District 9

Hello CPRS D9 Members,

The State Senate and Assembly Legislators are out of session now, but will be back in early January and the CPRS A-Team is asking for input from all member agencies and members to share with them what we (CPRS) should be fighting for to improve our profession.  Some CPRS agencies from Northern California have shared some thoughts, and I will share them below to get your brains juices flowing so that you can add to this list issues that your agency would like addressed by the A-Team for this next year.  Please review and respond back, to me John Jones via Catalystjjones@gmail.com as I am serving as the CPRS District 9 Representative for all of you.

Ideas already submitted:

• I like the purple pipe concept; there has been some past legislation but it hasn’t gone far enough.

• Purple Pipe/recycled water funding for parks, pools and spray parks.  Purple Pipes is new to me and something I was going to bring to the D&O Section so they can survey for feedback. As it relates to the drought, funding from the climate resiliency funding should go for turf fields and low-water landscaping. We could advocate for fair-share of those funds.

• Another parks bond like prop 84 or prop 68
• A legislative push for public pools/recreational water is desperately needed
• Legislative push for “community outreach funds” to reach underrepresented and underserved communities… something specific to funding parks and recreation agencies to do DEI work.
• Public Infrastructure life-cycle replacement funding (something specific to parks and open space revitalization)
• Federal – Public employee retiree early access to Medicare (match eligibility to state retirement age)
• Funding for meeting the Governor’s unfunded mandates of electric vehicles and electric landscaping equipment.
• Any relief opportunities for increasing insurance costs for public agencies with aging infrastructure. Recreational Immunity for these situations?
• Anything to assist with worker’s compensation rates, since PEPRA requires employees to work longer and until older… this is going to be a major issue in industries with hard labor jobs.

• Amending the Child Care licensure requirement for the # of hours, in the state of an emergency, providing an exemption for unlicensed gov. providers.

• Also for D&O section and our Parks & Planning departments, is there anything related to Turf fields, Climate resiliency, the shift from gas to electric.  All of those tops were brought up today.

Please review this list and provide me any new ideas that your agency may have, I would need to get this information by Mid-December.

Thank you,

John Jones

CPRS D9 A-Team Representative
John Jones <catalystjjones@gmail.com>