Soldotna: Parks + Recreation Advisory Board Meeting - Oct 1, 2026

Zoomed into that, huh? Yeah, they got new toys. So yeah, it's like auto-tracking thing. I move a lot.

It can't find me when I talk, which is kind of nice. It like spins around a couple times. Terrifying. Oh yeah.

Yeah, I wonder if it has like a parameter here or something. I don't know, I don't find it though.

Been called and emailed, but you didn't show up. Yes, it'll be pretty annoying. We don't have quorum, then we have to reschedule. Technically, we just—. We don't talk about anything, we just go home.

But I know Penny and Denise, they will be here at 3:32, right?

I've been home part of this week, says Hannah. We've been taking turns because our kid has been sick. Very sick, like 104 point something fever, cough, and finally getting back to it. But Hannah's like, all right, what do you have going on today? Okay, I can stay.

Oh, you buy your pee means tomorrow? Okay.

You just get down the middle of the tree and I see them. Birds is on Saturday. I think I said last week. Where they at? Where they at this year?

No. Okay. Yes, they've been not hosting and not traveling too far. Good time to go hang out in Seward right now.

They have the Turf Tensor now. Yeah, but they've overfilled it with the beads and it is crazy. Like when the ball bounces, like a 6-foot-tall spray of those black beads erupts and they're not distributed correctly. They also installed the goals incorrectly where like they're not at the yellow touchline and the goal line. If they're like 7 inches behind where the line is.

So like the goal doesn't line up with where the goal line is. No, it's like in practice it's super weird because like you're there in a game and you have to like go explicitly talk to the ref and say, okay, are you gonna call if it crosses the yellow line or are you gonna call it if it goes into the goal? Like, oh, that's weird. And it was somebody just made a mistake, they put them on their own wall. This is where this all went.

I'm so glad our mistakes are all done.

Yeah, that was a stressful time. Yeah, yeah, painting the turf and also the, you know, lines in the wood for the field house was like, oh man, it was just on us. It's like, we cannot screw this up. We didn't paint it, but like, right, to lay it out and stuff, like, we get one chance. Yeah, otherwise we get sued and nobody knows what's a goal or not a goal.

Yeah. No, it was weird. I remember growing up, we went there for the first time, like, with one of the first matches that they hosted. It's like, this is weird. We were there before the track was even done.

Like, the track was still all under construction, but the turf was in. It was miserable down there this spring when you guys went down there. It was, it wasn't too miserable. We were there, what, last, last Thursday? It wasn't nice, but it wasn't as bad as it could be.

Definitely got a little wet.

Tom gave me the, the pro tip on how to come in through the back way, through the cemetery, vehicle. So we were going to the truck in between game and halftime, warming up.

You guys win the Global? Yeah, that your team shot 28, what you guys shot? Yeah, we shot like a whole—. We did not do good. I had to give Ryan a hard time.

She missed all the free throws from the Mulligans. Like, come on, man, paid $30 for one Mulligan. We didn't pay—. We didn't get any Mulligans, so it's probably why we shot 40. That's the thing with those tournaments, you got to pay for all the tchotchkes.

Yeah, cheat code, you can't. The string is what really— the string takes a lot of strokes off because we, we used it probably 5 or 6 times for Yeah, a little bit. One-footers, you just cut it off. We did the— we started on hole 3, and that's where that house is over there. And they all came, and there was like all— but they're having a party apparently, and they all came out onto the balcony and like, like, yeah, like cheering us on.

And we were the first dudes to tee off. Took a 9 on that hole because we—. This is like all of our drives were just shanked. It's like, oh, okay. That's, uh, Johnny's house.

Is it? Yeah, yeah, they all came out and were cheering us on. I was like, oh man, we didn't— and we didn't hit any balls in the rain, we didn't do anything, we just were like, we got this, and we did not have it. We did fine after that, but that first hole killed us. We started on 6 and we didn't get on the green, but we made par there, and we parred 7.

I was really hoping we'd get a birdie on 7. We birdied everything else except for 3 where we made Eagle. I heard some yelling. That's a eagle, baby! I heard somebody yelling there.

