Video Description:
City Council Regular Session – October 12, 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.
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
She’ll be she’ll be glad noticed, I guess. All right. All right. It looks like we have everybody on council that’s going to be here tonight. And so let’s just I’d like to open this I would now like to call the October 12 2021 Longmont city council regular session to order. I know I know. Sorry. Sorry. Can I get the roll call please.
Unknown Speaker 0:31
Mayor Bagley is absent. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez here. council members Christiansen here. He double fairing here. Martin. Peck waters. Mayor pretend we have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 0:46
Thank you very much. We’ll now do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag
Unknown Speaker 0:55
of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
Unknown Speaker 1:04
justice for all. Okay, thank you very much. I think as everybody just heard the the mayor is not present tonight. So I’ll be running the festivities. This is a regular session. So we will be having a first call invited to be heard. And anyone anybody wishing to speak in first call public invited to be heard, will need to add his or her name to the list outside which I do have a copy of. There’s one person on the list so far. At this time, we will go to the approval of minutes, September 14 2021. regular session minutes. Can I get a motion? Alright, it sounds like council member waters moved approval with a second by Councilmember Peck All those in favor say yay, yay. Yay. Yay. All those opposed say nay. And, sorry. I’m actually going by the screen that we get to use that Mayor Bagley doesn’t like to talk about so that is approved unanimously. with Mayor Bagley absent. We also have minutes from September 28 2021. regular session minutes for approval. Can I get a motion please? So moved by Councilmember Pac, seconded by Councilmember waters gonna get a vote please. All those in favor say Yay. All those opposed say nay. The Motion passes. six to zero with Mayor Bagley absent. So the September 28 2021. regular session minutes are approved. At this time, we will now move on to Agenda revisions and submissions of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agenda items, or future agendas. It looks like. First up is council member Pac woman get your mic on there for you. There you go.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I would like to move to direct staff that we have a nother presentation by the early childhood coalition on now that we are done with our the cares act for the most that I would like to for counsel to hear what path they are going to go on and what issues they’re going to bring up to keep us all informed of the early childhood coalition.
Unknown Speaker 3:53
All right, there’s been a motion for an additional update by the Early Childhood Education Commission. Can you please repeat
Unknown Speaker 4:03
if the early childhood coalition and yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 4:09
the specific update your request, please.
Unknown Speaker 4:13
Okay. I wasn’t able to attend the Monday meeting of the early childhood coalition. I am on the I haven’t attended several of them. But the agenda that I noticed was that they were going to discuss a special district for early childhood education. And not only myself, but I think that all of counselors should hear what that discussion entails and are we going to move forward? are they planning to move forward with it?
Unknown Speaker 4:44
Okay, just to clarify, so is in motion to have an update from the early childhood coalition to specify about a special district for preschool education.
Unknown Speaker 4:58
Get just to hear What that discussion was about and I think all all of city council should be should be informed of how the early childhood coalition plans to move forward.
Unknown Speaker 5:10
Okay. And that was the motion was made by Councilmember pack and seconded by Councilmember Iago fairing. Now discussion? First up, we have Councilmember Christiansen
Unknown Speaker 5:26
Okay, actually, I was going to ask something my own? Well, I do think this is something that is part of Council’s work plan. I think that if, if another group is planning to outside of counsel, and they’re outside of counsel, if they’re planning to do something like that, we need to understand what it is and have some input as a as a whole, because it’s, this is doesn’t involve all of council. And I think, you know, it’s part of our work plan. And I think we need to hear something about what it’s about. Because otherwise, it’s, you know, our city staff is working on in one direction, City Council’s working in another direction. And I think we all need to be working together. So I think it’s a good idea.
Unknown Speaker 6:20
Or Thank you very much. Next up would be Councilmember Martin. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 6:27
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Just to clarify. This would be an invitation, correct? Because the early childhood coalition is is not and an organization of the other the city’s purview. Can I get some clarification on that? I think we get to command them.
Unknown Speaker 6:55
We’re not commanding. They have given us a second. Sorry. Okay. Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 7:01
I appreciate your willingness. Thank you. Yes, I believe that’s accurate in the sense that the early childhood coalition is not specifically a border commission under the purview of the city council, much less the city. And so I would say that that is pertinent. Do you have other things to say? Well, so
Unknown Speaker 7:26
yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 7:26
would you accept a friendly amendment to say to invite the early childhood coalition to give a second report?
Unknown Speaker 7:35
The answer is yes. According to Councillor Beck, you’re good. Okay. Thank you. I will second that. So I’ll select the amendment. Councilmember waters, please.
Unknown Speaker 7:53
Thanks, Mayor Pro Tem. I was in the meeting yesterday, both the coalition meeting and the management team meeting. And I’m certain that the coalition members would be happy to update the council anytime, in terms of the status of the work, just in terms of the council work plan. I’m not certain what the council work plan is for early childhood. I know we have work going on. If but it would be helpful. Since there’s references to the council work plan what that might be with respect to early childhood. I will say that what you’re going to hear from the coalition is that there is no one in that group could tell you what the intent is, in terms of proposing a special district or not, to the county or to the public. It’s been on the agenda as a topic of conversation for two years. With the question, is that something that makes sense in the post pandemic future? And I don’t know if it does or not. But that that group is, is thinking not just about that, but reimagining what child care would look like in the post pandemic future. And I will say they have a lot of work to do. And I in an invitation, I’m certainly they would be happy to, to present. I do think if this group gets in the way of the progress of that group, we should be ashamed of ourselves, they got a lot to do. It’s a bunch of volunteers, and to have to spend time organizing a presentation when people could dial into the meeting and listen and be part of the conversation seems to me to not necessarily be the best use of their time. We it’s a public meeting, we can get access to it, the second Monday of every month, if we don’t it’s on us, not on them, and Add to add to their one more task for them. doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to a group of volunteers, trying to carry the water for what we said as an objective a couple years ago, and really never developed a work plan for
Unknown Speaker 9:55
Alright, thanks very much. Just a couple of comments. In In the sense that I think when we start talking about taxable districts that it is, you know, a use of public good to have that conversation, not just as, you know, special interest groups, but as a city council. And so I think that bringing it forward sooner than later is probably a good conversation to have. That’s all I have to say. I’m not saying one thing or other about that. But I do know that Council, Murray doggo, fairing would like to say something. So there you go. Great.
Unknown Speaker 10:38
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, I just I had a few questions. The reason why I seconded This is really I wanted to know more and the rationale for for bringing this motion. You know, I had a few questions on, you know, was this coalition created as part of the work plan? That looks like my answer? I got my answer. So are we looking then would it be in the best interest of the coalition and efforts being made to combine forces? Would it benefit them to have us as a as an entity? You provide commitment to to support their efforts? And, you know, and know, what’s, what’s going on? And how can we can we how can we help? And then yeah, I do want to know, specifically, how, what are we? What are we doing to address the council work plan on early childhood education? Are we know, is it something I missed? Or I need to do a deeper, deeper dive and read? I just Yeah, I was trying to find figure out where, where this all fits in? Where do we fit in with this? And what could we do to kind of combine efforts if it’s if it’s in the best interest of the coalition and for our community as well. So it was a few questions, but maybe just think about as we proceed forward, but um, we I did get some of my answers. So thank you for that.
Unknown Speaker 12:06
All right, Councilmember waters.
Unknown Speaker 12:09
Thanks, Mayor Pro Tem. And just to be clear, we in the community services department, Christina Pacheco Sims and Olga Bermudez, they have a work plan. The Bright Eyes coalition, theirs is part of that work plan, they do a lot in the in the name in the interest of early that’s but that’s not a council work plan. So there is work that I’m certain shows up in a work plan. We set an objective a few years ago. And, and work has been organized, because I think, inspired by the objective, but it’s not a council work plan. I will say to the mayor Pro Tem and to the other council members, I’m going to encourage if you want to invite the coalition to talk about the status of the work. That’s great. I think I think it’s a distraction to them and the work they have to get done. But to put them on the spot to talk about potential special districts before they’re ready to talk about special districts. My encouragement to them is to not talk with us about that. There is no decision that’s been made. We’re far from bringing a proposal to anybody. And if a proposal would be would be crafted, it wouldn’t be presented to City Council’s anyway, I suspect it would be presented a different level, but it will do a disservice to good people who have donated their time to work on this to put them on the spot for that question at this point in time.
Unknown Speaker 13:31
All right, thank you very much. Next to Councilmember Christiansen.
Unknown Speaker 13:38
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I I agree with Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, why not get involved early rather than later. This is why why would we not want to work together? Why no one is actually trying to put anyone on the spot. And while it is supposedly open, you have to know that it exists. And you have to get in on a zoom meeting and the management team is not a public meeting. So anyway, I just I’m just saying this. I don’t think any intention is made to make put anyone on the spot or any of that I think we can be helpful to them. They can be helpful to us. We could all work together. This would be a good thing. We all want to do that. But we have on our council we have someone who ran a daycare business and certainly understands it. We have a teacher who deals with early childhood education. We have someone who spent many many years in education I think we have expertise on this panel that we get the supporting them and I don’t understand why we would not want to do that and I don’t understand why anyone would take this as a something that is interfering with them or putting them on the spot. It’s I don’t think it’s intended to do that at all.
Unknown Speaker 15:02
Thank you very much, Councilmember Peck.
Unknown Speaker 15:05
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. They, the early childhood coalition can deny the invite or not. But if we do have staff in that meeting, if we do have council people in that meeting, then I think that we do need to get a total update on what is going on. If it is an organization outside of city council, then city council members should not be actually speaking for them. I would like to hear what the early childhood coalition and the chair of that has to say, and how do we all move forward together? Because it is part of our vision. So if they deny the invitation, that’s fine. If they don’t, it’s even better. So I call the call about.
Unknown Speaker 16:01
Okay, the question has been called, there are still speakers in the queue. I prefer to listen to the speakers, but the question has been called. So we’ll take a vote.
