Video Description:
City Council Regular Session – September 21, 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/Hm32EPeaaPzFZXWeGS8yVLHHFeE
Unknown Speaker 5:21
Alright everybody, welcome to the study session of the 21st of September, we’ll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Masks are required of all attendees. It looks like everybody today has a mask, it was gonna say if somebody does come to the podium without a mask from now on, I’m gonna say you got to get out. So the only Even if you say that you’ve got a medical reason, from now on, you can go get a doctor’s note and bring it back. And if you don’t like it, then I guess you can sue me, I am probably the biggest opponent. And I’m vocal against I hate these mass, but it’s the law and we comply with the law in Boulder County, or in Longmont and the Boulder County Public Health Department and their board have decided that this is what we need to do. And I am not a medical expert. And even if somebody thinks they are, they don’t have to come if they don’t want to wear their mask. So that’s going to be the order of the day from now on as long as I’m mayor and that order is in effect. So that said let’s go ahead and do the roll call and then have the pledge. Mayor Bagley here Councilmember Christiansen here. Councilmember doggo, fairing here. Councilmember Martin here. Councilmember Peck, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and Councilmember waters.
Unknown Speaker 6:31
Mary you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 6:32
Great. Let’s have the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right, do we have any motions to direct the city manager to do anything? All right, seeing none let’s go ahead and move on to first call public invited to be heard. Actually, this is the study session so as the only call can be heard from the public and it looks like we have a good friend an old friend who has not been here for a while she’s standing up Georgia Johnson Why don’t you come on down
Unknown Speaker 7:15
make sure I told you that I was a mayor and council your job
Unknown Speaker 7:25
yet Can you can you put turn on the mic so we can hear you and let’s start you over on your right so start over
Unknown Speaker 7:31
thank you I said Good evening mayor and Councilman that know me and all you nice people that made me feel special my husband passed two years ago I don’t think I’ve been here since then or before and then my son but anyway I wanted to tell Brian you’re been a wonderful Mayor Lord bless you and then I guess I I wanted to complain a little bit saying some good things and not so good things
Unknown Speaker 7:59
you’re done that’s okay we can just leave it
Unknown Speaker 8:03
No I’m not gonna say anything really bad you know me I like that I like living in the city of Long Matt so it’s a wonderful place that I want to keep it a wonderful place but anyway I was just gonna say that I think I’m a little bit I did talk to Brian or Harold a little bit about housing I’ve lived it’ll be going on five years and the rent keeps going up and I’m I was a caregiver for my precious husband for 21 years so next thing I’d be out in the street I think I’m a little too old to go out and work so anyway we’ve had lots of managers lots of ups and downs him and I are going to discuss it but I feel like if you’ve got something to say come and we want a good city and the way we’re going to have a good city is different people hearing what’s truth and what’s not true and working together and doing our part and course you’re always going to have different situations but right is right wrong is wrong that’s where I’m at. And so anyway that’s what I was going to say that you know if I I’ll discuss it with him, I know lots of people because I’ve lived here I’ll be 77 next week. So I’ve lived here all my life. So I like this city and I’m the oldest of 10 so I wanted to stay that way but when you get older like this and I was a caregiver and then I can’t go out and work at this age I’m a little I did graduate from the Front Range when I was 60 and then my husband got really ill so then I couldn’t go out and but I have worked a lot of jobs but not in years because I took good care of him so I guess that’s where I’m a little upset right now is trying to figure this out why 55 and plus is getting to be assisted living is what is getting more where I’m at and Trying to up your rent all the time. And they don’t feel like I was telling him You need a phone or you need internet or you need a car. Otherwise, it’s a nice place. I like it. And I don’t want to move. So that’s why I’m coming to, I guess complain a little bit. But anyway, I feel like that if we have something to say, we all are here in this city. And that’s how we make it better is is come and talk about it and try to work through it instead of act like it’s not worth it. So that’s why I feel but it’s nice seeing you special people. And I’ll talk to him about it because we went through 20 managers and we’ve had some good and some not so caring so you’re living and learning as we are in this town. I’m seeing different people come they repeat, believe you know, and of course we want where we all work together fairness and, and housing for where people hear that we’ve been here all this time. So anyway, Lord bless you. Thank you. It’s nice seeing you all right, Mark
Unknown Speaker 11:10
Springfield.
Unknown Speaker 11:16
In the interest of time management, I’m going to read this. Hello, my name is Mark Springfield on chairperson of the library advisory board. And speaking tonight at their request, I wish to discuss the board’s concern over the ongoing trend in budgetary support for our library from the city’s general fund. The library typically is scored as one of the community’s most highly rated institutions on its community satisfaction surveys 92% on the last version, of course, any institution’s ability to sustain the respect of the community is in part based on the quality of the services it provides in the funding it receives in support of those services. The library’s budget as a percent of the general funds revenue has exhibited a downward trend since at least 2010. As a percentage, it is projected to be 17%, lower and 2022 than in 2010. This is the equivalent of over 800,000. In reduced budget authority in the one year alone, over that 12 year period reference the accumulated shortfall in the institution budget would be in the millions. spending per capita currently projected for 2022 is approximately $40 per person. This is lower by 10 to 15%. From the last good comparable numbers for the state and national levels. professionally trained library staff has noted in the previous feasibility study was indicated to be approximately 20% lower than state and national levels. Zero funding support for the library’s program services comes from the general fund. They are 100%, supported by the Friends of the Library, a somewhat unique arrangement. Boulder City has a population roughly similar to longmorn. In addition to their main library, they operate depending on their circumstances between two and four additional branches. their annual budget for capital has in the past been approximately two times the long months budget. With the Library District initiative they are targeting a budget of 20 million approximately five times Long March 2020 estimate. Therefore, in recognition of some of the concerns that these trends indicated, is the unanimous opinion of the library advisory board that the library is and has consistently been underfunded. A gap exists between long morning comparatively size systems. Previous studies have highlighted this gap The library is on the precipice of not being able to maintain its current level of performance, let alone position it to flourish as a library for the 21st century. The library advisory board strongly encourages the mayor and city council, along with city staff to revisit funding levels for next year to reconsider the libraries of questions support for additional staffing, and its recommendations for more efficient utilization of existing staff via acquisition of labor shifting tools. Such as a book sorting system. Thank you for your attention.
Unknown Speaker 14:36
All right, thank you. straighter Actually, let’s do camera. Make a switch to a mask. You can hear me oh you need to go home to do that. No, that’s fine. Hold your breath.
Unknown Speaker 14:53
Excellent. All right. Are we on here? Microsoft? Right Cameron Mackay 923 Corey Street. I’m here tonight to ask counsel to please consider the effects of train horn noise on the students at Columbine elementary school, as you all decide how to prioritize the railroad quiet zone construction work. First of all, though, I want to say thank you for getting this quiet zone work done at all. This is just phenomenal. And thank you in particular to the engineers who are working on this project and especially the one who got that $4 million federal grant to help pay for a huge amount of that. Second, I want to mention just up front that I do not live in the historic Westside neighborhood. I live north of ninth Avenue. several blocks from the train tracks and train horns are just not an annoyance for me where I live. I’m here tonight though, because my six year old and my nine year old attend Columbine Elementary, which sits right along the railroad tracks there between sixth and Long’s peak avenues. And I’m asking council to please give due weight to the effects of train horns on my kids and their classmates. train horn noise at Columbine elementary does affect the learning environment. The youngest students are in fact the most severely impacted many of the preschool, kindergarten first and second grade classroom windows are less than 100 feet from the train tracks. My second grader is actually in one of these classrooms and she is not a fan of train horns she tells me and they are in fact quite loud in the classroom even though they do have pretty good windows there. At the September 8 school board meeting, the superintendent Dr. Had dad stated research that the quality of the school facilities the learning environment, affects student test scores by up to 15%. I later spoke with him on the phone and he confirmed that as soon as we get rid of the train, or getting rid of the train horn noise will be a benefit to the students of Columbine. So the sooner we can get rid of this noise the better. page two of the council communication form for tonight’s budget presentation shows that all the necessary work to implement a quiet zone around Columbine will be complete next year except for Fifth Avenue, which will happen until 2024. Now I know it is not simple to accelerate the construction work at Fifth Avenue. That probably would mean speeding up the city’s application to BNSF for a new at grade crossing at Boston Avenue which is all detailed in that council communication. But there will be no change to train horn noise at Columbine until that Fifth Avenue construction is complete. The sooner it gets done. The sooner the kids at one of our city’s lowest income elementary schools can reap the benefits of an improved learning environment. Thank you for your time.
Unknown Speaker 17:42
Thank you, sir. All right. spreader Benson.
Unknown Speaker 17:52
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Council. straighter bench deny 51 was 17,000. New. Sorry about the historical side of it. I mentioned 50 years ago last week was the massacre of the prisoners and the guards said Attica prison sent the state troopers sent in by Governor Rockefeller who use that to vault himself to become vice president killing 39. Man, at least 10 guards 10 years ago. Tonight was the murder execution of Troy Anthony Davis. I spoke here at Counsel of when that happened. He was executed by the state of Georgia. There were 1000s of people there protesting and millions of signatures on petitions around the world including the Pope. Mr. Davis. They had nine close eye witnesses, one of whom was the one who killed the odd the officer. The seven of them recanted their testimony said they were tortured or threatened by police and 13 of 15 distant witnesses. The only one who did not recant testimony was a woman who was standing 100 yards away at night. And Mr. And Mr. Davis says a dark black man, no light, no moon and 100 yards away and she said she identified him so that was the only witness except for the professional rat who has to log criminal record and the doughboys putting back out to attack somebody else. This is the court the justice was Clarence Thomas, who always voted on the Supreme Court and still does to deny rights to all black people except for himself. People say the courts are not a political body. Look what happened when Merrick Garland was denied the right to even have a hearing for here. And then they put in Barrett with only two weeks before the election. If we’re gonna survive a democracy or even a republic, we have to wake up and stop this complete political cessation of everything. And look at what the country really needs. We have wildfires, we have floods, we have hurricanes, we have denial of voting rights, and I was 1965, the Voting Rights Act. Let’s keep it going.
Unknown Speaker 21:06
Alright, thanks straighter. All right, that will conclude our public invited to be heard for this evening. And let’s move on to special reports and presentations. Actually, do you have a COVID? update Harold? I do.
Unknown Speaker 21:27
Yeah, we did. But we’ll go kill Harold, go ahead with the COVID-19. Update.
Unknown Speaker 21:41
Mayor Council, this is when you can see the seven day cumulative case count. And so you can see we are trending in the right direction they Boulder County adjusted the slides, this time where you can see the high transmission rate versus the lower levels. And it’s really the high transmission rate. That’s the key to some of the the the recent mass mandate what they’re looking at. So we are moving in the right direction. The interesting piece when you look at this is, so generally the state numbers are moving down. But what’s interesting is that when you look at all of the metro counties in terms of where the case rates are going, they’re all either staying the same or going up but for boulder and Douglas County. And and so this is good news for Boulder County. But if you can see, there is a lot of growth in cases adjacent to Boulder County. And that was a topic of some conversation today. Again, generally what we’re seeing again, this is just more in terms of the case trends that we’re seeing and what that’s looking like. And so for us, we just, this is good news. What’s interesting in this and this did come up in our admin conversation today, as you can see that Longmont is now a larger percentage of the cases based on where we used to be. And they’re starting to look at to see if that’s a trend in terms of what we’re seeing with communities on on the eastern side of the county. And hopefully we’ll have more information there on that. One of the questions last week was about hospitalizations in the past week for the region. And so the numbers we can give you a regional number, so the North Central Region. So there’s their ICU availability is under 20%. Their med surgical bed available is under 20%. Hospitals are reporting tight staffing, in 20%, are showing that they’re having significant staff shortages. The northern the North Central Region is also continuing to take patients from other states. And then the combined hospital Transfer Center plan is activated at level one, which means that non emergency surgeries are being postponed at this time. So that’s really answering the question in terms of what we’re seeing in this region in terms of hospitalization. So they’re being pressed. This is also talking about the cases are still exceeding the epidemiological capacity, meaning the ability to trace. And that’s what the the county’s trying to deal with. You’re not seeing here, we did have one more death recently. That’s not on this chart that we just learned about. But you can see that there. There have been more recently. And then when we look at the testing, the numbers are going down, the positivity rate looks like it’s spiking a little bit. But then in terms of vaccination, when we look at the percent of total population, Boulder County’s at about 68.3% of vaccinated individuals of the elige are so you got to go down 73.3% but of the eligible it’s 82.7 when you’re looking at this when it’s combined with the first vaccine, so that’s really the update today in the slides today. gave us the numbers are trending where we want to the hospitals are seeing are being pressed on both capacity side and staffing. And they’re continuing to watch that. I’ll be happy to answer any questions. I know there was a question from Councillor sir. There’s a question from Councilmember Rodriguez, about the concept of herd immunity and what does that look like? I did talk to Camille. When she was here, and they’re they’re looking to see if there’s any information on that. They weren’t aware of anything at that meeting. So as soon as we get it, we’ll let you know.
Unknown Speaker 25:33
Okay. council member,
Unknown Speaker 25:35
let’s see here. Let’s
Unknown Speaker 25:36
go with Councilmember waters. One second.
Unknown Speaker 25:41
Okay. Thank you, Mayor Bagley Herald, the slides aren’t numbered. So I would give you one, but it’s the hospitalization is the same question. I understand. I think you were trying to answer the question I asked last week. That capacity. We have to we’re thinking about capacity different right now, because of staffing issues. Right? When the hospitals were fully staffed. The numbers of beds correct. Was the metric or the measure? That’s that’s only relative to staffing capacity. Right? Correct. So if we still had a dial, right and understand we’re not using dials. But one of the dials we used to see is on hospital capacity, and where we were from green to red. If you applied, I know this is kind of asking you off the top of your head to make this up. But if we were, if we were looking at a dial to reflect the combination of hospitalizations, staff, and Bed Availability, what would our dial look like here?
Unknown Speaker 26:40
We probably be in the red, it would be my suspicion, I mean, like real quick and see if there’s another place where I can find it.
Unknown Speaker 26:59
Yeah, we would be in the red, yellow range, depending on what specific component we were looking at. So we’re in the red now available ICU beds. On med surge beds were in the red, the events aren’t really a big issue anymore. And because of supply, right, and there’s a different issue, they’re having other data issues on their website. But yeah, we’d typically be red or high yellow.
Unknown Speaker 27:26
And I guess there’s not much to do about that other than to acknowledge it. And again, use that to encourage public to get vaccinated. And in to acknowledge that you made a reference to some of what we’re experiencing as Longmont as a percent higher per 39% of total cases in Boulder County compared to 28%. in Boulder being the East County effect.
Unknown Speaker 27:56
That was what they brought up today. And so it’s hard to say but where they went up, but the Boulder County Health Department did say is they’re trying to assess what is there a difference on the eastern side of the county versus other areas? Because if you can see, when you look up until about, I think that says August, August 23, you can kind of see where we were all. Yeah, it made sense based on when you look at population and those types of things. And then all of a sudden, you can start seeing the difference here. And that’s what they’re starting to try to look into to see. Are we getting more exposures here just because of
Unknown Speaker 28:38
Well, anyway, I want to reignite the weld County, Boulder County, you know, debate but, but the numbers that we saw in weld County, obviously are substantially higher than in Boulder County on average, that that’s what they’re talking about. Correct? Yeah. All right. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 28:52
All right. Let’s go ahead, Counselor pack.
Unknown Speaker 28:55
Thanks. Thank you very badly. So Harold, in your conversations was the it mentioned as the newest report that came out that the efficacy of the Pfizer and Madonna has dropped as far as I think in some cases, it was supposed to be eight months, eight or nine months and it’s dropped to six months with a 40% efficacy rate. So my question is of the hospitalizations. Is there a data on how many of those have been vaccinated? Because Go ahead, okay, because, um, those cases of people getting the Delta variant that have been vaccinated seem to be rising in some parts of the country.
Unknown Speaker 29:44
So obviously, they were there, we’re still pulling data. So the slide deck we had wasn’t as robust as what we normally do. Okay. I think to your point is in terms of the breakthrough cases, there are they are seeing more breakthrough cases. But I think when you look at the general in at least what’s being communicated to me, the general efficacy of the vaccination is still there, you are much less likely to get it. If you’re vaccinated muscling much, even more or less likely to go to the hospital and even more or less likely to go into critical care if you’re vaccinated, what they what you are seeing, and again, I’m not gonna play a physician on this, but the data that I’m reading is that if you’re an individual with other underlying health conditions, and and older, then the likelihood if you do get it and you were vaccinated, you have a higher likelihood of getting into those other categories. And I think that’s when you can see what’s happening with the FDA when they said they want to prioritize the booster component were those that have other underlying medical conditions, older adults in that world, because I think they’re really talking about that. And if you look at it, most of those vaccinations occurred in January, January and February. So we really are now starting to get in that eight month range. And so I think that’s part of what they what they were really looking at. They were obviously planning for a different approach on boosters, but with the FDA information, they’re going to focus on the target populations. But I know I probably didn’t answer your question, but
Unknown Speaker 31:27
no, you did. Basically, I just wanted to get information out to the public. But also, to that point, Walgreens is giving booster shots. And you can go on their website and sign up, they’re giving them every 15 minutes. So if you feel that you are in that eight to nine month, or whatever it is dictated by what shot you got, then I would suggest you get that booster shot. I know I’m going to sign up for it is ASAP. So
Unknown Speaker 31:59
yeah, and I know that the governor was pretty specific in terms of you have an underlying health condition, you just need to say that you have an underlying health condition and they’re supposed to be able to write. Okay, system.
