A bill for an ordinance approving the Parks, Trails and Open Space Program Plan. Adopts the Denver Parks and Recreation 2A Five-year Plan (2020-2024) to utilize the funds from the 2018 Ballot Measure 2A Parks and Open Space Sales Tax, which is dedicated to the improvement and expansion of Denver’s parks and recreation system. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-4-19.
Nine Eyes Council Bill 488 has passed. Councilman new, will you please put council bill 538 on the floor for us? Yes, Madam President. I move the council bill 538 to be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded. The courtesy public hearing for Council Bill 538 is open. May we please have the staff report? And I know we've got a lot of folks moving out, but if you could keep it down, we'll go ahead and get started here. Madam President, pro tem members of council. My name is Happy Haines, and I'm proud to be the executive director of Denver Parks and Recreation. I'm not here for the stadium district tonight, although it's a lovely plan. Congratulations. You. We thought it was loaded, but apparently not. All right. Thank you, Laura. Delighted to be here this evening. I know it's been a long one. We will be brief tonight because I think all of you and many members of the public have already had a chance to review the details of this plan for continuing our legacy of tremendous parks in Denver and in preserving what we already have and in really planning for the future with this new source of funding. And I'd be remiss if I didn't start out first with a big thank you to the voters of Denver who saw fit to pass this initiative and obviously with the also for the leadership of our President, uh, um, Councilman Clark and all of the members of council who really played an important role in moving this to a initiative forward to the public. So thank you all and thank you to members of the public. So continuing the legacy. We'll do a brief recap. I think I should just go this way. Uh. A brief recap of the public engagement process that included in a relatively short amount of time, not the 18 months that you just witnessed in the Stadium District plan. But really, I want to point out that this public engagement sat on top of another almost two years of planning. That was a part of our game plan. So in many ways, this is the first step towards implementation of our game plan. And you will see throughout the the two way plan very specific references and ties to our new game plan. Thank you very much for passing that recently. So we had held by five town hall meetings across the city. We had an online survey that was open to the public for the month of March. We included also an online survey of our capital, our six year capital improvement plan proposal, and which is very much a part of this plan. And we provided opportunities in all of our recreation centers. And thanks to Denver Public Library for once again hosting, being a host really to this city, as they so often are, an opportunity for citizens to come to their public libraries and weigh in on various, various topics. We had over 600 survey responses specifically to this plan. And in in in those meetings, the town hall meetings, the general conclusion was a very strong affirmation of the proposal that we put in front of the public about the framework for the plan, which was maintaining our legacy. And I translate that as a message from the public when they voted for this. Take care of what we've already got. We like it and we value it. And number two, as a growing city, we need you to have plans for how we're going to meet the future needs of the residents of this city. And so we received much affirmation throughout the public process for that framework of the plan overall, a strong agreement with the criteria that we recommended for how we would prioritize the projects. And while this roughly 37 and a half million dollars a year is a tremendous boost to our department, we recognize that it is there will always be more projects to that people want to see than the resources that are available. And so we proposed a number of criteria and a highlight and particularly a couple of them. First and foremost, equity and as a strong driving principle for how we would prioritize projects and secondly, sustainability. There were other criteria like do we already have projects underway using other resources and processes like the bond process, neighborhood plans, existing neighborhood plans that are there. So all of these information. All of this information. The facility and condition assessment reports that we have so using at our disposal all of the data to help us make decisions about moving forward. We got lots of individual suggestions in addition to the affirmation about the general approach. Lots of people weighed in with their specific suggestions, their specific parks, their specific recreation centers and so on. All of those were captured and remain a part of the lists that we will continue to use as we as we move forward each year with projects to propose the key themes for maintaining the legacy. And so these key themes were the things that many people repeated that repeated over and over again in both in the survey and in the meetings. I won't go through all of them there in front of you, but they they they really underscored the values that people place in so many of the diverse assets that we have in our parks, in our recreation system, and in our mountain parks. This is just a pie chart of our budget. I think the