South Cook News

City of Palos Heights Recreation Committee met Jan. 14

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

CALL TO ORDER

Chairman Key called the regular meeting of the Recreation Committee to order at 7:05 p.m. at the Palos Heights City Hall, 7607 W. College Drive. In attendance were Chairman Key, Alderman Basso and Alderman Begley. Also present were Director of Parks and Recreation Matt Fairbanks, Lake Katherine Director Gareth Blakesley and recording secretary Morgan Pukula.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Chairman Key motioned to approve the minutes of the December 10, 2024 meeting, seconded by Alderman Basso. On a voice vote, the motion passed unanimously.

PUBLIC COMMENT

None.

LAKE KATHERINE REPORT

Lake Katherine Director Gareth Blakesley reported:

• Our Holiday Hayride was held at capacity with participants visiting the lights around the city and decorating tree cookies for the holidays.

• Staff attended the chamber holiday party.

• We hosted a work day with Palos Islamic Center behind the waterfall area, where we showed volunteers the area they will be managing in the future.

• Our Christmas tree drop off at Lake Katherine is being held until the end of January.

• A volunteer work group cleared brush along the walk way.

• Our end of year and giving Tuesday brought in $34,850.00 which was a 400% increase from the previous year. We will be using portions of the proceeds for the new shade structure in the Children’s Forest.

• We will be posting the Nicor equity grant for the 2nd year, for schools to apply for soon.

• Education classes and programs:

○ Staff met with our partner, Do Good Movement, for ‘School’s Day Out’ programs.

○ We met with Tina from the Palos Heights Public Library for ‘Nature To Go’ bags and also to plan a Scout’s Resource Day event.

○ We partnered with Dr. Dieter from Trinity Christian College to have Trinity Education major students return for volunteer hours.

○ Staff attended a South Suburban Educator Roundtable to discuss scout programs.

○ Opened summer camp counselor positions and are currently in the interview process. We also posted a full-time educator position.

○ Our Nature Tots program hosted 2 winter sessions of ‘Frosty Fun’. Little Explorers had 2 sessions of ‘Out of This World’ which was centered around the night sky. Junior Explorers had 2 sessions on winter animals: their hibernation cycles and adaptations and 2 sessions of snowshoeing.

PARKS AND RECREATION REPORT

Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation Joe Smith gave the recreation report:

• Pool Phase 1 Update: Simpson Construction, Williams Architects and staff met on site on December 18th. During the meeting, it was noted that all masonry work is complete, the light fixtures have been mounted, the rough piping was completed and ductwork is 90% complete. During the rest of December, the completion of the electric and plumbing work took place and preparation for the painter was completed. The painter started at the beginning of January and is already complete. Framing for the ticket office is complete as well as installation of the front and back overhead doors and second water slide. Lighting control programming was scheduled for this week and the fire alarm commissioning was scheduled for this Thursday. An on-site meeting is taking place tomorrow, and everything is on schedule.

• Recreation Update: Our preschool little learners participated in the tree decorating contest for the city and won first place for the holiday themed tree. The holiday party we hosted on December 6th, parents and guardians were encouraged to come and do a craft with their children. Also during the holiday season, we had a Santa mailbox outside the Recreation Center from December 1st-20th, where kids could write letters to Santa. Santa received 75 letters and wrote back to all the kids.

The classes for our youth athletics ended December 16th. During this session, we had 71 participants enrolled in junior tee ball, junior soccer, lacrosse, flag football, basketball skills, tennis, multi sports for tots and basketball for tots.

Our youth basketball league’s registration has been open and we currently have 521 participants enrolled. The season starts with practices on January 20th and games February 1st. The season will end on March 22nd. We will have a co-ed kindergarten league and divisions for 1st and 2nd grade, 3rd and 4th grade and 5th and 6th grade boys and girls.

We hosted a ‘Noon Year’s Eve’ event on December 31st, with 227 kids in attendance. The kids made noise makers, danced and played in the photo booth. Volunteers blew up around 3,000 balloons for a balloon drop at noon. Channel 7 covered the story as well, and we ended up on the nightly news.

Staff has been working on a community survey. It is a 13 question survey and went live the beginning of January. It is posted on our social medias, website, it was sent in an email to Recreation Center participants and is posted in the Recreation Center with a QR code to scan. We worked with the RAB to review the questions and to date, we have 23 replies.

We are hoping for at least 250 for the survey to be viable.

NEW BUSINESS

a) Chairman Key motioned to approve payment #5 to Simpson Construction in the amount of $191,861.10 for work completed for the Pool Improvement Project seconded by Alderman Begley. On a voice vote, the motion passed unanimously.

b) Chairman Key motioned to approve payment to Dotty and Sons Concrete LLC in the amount of $8,195.00 for dry play equipment as part of the pool improvement project, seconded by Alderman Begley. On a voice vote, the motion passed unanimously.

c) Chairman Key motioned to approve payment to Dell Software in the amount of $15,679.77 for a new PowerEdge R760xs rack server for the Recreation Department, seconded by Alderman Begley. On a voice vote, the motion passed unanimously.

d) Chairman Key motioned to approve payment to Vermont Systems in the amount of $8,760.00 for VSI Cloud hosting services, seconded by Alderman Begley. On a voice vote, the motion passed unanimously.

e) Chairman Key motioned to adopt an ordinance declaring the following vehicle as surplus and to sell the 2002 Ford E-SERIES silver van VIN: IFBSS3IL92HA99617, seconded by Alderman Begley. On a voice vote the motion passed unanimously.

OLD BUSINESS

SD 128 proposal for a fence at Passarelli Park.

Matt Fairbanks stated the superintendent is proposing a split in cost for a split rail fence around the playground for children who are a flight risk at recess. Conversation included what the school’s responsibilities were versus the city’s responsibilities. It was mentioned that Passarelli Park is on the list to be updated next. Issues that arose were: justifying spending the money for a fence that would ultimately not protect students who wanted to escape from escaping, as well as the fence being torn down in the next couple years due to the comprehensive plan for updating Passarelli Park that the Recreation committee has in place, and starting a precedent for all parks  in the city to be fenced.

The committee overall wishes to obtain a quote for the cost of the split rail fence before a decision is made.

ADJOURNMENT

There being no further business, Chairman Key moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Alderman Basso. All in favor.

Meeting adjourned at 7:41 p.m.

https://palosheights.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_02112025-1130