https://otter.ai/s/B9iY_FPvTayMA-XlHRn5OQ
0:00
Thank you. Good evening. Sorry we’re getting started a few minutes late this evening. If the secretary could please take the roll.
0:11
And raise your hand as your name is called please so that the Secretary can see you. Thank you, Sue Oberg.
0:19
Jeff lm volgen
0:22
my nose gun law.
0:25
Yes.
0:26
Paige Lewis.
0:28
Here, Dan Olson. Here.
0:32
Robert put him here.
0:35
That’s just Oakley here
0:39
and Edward regas.
0:42
Thank you.
0:44
Thank you. Meetings are being held remotely due to the governor safer at home order as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. You can watch the meeting livestream at Bitly bi t.ly slash Longmont YouTube Live. Anyone wishing to provide public comment, during public invited to be heard must watch the live stream of the meeting for instructions. When the call and information is displayed on the screen, please call the number displayed. Enter the meeting ID and when asked for your participant ID press the pound sign. You will hear a confirmation that you have entered the meeting and will be told how many people are already participating in the meeting, including Council and staff. callers will be placed on hold and muted until they are called by the last three digits of their phone number, at which time they will be unmuted and invited to speak. Please remember to mute the live stream when you are called upon to speak. Comments are limited to three minutes per person, and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments.
2:00
The next order of business is approval of the agenda.
2:05
Is there any discussion about the agenda?
2:11
I move we approve the agenda.
2:13
Do I have a second? Sure. Second. Thank you. The motion has been made and seconded. All in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.
2:23
Aye. Aye.
2:26
Okay. The agenda is approved unanimously, and we’ve got that Secretary.
2:35
Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Next, I’d like to move to approval of last month’s minutes.
2:44
Take a moment for you all to get to last month’s minutes.
2:56
Are there any corrections or
3:01
Other changes.
3:16
Okay, do I hear a motion to approve last month minutes or the month June’s minutes Excuse me.
3:25
Okay, and Jeff seconds. And all those in favor of approving June’s minutes please signify by raising your hand.
3:36
Thank you. We have unanimous approval of June’s minutes. The next item on our agenda is public invited to be heard. The following information is also being displayed on the screen. For those viewing from home, please dial 1669900 6833 When prompted, please enter the meeting id 89586925691. When you are prompted for the participant ID please press the pound sign. mute your live stream when you call. We will now take five minutes to wait for any public invited to be heard.
8:07
Thank you Nikki, do we have any public ready to comment?
8:18
Heather, do you see anything? I don’t see anything.
8:21
Share? No, we’re at four minutes and 20 seconds. If you give me 30 seconds more so that the screen can stop being displayed publicly then then we can begin. So let me just wait till it clears the live stream. And currently we have no callers All right. It is now cleared the live stream. And you may continue.
8:52
Thank you. The next agenda item is old business. Final button rock management plan survey. Is that you Danielle
9:05
Hi, Yes, that’s me.
9:08
So I think Heather or Susan is just gonna bring up a document to look at while I talk. Just. There’s another way to process what I’m saying.
9:19
Give me just a minute.
9:20
Yeah. Okay.
9:30
Dan Olson Yes. Okay.
9:33
I’m sorry. Just a moment, Daniel. Sure.
9:37
Dan, you’re muted.
9:43
Dan, you need to unmute if you want to talk.
9:55
Is there something in our packet and you know that I’m not finding?
9:58
No, there’s nothing in the packet. Get the survey results came in too late for me to be able to get something written, which is why I have this.
10:07
Okay, great. Thanks. Yep.
10:16
Can everyone see that?
10:20
All right, Danielle, you may begin.
10:22
Okay, um, I am just touching base with prab. We’ve been working on the button rock management plan since February 2019. We’ve had two public meetings June 2019, and November 2019. And we are going to have one final public meeting. We’re looking at early October, I believe, until we’ve also had three public surveys. And we just concluded our third public survey which is what I’m here to talk with you about tonight. I have most of the results compiled but what I don’t have Is 131 comments? I can tell you what they were about, but I don’t have them pulled or sorted in a way that I can share meaningfully right now. So I’m just going to go ahead and share answers to the questions. So we wanted to end so this third public survey because of the pandemic was done completely online, we, we did have volunteers lined up and we were planning we had cards, postcards ready to go up, up at the preserve in the same way we had done survey number two, but that changed, but we still did good, get good responses. So we had about a little over 1000 people respond to survey number two, but we had 831 people respond to this survey online. And so here we go. There were seven questions. Most people were from Longmont. So the first question Where are you from? 74 people 74% of the people that answered this question. Were from long line so you can see 160 people skipped this question none of the questions were required. The second question to alleviate parking pressure at the preserve would you ride a shuttle to and from button rock preserve? Most people answered this question only 11 people skipped it 72% of people said no, they would not.
12:23
They would not write a shuttle to button knock.
12:26
Third question is a little bit long so let me line it out. The goals button rock preserve our to one protect our drinking water supply to protect surrounding ecosystems including healthy forests three protects sustainable recreational opportunities. Research indicates that when humans are accompanied by dogs both on and off trail their area of influence such as noise sent trash increases significantly impacting wildlife behavior and movement. How would you feel if a no dog policy was instituted So, almost every single person who took their survey answered, answered, only two people skipped and 64% strongly disagreed about us, potentially instituting a no dog policy 25% strongly agreed and 11% were neutral. Fourth question, beginning in 2021, staff recommends eliminating the button rock fishing permit and fee once again once in effect, anglers will only need to carry a state license instead of both a button rock permit and a state license. Do you agree with this recommendation? 48% strongly disagrees. 30% is our neutral and 22 strongly agree five question five visitation visitation is overwhelming the preserve the parking lot restrooms staff trails. Staff recommends dispersing use and limiting overall visitor numbers such as cars, people Dogs by charging a fee on Fridays Saturdays and Sundays between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Do you agree with this strategy 55% of those who answered said yes, they they agree with a fee during these times 28% felt that maybe and 17% said no. If you support dispersing and limiting overall visitor numbers, what would be the best way to accomplish this? So, we gave them choices of Would you rather pay a daily vehicle pass fee? And then long mountain lions utility customers would pay five and non customers $10 each time or do you prefer an annual pass where utility customers pay 65 and non customers pay 150 or would you prefer or if you’re senior, then your your annual pass is 35 for utility customers 74 non customers or you don’t support dispersing so we had a 35% of people saying daily pass 26 annual pass another 27 for the senior annual pass. And 12% said I don’t support dispersing on our limiting visitors. And so then this final one seven is just a little bit on the comments 131 people of the 838 that took the survey did make comments and most comments had to do with dogs, some with hiking fees, parking trails, fishing cars, and bikes. So up up at the very top of the document is just the summary here most are from Longmont most not in favor of shuttle most do not agree with a no dog policy. Most did not agree with eliminating that fishing permit. Most were in favor of charging a fee. Most who were in favor of a fee chose the weekend daily fee. And the top three comments were about dogs hiking and charging a fee. So Now that this survey is concluded, we have we have more analysis to do on on these results. But now I’d like to just open it up to you if you have any questions for me.
16:11
And you know, the question about passes was that a, you could only you could only choose one of those choices.
16:22
It had a table in it. And so yes, I think you could only choose one.
16:30
Although I guess my question to you is how, and perhaps you’re not ready to answer this yet. How do you interpret those results? Given that, you know, those are those are not mutually exclusive choices? Yes.
16:39
Well, I mean, I was just reading it back to you thinking that we might want to add together. You know, the the weekend and the annual and the annual, the annual for seniors, I mean, those are people responding that they would pay and this is the way that they would want to pay so I guess we would sort it out by
17:03
I’m deciding.
17:06
I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought.
17:10
What what I’m here to say, I guess.
17:13
Yeah, you haven’t quite worked out what those answers mean yet.
17:18
Right? I mean, if I’m thinking about it now, the majority of people would be willing to pay some people selected. Pay pay as they go. Some people selected annual and more people selected annual than not.
17:34
Right, that’s, that’s where I’m at with interpreting that
17:41
web page.
17:43
Can you just remind us quickly what the next steps are and how you will take all of this cumulative data and also how you’ll sort of balance the fact that this is a preserve and a watershed with you know, people The buyer can heavily recreate bear.
18:05
So what we’ve done throughout when we have so we’ve got the engage Longmont page, the caring for button rock page. And so the information on that page, and also the two public surveys that we are the two public meetings that we’ve had so far, what we’re emphasizing is just that, that, you know, the goals, the goals for button rock preserve are protect, to protect the water and the watershed to protect the surrounding ecosystems. And then third down on that list is to provide passive, passive recreation in a way that can fit into the other goals of the preserve. So we’ve reminded the public about that all along. And so what this what this survey is focusing on is is within that third item, the recreation and and how people feel about it, and So it doesn’t go into those other levels, if that makes sense at all. So, in terms of the second part of your question, what we have left is we’re drafting a document now. And so we, I will take this to council later this fall, the draft document. And at that time after we had our final public meeting, and we kind of talked about the survey results and spend more time talking with the public about that we’re going to take all of that, and the draft document and staff recommendations to Council and they, you know, they will give us back their recommendations and then we hope to finalize the document by December of this year.
19:50
We’ll prep be seeing the draft document for
19:55
all three of the boards. We have three boards that we’re keeping informed. So we have practices stainability board and water board. So yes, all three of the boards will be part of the process part of the public process before we take it to Council and if it makes sense after if they give us recommendations and we need to speak with the boards again then that’s the type of thing that that will do.
20:22
Any other questions for Danielle?
20:27
Have you seen? Oh, I’m sorry, Jeff. Go ahead and then I’ll ask my question
20:31
this one and understand I don’t know the anything about the fishing fee but I guess I was wondering what’s the rationale for having an additional fee on top of the state fee it sounds like people were in favor it I guess I’m just curious for a little more information about it.
20:44
Um, I’m not going to be able to give you a full answer, I would need to
20:52
not yet at this point. But the rationale behind the fee is because In one sense that protects the preserve, because it’s limiting the number of users who can buy the additional permit. And you have to you have to show up and you have to take this extra step to get this extra permit. But what’s happened in recent years is that we don’t sell out of those permits. And especially when we had one Ranger up there, what it became is a lot of administrative work for that Ranger to deal with, to deal with the permitting system to enforce the permitting system. And it became, and also the the fees from the permit weren’t going directly back into the preserve. So, and not all of that information in that detailed way was included in the question. So I think if, if the public knew that, possibly knew that The fee isn’t going directly back into the preserve. Perhaps that would be important information to
22:09
I guess I’m just wondering how often people don’t even know, you know, like, I took my son fishing recently. He’s under 16. He doesn’t need a permit. Do they run into issues with people to showing up in fishing?
