I'd like to first recognize and welcome our newest Commissioner, Eli Constin.
Thank you for being here.
This is his very first meeting.
He's a local student.
Is that right, Eli?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm not going to...
Well, I am going to put you on the spot, Eli.
Can you just maybe give us a couple of words about your background, where you go to school,
what brought you to this commission and why you're interested in it?
Is that cool?
keep it keep the button down. Right. I'm Elijah
Clemson for junior at Los Alamos High School. It's always
been a dream of mine to help the environment and in middle
school I got interested in in political science so seeing I saw
this as an opportunity to help both help the environment and
learn more about local law so yes that's why I'm here great well on behalf of
everyone the pros Commission welcome and thanks for service okay we'll now call
the roll Commissioner Pinkstaff here Commissioner Euler here Commissioner
Johnson here Commissioner Garland Vice Chair cook here and chair Moran here
let the record show that all are present. Alright we're gonna move on to
public communications but before we do that I want to recognize our new
Director of Public Works, Rich Payne, who is going to grace us with a few words.
Rich, thank you and welcome. Chair Moran, members of the Commission, thank you so
much for allowing me the opportunity to come and introduce myself as your new
Public Works Director. It's an honor to be able to work for the city in this
capacity. Just a little bit of background, I've worked for the city, I just celebrated my 25th
year in public works. I've spent some of that time in the parks and open space, but primarily
my responsibilities were taking care of the infrastructure, including all the facilities,
the fleet, the traffic infrastructure, and of course, there's something else. Oh, of course,
the streets so the streets facilities fleet and and traffic infrastructure so
and those responsibilities have kept me busy I can tell you that this is a
tremendous opportunity I feel like I've been working with a great team out there
at the courtyard with all the operational staff and I'm looking
to continue doing that with the engineering staff and collectively all
of Public Works. In terms of some of the things I look forward to over the next
few years is there's a lot of projects going on. There's a small
one out at Heather Farm Park that's happening and so I'm going to be spending
a lot of time working on on that project. In terms of the parks and open space, I
know you're aware we've got some some turf going in and some of our parks and
a lot of other amenities that we'll be working along with our regular stuff
are all of our capital improvement projects and and all those but I just
feel it a privilege to be able to represent such a dedicated staff I don't
it goes without saying when you drive into the city of Walnut Creek there's
something different and I truly believe it's those small little nuances of a
well-maintained infrastructure that makes this place special and you notice
it sometimes you don't you're not certainly aware of it but it's there and
I think there's a sense of security that comes with it so and that is it doesn't
happen by accident. There's a lot of dedicated employees that love what they
do and and they take personal ownership and it shows and so I'm looking forward
to leading this group and serving the public in this public works capacity and
hopefully I'll have an opportunity to work with all of you. So with that said
does anyone have any questions for me? Perfect. Thank you very much have a good
Thank you, Rich. Welcome. Okay, we're gonna move on to public
communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items
not on the agenda. Under the Brown Act, the Commission cannot act on items raised
during public communications, but may respond briefly to statements made or
questions posed, request clarification, or refer the item to staff. Does anyone
president have any public communication seeing none we will move on and we're
gonna go right to item 3 which is presentation on the Walnut Creek
watershed mr. Simmons well good evening my name is Bob Simmons I'm president of
the Walnut Creek watershed council I wish to thank you for allowing me to
come and talk tonight about the Walnut Creek watershed I first started meeting
with a group of people including the former public works manager back in 2011 and so there's
been a long history of the involvement of the city of Walnut Creek in the watershed
as well. I'd like to start with this particular quote because I think it is something that
speaks to me which is if there's magic on this planet it is contained in water. And
a lot of what has happened since the 19th, since around 1950s, we tended to bury a lot
of our water and the culverts and things of that nature
and put them into concrete channels.
We did it for very good reasons.
We were developing and all that so it's not a criticism
of what people did back then, but we're dealing
with the situation we have now.
What you have there is a photo was taken in October 2021
after the major storm.
It's a Chinook salmon that's trying to get
up above the drop structure.
And you got to get this.
And basically that's a very complete barrier to fish passage.
That's by Willow Pass Road, by the way.
This is a picture of the Walnut Creek Watershed.
It is 146 square miles in size.
It is the largest watershed in Contra Costa County.
The Walnut Creek Watershed Council, which it was incorporated
in 2021, consists of five what we call Creek stewardship groups, and they're all listed
there. We at one stage had lines showing where they are, but actually some of them have overlapping
jurisdictions and we're very pleased that we have that many. And we have one more that's
just sort of created called the Friends of Tice Creek, which is focused in Rossmore,
which does have some pretty significant erosion issues with regard to Tice Creek going down
the Gulf course. I wanted to come back to this one, because what I want to do first
as part of this is talk about what's happened to the watershed since the 1960, let's say,
and basically what happened is the flood control district with the county flood control district
and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers basically rebuilt the entire channel from Susan Bay
up to Ignacio Valley Road from 1965 to 71.
This was the first, below this it's all earth and channel,
but this is the first piece of concrete structure.
I think I said already, it's just south of Willow Pass Road,
and you can actually walk pretty close to it.
This is drop structure number two, they number them from the bottom
of the drainage, or bottom of the watershed up.
