Minutes; Park Board: November 2006

City of Evansville, Wisconsin
Park and Recreation Board Regular Monthly Meeting
Evansville City Hall Council Chambers
November 28, 2006
Draft Minutes

1. Call to Order at 6:05 PM and Roll Call: Chair Juergens, and Members Farnsworth, Krueger, Merritt and Sendelbachand present. Staff members Anderson and Hamacher present. Members Carlsen and Jacobson absent. Member Carlsen arrived about 6:10 pm.

2 Minutes of October 16, 2006 meeting unanimously approved without alteration on a voice vote.

3. The agenda for this meeting unanimously approved without alteration on a voice vote.

4. Citizen Appearances.
a. Ben Kraus of 19 W. Church St. presented a proposal for a "Great Evansville Duathalon", a combination race involving both a run and a bicycle race. He is the organizer, and his proposed date is Saturday, June 2, 2007. He provided a map showing the proposed route; the race would begin and end in Lake Leota Park; the 3.1 mile run would be through the streets of Evansville, while the 19 mile bike race would go to Magnolia Bluff Park and return. He hopes for two hundred participants. He requested support from the Park & Recreation Board, as well as access to the Park Store, the upper ball diamond area, and electrical service to connect the timing devices. Access would be necessary from about 1 PM on June 1st through 1 PM on June 2nd. The proposed route will pass through the intersection of 1st and W. Main St, which may be a problem, given the planned reconstruction of West Main St. This will be looked at. Staff saw no problems with access within the park. Kraus has previously discussed his proposal with the Public Safety Committee. Kraus was urged to make park reservations through normal channels to preclude another party from trying to reserve the facilities at the same time. Farnsworth moved, Sendelbach seconded a motion to encourage Kraus to proceed with his plans with the good graces and encouragement of the PRB. Motion passed unanimously.
b. Kitty Verkuilin of 14357 Golf Air Drive, representing the Evansville Soccer Club, requested information on the status of West Side Park development. She was advised that the area for the soccer fields has been graded and seeded. The two fields are on slightly different levels, to achieve the necessary flatness of each, while accommodating the overall contours of the park. The chair requested a report from the soccer club on its activities for the year 2006, how many players and adults were involved, how many games were played at what City Park facilities, etc.

5. SOLE Committee Report.
Gib Wiedenhoeft of SOLE reported that the V-notch designed by the City Engineer has been cut in the retaining wall above the Lake Leota sluice gate, and erosion-control fabric and rock rip-rap has been installed upstream of the retaining wall. He is concerned that this fabric and rock may work against the purpose of the V-notch, which is to allow drainage of subsurface moisture in the current lake bed. He urged that PRB take a role in evaluating how well the purpose is being accomplished.
Discussion ensued about the eventual restoration of Lake Leota's depth. The city's accepted five-year capital budget plan for 2007 proposes $2.5 million to be spent in 2009 for this restoration. This figure apparently came from a calculation within the Public Works Committee more than a year ago. Since then, SOLE has discussed the restoration with a contractor familiar with similar projects. A rough estimate through this contractor is that approximately 250,000 cu. yards of material must be removed, at a cost of approximately $2/ cu. yard. The removed material must be taken somewhere, and and additional transportation costs will likely be incurred depending on how far the material must be moved. Further, after dredging to depth, repairs of any damage to the lake-edge and park roads due to the heavy equipment used will add additional costs. Nonetheless, it appears that the total cost will be well within the capital budget plan.
Wiedenhoeft reported that SOLE is developing a website and asked that it be linked to the City's website. It will be done as soon as the URL of the SOLE site is available. He also reported that the next SOLE meeting would take place on Wednesday December 6th at the Library.

6. Development of a "2006 Park and Outdoor Recreation Plan".
PRB went through the latest draft of the plan page by page, with an eye to correcting errors, making changes and possible additions. Maps have been added to the draft-plan, and these were distributed. Chair Juergens will make the appropriate modifications. Each present member of the PRB agreed to read one chapter of the plan closely for typographic errors, misspellings, etc., and report back at the December meeting. Staff was asked to verify statements in the plan about the accomplishments of previous plans, including accessibility improvements.
Juergens distributed a compilation of 6 board members' individual evaluations of possible projects for the plan and noted that one member had still not completed the evaluation. Of the 40 possible projects, the top 15 all involved Lake Leota Park and West Side Park. After lengthy discussion, it became clear that an actual year-by-year plan for the next five years could not be constructed at this meeting, due to lack of information on costs of some of the projects, details of the city's current 5-year capital budget plan, and the current balance and expected future income in the "Fees in Lieu of Parkland Dedication" account. The chair will provide as much of this information as possible at the December PRB meeting. He asked each member of the PRB to slot each of the 15 projects into a possible year when the project would be done. Further discussion will occur at the December meeting, and hopefully a plan can be developed at that time. No motions were proposed on this topic at this meeting.

