Good evening, everybody.

My name is Bernie Narvaez.

Welcome to the Cinepa nomination committee for February 9, 2026.

Clerk, can we have roll call, please?

Council members painter here.

And Narvaez.

Here.

Great.

We have the agenda and the supplemental reports.

No, there are no changes, and we have received no supplemental reports.

Great.

Public comment.

This is a period of anybody here for any public comment.

Doesn't look like it.

Nope.

Okay.

Approval of the minutes from September 30, 2025.

I'll take a motion.

No second that.

All in favor say aye.

I okay.

That motion passes.

Great.

Next, we'll do the interviews and recommend appointments.

We're gonna start with our uh high school representative.

So it looks like we have is it the Trajan?

Trajan, thank you.

So Trajan, uh, if you want to come up here, are we asking them to come to middle?

Perfect.

And how are we how much time?

Three minutes.

Yeah, do I um I can time?

Do you want me to time?

Would that be helpful or we could do three minutes and if we need a little bit more time, we can be flexible.

So please come up to the podium and have three minutes to tell us about yourself.

Uh hello, I'm Trajan Bynum.

I get a new technology high school, and I'm interested in this position because I've I really like going to the parks here in Napa.

I've been going to them for a long time, and I've always wanted to like be able to have a voice kind of in our community and hopefully be able to do good for our uh city and help serve.

I don't think there's much else.

Uh so yeah.

Thank you very much.

Uh council member painter, do you have any questions for him?

Um well, first of all, I really appreciate your being here and taking an interest um and spending time in our parks.

Um I could do questions, but honestly, our other candidate is not here, and I would be thrilled and honored to appoint uh Trajan as our student member.

Um I mean, unless you really want us to grill you with questions, and we'd be happy to do that.

But um, but it's it's really a great commission.

There's a lot happening right now with our parks.

It's a great time, and it's a really important voice to have a student member on our parks commission.

So I um I mean we do have a ballot and we should formally vote, um, but I have no questions.

Um, I mean, what else is I'm comfortable with the same recommendation.

I served on Parks and Rec many years ago, and I remember having the student rep there.

I would say that you know you you have a voice on there, you don't have a vote, but we have a voice that's really important, and it's great experience for you to to pick up along the way.

Uh so thank you for your interest in and serving and um look forward to the work you're gonna do with our other commissioners.

So at this point, we'll go ahead and do an official vote.

Perfect.

And then I I have to compliment Trajan.

He uh he was here for a kids' council and definitely stood out as being somebody who was um involved and um excited and a leader.

So congratulations.

I'm glad you came back for that.

Yeah, congratulations and thanks again.

This is um it like I said, it's really important to have a student voice, particularly on this commission.

So um, and if you're um, so I'm sure you're gonna enjoy it.

It is a two-year appointment, correct?

We um we put that it would be through um June, so that way that it wouldn't break up in the middle of a school year.

Okay, sometimes it's a difficult position to fill, and we for example, we're in the middle of the school year now and we've got some interest, so it's it's been great.

But yeah, so it is two years just over in this instant instance.

Um, and then you can always reapply for because you're a freshman this year, right?

You there's more you can always reapply, or you know, if something happens and you you need to um resign, but we hope that is not the case.

Easy.

And then I as I mentioned before, and the same will apply to our um adult um commission um applicants.

Um the the recommendations, oh I forgot.

My time's up.

Um, the um the recommendations that come from council members Narvaez and Painter as a nomination committee will go um to council for formal appointment at their next meeting.

We have an ad uh a meeting next week, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to submit whatever the outcome is of this afternoon for for formalization at the next meeting.

So more to come on that, but that will be the process.

And then of course, um I'll just say this now since we're talking about that.

If if um if there is gonna be one person who is not recommended for appointment, but there are uh going to be more um term expirations coming up right in September.

So we keep applications on file.

We'll reach out to you and say, hey, are you still interested in applying and you might do this all over again?

And so Tiffany, just for clarification, it's gonna be a consent calendar.

So there's no need to do there's not gonna be another interview.

Correct.

There's not another round of interviews.

It's it's basically part of um routine business that um council formalizes the appointment, and then we I my office reaches out and we will give um an oath of office, a little bit of brown act training, and then we release you to the parks and recreation team.

So you're congrats.

You're all you're all done for the unique.

Right.

