https://otter.ai/s/JtwWA8g5TyacNVaIzn2pPg
0:11
So study session to order start the roll.
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Mayor Bagley here, Councilmember Christiansen
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here.
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Councilmember doggo, faring here. Councilmember Martin. Here. Councilmember Peck. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez here. And Councilmember waters
0:33
here. Mayor, you have a quorum. Great.
0:36
Polly, do you want to start us off with the pledge please? Hey,
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I pledge allegiance to the flag
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of the Republic for which
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it stands one nation,
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under God God, indivisible,
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with liberty and justice for all.
1:00
Not many of us muted Good job this week, guys. All right. Anybody wishing to provide public comment during public invite to be heard, please watch the live stream of the meeting for instructions. When the call and information is displayed on the screen, just call that number. Enter the meeting ID and then press panel. And then we’ll call you according to your last three digits, your phone number. All right. Now, any motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items, anybody? I can’t see. counsel. I’m going to need that off the screen please.
1:35
Thank you,
1:37
counsel. Councilmember Peck.
1:38
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Um, as we’ve all heard, and read in the paper that RTD has been in the news about lost revenues and possible furloughs of employees. So one of the places that they want to take revenue from is from our past tracks internal savings account, or Pfizer. I believe that that Pfizer account needs to remain intact. Because we can use that money for different things for all the unfinished corridors. For one thing, BNSF is waiting for a commitment to do an engineering study for the Northwest corridor. They’re just waiting for a commitment to pay for it. And there were several other things. So with that, I moved to direct staff to send a letter from counsel in favor of keeping the face of funds whole.
2:32
Second,
2:34
thank you. All right.
2:37
All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. I know that MCC has already written a letter, but can’t hurt. Alright, thanks Anything else? Okay, and then I’m gonna also be emailing everybody. Later on one of our a couple of our cities have approached their legal departments to begin RTD board members are actually now saying that they’re not going to build the Northwest rail. So I’m going to be shooting you guys over an email saying that I’ll be shooting you guys an email where other cities are now approaching the legal department. It’s actually not it might be time to actually do something. So heads up that’s coming. All right, moving on, public to be heard.
3:37
Want to take a two minute break while we wait or just kind of hang out? I
3:41
think we need to get the screen up with the number.
3:44
Alright, let’s get the screen up and let’s take a two minute break. We’ll be back okay.
5:26
Hi, folks, welcome for join. Welcome to tonight’s meeting and for joining us, we will get started with the public invited to be heard shortly we will call you by the last three digits of your phone number. So make sure you’ve muted the live stream and you’re listening to us from your
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telephone
6:52
All right, how many on The Cube
7:01
Looks like we have two callers, Mayor.
7:05
Hey, Erica, have you admitted for the one in the 499?
7:13
Yes,
7:14
yes. Okay. It’s just hanging out on my screen.
7:42
All right, Mary, the screen just ended on the live stream and we’re ready to begin.
7:51
All right. Let’s go ahead and walk it up and call the callers
8:05
Erica, did you want to kick that off?
8:07
Sure. It looks like we’ve got three folks here with us. So color ending in. Let’s see 499
8:18
can you go ahead and
8:21
can you hear me? Yep.
8:25
Okay
8:27
Am I on are
8:29
sorry we’re having I’m having a learning curve tonight. So bear with me. I’m Luciana is at state your name and your address for the record and you have three minutes.
8:40
Yes, I’m off to the races. Okay. My name is Joe Kelly. I live on barberry drive in Longmont. I’ve spoken to you guys on this before and good evening to by the way. I’d like to reiterate there are alternatives to having unsafe microwave emitting devices. says he smart meters or ami installed on every person’s home and business in the city of Longmont. And again, I urge you to host a study session on this matter. I have a couple of quotes I’d like to share with you from a report titled, fire and electrical hazards from smart wireless PLC and digital utility meters by Nene, written in July of 2019. And I would like to, although nobody really needs any reminding of the disasters that have been occurring in the western United States, could any of this been contributed to by smart meters? quote, due to meter design and function these digital meters can malfunction in several ways. Electric digital meters can allow surges and overvoltage to flow into buildings which can burn wiring and destroy. Fear with arc and grounds circuit interrupters meters have exploded and have caused fires and they have likely contributed contributed to the severity of other fires. Some of the fires have resulted in the deaths of people and their pets, water and gas ami Amr digital meters pose additional hazards. These problems are known to the Industry Regulatory Commission’s some fire officials, the news media and insurance companies. And we’re the subject of a dispute before the National Labor Relations Board. This paper is on known problems with meters use in the US and Canada. But electrical problems and fires are occurring internationally. And I have another quote from the website of Dr. Deborah Davis from the environmental health trust, and this was recorded by the SEC. Even I Tron the manufacturer of smart meters warns shareholders that we may Face adverse publicity, consumer or political opposition or liability associated with our products, we may be subject to claims that there are adverse health effects from the radio frequencies utilized in connection with our products. If these claims prevail, our customers could suspend implementation or purchase substitute products, which could cause a loss of sales. Okay, that was from an FCC form. So now that you have some idea of not only health hazards associated with this toxic technology, but there are substantial risks and dangers associated with ami, I asked you, whatever has happened to the precautionary principle. And I thank you for your time.
11:47
Right. Thank you, ma’am. next caller.
11:55
All right. The guest ending in now. Three, two, I’m unmuting. You You can unmute yourself and state your name and address. And then you have three minutes.
12:08
Hello, can you hear me? We can. Okay, my name is Carolyn towers. I live at 1534 South Kauffman Street. Good evening, Mr. Begley councilmembers. I am here once again to express my concern over the traffic signal that is placed at the intersection of pike road and South kompetenz Street. Today I’m going to go into detail on the long watseka design standards that needed to be modified or accepted in order to place this light at this location on our local residential streets. The first of these speaks directly to the exceptions and modifications. Section 103 point oh 1.3 b NC State B. The exception represents an alternative design that will meet the intent of the standards and requirements set forth in this document. C. In either case, if granted the exception will not be detrimental to the public interest or other property nor in conflict with the law. My area comprehensive plan and will not endanger the public safety, health or welfare. The placement of this light is not in accordance with the standards for the Longmont area comprehensive plan, and is certainly detrimental to our public interest and property. In fact, the public it is most effective was left out of the discussion on this matter. Section 200.0 1.3 states. Consideration shall be given within the established framework of local streets to provide for proper alignment and conformity to existing street patterns. The street design shall be directly related to the traffic needs, and the adjacent land uses. Street design for local and collector streets and residential areas shall specifically focus on creating a pedestrian friendly design, avoiding excessively wide or long street streets that encourage excess speed. Street design within such residential areas is intended to focus on developing a street system that can provide access to the adjacent properties provide a safe transportation system for pedestrians, bicyclists vehicles and minimize the impact of traffic on adjacent residential property, the street intersections, driveways, pedestrian facilities shall be designed to provide for the greatest safety for both pedestrians and motorists. The placement of this traffic signal is only 20 yards from one of my neighbor’s driveway. Place in this light at this location is not in the spirit of long lines vision and standards of street design as it is endangering the ability of residents to access their property on a local residential street. The city of placing the resident safety at risk as they attempt to enter and exit their property. Section 205 point oh 1.4 states that intersection spacing shall be in accordance with section 205 point oh three section 205 point oh 3.2 states, intersections with no potential for signalization as determined by the city will be spaced in accordance with the following table. This table states that the offset is 660 feet on an arterial. It is exactly 660 feet from Christie Corky South Kauffman street informing us that the city had determined this intersection to be non signalized and Section when the area was developed. So 5.0 3.3 states, intersections with the potential for signalization, as determined by the city shall be spaced no less than one half mile from the nearest existing or planned signalized intersection is an intersection that will potentially need a signal cannot meet the spacing requirements. It may be limited to right turn. signal is only a mile.
15:24
That’s three little over three minutes. Thank you very much for your time.
15:29
All right, next caller that it
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looks like we have one last guest here. This is the guest ending in 418. Give me just a sec here. Guests ending in 418. You should be able to unmute yourself and state your name and your address. And you have three minutes
15:57
I’m unmuted Is that true?
15:59
Correct. We can hear you.
16:01
Okay, thank you. My name is Stan tool. I’m a long term resident of the city, a long line, I’m communicating with you with a microwave emitting device that so many people are not, don’t seem to care much about. But the reason I’m contacting you is I wrote a letter to city commissioners. And I was asking how I can get involved with this RV ordinance, because I feel I as a long term resident, that people of my background are being excluded from the process. I would ask the city council to look at what I’ve written to them and get the information how a person like me not go into some place like the art center or some other place but somebody that might provide You know, some balance to face people that basically don’t want to treat certain people as residents of our community. So again, I would ask the city council to respond to my correspondence, asking how individual can get involved, like the people, other people said, they say on the thing, go to the city council can go to the city manager and go to the code enforcement people and not get charged and thrown in jail for it. I would like to be able to participate like these other people. So that’s what I would like to do. And I would like you to respond to my correspondence and tell me how to do this. Thank you.
17:55
Thanks, Dan. All right.
18:00
Those are all the callers we had.
18:02
All right, great. Let’s move on to special reports. The first one by the law, my Housing Authority. is Cameron grant here. There he is.
18:14
Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Thank you for having me tonight. I wanted to do a bit of a follow up to some of the discussion that we had two weeks ago at the last study session about the Longman housing authority and our ongoing collaboration with the city of Longmont. After that meeting, I received a request from council that the Li che come and speak tonight and present you with some information about the value of the services that the Housing Authority is receiving from the city. And I’ve provided the council with a letter that the board put together with significant help from ellijay and city staff trying to address those questions. And we can certainly dig into any other questions that you have that aren’t answered in the letter. I’ll give you a summary of that here verbally, and then we can see if you have any, any further questions for me. So a little bit of background. And as I mentioned two weeks ago, we had a pretty significant leadership change at the Housing Authority about two and a half years ago. And after that change, we spent a fair amount of time evaluating our operating structure and came to the conclusion that the structure that we had in terms of how la che managed its revenues and properties, was not sustainable in the long term. It was a structure that had worked very well for years, but for a variety of reasons. The climate had changed and that structure was not sustainable, without a pretty significant increase in rents to all of our residents and that was something we did not want to do. So in February, we met with the city to start having some discussions about what other options were out there for the LA che given that our mission of providing and sustaining affordable housing in the city overlap very well with the city’s affordable housing goals. And we so we started those discussions in February, and then the perfect storm hit. We had a COVID-19 stay at home order in March, we had a notice from our executive director that she would be resigning. We had several other key staff people resign. And in the midst of that we lost an investor in a $5 million rehabilitation project at one of our properties. Thankfully, we had started that discussion with the city and rather than lean away from us, the city staff leaned into those problems right alongside The lhsaa board and IT staff. Because of that, we were able to continue to maintain and provide supportive housing for about 1300 and 80 Longmont residents. We were also able to preserve the $5 million rehabilitation project and Aspen meadows. We opened up the new Fall River facility and fully leased that and now we are collectively developing options for how we maintain the Lh a mission kind of in concert with with the city’s efforts. And that mission is to provide housing and related services to the low and moderate income families in Longmont, which include elderly residents, disabled households, with the general goal to relieve the community of substandard housing. And our plan now is to do that on a long term basis. So that’s what we’ve been able to do in the the time Since February when we started with the city. Now turning to the specific question, we were asked what’s the value of what the city has done during that time to us, when we looked at that we took a couple different approaches to try to come up with this representation of value. First, we looked at actual cost savings to the Lh a, from the work that was being done by city staff. Then from a different perspective, we looked at that city, those city staff people, and the time they were putting into law matters to kind of give you that perspective. And then finally there, there’s an intangible value that’s it’s difficult to quantify but it’s pretty important dimension.
22:46
When we look at the cost savings, we have seven le k positions that are currently vacant that in normal times we would have filled we have not needed to fill those are we’ve been able To operate without filling those, I guess that’s a better way to put it. Thanks to the city’s efforts. The dollar amount tied to that is $196,160. For the rest of this year. That’s real money that we have available in our budget that we have available to reimburse the city for the contributions it’s provided. And looking at this from from the city’s perspective, which, admittedly, you know, we not may not be the in the best position to evaluate city staff. But but we have city staff that have put in over 1200 and 50 hours, which valued at about $60,000 thus far, and there will be some more time put in between now and the end of the year. And in addition to that staff, we have Harold’s time care Rooney’s time Susan McGinley be enhancing and a host of other city staff people that are all referenced in our letter. who’ve all put in significant amounts of time to housing authority work. I can’t put a number on that time. But I can very confidently tell you, we can’t afford it to LBJ with the benefits that we’re getting, the amount of service we’re getting. And the skill level, the quality of service we’re getting is well out of the reach of what our organization would normally be leaning on. So we’re getting more than than we bargained for in a positive way.
