed just as I'm I'm watching this is the word intentional has been used several times, but that there is a a plan, and it's not just it doesn't feel as sporadic as as sometimes when we've seen things before, like we're gonna fix this over here, we'll now try it over here.

That there's a very intentional design with a metric system on why we're doing it, and that also makes it easier for us when people are asking, like how how are things being spent or what is happening?

We can lay out the plan and so that it pulls back, it just pulls together cohesiveness.

Um and parks really are a community connector, uh, and it's it's how we create formal supports but informal supports.

So I'm very excited to see this playing out, and this is how we address everything from mental health to to um strengthening our neighborhoods, right?

So thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Is Councillor Flores?

That's all right.

All right.

Well, um thank you again.

Thank everybody for coming in.

I know we ran a little over, but I think that this is well worth especially getting this information out to the public.

So very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Great job.