If people are interested in how to permit for the big boards 300 Okay, all right, this is just starting to kind of get a gauge on how to make some discussions work. As we go, how many people attended this session last year? Oh, okay. All right. So not a whole lot has changed, I am gonna be able to talk to a lot of you about some changes that we're doing this coming here. And also, you'll just get to enjoy your lunch, which is great. So welcome. Once again, to the cities round in this whole affair. Please do stop by for natural areas management after this. And we'll have a sort of ask the city question where you can bounce as many questions as you want to have a panel of people who do our best to respond. Okay. All right. So special events and permits, I thought I'd go over a little bit just permits by the numbers for the city. And I'm going to do it all but starting to talk actually about the city's budget. For the General Services Department, there was a lot of talk about how budget cuts budget cuts budget, that's all throughout, you know, the six years up until, you know, the great restructuring. And right now if I took all the General Services departments, and I cobbled together, things that were more parks and rec related budget would be about $40 million a year, right. And that covers all personnel, and that covers all of our operations cost, etc. If I was to think about the recreation, the one which I live in, we have a budget of about $17 million. However, once you take out a lot of our personnel costs, which is over half of our entire expenses, we have so many employees that are in our recreation centers day in and day out. And once you take out the contractual services that we pay for, for golf courses, and cemeteries and things of that nature, I'm left with an operational budget, that's around $1.7 million. So run 307 parks and 12 rec centers, right soon to be 16. So we have a very, very small budget, we have a very, very small staff. And permits is just one little sliver of that entire operation. We issued this past year 1000 permits across the city. Doesn't sound like a whole lot when you have 300. Parks. Right, that there were 1000 permits issued. And over all of those permits, actually only 800 of them were in parks. Okay. And of those 800 permits that were issued, we brought in at $83,000. And at that rate, just so y'all are aware, we don't this is not a cost recovery issue for the city. When we issue permits, we're not looking to say, hey, we need to recoup all the cost for maintaining this park. Right. We're not looking to I mean, we can we can't even pay our permitting staff with $83,000 that we gave, what might we be looking for when we issued permits? What are we trying to gain? What are we trying to do? Think that's another basic
accountability are the people who
are in the park for not destroying things and cleaning up after themselves?
Right. Okay. It's correct. Yeah, it's one way that we can kind of monitor like the need for us to steward our parks. Right. And people are permitted. Hopefully, they take better care of the the asset that they're using, right? What's some other issue? Yes. Safety 100%. Right. Like survey, if nobody pulls a permot, we don't know what they are, right? We don't know to inform people with a certain event is going on. We have events that happen in our parks, and sometimes we have no knowledge of them until the day, for instance, we do this quite quite as willing. So safety, yes, of course, safety. One of the others that I'll just go ahead and win actually is. It's so we know what's going on out there. I'll give you a good example. The pistons are not the Tigers reached out to me. And we're like, hey, we want to improve some baseball diamonds. Right? We want to improve some baseball diamonds in the city of Detroit. Can you tell us where people are playing baseball was like well, you know, we issued permits for baseball diamonds. Let me look at our computer system. In all of 2022 We issued eight permits for baseball diamonds. Now, how many baseball games do you think happened in the city? Right? Like more than that, so even though I mentioned all this revenue, all the permits that we issued one of them Things That is just a consistent thing in the city of Detroit. Since Park stewards have taken such have done such a great job of like activating their parks without a whole lot of city support in these paths. A lot of people aren't accustomed to pulling permits. And if we're trying to get people back in the mode of pulling permits, they are not expensive unless your foul and looming like enormous amounts of programming. And apart from them, they can be expensive. But they're really affordable. And it basically lets us fly the game with instruments, right. So right now we're flying, blind, sometimes we get surprised day in and day out. And that's tough for us in managing personnel and like, like people, we have very few numbers of peoples, we have very few ceremonies. And the best way that we can make sure to coordinate all of our efforts is just knowing what's going on. And so please, as you work with Parks organizations, or your park organization yourself, please work with us to get permanent goals because then you know what's going on? We can also tell the Tigers they there's people playing baseball over here, maybe you should resurface that or making making make make some diamonds or something. Alright, that's by the numbers, the biggest thing that we're looking to do is not recover cost, right. We're looking to know what's going on parts? Yes, good question.
