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Please list your strengths and any related work, volunteer, or educational experiences that you could bring to the committee: Well, parks runs deep in my family. It's cliche to say that but my grandparents once toured almost every St Paul Rec Center and my grandpa was the main person who pushed for the multi -million dollar Northdale Rec Center in St Paul's District 10/Como/North End and got the approval for grants and funding to have the building built. Grandpa had 6 kids but was "Coach" to many and started Northdale Hockey in the days of playground hockey in the late 60's and early 70's. He served on the D10 council for 50 years and I got dragged to many meetings as a kid hearing boards/councils/proceedings etc. At the time of building planning, the city council and Norm Coleman wanted the building amenities to be sufficient for the present and future community needs and sent my grandparents on several tours with staff/architects to see what they liked and did not like at other centers. Grandpa worked with the architect and had his own blueprints as his "tablecloth" for several years during planning and construction and parked his van at the construction site daily to watch his building be built. A painter by trade who worked for Hamernicks for 45 years of his life, his true passion was community involvement and district council work and that's what I saw most of and often got hauled along to events. Sort of instilled those same traits to help the community in all of us "kids". When I say Parks run deep in my family, my cousin is Jerome Krieger who worked for St Paul Parks for many years as a facilities director and is now the director or asst director of Blaine Parks n Rec. He's also the sitting president of the MN State Parks Board/Association. He's pushing 40 years of experience directing and coordination parks n rec needs for St Paul and Blaine. As for myself, as mentioned, I worked with St Paul to replace their facilities. The then director Mike Hahm and his staff (Kathy Korum, Nate G, Derek Hollanitsch) on planning pocket parks, neighborhood parks, and community centers within St Paul. The goal was to have a park within 4-6 blocks of any residence. Some just swings or tot lot only. Some with fields and larger playgrounds. Others like Northdale, Phalen, Palace, Hillcrest etc. where they are more of a community center with other amenities and community needs/wants - craft rooms, conference rooms, exercise/weight facilities, indoor walking tracks, etc. The goal was to eliminate any small rec centers that was overlapped by another rec center who could serve or handle the needs. Staffing was an issue due to break coverage requiring 2 staff members working at facilities that had little more than a Connect4 and checkers board next to some markers and construction paper. City was done paying 2 employees to be a daycare. Griggs and Sylvan for example were closed and the Sylvan building was converted to restrooms. Griggs was sold but the city eventually reacquired it because per their original maps, West Minnehaha and Hancock rec centers appeared they could cover the needs. They realized that wasn't the case when many local neighbors voiced their concerns with kids having to cross Snelling and/or Lexington to access those parks if they lived between those 2 major roads. The city agreed and bought Griggs back! I feel my knowledge and experience of things like the above would be a good fit and beneficial for planning. I also volunteered for 6 years on the St Paul Outdoor Ice Committe when they purchased the 3 refrigerated outdoor rinks for Northdale, Phalen, and Palace. My dad sold hockey rinks for a living. Through his knowledge and industry connections, I was able to assist in acquiring accessories and equipment for the rinks and help coordinate flooding, scraping, shaver schedules, and helped schedule ice time for Northdales rink use. Their refrigerated systems were 20'x20' rubber coils that interlocked and then got filled with the glycol and pressurized for ref6gation then had sand dumped and spread on top to flood on the sand. They budgeted $80k annually, $40k for install and $40k for dismantling. In driving bobcats over their coils to spread sand, they beat up up the coil systems pretty bad and the EPA once got involved for glycol leaking. The sand never fully got collected so their plan to use the rinks in summer for rollerhockey became merely impossible due to sand flowing onto rink with every rain because the boards were elevated to allow room for coils and sand so debris ran under the boards onto the playing surface. I obtained quotes and worked with Norm Colemans assistant and budget committe to pour concrete and refrigeration lines like a normal hockey rink and ceased the use of the rubber coils at all 3 rinks. This also made it possible for roller hockey as the sand was eliminated from the process and the city no longer had an annual $80k expense. They can now flip a switch, refrigeration is pressurized and the concrete cools for flooding. As for my professional life, I started working for Allina Home Oxygen and Medical equipment in May of 2018 doing insurance and order qualification for patients to have home oxygen, nebulizers, hospital beds, and other durable medical equipment. In February of 2021, Allina sold their home medical division to Adapthealth where I still work as a lead in the intake department with a staff of 18 under me. I have a 20yo son who resides in St. Paul. My wife Anna and I purchased our home in June of 2020 in Moundsview and we now have 2 boys, a 2yo and 4mo old who will have me using the MV parks more than I have thus far as they grow up. I feel helping people and planning/organizing is my calling in life. I've had plenty of experience in the arena of what this committee is being formed for. I respect others opinions and try to look at and approach everything with an open mind and see both sides of situations or thoughts. I enjoy doing this type of stuff so I'm applying. My biggest negative quality in this is simply lack of park use and park knowledge thus far. My work schedule does somewhat revolve around patients medical needs as I deal with life sustaining emergency medical equipment - oxygen, tube feedings, vents, etc. Its rare to interfere with my life after 6pm but before 6pm is always up in the air a bit. If planning daytime meetings, I would most likely not be able to attend. I'm sorry this got so long but I'm a wealth of knowledge with St Paul's parks history!lol I'm also a die hard medallion hunter for the Winter Carnival treasure hunt. Jerome found it in 2017 and my mom's aunt found it in 1970 so I have 2 family members as finders. If you're at all familiar, the hunt gets you into parks and history and you learn about areas of the city and park history. We're always looked at funny showing up at a park on say January 27th at midnight with a garden hoe and a headlamp speaking in tongue with some clues that make no sense to us, but we're there to dig thru the snow, even if it's -50 with a polar vortex wind chill of-65!haha I have nothing to attach but if you have any questions or If I can be of assistance, please let me know. I truly feel like this is right up my alley and I could be a great asset to planning the future for my family and all of Mounds View. Thanks,