You can start whenever you're ready.

All right.

Turn my mic on there.

I know what to do.

Um gosh.

I'm getting older.

Anyway.

So call to order.

Is that the Yes?

All right.

Um Do I start that or uh So you're just saying that you're gonna call this meeting to order, and then um you can begin the Pledge of Allegiance, and then I'll kind of take over from there.

Okay, excellent.

All right.

So uh we're gonna call this meeting to order, and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Right.

I'm learning.

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

One nation, another indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, agenda item C roll call, Commissioner Tabera.

Here Zaragoza.

I do apologize.

Here Thompson.

And Vice Chair Dennis.

Here.

And Chair Hypes.

Here.

And we have ex officio members Rodriguez.

Ann Kusha.

Here.

Okay.

Chair Hypes, I would like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the commission, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium in the back of the council chamber.

Citizens can submit public comment to the commission electronically no later than one PM on the day of the meeting.

Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the commission and will be part of the record, and will even mentioned as part of the public comment portion of the agenda.

Material may be emailed to City Clerk at City of Merced.org.

Any correspondence received after one PM will be distributed to the commission and retained for the official record.

Agenda item D, public comment.

And we do have one public comment speaking.

Good afternoon, Chair and Arts Commission.

I'm Farrell Buller, 883 West 124th Drive, Westminster, Colorado, 80234.

And I just wanted to address you this afternoon and let you know that I work with a company called 110%, and we are leading a parks, recreation, and open spaces master plan for the city of Merced on behalf of the parks and community services department.

We've just kicked off this project the last couple of months, gathering a lot of data about the parks and the programs and the services.

And now myself and our team of designers are here for the next two and a half days.

We'll be attending six different events across MERSED, starting with softball this evening.

We'll be at Senior Bingo.

On Friday, we'll be at the movie in the park.

We'll be at the Lao New Year Day event.

We'll be at the bike ride with the mayor.

We visited the boys and girls club.

We toured a lot of the parks in the zoo today.

So the idea is to really for us to really understand the city of Merced, its unique features, who lives here.

And then really hear from the community.

So we currently have a short survey out to the community.

It will be open at least for 30 days.

So we want to start hearing from people.

It's how you design a plan.

We have the privilege of creating the future here for Merced residents, and we know that that is a privilege and an honor, and we want to do our best to get that right.

And so through that survey, through all of the community events, and then we have a group of 12 individuals who have connections to the community, and we've trained them as wisdom holders to go out and host focus groups as well so that we can just hear from more people.

And we're leading some other focus groups ourselves.

So lots of community engagement is how we're starting.

We have a lot of learning to do.