We call the Mandan Park District board meeting to order today’s May 12, 2025. We’re at the city hall. Uh, any additions or deletions to the agenda? None. OK, and at this point we’ll take any public communication from visitors. Call if you, this is now a require a requirement, one of the legislative updates, is that, are you gonna talk about that later I’ll just touch on leadership legislative update, sorry. OK. Nobody at this point to participate in that. I’ll close that portion of the meeting. Uh, can we look to approve, uh, April 14th, 2025, regular meeting minutes. I’ll make a motion to approve April 14th, 2025 regular meeting minutes. Motion by Comm Froehlich. Seconded by Comm Mehlhoff, any further discussion? OK, all in favor, say aye, the same sign. And motion carries. Moving into item number one, requests from Mandan Baseball Club to add a new shed garage to the ball diamonds. Hi Dave. President Meschke, Comm, tonight, um, the Man at Baseball Club is here to request to put a shed on the east alleyway between Diamonds 9 and 10, uh, Rob Oster from the Manda Baseball Club will answer any questions, uh, present, uh, anything he has to let you guys know cost and uh time frame and that kind of stuff. So I’ll let Rob talk about it. I know a few, few of us were able to tour. That a few weeks ago and, and I know Cole and Dave kind of pointed out what they were thinking and it looks like it would fit in pretty good. So, Rob, you wanna kind of give us, give us a plan 36 by 20 shed. Um, we do have the existing shed we kind of wanna remove those. Because they’re so old and rusty in the, in the main entrance, so we want to clean those up. So this would be just a building to store all our stuff as far as screens, maths. Um, mounds, balls, brooms. Turf rakes, all that stuff just to get it out of the way and put it over on the East side where it’s not a focal point coming into the main park between Memorial and, in the complex, so, um, I think you guys have probably have the, the spec drawing on it and whatnot, it’s. Pretty simple, so I guess if you guys have any questions. For me on that and I have, I have one, it’s, it’s gonna match with colors with the rest of same color scheme that green and taupe colors we got down there absolutely. So you have some some drawings there and I guess kind of see where they want to put it there, those of you that weren’t able to be at the tour. Um I agree those other sheds have They had, they had good use and good life out of them, and they looked a lot nicer when they went up than they do now, but. Any other questions for Rob or yeah, I do, uh, so thisit entirely. I know Dave, you thought that maybe you’d sit up against the fence or, or how is it gonna sit in that area? Essentially, were that fence is on the very east side, the front of the building where the overhead garage doors are would be right up against that fence, and the fence would go away so that building is in a sense would serve as a fence. So the fence would go to the building and it all would be enclosed just as it is, so. Perfect thanks. Is that, are you going to have a cement foundation right there? Yes. OK. And I don’t have that in my estimates because I didn’t, I don’t have that back yet, but yes, they would absolutely be concrete foundation according to the, you know, the specs of what the, the city wants for a shovel footing and so on and so forth, so cool, thank you. Any other comments or questions for Rob? Well, Rob, you know, we’ve worked really closely with men on baseball and you know you guys have always done a really nice job and. And uh you’ve also paid for a lot of things too, so we, we do appreciate that, um. I think this will fit in nice and it’ll look really nice. We don’t have well water out there anymore or no no reason to. I guess water that area, um, with the turf, so, um, I think it’ll look nice for a while. Absolutely. So Or the boards wishes. I’ll make a motion to recommend approving of the men and Baseball Club to build a new storage shed over on the east side there motion by Comm Melhlhoffed by Comm Scott. Any further discussion? Bean we are not paying for this and and and baseball is we we roll call we don’t need to do roll call, OK? We have a motion 2, all in favor say aye. oppose same sign. Motion carries. Thanks, Rob. Um, just a little background too, um, we’ll be constructing this towards the end of the season, um, and then we’ll be getting rid of the two sheds. We’ll be um purposing those somewhere else, um, so then those will be out by, I would say sometime August, September, they’ll be gone. So. Thanks. Dave, a real quick question. I, I was out there. Going off When they’re practicing, um, the, the little leagues are gonna still play there, right, correct, on the, yep, um, so all the leagues that we have, um, between the 5 year olds