point of this chart, if nothing else, is to to recognize that the two way funding is an additional resource to an overall budget. We approached the planning for this to to think of this as an additional source of funding and not as a stand alone program on its own. So these dollars, as you can see, the the part of the chart that's outlined in Gray is a significant addition to our budget. And so but we looked at it in totality as a $133 million of of a budget for our department. That will include general fund. That includes two way. That includes the the funds that you see, the capital improvement farm, the lottery funds, the winter park funds. And so as we looked at projects and as we look at how we move the department forward and how we maintain and extend this legacy, we looked at all of those resources together. And we we looked at an investment framework in categories that would help us think about the best ways to spend the dollars, both in maintaining the legacy our parks, deferred maintenance enhancements, facilities maintenance and deferred maintenance, and then around planning to ensure that we're we are extending that legacy, that we have the tools to continue to create the masterplans that help guide our investments and the resources and how we spend those those dollars. Land acquisition was a strong message. People want to make sure that we're growing our park system in a growing city. And so the the funding would would also be in that category. Resiliency is a new way of looking at our city and the important role that our parks particularly play in the environmental health of our community, as well as the individual health of our community. Protecting our water resources, protecting our air, addressing climate issues. And so there will be a number of investments in that area. And finally, how we program and activate the spaces. It's it isn't just the physical improvements, but it's how we envision people using all of these facilities and ensuring that we have the programs and the activities to be able to activate the spaces in the parks and both indoors and outdoors. And what we what we find in, particularly with the two way funding, is an extraordinary opportunity to really focus much more on our outdoor recreation with our mountain parks as an important asset that is underutilized. We want to take advantage of really focusing far more on our outdoor recreation opportunities and finally to continue to provide opportunities for signature projects like the Paco Sanchez, um, playground and Park. And I, and I'll point out, and I know Gordon will talk a little bit more in detail about the signature projects don't mean just brand new and innovative ideas. They often mean projects of such significant scope that in the past, our capital budgets or resources wouldn't have allowed us to do a major improvement like this without spreading it out over many years and phasing it. Now we have an opportunity to do significant projects that make a difference and not phase it over several year periods. So some of these may be signature park projects may be in existing facilities as we look to make improvements over time. I will turn it over to Gordon Robertson to talk about the plan and a little bit more the plan summary in a little more detail. We also have Mike Bouchard with us today and a number of other members of our Parks and Recreation staff that I want to acknowledge for their tremendous help and support. It was a team effort takes a village in. And I'm pleased to have so many members of our village here tonight following our brief presentation here. We will be available. All of us are available to answer questions. If you have questions, they will be for Gordon Robertson. If you need answers, they will be for Mike Bouchard. Good evening. Councilmembers Gordon Robertson, Denver Parks and Recreation. And I guess thank you. Happy. I'm going to be just briefly going through the financials of the plan with you where you can see before you on the monitor is our plan on a page. It outlines our five year expenditures by the framework that happy just went over. The first orange line is our fund balance. So we will be committing 10% of the fund in any given year to be in a fund balance in case of emergencies. And we'll grow that over the first three years to be the full 10%. And if it's used, it will be then replenish then in the next year. So that's the fund balance line across the top, the orange line. The next line is our acquisition and park development. New park development. Line item. And as you can see in 2019, that's at 19.5 million. It's a substantial amount in the first year and then it goes down to 12 million and then we estimate a roughly 10 million in the year in the out years beyond. Well, we'll gauge kind of how our acquisition goes and see if those funds are needed additionally or maybe less. So the next line item is our capital maintenance budget. That's our capital deferred maintenance. We have a roughly 12 million plus in cap for deferred maintenance. We're going to add to that number of roughly 7 million in 2019. And then that will grow over time to just over 8.2 million, almost 8.2 million, in addition to the 12 million that we get in our general fund, our entire annual cap. So again, in the out years, we're assuming it'll grow at that rate. But if we if we find that deferred maintenance needs more dollars, we can always add to those dollars in those out years. Our capital expansion budget is broken into the framework that Happy went through, from