https://otter.ai/s/Z40jRduASkS-3k_E6Yk0Vg
0:08
Anyone wishing to provide public comment during public invited to be heard must watch the live stream of the meeting and call in only when I i or the mayor open the meeting for public comment callers are not able to access the meeting at any other time. Watch for the instructions to be displayed and write down the meeting ID when it is played at the beginning of the meeting, wait for AI or the mayor or me to open public comment and direct callers to call in. When the mayor or me say to call in dial the toll free number, enter the meeting ID and when asked for your participant ID press pound to mute the live stream and I repeat, mute the live stream and listen for instructions on the phone. callers will hear confirmation they have entered the meeting will be told how many others already participating in the meeting, which includes staff and the City Council and will be placed in a virtual waiting room until admitted into the meeting. Once admitted to the meeting, callers will be called upon by the last three digits of their phone number and allowed to unmute to provide their comments. Comments are limited to three minutes just like normal public invited to be heard per person and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. Once done speaking colors should hang up. At this time, we will take motions direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas.
1:32
Councilmember Martin,
1:34
thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.
1:37
I would like to move to add the resolution that the council members received in their email this afternoon to the agenda those consent agenda for the next regular meeting. And I would like to ask the city clerk because of the ballot mailing timing, whether it would be appropriate since next week isn’t the regular session to suspend the rules so that the council could debate it?
2:12
Next week anyway.
2:16
I’ll second the motion. I put this on an agenda. I don’t know what to do with the rest of the request.
2:23
I don’t either. That’s why I asked. So we’ve got emotion now we can debate it right now we can discuss it right?
2:30
Yes, the motion is the motion has been made and seconded. I believe the proper procedure would be at that meeting to suspend the rules of procedure to make such a vote, if you will. At least that’s my understanding. If somebody would like to clarify any gene
2:52
Eugene
2:56
Marin Council, you could vote at this meeting to make next week’s meeting a regular meeting. Otherwise you could suspend at the time next week. You could spend real procedures to take formal action then.
3:11
Thank you. Thank you, city attorney for me. As I think before we decide on any procedural votes, let’s let’s first have any sort of debate on this motion. Councilmember Peck or I mean, Christiansen? Sorry.
3:26
Um,
3:28
I don’t know. I think it’s appropriate for us to spend our time debating valid issues in city council. These are statewide ballot issues. And I I really don’t see why we would be debating them. We all vote on these and i i don’t see the necessity of spending our time and the public’s time debating state valid issues.
3:58
Councilmember Martin,
4:01
I find that a surprising attitude because last year, Councilmember Christensen was in favor of a number of resolutions in support of legislation going on at the state level that had strong impacts on municipalities. And this ballot measure has the strongest of all possible impacts on on the state on municipalities and our local school districts. And it has been endorsed by the Colorado Municipal League. So I think it’s important for for Longmont to add its its voice because we you know this was an emergency referral by the in the emergency session of the state legislature. For the purpose of making sure that municipal and school budgets were rescued from a possible loss in revenue due due to operation of the Gallagher Amendment, which would lower the residential assessment rate by almost 2%. It won’t raise anybody’s taxes unless the price of their home is homes assessed value goes up at the desks next assessment. It just freezes the residential assessment rate where it is now. So, you know, I I think it’s important that we have this, this, you know, this fiscal rescue measure, be endorsed by Longmont because we are severely impacted by it. Certainly, we should debate it. I mean, you guys can vote it down if you want to, but I think we should debate it.
6:01
Any other comments from council?
6:05
Seeing none. Just quickly before we weigh in, I don’t think there’s anything inappropriate about weighing in as a council on state measures, measures, say for instance, that RTD is taking. We obviously can take positions on these things as a council whether we do or not as a different story, but I feel that it’s wholly appropriate to do so. So as such Seeing no other debate, I will take the vote. All in favor of Councilmember Martin’s motion say aye.
6:38
Aye. Aye.
6:40
Aye. All opposed say nay.
6:43
Nay.
6:45
So the measure passes five to one with Councilmember Christianson dissenting. Is there any additional motions at this time?
6:57
Mayor Pro Tem May I interject a question? Just to be clear,
7:00
yes. What motion did not include changing the meeting next week to a regular session?
7:06
Not at this time but council Mr. Councilmember Martin indicated she may have an additional motion. There we go. Remember, Martin.
7:14
Again, I’m you know, the the next regular session right now is essentially on the same day as most people will be receiving their ballots. It’s just not before the ballots are mailed. So I’m not sure that we need to disrupt the schedule just for that I think that the next regular session would be sufficient. However, I’m willing to listen to arguments for bringing it sooner.
7:44
Okay, before we hear any sort of arguments on not yet made motion, which your emotion in that statement, I’d like to ask attorney, city attorney may if we can have a procedural motion in the next meeting, not to make the whole thing a regular session but to hold a vote on one specific item.
8:09
Marin council Eugene may city attorney.
8:14
Generally it’s either regular session or study session is the way that our council Rules of Procedure are set up. I think you could vote to have just that one item. It may be confusing for the public. Not knowing if it’s labeled a study session and they think maybe that there isn’t any formal final action that is going to take place. So I would think that the structures laid out in the council Rules of Procedure or those that would would be followed.
8:49
All right, thank you. city attorney may.
8:54
Any additional motions at this time?
8:59
All right, seeing none we I guess we’ll move on to the public invited to be heard. According to my my script. It’s time to call it now the information is being displayed on the screen. Please meet the live stream and dial in now. We’ll take a five minute break to give everyone time to get dialed in. See you in five minutes. Thank you
9:45
dawn. Can you hear me
14:49
You’re muted Mayor pro Tim.
14:51
Thank you. I saw that hopefully Mayor Bagley will take
14:56
control the meeting
15:02
All right Mayor Bagley welcome we are
15:04
so sorry about that. Aaron. I really appreciate you doing that for me. Thanks.
15:09
And then um where we at
15:11
we in Polk first couple of vitami hurt.
15:14
We aren’t publican by to be heard we have one caller.
15:16
Great. Let’s hear who they are and what they have to say.
15:19
All right collar with phone number ending in 414. Please unmute and state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to speak. Color phone number ending in 414. Please unmute and go ahead and speak.
15:44
Color 414 can you unmute
15:51
Paulie make it back from a funeral?
15:54
She did. You just
16:02
color 414 can you unmute?
16:11
There you are, please state your name and address for the record. You’ve got three minutes.
16:16
Good evening. Mayor Bagley and council members Sharon O’Leary 534 Emery Street. I’m here tonight in anticipation of the city of Longmont turning 150 years old in 2021. But paired with that excitement, it’s concerned for the fear of a 200 and 75th birthday in 2046. Presently, the greatest detriment to long months preservation is holes in the city’s demolition requirements for historic neighborhoods, and the lack of a full time planner for Historic Preservation, and the missing or lost architectural guidelines within the new streamlined zoning of the city. A perfect example is 830 Emery Street, a home within the original square mile will be allowed to add an addition to the front of their home after it demolishes the entire house above grade, with the exception of the north and south walls, and then replace it with a two storey mishmash of architectural styles. The demolition process does not require presentation or feedback from the Historic Preservation Commission. Another potential scenario is demolition by neglect. Because of the present code, homeowners can allow their property to just deteriorate until maybe it might need to be demolished. Or if someone oops accidentally demolishes their property, they are only fined $50. The penalty hardly fits the crime. In streamlining the city’s zoning 10 loss there are le zoning, which addressed architectural guidelines for new additions. This would give property owners clear guidance on what the expectations are and the developmental code. So I ask that you direct city planners to review this. First, any new construction compatibility should be determined by the roof pitch and overhang window size and orientation or exterior materials. Second new construction incorporating elements from a single architectural period. A Craftsman front porch doesn’t belong on a Victorian home. Third, alterations to existing homes should have minimal impacts on the streetscape. A second floor addition that changes the roofline should be stepped back. For site plans should continue the existing development pattern of the neighborhood maintain a front yard a side yard and setbacks to match the pattern within the block, maintain ample year, year yards with garages and accessory dwelling units and setbacks towards the rear of the line. So what I’m asking you to do is to give direction to staff and walk the walk. Please put a temporary moratorium on demolitions within the historic areas such as downtown historic, he said, and historic Westside neighborhood until a more thorough update is completed to authorize staff to add protections for historic neighborhoods as a result of the new land development code. Architectural guidelines that were part of Hannah’s previous rld zoning were promised but to date have not been completed. And finally designate a full time Historic Preservation planner rather than a part time position that has been constantly changing. If you cannot do this permanently, then in honor of long months, hundred and 50th birthday, please give the president of a one year planner so that all work can be completed. Our concern comes out of our current rapid sale of homes within the historic Eastside neighborhood long month, oldest neighborhood and anything you can do to help preservation is greatly appreciated. Again. I Thank you for your time and dedication to the citizens of Longmont.
20:05
All right, thank you. All right, let’s go ahead and
20:10
do our COVID-19 update Herald
20:15
Marin Council, I’m having a quick update for you. I wanted to start off with this afternoon, Boulder County did release, a press release. And, and you’ll see in some of the data, they have seen a slight downward trend in the number of new cases among 18 to 22 year old residents over the last week, they are seeing some increases in the other age groups. And while the downward trend and 18 to 22 year olds is good, it indicates that the strategies are using the start, they’re starting to work. They do want us to pay attention to the growth in the other age categories. As we continue to move forward. It’s important that we continue to follow the guidelines that they talk about on a regular basis, socially distancing, wearing face covering, limiting gatherings and staying at home when sick. You know, what this does, and I’ve talked about it before is really we know that how they look at where we are in various stages is really based on the numbers and what we’re seeing within our community. And so there, you know, and it could affect occupancy limits for businesses within Boulder County. So we need to really stay vigilant, I guess was the message that they put out there, front on this one. If we look at the cases, we’re in the red zone for new cases, obviously, that’s still a product of what we were seeing within the 18 and 22 year olds. But in terms of the positivity rate, we moved in the yellow zone, and I will show that to you all in a second. Boulder County Public Health is going to submit a formal mitigation plan to the Colorado Department of Public Health on September 30. Based on the timelines that are put in place, they’re going to include evidence of results coming from the mitigation efforts that they’ve put in place thus far, they will then have a conversation to see if there are any additional mitigation efforts, that’s going to be necessary. So what they’re really saying in this press release is we’ve been doing well, in terms outside of the 18 to 22 year old population group. We’ve been performing better than the state has throughout this, but we’re starting to potentially see a trend that similar to the state and overall cases, and bring this up, and I’m going to share my screen with you all.
22:58
So when you see this screen, this is the dial screen that we’ve been talking about. When you look at and this is the one that cdphp has put out. What you can see is we are in the red in terms of the number of cases we’ve been seeing again, when you see the other charts, you can see that it’s related to the growth that we’ve seen in 18 to 22 year olds. This is the one that Jeff was referring to in terms of the positivity rate. If you’ll remember the last time I presented on this to Council, we were actually in the green. We’re still in the green in terms of hospitalizations based on the report I received from Dan this morning. As of this morning, we actually had two cases within the hospitals here in Longwood going to Can you all see the other screen with the charts?
23:55
Yes. Okay.
