12-17-25 - PTRC Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Parks, Trails & Recreation Committee – December 17, 2025 Page 7 Plan. The PTRC is an advisory committee, not decision makers. So ultimately everything will need to be approved by Council. Committee Member Johnson said she appreciates Staff for creating these processes. She would love to understand how the PTRC, the City and Ramsey County can work together. They have a work plan that fits into the City plan and that trickles down to PTRC. She focuses on trails. She would love to better understand the County and City plans for trails and how it fits in with what the PTRC are doing. She just wants to understand how each separate entities’ plan gets communicated to each other. Council Liaison Rousseau said the Comprehensive Plan is completed every decade. That work will begin this year for the 2050 Plan. There will be a section that is focused on the parks. There is a sustainability section in there. She thought there may be a section for transportation and trails, as well. The plan is that Staff will be able to pull from this Master Park Plan and insert the information right into the Comp Plan. Committee Member Johnson said at the County level there may be grants. She would love to fit all of the desires together. If we know what Ramsey County will be doing in upcoming years, we can try to fit our items into that schedule. She doesn’t know details, but she knows there are grants available and she would love to see how Arden Hills fits in with all of that. Council Liaison Rousseau said we can ask the County if they have a list of available grants and we can look for what matches what we want to do. She said City Council starts budget conversations in the summer. The preliminary levy is set in September, with the final levy being in December. If there are items we want money budgeted for, we have to get that before Council early enough to include those items with those conversations. The discussion on trails will need to include bonding just because of the cost to build them. She asked Staff once the Park Master Plan is complete, how we make sure the PTRC Work Plan is included in those discussions or how will it be used to help, based on what she’s seen at other cities Parks and Recreation Manager Skalicky said in the other city she worked for, anything on the Work Plan needed to be approved by the City Council in advance. The Park Master Plan helps the Public Works Staff more than it helps the PTRC. The Park Master Plan is the guidebook for what will be done for the CIP. It will outline the inventory at each park. She described how her previous City used their Park Master Plan to identify priorities. Committee Member Hilding asked if it will be part of PTRC’s role to filter through the recommendations and help with prioritizing the projects. Parks and Recreation Manager Skalicky isn’t sure. Council Liaison Rousseau said these are questions we can look at as the PTRC goes over the charter. We have some say in who we want to be as a committee. Chair Deitz said in the past the City Council has sought PTRC recommendations for playground color or something like that. He sees the PTRC role as advisory to the City Council.