Video Description:
City Council Regular Session – November 30, 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 6:03
So
Unknown Speaker 6:06
I want to remind the public that this meeting is going to be viewed on the live stream at www Longmont. colorado.gov. Anyone wishing to speak at first call public invited to be heard, will need to add his or her name to the list outside the council chambers. Only those on the list will be invited to speak at the first public invited to be heard. speakers who do not place their names on the list. We’ll have the opportunity to speak during public hearing items this evening or at the final call public invited to be heard any item at that time at the end of the meeting?
Unknown Speaker 6:44
Can we have approval of the minutes the November 8 2021 organizational meeting minutes.
Unknown Speaker 6:51
Thank you. It’s been moved by Councillor waters and Mayor Pro Tim. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 6:58
Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 7:04
Waiting for councilmember Martin.
Unknown Speaker 7:07
Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 7:11
Thank you that it has carried that vote is carried.
Unknown Speaker 7:16
Let’s see. Where are we? We also need to
Unknown Speaker 7:20
approve the minutes for the regular session on November 9 2021. Can I have a motion?
Unknown Speaker 7:26
Thank you. Again, it has been Moved by Councillor Margaret waters and seconded by Councilwoman Hidalgo fairing. Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 7:41
Okay, again, that is carried six to 616 did nothing it passed.
Unknown Speaker 7:50
Right. So I am going to make an agenda
Unknown Speaker 7:56
agenda revision and put the city manager’s report on COVID-19.
Unknown Speaker 8:03
Next, and then the agenda revisions after that. So Harold, are you ready for the update? Ready? Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 8:11
So Mayor Council, this is obviously the presentation that we received from Boulder County. And with the notes for us to present we did have the administrators meeting today and got some additional information. So
Unknown Speaker 8:25
if you look at where we are right now, we are seeing a decrease in the number of cases and the cumulative case rate per 100,000. What’s interesting is when you look at
Unknown Speaker 8:38
the numbers across the board and the counties, you can still see that we’re all still in high transmission, right. Voter counties are 211.84. We are seeing some fairly consistent reductions in the numbers at this point. It didn’t look exactly this way last week. And so we’re going to continue to watch this.
Unknown Speaker 9:01
In the briefing that we received today from Boulder County Public Health, I think they were cautiously optimistic in terms of what they were seeing in the numbers simply because we have sort of seen this ping pong game back and forth as we continue to move forward. When they look at the case, trend by age group, you can see that the zero to 11 category probably had the most significant drop, what they’re not sure about, and part of what they talked about in the meeting today is how much did this really come into bear because of the Thanksgiving holiday. And what we were seeing. We are seeing that 35 to 44 year old group has show a small uptick and so they’re going to be you know, continue to watch that.
Unknown Speaker 9:46
We look at the case breakdown by race and ethnicity. We’re seeing that become more in line with the county population. Again, remind you when we were looking at the numbers before when we were seeing that too.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Only 1% Part of it was because of the caseload that we were seeing in Longmont and the fact that our demographics look different than the county in terms of our Latinx population.
Unknown Speaker 10:12
Some good news for Longmont, so we’re no longer 40% of the cases getting closer to that 30% mark, and we are seeing more even distribution across the county. But we still have, we’re still ahead of Boulder when we look at it on a per capita basis, what they’re seeing from the health system. And so that you can see on the top, the average number of hospitalized confirmed patients, it increased by 2% in the week ending on the 28th. In the North Central Region.
Unknown Speaker 10:44
We’re at 5% in terms of staffed ICU bed availability
Unknown Speaker 10:49
6%, and the med surge availability moved to point but still holding steady. What’s really interesting is when you see we had some improvement on the tight staffing numbers, but not much 3%. And there’s still 18 pediatric confirmed cases in Colorado. When we look at the hospitalizations in Boulder County, we had 90 people hospitalized with confirm COVID.
Unknown Speaker 11:15
And we currently have 12 staffed ICU beds available. I think last week that was like three available beds. When I looked at the data last week,
Unknown Speaker 11:27
we’re still exceeding the EPA D epi capacity of Boulder County in terms of what they can really trace, again, wanting to remind everyone that they really are triaging that when they see cases, and really focusing their efforts on those areas where
Unknown Speaker 11:44
you have a higher level of issues that you need to be aware of.
Unknown Speaker 11:51
This is the wastewater numbers that we’ve been looking at. I don’t know what my computer did this time, but it changed the colors and everything else. But generally,
Unknown Speaker 12:02
the piece on this that we’re seeing is
Unknown Speaker 12:06
he saw where we had a recent spike, and then we’re going down, like Boulder County, when we look at the actual case, numbers, we’re hopeful that this continues. But the point that I really wanted to make in this slide is if you look at where we are, we’ve been lower
Unknown Speaker 12:25
in the last few days, weeks, and you look at how that really relates out here.
Unknown Speaker 12:32
You know, we’re still higher than we’ve been historically on our wastewater numbers.
Unknown Speaker 12:38
So this really is the only leading indicator that we can see. And you can see the the, the yellow or the greenish lines are actually the actual case numbers that we’ve seen. So we can see how that’s really trending with the wastewater work that we’re doing. So based on what we’re seeing now, and the leading indicator, and the predictions that we’re using, it’s probably going to look a little flat next week.
Unknown Speaker 13:06
And our folks have been getting remarkably close. So actually, they actually have a prediction table. And they’ve been getting pretty close in terms of the actual numbers of reported cases and what they’re seeing in the data. The big difference on this is if you look at the number of cases versus the wastewater loading, and the number of reported cases before, you can, you can definitely see a difference even when we had higher wastewater loading numbers. I do want to say that our our lab staff did reach out to the state. And the state is working on a way to test the wastewater for the Omicron variant. And we’ve also reached out to GT molecular that we’re working with, and they’re trying to do that now. So obviously not ready, but that everybody’s starting to work on that so we can see what’s in the wastewater.
Unknown Speaker 13:56
The big information that really came out of the presentation today is when we really look at the the deaths that we’ve had recently. And obviously you can see that the majority of them are not associated with long term care facilities.
Unknown Speaker 14:12
The information that they talked about is when you look at this number, in terms of the deaths that occurred,
Unknown Speaker 14:21
the majority of them are unvaccinated individuals. And for those individuals that were vaccinated, almost to a tee, they were all over the age of 80. And so obviously, we’re seeing
Unknown Speaker 14:35
you know, older older adults probably also have other conditions that are coming into play. And then the other point that we’re seeing in this is they also didn’t go to the doctors right away. And so we’re seeing that come into play some I think they said didn’t at all.
Unknown Speaker 14:54
So they’re really watching that number, but it’s definitely higher than we’ve seen in a while.
Unknown Speaker 14:59
Here’s
Unknown Speaker 15:00
were some things.
Unknown Speaker 15:04
Eugene and I were talking about this earlier. So we looking at our positivity, right, and it’s 7%.
Unknown Speaker 15:10
Obviously not tracking with what we’re seeing in terms of the case numbers. So I’m going to ask them to see if we can actually see the number of test runs. Because this is really starting to look to me, like we’re just having fewer tests. And so it’s driving the positivity rate. But when we also look at the fact that the number of cases are going down, so we have to work and really try to get some more data to answer that question, been relatively stagnant in terms of the percent of total population that’s been vaccinated and percent of eligible population. And then this is what it looks like in terms of those individuals that have received their third their booster dose, obviously, there’s going to be a pretty hefty public information campaign
Unknown Speaker 15:54
in that 70 plus category in terms of getting that booster dose, based on what we’re seeing in terms of the breakthrough cases, and those that get more severe, where they’re hospitalized in ICU and other areas.
Unknown Speaker 16:07
You have some data resources, here’s the slide that they basically put on the Omicron variant and what they’re seeing.
Unknown Speaker 16:15
Generally, they’re saying, again, what we’re seeing on hearing on the news, it’s an area of concern. They’re saying it spreads quickly, but it’ll be a couple of weeks before they really understand the disease severity, and whether or not there’s any resistance.
Unknown Speaker 16:30
What they did point out in the conversation with us is there is some preliminary evidence that suggests that there is an increased risk of reinfection in this. And what they really talked to us about is, while the travel restrictions are slow, will they’ll slow transmission, it ultimately won’t prevent the spread of it. And I guess the emergency the state emergency manager was on Face The Nation or one of the television shows on Sunday, and he stated that it hasn’t been detected in Colorado, but it’s probably here. And so I guess that’s why they’re working on some of the other components. Generally responding to it, what the County Health Department said, it’s really we don’t change what we’re doing. We just continue what we’re doing. And we’re more villages. And obviously, they talked about encouraging people to continue to get vaccinated. And then this was an interesting slide for all of us, when you really look at where are the cases developing
Unknown Speaker 17:32
in different settings. And so obviously, you can see the 40% of the cases in Colorado have been associated with school outbreaks.
Unknown Speaker 17:39
There’s a distinct difference in this when you look at when you compare larrimer, and Jefferson and some of the other counties on this slide with Boulder County, which is at 108 versus 915, you know, six to 900 cases, and these other counties.
Unknown Speaker 17:58
And I guess, Pagosa Springs, they’ve moved to all remote learning, based on the cases. But then when you look at this, it’s really interesting, because schools are the highest
Unknown Speaker 18:10
jails are
Unknown Speaker 18:12
second, and what’s really interesting is in this, I think all counties are struggling with this in their in their jails. Then you can see the health care in the skilled and assisted living and then office indoor, and then college, and so on and so forth in terms of where they’re seeing those cases develop.
Unknown Speaker 18:32
They talked to us about flu again, they wanted me to to remind you all and obviously everyone else that’s watching this in terms of the impact that flu is having on on the system. We’ve had five hospitalizations in Boulder County within the last week, and really just again, talking about the need for the flu vaccine as well because that also places more strain on our health system. And
Unknown Speaker 18:59
and then when they talked about other key issues, there’s less than 700 beds available in Colorado that’s probably changed by this evening. From we got this report. There’s 12 As we ICU beds in Boulder County, and they’re really watching the development of the Pfizer appeal to
Unknown Speaker 19:18
to reduce hospitalization and death. They’re I guess they’re reporting up to 85%. The key takeaway on this one is in order for that to work, you actually have to have the testing capacity in place for people to utilize it.
