report? being none, public comment is closed. commissioner buell: item three? commissioner lee. commissioner lee: given the comments i was thinking i would be happy to convene a meeting or meet with some of the residents on this issue perhaps denny might have some time and perhaps the organizers of another planet, we can have a meeting out in the richmond and hear some of the noise concerns and so forth and maybe take that back and attach it to our overall evaluation of the program for next year. and perhaps some ideas for abating some of these issues can be developed in time for next year's festival. that's agreeable to you. commissioner buell: i might get the staff to weigh in on this. >> sure. we will certainly, i know other

planet will sit down and analyze all the complaints. i think it's worth noting that we actually do a lot of this already. we do a lot of outreach prior to the event and we will do outreach post event in responding to some of the complaints and analyzing the complaints. during public comment -- there is a significant amount of outreach particularly in the sunset and richmond neighborhoods and how to balance what is a very joyous event and economically important event for a lot of people with some of the neighborhood concerns. we will continue to strive to do that. commissioner buell: so just recommend, then, let commissioners know if there is any appropriate time they could participate or be of assistance and we'll try and facilitate. >> we are now on item number 4 which is general public comment. it is up to 15 minutes. at this time members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction

of of the commission and do not appear on the agenda. with respect to agenda items your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when that item is reached in the meeting. i have tony, richard, and neal. please come forward. >> good morning, commissioners. tony is a retired senior animal keeper, speaking today on behalf of the dolores parlor of the native sons of the golden west parlor number one. i saw other members are committed to preserving california history and our western heritage. an important institution in golden state park is the bison which has a history dating back to the turn of the last century when president teddy roosevelt

launched an initiative to save the bison from extinction. during the summer myself and other members have been concerned about during our visits to the paddock that this seems to be a considerable disappointment by other park visitors in that the bison are not particularly visible. this is due to the fact that the herd has been reduced from 20 animals to only three rather gare yacht trick -- geriatric animals and they generally repose in the back of the exhibit back in the trees. i brought these concerns to the joint zoo committee last month and was happy to receive assurance from the zoo managers that planning is being done to add animals to the exhibit and to improve the handling of the animals in that exhibit. i took that -- those comments back to my meeting last week and we resolved that we commend the

zoo's efforts that we really believe that the bison herd deserves better attention and support from the wreck and park department which has ownership of the exhibit. we recommend the addition of sufficient animals, provide quality visitor experience, not to satisfy the byson's social needs as animals with herd instincts. also if possible we urge new animals should be purebred bison and not hybrids that have been inner bread with cattle for meat production. the native sons advocate that the restoration of golden state park bison herd and the continued fulfillment of president roosevelt's dream. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you. >> richard? >> good morning, commissioners.

i just wanted to give you an update with the water project, recycling water. i just talked with suzanne on the recycle water project and still m.b.a. major environmental analysis. i just wanted to bring up something additional to that. when i was looking at some of the layout they have, they have available, they have a reverse osmosis, they have a membrane, they give you a little diagram, it goes through the membrane and so forth how they treat the water. one of the parts that i see in the diagram has chlorinated after the water has been recycled and put through reverse osmosis. that's the part i wanted to look at is where you have such a membrane, we can always treat that as a semipermanential membrane, that is in chemistry,

so when you have a closer loop in there it as anode, diode you can get out the chlorine, get it out before we put it into our parks. that way it would decrease all the sailenation of topsoil. we are going to use this kind of water, golf course, i understand from commissioner buell, that golfers are not interested in saving the native water. the biggest culprit is chlorination . this particular process i'm going to be forwarding to the engineering division where you treat the water, treated water, out of storage before it's actually used regarding the put to the process. the key to it is that being that it's of the -- as i previously talked about, the chemistry, we can gauge the amount of electric

current put through the close circuit loop based on the amount of water that might be in storage tanks. i just want to keep you update that we are going to -- they haven't finished it yet, but one other point, i was more interested in trying to get across where they had a selection of site. i myself i think i like it a little higher up than at the betch level. that would be the armory, the national guard armory. that's it. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you. >> neal? >> good morning, commissioners. my name is neal, community planner with the san francisco coalition. i just wanted to give you a brief summary of the j.f.k. drive project. i definitely commend staff of the recreeks and parks department as well as the n.t.a. for coming together to come up with a really exciting project that i think is going to be transformative for the park and how people get around the park. so far there have been two