23:57
So when you look at this chart, you can see the obviously the spike that we hit in cases, and we were talking about what we were seeing with 18 to 22 year olds, it’s been going down. The last few days have been pretty good in terms of the number of new cases. This is really the chart that shows the impact of that 18 to 22 year old population. As you can see, we had nine cases. On the 27th. We had 27 or 29 total cases, two of which were in the 18 to 22 year old population. I had a question today about you know this number. And I think when we look at it, we really kind of look here and see what’s happening. But again, we were much lower earlier in the process. So just a reminder that as we’re watching these numbers, we continued we need to continue doing what I call the big three where your face masks socially distance in practice good hygiene When you look at the date, the data, our current five day average percent positive is 5.9%. Overall, we are at 4.3%. This really tracks what we’ve been seeing over time. And you can see that increase where we were over six, we’ve now dropped in, we’re a little below six as we continue to move forward, again, still performing a significant number of tests in Boulder County, in excess of 1000, many of the days over the last week, and so that’s a good sign that they still have the ability to perform a large number of tests. When you look at the transmission source, at least in the last data set, you’re not seeing the orange, which is in the community side, you’re seeing limited person to person or travel. In those numbers. Again, just looking at the numbers themselves. A lot of cases in this age group and this is the slide that I showed you that was in Jeff Zacks slide deck that he presented last week on the school issue, they’ve now included on their web page. So it’s something it’s a it’s a good slide to see. Obviously, you can see that slight uptick that they’re referring to and all the other population groups. But in 18 to 19, you can see where it peaked. And now they’re moving down, they hope that the mitigation efforts continue performing and show a further decrease. Same with 18 to 22 year olds, and then this graph there now, they now have the scale set. And you can obviously see where the bulk of the cases are within Boulder County. Again, the five day average, when you look at the numbers, this is a really good sign. We hope this continues, again, because the numbers are really setting the playing field for how we continue to move forward. And then when you look at the cases by where folks live, so obviously, boulders at 2600 cases, we’re now at 909. And then when you look at when they normalize that for 100,000 population, you can see where everyone’s moving, or the three larger communities are moving in the same direction, with older at 2400 cases per hundred thousand. These numbers are now staying relatively consistent. I think this did this hit three point 30.2. It’s now 30.3. And then, when we look at long term care facilities, you can see a couple here and there. But again, nothing like we saw at the front end of the pandemic in the long term care facilities. You can see then on the dials that and this is one I want to show you all, if you’ll remember I think last time the available med search beds was somewhere in this area, it’s now back in the yellow. And then the ICU beds, they’ve moved into the red. But again, what we’re seeing locally in terms of patients admitted for COVID, they indicated that there were two today in long line. So I mean, that’s the data that I have to go over with you all today. Obviously, we’re now starting to have
28:34
more meetings. I know that they’re scheduling more meetings, there was one yesterday with the emergency managers in terms of what we’re seeing, they’re going to start scheduling those on a more regular basis with us to start going over information. So we understand what understand the situation in potentially where we’re moving. But at this point, the data is very similar to last week. And the big, you know, the big thing for all of us as a community is to continue doing what we’ve been doing. And it’s wearing our mask and socially distancing as we continue to move forward. I’d be happy to answer any questions at this time.
29:17
No. Thank you very badly. Just a quick question. You may not have the answer to this, Harold. But as far as the breakdown between cu affiliated cases and non cu affiliated cases, I just was wondering where the degree of separation is, for instance, if you are a couple living in Boulder, you don’t work for the university, but say your nanny is a student. Would that would they, for instance if they caught a case, but they’d be included as cu affiliated? You know, I don’t
29:49
know the answer to that question.
29:53
Let us look into it and we’ll get back to you with that information. I think this would I remember them hearing Whether your student or staff member there,
30:02
so that wouldn’t necessarily get counted on that number.
30:06
Okay, I don’t think it would. But let me double check the answer, and we’ll get back in touch with you. All right, thank you. And if you remember in the last week’s slide deck that we had from Jeff actually broke down 18 to 22. And those that were associated with see you and those who weren’t. So I know they’re parsing that data out.
30:27
All right. They tell let’s go good. I’ve got
30:30
one thing. We don’t have city manager comments at the beginning. But one of the things I did want to talk about with you all, you’ve had a lot of questions regarding where we’re moving with ami, and I wanted to let you all know Dave will talk about that in more detail, but we are planning an update to Council in October to go over that in more detail.
30:52
Now I’m done.
30:54
All right. Well, let’s let’s hand it off to Jim golden. Let’s do the 2020 budget presentation
30:59
in Marin City Council. Teresa Malloy, budget manager.
31:17
Jim, are you
31:19
gonna say something here?
31:21
No, go ahead.
31:21
Okay. Um, so if we could have our first presentation, please.
31:30
And next slide.
31:33
So I am joined by melody polara. So melody, if you wouldn’t mind joining me, please. And together melody and I are going to cover for you the priority based budgeting. Then we have Annie and her staff, and she’s going to talk to you about sustainability, followed by Valerie, and she’s going to cover the next light programs. And then David Hornbacher will talk talk about advanced metering. And then Sandy is going to cover the public, the long month public media. And finally, Jim is going to wrap it up with those final three topics for you this evening. So next slide, please.
32:21
My comments this evening on regarding the party based budgeting are going to be pretty brief for us since we did just provide a more in depth review of our process, which several of you back in June. We certainly can’t get into more details should that be desired. Just let us know. The city is utilized a party based budgeting process city wide since 2013. In 2018, the process was updated to incorporate the Envision Longmont guiding principles as the desired results. As Council is aware, this process includes several steps that ends with a prioritized list of city services. It includes a community involvement step to value the results. This involvement process resulted in the relative weightings of the results that you see here. This weighting was used in the scoring of the programs. The complete background information, including the steps and the scoring criteria can be found on the city’s website. And we did provide a link to our information that’s on the website for you in the council communication. Next slide. The city’s priority based budgeting data has been updated to reflect the 2021 proposed budget. The core tile graph on the top here shows the 2021 proposed budget. The darker blue bars on the top compared to the 2020 adopted budget of 58.4% of the 2021 proposed budget supports core tile one programs with another 26.1 supporting core tile two programs. It’s important to note that this is the operating budgets only and does not include any funding that is part of our capital improvement program, debt service or any transfers to other funds. in your packet we included three pbb attachments for your reference attachment Oh is the cortado graphs for each of the major operating funds. Attachment P and Q complete arc a complete list of all programs in the 2021 budget amounts broken up by personnel, non personnel and total budget. P is the list of community programs and q is the governance programs. Each ongoing budget request was evaluated from the perspective of how it aligns with our pbV programs. The second graph on the bottom of the slide shows our ongoing level one and level two increases by quarter For the general fund. Next slide, please.
35:09
So I’m now going to turn it over to melody who’s going to take you to our pbb model that is available on on the public’s on avail available to the public on the city’s website.
35:22
So melody,
35:24
Hey, good evening, john, if you could pull that up, please.
35:34
So Good evening, mayor and council members, I’m Melody Clara, the senior budget analyst with the city. So as Teresa mentioned, this is our budget prioritization information that we have out on our website. At the top of this is just our overall background. And then as you scroll down, you can see the steps that we have identified just for your information. And then at the very bottom of this screen, we have a tutorial video that will walk you through the website I will be walking you through tonight. And then we also have an email address. If there’s any questions, there’s an email that the public can access that we can respond to. So Don, if you’ll go to the website, please. So this is our pvb online data website. And this is a nice capture of all of the information we put together during a party based budgeting process. And I like this. Oh, yes.
36:38
I’m sorry to interrupt. But can you enlarge that page? It’s very, very small.
36:43
Don, can you Sorry, Don striving poignantly.
36:49
Is that better?
36:49
It doesn’t feel the space like the other presentations do. So it is, but it’s very tiny.
36:57
as large as it will go for me. Okay, thanks.
37:03
Sorry about that. So across the top our community results. And you can see if you click through those tabs, the definitions below will change so that you can see how those results are defined. And then we also have in green, our governance results, but I am going to focus on the housing services, amenities and opportunities for all.
37:29
So if you click on
37:29
that, if we scroll down, this will open up a tree plot, which is all of the departments that have programs allocated to this specific result. And on the right are our community services grouping that I want to focus on. So if we click in there, this will open up all of our community services, divisions that have allocated their programs, or their resources to these programs within this specific result. So if we take a look at the recreation division, I’m going to show you this program here. So what I kind of want to explain what these boxes represent. So the larger the box, the higher the dollar amount that has been allocated to this program. And then the darker the shade of the box, the higher that specific programs scored to those results. So on a scale of zero to four for being higher score. So if we take a look at the Rec Center, program events and services, we can click on there. And it will open up a detailed description of that specific program, the total cost that has been allocated to that program, the total FTP, and then if you scroll down, there’s a pie chart. And that is breaking up the personnel versus non personnel costs that have been allocated. And then if we scroll up a little bit, there is a positions tab. And this opens up all of the positions with that have been allocated to this. And if we scroll down a little more, those are the specific positions with the costs that have been allocated. And then if we scroll back up, there’s the operating costs. And these represent the line item budget that has been allocated to this program for those operating costs. And there’s that breakout below. So if we close this, we can just miss this at the bottom of the screen. It’s over to the right, there you go. So if we go back to overall, if we click that, it will take us back to where we begin. And then there’s also a table view of all of this information, which then is able you are able to export this to Excel for anybody who’s interested in That’s all I have on this. So thank you for your time.
40:08
So certainly feel free to poke around and play with our model that’s on the website. And if you have any questions, as melody mentioned, we do have that email address, you can send your questions that way, and she will be able to answer those for you. Over the next six months or so, staff is going to embark upon a complete update to our PvP process. And that will include the addition of an equity component to the scoring part of the process. The update will then be implemented with our 2022 budget. So that concludes our remarks for you on the PBV portion of the presentation this evening. We can certainly answer any questions that you may have.
40:57
All right, we’re good each of those next,
41:00
turning it over then to Andy Noble.
41:08
Aaron, I need to step away just for a sec. We’ll be back in two minutes. Cheers.
41:16
Okay, can you hear me and see me? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Can you start the sustainability budget presentation, please. Thank you. So Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. I’m Annie noble Environmental Services Manager and public works in natural resources. And I’ll be presenting the sustainability budget tonight. There are several staff here to help me answer any questions, and we look forward to taking any comments or direction you may have. Next slide, please. So I have 10 slides that I’ll be brief. I’m going to start out by looking at what is sustainability? What is the role of the program, and what are the funding sources, and then I’ll talk about the work that’s currently underway and go into the 2021 budget. And I’ll conclude with a list of other city wide efforts that are related to sustainability. Next slide, please. So, sustainability is often described as meeting our needs without compromising the needs of future generations. I’ve view it as a lens from which we evaluate social, economic, and environmental factors when we make a decision. This is also called the triple bottom line or the three pillars of sustainability.
42:36
The role of the program is to manage track,
42:41
sorry, manage, track, support and collaborate on the strategies identified in the sustainability plan, which involves a wide range of programs citywide. Next slide, please. The sustainability plan identifies 10 topic areas which contains specific actions that are categorized into immediate near term and midterm timeframes. The city council work plan also directs the work of the program and this significant example of this this year was the work of the Climate Action Task Force.
43:15
Next slide, please.
43:18
This year was the first year that a sustainability fund was established with funding contributions from various city funds in 2021 funding contributions are being requested from the funds listed on this slide. Based on the topic areas that were identified in next year’s work plan. 2020 was also the first year of the Boulder County sustainability tax and Longmont received $125,800 from that tax, and we provided a $32,000 match.
43:52
Next slide, please.
43:56
So on the slide I’ve listed the major components of this year’s budget. The first four items were funded through the Boulder County tax, and that included hiring a grant and residential program board quarter coordinator, which is a two year fixed her position funding and neighborhood impact grant program, which is a fund that has been set up in partnership with the Longmont Community Foundation. And that’s it provides often an opportunity for neighborhoods to apply for grants to make improvements that have a public benefit the WIC Farmers Market program, which provides weekly vouchers for income eligible families to use at the farmers market. And then the development of the equitable carbon free transportation roadmap, which is a plan that will identify opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector and this will be presented to council this fall. Other program initiatives that were not funded through the county tax included the 2019 greenhouse scats inventory, which will also be presented to council this fall, the Sustainable Business Program, which has been helping businesses with economic recovery from COVID, and other neighborhood programs like the sole program, which is sustainable opportunities, lifestyles and leadership. And that program involves training volunteer technicians to go into people’s homes, and do energy and efficiency improvements and also provide education and outreach. And the last is the development of equity strategies with the support of the just transition plan committee.
45:39
Next slide, please.
45:43
The proposed 2021 budget is $359,000. And that’s excluding salaries and a $50,000. One time request for an update to the sustainability plan. This is the same as the base budget for 2020. And I’ve grouped the budget into similar categories that I just described. General sustainability includes items like temporary staff membership dues to CC for CA, which is the Colorado communities for climate action, programs related to waste, air quality, and the natural environment and building an infrastructure. There’s also a line item of $70,000 in the budget, and that’s for efforts that will be funded through the Boulder County sustainability tax. And I’ll go through that in greater detail in the next slide, please.
