Longmont City Council Study Session – March 3, 2020

To listen to the meeting alongside a transcript, please visit: https://otter.ai/s/rSZ6Mx2NS7-mB7kJYH246A

For a transcript of the meeting, please read below:

Unknown Speaker 0:06
Alright, let’s go ahead and get

Unknown Speaker 0:08
we go ahead and get started. All right. Let’s go to get started. All right, everybody, let’s go ahead and start with the, we’d like to call this meeting to order. Let’s go ahead and start the roll call.

Unknown Speaker 0:19
Mayor Bagley

Unknown Speaker 0:20
here councilmembers Christiansen here.

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Indigo fairy Mark

Unknown Speaker 0:26
Peck, Rodriguez, waters, you’re married. You have a quorum. Great.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
Let’s do the pledge.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
I pledge allegiance to

Unknown Speaker 0:40
the flag of the United

Unknown Speaker 0:41
States of America, to the

Unknown Speaker 0:43
republic for which it stands,

Unknown Speaker 0:45
one Nation under God,

Unknown Speaker 0:47
indivisible, with liberty and justice for

Unknown Speaker 0:49
all. All right,

Unknown Speaker 0:54
let’s go on. Actually, let’s go ahead and move before we start with motions direct city manager Without any agenda items Republic invited to be heard. Let’s go ahead and move city manager comments up

Unknown Speaker 1:06
the mics on

Harold Dominguez 1:08
Hello? Yes Okay. Yes Mayor council we actually have Dan Eamon and Carol hellwig Carol’s with the Boulder County Department of Public Health and we know we’ve had a lot of questions regarding coronavirus what the city’s doing. Dan’s going to do a brief presentation. Turn it over to Carol, and we just want to be here to answer any questions you all may have, because we know that the topic of conversation in our community.

Unknown Speaker 1:39
Good evening.

Unknown Speaker 1:44
Look at that.

Unknown Speaker 1:49
I’ll get in there. Good evening. My name is Dan aemond. I’m the assistant public safety chief for the city and I also oversee the city’s Office of Emergency Management. So my purpose here tonight is to just try to give You guys a an overview of what we’re currently doing in response to this coded Corona virus issue. And, as Harold mentioned, we also have Carol hellwig. Here. She’s an epidemiologist with Boulder County Public Health. She’s far smarter than I am. So ask any question you want of her. So kind of to start out with this, this thing is, so it’s a public health led incident and anything that’s kind of a epidemic pandemic. I guess any kind of demick is really kind of a public health lead response because they are the city’s public health entity to their county wide. We’re going to take a lot of our lead from them. This is what they do. And we have all the cities all the municipalities and the county have come together and decided to respond to this thing as a county. Harold’s on board with this. We’ve had a couple internal meetings talking about this already. And there’s a lot of systems that are already in place and a lot of stuff systems that we’re building to respond to this, if it gets any bigger, probably the biggest one that’s going to have the most impact right away is what’s called a Joint Information System. It’s kind of a fancy name for all of the public information teams from all over the county, municipalities, sheriff’s office, commissioner’s office, school district hospital systems, anybody that we can kind of think of thats related to this event in any way, are coming together with public health to try to create a consistent messaging platform. Because I think all of you know that anybody in our community that spends five minutes on Google right now is going to either come out thinking there’s nothing going on. We’re going to die tomorrow and anything in between. So what we’re trying to create here is a consistent messaging source that’s going out, countywide. That’s the intent of this Joint Information System and Mariah is one of the managers of this system along with the city of Boulder. Representative and they’re going to be responsible for making sure all of the entities involved have consistent messaging. That’s probably the most critical thing we’re doing right now. We also have a group that started meeting on Monday of all the agency administrators, all the city managers, the elected officials to talk about policy level issues. So we’re going to do that weekly. We have the emergency management offices, Longmont, Boulder, our meeting every day with public health, the emergency planners from public health to talk about tactical level things, what do we need to do to support our county departments? What do we need to do to respond to things that are coming up and we’ll continue to do that every day. On a more local basis, our primary communication tool to from emergency management to the city is what we call the situation report and we put our first one out today, and they’ll go out every day. It’s something that we’ve used in every year. We use them every year for severe weather season. And it’s really a way that we can communicate. Here’s what we’re watching for. Here’s the information sources we use. Here’s some trigger points. Just a way that we can communicate with the city employees of here’s what we’re watching and always trying to ask, what else can we do for you? We have a group that’s getting together with the hospital systems. We’re expanding that out to the clinics in the in the next coming weeks to try to support what they’re seeing. It’s probably going to be one of the initial catch points of things that do come in to the county, making sure the hospital systems are involved in the planning that we do. We’re starting to think about what members of our community are going to need a little additional support and how we can start communicating with with them whether it’s homeless, the assisted living facilities, all of those kinds of places. We’re starting to lean forward into that planning process to You probably saw today the governor polis declared a state a public health emergency for the state. Basically, for them, that’s a vehicle to activate their state emergency operations plan, which activates some state level resources and some dollars from them. It does not make dollars available for us. We have not done a local state of emergency and we’re not anticipating that in the near future. But that’s a tool that we can certainly use.

Unknown Speaker 6:31
That’s the overview of what we’re currently doing to, to think about this, this issue as a city. But I think the big message that that I want to leave you with is this is a county level incident and we’re going to respond to this thing as as a unified County. This isn’t something that’s going to just pick Longmont, right? I mean, we’re going to need to make sure that this is a unified response and that’s how we’re planning for it. The message that we’re giving to our employees is really the same thing we’re giving to the community, wash your hands. If you’re sick, stay home. We’re asking our managers to send people home if they’re sick, cover your mouth, if you’re coughing, I mean, some pretty simple stuff that we’re trying to communicate. And I’m sure Carol will give you much more detail than that. But that’s all I have for you. I’d be happy to take questions for you. And I know Carol can give you much more detail on that.

Unknown Speaker 7:26
Great, thank you very much. keep us safe and keep us updated.

Unknown Speaker 7:30
Oh, sorry.

Unknown Speaker 7:31
Give us something.

Unknown Speaker 7:33
You’re an expert. So say yeah, say something.

Unknown Speaker 7:37
slide deck. I don’t

Unknown Speaker 7:39
know if you

Unknown Speaker 7:40
like how much time you want me to talk. Well, how many how many slides? two slides? Yes. 24. No.

Unknown Speaker 7:45
Well, I’m a communicable disease epidemiologist. And this is like my favorite subject so I could talk all night. But But I don’t know. I could just feel your questions or if you want some visuals, we we do have some slides. available. I would say that Dan, though pretty much covered most things in a nutshell, the only thing that he didn’t mention is that we are also recommending that all employers, everyone recommend that people get a flu shot. a flu shot is not going to prevent kovat. But it can reduce the burden of respiratory illness in our community. And we want to do that as much as possible, anticipating that our healthcare system is likely going to be overwhelmed with people with respiratory illness. And then all those other safety messages that Dan mentioned, are there’s resources available on the CDC website. Like for example, this poster, you can get that on the CDC website very easily. Another thing that I’ll mention is that we are working with cultural brokers to reach out to the Spanish speaking community and make sure that the messaging that we’re getting out there is appropriate and and reaching them and so that we’re making sure that we’re doing that I don’t know what other kind of information you would like to know. I guess one of the things that’s most concerning to us and the reason that we are really trying to scale up to our highest level of activation is that there is community spread in the United States, especially in the in the state of Washington. The community spread there has occurred in people who did not have any connection to any travelers or to any known folks. And once that happens is when we raise our level of preparedness to the highest level, because community spread across the country is very possible right now.

Unknown Speaker 9:38
Possible or likely.

Unknown Speaker 9:40
I would say I don’t have a crystal ball, but I would be very surprised if we don’t get cases in Boulder County. I would be very surprised if we get through this unscathed.

Unknown Speaker 9:55
And on that note,

Unknown Speaker 9:57
on that note, wash your hands, get your flu shot, stay home. You’re sick, and stay tuned. All right, great.

