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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2013-05-22.pdfPage 1 of 7 Town of Dryden Recreation and Youth Commission May 22, 2013 Members Present: Vicki Wilkins (Chair), Tracy Kurtz, Steve Meyer, Stephanie Mulinos, Sharon Todd, and JoEllen Bailey Town Recreation Staff: Melissa Bianconi Town Board Liaisons: Linda Lavine and Steve Stelick (absent) DCDS Liaison: position open County Youth Services Representative: Kris Bennett Guests: Jane Nicholson, Town of Dryden Senior Planner 1. Reading of Commission Meeting Minutes A motion to approve the minutes of the last regular meeting of April 24, 2013 was made by T. Kurtz and seconded by S. Mulinos. The minutes were unanimously approved. 2. Introduction of Guests Jane Nicholson, the Senior Planner for the Town of Dryden, was introduced and the members all introduced themselves. J. Nicholson also serves as the Planning Department staff at the Conservation Board, Planning Board and sometimes the Agriculture Commission. 3. Discussion of additions or alterations to the agenda Chairwoman Wilkins added Andrew Pierce to the June schedule for further discussion regarding the football league. 4. Open Space Plan – Jane Nicholson J. Nicholson came to update the DRYC on the Open Space Plan. The Conservation Board was charged with defining the Open Space Plan The Open Space plan has three components: Recreation, Agriculture and Conservation. Conservation looks at open spaces that are not really agriculture (forests, open fields), the Agriculture Commission will look at the open spaces that are or have been working agricultural lands and the Recreation department is looking at the passive recreation side. The Recreation Master Plan covers active recreation but the part that wasn’t really addressed was the “passive” recreation, like walking trails, camping and bird watching, etc. In the Open Space Plan, they are looking at strategies for completing trails in the Town (the Varna trail, the Freeville trail), the recreation areas the Town now has, and standards for new projects moving in. Do we want recreation requirements for new development? J. Nicholson extended a welcome to anyone on the DRYC that wanted to sit in on the other boards (the Planning Board, Conservation Board or the Agriculture Commission) although no one is requiring a liaison from the DRYC. J. Nicholson is letting the DRYC know what is going on with the Open Space Plan and who is working on what components in the hope that the DRYC will be interested in reviewing the plan in Page 2 of 7 November when they hope it will be done. The Planning Department is/will be asking for some feedback. J. Humphrey asked if there were any specific plots of land that the plan is geared for. No, not really. It is more looking at parcels that the Town already owns and how to develop them. Also, they are hoping to set standards for new development. For example, do we want to require x number of pocket parks per house built? M. Bianconi asked about whether Campbell Meadows and Park Davies are part of the plan and how will it be dealt with in the plan? J. Nicholson replied that they will be in the plan inventory but there won’t necessarily be any use policy or maintenance plan. The trails are a really big part of the plan. M. Bianconi and J. Nicholson both agreed that having a plan like the Open Space plan will help with obtaining grants for trail development. S. Todd asked about the new development across from the school - do they have anything more going in like a park or anything. As far as J. Nicholson knows they are not adding anything more to Poets Landing. S. Todd mentioned that there appears to be a pond toward the back of the project, probably a storm water retention pond which as M. Bianconi pointed out, could be used recreationally. M. Bianconi asked about the signs that Bard Prentiss from the Conservation Board presented to the Recreation Commission last summer and what their status was. J. Nicholson has worked on the signs with Mr. Prentiss and they have been ordered. She is anticipating that they will be in place around July 1st. M. Bianconi asked if the CEAs have anything to do with the Open Space Plan? The CEAs are on the back burner in their current form but they are being used as a base. 5. County Youth Services Representative updates – Kris Bennett K. Bennett shared a couple of things: The County budget impacts the programs that are run through the DRYC and she is just getting information now on the budget; the County administrator has directed departments to accept a .5 percent reduction. One thing we have done in the past was to assign liaisons from the youth commission to the funded programs. The idea is that someone would visit the program while it is in progress. V. Wilkins and M. Bianconi discussed the past DRC operation guidelines in which attendance/direct interaction with the funded programs was encouraged rather than mandated (as it was in years past). The DRC thought that direct supervision wasn’t as productive as casual observance as a participant. K. Bennett pointed out that the OURS program, Dave Hall, and the Summer Youth Employment all get monitored by Linda Schoffel. S. Mulinos - we also get verbal or written reports from the three Cooperative Extension programs every month. V. Wilkins stated that the DRC had agreed seeing and being seen was more important than an evaluation. S. Mulinos thinks that when money is involved, monitoring is a good thing, because it creates accountability. It shows that we care and we are paying attention to what they are doing. M. Bianconi would like the DRYC members to monitor the programs that receive grant money from the Commission. Right now the Commission is pretty far removed from the programs that we fund. Page 3 of 7 S. Mulinos suggested that at the next meeting we have a list of those things we want to monitor and divide it up. List of grants and these 5 programs: Youth Jobs at the village of Dryden, Youth Jobs at the village of Freeville, David Hall’s programs and the employment opportunities at the Dryden Café and the Dryden Free Library, and OURS. K. Bennett addressed the grant process for the Youth Commission – they used to start in July and since the DRYC isn’t planning to meet in July, can we start working on that and can we use the same grant program that was used for the Recreation Commission grants? M. Bianconi asked if the DRYC wants to ask for more solicitations and how far do you want the solicitations to go? Does the DRYC want to stick with the ones the Youth Commission generally funds or do you want to open it up more. Accepting more solicitations will create a greater need which might influence the Town Board plus it will get applications in that might be able to be funded in a different way. The DRYC won’t know if they don’t apply, and the opportunity might exist to fund some of the programs through the recreation funds. S. Todd asked how much money exists for funding? K. Bennett replied that it used to be in the 90,000 dollar range but she isn’t sure what it is today. S. Mulinos offered a good example of the declining financial support. In 2005, the Village of Freeville summer camp was granted about $6,000 for youth employment but now it is down to about $750. V. Wilkins asked if the money for the two groups (the Youth Commission and Recreation Commission) had to stay separate or could the moneys come together like the two commissions did. K. Bennett said that the youth development money that comes from the County and the money that funnels down from the State is about $15-16,000 so most of the money comes from the town. M. Bianconi said that about $46,000 comes from the town and the Grant Fund has about $32,000 so the DRYC is charged with an amount of just under $80,000 to fund local youth and recreation programs. T. Kurtz asked if the Commission could have the grant application process set up and started so the Commission has a better idea of what funds they might want when the TB is preparing for the Budget. The problem with this idea has always been getting the reports back from the programs that we funded that don’t end until sometime in the fall and the reports usually show up at the beginning of the next year. M. Bianconi suggested shortening the cycle this year (try to get reports in earlier) so we can get things moving quicker next year. Does the possibility exist to have 2 grant times, 2 waves of funding? V. Wilkins - we expanded our scope recently. We were just granting to community associations then the Recreation Commission decided to expand resulting in some really nice projects/programs. S. Mulinos asked whether it would be reasonable to generate a figure approximating how much funding we will need and then allocate it later? The Commission has a historical record of amounts granted in the past, and the amounts requested are not getting less. M. Bianconi said we used to have to wait until we knew what we were getting from the County and State because we (the Town) was matching that amount. This is not how it works now. Page 4 of 7 K. Bennett thinks looking at applications in late August rather than late September would be much better. She asked that some time be allocated at the June meeting to start talking about the process. Youth Needs Assessment The Assessment will influence what the DRYC does in 2014 for funding in 2015. We won’t have the information compiled in time to benefit from it this year. S. Mulinos asked when we want to have it completed? K. Bennett said that depends on how we want to move forward? The last couple of times, the Youth Commission had the School Social Worker provide her perspective. Margaret Ryan came and gave her perspective from the law enforcement view point. Dave Hall came and talked about what needs he has seen. She has data from a survey that is done every other year. It includes information regarding substance abuse, bullying, how connected the kids are, who can they go to to feel safe? K. Bennett can get a copy to the members if they are interested. Other communities are holding a public forum to get feedback. The Commission could invite folks again, or they could divide up and go talk to different groups/representatives. S. Mulinos appreciated hearing from the different people who came and talked. When you talked about the open forum, was that just a presentation of the information collected or was it an open forum for the Social Worker, the police, etc to come and talk? K. Bennett said that the forum wasn’t so much for the needs assessment discussion but more an assessment of the community. The Open Forum at Groton a couple of years ago, the Superintendant convened the community with the youth commission, the business world, the PTA, etc. Another suggestion was to go through the schools. Do surveys for each of the districts, feedback on their strengths and weaknesses as they see them. Focus Groups – maybe each school could have a focus group to generation ideas. On-line surveys are possible – depending on who we want to reach out to. In 2006, S. Todd’s grad class did a phone survey across Dryden and got a lot of feedback. K. Bennett pointed out if we are going to invite people to come from the school we would have to wait till September when schools reconvene. M. Bianconi suggested that maybe we could reach out to some of the folks we want to get feedback from and do an on-line survey with them over the summer. S. Todd pointed out that a lot of our feedback comes from folks who are participating. We want to reach the people that are not showing up to events, they are the ones that we want to reach out to. K. Bennett – in terms of the OURS program, could we do a participatory research program? Get the kids involved and have them go around the trailer park and get feedback. S. Mulinos - the questions we want to ask will lead to who we want to ask. J. Bailey asked if the survey was going to keep the youth and recreation separate? A discussion was held in January but no decision was made. K. Bennet pointed out that if we want to have folks come to talk with the group in September, we really need to get moving on the project before September. M. Bianconi - The last time a Recreation needs assessment was conducted was in 2006. The information generated by that assessment was used to help shape the Recreation Master Plan. As the Town starts going back through the Comprehensive Plan, all of our plans should be as up-to-date as possible. Page 5 of 7 S. Mulinos pointed out that from a timing perspective, it would be beneficial and easier to do them at the same time. The last assessment was finished just before M. Bianconi started working at the Town. 7. Letter to Dryden School Board J. Humphrey is going to read the letter to the board. M. Bianconi said that the Recreation Commission has offered to help the school in the past but they have not been interested. She would like to see the school permit the DRYC to have some control or priority for the fields. A lot of the school’s recreation facilities seem to be struggling and are not being maintained as well as they could be. She would like a dedicated field at the Elementary School for the Recreation department. An issue that has arisen is the times and age of participants, everyone agreed that the young kids at the elementary school should be allowed priority at the elementary school. The high school kids and/or the elder members of the community should not get preferential treatment. (Teams that Jeff has coached, have had very late practices because other groups were using the school facilities) J. Humphrey wants to read the letter to the School Board on June 10th because he will become a member of that board in July. Letter is attached at the end of the minutes. Future Meeting Plans: At the June 26th meeting, the Commission will start to look at grants for the Youth Commission. V. Wilkins would like to start talking about the kid zone for the Dryden Lake Festival. July 17 will be the following meeting at which point they will be working on presentations and the needs assessment. Recreation Department meeting with Mayor Zimmer Mayor Zimmer and M. Bianconi had a great meeting regarding Montgome ry Park. Rick Manning and Creating Healthy Places will be coming up with a plan to rehabilitate the Park and do the work. The Village of Dryden was able to find a significant amount of money that can get repairs done right now. Report from the Town Board Liaison: Not present. There being no further business, S. Meyer motioned to adjourn at 8:39. T. Kurtz seconded the motion and the meeting was adjourned. Respectfully Submitted, Erin A. Bieber Deputy Town Clerk Page 6 of 7 DRYC Statement to the Dryden School Board Re: Facility Use The town of Dryden Recreation and Youth Commission (DRYC), for those of you who do not know, is a commission appointed by the town board with the mission of helping to provide a high quality of life for all town residents by assisting in facilitating opportunities to participate in healthy and satisfying recreation and leisure activities, and supporting and increasing access of town youth to programs that build skills, confidence, leadership, and supportive relationships with peers and adults. One of the primary activities of the Commission is to act as a liaison to the community and Dryden Central School District, community associations, the villages of Dryden and Freeville, the Recreation Department, and the town board. As you know, the DCSD facilities are used for many youth and adult activities including: Town of Dryden youth sports programs, the Freeville and Dryden summer camps, the Dryden Area Intergenerational Band, Sertoma and Kiwanis programs, and youth development programming provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension. These programs represent valuable recreation, leisure, and youth development opportunities for all Dryden residents and access to suitable facilities is critical to their success and continued availability. WE are writing to you because over the past several years the ability to organize and use these facilities has become difficult. Some of the feedback we have re ceived from groups include:  Lack of facility availability or inconsistent availability,  Poor communication between the building coordinator, district staff, and program organizers,  Poor facility condition. The general impression of many program organizers is that the district does not want to make their facilities available. It is worth noting that many of the programs pay a fee for facility usage, and some are responsible for cleaning and maintaining the facility during and after use. The DRYC would like to assist DCSD in developing a stronger relationship to increase the opportunity for youth and adult recreation. Some suggestions include:  Developing a more transparent way to use the facility master schedule, something that the recreation department had access to.  Development and utilization of policies and procedures for elementary school children using the facilities  A system in place to notify The Town of Dryden Recreation Department of schedule and field changes as well as construction projects that effect recreation programs and events.  DEDICATING SPECIFIC LOCATIONS FOR IN SEASON ACTIVITIES SUCH AS YOUTH BASKETBALL, YOUTH FOOTBALL, YOUTH LACROSSE, and YOUTH CHEER. THE TOWN WOULD BE WILLING TO HELP DEVELOP THESE SITES  Policies in place for facility maintenance of sites that are used by the recreation departments or an establishment of criteria that would permit town staff to do some field and facility maintenance as needed.  We have offered several times to offer financial and other assistance for the upkeep and reconstruction of the school/community softball fields ( with no response to partnership options) Page 7 of 7 We understand the primary focus of the school’s facilities is the students, their learning, development, and athletics, and there are important construction needs. However, the community needs access to recreation space. DCS has the only space to accommodate larger scale programs and recreation. With the DCS and community working together a stronger relationship can develop with greater community support of DCS. Thank you!