46:40
So, the 2021 proposed budget assumes $150,000 for work funded through the sustainability tax, and that includes a 25% match of the hundred and $50,000 80,000 has already been committed. And that’s for a two year fixed term grant and program coordinator position. staff is currently seeking feedback from the sustainability board and through the sustainability coalition on for other opportunities for the remaining $70,000, which includes the continuing to fund the neighborhood impact grant the development of a climate vulnerability risk map to identify areas geographic areas in the city that are of climate risk, and develop recommendations for addressing those risks. funding a temporary position, which is a climate equity and community engagement specialist, which could help support recommendations in the climate action report. And then expanding other neighborhood programs like the sole program.
47:43
Next slide, please.
47:46
So in addition to the funding and the 2021, sustainability program budget, there are many proposed city wide budget requests that help support the strategies of this sustainability plan. And I have several of those listed here on this slide. This includes the AIP projects for city building efficiency improvements, funding for transit, residential and commercial energy efficiency programs, air quality programs, waste diversion, which includes recycling and composting, and water conservation programs. So with that next slide, I can be happy to answer any questions and their staff here to help me.
48:33
All right, I don’t see any questions. So let’s keep going up the second report, or is there another way?
48:41
I think there’s some of the following the maybe next slide.
48:44
next slides following and then moving, then David.
48:48
All right. Dodd Dale, guys up.
48:52
Yes, I am. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Bagley, members of council Valerie Dodd, Executive Director of next light, I’m happy to be back in front of you. I’m going to talk a little bit about 2020 results, which I think Mary you’ve been interested in lately. And I’ll talk also about 21 or 2021, budgets and strategies. So we’ll go to the next slide. And I always want to make sure that we orient ourselves in the mission for next slide. And it really is to deliver our neighbors a world of possibility by providing fast, reliable fiber connectivity, while being accessible and easy to do business with those last two points you’ll hear throughout my presentation.
49:33
So
49:34
now let’s talk about the 2021 goals. Really, our goals and objectives are going to be the same probably year to year we might tweak some of the numbers, but really what we’re trying to do is drive customer growth. We’re trying to make sure as many people as many residents in Longmont as possible, have access and actually have our service and can get it and afford it so that’s very important. The next piece is assuring that we have the capacity for all this Growing customers and their growing consumption, as well as a very reliable network. And then lastly, this is an important one is we want to make sure that we’re delighting our customers and our residents, we want to drive an exceptional customer experience so that they become advocates on our behalf. So next slide. Pete speaking of the customer experience piece, we’ve done a few things in 2020 in late 2019, that have improved our customer experience, one is really reset, we have implemented a new IVR system so that customers calling into either LPC or next light don’t have to go to the same call queue don’t have to wait in line, they don’t get confused about reporting and next slide outage versus an electric outage. So we’ve separated the phone IVR. And then we’ve added in a callback feature. That way, you don’t have to stay on the phone waiting for the next available rep if you don’t have to. So we recently implemented that are excited about it. We also as you probably are well aware introduced the customer connection corner or Center at our service center location on Sherman. And that allows us to invite customers into see us if they have perhaps hearing difficulties if they want to make cash payments, etc. We’re making it really easy to do business with this at that location. We’ve also extended our hours of support, we have 24 seven online, sign up for service, we now are doing Saturday installations, it goes back to being accessible, we want to make sure everybody working Monday through Friday, if they can’t get off work, they can stay at home and get a Saturday install. We’re also making evening calls our evening support available as well, two nights a week in 2021. if not sooner, we’re hoping or we will be implementing a pay by phone functionality. This is important for two reasons. One, it’s again, easy to do business with it is our customers. Secondly, it allows our customer service reps to work from home. Right now they’re taking a lot of payments. And in order to take a payment from a customer, they have to physically be in a PCI compliant workspace. So going forward, when a customer can just hit a number and go into a queue and make an automatic credit card or bank account payment, then they can do that from home and they don’t have to come into the office. So that’s particularly important during this pandemic. So we’re excited about that functionality. Sandy, thank you for your help with that. And then secondly, to improve our customer experience, we are trialing some Wi Fi mesh satellite devices. So that if you happen to have a large home, maybe Mir badly does, and he has his router in the basement, but he wants to serve us up on the top floor, then this would be an extender to maximize maximize that wireless coverage.
52:45
Next slide.
52:47
Now I’m going to talk about customer acquisition. So think of that as the sales and marketing arm of next lights operation. So in 2020, we’ve done some cool things, we’ve refreshed our logo, it’s bigger and easier to see from a distance. So it helps with our branding and marketing. We added to the tagline, gig internet, it didn’t have broadband before broadband can be copper serves three megabit, we didn’t want to do that we wanted to take full advantage of the fact that we are gigabit and capable. So gig internet was added to the tagline. And then hopefully, you’ve seen the beautiful fleet vehicles that we have driving around with the new logo, which looks kind of like this slide on the bottom right hand corner. We’ve also recently engaged a new marketing partner and agency to help us with our digital online marketing, advertising our website, and really helping us reach out to the right segments. This is a great interest to all and it’s something I’m really proud of the team for getting done very quickly. And that’s the income qualifying offers. And it was something we wanted to do COVID happen, we jumped in to high gear and got the necessary approvals very quickly for which I’m so grateful. So customers that have maybe never had internet or had our internet could get free internet installed at no cost and get service for two months free. Now if they want to keep the service, they can pay just 1495 a month, it’s a great deal. They can also get one gigabit which some people have done. And then for existing customers that would be income qualifying because maybe they’re part of a school lunch program or on Medicaid, then if they were paying the higher normal rate, we allowed them to come down to that 1495 or 4495 price point. In fact, we reached out to all of our cares program participants and said you know what, we see that you have our internet service, you now qualify for this level rate. So we were very proactive and making sure we move them to the right price point. So that was cool. The next thing we’ve done is with the sharing the next slide program, for one we made sure we extended it to K through 12. Well then we realized we might have some community college students or even locals to college students. That will Pell Grant recipients if they are they are now qualifying for sharing the next slide program which provides free internet service. One other thing we did is we realized some children need Maybe doing their schoolwork and getting their childcare from an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent? Well, we needed to make sure that those children in those extended family households during the school year could get access to internet. So we’re including those families as well. As long as there’s a student in their home, they can qualify, again, income qualifying for the school lunch program. And then lastly, one thing that we were working on, and thanks to Dr. Waters, which I appreciate, he reached out to me and asked about preschoolers, because preschoolers could conceivably get left behind if their parents are not online, getting access to information about education, about schools, about medical care, about coven, whatever it may be. And so we’re now looking to see if we can find some additional support some other foundations that might be able to contribute to sharing the next light set next light such that we can get preschool or families with preschoolers online. So Dr. Waters, we hope to have an update for you very soon. And then the last thing under this particular topic is the bulk internet. That’s something that we implement, implemented recently, with, oh, we’re gonna think of the name village Co Op. And that’s whereby we get 100% of those units signed up with our internet service by going through the property management organization. And they basically handle the billing to their residents or occupants. And so we’re able to provide service to them at a discounted rate and get 100% of the occupants. It’s a great thing. Now in 2021, and or possibly sooner, we will have a refresh website, and it’ll be ADA compliant. And not only will it be in English, but will also be in Spanish, there’ll be a parallel mirror site of the primary site. And we’ll also have new digital ads will have landing pages for those targets that we’re really trying to reach that we haven’t yet. And then lastly, the thing I’m really excited about, and I believe Harold is as well, and that is across the promotion capability. And so we’re hoping to get a sophisticated website such that we can promote. If it’s composting, if it’s golf discounts, teatime discounts, or the museum or whatever might be relevant to that particular customer, we want to make sure we do some cross promotion with that.
57:15
Next slide, please.
57:16
As I mentioned, the bulk housing, we’re working with Harold and Kathy and team on doing some things with those properties. For one, we’re, you know, helping turn up the TLS circuit so that those properties can get on the city network. Secondly, we’re making sure that they all have fiber so that they can all get access to next slide internet service. So we’re fiber, we’re building out fiber to the suites as we speak. And then we’re looking at doing that boat deals so that we can provide a good discounted internet price to those properties, which also happen to have tenants that might be income qualifying. So it’s really getting providing a great value and a great service for this property. So we’re working through that, I do want to note that the deal that we are giving Li j would be no different than any other property management or apartment that happened to be serving income qualifying households and willing to sign a book deal.
58:12
Next slide, please.
58:15
So let’s talk about customer results and outlook. So 2020, we’re experiencing about a 9% year over year growth, pretty phenomenal. And we’re hoping to end the year with 22,500 customers, that is 800 above the original forecast and budget. So pretty excited about that, in 2021, we’re gonna probably see a little bit of a dip in the growth but still a 6% growth is what we’re expecting and would end the year at 23,007 80. So again, that is exceeding our outlook as well.
58:46
Next slide, please.
58:49
So I talked about those special offers that we implemented at the onset of COVID earlier. And so let me give you the numbers for that the income qualifying offers, which are the 1495 and the 4495. We have 432 households. With that service, we have 72 households that are experiencing the two months free, hopefully we’ll convert them to a 1495 customer or those customers could qualify for sharing the next slide. And then they would have service for a year sharing the next slide. We have 54 households with it. But we have money right now for at least 40 more. And I know children, youth and families is working hard to process those applications to get as many online as possible. In 2021, we really want to continue this focus on some of the different segments that we have not reached a lot of those households that maybe haven’t been online yet. So I’m setting a goal for us, for us of 1000 new customers that would probably represent in lower income, it could represent senior households and Hispanic households, etc. But we’ve got a map of those underserved households and that’s really our target next year.
59:54
Next slide.
59:56
Okay, quick updates on the network. And boy, we’re growing We’re baseline nine, six to 9%. And guess what, because of COVID data utilization consumptions gone up about 15%. So we need more bandwidth. So we were spending a fair bit of capital on 100 g transport circuits to make sure that we have the capacity up to the internet. We’re spending money rehabbing the network. It’s not just you build it, you’re done, you got to continually rehab it. And we’ve been able to replace some devices that were faulty and reducing our trouble report rate by 50%. In 2020, we have enabled over 3000 new premises, so we’ve still got a lot of building to do, there’s a lot of new development. So we’re about 88, and a half percent fiber enabled. For 2021. We have a DDoS mitigation plan, and we’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars there to implement some scrubbers to make sure that we can prevent cyber attacks from cratering, our neck it our network, and then we’re building a new fiber hut around countyline to accommodate some of the growth there. And again, we’ll have probably 3500 new premises that will be fiber enabled next year alone. So we’ll probably in the year at about 96 90% fiber enabled, I told you before, we’ll probably never get to 100% for one, some apartments won’t let us in. And then for two, we continue to grow and we’ve got to keep up with that growth.
1:01:13
Next slide.
1:01:15
And the employees a huge piece of our success with next slide super excited about our team, we weren’t able to finalize our network. Next slide organization this year, we’ve got 40 employees, and that’s about how it’s going to stay for next year, we were able to organize in such a fashion that many existing employees were able to take a new role with maybe a slight increase in pay and responsibility. So a lot of good opportunity for most of the employees in the organization. Secondly, we added a few external hires, somebody from the Geek Squad and other places. And then I’m excited to say that I brought on I convinced a dear friend of mine and former coworker, Dennis Pappas, to join us to help run the network piece of next life. He has over 30 years experience in the telecommunications industry on the private side, has public policy experience engineering and operations experience. So super happy to have Dennis taking over that piece. Another thing I’m really proud of that a committee has formed lately with the next slide. And that is to do equity and inclusion. And we know the city’s got a lot of focus on that. We know we interact with customers all day every day. And we wanted to make sure we were particularly aware and sensitive to those things. So we have committee working on education with our organization, in 2021 already mentioned, we won’t be adding any headcount. But we’re really starting to see the organization scale, we’re adding customers and revenue, but we’re not having to add employees. Next slide. And I’m winding down the good news. So this is kind of a summary slide customer count up 6%, employee count, virtually flat revenues up 9%. And that’s just because we have higher paying customers. Originally, we have a lot of people in that charter membership that $45 some of those churned out been replaced with $65 customers, which is our rate card today and very competitive. And that also offset some of that 1495 price point that we have in the market, our operating expenses up just a little bit some one time expenses ccip I’ve talked about last time, it’s up due to about $800,000 worth of one time expenses. And so we are a little net, we are a little negative on the net income side, but we’re not dipping below our fund balance. So that’s the great news. And I’ll show you a couple things on the next slide. But you see at this bottom slips, and Okay, I’ll go and go the next slide, that’s fine. So here, upper left hand column. This is our ending fund balance. You see we’re dipping low because we’re really investing and future proofing the network. But look at the cash that we start spinning off in the next handful of years. That is our ending fund balance over $20 million. Look at the bottom left hand corner you’ll see that, you know the revenue continues to grow and our expenses start declining. We’ve got to pay off some of the money we borrowed from LPC due to the unexpected growth and success. We’ll pay that off in 2025 will pay off the balance of our debt in 2029, at which time, we will be very margin rich and we’ll be able to reinvest in the network and see what else we can do for the community. So last slide is a celebration. We continue to get a lot of recognition I get a lot of phone calls and requests for media interviews because of our success. We make it look easy and I warn everyone that it’s not as easy as the team’s made it look. We’ve gotten reckon gotten recognition for the low income offer that we did to great news. And then once again PC Magazine has recognized our exceptional product and ranked us the fastest ISP in the western region and the fourth fastest in the country. That’s all I have. Thank you for listening.