Is there a way for park organization? Continuous recreation? Weekly forecast best programming for recreational use has events ongoing
Is there a way to make to pull a permit for weekly?
Their teams challenge? Is there a way to lump them together? For a couple of seasons from June until October?
We've got
that? Yes. Hundred percent, yes. And Rob is not here right now. But if you're filling out the Adopt Park stewards application for this coming year, there's a section where it's like, Hey, tell us your schedule for the coming year. And we do a couple of things. When we receive that schedule. We say, Okay, here's all the different things that are going on at Palmer Park this year, right. And we know all these different activities, what different dates they're happening, and we can block out the calendar for those particular park assets for that entire like season, right. And we want to do that both for legacy leagues, like PAL who, like might use a particular like field or sports court, year in year out, like we want your reservations in before we open it up to the general public, right? Because we want to know what's available. And we want to do our best job of making sure that adopt a Park stewards have their foot in the door when it comes to utilizing the space? Is there a way that
we will rely on accurate
understanding. And this is this is one of the things that I'll get to in just a little bit later on talking about some of the ways that we as Park, people, Park lovers can work together a little bit better, we get a lot of demands from general members of the public, that they want to be able to reserve their family reunion in January. But I can't in good conscience tell them yes, because I don't have the schedules for all the park organizations yet. So we've got to figure out a cadence for scheduling that we can all kind of agree to stick to. So that when you know, let's say, February rolls around, we can unleash the public on our places. Because at the end of the day, like if I if I didn't know when the palmer, Parker art fair was happening, and I scheduled the family reunion at the shelter for that weekend, and then like who's gonna get the boot, it's the family, right? So we and then they're gonna have bad taste in the mouth for the city and park and it's just not a good thing. So I'll get into that just a little bit. But I want to kind of breeze through what I breezed through last year just for everybody's awareness. All right, Parks permits and reservations. I'm just gonna go over kind of three distinct levels. Oh, my goodness, that is really small, I think had a bigger projector last year. So I'm gonna go over three different levels of events that don't require a permit. You can enjoy your city parks, and all sorts of ways without having to tell me about it. Events that require a park permit and then events that require like a special events management team review. These are three different categories and we deal with them in three different ways. So with each level of your park permit, it gets more complicated and sometimes you have to pay some more fees, right. Some part permits, we in parks and recreation can can process those in house. They don't have to involve all these other city departments. We talked about the big ones. We don't control sometimes, right. We're not the fire department. We're not the police department. We're not building safety. Right. So I'll go over some of these different levels just so everybody has a basic knowledge of how permits work. Okay. No permit required. That's the easiest one, okay. Less than 45 people, no structures no inflatables no alcohol, no amplified music, no fun whatsoever. You don't need a permit. I mean, you can have fun with 35 people, you know, occupying. So see they're under a shelter. Right. Now, technically, according to policy in the city of Detroit. If you're under a shelter during the weekend, we are we are allowed in a sense to enforce that you need a permit for that shelter. Just because on the weekend, we get lots of conflicts over shelters. And the best way that we can make sure that there's not a conflict is make sure that everybody knows that a permit is required for shelter use over the weekend. So these fine people that are enjoying the shelter, it's probably a weekday. It's a Thursday afternoon during the summer, somebody's birthday party, the shelters open. It's only you know, 10 people go have fun, right? If someone shows up with a permit, you got to get out on the likelihood someone's going to come Thursday with a permit for a shelter is pretty unlikely. Yes.
What about the shelters close to splash pads?