all the way up to the Legion kids. They’re all going to utilize the whole complex, um, basically between 99 to 12, everything’s gonna get utilized down there. Um, we’re just scheduling out right now with the All Stars and the league and then all that kind of stuff. So, but yep, can be utilized. If you haven’t had a chance to go up there yet. Take a, take a quick trip and do that. It looks really nice. Why I skipped because I’m off. Uh, OK, moving on to item number 2. Consider for approval capital improvements to golf operations, coal and Garrett. Meski and Commissioners, as you know, last month we rejected, um, the cost estimate and proceed with EAPC to move forward with construction designs due to the cost and at that time we told you that we’d come back this month to come up with a summary of some ideas which Garrett and his staff have worked together in that spreadsheet. I’m gonna let Gerrett kind of talk about those items in a minute, but the total cost that we’re estimating is around 1. 1 million in the back of those um Excel spreadsheet that Gerrett put together for improvements. There’s a highlighted in the financials as far as where the dollars would come from. There’s $963,000 currently sit in that vision fund with another $150,000 to be transferred in 25. So that will give us enough funds that we will not have to finance any of the improvements, and then they will be um paid for out of this year’s budget if for some reason due to weather or other unrelated items may may be as deliverable as the materials, we may have to come back in Jan or excuse me, December and have those funds transferred into January, but the goal would be to get as many outdoor amenities done in 2025 and then start the fall project with indoor facility improvements, um, there’ll be a few things that are indoor, such as the man Auni. Some of those may be able to start this late summer fall, um, all the items that we’re talking about are going to be itemized separately so they’re completely different projects where we would then not have to work through the bid requirements, um. It was approved up to $250,000 is what the new amendment for capital projects that require an engineer and or an architect for the projects, so any questions you have for me before I turn over to Gerrett to kind of give a summary as far as all these estimates. Last comment I guess to add would be as we did present it to Comm Scott where we did have a golf portfolio meeting, walk through all these items, and I think it’s just a good summary as far as benefiting both golf courses, being prudent with the dollars and the tax dollars that we receive and again all these dollars have been generated from the golf course from our revenues and allocated towards the vision fund, so it’s nice to see those dollars be regenerated back into the golf course. Gert Summarize real quick here, uh. I, I just thought of it now and I apologize, um, the That or um adjusting that new hole at Munich golf course. Is that on here? I don’t see it. So those funds are reimbursed by the Lower Hart Water Resource District, so as we pay for those costs, we will track those and then when that assessment comes back for the funding for the lower heart water Resource District for that levy work, those costs will be reimbursable through there. Thank you. Hi. Good evening, Commissioners. While the short summary of of this project, I guess, is we’ve kind of looked at every option from building a new shop down on the south end of the golf course to renovating our current shop and the overarching theme is running into roadblocks, uh, both logistical construction and, um, you know, fiscal constraints on that. So we’ve pivoted in the name of fiscal responsibility, and I think that we’ve put together a pretty good plan that can serve our needs rather than one centralized shop location. We can piece meals together some improvements to golf facilities that both men and municipal and Prairie West and fit our staff needs without taking. on a financial burden that we don’t need to for our operations. So we’ve itemized it um based on area and priority level, um, some of the projects would work congruently together where as you do concrete, you do asphalt, things like that. So our biggest priority is, uh, adding space in different facilities and then improving some of our, our services. Our cart storage needs to be addressed. That would be the number one thing that we would do, get concrete, a new fence, um, improve that area, keep our carts cleaner, stored securely, uh. And then after that we’d be redoing the asphalt basically from 10 tee box at Prairie West over to the clubhouse. Um, that’s in pretty bad disrepair the way it is, and then after our project, uh, on Ho 11 and 12, it was damaged even more and it’s time to replace that. A lot of these