1:04:42
Okay, can I get the Thank you. Any questions from Council for
1:04:49
her Jasper Christiansen?
1:04:51
Not a question. Just comment about once a year I call up your tech support folks and they’re always fast. And they’re always have a good sense of humor. And they always get me taken care of in no time it’s usually hold down that button. That’s the third from the left for five seconds. And yeah, then that does it. But anyway, thank you very much. You have very good customer service. And that’s really, really important. Thanks. Thank you so much, Councilmember Jolson, members. Oh, fairing. And then Kelsey.
1:05:24
I have a question on the numbers. You gave us the 72. For the two free month, the 432. For the income income qualifying offers, are those. Do those numbers? Are they overlapping? So what are these individual like separate?
1:05:43
They’re on separate? Yes, Councilmember. Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Starr have a lot of practice. And those numbers are separate. They’re on separate rate plans. So the 72 could turn into the 432 paying customers or they could turn into a sharing the next slide customer. Got it? And then
1:06:01
which ones because I’ve heard from parents that maybe they didn’t qualify for one. Are there other offers? So let’s say they don’t qualify for the two, three months? Could they do the during the next slide? Or what is how is that structured.
1:06:18
And generally, if they would qualify, if they’re part of the school lunch program, that part qualify for sharing the next slide. And if they have some kind of federal assistance or any kind of subsidies whatsoever, then they can qualify for the discounted surfacey income qualifying service. And if they don’t qualify for those, we have some people that are receiving $25 credits for three months, because they’re, they don’t qualify for those lower income offers, but they can’t really afford things because maybe they’re out of work, or they have reduced income. So we’re making accommodations for them with credit. And then worst case scenario is they could get a 25 max medical product for $35. Okay.
1:07:02
So if they don’t qualify for something, it’s not if for one of the sharing the next slide are the two free months. There’s still other options if they call and ask.
1:07:12
Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
1:07:15
All right. Just reminder.
1:07:17
Um, yes, I recently learned that an acquaintance in a mobile home park doesn’t have access to next light. Is that true of all of the mobile home parks in in the city or or only certain ones? Or are what what outreach effort are we trying to make to, to convert those because a lot of people that don’t need this,
1:07:44
and Mayor Bagley, Councilmember Martin, the issue probably is that the management company for that trailer park probably is getting door fees from a competitor, and therefore they’re making more revenue by having just one carrier in there and so they have not signed a service agreement letting us in. So that has been a continual problem, we have about 2000 premises for which we cannot get a service agreement. If you want to shoot what that one specifically to me, I will take a look at it. But otherwise, we are certainly trying to finish turning up everything, you know, everywhere that they will grant us a service agreement.
1:08:24
Okay, thank you. I will do that. This is duck waters.
1:08:29
Thanks Mary Begley. Valerie, what it’s a great report on great work. I mean, it’s very impressive what what you’ve been able to do with an outstanding I agree with Councilmember Christensen, customer service is extraordinary. I mean, you get the right people doing the right stuff. And I appreciate your acknowledgement of the need to ensure that every family with young children obviously preschool, families of preschoolers don’t qualify for free and reduced lunches because they’re not in school. Um, and I appreciate that you offered what will it take for us to get to that place where we can say there are no families with young children in Longmont who are not connected? And I and in the editorial I’ll add is I don’t know how we can talk about equity in the city of Longmont and not ensure that every family with young children’s connect that they are connected. And I kind of can’t parallel to that. I’m going to follow up Theresa just a heads up to you. I didn’t ask when when you did your presentation for examples, and I don’t need them tonight, but I’ll follow up with you examples of programs that that didn’t score with the with the priority based budgeting process into a tier one or a poor tile one. But we’ve chosen to fund it because there are exceptions because of how they advance the cause of equity or provide for folks who otherwise would not have been provided for. Right. So that’s a heads up, Teresa. But Valerie, I’m curious, you know, what’s it take for us to get there.
1:10:13
Mayor Bagley, Councilmember waters totally appreciate the question. And that’s certainly the goal. And I didn’t include our vision statement, because I was trying to cut back on my words, but it is truly a fully connected loan. And so I can say, and I think geometry can back me that nothing was turned down, Harold and team and others have been very supportive of what we’re trying to do, partly because when enterprise fun, they see that here in the coming years, we’ll have some be spinning off some extra cash. So I don’t think that’s the issue. I think it’s partnering with the right people to get the right grants, and the right foundations to contribute. And we started having those meetings, thanks to you again. And so we’re trying to work through that. And so I’m confident that we’re going to get some additional funding. But I also am going to set it up and say that my boss, Dale and I are thinking about this in a different way as well, trying to see Is there a way that we don’t have to be dependent, maybe on a foundation, and that this can be part of our really our business strategy. But I need to talk to Dale and Harold about that a little further. So I’m happy to come back in a couple of months, with a longer term plan on how we do segways
1:11:26
suggested if I can jump in on that one. I think it’s also when you saw the fund balances in the out year. So at that point, we’re going to have different options available to us. I think when we talk about social equity and the work that we’re doing internally right now, it’s also how do we work with our cultural brokers to really get the word out? Because I think that’s the piece two, we’ve talked about this a little bit, you can put information out, but in some cases, you don’t all information. And so how do we connect within various groups throughout our community via our cultural broker, so we can really get that connection in and be able to provide those services to various residents in our community. And when we talk about the digital divide, one of the things I wanted to add to Valerie’s presentation you saw where she talked about the bulk rate agreements. And we’ve talked about digital divide, not only being a problem, not only being a situation, or an opportunity, actually, where you deal with our younger population. It’s also something we need to look at when we talk about our older populations. And you’re seeing Valerie engage in that conversation with her looks at bulk rates and applying the same discounts to those who qualify in different ways. So it’s really a holistic look at everyone in our community. And I think as we continue moving forward, we’re going to have some answers to that question, but we just need to continue taking this step by step.
1:12:51
Thanks, Carol, then Valerie, again, terrific presentation. And I and I appreciate the fact that you and Dale are thinking about thinking differently about how to make certain that every family with young kids is going to thank you.
1:13:06
Alright, Valerie, thank you very much for addressing the concerns that are not just questions we all had. So Dale, good job. You laid it say anything. is a great. All right. Why don’t we go ahead and take a two minute break or a three minute break before we launch into our discussion on late fees? I’m good.
1:13:28
All right. I can view
1:13:37
come back everybody. Sorry. I thought we were done.
1:13:42
Sorry, guys.
1:13:43
I could use a two minute break.
1:13:47
We’re gonna take a three minute break. And we’ll come back.
1:13:51
We’ve been going out for almost an hour and a half. That’s fine.
1:18:26
Initially
1:18:29
listening to the debate the background and revenue meeting
1:19:10
the vice president which
1:19:13
right now that we’re back, Jim, want to keep going with that budget presentation.
1:19:18
Yeah. Next that actually Dave Hornbacher is going to, I believe introduce next time on automatic metering.
1:19:26
Great. Thank you, Jim. Good evening Mayor Bagley and members of city council. I’m David Hornbacher, the executive director of Longmont power and communications. So during the ccip presentation council asked for additional information on the capital project el E zero 99, which is the advanced metering. Additionally, council heard several comments for the public sharing their views regarding this, their views and their concerns regarding this project. We do appreciate and we do take that feedback seriously. As Harold had stated earlier tonight, we believe that the best path forward is to hold a study session discussion on these issues and invite a wide range of views and perspectives into that discussion. We plan to hold that study study session later in October. For tonight, though, I will still provide a brief update. So this project is the largest LPC project in our budget and it transforms the current handheld you know electric metering system to a robust two way communication system. And this provides a framework and technology to engage our customers regarding their energy use. The integration of distributed energy resources create a connection between the renewable energy production and to consumption, and other activities and policies that are central to reach our goal of 100% renewable energy by year 2030. The 2021 budget is the second year of this three year funded project rates for years 2020 and 21. that support the overall long lead power and communication budget, as presented were approved by city council last year in 2020. So regarding progress of this project, Longmont power and communications continues to pursue multiple tracks. So for example, we have been actively recruiting for an advanced metering infrastructure manager.
1:21:26
It has not been an easy task trying to find the right person. In fact, we have literally for many, many months, well over half a year, and multiple job postings and numerous interviews, we’ve been looking for the right person. So I am happy to state that we are in the final stages of onboarding a new manager. And we do expect him mid October. So once that is official, I will announce information about Him and He will start joining some of these conversations. Other activities we’ve done in coordination with purchasing as we’ve reviewed other existing EMI contracts for options that might leverage these contracts for pricing and timing benefits. In fact, one that we’ve been reviewing very carefully is a one from Colorado Springs Utilities. So Colorado Springs Utilities actually offers for utilities water, wastewater, Gas and Electric. And so they have significant benefits from let’s call it a volume purchase for their multiple utilities. So we’ve been working with Colorado Springs Utilities to evaluate that bid and to see if it would meet city of Long lots needs, and if it might be a great financial and timing benefit. As part of that, too. We’ve also employed the firm black and Veatch. And they are assisting us in creating detailed functionality list and part of the contract evaluation. We also to continue to evaluate alternative modes to convey the meter signal that support advanced metering infrastructure. And this includes the radio frequency. So the RF as well as direct connect options. And they must, you know, need to meet two criteria including technically sound capability responsive to the functionality needs, financially responsible and timely deployment to meet our municipal utility and community needs. Also with this is that we are coordinating with ETS finance and pw nr to ensure that the AMI project is synchronized with the CIS system upgrade. And that’s to ensure the highest overall value functionalities of these critical systems. And as needed the am the AMI schedule may be adjusted accordingly to ensure that that successful deployment of both of these systems currently well why we believe based on industry standard that a wireless solutions both feasible and likely the most economic advantageous, we are continuing to explore wired solutions that may include and utilize the city’s extensive next light fiber system. We are not at a final stage at this point would certainly welcome continued community discussion on alternatives and to address the customer concerns as well as the overall optimal solution for long line. So we do look forward to a much deeper dive with City Council here in October. We’re looking to do that on October 20. And so Frankly, I’m quite excited to be before Council and to share much more deeper information. So that’s my brief overview pending a much more extensive discussion here in October.
1:24:52
All right, great. Thanks, David. Jim, is that it or do we have more
1:24:58
we do have more Sandy Now going to cover the Lamont public media.
