Longmont City Council Study Session – August 3, 2021

Video Description:
Longmont City Council Study Session – August 3, 2021

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.

Read along below or follow along here: https://otter.ai/u/Rc6tPb4bd4INpqmhEqmmgN4QgiA

Unknown Speaker 4:53
Hi

Unknown Speaker 4:58
Alright, let’s go ahead and get started.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
It looks like we’re all here. But actually Susan’s not going to be here tonight.

Unknown Speaker 5:05
Alright, let’s

Unknown Speaker 5:08
let’s get going and

Unknown Speaker 5:11
get here. Alright, let’s go ahead and call tonight’s meeting order welcomed August 3 2021. study session for city council. Can we start the roll call please?

Unknown Speaker 5:22
Mayor Bagley here Councilmember Christiansen Councilmember doggo fairing. Councilmember Martin. Here. Councilmember pack. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. And Councilmember waters. Mayor, you have a quorum. All right, great. So let’s go ahead and say the pledge.

Unknown Speaker 5:41
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the topic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Unknown Speaker 5:52
I find it amazing that we can do that. So in unison, but on the zoom calls. It was a mess. So it just Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 6:02
All right, and then Let the record reflect that Councilmember Suzy toggle fairing, is enter the building, and she’s taking your place here at the Dyess with us. Alright, let’s go ahead. Just reminder, you can also view the meeting at WWW dot Longmont colorado.gov anyone wishing to speak during public invited to be heard, last chance to get your name on the list outside. So go ahead and sign up. The call and feature as of August 1 will no longer be available now that we’re back to in person meetings. So let’s go on any motions to direct the city manager to add any agenda items. Customer customer Christiansen.

Unknown Speaker 6:43
I would like a brief update on the COVID Delta Darien variant and what the school system is going to do in two weeks and that sort of thing and how we’re handling it.

Unknown Speaker 6:56
From the city manager.

Unknown Speaker 7:02
Okay, heartless. That’s right. That’s right. Let’s go ahead put it I meaning I was getting to say the same thing. Let’s have a, I don’t know if you get that tonight, or if you’re ready for that. Or if you can, I can do a quick overview. And I

Unknown Speaker 7:16
said let’s do that because I know that

Unknown Speaker 7:19
I know that we’ve gotten a lot of questions on on that. So okay, good enough tonight. Okay. Counselor Christensen. Oh, yeah. All right, clean. Alright.

Unknown Speaker 7:30
Okay, then let’s go ahead and move on to public provided to be heard.

Unknown Speaker 7:35
So we’ve got a shortlist tonight. But let’s go ahead Kathy Kemper, you’re up first.

Unknown Speaker 7:45
And if you could each state your name and address. That’d be great before you begin and then we’ll start your time.

Unknown Speaker 7:54
go nuts. actually go right there. And then Um,

Unknown Speaker 7:58
let’s see here. I don’t think I can control that one. I don’t have the magic numbers.

Unknown Speaker 8:06
Per file. Right. That should be good. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 8:09
Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Kathy Kemper. My address is 524 nesting crane lane here in Longmont. I live 460 feet from the night well pad

Unknown Speaker 8:22
in Longmont. And the purpose of my time tonight is to provide some feedback to you on the fracking operations in long man specifically those next to my home. My spouse and I built this house at the end of nursing crane lane for the quiet and solitude of the street. The space in the views we enjoyed watching the neighbor cows graze to our east Little did we know that the plans to develop that property were in progress for energy production. finding out that our neighbor had sold his mineral rights for development was a shock and I worked really hard to learn as much as I possibly could about this potential operation. Unfortunately, it was a little too little too late.

Unknown Speaker 9:00
What I learned that this developer cub Creek energy was strategic, they pulled a permit to drill a 24 well pad six weeks passage six weeks prior to the passage of House Bill 181. I highly doubt this permit would have been issued under the new rules under that bill.

Unknown Speaker 9:18
Although we were told by the technology company supporting the developer that those impacted would be allowed to comment and informed when it was time to do so. The process and communication was very unclear. We learned too late that we missed our window of time to make a comment who we were not

Unknown Speaker 9:36
who were we not to trust the experts in the field of how that process occurs. Again, we were all learning on our street and in the neighborhood. Not that comments from any of us, or you know or near the site would have changed anything that happened. But to have the opportunity to voice our concerns should have been an easier process and I know that this council was involved quite a bit back in the 2016 1718

Unknown Speaker 10:00
With everything that occurred with, you know energy drilling in the area. Let’s fast forward to September 2020. When the drilling began, the spud drilling was not so bad I didn’t think it was. But it was the giant rig that came in February of this year that marked the beginning of the true process.

Unknown Speaker 10:17
It’s nothing like the idyllic political commercials touting how clean, safe and low impact these drill sites are. They are loud, bright, smelly, swirling rumbly rumbling

Unknown Speaker 10:32
operations of activity that never cease. For me, the worst was the constant vibrations. 24 seven, my house vibrated all the time, almost imperceptibly to the point that I was doubting myself that it was really occurring.

Unknown Speaker 10:46
But it was enough to make my skin crawl, especially in some sections of the house. It wasn’t till I returned from a week of travel in March, that I realized it was for real, and it really was affecting my, my mental and emotional health in this house. Fracking began last week. And the most annoying piece is the misguided fracking trucks who rumbled down our street because they claimed that GPS sent them they’re backing up on the cul de sac at 1am, in an attempt to turn around and leave, or better yet, the few that tried to access our driveway last September, thinking they could get to the drill site from our house in our property. And let’s not forget the potential amount of time. You’re out of time, but I do not. I do know that this council is very sympathetic to what you’re saying though. So thank you very much. Thank you very much to the city for providing the support agency with with Jane Turner and her team. They have been amazing and really great. So thank you very much. Thank you. Laurie, Ashland or Laura Ashland. I’m sorry.

Unknown Speaker 11:55
Thank you for allowing me to be here. It’s great to be represented. A little closer have very low voice. I will be brief. I’m it this is not as big a deal is very variants in school openings and drawings. But I noticed as a traveler along Main Street, that there are some parking issues between the avenue of 10th Avenue and Eighth Avenue, especially around 10th Avenue, where cambio Tori’s has a building. And there are three parking spots right on main street in front of these businesses, as should be. But there is space to park in on right on 10th. There’s no signs so people could park in these open spaces. And Cambria Tori’s has their own spaces signed off. But what happens is, we have traffic coming down Main Street at about 30 to 40 miles an hour, and they’re dead stopped to get into Dutch Brothers. There’s no way to form a line to the side. So my suggestion is Is there any way to look into. And I know parking and Main Street is very difficult right now. And it’s a whole issue. But maybe the experts that could work on the parking, I feel like those three parking spaces should be not there. Because their clients customers can still Park around the corner. And there have been rear ends there, there have been all kinds of trouble because you’re flying at a certain amount of speed. And if you don’t expect to stop. And this is like the Starbucks line for Dutch Brothers to get to get in and it’s just a dead stop. So I’ve been wanting to talk to you guys for about three years about this. And I just see this keep happening and happening. So I thought I’d bring it to Council. And also in front of Sherwin Williams between ninth and eighth. There are two parking spots there that are not necessary. People are losing their mirrors. They’re so close. I mean, it is such a hair breath between the side of your car and the parking there. And there is plenty of parking space between Sherwin Williams and the vacuum cleaning shop there. And plenty of parking space. In those businesses that kind of runs they face south. They’re not on Main Street. And I realized that they have to have a place to be, but on the street is seeming to be very dangerous. People are getting out of their cars and those cars go by so quickly. So I thought I would just have bring it to your attention. Maybe somebody could take a look into especially by the Dutch Brothers, and the Sherwin Williams block. Hey, thank you so much. Thank you. Alright, Sean Malloy.

Unknown Speaker 14:42
Good evening. Sherry Malloy. 2113 rangeview Lane. I’m here tonight as representative of srls Zero Waste committee. Our ZW team has helped promote composting signups organized our monthly community cleanups and held in person events and presentations about the city.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
ours, rethink refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot in the last 18 months with COVID. We’ve done several webinars including food waste and the climate connection, living Zero Waste lifestyle, food preservation, and most recently one called the scoop on poop in other unmentionables. We’re committed to Longmont being greener and cleaner by empowering people to become active in earth and climate friendly lifestyle choices and changes. Why am I here in December staff gave their waste presentation and several of our ZEW members spoke to various aspects of long runs waste program, with concrete suggestions for improving services for residents while diverting valuable resources from the landfill. With commercial trash factored in, we’re spending 76% of the trash we generate in long run to the landfill. 80% of this can and should be recycled or composted. Our SRL team has identified three priorities. These include one to provide universal residential composting like recycling, to require multifamily units and commercial recycling by establishing a universal recycling ordinance, and three to significantly significantly improve outreach and education.

Unknown Speaker 16:22
We’ve also included re establishing hard to recycle events and adjusting subscription rates to provide more incentives. All of these continue to align with the city sustainability and Climate Action Task Force plans. incorporating these priorities will make a big impact to provide the most benefit to increase landfill diversion, and to combat global warming. to fund these needed improvements, we need to increase our waste management fee. Our fee is ridiculously low at 296 per month per household in Loveland where their diversion rate is double ours, residents pay 1150 a month. Our committee continues to be grateful for the continued willingness of staff to communicate with our team. We’re happy a hard to recycle event is being planned. While we’re disappointed in the timeline for developing language for a universal recycling ordinance. We’re glad this is moving forward, along with strengthening the rather weak Zero Waste resolution passed by another Council in 2008.

Unknown Speaker 17:25
We’ve had 13 years of the carrot with very disappointing results, and it’s high time for stronger political will and policies. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 17:36
Thank you, Miss Molloy. I’ve got a sly can’t read the last name here because it’s smudged Bart. I monopol. And then whatever that last letter is

Unknown Speaker 17:48
odd. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 17:51
We shall Well, I wanted to come back now because I want to know his name is

Unknown Speaker 17:55
all right. And I guess we can’t call him this last person. He didn’t put his last name down. It just says Strider. So without knowing who that is. We’re going to go on with the rest of our meeting. Mr. Benson, come on up. Come on up.

Unknown Speaker 18:14
Strider benched 951 7/10 Avenue.

Unknown Speaker 18:20
A couple of things, I’d like to point out that

Unknown Speaker 18:25
there’s a quasi extension on the rent moratorium for two or three months. So people who are almost on the on the verge of being evicted, right now might have another two or three months to find a job or get functional.

Unknown Speaker 18:48
There are so many things going on. I’d like to speak more locally. But I just learned today that two more capital policemen committed suicide that in recently, that makes, I think, five who have committed suicide of the travesty and the

Unknown Speaker 19:13
you know, dealing with an insurrection at to destroy the United States as a viable entity and democracy and as a Republic

Unknown Speaker 19:25
is that the consequences are still going hardcore.

Unknown Speaker 19:32
The

Unknown Speaker 19:34
up there were

Unknown Speaker 19:37
up a caucus later in Congress was arrested because she was singing.

Unknown Speaker 19:47
Bishop BB Burke got arrested again today because she went to the Capitol. But the 15,000 the mob of 15,500 or more who in

Unknown Speaker 20:00
invaded the Capitol to destroy our country. No one was arrested that day, even though at least five people died as a result.

Unknown Speaker 20:12
And

Unknown Speaker 20:14
let me

Unknown Speaker 20:16
my friend, Jimmy Cod, you’re

Unknown Speaker 20:20
who I learned afterwards is, was 19 days older than me. And we’d met on the march Montgomery, page seghers wife took a photo of us that’s on the cover of a record album freedom songs, Selma, Alabama, Jimmy to get out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, his black man, he lied about his age and joined the Air Force when he was 15 years old. And so he would already served its time and been out before the Vietnam war god full scale. And he got brought down from Chicago where he was a folk, singer and blues singer. And we met on the march on Montgomery. And he’s the one who got me out of jail at midnight on my 21st birthday. Otherwise, they would have killed me there.

Unknown Speaker 21:17
Jimmy died about two years ago, and I haven’t seen him since that night.

Unknown Speaker 21:24
Thank you

Unknown Speaker 21:27
very much. Thank you straighter, always appreciate you. Alright, let’s go on to special reports and presentations. And if we can have just, Harold, what’s going on with

Unknown Speaker 21:38
I mean, I’m i was uh, I was stuck on a plane, they weren’t letting anybody, even US citizens back in the States, unless you had a, you have a test that says your COVID negative, even though I’ve had COVID. And I have my two shots from Pfizer, so I want to know what’s going on.

Unknown Speaker 21:56
We’ll try to pull this over.

Unknown Speaker 22:03
Mayor Council, this is a little harder for me now that we’re not online. Because before when we were I had big screens, and I have small screens now. So it’s a, it’s a bit of a challenge for me.

Unknown Speaker 22:16
So we’re going to start off with where we are right now. And in terms of the vaccination rate within within Boulder County. And

Unknown Speaker 22:26
when you look,

Unknown Speaker 22:34
we’re at 79.4% on the vaccination rate. And that’s actually really good when you when you look at where a lot of places are from a county perspective. As you dig into it, and you look at the vaccine doses administered, today, we’re averaging about 302, you can see there’s a substantial difference where we were

Unknown Speaker 22:54
earlier in the year. And then when you look at this, this is really the breakdown on vaccination by age in Boulder County. And so the good news is, when you look at that 50 Plus, you can see that we’re over 86%, even 40 to 49.

Unknown Speaker 23:09
And then it really is the 12 to 29, where we’re lower, and then obviously zero to 11, because vaccines haven’t been approved for use in that age group. And I’ll touch on that a little bit. One quick slide. So you can see the vaccination by race and ethnicity. And you can see that there are differences in this arena, I would point out the carbon is still working with Boulder County Health and trying to to do that, you know, what was really interesting for me is Saturday, we had

Unknown Speaker 23:37
an event and night out event Atlantean Park, and we were providing vaccines there, they actually provided 23 vaccines at that location. They were actually believe it or not really excited about 23 because in most locations, they go to their their happy if they break double digits to kind of get a sense of what’s happening in the world. When you look at vaccinations across the metro area, you can see 73% of the 12 plus population is vaccinated. And so we’re spending a lot of time on vaccinations because really, that’s starting to be the crux of the conversation as we move forward. This gives you a sense of what’s happening in Boulder County. And obviously, we’re still working to drive that percentage up. If you look at this area, in terms of where it’s dipping into Longmont, and we’re focusing on that, hence Lanyon park the other day.

