https://otter.ai/s/pN6lmS-FRDiVjPWPNJ6FWw
0:45
Mayor you are good to go.
0:48
Alright, I’d like to call to order the 2020 Longmont City Council study session order.
0:54
Let me start with roll call.
0:55
Mayor Bagley
0:58
council member Christiansen
1:02
Councilmember Hidalgo fairing here. Councilmember Martin. Here. Councilmember Peck? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez
1:12
here. Councilmember waters. Mayor, you have a quorum.
1:16
All right, Aaron, if you let us in pledge yet you have right. Marcia has no Joan has. Polly has Tim has? I guess Suzy Have you have what they were back to me. So all right, let’s do the pledge. I pledge allegiance to
1:35
America
1:35
and then to
1:44
All right. Okay. Just a quick reminder anyone wishing to provide public comment during public invited to be heard must watch the livestream of the meeting for instructions. When the call and information is displayed like this, please call the number displayed. Enter the meeting ID and then When asked your participation ID press pound colors reveal caught here confirmation they have ended the meeting and be told how many people already participating in the meeting. Colors are then placed on hold and muted until they are called on you’ll be called on by the last three digits of your phone number. Please remember to meet the livestream, when you are called upon to speak comments are limited to three minutes and I will unfortunately have to cut you off no matter how awesome your comments. Alright, we have a motion to direct the city manager to add any agenda items to future agendas or any other issues. Dr. Waters.
2:32
Yeah, it’s not the direction to staff. So I’m just clarifying. One a part of our conversation in emotion or in an action in our discussion, the study session on
2:46
short term rentals.
2:48
So much of that discussion that evening focused on non residential property owners and what they can and can’t do consistent or inconsistent with the ordinance Late in the meeting, Councilmember Peck offered a motion that I seconded and voted for. And I just want to clarify what my what my my thoughts were in intent. I was concerned the next morning that that motion would would change. The current ordinance that allows a Longmont resident property owner to own a another property that they could use as a short term rental, which the ordinance currently allows. And I, when I went back and listen to the meeting and the motion, I it sounded like that the intent was to take that out or eliminate that from the organs, which wasn’t my intent. And I did check with Don Chet the next day to say, to ask them what what he heard. And I think Don told me that my impression was that that wasn’t going to come back as a change in the ordinance. But just I want to clarify, and I don’t mean I don’t want to debate it. I just clarify with Councilmember pack the intent of that motion. And, and just be clear, what I don’t want to do is have staff working on something that comes back and I’m going to vote in a way then that might be different than I voted voted the other night because of some confusion, my confusion about what the intent of that motion was.
4:21
Um, so Councilmember waters, you’re correct that it would be. I think, if I recall correctly, then the motion was to make the second residents a maximum, no, a minimum, a maximum of 30 days as a short term rental. What’s the maximum or minimum I can’t remember exactly what the
4:46
maximum maximum?
4:47
Yeah, that’s the maximum of 30 days. That that goes.
4:52
So just to I can clarify. a property owner, somebody who lives a resident Yeah, living in their home. If they have a second home could be an ad or another home in town. The ordinance currently allows for them to use that as a short term rental. And the intent would be to continue to allow them does that.
5:12
Yes, but not have it be a hotel where they’re running people in every weekend and
5:16
Well, that would be a short term rental, that would be a match that would be them. A short term rental would be the maximum 30 days. Right. Um,
5:28
well, for me,
5:31
I just want to clarify for the staff as people are working on that ordinance. That’s I don’t want to personally I would rather not see that come out. I think I voted for a motion that might cause that to come out of your ordinance and I just want to clarify what my confusion was in my what my intent is.
5:50
So hold on, timeout. Don, can you pull up the minutes from last meeting and read back what we voted for
6:01
It was the June was July 14.
6:03
Yeah, just one moment.
6:05
Thank you
6:08
for doing that there’s a second issue
6:12
that I just want to be clear on. I heard Councilmember Martin raise a concern about a very unique circumstance where you’ve got residents in a property owned by a Boulder County along mine, but a Boulder County resident in which they place their parents that are living there full time and want to use rooms in that home as a short term rental, which doesn’t doesn’t comply with the ordinance. But I want to say that’s a circumstance that seems to me that we ought to figure out how to make an exception for that in such a unique circumstance. You know, I’ll be quiet I don’t want to rehash the whole thing. I just I don’t think I was clear in my in my thinking or in my in my vote that evening, and I just want to I just want to be straight with the record in with other council members.
7:03
But the other confusion I don’t remember any of that in the motion, which is why I’m asking for clarification what we voted on.
7:13
Oh, Mayor, if I might, Councilmember waters, which motion were you trying to clarify?
7:19
It was an emotion late in the meeting.
7:22
A council member pack moved. And I seconded and I would I was focused on was non residential property owners, which had been most of the discussion that night as I went back and listen if what triggered it was the article in the paper the next day that we, as it reported, I thought, cash that’s not that’s not reflect what my intent was. So that’s what I called done. And then I went back and listen to it. And now I’m interested why the report the paper reported the way it did. So I just want to I just want to clarify, I understand there. It’s too late to do a reconsideration and those kinds of things.
8:01
I just don’t want to I don’t want to confuse
8:05
whatever that is. emotion. Yeah,
8:07
yeah.
8:08
Yeah, sorry. Here’s the motion. Councilmember Peck move seconded by Councilmember waters to take away the ability to permit a second term second short term rental that is not owner occupied and clarified that a property owner could have a second investment as a long term rental.
8:25
Yeah, yes.
8:26
So essentially what we did so what when we’re gonna have to cancel to come back on first and second reading, is we are prohibiting anyone from hat from from having a short term rental or an Airbnb, if that is there a second home or a second residence in Longmont. And we’re only going to allow them to own a second residence and rent it out so long is they’re renting it out for over 30 days. That’s how I understood that which which means that anybody who has a second home so if the I can live in Longmont. If I have a home, I am no second home. I’m no longer allowed to rent that out except for long term over 30 days.
9:09
What was our vote on that done?
9:12
five to two, I believe
9:14
it was five to two with Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Martin dissenting. All right.
9:21
All right. Then, Harold, you know, and that’s coming back.
9:28
Joanie on here.
9:32
Mayor Bagley, members of council. So we are currently reviewing drafts of ordinances from some other communities that have recently changed their regulations to assist us in bringing back something that addresses some of the enforcement issues we talked about. And so I do not have a date certain at this point. However, we’d like to try to get that on the agenda in September possible.
9:55
The Great
9:56
Gatsby Martin
10:00
Thank you. Mayor Begley, I just wanted to say for were the information of the staff was that the reason that I voted against this was two reasons. One is it makes someone local with a second property the same as an someone who’s not local with a second property because anybody can have an investment property that they rent out locker. And second, um, I think that all of the problems that our constituents are concerned about are matters of enforcement and not a matter of code. So in other words, if, if both code enforcement and the police understood who was who was a short term tenant,
10:47
then
10:48
they would be able to gather enough data that persons read up landlords who are not seeing that their tenants are well behaved. could lose their license right now we don’t have enough enforceability to allow that to happen. So I think we totally focused on the wrong thing. And that was why I voted against it.
11:13
So we’re back. So again, as we start, I’m going to pick you then Councillor Christiansen, we’re not just counsel. Dr. Waters only asked for clarification. There is currently no motion, no decision to be made. just reminding everybody that this is just talk at this point. We have a we have things to get through. But Councilmember Peck,
11:31
actually, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. This discussion happened on the first reading. Can we get back to our agenda, please,
11:38
or would agree with you? Councillor Christiansen? Do you agree?
11:42
Yeah, let’s wait until we
11:45
wait until it comes up to rehash it again. I I disagree that we focused on the wrong thing. Anyway, let’s get back to whatever I do have something I would like to say. Go ahead. Tonight. We’re talking about RVs and I want us to just stay on that. However, there are several parts of that code that I would like to bring back for discussion. One of which is that I’ve lived in a lot of places, and I’ve never lived in a place where you couldn’t park for more than 48 hours on the street without risking getting towed without even a warning. And I think that needs to be fixed. So I would like to bring back that part of the code. Also, I’ve never lived in a place where you could have your car towed out of your driveway for having an expired without warning without having for having a an expired sticker, which is a very easy thing to have happen. I just think we need to look at other areas of that code and I would like to have a discussion. You know, on The next six months. Okay.
13:01
All right. Well, before I
13:02
would move that we bring it back for I would direct staff to bring it back in the next six months so we can discuss other aspects of that vehicle ordinance.
13:13
I’ll second that.
13:14
All right, it’s been moved and seconded. We can vote on that. It’s been there is a motion has been seconded, but my understanding is parallel if you could just maybe shoot us an email or have Eugene shoot us in the eugenol if you’re on here, but if you could just shoot us an email what the current state of the lie is because I do believe that junk vehicles already I mean, unregistered vehicles or junk vehicles aren’t removed from private property but only to be removed from city streets and city property. If it’s happening, then I need to get an attorney and point out Harold do we remove citizens private property in the form of vehicles if
13:52
it’s unregistered
13:56
on dance dzone to get in, but I think it depends on the name Have the code case that we’re dealing with. I’m probably
14:03
gonna shoot us again.
14:06
We got to get you the details on that. But most of the cars they they tag are actually on public roadways.
14:14
Then the other thing is also the other question is the 48 hours of what the process is for giving warning and then removing Arby’s and other vehicles from the street if they’ve been there for longer than 48 hours.
14:29
Yeah, Johnny was nodding so it is a tag when they’re on the public driveway.
14:33
Yeah. So if you can just we can vote on it though. Councillor Christiansen?
14:41
I had my son’s car towed or in front of our house without any notice because he’s his ticket is a plate was expired by a month or a month, six weeks. And I cost a whole lot of money there was no notice given, simply disappeared and when I called report that this was a number of years ago when I called them to report the stolen vehicle. They said, Oh, no, we towed it. But it was a Friday, so I had to pay for the entire weekend. I don’t think we this is the kind of city we need to be. So if that’s still going on, we need to change that. And I know people got their cars towed from their property for having an expired plate. So
15:25
yeah, let’s get you the details. Cuz now I think they should Jeff’s on I think, Jeff, they should post a sticker, right?
15:35
Yes, especially on private property, but on public property or a public street, we would tag it and give the owner a chance to remedy it. And then we would put hardly unless it’s a junk to completely junk vehicle we we generally give people a opportunity to move the vehicle especially if it was parked in front of somebody’s home and It registered to that home.
16:03
Right, just
16:06
go ahead finish. You just you just skipped out on me. Deputy Commander Souter Go ahead, please finish.
16:13
Oh, we would take and give people notice if it was parked in front of somebody’s home, we would probably even knock at the door and let them know they need to update their tags or move the car onto the property. We generally don’t remove cars from private property, unless it’s an under some other circumstance. But it’s not for expired plates.
16:40
As per pack.
16:42
Um, basically, I think that the motion was that we want to see this in the code, not to discuss it and I think, Mary, you are correct in asking you Jean to bring back the code. And let’s see if that’s actually what it states Is that correct? Holly?
17:04
Yeah, because in the in the code there is no mention made of a notice and in fact, I got no notice my son got no notice the other people that I know have had their cars towed without, from their private property that were not junk cars. They were perfectly good. But as I said, this was a while ago, but I’m talking about what the ordinance actually says it doesn’t say that there will be a notice given. It doesn’t say any of that. It says 48 hours and your car can be towed. If you don’t have current plates, your car can be towed. It needs to be more explicit in the code.
17:42
Look, I will get back to you.
17:44
Thank you. It is one of a vote on that. Or do you want to just wait till we get the information first.
17:53
Or Councilwoman Christensen?
17:55
I would like to have it come back. Okay.
18:00
Okay, I’m not seeing anybody I’m gonna duck waters. Just
18:08
I’m just looking at my notes. I thought what I thought tonight was it was the follow up to a motion that I made on August 6 of 2019. To Richard bring back the RV ordinance. And in that discussion, Broughton paperbag will you indicated that you would work with the city manager to get this on an agenda? I thought this I thought what tonight was that?
18:35
It is
18:37
so look at all aspects of the ordinance correctly dig into
18:42
so I guess
18:43
I’m just I think tonight tonight it comes from a Christian said that
18:47
the dig into these things.
18:52
That’s right, Christiansen.
18:55
The reason I brought this up is I don’t want to discuss this tonight. It’s really we have a lot To discuss with the RV ordinance and i i don’t think this this has nothing to do with the RV ordinance, although it is part of the same ordinance, but it’s complicated. And what we need to talk about is Arby’s tonight, as we all know, that’s enough of a mess.
19:20
All right, I guess the see nobody else I guess I’m gonna vote against it only because my understanding is that the law already does what I think that you’re trying to do. You cannot have a 40 unless they can get they can’t prove the 40 hours, at which point they don’t have a legal case. So it’s already happening just naturally. And if you’ve got the definition of junk vehicle isn’t your vehicle doesn’t work. It means it’s not registered, and so on. And so I think by public policy, we should continue to require people to register their vehicles. So anyway, let’s go ahead and vote. I still stand I was like, Harold, even if this fails, I would like you to I think that we all want to see it in email, just what the current status is. I’m wrong. Let’s bring it back. All right, all in favor of the motion say aye.
20:12
Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay nay. Hey,
20:17
all right. Raise your hand if I heard no, a lot of them. Raise your hand if you’re voting for the ordinance or the motion. Okay, the motion passes four to three. Please bring it back for the next six months. Harold, if you can shoot us an email to save us time. That’d be awesome.
20:34
I work with Eugene on that. Thank you.
20:36
All right, let’s go ahead
20:38
and uh, see nothing else.
20:41
Let’s go ahead and move on to special reports and presentation. Actually, let’s don’t let’s go to public invited to be heard. Let’s take a three minute break because we allow people to get in the queue and then we’ll cut it off. All right,
20:51
back in three
24:39
All right, let’s go ahead and get back to public invited to be heard how many of you have in the queue done?
24:50
Sorry, Mayor just the moment. We have six people at the moment perfect
25:02
Are you ready to hear those speakers? there? We are. Okay. And you got the timer.
25:08
Ready. I do very good.
25:11
colors. We’re going to unmute you by after we call your the last three numbers of your phone. So color 348 I’m going to unmute you. Can you hear us now? Again, would you please state your name for the record and address and you are ready to begin.
25:31
So my name is Patrick McClintock my mailing address is 1100 East 17th Avenue C 105. The reason the mailing address is because I live in an RV. I’m calling to represent as someone who doesn’t fit the stereotypical Walter White Breaking Bad residents of an RV calling especially because of the article from the Longmont leader. I’d like to specify Ma Long taxpaying resident of Longmont I’ve been living here since I’ve been four since I was four. And I’m not a vagrant. I decided to live in an RV a little over a year ago, to allow me to stride towards career goals as well as to get out of being devoured by debt. Prior to COVID, I actually had a flipping business that was gaining momentum. And then when COVID occurred that kind of put a damper on that but now I’m on the path for another career. Because obviously, I do not want to live in an RV forever. I’m not a trashy person. My RV is old, but it’s in good shape and the tags are legal and up to date. And on top of that, I have a good relationship with my neighbors. I have permission from the resident I’m in front of to park in front of their house. I even help them with house projects, and I’ve actually become really good friends with them. I dog sit on regular basis for another one of the neighbors on nearby. I just want to point out I don’t leave trash around, I go to properly dump waste at Boulder County Fairgrounds. And when Boulder County Fairgrounds was closed during the first part of COVID, I even went to St brain State Park to dump. So if the city decides to ban RVs, I literally don’t know what I’m going to do. And that’s not only about where I’m going to live, but also what to do with my personal belongings. Even though I do have a career started on May will be a little while till I get a consistent income. So at this point, I’ll have no choice but to pitch a tent at Roosevelt Park, which I really don’t want to do. With that said, I asked the city council to consider and even show mercy to those of us who aren’t causing the problems with the RVs and when The city does decide on what to do. I ask that you please don’t punish me for the actions of a few. And thank you for your consideration.
28:10
All right, thank you very much. next
28:15
caller with the phone number ending in 410 I’m gonna unmute you please state your name and address for the record.
28:24
Can you hear us? Hello?
28:26
I can hear you. Can you hear me?
28:27
Yes, we can go ahead.
28:29
My name is Ed towers and I live at 1534 South Kauffman Street.
28:36
I’m calling this evening to voice my concern and frustration over the decision to make some coffee and shoot the collective street from being a local residential street without allowing the residents of our streets Kaufmann Any public comment? My concern with this project is that the city has misrepresented their intentions from the start. The city wants to make stuff happen between pipe in Quebec attune Street. But the street goes through a residential development with all of our driveways facing street
29:14
over the last week, we’ve been in this house for 20 years. And over the last couple decades since the development of prospects rainbow Ridge Creekside, we’ve seen increased your traffic from pike to Quebec on South Kaufman. And that’s because it allows drivers to bypass traffic lights on Main Street, and also offers quick access to Parkway.
29:40
There’s several problems with having a few traffic. It not only increases the volume of traffic coming through, but the typical speeds are well above the posts of 25 miles an hour. This endangers pedestrians, bicyclists, children playing and people that have been pulling into or out of their property. So I would, I would like the city council to state why it is acceptable to have a non local sophomore pack, sophomore Park traffic, cutting through our residential development, essentially using our street as an arterial Street. And that’s my comments. Thank you.
30:23
Thank you, sir.
30:24
All right, next.
30:29
All right caller with phone number ending in 618. I’m going to unmute you please state your name and address for the record.
30:41
Let’s go ahead and read it again. Done.
30:43
Well, that color seems to have hung up and disappeared. I will try another one. Caller phone number ending in 932. I’m going to unmute you. Please state your name and address for the record. Go ahead. Can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can.