22:23
That’s a ranger question in terms of how much they’re doing enforcement. I don’t I don’t know the answer. I know it does happen sometimes. But I can’t give you a
22:34
you know, if people have to buy the permit from that Ranger, can they buy it ahead of time somewhere,
22:38
there is. The way it usually works is they go to the memorial center in Longmont or or there’s another building and lions where they go for sale on one day and so people get in line and the people that have been doing it for years. know to get in line first and you know, then get number one and not Part two and number three, they’re they’re numbered out like that. So there, there is a way to get it at one time in person or if you missed the first day, you can go and get one later.
23:10
David Bell.
23:12
Yeah, this is good.
23:15
Add a little bit of Danielle’s commentary and Dan will propose some history could add some to but another piece that I know that as we look at, you know, trying to balance that reducing the use of capacity a bit button rock by having the fishing permits, because at one point, there was a there was a pretty strong demand for that. And as we saw that demand decrease, we could Danya Danielle mentioned that we weren’t even going through and selling all those permits, we did have this administrative kind of burden that way that wasn’t even achieving its goal of reducing numbers because we didn’t have the people showing up. The thing is that we would like to be able to look at what this is cpW as long mount was reducing the number of people love their fishing, fishing. cpW had a hard time justifying stocking rates. energy that lake. So the more we open it to the general public with their fishing biases, the more support we we get some cpW. So that’s another piece that I think, as we look at how we balance the information we get back from the public with the long term management goals that we want to include in those conversations. And I think the other piece that went back and how we manage the information we’re getting where we get results back from the public, I think the best thing we could do is say, this is the management direction that staff thinks we should be moving. This is public things we’re doing this is what the board think we should be doing. That should be the easy ones. I think the ones where we may see conflict between what staff is recommending and board’s recommendation recommending and the public would be these are areas that we have an advanced sort of signal recognition, this may be a more of a challenging change to make. So I think those are the things that we’ll be using for information for as well because again, I as Daniel said, we’re going to be managing this for the watershed for the preserve, and some of those may not be in line with what the the data coming back is. But I think there’s something it’s very important for us and counsel to know if we want to make a decision that we recognize your friends to be more challenging for the public. So I think it’s gonna be us trying to recognize this data as we make those recommendations.
25:16
Thank you. Have you seen a pandemic bump at button rock like you have in the city parks?
25:24
Danielle? Yeah,
25:25
yes, we have. And especially in late spring, early summer, we were experiencing that. And we were experiencing the parking lot, filling up early in the morning. So we actually were directing additional staff to take shifts at button rock to help direct traffic and make sure that people weren’t parking illegally and that they they turned around. We had signs up in lions for a time highway signs, letting people know in lions that the parking lot was full so that they wouldn’t drive up the road and make the long drive just to be turned around.
26:07
I think
26:09
I can’t remember exactly when that stopped being so, so busy maybe the end of June? David.
26:17
Yeah, I think is probably the end of June and I would say I just wanted to, but prep members know that this was a very collaborative effort to make this happen too because it really did take we’re working with button rock Rangers getting impact or information back to the neighbors up there work in Boulder County, county who let us put no parking signs along county road which I think this has been asking for for years after one of our meetings because Boulder County for service almost Hyde Mountain Park saw that spike that you’re talking about with COVID. And they pretty much on the first request to go ahead and put up They even gave us a temporary size we put those up as Daniel mentioned, we were looking for a variable message board to put down in town to tell people online It was gonna be busy and lions stepped up and said, you know, let’s not have multiple sides on here, go ahead and use ours. So we worked with lions on that. So it was definitely Dan wolf at his group going up there on weekends to help the Rangers, Longmont PD actually has two officers going through as well. So it definitely took a quite a bit of upfront effort. But I think people are recognizing that there was limited parking, and they started finding different locations. And I do think as Daniel mentioned, there probably was it June sort of timeframe when other parks are open. So Rocky Mountain started opening up, some of the things down lower started opening up. So I think people had a few more options. But I I think we’re now at a point where it just seems like a busy weekend. It is not that sort of overwhelming. Illegal parking and challenges that we’re having. We’re having up there early in the spring. If
27:51
I just wanted to understand how the city of Lyons is actually involved in the decision making you said we’re going to counsel I assume that means long line. So what is lions rolling all of us
28:01
Lyons is one of our technical advisory
28:05
stakeholders in the plan so Lyons has been at the table in that way
28:11
and they do get their water from best this year piece we have as we as Daniel I think in her documents is pretty clear that you know, she talks about how many people button rock serves we definitely include lions in those numbers that correct Daniel?
28:23
That’s correct.
28:28
Okay, anything else for Danielle?
28:34
Go ahead, Dan.
28:36
I guess I’m disappointed you know, I like taking my dogs are off leash once upon a time and now we’ve only been back once or twice with him on leash. But on the other hand, I’m reminded that he can’t even go in the boulder watershed. So I hate for us to have to shut the whole I guess we can’t shut the whole thing down. You explained to me before that. We had there is some provision that recreation is included in this, but it could be even more restrictive is the bottom line like boulder does.
29:08
And, and one thing I didn’t mention here is that we have some limited camera data that shows us number of dogs off leash in the metro area. That’s where everybody likes to go up. And yeah, that’s dog nation on sleepy lion trail the meadow. And so that’s that’s a lot of where we’re seeing people doing that and repeat offenders doing that. And so that will be included in some of this information. Just Just the limited times we had the camera on what were we seeing during those times.
29:48
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you, David. Moving on to item number six new business. We’re going to hear from francy I believe on the recommendations from the Climate Action Task Force. I would remind the board to mute when you’re not actually talking.
30:08
Great, thank you enough Heather. I have a presentation I believe it’s going to bring up
30:25
my The only person I can’t actually I’m not seeing others. Okay, I just have to be patient. Um, so my name is francy Jaffe, I’m the water conservation and sustainability specialist. So today, I will be bringing the board recommendations from the Climate Action recommendations report. And this report is a result of the climate emergency resolution, which was passed by city council in October of 2019. It called for the city to pull together a Climate Action Task Force to develop recommendations of how to become a Sustainable non carbon community. The report that was presented first presented to City Council on June 30. Details recommendations from the Climate Action Task Force which was a group of community members, community partners and city staff, as well as the equity recommendations from the just transition plan committee. I’ll be going through both of them, as well as highlighting some of the community engagement from this plan and then we will end on asking the board to vote on four of the different climate action recommendations. We are returning to City Council on August 25th. And between that city council requested that we bring different recommendations to the board and to get board feedback to help city council decide on next steps. Next slide.
31:53
Before going through the recommendations, I wanted to highlight that the Climate Action Task Force decided on six different times. topic areas. These are primarily focused on how to mitigate or reduce climate change, specifically focusing on building energy use transportation, renewable energy, which are our three largest sectors for emitting greenhouse gas emissions, as well as land use and waste management. The taskforce also determined that education outreach was an important component of this, as well as focusing on adaptation resiliency, which focuses more on how do we adapt and make a more resilient community in terms of climate change the board, the climate action taskforce determined that equity was a cross cutting area that should be addressed in all six topic areas. And they also worked on this with their partnership with the just transition plan committee. Next slide. We performed community engagement through this process. Through primarily through a community questionnaire we also had present And tabling events. But we decided to do this engagement in March. So only got about two weeks before we had to cancel all events. But given that on the next slide, we did get some takeaways from the community engagement. We did see general support for the climate action incentives and changes that were included. I do want to highlight that the questionnaire was set up in a way that it it it had respondents rank, but didn’t offer an opportunity for respondents to say they did not like any of the options. That being said, we still saw some general support, as well as the strong support for increase in services and benefits for low income communities. And in complement, with that a concern about cost and impact on affordability. Due to the fast timeline in the impact of COVID. We did have a lack of stakeholder engagement and did see in we asked for demographics in the survey and did see a limited representation. So we are aware that this process, there were voices left down this process and that could be a need for continued community engagement. So on the next slide, I’m going to begin going through the Climate Action Task Force topic area recommendations. I just want to review the process before I go through the recommendations. There are 27 recommendations, we are only asking the board to vote on four of them. But we did want to have a give a general overview of all recommendations so that you see all the different components, because this is a long section and we’d like to get to the voting section. I am going to ask that you hold any comments until the end. But if you have a clarifying question, feel free to ask it. I can only see three members at a time so I may need some help if someone has a clarifying question jump in. And then at the end, we’ll focus on voting on the four recommendations but we’ll also give a special For high level comments on the entire process, as well as the just transition plan committee recommendations. Next slide. So the first category is adaptation and resiliency and we’ll be highlighting the ones you’ll all will be voting on in green. So the first one is public health specifically designed around how to develop a coalition to address public health at especially around high heat events, poor air quality, severe weather events, and they recommended specifically targeting certain members of the community, including residents experiencing homelessness and workers in an outdoor setting. We wanted to bring this to prab as this called for shelter for people experiencing homeless cooling centers and water and water play areas as some of the recommendations. The second recommendation in this category was the water conservation recommendation, which calls called for a 35 to 40% reduction in Overall water consumption in the next five years. I do want to highlight that this is overall not just city water consumption and would have a strong impact to our parks and recreation areas. And then the last one in the adaptation resiliency category was a recommendation to increase our flood mitigation and preparedness education. Next slide.
36:27
On the next section, we don’t have any ones that you will reviewing, but I’ll just give a quick overview and building an energy use. We do adapt all our most recent building codes, but this recommended an expansion to include different components. We had a recommendation around creating a feasibility committee for in the next 18 months to develop a plan on how to do electrification. The next four recommendations focused on expanding our commercial and residential energy efficiency works which we primarily do through efficiency works. And then lastly was a proposal for climate action to help fund a lot of these different efforts. Next slide. This section focus on education outreach, the first was actually focused on developing a comprehensive workforce development that’s accessible to all members of our community to help create a diverse skilled workforce to meet a lot of these different goals. The next three recommendations focuses on different ways of how to explain climate change, education and outreach with the last one focusing on how to the establishing a peer to peer community sustainability liaison program.
37:42
Next slide.
37:45
And the land use and waste management we do have one that we are asking you to vote on extending agriculture zoning. This one really focused on expanding education and opportunities and partnerships to increase residential production. of food, an incentive for public to participate in growing selling their own food. We’re bringing this to prep as it called for a system for allocating public land and suggested to adopt a plot as a potential model. The other two recommendations were the commercial and residential composting you know, working on to expand comm posting in our community and then developing a downtime pay for parking structure. Although after this recommendation was developed, the writers did note that the timeline would probably need to be developed because of the impacts of covid. Next slide. for renewable energy, the first one focused on accelerate accelerating our transition to advanced metering infrastructure. I do want to note that all of these are, we have already committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy for electricity by 2030. So all recommendations support that effort. Recommendations two through three are all different ways of using technology to adapt and adjust to demand side management, either through kind of smart systems that you can use to better understand a home or by indicating to the customer when their electricity they’re using has is from really carbon intensive or renewable energy sources. And then the last one distributed energy resources focuses on moving a lot of our but distributing our energy more locally distributing to create make it a little bit easier to transition to renewable energy through a number of different pilot projects, including battery back solar are a group buying power program for electric vehicles. Next slide. In transportation, we had four recommendations. The first was a bit of a hybrid service. It’s a flexible bus or checkpoint service. So they’re set pickup locations and times. But the route in between the locations is flexible. They, they also recommended expanding electrical vehicle charging infrastructure downtown. There’s a recommendation on connected bikeways, which we’d also like you to vote on. This really focused on expanding Long live bike weights with a strong focus on safety, especially with minimizing traffic crossings and providing fully lit bike waves. Then the last recommendations was creating an educational campaign for alternative work schedules. And that one was actually developed before COVID. Does anyone have any clarifying questions before I walk through the jtp Committee recommendations? Fancy
41:07
and Danielson does
41:09
look looks like Dan does. Um,
41:11
yeah, I noticed your link to the full report, which I guess this is the summary of does not work in the prep packet that was sent out today I get a 404 file or directory not found. Okay. Is that what you just showed us was that full report summary?