Unknown Speaker 24:30
When you look at cases, what’s everybody responding to? You can see the uptick in the curve in terms of the number of cases. What’s interesting is if you really put it in perspective, based on what we saw from the beginning, you know, when we were moving up that peak, we would have been happy with this number at that time. This is the big piece of information. So when you look at it, the majority of the cases are actually associated with a Delta variant.

Unknown Speaker 24:57
And this one’s hard to read what I

Unknown Speaker 25:00
I can tell you is when I look at our wastewater monitoring it is corresponding with the number of cases that we’re seeing in the end. And what we’ve heard is the Delta variant is the dominant variant in in the state of Colorado and probably everywhere else.

Unknown Speaker 25:16
And, you know, I’ll talk a little bit about what they presented to us later, case trends, you can see what’s happening in the case trends. And you can see the age group that’s really spiking, it’s zero to nine. And I think if you hear about the Delta variant, and what’s really going on in that one, versus the wild variant is, younger age groups are more susceptible to it. And so when you hear me say wild, the wild variant is really the original strain of the virus that came in. And then delta is the current strain that’s dominant in the area.

Unknown Speaker 25:49
This is an interesting chart, because if you look at among youth, and this is right, per 100,000, and then the count, you can see that last week to the previous week, we went from six to 12, and then five to nine, we went from six to 29. But then when you look at that 10, to 17, the numbers are a little bit different. And that that does sort of correspond with the vaccination rate that you’re seeing.

Unknown Speaker 26:15
In comparisons of age 05, and six to 11 and 12, to 19, Summer 21 and 22. You can see the differences where this is we’re seeing it more within the younger age groups.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
And then when you look at it broken down by race and ethnicity, you know, really the good news in this chart is it’s more proportional to the population compared to where it was at the beginning of the pandemic. And then when you look at the breakdown by communities 25% of the cases in Longmont, 35% in Boulder, but what you’re really starting to see as those other communities that have traditionally been smaller segments of this are actually larger segments of this. And then we get into hospitalizations because this is a key number. So when you see level blue, that’s what the governor really talked about in terms of water those triggers as we look

Unknown Speaker 27:06
to additional steps in this. And you can see that in the dark, red line, Boulder County is still below the metro area. But the metro area, while we’re increasing worse, worked quite a bit lower than we have been in previous points in the past. And then when you look at deaths, they remain low, I think the actual number,

Unknown Speaker 27:29
let me look at a different piece of information.

Unknown Speaker 27:40
We’ve had seven deaths in Boulder County since May 1, for a total of 263 days. So you can see that it’s different.

Unknown Speaker 27:50
And then testing is now starting to go up. But you can see the positivity increasing. And that’s really a quick look at the data.

Unknown Speaker 27:58
What I will tell you is Thursday afternoon, we have an administrators meeting and they called a special meeting last week to kind of get tell us here’s what’s going on. I think everyone’s waiting to see what’s going to come down from cdphp and Boulder County Health on this issue. So we will know more Thursday, we’ll obviously communicate with counsel.

Unknown Speaker 28:20
What what’s really interesting about the conversation is this is about vaccines. And when you look at the numbers, and you look at

Unknown Speaker 28:30
when there was another piece of information, I wish I would have had it well, we’ll find it and send it to you all. When you look at the actual numbers of those, there are breakthrough cases. So you got to start there. There are breakthrough cases for those that are vaccinated. That’s actually not unusual with any vaccine vaccine. I think the efficacy rate of this traditional flu vaccine is like 50 60% at time. So we know there’s breakthroughs through cases. But there’s when you look at it on a percentage basis, there’s not a lot of breakthrough cases. And then as you start diving down into the data in terms of hospitalizations, and deaths associated with those who have been vaccinated, the numbers pretty low. And so this really then is based on what we’re hearing is really about vaccines. And so I think everyone’s trying to reconcile right now, where do we go in the future? And what does that look like? As as they contemplate additional orders?

Unknown Speaker 29:29
And how that’s gonna come out.

Unknown Speaker 29:33
The crux of the conversation is really this. What they do know about the Delta variant is that people who are vaccinated can carry it and can get sick. The belt, the Delta variant, what they’re finding, and people that are vaccinated tend to have more copies than they did with a wild variant. More what was copy so a copy isn’t the amount of virus that they have. And so when we look at our wastewater, we reported in copies

Unknown Speaker 30:00
They do have more copies compared to what people who had the wild COVID virus had. And then it’s then impacting those that aren’t vaccinated. And that’s tending to be what they’re seeing that’s driving the numbers. And so I think that’s what everyone’s trying to really wrap their arms around right now is, well, what is this mean? And how do we move forward?

Unknown Speaker 30:24
Because

Unknown Speaker 30:26
if you’re vaccinated, you can get it, you can get sick, you can get hospitalized, and I believe there have been a handful of deaths. But when you look at it, numbers wise, it’s much different than those that are unvaccinated. And that’s really the crux of the conversation. And we’ll be briefed on Thursday. In terms of how they proceed. I know that they’re having conversations with the state, and locally about how they approach schools, and what that’s going to look like, especially because of the zero to 11 age group, which haven’t has not been authorized for a vaccine at this point. So I really think within the next week or so we’re going to, we’re going to hear more information. I told you I was going to be out next week. This is probably one of the meetings that I’ll jump in remotely, to see what’s going on during that timeframe.

Unknown Speaker 31:16
But we’re waiting to see, we’re evaluating what that looks like for our organization and how we move forward. I’m hoping within a day or so to have an approach that we can utilize to continue to encourage folks to get vaccinated and how we’re going to work and serve our residents on a daily basis.

Unknown Speaker 31:39
That’s a quick overview. If you have more specific questions, I’ll be happy to answer those.

Unknown Speaker 31:45
All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, let’s go on to longer Economic Development Partnership quarterly report.

Unknown Speaker 32:01
Alright, and then when we’re when it’s done, I guess who wants to thank the thing to presenter.

Unknown Speaker 32:08
Take turns. If you do that job, your

Unknown Speaker 32:14
screen is covered.

Unknown Speaker 32:18
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 32:21
Good evening, Mayor Bailey and council members, Jessica Erickson president and CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership here to provide our second quarter report.

Unknown Speaker 32:33
If I can figure out how to use this nice digs. By the way, this is my first time here.

Unknown Speaker 32:41
Alright, so I’ll start out by reminding you all of our contractual strategic objectives economic development organization for the city of Longmont, which includes strengthening long months competitive position through implementation of our economic development strategy advanced long about 2.0 marketing Longmont, nationally and globally as a premier destination for industry and talent supporting the creation and retention of quality jobs, particularly within our targeted industry sectors, advancing opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation and advocating on behalf of all Longmont businesses.

Unknown Speaker 33:14
And so our work plan on an annual basis focuses on three of the areas of focus of the economic development strategy, which are talent, industry and impact.

Unknown Speaker 33:25
So I’ll start by talking about our work in the talent focus area. Our first objective is related to recruiting and retaining talent, marketing and recruitment being objective 1.1.

Unknown Speaker 33:39
I’ll remind you that we in 20, my timing is off in late 2018, I believe we launched or no, I’m sorry, early 2019, we launched a economic or I’m sorry, a talent attraction, national talent attraction marketing campaign. What we’ve recognized and what we’ve heard, both anecdotally and we’ve seen in data is that COVID-19 has shifted, how and where people work and how people make decisions about where they live in work. And as a result, we’re working with our marketing contractor to adapt our campaign in a post COVID world. And we anticipate launching a new kind of people first campaign leader this month, actually at our board meeting on Monday.

Unknown Speaker 34:18
1.2 objective 1.2 is to improve workforce perceptions of Longmont. we closed our workforce perception study. I’ll provide a little bit more detail on that in a later slide. On July 10, we had 207 responses to that survey this year versus 62. In 2020. We released preliminary results and our full report will be presented to the Longmont EDP board meeting on August 9 2021. So on Monday, your council members Martin and waters are representatives from council but you are all welcome to attend that if you’re interested in more detail.

Unknown Speaker 34:54
relative to our workforce perceptions study, just a reminder of what we looked at with that is

Unknown Speaker 35:00
The perceptions of our local workforce related to both lifestyle factors a set of lifestyle factors as well, as well as this set of career factors that we present to them. As part of the survey, the two questions that we ask is which of these factors matter most to you in selecting a place to live? And second, how do you rank long lines relative to each of those factors? So I’ll point out a couple of things on this chart, I realize you don’t see the grid lines that I see, we have four quadrants that we’re looking at. those factors that are extremely are very important to people, where Longmont is not performing excellent or good. And then extremely, very important where we are performing well. And then not so important, and not so great, as well as not so important. But we happen to be performing very well in from a workforce perceptions perspective. So I think that’s surprising to anyone. Cost of living and housing affordability remain the top in terms of importance, as well as where long one as a community, from a workforce perceptions perspective, is not performing very well, where we saw the most significant transition is that housing availability piece used to be in the very important quadrant, and we used to be performing very well in a year ago. And now housing availability has been added to cost of living and housing affordability as a place where it’s very, very important to people, but we’re not doing so well, from their perspective. The other most significant shift from a lifestyle factor perspective, has been that almost 100% of respondents to this survey noted that safety within their community was extremely, very important, which was not the case at just a year ago. And so certainly that is impacted by all of not just COVID, but all of the events of 2020 that have really resulted in some cultural shifts.

Unknown Speaker 36:55
And then when we look at career factors, most of those factors have remained the same year over year in terms of what quadrant they appear in. The one that does not is the wages factor. And I think that’s just an indication of reminder that this is a perception study. So wages haven’t gotten worse, in Longmont since 2020. But I think the national conversation around living wage and what people accept as a living wage in combination with the overall increases in cost of living, and cost of everything in a post COVID world have impacted how people perceive their wages at their jobs here in Longmont. Again, we’ll have more details including a full breakdown of the demographics of the study at when we present the full report on the Knights.

Unknown Speaker 37:42
Our second talent objective is to develop an industry and future responsive talent infrastructure, which includes objective 2.1, looking at talent, intelligence, data and infrastructure. So we recently completed our elevate Longmont surveys, which is our existing industry survey that will ultimately result in our suite of industry report, and found that 79% of our respondents which our primary industry employers, identified finding talent with the right skills is the top workforce challenge that they face today. We hosted a skilled workforce executive roundtable on the 29th was 7%. Seven participants, and results from the survey in the roundtables are undergoing an analysis and will be published in our state of industry report in mid September.

Unknown Speaker 38:26
Objective 2.2 is supporting our existing talent systems. So that’s our school district, our workforce development in our community college system by putting information about the availability of those resources in front of prospects, that we’re working with both existing industry and those looking at relocating or expanding into Longmont. And so we’ve continued to do that very aggressively throughout the year this year, we are I want to point out migrating to a new CRM to better facilitate tracking, not just the fact that we’re putting this information in front of folks but what they’re doing with it and what the outcomes are.

Unknown Speaker 39:03
going next to our industry objectives. The first is primary industry expansion and retention, objective 1.1 there is the use of state and local incentives. We are going to pick back up the work actually later this week of looking at the city of Longmont incentive ordinance to better align that ordinance with the vision goals and priorities of the community relative to how we’re investing dollars in future projects as incentives. And we have seen the approval of no new economic development center so far in 2021. Although we may have some in the near future. I do have some North Metro Enterprise Zone data later in this report as well. And then our second objective is relative to generating prospect leads and with the goal being 50 on an annual basis and so far this year, we have generated 24 new prospect leads and I have some more detail about that again in a later slide.

Unknown Speaker 39:57
So looking at North Manor, North Metro

Unknown Speaker 40:00
enterprise zone. So far this year, we’ve had 265 businesses pre certified to use the program. And you’ll see that we’re not meeting metrics on all of the other categories, because the first step is pre certification, then the next step is certification. So we’ll see as people file their taxes later in the year and actually claim those tax credits, we’ll see those numbers of certifications and tax credits used go up.

Unknown Speaker 40:27
And then, oh, sorry, as of the end of q2, we had 18 active prospects in our primary industry pipeline that represented the potential for just over 3500 jobs that average wages have at $3,663. With the potential to add $1.8 billion in capital investment into the community. We do have a handful of announcements that I can share with you. Of course, we saw the announcement that AGC bio is acquiring the Novartis campus also known as the former AstraZeneca former Amgen campus so we have another pharmaceutical company that starts with the letter A that will be acquiring that campus. We are optimistic because AGC is growing very rapidly internationally. And they are a contract pharmaceutical manufacturer so they’re not dependent on a single product or a single drug for their long term viability.

Unknown Speaker 41:21
We also had McKesson a health IT company signed a lease for 32,000 square feet, an existing aerospace company honeybee robotics, expand by 14,000 square feet, and cool beats ice cream will relocate their manufacturing and distribution from Denver to Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 41:41
provide a little bit of detail on the elevat long month survey results, we had 42 respondents and we’ve provided some detail about the size from both unemployment and average annual revenue perspective so you can get an understanding of who the respondents to this survey are. So average number of employees 74, average annual salaries, 73,000, and average

Unknown Speaker 42:06
annual revenues of just under 5 million.

Unknown Speaker 42:10
The top takeaways from that survey are no surprise that housing affordability and cost of living are the top issues that primary employers are facing today. Because of its impacts on because of the impacts on our ability to recruit and retain talent. Number two being talent supply shortages impacting employers across all industries and positions within the city. And then the third kind of just interesting takeaway that we saw was that regional connectivity ranked as important. But we say the most underrated issue because while employers recognized its importance, showed less willingness to engage in addressing the issue. So that’s a conversation that we’re having about how we can do a better job of engaging primary industry and addressing the issue of regional transportation connectivity.

Unknown Speaker 42:58
And then just some next steps for the elevate timeline I already mentioned, we’re currently doing neurolysis of all of the results of this survey, and our state of industry report will be released on September 13.