24:35
But let me turn to
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the last piece, the intangible piece, which I definitely can’t put $1 amount on. But there are several things that were made possible by this collaboration. First and foremost, the 1300 and 80 people that we support, are all still supported. They’ve effectively not felt The bumps in the road of this situation, they’re in high quality housing, they’re in safe and secure housing. And that isn’t in through no small effort of the city staff. I think we’ve effectively shielded them from the administrative changes that we’ve had. And in many ways, we’re increasing the quality of service we’re providing to our residents. And then in addition to that, we’re preserving some opportunities. You know, not only are we kind of battening down the hatches and stabilizing, but we have some opportunities that are available to us because we’ve been able to remain stable as we are with the city’s help. One was the Fall River Project I mentioned, which is a low income housing apartment project that we just finished building in late 2019, and open it up in 2020. We’re able to fully leased that project. So that one’s up and running and doing very well as to metal apartments as the project that’s going through a rehabilitation, with that loan closing coming up in a couple of weeks, and construction beginning shortly thereafter. And then in addition, we’ve preserved opportunities for other lmha land holdings. We’ve got a few things in the pipeline that I think are going to be great opportunities for the housing authority and for the city. And all of that is a result of the city’s participation. And it’s pretty clear to us on the Lh a board that an impairment or loss of our ability to do any one of those things would have been a significant blow, not just to the lmha, but to the individuals and families that we serve, and to the city as a whole. I don’t want to go without saying I’ve mentioned a lot about the city and the city staffs efforts. We have a question. core team of housing authority staff that have remained dedicated to this agency and its mission through all of the ups and downs of the past six or seven months that have been instrumental to to this success thus far. So where are we going in the future work, we’re hoping to continue this collaboration with the city. We’ve got about, you know, 12 to 18 months of time, I think we’re going to need as we evaluate operations and come up with the ideal structure to operate the housing authority on a sustainable basis. But I think we’re on a good, good track to get there. And we really appreciate everything that the city has done. I think this is the right thing to do for Longmont, we’re protecting a vulnerable population. And there are some great opportunities for us ahead. So thank you.
28:01
All right, great. If you have any questions from Cameron for for Cameron
28:07
All right, Dr. Waters.
28:10
Thank you, Bagley and thanks, Cameron, for your comments tonight and for your leadership of the board
28:18
that you mentioned the letter that you’ve drafted.
28:21
You submitted that letter. I believe it and if you didn’t see it in your packet, there must have been something lost in the communication but we’ve we finished that this morning 1000 Authority Board and send it back to staff with instructions to get it to the city. So I just
28:42
I actually just saw that in my email. I didn’t know if it were I couldn’t tell if it was sent to you all it is sent to you on I copied dawn and others in it so they can get that to the meaning is or I know john last for the letter. So
28:57
yeah, I think I was that’s where I was going. Just I think I think it’s important for both the Times called along on my leader to have copies of, of Cameron’s letter. So if I could, at least I don’t think I had seen it in my inbox. I know I didn’t see it in my inbox. And I think I think the media have
29:23
Mr. Peck?
29:29
I don’t have anything there. Thank you.
29:33
All right, great. Well, I asked for Cameron to present this only because we need to figure out you know, we have to figure out compensation and, and how the budget is going to work. So we will reconvene another executive session, if we can put that on the schedule at some point. Eugene Harrell, then we’ll pick up where we left off last time. Thank you. All right, let’s move on to the update on COVID
30:01
As mayor Council, it’s been an interesting few days in terms of COVID. So I’m going to go over a couple of things with you. I’m going to share my screen as we’re moving forward. So if you Can you all see my screen, I can see Councilmember Peck and waters. Okay. So if you look at the numbers recently, obviously, the y axis has changed significantly in terms of the number of cases that were that we’ve seen within Boulder County, and I’m going to talk about that as we’re moving through. You heard me the other day talking about the number when we were about 60. You can obviously see that it went in excess of 90 and that, again, is really based on on what number of staff who are in conversations with the county. You know, approximately 70% of those cases are related to the university. And there’s some information that went out this afternoon that I will go Over in a little bit. So, definitely seeing the increase in cases, the majority of those cases are related to the students attending university. What you can see that doing within the numbers is again, if you remember, we were at 1.7. It’s now 3.6. Over overall, we’re still below 4%. This kind of shows you what’s happening to the five day average of positive the percent positive.
31:31
And then, when you
31:35
when you move here in it, and you see the growth in the cases, obviously 20 to 29 is an excess of 510 to 19 is approaching 200. Based on what the governor said today, I think what we’re seeing in Boulder County is really the same thing that they’re seeing statewide. the steepest curve in this is still in the 1800s 18 year old population, slightly less steep, is when you look at 18 to 22. So we’re definitely seeing what those numbers look like and what’s happening within in our community. This gives you another look at the five day average. And in terms of what we’ve been seeing, again, it’s just all related to the university. And this is where you really start seeing the difference. So, if you remember, I believe the last time I presented this I presented to you on Tuesday, and then a group on third and our city staff on Thursday, so I can’t remember which number I’m referencing from the previous week, but it was a 10 a 15. And then you can see Longmont winter 826. But when you look at Boulder, they’re still at they’re now at 1200 and 63 cases. So this is really showing what they’re talking about when they say that the majority of cases are related to the university. I haven’t pointed This out to you all much. But when you look at the number of cases based on the hundred thousand population, I’m doing this because I actually have a question on this. When I was presenting to city staff last Thursday about what how do we really compare to some of the other communities in long line and you can see that when we really look at Lewisville, Longmont Lafayette. While we’re higher, we’re closer and you can see the difference within Boulder. And this gives you a comparison to some of the other communities in in Boulder County. Again, you know, this is different we’re seeing this drop, but again, related to what we’re seeing and where we’re seeing case case growth. When we talk about the hospitals right now, hospitals are still in, you know, the same condition that they have been. You can see ICU beds is still in yellow. Med search beds is in red, and again, we have to keep in mind that’s related to elective procedures but everything else is in green. The number I got today was that the number of people hospitalized was less than 10 in Boulder County. And I actually think the number may be less than five but I want to double check that but definitely less than 10. Orange in Longmont so I think it was in Longmont that Dan mentioned that number. So from a medical system perspective, we’re doing well. Now the other thing I wanted to share with you the state in this website, they’ve launched their, their new dial. And so what you can do is when you look at Boulder County, it says Where are we and everyone is essentially starting off in level two and safer at home. But when you look at this other component when you go Why are we here if you look at protect our data To protect our neighbor here, it’s kind of hard to show all the way to stay at home. And you can see the different components in this when we look at our two week average positivity. In that our hospitalization piece, you see that we’re really in the green. It’s actually in two weeks cumulative case incidents at 170.3, where you see us moving more into the yellow or the orange. Again, that’s specifically related to what we’re seeing at the what we’re seeing from the university. And again, if anyone’s interested in this, this is in the COVID-19 dial dashboard, with the Colorado Department of Health, to give you a sense of what it looks like for different counties. As I was playing with this yesterday, and you look at Jefferson, you can see that they’re in the green, but the difference is in terms of the cumulative incidence of cases they’re in the blue whereas we were in the yellow So this is something that the state put together. They just launched it today. You heard us talk about this before. And that’s what we’re really looking at in terms of
36:12
the, you know, the dial that they’re using and how that comes in with other conversations. I know many of you are probably you asked the question last week, but what does this mean for protect our neighbors with the increased cases? And in talking with the administrator group, it does mean that we essentially have to start back from the new peak. But one of the things that I want to talk about a little bit is the conversations that we’ve seen with the department, Boulder County Department of Health, City of Boulder and University of Colorado, CU Boulder. They’re definitely the Boulder County Public Health is definitely taking this serious. I know Eugene has been involved in conversations various teams. Individuals that represent various jurisdictions have been involved in conversations on this. today. They released a statement Jeff sent out a statement so and he referenced that, you know, in the last few weeks there’s been a significant increase in the number of Boulder Boulder County residents who’ve tested positive. The majority of these news cases has been among boulder residents, particularly those aged 18 to 29, many of whom attend the University of Colorado Boulder. I think the big piece in this is, he said today Boulder County Public Health issued a strong recommendation to every CU Boulder student to quarantine in their living in Boulder to quarantine in their boulder home or residence hall for 14 days. individuals should not leave their residence unless it is for work class or getting food to take care of children or parents or medical attention. Including to get tested that cannot be provided remotely. And then he ended by saying we must stop the spike and affects the health, safety and livelihood of all of our Boulder County residents. I know they’re really working on this. But I know this is one of the questions that you all were. Were asking this as we were talking about this and seeing this change in cases. And there’s a lot of conversations. I know there will be even more conversations moving forward. I will ask maraca to send a statement out to you all so you will have it available to you. But I just wanted you know, that’s the COVID update in terms of the numbers today. I’ve got one more thing that that I need to update. But before I go to that I wanted to see if there were any questions.
38:57
Nope, we’re looking good
38:59
notes. Right. Yeah,
39:00
I do have something else. Yeah. So next week during our COVID update, we are going to be providing you information on the the cares funding. We were hoping to do it today. We have different buckets of funding that have become available to us. We have Care’s funding, which is what you saw come through Dola. And and, and we worked with all of the other jurisdictions in Boulder County in a way that we did in the CDBG. Dr. in that, in that arena. Based on our allocation in Boulder County Longmont received $4.28 million. That was something I mentioned to you all before. Also, weld county got an allocation. So we have 16,000 based on our population in weld county that came. So we have 4,303,000 and change that’s available to us. That’s one bucket of money that we have the other bucket of money that we have Is the CDBG CB funds. And you may remember at the beginning of the COVID-19 situation we talked about CDBG CB or call it CV from now on. And then we also restructured some of our money in our existing CDBG accounts to utilize
40:21
to put into what we were doing.
40:25
So we actually just were notified that we got an additional allocation of money through the CV portion. And so we’re trying to now overlay that in terms of what we’re looking at in the cares funding. So today, I’m generally going to talk about the buckets that we were looking at. So when we move through this, we look at it in terms of city organization, individual assistance, business assistance, and partner assistance. And so in terms of the city organization, one of the things that we’re Let me back up a little bit. So there are some requirements that come into play with all of these funding sources. On the CV side, what I will tell you and that’s the CDBG side. On the CB side, the requirements are more strict than on the care side. But there are still requirements on the care side that we have to be that we have to be mindful of. As we’re looking at an allocation of these dollars. The advantage on the CV side is that we actually have more time to spend those dollars. On the care side, we don’t have a lot of time to spend those dollars, we have to spend them by the end of the year. And so that is why I’m going to talk to you about buckets tonight so that when we get in front of you all next Tuesday night and you see our our recommendations, hopefully we will be further down the road so we can begin getting those funds out in our community. The other thing that we have to be really mindful of is the fact that at the end of the day We have about a 15 year period of which we can be audited by the Li G or the Office of the Inspector General, just like it is on the FEMA funds and the Dr. funds and the other funds that we utilized in, in the we’re in the flood recovery process. So we have to be really mindful of this. We are very fortunate that we have a number of folks within our organization that are really good at this and, and are working through these scenarios. So when we talk about the city portion of this, the buckets that we’re really talking about, and this is related to COVID is that one of the things that we while we were better than a lot of organizations and having the ability to work remotely, we still realized that we needed more equipment, so their city telework equipment in that. The other thing that we have the ability to do if counsel remembers we’ve Purpose some funds to put into the business assistance grants. And so we took other grant funds and moved them into the immediate business assist assistance grants. That’s a another part of the internal piece where we can replenish those funds so they can be used for their original purpose. In terms of the city operations, based on what we’re seeing, we have the ability, and we’re still digging into this a little bit. But in terms of the pandemic leave that we had, where we had to have people go home, even if there wasn’t something for them to do. So we have the ability for pandemic leave. You know, the restaurant voucher program that you all came up with the idea voted on, we can replenish that 10,000 but we’ve also looked at putting more money in for another round of that program. Another big component that we’re looking at as a bucket is really did digital divide materials and working with the library so that we can have have equipment and services available. So that’s a big component of this. We also have the COVID Recovery Center, which you may remember was for individuals that were homeless that happened to be sick and needed to be put in a facility. We have a cost associated with that in terms of our partnership with Boulder, Boulder County, that may change a little bit based on some additional funding that may or may not come through, but we still need to allocate those dollars. We’re also looking at this funding can be used for our FEMA match or 25%. Yeah, we also then, as you remember, had to reassign staff into other areas. That wasn’t their normal job that that isn’t allowed expense in this the work that we did downtown. Many of the costs associated with that is another bucket that we’ve created. Also just heard that we received another grant for that work. So we’re having to fine tune those numbers. Business assistance grants, we have the ability to, to push more money in that arena.
