**Des Moines Citizens Advisory Board — May 27, 2026**
**Chair:** All right. Can everybody please take their seat? We’re going to call the May 27th, 2026 CAB meeting to order. Let’s do roll call, please. Everybody to the right of me start.
**Tara Vaughan:** Terra, staff liaison.
**Kyle Ehlers:** Kyle Ehlers, program supervisor, CES.
**AJ Johnson-Newton:** AJ Johnson-Newton, assistant city manager.
**[Roll call continues:]** Aileen Evans, central district. Bettina Carey, Marina District and Arts Committee. Mary Ellen Laird, at large. Diane Hoyer, at large. Lisa Franz Redondo. Randy Richards, at large. Rick Laker, at large. Jeff Crompe, at large, arts committee. Eddie Duggar, central and arts commission. Bonnie Wilkins, director of administrative services for the city of Des Moines. Gene Achziger, deputy mayor. Jeremy Nutting, council member.
**Chair:** All right. I have a request from Susan White to be excused — she had to attend a different meeting. Charlene won’t be here either; she sent an email to Harry. And Karen and Jim also let us know they won’t be here.
I move to accept their excuses. All those in favor?
**All:** I.
**Chair:** Sounds like it’s unanimous. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Moving on to our first agenda item: approval of minutes for the April 29th, 2026 Citizens Advisory Board meeting.
I move to accept the minutes.
**Member:** Second.
**Chair:** All those in favor?
**All:** I.
Moving on to number two: Community Enrichment Services recreational program and activities update. If there are any questions during the presentation, please hold them until the end. And here we go.
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**Kyle Ehlers:** All right. Thank you for having me. My name is Kyle Ehlers, program supervisor for the Community Enrichment Services department. We’re here to provide a little bit of an update for 2026 on some of our recreation programming and activities.
So we’ll start with a little background on how we got here. Before, recreation services traditionally operated in the parks and rec realm. We also offered senior services, events, and facilities — all separately. We exited our on-site school-based child care, which was our Club Chaos program that served all the schools within the greater Des Moines district. And then we all experienced our COVID disruptions, which obviously reshaped how we needed to cater to the community.
So, fast-forwarding to the shift: activity center and day-to-day management returned to the city from Wesley. Our recreation, senior services, events, and facilities are all now unified under one department. We formally adopted the name Community Enrichment Services with the goal of improving coordination, community access, and long-term sustainability — all under that one umbrella.
That brings us to today. We’re now one CES team working together across programs. We share activities, events, and community spaces. We’re using resident feedback — as you’ve seen in some of our surveys — and participation trends to help shape what we offer. We’re building more opportunities for community connection, activation, and year-round use of our spaces, and working together both internally and externally to help shape where we’re going in our next chapter.
CES has six passionate staff members: myself; AJ Johnson-Newton, who is also the assistant city manager; Courtney Wilt; Kelsey Cole; Savannah Matson; and Kim Ping. Each focuses in their own area of expertise but can cross-support and collaborate across programs, events, rentals, and community activities.
Where do we operate? We are a unique organization in that we are facility-rich. We don’t have a traditional community center where all programs are located in one area. We operate at the Fieldhouse — which is also getting a brand-new paint job, new lights, and a new picnic shelter renovation. Our central hub right now is the Senior Activity Center, next to the post office and Steven J. Underwood Park. And we also run events and facilities out of the Beach Park Event Center down at the marina.
Under this new framework, our goal is to activate and program all of these facilities as much as we can, and to make equally good use of our parks in and around the city.
A little on how CES serves the community — in a variety of ways: traditional youth sports and camps, including youth soccer, basketball, T-ball, and some adult sports like softball; senior services at the Senior Activity Center; community and regional events such as the holiday tree lighting and the Fourth of July celebration; facility rentals; community gardens such as Sanju. We serve youth, teens, adults, families, and the broader community. Our mindset remains the same: offering high-level programming and activities for all to participate in.
A couple of participation and program highlights: under youth and recreation, we’re increasing our Camp Chaos summer camp registrations from 80 last year to 120 per day in 2026 — a pretty dramatic increase. Youth sports participation for basketball and soccer continues to grow. We faced a little adversity with some kids aging out and going other places, but we’re trending in the right direction.
We also have several community-focused events: Breakfast with Santa, Extravaganza, the holiday tree lighting, and the Fourth of July. For our senior programming at the Activity Center, we’ve increased lunch service from Monday–Wednesday to Monday–Thursday because of demand — we’re at about 120 meals per week. Participation in trips and outings is growing; we’re nearly needing two buses for field trips. Kim is doing a great job bringing in what we’re calling “first-time seniors.” And we’ve expanded programming offerings: line dancing — which is tonight, so if we get out early, go check it out — family bingo, karaoke, popup nights, youth open gym, youth basketball league, Skyhawks, Art with Amy, gift-making workshop, Melany’s Dance Unlimited, good manners, basic dog obedience. We’re getting as much in as we can find space for.
One exciting update: as we get through the summer months, we have an exciting community partnership with the Legacy Foundation. Last year was our pilot — setting the baseline for a program called Pop-Up and Play Des Moines. It’s a mobile recreation program that will serve each corner of the city in different parks. We’re decreasing barriers to access by coming out to each park, letting kids come out for free, with structured physical activity and a craft, five days a week. We’re building on last year, which was solely focused at Midway Park — we’ll be adding a few parks and expanding from there, and we’ll continue into 2027 to look at how we can reach every kid in the city.
Looking forward, we want to focus on a couple of things. Community access and activation: Pop-Up and Play activates parks for recreation and reaches everyone in the city who might have a transportation or financial barrier. We’re also looking to develop specialized recreation opportunities, intergenerational programming, continued evolution of programming for older adults, and expanded offerings no matter the age. And we’re trying to match programs to the spaces we have — making sure we’re using the kitchen at the dining hall, the gym at the Fieldhouse, the fields we possess.
As we get to the end, we have a couple of CAB feedback and discussion requests:
One — what recreation, social, or community opportunities do you think are missing or needed in Des Moines today? And are there barriers that make it harder for people to participate?
Two — how can CES continue evolving recreation and enrichment opportunities to meet the changing interests and needs of older adults? And what opportunities do you see for more intergenerational programming?
Thank you.
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**Chair:** Kyle, thank you very much for your presentation. We’ll go to questions. Deputy Mayor Achziger, you had some questions first.
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Hi Kyle, thank you. Can you explain for the CAB the difference between Camp Chaos and Club Chaos, and what the future is for both?
**Kyle Ehlers:** Absolutely. Camp Chaos is our summer camp program — it begins whenever Highline School District lets out, mid-June, and runs all the way into the first week of September. Club Chaos was our before-and-after school program, which was formerly at the schools. We then moved to an after-school model just at the Fieldhouse, running through the school year.
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** I believe a memo has gone out saying Club Chaos is being eliminated.
**Kyle Ehlers:** For the time being we are re-examining how we’re offering that. At the end of the school year we will discontinue the service until we can either find another program to fill that gap or revisit bringing it back in a more structured manner that fits where we’re at.
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Thank you.
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**[Member — Aileen Evans:]** In the future, are you thinking about offering seniors transportation to the center — maybe a few hours before and after lunch a few days a week — for those who can’t drive?
**Kyle Ehlers:** That’s not something we’ve considered. We’d have to give it serious thought because it would essentially be a shuttle service — a different type of service than what we provide. We do have participants who use existing shuttle services, and we haven’t had comments about an inability to get to the Senior Center. At this point, I don’t see shuttle service being in our future. Thank you for the question.
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**[Member — Jeff Crompe:]** Kyle, what is CES’s involvement with the arts committee and the summer concerts?
**Kyle Ehlers:** Kim Payne leads on our department’s side in dealing with the arts commission. I support her and look to AJ for staff guidance on what that looks like. We help support where we can and seek guidance from there.
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**[Member — Alyson Chapin:]** Do we have an opportunity to add more programming this year and next, or are we budgetarily restricted?
**Kyle Ehlers:** I think there’s always opportunity to be creative in how we offer things. We’re all probably aware of some of the budget factors we’ve faced, but there are creative ways to work around that — contracted instructors versus in-house staff, and so forth. I think there’s a lot of room to add more.
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**[Member:]** I’m sorry if I missed this — I was a little late — but has there been any progress on the Fourth of July event?
**Kyle Ehlers:** We will be hosting a Fourth of July event: Stars, Stripes, and Sunshine, down at the waterfront from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. We’ll start marketing next week in June. We’ll be partnering with the farmers market, hopefully the park run, and it’s a free family event — kids’ activities, food trucks, music. We’re hoping you’ll come down and spend the day with us.
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**[Member:]** Have you thought about before-and-after school programs at the school itself? Is that feasible financially?
**Kyle Ehlers:** Traditionally we were in the schools — we served all five schools within the city of Des Moines. Then the YMCA and a program called Right at School came into play. They’re currently contracted with Highline School District and are on-site at all the schools.
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**[Member:]** Kyle — and I know I’ve discussed this a bit with AJ — you mentioned senior services and expanding opportunities for people without transportation. We’ve approached the city this year to provide some transportation to Judson and Wesley for the summer concerts, and it’s essentially been 100% shut down. If you want to expand programs and help seniors, why are we shutting them out?
**Kyle Ehlers:** The shuttle or van we have is particularly for participation outings. We rely on public transportation and the individual retirement communities to provide those services to their residents. That’s not part of our business model. There’s a real expense there, plus liability, and we’d have to figure out pickup logistics. From our perspective, there’s better use of our resources in keeping focus on programming within our spaces.
**Member:** But it seems counterproductive to say you’re looking to help seniors participate in more things while turning down an opportunity to do exactly that.
**Kyle Ehlers:** I understand the concern, but what we’re actually seeing is higher participation through the Activity Center. The work we’re doing seems to be moving in the right direction. Not saying there won’t be changes in the future, but right now the focus really is on programming at our facilities.
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**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Has there been any outreach to Wesley and Judson about whether they would coordinate and provide transportation for their own residents to come to Beach Park for the concerts?
**[Member — Jeff Crompe:]** It was my understanding the arts commission was going to take the lead on reaching out to Wesley. I’ve personally met with the directors at both Wesley and Judson. Judson plans on attending some — maybe not all — of the concerts and bringing people. At this point, Wesley is committed to bringing people to one concert.
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Thank you. And you mentioned the before-and-after school programs used to be at all five elementaries. We heard about Highline contracting with the YMCA — but that leaves Woodmont out, since Woodmont is in the Federal Way School District. What’s being done there?
**Kyle Ehlers:** They use the Right at School program.
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** And what is the cost structure compared to when the city was running the program?
**Kyle Ehlers:** We haven’t looked into it because we haven’t been involved in child care in that format. We never went back to compare pricing since we’ve essentially exited that business.
**[Member — Alyson Chapin:]** I can speak to that as someone who pays for two mornings a week. It’s comparable. You have to commit a month ahead of time, there’s a waiting list, and they have a very limited number of spots. You pay at the start of each month with no flexibility. It’s been a lot more flexible with Camp Chaos — I can call the week before and say “Hey, I need care.”
**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** Could we get an estimate of what it would cost to provide transportation for people at Wesley and Judson? One of the things I’ve brought up a number of times is that we have companies willing to sponsor various things for the concerts. If we knew the cost, there might be sponsors willing to underwrite those buses.
**Kyle Ehlers:** We can look into it. I will say, those retirement communities do actually provide shuttle services, and I’d hope that when you reached out to them, we’d want them to be providing the service their residents are already paying for. But we can certainly look at what that cost would be.
**[Member:]** Could the concerts potentially become a field trip option through the Activity Center — if there’s enough interest?
**Kyle Ehlers:** We could look at that. One thing to consider is that we do pay the van driver, so there’s a staffing cost. And the summer concert series is free to residents, so adding transportation would be adding cost to a free event. Not saying it’s a bad idea — it’s something we could explore — but just things we’d have to think through.
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**Chair:** Thank you, Kyle. Moving on to the next item: the new city website. Presentation by Bonnie Wilkins. Please hold questions until the end.
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**Bonnie Wilkins:** Thank you, Chair. I’m Bonnie Wilkins, director of administrative services. I’m here to give you a brief update on our website.
About a year ago, we put out an RFP for a new website provider. We received several responses and had an internal review team of about eight people. We ultimately selected Civic Plus — a large company that many municipalities across the country use. We’re very comfortable with our selection.
Why did we make the change? What we heard from the public was that information was hard to find, you couldn’t navigate by searching, it was clunky, it didn’t look good, and council information — agendas, minutes, packets, and videos — was very difficult to locate. That’s what prompted the RFP.
Over the last year we’ve been working with this company and we’re getting close. One product we purchased with the new website is what they call audio integration. By April of 2027, municipalities will be required to be ADA-compliant on their websites — there are specific criteria for how materials must be presented so people with accessibility needs can access them. This feature will help us along the way, flagging things that need correction. We’re really excited about it.
We did a migration from our current site to the new site, and we’ve been cleaning it up — removing outdated information, adding current content. We hope to launch midsummer, maybe sooner, but we don’t want to commit to a specific date in case we need to step back.
We also engaged a firm called Art and Science Communications — Allison Daskcam and Corey Feckner, out of Texas — to help us through this process. They ran site analytics to determine which pages were being used and what content needed to carry over. They scrubbed our current site and made recommendations. Half of it makes sense to me and half of it doesn’t, but that’s why I have them.
Now we need beta testers. We need you to look at the site, check for missing or broken links, catch any misspellings we might have missed — when you’re in it every day, you stop seeing those things. On June 1st I’ll be sending you the link. There’ll be a spreadsheet to log what you find, and we’ll make corrections from there before launch.
That pretty much is my presentation.
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**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** How many pages is the new website?
**Bonnie Wilkins:** We migrated 138. We had up to 150, but we only migrated the content we needed.
**[Member — Alyson Chapin:]** Normally in a migration like this you have a grid — page by page, what’s broken or missing. Do you have something formalized like that?
**Bonnie Wilkins:** We don’t have anything formalized right now, but I have a weekly meeting with the firm and I can ask if they can prepare something. That’s a good idea.
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**Chair:** Thank you, Bonnie. Any other questions? All right. Moving on to announcements — we’ll hold these to ten minutes. We’ll start with Aileen and go around the table.
**[Aileen Evans:]** No announcements.
**[Bettina Carey:]** None — I’m sure Jeff will cover our ground.
**[Alyson Chapin:]** None for me.
**[Member:]** We have grant applications that have come in and we’ll be starting the review process. No other announcements.
**[Randy Richards:]** No announcements.
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**[Jeff Crompe:]** So — and I want to preface this by saying I sent this to Tara and she authorized me to bring it up tonight.
When the CAB first started, at each meeting the various committees would give a little update on what was going on. I thought that was great — good to hear what was happening with the seniors committee, what was happening with the arts committee. That doesn’t seem to be happening anymore, and it’s not even on the agenda. We’re the Citizens Advisory Board. I’d like to know what’s going on with the committees, and I think everyone here would too. Why was that eliminated?
**[Councilmember Jeremy Nutting:]** I’m sorry — this is my first meeting; I’m covering for Council Member DeSone. I don’t know the history of that. I do think the announcements portion would be a natural place for committee reports. I’ll ask Tara to comment.
**Tara Vaughan:** That was not the original intention of announcements — but this is a council-created group, and it will run however the council wants. If the council wants committee reports added back to the agenda, I’m happy to add that.
**Councilmember Nutting:** Jeff, let me get a chance to talk with Council Member Steinments about the concern. The deputy mayor and I have heard you, and more to come.
**Jeff Crompe:** It just seems odd that the group is no longer getting informed of what each committee is doing. Even when we did submit written reports a couple months back, those never saw the light of day. It seems counterproductive to what this board is charged with doing.
**Councilmember Nutting:** Understood. Staff and the two of us up here have heard it. More to come.
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**[Eddy Duggar:]** Nothing — I’m with him.
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**Deputy Mayor Achziger:** I have three events to share.
First, as you heard earlier, CES does partner with the Legacy Foundation. They’re having their major fundraiser on June 6th at the yacht club — still available. Online tickets, 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. They raise money to support community programs.
Second, the dedication of the new LMN Docks at the marina — Thursday, June 11th at 4:00 p.m.
Third, the Redondo Pier dedication — Saturday, June 13th at 11:00 a.m.
And a bit further out: Fourth of July at the marina, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. July 12th is Shark in the Park at Redondo, co-sponsored with the Mass Center for Highline. Lots of events. The city manager’s report has them all — subscribe if you don’t already.
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**[Jeff Crompe:]** The summer concert series is worth announcing. So — Wednesday evenings, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.:
– July 15th: Spike and the Impalers — a Northwest cover band that’s been out there for 25 years.
– July 22nd: Kitty May — a country cover band, fitting well with all that line dancing people are doing.
– July 29th: Nightwave — 80s new wave.
– August 5th: Abba Graphs — an ABBA tribute band, really fun.
– August 12th: Stevie and the Blue Flames — harmonica blues.
– August 19th: Power of Love — a Huey Lewis tribute band.
That’s the full lineup. We want everybody there — bring your friends, good food trucks are planned, and it’s going to be a great time.
**[Member:]** Can you give any details on the food trucks? Last year I remember there was one food truck and then the burger place. Will there be more variety this year?
**Jeff Crompe:** In years past there were supposed to be two food trucks plus the ice cream truck. Because of the marketing done so far, the city expects bigger crowds this year, so we’re now planning three food trucks plus the ice cream truck. The full lineup isn’t totally finalized yet. The beer garden will be there again as well.
There’s a June 19th watch party at the theater — US soccer — if anyone’s interested in that.
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**Chair:** All right, we’ve come to the end of the agenda. The next scheduled meeting is June 24th, 2026. Is there a motion to adjourn?
**Member:** I motion to adjourn.
**Member:** Second.
**Chair:** All those in favor?
**All:** I.
**Chair:** We are adjourned. Thank you all for your time.