Unknown Speaker 19:32
And you have to have people test
Unknown Speaker 19:35
in terms of what’s happening around us. I know Councils had this question. So obviously Pitkin and Larimer. They adopted a similar public health order that we had in Boulder County, although Larimer did not include the vaccine verification program. Then the last week Jefferson Adams, Arapahoe and Denver all adopted the Boulder County Public Health order Broomfield is only requiring masking government buildings, but they’re going to meet next week.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
to reconsider this, and then the Metro Denver Public Health Group, they’re working to launch a regional collaboration on the voluntary vaccination program that we’ve been in for a while here. So there’s a lot of movement in in the various public health agencies. And
Unknown Speaker 20:18
that’s my presentation, I’ll be happy to try to answer any questions. Obviously, I can send those to Camille and Lexi, and we can get you all more information.
Unknown Speaker 20:30
I don’t see anybody in the queue. Do we have anybody? Any questions from Council?
Unknown Speaker 20:36
One slide that I had a question and I totally.
Unknown Speaker 20:41
Okay. Okay. Thank you, Harold. Seeing none, we’ll move on.
Unknown Speaker 20:46
The reason that I flipped the the agenda revisions and submission of documents, which should have come before the COVID report is because a couple of sessions ago, we discussed whether counsel should stay in person meetings or go virtual. So this is the time after this report that I think that we should just have that discussion. But I would like to remind council that if we do go virtually, will have to give direction to staff to bring back an amendment to our rules and meeting policies to allow for virtual meetings because this is not a declared emergency, which it was when we first went virtual. So
Unknown Speaker 21:34
does anybody want to make a motion here to open up this discussion?
Unknown Speaker 21:41
I would like to move to
Unknown Speaker 21:49
move to open discussion. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 21:53
That ready? Yeah. Okay, so yeah, so I’d like to make a motion to move to open discussion on whether or not we should be moving to virtual or, and change, I guess our original
Unknown Speaker 22:06
dance. Yeah, very person.
Unknown Speaker 22:10
Do I have a second?
Unknown Speaker 22:14
Okay, that has been moved by Councilwoman Hidalgo firing and seconded by Councilwoman Yarborough.
Unknown Speaker 22:25
Do we have a discussion? Anybody?
Unknown Speaker 22:34
Do we have the discussion? Okay, let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 22:38
All those in favor? Or let’s just vote?
Unknown Speaker 22:55
Pay that vote carried with
Unknown Speaker 22:58
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez against.
Unknown Speaker 23:08
So is there any discussion? Anyone?
Unknown Speaker 23:15
I believe this just goes on to the next agenda.
Unknown Speaker 23:20
No, well, this isn’t where we would normally have a discussion. Well.
Unknown Speaker 23:27
Yeah, I guess you have a discussion, not to move it to the next agenda, but do have the discussion now. That’s what I had moved for.
Unknown Speaker 23:41
Virtual councilman?
Unknown Speaker 23:44
Yes. Assuming that this is in order, and I’m not sure either.
Unknown Speaker 23:49
But I have one question to ask the staff. And I’m not sure who it would be. I would think it would be Susan Wallach, but I’m not I don’t see her. And
Unknown Speaker 24:00
the question is, if we if we change the rules, so that the you know, virtual participation is allowed, under the current context? Is that the main staff burden on this because
Unknown Speaker 24:17
we already have all the processes worked out, right. Everybody knows how to run virtual zoom meetings really well by now. So, you know, or at least that’s what I think. And I’d like to have that confirmed.
Unknown Speaker 24:33
Sandy Arafat council member Martin Sandy cedar assistant city manager. So we’ve been testing all sorts of different options down here in the council chambers. If you chose to go back to just straight virtual, then we do add a staff member to this process, but we’ve actually hired somebody to help us with these virtual meetings because we think they’re probably not ending quickly and maybe shouldn’t end quickly. So we do have someone who can assist with that at this point. So you certainly could go virtual and we are staffed and ready for that.
Unknown Speaker 25:02
Okay, thank you. And
Unknown Speaker 25:05
yeah, that’s all I have.
Unknown Speaker 25:09
Before I call on calcium, Councilman waters, I would like to explain that the only time the the purpose for
Unknown Speaker 25:20
making a direction to staff is if in fact we go virtual, then we would direct staff. Right now, this is just a discussion. And if we vote to go virtual, I should have explained that sooner. But this isn’t a direction to staff at this moment.
Unknown Speaker 25:39
Councilman waters
Unknown Speaker 25:46
are you not?
Unknown Speaker 25:52
Thank you, Mayor.
Unknown Speaker 25:54
Let me just start by asking, and maybe it’s a question for you. It’s a question for the counselor, maybe it’s a question for staff. Saturday, we’re going to interview candidates for board and commission.
Unknown Speaker 26:05
Appointments. We’re going to do that virtually. Right. Why are we doing that virtually, as opposed to in person? Because we, we’ve done that one time, virtually. When we were meeting when we were meeting virtually. Otherwise, we always met in person. This Saturday, we’re gonna do it virtually. Why is that? Can you answer that Sandy? Or
Unknown Speaker 26:27
Mayor pet councilmember waters, I believe it was way more efficient for both the applicants and for the City Council. But of course, I would defer to city clerk to add any comments to that.
Unknown Speaker 26:38
Mayor Peck that’s exactly what our assumption was, is that that was more efficient, definitely for applicants, but also for you all,
Unknown Speaker 26:45
had nothing to do with health and safety. In addition to consideration because I asked this question, weeks ago, I asked the view, why are we doing this? And one of the reasons was with house for was for health and safety. Absolutely. And not knowing where things would be on December 4, we know this was weeks ago, if it was for health and safety. I just, if we’re gonna if we if we in the interest of our health and the health and safety of applicants, we’re meeting virtually, on Saturday, why in the world, would we continue to do this
Unknown Speaker 27:18
and bring ourselves together? If if one of the priorities for applicants and for us on Saturday is health and safety, and then we just do the reverse, and continue to do the reverse in spite of the data that for it. So my comment is, you know, I for months, I’ve said I thought I thought we were making a mistake. When I look at when we when we talked about this back in whenever it was June, May or June. And the discussion was about the example we want to set in part of that discussion was setting the example for what happens in schools. As I recall,
Unknown Speaker 27:53
when I see 40% of the cases,
Unknown Speaker 27:56
right now can be tracked is that the data we saw 40% of the outbreak can be tracked back to infections in schools. That’s where they start.
Unknown Speaker 28:08
I said then I thought we were setting the wrong example, then I think we continue to set the wrong example now. And I think we ought to give direction to staff to bring changes to our rules and procedures, and go back to virtual meetings until, until we especially with a new variant coming along that there are so many questions about and so much concern about So, but I’m on the record with that my position hasn’t changed. But you asked for comments. And I just want to let you know where I where I still sit on. And we are having this discussion because at the last Council meeting, I said we would have the decision on the November 30 meeting. So that’s what we’re doing.
Unknown Speaker 28:53
Councilwoman Hidalgo. Thank you, Mayor. So in comment to just to make a quick comment, you know, back in June, I guess I was feeling more optimistic and hopeful that we were getting a handle on on COVID that we were going to be able to kind of mitigate and keep things under control. The message I got when we met last Friday that kind of made me lean a little more towards
Unknown Speaker 29:24
heading towards virtual was that if a if we can still conduct if any entity can still conduct business virtually then go that route. There are some places that you cannot businesses.
Unknown Speaker 29:38
At school, it was a nightmare. And yes, a lot of I see a lot of infection rate on there. But
Unknown Speaker 29:45
I mean, I tell you this year in my 20 years of teaching, this is this year has got to be the single most challenging year and a lot of it is just picking up the slack from trying to teach online. And so if there are things that we
Unknown Speaker 30:00
can be doing organizationally are things that we, you know, companies, businesses that can meet online.
Unknown Speaker 30:08
Let’s do it. And so that way we can still have
Unknown Speaker 30:14
groups, organizations, businesses that need to stay open, stay open.
Unknown Speaker 30:21
So But actually my I had a question for Sandy was,
Unknown Speaker 30:25
or assistant city manager SEER was about the hybrid, where are we, you know, how is that progress been going on possible hybrid option?
Unknown Speaker 30:37
Mera pet council member, Hidalgo, fairing there’s kind of some different levels. So when you talk about a hybrid meeting, there’s some different levels of hybrid meeting. Yes. You know, obviously, staff prefers either fully at person or fairly, fully virtual. But I certainly understand that there are some, you know, reasons to be able to do both. If you decided that you were just going to have public invited to be heard as a hybrid option, right, where people could call in. We did this back in June, by the way that the cases were much, much lower in June and July, yes. And we’re saying today, but during that period of time, we did continue to keep public invited to be heard open as a virtual option as well as in person. That’s kind of level one, right? So that you could allow public comment, if you wanted to virtually level to have a hybrid would be also allowing staff presentations, or Boulder County presentations, those kinds of things. And I do think that we’ve now figured out thanks to one of our wonderful ETS folks, how we can actually make that happen so that you can hear them and more importantly, they could hear you that was the issue we were having. Okay. And then the final sort of version of that would be is if any of you needed to participate remotely and not here. So that requires yet another level of equipment and some setup, but but we do think that we could do any of those three levels, depending on how you wanted to move forward. Okay, and thank you, that was more for my curiosity. I’m not saying that we should move in that direction. Tonight, or I just wanted to kind of check and see where we all were, thank you. Okay, I don’t see anybody else in the queue. So it looks like we need two motions, I need a motion to either go hybrid, virtual or stay in person. Then the second. The second motion I need then is to direct staff to
Unknown Speaker 32:27
let’s see what it is to bring back an amendment to our rules and meeting policies to allow for the virtual or hybrid
Unknown Speaker 32:36
meaning so that’s a lot.
Unknown Speaker 32:38
Does anyone want to make a motion?
Unknown Speaker 32:43
Thank you, Mayor pack.
Unknown Speaker 32:46
I move that we return to fully virtual meetings for both the council and the public comment.
Unknown Speaker 33:00
Okay, that’s been that motion was made by Councilman Martin and seconded by Councilman waters to go virtual. So when you have a vote
Unknown Speaker 33:14
I am going to make the statement that I’m going to be the tiebreaker because if this is a tie vote with three to three, we will no longer be able to discuss this on council it will it’ll be a dead issue. So we always need to be able to bring this up
Unknown Speaker 33:34
so I only
Unknown Speaker 33:45
this is not about the option hybrid, right.
Unknown Speaker 33:52
So I can’t see the vote to know how
Unknown Speaker 33:59
many
Unknown Speaker 34:02
there are four in favor.
