we are a group of volunteers who love the parks and we talk about what's going great in the Parks things that we've heard that need to be improved well one of our jobs is to be the first look at new park opportunities or to be available to consider changes in existing Parks uh we're always trying to stay up to date pickle balls become a big thing and out at our glacial Park you'll see we've got pickle ball courts and we're converting tennis courts to pickle ball courts and some of our other uh beautiful parks and so those are the kind of things that we keep track of and do each month we aren't the decision makers we're the influencers so we listen to our community members um we gather news from surrounding communities uh we use information that's provided by staff and we talk about what's going well and What needs to get better so we work really hard to stay a breast of new developments one thing that's really kind of new is lacrosse and one of the parks we're working on on right now which is near one of our junior high schools here in town will be for lacrosse we're also out in the community using the parks and the trails and we're participating in the recreation programming so we know firsthand how things are going and we're really plugged in to what the experience is like one of our challenges we've had very recently is the huge growth in electronic bicycles or ebikes so we're worried about sight lines and we're worried about people being being able to safely enjoy the parks both on ebikes which we're w we want to welcome them to the parks but also pedestrians and those using more traditional type uh bicycles uh we also partnered with uh Washington County and some local residents to bring in a community garden up at meadowgrass Park uh that's been a really exciting addition to our Park system and recently we've also been looking at plans for adding some features to Pine Tree Pond Park and looking at development of Mississippi dunes and we were successful in acquiring 100% of the riverfront property where we're going to build a new park Council has lots of commissions to keep track of and lots of issues around this city to think about so we make sure we go deep Dives on all the issues that are brought to us to discuss and consider when we have a vote on behalf of an issue one of the things we work really hard to do is speak with one voice so that we're able to give a unanimous vote on a topic so if we have disagreement amongst ourselves we work through those things before we vote and that way city council hears from us with one voice and we feel like that's really really important we'd like to see citizens at our meetings when they come they always bring ideas and some of them we can't think of so we'd love to see more citizen involvement both at our meetings and perhaps even if you're interested in being a member of our commission um I think the commission is a great thing to be involved with as an adult because you get a chance to see what all the different people in the city are using parks for but it's also a really great experience for youth who want to learn more about city government who want to volunteer and be a bigger part of the community so youth Commissioners are are always welcome as well