Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Study Session- February 2, 2021
For a transcript of the meeting, please read below:
Meeting Transcription Disclaimer:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
To listen to the meeting alongside a transcript, please visit:
https://otter.ai/u/clnvA5q1eQv9FhjAUKqBOpe_xSM
10:37
Doctor waters This
10:42
looks like a shower curtain shower.
10:49
It’s just he’s just sitting on the toilet just wave counsel. All right. Okay, I’m
10:55
visiting my siblings in the Phoenix area
10:58
and they’re sharing right? Those are their shears right?
11:06
In a crummy VRP Oh, I’m here.
11:10
That’s good. Yes
11:11
it is. I just I just saw the shower.
11:14
Alright,
11:14
but with that let’s call this meeting to order and we start with the roll call. I am here.
11:19
Alright and here Bagley is here. Counselor Christiansen here.
11:23
Councilmember dogberry.
11:25
Here. Councilmember Martin.
11:27
Here.
11:28
Councilmember pack
11:29
here. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
11:32
Here.
11:33
Councilmember waters,
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dear
11:35
mayor, you have a quorum.
11:38
Awesome. I guess I’ll lead us in the Pledge. All right. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic, nation, for God,
11:51
indivisible, with liberty and
11:53
justice for
11:53
all. All right,
11:56
not as good as some but we got her done. All right. The, let’s go ahead and remind everybody in the public that if they would like to start thinking about calling into pump for first call pump acts as the only call public invited to be heard tonight, toll free number is triple eight, it’ll be thrown up right there. And you want to watch for instructions after we’re done with the city manager and future agenda items portion. And you’ll just call in. And when you do call in, listen to the live stream or listen to the phone rather than live stream. And you’ll be called by the last three digits, your phone number. Okay, so with that, let’s move on to do we have motions direct to direct the city manager to add any agenda items or to address any potential future items.
12:42
All right, cool.
12:42
Wow.
12:43
All right. With that, why don’t we go ahead and take a two to three minute break and invite the public to go ahead and call in that triple eight number. So, Steph, if you could throw it up. That’d be great. And we’ll be back in three. Okay.
13:02
When do we get to eat our cake?
13:06
Paulie later?
13:09
All right him by me.
13:11
All right, the right back guys see in two to three.
13:26
Hey, Don, this is Rico. Can
13:27
you hear me?
13:34
Rico, this is Harold. I can hear you.
13:38
Susan Wallach put a message in the team’s chat. That said
13:54
yeah,
13:55
into the city’s website.
13:58
They were having issues with it. But this is hosted on our YouTube channel. So we should be good to go. I know they were having intermittent issues. I believe they’re being resolved. But
14:09
if people can access it through the YouTube channel and on our website, we should be good to go. Now there’s someone in the waiting room so they must be able to.
14:46
Yeah, staff they haven’t fixed it. Okay, I’ll
14:53
ping Susan and let her know because I think the last update we got was that it was corrected but she knew that there might be an issue. Did you can I let her
15:02
still out? Okay.
15:07
I know there were a number of people who wanted to comment on our waste services presentation.
15:13
Hopefully they’ll come in. All right, for
17:26
those of you that had call in, welcome to the meeting, we’re just going to wait for a little bit longer here for the public invite to be heard slide to be cleared off of the live stream. And when it’s time, I will call on you by the last three digits of your phone number at that time, I will ask you to unmute yourself. And then you will have three minutes to speak. And we ask that you state your name and address for the record before you speak. So as soon as we are ready to get started. I will call on you by the last three digits of your phone. Thank you.
18:54
All right, we’ve asked
18:57
how many we got the queue?
19:03
mayor, it looks like we have four people in the queue.
19:08
Okay. You guys notice I mix it up every week. My backgrounds always different trying to think about what the people would find appealing. You know, it’s kind of mixing it up. Nobody appreciates that. No, okay.
19:22
Just kidding. Better. It’s better
19:23
than if you were commenting on my background a little bit ago. Well, I know about you. You weren’t complimentary about what I
19:30
was not because you failed miserably. I’m sorry. Just Just say the truth. All right, there’s four people in line. Let’s go ahead and take the first caller. And we’ll go from there. I’ll keep track of time.
19:42
Right color with the number ending in 452. I’m going to ask you to unmute yourself. If you could please follow the instructions on your phone and state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes
20:00
Sherry Malloy 2113 rangeview Lane in December you directed staff to come back soon with options for how to impact long lines waste diversion. With commercial trash factored in, we’re setting 76% of the trash we generate to the landfill. 80% of this can and should be recycled. In December. Our SRL zerowaste team outlined three priorities one, provide universal residential composting, like recycling, to require mfcu and commercial recycling, and three significantly improving outreach and education. We also included hard to recycle events and adjusting subscription rates to provide more incentives. All these aligned with what staff will be presenting tonight, and the city’s sustainability and Climate Action Task Force plans. to fund these improvements we need to increase our waste management fee. Our fee is ridiculously low at 296 per month per household level and residents pay 1150 a month, their residential diversion rate is 60%. Double ours of 36%. We very much appreciate staffs continued willingness to communicate with our team. Charlie and Bob attended our December meeting and share their ideas about tonight’s presentation. As I said we’re aligned with all except their suggested timeline. We believe a greater sense of urgency is needed to provide the most benefits to combat climate chaos. organics are 50% of our waste stream and 84 times worse than co2 and causing global warming. 2020 was the hottest year in the history of our planet. The US had 22 natural disasters including Colorado’s worst wildfire ever waiting until qual to start planning a proposal to bring back to city council will put us another two years out for implementation. Our current opt in curbside conference program was decided in 2015 but didn’t start until 2017. It would be very helpful if someone from city council were to assume a role like Councilwoman Martens on the Climate Action Task Force. This person could become well informed and work with Boulder County to collaborate for much needed regional infrastructure. The county hopes to develop an organics processing center up to 87 to open in 2023 this is an ideal site for Longmont. SRL, wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly supports this one needs a council person to get caught up in advocate for this operation, and collaborate on other things like the transfer station construction and demolition drop off in North East hard to recycle center. First step is city council directing staff to write a proposal for a universal recycling ordinance. This should include a universal residential composting and be recycling it all mF us and businesses. The next step is making revisions to the zero waste resolution. We recommend staff lift the timeline of these two staffs recommendation is to start working on language this summer. For the zero waste resolution and fall for the ordinance. We’re recommending these be flipped and the timeline moved up. Thank you.
23:06
Thank you, Sherry is always exactly exactly three minutes. All right, next caller
23:13
caller with a number ending in 499. I’m going to ask you to unmute yourself, please follow the instructions on your phone.
23:20
Get your name and address for the record and
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you will have
23:23
three minutes.
23:25
Okay. This is Joe Kelly of barberry Drive. Their city council Mr. Mayor Harold and staff. I wanted to keep you apprised Miss Martin requested further information on the live blood cell analysis that appeared in the award winning documentary on smart meter dangers. Take back your power that was described in some detail in the January 19 open forum. I took on the assignment myself intuiting there was likely not a written study. But wanting to know more of the background of the video myself. I was able to locate the doctor a chiropractor specializing in something called morphogenic field technique named Dr. Frank spring up and speak with him just this afternoon. His 45 year healing practice as a chiropractor has included live blood cell analysis, aka dark field microscopy. As I had suspected there was no written study he had taken on the experiment when requested by Josh Del Sol, the filmmaker of the documentary containing the short video, Dr. Springer described taking 30 people from his chiropractic practice over three days time and first, taking live blood samples showing normal living blood cells. He then took these subjects outside to the smart meter on the building stood them two feet away for about two minutes each then brought them back inside to take the blood samples afterwards to see the results. The video was coming prize the before and after live blood cell analysis of three of the 30 subjects he tested. Plus narration explaining the results. If you’ve seen the video, which I know at least two of you have, you will have seen a pretty dramatic difference in the before and after shots. And if you know even a little bit about this technique, you will know the difference is not a healthy one in any of the three scenarios. I will continue to follow up with this thread of inquiry and hope to be able to find a practicing local expert for you to speak with on this subject. Sometimes seeing is simply believing. Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment if the Longmont city council had an area expert in this technology, perform the same experiment here in our area with a live smart meter. As I find people places and things to do with this subject that demonstrate that smart meters indeed, pose an incredible health hazard. I will keep you all apprised. Thank you for your time and I bid you a good evening.
26:04
All right. Thank you, man. You kept it to two minutes and 30 seconds. Thank you. All right, next caller
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caller with a number ending in 192. I’m going to ask you to unmute yourself, please follow the instructions on your phone. State your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes Hi, this
26:25
is Naomi Kurland at 2073 Goldfinch court. I’m the chair of sustainable resilient long month Zero Waste committee, and I am calling in support of a universal recycling ordinance in Longmont and expanding into universal composting. With the new proposed Boulder County compost facility, we have a huge opportunity to come out as a city in support of this facility’s construction and expand our programs at both residential and commercial level. This would include multifamily units and businesses. Taking individual responsibility for waste diversion, it should be at the cornerstone stone of our commitment. It is an accessible, simple solution where everyone can and needs to participate. People want to do the right thing. It just needs to be convenient, affordable, and well supported by good outreach and education. You have an important opportunity tonight to direct direct staff to work on design changes to our waste services that empower Longmont residents to move the needle individually and collectively in the right direction. Regarding funding, currently, there is 1.5 million in the waste services budget that could be used to get some improvement started. The state now has Front Range weights diversion fund that allows any entity to apply for funds which the city could apply for carts, trucks and facilities. Also, as Sherry mentioned, our current fees are incredibly low, and with modest increases, we could make a big impact. A recent Boulder County waste study found that organics are the single largest source of trash from residents, more than 25% of what we send to landfills of what we have what we send to landfills. Moreover, food waste was equal between multifamily units and single family trash. In both cases 16% of the trash was wasted food. So not only is food waste more than a significant source of waste, but it is a significant source of waste specifically multifamily units. Both yard waste and food waste could be diverted very soon, you make a huge impact. If we enact bold progressive policy alongside the support of this new boco composting facility. Please direct staff to move quickly on the timeline matching the urgency of our climate crisis. I look forward to hearing what the update is from our waste services tonight. Thank you so much. All right. Thank
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you very much last color.
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Color with a number ending in 119. I’m going to ask you to unmute yourself. Please follow the instructions on your phone state your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes
29:13
caller Oh, there you go. Hi, this is Karen dike at seven a week haven court in Longmont. I’m speaking tonight as chair of the Colorado chapter of the Sierra Club. Over 1600 members and supporters of Sierra Club live in Longmont. I was horrified when I saw how high the readings were several times in January at the union reservoir monitors the regional background level of methane in January. Excuse me, I’m sorry I lost track here. The regional background level of methane is just over 1900 parts per billion. The monitor at Union reservoir was above that the entire month of January and exceeded 2400 several times. Methane itself doesn’t cause human health issues. And also it takes up so much of the oxygen that breathing becomes impossible. So the concern with methane is that it is a potent agent in climate change. butane propane call Ewing, ethane and benzene also have had spikes at least three times this year, including yesterday February 1. EPA states benzene is a known human carcinogen. tol Ewing is known to have effects on the central nervous system, none of these toxic gases should be in our air. While these recent spikes have lasted only a few minutes, the cumulative impact of breathing these substances isn’t accounted for when calculating risk based on a few spikes. All of these gases are constantly in our air and affecting our bodies. I applaud city for closing the wells. I remember that plugged and abandoned wells also have a tendency to leak. They’re plugged with concrete and concrete tends to crumble. You can look at my driveway for for evidence of that. Also, I caution the city to be aware of potential leaks with the new wells. As they drill under union reservoir gases can migrate upwards potentially contaminating this body of potable water. So what to do, I urge you to continue to inform local residents of the air quality in sessions such as the one tonight, pressure those regulatory agencies such as co GCC, cdphp and aq cc to hold the operators and weld county accountable for the pollution and to shut down repeat offenders inform legislators of the continued poor air quality. This Council passed a climate emergency resolution. It is time to pressure all state agencies to act on this emergency. The methane being released must stop one way to stop fracking air pollution is to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. Let’s make a plan to do that. Thank you very much.
32:14
Thank you Miss dike. All right, that should end it for our only call public invited to be heard, correct?
32:21
Yes, that is correct.
32:22
All right. Great. Then let’s go ahead and move on to a hold on a second. All right, special reports and presentations. Let’s move on to a proclamation recognizing February 2 2021. As long hot day in Longmont, because as as the public and staff can see its long wants 100 and 50th birthday. And let it be known that Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez is cool enough to wear the hat. I just didn’t want Dr. Walters to feel alone. Actually, if I forgot mine on my desk at the office, so I apologize. I know Maria rented out and I appreciate her for doing that. All right, let me pull this up. Okay. proclamation recognizing February 2 2021, is Longmont day in Longmont, Colorado, on February 2 1871. The incorporation papers for the Chicago Colorado colony were filed in Denver, and that colony founded the town of Longmont in the spring of 1871. And whereas Longmont is a part of a millennia long history of people living in this region with Cheyenne, Arapaho, Inuit tribes, all having strong and enduring ties to the place we now call Longmont. And whereas llama began as a small agricultural community and grew as industries such as flour milling, vegetable canning and sugar manufacturing manufacturing prospered and whereas forward thinking early residents established an enduring legacy and ensured future success by creating their own electric utility and security. Securing extensive water rights demonstrating a pioneering spirit lives on in long lines trailblazing next light gigabit broadband network. And whereas the community transformed in the years after world war two with the arrival of high technology employers and many new residents, and whereas Longmont has faced many challenges including fire flood discrimination, economic hardship and pandemic disease. And its people have overcome these challenges building a stronger and more resilient community, affirmed by llama twice being recognized as an all America city. And whereas over its 150 year history, Longmont has grown into a city of almost 100,000 residents who work together to sustain a caring, inclusive community proud to embrace support, respect and celebrate one another. Now therefore, I Brian J. Bagley mayor, by virtue of the authority vested in me and the City Council, the city of Longmont do hereby proclaim February 2 2021 is Longmont day, and 2021 a year of celebration of long months sesquicentennial recognition. So, signed me but that’s kind of cool that we’re 150 years old, and the hats are almost as cool So, Harold, is there a staff member yourself? Would you like to say anything? Other than just yeah, pretty cool. 150
35:08
years.
35:09
Brian’s go first.
35:12
Okay, Mariah, let’s hear it. nail it,
35:14
mayor and council. It is a pleasure to celebrate long, 100 and 50th anniversary with you all this evening.
35:21
And while it might not be the grand in person celebration
35:23
we would have liked to hold. We do remain hopeful that before the years out, we’ll be able to gather in 3d to commemorate the city’s sesquicentennial. We do have some virtual events and self guided activities that are in the works. And I would like to invite you all
35:39
and the community to kick off the very first one of those on Thursday
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at 7:30pm. With the Longmont museums Happy Birthday Longmont live stream,
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it’ll feature
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some iconic long monsters and special guests, some historic perspective from Eric Mason
35:57
and a surprise performance. And while we also while we celebrate this anniversary, we also acknowledge that there are many in our community that are struggling right now and dealing with loss. And as we look back at last month’s history, we see that we have a community that’s come through some very hard times before fires, pandemics, floods, economic hardship, we’ve ultimately emerged stronger and more united. That same grit and feisty spirit have helped us face the challenges of this past year. And demonstrate yet again that we can find creative solutions
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to weather those hard times.
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So with that faith in our resilience, and and brighter days ahead, I’d like to invite you all if you haven’t already to Don your party hats.
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Light a candle if you can.
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And make a wish for a long month.
37:07
Happy Birthday online.
37:09
Thank you mica.
37:11
Happy birthday.
37:14
I just screenshot this. That’s awesome. All right. Good. Good job. And Eugene. Is that a party hat?
