[Gary DeStefano]: Can I ask a question non-dog pack related?
[Theresa Dupont]: Go for it.
[Gary DeStefano]: So there are a lot of people that are asking about off-leash in MEDFED, and they're wondering if we are the official committee for that. No, we're not. But they would like to join these meetings. And I'm all for it. I mean, I think the more people we have in these meetings, the better.
[Theresa Dupont]: I agree.
[Gary DeStefano]: But how do we get a MEDFED off-leash subcommittee, me, something that's official. Is there a way to do that?
[Theresa Dupont]: I'm sure there is. Wren Paisecki, who's joining us on the call, she's been working with our office as well as a couple other offices on kind of putting together a very preliminary sort of community outreach discussion about off-leash hours. And Wren, if you want to jump in, just cut me off at any time. But I think that that's a good idea about putting together a subcommittee. because there is a lot of cross-pollination from Dog Park Committee to potentially the softly showers. And you make a very good point. A lot of people are talking about it. So maybe, maybe we can take that back to Alicia about, does this warrant having a subcommittee kind of take this on? Because it's a big thing. It's a sizable topic that we want to definitely give good attention to. Have you been having a lot of folks reach out to you specifically, Gary?
[Gary DeStefano]: Over the years, yes, definitely. And it seems like more and more people these days that I don't know, because I don't go to the off-leash anymore. I only go to the official dog park. But prior to the dog park being official, I was an off-leash person, the same as the rest of them. And like you say, it's a big topic, because there's laws involved in this, and people on both sides of the fence. There's no fences.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. I do know that, like I said, we're still putting together some preliminary outreach materials. I think something is going to get pushed out soon. Right, Ren, you can give me a thumbs up. Pushed out soon. You can jump in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that creating a subcommittee is a great idea, and I am working on creating a survey right now, but just as Teresa said, it's really in the preliminary stages. Still kind of circulating it around City Hall and whatnot. But yeah, I think it's definitely become a big, a big contentious issue, or not even issue, but discussion. So the more conversations we can have, the better. Absolutely.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, so I guess the thank you for that suggestion, Gary, we'll definitely take it back to the team. And I guess stay tuned. All right, I think folks will join us as they can. So I don't want to hold this up much longer. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. I put together a presentation just to kind of help with our dialogue here. So everybody should be seeing my adorable PowerPoint. Thanks, Ren. So for those who are joining us on cable access, we have put a QR code here. I'm not sure if actually it might be getting cut off right now, but that was kind of the idea is for folks who are watching online on TV, if they want to join, boom, try to have that information there. So thanks everybody for joining. All right, so for our agenda today, I know we have, it's a hot topic and I definitely might, we might push this one to later. only because I know Patrick Hogan definitely wanted to speak to this, but there is, it's a mast year, I believe is the term for our oak trees producing acorns in abundance and acorns and doggies do not mix. So we wanted to talk about the oak trees that are surrounding the dog park area. We also wanted to touch on volunteer efforts and how we can maybe have a little bit more engagement from our community. We have wanted to talk about the shed. The shed finally went in and we're very excited about that. But you know, is there an opportunity here to kind of spruce it up a little bit with kind of finishing some paint? Wanted to talk about our current funding situation and how much money we have left and some potential purchases to use up those funds. There's, I believe, there is a leaking irrigation head nearby that sometimes warrants shutting off the water over there. And Gary, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's my understanding. We wanted to touch on that as well as open it up for public comment. So, I mean, I can, I feel comfortable speaking to the acorn situation that's over there. The acorns are inherently harmful to dogs if they're ingested. And I am the owner of a very stupid dog myself who eats anything that's off of the ground. So I know we received a comment from a patron of the dog park that their dog unfortunately had eaten some acorns in the area and subsequently ended up going to the veterinarian hospital. So I think this is just an opportunity for us to kind of put some thoughts together about some PSAs into that simple signage around the park. In terms of, I believe that the request was to remove the tree from the park. I myself spoke with the tree warden, Aggie Tudin, from Medford and, you know, the basically, and I agree with her, the response here is, well, we can't necessarily remove all of the oak trees from all of the parks in Medford. There's a ton of them out there in public spaces. So I think just this is an opportunity for education. So we haven't had acorns of this magnitude in a few years. So this might be new for some folks who are new dog owners. So I think this is an opportunity for education. If anybody else wanted to chime in with some comments, I'm happy to pause for a moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not ACORN related, but Teresa, did you want to record this meeting?