Unknown Speaker 10:03
No,

Unknown Speaker 10:05
sorry, Dr. Waters.

Unknown Speaker 10:14
You pick this up?

Unknown Speaker 10:16
Can everybody hear us tonight for some reason?

Unknown Speaker 10:20
You know, I’ve got questions like probably everybody else does, like, what are the thresholds that we reach before certain decisions are made? What are what kind of capacity do we have in our healthcare system? And at what point is it overwhelmed? But those would all that would be speculation, I suppose. But But what what isn’t? speculation is who makes the calls, right? We’re, I’m involved in a planning process for an event on the 27th of March, where we would like a group of people come together, the governor is going to be up here. It’s a big deal focused on early childhood education. So in the back of everybody’s mind is planning. What are the prospects that’s going to be affected and in in the real, you know that speculate But who makes the decision? whether or not to ban or discourage it certain, you know, along that continuum? Is there a stage where someone says it who’s the someone that we discourage gatherings? And is there a stage where someone who’s the someone that says, We’re banning public gatherings can’t use public facilities to bring people together?

Unknown Speaker 11:22
So I do have a slide that shares our incident management structure, and, and in and maybe it’ll be helpful to pull that up. But basically, we have a lot of our administrators and policy level decision makers within that structure. And so someone like me, I would make a recommendation to say, as an epidemiologist, I recommend that we do this to stop the spread of the disease. But then it’s going to be up to the administrators, our public health director and everyone jointly to make that call. It’ll

Unknown Speaker 11:56
be municipality by municipality, if we’re in a municipality Generally the way that

Unknown Speaker 12:03
it is now

Harold Dominguez 12:03
it is now. So generally the way this will work is they’ll make so assumed somebody’s test positive. They’re then going to do their work from an epidemiologist, a logical standpoint to go, what’s the risk? And they’ll go, here’s what we think we need to do in terms of managing that risk. That then goes to the director of their group, and then they provide advice to us as administrators, in terms of what they’re going to recommend doing. And specifically to that question, as we’ve talked through some of this, whether it’s a school district or it’s a city, we’re all going to be looking to them for guidance, because they’re also in working in conjunction with the CDC in terms of the protocols they’re issuing. They then make a decision because they’re the only ones that can really, for lack of a better word, say we need to do a quarantine or here’s what we’re going to do. And so then we will all start responding appropriately based The advice that we get for them, theoretically, just, and I’m just going to give you an example, this doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. It’s helpful to have. So what you see in some of the jurisdictions is you saw the Washington Department of Health make the recommendation to the Kirkland fire department that said, you need to quarantine your firefighters in this fire station. And they did that. So they were working in conjunction with that, where it starts getting where there’s other decisions for us is, let’s say, theoretically, there’s students that do this, and then they start making and they make a recommendation to the school district, we’re then going to have to look to that recommendation to go then what does that mean for us in terms of rec centers, and some of these other components. And so it’s really their guidance, it’ll start working us through the process based on the condition that we’re dealing with at that given time, and evaluating the risk and any number of things.

Unknown Speaker 13:56
So just go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 13:58
I do also want A state that in statute, public health does have the authority to implement actions to control the spread of disease. So ultimately, the legal authority lies on public health. And, and, and that is there. But But we do want to do this in conjunction with our partners. We don’t want to make these decisions in a vacuum

Unknown Speaker 14:22
at some point, not right now. But at some point in time, it’ll be helpful to be more specific than public health. Right. Give us here’s the person they make the call. It is has the force of law or whatever. There’s an emergency declared. Yeah, there’s no question. There’s no

Harold Dominguez 14:38
Director of Public Health.

Unknown Speaker 14:40
We have our our public health director is Jeff Zach. But then we also have the state health department and the head of the state health department. And there’s also I don’t know what the acronym is, but it’s the gark which is the governor’s kind of emergency communicable disease group. And and they also have levels of authority within this process. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 15:05
All right. Anybody else?

Unknown Speaker 15:10
So if there was a case in Colorado,

Unknown Speaker 15:13
would

Unknown Speaker 15:14
they would we be able to know which county it is in what city it’s in? Or is it just going to be an overall it? It was in the state of Colorado,

Unknown Speaker 15:27
there may be different situations that result in different things. For example, if we have a travel related case, that has not caused any potential transmission to the community, we will likely not release the county because there’s no risk to the community. But if there’s a case at Longmont High School, then we likely will release that information because will likely have to implement public actions in accordance to that so it depends.

Unknown Speaker 15:59
All right. That would be all thank you so much for your time to see me.

Unknown Speaker 16:03
Great. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 16:04
Okay, great. Let’s move on to anybody want to put anything on the agenda? All right. z no one let’s go ahead and move on to public invited to be heard. Can we get the list? Thank you. Thank you. Alright, we have one member of our community here to talk so hopefully it will be awesome.

Unknown Speaker 16:36
Greg, gambler, do you want to come up and address the council? Please?

Unknown Speaker 16:44
kind of feel like some of the debates right. I got three minutes and 15 seconds and I gotta do it in three

Unknown Speaker 16:49
minutes.

Unknown Speaker 16:50
There you go.

Unknown Speaker 16:53
So I’ll wait till after you say your name and address though. I’m going

Unknown Speaker 16:59
to read it

Unknown Speaker 17:00
Hello, my name is Greg dabbler, I’ve been a teacher and a football coach at St. Rain Valley School District for 25 years, I have held a contractor’s license in Fort Collins and long mod for 39 years. I worked as a teacher for nine months. And as a contractor for at least for three months, at least every year that I can remember without the second income, I don’t know how I’ve been able to do and live in Boulder County. After retiring from teaching, it was clear that my retirement, like from PR, pretty good, would not be enough to give me a very good retirement, I hadn’t been able to accumulate any meaningful savings until I quit teaching and went into building full time. The savings however, made a little income supplement to my retirement as my interest for the whole year with the interest rates the way they were was $41. a realtor came to me and asked me if I wanted to build a six Plex My answer was yes. But my thought of losing what little savings I had was daunting. I soon found out that I hadn’t put enough money away to qualify to build the project. And so my son and daughter in law said they would be partners with me. With some trepidation I’d put a contract on the property with contingency to do my due diligence. I went to pre AP meetings, I visited the lady in the building department who did permits and got an estimate for my permit, I guess.

Unknown Speaker 18:33
As you know what Mr. I’m gonna I’m gonna Let’s stop. Let’s fix this mic. Cuz we have time tonight. And I want people to pay attention. I want to hear and it’s distracting. No, you’re not on the clock. I’ll have you start over. Sorry. I mean, we’re walking around the room and

Unknown Speaker 18:49
so can we can we fix the feedback

Unknown Speaker 18:56
escaping

Unknown Speaker 19:18
No, it’s not you. It’s been on all night. But nobody

Unknown Speaker 19:21
cares about hearing us. So,

Unknown Speaker 19:23
test test test test test.

Unknown Speaker 20:12
test test test test test, test test test.

Unknown Speaker 20:18
Test test test test,

Unknown Speaker 20:26
test test test test test

Unknown Speaker 20:30
their mind you Test.

Unknown Speaker 20:34
Test test test.

Unknown Speaker 20:36
Okay, let’s try this again.

Unknown Speaker 20:37
JOHN. Can you hear us? JOHN Freyr. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 20:41
Alright, cool. Sorry. Did you gather lunch good and start over? We’ll give you an extra minute and a half. Go ahead, go ahead and start from the beginning.

Unknown Speaker 20:49
Go ahead, please, for anybody. That’s right. Nope, you’re gonna say I’ve been a teacher and a football coach in the same Green Valley School District for 25 years. I’ve held contractor license in Fort Collins and Mine for 39 years. I worked as a teacher for nine months and worked as a contractor. Yeah, hold on, hold on. We’re still we’re still bad. Does it?

Unknown Speaker 21:36
I can I can talk loud.

Polly Christensen 21:49
Yeah, this is a huge

Harold Dominguez 21:54
test test test test, Test. Test. Just like you try now

Unknown Speaker 22:03
as test test, test,

Unknown Speaker 22:06
test, okay.