Unknown Speaker 32:10
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 32:12
Okay, Kazmir, Martin.
Unknown Speaker 32:16
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I don’t know how I managed to do this. But I missed the call for agenda revisions and would like to know if there is still an opportunity to add one. It’s sort of related to the current topic.
Unknown Speaker 32:35
I’m sorry, say again? I’m trying to say, Yeah, I was listening. You’re talking to Harold?
Unknown Speaker 32:40
No. I missed the opportunity. I don’t know how I’m embarrassed. But I missed the opportunity to add something to a future agenda. It’s related to this topic. And I would like to know, Mr. Mayor, if
Unknown Speaker 32:57
that’s fine. Does anyone object to her? Speaking? Okay, nobody cares. So go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 33:02
Okay. It is difficult for everyone, for us to be meeting in person masked under the current conditions. And we have been unable to obtain an ASL interpreter, which I think is very unfair to hearing impaired persons trying to come and understand the the city council meetings and what’s going on. I would like to have as soon as possible to have the council vote on whether we should reconsider the idea of going back to online meetings.
Unknown Speaker 33:47
Yes. Do you guys want to talk about that now?
Unknown Speaker 33:50
I will about I guess what I’m what I’m saying
Unknown Speaker 33:52
is, can we talked about that briefly now. I mean, I we voted to meet with mass I was in the dissent. So I don’t remember who was with me in the dissent. I want to meet zoom with masks. But I don’t I don’t get about unless you guys, somebody makes a motion in the majority to change it. I’m only bringing it up. Now. If anybody thinks it’s inappropriate, we won’t talk about it. We’ll put it on the next agenda. It’s just that if we put it on the next agenda, we’re almost I mean, we’re Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 34:21
I would like to to discuss and vote now and I voted to meet in person so I think I can make that motion.
Unknown Speaker 34:30
Okay, so does anyone object to talking about it now or we will put it on the next agenda. Consumer pack Hold on a second. Okay. Councillor pack.
Unknown Speaker 34:46
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. We have such a pretty packed agenda tonight. I I would move that we would put it on the next council meeting to talk about it.
Unknown Speaker 34:57
Okay, so the only Wait, okay, it’s been moved and seconded to put on the next council meeting agenda, the only way around that that is what we do. So there are ways around that. But if nobody wants to take those actions, or doesn’t know how then then I won’t stop them. So anybody want to say anything about this? We’ll just put on the next agenda. Was that? Okay, cool. Anyone object to putting on the next agenda? Alright, let’s go ahead and put it on the next agenda. Oh, that’s okay. Oh, yeah. There wasn’t. Technically we have to vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. The Motion carries unanimously. It’s put on the next agenda, please. Thank you, Councillor Martin. All right, Harold, let’s go on to the budget items.
Unknown Speaker 35:50
Jim. Oh, sorry. Where’s the clicker?
Unknown Speaker 36:24
Good evening, mayor and city council Teresa Malloy, budget manager. And this is not working. So in your council packet, we did have four things, I believe that were follow up items from the council meeting on August 31. We do plan to touch on one of those items for you this evening. And that’ll be the quiet zones. And the rest of them. We don’t plan on actually including in our presentation, however, there will be an opportunity at the end. If If we need to talk about those we certainly can. And so we as you mentioned, we do have a pretty busy conversation with you this evening. It’s going to include a variety of staff. And, and we’re just going to get started. These are all the topics they were heard listed in your packet. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Tyler.
Unknown Speaker 37:42
So I’m actually going to jump in ahead on this one. And before Tyler. So I know there was a question regarding the timing of the project on and then I’ll have Tyler come up, and we need to get into sorry. If we need to get into more details on this one. I wanted to provide counsel with some background on the the quiet zone issue that’s at hand at hand. Because when we look at the schedule itself, there’s a lot of components to it. So we have two issues at play. We have the quiet zone conversation that was funded in terms of what we looked at that you all saw that was in your your packet. We also have the crossing with Boston so we can connect Boston across the railroad. And those two are connected to each other as we’re looking at this. So I want to talk a little bit about the crossing the Boston crossing at the railroad and kind of what we’re looking at there. So one of the issues is historically we have approached the PC before and we tried to get the crossing approved. And we did not submit any other closings with that and the PCP PC denied that. We are in conversations now with the P UC, to look at what we can do in order to get that crossing of Boston there. So we can get traffic on that. That’s important for a couple of reasons. One, we talked about BRT and the transit center that we’re looking to build and what we need to do, too, we do know that there’s a lot of traffic that that really impacts the Westside neighborhood on Third Street, and so that’s part of this this conversation. And doing that we need to look at options and we’ve talked to counsel about the different options and what we can do. If I haven’t said this, I’ll say it now we have begun can conversations with the PSE and our goal is to get to the PC as quickly as we possibly can. When you look at the quiet zones, and and they put Fifth Avenue at the end That schedule, it really is connected to the work that we’re trying to do with the PC. And what we have to figure out and how we’re going to be able to move on this other project. I definitely hear from the residents. I know I’ve been involved in a number of conversations, primarily with Rick Jacoby and others who were who were doing this. We’ve been involved in conversations when we looked at the Fifth Avenue option in terms of how the neighborhood looks at that. So we definitely understand the need to move this forward. What I can tell you today is my goal and my intent is we need to get through and really figure out the PSC piece as its associated with Boston, once we can understand that, that gives us some flexibility in terms of what we’re looking at with the schedule and the quiet zones. So we can really get that stretch dealt with on the front end of it. And so I wanted you all to know that because it’s kind of caught in two projects, but but the intent is we definitely hear what the neighborhood saying. And my goal is whatever we can do to get it done in 2022. But we need to get through the PVC piece first. I don’t know if that answers counsels questions on this issue. I’d be happy to bring Tyler up to help me with the technical components,
Unknown Speaker 41:24
not waters. Yeah, I want to comment on that. I had another question can kind of comment on this didn’t get back to my other question. What I just heard you say Harold, is that, regardless of word this how this is laid out, there’s no intent to leave Fifth Avenue until 2024. As part of a solution, it’s the question of what we’re going to do with Fifth Avenue. Correct. And there’s other decisions that have to be made. Absolutely. So for parents of children at Columbine elementary school, to the superintendent who has contacted several of us out of concern for what that does to the learning environment. The messages? We are not, we do not intend to wait to 2024 to bring some solution to bear specifically around Columbine Elementary School. Yes. Can I ask my other question? When we was it the 31st 100, we get the 31st. We got the cap the CRP budget. And you know what, that the meeting was long into the night. We were you know, we were gonna have a chance to answer questions tonight was the night we were going to get a chance to follow up. And I saw what Teresa listed two things we’re not going to address. And that’s okay. The thing that I want to that I have questions about for the most part will be in what’s already laid out in the accounts communication that we’re going to work through. But there’s one that’s not you know, I was I would have asked it on the 31st ask it tonight, because it’s not on the budget. My question is, what would it take to get on the budget? And that is the completion of the ukri Golf Course project that’s, that started 1996 right, we’ve had an unfinished project in the queue for 25 years or, or more now. I was gonna raise it, then. It just I don’t know how many projects have been sitting in a queue for 25 years waiting to be completed not given all the things we need to do in the city. I’m certain there are folks that go flat. Why would you worry about that given, you know, the health and safety issues, and this this Safety and Justice Center project that still wouldn’t be fun with buying money and the maintenance shed that’s still not, you know, finished? And we’re probably going to need to augment that with with other funding. But I was I had the question then. And then subsequent to the question that night, during the the artwalk. Either it was fun to stop by the museum booth, just after the time capsule had been opened. Right. And so it’s fun to see all the documents that had been placed in a time capsule in 1996. And one of those one of the documents in the time capsule was the layup UK golf course. Interestingly enough, and I wondered in that moment, who put that document in the time capsule, the enthusiasm they must have for the project that it was that important in 1996. And if they had any concept that 25 years later, the project wouldn’t be finished still waiting in a queue, even for the first dollar to be budgeted, right, towards accruing the funding to finish what we started in 1996. So I don’t know if that’s an answer tonight. That but but it seems odd to me that it just sits there this long, and we don’t address it one way or another.
Unknown Speaker 44:50
So that’s what if you saw me roll over to Jim and go. That was really the other questions at the end knowing that there were probably going to be okay, all right, we can get to it then So we should have been more clear on that one.
Unknown Speaker 45:02
I just didn’t show up. Yeah, it was. Alright. I’ll wait till the end. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 45:07
Alright, let’s go ahead with Councilmember Councilmember, come on Councilmember Christiansen, we have, you’re not next in the queue, but you have not spoken. So we’ll go ahead and eat with you.
Unknown Speaker 45:22
Okay, I’m going to try to speak more loudly because I was told that I couldn’t be heard last time. So forgive me if I’m loud. You know, I think all of us can appreciate how, how difficult it would be for a little kid to try to be concentrating and periodically interrupted by a really loud train horn. So that if there was a way to prioritize that, I’m sure we would. But engineering has to prioritize things in a realistic way. And sometimes, other things have to be done before you can build the other thing. So I would like to just reiterate what Councilman waters said that we’re not in any way trying to put that at the tail end of the line. But we do have to figure out other things first and other people. Another thing I would like to say is that some people have objected to the fact that we have to close Fifth Avenue. While that isn’t something we can negotiate, that is something that the Federal train authority requires us to do if we’re going to have a quiet zone for some of these things. So they asked for the quiet zone. But the deal is, then Fifth Avenue will have to be closed. And I am really opposed to closing any streets because it makes it very difficult in the long run. However, in this case, if it would get the kids the quiet zone, yeah, then we should definitely do it. So I would just ask for people to have a little forbearance that would there’s no weird stuff going on. We’re trying to do the do the best we can. And the city engineers in the city planners aren’t doing the very best they can to try to get this this issue of quiet zones resolved. But it does require us to be thrifty with the money we have. It requires us to be to, to do engineering in a methodical and orderly fashion, rather than prioritize things emotionally that we would like to do, but can’t actually do. Because in the long run, it’s best, we have to prioritize what’s best for the town. And so if this is a bit later, the two years it’s scheduled for but hopefully it won’t be. It just depends. So please understand that no one is trying to harm our kids. We want nothing but the best for these these kids. And I certainly do empathize with the frustration of parents whose kids are having to put up with this. But hopefully we can get this all fixed within the next few years. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 48:36
All right. Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Unknown Speaker 48:40
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I’d like to ask you to ask that question as a question. Because we all got a letter from a resident of the historic you side, we all heard what Mr. McKay has to say. And the city manager’s explanation didn’t quite tell me what I wanted to know. What I want to know is what has to happen. Specifically, with regard to the P UC or engineering or anything? What are the milestones that we have to accomplish in order to get Columbine elementary school out of the quiet into a quiet zone in 2022? What are the specific steps that has to happen?
Unknown Speaker 49:36
So
Unknown Speaker 49:37
then I’m going to say let’s go ahead and finish this, but I want we can, we’re starting to stray from this is particularly relevant, I’m saying we can argue about it, but I’ve got the gavel till November. Okay, I’m saying we want to get back to the budget, rather than talk about quiet zones currently. That’s what I’m saying. So go ahead and answer. That’s all I’m saying. That’s fine. But after this, I want to go Like to destroy gold. That’s it.
Unknown Speaker 50:01
So you have two paths. There’s two paths that are employing. And so one is, as we talked about, and Councilmember Christian Christiansen referenced in terms of when we talked about the quiet zones, we talked about the need to for closure of faith or potential closure a fifth, in order to accomplish that, based on what the PC said, what we are, we’re in conversations now to make sure that we’re exploring all options, so that we have more options in the end potentially. So we need to get through the PLC and see how they’re going to how we’re going to move through it and what they’re going to require of us to do that. If there’s other options in play, where theoretically, let’s say, theoretically, fifth isn’t in play, then I’ve got it, then we’ve got to figure out financially how to pull fifth into 2022. Because my point is, I don’t want to spend millions of dollars for a quiet zone. And we don’t have a quiet zone because we have a crossing that’s not there. But it is all hindering in the conversation that we have with the PC. And that’s what we have to work through.
Unknown Speaker 51:10
Till that sounds like the answer is we don’t exactly know,
Unknown Speaker 51:13
until we get through and deal with the PC in terms of what they’re going to look at for the crossing on Boston. That’s a big part of this conversation. Yeah, go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 51:29
Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Martin just a couple of quick thoughts on this. Staff gets gets it to get quiet zone implemented as soon as possible top priority in the downtown in the east side neighborhoods, we get that. I cannot stand here tonight, though and say that in 2022. We have to have third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh down. So your question of what does it take for us to have it done in 2022? I don’t believe it’s possible to have it done in 2022. I do think however, the city should collaborate and work with the school district to look at all solutions with Columbine on a shorter notice or a shorter time track. No pun intended there, buddy. On a shorter approach, possibly we could look at sound proofing of the school and to assist in those kinds of things. Because the children that are there now will be out of Columbine, by the time we’re, you know, we got this done. And I don’t I don’t think any of us want to wait that long. And so I just didn’t want to leave the impression though that by this time next year by the end of next year. We would be there. I think we’re overselling what we’re at the mercy of the railroad. As Harold said, we’re at the we have to get these situations cleared up with regards to Boston Avenue. That’s one step with b2c. The bigger issue at the end of the day is all this work. 90% of it anyway, needs to be done by the railroad. We are not in control of the timing of that. We can do everything we can to incentivize it, we can do it. You know, we’re paying for it for God’s sake. But I just didn’t want to leave. Anyway, I just want to emphasize we got the message. We know it’s the top priority it has been. And that’s a very difficult and frustrating process to go through.
Unknown Speaker 53:40
So I think part of it to get so we’re funding, we have program to fund all of those intersections in 2022. That the funding is there in 2022. The one that is not there in 2022 is fifth. we’ve all talked about fifth being connected to the other conversation with a PC on the crossing for Boston. So there’s there’s a connection point there. What Dale’s talking about, on the other side is BNSF then has to do the work. And so we can control is to say the fundings here and here’s where we’re going in do that. Dale was making a very good point of there’s a bit of lack of control on this in terms of how BNSF proceeds and what they do and in that we can’t guarantee in this process. So I don’t know if that answered your question. But really the P ucps. is a big piece to then knowing what path we go forward on in that is it a closure or is it bringing money and to try to do it and fund it?
Unknown Speaker 54:44
Sure. And and it’s it’s really that that the explanation wasn’t complete. And I know we talked about the ordering of crossings a really long time ago now. And I don’t remember why. The east side and how To have a node at the very tail end, that’s what I would have liked to hear. And know that the Fifth Avenue it’s the last one. Why?
Unknown Speaker 55:11
Because we didn’t know what the timing was going to be on the PC side. And that’s where I’m saying, We are now in conversations with the P you see very focused on getting that done as quickly as we possibly can. Once we know the answer to that, then it’s our job as staff to find a way to bring the funding forward. So we can bring all of these together as close as we can with the BNSF doing
Unknown Speaker 55:36
the work. So a reordering would be possible.
Unknown Speaker 55:39
Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying cue. Sorry, I was getting late, into the weeds.
Unknown Speaker 55:47
All right, let’s go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 55:56
I think we’re good on this one.