45:16
And then the other component when we talked about partner organizations and you just heard from Cameron, one of the challenges that we had in working with the Housing Authority is they did not have the ability if you remember they did not have be telling you this, they didn’t have the ability to tell work. They’re still having to come in, somebody gets sick and one of the manager units they couldn’t tell work. And so it really was a big problem. And then as we look at what we’re doing, and and really bringing their IT system in with the city. They It was so basic that we could get them a computer to do the teleworking on but the infrastructure the system was so outdated They actually still couldn’t do it. So we had a an infrastructure piece of that. So that’s one of the things that we put in the list. We also have created a bucket for childcare assistance. And that really goes in the individual assistance category. Another bucket is the individual assistance really looking at utility assistance for those who can’t pay their utility bills. But then based on the CV finding, also looking at home and rental assistance in that world. And then finally, looking at putting funding into Health and Human Service Agency funding. The only thing that we’re still working and this is also an Lj related item, but definitely COVID expense is based on the work that we were doing at Aspen Meadows because of the rules and regulations associated with COVID. It added about $150,000 to that project because of how we had to change the nature of it. So we’re still trying to figure that out. Again, I’m not giving you a lot of numbers because there’s still things in flux and rules that we have to make sure we’re okay with. But what I wanted to do was just verbally go over the different buckets. So you all can think about those buckets. This will obviously be part of the agenda next week. So you could think about the buckets. But if you didn’t hear me mention a bucket, and it’s something at the forefront of your mind. It would be good to hear that now. So we could try to evaluate it quickly. But we’re definitely going to be on a time crunch once we start moving forward with this.
47:46
Councilmember
47:46
Peck, thank you very badly. Harold, thank you for that update. I was I was curious about what Karen’s money was going to be going to, but just out of curiosity, do we use that neighbor to neighbor fund all So through the community or as the educational community foundation or the Community Foundation, is that part of some of the funding that the city staff uses?
48:11
That is not part of that. Okay. This is completely separate.
48:15
Alright, thanks.
48:22
All right, that Errol. That’s it. I did that. Did we miss anything category wise?
48:31
I don’t think so. We’re good.
48:32
Okay. I think you’ll get it. You’ll get a detailed list next week with these categories that I’ve mentioned in the dollars and then also see what the CV dollars are going to look like. And we’re going to try to get that out. It may be an addendum that we send out Friday or Monday, but we’re still trying to look at all of these nuances.
48:54
All right, great. Let’s move on to a request for approval on City Council. negotiate with Boulder County on the acquisition and management of the Nicholaw McLaughlin property.
49:06
Good evening, mayor and council members David Bell, Director parks Natural Resources received Longmont. I am here to talk to you about the McLaughlin property and staff’s request to move forward negotiating for the acquisition this property for open space. Now I have a lot in your agenda tonight. And I’d like to be as quick and efficient as possible. However, I would like to take just a quick moment to talk about why we’re in the process right now. And as you read through your packet, why it looks like this might be out of sequence with what a typical acquisition would look like. And the best answer I have is because it is a sequence back in 2014, one city staff and proud started asking Boulder County for assistance to acquire this property because it’s important to the city and value to the the neighbors out there our community when they came to us and said that they had a willing seller, staff was anxious to move ahead of that we start preparing packets for proud and for counsel. As we started putting those documents together, we recognize we had not made a formal request to counsel to move forward this negotiation. So I would just like to take a minute to apologize for Collins for being at this point this time, but this is where we’re at. And I’m hoping we can kind of move forward from here. I’d also like to thank Boulder County, who when we informed them that we were in this situation and we couldn’t have staff negotiate. Without Council’s direction, Boulder County took the initiative and continued with this acquisition so that we wouldn’t lose this opportunity. So they’ve included the front money and staff time to make sure this property was something we could continue to work on as long as we had council direction. So at this point, I could talk a bit more about process and where we’re at or I’d be happy to move forward why staff feels this is a great property for the open space program and a great opportunity for our community.
51:03
all right with if there’s no questions about that,
51:07
we can go to the first slide then or the next slide.
51:12
So this is kind of a big pullback and we’re clover basin is located you can see it’s up there. Nelson road is 75th. It sits really close to some of our new development in the city where we have people that would have an opportunity for an open space property very close. It’s just just north of the county’s age I property going all the way down to lager men. That complex is about a full section about 640 acres of open space and above that there’s some other county conservation easements as well but again, the proximity to the city has made it something been very interested in for for a long time. Next slide. So as you pull into the the clover basin, you can look at the property that the county has negotiated with to purchase the Midwest. And property. And that’s going to be 73 acres. But their staff has also worked to look at two lots up in the northwest corner that could be sold as, as lots of deer with conservation use as would use the price of this property by a million dollars, I think making a great opportunity, keeping that development away from the areas that have the Agriculture and Natural Resource value. So I think if you look this property and say, well, Boulder County has acquired this already, what’s the city need to set into this for? And I think it really is the fact the reason we want this for so long, is the fact that it is close to our community. And if you look at the eastern portion of Cobra basin, that is the reservoir company and at this point in time, the city has 99% ownership in the reservoir and that property. So if you look at that property, this outline there in black is a cobra basin reservoir and the hash area that will give us a very holistic management of that entire property. So it really puts together A significant piece of property, it’d be a great opportunity for our community to have something close to them that the city would be managing. That’d be part of our negotiations, as well as that the city would be the lead Management Agency. And I think that’s a nice piece too, because it’s great partner that the county is they have other priorities throughout the county. And if it comes to when we get to make trails out there or have public process becomes a much larger county process as opposed to city taking that lead and making it something that is really focused on our community’s needs. And also, I think we would want to make sure that we’re very fair close neighbors that are out there as well. So even though they’re not in the in the city, I think they’re close enough that we have that ability to pull in those neighbors to help with this, this national plan. So you can go to the next slide. This is a picture that I actually got to take was out there with the students in the Innovation Center. They were working with one of their little submersibles and was out there that day and just had a chance to see what a beautiful property It really is. And again, you can think about just to the ECU how much development There is but if you’re sitting out this property, looking out, just having a picnic bird watching or enjoying the area, I think this is a great asset for the city. If you go to the next bullet please if you look at the bullpen comprehensive plan right now property has agriculture on it and it has significant agriculture according to the land says significant agricultural value. next bullet. It has riparian areas. Next, wetlands
54:33
significant wildlife habitat,
54:36
the scenic views
54:39
it would also help limit development along that that reservoir and along that sort of more rural buffer between our development and the county and it has great opportunities for passive recreation. Again, I think going back to conversations we’ve had with how important has been for the public to get out and use some of these areas during this time. COVID time having other areas where people can disperse from and go out and engage in passive recreation, if it’s hiking bird watching picnicking, whatever that may be, this would be another great area that we can maybe take some of the pressure off of some of those other areas in the city. But again, a reminder that none of that would happen until we have a management plan. So this area would stay closed to we we work with the community and and proud to get a management plan for this property.
55:26
Next slide.
55:29
So, at this point, I’m going to take questions about the the property or really looking for direction from council to have staff go forward and work with Boulder County to acquire this property. And again, I think the pieces I talked about the county purchasing and they have purchased for $2.4 million and then they could reduce that by about a million dollars with the sales of those lots.
55:56
actually moved that we direct city sorry.
56:00
Similarly, we direct city staff to proceed with the negotiations pertaining by the acquisition Second.
56:06
All right on favor, so anybody want to discuss it? All in favor say aye.
56:11
Aye. Aye.
56:13
Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Let’s move on to the 2021 budget price. Let’s take a quick two minute break. It’s been an hour. Let’s use the restroom real quick and come back. And, Jim, how long is the budget presentation gonna take tonight you think? 90 minutes again.
56:30
It it’ll probably exceed 90 minutes.
56:34
Let’s take a bathroom break and then we’ll come back and get going. Thanks.
1:00:56
All right, Jim
1:00:59
getting Mayor Teresa Malloy budget manager. I’m going to start it off for us this evening. So this evening, the topics that we’re going to cover for you are a budget tutorial. Our total budget summary by fund, some revenue projections, general fund budget summary, public safety fund budget summary, our 2020 budget projections, early childhood hood education, Human Service Agency funding affordable housing Fund, the library feasibility study, and then finally equity in the 2021 budget and beyond. So I am going to start off with the budget tutorial this evening. But before I do that, I did want to point out just a couple things that was included in your council communication. So we, as attachment D, included a revised budget presentation scheduled for you and I do need to let you No, that has changed since we included that in your packet on the on September 29, or October 6, we have listed that the proposed proposed budget for recreation was going to be that evening. It’s instead going to be on September 22. So that is one change that, that I did want to point out for you this evening. I also wanted to let you know that the the information that Councilman waters was asking in regards to our CI P has been provided for you in your packet as well. And there is a replacement attachment attachment E for that. So certainly if you have any questions on that, we’d be happy to answer that. But other than just pointing out that that information is there for you. We hadn’t planned on reviewing that. So, up first, then it Is our budget tutorial. And so what I wanted to start by telling you is this this presentation is a is a version of training that we do for staff through our city of Long lat University clue training. So it’s it’s kind of a modified version of that presentation. So the first slide then please. So we wanted to start out, just basically giving you an overview of the city’s financial structure to kind of set the stage for the the current budget, our 2020 budget as well as our 2021 budget. So as As you are aware, the city budgets and tracks our actuals by variety of different funds. The predominant fund that tracks most of our services that really don’t belong in any other fund is, is in the jungle phone. So that covers a variety of services that you can see there on your screen. We also have several enterprise funds. And then we have quite a few special revenue funds. There are a few of them that we listed here on the screen for you. But we do have more than what we have listed on this screen as well as internal service funds. And the important thing to note here is that depending on the type of revenue that is collected or generated by that fund is is what really classifies these funds as enterprise versus special revenue for instance. So So utility rates or enterprise funds, taxes are in the general fund or end or special revenue funds. Grants can can really be in any different fund, and then user fees as well in different funds. So next slide, please.
