Building_development + Forests_green_space + Cross_cutting

34:35 Mayor, I was going to do a quick little intro for folks, if I may. We would appreciate that. And then we'll go through the presentation. Thank you. Council Member Diana Perez here. I want to appreciate the council and my colleagues for making me work-- not making me, but identifying me-- work with the Regional Parks Funding Task Team. One thing that became very clear throughout the process for me was that our park systems does not stop at the jurisdictional boundaries, and that neither do the people who rely on our parks. Our Vancouver residents benefit every day from regional destinations like Vancouver Lake, Frenchman's

35:32 Bar, Lucia Falls, and the trails in our natural areas throughout Clark County, just like the residents from across the county use our Vancouver facility, recreational facilities, community spaces, and our urban parks. So what's important is that this collaboration that we have right here recognizes that our communities are deeply connected. And that maintaining safe, accessible, and high quality parks and recreation opportunities requires a more coordinated regional conversation, which is what we did here. And I'm excited about today's workshop presentation from staff, who's going to walk through the data, the funding challenges, the benchmarking, and the models that we have looked at as a task team. And I'm excited for you all to hear that and ask the questions. Hand it over to you now. Well, great, thanks. Hi, Dave Perlich, Director of Parks, Recreation,

36:32 and Cultural Services for the city. I'm going to do some intros with me as Ross Hoover, Director of Clark County Parks and Nature. I think I got that right. I want to recognize and acknowledge County Councilor Glenn Young, who's here today, who's participated throughout the process with this task team. A member of our Parks and Rec Advisory Commission, Jim Loose, has been monitoring this process closely. And I want to acknowledge Evelyn Ives, Clark County staff member, who you'll see some of the data in this report. Really has done an excellent job supporting us and pulling some of that together. So I hope I didn't miss anybody, but it has been a team effort. And I think right off the bat, those introductions are important. What we've been doing is really at the request of the County Council to look at funding throughout the county. And so the presentation that you'll see today is a briefer version of a presentation. It was delivered to the County Council about a week and a half ago. And so if we could move on to the next slide, I guess I'd do that.

37:29 Quick agenda, we want to talk about the discussions we've had and some of the findings. That includes comparativism to some natural benchmarks to say, how are we doing across the county and as individual agencies? That work has advanced to looking at some funding model options. We'll talk about that in brief terms today. And there's a recommended set of next steps. This is not a go, no-go decision. This is really an opportunity to update you, make sure that we're in alignment with council values and the information you need as we move forward in this process. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ross. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, mayor, councilors. So the task team met over about six months, met 10 times, had some really deep discussions, a deep dive into the data, comparison against national data, so that benchmarking exercise. Some interesting insights came out

38:29 that we found that led to the specific recommendations that we presented to county council a week and a half ago. On this slide, I wanted to share that one of the findings is that the county park system is simply not meeting its needs. There's a lack of available funding. There are rising costs, as we're all experiencing, rapid population growth on top of that. And so for the past five years, and on this bar chart, you can see the revenue expenditure for Clark County Parks. You can see this gap. This gap has required the county to draw upon funds to make this whole on an annual basis, because there just simply isn't enough revenue in the system to support the operational needs.

39:17 Yeah. And so I wanted to talk in brief terms about some of the evaluation that we did against national metrics. So on the slide, I'll try to orient this well. What you see is seven reporting agencies-- Clark County and seven cities in the county that took part in this process. The National Recreation and Parks Association publishes a comprehensive report. We've identified some of those standards to compare ourselves. So we've got really a deep resource information that we can compare against. So on this chart, you can see that Clark County and those six participating cities on the measure of operating expenditures per capita. Again, this is a nationally recognized average that we can compare ourselves against. The orange bar shows actual expenditures from the base year 2024. And the blue line shows the gap that we fall short of that national average. I want to note, you'll see some different numbers at the top

40:17 on median values. There's a lot of data here. That data set actually segments by community size. So really, the information is relevant to the size of the community, provides more comparability, and I think rich information. What you can see is no one's meeting that operational expenditure average. In fact, we all fall a bit short to some degree or another. I do want to really make sure and make a note that the Vancouver numbers, for the purposes of comparison, we did not include our recreation and cultural services program. Because those are services that we've got a much more robust program than other cities. So for an apples to apples comparison, we did it this way. But we also had a lot of discussion with the group around the additional services this city has in its parks inventory. And if you add our recreation and cultural services program,

41:14 we would be at $85 of operational investment per capita. So still below the national average, but above the other communities. And so another measure is the full time employees per 10,000 residents. And so this chart shows those numbers for each of the cities again. The orange bar being the agency data and the blue section showing the gap between national median average. Again, you can see that all communities in this county fall short. In fact, are below half the national median average. Again, if you added Vancouver's recreation and cultural services function, we would move up from 1.6 to 3.7 full time employees per 10,000 residents. But again, still less than half the national median. These national metrics are not meant to be a rigid standard or necessarily a goal. We know that communities are different.