Unknown Speaker 56:16
Okay, we’re gonna move into the one time expenses, and both the general fund and the public safety fund. And these are recapped in for the general fund in attachment. K, I do want to bring to your attention before I cover what’s on the slide that we need to replace what was provided to you in your packet and out on our website, because there was an error. And so that will get updated them out on our website. Let me tell you really quickly what the changes are. So it is on the second page of attachment K. Under the one time services or expenses, it’s also page s 76. In about the kind of the middle section there, there was the textiles storage move to the museum storage building, that is not 60,000. That’s 40,000. So so that will be updated. And then the the one that says swaps, that one out 40,000. That one should be instead of swaps, that is the recreation master plan update. We did not fund swaps in 22. So again, this will be a replacement that we will put out on the website for you. Total Amount does not change. It’s just the description on one and the amount. On the other one, one was 41 was 60. And so total, one time expenses in the general fund is 8.34 6 million. And that is offset by $3.8 million of revenue and reserve from balances as shown appear on the slide, the largest of which is the property tax at at 2.36 6 million, as well as 483,000 of use tax. So those are one time sources that we use to offset the total one time expenses. There is also a reserve in the general fund fund balance for bond farm. It’s a reserve that we’ve been carrying for quite some time now. And since we are funding the that portion of the bond farm project in 22, we’re going to use that reserve as well. So the net one time expenses in the general fund is $4.5 million. And as we typically do, we categorize them in four different categories capital at 573,000. It equipment and technology improvements. At one point, just under $5 million 1.5 noncapital, small equipment and supplies at 177. That is mainly equipment to go along with our new FTP and then things that are not do not reach the capital threshold. And then one time services or expenses is the largest category at just under $6.1 million. So that is the one time in, in our general fund, and then in attachment L is the complete list of one time in the public safety fund it total $733,000. And again categorized in those four same categories as we do in the general fund 169,000 in capital equipment. It technology improvements is 316,000, the small equipment and supplies of 239,000. Again, a good portion of that has to do with the new positions. And then one time services or expenses is just under 8000.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:49
And then, as we do in every other budget process, we also have a financial policy around incremental development revenue. And basically our policy says that any new dwelling units above the 200 unit threshold is considered incremental development revenue. And we use that for one time and or ongoing, that would be subject to reduction should the revenue fall below that threshold. And in our 22 budget, as Jim mentioned, last week, we have 867, new dwelling units. So essentially, the equivalent revenue from 667 of those is what is making up this incremental development revenue of $619,000. It comes from both building permits 564,000 of it, and then another 55,000 from plan review. And this is the list of the items that were funding with the incremental development revenue. A good portion of it is ongoing as it has been in prior years. I will tell you that there are two positions that we are funding currently in our 2021 budget from incremental development revenue that we have now moved out from from being funded with incremental development revenue to being funded with ongoing revenue in, in in the public safety fund. And that is the fire inspection position, fire inspector position, that one’s been moved to ongoing funded and the public safety fund. And then a housing and community specialist was also being funded from incremental development revenue. And that one, we have now moved to the affordable housing fund. So we didn’t eliminate the positions is just we’ve shifted the funding source from incremental development revenue to ongoing revenue in those two funds. And so total ongoing uses for our incremental development revenue in 2022 is 585,000. It covers those items on the upper part of the screen here. And then we have one, one item that is partially offset by incremental development revenue, and that is the Envision Longmont update. And so our total incremental development revenue in the budget is just under $620,000. And with that, I’m going to now turn it over to Karen and staff
Unknown Speaker 1:04:06
Yeah, we can let’s go with this time Councilman Martin.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:14
Thank you Mayor Bagley in the IT improvements. You have not much not much detail in terms of line item detail. And there are there are two systems of reordering or improvement projects that are needed that I hear about on at least a weekly basis. One of them is access access to human services, functions. They’re just really hard to Find on the website. And I think part of it is because some of it is by one one application and another one is another application. But I will tell you the most important thing on there is to be able to complain about a habitability defect in in a rental unit, it is impossible to find because it’s buried way down in the in the permitting system, when it really ought to be up with the other human services links, like how to get rental assistance. And so I think that the reordering of that and and the improving the accessibility of that website is a real important problem that I want to understand is funded or wanted want to go for making sure that it is funding while we have this chance to give direction. The other one is the amenities ticketing situation, you know, you can’t buy a pass to Union reservoir, you can’t you can’t reserve swim lanes, you know, you can’t do any of that stuff. You have to it’s just really difficult and nobody can, you know, can find it and they end up going and buying the pass or the ticket in person hear about that all the time. So are those projects funded for 2022? Or are they not?
Unknown Speaker 1:06:39
Councilmember Martin, I’m gonna have to ask for some support from behind me to answer these.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:49
Mayor Bagley, members of council Sandy cedar assistant city manager, I would say yes, and sort of. So with the ticketing that you’re talking about, we need to take a look a little bit more at that. We just redesigned all the rec track pages recently to try to make them easier to use. But it sounds like maybe we need to do a little bit more work. So let me let’s let’s chat offline until I can find out a little bit more about the issues that are happening there. We do try to use single software as much as we can. So we do use rec track for not only recreation events, but also museum events and, and other other things that you can pay for and reserve online. So I’d love to hear more about what the concerns are there. Because I’m sure that there are some things that we can do. It just was redesigned recently, they just upgraded that product. So there, there’s some things that we should look at sounds like.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:37
So that was the easy part. And the least less important part, the part about being able to complain about your landlord,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:47
the other one. So you will notice that in the in the proposed budget is money for a web redesign. And so we’ll be taking a look at all of the kind of end user feedback that we get for those things, the other pieces that that seems like that might be a more simple fix. So that let me let me take a look at that one and work with our web team. Nice. We can look
Unknown Speaker 1:08:04
Yeah, I think that one is in the permitting application and all the other stuff having to do with human service isn’t?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:12
Yeah, we need to get with Joanie on that one, because there’s a component where there’s a link issue on that. But I think that goes into the web redesign in terms of the user interface on this because we’ve all had different issues at different times finding it, that’s we can
Unknown Speaker 1:08:27
always link things in many different ways, as you know, right? So yes, I do how one area doesn’t mean that we can’t also link in and community services. So yeah, let me find out a little bit more about the specifics. And I’m happy to work through
Unknown Speaker 1:08:39
so yeah, Can Can we you know, as as Ombudsman’s for the public of we can feed issues into that system, may we?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:53
Of course, okay. Of course they’re there for the public to let us know what’s happening. Okay. Budget wise, we I think the one thing that really does probably affect the most is that we do have a web redesign funded in the budget. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:06
Thank you. You’re welcome.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:10
All right, Council. Councilmember Christiansen Hold on a sec. There we go.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:16
Thank you. We I believe Teresa said we were not going to discuss the library unless we asked board I would like to. I would like to discuss the library because
Unknown Speaker 1:09:29
we are that we are we have that on the list.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:33
Oh, okay. Good. Secondly, there is an item 240,000 fund balance reserved for bone farm. I’m wondering why that is still on there. Bone farm is for sale. It has been for sale for months. The land is for sale, all of it. And so that project clearly has fallen through and We need to take that out of there. Perhaps we could give it to the library.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:09
So I think that funding How did the funding for bone farm come in?
Unknown Speaker 1:10:14
We were going to help them with a park project on the east side of it connected to the little little neighborhood park.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:33
Mayor, council members, David Bell, Director of parks natural resources, the bond Park, David Massara, the mayor said I had to leave a bit to get off my apologize. Bond Park was put back in, I believe, 2005. When that build was going to go in, there was a recognition that area the city needed some additional park space, the developer said they would help contribute that their dollars set aside when that project became funded. And the developer was ready to move forward, that we would use those dollars to assist with that. At this point. As far as I know, the developer is not ready to move forward. I still have the dollars is not in any of my staffs project list right now, to move forward until that development.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:20
So until we know whether we’re going to actually be able to work with a developer to put a park in there, we’re holding that in reserve just for the the park on the east. side.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:31
going back and looking at things I think that because that was actually put in there in 2005.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:35
But the local developer put the money in the 240 or was
Unknown Speaker 1:11:41
it just there to hold that for the city’s portion?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:44
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank
Unknown Speaker 1:11:49
you. Are you done counselor are Christians Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay. Sorry. Thank you. Alright, Harold Jim.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:05
Good evening, Mayor Bagley members of council and Christina Pacheco, division manager, children, youth and families. In 2021, for contracts for service were awarded to organizations. Early Childhood organizations to provide mobile preschool learning opportunities, open additional preschool programs, preschool classrooms, provide parent education and provide professional coaching and training for providers in 2022. staff is proposing that one time funds will address data collection regarding the need for additional childcare, early learning slots to serve Longmont families. Creating a data system to track this need for additional slots will help us know what’s going on at any given time. It’ll help providers in early childhood system focus on future focus future investments to address capacity issues on an ongoing basis. Staff will continue to work with what works cities to obtain technical assistance in order to identify exactly what we need around the demand for data in childcare. Staff will also continue to work on building the capacity of providers that serve the Longmont community and provide opportunities for both formal and informal training and the education of early childhood professionals. We work with collaborators on how to utilize the funding to support infrastructure needs of childcare businesses and organizations. We’ve collaborated, we’ve explored different ideas with our collaborators through Brandeis in the Longmont early childhood community coalition. We’ve explored the idea of using funding as incentives, as it’s not feasible to use one time funds to increase childcare staff wages, other options could be considered such as using funding for bonuses. We know that there’s organizations who aren’t reopening classrooms and are going as far as closing as existing classrooms. Because of staff shortages. Working with these childcare organizations is essential at this time in order to maintain at a minimum, the current level of resources while continue to work on increasing resources in this particular area. That is nearly ready to go the next one.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:28
Good evening mayor and council My name is Karen Karen Roni booth with the Community Services Department and I am pinch hitting the Sydney for Jeff reasoner, who was unexpectedly called away to deal with another issue. So what I’m what I want to talk just briefly about is this is the situation with with recreation. So it certainly has been one of the services within the city that has been impacted pretty Significantly by COVID. And so in, in the 2021. Budget, we, we did reduce the recreation budget by $1.1 million. And, and so we, we, we were starting to build back up, you know, we had a reduction in the number of people coming to recreation services, it hovered, you around 560 people a day, we were starting to jump a little bit back up with a masking order that was just re enacted by the by Boulder County Public Health, our, our attendance has dropped down a little bit, it’s hanging in there, but it did, it did decrease a little bit. So you know, we’re doing our best to try to make sure that we can operate as as best possible in, in, in the conditions in which we are all living in the 2022 budget, we did add back in 120,000. From increase over 2021. And that basically is sorry, my mask is full. And that basically is to hopefully find a full season of our operation for the outdoor ice rink, to be able to open kanemoto swimming pool, which we did not open this past year, for the for $40,000.02 to hopefully offer a reduced version of rhythm on the river this next summer, and that’s about a $50,000 cost that we are at we added back into the 2022 budget. So um, so again, is this kind of what we talked about last year at this time is that we will come back and make program adjustments based on what is happening within the community with our attendance with with COVID. And that if we will come back to Council and adjust revenues up or down depending on the attendance and in our recreation of programs. So if we have additional revenues, and we want to be able to offer enhanced programming, we will come back to council as well as if we need to do some constructing of our budget, we will also come back to Council. With that, we hopefully that’s not the case. But but that’s what we would be prepared to, to do.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:36
So as Karen said, this, this is been the one area that has been impacted the most by COVID. And I want to really reiterate that even when the restrictions were coming off, we still weren’t back at where we were in terms of people coming into the facility, which does impact what we can do. I’m going to say this to council now, because we’re trying to think about what we can do to ensure that we can have more activities and have more people come in where they feel safe. And you know, like the county did today introduce a a component of what you can do, you can do in terms of if you require people to be vaccinated when you come into the facility. I throw in that to Karen and her group to evaluate what that could look like and came that push us back from a revenue standpoint to see if we can bolster that we don’t know where we’re going to be on that. But we think we need to at least examine it as we’re moving forward. Because what we can tell you is people weren’t coming back to the same level that they were even when the restrictions were lifted. And we’re going to have to look at that in order to continue to provide many of the recreation services that we used to provide. So that may be coming back for a conversation sooner rather than later.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:03
We are certainly embracing that opportunity to look at that exemption. Alright, so next I’m going to invite Alberto Mendoza to come up and talk about the increase set aside funding for human service agencies.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:19
Thank you, you got a question.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:20
Kelsey. Merida appearing?
Unknown Speaker 1:19:22
Yes. Thank you don’t go Karen, come back. Thank you. So I do have a couple of questions. So one, when the Recreation Center was open, were there instances of outbreaks or COVID case? You know, positive positive cases that kind of ran through the rec center or had it stayed pretty? Pretty good with mitigating? So when they were open?
Unknown Speaker 1:19:49
We certainly we did not have reports of, of COVID cases that came to our attention that that I certainly am so you know, I think I think people were very vigilant about that, doing what was needed to be able to enjoy the recreation center again. So
Unknown Speaker 1:20:10
yeah, and so the only reason why I point that out is, you know, because there is some hesitancy in going back to some of these fitness centers, recreation centers. But you know, for the public to know that, you know, we haven’t had a series of outbreaks. And we were able to mitigate and keep keep the facility safe for our for people to utilize those areas, those spaces. The other thing, I wanted to go back to the and I had another question, but it kind of slipped away, but to the rhythm on the river. So So typically, and I think I don’t think that’s a source of our of revenue for us. Is that is that something more where the city does make money off of it? Or is it more just as a community engagement opportunity?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:03
Councilmember Hidalgo firing, so that is really, that is meant to be a free community event, so everyone can participate. So the the city’s general fund invests revenues into that event, and staff also solicits donations from from the community. So, so usually, what we the cost that we would have is listed here in terms that would be the general fund investment, and again, depending on what is the extent of the activities that we would be offering, okay, would seek additional donations from the community to to leverage those dollars,
Unknown Speaker 1:21:41
that’s what I was going to ask about is his opportunity for people to donate or right.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:46
We do want to make continue to have that’d be a free event. So
Unknown Speaker 1:21:49
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So that other question did come back. So when you were mentioning about coming back to Council, with adjustments to to the budget, how often do you anticipate that, you know, you would be looking at that? Are you going to be looking at it every every quarter or every month? Or?
Unknown Speaker 1:22:08
Well, that’s really hard to know. So yeah, I would say that we would, we would certainly have the opportunity. Because right now, we have additional appropriation ordinances that come before City Council. Yeah, they were basis. Yes. So we would we would tap into that, into that,
Unknown Speaker 1:22:22
since that time, I just wanted to kind of make sure, are we just gonna kind of like, oh, that we need that. And then, you know, slap it on,
Unknown Speaker 1:22:28
it’s gonna, we’re just tracking participation, revenues? And what what seems like it’s time to submit additional preparation, we will do that. Okay. Great. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:41
And answer part of your question. So when we said we’re seeing decrease in activity in indoor events, we know clearly, we’re seeing an increase activity and outdoor events, because right now, the golf fund is doing really well. We thought it was actually a product of just what was happening during COVID. But what we’re now learning is a lot of people took up golf during COVID. And so they’re continuing to play. So, you know, we’re seeing differences in different in different operations in terms of what what are people doing? And what are their comfort? What are they comfortable doing, which is really the driver and when we’re going to bring things back, and we need to make sure that we’re going to be able to sustain it. Yeah. So we will watch the numbers, but it needs to show that there’s sustained growth in participation. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:27
So yeah, that’s kind of what I was what you know, when you’re bringing things back, you know, kind of wanted to make sure that you’re not and I’m sure you are. But, you know, thinking about that sustainability, is it just something that was just a spike in that particular timeframe? Or is this something that we really want to invest in? and appropriate dollars for in the long term? Right, so thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:48
And I think to add on to Harold’s comment is that in the in the Gulf been in 20? Is that our rec, our revenues have increased by $500,000. over the previous year, and this year, so far, we were up 300,000 over 2020. So, so that’s so golf and recreation, and with the it’s a bright spot and and a pain point. So but staff is really working very hard to try to bring back those recreational activities. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:25
All right. Nobody else. Thank you. Good evening,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:33
Mayor Valley members of council. My name is Alberto Mendoza, and I am Project Coordinator for community services. And I’ll be talking about our increased set aside for Human Services Agency contracts. I think it was in 2019 that there was a general push from the council to increase the suicide to 3%. And this year, we have finally arrived and we are grateful for that. This funding as you can see, well Address increased demands for safety net services, and still continue to support community efforts to address homelessness and other challenging social issues. Just so you know, this is a 56% increase in 2021. We are setting aside at this point 60% of this funding for Human Services Agency contracts and 40% for our homelessness efforts and our homes, home stability efforts as well to answer any questions.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:33
So next we have Kathy fetlar, that will talk about the affordable housing fund. What is it?