37:24
It was the best I could do may or you make it into the office today.
37:27
I guess I’m just pointing out people on zoom today.
37:32
Happy birthday.
37:33
I thought we were singing happy birthday.
37:34
That’s up tomorrow.
37:36
I think Aaron should lead us.
37:38
I think so. He’s got the hat.
37:39
musical talent.
37:41
Aaron is Mayor Pro Tem the mayor. I can’t speak for a second you better lead us.
37:51
I didn’t think we’re going to sing this because it would sound really bad on zoo.
37:55
You sound good. So anyway, yeah. Why don’t you go to the cheese.
38:02
All right. I
38:02
guess we’re doing this. Oh, yeah, you’re doing it. I’m not singing but you want to sing it? Go for it.
38:10
Oh, Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday.
38:23
Happy birthday
38:24
to you. Yay. Awesome. Good. Good
38:32
call on singing happy birthday better call of having to be Aaron. So thank you. All right, let’s move on. Do we have an update on our nasty COVID-19 situation as always?
38:45
Yesterday, Mayor actually have some good news. We have some good news today, too. In terms of where we are. I’m going to start off with Valerie died. I’m going to pull Valerie slide up then I know we had some. Y’all wanted some information in terms of what we’re doing with the cultural brokers. Carmen will then join next. And then I’ll do a quick overview of the data based on where we are. So Valerie, why don’t you talk about the good news we just heard yesterday. I’m very
39:12
happy to do that. And Happy birthday and Aaron. Councilmember Aaron Rodriguez. That was wonderful. So thank you, Harold and good evening, Mayor Bagley members of council. I’m Valerie Dodd, the executive director of next slide and I am very excited to share some news that we just got. The great news is that the grant that we partnered with the St. vrain Valley School District on was granted. And so we will be receiving or the school district will be receiving $1.3 million to help provide broadband access to both students and educators that might be income qualifying or in special need. And the goal is really to provide that service at no charge to those students and educators. So we will soon be convening a meeting to To further fortify our network plan, that basically, the grant will go to fund, a wireless mesh overlay. And some of those areas where we have dense populations of students that are participating in a free and reduced lunch program, would you believe there’s over 6200 students in that program in the school district. So there are some apartments where we’ve either gotten a service agreement or have been unable to get a service agreement, either scenario, some of the families are still unable to sign up for next slide internet service. So we will be providing wireless access for free with a special code. Also, we will be recommissioning, the wireless network that we have around the city, that will be a big chunk of the budget. And that will allow us to put wireless access in more places throughout the city. And then we will also be able to afford to build fiber to certain areas kind of on the periphery of the community that we haven’t had before. So that will really help us expand our fiber network, which is terrific. And then lastly, I love that as part of the grant, the school district rolled into it, that they would spend over $10,000, in our sharing the next flight program, because there are a lot of students within our footprint that just can’t afford this service. So we’re super excited to put that into the existing fund, and be able to turn up more families. The good thing about this plan is that it really is sustainable. It’s, you know, we talked and kind of really pontificated with the school district. And we said, well, we don’t want to just pay for people service on a monthly basis, we want to kind of make it available for free into perpetuity. And so that’s why we chose the wireless solution so that more people could have access, and really, you know, for many years to come. So we’re super excited to give the students more access the opportunity to explore, to learn to develop their passions and their interests, and really to prepare them for the future. And lastly, the enhancement, and the further development of our wireless network will really kind of lay a foundation for the city to continue to explore the Smart City applications, and the IoT things that might benefit the city as well. So super excited that we were able to get this money and are going to be able to continue to really bridge the divide that exists in our community. Mayor
42:27
Council, any questions on this? The one thing I would say is, I think she approached me four weeks ago. I was like four weeks ago with this idea, because as we’ve known with some of the grants associated with COVID, it moves pretty quick, reached out to the school district and the technology department there. And a couple in a week or so grant was done submitted, and we knew is going to be a short timeline for approval. And so I just want to thank the school district for the partnership, thank Valerie bringing up and coming up with his creative idea and more importantly, everyone moving incredibly fast to get this in and bring $1.3 million into the district with it helps connect everyone to to next life and get the services they need at their homes. This is really part of the equity conversation that we’ve been having, as we’ve been talking about how we move through the pandemic and it touches to the work we’ve done with hotspots and some of the other things so thanks. Thanks, Valerie for working on this think School District.
43:36
Thank you all.
43:37
I think Councilmember Peck has a question.
43:43
helzberg Peck
43:44
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Valerie, thank you so much for the work that you put on in on this. And it’s it really gives me Heart, heart that our leaders which you are one thinks about the city as a whole, and that we all come together. But my question is, after the pandemic, will the wireless network still be available? To the so it is ongoing continuing?
44:14
mere badly? Yes, council member packets certainly is that was really part of the strategy that we aligned with the school district on, you know, we didn’t just want to pay for monthly recurring service for a certain period of time, we wanted to establish a free network that had broad access to numerous people. So that was certainly the
44:31
plan. Perfect. Thank you so much.
44:34
You’re welcome. And then if I may. One other thing that I’d like to mention is there’s also some federal grant money that’s coming out. I forget the name of that one. I think it’s an emergency broadband fund that we are hoping to participate in as well which could potentially allow up to $50 per household for Internet access, which would afford households one gigabit service. So we are certainly active in that and looking For that grant application process to begin, but we’re super excited. And again, this is just to start. But we certainly plan to continue to look at opportunities to partner to make sure that we’re always addressing this community.
45:15
And you just valued this I think this is great. One of the I’m sorry, Counselor revival fairing. Why don’t you go?
45:23
Hi, Valerie, and we had been in communication about this. And I had had a chance to talk to Harold, I even have my notes still on my whiteboard thing over here from when we talked over Christmas break. But one thing that it makes me really excited that we were able to have this partnership and that we actually received the grant. One of the things that we talked about was the educators. So we have you know, especially as we’re kind of this in and out of summer in quarantine, you’re teaching from home, right now we have a kindergarten teacher in quarantine, she’s teaching her class from her house. So we have paraprofessionals in there, we also have one paraprofessionals end up having to go into quarantine. And they’re having they’ve had their groups online. So what are the options for educators to have a discounted rate or get something on a sliding scale for next light?
46:20
Certainly. So Mira Bagley and Councilmember Hidalgo fairing. We haven’t worked through the details of it. But the intent certainly is to include educators as we recognize, some of them may have some challenges as well, from a affordability perspective. And so in terms of the wireless network, we plan to issue certain codes, so that you can identify the particular network and login. And so we will try to manage that as best we can. But we’ll certainly be generous with, you know, educators and students. And then there is, you know, certainly nothing. Well, I’ve got to think about the sharing the next slide doesn’t currently accommodate educators. But we could look at that. But we do have income qualifying offers for certain families that apply and maybe families households with educators, and then we are offering a temporary credit to households that have some financial challenges that are more short term. Okay. Okay, that conceptually, we’re absolutely in support, and we’d love any additional ideas you may have.
47:25
Okay, yeah. And I’ll keep working with getting input from educators and what are some of the needs? And I’ll, I’ll continue to stay in contact with you on that. And yeah, I mean, I really appreciate it because when I, we started the pandemic, I had three kids within access to internet.
47:42
So we’re scrambling trying to find, you know, where I’m sitting outside of their houses with my phone and having them log on to my hotspot. And those hotspots. I mean, while it’s I understand, you know, best intentions, that’s not sustainable. It’s not, you know, it’s not just to do that to our, it’s with, you know, who are in the lower income bracket, it’s there, let’s build, build up, do what we can to create that equal opportunity for all of our kids. And so I really appreciate all the work you’re doing. This is awesome. So thank you so much.
48:17
My pleasure. My job,
48:18
my dad, if I can, if I can jump into I think part of the federal dollars is actually to that educator piece. And so that’s what we’re focused, everyone’s focused on. I also want to thank Michelle bourgeois, the other person from the school district that we work,
48:35
Hilary Sontag, is there a great writer, your job?
48:38
I think everybody on this, and Hillary did a good job of pulling all the technical specs together. So when not to
48:47
thank you,
48:48
I was just gonna chime in, but that it fits right in alignment with us focusing on early childhood education. Cuz I just think it’s awesome that you guys did this. So thank you. And know that that’s just great. So all right with that, thank you. And I don’t know if you’re gonna stick around Valerie. But you can go home and go to bed. I think just go watch TV or do something else, or stick around. So let’s go ahead and Harold who’s given us our air quality oil and gas update,
49:16
and it’s No, no, we got some we got some more.
49:19
Okay, sorry. Keep going in. All right.
49:23
Next is Carmen. I know counsel had some questions last time and we said we were going to bring some information back to you all about what we’re doing in terms of cultural brokers and in work with the county. So Carmen is going to present she’s got this slide, but she’ll go through it, Carmen.
49:41
Good evening, mayor and council. Just a quick update. It will be very brief on cultural brokers. The network continues to be very active and we’re working across the county and connecting our Latino community to resources around COVID and also other needs. We’ve got new cultural brokers that are coming in recently, public health has hired quite a few folks. And they actually have included in their title, cultural brokers. So experienced cultural brokers are helping bringing on new cultural brokers to get to know our communities, and understand where the resources and needs are. There’s also a centralized resource database and a weekly newsletter. And that’s through Boko Suma, we’ve got probably over 200 identified resources on this database. We’re having capacitors, virtual capacitors. So in this a lot of the cultural brokers who are learning to navigate the virtual world are also helping the rest of our community to understand how to connect and navigate this virtual world that we got thrown into. So I also want to point out that as we get close to the year mark, we have a high level of stress amongst the cultural brokers and many of the cultural brokers have themselves gotten COVID. And they’ve had a loss of life within their families or their communities. So that stress is is pretty high right now. And the other piece that I just wanted to point out is that it’s important to recognize that the disparities that we have today are long standing disparities. And the recognition and investment and cultural brokers is fairly recent. Cultural brokers are an important component, but not the sole solution to addressing the disparities. I would also say that one thing that is important is that we’re getting different organizations to really bring in cultural brokers and have these honest conversations about disparities and how to address those disparities. And that’s it for me unless there’s some questions.
51:54
No, or is it just very logical, fairing than the last one?
51:57
Actually, I just, I wanted to comment and let Carmen know, I really appreciate the work. I think it’s important that opportunities to share what we’re doing on building equity in our communities, who specifically So looking at this website, Boko Suma, so and I’ve, I’m aware of the, you know, I like them on Facebook, and I follow what they’re doing a lot of the gopass see, those are during the day, so I can’t offend, because I’m in the classroom with students. But I think it’s important that our community know who the organizations are. So any opportunity that we can to continue to share, share out what’s being done, who are the the contact groups that we can reach out to, um, I just I think that’s, that’s really important, because a big part of it is education. You know, when I work with other educators, or just even throughout the state or the, with other people in the National Education Association, I often hear, you know, it’s very well, why are we always talking about race, and I’m tired of talking about race and disparity. And, you know, for some folks, I mean, this is life. This is what we’ve experienced generationally. And so for us to be at a point right now, where we are having these conversations, I think we are in the right direction. And yes, they’re going to be uncomfortable. And yes, it’s not going to be easy. But that’s the first step in healing in any fractured or any place of hurt and, and disparity and that the first place of healing is we need to have those uncomfortable conversations in order for us to improve our systems. So I really appreciate the work you’re doing. And thank you for taking the time and sharing sharing out this. what’s what’s being done. And and I liked how it was very clear the bulleted points, so. So thank you very much. And we’ll be in contact. Thank you.
54:01
Yeah, if I can’t, I think the thing that we’ve tried to do with even our system is really have I mean, we had in our EFC function, we actually had the cultural broker component of reporting into it, in terms of what we needed to know. And I think it’s making it keeping it front and center to understand what we need to do is we’re working with different communities is incredibly important. As a little plug today, a number of our staff are actually in a webinar about performance measures and incorporating social equity in that as part of the Gup x Foundation, which is associated with john Hawkins. And so even though we’re busy doing this, they’re working and trying to take lessons learned today, the future and so a lot of works going on on that so I wanted to let you all know
54:52
great i just i thank you. Because a lot of times what I see are we’re we’re dealing with things at a symptomatic Level rather than approaching it from a systematic looking at the systems. So we really need to be analyzing what we’re doing as an organization as a system and not just do these little pocket addressing the symptoms, because that’s not going to get it done. So thank you.
55:16
That’s exactly what we talked about today systematic approach. I’m mayor, if I can go over some data, or I’m going to move pretty quickly.
55:24
Just Just briefly, Carmen, thank you. You’re always awesome. I echo what else I echo everyone else’s comments. You’re loved it. Appreciate it. Thank you.
55:33
Thank you.
55:36
When we look at the two week, two week, cumulative incidence to 82.4, it’s actually lower now, it’s now down to 268. On the website, the Boulder County rates 3.6% 12 days, it’s actually 11 days now. And you’ll see that in one of the offices, why. When we look at the surrounding counties, basically what you’ll see is that motor County, pretty much across the board is doing better than our surrounding counties in terms of our COVID numbers this week, and when we look at our hospital surge metrics, you’ll notice a couple of points 05 Boulder County hospitals are reporting anticipated staffing shortages. 05, Boulder County hospitals are reporting anticipated ICU bed shortage, there was one hospital in each one of those categories as we’ve been presenting this information. So again, it’s continuing to show that we’re moving in the right direction 126 in the region. When we look at the data in terms of the cases, you can still see that we’re moving in the right direction. And the thing that I’ve that’s really good to see is that when you look at the number of long term care facilities, remember, it’s not as prevalent as what we were seeing in the slides over the last few weeks. So that definitely is a good sign. But this is really what we’re focusing on when you look at this. And currently our five day rolling average is about 59 cases per day. This is a decrease since last Tuesday when the average of 68. So, so this this trend is what we’re really wanting to continue to see. We didn’t get our wastewater data updated today. But what we’ve seen up until this point, it’s making this And so again, when we look at the leading ed ed leading indicator, that’s what we want to see. And then you can see that Boulder County, in terms of the movement is still at the bottom of our associated counties. When we look at it through municipalities, since December 1, a long line is had by far the highest case rate per 100,000 of all of the municipalities. Lafayette was also high during during this timeframe. But I think what’s really good to see is where you can see that Longmont had the bulk of the cases around that timeframe into the first of December, it’s now looking like it actually did or you know, when we were in a different period of the pandemic. So, again, we like where we are and what we’re seeing in terms of the data. When we look at among children, over the past two weeks, compared to the previous two weeks cases remained largely stable at zero to four, slight increase in five to nine year olds decrease 10 to 14, and then a substantial decrease in 15 to 17 year olds almost half. So against following the trend. And when you look at the data, by all the age groups, what you’ll see is that most age groups have, they’ve seen a decreasing trend when comparing to the past two weeks to the previous two weeks. The largest decreases were in 10 to 17 year olds, and 25 to 34 year olds, we’re still seeing increases in the 18 to 22 year old population in the zero to nine year old population, which you saw on the previous slide. So we are seeing and you can see here. And here is where we’re seeing those increases. So again, it’s something to watch. But again, compared to the numbers that we were seeing in November and December, I’m definitely in a much better position. This is a you know, when we talk about cases, by ethnicity and the impact on different groups, you can see that overall, the numbers have gone down. But when you look at this, I think what’s important and it’s really talks about the work and the focus that Boulder County Health, Boulder County all of our local jurisdictions have brought to it and focus on our Hispanic population. The number of cases remains similar the proportion of cases decreased among the history fantic Latinx population in Boulder County between last week and this week. And I think that’s really that communication and utilizing the cultural brokers to continue that engagement with with our Hispanic population vaccinations, so 21,505 with one vaccine 7000 with both of them. So we’re at around 28,000. We, we had a much higher number of vaccines that we received in the county, I want to say it was around seven or 8000. Earlier in the week, and so that was good compared to where we were the previous week.