Unknown Speaker 34:05
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 34:13
So that carries five to one with council with Mayor Pro Tem Aaron Rodriguez
Unknown Speaker 34:21
as a negative vote.
Unknown Speaker 34:23
Now our second motion has to be two.
Unknown Speaker 34:27
So I’ll make this motion. I move to direct staff to bring back an amendment to our rules and meeting policies to allow for virtual meetings.
Unknown Speaker 34:42
Right let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 35:02
So Don, can you tell us when that next meeting will be I know we have a few
Unknown Speaker 35:07
may have your next meeting is December 7.
Unknown Speaker 35:11
So we’ll start virtual December 7. Is that a question for you, Jane? Do we need the policy before going virtual? Or can they do that simultaneously?
Unknown Speaker 35:22
You know, I think in this circumstance where it’s health and safety related, that if council wants to go virtual, we could do it next meeting and introduce the policy at that meeting.
Unknown Speaker 35:34
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 35:36
So
Unknown Speaker 35:39
now that we’ve gotten through that part, are there any other council members that want to add something to a future agenda?
Unknown Speaker 35:46
Not seeing anything?
Unknown Speaker 35:49
Yes. Okay. Councilman Hidalgo, fairing louder. Just push the button. Thank you, Mayor. So, you know, I’d like to direct staff to actually come up with to bring us back some options to it for the creation of either a formal program, a task force, I’ll kind of leave it up to staff to determine what the best avenue is. But really, it’s to address the need for entry level market rate for sale housing, that, you know, what we’ve called mid tier, I don’t know what the, you know, if it’s attainable housing, but what what is the the language that is used according to, to HUD, or,
Unknown Speaker 36:34
you know, governmental entities, but I really, I do want to start making some, some really concrete actions in finding,
Unknown Speaker 36:43
you know, addressing our housing crisis, especially for that working class, middle tier group.
Unknown Speaker 36:51
So, you know, some of the things that I would like to staff to look at is what’s the best available data? So this group for program would really delve deep into looking what data is specific to Longmont?
Unknown Speaker 37:07
What, what would be developed what the Goal Council should undertake, in addressing attainable housing and securing and addressing the housing crisis?
Unknown Speaker 37:19
And so and this program should be designed to in setting goals for the number of housing units that we need to build over the next 1010 years.
Unknown Speaker 37:29
Okay, so, you know, we know that there’s a need.
Unknown Speaker 37:33
Yeah, and, you know, we’ve done a lot, I think, with long lat Housing Authority,
Unknown Speaker 37:39
and meeting people, you know, below that poverty line, but I really want to start focusing more on what we can do to help our entry level homebuyers working class, folks, you know, just I see this in my in my realm, I rent a house I can’t look forward to, to live here.
Unknown Speaker 37:58
And I just I have a good relationship with our landlord. And I think that’s the only reason why, you know, I’m able to stay.
Unknown Speaker 38:05
Yeah, yes. Go ahead. I just interrupt. Yes. So can you refine that motion? Yes. So I would like to I’m sorry, I’m just like carrying on it was very something very passionate for me.
Unknown Speaker 38:15
So I would like to move to direct staff to bring back some options to council to in the creation of either a final file, a formal program or task force to address the need for entry level market rate for sale housing.
Unknown Speaker 38:31
in Longmont, so they would come back with and so their task would be to set goals that you make recommendations for set, what goals we should be setting and
Unknown Speaker 38:43
and data collection that is specific to Longmont. I’m trying to shorten it. So that motion is to direct staff to have a
Unknown Speaker 38:54
committee to address mid tier middle tier housing. Is that it basically yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. Do we have a second?
Unknown Speaker 39:05
I would like to second that I have a comment.
Unknown Speaker 39:09
Can Okay.
Unknown Speaker 39:11
Oops, try again.
Unknown Speaker 39:17
Yes, I will second it. And I would like to offer a friendly amendment, because I know that there is work underway regarding some of the things that would be incentives, such as amendments to the land use codes,
Unknown Speaker 39:36
you know, time of, of incurring, you know, certain fees and, and so on.
Unknown Speaker 39:45
That I really don’t want to lose track of. So I would just like to include a clause that says as a continuation of the work that is already in progress
Unknown Speaker 39:58
regarding the
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Yeah, high density land use. Exactly. I accept that as a friendly amendment. I don’t want to lose what we what we have in progress, but I want the creation of this to be complimentary, and, and just kind of help move that that work along. Okay. Great.
Unknown Speaker 40:22
accepted as friendly? I don’t think so.
Unknown Speaker 40:28
Okay, Councilman waters. Thanks, Mayor Peck.
Unknown Speaker 40:33
I’m just I don’t this is a question for
Unknown Speaker 40:37
councilmember Hidalgo fairing.
Unknown Speaker 40:39
In the current ordinance, our current inclusionary housing ordinance includes the language about mid tier housing,
Unknown Speaker 40:46
with the price with with a range of price points, right potential price points, that makes it mid tier housing that was specifically
Unknown Speaker 40:59
added with that range established to address to send a signal that we need mid tier housing, we need attainable housing. That was the language we used. And we class we labeled mid tier in the in the ordinance itself.
Unknown Speaker 41:15
So I’m just wondering if if What if we’re going to end up not I support any group that we’ve got prosper long, long lead here tonight to to lean in to weigh in on this. But I’m a little concerned that we have an ordinance with language already in it. We haven’t done enough in my opinion. And maybe it’s amending that ordinance, or maybe it’s pulling that out and creating a new ordinance. I’m not certain what the right approach is. But the we do have it. We have it codified right now. One of the big, on fact what was in the queue.
Unknown Speaker 41:51
weeks ago, as I looked at what were what was coming in terms of agenda items. We were to have had on the agenda tonight.
Unknown Speaker 42:01
A return to the discussion of the unresolved issues in the inclusionary housing ordinance, one of which is mid year housing. That was the gonna be the topic for tonight. It came off the agenda for certain all the right reasons. There’s a bunch on the on tonight’s agenda anyway.
Unknown Speaker 42:19
But I’m just a little concerned about having an having an ordinance and a group that goes to work on something that’s going to be maybe aligned or maybe not with an ordinance and how confused that might end up getting us. If if if the SEC if the recommendation here or the direction staff is to bring us amendments to the ordinance to the to the exclusionary housing ordinance. And ways to increase the likelihood that we we see more mid tier housing and to set a target. I’ve always believed that we we’ve fallen short, that we didn’t set a target like we did for affordable housing. But I’m just I’m just concerned about getting at cross purposes or confusing the fact that we already have an ordinance, we’re in the queue to bring back that part of the ordinance and the calculus of what does qualify for major housing. And where that were we would end up potentially
Unknown Speaker 43:14
with less rather than more clarity. That’s the concern. Can I break into this for just a second?
Unknown Speaker 43:20
Councilman waters, you you. I think that the motion is not for an ordinance. It’s just for the committee to discuss ways to get to what our inclusionary zoning ordinance says and do we new need amendments to it? Absolutely. But that’s a different. That’s a different motion from my perspective, that I think this is correct me if I’m wrong, like I was confused about the two discussions.
Unknown Speaker 43:55
Do you want to speak to
Unknown Speaker 43:58
I can’t or councilmember Rodriguez. Maybe he might have better
Unknown Speaker 44:04
Nepo Tim Rodriguez. Thank you, Mayor back. So I think one thing we have to look at, at least what I’m hoping for would come to fruition with a potential working group that would be addressing this is that there was a point in time where the city did a study or a study was provided at some point where we didn’t have enough apartments being built in our community. And so there was a concerted effort to add more apartment homes to our residential portfolio. We also, you know, were involved with determining housing affordability and that we had this 12% Mark and that equated to 2100 units or something. So there again, was enumerated what our deficit was. And so that’s, I think what I’m really hoping for, is a pointed look to to establish what the deficit is, you know, and I, you know, anecdotally because of what I do for a living, I would imagine that we’re
Unknown Speaker 45:00
We’re falling very short in, say condominium properties, for instance, as well as more townhome style and paired home style properties. That’s just anecdotally what I’m seeing. But to have an actual number set on there, when I think help us more in either augmenting our current standing ordinance, and policies, or not, depending on if that really isn’t the case, and that we have to look at a different place. So that’s what I would really hope from the working group, if it were to be established, is that we’re able to finally come up with some concrete numbers for the kind of housing that we need to to possibly augment our ordinance and policies to encourage more, rather than just say, a number spectrum there, we might be able to come up with some other ideas to, you know,
Unknown Speaker 45:50
perfect, not that it’ll ever be perfect, but
Unknown Speaker 45:54
do much improved basis to something that really there’s been some movement on, but not as much as I think we all hoped when we enacted it, you know, a few years ago. So that, that’s just my take on it.
Unknown Speaker 46:08
Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, so those I echo, those are, those are my hopes and expectations as we
Unknown Speaker 46:16
create this taskforce, or committee. You know, what I really, you know, and then I’m also looking at the document that we received from echo,
Unknown Speaker 46:27
with recommendations and some of the things that I was reading on there and really looking at
Unknown Speaker 46:34
our planning, the planning process, looking for systemic bias, having people who are a part of this taskforce who could really identify those
Unknown Speaker 46:45
biases that are currently happening within our systems and our practices. So and to add that that particular input so my hope is that this taskforce can really pinpoint specifically toward Longmont, what the number of housing we need the types of housing we need. What you know, now that we have ARPA money coming our way, what, how can we best utilize that make recommendations for I know, it’s a hefty group, but if we can get a group of just very experienced individuals to be a part of this, and who have the time and the expertise to really understand the data that we can start making headway in addressing what what we’re lacking in our community.
Unknown Speaker 47:36
Councilman, Councilwoman Martin.
Unknown Speaker 47:40
Thank you, Mayor Peck. This is really just to clarify, is this task force intended to be
Unknown Speaker 47:48
a staff Task Force? Or is this to be a task force comprised of staff council members and community members? As was the taskforce that we that met when we were designing the first affordable housing ordinance?
Unknown Speaker 48:09
What’s what’s the vision for it?
Unknown Speaker 48:21
Got it isn’t in there. Perfect. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 48:25
So you know, really, I wanted to bring this I wanted to have staff create a couple of options. What would it look like if it didn’t compass everybody? If we have too many individuals, staff, council community, would it would it be as productive?