projects could be happening simultaneously, say, while we’re working on cart storage, we could be improving some of our other outbuildings. Uh, the cart storage building at Manda Municipalal as well as the fertilizer storage building at Prairie West are both buildings that were moved on after they had reached the end of their useful life elsewhere in the Park District or the city of Mandan. So they’ve, uh, definitely had their years of use. So as we replace those structures, they’d be um non-heated, non-insulated. We run power to them, but basically pull Barnes with concrete, that would allow a storage space to keep our equipment supplies, fertilizer, golf carts, secure. Um, as we were doing that, that would open up, alleviate space to go to the next steps of renovating our current shop, adding heat to both men and municipal and Prairie West shops where we don’t have heated workspaces now, um, cleaning up those areas, insulating them, and really improving those um facets of our operation, so adding the space that we need eventually working our way into the inside where in the winter, we could renovate our current break room, add space, add lockers for staff, um, like we don’t have a washer and dryer at Prairie West or even a kitchen sink or break room for our staff. So it would essentially be staged outside inside in areas that were easily accessible to Not interrupting our operations for winter improvements. A couple of questions, Garrett. I see a lot of concrete on here with the plan be to bring concrete, uh, contractors in and do all of that at once, or the plan would be to itemize those areas and try to get one contract or whoever would win the bid on that to do as much of the concrete work as at once as possible. And then do you foresee this being, um, I guess, uh A big distraction for golfers out there. I mean, as far as. I think there’ll certainly be minor inconveniences, but we’ll try to schedule that around major events, um, they’re all areas that don’t interfere with daily play. The cart storage, we may have to reroute car traffic from 9 to 10T around the driving range where that path is. Things like that, but nothing that we can’t handle. OK. Obviously we’re building things that’s gonna cause some disruption, but OK. You know, the questions for Gary. And President Meschke Comm just to, even though it’s under the $250,000 bid limit our policies requires that anything over $10,000 to get multiple bids to compare with, so we will be getting soliciting bids from each item that you see here, hoping that we can have multiple bids, see what’s best interest for the park district and then award all of it at one time to whichever area they’re bidding for, so we do get bids as I wanted to clarify. The one thing I’m super proud of Gerrett and whatnot, but In, in addition, this time, he included his staff in in a lot of the, the coming up with ideas, and I think that’s always important to let help them feel like they’re part of the decision-making process and, and so he got ideas from many different staff and then put the final list together based on that. So I, I commend you for that, Garrett. Thank you. Yeah, staff had a lot of invaluable input for that, uh, get us what we need to do in this project, no doubt. Anything else for Garrett? OK. Board’s wishes. I would move to approve the proceeding with the list of improvements as presented in the amount of $1,110,000 for upgrades to Prairie West and Mandan Municipal Golf courses. Motion by Comm Scott, seconded by Comm Melhlhhoff. Any further discussion? Comm Scott. Mr. Milhhoff. Comm Froehlich, Comm Mudder. I, for me as well. Thank you, Garrett. Thank you, Commissioners. It’s much appreciated. Moving on to item number 3. What happened at the legislative session, Cole, if you want to give us the, the recap, please. Yeah, so just some highlights in your packet uh demonstrate some of the things, as you know, I represent NDRPA as our public policy chair so over the last 8 sessions we’ve been, uh, participating, so I just wanted to give a quick summary of some of the things that will impact the park district. Obviously, we are well aware of property taxes being caps, excuse me, being imposed. We are working on that right now as 3% caps are into our budget process, the budget portfolios were sent out to everybody. Um, if there’s dates that don’t work for you in June that have been sent to you, please let me know. We could kind of work around all three schedules along with Terry, I guess 4 of us. Um, really the the impact there, as we mentioned, the 3% is going to be what we need to communicate and what we’re working with both city schools and the county. is that it’s 3% caps on our budget’s not on the evaluation so when home valuations are being impacted and there’s special assessments being added to it that’s not