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Park Board Minutes 2007 10-25-07 United City of Yorkville APPROVED Yorkville Parks and Recreation Department Board Meeting Administration Office - Riverfront Building, 201 W. Hydraulic Street, Yorkville, IL 60560 Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 7 pm Call to Order: Chris Rollins called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm, Roll Call: Chris Rollins, Ken Koch, Van Truman, Debbie Horaz, & Vickie Convey Kelly Sedgwick (arrived 7:05) Introduction of Guests, City Officials and Staff: Guest: Matt Schury from the Record Newspapers Joe Plocher, Ward 2 Alderman, City Council Liaison to Park Board Director of Parks and Recreation - David Mogle Superintendent of Parks - Scott Sleezer Superintendent of Recreation - Sue Swithin Park Planner - Laura Haake Public Comment: None Presentations: (done Approval of Minutes: David Mogle noted he'd like to bring back the minutes of the regular Park Board Meeting October 11th, 2007 to the next meeting, November 8 t with amendments which he would like to make. Chris Rollins made the motion to table the minutes and bring them back with changes to the next regular meeting. The motion was unanimously approved by voice vote. Bills Review: Vickie Convey raised a question, page 15, on the Waste Management Pota-Let's in Town Square and River Front parks. She wanted to know the time period the line item reflected. David Mogle stated that would be for payments for previous bills and that would be for a month and a half to a month. He also noted that bills get paid twice a month. Ken Koch stated that the price depended on how many units were in each park. Van Truman wanted to know if the Rotary Park and Beacher Park Pota-Let's were prorated for a partial month. Sue Swithin said 1 that everything is prorated, they get a monthly cost, and there is a certain fee for different types of units. She said that we're about 80 to 90 dollars for a regular unit. She noted next year that she would do a re-bid with Viola. With no other questions or comments regarding the cash analysis or bills list Chris Rollins made the motion to approve the cash analysis and bills list as submitted. Van Truman made the motion and Ken Koch seconded the motion. The motion was approved by roll call: Rollins- Yes; Truman-Yes; Sedgwick-Yes; Koch-Yes; Horaz-Yes; Vickie-Yes Old Business: Heartland Circle Revised Park Conceptual Plan David Mogle stated that there is a revised plan for the Heartland Circle Park. He said the staff has taken into consideration the public's input from the July 30th, 2007 Town Meeting and the August 3, 2007 park "meet and greet" both held at Heartland Circle. Taken into consideration were the concerns of residents regarding the distance of the playground from the street. Laura Haake and Scott Sleezer revised the original plan and Haake showed the revised plan and compared to the original plan. She explained what changes had been made. She noted that they moved the sidewalk to the outside and that pushed the playground in further. Now the playground is 130 feet from any resident's lot line. She pointed out that the revised plan still contained the same elements such as the playground, the basketball courts, picnic table area, concrete and skate park elements and some landscaping however the baseball diamond might be a future element. She said they added some trees to buffer some of the noise coming from the playground. Haake noted that the bid cost estimate is $147,845.70, with alternatives the estimate is $167,806.10. Our land cash amount for this park is $147,919.00. She noted that they are hoping for donations for items listed as alternates on the cost estimate. She said the shelter would be an alternate. Ken Koch said he didn't want to see the shelter become an alternate on future projects. Sleezer reminded the Board that it was the residents that said it was okay that the shelter be cut and they would they would help fund one later. Vickie Convey said she would like to see more evergreens by the basketball court to buffer noise. Haake said that they could put in a few more evergreens however didn't want to put too many because they didn't want to hide the courts. Mogle also reminded the Board 2 that it was the residents that wanted the basketball courts. Sleezer noted that they could look into putting in a few more evergreen trees. David Mogle asked the Board if it were okay to post this new park design on the website and go ahead with the bid. There was a unanimous approval by voice vote. 2007 Hometown Days Report Sue Swithin asked if there were any questions on the Budget Report that she drafted. Van Truman wanted to know about the beer and alcohol sales with Moose. Swithin said that the City took on that area/tent and they agreed to work with a non for profit group in town and scheduled them out to help serve the beer and in doing that they donated $2000 back to the organization. She said the expense we show for that was noted under the beer and alcohol sales. Swithin clarifies that we paid Moose out as an expense. Deb Horaz wanted to know if the payroll was noted on the report and Swithin stated that the report did not show those numbers. Truman asked if the expenses under the car show line item include the tee shirts, trophies and other car show expenses. Swithin said that those were recorded and the line item reflected those expenses. Fields of Westhaven Development Update David Mogle said that he brought this to the Park Board and had a brief discussion on how we thought it would be a good idea to merge parking lots. Another thought was to take the two 5 acre parcels and build a bigger gymnasium. He said this is an ongoing process and that he sent a letter to Dr. Engler however he hadn't gotten a response back. He wanted to know if building a larger gym would be