Okay, ready to rock and roll.

Let's uh I'm gonna call to order the meeting of the public works and sustainability committee for May 11th, 2026.

Uh all members are present as is uh Councilman Bixenstein.

Um first word of business is to consider approving the minutes from the March 9, 2026 meeting.

Is there a motion?

So moved.

To approve, moved.

Is there a second?

All um motion is made and seconded and discussion.

Hearing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed and the ayes have it.

Thank you.

Our other item of business or only other item of business is proposed ordinance 25-2026 to authorize and direct the mayor to enter into an agreement with once again with Help Foundation Incorporated for the operation of food concessions at Lakewood Park and Madison Park.

Um this was it's on second reading already.

Um so we're we'd be in a position to uh potentially report out to the full council favorably and then have council adopt at the next meeting.

Um it's a simple the ordinance itself is a simple uh proposal to allow the mayor to execute the contract and then exhibit A attached to the ordinance uh has the details of the contract, and that's what we wanted to review today.

So without um objection, committee members, let's uh hear from the administration.

Director Mahoney and Director Vargo are here, and then of course the Help Foundation leader leadership is here as well.

Director Mahoney.

Uh hello.

So um we uh put an RFP out, oh, it was a while ago.

Um, and uh we had two um people that uh had submitted proposals um help and one other vendor, and help was the successful um uh winner of the bid, I guess you'd say.

And um basically that's that's all I know.

Mr.

Baker.

Yeah, well what was the basis of the RFP?

Was it like uh for a nonprofit operator or uh it was not, it was just general.

Um last year we had put we had um reopened um the Madison concession, and we had a for-profit operator in there that Madison had been closed for a while.

Um that was a test run.

And uh we wanted to put both together for this year.

Um so uh yeah, we just took um proposals, and like I said, there was two people that had proposed.

And then we had a meeting with uh myself, uh Kurt Mate from Parks, um Michelle Nocta from planning.

They might be forgetting someone.

I think that was it.

And uh we evaluated the proposals and help was a successful uh proposal.

What were uh the kind of conditions or uh it was just the the completeness of the the proposal and um uh just you know also the experience that help has had uh, you know, at foster pool uh was and in their mission.

So that those were the deciding factors.

Yeah yeah, and I uh I assume this person here is from help.

Yes, I am um and you guys so I as a I you know customer of the pool.

Um I think you guys have done a good job of operating the concession facility there.

Thank you.

Um what's kind of uh I and I can read what is in the permit and the lease.

Seems to be a lot of discretion of the mayor, kind of like back and forth as the hours and and could you kind of explain your guys' um philosophy and kind of like what you'd like to provide, what services you like to provide these.

Absolutely.

So help is a legacy provider in Cuyahoga County, so we provide services to adults and youth with disabilities, and um we provide the full scope of services, uh residential, adult day, vocational employment, and transportation.

And so this service, it fall rolls up under our help harvest model, which is vocational services for individuals with disabilities.

And um this will be our eighth season um under help operating foster pool, and we're super excited and grateful for the opportunity to uh operate Beck's pool as well.

And we're super excited and grateful for the opportunity to operate Beck's pool as well.

And this is going this operates as a summer youth work experience site for individuals that we serve.

It's youth services.

We partner with opportunities for Ohioans with disabilities to provide this service.

So it's local youth who are interested in developing skills needed to work in the community someday.

So they're paid.

It's paid training for them.

And again, it's just to build those skills that they need to eventually work in the community independently.

And what and and is it are both operations going to be similar in the sense I think it's like hot dog nachos, obstacles.

Exactly.

So we'll have um over the past two years we partnered with Hershey's ice cream.

So we will have Hershey's ice cream, we'll have slushies, hot dogs, nachos, pretzels, candy bars were our biggest seller last year.