[Theresa Dupont]: We actually, we have our friends at Medford Community Media here, but thank you for that. Ordinarily, my heart would have just stopped there. I'm like, oh, wait, no, I was supposed to hit record. Okay, just wanted to double check.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
[Theresa Dupont]: No, it's all good. Luckily, we have some really great colleagues over at, shout out to Medford Community Media. Thank you. So maybe we can circle back on this if Patrick joins and has some comments or Patty joins about the acorn situation. So we'll move on here. So Gary, I'm not sure if you and Patty had any sub conversations about volunteer efforts or if this was more of her area, but wanted to pass the floor over to somebody.
[Gary DeStefano]: So right now, this is more of the Patty issue. Truthfully, I haven't been at the dog park as often as I should be these days. But I do realize we have an extreme shortage of volunteers. Five years ago, we had a lot. Four years ago, a little less. Three years ago, a little less. And now the last couple of years, it's not around. And again, the younger, I don't know if you can genderize like this, but the younger people is what we need. And like, personally, I'm old. I can't shovel the gravel anymore. I mean, I used to do the pathways twice a week. I personally can't do it anymore. We need younger people to get more involved. And being older, we don't know how to get the younger people involved. At least I don't. So that's where Patty's going to get in. She's a little more personable than I am. I was more of the analytic person in this park.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. I would say you're plenty personable.
[Gary DeStefano]: And about the acorns, do we know how many acorns a dog has to eat before it actually gets sick?
[Theresa Dupont]: I don't, which is funny, because I've often had to Google how many onions can a dog eat before it's gonna die? Because again, my A for mentioned stupid dog. So I'm not quite sure on the acorns. I believe that the complaint we received was that that person's dog had eaten a few. But, you know, the ratio of weight of dog to acorns, but I mean they're everywhere, they're blanketing the ground, so. But to kind of maybe tie that into volunteer efforts. I'm not sure if Patty specifically had any ideas about ways to re-engage the community, but
[Gary DeStefano]: I think she's going to reach out the same as I just did. I think she's getting a little aggravated with the lack of volunteers, but I don't want to speak for her.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sure. And if that's more engagement on social media, if that's boots on the ground, you know, I know we rely a lot on, and we have such great partners at Tufts, but maybe there's an opportunity to kind of try to re-engage some student activity in there because, you know, Can people like dogs and maybe they don't have dogs in their dorms or if they're offsite campus housing or anything?
[Gary DeStefano]: In the past, the volunteers were the users of the park. They were the ones that were there two, three times a day. You know, you just socialize with them and say, hey, listen, next week we're going to do this. And they would show up. They'd show up in masses. Again, like I say, I'm not there every day. I used to be there minimum twice a day, an hour and a half each time. I haven't been there since COVID-19, really.
[Theresa Dupont]: Well, I think, did I see in an email that Patty kind of tossed the idea about like a volunteer day, like trying to have like an event there?
[Gary DeStefano]: We had one of those last week. Okay. And three people showed up.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. So maybe, Patrick's joining us by the way. Say hi, Patrick. Probably needs a minute to get into audio. Maybe we can put a little think tank together about how to have some better engagement. Social media is obviously great. Hey Patrick, you missed the acorn conversation. We can skip back to it though. We just left it. Yeah, we were just kind of trying to talk about volunteer efforts and how maybe we can get some more community engagement. Patty is not unfortunately on the call and I think she had some ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went to 12 dog parks in our area and all but two of them have oak trees with acorns in them. So it's not really an issue with those plates. So it hasn't been, you know, and I talked to some veterinarians and apparently it's extremely rare and like a little difficult for an animal to eat enough acorns. They need about 6% of their body weight in order for it to cause an issue. And for reference, for a 200 pound person, that would be 17 pounds of acorns. So it's a real lot when they have a small stomach. And one thing that I heard about when I was asking people about this is there are dog parks that will, they'll put a little bucket out so that people can pick them up and save them because wildlife rehabilitators can use them to feed their animals and wildlife rehabilitators would, you know, come and pick them up.
