https://otter.ai/s/muKQJqwFSVmDeu1jyjOKRA
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For the record, once we go back to council chambers I have no idea how I’m going to do this without
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snacks.
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Brian, you never did it without snacks.
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Oh yeah, I forgot. Yeah, I never did it without snack.
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More snacks. Thank you, Marcia. Mayor, you’re
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ready to begin.
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You’re muted mayor,
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you’re muted mayor.
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Again, I’d like to welcome you all to the city council agenda, or sorry to the city council regular session meeting of June 30 2020. via remote access. I’d like to go ahead and call the regular session to order. Can we start with the roll call please.
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Mayor Bagley
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here.
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Councilmember Christiansen here. Councilmember double faring here. Councilmember Martin. Here. Councilmember Peck. Here. Councilmember Rodriguez.
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Can’t unmute
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Aaron here.
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He is here, but he’s having trouble. unmuting
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there, go ahead.
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Here, Councilmember, here we go. Councilmember Walker. Hear me or you have a forum.
2:03
All right, great. Thanks, everybody for being here. Let’s go ahead and start the pledge. Marsha, do you want to lead us this this time night?
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or Why not? Everybody has to follow the pledge. I pledge allegiance
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to the flag
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of the
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United States of America
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and to the
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republic, for which it
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stands,
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one nation, under God,
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indivisible,
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with liberty and justice
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for all. Oh.
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All right, thank you very much. All right. Just a quick reminder, anyone wishing to speak during first call public invited to be heard, or in a public item or hearing item that would be item nine. You’ll need to watch the live stream of the meeting and then call that number 1-669-900-6830. And enter that meeting ID. And then only then we will call on you will identify you by the last four numbers of your phone number, and then you’ll get your three minutes and then we’ll go on to the next person. So that’s how that’s gonna work. Um, let’s go ahead, go to item three a Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of June 16 2020.
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So move.
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I’ll second it. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. All right agenda revisions and submission of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items. Councilmember waters
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thanks, Mayor Bagley.
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I may be the only one that’s thinking about this being a good idea, but I’m going to make the motion. We’re all aware that we had a ballot question fail last November on extending lease periods from 20 to 30 years in the city charter It seems to me that if there was ever a time when we ought to be more aggressive in the pursuit and the enabling of public private partnerships, it will be in the post, post pandemic, not coast post COVID. But the post pandemic period. That ballot question failed, there’s no money tied to it. The reason it failed? I think we did and those who care about this in the community did a poor job of explaining why this would make sense in the long run. I think our performance Performing Arts groups in town anybody’s interested in investing in Longmont sees the wisdom of creating lease periods that would approximate mortgages. None of us would. When we got started with our homes, at least, were willing, I suspect, to take out mortgages that lasted for 20 years. We were looking for a 30 year mortgage just because of how you amortize amortized cost costs. And I think it’ll be a mistake if we don’t put that before the public again. And and then do better outreach with those in the community who care about this and make the case that, that it’s in our long term interest to enable longer pieces or to permit longer PC leasing periods to enable public private partnerships, should we choose to pursue them. So I’m going to move that we direct staff to bring back to Council, a question. Is this the same kind of question we put on the ballot last year that would require council approve?
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Second?
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All right, we have a motion on the table to place once again, the question of increasing city leases to 30 years. Do we have any debate on the issue? And we’re going to go with Councilmember Christiansen first and then Councilmember Peck. Um,
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I do understand Why I think most of us have 30 year mortgages. I do understand this, I just questioned bringing it back before bringing it back to a vote at this particular time when people’s minds are on other things. And I would rather see it come back in two years when I think it has a better chance of passing. You know, I’m not opposed to it. I just don’t don’t think this is really the time I understand why various people who want to invest in the city would like it to be back now. But given that it was already voted down, just recently, I
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I don’t know that it’s a wise thing to bring it back at this time. That’s all I’m saying.
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Councilmember Peck
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I agree with that. But my concern. My other concern is because we’re bringing you want to bring it back so soon is
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are we going to be able to
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reach out to people and truly explain what it’s about? I’m not sure that the public understood what this was really about. So I’m questioning the staffs ability, not not their depth timewise the ability to reach out and market this correctly, so that so that the residents actually understand what we’re doing and why. So I do think with everything that’s going on, perhaps we should wait I, I understand it as well and why we should do it. I just don’t want it to fail a second time, because we haven’t given it enough time or explained it correctly. So that’s my concern. So so I’m not going to vote for it right now.
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Morton,
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I think that we are debating the subject rather than the motion which is to consider the subject. I think that it’s critically important to rebuilding an economy and that therefore, we should at least have the debate while there’s still time to get it on the ballot. I also now that we all understand that the public didn’t understand
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in 2018
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I think that it’ll be a clean slate I doubt if anybody even remembers because it seemed like such a puzzle. But if it’s explained correctly, I don’t think it will seem like a puzzle and I think everyone wants our economy back.
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I don’t see any other hands I
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i’m not i don’t i I’m not ready to debate the issue right now, but I will vote to bring it back so we can have the discussion. I think it’s an important enough topic to at least discuss. And then we’ll we can vote it down later if we want to, but I’d before putting out an agenda, at least discussing it. I would have, if we were discussing it tonight, I would probably bring up the fact that there are some very influential political behind the scene figures that don’t want this to happen, and would want some assurance that that we could overcome that
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obstacle. But anyway, seeing no one else, and Councilman Peck,
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um, I don’t know Mayor badly why you you brought that up, but there are behind the scenes political figures that don’t want this to come back. I want it to come back. I just want to make sure we do it correctly. So although I wasn’t talking about you, Councillor pack, I’m saying that there are people who advocated against it. None of the council members I’m just saying there are people in the community Who were vocally against it? And I’d want to make sure we figure out a way to,
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to, to overcome what we faced last time. That’s all I was looking for anybody here?
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I have a vote to discuss to put it on the agenda to discuss. Thank you.
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Let’s go ahead and vote on it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion passes unanimously. I look forward to vigorous debate.
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Councilmember Christiansen
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sorry.
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Monday night, we had
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it, there was a another listening session for early childhood education. And
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it was very, very
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illuminating to me, and it made me realize how you know, we all are having very, very different experiences at this and It made me realize how very different the experiences of people who have small children, people who are central workers, people who are in the daycare industry are having a really nearly impossible time and they could use some help and I know we’re spending our contingency money down but that’s for emergencies. This is an emergency and since we have a bit of money there even though it’s not a huge amount of money, I would suggest that we contribute several thousand dollars of that toward the the early childhood education with the group in Longmont with the idea that they would distribute it evenly to the daycare centers that are having so much trouble. Okay,
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anyway. Do we have no money left
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Now I was actually going to jump in to say, a couple of things we’re working on, we have the 200,000, the council set aside, in terms of early childhood, early childhood programs, and we also have the cares funding that we’re looking at. And so what staff did this week, similar to what we did on the business side, we put out in essentially, trying to get an unmet needs assessment with all of the early childhood care providers. Oh, really see what they need, so that we can be more targeted. That was going to be something that I was going to update you on the COVID Oh, good, but it works now. So once we get that back, then we’ll be able to figure it out. One of the big issues we’re seeing is the need for PvE. And we’re trying to look at it in a similar way that we were talking about with businesses. So okay, this part Yeah,
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cuz
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they are I mean, thank you, Harold. I I wasn’t aware that the some of the carriers Money was going to be able to go to the early childhood people and that’s good. So okay, I withdraw that until we figure out how much is going toward them because it’s they’re having such a hard time and you know all every one of these daycare centers is worried that if one person gets sick the whole thing will shut down and these are all just for central workers the Yeah, anyway, we all know this but it’s it’s anything we can do to do that, but to help them would be helpful but let’s wait all wait until you update us. Thanks.
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All right up. Who else? Kazmir Martin. You need to wave your hand harder. I’m kidding. You wave it pretty hard. I just didn’t see.
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Thank you Mira Bagley. I’m out. Our public works and Natural Resources Division has been doing yeoman’s work
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on
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keeping our public open spaces operational, they’ve been facing a large number of public health and safety issues around it because of the extraordinary crowding. That’s resulting from people having flexible working hours and people not being able to do anything but local,
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outdoor recreation.
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And I think that it would be helpful at some point while it’s still summer. If the public and the council got a full report of what’s being done, I don’t want to make a huge amount of work for them. So you know, I’m pretty sure these are pretty eloquent people. If they can just talk to it, I’d be perfectly happy. And, you know, four weeks after we’re through with the Climate Action Task Force would be plenty good time if they don’t want to do it sooner. But I just think it would be useful for us to have the information that to tell our constituents when they write to us about it, and to get this case in front of the public so that maybe people will be a little more measured in in their
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in the care they take when they use these public amenities.
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For pack
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Thank you, Councilwoman Martin. Actually that was what I was going to suggest something similar, but it mainly it is coming from Macintosh like at this point. What I would like and I was going to make a motion to have either put it on a study session agenda or have a special session for city council as well as the parks department and public works, to have an open discussion of ideas actually, as to what we can all do help. Because I think that as we’ve been getting these emails that the council itself has, has ideas as to how we can work together to make this happened. So I am going to make a motion that we read that we put on a study session or a special session, staffs choice in the next couple of weeks or before August to have a discussion with a republic. With council having ideas and something we can actually give to the public. So that’s my motion that we direct staff to have either a special session or on a study session, a replay report and counsel input on what is happening to our natural resources and a step forward.
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I will support that and second with the stipulation that it needs to be a study session so it happens on Tuesday night when people are watching.
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Okay.
17:41
I agree with that. Um, I’ve noticed though counsel on martin that when we had our other special session because it is the COVID and people are at home and they’re not working that they’re more tuned into tourney tuning into another meeting on a different night. They’re not as As busy near at home, so that’s why I wanted to leave it up to the city staff, because I don’t know what they have scheduled for study sessions at this point. So
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I don’t know.
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Do what do you think counts? Well, Martin, since you’re the one Do you still want it to be on a Tuesday night?
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I’d prefer Tuesday night, but I don’t want that to be a reason to stop it. Because I do think it’s important. So, you know, again, I would like a goodly audience for it because I think the word needs to be spread and the word people need to understand what the staff are dealing with.
18:43
Okay. So I’ll take that as an amendment to the motion that we haven’t done on Tuesday night. Thank you.
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And I do second.
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Thank you.
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All right. Um, there’s a motion in a second to bring back and have a discussion on a Tuesday night. study session environment, environmental impacts of what’s going on out of my Macintosh lake. And I would assume that would also incorporate what we might need to do without a union. But Dr. Waters. I
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just I just want to clarify, is this limited the Macintosh? Now I think they’re issues that I’d like to learn more about from a staff perspective on decades Park, other parts of the Greenway union, I think I think I mean, certainly we’ve heard a lot about Macintosh and in knowing what we’re doing and what the options are in idea generation, but if I think we have issues beyond Macintosh, it would be helpful to get a broader perspective on kind of what they are and levels of intensity and because there may there may be different solutions or options we ought to consider in each venue.
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Thank you, Councilman waters, and that is why and I probably didn’t say it correctly, but I said Our natural resource or other natural resources, and I didn’t name them specifically, but I agree with you.
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All right, what the big question I was actually to talk to Harold with this week was, it didn’t seem to be a problem when union was open. And so if we were now consolidating everything in Macintosh, I just want Anyway, that’s it. Let’s go out and vote and we can talk about it and have staff come back and we can do it then. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. The eyes have it carries unanimously. All right. Thank you. Anything else from council?
20:37
Man, may I have just the reminder that we have sent out that substitute letter of agreement for item eight f 10. agenda tonight.
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All right, then we will get we’ll hit that eight F. Let’s go ahead and move on. To city manager report on COVID-19. How are we doing Harold
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actually may We’ve got two items of added to that are going to be regular city manager reports. It’s going to be COVID-19 and the housing authority as we move forward. Jesse is on the line and he’s going to talk about some numbers. A couple of issues that you already brought up that we were, I was contemplating how we move forward and bring those to you all. When we talk about the great outdoors, what I would say is that was actually a topic of conversation today. And my administrators call the public health. The we’re not unique right now in the issues that we’re facing in terms of the great outdoors and what’s really happening. And in some ways, in certain cases, it’s not as bad as it is in other areas. Because of the trailheads right now, in the foothills in the mountains are creating a significant issue for The county as they look forward as a as they’re trying to deal with it in the number of people they just have congregating in those spots. It’s actually going to touch on some of the masking conversations that are coming out some of the requirements that will be brought forward are not requirements, but public information that will be brought forward. In addition to the many of the points you made, when we talk about the issues that our public works department in parks and natural resources are having, they’re not limited to actually Macintosh. We’re seeing similar issues that union similar issues at Dickens. We had a huge issue occur at button rock. And just the number of people that we were having up there and where they were parking and I think we’ve gotten a handle of those issues based on where we were early in this to the point where we’ve assigned a police officer at Especially on the weekends to both button rock and union. And then we have a roving police officer that’s working at McIntosh and Dickens, you all know that we obviously had to close the bridge, because folks were jumping off of the bridge. And we knew that the water level was going down. Just to give you a sense of the types of issues that we’re chasing, even after we get it in, closed it, we still had issues with people walking around in climbing the bridge and still trying to jump off. So what I can tell you is generally we’re chasing these issues all over the community right now. And then obviously, you know, that’s in addition to the normal items that we’re we’re working on. So I appreciate the opportunity for us to bring that back. We’re probably gonna bring it back at the next study session. I know David and his group have been compiling that and working on these issues. You know, as Councilmember Martin mentioned earlier, the buoys around Macintosh as we were trying to get there, so they’re just trying to tackle these issues one at a time and, and really deal with them to the best of their ability. So that’s when we’ll bring it back. At this point, it was a day of change. In terms of some of the items that were released in the governor was talking today about protect our neighbors and what that’s going to look like. Jeff will obviously touch on that his presentation. I think probably one of the most significant changes today is that the governor announced in his press conference, that within 48 hours, he is going to close bars and
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nightclubs. And I think what you’re seeing is that something that is is happening in many states right now based on the increased case, the cases that they’re seen in various states, I know as a point of reference, where I was talking to my mom earlier, she was saying that they made the same decision. In Texas a couple of days ago, you may have seen many of the that state was being profiled about the number of cases that were specifically related to one, a couple of facilities in Houston in Dallas. So you’re just seeing states really move from this to give you also a sense of what we’re doing internally. I have not allowed work related travel, because of many issues, and I’ve actually have extended that out. And I haven’t created a date certain on it just because we’re not sure what people are going to get into and what states are going to do. Specifically, we heard that state locations in the northeast are saying, if you come from an area that has a growing caseload, you’re going to have to potentially quarantine yourself for 14 days. It’s actually not a new thing. why he’s been doing that from the beginning. It’s the first time that it’s really been something like mainland us. And so we’re just going to continue that in terms of work related travel based on. We don’t want people to get stuck. We don’t want people to go somewhere and then find out they have to quarantine. So we’re managing all of those issues internally as well. And we’re trying to work with Jeff and his staff in the county, as we all tried to understand what protect our neighbor means. And when we can get in there, and I’ll cover some points after Jeff’s presentation. But generally, today was another day of change. And we don’t understand it all. And we’re going to work to try to understand it the next couple of days. Jeff, are you ready?
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Susan, can you run Jeff’s presentation or do you need me to?
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Jeff, let me know when you’re ready.
26:50
I’m ready. You can pull up that first slide. Thank you, Harold. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, council members appreciate being invited back. What I’m going to do is Run through the latest data updates that we have, it’ll be similar to what you saw last time. And then, on the end of this, what I did was I added a protect our neighbor update. So I wasn’t able to see the press conference today with the governor. So I didn’t hear the details, but I did see what was sent out in writing. So I’m going to cover those pieces with you. Let You know what, what I’m seeing and when we might be able to move to that next stage. This first graph is just again, our total case count. So we’re at 1300 and 92. in Boulder County, we have not seen much change in the number of people that deceased and again, the majority of the people that we’ve seen deceased in Boulder County have come from long term care facilities. I will talk on a slide and as we’re coming up the work that we’ve done to really put some supports into those long term care facilities which has really decreased the numbers so the next slide
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One moment, there you go.
28:04
There you go. This is this is the number of deaths in Boulder County, the orange represents long term care facilities. The blue represents others that are not in long term care facilities. And as you’ve seen, that I’ve presented before, that is consistent with what we’re seeing in terms of data across the country. Definitely the largest percentage of the impacts are associated with our oldest percent of the population. And it’s also critical why we need as we move forward, we need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to maintain support for that critical population. If you look there at hospitalizations, you would see that the majority of people hospitalized are going to be people above 50 years old, but the the graph really jumps up when you start to get above 70 years old. So those are our that’s our population that’s most most at risk, and the population that we definitely need to pay attention to next slide.
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This is the total number of positives that we’ve seen in the county. And in terms of our testing. And again, what you’ll see here is that early on in this process that orange represents long term care facilities, we had significant outbreaks. That started right after we got into COVID. And it was when they’re in those facilities really difficult to control, as I’ve said before, but with a lot of work, both from our staff as well as from the directors and the staff in each of those facilities, we’ve really been able to get the spread of the disease under control. And those facilities are doing really pretty well. Next slide. This is our five day average number of new cases. And what you can clearly see here is that spike which is associated with what I’m guessing you’ve all heard about, and that was the outbreak that was associated primarily with parties that were up on the hill. During the week, the last week of May and into the first and second week of June, we do have that outbreak under control. As you can see, our cases are continuing to decline. We don’t have we are not seeing any other outbreaks in the county that we are not able to effectively control quickly. So the majority of the challenge here and this was a pretty major challenge for us. Just to give you an example, and those of you who are tuned into this, for every positive case, it generates roughly five contacts of people who were associated with that case, that’s the average. For every positive case investigation. It’s two hours for each of those five contacts that we have to investigate. It can range anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on the complexity of it. So that generates a lot of work in a very short time and it’s why it’s so important as we move forward with With protect our neighbor, that we have the ability to control the spread of that disease. So again, that’s that’s the majority of what you’re seeing in that spike right there. Boulder County, as I have reported in the previous weeks has been doing really well really appreciate everybody that’s been really working hard and sacrificing to keep our numbers low. And this is an example of what can happen if we don’t pay diligent attention to that.
