[roll call taken] commissioner anderson is on her way, a couple minutes late. so, quick reminders to everyone. if you have any electronic sounding devices, please turn those off. and take any secondary conversations outside. if you would like to speak on an item today, we request but do not require that you complete a blue card. and commissioner buell, three minutes for public comment. each person will have three minutes for public comment on each item. and if you would like to speak on a matter that is under the jurisdiction of the commission but not on the calendar today,

you could speak under general public comment. and that is item 4, continued to item 10. we ask you address your comments to the commission in order to allow equal time, neither the commission or staff will respond to any questions during public comment. commission may ask questions of staff after public comment is closed. if the fire alarms activate, you must evacuate the building in an orderly fashion using any exit. please note the elevators will immediately return to the first floor and are not available for use. if you need assistance out of the building, make your way to the closest area of refuge, directly across the hall in the men's restroom. inside the restroom is a speaker box, press it. city hall security will answer. let them know where you are and they will assist you. and with that, we are on item 2, the president's report.

>> president buell: i know the general manager will get to this in his report, but annual chamber of commerce breakfast where the, kind of a city report card, public survey of services provided by the government of san francisco to the people once again recreation and parts department ranked very, very high, i think it just continues to get better. and so extend congratulations, particularly to the staff and the people on the front lines dealing with the public. really a reflection of that performance more than anything, and so congratulations to all and that concludes my report. >> clerk: any public comment on this item? ok, none. public comment is closed. item 3, general manager's report. >> good morning, commissioners. president buell, i'll pick up where you left off. yes, 78% of san franciscans

think the condition of the parks is improving, according to the poll released by the san francisco chamber of commerce. the annual poll revealed satisfaction with the department is not only high but on the upswing. city residents who believe parks are improving or who approve of the work of our department jumped from 70% in 2018, which was itself quite high, to 78% in 2019. while those gave a disapproval rating to the department fell from 11% in 2018, which was very low, to 8% this year. lowest dissatisfaction or disapproval rate ever. survey revealed unsurprisingly some angst about the general direction of the city on issues that everybody is talking about.

and so given that in particular where we saw some other things dropping, the results were pretty satisfying and again a testament to the hard work of the staff, from gardeners, tree toppers, park rangers and custodians, and very much so this commission. leading us in a direction that is working and give people a great deal of satisfaction. so, congrats to everyone. this weekend is full of exciting events, a special event tomorrow morning. newly renovated trail in the oak woodlands trail in golden gate, for phil arnold. a few months ago the commission approved us, approved the naming of this section of the trail, october of 18, so career civil

servant, worked for several agencies, including rec and park, and member and chair of the bay ridge trail that connects twin peaks. the event begins on j.f.k. drive at conservatory drive and brief remarks followed by a trail tour. on saturday, we get to join the mayor in saying two words. play ball. this saturday we kick off the 2019 youth baseball league season with opening day ceremonies at kimball field at 10:00 a.m. mayor breed, san francisco fire chief joanne hayes-white and i will be on hand as the mayor throws out the first pitch. been in operation for nearly 30 years. this year we have 250 teams with over 3,000 players, boys and girls ranging from ages 4 to 14.

this year we feature three bay sox, all girls team in the pinto, mustang and bronco division, coached by over 700 committed and mostly volunteer coaches, many who are parents. immediately following the sfybl first pitch and opening day, balboa pool for the highly anticipated, long-awaited, long-awaited reopening of this neighborhood gem at 12:30 p.m. mayor breed, supervisor safai, mission terrace neighbors are going to help officially open the pool, which features a new bulkhead for programming, increased program hours and community room, improved infrastructure, landscape features around the pool. a bevy of activity showcasing the community hub, mobile rec,

nature activities, sports, free swimming, and then for those planning to just dip their toes in or apparently cannonball, like supervisor safai and i, who apparently are jumping in the water as part of this activity. >> what are you wearing? [laughter] >> yeah, yeah, new r.p.d. speedos. [laughter] and then this weekend, of course, we will also be continuing to celebrate chinese new year and black history in the parks. a week long chinese basketball tournament, starting tomorrow. and joe lee rec center, celebrates black history month, tomorrow from 5 to 8, and minnie and love rec center, community

celebration on saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., live entertainment, history exhibits and activities for the entire family. so, very, very busy weekend in our parks. next wednesday, february 27th, at 1:00 p.m., the golden state road warriors basketball team in partnership with san franciscans, will host a wheelchair basketball showcase event at gene friend rec center, featuring the ten new sports chairs. ten sports wheelchairs specifically designed for basketball. custom chairs were purchased through a generous grant from san franciscans sports and recreation and increasing efforts for adaptive opportunities, so everyone has an opportunity to get out and play. i will be there on wednesday, february 27th, and invite everyone to join.

it's a fun event. does not feel like it, but already talking about spring registration and summer camp registration. spring registration begins on march 2 at 10:00 a.m. summer day camp march 16 at 10:00 a.m. spring program registration begins on march 2 at 10:00 a.m. summer day camp march 16. so log on today to browse the classes and summer camps for you and your family and be ready. lastly, on march 20th, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., hosting a public meeting at the county fair building to discuss a proposed pilot program for a long-awaited free tennis court reservation system on the neighborhoods courts. this is something that's been in the loop for many years, and we

finally think we have a technology solution to help us work through it. proposed system will allow for free reservations on a select number of courts around the city for tennis and pickleball play, creating an easy and convenient way for the city to access for free. more information on the website, but discussing it march 20 at the county fair building. and this month's video, thank you ryan for cueing it up. take look at the most recent greenagers graduation. ♪

♪ >> hearty congratulations to the 2019 graduating class of greenagers, that concludes the general manager's report. >> president buell: thank you. >> clerk: public comment under the general manager's report? ok. seeing none, this item is closed.

now on item 4, general public comment. is there anyone who wishes to make general public comment? ok. seeing none, this item is closed. now on item 5, the consent calendar. anyone who would like to make public comment on the consent calendar? this item is closed commissioners, we need a motion. >> so moved. >> moved and seconded. all those in favor, aye. so moved. >> item 6, the san francisco zoo and as a reminder, discussion only. >> good morning, tonya peterson, director of the san francisco zoo. we had a power point to show. february was a busy month at the zoo. we have events to help connect our visitors to wildlife, as well as connect the zoo to the community and happy to partner for the lunar new year and highlight the pig, particularly

the endangered pig, thank you for coming, and highlighting the breeding and mating of the animals over the valentine weekend. mating is a sign of positive animal welfare. we kept it pg but had special tours and talks associated. and educate the next generation of wildlife conservation and this week we started registration for summer camps. children ages 4-17. they, we have camps from june 10th to august 16th and here the 1st grade is almost sold out. so, thank you everybody for already registering. it's also important to connect teens to wildlife or in my case, disconnect them from social media. so, we have programs for teens, we call it the nature trail program for teens age 12-14. zoo teacher assisstants and talk on the wild side assistance as

well. ages 14-17. that registration has also started. i wanted to highlight our science saturdays. we have these twice a month, they are free with paid admission or zoo membership. we have three upcoming. one this saturday that is particularly important, highlights decline of the west monarch butterfly. declined 97% since the 1980s. we are trying to bring them back and we have dr. angela love coming this saturday 1 to 2 to assist how we can save the monarch together. free, all on the website and they are free to those who come to the zoo every other saturday. lastly, if you have not heard, it's our 90th anniversary at the zoo. 90 is the new 50, i don't know what it is, but -- and with that, during the month of february, we were thanking our members with a $90 family

membership. this will end february 28th. represents about a 35% savings during the month of february and free admission to the zoo all year-long, 365 days we are open. and with that, i finish my report. >> clerk: any public comment on this item? ok, seeing none, public comment is closed. >> tonya, i have one question. i am interested in this monarch butterfly issue as i said at the zoo committee meeting. if there is any literature or anything to report back from that presentation, i think the commission would find it of great interest and the public. i put that request out to you. >> most definitely. >> president buell: any other questions from commissioners? seeing none, information only. >> clerk: item 7. san francisco recreation and

parks department budget for fisk year 2019-20 and 2020-21. >> good morning. commission liaison. general manager, i am derek chao, administration of finance. i'm here before you today to present for your review and approval the fiscal year

1920-20-2021 budgets for the san francisco recreation and parks department. so, we generally start with the mission statement. the department's mission is to provide enriching recreation activities, maintain beautiful parks and preserve the environment for the well-being of everyone in our diverse community. we also incorporate our vision, our values, and as we usually do each year, we develop a budget strategy when we put our budget proposal together. so, the department was guided by the commission approved strategic plan, operational plan, capital plan, as well as the equity lens and metrics.

in addition, we looked at the department's core functions. incorporated efforts to improve recreation and park users experience. we enhance capital and maintenance projects. we leverage new revenue options, and we reallocated vacant positions ab funds to where they were needed. in addition, the department prioritized park programs and services, and looked for new opportunities to reallocate resources. the department's proposed 19-20 budget of $215 million is about $15 million or 6% less than the current budget. >> can you repeat that. >> 6% less than the current year budget. reason for the decrease is two-fold.

one, in the current year we used one time open space revenue to support our bond projects and in addition, bond and capital grant funding is not budgeted on a normal annual basis, it's budgeted when the funds are either allocated or received. so, down the road over the next 3 to 6 months, additional funding may be added to the budget when they become available. so the budget allocates more than half of its funding to parks and open space maintenance, and about 26 -- i'm sorry, 14% structural maintenance, 17% to recreation and aquatics. the administration division receives just under $6.8 million, or 3%.

looking at our budget by account, staff salaries and fringe accounts for 55% of the budget which makes sense because much of the services are front line services, out in the parks, facilities, rec leaders, through maintenance, staff, including custodians, staff, gardeners. so as discussed previously, three maybe sources of funding are the open space fund, general fund and our earned income revenue. a fourth component of other revenue sources includes the bond funds, grants, gifts, bequested and other fund balances. to give you a little bit of detail on the changes from year

to year, as you can see on the top line, the open space fund is budgeted at $66.5 million, which is a decrease from the current year of $76 million, and again, that decrease is because in the current year we are using one-time funds to support bond projects, we are not planning to do at this time in the budget year. general fund support is increasing to 83 million approximately. from $77 million. earned income is increasing as well. our concession and rentals are going up. as well as permits and facility rentals. program fees. our garage paid parking revenue is going down as stated previously. we are seeing weaknesses in garage usage. partly due to the use of uber and lyft. our golf revenues are also going up and marina revenues fairly stable. and if you look at that last line, the only revenue sources,

again, there is a decrease of almost $14 million and that's due to just the cycle nature in the annual budget. this year the department is proposing to create two reserve funds. this would be in line with other baseline departments who have created reserve funds as a hedge against economic down turns. what we are proposing to do is designate 10% of open space fund balance surplus at year end and 10% of net general fund revenue at year end, and place both funds into reserve to help us when, if and when there are budget down turns. so, in this current year and next year, the estimated reserve would be about $2 million. so, we are starting at a lower

point, again, just to protect us against potential economic down turns. so we -- because of the growth and several of our revenue areas, we identified additional funding to support budget investments, in line with the department's mission as well as in line with what the mayor's office was -- what the mayor's office priorities were. in the area of clean and safe parks, we are proposing to add six new park rangers to add to our community-oriented policing program. we are looking to add support in our camp abatement and environmental services to support park and illegal en campment clean-up which includes the tenderloin western addition,

hayes valley and other neighborhoods. area of equity programs and services, proposing a pilot program summer play time, focus on equity zone playgrounds, and enhanced programming in the areas. also looking at increasing equity outreach and impact analysis studies. we are looking at flexible pricing at specialty gardens to align with the san francisco initiative, san francisco for all initiative, whereby we will be included with other city departments in a program proposed by the human services agency to provide equity and access for low income families to participate in the world renowned cultural institutions.

also flexible pricing at the specialty gardens for nonresidents based on market demand, similar to our parking and golf courses in san francisco. finally, area of equity, we are funding program support at the new ecocenter at heron's head park. relevant responsive and engaging ways to interact with consisting park users with the unique history and attract new visitors with exciting programming. in the area of work force development, we have collaborated with the human services agency and the hunter's point family to create a park stop program which we had presented to you previously. adds seven park restroom locations and extends the hours of additional playground to

provide for safe needle disposal, pet waste bags, and universal toilet access. we are also proposing to add a gardener work force captain to the apprenticeship program. in the area of community development, we are proposing to add funding to the golden gate park 150th, which is an honor of the 150th anniversary of golden gate park. we will be working with large and small partners on a series of events and activities that will showcase the park's past, present and future. and its influence on wellness, science and the environment, and the creativity and the arts. celebration begins april 4th at 2020. and the areas of efficiency and revenue measures, the department is exploring to enhance revenue efficiency at the marina, gold medal park and the public utilities commission. department is looking at

increasing marina guest berthing fees during peak periods. from $2 to $4. we are also proposing a marina reimbursement to the general fund provision. in the current year, subsidized the marina accounts for dredging services, and we expect this need to continue on for the next several years. we are proposing that when the marina fund is self-sufficient, they will reimburse the general fund for those dollars. in the area working with the public utilities commission, working with them right now looking at the water rates and policies. we are looking to mitigate costs and we are looking at the possibility of storm water credits and recycling credits for our water usage.

also working with the p.u.c. on the ugs of several spaces that they are using at the civic center garage, and requesting and working with them to request they help support our work and increase security at the garage and the civic center area. at the japanese garden, treasure tower pagoda built in 1915 is in disrepair and needs to be rehabilitated. a surcharge on adult nonresident fees, estimated at $2 million, and with the fee charge we are proposing to generate about $600,000 of that $2 million. finally more internally, the department, we are looking at staffing substitutions in the human resources department,

capital planning, as well as policy and public affairs, and in operations. and last as part of our budget, the following list the maintenance and renovation programs that are being funded by the $15 million in general fund dedicated baseline funding. before i conclude, i want to take a moment to thank the team that helped put this budget together. it's not just one person or just a few people. starting with the team's general manager, phil, the coaches, denny, sarah, tokes, dana, lisa, kim, i'm not sure if i introduced tiffany wong who is

here, our budget manager. tiffany soreas, the business planning manager, lydia, asset manager, johnny wong, our fleet manager, antonio in the back, capital finance manager, and maria sutton, finance manager. without them you know, this would not be possible. thank you. >> president buell: thank you, derek, and thank you staff. >> clerk: we do have public comment. i have two cards, martha and jackie, if you could come forward, please. and as reminder, three minutes each. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> good, thank you. so, good morning. this is a specific issue on the budget. i'm martha mahoney, mom to three

children, 13, 8 and 6. representing the friends of joe dimaggio playground and north beach. we request you include a full-time recreation director for the joe dimaggio playground and surrounding facilities. it's on an entire city block. it includes a clubhouse, three tennis courts, a large children's playground, two bocce courts, hard scape area with three basketball courts and a half size baseball and kick ball diamond. the north beach pool and the north beach library are also located in this complex. we feel our community deserves the safe and activated space at joe dimaggio, and full-time recreation director is imperative to that. as of late last night, 442 people have signed a petition supporting this request. and for those of you that know

north beach, having 442 people agree on something is a big deal. and it speaks a lot to the importance of this request. so, after underdoing a two-year, $7.3 million renovation in 2015, this playground is not only the focal point of our neighborhood, but it's become a destination for people all over san francisco and beyond and lack of oversight and stewardship is not an option. north beach has endured an alarming increase in crime this past year. with incidents of violence and drug-related crimes happening near our park. this is a deterrent for neighbors to utilize the space while simultaneously encouraging transients and criminals to frequent the area knowing nobody is watching and nobody cares. we have not had a dedicated full-time recreation director since 2009. 2009. instead, we have had either a complete closure of the clubhouse with no supervision

and no programming at all, or a stream of various people picking up shifts in bits and pieces. currently the clubhouse is operating with the bare bones schedule, serving young children and seniors, but a patch work of limited programming with no real effort towards meeting the needs of our community. nobody at the wheel. we find ourselves torn by the situation. people of san francisco have spent millions of dollars on this park, and as stewards of san francisco's park and recreation services, to house this jewel in one of the denest neighborhoods in san francisco and budget a full-time person at joe dimaggio playground and recreation center. thank you. >> thank you. >> i had give a copy of the petition along with comments and some quotes. >> thank you. >> clerk: jackie. >> commissioners, general

manager, finance team. my name is jackie boss, also with the friends of joe dimaggio. i have two 8-year-olds and 4-year-old and we live in north beach. active member of the friends of joe dimaggio playground. when we first suggested we wanted the rec director to look after the playground, parents were like yes, this is what we need, and i'm not going do bore you with all the details but i summarized the public statements into seven different reasons we need a rec director. first, for the safety of all the users of the park. teens need supervision and guidance there, and there's been people like martha said, with scissors, a teen with a gun in the playground, we need someone to call for help instantly rather than the parents having to do this. someone could put out equipment and it's great, when we have had people there, lending out

basketballs and giving equipment that the kids really appreciate. when we have had people there, there's been programming, there's been art, sometimes they put out tables in the afternoon and they'll put out crayons and art supplies which we the friends of joe dimaggio bought for the playground. a great hangout space, and the presence would stop people using the park as a toilet or damaging the equipment. and also i think the park needs more admin, i manage the mailing list for friends of joe dimaggio playground, always what time are the tennis courts open, how do i rent the bocco courts, always getting those emails directed to me. and also i make a lot of the 311 calls for repairs, and people spill food on the floor and no one ever cleans it up. no one noticing this stuff is happening.

so, thank you very much for considering our application for a rec director. >> thank you both for coming. >> clerk: anyone else who would like to make comment on the budget? come on up. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> my name is edna james, president of o.m.i., community action organization and this is bob ellis, my vice president. being seniors, missed the comments about merced heights park, and i know it has been approved on the consent calendar and we recommend that you go ahead with it. but wanted -- i was looking at the overall strategic plan and what it said and number objective 2.2, it said strengthen and promote the

safety, health and well-being of san francisco youth and seniors. well, here is something i want to say is that in all the planning that you did, we don't think it's accessible to the seniors because it's on a hill. and the playground, we don't see the seniors on the playground occupying the space where the parents should be, and you know, it has all the steps that are going down, and it's nowhere for seniors to take a walk and walk around outside. we do exercise at the center, at our community center, but we want to have a place where seniors can have access to that park. and we see that the turf on the free play area is the only place that seniors and we talked about this before, that seniors could have a walk to walk around the

park and go up on the monticello side with the ramp, and that got lost in transmission but bring it back to your attention and make that part of the park accessible to seniors and so, because we are not going on the basketball field, we are not going on the tennis court, and we are not going on the volleyball court. and we shouldn't be occupying the space where the youth are. so, we want benches around that spot, and we would, the center would still be, benches where seniors could walk around and just come out and have tea one day and so bob has some comments. thank you. add that to your budget. >> good morning. bob ellis. i've been a resident of the neighborhood for the last 55 years. and i've seen the park come from

a less than hustling children and parents playground into the condition in which it is today. now, i realize the park was not designed for senior citizens. we used to take our senior citizens and put them in rest homes, convalescent homes and threw the key away. but now we are now aware the senior citizens deserve a better consideration because they have paid their dues and at merced park playground is one of the central locations of that community. and i understand that the playground needs to be prepared all over. renovation needs to be there, but it really needs to have senior citizens. an old saying, build a better mouse trap and people will come. now we are talking about a park, merced park. and if we make it senior

accessible, the people in that community will get out of their house and interact with each other and they need t get out in the sunshine and place, benches and safe. and not only for senior citizens but the community to mingle and associate and have conversations with each other, and especially senior citizens. to get to the park you have to have accessibility for senior citizens. no sense in innovating the park if the senior citizens cannot get in there on their own. so, take that into consideration. we are here for a ramp to get for reconstruction of the sill street entrance, especially. for senior citizens to get into that, into the playground.

thank you. >> president buell: thank you. >> clerk: anyone else who would like to make public comment on this item? ok, seeing none. public comment is closed. >> president buell: thank you. commissioners. this item requires a motion. >> so moved to approve. >> second. >> president buell: moved and seconded. all those in favor? so moved. thank you, derek. >> thank you. >> clerk: item 8. park maintenance standards annual report, fiscal year 2017-2018. >> thank you.

>> good morning, commissioners. >> good morning. >> my name is ben wong, i am the operations analyst who manages the day-to-day of the park evaluations program here at rec and parks. and i'm here to introduce to you our 13th annual park maintenance standards report and this is for fiscal year 2018. this is my first year as part of the program, and i think it's been a pretty great year. as an avid park goer myself, it's pretty cool to see the hard work being done in the field, reflected in the annual report and real data. if you recall from last year, the first full year of data that we were able to capture with the use of the mobile app. so this allowed us to kind of dissect the data and pivot the

data in ways that we were not able to do before. and this year is the second full year of data that we were able to capture with the mobile device. so, we are able to dive even deeper and exactly pinpoint, you know, where, at a park, scores are shifted, and that's reflected in our annual report. our report also tells stories about how, you know, equity is working, c.p.a. renovations, for example, the one just renovated out here, center plaza, was recently renovated and that place is amazing, so it was reflected in the annual report. so, last fiscal year, 100% perfect score. pretty school, so without diving too much into the weeds and into

the details of the scores, i'm actually going to go ahead and turn it over to our partners and the team that put together the report and presentation and they have been pretty amazing to work with. from the controllers office performance unit, joe, emily and alice. >> thanks so much, ben. so today we are going to talk you through some of the main findings in the report. a lot of details but some high level analysis, you can dig into that at any time later on. so, firstly we look at the city-wide average maintenance score. two years of an increase in fy15 to fy16 to fy17. the past fiscal year, the city-wide average stayed steady, about 89%. but we really would like to dig

into the data a little bit more closely. in addition to just looking at the average, we are interested in the distribution of park scores, shown on the next slide. so, you can see the average of the park scores shown as the green line for each year. so, as that is inching to the right, that is the same average that we saw on the last slide continuing to increase and then holding steady in the past fiscal year. what's more interesting here, the outlyers of the data. minimum score was about 60% in fy15, and has risen to 71% in this past fiscal year. so, a pretty significant increase. and with that increase in the minimum score, the distribution is shrinking. so, we see a tightening of the scores around the average, and you can see that over time in the figure. these changes are likely due to ongoing capital improvements and

policies aimed at a more equitable resource allocation. an exciting trend we want to continue to watch over time. we also look at the top and bottom scoring parks in our reports. so, a map showing the top ten highest scoring parks highlighted in green, and the lowest highlighted in red. you can see some findings similar to last year, the majority of high scoring parks of the top ten parks are the northern part of the city and the majority of the bottom ten parks in the southern half of the city. this year an interesting finding. half of the top ten parks were in supervisor district 1 and supervisor district 1 also continues the lowest scoring park, park presidio boulevard. all below the average of the city, but particularly the lawns. litter on the green space and the lawns, so we were able to

entangle the specific findings from the data to hopefully result in operational changes at these parks. last note on these, we saw some overlap from last year. so, we had cabril lo, and others high scoring. and india basin shoreline, alice chalmers and rogers park, bottom top ten scoring la of the year and again this year. we wanted to flag those as well. we can also aggregate the data by the supervisor district level. so, this kind of heat map shows the average maintenance score for each district, with the district shaded darker green for a higher score. you can see districts 1 and 6 are the highest scoring districts. shaded in the darkest green. and you can see district 11 as the lowest scoring district here. notable changes from last year, so, district 1 and 11 were the

highest and the lowest district last year. so, those are very similar. district 11 had the same score last year, 83% as it does this year. one bigger change was district 6, this year tied for a top scoring district. last year actually had an average score of about 88%, and risen significantly to 92% this year. a lot of changing the past fiscal year. i'm going to invite ben up to talk about the park service area changes. >> rec and park manages our parks operationally, not based on supervisor district but on p.s.a. or park service areas. so, as you can see on the slide here, p.s.a.1 and 6 consistently the highest scoring parks or park service areas. p.s.a. in the northern part of town, 6 in the middle, mission district, and p.s.a.3 and 4 on

the lower end of the scores. so, 3 is the southeastern part of the city, p.s.a. 4 is the sunset area of the city. and although p.s.a. 3 has been historically the lowest scoring park, you can see in 15-16, hovering around 81 to 80%. the past two fiscal years, it's been on the rise. so, you can see fiscal year 17 around 82, 83. and now fiscal year 18, up to 86%. attributed to several different factors. one, we add add third supervisor to the mix, allowed for better management focus and better deployment at resources. another factor is capital investment, fiscal year 16, gilman was renovated and 17, hilltop park was renovated.

i am going to give this back to you. >> ok. as you all know, the june 2016 charter amendment the result of prop b requires r.p.d. to measure equity. r.p.d. designated equity zones in the city and identified parks that are serving those zones. we have a map here of the maps and the parks serving those zones, but note specifically that those designations and the equity zones changed. when they updated those, that park was changed so we are not able to make comparisons from last year to this year in those distributions because the underlying park lists change as a note. but this is still valuable point in time analysis. we could not make those analyses over time.

so when we look at equity zone parks versus nonequity, the average score is about 88%, and the average score for nonequity zoned parks 90%. in addition to the averages, obviously having a two-point difference, looked at the distributions and saw equity toward the higher end, so we don't see parks scoring over 97%. almost see a cliff towards the top, the nonequity zone parks, more normal distribution, 9 or 10 parks scoring above 97%. so, interesting differences and we look forward to tracing this over time once the list is more stable in future years. ok. we were also able to start looking at these maintenance

scores over time. the standards change in fy15, so all the changes are over four years. but a snapshot, who are the most dramatic from fy17 to 18. we saw as the city-wide average score did not change from the two years, individual parks increase and decrease, but all of those balanced out to a net holding the average steady. we were able to untangle the largest increases and decreases. so, a notable one here, alice chalmers, that park increased from 64% last year to 77% score this year. that was the largest increase of four percentage points. alice chalmers is one of the lowest scoring parks. however, the huge increase likely a result of the outdoor courts and further renovations in the children's play areas and alice will talk about that in a few slides.

so, b in addition to looking at just the past year, we were able to trace parks that have been increasing for the past four fiscal years, increasing all those four years and we show here the five parks that had the most dramatic increases. i will note here all of these parks, except for cuyahoga playground, were above the city-wide average this year, and have been increasing all four, interesting on successes and renovations. the other side of that, parks decreasing over the past four fiscal years. so these decreasing parks, perhaps give us a glimpse into parks most at risk to continue to decrease, and an opportunity for proactive maintenance improvement plans in the future. so highlight these as well on that side. give it to alice, my colleague, to talk about further detail in

the feature scores. >> thank you, commissioners. honor to be here today. is this better? how about this? >> not very loud. >> how about this? there we go. so, thank you so much to emily and benjamin, for introducing the park evaluation program, and those of you who are unfamiliar with our park evaluations, we set it up in a hierarchy, and so we achieve a site score by averaging the individual scores for the features, which are distinct areas that we can maintain in unique ways through the park. so i'm going to show you some examples of features. so these are the features that almost every park has and we evaluate. it ranges from park wide features, like hardscape, asphalt, and pathways throughout

the whole park, to very space-defined areas, such as a lawn or children's play area. this is an overview of the average scores for each feature over time. i do caution we try not to compare features to each other because evaluators may approach them differently, a different number or different types of criteria, so, this is to give a general overview and orient you to the average scores, be careful not to compare them to each other. you can see that generally children's play areas on average score the lowest, that may be for several factors. one of the things we did this year in the report that was different from last year, so i wanted to highlight, we took a deeper dive, looking at outdoor courts. not just on a feature level but feature instance, and by feature instance, the type of outdoor

courts. so compared the average of tennis courts, to basketball courts, skate parks, to other courts that may be like bocce balls or fitness courts. things like that. you can see we did find a slightly interesting finding, on average, tennis courts are scoring higher than basketball courts and i might be bias, but i think it's a very juicy part of the report so i really encourage you guys to dive in and learn more because we really break it down by what part of these different types of courts may cause this discrepancy in scores. may have to do with the resources input or the operational allocation of resources as an output, and something to just keep track of in the future and make sure we are treating all of our courts the same. emily mentioned alice chalmers earlier. it's a great success story. did remain in one of the bottom ten this years, but one of the highest increasing in score

parks. that can be clearly shown to be related to a lot of the great renovations that have been going on. recently the outdoor courts were renovated and you can see that in the increase in score from last year to this year, we are seeing as much of a jump of 21 percentage points, very impressive. i will note even with renovation, sometimes the score does not jump up to 100% for several reasons. for some, it could be the renovation happened partway through the year, so the average is dragged down by prerenovation scores and could be there are some scores affected by noncapital-related renovations, such as litter or cleanliness. and we can see the children's play area is one of the lowest. we are excited to keep our eye on this park. i'll go ahead and talk about elements. one level deeper in the hierarchy. talked about the park-wide

scores, feature-wide scores, this can be a range of things from litter to graffiti, both of which i'll talk about. it can also be specific features like the structures at a children's play area or the equipment on an outdoor court. it could even be things like paint or the quality of curbs. today we only have enough time to talk about two elements. we'll talk about cleanliness and graffiti. i will say that we have seen just as the city-wide score held steady at 89% from last year to this year, we also saw the cleanliness and graffiti scores hold steady from last year to this year. but we did note that last year we did a spacial analysis and saw some hot and cold spots in the city where we could say this area is consistently facing graffiti problems as opposed to the rest of the stay. we did not find that this year, and that may suggest due to

equitable resource allocation, resources with combat and graffiti are more spread throughout the city. we'll keep an eye on this and see how it develops over time. [please stand by]