41:29
That that was a summary of the different recommendations in this. Okay.
41:33
Thanks.
41:34
Yeah, and I apologize we’ve been, I thought check that link. But I
41:39
just tried it again, but I can’t do it last night when I was going through the packet either.
41:45
Page.
41:48
Okay, yeah, if someone could just provide that link at some point. I’d be grateful.
41:53
Yes, of course.
41:55
We gonna
41:57
check. Yes, Jeff.
41:59
Are we gonna have an opportunity to discuss specifics the four things we’re going to vote on and ask questions when we get to them, or how will that part work?
42:07
Yes, I’m gonna go through the just transition plan committee recommendations, and then we’ll come back to those four. And what we’ll do is we’ll do a vote and then discussion period. And you can always if we’ve had folks decide to change their vote after the discussion, and that’s fine as well.
42:26
David, did you have something to add?
42:28
Yeah, I did. That’s one of the fancy I talked about it. Why surprise you at the end with a reminder, but I think for the for prep members, I think we took the four that we felt logically made the most sense for this group. But I would say if anyone feels there’s a topic and that we miss it. They feel like they want to add to that conversation. We’re happy to entertain that but I think these the ones that we went through the ones that we really felt fit in through the workers via parks, the open space program, the park development, they really fit into this area, but I don’t think anything is off limits if they would like to talk about hope not.
43:02
Yeah, thank you. I forgot to mention that that is correct. Feel free to suggest another one to vote on. Or if you don’t feel like it’s within the perhaps purview to vote on but would like to offer high level comment. We’ll also offer space for that as well.
43:23
Great if that’s it for the clarifying questions, Heather, if you don’t mind pulling up the presentation. Thank you.
43:33
Next slide.
43:40
So I’m just going to quickly review the just transition plan committee recommendations. The recommendations are very complimentary recommendations, we like to call the Climate Action Task Force, the what, what you need to do to address climate action, why these are more than how they they’re, how can you address the climate action in a way that reaches almost members of our community. Next slide. So just as a quick background, the just transition process actually started in 2018. When we pass the resolution to transition to 100% renewable energy, this called for the city shall consider the needs of lower income residents. Last summer, we distributed a survey to kind of learn where we are in access to different resources. And our next phase was to develop a policy and program recommendations with a just transition plan committee, whose focus was on developing an equitable transition to hundred percent renewable energy, their focus shifted on with the passing of the climate emergency resolution, which called for frontline communities to actively participate in the process. So the new focus of the just transition plan committee was focused on equitable climate action, and they work to do that and support the the the Climate Action Task Force, I had two categories of recommendations. So I’ll start with the first one, then the next Slide. So the first was the equity assessment recommendations. And this is kind of recommending the process of what we did with the just transition plan committee. First, it’s important to find out provide a foundation on equity and climate action, use an equity lens and apply that to the different climate action in focus on frontline communities most impacted by climate change. I know frontline communities isn’t a common term. It from a frontline community is a community that is most impacted by climate change and might not have historically participated in decision making processes. For example, with climate change, we’re expecting an increase in high heat days. So an example frontline community that would be really important to target is someone who both has a underlying medical condition but does not have access to adequate cooling.
45:53
Next slide.
45:55
There their bulk of their recommendations was in the overarching macro climate action recommendations. These really kind of work together and can be used as a checklist that range from how to develop better marketing and outreach through targeted culturally relevant messaging to understanding the connections with health and safety the to understand that and address financial burdens of low income households. A lot of these recommendations actually are a series of questions that someone applying the climate action recommendations that I shared previously could think through when developing their recommendations. So it’s really more of a process that can be applied to the other Climate Action Task Force recommendations. Next slide. So now we’re going to go into the board feedback, probably what we’ll do is we’ll show the recommendation again, and then take the PowerPoint presentation off so we can see each other during the discussion. So if we could go to the next slide, Heather So we’re going to start with the ones in adaptation and resiliency. And how we’re going to do this is we’re going to ask each board member to either do a thumbs up, indicating they like it, approve it as written. A thumbs sideways stating they like, like it, but there are some noted considerations that they would like to provide a city council or thumbs down, do not approve it. And then after we do the vote, we’ll open it up for comments. And Nikki will be taking notes on this because we’re going to take your voting and the comments and bring it to city council when we go on August 25. So the first one is the public health launch a coalition to create a climate adaptation and health plan by January 2022, or sooner based on the timeline of the covid 19 pandemic. And if we could jump out of presentation though.
47:57
This page
48:00
Tim’s action item. This is just about chartering a group to develop a plan. I feel like there were more elements to it when you went through it.
48:11
Yeah, so the kind of the key points of this one was to pull together a coalition that kind of focus on different areas, but the recommendation had different recommendations that they recommended, including they had a actually let me just pull up the list and I can just read it out. So some of their potential plan examples are provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness anytime. daytime temperatures are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and nighttime temperatures over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Air Conditioners made available to low income residents, cooling centers and waterplay areas. Alert with expected actions for days with high pollution plan for health emergencies are not novel diseases. They specifically recommended that for this plan, they should focus on different members of the community, including workers who labor and outer setting, as well as people experiencing homelessness.
49:20
So if we have comments or questions related to these you would like us to vote first or should we ask them now?
49:30
If you have a clarifying question, I’d ask it now. But we usually like to vote first and then kind of focus on when when folks have kind of sideways or down comments. Okay.
49:44
Are there any other clarifying questions before we vote? No.
49:48
No PDM approval is needed to present it to the city council.
49:54
We will be presenting all recommendations but we will be providing Actually all recommendations have already been presented and city council wanted feedback and insight from the board because they haven’t decided next steps have yet been determined. Great. So if the board is ready again it’s thumbs up approve as written, thumbs sideways approve with noted consideration and we’ll walk through that or thumbs down do not approve.
50:38
So it would actually see two thumbs up. Three One fasci all thumbs up I think and then I believe one thumbs sideways from page so page. Can you tell us a little bit about your sideways?
50:59
Yeah, I didn’t In the added language that you shared again, thank you, I don’t see any concept consideration of kind of nature based climate solutions, for example, tree planting that could be, you know, additive in neighborhoods to provide shade and adjust heat impacts. And it seems like all pretty much focused on hard infrastructure kind of solutions. And so I it wouldn’t feel complete to me unless there was also consideration given to nature based solutions to public health considerations, particularly heat and air quality.
51:45
Great, thank you, Patrick.
51:53
So I had a concern about the air conditioner recommendation which I think dovetails with pages. comment about nature based solutions. You know, obviously equity is a serious part of this, but I am wondering if more air conditioning isn’t creating the problem you’re trying to solve
52:16
or exacerbating the problem you’re trying to sell.
52:22
Great, thank you and Nikki should be taking notes at this time and we’ll share them at the very end so we can make sure we captured all your comments correctly.
52:44
Chair, do you want to call
52:45
on them? Or do you want
52:47
francy? If you want to go ahead and call on people, that’d be fine with me. I’ve no problem. Okay, great. So
52:54
my one comment is, and I don’t want to stir up and change how you work but I am Feel like discussion before the vote is more helpful for me. I just want to comment that for the way I process things, I appreciate my other fellow board members. thoughts before I’d make vote. So just want to say that.
53:18
Yeah, that’s not how we’ve done it recently, but with the board if people want to give me a thumbs up if the board would prefer to do that. Great. Yeah, we can definitely have discussion first. Thank you for bringing that up. for discussion. Second, would we with the board like to revote on that first recommendation?
53:43
Great. So if we Heather, if you don’t mind pulling up the presentation again, we’ll I’ll reshare the water conservation recommendation.
53:58
So the goal of the wire Conservation recommendation is to expand and create new programs and initiatives to achieve a 35% reduction in overall city water consumption below a 2019 baseline by 2025. The specific recommendation did call for the need for staff to evaluate budget and landscape transitions and did have a couple of recommendations on how to achieve this goal. But we’re definitely kind of called for the the need for staff to evaluate how to achieve this. So if we can exit the presentation and I move to discussion,
54:47
I gotcha.
54:49
Um, so I noticed that one of the options that was listed in the expanded discussion was increasing the water supply from external sources.
55:01
Is that how how relevant feasible is that?
55:12
So, and I may be misunderstanding you.
55:18
Part of this recommendations specifically focused on reducing water usage and not on increasing water supply.
55:30
I’m looking at page 42 of the expanded
55:36
discussion that was sent to us last week and I just the increasing water supply from external sources was the thing that jumped out at me as a
55:50
either a non starter or very difficult to to implement
56:00
Yes, sorry. Um,
56:04
yeah, that that my understanding of that portion of the recommendation was as kind of how it’s relevant to climate change as how water conservation is relevant to climate change.
56:24
They
56:29
that wasn’t discussed in the rest of the recommendation. But as
56:38
I’m sorry caccia wearing
56:40
that page, I don’t see it.
56:42
It’s relevant in within the quote
56:47
analytics April 2018. report on boulder clent County climate
56:51
on page 14 of the packet but it’s numbered page 42 in that section also got
56:56
it but all I see is savings, not nothing about new water. Under which bullet
57:04
then quotes under relevant,
57:06
I can read it out and able to access the full play.
57:17
Okay, so Francine, what you’re saying is that this quote is it’s hoarding supporting information as opposed to an actual recommendation.
57:27
Yes, that’s my understanding because that statement, increasing water supply from external sources is a little bit in conflict with the overall goal of the recommendation, which is to reduce water consumption. So we would theoretically, well reduce your water consumption we would need a decrease in water supply. So that statement seems to be a little bit contradictory when it’s include increasing water supply from external sources. My based on how understand they were using this quote, that’s more though they more wanted to use that quote to focus on supporting why water conservation was needed for climate action.
58:18
Robert,
58:22
Robert, you need to unmute yourself.
58:29
Rob, you need to unmute your mic.