No, it cannot. They're not supposed to be like so amenities that are close to splash pads or, or playgrounds? Typically, we don't allow them for reservation because they're more communities. And so I can get into more of that in a bit. But yeah, that's a good question. Okay, no Park permit required routine enjoyment of the park. Obviously, it's not something that we want to limit at all. So permits required on weekends, Saturday and Sunday and holidays. Guaranteed exclusive use always requires a permit. If you want this ball field to be yours, pull the permit. Otherwise, if someone's there, when you get there, you don't have permanent right, and you can't tell them to get off. Right. Okay. And we do have a park security team that knows the rules and they can I can come down and help figure out any sort of issue. Okay. Okay, Park permit required over 45 people 10 by 10, or larger structure, inflatable present, vending, alcohol amplified music exclusive use of shelters deals. Okay. Now, this little bit right here on a 10 by 10, or larger structure, and put an asterisk beside that, because that's something that we're thinking about a lot of people don't buy those little 10 by 10 pop ups at Walmart, right. And we did have a fee, we do, let's just say that we didn't have to be on the books that allows us to charge 30 bucks for someone to pop up on those little tents, we're trying to think about the cost benefit analysis of doing it, because it's really hard to enforce. There's a lot of them out there. And at the end, what we're really concerned about is tents going airborne. And like taking out people, and especially in tents that were 10 by 10 that are used in a more public way, rather than just for your your family or small thing. And so really, we're thinking about offloading some of that responsibility for inspecting tents to the fire department. We're not going to assess a fee. Hopefully it will get approved by city council, we're not going to assess a fee for the fire department, just so you know, if you need to have a big tent that you're using for the public the fires department's going to requite an inspection, and I think it is it is definitely over $100 to inspect that because I have to bring someone out there. It is over $100 I don't have it in front of me right now. But I actually think it's closer to two. Yes,
but what a lot of us being nonprofit organizations, and that takes away from the activities that we're trying to put together for families.
I was questioning the assessment fee.
I know we were one of the firehouse
and one of our disposal children and charges 200 and something dollars per hour. That's crazy. Why is that?
So then me that the recreation division have a lot of power to manage our things. Like there's a lot of adopt a park stewards in the room. Right? And depending on what kind of event that you're holding, if it's a community benefit, it's not ticketed, you know, I'm gonna A, it's really like a community benefit. Like we can take that event in stride when you do your adopt a park stewards application, and we can say looks like this is going to break really excited, we're gonna wait for things, but I can't wait the fire department's fees, or I can't wave the building safety environmental engineering departments fees, I can only I only have control over my budget. So I would say, so I was gonna say
I'm sorry. I also can help with events, as far as the fire department and other departments that we work with. So as John was saying, they do have their own things that they their own fees that they set it this May, we have to look at your budget as well, their time, and the things that they have to do for demand off restrictions. So we have to compensate for some of the things that they have to do as well. So it's not in our jurisdiction to do that, because he has recreation is we are under that same code that everybody else is, you know, we want to use them we have to pay them. So is is not just citizen wide its the whole city wide including us.
Yeah, we have to pay shop rates for other city departments to help us out too. And every fee, just so everybody's aware, every fee that's established within the city of Detroit is supposed to be City Council approved. Right? And so like, you're gonna ask the question, like, Hey, you're charging this, like, is that an approved rate? You can ask to see. And so I'm gonna breeze on just a little bit quickly, I'm gonna take some questions for just a little bit. I'll try to blast through this because I know there's a lot of questions. If any of these factors apply to your event need a permit. Okay, you're blasting music. And there's only two of you. Right? Do you have to pull a permit technically, right, like you're causing a nuisance like he might be in violation of the noise ordinance, like you need a permit. fees vary depending on amenities use and activities held. Permitted activities initiate greater act like greater attention for General Services Department, once again, like we don't want to be flying blind, someone pulls a permit, we issue like a weekly park activation list, where it says, Hey, there's permitted activity going on over here, grounds, you know, Edu, like, whichever department might be, you know, need to have eyes on the space. There's something upcoming, you know, make sure to have eyes. Okay. It's the last one, I'll go over Special Events Management Team. This is controlled through the mayor's office. It's currently going undergoing some policy revisions. But this, this document says over 250, that's their current policy, they're thinking about bumping that up to 300. But if there's over 250 people for now, until this is approved, you're going to need to go through special events management team review, more than likely, there's some instances where if it's like a humongous family reunion, and they're not like bringing the circus tent, they'll let us handle it. But for a lot of big events, they want to have eyes on canopies every 10 by 10 got a really large structure, fire departments going to need to see it. Food trucks, catering, vending, alcohol, amplified music, those sorts of things require permits that we at parks department can't issue. One of the big ones has been Do you have a community event and someone's selling something? Technically, they need to have a business license in the city. And there's a particular kind of business license that they can get, just to like vend that day, an itinerant business license, and they would need to have that on hand or I might not necessarily shut you down. But BSEED, like the building safety and environmental engineering department division is all business licenses within the city will come and say, Hey, where's your selling permit? We erected realize that this is a real big barrier for some of our parks organizations. And so one of the things we've been trying to do is build a list of approved vendors. So if you've