This has a special significance for those of, for some families,
because this is where the bodies of two young men were found back
and I think 2011 and this is one of those barriers
that just you can't get past when the high water is there
and it was, you know, once they knew that they, you know,
that's where they had gone, they waited
to the water drop and that's where they found them.
Above this is about two miles and by the way,
it's about a mile north of Countrywood Shopping Center
and if you head north on Bancroft
and you see the bridge there, if you pull off,
you can actually look down
onto this particular drop structure.
It's rather terrifying in a high storm, by the way,
just for what that's worth.
The water flow is pretty significant.
Two miles upstream of this is,
four two miles upstream is solid concrete.
The channel bisects WCI.
If you go visit WCI, you see the signs stay out, stay alive.
And those were put in after the two young men
lost their lives.
This is something most people have never seen.
This is, on the right side,
is the creek coming out of Civic Park.
It is Walnut Creek.
On the left side is the end
of what's called the San Ramon Bypass.
Now the San Ramon Bypass was built in around 1990
and it was designed to completely eliminate
the flooding of downtown Walnut Creek.
And it achieved that spectacularly.
We haven't had a flood in downtown Walnut Creek
since this was built and the Army Corps of Engineers
did a great job of designing it to deal with high water flows.
They didn't pay much attention to low water flows.
And one of the things that has happened is the original channel
of San Ramon Creek dries up in the summertime
during low water flows because they didn't provide
for those waters to go into the natural channel
in terms of their design.
They didn't do it quite well enough.
And so one of the things we're working on as a watershed
Both as two
And I'll talk about it in a bit. So let me hold that for a bit what you have here is a temporary coffer dam
That is that that is put in every year the former director of Public Works for the city of Walnut Creek helped once and
Moving those rocks in place. So we're looking forward to the time that the current director of Public Works or come out and do that
as well every every June we do that and
It helps direct more water into the natural channel.
The two grates you see above is how the water goes into the natural channel now.
One of the things the Watershed Council is working on is the removal of something called a Rundodonex as well as other invasive species.
A Rundodonex is a common name in this giant reed, it will grow up to 4 inches a day and up to 25-30 feet tall.
It is both a fire threat and it is a flood threat.
It is such a dense stand that it will force to direct the water around it and sometimes
into the opposing bank.
We had one landowner that said, and this is down in San Ramon, I don't want you to touch
my rundo because it's protecting my soil, so we stayed away.
We only work on consent of the property owner.
Five years later, he had lost his entire bank because a rundo is a very shallow rooted species
and it doesn't hold soil at all.
This particular picture is across from the library.
And you can see sort of the middle part, lower left where the urundo is going across the
stream.
Next year that will come over onto the city property if we don't deal with it.
I'm going to change topics a little, and this has, let me see if I can do this correctly.
I'm not seeing the red spot.
Yeah, I think I am.
There you go.
Okay, right about there
That is the natural lake in Heather Farm Park. This was a map that is in the Philip Burton Library and
The name of the lake on the map is Laguna de and I won't even try to murder that last name. I
mentioned this because
I'm pretty sure because I'm familiar with a lot of the watershed that there is
No name of any water feature any place in the watershed that reflects the first peoples that lived and settled in this area
this is actually lagoon is obviously not a native name, but this was the people who were back then tried to
represent the tribe this chupkin band that lived in this area and
Actively used that natural lake and it used to be much larger than it is now
All right, what are we doing?
We are trying to create a restoration plan a walnut Creek Watershed restoration plan
It is the first time anybody has ever done this for the walnut Creek Watershed. We have identified
Over 80 sites and let me back up for a second
About four years ago the flood control district completed what's called the lower walnut Creek project
It is the first four miles of Walnut Creek as it comes from Susan Bay
It's designed to take those huge flows that come in the wintertime, and it's also a tidal
estuary.
So it does both, and they planted thousands, tens of thousands of native plants, and it's
really a nice thing.
And sometime over the next year, John Muir-Lantras was given the, you know, took on the obligation
to handle the public access to that, and you will see this area open up.
As you as we were identifying all of the sites that we did and we believe by the way we only
scratched the surface we identified over 80 and we've prioritized them into high and medium
and we but what's only in the areas that we live in we haven't begun to touch the upper
areas we have a couple in Walnut Creek those two greats are one of them because we want
to arrange for natural flashes but but hazard pond is on it Indian pond is on it and there's
There's a few other sites within Walnut Creek that are on that.
The purpose of the plan is to identify opportunities.
We're not working off on left field, well, maybe we are, but we're working with the flood
control district, the resource conservation district, and resource and creek stewardship
groups to develop in a collaborative approach to try and put this plan together and it meets
the requirement of the water board.
So the timeline, we're going to submit our report to the flood control district around
November 1st.
The flood control district has to submit it to the water board to comply with one of its
requirements.
Back in about three months ago, because we were really interested in exploring alternatives
for fish passage around drop structure number one, because of our, I'm going to use the
term quiet advocacy, the flood control district knew we were interested in arranging for fish
passage around it and sent a letter to the Corps of Engineers saying, and there's a section
of federal law that allows us, would you look at alternatives for fish passage around at
that drop one? They did. And we hope to learn in January that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
is going to study alternatives for fish passage around drop one. It won't bring it all the
way up to Walnut Creek. By the way, you could fish in downtown Walnut Creek in the 1940s.
