City of Gonzales
CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT
STAFF REPORT
TO: Honorable Mayor Rios and City Council
DATE: April 15, 2024
FROM: Carmen Gil, City Manager
THROUGH: Carmen Gil, City Manager
SUBJECT: Community Engagement & Recreation Departments Activity Report Current Activities
Kid Power
• For the month of March, Kid Power had 32 kids registered in the afterschool program. We continue prioritizing homework and helping the kids in preparation for state testing. Nevertheless, we always make sure to include some sort of fun for the kids as a reward for all their hard work! • For the first Fun Friday of the month, the kids put together some sensory bags. These bags consisted of hair gel, beads, pompom balls and glitter. They enjoyed measuring the gel and matching the items to the color glitter they were going to put inside. • In honor of the beginning of Spring and St. Patrick’s Day the kids made caterpillars and put together a snack that resembled pots of gold with a rainbow, they also worked on creating fluffy green slime.
AGENDA
ITEM
10 • In celebration of Easter, the kids worked on decorating their own eggs and we also hosted the annual Kid Power Egg Hunt for them outside where they had fun looking for all of the eggs! City Sports League
• The South County Girls softball league registration ended on March 11th. We have a full team of 14 for our U8 team Lady Dynamitez. We also have two teams this year for our 10U division, Gonzales Sparks and Gonzales Valkyries. Practices start the week on March 11th. We have 2 head coaches and 7 assistant coaches. One of our head coaches is coaching two teams, the U8 team and one of the 10U teams. Each team also has a team parent. • The City of Gonzales Mini T-ball registration is now full. We were able to get all 40 participants registered a week before the season began. We also have a head coach for each team. In total we have 4 head coaches, 4 assistant coaches and 2 team parents. • The City of Gonzales recreation department had a zoom meeting with San Andreas Regional Center and other cities on March 7th to discuss the possibility of a collaboration for Social Recreation for residents and youths with special needs. The meeting was highly informative and gave us some great ideas.
• The youth basketball Coaches and Referees Appreciation Basketball game took place on Tuesday March 5th. We had 15 participants play in the game. It was a close one. The final score was 52 to
53. It was so much fun that the coaches want to schedule a game once a month. • The City of Gonzales youth basketball league for boys’ grades 6th-8th had their last game on March 9th against Soledad’s teams. Both Gonzales teams were successful in ending the season with a WIN. It was a fun and successful season. This season our boys 6th-8th team names were chosen by the boys. Each team name was dedicated in memory of their friend and classmate Rosalio “JR” Chavarin De Leon who passed suddenly during the winter break. One team name was “Forever Junior” and the other “LLR- Long Live Rosalio.” We also added to our basketball jerseys a heart with wings and in the center of the heart, his football jersey number.
Gonzales Youth Council
• On Friday, March 1st the GYC had their first in-person meeting regarding the Youth Summit at the City of Greenfield City Hall. The Youth Council from all three cities gathered to brainstorm what they would like to see at their summit and to discuss how this has the potential of being an annual event. The Youth Summit is scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 11th at the Soledad Main Street Middle School. Some of the topics they would like to be integrated in the summit include youth workforce development/ internships, mental health, college/ career readiness and a resource fair.
• On Saturday, March 23rd some of the GYC attended the Gonzales High School Mental Health Summit where they were able to talk about their experience working with CSUMB professor, Dr.
Lovell and the survey that was conducted at Gonzales High School regarding COVID and mental health. Currently, the GYC continues to work with Dr. Lovell in hopes of conducting an additional survey geared towards parents and the topic of mental health. In addition to discussing their work regarding mental health, they also hosted a self-care to self-love workshop during the summit.
Recreation/Community Engagement
• For the month of March, we continue to host Chair Yoga every Saturday morning from 9-10AM at the Gonzales Vosti Building. Due to the consistent turnout, we had, we checked in with everyone in the class to see if they would be open to paying a monthly fee, so we are able to extend the classes through the end of May and they all said “yes!”. A special thank you to our Yoga Instructor, Vivian Leyva, who was able to extend her services as well. • We continue to update our Kick Kiosk every 2 weeks and have gotten a lot of positive feedback not just from residents, but also from other organizations that have provided us with resources they would like to share with the community.
• In March, the Recreation Department also met with the Fire, Public Works, and Police Department to discuss the logistics around the April 20th Car Show. We continue to do a lot of promotion regarding the event in hopes that we are able to get more vehicles registered, some of these methods include the Kick Kiosk, social media, banners and posters throughout the city with local businesses, and mass e-mails via Teamsideline.com. • On Saturday, March 9th, we hosted our Community Wide Gardening Day to kick off the grand opening of our Community Garden located at 205 Elko Street, next to the Gonzales Community Pool. This project was a collaboration with several of our partners including Wings of Knowledge, Blue Zones Project, Save the Whales, Workforce Development-CADRE, and the resource Conservation District of Monterey County. We were happy with the turnout we received from residents and look forward to seeing all the growth in the space. Our hope is that people in the community feel comfortable helping to sustain the space and that we can have workshops and classes for people of all ages.
Activities in the Planning Phase
• We met with Jody Rogers from Alliance on Aging and Jairo Hernandez from the Monterey County Health Department to discuss senior programming for the City of Gonzales. We were able to lock in Friday, May 10th at 1PM for a Senior Cooking Class and an Art Class on May 16 at 10AM at the Gonzales Adult School.