City reports summer youth engagement: staff highlight interns, camps and a RESET pilot

At the July 27 meeting Kim Brown, Parks and Recreation and Special Events Director, and Assistant City Manager Kevin Limehouse presented the city's summer youth-engagement work, highlighting cross-department internships and a range of programs that the city said reached hundreds of young people this summer.

"We have 200 young people enrolled at both sites for both sessions combined," Kim Brown said, and the presentation also listed 95 participants in an explorers program for ages 13–15, 336 swim lessons in 46 classes and 89 swim-team members. Brown described a new RESET pilot focused this year on a cohort of eight young men who meet three times a week for workforce readiness and violence-intervention work; the presentation said officials hope to expand the program with additional funding to include female participants.

Councilmembers praised hiring "from within" and asked staff for year-over-year registration and ZIP-code data to evaluate program efficacy and retention. Kim Brown said the city can provide registration data and track participants by ZIP code and attendance, and she noted that about 47 seasonal participants in recent years have moved into seasonal employment while some became permanent staff.

Officials said the city used interns across departments this summer (IT, airport services, fleet maintenance, parks and recreation and housing programs) and that the programs include leadership training, swim instruction and junior lifeguard and mentoring elements. Councilmembers encouraged staff to focus on retention metrics as a quality measure as the city considers program expansion.