community workshops for planning for the j.f.k. workshops. j.f.k. drive separated, one in june and one just earlier this week. we have seen overwhelming support for the concept as it's come through the multiple option stages to one particular option that's going forward with design details. through surveys, emails, neighborhood group meetings that we have been a part of, people overwhelmingly support it but fully separated. i wanted to make sure that you understood, we are excited about this one particular project, but we have a coalition, we have a vision called connecting the city where there are 100 miles of separated cross-town bike way that is get you everywhere you need to go on the bicycle. and j.f.k. drive is one part of that route. the city is also looking at projects on oak streets, the three blocks between the pan

handle and scott street this year. market street is a continuele evolution project. once all these projects gets elevated, i think it's going to help the thousands of residents, thousands ever visitors to want to come to our parks. i know that's something that's been resonating really well. i have talked to people at the academy of sciences, staff members, as well as some of the upper management, and they see a huge number of their staff members biking and wanting to bike more, but also see a vision like this where people can get a cross -- across-town safely, where you don't need special skills to do so. it will be a really big boon to their institutions and getting more people out to the park. we are really excited to be in the final stages right now. i believe that you will be hearing -- getting a lot more information later on this in october. i just wanted to let you know it's going really well so far and we are excited to be working with a lot of people here on this project. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you.

>> is there anyone else who would like to make general public comment? come forward. >> commissioners. my name is andrew solo, i have been very interested in youth soccer for almost 20 years now. i actually thought i should say a few words about the upcoming renovation of the dolores park soccer field. i put them in writing because i think it would take quite a bit more than two minutes to go over all the them. the primary issue with the renovation of the dolores park soccer field is now -- how it will be maintained after the renovation is complete. normally the department and the commission don't consider ongoing maintenance in capital improvements in a coincident way because it's very difficult to predict how much money you are going to have for regular

operations on a year-to-year basis. but in this particular case, not actually making some kind of a plan in conjunction with the approval of the capital improvement, some kind of a plan for ongoing maintenance, will ultimately result in the creation of a $1 million mud hole. so i wanted to stop by and drop this off. there's actually three different requests for calendarring of items for hearings before committees of the recreation and park commission, and then this single item which is my concern here. i don't want another $1 million mud hole. i pay 27 grand in taxes last year and i don't like it being wasted. i think we really need to consider how we are going to maintain a natural grass athletic field in the middle of a park that is very heavily used where there is no fence.

that is a disaster waiting to happen in order to prevent it from happening, you got to plan for the maintenance in advance. so i have actually submitted some sort of an informal or skellly tal proposal for did shall -- skeletal proposal for maintenance to staff and they have told me there is no money to do it but they would bump it upstairs to anna alvarez, and i spoke to her about that and she said she does not normally make plans for ongoing maintenance and renovation of capital improvements until after the capital improvements are actually approved. and under way. i think in this particular case, because we know it's going to be a problem because the area is so heavily used and there will be no fence, to control usage with, we should more carefully consider how we are going to do the maintenance before we actually approve the capital improvement. my comments are in writing.

hopefully everybody got copies. and that's it. thanks very much. commissioner buell: thank you. >> is there anyone else who would like to make general public comment? being none, general public comment is closed. we are on item number five, which is the consent calendar. is there anyone who would like to make public comment on the consent calendar? being none, public comment is closed. commissioners? commissioner buell: motion? >> second. commissioner buell: opposed? hearing none, it is unanimous. >> we are in item number six which is a san francisco zoo. >> director of the san francisco zoo. i'm pleased to report that the zoo is having a good summer. this has been in large part to a terrific response to the zoo's temporary tarantula exhibit, sea

lion exhibit, and arrival of the siberian tiger. specifically in july we had over 109,000 visitors when we had budgeted only 103,000 visitors. and as of august 14 the zoo had 51,000 visitors versus a budget of 50,000. since the start of fiscal year on july 1, our year to date attemptance is over 161,000 visitors versus budget of 153,000. because of its success i'm pleased to report the zoo is extending its exhibit until halloween this. way the creepy crawlers will take part in our annual boo at the zoo festivities. this summer the zoo's youth programs also did well. and internships like the nature trail and young zooologists were completely full. and in fact this week the san francisco bay guardian listed the zoo's internships as one of the best. we were able to get anything positive in the area, so just have to raise this. and said that's what a young zooologist, nothing gets better than being an intern at the san

francisco zoo. i'm also pleased to report that the zoo is reinvigorating its 40-year tradition of providing story boxes throughout the zoo. these talking boxes have long fascinated our young visitors and this ball we'll be adding 10 solar powered boxes. in addition we are introducing our new lion key, here's the first one hot off the press. and in light of commissioner arata's birthday, i leave this for you. happy birthday. that means you have to come to the zoo and use it. lastly, save the dates have been mailed for the zoo's annual kids feft at the zoo -- fest at the zoo. here's the postcard. this highly anticipated family friendly event is organized by the zoo's auxiliary and feature exclusive wildlife presentations, animal feedings, and live music by the country frog band and river rats. guests also will be able to enjoy rides on the friend care

sell and everyone's favorite, the little puffer train. with that i finish my report. commissioner buell: thank you very much. >> is there any public comment on this item? being none, public comment is closed. this was discussion only. so we are on item number 7, the glen canyon park improvement plan. >> good morning, commissioners. my name is karen mauney d.c. brodek with the planning capital division. i'm here to bring back to you an item that the capital committee heard on august 3 about the glen canyon park improvement plan. for you the item is to recommend to the board of supervisors to

accept a gift valued over $483,000 from the trust of public land for the development of a park improvement plan and the related outreach process. approve the agreement with the trust public land for use of the gift. and direct the general manager to commence, tell me, to commence further design development and outreach to implement portions of the project to be funded with the neighborhood parks fund, clean and safe neighborhood parks bond. let's get started. i wanted to review again the goals that we set out to work with the community, to come up with a long-term plan for this very complex and beautiful asset in our system, which is glen canyon park. it was important to work with the community to sign a long-range vision and also figure out what we could build with the funding we have at this time. which is $5.8 million. and determine what the best way is to proceed. the park is really special.

it has both a natural beauty of glen canyon and the creek located in the heart of the city, array of amenities including hiking trails, children's play area, tennis courts, athletic fields, and a wreck center, which attracts a variety of users. we are trying to balance both preserving and maximizing those things with the constraints of having limited funding at this time. we wanted to make sure whatever we spend money on now we don't rip out. we want to do something better in the future. and also trying to balance both the natural area's needs and recreational amenities needs. i have a slide here, can i show you, the canyon itself is special in a sense because it is in fact a canyon and it has limited flat area. flataire is areas usually used for ball fields and athletic fields and other facilities that serve active recreation, and most of the canyon is quite

steep and offers natural environmental resource that is we want to make sure we don't harm. i want to talk about the outreach. again we had a series of community meetings. six public community meetings. in addition we had three trail planning workshops. a trail walk, several focus groups, an online park youth survey where we got hundreds of responses, in addition we had over 100 email comments and written comments that provided feedback as we went through the process. and we had internal reviews with operations and recreation staff throughout the process to try and make sure that whatever we were developing would work from an operational and a long-term perspective. here are the dates of those meetings and the flyers that went out. in addition, we actively used our online, our new website and all of those online tools. we had a bulldog which we regularly updated. we also provided, here's a

screen shot of the fact that after every meeting we posted the materials from the meeting, the drawings, the plans on the website and with contact information that we could circulate both in the meetings and online. that allowed us to continue to get feedback from people that weren't able to attend those meetings. here's some photos of some of the workshops. you can see some, our design team there. in addition you can see community members who are putting stickers on images that they liked and also weighing in and discussing with their neighbors the pros and consequence different things we were evaluating. here's an image of one of the trail walks, the group that started on a trail walk one day. it's a very large park. over 66 acres. and again has both natural landscapes and creek that runs through the middle of it and under the portion of the park and lower part of the site

active recreational elements which will go into more detail. so the lower part of the park is the part that i think a lot of people think of when they go with their families and engage in sports and those kinds of activities. the lower part of the park includes both a main entry, children's play air areas, tennis court, wreck center, and athletic field. it was our desire through this process to find a way that we could improve those features and also not compromise them. currently the fields are a bit under sized and they are right up against the tennis court. the play ground is quite small. and does not meet current safety recommendations. and we have major pedestrian and traffic issues for the silver tree day camp along elk street. here i zoom in a bit to show you

a little more detail of the play area which is in yellow. the tennis courts and the ball fields. in our meeting with actually the athletic folks that use the ball fields, use both for baseball and for soccer, at times they a rife and use the sime face flexably at different times of day. in our conversation we actually talked about rotating the ball fields, seeing if there was a way we could maximize the space available. in the end they felt like they liked the existing location of the ball fields and also our permits person who permits the individual soccer teams also really liked the way the layout works. it allows for the most different options in the future. the area highlighted in red is the area that we are focusing on with the first $5.8 million of bond funding that includes the new expanded play area, a new entrance with a dropoff zone

which allows families to drop off their children for the silver tree day camp, and also improving access. currently it's there but not as optimal as it might be for park maintenance and the entrance for a.d.a. we also one of the major items we are going to be doing is adding a new rest room that's located inside the wreck center by the same level as the park and can be open even with when the wreck center is closed. it's certainly closed one day a week but the rest room can be available for the public seven days a week and that way -- and also a.d.a. accessible. there is work we need to do on the gym and its foundation. i'd like to show you some of the different options that we studied. we came to the community with several different option that is addressed different concerns. as you can see, a few of the images we show actually daylighting and the second image

you can see we show daylighting the entire creak behind the ball fields. that would require the reconfiguration of the ball fields. we show possibly daylighting the creek a little bit north of the wreck center. we evaluate -- rec septre. we also evaluated reloath kating the rec center to different parts of the site which would mean removal and replacement of the rec center. in the end most communities said there wasn't a better location for the rec center. the current location seemed to be the best location. and the w.p.a. facility. in the end renovation of that facility seemed to be the best thing from everyone's point of view. in addition, i can show you some images of these facilities. this is the -- some copies of some of the ways people provided feedback on the different option was colored dots. standard practice. red being good. i'm sorry, green being good. then here identify -- these are

the identified improvements we are recommending going forward with with the clean and safe neighborhood parks which is $5.8 million which we would continue to work with community to develop, design further detail that proposal this fall and implement that first phase. it means we'll have the new entry which will greatly improve the appearance of the park from elk street, drop off, new pathway, new playground, rest room, and the new tennis court. here's an image of the long-term view of the other elements that can also be included as we move forward. this is an image looking down on that new pathway. so the new pathway in this image and the playground would be included. we don't know what exact playground features will include. that will be part of the community process that will go forward this fall. to work with them in detail what

this first portion of the project, the funded portion of the project will include. you are seeing some ideas for the way the rec center can be reenvisioned and made better for the community. here's an image of the glade and creek area which we are proposing hooned the rec center. this is an opportunity to daylight a portion of the creek and bring some additional habitat and sort of another special resource that this park can offer. again we have $5.8 million in place right now. and we are -- one of the really -- one of the real privileges of working with public land and bringing the resources to provide funding for the outreach process is that more of that $5.8 million will be used for physical work in the park as opposed to paying for the planning process and then we have less of a budget to work with. that really meant that we could do more.

there is also the trails program which would be doing the trail improvement work which is on the consent calendar before you today. and the future renovations for the rest of the park which include the improvement and full renovation of the rec center, creek and storm water work, and tree improvements and that can total between $20 million and 30d million in the future depending on the funding. i think there are a lot of aspects of the project that are very attractive to grant funders. so we are going to be trying to pursue grant funding. in addition bond funding and other partnerships might help us get towards that goal. this fall again our plan would be po proceed with community workshops to finalize the detail deseen for the playground, for the landscaping, those other improvements, and start construction as soon as possible. we estimate that to be approximately summer of 2012.

summer of next year. and again i really like to extend our heartfelt thanks to chellsa who is here and everyone at trust for public lands and the california conservation -- coastal conservancy who funded a portion of that outreach through the trust for public lands. i'm also going to send around letters you saw previously from jane from the glen ridge preschool, the glen park association board, which provided a letter of support, and the coastal conservancy just submitted this in support of the project. i'm going to submit copies to all of you. i also like to mention the last time this was heard at the capital committee, julie wanted me to reiterate the supervisor's participation and support of the

process and also we are going to continue to work with both the m.t.a. and the p.u.c. to try and make -- find funding to -- add as many improvements as we can to the first portion of the project. the p.u.c. may be very interested in funding some of the daylighting of the creek and the ball field renovation, guess there's an opportunity to provide water storage for further irrigation, store water to irrigate the ball fields. that's something they are interested in partnering with us on. the m.t.a. would like to partner with us for some of the improvements. thank you. commissioner buell: thank you. commissioner harrison? commissioner harrison: just a question. i noticed that there's some concern about tree removal. >> he yes. commissioner harrison: how have you addressed that? >> great. i have a couple of slides.