Notes from Parks Meeting on August 26, 2009
The members of the Parks and Recreation Committee are Scott Muenz, Chair; Bert Buys, Vice Chair; Megan Mutschler, Secretary; Linda Montemayor; Phyllis Jackson; Maria McCarns; and Donny Jones. Maria McCarns was absent; all other members were present. Also present at the meeting was Council member Gary Johnson.
The meeting was called to order at 7:03 p.m. There was no one there wanting to speak to the committee during the “Citizens to be Heard” portion of the meeting.
Once again on the agenda was an item on the City’s 30th anniversary celebration which will take place on August 11, 2011. Bert Buys again said he thought it was too soon to discuss this event (and I, again, agree). Linda Montemayor said she had not yet talked to Council member Cynthia Massey, who they consider to be the City’s historian. Linda provided a little information to other committee members about the 25th anniversary celebration, but admitted that she did not go to it. (I’m pretty sure that I was the only person in the room that knew anything about the 25th Anniversary Celebration, since I was on the planning committee and helped facilitate the activities of the event.) They eventually just decided that Linda Montemayor will get in touch with Cynthia Massey, and this event will be discussed at another meeting in the future.
They discussed assigning duties and tasks for the following activities:
The MarketPlace at Old Town Helotes – The City Secretary, Grace Tamez, has asked them to let her know if they can help with this event which will take place next Saturday, September 5, 2009. In addition to the regular activities at the monthly MarketPlace, there will be a “Battle of the Bands” and “Show and Shine,” a car show. They unanimously approved a motion directing each member to notify Grace of their availability(?).
Movie Night at the Park – There will be two more movie nights in 2009, September 18 and October 16. Bert Buys suggested that when the dates for next year are selected, whoever does it should check to see that there are no schedule conflicts. For instance, September 18, the date of the next movie night, is O’Connor’s homecoming which will keep him from attending movie night.
They have regular activities and responsibilities associated with movie night. One of which is cleaning up after the event. They are going to ask the Mayor to make an announcement asking people to pick up their trash as they are leaving. They suggested that more trash cans should be placed around the grounds and the bags changed more often. Donny Jones suggested that the Mayor just remind those attending that their neighbors are picking up their trash, not paid employees, and they would appreciate their help.
The committee members were directed to let Grace know if they were not going to be able to attend the next movie night.
Annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony (Friday, December 4, 2009) and Annual Christmas Night Parade in Old Town Helotes (Saturday, December 12, 2009) – I have placed these events together because they pretty much discussed them both at the same time. Linda Montemayor passed out a ‘To Do’ list she had prepared. Apparently, last year she took care of a lot of the duties herself, and she’s wanting more help this year. She is asking each Parks Committee member to sign up for the required duties and form task forces of volunteers they will recruit themselves. She also encouraged each member to request donations for these two events, from citizens and local businesses.
They decided to gather as many volunteers as possible on Saturday, November 21, 2009, to decorate around City Hall, putting up and decorating a Christmas tree and lights around the grounds. Phyllis Jackson volunteered to work with City staff decorating inside City Hall. Megan Mutschler volunteered to coordinate the arrival at the tree lighting of Santa and Mrs. Claus in a sleigh accompanied by police officers. Apparently, after the lighting ceremony, kids line up and talk to Santa, and on their way out of the room they are given goodie bags. The refreshments will be taken care of by Scott, Phyllis, Bert’s wife Kathy, and Maria.
For the parade, Bert will be responsible for the lighting of the City Hall float. I guess there is a float on which will ride the Mayor and Council members and their families? They can use a flat bed owned by the City or Donny Jones also has one available. Bert said they could assemble the float at his house. Bert, Donny, and Phyllis volunteered to design and decorate the float.
They need a new PA system. The one they had last year didn’t work well. They are contacting several people about announcing the floats as they go by. They’d like to have a longer parade route than they had last year. Phyllis suggested that the committee members visit Helotes businesses and encourage them to enter a float in the parade.
Again this year, Diane Wootton, the publisher of The Echo, will issue and collect parade permits from each participant, and she will establish the order of the floats in the parade.
There will be no refreshments provided at the parade. Apparently, that didn’t go well last year. There will, however, be trophies awarded to participants, I guess for different categories like ‘Best Lighting’ or something.
Megan will devise a form for donors to fill out listing their donations for the committee’s records. Donors will be acknowledged in The Echo and elsewhere. Megan will also prepare an official duty sheet, which I am sure will be more complete and accurate than my notes.
They decided to assign duties and tasks for the Annual Easter Egg Hunt (which will take place next March) at a later date. They unanimously approved a motion containing all the issues they discussed on this item.
The next item was discussion and action on a future event tentatively titled “Spring Time Event.” They could not decide when would be a good time to have this event since the Easter Egg event is in March and other things are scheduled in April and May. February was mentioned, but they decided that February is not in the spring. They decided to move this item to the next meeting’s agenda.
The next item was discussion and action on researching more grants for Helotes parks. Megan apparently has some actual experience in grant writing, and she reported that all the grant applications she has reviewed required you to actually be able to detail what you want the grant for (who knew?). Most of the grants are matching grants, so the City would have to come up with the funding to match any grant that might be awarded. She told them that they needed to pinpoint a project they would want to do, and they would have to hire a professional grant writer, since the process is quite complex and labor intensive.
Scott has researched several available grants and had talked with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. They discussed the fact that the only land the City owns with park potential is the land in Iron Horse Canyon and in Old Town Helotes. Council member Johnson suggested that, since it is now budget planning time, they should submit a request to Council requesting that some money be set aside to be used as matching funds in case they are awarded a grant. He suggested that Scott Muenz, the committee’s Chair, talk to the City Administrator about it.
They unanimously approved a motion that a request for money be forwarded to the City Administrator and that each member will come to the next meeting with one idea for a project or opportunity that they can develop into a grant application.
The next item was discussion and action on recommending to City Council that their committee and the City should utilize free internet marketing tools to promote community events and recruit volunteers. Megan suggested that the City could use Facebook or Twitter to advertise events and encourage attendance. She thought they could also recruit volunteers and keep a list of them there also. The ‘pages’ would be managed by City staff and would be open and public to everyone. Bert said that the Festival Association had had some kind of problem on Face Book. They decided that before the next meeting, Megan would talk to the City Administrator, Rick Schroder, about this project. She said she would also check with other cities our size to see if they have done anything like this.
The next item was discussion and action on increasing volunteerism for community events and/or Helotes Parks and implementing a volunteer database. Linda suggested that all the members send information to Megan on people they know who would like to volunteer to help at City events. She could create a database and eventually turn it over to the City. No decision was reached on this item.
The last item on the agenda was discussion and action on recommending to City Council that one of the steel armadillos from the front garden area on municipal grounds be moved. Phyllis Jackson said that the plants in the front garden area had completely overgrown the smaller of the armadillos, and she feels that it should be moved to the flower bed at the main entrance to City Hall. There is room in the bed for it. They unanimously approved that this recommendation be forwarded to City Council.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 p.m.