[Theresa Dupont]: Do you have any connections with that? Is that something?
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. Yeah, because one thing we were, I was spitballing this with a couple of folks in City Hall and the idea was, well, what if, I believe that there are rakes out there for people if they want to rake the gravel, but what if we, you know, for lack of a better term, bedazzled the rake and kind of really made it more of a fun activity of, you know, protecting the dogs, cleaning up the park, and now we can now introduce the concept of feeding some wildlife rehab programs out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a device that's sort of like a rake that's called like a nut scooper that's specifically used for acorns and nuts on the ground. I'm not a hundred percent sure that would work on the, on the P stone, but it might, and they're like 40 bucks.
[Unidentified]: So we can get one and try it out. Okay. All right. Ooh, hold on one second. I just had Patty email me. But that sounds like a great idea, especially if it's not that expensive. We like inexpensive fixes.
[Theresa Dupont]: But one thing we had talked about was maybe putting up some just educational signage around the park, just to say, you know, hey, something basically similar to what I have on the screen where it's just, did you know that acorns are poisonous because I mentioned earlier, this year they're in way more abundance. There's so many more acorns than there have been in the past. So if somebody is a newer dog owner and they just haven't experienced this amount of acorns in two or three years, they just don't know. I learned a lot my first year with my dog, let me tell you what. Okay, so, oh, go ahead, Patrick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just gonna say, I'm still learning, that's all.
[Theresa Dupont]: I just sent Patty the link, so it sounds like she might be joining in mere moments. Wren, since you're a co-host, if you could keep an eye on if she joins, appreciate that, my friend.
[Unidentified]: Do I hang tight?
[Theresa Dupont]: We can always scoop back to the volunteer efforts, because as Gary mentioned, it sounded like Patty had some ideas. And definitely one of the topics, we got the shed, woo-hoo! This is very exciting. Last time we met was, I believe, April or May, and it was still an ongoing, the date kept getting pushed out, so. But the shed's in, it's beautiful, we love it. Shout out to Salt Spray Sheds out of Dennis for that, thank you so much. You know, one part in the installation that wasn't covered the painting of the door, if we want to stain it, if we want to paint it. I put up a couple little schematics of just, you know, what it might look like if we had a red door, a yellow door, a blue door. So any initial thoughts, Gary? Did you have any thoughts and feelings about color of the door choice here?
[Unidentified]: Okay, so that's a tough one. I like them all. How about striped? Okay. Horizontal, vertical? Diagonal. Diagonal. Okay. We could make it fun. I actually spotted.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. I'm going to stop sharing for a hot second because I had put together a concept. I just want to, I have to unhide my slide here. I want to get your thoughts and feelings about it, because you mentioned fun stripes. What if we put like doggie? Wait, I need to share my screen again, sorry.
[Gary DeStefano]: Paw prints.
[Theresa Dupont]: Exactly. We're on the same page, you and I. Boom, little paw prints.
[Gary DeStefano]: It's perfect.
[Theresa Dupont]: Now, I would defer, perhaps, to somebody who's more knowledgeable on this. But if we were to use, like maybe we talked about trying to have an event. Hey, Patty. Oh, there she goes. Hey, Patty. An event at the park to maybe drum up some more volunteer efforts. Is it possible to maybe have like a station where people could paint their dog's paws with non-toxic paint? I will do some research into that and have their dogs put their paws up on the door. That might be a little overkill. I like to go big, but that was kind of the concept behind this.