Unknown Speaker 43:13
Our second industry objective is around entrepreneurial development. The first being the management of innovate Longmont, I’ll remind you that we spun that out as its own separate organization in late 2019, early 2020. As a result of some personnel changes in both organizations, we’ve kind of brought it back under the umbrella of one one EDP. Stephanie on my staff is, at least in the interim, stepping into the role of CEO and president of that organization, and is preparing for the next accelerator program that will run September 13 through November 15, and will focus on smart manufacturing companies. also continuing to partner with the organization startup spaces to build are no wrong door ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Longmont and bringing together other entrepreneurial service organizations to support what will ultimately become the long run entrepreneurship hub using the startup spaces platform.

Unknown Speaker 44:09
And then finally, impact. Our first impact the objective is around organizational alignment. And the number of active advanced on what 2.0 collective impact initiatives we have ongoing in the talent focus area, we have four ongoing initiatives in industry to in place for and in constant connectivity for

Unknown Speaker 44:30
and then we are working on development of our shared data dashboard which will help you all as well as us and the general public track progress of advanced on what 2.0 and its impacts on our local economy. And we expect to launch that before the end of this year.

Unknown Speaker 44:47
We also have objective 1.3 which is to increase private sector funding for economic development. I have a funding table that I’ll show you shortly. We did experience the same thing that many nonprofits are

Unknown Speaker 45:00
All nonprofits did in 2020 and early 2021, which is a reduction in funding from the private sector, we were able to secure two PPP loans in 2021, total, totaling $163,000. And now, those were able to carry us until we’re now able to start to recognize improved private sector funding results.

Unknown Speaker 45:21
And so what that looks like we’re projecting this year, that the combination of public and private funds will have a $734,000 budget, about 5050 between public and private sector funding, or I’m sorry, not 5050, about 6040 between public and private sector funding.

Unknown Speaker 45:42
And again, in compared that to previous years, 2019. We were at 746 2020, we dropped to 709. And we’re ramping back up this year. This is not inclusive of PPP funds.

Unknown Speaker 45:57
Then our second impact objective is collective problem solving. As part of this objective, we formed the Aspire Leadership Council, which now has 28 members with representatives from primary industry, finance, real estate, construction, local business, legal and marketing, that are contributing their collective talents and expertise to COVID-19 recovery efforts, both in terms of financial support, as well as, again, their expertise, time, talent, and treasure we call it.

Unknown Speaker 46:27
And the primary areas of focus of our leadership council are on workforce housing and talent.

Unknown Speaker 46:34
And then our general overview we saw in

Unknown Speaker 46:40
sorry, this one’s hard for me to read. We saw 3.3% job losses in 2020, resulting from COVID and related economic shutdown. Although we still have seen positive job increases over the last five year 2.6 over the last five years 2.6% from 2015 to 2020, which is still ahead of the national growth rate of 1.3%. We are seeing projections of about one point, or 1% job growth in 2021.

Unknown Speaker 47:14
And we currently have a 5.6% unemployment rate in Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 47:21
And then when we look at that, in terms of our targeted industry clusters, our knowledge creation and deployment cluster was our best performing sector throughout COVID. And now in 2021, with 2.6% job growth in 2020, from 2018 to 2020. And now projecting another one and a half percent growth this year, our Business Catalyst sector is looking at having the highest projected upward trend of 2.4% job growth this year. Smart manufacturing, again, no surprise to anyone here was hard hit, but is projected to recover well. So while we saw four and a half percent job losses in that sector, we’re seeing we’re projecting growth of 1.4% this year, and even faster paced job growth in future years. And then our food and beverage industry, of course, was hardest hit by COVID-19, with almost 14% job losses from 2019 to 2020. And we’re continuing to see job losses in that sector in 2021.

Unknown Speaker 48:21
And I believe that is my last slide. I also did provide for you in your packet Ark or quarterly commercial real estate update for both office and industrial. So I’d be happy to answer questions about both the report and presentation or any questions you have about kind of the status of commercial real estate based on those reports as well.

Unknown Speaker 48:39
All right, we’ve got a few people here. Councilmember Pac.

Unknown Speaker 48:43
Oh, sorry. Hold on. mic on. You’re good to go. Thank you very badly.

Unknown Speaker 48:48
Thank you, Erica, this was a great report. Can you go back to the talent objective slide I had one question about a network.

Unknown Speaker 49:05
Tell me when to stop there.

Unknown Speaker 49:08
Shoot, let me find my.

Unknown Speaker 49:15
So you had said it wasn’t this one, but that there were seven, seven people? Maybe it was the next slide at that.

Unknown Speaker 49:27
At that one meeting that you had? Yes. Okay, this one skilled workforce executive roundtable held Tuesday. And then you said the next bullet point is results from survey and round tables. Did you have more than one roundtable

Unknown Speaker 49:43
we did so what we did with the results of the survey and because we did the survey online this year, which is a different than how we’ve done it in the past, historically, we’ve had volunteers go out in person and survey our businesses and not being able to do that last year or this year. We

Unknown Speaker 50:00
We set up a structure where we did an initial survey online. And then based on those responses we looked at which challenges and issues rose to the top. And then we hosted roundtables that focused on those areas. And so the roundtables that we hosted were the skilled workforce executive Roundtable, we hosted a transportation executive Roundtable, COVID-19 recovery, executive Roundtable, and housing executive Roundtable. So the results of all of those conversations will be incorporated into the state of industries study. Okay. It just made me nervous when you said the reserve results. And there were only seven participants. I thought, Oh, yeah, I thought a very good survey. Yeah, no. So what we did is we for the roundtables, we invited folks that had responded to the survey saying that these were significant challenges for them. And were expressed an interest in being followed up with as part at following on the survey. Do you have any kind of

Unknown Speaker 51:00
data on how many people took the survey, then how many participants over all of the roundtables and surveys

Unknown Speaker 51:13
are or zoom calls or what have you. So we had, so we have approximately 250 primary industry employers that we attempt to contact on an annual basis, we had 42 of those respond to the survey, and then the people that participated in the roundtables would have been survey takers, because again, we reached out to survey takers to say, who said that these were challenges for them to get a bit more in depth than those in person? Well, in person virtual round tables. Okay, great. Thanks for that. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 51:49
Dr. Waters. Thanks for your Bagley. Thank you, Jessica.

Unknown Speaker 51:55
During the open forum, we heard from the LED board chair, Eric Wallace, who was making the appeal to us

Unknown Speaker 52:05
to work harder and smarter, I think, to be on the same page to be all of us, city, LBP, as an organization and your members in the same direction.

Unknown Speaker 52:17
He reflected specifically on process issues within the city, and whether or not time and which equals money. And there’s a commensurate value that goes along with that. And there was a rigorous discussion about that was, which is all helpful.

Unknown Speaker 52:31
I’m just curious, without I don’t want to put you on the spot here. But if you’d like to, I’m going to ask, would you like to expand on that at all, in terms of, from your perspective,

Unknown Speaker 52:43
when you, you know, wake up in the morning, or you’re just over coffee with your board members, and you say, Gosh, I wish we could be pulling the same direction on this, or on the same page on that, from your perspective, where are those areas that we ought to be paying more attention to in terms of pulling in the same direction or the page we ought to be on with lldp. Thank you, Mayor Begley, and Councilman waters, that I think the singular issue that we are most focused on as most critical and most

Unknown Speaker 53:15
telling of how we are going to look as a community 50 years from now is the issue of workforce, attainable housing, and the absolute need for policy to align with process to align with vision in order to ensure that we’re able to house everyone who wants to be housed in this community. We respect and we support

Unknown Speaker 53:36
the truly affordable subsidized housing component of that. But what we are concerned about is that mid tear, that housing that is attainable to the largest percentage of our workforce is getting lost in that conversation, we have yet to identify as a community, a targeted number of goal for the number of housing units that we need in order to make that a reality. And we recognize that, and when I say we, it’s our investors, it’s everyone. It’s a conversation that we’re having on a daily basis. It consumes almost all of my time, in terms of conversations with those who are interested in bringing that product to the community, employers who are desperate to find a solution on behalf of their employees, and also on behalf of their businesses ability to continue to recruit and retain quality talent. And just in general in the community. It’s also a concern of my own personally as kind of a young family, in the community and our of our ability to continue to stay here and live here. And so while there are other issues that we’re looking at, and addressing, I think we’re at a tipping point relative to that issue in terms of who we want to be as a community going forward. Do we want to continue to be a welcoming and affordable community to everyone who works here? Or do we want to close our doors

Unknown Speaker 55:00
That’s really where we’re at. And our interest is in maintaining an affordable and welcoming community, in particular for

Unknown Speaker 55:08
industry and their workforce here in the community. Is it fair? If I were to reframe that, reframe it, but classify what you just said, as a mission. And that, you know, to be successful, and in achieving what we need to achieve, we all need to own deeply and commit to the mission of attainable a four hour continuum from affordable to attainable housing. And that has to be deep in this organ is as deep in this organization as it is in the hearts and minds and conversations of your membership or your partners or your investors. Is that fair? Yes, that’s very fair. So that I just say to the mayor, at some point, I think that we need to come back to this question, as a council on on what does that mean? What does it translate into in terms of annual goal setting and accountability and performance appraisal and all the things that have to be in place to move an organization, especially one as large as this one in a dick in a direction with, with people with disparate kind of work assignments? All pulling in the same direction? One one related question. On your, on your three takeaway slide?

Unknown Speaker 56:22
One of which was affordability, housing and affordability.

Unknown Speaker 56:27
The other talent supply and in regional connectivity?

Unknown Speaker 56:31
Kind of a parallel question, what is it that that if you have like one, you know, message to leave with us about what you need from us? in each of those three areas? is there is there a message to say, Yeah, get this than this, and this and do them simultaneously? Or here’s the priority of the sequencing? Yes. Thank you, Councilmember waters. So I would say there are three things that we would love to work with you all on. One is to identify the and agree upon the data? And the answer to the question of what the problem is, and what the scope of it and scale of it is. So what what is the delta between the number of attainable housing units that we have in the city right now and what we need in the future, agreeing upon what that number is, what is attainable to 80 to 120% ami, what is the AMI number that we’re using in order to determine that? The second for us is,

Unknown Speaker 57:33
and when I worked in the governor’s office, we had to say this about legislative sessions. If our if we had one primary goal, it would be that no harm is done or do no harm. So consider when you’re enacting policy, the impact that they’re going to have those policies are going to have on the affordability of housing for our workforce. And really consider kind of the cost benefit of analysis, the cost to affordable housing versus the potential benefit to whatever the issue is at hand. And then the third would be to continue the work of and collaborate with the private sector, who actually has to work in this environment and to bring us the product that we need in order to create an attainable housing environment. To continue to work on aligning policy and process with vision. You’ve stated, we’ve stated, everyone stated that part of our vision as a community is to have a full spectrum of affordable housing for every resident of this community. And

Unknown Speaker 58:36
we need to ensure that policy and process are aligned ultimately aligned with that vision because there are some things that exist today that prevent the city from being able to achieve that vision. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 58:53
Councilmember yellowfang

Unknown Speaker 58:56
Thank you, Mayor. So I want to circle back to the wages. You know, so we saw on that grid yet that he we had cost of living housing, affordability, housing availability, and then almost in the same spot, you see wages is something as target that isn’t being hit. And, you know, I I understand, you know, it is it is perception, I understand that piece, but it’s also to very concrete in the sense, you know, you either have enough money to be able to afford to pay your bills, your rent or your mortgage, at daycare, or you don’t, and so what I have seen and, you know, I so I’m on the bargaining team for the, for our district, on the union on the teacher side that we do our collective bargaining for our salary schedule and our master agreement. And, you know, our just our wages are not keeping up with the cost of living.

Unknown Speaker 59:59
You know,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
We spent 100, you know, $100, you know, 2030 years ago looks very different today how far it goes. So, um,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:11
so there are things that are in the scope that, you know, employers can control. And that is, you know, looking at those at at the wages, you know, we we look at it, we analyze our budget, you know, it’s we want to keep, if we want to recruit and retain high quality teachers, we also have to pay. So, you know, there’s, there’s that that respect how, how often do employees or maybe I don’t know how many businesses in our community other than the school district in the city have union representation or their union representatives, you know, offering the perspective of the worker.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:52
Thank you, Councilmember Hidalgo, fairing. There is effectively no unionization capacity of Longmont in any of it in particular in our target industries, which is true for Colorado as a whole because of the

Unknown Speaker 1:01:07
can a unique policy that we have. And so, but I will say a couple things, I certainly don’t want to overlook that wages are an issue, or say that it’s just a perception. It was just it’s what I intended to say is it’s interesting that what what was perceived as good wages a year ago are no longer perceived as good wages today, for a variety of reasons. One being the national conversation around what is the living wage, the other Of course, being how, how much more expensive it is to live today than it was even a year ago, in particular with the supply chain challenges that we’re having today. And their impacts on the cost of literally everything.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
Right now. So. So a couple things, couple of the conversations that we’re having, I mentioned that we’re going to reconvene the work of updating our

Unknown Speaker 1:01:59
or making recommendations for the update of our incentive policy. And one of the things that we would like to incorporate into the incentive policy is that any company that would be incentivized using city dollars