That was the guys behind. Guys behind you? Yeah, they're pretty stoked. Yeah, we did not see another group the whole time. We started and there was a group behind us, and then we just played our pace and no one ever got close behind us, and no one was ever in front of us.

And we finished first. We got log jammed. That's what we figured. We were moving fast from 7 all the way around to, 3, and everything was all— everybody was stacked up on par 5. So we got 3, and there was 3 teams waiting to tee off.

Yeah, that was nice. We got that surge, and we didn't have to slow down or wait. Or I'm— we're not very good, so we were expecting a team behind us like, oh yeah, you guys played through us. It's about ready to start hitting balls back at the team behind us because they kept hitting into us, and they had a couple that were pretty tuned up. Yeah, and I was getting real tired of listening to them.

Was it the dudes with the music that were walking? No, it was—. I didn't recognize him. It was, uh, older guy and then a guy about my age and a lady. And, and the lady kept talking a bunch of smack.

I was like, what, what did I do to you? I've never even met you. Anyway, they kept rolling balls up on us, and I'm like, I'm not down with that in the dark. No, we— I legit almost got hit. It was probably like I know.

Meanwhile, we got, you know, we got 12 people in front of us where we can't go anywhere. It's like, what do you want us to do? Uh, Penny's on her way. That gives us a quorum. Okay.

Denise is actually—. Is excused. She's out in Maine right now. So if you guys are cool with waiting a few minutes—. This is a pretty short agenda.

I don't imagine it'll take too long. Do we have any Zoomers? Should we analysis. This pause—. Carrie Nelson listening.

She, I think, was back to the fact—. I just—. Another goalball this weekend. I don't know who that one benefits. It's, uh, Terence Um, oh, the KPA?

Yeah, yeah, she used to do hers in Kenai, but she moved it over this year.

There was one out of Plenty River, I think, last week, the same night Rusty had his.

Yeah, they're fun. Ryan was trying to talk me into playing again with him and Coral this weekend. I was like, one's good enough. Coral's really why we win that thing every year. She's solid.

Lee was trying really hard to carry our team. I was—. He had like a, like a 60-foot putt, and then that was kind of the highlight we had. I mean, we all hit something good. It is very satisfying when you're in the dark and you just lace one nice.

It's like you see the sparks on your driver. Yeah, they got some really cool pictures on 6 a couple years ago when the Northern Lights were out. And it was clear. It was like, you know, blues and greens and purples. And at night, when you take an iPhone photo, it's got a long exposure.

So I was taking pictures while we were teeing off, and it's like a tracer. Yeah, with the Northern Lights in the background. Very cool. Sent it to Rustin for some marketing material. Yeah, it is.

That's cool.

Yeah. I don't know, I was trying to— obviously I'm nosy, so like, how much you guys make for this? What's your overhead? Like, how you— is this like a worthwhile fundraiser to do? Seems like it is, but obviously they do pretty well, and it's their, their main fundraiser, and it's minimum 400 team.

Yes. And the sponsored teams are 500, I think. Yeah. And they don't pay much out for prizes. We got a $75 gift card to Echo Lake each.

I didn't even know what the prize was. So We didn't even get our money back. Yeah, to win it. I literally thought about taking it. No, it's fine.

So the problems are just—. It hurt. At least we're showing it after. That's hate risen money. Quick, easy, dirty.

That's the worst part. I sports—. We do those candy bar settlement ones. That's what we've been doing.

Topping them up with soapy wrapping paper. Yeah, that was the last one. They still do those. I just got one from wrapping paper. We did, uh, last spring for soccer we sold, uh, what were they, like hanging planters from Trinity Garden.

That was pretty successful. And we're supposed to here, yeah, November I think, we're supposed to sell poinsettias.

Basically he sells it to us at cost and then charge what he would normally charge, and it lets us pocket the difference, which is really nice. Well, we sold it anyway. We're gonna do the bingo thing again. They want to do that plant bingo again because there's like 90 people that came to that. Yeah, we made just as much money from the bingo night as we did from the actual sales.

Yeah, it was fun too. I had a good time. Do you have—. Sterling was the MC on the mic, and he was just roasting people in the audience the whole time. It was pretty funny.

We gotta get down. Yeah. I think that would help. And if we choose a different avenue, we just push it out into the sand. Yeah, the door-to-door raffle ticket wrapping paper candy bar sales was interesting as a 100-pound high school athlete.