planning to outdoor recreation to resiliency and signature projects. And you can see that in the first two years, we're very specific about the kinds about the projects that we'll be doing in those areas. But in the out years, we really can't commit to projects in years three, four and five. It's just a bit of an unknown to commit to a project that far out. But you can see we've listed projects that are high on our priority list that will be competing for those funds. And then there are other projects that aren't listed there yet, but that may come up over the next few years that may end up being funded in those out years. But in the first two years, you can see the projects that we're committing to in each of the in the areas. And then lastly, the green line items are operations and maintenance funding. That was the 19% of the two way funding, and that is broken out in salaries and benefits for additional staffing in contracted services for things like pruning of trees and additional portal lights at parks and those kinds of contract services. We also have materials and supplies for our staff. And then lastly, capital equipment. It's easier to see in 2019 with a pie graph kind of how and where the money's been divided. So as you can see in year one, we we put a lot of money into acquisition. There's a lot of good reasons for that. We have a pent up demand of properties that need to be acquired from years past that we when we couldn't afford to purchase properties. So there's a lot of opportunity to create to acquire land in the first couple of years. It also doesn't take a lot of new staff to acquire land, which is something that we'll need as we as we go into more projects. Deferred maintenance is the second largest piece of that pie. And then capital expansion, the new capital projects is the next largest. But if we go to the next year and I'll spend a little more time here in 2020, this is probably a more normalized expenditure strategy where acquisition, deferred maintenance and new projects are kind of equally balanced. And then the remainder of the funding goes to fund balance to salaries and benefits, contracted services, material supplies and capital equipment . But you can see the three largest pieces of the funding are going to be acquisition, deferred maintenance and capital expansion. So those are that is the funding for the first two years. The other three, three years beyond that are really our estimates of where we think we'll be and the kinds of projects that we think we'll fund . But of course, every year will be coming to you to update this, and we will be very specific as to what we'll be doing in the next year. So with that, I will be closing our presentation. I thank you very much. All right. Great. Thank you. We have six individuals signed up to speak this evening. And so I'm going to go ahead and call all six up Bart Berger, Jesse Parrish, Kate Fritz, Jeff Shumaker, Beth Moisi and Paul Lopez. And we will start with Mr. Berger. Thank you very much, counsel. Madam. Madam President, my name is Bart Berger. I am the founder of the Denver Mountain Parks Foundation. And I really want us all to go home. So I'm going to be very brief. What I want to do is to thank this council for the support that the Denver Mountain parks have finally gotten . When I first started this effort, the Denver Mountain Parks were a curiosity and idiosyncratic addition into the mountain, into the park system. And that's no longer the truth. Part of what we're going to continue to do in the Mountain Parks Foundation is to also work with Happy and the Parks Department to increase activation and to to to expand that to include education. Outdoor education is really crucial in what I call cultural and social sustainability. I want to thank the members of council specifically. I want to thank Councilman Flynn, who made being here today part of the two way vote. So thank you for that. And I want to I want to also thank when New and Mary Beth Sussman and Paul Lopez who are going out, because now you get to be ambassadors for the Denver Mountain Parks for those, and you get to go train your replacements and tell them to get with me and so that I can give them my speech. So that's all I have. Thank you very much. 50, 65 years ago, I thought the Denver Mountain Parks were the did not have a dedicated funding source. But it occurred to me that the Denver parks have never had a dedicated funding source. And now we've got it and you're responsible for that. Thank you very much. Next up, Jesse Parish. Keep an H to my name. Oh, sorry. This is Jesse. LaShawn Paris. Represent for Denver Homicide, a low black star action movement for self-defense and positive action commitment for social change. And I was on top of the ballot for at large this past May election. I almost got 15,000 votes with no money. This sounds really good that we're preserving our Parks and Rec for future generations. But the fact still remains we have an urban camping ban. It is illegal for on house neighbors to occupy these parks. It's illegal for you to lay down, cover yourself from the elements, wear anything besides your own clothing so we can keep pat ourselves on the back about these park and rec investment and plans. But the fact still remains, we still have an urban camping banner needs to be repealed. So until that urban ban is repealed, we are not letting up and could keep doing all this work on the parks and on the bricks. But what good is it if our on house neighbors are now able to occupy this space? If we're really working to build an inclusive and welcome welcoming city, then we need to include all members of our community and not exclude them because of their status or their situation. Thank you. Kate Fritz. My name is Kate Fritz. In January, I succeeded Bart as the chair of the Denver Mountain Parks Foundation. And it's always nice to go second because he doesn't get to steal. My thunder quite so much. As a preliminary matter, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your support of the Denver Mountain Parks and in ensuring. Their sustainability for future generations. Both the Foundation and I personally support the plans put. Forth by Parks and Rec. For the use of the funds raised by two. Way. We believe that the plan addresses not only the needs of the Denver mountain parks importantly, but of all of the parks within the city. We were particularly gratified to. See that. One of the line items included in the plan is for busses to get kids who would not. Otherwise be visiting the. Parks up there, to be. Able to do outdoor recreation and education. And that is one of the. Things that as the board chair of the foundation. I believe, is critical. And this plan enables that. It gets kids into these parks and allows. Them to be activated. In a way that they never have been before. And that is thanks to your support. The foundation. And I believe that the. Plan is both comprehensive and equitable, and it ensures a continued focus on making Denver's parks sustained an integral part of the health. And well-being of the. Citizens who live here and the people who visit. I had the opportunity. To participate in the two way stakeholder meetings as well as to visit the most recent Parks and Rec Advisory Board meeting, and am satisfied that the Department engaged in the development of this plan in a very thoughtful and very measured manner, and that it is pragmatic and practical and attainable. And so I would encourage each of you to support it. And thank you again. Very much for your support of Denver's mountain parks. And I look forward to seeing you all soon. Next up, we have Jeff Shoemaker. Thank you, Madam President pro tem and members of Council Shumaker two times in. One night should never happen. I too. Thank you. 11 months ago we stood here and asked you to let the voters decide. And you did. And for those of you that are watching, listening tonight who voted for Measure two, I thank you as well. This is a long time dream of my family of the Greenway Foundation, the Colorado Parks Foundation. And it's an exciting night. I will not go on too long. I want to thank Happy and I want to thank Gordon and Michael, Fred, Doug and everyone here. Your leadership, their leadership is paramount. And without question, they understand the responsibility they've been given. And I am extremely impressed by their focus and their passion and their determination to do no small things. But at the end of the day, it started here in this chamber less than a year ago. And I'm grateful to each and every one of you. And now let's make stuff happen. Thank you all very much. And our last speaker is Beth Misty. Good evening. I'm Beth Mirsky. I'm with the Downtown Denver Partnership and I'm speaking on behalf of the partnership. We are here in support of two AA and the five year plan. This plan presents real opportunities to realize goals outlined in the outdoor downtown and the game plans, which the downtown Denver Partnership was very much involved in. We're looking forward to seeing investment in projects such as the Urban Forest, Skyline Park and a downtown signature children's program Playground, among other projects such as the 5280. The there is a robust, I think, public process in all of these plans now to our downtown plan, as well as the game plan. And and then there's this program this spring. So I urge you to support it. All right. Thank you. That concludes our speakers questions from members of council. Councilwoman Kimmich. Thank you. Madam President, I want to thank the staff who shared a pretty lengthy response to a set of questions that I had. And I just got it today. So I think I've absorbed it, but I had a couple of follow ups. First question was about how the 2019 budget amounts work here. So we're halfway through the 2019 budget year. You presumably already have this money in the budget, but maybe it wasn't line item out. Is there a supplemental needed or tell me how the current year's budget works. Given that you're just now releasing the plan compared to what was in the budget book. So just help me understand process wise. I'll take a I'll take a crack at it. Gordon Robertson. Different Parks and Recreation. Our goal is to in many ways, well, one is land acquisition. So some of the funding will be utilized to acquire land. Other funding is being added scope to existing projects so that existing staff can implement the funds this year. With that, this really I think budget manage I think is your question more around kind of how the line items get set up in budget management for people. So earlier an appropriation item was brought to City Council, so you all approved the appropriation of the full 37 and a half million dollars. Our aim is in the 19 budget is to spend those dollars in those categories. And, you know, we've already brought one to you in the acquisition. The proposal is to use these funds for the acquisition of the property in southeast Denver. And we figured it would take about the same amount of time to get this plan approved. It would take us that much time to actually get some of these other expenditures under way. But the first year our existing projects, so many of them we already have under contract, so we can add scope contracted services the same way we do a lot of our work by means of uncle contractors. So we have the ability to add scope to those contracts and and the idea being to try to get instead of saying this was great and now wait until next year's budget before we start anything, we wanted to get things moving. And so citizens could see relatively quickly the focus again on some staffing. It'll still take, you know, a few weeks or a few months to get staff in place. But particularly because we use a lot of on call staff who if we figure we're going to be able to get moving on some of our park refreshing and just, you know, getting out into the parks and doing some improvements right away that that don't take a lot of planning and design and so on up front. That's great. And maybe I do just need to hear back from budget afterwards about the fact, for example, if you're hiring a staff person, you're only going to use, you know, one quarter of your FTE. I just want to make sure that we don't lose any of the 2019 funds because you weren't able to spend them on a full FTE. No, no. The good thing is, is that the funds are rollover. They do not even even those that aren't just for capital. That's correct. Okay. That's huge. All right. Yes, super. That's great. And and they were very good in working with us and recognizing that that would be that would be an issue. And so so we won't lose those funds. We're going to do our best to spend them. But we recognize that that may not be possible for a lot of different reasons. Super. My next question is about the process going forward. So like let's use dog parks, for example, one I'd love to hear, I didn't see that in any of the slides. What is the intention? But for example, acquisition might result in buying something for a dog park or development might be something about developing a dog park. So I guess what I'm curious about is as we go into the next budget cycle as a council and we have some priorities, for example, that we want to talk about with the department. Mm hmm. What does that look like in terms of being able to say, hey, we think this is really important, it fits within some of these things, but we want you to use some of your acquisition funds or some of your development funds and really speed up the implementation of dog parks. We've been delayed, you know, so and so I'm curious both about that actual topic, but also just thinking about it as an example of how we influence the more detailed , granular level of this in an annual process. Sure. Great question. It is, by the way, on the on the bottom of the slide, we did point that out and it. And it's because it came up in many of the meetings and surveys which slide. The one that's on the screen on the very the very bottom line. I didn't see it in the dollar amounts list. Oh, no, no, no. So but these that is a much greater we do have for 19 and 20 a much more detailed. So. So what you have in front of you is a summary budget. There is a much more granular level. I don't think it specifically there is one at a granular level for dog parks, but I could be wrong. There are projects on the list. I mean, someone can just send that to me afterwards. And over to your the point I think of your question, which is how each year do we get to these decisions? And it'll be very similar to the process that we use every year for our annual capital improvements budget. And that's one of the reasons why I mentioned earlier. This is simply another resource to add to the overall process. But the you know, we will build a, you know, a budget proposal. We will use the the usual sources, which is suggestions from all of you the bond list, as you know, where there were many projects that didn't get funded. That's a. So we look to those things the the what citizens have already told us that they wanted and maybe haven't been funded in in the past. And that we also recognize there will be some new things as we move forward. There will be new projects that, you know, that get, you know, a project like the the district that you just heard. They may come up with some ideas. We intend to move forward. One of the items that we're very excited about or are continuing with master plans in in neighborhoods and in parks that don't have them. So we'll have a whole bunch of new ideas and projects coming out of that process. So it'll be a very dynamic breathing process as we move forward each year. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Kenny. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem happier? Gordon Maybe. And we've gone over this before, but just because we probably have a wider audience here, could you briefly talk about the strategy for identifying and acquiring new parkland in under-par areas where we have residents who are well outside a ten minute walk and also address a strategy if there is one, which I didn't see. But I know you've thought about it for providing larger parks in areas where there's a greater population within within that 10 minutes. In other words, a five acre park in a neighborhood of 5000 people is probably not appropriate just as a 100 acre park in an area where there a thousand people would be too much. So what are our strategies when we have areas already developed where there's, you know, commercial, residential, whatever? In Southwest Demmer, I see