Unknown Speaker 1:25:49
I am the person who cannot do the slide deck every time Cathy feather Housing and Community Investment division manager. So this year, as Teresa noted, we are moving the inclusionary housing program specialist from a term limited position funded and the incremental Development Fund into the affordable housing fund as a full time term, the full time position. And so what we are looking at each year is our total ongoing administrative costs to manage all of our affordable housing programs CDBG program, the Home program, the affordable housing fund the incentives, the inclusionary, housing, etc, which puts us at about 480. Some $1,000. Generally speaking from from year to year, there once we subtract out our CDBG administration, which were capped at how much we can use the vet grant program to offset administrative expenses. And then also the administrative transfer that you guys already transferred from the general fund into the affordable housing fund. We’re anticipating a gap of somewhere between 140,000 and 160,000. If you remember, last, I think it was 2019 and 2020, we came and received permission to use 10% up to 10% of the million dollars that you transfer to offset some of those additional administrative expenses. So that is, was still an option that we looked at. And then we also looked at a second option of allowing us to use up to 10% of all the affordable housing fund revenues to help cover that gap. And that would include part of the marijuana tax the part of the million dollars, the program income or the loan repayments that come in, and then the fee in lieu. So eventually, hopefully that will grow enough that it’ll be much less than 10% that we actually use for administrative expenses, again, to cover all those programs. I think that is the basic I think our recommendation is was for option two is what we are looking at for that so I will be happy to answer any question.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:15
don’t see any
Unknown Speaker 1:28:18
wrong way again.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:22
Okay, so next Nancy occur. Our library director will talk about the give us an update on the library.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:28
I will. As Karen said, I’m Nancy Kerr. I’m your library director. Good evening, mayor and council members. And we are underway. And the second phase of the library feasibility study, we had a kind of a pause for a while COVID related mostly. But the phase two is underway. Phase One did speak to some of the things that our board president Mark Springfield just spoke to with some deficiencies and overall funding that are impacting services that the building is too small for a community of this size, and the funding and resources are below average when compared to your communities. So what phase two is doing is including detailed financial modeling, addressing what it would take to provide llama Longmont residents and card holders with a modern 21st century library and different models to produce the funding needed to do so. So that’s a pretty complex task. It involves developing level of service standards for things like FTP, staffing, professional staffing, what what he means by that our master’s degree librarians, parking holdings per capita digital holdings per capita dedicated spaces for public use and study availability of new technologies and tech instruction. So these are some of the things that our consultant is studying now. And we are making headway on that and should be should have that phase completed with a report available in the next few months. So that is where we are in the feasibility study. And perhaps one of our important, our most important requests this year is for a librarian, one bilingual outreach coordinator, we are making a concerted effort to add bilingual staff all the time when we have openings, we have a great need to perform more outreach to the Spanish speaking population, we still have a lot of folks that don’t necessarily know what we do and what we have available. So this position does not only provide outreach to the Spanish speaking community, but will coordinate the bulk of the library’s outreach from children’s outreach to adult outreach. So we do have staff who normally at this point do go out in the community, but we need a more organized effort to make sure that we are reaching everyone who, who we could possibly reach with this effort. So we’re very excited about this new position. Oops, and I’ve gone backwards.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:56
We went the right way.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:58
We had four slides there, and I’m coming up with you. Here we go. Alright. And this is a restoration of prospect or loan service. What prospect or loan service is, is the service that allows you with your library card to borrow materials very quickly, and free of charge from libraries across all across Colorado, Wyoming, and a couple other little neighboring spots in neighboring states. So we tried to do without it this year, they were probably our one service vendor that did not offer any kind of a COVID discount going forward. We decided as a consortium to try and do without it this year, it did not affect some of the other libraries in our consortium as much as it did last month. Our patrons borrow a lot of materials from other libraries. And we actually send a lot more materials, about 130,000 items to folks in other libraries every year. So prospector was not something that was not missed by our patrons. So we would like to restore it for next year. In lieu of prospector we have increased through interlibrary loan, which means we can borrow materials from anywhere from libraries across the country, but involves a lot of conversations, a lot of mailing physical mailings, snail mailing of items. And we found that it took three staff members to do that, at least part of their time. So we feel that it’s more cost effective and a lot better for our patrons to go back to the prospector loan service. And this is a new item for us. This is something that I noticed when I came in here three years ago as the director, that this is probably the only library where I’ve ever worked, where we were still doing everything by hand, you know, every sticker, every label every RFID tag every plastic cover on a book. And processing by our vendors is just more effective and a lot cheaper. So we find ourselves in a position of having usually not enough staff to get things on, on death on the shelf in a timely manner. And to pluck all those holds for folks in a timely manner also, and some of the same folks that are doing these tasks will be able to be repurposed to do other tasks in the library. So this is an important thing for us. And we hope it gets our new materials into people’s hands more quickly. Happy to answer any questions.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:19
I know that I know the counselor had some other questions about library. so
Unknown Speaker 1:33:26
tough. Perfect.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:28
Thank you very badly. Thanks for that update. I have noticed that. Well, first of all, can you tell me the total amount that all of these four things will? Is it in the budget? I didn’t see it in the budget, but I didn’t look very hard.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:44
I don’t have that at hand. I’ll have to get that for you. Because it doesn’t we don’t have to position position,
Unknown Speaker 1:33:51
also position Teresa.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:01
I’m Jim, let me know that the library budget is growing by 160,000 this year. So
Unknown Speaker 1:34:06
what I want to know is, is that enough money for you until because I know that this feasibility study is going to come back. And it’s not going to be a fast process, depending upon how we go about it and what the public wants, etc, etc. So my my concern is that we are not funding you to the extent you need to be funded. What I want to know is 160,000 enough for you to get through. Whatever this year,
Unknown Speaker 1:34:39
I think it is for this year. Okay. I think that this year, we’re still we’re not you know, I don’t think that we’ve had as much impact as recreation has, but we still are serving fewer people than we would normally do. So I think that for this year. I think that request for reasonable i think that you know next year, hope Leave with with COVID. Hopefully COVID will be on the way and it’ll be a different story. And there are there are some things that we definitely want to not get out ahead of our feasibility study. And really look at the areas where we think increased spending would make that would have the highest impact.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:16
Okay. My other question for Jim is what happens with the overdue fines do those stay with the library.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:30
So the the fines are part of the general fund overall revenue, and obviously, all the library funding is coming from the general fund. Okay. But you might talk about that,
Unknown Speaker 1:35:41
they do not. It is definitely a trend in libraries, which you may have seen to reduce or eliminate fines on materials. This does not mean that libraries do not charge for materials that are just never returned, or damaged. But fines have definitely been proven over the years to be detrimental to to some folks ability to feel comfortable checking, checking out materials. And unfortunately, they have the strongest effects on low income families with children. So that is a direction we’d like to go in. And I will say that our final income has gone down quite a bit over the past few years, because we’ve instituted some policies, for example, with automatic renewals, etc. so that folks, you know, if your book comes to you, if no one has a hold on it, it’s automatically renewed for you. Correct. So we try really hard not to be punitive with our clients. So and we always make, you know, we make a lot of exceptions as well. And I
Unknown Speaker 1:36:39
think what Nancy’s touching in is really our equity conversation and how we do things and and so that is something we need to figure out.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:48
Okay. But Nancy, I want to encourage you that if you need funding for something, please come and ask. Because we don’t know unless you ask. So thank you for this update. Dr. Waters.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:08
Thanks for your Begley. So my question isn’t so much about what you shared. Nancy is about what’s in our materials tonight. Specifically, relative to a sorter and the use of the motion fund to pay for a sorter. I’ve had this conversation with Harold at length. And I want to I just want to say again, in that when we were asked in the spring, I think in May, I think Jim asked, maybe when we got our first overall budget presentation, if we had, you know, one time expenditure recommendations, this one was at the top of the list, well, along with the childcare each other as a priority. But in terms of library needs. And I was hoping to see when we saw the budget, that that we would finally actually be purchasing disorder, I was surprised to see that it would be coming out of most often. I can tell you as the liaison to the library board, the library board has been for several months working on a very thoughtful approach to a policy to kind of govern them with respect to the most your fund and the incent fund, right. So they spend that in a way that reflects best and highest use of those resources. So I can tell you as a surprise to them. It was a surprise to me to see the most your fund used to fund something that in my view should come be operational in the library. There are many modern libraries you confirm this or not nazeem very many modern libraries today operating without the kind of sorter that now we’re not talking about being purchased out of the most refined. I don’t want to put you on the spot. But this is something that’s been recorded, then we’ve been requested or proposed a number of times. Right. So So let me just hold that for a minute. I want to say, I don’t you know, I don’t know what, what what the expectations are for staff, for the organization or for the council, when we see the results of the feasibility study. And whether or not we want to, we want to signal the community that we care enough about the library to begin to make up ground that’s been lost over time. If we want to do that this is exactly the wrong way to do it. We send exactly the opposite message that we’re going to take most of your funds that should be used to supplement the budget and supplant what should be an operational expense, this core to the opera to the library’s function. I just I don’t understand it. Especially if we were you know, I would have it would have been fun to have some conversation about this. Before I sat in these materials, since it was a recommendation in response to the to the invitation to identify one time priorities. There was a there was another one in terms of shelving that I don’t know maybe it’s in the in the back I just can’t find it. But that was one of the other one time expenditures. But my biggest concern really is in Mark didn’t, didn’t speak to this one explicitly, like he did some more generally some of the other other needs. But I can tell you, it’s been, as recently as last night, a conversation about what’s the policy, and it’s for them to govern themselves. And it would have been nice even to have asked them, right, as opposed to surprise them with the use of that fun for that purpose. So I’m gonna, I’m getting I’m weighing in right now, my recommendation, I don’t know, if we had to do this, whether you want to council motion, or motion to the council or used to want to talk among yourselves. I think it’s a mistake to do it this way. I think we send the wrong signal to the community. I think we’re resourced to purchase disorder, I understand the RFP is out, we don’t really know exactly how much it’s going to cost. Whatever that’s going to cost. It seems to me that we need to make certain we get that done out of either the capital improvement budget, or I assume it’s a capital expenditure or whatever is going to be probably more than to the $250,000.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:11
Yeah. If council wanted to do that, we would do it out of one time funds. And to answer the question, as we look at this, and we had the budget request, this wasn’t in the budget request in in was in my budget request. Correct. And I remembered the conversation. And so we were looking at well, disorder we were going to disorder was going to be Don’t ask me if you don’t want any answer, right? Well, no, but we said disorder was going to be purchased. Now we got feet. Obviously there’s a different conversation coming in. As as Jim and I have talked about it, if if this is a direction that council wants to go, I think we can figure it out within within the budget. But
Unknown Speaker 1:41:53
I was so you’re asking for a motion I’m then I moved that. Is this the time to do it. I don’t want to I can we can wait on our budget. This is good. Then I’m gonna move to council that we direct staff to switch from the motion fund to the to the capital, improvement to the general thoroughfare to purchase disorder that we would otherwise have purchased with funds donated to do supplemental not supplanting work with the library.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:19
All right. It’s been moved and seconded by Dr. waters and upside moved by Dr. Waters. Seconded by Councilmember Christiansen. Does anybody want to speak against the motion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. All right, sorry. There’s some more questions here. before you continue. Councilmember Christiansen?
Unknown Speaker 1:42:48
This is not a question so much as simply that I’m very glad that Councilman waters made that thing. The fact is that it really is, we have fallen further and further and further behind in funding the library, when we are actually giving it adjusted for inflation. 17% less now than we were 10 years ago. That’s shameful. It’s disgraceful, you know, how can we possibly ever catch up unless we start doing it now. We there has been talk about establishing a special district for that. But that we wouldn’t need a special district if we would just fund them now at an appropriate rate. The fact that they are funded so heavily by the Friends of the Library of voluntary and private fund, and motor fund all of these, this is wonderful. But as Councilman water said, these are supposed to supplement the basic funding when we year after year neglect to fund them. This is you know, a library. And in terms of equity, when I was a little kid, we didn’t have much, but I could go to the library. And it was that was my world. And it is for many kids is place where they’re happy, they’re safe. They have the world at their fingertips literally. And they can it’s a wonderful place. And if we’re going to keep this up, the the role of the library has so changed but you know, in many ways, it has not changed very much in America because it is always underfunded. When I was 16 years old, we went to visit my relatives in Denmark. I know you’re tired of hearing about this, but we went to a library. This is a town of about 30,000 people they were so proud of their library. They had a theater about the size of the Stewart auditorium. They had a large cafe that served lunches and breakfasts and coffee in the afternoon and pastries. They had a huge library, they had a music room for listening to music, such as they have si su, I think they had meeting rooms, they had dance performances, it was a cultural center. And that is what a library it is. It is a cultural center where we base our knowledge and it’s available free for anyone in this town, who wants to educate themselves are avail themselves of culture, and meeting and public community, public public gatherings, it’s invaluable. And yet, every year, we kind of say, I’ll give lots of money to plenty of other organizations. So, so I would like us to actually consider donating, you know, somehow either donating it from our council contingency fund a substantial amount, or somehow adjusting the budget so that we can actually fund the library and an appropriate amount of money.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:21
So, Mayor, I think, I think I probably need to address some points here. So I think one of the issues in this, when you when you look at the revenue growth that we’ve had year, over year, we’ve had really narrow budgets. In during that time with the narrow budgets, we’ve also had other directives in terms of things that we needed to do, specifically. And many of you all weren’t on the council then. But it was creating an affordable housing fund of a million dollars, ongoing revenue. And so that was something that the council set as a priority for us. So we were very focused on setting the million dollars there. Similar to what we’ve done tonight, in terms of the Health and Human Service funding, where we pushed it 3%, which was another half a million dollars in ongoing revenue, because we’re talking about ongoing revenue versus one time revenues. And then we have to talk about the growth and the demands that we’re seeing in other places. I wanted to let you all know, we have we’re focused on this. But when when Oh, wait hit, and I’m going to kind of take you back to some earlier budgets. Again, prior to many of you all being here. There was a decision made in those budgets to fund ongoing expenses with one time dollars. And so at that point, if you remember, we called it the budget gap. And we estimated that the budget gap was somewhere in the neighborhood of what jam three and a half million dollars. The reality was that budget gap was larger than that. And I think it came out to be closer to $5 million, is that correct? For or was it four and a half? Anyway, so it was larger than the estimated three and a half. So in those budget years following that, we had to then take ongoing revenues to supplant those operations that were funded with one time dollars. Typically, when you get into a financial crisis like that, you make cuts, and then you baseline it, so then you can look at your revenue streams. And you can allocate it as needed. We didn’t that didn’t occur. So then we had to then shift ongoing revenues, to make sure that those ongoing expenses weren’t funded with one time dollars. So there was a pretty big gap. So if you take the three and a half to 4 million there, the million into affordable housing, the increases we’re doing that that’s about $5 million, that we’ve had to put into other ongoing expenses, and deal with many of the other challenges that we had in terms of flood recovery and these other issues that we’ve been bringing in. So I wanted to be kind of clear on this to say we’ve been focused on it. But we’ve had many pressures within the budget that we’ve had to deal with.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:22
Customer heat, you know, he hit your microphone, so you can people can hear you. That’s fine. Oh, call me. It’s okay. Sure, okay. All right. Nobody else is in the queue.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:38
Next, we have Carmen Ramirez, our community neighborhood resources manager did talk about the the the next two budget, proposed budget items.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:49
Good evening, mayor and council, Carmen Bermudez, manager community and neighborhood resources. I’ve got three quick slides for you here. First is the social equity coordinator. This role is going to be essential to really establishing and sustaining a social equity focus throughout the organization. As you can see, the position is going to really lead the efforts to advance city equity initiatives and then make our goals visible to ensure equity across equitable access to resources and services for all. So that’s the social equity coordinator. Oops, sorry. And then the next one is the neighborhood resource coordinator. This one is really going to be focused on the not only the equity initiative, but it’s really crucial to helping us initiate and sustain relationships and connections with neighborhoods, make sure that they have multiple access regarding barriers and health changes a health challenges. It’s a key role in collaborating with neighbors to better understand not only their needs, their assets, and work to build resiliency and sustainability throughout the community. I’ll add to that, that it’s very crucial that our neighborhoods are connected to the city, and all those different resources and that we’re in communication, as you’ve seen with COVID. That’s been key. The last one that I have here is Oops, sorry, keep going the wrong way, is equity training, we want to make sure that internally, we are providing training. So the organizational equity training is 20,000. We want to make sure that our equity team is also trained to sustain some of these challenging conversations when it comes to equity. So we want to make sure that we have a committed consistent equity training component for all staff. And then again, as I said, for the equity team, that they can facilitate equity conversations that they’re able to problem solve. And they’re able to build strategic plans with departments. And I think that is,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:52
so I want to jump into carbon here. These are two positions that to talk a little bit about what was happening operationally. So what we were seeing generally is the neighborhood services group was, was acting both as the internal and external equity component within our organization. And so what we were seeing is the number of calls that were coming in, whether they be issues externally with the community neighbor to neighbor relations, or external with the community to the city, or even internal that volume was going up significantly. At the same time, the work on the neighborhood service side is like this right now, in terms of what we’re seeing in different neighborhoods with what we’re seeing at parks and things like that. And so what we fundamentally had in this area was was a department of three or four, with me, for four with Carmen with with a tremendous amount of work that was much beyond that, and work that was needed in really facilitating groups like the neighborhood impact team, or how we’re working with with different neighborhoods. And then what we learned in COVID. Actually, this is where we’re going to bring some options to you all in terms of the ARPA funds, is we really saw the impact of we saw it in the flood. But we also saw it here in terms of neighborhood resiliency and sustainability, and really needing to dig in and spend time within neighborhoods in our community. So they could be more resilient and sustainable. And ongoing. And so this was just if there was an area where we were strained in honestly, to the breaking point, it was here in terms of what we were seeing. And so that’s what we were making the recommendation on these two physicians.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:46
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:51
Seeing who’s next. Oh, she’s not next, but you are next castmember toggle fairing your last in the list, but you haven’t spoken so you can go. Okay. I’ll take it.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:03
So, you know, I wanted to go back and look at the one time fund for the equity training. So it’s the 25,000 is that to hire. Outside facilitators,
Unknown Speaker 1:54:16
it would be one of the things that we’re going to do is an inventory of in house skills. But primarily, especially the first year we’ll be looking at outside facilitators or trainers to come in. But we’re also going to look at in house skill sets that we have,
Unknown Speaker 1:54:31
okay. And then, you know, one thing that I’m noticing and just in several organizations that are incorporating equity training for their staff or for members or for their different organizations, is that it’s sort of kind of viewed it as a checklist. It’s like a one and done deal. And, you know, I really want to make sure that you know, as we delve into equity training and looking at meeting the needs of our diverse population, that is Not just, you know, checking a box that that that it’s going to be ongoing. I know I saw that one time. And so you know, I’d like to see that this work is is continuous.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:11
I think this one is this one ongoing guys. This is ongoing, I think we may have some one time as well. Or we did have one time,
Unknown Speaker 1:55:19
I saw the 25,000 in one time funds for equity training for city staff.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:26
It is one time, okay. Part of what we’ve done too is we want to understand what we’re going to actually need. And then we can figure out how we can do it in an ongoing budget. I this year, I use some of my contingency for some of the work that we did in order to get it started. And I think we’re also learning too. And so this isn’t the forefront of our mind it council may remember that when Carmen gave a presentation of what we’ve done historically. And you can see it start and stop start and stop. This really is about generally both in both of these position is a consistent ongoing effort. Yes. So so that we don’t have that start and stop in this.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:04
Yes. And then you know, because because ideally, you know, we want to have equity so ingrained in how we operate, that it’s it’s second nature to do everything, you know, just like filling out your timecard and it just be just becomes part of your culture and norms. So and I I definitely think it’s going to be more than a year or a short, short term change. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:31
All right.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:32
Councillor Martin?