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Next slide.
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This is a really busy graph. But what I want you to pay attention to here is that the one the the the bar in red is Boulder County. So you can see that we popped up when we had the outbreaks, we’re now on a decline. These other these other lines that you’re seeing are the metro Denver area. And the point here is that you can see that there is increasing cases across the metro Denver area. None were as significant as ours. Our graph rpq was higher than the peak at any point during COVID with this outbreak associated with the hill, but there is increasing cases across the metro area. We are seeing in general, those numbers between the 20 and 40 year olds primarily with a concentration more so in the 20 to 29 year olds. So we do that is part of what we’re seeing across the nation as well. It’s part of what you what Harold just talked about, and what we know we need to focus on as we move forward.
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Next slide.
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This is our total testing. And what’s important to note here, one of the one of the protector neighbor requirements is that we have the ability to test up to four almost 500 cases per day, we we easily have the ability to do that in Boulder County. So that is not a challenge. We have tested and I’m going to show you on the next graph in just a second. What we need to do is be able to test number one, all symptomatic cases in Boulder County, we can do that across the board. Right now we have multiple testing sites, those are available on our website. And we’ve expanded our testing to the contacts of those people who are symptomatic so that we can more effectively control the spread of that disease. So if you go to the next slide, without getting too technical here, the bottom line is you want to maintain less than a 5% positivity rate. And that is what this graph demonstrates we are between between two and 4%. And that’s, that’s good. That means we are testing enough of our population that we are identifying the positives that are out there. When you start to see positivity rates up in the 20s. You are in an active outbreak where you’re not in control of that situation. And that’s part of what we’re seeing across the country right now. But in terms of testing, we’re in good shape. We do have a ability to test and get outside of just symptomatic to now test contacts of people who are positive.
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Next slide.
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This is the rate of residents who have tested positive per 100,000 population. Even though Longmont shows up as the highest here, the majority of the new cases are coming from Boulder. And again, that is associated primarily with the outbreak that we’ve seen there.
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Next slide.
34:32
This is the hospitalization data that you’ve seen me show you before. What you’re going to see as I go through these next couple slides is just that, again, our hospitalization data is good for Boulder County. Even though we’ve had a few more people show up in the hospital that had been COVID positive or hospitalization rates are still very low and continuing to stay very low. And this just shows what our rate looks like compared to the rest of the metro area. And again, Boulder County is that red line on the bottom.
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Next slide.
35:05
This is the total number of patients hospitalized in Boulder County due to COVID-19. And just demonstrates again, what I just said, which is our hospitalization rates are low and are staying low. And that’s what we want to see as we move forward.
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Next slide.
35:22
This is what we’re facing, that I’m sure everybody’s probably been hearing about and listening to on the news. So this is the United States. We are now at roughly a little over 40,000 cases per day, that is higher than any time during this pandemic from the beginning. So we are headed in the wrong direction. We do want to be very thoughtful and careful about how things move forward. And because we don’t want to be in some of the places and some of these graphs that I’m going to show you from others across the nation that again, I know we’ve all been hearing about so at a nationwide level. In Colorado level, we have reason to take pause and make sure that we’re being really careful and thoughtful about how we move forward if you can go to the next slide. So I’m not going to go through all these, but I just want to point out a few that are that are pretty challenging. Florida, Texas, Arizona, the steepness of those curves, as you can see, creates massive challenges. If you look at that graph, again, in the in the entire previous time, in the outbreak, those states are far above the numbers that they saw anytime previous during the outbreak and those are pretty challenging situations. Colorado is down there on the in the middle and it’s it’s pretty we’re pretty low in Colorado. Because Because we we’ve done a good job and we want to continue to do a good job. You can see that we do have a tail up just like I showed you with those Metro cases. We do have some increasing cases. And I think the governor is getting prudent about making sure that as we move to protect our neighbor that you have to meet certain metrics that I’ll talk about now, to really make sure that we’re not just jumping ahead without being really thoughtful. I think the governor is watching the cases that are occurring around and other states. He’s he’s meeting with his staff. At CDP he they’re doing a lot of analysis, and they’re doing a lot of watching and they’re being cautious. So if you can go to the next slide. So in order to go in again, my caveat here is I did not hear the press conference today. But I’m you I took the materials that I saw distributed today and pulled from those materials. We will have more information by next week as we move further into this, but to enter protect our neighbors and really the biggest difference between protect our neighbor neighbor at this point. And where we are right now is that you can open up all areas at 50% Pre pandemic levels. And that The only caveat to that is that you cannot go, you cannot do that in areas where there’s more restrictive orders. So as, as Harold just mentioned, the governor is announcing or has announced that they’re going to be closing closing bars and nightclubs. So that would be an example where you obviously that doesn’t apply to that 50%. But this really opens up all areas to 50% capacity. And that still maintains some of the social distancing requirements that the modeling is showing that we need to do in order to be able to move into the fall without surging our hospitals to a place that others are facing right now. So again, I think it’s a very thoughtful approach. I appreciate how the state has approached this and really been careful about looking at metrics. So for each of the things that you see on here low disease transmission levels, local public health agency capacity for testing, and hospital ability to meet the needs. Of all patients, there is specific metrics that we need to meet in order to be able to. They’re calling it certification. So we have to do an application process, where we demonstrate how we meet these different metrics. And then if we meet those metrics, then we are certified to move into a protect our neighbor. framework. And if we don’t, then we stay at safer at home. And obviously, the governor still maintaining three different levels stay at home. So if we have to move backwards, which none of us want to do, we all know that we have safer at home and we have now protect our neighbors So those three categories will still remain. And then there will be counties that are at different levels depending on whether they can meet the metrics in these areas or not.
39:49
Next slide.
39:52
These are this is additional requirements. each county that applies has to have a mitigation and containment plan. That is scribes what what they’re gonna do if they start to fall out of the compliance with the metrics that we had to meet in order to get into compliance. That includes things like, just as an example. Really, a lot of this is based on that case containment. So we can lean on, we have mutual aid agreements that allow us to lean on our neighbors on the state, the state has brought in, as I’m sure you’ve all heard, a fair amount of America or folks who can do contact tracing. So again, I think our state has taken a really proactive and careful approach to moving this forward. And that is part of what we would need to do in order to move to this next level and to make sure that we’re staying within that next level. These these components that you see here about how it must be approved our new components, which I think again, are thoughtful. This needs to be approved by all local leaders, local electeds county commissioners, mayors, hospitals that serve In our county, law enforcement and emergency management across the county, and the local public health director, and in addition to that, the plan has to demonstrate how counties will promote public compliance with the guidelines. And I just want to give a plug to all of you folks in Longmont and how much work in partnership you’ve demonstrated and helping us meet that specifically, Harold and his staff have been wonderful. They’ve been at the table with us really working through challenges when we’re running into them. Police Departments been completely supportive and as has your staff with educational approach as well. So your your commitment to this is going to help us make sure that we can move forward based on that. And then how counties will increase mass wearing we did extend our mask order in definitely be in when I say indefinitely, we will continue to obviously look at the mask evidence the mask evidence is getting stronger and there’s more done demonstration that masks are reducing the spread of disease. And that is going to be as as you see here, one of the requirements is we have to demonstrate that we can continue to do that. We will be also doing a monthly monitoring, we have set up a monitoring program. In addition to the the surveys that we’re dealing with our businesses to ask some of these questions we’re doing on the ground monitoring across jurisdictions on a monthly basis that includes looking for are the our businesses as an example, falling social distancing requirements? And are they following masking requirements? We’re looking in different cities as well as the county. And we’ll continue to use that to help guide education efforts. So when we run into hotspots, we already have a team that’s in place that that includes some of your stuff from court code enforcement as an example that are meeting and talking about where these hotspots showing up and how do we make sure we’re dedicating more education and support to making sure that We are actually falling at our mask. assessments have been very positive. We haven’t done one in the last three weeks. We will be doing one next week. But the last one that we did was demonstrating we have a very high compliance rate with mass Wayne, which has been great. And then the last thing is how will we have to demonstrate how will increase increase How will increase influenza vaccine uptake. And of all the years of how important that is, this one is critical. If you think about the symptoms and the requirements for having people stay home, when they have any kind of symptoms that look a lot like vaccine, I’m sorry, a lot like COVID and influenza together, those have similar type symptoms. So having people get influenza vaccine this fall is going to be critically important. And the state has made some money available to local public health agencies to support more education and outreach around that So, I believe we’ll be able to meet all of those things based on things that we have in place right now. But just know that it will need to come to local electeds to submit the application. And that’s all I have. At this point. I don’t have any other things. I guess the only other thing I would want to emphasize to everyone that’s listening in here is our ability to really control the spread of this disease. We don’t we all know, we don’t have enough people to assure there’s enforcement everywhere. We don’t have enough people to do education in every single place. More people are out in our communities. It really does come down to each one of our individual responsibilities, to do everything we can to maintain social distancing of six feet from each other. That will help us stop the spread of the disease, where it’s difficult to do that where a mask a mask is making a difference. And if we can continue to do that we can continue to keep our numbers down. I think part of the challenge that you’re probably also seeing At the national level, is there states now that are putting travel restrictions in place? Because even if Colorado is doing pretty well, we know that we have a lot of people traveling in and out of states. And those people can spread that disease that if you remember the graphs early on, that I showed you, there was a lot of associated spread with travel. We don’t want that scenario to happen again. So. So that is just those are all things to pay attention to as we continue to, to look forward. I want to thank you all.
45:33
Thank you, Councillor Christiansen
45:44
you’re muted Paulie.
45:50
I thought I did.
45:52
Jeff, thank you for your leadership on this and thank you for your kind words about our staff, our our staff and the police. Men work really, really hard and they’re under a huge amount of stress right now. So one thing I am wondering, I realized that weld county is not considered, I guess, part of the greater Denver, Denver Metro area. But not to be snotty about it. I’d like to see the statistics on weld county because I think would make us look good. I just think that would be interesting to look at. The second thing is, as you mentioned, I there are states that are putting restrictions or on people who travel out of the state. There are a whole lot of people I know who are angry at City Council for not having fireworks this year, which we could have had if they would just follow the guidelines, but um, so they’re planning to go up to Washington to Wyoming, which is of course having bikes in their record. So I’m a little worried about people going up to Wyoming and getting sick and coming back down here. Do you have any guidelines or suggestions for how to handle that?
47:15
Well, I don’t I don’t know that we can prohibit people from doing that. But what I’m going to say to you is the same thing I said before, if people are putting our economy, our society at risk, if they go into places where there’s lots of people in crowds, and you can’t maintain social distancing, again, we can’t control every single one of those situations. And unless people take personal responsibility to avoid those situations, we will see this disease spread.
47:45
High No, thank you. I wish people really understood
47:52
that the only way we can open up again and get back to normal as if people do follow social distancing, and hygiene and general courtesy.
48:03
Okay, if I can,
48:05
if I can jump in real quick while Jeff still here too. I’m Susan, I’m going to share my screen. One of the things and this was just updated after Jeff sent his PowerPoint on their website. So you’ll see the correlation. And if you all can see this, as Jeff talked about, at least how the state’s issuing the rules, we know, we know what the the you know, I call it we know what the game is that we’re playing now. And what we’re playing is don’t have increased cases, have the capacity to trace, have the capacity to test and to give you a sense of the impact on this. How people act and how they approach things, really impacts our local businesses and the people that work in those local businesses because Jeff and his staff are actually working to get ready to Looking at a variance, that would have allowed us to operate a little bit differently, or in a different way and be more open because of the way our numbers were looking, before they could submit the variance, we saw the increase in in cases in Boulder. And so that did not allow us to open up more businesses. And so at the end of the day, you know, that really hurt our local businesses and the people that have to work, there are the people that work there in order to, you know, to expand what they’re able to do. And when you look at this chart, this is really important to me. And Jeff, if I’m missing any of these, you helped me on this one. If you remember, we were at 500, a couple of weeks ago, and we sort of held at 517. And we were almost doubled the cases of Boulder.
49:49
boulder is now
49:52
both cases from from long line. And what’s interesting is is when you look at the population, they last probably 20 thousand students. So we’re probably the largest city now in terms of population, but they’ve caught up to us in cases. And then if you come up here, and you look at this chart, and this is exactly what Jeff was talking about, the largest growth in cases occurred in this 20 to 29. demographic. And that was what was associated with what they saw on the hill. And in those parties into your question is, those increases really penalize our local businesses, in terms of how they’re going to be able to operate and how we move forward, because that is what the state is saying. We the Jeff and we all have to look like in terms of whether or not we can move into the protector number phase, or protector number, protect our neighbors phase, the numbers are going to be how those decisions are going to be made based on what the governor’s communicated and so now if they If the variance was in play, it’s really protect our neighbors. You have to go 14 days out from this in order to just consider it. So it’s really delayed what we’re able to do to support, you know, our community.
51:18
They get that right, Jeff, you were perfect.
51:22
All right. Kelsey Marie local fairy.
51:27
Okay, so I had a couple of questions around the mask. You had mentioned something about a mask assessment. What does that entail? What is that we you said there was one three weeks ago, you’re coming up to another? You know, I just wanted to know what that what
51:46
it entails.
51:48
There’s two components to it. One is asking the businesses, what they are seeing we have a series of I think it’s about 20 or so questions. happy to share this with all of you and We’re asking business what they’re seeing relative to social distancing and masking. We asked other questions besides that, in it, and we are also doing on the ground assessments. So we are going into stores of different sizes. And I may not have all these details exactly correct. But we’re going into stores of different sizes, small, medium, large, and we’re doing on the ground assessments. And we’re watching in the stores, are people maintaining social distancing at six feet or greater? And then what percentage of people are or are not? And then in those same stores, we’re also looking at are people wearing masks or not? And so that’s the type of assessment that we’re looking at. And we’re doing that in different geographic areas, including mountain versus plains, and Venus apologies.
52:48
And the target is really 80% if we see about 80% of the public utilizing masks, were okay.
52:58
I don’t know if I agree tell you that because I haven’t, I haven’t modeled that specifically. So I don’t know that I can speak to what would happen if 80% were versus 60%. As an example, what I can tell you that is that in any scenario, where you can’t maintain six feet, social distancing, and it’s six feet, social distancing, just so you all know what CDC guidance is, it’s six feet, social distancing. If you’re less than six feet for more than 15 minutes, then you’re at increased risk for spreading the virus. So wherever there is less than six feet, if you’re not wearing a mask, you have that much more ability to potentially get the virus we know that mass will reduce the spread of large droplets. And there’s some more articles that are coming out that looked at states that had mandatory masking versus non mandatory masking. And what that looked like in terms of total amount of virus spread in those states. So so the the bottom line is whenever whenever you’re getting To be even challenged about being within six feet, you should wear a mask. And masking is not the panacea. But it’s an important tool. Maintaining six foot distancing is the number one thing. Obviously, hand washing, making sure that you’re thinking about when you put your mask on and off, you’re not contaminating yourself. Those are all important pieces that taken together can make a big difference and have made a big difference.
54:24
And are you finding that when we you look at what information you’re the World Health Organization is sending out CDs, CDC, other states? Are you finding that it’s coming more in line? Or it’s still because I know early on? There were just different messages all over the place? Yeah.
54:45
Yeah. Yeah.
54:47
Yeah, definitely. There’s been different messages all over the place without a doubt. And what I would say is that the Centers for Disease Control has been for it’s probably over a month now been recommending mass to the general public. Like, the I haven’t looked at the World Health Organization lately, but there was a time when the World Health Organization was saying you only need mass for people who are sick. But we know that mass make a difference. Now the the, as an example, the Surgeon General is speaking really clearly about masking and the meeting for mass in general public because we know that it reduces the spread of large droplets and can be effective at reducing the spread of the disease, especially in some of the states that weren’t necessarily pushing that mask. message, you’re now seeing a lot more mass messaging being pushed, because people know that it can help assure that we’re doing everything we can to keep our economies open, and our ability to be able to move and not be in a lockdown type city or state home type situation.
55:47
Okay, thank you.
55:55
All right here Harold, what else do we need? Oh, sorry, Dr. Waters, didn’t see the hand.
55:59
Thanks. Begley. Jeff, just building on on the conversation you were just having. We continue it, you wouldn’t be surprised if certain you do as well get a fair amount of incoming messages about how dare you require, even though we’re not requiring, right, I mean, there are explanations that come from the county, about mastering under what conditions. But are you have any advice on on what the specific messaging is? I mean, this is, since it’s voluntary, for the most part, because enforcement is so difficult. It are there are there are there any messages that are more persuasive than others? Is it I suspect shaming is not the right approach, but it’s hard not to. I mean, how do what what have you learned if anything about here are the two or three key points or messages that are more likely because people who have chosen to turn make this a political statement? It turned into an understanding of what we that we are repeating For one another, or it’s about the common good or just about the economy, and trying to, you know, keep our economy moving.