All these old guys are like, don't you want to go inside? Like, I really don't. If you want to buy something, that's great. If not, I'm going home. I live close to the subway.

I get my door knocked on all the time. Yeah, it's bad. I don't mind. I usually know the kids. They'll open it like, "Dolphin, come in here.

This is my house." They started now sending seniors out, so I feel really bad when they, they have a hard time getting to the stairs. I want to go out and get my "Do Not Disturb" sign and grab it before they get up there. No soliciting. Yeah. No.

Yeah, we live there and it's right on Vine and it's just hard to—. Hard to open to. It's like, if you're the first to ask, I'm not buying from more than one person. But yeah, whether it's because we get hit up for everything— Girl Scout cookies, Stars cards, cards, cards, everything. That's what I told Garrett last year when he was selling Stars cards for football.

Like, go right now. Yeah. Like before the other 120 kids knock on every single one of these doors. Yeah. So you guys live over there too?

Well, Hannah just texted me like, don't be surprised if you come home and we got blocked. I was like, what does that even mean? It's the KCHS marching band is doing something. Yeah, Flamingo. Yeah, nothing.

Yeah, okay, like, so what do we do? Like, do we owe money? Do we have to pass it? Do I have to pass it on? I don't think so.

I have no idea what we're supposed to do. I think somebody pays the block. Like, you can block somebody. Oh, someone else paid. You can pay somebody.

Interesting. Because we got flocked at the field house last year and we were like, we'd have to open our purchase order to flock the next group. Yeah. Like, can I pay? Can I have more space?

We'll see. It is, we do get like kind of torn because it's like, why coach it so high? But all Hannah's kids are all KC Chess kids. She's over there at Mountain View, so we get double dipped a lot. That's okay.

I see Krista Arthur's Cross Country Runners out like at the banquets doing setup and tear down. Oh yeah, I know, and it's $400 each time. There was a group that for a while was doing, um, like around Easter you could pay them to come to your house, like, like give you eggs, like hide them in your yard. Interesting. Um, but I did that.

That's a piece of my beard. I haven't figured out the logistics, but I keep pitching like a Valentine's weekend thing where like you drop your kids off with us and we watch them, and then somebody drives you around, takes you on a little like couple multi-stage date, and then you come back and we'll pick up your kids and take you home. And I don't know, the logistics are probably hard to do that, but it sounds like a great idea. It sounds like— even just the babysitting aspect. I see Bulldogs do that.

They do like a, like a day camp thing for kids, like air day day or something. Yeah. If you want to rent up the old house, it's $129. Yeah, I was looking at the price changes. I just had to my house delivered.

I don't know why my house, but on my front porch as I was leaving, the dude was dropping like 10 boxes full of those fold-out goals for us to use for our little 3v3 thing because they originally just set all the nets first. And I got this box and it's like this big. This must be like 7 sets of goals in here. Like, this is not right. I open it, it's all the— just the nets packaged separately.

I was like, did someone make a mistake and order nets, not goals? And they finally showed up today, which means I get to put them together. Yeah, I sold it.

Okay, can you pull up— no, probably not. Facebook? Yeah. Okay. What page in particular?

Parks. No, I was just going to show you guys the article that we got highlighted in the National Recreation and Parks Association magazine, which goes to every parks person in this nation. I saw— I saw that.

Good. Yeah, we got an award there too. Those are my kids. Um, that was like Industry Appreciation Day. We got for perseverance.

Oh yeah, that one's right here. Perseverance. Yeah, like not— don't give up, don't give up. You only tried for 30 years. I don't know, it's funny because it's a picture of the field house that's going to hang in the field.

Yeah, this one, if you click on any one of those, um, yeah, this magazine is— yeah, went out to everybody in the nation. Cool. Everybody that subscribes. Every, every American. I mean, every like person like—.

I just came back from the East Coast. Where was it? Uh, over there. Oh good. Yeah, I need to be— that magazine got compared to like Tunnel Diggers RS magazine, and I was like, this is way more important than—.

Yeah, there are some very specialty niche magazines out there.

All right, let's do it.

Who sat here last time? Incredibly tall.