Unknown Speaker 48:44
Or would it be better met if we had community input via survey or or community outreach? So really, I just I kind of want to throw it and I’m sorry, throw it back to staff based on your your expertise and your experience in these types of taskforce what would be the best route for us to to take
Unknown Speaker 49:04
sorry for throwing it back at you but I really want to be open as to what what that might look like.
Unknown Speaker 49:13
Okay, it doesn’t look like there’s anybody else in the queue to discuss this. So let me reiterate what that motion was. It is a direction to staff to create a task force slash committee
Unknown Speaker 49:27
to look at mid tier housing funding and
Unknown Speaker 49:33
etc
Unknown Speaker 49:36
options good word so let’s vote it’s been made and seconded Let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 49:51
so that that vote carried six to zero
Unknown Speaker 49:58
mer I hate to interrupt we’re having
Unknown Speaker 50:00
Some sort of technical problem showing the vote so thanks for reading it out. We’ll see if we can troubleshoot it at the break. Okay, great.
Unknown Speaker 50:06
All right next on our agenda is a special report presentation on air quality and oil and gas updates. And Dr. Jane Turner is going to introduce this Update Item.
Unknown Speaker 50:31
Good evening, Mayor pack members of city council. My name is Jane Turner. I’m the city’s oil and gas and air quality coordinator. And with a new member on council, I thought I would take this opportunity to just briefly reintroduce myself and reintroduce the the city’s oil and gas and air quality programs. My background, I received a PhD in air quality engineering firm CU Boulder and I have 15 years of experience in environmental monitoring, remediation and working with environmental litigators. I accepted this job in April of 2020. And it was a new position at that time. So with that, let’s get started talking about the programs.
Unknown Speaker 51:21
Okay, oil and gas in Longmont. We are in a position now where we have no active wells left in the city. That’s something the city has been working towards for over a decade. In fact, the last two active wells were recently plugged just this summer in 2021. And you might wonder, do we have any concerns about future drilling within the city of Longmont. And, as you know, the CO GCC that’s the Colorado oil and gas Conservation Commission, they are in charge of permitting and identifying locations for drilling that’s not in the city’s jurisdiction. However, in 2020, co GCC updated their rules and they’re quite a bit more stringent with oil and gas, and one of the things they did was extended their setbacks to 2000 feet. And we believe that that new 2000 foot setback is going to protect the city of Longmont from any future drilling. visually what that looks like I’m showing here on this map, you can see in the light green areas, areas that are within 2000 feet of a building, such as a home, a school or a hospital. And so these areas are where the CGC would not allow drilling to occur. There are just a few small orange areas remaining where technically someone could drill but the staff has looked at those areas. And logistically that would be incredibly difficult to bring an oil rig into those areas. So we feel confident that going forward, we will no longer have oil and gas within the city. And so I said one of the programs I oversee is the oil and gas program and we don’t have any oil and gas. So what what is that program? What do we do?
Unknown Speaker 52:55
We have two parts of the program. And the first is very important. That’s regulatory participation. That’s primarily with the CEO GCC, given that they permit oil and gas development and regulate their operations. We participated actively in 2020, I think there were eight rulemakings of IT staff participated in and right now we are currently participating in the CO GCC financial assurances rulemaking. this as an opportunity for staff to review policies offer critical feedback, also to advocate for the health of long months residents in ecosystems and especially to share the findings of our monitoring studies, because that data is really powerful for regulators.
Unknown Speaker 53:34
The second part of the oil and gas program is environmental monitoring. And we do quite an extensive amount of monitoring.
Unknown Speaker 53:40
We said that all the active wells are now closed within the city. And so when a well is closed, we come in, we contract out soil and water testing at plugged wells. You can see in that photo on the right, that’s a couple of the yellow casings for monitoring wells at the Ryder number one site.
Unknown Speaker 53:58
We do groundwater monitoring near Union river reservoir. And we also take samples of the surface water, we sponsor third party oversight for CGCC. As these wells have been closed out, and remediated, we have always had our third party there to make sure that we’re happy with the sampling going on. We also do air monitoring. We have some sensors near oil and gas facilities. And of course, the research grade monitoring with older air that Dr. Helmick is going to talk a little bit more about soon as I wrap this up.
Unknown Speaker 54:28
I want to show an example of environmental monitoring that we do as part of our oil and gas programs. And that’s for the night wells. So the night wells. You can see in this map, they are the black star. They’re outside of the city limits north of union reservoir, but they are pretty close to the city. And so there are 12 wells there. They were drilled in the spring of 2021. They were fracked August to October. And then earlier this month, they just started a process called flow back where they’re bringing those fluids back up. And they’re connected to pipelines and they’re moving them
Unknown Speaker 55:00
out east to be processed. So quite a bit of sampling right next to the star, you can see a small teardrop. All those teardrops are where we have groundwater sampling. And then the water sampling and union reservoir itself. up next to the night location, we also have two orange triangles indicating that the city has air monitors there and cdphp. Also, we worked with them and they had some sensors up there during the night well development. Down at the bottom, you can see a large yellow triangle indicating where we have the research grade sampling.
Unknown Speaker 55:33
The Union reservoir samples have been reviewed, no issues have been flagged and no issues with the groundwater. I spoke today with the water lab folks, they are wanting to do a more detailed analysis looking at the water from human reservoir over time this whole year, they want to look at trends they want to look at to see if there was any more subtle impacts that they can pick up. So that’s still in progress. But I’ll be sure to keep you apprised of the results of that.
Unknown Speaker 55:59
And I mentioned that CDP he had some sensors out of the night well during this development process. And so I wanted to just very briefly summarize their findings. These are available on the CDPH website, I’m going to be sending out a link to this report to our interest residents that subscribe to our air quality notifications. And I’d be happy to send that to council as well if you’re interested. So generally speaking, what we’re seeing here, this is a graph of total VOCs. That’s an estimate from a sensor VOCs or volatile organic compounds. That’s a family of compounds that’s part of oil and gas, it’s of interest, because some of the members of that family do have health impacts. So when we look at this graph, starting at the beginning of the year, we see a lot of orange crosses on the left, those are measurements that were taken during the drilling of the 12 wells. And we see that there was a lot of action there. Vocs were pretty elevated. And then right next to the orange is a blue area, that’s when they stopped drilling. So we see as soon as they stopped drilling those VOCs came down quite a bit. There was then a period when CDPH did not have monitors there, they did manage to
Unknown Speaker 57:07
monitor for the last half of the fracking event. And you can see in the light green there that the hydraulic fracturing actually had pretty low VOCs coming off the wellsite during that time. And then the last process is shown in purple. That’s the flowback we have seen a bit of a pickup in the VOCs right there by the sight. However, that’s wrapping up now they’re moving into production, which is a relief because this first development process is the time of an oil and gas oil, oil and gas wells lifespan where there’s the most emission so we’re looking forward to moving into production. The summary that cdphp has on their website about this monitoring is that they don’t expect that exposure to these VOCs will harm the health of neighbors living near these wells.
Unknown Speaker 57:55
Okay, now I want to talk just a little bit about ambient air quality. Ambient is kind of a strange world, it means the atmosphere around you. And ambient is the word that the EPA uses when they refer to the air that we all get exposed to as soon as we walk out our front door. So if you’re a union reservoir, if you’re on the streets of Longmont, that’s the ambient air. EPA regulates ambient air and they regulate just six compounds. And these have all been shown very clearly to all have health impacts. I’m going to talk just about the top two because those are the ones we have issues with here in Colorado, ground level ozone and particulate matter. Particles find particles associated with smoke during wildfire season that’s becoming, you know, common around here. But the biggest issue is really the ground level ozone. And when I talk to our public health experts at the state and with counties, they remind me that this is air quality public enemy number one, it’s very exacerbating for respiratory issues. kids with asthma are going to have more absences. This is the number one priority when it comes to health impacts for air quality.
