The Parks and Recreation Commission of Valdez, Alaska, held a regular meeting on August 12, 2025, at 6:30 PM in Council Chambers. The meeting lasted approximately 25 minutes, adjourning at 6:55 PM. All commissioners were present except Commissioner Carter (absent, excused). The agenda included approval of minutes, a commission assessment of trail reports, a director’s report, and commission business.
Well, I call this regular meeting of the Parks and Recreation Commission to order at 6 30 p.m. And all members are present except for Commissioner Carter, who is absent and excused. And moving on. Approval of parks and recreation minutes or commission minutes from July 8th, 2025. We have one set of minutes for approval. Are there any objections or changes to note? All right, I'm getting all nods, thumbs ups. Okay. So see no objection, the minutes stand adopted. And then we'll move on to public business from the floor on a non-agenda non-agenda item. And seeing as there is nobody coming forward with public business from the four floor, we will proceed to our next item, which is one item for new business, the commission assessment of the trails reports. And just real quick before we um actually, you know what? I'll do this after. Are there any notes or any changes or anything, any discussion items regarding the report that was provided in your packet? Okay. Go ahead, Jeremy. I go, Sarah, just um I was just reading for everything now. I think I think in regards to that Westide Trail, we may have people may have walked slightly different things, and that's fine, but just next time around, just just so we're all clear on tasking, and I sure thought it was clear, but just an observation. Thanks. And that was kind of some of the stuff I was gonna bring up. Um, and that is a conversation that I had offline with um with Bridget and with Lisa. Um, I know, and Bridget, I think had an emergency just now. So um Bridget had mentioned, because I said, you know, I think it would be a good idea to provide updated trail maps. Like, what are the what's the map look like that we give to visitors and residents and say, this is the trail, this is where you hike. Because a lot of our trails have offshoots. Most of like, for instance, on the West Dyke, that offshoot is really specifically for snow machining. It is it a trail? Yes, but is it really part of the trail system that we're handing in a brochure to somebody? No. Um, so I I did talk to Bridget about that. They are in the process of actually updating and uh updating those maps that the trail map that they have is a little older and it technically Shoop is now not considered a city trail. It's it's VAA Um and some other things that we've got the new little um trail at Ruth Pond, which and I I would say trail walkway. I mean, part of part of the nice thing about that is it gives people a way to park at the civic center and easily get down to Ruth Pond for events. Um we used it a lot during Gold Rush. Thank you, Cole, for putting that in there. Um it's very helpful to have. Um, all that being said, I think they are working on an updated trail map, and then once that comes out, that we can use that as our here's our guidelines of of where we're kind of looking and what they're what essentially is worth us coming back to them with. Really, this trail report is ours. It's not necessary. The department didn't necessarily ask us to do this. We took it upon ourselves. So we can certainly through this say to Cole and to um to the department, like here's our suggestions, but it's by no means a mandate that they have to do what we're suggesting. They have they have an agenda, they have things on their list, they're already working really, really hard. Um, they might take a look at this and say, Oh, that makes sense. Oh, that would be an easy thing for us to, you know, like um do, or maybe we'll put this on the list for next year or something like that. But um, I just I also want commissioners to understand, like, you know, by no means is this us saying, here's your to-do list, you know. It's it's this is what we've observed from our our trail experience. Also, along this line, um, I just want us to to be aware part of this reason we gave ourselves this homework was based off of the goals that we came up with, which was based off of the the master plan. But trails is one part of a master plan. Parks and recreation is a large department, and it covers a lot of things besides trails.