Intergovernmental Parks Work Group Agenda 10-13-21

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permanently close. We ended up bubble wrapping our playgrounds locking our restrooms. Acknowledging that even though playfields and some facilities were closed like Central Recreation facility; places like Little River Regional Park, Blackwood Farm Park; Hollow Rock Nature Park and Sevenmile Creek Natural Area were seeing historic usage highs. Thank goodness for all the miles of trails. He received emails and calls from folks expressing thanks for having access to trails that they helped play a key role in physical and mental health. Since there wasn't too many places for folks to go we were glad to have those places. Even though sometimes supplies were stressed but we figured a way through it. Then the second stage- Sort of a beginning to reopen phase. Learning things like where we need hand washing stations and signage. Sanitizing was done more often. Making sure people follow the three "W's"Allowing limited usage of ballfields moved us quickly to virtual formats. One of our lessons learned is that we will continue to do some of these programs. Some at greatly reduced cost. Recreation even started an insta-cart service ...where we would deliver supplies for our programs like Legos to people without contact. But even though we had success;we have to acknowledge that there were certain parts of the population that may not as well served; especially in our rural areas. Where internet access is limited. That virtual programs aren't a panacea that there is still a need for in person programs or explore other opportunities getting people access to what we do. Stage Three-How to bring things back safely now looking into hosting limited summer camps. The Health Department was of great help telling us how many people we can serve; how COVID protocols will work. Things like volleyball camp will be moving outdoors. Figuring how to bring things back safely. 1. Leaning how to do things virtually. 2. Getting the messaging out and working on outreach how to make sure programs and facilities are accessible to people. 3. Seeing how important open spaces are to the community not just for recreation but for mental health as well. We have learned a lot and will continue • Amy(Orange County) -Thanks to you guys for all you've done and she does hear what everyone is saying about the OC Health Department and maybe there will be a way to acknowledge them. She also expressed appreciation to all the departments who have helped the health Department accomplishing their mission. Their efforts are so critical to all of us to get back to normalcy. Jean- Echo's what Commissioner Fowler said and that she serves on the Board of the OC Health Department and she will share with them what she's heard tonight. And she gave a thank you for all the work to everyone. Now;the question is how we need to go forward with limited resources. The BOCC will have to balance out needs and to make sure everyone has access, and to see who is not being served and what we need to do better to serve them. • Aaron (Mebane)—great job to everyone they hit all the high points. Recreation and Parks are essential the pandemic brought that to light. Trails and parks being open was so important to mental health. In the beginning of the pandemic he thought he could work from home, but he was wrong working from home with four kids didn't work so he worked from his office alone the rest of time. The first week or to two he decided as a leader it was up to him to lift everyone up. He said everyone needed to take a lesson from Jim Valvano who preached "spend time in thought everyday". Which allowed his staff to spend more time thinking about everything especially equity and inclusion. They never had tons of programs but now because of the pandemic they have doubled their offerings. They worked closely with the Health Department and spent time how to be more equitable. They came up with a pod system that worked so well they will probably continue to use it. Things they learned was to be super flexible and creative. That safety was the most important aspect. And that if people couldn't follow the rules then they had to learned how to say"No". They got backlash when events were cancelled but they creatively made new events as they held new replacement programs that helped. That they were able to do a lot of projects and improve facilities. At Lake Michael they hired an engineering consultant to do a dam assessment and it will be important to get focus on making improvements. They added an automatic gate for safety. They made improvements to the boat house and added new dock and kayak launch. They are working on trail connections to adjacent residential developments. One big future item is to expand the trail network around the lake which would be a 3.2 miles loop. Also they opened Cates Farm Park which has two miles of trails. The opening of that was great timing with the pandemic. Dave next invited our other open space partners to share their experiences. • Bo Howes (TLC)—confirmed they had similar experiences that the others did. Their only facility that has a counter is Brimley Forest and in 2019 it registered 16,000 users and in a partial 2020 they had 32,000. With