Unknown Speaker 1:02:14
would be required to pay a certain wage for all jobs that they’re bringing into the community. And certainly we, you know, we get pushback from companies that aren’t paying a living wage, when we work with recruit, bring in new companies that are paying above average it or above living wages, because that creates competition for them and pressure for them to bring their wages up. And I would say push back on me all day long. That’s the goal of what we’re trying to do is quality jobs, and opportunities for everyone in our community. And if one project that we work on forces others to meet that challenge, then I think we’re doing our job. Okay. Yeah, thank you for explaining that more in depth. It’s like, you know, I kind of assumed that, you know, you’re you’re talking about this, you’re working, but it’s really important that the public knows as well, yeah, that these conversations are taking place. And you know, that, that we always need to be advocating for your wages that can offset the cost of living, it’s just seems to be keeps keeps going up. Yeah. But um, you know, and the other thing, I was talking to a resident, and it actually was right before here, I spent too much time talking. I gotta get I gotta go.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:28
But and it was about housing, housing, affordability, and having that same conversation, you know, will the city so focused on, you know, the subsidized housing and but, you know, I’m thinking people are kind of, you know, we wear two hats now is for Lh a right, as well as what we’re doing in the city capacity. So some of the the conversations that I’m hearing that are going on, people are looking at what we’re doing under the lhsaa not necessarily what we’re doing as a city. So sure, you know, I think one might visualize, like really putting changing hats in these roles. So it’s with two different goals and objectives. But I think, you know, as a city, we really we do need to be focusing more on on getting in providing the workforce housing and looking for solutions for that. So thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:24
Councillor Peck.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:29
Thank you, Mary actually worked out so those last two questions made me think of two more questions. So when you say that businesses have to pay well living wage to come into Longmont, what do you consider a living wage? We haven’t landed on that yet. That’s something that will work with the city. It’s up. So when we started this work, and we started having that conversation around, incorporating that into the incentive policy was two years ago. So again, as we’ve been having this conversation that’s changed.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
And pretty significantly in the, over the course of the last two years. So we’ll work with whatever I know the city itself sets a living wage policy, so it will probably align with that. Okay. And then you did have one slide when we were talking about wages that the one company or the example was 84,000 plus a year as the average wage of that company. Hi, I’m curious as to how many employees that company has, how many of them are on the upper scale end of that, and how many the employees are not, because an average wage incorporates all of it. So that would make a real big difference to me, if we’re talking about 400 employees, and Tim executives are making 300,000 a year, then this average wage is really going to be skewed. So that that’s important to me, when when we talk about a vision and how many developments Do we need in the upper ami? It depends on how many people we’re talking about in these businesses? How many employees do they have? How many? Because if they have employees making 40,000 or $30,000 a year, that’s a very different story. So are just curious about that. Sure. Thank you. So you might be referring to one of two slides. And so we showed this slide, which is this is the prospects that we’re currently working with. So primary industry companies that are considering location or expansion in Longmont. The average wage that they pay is 80. It’s one of the questions that we ask so is 83,006 63. But this goes back to any make a very good point that goes back to why we would like to see the incentive policy change to ensure exactly what you’re talking about. And exactly what we have seen, because the criteria right now is based on an average wage is that if you have a small company, with a seven figure C suite, and the rest of the employees making,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:07
below a living wage, they can still meet that average wage criteria. And so we recognize that that needs to be changed. And that’s part of what we’re working on in terms of our recommendations for changing the incentive policy. And then relative to our elevate survey, so of our elevate survey respondents, the average annual salary being paid was 73 619. But then we also ask the question of and when it says here, average hourly wage, what that is, is the average production entry level production wage is 1959 an hour.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:43
Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:48
Thank you. Okay, how’s that little baby? She’s amazing. She’s 17 months old. Wow. She’s walking and talking.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:57
Glad glad to meet her someday. Yeah, somebody someday. Next time Bringer. Okay, all right. Cool. Thank you, for what you know, be awesome. We’d love to hear. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, let’s move on to the first study session item, although it feels like the third. But six a is waste services program planning update.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:40
All right. Can I pull the slides up here?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:47
Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:49
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:52
There we go.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:58
All right. It’s been a while.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:01
Mayor and members of city council. I’m Bob Allen. I’m Director of Operations and public works in natural resources. And as our old friend Sarah Levinson used to say we’re here to talk trash tonight.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:17
So we have

Unknown Speaker 1:09:20
we showed you this very messy slide back in February, after meeting with you in December where we discussed in pretty good detail, kind of the future of waste services and try to get some feedback from you as to what you would like us to pursue. So I promise I will never show this slide again. And I will use a slide created by my esteemed colleague, Lisa Knobloch that kind of breaks this down into a little more visual, pleasant visual here. So there were four areas that we brought to you back in February. That came from kind of distilling down the comments that we had from you and the community.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
84 areas, I’ve called them strategic areas to work on education and outreach programs, the hard to recycle programs, and I should say the education and outreach. A lot of what we discussed at that time focused on expanding the Green Star Program. We’ll talk a little bit about that tonight. But as we work on these other areas, this education and outreach will be imperative to any progress we would make in the other program areas, hard to recycle HCR, hard to recycle programs, trying to increase opportunities. Zero Waste really, you heard a speaker tonight, sharing Malloy talk about the zero waste concept. And it really is kind of the the centerpiece of what I think we’re working on. And the universal recycling really will feed into that considerably, or at least back and forth feed to each other. But right now, the zero waste program is one of the imperatives that we’re working on, so that we can really lay the groundwork, I think, for all of the four programs. Real quickly, just to show you where we’re at with waste diversion in Longmont, you know that we’ve been in this 35 36% range for a little while now. In 2020, we popped up to 41%. Anyone want to guess why that was?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:27
Anyone?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:30
Yeah, the the pretty obvious point that so many people were working at home, that the residential rates did go up. And that was a trend that we expected. Now, that’s not to say that waste diversion necessarily went up in Longmont, because it shifted from commercial to residential. And there are a number of commercial entities that do recycle and compost. So we just don’t have the data or reliable data to track that. But certainly, we see the opportunity when it shifted over the residential side to really increase that this year to date, we’re at 44%, we think that will probably be higher than 36%. But the first half of the year tends to divert more waste than the second half. So we expect that to come down a little bit over time. And then, on the composting program itself, we have now almost 7000 customers 23% of the community. I’ll say it again that our consultant at the time that we crafted the program said that with a a, you know an opt in approach, we probably eventually end up at about 25% participation, she didn’t expect that it would go much beyond that without some other changes that would drive more participation. So the the amounts collected almost 8000 tonnes, and the greenhouse gas offset is about 6500 metric tons, which is equivalent to almost 17,000 cars off the road. So that’s progress since 2017.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:10
So education and outreach, I mentioned that it’s been focused so far, mostly on the greenstar program on trying to kind of build that so that it, it’s expanded to more schools. This is a program that we implement in collaboration with eco cycle, you will see this year a budget request for us to add more funding into that program so that we can actually make a little bigger change into next year, and Garner more participation, more schools into the program. So you’ll see that in in your budget requests this year that are coming from staff,

Unknown Speaker 1:13:50
hard to recycle. We are still hopeful. And this is the long game, but we’re hopeful that we will see regional facilities that will do this one day, even parts of it like you know, maybe construction demolition. Obviously we’re talking about possibly a compost facility or transfer station, things like that really bring the best long term solutions. But we did hear

Unknown Speaker 1:14:17
some criticism from the community that we could do more in the interim. And so that’s something that Charlie in particular has really been working on is trying to find a way to bring at least some some programs that are similar to what we were doing before like programs where residents could come and bring hard to recycle items to your local facility that we could then most of it would end up at eco cycles charm facility in Boulder. But we think that there are some options here that look attractive, working with a local contractor working with eco cycle and maybe trying to spread that out.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
over multiple days, instead of the problem we had in the past, which was hard to recycle on one day, were cars backed up and the facility got really busy. And the workers were overwhelmed. That was really not a good approach. And we think that we may have some options to do this differently. We’re looking in the range of about 25 to $45,000. To do an event, we would like to try to do one this year, we think that we, we could do one maybe in November, I guess I’ll call it a maybe a beta test. I was warned not to call the pilot. So.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:39
So we, we would like to try that. But it’s not in the budget. So one thing we’re asking for you tonight is your direction as to whether or not we should bring brat back and appropriation this year for an event.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:52
And we probably won’t know the cost for another month or so. But we would like your direction on that. So we’re not just showing up here randomly without appropriation.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:02
Zero Waste, can we can we address that now?

Unknown Speaker 1:16:06
You may

Unknown Speaker 1:16:08
does it? Does anybody care? Does anyone is anyone opposed to

Unknown Speaker 1:16:12
giving the appropriation or at least coming back? I move that we actually direct staff to move forward with the appropriation and come back in a month and not be so random.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:22
All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, thank you

Unknown Speaker 1:16:28
want to talk a little bit about zero waste. Lisa Knobloch was going to be here this evening to do that. And she had her mind wrapped around it probably better than any of us because she’s been intimately involved, however, and he noble has agreed to stand in for her. And so I’ll turn it over to you, Annie.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:47
Thank you, Bob. So maybe you could go to the next slide. Oh, sorry. Sorry. So both the sustainability plan and climate action recommendations report addresses waste diversion, you might remember that the climate action recommendations report really focused on increasing commercial and residential composting.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:14
Oh,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:16
good.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:19
Let’s go along. Okay, this works. And the sustainability plan had four target areas that it identified. So the first target area was to decrease the household residential trash to less than two pounds per capita per day. And we’ve met that, that goal,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:39
we are very close to meeting the goal, as Bob mentioned earlier about increasing the risk of residential waste diversion to 50% by 2025.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:50
And then, we’re still working on getting a baseline on all the commercial.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:00
Sorry,

Unknown Speaker 1:18:02
the commercial diversion, we don’t have that information yet. But these goals will be updated when we update the sustainability plan, which is happening later this year. So we’re getting close on the residential side. So as far as the zero waste resolution, Lisa’s working on that resolution, updating it as Sherry Malloy mentioned, that was passed in 2008, we’re hoping to bring to go do some community engagement out this fall, and then in the spring, bring that back to you with a proposal. So we’re working on that. Next slide. And so the the areas that we’re really focusing on

Unknown Speaker 1:18:46
are the areas that are in green. So what’s shown in black text on this slide are already addressed in the zero waste resolution. The areas in green are what we’re looking to incorporate into the resolution. So we want to add more specific goals and really look at equity, and focus on equity. So we’ll be bringing that back in the fall. So

Unknown Speaker 1:19:11
I think with that, I’m turning it back over to Bob. I’ll pass that slide. The last topic of the four universal recycling ordinance. This was a slide we showed you back in February, we have not really begun work on this. We want to make progress on the zero waste resolution and thinking or strategy first, because this will kind of position itself on top of that. We’ll start working on this in September.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:40
You know, this can take many, many forms, and it’s going to take a lot of outreach and community collaboration to make this work. So we expect this to be a longer process.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:52
And I would guess that we would bring back a number of alternatives because universal ordinances which are really

Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
ordinances that that can, that really, in effect require that the service be provided to everyone, whether it’s commercial or residential, usually composting and recycle, along with the trash service that they all receive already. Obviously, there are a lot of different ways that can be crafted or structured. And so we are going to want to have a lot of dialogue with the community and in particular with counsel on that as we start working on that. So that’s kind of a little bit toward the back end. But it is coming.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:35
We mentioned back in, I think it was December and February, February that we were not in need of rate changes right now for for revenue purposes, unless we change programs, or build facilities or do other things that would drive that need. So we’re not there yet. But the planning that we’re doing could lead to direction we receive from you that could then cause us to come back for that conversation. Otherwise, everything staying the way it is, we’re probably a year away from starting that conversation, maybe a little longer even. We do. And we mentioned that the city has a waste management fee, it’s $2.96 per month, per household, for residential entities, whether it’s multifamily or single family, it is not extended to the to the commercial sector, extending it to the commercial sector could raise somewhere around another 100,000 a year that the revenues from a fee like that have restricted use in Colorado, we can’t use it just for anything. Right now we use it predominantly for things like trash and public facilities and parks, illegal dumping collections, the education outreach programs, it can be used for assistance programs. So for example, if if we had a universal recycling ordinance, it put maybe an inordinate burden on smaller businesses or multi families that you know, don’t receive that service now that along with what’s being collected now could be used for assistance to kind of help with that. So your options there are going to be you can expand it to another sector or you can increase the fee that is currently charged. We do not have any recommendations there. Were certainly like to hear if you guys would like us to do any outreach, or collect information on that and bring it back, you know, and one of the next times we update you, we could certainly do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:38
And that was our presentation tonight.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:43
All right, who would like to all right, Councilmember waters?

Unknown Speaker 1:22:55
I guess you want the mic on? Uh, well, I don’t have to have the mic on. But it would be a fairly private conversation between

Unknown Speaker 1:23:02
just a couple of just so I understand

Unknown Speaker 1:23:05
that when under the heading of Public Engagement or stakeholder engagement, will it be Will you go to the public with this whole plan for feedback? Or is it more more targeted on fees, for example, or and, and the appetite the community has for whatever that fee increase might be, given the the the the benefit of universal recycling or, or composting for multifamily dwellings, that kind of thing is helped me understand kind of what the focus of that would be. mayor and council, I think that the the best way to answer that question is it would be mostly targeted, depending on what we were working on. But obviously all of these starts linked together, particularly the universal zero waste, and any fee changes or rate changes that could be used to, you know, bring an infrastructure equipment for those programs. I should have said rate, I guess, as opposed to fee. But yeah, so but but both? Absolutely, we would have to depending on the alternatives we look at they could drive the need for more revenue. And if we do, we’re going to have to talk to the community about that. unless you’d rather us not you want to just pass it blindly here then we don’t have to and that’s where I was going. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:25
If I go back to the February discussion in a subsequent follow up with you, and I just want to make certain I have held my understanding correctly, that

Unknown Speaker 1:24:35
that we’re constrained by state statute, is there a state preemption on what we can or cannot do with replacing commercial vendors for businesses and multifamily dwellings? Is units is that correct? That is correct. We can only serve we can only compel single family and multifamily up to eight to receive a municipal service. So when when there’s an I’m not certain

Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
I was interpreting, I’m interpreting what I’ve, what I heard earlier tonight or in any other conversation to expand whether it’s universal recycling or to expand to more multifamily units. It does that but up against what that state preemption is. It generally does not. What happens is that the private sector provides that service, most of them already provide all those services. So we don’t have to provide it. We don’t ask, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:25:27
would we regulate that but we by ordinance, you would direct that you. So by ordinance, you can do depending, once again, on the alternatives you look at, you could require haulers to provide that service within Longmont. They don’t do it. Okay. And is that would we go through a bidding process for that you’d award a contract for that? That would generally be if that was the approach taken that would generally be in an ordinance that would require them to do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:54
So I so in other words, private haulers would have certain requirements, if they work in Longmont. And one requirement would be that any commercial entity they serve, for example, they would have to make available composting and recycle if that’s what an ordinance said. And enforcement of that would be if you don’t end in there’s a complaint or enough complaints, then you lose your license to to conduct that business in Longmont. Is that basically where it goes. So that’s a question I can’t answer. Yeah. Because I my research hasn’t gone that far. But I would assume probably what you are, is that yes, you could enforce that and restrict that contractor from working in Longmont. And let me say, all of this will need substantial legal review. So I want to be really careful. I’m not talking about a school here. Because it is what we can do. What I know about it right now comes from a cursory review of other ordinances, primarily bowlers, and how they’ve structured it. Listen, you don’t have to go to law school just respond to every question with it depends.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:58
You’re good. Thank you, and do more research after that kind of thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:03
All right, let’s go with

Unknown Speaker 1:27:06
a customer. Martin, we haven’t heard from you. Let’s go with you.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:10
It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?

Unknown Speaker 1:27:13
So

Unknown Speaker 1:27:14
you had a number early on, that’s it, you know, Longmont does diverts? This percentage of its waste away from the landfill.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:25
And a larger percentage is possible, right? You know, lots of stuff goes to the landfill, that could become part compost or could be recycled.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:37
Compost, especially in a landfill or compostables in landfill

Unknown Speaker 1:27:44
produces greenhouse gases.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:48
Do you have? Or does any have any kind of an estimate of what

Unknown Speaker 1:27:57
that contribution to long mounts carbon footprint is?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:03
You know, leaving aside the cost in dollars, but just the the cost and the carbon footprint of the stuff that we don’t divert?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:14
And he’s not though, we do have those numbers, I don’t have them off the top of my head, but we could get back to you. That would be wonderful. I, you know, I, I think we could we should be when we think about this, we should be imposing our own little carbon tax here. And that should impact our thinking. And I would say anecdotally, four times that slide I showed earlier, is the footprint. If you assume current conditions, if you do more education, and you get more people diverting more, and you move that to the commercial sector, then that grows there. I think I understood that.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:53
But when it comes back, we’ll understand it better. And we’ll make sure that we bring more than information, I think that we’re going to have to get into that conversation more as we look at alternatives because that’s those will be the metrics that will tell you whether or not there’s much value added for alternative a over alternative B or C whatever we come up with. The world’s getting to be scary, you know.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:18
Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:22
Councillor Christiansen

Unknown Speaker 1:29:27
okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:30
So, thank you. This is a good report. And I’m really happy to see that you are working on the universal recycling ordinance because, you know, that will help us enormously.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:44
I know that there’s a lot of frustration that we haven’t gotten everything

Unknown Speaker 1:29:48
purified and simplified and fixed, but you know, it really does take time so

Unknown Speaker 1:29:56
I think the only people here when I brought the composting

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
ordinance forward. We’re

Unknown Speaker 1:30:02
Mayor Bagley and I, but I, I’m trying to remember, it seems to me that when we were talking about the about that the consultant said about, we were discussing whether to make it opt in or opt out.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:16
And I believe what she said,

Unknown Speaker 1:30:19
I wanted it to be opt out, because I thought we’d get a greater take rate. But she

Unknown Speaker 1:30:26
said that there, you might get a greater take rate at first, and then people will just drop out. So.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:33
And that’s not a good way to start things. In addition to which

Unknown Speaker 1:30:38
we didn’t have the equipment, we didn’t have it set up, we didn’t want to start saying we’re going to do composting for the whole city, and then I’ll be able to come through. So I hope that people in the audience understand that we were trying to do it in a way that would guarantee success, we have gotten to almost the rate that she suggested, you know, 25% would be as much as we can get. I do think that at this point,

Unknown Speaker 1:31:07
it might be good to examine whether we want to do an opt out. Because I do think that all of us are adverse to change. I took me years to even understand that I could change from a 95 Gallon

Unknown Speaker 1:31:22
Trash Can to a 45 with no effort at all, but I was really quite afraid of having trash pile up in my house.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:33
Anyway, I, once you and then there were all these people who also there were a lot of people who objected to composting, they thought it was going to we’re going to force them to do this and there be rats running around the town. And there were people who objected to recycling to so people are naturally adverse to change. But I do think that it might be time to think about the opt out. And I want to thank you also for bringing forth the hard to recycle. I think that’s a really good idea. Not only do I have a lot of stuff in my house,

Unknown Speaker 1:32:08
but I it would save everybody having to drag things themselves down to the landfill, which is really not that much fun. And and it’s a waste of gas. And it would be just much more efficient to do it this way, even though it will cost the town, I would suggest maybe we could ask for a five or $10 donation

Unknown Speaker 1:32:29
that might help offset the price. And I anybody who’s objecting to a $5 donation.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:39
So anyway, thank you for bringing this forth. I think it’s pretty good news, I think we have an excellent

Unknown Speaker 1:32:48
system of of

Unknown Speaker 1:32:51
all of our integrated

Unknown Speaker 1:32:55
utilities is wonderful for this town. This is the first time I’ve ever lived in with that. And it’s it’s cheaper. It’s more efficient. It’s just better All in all, and we’re very lucky that we have that. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:21
Councilmember Beck.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:25
Thank you, Mayor bakley. So, Bob, thank you. This is this is good presentation. But I do have three suggestions. First of all, I agree with the opt out, I think it’s now time to tell people we have to do this. But in doing that, we probably should also look at the different size containers for compost because those large containers, it takes me two or three months in the winter to fill that thing up. And

Unknown Speaker 1:33:54
it’s not needed. But in the summer, I do need it. So

Unknown Speaker 1:33:59
that as well as what Councilman waters said I agreed with about getting commercial and I’m assuming that multifamily or apartment buildings might be considered commercial, as well as goals. When you do your research. I would be curious as to

Unknown Speaker 1:34:19
do we need to purchase new trucks for those huge containers like Western disposable uses? Or do we have another system that would take that over? If the vendor decided they were not going to do business in Longmont anymore? If we decided they had to compost because that cost analysis

Unknown Speaker 1:34:44
might make a huge difference on whether we do that or not.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:49
Shoot there was one more thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:52
I don’t know what it is.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:55
But where was that three things because I have three things

Unknown Speaker 1:35:01
If the mayor will let me respond to one of your comments, then maybe you’ll think of it. Okay. Go. I hereby say you can, Mr. Allen. So I, I mean, you you raise the dilemma I’d never thought about and that is that the city can’t compels the use of its service but of private sector doesn’t provide it.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:20
So I don’t know how that works for us. I guess we could tool up to provide that I think that we would be likely to have the private sector willing to step in, hopefully, yes. So I let you I let you talk. And your answer is it depends. You don’t know.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:37
The, and then the opt out. So communities that do tend to I mean, the ship of opting out is kind of sailed already, because we launched the program. But I think that’s another way of saying the fee is embedded into the entire way services, subscription. And that’s how most communities that provide that whether you receive the service or not. That’s generally how that works. And certainly when we start talking about rates next would be a really good time to have that conversation about what you want to do. And we’ll we’ll bring that sooner if that’s what you would like, you’d have to direct us to do that. But when we get to that point in here in a year to I think, 18 months, that would be a good time to have that conversation. I did think of it. You’re right. On the heart to recycle. If we had a hard to recycle program in Longmont, we would have to as you said, truck that over to the to Boulder, those hard to recycle items. Was I correct in hearing that? That’s it that it depends. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:49
I’ll do declare victory. If so for what we’re proposing now, the interim program, yes. a longer term program that might have facilities locally, could go in a different direction. But I, I would envision we’d still want to partner with eco cycle still, because they’re really that’s what they’re good at. Right? Yes, yeah. So the reason I asked was when I’ve taken a hard to recycle, it’s $25 a load? So we have, I would assume you would have to work the costs of trucking that over? And would they would eco cycle then charge the city, per the load that they bring? I mean, these are just things to think about? Because the residents should pick up that cost. So instead of, you know, I love the idea of $5. But that isn’t going to guess how I’m going to cover it. So just keep that in mind. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:54
Councilmember, you toggle fairing.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:57
Thank you, Mayor. So I wanted to go back to look at the green green star. So that collaboration I think that is that’s great.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:08
I was wondering the impacts, though of COVID the Delta variant last year, so I work at a green star school. And last year, we did not do composting, we were instructed that to not to not have that. So all that was getting disposed of in the trash can. So um, you know, as we’re, as we are wanting to expand the program and work with the school district on on this, you know, I’d like to know if you know, are we going to be having

Unknown Speaker 1:38:41
composting next year.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:46
Mayor Bagley, Mayor Bagley and Councilmember e delco. faring? That’s a great question. And when we are doing our green star school program, we do work with eco cycle and also partner with the st. Green Valley School District. And at some level, the school district has a say, to help protect their employees and such.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:06
And the Delta variant or COVID is still going to be a little bit of a challenge as we proceed forward. And that’s a great conversation that we’ll have with eco cycle and school district sustainability person who joins on board.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:20
I realize it’s important to make sure that if we are having a program that we’re paying for that it should be done. But I think safety’s around that but I think the overarching goal is to go ahead and make sure that that program is put in place and that it is used properly. I hope that answers your question. Well, um, yeah, it does. Um, so I have a safety issue. Yeah. And it seemed like it was coming as the direction from the school district that they did not want to do the composting component because of because of safety issues.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:54
So, along with that, there is that educational piece and you know, I wanted to

Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
to also have this, you know, in your, in your heads as well, that, you know, our students, you know, they’re like sponges, they pick up that information, they’re sitting in the trainings when the presenter comes in and says, you know, what you can recycle what you can’t what, and they take that home. So, you know, during the years that we’ve been a green surf school, I’ve had a handful of kids who taught came back and told me that they are now doing composting at home. So it’s, you know, it’s really, you know, the influence that they have in family, but also to, like, I think about a lot of our families, I teach in Title One schools, so I have predominantly immigrant families,

Unknown Speaker 1:40:44
Spanish speaking families, and so that access to information, it, it can be limited at times, and it is it’s pretty frustrating for some of our families. So you know, having that culturally relevant piece where we are able to, to communicate,

Unknown Speaker 1:41:01
be culturally relevant information to our community. So, so to have have that component in mind as well. And, and that understanding that educational piece, you know, you got to rinse out your your recyclables before you’re throwing them in the, in the recycling bin. And, you know, when you mix, you know, you put in plastic in the composting bin that, you know, that ruins the whole batch. So you have to, you know, of course, there’s times I’m going in the trash in front of you, that doesn’t go there. So I’m literally dumpster diving in the three things back where they belong. So. So making sure that that that educational component is there, I think that’s something that I hardly regard. And I really liked that we are collaborating with the district in an eco cycle on the green sir schools as well. And I am you know, if you’re collecting our input on the hard to recycle event, I am in support of having of continuing that event and seeing what we can do to to make it happen. So thanks. And hopefully some of your former students will actually pursue careers in composting, recycling, I think by OCD is kind of where because they are very like,

Unknown Speaker 1:42:19
I don’t know, it doesn’t go there. And they’re educating the younger ones.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:30
Casper waters, you just I should have asked when I had my time. So I apologize for coming back in it has there been any more discussion about a regional composting facility? Or strategy or plan that includes not just the county but the the municipalities in the county? I appreciate you asking because I meant to bring that up and forgot. We voted yes. That the county is is in the lead role in that right now. As you recall, you wrote a letter and asked that we’d be able to participate. So they have definitely brought us into the process. Their focus, up until really about a month ago has been on recruiting a position within the county to take the lead on that. And they actually had to get approval from their commissioners to do that. Recruiting a a I don’t know the title, the facility, a job a position with God. Yes. Yeah. And that would be their focal point. I don’t, I think they’re actively recruiting the position. I don’t think that they have hired yet. So that’s kind of where their mind has been wrapped. And then they’re hoping that when that is done that we kind of hit the ground again, looking at the options and alternatives. We have

Unknown Speaker 1:43:41
been forthcoming with what we think we could offer contingent on studies and reports and revenue evaluations and all but I think it’s been a good partnership so far. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:56
All right, complete and utter garbage.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:01
So thank you very much for that update, and we appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:07
Alright, let’s go ahead and take a look. We’ll take a five minute break and come back and attack our air quality in oil and gas update.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:59
Alright, let’s go ahead and get back in our seats and get going again with our final study session item six be air quality and oil and gas update. We’re lucky enough to have Dr. helmy here and some oil and gas updaters I guess

Unknown Speaker 1:56:17
I suppose that’s me. Oh, no, no, not no doctor doctor. Yes. Welcome. Thank you. I didn’t see you walking down. I just saw Dr. helpings, large six foot 12 frame.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:31
Good evening, Mayor Bagley and members of city council. It’s nice to see you all in person. This is my first time presenting before you. Like Mayor Bagley said, I’m going to give a little oil and gas update. We’ll try to make it quick. I know you guys have heard a lot of information already. And then I will turn it over to Dr. helmig. For a more detailed update about the air quality study that the city of Longmont sponsors. Before we get to that, I just want to give a quick public service announcement. I don’t think anyone needs doctor helmets specialty to recognize that the air quality has been absolutely abysmal. And actually, you know, quite dangerous for people that are sensitive groups, people with respiratory problems like asthma or cardiovascular issues. And I want to remind our residents that there are free resources that can help people understand if it’s safe to go outside. Please know that even when the smoke isn’t around, it doesn’t look awful. We do have an invisible air pollutant in Colorado called ozone, it’s very irritating to the respiratory tract. Some of you like me, maybe notice that your eyes are itching your throat might be itchy lately. That’s probably the ozone, I recommend that people use a website at www dot air now.gov. You can enter your zip code and see very simply, if it’s safe to go out, maybe you’re thinking about going for a run in the afternoon, if you take a look at that or download the free air now app, you can get an idea of whether that’s a good time to do it. And if any of our residents don’t have access to this information, and they’d like it, please reach out to the city, they’ll route you to me, I would love to help you try to find this useful information. And that’s really important for protecting your respiratory health. So with that, I’ll get to these updates.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:18
Okay, I wanted to start with just highlighting a few of the oil and gas items going on at the state level. I know this council believes that it’s very important that staff participate in these state level items. And I agree that that’s a great use of our time. The Air Quality Control Commission, that’s the aq CC, they have an upcoming rulemaking on oil and gas emissions for greenhouse gases. And that’s going to be happening at the end of this year in December. And the focus of that rulemaking will be coming up with strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector by 60%. Before the year 2030. Now city of Longmont is a member of CC for CA, that’s Colorado communities for climate action. And we are represented there. In addition to that staff have been participating with local government groups. We’ve been working having meetings with cdphp as well as Koga to just try to give input feedback on on some of these ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions as they’re slowly coming together. So actively participating in that the CO GCC that’s the Colorado oil and gas Conservation Commission. As you all know, during 2020, they were very active. Lots of rulemaking is coming down a lot of increased tighter regulations for oil and gas. That process is ongoing. Right now. They’re working on the financial assurances rulemaking that’s going to occur in early 2022. This one is to help ensure that these oil and gas operators stay financially responsible that they put up bonds to ensure that these oil and gas wells have the money to be closed properly and that environmental issues going forward are paid for