1:25:03
Mr. Batman, members of council Sandy, senior assistant city manager, I’m here to chat with you about the limelight public media contract and public access media for the future in 2021. So as you may remember, a couple of years ago during these budget presentations, particularly during the financial policies, the City Council asked for staff to go out for a competitive process for public access television services. The Longmont observer was the successful bidder during that process, now known as Longmont public media. And part of the reason that they won the bid was because they had a business model that really incorporated a makerspace idea at the Carnegie building, being able to gather and have classes and create content and all these great things that were proposed as part of the RFP. As you already can guess, the covid 19 pandemic has certainly put certainly more than a damper on those plans for Longmont public media. And there are some concerns that in 2021, that contract cannot be renewed as it is today. So you may notice in your packet, you have a few different options that we would like for you to consider, mostly because the city council is the sole decision maker on the contract for public access services. So I’ve presented a few different options for council to consider. I’ll go through those briefly. We’re hoping for some direction from council tonight. And then we’ll continue on with negotiations and bring back a contract as we get closer to the end of the year. So first of all, first option, the same level of service. So you’ll see several iterations of the scope of services in your packet. The first one is what it looks like today. And so that includes, you know, includes boards and commissions. recording it includes the the voice text automated service and includes a couple of different shows, though, that were specific lpm doesn’t really think that they can do those services in 2021, without being able to hire some folks, since the maker space is a is a bit paused in the COVID pandemic. So they have told us that if we were able to give them $117,000 in one time funds to kind of span that pandemic timeframe, that they would be able to continue the current contract. The second option is a reduced level of service, the reduced level of service would essentially eliminate the count the city council meeting recap, recording of st brain Valley School Board meetings, which actually happens in any case, because the school board has decided to do those themselves. lpm created podcasts and paid marketing. So those are the pieces that we would take out of the original scope. And for that they still think that they would need to hire a contractor to be able to help bridge that span at $76,000 again in one time funds until they can get back up on their feet. option three is a further reduced level of service, I felt that it was important particularly in this year’s budget. Since it is a tight budget that you’re presented an option that is revenue neutral, the revenue for 2021 is predicted to be $145,000. For the cable for 25% of the cable franchise fees, it is a $10,000 reduction from the current contract because that is where things are unfortunately headed is the reduction of cable franchise fees. This further reduce level basically takes the city of city video services out from 20 hours to eight hours reduces the marketing plan reduces the metrics kind of just brings it down to sort of base level planning and zoning meetings, council meetings and public access work. This option would cost no additional funds but definitely brings the service levels down. option four is to bring public access video services in house. This is an option that council could choose for us to pursue. We’re not prepared to do that quite yet. But we could be if that’s the direction that council would like for us to move. And then option five bid public access Media Services competitively. If you’d like for us to take the services back out for a bit, we can certainly do that as well. The staff recommended option is option three, because reducing the scope in order to meet the revenue projections because it didn’t seem appropriate again for us in this budget time to bring you something that increases budgetary funds. l Pam’s preferred option is option two, well, that lpm doesn’t really recommend this option because they’re not completely sure that they can sign that contract for 2021. We do have a few more months to be able to negotiate and work through some different pieces and of course the final contract, whatever it is whichever direction council chooses would come back to Council for radical ratifies. So there are the different options. I would be happy to take any questions and also ask you for some general direction tonight. That Converse from my my public media is also unlimited.
1:29:52
All right, we can ask the question I’m actually moved that we actually endorsed option three the staff recommendation
1:30:02
All right, no second, Jasper Christiansen?
1:30:07
No, I don’t want to second that. I want to. I know that’s what I meant. But go ahead.
1:30:17
No, go ahead folly.
1:30:18
Did you want to say something?
1:30:22
Yeah, I would move that we so you didn’t get a second? Okay. All right, I would move that we endorse option two. And, and I’d be happy to explain why. But let’s see if I get a second.
1:30:39
I’ll second.
1:30:43
All right. No, it’s been moved and seconded motions on the floor for debate or questions just for Christiansen.
1:30:51
Okay, um, you know,
1:30:55
we had a lot of a lot of work was put into already sending this out for competitive bid. And then they got started. And they’ve done quite good work considering all they had running against them. I don’t want us to start all over again, we have very good we have some very good people there. We have some good facilities, but they have been hit with a heavy load, you know, all of their, their financial plan, which dependent upon the makerspace has been knocked out from under them. I would suggest that I know this is $76,000 is no small potatoes. But I would suggest that we could augment some of that from the council contingency plan for this one time, we have $65,000 in that we could augment it with 20 to $30,000. We could find other ways to get the additional 30,000. I just think we should have a little faith in them. And I really find the third thing of having no station manager, no employees only contractors, they’ve already been working as contractors for a year. That’s that’s not a good situation. It’s not fair. And I want them to be paid employees. That’s the right thing to do.
1:32:27
Anyone else? Just remind?
1:32:31
Yeah, I would I would be for a council member Christensen’s augmentation proposal, first of all.
1:32:40
Second, I
1:32:43
there was a plan under discussion for a while where the cable trust funding would be front loaded so that the long non public media could continue in its existing service level. And we could look at supplemental funding in the second half of the year, based on weather conditions have changed or not, and whether they are able to start reopening the maker space and producing their own revenue. That would maybe get us up to a surface level. Closer to number one, which is what I thought we were we know what was really the plan of record inside lpm that they had had plans for expanding their service level based on increased capability to add value to the community. Um, so first of all, what happened to that funding approach?
1:33:47
And
1:33:50
yeah, let’s start with that. What happened to that funding approach?
1:33:54
very badly. Council Member Martin, I think that what’s important to note is that funding doesn’t usually become more valuable available later in the year. I mean, you could certainly designate this as part of the budget and we could write the contract anyway, that you’re that you would like to see. We don’t receive all the franchise fees at once we receive them in chunks as well, which is why the current contract is written the way it is peg fees, particularly we don’t give them until we get it we give it to them as soon as we receive it, but we don’t have it before that we’re know what that what the peg fees are going to even be necessarily but we could structure the contract any way that the council would like.
1:34:29
Okay, um, I the other question that I had is, we you said put it out to bid again. I can’t imagine what kind of bids you would get for the current funding level, which I I’m assuming would be you pretty much a cap on what anyone could expect to be awarded. So I’m not even Can you explain what that option is in there for
1:34:59
mailbag accounts Remember Martin only because it was in previous direction of the Council. It’s always an option if you wanted to put it out and see what else was out there. But I would say we just did complete the last one, so it’s not recommended.
1:35:11
Okay, well, let’s let’s proceed. Let’s proceed. As far as I’m concerned with Councilmember Christensen’s proposal then.
1:35:18
Let’s go talk to Waterston. Councilmember Peck.
1:35:23
Thanks, Mayor Bagley, my personal preference would be to fund them with option one. And, and and hold their feet to the fire to deliver and I am confident they will. I think I think that’s I think that’s what we got to do the difference of $40,000? I don’t I can’t a third 370 $1 million budget? I don’t think is that big a deal. I heard GM last week, both identified both the stabilization reserve and
1:35:56
in the fact that we haven’t budgeted
1:36:00
all of our sale all of our property tax revenues. I know we’re going to get an update on on the effects of Gallagher rising or undie Gallagher rising if the bidding of the boat goes. But I there’s still a pot of money. I don’t think with I appreciate the thought about the contingency. I guess I don’t feel like we have to go there yet. I’d like to hear more from Jim. I think I think we got some one time money, that we don’t have to commit the contingency. And I think we have enough one time money to fund this at option number one. If we’re not going to consider option number one, I’m certainly going to support number two, I think of the of the of the five options we heard from Sandy. My preference would be to fund them an option one. This john
1:36:49
Thank you, Amir Bagley. Actually, this is a question for Sandy. I’m curious as to why staff recommended option three, what was it an option three that staff thought was worth worth supporting? Mayor Bagley, Councilmember Peck I think we were concerned about bringing any enhancements of services or anything that’s going to cost additional funding, particularly in this budget process. What was that a higher rating are only going with contractors. Part of that. I believe that would be the plan from Longmont public media is that they would only be able to hire contract work to be able to liaison it would would basically be a very bare bones type of operation at that point.
1:37:31
Okay, thank you.
1:37:35
Jennifer Martin. Um,
1:37:37
yeah, so Sandy, this question is for you, too, and it has two parts. One is you have a really high level of, of devotion and, and passion and commitment on it among the existing lpm employees. And so, there is a big opportunity cost for letting those people go. How do you value that as opposed to what you would spend this budget money on? If you weren’t spending it on paying those wages?
1:38:22
you’re begging the council member Martin, that’s a pretty tough one to discuss. Because then you’re talking about everything that everybody asked for the entire budget and how we value that in comparison to this, I will tell you that running a cable television station is not easy. And there’s a huge learning curve to it. And so certainly Longmont, public media and city staff have been learning together over the last several months on all kinds of things from not only equipment and how to do it and all these different pieces, but also programming and communication and conversations. And so to some extent, I would say that’s priceless. And you know, what I what I would mention is just that we wanted to make sure that we were presenting you options that also left the the revenues as they were intact with no changes. And so we wanted to give you the entire gamut of conversation. So I would say that we value it very much that they’re able to do the work that they’re able to do. And we certainly wouldn’t recommend, like I said, going out for bid again. That’s not our recommendation.
1:39:18
Yeah, um, it just seems like, you know, we we have not laid very many people off in this budget. And, and it’s as am I correct in saying that the only layoffs have been in the Recreation Center, where, you know, there is really no work to be done. And lpm I mean, I understand they’re not city employees. But in fact, there has been so much work for them to do in terms of crisis management, that they really are essential learning curve or not. So you know, As I, honestly when Councilmember Christensen mentioned, option two, I was thinking in the mode of, well, that’s the best we can do, or they wouldn’t have recommended below that level. But hearing Dr. Waters, advocating for option one, and remembering that we have a big contribution in the stabilization fund this year compared to prior contributions,
1:40:31
I am
1:40:33
inclined to offer a friendly amendment to Councilmember Christensen’s and, you know, going big. What do you think, Polly? Do you think you could you could spring for option one?
1:40:48
Well, I personally can’t spring for anything, but I just think
1:40:55
I’m, um,
1:40:58
you know, it’s just very difficult right now, you know, we’re gonna have to cut on a lot of things. And
1:41:07
I just think it’s,
1:41:10
it would be really hard to spring for $117,000 more, I think it’s gonna be hard to
1:41:20
go for 76,000 Moore’s, so
1:41:25
I don’t know. I would rather stay with two. That would, that seems to be more fiscally sound right now. Alright, so
1:41:33
let’s hear from Mayor Pro Tem. And then let’s have a vote. If it passes, great. If not, we’ll go on to another option. Mayor Pro Tem.
1:41:42
Thank you, Mayor Bagley, I believe a couple of the ideas that I heard spoken about so far that I think are important one is flexibility. I believe I heard assistant city manager cedar say that there’s some flexibility still, and we don’t have to necessarily lock in tonight. I think that’s important. One of the other important things I think we should talk about is open coverage of governmental affairs. And we know that their city has no ability to help increase coverage through the newspapers and through the long run leader, for instance. But we do have the ability to be as open and transparent as we can, by having a robust public media, whether it be a different contractor, this contractor, and making sure that that that option is available to the public, I think is very important on our behalf. I also think that kneecapping basically the Longmont public media organization, in a completely unprecedented year budget wise, after just receiving the the contract, because I think that their level of service is above and beyond what we had before in the city, as far as all the various boards and commissions that they’re going as well as the other things that they’re providing service for. And so a big x, I actually agree with Councilmember waters in that 117 to me is not a big ask, compared to 76. I don’t think that that’s a big amount of room to cover. When we’re talking about the budget that we have, as well as the services that are actually being provided the public. These are one of very obvious reasons, or one of the various obvious services that is provided to the public that they can see and find to be tangible, and see what they’re getting for their money. So I am open to option two, I prefer option one personally, but I’ll vote either way, knowing that we have the flexibility moving forward that say we go with option two this time and find out that there is some wiggle room to get us up to 117 then I would also support amending it at that time as well. But I think this is a vital vital service that I don’t think we should be looking at cutting as far as transparency between city of Longmont and the residence of law. So that’s just kind of where I sit on this.
1:44:13
Alright, so there’s a motion on the floor for option two. And it sounds like you might have a few folks make
1:44:20
America jump in.
1:44:21
Sure.
1:44:22
So I just maybe to answer a few questions and get some more information. Councilmember waters didn’t ask about the stabilization reserve. We did talk about that a week or two ago. That certainly that could be utilized for whatever means just realizing that that’s one time dollars we will have we will be getting I did actually get ours of just a few hours ago assessed valuation information from the county so we do have that earlier than we expected. I’m not going to say for sure how much that is until Teresa and I agree that we’re assessing it correctly, but it’s in that neighborhood of the cost of neighbor of an option one. So if if I’m calculating it correctly, so there are options, just keep in mind that that’s one time money and that this, this contract is typically covered by ongoing revenue. And so I think that the logic is, though, that the expectation would be in hopefully, in 2022, that operations would pick back up, hopefully out of it coming out of the COVID situation. And that that wouldn’t need to rely on that level revenue again, year after year, because we, we don’t like to commit one time money on an ongoing basis.