31:00
Okay, this is Tara towers at 1534 South cost ministry. I was wondering if the city council is aware of all the exceptions and judgments the Department of Public Works had to make in order to place the traffic signal at the intersection of South Coffman Street and pike road. The traffic signal goes against city standard ordinances and the Envision Longmont plan as well as a new TCD and f h w a guideline making the decision to stay at this location based on engineering judgment and Department of Public Works modification or exceptions. When we received the letter stay in the scope of like road improvement project I had no disagreement with the fact that we needed crosswalks or turn lanes at that intersection. Therefore, I did not take the time off from work to attend either the five o’clock Wednesday meetings in February of 2019. While talking with the traffic engineers in June it was brought to my attention that a traffic signal have been installed and during my research to find out why it was being installed at this location. The answer I received from the city traffic department is because of public comment and the warrant is met. There has been at least 25 years of public comment regarding pike road requesting that safety and environmental concerns of the existing roads. bids are taken into account while developing this area of Longmont. According to the Federal Highway Administration, which has incorporated any tpds or standards, just because a warrant isn’t that does not necessitate a light being installed, engineering judgment must be exercised to take into consideration the adjacent land uses. This light is being placed on a local residential street which is defined by the city’s traffic mitigation program manual as intended to provide access to property. These streets are not intended for through traffic movements and quote, the Envision logmar plan defines the functional priority of a local residential street as excess only and limited mobility. There is not another local residential street in the city that has a traffic signal installed on it. The city has repeatedly told the residents on our streets that the functional classification will not be changed with the installation of this traffic signal. However, last week, we noticed that our street is on the collector street prioritization list that the traffic mitigation website has posted. A stretch of South cross the street between pike road in Quebec has already been started. The practice of working with the city’s chest If mitigation engineers to address the fact that the through traffic has gotten out of control, this light will be legitimized in our street as a thoroughfare giving all this town traffic that gets stuck at that like the idea to cut through our neighborhoods to reach their destination engineering endangering our children as they are going to school and the many residents and bicyclists that utilize our street. After city council meetings last May councilmen are met with residence long pipe road further discuss the improvement project. I never received an invitation to any meetings to discuss this other than the one for the public meeting held in February 2019. The voices of the many residents on the north side of pipe road have not been heard on this decision. And those that have voiced their concerns have been brushed aside. Our 81 year old neighbor that lives on the northwest corner this intersection has attended nearly all city council meetings regarding pike road Jenna her 47 years of residents in the neighborhood. Her yard has been torn up the road is encroaching on the very small easement she has between the road and her yard and she is just beaten down because the city has never taken her concerns into consideration. This whole process has more than disrupted the convenience of our lives. This is in danger. During the neighborhood safety and reducing our property values, and it’s not okay.
34:05
Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you. All right. Next
34:11
caller with phone number ending in 119. I will unmute you now please state your name and address for the record. Can you hear us?
34:19
Yes, I can. Okay, go ahead. This is Karen. This is Karen dike. I’m at 708, Hayden cork, mr. mayor and council members. I want to begin by thanking this council for contracting with Dr. Helmut to conduct air monitoring at Union reservoir and at Longmont airport. Adding this data to the research conducted on conducted on air pollution from fracking is very important. I follow this data closely. However, Dr. Detlef helminths presentation on the benzene spike and the direction from which the spending must have originated is somewhat stunning. As an RN, I’m extremely concerned about the health effects from this benzene pollution that occurred. Based on this presentation I’m asking that this council take several steps. The first is to renew Dr. Helmets contract this month. When we have this type of alarming health data, we must continue to have this information. I realized that Cobra would like to shut down Dr. helmink monitoring, but please don’t fall into the negative information they spread. Second, benzene levels seeing we’re at dangerous levels, please set up a real time warning system so that people in the path of this pollution know to close windows and keep children inside. And lastly, it is time to connect with neighboring cities and counties to pressure co GCC aq cc weld county and our governor to stop this pollution. Sb 181. needs to be inactive now. taken years to write regular Before protecting residents is not okay. All permitting must be stopped until this law is fully implemented. Please see if you can add your voice to the CO GCC website. Drilling will soon begin on the large night Well, this well is on the north side of union reservoir to those who live on the east side of Longmont. I urge you to begin following the data found at bold air. That’s Bo u LD air. Make sure the air is clean enough for your children to breathe before they go out to play, especially if they have asthma. Thank you very much.
36:43
Thank you mistake.
36:44
All right, last but not least, we have one more.
36:47
One more. Caller with phone number ending an 811 I will unmute you please state your name and address for the record.
36:56
Hi, my name is Deb McClintock. I live at 1100 Eastern 17th Avenue. Good evening, Mayor Begley and council members are looking for the meeting tonight I found the vision for Longmont in the next 20 years written on May 18 2018. People in 20 years my mind will be the world’s greatest village where children are the most fortunate to be born and raised. elders are supported through their entire life’s journey for people will have access to food and shelter, and everyone has the opportunity to thrive and feel they belong to monitor status. One of his goals for long money is to become the most compassionate community in Colorado. These are all admirable visions and goals. The city wants to ban all recreation vehicles from public streets. Where can these people go? Are the RV dwellers going to feel an opportunity to thrive and feel like they belong? My first thought was we’re in the middle of a pandemic, a health crisis. We have been in lockdown closing our businesses, stores, restaurants, etc. People have lost their jobs. mental issues are at their all time high suicides, abuse, violence, and on and on all time. They’re all time recruits. Food Banks are having trouble keeping up. So I ask is this a good time to ban crvs? Is this showing compassion? People are living in what they can’t afford? Do we want to cause more homeless people? journal generalization or maybe in the report? Number one, people don’t have a proper way to dispose of human waste. And true. The County Fairgrounds has its own station. It was closed in March and now open since June. people leaving trust maybe a few but not most. You can see the same thing in residential housing to trash, weed, high grass, etc. Number three, can you safely assume that all RV dwellers don’t want to improve their life? I sign along later on this article was negative generalized statements without solutions. long run is better than this is the city council to consider the season we are in a condemned pandemic, or health crisis with economic consequences. Maybe a tapering of a decision for more time to work on a solution that would be available put to help these people. Don’t let a few bad apples ruin it for the rest. Let’s find solutions to allow for these therapies to say rv sustanon streets, most of which are parked in industrial or out of the way places. Some are parked where people allowed them to stay. I ask that we show compassion. continue to work on providing affordable housing as Polly Christensen has promoted, see if I can find a solution for all the homeless and RV lawyers instead of a complete ban. Thank you so much.
39:53
All right, good timing. Thank you very much for your comments. All right. That concludes today’s public invite To be heard, let’s go on to special reports and presentations Herald an update on COVID-19. They have one for us.
40:08
If I’m going to share my screen and go pretty quick, I also have David Bell here to really do the bulk of the presentation in terms of a continued update in what we’re seeing in some of our parks related to the COVID-19. Or what we’re seeing now.
40:27
Can you all see my screen?
40:33
You see charts?
40:35
Yeah. So this is the same chart that I’ve been showing you before in terms of the accounts that we’ve seen in, in Colorado and you can again, see the shape of the curve a bit of a peak here. We’re not sure exactly what that is. But generally, over the last week or so, it’s been trending in the right direction but for that day,
41:03
Don’t know why it does this and try it out.
41:09
Again, you’re seeing the the chart, this one on the number of deaths. It has been a lot lower than we’ve seen early on in this you can see some spikes but you’re also seeing some days where there’s there hasn’t been a death reported. The big number here is really looking at this chart with the positivity data. So you can see that it was at 3.53% on August 2 August 3 4.34%. So the state number is still down below 5% which is really, you know, they wanted to see that continuing trend moving down where the Boulder County data, I can tell you that we’re seeing again, you can see the same trend. We We’ve had some spikes within the caseload in what we’re seeing as as a community. Again, looking at this overall percent positive test for PCR 5%, current five day average 3.2%. I’ve actually had some questions that say, What are you focusing on the current five day average percent and positivity rate is because that’s what really tells us what’s happening now, with the cases versus the the 5% is really bringing in the positivity rate that you see on this chart. And so what we’re really looking at is what’s happening today based on that positivity rate, and what those cases are trending to do. So, at least in Boulder County, you can see that we’ve really been below that 4% range for some time and so that that’s really good for us and seeing what’s going on in our community. Again, when you see the growth in case It is, you know, I keep harping on this. But what we’re really seeing is in this 20 to 29 year group in terms of where the majority of the cases that we’re seeing are coming in. And that’s important because when you see the five day average of new cases, you can see where we hit this peak, we were trending down, and now we’re just ping pong in in terms of those cases, we look like we’re doing pretty good. And then we started moving up again. When you look at what’s happening in the community, we haven’t had some growth. I think the last time I talked to Council, we were at around 630 cases. 638 cases in Longmont, we moved up to 666 747 in Boulder. And then so we have had some growth in cases in the last week in our community. Again, just sort of seeing what we’re tracking in terms of race, ethnicity, In those issues, this number here was actually down to 36.2. So we’re seeing some, you know, fluctuations upward recently in our Latin x community, and so we’re trying to understand what that looks like. But that’s really what’s happening with the cases in our community. Obviously, we see a lot of the news in terms of what’s happening. The good news for us is we’re not seeing the same impact within our long term care facilities. And people go, obviously, it’s good news for any number of reasons, but it’s really also the strain that it places on the medical system. We’re not seeing that as much as we saw early on in the event, but it is, you can see that it is in different areas of the community. In terms of our hospital status, everything seems to still be in the same range that we We’re in, when you look at med search beds, it has moved a little bit into the red. But again, you have to keep in mind that that is based on elective procedure still being done. And when you see an ICU beds, it’s really kind of remained in this area and when we get the updates, and we’re not seeing as many cases of COVID in hospitals being reported,
45:27
as we were early on, so that’s also a good bit of information, but we’re still seeing case growth in our our community. And again, I think it’s just really important to focus on social distancing, wearing the mask, and then just good hygiene practices in general. There’s been some recent studies have come out that really said, if we can just do those things, it’ll help us really get ahold of the numbers. We’re still watching everything pretty close. Just so you know. We got an email From interphone notification from the school district today. I don’t know if you’ve all heard this. I think it’s going to be online classes until I’m going to look at Councilmember Hidalgo fairing to make sure but it’s going to be online classes until the end of September, and they’re going to keep monitoring as they’re moving forward. What that really says for us is, you know, we’re really having to look at our plans and how we manage our operations, because we haven’t we know we haven’t a number of staff members who have kids, and how is that going to impact it and ensuring that they can be online and learning? Many of the conversations that that came up that I heard earlier about childcare that is a major or that is a focus for us as we’re looking at what the world is going to be. For us moving forward in childcare is is a big component of that. We conducted a survey where we sent that out to early child care providers to see who’s still continuing to provide childcare, who’s not providing what are the limitations? What are your struggles financially, because we’re trying to get a sense of what that world really looks like. Because as we look at our cares funding, that’s an opportunity to help stabilize that world a little bit. And it’s all encompassing when we talk about the childcare piece to this, because it’s not only about childcare for teachers, but it’s also those parents that have to work. And how do we assure that there’s enough spots, and we’re definitely seeing issues. Anecdotally, and hopefully, the survey will clarify some of this, the friends and family network has been something that we’ve been concerned about because most of that’s in people’s homes, and they don’t want to do that because of obvious reasons. So there’s a lot of issues. We’re trying to wrap our hands around at the moment. And as we look at the carousel, That we received, hopefully within a week or so we’ll be able to have a sense of what that’s going to look like and how we’re going to at least make recommendations to Council in terms of applying that to our community and our operations. So that’s a that’s a piece that’s going to be coming coming to you all, hopefully in the very near future. I mentioned cares funding. What we’re also looking at is in terms of some of the expenses that we’ve absorbed as an organization that were not planned. pp purchases, equipment purchases to sanitize vehicles, I mean, we had a lot of things that we had to bring in. So we have we are really fortunate in our organization have two outstanding individuals that do this work Peter Gibbons and I always forget Charlie’s name, but I call him FEMA Charlie. To work is through all of the FEMA processes. And, and and all of these funding mechanisms that are coming to play in addition to Kathy and her team and the CDBG CV funding to really look at how do we apply it? How are we covering gaps? How are we working through some of the issues that were that we’re seeing as a community. And I will say though, the thing that I said on a number of occasions is childcare is it has the potential to have an economic development impact on our community. And so those are the things that, you know, we’re going to be looking at, hopefully have something to you in the near future on that piece, and what that’s going to look like to our organization at the same time, we’re preparing the budget based on this. And again, I will remind you, we’re looking at this on a month to month basis because of how fast things changes and the impact of certain decisions. So we’re continuing to dig into that so we can have that ready by the time that our charter requires it. Well, we will have it to you on September 1, but it’s um you know, just taking it off. To time from Jim and his staff, and trying to reconcile that versus what the world of COVID is going to look like and how it’s going to impact our operations next year. And that’s the big piece. It’s, you know, there we’re having to make really educated guesses in terms of what do we think next year is going to look like as we’re putting this budget together?
50:24
That’s my update. If you all have any questions, I can answer those. CUSTOMER PICK.
50:34
Thank you very badly. Harold. Just as a point of clarification, you may have already said this, and I forgotten when you do the five day What did you call it just five day look at the cases and you come up with a percentage. For example, it was about 3% is that based on on our population,
50:53
it’s based on the number of tests and so we don’t do that the health department does it. So they take the number of Test they’re performed. And then how many of those tests are positive, and that gets you to that percentage. And what that does is it really starts giving you a sense of, of how fast it’s moving in, within communities, within counties and within states. And so what you’re hearing and some of the other cases, and this is why I say we have to really watch the y axis. If you watch certain national news, you’ll see Colorado where it says significant increase, well, that’s a percentage point. And but we have much lower cases. So we may not see a case growth at some of the other states are having that. So this is a percentage of that. And that’s what we watch, which then goes into how they calculate the R naught, which is how infectious It is, in addition to how well people are wearing a mask and following all of the orders to develop their other models.
51:56
Yeah, I’m sorry, I broke in there. I’m just out curiosity. I how many people were actually tested within that timeframe in Longmont so that we can see how many negative cases negative tests came out of that? I’d be curious to see. See what that looked like. I mean, 3% of how many cases were tested, which would tell us how many were actually negative
52:27
entropy, we can try to get that information. Let me share the screen with you right now.
52:32
Okay, cuz I don’t know what’s 3% of why.
52:36
So, in this case,
52:40
so in this case, they had about, let’s say 450 tests performed. So then he had about 460. Then he had 500. And you can see you can see that then they dropped and then they went up to 520 on this date. So generally It’s in that range of out of 500 test.
53:05
So that’s how the 500 tests
53:09
that’s the 3%. And I’m doing percentage that was positive.
53:15
So they so right here on this chart, they’ve they’ve conducted 30,967 tests,
53:23
in what time?
53:25
This is over the course of the entire okay? event. Overall, it’s 5%. But the current five day average is 3.2%. Okay, that’s when you look at the last five days to figure out how many tests they’ve done. And if you remember what Jeff Zack said when he presented and we’re going to try to get him back again. What they really wanted to do is that study said having the ability to do 500 tests when right when you get there, and they’ve obviously exceeded that on certain days.
54:00
Okay, thank you for re restating there’s
54:03
no problem.
54:06
All right, counsel, reliable firing.
54:10
Um, so you and I have had conversations and I also spoke with Jeff Zack about this, but that period where we have that 17% positivity rate. So in our conversations, so we think about early in the pandemic, you know, really you were kind of on death’s door death’s doorstep before you could even access a test. Correct. returning a lot of people away. Um, so that rate then impact impacted the overall so I know I stations with several educators because I think was it two weeks ago that it was even up to 5.7%?
54:55
Maybe for the state, the state Okay, I don’t I don’t think it’s Boulder County. We’ve been there but the state.
55:03
Let me pull that up.
55:05
So,
55:06
yeah, on July 22 2020, the state positivity rate was at 5.84% 24%.
55:12
Okay, so that’s what I was thinking, but it was looking at the whole
55:19
duration of the pandemic. So that’s why the 5% overall rate is a little higher than that. 3.2% 2% correct.
55:29
And,
55:31
okay, yeah, Thanks for clarifying that. The other question I had was around licensing for daycare. Is there any work about maybe expediting that process for people who want to? I know, I’ve heard community members and parents talking about wanting to create these pods where they would still have so they’d have multiple children in their home, but still utilizing the district’s correct, you know, curriculum, so we would still have bt
56:01
But the fact that they would be having multiple families in their homes I, that kind of for me that raised a red flag as far as licensures.
56:10
Yeah, I you know, I don’t I don’t know the answer to that. But I know we can get with Jeff and Karen and Christina to try to get the answer to that. Because one of the things we’ve asked Jeff reasoner to do, if you remember, early on, we were, we were spinning up some childcare opportunities within our organization, because of what we were seeing and the need for childcare for healthcare professionals and what we needed. And so I’ve asked them to look at the same thing. As we get into the fall, in case there are gaps or shortages. But you know, we’ve done some things now where they’re, we’re helping facilitate PPP, PPP through our system because of the bulk purchasing that we have at play in play to hopefully reduce some of those expenses. So we’re doing a number of things and hopefully When we can bring that care spending piece, you’ll see it all be where we’re tying it together. Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
57:10
All right. See nobody else held.
57:13
I’ve got a David Bell for a quick presentation.
57:17
Good evening, Mayor councilmembers. David Bell, Director of parks natural resources. This is a follow up conversation and I got lost in the judgment. So I’ll try to keep it brief. But we’ll definitely make myself available for questions here, even afterwards, always can reach out to me. But on the 14th, we hit some highlights of what we were seeing in the parks and I had a chance to hear from House members of the public about some other items they wanted to discuss. I want to make sure that what I heard from counsel might hear from the public is aligning with what you’re hearing out there as well. And this is also a chance for you to hear what we’re doing in response to some of the things we’re seeing in the parks because that increase use and again, I just want to remind everyone this is an increased use not only in Longmont, Boulder County but Nationwide as people are really trying to take the opportunity to get out of the house that people may have been uncomfortable into restaurants or theaters or movies or really taking advantage of being outside and enjoying these outdoor opportunities. So we definitely are seeing an increasing use, which again, I think has some very positive aspects, but also has some impacts on our community and the resources. So I, I’m not sure who’s going to run this PowerPoint or how I do that, Harold. I was I sent it to Susan.