1:00:40
And this is what it looks like in terms of the doses administered, and that it received their second dose. And then this is a breakdown by age group, you can see 52.5% and 70, plus calf poppy population. He’s heard the governor and really the focus, they hope by the end of February to have that at 70%. So you can definitely see where that was a significant focus. And then again, this, this is breaking that out by race and race and ethnicity. And you can see a slight difference here. This is part of the conversation that they’re now having in terms of, you know, getting folks to how do we get into neighborhoods, how do we get to locations. And so we’re going to continue working in that area. And then testing you can see we’re now at a 3.3% five day average on the positivity rate. Here’s what that looks like in terms of number of tests performed. And here’s where you can see that positivity rate move. And so we’re really like what we’re seeing, again, on the age group. Again, the data, you know, good sign. And then when we look at the average positivity rate, you can see that that you can see where it is in that 18 to 2223 to 24, it’s got the highest positivity rate in the county. And then hospitalizations, the hospitals, as we said earlier in good shape. And things tend to be where it’s been and what we’ve talked about in previous sessions. This is really the sign that we like to see in terms of where we were and where we are today. This is Boulder County. And then this is the hospitalizations for Colorado. So following the trend in this and Rachael will send you the slides because there’s a lot more, I’ve just paired them down. And then the social distancing update, or as a state 40% 47%, social distancing, compared to 40%, last week and 41%, the week before. So again, that’s working well. boulder is currently at 61%. And we were at 55%, in the last week. And then this gives you a sense of what that looks like over time. And this is what they watch as they’re looking at the models in terms of what we can expect in terms of some of those other leading indicators. So Mary, bounce I move through this pretty quick. We will send you the slides out and we’ll get those out to you. That’s where Martin
1:03:19
where you were you finished Mr. city manager?
1:03:22
All right, I am and I just lost my screen.
1:03:26
Okay.
1:03:28
My question is,
1:03:30
based on
1:03:31
my understanding of how things are in this community that I was shocked by the racial disparity in the vaccination rates. And because I don’t believe and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that any of our health care providers are actively discriminating. What do you or Carmen or whoever’s here that
1:03:57
can, you know, give
1:03:58
an answer to this?
1:04:00
How is this
1:04:01
happening? Is it a lack of trust? Is it a lack of have access to sign up, Carmen help?
1:04:09
Harold,
1:04:10
if you don’t mind.
1:04:12
Going after you. Okay,
1:04:14
Mayor, and Councilmember Martin. Yes, it’s that historical lack of trust. That is very real today, for a variety of reasons. There is also trust in the present day in regards to kind of not only our past political environment, but immigration issues. There is also mistrust around vaccines themselves and not that education. And that out reach is really important to explain what is the vaccine? What are the side effects that are caught in a way that is culturally relevant. So those are barriers and challenges. And those are really good conversations that our cultural brokers have had, about how do we reach our community and unfortunately, if it was not pandemic during the flood, I went door to door and talk to families and walk them through systems. The other thing also is the signup process. It’s, you know, sign up and wait. And sometimes that doesn’t quite make sense for folks in a very, very busy life. So it’s a combination of all of those.
1:05:22
Thank you.
1:05:24
Alright. Sorry, Carol ahead.
1:05:28
I think is that in? Yeah, no, I want to stress the sign up and wait. So we’ve had other groups have clinics scheduled, and then based on a number of vaccine, that they get notified on over the weekend, or even on Monday, they then have to schedule appointments. And so then that creates other issues. And, and so I would, I would tell you is, it’s not lost on the groups that are having this conversations, and they’re being really focused on it. And that really leads to the kind of the concept we talked about last time at the pop up vaccine approach and what they’re looking at. And we’re hearing that we may have the opportunity this week on a couple that really related to, again, facilities for older adults, because remember, 70 Plus, but I think it’s a learning piece that we’re going to be moving through, but really focus on specific communities. But what I will tell you is we’ve got to have the cultural brokers there with us ahead of us. And we’re going to, we’re gonna really work how we communicate, and we do this, and that’s just been a big focus for everyone.
1:06:38
All right, Kelsey, oh, we’re gonna go with Councilmember Christiansen and then Councilmember lager friend.
1:06:43
And I sat in, I substituted for Susie, at our committee. Last weekend, I brought this up, because we had seen these statistics last week. And I, it was really alarming that only 3% of the Latino community had gotten vaccinations. And I asked what we could do so to, to help with that. And so they’re trying to work on some and I pointed out that border Community Health has sheets that can be printed out for people that are in Spanish already, for people who aren’t as comfortable with English. But um, you know, I really, there is a lot of information, but there’s almost so much that it’s confusing. And a lot of the problem, I was really happy to hear what Valerie said, because a lot of the problem is that the communication is go to the web, well, but a lot of people don’t have access to the web. And so you need to have phone numbers, so people can call on their phones, almost everybody’s got a phone. So that’s one thing. But I also would like to see there be some outreach to priests and to Latino businesses, and those trusted sources because, you know, after the last four years of being threatened and deported and insulted, I think that it’s obvious way a lot of people don’t have a lot of a lot of the Latino community does not have a lot of trust in, in the government, but so they need, we need to look for cultural brokers and trusted resources in that in the community to really urge people to sign up that this is, this is safe. This is what we really have to do all of us to start with this virus.
1:08:49
Right, Councilmember bearing,
1:08:51
so And thank you, Councilmember Christiansen, too. And I want to add to that, it’s been more than the last four years. For some of us, it’s been our entire life, it’s been several generations of living in fear. I mean, some of my earliest memories are having somebody tell my mom, and when we were with her, that we all need to go back to Mexico. So Never mind that we’ve been here since we traced back to the southwest since since 1600s. But that’s or they’re one of the things that I had asked Ellie Barrett, though, is really what do you need you Carmen who are out there on the field, working with people What do you need from counsel to help streamline this process to help make sure that we you have what you need in order to reach as many community members as possible to to raise that level of trust. I see it all the time in the buildings that I’ve been at Loma Linda now at Indian peaks. You know, there’s a lot of distrust even to just go in and get the test. So So I often wonder, are the numbers even higher than what we’re seeing? Because people are not going in to get tested? So, yeah, so I don’t know, off the top of your head or you want to get back to me. Mayor, council member, they’ll go fairing one thought is it for you to continue to be that voice? That is really stating the disparities, the challenges, but also that we have trusted voices within our community. I think about when I go to tortilleria, Las Americas and I have a handful of fliers. And unlike Mr. Soto, you got to get this out to the community. And he’s like, see me handle Deborah copus. And he does that. But I would say if you could continue to be the voices. I know, I believe it was last week, Councilmember Peck talked about religious groups. Many of our religious groups share a building with Latino religious groups, and they don’t know each other. So it would be great if they could they pray under the same house, but they may not know each other. So could they? Could you encourage folks to talk to one another, share that information? And those, those are the just real quickly. But I think the other thing that we have found through the census and after the flood, is that providing small grants, so the Community Foundation provided small grants for organizations like it’s gonna be dense and throw me stuff and Bill out boulder to do outreach specifically, but to support them financially to either hire someone or provide materials that they could do the outreach. My understanding is public health has a small amount of money, and they are doing the same. I will tell you that during the pandemic, we pivoted on the census and a committee reached, I believe, like 400 households that they helped to sign up on the census. So we have that infrastructure. We need your support in the community as well as that awareness of where to connect, folks.
1:12:13
Councilmember Peck Thank you, Mayor
1:12:17
Bagley. Carmen, thank you for all your work. It’s really appreciated when I heard something on CPR today. And perhaps you can verify whether this is happening in Longmont, but they were interviewing Hispanics about COVID. And one gentleman spoke for several and said that even though he thought he had the virus, he was afraid to take a test. He was afraid to confirm it for fear he would lose his job and he absolutely needed the money for his family. Is there some way we can address this through some of the subsidy funds that we are getting? Or perhaps I don’t know what other what other funds but are we are you are the cultural brokers addressing this and how
1:13:09
Marin council member Peck guests we are there is what is called no workers left behind through public health. And we’re connecting folks through those resources, I will tell you that it is a challenge. Because if I go and get tested, and then I have to quarantine that, I mean, two weeks of no pay. And also, it’s very challenging. I will tell you that we experienced that when I had COVID and had to tell my daughter to go get tested and she had to quarantine and did not receive full pay. Fortunately enough she had a house to live in. But we are facing that challenge of that fear. But what we are trying to do is get the word out that there are resources for rent for food for utilities, and then we can work with the no left no workers left behind. The other piece that we’re trying to do is also get that word out to employers so that players understand that they’re also encouraging their workers to get tested to quarantine but to connect to resources. And I’ve done that with a couple of companies in Longmont provided them information on housing assistance, utility and food and so forth so that they can relieve the stress of their workers and also help their workers to stay quarantine and not impact the rest of the workers.
1:14:38
Okay. The other thing is that Councilwoman Hidalgo pairing and I are going to do count coffee with council this month. And I would like it to be actually addressing this issue for the most part and getting that information out. So how do we get people who need to hear This message to log into coffee with Council and the businesses should the Latino chamber I’m sure, I don’t know, how do we get that message out to the people who need to hear it.
1:15:17
Mayor, council member Peck, I will tell you that the Latino chamber just recently, they just did another one with Karla Golan who’s a cultural worker with Community Action Program around resources. So we’ve been doing those regularly. We also have talked about doing kind of small messages with radio stations and TV stations like lolly. And it might be if you’re, you know, 75 and above, bring your grandmother and I would say this in Spanish. So bring your grandmother bring your grandfather, it’s their turn, and your turn is coming. So how do we get these very quick messages around not only resources, COVID testing and the vaccine. So we are working on on those things. And we have done several webinars, specifically in the Latino community. But again, what we’re finding is that the cultural brokers are the best resource to get the word out. So when in the Gambia has a class, when in Basel has a session with parents that are having that conversation saying, anybody? How’s everybody doing? Have you gotten ill? Have you gotten tested? Do you know, resources? So we almost have to have a catalog of resources in our head.
1:16:37
So um, and maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong, but because of what you’ve said, that is trust for government, and that would it make a difference, if counsel people who happened to be the local government, actually came out supporting and that was my point about coffee with counsel, that these aren’t culture, you know, we’re not cultural brokers, we’re not normally in that realm, that I would like to speak for counsel at that, to let your community know that we trust that we care about them, and that this is a good thing for them to do and etc, etc, I would have to have talking points. But that was my point is that government coming out expressing their support and care for this community, that community do? Get the vaccine get tested? And we’ll support you with these resources or whatever? Absolutely. What?
1:17:38
Councilmember pacus, if we could find opportunities, whether it’s council members angle, fairing, or other view to speak to some of these groups, we provide the talking points and provide that opportunity. I know we have a group called parents, education, we bring in folks and we sometimes have 30 to 60 parents, depending on the topic. So it would be a great opportunity, not only for you to tell the rest of the community, but then specifically these communities that have trust issues. So thank you, that would be great.
1:18:21
Councilmember Christiansen
1:18:23
What are we doing to work with the school system and preschools and childcare too? You know, I know that’s the low end, but they have grandparents and the people, their parents have older people, members of the family. If the school system, were distributing some materials to urge everybody to get their shots, that would help. There are a lot of kids in daycare, who have grandparents and I’m just saying we need to really try to reach out into all of the community to get everybody to understand that a virus doesn’t care what ethnic group you’re part of. They just it doesn’t. So we all need to take care of each other.
1:19:13
All right, well, with that, I’m just gonna we all agree that the virus sucks. There’s a cultural disparity. Carmen’s awesome, we’re on it. We need to do more. And we’ll, we’ll we’ll think Carmen Carroll, is there anything else with the COVID update?
1:19:28
All right,
1:19:29
let’s go on to the air quality and oil and gas update, which I had the opportunity to go out and get a tour and spend a couple hours with with the research team was kind of cool seeing all the equipment they do. All right. Let’s go ahead and go with there’s Jay Jain speaking the devil.
1:19:47
Here, Dr. Turn,
1:19:49
how are you?
1:19:49
I’m well thank you.
1:19:51
Good, good.
1:19:54
I believe the time is yours.
1:19:56
Great. Well, good. Evening Mayor Bagley and members of city council My name is Dr. Jane Turner. I am the air quality and oil and gas coordinator for the city of Longmont. And you can go to the next slide. I’ll start with an overview of the update that I’m going to be providing tonight. First, I’m going to talk about long months air quality study and some new forms of public outreach that staff have developed. Then I’ll discuss methane and BOC measurements taken as part of that study. And I’ll try to address some of the questions that have come up from Council and from residents about recent measurements at Union reservoir monitoring station. also informed counsel about a study that researchers are proposing to do in Longmont, and I’ll ask counsel for direction regarding that. Then I’ll move on to a general oil and gas update. I’ll go over new rules adopted by the CEO GCC, and talk about how those rules potentially will impact Longmont. I’ll describe current oil and gas surface operations within Longmont go over some of the upcoming oil and gas activities in the area. And last I’ll provide a summary of the oil and gas environmental monitoring program that we have in place here in Longmont.
1:21:15
Next slide.
1:21:20
City of Longmont has a regional air quality monitoring study. It was funded by Council in 2019. And we now have our first full year of data collected and we’ve shared that data with regulatory agencies, researchers, academic institutions, we’re really excited about the interest in that data. And boulder err. And Dr. helmig are going to be coming each spring and fall to be giving semi annual updates to kind of keep Council and the residents informed about what we’re finding. The technical data reports come out quarterly and those are available on the city website as well. In an effort to increase public awareness of the study, staff have created a couple of new videos. We have a shorter video that’s intended for social media featuring the mayor, and there’s a longer video which includes an interview with Dr. helmig of Boulder err. So I’ll ask now if we can play that shorter video.
1:22:33
Not that short.
1:22:36
That was beautiful, though. If I’m in it, that’s perfect link. Hi there. My name is Brian Bagley. I am the mayor of Longmont, Colorado, and we are out here at Union reservoir just off county line road one east of Longmont and we’re out here today to not only enjoy nature, but we’re here specifically to look at our air monitoring station. The air monitoring station is set up to understand one what are the sources of air pollution. And number two, to monitor how high that air pollution is. It’s part of a network of air monitoring stations here in Northern Colorado. It’s a multi year project in order to keep Longmont air quality, nice and clean along with our surrounding cities and neighbors.
1:23:24
long months air quality study is a long term project which is part of a comprehensive environmental monitoring program. This project provides lots of data for
1:23:33
a topic close to our hearts
1:23:34
sustainability. And while the two air quality monitoring stations measure different things, the data we collected each is useful for researchers and regulators. It can also be used to help guide council decisions about sustainability initiatives. And to give us a good idea about how much greenhouse gas Longmont is contributing to the Front Range. Of course, you don’t have to get the super scientific scoop on air quality monitoring to know whether or not it’s safe to go outside. You can track local air quality just like you monitor the weather. Just download the EPA air now app for your mobile device. And if you do want to learn more about the nitty gritty of oil and gas emissions, air quality monitoring, and the work scientists are doing here at Union reservoir and the Longmont airport, check out the link in the description to visit the city’s website and watch our longer video interview.
1:24:41
Great. Thanks for showing that. The other thing I wanted to let folks know about is that we have a new air quality topic for the city is a notification to call the January 20 2021 Longmont sustainability advisory board meeting. Videos always tricky. All right.
1:25:07
Oh, wait, give me one second.
1:25:09
Yeah.
1:25:16
Okay.
1:25:18
So the other thing I wanted to let people know about is that the city has a new air quality topic for the EA notification system. And if people would like to sign up to receive air quality, topic updates, they can go to the city’s website and search for EA notifications, where you’ll find the instructions to sign up for those.
