City of Nowthen

Park and Recreation Committee Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

7:00 pm at City Hall

Present: Judy Herrala, Chris Bassett, Chairman Paul Reighard, Dan Williams,

substitute liaison Bill Schulz

Meeting was called to order at 7:10 pm by chair Reighard.

Approve/Amend Meeting Agenda-Chair Reighard made a motion to approve the meeting agenda with the following changes: Paul would like to move #8 Twins up to number 2 and renumber accordingly, Judy would like to add a #9 Meetings at the end. Judy seconded this motion. All were in favor; motion carried.

Paul R made a motion to approve the meeting minutes of September 4, 2012. Judy H seconded. All in favor; motion carried.

1)  There were no floor items at this meeting.

2)  Twins Grant. We did get the Twins grant in the amount of $4,913 which is a matching grant so the total cost of the project was approved for $9,826.00. There was a detailed items list and quotes received from Plaisted Companies for the Ball Diamond Aggregate, and North Star Fence, Inc for the fencework which will be making the first baseline longer, building dugout areas and add 6 feet to the backstop and add tension wires and extra support wires to the fences. There is also some money in there for sodding and seeding should it be needed. It was discussed that the work on the field should begin immediately. Joe Glaze states that this is a good time to put down the aggregate as it is dry. Joe states the aggregate should be brought in first so the trucks can get in there before we extend the first baseline. This information will be placed on the City Council Agenda. The application asks what the name of the field is and it was decided that we should name our field. Bill Schulz suggested naming it Ernie Koehler field as Ernie Koehler has done a lot for this city and has really moved this city forward. The park and recreation committee members agreed. Paul Reighard moved to take the ballfield information to city council to recommend approving instructing city staff to go ahead with construction and also to name the field “Ernie Koehler Field.”

3)  Message Board//Grill replacement for the stolen one. The message board was talked about first. There were some message boards in the packet and Judy had picked up a book in the city offices. Possible things that will be posted on the message board will be events, the city newsletter, possibly a field use schedule, and Roseanne Ames, a city resident would like to continue to post the information. It was talked about briefly where the message boards should be located. Aesthetics are important and also a large enough display area is important. The committee would like to table the message boards discussion for further research and finding just the right message board for our use. Grill Replacement was also a topic on the agenda with the message boards. It was discussed the there was a grill stolen from the park. Whoever stole it, dug the cement right out of the ground and hauled the whole thing away. The question now is, “Does it need replacing? How much did it get used? Maybe when the ballfield is upgraded it will get used more.” It was decided to table this until later dates to see how much use the ballfield gets. Paul Reighard made the motion to table the message boards until the next meeting and to table the grill replacement indefinitely. Chris B seconded this motion. All in favor, motion carried. There was some discussion about whether the park entrance should be closed at night as a preventative.

4)  Park Programs

a.  Adopt-a-park-Judy would like to see the Adopt-a-Park program in Nowthen. There was an application from the past that was worked up that has Adopt-a-Park and also Volunteering included. There are things such as background checks and other checks included in it that this committee feels is too much to ask someone just because they would like to keep our parks clean. It was discussed that there are programs out there where people volunteer for cities and those programs would be more appropriate for the background check application. Judy would like to work on an Adopt-a-Park application which can be used for citizens in our city and schools and organizations that would like to keep our parks clean. She will work on this for the next meeting.

b.  Park Rules and Regulations-At our last meeting there were some park rules and regulations that had been updated, but at that meeting the previous rules and regulations weren’t included and the committee thought they would like to see the current ones as well as these new ones. Those were included in tonight’s packet, but the committee now would like to take further time to look at these. Joe Glaze states that the Sheriff doesn’t enforce rules and regulations by the beach because the sign there still says Burns Township. Paul Reighard moved, and Dan Williams seconded, to recommend to the city council that we change the beach sign to Nowthen instead of Burns Township.

c.  Park Donation Programs-It was discussed that this is a document that really will need to be looked at as it was first presented to this committee last month. The committee would like to take the time to go through it line by line to make it workable for the City of Nowthen. It was discussed that this all takes time and we seem to be working on many things at once. If we could meet more often we could be working on this.

5)  Park Activities-It was discussed that the park and recreation committee would like to sponsor, as a committee, some activities in our City of Nowthen. Other cities have very full park and rec programs, but it is understood that our activities would have to be small and with volunteers. It was talked about that we could start with just one activity per quarter of the year, maybe a Fall Haunted Hayride in the Fall, a Kids’ Ice Fishing Clinic in the Winter, and something in the Spring and Summer. It was discussed in the past that Cory, the owner of Mama Deluca’s would like to sponsor a disk golf tournament sometime for the kids. The park and rec committee would like to look further at these possibilities to offer activities for our Nowthen youth. There are some good ideas to be gotten from other cities and this park and rec committee feels it can be done. We talked about finding a volunteer base and resources to find those volunteers could be the Nowthen newsletter, the marquis signs in town and on the website. This will be continued to be talked about as we go on with meetings and nothing will be scheduled until planning is finished with these items.

6)  Future Park and Trail Areas-It was discussed that it would have been nice to put a trail along Cty Rd 22 while they were going to have it ripped up while working on it to put in a trail to connect Twin Park and Nowthen Park. That option is not there for us. It was also discussed that it would be nice to have all of our trails connected in Nowthen. There was discussion about connecting Goose Lake and Pinnaker Lake. There is just one way to access Goose Lake and that would be through someone’s property. Joe says a parking lot for several cars would need to be built if we were going to do something like this. Committee members were told to think about it and we can talk more about it at our next meeting in February. This is our last scheduled meeting and we would need council approval to move forward with this and to talk with the property owners. No action on this item.

7)  Future Park Improvements-Chair Reighard brought up the fact that we as the park and recreation committee need to continually be thinking about what we can do in our parks to get our parks known and used. Paul stated he would like to see a skating rink someday in Nowthen. Ice rinks are at a premium. Cities around us have ice rinks such as Ramsey and Zimmerman, but it is hard to skate on them as they are used almost all the time by hockey teams, etc in the area. It would be nice to have a rink in our own city. There was no action on this item, just discussion.

8)  Meetings-Judy states that she would like to see about meeting during the winter as well as during the summer. Judy thinks that meetings every month would be good for continuity and working on things every other month just doesn’t keep that continuity. There are several things to be worked on that will take a lot of time that just cannot be done quickly such as Park Rules and Regulations, Adopt a Park program and other things. Judy did check with the city clerk and she said that the park and recreation committee could talk with the city council about doing workshops. She said that they park and rec chair would have to tell her ahead of time so that she could give public notice about the workshops to be compliant with the open meeting law. The committee would like to begin monthly meetings with the meeting in November being November 7th on a Wednesday, the rest of the workshops to be scheduled on Tuesday. Chair Reighard recommends that this be put on the council meeting agenda to get their approval to do this.

9)  Spectrum High School-Chris Bassett had a question about where the talks are with Spectrum High School. He was asking because it was on our September 4, 2012 agenda and that a staff member was assigned at the council meeting to talk with Spectrum. At the lions 5k run, the lions 5k runners were running one way and all of a sudden there were many kids running the other way and there was a cone there and it was discovered that they were from Spectrum High School. He questioned why these people were running on our street where we had an event going on in our city without letting the city know about this.

10) Meeting adjourned-Dan Williams moved to adjourn the meeting and Chris Bassett seconded at 8:55 pm. All in favor; motion carried.

Respectively Submitted by:

Judy Herrala