The Milwaukee Parks and Recreation (PAR) Council convened on November 18, 2025, to review third-quarter staff accomplishments, discuss the Community Choice park project pipeline with Metro, address the Green Space Management Plan strategy, and initiate a dialogue on land banking for affordable housing and park development. Council President Anderson presided, with Counselor Steven Jordan absent.
All right, we are on the air, and then it's our November 18th session. Uh it might look like no quorum because there's only two council members in the room, but actually, counselor um our council president Anderson is on the with us. So we do have three counselor Steven Jordan will not be joining us today, and Counselor Costramani will come in, I'm sure in a couple of minutes. So with that, we'll turn it over to Peter Pastorelli and have more. And mayor, I might just comment before we start. Um, just two kind of procedural notes. I'm gonna have to disappear at 4 45. Joseph will be acting city manager during that. I just have to run a kid home. Um, and I'll be back to the regular session, and then we do have a hard stop tonight at 5 30 to get an executive session in. So um I just let's try to go try to be brief. Both this one and the agenda item to follow. Okay. I am just gonna turn. Okay. Um see you all in. Uh, I'm gonna jump right into the third quarter staff accomplishments. Um, looking back at the law in September, um, and some things that we've accomplished along the ways. We've been working with a almost completely new parts and record. Um, we have four new members who joined us this summer, but three eight of the existing members had a made in there a short time as well. We've been working really hard with getting a parts and record board caught up. Um so we have new bylaws adopted. The first adopted bylaws that we're aware of since 2014. Um, I know we don't do any likes for beyond bylaws, but some things we might need to make a few little tweaks. Um, and those tweaks would come in the form of adding on uh alternatives to the DAC. Um these will probably just be a couple short sentences into that, and then also um we do have one existing permanent committee, uh, which is the D City Committee, and they are in the PAR bylaws, and it seems like if we are going to go down the route, a little bit of foreshadowing, but we do go down the route where we are going to have a permanent naming committee with a PAR representative on there. We might want to for consistency's sake just acknowledge those of the park bylaws as well. Um can I tell you just about the DAC alternates? Um so the DAC didn't get updated allowed for alternates, but I asked at the meeting last week uh what the plan was were the or how they were selecting them and what timeline, and I think uh security don't really have a good answer for that. I think they are they usually do their recruitment for new members in the summer. Okay, so I think they're gonna probably be doing that, doing alternates as part of that. Okay. So I don't think what I'm saying is I don't think we're in a ration. Okay. Yeah, our position descriptions in the bylaws already state that uh vice chair can set in with the one for the chair when they're not available. We just might want to add in simplify to clarify that that could include the news uh unless council disposed. Um we have been working very diligently on naming policy in a separate donation policy. Um there's currently a survey on engagement walking. When I check this video, the recording responses to that survey. So good job getting the word out on that, and we will next see that naming policy and a separate memorial donation policy in January 6th. Um my partner in policy, Gabriella and I will be meeting with the subcommittee in early December to go over the results of the surveys and we may be bringing some uh some tweak policies to you all in January, but we're gonna see what the community feedback is on that. Um does have uh existing goals. Uh the existing goals have kind of been repeated multiple times. Um all the boards and committees as I think you're all aware, do need to do a study session with you all uh as an annual report and report back on the goals. I think where we're at with PAR right now is there's a feeling amongst the board that the existing goals are probably too many and too robust and lack some specificity. They might also be missing some of the work that we are doing that maybe they feel like they need to advocate for. And so all that is to say that part feels like they do need to make some tweaks to their goals. And in looking at the next three or four months of work, there was some concern that was brought up last month about being able to come to that March study session with revised goals and a list of accomplishments. So part was wondering if it was perhaps maybe possible to get a little bit more time to work on those goals, recognizing that Earth Day is coming up, and our February meeting has been dedicated to a public design charred with Metro. So we we've lost a meeting in there as well.