Unknown Speaker 16:17
On the motion. On the question on the question for the motion, yes. All those in favor, say Yay. Yay.
Unknown Speaker 16:29
All those opposed say nay? Nay. Can we? I’m sorry. I’m not that good at listening to voices, I guess. Can we actually press the buttons?
Unknown Speaker 16:52
The question fails. slyke. Two to four. With council members, Martin Rodriguez, he doggo fairing and waters against. So we will continue with debate. That brings us to Councilmember waters it appears oops, nope. See three? Yep, yep, that’s you. All right. And good. Yeah, my
Unknown Speaker 17:19
bad. There is not a question of whether or not if there’s a if there’s an invitation from the council to come in and update the Council on the work, then they’re going to do that this suggests that because I’m involved? Well, that’s what I heard if council members are, are involved in meetings, I’d meet with folks all over town. So do you want to try to hook that into accountability for them? Yes, seems to be reached. They’ll be delighted, I’m sure to come and present. What I’m suggesting is if you care about a long term future for a more remote, more robust, enlightened, informed approach to childcare and early childhood education, to call or push the question on special districts before anybody’s ready to talk about that, and I don’t know that they’ll ever be ready to talk about that is a mistake, if that’s the expectation. If it’s simply a progress report, you’re gonna hear much the same thing you heard last time, because there hasn’t been a lot of progress since then. Except the governor’s event which we’re all invited to.
Unknown Speaker 18:24
Thank you very much. Councilmember waters. Councilmember Martin, looks like you’re next to the cave.
Unknown Speaker 18:31
Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to say that I’m going to vote no on this at this time. We heard a lot of talks that that made it sound like the you know, the initial idea was that the council had some sort of authority over this organization, which it does not. And you know, I believe the usual thing in in situations like this is that when the organization would like to have the attention of counsel, the organization would ask to present before counsel, I am certain that anything any organization that is focused on early childhood education and has the governor’s attention is doing pretty well by itself and and will know when it is ready to report. So I’m going to go vote against it just because they’re free to come forward anytime they want. And I don’t like the idea of putting pressure on them to do it, especially this close to an election when the council may turn over. So I’m gonna vote no.
Unknown Speaker 19:45
All right, thank you very much. Council Member Christiansen.
Unknown Speaker 19:50
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I actually think that on a statewide basis, a great many things have been done, which I’m Because I’m on Colorado Municipal League, and I’m on the county, various, that Boulder County consortium of cities, there are a lot of things. And there are a lot of things that were mentioned, that have been done in the last year, two years, three years maybe, and also, especially in the last year that are helpful to our efforts. And especially, of course, the the early childhood coalition who is really the ones doing the work for this. So I think it would be useful to have them come and tell us give us an update on things that have been improved on on a statewide basis for early childhood caretakers, and preschool people. And the difference between preschool and childcare should not be ignored. They’re two very different things. So you know, as we’ve said, they can come if they want to, they don’t have to, certainly but you know, this is just hesitation for them to update us so that we can all work together. Anyway, I really think that there are so many things that our state legislators have done because they understand how important this is. And we have an excellent opportunity, because we have a governor who honestly understands this, and has been part of daycare since he was a baby. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 21:38
Alright, thank you very much. I’m just gonna weigh in with a couple things here real quick, in the sense that I feel this is a procedural question. And so I have a question for city staff. My understanding is there’s been no city council motion to direct staff to build an ordinance that would talk about a special district for preschool education. Is that correct?
Unknown Speaker 22:07
That’s correct. There has not been anything to build an ordinance for that.
Unknown Speaker 22:10
Has there been worked by city staff to build an ordinance for that?
Unknown Speaker 22:16
I am not aware of working on an ordinance to create a special district we have been working in terms of the numbers in the data, trying to understand what the scope of the issue is. And if council will recall in the budget, we allocated a half a million dollars, so that we could really get into the data work with what work cities are the data work that we need to do to figure out what the scope of the situation is more detail, and then we had some additional funds to operationalize some things if needed, but we haven’t gone beyond that.
Unknown Speaker 22:47
Okay. So the direction hasn’t been there for for staff to bring back an ordinance for a potential special district for preschool education. Correct.
Unknown Speaker 22:57
I can’t remember who where there was a vote or anything like that.
Unknown Speaker 23:00
Okay, I was hoping to clarify that point. As such, I am not necessarily ready personally. council members obviously can vote how they would like to, but I’m not going to necessarily bring back the ECC, the early childhood coalition on this this item until there’s a true proposal. And as such, I probably won’t be voting for it, but at the same time, it’s time to vote on the motion. And, sorry, let me go back to where the motion was to have the early childhood coalition come back and report on their work for a special district for preschool education. Am I correct? Okay, that is the vote. Let’s have a vote. All those in favor say Yay. or press Yay. All those oppose press nay. We will see well the vote goes. Okay. The vote fails. With council members, Martin Rodriguez, a dog fairing and waters against council members, Christiansen and peck for Are there any further agenda revisions and submission of documents? Okay. Councilmember Christiansen, you are on.
Unknown Speaker 24:36
Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem. I would move to direct the city manager to add an item to the agenda. There is no rush on this, but to to move the Longmont Economic Development Council back in house as well. branch of city government. I Do I have a second?
Unknown Speaker 25:13
I’ll second that for the discussion. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 25:18
Okay. So I would like to discuss this then. About 2015, the City Council voted on an experiment to outsource the economic development of the city to an outside entity. That seemed like a simple idea, which some thought would be clearer for businesses coming to town and more efficient. There are currently three employees, we have a very skilled head, Jessica Eriksson, all these employees could be bought in house. Most of the legal work for the Economic Development Council is being done by our legal staff already, much of the rest of the work is done by our city staff, it doesn’t make sense for us to be paying for the rent, and many other costs associated with this, the city pays $365,000, every year, PR pa pays a great deal of money, Boulder County pays a great deal of money, all of that could go to the city. And we could have the professional staff, the three members of that professional staff move in house, and it would save a great deal of money, it would gain, we would gain efficiency, we would gain a great deal of transparency. Right now, nearly a great deal of the money that is going to this organization is coming from private businesses who are paying to join this organization. And with their pay, they get a vote. None of these people have been elected. And if we want transparency, that’s what we need is to have this be a truly transparent organization. The honor, in their last report, they stated that their goal was to have at least 50% of their income on their money come from the private source. That means we will completely lose control over our own economic development. Over the years, I have witnessed constant interference in Council council policy and council elections. If you look at the through members of this, not not the professional staff, but members of the private businesses involved and if you look at the garretson, open records request, g e r, it s e n, and the Belmont open records request, both of which are free and open and available to any citizen of this city who wants it. You can see the degree to which there has been interference with by this group, and also by members of city council in the affordable housing ordinance in the metro district ordinance and landlord licensing and inspections and in elections. The high point for me was having a member of this come lecture City Council on how we need to align ourselves with them. And they work for us we are they are on a one year contract with us. And we don’t work for them. We have many, many agreements with the federal government, the state government, the county government with all kinds of districts and and governments, municipal governments, this is one more agreement that we have. And I think that for them to come tell us to order to essentially feel that they should be able to order us around is really quite ludicrous. So that is that is why I’m suggesting this I have been to numerous presentations and lectures and read a lot here and recently as Colorado Municipal League had a presentation on economic development. Recently, the border county consortium had everybody. All the members in the county develop or discuss how their economic development teams worked. And none of them work the way we do So I really do think we need to address this. I think it would be good for the city. I think it would be good for transparency. It would save money, and it would be clearer for the businesses coming to town.
Unknown Speaker 30:15
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Christiansen, sir, as I hear it, the motion is for the city of Longmont to discontinue its partnership with Longmont Economic Development Partnership, as well as the funding they’re in and create its own in house department to deal for academic economic development.
Unknown Speaker 30:38
No, not exactly okay to bring, bring the professionals from that organization into our city government. and have it be you know, as it was a long time ago, part of our city government, although it has been an outside entity for a long time, we have we have inside redevelopment, we need to make it be one one thing, redevelopment and development needs to be simply a branch of city government instead of something that is an outside entity.
Unknown Speaker 31:14
So what I am hearing is that you want an economic development group within the city organization and no longer supporting the LDP as its own function.
Unknown Speaker 31:29
Yes, but all the money that we spend on them would be spent in house and also that money from PRP, and from the county would also go into our development group, because
Unknown Speaker 31:42
Fair enough, I just don’t understand how I stated the motion incorrectly.
Unknown Speaker 31:45
Okay, well, you said you wanted to that not me eliminate it? I’m sorry, I didn’t, I probably didn’t state it.
Unknown Speaker 31:52
I said just defund and non partner with? Well,
Unknown Speaker 31:56
I would say move the funding, because I don’t certainly want us to start from scratch. We don’t need to we have a very qualified,
Unknown Speaker 32:03
okay, we’re arguing semantics here. But it’s basically the same thing as when we’re talking about moving funding or defunding, regardless of what you’re talking about, from one organization to another organization.
Unknown Speaker 32:16
Okay, I would say transfer funding,
Unknown Speaker 32:19
regardless of semantics, all right. The motion is to move funding from the LDP to an internal organization that will have to be created, as we don’t have one currently existing as such. Thank you for the motion, it appears that council member waters is next.