some in Park Hill, I see some in South Central Denver, substantial areas without ten minute access. Let me let Gordon Gordon's team is working on the acquisition strategy piece, and I think you can. And I congratulate you on identifying the parcel in in Councilwoman Black's district that we recently moved on and and hope to see more of that. As you know, we won't solve the problem overnight, but we are actively working with the National Recreation and Parks Association, with ULI and with Chester Public Land on a grant that we received to do a study of Denver and how we can implement a strategic acquisition plan. That effort is currently underway. We're going to go visit Seattle and Austin, who just finished their plans last year and learn from them. And then we're going to complete our plan here locally. But while we're doing that, we're certainly looking at properties that we can purchase like we did in University Hills. So we are actively working on that with real estate. We have a team in Parks and Recreation that works with real estate to identify property and opportunities and that is ongoing. But we are looking we have a map that identifies the deserts in our city where we don't have a ten minute walk to our neighborhoods. So we know the areas where we're looking. And as opportunities come up, we have the ability to to move. But in the meantime, we're doing a strategic plan citywide that we will hope to finish mid-next year. Okay. Do you have a time out? Okay, Minister, thank you. And you'll share that with us. And I would add to that that in addition to the point you made is in addition to the ten minute walk, which is a proximity right criteria, we also take into consideration the density right in an area. So, you know, the acres per thousand people and and the development pressures so the the southeast site in council women blacks district is a perfect example of you know, there are equity principles. There's a there's the ten minute walk standard. There's a, there's a if we don't do something soon, there won't be any land to apply any principal to. And, and so those are all the things that will be in the mix as we think about trying to guide our acquisition strategy. Thank you. And we're not making any new land, are we, then? You know, we just came back from Copenhagen when and so they actually did create new land. And so I'm intrigued by that as a potential strategy. They're filling in, like filling in wetlands and stuff like that, I suppose, but we don't have any such recourse. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. Well, I can remember when Sal Carpio was talking about Emerald City over the Sphere Boulevard. Cloverleaf? That was a long time ago. I'm happy. I just have one question. And it's about whether or not we can use these dollars to be doing actual planning. Or do they. Are they concentrated on capital? Yeah. No, the the dollars can be spent on planning, which is really the most important first step in, uh, in a capital strategy. And we think very important. That's where we engage the community on what they want to see and go through the kind of process like we went through with Paco Sanchez Park where, you know, we heard from residents about what they wanted to see, what are the amenities, what are their, you know, interests in terms of activities. So planning and design are all an outreach for that effort, are all important parts of the process and are eligible for funding under this. And so I guess I'm I'm struggling with trying to understand how we move projects forward before we just keep piling on, you know, planning, but yet, you know, certain projects kind of lag behind because we're not putting the actual capital dollars into some of them. So how are we like determining what those priorities are and how much does the the new equity framework that, you know, city workers, city employees are now doing the training around is sort of mimicking the Seattle model. Play into those conversations. Is very important. And as I mentioned earlier, equity is probably the the strongest principle that guides us in the decision making about how to how to move forward. We are a part of that overall the overall city process and defining um, equity criteria. So neighborhood them, you know, demographics, income, number of children. Um, the, you know, so a lot of, you know, a lot of things go into determining equity principles as, as well as others. And that's and that's an important part. So when we bring, for example, each year when we bring our capital improvement budget to you, we include a set of principles that guided us in our thinking. And so it includes all of that criteria on, on how projects were selected and why some, you know, rose, rose to the top over others. Um, one of the things I wanted to mention is I sat in on a process looking at red rocks and you know, this was around sort of the historic preservation of Red Rocks. And one of the commitments that I think we all walked away from was that we would be seeing some design guidelines for Red Rocks. And I know we've been moving forward with the camp. I understand there's some efforts to replace the the stage. And I would assume that, you know, joint parks and rec arts and venues effort. But I guess I'm just wondering kind of where are we in the design guideline process for for Red Rocks as one of our mountain parks that we've been anticipating would would be coming forward to guide how we do a lot of the construction work that obviously, you know, needs to happen. We want to