04-13-16 Special Elbel Committee Minutes

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course is getting its fair share of marketing. We are also using social media to our advantage in the marketing of Elbel. Councilmember Broden addressed the Draft Summary Recommendations. Recommendation One (1): Engage a Golf Course Management Consulting Firm for all three (3) courses to asses. Committeemember Perri explained that Elbel is part of an ecosystem of the parks and also of the Golf Division in particular, so we're spending some time looking at Elbel's operations. I think it's prudent to look at all three (3) courses in harmony, and look at how they can work together efficiently. The largest cost of any golf course is the greens and turf management, so we're engaging a firm to help us with that and looking at a capital improvement plan that really spells things out over the next five (5) to ten (10) years. The consulting part comes in on the management side of things when we look at our position within the marketplace, our rates, best practices, marketing strategies, looking at the complementary use and seeing what's feasible and how we could get extra revenues from that, or what should be free and wouldn't interfere with golf. Engaging the users is going to be very important throughout this entire process as well as talking to local golf communities. Recommendation Two (2): I think it's important whether we continue to operate this in house, lease it, or sell it, we need to understand what we're dealing with. We've heard from many experts about the special features that are present out at Mud Lake. We'll be getting a full inventory of the flora and fauna, understanding the water quality, understanding how our care of the course and the property impacts the natural environment out there. It is important how we catalog that and have a process for how we care for and maintain the property. When we zoom out from Elbel, I also committed that we'll be looking at a natural resource management plan over the next year for all of our major parks. Councilmember Broden mentioned that Committeemember Perri had specified that the natural resource management plan would be done by June 2017 and she asked if he wanted it included in the recommendation. Also, what about cross department collaboration. This was a move from a voluntary effort to a paid consulting effort. Committeemember Perri said sure, it will be important to engage volunteers, but if we are looking at our accreditation, and to look at any type of potential funding, we'll really need to make sure we have the experts in play as we're developing the natural resource management plan. We will have to spend some resources to make that a reality. We have some preliminary conversations with Orbis Environmental Consulting about how we can creatively engage the public in the process. The cross department collaboration is important. The Office of Sustainability will be a great resource. The date of June 2017 is a pretty firm deadline for us, because that is when our reaccreditation is due. We want to have fifteen (15) to sixteen (16) months to be able to do that. We need a growing season to do the environmental consulting, but there are some things that only grow this time of the year, so if we want to get a good inventory of all of those things, we need to start that sooner or later. Recommendation Three (3): The existing work product of the Special Advisory Committee on Elbel, the ongoing engagement of local experts, we may want to input city departments, key