58:34
I was gonna ask to something that Santa Fe in New Mexico does. Most water usage, treated water usage goes on Lawns by a huge amount. In Santa Fe what they do is you have to have a ceric paraphilic lawn or whatever. And you can pay for grass but you pay an extra fee of so much square yard for grass. And that would reduce to 35%. In no time at all, if you just instituted Sarah escapes, and people paying per square yard of grass that they have. I was just wondering if they considered that.
59:21
That was not one of the recommended actions in the report, but it’s also a very short recommendation and I believe the report was expecting city staff to pursue and look into a number of opportunities besides just what they they listed
59:47
page.
59:50
I think for this one, it would be great in the text to indicate somewhere the need to balance the range of issues you’re looking at here because some The water conservation depending where you prioritize it may conflict with other you know, things that you’re trying to do I noticed there was sort of an increase in splash pads and you know, water features as part of the cooling and, you know, also increasing tree canopy may change water use, but it might offset further water use from like air conditioning. So I think this water conservation one is tricky depending on how you specifically prioritize the areas for that conservation to happen.
1:00:44
Thank you. Is there any other Jeff?
1:00:48
What I think you mentioned or alluded to this but what is the expected impact on let’s say sports fields and other parks and recreation facilities provide
1:01:00
So we don’t know the full impact. But according to
1:01:08
timber, tosta who reviewed this, he expects that this would completely transform what our parks look like. So to maintain parks, I believe big was sort of 35 to 40% reduction. We residents use about 50% of their water usage. Outdoor water usage, the city as a leader to meet this recommendation. I don’t know who it was, but I believe when we were talking about this recommendation of staff meeting highlighted that, as a leader, the city might go above and beyond that goal to kind of help reach it since it is overall water conservation. Am I remembering that I think maybe that was Steve.
1:01:59
It was Ken Houston. Okay, no
1:02:00
fancy, Steve. Oh, go ahead, David. I’m sorry. Yeah.
1:02:04
Yeah, Ken’s the one that really did lay out the sort of as a leader, we’re probably looking to do more water conservation. But I would also like to if I just have a minute, as you mentioned timber statements, because it’s something that we have definitely talked about, I think is where having prab weigh in with what I’m hearing from this group is that and also from fantasy that this moves forward is going to take staff looking at things creatively to because as temporary I’ve talked about this 35% could be across the board and just be a impact on everything equally. Are there places that we could do 100% reductions where we know we want to do as Paige mentioned, maintained tree canopy or increased tree canopy. So I think we’d really have to look at how we, as staff manage this sort of reduction because I think timbers right is going to be a drastic change, you might see a significant change across everything. drastic change in other areas and maintaining status quo and others because we want to maintain those cool green places, I definitely am going to try to not throw my feeling either. But I do think that we have an obligation to maintain those cool green places for people who don’t have that equity issue in that to that if we as a city say we’re going to reduce it, and that comes at the cost of those people that don’t have spaces of their own. I think we definitely need to keep that in the conversation. So I think at first he said, we don’t have a true direction of how we implement that. So I think it will take working with timber by Elsa and let Steve jump in as he’s up here to it’s gonna come from the design side to
1:03:41
Well, I can already say that we use the most drought tolerant sports turf that we can when we’re designing these fields. We’re already always consciously looking at the types of things of turf we can use that can take the compaction and that sports turf See, it’s gonna need some water. You know, there are definitely some low hanging fruit areas and timber and his staff are already looking at these areas where there is turf installed that is not meant to be walked on that sort of the landscape architecture. mantra is that, you know, don’t put turf in unless you’re going to walk on it. So there are some areas within the city that we can certainly reduce the amount of water that we use. But sports fields are something we’re going to have to continue to water in order to keep the programming up that we have, you know, I’ve created so it’s going to be like David mentioned, it’s going to be something that we’ll have to talk with City Council about if they choose to move forward with this type of recommendation.
1:04:49
Let me also chime in from the natural areas perspective and open space perspective, as we reduce significant amounts of water to these years. Getting turfgrasses, you’re going to significantly or potentially significantly reduce the resiliency of these turf areas. Therefore, inviting more noxious weeds and weed issues that may be needed to be dealt with from Outland management perspective, just to consideration as we move in that direction. We’ll be taking a closer look at those details.
1:05:25
Yeah, you’re right, Dan, it could lead to more the use of more herbicides.
1:05:31
I don’t know. I know.
1:05:34
Do we have any data who are the highest user of the water in the city? I guess it varies by the weather season, maybe in the summer is the highest users and I
1:05:53
do not currently have seasonal information often top of my head, I could probably figure that out. But our large user class based on Wi Fi, we look at it based on rate classes residential. That being said, I think it’s just mostly because of the sheer size of residential. If you break it down by the number of connections, I believe it’s either I think it might maybe be irrigation. But because irrigation is only being used for irrigation, but that one I am not fully positive, but I do know that that our largest user class is residential. I also do want to note our water usage has been decreasing since our first water efficiency master plan and our per capita rates have also been decreasing. So since 2000, For I, I believe the about the total water consumed metered water. Clarify metered water consumption has decreased from about 12% between 2004 and about 2019. And per capita. I think it’s about 15% reduction. So I do want to highlight that our water conservation has our water usage has been going down water conservation has been going up.
1:07:28
Just an observation. For this summer. I didn’t start my sprinkler doing metal, and there’s a huge difference between what we uses.
1:07:42
Are you saying it’s down the notion?
1:07:44
Yeah, he didn’t do here. Jeff.
1:07:48
I don’t love this idea. But I’m curious how much consideration there is to the possibility of putting something like astroturf or something like that. I mean, which is not nearly as cool it’s hot usually, but that’s something you guys are Looking at I mean, that pleasant, but it would cut down the water obviously, if you knew,
1:08:04
yeah, I’m gonna be as close as I hear Steve in the background by letting go. But we, we have looked at that and we do have as a, you know, a sustainability tool that we could run these things through and I’ll let Steve talk about that. But we’ve run that through our modeling process because I think Paige started this off, there’s always gonna be trade offs. There really is no free lunch in any of this. So if you decrease water, do you decrease tree canopy if you increase air conditioning, do you increase water someplace else? So I think it’s that balancing piece that I think these boards and staff are important to bring it down to that lower level, getting into the weeds a little bit because I think it’s francy said, this is pretty high level sort of ideas that are thrown out there. And I don’t want to step on Francis presentation or take more time we need to but just so you know that you know water boards, other boards have looked at this they’ve made significant recommendations to these sections. To represent how they feel they should be carried forward. So I don’t think it’s a necessary you just have to take it as is. France has been great at capturing the feedback back in these boards on how they see these recommendations and what they think needs to be done to make these successful. Steve UI also turf
1:09:21
Well, the the challenging thing with synthetic turf is that it is considered a non permeable surface. So basically you’re putting the water down onto the turf and then point discharging into the adjacent waterway or the place where the drainage just where the water goes. So it’s not quite as effective from a storm drainage management system. Also, you end up using a lot of water, not irrigating, but you have to hose it off. Blood, vomit, all that fun stuff that gets on sports fields, needs to be hosed off before the next people play. And so there’s a lot of Water that goes into maintaining that turf even though it’s not growing.
1:10:03
So it’s I don’t understand how you get 35% reduction or higher if you’re trying to be a leader, if you’re already using the most efficient turf possible. I that’s the part of this that I don’t feel like I’ve heard yet. And to do it, are we just saying, This is the goal, and then we’re gonna work on it.
1:10:22
Well, that’s why they did the big bucks.
1:10:25
Yeah, and I do I do want to clarify that this. This was a goal developed by the Climate Action Task Force. And I think we mentioned this during waterboard that. They stated a they stated a goal that they they wanted to state an aspirational goal. But there was, I think, as we highlighted to water board when we went to them, there was not an extensive research done to define why that goal was stated at that number And if the goal was kind of to state an aspirational goal, but and that and highlight that staff still needs to do a lot of the work to figure out how to reach the aspirational goal,
1:11:15
then diferencias point, you know, yes, it was a it’s a goal. But if you read the times column, the past week, they’re talking about the city or the state of Colorado being under drought conditions and have been on and off for 20 years. So our parks may not look the same way they do now or did 10 years ago, in the next 20 years, they might look very differently with a lot of more brown in July and August. And so that’s something we as staff need to try to figure out the best way to handle that while maintaining all the other recreational
1:11:49
goals we have with our park system.
1:11:51
So Steve, I’m sorry, I’m gonna throw up these and throw it back to francy. Again, it is just this idea of Looking at the places that we know we want to maintain these green walkable places is green cooling islands. But there are creative ways out there. Steve, you said we’re using the most durable, drought tolerant grasses for our park. But we do have others that we like to keep green. Like you say that may look different. But Francis, you want us really quick talk about what you and Ben are working on is, again, taking that next step. I think some of these aspirational things can push us I think they’re beneficial, but they definitely have a trade off. So francy I, again, I hate stuffing your presentation. But would you take a minute to talk about what you’ve been doing?
1:12:34
Yes, I would be happy to and thanks for all. So before I do that, Steve for bringing up that point, because the goal behind this recommendations was acknowledging that there could be increased drought and changes in precipitation and change in temperature and that there is a need to focus on water conservation. And then Ben and I are working on transitioning 1.25 we got well before that we got a matching grant from Northern northern water Conservancy district to transition 1.25 acres of Kentucky blue grass to a wheatgrass blend, we’re expecting to reduce water consumption by 50%. And we’re also expected to reduce mowing which could have benefits on greenhouse gas emissions. I do want to note this entire project to transition about 1.25 acres after we take out staff time is about a 20 $26,000 project for that amount of acreage. So it it but it so it’s definitely a inexpensive solution, especially if we needed to transition the amount of acreage to get to what’s stated in this goal, but it is a solution that could have significant water conservation savings for areas where there are not a lot of people walking on or recreating on actively and we’re doing this at the Longmont service center and then a strip along hoever to see how it does in high usage roads.
1:14:11
Gotcha. And then Dan.
1:14:13
So in the, you know, in the line of pages comment and David saying that there’s, you know, there’s trade offs and everything. I think one of the things that’s important to keep in mind here is that the choice isn’t between the status quo indefinitely and this plan, right? I mean, the choice is between this plan and some other way that the scenario plays out, which might not in which might involve the city reacting rather than being ahead of what needs to be done. And one of the things that I don’t see here is, and this may be just a reflection of the level of detail that that these recommendations are at us. I don’t see a scenario that says and if we don’t do this, this is what will happen in the next 510 1520 years as the population increases in the end, you know, we keep having lawns and fields and parks and you know, just the same way they always have been. So so my view of this is I’m not wild about the 25 to 35 to 40% goal because as you say, it doesn’t have any, there’s no data behind it. But the idea that the city get in front of this rather than reacting to it is something that I can support. Dan,
1:15:32
I’m going to your presentation that you showed us so I’m looking on page 942. In this bit part, it just says prepare the city resources for residents and businesses to reduce indoor and outdoor water use. This board is primarily worried about Parks and Recreation and open space etc. And I don’t know if you need to say that actually. explicitly, I’m not sure where this recommendation goes if it goes on to city council or not. And then when we look at Appendix B, for this whole topic about water conservation, the only bit in there that really addresses the city’s water use is that little line right at the bottom saying golf courses and city parks may change in appearance. So somehow, it seems to me to get back to that point that not sure who started it maybe page. You know, is there a balance between corporates you city use, residential use bit overall gets 35 to 40%. In other words, maybe the city use or parks to keep greenspace going, you know, doesn’t drop as much and we get more out of residents or I don’t know how you balanced that. But the way this is written for us, at least doesn’t talk about parks per se. And yet that’s what I’m supposed to be voting on is and so maybe I’m not getting it or I’m being too nitpicky here, but I don’t see that in the presentation that the use is like overall city. But it doesn’t really mention that, oh, by the way, golf courses are going to have to come down by this much. And parks romantica might not this much. It’s all businesses and residents.