part of that 3% cap to our budget, so I think ideally the concept would be if my taxes are $1. Next year it should be $1.03. That’s not necessarily true when there’s assessments that don’t have a maximum levy on that. So we’re trying to make sure we all are communicating that to the public, um, when we go through this process. The cooperative Pur Authority, um, that’s been brought before us many times where Our lawn mowing equipment or specialty items that we have, um, we do a lot of state procurement where we go on the state procurement it’s already been pre-bid in advance. We buy vehicles, trailers, equipment, things of that nature there. Now we have the authority to go outside the state and participate with um. Those groups, we won’t go outside, um, the state as far as in our city limits or in the state, obviously if we have the ability to get a quote from them here, we will get that quote and support our local businesses, but at the same time, um, there are things that are outside of our state that get brought in here that we don’t have any option on, on specialty items. If we were to go with a cooperative purchasing with anybody outside the state of North Dakota, we would have to have a joint powers agreement with them. So we talked about that our leadership meeting this morning and if there’s any pipe equipment that we may be looking at in 206 or beyond, at least get with a company called Sourcewell, which there were very large, um. Cooperative purchasing agreement. We just got to download their joint powers agreement, bring it before the board, have a motion by the board that you support us sign up with that group and then we would be able to proceed with any type of purchases with that. Um, as you talked about earlier, um, public comments we’ve been ahead of the game. We allow public comments. We don’t necessarily have a written policy. I mean, it’s stated at the bottom of the agenda. Um, it summarize exactly how we handle it, and it’s always is limited. I did change that limited it to 3 minutes if you just kind of tweaked it, and that’s kind of what really got implemented. There were some other entities across the state that weren’t having public comment, so we actually been doing it for many years, so I don’t see a whole lot of change, um, please review that public communication policy. We have on our agenda. And then maybe we’ll present it back at a future meeting or we’ll have it at our July retreat like we do most time with policy changes and then at that time, we can then build it into our standard operating procedures for the district and then be able to update it there but I think overall we have a pretty good, um, public policy comment or communication policy already in place. I could turn that into a policy pretty, pretty easy. correct me if I’m wrong, it has to be on an agenda item that they at that meeting or the follow-up meeting. Is that correct? OK. That is correct. Bonnie, um, not, we don’t really as a park district do a whole lot of elections for bonds, but just in case we do ever want to do a bond for a large tax increase. It requires a vote. It can only be held during the primary general. You see a lot of that with school districts with their bonds for the schools, um, we haven’t never done one in my tenure. We’ve done a sales tax one, but if we were, we couldn’t have a special election. That’s really what’s changed before you could have a special election. Um, the bid threshold as I mentioned earlier, has gone up to $250,000 signature threshold for petitions to be on the ballot. Remember last year when the city had the ability to change their signature requirement, and we as the Park District had to still stay at that 300. We had worked with the League of Cities and we appreciate their assistance and we got that put into play now we will have to abide by whatever the city signs off on, so I can’t remember what that signature is, but I think it’s right around 150. Um, don’t quote me on that one, but it’s much less than what it used to be for petitions. As far as the audits, doesn’t really have any impact um to a board. It’s just when you have an open records request. Sometimes our audits are excuse me, our audits are required to be submitted to the state, um, and then sometimes the general public ask questions about related to our audit they’re going to delegate that back to the local municipality which makes total sense. And then as far as the other components here as far as transparency, it just is, you know, financial and personal interest mandate for Park board candidates, not sure what changes has happened in that specifically, but it was just worded in there where it had city counties and schools and then we’ve always just fall under the governance of a city, and I think it’s just been interpreted that way and has it always been Secretary of State’s website though not for park board. It’s always been kind of included because many park boards are under the city governments as far as um so that’s why that just got added this year. Um, obviously state parks, we’ve had some grant fundings over the years where we haven’t been able to get that. The last two bienniums we’ve been able to secure grant funding this year there’s no dollars in there. And then as far as the retirement changes doesn’t affect the Man in Park District, specifically, obviously that we don’t have a defined benefit. We have a defined contribution, but it just kind of spells it out that if we wanted to ever join their defined contribution, we could, um, but we’re quite happy with where we’re at here today. And then just insurance and liability is just some kind of cleaning up some communication internally between the state, North Dakota Insurances and their state fire and tornado administration doesn’t really impact us, but as you know, we got the daylight savings time bill removed that was going to be a big implication to the Park District for all of our youth facilities and just access to them after hours and so that’s a good win. And then, as you know, the bonding authority was uh a big discussion for um Many of us is that we have the ability to go out and do geo bonding requires to have a public hearing, requires you have public notification in the local newspaper. It cannot exceed 1% of your total taxable um collections and excuse me, assess value, sorry, and we were at around $14 million and there was discussions bringing it down to 15, which really impacted the larger cities in the state of North Dakota who are have the ability to go up to between 50 million all the way up to about 84 million that really handcuffed him, um, so that was defeated. I think they were trying to send us a message from the state level to make sure we’re communicating with the public for some of the entities around the state that didn’t follow it. The communication standpoint, I think the legislators expected. And other than that, we are able to keep the construction manager at risk in place, and then the last one was a weapons bill, as you know, um, we don’t allow weapons in public operated buildings, um, there was some discussion about amending that uh language so that. You could carry in public areas but not where school events were taking place and the issue that we have is all of our facilities have at some point, maybe a school practice of the hockey arena on one side and a hockey club on the other, or at the soccer fields or even baseball fields, how do we police it? How do we have our staff know who, where you can go and where you can’t go, so that was easily defeated, and it has been a good session, but a lot of bills that went through. Um, the specific details are in your packet if you want to go through them, if you have further questions, but overall, um, we’re pretty happy with how the legislative session played out. Any questions on the legislative update for coal. OK, hearing none. OK, we’ll move on. Thank you, Cole. We’ll move on to item number 4. Uh, authorized payment of monthly bills. Can we get a motion? I’ll make a motion to authorize payment of the monthly bills. Motion by Comm Froehlich. A second Second by Comm Mudder, any further discussion. OK, all in favor, say I. same sign. Uh, Comm Staff reports. Anything to add, Cole? As I mentioned, the budget portfolios, if for some reason there’s a conflict or whatever, let us know. There’s some dates where a lot of staff were brought on vacation in the month of June, so we got to work around those if possible. Old Redd Trail phase one, our multi-purpose trail basically from sunset past Beaumont all the way out past Pepsi to 37th Street, I believe, is getting a mill overlay, received that grant two years ago. That is the um the work is starting as we speak they’re starting to do some of the spraying to get that trails and some of that ready to go, um, one thing that changed in the grant is that in 2027 they’re going to be doing DOT is gonna be doing some construction work to the interchange. That intersection where the on and off ramps are located, we chose not to tear up the trail that leads close. There’s a construction zone, I guess is what I’d call it for old Redd Trail in Sunset intersection where those on and off ramps are going to be. So we chose to get outside that construction zone. We’re waiting for DOT to approve that otherwise if we tear it up today, 2 years later, they’re gonna come back in and tear out probably about 50 to 100 yards of our trail, so being prudent of our tax dollars, we’re trying to see if we can do that portion, so it may look a little odd if you get questions from the public as halfway up to that um gas station, we may not tear that trail out because in 207 it’s gonna get ripped out again for that sunset, uh, interchange as far as on off ramps. And then just a reminder, the bolt ramp, as we know we have the uh ribbon cutting, the weather was going to be kind of potential cold and rainy, but it looks like the rain percentage has dropped, if for some reason we’re going to cancel, we’ll let you know as early as possible on that day. And then May 29th, um Dave may, I may be touching on that, but the Raging River’s opening date is May 29th. And then we are at a 300 kids for our summerer Mac programs, so that’s the first we’ve been able to hit that number and we’re pretty excited. That’s all I have. Thank you, Garrick. We’re in full swing for the golf courses now. We had our first game day at Prairie West last week with good turnout, and today is our First Lady’s Day at Prairie West. I had an excellent turnout for the high heat temperatures today. Um, we will be transitioning to mid-season tee times here as we approach Memorial Day, so full in-season swing. Uh, one issue that we had to work through this spring was our irrigation pump, or lone irrigation pump at Mana Municipal was not operable coming out of winter. We lucked out and found one, but that was just installed last week. So Mann Municipal had not had any irrigation until last week. Uh, my staff did a great job on hand water and keeping greens looking alive and everything like that. So we made it through a tough patch and we’re ready to go now, so Gerrett, can you, oh, I was gonna say, can you give us timeline for the temporary green and the trees and we had the, uh, the dirt stockpiled while the ground was frozen so we could get trucks in there, um, and not do more damage. Now, as staff has time, I’ll start building that green here in the next couple of weeks. Uh, we did start installing the irrigation, so some of the underground components are there at this point. Uh, we’ll hope to get the green shaped and seated in the next, you know, 1 month to 6 weeks growing in by the end of the year, should be ready to go for next season and whenever that potential project happens with the levee that green should be ready. OK, thank you. I got a question for Garrett. So that temporary green, where that dirt is is where that’ll be, right? The, the actual green will be slightly to the east of that, that stockpile bit so we can grab from there, build the green, um, a little bit closer to the road. What’s the expectation of a ball lands on there, I guess is where I was. In the course of play, uh, while it’s, it’s growing in or even after it’s after it’s open, uh, just like as any other green surface would be, uh, please take a free drop unless you’re in a stroke play tournament, which we don’t have too many of them that. That’s a legitimate question. Uh, it is. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Kurt. Uh, Dave, anything else? Um, like Cole mentioned, uh R Rivers opens May 29th. We’re just getting ready. We have a new um supervisor, uh, Brittany Ashul. I’ll bring her here next month to introduce you to everybody, but she’s doing a great job, um. I is going out as we speak right now this week, uh, the Cadillac rink. Um, and then baseball construction. We should be sodding here shortly within this week or next week. Assad should be going in and that should be wrapping up the project down there so I gonna make it look really nice down there, um, hoping to have it closed up by by June, um, so. That’s about it. OK, I’m turning rough. Comm Mudder, um, I just want to thank file orthodontics for sponsoring the Mac program this summer and I really appreciate all those people who help sponsor our stuff, so thank you file. Comm Froehlich Comm Melhlhoff this month. Mr. Scott. A golf like Gerrett said is in full swing if you look at the number of rounds, uh, already at Prairie West and at Mandauni, um, things are looking good for this early in the season. I mean, it’s, it’s quite amazing and the tea times are. Very, you know, it, uh, they switched it from midnight to 6:00 a.m. and if you’re not on there at 6 a.m., you might be playing in the middle of the day and you extended, extended the reservation period too. So 7 versus the 3 that we started out as, so yeah, but tea times are filling up fast. Good. OK, uh, future meeting dates for Park Board commissioners like Cole had mentioned May 15th. Uh, boat ramp ribbon cutting ceremony at 3 p.m. at the boat ramp. Uh, June 9th admin portfolio and audit committee. Uh noon at the park administration office. Also on June 9th, we’ll be right back here for our regular board meeting at 5:30. And then our upcoming 100 year municipal golf course ribbon cutting on June 25th at noon at Mandan Muni. Uh, can we get a motion to Adjourn? Moved to Adjourn Motion by Comm Scott. I’ll second, seconded by Comm Mudder.