So next uh we're gonna nominate two individuals to serve a two-year term on the parks and rec and trees advisory commission for a term beginning on the day of city council appointment ending September 30th, 2027, and designate two individuals to serve in the capacity as a member with demonstrate experience in one of the following identified fields: urban planning, park planning, park operations, park maintenance, recreation, programming, horriculture and arbore culture.

Okay, so we're gonna are we gonna go from top to bottom.

Is that that we established?

Okay.

Um Darren, if you want to come up and we'll give you three minutes to tell us about yourself.

And um, we may have some questions to follow up.

Can you pronounce your last name for me, please?

Graphis.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's a tough one.

Yeah, all right.

Um thank you all so much for having me.

My name's Darren Graffius.

Um just wanted to point out um how inspiring it was to see some of the other candidates' resumes as well.

Um I you know feel this is a super important position for the city.

It's a really critical time right now, I think, with so much uh development happening happening and kind of new projects.

Um whoever gets chosen, I think will be in great editions.

Um so yeah, I'm I'm from Wana Creek, so I've I've grown up in the Bay Area here and I'm a landscape architect.

I've lived in Napa for about three and a half years now.

Um and Napa's immediately felt like home to me already.

It um I'm you know very in tune with kind of that rolling uh the Oak Savannah kind of rolling hills uh typology.

I love the mix of people here in Napa.

Um feels like a real small town to me, which I think is really um incredible, and it has that really rich um agricultural history too.

So I think all of those things are just really worth preserving and enhancing, um, and something that I'm really excited about.

Um I studied environmental studies in undergrad and took a lot of urban planning classes, and that's where I really started to get interested in public space and thinking about how that affects life on a daily basis, and kind of over the course of several years discovered landscape architecture and um today um yeah, just that's kind of it's been the perfect blend of um kind of science and culture and um and art for me.

So I really uh really value that.

Um I think public space and cities have a real um opportunity to of course bring people together.

Um public space also creates that identity for a city, which I think is really valuable.

Um, and also something that I'm really interested in is um kind of tackling and thinking through the environmental challenges that we all face and kind of bringing together and galvanizing people through those efforts and kind of inspiring them to come together and and overcome those those challenges.

Um so those are kind of three things that I wanted to quickly just touch on about myself and I think what I would my attitudes towards those things and how what I would bring to this.

Um I think Napa does a really great job at bringing people together.

I've been a part of few of the surveys that um have been sent out.

Um and I just, you know, my wife and I have really enjoyed some of the local events here and you know, some of the concerts in the park and things like that.

So it's been really fun and um love the town for that.

Um I'm I'm really passionate about uh street trees and what they bring.

Um I obviously, from kind of a functional standpoint, they're hugely important, but I also think they add a lot of character and identity to a city, and it's something that really needs to be studied and considered.

Um running out of time here.

Um there's just so much um life and important aspects of those trees that they bring to um kind of the urban environment.

And uh lastly, is kind of the environmental issues.

Um, you know, we're all going through the climate crisis right now, but also we're kind of in a point where birds and insects are declining, and I just think that those choices are directly affected by what we plant and how we manage our landscape.

So I'd like to be kind of a part of that.

So I ran over time.

Thank you very much.

Um Darren for telling us more about you.

Uh we'll see.

Do you have any any questions for Darren?

Um Yeah, I wrote down a few questions, but actually your opening remarks kind of covered a lot of what I was going to ask about, so I'll pivot a little bit um and ask you what your understanding is about um the role of the commission.

Um I and I asked that question because I just want to make sure those interested in commissions um understand sort of what the expectations are and and how you work um both with staff and council.

So what is your uh understanding of that?

Uh yeah, my understanding is that projects um that come through the commission were you know that the role is to essentially review those projects and make recommendations to the parks department.

Here the um members of uh the city come and bring issues and then um we're essentially giving recommendations that go on um to council.

Um so kind of reviewing a lot of the big infrastructure projects.

Like I know Harvest Middle School is going on right now, or it's good coming down the pipeline.

Really excited about um the new Napa River project and some of the work that's been done there.

Um, and so yeah, it's kind of absorbing all of the information and uh yeah, giving recommendations to the folks in the city.

Darren, um you mentioned Harvest Middle Schools, you know, seeing that but purchase that that um that property and we have a next phase of community input and figuring out what we want to do with it.

How do you envision that process working out and having input from the community?