You can still go fishing there now, there just isn't any fish.
The other thing is we applied for a grant of $300,000 to complete our planning process
and from the Bureau of Reclamation and we hope to, we will hear about that in September.
They take a long time to make their decisions on grants, but it's a very competitive grant
so we're hopeful, but, you know, just have to see what they do.
So I'm almost done.
How can you help?
You can help identify restoration opportunities.
Our restoration effort is a living document.
It's not something that we're going to submit it on November 1,
and there's never going to be another restoration
site looked at again.
But it will guide restoration activities in our watershed
for 20 to 30 years.
I'm pretty confident about that.
You can become a Creek Stewart.
Just contact me if you're interested in that.
And you can be a Creek advocate, which
is something we really need a lot more interest,
not just from the public, but from the cities and the towns.
And I'm appreciative for the support
that we've been getting from the city
with regard to the things that we're doing.
And I'd like to finish with this.
This is in Civic Park.
This is right by the Senior Center.
It's one of the first sites that we actually restored.
And I was there one day and saw this dad with two young kids.
And I said, you know, I'd really like to take a picture.
Can I take a picture?
He said yes, but when the older girl heard the word picture,
she turned around and posed.
And he knew I didn't want any faces on it.
So he said, what are the ducks doing?
It's one of the things that's happened with what we've done.
And you can see it if you do a creek walk.
You can see the creek now from the creek walk,
and you couldn't two years ago.
Not only that, but what is also happening
is the Walnut Creek Senior Club has a group of native plant
gardeners. It doesn't look like much now, because native plants in October don't
look like much, but along that fence are a lot of native plants. In
addition to removing the Arundhat Donax that was there, we removed a lot of
English ivy, and the person that leads that project has seen an explosion of
butterflies, because in addition to English ivy being wonderful habitat for
rats, it also interferes with the biological life of butterflies. And so by
By removing the English ivy all of a sudden it enabled the butterflies to come back.
And when you have the butterflies come back it means there's more food for the birds and
the whole nature change.
I didn't put any contact information on here, but I'll be glad that you know how to reach
me.
I'll be glad to answer any questions you have and you can ask them later as well and we'll
be glad for any support that you can provide because we think what we're doing is pretty
important.
Some of us won't be around to see the results, but we think this is an important thing to
do to try to improve our creek and create a healthier watershed.
So thank you for allowing me to speak.
Appreciate it.
Does anyone have any questions?
Yeah.
One, I had no idea that we had Chinook salmon in Walnut Creek, is that, are there-
Not up here in the city of Walnut Creek, because they can't get past the drop structures.
Because they can't get past, right, but they do try to come up with-
They try and but that's somebody that was really knowledgeable about it and saw one
steelhead get up because steelhead are stronger leapers but hasn't seen anything else.
And if the water level is just right then they might be able to.
I have another slide where it's a video actually where you hear the fish slap against the
wall.
The guy doing it said, oh, that hurt.
But yeah, there's Chinook and there's
Steelhead that come to the base.
In October of 21, they were also in Grayson Creek,
and they couldn't get above either one.
There's not a drop structure.
It's a different type of structure in Grayson Creek.
But yes, this was a salmon creek.
My other question is, so in the areas that are actually
in the city of Walnut Creek, do you
partner with the city and the work they do or is that more they're more
interested in the infrastructure element and you're taking a room to out let me
answer the first question and not the second part of that question cuz it we've
gotten a lot of nice support I mean I'll use my Mike saw what we were doing and
saw the public reaction to it he found a way to provide some resources to us so
we could continue the work.
We have now removed, but it's very expensive.
And so we had to get some other grants.
We got a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
of about 90,000 for other sites in the watershed,
not just in Walnut Creek.
And so we have made one attack at all of the stands of Arundo.
Arundo is incredibly perseverant,
and so we have to be equally.
And it does take some chemicals as well,
but we're careful about how we apply it.
but it'll take like probably three years
to completely eliminate it.
But at the same time, we're starting to plant
and we're moving the ivy as well.
And if you go to walk along that creek walk,
particularly between the Civic Park Bridge
and the Senior Center, you will see
a lot of the ivy has been removed
and you can see actually some stands of a rundown
because we cut them about three weeks ago
and they regrow really fast,
but they're not as big as they were.
And basically what happens is each time you attack
and you kind of reduce their vigor, okay?
Thanks for coming and presenting.
Thank you.
I really enjoyed this.
All right.
Bob, before you go.
Oh, I didn't hear another hint, sorry.
Yeah, I wanted to thank you for not only this presentation,
but a couple, couple three years ago the presentation
on the lake issues and the riparian issues
that have I think led to some great plans
that Mike Vickers and staff have come up with
that are gonna be incorporated into the changes going on
at Heather Farm around the community center
and aquatic center and some things going on there.
So that, thank you for incentivizing us
to get involved in that.
and also hopefully your presentation leads
to more involvement in our creek.
I hope so, and I appreciate your thoughts.
And I did include the slide of the lake
because I hope that two years from now when it's redone,
it won't be the nature lake.
One more thing, Bob.
I know you didn't have your personal phone number
on the slide, but if there's somebody watching at home
and they're interested in getting involved,
can they Google?
So the best way is probably email with Bob Simmons
all one word 2866 at gmail.com.
