Say More in Raymore
There's always more to learn, discover and talk about in Raymore, Missouri. This podcast shares information from the City of Raymore, including upcoming events, City project updates and insights into City departments and the people working to serve the community every day.
Say More in Raymore
Parks Transform a City: A Deep Dive into Raymore Parks with Director Nathan Musteen
Nathan Musteen, Director of Raymore Parks and Recreation, shares the transformative journey of developing award-winning, universally accessible parks and facilities that have put this Missouri city on the national recreation map. From his nature-filled childhood in the Ozarks to spearheading innovative park designs, Nathan reveals how his "why not us?" philosophy has created recreation spaces that serve all residents while attracting visitors from across the region.
• Growing up on a farm in the Ozarks influenced Nathan's passion for outdoor recreation and eventual career path
• T.B. Hanna Station transformed the original downtown area with Missouri's first inclusive playground and sprayground
• Hawk Ridge Park features the Hawks Nest Inclusive Playground, designed with the philosophy "all ages, all abilities"
• The Raymore Activity Center (RAC) and Centerview provide indoor recreation spaces for sports programs and events
• Recreation Park remains the "crown jewel" of the parks system, hosting numerous sports programs including the rapidly growing flag football league
• The annual Rugged Raymore mud run has become a beloved community event where everybody's smiling
• Future plans include a dog park and The Ranch, a 154-acre property that will offer unique recreation opportunities
Join us at our upcoming Rugged Raymore mud run, the Friday before school starts! It's our last big summer event before fall programs begin. For more information about all our parks and recreation opportunities, visit raymore.com/parks
Learn more about the City of Raymore's Communications Department at www.raymore.com/communications
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Threads @CityofRaymoreMO
Welcome to Say More in Raymore, the City of Raymore official podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Harmer, Communications Director for the City. Each episode will bring you news, updates and behind-the-scenes stories from your city government, covering projects, events and the people who help make Raymore a great place to live, work and visit. On today's episode we have Nate Musteen, the director of Raymore Parks and Recreation. Welcome, Nate,
Nathan Musteen:thank you.
Melissa Harmer:First tell me a little bit about you. You grew up in Northwest Arkansas, which is one of my favorite places. Tell me what that was like for you.
Nathan Musteen:I grew up in a little town called Pea Ridge, Arkansas. It's just literally, I think my house was five miles from the state line in Missouri, so we were right on it, right there beside Bella Vista, Bentonville, Rogers area. So you hit 49 and you go south and I'm basically home. So you hit 49 and you go south and I'm basically home, and it was awesome. I absolutely loved it. Had I not met my wife in college and blown out my knee and she got a job first, we'd probably be living down there instead of up here so.
Melissa Harmer:So you took advantage of being in the Ozark Mountains. Tell me you went to the state parks and explored all that stuff around there.
Nathan Musteen:Oh, yeah, oh yeah, I was a farm kid so I grew up on a 100-acre farm. My grandpa had a 300-acre farm, my uncle had another 100-acre farm or 50 acres, and so we were outdoor kids big time and it was in the Ozarks. So when you think of what Branson looks like and those types of the hills and stuff, those were our farms. So canoeing, camping, that was every weekend we actually had. I kept a canoe in the back of my truck.
Melissa Harmer:Oh nice.
Nathan Musteen:Yeah, we were one of those kids that grew up with gun racks in the back and we had tents and everything set up so we would go camping anywhere. We had access to all this farmland. I mean, I wasn't the only farm kid, all my buddies were, so we just had it ready to go. So if we want to go camping it was you just did and we went canoeing every afternoon after after school and very cool.
Melissa Harmer:Was a there, a creek near you or on your property?
Nathan Musteen:oh yeah, there was the Elk River, which is, I mean, that was 20 minutes from school, and then we had the Big Sugar and the Little Sugar, and the little sugar flowed right through my uncle's property. So we that's where we camped mostly was right there on the little sugar, and we would drop the canoe a couple of miles ahead. Then, uh, we would just truck down to Uncle Dub's house and then
Melissa Harmer:Uncle Dub, I love it.
Nathan Musteen:W. A. Walter Alexander, so he was uncle Uncle Dub we would just caravan and went canoe down and go camping, spend the night down on dub's Dub's and uh, that is so cool.
Melissa Harmer:as long as far back as I can remember my family family, we'd go down there that area at least once a year, camping and everything. Loved it so much. But you had it 20 minutes away, it was like four or five hours from me.
Nathan Musteen:Yeah, we were camping, especially in high school. My dad really liked it. We were on the creek every weekend and probably camping two or three times a month very cool growing up.
Melissa Harmer:So would you say you're more of a river or a lake person because you were also really close to beaver lake, right not very far away.
Nathan Musteen:No, no, we were 20 minutes from beaver lake. Growing up, I was a river kid or a creek kid. Now I'm more of a lake kid.
Melissa Harmer:Yeah, what about? I know you talked about tent camping a lot. What about now? Tent or cabin?
Nathan Musteen:Mostly cabins. I will say that I would still prefer to tent camp and do that, but my wife tends to win those arguments, and so we're at the point. Now, though, we really like just being on the go. The sitting by the lake and just relaxing is not really our thing. We want to get up and go hiking and go thing do stuff. So cabins and hotels are a lot easier, because you can just wake up and go and spend all day so that's kind of where we're in.
Nathan Musteen:The mode right now is I've still got too much energy to sit.
Melissa Harmer:Well, that's a good thing.
Nathan Musteen:We just keep going.
Melissa Harmer:So you've traveled to, you've taken some pretty cool vacations over the last few years. Would you say you're more of a beach or a mountain person or mountain.
Nathan Musteen:I really like Hawaii.
Melissa Harmer:Don't get me wrong. You had a really great experience there.
Nathan Musteen:Yes, but if you were to ask me, I'm heading to the mountains great experience there?
Melissa Harmer:yes, but uh, if you were to ask me, I'm heading to the mountains. Nice, no questions. Yeah, what is your favorite season?
Nathan Musteen:then do you have I actually? That's why I like the Midwest, because I like them all. I like them all for different reasons. We have all of them in extreme, all of them yeah, monthly yeah but, um, without the business of life and work and kids and stuff.
Nathan Musteen:The fall is my favorite relaxed season and the spring is my favorite restart season, which makes total sense on both of them. But being a tree guy, I really like the spring because I like planting trees and I like watching them sprout and grow and stuff like that. So that's energizing to me, kind of a fresh start every year.