Okay, we would like to call the board— October 1st, 2026 meeting of the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Will the Parks and Rec admin assistant please call the roll?

Steve Peel has an excuse absence. Fonda? Present. Queen? Present.

Parker? Present. Dolphin. Present. I do not see Scudder or Via online.

I'm going to assume that they're absent. No more. Thank you. Um, is there a motion to approve the agenda as it sits here? I move to approve the agenda.

Is there a second? I second. No objections. Uh, the agenda is approved. Joseph, do I remember 3 means to approve the minutes from our June 25th, 2026 regular meeting.

Is there a motion to approve the June 25th, 2026 minutes? I move to approve—. Excuse me—. I move to approve the, um, June 25th, 2026 regular meeting minutes. Is there a second?

I second. No objections. Our meeting minutes are approved. Brings us to item 4, which is Public comments and presentations. Looks like we have nothing scheduled.

Bring us to our action items. First action item is our fee schedule amendment. Um, is there a motion to bring this to discussion? An example if there's somebody that needs it. Okay, I move, uh, item fee schedule.

The Soldaten of Parks and Recreation Advisory Board supports the fee amendment as presented and recommends City Council officially amend the Municipal fee schedule. Do you second? I second. Okay, and we have the report from staff.

All right, I'm going to defer this over to Jen. Um, no, fee schedule is M— sorry. Um, okay, so we have come full circle. We've come a full year on running the field house. There are a couple of fees that weren't quite making sense, um, in practice.

And through chatting with Emily and her team, there are only a couple of these that are actually really changing. Um, the rest of the changes that are proposed in here are in response to the citywide tax increase.

Um, and I can go more into detail on that. Most of it's laid out in the memo. Do you want to do anything more than that? Yeah, maybe just highlight the, the 2 or 3 specific ones. Yeah, um, so when we first put this fee schedule together, we had anticipated the turf rental, uh, making that just a lower price.

I think we talked about it in a work session, how, you know, a basketball team versus a soccer team and how big is their playing surface, you know, in order to play a game. Um, so we made that turf be a little bit less. Well, then when we started renting turf, we had a lot of organizations that were interested in renting a third of the turf, and a third of the turf is $50, half of the turf is $60, and two-thirds of the turf should be, you know, $100 at 50 and 50, um, which is the same rate as our full turf, which is $100. So it got a little bit confusing in there. We had some people that felt like they were being overcharged because they were paying the full turf price for only getting 2 courts.

Um, I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but basically we are proposing that this— we just realign the rate of the facility space with what our court rates are. Um, and we had floated this by organizations last year when we were running into these issues, and most people understood why we would do this. Uh, batting cage, another one Everybody kind of runs their batting cages a little differently. We were doing a, a per-person admission to the batting cage, and it wasn't really making sense because you need 2 people to use the batting cage. So we were kind of running into issues with that, um, who has to pay, who doesn't have to pay.

And we decided that renting it out at an hourly rate would make more sense. It's what most other facilities are doing. It also helps us not have additional memberships And, um, yeah, it's easier to administer for our staff as well as for the community to understand it. And then you'll, you'll look at the fee schedule on the next few pages. It looks like every single fee is changing.

Really, it's just a tax increase. A few things that we, we've chosen to alter differently, I guess, would be our admission for our sleep rentals. Our whole estate and our drop-in fees for the Field House. Those numbers being even for the customer helps us not give as much change, and it also helps, you know, the community members coming in just be able to hand over a $5 or a $10 and not have to take ones home with them. The rest of them we've chosen to, instead of having our our total fee be a flat amount, we've made our base be a flat amount.

So now all of our fees are that straight dollar amount, just added onto it. I hope that was confusing. All right, well, this is now open to discussion by the Parks and Recreation Board. Are there any board member comments?

I just wanted to—. I just wanted to— this all starts January 26th, correct? Correct. Yep. After this clears this board, it will go on.

Okay.

You know, this makes sense to me to do flat dollar amounts. I remember scratching for how many quarters I need to go twice, so it makes sense, especially with, with, um, as many of the patrons being youth and teens, it makes sense. Um, you can have your mom hand you a $5 and not have to worry about change. Any further discussion?