That's a good question.

Yeah, I mean um in landscape we deal with this quite a bit.

There's obviously I know that there's been surveys that have gone out um to the community, so I think that's a really effective way, and I think that um the accuracy I heard in uh recent recording was um really strong and seeing like people really wanted sports fields and and um pools and things like that.

Um there's also obviously community workshops.

I was always really interested in the river here when I first moved here.

I think it's incredible resource that Napa has here.

Um, but I could never really figure out how to get involved, and so I think anything that we can do to be kind of reaching out and and including more people in the process, um, whether that's community meetings, gatherings, kind of walking through, you know, doing field trips with with people of the city.

Um I think there's a number of different ways to reach out to the folks.

Thank you very much.

Um I think we can go ahead and take a seat.

We'll interview the rest and then we'll vote towards the end.

Thank you, Darren.

And next we have Drew and I believe Drew, you are still connected up there and you can hear us.

We make sure we can hear you.

You can hear me all right.

Okay, we can hear you.

Um so we're gonna give you three minutes.

You want to speak out maybe a little louder so we can hear um all about you.

Absolutely.

I'll come later on.

Maybe that'll help.

That's well, thank you very much.

And again, like Darren said, it's wonderful to see people interested in being involved with the community.

And a bit of background about myself and that I'm a geographer by degree and environmental scientist by profession.

But over the years I've volunteered um in community recreation and with New York City Parks and Recreation Department, uh Little League and Teenac, New Jersey, the New York New Jersey Trails Conference, a lot of outdoor work done also with the Boy Scouts.

So I've been an active community member really throughout my adult life, and having moved here to Napa for uh about three and a half years ago, kind of similar to what Darren said, I feel that it's wonderful to be part of a community, and being involved with the uh parks and recreation and tree commission, I think give me a unique opportunity to learn more about the community.

And I've served as a public official and work with government agencies around the country professionally, and I enjoy it.

It's a nice challenge, and there's so many wonderful things going on in Napa right now.

It's a very exciting time, both with Measure G and the Um work that's being done over at the um well, Harvest Middle School, but also uh Fuller Park and the playground.

So I want to learn more about my community, do what I can to help, and um also just maybe become more uh feel like I'm at home.

So I thank you very much for the consideration.

I put in a variety of the documents about my professional background and personal interest.

But if there's any questions you have, I'd be glad to talk with you.

Thank you, Drew.

Appreciate you telling us about about yourself and appreciate your interest in the playing.

Uh would you like to ask a question?

Um, yeah, likewise.

Thank you for um coming to us by Teams and being able to learn a little bit more about um your background and what you would bring.

Um, and as a newer resident, but with this uh, you know, a lot of experience from other places.

Um how do you see how that adds value to this community?

Um, and then in addition, you know, you've already talked a little bit about what you're learning about that's happening in this community.

Um, how what other things would you do to sort of come up to speed with what's um uh what plans we have in place um and what our goals are.

Well, thanks.

I've been doing some research.

Just naturally, I'm always interested in the park infrastructure program.

I got a number of different documents here, the capital investment policy and um I love organizing programs.

I enjoy making things happen.

I've organized volunteers over the years and raised a couple million dollars for nonprofits um to celebrate community, so that um I just gotta say, I think it's a it's a wonderful time in NAPA and um, yeah, those are those are skills I'd like to bring to bear as a member of the commission.

I don't know if I answered your question directly or that was kind of an open-ended question, but you gave me more insight into into your interest.

So thank you.

And I'm not sure if you saw the you know, we're working on updating Fuller Park, but in the last meeting, there was a little bit of concern on how we're implementing that design and following the the master plan, the park master plan.

But there's some concerns and design concerns, something that we we approve with a kind of an a design that's for all abilities and a little different than what we've done before.

Can you give me your feedback on what you thought about that process and what you see with other parks?

Uh if we're on the right track with that or not.

Yeah, I went over to Fuller Park and I I volunteered to do a little painting job at the Head Start program there, and I saw the area fenced in, and I've learned that it takes time to really understand a project.

For example, I did chat with um some folks about what's going on over at Harvest Middle School and the RFP process and the community engagement process.

Um, when I worked with the environmental protection agency, I was a public involvement officer, and then I actually wrote RFPs and analyzed RFPs.