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
That’s pretty important to Longmont. And again, we’re being represented by CC for ca who’s participating in this process. I’m also working with local government groups and co GCC to make sure that long months interests are expressed and heard. Lastly, this isn’t a regulation but I just wanted to highlight that cdphp is really stepping up in the monitoring game. They have a new aerial oil and gas survey. They’ve got airplanes that started flying around last month, they’ve been looking at methane, they’re going to be expanding to other air pollutants. So they’ll they’re flying over boulder weld and Laramie counties to try to get a better understanding of the real world impacts of oil and gas. And when I spoke with staff at cdphp, they have expressed to me that the air quality study sponsored by Longmont Boulder, Broomfield, done by Dr. Helmick, there have been some of the motivation that’s made them really have to second take a second look at their models, the data that they’ve been using to base Regulation A lot on and so they’re really stepping up and using some sophisticated means to monitor so there’ll be the airplanes they’re going to use satellite imagery, and really expanding how they take a look at this.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:15
Moving to more local issues, Longmont oil and gas as many of you know,

Unknown Speaker 2:01:20
the there was just two active oil and gas wells remaining in Longmont and those are now plugged so we’ve closed the last two wells in Longmont. The stamp well located on the northwest corner of union reservoir was plugged in early July. The table number seven well located on the South side of town near the Innovation Center was plugged in late June. And there is still a little bit of work going on out there the operators are the wells are plugged, but the operators are working to remove the last of the infrastructure, tanks pipes, any historical contamination that they encountered during that process will be remediated. And all that work is being overseen by co GCC. But if there is remediation needed, the city will have terracon there to provide third party oversight. So I just want to take a minute to recognize all the folks over the last decade that have worked really hard to make this goal a reality. City Council present and past staff, as well as residents and activists have all played a role in in making this happen. And it’s a pretty big and unique achievement here on the front range.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:27
Alright, so looking just outside of town to the north, the night wells, this is a well pad that’s located just outside of town to the north of town. And you may recall that 12 wells were drilled, as we heard during public invited that drilling occurred from February to June, during July, the well pad, there was nothing going on of the wells, they were just preparing for this next phase that they’ve just now started. That’s the hydraulic fracturing, often known as fracking. And that just started over the weekend. And they’re expecting eight to 10 weeks of work for this. So as we heard to can be quite a disruptive process, especially for those that are very near the wellsite. Cities very concerned about it, I have had reports from staff who have been in the area, including Rangers at Union reservoir, and they’re indicating that they cannot hear what’s going on there. So as disruptive as the process is, it does seem that the sounds attenuating quite quickly as you move away from the the well. So at this time, we’re not expecting that folks recreating a union reservoir, we’ll be hearing those impacts. Of course, we’re also concerned about potential environmental impacts.

Unknown Speaker 2:03:39
So you’ve seen this slide before, we have a lot of oil and gas monitoring near the night, well, then I’ll just run through this quickly. Adjacent to the night well pad.

Unknown Speaker 2:03:49
A neighbor has been kind enough to volunteer to allow us to drill a groundwater monitoring well, and also place some air quality monitor sensors there. cdphp has also indicated that they will have some more sophisticated sensors there during this fracking process. along the north shore of union reservoir, you see those three teardrops, those are representing three groundwater monitoring wells, those act like a sentinel so that we can see of some things in the groundwater moving towards union reservoir. We test those each month in Union reservoir itself. We do surface water sampling during the summer months, and we’ve been doing that since 2019. And of course, you know that we have our research grade air quality monitoring station located on the southwest side of union reservoir. And Dr. helmig will tell us more about what he’s seeing out there.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:34
Regarding results at these monitoring locations, adjacent to the well pad, the groundwater monitoring, we have not detected pollutants there. We have not detected pollutants on the north side of union reservoir. And as far as the union reservoir surface water sampling for this year, we just have one sample so far. That’s for June. That sample came back clean, and we’re awaiting results for the July sample which was just collected last month. If we see anything in that sound

Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
Well, of course, I will let you know immediately.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:06
And the last topic I wanted to hit upon is the air quality station on the west side of town. It’s currently located the airport, as you know, we’re going to be relocating that station, there’s a new new hangar that’s expected to potentially impact the data. In particular, the the wind data, which is an important part of the study, that new hangar is expected construction start date is in October. And I’m showing this photo here the air quality station components. So you see that it’s a 30 foot steel tower, which we attach instruments to, and a small trailer, which houses computers and some of the instrumentation. So this is, this is the station and we’re looking to find a new home for that.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:48
And we’ve looked at a number of sites so far. At this point, we’re focused on what looks to be the best candidate to us. In this image on the left side, you’ll see obviously the airport with a yellow flag noting the current location of the air quality station. And if you jump just to the right side of the image on the other side of Airport Road, off, like in skulpt Greenway, you’ll see the area that we are contemplating right now. It is owned by the city, it’s a relatively flat area, we like about this location that it’s so close to the current location, we believe that that will be helpful and being able to compare data collected at the current site versus the new site. We also see it as potentially an education outreach site, we put some signage up there, people on the Greenway could see the monitoring station and maybe a little more interested in the program.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:38
Now in this photo, I’m showing kind of zoom in of looking south from the bike path on like in sculpture there. This is just to give you an idea of what that area looks like. There are some homes, but it is relatively flat, it’s probably hard to see there along the fence line. But there are also power poles. For reference, those power poles are actually taller than the monitoring tower. So we’re hoping that that tower wouldn’t be cause too much of an issue. One potential downside of this site is that it is quite open and accessible to the public. And so it would require that we would need to add in probably fencing, just to make sure that the those sophisticated instruments that we have there don’t get tampered with. So that would be an additional cost that we need to bear if we did select this site. But I wanted to keep you all in the loop at what we’re looking at. There’s still a number of boxes that would need to be checked if we select this site. But I did want to share that with you.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:33
And I think that’s all I have. Unless Council has questions, we can turn it over to Dr. Hellman.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:42
johnsburg Beck.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:44
Thank you, Jane, thank you very much for this update in ice 50 wanted to thank you for the email that you sent to council with the update on the night well, and in that email, you had a web address for complaints. And for anyone to complain. I would like that address, however, you can get it out to the public so that residents can actually use that as well. Yes. And I our is our city complaining to Koga or cdphp. When we have spikes in the monitoring system that we’re using with Dr. Helmick, mayor and council just to first comment on the making those complaint forms available. We have added quite large on the city’s website. If you search for oil and gas, any residents that believe that they have observed some operational issues that they would like to report on whether it’s, you know, smoke or sound, those sorts of complaints get filed with the CO GCC again, there’s a link. And I’ll definitely brainstorm some ways to get those links out to other places. Okay, if residents have health concerns that they believe are oil and gas related, that’s a separate complaint form. And there’s a separate link for that that goes to cdphp as the health department. And I think cdph is quite attentive when people submit these complaints. They follow up, they ask a lot of questions. And that’s really important for the state to understand where clusters of symptoms are, are being heard. I have heard a couple of people with complaints or health concerns. I can’t say I’ve heard a ton of that. But I would encourage people to check out the website, use those forums, or reach out to me and share what you’re experiencing, as we heard, can be very disruptive, close to the site. And people may be experiencing other impacts that if if they’re not filed with the state or if they’re not reported to me, we just simply don’t know you know exactly what people are experiencing. The second point is regarding the data spikes that we experienced earlier this year or last year. I haven’t personally used the complaint forms just because I have contacts and colleagues that I usually reach out to

Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
directly. So whether it’s the compliance manager at co GCC, or someone at cdphp, that I know kind of going straight to the source, I typically share my data that way. Okay, I was just curious, because the city of Broomfield has given direction to their staff to file complaints. And I think the, you know, the number of people, the number of cities, the number of staffs that do this makes a huge difference, especially when they’re doing rulemaking. So I’m curious as to how they are complaining are they going to? Would you mind reaching out to Broomfield to see if they are using the complaint status? Or the complaint website? Just out of curiosity? Yeah, man cancel. I’m happy to do that. I do connect with other communities, including Bloomfield regularly. Okay. And if we feel like adding that, so it’s sort of you know, on file that we have made a complaint, be happy to do that. Great. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:04
All right. Thank you. Okay, we’ll turn it over to Dr. Detlef helmig of Boulder air.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:17
Yes. Good evening, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:20
Good to be back in person.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:26
Are you helping me loading this presentation?

Unknown Speaker 2:11:30
Or am I doing this myself here?

Unknown Speaker 2:11:38
Let’s actually no, that’s

Unknown Speaker 2:11:41
no, this is.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:43
This is not the right one.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:48
That’s one yeah. Okay, so

Unknown Speaker 2:11:56
there we go.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:58
Okay, so it’s been four months last time I presented to you. So I have updates, mostly covering those past four months. Can Sony see here? Yep. This is what I showed last time.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:14
Just to remind you what the highlights were we covered back then. And I want to pick up on two of those again, one was that was a really big, big event. We had these gas plumes be observed earlier in the year. So I’m going to show you how that looks now four months later. And then we had that very unusual photochemical smog event in March. We’re going to touch on that again, a little bit as well.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:42
So this is the presentation today.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:46
Real quick on an introduce another network side that can that’s coming on board right now.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:52
update on these these plumes we saw last times when big chunk will be the summer 21 air quality we’ve been observing here. And then something really interesting. That’s that’s new, it’s kind of exciting. It’s been fun to work on that is on co2 occurrences at Longmont Municipal Airport station. And then a quick outlook, what’s what’s coming up during quarter three.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:20
Again, I showed that last time, it just added a few updates. And you probably remember by now we have those two different stations one at the airport, the other one in that union reservoir. And we’re approaching two years

Unknown Speaker 2:13:33
operational time for the one at the airport.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:37
Everything has been running very nicely, taking long data coming in the website has become quite popular. It received another 1600 something visits just in quarter two, we made one improvement. So now it’s much easier to view the different pages on your mobile phone. That was quite a big job for us to make those adjustments. And then we also implemented it was a request by union reservoir, park staff. We implemented wind alerts, they wanted to know we want to know when the winds get crazy so we can pull people off the reservoir. So you can see this is actually from when boss died just today. Yeah, the third. You can see it says at 1150. The wind exceeded

Unknown Speaker 2:14:32
I think the threshold is five or 12 miles per hour. And you can see the email was sent at 1155 and the winds were higher at 1150. So within five minutes, these wind alerts go out to park staff. So they you know even if they’re out for lunch or somewhere else they they get a notification right away. When the winds

Unknown Speaker 2:14:54
become unpleasant on the reservoir

Unknown Speaker 2:14:59
then, this is

Unknown Speaker 2:15:00
The news about the the overall network, you see, you know, the two longmorn sides have some some companion sites in the region.

Unknown Speaker 2:15:10
Two are in Broomfield and the one at the that used to be Broomfield Livingston has been moved over about a couple miles to the east and it’s now Broomfield not North picos. So that’s because there’s some oil and gas activity in that area, and Broomfield askers to move that side to be closer to those fracking sites. And then another news is that we’re going to have another site added to this network. And we’re working on it right now. And that’s going to be in the the town of Erie, they decided to go forward with another station that will monitor methane, vo C’s PM, also ozone. So that will be nice gives us another piece of the puzzle to

Unknown Speaker 2:16:00
to better understand the air quality and where pollution originates.

Unknown Speaker 2:16:07
So that’s what I showed last time. Again, this is ethane, and it shows the concentrations. Again, against time, there’s about a year of data on this graph. fn v reserve favorite compound to use as an indicator of oil and gas emissions, because it’s so specific, so selective, indicating oil and gas plumes. And, you know, weights back in the early stages, you know, we had these these many, many spikes, many plumes of oil and gas,

Unknown Speaker 2:16:39
making it across the union reservoir. But then that become much, much quieter. Soon after we presented these data. And then earlier this year, in 2021, we had these two crazy spikes, there were concentrations peaks, and we estimated 345 1000 times above the background.

Unknown Speaker 2:17:02
And so I want to show you now how it’s been since then. So this was what I showed last time. And now I’m adding to the same graph the data from the last three months. Now it’s running all the way to yesterday, actually. And you can see those two big spikes there in January and February 2021. So it’s been calmer, it’s been quieter. You see a little bit that winter maximum that we always see that’s mostly over my metrology. But it has calmed down. And those two events, you know, where I would call them exceptional? We haven’t seen anything that extreme since earlier this year.

Unknown Speaker 2:17:43
Okay, similar for benzene. You know, there’s several people here who are watching benzene very closely. So this is now the full record. There’s some Oh, 10 15,000 measurements of, of air in there. And each, we look for benzene. So you can see in the winner, we had some spikes there were benzene when ways above the background, but the last couple three months, it’s been more calm. And I put in there on the right side, these World Health Organization’s

Unknown Speaker 2:18:18
thresholds or risk thresholds that show you roughly, you know, what the risk levels were, are that correspond to certain levels of benzene and bear in mind, those are the mean, annual mean, levels that these relate to. So you know, we are probably here if you take the yearly average. And actually, I think I have that in the next. Next slide. Yeah. So this is now these are

Unknown Speaker 2:18:48
monthly data averaged. In these we call these box whisker plots. So each of these colored boxes give you the whole spread of the data, where the round dad is the mean of the data. And the horizontal line in the box is the median of the data. So that’s really what shows the you know, what’s across the month, the mean and the median. And you can see for union reservoir, that’s the pinkish on the right.

Unknown Speaker 2:19:16
We’ve been between point 06 point 09 on the mean, and the median for the benzene.