7. Chair's report on actions of other city committees and Council. Council is in final negotiations with its preferred candidate for City Administrator, and it is expected that agreement will be reached so that he will begin his duties on January 2, 2007. The dam V-notch was discussed at the Public Works meeting last night. The engineer believes the V-notch is working properly and it will take time (months) for the lake to completely drain. The pooling water seen upstream from the V-notch is from a saturated lake bed.

8. Updates on pending park projects:
a. Leota Park: No further progress on re-roofing the Boy Scout house.
b. Franklin Park: More sand was added to playground equipment area. An initial contact was made to an architect who's working on the old Ace Hardware building and the Baker Building near Lake Leota Park, with an eye to developing a concept for a "Gateway" facility in Franklin. The chair continues to make periodic requests of Water & Light Department to complete the removal of poles and installation of services on the new pole.
c. Countryside Park: Concrete Block work is still unfinished. Once it's done (and this may depend on weather) addition of roof trusses and other construction can begin. Playground equipment installation is complete.
d. Westside Park; Nothing new.
e. No other projects pending at other parks.

9. Aquatic Report: Rick Hamacher; pool director.
a. The subcommittee on 2007 Pool operation met on October 26 as scheduled. The subcommittee recommends that the grill operation in the park store be suspended for the coming year, though the full restaurant license will be retained. Closing the grill will mean that hamburgers and French fries cannot be provided, but it will still be possible to provide hot dogs and nachos as hot food. All other customary cold foods will continue to be provided. Closing the grill will also mean that less-experienced people can operate the remaining store functions. The grill suspension will be tried on a one-year basis and evaluated by staff before making a decision for how to operate in the more distant future.

The subcommittee also evaluated the proposed 2007 Pool Operations Manual and recommended that PRB accept it with some minor modifications.

Farnsworth moved, Merritt seconded that the recommendations of the subcommittee be approved by the full PRB. The motion passed unanimously.
b. There was discussion of newspaper reports that vandalism done at the pool in early October had been done by youth on bikes, not skateboards. The director reported that he had seen fleeing kids carrying skateboards out of the pool area, not bikes, though he did see bikes outside the pool fence.

10. Park Maintenance and Improvements report: Ray Anderson; maintenance supervisor.
All items in his report were covered in item 8, project updates.

10. Old business: On advice of the City Attorney that no trapping be allowed in Lake Leota Park, the chair contacted Bruce Polheber, who had made the request last month, and told him that his request was denied. Mr. Polheber accepted the denial without objection.

11. New Business:
a. Several PRB members have volunteered to supervise Community Service work to which the youth convicted of vandalizing the pool have been sentenced. Park Supervisor Anderson recommended that pulling weeds and brush out of Allen Creek would be a suitable activity. The chair will contact Judge Alisankus to work out further details.
b. The chair reported that an ad-hoc committee [consisting of the principal and a teacher at McKenna Jr. High, the director of the Dean Youth Center, a representative from the Police Department, one adult sponsor of the Skate Club, and the chair] will meet on December 8th to discuss how to ensure that the skate park will be an appropriately used public facility. This group will identify and invite interested youth to participate in future meetings.
c. The city attorney provided, at the chair's request, a listing of current statutes and ordinances that can be employed to enforce skate park rules in the future. This was distributed to all members and staff. There is no legal authority to enforce some of the rules. After a brief discussion, the general sense was that trying to cover those rules by writing a new ordinance was premature and possibly counterproductive. If the current ordinances against disorderly conduct, destruction of property and littering are not strictly enforced, why make new laws? It was informally decided to pass this information on to the ad-hoc committee mentioned above for their consideration and a possible recommendation to PRB.

12. There was a motion to adjourn at 8:30 PM. The next meeting of PRB wlll be at the regular time and date: December 18, 2006 at 6 PM.

Minutes drafted by Chair Juergens on December 8, 2006 and sent by email to all board members, staff and the city clerk for further distribution. These minutes are not official until approved at a subsequent PRB meeting.