Um, and choosing the right contractor is a very deliberative process, in that you s you get the competitive bids from qualified companies, but you always want to choose the person that's the most responsive and responsible bidder.

So that I'm really not informed about what's going on with Fuller Park specifically but I did hear that five trucks came from well there were shipping from Germany five trucks came across country landed at one o'clock at the at the yard and it's gonna be launched uh sometime maybe April and completed in the fall.

So it's a process so I'm not really confident I'm there's I'm just not informed about exactly where they are in that um construction process.

Thank you very much.

Anything else?

Uh no I think I'm the right okay well Drew or probably not drop your mic for a little bit while we interview the rest and then we'll go ahead and vote.

Thank you very much.

Uh at this time we'll ask Simone to come up and um you have three minutes to do the same thing as the others did and tell us about yourself.

Thank you.

Great thank you so much council members for having me here this evening I am Simone Katz O'Neill and I'm a resident of Napa for the last 11 years um and am a heavy park user so offer I think a slightly different perspective than the other candidates I have two children and a dog and have spent many hours both at uh Century Oak Park, um Fuller Park, which I know is closed right now, Buman Park, Alston Park, the list goes on and on and on.

And um I I think I bring a fresh perspective to the commission um as I understand it they're currently only um men on the commission and I believe I'm the only woman applicant which is obviously not a requirement of the commission but something that's a a different perspective.

And I've spent a lot of time at our parks and know them very well.

The other thing I think that I bring is um being a long term resident of Napa I am heavily ingrained in the community um I was the co-chair as you both know for Measure B which is for which was our school bond that we passed in 2024 and so delighted to see all the work that's been going on in the schools and um really excited about what we've been seeing in the parks like Century Oak last year reopening with the renovation and a few other parks as well.

I previously served on the library commission for the county of Napa and I see this role in a similar vein which is uh the library is really an amazing resource of our community just as I believe we have almost 40 parks in the city of Napa the parks are an amazing resource in our community excuse me and um when I was on the library commission I really enjoyed being there as a uh guiding light for what the director of the library is doing and I see that in a similar role on the parks and rent commission.

Um and let me see if there's anything else I wanted to add yes um as I understand it we also do appeals of trees although my research suggests that we don't actually have many appeals of trees that actually come through the commission um but I do have a legal background and I think that can help if for some reason we suddenly started seeing an influx of appeals on trees it's certainly something that my background just helps to give I think a um a good understanding of the process um I've also worked on things like RFPs and um many times in my legal background and so if those things do come up before the commission I think I offer a fresh perspective on that as well and I'll send back my time to both of you.

Very much Simone any questions.

Yes thank you thank you for that information and uh similar to Drew I was actually kind of going to drill in a little bit to the um what you bring differently to the commission but you've articulated that really well um I tend to really feel that a commission like this one particularly um should have um a really diverse set of interests because parks are here for everyone in the community um and um so I appreciate your comments on that.

But what do you see as the highest priorities over the next two years?

Which this would be a two-year term um and have you had a chance to look at any of the sort of the past accomplishments of the commission that you might say, hey, I really thought that was a good move or not a good move.

So as far as I understand it, the commission is really here to advise and guide the city.

So we obviously can't make any decisions ourselves, but we can, of course, offer suggestions and thoughts to what the city is doing.

And one of the things I did want to mention that I think I would offer over those two years is I'm also involved in the Napa Moms, which is a very active group in the city of Napa.

And what I did, for example, when we were running the Measure B campaign is I reached out to that community.

And I know there's been, for example, a lot of talk about splash pads, which is something that I know is a very hot issue for the NAPA moms group.

So what I would do if I was on the commission, of course, if we had an issue that was coming before us is I would reach out to that community and basically get feedback from them.

As far as the accomplishments of the last couple of years, I've been so impressed with the work that's been done at the parks to really improve the playgrounds, and that's partly why I wanted to get involved in this was to continue those efforts.

I know we have sort of future ideas for a lot of the parks, and we still have some parks that are not quite where we want them to be.

And so my uh one of the reasons why I wanted to get involved was to help sort of continue to guide that the improvements for the playgrounds.

We really need enhancements on restrooms at a number of the parks as well.

And I know, for example, Century Oak, that work will be done.

Um, so I think I'd offer that perspective, and also of course reach out to the community to try to get insights as well to help the commission.

All right, I mean I had some questions and you addressed them through those answers.