Unknown Speaker 1:56:41
Can’t do that. It’s a habit, I’m sorry. On the topic I’ve been harping on, I want to make sure that one of those full time equivalents is is going to have as part of his or her role, the idea of connecting residents to city and county services, because it’s it’s a scavenger hunt right now. And I hope that it would mean, fixing the website is one thing, but it’s not everything.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:18
Yeah. To that point, when we did the we kind of took a stab at it earlier. Unfortunately, it rained that day with an event at Lanyon Park. Yeah, it really is about bringing services. But part of why you want the coordinator position is this isn’t just about this department. So my vision for this is that it is truly a coordinator position that brings the entire organization together so that when we work with neighborhoods, we literally we’ve already talked about a few or will go in and do a block party and bring everyone that’s connected. First, first, actually, is to get to know each other and build relationships. And second in part of that, then is to talk about what we do. And that’s really part of this that in terms of the conversations because we need that.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:07
As long as there is a vision for it. I’m very happy.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:12
Okay, that’s it for the queue.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:19
All right. Good evening, Mayor Bagley and members of council Lisa Knobloch, sustainability Program Manager with public works and natural resources. Can you all hear me? Okay? All right, I’m gonna be reviewing the proposed 2022 budget for sustainability. But before I get into those numbers, I just wanted to provide some highlights for some of the work that’s underway in 2021. Mostly, because I just want to show, I’m not going to get into the details of all of the things listed here. But I wanted to show just the breadth of work that’s happening across these areas across the organization. There’s a lot of exciting things going on. And I just want to touch on one of those items, in particular with regards to electric vehicles, because there’s a lot of movement happening in that area. No, no pun intended, or maybe. And I also want to let you know that in your in your packets, you do have the mid year report as part of your info items that goes into more detail on these items, as well as a few other things. But with regards to electric vehicles. As you all recall, back in the spring, we completed the equitable carbon free transportation roadmap, which is a mouthful. It’s a project that was funded from 2020 boulder County’s sustainability funds, and really created a coordinated and streamlined plan for how we can achieve our emissions reduction goals in the transportation sector and do so in a way that benefits everyone across our community that actually laid the foundation for an opportunity that we were approached with a couple months later, to apply for a Department of Energy grant for almost $12 million to accelerate the strategies in the roadmap to electrify the transportation sector. So that was a pretty exciting opportunity we should be hearing in the next couple of weeks the status of that grant. And I really want to give a huge shout out to Tim Ellis with LPC and Archer new strat with sustainability and who’s our grant coordinator as well, they really pulled a big group of folks from across the organization as well as coordinated with some external partners to pull that off in a pretty quick timeframe. And even if we don’t receive those grant funds, it really gave us the opportunity to pull a solid team together to move forward with the implementation of those strategies, albeit on probably a slower timeframe than if we had those additional funds. So wanted to just highlight some of the work that our fleet folks are doing. They’ve been deferring as many vehicles as possible waiting for alternative fuel or electric vehicles to be available. They’re also really looking at their 16 year replacement policy with an eye toward electric and alternative fuel vehicles, and the infrastructure that’s going to be needed to really facilitate that transition, and starting to set targets for our fleet transition, as well. So they’re doing some great work in that area. We have a couple of regional collaborations underway. We’re working with some of the other Boulder County communities and excels partners and energy program to develop regional Evie plan which will be really critical to building out this capacity across our across the Front Range region. And then also working with cu city of Boulder in the school districts on some bus fleet electrification opportunities. And then lastly, I just want to highlight the go Eevee resolution that will be coming to you next week on the consent agenda. That was one of the strategies identified in the transportation roadmap that really outlines long months commitment to electrification in the transportation sector, and designates Longmont as a go Evie city. So lots of cool stuff happening in that area. And now I’ll jump into the 2022 sustainability, proposed sustainability budget. The total funding within the sustainability fund is just over a million dollars. And you’ll see in the graph of the various enterprise funds that contribute to that as well as the general fund and the projected revenue for with the Boulder County sustainability tax funds.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:19
There we go. The breakdown of that total includes funding to support climate action strategies identified in the climate action recommendations report, neighborhood programs such as the Seoul program and the sustainable neighborhood solutions program and our partnership with Carmen’s team and community neighborhood resources. The Sustainable Business program, education and engagement, some one time funds for the zero waste efforts which we’ve been discussing with you all recently. And general sustainability, which is kind of the catch all bucket for things that don’t fall into those other categories. The sustainability tax funds that we expect to come through in 2022. And then the portion for a staffing which includes some increases in existing staffing positions, which I will talk about next. So the proposed 2022 budget has increases to three existing positions, the first of which is the water conservation and sustainability specialists. that’s currently one FTD FTD that’s focused on both of those areas. The proposed budget includes splitting that into two full time positions, one which would be water conservation specialists, which would be housing and water resources. And the other would be a full time sustainability specialist housed in sustainability. That would create greater capacity for us to focus on climate action priorities, particularly around data analysis and things like greenhouse gas modeling, tracking and reporting, as well as creating greater capacity to support and collaborate across our organization through things like influence implementation of the internal sustainability evaluation system, the neighborhood resource specialists specialists which is housed in Carmen’s team, we currently have half an ft that’s dedicated to sustainability, that we’re proposing to increase to one f t. That will help increase our resources and capacity on neighborhood based sustainability efforts and really ensure broad and equitable community engagement on all of the work that we’re doing here. And then lastly, the sustainability grant and program coordinator position which is also currently one ftu. That’s that split into both of these areas. This is also currently a fixed term position set to end at the end of this year. And the proposed budget includes that as two full time permanent positions a grant coordinator position that would be housed in business services, and a full time sustainability Program Coordinator that would really help focus on climate action priorities such as the development and implementation of the climate action. Fund, which supports low income businesses and residents with climate action work, as well as promoting and evaluating all of our sustainability related programs and resources to make sure that those programs really benefit and are accessible to all members of our community. With regards to the sustainability tax, you’ll see that the box in the top is the 2021 tax amount that was funded and the projects that we have supported through those funds. So part of that is the grant program coordinator, which I just mentioned, which is a fixed term position ending at the end of this year. The equity and engagement specialists which is a fixed term position that started this year and will continue into 2022. And the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project, we had a match of about $27,000, not about 27,020 $7,503. With a total of just under 140,000. You can see in 2022, the estimated revenue from the sustainability tax is a bit of a bump, obviously 2021 took a hit with COVID. So we have a will have a total of about 160,000. There, we will continue to use funds to support the second year of the equity and engagement specialists. And then the additional items there are not set in stone as yet we’ve been in conversations with staff and the sustainability advisory board and if identified these as the priority projects, but we’re still waiting on some additional information to determine which of those will move forward and at what amount, but continuation of the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project. That could be additional data to collect if that’s determined to be needed, or moving into adaptation planning contributions to the pace equity program, which is a county program that supports underserved businesses in the implementation of sustainability practices, or support for the sustainability plan update with an estimated city match of about $30,000.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:00
And then lastly, I just want to highlight some of the funding requests. And then in a number of other areas that also support sustainability and climate action goals. I’m not going to go through all these things here. But you’ll see that there’s a number of things in these areas that total just over $10 million supporting investments in transportation, energy, air quality, waste diversion, water conservation, and community with the cares program, which I’m going to hand off to Becky in just a second. So she’s gonna chat more about you with the with you about that briefly. But before before I hand it over to her, I really just want to acknowledge the work of the staff across the organization that work on in all of these areas and other areas that support sustainability and climate action. They not only help us meet our goals in those areas, but help to create or help to make Longmont a more healthy, resilient and equitable place. And I want to thank Council for your continued leadership and support in this area. So I’m going to hand it to Becky and then I’ll jump back in if y’all have any questions.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:07
We do have questions. We’ll go with Hold on. There’s they’ve been in the queue for a while but you want to go counselor pick your next. Yes, I was just wondering if Becky and I want to
Unknown Speaker 2:08:19
talk about the character.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:20
Please. This is this is this has been in for a while. Councilmember tautomer. Peck?
Unknown Speaker 2:08:27
Yes. Thank you, Lisa, I’m really happy to see that the water conservation specialist is part of this program. And I was disappointed to see that water was not really addressed very well in the climate action task for us. And I would like this to be an absolute priority. And to have out of this specialists to have definitive steps that we take as a city as residents as a school district on what we do with our water as we see reservoirs and lakes drying up all over. I mean, Longmont is in a perfect position. We’re good, but we may not be good for a while. So we need to do visionary steps. So that’s what I would expect back that we have actually an action plan that is that’s doable, and the sooner the better. The other thing that I haven’t seen in any of this and correct me if I’m wrong, if it’s wrapped up into another program is anything about renewable energy, other than modernizing the electrical grid, etc. But for long Mark taking specific steps through grants that may come down out of the bill back better for maybe neighborhood for low income, socio economic equity, low income solar farms, so that we can provide different ways to get our energy. And in the only reason I’m saying that is look at a hurricane it did miles and miles apart from where it hit, it wiped out electricity for 30 or 40 hours, we need to look beyond that and prepare. So somewhere in this, I would like to see some kind of a research or education on what’s available in grants, maybe work with David Horne Barker and get PRP as well, I’ll just say get prps to move a little faster. So that we also have a vision for those steps. Rather than just lip service, we need to actually hit it hard. Thanks,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:52
is I don’t think Ken, Ken Houston isn’t here. So I do want to jump in really quick. Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Peck with regards to the water conservation position, if you all are familiar with the water efficiency master plan, and I’m not going to be able to do this justice as Ken would, but that the update to that plan is coming up in I think we have to have it in in 2024. And so part of Part of the reason for requesting the full time position in 2022 is so they can get that process underway starting in 2022. with an eye toward that will the Climate Action Task Force target that I know we talked about kind of putting on hold until we go through the water efficiency master plan, Master Plan process, so that we can really have that visionary, but actionable step to get us to increase water conservation pretty dramatic dramatically and understand what’s possible and all of the costs and impacts and such associated with that for a long month. So that’s that piece. And I’d be happy to follow up with with Ken and with Francine if y’all want additional information for that, but I definitely will bring that information back to them. And then with regards to renewable energy PS, Dave Hornbacher is going to be up next. So so I’ll put him on the spot to answer that. But I will say that he and I are both working on the ARPA team with regards to the recovery funds on talking with folks about how we can integrate different sustainability practices into the different focus areas within those recovery funds as well.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:25
And we do we are out for a fairly large deal with Department of Energy grant to deal with some of this. And then, obviously, with the infrastructure legislation that that is something that we’re going to be focused on in terms of the renewable component.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:46
All right, Councillor Martin?
Unknown Speaker 2:12:50
Thank you, Mayor Bagley. This may also be a question for David. But you know, I like the idea that we’re going to sign up on the go Eevee resolution and all of that. But I had a question from a resident today about Eevee support from the city. And really all I had to tell him was you can have a level two charger for $1. You know, and I was looking on efficiency works. And you can’t buy juicebox level two charger for your house at a discount there anymore, apparently. And there used to be a group by Yeah, arrangement that you could buy a certain, you know, down level aviz. And that may have been only for for Collins people. I’ve never quite been sure how that works. But that’s not there either. So can you give us an update about what PRP EA is doing for the service area with regard to in couraging, the transition to electric vehicles.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:05
Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Martin that that might be a better question for for Dave. Again, not to put him on the spot, but I don’t have I don’t have specifics on that. Otherwise, I’d be happy to follow up with Tim Ellis. He’s going to be the one that’s going to know more about what PRP is and the city’s focuses in terms of supporting private ownership.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:25
Thank you. I’ll ask it when he’s up again.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:30
All right. That’s it for the queue.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:35
Good evening, Mayor Bagley members of council and Becky Doyle with pw nr. There was a brief mention in the packet today that we included a budget request to fund a rebate of the waste management fee is part of the Longmont cares program. That’s one step that we need to take in order to include that in the program. So if you would like to provide direction to add that to the program, as Part of our upcoming ordinance that includes the direction from last month to also include funding for a partial rebate of the storm drainage fee. that that would be helpful.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:18
Councilmember back,
Unknown Speaker 2:15:20
thank you. I move that we include the storm drainage fee rebate in cures, waste management. Oh, you don’t want to do the storm drain. The waste. The waste management fee in the cares program
Unknown Speaker 2:15:39
has been moved by Councilmember Pac was seconded by Councilmember Christiansen any debate on the issue. Okay, see no debate? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. The Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Becky. Councilmember Christiansen you’re in the queue. If it wasn’t for that, or you want to say something else? No, well, we’ll come back to you. That’s okay. All right.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:04
Very rare. You have quite a few more slides if you wanted to. Take a break or we can
Unknown Speaker 2:16:12
take a break and keep going. Let’s take a five minute break. That’s fine. All right, if counsel can hear me, let’s try to head back. Got it, guys. All right? No, no. Alright, let’s get going again. All right, good evening,
Unknown Speaker 2:27:39
Mayor Begley and members of city council, I’m David Hornbacher on the Executive Director for low power and communications. And I’ve just got a short overview for you sociated with renewable energy, actually four slides total. And so I will get into it. And so actually, the first slide is this overview. Second will be on budget and three main capital items, the third will be on strategies and tools in progress. And the fourth slide is really about the resources to accomplish these goals. You’ve seen this slide before, what we’ve done is tried to sort of create a simple graphic that we could use as we talk about our programs. And we grouped the these tools into basically seven categories. And they all sort of fit together to, you know, help us work towards the 100% renewable energy goal. And these are really our integrated electric resources. And so in addition to you’ll see sort of towards the top, Platte River, you know, Power Authority, renewable energy, well, in addition to them transitioning to a renewable energy resource, they’re really actions that we can take at home, and especially as a municipal electric provider, and getting counsel from giving council direction. And that’s what we will use to create store, manage energy, and most importantly, to ultimately synchronize that to our renewable energy resources. And so really, my goal is that is that really, we’re able to ultimately control about 10% of our load, that it’s either being created, or it’s enabled, or that it might be reduced during times of peak or times of lack of other energy. So when we move to the next slide, then oops, I guess I will. So with that, then 2022 budget for LPC, there’s really three capital programs that start to work together in tandem to maintain and improve the system to modernize it, and to make this transition of a system that can manage these renewable energy resources. So electric systems really have been designed throughout the past century, really to move electricity in one direction, really from a source source typically far away. Sort of to your point, Councilmember pack, you know, somewhere else. And then if it gets disrupted, there’s problem. And so that whole system is taking from that sources that comes to town and then distributing out through a sort of a spider web to the meter. It’s all designed, fused, you know, operates in that way. And that has to change. And that has to change quite a bit. For us to really enable local resources to the goal, you can get a little more than that. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, I say something else. Okay, sorry about that. Yep, I’m drinking. And so like I said, these, these systems were designed for a single direction, really, from somewhere else, down to the final meter and user. And what we need to do is really create a more dynamic and a bi directional type system that can infuse energy at many different locations throughout the system. And so really, what we’re doing here is we’re everyday building that utility system of the future. And the future, frankly, is not very far off. So that’s something we’re diligently doing. And some of those questions I’ll even be able to get into tonight. And so when you look at these three items, you can think of zero 44 645,000. A lot of that is the equipment and technology to create that reliability. So that’s part of that transitioning from the old fashioned grid to what we need in the future. 102. The second one at 431,000 is really two partial two main components. One is the proactive replacements. So as things fail, cables failed Transformers fail, we replace them what’s different, though, and the utility of the future is looking carefully at what size should that be? Could it be? Are there other alternatives? Is it a different size cable, a different route is there distributed energy resources, we might put in those areas to really create a stronger backbone than we currently have. And then there’s also the reactive replacement, somebody, you know, transformer fail, somebody drives over a streetlight pole, things of that nature. So you were acting, replace, and refresh. And then really the last one at 450,000, the L, one, l three, that one is the distributed energy resource innovation solutions. And it’s really, it’s the part that we’re really creating, integrating and managing. And so these three funds actually account for a little over 1.5 million of the LPC budget. And we will use them in tandem, to really work on that utility of the future, as well as ensuring our reliability for this community.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:40
Let’s do an overview of some of the strategies and tools that are in progress. And by what I mean is in progress is that we actually have staff working on most of these, or we’re going to launch staff to be working on some of these. So first off, and you’re gonna see more about this here shortly, actually, is the thermostat program. And so the idea with that is that we’ve got a lot of intelligent thermostats already on the system and working through a third party vendor, where in in working with our customers, there might be some controls that can be enabled. So for example, shaving peak with air conditioning load. And so that’s a program that we’re looking to launch and demonstrate in 2022. We’ve talked briefly about the habitat project. And frankly, that has gone slowly. Habitat has not been able to, especially in this COVID environment sort of build at the pace that they had wanted to. And we’re encountering some technology gaps. And so we’re working through those. So it’s actually a really good project for us to sort of work through those specifics on a real small scale. So when we launched larger, we’ve actually have something that will really work. electrification. You know, Lisa had mentioned that there is the electrification committee, and we’ve got two council members sitting on it, and so greatly appreciate your effort with that. And we have one of our staff members, that’s just the leading that work. And then also, as you know, you know, with EBS within town, there’s five stations that are currently running and over 60 that are available through other private organization. So as great apps to find those building benchmarking, we’re in the phase two. So we’re looking at buildings over 20,000 square foot. And so we’re actually reaching out to all these businesses. And our goal is to get at least 100 of these building participants. And right now we’ve already got 80. And what that will lead into is a program that will make recommendations to City Council on different types of changes, and suggestions that we might have in the municipal code to further ensure the benchmarking and really the ability to use that benchmarking to assist towards our goal and distributed energy resources for at the Platte River area a little over a year ago, Platte River and the four communities got together to work on a Dr. Strategy document. Well, that strategy document and tool has been completed and basically was we looked at at the board in July of this year. And so now that’s a tool that the individual utilities can use to analyze different types of d e Rs, and to put in different types of pricing and other things to try and look at how we can move some of these forward either individually within just our communities, or if there’s a larger, larger advantage to do it more broadly across the entire Platte River system. And also, we’re looking at sort of a suite of DDR and other LPC offerings. And really looking to have our staff put together sort of like a demonstration grouping of offerings that will include energy storage, electric vehicle chargers, electric water heaters, and so forth, trying to address some of the many things I’ve heard at this table from different council members on items and ideas that they have. And I really appreciate that type of input. And then also on the community solar side of things. So we, city along mod is one of eight organizations across the nation that is working with men and rail and American public power association to really evaluate community solar, the goal of that, and you know, enrile, sort of the brains behind it is to how can we do community solar, here in this community. And so we’re really excited about that we’ve actually included budget in 2022, to take an action on that. And so you know, whether it’s a traditional community solar, whether it’s what’s called an an lpcs, solar farm, or whatever, but we’re really talking about trying to move solar, forward in greater quantity within this community. And so back to the point of reliability, and really sustainability here. And so, and one of the things you’ll also hear is, you know, how do we how do we really migrate or move to just solar and house but really solar and battery. So we’ve got actually dispatchable resources, not only as a generated, but then we can store and utilize it at the times that we need it for peak or other times where renewable energy resources are lacking. And so really, the last thing I want to talk about is sort of how are what does the team look like that’s working to accomplish this.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:39
And so right now, with our strategies and solution teams, so that’s one of the divisions within LPC. We have a group that really has five team members right now, the first is the director who’s an loots. We have two key account managers, Chuck Finlayson and Susan Bartlett. We also have our energy strategy specialists, which is Debbie Seidman. So you’ve heard her a couple times doing with the benchmarking discussion. And we have the renewable energy strategy Manor, which is Tim Ellis. So that’s the team that we have currently. And those are sort of like building the tools, but it doesn’t bring all the tools together. It’s like these individual thoughts that are out there. But how are they working together? Do we have the technology that makes it work together? Are we able to infuse it in the system when it’s needed? Are we able to store it our Do we have really the technology that makes this all work? Do we have the rates and the programs and so forth in there. And so really the last piece that I’d like to add to the position, add to that group, and it’s not in your current budget, but it will be in your next review of the budget for 2022 is this position here, which is the electric portfolio development manager. So that is a proposed position. And really, this position is the one that sort of leverages coordinates and synchronizes like I said, we have all these individuals sort of this in this, you know, separate items, but we put that together in a portfolio. And so I pulled some bullets out of the job description, which is consolidation of virtual and real energy production and curtailment into a single dispatchable renewable energy portfolio. I don’t want to say it’s so simple that you have a single button that says more or less, you know, but but you sort of got to drive to that. And so you’ve got a set of algorithms that are sitting in the background, it’s analyzing the data is what seeing what Platte River is producing, and you know, what the demand is and what’s in storage, and putting that all together to really maximize the use of what renewable energy resources that you have. And the second item is to analyze that resource, Mitch mix. And are there additional resources that we need and what type are they and are the control systems the other physical electronic tools in place? And then the third bullet there is develop dynamic, safe and reliable system and I mentioned sir My goal is at about 10% of Walmart’s overall energy consumption, to enable, basically able to control that in some way to really enable and support the transition to 100%. Renewable. So you hear that a lot popping up in our conversations, and that sort of coal, and frankly, to get to that goal, you know, it’s something that we need to contribute, you know, it can’t. There are issues with reliability and cost if we don’t, and I think we can do this really well. And we can move this forward, I talked about synchronize the portfolio and customers with other renewable energy resources. And the last is just really coordinate coordinate with internal external teams to meet these objectives. So this is a proposed position that you’ll see in your next budget, but this position really brings it home. And so with that, I had also heard, you know, a question from Councilmember pack about resiliency. And so with this, I’m hoping that some of the additional detail you heard tonight will help address those questions, you may have more, and we’re certainly open to providing more information. But it’s this exciting period, and a lot more is going to be coming forward. And Councilmember Martin, you had talked about a couple things. And one, the Evie chargers, you know that we do have the, you know, for $1, you can charge for an hour, and so forth. So that’s very helpful. But that’s why I think we need to have a program that’s more specific that can help Evie chargers, whether it’s at home or in the public setting. And frankly, to get them out to some of the multifamily dwellings that are going to be the hardest to, to get a charger out there. And so we’re already looking at those subdivisions differently when we design the electric system in there to provide some opportunity when we’re out there digging trenches. And so that’s some additional conduit and some forethought to help reduce the barriers and the cost of those barriers to ultimately enable those types of communities to to have electric chargers. And
Unknown Speaker 2:42:10
yeah, so you don’t see anything on efficiency works. And so that’s something we can work on at Platte rivers level. And, again, transition to E V’s. So there are certainly programs has been on how to transition to them. But probably the first and foremost is making sure that folks have access to the equipment they need to charge these at home, or in their workplace. Otherwise, that’s probably your first barrier. If there’s no gas station, it’s hard to go out and buy something. And so with that, that’s the end of my slides. But if there are questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:50
Tomorrow, Martin,
Unknown Speaker 2:42:53
thank you bear Bagley First, the new one is really a suggestion. But you have this nice bullet item about demonstration resources for beneficial electrification. And there’s just an item I’d like to that to be on that list, which is a test kitchen. Because induction ranges are really cool. And people need to learn to set their sights on them and need to learn to realize that that you know, gas ranges aren’t all that. And, and so I just don’t want that to get left out of the budget for the demonstration system. And then I am interested in in getting to the bottom of of why PRP EA appears to have abandoned in efficiency works the Evie transition because they did have a group by and they and they did have the juice box network. And you know you can’t have a juice box network that helps you do demand management if nobody’s got juice boxes. So I’d really love to find out what happened with that. And I did have a constituent asked me today whether Longmont could run a group by program for residents. I don’t know what you know, with what’s going on with our supply chain that may have to be deferred. Excuse me. But you know, there were down level lower range, not so marketable e V’s that a lot of people would would like to get into because they, you know, don’t need to drive long ranges. And so it’d be wonderful and you know, Even the social equity thing, if if we could somehow put together a program maybe through grant winning, that we could help people into those vehicles.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:17
Those are just wonderful suggestions. I’ve got them listed, you know, especially with like the E V’s my first real experience in Eevee. Well, my first experience was probably 30 years ago with a Platte River converted car. And it was just a Lead Sled at the time. But you know, I actually drove my first one was an acid when we had one of those types of demonstration events, and it just, it really gets you excited.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:42
They give you whiplash,
Unknown Speaker 2:45:44
yes, it will make sure you’re pressed in the seat before you sell. Right?
Unknown Speaker 2:45:48
Yeah. But I don’t know why PRP has abandoned that. But I would like to know.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:53
Okay, I’ll do a follow up for you.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:57
Councilmember Christiansen
Unknown Speaker 2:46:01
Thank you, Mayor. So I have a few suggestions or comments. First of all, it has been sort of noted nationally that in poor areas of town, there are very few trees, whereas in wealthy areas of town, there are lots of big trees. This, trees really do a great deal of, of climate mitigation. It’s true, they take some water, but it’s it’s not the mitigation, whether it makes up for it. So I’m just wondering if you would think about working with the forestry department to increase the tree canopy where we can, especially in the parts of Main Street that have not gotten the love they deserve on the north. And also in certain areas, some areas where people are very low income, they can’t put up their own trees, but we could we could help them. I know that sometimes the city does offer low cost trees as part of a spring thing. But I think a lot of people don’t know about that. So anyway, um, I was also going to say that there’s a development in that I believe was done by habitat in Fort Collins. It is low income development called harmony homes. And they have cottage zoning, and they have solar on all the roofs, they have flash heaters for all the water heating. And they’ve been there for at least three years. And it would be I went up, I went up there when they’re still working on building them. It’s a it’s a really interesting development that I think it might be fun to take your little sport car up there. Take a look at it. Also, Tim Ellis is a wonderful resource for the he’s always attends the sustainability advisory board. And he’s he’s so knowledgeable, and he really kind of sets people straight when they’re going off the rails on some kind of harebrained idea, but he knows a great deal about. So Jack’s solar garden, which I don’t know if you’ve been there, but Councilwoman Martin and I went there a few weeks ago. And it was a wonderful tour. It is such an interesting thing, because and I think it’s so applicable to a lot of things. What has always driven me crazy about solar is that it takes up a huge amount of land and you don’t do anything else with it. But this of course, raises the solar so that you can use the land underneath it. And you get solar as well. So you are doubling your economic impact and getting huge benefits for for everyone. So I know Tim knows a lot about jack solar and is interested in his talk with jack and I mean not jack with Brian, but he I would suggest that the city continue to work with with Brian and see where we can make use of some of the some of the his expertise and what we’re trying to do with local solar farms. And as regularly are the projects that you already have going on nothing but five projects for solarization for the city buildings.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:58
Oh yes. Where we’ve analyzed facility buildings are potential solar. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah. And that’s just a great example of, you know, not not looking at solar as a singular use
Unknown Speaker 2:50:08
here. But it’s something you know. And it’s very helpful. And we have plenty of solar in Colorado. So thank you very much for what you’re doing. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your input. All right, next. Thank you all.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:27
Oh, one last thing. I wanted to just clarify something David said he said this position was going to be in the next budget. And I want you to understand that the next version of the 2022 budget, not next year’s budget.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:42
Thank you. Mayor Bagley council members, Dennis Pappas, with next slide, an opportunity to talk to you a couple weeks ago about our C IP. And then today I’m here to talk about our kind of key investment areas that we have going forward. And where we’re going to spend these where we’re going to spend our dollars. So the first one, of course, is the fortification and the future proofing of our network. Here, by the end of the year, we’re going to be offering 10 gigs services in Longmont. We plan on doing that in the new, we’re setting a new hot out at the county line substation, September 29. That’ll be the first that’ll be the first area that we’ll have it and then probably in the meadow or Fordham, and along with the service center. And then we’ll do two more. Two more of the Hudson in 2022. Along with that, we’re going to build out to 3000 new new units for him to use multiple dwelling units, and then recapture reinforce and rehabilitation, which is a very important part of the efforts going forward. 22 and beyond the network’s seven years old now. I think some of the attitude is Yeah, we’ve got some, you know, fixes in the network, and we’ll get to it tomorrow. Tomorrow has arrived. We’re gonna we’re going to experience some outages if we if we’re not careful. And one of the initiatives and one of the headcounts that we need for 2022 is is another fiber splicer. We need I need someone that I can dedicate to a rehabilitation effort on on a daily basis, not just as we have time that allowed that to happen. And so that’s one of the requests that we’re going to make in addition to that will be for a network engineer, so that I have an engineer that can go out and really work on the backbone piece of the network to identify the areas where we need to go in and, and work to get are the backbone that we have consistent throughout the entire city. One of the other efforts we have here is the delighting the customer with our customer experience, we are going to request an additional customer service rep. Because of the call volumes, right now, our call wait times are about six minutes. Our bogey that we’ve set is two minutes or way over on that. For abandoned calls, we have a bogey of 10%. We’re about 24% right now. So it’s really important that we get another customer service rep in to to help relieve some of that pressure for the six that we currently have. Our headcount amounts are about 200, and almost $300,000, which is about 6% increase of our budget, our revenue this year is getting increased by about $1.2 million is what we anticipate so we can more than cover the expense of those three additional headcount. We also want to grow our base, our customer base, which currently sets were about 100. And think I wrote it down 197 customers away from 24,000. That’s our end of the year goal. I really expect that we’re going to end at about 24 four, if the trends you know, keep up for how we’ve done for the other weeks for the last three quarters that we’ve had. We’re going to grow our customer base through strategic partnerships. We have strategic partnerships with course llj. For those qualifying customers, then we have programs where we can provide free or reduced services or cost services to those customers. As you probably heard, we’re doing a partnership with St. Green Valley School District to provide services to students on the free and reduced lunch program. We have an RFP that is probably going to hit this next week. And we’ll be providing some type of a either an lt or cbrs wireless network to probably seven locations across the city where we’ll cover about 3000 students with that. And then St. streamwise Solutions is another one for it’s kind of accustomed to solution. We have a lot of cord cutters in the room. What this allows is for everything in your house to be networked together a digital antenna to be placed in your home. And then we, we have a partnership with streamwise, where they go in, they do the installation of the antenna, they help with customer with all the networking and basically they they’re not paying $240 a month for their cable TV bill, they can do over the air for free after they do the initial installation of it. And then probably the one of the biggest things here is you know, we’re trying to involve this dumb pipe just a gigs service to something that is smart apps. We have a new
Unknown Speaker 2:55:43
Wi Fi six enabled router. Basically, the issue has been on homes, you really don’t get the coverage, there’s kind of areas in your home where you get bad, you know, you have bad conductivity, bad connections. Wi Fi six allows for a further reach in those homes. So that you get better you get better speeds at your computer. We’re also going to work on whole home networking streamwise. And Thea isn’t the only ones to do that we have a group of technicians that are very capable of doing in home networking, and then and then of course we’re working with power side but they’ll PC on an ami and to provide a number of ami locations here where you know that all the AMI, the meters will be aggregated together at a single point. And then the traffic will be carried back. Not a surprise from a budget standpoint, capital and non operating budgets 42%. Four and a half million dollars of that is our debt service. That goes away in 2029. So as you can see here, and then it will show in the next slide, our revenues will ramp up and our x you know our expendable dollars will ramp up at that time. repair and maintenance is the biggest driver on O and M on the OEM side. I’m not sure if you are aware we had an outage this weekend, it impacted quite a few customers, we lost the backplane of a of a of a box in the Harvard substation not cheap, we’re going to spend probably 85 to $95,000 on new cards so that we have adequate maintenance backups available to us. And so what you’re going to see is you’re going to see our construction over the next few years you’re going to see kind of our construction spend going down. But the span from a operating from a maintenance standpoint is going to go up because we just got to keep upgrading the network and maintaining the network. We have some very hungry squirrels in the city that do quite a bit of damage. So what we do in those cases were taken down the the old non shielded cable that was initially put up because that was kind of the fast and easiest way to do it. And we’re putting up armored shielded cable and those areas where we still don’t have a bearing, you know, we still can get in there and get it buried. We are doing some work on the north side of highway 66. here soon. We have two areas we’re going to start shooting across 66 to provide service over there. Schlegel is an area in town. We turned up service to half a Schlegel to last Friday, and we’ll probably turn it up to the rest of Slagle by the end of this week. So we’re making good strides there. This is kind of our financial outlook as you can see in 2029 once the debt retired, we really have a huge increase in our in our cash flow. And we’ll have you know, a lot of working capital that we can stick back in the network and and then try to expand beyond where we’re at today and hopefully help out some of our some of our neighboring communities with the service that we provide. Okay, any questions for me?
Unknown Speaker 2:59:09
cutsem or Christiansen?
Unknown Speaker 2:59:13
Yeah, my sympathies for the squirrels they’re just so annoying that you your peaches they eat your palms, they eat your phone they Oh, wow. I’ve wicked calculate how much damage they do. It’s anyway, I wanted to compliment you on the the customer service because there’s a guy who period about every couple of years, somebody does something somewhere and everything is out and I’ve written down all the instructions and I usually can fix it by hitting the third button from the right and holding it down for three seconds after unplugging everything and re plugging it but it doesn’t always work and the guy who is the tech support guy is so He gets back to you right away. He’s really courteous and funny and always helps me at no time at all so and is very patient. So just tell your your customer service people thanks and tech support people rather. Gal, thank you thank
Unknown Speaker 3:00:18
you very much for the compliments for shade, we have a team of six of those technical service reps that I think that are all very capable of doing exactly that for our customers. And I think that’s what sets us aside is the customer service that we do provide, we’re local, we are very responsive to a customer’s needs. And if they have an issue that those tsrs can’t resolve, we get a technician without their with up there within hours. So
Unknown Speaker 3:00:46
Alright, nobody’s in the queue. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:47
Perfect, thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:54
All right, Mayor Council, I’m going to try to take this home. For we’re going to start with the the budgeted positions, new positions that are included in this proposed 2022 budget, we have 31, new fd included, which brings our total budget positions in the budget to 1,042.76 f t. So there are 13 different funds on this slide that have at least anywhere from 9.95 f t being added in the general fund two all the way up to less than a half f t in the electric fun. I won’t go through them all. But you’ll see the second largest one, there’s the five f t e in the public safety fund.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:41
I’ll jump in with Jim on some of these two.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:44
So what I plan to do, I mean, we have a bunch of slides here, and it has each one of those with description, you have seen this description in the budget message, you’ve seen it in our council communication, I’m not going to read these descriptions, I will just touch the name each of the FTA that are being added in the budget. stop us if you’d like to ask about any of them. If I can’t answer them, or held can answer them, there are probably some teammates behind this that can probably jump in and do that. So the first is one FTD. neighborhood re and you’ve heard about some already tonight. So you probably don’t need to ask about those. But some of these you haven’t heard one ft. neighborhood resource coordinator in community neighborhood resources from a variety of funds. One FTA counselor in senior services,
Unknown Speaker 3:02:32
and I’m going to jump in on this when we all have talked about the increasing demand to serve our older population. And what we’re seeing is the number of requests. I mean, this isn’t necessarily to do a lot of new this is just to manage the the number of people that are coming to us asking for service and then obviously assisting with some of the work that we’re doing with the Housing Authority, but the demand is growing significantly for senior services right now.
Unknown Speaker 3:02:59
And then one FTD librarian in the library in one in a library, one ft social equity court coordinator and community services for multiple funds. One FTD development project administrator in planning and development services.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:15
And I’ll touch on this one because I know there were some questions before on this one. Generally, this is something we’ve been looking at. I mean, we’ve had conversations on a similar type position in previous budget years. Unfortunately, when we had the other needs, we just couldn’t find that position. But the intent for this really is is to streamline a lot some of our processes, increase communication with people who are in the development process, and help us facilitate and reduce the number of times that we have to come back for recent medals. Obviously, we’re going to focus on high priority and significant projects, whether that’s in the affordable world or large economic development projects. But the other piece on this to Tim asked me, Councilmember waters asked the question, how are you going to measure this? For me, it’s how much does this reduce the number of times that Joni or I or Dale have to come in and engage in different projects because we’re seeing that a lot but it’s really to facilitate and streamline the communication between the development community and our development services staff.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:25
They want to have T GIS analyst in planning and development services, to FTP parks and open space Rangers in public works in natural resources.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:35
I mean, so sorry, Jim. One of the things that we’re really struggling with in terms of GIS and really being able to fully envision what we can do with that system. We don’t have a position to do GIS work in planning and development services that is absorbed by planners. And I think to truly build the system and utilize the GIS system to its extent and I think I know, based on experience in other communities, you need this dedicated position. We’re obviously we’re also working in how we can bring this together from an organizational perspective. But really the intent of this is also to to streamline the processes and, and provide more information to the community so they can get it in, it’s easier to address versus having to search for it and find it. Similar to some other questions here. And then the two FTD parks and open space Rangers, we all know what we’ve been dealing with it Macintosh and what we’ve been dealing with another areas, and we’ve talked about that. And we really feel like in order to manage the increased demand. And again, this is just managing the increased demand and our existing parks and open space, we need those positions.
Unknown Speaker 3:05:50
One ft data and innovation analyst and in public works in natural resources, business services, and that’s from multiple funds. And one if the Human Resources business partner to and shared services.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:03
So in this one, you’ve heard me talk about the data and innovation where the data analysts the data work we need to do as an organization so we can really look at, you know, what are we doing? How are we measuring it holding ourselves accountable. This is going to have an overarching view and work with the entire organization as we continue to move down this road, the FTA and human resources. This is an in response to many state laws that we now have to manage in terms of things like equal pay and equal work. And just that the same process that we did a year ago is now incredibly more complicated in terms of what we have to do. And so again, this is just helping us manage the gap and workload that we have right now.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:52
One of the key procurement specialists in purchasing one half FTP, retirement administrator and finance, one FTP clinician connection to in community health and resilience from the public safety fund. One FTD, Community Services Officer detective, in police from the public safety firm, to FTD, core paramedics in community health and resilience from the public safety fund.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:21
So and these only go back to the FTD core. So the one FTD, and community service officer and detectives, what we’re really finding is, I’m going to separate that out the caseload that we have now coming in, and the work that an actual detective is doing is outpacing what we can manage operationally. And so this is not a certified police officer. This is a community service officer, which is a civilian position that can help those individuals process the cases that we have right now. And and and where we can hit them more quickly. The the FTC and the Corps, paramedics and community health and can you go back a slide, Jim, and FTA, clinician and community health and resiliency, and you’re going to see a few more of these positions. They’re new, because we’re moving them into the budget. And with ongoing funding. These are positions that were grant funded in lead and core. And so we’re bringing them in to ongoing funding now, and there’s some more where you will see this.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:29
Okay, then one FTA victim advocate in community health and resilience from the public safety fund.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:36
That’s another grant funded position that we need to move to ongoing funding. One, report to campership.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:44
One FTA, volunteer and evaluation coordinator at the museum from the museum services fund. Keep going what after a network engineer in broadband, one ft customer service representative and broadband, one ft e fiber optic technician in broadband, one FTP, airport operations and maintenance tech from the airport fun.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:12
So let me touch on this one a little bit. I know counsel mentioned this, this is something we’ve been really evaluating in terms of the airport, we have one individual out there. where, you know, as you all know, David passed away. And so this really highlighted that we need additional support there. It’s unfortunate that we’ve been working on this position for a few years and he’s not here to realize it. But we’re also looking at taking the next step in this and really working with our Operations Division to streamline and try to do things more efficiently effectively, which will create more redundancy within the system but then at the same time, allow us to be a little More specific in terms of the airport position in the future in terms of what we’re looking for. We basically the way it’s been structured for years, you had one person that had to be able to understand the FAA, manage the grants, also be able to pull the fire sweeper on the runways and do other things. And so I think this is going to be a big benefit. And based on some of the conversations we’ve had recently, I think we can achieve even more with this position.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:33
To FTP Natural Resources technician and public works and Natural Resources open space fund. And one FTD, sanitation supervisor and public works and natural resources from the sanitation fund. One ft. One FDA assistant director of engineering services from the water Fund and the sewer fund. When after a civil engineer One, two from the water Fund and the sewer fund, one FTP construction and Spectre in public works and natural resources from multiple funds, and a half FTP water conservation specialist in public works and natural resources from the water fund. We have three quarter FTP grant coordinator in public works and Natural Resources Business Services, half FTP sustainability specialists from the water fund, and a quarter FTP sustainability program coordinator, again from the water Fund, the half FTA neighborhood resource specialists from the sustainability fund and one FTA environmental regulatory specialists from the storm drainage fund. So it’s a summary of the positions Do you want to point out that, as I said, in the beginning, we had 9.95 f t added in the general fund, we did have over 40 requests for f t within the general fund. Moving into the LDA budget. going to run through this quickly I gave you quite a bit of information within the communication. I’ll not get into that level of detail. This is seems to be missing the first bond slide. But I did have a first slide that listed the other six DDA funds that are also part of the DDA budget, the operating from the construction firm, the arts and entertainment fund. And also we have a capital fund and a debt service fund and a facade improvement loan fund. So the operating fund budget is for 22 is $344,000. It’s an increase of almost $30,000 over 21. And a little over 9000 of that increases in your salary and benefits area over $20,000 is an O and M and of that $20,000 over 15,000 is for parklet maintenance. The LD VA construction fund gets its funding from tax increment revenue. We have here $185,000 of uses of those monies that are scheduled for 2022 Alley cameras at 100,000 pedestrian metrics for 10,000 mural cultural project for 15,000 parking study update for 25,000 parklet maintenance for 10,000 and economic vitality for 25,000. And so the total use of TIF revenue in the 22 budget is for 276,000. So besides those projects I just went through, we also do take from our fund through TIF revenue project management for those projects from the DDA staff. And that’s $32,900. And then every year we do put a certain amount of money away towards infrastructure replacement into a sinking fund. This year, it’s $58,742. And it’s tied to how much of the city’s mill levy goes towards the DDA chef
Unknown Speaker 3:14:22
Jim? Yes, how many slides are there? The only reason I asked is there’s a couple people in the queue. And I usually wait till the end of the presentation but I’ve only got 45 minutes probably have about five more slides and let’s finish the slides then we’ll we’ll come back and can’t go on I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:39
The into in the 2022 budget we have $1.342 million budgeted for TIF revenue. So you can see where we’re utilizing a 276,000 here. And then in the arts and entertainment fund. We’re using another $375,000 of TIF funding to fund us expenses in this budget, so the budget of $413,000 for 22, an increase of almost $60,000, over 21 $10,000 increase in salary and benefits, almost 50,000 increase in O and M. And within that it’s $26,000 in advance, and the VISTA program and $14,000, in printing, downtown parking fund budget is nine, almost $100,000, for 22 increase of close to $20,000. Over 21. increases are in small amounts and salary and benefits, an increase of seven and a half 7.5 1000 in on em and $10,000 in parking lot improvements. And then the GI D budget is 151,000 for 22 increase of almost 30,000 over 21. And most of that increase is in downtown in a GI D area maintenance and cleaning of $14,250. And then another $11,300 increase in administrative transfer fee to the city for 22. That’s all on a DDA. So I can stop there if your questions related to that.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:25
dark waters.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:27
Please me your bag. I actually I hit the button when we got to the end of the overview of personnel. So I’m all good here. I really am all good here. So if you want to know and I would like to, I guess my I made it I shared this observation with Harold is it’s not so much a question as an is an is an observation and maybe a request I it’s a kind of comment and request I’ve made before and and maybe it’s just not reasonable given the scope of how we operate as a city. But 31 f d. And when you go through the narrative, the gym just went through i can i think i can surmise, you know, what might be different in 2023 because of additional people and work in 2022. But as we listen to the presentations, and let me just preface this I we have great people, I total confidence in you and everybody in the crew to make best and highest use of every dollar we spend. This is not about questioning that either competency that people are the intent or how the dollars will be used well. But if I’m asked tomorrow, or when we approved the budget, Tim what will be different in 2023 because of additional 31 people in 2022. I can think I can answer that question based on what I just heard about LPC, right. We’re going to reduce response time from five minutes to two minutes. We’re going to reduce from 24 seconds to 10 seconds. I mean, I heard some metrics. And we’re going to grow from what I think I heard was 24, four or five customers, and then there’ll be a target for 2000. I mean, that was for me. It’s like okay, we can answer the question, how will we know? Right? Did we accomplish in 2022? What we thought we were going to accomplish? And, and I could when I when in David’s presentation, he made reference on whatever Slide it was to these objectives. It was his last slide. In the bullets on that slide. I think I could turn into objectives. Because there are pretty strong hints, but they’re not stated that way, you know, and so even there, it’s it would be hard to know how to answer the question what’s different because you’ve got 30 more people or 31 more people on board in 2022 than you had in 2021. The the appeal would be a hint some way to say it maybe it’s only when we’re adding personnel to say, here’s what we’re going to accomplish. And I’m certain with the the equity coordinator, you’d expect to see goals and objectives across units, right departments and divisions that are specific and measurable in terms of the equity effort. But that would be it’d be good to see that that’s that would be one of the outcomes, right? That you would even have that structure and then the accountability that goes with it. I’m just saying it would be helpful to me as one council member, I do feel like I’m doing my job just in terms of accountability, to see greater specificity. Now, all that said, specifically, the the the additional position in planning would I think that’s the Ombudsman role. And you mentioned you and Joanie having to be called in less frequently on projects, which would be one way to measure That’s would be different, you’d get to spend your time differently. But I also think that’s about speed. Right? It is about speed. Yes. And so then, you know, one outcome, and how we would know is you’d survey both applicants and staff, right? with a couple of questions periodically, quarterly, the end of the year, you know, on a pretty, you know, simple scale. Did we or did we not reduce time without compromising quality, right, of the of the decisions we’re making? Because that’s not that’s not the intent. It’s just generally as we’re about to approve a 300. And what’s the top line? It was a 389? Or 366 390? Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, under 390, we’re going to prove a $390 million budget, we’re going to use every one of those dollars. Well, but but when this is part of it, it would be for me helpful to be able to have more specificity on what’s going to be different. And how will we know because the additional capacity we’re bringing into the organization.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:06
The last comment about the Ombudsman, couple years ago, when we talked about I thought it was less about cost than it was about conflicts, that to put somebody in that role, put them in a real conflicted position, in planning or in in with engineers and public works and natural resources. And so we contracted that out for someone to work with nonprofits, right that it applied, because whoever we were bringing in wouldn’t have those conflicts, their total interest was in the client. But this is going to be different, right? This is we’re going to have somebody who is on the payroll, and they’re taking on big projects. So we learned something through that experience with the Ombudsman that was working with nonprofits to kind of informs this one.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:53
I think it streamlines a conversation. So what I’ve seen where the where it’s been successful. And so I’ll talk a little bit about VCP is that position has been able to really say, here’s what we need to do, here’s what you need to do in help martial through. Now. At the end of the day, even in some of these cases, where they work, it’s whether or not they do it. But I think they help bridge the gap in the understanding and the system. I think the conflict still does exist, we still have conflict in the point, even on other projects where you’re in a regulatory position, but then you’re also having to facilitate on some of that. And so that doesn’t go away in this but it really is that different position that can blend that gap, but then also facilitate the movement through and when things start getting hung up, can also facilitate a conversation to get it resolved based on what we’re dealing with. Because there’s a lot of times when we get in it, there’s really no magic to what we do. It’s really facilitating the conversation so everyone can get on the same page. And then Marshal some of those things through to make sure both sides are having their time requirements. This is
Unknown Speaker 3:23:03
one for whatever it’s worth when we will come back in on bringing us back at some point before we close up this year. If I think about the motion that council member Martin made that council member had Duggal fairing amended to bring commercial residential development projects that are in the process for more than a year or when they get to the year. Bring him here for review. This particular position, I would assume is likely to minimize the number of times that would have to happen that would be part of the intent. Is that fair?
Unknown Speaker 3:23:37
Hopefully, yes. I mean, that’s how we’re going to be evaluating. I think one of the things we realized is, when does the year start because some of issues just statutory time. So we’re gonna, but yeah, exactly. Because so for example, on a project, I mean, this is kind of the new ones, we get into some of these. It was Joni facilitating a conversation with other property owners to get a document signed that had nothing to do with us, but was definitely bogging down the rights of way, all of that stuff. And so Joanie was having to engage in that or something on our side where we needed a navigation easement and we couldn’t get a navigation. But when you start looking at who’s spending time or or when even Dale’s been in the mix with us, when we get into it, it really is hopefully, we’re going to be able to see a result where that’s not happening. And we can work at our appropriate levels as we’re doing this, and that’s the desire.
Unknown Speaker 3:24:37
So for me, this one connects across a couple of different priorities that we don’t keep coming back to affordable housing and attainable housing, etc. This is one where if there was an objective, I would have said, the least clearly stated objective because every day that we spend, we don’t need to add the money, the cost of a homebuyer, right ultimately That one, when we’d elevate to say that’s that ought to be an objective we all own right? That ought to be a objective for the council and for you and for the organization. And so let’s on a quarterly basis, monitor our performance, and make mid course adjustments as we need to. it’s that important, right, in terms of getting everybody going in the same direction. And you couldn’t do that for all of them. But there are some of them, that I would think you would want us invested in to that level. And that we ought to hold ourselves accountable for at that level, because the stakes are so high, right, and the people for whom the stakes exist, aren’t appear. Right? Folks, we’re, you know, trying to figure out how to serve so
Unknown Speaker 3:25:41
and we can we can bring that information, and we can have it brought to you back before this is approved? Because you know, you heard me talk about the procurement specialist or the HR specialists in the budget reviews I, I talked about that. So how long does it take us to hire position? And then what’s the impact on how long it takes us to hire position based on the operating or take us to get there. So if we can get that to counsel, because again,
Unknown Speaker 3:26:05
this is not, I know, we got it. This is about trying to get us all invested in this together in ways and accountable to get us going in the same direction. So thanks.