42:13 However, I think it was clear to everybody who was participating that Clark County agencies are concerned about funding, particularly as growth is occurring. And the data reinforces that at this point, we are not meeting the goals that we've set for our own communities. And that growth concern raises the anxiety around that. And really has created a great discussion around how do we create a sustainable funding plan that we can look to the future with confidence. So as Dave just mentioned, growth is a real part of our picture. People want to come to Clark County in part because of the amazing parks and natural amenities and natural beauty. From the state projections, the county is expected to grow 34% over the next 20 years. The park system needs to grow and adapt and change to the needs of those future residents and our existing residents as their needs change. Given our operational gaps that you just

43:10 saw in the previous two slides, we need to find a solution. And so that was the next body of work of the task team to look at specifically where other communities, other areas, other regions throughout the country that have encountered the same challenge, and how did they respond? What specific steps did they take? What mechanisms did they use? And so we had a good opportunity to look at some of those funding models and mechanisms. We landed on two that were particularly interesting. And you could see the various characteristics of those two funding models. One, a metropolitan park district funding structure. And two, a regional levy, a county-wide levy. So some of the regions that are utilizing these tools, one of them in particular is just to our north, King County. They passed a regional levy in 2005

44:07 when they had a position similar to the county's and similar to the city position in Clark County, where that operating expenditure was far below the national median. So they put a regional parks levy on the ballot. It passed, and it has been renewed every cycle until just recently this last August was renewed. That levy provides funding for King County parks, but also through an arrangement where the county enters into an interlocal agreement with the cities is shared with the cities subsequently. So it benefits not just the county system that provides the large regional parks and the regional trails, but also the city needs, the city-specific needs. So that was particularly interesting. The second item or mechanism that we looked at was a metropolitan park district funding structure. And we'll talk on the next slide just a little bit

45:02 about what that might look like in Clark County. So the metropolitan park district that currently exists within Clark County is called the Greater Clark Park District. It exists essentially close to the urban growth boundary of the city of Vancouver. So just north of the existing city limits and just south of that UGA northern boundary. So this metropolitan park district was passed by voters. It collects a property tax. That property tax is dedicated specifically to park acquisition, development, operations, maintenance, programs, and services only within this boundary. And so thinking back to that past slide, those two options we have available to us. I mentioned the levy option, the model that King County uses, would extend to the boundaries of the county

46:01 and would function as a source not just for the county system but also the city systems. But a levy would overlay this metropolitan park district, this GCPD or Greater Clark Park District, creating an area within the county where folks inside the district would be paying for park services and maintenance operations and acquisitions twice. The levy and the metropolitan park district. And it's for that reason that we heard from cities that that one's less-- that option, that levy option is less favorable. Back to the second option that we looked at, and that's the metropolitan park district option. So the notion is that the boundaries of the existing Greater Clark Park District could be expanded to the extent of the county limits and could act as a funding source for the county park system, regional parks and regional trails, and the local city park systems through an interlocal agreement where the revenue is shared.

46:58 And that brings us to the recommendations from the report of the regional parks funding task team. And these recommendations were provided to county council a week and a half ago. County council directed staff to move forward on these three bodies of work, these three actions. So action one is conducting market research, really understanding how does this fit, asking the key questions of our residents, of our business owners. Does this type of a mechanism work? Is this an investment we want to see within Clark County? Within number one, you'll also see public education and the opportunity to provide the detail, the information about what this mechanism could do for our residents, for our business owners, and what it won't do. So that public education component is crucial.

47:57 Item number two, determining viability and process. What does this look like to extend the boundary of a metropolitan park district? Do we have a viable pathway? What are the legal implications? We need really a formal legal review. We want to hear from folks about whether this is functional or not, not just from the county, but also the cities. And then number three, to develop a framework for revenue sharing. To pull together all of the parks agencies, all the cities, and develop a framework and a subsequent interlocal agreement, whereby the revenue from a greater Clark Park district expanded, could be shared at the local level. [PAUSE] And so that's a lot of information coming at you in a pretty short presentation. We wanted to leave time for questions and comments. I mean, ultimately, we want to, again,

48:57 make sure that we're in alignment as we move forward, as we're talking to other agencies in the county. So we've added a few prompt questions. But we'll pause, look for your feedback, and let us know if there's any specific questions that you have for us today. Great. Thank you very much. Dave, the city of Vancouver imposes park impact fees. Correct. Does the county and the other cities do that? Yeah, we dug into that information. And we found that, yes, the county imposes impact fees-- and I'm going to say within an urban growth boundary, which is what's allowed under GMA. Formally, the city and the county administered that program within Vancouver's urban growth boundary consistently. And really, many of those same provisions still exist today, even though we're not working through a formal joint agreement. And we looked at the other cities. And we provided information. We looked at the rates.

49:53 So yes, generally speaking, those other large cities in the county all have impact fees. And we're all administering that program. But the provisions aren't exactly the same. So does that mean the other cities do not have park impact fees? They do have park impact fees. OK. Yes. What happens to those impact fees? Yeah, so that is just another funding source for parks. It would be factored into the need behind either a levy or a metro park district. Ultimately, all of the metro park districts that I'm aware of are in communities that also impose impact fees. Impact fees paying for the proportionate share that new growth is demanding on the system often matched by the metro park district revenue. And the programming and ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation of the system then becomes the sole responsibility of other funding sources, which primary one in those cities

50:53 would be the metro park district. They work hand in hand, if that makes sense. Well, I like the matching idea. Yeah. But I would not be accepting the fact that the city charges impact fees. Therefore, we would get less funding from the metropolitan park district or whatever. That would not be a good compromise. Counselors, let's go backwards. Councilor Fox-- Mayor Pro Tem Sarah Fox. That's right. I did have one of your follow-up questions here is what specific information would be useful. And when I was looking at the chart on the FTE comparison, what I was wondering is more information about what type of services are included in that national comparison. Given, building upon the mayor's comments, the different services that each of our cities

51:51 provide when it comes to park services and the county itself include the city actually has recreation centers. And we have programs associated with those recreation centers. And there's a lot of other specialties that our particular park system supports versus the county that doesn't have those things. Some of the cities don't have recreation centers, right? So just curious more about how do you really compare the apples to apples on that FTE numbers and the gaps potentially? If you have an answer now, it'd be great. If not, that would be information I'd be looking to hear more about. Yeah. Again, I need to note-- I need to reintroduce David Perlich, Director of Parks Rec Culture Services. The data set is actually rich. We can look at specific agencies and see what they reported. I mean, I think ultimately the main measure is breaking it apart by community size

52:46 helps balance out some of those typical differences. But I think that we need to work together as agencies within the county through that interlocal discussion and apportionment of money. What are the various needs, opportunities, and responsibilities? I know Council Member Perez can vouch that we had robust discussion about how frequently people from outside the city use our community centers. And so we really made that front and center that when you're the only game in town, certain services get used. And we do have a non-resident fee rate, but it doesn't always fill the gap. So I think I can say we'll be discussing that. That's already been discussed and needs to be discussed more in this discussion of allocation of resources. OK, so I have a couple more questions based on this particular piece around services. So understanding that we've talked a lot about-- this is Mayor Pro Tem Fox-- understanding that we have had a lot of discussions

53:46 around the annexation topic and acknowledging that if the city annexes in more of our urban growth area, then we have a responsibility to provide those services that have not been provided, like recreation centers or improving parks to the level that our city residents enjoy. So I'm wondering, when we're thinking about this new organization, are we bringing more of those services to those areas in the county? Are we going to have a new rec center in other areas of the city or the county? Yeah, thank you. Good question. Ross Hoover, Clark County Parks and Nature. So one of the sort of recurring themes that we heard from cities across the county was that each city is conducting their own parks system plans, development, and parks, recreation, open space plans, that 20-year look out, that vision document that

54:46 provides for the blueprint for the future of the system, and that the cities in our conversation repeated over and over again that each city should have autonomy to direct funds that are shared from a metropolitan park district for the specific investments that their own community has identified and the specific priorities within their own community. And so that was just one piece that we heard from cities in this discussion that was really important. And my final question is around the funding allocation piece as well, understanding that we're the largest city in the county. And often, I think there are folks that perhaps are not super excited about looking at a funding scheme where the city of Vancouver might get proportionally more funding based on our size than the rest of the county. So I'm wondering how that discussion has moved forward

55:43 given that particular lens. Certainly not something that we discussed in detail.