City Council Work Session

ClarkclerkOur first agenda item is an update on the city's Parks and Recreation Master Plan. I'll recognize Tacey Summerfield, Parks and Recreation Director, for the staff presentation.

Stacey SommerfieldstaffGood evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having us here tonight. Tonight I am joined by Katie McCammon, who is our Youth Recreation Manager, and also James Mickle from Barry Dunn, who is our consultant, who will be leading us through This is an update to our master plan, which was last completed in 2014. And right now we are in the process of gathering feedback. So James is here tonight to talk to you all about your vision for the future of parks and recreation in the city and to gather feedback from you. I'm going to turn it over to him now.

James MickleThank you, Stacey. Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council, and as I understand it, new city manager. Congratulations. Again, my name is James Mickle, and I'm a consultant manager with Barry Dunn. I've been with that firm for four years, and previous to then, I spent over 20 years as a recreation professional with the city of Norfolk as an administrator. I spent a year and a half as assistant to the city manager, and then I spent 15 years with Boys and Girls Club as the executive director. My entire career has been rooted in youth development and community servitude. So transition and consulting has been absolutely amazing for me. Thank you for having me. Today I'd like to tell you a little bit about the status of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan,

just a little bit about Barry Dunn, because they required me to do this. Burry Dunn was founded in 1974 as an accounting firm and then 30 years later they ventured into consulting and they ventured into consulting in many different realms to include Medicare, local government, feasibility studies, strategic master planning. Five years ago they learned that Parks and Recreation master planning could be a vital addition to the department so we began our practice five years ago. What's unique about our practice is that we're a administrators and parks and recreation. So we're rooted in the field, we speak the language, and we understand what individuals like Stacy and what Katie go to on a day-to-day. But we aren't just parks and recreation professionals, we're

also trained project managers and we've done this on over 500 projects in just five years. Myself, I think I've worked on 45. So just a little background into the core components of a scalable parks and recreation master plan. These are four components that's typically a part of any strategic master plan not just for parks and recreation but it could be a comprehensive plan for a city, state, or any department or for any park. Step one or component one is information gathering and that's the needs assessment that's inventory level of service to include the community profile. The community profile is typically your demographics and trends because when you're completing this type of work it's important to understand who you're serving and what they desire. If

It may take me a few hours. I don't know. But we write a draft and then we present that to council. And then a final plan that we design and we teach you how to implement it over the course of 10 years. So for this project and the scope for this project was customized. So we came up with five phases that would be beneficial for this project. Phase one which we started in August 2024 is project planning administration that started with the kickoff meeting data collection of demographics and data and then building a work plan that will work with the staff. Myself I do this each and every day. These individuals they have a lot of other things to do outside of master planning so we want to ensure that we

4,000 pieces. And we have to remove 2,000 of those pieces to build the puzzle. That's master planning that's our job to analyze. We're fine to gather as much information as possible even if some of it isn't conducive to figure out exactly what the key findings are so we can make recommendations that would be beneficial for the next 10 years. Our plans are customized. We created collateral which I'll show in a minute. We attended many events. We talked to so many people in the community that I'll talk about in a few moments that we wanted to ensure that everybody that wanted to provide information had that And then it's defendable. We completed a statistically valid survey for this project where we received 423, I remember that number.

We received 423 surveys back. 400 would have made it statistically valid by 96%, which means that if we even had 5,000 surveys back, the data wouldn't have changed in terms of what the priorities were. So when we talk about it being defendable, where we talk about it being immersive and mean people where they are in terms of inclusive it's what makes these plans plans that can work and can be comprehensive in the communities so this is an example of the memorable recognizable branding so when the community engaged in this project we wanted to have something that they can cling on to and understand that anytime they saw it that it was something that was representative of the master plan and I forget the name of the fox and I remember the story sneakers I remember the story

And I have a couple of questions. Hopefully I can get a couple of reports out, and then I'll be able to field any questions. So my first question, what are three department priorities that you would like to see implementing this master plan in the next five years? Three department priorities. One of the cards. Yes, ma'am. No, one. All three of them. Yes, one card. I'm sorry. If you didn't get the color you wanted, I'm sorry. I just threw them out there. Yes, that's what I should have done I give 20 more seconds. I SEE INDIVIDUALS LOOKING UP. ALL RIGHT. I THINK THAT'S TIME. DOES ANYONE WANT TO SHARE OUT WHAT THEIR TOP THREE PRIORITIES WOULD BE?

I think almost everything on the last question was sort of centered around or not deferring maintenance in terms of ensuring that we have equitable amenities across the department. So this question is centered around actionable outcomes. What three things would you like to see as actionable outcomes that would stem from this master plan and process? So if I had to draft here today, what three things would you like to see in the draft as things that would be actionable outcomes for the next 10 years, within the next 10 years? Top three. Thank you. Maybe 20 more seconds.

Wonderful. One of the things that I think separates some of our master plans is that we provide what we call an alternative strategies as a part of our financial analysis. So we don't just make a recommendation to build a new multi-million dollar recreation community center. We understand that everything can't be a bond measure and that if we're going to make those types of recommendations then we need to ensure that you're providing you with tools how to fund them. So things that are actually realistic not pie in the sky. Wonderful.

Absolutely. You have maps. I don't want to elaborate there, but you have maps as a part of our facilities and parks assessment, but as also a part of our implementation plan. We provide maps that sort of relay what we're recommending. Thank you. And my last and final question, and this can be two rather than three, what are some key challenges or values in the community that should be considered by developing this master plan? As I look around this room, you have the institutional knowledge, the historical data that can assist us who's coming into Fairfax to understand what some of the challenges or some of the virus in the community that we need to ensure that we consider when I guess dissecting what the key findings are and making

Anthony AmosJust a few things to highlight. I would say fiscal impact specifically short-term priorities versus long-term maintenance. You know we have a Van Dyke master plan that we we hope to be able to implement at some point in the near future but what do we do in the interim for example with the more dilapidated fitness equipment things like that which was clearly a priority that was stated in the information you gathered. Aging in going to Councilmember because member Peterson's point and something that was reflected with from a lot of my colleagues how to develop that infrastructure both for our persons with disabilities and our seniors I remember when I tore my ACL and I was on crutches I couldn't make it to the park

James Mickleright and funding is typically the deciding factor for that in grapevine texas i'm currently working on a master plan where they had a restriction of no new capital recommendations what they wanted was reinvigorating of their spaces so take our spaces that we have that may have decrepit features or maybe missing some trending things that are trending around the country unless we invigorate those spaces for the take care of what we have rather than building something new and then deferring maintenance on this in that process.

That's a tremendous question. So this is a system-wide master plan which is technically it shouldn't be as granular that one might think and the reason it's not as granular so it can be flexible. What I that every recommendation we make falls into three categories, short, middle, or long term. One to three years is short, four to six years is mid, and then there's long term, which is seven to ten. Then you may also have some ongoing recommendations. What I say about those recommendations is that throughout analysis, we relay why you should do these things, which sort of assists where you align in terms of priorities. We relay what priorities should be just based on our analysis, knowledge. So this document is something that's a living breathing document where