got a vendor that you work a food truck that you'd like someone who sells pendant necklaces, or you know, it wasn't like a food truck and pendant necklaces, those are all ideas that if you've got someone you like working with that, make sure that they're on that grouping that annual and instead of having to pay $115 for your itinerant business licenses, anytime you sell content keychains necklaces. You can pay it once a year. And you can be involved in as many Park events as you want. Right. And the park event organizer is the person that says, hey, this is my park event. And these are my items. I chose them. Right? That way you as an event organizers don't have to worry about, you know, someone just coming in and selling repairs, that's not coordinated. Okay? Do you do special events management team applications, once again, if any of these apply, this could be the route that you have to go. They require a currently a minimum of 60 days. Okay, this involves a meeting of the minds. So we'll have representatives from GSD, the fire department and police department etcetera, there to look over your application and say, What permits do you need to pull park permit, you need to have a fire permit, you need to have a street blocked off or whatever. So 60 days minimum, those are reviewed, and those are eventually voted on by city council. So city council, like also, if you're an adopter Park steward, and you know, hey, somebody's applied for an event at my park. And I think it's gonna be a tragedy, it's gonna be a horrible, horrible thing. You can advocate it at city council not approve that event. And if you don't want it. Now, it's so politics can come into play in this as SEMT consists of multiple departments, including us DPD, ons and cetera. This is in development right now, we're a lot further along than we were last year, but the landscape design unit within the General Services Department is going to be approving a lot of site plans going forward. So if people were like, hey, I want to do this particular event, I did not have time to put this in the presentation. But we asked people for a site drawing, right. And I'm like, what they're going to do in their park, and what the footprint is going to be and alot of times we were receiving, like really, like, very cute drawings of what was gonna happen. Like in profile, like, here's where the bouncy houses and here's the grill, and it was, it was great, but we're going a little bit more streamlined, going forward. And the landscape design unit will approve things to make sure that nobody rams a stake through an irrigation, like line before, you know, has a campfire on top of one of our gardens we just installed. Okay, SEMT if people are really interested in it was not a huge contingent of folks. But I can take that into question that I got a lot of little details about the SEMT that we could go into. sign off on site plan did that. security plans for big events or big events that are happening in your park, make sure that they have a security plan, and the security plan is not. If something happens, I'll call the police. And it's not a Security claim. A security plan is an act of like proactive idea about how to manage people that are coming to your event, from a security standpoint, bseed is responsible for making sure that vendors are properly license that is $115 fee. And we've worked away this past year, Jackson farms at the special events group has worked away that we can all feel like we can have vendors on what they have once a year instead of every time we show up. These are our scheduled fees. And like by and large that I mentioned the was it $83,000 that we made on Park permitting. by and large most of it is this right here $75. One day shelter. That's right. That's that's the bulk. That's the largest single like contributor to that 83,000 bucks. We do have some special events, like high school reunions, or sometimes music festivals that are happening in certain spaces and when we do get some funds from those. But once again, not a cost recovery mission. We just want to know what's happening. I did not put on here the schedule of fees for our sports fields. They've all been approved by City Council. We are expecting an update to these fees in March 2024. Nothing on this list will change. There might be a minor change on non resident fees for some of our sports bookings. Right now we're doing sports field bookings by the hour. It's $3 an hour for a field, football field or soccer field. If you're a resident, it's $5. If you're a non resident and our courts if you want to reserve courts, there are very few reservations for courts since there's so many. It's I believe, six and $9 an hour and that is phenomenally cheap compared to our neighbors. Like orders of magnitude cheaper. Okay, okay. Ongoing work in 2024 in the I'll turn it over to some questions. Scheduling cadence, right? We mentioned earlier about like just having, like how when do Park organizations typically have their schedules or athletic organizations, when you know, you're going to be on particular fields, we have a public duty to open up public assets or reservation to the general public. And there's a lot of push to make that happen. Like, first of the year, the first month of the year, not waiting until March or April. But that requires parks organizations to get together and say, Hey, what's our schedule going to be for the coming year? What are we going to do? When do we need to be to stake a public claim, hey, this is our partner we're doing that. And that route for doing that is coordinating with the adopt a park stewards application. And turn in your adopt a park stewards application and attach as many scheduling documents to that thing as you'd like. Right, and we will reach out one on one last year the recommends 40 Adopt a park stewards, we're gonna have more this year i'm sure. But in the offseason, which we basically consider like Halloween, to, Easter is a little bit of an off season for us. That's when we can take your schedules, run it into our system, assess Sundays, or waive fees depending on what type of programs you're doing. By and large, if you're in an adopt a park steward, and you're doing a public event that's open to the public on the part that you steward. More than likely, we're going to waive the fee from the Parks and Rec, okay. It's just part of the way that we open the door for you say, Hey, you got first dibs. Oh, and by the way, we're not going to charge you, right. And if we do charge you, it's going to be something along the lines of you're charging tuition fees, or you're charging the black vendor tabling fees, we'll take a look at some of the finances involved. As long as you're turning the money that you might accrue into benefiting that park, we're going to be happy. That's what we want to try. But once again, we have a we have a public responsibility to make sure that that is happening.