I tend not to answer phone calls from numbers
I don't recognize.
Well, I don't blame you.
Yeah.
But emails are real easy, and I do get some of those.
And we will have, you know, we're really actually
looking for people willing to become creek stewards.
And it's not an every day or even every month thing.
It's just, you know, but it's something
that we could use some help with the ivy and other things.
and the planting that we wanna do later this year
and in future years, so thank you for that question.
Yeah, stay there, you're not done yet.
Oh.
I didn't wanna give Mike a chance to talk.
This is probably out of turn,
but I'm gonna bring it up anyways.
This body, this commission, has supported
over the last two capital budget cycles,
putting money into the efforts
that you're mostly leading.
Leslie Hunt is also helping with those.
So it's this body that's making this stuff happen.
not necessarily public works. We get the opportunity to put the budget together, but your support
has gone a long ways. And I'm sure as we move into the spring of 25, and we're back at the
capital budget exercise again, we might see Bob here. Maybe-
I got lots of ideas to spend money. Mike, thank you for mentioning that, and thank you
to the members of the Pro's Commission for your past support. We really appreciate it,
but we're putting your money to really good results. So thank you.
I have one last question. Do you have a public website for the work?
Oh, I am so disappointed. I didn't mention that one. WC watershed dot org.
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Bob. Next on the agenda is the consent calendar.
Uh, and I'm approved the minutes of the pro special meeting last month, September 9th, 2024.
can I get a motion to approve the minutes motion to approve the minutes
okay roll call Vice Chair cook yes Commissioner Euler yes Commissioner
Pinkstaff yes Commissioner Garland yes and chair Moran yes and just a quick
note our newest Commissioner because he wasn't here that's why you don't get a
vote on the minutes but you soon will. The minutes pass unanimously. Next is the
racquet sports annual report, yes? It's just a consent item. Oh the consent item
on the wreck, okay. Do we need to approve that? Yeah. Okay another motion to approve
the racquet sports annual report also last month. Don't all jump at once. May I
ask a question first? Sure. The data in the report was from 2023 was that
calendar year okay I moved to approve the report great I'll take roll
Commissioner garland yes chair Moran yes chair pink staff or sorry Commissioner
pink staff yes Commissioner roller yes Commissioner
Councilman.
Yes.
And Vice Chair Cook.
Yes.
The motion passes unanimously.
All right, next on the agenda is an item for the Commission consideration of the Prose
Commission staff report.
And we're starting with the Civic and Walden Parks playground update.
Good evening.
Mike Vickers, Interim Assistant Public Works Director, and normally I'm standing up at
at the lectern, but I'm gonna try and do this sitting down,
which is a little uncomfortable for me, so bear with me,
but this is a project, there we go.
So this project was put, recommended by the Prose Commission
going into this fiscal cycle, so in spring of 23,
when we were going through the capital budget,
this body recommended we set aside $500,000
Park and Lou funding to update the Civic Park playground and the Walden Park playground.
And so as part of this process that we're bringing forward, the most important aspect
to this tonight is the public outreach plan.
Some of you remember, I don't know if you, I don't believe any of you were on the Commission
at the time, but when we were putting together the All-Abilies playground, that project actually
started back in 2012, and opened in 2014. We had a pretty robust subcommittee, and we're
presenting fairly frequently with the Prose Commission, and did a fair amount of public
outreach. And we want to take that same approach this year, as many of us know, probably in
the downtown area, we've seen a big change in housing and updating this playground and
and trying to bring some newer amenities,
some newer ideas to the community will be really beneficial.
And if you've been out at Walden Park,
there's a lot of condos and apartments
over in that area as well, along with a new development
that is just a couple blocks away
that has quite a bit of high density housing.
So both of these playgrounds are heavily impacted daily.
So as I mentioned, we started the funding process
back in the spring of 23, recommendation from pros council
agreed and put $500,000 of parking loom money aside.
With the whole goal, as I've mentioned,
jumped a little bit ahead of myself,
is to increase the usage of the park
and bring some new amenities.
Public outreach is going to be key.
And the goal with everything that we do in our parks
is to be as inclusive as possible.
So the process itself, like we do with everything
throughout the City of Walnut Creek.
We have an MMP, a maintenance master plan,
where we actually have identified every item
throughout the city, and we have that logged
with a, what's the best term, like a end of life date
or a useful life date.
And so when we're setting our budgets,
we go through our MMP and look at all of the items
that need to be replaced that are coming up
at the end of their useful life
and start budgeting for those.
These two playgrounds were built in 97.
So they're over 25 years old now if I'm doing the math right.
So we think these are important pieces.
So that's one of the reasons it ended up on the capital budget.
As I've talked about, we're going to talk a little bit more
about public outreach, the importance of community feedback
and then we'll be reporting back to the commission on a number
of times in terms of selection of design, amenities
and getting you guys updated and keeping you updated
on the feedback we're getting from the community.
So this is just a look at some of the worn out pieces.
I will tell you, back in 2015,
we went through both of these parks
and made some updates to a few of the amenities.
There were some ADA laws that changed at that time
and we were required to make some improvements,
but if you were out there in person,
these pictures aren't gonna do it justice,
but a lot of this equipment is really,
it's seen a lot of usage over the years
and the elements as well.
