City Council Meeting

Stacey Sommerfieldstaffthat gets us to our staff recommendation which is to accept the bid in full with all the alternates to reallocate the 1.44 of ARPA funding from Van Dyke over to Theis Park and then just to also say that well later this evening we'll be talking about the parks foundation and so we will staff will continue to push to offset some of the site costs such as site amenities the pavilion playgrounds different pieces through the foundation to hopefully be able to offset some of those costs as well

ShinneberryclerkOur next item is a discussion on development of a Fairfax City Parks Foundation. Stacy Summerfield Parks and Recreation Director will provide the staff presentation.

Stacey SommerfieldstaffAll right, good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight I am joined by our PREB Chair, Sarah Ross. I want to thank her for sticking around until now to be able to participate in this discussion of a potential Parks Foundation. So just starting with the basic question of what is a Parks Foundation. So a Parks Foundation is an independent 501 that works in partnership with the Parks Department to utilize private funds in order to essentially supplement public funding for programs, facilities, parks, green spaces, events, scholarships, all the things that make the Parks Department great. It helps us afford those items. Sarah and I have been working together to develop a set of bylaws to really provide the framework for the development of this Parks Foundation.

have our set of directors are our voters and they would lead the parks The type of funding that we're going after with the Parks Foundation would be, first of all, sponsorships. That's a very kind of easy lift for us. Currently, with a fairly limited structure within the Parks Department, we raise about $75,000, mostly for event sponsorships each year. We put out a small booklet that Mitzi and Deanna produce, and it has sponsorship opportunities. We do not actively solicit anyone for that and it just passively brings in about 75,000 We see that as a major opportunity for us to actively go out into community and talk about ways that people can get involved Also grants so currently as a municipal nonprofit

helpful in helping us offset our parks maintenance costs. So where we are in the development of our parks foundation is that we have worked together jointly with prab to develop the founding bylaws that were included in your packet for this evening. Those bylaws have been reviewed by Brian. JC was also kind enough to set up a meeting with the city's auditor so he could review those bylaws as well and talk to us about you know what he saw is maybe some financial hurdles for us or best practices and And so that is where we are right now. We also know that you know the legacy for Fairfax funds We have talked with the auditor and JC about the potential currently We have several funds that do not zero out at the end of each year. That's where our sponsorship dollars go

remaining dollars from the Sherwood sponsorships go our memorial benches and trees some of our scholarship funds long term looking at rolling those funds into the foundation so that they can be managed there they do present a small hiccup for our auditor every time we kind of do the city audit as to why there are these funds that don't zero out at the end of the year we would following this if the council were to endorse the Fairfax Parks Foundation we would begin soliciting applications from the community prab would review those applications and appoint the first set of directors after that point the foundation would be self-sustaining so if someone were to announce that they were going to finish their term and then not apply for another

one the foundation itself those directors would take applications or nominations for another then vote as a voting group as to whether or not that person would be added to the directors group. We are also asking for a one-time seed money grant from the city of $50,000. Those funds will be used to procure and develop a website for the Parks Foundation. They will also be used to procure donor management software. So this is specific software that when donations come in, it tracks the fulfillment of those donations, any sort of advertising different things like that also helps us to generate automatically tax letters and then the third thing would be using the fifty thousand dollars for right away would be to purchase financial software a

Yeah, and I appreciate you bringing up the other parks foundations because we have joined the National Association of Parks Foundations to become connected with. There's 145 members in that group. So it's been really a great way for us to reach out to other organizations and look at their bylaws And we're able to look at a lot of different cities bylaws when developing the City of Fairfax Parks Foundation bylaws I agree with With Sarah we are really working to try to kind of play a little bit of catch-up because we really want to be able to as we build vice park Offer these opportunities for sponsorship and to be able to offset those costs of the city

Kate Doyle FeingoldOkay, thank you. Yeah, I think you know, I think that so this is the first I've heard of the Parks Foundation And I think it's a great start to the discussion, but in my mind I think we should look at the bylaws more in terms of residents and things like that and and think about the funding I don't know that A supplemental before December makes sense to me. I'd like to think more about the shift here and I and I totally agree it has to be independent and separate which even it so the way it's designed PRAB nominates the first three and then it functions on its own which would also be the case if it was council appointing the first three I just think we need more time to discuss and understand so my preference would not be to push forward on a supplemental for

right? Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. I just think I think there's a balance there and the way it's written. It could be without city residents so I just think we should put more thought into the language so that We don't end up in that situation Because I think it's good to have a balance. You can have people who are invested from outside the city But I also think we don't want a parks foundation that is made up entirely of non-city residents Thanks.

Jeffrey GreenfieldParks foundation, so that's just some thoughts for tonight. Thank you there