With no further discussion, we can call for the vote. Um, Queen? Yes. Baba? Yes.

Parker? Yes. Dolphin? Yes. I do not see chatter nor yes, no.

Your motion passes.

Excellent. That brings us to our second action item, which is action item B, the Sedona Community Memorial Park policy. Uh, is there a motion to bring this to the board?

I motion to bring the Solana Community Memorial Park policy to the board. Second. I'll second. Thank you. Do we have the report from staff?

Yeah, Jen Anderson has been working on this, so I'll let her kind of explain where we're at.

Thank you. We actually included some pictures of the cemetery So we have kind of had an ongoing conversation with our groundskeeping staff, our lawn crew, and right now it's getting a little hard for them to mow and to weed whack around some of the graves because there are an accumulation of items of memorial status, and in the park policy right now, in our Memorial Park policy, it does kind of prohibit some of these items, especially the glass and ceramic things that would be, you know, detrimental to have particulate matter in the lawn, as well as some of the rocks and things like that to place. It makes it again hard for the groundskeeping to do their job throughout the year. Throughout the summer, it is okay, as Park Policy states, to have flowers and things like that, but there is room for us to do a clean sweep. And so we, in anticipation of having an upcoming Memorial Park cleanup day, which is in 2 weeks, we wanted to also think about how is it easier for our for the crew to interpret the park policy as well as for members of the community when they are signing this agreement to have a reservation, as well as their families to understand what's allowed and what's not allowed.

Currently within our policy, what's not allowed and what's allowed is seen in 5 different places, and the policy is pretty long. It's about 18 pages. And so because of that, we wanted to consolidate it and make it into a more standardized format. We're not changing what the policy says, we're just changing how it reads. And so really the only change is on page 7 of the policy, is page 20 of your packet.

Um, what we go into is we just talk about when the removal of the decorations and what we may remove, which is the decorative items, flowers or plants. Um, and basically when there's plastic flowers, um, over the course of a few extreme weather events, they become pretty dinged up, and then natural flowers obviously die. Um, and then some of the prohibited and abandoned items. Um, and then we, we tried to make it really clear what is allowed, and, um, and just so when we're reading it, it's all in one place. And that is the only thing— we're not changing anything that the policy says, we're just changing the format.

And if you do wish to make any changes to what the policy says, it would have to go before council, because ultimately this policy is what is approved by a city council. So it wouldn't happen today if there were any changes It was— this is fairly clerical in nature. Thank you. Okay, um, this item is now up for discussion by the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Are there any board member comments?

I, I think we do a really great job over there. Um, is there an issue though with the, the green around the headstones? Like, I see that that's not And I, and people walk on it, so I don't know how you would be able to maintain that to be a really deep, rough area where people had lots of grass growing. I know it's different here. And I just looked at a memorial place in Massachusetts to see if I could find my grandmother, but I couldn't.

And they had really nice grass, but Alaska is different and it's really different to keep that maintain that maintenance.

Because I think we have really great areas. And I do like the rocks in front of them, but I agree with you. They, they can't keep on putting rocks there and having people not trip and other things. So those are my 2 concerns, but I think it's a beautiful cemetery. I really do.

Yeah, just I guess highlighting the grass. I think these are spring photos, but typically it takes a couple years for after, um, somebody's buried for us to fill in that with, uh, with dirt and seed and get that growing. Um, our lawn crew and one of our maintenance guys, Owen Malone, has really upped our game as far as lawn care this year and cemetery. For the past couple years, it's been hit pretty hard in the winter with a lot of frost and, and, uh, kind of death of a lot of our grass. It looked a lot like that photo.

And if you go out there right now, it's pretty lush. It's probably the best it's looked in years. Um, and we've been putting a lot of energy into that, into that space, um, to try to make it, uh, all pretty uniform.

I have a question. Is the—. The memorial park is not fenced in any way, correct? Correct. So moose do come and go.

I know my own gardens in my yard, I tend to get lazy and I'll leave out my little decorations and I see those knocked over. Have we had trouble with the moose or anything other than— I mean, we live in their world, right? But it seems like it would be a problem. I mean, just kind of an extra issue to have them in there knocking all that stuff over. Yeah, we typically always have at least one moose that lives in that neighborhood.