57:08
Well, I can say a couple of things. So there is there are some people and we do we do get that same feedback as well there. And there is some folks who, for whatever reasons, they have just don’t believe that mass are an effective tool. And and even when we provide messages, and we show information, it still is not very convincing. So and I completely understand that that’s the world we live in. And we know that what I try to make sure that we’re emphasizing to people is that this this doesn’t help me specifically, it doesn’t help you specifically that we’re protecting each other because we want to protect our community and our economy. None of us want to go back to a place where we’re having to shut things down. That’s not good for anybody and we all know it. And that’s the message that we keep trying to get to people. I can tell you that Number is 100%. We have both our chambers are 100%. Behind this, we’ve been working with chambers, who have been emphasizing the same thing, the importance of social distancing, and masking helps all of us. And when we don’t take responsibility for that, we can see outbreaks that occurred that then put all of us at risk, not just not just us individually, or our parents or our grandparents, but but again, our society and our economy. So I think it’s really important that we continue to emphasize those things. And and it’s up to people’s individual behaviors. They are the ones who are going to make the difference. And again, I just want to say thank you to so many of the people who have really worked so hard and sacrifice because our numbers outside of that outbreak were very positive and have remained completely positive, especially comparative to the metro area. So we can do it together. And this is not forever. We’re going to have a vaccine at some point that’s going to be available. But we do need to be diligent in the intro.
59:04
Maybe we can I follow up with one more question to Harold.
59:07
Again.
59:10
Here what when we get questions because we do I just got an email, you know, just before the council meeting, expressing concerns about enforcement. Where are we with enforcement? Are we still in an education phase? Will we always be in an education phase? Is there a point with individuals where it’s no longer education, but people do get cited? have anybody been? Have any people been cited? Are there places that we are paying to which will pay more attention with with more vigorous enforcement than other places? Just give us the Gestalt? And what what we should know and how we could help the community understand what can’t what can we do and what Can’t we do with respect to enforcement?
59:51
So I think generally, what I would say and you just talked about this, and this was also the topic of conversation. If you talk to any of the administrators, what you will see is we just don’t have enough bodies to be everywhere to enforce everywhere. But what we do try to do is really target that. So you heard me say, on the weekends when we do see certain upticks, we are devoting officers to assist our parks and recreation staff. And you know, a big shout out to those folks because we’re asking them to come in for overtime to help us on these items. And so we are specifically placing folks around Macintosh union dekins. In button rock, as I said earlier, we are still trying to really approach it from a an education standpoint, because we’re also finding that actually we get more compliance with that. That approach then, you know, just issuing tickets because all you do is really then create a situation where people can become more entrenched in their position. And try to talk to him about, well, here’s how you’re really impacting. And so I what we’ve always said in this is in our officers have this discretion at all times, it also is going to depend on the situation, how many people were seeing how they’re approaching it. You know, it’s one thing if it’s, you know, five people, it’s another thing if it’s 100, if it’s 100, we’re probably calling we’re calling Jeff. And it’s not just us, it would be us in the county health department and others all engaging in that particular issue. So the answer is, we still really try to take the education approach. And we are targeting people based on where we’re seeing significant pushes, and where we don’t have enough people to respond. But we also can’t do that all the time. Because in the middle of all of this, what we’re also dealing with is our normal daily activities, and the staff loads that that presents and that really ties into what you all were talking about. In terms of the challenges that we’re facing with our parks folks, so I didn’t probably give you the numbers, I can get those numbers and see what we’re really dealing with. What I can tell you is that the reports that I get in terms of the number of calls, we’re at least getting into the system, those have gone down for a long, long time. And we’ve been pretty stable in terms of the issues that we’re having to deal with. We’re not seeing it as it were, other than what we’re seeing at Macintosh, and the calls that we’re all getting on that. One of the other challenges in this is how do you know when they define it a family group? And how do you verify who’s part of the family there’s a lot of nuances in this that don’t make it as simple as as we would all like it to be.
1:02:50
Right counselor Peck
1:02:55
Thank you very badly. I just want to say because there are probably more people watching at this point. council meeting them later during the comments is that for those of you who think long when doesn’t have the right, that we shouldn’t be enforcing or telling people to wear masks. I want you just to look at the country. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey now have banned travel from Florida. No Floridians are allowed to go into that tri state area, because their numbers are so high. They did not comply. Their mayors and governors did not take this seriously. Also with Arizona and Texas, their mayors and governors didn’t take it seriously at all. We now have Europe banning travel from the United States, because they do not want the they don’t feel that the United States is taking this seriously enough and they don’t want their numbers to escalate. Again, this if you’re only concerned about the economics of this, look at the economics have us not being able to go to Europe on business and to conduct business as usual. So we all have to take personal responsibility, none of us want to be policed. So I am asking you please comply with the mask and the social distancing. We don’t want to go back to safe at home, or even more stringent measures. So I’m, I’m asking everybody in this community to please comply. Thank you.
1:04:32
All right, Harold, anything else?
1:04:34
Um, I was gonna do a bio bot update, but we’ve kind of gone long on this one. So Robert, Annie and your group if you’re here, we’ll bring it back the next time. Sorry about that.
1:04:44
Right. Thanks, Cheryl.
1:04:46
I didn’t have it now.
1:04:48
Yep, go ahead.
1:04:51
So as you all know, you pass the resolutions and we talked about the that I have been now on the board appointed The executive board member, and we’ve got our team in place. Just wanted to give you a sense on who we brought in to work with this. So generally, you have three of us, Kathy, Karen and myself, that are working on a pretty high level to mid level issues generally, with the Housing Authority. Typically what I’ve taken on and that is really working on that information technology and maintenance side directly. Kathy is really working finance construction. Karen is taking the organizational residential culture and operations. Obviously, all of those at different times. I’m getting briefed on it by everyone in terms of the work that we’re doing. Jim golden is coming in and out advising on our finance components. Jim’s going to be more involved with this. But in addition to that, we’ve taken Tracy defrancesco, who works in Community Development Department has experience with housing authorities. She’s spending a fair amount of time there operationally within the building, working with them to really work through leasing issues and understand what’s going on so that we can have as much data as we possibly can get as we are moving forward. kyndra Daniels who came in with our disaster recovery, and really did a lot of accounting with the feds There is also we had some capacity with her we’ve asked her to jump in, and she’s working with count Kathy on the accounting and financials. Cathy woods, who is our over our ETS department is the project lead that I’m working with on the technology issues and those are significant. Jeff cedars working with our facility maintenance group. As we do this, and then we put together a team Michelle wait Carmen Ramirez le Berto, in Karen, and I’m probably missing Other folks, really on the residential organizational issues and then our public information team, with Steph Bergman and Veronica are really jumping in to help us get that information out. At the moment, we’re still really in triage mode. In terms of the items that we’re dealing with, the first one that we’re having to tackle and we’re going to have to deal with it quickly, is really in the realm of technology. You know, what the analogy that I’m using with everyone else is if you’re a carpenter, and you really kind of need a hammer in Asana do your work. In many cases, they don’t have a hammer and a saw, to do their work. And in an example of that is the majority of their computers are older, and they can’t even handle the current software requirements. One of their financial and financial analyst her computer won’t even allow her to open two spreadsheets at once without crashing it’s approximately 10 years old. And so we’re having to really dig in on just the core infrastructure in that piece. You know, we know for two years, at least they’ve been on a month month contract with their computer provider. And so we’re working to understand what that looks like, and how we can bring that in and really gain an economy of scale with our system. That then ties into the camera systems that we have in facilities and then their security systems and trying to integrate that. So we can operate more efficiently and effective. Instead of having multiple internet providers, we want to be able to take it to one
1:08:43
and multiple phone carriers. But the good news is, I think where we were a couple of weeks ago and where we are today, is we really now completely understand that issue and we’re moving forward in terms of designing the plan that we need to really create a more efficient and effective option. building maintenance. You know, it’s interesting, as we talked to him, you know, we know there’s not an ongoing maintenance plan. There’s no ongoing capital replacement plan. But in terms of the maintenance supervisor, you know, what I would say is he just doesn’t have time to deal with it based on the staffing levels, and so, definitely, we’ve had some good conversations. That’s where we’re going to go in and help him and try to bring those things together. Based on the audits that we’ve seen, and some that have come in, you know, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re going to bring our city’s personnel roles and purchasing policies and establish those and put those in place so that we can ensure that we’re in compliance with federal and state requirements. In addition to the audits that we’ve received. In then another foundational level is really bringing in training for the for the folks that are in various positions. Because we’ve also seen that that’s really been an operational issue where Folks weren’t necessarily trained appropriately to do their job. And, you know, again, that’s another issue. That’s that’s really foundation to the to the organization. So, you know, generally, Kathy made the comment to me earlier, she’s like, are we gonna give him good news? I think in many ways, this is actually good news. Because in a fairly short period of time, the team has been able to come in and really dig in. And we can sit courses that are, you know, directions, we need to go in on all of these issues, and can start moving on that. And then in the middle of this, kind of tacking on to what we talked about with the COVID, where we still have our daily issues we need to deal with where the sweets get hit by lightning Lastly, and so then you have a situation where you’re trying to do this work. Now you have air conditioners going out, microwaves going out,
1:10:53
ranges going out,
1:10:56
telephones, and so you’re trying to very quickly circle around and deal with it. And I think that’s where you really then start looking at capacity and capability. And so in about two to three days, yesterday, by the by the end of the day yesterday, everyone that was without an air conditioner, we actually had the portable air conditioning units in their facilities. We got the adjuster to come out, and so we’re really looking on that broader replacement piece. But those are really things that occurred, that we’re all heading this way. And we all just had to kind of stop what we were doing and jump in and start dealing with this issue as a team, and it worked well. I mean, again, so that’s a positive thing. Seeing how you move through these challenges and how you can get through it and I was really happy with the way everyone came together to deal with that issue. On another note in terms of the main office, we’re looking at a soft opening next week and official opening the week after that. The big thing that we’re challenged with right now, and this is, again, we’re tapping into other resources. with Michelle Wait, Dan Eamon, and then Eugene and Liz in the attorney’s office, is really start understanding the rules regarding our multifamily facilities and specifically those facilities that are for older adults in terms of how we can open those, because as you saw for the preferred the presentation, they can be challenges related to the COVID world. And so we haven’t made a decision yet on those facilities. Because we really want to understand the orders understand the risk before we make a decision. And like many decisions I’ve had to make recently, some people don’t like it. And but but at the end of the day, you know, our responsibility is for the self health and safety of the individuals that live in those facilities. And we’re going to make a prudent decision on that. So we’ll know more In the in the very near future. I’m going to turn it over to Kathy really quickly so she can, she can give you the good news because Kathy actually has a lot of good news on things that we’ve been able to deal with that were challenged. They were opportunities. And she was able to move through those with her team Kathy.
1:13:23
Hi, everyone. Um, so the best news that we have so far is as of about a couple hours ago, we are 100% leased and occupied at Fall River apartments. So we met our goal of having that done by the end of June. staff did just a fantastic job in moving through those units as soon as we were opened up and people could start going back in and looking at units. So we can start our qualified occupancy July one, and then in about three months. That shows our studio ability, financial stability at the property and we can convert everything to a permanent loan structure. So that’s that’s really excellent news.
1:14:08
Kathy, one of the things in terms of the relationship. I know in terms of finding the people that we could move in there, there were conversations and what you were seeing on the housing side that we have internally, and really connecting with the Housing Authority, which is something we’ve been wanting for a while, and we were actually able to implement it, which helped I think, with that, is that correct?
1:14:29
Right. Yeah. as they move through the waitlist, pre COVID. Things were going really well. And then when COVID hit and they went back to the waitlist folks, were not some folks were interested. So we reached out to our Senior Services staff and Carmen and her group and some of our other partners and put the word out that units were available and and that really helped to move those along and helped us move through much quicker than, than what we probably could have otherwise
1:15:01
On the other properties,
1:15:04
we have been working diligently on getting vacant units on the market and rented. As of the middle of this month, we had 23 vacancies. I think this is what we reported to the board at their June 16. meeting, we had 23 vacancies for a 22,500 rent loss. And as of today, we’re down to 13 vacancies for $14,500 rent loss. So those are moving through pretty quickly and we’re starting to get a rhythm for returning those units. We are reviewing leases at all the properties to move to a more uniform lease that meets all federal and state requirements. We’ve been reviewing rents, the rent structures to ensure that they’re compliant with all the different funding sources and that we are Moving rents up where we can and where we need to. And just making sure that we’re following all the all the requirements. We’ve been also reviewing property budgets to reviewing the budgets against the current status, and resources to expenses, to ensure that we’re capturing all of those and how that all rolls up into the Longmont housing authorities overall budget making sure that admin fees and different management fees get processed and moved up and that we’re capturing everything that’s owed to you that so there’s been a lot of work especially Tracy has been working a lot on ensuring compliance with the rent structures and resources on every property. And we’re slowly making our way through that. On acid meadows, apartments, refinance and rehab, that is bad on track, I think we reported, maybe last time that we had lost our investor, they pulled out in the middle of the COVID. And we were able to find it down Manny, sorry, dog. We were able to find another investor, we’ve been working on all the paperwork that they require that we’re going through everything. Again, with a new investor on new forms. We’re confirming pricing and construction schedule with the contractor that we have on board, we’ve have had to change because now we’re not going to close and start the rehab until probably mid to late October. So we’re moving the whole schedule from starting on the exterior. If we could have started in July, we would have done a lot of the exterior work and then move to the interior. We’re gonna have to flip that. So we have to reschedule everything and figure that out and the impacts on the residence. And we’re working on a relocation plan for those residents because some of them won’t be able to stay in Place when the elevator gets replaced, or when the windows are going in or when their units are being worked on. So I’m trying to figure all that out. We have been working with our city purchasing staff to get us quotes for motels, costs of motels if we have to move people in moving pods to have on site and also, I guess that’s the three things that we’ve been working with them on. And Molly O’Donnell from my staff is taking on the construction oversight. So there’ll be a contractor, they’ll have a project manager, but she’s going to serve as the project manager to make sure and look out for the interests of the housing authority during all that and has already started work with the contractor.
1:18:49
And getting everything set up. We’ve also unique thing that I don’t think they’ve ever done before as we were bringing in our maintenance staff to look at some of the specs they That spec to see does that make sense to them? Do they have something else that works better than the other properties that we can get some economies of scale by specking, all of the same AC units in every building eventually get to a point like that. So then we’ve got some efficiencies and we can purchase ahead to a certain extent and be able to move forward on that a little bit more quickly. And then Cameron from our facilities management staff is also helping to review some of those things. And then finally, I went to port on the voluntary compliance agreement, our fair housing and Ada agreement that we had with HUD, the Housing Authority had with HUD, it is a big agreement, and there’s a lot of work that has to be done around that. We have submitted all of the required updated policies to HUD for their review, so they’re all with HUD for them to review. They’ll get comments back to us. And we’ll go back and forth probably a couple times on getting those all up to date. And then we can disseminate those out and make sure everyone’s following the same reasonable accommodation policies, grievance policies, all of the things that comply with fair housing. And then we’re going to need to start on a unit by unit building by building inspection, putting out an RFP for a architecture consultant to come and help us implement that by inspecting all of the buildings in the unit and then telling us what meets Ada code and what doesn’t and how can we move forward with that, we will probably link that we saw some economies of scale if we link it with an include in the RFP to also do a capital improvement plan and maintenance plan for each building as well. Get two birds with one stone kind of thing. For the same, same pricing or the same under the same contract, that will have to wait until COVID restrictions are lifted, and we can go into units. But we’re going to get ready so that as soon as that happens, we’re ready to go. I have to say head has been really good at working with us. And a couple times we’ve had to ask him some extensions, especially on this piece, because of COVID. We couldn’t go into inspect units. So that has been postponed until the end of this year. And they said, if we need another postponement, depending on what’s happening, that we can do that as well. So as long as we’re staying in touch with them, they have been really good in working with us. But that was a really important compliance piece that we have to make sure that we pay attention to and don’t let fall through the cracks and that we meet the requirements we need to meet. I think that’s all I have. Oh, I did want to also say we did just enter into a contract with a consultant to go through And look at the LSA from the perspective of former Housing Authority director. So she’s going to look at financial, she’s going to look at job descriptions, are people doing what they is in their job description? Do we need to look at restructuring and just really taking some, like an outside look at things and giving us some feedback on that, which we can then compare to what we’re finding as well. So that should be done by the end of July, her report back to us so.
1:22:39
All right. The only question I have Harold is I actually asked for some information from the from our human resources director about additional responsibilities that were being pushed on to you and Kathy and Karen and reallocating budgets from lie to you. I know that you feel uncomfortable talking about that. But when can we expect to hear from her? Probably by the end of the week. Perfect. I will await that conversation and I’ll put it on the agenda when I hear from her. All right, great. Any other Thank you very much, Kathy. It sounds like you guys have a daunting task and we appreciate everything you’re doing. You’re doing a great job and keep it up. So
1:23:27
we’ve also been keeping track of of some of the things like that and facilities work and the ETS work so to have a new IGA with them are an amendment to the IGA I think we said we were going to start doing that bringing back separate ones, or smaller ones that are more specific to exactly what we’re doing. So we are tracking that and probably will have one I would guess, Harold in the next month.
1:23:52
Yeah, we’re gonna need another IGA. We’re going to need it. We’re probably going to have to step into this incrementally. Similar How he approached it with the flood where we had one and then we amend it because the first one we have to get in is on the ETS side so we can get that system stabilized. In that’s going to be the base for a lot of things that we have to do and integrate the yardie system into how we approach it.
1:24:23
And then questions are good. It looks like we’re good. Thanks, Harold.
1:24:27
It’s 830 Should we try to do public invited to be heard before we take a break? Look like that? Okay. All right. Let’s go ahead and actually, let us know let’s take a five minute break while we wait for people to get on public invited to be heard. And then by the time we start again, we’ll cut off the list and that way, we’ll, we’ll know how many so let’s take a five minute break. But We’ll now move on to public invited be heard. So if you’re listening to the broadcast, this time, go ahead and dial 669-900-6833 and then enter the meeting ID and get in line. And then we also asked you get in line now for ordinances on second reading, which is matter nine, and we’ll be back in five. Thank you, everybody.
1:26:34
Mayor we’re ready for the public invited to be heard when counsel is ready.
1:26:40
All right, let’s go ahead and if you can hear my voice let’s get back on.
1:26:43
There’s four of us here.
1:26:49
There’s
1:26:49
five
1:27:00
So it looks like we have three callers.