Unknown Speaker 59:02
Now the ground level ozone in Colorado is elevated so often that the EPA has determined that parts of Colorado are out of attainment for ground level ozone and that’s where the state comes in
Unknown Speaker 59:15
the Colorado Department of Public Health in the environment that’s the CDP. He is then tasked by the EPA to create an implement a plan to decrease ground level ozone to make it so that the air that residents are breathing is safer them among many other things CDP he also issues air permits to industries that emit pollutants and that includes oil and gas. So we have co GCC that’s issuing permits overseeing operations, CDP he is going to be looking at air emissions from oil and gas. And they’ll also be responding to air quality health concerns. So if a resident reaches out to me expressing that they have some health concerns related to air quality cdphp is where I direct them to they have the correct public health staff to give them the options that they need and
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
They’re very responsive and very interested to learn what people are experiencing. Lastly, I’ll just mention that cdphp is doing research and more and more every single year. They have two very sophisticated mobile labs that they drive around primarily to oil and gas sites. They’ve been deploying sensors, like we saw those that I just showed at the night wells are also doing more aerial surveys. So they’re flying planes around to try to understand their quality pollutants, where they’re coming from, and how to improve things.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:31
Lastly, I just want to mention some things that are not regulated in ambient air quality. A few examples of that are carbon dioxide, methane, and VOCs. So co2 and methane, these are greenhouse gases, they are regulated. For example, if they’re coming out of a stack, like at SeaMAX, in Lyons, they will have a permit with cdphp, showing how much co2 that they are going to emit. The same is true for VOCs. There are not regulations for ambient air for the this family of chemicals. So if a person is out in the out great outdoors, and they get exposed to some elevated VOCs, there are no regulations that are going to be triggered by that. The state has however, issued some health guidance values. And that helps us to put into context our findings. For example, these measurements that we take at Union reservoir, we look at VOCs. And we can compare those to help guidance values. Thus far, we don’t have any exceedances of the health guidance values measured here in Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:30
And you’ve heard me talking with this ambient air quality about the EPA and about the state. And so there’s really not a lot that cities can do in their jurisdiction when it comes to ambient air quality. So once again, you might wonder, you know, what is this air quality program? What do you do, Jane? What does it include?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:49
So here our air quality program for the city. It overlaps significantly with oil and gas because we’re very interested in the air emissions of oil and gas. It also overlaps with sustainability. Because we’re interested in greenhouse gases, we’re interested in climate. And the first most important component of this is the regulatory participation. Now the city’s a member of CC for CA, that’s Colorado climates, communities for climate action, and they advocate very strongly on behalf of the city and 40 other cities for stronger climate policies. City staff have also been pretty active in in participating separate from CC for CA. I, myself and other staff have been collaborating with a number of communities along the front range. These are on EPA rulemakings AQ CC rulemakings. Again, we want to share our data, we want to share the experiences that we’re hearing from our residents and from you all.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:43
And things are still really happening in air quality land, I’ll just highlight a few things that are happening at the federal level, the EPA has updated the non attainment area for ozone in Colorado, it’s now been expanded to include all of Weld County, at the state level, the 2220 22 budget has been proposed, there is over $420 million in that budget for air quality and climate initiatives. My colleagues at cdphp and Co GCC tell me that they’re looking forward to using that money to drastically increase inspections and monitoring. The state has a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. And I’m currently participating in the Air Quality Control Commission rulemaking. And that one is specifically looking at oil and gas emission cuts for the oil and gas industry. They’re looking to cut 60% by 2030. So still lots going on in the regulatory
Unknown Speaker 1:03:38
air quality program also sponsors this air quality study that Dr. Helm is about to talk about. And that pertains to both oil and gas and sustainability. So over on the east side of town at Union reservoir, we look quite in detail about these different VOCs and different components that are common to oil and gas air pollution on the west side of town, our new station that we’ve just moved, we’re looking focused a little bit more on climate change. So we’re looking at greenhouse gases and we want to be able to track how the city’s efforts in that realm are making an impact there.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:15
Okay, so I’ll just give an example here of what happens what do we do with this data that we’re collecting as far as this air quality study goes? When we have an air quality station that records a notable pollution event, I’m going to spring into action other staff are going to spring into action. The information about the events can be shared internally and with residents via email notifications. All the continue to communicate with our contractors builder err as they further discuss and analyze the data. And that data will also be presented here to council and is also presented in quarterly reports that are available on the city’s website.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:50
Staff also reach out to the two state entities so both cdphp and Co GCC complaints are filed with them. The data is shared they will
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
respond to us. And they have told me that they’re using these sort of case studies these events as discussion points when cog CC talks to cdphp, about how do they want to change permits, how do they want to look at the next regulatory updates, these data examples are really helpful for them to have.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:19
Last, lastly, staff reached out to oil and gas operators. So we generally with the wind direction, we have an idea where the source of these plumes are coming from and we will reach out to oil and gas operators in that area, we’ll share the data, we’ll ask them to review their work logs, you know, tell us what they were doing. See if we can identify any issues, we’re trying to build a relationship that, you know, they don’t, they don’t want air quality issues to be pinned on them, certainly. And so they’ve been responsive, they want to step up and be on their best behavior. And I think that data is useful for them.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:54
So last of all just mentioned, we did relocate our air quality station on the west side of town. It was formerly located at the airport, and they’re building some hangars over there, a little too close to come for comfort to our old station location. So we did find a new location to move that to some of the upsides of this new location that you can see on the right side of the picture there on Lykins Gulch bike path. Some of the upsides are we think it’s great visibility, our residents will be biking or walking by and get exposed to our air quality study. On the downside, this location did not have power. So we had to bear the expense of bringing power to the location. Also, because it’s so publicly accessible, we felt we wanted to protect those instruments. And so we have put in a fence and really updated the spot. I’m going to let Dr. helmink talk about that, because I know he does have a couple of photos of the new site.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:48
And with that, I will hand well unless you have questions. I’ll hand it over to Dr. Helmig.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:01
Thank you, Mayor Peck, I’ll be quick
Unknown Speaker 1:07:04
to questions about recent developments and how they affect your work. The first one is that we out of the International cup 26.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:17
Convention that that just happened. There was a new emphasis on controlling methane emissions. And
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
I hope that will lead to local rulemakings. And that our monitoring program will will make more stringent use give us new app avenues for complaints and stuff based on the methane that comes to us from Weld County. So the first question is, Are you doing anything about that? The second question is, oh, what’s the status for AQ CC or CD X? Whoever agency I think it’s a UCC,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:04
and
Unknown Speaker 1:08:06
enforcement of methane emissions from active wells.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:12
Okay, first question.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:15
What are we doing about the methane because we do see these these spikes of methane that come through? Yes. So participating in the current Air Quality Control Commission rulemaking is one of the ways that we’ve been able to share that data in particular so that rulemaking is focused on cutting greenhouse gas gas emissions from the oil and gas sector. In particular, we’ve written up a summary of our data, we’ve shared our data, and that’s going to be included in the the statements that are released by these local groups here on the front range. So you know, again, sharing the data is really the best way we’ve found there, we’re certainly open to suggestions if people can think of other ways that we can, you know, use that data or use our, you know, staff however we can to improve when it comes to that because it is really important.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:05
The status as far as methane being released, okay, if a well is existing, these new cod CC rules aren’t going to necessarily apply to them. If it’s a new oil and gas. While that’s been put in, they now have much more stringent rules to comply with, in fact, they are required to do around the clock air quality monitoring. Those monitoring reports are then submitted to cdphp as well as to the municipalities that those wells are in. Again, we’re in this kind of odd position here on the front range where we don’t have any active wells within our limits, which means we have less control. It’s they’re outside the city, they’re out, you know, in Weld County. So
Unknown Speaker 1:09:49
we are relying on these new stringent co GCC regulations and requirements for air monitoring to hopefully improve that as we move forward.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:07
Oh, I turned it off.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:11
Come on.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:14
Thank you. Sorry, I should have just held the floor because I was sure I’d have a follow up.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:20
What I’m what I’m asking about in particular, is, you know, it was that the new sense of urgency at the global level that’s been associated with local methane emissions
Unknown Speaker 1:10:37
from drilling, are we in a position to lobby to even just watch dug for new rulings that come out? Because you know, that those old wells are not innocent? And we would like to see some,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:54
you know, some some better enforcement put in place on those two because it comes to us. And and so I just, I want to get the statement out there that we need to be watching for any opportunity to up our game on that, since we have the data. Man Council absolutely agree. And greenhouse gases and climate policies long been what CC for CA is advocating for. We as the city, you know, even before the IPCC report came out, of course, that was a focus and something that we were concerned about, I will say, you know, one thing about these new style of oil and gas wells is that they do turn over pretty quickly. So it’s frustrating that, you know, some of these new rules are only applying to new wells. However, these wells, you know, within a number of years, they’re kind of really getting down low on their production. So they’re constantly drilling new wells, and that turnover will be helpful. I think, as far as implementing these new regulations, the CO GCC regulation rulemaking that we’re participating in right now, financial assurances, it doesn’t indicate very well that this is mostly around, getting old wells closed, making sure that abandoned wells are not just left abandoned, but they are being closed properly. They’re being monitored, in that the finances are there to be able to do that. So we’re trying to hit it from all the angles. I think the state is concerned, and we’re making our voices heard.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:27
Counselor waters, Dr. Turner, could you go back to slide 16?
Unknown Speaker 1:12:35
As I as I look at this slide,
Unknown Speaker 1:12:39
I see the variety of entities that take they can they can use the data that we’re going to hear from Dr. Omega, just a bit.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:48
You made reference to the presentation to city council. The one group in this in this picture that can make no use of the data is this one, right. And yet we continue to bring Dr. Helmig, to on a Tuesday night to make a presentation to the one group who can’t you do anything with the data, right? It’s not actionable for us, but it is for everybody else in terms. And what what I don’t think shows on this slide is the potential use going forward with our sustainability efforts as a way to evaluate effects of what you know, the thing, the variety of things that we are doing and plan to do to reduce our own carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions. So I’ve been puzzled. And I’ve asked this question before. And since you’re here, before Dr. Helmick does the presentation seems like the right time to ask it again. What’s the highest and best use of his expertise and time in addition to collection of data and the and the analysis of data? In terms of sharing the data with the community? It seems to me that if we’re going to ask him to take his time, wouldn’t it make more sense to use him to visit to give him a chance to do a presentation, we can answer questions to the community to the public that that can care about this, even though we’re pushing that information out that they will get a shot at him, right? For a face to face interaction. record that right, so we could run it. So people don’t have to weigh you know, fast forward to a council meeting. We feature we’ve got a we’ve got a public access television system that could feature tailor video presentations of his praise of him doing President presenting these data,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:32
capture some of the q&a. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways we could I think make better use then then what we do on a Tuesday night. You want to comment on that
