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HomeMy WebLinkAboutParks Board Minutes 04-05-2023 MINUTES APRIL 5, 2023 6:30PM IN PERSON, CITY HALL TYPE OF MEETING Parks and Recreation Board Monthly Meeting CHAIR Will Bertron SECRETARY Richard Cunningham filling in for Evan Mintz ATTENDEES Members Present: Will Bertron, Richard Cunningham, Amar Patel, Manish Agrawal, Stephen Damiani, Lulu Lopez, Laura Turley, Arlene Wells, Bret Bingham Staff: Susan White Council Liaison: John Montgomery VISITORS No visitors present, but comments from Randy Batsell read into the record I. Call to Order: Will Bertron called the meeting to order at 6:33 p.m. II. Citizen Comments: Randy Batsell (His written comments were read into the record by Susan White). Randy disagreed with a Parks & Recreation policy that limits tennis instructor’s time to 1.5 hours and wait times between court reservations and a limit on total reservations for tennis lessons. He said the rule also inconveniences West U citizens because instructors cannot reserve a court themselves. Randy encourages PRB to relax the rules on reservations. He feels that doing so would increase usage of the courts. III. Meeting Minutes: Manish Agrawal moved to approve the minutes of the February PRB meeting and Stephen Damiani seconded; approved unanimously. IV. Operational Analysis and Financial Sustainability Update: Susan White encouraged PRB members to attend the City Council meeting Monday, April 10, either in person or via Zoom. Farrell Buller from 110% will review statistics gathered so far. She will bring Council up to speed on the work her group is doing and present a preliminary cost analysis of the Parks and Recreation program. V. Friends Update: Will Bertron noted that the Park Lovers’ Ball grossed nearly $500,000.00 and netted more than $300,000.00. This is the largest success in the history of the Park Lovers’ event. Five more benches ($5k each) and a water fountain ($10k) are available. These items will be installed along the new Edloe Street Pathway. Planning is underway for the 2024 ball. Tentative date: Feb. 10. Exploring venue options. Co-chairs are Sarah Covington and Jordan Jewett. Fathers and Flashlights date set for November 4th and 5th. Chairs are Kelly Beth and Charlie Hapgood, Katie and Chris Turner, and Megan and Nick Nicodemus. Parks and Recreation Board Minutes page 2 Party on the Patio dates are June 2, 9, 16 and 23. All the bands have been booked. Mary Francis DuMay with Compass Real Estate is sponsoring the event for the third consecutive summer. VI. Council Update: John Montgomery, Mayor Pro Tem: There have been four Council meetings since our last PRB meeting. Infrastructure is a hot topic with City Council. Looking for ways to improve, especially with the likelihood of intense storms increasing. Drainage is a problem on the East and West sides of the city. Potential rainfall in major storms exceeds our capacity to remove the water. New East side drainage project will start along University Blvd. in the next two weeks or so. Budget approved. The street will be done one side at a time, so traffic will be restricted for most of this multi-year project. Two streets south of University will be done as well. West side drainage remediation will be more difficult. Council explored the possibility of installing a large drainage trunk line along the railroad right-of-way. We also need to install some vault storage, either at the Rec. Center under the parking lot, or in combination with vault storage under Colonial Park. This will be disruptive, but we must have water detention / retention to meet Harris County requirements. These are very expensive projects. Food waste recycling plans were discussed. Council selected preferred vendors: Zero Waste and Moonshot. City may also provide compost bins and pay 50 percent of the cost for a limited number of bins. City needs to rehabilitate one of its water wells. Council approved a connection to North Law Street. Residents there will soon be on West U’s water system (The north side of Law is the only West U street that, for infrastructure reasons, is on the City of Houston’s water system.) It will take some time to drill the water wells and construct the lines to connect them. Approval process (City of Houston) is one of the factors in delay of the project. Weslayan traffic signals: Had hoped to replace them in conjunction with new signals on Buffalo Speedway, but the cost went up 30 percent recently. Council voted to wait. Feasibility study to enclose Poor Farm Ditch: Budgeted up to $47,000 to survey the ditch. Some $20,000 went to evaluate the model to see if we could enclose the ditch without affecting drainage in the rest of the community. The answer is “no.” The study also showed how inadequate the ditch is due to lack of Harris County maintenance and the way work on the ditch was done in the past. In major flood (modeling) the ditch exceeds its banks for about two-thirds of the distance between Rice and University. Edloe Street becomes part of the drainage