Unknown Speaker 22:30
Maybe just set the other mic on the floor in case it’s a proximity thing.

Unknown Speaker 22:45
Still hearing it though.

Unknown Speaker 22:46
Still doing it.

Harold Dominguez 23:40
test test test test test 1-234-567-8910

Unknown Speaker 23:47
test test test test test.

Unknown Speaker 23:51
I’m not hearing the buzz. Cool, good job Laughlin.

Unknown Speaker 23:57
Alright, let’s go ahead did you want to start again Go for it.

Unknown Speaker 24:01
How can I change this?

Unknown Speaker 24:05
There we go. I’ve been a teacher and a coach at St. Green Valley for 25 years, I’ve held contractor’s license in Fort Collins and long month for 39 years, I worked as a teacher for nine months, and as a contractor for three months, every year to make it possible for me to live in this area. Without the second income, I don’t know if I’d been able to do so. After retiring from teaching, it was clear that the retirement provided by P era, they’ll good was not enough to have a meaningful retirement. I had been able to accumulate hadn’t been able to accumulate a meaningful savings until I quit teaching and went to building full time. The savings however, made little income supplement for my retirement as my interest for a whole year with the interest rates. So they were it was $41 a realtor came and asked me if I’d like to build a six Plex in town. My answer was, yes, always Yes. But my thoughts of losing my little savings was a little daunting. I soon found out that I hadn’t put enough money away to qualify for the project. And so my son and daughter in law said they’d like to be partners with me. With some interpretation, I put a contract on the property with contingency to do my due diligence. I went to my pre op meetings, I visited the lady in the permit department who gave me an estimate for my permit, actually said it was better than an estimate. And I didn’t have all the estimates for all of the building. It was marginal, and I was leery but my son encouraged me to go forward. We bought the lot hired architects, engineers and committed all of our cash to get going. We assigned a we were assigned a planner to work with us, and we went forward full speed. We submitted our site plan and set goals to have our permit by James Very first, along that time, my bank called me and said, Did you know The city was considering an additional fee? color for affordable housing. They said that I’d have to come up with that money to handle any increases. I went to the mayor, and I said, I can’t do this. He assured me that my project was exempt for two reasons. It was too small and I would be grandfathered in. I went back to focusing on my plan, review and architect plans. We got our site plans back after a first submittal with lots of notes to correct but my planner said your plans are excellent. You clean up those red lines and we will be able to get this thing through very quickly. She even said, you can submit for the building review of your bill building plans. It’s that that’s not usually done without Some sort of

Unknown Speaker 27:02
thing on the builder.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
So I submitted my plans and played paid a plan check fee for that of about $5,000. It was then that I was told my cost had doubled from what I was estimated from the building department. Another big blow to my finances. We still had our goal of starting January 1, and I went often to see my planner to help push her through my approval. I’m a kind of pushy guy. After numerous visits, I found out that she was on an extended medical leave, and no substitute planner was assigned. During this time Council passed an ordinance and set two weeks or so. To get plans approved. My focus changed from January 1 to panic. my planner came back and apologize for the circumstances her illness had caused. She said she would do something They get an approval before the 21st deadline. I don’t know what it was. After two days, I saw her again. And she said she was told she couldn’t do it by somebody above her. A few days later, I ran into another person in the lobby, who I’d gotten to know very well, by the way, I really like the people I learned and worked with within the city. They were great. This guy looked at me and he said, Greg, we’d had your plans entirely too long. I will hand deliver them and get approval. And I’ll predate them again, somebody up the line said No way. I have finished the project and I have paid my my fee. I had to pay my fee to get renters to, to go into the building. But I’ve had to substitute money from landscaping blinds and interest that I need to carry the project till I get it ranted. I’m in a financial problem, and it’s not my fault. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 29:10
All right. And I actually yeah, I cheated. Cuz Oh, we interrupted him plenty of time. So I gave him the full time. All right, thank you. All right, let’s move on to special reports and presentations.

Harold Dominguez 29:38
So we’re in the study session.

Unknown Speaker 29:41
No, okay. Yeah, we don’t start with the update on the climate change.

Unknown Speaker 29:46
Or do you want actually your What are you here for? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 29:51
I don’t want you to go away.

Unknown Speaker 29:53
Oh, I prepared for it. Yes. Yes. All right. Mayor badly members of council and Lisa Knobloch sustainability Program Manager And I’m here tonight to give you an update on the climate action, Task Force and climate action in general. And if I get too far away from the mic, and you can’t hear me, let me know, because I feel like you have to be really close to this thing. Or if I’m too close, and it’s making weird sound, let me let me know. Okay, so Climate Action Task Force, you all saw a variation of this slide at the retreat a couple weeks ago, the Climate Action Task Force has now held five of their eight meetings, they have drafted recommendations on the three topic areas on the left hand side and I will go through pretty high level review of those recommendations with you tonight. And they have now moved into developing recommendations for the education outreach, adaptation, resilience, and the land use and one change from when you saw this slide. Last is the they did decide to include waste management in the land use topic area. So you’ll see recommendations around that and included in land use when that comes through As I mentioned before, equity is incorporated throughout all the recommendations. And there’ll be a section also on governance plan evolution and adaptation. So looking at what do we do once the report is completed? So I’m going to run through these pretty high level. If you have any questions, feel free to holler I’ll do my best to answer it. I’m not the drafter of these recommendations, and I only have summaries. So I’ll do my best to get answers for you. I’ll follow up if I don’t have specific answers to your questions. So the building energy use group their recommendations are focusing on code updates. So we already have a policy in place where we adopt and implement them broke most recent code updates every cycle. And this would be looking at including things like solar and EV readiness in the next round of code updates coming in 2021. They’re looking at an electrification recommendation, that group has decided that that’s a pretty weighty and complicated topic. And they don’t have enough time, as they would like to really dive deep into the research that they need to to come up with a comprehensive strategy around electrification. So their current draft recommendation is to form a feasibility committee to spend some extra time doing the research needed to really come up with a solid electrification strategy, focusing on commercial energy efficiency through things like benchmarking and retro commissioning. And then also residential energy efficiency through expanding and increasing participation in our efficiency works program and expanding the low income Energy Efficiency Program as well. And then a cross cutting recommendation that they’re looking at is establishing a Climate Action Fund. And so that would be identifying a number of different revenue sources that would help fund all of our climate action work because they recognize that in order to do a lot of the things that we’re going to be proposing, we’re going to need additional resources for staffing and implementation and They want to look further at potential alternative revenue sources and establishing a fund to support that work. The renewable energy group are looking at a number of complimentary recommendations, starting with smart grid. So that’s really excel accelerating the AMI installation and looking at a developing a plan for how to use that technology when it’s only partially implemented. So not having to wait until it’s fully completed. Establishing a home energy management system so program to really establish homes to optimize energy use and really set them up to manage distributed energy resources as they come online as establishing a five year plan for developing major inventory of distributed energy resources that are managed in Longmont continuing to aggressively pursue internal and external policies for greenhouse gas reductions. Then workforce development. So looking at how all of these things are going to be creating new workforce development opportunities for long line and how we can set up programs to really help train people up for that, as well as understanding what are the sectors that might be negatively impacted as we move away from fossil fuels and making sure we have programs in place to retrain folks and get them into new sectors of work.