1:45:52
All right, Marsha, you’ve had more than two comments on this motion. So I’d like to just vote on it. So as we’ve got, okay, we’ve had so let’s go ahead and vote option two’s on. Dr. Dr. Waters. I don’t think you’ve had to.
1:46:10
You’re right. I have not had to. So thank you for acknowledging me for a second comment. And I will say this. I think if we want. First of all, I appreciate Mir for Tim’s comments and the other comments that have been made about the value that that lpm has brought to the city I think far beyond what we’d experienced in the past. I think if we want to position them, acknowledging This is one time, Lennie. As Jim said, we want to position them to be able to be viable in 2022. That I think we need to make the investment this year that optimizes that process that possibility, I think if we put them on a shoestring, which I think that option two does, it keeps them kind of status quo. I, I just think if we’re gonna take if we’re gonna invest one time to try to get them ready to be viable over the long run, then we are committed to option one, as the $40,000 is not going to be a difference in 2020 budget, and in giving the chance to hit the ground and and finish the race. So
1:47:24
you spoken twice, Joanie. All right, go ahead and call on john.
1:47:30
So thank you very badly. So here’s my thought. There are other things in this budget, also, that I am I want to bring up about perhaps we should look at as a priority and fund. So is there any way when does this contract have to be signed Sandy? airbag, the council member pack, they’re under contract currently until the end of December. So this contract, you know, we wouldn’t have to bring back to you until we got closer to the end of the year. So I was wondering if we could put this off and till we bring out all of the issues that we would like to fund and Jim can actually give us some, some hard numbers and and how, you know, one time funding I agree with, but there are other things that I think we should look at funding a little better as well. And so I don’t want to make a motion where we take all of that pile of money and put it in one place. So I’m gonna vote a, I would vote for two but I really would like a little more time on this contract. If, if others feel that all of these discussions are important, and they’re valid. But I don’t want to make a decision on a half an hour discussion on this. When we have a whole budget that we have to figure out so that’s my God.
1:48:56
All right. I’m just gonna say I’m gonna probably go No, so we can go for number one, but if two passes, that’s okay, too. It’s not gonna world. Alright, so we’ve got a motion on the table and delegating staff to proceed with option two. All in favor say aye.
1:49:11
Aye.
1:49:12
Aye. All right. All that’s an eye calciomercato firing. All right. All opposed say nay nay. A.
1:49:22
Is that a nay Marsha?
1:49:26
Are you Aye or nay Marsha?
1:49:28
I was an eye because I thought it was good to put a stake in the ground for at least that much. I wanted to go with Mayor pro tems plan.
1:49:37
But right so with the motion passes, four to three with Councillor Martin and Councillor Christiansen, Councillor Peck and Councillor doggo fairing voted for the motion. So, all right, let’s move on to actually Jim. Is there anything else?
1:49:51
Yes, there are just a few more budget presentations. I’ll be handling them if we get the last PowerPoint please. We’ll begin with the topic of the special marijuana tax. Next slide, please. And the next slide, so the tax was passed in late 2018 began to receive revenue. About a month after that. The first full year was 2019, we had $265,000 of tax revenue. In 2020, our budget for tax revenue is $274,000. We did have $137,000, from 2019 tax revenue that went for affordable housing. And here in 2020, we budgeted 137,000, again, half of the budgeted tax revenue for 2020 for affordable housing, and then $87,000, a council designated for HSA funding and $50,000 for early childhood education. So next slide, please. So in 2021, we’re projecting the tax revenue to come in at about 410,000, which is similar to the pace that we’re on this year. So there will be money in excess of budget for in 2020. The 2021 proposed budget so far only includes two half of the amount 205,000, again, designated for affordable housing. So as another 205, that could be directed by the City Council, the in 2019. Since the council never designated any use of the second 50%, we do have left over from that hundred and $32,000 and change that the city council can direct for one time usage. So as we just finished discussing different sources of one time money, this is also one that’s available when you are giving us direction. And by the way, we will be looking for direction from you final direction on the budget on the night of the 13th. So this cannot all wait until then, unless you wanted to talk about it sooner. Next slide. That’s all I had on the marijuana tax unless there’s questions on that.
1:52:21
Let’s see anybody. So let’s continue.
1:52:23
Next slide. Now, the DDA budget. So I’ve given you quite a bit of information within your packet on the downtown Development Authority budgets, the DDA act budgets actually have six individual funds within the DDA. And then in addition to that, they also do propose budgets to you for the downtown parking fund in the general Improvement District. So I’ve given you all a lot of information on those budgets within the council communication, I’m not going to take you through them. The one thing I am going to talk about their biggest source of dollars is tax increment financing. We have that budgeted so far for 2021 at about 1,075,000, which is actually the the level that we’re expecting to receive in 2020. So we’ve just transferred that forward until we get word from the county about that amount. But anyhow, what I wanted to point out to you is some of the uses for those monies that are budgeted in 2021. budget. You already did hear during the CRP presentation about the downtown Plaza rehab 400,000. In addition to that, we’re using TIF dollars for marketing collaboration of $30,000 redevelopment of 25,000, employment incentives for 100,000 economic vitality for 10,000. In art and entertainment funding programs, we do this annually. It’s 289,000. For 2021 Kimberly McKee is on the line, she can answer questions about any of these proposed usages. We also do use the monies from the TIF for project management on our capital projects. And as as well as we do have a mount of dollars that goes to infrastructure replacement downtown every year.
1:54:26
Any questions on the DDA budget or the god budget?
1:54:31
Looks like we haven’t. Keep going.
1:54:34
All right, we can move into the final item. And that’s the Gallagher amendment. So first, I want to point out that you know, the city’s what we do with the property tax detail what we do we it’s basically administered by the county what we receive money from that from the county every month, based on their collections, but the actual ministration property tax is done by the county assessor’s office and collections and forwarding to us by the county treasurer’s office and they all fall have to follow the state statutes in those regards. So, you know, we’re not the experts on property tax. But having said that, I put together information that I have gathered from a few sources, mostly from CML. The actually the best source that I have found of information on this topic is in the election blue book, it does have quite a bit of detail, it’s useful, so but I will take you through, and I’m going to keep it to factual information since this isn’t a ballot question. The first slide please. So the property tax is paid on a property’s. Sorry, I’m just fixed my slides here. Properties actual value assessor determines the actual value of a property. The actual value is then multiplied by the assessment rate to get the assessor taxable value, but the assessed value is multiplied them by the tax rate, which is our mill levy at any entities mill Levy, to get to the amount of the tax owed. Next slide, please. So the Gallagher amendment passed in 1982. And the intention of it was to maintain a ratio between the taxable value of property as 45% residential and 55%. Non residential, that’s the ratio it was back in 82. And intended to keep that in place and it’s statewide, not on a, say a city or county level, but the whole state. So the resident residential property values since then has grown much faster than non residential has non residential ratios fixed at 29%. Well, because of the growth in residential property values, the residential ratio has reduced from 21% back in 1982, to what is currently now 7.15%. The residential rate would have increased six times since 1999, underneath the Gallagher amendment, but for the fact that Tabor, since it was passed prohibits that type of an increase to occur without a vote. So this is where Gallagher and Tabor come into conflict with each other. Next slide, please. So amendment, Mehmet B would repeal the Gallagher amendment. General Assembly also adopted a statute that if this does pass, the they would freeze the current assessment rates at 7.15%, residential and 29% non residential. And that is something that could be changed by future legislators, but they can only reduce either of those rates. Because again, because of Tabor, they’re not able to increase those rates without voter approval. Next slide please. So, the residential values continue to grow. Non residential values are expected to drop in the coming here in the next assessment year, and due to the impact of covid on business, so business values are expected to drop. So between the residential value values growing and the non residential dropping, the state property tax administrator is projecting that resident under under the Gallagher amendment as currently in place, the residential ratio would drop from 7.15% to 5.88%. In 2021, that’s an estimate. estimates have different from actual in the more recent, more recent assessment years. So applying that projected decrease to the current 2019 assessed values, which is what our 2020 revenue is coming off of the staff calculates that that there would be a reduction of property tax revenue of $2.1 million for the city. And that’s just the impact of the reduction in the residential ratio. If there’s growth from new construction or knew about growth and values, that would
1:59:35
would offset some of that loss, how much who would know? I took the same methodology and applied that to the property values for that the county and the school district. And their impacts would be 20 point 2 million for the county and 19 point 4 million for the school district with the school district is a little different, though the impacts could differ because their impacts could be offset by the state. So I think that that might be my last slide. Yes. So try to answer any questions if you have any otherwise, it’s all I had on the on the Gallagher memo.
2:00:20
Jasper Christiansen.
2:00:23
Jim, the the state legislators put this on the ballot because they’ve been squabbling about this for 10 years, and they couldn’t figure out a way to fix it. So they’re kind of throwing it off on us. But why couldn’t they just adjust make them a different adjustment to the proportions? Is that set in the law? The
2:00:43
that Gallagher amendment is in the constitution? So what they’re doing they’re doing is is they’re following the Gallagher amendment? Every assessment year their hands are tied in that respect.
2:00:54
So there’s no flexibility in adjusting those ratios.
2:00:59
Not as long as Gallagher is in place,
2:01:02
as I understand. Yeah. What a mess. Okay. Thank you.
2:01:08
Thanks, jumpers. You bet.
2:01:10
Thank you.
2:01:13
I do not have another thing I just wanted to point out. So this is the last of our planned presentations in relation to the proposed budget. If there’s something that the council thinks is missing, that they’re we’re looking forward to hearing about, let us know, we can bring it back next week. If, if that’ll work on the agenda. Our intention, though, is to turn to you on the 13th asking you for final direction on the 2021 budget.
2:01:47
All right, john.
2:01:50
Thank you,
2:01:51
Ryan.
2:01:53
Jim, I will actually I want to throw this out to all of council. I don’t want to make a motion tonight. But we all know that the library needs to be funded. It’s in the feasibility study. It is been talked about here for years. It is underfunded. And I would like for us as we talk about the one time funding that we have both in marijuana and the other places that you told us, Jim, when we do the budget, I’ve always heard that we have carryover from past years that we’re carrying over into this budget. So here’s an idea that I would like us to think about in funding the library more is some of our big funds like public safety fun, like the fleet fund, like the water fund. They always have carryover from the past years that they haven’t used, or they didn’t get time for their projects that they wanted. So they have that carry over funding, which gets put back into their budget. Jim, I was wondering if there is a way from perhaps cutting those budgets, I know, they’re, the directors aren’t going to like this idea. By a half a percent, or some of the one time funding either from marijuana, or the other places, if we could put more money into the library. We’ve really got to keep that library viable. And up. I know that we probably can’t fund it to the extent that the feasibility study said it needs to be funded. But But could you come back to us with some cobbled monies that we could put into it, whether it’s one time whether it’s ongoing and let us know if that’s a possibility. And that’s why I didn’t want to vote for number one that Calvin water suggested, because I do feel that this is an area that we really need to pay attention to. And before we get into that feasibility study, let’s see what the city can do. So there you go. I just want council to think about that. And hopefully, Jim, you can bring back some ideas for us.
2:04:17
Well, I will bring back when I can, but I do. I will state right away that the only place I would be looking is in the general fund. You mentioned a lot of different funds. And all of those monies are in separate funds because they are intended for a specific use. A lot of them legally are restricted in for use, so they couldn’t be used for the library. Second, secondly, the monies that we would be talking about would be one time money so they could not be used for ongoing expenses for the library if we’re going to keep with our financial policies. But again, it’ll probably come back to what we talked about. During the last discussion here, regarding the public media that we have certain amounts of dollars, that we were moving towards stability reserves, if you want to instead choose to use those for one time purposes for the library, that options available to the council and we’ll bring that information back to you.
2:05:18
Okay, thank you.
2:05:21
All right, let’s go ahead and take a three minute break, and then go on to our last item that evening. All right, back in three
2:11:24
Just waiting on Aaron.
2:13:00
Aaron, can you hear us?
2:13:40
All right, let’s go ahead and move on to the last
2:13:45
item, the rental fee moratorium or the wait two more doors.