So this is Civic Park two to five,
and two to five, for those of you who don't know,
playgrounds are categorized in age.
So two to five years old for children,
and then five to 12 years old.
And to give you a better example,
if you're out at Heather Farm Park,
the two to five is the, or sorry,
the five to 12 is the large ramp structure,
And then the two to five is, what would that be?
Just to the south of it.
And best practices are to have a physical element
break the two up.
And that's why we installed those mounds
in between those two playgrounds.
So there's clear definition between what's a five to 12
and a two to five.
So this is Civic Park, while the other one was two to five.
This is more the five to 12 side.
You can see the handrails are getting worn out.
This is the physical barrier if you were out there,
the walking path there that separates the two.
We're getting ready to patch these,
but you can see these would obviously be trip hazards
as little kids are running around.
More wear and tear on some of the brackets and elements.
You see I have the fencing there.
What's interesting about the fencing
is a little bit of a challenge.
Part of it is a wrought iron fence, a decorative fence,
And then the backside is a wooden fence, as you see here.
And what we find, unfortunately, is some of the unhoused,
when they need to keep warm, they kick the fence in
and use the wood to burn.
And so we're going to be, as part of this project,
we're going to be proposing installing the wrought iron
fence throughout the playground.
This is a look at the two to five here at Walden Park.
Walden playground is obviously pretty small.
One of the biggest benefits we see in our park,
whether it's at Heather Farm, Arbolado,
Larky has it here at Civic Park, is the sand features.
The little kids really love the sand features.
And whenever we can pull a water element into it,
it's a huge benefit.
It just gives one more opportunity,
one more play opportunity.
And this equipment was installed in 2014 or 2015.
It's well manufactured, hardy equipment.
You mix the sand with it and it gets worn out pretty quick.
And I think going into this process,
I think we can do a little better job with the design
and maybe add some more additional features.
The one part, the picture on the far right there
with the little house, kids love to hide from their parents
and be able to peek out and those types of things.
So it's a lot of fun to have those little school houses there.
Same thing here at Walden, this is the five to 12.
you can see some of the age.
You see the swing set in the middle.
We have plans to keep the swing set,
both at Walden and at Civic Park for budgetary purposes,
with the whole thought of adding some
different type of seats.
They have what are called generational seats,
or some people refer to them as iPhone seats,
where the parent can sit with the child
as they're swinging back and forth,
those types of things.
And then maybe there's an opportunity
for some additional ADA-type seating
that is very, very popular at Heather Farm Park.
So as I mentioned, big part of this process
is the public outreach and we would like to somewhat model it
after the successes we had at Heather Farm
but also other activities that have taken place
around the city, whether it's through traffic engineering
or those types of things.
So pop-ups and what I mean by pop-ups
is really be out there on site with the table and chairs
and be able to talk to the residents.
not everybody wants to go home and get online
or click a QR code and give your feedback.
Sometimes they can just verbalize it
while they're there monitoring their kids
or their loved ones.
Social media, obviously we can't do anything
without social media nowadays.
So we will have QR codes and those types of things.
An online survey and get to the farmer's market
on a number of occasions.
And this is part of the discussion.
You guys may have some other ideas as well.
And they may not all come out tonight.
but you know, as you're thinking about this type of thing,
please follow up with us because the more people
we can reach, the better the design is gonna be by far.
There are, and I'm sure many of you have seen them
over the years, different types of themes that you can have,
whether it's the firehouse theme or the airport theme,
the dinosaurs and those types of things.
These playgrounds aren't, they're not getting any cheaper.
You know, $500,000 is a lot of money,
but doesn't go a long ways in building playgrounds.
And if I go back, is it, yeah, let me go back a slide.
Nope, sorry, it's the next slide.
Resilient surface is fantastic because it doesn't,
you don't need the same amount of maintenance,
but there's an expense to it.
And eventually wears out quicker than bark,
And it's a lot more expensive than barks.
So that's certainly gonna be part of the discussion.
And we don't have to go with a themed approach.
We can go with standard equipment
and pull in a whole bunch of different amenities
that maybe the community is interested in.
And so not to jump too far ahead,
but the thought process is if we have a pop-up
and we're out there with a table,
we're gonna have maybe pre-designed with input
from all of the commission, you know,
are we gonna pick a theme?
We're not gonna pick a theme?
If so, if we go with a theme from the designer,
maybe we throw three options out there
along with 15 different amenities
or something to give people something to pick at, right?
Instead of just having them do their own research
and come up with it.
You know, we have the boulders out there at Civic Park.
There might be an opportunity to either remove them
or maybe modify them and put some of these rope ladders
that are in there now.
If I do a fair amount of surveying of different parks
in different communities, I go to these shows
and there's different trends.
And right now, one of the trends
are these different rope features.
I'm not quite sure why.
It's just maybe it's cheaper for the manufacturers to build
and so you can kind of get more money for your buck,
that type of thing.
So shade, you know, I think we all value shade,
especially over the last week, shade is really expensive.
So it's gonna have to be something
that we consider going through this process.
And then these are what we call the play panels
where you see the three girls there
at the educational panels or the musical panels.
So lots of options and we'll be there
with a number of options numbered
so that people can weigh in
on what their favorite thoughts are.
So before I finish up with the action
for tonight, there's other, we don't foresee the footprint
of either one of the parks changing,
just for budgetary purposes.
But if you can envision Civic Park right now,
it's completely enclosed in a concrete retaining wall,
just call it that.
There's options to make that concrete retaining wall
an amenity by putting seats along there.
And then you can attach shade so that the parents
are actually sitting in the shade in some of these areas.
So taking advantage of what's out there,
instead of having to build something from scratch
in order to add some seating.
And so we're going to try and get creative in that fashion
as well.
There's a lawn area out in front of the Civic Park
that gets heavily used.
It's a natural turf lawn.
Is there an option to maybe go with synthetic turf?
We don't know.
We'd have to figure that out, price it out.
the synthetic turf is warm.
Mind you, there's a fair amount of shade trees over there.
So it's those types of conversations
that we're gonna have with the community
and then be able to bring back to the commission
and get more information on it.
We do have a budget, right?
It doesn't mean that we, as a group,
that we get the feedback that says,
hey, potentially we need x more dollars
and that'll be up for the commission
to make the recommendation to council
that we need additional money or not.
So just to share that with you.
So I know I moved that through that pretty quickly,
but your action for tonight is to provide comment
on the proposed playground equipment replacement project,
the process, and the public outreach plan for the two parks.
Now I'll open it up to questions.
Fellow commissioners, does anyone have any questions?
I just was curious, Mike,
to get a rough timeline idea of the kind of processes
that would lead to completion?
So we would like to start the public outreach portion
in November, assuming we leave this meeting today
and everyone's happy with this approach.
It could be, hey, we're not totally comfortable
with this approach, can you come back in December
and maybe consider these items?
If we leave here today, we would probably
start the public outreach process in November.
There is, there are some grants
that are going around right now.
there's a major playground company called Game Time
who's purchased a lot of these smaller companies.
You just don't recognize that they're all owned
by the bigger party.
And they have some grants that we're
looking into right now to maybe make our dollar
go a little bit further.
I don't know enough about those grants
to know when the application has to be in
and when that funding is going to become available.
But I feel like we're going to have a pretty good shot at it.
So I'll get more information and maybe I can send that out
on a weekly to keep you guys updated
since we're not going to meet again until December.
But we want to jump into it pretty soon.
We can select a designer, including game time.
And the grant, like I said, I don't know enough about it,
so I'm not going to speak very intelligently about it.
But the grant, it may be as simple as if the city is willing
to put in this much funds, we're going to match it with this much funds, and it's not
as competitive as a lot of other grants, so more to come on that. But sooner than later,
we'd like to get this rolling.
And you know, carry it on to contracting and construction. What are we talking? Another
year here, 18 months?
I would say a year. And I don't want to sound too aggressive. I mean, it would be great
If we were going into the summer and finalizing the design,
getting the equipment ordered, we
don't want to shut down the parks in the summertime.
But maybe in the September-October range,
we can be in construction while most kids are at school,
tackle one park at a time so that people still
have an opportunity to go to different locations.
So Walden, you guys have all seen Walden.
The space over there is really quite small.
So it's not a huge lift.
And I think we'll find that the majority of our focus
and funding will probably be at civic.
Civic is next to Heather Farm Park
is our most used, most well attended park
that we have in the city, so is that good?
Yeah.
So Mike, do you need our comments right now
or is there a deadline for comments for the commissioners?
Yeah, so we'll ask, we'll finish up the questions.
Okay.
We'll, there's no one here for public comment
and then you guys can provide comment
if that works for you, Chair?
I think what you're getting at is,
it's a now thing more than anything.
Yeah, yeah, sorry.
I mean, I'm certainly gonna follow up with Mike,
you know, after the fact, but if you have something to say,
don't hold your breath.
I'll just give some feedback,
because I have a lot of fond memory,
especially with Civic Park.
My children, now they're in college,
but we spend a lot of time there.
Especially that sand area, that play area,
I would like to see either expanded or, you know,
at least retain what they have, because with the water feature
and the sand, they spend a lot of good memorable, good time
there, like working with other kids and by themselves.
But I do remember it's really hot.
And some kind of shade over the sand play area would be nice.
Also, I'm very intrigued by the swing, that new design,
It used to be just either the baby or the kid or adults.
So I think that's a great idea, the new design you just
mentioned, the parent and the child thing.
But yeah, I just remember that sand play area.
If we can maintain it or expand it and have definitely
the water feature there and perhaps some shade,
shade will be nice.
And I don't know if there's like wash off area.
The bathroom, you know, it's right there.
They will go in and kind of cling their hands and stuff.
But, yeah.
We recently, by recently, I mean,
within the last year, year and a half,
added what we, what's referred to as a jug filler.
It's a smaller unit, you hit the button
like you were gonna fill up a big igloo.
Okay.
For the kids to fill up buckets,
but also for the parents to wash their feet off
and those types of things.
So, we're learning and adding some of these things as well.
So yeah, that's just my initial feedback about the civic park. Great
I have a
Couple comments a will mix comments with questions, right? Okay
So on the public outreach
I are there no I don't know
Like a homeowners kind of group they are a place to have a more formal meeting
The only reason why I like the pop-up concept is getting input
But then how do they ever get to know what became of the comments they gave?
Did they have to come to our meeting to learn that or will you post it on?
social media I
I'm asking you I like can you elaborate on that how that works? I mean because I think
it's always frustrating for people to give comments and not see how their comments were addressed or dealt with and
Since we're not having some kind of formal process you said there probably wouldn't be like a big meeting or anything like that
Or a you know, a charade or a workshop or anything like that
I'll give an example
Back in 2012 or 2013 when we were planning on installing the disc golf course at Walden Park
We reached out to this other four or five HOA's in that area
Had them reached out well in advance so they could put it in their newsletter. We also posted information
Asking for comments and asking them to come to the pros meeting or at least provide comments to the commissioners
With a number of HOAs and it's going to be the same with the downtown, right if we're reaching out to these
Apartment complexes or condo complexes down here. It's probably going to be easier to have them come to
This type of meeting and as I'm updating and sharing
Feedback from the community I can and be able to group the topics
I can do that I can do it during that time to let them hear or they can watch it at a later date
You know since they're televised and that type of thing. Okay, great. No that that's good
So there's gonna be some give-and-take not just getting comments from them like because they filled out a survey online
Yes, right. Okay, and that's good. So you'll use our Commission in on their own course of our review of things to invite them
Yes
And I'm not really big on the theme concept, I don't think these kinds of
playgrounds need a theme. I think kids just want to run around and be crazy and
I, you know, the kind of features you were showing and those pictures I think
are all good. I mean I think I remember my son playing and all those kinds of, you
know, situations. But yeah, so I would say particularly I'm assuming if you're going
to get a giant dinosaur it's going to cost you more money. I don't know the
of having a giant item.
Or you know what I'm just saying?
To me, this is a personal opinion.
I'm not big on the theme.
Something more free-flowing.
And to be honest, I don't know this to be fact.
But I'm fairly certain the themes are a little higher
in cost, as opposed to something.
Plus they are dated sometimes.
That's what we're facing now.
Oh, you mean the themes themselves are dated now.
The themes can end up being dated, you know what I mean?
I kind of feel like it's better to just sort of go with sort
more tried and true play structures. Anyway, that's my another opinion. Yeah, that's pretty
much it. Thank you. Yeah, I think Commissioner Garland was getting at the costs involved
in some of these, you know, adding things that may not add a lot of value. And in regards
to the cost, does the new high density project near Walden contribute money to these projects?
it's County property but yeah unfortunately they have the county
collects Park and Lou funds but it goes into the county it doesn't certain that
even though the close proximity you can't you can't say hey kick down for the
local guy okay civic park is is my impression there that during like winter
and wet months that there's been some drainage issues there is that a fair
statement? There has been on the turf but not in the playground. On the turf.
Yeah. And that's why when you mentioned synthetic turf that was appealing but I
know there's a cost associated with that. Yeah the soils over there they don't
drain well well and they tend to hold the water instead of let
it percolate through so yeah it's been a challenge. And then Larky's not on your
list because have they been updated more frequently in terms of that playground?
Yes, so there's two playground structures at Larky, one close to the Lindsay Wildlife
Museum, which is when in 2014 or 2015, right around the same time we opened up Heather,
so that one's, you know, 10 years old.
And then the, what we call the upper one, it's still in decent condition at this point,
and we also made some improvements, more so ADA improvements, back around the same time
we installed the other one around 2014, 2015.
Okay, yeah, that's primarily my comments a lot of good times there with the kids. Yeah
Yes, I suppose uh, one of the ways to kind of
like
to kind of cut costs
in terms of uh, the shade that well you said earlier about the shading I
Don't really see how some of it like for specifically for walden park. I don't see how shading is exactly
Necessary because it's a very you have forested area due to the true abundance of trees there
One can one can kind of say the same for civic
Although civic has does have more sunny areas. I just feel like
Maintaining some of the trees there would be a way to kind of cut costs
Yes, that's
All my comments for now
Thank you. I
Just thought about because Bob just made that presentation is is there any opportunity to integrate?
What the watershed council is trying to do I know that's on one side of the park and then some of the concepts into the
Playground idea so the kids and the parents especially when the parents observing the kids or when they hang out they can
You know
Get some exposure to the whole restoration plan that's going on in the city
That's a good. That's a good thought. I where I thought initially you were going with that is to maybe we could have some
Whether play panels or some elements out there that were more
Educational in terms of nature based, but it sounds like you're looking
To hey
You can walk you can go play in the playground and then you can walk over and walk along the creek walk and that that
Type of thing and maybe is that where you're going with that?
Obviously, there's an opportunity to do that,
but also if you can bring that piece,
the educational piece of the restoration work
into the playground, either the design or the games
or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea, absolutely.
I do have one more, sorry, is that okay?
Yeah.
So again, this is sort of my opinion,
but I'm really not in favor of plastic grass,
And I know there are better materials these days
than they ever were when I was growing up.
But as much as we can avoid putting in artificial turf
at Civic Park, I like wheel grass.
And even if it's soggy, it's still
better than a puddle on a field of artificial turf.
So I also would point out, I know
we're doing it at Heather Farm for a variety of reasons.
But there are some cities in, I think,
Santa Rosa or somewhere up in that area, Sonoma, and maybe
Marin, I forget that they actually are going the opposite
direction, you know, they're making decisions to say no, this
is putting chemicals and breaks down and you know, I don't know,
I just so I know we made a decision based on a lot of
input from a lot of people for a lot of good reasons related to
the sports and that particular use, but the park, this isn't a
sports field, you know, this is a city park. So I don't know, I
I would like to stay with grass,
but you probably should get people to weigh in on that
at the meetings, but.