Okay, all right, park permitting policy. We have drafted and gotten them approved through our internal leadership for having a park permitting policy like written in not stone, clay tablets, like not fully like it's etched in stone. But it's something that we can use as a working document to move forward. The there's a lot of stipulations within that policy about what capacity means for certain parts. Also, for certain parts, what a an approved uses, and tell you how many parts we get requested, hey, we want to have an auto show on your park is basically just people like parking their vehicles on our soccer fields, you can request for that all the time. And it's just like, there's maybe two parks that we can consider if you have any like, like things that are hard surface. And so we really do have to be proactive in our approvals of certain types of activities to happen on certain types of parks, largely, you know, some of the capacity limits. For most of our parks, it's a function of their parking lot. Okay, most of our parks, especially riverfront parks, regional parks, standard parking lot, people drive to them unless it's a very community oriented event. A lot of times people are driving to this space. And so when they're driving to the space, how many cars can you fit before we start? Also, some of you may be happy to hear, we're getting a new park registration software. It's been a long time coming. We've been working with a software called Community task for the past four years. It is not it is not sized appropriately or functionally to deal with the scale of the issues. If we're we're this company's largest client currently, and in July, we will no longer be this company's. We're in the final stages of getting some signatures and council approval for software from Vermont systems called rec track, which is one of the largest recreation management software's in the country. The Los Angeles uses rec track. And so that'll help us out a lot of both of us, all of us. And in knowing what's going on in parks. You as a adopt a Park stewards would be able to go into the reservation system and now you won't be able to tell everything that's going on in the park. But you'll be able to tell what everything that is going on in a park that is permitted . And if you can help us encourage people pull a permanent and enforce people with something like hey, you got to have a permit for this What happened, you're here next weekend. That'll help us. It'll help you. And we'll have a better way to do all this That's my speech. And I hope I didn't run out of time. Here's some important resources. I'll just open that up. So you can write any of those down, this is a security hotline
hotline
for DPR D security. I don't know if this has actually happened. Oh, when I misspell dprp? Woof. DRP. Those were DPR. The over the past year, our security team has been working to get in sense deputize, and like in my case, misdimeaner offenses. What happens now if somebody has pulled their vehicle onto a park space, is that our security team gets there and they say, Hey, you're not allowed to park in the grass. Now let me call a police officer in here to write you a misdemeanor ticket. And by the time police officer goes there, like things situations have changed, or we can't get the police officers to respond to the to the park because they've got something bigger. And so that's, then they will hopefully have misdemeanor enforcement power, they'll be able to issue tickets for people that aren't in line to city code. And that's that's a great way for us. I think John Armstrong, my email, Grace rumbley, is in charge of all of the events that happened in the parks, as far as permits go. And Gary Miller is in charge of sportsfield permitting, and that contact info is current. And yeah, as you can see, pretty small team, I'm in charge of working for permits. But permits is one of those things, especially in certain times of the year to say July that are just bonkers, crazy. And so the more we can coordinate before that time rolls around, the better off really, any questions, I'm sure that I'll just go this way. Okay, so one. What's the square footage, square footage what's considered a park square footage, residential lot, commercial lot,
some acre of land. So
so we had like, in terms of our city parks, the parks that the city owns, the City manages, like, we have 300, some odd parks, and they range in size from about the size of this room to over 1000 acres. Typically, the knows the breakdown a little bit better than I do. But any park that's under an acre, we considered like a neighborhood park, neighborhood park. And any park that is like probably like that two to maybe 10 range might be like, community park, or I think that's never gonna come up before. It's
like a pocket,
pocket park community park, regional parks, that can be enormous, right, like our regional parks, we have like rouge parks thats over 1000 acres. And so that's from from our standpoint, we do deal with those somewhat differently, but in terms of like, how they're funded, how they're maintained, and sometimes how their permited, if your park doesn't have a particular like shelter, if it doesn't have like, it doesn't have a shelter, if it doesn't have a ball field, if it doesn't have what we would consider like a reservable asset. We're not going to have as many, like permitting eyes obviously on that park unless someone reaches out to us and says, Hey, there's a you know, a half acre green space in this particular park. And we would like to use that to do this such and such. We will like to permit that park. And we'll just establish a green space permit. Sorry, that's for details.
