Good afternoon and welcome.

I'd like to begin by asking our clerk to call the roll, please.

Councilman Bowman.

Aye.

Councilman Brown.

Vice Mayor Gray.

Councilwoman Craig.

Councilwoman Harper.

Councilman Hobbes.

Present.

Councilwoman Muggler.

Present.

Mayor Tuck.

Present.

Two announcements.

One, Councilwoman Harper's not feeling well, so she won't be with us today.

And the second announcement is two weeks ago, we announced Courtney Sidnore as our attorney city attorney in waiting.

And today she's with us.

And so welcome.

We won't put you on the spot by asking you for any comments, but we'll put you on the spot and ask you for comments.

Well, thank you, Mayor Tech.

I'm happy to be here, and uh I look forward to meeting many more of you and working with everyone here in the city.

Thanks.

Super.

Now we'll ask our senior manager to introduce the staff news agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor and Council members, as you know, but for the benefit of the public, as we return to two meetings a month, we use the second meeting uh each month to focus on what we call deep dives.

Typically they're around strategic priorities, and today uh we will be hearing from our parks recreation leisure services director, Dave McAuley, and our public works administrator Michael Bowery, who will this will be his first time presenting to you on the on the various capital projects that relate to the strategic plan, uh both to give you and the public an update on where we are with those and also for you all to uh be able to really reflect on how much we accomplish in a given year.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over first to Dave McCauley, and then at some point he will transition to Mr.

Bowry.

Good afternoon, Mayor Tuck, Vice Mayor Gray, City Council, City Manager, new city attorney.

Um I'm Dave McCaulay, Director of Parks and Rec, and I'm gonna uh give you an update today on uh the placemaking strategic priority.

So as you know, these are it's one of their seven strategic priorities, and it all goes towards helping create your uh your vision of creating a vibrant waterfront community embracing 400 years of history and innovation to create an even more dynamic future for Hampton.

So this is kind of what we start off with.

It shows you the breadth and depth and scope of what we offer in parks of recreational leisure services.

It's close we manage close to 400 assets for the city for per capita of 140,000.

Uh includes managing 2400 acres of grass or of lawn care that we do as well, landscaping as well.

The dark uh green are on the slide are all parks, and the yellow uh pluses are indoor facilities such as our community and neighborhood centers, and the light green areas uh are the Hampton City schools where landscaping grounds and playgrounds are also maintained by parks and recreation, as you know.

Uh in addition to what's shown here, we also maintain two uh stadiums.

Um Darling and War Memorial, plus school playgrounds and lawns, uh three community gardens and BMX track, as well as additional programs and services such as festivals, events, and community gardens that I'll talk about here in a little bit as well.

And it and during the master plan study, it would came to light that um it was one of a council question earlier on that 96% of our facilities uh of our parks or 96% of our residents are within uh uh one mile of a park facility.

So that was a huge asset and bonus to uh to our residents as well.

So these are the uh I'm gonna be reviewing the projects that we completed in FY24 as we continued our hard work and investment in the city that will bring hopefully a sense of pride and and belonging to our citizens and residents as well.

So as you well know, this is Air Power Park.

This is what it looks like used to look like before the uh not what it looks like now, this is what it used to look like uh during a rain event, not even a significant rain event.

And so we put a lot of work in over the last five five, six years to uh get to where we got to this point to where we had the grounds work completing and um uh including the the uh bulkheads, the dock, and adding a kayak launches showed here during the relaunching ceremony.

Um we're also looking into adding a self-service kayak, uh rental kiosk, which is a growing trend in other city uh waterfronts as well.

Um and then this was uh we also restored and raised all of our outdoor artifacts at the um at Air Power Park over the past couple of years.

Uh and you know it uh we're getting a lot of compliments on it on it, the restoration, the the vibrancy, the brilliancy of the uh of the artifacts that are there, and then those are some uh a family that was enjoying the uh the relaunching ceremony uh at air power park as well as happening on every weekend out there.

Uh at Asbury Park or Asbury Ballfield, the new restroom trailer and access walkway to the residence was installed as it was shown here.

And then at uh Briar Field and FY24, we added a new uh ADA um see if this works.

We added the new ADA uh accessible uh walkway from to the Azalea shelter, and we also added a pathway to the right to the park or to the playground as you enter Briarfield Park, as long as as well as a new fence line to highlight the area.

And then this is at behind Buckrow Beach, uh the lifeguard uh shed at Buckrow Beach.

As you remember, it was a it was a dilapidated old fence that was there and and equipment was uh strewn all over the place in the back there.

We've cleaned that up, moved it out, and uh added this fence line, which was uh done in accordance with city ordinance, uh so it didn't uh in uh hinge or you know hinder any of our views out there.

Um and also we were asked uh the mayor made a point last year as well that we this the shelters at the uh um Buckrow were not clearly marked, so we although the picture's not great, we have clearly marked each of the shelters at the at Buckrow so you can see what you're renting, and people are clearly where they're going because he was right, people were showing up at different shelters, didn't know which one was which, but now we strained that out.

Uh and then at Buckrow, also at Buckrow, as if you if you go to the bill meetings in the past, there was always light, there was always constant uh questions on where how where are we doing on the bollard lighting and the and the park lighting, and a lot of the lights were out.

We've replaced all those lights, they're all good to go.

Uh over 100 lights were painted.

We've pre repaired all the bollard lighting.