1:25:41
Next slide.
1:25:47
Next, we’ll talk about measurements collected at Union reservoir monitoring station for methane. And for both volatile organic compounds. Those are known as vo C’s. We’ve had some questions and concerns in particular about recent measurements. And so for background, I want to give a bit of an overview on what we’ve seen over the last year. Before I’ve talked about the recent measurements. So I’m showing on the right of this slide, a graph of methane concentrations at Union reservoir station. The graph starts on February one of 2020. And it goes all the way up through yesterday. And what you can see here is that this graph is it’s not a smooth line that would indicate gradual changes in concentrations. Instead, the concentrations go up and down really quickly. And this sporadic nature of methane and other oil and gas related compounds, is one of the things that we’re learning with the air quality study in Longmont, because Longmont study is a high resolution research grade study, we’re picking up on these very short events that might not otherwise be captured by less sophisticated studies. Our monitors are telling us that when methane and voc concentrations are elevated, it’s typically only lasting for about five to 15 minutes. These sorts of short term increases are often called spikes. And you can also see that over the last year, we’ve had a handful of spikes that were significantly higher than the smaller ups and downs that we’re used to seeing. Those events occurred in March and late June of 2020. And then the highest concentrations that we’ve recorded yet have actually occurred this year, on January 6, and then again yesterday on February 1. That’s that very last vertical line you can see on the right, so that’s the highest methane concentration that we have recorded yet. Now during both of these recent events, when speeds were low, and the wind was coming from the east northeast, this wind direction suggests that the source of the emissions was outside of Longmont. And we know that because the wells to the east and northeast of our monitoring station are all outside of city boundaries. Now because the January 6 event at the time was the highest concentrations we’ve seen, staff did reach out to state agencies and to oil and gas operators that work out in that vicinity to discuss this data. The Colorado Department of Public Health and the environment. That’s the CDP he confirmed that there are currently no standards for methane or vo C’s in ambient air. So from a regulatory standpoint, these concentrations don’t trigger any actions to be taken by the state. Staff also discuss the data with the Colorado oil and gas Conservation Commission. That’s the CO GCC. And in those discussions, we reviewed some of the oil and gas maintenance activities that were scheduled east of Longmont in January and co GCC confirmed that those maintenance activities were in compliance with state oil and gas regulations.
1:29:10
So the spikes we recorded may be related to oil and gas maintenance activities, Isa Longmont, but we can’t confirm this. Because our data along my air quality study is not really designed to be able to single out individual wells as sources. I did also talk with weld County Public Health, and they told me that they’re interested in air quality and that they welcome the opportunity to work with us. So I’m looking forward to reviewing the data with them, and they said they’ll help us determine if they can see if it might be attributed to any specific cause. So we’ve determined that these concentrations didn’t exceed air regulations. How about health effects? methane, which I’m showing here does not have negative health effects, but it is of concern as Karen mentioned, because it’s a powerful greenhouse gas, and it’s often associated with oil and gas emissions. And when we see these higher methane concentrations, we’ll also also typically see increases in vo C’s. Now methane and vo C’s don’t track together Exactly. Meaning that higher methane doesn’t always mean higher vo C’s, but we do typically see them increasing at the same time. There are some vo C’s that do have known health effects. And for those vo C’s the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control have established what are called health guidance values. I had a virtual meeting with cdph state toxicologist Her name’s Christy Richardson, and we discussed the BOC data from our study, she shared with me the details of those health guidance values. And based on what what she shared with me, I went through our data and in our review, we found that none of those health guidance values have been exceeded since we started collecting data for our study. Now the primary goals of Longmont air quality study are to contribute to the scientific understanding of Front Range air quality, and we do this by sharing our data freely. We also want to keep regulating agencies informed of our findings so that real world data is being considered as these regulations continue to evolve. And I did want to share some exciting news. Well, County Public Health has recently installed three air quality monitoring stations northeast of Longmont. And since our union reservoir monitoring station is located in weld County, it makes sense that we would work with them and collaborate with them. And I’m excited that they have indicated that they’d like to look for ways to work together with me to share data, and to have a more collaborative air quality analysis process. If residents would like to stay informed about notable air quality topics like this, I do encourage them to sign up for those new air quality notifications. Next slide. staff have been informed about a proposal for an expanded oil and gas study in Colorado and Texas. The proposal was was received from Dr. helmig a builder err and he’s working with a group of other researchers. The funding source is a large nonprofit organization called the health effects Institute. There’s no funding being requested from the city, but they are requesting use of our monitoring data, and also requesting access to Union reservoir monitoring station to do a couple of weeks of air and noise research during 2021 and 2022. So unless otherwise directed by Council staff will proceed to review the proposal and plan to offer its access for short term sampling at Union reservoir. Do we have any input from council
1:33:09
Councillor Martin and then Councilmember Christiansen
1:33:15
I have proposed direction but I also have a question for Dr. Turner that I’d like to ask first.
1:33:23
And that is we here on the front range are in a big fat ozone non compliance area. And there is a direct
1:33:36
connection between
1:33:39
methane and volatile organic compound emissions and the and ozone as a as an eventual byproduct product of the breakdown of those compounds when hit by sunlight. So even though you say there’s no adverse health effects and no
1:34:04
maximum levels for methane and most vo C’s, we still have a problem because it’s making ozone right?
1:34:12
That’s right.
1:34:13
Can you say a little more about that than just confirming it? Because
1:34:19
Yeah, um,
1:34:20
I would say that these things are all interrelated in areas particularly hard to regulate, you know, it moves around, it has to be regulated on a regional scale and where the ozone precursor stuff is really being addressed is through the Air Quality Control Commission. And so they passed an update to regulation seven, which I’ll talk about on one of the next slides coming up. That’s going to help to try to rein in some of these precursors from oil and gas. And they’re also in ongoing rulemaking. So they’re looking at greenhouse gas plans. They’re looking at ozone that’s ongoing and all Continue to provide some updates about that once they finish with those rulemakings. Okay, did
1:35:04
did we provide our data to the aq cc?
1:35:08
Absolutely. Okay,
1:35:09
that’s good, then I would like to say that I see no reason not to proceed with the
1:35:19
studies that you just described, and would move that the council direct staff to do so.
1:35:29
I’ll second it. I guess my question is, do we need to take action or these these are just ongoing? Are they not?
1:35:36
He asked for direction.
1:35:37
Right. But if we My question is, this is the plan, right? There’s nothing I mean, we’ll vote on it. But I just want to make sure that, that this is what we expected to happen. Right. Harold? Harold? How’s the game? How’s the game? Harold?
1:36:02
Mayer Bagley? Yeah, Dale,
1:36:03
I think as as Dr. Turner had stated, The staff is intending to move forward with it. Only if, but if the council doesn’t want us to, now would be the time to tell us No.
1:36:17
Yeah, so the direction is
1:36:19
forward. That was the motion. But I think we got the sense of the council unless we hear otherwise,
1:36:25
move forward. But let’s let’s There’s a motion on the table. And we want to make sure we’re clear. Is anyone opposed to the motion who’d like to speak? Councilmember Christiansen?
1:36:35
Not necessarily opposed. I just want to know, have you looked into who the health effects Institute is? I mean, I don’t want it to be some kind of crackpot organization. So I assume you’ve looked into this?
1:36:49
Yeah, it’s a it’s a large nonprofit organization. Their grant is up to 2.5 million. They work with the EPA. They’re a well respected organization.
1:37:07
All right. Let’s go ahead and vote on this. All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the Motion carries unanimously Dale, keep going full steam ahead. But Councilmember Peck.
1:37:21
Thank you. I just I just have a question. A couple of questions, if you don’t mind. On the notifications, Jane, where is the data coming from about the air quality on nosy notifications,
1:37:35
so that he notifications. We’re not intending them to be a way to share data. But we will always look first to the builder err data, that data, as you know, is publicly available online. That’s preliminary data, it is averaged data. And so it may not always show the highest value recorded, it’s kind of has to be summarized in order to make it feasible for them to keep updating that website. But, you know, we want those notifications to be beyond just the air monitoring data, any topics that are coming up that are notable, exciting, whether it’s future collaborations with weld County, or whatever else we do we want those to be included in the notifications.
1:38:18
Okay, thank you. Oh, and one other thing, if you don’t mind, you mentioned that the regulatory air quality standards and the EPA health based guidelines we were in compliance with, can you share with those guidelines? And those standards are?
1:38:38
Okay, um, through an email, or do you want to do it here?
1:38:46
It’s probably easiest to do it on an email I can, I can share you the document that co GS or cdphp rather has produced. If you would like me to include a little bit of the analysis and show the data I can I can do that as well.
1:39:00
Okay, because I am really as concerned about the health as I am the the ozone layer and climate change. And some of those vlccs don’t have an EPA standards at all. So to stay say we’re in compliance is a I don’t know what that means when there are no standards. When we’re way over what is a normal? I don’t know what the compliance or regulatory standards mean. So that would be great. If you could verify what those are.
1:39:35
Yeah, and I’ll I’ll add that. I’m sorry. Councilmember Peck. Thank you for your question. I’ll add that when I spoke with Christy Richardson, the state toxicologist and we were going over these values and the voc concentrations that we saw, I asked her what what is it what levels would we need to reach for you to be concerned and to get more involved and she indicated that if she had seen Levels tend to 100 times higher than what we recorded that cdphp would want to get involved. So just that gives a little bit of perspective on the kind of context that they’re looking at these numbers.
1:40:12
Okay, thank you. All right.
1:40:18
Doctor, anything else, I assume there is.
1:40:23
back to the slides.
1:40:26
Next slide, please.
1:40:31
So there’s been a lot of updates in oil and gas world, I wanted to go over some of the changes that have happened with CGC. Back in March of 2019, the Senate passed SB 19 181. And that required a bunch of changes to the CEO GCC, including a mission change, which required them to change from quote, fostering oil and gas to quote regulating oil and gas. There were numerous rulemakings during 2020 and co GCC came out with a sweeping set of new rules, which were unanimously adopted November 23, of 2020. Now, those rules went into effect just a couple of weeks ago, January 15 of this year, and there’s still more to come, there are three more rulemakings. That will happen in 2021. And those will be focused on financial assurances, fees and workers certifications. Next slide. These are just some of the highlights of what came out of the 2020 rulemakings. There’s increased public participation in the permitting process, new relationships with local governments. They are trying to acknowledge environmental justice issues, they’re trying to look at cumulative impacts from oil and gas. they’ve updated the setbacks from 500 to 2000 feet. So that’s a pretty significant change. They have rules that and routine venting and flaring. There are significantly increased record keeping requirements and notifications that the oil and gas operators have to give. They’re also additional protections for wildlife and water. So let’s talk a little bit about how these new rules will pertain to the city of Longmont.
1:42:20
Next slide.
1:42:24
I mentioned that co GCC has a new rule to end routine venting and flaring. And we do have a couple of active oil and gas wells in the city. So for venting, we can expect to now be notified of any planned venting within the city or proximate to the city, which means that any oil and gas well within 2000 feet of the city limits would be required to notify us as well. And I wanted to talk a little bit about flaring, because we have had some residents that have expressed concerns about flaring at the stamp well, which is northwest of union reservoir. So I want to clarify what the CEO GCC defines as flaring. In the picture on the left, I’m showing a photo of what a flare looks like. It’s a large open flame that releases a lot of pollutants as the gas is burned. And this is what co GCC defines as flaring and what the new rule will prohibit the Standard Oil does not have a flare. Instead, it has an EPA approved device is called an emission control device. That’s what I’m showing in the picture on the right now this device removes most pollutants during combustion, which is why it’s allowed, it does produce an orange glow when it’s functioning. So it’s certainly understandable that someone might be at Union reservoir at night and see that glow and assume that this is flaring. But the light that’s visible at the Standard Oil is from an approved device. So we won’t expect that the rule that ends flaring will change the operations of the standard. Well.
1:44:01
Next slide.
1:44:07
The CEO GCC is also starting to consider cumulative impacts. And these new rules show that they’re starting to think about things more broadly, when it comes to oil and gas impacts. One of the ways they’re doing that is through this increased analysis of cumulative impacts, which has two parts. The new rules call for the creation of a cumulative impact data evaluation repository. And what that is calling for is that cdphp and co GCC are to gather a large repository of data about oil and gas impacts. And to evaluate that, they then have to report to the CEO GCC director by January of 2022. And then every year, they’ll have to give an update on what their understanding of cumulative impacts is. And I was glad to see that they’re going be considering data submitted by government agencies. So this is one more avenue that we can share our air quality data with the regulating agencies and help them understand you know, what we’re seeing in the real world and not just modeled oil and gas impacts. The other part of this is that operator plans will start including cumulative impacts analysis. And these will have to impact evaluate the impacts of air, water, wildlife ecosystems, public health, so very broad. They also have to consider existing wells and provide plans to mitigate impacts the details of how this will work, who exactly will be required to do it, that’s all still being worked out by cdphp and co GCC. So I’m excited to find out how what they’re going to come up with. And of course, I’ll keep you updated on what that process is going to look like. As a side note, this is what I have been talking about with Councilmember Martin, or Yes, Air Quality Control Commission did update regulation seven in 2020. And that has some new oil and gas air monitoring requirements, which will begin may of 2021. And this is all still being worked out details. I’ve been included in some of the meetings with CDP he who will be overseeing this process. And it’s clear at this point that proximate governments those within 2000 feet are going to be allowed to review and comment on the air monitoring plans that the oil and gas companies are putting into their proposals. So I’m excited about the opportunity to potentially look across the city boundaries and hopefully have some input in the oil and gas development that goes on outside of there because we don’t have a lot of oil and gas left inside the city. Next slide. Now for setbacks, one of the most highly publicized changes adopted by co GCC or the new setback requirements. co GCC changed the setback requirement from 500 feet to 2000 feet, meaning that new oil and gas wells will have to be at least 2000 feet from homes, schools, daycares, hospitals, and an effort to understand what these new 2000 foot setbacks mean for Longmont, staff have started analyzing the implications. And what you’re seeing here on this map. There’s a black outline showing the city limits. And then we have green shading over the areas that are covered by the new 2000 foot state setbacks. We’ve also included included the current city of Longmont, minimum setbacks, and zoning exclusions. And then there are properties in which the city owns the mineral rights. And so we have the power to prohibit oil and gas development on those. And you can see that there’s just a few very small areas that are shown in orange. And these are the areas that are not explicitly covered by the state and city setbacks. Staff are really optimistic about this analysis, because these few remaining orange areas are really not conducive to surface operations. These areas would have huge logistical challenges associated with oil and gas development. And then if those companies were even considering them, not to mention that the city would also vigorously oppose any attempt to develop in those areas.
1:48:28
Next slide.
1:48:32
Now that we’ve heard a little bit about oil and gas changes that are happening statewide, I want to come back to what’s currently happening with oil and gas here in the city of Longmont. Unlike many cities on the Front Range, the city of Longmont has used both regulations and legal agreements to minimize oil and gas surface operations in the city. Longmont only has two producing oil and gas wells remaining. I’m showing those on this slide. The stamp Well, number 31 to see is located northwest of union reservoir, and it’s scheduled to be plugged in abandoned in 2021. I did also want to make folks aware that top operating has let me know that they’re going to be bringing a workover rig to the stamp well on Friday. And the reason they’re doing that is the CEO GCC has asked them to get some more accurate downhole surveying. So that’s the reason that they’re going to be getting into the well for surveying purposes. The other well remaining in the city is table number seven, and that’s located southeast of the intersection of quail road and Main Street. And staff are currently in discussions with the Tabor seven well owners about potentially plugging and abandonment abandonment at this facility in 2021.
1:49:55
Next slide.
