April seemed to come and go quickly. We stayed busy here at the center.

Caroleana officially restarted the Center’s respite program. So far she’s had 4 great Thursday Respite days. She is working on some upcoming special guest visitors for the program. Stay turned for photos next month.

Caroleana attended Grief Open Group at Ant Farm. In the fall, we’re hoping to partner with Mt. Hood Hospice to offer Grief 101 classes here at the center.

May 23rd is the Senior Resource Fair at the Center. Caroleana has done an amazing job at getting businesses and organizations to attend. She’s been doing lots of advertising for it as well. In June, she is working with AARP to put on a Safe Driving Class.

There were 9 new Meals on Wheels clients signed up in April- and lots of home visits. Caroleana has started a monthly newsletter that goes out to these clients with resources and information. It’s been a great addition to our Meals on Wheels program. Caroleana also completed 7 energy assistance applications.

Chelsea spent the month completing lots of various documents. She created the May/June Newsletter and got it printed and mailed/emailed out. Marc and her also started brainstorming ideas for Summer (July/August).

For April we had a Parks & Trails Advisory Board meeting and Chelsea worked up the meeting minutes after.

Chelsea attended various meetings- A planning meeting for Winter Fest 2023, a meeting for Mountain fest 2023, and 2 budget committee meetings at City Hall.

Chelsea also processed invoices for various ongoing projects and submitted a quarterly grant update for the Cedar Ridge Trail.

Chelsea updated the Longest Day Postcard and flyer for this year’s Longest Day Parkway Event. Last year at this time, Canva (our design software) was still really new to her so it was fun to see how much has been learned over the last year of designing documents/publications. She also created a building monitor job posting flyer, a youth summer sport camp flyer, and senior summer bbq flyer.

April started out busy for Carol with all ages celebrating Easter in our park and library.
Our seniors hopped on the trolley and were dropped off at the library to hunt for
Easter eggs in between books and all over the building. There were 5 golden eggs and each egg was worth a gift card from a local business here in Sandy.

The following day the teens showed up on Friday night to hunt for Easter eggs in Meinig Park. The middle schoolers went first and over 100 kids showed up with flashlights. The High schoolers went out after and we had close to 50 kids. Again, all the golden egg prizes were from Local businesses.

The summer recreation guide was finalized and sent to Pamplin to be printed and will be completed and ready for distribution the first week in May. Carol is truly the head of our recreation guide and although the whole team helps, we couldn’t do this 3 times a year without her!

The adult Softball League is just about complete with 8 teams this year. Last year we had 6. Games start on May 31st and will end with a playoff on July 29th. Amy created the softball season schedule, which was a huge undertaking, but it’s done!

Amy hosted a Community Gardens Social and Work Party to celebrate national gardening month. They placed mason bee cocoons into the bee boxes that are installed in the gardens, educated gardeners (and kiddos) about mason bees and cleaned up the garden shed! Speaking of bees- Bee City’s First Quarterly Meeting took place – Amy met with a group of 5 to discuss the past activities Sandy has done for bees and what we can do in 2023 and 2024.

SOLVE IT In Sandy took place on April 22nd – We had 54 volunteers and hit 10 different locations to clean Sandy for Earth Day!

Arbor Day was celebrated April 26th in Centennial Plaza- We celebrated this by having snacks from trees, planting a tree, collected haikus from the community, and the mayor spoke.

Amy participated in Children’s Day @ the Library – She provided a booth for this event and shared park information. Amy loves supporting the library’s events.

Amy spent time Networking w/ the Chamber of Commerce at Morning Perk.

Amy has also started driving and securing patrons for the first time for multiple senior events. Our programs are so successful we are taking two vehicles to some of the outings we offer. This means we are able to help even more citizens of Sandy. This has also given her good practice with the van. Next step will be driving the bus!

Amy is in the process of taking over coordination of the building monitors and creating their schedules. They had a training meeting, transitioned the employees onto a scheduling app, and talked about challenges as a group. It was a very successful meeting. 

-Low Mow Spring started. “We want to encourage citizens to let their grass grow a little longer this spring to support bees and other pollinators. Sandy code allows grass to grow up to 10 inches in height. You can print out your own sign to advertise your support or pick up a sign from the Sandy Community Center! To support pollinators, we’ll be letting the grass grow longer at Deer Point, Melissa Field, Big Fir, and Champion Way Park.  These are open public green spaces (non-developed parkland) where long grass won’t interfere with park and activity use, but will still help pollinators.  We will continue to mow and keep our high use parks in good shape for public use.”

John spent the month starting to gear up for the holiday season. He hosted a meeting with Khrys Jones from the Sandy Chamber to talk about creative ideas to get local businesses and the Sandy Community involved in our Winter Holiday celebration. John and Tiana also met with an electrician who is providing a quote to add more electrical outlets to Meinig Park. We want to grow the park holiday light experience.  More lights means more electricity.

• John contracted with Bold Media to purchase a custom designed Sandy Logo made of Holiday lights (15ft by 4ft). This will be a great new “Sandy” edition to the holiday/winter fest experience.

Tiana and John are exploring a partnership with the Combat Veterans Association.  We are working together to fundraise money for concrete repairs to the Veterans Memorial.

For the past year, John, Rochelle, and the team have been working with Amelia 110% to create a departmental Financial Sustainability Plan.  This plan will help guide where our Taxpayers money is spent and where we offset those expenses by generating revenue.  This month he presented the Policy to the Parks and Trails Advisory Board which was motioned to take before City Council for adoption.

As a Recreation Team, Carol, Amy and John met with staff at Oral Hull to start exploring options for Sandy youth aquatics.

Marc was overjoyed to not have any more cancelled trips due to weather. The seniors did have a great time at the Tulip festival and the rain even held off for them. They also enjoyed a day at the Museum of Oregon Territories. Dine outs included Oswego Grill and an Italian restaurant in Troutdale. The two hikes for the month were Salish Pond in Fairview and the Cedar Island Trail at Mary S Young Park. These trips have become so popular that most fill up within the first few days of opening. The dine outs tend to be the favorite.

-Due to all the Meals on Wheels clients Caroleana has been adding, Marc has been busy inputting them all into the Meals on Wheels routes and organizing their deliveries. 1168 meals were delivered in April.

We had a 1 year work Anniversary Party for John, Chelsea, and Marc!

Parks Monthly Report:

Upcoming and important events/dates:

• -No Mow May in full swing – As part of Sandy’s commitment to being a Bee City, this year we’re introducing “No Mow May” and “Low Mow Spring!”
• -Spring Celebration Bee City Booth on Sat May 6
• -Bringing Pollinators to your Garden Library Event May 15th – there will be a Bee City Booth – see poster attached
• -National Bee Day May 20th (unfortunately we aren’t doing anything big with it this year, but it’s a day we should remind people of) 
• Senior Resource Fair- Tuesday May 23, 10 am to 2 pm.  
• Energy Assistance can continue through the year- Cooling assistance specifically  can start in June 
• May 29th- Center Closed
• June 10th walk or Run with Pride which is held at Sandy Bluff Park
• June 22 Longest Day Parkway which is held at Bornstedt Park
• June 24 Noah’s Quest which is held at Sandy Bluff Park.
• Skyhawk Camps start end of June