system. Residents on the east side of the ditch would also be affected by the overflow. Bottom line: Poor Farm Ditch is massively undersized to handle updated rainfall projections. Council authorized the engineering firm to spend the balance of the $47,000 Feasibility Study budget to tell us what we should do next. Give us design options. We need a concept in hand before approaching Harris County and the Flood Control District. Southside Place will be involved in the discussions. Improving the Poor Farm Ditch is a high priority item. Parks and Recreation Board Minutes page 3 Parks Update: Susan White, Parks & Recreation Director: Have received an updated Wier Park survey and have begun a conceptual design. Put out call for residents who would like to serve on the Wier Park User Group. Will be replacing padding under the artificial turf surface in the play area because it is hindering drainage. Will add drainage to the playground area. Several issues are increasing the cost. Susan also discussed fall zones around playground equipment. There are many considerations including accessibility requirements. Tennis and Pickleball: Questionnaires were sent to anyone with tennis memberships or who had made reservations in the last 15 months. One question was about expanding time for tennis lessons and the one-hour break time between them. Limited feedback from the survey noted that software was user-friendly. Most residents who responded to the survey said there was more availability for reservations. Walk-on use was not an issue since most people use the reservation service. One issue staff has been discussing is the tendency for residents to book courts for the maximum of 1.5 hours, but only using them for one hour. Staff recommends that current policy remains in place. Staff will revisit the issue later in the year. Will Breton noted that tennis is strong, despite predictions that the sport was waning. Pickleball and tennis are big here now. Colonial Park deck: Susan will ask City Council to reject the two bids we received to rebuild the deck. First vendor was $210,000 and the second one wanted more than $300,000. Looking at alternative solutions now, including working with other vendors to salvage half of the deck closest to West Point. The other half will have artificial turf and benches around the trees. Artificial turf technology has greatly improved, so it should last a good while. This is a cost-effective solution. Edloe Pathway: AT&T is investigating the recent problem with a severed fiberoptic cable that had not been properly installed. There have also been some delays with the fencing. Posts will go up first. VII. Amusements in Parks: Arlene Wells discussed guidelines for using inflatables (large amusement attractions for children to play on) in our parks. Susan noted that we don’t have an ordinance that addresses inflatables. Instead, special park rules were created about 15 years ago for Judson and Huffington parks. There are also large party rules and small party rules. Those rules have evolved. Judson may be a good place to allow inflatables. Need to readdress the issue. VIII. Historical Book: Richard Cunningham noted that he has contracted with Arcadia Publishing to help produce an “Images of America” book about West University Place in time for the centennial in 2024. The book will require at least 180 old photographs to tell the story of West U’s development. He asked for help locating longtime residents he might interview. John Montgomery noted that an older neighbor told him that where Studio 3 is now used to be a movie theater. During World War II, if you brought a metal coat hanger, you could watch a movie for free. She used to go every week with a coat hanger. Parks and Recreation Board Minutes page 4 It was mentioned that West U Elementary has a box of photos they were cleaning out. Steve noted that West U Elementary was a middle school until the 1960s. IX. Park Ambassador Reports & Remarks: Call for individual updates. - Colonial Park: Amar Patel (east), Stephan Damiani (pool) No issues to report. The grass looks nice after all the recent rain. - Huffington Park: Brett Bingham – Looks good. Hilly area on the west side was packed with people. - Jennie Hughes Park: Laura Turley – All looks good. People were enjoying the porch and the water feature. Two diseased trees were removed. - Judson Park: Richard Cunningham – Looks good. Wooden pole removed CenterPoint disconnected wires that are no longer needed so green pole will be scheduled for removal. - Recreation Center: Manish Agrawal – Looks great. Heavy use when pool events are going on, but the adjacent park is somewhat empty on weekends. - Whitt Johnson Park: Arlene Wells – All looks good. - Wier Park: Lulu Lopez – Looking great. The park is being heavily used. Will added that contractor is looking at big-picture issues in the park. They are coming up with ideas to see how much we can do within budget. Presentation in May. X. Motion to Adjourn: Laura Turley / Steve Damiani. Unanimous approval, 8:25 p.m.