But as far as messing with people's stuff, I haven't really seen that much of an issue. I mean, they will try to eat some of our plants and stuff. But And that's why a lot of the trees actually in the park are still caged with the moose fencing, because they, they'll eat them up if they can.

Any other discussion?

If there's no further discussion, we can call for a vote. And I forgot to say one thing, is that we did do an outreach. We inventoried all of the grave sites, and anything that had an accumulation of memorial items, we made specific phone calls to those families of we had contact information for to let them know that we were planning on this kind of comprehensive cleanup, and we gave them a 3-week window to gather their belongings. So this—. It won't be— hopefully this won't be a surprise and it won't be hurtful when we do this in 2 weeks.

Okay, we'll start with that. Um, I will call for a vote again.

Um, do you still have an excused absent, Shelton? Yes. Queen. Yes. Baba.

Yes. And Hawker. Yes. I still do not see Scudder via online or in person. Your motion passed.

Thank you. Bring us to item number 6, which are our reports, which takes us to our Parks and Recreation Director report.

Um, all right, so in the packet we've got a little highlight of the past few months. Um, As you guys know, summer is always crazy for us in the community, and we just kind of highlighted a variety of events that happen specifically at Kalanak Creek. Um, just kind of highlighting the—. I guess there's some rink footage in that too that got showed. Um, we, we are more than just Wednesday in the Park with the 11 AM concerts.

We're doing river runs and, um, picnic and family fun days, and seems like every weekend We even had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the park this year. Wow. Keeps us busy. Few notes, you know, we are using some software called PlacerEye AI, which kind of helps us gauge attendance for some of these events that don't have— that are more park-related. You don't have like a one front door where you can count people coming in and going.

So There's some software that you can use where we think we estimated about almost 9,000 people every Wednesday in the park, over 200,000 for the summer. So a lot of humans.

And then summer ice was good. You know, we've been talking about summer ice for many years. We were able to put ice in again late June so they could skate for 4 chicken pies. We had 3 or 4 different camps that were all very well attended. We heard from multiple families that were very excited that they could stay and not have to pay for hotel rooms or driving up to Anchorage for a week-long camp for their kids.

So it is doing exactly what we hoped, allowing our families to stay home, save a dollar, and encouraging some families from the Valley or Anchorage to come down. And, and stay in our community in the summer. Um, so that was very popular. Uh, Centennial and, uh, Swiftwater Rotary Park's all super busy. Uh, the Red Run, um, well, for us was nice that it was only kind of one weekend.

Um, and so the amount of people visiting us was more manageable. Last year when it was 3 weeks long, that was very hard for us because just never left. Um, but yeah, we had, yeah, kind of record numbers of people everywhere. And, um, reports from our campground hosts, uh, pretty chill summer as far as weird violence and callouts to the cops. We're always calling the cops on something, but, um, as far as it was kind of a normal, um, normal summer But nothing extra crazy, which was nice.

We're always having parking issues, as you guys know. We've solved some parking issues at Solano Creek Park where we blocked off a road for load-in, load-out for the vendors. But we're still continuing to battle people parking wherever they want and blocking traffic. And so we've added more signage, more cones, and painted more areas that are no parking. If you live near West Reout, you noticed this summer a lot more people parking past the elementary school down in the neighborhood so they could access fishing through the woods there, and that has become more and more of a problem that we're trying to address.

Some of that land is DNR land, but still, like, we had reports of people, yeah, parking in people's driveways and you know, going to the bathroom in front of their house and stuff. That was pretty, pretty frustrating. So we're continuing to work on that. As far as other, other important stuff that we've been up to, just to keep you guys in the loop, we are working on a master plan for the 200-acre recreation property at the Centennial Fieldhouse ice rink. So that will, you know, hopefully through a community process, right, we'll be able to figure out what's the next 20 to 30 years that we want for the Little League fields, for the rodeograms, for the field house, for, you know, we're going to do like hang gliders or slip and slides or whatever.

So that will go out soon, and that process will take probably a year of community meetings and gathering information, and you guys will be very involved in that process, um, probably starting in January and going through the summer. So that'll be a big focus of the, the advisory board for the next year. Um, let's see, park signs— you guys talked about that, uh, last meeting that I wasn't able to attend, but we're making some progress on that. We've got some locations and we're starting to fabricate and get material together for that. Not sure if they will make it into the ground this fall, but definitely in the spring we'll be doing that.