1:49:59
One of the leading agreements that cities use to eliminate oil and gas in Longmont is the site relinquishment agreement and that was entered into in 2018. In this agreement, local operators cub Creek energy and top operating agreed to plug in abandoned eight existing oil and gas facilities to withdraw forced pooling applications and relinquish the right to drill up to 80 permitted oil and gas wells at locations all around union reservoir. I’m showing those over on the right. Instead of drilling at all these locations around the reservoir, the operators agreed to consolidate their oil and gas service operations outside the city of Longmont. At two locations, which I’m showing as stars they’re up at the top of the map, and those locations are known as oleander and night. In return for this, the city agreed to use oil and gas royalties to provide financial compensation to top operating once all the provisions of the agreement were met.
1:51:02
x slide.
1:51:06
At this time, there’s just a few requirements that remain. Specifically pal number one well awaits final plug in abandonment approval from cgcc. All the work has been done it’s pretty much a paperwork thing at this point. We are waiting on the completion of the night wells outside the city. And the stamp well number 31 to see will need to be plugged and abandoned within 90 days of the night wells completion. As stated in the agreement. Once all these requirements are met, top operating and co Creek energy will be prohibited from applying for or conducting oil and gas operations anywhere in the city.
1:51:47
Next slide.
1:51:51
staffer anticipating that these requirements are going to be taken care of in the coming year because cub Creek energy has announced their plans to begin drilling at the night well pad. In fact, we received notification that they’ve begun mobilizing today. As you can see on this map the night well Pat is located just north of city limits between union reservoir and highway 66. Creek has a permit to drill up to 12 wells there, but the number of wells drilled and the timeline of this process is going to be dependent on a number of factors including rig availability and oil values.
1:52:29
Next slide.
1:52:33
The city of Longmont has a comprehensive oil and gas monitoring program in place. In addition to what I’m going to show you on this slide, we also do regularly irregular soil, soil gas and groundwater monitoring at plugged in abandoned wells within the city. And for these night wells, we have a lot of monitoring that’s going to be in place. I’ll go through these one by one. They’re shown on the map. Right adjacent to the night well pad, we have installed a groundwater monitoring well. And we have installed air quality monitoring sensors. And those are located just about 60 or 600 feet rather from the well. So really close CDP He has also installed their own air quality monitoring sensors. And we’ve also let us know that they’re going to try to bring their camel that’s a mobile laboratory, this is kind of a truck that would park there for part of the development process. We also have three groundwater monitoring wells along the north shore of union reservoir so that we can ensure that nothing is moving in the groundwater south from any of the wells to the north, towards union reservoir. In union reservoir itself, we do surface water sampling whenever we can get access to the lake, so not when it’s frozen over. And then of course, we have our regional air quality monitoring station, research grade, over 25 compounds measured 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. So there’s a lot of eyes that are going to be on this night operation as they move into the drilling process. And that’s all I have for you today. I know that was a lot. But if there’s any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
1:54:24
Elsewhere with that.
1:54:27
Thank you very badly. And Jane, thank you. This was a really good presentation. You outlined a lot of a lot of questions that I had, but I still have not. So when I was reading the rulemaking on venting, it mentioned that some of the reasons that that operators would vent or flare is because they don’t have a delivery line to did closing the delivery line that we had in Longmont. Do you feel that that might be contributing to the flaring and venting of the the whales around you and your reservoir that are actually in weld County? Could that be a possibility? and Harold might know the answer to that, actually,
1:55:16
I don’t know. Well, we
1:55:19
were very motivated to close some of the gathering lines within the city. As many of you know, the stamp gathering line went near school and right, we think that that was a really good thing that we did. There are some gathering lines outside of the city to the east. And I can’t say that I’m familiar with all of those lines. But I believe that they’re most of the wells to the east have gathering lines.
1:55:46
But are they are they being used? That is my question. Okay. So it’s only if they’re closed, that the venting, or flaring would be more prevalent? Am I correct in that or not? It looks like Dale,
1:56:05
Mayor Bagley and Councilmember pack a couple of thoughts on that. So certainly, when we pushed hard to get the gathering line from that stamp well abandoned. And remember, that’s the line that came down through the city, near trail Ridge, middle school and other very sensitive areas. The trade off to that is that for the very small amount of gas that the well might still produce, it has to be burned. And that’s what Jane was talking about the difference between the traditional flaring, where you would see an open flame versus now through these combustion equipment that is approved by the CLG cc in the state. And so there is some trade off. And so I think you’re right to note that we may have some incidental burning of a small amount of gas. The trade off though we think is better to have gotten the line abandoned now, knowing that the well itself will be plugged in abandoned as soon as we can. And it looks like it will be this year. Okay. And to that question, if you’re talking the other wells that are east of union, right, different collection lines that they’re attached to, it’s not the same line that we talked about in abandoning this one. So that was referring to
1:57:42
Okay, thank you for that answer, but I do have something else J. The reason that I am concerned about the venting or flaring or the spikes is because we are looking possibly at 140 plus wells that Crestone wants to put in need near Well, I have in my head where they are but I think it’s often 52 closer to our rec center and museum than then I would like them to be if if we don’t stand strong against the venting and flaring we’re gonna have a lot of a lot more vo sees a lot more methane produced which is affecting our climate and our ozone layer. So I just want that to be on the radar of the city and anything that we can do to push that away from the city away from our county. I would definitely be in favor of because it is affecting it is affecting our residents regardless of where it’s coming from it it does affect us and and the ozone layer. So thank you for the presentation. All right,
1:58:55
all right before until we can all say but I think this council is all in agreement that we were we we are for clean air in Longmont and would want want to limit vo C’s and flaring and oil and gas activity near our borders. Councilmember goggle fairing
1:59:13
Yeah, and I have a question. I think was last year I sat in on a presentation where they had talked about the location of Longmont or even boulder but I think more so Longmont where we are situated between the mountains and the plains do we end up being kind of a pool, a collector of these emissions? You know, particles in the air that just kind of fester in our area. And I don’t know if you can help clarify that or if you know what I’m talking about. And that might explain why and I’m wondering to what are some of the surrounding areas Larimer Broomfield weld even you you had mentioned that, that your public health is out and weld is wanting to do some monitoring. So that’s, that’s great. I would really like to compare the data to know Are we kind of collecting serving as a cesspool for all of these pollutants that just kind of sit over our area?
2:00:22
Mayor badly, Councilmember Hidalgo, fairing it’s a good question. Unfortunately, there are some consequences of our geography, I’m having mountains, right there does sometimes can add to these pollutants, concentrations going up in our area. I think that question will be probably better answered by Dr. helmig, our atmospheric chemist, and he is going to be coming to do a presentation this spring. So I think he could probably explain it a little bit better. But it is an issue. And it’s why Front Range air quality is of so much interest and why not just us, but a number of other communities. And more and more are getting on board want to do this air quality monitoring to understand at this regional level of you know, how’s this happening? Where Where are the precursors coming from just to have a better understanding of how it’s all working so that the regulator’s can address those things going
2:01:17
forward?
2:01:18
Absolutely. Thank you very much.
2:01:23
Dr. Waters.
2:01:24
Yeah, real quick question. 3030. You mentioned, the term you use when you’re talking about the night Well, in its relationship to the stamp while was completed or completion. It’s my recollection that in the agreement, the language was when it’s productive, when the night well is productive, than the stamp well gets plugged is completed, in productive, the same or different.
2:01:51
Mayor Bagley, Councilmember waters, we’ve looked at that language closely. And there’s a little bit of both in there. So I’ve used the word pleated. And there also is a mention of producing in payable quantities. So they’re kind of one in the same completed typically means that the well has been stimulated, that hydraulic fracturing is in place such that it can be produced. So we expect that those two things will happen at the same time.
2:02:18
So for all intensive purposes, the terms completion doesn’t mean it draws out longer than becoming productive.
2:02:27
Now, Mayor Bagley, Councilmember waters, you know, Completion is the is the the act of finalizing the drilling and fracking operations to the well, which is then immediately followed with production. And so you can think of them as essentially, very close in time with each other. And so the follow on would be,
2:02:51
can we now anticipate? I know, we’ve been talking about the Nightmare Night? Well, for a while it is now within sight, or, you know, anticipation of a date of war, it’s productive enough that we can see the stamp Welch, shut down. For plug.
2:03:09
Councilmember waters, I have tried to Press Club Creek for a more definitive timeline. And they’re really reluctant to give that to me. And I think because the price of oil has been so erratic, they want to reserve that right to at any point along those development process, they can kind of close things down and say we’d like to pause until things are, you know, financially in a better position, or firm a drill rig schedule, they may pause. I am expecting that things are going to continue pretty quickly once they actually get started. But it’s anything could happen in this, you know, financial climate.
2:03:49
Alright, thanks.
2:03:50
I think I think the biggest the biggest clue for us will be once they commit to paying the cost to bring a drill rig on site. That’s when they’re spending a lot of money to drill that well. They have got to get the wells drilled, they’ve got to get it completed and producing or they won’t be in business. And so Councilmember waters, I believe, once we see actual activity begin in the form of the drilling of the well, we’ll be able to at least bracket what would be an expected timeframe to reach that, that milestone to plug the Standard Oil.
2:04:39
Thank you. All right. Nice presentation, by the way.
2:04:43
Thank you.
2:04:45
Yes, absolutely. And the kicker in all this one question I asked when I was on site was, can we absolutely determine where all this bad air is coming from? And the answer was, no, but it gives us an idea. So
2:05:01
we do appreciate the efforts and I’m anxious to to continue the project. So thank you very much. Is there anything else Dr. Turner? All right. Well, again, thank you. All right. How long is the waste services
2:05:13
program? Follow up
2:05:14
gonna take?
2:05:19
mayor, I think that’s probably 30 minutes.
2:05:22
All right. Let’s go ahead and take a break. Then we’ll come back into three. Sounds good. All right. See in three minutes.
2:10:44
All right, I’m ready. All right, Bob, it’s up to you, I guess Charles or you’re here who’s talking?
2:11:25
I am. I am ready. I’ll need someone to queue up my slides. All right, thank you. Mayor Bagley, members of Longmont City Council. I’m Bob Allen, I’m director of operations in public works and natural resources. And I’m here tonight to follow up on our discussion from back on December one on our waste services program. Back in December, you had directed us to look at some work that we could do that would be kind of quick strike and impactful for diverting waste and the city of Longmont. And I wanted to review with you some of the ideas that we have and and get your your direction moving forward from here. Next slide, please. I am sorry that this is a very messy slide, I was advised that it still was kind of a helpful slide. So I’m going to direct you to the four boxes with blue font at the top. We have four areas that we believe that we could do some significant work and and I’m going to go into each for these and, and pull it up at a little higher level. So you’ll be able to see it a little better as I move along. But for areas that we think we can work in over the next months and maybe even up to a couple of years to make a difference in waste diversion in the city. The first area here the big one that you heard a lot about in December was this the possibility of Longmont adopting a universal recycling ordinance. That is a program that would definitely take us more time than others and that would result in ordinance that you would have to approve. So certainly between research and getting through final approval, we’re looking at probably a little more time for that type of an effort. Zero Waste resolution, I think I had attached that back in December to the communication and to this one as well. We have a a solid start to zero wastes. resolution for the city of Longmont and Longmont activities and businesses, we think we can do more to move that really into more specific programs that I think would strengthen that resolution. And that’s something that we think we could work on actually fairly quickly and make some difference in a shorter period of time. You heard a lot about hard to recycle programs. And we believe there’s some things we can do in both the short and long term that can make a difference there. And I’ll talk about those a little bit here later. And then education and outreach, very much the same thing. We think there’s some things we can do here that can make a difference. You’re tonight in some of the community comments about there being differing opinions about how urgent or how fast we can work on some of these. And I agree I’m going to present to you tonight what we think we can do with the current staffing levels and with the current you know, work plan that we have but if you want to changes to that, then we’ll have to have that discussion. And Dale rata maker who directs a lot more resources than I have, we’ll have to really weigh in on that as we move along. So Charlie’s also here tonight to kind of help and I’ve invited that he can interrupt me if he has some additions to my comments. So as we move along here, he may also be speaking. Next slide, please. In fact, skip this one, and let’s go to the next one here.
2:15:32
So universal recycling this is this is a concept that really, in effect would provide more opportunities for recycling and compost in Longmont. That’s, you know, the general approach with universal ordinances is that they, they present to the community more options in terms of having more bins for either or carts or dumpsters or roll offs or whatever, so that they can dispose of more recycling, and more composting. The questions here are really get down to what sectors Do you want to target? And what materials do you want to recycle. And those are important because those can become equity issues in a community. So you see here that we would need to look at various alternatives, and engage the community on that discussion and make some decisions in the city in the community as to what provides the best program to divert waste that is most equitable for the community. I want to call out here too, that this is a really interesting concept for Longmont and for Boulder County in general in that recycling is really a fairly well developed market, and it’s a commodity. Even though the market is low on that commodity that’s fairly easy for us to embrace, or to adopt and to potentially proliferate within the community. Composting becomes a little more challenging, because absent transfer stations for organic material and processing facilities, a lot of the waste, which really tends to be the yard waste, which is the largest component of it, is kind of slipping through and making its way to the landfill. Part of the reason for that is just simple economics, you can landfill for around $20 a tonne. But to dispose of composting material for recycling is somewhere around four times that amount. So without more options for transferring these materials and processing them locally, it becomes really more of a food waste program. And you heard tonight and some of the comments that there’s a an impression that even the food waste recycling is could be significant for the community. I’m not going to debate that that needs more research. But that is the complication we have here is that absent the facilities to really handle organic materials. A lot of it gets disposed of at landfills by landscapers, that’s for multifamily facilities for major ways, even from a lot of single family homes. So that’s that’s the topic that really is going to require the most research and the most effort, you know, by our team to work through. Next slide, please.
2:18:53
So
2:18:54
sorry, the animation here just shows that we think that we could begin work on this in earnest, later this fall. And that we’re probably looking at a two year program to actually get to an ordinance that council would act on that would actually then require you some form of recycling beyond just what the city program does. Next slide, please. So another, I think maybe a quicker win, would be to look at long monster Zero Waste resolution, which was passed in 2008. That resolution had a lot of good intention. I guess you could probably refer to it more as a platitude and that it had a lot of good ideas and intention, many of which we have acted on. And if you were to ask Charlie about a number of the programs that we’ve actually implemented since that time to divert waste and city operations, it’s fairly substantial. But there’s a lot more we could do. This would be a good way to actually kind of reestablish that zero waste concept. And to maybe look at more specific programs, you know, that could promote that within the city. So that could include things like requiring Zero Waste at all, or most or some city events. We could do small things like eliminating plastics from city vending machines. Certainly, we would want to align this with a lot of our sustainability program goals, which I think also obligate the city to diverting more waste of all kinds. So there’s a lot I think we could do here. And this would be something that would be a little bit, you know, quicker strike. Could you activate the animation, please, or hit the next slide. So that this is something we propose we could begin in June. And this would probably take a year to get to a new resolution. That would depend on council schedule, and how fast you wanted to move this through. But we do think that the city could set a really good example in the community and do more than what it’s doing and, and work toward a more specific plan here or more specific resolution that would create opportunities to divert more waste in Longmont. Slide, please,
2:21:22
can I can I just pop in? There is that comment? Is it possible to I mean, I’m gonna make a motion. But is it possible for the city just to I assume this council is going to vote to move quickly as possible, given financial constraints and time constraints on staff? Is it possible for staff to begin those preparations and bring something back? saying this is the plan? For zero waste?