1:05:22
Just an overview of our high level overview of our budget process, we start our process with staff creating and updating their, their capital improvement projects. And that happens in March. Then in April staff starts working on their operating budget for the following year. And that all then comes together in in June and July, with discussions with the city manager and directors in regards to what we’re going to show is funded in our proposed budget We do have some charter requirements that we have to meet with our budget. One of those is that we have to present you with a line item budget. Hence the reason our budget document is 600 plus pages. We also have to have our budget to you on or before September 1. And then we have to hold a public hearing on or before September October 1. Council then adopts the budget by ordinance, multiple ordinances In fact, it’s it is more than one ordinance that it takes to adopt our budget. And we typically do those in October, although this year, it will be first reading on October 2 reading of the the actual budget ordinances will be in November, and then it becomes effective the following year and then throughout That budget year, we bring you additional appropriations and ccip amendments to continue to add to and amend that budget as we go through the year. So next slide, please. This is just a list of all of the funds that are in our proposed budget. There are 43 of them. So a lot, a lot of different funds. Next slide, please. I wanted to spend a little bit of time walking you through our 2019 budget process because that is the most recently completed process, just to give you the entire picture of what it looks like for a completed full calendar year. So we submitted our budget to you in August of 20. 18 for the 2019 budget. And when we submitted that to you, this is what the proposed budget look like from a revenue and expense, and then the use of fund balance perspective. Next slide, please. Throughout September and October, like we will be doing this year, we had discussions with Council and that budget was revised and then adopted in October. And this is what the budget looked like when it was adopted by you all in October. So, next slide, please. And then, throughout 2019, there were eight additional appropriations, including the carryover which was completed in August and that brought our final budget to 540 $9 million. So it was 185 $5.9 million more than what was adopted. Next slide, please. And that hundred and $85.9 million was made up of 130.8 of carryover and 55.1 of new appropriations. Next slide, please. So this is a history of carryover versus new appropriations. And the carryover is that dark brown kind of colored line and the new appropriations is that line that blue line on the bottom and basically what what I wanted to point out is that so as you all know, the flood occurred in September of 2013. And so from 2014 on the Both in new appropriations and then carryover of those dollars. A lot of the funds that a lot of the dollars that you’re seeing in both of these lines was flood related. So CDBG dr funding, FEMA funding, etc, as well as bonds. So we issued
1:10:24
in 2019 was the public improvement fund bonds. And so those were appropriated in January of 2019. They will be carried over or work carried over in our carryover appropriation that that just recently came to you. We also had broadband bonds that were issued in 2016 and then carried over as well so so it is a combination of flood and bond dollars that is making up that very large care Over amounts that you see year after year. So next slide, please. So I wanted to take three different funds for you and kind of walk you through what what the original budget look like, what the final budget look like, and then followed by find how much of that was carryover and new appropriation. And then on the right is the detail of these funds. And so I’m not going to go through the detail. Unless you have questions. I certainly can answer some questions for you. But, but basically, I wanted to give you a snapshot of three different funds and I picked these three different funds for a couple of different reasons. So So here’s our water fund, and it started the 2019 budget was lifted. $16.9 million and ended with $75 million. It had a pretty hefty carryover and most of it was ccip related as you can see. However, there was some new appropriations most of it against the AIP related. Next slide please. The other fund I wanted to show you is our public improvement fund so it started at 6.7 million and ended at 39 point 5 million. And so this fund is the only fund by charter that does not where our appropriations do not lapse at year end. So we don’t have to bring those that that carryover back to you all. Because this is a fund where those appropriations do not legally lapse. All other funds do which is why we have to Those carryover that carry over back to you in the form of an ordinance. What is also noteworthy for this fund is this is the year that we issued the bonds to cover those projects that you heard a little bit about last week as well. So 32 point, just under $32.8 million is essentially what what the bonds were. Next slide please. And then the final fund to look at this evening is the CDBG funds so, so this one has a lot of carryover. It started out at 1,064,000 and ended up $41.9 million. A huge carryover and that is predominantly the CDBG Dr. funding that we have been carrying them spending down but Continuing to carry the balance year after year after year. And we’ll continue to carry it for probably quite a few more years as well, while they continue to spend it down. So next slide please. So I’m going to move now into 20. Because just like 2019, where we start out with a, you know, a budget that is much less than what we end the year at, for 2019. That will also happen for 2020. And so our budget for 2020 is $353.9 million. That’s what was adopted. And you can see on the right side the the the funds that make up the largest component of our 2020 budget. So next slide
1:14:58
and then this is just The presentation of the sources of funds. So, charges for service make up most of the revenue source or 50%, roughly of the revenue source, covering our budget. And then on the right side is the sales and use tax adopted budget. So Jim will talk to you a little bit about our projections and in a little bit later in our presentation, this is what was adopted sales and use tax. Next slide, please. And so before I get into the slide, I do want to note that, you know, we have not we did complete the carryover, that was one of the appropriations that we did recently bring to you. It was 130 $9 million dollars, compared to a roughly 100 and 30 million in 19. And again, a lot of it is a flood related or dr funding as well as bond dollars. And so it’s it’s big and we haven’t, you know, completed this year yet, but we do expect to have at least a couple more appropriations that will we will be bringing to you throughout the rest of this year. And so we are pretty much on track to end the year with another half a million plus total budget. And so this slide I just wanted to show you, our 2020 adopted versus what is in our 2020 proposed budget. So not necessarily a big increase in revenue of 5.1% increase in expenditures overall, but That was mainly covered by fund balance, as opposed to an increase in revenue. And so you’re going to hear a little bit about our what makes that up a bit later in this presentation. Next slide please. And so, this is just a snapshot of the different categories in our budget. So, this is our total budget and roughly one third one third, one third. So one third of it is personal services, one third is operating and then one third is is the non operating and capital together, combined. So next slide. And this is the general fund. So 74% of the general fund. Is is personal services so heavily people focused in our general fund. And I believe that is my last slide. Yeah. And so with that, then I’m going to turn it over to Jim. And we’re moving into then. Erica presentation number two.
1:18:15
Thank you, Teresa. I’m Jim golden, the chief financial officer. And as we’re waiting for the second PowerPoint to come up, I’ll just let you know that I’ll be carrying through with some of the topics that Theresa mentioned. Next slide, please, Jim.
1:18:32
Yeah, we think there is a question
1:18:38
who had their hand up?
1:18:40
I can’t see the council at this point.
1:18:42
Can you remember water semana?
1:18:45
Oh, 10 Go ahead. Surprise, surprise. First of all, thanks, Teresa. That was very helpful input, Jim. For for bringing that back to us. Just so I’m clear, and I may be the only one that puzzles over. This is There’s no questions for me about the carryover funds and where they come from how they accumulate in the types of revenues they represent. The date when you make the distinction between carryover and new appropriations. is our new preparations all budget balances, as opposed to what we what we just learned about is carryover. make that distinction? We the idea?
1:19:23
That is a very good, good question. Councilman waters and I in hindsight, I could have been a little clearer on that and showed you some of that is covered by fund balance. Others, it depends on what it is. Some of it is certainly on grants, any additional new grants that we may have gotten that were not included in our in our adopted budget. We typically don’t include many grants in our adopted budget because we don’t know Have the time that we’re putting our budget together, you know, what those grants might be how much we might get, we’re still in the process of perhaps just applying for them at that point. But so things like the grants that public safety has recently gotten, you know, for their programs, some of those can be you know, upwards to a half a million dollars. And so, so some of it is is covered by revenue and other it others is fund balance.
1:20:32
So, so it’s that it’s a mix of new revenues based on a variety of sources could be grant funding.
1:20:39
It’s also then unspent
1:20:42
money and various lines within the budget, separate from tip and how we carry those over or bond funds and those kinds of things.
1:20:50
So So at the end of the year, when our appropriations lapse, you know, the the fund balance will change depending on, you know how much savings we had. If we don’t carry that over, then it does become fun balance that can be used for other purposes. And, and I and I know you guys are on top
1:21:13
of gyms on top every day of where we are with expenditures, expenditures against budgets, what the actuals are against budgets and, and at the end of the day, you’re not going to read appropriate until you close some of those accounts out. So yeah, you can account for every penny. What are those dollars when we get the recommendations that show up on a Tuesday night for appropriations? And and they’re they’re identified for specific projects or programs? You the staff has gone through the process of identifying how to reallocate those dollars and bring us that recommendation. I mean, that’s the way the process works, I assume. Correct? Yeah. And it just having gone through that now. For years, I wonder if there’s a percentage of those or ever a time. When it comes where we it comes to us with, it hasn’t so far with. We’ve got to make a decision about how to spend this budget balance. Here’s where we what we were unable to accomplish, as we built the budget to respond to the work council work plan or the priorities and, and and how would you like to see us spend those dollars on those priorities? mean we’re not we’re not in that conversation. I know you guys are.
1:22:37
Mayor Bagley, Councilmember waters, maybe I can jump in here, Teresa. You know, those actually are rarely ever, the type of things that come back in reappropriation. Most of those are because there’s an unforeseen revenue that comes up, we will only bring forward the use of fund balance. As a last resort almost we’ve, for years we never really ever did. And if there’s some emergency or some some need that the city managers needs to see funded, we’ve we may do that. But now we actually have a city manager contingency beginning this year that we would have been able to use for those. When you’re looking at the general fund. That’s what I’m talking about when you’re looking at other funds. those choices are being made amongst let’s say, the water enterprise Fund, and the use is going to be a fund balance from water on on water projects. So I think we don’t make those type of decisions without bringing that information to the council for for direction. We are really only doing things that were that really our revenue that we know is for that purpose already, whether it’s been budgeted before or now it’s coming forward and being brought to us for a specific purpose.
1:23:56
And Jim, I would add that even in the other Funds outside of the general fund, the use of fund balances predominantly, because we have a ccip project that we need to add additional funds to to complete that project. So it’s mainly ccip related. Thank you.
1:24:21
Another question.
1:24:22
Yep. Marshall.
1:24:25
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Another one that probably is obvious to everyone else. But Teresa, you said new money. And the example was
1:24:35
grants.
1:24:37
There’s also tax revenue that can either exceed expectations in the budget or fall short. So how does that get accounted for? Is that new money and therefore can new money be negative?
1:24:53
June Do you want take this one or Oh, yeah,
1:24:55
I will. Because Yeah, because we’re in a time situation that particularly with sales and use tax, we do not know for sure that we’re even going to exceed the budget to basically the years over. We know we’re, you know, ahead or behind budget month by month, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to have extra money for the year until the year is over. So we don’t bring any additional appropriations for for sales and use tax. And Teresa, correct me when I’m wrong, but I don’t think legally we can even do it for property tax, isn’t that correct?
1:25:28
legally, we cannot do it for property tax, our property tax has to be included in our original adopted
1:25:35
budget. So what happens with those monies is they are carried over in our fund balance, we might project them into the next year’s budget for one time expenses because it’s not an ongoing revenue. But that’s ultimately what will happen to it. It’ll come through for a one time expense in a in a subsequent year budget
1:25:58
and I’m still not clear On what happens when you end the year with a shortfall?
1:26:05
Well, typically if we end up, we always end the year with a shortfall with some revenue sources and we have others that may exceed. Hopefully they offset each other and we exceed have more money than we budgeted. Overall, that’s certainly not going to be the case this year. You’re going to be hearing in a few minutes about about how that’s going to be handled in 2020. But expenditures coming in underneath budget will make up for shortfalls and revenues that come in under budget. And that’s typically our approach to trying to deal with that if we’re aware. We’re going to be below budget, we realized that we have to pull back on our expenses.
1:26:46
Okay, thank you.
1:26:48
You bet. Right, keep going.
1:26:50
Okay, so we get the PowerPoint back. I’ll be talking about begin by talking about the total budget summary by Bingo, the next slide please.
1:27:04
And one after that, so.
1:27:08
So this proposed budget for 21 is $371.78 million. It’s 5.05%. More than the 2020 budget is $17.9 million more than that that budget, which was $353.91 million last year. So there are 43 individual funds you on attachment F and I will be making reference to a number of attachments that are in your communication tonight. But attachment f does show you each of those funds, and their proposed revenues and expenses for 2021. largest percentage increases or decreases are in individual funds, mostly due to capital expenses. Let’s see that The other attachment I wanted to bring your attention to is attachment G. We’ve been separated the operating expenses from the capital expenses again by those 43 funds. This way you can tell where the increases and decreases are coming from when within each of those funds within those that that statement or that attachment, I should say, no see that. Funds with the largest increases in expenditures include the electric and broadband Fund, which seven and a half million, the water fund at 8.6 4 million. The streets fund at 4.8 6 million and the fleet fund at one and a half million Conservation Trust Fund at 1.2 million and the sewer construction fund at 2.3 million and the water construction fund at 13. Point 6 million and then the funds where we have the largest deal increases and expenditures are the general fund at 3.5 7 million. The sewer fund at 1.2 million and the public improvement fund at 2.8 7 million. The park improvement fund at 2.3 million, the DDA 5.2 million and our utility billing cis fund at 4.8 million. So our CI p projects for 2021 increased four by 52 point 4 million or actually they increase from 52 point 4 million to 84 point 7 million in 2021. The next slide please. So the major decreases in the individual funds. I included 960 fat in this is in the ccip $960,000 in the airport fund decrease of 2.4 million in the public improvement 2.3 million in the park improvement fund and 2.1 5 million in the DDA. And the major increases in the ccip. And individual funds are from 7.4 million from electric and broadband fund. 9.4 million in the water fund 3.9 million streets fund 1.2 in the Conservation Trust Fund 2.4 million in the sewer construction fund, and then 14 point 7 million in the water construction fund. One thing to point out about the tip for 2021. We talked about it last week, I believe want to point out again, it includes 31.8 7 million for the price Park tank replacement, and the Nelson Flanders water treatment plant expansion. That’s the cash funding that’s provided towards those projects that will be combined with the bond funding. If the bond question in November would it be approved? So it’s incumbent But on that, that question passing otherwise, that 31 point 8 million would not be expanded towards those projects.