Unknown Speaker 1:14:42
Marin Council, I think it’s a great idea. I think a science talk is maybe you know, an appropriate setting for people to really get into the weeds with Dr. Helmick. Well, I guess we could do the same thing we could be part of the public that gets a chair gives us a chance to interact. That’s way less stilted
Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
then it is here, I just think in terms of meaning, there’s one thing to have data, there’s something else to have meaning from the data. And we don’t create much in this format, I just think, in terms of highest and best use of his expertise in the data, there’s got to be a better way to take advantage of what he brings
Unknown Speaker 1:15:19
in terms of the value we bring to the larger community than what we do here on a Tuesday night. So we’re, and I’m looking forward to hearing that presentation. I wish I could do something with what we’re going to hear.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:33
Man, counsel, I certainly appreciate the suggestion. And we look to you for direction. So we’ll do whatever you like.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:42
I appreciate your comment, counselor waters. And I think it’s a great idea.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:48
And I would be interested in having a deeper comment, conversation, maybe using the museum as a format, to have public science and air quality climate change, conversation, back and forth. So let’s talk about that further. And see see what we can do. Yeah. And then we will, because I think existing Council direction is we bring this back for quarterly reports to you all. And so if you do want to make that change, we will need that direction to do this in a different format. Okay. And make it make him make Dr. Helmig, available for public to the public for questions. So we’ll just need that direction. And we have had Dr. Helmick in public settings before but it has not been counseled, directed, correct. So this would be different. And good. Thank you, Jane. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:51
Well, good evening, Mayor, council members and the public. That set quite the stage for me.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:59
Very excited to be here.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:01
Hope I can meet your expectations. See if I can get this started here.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:08
Okay, so another update, the previous one was on August 3. And so it’s about four months or something like that. So a few things have happened. And I’ll walk you through that. See, we do this year. Okay. So just a recap of what I presented. Last time, August 3, mentioned the new network side, I will show some more detail on that. There were some high very extremely high oil and gas plumes and then talked about that. We touched the equalities used to that date in early August. And I’ll expand on that some more. Talked about some co2 occurrences at the airport that were somewhat surprising. And then a bit of an Outlook. So today, now, another overviews, and there’s some new new members here.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:59
I’ll give you some more details about that airport site move, and then updates with some new data, new interpretations from the last four months.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:09
Talking about ozone, particulate matter, and some comparisons of the long run data with other sites. And then we’re going to talk about methane. And follow up on that question.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:21
New data just one month now from the new station, I think we seeing something interesting there. Selected pollution events, I was asked specifically address those. And then a little bit more on the wildfire smoke that we all
Unknown Speaker 1:18:36
certainly noticed this past summer in the area.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:41
Again, we are operating under contract from the city to monitoring stations, one that was formerly at the airport. Now, it was moved to the Lykins Guincho location. So we change the code and you’ll see these letters all the time because they are abbreviations for the site locations. So the new code we have is llg for long ones like in Skullz.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:07
Update, everything has been running. We’re now in the second here, the observations with from the Western location. Also, the union reservoir is nearing two years of operation now. The website has been up and running everything’s pretty much up and running. The website will keep track of the visits. Last quarter three was an amazing increase in the visits to the website. That’s the largest we’ve ever seen within one quarter and it’s about two three times as many visits as we get for the other sites we operating. So I’m surprised and stunned about this interest. There is in the public in these observations from the to Longmont side so it has steadily been been kicking up for sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:57
So that’s kind of a horror picture for us.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
because there was just a few days before, we didn’t eventually move the trailer, the new site wasn’t quite ready. But you can see how close it gets got to kicking us out of there. And you can see the construction work in preparation and and it was the last day or two before then that’s station was moved.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:21
And you’ve seen this before. Previously, it was located where that yellow circle is. And we move to to that star, the red star there on the right, it’s probably it’s less than a mile to the east. It’s a different location, it’s not as close to the airport, it seems to be more rural, without, you know, nearby, obvious sources. But it will show you in a moment, a little bit of a sort of a surprise, though I had a suspicion there. So just hold tight. I’m going to show this in a moment. And this beautiful new site was really nicely prepared by the city. You can see the trailer after it was moved tower was erected. It’s fenced, has a gate. Very, very nice. You know, for me, as somebody who’s been running stations for many, many years, this is beautiful setup. Very, very nice, very happy and proud of it.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:14
So now, this is the current network that boulder air operates.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:21
So there’s these two changes, you can see in the upper left, that little change for the
Unknown Speaker 1:21:27
Longmont airport side going to like in school, so just a little shift to the east. But we now also have an operation the Erie Community Center, which you see kind of there in the middle, we call it ecc. It’s been up and running for a couple months. And that provides us another data set that’s really valuable for comparison with the other locations. So we’ve we’ve really gained some new insight already from this first two months of observations
Unknown Speaker 1:21:57
at that new eerie side.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:00
And something I want to mention is that our observations follow as strict and high have a quality control process as we possibly can we label our data, its regulatory grade, so that it’s fully recognized by agencies such as the EPA and cdphp.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:21
So all this was pushing that as hard as we can. And as part of that effort. We were audited, we initiated audit by cdphp. That’s an agency that does these audits in within Colorado. And so the Boston audit at the Longmont union reservoir on October 8, and the new station at like and sculpts on November 19. And we had everything audit that the state will audit. So that includes ozone, nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. And also the metrology observations we are conducting. It’s all they are that they will not audit methane or VOCs.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:04
Some of the other species we
Unknown Speaker 1:23:07
monitor as well. But we these audits were completed and
Unknown Speaker 1:23:12
we’re happy that all of our measurements fell within the quality control
Unknown Speaker 1:23:19
criteria. So there’s a certain range of deviation
Unknown Speaker 1:23:24
that has to be met, they all complied with these quality control deviations. So you can see there, the state, they show up with their own monitors, they provide a standard and then you measure these side by side with both set of instruments you do the comparisons, use some data evaluations, and then you get a certificate that you complied with the state expectations.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:48
So
Unknown Speaker 1:23:50
always in season wrap up early August, I already mentioned that we were experiencing a
Unknown Speaker 1:23:56
very rapid, unfortunately, high ozone season this year. And that continued after the August 3 presentation. You can see here the eight hour average data. So we calculate an eight hour running mean of the ozone observations. And this graph has both the data for the loan amount union reservoir and the airport. And that yellow dotted line. That’s the air quality standard for ozone for
Unknown Speaker 1:24:30
for eight hour observations. And you can see that that quality standard was exceeded on quite a number of days. All together throughout the year, there were 34 days where the standard was exceeded at the airport location. And then there were 32 days where it was exceeded. At the union reservoir. There’s the second standard and older standard of 75 ppb that the EPA is also still keeping track off and that was exceeded as well on a
Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Days at both locations, the criterion for being in attainment with the ozone standard is for exceedance days on average over three years. So you can see with 34 days we were waist waist raised above the threshold that we’d like to reach eventually, to be back in compliance with the ozone air quality standard. So we have a long ways to go.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:27
This shows a comparison of the ozone data. Top left is the union reservoir, lower right was the airport side to that time of year, it puts side by side the distribution of the ozone in each month.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:46
In 2020, versus 2021, you can see that ozone increases
Unknown Speaker 1:25:53
as we move towards the center of the summer, because you know, you know by now it was on is a photochemical leap produced compounds with forms more so during warm, sunny long days.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:07
You can also see on these percent numbers on top of these graphs, show you how much higher was on was in 2021, compared to 2020. So that shows that you’re in the peak of the ozone season, June, July and August, we were significantly higher in ozone this year than the previous year, in 2020. August was a pretty high ozone year, we thought it was really extreme last year. But as you can see, this year, we match pretty much even the high ozone conditions in August that we had last year.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:40
This has lost a lot of information.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:43
I don’t expect you to follow all these numbers. But these, this table shows the ozone monitoring sites maintained by the state by cdphp. And they keep track of the five highest ozone observations for each station. And so it’s every row is another station. And I’ve highlighted with these red boxes, the stations here in the front range. Yeah, the sites that are not in boxes, those are other stations within the state that are not in the Front Range. And then when ozone exceeds the 75 ppb standard, the data has shown in this this darker yellow orange, and the lighter yellow is the exceedance of the 70 ppb standard. So you can see, but that all of these orange colors are for stations that are in the front range. So what’s important here to notice that wasn’t in the Front Range is so much higher, then, you know, on the western slope in the central mountains,
Unknown Speaker 1:27:48
on the south,
Unknown Speaker 1:27:51
the south of the state, so the treble sides are all in the Front Range.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:56
At the very bottom. Now, I added to this our own observations from the union reservoir. So you can see there, the highest value of the year was 86, the second hires 86, the third 85. And the fourth highest was 83. And the fourth highest is what’s used for the regulatory evaluation. So only use the fourth highest of the year. And we had 83 here and within this state for a long month, that’s the seven highest in the state for the fourth highest eight hour ozone Max cars. And
Unknown Speaker 1:28:31
short story is, you know, we are here in an area with high ozone.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:37
It’s you know, among the states that are measuring ozone in this state, it comes in seventh hires overall for this this summer.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:48
So, now, the next pollutant that we are concerned about from a health perspective is particulate matter. This shows the data for the smaller particles PM 2.5. So these are particles smaller than 2.5 microns that can make a deep into your lungs.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:07
And and enter your your your your system that way. And this these data are average now is 24 hour averages, which is 4pm, the regulatory standard, you can see that in 2021. That standard was exceeded on three occasions. And on each of those, these exceedances lasted a bit longer than just one day. So overall, there were six days in 2021, where that health standard for particulate matter was exceeded.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:43
Okay, it’s do some comparison of how the Longmont data compare with other sites within the network. I’ve just picked a few examples to give you a general idea.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:55
This shows the distribution of methane at the Broomfield
Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
soaring eagle that’s in green, both the reservoir that’s in blue, and the long one airport in red, and the purple is then the union reservoir. So you can see that the union reservoir peaks is the highest when it comes to methane that’s consistent through all months that we’ve been analyzing this, these boxes show the distribution from the lowest values to the highest values, the round dots is the mean value. And the middle bar in the box is the median. So you can see it all these different statistical criteria. And the long one union reservoir always comes in with the highest methane, meaning most likely that it’s subjected to higher emissions nearby than any of the other stations. So it’s been our highest methane side, all through the last two years since we’ve been measuring this.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:54
Now we’re doing this for two other compounds on the left, the same type of analysis for ethane. And Fn is our favorite tracer oil and gas operations. It’s a very selective specific tracer. And again, you can see that for the Union reservoir,
Unknown Speaker 1:31:12
it has the highest f8. And consistently
Unknown Speaker 1:31:17
