large and welcome again to commissioner's corner i'd like to welcome today my guest todd who charge general manager of public works and he's here to talk about sustaining our parks todd could you tell me about how many parks do we have in the city of sarasota a good question you know with the size of the population people would think we don't have a lot but there's approximately fifty parks in the city specifically for the city  interesting cab though we have like south and north of the good park some people think that's like two parks on it's actually one but it's split by roadway and then we have a park that's where robert taylor center is and the actually two parks and it appears to be one that's correct we have david cohen park there as well and the robert taylor community complex is one well kind of acreage in the city is consumed by parks just a little under a thousand acres and with the parks do we have a budget specifically for parts when we have several park budgets one of them being the children's film that budget is roughly at seventy three thousand dollars a year and we have the skate park which is  eighteen thousand and eighteen thousand a year and that's with cooperation with skate school we also have the robert l taylor budget which is one point two million we also have the bobby jones a two point seven million we have lido at two hundred sixty thousand for the pool and pavilion area and also the landscaping parks in general is at three point two million and that includes parks as well as our medians and right away that we maintain as well as  city properties like city hall now when you've talked about the budget you've talked about some of our recreation programs can you tell us what kind of recreation programs we have for our city parks it's a great question unfortunately we don't have any recreational programs for city parks other than robert l taylor and then the few items that are done at the bobby jones golf course a lot of there is some real informal recreation opportunities that happen in our parks but there's nothing specific from the city at this time when we talk about best practices for park usage and how do we increase park usage is a recreational program important oh absolutely the the big thing with that is you want the community to engage in a park and make it an active park if it's an active park it's a living park and you help to reduce a lot of the popular activities or illegal activities and that may occur so record ation can help to promote that with the community whether it's classes like tight she or you have a theater in the park type of situation where you're bringing people in for plays and things like that it creates a whole different dynamic of of the park other than just somebody showing up and taking a stroll around the park or you know maybe shooting a few hoops in a basketball or something like that how can we enhance recreational opportunities in our parks well i think the first is getting that give community engaged and getting them to kind of understand also working with the commission to see the next fiscal year if it makes sense including recreation in our parks and then determining from their kind of what some of the budgets numbers would be to get that get in there and do that some of the items we could do through a contract where we can have a vendor come in and create some of these recreational programs some of it we could do in house to engage the community to do some of those types of recreational events and we used to have a contract with the county for maintenance of our parks and that contract is kind of go you know and of existence can you tell what happens with that well it just recently started over in two thousand and eleven  of thirty year agreement with the county on that and we reworked it into a new in our local agreement but last for ten years the way it's structured right now is that the county and the beach area at lido and with those areas they maintain and operate them but they have a limited capital reinvestment cost of five thousand dollars a year towards each park so for example some of the issues that are out there now with hearts landing is the city has to take the cost to repair that but the county operates and maintains the facility through the inner local agreement but because the cost exceeds the five thousand dollars the city has to pay the full amount for that so that's where we're at right now in your local agreement and there is a bridge at arlington park as well and if that's a good that's another good segue because arlington park in itself has many different facilities in there the county reached the point where they had expanded their costs for five thousand dollars and the city had to look at replacing a bridge and what we found out is that that bridge obviously exceeds the five thousand is going to be roughly in the ballpark of one hundred thousand dollars to repair and replace so immediately that falls on to the city to implement and we use the funds from our surtax account to cover those costs associated with any of the capital reinvestment repairs now we're having a workshop the city commission is having a workshop in january to talk about parks and how we can better fund them and maybe even fund a recreational program through the city can you talk about different ways that we might be able to fund our parks in a better and more useful way sure absolutely other than just doing general funds we could look at alternatives where we could get donations as you know we recently received a donation for doing park improvements in the ringling park and we'd we did some name changing for that as well in park so there's new playground components being added there as well as monies available for future maintenance we could also look at some type of conservancy we're a private entity comes in and help support some of the parks or augments some of the services that the parks would do or recreational programs very similar to some of the programs up north in new york city for example park central park and certainly see also you have the taxing district which would be specifically set up for parks and recreation and so the funds would only go towards parks and recreation and then you would have the dollars available for setting up your programs and certain levels of service as far as the maintenance and then the community would know specifically what you know how much of their taxes is going towards parks and recreation essentially we're just maintaining our parks at a level we're not providing too much recreation right now how could we enhance that through these kinds of funding that bends several  doing that in recreation is kind of a generic term for many different things it can be what a lot of people typically think about ball fields and athletics and fitness but it also includes things like a fterschool programming for children hard classes elderly programs that could be just as simple as card playing and basic social skills for people and it also can include some type of social type of services provided to the community to help with that whatever type of perhaps financial challenges that people have so recreation as a whole is a pretty diverse venue for providing services to the community and in each one of these could create an opportunity for that and that calms back to the quality of life and how do we value that and how do we grow as a community and i think parks and recreation is a proactive approach to  a lot of people are saying that parks and recreation serve the middle class or the great numbers of the population in the city of sarasota and we look forward to having a good car says part of our lifestyle absolutely but i would like to stress we are already doing it robert all taylor and what's interesting about that is it's hitting everyone and that facility has really become kind of the heartbeat of the community by engaging from the young ones all the way up to the elderly ones if you will and creating an opportunity for them to interact and i think most importantly get out of the house get away from the computer get away from the t v get out and engage in the community come into the park half an opportunity to relax and recreate and then get out with other people that you don't know and improve on social skills and interaction and just having fun well why don't you tell what we have available at robert taylor well robert taylor if you go there what's nice is they have different memberships to attend  to it's a fee if you will and they kind of call it memberships because you become a part of the facility but it's a fee that you can pay monthly or yearly to either access the whole facility which would include the pool the gaming area for the kids the computers the fitness basketball court or you can break it down and be specific you only want to do fitness and then what is being done there too they have a sort of programs from yoga to dance classes gerry fogle the manager is now put together a boxing program where you can go in there and do some boxing fitness words which is with the machine and it creates a whole different way of of exercising but they also have their youth programs to help with education the senior friendship comes and visits and they do some arts and crafts and social time there is really a lot of opportunities there and i encourage everyone and anyone from the community to stop by and visit robert l taylor and they have the best water slide in and with their absolutely yes i've used it many times and there's also pain park auditorium has one of the nicest dance floors in town absolutely you know and that's another avenue i don't think people really realize our municipal and pain park auditoriums we program a lot of that out based on what public would come in and want to use that facility but that also creates another recreational opportunity like the gem show or a coin show that's been at the municipal auditorium so it creates people an opportunity to get out of the home and get out and recreate and pain park is another wonderful facility within our park that can provide those types of things you have the senior dancing that goes on there and it's a wonderful opportunity for people utilize and we haven't actually have an amp a theater in pain park that is not really used yeah correct correct how can citizens become more involved in this one i would say reach out to your neighborhood association see how you can get involved with the neighborhood  have a few neighborhood associations that have been active with us like laurel park for example in gillespie park where they've kind of taken ownership of it if you will to get involved with clean ups or we've done coordination with some landscape projects that they wanted to do is community building and i also also to just get out and enjoy the park go and see what it's all about you know we have many different parks take an opportunity and go recreate and provide the city feedback how do you think we should better service you in your parks let's talk about the future in connecting our parks with the various trails the mert the legacy trail oh yes absolutely we right now armor trail unfortunately is somewhat split it's not completely connected and eventually would be nice to be able to go all the way from the north and the the city all the way to the south then and have a nice enjoy a boat ride that you can go along the bay front and connect with other neighborhood parks through the area as well as then go out west towards st armand's and of course the legacy trail vengefully getting that in would be fantastic being able to connect the city of serious with the city of venice and just the the whole experience of going along the trail it would be phenomenal well i want to thank you todd for coming in and telling us more about our parks and hopefully we'll get a better funding source so we can have a more robust recreational program thank you so much for coming in thank you vice mayor it's been a lot of fun thank you for joining us for this episode of commissioners corner and we look forward to hearing from you and we look forward to bringing the next workshop to y