58:42
Sorry, David, just one second.
58:43
You’re fine. Thank you.
59:07
Alright, I’m advanced. Let me go back.
59:54
My apologies, David start, start talking.
59:58
I have my other
I was going to share my screen.
Hey, Don, let me give it a try.
Okay.
Ready when you are, alright.
Again, this is a follow up and really what we as long as other natural resource agencies are seeing around the Front Range in the country as we’re trying to manage our parks natural areas during this pandemics. Next slide. So I think you’ve all seen kind of what that impact is. It’s hot kids were in school. How do we get out and do things so, from Dickens park to left hand Creek to Macintosh and The Bridgestone at dickins as well, button rock is including that as areas that were really impacted pretty significantly. And we had to respond pretty quickly on how we wanted to engage in making sure people are acting in a safe way following our rules and regulations as well as trying to keep them safe following the governor’s guidelines. Next slide.
So what we were really seeing out there that were private our biggest concerns and again, this is a place of hope we have counsel see things out here that they are not are seeing or not seeing things out here that they want us to make sure that we hear about these let me know but swimming especially out of makin at Macintosh, we’re seeing single chamber inflatable inner tubes that don’t really have safety features on them. We’re seeing increased number of watercraft and Macintosh, launching from undetonated launch areas which causes impacts dogs off leash, littering, alcohol and glass as you start bringing these large groups of people together. Next slide. And with those violations since those rules and regs, we definitely know that those rules are there for a purpose. And a lot of that is safety. And Macintosh, we really have no lifeguards on duty, we don’t have water rescue, we don’t have a way to water or monitor the quality of the water. So we don’t know what ecola is, for instance, where we do that at Union reservoir, we have impacts to habitat. We have shoreline degradation, trashes getting very full, and neighborhoods of being impacted. We’re seeing parking that is, you know, become something that people don’t use their neighborhoods. And we also have the ongoing concern about people not wearing masks in our parks and large groups gathering.
And next slide.
And just the way it is on my screen now, I apologize. I can’t see any of the council members so I’m hoping if you have questions or if you see things that aren’t aligned with what you’re hearing, just please let me know and Hopefully, I’ll hear your voice
at the end, David.
Okay, very good.
So in a typical time, what we’ll be doing is saying we have tools in our toolbox that help us get through this. And we’ve kind of put this together kind of spokes on a wheel, how these things work together to help us keep our park system rolling along smoothly. So, we have signs we have rules and regs, we have education’s, we have presence, we have enforcement. But all those things take resources were based on our previous usage in our parks. So now what do we do to make sure that tool component of the spokes are working well, so next slide. We have really tapped into our park rangers. We have three of them out at Union reservoir full time. And as you can imagine, Union has become very busy. They have done a great job out there, of limiting the number of visitors open swim beach now 275 people open the dog beach, all those activities require Rangers to be there to make sure they’re doing that. Plus getting out and then trying to be out at Dickens Park and Macintosh, so we’re taxing that group, but we are using them as part of the tools. Transportation has been out looking at the streets, they’ve been looking at parking and they’ve been working with us on getting speed signs up to make sure that we’re addressing that our solid waste group has put dumpsters out at dickins so that we can address that increase in trash. Parks maintenance has been doing a great job as they try to keep the parks clean but also deal with our Earth irrigation and turf and, and social trails. We have parks staff is coming on the weekends now just to do trash because we used to kind of hold over until Monday to clean it up and it was taking a full day just to deal with that trash. So we’re dealing trash with additional existing staff is getting over time. Our parks development crew is making temporary signs and heading out in the weekends using their household child labor and bike tours to make sure we’re praying our signs up Our communications team is working to make sure as we’re making changes at our swim beach from being closed open to 50 to 75. To letting people know jumping off bridges not safe they’ve really stepped up to help us out. And then Dan Wolfert in the land management group, they’ve done a great job of being up with button rod to help with that staffing, being out monitoring our wildlife areas to help me know when we need to do things like install the buoys, audit Macintosh. Next slide. But we couldn’t do it ourselves. And that’s just a piece that we’ve had to really reach out and ask for help. And I again, as your hair is held, Harold’s already talked budget is a time that some of these things will be going back and going to Harold and council say we need some additional funds to deal with this additional use but we’ve had code enforcement out there they call me ask me what the change are as far as are we allowing people in skate parks are we not allowing people in the parks if there’s Arby’s, the parks have forcement stepped up dispatch is trying to answer all of these ongoing Questions. So they don’t come back to staff that has to do with them try get public help with good information. Public Safety and Jeff’s group have just done an exceptional job of giving us additional resources where we could do additional patrols that Dickens at McIntosh at Union and then assigning officers up to button rock as well. And I just can’t tell you what a great partnership has been. I think it’s worked out well for the Rangers who know their short public. It’s one of those things I think that they’re get a chance to get out and engage with people and I think they’re really being appreciated out there as people are trying to do the right thing and having someone to turn to ask for how they are supposed to social distance say how they can park how they do things, right. And people are really looking to try to do things right having those officers there I think has made a difference. Social media again from Harold’s group and ryka. They’ve done a great job helping us Jeffrey’s dinner and the recreation group is divided people on weekends to go to Macintosh. Talk about social distancing. Talk about Not swimming in the lake. And some of the challenges that people might face if they’re in that water that’s not tested, goes beyond just the city support. And that’s why I went to agency support lions, as I called today, and no one can find the variable message boards. And once you can kind of program in what your messages before you get there. Lyons has given us the ability to use their size. When people come into lions, they get a message that button rock parking lot, maybe full so people get that message before they get up there and have to make a decision. boulder South County has given us very quickly the ability to post county road at with no parking signs to help the neighbors up there and then provided the signage for that too. So this really has taken a large group beyond what Peter vrsf has already been putting out there. Next slide. The other pieces the the community support and as something that the council members had brought up at the last meeting and why can’t we use volunteers and I share some of my concerns right now.
People are willing to ask for help. But I think when you start telling people they can’t do it now, we were definitely getting pushback. But after that meeting, I had members our community calling saying, you know what, you guys are doing a great job. We understand this is challenging, what can we do to help? So knowing we have people there, knowing what our challenges are, we are concerned to put together a training program to do some work in our parks Fulton County has done a program called Park ambassadors. We’re also looking at using them disciplic data so that Council has a better idea how many people are seeing how big groups are what’s parkings like so they can balance what we’re getting from staff from the community of neighbors with received from some data that we’re collecting. How quickly get that and how statistically valid would be over the next couple of weeks or months we’ll take a low looking at but again, you utilizing people to help us gather that information. They’re also great using social media to help push the city’s causes through their their social media networks, neighbors If it’s the neighbor calling and seeing something that neighbors having a problem, those those extra eyes and ears for us, and we always take those very seriously and try to respond and try to make sure that that information is being captured as well. So our neighbors great as well as our park users. One things we can do, I think, for me, the biggest concerns are always the safety concerns. And if it’s kids jumping off bridges, if people want macintoshes to park users should really be on their phones and let us know that those things are happening. So the community has been a big part of this as well. Next slide. So I think with with staff being out there, this is Macintosh. This is a Saturday. If you’d asked I believe Jeff’s group is going out the recreation responder my staff is going out there and we say what are you seeing? I would definitely say we are seeing busy parks. Next slide. People are getting out there taking advantage of our odours. Amenities were built. And this is the piece that goes back to the COVID. And how that the ability to use these spaces to have opportunities, but also how we’re not increasing spread, how we’re keeping people safe in their own social groups is a little more challenging. As we go out there, we see busy parks, we see a lot of groups of people that are isolate themselves from other groups. So once we’re in those groups, and if it’s the same household, they don’t have to have a mask. However, we’re not going out this time extra councils were and asking people you’re in the same household. Even if you were checked for IDs, one of the it could be a group of sorority women that are up here and they’re living in the same household but they don’t have the same address. It could be a family, who lives in different households, or lives the same house but they have kids in college, they’re coming back. So those those IDs are always match up or give us a good way to know that people are households. So what we’re really looking for, is the ability for people to go out buy To space where they can keep their six foot discussing where them and their group are not impacted by another user group. They can use that infrastructure we provided and do in a safe way but making decisions for themselves so we are still working with this you can go next slide please. However, is the piece that you know resources that we know we we really could use to do a better job. I think we’ve shared with counsel that we only have three park rangers out of union right now. We are in the hiring process for two more button rock which would be a huge benefit. We’re working on building that volunteer program which again takes a takes time to make sure people are praying appropriately. I mentioned it prior to this it when we put people out there with a long line uniform on or long my clipboard and online name tag that there represents city will make sure that they’re doing a way that represents the city’s philosophies but also keeps them safe and the people are contacting safe
signage. We’ve been doing local low costs making laminate science pay him up things like no swimming and Macintosh. They’re temporary, they blow down, they get tore down, takes labor takes time. But we’re working on that. We’re also looking at volunteers to help us put those signs up and keep up on that. If we want to start looking at midrange signs that we can just kind of do quick go to sign shop, we’re looking like $11,000. If you want to do full sign package at a place like Macintosh, you’re looking about a few thousand dollars. What these are also working with and Harold I gave them a shout out but Peter Gibbons in that group looking at some of the grants that are out there. goko is offering some stuff now just help agencies respond to this one things that can be covered are things like Rangers and signs so we’re we’re racing deadlines to get some grants in to help us meet those funding needs. Harold and Dale have been great saying how can we work internally to look at using recreation using PD using people whose jobs may not be fully utilized right now. So I think that create a piece with grants are a great way for us to keep moving forward. Next slide. So it really does take all these pieces working together, knowing that we don’t have, you know, just a deepwell to go to to do this, I think we are going to continue to work collaboratively to strengthen all those folks that we continue continue by this experience for our our community. And I always go back to I think, all the groups I get on the phone with zoom calls, it’s just his profession, I think we recognize how important keeping these spaces open to the public is for their mental and physical health. So health so that we’re we’re really doing everything we can to make sure we provide a space that is safe as possible, while protecting our natural resources. So they’re not impacted for next season or next generations. Next slide. And that’s my quick update. And again, I know I think you’ve probably heard a lot of this already, but I really want to make sure that what you’re hearing from your constituents Is lining up with what we’re hearing and also, if there’s things that we’re doing that you’re unaware of or have questions about please let me know.
All right customer back.
Thank you, David. I wanted to thank you very much for this presentation as well as for the volunteer education heart whenever whenever we have something that we need help with, involving the community brings us together whether it’s a flood whether it’s a pandemic, whether it and they want to help. So I thank you very much for doing that. And I was out at Macintosh this weekend and people people are better there was it there was absolutely no parking on the on the street. That is right next to Macintosh.
I don’t know.
Is that lake shore?
Yes. Um, they were finding other places to park I think that the word is getting out that everybody has to be responsible. There are still some kids taking their unsafe rafts out and and pretending like they fell off when actually they’re diving into the water. But I do want the public to know that these are public parks. Just because you live by one does not mean it is specifically for you. The entire city has access to all our public parks. And I am happy that we have all these parks during this ridiculous surreal time. So thank you for all your work and let us know how we can help you.
I appreciate that I’m soapbox for just a minute because I think a piece that I think me and my staff have really talked about and as we look at kind of social equity piece where people that don’t have backyards, they don’t have a green space. They don’t have anything other than our than our parks. I really think that these are important spaces for our whole community. I know it can be a very, it can be a challenge for that neighbor who lived there and wasn’t used to this. I think it’s a opportunity to try to engage in that. But that conversation, but you’re right. I think having these parks out there for the whole community is something we all have to understand. I
think the thing I would add to what David said, Just real quick is this is an extreme exercise for us, and social engagement with individuals based on what we’re seeing and how they approach it. And, and there’s, there’s just a lot of people management, and we’re constantly getting these calls. I had one a text of a picture where we actually had some teenagers on top of one of our water buildings at one of our parks, and they were suntanning and eating food and so how we work together as it comes in. I call Jeff Saturday Jeff gets in line, but by the time they get there, they’re gone. And so what people think what I would like The community to understand is we’re seeing it, we’re hearing it. But in many cases, by the time we can actually get someone there, whatever people are doing, they’re not doing it anymore. And, and the thing I would say to everyone, and I’ve even said this to my staff, educate, don’t enforce, because we know what some of the the interactions have been like. And if we’re going to go there, then we need to contact the appropriate people because we we’ve seen the bad side of some of these interactions. And that’s why I want to be very cautious with everyone. Because there’s times when it’s been pretty tough for our staff and when they’ve engaged in those conversations.
All right.
Then Thank you very much. I echoed Councilmember pecks appreciation for the report and
the update. Thank you.
All right, Harold. Is that it?
That’s it. All right, cool. Let’s move on invite is just Erickson here who’s joining us to group?
The group right now
you are the group.
All right, let’s go ahead and welcome you and hear your your presentation, please.
Great. Thank you Mary Bagley and council members, I will let you know that
Harold has given me a strict I believe seven minutes to do my presentation this evening understanding the length of your agenda tonight. And so I’ll do my best to stick within that if not fall below. And so with those time limitations, you’ve been provided my report and advanced in your packet. I’m not going to go through every metric and every objective as I’ve done at some times in the past and I’ve just pulled out some highlights some sections where I think I might be able to answer questions before they’re asked but I’m happy to answer questions regarding any portion of the report that you are provided or The presentation the pieces of that that I’ll be presenting tonight, and I don’t know who’s running my presentation
I see it.
You can go to the next slide,
you can just go to the next slide.
So just to remind you that our contract with you as well as our work plan is aligned with the focus areas of advanced one want to point out of talent, connectivity, place, impact and industry, provide you an update on advance on web 2.0. You’ll recall we did suspend the working groups in the early days of the pandemic so that we could focus our efforts on the business response team in partnership with other advanced partner organizations, we have reconvened all of the working groups, all of the active working groups over the course of the last month, really to look at a revision You have the pre COVID initiatives, whether or not they were still relevant and how timely they were, in a COVID world are in the midst of, of the COVID pandemic. And so we’re updating those work plans. I say we, but many of you are, if not all of you have probably heard that Morgan is no longer with the organization. His last day was July 31. And he’s gone on to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams with a business that he and his father started. And so we are without a leader for advanced on what 2.0 but hopefully very briefly, as we’ll be posting position for collective impact coordinator, so somebody whose job it will be to come in and take the baton from Morgan, who will help onboard that person to really support the work of advanced on what 2.0 so we hope to have that person in place by September and then we can go to the next slide. So our work plan at Longmont EDP is really focused on three areas of advanced on what to point out as our contract with the city of Longmont. And those are talent, industry and impact. If you go to the next slide, I’m just going to highlight a few of the things that are in your report. So we can go to the next slide.
I got seven minutes here.
So starting with talent at the advanced level, what 2.0 goal around talent is to successfully recruit and retain you needed talent while building an industry and future responsive pipeline. I’m going to focus mostly on the first part of that, which is our efforts to recruit and retain new needed talent. Next slide. We have officially launched our national marketing campaign, one component of that being a talent attraction campaign. We are actually putting advertising as well as media so own earned and paid media into target markets that are either producing or have a high concentration of the talent that’s specifically needed by our industry base here. We actually talked to industry here in Longmont, in particular Leadership Council who invested in this campaign to find out what their skills and talent needs are. And we’re targeting markets that are again, either producing through their university systems, or already have high concentrations because of their industry, cross industry concentrations of that talent, and making the case for a long long as both a place where you can have the lifestyle that you want, as well as career advancement opportunities within those industries are targeted industries, in particular, go to the next slide. One of our metrics in in the contract with the city is to develop KPIs around that campaign. And so I shared with you in the report what those KPIs are, and even though it’s technically third quarter stuff, wanted to share with you some of the early results that were reporting against those KPIs. So we, having launched that campaign in the first part of July, have already driven Over 2700 new users to our website. And if you can scroll down a little bit, you can see the age breakdown being really that 25 to 54 age range, with a consistent uptick in both monthly and user monthly and weekly users since we began the campaign will continue to report out on those I just wanted to show you some of the early results. And remind you too, that that this campaign or this part of the campaign is really a top of funnel awareness campaign. And so we will ultimately especially as it relates to the portion of that that is to attract industry and business investment. We’ll have some future KPIs on conversion of that activity into actual relocation of talent and actual business industry investment and job creation in our community. We’re just setting a baseline now this is the first time we’ve done a campaign like this for a long long
that’s fine.
We have done some paid social advertising Facebook impressions on those advertisements, over 380,000 impressions, of which, and 2700 clicks of which Boston interestingly makes up about a third of the total clicks. So people looking to relocate here from Boston. I think that not an accident when we look at the industry concentration and talent and the drive of people in the midst of the pandemic to get out of those more highly dense environments into places where they can still have career advancement opportunities, but a more relaxed lifestyle and more spread out lifestyle than what they might have in areas like Boston in the Bay Area, which are two of our targeted areas. LinkedIn, interestingly, we’ve seen most of our activity coming out of Portland, so 24% of impressions coming from Portland, and I have no theory on that Portland and Denver Metro area are often competitive in terms of both business location and talent. Let’s And so we’ll continue to watch if that remains consistent over time. So moving forward. I also wanted to update you that we did finally launched the one month start to Home program. I’ll remind you we started talking about this last year as a talent relocation program. So a tool for our existing industry base and newly relocating companies to use to help attract talent or convinced talent to relocate as part of a relocation of a company. Post pandemic, we actually have been able to work with our partners at Cornerstone home lending at to pivot that to allow for it to be used also for existing long term based employees who are either seeking to move out of rentals or even just move across town and purchase a home or in some cases refinance, which becomes incredibly important important, as part of economic recovery for individuals during and post pandemic.