2:13:52
Good evening mayor and city council. My name is Karen Roni with community services. So I will introduce this item which council asked us as staff to bring back recently, and I believe in August of this year the city and county of Broomfield did dopt an ordinance which enacted a temporary prohibition of property owners to assess late fees when there was late rental payments. Basically due to to code related hardship, so so we we are bringing forward to city council tonight. an ordinance that is very similar to what the city and county of Broomfield Did, did an act, which basically, in essence temporarily prohibits property owners from assessing fees for late rental payments. It does include some suggested documentation for for how to how to establish a heart Yep, if you are a renter, we it suggests that the prohibition ends with, with either the expiration of the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium order, which is set to expire the end of this year or unless that is extended. Or when the Governor resends, the declaration of the emergency disaster related to COVID-19. We also suggest the penalty under this for violation of this section of the ordinance would be I find only and we suggest that $500 certainly are open to what kind of input that city council would have. So, in essence, this, the ordinance before you is very similar to the city and county of build. Our city attorney GMA was in contact with the city attorney with the City County and responsible for drafting the ordinance if if you have specific questions, I’m sure Eugene would be, would love to answer those. So I think the only a couple things that we want to add, then obviously, we’ll open it up to direction from City Council is that we really did not. Because there was an interest in moving bringing this back fairly quickly. We did not, you know, spend a lot of time doing additional analysis really looking at what the impact is for for Longmont renters, or to really look at what some of the unintended consequences could be by passing this particular ordinance. So, so this, this communication does not include any of that particular analysis. And so we just wanted to point that out. The other thing we wanted to point out is that Governor polis did appoint a taskforce that has that basically started to meet mid part of September, to also advise the governor as well as the Department of local affairs on various strategies to really look at housing stabilization. So they are to bring back their recommendations to the governor and to Dola. By mid October, there was a 30 day rundown once they had their initial meeting. And they also might be discussing statewide, a variety of strategies, which could in you know, which could include a temporary prohibition on late fees assessed for late rental payments. So so there is a there’s, there’s a, you know, so we could continue to have or we could have a piecemeal legislation which we talked about, or there could be certainly a statewide recommendation for how to address housing stabilization. And, and read fees, prohibition of late fees could be part of a statewide effort to so we just wanted to point that out. And, at this point, really turn it over to city council to provide staff direction on whether to bring back an ordinance for first reading, or an any modifications, or anything else that you would like to direct us to do.
2:18:35
But customer
2:18:37
Thank you me badly. Karen,
2:18:40
thank you for explaining that task force. When I read it, I realized that late fees were not really the target of what they were getting at. But if they do, address that and come up with some ideas, I would like to add that the temporary and see how do I put it, that this temporary thing would also include whatever that taskforce comes up with late fees, because that may determine a different end date for this and a better one a better outcome. So I think we should put that in this ordinance as one of the at the very end as the one of the options of, of when, how long we extend this based upon the results of that taskforce, if they do in fact, address late fees. I don’t know what kind of wording to use. I think that’s probably Eugene’s area. But the other thing that I wanted to bring up because we’ve we’ve had emails, not as many as I thought we would get actually in phone calls. And you address that saying you hadn’t really done any outreach for this. Susan Spalding. is the one who actually has those monthly meetings that Suzy Hidalgo and I went to? Is there. Do you know when that next meeting is because I think that would be a great place to get feedback and address this. And
2:20:17
that is a great question. And I do not know. But I see my colleague, Carmen Ramirez is still here in the snow still with us. So I don’t know, Carmen, if you know where the next landlord tenant meeting is. So usually
2:20:35
their council Good evening, sorry, Carmen Bermudez, community and neighborhood resources. They’re held the second Wednesday of each month. With the issue of zoom, we’ve had a little bit of issues on presentations. But we could definitely do one or two things convened a meeting, as we typically on a monthly basis, and or send out some questions because we have quite a large contact list to landlords,
2:21:02
as that would be great. I think that would be a good way to get some feedback from the property owners. My other question is, and this is what, Karen, you probably know, when I talk to Susan Spaulding later in earlier in the spring, she mentioned that she did a renter landlord, one on ones to work out some kind of a situation in the end that the city could use that neighbor to neighbor fund to help with the landlords getting some support from the rent if the renter could not working out a compromise between them. And the reason I’m saying this is that I don’t want the property owners or the landlords to think that the city is not concerned about them losing revenue that they need to pay the mortgages on these places. So I think that message needs to go out. And I would not be adverse to using some of the council contingency fund to help landlords be in and well, landlords, property owners make up some of the rent that they might be losing during this time. And I see Harold has an answer for me.
2:22:24
So if you remember when we were talking about the cares funding during last council meeting, I’m going to go over everything that we’re actually bringing to bear for individual housing assistance. So in the cares component, we’re putting 400,000 for utility assistance, we have and we have 126,000 for housing services support. So that’s 526,000 in that out of that bucket for the individual support. And then when you move over into the CDBG, cb funding, we talked to counsel about putting 657,000, a little over 657,000 for individual housing assistance. So in the arena of all of the expenses that individuals have related to housing, whether it’s utilities or the housing perspective, we have over a million dollars that we’re putting in via the CD funding and the cares funding.
2:23:27
Thank you, Harold, I didn’t realize that that applied to property owners as well, for their
2:23:35
Well,
2:23:36
it won’t,
2:23:37
that that is so if somebody is having trouble making their rent, we want to work with them so that we can use those funds so they can pay their rent to the property owners.
2:23:48
Okay, so you don’t work with the property owners directly?
2:23:52
No, but in that world, we’re where Susan is working on that issue between the property owner and the renter, that’s where we have the ability to bring those funds to bear so that we can provide assistance. Now, again, there has to be COVID connection in this. So if it’s lost their job, they were furloughed, I mean, those COVID connections are there to provide that assistance. Similar to the way this is written. I believe this is written as the COVID connection has to be
2:24:20
there. Okay, so Carmen, when when you do reach out to these people, then perhaps that could be explained a little better, that it wouldn’t go to the property owner but it would help rental assistance to make up part of that. If I can add I think they understand that is my is my point. Okay.
2:24:41
And I think if I can add to that, what I would say is, if it may go to the property owner, but the conduit is the individual coming to us because we can’t, we have to ensure that those funds are being utilized for their intended purpose, similar to how we talked about The early childhood education, they would come to us, we would then go, you need x, we would then pay property owner x, so that we would have the necessary documentation. So we don’t have clawbacks,
2:25:13
I think that’s a great idea. And it would be the reason I think the property owner should know about this, as well as their injuries that they could tell the renter where to go for help. So a lot of different communication, thank you.
2:25:30
So Council, woman Peck, if I could just add, we repeat that message around our mediation service and connecting people to resources, so their tenants, so we do that very often, whether that’s via email or education. Do that on a regular basis, letting them know that we’re here to connect tenants to resources, so they can pay their rent, as well as serve as a communication and mediation between the landlord and the tenant? So we were doing that on a regular basis also.
2:26:00
Okay, thank you.
2:26:04
It was Kazmir Christiansen then Councillor Martin.
2:26:09
Thank you, Carmen. And Karen, I have been in Herald, I just think it’s, it’s very important that property owners understand that this is not punitive towards him just trying to keep people in their homes. And that, the idea is that if everybody can work together a little bit, and they can use the city to work together to get this help that they need, so that everybody winds up doing a little bit better. Yeah, I think a lot of, well, the landlords that I spoke with, didn’t, they seem to think it was up to the tenants to do this, they seem to think the tenants had all the rights and blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I just want tenants and landlords to feel like they can work together and have a happier situation.
2:27:04
Marsha,
2:27:07
thank you, mira Begley. Um, I, I just would like to say that I think the more holistic approach and you know, offering assistance to tenants, so that they can meet their obligations to their let their contractual obligations to the landlords is a better approach than reducing their obligation under contract. And the reason for that is that the latter can have an unintended consequences. So if a landlord is already stressed, because remember, landlords have obligations, not just what was mentioned, you know, property taxes and insurance, or even a mortgage, they also have the obligation to maintain the property to spend money to keep at least up met with with, you know, new tenants, so get people in housing when they when they when there are vacancies, put a new roof on the place. So there are and and not just late fees, but various fees, security deposits, and all kinds of stuff typically go into a budget that is that the that the landlord earmarks for that. So you know, we want to keep the places that people are living decent. So I’m bailing out stressed tenants, rather than reducing their obligation to their landlord is just, excuse me a better way of keeping money flowing and budget satisfied. And I think it’s, it’s also necessary to, you know, sort of have a unified solution. For the same reason, you know, so that we don’t find people moving from municipality to municipality, based on where they can get the best deal.
2:29:10
I was just gonna go ahead. You first
2:29:15
know mathematically, please go ahead.
2:29:16
No, I was just gonna say that. I don’t think that the council has the expertise or the the or nor should we have the authority to be telling private property owners how they should charge their late fees. We’ve got a they’ve all got contracts. And and I don’t know why the renter’s would be seen as needing help when maybe the landlords need help. They’ve got mortgages, they’re not all big rich people. Some of them are struggling to make their mortgage payments. And it’s not just that you could say, Oh, well, it’s only $15 or $25, or whatever the late fee is, but those late fees, encourage people to pay their rent on time. And so people don’t pay their rent on time mortgages aren’t made on time. And when mortgages aren’t made on time, then you’ve got defaults. And so while it sounds really good to be able to say, hey, let’s go ahead and help people by saying you don’t have to pay this, we have no idea how this is going to impact people. And I just I just think it’s a huge mistake. And I think it’s overstepping our authority.
2:30:27
I want to city count the Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you very badly.
2:30:32
I understand the the point of what Broomfield did with this one. I feel like for us, due to the lack of data release, that we’re going from not an A to B in a status quo to B solution issue here. I think we’re going from a status quo to D, a solution but we haven’t taken the time to connect the steps yet. We don’t have the data as far as you know, I personally as a renter, myself, even there are those folks who have no problem making their rent. There’s those folks who have made accommodations with their landlord so far. And so then we’re talking about probably a subsection there that is unable to make the accommodation with their landlord, as well as they’re unable to just normally meet their rent requirements. So I want a before we went to straight up banning late fees, I would want to see somewhat what the numbers are. Because I’d also rather before we went straight to what I would call the jackhammer approach. With a straight band, I’d like to see us provide support for those folks that are possibly incurring late fees that they can’t afford, or, as was, I think, proposed in the council communication, that we might look at a cap on late fees, before we look at an absolute ban. I just feel that there’s some steps in between where we are at now and what’s being proposed in this ordinance before we get to the straight ban. So I’m a little mixed on it until we explore some other options that I feel that because of the haste of this suggestion we haven’t explored yet. So I’d like to I definitely would like to hear some other comments from council
2:32:24
like waters.
2:32:26
Thanks for sharing Bagley.
2:32:28
I appreciate the
2:32:30
mere pertemps comments about getting a little bit more information, I think that would be helpful as well, in that information. Karen, you, you were specific to point out that there’s been really no analysis of unintended consequences. And I can I’m sitting here imagining what the unintended consequences might be. Right? If the city says I can’t collect late fees, what I’m going to do is I’m going to double up on my security deposit, right? Or, I’m going to I’m going to do things that protect my interest in the long run hurt the very people we’re trying to help. So I’m sympathetic to what the to the ordinance and to what Brookfield did. Um, but I but I would like to get a little bit more data, both in terms of income, the kind of data Aaron was talking about, but also what your take is on unintended consequences. And maybe that that Susan has a pretty good idea of that as well. Um, the other thing is, if if the taskforce that you mentioned, the governor has convened, comes forth with a plan that includes late fees that’s likely to occur before we would get this through a second reading anyway, isn’t it?
2:33:46
We’re not it. At this point in time council member waters, the I believe that first taskforce meeting was around September. So in answers, yes. Is the answer. The quick answer to your question, if everything goes according to plan, that, you know, by mid October, there would be a set of recommendations presented to the governor and Dola. Yes.
2:34:12
Would you assume or should we assume, then if they were to include late fees in whatever those whatever that order is? And I assume it would be an executive order? that that that would that would Trump or preempt anything we might be doing with an ordinance?