Unknown Speaker 3:26:15
Mayor Bagley and Councilmember Ward has that. So you know that there’s a number of staff here tonight, I asked them all to be here and be ready to answer questions about metrics on these positions. We will put it together and get it to you. So you have it all in upcoming packet. So Alright, so
Unknown Speaker 3:26:34
there’s also Councilmember Duggal fairing has a question. Sorry. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:26:39
So yeah, this one’s actually going back to the FTA. Again, like a while ago, go back. So and, you know, I do agree with Councilmember waters, comment about, you know, having those goals stipulated. You know, I keep going back, and we talked a little bit about this, the SMART goal, you know, as a teacher, I use it for every bit of data that I analyzed with, with students, you know, that Specific, Measurable, Attainable, relevant and relevant is irrelevant, you know, because some of these things, yeah, they’re nice to have, but are they relevant to our, to our major scope of what we’re trying to accomplish as a city as a whole, and timely. So you know, just going back and looking at the quiet zones, you know, having that set for so long, and I know, it’s not the fault of the city, there were other factors involved, but just kind of moving, moving these things along for the betterment of our city. But I actually want to go back to the FTP for the core team. And I talked a little bit with Harold about about this, and I appreciate that, I’m glad that you had mentioned that it’s not new FTP, it’s actually ft that we’ve had in place, but it’s the grant is currently waning. And so I guess for me, that’s, this is something that I’m I’m very passionate about continuing to have I have a son with a disability, a daughter, who has survived multiple suicide attempts. I think, you know, looking at what happened in our family, at that time, had when we call law enforcement for help. If we had had trained people, it would have really changed, you know, just our family dynamics for several years afterwards, because, you know, it was just I think, you know, we called the police, about 30 seconds in, I regretted that moment, it was very much criminalizing her, her state of crisis. And, and so to have qualified individuals, and not putting it on law enforcement officers to take that that role of people who are in crisis, people who are in drugs, and are not thinking straight, and, you know, we hit you trying to get people to, to work with these individuals in crisis, who are trained to do this. So it doesn’t escalate a situation, and it’s not criminalizing people who are dealing with drug addiction and mental health crisis. So, you know, and having said that, now, going back, you know, have we, and I, you know, I’m setting appointments to meet with folks in public safety as well to further discuss this, but looking at, you know, our leads and core team, are they where they’re at right now Do they have, who they need, what they need in order to keep the program going strong? Do we have you know, we’re making up some of the positions for grants that you know, that as the grant is waning, but do we have more funding to be able to support and keep this program going ongoing in other means not just f t, maybe additional f t, because the other thing I’m hearing in having conversations with folks at mental health partners is, you know, people are burned out, you know, teachers are burnt out, police officers are burnt out everybody who works in the public, y’all. It’s, it’s been a very trying time. And if we are stretching people to the max, and they’re having to deal with people in crisis, I just worry that we’re going to lose a lot of really good talent, because we’re stretching people too thin. Now, I could be totally wrong, and everything’s fine. I just continue conversations. But that’s kind of, you know, the burning burning concerns I have. And I want to make sure we don’t get to that point,
Unknown Speaker 3:30:46
I think this is going to have to be something that we’re going to have to continually evaluate and every budget process to see where we want to go and where we want to be, again, in the public safety fund. This gets into this other conversation, you know, we’re looking at these within the public safety fund. So you have limited scope. But then if you look at it, then and you go, Well, we want to bring the general fund and remember, we’ve gone for public safety fund to increase the revenue stream their general fund, we haven’t really increased it. So that’s what we’re balancing priorities across. And we can we have to look at that because there is a finite amount to this. The other thing is that, in Zack, and I’ve actually started talking about this is there’s another piece to this. So when we looked at how we benchmark our current clinicians, we looked at it in a different way. And we said who’s going to have emergency, we we tiered it in three different levels, to try to look at it. But I think the other component to this that we’re going to have to really work on is cross organizational collaboration, and how are we connecting dots when they can be connected versus just holding it in one area. And that goes to the middleware project that we kind of talked to you all about, and connecting dots. And so Zach and I had a conversation this morning about this is, we’ve also got to shift to where this just isn’t a public safety conversation. This is an organization conversation where we’re bringing more resources to bear because then you can do it more efficiently and effective. And the more we work as a team, the stronger we’re going to be as an organization, but to your first question, this is something we’re gonna have to keep an eye on and we’re gonna have to work it on every annual budget. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Alright, that’s it. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:32:30
All right, I’m going to jump back ahead here to the marijuana tax some taxes initiated in 2018. So the tax revenue for the first year was 265,000. As you know, the vote for that allocated 50% of the tax to affordable housing. In 2020. Our revenue is 562,000. Half of it again, affordable housing and then we had 87,000 towards human service agency funding, and $50,000 for early childhood education is how we allocated that in building the 2020 budget based on council direction. For 2021, the budgeted revenue is $410,000 and half of that, again, our affordable housing we allocated by council direction 67,000 and change for Longmont, public medium $50,000 to the library feasibility study 150,000 to early childhood education, and $70,000 to the 529 jump program, to 22,021 uses includes $132,558 a fund balance from the prior years unallocated revenue that was like from 2009 team’s activity, revenue beyond really what we had budgeted in the initial budget, we would be having that on an annual basis as long as as sell marijuana tax that comes in over the annual budget. So this year, we have taught the projected tax revenue for 22 at $600,000. So half of that go into affordable housing. We have another 150,000 fund balances time left over from 2020 operations where revenue exceeded our projections. We leave it a little bit more in fund balance. I think if we ever get to the point where the the marijuana tax doesn’t reach our budget projections, we’ll need some fun balance to have a cushion. And so right now, I think a little less than 10,000 that we left in there. So we have $450,000 available to be directed by the Council. Some options that the Council have identified included mental health and again the 529 jump program. And so we will need final direction from counsel on how to use this unallocated portion. Don’t need it tonight. You can get To us two weeks from tonight, if you choose when we come to you for final direction, but just want to let you know you have that much available to you.
Unknown Speaker 3:35:07
Cool. Thanks, Jeff, we look forward to that discussion in two weeks. What day will that be the
Unknown Speaker 3:35:12
that would be the fifth, I believe that. So, so we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be able to try to answer all the questions you have. And I think we’d like to start by talking about that golf course clubhouse. And Theresa is going to hand out this page from the CI p two pages from the CI p related to the public improvement fund, because I know the city manager wants to take you through that. Before he does that, or as you’re passing that out, I’m going to begin to give you a little bit of background. You know, last week, somebody asked how long I’ve been here, and it’s a long, long time. So it looked to me for this institutional memory. But the reality as I don’t remember much anymore. So I ran upstairs at the break, to seeing I had to get wanted to get some information about the golf course. And I pulled out comprehensive annual financial report that has the design of the golf course on the cover, you know, appropriately enough back from 99 to seven. But so what I was able to pull out is that we we did a lease back in the mid 90s for five and a half million dollars for the ukri golf course, we did have some money. On top of that, I think from other sources, but that most of it was a lease that was going to be paid back from a golf revenues. And because the golf enterprise is an enterprise fund. And so the operation is is supposed to be self supported. And that’s how that was all designed to work back then. And the business plan for that was that we were going to see growth in revenues from that golf course, we had a lease that was going to increase is kind of ballooning. It was going to start in 100,000 and then go up to about 300,000 a month and eventually get up to the 600,000 plus level. And I think it was going to pay off in about 15 years that I don’t have with me to be able to validate or verify. But I do recall that’s about what it was 12 to 15 years or so. So pretty much a little bit after the the turn of the century, and you had an economic downturn. You know, golf didn’t do what everyone expected it was going to do in the 90s. And all that growth that the golf did see in the 90s started to slow down. So just give you a little bit of data. So I pull out this this comprehensive annual financial report from 2000. And from 1999. And the revenue for the golf enterprise fund was $2,459,000. Pulled out last year 2019 annual financial report. So we you heard the city manager say we did really good and 2020. So I’m not going to use that year, I’m going to compare the 2019. And that revenue for the golf enterprise fund was $2,764,000. A $300,000. increase over 20 years 12% growth in 20 years. This is why this project is sits unfunded in our ciap 25 years later, we struggled to even pay the cost for the original golf course, we will be paying that off in two years. We refinance that lease sometime after the turn of the century. And that didn’t help we refinance it in 2010. Paying off the lease entirely getting the bank out of it. And using somebody’s crazy idea about the Bank of Fleet fund to to instead extend this lease all the way out here to the 25th year or so that it’s going to pay off a little bit early than we thought back then. But it’s going to pay off in 2023. After a payment. It’s been about $130,000 a year for over 10 years. So we were never come close to paying the 660 something 1000 maximum payment that was built into that financial plan back in the mid 90s. That really is give you just give you the idea of where the history of that was. And I will also point out that I’ve worked with the city councils throughout all those years. And they’ve always wanted the golf fund to be self supporting and not tax supported. And that’s why that that that that project did not receive any funding. So you wanted to take them to the public improvement fund.
Unknown Speaker 3:39:56
Yeah. So if there’s any other there’s a question For Jim, we can go to this. So obviously, this was something that Councilmember water submitted when we asked the question, and and so when we were looking at it, kind of want to talk about the public improvement fund and what we had in there. And so historically, and Councillor waters asked this question earlier. For me, the public improvement fund has been an interesting experience for me since I’ve been here. I think in my first budget with you all is in 2012. And I think in that budget, we were trimming the public improvement fund and trying to balance it out in future years. And that’s been something that we’ve been going through on a periodic basis. And, and so when we, when we look at this, I think we’ve continually adjusted projects. So whether it’s flooring, whether it’s boiler replacements roofing h vac, we were constantly having to toggle these projects because we didn’t have enough funding. This was the year that this was probably the only year I think we haven’t had a hard time balancing this since I’ve been here where we had more capacity, but in that what we what we also funded was the $3.7 million for the first and main transit station, which most of that is his general general fund. Yeah, that’s mostly general fund, but we included it in this and so we were looking at it. And then we were really bringing back other projects that we had to delay. The other thing is when we talked about this, and we talked about the bond initiatives that we put in place, you know, one of the things we said is, this is what we need. And I mentioned this earlier, this is what we need to to get the golf course on, its on its feet. And then COVID head. And so as I mentioned earlier, we now know we’re probably going to have to add more dollars to the maintenance facility, because we’re just seeing cost increases all over the place. But the interesting thing about it is, and I didn’t think about it until later, when we a few years ago when we were going through the golf and we talked about in Council, you may I don’t know who was on here or not. But when we talked about the man pricing, and we made the switch to demand pricing in terms of what we needed to do, that did actually have a tangible impact on the revenue stream that we’re seeing in the golf. And it’s only been like two or three years. But immediately it flipped a switch and we went from barely making it to making more money. Last year, we added about a half a million dollars to the fund balance in the golf fund. If you heard Karen earlier and I had to go, we’ll check this you guys were 300,000 ahead of where we were last year. So theoretically, you know, he could be in the neighborhood of $800,000, adding it to the golf. And so that’s a fairly significant financial shift. So as I was looking at this, what I failed to mention in the conversation earlier is when we started doing this, we started evaluating what do we need to do to improve the golf courses. So we can increase play and do other things. And redoing the clubhouses and finishing the ucrete clubhouse is actually something we talked about, we couldn’t quite figure it out then because we were still on the front end of this. And we have the fire Twin Peaks. And so we were actually able to redo the Twin Peaks clubhouse because of the fire. And we made that difference. And so as I was thinking about this, one of the runs that we made, actually, when we were looking at the maintenance facility was is there a way to design it on site to to use the money? I don’t know, Jim remembers this, but to do both do the maintenance facility and finish the clubhouse. But that didn’t really work out? Well. I think where we are now based on where the funding is to answer the question on this. I think
Unknown Speaker 3:44:14
we can allocate the design cost out of this year out of the golfer and based on their performance to actually get a real cost to see what’s it going to cost to do this because the 5.4 million is a is a swag I think in my recommendation would be the golf and actually go into the next level, do the design cost figure out what it is. We have one full mort we have one more full payment in terms of paying off the debt that Jim was talking about, then the next year is a half payment by the time we get there on this and utilizing the golfer and that’ll give us a real number to target. And then let us really evaluate what the golfing can do and what option We have available and in approach it that way. So it is something we’ve been trying to figure out, we know we need to finish it. And, you know, golf course of that caliber with a clubhouse of that nature. We can do more, and we think we can increase revenue. But that would be how I would propose we approach that situation. operationally, you know, that’s kind of what I was thinking. So if you if you all want to do motion, I’ll make a
Unknown Speaker 3:45:30
motion. I’m sorry, about your duck water.
Unknown Speaker 3:45:33
I’ll move that we take that approach. Can I add to that? That, that it become something that goes maybe on Tony’s to do list to look for a partner in terms of a potential public private partnership, when the time comes once you’ve done the design work? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 3:45:51
yeah. cuz I’ve, I want to do a public private partnership. I mean, that’s a way to manage emotion. Right. We’ll restate the motion, please. I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:06
That the motion is to take the approach that he’ll just described to get the pay off. They’ll make the last payment using us money this year out of the golf fun to do the design work. Next year, I guess, pay off the balance of the lease is that would
Unknown Speaker 3:46:22
well we have the last foot we have a partial payment in the next year. But Jim and I can sort that out
Unknown Speaker 3:46:27
to manage that. And then to look for a public private sector partner, when the time comes that we know what the the real scope of the work would be.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:38
And the only thing I would say is let us get through the design of the maintenance facility first. Before we start that, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:45
Okay. One second to that. Alright, it was made by Dr. Waters, seconded by Councilmember Martin. Anybody want to talk on this issue? Councilmember Peck?
Unknown Speaker 3:46:55
Thank you. I think it was a good motion, Councilmember waters. But I also thought that we should wait to the design before we look for a partner, because we don’t know what costs we’re talking about. And until we get that design phase in. So would you mind a friendly amendment to split that vote? I mean, that make that amendment. Okay. Thank you. So I move that we amend the motion to our go with the city manager’s suggestion of going through the design stage of the of the project.
Unknown Speaker 3:47:39
withdraw the second part of that motion, you
Unknown Speaker 3:47:41
just leave it right there. Okay. All right. You second that Councillor Martin? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any more debate on the issue? All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. Sorry, you’re in a sorry, Counselor. Christiansen. I didn’t hear you. She was an A. So the motion carries six to one with Councilmember Christiansen in the dissent. All right, Jim. Thank you guys.
Unknown Speaker 3:48:11
Now the questions. We are here. Otherwise, we’re finished.
Unknown Speaker 3:48:15
Okay. Anything else? All right. Anything else at all Herald? dot waters?
Unknown Speaker 3:48:23
I’m sorry. I I appreciate the the additional information. I’ve forgotten that it was the marijuana tax. That where we took the $70,000 for but could somebody follow up? The 529 jump committee right that I’m still connected with. We’ve we have contracted with them for one installment of our what we’d agreed to. I don’t think we’ve transacted that this year yet. Because I would in fact, I got a just an email today from Josh Atherton at foundation. So the money’s in the budget that if we could get that done, and then and then we’ll obviously talk about what to do with 2022. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 3:49:05
The only thing I will add is about the time we finish this budget, we’re going to be bringing you all in as a le j board into the Lh a budget so
Unknown Speaker 3:49:14
can’t wait. Alright, so anything I’ll tell all right, with that, let’s go on to I believe the only thing left is mayor and council comments anybody. All right, Councillor pack.
Unknown Speaker 3:49:28
I just want to let people know that on October 3 at the Boulder County Fairgrounds sustainable resilient Longmont is going to have their Eevee fair. So we were talking about EBS if you want to know see some cool cars and talk to some dealers October 3 at the Boulder County Fairgrounds it’s always a lot of fun.
Unknown Speaker 3:49:54
Fact waters tomorrow morning at 715 in the hopefully you We want to see museum. It’s our early it’s the business of early. It’s the business of early childhood education business. Right. And hopefully we have a good turnout, the governor will be here at nine o’clock and make some comments. I’m starting to promote his new office of early childhood education, but it’s a chance to kind of motivate hopefully, our business community to lean in to this initiative. So hopefully we’ll see everybody there.
Unknown Speaker 3:50:27
Alright, anybody else? All right, Harold. Anything, Eugene, anything? Do we have a motion to adjourn? All right. I’ll second it. It was Moved by Councillor Peck. Seconded by me on favor to adjourn say II. I opposed. All right, motion carries. We are adjourned.