1:17:22
You are correct that it is overall city water usage. As Ken Houston, our water resources manager highlighted in a staff meeting, that part part of the method of helping students in businesses large conservation goals is having the city be a leader. So there could be a possible scenario where you figure out how to achieve those same things. We focusing on residents or businesses. I Think
1:18:02
the city would probably explore
1:18:07
a lot of scenarios where the city was also trying to lead and do best practices to kind of help show what can be done and be kind of a role model but you are correct that is city wide and not specifically calling out parks and open space.
1:18:24
I think we’ve got Rob and then Paige.
1:18:30
Rob, you have to unmute.
1:18:37
I have to agree with Dan that our question for us is Parks and Rec and I am very much in favor of water conservation and water saving. That said I would be very happy to see the city of Longmont the high desert that it is with 15 inches of water per year. So on with green Oasis that are called parks and things that are lush and green and all that, that I could see. Okay. My other problem is saving 35 to 50% as an individual. At the same time, I’m going to be asked to vote maybe by the City Council on income, charging myself to get more water. Now, there seems to be an inconsistency here confrontation between save water now pay us a lot of money for more water. I just don’t understand it. That’s all and for water conservation. I’ll vote for it. But I don’t see. wanting more water at the same time asking people not to use it. That’s it.
1:19:57
francy do you want to comment on that? Annie, do you want to comment on Rob? So?
1:20:02
Well, I just wanted to point out
1:20:05
on any environmental services manager, and we’re asking people this, these are actions that were developed by a group of members of the public. And it was aspirational. We’re asking you to vote either thumbs up on the side or thumbs down. So there is an opportunity to move aside and make your comments and we could add those and provide the specific instance, I just wanted to remind you that you do have that option.
1:20:33
I’d also just like to point out your get you in just a second page that, you know, raising the price for something is a way to reduce use of that something because people will not pay higher prices. Page. Go ahead.
1:20:49
Yeah, I just have a process question and it may be for you to just kind of building on what Annie said. I mean, given the time and sort of the early stage name Have these? You know, I wonder? I mean, I know. You know, I personally will have a lot of questions about the agriculture one as well. But I just don’t know if it’s even really timely to ask those right now versus just saying that we have concerns about them. And if they go forward, you know, we would want to have this concerns addressed. So I’m just my question is just like, how much more time do we want to devote to this discussion?
1:21:29
David, or francy? Do you want to respond to that in terms of your expectation of the amount of time that will be spent on this and whether it will come up in subsequent meat?
1:21:40
I’m going to let Francey and Annie take that this is or we’re spoiling them, right this thing that I would really actually give it back to Francine Andy and the the board beside how much time they want to spend on this, but it really is it really is moved for if counsel is going to see it. I think that just what page mentioned that those sorts of comments. And ducted protocol somehow. So if Francine and I have a plan of how we do that, I’ll let them take that.
1:22:09
So we are going to City Council on August 25. And we do not have another board meeting between this board meeting and that one where we are taking advisory board comments, based on my experience with what we’ve seen from the other city boards. We, as Annie mentioned, a lot of boards have done this and said, I have concerns about this, this and this without getting into extensive detail. These I do want to also highlight if these are there still even ones that are more written out or stole the starting point and will require implementation process from city staff to figure out the next steps going forward. So I’ll let Annie add but my recommendation is that Week, if too by the end of the board meeting tonight if we can have the the vote done and some general comments that we can bring to city council that would allow us city that would allow city council to kind of gauge how the board is filling. And if there are ones that they’re primarily concerned about, you’re welcome to say, I like the idea, but I think a lot more research needs to be done, which seems to be kind of a theme of what folks are talking about, without having to go into the extensive details and then that can help us City Council, decide on Okay, we should not pursue this recommendation or let’s pursue this recommendation, but staff needs to do a much more in depth analysis process. Any Do you have anything to add?
1:23:50
I’m not really I mean, I don’t know if it’s helpful to understand what other boards how other boards weighed in on this. You know, I have to say the water board and the transportation advisory board and sustainability advisory board, you know, have questions about this being our picture arbitrary unachievable. While they supported the idea of conservation, they were concerned about if this particular
1:24:23
recommendation. So
1:24:26
I don’t know if that’s helpful or not. But I think it would be helpful for us to, you know, get your take on what you think and, you know, if it’s just providing comments about your concerns in your support for conservation would be
1:24:41
so here’s what I think I’m going to do, given the hour and the fullness of our agenda. I’d like to move this item to the vote. And I’m going to put a time constraint on the discussion of the next two items, just out of necessity or we’ll be here till midnight. So, if you don’t mind Francey going ahead to the vote on this item.
1:25:06
Great, thank you. Yes, if everyone could either do thumbs sideways or down
1:25:13
so I believe I’m seeing all thumbs sideways.
1:25:18
Did the board members have any additional comments that were not already expressed that they would like to add? If not, we’ll use what was expressed in the discussion.
1:25:33
Okay. So the next recommendation that we will be reviewing is the extending agriculture and use and Heather Do you might not bring Thank you already had. So this is to this. The short summary is to establish code changes to allow for residential agriculture develop ongoing programs that ensure incentivize the public to participate in growing and selling their own food by 2023. If I believe if you read the recommendation, it talks a lot about education and incentives for engaging residents, and specifically calls for this should not only be focused on private property but focused as well on public land, which is why we decided to bring it to the board. And I’ll open it up for discussion at CAPTCHA. How long would you like this discussion to be time limited to
1:26:38
five to seven minutes?
1:26:45
Go for it page.
1:26:49
I mean, I think this is it’s a nice in concept, but I think it won’t necessarily results in sort of, you know, carbon sequestration or climate, you know, benefits emission reduction benefits, depending on how you do it. It also could increase water use if you have, you know, more and more people having sort of mini farms, maybe it’s a trade off with, you know, blue grass, I don’t know. But I think at a very high level, it’s an interesting concept, but I think it worries me and some of the language about, you know, sort of displacing, it does have to go back and look at displacing open space or undeveloped land, I want to make sure that there also wasn’t kind of a perverse incentive to kill and cultivate land that could otherwise be open space or, you know, more natural open space. So
1:27:47
I just have a lot of concerns about how this would be implemented. Yes.
1:27:55
I agree with everything Paige just said my questions were more about details that aren’t in this Yet about like, neighbors blocking view to be able to get out into the street because they have tall corn and things like that. I mean, just, there’s so many details that need to go into this work and implemented and I’m sure, based on the last time, we’re not there yet.
1:28:16
Rob,
1:28:17
I’m already growing a farm and where I live, you know, tomatoes or beans, stuff like that. So I’m certainly in favor of it and composting and all that sort of thing. And so I’m going to be in favor of it because I do it.
1:28:37
Any other questions, comments from other board members? Dan?
1:28:44
Yeah, page’s comment was that transition is significant amount of long months idle land. The only part that really pertains to this board is wasted in easements and right of ways. Otherwise it’s all private land. So I’m not sure prab has a lot to say here, except to think they’re going to we’re going to plant corn in medians or you know, street medians or something the way this is written. So, you know, I don’t think we get to tell city council about residential lease. That’s not my understanding of prab. So, I guess we get it’s nice that you asked for our opinion, but I’m not sure it counts for much.
1:29:29
Anybody on staff want to comment on how this would be specifically applicable to parks and open space?
1:29:42
I will mention that, you know, over 2000 acres of the city’s open space program is under an agricultural lease, where we’re, you know, raising crops that go to a variety of markets, not necessarily to a farmers market, but Certainly for you know, as we develop sugar beets and winter wheat, and a variety of things, so we are in this workgroup is very much involved in agriculture and what we’re providing out out there. Again, for me, it would be thumb suicide only because it’s many of these details that we’ve not figured out if we take open space and subdivided into small five acre plots,
1:30:30
so that
1:30:32
30 or 40 families can, you know, now we’re bringing in a lot more irrigation and infrastructure in order to do that. So, how that fits is to be determined. Certainly, you know, the goal of greater food production within the community and in small is a you know, very grand goal, like many of these are, you know, the, I guess the bottom line is the devils in details
1:31:02
I guess I would just say that you know, since the first sentence of this has changed zoning to allow for agricultural enterprises on residential properties, as a resident, you know, and as a person who owns a home in long run I’m like, all for anything that encourages people to grow something besides grass. And so, I would be inclined as a resident to to upload this regardless of whether it has anything to do with Parks and Rec, but I’ll be up beside boys voting to for all the reasons that have been mentioned. Any other comment? Yes frenzy.
1:31:33
I do want to comment that the there is currently no code that limits residents to residents are allowed to grow food on their property. So I did, so it does say to expand that, but we do already have code that allows a lot of that but it doesn’t, it does not address kind of the binary Selling that this expands into, just as for contact on the resident and allowing is different from encouraging,
1:32:06
right? Yes.
1:32:11
Any other comments from the board?
1:32:15
francy. Let’s go ahead to the boat. Great.
1:32:23
I’m seen.
1:32:25
Think, five thumbs sideways and two thumbs up.
1:32:31
Thank you. So we’ll move on to the last recommendation which is connected bikeways. And that one, I’ll read out the summary. Create a plan for safe and complete Long live bikeways that interconnect all major nodes, neighborhoods, and community service centers that crossing major roads, slash highways and construct most the system within the next 10 years. for completion in 20 years, and again, there was a strong focus on creating a fully lit up of great and limited to no traffic bike ways and counters. Thank you, Heather.
1:33:18
discussion from the board.
1:33:26
Go ahead, Rob.
1:33:31
Hi, my bicycling, so I want more bike lanes. And I’d like more bike lanes around open space across parks and stuff like that. So I’m favor like lanes just because I ride a bicycle a lot, too.
1:33:51
Well, the board has actually talked quite a bit about this issue and is, you know, in general, very much in favor of all these connections who probably You know, it’s probably not a lot of big discussion. Is it some we’ve really gotten a lot of good education on it and it looks like the city’s you know, got a good start to
1:34:12
I’d be in favor.