What else we got? Rotary Park. This is one that we've talked about periodically. Rotary Park was built in 1997. It's beyond its life.

It's also— the bank has eroded so much that it's It's, yeah, it's a problem. Not only the fishing platforms and whatnot, but also the bank erosion. So we're working with a variety of user groups like the Watershed Forum, Trout Unlimited, the Rotary Club itself, Fish and Wildlife, a bunch of, a bunch of people that love protecting the banks. We're trying to put together some grants to fund some rehab there. So that'll be another fun project for us to kind of play around with.

Some of you guys remember me and McKaylin are part of the Alaska Recreation and Parks Association as board members. There's a conference every year that we will go to. We went to Wrangell past couple years, went to Valdez last year. We hosted it about 6 years ago. This year it was in Kenai.

That was great. So we had I think 50 parks professionals from all over the state, from Fairbanks and Sitka, all the way down to, you know, Seward, Salina, Kenai. And yeah, great 3 days of education and, you know, leadership opportunities and mentoring opportunities and networking. And during that, we gave out awards, and Kaylin Randall received the New Professional Award, which is basically goes to the, the person that's, uh, you know, the up-and-coming, um, uh, sorry, I want to say words that I probably shouldn't say out loud. Um, just kind of the all-star employee that's, uh, that's about ready to take over the world.

And, and so that was very cool that one of our own got that. Um, Refrigeration. So you guys know we love to talk about a refrigeration system at the ice rink. Um, that is also going out. Um, that'll be a—.

The design work will happen soon. The paperwork and the process for that bid will, um, is in the works, and that will hit the streets and people bid on it, whatever. Um, so we'll start designing that this winter. And hopefully have, have a completed design, hopefully by the spring, so we can figure out how to budget for it. So that is as far as the system itself.

We've got—. We've put a lot of bannies onto it. We've been having a lot of issues this year. Most of them have been computer program issues. The software that helps run some of that is not working correctly, and we're kind of chasing, chasing gremlins and trying to make that work.

But we have, uh, we've almost lost ice, um, at least once if not twice, that order. Um, so that was kind of scary. We, we did have to cancel 4 sheets of ice last Friday as we emergently rebuilt a compressor, um, on Friday to try to fix a bug. Um, we were able to fix it, but we didn't find the bug. But we put it back together and it worked, so that's great.

But I do know that our crew is struggling. Trevor Baldwin specifically, who's our operations supervisor, he's— every day his eyes look very tired. So we are running, things are going as well as possible. We've got a lot of backup plans, we're doing everything we can, but it is becoming a challenge. And parts, you know, we had some widget break.

They don't even make them anymore. We found some on eBay, ordered them. So it's, it's just also getting pieces and parts for that system is, is some of the hard part.

Fieldhouse storage, talked about this before. That just— the biz just came in yesterday for the construction of storage facility on the north side of the field house. So basically outside of the garage door on that side of the building, there'll be enough storage to house both the hardwood and the turf, um, along with the basketball hoops and soccer nets and whatever, so we can protect our investment a little bit better and free up a ton of usable space, um, down around the, uh, the field, uh, for spectators and, and user groups to, to use. So just clean up that whole space Um, those came back, um, under budget, which is great. Um, they don't have a winner yet.

They're still doing their due diligence to figure out exactly what the plan is. But, um, we'll break ground this spring and it will be done by next fall. Um, so by the end of next summer, hopefully that building—. It'll look the same, same product. Um, you won't even notice that it's something different.

And I think that concludes my report.

All right, thank you. Any questions for Joel?

All right, takes us to our next report, which is from the board chair, which is me. And I don't have a lot to report, um, as we are kind of winding down the summer and working ahead towards the winter. Um, I spent most of my time outside and I'm about to switch to spend most of my time inside, but it's going to be the field house or gyms around. Um, and I'm excited. Obviously, uh, the Parks and Rec crews do a fantastic job with all of our parks.