something that the Board thought would be beneficial or having the 10 acres out there would be more important. Chris Rollins said that he thinks it's an excellent idea to build a larger gymnasium. He noted that if you look at the plat where the school and park is going to be we could easily give up the 5 acres, and the balance of green space available to the public to use wouldn't be impacted by that if we had use of the entire side and all of it's open space. That's the point he said of doing these things. He said that using our land cash contribution to build a larger gymnasium would be to our benefit as long as it's conducive to our usage. He said people would have to have a place to park and be able to access the gym without going through the school. Rollins said these things would need to be worked out and it can be done. He said dozens of schools do this 3 all over Illinois; both organizations can benefit and we won't have to lose open space. Rollins remains optimistic. Alderman Arden Plocher said that we should wait to see what happens in the next meeting and bring our ideas to the School Board. Rollins felt we are having all the right discussions and we hope to get people on the school realm to see it our way in combining this effort. Mogle noted that everyone is on board and in favor of expanding the gym. New Business: Bristol Bay Storm Water Management and Park David Mogle said there was an article in the Record a couple weeks ago that might have raised some questions and he said his information is somewhat limited because he had not been directly involved in the discussions. Mogle then stated what he knew. He said there is a, possibly because of the downturn in residential sales, a dispute between the developer and the landowner. The landowner still owns a large part of land south of Galena Road and this is a potential park. Dave explained, to new board members, that the land that they are talking about is up in Bristol Bay and about half of it is north of Galena Road and the other half is south of Galena Road. The plan for the land south of Galena road is for a major storm water management area that would include lakes and wetland areas. He said it would also be a natural area with water, fishing, community yards and trails. He noted the conceptual preliminary plan was put together showing to have soccer and tennis courts mostly on the north side. The advantage being, rather than having every subdivision coming in having to devote a large part of their space to detention retention there would be one central place that all drainage from surrounding areas could go to. All the developers would contribute in using that and in doing so we'd get much larger open water surface that might have some recreational value and there would be a buffer around it of open space that we could use as parkland. Ken Koch said that it is called a banking system where the subdivision contributes and they get a credit back for not building a detention in their subdivision. Mogle stated whether or not it has to do with the downturn in residential sales he is not sure however the issue is between the landowner who owns much of the land on the south side of Galena Road and the developers of Centex Homes. They've run into the issues in the annexation agreement. He said there is an effort to resolve this 4 however he could not make a comment on what those efforts were. Mogle said, however, the size of the park could shrink by a third. He doesn't know that it will happen for sure but he wanted the Park Board to be aware of what was going on. He also said that 2/3 of the 170 plus acres are protected and that the area in dispute is all south of Galena Road. 2008 YYBSA Agreement Preliminary Discussion David Mogle said that we are looking ahead and gave a draft of the new agreement out to board members to be reviewed. He said the staff had minor discussions and they were open to ideas and issues that some of the Board may have. Mogle noted that the draft included the rules and regulations of the parks, it defines the priorities of who are looked at first in who can use those fields first and breaks out a fee schedule for rentals to outside organizations and the final page is the application. He said all deadlines are and fees are listed. Chris Rollins wanted to hear from those who were involved in youth baseball and wanted to know what they had to say about what was not working well. Ken Koch said that in the future he felt that we should not trade services and gives the example of the mounds. He felt it was a fair trade for the building and electricity however now the mounds are not holding up. Van Truman said we would dispute that because we never wanted mounds. He said these fields are to be multipurpose fields and we cannot have permanent mounds. Truman said this agreement received a huge overhaul and he feels that it's solid now. Mogle said there was one issue that came up and that was that we need to have the ability to take a field or two and not schedule them. We need fields we can hold open for the public. Scott Sleezer said that they had gotten phone calls from the general public who wanted to know where they can take their kids to play. Koch would like to see the fields listed in the agreement such as show rental only fields for example. He thought that we could make it mandatory for private parties and for tournaments to obtain a permit to use the parks that way we could regulate who is suppose to be using the parks. Mogle said is that we wanted to provide all the field maintenance. There is a large amount of money that is spent on the maintenance of fields. Sleezer thought that we should no longer waive fees or look at charging a certain lump some fee or charge a fee per child and use those monies to maintain the fields. Rollins said that this is a market- 5 based thing. We can find out