Unknown Speaker 34:24
The transportation group is looking at

Unknown Speaker 34:29
greater access to and participation in transit, biking, walking, things that get people out of single occupancy vehicles, looking at partnering with schools on multimodal options, looking at opportunities for incentivizing new programs for alternative modes of travel, renewable sources to power transit, so that’s not only electrification, but other alternative fuels as well. And then looking at all employer based programs like alternative work schedules to create more flexibility in the workplace to reduce the need for We’re driving overall, or to help create more flexible schedules to reduce congestion and things like that. So as I mentioned at the retreat, we’re also going through a community engagement process concurrently to inform the public of the work that we’re doing and to gain feedback on draft recommendations to understand how we might strengthen the recommendations. What are potential impacts or negative consequences that we might not be thinking about? And then what are we missing? And so where we’re at in that process, we’ve developed and distributed flyers throughout town that are driving folks to the engage Longmont website. We started tabling at a number of different community events. We’re launching a questionnaire in the next couple of days. We’ll be doing presentations with a number of different community groups, setting up educational kiosks at key community locations, and working with volunteers to do what’s called kitchen table conversations with friends, families, neighbors, co workers, things like that. And then bringing that information back to the Climate Action Task Force. So the next steps again, they’ll be drafting their recommendations for the new subgroups that we talked about. They have a joint meeting with the just transition plan committee on this Thursday, the fifth. And that’s a three and a half hour meeting where each of the subgroups that’s completed recommendations to date, will have an opportunity to go do a deep dive into one or two of the recommendations with the just transition planning committee who will do an essentially an equity analysis on those recommendations and talk through possible equity impacts and look at opportunities for increasing the equitability of those recommendations. Again, they’ll be able to incorporate all of that feedback from the feedback from the community engagement efforts to refine and finalize their recommendations. The report is due April 8, and then that will be presented to Council on April 14. And then, in addition to what’s happening with the Climate Action Task Force, we wanted to mention that the city also is really taking a number of steps. To accelerate our work also in context of and in alignment with the climate emergency resolution and the resolution to transition to 100% renewable energy. So we’ve been working a lot with with staff to identify what we’re already doing, and some additional strategies that we can take to help accelerate those efforts. I’m not going to go through every single one of these, I’m just going to pull out some highlights. But again, if you have questions on any of these, please feel free to holler. As I mentioned, we’re in the process of updating the greenhouse gas inventory. That’s well underway. We have a lot of that data collected. And our consultants right now we’re in the process of modeling all of that information. And we’ll bring those results back to you all when we have them in the next couple of months. We’ve talked to you about we’re doing some energy efficiency assessments at a number of our city facilities. We’ve just recently worked with the contractor on that to include an electrification component to that so looking at opportunities for fully electrifying those facilities. as well. We recently received a grant to transition some of our city land to low water turf and to do some demonstration and research on opportunities around not only reducing our water use on city property, but also utilizing plant materials that reduce the need for mowing, which will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions associated with fuel use from those types of operations. And then as Dave Hornbacher is talk to you about he’s working with Platte River Power Authority on a distributed energy resource plan. And again, as I mentioned, that’s a focus from the renewables energy group as well, that’ll have their recommendations from the Climate Action Task Force around distributed energy resources. So we’ve identified a handful of quick wins. So things that we think would take a

Unknown Speaker 38:52
few too little resources and have little to no negative impacts that we can put into place relatively quickly. To help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so one of those things is telecommuting and web conferencing, that’s something that the city already does. But there’s not a lot of consistency across departments around how people are utilizing that. There’s not a lot of understanding across city staff about the technology that’s available to folks. So that’s looking at promoting that creating greater educational opportunities so people know know how to use the technology that we have available, looking at potentially replacing some of our fleet vehicles with E bikes when possible, of prohibiting plastic and disposable promotional giveaways. That’s something that we do a lot across city events that we could look at changing our practices around that. It’s shifting to a 10 hour workday or requiring telecommuting one day a week at facilities where that would be possible so we can actually shut down one of our facilities for a whole day and save all of the resources that are associated with that. And then prioritizing energy and water efficiency and low emissions practices and park development project. So those are just a handful of things that we could put into place pretty quickly. And then new strategies, these are things that we would need counsel direction on if if these are things that you would like us to pursue, and would also probably likely need additional time and resources to really dive into these and get the details on them. What one of the things would be looking at UCLA incorporating a climate change, separate section or topic into all of our city plans, so making sure that we’re addressing climate change comprehensively across the organization, requiring lead or other green building standards and all new buildings or major innovations, looking at renewable energy opportunities, and Nelson Flanders and button rock and then looking at something like a universal recycling ordinance, and I know Bob and Charlie are coming to you guys in a couple of weeks to really go much more in depth into some of those opportunities around waste diversion, and reduction. A couple of things I just wanted to make sure on your radar if they’re not already, somebody Upcoming events that are tied to climate action work. Tomorrow’s the Platte River Power Authority community focus group will be talking about some of the findings coming out of their integrated resource plan. So if you’re not aware that that’s happening, it’s tomorrow from six to 8pm, at the 17, place, place Event Center. And then also tomorrow is the Lincoln long lot which which is a transportation oriented event at the museum from five to 7pm. So just to have some things on your radar,

Unknown Speaker 41:29
that didn’t come out, well, sorry for the

Unknown Speaker 41:32
color on that. I didn’t realize that changes with the web link there. But I just want to make sure everybody always knows that. For more information or for information on how people get can get involved with sustainability work and climate action work, they can always go to the sustainability page, we have all of our previous quarterly reports on there. We have all the information about the Climate Action Task Force as well as our contact information. So that’s where we’re at. So anyone have any questions or comments. I’d like to share

Unknown Speaker 42:01
customer Martin.

Unknown Speaker 42:02
Thank you Mayor Bagley, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Can you go back one slide? before that? Some of these I’m a little confused about are these four city actions internal city actions only?

Unknown Speaker 42:22
there? Are there things that we that staff can take on internally.

Unknown Speaker 42:26
Yes. Okay. Because the like, could require lead or other green building standards in new buildings and major risk. I think that’s going to come out of the buildings as a general requirement for the next code update. Is that correct?

Unknown Speaker 42:43
Not specifically that I’ve heard and again, this is this is coming from recommendations from staff that we’ve asked to identify potential strategies that they could put into place as well.

Unknown Speaker 42:54
Did you want to add something else

Harold Dominguez 42:56
am I on? So I think there are some of the recommendations that will come into the code conversation that Lisa touched on that will be in the future. But we’re saying here is in terms of how we look at our construction projects that are ahead of that conversation. We will look at it under this land. So this is really something we can do ahead of that.

Unknown Speaker 43:15
Okay. Yes. Thank you for that clarification.

Unknown Speaker 43:21
Dr. Waters.

Unknown Speaker 43:23
Thanks for your family.

Unknown Speaker 43:25
The what you have listed or as recommendations or kind of categories in which recommendations have been are being developed. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 43:34
yeah. There. I mean, high level.

Unknown Speaker 43:36
Yes. So, you didn’t share it with us tonight? Is that because or in preparation for this? Is that because they’re just not ready? They’re too drafty.

Unknown Speaker 43:45
They’re pretty drafty. And I just got them on Thursday. So in the game, we talked through them Thursday at the Climate Action Task Force meeting, and they now have some time to go in and tighten up the recommendations according to the

Unknown Speaker 43:57
chapter two tight timeline, but here’s the one thing I would ask you I think of them, as I look at the timeline and the public engagement process, and when you’re coming back to us, which is driven by the initial timeline and the budgeting process. So if we’re going to do something with that Climate Fund needs to be in front of us before we budget, this is the one concern I have is, there’s a ton of work all of its good, I’m sure. big, powerful ideas. I’m gonna feel a little squeezed for the last ones to see recommendations after they’ve been processed by the community and you get the community engagement process in there, you know, they’re kind of rolled up into, okay, what can we do at that point in time other than, say, less than right? If you want meaningful, we get a chance to have a meaningful

Harold Dominguez 44:42
part in this. It’s going to go to you for it’s going to go to the council. Am I on Can you hear me? Yeah, it’s going to go to the council first. And then we will then off of the council conversation, then go through those other community involvement. Well,

Unknown Speaker 44:57
maybe I should have seen that and just did

Unknown Speaker 44:59
yeah. So to clarify, we are going through a convenient engagement process in the month of March to get feedback. Yeah, so and the draft recommendations are more of these category. They’re not the they’re not super in depth. It’s just just try to get a sense of one. We’re trying to bring the community along with us in this conversation as much as possible. And to try to get a sense of are there negative thing consequences that we might not have on our heads up?