1:27:04
And the slide has has stopped on the screen. So do you want me to go ahead and close public invited to be heard
1:27:12
and close it?
1:27:15
And I will admit all of them and call them each one at a time. Actually, it looks like we have more than that. We’ve got 12345 guests that have called in
1:27:27
pool.
1:27:28
The first guest your phone number ends in 376. I’m going to unmute you. Would you please state your name and your address? And you have three minutes? Guest 376 Do you hear me?
1:27:46
Oh, I’m sorry. This is a yes. 2376 Yes, sorry. Yes. Christine Dominic. I’m at 1003 Dunkirk Street. Hi. So I am. So my background is I’m Mark ironically, I’m Marking director of Center for Health. So I know a lot about what’s going on with COVID behind the scenes within the health system there, but also, I’m the wife of Hayden peacock who is the owner of the Chinese medicine clinic in downtown Longmont. So I wanted to express my concerns in regards to the parking and the closing off of lanes on Main Street. And the two concerns that I have are his clients specifically so he sees a good bit of individual who are older folder and if you know about the circumstances with COVID. Sorry, that, you know, there’s a lot of restrictions in terms of moving around and I can talk about anecdotally with my own mother, her being restricted from the activities that she normally would do as an older retiree to The point where there’s mental health implications of that. So by closing off the parking and Main Street, significantly, is going to really make it challenging for his clients to be able to access his clinic, because they are utilizing his services in a safe way to be able to get care and be able to interact with somebody that can provide that care both. You know, he’s acupuncture, but also from a mental health perspective. The other concern that I have is just logistically with the closures. You know, the alley scape is what I would think would be a fabulous idea but also, like I said, logistically, you’re closing it off. My concern is having outdoor diners not wearing masks, and then having these other people moving about on the streets, on the on the paved area with masks and you’ve spent a good bit of time Talking about concerns with masks and unmasking. So if you actually have these patrons in the alley, it would eliminate a lot of concern that maybe patrons are just walking up and down the street with their masks would have with the patrons that are not. I mean, I know there’s a lot of misinformation about what is or isn’t Okay, in terms of mass squaring. But, you know, people are still gonna think what they’re gonna think and it may actually cause issues with individual wanting to actually come downtown. So also Thirdly, I mean, I should say just the the traffic issues and what would happen, pushing all that traffic, that highway traffic onto residential streets. So I mean, that’s the third point. So that those are my concerns. I’m going to keep it short. I know I’m only have three minutes
1:30:55
turned and that was three. Thank you very much for Great. Thank
1:30:59
you very much.
1:31:01
Okay, next
1:31:04
caller your phone number ends in 396 I’ve just unmuted you. Can you hear me?
1:31:12
Yeah, this is Scott cook at the Walmart chamber.
1:31:16
Thank you. You can hear me. Okay.
1:31:18
Yes, yes.
1:31:20
Okay, great. Scott Clifton along much chamber 528 Main Street Good evening Mayor Bagley and city council. The chamber recently took a position to support the LDA requests for lane closures on Main Street to expand public space in the downtown for pedestrians, cyclists and additional space for restaurants and businesses. The city and LDA staff have worked quickly with C dot and have been granted permit for the closure. We understand as has just been mentioned that there are some concerns from the public and other businesses. However, survey results show that a majority of respondents support the plan and I know that they’ll be working closely with impacted this businesses and some changes have already been made to accommodate that. I believe it’s also some concern with the fast pace of this request. The governor and C have also worked very quickly. And that is what is often called upon us in a time of crisis. years of work and planning has brought our downtown area to be something all Longmont can be proud of. Many of us remember a time in our downtown, the center of our community was not nearly as vibrant as it is today. But we could be in danger of losing that if we do not use all the available tools to help save our businesses. The chamber and the LDA interact daily with businesses that are struggling right now. Some will not be able to survive much longer, and some have closed already. In recent messaging from the chamber heard a little bit about this tonight from from Jeff earlier. Recent messaging from the chamber and with our Regional Chamber partners. We’ve asked everyone to remind themselves of what the phrase we’re in this together means. We believe it means putting up with a small and sometimes larger income balances we have to undertake to support our local businesses. lane closures will be one of these inconveniences for us, but it very well could mean survival of our downtown businesses. The chamber asked that the city council support the LDS requests for Main Street closures. Thank you.
1:33:18
Thank you.
1:33:19
Right. Thanks, Scott. Okay,
1:33:21
next.
1:33:23
The next caller, your phone number ends in 696 you’ve been unmuted. Could you state your name and your address for the record? You have three minutes?
1:33:34
caller 696 Do you hear me?
1:33:42
I’m gonna put you on
1:33:43
mute again and we’ll come back to you. Color 439 you’ve been unmuted.
1:33:53
color for free.
1:33:55
Yes. Yep. Can you hear me?
1:33:57
Yes we can.
1:33:58
Okay, this is Devin Quinn. 911 Venice Street and the downtown business center. I’m just good evening mayor and council members. I’m just calling in in support of LBD A’s proposal to reduce traffic on Main Street to enhance the business properties and allow people more space to socialist deployments and enjoy our downtown. It’s been proven over and over again that people walking biking are the ones who bring business to downtown that people driving by at higher speeds. I think this is going to make downtown a more pleasant place to be, at least for the next three months, and hopefully we can look at doing something longer. Thank you very much.
1:34:40
Thank you.
1:34:43
Let’s try that last one again.
1:34:51
guests.
1:34:53
Well, I guess they just left.
1:34:56
All right. Last one
1:34:58
guests eight, nine Seven.
1:35:01
Do you hear me?
1:35:04
I’ve just unmuted you. Hello?
1:35:15
Guest 897 would you like to speak?
1:35:20
All right, let’s go ahead and conclude first call public invited to be heard. And if that person comes back, they can get in at the end, they can call in and express their concerns. So let’s go ahead and move on to consent agenda introduction or reading by title first reading ordinances. Don, can you go ahead and read those for us?
1:35:41
Again, Mayor, item eight a is resolution 2020 dash 55. a resolution of the Longmont city council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Long mountain St. Green Valley School District for the water fixture replacement pilot project. Eight B is resolution 2020 dash 56 a resolution of problems To the council operating agreements between the city and st brain investors LLC for the purchase of real property for the resilient st brain project. A debate C is resolution 2020 dash 57 a resolution of the Longmont city council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Colorado Department of Transportation for a special use permit for restaurant and retail use on state highway right away, including waiver of use v. Item eight D is resolution 2020 dash 58. a resolution of Alomar city council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of LA and the Federal Aviation Administration for grant funding under the Coronavirus aid relief and Economic Security Act. Eight is resolution 2020 dash 59 a resolution of the Longmont city council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Board of County Commissioners of weld County, Colorado and all other weld county municipalities for corrupt collaboration agreement related to distribution of cares Act funds and h f is ready 2020 dash 60 a resolution of the Longmont city council approving intergovernmental agreement between the city and Boulder County the city of Boulder the city of Lafayette, the city of Lewisville, the town of Erie, the town of Jamestown, the town of Lyons, the town of Netherland, the town of superior and the town of Ward for Boulder County collaboration agreement related to the distribution of cares Act funds. And Mayor staff has a brief presentation on item eight C.
1:37:26
All right, Counselor Christiansen.
1:37:32
I would like to pull hc
1:37:36
Do you want to move the consent agenda
1:37:38
counselor customer waters?
1:37:41
Full eight.
1:37:55
Mary, you’re married. You’re muted.
1:37:58
I moved I moved the company. Agenda
1:38:00
less items eight a and eight C.
1:38:03
Second.
1:38:04
All right, so we moved in seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the consent agenda minus eight c passes unanimously. Harold, can we go ahead and have the eight seat presentation, please?
1:38:24
I’m gonna go second reading first.
1:38:27
Oh, yeah, let’s do that. Good point. Good call Carol. All right, let’s move on nine a ordinances on second reading and public hearings on any matter. We’re going to go ahead and ask everybody to go ahead and call the number if you have any comments or questions. ordinance a or ordinance 2020. That’s 26 a bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities to the last fiscal year beginning January 120 20. Do you have a report peril?
1:38:55
Yes, Mayor we have a brief presentation from I don’t know if it’s Jim or Teresa. So
1:38:59
if We could go ahead and ask people to call in for nine, eight and nine B as well at this time. Go ahead and call in and go ahead and we’ll we’ll go ahead and take public hearing after we hear your brief presentation now.
1:39:16
Teresa, is that your jam?
1:39:21
One moment, Teresa.
1:39:28
You should be all set.
1:39:33
Thank you. Good evening, mayor and city council.
1:39:37
I’m Teresa Malloy, budget manager. Can you hear me? All right?
1:39:41
Yes, we can.
1:39:42
Okay, thank you. So this evening, we wanted to take just a brief moment and update you on this additional appropriation. So each year at about this time, each year we do bring our carryover appropriation to you Since this is our carryover, it is a very large appropriation, much larger than the appropriations that you typically see from us throughout the year. So this appropriation is 140, almost $148.3 million includes 35 different funds. And for ease, we have broken this appropriation into two components and presented them separately in our counsel communication for you. So the first component is 1.2 million of this is new dollars. So these are, this is appropriation for funds that you have not yet seen in any prior year, or any prior appropriation. So so this is essentially the type of appropriation that we typically bring you each each month. So that comprises $1.2 million of this hundred and $40 million appropriation. The bulk of this appropriation, however 130 $9 million is carryover from 2019 or, or prior years, as well, because in some cases, we have been carrying some of these funds for a few years now. And so this appropriation in total, brings our total 2020 budget at this point in time to $495.5 million. And what I wanted to do was just talk to you a little bit about the the carryover piece. So certainly, if you have questions on the new dollar piece, I can answer that for you, but I’m gonna skip down to the carryover piece and in the council communication, we call this unexpended, carryover items from 2019. And so Our city charter states that all appropriations will lapse at the end of the year in all funds except our public improvement fund. And so for projects mainly Capital Improvement Program projects, where we have full funding for the project appropriated but those funds are not spent, we need to carry those over to continue those projects. So so the bulk of what you see in this appropriation is is carryover of dollar wise is carryover of our CI PE program. You will however, see some other carryover items. So So other one time type expenses that we have budgeted in 2019, but those projects were not complete. And we still are actively working on completing those projects, those are included as well. And the other type of carryover, but you will notice in this in our council communication is
1:43:16
dollars for grants that we have received in prior years that you council did appropriate through an additional appropriation ordinance last year. But again, those grants were not fully expended. So those are slightly present a slightly different in our counsel communication, rather than showing them coming from from balance as most of the rest of our additional appropriation items are indicated. These ones you do see an offset of, of revenue. So even though we’re offsetting it by revenue, it is From this perspective, carryover, and so, just a couple wanted to highlight just a couple items for you. One of the big projects that is included in in this carryover is our is our Wendy gap project. And and that that’s a very large project. It’s $35.58 million in the water fund is $4.12 million in the water construction fund. It’s almost $5.6 million in the water acquisition fund. So those dollars are all being carried over for that specific purpose. We also have in several different funds, carryover of our resilience st brain project, so that so another big project that’s being carried over and then in our CDBG fund, we have $16.7 million of CDBG disaster recovery funds. From our flood event that is still unspent funding that we are carrying over. So those are just a few that I wanted to bring to your attention. I can certainly answer any questions that you have on any of these other items. Or if I can’t speak to them specifically, I know we probably have staff in the audience that can help as well.
1:45:28
All right, thank you very much for that presentation. I’m seeing no other questions. Let’s go back to the actual ordinance and open it for public hearing. Do we have anybody in the queue?
1:45:41
Yes, Mayor, we have one individual, I’m going to admit them.
1:45:44
Thank you.
1:45:47
Caller 696. I’m going to unmute you if you can go ahead and speak.
1:45:54
Do you do you hear us?
1:45:56
I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?
1:45:58
Yes, go ahead, sir.
1:46:01
Thank you all. My name is Hayden peacock. I’m the owner of the Chinese medicine clinic who 10 years down at the intersection of Portland, Maine. And we have 200 plus patients that see us monthly, downtown. I’m here to say that this proposal is going to cause chaos downtown. It’s going to eliminate 100 parking spaces from Main Street, that there is no good plan in order to be able to do anything about in terms of relieving congestion and parking for downtown. I’m sorry,
1:46:30
Mr. Peacock, I’m sorry. So So right now you I mean, theoretically, you can take your three minutes and say anything you want. Right now we’re talking about a bill for Norton’s making additional appropriations for the expenses of the budget. Okay, well, I was cut in to talk and and this is what I was intending to talk about, and I got cut off earlier. Right, again, it’s freedom of speech. Go ahead, take your take your remaining remaining time. That’s fine. I apologize.
1:46:58
Okay, so You know, it puts the finger on the scale for certain businesses above others. And the person that called in earlier that was suggesting that the LD da is working with all businesses downtown is not being forthcoming about what’s happening. I’m downtown. I’m trying to work with the LD da to have conversations with them. They don’t particularly want to hear what we have to say. And own their website. It suggests that one of the goals of the of the LDA is to maintain a diverse range of businesses and prevent displacement of existing businesses. And this proposal is going to do exactly that. We do not have any kind of parking stability downtown in order to be able to accommodate what they are talking about doing. And I if we had more time and insane minds could rule the day here, we would end up in a position where we could have longer conversations about, you know, redoing the entirety of downtown Longmont based on unelected people that don’t have any consequences for the decisions that I make. It’s the businesses that are going to suffer because of this. So I appreciate everyone’s I’m sorry, I’m in the wrong spot here, but I was on the call earlier and got cut off and I appreciate the finish.
1:48:07
That’s right. Thank you, Mister. Thank you very much.
1:48:11
All right. Is there anybody else that you
1:48:14
know may or not at this time?
1:48:16
All right, Dr. Waters Move approval of ordinance 2020 dash 26
1:48:24
Okay, it’s been moved and seconded. Moved by Dr. Waters seconded by Councillor Christiansen. All in favor? vote aye. Aye. All right. Opposed say nay. All right, let’s move on to item nine. B ordinance 2020 dash 27 bill for an ordinance conditionally proving the vacation of a five foot wide electrical utility easement within the Bruce Bruce salt subdivision conveyance plat filing one generally located east of mountain crest port south of Mexico Avenue and west of high plains drive.
1:48:57
Do we have a motion
1:49:00
Move approval. Second.
1:49:04
All right. It’s been Moved by Councillor Martin. It’s been seconded by Councilmember Christiansen. Do we have anybody in the queue for public hearing?
1:49:13
No, Mayor, we do not.
1:49:15
All right. Seeing no further debate on favor say aye. Aye. Okay. All right. Those opposed say nay. All right, the motion passes unanimously. Let’s move back to item eight. See, Harold, I’m sorry. Let’s go ahead and have that brief presentation. Now, if you don’t mind.
1:49:33
Actually, you know what, let’s
1:49:34
do a first let’s get that one out of the way. Who pulled that one? Was that you Dr. Waters?
1:49:42
He was.
1:49:43
Let’s do a first.
1:49:44
All right. You want to put that on first? Because you think that one’s gonna go really fast?
1:49:49
Yeah, that’s true. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong so much the last year.
1:49:53
Well, it will probably go fast and I go
1:49:57
to council members and I spoke with Dale about the show. Yesterday, I likely will vote in favor of this. But I do have some questions. And I don’t know if Dale or can or Francey who would be the right person to ask but I’ll start with this. Based on the right if it looks like based on our audit of the of the efficiency of the fixtures in the elementary school, we concluded and the school district concluded that they could reduce consumption substantially in the school by doing this retrofitting of fixtures in in related water controls. Is that a fair conclusion to what we’ve read?
1:50:48
Go Are you taking that one?
1:50:51
Dale, why don’t you do why don’t you take that one?
1:50:56
francy one minute Dale.
1:50:59
Do you got it? So yeah.
1:51:02
Councilmember waters? That’s correct. We, we worked with the school district to, to identify this particular school, partly as a as a pilot demonstration to see how effective it is in a school setting. We’re also trying to do this obviously as an education effort with the students. And so multiple things we’re trying to accomplish throughout.
1:51:26
So, Dale, you know, my question here is
1:51:31
the fact that we’re working with the school district is a good thing. The fact that we’re auditing efficiency is a good thing. What I’m puzzling over is why the city is reimbursing the school district $25,000 to retrofit equipment that this school district why would the school district be doing that? on its own? Why do we need to be reimbursing school districts going to benefit by lower costs for communities going to benefit by greater conservation environment is going to benefit benefit Ritter conservation? Why don’t we create an incentive for a school district by the way, it just announced a short time ago they were going to get enough money in their reserves to build a swimming pool and cover operational costs. And I just it just seems odd to me that the city
1:52:17
reimburses the school district to do what they should be doing anyway.
1:52:22
All right, I changed my mind. Let’s go down to eight. See.
1:52:25
Just kidding, if
1:52:26
I think I can respond to some of that. But Councilmember waters and Mayor Bagley and council I clearly understand your your, your question there. What I would say to that is that the school district is not otherwise required to do anything right now. The current fixtures that they have in their school, meet all of the there’s no law on the books I should say that would require them to move forward now to achieve greater levels. of efficiency. And so that’s why we seek out partners to try to do this with it. That’s part of it. And And And my guess is could the school district afford to do this? They very well, May. But if you look at the the multitude of schools that they have across the district, they may or may not be able to do this, you know, district wide. I think the district is is interested in in the effort as we are to see how effective it is. Our hope is that we’re going to show that you’re right, they’re going to save money. It’s going to help educate the kids on low water use fixtures. And we’ll see where it goes. I mean, that’s part of the thing. This may be a one and done. We may do it one time and find out it wasn’t as successful as we hoped for. But I think that’s part of the reason why we are wanting to partner with him.