1:31:11
So
1:31:13
we’re moving into the revenue projections. So the biggest funding sources in our our budget, the ones that we’re most reliant on, I guess, as far as them, and whether they go up and down are the sales and use tax the property tax in our building permits. So bringing you some of our detail on the revenue projections on each of those. Here we have the sales tax through July 2020. And I’ve updated this from the communication which was through June. Our budget projections were made when when we had the June 2020 results. So this is information that since has become available, but currently, our sales tax is up three and a half percent. tax is down 10.4%. And combined, it’s a point 9% through July. So our projections to end 2020. This is our mid year projections going through our budgeting process and trying to project after six months where we might end the year, keeping in mind that we were trying to be conservative and not sure what might happen in the second half of the of the year and potential recessionary impacts as well as what might happen with the virus. projections were sales tax to be at 2.4% for the year, US tax down 15.5% and a combined reduction of two thirds of a percent. So our projections for 2021 now for the budget for 2021. Our sales tax of 2.2% increase in US tax of a 4.5% increase and then it comes combination of a 2.54% increase overall. Next slide, please. property tax revenue estimates. So just trying to get my place here, property tax revenue growth in 2020 was over $2.4 million. So, when we would go through the budget staff budget for 2020, staff did propose that a large amount of that be only used for one time expenses. That was little over 1,000,001 point over $3 million. Here. The intent was to save that amount of money for new ongoing revenue to be used in the proposed 21 budget. And the reason for that is that we’re aware that you know, the property tax assessment timing is sort of has a biannual process to it in the sense of The reassessment takes place every other year. And so on the off years, the only growth and property tax is coming in a non reassessment year it’s coming from construction. So, this year to tax year 2020, which is is what we are looking at for the 2021 revenue tax year. 2020 is a non reassessment year. So we wanted to make sure that we if we held back on this million dollars, that it would be available to be used for ongoing expenses in 2020 one’s budget. So, the county assessor provides the preliminary information to us each year for the sets valuations for our budget process, and they provide them usually by August 25 of each year, but due to COVID. That’s been delayed until October 13. So the pros 2121 budget does not yet include any new property tax revenue from tax year 2020. We do expect that there will be some growth in weld county we’re aware because of our communications with smuckers. With the read with the incentive agreement we have with them they have to inform us of when their business personal property tax will begin. So that we can plan set that aside to rebate it as we agree to in that agreement. So we do know that there will be growth in the weld county assessed valuation from the smuckers business personal property tax. They again that will be rebated so we won’t be counting on that within the 2021 budget.
1:35:51
So
1:35:53
that covered all that so we can move off then. Go to the next one. So the amount of if we do get any new revenue from Property Tax Valuation that we would receive as of October 13, we will bring that back to you once we’re aware of it. The ordinance for the budget would be proposed on October 27. So we will have time to be able to include any new valuation within the budget process. Our intention would be to recommend that if there is any new assessed valuation that we once again use it for one time expenses in 21 budget. And I have here on the screen a couple of potential uses that we could dedicate those towards. We’ll let the council give us direction at that time, once we’re aware that there actually is any money available from that and when we find that out next month.
1:37:01
So the next slide
1:37:04
is
1:37:07
basically these are the building permit projections that are built into this 2021 budget 230 dwelling units of 526 multifamily, and a combined total of 756. It’s a bit a little bit of a drop from from what we budgeted for 2020. So that you’ll see reflected in some of our revenue numbers. Alright, so now I’m going to move into the general fund budget summary. So we see here that the 2020 adapted general fund budget, ongoing revenues and expenses were $86,791,080. Well, you’ll see as well with the 2021 proposed budget, pretty close to that amount. It’s actually only six 7000 $670 greater than it was in in 2020. I’m going to highlight the major changes in the revenues and expenses. But if you do look at at attachment H, you will see all of those changes a detailed on that attachment. So, next slide please. So ongoing revenues, although they only went up by $7,670. net, we did have an increase of over $2 million in some areas as well as a decrease of over $2 million. Next slide. And major decreases are, first of all from recreation revenues. And you’ll be hearing next week about our impacts in recreation, but there’s a offsetting decrease in ongoing expenses in this exact same amount. Again, this is The impact on COVID and our ability to offer programs that we’re projecting next year. The building permits I just mentioned that was going down some. That’s $337,000. And then we are do we are also projecting a decrease in our investment earnings. Obviously interest rates are much lower than what we were looking at. We were budgeting a year ago. Next slide please.
1:39:27
So the major increases in our ongoing revenue. The property tax I just mentioned a few minutes ago the million 31. We don’t have any new property tax but this is that carryover from last year that was used for one time. We have a small amount of sales and use tax. This is really from the difference in the allocation of how much is going to the village at the peaks tax increment financing for the payment of clps we’re able to do less of that this year, we probably built up our reserves a little bit higher than we wanted to. So we’re backing off a little bit on that this year. And next is oil and gas royalties of 136,000. That’s offset by some direct expenses in those areas. And then finally over $500,000 from utility franchise revenues increases and those are in mostly in the electric area but also in in water as well. Next slide, please. So now this the changes in the expenses in the general funds budget for 2021. Again, the net was only $7,670. But the increases in decreases were up close to one and a quarter million dollars. The increases affections. Next slide. We’ll start with the decreases in ongoing expenses. I mentioned the recreation expenses going down We also have a decrease in $10,000. Towards video Services and Public Access. What that is reflecting is that we had a $40,000 projection of a reduction in cable franchise revenue from from 2000 to from 2020 to 2021. So quarter of that goes towards the video services. So that’s the reduction here. The next three items are all insurance funds that we maintain. We’ve been funding knows pretty strongly the last few years and built up pretty strong reserves. So we were able to slightly reduce our funding to those below what they were at in the 20 2020 level for for this year coming. That’s all three of those different types of self insurance funds. Next slide. increases in ongoing expenses. Again, I call your attention to the attachment if you’re wanting to see the detail we also have in the ongoing level one and ongoing level two, we have another attachment attachment I, that has the detail of what’s involved in both of those areas. Level One expenses are expenses that we are facing that we have no choice but to fund them because there are things like contract increases overtime levels of overtime that we’re already paying out from one year to the next and we’re trying to cover a level of service that’s already been expended. The largest of these, though, actually more than half of this, I believe is going towards our contract with Platte River Power Authority for operations of our customer information system for utility billing. Next year. The For Collins is going to be moving off of the arrangement that we’ve had where they were where we’re Platte River has been, has been administering that for both cities for 20 years or more, and they’re going on their own new cis on their own next year. So we are actually bearing the brunt of the full cost of that the Platte River service, it dropped because of the fact that Fort Collins is leaving, but since we use we’re paying 100% of it. It’s a net increase to the city. So that that’s about $250,000 from the general fund. That’s all offset by administrative transfer fees since those are billing for services that are outside the general fund. The ongoing level two expenses of 142,000 are on expanses that reconsidered to be increased levels of service. And again, you can see those on attachment I,
1:44:08
the group have talked last week about the gentle plays with time and plan having to increase their city’s contributions from eight to 8.4%. This is this general funds share of that increase at 99,000. With the public safety step increases, we talked about those last week. This is again the general fund share of that most of it within the general fund but the public safety funnel so incur some of this as well. Different amount though, the pay and related benefits of 148,000. Again, those are detailed on cash Menai, but they do include some increases and things like buy bilingual pay, as well as increase in exceptional pay and some job audits on some positions. And then finally, we have Increase human service agency funding, which you’ll be hearing about in a few more minutes from Karen Roni $107,000 in that area. Next slide, please. So now I’m going to talk about the general fund reserves. And so, the general fund has a city as a financial policy that the general fund is going to maintain reserve and it’s a reserve that has three different reserve type of targets. first target is that we require to have the statutorily required Tabor reserve which is defined in the state statute under Tabor as 3% of fiscal year spending. So that is the first level first tier. second tier is an 8% emergency reserve for 8% of general fund operating expenditures and Third is a stabilization reserve from three to 8%. Again of general fund operating expenditures. So a little over 10 years ago, we had a reserve policy of about 6% period, and the Tabor Reserve was a portion of that 6%. And as the table Reserve was growing wasn’t as high as 5.59, as it is now. But as it was growing it, we realized that that that reserve policy wasn’t sufficient. And that’s when we actually did move to 8% for a few years. And then we decided from there that we needed to expand to this larger policy. We’ve been striving to meet the limits of this policy over the last 10 years and over only really over the last two budgets or so two to three budgets that we’ve actually been able to begin to fund the stabilization reserve. So based on today’s The 2020 policy limits again base the 2020 budget, the reserves 4.8 5 million for Tabor 6.9 for the 8% emergency reserve, and then the stabilization reserve is anywhere from from 2.6 million to 6.9 million. So that and combined is 14 point 4 million to 18. Point 7 million have a reserve. So with this 2020 budget currently, below this here, we’re showing you what we do have funded. So we do have the Tabor reserve in the emergency reserve funded. And we have 2% of a stabilization reserve that based on what we put together the 2020 budget at a we had 1.7 million that we were able to put towards the safe stabilization reserve. So that’s a total 15.59% and almost 13 and a half million dollars in reserves. So next slide. So since the operating expenditures in the general fund for 21 are not changing very much at all, you see here that our our reserve targets are very close to what I was just talking about. And so what we are able to do with this budget is increase the amount of dollars going towards our stabilization reserve, we are going to be able to raise that up to about 3.1 6 million based on what we’re recommending, it’ll bring on total funded reserves to 17 and almost quarter percent
1:48:42
and this time close to $15 million of a total reserve for the general fund. So next slide. So, what we do have basically from result, mostly of, of 2019 operations, What we bring into this budget process that we have available for one time uses is that little less than $2.5 million here. One time expenses, which we will be covering with you next week, which we’re recommending just a little over a million dollars of those. And then the emergency reserve I just referred to, this is the 1.46 7 million that we are recommending, be moved to the stabilization reserve. I will talk about the 2020 budget adjustments in a few minutes. But as you know, or recall, we did talk about that stabilization reserve of 1.7 million and utilizing that as a fallback in 2020 budget adjustments. And we are projecting hopefully that we won’t have to do that. And so the numbers I just quoted to you, for the total reserves are inclusive of that 1.7 million and then adding this 1.4 6 million on top of it. So assuming that our projections do play out for the rest of this year, then hopefully that will be where these reserve amounts remain at. So I’m going to move into the public safety fund. So, public safety budget, the 2021 revenues include 12 point 9 million sales and use Tex $842,000 of grants and other governmental revenues, and then a projected $40,000 from firing range operations. The public safety sales tax was first put in place in 2006 at point three to 5%. It was increased in November of 17 effective in 18 2.58. percent. Next slide. So the proposed expenditures of 14 and a half million include just below 100 f t being funded through the public safety fund. More than half of those 53 f t e r in police 17. In fire you see 13 and communications, and then smaller amounts and support services community health and resilience. One from the city attorney’s office, we have two from children, youth and families and a portion of FTP for graffiti removal. Next slide. So the budget for 21 is recommending that $715,000 and change for one time expenses and police and fire and then the firing range operations expense $473,000 is offset 20% by projected user fees from other governments The public.
1:52:02
Next slide.
1:52:05
So
1:52:08
so we did put in in your packet as well an attachment attachment j which is a pro forma for the public safety fund looking ahead. Again, this fund is pretty much funded mostly by sales and use tax and that dedicated point five 8% tax at 1.2% of the public safety from his salary and benefits in this proposed budget for for 21. We do have very conservative estimates in the pro farmer. We put them together in July, our revenue estimates for sales and use tax beyond 2021 included 1% estimates for the first two years after 20 One 2% for the next two years after that, and then three beyond that. Again, like I said, very conservative, we know that hopefully conservative, but we we build this we show you this performer realizing that it you know it hopefully our sales tax does better than that. We are showing you what could happen if if those revenues were to be coming in and low is what we’re projecting here. What we do have in our projections on the expenditure side, that is much different story. We do realize this in 2021 budget is only step increases budgeted for public safety employees. We realized that for 2022, we are going to have to get our public safety employees up to market and most most of these employees are under collective bargaining and they’re market does move even in this economic environment, because these lot of these cities do have contracts that most of them are trying to, to hold up to, to commit you and follow through on. So we do think that there’s going to be quite a bit of growth in in compensation that we will need to be taken care of in 2022. We have budgeted 5% increase in an instead but I mean budget of that projected 5% increase for 2022 in salary and benefits. And that might be that might not be conservative that it could be greater than that. It could very easily be greater than that. So that’s something that we are going to have to wrestle with in both the general fund and the public safety fund. But it becomes a much bigger chore for this fun because again, it only has This one source of revenue, the sales and use tax. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention. And I think we’re gonna now move to the next. The next presentation or attachment K, if you could bring that up for me.
