Parks & Recreation Advisory Board Study Session on Capital Plan - June 4, 2026
Parks & Recreation Advisory Board Study Session on Parks Above-Ground Infrastructure Capital Plan - June 4, 2026
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board held a study session on June 4, 2026, to discuss the development of a prioritized capital plan for above-ground park infrastructure. The board reviewed a prioritization matrix and rated five sample projects to test the methodology. No formal votes were taken; the session was for discussion and alignment.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Per the agenda, no public comment was accepted during this study session, and none was given.
Discussion Items
- The board reviewed a prioritization matrix with criteria including community beautification, tourism and recreation, master plan alignment, infrastructure improvement, ongoing expenses, external funding feasibility, equity and access, public safety and risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance. Each criterion was rated on a scale of 1-5 (with 2 and 4 allowed), and staff explained that cost is considered post-prioritization.
- Staff presented five hypothetical projects (not approved or in the pipeline) to test the matrix: Golden Heights Park site plan, Cressman Gulch playground, Traffic Island beautification, Standardization of Amenities, and another unnamed project. Board members rated these projects, and results showed high consistency — most rated Heritage Gels (likely a project) as highest priority and Traffic Islands as lowest.
- Key discussion points:
- For Golden Heights, some board members rated it lower because they focused on specific repairs (e.g., basketball court crack) rather than the broader site plan that includes reimagining the entire park, sound walls, and access. Staff clarified the scope, and board members noted that interpretation of project descriptions affected ratings.
- For Cressman Gulch, Pete rated it high (score similar to Lions Park) based on community input from a previous meeting about lack of parks in the area, while others rated it lower due to underutilization and aging infrastructure. The playground is small and rarely used, and the neighborhood is aging. Staff mentioned potential public outreach to determine community desire.
- The board discussed subjectivity in the matrix, particularly for "community beautification" and "regulatory compliance". Some board members initially misinterpreted the scale (e.g., thinking a 5 meant no issues in regulatory compliance, whereas staff intended 5 for no legal challenges). Staff clarified that ADA improvements are captured under regulatory compliance, and equity/access refers to serving underserved communities.
- Pete raised the idea of normalizing scores to account for different scorers' tendencies (some score higher on average). Staff indicated they will set a threshold for outliers and investigate discrepancies.
- Staff explained that the matrix will be used internally by a small group (5 or fewer) to evaluate roughly 100 projects. The board will then review the prioritized list and provide feedback. This process is timed to prepare for budget season starting in about a month.
- Staff noted that capital plans will be fluid: projects in the next three years are concrete, those 3-5 years out are tentative, and beyond that are subject to change. Every year the plan will be reassessed.
- Other items: Standardization of amenities (picnic tables, benches, etc.) will be gradually implemented as other projects occur; Traffic Island beautification is expensive (approx. $1 million per mile for median renovations) and often requested but rated low priority due to limited impact.
Key Outcomes
- No formal motions or votes were made.
- Staff will proceed to apply the matrix to all known capital projects (approximately 100) and develop a draft prioritized plan.
- The board will review the draft plan within the next two months (by July or August 2026), likely in a study session.
- The board expressed general agreement with the matrix methodology and the consistency of initial ratings, indicating the approach is workable.
- The study session was informally adjourned without a formal motion.
Meeting Transcript
Do we want to do anything formal sentences? Okay. Welcome to our study session. I'm going to start by answering just a couple questions that I got in the process. Some things following up from last time we met. Some new. So first and foremost, I so I filled it out, and I concur, twos and fours are allowed. So like I really need to put one three. I don't think we need to put definitions to two and four, but if you're like, this doesn't really fit this one, or it's in between, we're gonna put a two and a four. Because yeah. Um 2.5. No. No. Yeah, no, no, no. I think that was like our biggest discussion at the last meeting. Um we were fairly consistent on ratings. We did have two outliers. Um heritage cells are Kelsey and I guess close to permit. So pinks are folks' highest rated project. The light green is folks' lowest rated project, and then the two blues I highlighted just were bigger outliers than anything else. Um I did want to talk through those two in particular to see if we understood um if they're up for discussion, really. Pete, I will say I changed one thing on yours. Um the safety column. I think you might have misunderstood and you had some lower numbers in there. Um at first glance, like, yes, it seems like the safety risk of not doing these is like is low, but that the way it's written, like basically every project we had was a five. Okay. And everyone else had fives, and so I upped your last call. Yeah, for what? The safety and legal implications. Um your scores are a little inflated than what you sent, because I changed that last one. I did not commit them to memory, so great. In case you have, um They're also wildly different from each other. You think so? I mean, kinda. Well, I guess in that line for the traffic island is similar. Number five is pretty far off of each other. Maybe number three isn't that bad. Number two is, and I guess number one isn't either. So not huge, but yeah, I mean, I think we definitely like people were putting like variations of weights, like you were either on a higher end or a lower end because we still have really similar trends on like most of us rated heritage gels as the most as the highest priority project, and most of us rated Traffic Islands as the lowest rated project. But yes, you got anywhere from what 79 to 119 as uh within the those five of us that put it at the high end. Because I do think some of it, and I said this to you in my email, but I do think with the examples you gave, does leave it open to some subjectivity, you know, between some of these different what were they called? Like things that we're judging against. So I just I thought it was a really interesting exercise because of that. Um so I originally thought I was gonna make a fake projects. Um these are not totally fake projects, they're not they're not approved, they're not they're not in the pipeline, but they uh we did an initial um workshop with all of the park staff to identify all the capital projects we could think of. And these are five that came up. Um so they may end up at the top of our list when we start looking at like the next three years of what to what to add in to our project requests. Um with that, I was thinking more about your comments, Sandy, because you had put that in an email. Um I've got a list of about a hundred projects. If I sent that out, I I suspect there are still going to be a ton of questions and that subjectivity of each of those.
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