So no, we got a lot of questions. We got to get the next I'm sorry. Two more questions.
Okay. So,
john will be here all day
I will ask the city.
We do put out a list of all of the adopt a park steward events
Rob, I'm sorry. So do we put out our or do we? Or are we I will say gonna put out a list of all of the adopted perks to events, so that all the city kind of knows what's going on, currently, but
that's the goal for this coming year. stay around for the session that startd in 10 minutes and I'll tell you more about it.
I wanted to connect.
Okay, my question is, I think you answered it and what's coming that there will be access for say community to find out all the different permits easily, easily find out what's coming In the park. And I think that's something I think it's been lacking for years. So yes, really important for the community as well as, yeah.
And then one thing that we have done in the past year for certain like, like really hoppin parks from a permitting standpoint is we've added, like the coordinator for that adopt a park stewards group to our weekly Park activation email. But that doesn't give you all the details. It just basically says, what's being reserved? How many people are being expected, you know, and when and but you only get a week's notice for certain things like that. And so I would love it in our new system some, I think we'll be able to have like notification chains. Like if hey, if a park if someone reserves the park, and they're saying that there's this many people who are on the folks that need to be informed. There's a lot of internal city folks security grounds or whatever. But also, we might be able to add community members that say, hey, hey, just simply someone reserved your park for a 10,000 person music concert ended up probably. We probably wouldn't have heard that. But yes, I'll take one last question back over from
being at the summit, am I automatically registered as a steward? And is my park automatcally involved in adopt a park?
you will, you will find out in 10 minutes or less? So but the answer is no. Like there is an application process and
the creative department was in
the register, that was one pre register, we're just gonna have to go through the application process. Now application opens up today.
Are you going to now to get live?
stuff? Okay. Questions.
And permits are wild and crazy. There's always like some weird ones out there, like particular events that want to happen. And but if you ever have some questions, feel free to contact me, or grace or Gary and we can try and steer you in the right direction. If you're doing a big thing, want to do something really, really splashy, just make sure earliest is better, like early early early so that we can get all of your ducks in a row. Make sure you all have fun and safe.
I have a quick question for you. Yes. When should the procedure be when you do have your full permit and you go to that particular location park or recreation center and they act directly they'll have no idea what you're talking about
Well, if it's a recreation center call me I technically it's an operation thing, call Ricardo, I will contact him. But you can call me and I can reach in touch with Ricardo. if it is a park issue. You show up to a shelter This happens every summer, every park every shelter. It shows that there's someone already in your space and so called DPRD security hotline and we can also do the weekend permit hotline
hours of operation
DPRDs security hotline is 24 hours and
weekend permiting hotline what is their hours of operations
I don't know at what point they forward that phone to the security operators to the security tools get 24 hours a day how many operate like shifts scheduled for like grace adn gary. They operate the Batphone right and then pass it around on the weekend and it's like basically park active hours from like 10 to eight thank you thank you everybody
yeah
okay
down the director last time,
all the time Dr. Vishal Redick is currently the Chief Operating Officer for the City so don't do it anymore