[Unidentified]: But hey, Patty, welcome. I think you're muted. I'm not sure if she's talking to us.
[Theresa Dupont]: So I kind of like the idea of doing a more fun design on the door rather than just painting it. What do you think, Patrick?
[SPEAKER_01]: My opinion on anything to do with art or colors is totally irrelevant, but I like everything that I've seen so far.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, thank you. Love the honesty.
[Gary DeStefano]: So I don't think we could do actual dog prints because the paws are too small.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sure.
[Gary DeStefano]: But unless we want to start investing money, get small until we get them enlarged. And then we get stencils put up and then paint the stencils, which we're not going to do. So I would say just go with a stain on the door and paw prints of different colors and stuff, either as a stencil or as a stick on. Okay. Yeah. Make it fun.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. I like the stencil idea. I know, Patty, you've joined and you're on mute, but if you have any comments on this.
[Patty Flynn]: Oh, I'm here. Sorry. Yeah, I couldn't find the link. I actually found it through another. Yeah, it's long story. So I like the purple. I think that looks awesome.
[Theresa Dupont]: This way. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Again, I'm not my Photoshop skills are for but I was just trying to put like kind of a rendering. Cool. Alright, so we definitely want to paint or do like a solid stain to the door. Patrick deferred to our decor sense. And Gary had suggested stripes to do it like fun, but cool. So well, maybe we can take that one offline and just look at specific color samples. But this is kind of the direction we want to go color the door. and maybe put stencils of dog paw prints around it. Great. Cool. I'm going to skip around, Patty, since you weren't here. We've talked about acorns a lot because it's an important topic, if folks are worried about it. Patrick shared a little bit of his takes on it. I don't know if, Patrick, you would be able to go over what you mentioned again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure. So hi, Patty. How are you doing?
[Patty Flynn]: Hi, Patrick, I'm doing great, thanks. How are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good. So I went to 12 dog parks that are nearby to check out what kind of trees they had, and all but two of them had oak trees with acorns in them. Right. So obviously, it's not like a problem that's happening that often. I talked to some veterinarians, and they said that a dog needs to eat about 6% of its body weight in acorns in order for it to cause issues. And most of the issues would be, you know, like discomfort, vomiting, things like that. But 6% of body weight is a lot. For a 200 pound person, that would be 17 pounds of acorns. So imagine a dog eating, you know, 17.
[Patty Flynn]: So he was unsupervised for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right. Or he had some kind of underlying condition that could have made him more susceptible to them than other dogs too.
[Patty Flynn]: And I wanted to talk, you know, before I responded or had the city respond, I thought we'd better, we get our information again. I remember touching upon this before and it's, you know, you had brought, you know, if you know your dog eats non-food items, you really need to pay attention.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. And Patty, just to recap, I spoke with the tree warden, Aggie Tudin, and collectively, you know, I agree with her, you know, the request to remove the tree is a little extreme only because oak trees are everywhere. They're plentiful in all public and private spaces in Medford. So it's, but I'll put together some signage, and maybe we can just post it, just laminate and zip tie it to the chain link, just because this is such a, this could potentially be a new thing that some dog owners are just not, if they're newer dog owners, they just don't know yet because we haven't had this amount of acorns.
[Patty Flynn]: We've had them in the past, this many.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Arlington Dog Park tree is twice as big as ours and there's acorns everywhere. But also I think that in the signage we put up, we should say something like you know, it needs to be a large amount of ingested in order for it to be a problem. We don't want to scare people, you know.
[Patty Flynn]: Sure. Watch them. It's just if you know your dog eats non-food items, be particularly vigilant because it's not going to go away. And to be honest, I think it's probably a sign that should be on a metal, some metal, because it's not going to go away. This is going to be an ongoing issue.
[Theresa Dupont]: Sure. I can, I can explore. I mean, it's a little bit more costly to get printed on metal, but you know, it's, it's to your point, permanent at that point. So.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay. All right. I think we've talked about acorns more than I've ever talked about acorns in my life. Um, and we want to circle back on volunteer efforts, Patty, I think you had had, we'd had an event last week to try and drum up some volunteer community engagement. Um, do you want to kind of run with that topic?
[Patty Flynn]: Yep. So, um, I have three new, sorry, we have three new volunteers. Robert, who used to work in Stoneham with the DPW. Marge and say Robert, I believe. No, Robert used to work on the DBW. So they were, James, James, yeah. So they were there on Saturday. Unfortunately, my uncle died unexpectedly and I had his service, but I went to the dog park first to drop off the water. You know, I got a case of water, some new grain bars. And Mike dropped off some equipment, I guess, but I guess they were tired out by the time he got there or his guys did. You know, I haven't had much success. Again, this is an ongoing issue, but at least these three seem to be committed. I've emailed, we've had several emails back and forth. We're going to do another one, try to, he's going to try to, sorry, Robert's going to try to, he said, what was the term he used? Guilt? Some people into volunteering. and we're gonna do another day at the end of mid or end September, beginning of October. It's really laborious, especially in the summer to get that walk cleared off, but we're trying. I put up signs on the memo board. I put them in protective covering and hung them on the fences, but it didn't really help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Patty, the next time you're going to do that, can you send me a copy of the sign and I'll put it out on our social media and I can drop it off at like the pet stores and veterinarians.
[Patty Flynn]: Oh, cool. Thank you. Yes.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, if you could share that with us too. Our department runs a Facebook page as well. We're always looking to try to get more traction out of it. But yeah, if you send that my way too, we can help post and get it out there.
[Patty Flynn]: Yes.
[Theresa Dupont]: That's great that we have three more volunteers.
[Patty Flynn]: Yeah, it's better than none.
[Theresa Dupont]: Robert, Marge, and James, thank you very much.
[Patty Flynn]: Yeah, I posted it on Fawes from Medford, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nice. This is just a suggestion, but Tufts has a pretty big veterinarian vet school, and I feel like those people might be a little bit more interested in volunteering than maybe some of the undergrads, or maybe more able to. I know the campus isn't in Medford, so I don't know how often they're in the area, but could be a possible community to reach out to.
[Unidentified]: Great suggestion. Thanks, Ren.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, so let's see what kind of traction we get out of pushing it out more on social media, reaching out to our friends. at Tufts and see what we can do. All right, so we talked about the shed door, so I'm going to skip ahead. All right, so these are our remaining funds after paying for all the various, you know, the shed and all of the little accoutrements that added that we added during the installation there. So we have just under just over 2700 left to spend. So I know last time we talked about adding some potential agility equipment, which I think would definitely bring some some fun to those two parks. In my head, I was kind of imagining in the top left here, I'm not even sure if my cursor is showing up on the screen here, but top left corner, this ramp as well as the adjustable jump all the way over on the top right. I think we have enough funds to be able to do one of each of those in both of the enclosures, one in the small dog park and one in the large dog park. I'm going to stop talking for a moment and get people's feedback about designs, pricing, go for it.
[Gary DeStefano]: I'd go with the $1,400 one in the large dog park and call it a day.
[Patty Flynn]: I would too.
[Theresa Dupont]: Refresh my memory, does the small dog park have a bench in it seating at all for folks?
[Patty Flynn]: Yes.
[Theresa Dupont]: It does? Okay. Anytime I've gone, I've just hopped right into the large enclosure, so I wasn't, okay. I believe it's kind of a use it or lose it type situation when it comes to the funding. So we could just go ahead and move forward with just the $1,400 large.
[Patty Flynn]: Oh, no. We want to use all the funds.
[Theresa Dupont]: Exactly. Yeah, that was going to be my point. I think it's a use or lose it situation.
[Patty Flynn]: How tall is it? So between the two of the 731 and the 1,400 one, I would definitely go with the 1,400 one. Is there a tunnel that seems to be really, the one in Arlington, they seem to love that.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, there are tunnels and I saw that too, that seems to be popular. And because it's so popular, perhaps that's why the manufacturers charge usually like somewhere between $3,500 and $5,000. They're expensive.
[Patty Flynn]: Does DBW have the extras lying around?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I was thinking, can we get some 55-gallon drums and just make our own?
[Patty Flynn]: Well, I'm talking about the big concrete thing. Patrick, you know what I'm talking about, right?
[Theresa Dupont]: Like the sauna tubes?
[Patty Flynn]: Patrick, are you there?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here, yeah.
[Patty Flynn]: You know what I'm talking about from Arlington, that big concrete tube?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they have some type of huge part of a sewage system or something like that. I don't even know if we can buy one of those.
[Patty Flynn]: That's why I was wondering if TPW had one. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know how you deliver it.
[Patty Flynn]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe float it down the river.
[Patty Flynn]: I think it would sink.
[Theresa Dupont]: I can see if there's something we can repurpose. But yeah, if we were to buy just a straightforward dog park tunnel tube thing that is made for specifically for that. Yeah, they're very expensive.
[Patty Flynn]: What about this $300? That looks interesting.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, it's like just little hoops for dogs to jump through. My dog is not agile asshole, so he would probably just run into it. But yeah, I kind of like that one too, especially for perhaps maybe the small dog park. I think that it goes from 12, 18, and 24 inches high.
[Patty Flynn]: So, you know, I just- That's a really great thing for small dogs, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how many dog owners and dogs are going to use it.
[Gary DeStefano]: That's my point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[Gary DeStefano]: Yeah. Unless you're really into agility and you'd have to have everything there, you're not going to use that little jump hoop. And my dogs wouldn't make it through those circles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And usually people that are into agility have some other place that they're doing it. Right. The dog park. Yeah.
[Patty Flynn]: Okay. So that's hope.
[Gary DeStefano]: That'd be my guess. I like the $1,400 one just because that'll get used not necessarily as agility, but as a toy, something that they're going to go up and go down and play with. Yeah.
[Patty Flynn]: We put out another bench underneath the awning at the, where the set is.
[Unidentified]: Where do you want the bench?
[Patty Flynn]: We have, you know where the shed is, where the awning is? We're gonna put an awning there, aren't we?
[Theresa Dupont]: There's a overhang. So it's providing like a shaded area, but we could, well, the door's on the other side. Yeah, we could conceivably put a bench there that's in the shade.
[Gary DeStefano]: There you go. Now we're at 22.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. I think she's talking about on the backside of this area here. Yeah.
[Gary DeStefano]: I thought it came with a bench.
[Theresa Dupont]: It didn't. And we do have the bench area around the tree, but we could always put something.
[Gary DeStefano]: I like the bench underneath the arm, underneath the overhang.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay.
[Gary DeStefano]: So if we're voting, we got 14 and 850, 2250 out of 27, 500 more to go.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right, there are some shipping costs associated with it. So I want to say we should factor in $200-ish for shipping. So if we're at $2,250 or $2,450, we could probably throw one of these agility hoops in there just to see if it sticks.
[SPEAKER_01]: What about the installation?
[Theresa Dupont]: Right, so these are all available to be portable. I see the possibility that means that they grow legs and walk away.
[Patty Flynn]: Oh, no, they have to be concrete. No, no. They'll have to go into the ground. Right.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yep. I just wanted to let you guys know options out there so I can see if DPW would be willing to install them for us. We'll cover the cost of materials maybe at that point. Yeah, but putting in the bench and as well as this multi-level platform, the $1,400 one.
[Patty Flynn]: That'd be great. Now is the money that's left over, is that after the surveillance? Are we still doing the surveillance?