Next.
Right and in this quick industry update again, the goal primary local and startup companies in Longmont thrive with a collaborative business environment and easy access to financing real estate and mentorship. Going forward. Next slide. Just provided some more detailed information about our prospect pipeline, we still have a very active pipeline with 29 total primary industry prospects that we’ve worked with year to date at 17 of those having come in new in 2027 of those even in June and early July, with over 7000 jobs in that pipeline, so if we were to win all 29 of those prospects, we would be creating over 7600 jobs. The most interesting piece of this that I wanted to share with you is the real estate demand by square feet needed by those prospects. Nearly half of those prospects are companies that are looking for in excess of 100,000 square feet. And so other than the max facility and one other facility at Dry Creek right now and then ultimately the GE facility for existing space, we don’t have a lot of big block 100,000 square foot existing space. So in order to accommodate future users of that size, which it seems to be where we’re getting a lot of interest, especially in recent weeks and months, is in with those larger users. We are having ongoing conversations with our development community, as well as our landowner community to talk about how we at least get site shovel ready to be able to provide build astute options for some of those prospects as they’re coming to us. We’re also gonna be partnering with the long walk downtown development authority to do a city wide real estate, office and industrial real estate market assessment to understand in a COVID world what our baseline is, what some of the challenges and opportunities will be facing. Certainly, I wouldn’t have anticipated that we’d suddenly get a bunch of 100,000 plus To 300,000 square foot users that were interested in long run, so we’d like to better understand what those dynamics are, how we take advantage of them and also ensure that we’re attracting and incentivizing potentially those businesses, especially at that size that match our our values as a community. So going to the next slide, I’m just also wanted to point out that another component of our national marketing campaign is the traditional business attraction economic development messaging to site selection and corporate real estate decision makers across the country, again, targeting those regions nationally that have concentrations of our target industries that may have an interest to expand or relocate into Longmont. Next slide.
Then for entrepreneurial development, just wanted to break on the innovate long month program. That’s the accelerator program that spun out of Longmont EDP earlier this year, and found Did in one one EDP in 2018. Seven startups have now completed the first innovate accelerator cohort. And one of those startups did was awarded recently a $250,000, Colorado advanced industries accelerator grant. And then winter winds robotics and other one of those startups robotics aerospace robotics company has expanded into about 1000 square feet of our space because we wanted to make sure we could continue to accommodate them here in Longmont. So we gave up some of our space to do so. They now have been awarded a phase one SBR are pursuing a phase two SBR and has been awarded a NASA contract to get their robotic arm onto a spacecraft that will actually be part of future launch. And so we’re excited about them and they’re now actually employing 15 people having launched out of our innovate Longmont accelerator in November of last year, and I believe profitable, I’m not certain on that. But definitely generating revenue already significant revenue already. The the accelerate has pivoted to a fully online platform. So they’re going to test that out for the second cohort, which will launch in fall of 2020. And applications are now open for that. Then in the interest of time, we’ll go to the next slide. And talk about impact. Our goal here being to be nationally recognized that as a city that solve problems solves problems together, uniting organizations, resources, and people from all sectors to implement what matters. And this, of course, is more important now in a COVID world than it ever has been before. But just wanted to point out that this advanced one what 2.0 strategy having launched it when we did certainly we weren’t prepared for or anticipating global pandemic, but I think that we have a head start in terms of recovery and resilience for our community, because we were already had this collective impact model where we were already talking about and actively aligning resources. And goals and working together on more strategic initiatives that matter, but now, using that same strategy to address the problems and the challenges that have come with cobit and the pandemic. So, our Aspire Leadership Council has been very active in helping us to develop some policy recommendations. We’re actually using leveraging that Leadership Council, and to support the conversation around early childhood education and daycare and what industry’s role can be in addressing that challenge for our community. And we’re also working with visit Longmont Chamber of Commerce and the downtown Development Authority to better align our resources around marketing and also in an effort to lift up visit long long as they as they’ve struggled most significantly from an organization financing perspective, because of the loss of lodging tax revenue, so to keep that help keep that organization alive as well as align and better share resource versus across organizations is something that I can’t envision would have happened pre advanced long lunch 2.0 under the same circumstances, but because we were already have that mindset of that collective impact mindset. We’ve been very quickly able to put together a strategy to address just circumstances that I will stop and answer any questions that you have.
All right, I don’t see any questions. But Jessica, thank you very much for your presentation. And we appreciate the work you do. And do you have any next time we expect the picture that new baby?
I have plenty of that was?
slideshow baby pictures.
Yeah. Well, next time at least one slide with the bigger picture. All right.
All right. Cool. Later.
All right. Let’s move on to Marin council cup. Just kidding. We’re not done. All right. Let’s go on to study study, study session. Item number one Six a resilient seabream project update.
Mayor Bagley and members of council I’m going to start that presentation off if Don can start the slideshow tonight at your study session, this is really to give you an update on the status of the resilient St. Green program and project Council. You know, we have been underway with this project literally for going on seven years now. Since the September 2013. Flood. It has been a It has been an interesting project. It’s one that I really do believe it’s brought the community together around a common and shared goal and purpose to protect people and property in times of flood. And I’m very proud of the staff that has been involved with this project and most importantly, of course, Nick Wolfram who seemed like a long time ago used to be our Director of Engineering. And Nick is still with us. working hand in hand with Josh Sherman, who is our senior engineer. That’s going to make the presentation tonight. A couple of things I want counsel to, to take away from this presentation. One is that we’re going to provide some information on the upcoming Army Corps project. And most importantly, we are going to have we have the contract ready for your consideration at your August 11 meeting. And so tonight is really a good opportunity to ask questions about that particular aspect of the project. And that we wanted to give you an update as well on the additional federal dollars that we are trying to bring into the community, in particular for the unfunded reach of the project that is upstream at sunset. And so with that, I’ll turn it over to Josh Sherman to take us through the presentation.
Thank you for that introduction down. Next slide, please done.
Thank you. So as Dell mentioned, the resilient st brain project was initiated after the September 2013 flood event. It’s the city’s multi year multi phase project to fully restore the st bring Greenway trail, improve the st. Bring creek channel to protect people property and infrastructure from future flood risks. And one of the project’s goals is to incorporate natural channel design and techniques where feasible and complete the work and in environmentally sensitive way. I think of RSVP as a master plan for St. Brown Creek. And again, the extents of this project begin on the downstream side of the confluence of St. Brown Creek and Boulder Creek out at sandstone ranch on the east end of the city. And they work all the way upstream to the west end of the city, Airport Road. Next slide please. So the agenda that we want to get through tonight is to provide a status update on the project. The presentation will follow the phasing of the project improvements starting on the downstream side and work upstream. The The project has been segmented into reaches or phases that are being completed based on the funding availability. And this highlight like they’ll make this presentation like they’ll mentioned we’ll highlight some of the work that’s complete some of the work that’s currently under construction, where we are with final design and pending work. And finally, where we are headed with some of the future phases. Next slide. This graphic just provides an illustration of the reaches that we’re going to speak to tonight. In yellow is city reach one. Again, it begins on the downstream side, left hand Creek and city’s wastewater treatment. and ends at Main Street that work is complete. The area in red as we refer to a city reach to a begins at Main Street and works upstream west of South craft Parkway. Of course, the South Platte Parkway bridge and Main Street Bridge have also been replaced in coordination with the project in the past the new flood flows. The area in green is referred to as city reach tubi. It includes channel improvements immediately upstream and downstream of the BNSF railroad bridge and includes replacement of that structure. That is a project that’s currently under construction. further upstream is a short section in blue that we refer to as Isaac Walton reach one extends from price road up to Boston Avenue. It’s very confined section of the of the channel. And then moving further upstream in the magenta is what we refer to as Isaac Walton reached to it’s an area that we’ve been working on with the Army Corps of Engineers through a feasibility Study and that we are planning to advance towards final design. That project also includes replacement of the Boston Avenue Bridge on the downstream side. And then finally, upstream from South sunset street we refer to as city reach three from sunset all the way out to Airport Road. We would anticipate completing that project in phases because it’s currently unfunded. And looking at the initial phase of the hobo road reach from sunset up to over road. So next slide please. We have a short three minute video to share. And while dawn and Susan or maybe queuing that up, I can set the stage. This is an aerial video that starts at the downstream end of the project near lefthand Creek in the city’s wastewater treatment plant and moves upstream to where work is currently underway at the BNSF railroad bridge. want to give a quick thank you to the Longmont Police Department for providing a drone and a pilot to fly this section of the creek and to the city’s public information team for editing and putting together this video. So with that we can start the video
are you hearing this?
I am not but it’s just elevator music in the background
of the video
Perfect, thank you.
Next slide.
So, to continue and to highlight somewhat against some of the work that’s been done city reach one and city reach to a our projects that are both complete in coordination with those the dickens farm nature area was also recently completed earlier this year. And as David mentioned in a previous presentation tonight that’s an area where the public Can is invited to and can interact with the water in the creek and it’s proven to be very popular on city reach one in Sydney reach two as a reminder, we’re primarily funded through the FEMA public assistance all sorted alternative procedures funding the PAP program, as well as local local dollars. And then adjacent to those reaches the Main Street Bridge South craft Parkway bridge, which were both separate transportation capital improvement programs or projects have also been replaced and now have the capacity to pass the larger new storm flows. A couple of accolades that the project has received an AP CWA American Public Works Association, Colorado chapter award for sustainability in the large community category. And then recently, I just learned that one of our funding partners FEMA has been referencing the resilient st brain project as an example for good mitigation. projects that implement resilient infrastructure and nature based flood protection. So we’re humbled to get that recognition. Next slide please. So one with the work that’s been completed that the city is going to initiate a letter of map revision. And this slide illustrates the benefits and floodplain improvements for the projects completed to date. The area and blue shown on the screen is the 100 year floodplain. And on this map are some tributaries the same green Creek as well such as left hand Creek and spring goats number one, the areas in the black crosshatch our properties and an emphasis and structures that have been removed from the hundred year floodplain as a result of the project improvements completed to date. So some of those areas that have been highlighted such as the city’s wastewater treatment plant facility are now protected. Some commercial and residential properties south of the creek adjacent to Main Street and South Parkway. And so, again, we’ll be initiating a letter of map revision, which is the steps that are necessary to actually have the floodplain maps reflect those benefits. Not all the property adjacent to those reaches have been removed from the hundred year floodplain. And that’s because the project needs to continue further upstream to cut off some of the water bank flooding that’s shown on this map and representatives, the st bring Creek Isaac Walton split flow. So we’ll get into that as we continue to move forward. Next slide please. City reached to be was at the end of the video there that was currently under construction and again, it’s the channel improvements immediately upstream and downstream of the BNSF railroad crossing and includes replacement of that bridge as well as replacement of the price road pedestrian bridge at that location. That project is scheduled to be substantially complete in December of This year, the railroad bridge has been replaced. And the picture on the top right is a BNSF train running over that new structure and contractors out there this week excavating the new channel underneath that new bridge. This project removes a dogleg and a major construction on the creek, which was the old railroad bridge and will result in additional floodplain benefits. And so the city would initiate a plan to initiate another floodplain remapping a letter of map revision number two. So next slide, please. Okay.
Apologies my phone thinks it’s tough I’m talking to
so this city staff has been coordinating with Boulder County collaborative and has secured approximately $13.8 million to date through the HUD Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery program, which is the majority of funding for these channel improvements in railroad bridge replacement, about 12 point 6 million of that 13.8 is funding the project. The additional funding that remains will help is eligible for utility relocations and some property acquisition upstream at Boston Avenue. So next slide, please. I’m continuing to move upstream is the ASIC one, phase one reach, again, a very constrained section of the channel. As the cross section shows, this reach will continue the modular block retaining walls within this area, and one of the reasons we’re doing that is to keep the improvements within within the city owned property and limit the impact to the commercial and industrial properties on the north bank in the same brain mobile home park on the South Bank. We went through a lot of design iterations to really Tried to not have to relocate any mobile homes or any businesses through this reach. That project is complete with final design and we anticipate going out to bid and starting construction late this year. And the funding piece for that is the remainder of that FEMA Pat funding and local dollars. Next slide, please. Continuing upstream is the Isaac Walton phase to reach again, that’s the section of the creek that city has been coordinating with the Army Corps of Engineers through their section 205 program. We’ve been working with the Army Corps since 2016. On a feasibility study, to get to the point that we can call this the preferred alternative for the for the improvements that we’re going to work on with the Army Corps. In fact, that feasibility study is is being routed within the Army Corps for their division commanders signature right now, as the cross section shows this is a section where We move out of the of the walls and back into a tiered cross section for the channel with slope grading and
a levee adjacent to the Isaac Walton pond. Next slide please.
This is just an exhibit that again kind of shows those improvements. Again, it includes the replacement of the Boston Avenue Bridge, which is shown sort of in the yellow rectangle. The hatching areas, show the channel improvements and then that beige area would be the levee that’s between the pond and the channel which cuts off those Isaac Walton split flows. to picture the levee really just picture the berm that existed before the flood, but constructed in a in a more specified way and more resilient ways so that it can be classified as a levee. But it’s it doesn’t intend to be a structure that’s elevated 15 feet in the air above existing grade and surrounding area. Next slide please. So to expand a little bit on the US Army Corps of Engineers 205 program again, it’s it has a $15 million project limit. Typically that is 65% federal funding through the Army Corps, with 35% minimum local match. The city’s local funding match is made up of a cash contribution of a minimum of 5% of the total project cost. The Army Corps gives credit for any land owned or land acquired needed within the project footprint. And then they give credit for any working kind, which in this case, the city is using the Boston Avenue Bridge replacement. As Dale mentioned before the introduction, we staff has been negotiating and coordinating with the Army Corps to draft up a public partnership agreement. We plan to bring that in front of council at the August 11 regular session for consideration. The public partnership agreement or PPA, includes final design and construction of the Isaac Walton reach to improvements. One thing about the Army Corps that unique in comparison to some of our previous funding partners, that the Army Corps will actually manage final design. And they will also manage bidding and construction of the improvements and in this case, the channel improvements, the city would maintain design and construction of our match the Boston Avenue Bridge replacement. And then, at the end of the day, once all the work is complete, the city would own and maintain that infrastructure. Currently, that just what you’ll see in your council packet for the August 11, and the PPA is that the current cost estimate for the project is about $14.7 million. And the Army Corps matches about 51% or seven and a half million dollars. And the city’s match is about 49% largely made up of again, our working class With the Boston Avenue Bridge replacement. So, as Dale said at the end of this presentation, we can certainly talk more about that, if needed. One of the things I want to highlight is that in the 2021 tip budget, which will be presented to council later this year. That budget includes funding for construction of the Boston Avenue Bridge replacement, which is under the transportation TRP 118. So, approval of that that TRP 118 project provides the city’s required match are part of the city’s required match for our local funding. And then finally, we would initiate one more letter of map revision after this project is complete. So next slide. Again, this slide illustrates the benefits of the stream improvements once they’re complete up South sunset Street. The areas in blue again represent the 100 year floodplain and similar to the previous slide the areas in the black crosshatch should those properties that would be removed from the 100 year floodplain. So you can really start to see the benefits of all the work currently completed and that’s planned at the south sunset, which would remove approximately that hatched area is about 266 acres and several hundred commercial buildings and residential homes.
So next slide please.
So mentioned before upstream of South sunset Street, we refer to a city reach three which again extend from sunset up to Airport Road, this reach is currently unfunded. We have completed again a master plan and some conceptual level design for this reach. staff would expect to phase the final design with in construction within that reach based on available funding similar to how work was completed downstream. This slide illustrates the hoever road reach from sunny Set to overrode including a box culvert. This is the preferred alternative that we’ve presented and discussed with counsel in the past it’s referred to sometimes as the split flow alternative. So it’s a split flow channel through the fairgrounds pond capturing water that’s already come out of the bank west of overrode bringing that those flood flows back into the mainstream of the creek. This project is estimated to be about $20 million and the benefits of the project so in this slide, the blue and the pink together represent the hundred year floodplain, again north of the creek that floodplain was mitigate would be mitigated with the core project but sat on the south bank of the creek and east of overrode all that area in peak pink is floodplain and property that would be removed. If this project on the hobo road reach can be completed. So that’s a significant portion of the developed section of the city Longmont that can be ready removed from the same brand Creek floodplain with this project. So currently staff is preparing a FEMA, pre disaster mitigation or PDM grant application for funding this overrode reach. The FEMA PDM program is a 75% federal share and a 25% local match. So that would be roughly $15 million if we can get fully funded through the grant $15 million in federal funding and $5 million required for local match. Should we be awarded the grant funding we would need to consider alternatives for our local funding match. Some options that could be available are leveraging other capital improvement projects such as TRP 117, which is currently unfunded, but is the Hova road bridge over st brain Creek improvements, or potentially, you know a future storm drain Bond or rate increases within that program. So staff, as we as we move further along in that grant application process, we certainly plan to provide a future update to council regarding that grant application local funding alternatives. And then finally, work upstream with over road to Airport Road is about $40 million more of improvements. And again, those are currently unfunded. So next slide, please. And that does conclude the update for the resilient st brain project. And thank you for your time and attention this evening and we’re happy to take any questions that you might have.
Right customer Christiansen
and, Josh, thank you so much. I am
I’m in awe and I
In envy, what an incredible engineering project this is so varied and so extensive. And I think you guys have done an amazingly thoughtful and hard work on this project for everybody involved from city manager. Public all the public works and and i know some of this looks kind of bleak right now, but as somebody who gardens and has been doing that for a number of years, it’s gonna look really good and a few years, it’s just,
it takes time. Plans take time.
So I was gonna say, how are we going to get that money? Where are we going to do we have to do something we have to write it, you know, but you guys have already thought about some of those things. Any amount of anything that this council can do to say write letters to ask for federal help. We’ll certainly do I think, and federal help state help county help Dr. cog help. Anything we will be happy to. I think all of us will be happy to sign our name to a letter asking for help.
Thanks again.
You’re welcome. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
You’re welcome. All right. Hey, Mayor, what’s what’s your what’s surreal around about this presentation and seeing it’s a great work they’ve done. But people don’t realize this. When they were building the railroad bridge. They actually had to keep the railroad operating, while they were building the bridge. So when you get into the details on this phenomenal work, Nick, Josh Dell, the entire group. What’s interesting is this was our first federally federal disaster in 2013. The surreal part is we’re still in it. working on projects and closing out when we have another one that we’re dealing with. And that was just to sort of remind you on the community, it’s a, it was one of those moments where you just went, Wow, we’ve got to, but it really is a testament to the phenomenal work they do. And if you ever want to go out, let us know. And we’ll, we’ll walk you through that area. It’s, it’s good to get the firsthand tour from Josh and Nick, because they really work you through all the details. Thank you.
All right. Anything else? We’re back.
Josh, can I or can we have a copy of that video?
It’s great. Absolutely.
Great. Thanks.
Sure.
All right. Anything else?
All right, Josh. Good job. We really appreciate it. Having had a front row seat to the floods of 2013
It’s amazing how much progress was made Dale thanks to you and your staff for everything you’ve done I would be a much different city if we didn’t have your dedication passion, love and experience, knowledge etc etc. Thank you I
just felt fortunate tonight that I didn’t have to talk after watching that video it
a little choked up
so I was gonna be positive the world grateful we didn’t hear from either, but you still did a good job. Alright, let’s go ahead and move on to when to get forming project allotment contract review, please.
And so, again while they’re loading the slideshow for this one, city council tonight is your study session. And it’s too for staff to bring to you the winning app firming project. I think the really good news that we have tonight is that We believe staff together with the waterboard have really arrived at what we believe to be not only a doable level of participation in the project, but most importantly one that will meet the long term needs of this community through the build out of the of the Envision Longmont planning area, and and importantly as well, to position long lat, and defeating continued position long enough to be able to meet all the unknowns coming to us with climate change and other challenges that we know our community is going to face. And so I’m very happy tonight to bring this to you. And similar to the Army Corps project, we will also be bringing to you likely in September, the allotment contracts for the windy out project. And so with that, I’m going to turn it over to Ken Houston, and Becky Doyle to give you a presentation on the project, both in the status update, as well as to discuss the issues of participation level and and those items.
So go ahead, Ken.
Thank you,
Dale and
council Mayor Council. Ken Houston, Water Resources manager with public works. Natural Resources Department. Thank you for your time tonight.
Could we have the next slide?
Tonight we’d like to give you a summary of the windy out firming project, the history and status of it review the allotment contract and escrow agreements. That’s two agreements we’ll be bringing back in September for counsels action. We wanted to be able to give you a preview of it and get any input you might have on those To agreements and then finally, we will ask at the end ask us council to give direct staff regarding the final participation level for the windy gap funding project. Next slide please. I’d like to first briefly the moment especially for the public a lot of understand a lot about raw water source. There’s really two raw water sources, Longmont uses first water. The first is the native basin water, which is the same rain Creek. This map shows the area west of Longmont up to the Continental Divide primarily North Sea rain but also Sasame rainwater is what we utilize. It’s about two thirds of our water supply. And then about one third of our water supply is from the west slope. Two sources the windy gap project and the kohlrabi Thompson project. Both of those projects are stored in Lake Granby, which is on the left side of the map there and then is pumped through shadow mountain Grand Lake flows to the VA Adams tunnel into ventually ended up in Carter Lake for delivery to Loma.
Next slide please. I
wanted to give you a little bit of project history on the on both the windy cap parent project, the diversion project and also the history of the windy gap forming project on the parent project actual diversion out of the Colorado River. In 1967, long months Mayor rough price on behalf of six Front Range cities filed for that water right. It took about 20 years after that to actually get the project constructed and operational. It became our operational 1985 and it primarily utilizes the Colorado Big Thompson project to get the water here to the west slope As part of that original project, it was always contemplated that the storage reservoir would need to be built early on in early on in the parent project filing was maedhros called Jasper reservoir on the west slope. And in 1999 as the as the parent project was payments were being made and the project was completely operational. The second phase of the project the storage component was being investigated and started 1999. And one of the first steps you have to do is work through the federal permitting processes and the very first step is to do an Alternatives Analysis of the different alternatives to what then was contemplated the Jasper project. chimney all reservoir who where we are today was one of those of over 200 Reservoir sites that were looked at and studied extensively. As part of that process, it became quickly obvious that really having the project, the storage project on the east slope was very beneficial. I think the Florida 2013 taught us that the more resilient The closer your supply can be to your facilities. the better off you are both both some some environmental concerns with a reservoir side on the west side, as well as the fact that having our stories on the east slope was much better led us to the Jimmy Hall site is the preferred site. At that point, started legal and permitting for that site.
We also
started the
For the legal permitting, there were numerous numerous project legal permits were required. We need to get a 1041 permit from Grand county before one water quality through the state of Florida for permit fill in dredge permit from the Corps as well as the overall project permit from the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which is the owner and operator of the Colorado Big Thompson project. That’s really the permit that
allows the project to move forward.
And that permit.
The US Bureau of Reclamation is the lead Federal Agency for permitting for this project. There were two legal actions that are necessary to bring this project forward. The first one is filing in the State Water court to make sure that all of the permitting all of the activity we’re doing as well as the storm vessel and how we intend to use it is legal as well as one of the mitigation projects this project is doing is construction of a conductivity channel around the windy gap reservoir on the west slope, where we divert the water to provide conductivity from above to below that reservoir that needed a
state
decree as well. I’m pleased to report today that the cases made its way through water court. The referee signed the final decree in early July, there was a 21 day protest period as in all water rights cases, that 21 day perm protest period has expired and there were no protests filed. So the last action for that case is to have the judge in Water division five, to sign that we’re expecting that at any time, but that pretty much the most significant item we had was getting that State Water court. There is also as a federal case, a challenge to the issuance of both for for permitted primarily the US Bureau of Reclamation permit for the project that was filed in 2017. The final arguments and action on that case occurred in July of 2019. So we’re just a little over a year from the final arguments in that case. We’re waiting any day. We hope sooner than later, but it could. We don’t know exactly when the federal court will give us a ruling on that. We really need to get that case settled before we can actually start the process. Project. The design is 100% complete, and a contractor has been selected. That’s Bernard construction. They’re out of Montana. And they do done major, major dam and reservoir construction all over us in the world. They’re actually on site, they’re doing a little bit of grabbing, mostly what they’re doing is getting their project submittals through and design of the coffer dam and things like that. So that when the federal case is done, we’re actually able to start moving quite quickly on that, and then finally, on the environmental aspects, again, as we mentioned, all the permits are done, including the the mitigation of the any impacts of the project fully 100% mitigated and a number of enhancement projects which will actually make the project a net positive environmental impact. And on the next slide, please. This is next slide is a rendering of what the reservoir will look like when it’s completed. On the left side, you can see Carter lake. I think most people are familiar with Carter lake. There’s a chimney hollows on the middle of the picture. They’re the shiny or reservoir. That’s what the reservoir will look like when it’s constructed. Look, it’ll really be almost a twin of Carter lake. And all the property was acquired a number of years ago. So we’re ready to move forward on that. One of the aspects that I think is great beyond the water supply, if you look just to the right side of the chimney Hall reservoir, you see the mountainside there with the greater area that’s Blue Mountain. It’s It was probably By Larimer County as part of the purchase of all the property out there about 3000 acres, an area similar in size to button rock preserve that when this reservoir is constructed, the entire area will be open for public recreation and use, which will really help. I believe it’ll be an asset to our community, having that great of a facility close to it. Next slide, please. We’d like to go through real quickly then on the allotment contract and the escrow agreements and
just real quick
explanation of a llama contract. It’s the allama contract essentially gives us an allotment in the in the reservoir itself. It’s an undivided interest we’ll have currently were subscribed 1000 acre feet. What are we finally subscribed to that’s what we’ll receive an alarm for. what’s called a llama contract is similar. If you can think of it as like a share in a company, you don’t own any specific part of it, but you own an undivided interest. That’s That’s the important aspect of the llama contract. There are a really key parts of the allotment contract that you have before each and I’ll just real quickly go through those kind of explain them. The first the first section is just definitions. The second section is a lot in this subscribe capacity in the reservoir and in our case either what we choose tonight will be that a lot of capacity. On the third section describes the construction of the project and how the project will be completed that really carries you through construction will be applicable after the construction. The fourth section outlines operation of the project after the completion. There are numerous numerous agreements and permits and input to this reservoir and how will operate, it can all be covered in the allotment contract. The llama contract really for operations sets that up, and there’ll be a separate operational criteria that will be developed over time after after that happens. The fifth part of it is the term of the contract. It’s a perpetual contract as long as we meet, you know, meet our payment obligations, how you might transfer an allotment in the future after construction, a default provisions only. If long over default, the more importantly if somebody else in the project would default, which protects Longmont and again and any amendment processes for the ultimate contract. The SEC six section is just describes the funding and how it will process and then finally, most importantly, the seven section is provisions for cash allottees Longmont will be a cash allottee there are people who bring cash Really people who participate in pooled financing Longmont will be a casualty. So this seven section really applies to Longmont. Finally they say section which won’t apply along but is pulled financing allottees. And then finally, it also attaches a sample escrow agreement, it simply will be putting a lot of money moving a lot of money up to when you get from a project enterprise for then they will hold that money during the construction process. So that just gives us some legal protection on how how that money is allocated, how that money is invested in, and how it’s done. The next slide, please. Finding we want to talk a little bit about and most importantly focus in on the financial considerations for this project. We are currently subscribed in the project at 8000 acre feet. That was Previous city council direction, and we’ve been in there for about three or four years now at that level, the total cost for that is about $16 million, just a little bit less, at 1000 acre feet. We’re also looking closely at 7500 acre feet as our participation in that that will cost us around 56 million for that funding level. The funding sources for this project, there’s really four internal funding sources and then a fifth, which is, you may remember in 2017, the citizens approved a bond for $36.3 million,
which we will use that we will sell those bonds and use that funding for the majority of this project. Then finally for internal funds that will be used or the water construction fund, that is revenue generated from the sales of water taps, a new development water operating fund, which is our rate revenue. There also is money in raw water storage Fund, which we’ve kept since we had high mountain dams up in Rocky Mountain National Park where we sold the dam and the and the easement back to the park. And we have about a half a million dollars of that money left, which will put into this project. And finally, cash in lieu of water rights. We have about six and a half million dollars in the bank right now and anticipate a little bit more as development occurs in the next year or so. So all of that funding will be used for this.
We’ve really looked at
the participation level based upon our future water supply needs and our financial considerations and this point, next slide please. At this point, we We’ve looked at that with both with waterboard and in do have a recommendation, kind of the areas we’re looking at right now is the thousand acre feet that we’re currently at. The minimum future water supply we really need for the eventual planning horizon for the city is 6300 acre feet. We looked at both of those areas. We also looked at trying to balance both the level of the water we get as in our financial considerations. And currently, we believe we can fit the project in at 7500 acre feet without unduly impacting some of our asset management. We have a number of existing assets in our system that are requiring rehabilitation and so at 7500 acre feet were able to balance keeping our system running as well as being able to fund it. And finally, there are many other considerations that could be looked at early undetermined, future water conservation might bring it down a little bit more more impactful climate impacts could bring it up. So those are all really undetermined and running at this point, we’re not able to, to give you a really good recommendation from those. So as such, staff went to waterboard recommended 7500 acre feet to help with our financial considerations, waterboard review that and agreed with that and unanimously recommend city council to participate at the 7500 acre foot level. So next slide, please. At this point, that kind of concludes my presentation on the history and the summary. We’ve been happy to answer any questions we also have our legal counsel on tonight in case you have any specific legal questions about the lawmen contract. I’m with Jeff dragger representative from Northern water who could answer he’s the project manager for this project could answer help answer questions. We’ll be happy to answer any questions or take input primarily with respect to the financial participation level. After we get that input, we will take that back to Northern we’ll come up with a final allotment contract. And that final a lot my contract will go to water board in their August meeting and city council in hopefully September. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you can and Thank you Mary Bagley.
I have a question about About the pooled funding option that it’s been understood from the beginning Longmont would not participate in. Can you explain why that decision was from the beginning that Longmont would not would would go the funding on its own and not participate in the pooled funding?
Yes, Mayor, council member Martin be happy to the pooled financing is is a great tool. In fact, we use that in the original windy gap parent project funding. Unfortunately, one of the aspects of pooled financing is that to be able to help sell the bonds in a pooled financing scheme, the investors are going to want to see what’s called a step up provision. In essence, if any one of the one or more of the participants in a pooled financing or to not make their payments, the other participants would step up And make the payments for them. They would they would get their allotment on capacity if they did that, but they would still be on the hook uniquely to Longmont that basically counts against our bonding capacity. And so if that were to happen, we would have to count that against our bonding capacity, which would limit the amount of bonding we would be able to take out which we would then not have enough bonding capacity to move forward with the project. So it became almost impossible for us to participate in the pool financing.
And what is unique about the Long Island City charter that makes it count on against our bonding
capacity?
All ID wise are answered that if he if he doesn’t mind.
Or Becky Becky
Marin Council, I’m happy to answer that. I’m Becky Doyle, assistant director. Director of Business Services and Public Works natural resources. The Longmont charter has a requirement that we go to the voters for all issuance of debt of enterprises under Tabor do not all in deep dive CDs in here now, so you can jump in rock. But Tabor enterprises generally do not have that requirement. So that’s something that’s unique to long month. And we would need to get voter approval to increase our bond authority to cover that step up provision if we wanted to participate in the pool finance.
Thank you. Okay, do you have anything to add?
Now, Becky’s spot on it’s just the charter requirement for an election. It would be a challenge for us to figure out how big an election to have if you have to step up for others.
I think other good news from Longmont is our bonding rate. is also very competitive with other entities. And I’m I know Jim golden and D and folks and Jim air have done an excellent job over the years of, of keeping Longmont in a very competitive position such that we get very favorable bond rates when we go to the market as well as a city
I guess dark waters
Canyon and or Dale, um, the $36 million authorized by the voters through the sale of bonds. What percentage of the total cost of this project was not originally intended to cover?
I’m actually gonna let Becky answer that but I’m I’ll try the answer. Councilmember waters I believe when we Back to the bond election, the price per acre foot of the project was such that we believed that the 36 million would be sufficient for up to 10,000 acre feet of participation in the project. And as you know, we we had some fairly significant increases in the project costs over the last year or so. And that’s what has now arrived us back to the point where we’re where we are today. I think the key difference going forward from now, though, is that we have the contract in place. And we also have some very healthy contingencies. And so I don’t believe we’re in the same position as we were when we went for that bond election.
So so one related question, I don’t want to go back and debate the whole set of issues around 6000 8010 thousand. But do your your original presentation to the Council, the SMC tonight it was 6300. As I recall at the time you made that presentation was 6000. And then, you know the council at that time with the 10. That subsequent council with eight. Is there anything in your calculus? Apparently, you now are estimating that the the the requirement would be 63 versus 6000. If we were just coming after this, to get to the at least to the minimum we would need. So what would be the if you if you scaled back to 6300? What would that cost me? I assume you’ve done
that. So we have a let me answer that question. But before Becky goes through that, one thing. One thing I will also say is that and actually Councilman waters, you made this point, very clear. I believe about a year ago. And I do remember it. We need to be very careful to participate at a level that we can afford. And one that does not put the balance of the utility in jeopardy, and one that does not further increase the rates on our customers. And so we certainly agree with that. That is part of what we were looking at. And that is part of the calculus, if you will, that went into the decision making process to arrive at the 7500 acre foot level. You know, the last thing I wanted to do similar to you was to have another debate about participation level in the project. The difference now though, is that you the water board is unanimous in the staff recommendation of lowering our participation level down to 7500. Again, so as to not jeopardize the balance of the capital needs within the overall utility. In line with that line of thinking, build what you can afford, and for gosh sakes, hope that that is enough to meet your needs. And in this case, it’s both. It’s what we can afford. We believe it will meet our needs. We believe we will have a little bit of cushion but Becky You can also respond on what the 6300 acre foot cost would be.
The mayor and Councilmember waters the cost her 6300 acre foot at the current current per acre foot cost is approximately $47 million.
So 55 million at 8050 1 million at 70 540. You take 4048 47,000,060 300 Yeah. All right. Um, and Dale just for the just district clear my head. There’s nothing in your your estimates. What I heard you say is the 63. The 7500 is exceeds the minimum requirement with some cushion, I think was what I heard you say? Alright. I do want to acknowledge that the water board and the staff now are offering the same recommendation, which was not the case before. And I, I think that’s a good thing. I appreciate the fact that you’ve come to they’ve come together with the staff on that recommendation. And I’ll leave it at that. Thanks.
Yeah, just just to get all of the parameters on the table. Because I was at the water board meeting where they made this decision and, and I kind of reluctantly concur with it. Although at the tutelage of the waterboard from For the past two and a half years, I’ve kind of liked the idea of having water access as assets in reserve, which wasn’t high on my priorities list originally when I came into office,
but I’m
speaking of cushions,
what is the assumption on the amount of water conservation or the rate of water conservation that is done by the water users of the city? In that build out requirements estimate, I mean, is that assuming the current level of usage is at a, assuming a rate of conservation and decline in water usage or, you know, where does that estimate where’s that projection fit?
Marin, Councilmember Martin the current projections anticipate 10% or Water Conservation savings at a time of build out that’s both savings of where we are with our water now as well as future water use, you know, new growth will consume 10% less water in anticipates that. Yes.
And there’s there’s been a historic preference about precedent for that, in the sense that we’ve been achieving that for a while.
Absolutely. City has been certainly on that, that track and and and I believe it will continue, because I believe certainly, we’re all coming to a clear understanding that we’re living in the arid West. And then on top of that, that we have climate change coming at us and I think every responsible member of the community is looking at that and trying to figure out how to reduce their water this where they can and we want to be part of that. We want to be actively working with customers to reduce the water demand where we can
thank you
alright guys, we’re back.
Um Can we make motions now? I think we can. So I move that we direct staff to accept the water board’s recommendation of a 7500 acre feet participation level.
Second
All right, that’s going to be going down from 1000 correct? Correct. All right. I don’t see anybody else I’m going to be voting against it only because I sit in on a lot of these meetings with pure PA. Zombie any Anyway, I’m not gonna debate it. I just think the waters the currency of the future and I think we can we can control it. We can protect it. But anyway, let’s go ahead and vote All in favor say Aye. All right,
aye. Aye.
Opposed say nay nay.
All right. The motion passes six to one. Mayor Bagley dissenting.
Thank you, Mayor Bagley and council. And as Ken mentioned, we’re going to keep pushing this project forward. And with any luck, we’ll we’ll have a lot in the contract in front of you, as potentially as early as September. Thank you again for your time, and your support.
All right, great. Let’s go ahead and you guys mind if you take a five minute break, it’s been two and a half hours and maybe our backs and our bladders would appreciate a little bit of a break. So
all right, back in five guys.
Get on to discussion
discussing the options regarding sleeper vehicles parked on public property.
That evening, Mayor Bradley and council members I will be leading us through a presentation that was put together by our SWAT team safe and welcoming places team in that team to Night presenting riveting that team tonight is myself and Rebecca Mendoza, Project Coordinator for Community Services Jeff Saturn deputy public safety chief needs in salts from code enforcement. Tim home assistant city attorney, we’ve also invited Joseph stanovich from hope for Longmont to provide any answers to any questions around safe lots as well. Of course Karen Roni, resources director, Don if you wouldn’t mind, starting the PowerPoint.
So my goal tonight is just to go through this as quickly as we possibly can so we can share enough time for conversation and discussion with council members. So Danny go next slide. So the swaps team is really a cross divisional cross department team that is looking at how we ensure safety and make sure that our public faces are welcoming. This is just a list of the members on that team. Next slide. You know, as mentioned in the council communication, we’ve seen continued growth of RVs and campers on public streets. Nathan put together this information around what code has been seeing as far as RV abandonment cases and you compare 2019 to 2020, January through June. Next slide.
And these are also cases that public safety has received in 2019 and 2020. They’re very similar. You can see there’s some peaks and there is some valleys in the amount but they continue to see cases coming in and the there was a drop off in in the winter. As far as far as cases received, and but there’s increased over the summer as well. Next slide. Now, this is some data that came from our safelite task force our data team, when we instituted the, the survey 123 data that I showed to you in February, we did this we are planning to do this to the end of March, but due to COVID, we did it through mid March. But you can see the numbers we had 42 RVs, operating and a little over 10 or 12, that were not operating. We see some of the numbers you see also a GIS map of where those contexts were.
Next slide.
And then here are some examples that were provided by public safety and code enforcement of just some of the issues that we’ve experienced. You can keep going done. So here’s some more examples of trash and inoperable RVs that are in our in our cellar in our open spaces parking lots. Next slide. And of course some of the issues of leaking fluids into the city storm drains that is that happened where they’re parked. Next slide.
some more examples of that
next slide. And then just some more examples of trash being left or the tiles up next to them and block sidewalks Next slide. And here’s an example of again more trash but example of the of creating a makeshift living room on the city streets. And finally, here’s an example of a little more dangerous situation. As you can see there are propane tanks in this RV Which of course, can cause hazardous conditions. So those are just some examples that you can go next slide. Here’s some of the costs. These are not that total, I just want to share. So the RV cleaning costs, this is not the towing on the street or storage, there’s just what it cost. To clean out some RV as you can see in 2019. We spent 17,000 in just cleaning costs, and so far in 2020, we’re already at 19,000. And then you can see on the next side, a little more of a table of what in average, total cost per RV is around 33,305 18 Rv were towed between March and December 2018 and 17 have been toads between January and June of 2020. So those costs tend to accumulate and I know that they’ve thought that We have allocated some more funding to disposal as well. Jeff can can talk to that later. Next slide. And currently we still have six that needs to be cleaned and that is the storage lot and eight remaining in storage which were total between April 2017, October 2018. And for more than that, they still need to be told to salvage So next slide. So, you know, there are some options for parking in RV in Longmont and then some further from Longmont. This is the country would in an RV park that’s on 1550 Main Street. This is this is their website and it shows you kind of what its amenities are, but also its cost and that’s something to point out that these these are cost prohibitive, depending on the size of the RV. You can see there’s some of the some of the rates both weekly and monthly. Next slide. Then the next closest one that we’ve we could find was Johnson’s partner. And here’s it is less expensive. They do have some other restrictions on how old the RV could it needs to be. I think our team could answer some questions around that. But just wanted to give, give some ops examples of options that that folks who are living in RVs can can could find as far as part more permanent parking.
Next slide.
And so this is what we’re what this livestream is recommending staff, or staff is asking Council for direction around the recommendations to eliminate the allowance to move super vehicles parked on public street every 48 hours and relocated different areas defined in the current ordinance. Instead, we swapped is recommended all cebra vehicles be prohibited from parking on public property. including any portion of highway street alley or the or other right away with some exceptions. So for example, active loading and unloading as you can read there which means a period of time in which a person or persons are physically engaged in actually in the labor of or unloading from an apartment, etc. and finally to modify the current code sections allows individual apply for permanent for a permit for time limited parking on public property. So this is just part of the recommendation we depending on directions and counsel, we can bring more detail recommendations back. Next slide.
So one of the things that just the last thing I want to share is that we did the swaps team will look at this did look at other cities. And we did talk to Lakewood. They recently passed in our stricter RV ordinance and you can read what they would what they would they said And basically, it really helps with the enforcement. It helps, you know, clean up the streets in the city of Lakewood. So I think that’s the last slide and to open up for discussions and questions, like I said, we have a team here that can answer questions for the council.
Councillor Martin?
Thank you little Berto. Um
You said that there were 42 operating functional RVs that were counted in 2019 is that correct?
So comfortable? airbag because Martin that number came from the survey. 123 Yep, that happened between January 27 and March 19 of this year.
Ah, even better. Thank you. And you showed some pictures of interiors of RVs that were pretty trashed, and people obviously occupied RVs that had a lot of stuff on the sidewalk. Where do you have any understanding of whether those photos were of from occupied operating RVs or from occupied or from occupied non operational RVs.
So, I will let Nathan or deputy chief setter, respond to that. Sure.
Go ahead, David.
Yeah, so, I’m Nathan Phillips with law enforcement. Good evening, Mayor and councilmembers. I was wanting to put together some of those photos. They were not online, but they did mostly come from our code enforcement division. We don’t necessarily keep track of jumps. To buy code junk motor vehicles that are also associated with the transit population, but I can say that the majority of those if not all of those photos that you saw were occupied RVs or RVs that as a result of this continuing problem, we’re left in city parks and we’re and then did contain those hazardous materials like the propane tanks and car batteries. So that’s that’s a pretty common seen among the ones that are occupied.
Definitely.
Okay, oh, can I add rain or non operating, or both?
Most of them were operated as an example in 2019. We tagged 170 police department did. Nathan and his team also been code enforcement tagged a lot of Arby’s, but in 2019, we tagged 170 Arby’s. One of them we tagged 11 times as it moved around the city. And they just they keep moving. We go there, we find them, they tag them and they move them. And that that’s a common theme with our current orbits. So many of them are operable. You saw one of those pictures that did not have an engine. that individual is well known in our community. He buys an RV he removes the engine and he pulls it around with a car. So as long as they’re moving it that 600 feet, we don’t get to tow it till they break down and then we told him
Yeah, thank you. Okay.
And under what circumstance does this is this? Does the city become responsible for cleaning out these vehicles? I mean, I’m I’m pretty sure you don’t clean them out and then give them back to the person that was living in it.
No, procedure on slide
13 kind of outlines the process. But whoever toes it the police or code, we tow it to a storage lot at that point over the next 30 to 45 days. We have a person that works on getting title for that RV. At any point during that time the owner of that RV can claim the RV, they just have to pay the impound fee, but the first tow is $245. Then we pay $15 a day for storage. Once we have title that 30 to 45 days. Once we have title we contract with a cleaning company. They come in and they remove all the Blackwater tanks, gray water tanks, cabinets, things like that. All the debris inside all the hazardous materials, the needles one B was packed, it took two full dumpsters. Once it’s cleaned, then it gets loaded on a flatbed. Sometimes they can take up to two or three depending on the size. We pay $275 an hour to transport it to really where it gets shredded. And we got to pay to add from. That’s why the costs range from anywhere from 2500 to 30 $500 per rb, but the city is paid for. For that because I’m aware of one RV that got claimed for the most part. Nobody has come to the police department and asked to claim their vehicle.
Okay, so it has to be has to be cleaned in order to be destroyed.
Yes. Yeah, the salvage yard won’t take it with black water tanks, we have to drain oil. I mean, there’s all kinds of it’s a it’s an environmental health hazard. I mean, that’s part of the problem. These things are full of human waste in their black water tanks, the gray water tanks, not to mention oil. So we got to get rid of all that stuff. And it’s very expensive. Unfortunately.
I understand that. So the last question is that both tonight we heard from
two people who were living in RVs.
That thought that it was a decent, good way to live, and they wanted to continue doing it. And I’ve talked to some different ones in the past that we didn’t hear from tonight, who are also considered these RVs to be home. And so do we have a we don’t have any photos of RVs that are occupied by those people. I guess. Because you know they will if they share their story they will say, you know I have a job here I have family here I have two sons who live with me in the RV and
one’s going to school and one has a job
so what about people who are have ties to Longmont and just want to live in an RV? I don’t I don’t see those in the examples that have been presented tonight but we’ve heard from them before.
I’m sure we have tagged those vehicles and asked them to move on. And and it’s a matter of time for some individuals as the Arby’s eventually break down and we we end up telling him but that that’s the unfortunate part of this is we we have people that are not impacting neighborhoods not impacting business areas not trashing our parks not trashing the right of ways. And they and you don’t see him but they’re they move around town and they mind their business and hopefully they’re dumping their human waste. But with 170 of these vehicles that we tagged and moved around last year, I’m sure some of those people may have got a tag and asked to move on. The problem is you there’s it’s very difficult to come up with a way of allowing somebody to live within RV and and then have someone else that’s trashing the neighborhood and draining their septic and drain in their fluid into the storm drains.
It’s really hard to distinguish between the two
Kind of an all or none thing at all all throw out
sewage.
And you know we every community member in this this town has sewage to their house has a we have a city code about use of public sewers required it says the owner of any house building property used for human occupancy employment commercial enterprise recreation or other purpose situated within the service area is required to have public sanitary sewer as required at the owners expense. And so we have individuals in this town parking that do not have their living in those those locations without proper connections to sanitation, which is why these RV parks are occupied Because they have to put in those kind of services for their, their guests or the people that are reading those services. And it’s very expensive. I think a Joe could talk about this, but when they did their safelite study, they were estimating it was going to cost 149 to 280,000. Just to kind of outfit a lot to accommodate the RV. The sanitation needs for these individuals. And and every individual has a sanitation need every day. And without water without electricity, run the pumps. There’s there’s other things that we find in these RVs that is just not sanitary. And you know, one of the reasons disease went away in our world is because the sanitation,
they definitely kind of I think they think part of that the answer to the question and what I’ve learned from this and I think Alberto and Joseph can talk about It’s the different dynamics. So if you take a population and then the different components that you have and how many, you know, we can be successful with or willing to go into coordinated entry and try to move into that housing world. I think that’s part of the discussion to me. Bertha, Joseph, do you want to talk a little bit about that?
I have a couple clarifying questions for I had Sorry, I came with a list. I was channeling Dr. Waters here. But two clarifying questions. One is of those hundred and 73. I think you said it was that you tagged in a period of 170. Were those unique vehicles or unique tagging instances?
No, those are.
Some of them were tagged multiple times that I kind of sorted through it. One of them was tagged 11 times So I went through and counted and there was 60 plus unique vehicles. And a lot of those were tagged multiple times over the year. And there’s a lot of unknowns in here that I did not count because they didn’t have a tag listed. So there’s a on my list, we keep an Excel spreadsheet. And on my list, there’s a lot without a tag number. They’re just listed as unknown. So licensed vehicles that have a tag, there’s 60 plus vehicles in that group.
Okay, very good. And then the last question is, of the two locks that you can pay to rent. For long term I’m assuming 1550 North Main, I guess, and Jan one in Johnstown. And they’re expensive. I understand that lets their access to public transportation to where you can get to long months. transportation network public transportation network.
I’m not familiar with John’s town, but it’s by the Johnsons corner. So I don’t know if there’s services out there, but 1550 main is right at right near 17. The main there’s a bus stop at 17. I think there’s a bus stop down at 15 also.
Okay, thank you.
Just remember Peck
Thank you very badly.
Um,
I see the RV situation in three different tiers. There’s the unemployed non residents, who just wanted to use their RV to camp out and move it wherever they want without any kind of responsibility and they don’t really have ties to our community. But when I looked at the slides, the one that said it looks like we are surrounded by cities that have strings RV regulations that they are enforcing. So who doesn’t have them Longmont so that is where they can come and not be what they would be considered be hassled at this point because our regulations are fairly lacks. Then there are the ones that are employed who want to live in RVs. But they don’t want to pay rent, they don’t want to pay the utility bills, etc. that are associated with having a structure a permanent structure. And I don’t think those people should be allowed to park on our streets either. I understand that RV lots are expensive, but when you look at that as compared to rent and an apartment or paying a mortgage, that’s pretty cheap. So um I don’t think that we should allow them to live on our streets. In our on our trail heads in our parks, because it is convenient for them. It is not convenient for us and I really don’t want our police chasing Arby’s around the city all the time. So I think those are two different sets, then there are the people who have to live in an RV. Not because they want to, but because their living conditions have changed, either because rent has gone up, they’ve been evicted. Have they lost their job, so they lost their living places. And I do want Joseph to address this. So those are three different to me. Those are three different categories of people as Harold is often referred to peeling the onion and the center core are the people who would like to be in a house in an apartment, but for some reason can’t afford it. And I would just like to uh refer back to the the gentleman on pi tbh. Who said that he was parked in front of a person’s house who allowed them to park there, but he would like to be in a home. He just doesn’t have any place to park, his RV. So I’m going to make a motion here because I want to discuss this. And if we make a motion then we can open up the discussion.
And
then I have to move to where I wrote it down. So I’m going to move that we direct staff to engage Boulder County Housing Authority, the Boulder City, the Boulder County Commissioners, Joseph stanovich, with safe lots and the Boulder County homeless community Task Force in a discussion to use the Boulder County land on Alaska Avenue as an RV safe lot because we need options for people and the people who want a home made a safe place to park. And so Do I have a second for that? to open up the discussion?
All right, it’s been Moved by Councillor pack
and seconded by Councillor Christiansen. Do we have some discussion on this matter?
Can we have a Joseph stanovich address this and tell us about the safe locks for cars that he has and what he has implemented as far as regulations and how that would um, what he is seeing an RV. RV campers now and what has been happening in the last month? I guess the I guess
the question becomes, I guess the I personally don’t have a problem with it. I guess my question is Harold, what is Joseph Zenovich his role tonight as ever? presentation for us. Obviously he’s here he’s been invited into the room. So I guess my question is I my understanding was we were waiting to hear back from deputy commander Sattar and Roberto Mendoza about
you know, we put off.
Go ahead we we we put together a group of which Joseph has been part of the conversations with us in terms of how we’re looking at this broader situation. And I think part of part of that is some of the information that was given to Le Berto and what he said to me in the sense of and Joseph if I misspeak Tell me but on the RV issue, I think as we look at Coordinated entry and how we’re working on all of that, but at Is it fair to say 80 to 90% of the people is that an accurate number that I heard from Le Berto in terms of getting engaging in the RV community generally really engaging in the coordinated entry process, there’s not a desire to do that, which kind of gets to the different tiers that we’re talking about. And then there’s 10% or 20% of the folks that then are more willing to do that. And I think it’s that kind of experience that gets into the conversation to understand the different layers of the challenge that we’re facing as a community. And so I asked him to talk a little bit about having Mir to answer that.
All right. So he’s, the thing is, is I just wanted to make sure that he was invited. I mean, obviously was invited. I just wanted to make sure that, that I just don’t want to get in the habit of council members inviting people. And no, I didn’t hear talk. I did that then we’re good. Joseph, why don’t you go ahead and take no more than five minutes if you could and just share your thoughts.
You have to unmute Joseph. Can There you go. There we go. All right.
Yes. came across the party everyone.
Council, thank you very much for this opportunity. So yeah. In what Alberto has discussed, raised a bunch of issues that we currently see. Parallel. Do you also brought upon some issues that yes, we’re seeing. So the safe let me just very quickly give an update on that the safe flight program is full. We only have eight spots for that. I could double the size a lot immediately tonight will be full and we’ll still have waiting lists. The demand continues to grow for those living in vehicles. Prior to COVID. I would absolutely agree we had an 8020 I would even say maybe even 7585 15. I mean, it was pretty high percentage. We went on outreach. We consistently found folks that were hesitant to move into permanent housing model within last two weeks, I can definitely say that it’s starting to shift. I am starting to see folks that have been evicted. I’ve lived within the last five days, two families, one adult
living trailer and Arby’s that
are in situations because of what we’re what we’re all we’re all facing right now. And that is changing drastically the perspective that I had prior to
April, really.
So there is a need to help those folks on especially that are in a position because they didn’t choose to live in those those Arby’s or those trailers. We’re hoping out one family right now to get out of that situation, trying to make an exception at our safe flight even though we don’t take our bees they were in a situation where we felt we could help them you know, say I really want to challenge the mode of thinking on this that pre coded, I would agree with most everything that was said, there is a there’s a definite shift. And I feel like it’s only going to get worse. But those that have the ability to live in a trailer, they have that as an asset. They’re going to be and we’re already seeing it. I mean, I have three examples. Within the last within within this week
with the CEPA model,
you know, we screen everybody, there are very strict codes of conduct. we’ve, we’ve kicked out five people within the first month and a half of the slot opening. We were very strict on Safety Code of Conduct, they follow the rules. They’re there because they want to get out of there and onto a better better stage of life. And that’s, that’s so bad on the poor. And I think that when we talk about those in Arby’s, the gentlemen who who spoke publicly, I mean, a simple program would help him specifically and there are a number of those folks in the city. Obviously, the big contention is those that, you know, if we talk about housing first, this doesn’t qualify in the federal definition of what, you know, housing is. But so many folks, this is what they can afford. This is all they this is this is as far as they can go and housing model and submitted, they’ve made this their home, they’ve invested in these Arby’s. You know, and yes, code enforcement changes, you know, chases them around. We all know them. We all know the ones that live in within those RVs. For the most part, those aren’t the issue, the ones that are causing issues, I we are finding the ones that have come from out of the area. Cause majority of issues I mean, so if we’re looking at if we want to take care of our own, the ones that are paying taxes, the ones that are working here, you know, there could be a sick model for them. Whether it be a cheap plot of land and maybe we get them vouchers to dump at the fairgrounds temporarily. But I don’t want to see us dump everyone out of here because we have we have residents Hear that they’re part of our community. And I think that if there’s a way to get them the help that they need, you know, we can effectively do that. The safe flight model can work in that regard. Obviously, there’s a lot of logistics derbies, which is why hope hasn’t been able to deal with that yet. But, you know, I want us to be cognizant and aware of what’s happening with with evictions, we are going to see more people on our streets because of because of the Trump.
I think part of that, I think the opportunity that we also have now that we didn’t have two months ago, is our involvement in well, where we are with the housing authority in the work that we’re doing with the Housing Authority right now in terms of the work that we have to do in term, but just take Housing Choice vouchers and what we can do to bring real housing opportunities. to two individuals that that are willing to move into the coordinated entry program and move through the process. And and that’s something that we’re talking about to go a, this is a slightly different conversation but connected to it. How do we maximize the use of our Housing Choice vouchers that we have? And really work with people? Because we know that that’s work that we have to do we need to do it very quickly. To see if we can maximize it, can we actually grow the amount of Housing Choice vouchers that we have? So there’s an interesting opportunity now and the work that we’re doing to really integrate what what we have in the housing authority model into this into this conversation. I think the challenge for us and legal will have to speak to this is you have this gamut and you have, you know, the group that they that are coming in from the outside You have others that are just moving around and the neighbors are calling. And then you have a group that’s wanting to improve themselves or you know, improve their condition and move into these programs. I don’t know if you can unilaterally create a program that can make those exceptions because we have to treat everyone the same. And I think, inherently I’m going to look at Karen and Natalie Berto. That’s the challenge. Is that correct? Karen?
I mean, yeah. tognoni Community Services. So. So yeah, I mean, we what we really are trying to
what we’re trying to pour is
trying to help the program.
It’s my computer so and so that you know what we really are trying to hoping to do is to connect up with folks that are in patient where temporary lost or housing or they’re really looking for a stable place to decide. That’s really what we are trying to do up through coordinated entry, but I think was thoroughly talked about with our opportunities on my Housing Authority. Also with the with the cares Act funding, I mean down find housing assistance. So we have a lot of resources at our disposal now that we do have pre probate and so I think our our interest is how do we hook up with the vigils are who are struggling have a need for this bridge housing, work. Get folks in I would say those, but generally some of the challenges that we’re having are with folks that are not, aren’t really interested in in the system at some of the challenges that we’re also about. But we do have more resources than we had two months ago. People who are are really struggling, temporary, who lost their housing, are looking for an opportunity.
Can’t hear you at all. Sorry.
So I think what Karen was kinda was also talking about is so when you look at the COVID connections in you, and you see the the resources that are coming into the county and some of these other areas, in terms of those folks that have gone through the eviction process, It’s interesting that they went through an eviction process because I think that’s still not moving through. Those aren’t moving right now. So I’d be interested to understand that a little bit so,
so the so the only evictions happening right now, Terrell are ones that are based on behavior. Right? My understanding, so you can be evicted based on me. I don’t think you can be evicted based on America payment. That’s my understanding we can get we can get
That’s my understanding. And the behavior has to be what I’ve what the way I understand it fairly significant in terms of actually getting a court case and moving through, but we can we can verify that but I think the change condition is there are more resources coming in through the assistance program at the county level, being curious funding, Harris funding in terms of what we have to really try to house folks and I think for the first time In our history, we have the ability of the Housing Choice vouchers to match with this to maximize the amount of money that we have. So we can get people into housing.
That’s real quick.
So I guess my reason for bringing this up is that if we are in fact going to change this ordinance that absolutely nobody can park on our public streets in campers, sleeper trailers, whatever you want to call them, then how do we separate the ones who actually have children in school here who have a job here, but do not have a home? And that is for me, the whole point of a safe lot was so that we we actually can give those people a temporary place to park become part of the coordinated entry because it is housing first. You’re not living in a tent, we’re not going to be able to we’re not going to say we have no housing, you have to go back out on the street until it comes up. Um and I am not talking about long term at all I am talking about when we get housing available for me it doesn’t matter how many vouchers you have if you don’t have a place to use them. Um, and I understand we use it with hotels etc. But the other two tiers that I was talking about the basically what I’m going to call travelers who just move around, and the people who want to stay in a in their RVs but they are employed, they do go to work. They can find another place to park that in a lot that is that is equipped to have Arby’s and yes, it’s expensive, but as I said, No more expensive than rent or mortgage. So I guess the question for me is with this whole discussion, are we going to say that no Arby’s, no sleeper trailers, no vans where people sleep and live in them 24 seven are going to be allowed on our public streets. And if so, I feel very strongly that we need to separate those into residents who really want to improve their situation. And hopefully we can move them in and out very fast. But we don’t know. I just before we have a tsunami of people who are without housing, let’s be proactive and think about how we can face this before it happens to us and help the police out. So that is, that’s the whole point of my discussion.
I’m going to start calling people but it’s my two cents are that I don’t I mean, I don’t really I not only think I know Know that our public streets were not built for housing people. They bring a whole host if people are living on our streets, even in vehicles, that brings a whole host of problems sanitation, education, law enforcement. And I think that’s a separate issue than the safe lots. But I believe there’s a motion on the table currently, that we’re going to need to vote on. So after that motion I plan if no one else does, I’ll make a motion that we instruct staff to go ahead and prepare an ordinance saying that as the same ordinance that they say along the lines they presented in tonight’s presentation that we do not allow sleeper vehicles except for those instances. For mentioned.
Customer Martin.
Thank you, Mayor Bagley.
I also agree and I’ll be in agreement with emotion that suits We can’t have these vehicles parking on our streets because, you know, I’m pretty sure that everybody has learned from the last two years of this experiment that it’s completely untenable and we can’t do it. But I am concerned in terms of the distinctions that we’re making. Yeah, we can make the distinction between people who have ties with Longmont and people who don’t, because we don’t need to give a lot of services to people who are just passing through and I’m okay with that. And I’m okay with the idea that if you are a permanent resident of Longmont that should involve having a sewer so you know, I’m I’m not okay with people being allowed to park on the street just because they
have a job or family
in Longmont And pay taxes in Longmont maybe that’s the criteria and I don’t know because there are people who have you know income but not a job and that’s that should be okay if law money is their town.
But I have a problem with
is the idea that we can require that people want to be like us. You know, there are people who want to live in an RV just as there are people who want to live in a manufactured home. You know, lots of people think that manufactured home parks are an eyesore and and we ought to get rid of all of them. But that isn’t right. And I’m not sure where on that continuum of an RV is if it’s an RV that’s plugged into a sewer. You know, isn’t that okay? I don’t think you should have to be in coordinated entry and trying to get out of the RV. If that’s what you think of as your home,
so
I just wanted to get that out on the table. I agree that we need to decide to, to vote on whether we’re going to have this meeting. This consists of a consortium of people who have some expertise in this situation and hash it out but I just, I just wanted to get the milk the message out that I am not comfortable with telling people how to how they live their lives and what their house should look like. As long as they meet this, this basic public health needs of of having a sewer and not infringing on somebody else’s property rights and leaving trash all over the public right of ways but I don’t think we should tell we should have everybody wanting to aspire to house an apartment if that’s not the way they want to live their life.
Also, we’re Christiansen
completely agree that Gypsy in my soul says people ought to be able to live how they want. But the reality is, you know, this this leaves
before we had sanitary sewer systems, we had huge plagues of cholera. I don’t want the police to have to be endangered by having to clean these things out. That’s not their job at all. And people need to be educated about the need for public sanitation and basic rules like that. And I know you’re not talking about that I agree with you don’t I really do. And I do think this taskforce will be a good idea Because we need to have further discussions I would like however, to bring up two points that have not been brought up. The basic thing that we’re trying to solve is people who are living in their vehicle on the streets. That is not the only kind of an RV. I mean, that is not the only situation with Arby’s parking on the streets. And also one of our constituents have brought up the problem that at various parks, the public the the parks are being filled with Arby’s in the daytime, people leave the generators on which makes a huge racket they take up all kinds of space in the parking which is already pretty small. And nobody can use the parks and and the people adjacent to this have to keep their windows closed because the generators make so much noise and blah, blah, blah. So there’s also a problem with them parking in park. And taking up all the space in the park and not even being there they leave at night. So that’s another problem but um and I have mentioned this problem before when we talked about this and it has to do with this this entire ordinance which has to do with people parking on the streets. My neighborhood is full of contractors and they have contractor vans now according to this ordinance As it stands, a sleeper vehicle can be a camper coach, a camper trailer, a motorhome, a multipurpose trailer, or a trailer coach or a
travel. Oh no, a camper coach.
That includes most I believe it includes most construction vehicles that
for instance, there’s a guy in my neighborhood Who has a
I don’t know what it’s classified as. He’s not living in it. Nobody’s living in it. But he needs to have this at his home and most of these construction guys do because they he has wood in it. He has a table sign that he needs to take it to the job site. He doesn’t have a place to put it right now. I don’t mind being on the street. It’s fine. It’s not like a giant camp RV. But by this law as it stands right now, he wouldn’t be allowed to keep it there more than 48 hours at a time. I really think we need to distinguish between people who are living on the streets, in their RVs and people who are not people who just have an RV. They drag it out for a couple of days to clean it off and put, you know, then they put it somewhere else but they shouldn’t have to come down and get a permit to drag it out right now. They Don’t have to, they can just take it out have it there for a couple of days to clean it out when you know, pack it up, and then clean it out when they come back. We’re not distinguishing between people who have RVs and just use them actually as Arby’s, and people who have construction trailers, which by this is classified as a sleeper trailer. I mean by the current law, we need to actually have that discussion
which has to do with what I was talking about earlier with cars being
only allowed to park on the street in the same place for 48 hours. Anyway, so I want us to distinguish between people living in RVs on the street, and just RVs that are used for as actual Arby’s a couple of weeks out of the year. And Arby’s the for construction trailers, thanks.
Alright, so we’re gonna go Councilmember waters and then after Councilmember waters, I’m gonna regardless what actually let’s go with you and then and then uh, no hands quite yet, Dr. Waters. Go ahead.
You’re not. I don’t think we’re actually debating the motion. That’s what I was gonna say. But go ahead. So, so how would you you want to vote on that motion I have I have something to say.
If we have so what I want to do is handle the motion that’s currently on the table. And Councillor Peck made a motion counselor Christiansen seconded about specifically making a safe lots down on Alaska Avenue.
I only speak to one part of that motion ahead.
If that is what I heard, sounded very kind of involved. But I understand it’s to get use of County Land. I mean There’s a lot of stakeholders in in that decision. if if if the motion was to figure out how to either acquire or utilize through some arrangement, that property or some property for people who are living in RVs, because they don’t have an option, they’re registered with coordinated entry in want to get into more permanent housing. I would support that motion. If that motion was generally a place for people to just get off the street, no emotion, so I thought it would be helpful to have that clarified.
You want to do you want to make an amendment to that motion? I would accept that.
Well, then I would then I would be offered this amendment that if, in giving that direction, a site would be utilized to provide an option for Longmont residents living in Arby’s not by choice, but by circumstance registered with coordinated entry aspiring to get into more affordable housing or more permanent housing.
I guess
I guess I guess my question is simply, we were going to hear about i thought that i thought the police department and city staff was going to bring back some more information on whether or not this is going to work.
And so here we are about ready to vote on it. And the location down by Alaska Avenue I don’t know if there’s any residents down there. But
where we add on that, Harold
so I think part of it is and I like Karen jump in part of it so work that Joseph’s doing but Karen jump on in.
Oh, Mayor Council, can you hear me now?
That better Yeah.
So, so so obviously we we brought this back as a recommendation from councils, one to bring back the RBA. So that’s really what we do.
At with all of the words
all of the words, I don’t know what else to do with all the words that we were doing with COVID that we were behind.
Oh, really
emanating off for what it was hard, but we also wanted to have hope have some experience under their belts with their families. Just established that in
we don’t have a we don’t have a lot of
so Ellie Berto, do you want to take it?
Yeah, so um, Can you all can you hear me? Yeah
so Aaron’s computer
yeah Karen has had several requests um so I think yes we were wanting to see
kind of the
how hopes
safe lat experiment would go they have a month under the belt Joseph actually sent me a report and he can speak to his outcomes but it is pretty early we’ve not the only been doing it for a month I’m not sure that I was anyone at this point. I know that some I’ve been I’ve received access to some services so that that’s that’s where we’re at you know, in the in the console comm I did talk to Mountain View California, and they actually have an RV lot and there is some information around their costs and what what they did is Well, are there, they’re safe, except RVs. So, um,
Karen’s gonna we’re gonna switch here,
the mask on.
Sorry. So
the other thing that I was gonna say is that
is that we are also, you know, working on the whole idea of a bridge housing and, and so that is something that our housing x group with, with homosocial, or county is working on. We have local funding that we have set aside for, you know, for bridge housing for temporary housing. We also have, again, resources that have come into the county and we’re looking at being able to use those Rapid Rehousing dollars for bridge housing. So we just because of COVID, and all the work that we have to do with that, you just progress as a task force as fast as I think some of the council members wanted us to do, and we apologize for that. But but we wanted to have more time with the safe flat pilot and see where that that led us. And we also wanted to continue to work on repurposing money, rapid rehousing money, bridge housing. So to really continue to bring back to council a, we would, you know, here’s how much it would cost to establish, say, a lot for our V’s as compared to here’s what it would cost for us to master lease units for people to be able to move into bridge housing rather than living in their vehicles and we were behind on that because of COVID. And, and but we brought back what we had in terms of the RV ordinance,
right counselor waters.
Just say that If the week if Karen’s point is you can spend $1 on the bridge housing or $1 on the investment in an RV safe lot, I would spend $1 the first dollar in every dollar on bridge housing is one of the other number one. My point was that I’m sympathetic to the Longmont residents who are in RVs by circumstance. If they were in an RV by choice, my I would say you got to live like me. But I would say if you live like me, you are going to pay property taxes which you don’t pay in, in an RV. You are going to have to resolve disputes with your neighbors if you have them, which you don’t have to do in an RV you can drive away. I mean there’s to live like somebody who’s going to, you know, burden themselves with a mortgage and all the rest of it. There are consequences, different consequences if you don’t we make our choices. And I don’t get to be held harmless for the choices I make. And I don’t think the city ought to be obligated to hold folks harmless for the choices they make if they chose to live in RVs. We’re all adults. And I understand if you’re an adult with kids, and you’re in this by circumstance, the circumstance that calls for a different remedy. But I just want to be clear if we’re if if we’re looking for a way to address families, in circumstance living in a circumstance. I want to do whatever we can, whether it’s Councilmember pecks proposal, or or not, but you use those dollars to do something else. But the other tiers that I think that was a good way to lay it out, Councilman, Councilwoman pack the travelers or just the folks by choice Who are you know, living in long line. I don’t think that we need to go to extraordinary lengths to accommodate them. I don’t want to police chase them around. Don’t think the neighborhood’s I’d have to manage that as well personally. But the third category, we need to get creative about or for and innovate and make highest and best use of whatever the resources are.
So I can answer Councilmember or Mayor Bagley second, go ahead. So the estimate that they used in creating a facility and again this is a rough estimate. Actually, let me take you back to California so the one that they did find the city invested $100,000 to upgrade a site for a safe lot did not include restrooms and other facilities on it. They had to put lighting, electricity, other other components into and they contracted with a faith based nonprofit. The original contract it appeared was 220,000 In the information that they provided to Ellie Berta said that that the next proposed budget from the nonprofit partner would be closer to 300,000 to operate that facility. annual basis. Correct, le Berta? That is correct. That’s what they told me. It’s an annual expense based on what they’re doing. When we research providing restroom facilities in the RV lot, the rough estimate on that cost was 275 to $300,000 of essentially capital costs to do it. So you see how they built a lot, didn’t put other amenities into it. They were on the lower end of 100,000. You provide more amenities into it, you then get into the the upper end of the construction cost and then the ongoing operational costs, I think would vary depending on the group and in how they We’re staffed and utilize volunteers. My estimate would probably be based on what, you know, I’ve seen from them 150 to 300,000 annually based on other operations, but I think that’s the answers you were looking for.
Yeah, in America.