Unknown Speaker 32:48
You won’t surprise surprise anybody that I’m going to vote against this, I think it’s a really bad idea. In my first meeting, as a council member, Jessica Erickson was doing a quarterly report, which he’s scheduled to do again on October 26. And I’m looking forward to that report. And I was I was probably harder on Jessica than I should have been. I didn’t mean to be hard on you, Jessica meant to be hard on the on the data. And because I had all kinds of questions about it was new to me. And obviously, I’ve learned something since then. And I’ve and I’ve appreciated your response to the questions I had then and every question I’ve had since then. But one of the things that, that that was an upshot of that, from my perspective was a deeper understanding for me on the relationship that the city has to lldp certainly we write a big check tally dp. But in writing that check we’re viewed and I think we view them as partners. I think we’re viewed as partners. And I have to say, when when somebody who is a partner comes to that podium and speaks truth to power, we ought to be grateful. And what we’re hearing is that somehow is being interpreted as being told what to do. We had the we had the chair of the LDP board come during open forum, at our invitation, right open to the public. We encourage people to do this. Now we’re resenting that they do it as partners. They came to tell us, there’s a problem in the community with housing. And we are part of the solution to that problem. And if we and we talk a lot about wanting to listen, if we’re not willing to listen to our partners, who are we going to listen to? They have a huge that we’re talking about people with a huge stake in long line. The members of that board to suggest there are no none of us involved with that is simply not true. I am in council member Martin our liaisons to the board of directors were there every month. They hear from us, we hear from them. And there are there was honest conversation about if there’s resentment because they have a point of view About rental licensing, we ought to listen to the point of view and thank them for sharing it. If you question the productivity of LDP, I challenge any member of this council to point to an example, where we would have a city that has been more productive in their economic development efforts, then this one has been. So you can you can, you can interpret somebody speaking truth to power as interference, which was your word, I would think it’s the advice of partners to whom we got to listen. And we got to thank them for sharing what their experience is in the field. Beyond that, what they bring is the is they bring multiples of the funding that we put into the into le dp. It’s called leverage. We’re able to take our money, they’re able to leverage what we bring, to realize the successes that we’ve that we’ve enjoyed in if we think I have to sit here, if I’m them. And I think the move tonight, the attempt to move this back into the city, the last thing if I’m then I would want to do is be partnering with us if we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath this effort, so that we’re the last people I want to be partnering with, if that’s the move tonight. So I’m going to vote no, I think it’s a bad idea.
Unknown Speaker 36:20
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Iago fairing.
Unknown Speaker 36:25
Thank you. So my concern lies with primarily the impact on our budget and time constraints of staff to more bring this back. You know, I was not on Council in 2015. So I don’t know why the rationale for the split. And I’d really like to hear from staff. why that happened to begin with. And, you know, from that perspective, from the city staff perspective, who were in the weeds and doing this work all the time. How is that? You know, how has that worked?
Unknown Speaker 36:58
Yeah, so I think you actually have to go back before 2015. And so even before I before I was here, the the city of Longmont contributed dollars contractually to Longmont Economic Development Corporation. And what we had in 2012, when I got here, and then subsequently in 2015, is you had Longmont Economic Development Corporation doing their work. You also had components within the city doing some of the redevelopment work and some of the other positions. And so in 2015, what we did is we went through advanced Longmont one where we set the we went in and created the strategic plan for economic development. And then what we did is the city at that point is took some of the other positions we had we eliminated them internally. We then contracted for the work to be done as we were continuing to move forward, but then we retain some of that work at the same time. And so it really was this partnership that was developed in terms of what we’re doing related to advance Longmont 1.0, which then created the structure at that point. And then that’s when the Economic Development Corporation hired Jessica, as as the president, during that time when we were creating it, there were some issues. So I got it back up again. Prior to me getting here, council members were voting members on the economic development quarter Corporation. There were some legal issues that came up with that and council members were no longer able to be voting members of the corporation. What we did in the restructuring of this when we came back together with the new advanced Longmont plan is you had the mayor, as as a liaison to the executive committee, you had two council members that were appointed or the mayor and council member. But then you actually had two voting members on the economic development board, which is, which was Tom Roni Otis and myself and then it was now it’s now Dale Rademacher myself. And we wanted the utilities represented on there because they tended to be a significant component of any Economic Development Partnership we had that’s why those two individuals served on that. There are times in the conversation where things show up where it is veering into the city side and that’s where Dale and I recuse ourselves from the votes based on the nature of it but So to answer your question, that was a long way to answer a the city’s funded it for I don’t know how long, I mean longer than I’ve been here. How long so 40 years is so the city’s funded it for an extended period of time. We restructured based on on how it worked with the creation of advanced Long, long at one point now that’s when the board structure was changed. That’s subsequently when they hired the president of the corporation. In this, and then we’ve evolved it. So I don’t know if that answers all your questions or if you have more. So
Unknown Speaker 40:07
I, you know, I think about what I think about how the community looked like 40 years ago, and what it looks like today, it’s a lot different. So by, you know, essentially defunding, or dismantling this one group and then taking it absorbing it, would that hinder you know, prospective businesses coming in, would that simplify the process, I mean, I really, you know, I have my ideas, but I really want to hear from the people who are in the trenches, we’re in the thick of it.
Unknown Speaker 40:42
So I’ve got to give you my perspective based on the different systems that I’ve worked in. And so when you look at this, coming from a state that has a different funding source for economic development, usually did have economic development corporations involved in that, and it was separate from the city. When you look at what we’re talking about now, and you look at the the money that we’re putting in, and then the money that’s coming in from the private sector, we couldn’t fully fund all of the positions with the money that we’re putting in now. So it would require additional investment from the city, if that were to come about. And beyond that, just, you know, looking at what we had to do with deal with in terms of the housing authority and what you go through, and that’s a lot of work. And so what I would say is, it would probably cost more, and I’m saying this off the cuff right now, it will cost more, I think something that you see historically is is that public, private partnership and economic development tends to work well in other communities, and you see different communities approach it differently. Now, talking about economic development in Boulder County is different as well. It hasn’t been until the last year or so where we’ve seen boulder probably become more aggressive in that front. Same with the county. If you remember, when we’ve come when we’ve come with different incentive packages, depending on where it is. We don’t necessarily have the county supporting our economic development incentive packages when they’re in Boulder County, unlike when we had weld County, weld county did participate in this. That’s a policy choice that they’ve made. And so when you take all of that into account, and you go well, will it create more work? Yes, it’ll create more work? will it cost more money? Yes, it’ll probably cost more money. But at the end of the day, you all set the policy directive, and my job is to implement that policy directive.
Unknown Speaker 42:50
Well, I you know, I do want to let go, I had said last week, you know, we have these plans in place. And as we get new people coming on Council, you know, and I’ve heard it in the debates, you know, wanting to come in and dismantle things that were already you know, we’re that were set in motion long before I was here long before any of us were here. So it’s just these are things that destroy communities. So we have to be really careful. And making sure that, you know, we have our our long term plan that we’re not derailing from that and the impact that has on the community on city staff and, and work and the partnerships that we’ve we’ve established. So uh, you know, I I’m not good with this. I’m going to be voting no.
Unknown Speaker 43:36
Thank you, council member ido fairing. Looks like Councilmember Martin, please.
Unknown Speaker 43:44
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Um, yeah, I just like to say first of all, that it seems like a very odd thing for an exiting council member to move I remember during the time that I was, had been recruited as a candidate for council four years ago and some being mentored by Councilmember Christensen and her expressing the idea at that time that all these l agencies had been a mistake and that they should be sucked back into the what
Unknown Speaker 44:22
Okay, point of order, please say stay your point of order. The comments. Sorry, let me Yeah, we go,
Unknown Speaker 44:35
thank you. The comments need to be about the issue at hand, not about the person.
Unknown Speaker 44:44
Okay. point of order, uphold and sense. Direct all of your comments towards the chair and not towards fellow council members. Please ring back in council member Martin to finish your statements. Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 45:02
thank you, I was not accusing the council member of anything. But nevertheless, I do want to point out that this is an odd time to bring forth such a massive structural change it is it would eliminate a check and balance that exists in the city now, where more people have a voice, we have some extremely talented community leaders on the Lh a board who are putting a tremendous amount of effort and analysis into their recommendations and effort for for the city. If we brought them back, in under the auspices of the city that would all go away, I don’t think that they would put nearly as much effort into being as an advisory board, if they were even willing to do it, we would lose all of the subscription money that they are paying. So as as the city manager pointed out, we wouldn’t be able to pay the four person staff, we’d have to allocate more money to it. But I think what we’d be losing most of all is the creativity. You know, I have been in a position of, of negotiating with the Le dp about for their support or alternatives for policy positions that I was taking, and I think it was productive. I think the outcome of that negotiation was probably a win win. And obviously we’ve had some very effective things come out of this like Costco you know, for example, it or or the continued use of the very problematic technical properties on the on the west side, all of the A companies that have held those. It’s not because the LED PE didn’t do it right is because that’s a problematic industry that struggles and they’re doing a very good job keeping somebody paying the property taxes on those. So I see, I see no problems with the EDP. I’m very happy to be a liaison to them, and I’m certainly not going to vote for this.
Unknown Speaker 47:36
Thank you, Councilmember Martin. Just for reference, Councilmember Christiansen you are next. This is your second time speak on the item and your last time to speak on the item. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 47:46
Okay. The assertion that I am saying that led up Oops, sorry. Please ring back in. Good. It’s just been asserted that I am suggesting that LDP has not done a good job. That is not what I am suggesting. I think Jess, Jessica Erickson has done a good job. I think the professionals on that which is Jessica and whoever else is a professional, qualified professional and economic development should join our city staff. I have repeatedly been told by our city staff that we are doing the legal work and most of the other work for LA GP so it isn’t it I find it difficult to understand why we would not want them to just join us for greater efficiency and for greater coordination. I have watched in open forums and in public hearings, members of La dp repeatedly come forth, to speak against our affordable housing ordinance to speak against to speak for Metro districts to speak against landlord licensing and inspections to to constantly comment upon and try to turn our city the policymaking of this city council into something of their more of their liking. That is not that is members of lldp. What I am suggesting is that we have now got a situation where the private people involved in this the private businesses who are involved in this are becoming more and more of a share and that means we will lose any control over our own economic development. That’s why it needs to be brought in house. The money that we are getting with that the city is donating which is 365,000 that PRP a is donating the older counties donating can be Simply redirected to the city. And yes, I, I find it difficult to understand. When I first came on this board in 2013, we had an outsourced a small outsourced economic development group, the man who had it, who I taught was told, well, I’m not going to get into that. But I looked at how many jobs were actually created. It was a town of 80,000 people at the time, and there were about 24 jobs created over the course of two years. I don’t think that’s a good record. We are much better than that we’ve done Jessica has done a very good job. What I am suggesting is that that can be done in house in a more coordinated way and in a stronger and harder your way. Without the the same wealthy elite who have always run the city taking over and larger and larger share of our economic development. That’s all I’m suggesting.
Unknown Speaker 51:15
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Christiansen for I will be calling on Councilmember Peck next, just a reminder, this is your second and last time to comment on this item. Before we vote.
Unknown Speaker 51:28
Thank you, I just have a question. It is my understanding that the divisions within the city are are charged for staff time to to work, I forget what that fee is. It’s the one that we took away from the airport, ATF, the ATF Thank you very much. So my question is because I do know that the city staff puts an awful lot of time into the economic development work is either LDP paying us or are we charging le dp for staff time?
Unknown Speaker 52:10
No, because we don’t charge within the general fund via ATF. And that’s a general fund expense. And so it’s only when we do work for enterprise funds, where we have the ATF come into it. So water wastewater golf, airport, those are enterprise funds. And that’s where we do charge the ATF. But when it’s within the general fund, we don’t do it. For example, the general fund doesn’t have an ATF or legal time for operations that we have within that. So recreation or the city manager’s office. The things that he does for me, there’s not an ETF, because it’s all general fund dollars that we’re using.
Unknown Speaker 52:51
Okay. So this is just a thought. We are partnering with them for the amount of money that Councilwoman Christian sin just stated, and we are giving them staff time, I understand that this is for development within the city. But with all of the conversation going around on other issues that council comes up with about not overloading staff, I think that it might be something we should reconsider, to have them reimburses for the staff time spent on some of the things that some of the parts of the contractual agreements that we have, that their staff cannot do. I hope I’m making sense. Are we giving them free staff time and paying them $365,000 a year?
Unknown Speaker 53:56
Not necessarily. So when we talk about what we do when we get involved in so I will use smuckers for example. Okay, and in that. So we engage in the conversation because much of what we do and much of the legal work is really about what we’re doing to what we’re providing to the company for them to locate here. Okay. And so that isn’t that is a contractual agreement between the city and the perspective company. And so that is very much city work. And so, when we were talking to smuckers, we had people from LPC there because we were talking about the electric and what we needed to do from an electrical component or someone from water because there was a significant conversation about water rights. And so those very much our city conversations in terms of what we’re doing, you
Unknown Speaker 54:49
answered it. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 54:53
All right, thank you, Councillor pack. Just a reminder, Councillor waters, this is your second time speaking on the motion and so This will be your last time speaking on the motion. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 55:02
Now I get that second and last. Just the idea that somehow moving lldp inside the organization would reduce the burden on staff time is absurd there but whether they’re inside or outside, whenever required requirements are staffed I would be the same whether they’re inside the organization or outside the organization, the thought that we would charge lldp for the time of long line staff, when the objective of long line staff is to help bring new business to town is equally absurd. That’s the we’re in this together to successfully to have successful economic development efforts. Now, if the work of the staff was to benefit members of the LDP board, or one of the corporation’s, in some way, I think that’s a different story. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about bringing new opportunity new jobs, the tide that raises all boats, to Longmont. And every dollar that’s spent, I don’t care how much time staff spends is all for the same purpose, whether they’re billing it to an LED, the LED p cost center or a staff cost center. And the benefit is the Longmont our tax base in our residents. So that I mean, whatever the legal how much novel legal time, Eugene wouldn’t spending less time with their inside or outside. Number one, number two. We’ve we’ve had some conversation here. I know it’s kind of the defining in many ways, kind of framework for lldp. And I think our our Chamber of Commerce, the whole concept of the new localism in my mind, if we were going to spend better time spent than this conversation would be to have a seminar, let’s have a tutorial on what that concept is, what the framework is, and what it means and what it looks like when, when folks like US government bureaucracies that are pretty rigid, not real flexible, learn how to take advantage of the IQ points.
Unknown Speaker 57:11
point of order has been raised, what is the point of order? Please ring in so I can recognize you, Councillor pack,
Unknown Speaker 57:20
the conversation or the is going off of this subject, and it is beginning to lecture counsel, rather than just making I’m gonna finish my statement about about the motion.
Unknown Speaker 57:36
Thank you. Council Member pack. I disagree with your point of order is been overruled. Councilmember waters, please continue. But be brief wrap it up?
Unknown Speaker 57:45
Yeah, yeah, I’ll be as brief as I can. I didn’t bring the topic up. So I’m going to have I’m going to finish saying what I had to say. It would be it would be in our interest to learn something about the new localism, we’ve arrived at a conclusion, I don’t know how much knowledge we have. that supports the conclusion that somehow what we’re trying to do is, is misguided. But I do believe the cities that figure out how to take advantage of public private goodwill resources, IQ points, will win in the post pandemic future. And we ought to get smarter about how to do that, in my opinion, as a council. And as an organization. The last thing I would say there was a reference to the input that we received on the icy inclusionary housing ordinance. And in other policy decisions. I, in my mind, what we ended up with the inclusionary housing ordinance was better, way better, because of the input we got from the private sector, from those who know something about developing the ground and know something about building houses. The fact that we listened and we put together a package, we ought to be proud of ourselves for that in appreciate the input that we got. And when they come and they say to us, I am not going to stand with bad policy. I think we ought to thank him for that, to say, this is not going to help you’re going to create new problems. And the ones we’re going to create are worse than the ones we’re trying to solve. Now. That would be the effect of bad policy. And what we’ve heard from time to time is when you when you’re headed down the path towards drafting that policy, you’re going to hear from us, and I think we ought to continue to hear from them as partners.
Unknown Speaker 59:22
Thank you, Councilmember waters, I will just chime in real quickly here. And then I think that effective governing does take in many points of view. I think that it has been generally speaking, very productive partnership between the city and the LDP. I think that we need to have those points of view. And at the end of the day, the City Council are the arbiters. We do get to decide whether we say partner with private partner, you know, industry or we decide not to I think we’ve always had that opportunity when we’ve been in Executive Session, which most people don’t get to see. And people probably feel somewhat rightfully shut out of those sessions. But at the end of the day, you elect us, and I think it would feel better for you to know that there are outside points of view, not a centralized planning commission that says, hey, you know, we get to decide, yes, the City Council gets outside in concept, but having an outside voice like the LDP, or the LD da, and, you know, as far as downtown is concerned, and hopefully we see some of these partnerships come to fruition in other parts of the city, not just the downtown, because the city council is looking at so many different things. Not just downtown, or North Main or South Main or the hover district, Southwest Longmont, yada, yada, yada. And so I don’t think it’s appropriate necessarily for us to centralize all this power within the city government. And so I’ll also be voting against this motion, but as such, the motion is now called to direct staff to an agenda item to move the LDP back in house as a branch of city government, based on specifically what is stated on our screens here. So all those in favor push Yay, all those against push nay.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:44
Oh, you got it. Sorry. My bad. That’s okay. You got it.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:59
All right. The motion fails five to one with council members. Martin Rodriguez, he dog fairing Peck and waters against and Councilmember Christiansen for. Thank you very much. Very good comments and very good things to consider for the next council after November 2. Now, clerk kintone. Is there any other agenda revisions at this time?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:27
There are not Mayor Pro Tem.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:29
Thank you very much. Now we’ll move on to the city manager’s report on COVID-19.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:40
Mayor council sorry, had to step out earlier we had an outage that was hitting some of our electric outages hitting some of our housing authority properties. So we had to kind of figure that one out real fast. But it looks like they’re, they’ve got they know what it is and they’re working on it. So I’m going to just go through this pretty quickly. You know, when you talk about it, you can see a slight uptick in the number of cases in the seven day cumulative case rate per 100,000. You know, again, not at the peak where we were but we’re seeing that move up. Again, you can see this is bouncing all over the place in terms of Front Range and what we’re seeing so now you can see boulder going up, but Broomfield grande are going down, and everyone else is going up. And if you can remember the last few times, sometimes they’re in green, sometimes they’re in red, and we’re seeing it move around. And I think it’s because when you go back to this chart, you can kind of see how it’s ping pong in on this case trends among age groups, you can generally see and my eyes are really bad right now but we see some increases in 75 plus but generally as a county, they’re moving down. Again, you know, we kind of talked about this Longmont is still 40% of the cases in Boulder County with boulder 22% of the cases. You know, part of when you look at that and what I’m hearing in the conversations, see you had a vaccine mandate. And so I think they’re up to like 90 some 90 plus percent of their students and faculty are vaccinated and we saw that really drive the numbers. I asked the question of the county what what does it look like by age group, in Longmont, and so they got this to me and what I want is this is per 100,000. And so generally what we’re looking at in this number is the trend and seeing what’s happening. And so the colors aren’t great in this in the chart that they gave me. But what you can see is that the 12 to 17 year olds were a significant part of the increase recently. The good news is we’re seeing everything trimmed down except for the 23 to 24. When we went in and started looking at it, you can definitely At least see the growth there. This is the chart that you’ve seen before when we talk about our wastewater sampling and what that looks like. And so if you remember me talking about that peak, and what we were seeing, this is the peak, and what we wanted to wait and see is where we’re gonna see that flattened out over time, or we’re gonna see a decrease. And so we’ve seen it decrease, and that’s a good thing, because what we’re looking at is the movement in this, the blue line are the cases. And so when you talk about the 40%, and what that really looks like, in Longmont, and then you look at this data in pretty much the status forecast that we’re going to do that. And then when you look at where the populations are, and so we’re gonna try to continue to get these localized reports in terms of the numbers. When we went in, let me go back to this one, when we went in and really started looking at the numbers and and what that means when you start breaking it down into percentages and Moroccan are going to work on having a different chart hopefully for next week. But you can really see that when you start seeing this kind of movement in this case, you take those percentages and how it then starts impacting the hospitals. So once again, some movement, not a lot in the north central reason ICU Bed Availability increased from 10 11%, it was at 9% before, so you can still see the press their surge Bed Availability is 11%. That’s holding pretty steady. And then tight staffing is what they’re seeing in the North Central Region. 30% was significant staff soap shortages. So that’s actually up from 23%. Last time. And again, you’re not only looking at Bed Availability, you’re looking at staffing availability, because you may be you may have the beds, but you may not have the staff and so you can’t put people in, and then they continue into their transfer plan across the state. And and so those are the issues that continue to challenge again, it’s not all COVID. And so it really is you have your normal diseases that come into play, whether it’s heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and those types of things. And when you layer COVID on top of it, it’s really what’s throwing these systems into these different pieces. And then you can see number of cases, we continue to exceed the epi capacity in the county. And then you can see the deaths that are continuing,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
you know, sort of a mix of long term and non long term. And again, you know, we’re trying to get some other data on national trends in terms of the breakthrough cases and what that looks like to give you all a better picture picture of what’s going on. Positivity rates increasing. I’m not really sure about this number, because it may be that we have more symptomatic people testing and less asymptomatic people testing which may be driving the positivity rate up in this. And then you know, we continue same relative same numbers in terms of vaccination status as a county, we were improving slightly as we continue to move forward. And that’s it. You know, in terms of the update it really we are pretty much in the same spot, we’ve seen an increase. Longmont is continuing to be the largest percentage of cases in Boulder County. And we’re trying to get more data to try to identify what that is. It did look like that younger population was a big part of it early on. And and now we’re seeing it and some of our older populations. And so we’ll we’ll continue diving into the data to provide you all with more information. Be happy to answer any questions you will have.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:46
Thank you Harold council member, he Nago fairing
Unknown Speaker 1:08:51
Thank you, Harold. And thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So in let slide with the positivity rate, the 4.7. So you were saying you thought that that number could be lower? Or?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:08
So I think for me, the challenge is when when you see who’s being tested. So if you drive by some of the testing sites, you’re not seeing the number of cars that we were seeing at those testing sites. And so if you have more people who are getting tested who are symptomatic, or other issues, and less people just being tested, because they want to see if they have it, then I could shift that percentage a little bit. And so what I want to dig into with marayke on this is really now start looking at how many tests are performed sure, because these numbers can show different things as you’re digging into the data. And so I just know anecdotally that I’m not seeing as many people in the lines, which tells me what we’re probably seeing are those that are either exposed or symptomatic. Yeah. And that may be driving that up to you. So I want to ask more questions on this. So
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
Then what would the difference? You know, based on what we’ve seen over the last 18 months, and how this data kind of ebbs and flows and evolves? Would it make a huge difference in that percentage would? Or would it just be like, you know, by a few tenths of a percent?
Unknown Speaker 1:10:18
You know, it’s hard to say I mean, you know, when we were prior to, it could it could make, I mean, it could make a difference depending on what you’re seeing, if you think back to the number of people we saw lined up at the fairgrounds early on in testing to where the lines are really moving all the way around. And now you can almost drive up and get straight in line. Yeah, I mean, that’s a pretty significant change in volume. And that’s why I want to look into this number a little bit more to really see what’s happening. And in that, and it’s not as many it’s, you know, the percentage of the total being tested is what it is. The question is, for me, are we seeing fewer people testing to ensure that they don’t have it compared to what we’ve seen in the past? And these are more directed by being exposed or being sick or some of those issues? And so there’s a, there’s a nuance to the question that I want to ask.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:15
Okay. And then the other thing, I guess, what is the trigger point then, for us to go back virtually. The county has said, kind of continue on, as we’re doing now. But every indicator, we’re, you know, higher transmission, how, you know, we’re above the line above the line,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:37
meaning the schools know,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:39
us, our city functions, just everything in general.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:44
So what I will tell you is, operationally, we have done some of that simply because we are seeing breakthrough cases, we know we do have people that are unvaccinated. And so we are in terms of some of our meetings doing it just because we don’t want to impact our ability to provide services. Because depending on the nature of what happens if you have somebody that test positive, if you’re vaccinated, you don’t have to be quarantined, but you have to watch your symptoms and if you become symptomatic, then you have to stay at home and then you have to get tested. But if you’re not vaccinated, then you have to go on the seven to 10 day quarantine. And I think it’s seven days with two positive test Sandy or seven days with one negative test, but then you have to so then we lose somebody for a week. And we have had instances within our organization where we’ve had crews that have had multiple people in that situation and it creates an operational challenge for us. And so we’re trying to be mindful of that as we’re moving forward. Honestly, it’s also easier at times to have our meetings via teams and and not you know, everything else so we you know, we’ve done that internally for you all I will say it’s interesting because today in the admin call, I know that there’s some other cities that are they’re still virtual that are contemplating coming back but they talked about potentially using the vaccine requirement program as a method to come back and not be masked and I know that Boulder County legal department they’re going to probably reach out to Eugene indicated that cities that are interested in exploring this they’ll bring everyone into a meeting and that was something that I was wanting to learn a little bit more about but didn’t get some questions answered but that is something we can consider so every city is looking at different things in this process right now Sandy did I know so not know so not capacity restriction so it’s not on this chart but the other chart where the capacity restrictions that’s the one with the state where you when you cross that the high point in line, we’re not near there and so this is really what they’re looking at now in terms of where we are and it’s really all about the masking piece
Unknown Speaker 1:14:19
Okay, so yeah, I’ve just been trying to figure out you know, I I’m hearing so many mixed messages still between the state what’s happening in other states you know, even among you know, within our own community so you know, I just I guess I want to know and i i feel like you know, even though we have this discussion and decided to remain in person now, I think that can still change at any time I don’t want to just like take it off the table. But I guess I really want to know what is the hard trigger point where we like, okay, you know, what we the safest thing for us to do would be good to go back virtually
Unknown Speaker 1:15:02
I think it really would be the health department’s limiting capacity at indoor public events. I mean, that would be the the one that’s first and foremost that we would go, yeah, we need to do this. Now there’s going to be degrees in between this. And obviously you I’ve talked about that. But I think what we’ll do is just continue monitoring the data. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, so if all of a sudden, there’s another variant that creates issues similar to what the variant Delta did, but that’s much worse and and we hear that news we’re going to inform you all about that. And and what we’re hearing from the medical community so we can make we can have an informed conversation. And so we will be bringing that to you all as we hear at real time. But ultimately, it’s you again, your your decision in terms of what you want to do.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:52
So Okay, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:56
Thank you, Councilman radiographer. And just to reiterate, unless there’s a specific health order from Boulder County Health, it will be up to us to make and as we’ve already gone through a couple iterations of votes on that. It will be up to us to decide how we best decide to move forward with our meetings. As such, Councilmember Peck you are next time.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:23
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So Harold, maybe you can add a little bit to this. But what I have heard as the efficacy of Pfizer and moderna are coming to they’re in, they’re getting less and less effective. If you’ve had the second vaccination, which is the reason for the booster shots. Pfizer at this point is the only one that is giving the booster shots moderna is not. But it is my understanding that Thursday or Friday, there will be an emergency. FDA will say that you moderna can start giving the booster shots starting Thursday or Friday. So I just wanted to put that out there. I’ve been looking for the booster shot for moderna, and no one’s giving it to us. So I just want to put that out there for the public that pay attention. If you had the Medina and are looking for a booster. Watch Thursday and Friday, they should be an emergency order that those would be available.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:29
Thank you. Yeah, we’ll let you know when we hear something on that one. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:36
All right. Thank you very much. Councilmember Morton.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:40
Oh, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I just wanted to clarify something based on discussions that happened a couple meetings ago, failing a policy change from Boulder County Health, or a declaration of the state of emergency by the city manager. Is it not true that this council before the election actually can’t change its own status in terms of meeting in person? Yeah, we voted and we declined to allow a second vote based on parliamentary rules. So I don’t think we can change our own status. Something has to happen externally at the state or county level.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:26
Yeah, all right, have to come and say, Hey, Council, we’re hearing something and it’s our recommendation that would mean change conditions I think is really the
Unknown Speaker 1:18:35
because I heard that was the question I heard in what council member at algo fair. Okay. Can we change it? No, we can’t.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:43
Not until the new council is in place but a change condition I can bring to you
Unknown Speaker 1:18:46
all. Fair enough. I think we’ve gotten some clarity, both procedurally as well as with county and state mandates are concerned. We will move on now please do item seven special reports and presentations. Let me let me pull something up real quick here as I would like to read them. So we are moving on to special reports and presentations. And we have a couple of proclamations tonight which I’m very happy to read. I feel sorry that Mayor Bagley is not here for these because I’m sure that he had you know a good amount to do with them. Outside of that. They are very important. Now I would like to move on. This would be seven a proclamation designating the month of October 2021 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Longmont, Colorado, whereas domestic violence impacts countless citizens of Longmont without regard to age, sex ability ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio economic status. or religion, it affects their children, families and entire communities. And whereas, the city of Longmont has seen a record number of cases of domestic violence in the community during the COVID pandemic, making it the number one crime in our city. And whereas racism, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination based on physical ability, nationality, or other factors help perpetuate domestic violence and make finding safety even more difficult for some victims. And whereas, domestic violence and intimate partner violence can have lifelong consequences emotionally, mentally, socially, spiritually, and physically. Violence harms the core of the human spirit. And whereas the city of Longmont joins with others across Colorado in the nation in supporting victims of domestic violence, and share the worthy goals of this month long observance, sending a clear message to abusers that domestic violence is not tolerated. Now therefore, I Aaron Rodriguez Mayor Pro Tem on behalf of Brian J. Bagley mayor, by virtue of the authority vested in me and the City Council of the city of Longmont, do hereby proclaim October 2021 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Longmont honoring domestic violence resilient survivors, and the important work done by domestic violence programs and victim service providers. I urge all citizens to participate in activities and programs sponsored by the Longmont ending violence initiative in the safe shelter of St. Green Valley to work toward the elimination of intimate partner violence. At this time, I would like to invite up. Let’s see here. I’m sorry. It looks like Kim heard I believe from Levi.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:53
And what’s the other one? Jackie list from? Yes. From safe shelter of St. vrain. Valley, thank you so much. Just a second, there’s a button there if somebody could help you if you don’t know. What’s. There we go. Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:17
Mayor Pro Tem council members, thank you very much. My name is Jackie lis. I’m the executive director of safe shelter of st ring Valley, which is a victim service organization that has served Longmont for well over 40 years. We thank you for the proclamation and giving us recognition this evening. Domestic Violence Awareness Month has been for 40 years now an opportunity for survivors, advocates and allies to bring awareness to the complex issues faced by victims, as well as the diverse responses necessary to address domestic violence in our community. As I said this year is actually the 40th anniversary of Domestic Violence Awareness month month, which began in 1981 is Domestic Violence Awareness Day. And the original theme of that day, and now the month is mourn, celebrate and connect. And so each year in October, we take extra time and space to mourn those who have lost their lives because of domestic violence perpetrated against them by someone who was supposed to love and protect them to celebrate the triumph of those who have survived and now walk a path of independence, free of intimidation, exploitation and abuse, and to connect and hopefully as a community, we will do that in solidarity to do what we can to create a violence free future. Domestic Violence Awareness Month is our month to celebrate our work, raise our voices, make noise, and call attention to this most serious health and safety issue in our community. to exemplify the breadth and depth of the problem in our town, Kim will now speak to what law enforcement has experienced as they address the issue.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:12
I came here Hurd. I work at Levi long run anti violence initiative, my offices across the street to public safety. And I appreciate very much that you’re read this proclamation. Also. Part of my job I keep the statistics for the police department on on domestic violence in the city. And as we mentioned, it has gone up last year this year this year. As of today in 2021, there have been 813 calls for service for domestic violence with 378 arrests. It’s a 10% that’s a 10% higher amount than last year even in 2020. And this doesn’t even take into account the unreported calls that like the safe shelter takes care of Or that people don’t even report to anybody. So proximately 40% of our domestic violence cases involve repeat offenders. And almost 30% of time, children are involved in these cases, so it really affects our children in the community. So we, we’ve worked together safe shelter and Levi for many years to try to bring this very serious. Number one, public safety issue to the forefront. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:31
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:34
All right, thank you very much. It’s amazing. I think that we will uphold our current mayor’s precedent and have a picture where we all come down with you so please come up and accept the proclamation and we’ll have a picture Thank you. I assume we have to wear them 123 and three again, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:46
I just want to say that’s it’s an amazing thing that Levi in, you know, same Rainsy safe shelter does. I’ve met with them before, and it’s so important. As such, I just like to move on to item seven be. This, you know, is somewhat inherent to me as I was a former planning and zoning Commissioner. So, a proclamation designating the month of October 2021 as community planning month, in Longmont, Colorado, whereas the month of October is designated as national community planning month throughout the United States. And whereas community planning can help manage the constant change that affects all places, provide better choices for our people work, live and play, and provide opportunities for all residents to be meaningfully involved in making these choices that determine the future of our surrounding environments. And whereas, the American Planning Association and its professional Institute, the American Institute of certified planners endorsed national community planning month as an opportunity to highlight the contributions that sound planning and plan in been implemented implementation make to the quality of our settlements and environment. And whereas the celebration of national community planning month gives us the opportunity to publicly recognize the many valuable contributions made by plant professional community and regional planners, as well as the participation and dedication of the volunteer members of the planning and zoning commission. And now therefore, I Aaron Rodriguez, Mayor Pro Tem on behalf of Brian J. Bagley mayor, by virtue of the authority vested in me and the City Council of the city of Longmont, do hereby proclaim October 2021 as national community planning month, in Longmont, and extend our heartfelt thanks to those volunteers and professionals for their continued commitment to public service. At this time, I’d like to invite up planning director Glen van Nene vegan as well as anybody else that would be liking to make some comments. And anyone else that is involved, because there’s quite a few of you apparently.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:08
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, Glen vandemark, in your planning director, and we certainly appreciate the support that the council has given not only your citizen planners, but your staff planners, and we do have a group here and I’ll just introduce them very quickly. From our planning commission, we have Michael polen, who is our Vice Chair. He’s here. There he is. And we also have Anna Lou Katia, who is alternate member over here and getting whiplash here. I don’t know if anybody else come in from Planning Commission. That’s good. And then from our staff, I guess going down the road here we got Phil Greenberg, what’s our transport? Green. I knew it. I knew it. Sorry, a million saris. Animal rights. Zach blaze hack, Ben Ortiz, and of this one, I’m gonna mess up Patrick chesky. Pretty good. And then over here, Aaron fosdick and Brian Schumacher. So we are really grateful that the APA put community planner because it’s not just us, it’s certainly our community, our probably our most important planners. So I want to bring Aaron up to talk about a little bit about a program we’re going to bring back next year to kind of bring more folks into the fold if we could. So
Unknown Speaker 1:30:37
thanks, Glenn. Nice to see you all. Aaron fosdick, Principal planner, Glenn just asked that I share where we’re really excited in honor of national community planning month to let you know that we’re going to be bringing back the Longmont planning Academy. Many of you may recall that we launched that in 2018, and had two great sessions before we put the brakes on due to COVID. Like many other things, but we’re gearing back up we’ve got a lot of new staff that are interested in participating. And so we’ve we’ve had some great feedback from the community. We have a few members that are now serving on advisory boards and you know, making great contributions in the community. So we’re excited to be bringing that back in early 2022. I also want to mention that our transportation planning group with Phil and Ben and Lauren have been working on a community bike ride. So stay tuned for more information. That’ll be on Friday, October 22. We’d love to have you join us. And if you don’t have a bike, but want to participate, we could probably help you with one of our employee bikes. So contact, contact one of us and we can help with that. And thanks for your continued support.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:42
All right, thank you very much as such, I think we’re gonna take a picture. So everybody, come on up and do that. All right. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:45
Thank you so much for that. We will now be moving on to first call public invited to be heard. Just to let you know, you will have three minutes, please state your name and address before you begin speaking. Brief segue, we will have a little break after public invited to be heard for those people wondering. Anyway, because the list is very short. As such, just to let you know anybody that didn’t get signed up on the initial public invited be heard. He may speak on second readings and public hearings on items as well as you will be allowed to speak at these is regular session meeting so you’ll be able to speak at the final call public invited to be heard. as such. Mr. Strider Benson, you are up.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:44
Greetings. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and counsel. I discovered something really shocked me yesterday. And maybe there’s a different answer. But I discovered there’s no history of newspapers send our library. And I’ve volunteered for the library board bout eight or 10 years ago, before I discovered there was a pact to prevent me from being on any board. But anyway, I went to ask, did you burn all the last 50 years of our newspapers, New York Times and everything and I got the approved word have we recycled them? I think if I had been on the board, maybe I would have had something to say about that. But the abrogation of history and truth and everything is going full force in this climate. If the death cult which used to be a political party, gets back in. We will not be over time having me public meetings like this, everything will be top down with voter suppression and the incitement of insurrectionary violence and such. Where did this come from? Well, in that yesterday’s New York Times, there is a pillar surprise for the article about how to destroy a public school system by essentially the Ku Klux Klan on Facebook and print Sand County, Virginia. And also there’s an article about City of London is hiding the world stolen money. What is that there has been a 60 or 70 year campaign in this country, to steal the entire wealth of the country and put it in offshore islands Cayman Cayman Island City of London, South Dakota, British Virgin Islands and such. And then, when there’s any initiative in this country for social justice, economic justice, childcare, health care, they climate, they say there’s no money, we have no money. Where did the money go? It all went into the pockets of the corporation and the banksters, who are using it to destroy the Democratic Republic that we’ve had for 250 years. 50 years ago in the Ivy League schools, most of students were in humanities, public service or the sciences. Now they’re mostly on timeout social services. What does that mean? How to steal all the public? Well, that’s why Trump was such a buddy of Vladimir Putin. Thoreau said it’s fine to build castles in the air. Now it’s time to put foundations under them. Thank
Unknown Speaker 1:37:09
you. Thank you very much straighter. At this time, we will take a five minute break and we will reconvene for item nine which will be the consent agenda. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:58
All right, thank you very much appears that Council is back so you know staff is ready to go. We’re gonna move on to consent agenda and introduction and reading by title of first eating ordinances. Clerk kuntala Can you please read those for us?
Unknown Speaker 1:46:22
I can’t Mayor Pro Tem probably not with the same flair but I will go for it. item nine a is ordinance 2021 dash 50. A bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities of the city of Longmont for the fiscal year beginning January 1 2021. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Items nine b 123 and four are the 2022 budget ordinances. ordinance 2021 dash 51 to bill for an ordinance fixing and levying taxes upon the real and personal property within the city of Long lock for the year 2021 to pay budget budgeted city expenses for the 2022 fiscal year. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. ordinance 2021 dash 52 a bill for an ordinance fixing and levying taxes upon the real and personal property within the Longmont downtown development district for the year 2021 to pay budgeted expenses of the Longmont downtown development authority for the 2022 fiscal year. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. ordinance 2021 dash 53 a bill for an ordinance adopting the budget for the city of Longmont for the year 2022 public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. ordinance 2021 dash 54 a bill for an ordinance making appropriations for the expenses and liabilities of the city of Longmont for the fiscal year beginning January 120 22. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. item nine C is ordinance 2021 dash 55. A bill for an ordinance amending section 4.0 8.04 of the Longmont municipal code on city rebate programs for income qualified residents. public hearing and second reading is scheduled for October 26 2021 90 is ordinance 2021 dash 56. A bill for an ordinance amending section 14.2 4.04 of the Longmont municipal code and stormwater system charges public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine E is ordinance 2021 dash 57. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of lamarque to lease the Real Property known as Vance brown Municipal Airport hangar parcel h 18. c. two arrows fear Inc. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine F is ordinance 21 dash 58. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to amend the lease for advanced brand, Municipal Airport hangar parcel known as hangar parcel h 71. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine G is ordinance 2021 dash 59. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to amend the lease for Vance brand municipal air Municipal Airport hangar personal known as hangar parcel h 74. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine H is ordinance 2021 dash 60. A bill for an ordinance approving an economic incentive agreement within bio diagnostics Inc. public hearing and second reading is scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine eyes ordinance 2021 dash 61. A bill for an ordinance amending section 3.0 4.85 of the Longmont municipal code, adopting an amendment to the city of Longmont. Police employees pension plan and trust agreement public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021 Nigeria’s ordinance 2021 dash 62 a bill for an ordinance amending section 3.0 4.85 of the Longmont municipal code, adopting an amendment to the city of lamarque fire employees pension plan interests agreement, public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021 9k. Is ordinance 2021 dash 63. A bill for an ordinance amending section 3.0 4.85 of the Longmont municipal code, adopting amendments to the city of La my old hire police pension pant plan. An old hire fire plant pension plan. public hearing in second reading scheduled for October 26 2021. Nine now is ordinance 2021 dash 64. A bill for an ordinance amending section 3.0 4.85 of the Lamont municipal code adopting an amendment to the employee contribution requirement of the city of Longmont, General Employees Retirement Plan. public hearing and second reading scheduled for October 26 2021 9am. Is resolution 2021 dash 103. a resolution approving a certificate of compliance in support of an application. Requesting coverage under the F PPA defined benefit system administered by the fire and police pension Association for new firefighters in the city of Longmont and nine n is resolution 2021 dash 104 a resolution of the Longmont city council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont county of Boulder and the city of Boulder for the Bureau of Justice Edward Byrne Memorial Memorial Justice Assistance grant program award.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:56
Very good. I definitely allow the city clerk to take a drink of water after that. That was that was killer list of first items anyway. council members want to pull any items. It looks like council member Christiansen is actually first.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:17
Thank you Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Yes. Let’s hear it for dawn Quintana. We made it halfway almost halfway through the alphabet and maybe more. I would like to pull items D for a couple of questions and item E for one brief question.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:34
Sorry, thank you D and E have been called. Let’s see here. Councilmember Peck.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:43
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem I move the consent agenda minus D and E.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:50
All right, we have a motion to pass the consent agenda by Councillor pack minus items D and E seconded by Councilmember waters. Let’s have a vote. All those in favor push Yay. All those opposed push nay.
Unknown Speaker 1:52:23
Okay, we will verbalize this vote All those in favor of passing the consent agenda. minus D and E say Yay. All those opposed say nay. Okay. The consent agenda passes six to zero with Councilmember Bagley or Mayor Bagley absent. Councilmember Christiansen Did you have another comment to make Are you just
Unknown Speaker 1:52:46
okay. Very good. Very good. Just is moving on. There’s no items from staff for removal. I take it
Unknown Speaker 1:53:00
okay. If not, we’re move on to item 10. ordinances on second reading and public hearing on any matter. Item A 10 A ordinance 2021 49. A bill for an ordinance approving the the concept plan amendment for the Barrett utilities sales and service Incorporated. Clark annexation located at the northeast corner of state highway 66 and Erfurt Street. Are there any questions from Council on this item? Seeing none, we will open this up to public hearing on ordinance. Oh 2021 49. Is there anybody would like to speak on this ordinance at this time? Seeing none we will close the public hearing any discussion? Or can I get a motion from any Council on ordinance 2021 49. Okay, ordinance 2021 49 has been moved by Councilmember waters and seconded by Councilmember Martin Any discussion? Seeing none let’s take a vote. All those in favors push yay or push nay. If you are against working on it, keep trying.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:26
Okay
Unknown Speaker 1:54:31
let’s see. I assume where we’re going here but I just like to give it give a good college effort there on the new system so Okay, there we go. We got the ham orders 2021 49 passes six to zero with Mayor Bagley absent. Thank you so much. We’re getting there. We’re getting there. All right. Item 11. Items removed from consented genda we will start with it appears. Item D which to just reread is ordinance 2021 56. A bill for an ordinance amending section 14 2404 of the Longmont municipal code on stormwater system charges. And this was pulled by Councilmember Christiansen and your mic is good.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:27
Thanks, Mayor, Pro Tem. And constituent asked me to ask a couple of questions, which I think are good. One is this is a fee. So I believe, right? Okay. She was wondering if they some of this money could be used to complete the RSVP project. It’s my understanding that a fee can’t be used for anything but what it was designated. So I don’t know if the stormwater would have anything to do with that.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:04
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, Councilmember Christiansen, this this is a fee for service. monthly fee and it is designated for at least a Yes, a significant portion of the increase is to complete the RSVP project. Oh, it is over. Yeah, okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:20
Okay, good. Okay. And the other question is, will land holders and developers also get an increase? This is for everyone, not just residents. Right. Okay. All right. So it’s, it includes everyone. Okay. Thank you very much, Becky.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:40
All right. Thank you very much. kozma. Christiansen council member pack.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:44
Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. I also had a question on D. And this is basically going out to the future I see that we are projected to go through 2024 for fees. And I’m wondering Do we have any type of an escrow account to project structural damage or repair from 2025 on? are we are we always going to every year come back in and increase these fees? are we are we escrowing any funds going forward?
Unknown Speaker 1:57:23
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, Councilmember Peck, we anticipate that the storm drainage master plan will be completed in three years time at which time we’ll we’ll take a more comprehensive probably 20 year look at the the capital plans required to maintain the system throughout that that whole period. So we are looking forward. Certainly as we as we make these financial plans.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:47
I guess my my question was, as we look forward, and as we figure out how much it is going to cost us to move forward? Are we asked growing any dollars in today’s environment to address some of those capital improvement projects in the future? Or are we always in order to get our projects funded going to have to continually raise fees?
Unknown Speaker 1:58:15
So am I making sense? Yeah. So I think when we look at it in this increase over the next three years, and correct me if I’m wrong, Becky, but this is really to look at what we need to finish, RSVP and the stormwater projects that we know that we need to correct now. In that process, we’re going to be doing the 20 we’re going to be doing the stormwater assessment of the entire system, which will then set what we need in the future to hopefully allow us to accomplish that.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:42
Okay, just so that’s in the mindset.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:45
And if I could just add one clarifying city management domain has had it right, the stormwater utility is really no different than your other utilities we’re constantly doing and updating or master planning. What we’re in the phase on right now is that next look out in the master plan. So I don’t think it’d be fair for us to say we’re going to set money aside in fact, the money that’s going to be coming in under the these raids, we are targeting for NIDA capital projects that we are already aware of. Right. So and it’s in its putting us on on the right trajectory to be able to invest in higher levels into the storm drain system, but I don’t think we know today. Is it sufficient for the years beyond this, this next couple, two or three years? Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:40
All right, very good. Can I get a motion? Oh, sorry. Council Member waters.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:49
Thanks Mayor Pro Tem Dale, you want to come back down. So I wouldn’t have pulled this off but since it’s pulled off, I think it is worth taking a couple of minutes to read View not just for us, but for anybody and for the newspaper. The implications of failing, sure to collect in and maintain that you might give just one example of what happened on call your the summer, right? as as as, as an example of what is could be in the future if we don’t do this because we’re gonna get, we’ll get grilled by some folks about we’re already getting the incoming emails you know you goofballs you’re raising fees again. People need to know I it’s hard to pay the fee, what’s harder is to deal with the consequences if we don’t so what if we don’t I Mayor
Unknown Speaker 2:00:35
Pro Tem Rodriguez and Councilmember waters? That’s a good question. And and the best way for me to sort of respond to that is, again, your your storm drainage system is old, there are some components of the hat that are probably approaching 100 years or more, especially in the in the core area of the city. Those are the areas that are going to fail first. The stormwater system also relies on sort of a myriad of different conveyance systems. Some of the old irrigation ditches that used to go through the city are used for storm drainage. And, unfortunately, on some of those systems, some of the materials that were used were not the materials that we would typically put in, they use things like more corrugated metal pipe instead of concrete pipe. And so it’s really a combinations of things. And so I think what we’ve experienced up on on call your street, you know, I can’t say that that’s an anomaly necessarily. I also don’t want to, yeah, go the other way, right, and alarm everybody, Oh, my gosh, this guy is falling. But again, our goal is to avoid any severe failure that would result in damage to private property, and certainly any loss of life. And so as council knows, you have strongly supported the RSVP project, after the 2013, floods. And I think this community has done an outstanding job of have the commitment to protect people from that major severe flooding that we all experienced. I think now what we’re as as we’re nearing, you know, further completion on that particular project, I think it’s time to refocus back into the infrastructure of the rest of the system. And I think that’s what the master plan is going to delve into further. And, and I think we’re doing it in the right sequence. In other words, protecting people from immediate loss of life and dangers is one thing. And then maintaining your, your your core infrastructure is is is certainly important, right? And one, we need to stay focused on guys, this is, and this is the long run. This is not an event, this is not just for the next few years. It’s really going forward in this utility, and in all of your utilities, I think, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:03:08
so what happened on call your hopefully it’s an anomaly, but it could be an early indicator, it could and we’d want to pay attention right to a leading indicator, right? Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:17
Yeah. And and, you know, the analogy of that is when we get breaks on the water system, on the treated water system, I don’t know if any of you have had breaks in your neighborhood. But if you have, you know how disruptive Yeah, and and, and how they always happen, either when you’re in the middle of the shower, or you’re about to host your Thanksgiving dinner. That’s right. And so our goal is to have reliable service and high quality service. So
Unknown Speaker 2:03:44
as hard as hard as it is to, to squeeze out the extra dollars. What’s worse is to try to pump your basement out or exactly how to deal with
Unknown Speaker 2:03:52
the damage to your property. I think the other thing that’s important is that at the same time counsel, you’re also updating the cares program, where we are investing far more heavily in that program that is intended to provide relief to those in our community who, whose income, places them in a far more challenging position to be able to pay these fees. And so I think the combination, you’re you’re, you’re trying to also be mindful of the ability to pay
Unknown Speaker 2:04:27
Mayor or Mayor Pro Tem council to add to what Dale said. I remember, is it 2012 or 2013. We presented to the then council about the stormwater plan and where we wanted to go, literally we were getting then the flood hit and we were we were bringing a capital improvement plan forward and we had to retract it back, change it completely and then bring it forward again. And so now you go full circle to we’re coming to the end of this and now we’re bringing this piece forward and so you can Trying to see how long it took us just to get through that piece of the recovery.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:06
So just just to elaborate a little bit, I believe that as far as my information is, is concerned that we didn’t start actually even funding had not even adequately unnecessarily but the storm drainage concept until 94.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:23
As I correct Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, so the city formed the stormwater utility in the mid 1980s. And we were one of the first communities in the state to do that. And so we, we took it out of the general fund at that time, because again, it was competing in the general fund with police and fire and library and all the other uses, and they set it aside as a separate utility. retrospect is always best, right? When you can look back, what we maybe should have given more attention to at the time, was sending it off with some sort of a sinking fund or something, to help it to be able to stabilize and run as a separate utility. Their thing we did is when it when it when it was created, the monthly fee was was very low, and was really not at the level that was going to allow you to reinvest into the system. So it goes back to the mid 80s. And really Since then, the fee has been slowly increased over time. We haven’t adjusted since about 2013. So it’s been some time. But you’re right. It’s the level of investment. I would say it’s probably been insufficient to fully take care of all the infrastructure.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:44
Thank you. And I think it becomes immediately apparent in the fact that a lot of people live through the flood of 2013 not just necessarily the already spoken about sinkholes that we experienced just this year on call your street. I just would like one more question answers in the sense that, you know, the papers have reported the percentages that are being increased with what the actual cost is, because I’ve heard many different indicators being 30 cents, dollars, whatever it happens to be. So if I could get just the average is that any city bill will increase.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:26
Mayor Pro Tem, on the storm drainage side, it’s a couple dollars a month, which again, to some people is a significant amount. To others, it’s not as significant. But that’s about the range on each of those years, it’s going up a couple of dollars is going from about $13 to about $18. So thank you, but going up about $5 over that three year time period.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:51
Thank you. And as stated it’s been added to the cares rebate program that we already have in place.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:58
Yes. And and the level of offset has been increased in the cares program.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:04
So yes, while we’ve added it and increased it, we’ve also added it to the rebate program and increase that as well. Thank you very much. Council Member Christiansen, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:15
Thank you, Councilman waters for bringing for making your comments and Dale and Harold and also Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. It’s important to you know, when I see this in the paper, and it says it’s increasing 14% It sounds horrific, and yet, that’s like $2 a month, which is a lot for some people, and that’s why we have the cares program to balance that out. But the truth is that of course when the amount of money in actuality is very small, the percentage sometimes looks very large, but it’s it isn’t and so it’s a little deceiving people get needlessly alarmed. And I would like to thank Councilman waters for saying that failure isn’t an option that is our entire you know, our basic job as city staff and as city council to make sure everything in this town actually runs and I know storm sewers storm. Drainage seems kind of abstract to most people but actually I’m on a an old drainage ditch and when that isn’t cleared out, my basement floods everybody in our town, it all floods and that causes huge amounts of damage that only happened during the big flood but and maybe a few other times. But that’s what this is for is to keep all of our property safe and keep everybody safe. So it is something that we basically have to keep investing in our infrastructure and some people don’t think that they think they don’t want to be taxed for anything well. You have to pay for things That’s how we pay for things. So yes, we have to increase it, it is a small amount. And if you cannot afford to pay it, we will help you. And I thank you for doing this because it’s, you know, critical. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:17
Or Thank you, Councilmember Christiansen council member he doggo fairy. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:22
really quick before you leave before you go sit down. So just remind us stuck here. So just remind the public to how they can access the cares. There was an ordinance that we just passed to increase to make up for the difference for folks who are needing the assistance and you know, this is something that I’m really in support of. I think this this really helps to bridge those barriers. So please, just to have in public record, how can people access cares if they’re in need? Yes, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:54
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and Councilmember Hidalgo fairing the simple way to access the cares program is through our website searching long line cares there’s there’s a simple form you can fill out their paper forms are available at the utility billing window as well as some other locations throughout the city including the Senior Center and the the youth center. And there’s also a phone number to call if if neither of those options is convenient for folks. Unfortunately, I do not know the phone number but it’s on the website.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:26
It’s on the website. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 2:11:29
thank you. Yeah, it will be featured in city line and Oh, perfect. Well
Unknown Speaker 2:11:33
thank you. So look in your bill when you open up the bell you can see city line and how to access cares for anyone who’s who’s in need of assistance. Yes, so thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:44
All right. Thank you very much. Councillor you dog appearing? At this time I’ll move ordinance 2021 56 Alright, has been motioned. It’s been moved by myself. And seconded by Councilmember Martin. For all those in favor of ordinance 2021 56. Press yay for those opposed, pushed in a all right the motion passes six to zero with Mayor Bagley absent we’ll be moving on to the second poll Consent Agenda Item e ordinance 2021 57. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to lease the Real Property known as Vance brand, Municipal Airport hangar parcel h 18. c, two Aero sphere Incorporated. This item was pulled by Councilmember Christiansen as such, Councilmember Christiansen Mike is yours.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:39
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I’m sorry to ask this because I know right now unfortunately, we have no airport manager yet, but so I have to ask you. Anyway, um, I just want to know who’s at the airport and what they do. So I couldn’t figure out who arrow spear was and what they do.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:02
Somewhere I can have to help me on this one. I think aerosphere is the one that does the imaging. Is that correct? Oh, is it a different one?
Unknown Speaker 2:13:10
I mean, the mayor mapping Pro Tem, Councilmember Christensen so aerosphere is actually one of the flight schools on the field. They also have a simulator, do a fair bit of flight instruction and aircraft rentals as well.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:25
Oh, I think I went out and
Unknown Speaker 2:13:27
saw them when we went on tour. It’s like, Yeah, I thought it was the mapping is because they’re actually I think we’re okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:32
Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah, thank you. That’s very interesting. Yeah, right.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:39
Okay. If there’s no further questions, or if you’d like to make a motion,
Unknown Speaker 2:13:45
I would move ordinance 202157. All right, the
Unknown Speaker 2:13:53
motion ordinance 2021 57. has been moved by Councilmember Christiansen and second to bid seconded by Councilmember Iago fairing. Let us vote please. All those in favor push gay. All those opposed push nay. The ordinance passes six to zero with Councilmember or Mayor Bagley absent. We will now be moving on to general business. Seeing that there is none we’ll be moving on to item 13 final call public invited to be heard. Are there any members of the public that would like to speak? who have not already spoken or even if you have you can speak again. Okay, seeing none. We’ll move on to item 14 Marin council comments. We got a few. We got a few here. Let’s see. Councilmember Christiansen you rang in first? It’s a hot button.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:45
Oh boy. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Councilman waters mentioned Mr. Katz, who wrote the new localism the Brookings Institute and Sarah Levinson. I brought Mr. Katz to town. So Sarah and I drove him around all day long and I got to talk with him. And that was very, very interesting. He was quite amazed that huge swathes of our town had been declared, including my neighborhood and many other people’s neighborhood, everything colored lighting. So anyway, he was surprised at how this has been played out locally. But he was very interesting and I got an extra copy of the new localism that is upstairs in the the mayor and council room, if anyone would like to read it. And it’s a really a very useful thing I think for municipal planners and policymakers to read.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:47
Thank you very much. Councilmember Duggal fairing
Unknown Speaker 2:15:52
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. So I just wanted to update last Saturday was the the lls weren’t those kind of museum kickoff over on near Main Street and forth. And both council member or Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and I co emcee the event. That was pretty exciting, because I’m usually behind the stage, not in front and this kind of weird, but it was fun. So he had my back. So I appreciate that. But I just wanted to let folks know that the that the exhibit is going on for October 9 through November 7. So get out there to the museum to look at the the ofrendas offerings, altars and other work by local artists Mario avetta it also Longmont 150 is still going on through January 9, so if you can get a chance to get out there to the museum, I would highly recommend doing that. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:55
Thank you, Councilman Rudaba fairing I will say that for even for me, it was extremely educational in the sense that you know, my family background is San Luis Valley. Its casiano Spanish, and so having to learn and ask about a lot. pronunciations. Aztec pronunciations is very interesting to me. Anyway, moving on. City Manager remarks.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:26
Mayor Council.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:27
Thank you. Eugene, do you still have those green headphones and are you still awake? Yes. to both Yes. And no further, no further comment. All right, very good. At this time, I’ll take a motion to adjourn. All right. It’s been moved by Councilmember waters and seconded by Councilmember Peck. All those in favor say Yay. All those opposed say nay. The motion passes six to zero with with Mayor Bagley absent we are adjourned
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