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Parks, Trails & Recreation Committee – February 17, 2026 Page 3 breaks it down into categories, by all agencies (city parks departments) and also by agencies that have populations of communities that have less than 20,000. They made key takeaways and notes for those benchmarks. They also look at the outdoor facility service standards to determine if a community has what they need. There is a gap analysis for parks. They determined that all residents have an Arden Hills park within a 10-15 minute walk. That is outstanding park access for the community. They summarized the engagement touchpoints that they heard at each of the public engagement events. They confirmed that trails are important. A lot of residents want to see a nature playground and water features. Ms. Springer said the action plan outlines the assets in each park, what condition they are in, a replacement timeline and potential replacement cost. These costs are estimated and may not include engineering or a wide range of finishes. That can affect the final cost. Ms. Springer said the trails and connectivity improvements are in one table that highlights specific projects and feedback from the community. Ms. Springer said they refined all of the improvements with Staff, trying to spread out the recommend improvement dollars. She said there is a list of ongoing initiatives that they heard from the community that aren’t related specifically to park upkeep and maintenance. Some examples are a splash pad and single track mountain bike trails. Those initiatives are not included with hard recommendations. They may be included in future park developments, potentially with park dedication funds. It puts these initiatives on the radar for Staff to look for opportunities to consider in the near future. Ms. Springer said it wraps up with funding strategies, including grants and funding mechanisms. Council Liaison Rousseau asked how PTRC members can affect the final document, if they identify a gap or opportunity at a specific park. Parks and Recreation Manager Skalicky said the next step, after approving the Park System Plan, will be to prioritize specific parks to have their own mini park plan to make decisions on the enhancements or features that would work well there. They will start with Royal Hills Park. It will include the larger vision of what this individual park will be, based on community needs. Ms. Springer said there is a section that outlines the parks that they think should be addressed first. This plan is a snapshot in time, right now but is designed to be a living document that is updated, as needed. Chair Julius said it sounds like the current plan is a comment on existing assets. How do the conversations had about what the community wants, show up in this document? We don’t want to be starting the conversation all over. Ms. Springer said the priority was to maintain what exists and then use the planning process for individual parks to decide what should go where. Chair Julius asked if the mapping of proximity to parks included any demographic information. Ms. Springer said that was not part of this process. You can get census level data, that just wasn’t part of this scope.