Unknown Speaker 2:19:26
You know, which, you know, is somewhat higher than these other sites. The two green ones are the Broomfield sites. The blue one is the border reservoir. But actually in June, I think that’s for the first time

Unknown Speaker 2:19:42
union reservoir was actually lower than what we observed at the border reservoir.

Unknown Speaker 2:19:49
Hope Okay, so next topic is ozone. And you know, when it comes to health impacts, I would say call ozone in small particles. The two

Unknown Speaker 2:20:00
most concerning pollutants we’re dealing with here in this environment. And this is the full record of ozone for the union reservoir and the Longmont airport. You can see it goes up in the summer, it comes down in the winter, and then goes back up again. Last year, we had one occurrence where ozone peaked over 100 parts per billion this year,

Unknown Speaker 2:20:26
you know, we’ve actually been higher overall and ozone, and that becomes more clear in the next slide. So again, you know, ozone is a very strong respiratory irritant. And, you know, at the levels we’re observing here, it does impact a pretty significant fraction of the population. So what I showed you first, in this first slide, were the the very, you know, high resolution minut ozone data for the regulatory consideration. What’s used here is the eight hour average. So you take the data, and you you average over eight hours, and then you do this over and over every hour, you slide that mean, across the timescale. So this is now a year and a half of this regulatory ozone standard. And we had a pretty bad ozone year last year. Remember, we had

Unknown Speaker 2:21:23
high ozone events in June, July, and then in August, September, all the way through October, we got impacted by wildfire smoke, that adds some words to these high ozone conditions. So altogether, last year, we had 17 exceedance days. And the EPA defines non attainment with the ozone standard, when you have an average more than four days are more of these exceeding dates. So we were four times that high last year in 2020. And now in 2021, you can see how you know, and this is, as of today, this graph was just done today.

Unknown Speaker 2:22:05
We’ve we’ve we’ve already had 32 exceedance days, thus, this far, for the year 2021. They were 20, just during the past month, and you can see all the you know how now this this spring, this March, photochemical smog event in there,

Unknown Speaker 2:22:25
see status

Unknown Speaker 2:22:31
shows here. I don’t think it shows.

Unknown Speaker 2:22:35
So early on there in March 2021. That was the very unusual spring photochemical smog event.

Unknown Speaker 2:22:43
And they added two days. So we had 32. And we’re not anywhere close to being done. So last year, we had most of our Hydros on days in August. So they’re, they’re likely going to be another 10 1520 days, we’ll see how it goes. So this is going to be huge, huge ozone year, but very, very unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker 2:23:07
This compares

Unknown Speaker 2:23:10
by month, the ozone we’ve observed this year in 2021. With the ozone we observed last year, again, those are the box whisker plots, and the dots in there the circles, the mean values, the horizontal or the median values, and then the percentage values on top give the difference in the median comparing last year to this year. So you can see, you know, the March we were high with this crazy photochemical smog, we were 22% higher in ozone than the year before. But now June and July.

Unknown Speaker 2:23:48
Again, we are higher in ozone, June 5% medians. And in July, we were almost 20% higher in ozone than what we had last year.

Unknown Speaker 2:24:01
Okay, so the second pollutants

Unknown Speaker 2:24:04
that we worry about from a health perspective are fine particulate matter. And those are only measured at the union reservoir side game has got deep into your lungs, and they can also carry carcinogens and

Unknown Speaker 2:24:20
very unhealthy to inhale these fine particles. And we had a lot of a fair number of exceedances. I think we had 1516 days last year when we were subjected to these wildfire plumes. And then this year, we had that photochemical smog event in March that

Unknown Speaker 2:24:40
where we exceeded the standard again, the dotted line there so that stands for national ambient air quality standard. So we exceeded that clearly in in March. And for the summer. We just exceeded that yesterday for the first time. But other than that, even though you’ve noticed, you know the haziness

Unknown Speaker 2:25:00
And the poor visibility. From the measurement perspective, the particular levels we’ve seen so far this year, have not been quite as bad as severe as what we had last summer.

Unknown Speaker 2:25:15
Okay, and this is where most of this is coming from right now, unfortunately, and again, this is a poultice. This morning, on the left picture there, it’s that’s a knower generated image, it shows the fire intensity. So the brighter, the brighter the spot, the larger, the hotter the fire. And then the larger image that shows you where the smoke is being transported from the fires, it shows you that the density of the smoke plumes and the particles, and I’ve watched this, you know, a few times over the last week or two, and it’s very typical transport pattern, you have these, these fires on the west coast, and then Oregon, and Idaho, and the kind of circle around make it around the Rockies and then drop down from the north. And we get this transport van here into the Front Range. So that’s a major contribution to this particular air pollution we’ve been observing. And this compares similar to what we just looked at for ozone, the levels in fine particulate matter, between last year and this year. And you can see that for the month as a whole.

Unknown Speaker 2:26:38
May, June and July, particles were at higher levels all throughout the the main words higher, the medium was high, the whole distribution was higher, the high percentile values were higher, and very significantly 83% 55% in July, you know, and that’s done with a $30,000 instrument. But if you does look towards the mountains, you can see the mountains, how many days have you seen the mountains, you know, and that’s what’s driving this, this poor visibility.

Unknown Speaker 2:27:10
For benzene, benzene is also somewhat enhanced in these fire plumes. So you can see that May, June and July this summer, benzene levels were higher than last year,

Unknown Speaker 2:27:25
you know, somewhat significantly because these, these smoke plumes do carry

Unknown Speaker 2:27:30
a certain amount of benzene with them.

Unknown Speaker 2:27:33
Okay, so now I’m going to turn to a different topic. And I haven’t touched this much here in previous previous presentations. So So part of this, the motivation of this study we’re doing here is to better understand the greenhouse gas emissions from the city and and provide observations

Unknown Speaker 2:27:59
to evaluate the city’s path towards curbing its greenhouse gas emissions and you know, co2 is that’s, that’s the big big one, that’s the the most significant greenhouse gas we’re concerned about.

Unknown Speaker 2:28:16
So we’re monitoring this at both locations at the airport and union reservoir.

Unknown Speaker 2:28:22
And then what we can do with the data is produced these we call them heat maps. So let me explain again, what you’re seeing here. Let’s, let’s start on the right one,

Unknown Speaker 2:28:33
you’re plotting the data we’re seeing over a certain time window here, this is quarter two. So this is three months of data measured every minute. So we plotting the concentrations against the wind direction, and wind speed. So wind direction is north south east, you know, it’s just like a compass. And then from the center, to the outside, you have increasing wind speeds. So most of the time, you actually have pretty calm winds. So most of the data are really in the center of this. And on the outskirts, it’s just a few, you know, crazy high wind occurrences, you have much more, much more data, what happens much more often is, is what you see in the center of these plots. So what you see on the right side is very clearly that the hot colors, the red colors are on the left of the center, which means when the winds are from the west, and mostly at lighter winds, so this is in meters per second, you know, between like zero or three, zero to three meters per seconds, that when you get the highest yield highest co2 at Union reservoir, which means looking at a map union reservoir to the west, that’s where the city is pretty much what I would have expected. You have 100,000 people living there. So let’s look at that. So we are you see the star there on the right, that’s what union reservoir is that we’re measuring. And you have the city

Unknown Speaker 2:30:00
Straight to the west. So when the air comes from the west, that’s when you get high co2. So that’s what we want to measure, we want to measure, you know, the co2 that’s coming from the city works very nicely. makes complete sense. And, you know, as we, you know, we move now towards bringing co2 emissions down, if we do this year after year after year, and if you really completely succeed, this sort of all disappeared should be gone eventually.

Unknown Speaker 2:30:27
So then we do the same for the for the airport, and that’s the other star there on the left, LMA Longmont Municipal Airport. And so what I would have expected now is that that hot

Unknown Speaker 2:30:42
color should be on the right side, because we have 100,000 people on the on the on the east side, northeast. So that’s where all the co2 should be coming from really, because to the west of the airport, there really isn’t a whole lot, you know, there’s a little bit of Lyons and and then there’s the mountains and Estes Park where there shouldn’t be a whole lot of co2. But let me see if I go back. They chose it a little bit a bit larger. So what we’ve been seeing, and we’ve done this analysis for the airport, something very similar to what we see at Union reservoir, we see more and more co2 coming from the west, then from the city. And we’ve been looking at this now for for nine months. And we think we’re doing something wrong, we’re doing something wrong. That’s, you know, if the wind rain isn’t in line, right, and we’ve been striking and shaking and scratching our heads, and we’ve seen the same thing over and over. So why is there this much co2 at the airport. There’s another sign for this. And we’ve been watching this now more and more. This shows three days of co2 data

Unknown Speaker 2:31:57
from just a month ago. And this compares the airport data in red with the union reservoir. This is this this purple, and Broomfield Soaring Eagle, which is green.

Unknown Speaker 2:32:13
So what happens with co2, it goes down during the day, for two reasons, the atmosphere mixes much, much more during the day, and you mix cleaner air from above, with what’s near the ground air really bumps down just like a basketball, it mixes really well. And that dilutes it. And then in the summer, you have all these planes out there the vegetation that take out co2 through photosynthesis, so it’s a real thing. And you can see that during the day, these are the lows, the three sides, they are almost identical, very nice, consistent. As I chose here, you know, we’re measuring the right thing, the sensors agree very nicely. But then at night, this mixing becomes much weaker. And you have these inversions. And then you see really what’s happening in the vicinity.

Unknown Speaker 2:33:01
Because the emissions they kind of they they accumulate like it’s all trapped under a blanket. And what really puzzles me is why the airport and even union reservoir are higher than Broomfield because Broomfield is much closer to Denver, big city. Lots of traffic’s power plants as a power plant on there. Lots of heavy co2 emissions, but Longmont peaks at higher levels during the night day after day. I’ve seen this most days we see it like that. So why would be up here in Longmont have more stronger co2 sources than

Unknown Speaker 2:33:43
what we see in Broomfield.

Unknown Speaker 2:33:46
And you see that here as well. So this is the statistics of the data.

Unknown Speaker 2:33:52
Again, the green one is the Broomfield data so you can see the spread is higher at the lung, one sides, the mean is higher, the medians are higher than the boxes give from this the 25 to 75 percentile, it’s high, it’s higher in long run, so we have more co2 we have strongest co2 sources, in Longmont than what we have in Broomfield.

Unknown Speaker 2:34:15
And this is another interesting comparison. So now we’re getting into the second years we can do year to year comparison. So this compares for the Longmont airport, the co2 distribution in quarter two. So this is three months of data many, many many measurements

Unknown Speaker 2:34:33
between 2020 and 2021. In wind up it the mean went up by four parts per million, the mean by 3.3 which is not that surprising because if you watch the news or read the papers, you know co2 is going up and up and up and up. But globally, it’s gone up by 2.1 parts per million from the NOAA network. This is very well defined the global co2 increase between 2020 and 2020

Unknown Speaker 2:35:00
One was 2.1 parts per million. Here at the airport, we see more than that,

Unknown Speaker 2:35:06
you know, we want to go towards bringing co2 down. But there is this. So as well, we are actually heading the opposite direction according to this data. So we have some, some some, some strong co2

Unknown Speaker 2:35:20
issues here. So we’ve looked at this more.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:24
And this now takes these windrose heat map analysis a little bit further. And this shows now the airport co2, got to do a little bit of filtering of the data. And so what what the tea is out there now is that, you know, as I said earlier, we have this, this flow this high co2 to the west of the airport, whatever it may be, but then there’s also in the north west corner. And very interestingly, at higher wind speeds, you see the yellow colors there in that corner at higher wind speeds, we get higher co2 from the northwest corner.

Unknown Speaker 2:36:04
So, you know, we’re very surprised and and we stumbled, actually, over a second set of data. So the red Asterix there. So that’s where the Longmont airports

Unknown Speaker 2:36:19
monitoring site is. And it just happens that just half a mile to the west, there is another place where co2 is monitored, being monitored. And this is a neon site that stands for the National ecological observing network. And it’s a testing site, it’s an instrument testing site, but they also have a really high accuracy co2 monitor there. And we were able to get the data and analyze the data. And that’s now on the left side there. So we use, you know, we use data from a different instrument that’s operated by a different group, we had nothing to do with it, but we then process the data. And that’s what we get on the left side, and it looks very, very similar. We get this, you know, the high co2 plumes that come from the northwest. So we know, you know, this, this is not something we did wrong with our measurements or whatsoever, there’s no major co2 source. And that’s not the city, I mean, you can see a little bit on the east, there’s, you know, it’s higher than on the southwest. So the city contributes somewhat, but the biggest contributor here, the biggest contribution is not, it’s not from the city. So then if you look, you know, what are the roughly the sectors if we put these, the wind direction?

Unknown Speaker 2:37:38
On the map, you know, that’s, that’s where the airport is. And the the yellow sector there, that’s where we get these, these these strong enhancement. And then the more darker yellow, orange is, this is where we get these, these other, the other signal.

Unknown Speaker 2:37:57
So then what’s what’s right within that sector, and which I think points towards the source of the co2 is the basis that cement plant ceramics.

Unknown Speaker 2:38:10
And, you know, cement plants are very significant source of co2. So actually a little bit of digging, and we got their greenhouse gas summary report, and that reports for I think this is 2020 Yeah. 2020. If I understand this report, right, co2 equivalent emissions from the facility is as 357,000 metric tons in co2 357,000. I’ve never seen this before. So I was really intrigued as to how much is this? So I was then I was doing some math.

Unknown Speaker 2:38:49
So that 357,000 metric tons of you, and I’m just guessing here, and please redo this math and tell me if I’m wrong. So it’s guessing you know, if Longmont has 100,000 people and there’s, you know, 60,000 cars, and everybody puts in 40 gallons of gas every month and and you burn this all to co2, how much co2 do you get from all these cars in Longmont and I got 213,000 metric tons per year from all the cars. So that math is correct, your hope it is, you know, that that that plan by itself emits more co2 and all of the cars in Longmont per year. You know so so that makes sense. That makes sense. So this is a this is a stronger co2 emitter than all the cars in Longmont and we see this nicely in the data. You know, that’s that’s what we see, you know, without having ever thought about it, just analyzing our co2 data.

Unknown Speaker 2:39:48
There’s a strong co2 stores, you know, to the northwest of alpha station. So I think that’s an explanation for this. You know, this this increase we serve the average visitor

Unknown Speaker 2:40:00
I have one other question that isn’t answered. And that’s a question mark. So what’s this other good signal we’ve seen from the west here? Why do we see, you know, this higher sea co2 on the west?

Unknown Speaker 2:40:13
And, and our first suspicion was, I thought I had a really good explanation.

Unknown Speaker 2:40:22
So so we are, we’re there were the stories. And then if you could guess, the Google a little bit to the left there, these hangers, these these light aircraft hangars, and there’s eight of them there. And I did some research at all, we call the managers and it turns out the heat them, they have extra natural gas heaters there so that the planes are not getting too cold. I guess I thought, Well, probably what we’re seeing here is when they’re heating these firing up the hangers in the winter, and we’re getting the co2 from the natural gas furnaces. But then we did the season. And on season three, we see the same thing in summer, we seen the winter, why are they heating these hangers in the summer, it’s so they must be really hot in there. So that that didn’t make much sense. But then we get that neon data. And that’s to the west of all these hangers, and that showed the same co2 source that it’s from on the west. So if the hangers were that source, it would come from the right side from the east, but it didn’t. And another thing, then, that was stunning to me is that this now shows the co2 data from our airport side, which is this, this brownish color versus the neon data. And the neon data you can see at night, actually higher, the spikes are higher, which means they have higher co2. So you go half a mile further to the west, and the nighttime spikes and co2 actually higher, which means that the neon side, which is on the other side of the hangars in the airport must be closer to that co2 source.

Unknown Speaker 2:41:59
So where’s this from? What’s out there that that generates all this year, too. And we thought we had it figured out until this morning, actually, I still have this slide in there. Because we actually drove around, we did the Google Map surveys, and we found this one business, that’s just a half a mile west. And it had this big tank there in the back parking lot. And we thought it was a co2 tank. But now we’ve found out this morning, it’s nitrogen supposedly, so that that’s not the the, the the explanation. So we’re still not sure what, Where’s the co2? And if any of you, you know, have an idea suspicion, what’s west of the airport, that releases a lot of don’t you live there, Eugene.

Unknown Speaker 2:42:48
And this this is this is significant, you know, this is this a fair amount of co2.

Unknown Speaker 2:42:56
So

Unknown Speaker 2:42:58
that’s, that’s the end of that. But I have to share about the Wallace data analysis. And this is detective work, we’ve been doing

Unknown Speaker 2:43:07
outlook for what’s down the road. You know, we’re still in the middle of the

Unknown Speaker 2:43:13
high pollution event episode here. So we certainly keep our eyes on that. The Fed maidwell becoming

Unknown Speaker 2:43:22
more and more active right now. Were watching that very, very closely. so far. Nothing has jumped at us from the ongoing activities, they’re

Unknown Speaker 2:43:36
still in the middle of the ozone season.

Unknown Speaker 2:43:40
We already heard that the the side, airport side will likely be moved to a new location. And I have very similar slides that you just saw about that already. Also, I wanted to throw out the idea of having an open house at some point we wanted to do this last year already. But then COVID of wood is upside down. So face interest to do a council field trip and we can give a tour and show you how all these these instrument work and look like we’ll be happy to accommodate that as well. And that’s my last slide. So

Unknown Speaker 2:44:16
thanks. All right. Thank you, Doc. We appreciate that. Counselor pack. Did you have any other questions or no? Did you already ask yours? Okay, cool. No, thank you very much. We appreciate that. Doctor, coming up now. All right, we’re gonna go with council member.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:34
Pack. You do have a question.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:37
Okay, dark waters.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:41
Hold on a second. I’ll get john here.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:43
Thanks, Mayor vaguely. Earl. This is really for you more than glad to help me. Is there some direction you’re hoping for from US based on on this presentation? Or or slices of the data? No, this is the

Unknown Speaker 2:44:59
this is the update.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:00
That you all wanted in terms of the quarterly updates we were required to give.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:06
Thanks, if you have anything.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:10
Alright, Councillor Beck?

Unknown Speaker 2:45:14
Thank you, Doctor helmet you have on this last slide, more fires question mark, can you tell us what the depletion of these ozone layers? How does that affect the fire that we’re having? Or does it?

Unknown Speaker 2:45:32
Or is that something that you just give us?

Unknown Speaker 2:45:35
data?

Unknown Speaker 2:45:39
Yeah, there may be two questions in there, you know, does the ozone trigger fires, or do the fires drive Morozov?

Unknown Speaker 2:45:49
And so actually, both.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:53
So we’ve we’ve experienced

Unknown Speaker 2:45:56
in the Northern Hemisphere, roughly a doubling of ozone over the last 150 years. And there’s more ozone everywhere, the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere is much cleaner, because the equator is kind of like a big curtain and air doesn’t exchange across the equator nearly as much as it does with the left hemisphere. So if you look at the northern hemisphere is much more polluted air overall, there’s because 90% of the world’s population is the northern hemisphere, most of the industries on the northern northern hemisphere. And so, you know, 150 to 100 years ago, before all this fossil fuel burning, really kicked in, we may have had 2025 30 ppb of ozone. And now we have many areas were close to twice that. So there’s more ozone in the Northern Hemisphere. And it turns out that ozone is a very significant climate for some gas, we always talk about co2, and then we worry about methane. Because those are, they are the big ones, you know, methane, and co2 is about 60% of the climate forcing methane is something like 25. And then the third one is already ozone is doubling of ozone is actually the third important most important climate gas. So it’s it’s contributing it’s 0.3 watts, of forcing, which is pretty significant. So that ozone, we’ve added indirectly to the atmosphere is driving, you know, 15 to 20%, of the climate change of the warming, so we could knock all this ozone out the ground, the warming wouldn’t be quite as bad. And you know, then then the climate warming, you know, it’s it’s changing weather patterns, it’s changing extreme weather remains. And it’s driving these these heat waves and the drain of the the ecosystems and the fires. So yes, ozone is one of the gases that contributes to climate change and contribute to these these extreme severe weather events and the burning the sea and the smoke that way, now. And the second part of that is, you know, now with the smoke, and the associated other pollutants

Unknown Speaker 2:48:16
being transported in this region, we have conditions that promote a more aggressive ozone production, you know, the ozone production here, it goes up and down every day, because ozone is so reactive, that at night, a lot of this reacts away.

Unknown Speaker 2:48:36
And then in the morning, you know, as the sun comes back out, and we get this radiation that we need to rebuild, make more ozone. You know, it goes from 2030 in the morning to 100 in the afternoon, and triples throughout the day, on a sunny day. And that happens without the fire smoke. We’ve seen this on many, many days.

Unknown Speaker 2:49:00
But from you know what, we’re still studying this very intensely, with the presence of the additional pollutants in the smell, we’re getting somewhat stronger production of this ozone throughout the day. It’s not clear cut correlation. You know, it’s it’s more on Sundays than on other days. And then also what the smoke can do it, it can block some of the radiation so you have less energy to produce all this ozone. So you know, there’s actually a somewhat beneficial effect of that smell because it blocks the sun’s you don’t

Unknown Speaker 2:49:40
produce as much ozone. So there’s components to both of this. Okay, thanks. That was that was an interesting

Unknown Speaker 2:49:50
answer. My other question is, because of the cement plant, do you report that to cdphp that that’s

Unknown Speaker 2:50:00
Have you found that? No, that’s that’s not my role. That’s not your role. I just did some poking around and, and was just really excited.

Unknown Speaker 2:50:10
Because you know, we just looked at this data and we see these these graphs. And then we said, this makes no sense. And then we look more and more, and then we find an explanation. And that’s it. Oh, cool.

Unknown Speaker 2:50:22
The other thing is that you mentioned that you had alerts that went to the park service, email alert emails, is there a way that you we can get

Unknown Speaker 2:50:35
alerts to people on their cell phones through your company? Or is that? Is that possible? So at this point, we’re entertaining two types of alerts. So the park

Unknown Speaker 2:50:49
we’re interested in just the wind, wind conditions, okay, for safety of recreational activities on the reservoir. That’s something we played with, and we try to set the variables and they seem to be happy with it. We just heard back, yeah, they’re, they’re happy, they want to maintain this. So we had kind of like a pilot study there. So I think that’s going to be continued. And then the second type of alerts are these air quality alerts, air quality, not wind. So when, when benzene goes above a certain threshold value, and particles go above and methane, and ozone, when ozone goes, it’s set at 70, right now, then being an email, goes out to distribution list.

Unknown Speaker 2:51:35
And then checks after an hour, it’s not like you get an email every, every five minutes, it waits for an hour. And if ozone is still elevated, you get another email.

Unknown Speaker 2:51:45
And right now, you know, there’s a fairly small number of people who are on this distribution list, it’s relatively easy for us to add more recipients on that,

Unknown Speaker 2:51:58
you know, that that’s something I don’t make that decision.

Unknown Speaker 2:52:04
You know, I think we need directive from from you,

Unknown Speaker 2:52:08
Jane, wherever she is, right now.

Unknown Speaker 2:52:12
If you want to move that direction, I want to warn you, though, it can get pretty exhausting. You know, it’s ozone, lets the ozone, you know, typically reaches the 70 ppb at 1112. In the morning, you know, we had 20 days in the last month.

Unknown Speaker 2:52:32
And then it stays above 70 ppb till 9:10pm. So you get, you know, 10 1112 of these emails, and I get them from four different sites. So I get, you know, 4050 of these alerts, it sounds great, but, but be aware, you know, you’re gonna get hammered by these equality alerts and alerts, it’s not the most cheerful news by now, but it’s when the system is in place, you know, it just if anybody else is interested, and want to give this a try, you know, it’s easy for us to implement that it is already there, we just need to add an email address to an already existing mailing list. So maybe it’s something that we can discuss and decide, because 20 days is a lot of bad weather for people who are who have health problems. So I would like a way to alert people and ticket these complaints out that these are bad days to the cdphp NGO, CCC. So we need to work on that.

Unknown Speaker 2:53:42
Because it’s just getting worse. You know, I think we’re in a time when we need action. And that’s what your data is giving us the data that we need to decide what as a city should we do? How far Should we go with it?

Unknown Speaker 2:54:01
Because that was the point of getting the data to begin with. So now that we’re getting it, what do we do with it? How do we, how do we alert our residents? How do we protect health of people? That is really,

Unknown Speaker 2:54:15
that’s our next step. So thanks. It needs some thought and some discussion. So thank you for that.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:27
Yeah, if I can answer one question. Regarding the C max plan, I did want to say that we’re tracking the plan on operation, we understand that it may be reaching the timeline where it may cease operations. Ultimately, that decision rests with Boulder County, regarding an extension of the permit, we are monitoring it for different reasons and we’ll let you all know.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:54
johnsburg Christiansen

Unknown Speaker 2:54:57
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:00
Thank you that was a really interesting and thorough presentation.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:05
I, you suggested that maybe we would want a an open house. I think that’s a great idea. I think we’d all like to. I mean, I would like to go

Unknown Speaker 2:55:15
and see how you do that.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:17
So perhaps you could set something up in the next couple of months.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:23
Have you thought about the goto meeting the goats to the west at haystack mountain admitting.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:30
I’m just jumping.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:33
Anyway, just a thought.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:36
Alright, thank you very much. We appreciate your work. Thank you. Alright, let’s move on to mayor and council comments.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:45
Councilmember Iago fairing?

Unknown Speaker 2:55:48
Thank you, Mayor. So I just I have a couple of announcements. On our open forum, the group from element day did come to give us an update. But I want to remind everyone that the August 14 the vaccine, they’re running a vaccine clinic.

Unknown Speaker 2:56:07
So you know, that is an option. I believe it is at the at their parking lot on kimbark. If

Unknown Speaker 2:56:17
so, yeah, I didn’t, I failed to write that down. But I am going to be there to to assist and volunteer and volunteer my time. The other thing is, we all did receive an email invite from I serve as the council liaison to the museum advisory board. And this Friday.

Unknown Speaker 2:56:35
Let me double check. Yeah, it is this Friday, we all got the invite for their 100 and 50th. Open reception, the 150 year, long month anniversary, they’re opening reception, they’ve been doing some really great work. And they’ve been working really hard to to put this together the work that Eric Mason has done for with the book that they have out celebrating 150 years of long month. So if you are able to, to attend that would be that would be great. And yeah, I’ll be there as well. So yeah, and then you know, just I’m you’ll see me around with my mask a little more often. I’m about two weeks away from having students back in the glass being back in the classroom. And I teach third grade. So I’m just trying to be more cognizant, it’s better safe than sorry.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:27
You know, they don’t have access to vaccines and then looking at the numbers of positive cases among our youth. You know, last year,

Unknown Speaker 2:57:36
it was a nightmare. I had a former student whose dad passed from COVID and three students. I had one in ICU

Unknown Speaker 2:57:44
because of complications with COVID. So this is you know, this is really serious. And I’m just I’m not taking any chances.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:52
So be safe.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:55
Galesburg, Christiansen.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:59
Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman, dog offering I

Unknown Speaker 2:58:06
I am concerned about you’re having to go back to teaching but I’m concerned about all the kids and all the teachers, you know, I think we all are and

Unknown Speaker 2:58:16
we’re just gonna have to do the best we can and hang on tight.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:21
I’m glad you announced the event at the museum. It’s from six to eight, I believe. And you can dress up in your favorite era.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:34
And also, don’t forget that Friday that Saturday is the

Unknown Speaker 2:58:39
county fair parade. So starts at nine o’clock.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:45
And we’ll all be there too. I think so.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:50
Come to the parade. And then come to the fair. Thanks. Bye.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:56
All right. I don’t see anybody else set to speak. So we’ll go ahead and say city attorney anything.

Unknown Speaker 2:59:04
No comments, Mayor and are like calling me for the city man. I know. I see. I accidentally crossed off Harold right there. So

Unknown Speaker 2:59:13
that’s right. All comments. Thanks, Eugene. Anything?

Unknown Speaker 2:59:18
Nothing, Mayor. Alright, great. We have a motion to adjourn.

Unknown Speaker 2:59:23
All right. It’s been Moved by Councillor Peck and it was seconded by Councillor Christiansen All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, We’re adjourned.