the the level of increase or enhancement, I think has come down a little bit compared to previous quarters, but it remains the highest fn side within the network. Then on the right side, this is benzene. And they can see for the last quarter, benzene at Union reservoir is about the same.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:41
It doesn’t stick out as a highly elevated location anymore, which we’ve seen in the past at times. So it compares reasonably well with the other locations. But it’s a little biased because and I’ll show this in a moment, benzene during the summer was actually heavily driven by the wildfire, smoke transport, and the whole region got subjected by those wildfire smoke events in a very similar fashion. And I think that that’s partly what you see here in these pens in the area.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:13
Okay, let’s be we set the stage for the Nathan discussion. So this is a bit of information in here. So these are methane on the top left. These are not our data. But this is from Noah, Noah maintains a global network with Neff methane observation. And they publish these methane trends. And the whole world uses this to evaluate where we’re heading with methane. And this is a depressing story there because over the 30 years that methane is plotted here, you can see it go up and up and up and up. And it flattened out a little bit between 2000 2010. But then the last 10 years, it’s been going up and up and up and up. And you know, we want to go the opposite direction, meaning good intentions, but the data. So methane in the world is going up and up and up in almost looks like it’s going up and up steeper and steeper. So Methane is a very strong and climate gas. And so this is this is very concerning. And if you look at the trend in methane, the global average increase between 2021 and 2020, is 15 parts per billion. So within one year, methane increased by 15 parts per billion. So now on the right side, there’s one example for this quarter three, just to show you what we’re doing with these data. This is from the airport, methane for quarter, three,
Unknown Speaker 1:33:38
and three months, the distribution of methane and the same we call it was box Whisker plots. So the white dots are the mean values. These boxes are the 25 to 75 percentiles, and the bar, or the horizontal line is the median. So if you look at all this data, we see an increase or change between 2021 and 2024. Methane that’s at the airport plus 19 ppb, the median is 16 ppb. For the reservoir, it’s 30 ppb. Median is 21 ppb. So these increases, we see here Longmont are higher. And that’s the bottom line a higher than the global increase with methane. So this really doesn’t show that methane emissions here are coming down or anything is actually, you know, this data representative, but it’s only three months. And there’s other things that factor in and that takes a lot of very thorough statistical work to do this, get really to the bottom of this. But the first look, does not really argue for methane emissions coming down. And you’ve seen some opinions here,
Unknown Speaker 1:34:47
advocate that conclusion. These data do not show that the methane in the region is coming down, or is decreasing at a rate that’s below the globe.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
Average, actually, it’s the opposite. If you believe these data, I would say, you know, we have methane increases here emission increases that are above what we see on a global average.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:12
Okay, so where’s that methane coming from? So we do many, many, many of these plots where we look at
Unknown Speaker 1:35:19
what’s the concentration in the air that comes in from north, east south? And what’s the dependence on the wind speed. There’s a couple example for methane.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:31
Airport left union reservoir, right. So this shows, you know, the hotter colors show you the average higher concentrations come usually from the east from the northeast, we’ve seen this before, from the from that first quadrant sector. But you can also see, you know, it’s at karma wind speeds, which is right in the center of the graph, there’s a you know, a little bit of a distribution where, you know, it can, we can see some elevated methane from
Unknown Speaker 1:36:01
directions pretty much all around.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:05
This is,
Unknown Speaker 1:36:07
you know, the number one climate guys, we concerned about carbon dioxide, data for quarter three, just to follow up on last. Last presentation, we continue seeing what we saw before that, surprisingly, at the airport, we see a strong methane signal from the west. And I mentioned last time that we can’t fully understand that why is that as much co2 coming from the west of the airport side, and union reservoir that makes a lot of sense. The the reservoir is on the eastern edge of the city, and the city with 100,000 people or something like that to the west of the side, you would expect most of the elevated co2 coming from that direction. And that’s exactly what the data show.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:55
Now, this is very fresh. This is
Unknown Speaker 1:37:00
the last month we moved the airport trailer to the new side, late October, and it started collecting data on November 1. So this is one month of data the first month we have from that lichens Gulch side. And very curious how this would look now compared to what we saw previously, just a mile further to the west, and it has shifted, it has shifted a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:27
We still see, you know, elevated levels coming from the east, that’s where the city is both for co2 and for methane. That makes a lot of sense. But it karma winds, we see some source that appears to be in the in the northwest sector, if you look closely in the northwest sector, we don’t see that higher wind speeds mostly at karma wind speeds. And
Unknown Speaker 1:37:52
I was wondering about that when we inspected the site prefers to have an idea. But we need to look at this more closely. There’s this this farm, there’s this. It’s called skypilot farms and actually have a nice internet site. And it’s a meat producing facility. And I remember actually hearing I think there we can hear that the chicken or turkeys or something they Avenue when it’s quiet, and the winds come from there. So I wonder if that met what else would bring methane in from that interaction. So this is possibly a signal we’re picking up from that meat production facility. Very, very interesting that our data analysis, it’s you can point to source like that, and it’s not something important to also bear in mind when we talk about reducing co2 and methane emissions. You know, there’s some sources that are obvious to to address, others such as this, that may potentially contribute, you know, much more challenging to, to control their emissions.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:54
Okay, so then I was specifically asked next topic here to look at any potential signals that we may have observed from the night well, so again, this is the map showing with the yellow star, the location of the Union reservoir monitoring site. And tonight, well is that black star, what’s important to realize is that we are almost straight south, you know, maybe a little bit southwest. And so if we observed
Unknown Speaker 1:39:29
transferred from the night well, it would come pretty much from 2030 degrees north. Yeah, because that’s how these two sides are oriented to each other. So let’s, let’s, let’s keep our eyes open, you know, what do we see when air is transported from that wind sector?
Unknown Speaker 1:39:48
So what I did first is, I plotted all the data we have, for instance, this is methane, now methane at the reservoir from almost two years now January two
Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
2020. And this these bars on the right, you see the different stages of the drilling of the night? Well, so the drilling in blue, the high hydraulic fracturing, and there’s this brownish color, and the lighter brown is the with the cold side build out. And then they just started the flop back production two weeks ago. So question is, you know, do we see big change, increase something that sticks out for the period of the night? Well, production. Bear in mind, these are all data, they’re not winds wind direction filtered, but you know, we would expect 20 30% of the time wins out of that window. If you have a strong source, I think we would clearly see that, I wouldn’t argue that we’ve seen much of a difference in methane, since the work began at that well. So let’s do the same for ethane, which is oil in our favorite oil and gas tracer. Again,
Unknown Speaker 1:41:00
at the beginning of the program, in the first two months, there was a lot a lot of elevated fn spikes. I talked about that a couple of times before. And we had those two big transport plume events in January and February this year. And I talked about that here as well. So now looking at the remainder of the years, since the work at the well, has been ongoing fn data looks, you know, you could call it normal, but it doesn’t look.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:32
You know, it doesn’t seem to show anything that’s deviating, notably from what we’ve seen before.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:40
And now look at benzene. Similar to benzene, there were two benzene spikes in January and February, but that was right before the drilling started. So during the drilling window, again, benzene looks, you know, doesn’t look
Unknown Speaker 1:41:56
that unusual, I would say, and that now puts the Longmont data a little bit hard to pick this out in, again, this this pinkish color, together with the benzene at the border reservoir. It’s soaring eagle in Broomfield and another side in Broomfield, it’s actually, it’s been subjected to some emissions from an ongoing fracking operation there. So the dark green is actually I would say, the highest benzene for this year at the Broomfield side, but the benzene at the Union reservoir has been relatively moderate in comparison to the other sides.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:36
Another thing we can do is look at the dependency of these different tracers on the wind speed and wind directions. So you’ve seen these graphs before, and the very top of our two oil and gas tracers ethane and propane, you can see they’re an enhancement in transport from the north. So there is potentially
Unknown Speaker 1:42:59
higher concentrations more abundantly transported from the direction of the night. Well, it could come from other worlds further out, it’s that’s hard to tell with this analysis. But for ethanol and propane, there clearly is a stronger signal transported straight from the north, for settling at the bottom and benzene. We don’t see that for those I would say, you know, the city and maybe highway 119 To the south appear to be stronger sources, and we don’t see a strong signal from the direction of the the night well.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:33
Okay, so then I was specifically asked to comment on two events that were seen in the last quarter
Unknown Speaker 1:43:42
that resulted in elevated concentrations of some of these oil and gas tracers.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:49
And pointing this out here, those events occurred on October 4, and November 29. So I’ll
Unknown Speaker 1:43:57
look at those specifically now in the next few slides. So they did overlap with the work at the night. Well,
Unknown Speaker 1:44:06
this shows the same events from methane. So you can see that the last event which happened yesterday, we work pretty frantically yesterday, and this morning, to put this together. It’s actually you know, within the whole record, it’s the third highest methane spike we’ve seen at the Union reservoir so far.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:27
So let’s look first at the October 1 event.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:32
That happened early in the morning, around five o’clock so you can see. The top trees shows one week of data. For methane. The one below shows the ethane. The very bottom shows the benzene. Benzene didn’t really pick up March but you can see that methane and ethane the natural gas reserves both wind up together to pretty significant concentrations of methane went to five
Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
1000 parts per billion and ethane to about 200 parts per billion, and that’s about 20 parts per billion, you know, that’s, that’s about 100 times higher than the background. So 200 parts per billion, that’s, that’s a lot, that’s 100 times higher than the background. So that’s a big spike.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:17
So what we then do, we look at, you know, where we’re where the winds coming from. And so again, that’s the, the spike there. And this now is just that one single day, on October 4, it’s a 24 hour plot,
Unknown Speaker 1:45:31
showing the higher resolution data, and methane on the top, below, you see the wind direction, and the very bottom is the wind speed. What we always see when we see have these spikes, these these plume events that the winds are actually relatively calm. You know, when it’s windy, it alludes very, very quickly, and the concentrations go down very quickly. You see these high spikes, high concentration when it’s calm, so the winds were very, very calm, very low wind speeds, and the wind direction. Now, you look closely,
Unknown Speaker 1:46:04
right before that peak, and winds were right around 00 ish, and then shifting a little bit to the west. So that came from the north. So this this event, actually, it looks like it came from the north. And then as the winds shifted more towards the west, concentrations dropped. So that’s potentially right from that window, where we have that Wildside location. And then that was yesterday.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:33
So that happened, yesterday, late afternoon, you can see methane went up to about this five minute data to about, that’s 14 parts per million 14,000 parts per billion, the one minute data, the higher time resolution went all the way to 27 parts per million. So that’s
Unknown Speaker 1:46:57
almost 15 times above background, it’s a huge increase in methane, that’s a big methane spike. And below, you see the wind direction. In this case, now the winds were steady from the east, right on 90 degrees, 90 degrees straight from the east. And then they slowly shifted from 90 to 180. So that shifted from east to the south. So this is clearly a different direction than what we expect from the night well. And so this came over the reservoir from further out to the east. And as Winston shifted more to the south, the peak disappeared. So this came from somewhere else. So very significant enhancement and methane.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:37
It also caused enhancement and ethane and propane at the sampling time was a little bit different. Because the the VOCs are collected from the hour to 10 minutes after the hour. So we didn’t quite catch that peak. But we did see enhancements in ethane and propane and again 200 parts per billion of ethane 200 times above the background. So that was just last night about a day ago. So very clear oil and gas signature. And that shows tell you in in benzene at the bottom.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:09