Thank you very badly. As far as the specific motion on the table. I am in disagreement and will not be supporting the motion as I think that there should be a generalized facility provided as far as the city should be involved in the sense that if there’s assistance needed for people that are looking to get into housing, or they cannot quite afford, say, a full cost of staying at the RV park on Main Street, for instance, that there might be some assistance there, as well as similar that we provide to folks in our country. Who are in, you know, permanent housing, but still need assistance for living costs. So I think that that would be necessary. Not a safe lot in the capital S sense, but a secure place where people can feel safe being. But I do feel that penalizing folks that do choose to have their lifestyle of living in a in a RV or something similar is not the right right method to go forward either. And that’s why I can’t support the motion on the table. And as I’ve told constituents who have talked to you about this issue in general, I am happy to support making the ordinance more strict once we have an alternative for folks, or once we have exhausted all of our possibilities of having such an alternative. So I can’t support the making the ordinance more strict until we have something tangible on our plate to provide that alternative for folks. So that’s where I’ll be as far as this motion, engine in generally what the subjects talking about.
All right, well, the motion currently on the table is are we gonna make a safe lock down there on Alaska Avenue, specifically for folks who have shown shown that they are looking you’re moving towards some type of permanence based on Councilmember waters amendment. That count that motion was made by Councillor Peck and was seconded by Councillor Christiansen for only a minute by Dr. Waters. That’s the motion is currently on the table. So let’s go ahead, Councillor Martin.
I just want to say that wasn’t quite how I understood the motion. I think council woman pack wanted to bring together people to put together a specific plan for doing that not are we going to do it? Is that correct? Councilmember?
Exactly. It’s nothing more than a discussion. This is this is county land that is in the city of Longmont. There are no NIMBY issues at all. It’s right behind us. cement plant on Alaska Avenue behind Isaac Walton. It is a dead end street and Boulder County Housing Authority. Their vision is to supply housing within the county. There are buildings there that possibly have bathrooms in it. I’ve already talked to the commissioners about this for four years. All I want is to get a group of people together to discuss the possibility and what it would take. Would it really be that expensive? If we use you know, the fairgrounds dumping station if the buildings have a bathroom if let’s have a discussion, that isn’t going to hurt anything to discuss what we could possibly do moving forward. So I’m going to call the question.
All right. Oh, we have the customer Martin.
Oh, I just, I don’t know do you second calling the question.
No,
I concur with Councilwoman pet that we should vote on. Alright, let’s
do it. Let’s go ahead and this question has been called spin seconded. not debatable on favor taking a vote say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right Motion carries unanimously we’re going to go ahead and vote let’s go ahead and restate this sounds like the motion then is one that we are directing staff to.
can form a
I don’t want to retask force that but the form a committee made up of staff to go ahead and look into the possibility specifically the costs, the timeframe, process, etc. In order to create a safe slot, down on county owned land located on about this particular area on Alaska Avenue. And with the understanding that it would be used for the folks who are from Longmont looking to move towards permanency in their housing situation. Other than living on the street.
Thank you.
Okay. All in favor say aye.
Aye. Okay. Opposed say nay.
Nay, nay. So the motion carries four to three with myself. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and Councillor Martin opposed. So you have your direction Herald
dark waters and address everything in this country.
No, go ahead, make a motion if you want to.
I’m going to move that they that we did. We also direct staff to bring back changes in the ordinance reflecting staff recommendations. Understanding this in timing with this conversation that we just approved.
I’ll second. I’ll second that. But can I just clarify the motion that basically what we did the motion is that we direct staff to follow through on the recommendations pertaining to the prohibition of sleeper vehicles on the streets with the with the
with the exception of the things listed in the previous slides
that there are some exceptions they presented to us today. Yes, yeah,
yeah. loading and unloading and whatnot.
Correct. Councillor Peck? Let’s just go calcium or pecs. Councilmember referring Councilmember Christiansen
I would like to add an amendment to that that in the part Anna. I can’t bring it up. But it is basically saying that they can’t park on public streets. I would like to add any public property for example. trailheads um, city parks. That they cannot use those spaces for places. So it’d be any public property, not just streets. And does anybody agree with that? Because we’ve had, we’ve had emails from people saying that, you know, they park in the parking lots of city parks, and sit there all day or all night, or
almost except that amendment. Thank you. Yes. Awesome. So, Councillor Christiansen
Suzy was first.
Oh, sorry, Suzy. Yep. Your first.
Um, you know, I guess I I am not comfortable accepting any kind of, you know, read just any of these allowances or eliminating the allowances under Unless we have some kind of alternative option presented as well so I you know I won’t be supporting moving forward with this I mean I I’m okay with hearing what the recommendations are I guess, or going more in depth, but I want to know what what other options are for for individuals. What kinds of solutions can we come up with first?
Cuz we’re a Christiansen
Would you please read that? What
Councilman waters said I’m unclear what the what we’re voting on. But I would like us to clarify the situation for contractors because right now, it isn’t clear for contractors and we don’t want to cut down on anybody who’s trying to earn a living, being able to earn a living, I my neighborhoods full of contractors and I am very supportive of them. There. Good guys.
So the current motion on the table is pursuant to adopt steps to direct staff to prepare an ordinance following through and staffs recommendation this evening. That was in the slides that basically is prohibiting sleeper vehicles, with the exceptions provided by staff. those exceptions specifically were Harold helped me out. You had the loading and unloading. It sounds like a Councilmember Christiansen was there was there an exception in there for for work, work vehicles.
We’ll have to work with the attorney’s office to make sure that we carve it so you don’t have an unintended consequence of work vehicles and those types of things.
Because I think really what we’re talking about here is just making sure that people aren’t sleeping on the streets and their RVs and then listing exceptions in an ordinance that would basically allow for us to allow for the situations that you mentioned, Councilmember Christiansen and Those listed in the ordinance customer Martin.
I just think the language that you’re looking for is that if it’s a vehicle that’s a you know, its form factor would have allow it to be asleep for vehicle, but it’s not fitted out as a sleeper vehicle. It’s out. It’s for tools and lumber and stuff, then it doesn’t count. You know?
My Computer went all wonky anyway.
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Just to kind of reiterate, I will be voting against this motion because I don’t feel that we’re far enough along this for an alternative site that we were talking about. And so bringing this ordinance and making it more strict before we have an alternative site would kind of make the efforts towards the alternative site seem less effective to me. Also, oh, but I would like to state that when I feel it would be appropriate. I do agree with the recommendations that staff has brought forward once an alternative site is in play. So I feel like the recommendations were spot on. I just don’t think we’re there yet. As far as being ready to make that that leap.
I’m I don’t see any hands up. I guess I’d say that I don’t view these issues. I mean, they’re real. They’re like cousins, but they’re not they’re not I think going hand in hand. Right now we’ve got a real issue with people on the streets. Even come deputy commander Saturday, you see him just subconsciously nodding his head. We’ve got a real issue here. And those people who are living in the art in their RVs on our streets, by definition, are not residents of Longmont. They are they don’t pay property taxes. They’re not living in homes. We don’t know. They’re there. It’s a problem. Now, in the motion that we provided earlier that we’re gonna be looking into is not about just a willy nilly RV lot. For people who don’t want to live in houses. They’re specifically Long, long South Beach. The motion the past was there going to be Longmont residents who were working towards permanent home homes in Longmont. So I don’t view these as is as having to move forward together. I think that it’s a good idea to get Arby’s off the streets. It’s more sanitary it, it’s healthier for our community. And at the same time, we can then focus on getting a safe lots that will I think meet the criteria that we’ve already established. Councillor Martin,
I think Thank you, Mayor Begley, I think we need to to include in in the no parking ordinance, some kind of an interim solution where for four months, six months, something like that, we come up with an arrangement where you can put the housing use the Housing Choice vouchers on the places in North places in place in North Maine, where you You can have,
you know,
dumping tokens or something that you can use at the at the fairgrounds. At one time, Johnny Marsh was going to look at a negotiating rental of some places at the fairgrounds at certain times. And I just, I understand that none of those are good solutions. What I’m trying to avoid is people who have been relying on that if I move my car every 48 hours and dump at the fairgrounds and don’t put trash on the streets, then I’m considered a good citizen. Now we’re trying to say, yeah, you can have been abiding by all of those laws, and you have a job and you pay sales taxes, and you pay personal property taxes and keep your vehicle tag and in good repair and we’re still kicking you out of town and I Just think we should have some kind of an interim solution. So we don’t kick those people out of town. Because what we’re doing is, you know, we’re we’re essentially saying, Yeah, you were a good Longmont resident and now you’re not anymore because some other people abuse the privilege. I just can’t get down with that.
dark waters
vaguely. So it sounds to me. Like there are council members who would like to move that we direct staff to come back with a proposal to spend $300,000 or more whatever that number was to construct, whatever to provide whatever the infrastructure is, lighting, showers,
sanitation system.
In that we would that would proceed anything else that we would allow What we’ve just seen tonight to continue on the streets, putting our police officers in a position to chase it down, paying for the cleanup, etc. And I just have to say for me that makes no sense. Your point Mayor Bagley, about these being cousins, not not tied to one another. mean I there is no proposal on the table to do what I think I’ve heard Mayor Pro Tem suggest happen. There’s no there’s no proposal to build a facility. So given that we would have an ordinance that goes on indefinitely. until there’s until there’s that proposal and it’s in, it’s completed. In the meantime, we put code enforcement, law enforcement in the neighborhoods in untenable situations, it seems to me, I think we ought to be clear on it. If somebody wants to propose that we build out a facility for others or for RV residents, other than those who aren’t
By circumstance who are registered with coordinated entry and who aspire to permanent housing, I’m not going to support that. But because that’s not the way I think we ought to use our affordable housing dollars. But if that’s if that’s the proposal, somebody out of Megan, otherwise, I think we have an obligation to the rest of the community to deal with this.
Councilmember Martin?
Hey, I don’t think you are right. They are cousins
of that caliber Martin it so it’s 11 o’clock. I’m not just going to end the meeting. Somebody I’m going to move that we extend the meeting, but I am going to ask that we hurry the end of the rest of the meeting along because we’ve been here a while and I for one, want to go to bed. And
Sure. Sure. And also I’ll second your motion to extend the meeting. All in favor extending the meeting say aye.
Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously Councillor Martin. Ciao.
What I what I wanted to say was that we don’t necessarily have to build a really expensive Arby’s RV safe lot ever. What I would like to have is a three to six month interim solution for people who are living in RVs responsibly now to be able to survive until they can make plans and they know what to do. So you know, we I don’t want to kick them out of town and they can’t get to their jobs and they don’t have any option of doing something else. Let’s just, you know, even we’ve even given them a chance to even if if what up what happens is eventually they do have to leave Longmont at least we given them some warning longer than the than the month it takes for an ordinance to go into effect. I think that we should be at least that compassionate customer
I agree with you, Councilwoman Martin. And that could be a separate motion, that the initiation date of this ordinance is and in the meantime, there are some ways we can educate using the police. With educating all of these contacts that they make in RVs, given the ordinance, give them a timeline, tell them what it’s gonna how it’s going to change. That’s a separate motion. So let’s vote on this one. And then if you want to make that as far as when we’re going to actually incorporate this ordinance. That would be a good idea, I think.
Yeah. Okay. That’s
alright. So we can we can we can address that motion in a second. But right now, there’s motion on the table that we’re going to go ahead and adopt staffs recommendations and or, I’m sorry, direct staff that they go ahead and prepare an ordinance based on tonight’s presentation, so all in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. I
opposed say nay.
Nay. I would
say that again.
I was in a,
I was in I. Alright, raise your hand if you Okay, let’s do that again. Raise your hand if you’re an eye.
All right, raise your hand if your name
Okay, the motion carries four to three. With council members waters, Martin paddock and myself four. And the three other council members against
Kazmir Martin.
Thank you, I would like to move. That’s staff
bring back an interim solution of at least three months where we would provide a way for people who pass certain criteria such as the state of maintenance of their RV and having an income that’s tied to Longmont or having family, children in school. You guys know, Ella, Ella barrows nodding. So I think he knows what those conditions are that we care about. So that they have some warning before they’re totally thrown out of town. And that might mean, you know, a designated parking place that has no amenities, but they get a token that lets them use the fairgrounds. Some kind of option like that, so that we are not running people out on a rail in two to four weeks, because they just don’t have time to rearrange their lives that way.
Second,
Harold,
and I just wanted to ask if we would have the latitude to come up with a broader range of based on what Karen said in terms of some of the private funding that we have available, a broader range of options. That still is A bridge solution? Absolutely.
Yeah. Just that was intended as a minimum. Okay.
And I guess the I guess the other thing that we’re forgetting is these are RVs. I don’t think we’re running them out on a rail. I mean, they can literally start their car and drive somewhere and so don’t
have a car, they only have the RV and they can’t get to their job.
That’s the problem. My point is that if they have an RV, it’s working, they drive it somewhere else. They’re not evicted. They’re not. It’s not we’re not running them out of town. They are they are driving a vehicle. And so I’m going to vote against the motion because I would like to a crbs off our streets and be see what staff comes up with our safe lots. And I think that is the solution that that the motion would naturally lend itself to which is once we have safe locks, you say By the way, you can’t be on the street. You’re safe lots and there’s no room, move on.
Yeah, but some people are against having a safe lot because it’s more expensive than the interim housing. So, um, you know, we’re, I think we’re kind of losing track of what the solution is and maybe when the staff comes back we will and lose track of it. But if you have to drive your RV away and park it’s so far away with no public transportation, that you lose your job. You know, it’s kind of like the problems that we have with coordinated entry now where you can’t hold down a job because you’re on the bus all day going to five different service stations around the great Boulder County area. And what we’ll be doing by saying you immediately can’t park on the street is you’re creating that situation where people with jobs can’t get to them. And and I want to provide an interim solution that does not create 50 more instances of that because it’s an injustice. All right,
let’s go ahead and vote. All in favor, the motion is to the you want to repeat the motion, the motion is to create some type of interim solution, but before we kick them out of town or ticket them, that we that we tell our police, which we don’t want to fund to do things like this. You know what we’re going to have them take on one more responsibility to become the RV enforcement agency.
Am I getting that motion? Correct?
Yeah, if you want to put it that way you can. But
that’s not the way I put it. Mr. Mayor, I’m just pointing
out what’s inherent in the motion. All right. It was seconded. Let’s go ahead and vote. All in favor say aye.
Aye.
All opposed say nay nay.
Okay, there were a couple people I didn’t see lips moving. So go ahead and take this vote again.
Raise your Your hand if you’re for the motion.
Raise your hand if you’re against the motion.
All right, the motion carries five to two, with myself and Kelsey waters against. All right. Thank you very much. Okay, let’s move on to Mayor counts. comments. Deputy Commander sadder
I noticed your hand went up or you and I
are in a No, I’m just
kidding. By. Thank you. All right. Okay. mayor and council comments. All right, Councillor Martin?
Well, I just want to commend the council because what I have noticed about this debate that has not been true for a long time, is that people have been taking positions based on their personal convictions. Not on which imaginary side they belong on, or or you know, who campaigned for their election or any of that stuff. It’s, you know, we’ve been we’ve been debating based on what we think is right and wrong and what the best way to get to something is. And it was just really wonderful to see and hear that. So thanks, everybody.
Thank you, Marcia cows. Rebecca.
Thank you very badly. Um, I heard from some constituents that there was a really important PRP a meeting on Friday, a day long discussion about alternative resources or an alternative. It’s late alternative energy. And I was wondering if you could tell us because they’re gonna be voting on that next month. Um, can you tell us how that went?
very badly.
I was the are you talking about the PRP board meeting on Thursday? Yeah. was in Houston, Texas.
Oh, you were so you didn’t get to go. I did not attend
that meeting. You do
the mayor Pro Tem to go in your stead.
I did not. Meerkat doesn’t sit on that board.
I was on the meeting, I can tell you what happened but not as a member of the board. Go ahead if you’d like
to if you’d like to share.
Well, okay. Christian is Mayor Bagley, are you going to be at the next meeting in order to vote?
Yes, I yes, I will be. Okay. Is this a Is this a public is that are you making a public point here? Councilmember Pac,
kind of I I was very concerned about this meeting I was waiting for. Are you to go? Yeah, no, we’re out of town. And I was hoping that Mayor Pro Tem could go in your stead since he is the
Yeah, well, that’s how that board works.
Okay, so There is no alternative for for when I’m not present at that board. It is not a it’s not a council appointment. It is one by charter and I vote not as a council member, but I vote as a board member.
Okay. That is
my that is my legal obligation. But I don’t miss them often. But I had an obligation down in Texas that I did not feel like sharing with Council and I will still not share that with Council. But once again, I appreciate my fellow council council members trying to cause problems that aren’t there. But anyway, anybody else want to make a comment?
Yes, customer Christiansen
I’ve been doing what’s called Death cleansing which means you clean out your house You don’t sound Oh, your poor kid with the process. So I gave away 40 years of National Geographics, and I want to thank the family who took them They were delighted. They sent me pictures of them. They said, how happy they were. And that made me feel very good. And because I had a very sentimental attachment to them, and I want to thank the guy from Tinker mill who took a load of wood off my front porch that I was also giving away. I’ve been giving away stuff left and right. So if anybody wants anything, I probably got it. Come to my house.
All right, I guess my I guess it’s late. So I’m going to watch what I
say. But I would just admonish and counsel my fellow council members, including your Councilmember packed and you Councilmember algo fairing, give me a call. If you want to be critical, be critical of me in public. Believe it or not, a lot of times I just feel that. I believe that a lot of our dirty laundry doesn’t need to be aired here. And I tend to get defensive when people poke me. And so I
don’t want that to happen anymore. Okay. So
I agree with you and I would like you to do the same.
All right, we’ll notice that I don’t typically poke unless poked first. So all right, well give me a call. We can talk about it. Councilmember pack. All right. Anybody else? All right, then let’s go ahead and let’s take a vote to conclude the meeting. Go ahead. Sorry, Harold. Eugene, anything.
No comments? No comments, Mayor.
All right. Can we have a motion?
I move. we adjourn.
I’ll second that. All right. It’s been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. All right. Have a good week, guys. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai