Referentment names,
Let's take a look at the other side, let's take a look at the other side, let's take a look at the other side.
Let's take a look at the other side, let's take a look at the the other side, let's take a look at the other side, let's do it.
All right, everybody. We now have a quorum and we can convene
counselor Jonathan Lambert Melton has an excused absence today and Mayor Pertum
Fort is running a few minutes behind but we'll be joining us and we are here to
talk about the 2022 Parks Bond update with Shoshin Baker and Kelly Ham.
Thank you. Good morning Mayor and good morning members of the council and Shoshin
Baker with Rally Parks and this morning my engineering services colleague
Kelly Ham and I are presenting a progress update on the 2022 Parks Fund
project and towards the end of this presentation I'll be giving a brief overview
on the annual Parks Capital Improvement Program Supported Primarily by the Penny Tax
Revenue. First the bomb projects there has been very extensive and intensive engagement
and collaboration building internally and externally as you have experienced
yourselves, most of the projects after community engagement process were brought in front of
boards and commissions and city council for review and approval so thank you very much for
all your input and support on these projects. And most of these projects now have moved into
technical design phase with a very minimum interaction with the community members, however we
continue to communicate with them through project websites and social media channels as well as
outreach with targeted stakeholder groups or planning an open house event for spring
2026 to report progress and share and share project information. As presented last time a
cross-departmental team has been working towards the development of a reporting dashboard
to promote transparency as well as reporting on the Bond budget spending status.
And we're going to take a closer look at the dashboard a few slides later down this presentation.
And here's the graphic again showing the four-year rollout for the Parks Fund budget and we're currently
in year three. Also as presented previously there was a funding gap of little over $21 million
between the originally proposed budget and the final dollar amount that was approved by city council
and the voters. We've been working towards closing that gap and I have a little bit progress report
today. First we finally received a written confirmation letter from the grant tour for the $8.6 million
grant award for Smokey Hollow Park and it's still conditional contingent upon
US Army Corps permit and review but that was already part of the proudest scope in a ways
and the proud team has been working towards the permitting phase and as we develop the design.
And second we are still working on the environmental review process for the $1.5 million
dollar hot grant for South Park Heritage Walk and recently we received a $400,000 grant from the
great trail state grant for us.
From North Carolina, towards the Marsha Creek Grandway Planning and the Ability Study. The neighborhood
and community connections partnership is going strong, currently in permitting phase. We also recently
secured pretty substantial partnership with a private developer for the Office of Renovation
and Activision Index Park. In addition to all that, we have received over $800,000 from
City of Raleigh, Stormwater Program for the implementation of Green Stormwater Infrastructure on
some of the bond projects. We still have a couple in the pipeline and we continue to look
around. With that, I would like to have as Kelly Hamd to start talking about the projects.
Thanks, Shashin. All right, and we're going to talk a little bit about the project status and
this slide may look familiar to you. We've used it a few times as we've provided updates. So as we go down
the slide vertically, we have the Part 1 projects and then as we go across the top from left to right,
we have the phases of the project, starting with early phases like RFQ, planning, schematic design,
construction documents through permitting, bidding, construction and finally completion.
And our progress since our last update to you all, which was in March, is shown in blue.
And I did want to note, even if you don't see an entire phase, if anything, in blue, we are making a lot of
progress. And we're going to talk about the projects based on their fiscal year. They were funded a little bit here.
So for fiscal year 24, we have one project that is open to the public and wow, what a wonderful project to
be the first one to live through the part of our founding success with the play flaw.
We've got a couple of projects under construction and then green road is in the bidding category.
A significant number of the projects funded in fiscal year 24 are in permitting. I won't read all of them,
but I wanted to point out, build more hills as the farthest is the answer to the building permit phase
and the remainder are primarily in site plan permitting. And the remainder of the fiscal year 24
funded projects are in design as you can see here. And the fiscal year 25 of funded projects are also
in design. So happy to report all the projects are enrolled out in a designer for their long phases.
Just wanted to briefly mention some of the ongoing challenges and this is not to alarm anybody
just to say that we are anticipating planning for these factors and trying to work to minimize their impacts
on our project to the extent we can. So some of those challenges are tariffs, bidding conditions, and
contractor availability to do the work, increasing costs. There are some projects for which we have federal
grants, so we want to be extra careful to make sure that we meet all the requirements for those projects.
And then relocation of impacted services. So even as we are planning for design of renovation into some
of the community centers, parks counterpart, so we're very hard to put in place plans to relocate
some of those services to minimize any impacts to programming overall. And so now we're going to talk about
the dashboard. And we will see. Here we go. Okay. So we last provided you an update on the
park spawned dashboard at our last update. And we wanted to preview it for you today. So we're calling it
the 2022 park spawn spending tracker. And I'm just going to go over it briefly. You can take all
projects or you can pick a specific project. So right now we're looking at all of them. It has an
interactive map here where you can click on projects that each of these dots represents the project.
And the bigger the dot is, the more bond funding the project has. And then as we go over here, if I pick
it, we'll do this in a minute, we'll pick a specific project. But when we pick that project, it'll tell us what phase it's in.
It tells us what is the total budget. So this represents the 275 million of bond funds plus
any other donations grants or other funding for a total of 325 million here. And then it shows us on the next
line how much have we spent from the park spawned. So we've spent 55 million. And then it'll give us
for each of the projects in the visual book. But our goal is to spend down these funds by December of 2022.
And then as you go down farther, there's a cash flow curve here. So this is how we plan to spend
the funding over time. So the blue line is just that that projection. How do we plan to spend this
275 million of bond funds over time. And then the green line here is how much are we actually spending
over time. So the blue line is a projection based on a curve and the green line is based on actual
invoices and pay applications. So as we go over here, we have some general information about the bonds.
And then we have these graphics that look like speedometers. So I like to call them spendometers because
we're trying to show how much we're spending. So you can see here, the first one is spending from the
park spawned. So we know we have a total of 275 million. And so far, if you see this start blue,
we've spent about 55 million from the bond. And then if you go to the middle, it's going to show us
spending from those other sources. So we've got 50 million and we spent about almost 36 million.
And then if we go to the far right, that's just going to total everything up for us from the bond plus
other sources. So 325 million and we spent 91. And so we'll just go ahead then and try to preview
a specific project. Let's just take a look at Tarber, for example. And one thing that you'll know is
you have to unclick this elect all so that it shows you that specific project. There we go. Okay.
So now that we're on Tarber, you see our math is focused right into our project location. Our project
description is telling us specifically about Tarber. So we have a note about when the schedule was
last updated. In this case, we had a contract an amendment that did schematic design through
construction. So we're on that schedule. We have an overview of what it is. So this is redeveloping the
park. And then some of the key features, the community center playgrounds play court, parking, and so forth.
And improvements to Saint Monica. And then if we go over here, you can see where in the design phase,
our budget is about 29.3 million. And we've spent about 980,000 of that. We're anticipating
being done with construction in January of 29. And then as we look at our projected spending versus
our actual spending down here. So again, projected as blue and actual as green. And then as we
go over here, our spendometer, as we can see again, our budget for this project is 29.3 million.
We spent about 980,000. And this particular project doesn't have any other funding sources. So you're
just seeing bonds so that a spendometer over here will look just like the one spending fund bonds. So
with that, I'm going to turn things back over to Shashi and talk about the look ahead.
Thank you. Next up's, of course, we're going to continue implementing these projects and continue
to pursue grants and partnerships. And this fact dashboard that Kelly just showed you. We hope to publish
that this week unless there are any substantial input and comments from the council that we need to address.
Of course, I mentioned earlier that we're going to plan, we are planning for an open house event
for a spring 2026. And this event is intended to be a community event with the fund and food and music and
family activities. And once that data finalized, we'll definitely share with the Board's and
commissions and city council and the broader community. The next two slides, I only have two slides
left. The next two slides are about the capital and the annual parks capital improvement program.
Again, primarily supported by the penny tax. Back in fiscal year 2022, city council authorized
to implement a one penny tax increase to support maintenance, different maintenance and life cycle
replacement. During the first year, if by 2022, one penny brought us $7.6 million and that amount has
increased with current year being $11.6 million. And since then, staff has been working pretty
hard with the penny and we have completed over 120 projects through the execution of well over 200 contracts
and we have expressed $28 million and currently there's just shy of $9 million under contract waiting to be spent.
And here's some snapshots of the projects that are covered under this program,
Dix Park Building Abatement Demolition and Site Stabilization. We also have security system,
expansion and upgrades at locations where there was none or locations where there were analog
old outdated analog systems to keep them upgraded and we completed about 40 at about 40 facilities so far.
And then ongoing parks savings, stream their anguish duration and play more innovation
than park system upgrades. So those are targeted for again, focusing on maintenance,
deferred maintenance and life cycle replacement. And with that we're happy to take questions.
Yep, council branch. Definitely thank you for the presentation information of the 4.187
that is short between that 21 and that 17. I know you said yet three opportunities.
Excuse me, coming forward yet to be secure. But what's the touch point are the date,
kind of on the calendar that says, hey, if we don't have funding for this 4 million by this date,
then projects may be in jeopardy. Okay. I wouldn't say our projects are in jeopardy and the grant
funding is really to supplement. We're not counting the projects are not designed,
accounting on the extra funding. At the extra funding we'll just provide extra cushion,
extra confidence for us and also if there's any low hang for during the projects that come up that
could be covered with additional grant funding that will be helpful. So we're not counting on that money.
Okay, perfect. This is good to hear. Thank you. Thank you.
How's our patent and then silver? Hi. My question is around. I think there's a budget gap on
news of our park. And that between what was approved in the master plan and what's available. And I know
like funding opportunities are being pursued, but I don't see them reflected here on the slide. Are those
still looking optimistic or how's it going there? They're not on the slide because we have not
secured them. We're only reporting back the dollar amount that we have secured 90%. And for news
we're apart. We did, we complete the master plan and we're looking at phasing to see what we could
accomplish with the funding and also me while looking for other opportunities. One of the
the grants I caught out on the slide was the state park's grant and that's something we're
eyeing on and hopefully to apply for for this project. And we're also talking with our partners and to
hope to bring some private dollars, but they're not secured yet. And if we go back to Mr. Grenches
Mr. Grenches question, if we fail to do everything there, we will face the project and to have a fit
within the budget. And then a broader question is it fair to to characterize that these
did bond projects currently are on time and on budget? Have you fair characterization overall?
The short answer is yes without getting to each project. There has been some council directions
to ask hope to certain projects that impacted funding and schedule and staff has been strategizing
every time we receive directions from council, from the community to, again, the hope is to get everything
under budget and on schedule. But there has been some adjustments based on additional input during the process.
Question, thank you for the presentation and very excited to see how this project is moving forward.
I know on our presentation and it's, I guess, in beta version before you roll out the
tracker and certainly appreciate it. I know we had talked about a very effective tool we use in
your city capital tracker. This is a suggestion for the future, but I think the public should be where
there's always three stages of a project, there's design, procurement, and construction. And so whether
in the future, I know you want to roll this one out, would there be an ability of just showing which
stage it's in, so the public understands what's happening, always in the design phase.
Procurement I imagine is very short here. Unlike New York City, which was 14 months, but here I think
it's shorter. And then design, there are some complexity just adding that one feature about what
percent completes, so the public understands, oh, designs expected or estimated to be completed in this
quarter, the project's expected to be delivered. So I think that would just be a helpful
innovation, but the fact that you have this tracker. Thank you. It's very helpful as we go out
and members and community access about it. We could either tell them go directly to the tracker,
or we ourselves could look this up on the dashboard. So we just want to thank you for this addition
to understanding how our capital projects go from design to completion. Thank you for that input.
When we, when the team worked down this tracker, this product is intended to be a living document or a
living product. And based on it, because we'll have not rolled it out yet, and once it's out there,
I'm sure with the passionate people.
Global in the committee, we're going to hear feedback and input on the track. How to use it? And from, in
both, they elect officials, as well as the general public. So we do intend I improving it,
as needed. And currently, there is a phase as Kelly presented. There is a phase showing what
face were in. There's a field showing what face were in. Design, construction, but we do not have the
rainbow or the speedometer to show that, but we could not work with ourselves. I just couldn't play with it
because in the slide, it was static and so I kept clicking. So, but I understand it's in beta,
you're going to roll it out. So, I will certainly take a look at it. But thank you for that addition. Very helpful.
So, I'll just second council or silver. I mean, this is fabulous. This is going to be such a great tool.
When do you think it's going to go live? I mean, just ballpark.
We have things set up today. Hopefully tomorrow, we'll have the links on all the project websites,
including in the main park spot website. Why have a set up? Just read to roll.
Okay. Well, I mean, just the interface, the diagrams, the interactivity of it's really, really great.
I mean, I do think this then begs, if the park's department does this, you know, the affordable housing
bond, the transportation bond. We're probably going to need to develop right tools to assess
those projects in those departments of the city so that we're treating all these big bond issues
equally. So, I don't know whether we've got plans to do that, but I think that's going to immediately
beg the next question. I have to say there has been a lot of efforts to this season to give
things and presentations. I do want to thank IT staff and for a nice and weak work to make this happen.
And to answer your question, it would be, it would be a shame. It would only use this one time for this
park's department. And we're doing 10 on. Hopefully, I'm not speaking for Marshal, but hopefully to use
something similar or future bonds and to help with transparency. Second question, which kind of goes to
some of Kelly's comments about, we know there's been tariffs inflation, all these projects, the
dollars have gone up. And so, this sort of suggests that the 2022, when these things were bid,
that that was the total number and we're just tracking against that number. I mean, at some point,
you also need to show where there are inflationary increases, how we're trying to address that.
I mean, maybe that's too much to put into the tool, but I also want to acknowledge the amount of
the city's stretching. And in the case of Dix Park, of course, where you had philanthropic dollars put
an additional $1.5 million to cover some of the inflationary overruns. And you sort of want to
recognize the muscle and flex that the city and philanthropic partners are putting in to make sure
these projects are actually brought to, you know, to fruition.
Appreciate the thought. Most of the very complicated, large scale projects, so we did have a
different delivery method like construction managers at risk and who help us with the cost
estimation from real construction market time and hopefully. And we're also tracking escalation as
while every step of the way we have certain percentages of escalation built. So we're hopeful,
I don't want to promise anything, but we're hopeful that most projects will be delivered
budget. But that's why the GAM back to Mr. Grinch's question and we're still looking for additional
funding opportunity for in case situations. But we're not necessarily increasing scope,
even with additional funding, which is hopefully one bit time comes. Everything is workable.
Okay, any other questions? All right. Well, I think that is the right only item we had on our
work session. And we appreciate it. And we are adjourned until the regular session at 1 p.m.
I'm Robert Hanson and this is what I'm doing.
Whether you're a rally native or new to the area, you've probably been to Poland Park.
It's a magical place for kids and adults. I work for the city of Raleigh as an attraction specialist
been doing that for about three and a half years and what I do.