Travis County Commissioners Court
July 1, 2008
Item 8
Number 8 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding proposed new park hours and a new park rule prohibiting tobacco products at youth events.
>> good morning, judge. Charles with tnr parks and with me today is robert, who is newly hired division manager for parks. He is the roy turley replacement. On my leaf is kurt, the district manager for the east parks. Back in may, we brought before the court in a work session several park items, and one of them involved an updated park hours and also a proposal for prohibiting tobacco products at youth athletic events so what today's item is to get the court's authorization to implement these two new rules. And I will pass it over to kurt and let kurt kind of quickly outline to you our recommendations.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> I will give you a quick overview. We brought our hours up for change because of some things that happened with daylight savings time, and it kind of put us into a position where we were asking people to leave the parks before it was even dark, so our goal is to establish -- and we would a system where we changed our hours four times during the year which was somewhat confusing for staff and visitors, so in order to get consistent park hours throughout our system, we are proposing that we close the majority of our parks at civil twilight, which is basically dark. We propose also, along with this we're proposing we change our closure period for tom hughes park which is a small park we own out on Lake Travis, it is currently closed. I'm going to have to read this because it was very confusing, closed on weekdays in October, November and February and closed all together in December and January and this was based just upon visitation. We continue to have low visitation at this park in the off season and in the nonsummer season so we're proposing that we change that to where we close the park entirely from November to March 31. And then when we open it, we'll open it seven days a week. We found it was confusing being open on weekends, closed during the week. People would come out there and didn't realize it and if you've ever been there, it is a long drive to get down to the park to find out it is not open.
>> how do we close that park?
>> we now have signage on marshal fort road which is approximately -- well, it is before you head down a long, windy road and we put up a sign there to tell when the park is opened and closed but we have a gate. It is a gated park.
>> if you live near the park and it is closed, you still have access don't you. You can enter the park and do what you want to but county activity is not there because we deemed it closed, right?
>> you do not have vehicular access, but yes, judge, hypothetically, you could walk around the gate and get in. But that's with any of our parks.
>> I don't know that, in my lifetime, I don't know that I've ever seen a public park closed for months. There are times when the public entity does not maintain it, doesn't do a whole lot of stuff you would do if it were in season, can you see what I'm saying?
>> yeah. This park has been closed, we have been closing this park throughout the winter now. That is the way we manage it now, closed in the winter months.
>> December, January.
>> I guess I never knew that because I never, apparently serve living with it, nobody has complained about it.
>> right. That's because the way the park is, it is really just access to Lake Travis is all it is and when people can't swim they really have, the park just isn't used.
>> and there are other parks, the county has other parks in the vicinity that have a lot easier access for the public, so historically the way we've operated this park with court-adopted closure times was December, January, the park was completely closed, and then October or November February, we had it open just on weekends and we're basically trying to consolidate that time and keep the park closed during the winter months.
>> let's say the park is closed and I want to use it anyway. I drive down there and get out and do whatever I want to do in the park. That's allowed? It isn't. How do we enforce closure?
>> there is a large, probably eight-foot chain link fence that wraps the property now. There is a residential property that is on the other side 6 the park. The person who lives there has to drive to the fork gain access to their property. -- drive to the park to gain access to their property. When it is closed they have an access key code they punch in to get the gate to open and close. And I guess the biggest deter rent now would be where would you park your car. Because the park is gated off. Now if you walked down that road and walked around the gate, other than period I can patrols, you could very well walk around the gate and use the park without us knowing it.
>> when the park is open, what do people do there?
>> they access Lake Travis and swim.
>> they just Tuesday to get to Lake Travis.
>> yes.
>> there is no other pleas gates or any other infrastructure that the facility, it is just water access to Lake Travis.
>> other than that change, we're proposing we change the sports facilities hours, they are 8:00 a.m. To 8:00 p.m., we would like to adjust those to 7:00 a.m. To 10:00 p.m. And we would like to adjust the sport the field closures during the dormant season which is part of our turf grass policy and currently we close from December 15 to February 15 and we would like to move that to December 1 to February 15. And with our, the use of tobacco products at youth athletic events, this was a concern that was brought to us by a constituent whose son played little league baseball and in our investigations of other facilities, youth facilities in the area, they all had a similar rule and this, so we proposed this during youth events. And this will be primarily the responsibility of the youth organizers that have an event to enforce this rule, but we'll make, we'll put signage up to make people aware of it. And also, I want to add with our park hours, if the court approve it, we would like to make it effective October 1, 2008. That would give us time to get our signage together and make the appropriate changes.
>> we believe these changes are necessary for us to better accommodate the public?
>> yes, sir, I think the changes will better accommodate the current uses at the park.
>> to enforce all of these rules, who do we have these rule change, I know have you signage and stuff like that, but somewhere along the line, somebody has to enforce something. How will that happen?
>> well, just like now, we currently close of our parks now so we're really not making any change there as far as enforcement goes. But now, with the tabbies we have park rangers and park staff and I really think that this rule will not require so much enforcement as it will just public education.
>> so even though we're saying we're prohibiting smoking when these children events are going on and stuff like that, I know it is good to maybe have it on the book but it just appears that -- I'm just looking at the how to enforce.
>> I understand, Commissioner. And actually --
>> you know, the park rangers sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't.
>> mainly, that rule will work through the organizers of the events and let them know and most of them are on board and in agreement with this rule so that is something that can somewhat easily be initiated through youth athletic organizers. And they're used to it, because in our research, all other facilities in the Austin area don't allow tobacco products during youth events, so I don't think it is anything --
>> that is pretty much adhered to?
>> it's my understanding, yeah that it's not really a big problem, it's, I think it was more this constituent that saw it taking place at one of our facilities was kind of taken aback that it would even happen.
>> okay. My son is playing softball, I'm sitting in the parking lot in my car, smoking.
>> my interpretation of this rule --
>> am I aloud do that.
>> if you were sitting in the bleacher smoking, you will be in violation.
>> the recommendation.
>> second.
>> you will let us know a year from now what impact these changes had.
>> will do.
>> discussion? All in favor? It passes by a unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 1:51 PM