2:21:54
Yeah, so I think this is one that we probably could work, work on, you know, move up in time and work on quickly and have an impact, I would have to defer to Dale and Harold has to Well,
2:22:08
I guess, well, I’m not saying I’m not saying to hurry it up. I’m just saying that you said you you lacked. You said you were seeking counsel direction, on the speed. And the which leads me to believe that if you’re asking for our direction, or input, you’re going to get it. And so be careful you asked for. And so my point is, have you thought through timelines, and we can either tell you to come back next week or, but nobody’s gonna say we don’t care. And so have you guys thought about a timeline that this is doable.
2:22:41
So let me I’ll weigh in on this little bit. Mayor Bagley if I can, I think what Bob is going to share with you on each of these four areas tonight, is the sort of the result of a lot of staff dialogue between our sustainability staff and our waste services staff, to try to come to the council tonight with what we believe to be a recommended approach that that we believe we can do good work. And and, and not to get lost on the what can be very complex issues in these matters, certainly when it comes to the costs and the equity throughout our community. And I think what you’re hearing from us is, we think these are all things we’re going to be able to move through. We’re trying to be as realistic as we can with regards to what we believe a an appropriate timeframe is going to be if we do proper community involvement and engagement in the effort.
2:23:52
And right and what I’m all I’m saying is that rather than having a to our counsel conversation, which will ultimately lead to the punch line, the climax is do it as quickly as possible, given financial and time constraints. And so are we going to see a proposal of this is what staff believes we can do that is responsible here the dates here the targets here the deadlines, or do we need to ask you to return with that?
2:24:21
We’re gonna go over that with you tonight. Perfect. And and if your feedback is, you know, the porridge is not quite quite hot enough. We wanted to turn the burner up, then we need to, then we would need to probably come back because we have to then consider that in the context of all the other Climate Action Task Force recommendations that are also getting underway.
2:24:45
Okay, so we’re gonna see some dates at the end. Some perfect I’ll shut up now.
2:24:52
So they the we’ve advanced beyond it, but the dates we had for working on the zero waste resolution. and refining that, or taking it to a next generation was to begin work on that in June. And we think that would take a maximum of 12 months to achieve that. Now, keep in mind that anything we do there, even within the city, which you Mayor directly have some control over, is going to have a cost to it. So for example, if we were to move towards zero waste, and all recreation events, that would have a, you know, a budget impact for the city. So we would need to also vet that with council as well as, you know, a resolution that would specifically obligate us to doing different things and what we’re currently doing. So, the other thing you heard about a lot back in December, we’re hard to recycle programs, and we heard from from council itself that they thought we could do better with this. And, and so we would like to really make, you know, some efforts in earnest to improve the community’s options for hard to recycle items, those are becoming, you know, a bigger deal. Certainly, with a lot of different products out there, many of which are hard to recycle, we’d like to find ways to provide that convenience to the community. Certainly the community has options right now, but they are, you know, generally include a drive, you know, in the Boulder. And so what we would like to look at are a couple things here, beginning with some interim options, that would kind of bridge You know, this kind of gap to longer term options, Interim options, could be going back to working with eco cycle at a different location or different facility than what Longmont can provide in its own ownership, to actually find a way to stage events that could allow community members to actually drive, you know, to a facility or a location and get rid of most hard to recycle items. We think we can begin work on that here in March. And we have some ideas about how we can do that. But I do want to say that longer term options include different or newer facilities than what we have currently. And that’s going to cost a lot of money to develop. And in fact, that could cost more than what the city could afford, independently or individually. So we’d like to spend time researching those options with other stakeholders and collaborators and partners in the county and see if it’s possible that we could either develop independently for Longmont a better facility for hard to recycle items, or in collaboration with other jurisdictions. Certainly Boulder County and maybe other communities that would have hard to recycle items more to the north of the county that would allow more convenient options to Longmont residents, that’s going to take longer to develop. But we would, and we believe that we can start looking at interim options that could replace some of the things that we did before. I do want to say though, here again, that whatever we do needs to be needs to be safe for our residents. And it needs to be safe for our workers. And that’s the real challenge we face. Certainly the challenge we face at our own facilities, we were not able to do that. And so we would need to find options that would work there. Next slide or advance the slide, please. So this is something as I mentioned, we could begin working in March. There may be some budget impact to this. But we certainly think that we could probably be looking at interim options that could be launched possibly later this year. And hopefully by 2021 longer term options are uncertain, hard to recycle, you know facilities like the charm facility in Boulder, you know, those costs millions of dollars to develop and hundreds of 1000s of dollars to operate. And so we would need to look at the best best way we could collaborate with others to do that or what we could do maybe on a smaller scale along. Next slide, please.
2:29:36
So there were quite a few comments back in December about increasing or enhancing education and outreach in our programs. I think this is one that can also be a quick win for the city. I think we could enhance some of our participation in the art and contribution to the greenstar program with the st vrain Valley School districts. I think this would be something that we could begin conversation on quickly with eco cycle and the school district, something we could begin in March. There are other elements here in education and outreach we could certainly pursue. And we have been. And that includes, you know, more regional collaboration, and more convenience, even on the city’s own website. Overall, any changes we make in waste services in these three other areas I already discussed are going to require a lot of aggressive outreach to make them work. And so we would be prepared to also move to to promote and market any changes in any other area. This, you know, could potentially be a have a budget impact and something that we would bring back in the budget cycle. But we believe for now we have resources to work with to expand this even in 2021. Next, slide or advance, please. So this is something we could begin work on immediately. And we think we could have some impacts fairly quickly. Next slide, please. So the other thing that we we briefly touched on back in December is the discussion of rates. I mentioned at that time that our current programs do not require changes in rates, to have the revenues to be able to continue at the levels that we are. But any changes in those programs certainly could require rate changes. More importantly, is that any incentives to divert more waste could could lead to changes in the Pay As You throw rates that we currently have. Our suggestion is that we hold off on that for now. And let us do work in these other areas. And then based on the work and the findings in those other areas that we come back and then discuss, you know, the revenue requirements. The caveat here is that the waste management fee could certainly be modified at any time, if council desires to fund other programs or facilities, it could lead to advances in those three areas that I’ve already or four areas I’ve discussed. No primarily assistance programs that could fuel our universal ordinance or new facilities or modified or, you know, re developed facilities that could lead to more options for how to recycle items, or composting opportunities that we don’t currently have or offer. So the waste management fee could potentially be a, you know, a revenue generator for those purposes. And we would ask for specific council direction to look at that, to look at changes in that waste management fee. Next slide, please advanced. So our suggestion here is deferring changes in rates, but possibly consider changes in the waste management fee. And next slide, please,
2:33:25
if I could jump in here real quick to Bob, I think one thing we always try to do with the council is to certainly put
2:33:37
in front of you, all of the different rates and fees that we believe might need to be adjusted. I am aware of other areas such as our storm drainage, utility, potentially, and our electric utility,
2:33:55
where we may
2:33:56
also be faced with the need to adjust rates, I think it’s best that counsel, if you want us to move forward to look say at a waste management fee, change that could be applied to say accelerating the universal recycling effort. That’s good. If we could do that in the context of everything. We think we serve you better by putting all that information in front of you. If that makes sense to y’all.
2:34:30
I guess that that does make sense, I guess. So I guess what I would say is what exact so keep in mind that we only see the budget for the most part once a year to it’s very lengthy and boring and don’t pay attention 80% of the time. Three, we’re not experts on the ground every day. And so I’m going to ask what I always asked for the last decade which is what does staff recommend we do you know, the capabilities staff knows what the budget is what we need. We certainly are aware of what this council feels we need to do in regard to the environment composting recycling, trash collection, etc. What can we afford to? So what what can we afford to do as far as bringing the rates down so that we can maximize the effectiveness of these programs that we just went through? What do you guys recommend? That’s what I want to know.
2:35:19
Mayor, if I could help with that, I thank thee. We certainly will come to you with with that kind of the discussion, we will, I would propose we do it similar to way we did the water and electric rate adjustments, wherein we had our staff come forward in a series of presentations, so that the council could really thoroughly understand the basis for the need of any changes, and then understand the options that were in front of you. before we’d ever put in front of you to say, Well, you know, go ahead and just increase that thing, two bucks a month. So that would be the process that we would want to go through with you.
2:36:01
Perfect. So the question becomes, do you need direction to do that? Or is that on the plan? Or is that coming?
2:36:09
I think as we end the discussion tonight, we certainly do want to get that kind of direction from you. On which of these to initiate and whether or not this timeline makes sense.
2:36:21
I okay, well, I’m not going to hold off because we still have some more presentation. Councillor Peck?
2:36:30
Thank you very badly. Correct me if I’m wrong, Bob and Dale, but I thought I thought these four options were in front of us. And we would choose which one or ones we thought county staff should go ahead with. I I personally don’t think that we’re going to do all four of them at once. So in order to put a price tag on this is not it’s not feasible. So I do have questions, though, about all four of them before I personally would would recommend, wait, which direction we would go? Um, so
2:37:12
can I respond to that? Just?
2:37:14
Absolutely. Yeah, of course.
2:37:17
Councilmember pack that’s absolutely understand that, I think what’s inherent, we do believe we should be paying attention to all four of these areas. Correct. We also believe that there’s a certain amount of analysis and research that needs to happen, before we’re ever going to be in front of you to say, Boy, you know, this is the one you better go with first, because it has the biggest gain. And this is what it’s going to cost. What we’re trying to tell you tonight is here’s the universe of the four big areas, if you will, this is the timeline that we think we actually do have the capacity to work on all four of them. Okay, are not proposing to try to do them all at once we’re trying to do the ones that think of him as sort of the low hanging fruit, the ones that we can get after quickly. While at that time, we’re also gearing up to do that, that additional analysis that needs to happen. We want to be very thoughtful as we do this, because we know our community is already stressed with with the costs that they have in front of them. So we’re trying to be very, let’s put it this way. We want to be aggressive, but we want to be careful. We do not want to price anybody on the floor. And so we’re trying to balance everything here so that we get the best environmental impact as soon as we can.
2:38:47
Okay, can I ask my questions about these four? Just very short.
2:38:54
Just hold on one second. I’m Dale, how much how much? How many more slides? Do we have to go?
2:38:59
I’ve only got a couple more.
2:39:01
So my question is, do you want to ask him now or do you want to wait just a few more seconds or minutes, john?
2:39:06
Oh, wait. I would thought he was finished. Thank you. Okay. All right. And then
2:39:12
can just wait everybody wait two seconds or two minutes customer reliable fairing? You have something to ask now.
2:39:19
It’s so before you move on, I actually do. One of the things I want to know is has research been done to look at state or federal federal grants to fund some of these opportunities in addressing Zero Waste goals.
2:39:37
Great question. Councilmember Hill doggo fairing? I don’t believe we have. But as you know, we will. We will aggressively go after any kind of funding we can. I can’t sit here tonight though and tell you that we’ve looked at the universe of all the options. I am sure there are grants out there. We would be very competitive and going after if we do good work and setting up a really solid program.
2:40:08
Okay. So that would be something I’d recommend the other one and around education and outreach is are we working with groups like alchemy, de intercambio hope our Center for so they can implement the zero waste in their organizations, because they connect with a lot of people in the community. So when and you model, you model, what you want. So people see that, Oh, this is how we do it. It’s not that hard, or, you know, people kind of buy into the impacts, but it’s very little effort from our part, as a citizen, to make great gains in and clean, zero waste, and contributing to a clean environment. So, you know, I know we don’t want to really subsidize, but maybe provide incentives for some of our nonprofit organizations to do zero waste. And also to with a well, I’ll let you answer that one first.
2:41:14
mayor and council I’m, that’s one of my slides coming up. But But indeed, yes, and that’s exactly why starting with zero waste with the city of Longmont is a good way to start because we become the example that others can follow, and we can help them follow it.
2:41:31
And then also working with our nonprofits, and also to when we want to address the issue of inequity. And you know, I think about apartment complexes, mobile home units, multi unit properties, where they they don’t have those opportunities, really, unless the land, the landlord or the developer, you know, the development company, whoever owns that facility, unless they buy into it. So what can we work? How can we work with those to have to increase that zero waste capacity? So those are kind of the things that that kind of burn and are etched in my mind, as we kind of move forward in how to address this.
2:42:19
So
2:42:21
Councilmember Hidalgo, fairing, I think you’re hitting exactly I saw Lisa Knobloch, bring your camera on. That’s why we’re bringing together people like Lisa and Carmen, and Bob, because it does take all of us getting together in order to move ahead with a focus on equity, and doing this in a way that everyone has an opportunity to participate. And that’s, and that’s a little different. For us. Our history is not, I’ll be honest, we haven’t done great at that we can do so much better. But what I think now we we got the talent, we’ve got the staff, we just need to do the good work.
2:43:07
And I think we have the desire to do it. So I I really appreciate the responsiveness and how everybody’s willing to, to go above and beyond. So I you know, I want to recognize that as well. So I’m throwing all these things at you. So
2:43:22
if you just want to jump in real quick, if I can Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Hidalgo, fairing, especially the things that that you just mentioned, are very much a part of the Sustainable Business program that I know you’re familiar with, and working with those entities into, in particular that you mentioned. And there are some rebates available through the Boulder County PACE program that Bernice brings to that work. And she’s always working on expanding the effects that she’s engaging in that program in particular.
2:43:51
Oh, boy, I just, I’ve just just one thought is I would definitely focus on the vaccination rate, before we work on zero waste. All right, let’s keep going.
2:44:08
May or you have Polly has her hand raised is there. Do you want me to continue or
2:44:12
I can wait. I’ll wait till you’re done. Let’s wrap it up. And then we’ll we’ll go back and hit everybody on council as questions and comments.
2:44:20
All right. So my comments here were that we suggest that we wait on looking at rate changes or rate modifications, but there’s possibility we can discuss sooner, waste management fee modifications, and we would like Council’s direction tonight on whether or not that’s something you’d like us to work on. Next slide please. So I want to talk a little bit about our residential program. for composting. I think you all know it’s a voluntary program. We have you know, we’re hoping to have about 25% penetration with that program. As a voluntary program, the evidence does not support that it will grow much beyond that, with it, staying in the same status it is today. So we would like to review changes to that program in the context of this universal recycling study. As a matter of fact, the universal recycling ordinance could cause Longmont to change its program, and may very likely do that. So we’re not we’re not forgetting about that or dropping that off. But that would be part of the research, where we would look at how that could change whether or not you know how easy we can serve multi families that maybe currently don’t have the facilities for that. Various customer needs, for example, those who don’t really have a yard and only have food waste, do we have different rates for that? Do we deal with that equity issue, the impacts of, you know, changing the rates, if we embed that into, you know, most of the community members or our subscribers of subscription, we would need to really take some time and research that we believe that’s the best way to do that. And that’s going to require analysis all the way down through community engagement. But we’re not, we’re not dropping that we just would incorporate that into that research. And, and I think as Dale said, earlier, a lot of this work really is going to fall on the plate of our business’s service business services program, which is really another way of saying our sustainability program is going to be taking the lead on a lot of this. The reason for that is that Charlie and I are here presenting tonight, but we are leading the operations piece of it, the business piece of it, and the analysis piece of it really fits in a different, different program. And they’re going to need the time to do that. And the schedule we’ve given you really reflects their workload currently. I think that some of the work that we can do on the operation side, we can probably begin in March and work through more quickly. Next slide, please.