keep it fresh, upgraded. I know there's some discussion now about replacing the the ramp on the West. This was at the east side of the that. That's correct. And we do have in in the proposal, um, a specific budget generated for a master planning for all of our, for our mountain parks in general. It would include all of those various facilities, including Red Rocks. And you want to add anything to that. Yeah, but it seems like we did a lot of that planning through that process. And it's the design guidelines that are really important at that particular venue that will help guide any of the work that's that's even happening now. Um, and so without that, you know, we want to continue to maintain the, the character and the uniqueness of that iconic venue. We care about Red Rocks as much as anybody, and that conversation is ongoing with the community. Out the request for design guidelines. As you know, there are design guidelines for the venue itself, and so that guides whatever work happens there. The request currently is to have those design guidelines filter out to the whole park, the landscape, really. And that's a that's a trickier conversation to really create guidelines around the landscape of Red Rocks. But it's something that we are working with the folks that are interested in doing that to find out what they're really goals are so that we can make sure it's the right tool because design guidelines might not be the right tool to really kind of expand on to a landscape from what is a constructed venue. So it's a tricky conversation, but we are happy to engage in it with the community. So I think would be helpful to as those conversations continue to get updates on where we're at in that process. Sure. So that's my request to you. Thank you. And thanks for all your work on this. A strong game plan and a lot of incredible input, not just from people who served on the committee, but tons of people throughout the Denver community. And I know that has helped shape and guide what some of these priorities are. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. The public hearing for Council Bill 538 has closed comments by members of council. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Madam Pro-Tem. I want to thank you all for the plan for this wonderful, dedicated fund for our parks. I'm very pleased about the game plan and very pleased how quickly you actually formulated from the game plan, how we're going to go about this spending, this dedicated fund. And I'm looking forward to, course, what it means for our parks to suddenly to finally have a dedicated fund for our parks and all the new parks we're going to find, whether we build the land or not, and also the activation of the mountain parks. And I'm still pulling for that regular shuttle for families from our parks here to our mountain parks. I read a story once about children in Brooklyn that didn't know that they lived beside an ocean. And I'm sure that there are children in Denver that do not know about our wonderful mountain parks. And it will be wonderful. And I know you let us know at committee that the money can be spent on a feature like that and that you all are going to look into it. I'm very excited about that. So thanks again for all the work you're doing and I look forward to seeing our parks thrive. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you. I am happy to see this move forward. I just can't I can't believe my eyes after all this time. I'm just surprised. Well, I know why we didn't do it sooner. Because we were in the middle of a recession. But somebody's always talked about is a dedicated part fund. And to see this moving forward and to see this parks, trails and open space program plan to have a game plan and actually have dollars to go with it is is different. We've had plans. You've had so many plans that are just gathering dust and gracing bookshelves throughout the Web building. Now they're going to come alive. And I'm happy to support this. And I tell you what, all the good stuff happens when you're gone, doesn't it? So the Llama Lincoln Park neighborhood plan is not the neighborhood plan, but the park plan. That master plan is going to happen. Lincoln Park is one of the only llama. Lincoln Park is one of our oldest parks. And it sits there and it's so underutilized. And there's we've seen what we can do when we actually put planning to the process of the playground, turned it around. Historic park. You look at sunken gardens and look at sunken gardens to check out what it used to look like. Right. And if you had a plan that really addressed and brought back that old sunken garden, now, it was pretty extravagant then, but the reflection pool, the pavilion and all that that got filled in because of the polio scare. Right. Imagine if you still had that. This is one of those things that creates that reality, our mountain parks and trails. I'm just I'm happy to see this come on our time. So please move forward as you move forward. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. Flynn Hi. Cashman I. Can. Lopez I. Knew. Ortega I. Assessment I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. Nine Eyes. Nine Eyes Council Bill 538 has been ordered published on Monday, June 24th. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 547, designating the River Drive River Drive Historic District as a district for preservation. On Monday, July 22nd, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 449, changing the zoning classification for 2701 Lawrence Street