1:55:20
Jim, that was a lot of information. Do you want to
1:55:25
see if we need to
1:55:27
what’s Okay,
1:55:28
what’s the next presentation?
1:55:30
The next presentation is the 2020 budget.
1:55:33
Right, right. And I go ahead.
1:55:35
I’ll take a drink. There’s any question.
1:55:39
It says the leader was we don’t see hands. We’ll just keep moving. Okay, Harold, Damn you. All right. Go ahead, Christiansen.
1:55:48
Jim, I just want to ask a question about on the public safety fund about the firing range. Yes, I think it’s a terrific idea that we have a firing range but um That’s, I thought we owned that land. I’m just wondering why it’s nearly half a million dollars for the firing range
1:56:09
as the operating expenses, Rob spend load to, to, I guess address that if you want to ask more about those operating expenses, but that’s not for the land. It’s to operate it and staff it.
1:56:22
Oh, so staffing and maintenance and Oh, yes, I get it. I thought that we were sharing that property with the museum.
1:56:34
Am I remembering wrong?
1:56:36
They’re sharing the property, but it’s a different facility. And that’s part of a storage facility. different ranges adjust to it.
1:56:43
Yeah, I would hope so.
1:56:46
Okay, thank you.
1:56:49
Hey, Eric, if you could bring up the attachment Kay, please. So, again, this is within your council communication. I wanted to, I’m not going to cover the two pages or so have a little history, the six month history that we’ve we’ve just gone through. I did want to, I kind of wanted to put it back together for you all so that you had it in front of us. So you could check that out. And see we’ve come a long way I guess in the last six months. We did you know, begin with a $14 million shortfall estimate in March went up to 15.3 in April, went up to $18 million dollars in May. And then as things started to change, we’d actually didn’t make enough did not make any estimates or projections in June. But in July we did adjust downward from there was down to an impact of 11.3 3 million city wide is what we were projecting at that point in time. So what what we Did is at that point in in July is we had to make some decisions through the month of July and into early August about what we were going to budget our sales tax at, for 2021. How we would finish 20, which was also important for us to be able to estimate how much fun balance we might finish with, as well as looking forward as to what we would project for 2021 expenses. If you could go up actually one slide. Now back to the first slide. There you go. Thanks very much. So what we gave you throughout each of the presentations in I think in April, May and in July was a worksheet like this, that identified what we projected our shortfalls were and what we were identified. as either an equity or saving solution to offset those shortfalls. So you’ll see as you look to the right, that there’s a July estimated shortfall column, all that information has been was was brought to you in July. And then what I’ve added to it for tonight is really an August estimated shortfall kind of really, after we were came aware of what our sales tax was for June, how we adjusted those. And then looking into what were we were thinking what the impact would be. So you can see on the left side all of the equity solutions and saving solutions. We had a total of 3.5 million of those that we were identifying from savings in 6.9 million from equity fund balance and and things that we’re transferring
2:00:01
from other funds included stabilization reserve are referred to open equity. And I think you’re all familiar with that since I’ve brought that up a few times this year. But that was a very key item and one that we have relied on. And then that the first main trains that station that was funded, being paid out in from the general fund the public approval fund, but was being funded via the fund balance in the general fund. In fact, pretty much that was what we were doing with that property tax in those one time revenues in the 2020 budget was using them towards first the main transit station. So what I’m showing you here is that I’ve made adjustments to what our expectations are now beginning here in August, and what we might actually use so what is shown in in in gold is Again, what we’re still relying on to offset the shortfall you see in the general fund, we still have an estimated five and a half million dollar shortfall. About 1.2 million of that I believe is is from the general fund. Rest of that is from from other revenues. And I have detailed those within that council communication as well on page 71, and 72. Each of those major sources of that the biggest of those is 2.8 5 million of recreation revenues, and then a number of other revenues, some as a result of COVID, but others just as a result of economic impacts. We’re not reaching budgets in some of the areas that we normally do. And so we have identified shortfalls throughout general finding a number of different areas and then you can see all those I’m not going to walk you through those, but the largest of those, again was recreation revenues. So we would be relying on the O peb. equity of 2.1 7 million still. And everything in the right far right column is what we’re relying on. It’s the same items that I have shown in gold on the left side. Well, savings from expenditures that we’re holding off on or didn’t need. Were in some cases like the sister cities return money to the, to the city some funding to the city. We have frozen positions, so we’ll have savings. We have cut back in parks expenditures and recreation expenditures. So we have savings there as well. items in green are hopefully items that we will be able to go back and allow to be funded in the future. Could be a short term future, it could be maybe a medium term future. Won’t we want to hold back still, because we want to make sure that we we don’t let turn things loose too early. if things continue as we project with the sales tax and other revenues, we would not need to rely on these monies. But in fact, if if, in fact, we’re off on our sales tax projections, if, say the economy were to go through a hard time again, maybe because of the virus coming back harder, then we still have those on hand, we still want to hold them and not commit to using them just yet. So next slide, please.
2:03:42
So this is the
2:03:44
public safety fund. So you can see that we’re relying on the open equity there. And we also are relying on freezing positions and sometimes fleet savings. So if all goes well, we can maintain the emergency reserve, which is important, because everything I just told you about that fund, as well as maintaining some additional fund balance there. And also possibly there’s money here for a budget item for comm center expansion, which actually we’re hoping is actually part of the 21 budget as well. So in a sense, this will build up the fund balance back there, which is again going to be going to be needed for this fun. Next slide is the public improvement fund. At this point, we are had all these identified savings that are here of 739 seven 793,000 are still going to be at this point can still consider to be savings or deferrals, some of the different projects savings, they don’t need that, that money back deferred projects, those projects, most of them we are trying to we have built them into the 21 budgets. So these dollars are available to, you know, again, hold off on any shortfalls there. And if they’re not needed, they’ll help us in the next budget cycle.
2:05:23
Next
2:05:25
slide is the streets fund. And again, similar situation here, we do have both savings from ccip projects as well as projects that are deferred that will for now remain deferred. And if they if these projects are not needed, they’ll be reassigned in the CI prs, these projects will just be resumed at a point down the road. When we feel comfortable that they can go forward and when they can actually finish In the work next is the open space fund. similar situation there where we have been able to use the equity solutions and some of the savings solutions. And so we will be able to return some money into that fund as well. And that is all we show here. There is a number of small funds that we brought to you in July which I just didn’t include in the presentation here because they haven’t changed in scope. The they still have same amount of projected shortfall. The one that I will mention though, is the Gulf fund. Because we did have that go from 100,000 to a $400,000 shortfall. And the Gulf fund is is had a heck of a summer and like backup is on its feet and and is no longer having to shop for They’re outperforming last year, and doing just fine. So they’re no longer on this, this warning list here. So that is it. On that presentation. I could take any questions you had on on anything I just went over. Otherwise, I’m going to turn it over to Karen.
2:07:24
All right, Dr. Waters.
2:07:29
Thanks very badly. Jim, as you went through the this last set of slides, I’m your language with a little bit I just want to make certain I was understanding was just a little bit different. It sounded like when you talked about the public improvement fund, I don’t know if you meant that, that you were going to treat those projects differently. Or just everything that’s in the gold are potentially going to show up in 2021 as a in addition to preparation based on how 20 Your 2020 closes out.
2:08:02
No, I’m gonna ask Theresa to jump in. But Theresa, I are all for those projects re budgeted already in 2020. One’s proposed budget,
2:08:13
can we put the list back up there, please?
2:08:19
As she’s putting it back up, I get that there’s a mix of things. I mean, you just some of it, you just don’t know. I some of them, you’re going to be able to carry over some of them. You’re not, it just sounded like the public improvement set was maybe a little bit different. And that’s one of the things I wanted to clarify.
2:08:33
I believe that
2:08:36
each of the major ones were re budgeted in 2021. And so we will need we will need this money for those projects, because they’re being funded through monies that are available in 2021.
2:08:49
So that so those are a little bit different. Yeah, yeah. One, just one other question. On the, in the on the first slide, the Under service level reductions, and that was the a million and a half savings from hiring freezes, right. Um, those were positions. I know that people vacated during the year, there were some of those positions that we budgeted during the year or budgeted last year for this year. And we’ve held off on because we and we’ve heard a lot about the environmental planner and volunteer coordinator in recent meetings. And we talked a lot about that last year, I assume those positions would be among that million and a half.
2:09:33
They are within that number.
2:09:36
And this is a number that we identified three months ago, three or four months ago, realizing that this is still a selective hiring freeze, city manager does have the ability to authorize something to be filled. And if and when they get filled, it’ll impact this number. You know what I didn’t say? I don’t know if you noticed is the last time Here is half percent ATV, which is across the board savings. So we do make an estimate, every budget annual budget process of a city is probably not going to spend all its money in its general fund budget. And some of its going to come from vacancy savings that maybe in a normal year, we’re just going to be any vacancy savings. It’s going to be us managing our budgets tighter and the operating end of things. And so this is a pretty conservative estimate, knowing that we have a very tight budget already making savings commitments. But I did add that half a percent which is a $458,000 to my projections, because there is always more savings than what we just identify. And I tried to identify that as well. So where I’m going with that is any type of If the city manager does authorize any of those positions to be filled earlier than the end of the year, it could potentially be offset by other savings elsewhere anyhow.
2:11:11
So it’s really to be determined between now and the end of the year. As you get more information as it closes up. Can I have I said that was my last question. I have one more. Jim, is you as you looked, as you showed us the property tax, estimated profit tax revenues. What should we know about the estimated effects of the ballot in November and either the Gallagher rising or not, and what the effects would be here in Boulder County generally in Longmont, in particular, if that if that ballot measure passes.
2:11:47
So Mayor Bagley, Councilmember waters, we do plan to have that topic in, I believe, two weeks from tonight. So I could devote a little bit more time to it. The one I’ll just throw out A number that I do have a projection based on what the estimate is that the reduction for the ratio will be in residential. The city of Longmont impact is I calculate as $2.1 million
2:12:17
if
2:12:19
you’re if it doesn’t pass, if it doesn’t pass, that would be 2.1 million less dollars of property tax. Now at the same time, at the same time, there’s going to be growth, potentially any house so some of that could be offset, but it does have that it does have that a potential impact
2:12:40
and Georgia, deeper presentation on that but I appreciate the answer now. Thanks
2:12:49
Karen.
2:12:56
Good evening, mayor and city council. We are in the home Stretch. This is a PowerPoint presentation number four. And we will do our best to move through this rather quickly. So there were four issues that we thought would be appropriate to,
2:13:13
to just update the Council on tonight. And
2:13:18
the first one is really their early childhood education effort. So we’ve had to pivot a bit for what we had planned in 2020. And we want to talk a little bit about that and plans for 2021 and Christina Sims is going to lead that effort. Also. The second speaker will be liberto Mendoza and he’s going to talk about the human services needs assessment that we conducted in 2020 that will impact and influence how we spend the funds available for human service agency grants in 2021. Kathy fetlar, then we’ll talk a little bit about the expenses associated with administering the Affordable Housing fun. And we’ll be asking for some council input and direction around covering those expenses in the future. And then we thought you might want to know what the heck has happened with the library feasibility study. So Nancy curry is going to give you an update about that. So at this point, I’m going to turn it over to Christina Sims to talk about early childhood education, Christina.
2:14:28
Okay, good evening, Mayor Bagley members of council, we can go ahead and move to the next slide and talk about early childhood education. So in 2020, as Karen said, we needed to pivot a bit. We had in 2019
2:14:49
worked with
2:14:50
community partners and stakeholders to identify funding focus areas, which included training and capacity development. We had $50,000 in ongoing 150,000 in one time and $50,000 in one time from special marijuana tax funds to really address those two areas and then COVID hit. So we conducted an early childhood business needs assessment and really found that there were some critical needs in providing personal protective equipment and looking at loss of revenue in childcare providers. Businesses, due to the pandemic so have looked at how we can use some of these funds to provide some assistance in those areas. So we plan on using those 2020 funds to subsidize not only the PPP, but childcare for parents who are now returning to work and unable to afford that here. Okay, next, next slide, please. And 2021, the proposed areas for early childhood amounts, we want to continue to work with our community partners and stakeholders to still use the funds in the best way and be able to continue to pivot if necessary, anticipate the needs and continue to monitor the demand for subsidizing the slots, PBE needs and others other areas as they arise. We want to also pursue the initial 2020 plan. As we’re able to stabilize the other other needs. We know that that capacity development and training is still necessary. We need to continue to figure out how we’re going to meet that need for childcare. We know that that’s a key to Economic economic development and getting everything back on track. We need to have childcare for, for our parents to go back to work. So the proposed amounts for 2021 150,000. So 50,000 ongoing 50,000 proposed one time and then 50,000 proposed second year of that one time funding in the special marijuana tax and that still to be determined. So that’s what we have. So I think about those next is that correct?