So we have to type on my head, I'm going to question that we have over 50 parks.

So how do you see the city engagement with people to maximize the use of parks?

And are we utilizing them in the way they should be?

Um so I think if we were going to because we really do have a lot of parks, and it's one of the things that I love about NAPA, and whenever anybody asks about moving to Napa, it's actually one of the things that I feature.

Obviously, that's partly why I got involved with Measure B was because I felt like our schools really needed that sort of little extra boost that the city is already taking with parks.

As far as how I would solicit sort of guidance or thoughts on it, it would be through surveys.

Um, it'd be through reaching out to community organizations like Napa Moms.

Um, it'd also be working with the Parks and Rec Foundation as well to see if there are things, for example, that they're hearing from the community.

Um, so I don't see my role as sort of, you know, being here as a statue.

What I see is reaching out to everyone around me, and then that would be sort of the voice that I would offer to the commission would be okay.

I've talked to this group, I've talked to that group, and here are the thoughts that we're hearing.

But I think surveys, I know we do a lot of city surveys already, um, but I think surveys are a great great way to figure out of those 50 parks where should we be where should we be putting our priorities over the next two years?

Thank you.

Anything else?

Okay, well, we can have a seat.

We're gonna go ahead and vote, and then we'll announce the top two.

Thank you, all of you for your time.

I just want to thank everybody.

I know we have a small but mighty group here, so three really great candidates.

Whatever the outcome is today.

Um, as Tiffany said, I'd really encourage you to um stay tuned because September is not far uh off into the distant future, and this commission always really needs good people.

So thank you.

And we do have a current commissioner that's not designated expert that could be assigned as an expert.

Okay, so I do have to, as part of the record, announce the individual votes and then the total votes.

I will announce the total for uh the total votes first.

So Darren and Simone both received a total of five, uh, a score of five, and um Drew received a score of two.

And just for the record too, I don't know if we said this out loud.

We use a weighted, um, a weighted vote scale.

So members voted um one, two, or three, with three being the highest qualified, so that we could come up with some sort of point system in order to hopefully, you know, potentially avoid a tie.

So that's where the the scores came from.

So they all voted um uh weighted scale of one through three.

So again, Darren and Simone will be moving um forward with um the as the recommended nominees.

Uh, council member Narvaez voted, uh, gave uh Darren two, Drew one, Simone three, council member painter, Darren three, Drew one, Simone two.

So um we will keep Drew in mind again.

I'll be reaching out in uh September when we do this again, probably really July or June.

Um, and then just the other official businesses.

If we I'm assuming then uh we would want to designate in our recommendation um Darren to fulfill the uh person with demonstrated experience, and then we'll reassign current commissioner Jeffrey Richard as the second, just in order the the code does state that three of the three, that three of the members need to serve in the capacity of a person with demonstrated experience in an identified field.

That sounds right, okay.

That sounds right to me, and also uh Brian Bordona, who's currently on the commission is the third member, correct?

Um and that actually gives us three kind of distinct skill sets, I think for that.

Um I just wanted to mention just because it came up, um, I serve as an advisory member on the Riverline Board, so which you'll be kind of stay tuned on that.

It's a very exciting parks type of project.

Um, and if anybody's interested, don't hesitate to reach out.

Um I also served for 16 years on the board of the resource conservation district.

So if you're interested in the work that they do, I would absolutely encourage you to reach out um to them.

And and I noticed um I think Drew, you're already a member of the Parks Foundation, but we have some other organizations that really help us with all the work we do on parks.

So I would encourage you to look into those as well.

There's there's a lot of opportunity to get involved.

Um, also say this is academy.

If you haven't done that, please look into that because that's a great um program to get to know what the city does and how we do things and how it affects our services.

So in addition to what council member painter said, there's plenty of other opportunities.

But again, thank you, which we could choose all of you, but we have to make a choice.

Um, you know, we appreciate your efforts and your interest in helping us and be our eyes and ears on the community.

Thank you.

If I might, I'd like to thank you for your consideration.

And Darren and Simone, I would have voted for you too.

I think you did a great job in your presentations.

Congratulations, great points, and it's wonderful to be in a community to have being a community that has such people dedicated to making it better now, but thank you for your consideration.

Thank you so much for those great comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

I will be good night, Drew.

I'll be following up to um book your oaths of office in a quick brown act training.

So, great.