2:47:15
And, and so anything we do, I think is going to require some level of consideration for assistance programs. If, for example, you want to move toward universal recycling, you can certainly pick the sectors that you would target with that as a council. Or you could look at assistance programs that could help for example, nonprofits, or affordable housing units or small businesses that maybe couldn’t afford these initially, to help those programs, or help those entities actually, better, you know, comply with an ordinance if we were to change that and mandate certain types of recycling or composting in the community. I’ll have to say, though, we currently do not have the funds to do that. So the only way that we could do that would be to increase rates or increase our waste management fee. Thank you heard tonight from a community member who said that there are other communities that do have greater waste management fees and than what Longmont has, and that is true. Certainly, one of them that that I’m aware of is the city of Boulder that does have a higher per month fee for residences. But they also expand their waste management fee or what what they call it out to commercial and multifamily entities as well. So they’re able to collect quite a bit more revenue to help with these types of programs. And I know they’re, they’re fairly popular in Boulder, if we are going to divert organics, and we’re going to work with landscapers to do that that’s a fairly marginal, marginally profitable business, and ask them to divert waste from landfill at $20 per ton to a composting facility, which is currently $80 per ton in Boulder County, they’re probably going to need assistance. And I would say that that’s the bulk of the organic waste we wanted to divert, though I think you’re going to hear from other community members that the food waste itself is still substantial and could be diverted a little easier. But that notwithstanding, if we’re going to to really promote new programs, I really think that we are going to have to have assistance programs that not only are more substantial than what we have today, but would go beyond just targeting our own subscribers and other community members that might be influenced by a ordinance change. So, next slide, please. Our plan on this program is to continue to come back and kind of inform you as to where we’re at. And to get your direction as we move along. If we work in all four of these areas, I think as Dale said, we can do that. As long as you know, we, we either have the schedules that we’re asking for, or you change our priorities, so that this maybe becomes a higher priority. But we’re still going to need direction as we move along, we want to make sure this is relevant to the community and policy input is going to be very important to anything we do. So much like the last presentation, policy input is critical to what we do. It’s not just the science of waste diversion, or the the practice of it, it’s what best fits our community. So we’re really going to need your help. And we intend on coming back fairly regularly. We’ll keep the sessions short, the presentation short, you know, within 20 and 30 minutes and and hopefully get relevant feedback and, and be able to use your input to guide the program. And that concludes my comments.
2:51:18
All right, can we get the screen back? All right, great. Let’s go ahead and start. Councillor Martin. I believe your hand was up first to begin with Councilmember Christiansen?
2:51:26
Um, yeah, Bob.
2:51:28
I’m hearing both in the in your presentation in the discussion,
2:51:31
everything
2:51:32
except what I want to know, which is bang for the buck? You know, we have we have the the potential environmental impact of each of these types of waste diversion, and we have the cost of getting it done. And to me, that’s primarily data and potential impact on long months economy.
2:51:58
Those are the things that we need to,
2:52:03
to know to make a decision about which program to emphasize,
2:52:06
how soon Would you be able
2:52:08
to do that? Mayor Bagley,
2:52:12
Councilmember Martin so I want to make sure I understand this. I think what you’re talking about is the the impact to the environment or the the positive. Yes. So that would have to be part of the analysis. And I’ve talked about it qualitatively. For example, in the composting side, you know, the yard waste is going to be the bigger component of that programs that don’t target yard yard waste will have less of an impact. We have worked with a consultant in the past, in fact, the last time that rates were changed. Dr. SCU mattes, who lives in Boulder County, has advised us advised us considerably on those types of impacts. She’s done a lot of research and work for US EPA and other state agencies. So she is somebody who’s advised us and we would need that type of advice, again, as we move forward. So that would be part of the analysis we’re talking about.
2:53:11
And if I could add to what Bob’s response was for Councilmember Martin, I absolutely understand and appreciate the question that you have there. How can we possibly know which one to go forward on if we don’t know, you know, the biggest bang for the buck. So it is a it’s a sort of a little bit of, you know, chicken in the egg thing. What we’re trying to say is, here’s the universe of the big four things that we think we need to focus on. We think if we can make advancement in each of those areas, we’re going to substantially change the diversion rate of our community, out of the landfill, and then to different cycles, right, different waste cycles, whether it’s composting or recycling. Saying that, however, is one thing. I think at the end of the day, we know that the environmental gain is you keep stuff out of landfills, you keep it from generating methane as it goes into the landfills. You hopefully put into systems that reuse materials as opposed to simply recycle. I mean, I think we need to, it’s really a transformation of the of the way people think about materials about waste. I mean, we use the term waste. You know, the future is going to be a very different dialogue. It’s going to be around. It’ll almost be bad. I mean, people will frown on you, I tell you, if you’re not reusing everything, as opposed to simply recycling something because there’s There’s the additional cost and energy and everything involved to try to recycle material. So I think what we’re trying to say, We want the council to hopefully bless us. Well, that might be a little too weird. But we want the council to understand that we see this is sort of the the high level universe of the areas to work on. We are trying to put it into context of a timeframe that we think we can do it in partnership with both the council and the community, so that when we come forward, we’re hitting on all the cylinders. We haven’t missed, you know, a good sector of our community like Councilmember Hill boggle fairing is making it a big point about all of that takes a very thoughtful and careful look. And as Bob said, we would want to bring in experts to assist us in that. Right, we’re generalists were sort of like your general practitioner, we are not the expert doctors. And so we know how to do that. I think bringing in the sustainability team, along with our operational side, along with Carmen and her staff on the equity side, I think we’ve got all the right elements to do good work. And I can see frustration in the council tonight wanting us to be able to say, Okay, let’s do the recycling ordinance first. Because we know we’re going to get a you know, for every dollar we invest, we’re going to get 80 cents back or whatever. We’re just not there yet. We’re trying to be timely and get back in discussion with you so that you know what we’re trying to do. So that you can redirect us if you think we’re on the wrong path. Now would be a good time to say, well, Hell no, don’t don’t focus on that right now. Do this. But I think we’re trying to give you that sort of across the board look. That’s realistic, again, in the context of everything we’re doing across the organization.
2:57:14
Alright, Councillor Christiansen and then Councillor, pack your next.
2:57:20
Su Dale, bless you. I thought this was a very good, a good slide deck. And I also thought the white paper was very helpful in explaining the complexities of some of this stuff. I think what we need, and I think it’s perfectly feasible for us to be for us to be working on all those things. At the same time, I mean, it’s a complicated issue, but there’s synergy between them. So that’s a good thing. And I think we need to be talking about the circular economy as you said, Dale. Now it’s not just recycling, it’s not using so much in the first place, repairing things that are broken. Secondly, and just, you know, reusing and reusing. I had a couple of questions. First of all, how is Boulder County? The compost facility that they’re thinking of doing? Is that is that coming along? Is that would save us a great deal of having to drive things out to Hudson, or Henderson. Bob,
2:58:34
can I address that directly in council members, Christiansen.
2:58:39
It’s been moving along.
2:58:40
But it’s boulder County’s put that facility on pause as they’re reevaluating some costs and some, you know, location situations. But as far as I know, as we spoke of it at the archive meeting, it’s on pause, as boulders evaluating, you know, good steps to take forward. But to bring back what Bob was mentioning earlier in the presentation, you know, regionalization is really the approach to some of these things in the future, whether it’s compost or hard to recycle facilities, because, you know, if we do a hard to recycle event here, we’re going to get non residents coming. So
2:59:19
equity in that and all that.
2:59:20
So I would be happy to provide further updates to that as they come forward. But that’s where we are today. But support for that facility would be
2:59:29
good to do. I
2:59:30
know the Ark is supportive of that and
2:59:33
has mentioned that to the communication. I know that there’s a group that john Caldera, of course, has given platform to who’s against that they say it’s going to destroy open space and whatnot. But so I was just wondering whether that had anything to do with her putting it on pause
2:59:55
for the day. I’ve heard that they have definitely run into some land use issues on the conversation?
3:00:01
Well, that’s a shame. Because that would really help. We have to drive our compost way far away right now, which makes it very difficult. So in the white paper, you mentioned that the waste diversion centers really, we’ve really outgrown that. And I love the waist version center. But I understand So, um, do you have a proposed alternate place?
3:00:34
mayor and council? That’s a really, really, really good question. So consider a waste diversion Center, the one we currently have that didn’t, for example, have to take green waste any longer. That could open the door for a stain at that location and doing something different with it. The only problem at that location is that anytime you need to be moving a lot of traffic and trucks near a railroad tracks, and then you’re backed up as we are to Third Avenue, you’re always going to have challenges. Yeah, so that doesn’t mean that that site will work forever. But it could work if it was done differently. If you asked me my my personal opinion, is that it probably should move one day.
3:01:28
Okay, but you’re not thinking of moving it right away.
3:01:32
We are not in that would all be part of this analysis. And that would really take city council to direct us on on, you know, based on the options we present on what to do with them.
3:01:44
Okay, so, um, it would be a lot of waste, of course, is I mean, we all produce waste of one kind or another, but a lot of waste is produced by commercial companies, and especially construction companies, and there’s no place to recycle construction waste. Isn’t that something that we could do effectively for the NBS center for that and make money off of it? I know construction guys just they don’t want to recycle anything. They just throw it on a big dumpster? And but if they had to? They would, you know, um, we have? I was under the impression that we had a state preemption event about the city could not be in competition with commercial waste. Places, is that correct?
3:02:43
America and council that is correct. But that wouldn’t really prevent us from having, you know, facilities that could really help with recycling and disposal of materials that could be diverted. You know, for waste purposes, what we can’t do is we can’t go out and compete with private haulers, on on, you know, requiring others to use our services and
3:03:09
require businesses. I don’t want to do this right now, because they’re all having quite enough trouble as it is, but we could require them to recycle and compost. Indeed, you
3:03:22
can you just can’t require them to use the city’s Oh, I
3:03:25
see. Okay, operations to
3:03:27
do that. Yes.
3:03:28
Well, that might be something. I mean, it wouldn’t help the city’s bottom line any, but it would help the planet’s bottom line. Because we have so much food waste, for instance, from hospitals, schools, restaurants, it’s just enormous. And supermarkets. And if we could divert some of that to compost, it would be enormous. And that’s what I would like to see is this. And I but I would like us to put that off until we’ve recovered economically because that’s just impossible for businesses to have one more burden right.
3:04:13
And the timing by the way for doing this research is really good right now because I don’t think programs would be phased in until you know we get past some of the current challenges economically we face here.
3:04:27
Okay. Well, I do I really do think that I thank you for the white paper that was very interesting. And I also do think that we you guys can work on little bits of this all simultaneously. I mean, you guys multitask with like all of us all the time. So I really want to thank you for this presentation. I think it was very good.
3:04:55
But waters.
3:04:57
Thanks very badly. I don’t know if I was in sequence. I I thought you’d call it somebody else. I’m happy to differ or
3:05:03
think does it? Do I think that I think it went from Marcia to Polly. Joan, your hand was up, but he didn’t she
3:05:12
think you’re next I think right. So I appreciate the presentation well, and all the information, I’m just trying to get an understanding Bob, of the Gestalt here, or, or maybe there isn’t a good show, but I know you well enough to know you didn’t go into this year. Without it without a pretty well developed plan to make progress across the board in all these areas. I’m guessing. So I it’s like I can’t I’m trying to listen now. Are we talking about new goals? Are we talking about? expanding goals? Are we talking about? Because you went into the year with goals and objectives? I have no doubt about that. So when the question is comes up about outcomes, or bang for the buck, for me, My mind goes to an outcome, you know, you’re going to have something we’re going to accomplish in relationship to what, what, what your goal is, and then you’ve talked about as you talk about public engagement, that with you, they have process objectives, and you’re going to have some performance objectives, which means you’re going to have some ways to measure progress. In in all, if all that is in relationship to the budgeting process, then when we get to the budgeting process, we’re going to look at a plan that says, Well, here are the then kinds of objectives. If you want to accomplish this, this is what it’s going to take if you know, then you need this kind of money, or, you know, we’ve got a whole series of those that have to do with scope and scale and sequencing and then resources. It just feels like we’re kind of piecemeal in this and I don’t know, I’m trying to track it. I’m just sharing with you. And with with Dale and with Harold. It’s got to come together in what the heck, where do we want to be 10 years from now? And what do we have to do now and next year and over the next nine years to get there. And if there’s going to be a radiant crease somewhere in that process? I get what Dale is talking about this, you know, we we’ve heard a lot about water rates and electric rates. And Dale and his crew did a great job of taking us through, you know, you sequence that in a way that even with even with the concerns people expressed, at least, at least I had, I think counsel had in those in the community who were listening had a pretty good understanding of what we decided and why we decided it. And what the long term interests, what long term interests were being served as a result of those decisions, as painful as they are to implement. It seems to me that that’s the approach we’re going to be taking here. But but this just feels like it’s a kind of a it’s come together in a way that I think Bob Allen’s mind works. some idea of how his mind works. And I don’t know how much of its political politically driven. But I at some point in time, I don’t know how we get to all the answers. You’ve talked about Bob without laying it out, both in terms of process and performance. And then what are the ends if we’re going to budget for it and sequence it in a way that achieves what we want to achieve over the next decade?
3:08:23
If I may,
3:08:24
that was a rant, it wasn’t a question.
3:08:27
I would like to respond to that, Dale and Bob. Yeah. So you’re right. I’m an engineer, I love you know, deterministic solutions, I love Cause and Effect. And unfortunately, this is a different journey. So and this is going to be a journey. And it’s going to change path from time to time. And the reason for that is that we are a nation and a world of waste generation. And the first thing we have to do is change habits before we do anything else. And so a lot of what we’re talking about is really related to changing habits. So any of you who’ve been in business for a while you understand that what they call the S curve of innovation, where you spend a lot of money, at first to see the returns on that investment later. That’s what we’re really talking about in our community is changing habits. And moving away from this disposable world that we live in. And it’s going to have a cost to it, it’s going to have controversy to it. It’s going to have some false starts, it’s going to have some things that we we probably will scratch our head and said, Gee, I wish we would have done that a little differently. But we don’t have in that environment, perfect knowledge of that cause and effect. So we’re going to have to work that journey a little bit. But you are correct and that these are things that can be articulated in terms of the budget, we can bring those to you systematically. You can see See what we know about them at that time, you can tell us we don’t know enough yet or we’re comfortable with where you’re going. And then you can weigh in on it really every step of the way. And we will do the best we can to inform you of what we know and what we don’t know. So that when you make a decision, and council member Martin, this kind of goes to your comments earlier that you at least know what the the risk is, and the certainty or lack of certainty about what’s going to really happen. But first and foremost, this is about changing habits before we really can start articulating the changes and impacts to the environment.
3:10:37
Gonna just make one more observation or maybe a question. Yeah. Is it fair to assume that you’re working on all this stuff? Now? The question, I mean, are you Is there anything that you’ve talked about tonight that you’re ignoring? It isn’t part it’s set up somewhere in your work plan this year?
3:10:55
mayor and council know we’ve been talking about all these things for a long time. Yeah. However, and I want to remind you, Longmont, sanitation is right now, a fairly small focus program on curbside services, it is not the do all end all four solid waste generated in the community. It’s primarily built around a subscription program for curb for at the curb. And we were able to use the waste management fee and some access from that subscription to fund these other additional services, which are pretty small, the waste diversion center being the largest. So anything that we do beyond that is taking us a little bit into a broader direction. And it’s really a little bit less Longmont, solid waste and a little bit more Longmont sustainability, and Longmont comprehensive plan and other things that are really dealing with all these other environmental factors that we’re dealing with. I hope that made sense.
3:11:56
Yeah. No does. It seems to me, what we’re talking about then is pacing is the pace of this or in the scope of the work, and maybe the sequencing of it, so we can get into discussions about resourcing and setting priorities. And that’s, you know, it seems to be part of the IF THEN scenarios, scenarios, we’re gonna have to look at, in all that’s going to tie back to what’s going to get the best outcome, right, and how you’re going to measure that. So I look forward to those conversations, when they you know, when they occur as a run up to the budget, or, you know, as we start to put meat on the bones here, but I know you got a lot of process objectives that you’re going to have to work your way through or process to work your way through, as well as more performance, like
3:12:45
Harold said, we’re gonna say, and then Councillor Martin, and I’ve got a question.
