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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPRMinutes_2025_04_07 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Notes Monday, April 7, 2025 5:30 PM 1. Call to Order the Joint Meeting of the Sustainability Council and Parks & Recreation Advisory Board Chair Erika Saunders called the meeting to order at 5:30 PM. Board members Present: Erika Saunders, Jay Larsen, Nathaniel Condelli, Steve Berseth and Stacey Zerfas. Board members absent: Brenda Andersen. Sustainability Council Members Present: Alicia Haich, Connor Evers, Kyle Jamison, Anthony Shanks, Robin Buterbaugh, Emily Abele and Kiley Rath. City of Brookings Staff Present: Park, Recreation and Forestry Director Kristin Zimmerman, Assistant Director Parks, Recreation and Forestry Joshua Bauman, Park, Recreation and Forestry Office Manger Ashley Johnson and Stephen Hartung, Park Technician. 2. Approval of the Joint Agenda Jay Larsen motions to approve the joint agenda as printed. Steve Berseth 2nds the motion; Motion is carried. 3. Bee City USA Kristin Zimmerman explained that she and Sam Beckman had got together and thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting between the Sustainability Council and Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to discuss Bee City USA and the Community Food Forest. Anthony Shanks spoke on behalf of the Sustainability Council. He brought up the commitments needed from the city. The Sustainability Council will be responsible for communicating with the Parks and Recreation Board to make sure that we are working together. There are several items that Bee City USA requires. Much of these requirements are already things that are being done by the City of Brookings Parks and Recreation Department. Part of Bee City USA requires that we create an enhanced pollinator habitat on public and private land. Using native plants and nest sights. Parks and Recreation has already been doing this. We also need to incorporate pollinator conscious practices into policies and plans. We will need to make sure that we are creating pollinator awareness events. Garden Discovery events at Medary Gardens qualifies and that is an event the Sustainability Council takes part in. The Sustainability Council will take care of awareness events but the Parks Department is also willing to help with awareness. We will have signs that should be coming soon. We will need to make sure that we are paying the application and renewal fee. The Sustainability Council will apply for and pay all fees. We all feel that the Parks and Recreation Department does a great job with the commitments that are outlined for Bee City USA. We will have a lot of information on the website. There will be green houses that will be listing some of the native plants that will be available as well. Robin Butterbaugh believes that we could really do a lot of outreaches by working together to have different events, like introducing rain gardens and native plants. Kristin mentioned that we made seed balls for the Downtown at Sundown events last summer. If we wanted to do an exhibit at the nature park, we could do that, or we could even introduce a beehive into the Nature Park as well. As events come up, we can look at different options to include the Sustainability Council and invite the public. Anthony believes that the application will be approved in just a few days. 4. Community Food Forest Update Robin Butterbaugh spoke about the community Food Forest. It will be located at the community gardens. Residents wouldn’t have to pay for the food forest, it would be open to the community and we have already got a few trees planted. We will be having a community engagement meeting that will be on April 16th from 6:30 PM to 8PM. This will allow the public to get more involved and voice their opinions about what they would like to see there. We have been working with SDSU Architecture Dept. They have come up with a few different designs so that we can help the community envision what the food forest could look like, we hope that it will also help engage the community and get them more interested. The first thing that we need to do is raise some funds for a fence. This would keep deer out of the food forest. The Sustainability Council believes that it will cost about $10,000.00 for the fence. They do have a fundraising letter that they are getting ready to send to businesses, to see if they can get any donations to help with the fence. Once we get the fence up, we can start looking into other projects, like benches or shelters or even moving the water closer for watering. We would also like to have educational programing at the food forest as well as having volunteer days. We will utilize social media to get information out about when certain plants are ready to harvest. We will have signs that will show what the plants are, with additional information about harvesting. The Food Forest would be an ongoing program, that we would continue to work well into the future. We did purchase signs that are ready to identify the Food Forest. 5. Adjourn Nathaniel Condelli Motions to adjourn the joint meeting, Stacey Zerfas 2nds; The motion is carried. 1. Call to Order Park and Recreation Advisory Board Meeting Erika Saunders called the meeting to order at 5:57 PM. 2.Approval of Agenda Nathaniel Condelli motion to approve the agenda. Jay Larsen 2nds; Motion is carried. 3.Approval of Minutes Nathanial Condelli motions to approve. Stacy Zerfas 2nds; Motion is carried. 4. Open Forum There were no members of the public at the meeting. 5. Introduction- Paul Meyer Paul Meyer introduces himself to the members of the Park and Recreation Advisory Board, he is excited to be a part of the Board. 6. Discussion and possible Action- High School Appointment Kristin Zimmerman will be emailing out applications for High School Appointment. Due to it being close to the end of the school year, we can let this expire in May. And then look into the new applications when school starts again next fall. 7. Discussion and Possible Action- Proposed Park Rentals We have the summer arts festival coming up in July, it will be held the weekend of the 12th and 13th in Pioneer Park. We do have a new one coming up, Grasshopper soccer. We did discuss this at our last meeting however things have changed. We did get a letter of support from the SoDak Spurs and they did change their location to Camelot Elementary Field, and they do have insurance. They have worked out all the details of when they will use the fields. Grasshopper soccer is different from the SoDak Spurs, it is strictly for 3- to 4-year-olds. We also have SDSU ROTC wanting to do a morning training at Dakota Nature Park. It is from 4 AM to 7 AM. They just want to do some team building exercises. They will be using tents and flashlights so we will want to let the public know what is going on to not alarm anyone. There will be about 20 or 25 people. They will be doing this the end of April, weather depending. We will also be doing the Disc Golf tournament. When we went through the fee schedule last year, and we did add a fee since we are going to be having more tournaments this year. They are looking at doing 5 tournaments this year. The first one will be the beginning of May. One of the tournaments will be a state tournament. Right now, it looks like it would be a 3-day tournament at Larson Park. Since we have introduced new fees, we have decided to work with them so that they aren’t having to pay 100% fees the first year. They will be coming to help us do some park clean ups and plant trees this fall. They will work with us cleaning up Larson Park as well. This will be the first time that they are having the State Tournament. The State tournament will be in September. It’s possible that we can use the golf course as a good place to have the State Tournament as well. Jay Larsen motions to approve all events as printed. Nathaniel Condelli 2nds motion; Motion is carried. 8. Bicycle Subcommittee Report Josh Bauman stated that the 3rd Thursday of the month the bicycle subcommittee gets together. They have been discussing different options for education outreach. May is National Bike Month and the committee is reaching out to the different schools to see what they are doing for education with the kids. We’d like to see if we can partnership with the schools to help with educational activities. Currently they are working with the GIS specialist to create a map with an online survey asking 5 questions to get an idea of how the community is using the trail, the maintenance issues that are being seen that are needing attention. We will also ask what amenities the community would like to see on the trails. They are partnering with Critical Mass to do a couple of bike rides. Critical Mass does their bike rides the last Friday of the month. April 25th will be our first one. We will start at Dakota Nature Park and branch off to different trails. Their rides usually last about an hour. We will have a QR code and it will be live for at least a month if not a little bit longer so that is something that we can push out on social media. We would like to see what we need in the next few years as far as maintenance goes, so that we can start planning. We are also going to be breaking up the bicycle master plan into more digestible chunks. We plan to divide it up into teams so that we can do a good update of the plans. We will work with the bike subcommittee, Parks Department and Public Works. The last time that the Bike Master Plan was updated was in 2017. 9. Edgebrook Golf Course Kristin Zimmerman talks about the Capital Improvement Fee or CIP, for every round of golf a fee is assessed and put towards our Capital Project Fund. Currently $1.00 for every 9 holes, $2.00 for every 18 holes and $30.00 for every season pass. That equates to about $28,000.00 a year. We also receive a contribution from the liquor store. Currently we are sitting at about 1.6 million dollars in that capital fund. This also includes the golf course water sourcing. That will likely deplete this. We do have some needed improvements at the golf course. The club house is on a septic system, so if it were to fail, we would have to hook into BMU sewer lines and that would be a significant cost. Right now, we are in a single row irrigation system. So that means that there is an irrigation line going down the middle of each fairway, with a simi double irrigation system at the tee box it would be a single row irrigation and then route out to a double row irrigation at the hole. This way it is laser focused on the playable areas. In the summer you can see that some areas turn brown really fast. It’s not ideal for playability. Right now, it would be slightly over 2 million dollars. We also need to look at improvements at the clubhouse. The clubhouse probably hasn’t really been updated since the 80’s and we really need to focus on the aging of the clubhouse improvements. We think that we should consider raising fees. If we add an extra $1.00 it’s an extra $20,000 dollars. If we add these fees, we will be able to get from 20,000 dollars to 40,000 dollars. We have a lot of larger ticket items, so we would need to lean towards the higher end. A season pass is right at $1,200.00. An additional $30.00 to $40.00 will be a noticeable increase, but we also need to look at this as an enterprise fund, so those funds that are sourced there stays with the golf course. This would be a recommendation for next season. Steve Berseth thinks that it is too premature to decide. It wouldn’t really be increasing the fees it would just be reallocating the fees. The board decided to take no action on this at this time and will discuss it later in year. Water Sourcing: Kristin Zimmerman wanted to give a little more back ground on the several different options that we have looked at for our water sourcing issues. We have explored 6 well sites and none of them proved to be viable options. We looked at water collection to the north but it wouldn’t offer enough water for the golf course needs. We looked at water collection from the west however that was done with the drain tiling, but that didn’t really prove to be viable either. We looked at connections to the L.G. Everist pond and the BMU treated water and the raw water line. We also looked at connection to the South Brook water well and wells to the south of Edgebrook. Only one was found to be viable to the south. The cost estimates of the raw waterline construction is estimated at $800,096 dollars. That would take the waterline from the golf course to the railroad tracks. Pond improvements such as lining one pond is consistent through all options. That would be just under $400,000 dollars. Our Construction Cost would be at 1.3 million dollars. The 10-year cost from BMU would about $10,000 dollars. The cost for South of the golf course would be just under $100,000 dollar difference. The BMU raw water line is a little bit more expensive but please keep in mind that the cost of land is variable. We don’t know for sure what the costs would be. This also doesn’t take into account any maintenance fees. The main difference between them is BMU Raw water has the ability to access multiple wells, where south of the golf course we can only access one. We also need to take into account all the maintenance cost if the well goes bad, or if we have to replace the system that communicates between the pond and the well. Kristin Zimmerman’s recommendation is to move forward with the raw water line. Its less maintenance in the long run. There’s also the redundancy of the water source which is huge. It is also a more stable water source. The general timeline would be design summer and spring 2025, construction bid and RFP process Summer/Fall of 2025. Construction in Spring of 2026 with a completion in summer of 2026. This is just general construction timeline; we would have a more formal construction timeline through the RFP process. Disruption to the play of golf will be minimal because they can bore under each of the holes. They would be running about a mile of pipe along the interstate on the golf course side. They would be able to trench the city easement. It was also stated that a pipeline that is ran this way would have a 75-year life expectancy. The Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department does recommend to connect to the raw water line. This option is about $100,000 more than the connection to the well south, but it offers redundancy which is critical for us. There are more BMU wells and less maintenance costs. Jay Larsen motions to move forward with the raw waterline. Nathaniel Condelli 2nds motion; motion is carried. 10. 5th Street Gym The press release was sent out that the city is moving forward with acquiring the 5th street gym. The parking lot agreement was finalized between Brookings County and the 1921 building. We are just waiting signatures. Planned facility improvements will focus on the HVAC system, the roof, ADA compliance, facade improvements and safety concerns. These are the critical items identified. Once the facility is officially transferred to the city, we will send out a survey asking for public input on what they want to see in the 5th Street Gym. Currently we are working with our user groups and stake holders to insure they are able to continue to use the 5th Street Gym. We have had meetings with the Children’s Museum because they use the 5th Street Gym for their lunches for field trips. April and May, the Special Olympics also uses the gym, so we want to make sure that we are still allowing those user groups to use the gym. There are opportunities for future programing. We will have pickle ball, walking club and fitness classes. With the 5th Street Gym coming on board, we want to make sure that we are capturing any rental fees that there may be. We want to make sure that it is still affordable for groups, families and individuals to use. Currently the fee for one and a half hours is $25.00. Kristin would like a $20.00 per hour fee with a two-hour minimum. Larger events will need a deposit of $100.00. Drop in visits, like for open gym, pickle ball and walking club would be $2.00 per person per visit and also doing a 10-visit punch card. We do plan to have it city staffed. We would like to be open from 6am to 10pm. We do have a great pool of intern applications so we plan to have a few of them working at the 5th Street Gym. Especially the sports management SDSU grads. A larger event would be if they are using more than one court. The deposits would be refundable. As a part of the ADA upgrades, we are in talks about adding a concession stand. In the meantime, we are talking about having vending machines. We would like it to run a little while to see what we need and prices that we should charge. We do want to keep it affordable. We can do a survey where we ask if people should pay a monthly fees or daily fees. We could also have a park pass so you could choose the pool, the gym or skating at the Larson Ice Arena. Jay Larsen would recommend that we table fees until we have more information from surveys. The board would like to know more about when we are taking the 5th Street Gym over before we establish fees. 11. Directors Report Our recreation program guides are now available online. We are being pretty aggressive with applying for grants. We have applied for the Kentucky fried Wishes Grant, which is a recreation compacity grant to support the 5th Street Gym. Josh applied for the Recreation Trails Grant for Moriarty Trails for 2026 project. We are also in the process of applying for the T-Mobile Grant. With our partnership with SDSU students are clearing out our discovery trails at Dakota Nature Park. The students are Sports and Recreation Students, it’s their community engagement class. They wanted to come and support Parks and Recreation. There are about 40 students. We have a graduate student that is studying fish at Dakota Nature Park. We do request that we are able to get a copy of the data that they collect so that we can see where we need to put our efforts in. We are also partnering with the SDSU landscape and architectural students working on the connectivity between Hillcrest Park and Pioneer Park along 5th Street. Looking at having more connection. Their focus is looking at the safety of bicyclist and pedestrians. They are also looking at locations for a pedestrian bridge going over the interstate. Forestry crews remain focused on EAB removals, this will continue until Memorial Day. Once Memorial Day hits they will no longer be able to touch the trees. The official tree will be planted on April 25th at the golf course. It is a hackberry that will be spade in so it is a pretty big tree. We will also be giving out free trees. We believe it will be around 12:15 pm. The Urban Forestry initiative will kick off on April 22nd. You can get up to $175.00. April 25th the Arbor Day 5k will be at 6:30 am. We are also thinking we could do a rededication of the 5th Street Gym. Possibly in June. 12. Adjournment Steve Berseth motions to Adjourn, Jay Larsen 2nds motion; Motion is carried.