2:34:32
You know, that’s a good question council waters, and I really don’t have the, you know, have the answer to that. But, but certainly, we would certainly know by mid October what that set of recommendations is.
2:34:46
And, and that certainly would inform what actions
2:34:49
Okay, basically, to give you specific dates, if we first reading would be on the 13th because the six is a study session. And then second reading would be on the 27th.
2:35:10
Up Caspar Christiansen
2:35:15
so if the governor doesn’t do anything, then we are starting from scratch. And in mid October
2:35:25
I’d like to read something that
2:35:30
Sharon Tessier, who’s a councilman at Broomfield wrote. Councilmember law, Evans and myself representing both sides of the political spectrum work together to ensure that equity was in place for both tenants and landlords. We consulted with a lot of landlords and tenants like this ordinance honored and respected the landlords who were already working with their tenants, they are leading by example. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of landlords and leasing agencies who are making profits off of someone else’s demise during COVID. And beyond late fees were not put in place to make a profit or to be punitive. But to be a fractional incentive for collection of rent, some landlords are charging fees in excess of 200. The first day the tenant is late and $20 per day thereafter, some tenants have paid their rent but owe more and late fees are facing eviction due to being unable to pay their late fees. Please vote to support this ordinance and stay in touch with your family resource centers and housing authorities to ensure that they have what they need to enact this ordinance successfully. This ordinance does not ban outright late fees advance any late fees that have to do with COVID hardships, and you have to prove that you have either been laid off or that you have had COVID and that’s where I’m able to work. It’s really a very modest little ordinance and it will prevent a lot of people from becoming evicted by the end of October. If we do nothing, then it’ll be by the end of November. And then, you know, we’re just talking about keeping people off the streets, keeping people in their homes, so that we they have a chance to get back on their feet. That’s what this ordinance is about.
2:37:18
And I say that if we should do that, but not on the backs of the landlords. I mean, why don’t we I mean, it’s not fair to put it all on them. Dr. Waters?
2:37:29
Yeah, I just I wasn’t suggesting that we not proceed. Bali, I was suggesting that. As we move forward, we’ll have more information from whatever the governor does. Before we would before this would be before us for a second reading. And in the meantime, we could we could benefit from the analysis of unintended consequences that Karen and or you know others on her crew could do inform this. So I favor moving forward actually, with something I would just observing that, that we’re gonna learn a lot more before we get to a second reading at the end of October on this. So
2:38:05
all right, Councilmember, council memory jogger fairy than council perfect.
2:38:10
So a couple of things. So one of the things and yes, I agree with Councilmember waters, in you know, we will be collecting data and we will be looking at these pieces as we move forward. The other piece is so when we have a landlord, who is struggling to pay off their to pay their mortgage and make their mortgage payment, because of a tenant who’s fallen behind? Would they be able to apply for any of the would the cares funding piece be able to apply for them? I
2:38:49
think what we would want is is the landlord to connect the tenant with us, okay, so that they could get the cares funding that we have available. So they we would then in turn pay the landlord.
2:39:05
So can there be something a piece a component to this either in this ordinance or as something gets pushed out in communications, that is tied to this ordinance that kind of stipulates steps in the procedure. So if we Okay, so you hit this point, before charging a late fee or going that route? You know, contact Susan Spaulding or contact, you know, what are what are people’s landlords and tenant options and have that in language as well where it’s tied to this ordinance. So it’s seen as a group, so they’re not looking in two different places. I think oftentimes when people are strapped or they’re in crisis mode, being able to seek out resources in but in different places. So if there’s a way that we could have all this together streamlined I think when we’re dealing with people in crisis or financial crisis, to have something streamlined would be
2:40:07
my opinion would be helpful. But
2:40:10
is that doable?
2:40:16
So you don’t have to talk about the construction of the ordinance and how we could do that. But what I could say is, I think in terms of streamlining the connection points, we can do that, because we already have segments on our website. So there are multiple ways for people to get assistance on housing, the county has housing dollars, we have housing dollars. And so I think, can we streamline to go, here’s where you go? The answer to that question is yes. How that comes into the construction of the ordinance, we’ll have to talk with Jean, and look at it because it may be something as before, you can, before this occurs, the tenant has to have gone through a, b and c. I think that’s what I hear you saying, if that’s the direction of council, we can certainly look at it before we bring that back to Council for first reading, if that’s your direction,
2:41:12
you know, and in May, if I can add, and we included that in the the council communication. So some of the initial recommendations from the task force is exactly what Councilmember adobo fairing is talking about. So you know, so making sure that that when renters are behind that there is a you know, that landlords do connect the the renders with the assistance that is available that there so they really are outlining some other options in terms of communications, what other sources that, you know, that landlords can apply for? So I think that’s part of their outline of the recommendations. And, you know, I think what Susan Spalding would say is that, that property owners and and renters in Longmont are doing a great job of working together are our mediators on our city team as well as the city of Boulder team, they are really spreading out throughout the entire county to help resolve situations for both the property that benefit really the property owners and and the tenders we want to keep people housed. And and I think I just need to mention that they are really doing a great job. And both our property owners and our renters are working together with our mediation teams to try to weather this storm and keep people housed and link folks to resources. I don’t know how again, that gets constructed or gets but but Eugene can help us with that, I guess.
2:42:49
But I think
2:42:51
it’s really important to know too, that as you go through the process, and it comes to surface that the reason why the tenant is behind has nothing to do with COVID they will be charged a late fee. So you know you have these bad players on both sides. I mean, I rent a home. I love the the homeowner who we work really well together and you know, my husband’s a plumber. So it’s, we have a good open relationship between landlord tenant. So and I know I hear that happen often. But I also hear that that’s not happening and what we can do to really ensure that people are not because of COVID getting kicked out to the streets. So
2:43:35
customer back.
2:43:37
So thank you very badly. Um, so Susie, our Councilwoman Hidalgo ferric, you you put in a better conversation, basically what I was saying, even though we have that communication out there, we do have bad players on both sides. And if both players know what to do, then perhaps it wouldn’t become such a, an anxiety point for both if, if the if the property owner can direct the tenant, if they know about this funding, and that that’s what I was getting at. Make sure that the property owners the management companies know that before they go to the Insert degree of late fees or whatever, to direct that resident to Susan Spaulding or whatever website we need to go. I’m just I was just talking about the communication. Because from the emails and the phone calls that we’ve got, those property owners don’t know about that. They’re they’re very concerned that they’re going I don’t want them to lose money. And if their tenant can pay the mortgage through the city, they need to know that so they can direct their tenant. That’s all I was getting at and Mir badly I would agree with you on some of your points if in fact fact, that late fee was the same everywhere but to charge a late fee and an interest on top of a late fee. Just puts everybody behind and thinking of the city. I don’t want these people on the streets, because we haven’t figured out how to work together.
2:45:20
And I guess what I’m saying is there’s people, people have entered into contracts, landlords, with banks, tenants, with landlords, and putting it on the landlord to say, Well, now you’re responsible to make sure that people don’t don’t go to the streets. I don’t know I live I live in prospect. It’s a very left leaning neighborhood. And they’re all million dollar homes. Why don’t we? Why don’t we take a collection down here and start helping people pay their rent, but putting it on the landlord who we have no idea. I mean, Councilmember Donald fairing. She just said she rents a home. I think Marsha Martin rents a couple homes. Those are the ones I’m thinking about what happens if you have an apartment building with 400 units? I mean, who’s going to police? I mean, it sounds good to say what has to be Coronavirus induced, but who’s the police to determine whether or not it was coronavirus induced their city pattern is there. I mean, what we’re talking about is it’s not going to work. And even Karen Roni said they had not taken the opportunity to think through the unintended consequences. So it sounds like a really generous idea. But again, we’re doing it, let’s stick it on the landlords, they they own property, the rich, they can do it. That’s fine.
2:46:41
Thank you. Mayor
2:46:42
Begley. I just wanted to clarify a couple of details about the administration of these care funds that maybe is buried in there somewhere I didn’t catch it. But first of all, if a tenant applies for cares funding, the funding that they’re granted is paid directly to the landlord, right. So there’s no opportunity for the funk for the grant to grow astray. The rental assistance to go astray.
2:47:13
That’s the way I would that’s the way I want to construct it. So you can have the accountability, you need to get the money coming back. Correct?
2:47:21
Yeah. And so and so then the other question is, is what is reimbursable? Through these through this funding? Is it rents only? Or is it tenant debt to the landlord?
2:47:39
In other words,
2:47:41
can will the cares? Will the cares money pay for pay for the late fee?
2:47:49
You know, that’s a good question. I’ll have to
2:47:52
I’ll have to work with Peter on that one. Because
2:47:58
if you remember, when we talked about it, you can’t I mean, they’re so the city, we can’t use it as a rent as a revenue replacement. And, and so that’s why we’re gonna have to track down with Dola. Because it could be it very well could be that we can only use it for rent, we couldn’t use it for late fees. And but we’ll need that question.
2:48:21
And, and it? I mean, the answer to that question also informs what we would do about an ordinance like this, you know, if we know that the landlord is going to get at least the base rent, then forgiving a late fee is a little different than if the landlord could go on forever and get nothing from any tenant.
2:48:47
And the other thing that
2:48:50
I wanted to ask was about unintended consequences. There already are some in that landlords are already increasing security deposits for new tenants. You know, so, which is another good way to keep people from getting into housing, if you now have to have two month’s rent and the security posit that’s really nearly unattainable. So it would really the it’s a better solution to make sure that landlords feel secure
2:49:26
than it is to make them less secure.
2:49:30
That’s something to consider.
2:49:34
Alright, so what do you need from us, Karen?
2:49:39
Well, we could use some direction.
2:49:43
I’m whether you want us to bring forward this ordinance for first reading, like it is. modify it. Don’t do it at all or something else. So it’s, we could use some direction.
2:50:00
Mark Christiansen
2:50:05
tell us where christison Please turn your microphone.
2:50:09
Sorry, I move that we move forward with it.
2:50:16
All right. I have a second.
2:50:20
I just wrote back one
2:50:23
second to make a normal euro motion.
2:50:27
Well, I just wanted an amendment to the motion that we put in the task force part that if if the task force comes up with a solution on late fees or recommendation on let’s see late fees, that we take that into account for this ordinance as well. If
2:50:53
I would accept that amendment.
2:50:55
would we? Did you say Karen, or Harold that you thought this would come back on a second reading after the taskforce has made the recommendations?
2:51:06
If the taskforce stays on schedule, then the second reading will fall after the taskforce recommendations come out?
2:51:16
So I think we should say we would follow the taskforce recommendations on late fees.
2:51:22
Whatever that is,
2:51:24
all right. There’s a there’s a motion on the table. I don’t see any more discussion or debate. So let’s go ahead and vote on it all in favor of the motion say aye.
2:51:33
Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay nay. Nay.
2:51:40
All right, raise your hand if you said aye.
2:51:44
Alright, so the motion carries four to three. So we’ll proceed with that. And that was with Councillor Christiansen. Councilmember waters, Councilmember dial Berry and Councilmember Peck voting in favor. All right, great. All right. Let’s go on to mayor and council comments.
2:52:05
Anyone?
2:52:06
Does? council Councillor Christiansen?
2:52:10
I just like everybody to remember that the opening for the Day of the Dead is at the museum is October 1. And it’s a wonderful time for everybody around the world to remember all the people who’ve gone before them. Thanks.
2:52:31
All right, Councillor Martin?
2:52:34
Yes, I would actually like everyone to know that the League of Women Voters has done a really fine job of deeply researching the issues on the Colorado ballot this year, all the way down to to municipal level issues. And that their voter guide goes online live at 411 vote.org on October 2, which gives you a week and a half a good 10 days to really study the ballot before you have to fill it in and still vote really, really early. That you know, they’re a nonpartisan organization. They did wonderful research, and they endorsed both of long months ballot questions. So everybody go to 411 vote and get that get that ballot in early.
2:53:41
All right. Thanks, Councilman. Alright, Harold, you got anything.
2:53:46
Comments? Mayor council?
2:53:47
Eugene.
2:53:51
Oh, comments, Mayor.
2:53:52
All right, customer. We have a motion to adjourn, please.
2:53:58
And I’ll second. All in favor say aye.
2:54:02
Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion carries unanimously. All right. See you
2:54:08
next week, guys. Thanks. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai