Parks for the People

All right, thank you both.

Frank, we're going to dive a little deeper into what Parks and Rec offers the community, both the parks, the open spaces, and the facilities themselves, the buildings that are there, and the programs your department oversees.

But first, why is it important for a community to have a strong and engaging Parks and Rec department? First,

parks should be seen as part of a city's broader public safety plan.

When you have an active park space, crime decreases by up to 17%.

We also, in that parks and recreation public safety plan, you have swim lessons.

And a lot of people wonder, why are swim lessons offered through a city government? And when you start looking at the statistics that drowning is the leading cause of death for ages one to four and the second leading cause of preventable death for under 14, it fits into a city's public safety plan to teach people water safety and at least basics of swimming.

All right.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about the different programs, the camps, the whole nine yards of what the Parks and Rec has to offer? Sure.

Well, we actually have about 230 hourly staff, and they run the gamut of teaching some lessons, to running day camps, to teaching dance, and even teens, running teen programs, senior programming.

For it, we have almost programs for almost any interest level and we are always identifying growing trends such as pickleball and increasing that we at our senior center are going to be adding a pickleball league soon just because there is a growing trend and demand for that as well.

Awesome.

Awesome.

What are some of the more popular camps that you find parents signing their kids up for?

Right now, I would say probably the most popular is a traditional day camp where they have a field trip.

We do have some specialized camps such as basketball, baseball, soccer.

And we recently received a grant from the National Recreational Park Association called It's Her Sports.

So it's a Girl focused, getting girls active into sports type of camps.

So this summer we ran our first It's Her Sports Camps and we were full every session because we were able to offer those at a lower rate given the grant funding that we had.

Now, for all the activities and facilities that you offer, the programs, is it just for families or do organizations get involved? Can, say, a company hold an event at one of your parks? We have

many, many organizations that are nonprofits as well as for-profits that host events in our parks.

We have 5Ks offered at Roar Park through other groups as well.

We also work with many agencies such as the adult learning centers to offer programs for free for our aging population.

So we run the whole gamut of different working with for-profits and nonprofits to collaborate and offer a wide spectrum of programming.

And for organizations or families, residents, what's the best source for them to find out all that's going on at the parks and how to sign up and get more information? Probably the best way