what others are charging for tournaments and such related activities. Sue Swithin brought up three recommendations to the Board. First she thought the April 1St to July 31St date isn't long enough. Swithin said that she had YYBSA wanting to use the fields through the fall. She felt we should extend it through to November 1St. Second she said within our policy we'll need a cut off date. There should be a date where reservations can no longer be made. Thirdly she thought there could be a possibility to schedule tournaments earlier. She said now is when they are scheduling tournaments for next year. Van said that we should just black out dates for tournament play for the future. That way we're not waiting on them to determine their dates. Swithin said that there is an attachment to the athletic fee schedule that's a tournament fee. A recommendation was given and was mentioned several times from those holding tournaments that $400 could be raised, it could go hirer, and those groups would prefer to have a higher fee but do field prep for that entire field. Swithin felt that the City should hire someone part time to maintain the fields throughout the tournaments. Koch felt that we could possibly get an intern. Swithin felt that charging $800 to $900 for a weekend tournament could cover our maintenance costs. Rollins said that we needed to find out what it would take to accommodate people. We need to find out what it will cost to offer the level of service that they expect. Services include lighting, concessions, and staffing. It would require careful planning and support. He felt it would be to our benefit to have our own staff do these things. Reports: Director Report YMCA Report Dave Mogle reported that the director, Andrew, from the YMCA was at the meeting on Tuesday just to ask to come before the council and he is actually going to go to the EDC meeting on the 20th of November, which means he will be making a presentation to the City Council on November 27th HOOVER Dave Mogle attended the Hoover Property meeting with representatives from the Forest Preserve District, and Ken Koch. He noted that they have a wide range of opinions however he said that he felt the meeting was very cordial. He said Jason, the director, started 6 out by making the same statement that he made when we met with the Mayor that some of their board members felt strongly that the City should have been more involved with the purchase of the final piece of land. However between the board members one was very positive and the other Forest Preserve District board member wasn't pessimistic, Mogle stated. Ken Koch said that he got a different feel and he felt that they thought that we left them hanging and that the City needed to put up more money toward the cost of the purchase of the final parcel. Rollins said that the City helped on the front end with our money, which made it possible to contract with Corlands to hold the land. Koch felt that they felt like we aren't going to hold up on our part of the agreement. Rollins stated that many parts of the agreement haven't come to pass so how could they legitimately make that statement. Koch also reported that they wanted the City to come up with a budget for the sewers. They want to see a timeline and plan of infrastructure of what we are planning to do. Rollins said that the first thing that has to be decided is what plan to take and put into budget the plan. When and where it is appropriate we will do these things he stated. Koch says we need to have some kind of timeline to show what the City was doing before the County came into this. It would show that we've been keeping our part of the agreement. Alderman Plocher said we might have to sit our attorney down and show them this is what you signed. We don't want to force them to read their agreement we want them to agree on the agreement. Rollins said that now we have to fulfill our obligation to bring City services, annexation and lease the property. No one can say that we aren't going to do these things. He noted we are now in a position to annex the property in accordance to the agreement. Rollins said everything is spelled out in the agreement and we need to defend what it says. Our expectations are still the same and we need to find a meaningful common ground. Mogle said that both parties were willing to work things out with us. They want to look at the conceptual plan and they want to see Laura's plan again. He felt that the conceptual plan is impressive and it shows a lot of thought on both sides. The next meeting will be November 13th Mogle said the next step will to bring this back on the November gen for further discussion. 7 Parks Report - none Recreation Report - none Additional Business: Future Meeting Schedule & Agenda items Board agrees that the second meeting in November will be on the 29tH It will be the following Thursday after Thanks Giving. Van Truman mentioned that he would like to see, in the future, holding a large destination type event. Alderman Plocher suggested perhaps an event such as free style motor cross. Truman thought that we should have some kind of signature event. Sue Swithin said she could research what the trend is. Deb Horaz mentioned that the Mayor Burd met with Oswego's mayor and it was in the paper about doing a joint park. She said that Mayor Burd wanted to do a city garden with vegetables however it is not clear on where the parcel will be. Horaz said that it is in the works and Mayor Burd wanted us to know about it. Adjournment: Chris Rollins entertains a motion to adjourn the meeting at 9:50 PM. Kelly Sedgwick makes the motion and Deb Horaz seconded the motion to adjourn the meeting. The Motion was unanimously approved by voice vote and meeting was adjourned at 9:50 PM. Next Meeting: November 8th, 2007 Minutes respectfully submitted by Jamie Cheatham, Minute Taker 8