[Theresa Dupont]: So we're no longer, the surveillance isn't an option. Unfortunately, the funding, I don't know if I miscalculated, but originally when we were putting it out there, yeah, it was a miscalculation on my end. I own it. I said the wrong number, guys. I'm so sorry. We are still looking into, I just need to reach back out to our contact at the Stanton Foundation. I reached out to him about a week or two ago, haven't heard back about funding for the part-time maintenance person to kind of help keep an eye on the park. So TBD on that. Hopefully we get response from, I owe him a follow up. But because of other activity that's been happening in the park, and Patrick knows what I'm talking about, there might be an opportunity to look at surveillance being funded elsewhere. And because now it's not just for the dog park. What's going on? Somebody was doing some clear cutting without permission down on the river bank. very well-intentioned person, but they did clear cut a lot of the land down there, so.
[Patty Flynn]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody stole my cameras too.
[Patty Flynn]: No way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really? Are you serious? We knew it was gonna happen, yeah. You didn't hide them well enough.
[Theresa Dupont]: I know where your cameras are, Patrick.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, we'll talk later.
[Theresa Dupont]: We will talk later. If people could see my face, I was just like going, oh, I know it. It wasn't me, but I know where they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK. Thank goodness.
[Theresa Dupont]: If you could hear Dennis in the background.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, well, I'm glad they're in good hands.
[Theresa Dupont]: They're found.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, fantastic.
[Theresa Dupont]: But let me ask around with Alicia, perhaps there's an opportunity there to, maybe not this fiscal year, but Yeah, I still think surveillance system in that area is worthwhile to still try to pursue.
[Patty Flynn]: I think we could get Stanton to pay for the signage for the acorns.
[Theresa Dupont]: That's also possible. Thank you for pointing. Yeah, especially if we go for these two pieces with the shipping, we still have some small amount of funds left over. So yeah, that's a good point. Boom. Thanks, Patty. You're welcome. Bringing the good ideas, she is. All right, so it sounds like we want to pursue a bench that we'll put over kind of in this area here. Again, you can't see my cursor, but. Oh, you can. Okay, great. Thank you. It's good to know. Great. All right. So I will, I'll go ahead and put that order, because I think they have about six to eight week lead time. And now we're, we're talking. Maybe it might be too cold to do some work. So.
[Patty Flynn]: Well, at least we'll have the product.
[Theresa Dupont]: Correct, right, they'll be in hand.
[Patty Flynn]: Yeah.
[Theresa Dupont]: All right. The next topic to talk about, irrigation head issues. Do you want to take the floor, Patty?
[Patty Flynn]: I think Mike fixed it. I did tell him about it. That there was one really sticking up. I mean, it was bad. It was really hanging out there. But I think they took care of it. I didn't notice it the last time I was there. But then again, I did. I did not look, but he said he was going to take care of it, and I think he did.
[Gary DeStefano]: Patty, did we ever get another shipment of rice stone put in?
[Patty Flynn]: Yes. I think. Didn't they?
[Gary DeStefano]: I don't know, because that was one of the problems was the heads. The rice stone was just all going towards the river, and the heads were getting exposed by two, three inches.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Gary DeStefano]: And then a pipe came up last year out of the ground. That had to go. be put back in.
[Patty Flynn]: The same thing happened. This came out.
[Gary DeStefano]: The whole pipe, not just the head.
[Patty Flynn]: Not just the head, nope. The whole, the casing, you know, right past the elbow, actually.
[Gary DeStefano]: Yep, exactly. Yeah, the whole thing came up. That is an issue, and it's an ongoing issue. It's like a frost heave, you know, as the ground, hot, cold, the things raised and that has to be a line item in the city of Medford's budget that we have to maintain that park and that is part of Stanton Foundation's agreement is we maintain the park.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. Correct. All right. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. We did just go through with budgeting for this fiscal year. However, I imagine the cost to lay down some, is it pea gravel?
[Gary DeStefano]: Pea stone.
[Theresa Dupont]: Pea stone, okay. It's rice stone, actually.
[Gary DeStefano]: Yes, exactly. I said rice stone, not pea stone. Rice stone is actually smaller than pea stone.
[Theresa Dupont]: Right. Okay. I learned something today. Thank you. I can't imagine the cost is that astronomical, but we should factor that in to the budget. So thanks for bringing that to my attention.