1:34:15
I just want to comment that I grew up in a town that was designed from the ground up with a independent pedestrian and bike system and as a child, you know, as kids, it’s, I’m all for it. Obviously, it’s easier to do if you design it in from the beginning than to try to retrofit a city but i’m in favor of a goal like this.
1:34:37
Or board. Ready to go to the vote?
1:34:46
Great. I believe I saw all thumbs up. Thank you.
1:34:51
Great, and
1:34:53
that was the last recommendation. We’re asking you to vote on a cut, touch. I know we’re a little bit over time we were going to ask for Some high level recommendations on both climate action and the just transition plan committee not not asking for a vote just if anyone had any high level comments, but I also wanted to turn it over to you to whether we had time since in other boards we did run out of time and cut that if needed.
1:35:16
Now I’m happy to entertain about five minutes of discussion at the high level goals of the Climate Action Task Force and the just transition. Thank you.
1:35:28
Go ahead. Hey.
1:35:31
I just wanted to add I didn’t see anything in here since we have open space in our purview. Protection of open space can be a really important both adaptation and sort of avoided carbon emissions strategy. So it actually be great to see you know, increased emphasis on you know, protecting open spaces increasing open space protection as a climate emission reduction and adaptation strategy.
1:36:04
Thank you, Paige. Any other comments from board members?
1:36:10
Go ahead, Dan.
1:36:13
to David’s point about keeping green islands and stuff, perhaps that needs to be mentioned the trade offs between water reduction, residential versus corporate are not corporate but civic. And are we balancing can we maintain quality of life by shifting around who’s doing the saving, etc, etc. No, this is city wide, but the whole balancing act, maybe people would be a little more amenable if they knew. Either everybody’s suffers equally or the city as a whole and still has some green island that I can adjourn to that might. I’m not sure that something to be thought about in disgust
1:37:01
Dan,
1:37:05
any other board member comments,
1:37:09
anything you want to close with francy.
1:37:14
Just wanted to thank you all for your time and providing your comments. And then we will go ahead out I’ll actually, if we have time, quickly, if we can just share the document, so the board has a idea of what we’ll be sending. So this is kind of the format that we’ll be sending to the city council. And probably what we’ll do is we’ll just go through the comments one more time, just for consistency and how we’re presenting them to the other board members, but this is the format that we’ll be doing.
1:37:50
And then Are there any questions on that before I hand it back over for your next agenda item
1:38:05
Great. Thank you again for sharing your feedback and
1:38:09
thoughts. Thank you for it. Thank you, Annie.
1:38:14
Moving on to new business item be the left hand Creek BMX riparian issue, Steve.
1:38:21
Yes, thank you. I just had a great opportunity to clean off my desk. That was wonderful. I just filled recycling cans. So thank you for that time. I am going to share some screens with you. I don’t think prab is up to speed on this issue. This was something that was brought to City Council’s attention back in May by a citizen who is concerned with our riparian corridors and we’ve been looking at it for the past couple months as staff and we have some options to take to city council wanting to get perhaps input on that first. So
1:38:59
you can See I’m hoping left hand Creek Park.
1:39:03
Steve, we’re not seeing anything.
1:39:05
not seeing anything. Okay. How about that? No. Okay. Just one second. Thank you for now you have it, I believe. Yes. Yes, thank you. So left hand Creek Park pike road is right here. Here’s the parking lot and the playground and the the athletic field area. When this park was originally built back in 1997, and 98, we created some soft surface paths into the riparian area so users could enjoy the the creek corridor while they’re using the park. This has been eroded several times through large flood events. It’s also been destroyed by people using this corridor they’re having has been a BMX course that has been created. Within this corridor, and I tried to pull up some pictures that Dan had sent to me, but I was not able to get them live tonight, I apologize. But if you could imagine, they’re within these trade areas. There’s an area where children have created a denuded area for them to ride bikes, dirt jumps, and then there’s an access where people bring their kids down to the water, it’s serving almost as a beach type area. The area within the riparian corridor being disturbed creates concerns of erosion as well as adverse impacts to the riparian vegetation. The resident who brought this to a city council members attention back in May was concerned about how the city was not really managing the uses in that riparian corridor and And so so the council asked staff to look at it and figure out what we could possibly do. I believe there is in your account or your prep packet, the email summary that I came up with after meeting with a number of staff out there, we’ve come up with three or four different options. One is to just leave well enough alone and to leave the BMX course as is. I’ve talked with a company out of Kansas City called American pumptrack. They have come up with a couple of
1:41:39
different
1:41:45
just one second, please. I’m sorry. Okay,
1:41:53
stop share.
1:41:57
They’ve come up with a couple of different ideas that we could do it Some type of
1:42:04
Steve, did you want me to show those different? series lumberjack and Mason? there?
1:42:11
I’m getting there. Thanks, Susan. But yes, I’m getting there. So this is this is one that they said we can do in a riparian corridor or something such as this.
1:42:22
This is all there’s also the
1:42:35
something such as this that we can do in the riparian corridor, probably cost about $10,000 $12,000. Somewhere in that area to dress that up. Some of the concerns are that we, the access points on his property is using private property so kids are trespassing when they’re accessing this area. So we would have to work that out.
1:43:01
Um,
1:43:03
the once the children found out that the city were thinking about removing this, they went to change.org and about 2000 signatures on a petition to keep this BMX area in place. So that if we were to leave it in there or improve it to be in such a more safe design, it would be a sense of accomplishment for the kids that, you know, put this thing together. But the cons are that it disrupts the riparian corridor along the creek during larger flood events. We have increased bank erosion. It’s accessing through private property, there’s impacts to existing trees. It’s not necessarily a safe design and there’s not really any way we can make it a completely safe design in that area, because of the need to contain the riders to a certain corridor. tended writers tend to move wider and wider and wider and they’re eroding and more and more and more area based on what their skills are. And if to control that we’d have to put fencing in and fencing is sort of contrary to flood control within a riparian corridor, and then the the beach that I mentioned, there isn’t any sort of lifeguards or water testing or anything like that. So we’re encouraging people to go down to a water water body that is not controlled by the city.
1:44:33
The second option would be to really relocate the the BMX course.
1:44:42
Right here.
1:44:44
There’s a detention pond and this location right here. This is currently private property, but it’s unused property by this development, and we could certainly use this land if this property owner works Dedicated to us which we were pretty confident they would to create some sort of a bike skills area that would be an asset or an extension of left hand Creek Park, but would not adversely impact the athletic fields within the park. But would really relieve the port or the repairing quarter of the impacts of the uses, including the beach, as well as the the BMX I’m
1:45:36
sorry, here.
1:45:39
This is something that we are looking at.
1:45:43
Same company out of Kansas City that I talked about, which would be sort of an act grade course that the kids can ride on. And this sort of thing costs about 50 $60,000.
1:45:56
And then in order to
1:46:01
repair or reestablish the riparian corridor we’d have to spend another 30 to $35,000 on revegetation fencing and some access points down to the waterway where people could safely and without damaging the riparian vegetation read riparian vegetation without damaging that get access down to the water. So you know pros of that are is that we are providing another bike amenity in South Central Longmont. This area is accessible to the dickens farm nature a bike skills area through a I think it’s two and a half miles I measured from the park up to Dickens farm, but there are no road crossings. There’s also in our capital improvement program a future bike skills area proposed to sister’s community park which is a show Distance probably about a mile and a half, but you’d have to cross Main Street at a light. This is an unbudgeted request. So that’s a con, we don’t have any funds for it. Council would need to direct us where to try to get the funds funds from. Again, I’m thinking about 100 and thousand hundred thousand dollars. So this would also be contingent upon the property owner, wanting to dedicate that land to the city, which we are not anticipating that’d be a problem, but you never know. And then the other con of this is this one that says necessitate Ranger activity to enforce the closure. You know, if we’re closing down the riparian corridor, we need to make sure that we can get the revegetation established in such a way where kids aren’t still using it. And our Ranger program is not quite so robust right now. And our open space and parks operation staff is is somewhat strained. So that would be an impact on those staff members to try to watch this and make sure that they’re revegetation is happening in a successful manner. And then the other option would be to just remove all access points to the creek, we don’t need to have them down there. We don’t need to have them riding their bikes down there or accessing the water down there. We can fence this area off and have a pristine riparian corridor and tell the children that they can ride their bikes over to Dickens or ride two sisters when that’s built in the next couple three years and not have any sort of bike skills or water access in this quarter. So we have not David staff does not have a strong recommendation. We really wanted to hear what parks board had to say. So again, to summarize, option one is to do nothing and maybe spend 15 to $20,000 to improve the existing bike area. spend about $100,000 on a new bike skills area and improve beaks at beach access or to spend about 30,000 hours to reestablish the areas that have been disturbed by the public. And then remove everything and let the public know they’re not welcome down to the riparian corridor.
1:49:23
That’s about all I have except for questions.
1:49:26
Questions and comments from the board. Go ahead, Rob.
1:49:34
unmute yourself, Rob.
1:49:40
Rob, you’re still on mute.
1:49:48
Okay, can you hear me now? Yes, thank you. You can’t keep the kids out. I don’t care what you do. If they if it’s in there. They’re gonna keep coming. I’m in favor. To the hundred thousand dollar thing and the host devil business on the other hand with COVID and decreasing fees money coming in and revenues, I don’t think we can afford it. I mean it’s nice and I would I you know so I would just say we should defer this or at least table it until the financial picture looks a lot better.
1:50:32
Um I guess Ed has had the same thing. The bike ped in with the winds, it will whole thing blown away and they had to spend 30 40,000 again to put it back.
1:50:46
So I guess
1:50:49
just repair it with 10 15,000 until the funding is there, and that would be my recommendation
1:50:56
was Aries situation city built area or a volunteer project like this
1:51:03
one cities he was meant
1:51:08
to be clear culture. This was not a volunteer. This was a
1:51:11
I.
1:51:14
Yes. volunteer in quotes, spontaneous
1:51:18
use of public space without any approval.
1:51:21
Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Jeff.
1:51:27
I just wanted to clarify, Steve, can you tell us more about the sister park that you were talking about a minute ago? I don’t know anything about it. I’m trying to find it on a map just to context. All right.
1:51:36
Yes, I can do that. I’m going to pull up.
1:51:45
Let’s see.