3:12:48
Yeah, I think to answer several questions at council talk about the, you know, anchor on Councilmember Martin’s question, bang for the buck, these types of issues. I think what you’re hearing us say is a here, this is our solid waste model today. This is what we’re asking our SolidWorks model to look like over time. And the timeframe they gave you is really developing, what will it cost to do some of these things? That’s the work we have to go through the IF THEN, then we have to understand what’s the impact on rates, so that we can have that that comprehensive conversation to bring that answer back to you. This is there’s way too many variables. And to think that in a couple of months, we can say, Well, here’s what this is going to be. And here’s what the rates going to be. And here’s where we’re going to go. It’s not feasible for us to do that. And what we’re saying is we’re going to start building if then statements over time, this is not a singular budget year discussion. This is a multiple budget year discussion, as we said, the targets 457 10 years down the road. And that’s what they’re laying out to say we can start moving through all four of these, some will move faster, some will be a little bit slower. But here’s the process. So we can then start taking you all through the IF THEN conversation, so that we can say here’s your bang for your buck, here’s what we can do. And here’s what it means. Because we know there’s a lot of cost associated with this expansion of that operation. I mean, that’s that’s how I’ve been seeing it and been part of the conversations in you know, so that was just my thoughts to help bring some clarity to that.
3:14:36
Right, Councillor Martin and Councillor Peck. Marsha can only say anything if she admits.
3:14:47
That’s the new rule.
3:14:49
You can’t say anything unless you unmute.
3:14:55
Okay, so my spacebar was not letting me unmute just why everyone to know that I know how it’s supposed to work. It wasn’t working.
3:15:05
So I’ve been using my house in a very small way as transitional housing. And one thing I learned by doing that was that if every Monday I didn’t go and inspect my bins, while I had the other people living in my house that didn’t see didn’t understand about separating the waste streams, I was going to be costing the city money if I put those out there, the way they were. And so I think that it’s probably a maybe a shorter, quicker bang for the buck to try to fix that. And I mean, I had my I had my this is how you recycle poster on the door into the garage, you had to pass that poster to get to the bins didn’t help a bit.
3:16:05
So I’m interested in how much it costs us. Because our recycling streams aren’t,
3:16:14
aren’t
3:16:14
pure enough, aren’t clean enough, aren’t aren’t properly separated. And if we could
3:16:22
do something about that, in the short term, while we’re studying the bang for the buck, on the more ambitious efforts,
3:16:29
I think we could save ourselves some money. So that’s I think that’s something to consider.
3:16:37
and jump into that one of the things I forgot to mention to council earlier, you heard me talk about God acts and john hopkins on some of the other stuff. This is that world. And one of the things they actually bring to the table as a group called behavioral insights, the behavioral insights group, I think they’re out of the UK. This is the type of stuff we want to start working on because they bring a completely different perspective in terms of that very point is how do you shift behavior. And it’s a skill set that we have take advantage as part of the Kovacs work we’re doing. So that may be one of the things we can resource pretty quick, and bring into the conversation, we will need to work with Becky and talk to him. But that’s a resource we’ve never had. And Harold, that’s a great point, I was going to say the same thing. It was a it was a really good day for Longmont. We were hosting with john hopkins university this this webinar, and we heard over and over how Longmont is really sort of setting setting the pace on on how to have a very efficient city that’s databased on how it makes its decisions. And so yeah, Becky Doyle, another strong individual in our in our staff, who quite frankly, is stretched really thin. I wish I had about five Becky soils where we could move things at the pace that I know the council wants things to move at. So we’re trying to do that we’ve got really good talent right now. And I know we’re gonna do really good work. It just doesn’t happen immediately. That’s that’s our challenge.
3:18:31
All right, whose hands down? I think your hand is literally yellow and up the first time I’ve seen that. Good job.
3:18:40
Thank you very badly. Um, first of all I want it was mentioned in the public comments that you may want or if you want some council person to advocate and collaborate with Boulder County on these issues, I would be glad to volunteer. So whatever, whatever time you need that to happen, let me know I would love to work with you with this group. But I’m on the waste I have. I have a comment on every one of these. So if you just bear with me on the waste services, I’m kind of curious as as our city grows to be more urban, more dense, we might end and this was brought up before about the private vendors like Western disposal, etc. That’s where we’re going to find our biggest waste to be quite honest in the in the apartment complexes in the restaurants etc. So what I would like to hear from this is the cost differences. What does Western disposal charge a large apartment complex versus what would we charge? And I don’t think Western disposal I’m only using them because I don’t know of anybody else. I don’t think that they do anything but trash pickup. I’m not sure they do recently. Coal or compost? So that’s what I would like to hear out of your research. What is the difference in cost? When we get to the zero waste from the presentation, I only saw that it was how the city could do zero waste. Why isn’t this universal zero waste, for example, incentives, or maybe just an ordinance for all of the styrofoam containers that restaurants use for all of the plastic bags in our city. And going through this, we have so many great organizations that would love to take on one of these projects only one, like getting rid of plastic bags to help the city out instead of just putting this on staff. So when you do research these these areas, I would like this to be not just the cities are always but universal for our for Longmont. And then the HTA hard to recycle, I think it’s probably something we have put on the back burner, but it would be interesting to have the cost. And I would like us to work with equal cycle for a different facility. Eco cycle does a great job. And I think we should be working with them on every issue. Pay As You throw in right changes, that should really be on the very back burner, it’d be okay to research it. But I can’t see raising these rates until probably 2023 to go on the ballot issue on 2022. Because 2021 is not. Now that’s not going to work. They’ll get defeated. So be interesting to know what those rates should be or could be, but I wouldn’t put a lot of research time into that
3:21:54
right now at all.
3:21:55
So that’s it. Thank you very much.
3:21:57
Thank you.
3:21:58
Thanks, Councillor Peck. Okay, so here’s my question. And my question is, could staff bring back a proposal, proposed timeline that does not impact small businesses, the current COVID economic climate? And that would still provide some sense of forward momentum in each of these areas, meaning not all of them, but you could record low hanging fruit compared to what’s less expensive? What’s more expensive? And give us a give us a recommendation on on what staff believes. I mean, if we’re here, can we go here? Should we go here? How much would it cost? And, and, and just if we if we go to hear what where is the definition of here before? You know, just what we’re dealing with in terms of COVID and the economy hurts people. That’s personally what I would like to see
3:22:56
is that possible? Mayor Bagley at in three areas, that is entirely possible, the areas of the changes in the hard to recycle program changes in the zero wastes, resolution, and changes in education and outreach are things that we are predominantly already funded for. Okay. And this crossover crosses over into some of the comments that Councilmember pack just made, it’s going to be a universal ordinance, that’s going to be the trickier one, there is no way to have an ordinance. So. And, Joan, if I may, Councilmember pack, if I may, the best way to target zero waste in the community is going to be through the universal recycling ordinance. The Zero Waste resolution only obligates the city business to a certain practice. We think that’s important. But that at a resolution level only obligates the city to do certain things, you have to have the ordinance, which would be the universal recycling, and push that out to the community and Mayor Bagley, that’s going to be where the financial impacts going to come into play. And that’s where the work and research is going to take more time. There’s probably not a quick strike there without an impact to business. dividuals.
3:24:20
So what you’re saying is that to truly be effective, we need a universal ordinance, but it will probably be more expensive, certainly than not.
3:24:32
Right. for business.
3:24:33
Yes, it
3:24:34
will be it will be more impactful. Right. So I guess my question for counsel is, do we want to tell staff to hold off until the COVID pandemic and the economy recovered a little bit? Or do we want to proceed? council member genik Councilmember pack? I don’t know why I called you Councilmember Jeff. No idea was a slip of the tongue.
3:24:56
That’s my son’s name not works.
3:25:00
Harold, as far as the pandemic goes, as far as staff goes, is this group that we’re talking to tonight? Are they involved in in the COVID, relief COVID pandemic, as much as other parts of staff.
3:25:15
I’m
3:25:16
not all the time, but sometimes depending on when issues come up, they may be. So for example, if we have a vaccine clinic, and we need people to organize traffic and things like we pull different people at different times, I think to answer that question, Bob said, set the timeline. And I think the timeline was three years from now. Exactly. I think what we could do is really look at that to go. Can we pull it in? But I don’t think there’s any way feasible if we absolutely, I mean, unless we just stopped doing things. We could get it done within a year. And so I think it’s more realistic to say, if we can get it done. I mean, let us look at that, refine it. If it’s work, we can start now knowing that it’s going to take longer for us to get to it. But we’re going to start working on it today. And we’ll break each one of these down into a another layer of detail. So we give you that that look at what that means. Because as Bob said, low hanging fruit education, we can start that now we can start implementing that now. We’re ready to do it.
3:26:22
And I would that I would move that we that I would move that we direct staff to proceed with those preparations on all four areas, keeping in mind the universal ordinance. But to bring it back when staff feels that our community and our businesses are prepared financially to undertake the seriousness of the venture.
3:26:43
And Mayor Bagley, I believe the schedule that I gave in my presentation by enlarge, does that right? Okay. So, for example, the universal ordinance, you know, that you’re talking about, to the day where you would possibly approve an ordinance, you’re talking about a lot of work and research to get there. That’s, that’s it, that would be two years from September. Now, the issue you face is that you do have community members who have a sense that it is more urgent than that, and we could move more quickly. And we could even with the schedule we have, there are certain things we could do that would and could move more quickly. For example, recycling, there’s not a lot of debate that recycling of commodities, right that generate revenue are is a good thing to do, you could start a universal ordinance that focuses just on recycling to the sectors that you want. And then you could phase in organics later. Or you could do just the opposite. Or you could do phased in certain sectors. Now in other sectors later, you can start with commercial and large multifamily and move to nonprofits and affordable housing and things like that later. There are all kinds of options there. And some of those could move more quickly than others. But I just want to remind you that the public, some members of the public are going to push you to to work more quickly on this,
3:28:11
like I think, I guess what I’m saying all i’m saying i get that to me, it’s not quite I’m not saying more quick, less quick. I’m just saying, Let’s go and do this as quickly as financially possible. Understanding that we can’t snap our fingers and do it today. We don’t want to wait a decade. But I think it’s reasonable to believe that staff should begin. And I don’t think anybody on councils an expert on how to do it. And so we need to rely on staff, and rather than talk about it, let’s do it. Anyway, that’s my opinion, but nobody seconded it.
3:28:47
So
3:28:48
trying to second
3:28:50
damage, but I want to have
3:28:53
a friendly amendment that So with that, I want the quantification that I asked for before Oh, yeah,
3:29:00
that’s so absolutely. How much is it going to cost and what’s the bang for the buck? Is is everything
3:29:07
it is
3:29:08
yes. So but basically it’s it’s we’re we’re not cooks we’re we’re we’re eating eaters. We like our we consume this council mice, at least myself, we like a buffet say, here’s your buffet, bone appetit. And if we don’t like it when it comes forward, we say something. But other than that we rely on staff, Councilmember Christiansen
3:29:33
I’m just to remind people in case people aren’t aware of this. For several years now, the state legislators have been working on banning plastic bags, and styrofoam. And it’s much more efficient to do this on a statewide basis. And a lot of the manufacturers in the restaurant people and hotel people understand this. They understand this is where it’s headed. But they do also have to have time to phase things out. Because you can’t just say to somebody who’s bought, who just bought 30,000 plastic bags, oh, you can’t use those, you know, they have to, there has to be a phase out time. I think that they’re probably going to pass that this year. I hope they’ve been trying talking about this three years now. So hopefully, we’ll get those two things passed. And then if one state does it and other states are doing it, that’s how it works is to get it done on a statewide basis. And then manufacturers simply create different different products, and different products have already been created to take the place of non recyclable plastic bags.
3:30:52
Thanks, Councillor Christiansen.
3:30:54
So there’s a motion on the floor that has been amended to direct staff to use its expertise and sound judgment, to look at each of these four areas and come back with a plan that is financially responsible or fiscally responsible? And and that will not put an undue burden on on staff and our community. And that also presents the the the costs the bang for the buck, so to speak. As soon as soon as staff feels it’s it’s reasonably necessary. So any further debate on this? All right, all in favor, say aye.
3:31:38
Aye.
3:31:39
Opposed say nay. All right,
3:31:42
great.
3:31:43
We know it’s not gonna happen lightning quick, but it will happen. So thank you very much. Anything else? Dale or Harold? I know you were kept trying to raise your hand, Harold, but sorry, motion on the floor. Go ahead. Aaron, what else do you want to share?
3:31:58
Now the only thing I wanted to say is how important that community involvement process is going to be through this. And one of the things that we’ve learned recently, we talked about it online equity and these other issues, is really refining that to make sure we’re getting into every area of our community and the community involvement process. So I just wanted to bring that out that that’s another component that has to be embedded in this.
3:32:23
I’m sorry, distracted Heraldo. Just look at how awesome. Aaron and Polly both looked in their hands. And then Joan, so no. Okay. Thank you, Harold. That’s great. All right. Let’s get ready for mayor and council comments. Who would if you’re wearing a hat, you automatically get deference first. So we anybody want to say anything? Marin council comments. Her she doesn’t want to say Councilmember Christiansen
3:32:48
I just want to say visa be the hats. two wonderful books have come out this year that are really like love songs too long one, and they’re both terrific. The one is by called Long Island by Eric Mason, and you can get it at the museum. And the other one is about boulders. I mean, non mud parks. And it’s by Paula Fitzgerald who of course is Yay, yes. Miss parks. They’re both really terrific. So you know, you might want to pick them up.
3:33:24
I purchased I purchased them and they’re sitting on my coffee table in my office. So pretty cool. All right. Who else? council member council member although faring?
3:33:33
Well yeah. And actually I am using them in my classroom. Because third grade, we do local history. So this one and this one and I’m waiting for my copies. I have to go to the museum to go pick it up. But um, so one thing I want to just comment, just a shout out to our city staff. I don’t know, you know, being a public employee, being an educator in a COVID world, it has been so I am thinking of everything I’ve gone through in my life. It has been really difficult this past year. And I have seen great educators just walk away. I don’t care about their or I don’t care about my retirement. I don’t care. I’m out. And it’s heartbreaking. So I think about anybody My heart goes out to anybody who’s working with the public on a day to day basis and that includes the people that we are in charge of their care. And so I just I just want to express my heartfelt appreciation for everything you do. I send out an email and I’ll get a response right away. I’ll reach out to rob spend low delete you know interim police you he calls me right away. You know, I’ll take last Friday, I ended up taking the day off just so I can meet with folks on staff. And, I mean, it was just like, immediately, and they’re taking the time having in depth conversation with me. And I know it’s taking away from other words, they need to be done. And I just I really, to address issues that are important to me, and important to, to other to the Hispanic Latino community. And I just, I really, I really appreciate it, and, you know, keep up the work. And, and it’s not going unnoticed. So that’s, and, you know, to everybody out there, you know, just execute patience. I think we’re all doing the best we can, given what we’re presented with. And, and we’re, I, I see that everybody’s really trying. And, you know, I’m, I went through my draft box, and I looked at my inbox, and I actually have, I’m getting more drafts, I start emails that I never finish, because I get distracted, and I never come back to it. Or even by text, I’ll start a text and I never get back to it. And, you know, and I try to keep on top of things, but it’s just, it’s been so overwhelming. And, you know, just be patient with us. And we’re trying, and I appreciate everything that you all are doing. So thank you.
3:36:27
All right. If there’s no one else, we have a motion
3:36:32
to adjourn. All right, who made
3:36:36
that customer Martin? All right. Customer Merton made the motion customer Peck seconded
3:36:40
it.
3:36:41
Anybody want to debate it? Discuss it. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the Motion carries unanimously. We’re done at 1030. And we’ll see each other next week. Thanks, guys.