1:53:56
So So Dale, for us to know requires setting some performance targets in collecting data. Yes. The last conversation I was in as a council member regarding data in the school district, the school, the school district refused to share data with the city to support a proposed proposal a grant proposal to secure funding to install a traffic signal that would increase the safety of children crossing county law or Airport Road as I recall. Yeah. So how confident are we that this is this? What’s different about this, that the school district would provide or share data on this project when when our previous experience has been that they don’t or choose not to?
1:54:48
I think one of the key differences here is it’s the the city owns the water meter. And so we have access to the data. And so we will it will really be incumbent on the city in this case to share the data, also with the district on what we’re doing. So we will be already having the data, if you will, in our hands, we will then be able to do the analysis on the data.
1:55:13
So we’re not dependent upon the school district for data collection. No. Okay. Last question. And I’ll mute myself. I’ll ask one more question. I’ll move approval and it’ll be myself
1:55:25
listen.
1:55:26
But the last question is this.
1:55:30
This is this is about water conservation. in white, what might make a difference in one school and then could be generalized to others? Is the swimming pool proposal that we’ve read about in the newspaper? Is that going to conceit can conserve or use more water than the school district is using right now?
1:55:53
Are you asking me a question on that
1:55:56
countdown? Oh, yeah, I’m gonna watch a speculation.
1:56:00
would increase their water demand? I would certainly assume.
1:56:04
Yeah. Yeah, that’s those are the things that are, you know, I just look at and wonder about the logic of it all. Like I said, I told Dale and i and i and for council member I’ll move approval. But it’s a head scratcher for me and a lot of words. Second
1:56:23
it’s been moved by Dr. waters and seconded by Councilmember Martin singer for the debate. All in favor say aye.
1:56:29
Aye. Aye.
1:56:31
Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Item A passes unanimously. Now let’s go on to eight C and talk about the
1:56:41
C dot stuff.
1:56:44
Mainstreet, etc.
1:56:46
Harold.
1:56:50
So, we have bill Greenwald. I think Tyler’s on the line. Phil’s gonna do a a factual Sort of overview of what we’re talking about here. Kimberly, Kimberly is on the line. And she’s going to talk about the DDA perspective. And I believe we also have Chris, who is the Board Chair of the downtown Development Authority. That’s going to speak to this with Kimberly. So Phil, do you want to start out? Yeah, man, I’m gonna turn it over to you. Yeah. Do you have the map or you can share your screen or Susan gonna do that?
1:57:24
We’re gonna do that once. Chris introduces the topic, and Kimberly has a little introduction. So I’ll turn it over to Chris for discussion.
1:57:34
All right. Thanks, Bill. Mayor Bagley City Council, city manager thank you all for your time and your leadership. Chris MacGillivray, Vice Chair of the DDA board, chair of the Longmont Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Main Street business owner. We’ve never experienced anything like COVID-19 and its economic and community impacts. We’ve never experienced such dramatic change in our town. Think about this. Just six months ago, Longmont right was ranked number one boom town in the country. We had record unemployment rates, we had a thriving economy. We had a thriving downtown. A lot has changed in six months. I think we all can agree. We’ve experienced sudden shuttering of many of our local businesses that have resulted in significant loss in jobs and sales tax revenue. And just a couple of days ago, my favorite breakfast shop downtown closed tangerine. And this was a business that made significant contributions to our downtown. So I wish I was here to say that it’s gonna get better, super quickly, but our recovery is going to take time and a lot of patience. economic sustainability is a top priority for our city and as an LD da. So the question is, what creativity can we do to To support economic sustainability for our downtown and for our small businesses, what creativity can we do to support economic sustainability? It was this question that shaped the context of the recommendations that are before you all to discuss today, the main street closure. Now is the time more than ever for creativity, innovation, community collaboration, to bring attention, people and commerce to the heart of our town, which is our downtown, and do it in a safe and compliant manner. The LDA board appointed a task force and a Marketing Committee recently to look at this question. What can we do to support our businesses? We heard from retailers that restaurants are a driving factor in the foot traffic for our downtown community. We’ve experienced an unprecedented amount of unused parking in our lots, and we’ve heard the word that the worries and concerns of all types of businesses on how they will make it through this health crisis. We spent years investing in our downtown community. We feel that it was stronger than ever before and that we had historically low vacant rates. We had highly engaged new businesses and more feet on the street than ever before. Downtown has the largest concentration of locally owned businesses in our community. It’s it’s truly what Main Street America is all about. He led a board encourages you to be creative with ways we can make our downtown a safe and sustainable destination for all. This is an experiment. This is not etched in stone. This definitely has an eraser at the end of a pencil. This is not a new idea, but has been continually suggested and discussed in our community. There are other communities that are using similar type approaches such as Greeley and Lewisville
2:01:01
So I was one of the earlier in this process, which feels like forever ago, it was about 30 days ago, we began to vet the viability of Main Street closure of lanes. And my first reaction may have been similar to your first reaction. Are you serious or Main Street? Do you realize it’s a state highway, you’re contemplating closing lanes. So there was personal resistance that I had to this idea in the beginning. And the chaos that was mentioned earlier that it may create, going through the process of vetting the viability through a lot of community discussions with the business resilient Task Force, with our business community with the Chamber of Commerce. And as well as surveying our business owners that are going to be in this area and property owners have changed my mind. I see that the positives outweigh the negatives. Some of the positives are that it’s going to stimulate hopefully The goal is is that it stimulates economic development, it could increase the vibrancy of our downtown short term, right. This is not a long term play. This is a short term play. It could increase sales for our restaurants and retailers to create a unique experience. When you’re driving through downtown. During this time, you may slow down because there’s something cool happening. It’s pretty exciting. And you may just find a parking spot a block to the right or the left, and take your family out to dinner and buy something at a retail shop. It’s gonna encourage us to slow down hopefully, and buy stuff. And so the LDA through this process, we conducted a survey to look at the viability of this process. And what we found is 72% percent of those that took the survey indicated initial support. There was some concerns 16% had significant concerns and looking at the themes of those concerns that emerged From the survey, and the thoughtful discussions that we had it came, it was basically traffic congestion was a big concern and parking. Those were by far the two biggest concerns, which Kimberly will aren’t we’ll discuss what we are looking at in terms of responding to some those concerns, we do have to be mindful that this will impact those the downtown, we’re not naive to think that this is going to be easy for everybody because it’s not going to be. We don’t have all the answers. And we can’t see into the future. But we do believe that this is worth a shot. Thank you again for your leadership during this time, and I’d like to pass the baton to the LD DEA executive director, Kimberly McKee.
2:03:52
Thank you, Chris. And thank you, Mayor and members of council Kimberly McKee, Executive Director of the downtown Development Authority.
2:04:00
As you all know, these are unprecedented in trying times for our business community in our residents. With this ever changing climate, things are moving at a very rapid pace. So we just wanted to talk about a timeframe or a timeline of what we’ve explored. We’ve worked with businesses to navigate guidelines of how and when they would be able to reopen. I worked with our folks in traffic and assistant city manager, Joanie Marsh to investigate how in which businesses could expand into the alleys and I know that a lot of people are asking why that is not the option. Most of our residents, restaurants and businesses are fronted to Main Street. That’s how they were built 100 years ago. So this option doesn’t allow for an immediate line of sight for those businesses causing them the need to have additional staff to do a lot of setup tear down. The alleys are still the primary spine for trash deliveries and other ongoing activities. I can assure you that our businesses are working very hard to reinvent the way they serve our community. They’re working tirelessly to balance staff with inconsistent customer accounts and other obstacles. This is not a case of them not wanting to try, believe me, they’re trying everything that they can. We did work with a few businesses are able to utilize the alley, but it was not a very widespread desired option. For the past nine years, I can’t tell you the amount of times the LDA has been told that we need to make art to make our downtown stronger, we should make it a pedestrian mall, or we should have one lane of traffic in each way with dye in a diagonal parking, or we should build a tunnel for cars underneath the street. People are craving this kind of pedestrian environment. We’ve heard this again over and over as a suggestion to help with COVID-19. So many people have told me about their experiences in Lewisville in Boulder and all of these other communities that are using their streets for this type of purpose. Our answer was always No, this is a C dot highway and they would not allow this Our surprise on June 11, Governor polis announced the can do community challenging challenge asking local communities and their resident businesses to find new opportunities to restart commerce in ways that are safe and sustainable. This includes finding innovative ways to reuse our public spaces and help more businesses thrive in a world of social distancing. He encouraged to work with communities to open up its right away for businesses and allow the community more space to socially distance while patronizing our local business community this initiative allowed for us to truly investigate the idea of rethinking how we use made street downtown was where our community began and intimate environment where businesses are fronted to the sidewalk. It is intentionally a pedestrian environment. That is an important asset to our businesses, but it also offers unique challenges when we expand into the outdoors. I forwarded you all a recommendation letter from Boulder County Public Health on the importance of outdoor spaces, research and surveys done by the downtown boulder partnership which we got the results of. they surveyed 1000 Boulder County residents, it shows that people are more comfortable with outdoor activities. That survey in mid May show that 18% of Boulder County residents were ready to go inside a restaurant but 50% would go outside. So you can see there’s a huge difference in the comfort of Boulder County. Knowing this city staff put together an application for the permit of a one lane closure and was approved by C dot and the federal government to use it right away. We envision this as a place where people can not only patronize businesses, but spend time outdoors in an urban environment. We hope that this is a place where people can bike and walk we understand that there are still conversation about how we can do all those things safely within the space. But we at the DDA are committed to working toward a solution to allow all of these activities happen within that space. We’ve been working with the Longmont museum on the historic walking tour. If this is passed, we’re going to put different markers out on the street. As well as have our creative community come out to provide art. We have identified lighting banners and other things that will create a true sense of place within this corridor. We’ll be working we hope to work with visit Longmont to encourage safe travel within Colorado for people to come and join our main street. As Chris said, we understand that traffic and parking are a concern. We are embarking on a $7 million project that will make Kaufman street a transit sign. To alleviate congestion. We can offer an alternate route to take Kaufman between first and ninth. Looking at signage to tell people who do not want to sit in this temporary lane closure can use Kaufmann as fine. If we have been if you have been downtown lately, you may have noticed that we have more available parking than ever before. With most of the workforces that 50% or lower we are not seeing the parking concerns of the past last year this would have been a different conversation. I’ve been working with Carmen Ramirez And her parking team to audit the lots for the past week. In the morning in the afternoon, they take their observations of what kind of parking that we have. They have never seen any of our lots or streets exceed 80% capacity and they’re very few that hit that mark. Most of the parking lots and streets tend to be only between 25 and 66% full at one time. There is more parking downtown than we’ve ever seen before. As a backup if we do see some parking congestion, we are talking to the Elks and a few other folks about private lots that will help add to that supply if needed. As you may know, we have heard a significant amount of concerns from the 300 block 300 West block of Main Street. The recent announcement that tangerine is closing and today the governor’s order to close bars and pubs again, the DDA staff has worked to devise a plan to use excess sidewalk space on Third Avenue for the southern most restaurants and alternative innovation Gonna find some alternative space for some retail classes. Although not our original vision council may want to consider stopping the closure at Fourth Avenue on the west side of Main Street. It is disappointing to some of the business owners on that block but we would like to be mindful of the concerns of those business owners that have such concerns about this and make some accommodations if we can or your you all would be able to if you wanted to. As Chris said, This is truly what Mainstreet America is all about. And we are working on some solutions. This is an experiment one that is not a new idea, but one that has been continually suggested by our community. We don’t have the all of the answers, and we can’t see into the future but we do believe that this is worth a shot.
2:10:46
An ideal situation would be to keep the closure through mid to the end of September and these unprecedented times we will strongly monitor and evaluate the impacts. Tyler and Phil can speak more on what they will track from traffic impacts and we will monitor our public Yesterday in counts our parking supplies, track sales tax, and really look at what this is doing for downtown as a whole. The loss of our business community, the loss of our local business community impacts all of us. We are working hard to retain what we have worked so hard to build together. Downtown Longmont has bigger hearts and we hope soon stronger streets. Our hope is that a rising tide raises all ships and that this will help all businesses. We won’t know whether this works or not again, unless we try. I will turn it over to Phil and Tyler to more fully discuss how those closures would work.
2:11:37
Good evening Council. This is Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city of Longmont. I think rather than go into the details, we just turn it over to you right now and ask. I’m sure you have some questions about this, this proposal or this resolution for this intergovernmental agreement. So I would turn it over to counsel and if and if needed, we do have a closure map if you’d like to see that as well.
2:12:00
I’ve just got one question, Marsha. I’m gonna, I’m gonna call on you. My only question is I commute every day from South launch North Longmont and my end, a lot of us commute from north to south, south to north. And I am inclined to vote for this. My only question is, if we don’t have traffic study to mean I’ve got 20 employees that are making that commute, how much time? Are they going to be? You know, every day? How much time Are they going to lose in their commute if they’re coming up to 87 as a result of, of going through 221?
2:12:39
Yeah, bear.
2:12:41
Thanks for that question. We have not done a detailed or a detailed analysis of actual loss of time on those travel times yet but we are going to measure them very carefully and make sure that we are not adding many, many minutes to your commute as far as that goes, but Maybe Tyler has some more information about actual trip making efforts through that area. As we shut down those lanes. I will just mention, I do want to mention that we are asking RTD and they are saying that they will move buses over to Kim Burke. So we’re going to move the bus traffic off of Main Street to help you get through this area help everyone get through this area. We’re also as you’ve heard earlier, we were eliminating parking which is also takes up quite a bit of that outside lane right now as far as removing some of that capacity as people try to stop in traffic and then back into a parking space. So those those two elements will be eliminated with this proposal. I’ll turn it over.
2:13:40
Give me a word this can be substantial. Is that what you’re saying?
2:13:45
I would like to do that. So Tyler standing transportation engineering administrator
2:13:50
is so so not sugarcoat it, your job times are going to go up we do fully anticipate that. We are measuring travel times between first two nights Right now we’re going to measure those travel times as this setup is implemented and as it continues. So we’ll have that number to report but I don’t have a model run to, to really estimate what that impact is going to be at that point. This kind of came together relatively quickly. And to do that type of model takes a pretty substantial modeling effort that frankly, we didn’t have the time to do right now.
2:14:22
I will say we have done this similar setups before with construction as we were going through I think it was 2017 repaving or reconstructing Main Street. We had times when we add traffic down to one lane each direction and shifted onto one side of the street. I think what we saw with that was a lot of drivers picking alternate routes. And so I think we saw volumes go down. One of the other things we see right now, as we’re watching we’re checking volumes across town and impacts to stay at home orders.
2:14:55
Online on Main Street in particular, we saw a pretty good reduction in the first couple weeks was At home ORDERS WE SAW traffic volumes go down about 60% of their normal normal what we see on a normal day that has come back we’re at about 90% of pre COVID volume so volumes are a little bit lower than normal so that that’s in our favor right now as we’re looking to do something like this but ultimately travel times on that route. Unfortunately your route Mr. Bagley will be impacted by this.
2:15:25
Okay, yeah, I guess the only I’m gonna vote book tonight, but I’m gonna I don’t know how much time or money we want to dedicate to this. But I do have that. I’m all for this. And I hear everybody’s. I hear Kimberly McKee and I hear Chris mcgilvery. And I hear I, in theory, it’s great for downtown. My question is, what’s the trade off hundred thousand people. other businesses in town are not located in the downtown district. And I want to see the downtown district thrive. The question is what expense? Because if other people and I’m not saying that, Oh, this is all about bag, a lot of money. saying that what I’m saying is I’m assuming that if I’ve got employees that are going to say, I don’t want to drive up there anymore, if you had 10 minutes to their commute, is that coming in from Lafayette Broomfield? I’m assuming other businesses would also have a similar problem. So I guess my question is, what’s the given take? So I’m going to vote for tonight. But I’d like to know. I mean, if it’s, if it’s 15 minutes, that’s terrible. That’s two minutes. Not a big deal. All right. Councilmember Martin.
2:16:28
Thank you, Mayor Bagley.
2:16:31
I have been doing two things. One is looking at national and international data about projects like this. And they seem to have in common, a lot of initial resistance in terms of, of people believing that, that their business needs to be driven straight up to in order to thrive and things like that. thing, the finding that the outcomes turn out favorable after all, and the situation resolves itself to be for the benefit of everybody. The other thing I’ve been doing is listening to the local objections and seeing what people are really finding as the problem. So I have two questions about the local objections. One of them is what do we do with the bicycle traffic? And it seems to me that the bicycle traffic falls into two cases. One is the through bicycle traffic that isn’t going to stop it downtown but is going to be possibly disrupted by the rerouting of traffic. And the other one is, how are cyclists going to be accommodated that are headed downtown Which is something that they have always said, yeah, we need we want to buy downtown make it work for us. So those are the two questions you can answer them in either order you’d like as long as you tell me which one you’re answering. And then on I’m sorry, the bicycle question is really one question. The other question is, I’ve been looking at the parking in the back on Kim bark and Kaufman and seeing that regardless of the traffic on me, those parking lots are just not as full as they used to be. Can we make more parking for disabled persons back there? So that the alley entrance works for less abled people or differently abled people because I think solving that problem is, for example, going to address a lot of Mr. peacocks concerns. And if that’s part of the plan, then I feel a lot better about it.
2:19:15
I guess I’ll take a shot at the question, Mayor and Councilmember Martin. Starting with your bicycle question, I think what we’re doing is we’re really trying to still work with the avenues that are very low volume right now and getting people into downtown through those avenues. And I think that’s been working really well. I know I, you know, as as a bicycle commuter myself, I use Fourth Avenue quite a bit, and it’s really, really very easy, quite frankly, and Fifth Avenue, and Sixth Avenue are all east and west, very easy to get into downtown. The bigger question is the through downtown that I think you mentioned, and we really have been pushing bicyclists to use the alleyways. And I understand that there are some issues with partial closures of the alleyway to traffic but I think that there still open for bicycle use. And Kimberly, feel free to chime in if this is incorrect information, but my from my information is that most all those alleyways still remain open to bicycling. And then when we do place the barricades This is kind of my issue and I talked to a number of you about this is that I originally last Monday talk to the bicycle issues committee, that’s kind of a group that we use to link in and communicate with the bicycle community. And I did tell them that we thought we were going to have room to bicycle with these closures on Main Street, and after kind of discussing it and talking about actual space needs, and we weren’t sure if that was true or not. And so I had to kind of back off of that a little bit. And it caused some consternation within the bicycling community. And I certainly apologize for that. But I think we’re just trying to be on the safe side, err on safety here and just say that we don’t know exactly what this is going to look like and when when the barriers come down. We’ve got 17 feet of space for the travel when And the parking lane. So you know, that’s not gonna be very much space, you put a three foot wide barricade in there, you put a two feet away from traffic, there’s five feet gone from, from that 17 feet. So they are working with 12 feet. So it just becomes this rule of numbers, but things can move around. And I think once we set the barricades, that area really becomes the area for the for the businesses, we’re going to make sure that traffic flows freely on Main Street. But behind those barricades, we’re going to try to create I believe LED is going to try to create some space for the bicycling to go north and south as well on that because we realize that Kaufman and Kim bark are going to be busy with increased traffic loads and they’re not really great places to ride bicycles right now with diagonal parking backing out so hopefully that answers your first question about bicycles. As far as the parking goes, you know if you have a handicap placard, you can park anywhere in the downtown for as long as you want to. And so we are taking away those those spaces in the front. But there are no eight right now there are no handicapped parking spaces on Main Street, they are all in the, you know those, those city parking lots of ltda parking lots that are off of Kim bark and Kaufman. So technically we do not have any Ada parking where you can park with the placard and and have that spot saved for you. So that is kind of a non issue in our mind. But we would like to take a look at what we need to do for those parking lots and make sure that there is access but again, if you have a handicap placard, and we’re talking about 25 to 66% utilization in those in those parking lots, you can use that parking placard and park anywhere in any time spot for as long as you want. And so that kind of goes under the radar a little bit. Just turn it over to my colleagues to chat anymore about if I missed something on that.
2:22:59
Oh Thanks, Phil. I just wanted to say I was unaware that the time limitations didn’t apply if you have a handicap placard, so that’s excellent information and definitely satisfies my concern.
2:23:21
Mary, you’re muted.
2:23:22
You’re muted number Christiansen and then Councilmember Peck.
2:23:24
I seen the ball.
2:23:35
Okay, I want to thank Councilwoman Martin for asking those questions. Those are two of my concerns to the a DA and the the bicycling. I really would like to have bicycling, bicycling lane I, I’m having a hard time picturing what this is going to look like. Now it seems like we’re going to have one leg of traffic because then we’re going to have a whole bunch of barricades. Is that right? Because I went down today and I mentioned I measured the sidewalk, the regular sidewalk is 18, about 18 feet. So they already have 18 feet. But we also actually have to still use it as a sidewalk. People have to be able to get up and down it. So I’m wondering how much extra space people actually be gaining by this. I’ve been mentioning Lewisville for years and years and nobody seems to be very interested. Now. I’m heartened to see that people are sort of interested in Lewisville has done although they’re there they have a different situation and different kind of town but they just closed there. They do this every summer they close off. They they use the parking space They put flaps out that are basically pallets covered with
2:25:06
inch thick
2:25:09
plywood and the city stores these every year this evolved over time from somebody, a city council person actually observing somebody doing something rather clever. So they use that parking lane in the summertime as extra seating. Well that’s I don’t know how wide a parking lane is 10 feet 12 feet.
2:25:38
I think it’s more like seven to eight feet.
2:25:41
So that’s enough room for table and chairs. And
2:25:47
so
2:25:48
that would still allow you if we close down one lane of traffic, it would give them more room with they used that
2:25:59
parking lane In this this summer
2:26:03
to
2:26:06
put out pallets and expand their tables there.
2:26:12
Although that would cost them more money, you know this is
2:26:17
we do have to be creative. I went down there tonight and I had dinner, my son and I had dinner at the at the pump house. And as usual there was no parking in the parking lot and back there never is ever, ever, ever in my experience. And so we had Park and walk about three blocks. That’s typical for the situation. You know, when you measure stuff in the morning, and in the afternoon. That’s all well and good but most people are going to be down there at night and at night. It’s it’s always packed. You can drive around that parking lot forever and you will not get a parking space there.
2:27:02
It’s the same thing down by the chicken. So I
2:27:07
I am worried about the parking. I mean, I’m frightened by the fact that I look at all the empty storefronts down there. We had as Chris said, we were doing wonderfully and our downtown is so much better because of Kimberley. And when I moved here when it was just
2:27:30
30 years ago, and
2:27:31
it’s been wonderful and we want to keep that it’s a huge generator for income. I mean for jobs for entertainment for economic vibrancy in this town, but we also have to have a balance between people who are handicapped having access, the biking, biking, being you know, the biking community being able to get around the neighborhoods not being any more impacted than they already are. By don’t people parking all over And
2:28:01
creating problems all over. So yeah, none of us
2:28:07
none of us here is God nobody’s got any answers we have to do the best we can to try to find creative solutions. I’m
2:28:16
I see the point and Mr. Christiansen from the
2:28:22
elite barber shop. And I also see the the point of Mr. Peacock from the Chinese medicine thing. I do think some businesses will be adversely affected by this and I worry about that. But we have to try to figure out the greatest benefit for everybody to get through this difficult time. So I would vote for this if we if we allow somehow to have a bike lane going through there. So that bicycles which are the way that people Couldn’t get downtown and go to these places. I mean, people talk about foot traffic, but people are not going to be walking from all over downtown to downtown. They have to get to downtown and park. And if we are pinching the traffic to 50% they’re going to avoid downtown like the plague. And then we eliminate parking. They’re really going to avoid it. So I do worry about that. But I think it’s worth a try until the end of September. I think we have to try to do something to help people and so I will vote for this provided we have some bike lane, we have a bike lane because otherwise I think we’ll really be doing a lot of damage.
2:29:45
Let’s go with Councilmember pack. Then Councilmember Susie Doyle, fairing and Councillor Martin.
2:29:51
Thank you very badly. So I have two concerns and I had already asked Phil, I talked to you on the phone about this. So I’m gonna let you explain it because you explained it so well to me. And the question is, well, the normal process for something like this would be that it is brought to Council and we put it on an agenda, etc, etc. That didn’t happen. And I was concerned about why the rush How did this happen? How can we haven’t heard about it? And you explained it very well, Phil, so I’m going to turn it over to you to please let everyone know how, why this is such a rapid response to the business community and to LD da
2:30:37
Take it away, Phil
2:30:39
Marin, Councilmember Peck. I’m trying to remember what I said. Um, I think you know, I think Kimberly did a really great job in explaining kind of that timing. You know, we’re talking about June 11, was when we started hearing about this, and it’s June 30. Today, so we’re really trying to, you know, we really did get Quite a kickstart on this, as far as you know, trying to get going with what we had heard and the different things that we heard from the different businesses and folks, the piece of it that really kind of, I think Kimberly really mentioned was the idea that we really looked at the alleys first. And that was really where we wanted to go. And and so alleys really became the key focus initially when we were talking about business expansions. And it was quickly became evident that the businesses couldn’t make alleys work as long as they thought they could or as well as we thought they could. So the next, the next option was looking at Main Street, but the very first reaction that everybody had was who’s going to want to sit next to four lanes of traffic while they eat their dinner and try to converse with each other. It’s already kind of difficult in some of these outdoor seating venues already. So what can be done to kind of mitigate that and that was the idea of could we take off Elaine and slow traffic down a little bit and calm traffic a little bit with this with this proposal. So that’s kind of what you see in front of you tonight.
2:32:07
So if I can, if I can jump into kind of help with that, too. So when we talk to counsel about what we were going to look out for the alleys in the process, you have to go through liquor licensing, and all of those components. Well, the state relaxed a lot of rules and processes in terms of bringing it through. The operational issue also becomes more challenging in terms of the licensing aspect. And Kimberly kind of touched on this is because you have to make sure that you can when we expand the premise that you can ensure that you’re properly monitoring that premise as part of the licensing process. And so there’s very few based on access points to the alley that can actually do that. I think there’s really only one that has that line of sight. And so then when you take a facility that’s challenged financially, and then you add additional cost for them in order to be able to expand to increase the 50% margin because of the licensing piece that becomes an additional issue that’s in play as well. It really has made the alleys more difficult to work for.
2:33:24
So I think that that part, you’re right, Kimberly explained it very well. And I guess what I was getting at for the conversations that I’ve had from the residents Is that why are we just hearing about this? How come you’re rushing it through? And what I understood from our conversation was that you we, we, Harold could do this based upon that emergency authority that we gave you. I forgot what it was called a ready because we needed to get see.on board, we needed to be able to, that was going to take longer than we thought to get their permission, etc. So it was all fast forwarded that way rather than coming through Council and getting it on an agenda and discussing it and carrying it out for a long time. So do I have that correct? Is that because people have been asking, why are we rushing this when in fact, it is the process that is rushing it not necessarily
2:34:34
the need So, I hope I understood you correctly with that.
2:34:41
I can also jump into that one too. So when we talked about the use of alleys I know we did mention that there was a possibility of looking at Main Street during that conversation. But we also indicated we did not know how c dot was going to respond. And so what we what we said was we were going to go in work to see DoD and see what they were going to do. Because if they weren’t going to allow it, that would have been a lot of work that everyone went through and I think seed on didn’t allow that, which is why we’re then bringing it to you all now.
2:35:13
Okay, thank you. That’s what I wanted the residents to hear as to why it went that fast. My other concern actually was brought up tonight and Kimberly mentioned it about the bars and lounges being closed per the governor. So my question is, are the bars within the restaurants going to be closed? For example, the roost has a bar the that does not pertain to them. There’s
2:35:42
no based on what I understand from the existing order. It is really specific to bars and like nightclubs that don’t sell food. Okay. And so there is a distinction in the licenses and in how they operate. And where it gets different is they have created different, a different venue for breweries and distilleries in there. They’re obviously licensed by the state, but they created special provisions for that type of license. But in terms of bars, they don’t sell food. And so they’re in a license category. They have specifically closed. Okay, it will impact those other ones based on based on what I know tonight.
2:36:30
Yeah, exactly. So I have one more question. This is an experiment and I think it’s a good experiment, and I’m anxious to see what happens with it. And it is a 90 day experiment. Or a little over 90 days. What if within the first 30 to 45 days we find that it has a negative effect on other businesses that the data isn’t we’re showing that there are no more people coming to the rescue. On, then before we put we did this, are we going to continue it throughout the 90 days? Or are we going to say this isn’t working as we planned and shut it down sooner? Is there any data collection that would make us rethink what we’re doing? Or is it is it going to be the 90 days period regardless?
2:37:26
So mayor and Councilmember Peck,
2:37:29
just just to let you know, yes, we are going to evaluate this. We want to take the first 30 days to look at what’s going on with traffic, what’s going on with all the different businesses that are downtown. And I think Kimberly has some more information on that. But if anything happens, where we are seeing this, you know, kind of fall on its face as a failure. With traffic or with the businesses, we have the ability to kind of pull those barricades we don’t, but we’ll get the barricade company to come back in and pull those barricades and take Come off on Main Street and return it back to normal. So that’s kind of what we’re looking at right now is a is a month long kind of test. Okay, see how things go and give people time to kind of adapt, you know, give the mayor time to find different routes to get to his office and on the north side of town, but and then everybody, you know, we’ll have to kind of figure this out as we go, I think. And as that happens, we have that ability of things if things go really south on us.
2:38:25
Okay. Great. Glad to hear it. Thank you.
2:38:33
Let’s go ahead and with Pillsbury logo fairing.
2:38:38
Harold, are you going to say something?
2:38:41
Just to clarify what Phil said and answer the question, Kimberly, and I did have that conversation today. And we talked about if we see certain things, we’re going to immediately come together and go, can you deal with it and if you can’t deal with it, then have to reconsider. So there has been ample conversation on that.
2:39:03
Okay. Um, so council member Peck had asked us, one of the questions I wanted to, to ask, um, in regard to if it’s not working, you know, so we were going to look really look at the first 30 days and see what happens if it doesn’t work. I’m curious to know, how long would it take to do the reverse single enclosure? And would it need to be brought forward to Council for approval first, or can you guys just decide, okay, this isn’t working, we’re gonna have to, to undo this.
2:39:46
I think we have the ability to untangle it if there’s a problem, but similar to how we’ve approached many of these issues, and we would communicate with counsel to say, here’s what we understand. Here’s what’s happening here. What we need to do? So we would communicate with counsel on that issue, if you would like we could bring it back to you. I just be afraid if it’s not working, it’s we’re going to lose time. And so rather,
2:40:12
I didn’t want any of that to be a delay. Yeah. Now, now to to,
2:40:19
you know, expediate that process. I wanted to get that on the record now. The other one was, if Oh, as far as funding for this, are we able to acquire any federal funding COVID relief for the blockage of the road? What’s it gonna cost for the barriers and, and, and doing it when we’re when it’s completed?
2:40:44
Aaron, Councilmember Hidalgo fairing this is? This is a great question because we are currently pursuing a grant from the state then the state has actually put together a funding program of $4.1 million with a $50,000 match Some requests and we were going for that full $50,000. And we think that’ll pay for almost half of this or more than half of it, hopefully is what we’re saying 90 to $200,000 Is that correct? Tyler? Okay, so, you know, we’re trying to get about half of the money from the state. We’ve got some of our best grant writers working on that issue right now. So we’re hoping, hoping we can get that those dollars to flow into the city.
2:41:28
Okay, very good. And then this is back to the parking but on the west side. So I’m you know, I’m thinking more between third and fourth and we had a talk Phil earlier today about this very issue and utilizing how I wanted to know how receptive the the establishments that have those private parking space lots, how flexible are they been in allowing
2:41:56
other
2:41:58
customers to utilize those spots For other businesses,
2:42:02
Mayor Begley in councilmembers, I did talk to start a conversation with the Elks Lodge. So they have a parking lot that’s immediately adjacent to ours. And I was asking them what type of usage they were seeing and if they anticipated any larger events, or if they would be willing to work with us to either lease us or allow us to use some of that parking and they’re very, very open to that discussion. So, they said yeah, we you know, we can look at something. So, we thought about waiting to see if the need was there. And then kind of initiating that discussion, I know that
2:42:37
some other banks are going to allow for parking in their spaces after hours, that type of thing, which will also add to the inventory. And, you know, again, as I mentioned in my presentation, since the 300, West block is by far the most sensitive to this. We could always choose not to do the closure in that area. Yeah, which will preserve all of their parking for all of those that I think reached out with you.
2:43:06
So could we do a partial closure where on the east side, it closes and then the west side that just stays? Is that an option that could be used?
2:43:23
Are you looking at the entire Westside Kimberly or just one block on the west side?
2:43:28
Between third and fourth? What I was thinking?
2:43:32
Yeah, that’s what we looked at with Tyler and fell between third and fourth, it would just the closure would just stop at Fourth Avenue and not go down to third on the west side.
2:43:41
West Side.
2:43:42
Yeah. So
2:43:45
on the east side, it would actually it would pick up half phase so it would take a little bit about 200 blocks to pick up that and then possibly smokin Dave’s if they open if we do some rearranging and then go up to the pump house. Okay. Okay. Yeah, thank you.
2:44:06
All right. I think we said counselor Martin is next. And then we’ll go with Dr. Waters after her.
2:44:12
Thank you, Mary Bagley, I’ll be quick. The first thing is, I think that a lot of people, especially us over 65 types are going to still be interested in pickup and delivery. And Can Can that be run? Excuse me through the alleys for most of the restaurants?
2:44:38
Yes, we absolutely would like to see pickup and delivery in the alleys and I think the alleys are very well suited for that. So most people do have that access to where they could run the food out and do curbside pickup. And we also have the 15 minute curbside pickup spaces and we may look at putting one of those in the avenues so if you didn’t want to go to a block and You had some accessibility issues, some of the spaces would be marked for 15 minutes. So you could walk up, get your curbside pickup and walk back. So that’s another option we can explore.
2:45:12
Thank you. And then the My other question is about bike parking when, when downtown is the biking destination? Can we make it as safe as possible by by putting the bike racks at the ends of the closures? So that because I don’t think there you’re going to see very many bikers who are going to have a problem walking three blocks.
2:45:42
All right, let’s go ahead duck waters.
2:45:45
Do I get an answer on that? That was a question. Okay. Go ahead.
2:45:50
Do you want to answer Mayor Martin, Councilmember Martin I think I’ll try to take that one and just say that we’ve done a lot of work in the last couple years to really get some a lot of bikers In the downtown, I think Kimberly can kind of attest to the, the amount of work we’ve we’ve worked with her staff to make sure we get those bike racks, but we can certainly, we have a bike rack program and if we hear that we need to add racks in any location, we could quickly do that as well.
2:46:16
I think I was asking about moving bike racks to the ends because if I’m walking around with my drink in my hand,
2:46:25
I’m
2:46:27
not necessarily eager to have a biker with me on the sidewalk.
2:46:34
We will look into that as far as a solution that sounds like a good one. Thank you.
2:46:42
All right, Dr. Waters. Now your turn.
2:46:45
Thank you Mayor Bagley. Kimberly, in your comments you made reference to accommodations is what you just went through with Councilmember a double fairing in terms of not utilizing or not closing down the You see southbound traffic in the 300 block? Is that the accommodation that you were thinking about? Or are there other accommodations?
2:47:10
That’s the
2:47:12
specific accommodation that we’re thinking about, because that’s where we really heard the concerns.
2:47:22
So, related to the, to the question of accommodations, my guess is you and Tyler and Phil talked about creating one way street, right. Like northbound Kim bark, southbound Kaufman being one way streets as opposed to two way streets. I assume that was at some point, a hot topic of conversation. And just be curious, is that that’s not why that wouldn’t be worthy of thinking about in terms of traffic flow.
2:47:52
Councilmember waters, Mayor, I think what we’re really trying to do is make sure that we had all the streets available in both directions we’ve certainly talked about the one way pears in the past with different with different folks but not in this conversation not this is really about trying to keep some traffic on Main Street and keep that traffic flow going and not completely closed off Main Street at this time. So that was not not a specific consideration for this specific closure yet.
2:48:22
I appreciate the feeling just doesn’t answer my question. Why wouldn’t you? I mean, you’re afraid now if we if you went one way north and south Kaufman and Kim bark that takes too much traffic off of off of Main Street. If it did it would be because people traffic was moving smoothly. I I guess that confuses me why people want to do that. And I don’t want to get into the weeds on it. I just in terms of accommodations. It seemed like one of those that might be on the table for consideration. here
2:48:57
and Councilmember waters I think the reason why we didn’t do Consider that at this time as it’s that’s a very expensive traffic control plan. And what we’re trying to do is keep it simple and little little less expensive than what that would take to actually change the traffic flow patterns with those with those streets that you mentioned Kim Park and Kaufman so that imagine the the traffic control that that would take it’s it’s that’s that’s probably quadruple the cost of what we’re talking about here. So we’re really trying we were trying to keep it to try to keep it inexpensive and keep the traffic moving and not not to stress or or impact those folks along coffee and come back any more than we had to but maybe Tyler has some other ideas about one way traffic flow but that’s that’s kind of my initial reaction to that.
2:49:52
All right in this territory, I was going to jump in i i do i do want to go back to Kimberly into into Chris You know, one of that kind of standards in my mind, and I think Councilmember Christiansen made reference to the same kind of standard a few minutes ago about whatever we decide doing the greatest good for the largest number, understanding that especially at these times, no matter what decision we make on this, cron, a bunch of things, asks auto mask. We got a whole bunch of folks out there who are going to second gas and not be unhappy with whatever we decide. So
2:50:30
understanding that we’re going to make a decision.
2:50:33
So you to make the case that this given the concerns we’ve heard, but maybe a minority of businesses and we’ve heard from residents make the case that this plan serves that it does the greatest good for the largest number of long months.
2:50:52
I guess I’ll start Kimberly, I think these are really important questions that you asked him and the guy we got asked these from so many people, and it’s really important to understand that this is not tunnel vision on just restaurants. This is not tunnel vision just on Main Street, this is what’s best for our community is what’s best for our city. Right? It’s adding sales tax, it’s saving businesses. It’s, I mean, we’ve all you know, we’re really proud of what we’ve created in the downtown, right, coming out of implementing our master plan from five years ago and truly executing against our mat, our master plan and having it a destination where people are have fun, and it’s safe, and it’s inviting, and we’d lost a little bit of that, but we’re excited about the future. And so, you know, it’s about identity. It’s about, you know, the you look at the sales tax alone that comes out of our downtown. And Jim can give us more of the specifics, but it’s, it’s a significant percentage of our city, right? But then there’s also the Employees the jobs. We talked about the economic sustainability earlier. All that comes together this is, you know, it is when you look at the results of the survey and this in the discussions, Tim, this is not going to, we’re not going to please everybody, there are going to be some challenges. That’s why it’s really important that we continue to have discussions about these concerns around parking and traffic congestion and really doing what we can to accommodate those needs, which I’m really impressed with this discussion on those are bringing up some really important questions. So but, you know, it’s our downtown is our city. And, you know, it’s, we have to invest in the heart of our town. And that’s, that’s my argument is, it is a small sacrifice. It is an experiment. You know, and I I asked the same questions that I believe Polly asked Phil, in terms of what if things go wrong? What do we do? And it isn’t that complex to go back to the things that they basically to go back to normal. And so there is a little bit of risk associated with this. potentially some frustrations. But I think what makes our community so special, Tim is coming together. Right? And for a common purpose. And I think this, that what this sends is when you’re driving through downtown, you know, we’re obviously in a pandemic, things are difficult, we’re struggling, you’re going to build a drive downtown, and you’re going to see Wow, like, something cool is happening like, you know, there’s some vibrance, maybe I need to pull over and have a slice of pizza Rosalie’s and it’s gonna create some excitement and some feel good buzz. That, that our downtown has missed, obviously, through this pandemic and, and so I’m excited for, you know, these micro examples of tapping into our vision using our imagination to, to try to help help each other through this.
2:54:17
Can you add to that?
2:54:18
Yeah, fine just quickly and thank you so much for asking
2:54:21
the question. I really feel like this is an investment in people and the thing that makes lawn lawn so special is its people and so sacrificing some parking so people have a space to come to be able to gather safely six feet apart and be able to still have the heart of the community. We really basis that everyone that comes to downtown is a pedestrian at some point. We don’t have any drive in movie theaters, everyone has to walk at some point. So how can we make that safer, more pleasant, give more space for people to come and gather and really embrace our local business community?
2:54:56
Well, my last comment, and then I’ll, I’ll mute is If we if we’ve learned nothing, since March 17, when the whole world changed, we’ve all learned that adaptation is a requirement going forward. It’s been a requirement since Mark 17. And there’ll be no less need to adapt and adapt and adapt and adapt to the conditions as they emerge. So this strikes me for whatever controversy or you know, anxiety there is around it. An example not just of an innovation, but of the of it’s incumbent upon all of us to figure out now how to adapt as we work together in this situation, so, I’m gonna vote for I’m going to vote for this. And, and, and hope that we can all work together continually and either adapt the plan or adapt to the plan as we go forward.
2:55:53
All right, and
2:55:56
counselor Christiansen,
2:55:57
you might be the last word. We’ll see.
2:56:04
Can we clarify that they’ll be bicycling, there’ll be a bicycle lane. I mean, I know this is sort of up in the air, but it makes a difference to me whether I
2:56:16
vote for it or not.
2:56:18
So mayor and Councilmember Christiansen we are going to make every provision possible that we can to include bicycles on Main Street with the spacing requirements, and I think Kimberly has done an excellent job of trying to find the space and working with bicycle community and the restaurants to figure out how to make sure there’s space there. We’ll do the best we can but there may be places for where we have to figure out different ways to get bicycles through.
2:56:48
So this is just going to be from second to sixth. Is that correct? Kimberly
2:56:56
on the east side of the street, it will start north of the 200 block parking lot up.
2:57:05
I’m sorry, you’re breaking up a little bit. All right.
2:57:09
Ah is on the 200 on the east side of the street, it’ll start a little bit north of the 200 block parking lot we have there and go up to the pump house. And then on the west side of the street
2:57:24
it will either go from Third Avenue to Sixth Avenue or from Fourth Avenue to Sixth Avenue depending on which route council would like to go. Okay,
2:57:33
I had another question since you mentioned this would cover half face to this half face want to be part of this because right now they have a very good system they have and that relies upon having to open lanes and being able to drop stuff off at the
2:57:53
curb.
2:57:55
And I don’t believe that they have much in the way of Alan access. So wouldn’t this negatively impact them?
2:58:05
They requested to be part of it, which is why we extended it to there. So okay. Well, yeah. And
2:58:12
they’ve got a good idea that what’s their business?
2:58:15
Well, I do know that Sean, he’s part of the business resilience Task Force. So he’s been very involved in this process. And so I’m pretty sure he’s on board.
2:58:28
All right, we’ve got ahead and I think everybody that again, this is just first reading. We have a second reading coming up. I think we’ve all had the opportunity to say or ask questions. Let’s go ahead and vote on eight. See, do we have a motion? Just a point of
2:58:41
order? There’s no second reading. No second reading
2:58:44
this resolution. Sorry, it’s after 10 I’m starting to get tired. All right. It’s a resolution. We’re not coming back. Councillor Peck.
2:58:52
I moved the resolution.
2:58:54
Councillor Martin. Look at that. All right. It’s been Moved by Councillor pick second by Councillor Martin. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, carries unanimously. All right, let’s move on to crank through the rest of this general business. Let’s do 11 A lgi D resolution. Let’s move that we recess the former city council inconvenience the board of directors the llama gentle Improvement District number one.
2:59:22
All right. All right. Well, I’ll move on. I’ll take that as a second. Councilmember Christiansen. Let’s go ahead and vote. All in favor say aye.
2:59:30
Aye. Aye.
2:59:32
Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. Let’s go ahead and do a two resolution LG id 20 2003. a resolution to the board of directors of the Walmart general Improvement District number one and acting as supplemental budget making an additional appropriation to the expenses and liabilities the district’s fiscal year beginning January 120 20. was pretty clear in our packet, but do we want to keep talking about it?
2:59:52
I move resolution 2003.
2:59:55
All right. Thank you. has been moved by Dr. waters and seconded by Councilmember Martin, I believe let’s go and vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. All right resolution lgv 2023 passes unanimously. I’ll move that we adjourn as the llama general human district number one board of directors reconvened along with City Council.
3:00:19
Second Selma.
3:00:22
All right, I’ll move by Councillor Martin, second by Councilmember Christiansen All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, passes unanimously. Let’s wrap it up with the presentation the recommendations of the Climate Action Task Force, renewable energy building energy use and transportation.
3:00:40
Parallel.
3:00:45
Leave the bell. Are you starting this off or is Lisa starting it off? I’m starting with
3:00:51
Lisa.
3:00:56
Okay, Susan, you can go ahead and start the presentation. One moment.
3:01:06
There you go. Thank you so much. Mayor Bagley members of council and we send all back the sustainability program manager and I’m here tonight to review the climate action recommendations that have been developed over the last six months with the Climate Action Task Force along with the just transition plan committee. And before I dive into the presentation, I’m going to hand it over to deputy city manager to Rademacher to provide an introduction. So you can go to the next slide, please.
3:01:32
Thanks, Lisa. The only thing I really wanted to share with counsel given the late hour of the evening, a couple of things council you pass the emergency ordinance declaring the climate emergency back in October. We were all working in January to have this report delivered to you by April 8. I know we got a few bumps along the way but I’m very proud to say that Lisa and the sustainability staff, working with awesome members of our community have been able to pull together a report that I believe is going to help guide our community going forward to be able to deal with the
3:02:20
climate challenges that we’re going to have. So
3:02:24
with that, I’m going to turn it back over to Lisa to get underway.
3:02:30
Great, thanks, Michelle. So as I’m sure you’ve all seen in your packet, the climate action recommendations report is quite substantive. So and luckily, because it’s late, so we’re gonna, we’re actually breaking up the presentation over two sessions. So tonight, and also next week, and I’ve just listed here what we’re, what we’ll be covering tonight is we’ll go into some of the background of the Climate Action Task Force. Review the structure of the report. We have a governance recommendation and community engagements on And then the bulk of what we’ll be discussing or the topic or recommendations around building energy views, renewable energy and transportation. And then next week, we’ll be back to talk about the recommendations in the areas of adaptation and resilience, education and outreach, reducing waste management. And then we’ll be discussing equitable climate action in reviewing the just transition plan committee equity recommendations, and then getting into a discussion with counsel around how you want to all want to move forward now that the report is my next spot. Oh, and real quickly, just to know why I’m doing this presentation and as staff is due to the comprehensive nature of the of the report itself, and the recommendations of the Climate Action Task Force have requested that staff, present and brief the report and recommendations. And although we did provide a lot of support and resources and information to the Climate Action Task Force to help inform the development of the recommendations, and we help to facilitate the process Haven’t been directly involved in the drafting of the recommendation. So I’m going to do my best to answer any questions that you have. But we do also have a couple climate action customers members that are on the line that will be available from each topic area to answer more specific questions if I’m not able to do that. And before I jump in, I just want to take a few moments to acknowledge the work of everyone that contributed to this effort. As Dale mentioned, it was a big undertaking, and I’m really proud of the work that everybody’s done. And first and foremost, the climate action task force members for their time and passion and expertise, especially getting all of this done amidst the global pandemic, as well as the just transition plan committee members for their invaluable contribution on equity. The staff that helped provide data and information and resources to the Climate Action Task Force, and especially the sustainability team, for their time and dedication is getting us across the finish line in particularly on a shout out to prancy Jaffe or more Conservation and sustainability specialist who really helped hold all of this together. And I don’t think we would have been able to get to this point without her of the Institute for built environment, their team who helped facilitate the Climate Action Task Force in the just transition committee, and provided a lot of support and resources as well. And then, of course, thank you to City Council and the members of the public who have brought this important issue forward next time. So before I get further into the presentation, we do have two climate action task force members, Peter wood and Alessandro frenching, who have a couple remarks to share. So I’m going to pass it to Peter would first would you?
3:05:56
Yep. Go ahead, Peter.
3:06:00
Well, thanks. Thanks very much for hearing us. I want to speak for the whole task force to say how grateful we are to the city council to have passed your resolution last year about the climate emergency was a step ahead and then to set up this task force. So we’re grateful for that. We’re grateful for the terrific facilitators and the city government staff that has been so helpful Lisa, and francy and others. And and I think all of us were just grateful for the chance to do something helpful for the city that we all feel so immediate. This has not been a burdensome chore. It’s been a very exciting challenge for all of us. We’ve taken it seriously. We’ve learned from it. And so at the end of it all I feel is we’re quite optimistic and that’s not always easy. has
3:07:02
it’s been a good process. And we hope that you’re going to be able to absorb these recommendations. My first thought is, I hope you’re not intimidated by something this large. We weren’t sure it was going to be this large, but we wanted to get everything in there. We’ve got more than two dozen recommendations covering half a dozen important areas. But we really think that these are varied recommendations. They’re ambitious recommendations. But they’re also very practical recommendations. This is not a pie in the sky wish list. They’re sensible and interconnected. And I think they’ll help us all Move, move forward. And moreover, you’ll notice as you go through them that some of them are already connected and building on programs and organizations that are already in place. And I just want to say one, we put a cover letter on the front of it, which I hope you’ll read. But I want to end by drawing your attention to our comments about COVID 19. It’s been reinforced for me listening to your serious conversation tonight. If the council is able to bring that kind of acumen and seriousness to go of it, I am hoping you’ll bring it also to this even bigger problem, because when this pandemic is behind us, at some point, the crisis in the climate will still be and will be worsening, the clock keeps on ticking. So what I want to point out is that we mentioned four things there that we’ve learned from the COVID crisis. And let me just read them to you that in crises decisive action is best when it is early and coordinated, even where it imposes short term hardships. Secondly, almost all know that some groups are setback more than others. So sharing present burdens and future benefits equitably becomes vital. We’ve talked a lot about the equity lens as we were working through these recommendations. And I think we’ve seen the inequities that occur and in the COVID crisis, there are inequities that create challenges in the climate crisis. And thirdly, we’ve seen from COVID, that concerted local effort is crucial, even when the challenge is global. And it’s exciting for all of us as 10 scores members to be involved. Dinner in such a local effort. And then finally, I think we’ve all been learning this spring that planning based on community discussion, like you’ve been having tonight and on sound science can be a key to long term success. So I would just say in closing that I hope you can bring the same energy and commitment to these, the climate issue that you’ve brought to working through our, our COVID pandemic. Thanks very much.
3:10:40
El Centro?
3:10:43
Yes, Mayor City Council.
3:10:46
Thank you
3:10:47
for the opportunity to speak and thanks for your leadership during these very challenging times. If you think that COVID is a challenge, please be prepared because climate change Gonna bring more challenges like this one that we’re living in right now. I’ve been studying climate change for more than a decade. And now I’m seriously concerned. I enjoy, I joined the Climate Action Task Force because I felt a sense of urgency, urgency to act. I hope that you all shared the same, the same sense of urgency, we need to start to be part of the problem and start to be part of the solution. We basically had one decade to get to zero co2 emissions. This is the kind of task that cannot be tackled at an individual level. No personal decision, no matter how radical we make a difference alone. In order to generate a significant shift and make a difference. We need a collective systematic shift that involves a large part of the earth’s population. Together, we need to redefine a new normal. I think the long ones can lead the way long one can become an inspiring model that Other places in the US and in parts of the world can imitate its dynamism and the size make our city a perfect laboratory where we can find solutions that can be copied and or fully scaled up. I think the long month has already faced an event that gives the sense of what the effect of climate change will be. And that was the 2013 flood the city to fix the aftermath of this disaster. Imagine if we knew beforehand about it, we could have done something to avoid the worst consequences. Well, climate change. Climate change has been known for about 20 years and is coming upon us. But it’s not too late. The climate acts are stacked the Climate Action Task Force, with this recommendation hopes to help the city to prevent the worst consequences of a global disaster. I have the City Council and the rest than supplements will appreciate our report and take it seriously. I hope that our recommendations will be a strong starting points, the first of many steps to demonstrate that it is possible to have a blooming economy and fair and supportive community that does not need that does not need to burn fossil fuel to thrive. Thank you.
3:13:24
Thank you, Lisa, who else we got?
3:13:28
That’s it. So you can move ahead to the next fight. Susan, thank you so much, Peter, and all Sandra.
3:13:35
Great, and as both Peter and Alessandra just mentioned, it is important to take a moment to acknowledge that we are in unprecedented times with COVID-19 and a global pandemic. that’s underway. And as you know, this process began before the pandemic emerged. But it’s now impacting pretty much every aspect of our lives. And there are so many uncertainties about what the long term impacts will be. On our communities, on our economy and on our environment, and we don’t know the extent to which it will impact our ability to implement climate action measures. But at the same time, despite those challenges that we face due to COVID, we’re also in a moment of opportunity to build back better through the recovery process and create stronger and and we’re already doing that, and we’re on our way to doing that through ongoing partnership with pure pa and the commitment to transition to 100% renewable energy and the completion of the 225 megawatt new wind farm at Roundhouse. So we’re we’re doing a lot of those things already that were underway. But we still need to continue to prioritize resilience, equity, economic vitality and climate action in our recovery, so that we can rebuild in a way that helps transition us to a clean energy economy, and builds jobs and addresses the long standing social medically inequities that we’re seeing play out in a number of different ways. Beyond just COVID. And then we know will continue to be exacerbated by climate change unless we do things differently. So you can move to the next five things.
3:15:14
So now I’m moving to the report itself. And you can go ahead to the next slide. So this is just a brief overview of the structure of the report that you will receive. So, as you said, it’s pretty comprehensive. And we’re not going to go through every detail but touch on some of these areas. So go ahead and go to the next slide. So as we discussed, we have our six topic areas and then equity as we’ve talked about before, the Climate Action Task Force really identified that as a critical component to climate action, and decided that rather than having it as its own standalone topic area, to integrate it throughout the recommendations in the report, and we’ll be going more in depth in equity and climate action, as well as reviewing the just transition plan committee. Equity recommendations as the presentation next week. Next slide. So the Climate Action Task Force also discussed the need to ensure accountability and implementation of climate action recommendations and making progress toward climate goals. And to do that they’re recommending that oversight of implementation and reporting be integrated into the scope of the sustainability advisory board, as well as from ad hoc committees as needed to provide technical expertise and assistance in the implementation of specific recommendations. And then also incorporate climate action recommendations into existing plans such as the council work plan. Next slide. And we mentioned this to you in previous presentations, but we were undergoing a community engagement process as well. And the goals of that process were first and foremost to inform the public about the climate emergency declaration, but also to obtain feedback on potential draft recommendations. Understand potential impacts, how to net medic mitigate any potential negative impacts, how things might be strengthened and where things might be missing. And although we were able to conduct some of the community engagement activities that we had planned prior to close closures, closures, and those activities are listed here. Our efforts were pretty significantly impacted by COVID. However, we did provide the results and findings from what we are we’re able to do to the community Climate Action Task Force to inform the development of their recommendations. Next slide, please. So I just want to share a few of the key takeaways from that process is overall there there is general support for climate actions and incentives. And there’s pretty strong support specifically for increasing services and benefits for low income communities and specifically addressing issues around affordability. There are also concerns about The cost of implementation of climate action, and particularly how that might further impact affordability in the community. And then also concern around the lack of adequate stakeholder engagement. And the limitations that we faced were it was a fast timeline to turn things around, obviously, the impacts from COVID, as I mentioned, the format of the questionnaire that went out, kind of set up a challenge where people couldn’t actually select an option where they didn’t like any of the options that were being presented. And then I think largely because of COVID. And the impact to community engagement, we have pretty limited representation in the community engagement process. So we know that there are a lot of voices and perspectives that weren’t heard that need to be taken into consideration. Next slide, please. So now I’m going to get into the topic area recommendations and just making a quick request to keep questions if at all possible to clarifying questions as I go through These recommendations so that we can get through all of them tonight, and there’ll be some time at the end for more in depth questions and discussion. So the first topic area is building energy use. And I know this is kind of a lot to digest the slide here, but based on the most recent greenhouse gas inventory, which was just recently completed, and we’ll be bringing that information to Council in the coming months, and building energy use, it accounts for about 80% of our greenhouse gas emissions. If we’re only looking at the low chair portion of Longmont electricity from Platte River Power Authority. So this is if you remember back at the retreat, we talked about the greenhouse gas emissions based on looking at both the low chair which is just the the power that’s provided to one month versus including the the equity share as well which is the total generation of Platte River Power Authority. So we did in the greenhouse gas inventory. Have we have both sets of that information and so, these two graphs are showing that side by side. So building energy use without the additional equity share emissions and then the graph on the right is with the additional equity share emissions.
3:20:15
Next slide.
3:20:18
So the first strategy in this topic area is improving building codes, and long term already adopted implements the most recent version of the International Energy Codes. The next cycle will be in 2021. It’s anticipated to increase energy efficiency by about 10%. And this segmentation is focusing on adopting additional dependencies for solar and Evie readiness, ENERGY STAR appliances and options for electric heaters and water heaters. So they said help reduce emissions, as well as increase home comfort. But there was also some potential impact on the affordability of housing and we would want to make sure to analyze that further and take that into consideration as well. Next slide. So this is looking at creating a committee to oversee the development of a phase action plan for transitioning to full electrification. The timeline would be looking at getting a plan finished by November 2021. And then doing community engagement after that, and then bringing a plan to Council for approval sometime in early 2022. And then doing ongoing monitoring and evaluation from there. This will also reduce emissions and have the potential to increase home health. And at the same time, there is also that similar concern around how it might impact affordable housing and the need to make sure that we’re focusing on maintaining affordability. This also could come at a significant cost to homeowners for not only electric appliances, but for the infrastructure upgrades that would be needed to their home to manage that as well as LPC infrastructure to manage electrical
3:22:01
Next slide, please.
3:22:04
Councilmember Martin, did you have a quick question?
3:22:07
Yeah. So a very quick one. Some constituents on the previous slide were concerned that this meant a really rapid electrification by 2021 or 2022. It doesn’t the plan supposed to be in place by them, correct?
3:22:25
Yes, that’s correct. Thank you. Thanks.
3:22:26
I just wanted to get that. Yep.
3:22:31
Yep. And that plan would be looking at it at a phased implementation over the next 10 or 15 years.
3:22:38
Okay, Marshal bench.
3:22:41
Councilmember Christiansen? Yes.
3:22:46
I’ve gotten the same letters as Councilman Martin and
3:22:50
people are under the impression that this would be we would mandate having no natural gas lines in in 2021. In that all future building would have no gas lines and all this would be mandated. And so just it would be helpful to clarify that.
3:23:11
So again, this this is the planning effort, and it was a good clarifying questions and a few more slides to get through. But go ahead, Lisa.
3:23:22
Um, so commercial benchmarking so benchmarking is the process of measuring a building’s energy use over a one year period and comparing that to similar buildings energy use and national and local targets in this program would start with, first of all comprehensive public business outreach campaign to educate building owners and get community buy in. The initial launch would apply to buildings over 20,000 square feet and by 2023 expand to almost non residential facilities over 5000 square feet. There’s a pilot that’s already underway in the staff from LPC that’s That’s leading that is putting on developing an ordinance later in 2020 to bring to Council for discussion in 2021. So we already do have a full time staff person in Longmont power and communications, it’s working on that, but we’d likely need additional resources for marketing and outreach for implementation of this recommendation. Next slide.
3:24:28
Commercial energy efficiency. So this is an existing strategy within the sustainability plan, but focusing on expanding rebates and participation from a broader range of businesses and expanding the existing target of 1% energy savings to 2% energy savings across all commercial buildings by 2025. And this would also likely require additional staff and resources to meet that target next time. So similar to the previous recommendation, but this is the focus on expanding rebates and participation in the residential efficiency works program from about 100 homes that we serve currently per year to 400 homes per year by 2030. As well as the introduction of a home energy report, which would inform customers of their energy use and tips for energy and utility bill savings. Next slide. And then also similar a another strategy that’s existing within the sustainability plan but focusing on expansion of the existing Care Program, which is our low income energy efficiency program that serves single family homes, from the current about 40 homes that we serve now to single family to 400 single family homes by 2025. The program conducts free energy audits and provides energy efficiency measures, such as insulation, air sealing and high efficiency refrigerators. There’s the potential to expand that to include electrification and smart thermostats as well. We have about 12,000 households in Longmont that are considered low incomes, there’d be a lot of folks that would be eligible for this program, if we were able to expand it. And there’d be significant benefit to low income households in terms of utility bill savings as well as increased home health and comfort. However, it is pretty substantial. From a cost standpoint, it’s about $4,000 per home, or $2,000 per mobile home for those upgrades, which doing 400 homes per year would would put us at over a million dollars a year. So we would we would definitely need additional resources for that. And we probably be looking for grants and other things to support that program extension. And then lastly, this recommendation focuses on establishing a sustainable Climate Action Fund to assist low and middle income building owners both residential and commercial in the transition to meet the city’s renewable energy goals. So this is really looking at substantially reducing or eliminating any cost burden that would be put on on low and middle income folks, we would obviously need to determine funding sources for this type of fund, and then develop a funding plan by the end of 2020.
3:27:17
Next slide, please.
3:27:21
So moving on to renewable energy. Again, these are pretty busy slides, and I apologize for that. But just showing that without the additional equity shared with additional equity share emissions, renewable electricity accounts for about 55% of our missions, if we aren’t including that additional equity share in about 66%, including that equity share. Next slide. So the first recommendation is focusing on accelerating the timeline of the AMI completion, bumping that up by a year to be completed by the end of 2022. And this is really essential step in balancing our electricity supply and demand and helping to achieve the city’s hundred percent renewable energy goal. And it’s a it’s a requirement for many of the other recommendations that are detailed in this topic area.
3:28:15
Next slide.
3:28:18
So this recommendation focuses on developing a program to educate customers and incentivize the use of Home Energy Management Systems and create an opt in system that would allow LPC to manage usage at peak times, as well as PETA, an energy management system pilot in at least one neighborhood by 22. We’d likely need additional staff and funding for incentives and marketing. But this also has the potential to reduce one month’s demand charges through inability to manage.
3:28:49
Next slide.
3:28:52
And this is really kind of taking that a step further beyond the home energy management system to developing an energy savings program for individual customers. To save money on their electricity bill by helping match their demand to meet supply more dynamically, and where an individual could decide whether or not they’re willing to have their electricity use adjusted and by how much and then they would receive some sort of incentive based on next Excellent. So the focus of this recommendation really is twofold. So first of all, working with Platte River to provide real time data on the carbon intensity of their generation to OPC and then also in turn LPC establishing a signaling protocol to encourage residents to use electricity during times in which the carbon intensity is the lowest.
3:29:45
Next slide.
3:29:49
The development of a distributed energy resource plan includes community solar rooftop solar group by programs on electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging stations, In a beneficial electrification pilot, the program could raise or lower long runs demand for energy helping to shift demand from one time of day to another and reduce the demand charges that Longmont pays to Platte River. It’s focusing on creating a five year pilot program and 10 year development plan to help Longmont and PRP achieve the goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030. And by the end of 2025, have the city running three to five pilot programs and evaluate their ability to yield those demand swings. There’s a lot of opportunities for Workforce Development in particular recommendation. Next slide, please. So moving on to transportation, so transportation accounts for about 19% of our greenhouse gas emissions without that equity share component and about 15% if you include that. And I just want to note here that if any of you that have followed us as closely as we do and notice that This is actually down from about 30%. From the 2016 inventory that we did, I would love to say that that just means that our transportation emissions are down close to 10%. However, it’s that number change which, which is pretty substantial, and it’s actually just due to a change in the way that DEA the methodology that they use to calculate their admissions and our subsequent proportion of those admissions based on population. So that change in methodology alone had a pretty substantial impact on our inventory. And just goes to show that the this process is an ever changing process that we’re always looking to find to view more accurate ways of calculating this data. Next slide, please. So the first recommendation is looking at a checkpoint or flexible bus service, which is a type of service that’s a hybrid between a fixed route service like the 300 series of local RTD routes. In a subscription or call ahead service like vo reflects run. And it’s a way to accomplish more coverage and availability of transit and allow vehicles to be more flexible in their routing, providing better services to those who may need that additional flexibility. So this is a micro mobility model that increases the total service area in a more responsive and user friendly format than just providing fixed routes with an overlay of flex fighter Conrad services. And the target is looking at in the next year to develop a plan with our TV, or one of its contractors to establish a low cost test program for a checkpoint bus service line Amman. And the measure of success would be achieving a cost per writer that would be lower than the current flex ride service that’s available throughout Longmont. And the goal would be to transition the current foot start service to a checkpoint
3:32:54
coverage. But how the traditional fixed route bus service would still continue to serve. is the backbone for the public transit system.
3:33:03
Next slide please.
3:33:07
So this recommendation focuses on incorporating more electric vehicle charging spaces in high density areas such as downtown Longmont. This would help create greater visibility and encourage more people to adopt electric vehicles. And the goal is to install 20 level two chargers by 2030 in five downtown areas to conduct usability for patrons. And just as a side note, internally, we’ve identified a 2020 month tip to fund five level two charging stations in 2022 and five more 2023 and LPC has also requested some funding for 2021 for public charging stations and associated activities as well. Next slide. connected by acquaint so this is developing a highly interconnected complete and safe bikeway system to encourage the increased use of it. Transportation would help connect major, major nodes within the community like bus stops grocery stores and primary Community Services. It would recruit decreased reliance on single occupancy vehicles in increase biker safety. It does come with a pretty substantial cost. The initial estimates are between 10 and 20 million over the next 10 years. And we’d be looking at about 10 years to complete the majority of the system and about 20 years for full completion of an interconnected bikeway system next time. And the last recommendation in this area is looking at alternative work schedules. So developing a program that educates employers and employees about ways to reduce congestion through alternative work schedules, which would help reduce stress greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. It’d be voluntary for employers and provide a menu of options to reduce single occupancy vehicles during high commute periods. The goal would be to reduce period and play chips by 20% within 10 years. And the timeframe would be to to begin an education campaign within two years. With the target of that 20% reduction of local peak, our vehicle miles traveled within 10 years of beginning distribution. So this is particularly relevant given our current situation with COVID and would potentially require some additional staff resources to
3:35:31
make fun.
3:35:34
So that wraps it up for the topic areas that we wanted to cover this evening. Next slide, please. So just the next steps. Just again, we’ll be back next week to review the recommendations and the adaptation of resilience, education and outreach and land gets in the weeds management topic areas, as well as suggest transition plan committee equity recommendations, and we’ll get into the discussion about how council wants to move forward now Report. And then later in July, we’ll be taking the recommendations to advisory boards for review and comments. And then we’ll bring those back to Council for further discussion. And we will want some additional direction from you next week on what information feedback specifically you’ll be looking for from those boards. So with that, I’ll I’ll open it up for additional questions or discussion.
3:36:28
All right, everybody, it’s 1045. Do we have any questions or discussions based on what we’ve heard?
3:36:36
Councilmember Martin.
3:36:39
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I will make this quick, Lisa. This is a potential contradiction between two of the recommendations that I apologize for not noticing. A distributed energy resource list. A Level three charging station is a district To the energy resource, whereas a level two charging station is not so much. And I wonder if the schedule for putting in a level two charging stations is going to have us over supplied if we also put in a level three station as a D er. So I don’t even expect you to answer that tonight. I just want it to be on the radar. Although if you have an answer, I’m completely willing to hear it.
3:37:28
I don’t have an answer for you tonight. But thank you for putting that on the radar. And I’ll discuss that more with with
3:37:37
All right, well, thank you very much, Lisa. We appreciate it. This is this we did decide this is an emergency and you’re taking it seriously. And we thank you and the the citizens that were selected to serve. So thank you very much. Keep up the good work. All righty. Now for your time. All right, thank you. All right, let’s move on to the final call public invited to be heard. Let’s take two minutes of silence.
3:37:58
See who calls in
3:38:06
Florida to stay awake when you’re alone in a kitchen.
3:38:14
And I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you, Susie. Nice kidding. You’re staying awake. Good. I was talking
3:38:21
about
3:38:23
how about you?
3:38:24
I’m hanging in there
3:38:26
around out of coke. I’ve been forced to take diet seven up. It’s
3:38:29
not the same.
3:38:32
Iced coffee.
3:38:33
Yeah, that’d be nice.
3:38:38
For a shower,
3:38:39
I’ll just take my iPhone in there and just start wandering around the house.
3:38:46
Just turn off your video.
3:38:48
I thought about it.
3:38:51
Even for the shower for the meeting.
3:39:23
Alright, let’s go ahead and we won’t conclude public invited to be heard, but let’s go ahead and move on to mayor and council comments. And if somebody calls in by the time we’re done, we’ll go ahead and hear him. Councilmember Christiansen
3:39:37
um, I just want to say, go get your medicine down at the Chinese medicine place and go get your haircut at elite barber shop. It’s the oldest business in Longmont and they’ll cut your hair pretty short. Take care,
3:39:53
Bonnie Finley would be proud. Councilmember Christiansen
3:39:58
All right, anybody else? All right, looks like we’re gonna get out of here on time. Harold, do you have anything to say? I’m sorry. Sorry. Take that back. Kelsey. Remember Martin, she’s Wait, I assume she’s not waving goodbye. You’d like to say something?
3:40:11
No, I would like to say something. First of all, we do have someone calling in for final call public invited to be her.
3:40:21
And so I wanted to point that out.
3:40:23
But I just wanted to thank Lisa and in particular, our two speakers, Ali French and and Peter wood. They are have been terribly eloquent. They were tremendous contributors to the task force. And I’m just
3:40:43
completely inspired by them. So I just wanted to get that out there.
3:40:50
Thank you, Marcia. Anybody else?
3:40:53
Let’s go to that. Let’s go ahead and close first card. Let’s close the queue. But let’s go ahead and hear from this citizen?
3:41:03
Mayor it does look like they hung up. I’d no longer see him in the waiting line,
3:41:07
whoever it was we thank you. And let’s go ahead and the Herald Do you have anything?
3:41:16
comments, Mayor council? Eugene, how about you?
3:41:20
Still here, Mayor?
3:41:21
No comments.
3:41:24
Appreciate it. Do we have Do we have a motion to
3:41:26
adjourn?
3:41:29
I’ll move adjournment. Second.
3:41:32
All right. It’s been moved by Dr. waters and seconded by Councilmember Christiansen All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay.
3:41:43
All right, we are done
3:41:44
that that’s unanimous. All right. Looks like we’ll see each other next week. All right. And I’ll call you Dr. waters to schedule a ride and I’ve got a few other things talk about the rest of you. So I’ll talk to you this week. All right later guys,
3:41:56
but and it’s not 11 yet.
3:41:58
I know. I’m tired but happy.
3:42:01
Alright later guys
Transcribed by https://otter.ai