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Placerville Rec & Parks shifts focus to community-wide needs assessment for master-plan update
Summary
Department staff proposed pausing a narrative rewrite of the 2017 master plan to run a community-wide needs survey and targeted outreach; commissioners agreed to form an ad hoc group to draft and return with a short survey in about a month.
Director Dennis Nish told the commission he intends to pause a full narrative revision of the 2017 Parks and Recreation Master Plan and instead prioritize a community-wide needs assessment to guide future updates and investment priorities.
Nish said the goal is to collect multilingual, place-based input from residents "so then that way we can quantify and be like, okay. This is what our residents want." He listed possible methods — in-person outreach at schools, churches and community events; paper surveys in mailings; phone surveys; QR codes and translated materials — and presented sample questions covering satisfaction, program interest, barriers to use, priority improvements and policy trade-offs.
Commissioners emphasized keeping the survey short and targeted. Commissioner Potter and other commissioners recommended going to where people already gather (schools, sports events, salons) rather than relying solely on town-hall meetings. Commissioners volunteered for a short ad hoc drafting group to work with staff and return a proposed question set at the next commission meeting.
Nish proposed a timeline: draft questions and outreach plan with volunteers over the next month, hold an initial community input session on Oct. 18 to review outreach and collect feedback, and aim for a broader launch later in the season. The commission discussed expected response modes and incentives; staff said they would check legal rules on drawings or prize incentives and look for existing survey templates from professional associations to adapt.
No change to the existing 2017 master plan was adopted at the meeting. Commissioners asked staff to prioritize safety and maintenance items in future budget conversations and to bring a shortened survey draft to the next meeting for refinement.