1:51:49
I’m going to try to get you over there. You’re familiar with wortman neighborhood park, possibly. So let’s see. Let’s try to
1:52:02
I’m going to share my screen share this one
1:52:08
tennis courts, rec center museum right here, okay quail road and Main Street. This is where the neighborhood park. And this is under design right now. There’ll be a pond built right here. This land right here is 80 acres of future community park. So we will be building this in the future, this area here. And that’s, we have some pond readings that we’ve been dumping in this area right in here. And we think that we can create a temporary, maybe a porta potti, a gravel parking lot and some hills for kids or people to bike on and do some sort of a low cost bike skills area until we end up developing this park which is not anywhere in our five year capital. Improvement Program. But it’s sort of a temporary use in a community park property. I would bet based on the masterplans, we’ve done for other community parks throughout the city that does none of them have a full on bike skills area. That sisters would be one that we would end up having some sort of full on bike skills, Belmont Park style type of facility that’s most appropriate in a community park within the city system. But we don’t have the funds for the full lawn built out of this park at this point in time. Thank you. You’re welcome. Ah,
1:53:47
yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I don’t, I wouldn’t support option one at all for all of the reasons that you highlighted along with the fact that it endorses this kind of behavior, which is inappropriate. So you know, don’t don’t think there’s any real wins in not feeling good about ruining city property. You know, I think option two is would be nice I mean, maybe there’s a to a where you sort of improve the beach access so that it’s not detrimental and you know postpone the bike skills thing or you know maybe put it in this temporary location. I think if the budget were not where it was, you know it might be more worth considering developing a smaller bicycles area there but I would be concerned about them still being in the right period, you know, being close to the riparian area and then just kind of veering over there. Sort of a temptation to keep going back to where it was. And then also sort of what is the trade off if you did that smaller area with that then sacrifice the ability to do more Valmont like to You know, in the future, so I would want to know sort of what the trade off was if that was pursued.
1:55:07
Well, so Dan or Susan, one of the two brought up a photo of that sort of riparian bike skills area that the kids created. You can see the dirt piled against the base of the trees and the denuded course, whether they’re using it, um, page, I think, yeah, you know, it’s a good point. If we are when we’re spending $100,000 on something new, we’re pulling it away from something else. I don’t know what that is.
1:55:37
counts would have to sort of figure that out.
1:55:40
But yes, it would be pulling away from something else.
1:55:44
Question about your your hundred thousand dollars for option two. Does that include the cost of removing that notice does include the $30,000 to remove all this change? It’s
1:55:55
It’s close. Yes. Yep. We’re looking at about $60,000 for the Bike skills area and then 30,000 to 35,000 for the restoration and the fencing and things like that. Another 5000 for land acquisition left to replant the property and things like that.
1:56:15
You know, I, I’m sorry, go ahead.
1:56:18
I really think that if you look at our parks, recreation and trails master plan, we look at trying to provide specific type uses within areas of the city. So you know, north south, east, west, north central South Central, trying to have no ball fields, soccer fields,
1:56:42
splash gardens, baseball,
1:56:46
volleyball, basketball, all the different options for people to use within those gap areas. Bike skills is one that is not super well distributed throughout the city. We of his facility at Blue skies park in southwest Longmont. We have one and Steven de park in northeast Longmont. We have one a dekins that was just built. The one that sisters we anticipate having built in the next couple of years. So whether one is necessary in this area of town, there isn’t one within the half mile gap area No. But what is necessary in this area town where they have a great playground they have a roller hockey facility. They have a large athletic field and there are other parks kanemoto Park is just up the road that has a swimming pool and volleyball and other open turf areas so I think they’re pretty well covered in South Central Longmont but they do not have a bike skills area at this point in time.
1:57:59
Soup Go ahead.
1:58:01
So one of my questions is this private property owner doesn’t mind these kids doing this or what’s the story on that?
1:58:10
Sue? I don’t think they even know. I don’t know. They know where the property boundary is. There’s no fence or anything like that we had it surveyed. And I remember back when that property developed, the city made some concessions and didn’t quite get all the land we probably should have gotten but you remember Don baesler highlight him.
1:58:31
Blame it on done so so he hasn’t there’s no liability issues for the city.
1:58:39
At this point in time, if we do nothing we will put signs up saying no bike riding unsafe conditions. avoid that. Yeah, there’s there might be a little liability that we know about it right now. We have not done anything. So we would get minimum put up some fencing and signs telling people that it’s not safe to be in there doing what they’re doing.
1:59:00
So I mean, I can see why kids want to create something like that. Because when we were kids, we had places like that, you know, like our kids don’t, I don’t agree with what they did. I think it’s wrong. And I just think it’s not the right place. But
1:59:17
could these kids be engaged to help fundraise?
1:59:21
Possibly, you know, to get them involved in a new design, if there is a new place, and not just these kids, city kids in general. And, I mean, that might be just something to you know, if you could get some parent group and kids together that would possibly, you know, fundraise for one of these cool features. Just might be a good idea.
1:59:44
That would be interesting to
1:59:46
it. It, it would be, um,
1:59:50
we have a fledgling volunteer program. We do not currently have any sort of
1:59:59
public
2:00:01
fundraising program that we have in place, we would have to put something like that together, we would certainly engage the community, including the youth when we would go about designing what we would design but with limited funds, the input would be somewhat limited.
2:00:20
I’m gonna I’m gonna cut you off and let Jeff
2:00:23
chime in here. I’m sorry,
2:00:25
verify from the park side, not the business side. Are people allowed to walk from the park to where they are is the problem that they’re there or the problem that they’re biking.
2:00:35
Okay, so there’s two sides of the creek, the side of the creek that has the quote unquote beach on it. They are allowed to walk down there but they’re walking off trail down into the water. The trail did not leave down to the water. Where the bike BMX area is, there was never any public access intended for that area. They’ve just found this area as a pathway. Resistance.
2:01:00
But as a member of the public, I mean, I guess we’re supposed to walk on trails. But how is someone supposed to know that? Like, I mean, kind of like Sue said, as kids, we could walk places. I get the bike park, but I don’t understand.
2:01:12
Law rules regulations say that just stay on trails. And then that is the way we build our parks is for people to stay on trails, and not go off trails in native areas. The people
2:01:24
can go down there if they stay on the trail.
2:01:26
Yes. But there is no trail where the BMX areas was got it again.
2:01:35
David than Dan. David.
2:01:39
Yeah, I think
2:01:40
I think Steve curb most I think as far as engaging that community, we don’t have a way to require those neighborhood kids to be involved in that process. I think it was if we wanted to do on the reason Steve has reached out to the neighborhood’s is, if we could engage them, that’d be a great opportunity. I think some of the things that we’re throwing here are things that we should keep on our radar. How do we look at having ways that we can bring dollars and to help us on these projects. However, I’ll throw there as managing at these time and Danielle’s? If you get a group that’s said, we just raised money because we think we have this super cool idea be great in our backyard. Not only is it the dollars their impact, it is their time. So do we pull them from doing a project in a neighborhood that may not have something just because they don’t have a affluent community that has ability to pull dollars together? Do we pull them to take that, that new direction? So I think there’s also a piece in that we need Always remember to just because we raise money, doesn’t mean that we’re going to pull down from existing projects to ship them over there. We have to really think about that as well. Wow. So that does I really wanted to add on that. And I do think our rules and regs as you’ve mentioned, you know, primarily as bikes, you’re required to be on trails, but the biggest concern with being off trail and things I think Dan and his group spent time on if we start seeing those social trails develop is a place that we like to get back and educate people that if we’re starting to build social trails, how do we either incorporate those or how do we then go about educate people not to be in those areas, but pedestrians walking around off trail is something that we we know happens and we expect to happen and it’s it really is now required in our rules and regs. But it really is the bike impact and wolfer.
2:03:24
And to address Jeff’s concern, it’s a lot more than just, you know, getting out on that social trail and riding your bicycle. As you saw in some of those photos. Those kids have actually excavated into the into banks and remove trees on there’s so vandalized, you know, significant mature trees that have been cut. You’ve got rope swings that are hanging off those so it’s a lot more than just walking or bicycling. It’s literally habitat destruction.
2:03:57
Okay, what I’d like to do now is take a boat Each of the options that Steve presented in order to provide a recommendation of from prab. And I’m not quite sure how to handle it if we don’t have some sort of majority consensus, but let’s do a show of hands first. How many people are in favor of option? One, which was leave it as it is. Can I
2:04:24
ask Are we voting once for all three? Like, how many votes are we doing? Sorry,
2:04:28
I think each person has one vote. You get to vote for one option or Okay, thank you. Yeah. So, show of hands for option one. Leave as is. Rob is are you voting for it? Okay, so Jeff, I see one vote for option one. Is that correct? Okay, option to build a whole nother course elsewhere at a significant cost. And this would include removing the changes that these kids have made. Can I see your show hands
2:05:00
Have a question. Yes, I, I don’t support that in full. I mean, I think a modified version of option two is what I would suggest. I don’t know how to Sure.
2:05:14
Open to a hybrid of option two as funding the restoration and then waiting for the funds to become available for a bike skills area. Tag page.
2:05:26
Okay, well then then I will add that as a fourth item at the end, so option two, which is the hundred thousand dollar, remove the damage that’s been done and build a whole new bike course somewhere else Can I see a show of hands in favor of option two? We have one vote. option three, you know, restore the area to its intended use and add signage fencing, whatever. At estimate of $30,000 Can I see a show of hands in favor of option three
2:06:01
Rob, you can’t vote twice. Okay.
2:06:07
So Rob, do you want to vote for two or 4333? Okay, so we have zero votes for option two, two votes for option three. option four is a hybrid, restore the area and look at a smaller or more financially feasible,
2:06:32
like skills area page, is that accurate?
2:06:36
And what if I could design my own option it would be doing the restoration, improving the beach access and then looking for the right opportunity to do a bike skills course in the future. So focusing now on the restoration and maybe improving the beach access so that it’s not causing environmental damage. I think love the idea of a bike Of course, but I want it to be in the right place. So, you know, I support that being fill in the mix but just not urgent. would
2:07:13
sue you have a comment?
2:07:15
Question about the beach. I mean, is this really an appropriate place for a beach? I like a beach thing on a river. It’s my access, right?
2:07:26
Yeah, it’s it’s just access down the water. You’ll see mothers put their lawn chairs in the water while their toddlers are playing in the water. It’s pretty low flows. What I’ve experienced down there are seen down there if anybody knows rocky grass or folks Fest, it’s very akin to what’s to the right of the stage there where you have just that little access down to the water where everyone is down, interacting with the water getting in the water trying to get wet, but it’s it’s not as For there’s no sand it’s just dirt, kids or buildings, digging some holes and putting buckets of water down, which creates a little bit more erosion on the banks to try to dig sand castles but there’s no sand. It’s just dirt.
2:08:15
Sorry, Dan Wolfert.
2:08:17
If you’re familiar with Rogers Grove prior to the 2013 flood, where a lot of people access river, again, you know, relatively shallow, quick access, low flows that provided quick and easy access and simple access to the river.
2:08:40
So from a staff point of view,
2:08:44
you know, Steve, what’s your opinion about page’s comment about improving access to the water while at the same time restoring the riparian area,
2:08:53
I think what we have in mind is to try to formalize the access a little bit better. So it doesn’t hasn’t doesn’t have a 25 3040 foot length of bank that’s just completely denuded of vegetation, trying to put some sandstone steps and maybe a little area for them to get down to the water but try to revegetate the area around those steps. So they can still interact with the water, but also have erosion protection for the the banks during higher flows.
2:09:21
Okay, Manish and Dan Olson we haven’t heard from you in terms of your thoughts on this.
