For the regular year.

Try again.

Um like to call to order the city of Norman Board of Park Commissioners meeting for Thursday, May 7th, uh 2026.

Roll call.

Billy Davison.

Here.

Todd Fagan.

Christy Isaacson.

Here.

Mark Nanny.

Here.

Cheryl Sheriff here.

Tori Ted or Laughlin.

Here.

Alan Usry here.

Christy Wright?

Here.

Christina Wykoff.

Here.

All right.

First item is the consideration of approval, acceptance, rejection, amendment, and or postponement of the minutes as follows.

The Board of Park Commissioners regular meeting minutes of March 5th, 2026.

I mean two approved.

Thank you, Christina.

And do I have a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Christy.

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay.

Any opposed?

No.

Uh that motion passes.

Um item three.

Do we want to do four before three?

Oh, item two.

Okay, two consideration of acceptance, rejection, amendment, and or postponement of previously approved city council items.

Okay, this one really rather short lists uh that happened this month.

So on April 14th, that we had a contract with uh Norman Regional Hospital Authority to basically take over the turf field at the uh back of the WIFAC when that was built, that was born built with uh Norman regional um funds.

It was on our property.

This is kind of cleans up uh who's responsible for it if it if there's some kind of uh incident that happens on it and uh liability for any injuries or anything that are associated with that.

Uh now we set the hours and are able to take rental funds from it, so uh overall ends up good for us.

Uh then on the 28th, uh we have donations from the Cavens Group and How Smith Restaurants uh for the employees record uh recognition program that was held at the WIFAC.

Uh then we had a a transfer for 130,000 from the WIFAC balance to uh the concession stand expenses and bidden year.

We took over uh the concession stand at the WIFAC, so we needed an appropriation uh to finish out this year.

Um that means we're actually making money, which is good because we needed more money to spend.

Uh that's one of those items that uh the uh if we're spending money, we're making money.

And then we also had an appropriation from the normal forward balance of about $3,600 for a land appraisal that goes along with the Canadian River Park and Trails project.

It is a Norman Ford project.

So love to take any questions about any of those.

Okay, all right.

Um item three discussion regarding proposed updates to the parks and recreations department's policy and rule manual and consideration of approval, rejection, amendment, and or postponement of such updated policy and rules manual.

So I've uh we can take some questions on this, but uh for the most part we have handed to you, and we can also email out to you if you all want to make uh uh notes on a word document.

But the the uh we have been working on this for about a year now, but this is a an update to our norm parks and recreation uh rules and policies uh uh th manual, which hasn't been updated since 2021.

Uh we've added a whole lot of facilities since then, uh just also modernizing uh a lot of the rules and and things uh that uh wasn't even taken into consideration in 2021, also uh clarifying some other issues with uh special use parks and so on and so on.

If you look through this, it has uh explanations from everything from uh park hours to uh the uh much needed definitions that go along with some of the rules uh to uh special exemptions that go along with uh special use parks and so on and so on.

I think the the biggest thing that that we need to update and uh get on to the schedule is our general park rules.

If you uh if you look underneath 2.2, it goes A through all the way.

Uh man, uh O might go longer than that.

These are the everything that is in caps will be on a park sign at every single uh park.

Uh correct it is it goes all the way through T, but that that'll be on um the the caps portion will be on uh every sign or a signage at every park to make sure that those are basically the rules that go along with the park that the the police are much needed to enforce any of uh these rules.

Uh what we want from you is not necessarily unless y'all have questions tonight on how the process is gonna work.

Uh we want you to have a little bit of homework.

You know, we have a schedule that goes along with this, so take this, review this, make notes, uh be ready to come back for our next park uh part board meeting, and we'll go into discussions details about the rules and also any um amendments that you might have, and then we'll get all that uh adjusted.

And then we would like to also call a special meeting in the middle of June.

I think that would be the third Tuesday of June to get these adopted so that we could have these in place for uh by July 1st.

And love to take any questions about the process, but I'm uh also like to apologize for giving everybody some homework.

But one quick question you want us to come with questions, or would you like us to email them ahead of time?

If if you have anything that's in depth uh that that you need explanations, don't forget to be afraid to reach out at the time.

But uh, if you see adjusting adjustments or rules that uh haven't been covered, um just go ahead and make note of that, and then we'll we'll take that at the time.

And uh also too the uh we were we've basically been been done with this for about two weeks, and the this past two weeks have kind of been super busy for us unexpectedly.

Um so uh we might also take one last run at this, and um, if we do any adjustments, uh we'll send that out to you guys so that y'all can see those uh uh as they are getting adjusted by staff.

Yeah, June 16th was suggested as that mid-June date.

Um I won't be able to make that.

Okay.

Oh my goodness, Alan.

Um that is a a suggested date, uh just by staff, and we're open for any time uh that y'all want to do it.

We can make a special meeting at any time.

Uh staff's preferences actually probably doing during the work day, but I know y'all have jobs, uh, but it should be a quick that would just be an adoption of the rule, so that uh we don't necessarily unless there's gonna be changes to it uh at that time.

We wouldn't necessarily need everyone here, we just need enough to adopt the rules as presented.

Um coming about on the 16th, it would just be uh to adopt motion to adopt.

We won't have any discussion on that.

There could be of course we'll the discussion will be uh yeah, that yes, that would be the big discussion.

Um we we might um bring order some pizza and some ice cream and stuff, it could be a long one.

Long as there's not a thunder game that on that night, we should be good.

Any other questions?

Item four consideration of approval acceptance rejection amendment and or postponement of the annual report from Norman Ombus Optimus Club.

All right, excuse me.

Uh thank you.

We appreciate the opportunity to share with you who we are and what we do.

Uh my name's Stephen Massey.

I'm the executive director of the Norman Optimus Club.

Uh this is Manny Young, he's the co-executive director.

And uh within the parks, we operate uh three recreation youth baseball and softball leagues uh each year.

There is a spring league, a summer league, and a fall league.

Uh so we're basically playing ball all year round.

Uh we coordinate field uses also with groundskeeping and uh adult softball league, which is legends softball the last couple years, and then of course OU Spring and uh uh intermedials and camps and uh softball games and things like that.

Uh we are an affiliate of the Optimist International with a mission of by providing hope and positive vision uh through the members of this club.

This club will bring out the best in children, families, and in the members of our community.

So uh that is our uh daily uh how we go about our things.

Uh our league and tournament structure.

Uh I'll let Manny tell you a little bit about that.

Hello everyone, thanks for having us.

Um Norman Optimus Club.

Um Norman Optimus Club is affiliated with Optimus International by providing hope and positive vision through the members of this club.

Oh, I'm sorry, he already read that.

All league and tournament structure.

So NLC utilizes early registration and late fee registration prices.

Uh, we offer team discounts.

We also offer $20 team discount codes for each player.

Um, and basically that's for multi-sport uh kids and for coaches who register early and request a code.

Um we offer scholarships that are provided by request.

These vary from 50 to 90 percent or 100% uh reduced rates.

Applicants need to show proof of SNAP, reduced lunch, or suited care benefits.

Um our registration prices vary uh for four you wee ball.

It's eighty to ninety-five dollars per player, depending on the time of year that or the the time of registration that they register, and that that kind of consist with all of our our age groups.

Um five you prep baseball is 100 to 115 per player, and six you through 14 is 100 to 115 per player.

Um baseball tournaments, most NL NLC baseball tournaments run two pull play games into single elimination, one-day tournaments, excuse me, begin with straight double elimination brackets.

Um our fees vary uh for two to three-day tournament um or a tournament for one day.

So for two to three day the gate is ten dollars.

Senior citizens get eight dollar uh entry fee, five U to six use fifty dollars for tournament fee, seven to eight, seventy-five, nine to ten is a hundred and fifty.

Um 11 to 12 is 175 dollars, and 13 to 14U prep is 200.

So that's for two to three-day tournament.

Um tournament fee for one day, same gate is 10 mil uh senior citizen military is eight dollars, uh, five U to six U is 75, 70 to 8 use 100, 9U to 10 use 175, 11U to 12, 200, 13 to 14 use 250.

Um I keep saying um, and I didn't want to do that, but um number of games, team players, tournaments, scholarships, and age of participants, same from fit from from 5U to 14U.

Um, so we offer so for through the summer uh 2025.

Um 15 U, I'm sorry, five U had 19 games, 16, 6U had 28 games, 7U had 23 games, 8U has 19 games, 9U has 40, 10 U has 35, 11U has 13, 13 to 14U, it's 41 games totaling at 218 games.

It's a lot of games.

Um, that's a that is the number of registrations.

Oh, I'm sorry, number registration, yeah.

I apologize.

Yeah, my bad.

Registration.

And then uh for the fall of 2025, number of registration.

Um 4U is 37, 5U 35, 6U 60, 7U 60, 8U67, 9U's 96, 10 U is 84, 11U is 69, 12U is 37, 13 and 14 72.

And that's for baseball for softball, 6U 58, 8U 116, 100 71, 12 58, totaling at 350 registration.

Just we had all this printed information.

If you just want to give us the highlights of your help program, that would be I mean that would save you from having to re read it.

Oh no, no problem.

No problem.

Uh you got it.

Yeah.

Uh so basically we're in league games three days a week.

We have one day for makeup.

Uh, we do some tournaments on the weekends.

We're not playing tournaments every weekend.

Uh we utilize that for to you usually to you know recoup some of that field, get some of that uh uh the life back in the grass and all that.

Uh spring 62 teams last year.

I'm sorry, this year.

Uh softball, we had 37.

So we've got a pretty healthy league in both of them.

You can see there's a uh varied list of tournaments.

They pretty much match up, baseball and softball.

So we're utilizing both sides of the field or of the park at the same time.

Uh and then uh let's see here.

Uh we are fully transparent with all of our income and expenses uh being a nonprofit organization.

We have a lot of groundskeeping expenses, uh, as you can imagine, doing everything that we do.

Uh we have to maintain and upgrade our field equipment such as bases, base plugs, pitching mounds were a big expense last year.

Uh league supplies and operational needs.

You can imagine the electronics to run that park, everybody uh from taking payments to organizing schedules and people clocking in and out.

Uh the cleaning supplies just to keep the bathroom up is is extensive.

Uh and then thanks for the gate workers.

Yeah.

It's it's it's always you can.

I mean, you you guys are fully aware.

Uh and then of course the website accounting, uh, payroll fees, all that as well.

Uh so we have uh three to four week weekday leads, ground keepers, and then various uh other ones that can come in and kind of do the grunt work and get everything done uh so that we're ready to play ball.

We also have uh baseball and softball director, uh head umpire uh in both baseball and softball uh gate workers, and then of course Manny and myself out there helping as well.

Uh we've got our uh PL basically laid laid out in front of you.

Uh basically all the money that we make, it sits until we need it and we make the upgrades or replace the equipment we need to.

We've got a lot of big ticket expenses coming up.

We had a uh a UTV we had to purchase.

We're gonna have to purchase something else soon to help pull uh some of the uh the drag and equipment we have like that.

So uh we're able to do that uh with the results of what we're doing right now.

Uh we've also shared our budget for next year, uh pretty similar to last year, uh, with some minor adjustments for the things that we purchased and things that we know we're gonna have to purchase next year.

Uh we've also provided an extensive list of uh our board of directors and staff, uh including our board, uh all the members, and then our uh office staff, including the directors, uh office directors, and then the director of each league.

Uh as far as our taxes go, we work with Pisic and Hollingsport uh here in Norman, and our fiscal year is August to August.

So uh we'll be submitting our 2025 taxes in the next few months, you know, August rolls around.

Uh we have successfully filed our previous fiscal year return and got that done.

Uh I believe that was done between uh just January and now, so we're all caught up there.

Uh that is everything we had to share.

I'm sure appreciate your time.

Thank you.

I had one question back to the um to the number of registrants.

Registrants, I can't even say that.

Um it looks like there was a drop in spring of 26 compared to spring of 25, but then there wasn't a summer in last year's report.

So I'm wondering if that was grouped together or has there been a significant change or the summer league did not make.

Ah, last year.

We did not have uh we chose not to do a summer league just to gear up for uh ball ball.

Uh now, as far as the spring discrepancy, we did have a change in staffing, and that caused uh a few teams to migrate to a booth leagues.

So we're kind of in the rebuilding those age groups, it's the older tiers, the that older group.

Uh so we're trying to attract that attention back to our ballpark where we can run those age groups again.

Cool.

Thanks for the explanation.

No problem.

Yes.

It was a glaring one, yeah.

Yeah.

Is that it?

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

And it's always crazy right there.

It is a lot of work.

We love what we do, so it makes it worth it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Anything else?

Christy, do you not have anything?

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Oh, okay.

Just wanted to check.

All right.

All right.

Item five.

Mitch is not here.

Oh, yes, we do.

Um need a motion to approve, accept, or reject the annual report from Nomar and Optus to be forwarded to City Council.

Thank you, Billy.

Thank you.

Christy, is any all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed.

Okay.

Thank you.

Now, reports.

Item five, Capra.

Uh Richard's not here quite yet.

Okay.

Uh item six, Norman forward update.

All right.

Norman forward update.

Might have to get a little bit of assist from uh from James to make sure that we're uh we have a full update on playgrounds.

We'd have do have uh three playground sets at uh Northeast Lions, uh Sutton Wilderness, not Wilderness Sutton place and Eagle Cliff.

Yeah, thank you.

And they're all almost uh a little bit over halfway done.

I think that we will have a dedication for each of one of those playgrounds probably in the upcoming month, uh sometime six weeks somewhere.

And we've probably four weeks.

And as you know, the uh we have never seen a celebration we didn't like, so we'll make sure that we do celebrations for all those neighborhoods.

It's one of the very rare times uh that we get to uh go connect with some of our neighborhood parks, and also a great opportunity for the council member who doesn't usually get to do speaking engagements for for their awards on that type of thing.

Let them have a their moment in glory in the sun to go along with it.

But those are almost done, and we have heard a lot of good feedback now that uh those have started, and we're ready to check those off the list.

And then when you start talking about Blue Sem Park, that one is a little bit farther down the line.

But we have started work out there, and we think that that will be complete hopefully sometime in the fall.

Uh when you start looking at other projects, Saxon Park, uh, we have given the thumbs up to our uh designer to go ahead and prepare bid documents.

So they are preparing bid documents.

We think those bid documents will hopefully hit the street sometime here in the next month.

Uh the the street that does uh the road that has been worked uh being now installed or um constructed by our public works crew it has gotten we wanted to get into a period where we're about 60 to 90 90 days out.

They've given us that notice.

Uh uh reason we're waiting on that is because one, it's gonna save us a lot of money, they're putting the infrastructure in there for us to connect to electrical and sewer and all that good stuff that's gonna be close to the road, so that has uh saved us a lot of money.

So we'll see that out on the street here pretty quick, and hopefully it get some bid backs on uh on that portion, and then I think the other one which you saw a an item on for an appraisal for land that has to do with Canadian River Trail Project.

Uh we did get an appraisal on a portion of land and um possibly working towards a purchase of land.

So uh there'll be more information upcoming about that soon.

I have a question.

Is there a list of a timeline for when the neighborhood future neighborhood parks will be done, like Brookehaven Park, for instance?

Yes, we we presented.

Yeah, we have data an actual timeline.

We had we have a like a five-year um year by year, yeah, five year list that has to include that timeline.

We and we have talked about Brookhaven, and we actually went through and uh have an ongoing spreadsheet with uh the go along with all of our parks, and Brookhaven does want to have one of the older playground units in in the system.

So I think that one will probably be up in the next two or three years.

Um last five-year plan, but I don't know what year was in one year one.

And we can uh we can email that back out to everybody the the what the five-year um plan looks like on neighborhood parks.

Okay, I had just gotten some I had had some questions because I know back in 2016, 2017 when it was at the end of when I was working in the parks department that we were gonna do um cardio walking thing, and they had sent a survey out, but then the Norman Forward came in and all of that stuff was put on hold, and it's nothing has been happen has happened there, and I mean that park hasn't seen anything new in years, so yeah.

All we've done is tree planting in there lately, and wood chips, so that's that's I was just curious because people in the neighborhood have been asking.

So thank you.

Any other questions?

Item seven, division update.

You guys are welcome to leave if you want.

Or you can hang out on us.

Oh, you can hang out.

Yeah, you're welcome.

You're welcome to go.

You're welcome to leave.

Yeah.

They're sitting there like we can talk through that one.

Yeah, okay.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for all y'all do really appreciate it.

Yeah, it's easy to all right.

Um, as y'all know, it is starting to warm up, although it's been super dry.

We've had a couple of big projects that we've started going on.

We did the demolition of the Andrew's pavilion or Andrews building in the middle of the park.

That took about 35 truckloads of material.

Uh some of it steel blocked.

There was a lot of lot of construction went on inside there at some point.

We found about what?

So some of it we took to transfer down on the south side of town, but they wouldn't take the rock and the cinder block and stuff.

So we hauled that to the landfill up north on 240.

We saved a bunch of the rock for we palleted up a lot of the good stuff when we first uh kind of peeled it off as much as we could.

And then some of it that was kind of entangled with some of that other debris.

Uh we hauled with it to some of the landfill, and then at the end, anything that we were able to sort out, um, we hauled and we kept a pile of it just of just kind of just so A, we didn't have to haul it to the landfill, and B, we would have it, but then so we've got like several different like groups of material that we that we saved from that.

Um that can be used on future projects.

That just so it let everybody know that that stone that was on the facing of that building is from the 70s, it is not WPA stone.

Uh we did found the original WPA stone, which had a what was basically underneath the several layers, it was run because it looked like they put a weatherproof coating over the top of it.

And it was really only the north part portion of the north and south walls.

The east-west wall where the kitchen and restroom had been expanded was completely different.

Um, but it was made to match some of the other stuff, but it wasn't the exact, but we went ahead and kept as much of it as we could in case we needed to match down the road that it was it obviously did a very good job of matching at some point.

So we're in the process of uh Royal Oaks.

We did we remodel their um pavilion and sidewalks.

We did a couple of sidewalk projects at Northeast Lions.

Um Eastwood Park, we did a bridge project to retie in where that concrete that concrete had started to settle.

Um so we took that time, we've taken some time over the past couple of months because we haven't fully got into our mowing because it's been so dry.

Um we've been very sparse with our with our mowing right now.

So we've tackled a bunch of uh these small like concrete projects and stuff.

We reported the pavilion, it had started to settle.

We wood chips out.

Um, as James will tell you, some of the playgrounds we we removed those.

We've had little projects on the outside of that irrigation going, trying to get that a little sooner than normal, trash cleanup, normal back to the summer routine.

Robot mowers for our guys here back up and going.

So to add to the robot mowers, we did purchase three more robot mowers that are now because our Westwood guys don't usually come and they'll speak about it in a couple months.

But we have three new uh robot mowers to hit fairways out at uh Westwood, and it's gonna save.

We only have five guys out there, so that saves a ton of work, and they're hitting the fairways every other day.

We're having we're having a new one installed at Animal Welfare tomorrow to a Segway is this brand.

When we went with the Huskavarna in the beginning, they were the only one with a fleet management uh app or website.

The first central hub will now Segway has added one of theirs, and uh water treatment has I think is gonna get some line maintenance is gonna has demoed some of the units, so I feel like we kind of led that charge and it's been pretty successful, and the robots just keep getting any better.

So other than that, question.

Have you guys been getting lots of calls about the bathrooms and the new design of the Andrews?

No, not a ton of calls about it.

There was a couple there, you know, but they were more concerned about the age of the building.

Um that was the majority of the the phone calls that we received about Andrew's building.

We do ultimately have in the master plan a design for uh restrooms, amphitheater, stage.

Um we could probably share that at some point or send it to you if you want to.

We've we've seen it, yeah.

We've seen it.

I think it looks great.

Christina could probably talk more on it, but uh add a little bit to your question.

The uh when we start talking about the that 11 million dollars excess norm four money, we believe that um we have one more board to talk to, but what we believe that that would be the the top item that council picks.

So I think that we would probably be surveying and engineering uh that probably within the calendar year to start start the pond and working on the design of that restroom that we'll go in there.

Yeah, I was just um uh says state historic preservation office has been getting calls about it, which is nice that we're there and can explain.

Have you talked to anybody?

No one has called me, but no, but Linda's been, yeah.

But uh as the city website says, you know, that yeah, that building that was demoed is not part of the historic district.

It had been modified, it was not um a historic property by our definition.

So yeah, but right.

I only bring it up because I just think we all should probably be um ready to answer that question.

Yeah.

Good job.

That building is also in the flood plain, not the flood way, which means there should have never been a building ever built there.

Um it's been flooded several times.

It's uh it's just in a it was in a terrible spot.

We believe that the the body of water that goes back there originally before uh it was made into City Park in 1920 something that that that uh was originally a body of water that was going in that area.

Yeah, no, I'm totally in support.

Is that part of the heart?

Is it's the city of Norman website is what we posted, yes.

I do get it wrong.

Yeah.

And we and we do have the the the Norman, or I always say Norman, the national uh parks uh page the the that has all the historical information.

In 2000, it got designated as a historical site, and then we have the the paperwork that goes along with that that also excludes it.

And you could tell when when we started tearing apart the that building, the it's been there was no WPA stone that was uh exposed on all that was 19.

As I said, the stuff we took was from the 1970s.

There was long span steel, aluminum pressed uh pressed uh yeah, TPO roof.

Uh there was pressed uh plywood in there, which didn't sit uh exist in the 30s, so this is a whole lot of um construction items that we would consider modern that was not a not original with that building.

Fortunately, no existence and uh and interestingly enough, I had a uh an old Norman Parks employee that popped by that he was the park supervisor in the 1960s, and he told me about when he worked there in the 1960s, the building was much larger.

So uh evidently it got when it got redone in the 1970s, it got smaller.

Mark Andrews, descendant of Abe Andrews, also get online and tell people calm down.

I'm an Andrews, I I know the story, it's it's not historic.

So it's good to have an Andrews or two laying around to help defend you.

Hello, huh?

So before you start, just to make sure we're all in the same thing.

Not historic than the floodway.

Yeah, it was in the floodway.

It's in the darkest blue of the blue lines.

Yeah, it is in the floodway, yeah.

So I was I was gonna correct that and say, yeah.

Everything's in a floodplain, but that wasn't literally in the floodway.

It was in the the dark blue.

The entryway and the arch.

Those do contribute.

Yeah, those are and those will be first thing, right?

Yeah, because if you look at the the response in the report about yes, the the park is historic, and here's the things that contribute to it the channel, the amphitheater, the gateway arches, not the building, not the landscaping, not the anything else.

So that building was not contributing.

Right.

Yeah, the the little castles they would not because they were also at that time when it got applied for had been modified so much that they didn't have the original character anymore.

Okay.

So they're still there, but they don't contribute either.

We could tear those down.

And that's we're not going to.

And those are coming down, right?

Uh, those those are still there in the master plan.

If you look are they okay?

They they built sort of like uh a patio, circuit because they put like um they want to put like an arbor structure in between them and make it sort of like a seating area.

Okay if you look.

I mean, that's not finished design work, but the roofs get removed and you almost put like a a this long time.

Yes, yeah, like a percolar pergoless.

So it's in there, but like so we haven't gotten into the design details.

We'd like to save them if we can, we'll we'll examine them as well.

I'll jump in really fast and say if you wanted to have them, you know, to update the documentation for them because of the time difference and the loss of WPA properties.

It's possible that they could be considered eligible at this point.

If you wanted to uh do that, yeah, you certainly could.

No, that's a good note.

We do want to do that, so yes.

If only we knew someone in the state historic preservation office.

No, that's good.

Um, James Briggs, park development.

Um Jason already ran over some of the things we've been working on managing those projects to get the Norman Ford playground replacements.

And at Eagle Cliff, it's been kind of a whole park renovation over the past year or so with paving the trails, adding a lot more trees and irrigation, um, several things there.

If anyone lives in Eagle Cliff area, that the we let it had two playgrounds in it, the park.

We left one small one there while we built the new one.

Clever.

It's gonna come out too now.

We're gonna harvest uh replacement parts that we can because it's old and obsolete too, but still safe, just obsolete and small.

So we're gonna take what we can of that one and then we'll probably end up putting a shelter where that one was.

Um you talked about Bishop Creek Eco Park.

I remember people have been watching that.

Um work keeps get going.

We are finishing up this week or early next week.

The we're doing sort of a really better version of a fence along the north property line.

Right now, the north line is a chain link fence with barb wire sticking over the top, which it belongs to the neighbor.

So we're coming about four feet, three, four feet off of that and building more of a uh cedar fence with a you know cap rail and all that, so it'll be safer and and better, easier to maintain.

Um that um we're still watering and getting things to grow in from the uh uh hydro seating and native plants that we're trying to establish in there.

We've got some park furniture heading that way, we've got a shelter, and we've ordered uh sort of a pavilion type uh overlook and we can get some water um and landscaping done there, some water source and landscaping in some of the blockout areas in the in the in the pathways.

You'll see that when we open it coming up this summer.

Um Westwood Park, uh, we had a crew go in and finish all of the uh resurfacing of all the courts.

They did the two indoor courts.

They had they're used so much and so popular that they were playing extremely fast and even starting to fade.

And and now that we've moved pickleball kind of over to WiFac, there's not be as much demand for that's a good time to do it because the pickleball players, because it's USTA could only do tape lines whenever they're in there playing, so it's good to kind of reset and get all back to tennis in there.

Um we've issued an RFQ request for qualifications for firms to help us to come up with a Sooner Theater Master Plan.

So that's a big thing we'd like to uh keep pushing forward towards and have ready, much like the master plans you've seen for Griffin and Reeves and Sachs and all that, that we want to have a master plan ready for that facility to add some square footage, like do an addition and do we've updated it pretty well over the years with the things we could do tech wise and internal, but we still want to keep it looking like the Sooner Theater, but then likely build an addition to it so they can have scene shop and black box theater space and other things.

So that's exciting.

That's out, and it's due back on the 29th from firms from around the state, nation, country, world, whoever wants to help us master plan a theater.

Because they're getting ready to hit their hundred year anniversary in two thousand twenty-nine.

So we want to have things going.

A nineteen twenty-nine building that we um we're working also with uh Andy over at the firehouse art center, talking cultural facilities.

Um they've gotten a grant to do another mur another mural, where you ask, well, this one's gonna be on the ground in the sunken plaza out back.

You're like, it's like he's muraled out.

There's no more walls.

But there's a ground.

So that's coming.

We're gonna pour some concrete out there, and and part of the grant is also to um change out those beds to be uh native pollinator habitat.

So it's sort of a um two-in-one combo project.

Um Reeves Park, we finished all the dirt work.

If anyone goes to Reese Park around the pond, need some sod, because we're just gonna we're gonna forego pollinators there and just put sod on it to keep the uh banks from washing down.

But yeah, that should solve a lot of the flooding problems we had last year in the great flood of of twenty twenty-five, where we were overflowing into Constitution Street and all things because south end of the pond wasn't at the correct elevation because we hadn't finished building the park for the master plan.

So that um forestry, there have been some seedling plantings trying to re-establish trees on a on a big event day and and other days out at uh Sutton Wilderness.

I didn't mention it, Saxon.

Jason talked about the things that happened, and I know I'm talking about last month, but today, this very day we did our first control burn at Saxon Park in this couple of acres there by the parking area.

So it's sort of like the last possible day to do it with the leftover winter fuel.

Had it been a rainier spring, we probably wouldn't have done it today, but you gotta have the right humidity, the right wind speed and direction and all that.

We'd already filed our burn plan, you know, with all the relevant people and notified the adjacent property owners and it went really well.

Megan helped.

I was doing several things today, but we had several staff members, um forestry and parks and environmental resiliency and even even recreation.

I even saw Jeff Moody out there.

Where are you, Jeff?

He's banging on the door.

So that's it, and other things.

So we're working and building and and doing and being.

Question?

Yeah, I have a couple questions about the Sooner Theater.

Um I was curious.

Um I know it's the hundred-year anniversary is coming up, which is pretty exciting.

Um I do think that when we talked about some of the issues that the theater has, ADA accessibility, et cetera.

There are definitely issues that the theater has that should be addressed.

But I'm also curious if the um the cost of the sort of construction that will be required to adapt the theater to what we need.

Um if uh if the city's considered new construction and/or acquisition of a different property that could meet those needs so that the theater building itself could be retained in some different way, and the sooner theater could, you know, like we could have a more accessible space uh that would meet the programming needs without um without changing the building so much that it wouldn't be eligible.

I should send you the RFQ because that's basically what we said in there that we want to build basically a second space adjacent to that building with connectivity through it, and then address some of the accessibility issues by gaining that space.

If we had a additional first floor space that you could travel down a corridor and enter the stage at ground level, then we would have and have dressing rooms in that additional space on ground level.

That would be an accessible space that you would enter and still be able to enter the theater because that's a limitation right now.

Is performers particularly getting to the actual performance space who are have mobility um obstacles.

Seating, we don't want to change the seating.

We do have some.

I mean, we've done some work over the years to have convenience ramps, things like that.

We've gone through code.

I mean, theater floors are of a certain pitch that resist making them accessible for seating, but there are th and we talked even about in the RFQ about planning for design of like elevator space in the additional building that then also could penetrate into the building and give you access to the balcony level and all that thing.

So there's many things we want to do.

That's we want to hire a firm to design this.

And most of the firms we want to lead this would be theater design specialty firms.

Um there aren't very many in this area, but that we have sent this out already to at least two forms uh on the east coast, and there's um we we have it advertised to get people that deal with this sign thing all the time because that is our primary goal is the accessibility, also second space, you know, to have to have like I said, some some additional performance space by going west and maybe closing down the street and building another building, essentially adjacent to it and leave the theater as is essentially.

So architecturally, it still would qualify and contribute to its national register status, but then have an accessible space that adjoins that that makes the rest of that accessible.

It'd be a it'd be a fun puzzle that we'll try and solve.

So in our we want to keep the student theater still looking like the Harold Himano designed Spanish Gothic theater that it is.

So that's 100%.

We have two goals accessibility and preservation.

So I appreciate that the parks department's looking at that.

Yep.

I was about to ask um if there's any chance Mr.

Roberts would move because that's next door.

Well, there's a chance, but this is a you're seriously thinking about going west and closing off that street.

We consider all sorts of things.

Um yes, there's a chance, but we can't force them to ever sell it.

They talk that they could and and might and would sell or even gift it to us, but their timeline may be different than ours.

So we'd be happy to explore it's in our RFQ.

We talk about going east or west or both.

Yeah.

So we'd like to master plan west, master plan east, and if that ever happens, we would have like let's build phase one, go west, phase two.

If we ever can get that just one of the buildings, not all of the, I mean, Mr.

Robertson's five buildings on the block, but the one adjacent to the theater is a two-story space that would be awesome to have.

And we've thought about it and licked our chops, and then we thought, well, what if we went west?

Because we own the street and we own the parking lot and we own all those things, and it's not uncommon to close the streets.

Well, you can turn that street into like an entry into the parking lot.

So if like at the Civic Center Music Hall, you come in off a street and you're in the parking lot.

So you can always take part of the street, like leave the back half, so the alley still gets you out to Gray Street.

I was just kidding, I can go to the next block.

Jones might also when you were talking about the depot on the other side with uh the RTA possibly expanding that to sorry, talking about uh closing Jones off on uh south of Main Street anyway.

So you and you do you you can also trip and fall and land on James Gardner from from Jones, so it's not that far off.

All right, cool.

Kerry.

Anything else?

James, can I ask you about Reeves?

Yes, Jenkins project closed off that one entrance on the north side.

And I noticed the signs gone where it says don't enter anymore.

Yes.

Have y'all thought about changing the angle of the parking?

Yeah.

Because it's a little dangerous.

I talked to Dennis over in traffic and he pointed out too that our signs don't match your ins and outs.

So we're gonna we're I actually have a I owe him a call back and we're gonna kind of go through the park and talk about changing the one-ways and do not enters and all that.

Um so we may declare some of it be back in parking.

We just need to check the width of the lane on the two way because you're two-way from the main warrior uh Reeves Park Road to the south.

It's two way because there's that big parking by the Kidspace Playground, a little narrow north of there.

Yes, but it can work.

But yes, so we are working through that puzzle of how to re-sign that area because it'll all get re-signed and redone when we do the phase two build out.

We're just sort of stuck in that's much like the pond.

We're stuck in between the final build out and the current conditions.

Okay.

So during the Reese Park, they went ahead and because the master plan shows closing that entry that used to be there by the OU by the tennis courts, you know, across the street across Jenkins, because that's now gonna be a signalized intersection at Timberdale.

Right.

So when you leave the park, you'll if you're by softball and all that, you'll go up Timberdale to a light and get out of the park.

But the people that are from Timberdale to Reece Park Road stuck in that in-between area, and we need to get them more efficiently to move through the space because the rest of the park works.

The Reese Park Road works, the exits onto Timberdale West, I'm sorry, east of Jenkins work, but it's that area right along Jenkins.

So yes, noted.

Okay.

Because it's a little crazy over there.

And they're parking on the grass and well, we can't solve that because they park on the grass on the very nice road with all the parking lots in it, or the parking lots don't have enough, they're not full, and everyone's parked on the grass.

That's a etiquette problem that we're trying to also.

You know, I do notice though there is way more cars than their parking spaces in Reefs.

I don't know if there's everyone.

Is that in the master plan to be?

Oh, yeah, there's maybe more parking.

Okay.

I mean, I thought it was that's a that's a factor of society.

Like if you have one kid playing and and seven people come to see them, they all drive their own car.

That's that's not the standard.

I mean, the standard's designed where you you know you have a car that has you know three people in it.

Right.

But when when every single person shows up in their own truck, then you start to fill up the parking lot.

So and then the other thing is games are scheduled that they overlap.

Do what they overlap.

They overlap very much.

You have a game that starts at six, and people coach tells them to be there at 5 30, and you have the game that starts at seven, and they're bears when the other game is even halfway over, and there's just no place to park.

Yeah.

That park is crazy in the evening.

So um, it's awesome that it's that crazy, but that's gotten a little bit.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Hello, park board commissioners.

Mitchell Richardson, recreation manager, and we've started summer here.

So it's kicked off and it is packed full this month with a ton of recreational activities going on.

Uh we kick it off this weekend.

Uh we've got our office 5K, the Dunder Run.

Uh, so it is an office themed 5K.

Why it's not Parks and Rec.

It's we'll we'll go we'll go with it.

We'll go with it.

Uh, but so there's a ton of fun planned activities to go along with that 5k.

Um our special event coordinator's office looks like an office theme park uh right now.

So there are a ton of different things that's gonna happen there.

I'm gonna let you guys figure that out as we go because I I imagine everybody's gonna be out there running the 5K or one mile.

I'll see you all out there.

It'll be a great time.

Uh we also have our outdoor movie series kicking off with our first movie being Shrek on May 15th.

Uh but before that, we have bike to work day.

Uh so everybody bike to work.

It's a kind of a national yay.

It's a national movement, so we've got a couple routes that all go back into Andrew's Park where we meet up, raffle off some fun things, play videos, play music, and we all have a grand time uh that morning.

Uh the next day, directly after we have our kids to parks day, which is another national event where it's just to celebrate kids to parks and where what we do there is we just pick out we have uh snow cones, we've got uh nerf darts, we've got different games, activities, and we choose a different neighborhood park every year, and we kind of spread it out around Norman.

And so the idea is to just get the neighborhood engaged and get the kids and their families out to the park.

We do door hangar flyers and everything, so everybody comes out and just has a good time and remember that neighborhood parks are the real lifeblood of what our park system is.

On top of that, it's not directly our event, but it is happening at a park.

There's an e-waste event at Ruby Grant uh done by the doers.

So that is uh May 16th.

So if you get questions about that, uh it's Ruby Grant.

Uh, I believe it's 9 a.m.

to 12, but there's a press release out about it.

Um we also uh have our summer camp starting up here May 26th at our three locations here, the 12th Avenue Recreation Center and at the Whittier and Irving Middle Schools there.

And we've got our Westwood Tennis Clinics uh youth clinics starting up May 27th, a nerf night the 29th at 12th Avenue, and every weekend this uh this May, we have a basketball tournament at the Young Family Athletic Center.

So it is full packed.

Uh one of those being uh this coming week, the largest one, an Adidas Junior tournament.

It'll be fairly big.

Uh it's a it's Adidas, so uh it'll be a large tournament for everybody.

Um and then uh I think that covers everything.

We'll meet uh early on June, so I'll let I'll tackle June next.

And the Westwood Family Aquatic Center is opening May 23rd, and there is a season pass holder tonight at the day before 22nd.

Well, he said this covers May.

We're in May, and then I can 4th of July.

Uh we have our Norman Fourfest uh July 4th.

We have a multitude of different events ranging from a couple days before.

So yes, we've got movies, we've got home run derbies, we've got uh lantern festival.

I mean, it's gonna be we're celebrating America 250, so it's uh full on bonanza jamboree.

All right, any questions over the upcoming events and recreation?

Have you thought about doing a like a Norman t-shirt for the 250 that let the citizens be able to order and I like it?

I haven't, but it sounds like a great idea, yeah.

It's just so duh.

I mean, I just think that yeah, you could you know put an order form out there, and people would I would think people would jump at the chance to buy a t-shirt, especially with it being the 250th anniversary.

I think that's a great idea, and we can include Jason on the design, he's a great designer.

Um, so we'll just get that worked worked out, yeah.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Please stay there.

Any other questions?

Okay, we're gonna go back to item number um five.

Yeah.

I didn't get out of it.

That's okay.

No.

That's all right.

All right.

Welcome again, park board members.

Uh we have uh uh Capra this time.

So as you heard, we do have a lot of recreation events and events that uh we really kicked off mowing season, everything going with that.

So this week we do have a shorter update for you.

Uh as summer kicks off, it is the busiest time before then for us to plan, get everything ready, and make sure everything's polished before we enter that summer league.

So with that, we've basically tackled uh so chapter four.

We really nailed down a lot um of our HR department.

We've really tackled a lot of our onboarding procedures here.

Um we've developed and worked in-house to get a basically an online version of our onboarding procedure.

So when we get in new employees, they're able to basically focus in on one site and find out our master plan, find out the budget, find out all the new things that we're going through.

Um so that was one of the bigger lifts that we're able to tackle with that.

And luckily, we're we've knocked out quite a few of the plans to where now it's the small nitty gritty stuff that we're just getting in the last little bits on on a lot of the chapters.

Again, we've spread it out all the time, so only a couple of them are complete, but they're all progressing towards finishing, and it's just all gonna come together in a little bow.

I hope.

It will.

It will.

Questions.

Fantastic.

All right, thank you.

Oh, we do have a question.

Oh, yes.

Are you dressing into Michael's not for the run?

Oh man.

Dwight.

Yeah.

I did see, and I hadn't heard about it yet, but I heard about it from a pro about five or six people today came into my office and said, hey, I don't know what's going on, but there's jello with a stapler in it in the fridge.

I figured that was you guys.

I said, Yeah, it is.

I have no clue what the plan is for that, but I'm really excited to find out.

So thank you.

Thanks so much for not surprising.

Okay.

Anybody have any miscellaneous comments?

I do.

Okay.

I meant to do it last week, and I just wanted to say kudos to Jason and Megan, because this was the awards that you got.

Jason was the helping hands award and Megan was the rising star award.

So kudos and kudos.

Who did it?

I forgot who did it.

I only printed the page that who did it.

Who was was it the whole city wide?

What was it was it was it was our first ever like citywide awards.

Uh uh traditionally we we've kind of celebrated everybody's anniversaries and working anniversaries and things like that.

This year we expanded and uh did a whole lot of awards and including the uh public servant of the year award, which somebody in public works one, but it's uh uh it was a good experience, and we had it uh at Young Family Athletics Center and got to integrate to video screen, so it was uh really really cool and fun.

And the uh also our MC uh roasted every single uh director.

So it was it was good times.

And the city manager and uh got fired and hired back in the in the same way.

Nothing else.