Melissa Harmer:Nice. And one more question before we do get into the actual parks part of this what would you say is the coolest place you've ever been?
Nathan Musteen:I really liked Alaska. The Northwest is probably my favorite. This sounds weird, I'm going to give up some stuff, but I'm a big Northern exposure fan. It's a TV show from the nineties. It's like my all time favorite TV show and we were doing a road trip up in Seattle when I was in high school and the show was still on air and by Roslyn Washington, which is where it was filmed, and I recognized it and we had this caravan of like five or six of our families because we were doing a going to a family reunion up there and we literally pulled this caravan off and went to Roslyn Washington and I got to see the set and all of those things so did you see a moose walk through?
Nathan Musteen:I did not see a moose at that point.
Melissa Harmer:I did in Alaska.
Nathan Musteen:But that was just really impactful to me. Very cool Because it was my favorite show at the time and so I've got coffee mugs and all kinds of stuff from it that I probably would never have gone there if we just hadn't happened by Cool. And you asked me a while ago about like lakes or whatever. I'm a lake fan now because I have a history, like you talked about Beaver Lake, I was a park ranger on Beaver Lake you were.
Nathan Musteen:I didn't know that yeah, and that was really how I got headed into my field. And now my family is uh, we have my brother-in-law has a cabin at Table Rock, which they're connected with the Corps of Engineers, so and the White River, so that's really how I kind of transitioned into Parks and Rec.
Melissa Harmer:Nice, that's actually what I was going to ask you next how did you was the way you grew up. Obviously that was influential in what you chosen as a career.
Nathan Musteen:So if you look in my high school yearbook and you look at the senior pictures, I say what?
Melissa Harmer:do you want to be? Actually, could you please bring that in sometime. I do want to see it. I would love to.
Nathan Musteen:Yes showing pictures of myself is a favorite thing of mine. I actually said on there that I would be a park ranger and I worked for the Corps of Engineers on their maintenance side and cleaned the buildings and stuff during high school and so I got to see the guy, the rangers, all the time and it really just excited me. I liked it.
Nathan Musteen:So I went to college for a rec degree and I came back to Beaver Lake and I worked as a park ranger for a couple summers and that's what got me started and how I ended up in local government or municipal versus the Corps of Engineers is you don't get to choose where you go in the Corps right you sign up and they send you where you go, and my now wife, but then girlfriend, I mean we were going to be engaged and we were still in college and there just wasn't stability on what I could pick and choose, where my counselor in college said I think you need to transition to this because you get to do what you like, but you can kind of pick and choose where you want to go. And so that's really how I ended up with local government.
Nathan Musteen:We didn't have parks and rec agencies down there. Growing up you had a YMCA and most everything is kind of on your own. You know local parents ran the sports groups. It wasn't like a parks department. I didn't see any of that until I moved into the Kansas City area.
Melissa Harmer:Yeah, yeah, how long have you been here with the city?
Nathan Musteen:I started October 7th in 2002. Been here with the city, I started October 7th in 2002. It was my start date originally. I worked 10 years and really developed all of the sports, the programs. I was the first true recreation employee the city had, so we weren't doing any sports or anything until I got here and we took all that on and then I worked 10 years and then I left.
Nathan Musteen:I went down to the city of Peculiar. They asked me to come down and kind of help them get started. So I was there for not even two years, about a year and a half, and the director job for Raymore opened up and I had several former park board members, city staff members asking me hey, are you going to apply? And I wasn't sure I wanted to. I didn't know if I wanted to come back. My heart was always here but I wasn't sure if I wanted to apply and not get it. I struggled with that and I ended up turning my application in the last day, of course, and I had a former park board member. He called me. I was coming home from Peculiar, going home for lunch, and he called me and said what are you doing? Why haven't you turned this in?
Melissa Harmer:And.
Nathan Musteen:I said I don't think I can handle not getting it and he said you need to turn this in. And I actually had the application filled out. It was sitting in the truck seat beside me when he was calling and I just took a left at 58 and went to city hall, turned it in all right, so that was it nice.
Melissa Harmer:Now I've been back 10 years yeah, and so, and, and in that 10 years, I mean, our park system has changed how like so much, so much even some of the things that have come online, I guess, in the last 10 years. It's just incredible to think about.
Nathan Musteen:We have had just a explosion of improvements, but just remarkable things that most departments in cities our size will never see, and we've been able to do it in a 10-year stretch. Yes, we've won major local, regional and national awards for things that we've done, which is awesome, and I like talking about it. I don't like, and I like talking about it. I don't like getting the credit for it, because I'm just pushing everybody else to do things for me is what I'm doing.
Melissa Harmer:Well, sure, but you obviously played a big part. But yes, and I love that, in Raymore there are so many firsts in our parks, first in the state, first in the country. That's really cool for a, you know, at the time 23,000 population city, a small town.
Nathan Musteen:I'm pretty competitive when it comes to making sure our town has the same things as others, and that's one of the things I like about going to national conferences and stuff, because you get out of your little bubble and you see what others are doing. And I'm always the when I see something I'm like, why not us? More so than we could never be that. So I start pushing for things, I start looking for things that is not normal in our area and I go and try and find them and figure out how to make it happen. Sometimes we sometimes we get a win, sometimes we don't.
Nathan Musteen:It's certainly a challenge, but it's great to have that positive attitude of like let's see if we can do this oh yeah, and I've had some tough conversations with some of my bosses on things that we've tried, and I've had some really good conversations with them on things that we've tried that have worked out, and none of it really bothers me in terms of let's go try for the next thing. I'm, I really just want to be the leader in, specifically, cass County. I want to be driving and be motivating for other cities to like we want to be those guys. We want to do with those guys. We want to do more with less like those guys, and I want other directors that I mentor or work with to to look and say if he can do it, I can do it.
Nathan Musteen:There's no reason why we can't do this. And if you start looking around the other cities around us, you see things that we've already accomplished four, five, six, seven years ago that they're doing now and they're calling, asking me questions how we got it, and I feel like, without being just in their face, pushing them, I'm leading by example and I'm just there to say, yeah, let's do it for your town too. This is great. You know I'm competitive but I'm not selfish. Well, that's good.
Melissa Harmer:Share the knowledge and the example. Yeah, so let's just go through a couple of our parks and our big accomplishments over the last couple years. Do you want to start with what? Do you want to start with TB Hanna Station? Yeah, okay, that used to be our little downtown back in the day.
Nathan Musteen:Yes, when I started there were a row of the old municipal buildings right off Washington Street and police was there, public works was there and there were like four park employees at the time that were there. The buildings were really, really cool. I wish there was a way we could have saved them and restored them and used them, but they were way beyond repair. Restored them and used them, but they were way beyond repair. So they were, uh, condemned and demolished. And right next to it, on the corner of maple in washington, by the church, there was a little park called jc park. Jc's was an old, uh, civic group, kind of like the optimist club or whatever, and there was a little shed and that's where they kept the parks, lawnmowers in the shed. And then there was, like it was old school park, like from the 70s, like a teeter-totter and an old steel swing I mean nothing much A sandbox, right.
Nathan Musteen:Well, when we tore down those buildings, we took that stuff out and we made that hole which was basically a half block, the farmer's market. There was nothing there but grass, there was no parking, nothing. We just mowed it and we used our field striper and we striped out boxes and that's where the farmer's market started and it stayed that way and up until my first time I left and that time I was gone they started building what we now have as the depot and that finished up. That was the first project I finished up. Former engineer Mike Kras and I wrapped that project up. He really led it and then kind of passed it off to me.
Nathan Musteen:So when I got here 10 years ago it was just the shelter, the depot. Since then we've been able to acquire property around us, and so the first thing we did was we had an agreement with the church and we bought the old parsonage that was across where the spray ground is now. There used to be a house there that was the church parsonage, and so we bought that from the church and we built parking along there as a shared use parking space for them. And then where the skate shop is now, or the playground, there's a little building we call it the skate shop. That used to be the post office in town back in the I think they started. They built it late 60s and I mean it's just a concrete box is all it is Very basic.
Nathan Musteen:But it was the post office and we were able to buy that and that's where the old railroad used to run through there. And so when we started looking at what to do with this park, mike Grass, to his credit, had already built the depot. What we call the depot was the shelter, but he picked it to look like an old railroad depot because that's where the town railroad started and the old depot station was. So I just went off of that and we started thinking about what we could do train theme, how we could incorporate the history, because that is the original downtown. We don't really have a downtown like an old courthouse or main street in belton. We Raymore doesn't really have that. We, you know, we kind of let it go.
Nathan Musteen:We didn't keep up with it, so we're having to rebuild it and I wanted to put a park in that space that anchored that downtown and kept original town connected to the new part, and so there was a purpose to drive down in there and I think we've done a pretty good job of getting people going down there. The spray ground and playground are huge. We just put a lot of effort into conserving the history so we restored the old post office and we made it it's a storage building and then a skate shops. For the winter, when the ice rink is up, we rent skates out of it and we have a all-inclusive playground, the all-inclusive spray ground. We were able to secure 135 000 donation from variety kc and that really helped us kind of regionalize the park.
Melissa Harmer:People know about it because of that and that name recognition and if anyone doesn't know that, the inclusive part is that it's accessible to all.
Nathan Musteen:Yes, yes, and the train there that is customized. That's the only train like that that we know of in the world, which is basically one of their standard units, and we actually took the train and we spread it out and we customized the train to accommodate mobility devices, wheelchairs and things like that. It they you can buy the train. It's just really tiny tunnels that most children would have to get on their hands and knees and crawl through.
Nathan Musteen:Oh, yeah, so we just spread it out, yeah, you know. And so that that's the park that became like the first in the state of playground and spray ground and the third in the country that had an all-inclusive spray ground. So at that point it wasn't even three acres, it was about a two-acre park. It was a city block down there but a lot of stuff packed in two acres and we won some national awards for that one.
Melissa Harmer:Yes, yes, and I got to go with you yeah to go, except one of them which was very cool.
Nathan Musteen:Charleston is that where we went.
Melissa Harmer:We were in charlotte, north carolina and apwa, our second national apwa award for one of our parks yes, our other apwa national award was for hawkridge park, before we even got all the cool stuff in there that was the.
Nathan Musteen:That award was uh, hawkridge has gotten to that award for apwa. The first one was for the master plan. They uh did the master plan right as that one was completed was when I came back, so nobody had. It was basically a fresh print of a master plan and it was sitting on my desk when I got here and I just took it and ran.
Melissa Harmer:Nice because it's 79 acres. Basically it was just rolling hills and a lake right.
Nathan Musteen:Yeah, we bought Hawk Ridge in 2008, and there was, it was nothing. I mean, we were still leasing it for hay Right to local farmers, and we built this tiny little 10 parking spot, asphalt, at the end of the street so you could at least walk down and go fishing, and we didn't even mow around it. I mean, it was just what it was, yeah then we started.
Nathan Musteen:It got traction and started mowing around it. When I got here, we uh, we put the place, the the master plan in place. Now, some of these, this growth that we've had it is largely due to the voters we passed. We passed two no tax, increased bond issues, four park improvements hawkridge park and tb hannah were both built off of those right supplemented by grants and and donations and stuff.
Melissa Harmer:But hawkridge was just a big old hayfield when I started 10 years ago and it is so cool to see what it's turned into and, you know, lately we've been getting a lot of regional recognition for the trails and it's really cool to see how we're being noticed around the kansas city metro, for it's fun to get on.
Nathan Musteen:Facebook and you know those social media sites and you're looking at top ten playgrounds or top ten trails and we're in it? How do?
Melissa Harmer:they know about us yeah.
Nathan Musteen:And it's not anything we're doing, it's just word of mouth. People are coming, and that's what you want.
Melissa Harmer:That is what you want, and one of the bigger pieces of this is the actual park, because of the special I guess, special designs and the grading of the path can only be so many degrees and everything is accessible. So it's Missouri's first what you would call inclusive, fully accessible park. You can use a mobility device to go all around the park, all around the trail down to the dock to fish, so that's really up to our amphitheater stage. No steps, it's a concrete path. So everything is accessible, including our gem, the Hawk's Nest inclusive playground, which was such a long process of getting there. But, uh, just the like, how like proud, like I feel like we are, of finally doing that.
Nathan Musteen:That was such a huge accomplishment I think the Hawk's Nest is, uh, really my a picture of my career you know when we started designing Hawk Ridge Park, the inclusive part of it was not in the master plan.
Melissa Harmer:Right.
Nathan Musteen:I had gone to a conference and at the time I had. You know, when you do things like that, you usually have somebody you're champion, you know like you're closely connected to, and they have these, these needs, and so you fight to provide that. I didn't have that. I'm like I just I went to a couple classes and stuff and I just kept thinking our town does not serve this population and I need to. And I started looking at I was very uh, I don't know purposeful in everything we did, like how do I make sure that meets ADA standards and beyond?
Melissa Harmer:Right.
Nathan Musteen:And so we just started building it and I I quit saying no to things. I said no, this is what we're going to do, I'll figure out how to pay for it, I'll figure out how to overcome this. And little piece by little piece, it was just like, and then it became automatic, like when we were designing or we'd have a consultant, and it was a. It was an automatic. They were bringing things this meets your, this meets your design standards. I didn't have design standards. I had my own mission, like right, this is what we're going to do right there's no design standards in there, it's just.
Nathan Musteen:But it just kept compounding and building. And so the department of conservation. They came in and they really liked what we were doing with the lake. We we entered an agreement with them on helping maintain the lake itself and which required us to just provide free fishing. So we don't charge for it or anything like that still need your license.
Nathan Musteen:You still have to follow state rules but there's no charge to fish and they just absolutely loved that we were inclusive and so they. They gave us a couple hundred thousand dollars to do a floating dock that was ADA compliant and accessible. A fishing jetty over by the amphitheater that you can wheel right up to the lake and fish off of the restrooms on the south side are accessible so you can get in there. And then we just started going from there. I just didn't stop at that point and we had a playground.
Melissa Harmer:There was $100,000 for a playground in there and I said, oh my goodness, that's a little bit that's great.
Nathan Musteen:We're going to get a swing set, you know, and I met, I met some folks at a conference through unlimited play and my park superintendent, rulo, steve Rulo, and I, we, we just said we got to do this, we got to figure out how to do this, and so we started off with the idea of we're going to take and make it a $500,000 playground and by the time we were done, we had about a $1.4 million playground.
Melissa Harmer:I think that's somewhere around there, I don't know.
Nathan Musteen:Yeah, but we went from $100,000 to, let's just say, $1.4 million playground. Now it took me a while. We got a grant for $250,000. We did a fundraiser, the gala that you led the charge on.
Melissa Harmer:And I would like to just thank the leadership here for letting me do that, because nobody knew what I was doing. But they're like, okay, go ahead. And I remember that was at the very beginning of fundraising. I think we raised $21,000 at that event and I was like cool. But also, oh my gosh, we have so much further to go. And then we had the pandemic kind of right after that and I'm like, oh my gosh, is this ever going?
Nathan Musteen:to happen. I thought we were going to lose during the pandemic, because you just couldn't do anything, but ironically it just flipped the other way. I just kept making it bigger and we, we just kept going, and and I say that that playground represents my career is because I just kept looking towards the end, like we can do it better. We can do it better, don't worry about this, we'll get there. We can do it better, and it was about six years later we finished it yeah.
Nathan Musteen:And there was less than half of that budget was city funded.
Melissa Harmer:Right, we did get grants, we did have lots of individuals we sold equipment and we uh donations and stuff and so I'm just really proud of it I think it's fantastic.
Nathan Musteen:I love that people use it. I hate that people abuse it right, because you take ownership in there and and I realize that things are going to get broken and things are going to get vandalized. But it hurts a little more with that one.
Melissa Harmer:Well and also, I think, the best part. You know, we did this so that not just children with physical disabilities, but also a grandparent, maybe with a walk-up, can go all the way to the top of the treehouse with their grandchild. And there are special areas for children with autism. If they need a little break from all of the stuff going on, there's a little kind of like cubby type thing they can sit in.
Nathan Musteen:That is why I call it. It's universally designed, all-inclusive. There's all-inclusive, which every playground company now says all their stuff is all-inclusive. It's not about the equipment, it's about how you design the equipment to be used, which is what I liked with unlimited play, because they would take standard equipment. Say no, if we put it here, if we add this, you, you take a whole different element, and so I will describe the spray ground and the hawk's nest as universally designed inclusive playground, right, right, and basically meaning we have different ways of getting around, but you go your way, I go mine, and we can meet at the same place.
Nathan Musteen:And our tagline is all ages, all abilities. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Melissa Harmer:And the best part is when, after we opened those and I'm probably going to try not to cry, but we started getting messages from people saying you have changed my child's life.
Nathan Musteen:We moved here for this.
Melissa Harmer:And it was so like. This is the reason we did it, you know, and it's being recognized and it's actually like supporting, you know, the kids who never got to play on playgrounds because they couldn't get on the stuff.
Nathan Musteen:I know. So I just I love it so much. So I said earlier that you know a lot of people have a person or a family member that they champion, and I didn't really have anybody close. I just knew I wanted to do this champion and I didn't really have anybody close. I just knew I wanted to do this. But as we got going and you know, you learn a lot about that demographic and it's a higher percentage than you would have, than you would guess yes, my cousin which we grew up very close back home and he's like my brother.
Nathan Musteen:His oldest son, austin, is, uh, autistic. I never really we didn't put that together, you know we didn't. He was just austin, that's who he was. After I built it, I, we, we wrapped up the hawks nest and all that, I sent Josh pictures of it and videos of look what we did. I said I didn't realize I was doing it, but I built this for you to take Austin to, because I went from a parent's perspective of what would I do if my children needed this, and so I wasn't doing it for Austin. I actually had Josh in mind, like I'm going to build the playground for the parent, so they don't have to worry about it Right.
Nathan Musteen:So that was the perspective I came from is it's not trying to find play equipment that accommodates them, it's trying to make a parent's life easier and that's why we decided to do a playground side by side so in one setting they could go and picnic and sit in the shade, and they can have a water park and they can have a playground and not have to go anywhere. We're a one stop shop right there.
Melissa Harmer:Yeah, yeah, it's a really both of those playgrounds or both of those parks are really amazing for what they offer, yeah, so.
Nathan Musteen:I'm really proud of them, and I think we've just set the tone like you. Just do it. There's no.
Melissa Harmer:I mean there's no Kind of a high bar now, nathan, it is. It's expensive too.
Nathan Musteen:It's not. It is expensive it takes me a while to fund and build things because we don't have a large budget and if you look at our budget, we are like toeing the line every year of but if you're not aggressive and you're not purposeful in doing it, you'll just get sucked into the current and just do what everybody else is doing, and I want to be different.
Melissa Harmer:I don't want to be the same.
Nathan Musteen:Keep everything very intentional, so there'll there'll be years that we don't do projects because we're saving up to do them later, because we want to go bigger and better and do it in my mind, the right way. Yeah, yeah, and there's. There's sacrifices we make for doing that. You know we could back off, but we ask our staff to do more so that we can do more and I think in the long run it's just a benefit and a blessing for the staff for the town everybody and that does mean everything is in phases so there are a lot of phases.
Melissa Harmer:I've never, you know, at some point we're going to get done with the phases.
Nathan Musteen:I've never done a project whole right.
Melissa Harmer:You know it's always phased out because we want it to be the best it could be.
Nathan Musteen:There might be a few phases and I think that's one of my approaches is I may not be able to get it all done, but I'll get it all done eventually, and so I just go for it, like okay so I can only afford half of it. Well, let's do half, and that gives us a reason to do the other half. And that's kind of how I approach it is right you just got to start, and if you wait you'll never get there. You just go, and so that's what I do seems to be working.
Melissa Harmer:I hope and I mean, and, like you said, you know the parks or the playgrounds built for the parents, with the parents in mind. Our parks are not just for children, like I love. Now that sunset lane has opened, I come in to work yeah that way you all set your cruise control, because it is so hard right now to go 25 it is, it is.
Melissa Harmer:I set my cruise control every day through there, but I love looking over because my other route into town before that open I I didn't drive by any parks, so I love looking over and just seeing so many people out there every morning, uh, utilizing the trails and it's just. It's just one thing that encourages physical fitness, boosts your mental health, you get exposed to nature and trees and it's just so beneficial to, I think, just your mental well-being in addition to being outside and being physically active.
Nathan Musteen:Outside of summer camp or sports leagues that specific to the younger age groups, our parks are utilized by adults more than kids, You'd say so.
Melissa Harmer:Yeah.
Nathan Musteen:There's not a time I don't go to the park and see more adults than I do kids.
Melissa Harmer:And we do have a good like. They're kind of spread out throughout town, so you're actually not usually too far from one. In most areas of the city, which is nice, we do have a good number of parks and we have a good trail system.
Nathan Musteen:Yes, slash sidewalk that connects them, and that's one of my projects next year is kind of overall signage of the parks.
Melissa Harmer:Resigning, I'm actually really looking forward to that. I hope I'm helping with that. You will be perfect, okay, and then?
Nathan Musteen:the. The trails will be a huge component of signage. So we want to make the trails user-friendly and allow people to be able to find routes and loops and exercise you know ways that they can know where to go on a trail and not just a. Okay, well, it ends, let's just turn around and go back. No, you can loop almost anything you want. Sure, we just need to teach them how and provide that.
Melissa Harmer:Right, that'll be part of it next year. I'm pretty excited about that that. Actually, I am really looking forward to that project as well.
Nathan Musteen:That project I've had in mind for about eight years and we just kept expanding. I know that's the hard thing.
Melissa Harmer:I know that's the hard thing. You know we have these little accordion maps that we had made a couple years ago and handed out. People are like, oh, do you have another? Well, we just keep adding streets and we keep adding trails. So maybe next year, at the beginning of the year, maybe we'll be close enough we can print it off again. But we do have online on our website we have trail maps right now at rainwatercom, so just click on the trails option.
Melissa Harmer:Yeah, we have some trail work going on right now actually, if you want to talk about that.
Nathan Musteen:Yeah, we are redoing most of our trail system, anything that was built prior to 2018, we went and we passed a maintenance bond. Well, we didn't pass it. We just took out a maintenance bond to fund the refurbishing of the trails. So all of the old trail system that was once asphalt, aging, we're replacing it with new 10-foot-wide concrete. So Recreation Park has been done, Memorial Park has been done, Ward Park wrapped up yesterday. They're going to Good Parkway, which is between Lucy Webb and Stone Gate. That was the very first project I ever in my career got to work on and I was a rookie and my boss just kind of let me tag along at the time and just kind of watch. So we built that in 2003.
Melissa Harmer:So it's lasted 22 years With concrete like no more asphalt. It's all concrete that's going to last longer.
Nathan Musteen:These are what I'm calling my retirement projects. I won't have to redo them before I retire they're fantastic and we're just. We're at the point now where a lot of our phases of TB Hanna, hawk Ridge, the bulk of those things are done, and now the trail system is getting redone and it just felt like, okay, we could probably do this sign project.
Melissa Harmer:And then just add and tweak it as we go.
Nathan Musteen:And so that's why I went ahead and put it in.
Melissa Harmer:Let's get going. I mean, it's going to be a lot of signage, it's going to be a huge project.
Nathan Musteen:But it needs to be done, and I think the community is going to notice it and appreciate it a lot. Right, because as we built these, we've just taken the old signs down and haven't put them up, so there's very little signage out there. We know the rules, but not everybody does, because they're not signed. So it does get frustrating from a staff perspective of why are they doing this? Well, we're not telling them that that's not allowed, or we're not telling them that they can, and so it's just time, and I think our park system has been developed enough that we can do it.
Melissa Harmer:Do you want to talk about some of our facilities the Raymore Activity Center at Centerview and what we have available with those?
Nathan Musteen:Yes, I'll talk about the RAC first, because that was the one thing in my first tenure when I was doing the sports. And see, now we have three people doing what I did as one person in the 2000s you know, that's how far we've come and grown is we've added a rec coordinator to do all the summer camps and the special events and we have a specific athletic coordinator. That's just sports. We've grown so much and we have a recreation superintendent over facilities, which we never had any. So we've come a long way and we're still not very big, but we do a whole lot with what we have. I say all that to.
Nathan Musteen:When I first started. We were in the schools 100%. I was renting gymnasiums for volleyball. The school district was still doing basketball and eventually they said, hey, this is a beast, we can't do anymore. Do you guys want it? And I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, I do, but I don't know where I'm gonna put it. So we just kept taking things and it was always a dream to like man, I wish we had a gym, because Belton had the community center, harrisonville had a community center, you know, and we were up and coming, same size, just competing, and we had didn't have anything, and so always.
Melissa Harmer:Well, come on, now we had the little park house we had the park house, that's right couldn't really do a lot in there, though spent a lot of time in that park house.
Nathan Musteen:You know you just dreaming like man, if we just had a gym and it. I never really saw it happening. And then I did my 10 years and I left, never thinking I'd be back. And when I came back in 2015, that was the first thing they handed me was hey, while you were gone, we did this feasibility study and we want to do this. It's basically a community center, but we're going to split it into two buildings and we're going to give you an event center and then a gymnasium. And I was just thinking, wow, did I come back at?
Melissa Harmer:the right time, you know.
Nathan Musteen:And so we went to the voters for that first 2016 no tax increase bond issue and it passed. And now we have Centerview, now we have the RAC. And I think a lot of folks come at us and ask like why do you not have like a community center like Belton or Harrisonville and you don't have a pool? And I'm like well, we have all those things. We just have them separate and better. And I say that as a little bit of a dig to my buddies over in Belton because I can.
Melissa Harmer:We get to do that sometimes.
Nathan Musteen:But I'm also I'm not lying our center view event space is so much better, I mean, than what you would add to a community center. You know Right, the RAC is so much more flexible and usable because we simplified it as opposed to overdoing it to where sometimes there's just this level of simplicity that makes it more usable than if you just add everything and add everything and now it's complex and you got to figure out how to make it all work together. The RAC is what it is.
Nathan Musteen:People come in all the time saying, well, where's the, uh, the gym equipment and you know the fitness stuff? Or why didn't you build a pool? And my first answer is we wanted to build gymnasiums so that we could play sports inside without having to go to the school all year long all year long. Yeah, well man, I wish we really had fitness equipment. I'd be here and I'm like there's four you know gyms, Gyms through town, in town, yeah, if I built one, nobody makes money.
Melissa Harmer:Everybody loses.
Nathan Musteen:And that's what I kept telling them, like there's no point in it. I can't do this cheaper than they can, but I can do this better than anybody else can. So we built this and we are rented all the time. It has our summer camp it. We have open play volleyball on Monday nights. We have open play basketball in the winter. We have walk-in an indoor walking RAC, adult leagues, youth leagues. We have private volleyball clubs are our largest renter of the RAC and they're in there year round. I mean, we just wrapped up, not even a year ago, the expansion which added a whole nother gym, indoor pickleball courts, two more volleyball courts and those rooms two party rooms multi-part.
Nathan Musteen:We call it the sportsmanship, so there's the resilience room, and what was the other one I should know? I named it but we, you can rent those rooms as private parties so you can have a birthday party in there plus a court, and so you can have uh kids birthday parties where you bring in pizza and do all this stuff and then they can go out and play basketball for a couple hours as a private rental. It's great, can't find it either.
Melissa Harmer:Oh, it's called Full Multipurpose Space, larger multipurpose room and smaller multipurpose room on the website. Maybe we need to update that. I know I named those. Yes, yes, so the RAC is fantastic.
Nathan Musteen:We really like it, and averaging 100 kids a day for summer camp tells you that it's what parents wanted and we have room to grow Right. You know, 100 kids is not anywhere near capacity of what we could do. Centerview Centerview is such a jewel do Centerview? Centerview is such a jewel? I said when we did the grand opening of Centerview that Parks and Rec finally has a home.
Nathan Musteen:That is where we office and for at the time I had only 13, 14 total years of Raymore, but in that 14 years our office had bounced around three different places because we didn't have anywhere of our own works. Building old downtown for a little bit we were in a trailer behind the original city hall, then we were at the public works down by the uh, where they currently are. Then we bought the old park house and if you were in there it wasn't an office, it was just an old house.
Melissa Harmer:that was your. Would your office space like in the living room or a bedroom or something?
Nathan Musteen:I had the back bedroom yeah, I chose the back bedroom because I had the window looking over the park, but it truly is our home. It's. Our offices are there, mine's over there. But the flexibility of that. We can run programs or we can run classes, you can do weddings, you can do receptions, conferences, trainings blood drives concerts.
Nathan Musteen:I don't think there's anything that we haven't tried and it's not worked well. What's great about it is it's got the patio and the fire pit so you can do evening stuff. We just wrapped up a half a million dollar boardwalk butterfly gardens behind it that is now connected to the trail system. This is the first growing season, but wait till next year when all those things hit.
Nathan Musteen:I can't wait if you walk back there now, there's a lot of color, right, a lot of flowers and just they always say with the landscaping plan, give it three years, it'll be at full capacity in three years. If it's anything like what we're expecting, it's going to be just beautiful.
Nathan Musteen:We're actually going to submit that as a as an award recipient and we're nominating the project right for uh, for an award and and we'll see how it goes, you, you don't win unless you nominate. I'm not one that typically nomin, but the firm that helped design it. They want to Sure and I'm like sure I'll help you do whatever.
Melissa Harmer:And also I mean how important it is to have Monarch Waystation. Yeah, you know, we have endangered pollinators.
Nathan Musteen:Right.
Melissa Harmer:And so that will be a perfect space back there for them.
Nathan Musteen:It'll end up being about six acres of Mon native plantings and stuff, so it's it's big it's.
Melissa Harmer:It's going to be really cool. Yes, the plants are kind of small now, but I can just imagine what they're going to be in the next couple years and what's great about that particular project.
Nathan Musteen:It's also a stormwater project. Those were just basins that collected stormwater and then it dissipated out.
Melissa Harmer:We just enhanced it and made it better yeah, and so it's functional, but now it's pretty. Now it's pretty.
Nathan Musteen:That's exactly right, yeah and if you've not walked the trail, the boardwalk back there, it's just fantastic. It is really cool. We have signage back there of what the plants are going to be and what we've done and how it works. Just really proud of that project, I think. It's it unique. A lot of cities don't get to do things like that because it's not necessary. We could have not done anything back there and it would have worked just fine. It was just the approach that we always have of well, why not, let's try it. So that one we took to the voters and we asked for their permission to do this back there and it was approved and with no tax increase. So I think we did a pretty good job. I think all of those no tax increase bond issuance projects I think our voters are proud and pleased with what we've done.
Melissa Harmer:And it just enhances the quality of life for our residents. We're not the fastest growing city, for nothing.
Nathan Musteen:Right, that's true. That is true. I mean, there's components of why you are a fast growing city and people that don't believe that parks and recreation are a part of that. I don't know what they're looking at, because if you're not coming to a town for their parks and their athletics and just the natural beauty of the town and having things to do in town, why are you living there?
Nathan Musteen:You know, and I just wanted to. I think always it's just been my. I want to make sure that what I'm doing is a major component of why your town is thriving and growing, and I just tried to do that, and sometimes you hit it sometimes you don't. Some people don't care about parks, and that's some. That's all they care about so I just try to be right in the mix, no matter what it is.
Melissa Harmer:yeah, yeah, yeah. Parks are the one place you can essentially just go to for free anywhere.
Nathan Musteen:Well, as much as I hated the pandemic, which I know everybody did Not the best time. But where was everybody going?
Melissa Harmer:Yeah, the parks were the only thing you could do.
Nathan Musteen:We were so busy, I mean, we just shut down all our sports and stuff. But from a maintenance perspective we were slammed during that time because our parks were getting so used and I think our town really found our park system during that because there there wasn't anything else to do you, I mean, and if you wanted to go outside we were the destination to go. And I think our community found us during that time and we haven't stopped since then.
Melissa Harmer:That's right, that's right, so that's great, that is great.
Nathan Musteen:There's a positive out of a negative right, yeah, yeah.
Melissa Harmer:So here we are 52 minutes into our 25 minute podcast.
Nathan Musteen:Am I a two-parter? You might be a two-parter, or am I just? You know, take a break.
Melissa Harmer:So I know we talked a lot about a lot of areas, but we didn't talk about the sports and recreation opportunities. We still have Recreation Park, which is down where the RAC, the Rheemar Activity Center, is located. That's where the majority of our sports happen, and what are we gearing up for?
Nathan Musteen:Okay. So Recreation Park. As much as I love Hawkeridge and as much as I love TB Hanna, recreation Park is still our centerpiece. It's still our crown jewel. It is the one that consistently draws people from out of town. Not say good things and not compliment or not. You know, come to me and say, man, I wish you guys would come show our parks department what needs to be done. You know that's the ultimate compliment when they're coming and saying, even though it's there's not much, it is just aesthetically beautiful and yeah it's.
Nathan Musteen:It's my guys take so much pride in keeping rec park pristine because it's used and if you don't stay up on it as much as we use it right, you will. You will tear it apart and so we put a lot of effort and a lot of time in there and big time sponsorships with big green sponsor uh ship. That we did last year of redoing all the islands in the roundabout right. That was huge. You don't drive down there and not see the work they did and think this park is beautiful. Yep, you know, it's just the way it is. So we put a lot of effort in there.
Nathan Musteen:Our soccer program, our flag football, which is our fastest growing sport, is flag football. You will notice in sports that as our professional teams go, so do our youth sports go. Ten years ago when the Royals were really good, our baseball numbers were skyrocketing. Now that the Chiefs have had a pretty decent five run, our flag football is just going crazy and our baseball is kind of softening a little bit. So you see sports come and go. Soccer is the same way. When, uh, when sporting kc was doing really good, soccer was really good. We got the world cup coming up, so we expect to see soccer really take off next year.
Nathan Musteen:Kc current yeah, the current deal a lot of a lot, and so our sports are extremely popular right now and we keep RAC personally, we keep RAC of our numbers in comparison to the other cities. We share play and the goal with the South Metro Sports Group is to stay consistent. So you can share if you need to, but stay in-house if you don't have to. We're literally at a point where we don't have to share. We're share-playing because they need us. We can stay in-house in almost every sport, maybe a couple divisions or the older ones where just numbers aren't there. So my rec team is leading the charge and I mean we just are bigger than the others and I don't say that to brag, it's just what the numbers are hey, yeah you know.
Nathan Musteen:but with that I mean that's great, but it also there's a lot of abuse on your fields and on your equipment and you're maxing out, and so when your sports takes up more time, then you're drop in play and for regular folks it's not there because you're maxed out. So is there room to grow? Yeah, I mean, we can always take more. You know, my dad always said all it takes is more money.
Melissa Harmer:Hey, that's it no big deal. Yeah, if we want to add more.
Nathan Musteen:it's just going to cost us a little more, and then we build it up and go. But our big thing coming up right now is fall sports, so soccer, baseball, softball, basketball is coming up and volleyball is coming up those are big and flag football. So I mean we're about to hit them all. A week from tomorrow we have the. Is it a week from tomorrow, maybe two weeks from tomorrow, we have the.
Nathan Musteen:is it a week from tomorrow, maybe two weeks from tomorrow, we have the rugged Raymore, our mini mud run yeah, which started that I used to do a couple of the mud runs and the whole time I was doing those like, uh, the tough mudders and stuff. All I kept thinking at the time was man, I wish my boys could do this. This is so cool, this would be so cool for kids. And when we got done, I was looking and the city of Columbia did one and I literally just stole the idea.
Melissa Harmer:You were.
Nathan Musteen:inspired A former employee, jerry, and I come up with the idea. She wanted to do it and I had done them before, and so I come up with a lot of the ideas and it's just been fantastic. It's so much fun.
Melissa Harmer:I love seeing the kids running through, like so many times they're just covered in mud from head to toe, Biggest smiles on their faces it is shoes missing. It is just so fun.
Nathan Musteen:It's the one event and even my maintenance guys will notice, because that's one that they have to work. A lot of times those guys do their 8 to 5s and they don't see what they do in the evenings. This one we work and they notice everybody's smiling. It's the one event, one thing that you know in a sport if a bad call's made, made, a parent's going to be frustrated how they're playing, or the mud run, everybody's smiling, everybody's happy. You get done and the parents are like go again. All they're doing is getting them tired. You know that's. It's just one of those community events where we have so many volunteers because people want to volunteer for those stations. They love watching it. We, the optimist Club, comes out every year.
Melissa Harmer:Every year? Yeah, and those folks.
Nathan Musteen:You know we're having to haul them down to some of those spots because they're in some pretty tricky areas of Hawkeridge Park that's hard to get to. They're troopers, they just love it. So that's coming up and we do that always the Friday before school starts. Our idea is that's kind of like the last summer blowout before school, so let's go get muddy and let's go wear out the park system and that's our last big thing before traditional stuff starts up again.
Melissa Harmer:And I think one of the most fun parts of that too is when they're done. Sometimes South Metro Fire will be there like hosing them off, yeah. Because to wash them off before their parents let them get in the car.
Nathan Musteen:I know, Last year we had to rethink how we're doing this, because last year it was so muddy which is exactly what you want, but they were going to the shelter restrooms to wash off, oh God, and the playground was just muddy and filthy. The restrooms are bad, and so the guys were like really after me, like we got to reroute this thing because we don't want to be cleaning bathrooms the whole next day Right.
Melissa Harmer:Like I agree, so we'll figure out what we need to do there.
Nathan Musteen:So the South Metro's spraying them down is very helpful for us. Yes, we just got to position it right so that at the end. They're close Before you go to the bathroom, because the idea when we started having them was let's have them up there to rinse them off before they get in their cars. Now we've got to rinse them off before they go to our playground, because it's become like a family event.
Nathan Musteen:You go do the mud run, and then you go walk the trail or you go on the playground or you have your picnic or whatever. So the park is busy that night and we just kind of. Those are growing pains. I will take them all the time. Yeah, and our mountain bike trails are a volunteer group for our mountain bike trails. They're so gracious. The work that they do, which is a regional, draw people down in like the hub of the ozarksville and stuff, know about our trail system and, yes, fantastic.
Melissa Harmer:I was just seeing that someone said you know, if you want to ride with me, let me know. But like I'm more than an hour away, so usually when I come up I make up, I make it a point to spend a couple hours like whoa.
Nathan Musteen:That's pretty cool, and a lot of it's because it's constantly changing. Those guys are so dedicated and love it so much they they're constantly changing and improving it. So every time somebody comes up there's something new about it, and now that we're doing the expansion we've limited them and once the construction's done they'll reroute the whole thing. But they allow us to use their trails for the mud run, because it just helps wear them in and break them in. It's just such a cool partnership that I don't really even try to do.
Melissa Harmer:It just naturally happens yeah, really, they're just, they're doing everything, which is great because they have a sense of ownership in it and so, yeah, they're constantly improving it, yeah, and attracting a lot of people.
Nathan Musteen:They uh one of the members is on our park board and we just stay in close contact and we go out and we do inspections with them and make sure I mean there's some things that we're like no, you're not doing that little too adventurous and so we just stay with them.
Nathan Musteen:And they ask sometimes like, hey, can you help us put up some signs or do some of this? And we're like, yeah, yeah, we'll do that for you because I, we are definitely getting the benefit more than we deserve on that. Because, yeah, we'll do that for you because we are definitely getting the benefit more than we deserve on that, because yeah, we're just outside of mowing and spraying weeds and poison ivy. We don't do a whole lot there and we reap a lot of benefits right.
Melissa Harmer:One last thing. This has been very long, but that's good, because it's like I don't feel like we've been talking for an hour, but there's just so much going on with parks and so many told you 30 minutes was not I know you love talking. We do know that, and it's easy because there's so many good things to talk about do you want to talk about looking to the future. Do you want to talk about the big master plan that we? Just have in that I'm so tired.
Melissa Harmer:It's okay no, I, I absolutely do although we do have a meeting in 10 minutes.
Nathan Musteen:Yes, I'll wrap it up.
Nathan Musteen:As far as our current projects, we've got a couple more years of those phasing and I think from my career perspective, although I'm not old at all, I've been doing it a long time and I need to start thinking about what's next in terms of what I'm doing here for Raymore.
Nathan Musteen:So, personally, on my checklist is I want to wrap TB Hanna, I want to wrap Hawk Ridge and I want to make sure that our standards Memorial Park and Rec Park are hitting on all cylinders. Those things are done so we can move on. Because what we have moving on is our parkland dedication ordinance has benefited us tremendously the past couple years in terms of dedicating land for the future. So we have a dog park over off 163rd and Madison that we'll actually do that within the year. We'll start construction on that and it will be a a mix of small dog, large dogs, and it's such a large property we'll probably end up adding some practice athletic fields in there because it's a big space. And then the big one is the ranch. It's 154 acres down adjacent to Bridal Ridge Elementary School, off 195th.
Nathan Musteen:So southwest portion of town yeah, southwest portion of town and in our comprehensive master plan I've kind of laid out the groundwork of what that's going to be and I'm really, really excited. It is nothing like anything in our county or anywhere. The things that we're attempting to put in are you're driving hours to get to some of those things.
Melissa Harmer:I was just going to say. It's things that you think you would have to leave town or possibly crossover on the Kansas side to go to. Yes, but it'll be right here.
Nathan Musteen:I am super excited about it. The issue with it is the funding of it. Things like that don't come easy. They're not cheap and an annual budget can't afford to do those things. So you have to plan and you have to prepare and you have to phase and you have to do those things. So I realized that as much as folks are reading it in that comp plan and they're thinking it's happened, it's really more of a 10 year plan.
Nathan Musteen:I have'm. I have to look ahead. We're going to do this then, and I'm putting the steps in place, the measures in place, and so I tell myself a lot of times like I'm teeing this one up for the next guy to bring it home, and if that's all I get to do, then I'm going to make him very or her very successful when they get to come in, because I'm putting all the measures in place and I'm putting all the plans in place, so all they have to do is come in and execute. And so that's really what I'm focusing on and a lot of that is leading the charge, anticipation, developing buy-in from park board, council, community, all of those things and honestly, that's the fun part for me. I like it better than the actual construction. The construction part is difficult, and it's hard, it's fun leading up, and then I could skip that part, and then we could, and so, um, maybe within that I'll hire a project manager sometime in there, so I don't have to do that part.
Nathan Musteen:If you want to see what the ranch is going to look like, go online, go to our comprehensive master plan. We are Chapter 5. Our parks master plan is Chapter 5, and it will tell you everything you want to know about our park system. You want to know about our park system. It's fresh, brand new. So you're going to see Hawkridge Park, tb Hanna, Rec Park, all of it, including our future parks things we want to do things. We need to do things.
Melissa Harmer:We have to do yeah, through the next couple decades.
Nathan Musteen:It's a good plan that is usable. It's not just, wow, you guys got this and then you put it on your boat shelf and you never look at it again. It is an executable plan, right and pretty proud of that one too, I had a hand in doing that one too.
Nathan Musteen:So yeah, I would say I think you shoot for the moon, but it's also realistic yeah but, as you do, you always want to go, go big, do it right, do it the right way and I think over over my 10 years as a director I figured out a good balance of I'm gonna, I'm gonna shoot for it, but I'm gonna make it practical enough that I can actually get there. Right, you know right. And so that's kind of how my career has been is like, okay, let's, let's go for it, but let's have a good plan in place to get us there, so that we're not just wasting our time or empty promises. I don't like doing that. If I say it, I want to go do it, do it. Yeah, it may take a while, but I'll get you there, you're going to get there All right.
Melissa Harmer:Well, I think that we have an excellent park system. I'm so glad that you're here and making these things happen, and I know you have an amazing team and you work with a lot of really great vendors.
Nathan Musteen:Well, you're a pretty big part of it. You come in on the backside with the arts stuff that we don't do and you complement what our offerings are. You use our facilities in ways that we don't. I do love using your parks, yeah so I think collectively we all just make it a better place. We all have our little spot in it.
Melissa Harmer:And that's what we're here to do. We're here to serve the people of Raymore and here to make it a great place to live.
Nathan Musteen:Some get it and some haven't seen it yet, but we'll get them. We'll get them.
Melissa Harmer:Well, thank you again so much for being here today, nathan, and thanks for sharing about parks and anytime you want to come back, I'm pretty sure we could talk for an hour more. Yes, we could, so we'll catch up with you, maybe later this year, but thank you again so much. Well, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Nathan Musteen:Appreciate it, thank you.