INC Parks and Rec Committee Notes
November 19, 2019. 6:00p.m.- 7:45 p.m.
Brookdale Senior Living Residence

Present: Cindy Johnstone, Maggie Price, Marlene Johnson, Ronnie Crawford Sandy Robnett, Maria Flora, Tom Morris, Katie Fisher, Steve Fisher, Jane Potts and Guest speaker Frank Rowe

Guest speaker, Frank Rowe was invited to share about the newly formed Denver Park Trust. The trust and foundation was formulated and developed beginning in 2017 by Councilwoman Kendra Black to address the financial shortages to address park projects and purchase of land for parks. She and Frank met with DPR about a partnership to raise money for parks. They also met with the Park People to see if there could be a way to work together as The Park People also raise money for park projects. The missions were too different to work together after lengthy discussions.

July 1st 2019 was the beginning of fund raising with the mission to buy land for parks, and support park projects. The criteria being used to determine where the money is spent is based on park access, a 10 minute walk to a park and park equity, where there are less parks or the need for more traditional parks. An example is District 3 where there are gulches identified at parks.

Denver Park Trust is a foundation and has support for financial records from the Denver Foundation. The plan is to raise money from
1. Philanthropic organizations such as Gates Foundation, Colorado Trust and Colorado Health Foundations.
2. Corporations who give to non profit 501 c3 foundations and
3. Raising money from individuals perhaps similar to CPR method.

The Founding Board includes Kendra Black who is board chair, Frank Rowe, Darrell Watson Secretary, Jeff Shoemaker Treasurer, Bruce Hoyt, Jamie Aguilar, Kristi Kelly, Albus Brooks, Stacie Gilmore and Khadija Haynes . Later there may be a Board of Trustees who can raise money.

Questions from the committee: Concern about naming rights from corporations and discussion of concerns and believing it opens the door to our parks being advertisements for corporations. The general feeling of the committee is there be no naming with donations from corporations. We believe a donation should come without strings attached.

This seems to a duplication of what the Parks dept. is suppose to be doing on its own and that decisions of where and which projects should be funded is a City decision. Frank explained that the Trust works closely with Denver Parks and Rec.

Concerns expressed about including general community members who may not have political connections or corporation connections but would bring a different perspective and more connections to the community.

Letter to City Council
A letter was distributed to the committee to ask Council to change an ordinance whereby open space and park space use removed from the responsibility of the Executive Director of Park. A resolution was passed by INC delegates in 2017 asking Council to take back the responsibility and with a new Council the committee felt that the topic should be brought forth again. The letter was approved by the committee with some edits. The letter will be distributed to Council, council aides, Mayor Hancock, and others. The letter will have an attachment of the resolution and a letter from Cathy Donahue written in 2009 when City Council was considering the change.
The letter will go out the first of the year.

Change the Name of the Committee

The discussion to change the name of the INC Parks and Recreation Committee to INC Parks and Open Space brought up several comments that the perception by people can be that the committee is part of Denver Parks and Rec and the name has a close association to Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Focus on recreation as it relates to scheduling and implementing programs and classes has not come up to our committee whereas we have had park use and non scheduled recreational use in parks in some of our discussions. Our focus has been on parks and open space and our platform addresses parks and open space. After discussion it was agreed by the committee to change the name to INC Parks and Open Space. This will be taken to the executive board and if approved will require a charter change and a vote of the delegates.

Meeting Every Other Month

Cindy and Maggie brought up the concept to meet every other month as the people who attend the Parks committee meetings also have many other meetings to attend. The pros and cons of meeting every other month were discussed and there was an understanding if there is an item that needs to be addressed by the committee sooner than the schedule an additional monthly meeting can be called. The committee will meet in January and then every other month going forward.