repeatedly but we found hard to quantify was the idea around play value and i think that's something we discussed it and more of a guiding set of principles for the design effort rather than a criteria that could be used to select playgrounds, but we hope to really be able to solicit some clear good feedback about what people are enjoying about the recent renovations we have done. what are features they would like to see they haven't seen? what makes a successful family experience at a playground, et cetera and the parks alliance will host the forum and february and if the staff can return to the commission in march with a more specific delivery plan so having the two tiers we wanted to look at are there economies to be gained by grouping some of the together and bid out as one contract? can we do

preliminary scoping just to see how far down the budget we would be able to get? so in march we would like to come back with the plan okay with the 15.5 million dollars this is the number of playgrounds we think we could do in the first effort and the schedule for those. i think the other main piece of the feedback from the task force committee which was mostly at the last meeting that we rebrand this program and while failing playgrounds sells -- gets you votes for bonds it's not necessarily the inspiring title that you need to engender stewardship and commitment over the long-term. i was unable to single-handedly able to come up with a rebrand between the task force meeting and today and i will work with the task force members and when we come back in march with the delivery plan we could have a compelling title and compelling and inspiring title for the program we could

use going forward so with that i am happy to take any questions or feedback. >> commissioner mcdonnell. >> thank you mr. chairman. just a couple of comments. one, having served on the task force a few thank yous that i want to reiterate or under score that dawn did mention. first the staff. i would agree with dawn having participated in a number of these process and ones that had the passion and commitment to parks and open space that could potentially be therefore very contentious and this was not for a number of reasons. the first of which in my mind was the incredible staff support and analysis that went into preparation that dawn referenced so again thank you to dawn and the entire team, and then secondly the masterful facilitation skills of steve --

his last name? >> cansian. >> was just phenomenal in guiding the process and ensuring that task force member as well as community members felt their voice was being heard and options and issues of importance were being considered so really, really fantastic, and then in addition to the members of the task task force each brought commitment and intelligent and passion around the issues i want to under score. >> >> how valuable it was to have community in the room and again who brought their passion and were consistent, and there were a number of community members that came throughout the process and three in particular they want to call out because they're special who didn't come to a few meetings intermittently but every meeting early and often

and engaged in the process and they were incredible in their participation as community members in and during meetings as well as the tour, et cetera, and so finally i think that the what we have before us in terms of a recommendation captures three things they think are important going through the process. one that the recommendations represent where both highest in need in terms of conditions but highest opportunity with regard to leverage of resources is represented here. also the geographic kind of distribution across our city is also i think well represented, not the entire city, but i do think well represented and something that dawn said a few minutes ago around the bang for the buck. it was helpful to have a fuller picture with the capital plans

across the city to utilize the small pool of dollars and two final things. one, the opportunity that we have to do the rebranding. i think we should do that. i am hopeful this is ensuring that the parks across the city are beautiful spaces for communities and families, so i am hopeful at some point we don't need a failing playgrounds task force or anything by any other name frankly because we made the investments to ensure we have great open spaces across the city and lastly in addition to delivering a great report and set of recommendations our process also delivered a beautiful baby. [inaudible] had a baby so thank you very much. >> thank you commissioner. commissioner low. >> well, i want to first also thank commissioner mcdonnell. i find it hard to believe he attended all these task force meetings but thank you very

much for putting that time and energy into this. dawn, i think mcdonnell mentioned it. are there opportunities to leverage -- for example taking the tier one playgrounds and leveraging opportunities with other funds, maybe thinking bigger beyond and renovating the mark and for example sergeant mccally park and think out of the box, expanding, taking over the street and expanding the box and the partnership from bo decker and expanding to there and doing something similar to that park or any of the tier one parks? >> yeah let me take that one because it relates to some of the things i was going to say. we have the dollars that we have and the public funding that we have, and a playground -- i think dawn you would concur between $1 million and $2 million range for a basic

playground renovation but we know some of the exceptional play play plays in the city are more expensive and not the budget at lafayette and had support from others. this will depend on leveraging the dollars with philanthropic sources or grant sources and we are working on that. lisa bransten from the team is very involved in that. this is something of passion ate interest of the parks alliance and will depend on timing and the additional funding that we have. i think we should focus -- before we grab streets and acquire land and build new parks i think we should focus on delivering the public's expectation which is a beautifully renovated playground in the sites that we have, but we do have this pot of money

we're hoping to leverage so the short answer is there is more to come on that. >> yeah, my only point being i don't like doing things twice so if we mobilize the resources for say any one of the tier one parks, whether we could maybe leverage that -- think bigger and use the opportunity that we have to expand parks, improve parks beyond the scope that we originally imagined. >> again commissioner and dawn if you have thoughts you could certainly dive in. we want to do the most -- deliver the biggest bang for the bucks that we have but we do have a responsibility to try to focus on all of the playgrounds on this list at once -- over time before we talk about expanding scope at any one particular site. >> we do have -- i think that's correct and i also think

in terms of leveraging more broadly there are a number of playgrounds that managed to attract additional funds already in terms of impact fees and add backs so that helps to spread the $15.5 million broader and hopefully we can get deep into the list as possible. for example -- impact fee conversations going on for jerry commons and maybe hertz playground. buchanan street mall has been beneficial super supervisor london breed and for what you're talking about and doing envisions around those parcels because right now there are

three dilapidated structures and supervisor breed provided $75,000 for a grant to allow us to do envisioning and planning to think about -- how about we have one play structure in the place that makes the most sense? what would that look like? what are the uses for that area in the future? so we're thinking about those efforts where funds have been made available to us. >> commissioner levitan. >> this is a far less technical question than anybody ems asked but with some of the criteria for tier one is capacity to find sources and fund raise for funds for these reasonerations. is that necessarily tied to having a friends group associated with some of the playgrounds? because some of these look -- i'm not off hand aware they have support groups already existing so how important is that for the renovations to go forward? >> it isn't a requirement. we haven't made it a explicit criteria in the selection of

the playgrounds and that was a good policy discussion that happened with the committee members in wanting to make sure there are neighborhoods that don't have the capacity to have a friends group or maybe a friends group will come out once the renovation gets started, right, so we didn't make that a criteria for selecting a playground to be renovated but we hope in the process and with the parks alliance and others that we can encourage stewardship and we saw in the task force new friends groups appeared in the task once they saw the opportunity was available and we have a graton friends group coalesceesing and [inaudible] had one and golden gate heights -- the playground there didn't have a friends group until recently and actually part of this effort so i am hopeful as we move through

the reason vaigdzs and engage the community and the design conversation that will spur the development of further stewardship efforts with the playgrounds that don't have a strong organization. >> [inaudible] >> absolutely. >> thank you for this. it's a tremendous document. >> mr. ginsburg did you have anything else to add? >> mostly thank yous. i want to thank dawn for her and her team for their very effective facility facilitation and all of the planning that went into coming up with the list. it's said it's often hard to spend money than reducing spending because the choices are harder and this was done with facts and the community and i think the outcomes are very, very credible and i really do want to thank dawn and stacy and the entire steering committee for their participation in it. i ulc

want to thank the san francisco parks alliance which has taken up playgrounds as a cause and i can't think of a more noble one. i know matt o'grady is here and i want to thank them and the parks alliance board for their interest. this is at the top of our philanthropic list frankly. we want to leverage this opportunity. we have a chunk of public money that if we can figure out and attract some private support we can do more and we can do it better and more boldly and the trick will be trying to attract and get commitments for that support in a time frame that works with the first phase of renovations, but this is on our list. it's something that lisa bransten thinks about everyday and she and i talk about everyday so hopefully more good news to come.

>> thank you. commissioner bonilla. >> yes. the question i have is what is the average use of -- or the useful life of our parks? how often do we have to renovate our parks? what do we do in terms of the design and the planning, the maintenance and so on so that we extend the lives of our parks? because i think in terms of all the resources that we want to leverage to renovate these parks i think we need to have a way of ensuring that we don't have to be constantly going back to the till and doing more and more renovations, so i mean that's a big concern of mine because i have been on the commission for

quite a few years and i have seen a lot of different renovations going on and maybe on a couple of them of the renovations that we did, so i want to make sure we're going to invest considerable amount of money and a lot of different resources that we have these parks for as long as possible so i would like that addressed in the future efforts, and to continue planning with these quote unquote "failing parks". >> commissioner i think it's a great question and in march we can come back with more detail but there are two questions embedded in your question. one is what is the current replacement cycle for assets and then what should it be? because

we're certainly squeezing every month of life out of the play structures that is possible. when you saw the play structure at bo decker -- for example at lily wong right now they have been around for over a decade in some places -- closer to two and merced heights and no one has been here in a super long time and so some of those are functional still. you can still play on them, but the trends and in design and whennure compare the quality of those play structures to mission playground on valencia street it's a dramatic before and after so we can certainly talk about what i think a replacement cycle should look like. i think the department has learned a lot over the past decade about how to improve the durablity of the playgrounds that we build and

also the ease of maintenance. we made a number of policy decisions over the past 10 years. for example a decade ago we were ordering playgrounds from germany and fancy things from other places and we discovered the replacement time when you break it there is a lag time to order a replacement part from a high end designer in germany when the yard is here in san francisco and it broke last week and all the parents are understandably aren't you going to get it fixed in the next month or so and seeing six to eight months to replace playground equipment so now we moved away from that where we have custom work done but done overwhelmingly in the united states and think through with the friends groups how we're going to deal with that and helen dillard playground there is annual maintenance set aside

and they have a donor fund for dealing with the replacement of the custom parts and working towards the overall deferred maintenance and we're pursuing something similar at the civic center playground as well so we learned real lessons. sand -- we don't put sand in new play structures in the way it was once used and creates eroding and maintenance for the staff so we have lessons learned that we are incorporating with more renovations that i think will overall lengthen the durablity of the asset and for the staff to provide maintenance. it's a great question and i can develop a more detailed answer. >> yeah, if you could do that and a certain when we were looking at first tiers and squeezing in 13 of them i am thinking would we be squeezing

so many parks in are we doing the job that we need to do to really ensure more permanentacy in terms of the parks. >> it's good feedback. >> yeah, i would be -- i would error more -- i would error on the side of caution here instead of squeezing too much in and really doing the best job possible even if unfortunately it involves fewer -- that we do fewer parks but at least we know they will last -- i mean that we will have them for a lot longer, and they will have a longer useful life. >> great. thank you for that feedback. >> thank you very much dawn. let's go to public comment. >> okay. wilma gardner and if anyone else would like to speak and sign up by the table that would be great. wilma. no,

no, no. you come on up. thank you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> president buell, and members of the commission for rec and park and also general ginsburg. dorothy strictland and i i are part of the 800 block club and have been stewards and advocates for the merced heights playground for more than 21 years. we have

followed the failing playgrounds task force closely for about eight months. we were impressed by the facilitator, task force members, the recreation and parks staff and the parks alliance and say job well done. also we appreciated the opportunity for active participation of the public throughout the process. we wholeheartedly support the report given by dawn and ask that you adopt the recommendations of the failing playgrounds task force. thank you. >> thank you. >> dorothy did you want to speak? >> good morning everyone and i just want to really express my

very, very much appreciation for our task force. the task force was so inclusive of the community at every point of their analysis of everything they did and we learned an awful lot and it's much appreciated. they have done a tremendous job. >> thank you. >> it was a wonderful experience. >> thank you both. >> next speaker. >> good morning commissioners. matt o'grady, the ceo of the san francisco parks alliance. you may know that we were created by a merger over three years ago. in three years -- can you believe that? but at the time we attempted to combine stewardship and fill land pee work with policy work and made us unique across organizations

across the country and many asked how we were going to combine the approaches? we have no further to look than this initiative. we engage volunteers to do the report card and engage them to do clean up days on a regular basis across playgrounds across the city and most importantly it's the volunteers that do fundraising for playground renovations and construction. philanthropy -- if those partners that raised millions of dollars in recent years for renovation and expansion and building new playgrounds across the city. we know them in delores park, lafayette park and [inaudible] and dog patch neighborhood and there is more on the way. last year party in the parks helped fund some of the renovations. policy. you know our report card. it's one example that we

bring data to the decision making processes. we are proud to co-chair thursday task force that bring this is recommendation to you today. it has members from every district in the city. represents various neighborhoods and interest groups. it brings to the table expertise in education parenting and childhood development. this task force went through a thorough and objective consideration of the data to help prioritize the playgrounds with the greatest need and dawn has outlined all of that for you. this task force came to a unanimous recommendation after five months of analysis and discussion. this task force has demonstrated a solid process that we can rely on this decision before you today and also a process to rely on future projects. i want to ask you to pause for a moment and reflect. what would it have been like if there was no task force? what would your decision making process be like without

that guidance and spend $15 million? now i am happy to jerk you back to reality because we have had a task force. you don't have to deal with that kind of environment. we have had this guidance so we do all owe a debt of gratitude to the task force for their hours of volunteer time and especially for their unanimous recommendation they bring to us today. i also want to thank julie and sonya, the parks alliance staff who did the heavy lifting in support of the task force so i am delighted to ask julie to come up and provide some specifics to you. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> good morning commissioners. >> good morning. >> julie from the san francisco parks alliance and i manage our playground initiative program at the alliance which includes data collection for the playground report card, and i served on the steering committee of the task force and also was

a task force member, so i won't repeat what has been said but i again want to thank the rec and park staff, dawn and stacy and tokes and everyone that did an amazing job. they provided solid data and information for analysis. it was a very thorough process. extensive community engagement and very robust public participation that has been mentioned. the groups did a very hard thing with starting with this universe of over 55 playgrounds that could be considered, and whittled it down to a list of 13 and i feel like it truly does represent the most needy of playgrounds and again a balance of considering the conditions on site and then

also the neighborhoods in the most need with the low household median income and high youth density and low report card grades. also when all 13 of those playgrounds are renovated there will be no playgrounds in the city with the hazardous cca wood, so i am very proud if we get there and this will be a major milestone for the city, something to be celebrated, and just wanted to thank all the people that served, commissioner mcdonnell. i also wanted to call out lee an weldon from the san francisco parks alliance council who is here and all of the members of the public that came and in conclusion going forward parks alliance will continue to partner with the department both for leveraging funds for the playgrounds in

tier two and as dawn mentioned will also host a civic forum on playground design to get input from community members on what elements and experiences they would like all of our playgrounds to have going forward so we look forward working with the department to continue our work. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker please. >> good morning. thank you for the opportunity to comment. my name is trudy garber and a project manager at the trust for public land. i work with alhand ja who served as a member on the failing playgrounds task force. we are a national nonprofit and conserves land for people and parks. our goal is to make sure every child has safe access to play be a garden, park or playground within 10 minutes walk of their home. we're a

proud and close partner with san francisco recreation and park department and with rec and park and community groups we recently completed the san francisco parks initiative or san francisco initiative to renovate three different parks in san francisco and working on hill top park and bay view and civic center. we're especially supportive of the process that the failing playgrounds task force under took. the comprehensive research of the anatomy of a playground, mapping of existing conditions, and consideration for other park initiatives makes the process comprehensive and realistic. the playground selection criteria that the task force used to select two tiers of playgrounds is very similar to the trust for public lands playground selection criteria and parks selection criteria. we consider high use density. we look at seniors. housing, income, demographics and

quality of parks as captured in parks alliance report cards and while there are many playgrounds in san francisco worthy of improvements we believe that the task force recommendations show a the sites that will have a transformative impact on the residents in san francisco and in fact many of the sites chosen have been on our potential project list for many years and we're excited to see funding allocated to these sites so we look forward to supporting and working with rec park as an implementation partner for these sites. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker please. come on up. >> hello commissioners. my name is linda lighthiser and here to represent the mclaren park collaborative. we are proud that a playground within mclaren park was considered for the failing playgrounds task force and one