Um, I live very close to the, uh, cemetery, and just the amount of times I saw people out there just constantly working on the flower arrangements and landscaping and things like that, it was like, I felt like I was seeing people there working every day to keep it beautiful. So, um, just huge shout out to everybody. Also, huge shout out to our award winner over here Nicely done. Um, and we just got to keep on trucking. I love coming to these meetings because it always opens my eyes to all the things that are happening that I'm not aware of, which is a lot.

It feels like here in the city of Soldano, we are constantly making moves and doing things. So that's all I have to report, which moves us on to our city council member, which I don't think we have this evening, which takes us to public comments.

I don't think we have any, uh, either.

Um, which brings us all the way to the end, which are our board member comments. So that would be us. Do we have any comments for the board?

Um, first of all, again, thank you everyone. It takes all of us and many, many more to, um, make things look so amazing. I think Sodha looked amazing. I'm always proud when family, friends come to Silvana. Um, I think our parks are our gym, really our gym, and, um, and they believe it too.

So, um, I did have a question as far as on the 8th of October, is there a, a meeting or a field house event coming up? Sorry, I was gonna tell you guys, yeah, you please check your emails if you haven't. Thank you. Um, You guys are invited from 4 PM to 6 PM to the Field House. You should have gotten an email from Laura Reiner, and that was probably sent out maybe in the past week.

And so from 4 to 6 at the Field House on the 8th, next Thursday evening, you're invited. We're doing an employee conference throughout the day, but we're hoping that all our boards and commissioners can join us for a meeting at the night. Wonderful, thank you.

So I'd like to say thank you for calling me. I played a lot and played hard today with your little girl, Emma. Um, and I'm really impressed with all the things that you are doing this summer because it seems like it's more than— I mean, you do a lot every year, but it just seems like more stuff is happening. And, and I, I see that you're following it and that the fact that you're, you know, having events out there and the ice seems to me that it's been problematic for a while. But I think that it sounds like that will be fixed.

And it's an old— it's the old arena, or is it the new one? It's the old one. And the skating was a blast the other day. I had so many pictures of some little girl, you know, and that to me Preparing kids how to skate at a young age and watching them very carefully. It's really amazing to see that those many little ones there that are like going all over the place, but then they get it because somebody's patient with them.

So I appreciate that. And I appreciate that, um, you mentioned Parks and Rec and all the way to Sitka and other areas. Did they come? Up here. Okay, because I'm a little jet-lagged.

Maybe I'm just lagged.

I really like— you talked about the field house storage and the outside door. Is that really secure? It is. I understand it is, but I'm not sure. It is.

Yeah, yeah, that storage facility will be—.

Yeah, we'll have two garage doors for people to get into, and we'll reroute the road. Um, yeah, it'll be very secure for all of our stuff. Okay. And, um, M to you, you are amazing. Well, I like your little ones too.

Um, so I, I think that's— oh, and I, I would like to say that my, my, one of my great nephews runs all this stuff, and when I tell him what you do and what the team does. They are amazed. They say you—. I said, you live in Wellesley, you guys get all the money. But we—.

Don't tell my nephew if he comes up— we do an—. We—. You guys do a wonderful, wonderful job. So I appreciate that. And I'm happy that you're having a summer ice camp.

Um, it's nice to know that that campground is in good condition that you mentioned, but it does need some work. So thank you, and I'm sorry I forgot.

Any other comments?

I'd like to comment just quickly on the data. Um, looking at just the raw numbers is actually fascinating. I did find, um, the couple times I did attend Wednesday, uh, in the park over the summer, it felt humongous and like there were so many people there. And it's always difficult to see a giant crowd and go, yeah, that's probably like 9,000 people. So that to see these numbers does kind of validate like what I was thinking.

Uh, this number of over 300,000 total visitors to All-City Parks through the summer is pretty off the charts. Even just getting here to the 73 estimated number of skaters per day, it really shows that it was worthwhile thing to do and people using it. Um, so that's fantastic. The, the numbers here were pretty staggering this summer. So that's All I want to comment on, and, uh, keep on keeping on.

With no other comments, that takes us to adjournment of the meeting. Next regular meeting of the Salada Parks and Rec Advisory Board will be held on January 7th, 2027. Meeting will be at 5:30 in the City Council.