Unknown Speaker 45:25
Looks like there, we could get squeezed out? And I’m just saying no,

Unknown Speaker 45:28
and it’s partly to help inform the Climate Action Task Force as they finalize the recommendations before they come to

Unknown Speaker 45:34
you have a question for you. I suppose it’s a question for Harold, maybe Joni, and at the risk of beating a dead horse, I’m going to beat it some more.

Unknown Speaker 45:46
On slide 412.

Unknown Speaker 45:52
Tell me which of those I could consider as an extraordinary benefit and expect to see proposed you If we were to allow developers to deliver to us extraordinary benefits in the context of a metro District, which of those might I be able to expect to see in an application?

Harold Dominguez 46:12
Probably the distributed energy resources. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 46:19
That’s the most about carbon free neighborhood. Wouldn’t that be the next to the last bullet control greenhouse and correct missions? What about smart grids? I mean, what’s on that list other than the workforce development, that wouldn’t be a legitimate extraordinary benefit presented to us as an option. If If we thought it was a high enough priority, we’re talking about a climate crisis. And we’ve taken off the board off the table as a council, the opportunity to include those extraordinary benefits in new development in this community. That’s not your problem. To solve or to address that, I just want to say it just makes No sense to me, on the one hand to claim crisis. And on the other hand, the unwilling to get smart enough to learn enough to figure out how to take advantage of those opportunities as new housing stock comes on into the community. Thank you

Harold Dominguez 47:14
to also want to get a different point. You all will be the first to see the specific recommendations and information. The specific information is coming to council first.

Unknown Speaker 47:25
Well, my comment wasn’t directed. Anybody on the staff?

Harold Dominguez 47:28
You understand that? No, no, not this was directed to my colleagues up here. previous question is the one I was referring to.

Unknown Speaker 47:36
All right, anybody else? Alright, thank you very much. Appreciate that. All right. Let’s move on to item four be potential ballot item for debt financing of water projects. The illustrious Dale automaker the one, the only

Unknown Speaker 48:04
Mayor Bagley members of council and Dale Rademacher deputy city manager, and here tonight to talk with you really, fairly briefly on a particular issue that we have talked with you in the past about and that is on the financing strategies that we believe are necessary for the city to realize the resources necessary to maintain the city’s treated water and water delivery systems to our community. Many of you were on council when we did the integrated treated water master plan several years ago. That document identified upwards of $200 million of resources that are going to be needed to both expand and but primarily maintain this system. That community has come to rely on for the delivery of water inherent in that overall plan. also embedded in the rates that you approve last fall was continued debt financing as one of those options to get to that point. And Jim anks dad is going to talk with you a little bit about some of the projects that we are believing are necessary and sort of qualify for that type of a financing strategy. And also the, the intergenerational benefit that that is derived through a debt surfy a debt servicing approach. In other words, current people play it as well as future residents that come into our community. And so it really does try to balance out that that obligation in addition to it being a very flexible tool for us to use and balance the cash financing alternatives, with the debt financing mode, and That further ado, I’m going to turn it over to Jim. Really what we’re looking forward tonight is, we believe in order to stay on track, in particular with the Nelson Flanders treatment plant expansion, it is really necessary that we would seek voter approval this fall at the 2020 General Election tissue, additional water bonds for that particular project. You know, we’re not asking for a formal vote tonight to place it on the ballot, but rather whether you want us to continue to pursue the effort and do the necessary work, such that we would bring that to you for your consideration this summer. With that, I’ll turn it over to Jim.

Unknown Speaker 50:48
Good evening Mayor Bagley city council members jimang staff director of engineering services with the public works and Natural Resources Department. I’m going to go ahead and just make a note here and cross off my first item because Dale already pretty much covered it. So we’ll go to the second slide 2013 the city completed the integrated treated water supply master plan which identified the capital needs for the city’s water utility for the next 20 years, in order for the city to continue to provide safe and reliable drinking water to our residents and our customers. The plan identified the cost for these for our basically our capital needs at over $200 million. To date staff has been working on some of the critical short term projects. But we are now at a point where we are ready to advance the debt financing component of the financial plan that supports the larger capital projects. So the first one project we want to just quickly throw your way is as David mentioned the water treatment plant expansion at Nelson Flanders.

Unknown Speaker 51:58
The city has two waterfalls is

Unknown Speaker 52:01
the true ride are treated water to our residents. Nelson Flanders plant and the way dhatus plan. The weed Goddess is the older of the two. It was designed with an older filtering process and it can be challenging for our operators to provide water that meets current drinking water standards. expansion of the Nelson Flanders plan will provide the capacity. Once we are after we are and then as part of that project, we would also decommission Wade Gaddis. Another potential project is the North st rain pipeline. This is located north of Lyons the pipeline carries raw water from this North st rain Creek to the Nelson Flanders water treatment plant pipeline was constructed in the 40s and 50s. And as you can see, one of the challenges is there are access issues the photo on the right shows that the pipeline because of its age has been deteriorating. And it

Unknown Speaker 53:10
it is, makes it an ideal candidate for replacement.

Unknown Speaker 53:16
So the other another alternative project we can we’re looking at is the price Park reservoir. The original reservoir was constructed in 1923. We had improvements undertaken in the 70s and 90s. This is located over by the sunset golf course. The facility is reaching the end of its useful life. It is displaying some leakage in the liner. There are some openings in the roof that are requiring extensive maintenance and state inspections have called for a higher degree of maintenance

Unknown Speaker 53:50
to meet current standards.

Unknown Speaker 53:54
So that’s just some of the Quick quick highlights of some of our projects. We are looking for council direction As yet and as Dale indicated, as you’re aware debt financing of projects is subject to voter approval. And in the past residents along must have been highly supportive of the city’s effort to improve our public utility infrastructure. Other examples of that are the we did bonds for the wastewater system as well as the storm drainage system. So this evening Public Works and natural resources is requesting city council direction on moving forward for us to continue our efforts to prepare for possible placement of this issue on the ballot for the November 2020. General Election.

Unknown Speaker 54:34
Customer Martin

Unknown Speaker 54:36
Thank you Mayor Bagley. This

Unknown Speaker 54:41
is is this

Unknown Speaker 54:43
already secured bonds or or is there a tax associated with the bond issue to secure

Unknown Speaker 54:52
I’m going to have some of our wonderful staff copy answer that question.

Unknown Speaker 54:59
Council Member Martin, the the bonds will be paid for by water rates, there’s no taxes involved, okay? It would be secured by the rates and the rate increases that you have already codified. So there’s we don’t need to go back and do yet another adjustment to the rate, the strategy that you put in place, which is a five year plan of rate adjustments,

Unknown Speaker 55:25
yes. Okay. So, so that means that we are asking for bond authority and we’re not asking for any more money from the ratepayers or the taxpayers that other than what has is already in the plan,

Unknown Speaker 55:42
correct, other than what you have already codified, but to be clear, the rates are increasing. They are scheduled to increase each of the next several years. And so, you know, the way I would say is that we have already laid out the rate structure necessary. Sorry to fund the capital improvements necessary for the next several years without having to increase the rates even further than what you have already approved.

Unknown Speaker 56:11
Yes, I just wanted to make sure that that was out there. If I could make a statement. Well, I have my mice mic working. I would like to say that I think it is important in the face of what we’re looking at evaluating in terms of the climate action, Task Force recommendations that are ongoing, planned infrastructure updates happen on schedule before some of these major activities that were unanticipated hit us. So I really I’m in favor of proceeding with this if it’s at all possible.

Unknown Speaker 56:53
Alright, see nobody else I got the only question I’ve so I’m gonna make a motion when I asked this question. So we’ve had ballot. So this is on a scale from one to 10. This is like a 10. Right? As far as we need to fix our waters infrastructure, I want to make sure that we don’t have the same mistake we need. We didn’t need a swimming pool, an ice rink, right? But we’ve learned some lessons which was moving forward with a ballot initiative or a ballot measure, without having buy in from the community, specifically, certain members of the community. I mean, I’m gonna make a motion to move forward. But I think it would be foolish to just put it on the ballot. I think we need to hold community meetings. I think we need to pay to, you know, market as to what the needs are and why we’re doing this. We need to market to make sure that people understand that we’re not going to be additionally increasing rates that we will not be asking for attacks, because it will get muddy and people will start complaining that we didn’t take it to the public and we didn’t know me and even if we do, they’re still gonna complain about it. So we have to go like over the top No surveys. No, I mean, like meetings in your face called Gordon called the people who have been calling and just say, please attend the meeting, because we’re going to need your support. We’re also going to kill it.

Unknown Speaker 58:12
Mayor Bagley if I could respond to that real quickly. That’s exactly why we’re here in the first part of March because I agree with you, I believe we need to communicate and talk with our community about the the very need this is in my estimation, not a want to have this is a need to have, if you value having clean, reliable water for your community. So I put it in that category, but I might be a bit biased coming from black works, and I’ll admit that and so yes, our intent is to work very closely with Mariah and the entire city public information team to really have a good community dialogue around this. So that’s that when we bring this to you, later this summer, for your your formal consideration of You will have that information as well.

Unknown Speaker 59:03
Okay, then I with that I’d move that we move that we instruct staff to move forward with every possible placement on the ballot for the 2020 election.

Unknown Speaker 59:14
Right? scene go dark waters.

Unknown Speaker 59:16
So is that what is that what we’re doing tonight? I thought you were gonna bring it back.

Unknown Speaker 59:21
It just move forward, the motion is to move forward to prepare for a potential ballot issue for you to make that decision. And I believe it’s August timeframe. August is when you will be voting to formally place it on the ballot or not.

Unknown Speaker 59:37
I’m equipment editorial Can

Unknown Speaker 59:38
I believe you can do it?

Unknown Speaker 59:42
I mentioned I think last Tuesday night, this news article or news tv news piece. We’ve seen just before I left to come to the meeting about a water main I think it was in St. Petersburg, Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale. I mean, it was it was catastrophic. Pardon me, it was a Superman. But it was a catastrophic failure. And what we’re trying to do is avoid that, right those kinds of experiences. So to the degree that in building the case that the mayor’s talking about, we could build a portfolio of examples of where people have failed to do this, because they continue to defer and defer and defer.

Harold Dominguez 1:00:17
Carol’s got several. And all in all honesty, I’ve lived through it. On the backside of shortly after I obtained the position I was in the previous community, we lost water to about 75% of the community. We also had a major sewage leak that spilled thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the river and had to very quickly completely restructure the capital improvement plan to try to get ahead of that cycle. And if you don’t plan and you don’t look out 20 to 30 years, you will create a significant financial

Unknown Speaker 1:00:59
need. But when it right,

Harold Dominguez 1:01:01
it’s not if but when. And so my experience and what I’ve always said, is I never want anyone to be in that same position in the future. And so we have to be very focused in terms of how we’re managing the system and how we’re looking into the future.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:17
I’m just I don’t want to go. Let’s not draw,

Harold Dominguez 1:01:19
I can give personal examples of that.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:23
I did want to end with one thing. Before you vote on that we had a paragraph in the communication about the street fund. I know there was some council interest on whether we should or shouldn’t move forward as well, to potentially consider some sort of the debt servicing package on the street fund. We are working on that we’re not ready to bring that to you for discussion yet. I would think in the next 30 to 60 days we’ll have that discussion. Just so you know, that

Harold Dominguez 1:01:52
session is when we get information like we received last week, about a $4 million grant that starts changing how we’re Evaluating the financial considerations and there’s another grant that we’re going to be going for. And I think that’s due MIT, the answer will be mid summer. Is that what we heard? And so there are things that we need to also wait on to really understand what that need is.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:17
All right. Thank you. There’s a motion on the floor. All in favor say aye. The motion is to direct staff to move forward on the preparations to put this on the 2020 ballot. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion passes unanimously with Councilmember Peck absent. Alright, let’s move on to force we doing okay. It’s eight o’clock. We’ve been going for a little over an hour. Right. Right. All right. For see healthy beverages for children’s meals.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:00
Mayor, members of city council My name is Karen Noni, I’m the Community Services Director. And as you recall, earlier this year, there was some discussion among city council about healthy beverages with children meals and the council provided some direction to staff to, to bring back for discussion at a study session. Possibility of bringing forward an ordinance. So tonight This is that discussion. It we have nine slides, we have three or four people who are going to be making the presentation and I will, I will wrap that up with some questions that you might have and and really to get some direction from council about if you want to pursue us doing more work and bringing back in an ordinance about healthy beverages with children meals. So I want to introduce Olga OLC remembers who is with children, youth and families and she will go over the First three slides with you.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
Good evening, Mayor badly and city council members. I’m all good mothers with children, youth and families. So I want to talk today a little bit about the process. So, you know, the has been like a long process, I want to say three years working with the community. So the healthy and long one is a coalition between there was formed between parents, you was also community members of children, youth and families, local businesses, public health, state, and national health organizations that came together really just to look into see harder going to be able to support our children harder to make sure that we’re hildred Our children are really healthy. So this, this coalition, started working at, you know, bringing the messages into our communities. So through different community events, you know, like single the module, especially targeting the Latino community. Also, they call it our Latino festival. unity in the community. So this coalition was going to different events just bringing the information bringing some educational tools so people were really aware of their consumption. So you know, through a really dynamic exercises, so engaging the community asking questions and through games. So parents and kids were learning really about the amount of sugar they were consuming and we were really amazed to see that a lot of parents were not really aware of this that they wasn’t they wouldn’t really thinking that you know, a kid and a glass of water nine ounces, sometimes they can consume between eight to 10 of spoons of sugar in one drink. So through this process, a lot of articles were published in The Times call and and also in our local magazine, and some letters to the editor also were published, and multiple presentations word that the schools, middle school, elementary school and high school. Also presentations at children, youth and families on presentations at saluda Clinic also they collaborated With this effort, and also the hidden a secret campaign was promoted at clinica Lamar united hospital and through all their organizations, so this message was use into the community through these three years. And also through the mayor’s book club, we always send an insert. So we said that the information about the impact of the sugary drinks you know, to families, so we send this twice so that was able to reach that 1325 our families that we were able to work with, and it messages were sent also through Facebook, Twitter and Social Media. And also a rituals done through the summer music programs. We have a meal program for the last three years so this group have been going to the Meals Program to educate and again parents and children about the impact of the sugary drinks. And also the farmers market also was a rich done Here in this slide, you can see all the different organizations that have been pledging and supporting this effort. So if you see this slide, you can see Southern clinic, you can see our local nonprofits, and also you can see a business, the roots and the half is is also one of the business have been really supportive. And absolutely, tonight we have Sean there’s a business owners, so we reach out to them and also we have that support. Also you can see the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association. So this girl hasn’t been working Joe’s alone. So it is a coalition really trying to tackle this issue from so many different perspectives. And now I want to talk a little bit about the the ordinance. So the ordinance is not really punitive ordinance. Pretty much what we are trying to accomplish here is the restaurants will be offering. You know when they have the children’s meal, they’re going to be offering a healthy bridge and a healthy breakfast the definition will be a water With no natural or artificial sweeteners, milk with no dairy solicitors, we know added natural or artificial sweeteners. So pretty much will be water, sparkling water or milk without any sugar. And the response is still they can still another type of religious if parents request that order children request that they can also they will be able to provide that bridge. So now I would like to introduce Tessa from our public health show is going to provide more information about the word public hell have been doing.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:41
Good evening, Mayor badly and city council. So I know you all have heard a lot about this and I’ll keep it brief, but we just wanted to be really clear on what the policy says. So our definition of a children’s meal is a meal that is advertised to children that comes with food and beverage for one price. The default beverage is the beverage that automatically is offered with the meal. So those are the definitions of what we’re talking about. And I included the definition of default here just because I think as we’re talking about choice, and that comes a lot comes up a lot in this conversation. The definition of default is a choice automatically made by somebody else. So as we’re thinking about this, what we’re doing is really opening choices up for parents is how we see this. So this is just a depiction of what could be offered as Olga explained that there’s unflavored milk or any kind of water with out added sugars. And we know that this works. Disney resorts adopted this over 10 years ago. And you can see from the chart here that 68% of the time, parents stick with a default healthy beverage option. McDonald’s also did this and this data is from 2014 2015 and they just released some new numbers and 20 18

Unknown Speaker 1:10:01
and the number of healthy beverage

Unknown Speaker 1:10:03
choices has increased another 10%. So it’s almost up to I think it’s at 55%. Now, so we know that this works.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:13
So Disney does it.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:14
Disney does it okay Donald’s does

Unknown Speaker 1:10:16
it that’s a that’s a quote from Mayor Bagley, that paper Disney does it? Yes, Disney does it.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:23
So here is just so you can have, you know, a real sense of the impact on local restaurants. When we’re talking about restaurants here we’re talking about, we’re not talking about food trucks or grocery stores or convenience stores, we’re talking about places that serve meals, they could be. Sit down restaurants that could be fast food restaurants, there are total of 218 according to public health way we classify these things in Longmont right now at our serving children’s meals are msre says 37% serving children’s meals. 92% of those are currently offering sugary drinks. So there are 74

Unknown Speaker 1:11:03
restaurants

Unknown Speaker 1:11:05
that would be impacted by this

Unknown Speaker 1:11:06
policy.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:08
And, and at this point, Sean gastner, who owns smoking bowls, the roost and cafes, who’s been an amazing member of the healthy Longmont coalition and his voluntarily adopted this himself is here to talk about the business perspective.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:26
Hey, y’all,

Unknown Speaker 1:11:27
thanks for having me.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:29
Not that you have a choice. I think I get to just show up and talk. So I may do this more often, Tuesday nights.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:36
10 years ago, I heard it said that restaurants are the heart of this, or the heart of a city. And that’s all always since then, kind of been part of the grid through which I filter decisions to just responsibly run restaurants. It’s actually been printed on our menus last five years and it’s, it’s why we chose from the very beginning to give 10% of all of our profits back towards just back to the community, we’ve given over $220,000 to help local families in the process of adoption, we’ve helped eight kids come home that wouldn’t maybe would have been able to. Without that, it’s why I’ve always kind of done the extra work to to responsibly source, local and sustainable products that we sell. A few years ago, when we started seeing all the statistics about single use plastic, I personally spent quite a bit of time and, and resources towards to figure out how to eliminate those from our restaurants. And it’s been about two and a half years with all three restaurants now. No single use plastic, they’re still pressuring the companies you’re from to stop packaging things in bags, but and so it was really clear when about a year ago, I started seeing the statistics about sugary beverages and the effects on kids health. And so we look at Okay, well how How can we be more responsible for what we do inside the restaurants? And for us, and we even when we changed the menu about a year ago to where he used to say, you know, kids meal includes, I think I think it listed like sodas, lemonade, juice, water milk. So we changed it to just say, includes water milk. And that for us and what we communicate to our staffs, specifically our servers is that this isn’t, you know, ever wanting to like shame parents if they ask for a soda or even tell them how to parent, but really, rather, it’s us partnering with parents, I have four kids myself, and so I know what it’s like when you go to a restaurant and said it includes a soda. Some of them even have like, includes dessert or pictures of milkshakes or that’s a fight every single time even with the best kids that know it’s not going to come. And so for us, it feels more like partnering with parents to like not have that fight. Especially, you know, maybe 20 years ago when it was A lot more rare and more of a special occasion to go out to dinner. You know, it’s probably way more common and fairly harmless to let your kid have a soda because it’s special. But now it’s I mean, I see the same families in especially between multiple restaurants, five to 10 meals a week, families are going out now. And so for us, this just feels like how can we be responsible with these families that are eating out five to 10 times a week or five to 10 meals a week? And right now and yeah, I are. Every once in a while we have parents that ask Hey, can we substitute eliminate or soda for the milk? And my staff note our number one core value is that we’re a yes restaurant. And so it’s always a resounding yes. Absolutely. free refills, sir. Extra spoonfuls of sugar. Like you’re the parents, you can parent them, but for us it really feels like just trying to be helpful and free refills on chicken wings.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:54
for you guys.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:56
I’ll test that there. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:57
And so yeah, that’s that. I don’t know. If you guys have any questions I know, some people have asked about like, what about the costs because sodas really inexpensive. But what we’ve found is when since it said just water and milk, like 70% of times, they just say water. And so I think if anything, we’re spending a little bit less money on beverage costs for kids. Because I with my family, my kids, we always get water and they know that now. But anyway, that so it’s not that now instead of spending a nickel on a soda, we’re spending 25 cents on a glass of milk. It’s we’re serving 70% water.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:34
Alright, great. Thank you. Yep, we should.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:39
Just it just a couple more slides, and then then we’ll turn it over. So so as Olga had mentioned Initially, the coalition here in Longmont, Boulder County Public Health, they have done a tremendous job of doing outreach and education for the past three years. And one of the things that So we’d like us to continue on this discovery and finding out, you know, what the community’s appetite is for for this particular ordinance, that we would that we would do some additional community engagement, we would primarily work with our engage long web process. Obviously, restaurant owners are very busy, they have a lot going on, they don’t have a lot of time to go to meetings. And so what we would do is that we have done some preliminary work with our communications and marketing staff around how to set up and engage Lamont site with stories, questions and answers community forums to make it easy for for restaurant owners to be able to weigh in. Because as you saw that, you know, there are 70 some restaurants that would be directly impacted by this ordinance if we choose to move forward with that. So we need their voice. We want their input in order to this to be successful if council chooses to move forward. So we will have a kind of a restaurant site and as well as community site, because lots of people have pages about this. And so we also were indicate how Boulder County Public Health has resources and abilities to support restaurants to come into compliance with this ordinance if again, if we choose to move forward with that, and certainly based on the input that we get from, from the community, if there are some modifications to the ordinance, we would certainly include those for further consideration with with City Council. So really, tonight, we’re looking for some direction and from council some some input in particularly around the compliance issue, too, is that and Eugene May our city attorney can help me with this. But what we would what we would look at or what we propose would be is that Boulder County Public Health would be responsible for, you know, for compliance. They already are responsible for inspecting restaurants, certifying restaurants are healthy doing things right I’m not making people sick, so, so they’re already out there engaging with restaurants and they could really be the bit the party responsible for compliance. And if there was a violation, then they would in turn contact the city plumber, we would designate the staff to be their contact. And then we will go through the, the process of enforcement, if you will. And so so we we would need some direction from from counsel about what kind of an enforcement option we would look at. So I understand and Eugene can help me. So I understand that the certainly by the charter requires us that if we have an ordinance, and we’re responsible for enforcing it, and so, so, but we also have an administrative civil penalty, and within our code that allows us to, to, to basically enforce and violations to do with violations through administrative or civil penalties. Option rather than a criminal one. And so, you know, so we would be looking for any direction from Council in regard to client compliance and enforcement, as well as anything else that we had in the very drafting ordinance that we included in the end the packet. So questions direction, anything that you would want to direct staff to either move forward in this way? Stop

Unknown Speaker 1:19:26
kelsier Christian said.

Polly Christensen 1:19:30
I do think that this is a very good idea. I think that all government is is a balance between the individuals rights and the communities, communities rights, and in this case, I think this is a modest compromise that allows people to have their choice. It’s just that the default drink that comes is either so is either water or milk. And I think that is that is the thing that people Most misunderstand about this. We’re not telling them as parents what to do. We’re just saying that when you order a meal, the default choice will be one of those two choices. You can still order whatever you want. As somebody who’s dragged around a car full of little boys changed up on candy and caffeinated sugary beverages I can. It would have been nice to have a choice of not giving them that but you know. Anyway, I do think that the the two sites are good. I think the two things that need to be clarified for a business probably is that if I serve somebody a drink that they asked for, will I be fined? And the answer is no, because they asked for that. And the default beverages that you’re bringing are those default beverages. And I think the thing that needs to be clarified for parents is your order. me around and you’re telling me what to do with my kids and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And no, we’re actually not we’re giving you the choice of, you know, you have a choice of milk or water. If you want other choices, then you can order them and we’ll bring them but I think this makes it very, very simple the level of, of childhood decay at tooth decay and obesity and diabetes, which all have really awful long term consequences, is a habit that gets set up in childhood often, or it’s a matter of genetics, but it’s exacerbated by sugary drinks. And you know, I think this makes it easier for a lot of parents to just say, No, you’re going to this is these are your choices. I also Now I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway, I also wanted to thank Sean because he is one of the more successful businessmen in town. And he’s also a good guy. And he did this voluntarily, because he sees the sense of this. And I would really much prefer to have had many more business to businesses do this. It’s much better if people voluntarily do stuff. But as we all know, people often don’t make that choice. And so this, to me seems like a very sensible thing. I’m not interested, really in a civil penalty penalty. I think these are pretty modest amounts, because it’s, the first one is just $35. The second was, it was in five years. So that gives people a lot of time. Oh, I remembered what I wanted to say. Is there a time for a business to phase this in? I mean, I don’t want to face it in like, next week. You have to do this. Because they have, they may have to reprint menus that’s very expensive,

Unknown Speaker 1:23:10
correct i think i think the Tessa Hale has from Boulder County Public houses has indicated that the health department does have resources they want to help restaurants come into compliance. So if they need assistance in cost with reprinting menus, that kind of thing that that they would do that and then they also would would recommend a delay or if the if we do move for the ordinance and it passes to have enough time to be able to transition and help people be successful

Unknown Speaker 1:23:40
with that. There’s always white out but that’s not to classic.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:44
there there there is white out so and and i think in terms of just to clarify that the compliance is really about do you if you serve it a children’s meal, which defined is it’s a one price for a beverage and a meal that You have that correctly listed on your menu. That is really what when public health goes into do the inspections. That’s what they would be looking for. If you offer that children’s meal, does it have a healthy beverage? That’s the level of compliance that they would be looking for?

Polly Christensen 1:24:15
Yeah, I hope that would be a very modest cost to businesses to make that change, anyway, thank you for bringing it forth.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:29
I remark Are you done? Well,

Polly Christensen 1:24:33
I could move we’re gonna move it. I move that we

Unknown Speaker 1:24:38
adopt this.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:40
Do we direct staff to move forward? Move staff to move forward? I’m sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:44
Thanks. Second. It’s been moved by Casper Christian and seconded by Dr. Waters. Customer burn. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:53
I’m gonna vote to move forward. But I just wanted to say because I think some of this was stated in complicated ways. The only thing the restaurant would be out of compliance for is what it says on the menu and not what they serve or anything else. It’s just what it says on the menu. Correct. And

Unknown Speaker 1:25:17
and then

Unknown Speaker 1:25:21
the other question that I wanted to ask and and Councilmember Christensen came close to it is, is chain restaurants especially have menu reprint cycles. And I would like to make sure that the ordinance takes that into account in terms of the interval required for compliance.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:46
That’s all

Unknown Speaker 1:25:46
I agree with that. So

Unknown Speaker 1:25:50
Councilmember,

Unknown Speaker 1:25:53
you don’t apologize. You’re on Council. What we do, go ahead, it’s your turn.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:57
I know it’s been it’s been a long time, but I’m So something I did want to point out that I thought was very just miscounting bit of facts is that in the United States, the health costs due to obesity related diseases are approximately 190 billion dollars, with roughly about 40% of that being paid through Medicare and Medicaid, which are taxpayer, you know, we pay for those programs. So, you know, if my calculations were correct, that’s approximately $76 billion that is being spent on obesity related diseases, illnesses, so I just I, I am going to move forward with this. But, you know, some of the pushback that I’ve heard from constituents was that, you know, well, we’re government these are choices. People still have choices, but us as a governmental institution, we are promoting and standing behind healthy drink options for healthier lifestyle. So yes,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:07
but waters.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:09
Thanks for Begley. I’m also going to support this because I think is the right thing to do and the data that Councilmember Hidalgo pairing you shared is part of the reason. And we’ve all read the emails about becoming a nanny state whatnot. But the saying I wonder if those who would would accuse us of parenting would choose not to put their children in car seats, which is, which government says you do? Because we owe it to children for their safety. Or that we would say, use a seatbelt or not. Isn’t the law that the state says you’re going to use a seatbelt because of the cost to society, if you don’t? So it seems to me that we’re falling far short of that kind of role for the state of civilization and a clear signal About our values, and how important it is to pay attention as decision and as the as we heard to make it easy for parents to make the right decision on behalf of their children. And I think it is absolutely what we ought to be doing.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:17
All right, there’s a motion on the table. Actually, I just want to say that I’m going to vote for it. However, when it comes back, if it’s I will make a motion not to include an administrative penalty. If it comes back with one, I will also make a motion that we give plenty of time in order to allow them to hit the reprint cycle. Because I don’t look at this as us being a nanny state either. I think it’s just a matter of just letting people know that hey, water and milk come with it. And if they take the proactive step to say, hey, but we want some sugary drinks or pop or whatever, you can still do that. It’s not that big of a deal. My bigger concern isn’t telling parents what to do with their kids. Because we’re not, we’re telling the restaurants how to run their business. And the really, the only thing that I think that a business owner would be concerned with is, why are you imposing costs on me? So I just want to make sure that we’re not imposing those costs, even if it makes, even if it means that we have to go a little bit longer in allowing them to become compliant. So, all right, we have a motion on the table. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no. All right, that passes unanimously with those of us president and Councilmember Peck is not present. And so she’ll be back tomorrow. All right, so thank you. Alright, last but not least, let’s talk about House Bill 20 1164. Concerning the exemption to the housing authority from certain fees imposed by a water Conservancy district, I assume everybody is read this. If not take two seconds while I make a motion. I move that we direct staff to oppose House Bill 20 1164.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:57
Alright, so that was moved by me and second Goodbye, everyone will say will say Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Get them on the get them on the agenda for tonight. All right, and then anybody have any further comments, debate, etc. All right. Customer Martin.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:14
Yeah, thank you. I just I just wanted to say, you know, from the waterboard, they were pretty serious about opposing this. And they have very good reasons. So I won’t go into them at length, but trust us, it’s not a good plan.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:29
All right. So that said, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, that passes unanimously with customer dopson.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:37
Mayor bakley. One of the really fast thing at coffee with Council, there was a question about the status of the management of single use plastic. So I just thought I’d give a very fast update as to where that is the city council, you may remember that you supported House Bill 1163. Really in your first session. At this point, it’s still in committee, so it’s still turning and burning. And so I haven’t heard necessarily anything I know they’ve had a lot of debate about How to phase it in and what it’s going to look like. But that bill is still alive. And that’s where it stands. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:07
All right.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:09
All right, that said, let’s move on to Marin couch comments.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:13
Councillor Martin,

Unknown Speaker 1:31:15
I just wanted to add to what assistant city manager sader said, which is that the climate emergency Task Force also really, really wanted to do something about single use plastics. And it kind that, you know, it was very sad to have to tell them that we can’t tell what to do until the state decides whether they’re going to act or not. So we’re going to get a a wishy washy recommendation from the Climate Action Task Force, but we want to continue to to promote the state taking action on this.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:56
Alright, anyone else? Alright, so you know, we have For the comments, let’s go ahead and move on to city manager remarks. Anything else? No

Harold Dominguez 1:32:04
comments, Mayor Council.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:06
Mr. May its remarks.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:09
All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn in the spirit of I’m sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:16
We move to adjourn.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:17
All right has been mo the motion has been made by a rare show of partners solidarity with council members, Christian Center. Martin. I saw second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. All right. We’re adjourned. According to six of us, and ironically, Councillor Peck is absent