2:09:27
Yeah, I like to be God ever improve the access in resource area that will be less financial strain stream.
2:09:39
So, yeah, before that, that idea?
2:09:44
Danielson.
2:09:46
Um, that’s the easy and cheaper way I understand. But the 2000 signatures were gathered for the BMX thing. That’s a lot of upset people. If we put that off till COVID budget comes up. So while I’m agreeing with option four, however, this hybrid thing is, I think there’s flack to be had here. You know, somehow we have to couch that. Yeah, we’re working on it. You can’t do this. But we get your message here. And we’re here’s one step another one along the way. I’m not sure if that’ll fly or the city council want a recommendation from us? Is that what are we volunteering this?
2:10:32
you’re volunteering this city council asked us to come back with how we wanted to handle this. We thought it best to try to take this to prep for your thoughts. So we’re throwing you into the end of the throw here.
2:10:46
Appreciate that.
2:10:48
Jeff, since you voted for you know, let it be you want to address that in the context of pages. idea.
2:10:57
I’m a little torn I mean, I felt like it’s unenforceable, you know, unless we’re gonna have arranger There seemed to me based on the budget based on the kids wanting it based on not being will have Rangers for it. The do nothing options seemed like the most reasonable choice. I like page’s idea. That would be my second choice. If not my I mean, I could be swayed. But I don’t see how we’re like Robert said it already. Like how are we going to keep kids out of there? You’re going to spend money on it and then people are gonna want to go back or I don’t know. That’s not an answer. Sorry. I guess I’ll leave my vote with number one. Okay, it doesn’t cost any money. But I understand what Dan said we’ve got damaged there, which is unfortunate.
2:11:40
So, so kind of the the,
2:11:43
the feeling I’m getting for the sense of at least the majority of the board is that page’s concept
2:11:50
is the way that we would like to go assuming that the city can afford it. Page Would you be willing to make a motion to the effect that that prab, you know, recommends this course of action if possible, and then we’ll take a vote and of course, any board members who don’t feel that that’s the way to go or free to vote against that.
2:12:13
Sure, I should have written down what I said.
2:12:19
I recommend that we
2:12:24
or I move that we recommend to counsel that they proceed with restoration and improve the condition of water access in the near term, and then continue to pursue options for a bike skills area in the most appropriate place, when possible.
2:12:48
Thank you, Nikki, did you get that motion?
2:12:54
I did.
2:12:56
Do we have a second
2:13:00
Dan Olson seconds. Any further discussion?
2:13:07
Okay, all those in favor of the motion, please indicate by raising your hands.
2:13:14
Okay, we have six in favor. All those opposed, please indicate by raising your hands.
2:13:20
Jeff, you’re abstaining.
2:13:22
Okay, we have six in favor, one abstention. The Motion passes. How’s that work for you, Steve? That’s right.
2:13:29
I hope to get this to city council here. Oh, probably first week of September, depending on the agendas. Okay, I’m on that. I know it wasn’t easy. would have been great to have a meeting out there, whatever. But that’s just not our world anymore.
2:13:46
Okay, we have 10 minutes left unless we want to move to extend the meeting. items from staff. Dan Wolfert.
2:13:57
You’re muted. It’s
2:13:58
muted.
2:14:02
I’m just going to jump into item C for you and telling you that we
2:14:06
I’m so sorry. No, no,
2:14:09
I was going to just jump in and say that we were at least myself anyhow, a bit overzealous on the disposition of open space. Tomorrow night council will be finalizing the change of language. in your packet, you have the basically a revised copy of the council’s communication and like I was saying we were a bit overzealous in bringing this to you. One of the requirements for a recommendation from the parks board is that we provide notice to the not only to the city’s website, which you know the agenda for this is done but to also post a in the newspaper under general circulation, which we did not Do. So with that said, I’m happy to discuss this particular item for 10 minutes and get a sense from the parks board or, as David and I’ve talked about it, we’re certainly willing to withdraw this item, shorten your evenings by at least five minutes, and then bring this back next month going through this process and making certain that any comments that we get from the public, either through emails or whatever that might be are in front of you so that you can make a decision with that public comment?
2:15:36
Yes, it’s gonna say I think, you know, I want to give Dan a little cover here because as we’ve been directed by council back in 2015, to do these conservation easements, thinking it through and looking at giving a conservation easement is a real property right that we’re giving away. So it really is a disposition of office space, even though this is what council wants to do. They want to do it the right way as well. So I really do think putting the notice out To the public that way, if we get any information back, we can bring that to you. And we have a conversation then that really does loop in that public comment if we get any. And then moving forward, it slows things down. So Dan was a bail results. I think it was a process we’ve used in the past. So my recommendation would be that we really just wait for us to notice it correctly. Bring it all back to you at once and give you the appropriate time heads conversation.
2:16:22
Thank you. Let’s please table that item for the next meeting. items from staff Dan, anything else? Good. Thank you, David. Anything else? I would really
2:16:32
quickly just like to say thank you to Danielle for her work. On the button rock forestry management plan is to Emily’s been working with the Forest Service Boulder County and other agencies to try to bring grant money into helping us manage our forests up in that area to protect our watershed. It’s been signed by council but they’re going to have a ceremonial signing that I really do think the Forest Service in Boulder County and other agencies have They’re really pleased with the results that would have been achieved through this process. So, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez will be going up to Nederland on Thursday to be part of that ceremony. And I want to thank him for doing that as well.
2:17:16
Thank you, Steve Rance while or anything else?
2:17:21
Not unless you have questions for me. I’m good
2:17:23
items from the board. Councilmember Rodriguez.
2:17:28
Thank you very much. I just want to thank you all for your service. And I’ll definitely be able to have a good characterization for the rest of council and are discussing the board’s recommendations or these concerning the new sustainability suggestion recommendations from the taskforce. So thank you all so much for your time this evening.
2:17:49
Thank you,
2:17:50
Rob. Okay.
2:17:53
Oh, okay. I just want to say that I’m helping Danielle do a survey on the use of magic. Macintosh like this month?
2:18:04
Thank you, Dan Olson.
2:18:06
I didn’t realize there was a survey going on last night at 7:30pm. In the evening, there were 47 boats on the Macintosh lake that I could see. And of those boats at least six didn’t have people in them because they’re swimming. Now I understand that swimming is not legal, but not enforced. So this all this Macintosh lake is like a much larger version of what we just discussed it left hand Creek. I mean, it’s huge. If you live I live about a block away. Luckily, because if I was on the street there, I’d be pretty perturbed with all the cars there. Now I understand debut. David, you mentioned this a month ago, two months ago, that’s now discovered and I get all that but this no swimming signs that we saw one morning there were three little papers. ones on sticks were gone within two hours. And if we’re going to enforce no swimming, we got to be serious right now. It’s a mess waiting to happen. Or maybe it is happening. Do we have to rescue folks? You know it? I don’t think we can put our head in the sand here unless that’s a something the city has decided to do.
2:19:22
Maybe do you want to respond?
2:19:24
Yeah, just real quickly on that. Dan, I just want to one let you know that our head is not in the sand. I think the the challenge we have is how do we respond to something that the city and other agencies all along the front range and actually say nationwide and around the world as we have people being told to stay home but get out and use our natural areas. It’s really kind of increased that use we talked about it a button Rob talked about it down along the creeks, but those areas like Dickens and Macintosh have been significantly in impacted we recognize that so with the resources we have, how do we manage that in a way that allows people to do was loud in the park, but also enforce the rules regs and try to be good neighbors out there. So we have been working with our our transportation group who work with Rangers I paying PD extra overtime hours to be out there on the weekends. We put up those additional size but doing a sign package to really reduce signs out there. I think the number I got for like an intermediate sized package where we just went from paper size to a temporary sign is about $11,000 if we want to do a full site package to redo a rules and regs and put up signs that reflect the no swimming which is now a My biggest concern, either Dan or I’ll try to go swimming with you.
2:20:45
Swimming is the key.
2:20:46
Right? So swimming is the biggest one we need to hit while swimming. And I’m seeing a lot of those boats out there that again, I’m just going to say is I have to prioritize having more than 25 is a pretty big lake. We have the buoys up to protect the wildlife if I have to Five I feel appeal, I can keep distance I’m okay at that. But not having personal floatation devices or was necessary to keep them safe and not having Rangers out there is a concern. So trying to get the message out, don’t swim in this water because we don’t test it. We don’t know the ecola number is we don’t have a beach. We don’t have lifeguards. And if you’re been at water, have a personal floatation device with you. Those are the two for me that I think we’re going to keep trying for you how to do it. And that’s what Danielle is trying to do these surveys with volunteers to see what we’re seeing. So those sort of numbers come back and say as we’re prioritizing resources, is this neighbors we’re seeing it there. They’re calling in those Saturday afternoons or it’s just an ongoing challenge we had to face and I’ve been out there on Saturdays as well. So I know this is a challenge that we have to address Believe me. So our heads out in the sand. It really is. How do we deploy as Aaron’s mentioned night, when we’re having reduced revenues, we’re having a reduced budget. We’re having reduced staffing. How do we address this My eyes are wide open, but I don’t have good answers for you, I have not been able to provide what I would hope to be a great answer to counsel yet other than we’re trying to as much as we can with the resources that we have
2:22:12
three more months, it won’t matter. It’ll be a little bit of ice.
2:22:15
Even okay at
2:22:16
this at this point,
2:22:18
right now real quick, and we’re getting close to our cutoff Just so you know, water resources here. And as we talked about how we manage our parks, we use raw water for that this time of year. We don’t have access to the river and Creek so we are pulling water from McIntosh to that water level starts coming down to so that will be another reason maybe will not be such as much traction.
2:22:38
Before I recognize the next speaker, I need to ask if anybody wishes to make a motion to extend our normal meeting time, I would suggest by 30 minutes. Dan, Dan moves that we extend our meeting time. Sure, I can day. You can’t stay. The other option is to adjourn prior to
2:23:03
We can extend the meeting time and say goodbye to page that works too, unfortunately,
2:23:08
what often needs to be discussed that’s, we have the remainder of items from the board and we have public invited to be heard.
2:23:16
But we can also entertain a meeting for a German. Isn’t that correct?
2:23:21
Nikki?
2:23:21
Yeah, I can to
2:23:23
stay. Are we required to have public invited to be heard? Must we be on for five more minutes anyway?
2:23:31
No, I don’t believe so. If we if we run out of time,
2:23:34
David, do you know? I do not know.
2:23:37
Here’s Jeff reasoner when you need him.
2:23:39
Okay. I Would anybody like in that case? Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn at this time?
2:23:46
I’ll change mine to adjourn.
2:23:48
Okay, Jeff Ellenbogen moves to adjourn.
2:23:51
All those in favor of a journeying, please signify by raising your hands. Thank you very much. The motion is unanimous. I’m sorry that we could not quite finished the agenda. Thank you all for your time and we’ll see you next time.
2:24:03
Thank you. Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai