We only had three vacancies at the end of the 2025 season um with a wait list of 179 people, which is a lot.

We don't have any sailboats. Uh, and I think generally speaking, that's we don't because of the bridge. People want to get out into the into Weisetta Bay and that would be uh prohibit them from doing that.

It's a nice nice cooperative venture.

When that uh fee was established, we uh it was basically to generate some maintenance uh to cover some maintenance, not a lot, but just a little bit. Um have the uh the organizations have some skin in the game, so to speak, and uh also to uh create some uh a small fund for some future capital projects.

Um keeping in line with other cities um our rates are relatively low. Other cities uh charge anywhere from $15 to $80 an hour. Um, so we're probably low mid to to what other cities charge and our, you know, our costs from public works and and staff uh um wages and that sort of thing are increasing every year, too. We haven't increased since 2023. So, this is, you know, three years at the same rate and now we're going again.

Um, and to your point about diversity, it was a Hispanic uh, soccer league uh, that was utilizing that.

So, this was the first one that we have held at the marsh. Um, previously we were at Bridgedale Commons um the last two years and prior to that we were down at the Minnotonka Ice Arena Bot. Um but we thought we found kind of the perfect spot with the marsh um just because of visibility um parking stalls um that kind of thing.

So, um the challenges, um, Dave, you mentioned the construction. So, there was construction on Minnotonka Boulevard. I'm sure you didn't even notice all summer, but um we thought it was going to last maybe two to four weeks of the season. It lasted all season long.

In terms of community engagement, what do you think about putting a park board booth at the farmers market so that we actually are describing to our citizens what we're doing?

I think if you just work with Ann on the schedule, maybe we can figure out what what works best. Yeah, that and what we have as a not just a freebie for people, but like you know map of the trails or map of the parks or we've got we've got stuff on the website that could be pretty that would be good to have.

We've done um something interesting with the surveys that are available to to the community. Um, they're more interactive where we've added photographs of a variety of parks and we're asking people to sort of click on the vibe of the park that they're most interested in.

Good question. That's why I I'm really trying to emphasize that this is a park master planning effort that we have a a really valuable corner in our community there. And yes, the skate park is going to be, you know, a a thoughtful element, but really we need this to be opening and and and welcome for the community. There's a lot of trails and sidewalks here at that area. There's a lot of walkable commercial areas. It really needs to function on a variety of levels.

We're we're talking that through. So there is a restroom associated with the concession stands, the ball field, but that's not open all the time. So it currently we're not necessarily planning on building a brand new building unless that was to come out of this planning effort, but for now it'll be an open park space. We can talk through um you know how a bathroom facility would work. We have some parking challenges and quite a lot to fit in that corner. So, um, we're just preliminary concepts at this point, looking to see what the community has to say, but we certainly hear a lot about the availability of public restrooms.