Yeah, and it's, you know, we get lots of feedback
for lots of different reasons in our parks,
and it's never have I heard of one comment
coming to me about the natural turf around the playground
not being ideal for laying on.
I mean, most people, when they go out there,
they're bringing blankets
and those types of things to begin with,
and it does have that moisture element
that you're likely going to lose
if you put the plastic grass out there.
So I haven't got that feedback from the community.
It was just an option that I was,
example that I was bringing, but yeah, understood.
Thank you.
I just, just a quick validation.
I think your outline structure process for feed,
you know, community input and everything else
and the processes you've discussed with us tonight
are appropriate and I anticipate that we'll help with a really good plan, so
thank you. Thank you. Quick question and then if you comments. Does Walden
have also like a two to five and then a five to twelve section? Yes. The two to
five is basically the sand portion and then the five to twelve is the structure.
And the thought would be to keep both of those philosophies
at the new wall and the new civic, right?
Like have it two to five and a five to 12
or some varying degree of.
Yes, correct.
Okay.
I think it's important just because as has been pointed out
there's about 1,000 new units now than there weren't
in 1997 in both places.
with different ages of kids and different needs.
And to that point, what you had said about
places to maybe sit around the retaining wall,
I think it's important to keep that in mind
because the number of people of varying ages
that are going to be coming there in the next few decades
is only probably going to grow.
And I know that when as a parent of young kids,
when we go to the park, I want to sit down, right?
So there's places to just hang out,
so I'm not standing around just watching them running.
It's more of like a family place to sit and visit.
And if there are options for the adults or grandma and grandpa
to have a nice spot.
Because Civic Park has benches and so forth,
but a lot of times you're kind of looking around going,
where am I going to position myself as the kids are?
Especially if they're older, they're
going to be there for a long time.
So just multi-generational kind of amenities
for people to just be there rather than a place
to kill five minutes, right, on the swing set.
And to that point, the swing set, in my opinion,
and I'm sure everyone else here who has the children,
who were young once, that's kind of like the centerpiece,
right, that's what everybody remembers, right,
about taking him to the park.
And the last thing I wanted to say was,
I think when you guys are doing the public outreach,
what I really liked was the idea of showing them
what's out there, right?
You know what's out there because you're an expert.
I really don't, you know, and if I'm just average parent,
you know, I might think, oh, that's cool,
but I have to kind of be shown that, I think,
and that'll prompt, I think, a good conversation with,
oh, I didn't know you could do that,
Whether it's a theme, no theme,
I kind of would agree with Commissioner Garland
that if, while themes are cool and it's not something
that we shouldn't not do, but the idea is a lot of things
for everybody to feel like they have access to it
and like the ropes and one of the biggest things
at Civic Park for my kids was the boulders
that you can climb on, right?
So stuff like that, that's almost unique.
But I'm interested to find out what people have to say.
Yeah, that's good feedback.
Because if we can think of it, they've already created it.
And so you can have sections of elements or components.
These are all the play panels.
These are the type of climbers, those types of things.
And let them, oh, I'm not interested in climbers.
I'm more interested in educational.
And they can go straight to that section
and identify what they like about that.
and give them, you know, it's probably,
you don't wanna overwhelm them but it's,
you wanna make sure you're presenting
a lot of different ideas
so that they're getting the whole drift.
They're not showing up at the exhibit halls
and looking into this stuff either.
Yeah.
Okay, anyone else have any comments or questions?
I'm gonna formally ask if anyone,
member of the public, has any,
Any comments or questions for us?
And seeing none, I'll throw it back to the commissioners
to respond on the public comment that we didn't just get.
And so after that, now we're...
Can I just ask for one more thing?
Of course.
So I just wanna, Art gave me some feedback
on the public outreach approach.
Is everybody comfortable with the approach?
Yeah, sounds like, nope.
I'm comfortable with it.
Does the city use Nextdoor social media app as a?
Absolutely.
And that would be one of the social media opportunities
that we'll reach out to.
Certainly, well, we'll do it citywide,
but certainly for the downtown community
and the Walden community for sure.
Okay, yeah, thanks.
I don't think we need to take a pass resolution
or a vote or anything like that.
I think there's good feedback from everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, moving right along.
Any commissioner's reports?
Okay, seeing none.
Staff reports.
The only staff report I have, let me see,
the only item I have for you tonight
is just a reminder of community service day
that's taking place this Saturday.
If you haven't been on the city's website
to sign up for a project,
you can do that right through walnut-creek.org.
And there's, I think there's over 40 different projects.
Lots of them in our parks, some in the open space,
and libraries and schools.
And there's always lots of opportunity programs,
really well run.
I think this is the 12th year of that program
and it remains successful.
It's one of the reasons the group keeps doing it.
So if you haven't signed up,
we would love to get you out there, get your support.
That's all, thank you.
All right, thank you.
I guess that's it.
This concludes the October 7th, 2024
pros commission regular meeting,
and we are adjourned until the December 2nd,
2024 scheduled meeting.
Thank you.
Picture and put it on the site
until we got the waiver and get this to Susie.
Thank you.