[Patty Flynn]: We've been asking that for years now. Did they not factor it in in July?
[Theresa Dupont]: Not that I'm aware of. Our specific budget has hundreds of different buckets of funding. We have a bucket for that and a bucket for that. So it may have been factored in. It just wasn't highlighted. But regardless, we can. I'm sure we have some funding that we can move around to make sure that happens this year.
[Patty Flynn]: Can we email Mike on this? Because it's really important that we keep it leveled, that the rice stone is replaced. It has to be replaced a minimum of every three years. Not fully replaced, but added to a minimum of three years, they said. And we need to find out if that is being done. That's important.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you.
[Patty Flynn]: Good idea.
[Theresa Dupont]: I will, I'll follow up with Mike about that. See what our plan is. And if we make sure we have a plan going forward.
[Patty Flynn]: Oh, thank you. Of course.
[Theresa Dupont]: Obviously, if it gets washed away, now we're exposing plumbing. That means there's a potential for it to be damaged. And that's more costly than a yard of stone. Right.
[Patty Flynn]: Well, it's a hazard, too, for dogs running. Sure.
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right, so at this point, I think we've kind of hit on everything, unless there was anything new. Patty, I know you emailed yesterday evening something, but.
[Patty Flynn]: Let me see if I touched on my points. I found those as I was looking for the email to connect with you guys. Do you know I still didn't find it? Yeah, I found it on an email thread regarding the open dog The open dog.
[Theresa Dupont]: That's funny.
[Patty Flynn]: Someone thought it was a different meeting. Okay, so let's see my. Okay, yeah, I was looking for the email I sent you with the targets. I really got to have my act together. I went to my son's. He needed me to help do something up there. He just bought a house. I got it. Acorn tree lack of volunteers schedule. We got that update on the grant of that irrigation head. Okay, I got everything.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay, I thought you would email something.
[Patty Flynn]: Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Okay. Great. Perfect. All right.
[Theresa Dupont]: I'm gonna stop sharing my screen. You know, there is I know we have a couple members of the public on the zoom here. So if Anybody had anything they wanted to add? Otherwise, it's supper time, almost. So things to follow up on. Go ahead, Patty.
[Patty Flynn]: Sorry. Ryan's here. You're the one whose dog ate the acorns. Is that right?
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, that's Ryn Piasecki. She works with me. Oh, no.
[Patty Flynn]: That's right. OK, that's who it is. OK, thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: So things to take away, I'll follow up with Mike Nestor about the rice stone, make sure that we have a maintenance procedure going forward for that. I will go ahead and place the order for the bench, as well as that double sided agility platformy thing. I think that's the official term for it, by the way. And that looked like it was about a six to eight week lead time. I'll work with DPW and getting that installed. And obviously we'll, I'll loop everybody in here to determine placement for it. I'd hate to get it installed and be like, Teresa, why did you pick over there? It should be over here. So we'll have some, some buy-in on that. I'll put together some signs with language about acorns and just being careful and being cognizant of what's out there. I'd love to pass it through the group to get you guys's buy-in as well. just to make sure I'm not doing an egregious typo or I just wanna make sure we have the right messaging and then look into getting that printed on to metal so that's a permanent sign.
[Unidentified]: Did I miss anything? Okay. Where did your son buy a house, Patty? Oh, you're muted again, I'm sorry.
[Theresa Dupont]: You're on mute, Patty.
[Patty Flynn]: There we go. I don't know how I do that. Yeah, in Derry, he just bought a house in Derry.
[Theresa Dupont]: Oh, awesome. Congratulations.
[Patty Flynn]: Thank you.
[Theresa Dupont]: That's great. Okay, I never know how to properly end these meetings. So 123 break. If anybody has any questions, I can be reached at OCD at Medford-MA.gov. If anybody has any public comments that they didn't have a chance to voice here, But otherwise, we'll catch you on the next one, everybody. Thank you so much.