Summary of March 18 board of directors meeting
March 19, 2025
The BPRD board of directors met on March 18 and approved an updated user fees and charges policy. A video recording of the meeting is available.
The board also received results from a recent recreation needs survey, and staff shared information about a new tool providing data about use in parks and trails.
User fees and charges policy
The BPRD Fees and Charges Policy was approved by the board on February 19, 2019. Staff thoroughly reviewed the policy and made minor edits to align with current practices and other related policies. Staff also took the opportunity to revise the section addressing needs-based assistance to respond to input received at the annual board workshop on January 31, 2025.
The needs-based assistance section was rewritten to be less prescriptive and procedural and more policy driven. The revised language maintains the same philosophy and continues the practice of the board annually approving a Needs-Based Assistance Plan. This allows the district to respond to changes in need and resources in the annual plan without needing to revise the board policy. The policy also provides that scholarship assistance not exceed 6% of budgeted revenue from regular fees and charges, and sets a target of a minimum 25% of scholarship assistance funding coming from non-tax sources.
Recreation survey results
The district recently conducted a survey to help identify the current and future needs and priorities for recreation programming in the community. The survey will inform a new 5-year Recreation Programming Plan that is currently underway. The last community recreation survey was conducted in 2019 and helped shape the 2020-25 Recreation Programming Plan.
RRC Associates, a public research and analysis firm specializing in parks and recreation, conducted the survey and shared the results, which included:
- Nearly 80% of Invite respondents have visited at least one BPRD recreation center in the past year, with over half having visited Juniper Swim & Fitness Center (57%) and/or Larkspur Community Center (53%). Two-thirds of Invite respondents also indicate that they have signed up for some type of BPRD activity in the past year.
- There are also high levels of satisfaction with BPRD facilities and programs with an average of 4.4 for the Invite sample and 4.3 for the Open link on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very satisfied.”
- Survey respondents agree that the affordability/good value of BPRD programs and facilities and quality of facilities/equipment are the top reasons for participation in BPRD offerings.
- The highest demand is for fitness center/weight room access (72%), followed by swimming activities (71%) and group exercise/fitness classes (63%). These activities also ranked highly in community priorities.
- There is strong support for access to recreation programs for underserved communities. Providing scholarships and fee waivers received the highest support, averaging 4.0 out of 5.0 in both samples.
More than 700 people responded to the statistically valid survey, well above the number required to meet the desired margin of error. The open link survey was communicated through an e-mail sent to all households in the district registration system as well as promoted on the district website and in social media posts. The district received over 1,500 open link survey responses.
Locations data tool
BPRD contracted with a locations analytics company, Placer, to learn how people are using district parks and other key recreational areas around the community. The program uses data from hundreds of cell phones applications that people have opted to allow location services to be used. Placer uses anonymized location data to track foot traffic patterns without directly identifying individuals.
During the board work session, staff shared information about the Placer data platform, the types of data that the district has access to, how they have used the data thus far, and how they plan to use it in the future.
The program enables staff to query topics such as the number of visits to any given park in a chosen period, average length of visits, origin/destination of park users, and park user demographics. This information can be used for district planning purposes, grant applications, recreational programming and various other applications.
The next board meeting is April 1.