2:17:38
That is correct. Unless are any questions?
2:17:40
Unless there’s any questions for me then Alberto is
2:17:45
with when anything’s on the screen, I only suggest you guys know I only see five. So there’s five people. So if you and it’s always Dr. Water so. So if you want to go to questions, if you want to say well about questions, I can’t see you. So you need to take the slide off the screen so I can see everybody in the room, or I’m just an observer. So
2:18:09
the only questions, any questions for me,
2:18:13
only thing I wanted to add to what Christina is talking about with early childhood is when we look at the numbers now, he and I talked about cares funding and the other component. And this year in the remainder of the year, you’re going to see this year’s budget cares funding and next year’s funding sort of come into this point toward the end of this year. So that’s part of what we’re trying to figure out.
2:18:38
Okay, oh, dark waters. But just to clarify that here. Oh, dear. Are you suggesting that that number we just saw might go up?
2:18:46
Well, so we will have more funding come in via the cares funding? What we have to understand is the rules from the state because there’s some questions that we have lingering in terms of we know we have To spend it by the end of the year. The question is what does that mean? In Canada extend out and that’s part of what we’re waiting on. So I’ll maybe make it just a statement. I
2:19:10
don’t know what other council members did. Back in May. When we first started, I guess our first conversation on budgets. I did submit to Herald what my proposed recommendations were I say anything I did last year, and I suppose others did the same thing. Just for the record. I Harold knows I, I recommended we double the amount of funding for early childhood education childcare to a half a million over the 250,000 we have budgeted this year. I understand the pressures on on a budget and people and why we would be looking at this number, but I but I can’t let it go without saying I I don’t think we can recover economically, the way we hope to, both during and post pandemic without a more robust early childcare and early childhood learning, you know system. The industry is collapsing. It’s collapsing in Boulder County. I know we’re struggling to hang on and in Longmont. But I think when the as the smoke continues to clear as we move down toward the end of the year, if there are one time funds additional one time funds, there are a couple of places that I think we’d be worthy and this would be one of them to at least maintain what we’re doing in 2021 what we did in 2020, so I get off to so much.
2:20:38
All right, let’s keep going.
2:20:39
Okay, next up is Alberto Mendoza to talk about the human service agency funding and our updated needs assessment.
2:20:49
Good evening, Mayor Bagby and city council members. So what I’ll do first is really just go over what the Human Services needs assessment found. So we started the Human Services these sessions really in 2019. And through 2020. We held over we had over 1100 Longmont residents fill out a survey. And then we overhead we had over nine or 10 of focus groups, both with stakeholders, and residents. And at the end of all of that, at the end of July, we received the report. In out of the report, there was eight primary recommendations and you see them on the screen right now around supporting important around emphasizing the No Wrong Door approach. Building case management capacity. So the digital inclusion as we see as we move to virtual world and there’s much others the need for more support around digital divide, and also around crisis mental health services. And of course, what Christina and Dr. Walters just talked about reading support to access for childcare and And regulators around being mindful about the impacts of continued school closures on children, families and employers. Of course, that’s all connected. And of course, the continued need for prioritization of housing stability and housing crisis services. So these are the recommendations that came out of the human services was not on the on the underside, because there’s quite a bit of them is we deduce a whole bunch of different activities that belong or could be categorized under these recommendations. And those are going to help us prioritize when we will receive the applications. But the service the needs assessment did provide us quite a bit of guidance moving forward on Canada. Next slide or whoever’s. So, there was a lot of conversation at the housing and Human Services Advisory Board, but what we realize is that
2:22:57
it just came out like human services.
2:23:00
Do fit well with our current priority areas. And the graphic that you see shows what we allocated the percentage of funding that we allocated in 2020. We have not determined yet exactly if that’s going to be how it shakes out in 2021. Those conversations are still yet to be had at the Human Services Advisory Board. But we decided to, we felt that there was enough alignment, which dacians and our priorities are broad enough buckets that we could fit those recommendations inside these, these bigger priorities. And again, what’s not on the screen is the different activities that are associated with the recommendations that would then also be used to wait the scores of the applications and programs that are coming in. That is where we decided to go forward and we have much more work to do as far as creating a matrix. Create The waiting process and the scoring, and all of that we plan to release the Human Services fund grant application this Friday, and we hope to get the process by the end of the year. So Karen, if you want to, or it’s one. So I also wanted to add this slide because this has been a very important and robust conversation that the housing and Human Services Advisory Board has had. And that is around how do we view equity and Human Services funding? What is the equity lens that we put to human services funding? We need a ton of detail about the wonderful conversations that we had I the main takeaways or the important changes that the board has made in the last few weeks. In the last few months has been one both the city and boulder already had sort of social equity goal every application and and we decide dapu into our application. So you can see what our goal is that the non apply for, that we didn’t have in the past what we do now. And then the board decided that it was very important to include in the application questions that specifically count color equity. at the program level, we’ve always had an inclusion question at the agency leadership level that has been there for quite some time. But we want to take it to another level and ask at the program level, what agencies are thinking about as they as they plan and implement their programs, and how that impacts social equity. So that those are the two big changes that came out of these conversations. So finally, the last slide just kind of shows our amounts what we had and again, always grateful to counsel for the increase of 107,000 As you know, Karen presented this last year we the board had recommended a plan to get us up to 3%. And we had started that process in 2020 funding. And we are we were hoping to get to 2.7% of general fund. But of course with what’s going on, we were able to get to 2.52%, which is an increase. And we hope that we continue to move toward that total 3% of general fund for Human Services funding. And this is you can see how it’s been broken down. About 49% is still allocated for homelessness and homelessness prevention work. That is that is lower than last year last year was 51% at age 35, and this year 51% is allocated for the Human Services Agency grant program. And again, the goal is to continue to to to increase that amount available for Human Services grant. So that I think All my slides and I’m open to questions.
2:27:07
All right, let’s keep going.
2:27:10
So next up is Kathy peddler.
2:27:17
Good evening, mayor and council, Kathy fetlar, housing Community Investment division manager. So next slide, please. Yes. For the affordable housing fund, what we’re looking at for 2020. And I’m going to go through 2020 and then into 2021. is the fact that our budgets keep changing from year to year depending on what we’re working on and what kind of grant funding that we have and what’s, what’s going on. So we had the administrative fund transfer of
2:27:53
I think it was two.
2:27:56
Forget what the total amount was. That was reduced. Think was 250,000 reduced in 2019 to 165 43. This is it the time going into 2021 that our staff time started to reduce for the disaster recovery grant funding. And the time that we were spending in staffing increased with the new inclusionary housing program. So in 2021, it was just getting getting started and going. We also had a loss in home admin fund funding to support regional efforts that are have been going on around the regional Affordable Housing Partnership. And we were able to use incremental development revenue to cover the inclusionary housing specialist position. So what has happened in 2020, is with their decrease in the administrative fund transfer, we Have $100,000 hundred thousand $794 in a gap to fill to cover all of staffing costs. And so what we are asking for tonight is some direction on whether or not we can use up to that hundred thousand 794 or about 10% of the affordable housing funds that would otherwise be used to support affordable housing projects to cover that administrative cost gap
2:29:33
for this year.
2:29:37
In 2021, we are facing somewhat the same thing it’s a little bit different in the fact that we did get additional funding is being recommended in the 2021 budget to bring us back up to 206,543. As you can see, CDBG admin costs are estimated to go down a little bit and the Dr. admin costs are estimated to go down quite a bit as we get to final close out of that grant program in 2021. staffs size exactly, as I said, are estimated to be reduced significantly in the Dr. budget and CDBG with increased time again spent on the inclusionary housing program and the other housing, affordable housing programs we have going on in 2021 budget that in incremental development revenue stream is still covering the inclusionary housing specialist position, or these costs would be about $89,000 higher, and we do not have any costs estimated in the budget to cover additional work that we might be spending on Longmont Housing Authority. So this is just our regular budget here. So again, we are asking if we can use around 10% of the affordable housing funds And that would otherwise go to support affordable housing projects to cover the administrative cost gap up to 115,000. In this case, for other possible administrative costs, not anticipated, one thing that might happen is we might have some additional funding come back into the DR program that may or may not include administrative funding to take that through. So we might have to cover a little bit of that. But there might be some other few things that are that need to be covered. I just want to also add that my division is a little different in in budgeting, in that we do our best effort to budget where our costs are going to be and how we’re going to spend our time but then we have to code exactly how we do end up spending our time so that the right accounts get charged and so the actuales can look quite different than the budgets, which I know causes trees all kinds of headaches in trying to get things reconciled and plan for the next year. So it is kind of a moving target sometimes. And it seems like we’ve had a gap for a while, but it’s really trying to get to the best budgeting place that we can. So I will be happy to answer any questions. But at least on the 2020 question, it would be really nice to be able to get some direction from council if possible and whether or not we can use those funds. Otherwise we’re gonna have to figure something else out for 2020.
2:32:44
That’s we’re back. Thank you. We are back we are Cathy. I just want to clarify something the dollars that you want to use from the affordable housing fund. They are not going to the because we were talking about some of the funds from LA Pay to cover staff and extra work that staff is doing for lmha. This is a different fund. Is that am I correct in that in that correct? Yes. So it would it wouldn’t go to okay. You answered it through two different funds, two different ones affordable housing once la J. Okay. I got it
2:33:23
separately.
2:33:24
Okay, if I can help. So I think when we started working on affordable housing, one of the things that council asked the council previous council set to go to set a million dollars put a million dollars annually and affordable housing. So that’s what we did over a few years. And so that in addition to the funds that come in now through inclusionary housing processes, what goes into account for that affordable housing fund? That’s the fund that they’re talking about.
2:33:54
So with that, I would move that we use those affordable housing funds to cover cost overruns in
2:34:05
whatever account cat is talking
2:34:09
fund the service that they need.
2:34:12
And that we do that.
2:34:15
Oh, that’s been second by second. She’s moving around customer Christiansen the second day Herald. Is that what you’re suggesting we do that?
2:34:24
That’s a question for you all in terms of whether or not you want to use the funds for that if we if we don’t use those funds to cover that cost, then we have to come up with other funding sources within the budget to cover to cover that cost on that million dollars.
2:34:38
That’s great. And all but I’m personally asking I mean, I mean, I understand policy. Well, I mean, it’s finance, it’s business. It’s like you have access to all the money’s all the budget. All I’m saying is as the manager, the CEO of the city, if you can get it from elsewhere, fine. But is this I mean, you’re coming to us saying I need to do my job. We need need to run the city? Things are going to be tight. Is this the best this the best?
2:35:05
At this point based on where we are, that’s what I would say is it’s the best option at this point based on where the money’s coming from and understanding the other issues. First, to do that from another location, we would have to make some other reductions. I think it’s something we need to keep in mind as we’re looking forward in different situation. Okay,
2:35:27
Dr. Waters.
2:35:28
It just to clarify, is the Kathy that the 10%. The numbers that we saw looked like it was 10% of what we budget out of the general fund, as opposed to what to make totally accrued in the affordable housing fund, or is it 10% of whatever we accrue in the affordable housing fund.
2:35:51
So I was estimating to be on the safe side 10% of what is
2:35:58
put in in any one year.
2:36:02
And what also enough
2:36:03
on the marijuana tax in the inclusionary housing, we probably will not need that much. I mean, there’s a finite number that we would need as well. But the 10% was kind of estimated, actually 10% is about, you know, 100,000 is about 10% of the million.
2:36:24
Well, that’s well, that’s kind of what we’re thinking. Yeah.
2:36:27
I mean, there is additional funding that’s going into that.
2:36:31
That account. So we saw earlier
2:36:32
from Jim that 756 housing units, right, permits anticipated in 2021. I think that was the number we saw. If that will either get affordable houses or people will get payment in lieu. Right and for every payment in lieu dollar that goes in the affordable housing fund that would grow. So I would just let’s hope that we’re gonna see way more than a million dollars But the 10% that what you were talking about was likely 10% of the million
2:37:05
grant. Thank you.
2:37:11
All right. All in favor. We have motion, basically following the recommendation of staff to say use the affordable housing funds in this in this manner. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.
2:37:26
Opposed say nay.
2:37:29
All right, the eyes have it unanimously. The Motion carries. Okay,
2:37:32
what else you
2:37:37
then the last last presentation is about an update on the library feasibility study. And
2:37:45
Nancy kerwell.
2:37:52
Okay, I hope you can hear me. Good evening, Mayor Bagley and members of the city council. I will try to be succinct even Though that looks like a lot of words in the PowerPoint, so if we could advance to the next slide, we did contract with Kimberly Bowen and Associates, a consultant firm and late in 2019. It seems like a long time ago, they came in and December surveyed staff, some stakeholders, library boards, Community Services, department heads etc. followed that with a survey to which we had over 1500 responses which was considered very good by the consultants, by a wide variety of community members, some library patrons some not. And the consultants also spent some time looking at our building concentrating on the building spaces on our technology, on the buildings condition on the amenities on things like ADA requirements. For example, we have books that are our entire upstairs is filled with books that are too high, too low and downstairs nothing is isn’t at a distance apart. But if we can to death to fit ADA requirements, we would probably have to remove a lot of our materials. So along with the library staff, the consultant collected a lot of information on pure libraries and Colorado and across the country to do some comparative analysis. We were deep into that and met with the consultants, several of us went to the American Library Association Conference in Nashville in March. That was the consultants talked about next steps and then COVID happened. So the next step was to have been a kind of a sub consultant that was going to be doing some financial modeling of some of the proposed directions that the library might go in in the future and we did delay that due to COVID-19. So if we could move to the next slide, please.
2:39:45
So some luminary findings, these are very basic the it’s a very thick preliminary report that we’re going through. And the one month PDF does really use and value its library circulation is high. expenditures are low when compared with your libraries. visible to accepted norms and library land and we should according to the consultants, formulas, they used to have about 81 to 85,000 square feet now for the current population, more like 93 to 100,000 square feet for the built out of the population. Our physical holdings are very strong. Our digital holdings have increased significantly. Over the past few years, we’ve spent a lot more of our budget on online materials, and then we had in the past, but they still are not meeting our demand. Our program attendance at least was robust pre covid. But all of our programs are funded by the Friends of library rather than through the city’s budget. And you know, at the moment, the friends are not making any money because they’re not having book sales. So areas seen as needing the most improvement in their surveys were parking, state of the art technology accessibility, adequacy of collections for growing community and public meeting and study spaces. Once again, not used at the moment, but always And demand we’re open. So just some community input. These were some things that we heard over and over, and that even when digital resources are increased that a robust print collection is really important to our patrons for us to keep that emphasis on still having books and adult programs are of good quality, but there’s a lack of awareness there. children’s programs, people want more and more and more steam maker and educational programs and programs for older teens, we tend to skew our teen programs younger into that tween age. Lots people wanted a coffee shop that wasn’t necessarily the highest on on our priority list. But patrons wanted coffee with their books and dedicated programming spaces with more meeting rooms of varying sizes. We’re very high on the list of amenities. We have only two study rooms so far, and they’re not at all tech equipped. And lots of patrons wanted us to open earlier open at nine o’clock rather than 10 and open Sundays all year rather than just the wintertime. And there were quite a few comments that basically said that the library is doing The best of what it has, but that doesn’t always reflect the progressive nature of the community. So multiple people felt that we are really good old fashioned laughed at, so you could advance to the next one. So the consultants did do some preliminary recommendations but didn’t really go into details with these without consulting their financial analysts. But they did think that an increase in library funding is warranted clear from the library’s efficient deployment of resources, this would be positively positively implemented. And actually, the state average is now above $46 per capita. Last time I looked, we were above the 36. This was using 2018 data, we’re about 38 instead, so they said that, you know, at some point the library needs to expand it space whether it expands in a single location or in multiple locations, at least drop offs for book returns or neighborhood branches, and sitting in the library board to discuss options for changes in structure. To allow flexibility or flexibility in hiring and spending and control over policies. This is the short version of them talking about looking at a hybrid model of managing a library, which isn’t a district but has a governing board and is a little bit different than your typical municipal library. And its positive outcomes can be obtained through lessening the library’s dependency on friends support, increasing funding and modifying structure a shift to a district model is not seen as needed. Most of the folks that were surveyed were not familiar with the district model. And support for a district model the consultant felt would build if the community feels that the city isn’t adequate supporting the library staff or there’s a lack of vision of how facilities are going to meet current and future needs. So COVID has really affected
2:43:46
or maybe even enhance the results of what the consultants already found. And the digital divide that we were looking at is far greater than we even thought pre Cogan and we are trying our best To help people navigate the world, of online everything, and, you know, we don’t have a demand obviously right now for meeting rooms and that sort of things, but we’re finding that even when people are coming to us with their devices in hand, they don’t know how to use them. So we had had quite a few comments about tech training. That’s an area that we’d like to rearrange spaces and rearrange staffing in the future to provide more technology training to people. And we have applied for grant funding, and received some grant funding so far to add a lot of Wi Fi hotspots for checkout by patrons. For several months. We’ve looked into some funding for some pre programmed tablets with educational material. There are a lot of ways that COVID has changed our studies change the way we look at our studies results. So some of the things that people had mentioned previously, we’re just, I guess, made more unnecessary by by the advent of COVID-19 We found that our services are really needed, and that people were were extremely inconvenienced and upset when the library was closed. And we had a young person standing by one of the doors crying holding their resume that they couldn’t complete when we were still closed. So we are not done with the consultant survey, we expect to have more conversations with them. I am updating all of the data to 2019 data, which was not available when the consultants first started this process. And we hope to come back with a completed report with more fleshed out recommendations.
2:45:40
All right. No questions. Keep going.
2:45:45
All the way. I spoke too soon. Dr. Waters.
2:45:48
I you know, I apologize for continuing to bog it down but I just reflect on this. If the state average is 46, and I thought you said it’s about 38. So That’s per capita, and then that’s for the number of residents. So the assumption because it looks to me like we’re not increasing library, Library Services fund increasing by expenditures for the library in 2021. Is that fair to say as I look at the sheet as I look at the adopted, or the proposed budget summary?
2:46:26
So Councilmember waters, I think that it’s a minimal increase crease, you know, so there is, I believe, $22,000 in one time, expenses. And you know, and again, I think that’s always that was important to bring forward the feasibility study that we have thus far, because we thought you might ask this question.
2:46:47
So we’re still kind of kind of on hold, but we did at least do make some increases. Well, in terms of trying to understand and build a narrative about this. Right now. We are underfunded by eight and thousand dollars minimally, I think to get to the state average for operations, compare it based on what you’ve learned from the feasibility study. And we’re how many thousand square feet under, under built. So whether there’s a whether there’s ever a proposal to do a library district or, or the idea emerges out of this for a dedicated sales tax, what however, the revenue source, we’re not going to squeeze it out of out of diminishing, you know, the resources in this budget or probably on an incremental growth basis in any budget in the foreseeable future. So we’ve got to build an understanding of how important this is for the community and give the community at some point in time a chance to say we’re willing to make that investment in a 21st century library and library system in Longmont.
2:47:56
Was he a question? That was so fun,
2:47:58
so great. Great. Cool soapbox, but let’s keep going.
2:48:03
So Mary, I believe the last part of this presentation is is Harold. So take it away, Harold.
2:48:11
Next slide, please. So I think one of the things that we’ve talked about recently is social equity and equity in this budgeting process. And I think one of the things that I would say is, as we were looking at this, this was a hard budget to really move through in terms of what what we were looking at in this arena, obviously, because of everything we’ve just talked about, but I wanted to highlight some some things that we are going to we have been doing. So as you all have been seen, next slide has really been expanding their programs and targeting income qualified families. I would also go on to say that they’ve really in conversations regarding touching on the first topic in terms of the housing authority, really looking at how they can come in And not only support the digital divide in terms of we tend to focus on digital divide being the youth of our community. But there’s also a digital divide with our older adults. And so we’ve actually started having those conversations. And they so they’ve created programs to deal with that. Well, it’s not a budgeted item in this. It is something that we’re doing. While we had limited funds, you can see that one of the requests that came in when we were looking at it is really expanding the meal program. The community. Children, Youth and Family Services also have been really good about leveraging this fund and they have received another grant, which means we’ll actually be able to defeat the youth in our community until December. Is that correct? Karen? Yep. Um, one of the things also we’ve kind of talked about it in the library when we were really seen what the impact was in terms of how people were trying to cope with The world of either online school or a hybrid version of school, we were definitely seeing an increasing demand for digital and augmentation of digital and print resources and primarily digital. So we did put 22,000 at one time, you can see what we’re doing on the language line. For those of you that don’t know, this, we have we have a compensation component in terms of a bilingual pay. And so we have tier one, tier two and tier three. tier three is someone that is really the highest level in terms of interpretation, they can read, write, and in Tier ones and entry level. But often cases, even within that program, we don’t have time. So the $10,000 is really giving us the ability to use a language line where if we don’t have someone available, we can call this number and they can provide that service. I think it’s also really important that as we see the diversity of our community grows We have seen occasion recently that Karen and I and Michelle have had to deal with someone that speaks Russian. And so that service also will help us in that arena. You can see the increase in human service needs category. Also the ongoing funding for affordable housing and CDBG admin cost it was discussed the 50,000 in early childhood. And then, you know, when you see the 268 Park infrastructure, one of the things in funding this is, and I’ll say, in other communities that I’ve worked in, it’s not as based on what you see in the investment, you know, it’s consistent, but we really want to focus on areas that we haven’t been able to serve. And so we really thought that that are the areas that were built in are older that need to be replaced. And so that’s something that I’m going to be working with David Bell and his group on and really focusing on that piece as we look at it There’s not a lot here, but I wanted you all to know that we are trying to watch this, you’re actually going to see, see me tying in a lot to some of these other dollars that are coming into play via the CV and the corresponding three, you’re going to see a lot of work. And so for many of the things you’ve talked about, I’m hoping that next Tuesday, you’ll get a lot of your questions answered, because in many of the arenas, we’re hoping that we can utilize that funding once we get all of that together, and really augment all of those places. In terms of the next slide.
2:52:35
Next slide, please.
2:52:38
I thought there was a next slide. So what we did hear from counsel on this that I did want to talk about is, as we get through this budget, we were we were really hoping to put more attention to some of the things were a little late going into this process, but really focus in terms of our priority based budgeting process. In terms of how we do put this in as part of that criteria, as we look at the the next budget, and and so I wanted to let you know, that is still at the top of our list as we look at preparing the 2022 budget next year and incorporating that within our priority based budgeting process.
2:53:24
If we can.
2:53:27
Alright, great.
2:53:28
So that’s it for the presentation for tonight. The budget. That’s it. All right, Councilmember ferry?
2:53:37
Yeah, I have a question on what and it also goes back to the early childhood, the 50,000 for, you know, the early childhood and daycare, um, how many people are tapping into it? And do you find that we’re kind of reaching out to different levels of community.
2:53:59
So we haven’t really started That yet we’re getting prepped in order to do it. So what I can tell you in terms of the work that we’ve done thus far is really been I know, you’ve heard us talk about the COVID world in the PP needs that we were seeing and trying to facilitate that. But in terms of this next program, and what we’re hoping to do, we will, we’ll show you what we’re aiming to put into those and then really building a program to to very quickly and very aggressively market throughout the community in terms of what we can do with those dollars because once again, if to have it spent by the end of the year, and there’s some questions about can we spend it now and it extended to next year because the reality of many of the things that we’re looking at using cares funding for and CV funding is that the impact that people are facing we know is going to extend into next year, or at least until vaccine and other other changes. take place and so we’re trying to figure out how to bridge that gap. So the the points that many of you have brought up, we’re hoping to have all of those answers next Tuesday. But there’s not a lot of guidance and so we’re having to ask a lot of questions.
2:55:15
Okay. Okay. Thanks.
2:55:20
Okay. Thank you, Councilmember dogberry. All right. Let’s move on to mayor and council comments. Anybody? All right, then let’s go on to Harold. Any comments?
2:55:36
Comments? mayor, council?
2:55:38
city attorney.
2:55:40
No comments, Mayor.
2:55:41
All right. Glad to see
2:55:42
you’re still with us. Eugene. All right. We have a motion to adjourn.
2:55:47
I’ll second that court favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai