00:00:11,070	Today’s meeting for the men in Park District to order today’s March 9th, 2026. We are at City Hall. Any additions, additions or deletions to the agenda? None. Hearing none, we will open the public communication from visitors. Nobody in our audience. So we will close that portion of the meeting. Moving on to minutes.

00:00:35,700	Seeking approval or comment of the February 9th regular meeting minutes. I would move to approve the meeting minutes from February 9th, 2026. I’ll second. We have a motion from Commissioner Scott and a second from Commissioner Freilich to approve the February 9th meeting minutes. All those in favor? State. Aye. Aye. Those meeting minutes are approved. Item number one.

00:01:01,830	Consider for approval synthetic turf bids for diamonds 11 and 12. Director Hoagland. Commissioners. As you know, the band and baseball requested approval back in October of 25 to do an RFP for synthetic turf for the diamonds. We have an agreement in your packet that has signed. Excuse me.

00:01:22,870	Has been signed demonstrating that they are responsible for all the costs related to it. It would be ran just like we have in the past. The Park district would administer the construction. We would pay the invoices directly, get reimbursed for the mat and baseball club on the back with that. Then the bids were opened.

00:01:39,970	We had all my sheet here. We had three bids in. The low bid was to Northwest Contracting, and the recommendation is to accept alternate A, which is the root zone diamond RBI, which is your premium turf. So the total bid for base bid and alternate A is 1,000,009 95666. So just under $2 million would be the recommendation. In the packet.

00:02:04,300	You see an email confirmation from the baseball club. And Rob Oster, given their approval to move forward with this project. So any questions you may have for me. I got one.

00:02:22,970	Um, can you give me a little bit more explanation about this turf? What? We’ve got the best versus is there that much better turf than the other one? So the the synthetic turf itself is. Yes. There is different level quality. So absolutely it is a step up. Really.

00:02:37,100	It’s your, uh, your beads that go with the black beads that you see kind of on TV or at the Star and Sports Complex. It’s the feel that you have in there. So it depends on the percentage of fill that you have. So we’re going with a higher quality field for safety reasons. But no, it definitely is a warranty is exactly the same. It’s just a higher quality. It’s kind of like extra amenities in a in a car.

00:02:51,300	What you look at, there’s certain levels of things you want to add to the car, very similar to synthetic turf. Thank you. Any other discussion on the turf bids? I would make the motion to accept the bid from Northwest Contracting alternate a uh, in the amount of $1,995,666. I’ll second.

00:03:21,670	We have a motion by Commissioner Scott, a second by Commissioner Mutter. Any other discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. Vote. Commissioner. Mutter. Yes. Commissioner. Freilich. Yes. Commissioner. Scott. Yes. I’m also. Yes. Motion carries item number two. Request to amend the 2026 budget for Ada and website upgrades. Uh, Kelly.

00:03:51,100	Yeah, commissioners, as you’re aware, any government entity serving under 50,000 people must comply with Ada digital rule by April of 2027. Um, so as I presented previously, we’ve completed an Ada audit with our current website provider, Mint Brand Marketing. So we reviewed every content on our page and made that as Ada accessible as we possibly can.

00:04:11,370	Um, we’ve added reference text alt text to every image, so patrons that hover over the image are able to see or. Excuse me here, um, what the image would be if they have any audio impairment.

00:04:29,600	Um, and we’ve also conducted research with multiple vendors, um, to research different Ada ways we can, um, really switch over the website and how to help us be Ada compliant. Um, so where’s that research? We found that Civic Plus would offer the best service, really, for an inexpensive cost. You’ll be able to see in your board packet that they have two different things that they offer. One being dock access.

00:04:48,770	So dock access is basically an application where if we’re updating standing schedules, strategic plans and reports, different PDFs to our website patrons, we’ll be able to pull up that PDF and basically click on a button to make it Ada accessible.

00:05:06,470	So we find that would be really valuable to us with how many PDFs we update daily. Weekly. Um, other research that we’ve done with companies, they charge per page. And just considering how many PDFs we upload, um, daily and weekly, we think this would be a really good fit. Um, the second app they offer is audio.

00:05:26,630	I so that’s basically a human AI digital platform that basically converts to website to be Ada compliant. And then also this website or this application provides legal protections and then also stays up to date with, with the standards. So we find that to be really two really good applications that we provided with Civic Plus.

00:05:44,970	Um, today I’m not here to ask you for the two payment applications for those two. I’m here to ask you for basically the website cost. So Civic Plus offers those two applications at a reduced rate. If your website is hosted with them.

00:06:05,100	So that’s where the I’m, I’m here today to ask for the $25,422 from to be amended from the 2026 budget. Um, that’s the initial upfront cost. And then there would be an annual payment for the two apps that I discussed earlier. And just so you’re aware, that payment would be for the raging River site, Star and Sports Complex and the Manhattan Park site.

00:06:22,200	And then I’m here today to ask for approval. And if you have any questions. Thanks for that. Um, any questions from the board? Uh, Kelly, since you brought it up, is is the raging river’s budget and the golf course budget paying part of this? So it’s Darren Sports Complex and the raging river sites.

00:06:45,330	Golf is operated by a completely different, um, basically site called Tee Snap that we offer through a point of sale system. Um, but this would all be coming from just the general fund. Thank you. Anything else? Uh, what are the board’s wishes? I recommend the budget amendment.

00:07:17,130	Uh, $25,422 into 2026 for the launch of the of a new website. I’ll second. We have a motion from Commissioner Mutter and a second from Commissioner Freilich. Any other discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. Vote. Commissioner Scott. Yes. Commissioner. Freilich. Yes. Commissioner. Mutter. Yes. I also vote yes. Uh, that motion is carried. Item number three.

00:07:44,600	Consider for approval JLG General Lease and Settlement Agreement. Director. Haglund. Vice president, playoff and Commissioners. As you know, we’ve been dealing with the Ada, um, issues for like the last year. Um, we have submitted all of our Ada information into the Department of Justice.

00:08:00,430	Uh, two months ago, roughly. And we have not heard anything back in regards to mean compliant, but we have plenty of time. If we weren’t, but we followed within what we were required to do. So that’s been submitted.

00:08:15,600	So before you, as the information that has a settlement from LG’s attorney and attorney, Ruff had reviewed it, I received it this morning, mid-morning. So I shot it out to the commissioners for your review. Essentially, Attorney Ruff has given his support.

00:08:30,770	Um, I mentioned earlier last month we talked about the general lease, general release of any future liabilities for the value of the dollar that we have been settling for. That was a concern on the entire building. But the release is only specific for the Ada related to the Star and Sports complex. Not everything else that’s related there. So if we do have any future issues, I do not foresee any.

00:08:46,930	I think it’s been a great design building by JLG. It’s unfortunate the way this took place. Um, it’s basically interpretation of Ada code. We’re very happy with the building. We don’t foresee any concerns as far as future related to the design or the construction of the complex. Um, but before you, as the general release settlement agreement.

00:09:04,670	So we figure we should bring it before the board. Even though you gave Attorney Ruff direction last month to move forward with our settlement requests. And so before you is the the contract and the agreement, it kind of spells out the release. And along with no admission of liability.

00:09:22,570	And then last is just, um, the stipulation if we were to dismiss this, what we would do moving forward. So I think the recommendation is to approve as presented. Thanks, Cole. Any discussion from the board? Hearing none. Uh, what are the board’s wishes? I’ll make a motion to approve the JLG general Lease and Settlement agreement. Second motion from Commissioner Freilich.

00:09:57,000	Second from Commissioner Scott. Any other discussion? Hearing none. Roll call. Vote. Commissioner. Mudar. Yes. Commissioner. Freilich. Yes. Commissioner. Scott. Yes. I also vote yes. Item three. Uh. Motion carried. Item number four 2025 Annual Report. No. For computer. I don’t know. Okay. All right.

00:10:34,170	So before you, as our 25 annual report, Kelly, who’s here today, put together the PowerPoint presentation for us with only a few revisions and color changes. I’m on my behalf now. So before you, we want to just summarize this. As you can see, for the revenue expenses, again, all of the entire park system, 11.3 million expenses 11.3 million.

00:10:53,370	As you recall, you’ll see throughout this presentation, there are a lot of construction projects that we did as far as deferred maintenance. So there’s some capital costs related with this. But the one thing I want to point on the revenue side is that 42% of our revenue comes from state aid and or property taxes.

00:11:09,370	So right around 58% of our revenue comes from other sources through our fees and programs that we operate today, personnel highlights. Just kind of given a review, 28 full time, 315 seasonal employees. We did add two restructuring positions in the HR generalist, and then the board did approve adding a community engagement specialist. We do have one position that is open.

00:11:26,900	That is a shared position between staffing sports complex and park operations that we have not filled. We are looking at restructuring that position for 26 due to the some of the logistics related to shared employees that will communicate with you in your portfolio meetings, some future projects.

00:11:42,500	As a reminder, the year goes by kind of quick. So you kind of look back and I went, I looked at this too. I even forgot that Muni had 100 year anniversary.

00:11:54,700	But car, bodies, boat ramp as we know we were able to build this new boat ramp with the cooperation of the city and the county and along with the park district’s contribution and $800,000 matching grant from the state of North Dakota, and that was able to be open this year. And you can see the fish cleaning station there that the Park district staff installed and put together themselves. So that was kind of an in-house project. The softball multi-purpose building.

00:12:12,900	We did new doors, roof, new fascia, epoxy, two floors along the restroom, concession building on the north softball complex. Again, this ties back to our deferred maintenance program. We start going through all of our facilities, and if we see grades that are low, we want to get them as a priority.

00:12:27,400	So making sure that we have facilities that we can be proud of. Ada, we mentioned here earlier with the settlement, but in front of you, we had obviously the new east bleachers that we added on the visitor side for the stadium, for the football stadium, we added new ramps along with new

00:12:42,300	bump outs in the Cadillac rink we had four Ada spots. We now have nine. And then in the Buick rink, we had to do some retrofitting of some bleachers that were installed by the hockey club, and we partnered with them to get those installed. Raging rivers.

00:12:59,470	We did new paint and gel coat on all four of the slides that you see there. We did the white flumes on the inside. Based on the recommendations from the oxidation and the chlorine that we have. But all four slides now have been repainted in gel coated. We didn’t think we were going to get that in this fall.

00:13:11,630	If we brought that in, we brought that before the board. They happen to be in town, in the area, so it makes it a lot more cost efficient. And the weather held out for us. Golf improvements.

00:13:27,170	Um, if you remember, we had a long study about doing a new golf operation, maintenance building south of Prairie West down there by the hole number six, and with all the cost estimate, the feasibility study and everything related with the soil conditions and being in a floodplain, it did not make sense to do it there.

00:13:44,330	And so I give Garrett Schultz a lot of compliments in taking the the initiative that he probably could have got a new park operations building, but the cost of that building was going to be over more than what we paid for park operations, for less square footage. So he actually took it upon himself to come up with some ideas.

00:13:57,570	And I think you’ve seen some of the benefits that he’s been able to come up with and address a lot of things between the two golf courses. So I’m going to highlight just a few of them. As you see.

00:14:09,300	But we did a portable restroom enclosure at hole number five, a new irrigation pump at Municipal Golf Course. We did the new entrance at the Prairie West Golf Course along with cart storage. You see the concrete in the cart storage area there in the picture. Lower bottom right of that picture is the cart barn at Man and Municipal.

00:14:23,930	If you remember, the old one that we had there had been there for many years, didn’t fit all of our carts. So now we have the access to store all of our carts. We have access on the back side of the north side of the building. We can exit on the south side.

00:14:34,430	And then along with that, we added additional power to the outbuildings on it, Prairie West. And then we renovated the interior of his maintenance building for his office. And you kind of can see a picture on the left is where it looks like when it’s being demo. Then obviously the renovation for the area there for all of its employees.

00:14:49,470	So it’s a nice addition to that facility. We will do a tour of this facility once spring comes, and hopefully the golf course is open. We can let the mess of the commissioners go in there.

00:15:04,230	Along with that, they did all of the installation themselves over the winter months, so they were taken apart. The mechanic area and the some of the cold storage areas put in the ceiling did a lot of the insulation and added heat in there. So now we have a whole building. Now I think to the standards that we want. In addition to that, this is the one that kind of brought back some memories.

00:15:19,770	Is Bauer’s donation. Bauer’s excavating donated holes 11 and 12. They dug out the pond, they deepened it. And that kind of took place in 24 over the Christmas time and then over into the January of 25.

00:15:34,600	But it was a nice addition to our community, obviously got rid of all the cattails and some of the things that we had there. So that was done in 25, along with the new hole related to the lower heart here at Man Municipal. That hole will be open this year.

00:15:50,770	Um, since we’re talking about Lower Heart and Mandan Municipal, we do not see any impact to the golf course in 25 or in 26. In the spring, if something were to happen. We’re looking at probably the fall of 26, if all permitting things get put into place. Some statistics, as you can see, golf has continued to be an upswing since Covid and Is continues to grow and grow.

00:16:11,570	Brent does a nice job of partnering some of his different age groups and tiers. His season passes to geared towards the younger generation to help he get these numbers up, and you can see the rounds of golf just continue to grow and grow annually each year. We have 226 days of operation. We opened on March 22nd.

00:16:27,670	Hopefully we can beat that this year, but the snow today is probably going to set us back a little bit for drying. And you can see municipal was open 184 days, um, $1.5 million of range balls.

00:16:43,170	And then the youth on course is a great feature to get young kids on that golf course, and we get reimbursed through that. And I mentioned earlier about our 100 year anniversary of the municipal golf course, um, brought back a lot of all the former golf pros and people to come back and to enjoy and share some memories on that. And then the park operations.

00:16:58,800	As you can see, shelter rentals kind of highs and lows. I asked the question, are staff meaning as to any reference as to why? Um, there is really no signal in definite definition as far as why those numbers have slightly decreased.

00:17:13,830	Um, we haven’t really added any new shelters, but we have added some open shelters that aren’t being rented, so that could be part of it to some statistics there. As you can see, we had 21 motor events at Centennial Park. Over 11,000 people attend the RC track. As we know, in our second year of operation had 17 events, 14 rodeo events along with two professional of those rodeos.

00:17:31,630	Um, those continue to grow. We have a meeting next this week also about potential phase two, um, taking place. As we know, the pledge drive at DCP for the rodeo grounds for Dale Park Arena is scheduled to be paid off at the end of this year, so we will have it paid

00:17:42,900	off in three years. And so the excitement is already there for phase two. And we talked about the car bodies related to the, um, boat ramp. And then in just making subtle improvements to Eagle’s Park indoor shelter and along with the new turf on diamonds nine and ten, that was kind of done in 24, but carried

00:17:59,530	a little bit into 25 as we had some fine tuning to complete in our construction for recreation, youth and adult sports. As you kind of can see, the numbers on the right side in 25, we compare it back to 22, um, numbers continue to grow, as you can see in the youth program, specifically the

00:18:15,000	Mac. As you know, we added on more kids in the summer got up to almost 300 that were related to in the summer Mac program. But some of the comments that we’re dealing with is the adult sports, specifically basketball. As you can see, the downward trend.

00:18:29,830	It’s not just a local downward trend of adult basketball. It’s statewide, and you’re seeing it at the state amateur basketball tournament. Two teams are down quite a bit.

00:18:43,700	Uh, we’re assuming it has a lot to do with other activities, whether it’s pickleball, whether it’s indoor golf, a lot of other opportunities that are going out there that may not get you hurt. So we’re not sure exactly where we’re going to go in regards to the future of adult basketball. But I know across the river we’re having concerns with teams being decreased there too.

00:18:56,600	So hopefully we can kind of make a competitive league that makes it to be at least have an opportunity to offer that in our in our city. And then you see the decrease in kickball. I think that’s kind of related to just sometimes, whether it is one of those programs that has highs and lows. We did, uh, if you remember, many years ago we had a dodgeball program. The numbers really skewed.

00:19:10,870	And then it started to nose off at the end. It could be something like that, but we’ll continue to monitor as we go. And then you see volleyball just down slightly and raging rivers. You can see the attendance was a cool year in 25. We were only open 64 days, eight days over 90.

00:19:27,670	But if you remember the second half of July and all of August was a very cool months and rainy months, so it made it very difficult for us to open as much as we could. With the weather that allowed it. But overall we had 519 519.

00:19:42,030	In our swim lessons, we had 700 over 700 people attend Tod time and everybody swims the all inclusive swim days, which is in the mornings before we open up to the entire public. So it’s been a good successful plan there. And starring sports complex, as you know, one of our directives from this board was to get more activities up at the Star Sports Complex.

00:19:58,970	We’re pretty limited in what we can do in the ice rent. As you see, the hours are still very consistent, but over 100 and 112,000 people attended actual games. That does not include any practices or open skates and things of that nature, just actual games.

00:20:15,170	And you can see the 43 soccer games that we’ve moved up there. So we moved all of our soccer up there for this year. Um, to open up free space down at the closest soccer fields for all of our youth programs. Instead of having to go buy more land, we now have moved them up there.

00:20:26,300	And then you can see all of the track means that we’ve hosted, along with Dakota Star Gymnastics. So it’s been a success. Um, it’ll almost be ten years next year. We opened in 2017, so we’re already into nine years. It’s crazy. All the time flies all seasons. Arena. This was our first fiscal year of operation.

00:20:43,300	In the past, we’ve always shared it with the school district. As far as they staffed it, we maintained the utilities and the operation of the building. This for 25 was the first fiscal year of us operating both staff and operations of the building.

00:20:57,170	And you can see some of the hours that the Park district utilizes compared to the school, and then others that are associated with there. So it definitely is a well, um, used facility Monday through Sunday. And we’ve had great success with youth tournaments and basketball and volleyball tournaments in there.

00:21:16,370	Any questions you may have of me regarding our annual report? Next call? Um good job. Thanks for putting that together. And any comments from the board. I will say I did chuckle a little bit when you listed the number of orders of French. Fries. It was quite comical. I thought, well, you could have broken it down to individual French fries. Best fries in town.

00:21:43,100	I do have one question is, do we have I’m watching golf going up and all that. How how many more rounds can you put on our golf courses? You know, obviously weather is going to dictate how many rounds you can put out there.

00:22:00,830	I mean, if we have a nice open spring like we had in, what is it, March 22nd that we opened last year? I mean, if we can open late and open early and stay open later, we definitely can add. But it’s kind of a tough question to decide because we are full.

00:22:14,230	It’d be different if we weren’t full at those times, but it’s very difficult to determine that number based on whether and again, we have good competition in our community to offer good golf courses, but there are discussions going around about adding another golf course.

00:22:29,700	And if that would have happened, how would that would impact everybody? Or just taking the existing pie of golfers and spreading them out? But I think there is a need for certain type of golf course, whether it’s private or semi. But to answer your question about how many more rounds we can take, that’s a hard question to answer. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that. Uh, moving on to item number five, authorization of payment of our monthly bills.

00:22:55,130	What are the board’s wishes? I’ll make a motion to approve authorization of payments for the monthly bills. Second. All right, we have a motion from Commissioner Froehlich and a second from Commissioner Scott to authorize payment of our monthly bills. All those in favor? State I. I. All those opposed. Same sign. Uh, authorization is granted. All right. Item number six. Commissioner, staff reports.

00:23:22,370	Director Haglund. Nothing. Manager. Thomas. Yeah. I just wanted to let you know that we went through our 2026. Summer Mac waitlist. So now we’re. Opening it up to the public. Commissioner. Mudar. I just want to remind parents. I want to remind parents that registration opens March 9th for peewee baseball and T-ball.

00:23:49,630	So parents, get on the. It’s open today. So sign them up. Commissioner Freilich. I’ve got nothing. Commissioner Scott. Nothing. No report for myself. Um, future meeting dates for park board. Uh, April 13th, a regular scheduled park board meeting will be here at 530 in City Hall. Um, anything else to add? All right. Seeking a motion for adjournment.

00:24:19,430	Move to adjourn. I’ll second. All right. We have a motion for adjournment from Scott and a second from Commissioner Mutter. All those in favor say aye. Aye, aye.