the alderman of the 35th Ward, Carlos Ramirez Rossa is moving to a different office superintendent of the Chicago Park District.

The park district is the nation's 3rd largest park system which includes over 600 parks, 230 field houses.

And 26 miles of Lake front.

Joining us now to discuss his vision is Carlos Ramirez, Rosas General superintendent and chief executive officer of the Chicago Park District.

Welcome back.

Congrats on the new pension.

Having me back.

We just named how big it is.

Right third-biggest.

And you are going from serving 57,000 people in your ward to 2.7 million and seeing how big the park district is.

How are you?

Bring yourself up to speed?

>> It is such a wonderful institution.

I was named February 28th.

And we started a month long transition process.

My start date was April one.

I had over 40 hours of meetings in that month of transition with Park District leadership getting up to speed with the most pressing issues.

But I also met with important stakeholders, the Chicago Parks Foundation, friends of the parks.

So many important stakeholders that support the work that we do at the district.

And on April one, I got an opportunity to obviously do my first staff meeting.

I met with 481 years of experience at headquarters.

I then met with the stewards for SEIU, local 73, which represent two-thirds of our wonderful, amazing work force.

And then I spent the rest of the week meeting our park and playground supervisors from the North Central and South regions.

I did the math in total and that with 5,000 years of experience and as a point of reference, the Pyramid of Giza had not yet been built 5,000 years ago.

So there's a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge that the Chicago Park district and that's what's going to guide us into the future.

A good foundation.

It sounds like staff and people who know the organization.

>> Why did you want this position?

Oh, my goodness.

To be able to build playgrounds for children to be able to provide programming for seniors for adults for our toddlers, for our teenagers.

>> Chicago Park district is such an amazing institution and the park district was created from the consolidation of 22 separate districts.

This was during the Great Depression.

Those 22 separate districts fell into dire financial straits and our foremothers and forefathers had the wisdom to say if we're going to save this institution for the next 100 years, let's bring these 22 institutions together and create one unified Park district.

And so that's a tremendous legacy.

The park district here Chicago was also the first park system to have fieldhouse a revolutionary concept where we were providing services and programming from arts to recreational sports for our young people in for people of all ages.

So the park district has a tremendous legacy.

I feel very privileged to be able to advance and protect this wonderful institution.

What are your top priorities?

So we need equitable infrastructure improvements.

There's a lot of need for deferred maintenance across the system.

We had field houses that are in disrepair.

I started my first day in Englewood with Alderman David Moore.

So we are working expeditiously to bring a new field house to Ogden Park.

And I look forward to working with the mayor and aldermen other elected officials bring announcement forward later on this year.

We are working on a new playground for Elko Gardens.

So being able to advance equitable infrastructure improvements, I think that's incredibly important for the well-being of the city of Chicago.

to make sure that we're providing our youth with opportunities.

The park district is the largest employer of young However, I know that we can do more.

And at the same time, addressing sustainability making sure that the park district continues to be a leader in environmental justice and ultimately supporting our workforce.

We have thousands of wonderful employees are park district does not work.

All of those wonderful programs for our youth.

They rely upon our park and playground supervisors up on our frontline staff.

And so we want to support them, make sure that they have the support from the district so that they can be successful in providing resources for families Chicago parks.

They have a long history of festivals.

The district has approved a three-year agreement with Riot Fest in Douglas Park.

>> And there's been some pushback from residents in the area saying that the festival it is destructive and it limits the access to their park.

How do plan a bridging that divide between the big festivals in the communities where those festivals are?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So March 18th, I had a meeting with community advocates from the Douglas Park area.

We talked about some of the issues.

>> That Riot fest creates.

I brought those issues back to write fest organizers and write fast.

Also held community meeting on February 18 based upon the feedback that they every team meeting based upon the feedback see that the March 18th meeting, we took steps to address those issues.

So for the first time ever, we're going to a pre-event walk through with community advocates.

So the park district always doesn't walk through with the festival.

Organizers.

But this time we're going back to community along for prevent walk through.

So have greater accountability so we can make sure that event Keeping the park up to the same level that they found it out, also extremely proud that as a result of this multi-year agreement, we were able to deliver a million dollars over the next several years for infrastructure improvements at Douglas Park, the Park district previously created a 10% giveback policy where 10% of the money generated from an event would go back into the local park.

And of course, the money that's generated from these big events supports our programming at our parks.

But we said we're going to 10% to go back in capital infrastructure for the local park.

I came in and we got it up to 30%.

So that's how we have million dollars over the next several years.

And we're going to allocate that money with community input to a participatory budgeting process.

Some Chicago parks are also home to homeless encampments and one particular conference park.

It gets a lot of attention, but we know that Chicago has several others.

>> Across the city, what are your plans for addressing that issue?

Well, we've been working hard to make sure that we're providing people experiencing homelessness in the parks with resources and support.

We know that the solution to homelessness is housing.

It's not criminalizing individuals.

And so we are working to establish relationships with people that are experiencing homelessness in the parks.

Ultimately, while I'm proud of the work that we've been doing over the last several weeks and I'm proud of my track record working on this issue.

We need to make sure that all stakeholders at the table.

So we are working to convene a working group with this call collisions and homelessness with friends of the parks with various other stakeholders so that we can have a holistic conversation about what it's going to take to address homelessness in the Chicago Parks.

We need to make sure that people that are experiencing homelessness are connected with housing.

And we also need to make sure that programming that plan capital projects can move forward.

couple seconds left.

How have the park serve you as a resident?

Oh, my goodness.

How haven't they serve It's where I would go.

Hang out with my family.

It's where I would play sports.

It's why would cool down in a splash pad.

Chicago parks are at the nexus of a greener, healthier, Safer City.

We all benefit tremendously from our park system.

It is truly a jewel in a jam in this city.

They're just so many amazing things for a Japanese garden back in a minute.

But right now for