And that also went up not you know super high, we’ve seen higher levels than that before. But it was an increase in
Unknown Speaker 1:48:17
in ethylene and propane and benzene and tell you in
Unknown Speaker 1:48:22
and that again shows the overlap of the VOC sample with a bin direction. It was straight from the east. When the VOC sample was collected, this was coming straight from the east across the reservoir.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:35
That wind direction and wind speed just to show you how calm the winds were just two three meters per second. When this when this happened. Okay, there was another it’s the third
Unknown Speaker 1:48:48
spike event that I think is pretty notable because that’s for different compound that’s acetylene. acetylene you may know from it’s a welding gas. You know, it’s used in industrial uses for welding for torch welding. But it’s also a product that’s formed during flaring and fires.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:08
In this area, it’s often used as a tracer for flaring. And we had a very notable spike there, were settling when to 18 parts per billion. And you can see within the whole record, that’s huge. You know, that’s, that’s two, three times higher than the highest we’ve ever seen before out of now 40,000 measurements or something like that. So we’re what was happening, where did the settlement come from? So now we look again at this settlement peek. And these are now the data for that day, that one particular day. It shows within that box. The time when this this happened for a settlement and benzene went up as well. Methane went up that’s in the very top two methane went not up nearly as much but there was a little bit of methane in there. And at the very bottom now that’s the important
Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
graph that shows the wind direction. And you can see that this happened right when the wind shifted to the north. And there was just an hour or half an hour, where the wind direction dropped to like zero ish. And that’s, you know where that one well pad is. And then we be picked up at high acetylene and benzene and, and methane. So this could potentially come from that night well pad, but it wouldn’t be this is not an oil and gas signature. This is a flaring signature. So I don’t know, you know, if there was flaring or burning going on at the time. But that’s a potential
Unknown Speaker 1:50:35
signal that we picked up from from operations that are right within that wind sector.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:43
Okay, and I think this is last topic now. Wildfires, you know, if you were here, not in Hawaii last summer, you all notice that,
Unknown Speaker 1:50:54
you know, with the reduced visibility, you could smell it during many days. So we’re heavily impacted by wildfires. And that’s driving
Unknown Speaker 1:51:05
high relatively high levels of particulates in the air. This is why we can’t see very far because the particles, they block the light. This shows the monitoring data for the small particles, PM 2.5. Again, during two weeks in August, when we were really heavily impacted, it shows the high resolution data, that’s the wiggly line. And then the smoother data, the 24 hour average data and again, the dotted line is the quality standard. So you can see, you know how the standard was exceeded. This has data both for the Union reservoir, and the Broomfield soaring eagle, and you can see how closely they fall on top of each other. So you know, when we get hit by the smoke, you can’t run away from it. If you’re in Longmont, if you go to Boulder or Broomfield or Erie, it’s the same smoke, you know that smoking transport from so far away, it’s so far spread out that it’s pretty much the same within the whole front range. So the whole front range was subjected to very similar levels of these these elevated particulates. Now when these particles happen, and the smoke gets transported through the air, again, the particles on the top, then what you also see is that some of the VOCs go up. The middle plot now shows the benzene and the the bottom. So that’s in this case, a theme, not ethane. It’s a theme. It’s an unsaturated hydrocarbon. So some of these hydrocarbons are really high in the smoke plumes and benzene is one that’s actually of all the ones we’ve looked at as the highest correlation. So the smoke plumes when we see this, we see the smoke, we smell it, there’s a bit of benzene in there. And that benzene connects be more than what we see. You know from other sources in the regions, this plots the different pollutants against the particles. So at the bottom is the particles. Basically low particles means clean air, high particle numbers means really, really dirty a lot a lot of smoke. And then on the y axis are the data for these VOCs. So you can see this correlation between benzene and the particles been It’s very nice for us. It’s a very nice tight correlation. The particles bring a lot of benzene into the area. And you can see that under the higher particle loadings, we have about a four or five times higher level of benzene up to half a parts per billion.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:42
This is the strongest and correlation compared to these other tracers is settling told you in and there were questions are asking what about Nox, nitrogen oxides, because it’s driving ozone, do this smoke plumes bring a lot of nitrogen oxides in this that may be then causing higher ozone? But it’s really not. There’s no clear correlation. If you look at the bottom right, just an oxides don’t correlate with a smoke. You know, it’s not the smoke brings nitrogen oxides. Same as always, it seems, and I know this is probably the most important graph of my presentation.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:20
Because it feeds the discussion of you know, how much of the high ozone we saw this summer, but was it 33 days of exceedances? You know, you’ve you’ve seen opinions that state, you know, this is because of the smoke, we are doomed. Because of all that smoke, we have a ozone, it’s out of our control, there’s not much we can do.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:44
How valid is that argument? That argument is kind of challenged by this graph. It shows the ozone on the y axis is the function of the particles. So particles now on the right on the bottom. Again, the higher to the right, the higher the particle
Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
You know, the worst days are on the right there when particles went through the roof. So, and then the color coding
Unknown Speaker 1:55:09
and defines the data points by the time of day. And you know, as it gets formed during the day, mostly and it’s lower at night. So the high ozone values are the dark, brownish colors, which is late afternoon, evening, that’s when ozone is the highest midnight it comes down. So the important message conclusion from this analysis is that as it gets smoky and smoky and smoke here, actually ozone doesn’t go up. Next week, you could argue that actually the highest
Unknown Speaker 1:55:41
levels in smoke, there’s actually less ozone.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:45
Then when it’s not as smoky, the highest ozone levels are seen at the lower smoke levels. So then under the normal conditions box,
Unknown Speaker 1:55:55
that kind of defines conditions when there is no smoke, you know, these are the data for the whole quarter. So this is smoke and not smoke. But clearly the highest ozone, many of the high ozone are associated when it’s clean when there’s not when they’re not wildfires. And when the wildfires move through. It doesn’t
Unknown Speaker 1:56:17
clearly
Unknown Speaker 1:56:19
appear to be driving elevated ozone, I would actually say You know, you could argue for the opposite. That’s this leads the conclusion based on the 2021 data from the union reservoir. Okay, that’s that’s my last slide. Just again, the summary. New Site Location, we learned more about the smoke. I showed you about methane going up, maybe even more so in the region, then globally. We looked at the particles and the ozone, that from an air quality standard from a health perspective,
Unknown Speaker 1:56:54
we would think are the most concerning pollutants
Unknown Speaker 1:56:57
that we need to keep watching here.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:01
All together trying to stay healthy. And that’s that’s it. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Detlef, that was very interesting, because of the length of that presentation. I’m hoping that we don’t have any q&a at some point.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:17
Thank you is very good. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:21
Does anybody have any objection to have a two or three minute break here? Let’s make it a five minute break. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:33
Well,
Unknown Speaker 1:57:35
I know they have.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:39
So I’m asking
Unknown Speaker 1:57:42
if you’re asking
Unknown Speaker 1:57:45
what about the rest of
Unknown Speaker 1:57:48
we’re gonna have a two minute break because I need to get up
Unknown Speaker 2:06:04
Okay, I think we’re all back. We can reconvene
Unknown Speaker 2:06:11
we’re ready for the public invited to be heard section and I would like to remind everyone who comes up to the podium that you need to be wearing your masks, and that you have three minutes to talk on the subject. The first one that we have on our agenda tonight is Eric Wallace.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:41
Good evening, Mayor Peck council members, I come in peace. I’m here on behalf of my family including my three children, my business lefthand Brewing Company, and its employees seeking housing. Prosper Longmont who’s advocating for workforce attainable for purchase housing in our city, and those who are currently looking for aspire to buying a home and growing roots in our community. The next generation. Our city is a highly desirable place to live and more people want to live here than we have homes for our company hires people both locally and from other parts of the country. Their ability to find a reasonable place to live in long line has increasingly become a challenge and they continue to look outside of town. I urge city council and city staff to create a program to specifically address our workforce housing crisis. A recent Rosing group study commissioned by the National Association of REALTORS quantified the national housing shortage at 5.5 to 6.8 million homes. The study also identified the need for new home construction of 2.1 million a year for the next 10 years. That would require that Longmont build 6200 new homes in the next 10 years to close the current housing gap. It is now time for Council to take the tactical actions necessary to attain the goals, activating and aligning both city and community resources in the interest of the collective well being of our city and all of Israel’s residents. We all need to commit to addressing the known problem of attainable, attainable workforce housing, and to hold ourselves accountable collectively to putting plans in place to fix it. Prosper Longmont and numerous community organizations are here tonight to support and to encourage to council to create a specific program to set a goal for the number of for purchase homes and to identify opportunities to accelerate the approval of and construction of housing sufficient to match the supply to the demand within our community. Council has already acted to approve two complementary strategic plans that specifically caught strategies to address our housing crisis. Envision Longmont strategies 1.2 1.61 point 10 One
Unknown Speaker 2:08:50
point 23.53 point 60.7 and 6.2 are all strategies already approved by council to address our housing challenges. Advance on 2.0 identifies collective impact as a tool to achieve growth, prosperity and inclusion within Longmont. Collective impact is a powerful framework to improve communication, alignment and institutional knowledge between private public and nonprofit partners in our community. It also creates and deploys innovative projects that accelerate community and economic impact. Advanced Longmont 2.0 includes within its placemaking strategic focus the priority to ensure residential affordability for current and future residents. The city council work plan goal be one includes have a diverse housing stock with higher densities. We are here to help. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:39
Thank you, Eric.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:41
Our next person is Lonnie Kramer.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:54
Mayor Peck city council, thank you for hearing me tonight. My name is Lonnie Kramer. I’m the president of lungs
Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
Speak hospital. And it’s my privilege to present today in benefit of the housing affordable act. And Eric quoted most of the stuff that I was gonna say tonight, but I also want to add a little more fact. According to the FY 2020 Census Bureau, the average income for 82% of our workers falls below 77,000 annually. When you look at 82% of our workforce in that range, that means for housing to be attainable in Longmont, it needs to be less than $1,925 a month all and so as we continue to recruit and try to hire, we employed a third 313 additional staff members last year, and I can tell you the biggest downfall and the reason many turned down the job. They couldn’t afford to live here, they couldn’t find a house that their family could move into here. So they turned us down. As we continue to recruit the best of the best in health care in in our workforce, we need your support and allowing them to come here. So with that, I’ll end by saying 67% of our workforce right now lives outside of Longmont. To me, that’s a problem. Our economy deserves to have our people here using our stores using our restaurants using our local businesses. So thank you for your support and thank you for hearing me tonight. Thank you, Lonnie.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:29
Next is a partner Palmer.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:44
Hello, everyone, I’m Dr. Aparna Palmer. I’m the new vice president who oversees the Boulder County Campus of Front Range Community College, which is in Longmont, Colorado, we have about 450 employees that work for the campus and about 2000 students. In 2017 and 18. When we commissioned our last economic impact study, the economic impact of the Boulder County campus was over $75 million.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:17
This figure included our operations funding, our construction funding our students funding and our employees, and our alumni impact. That is just to say that we are an important part of the success of this community. When that study was commissioned, we had 302 employees. And as I mentioned before, we now have 450 employees. As we constantly adapt to the evolving pandemic, we have the opportunity to grow our impact and our contribution to the committee, but to the community. But one of the most significant barriers we face is housing. Simply put, we will not be able to grow and serve more of the people who need us. If housing for our workforce, as well as our students and their families continue to be a challenge. We are being out competed by other places in Colorado for both employees and students because of the lack of attainable housing. Just a couple of weeks ago, two of our job offers were rejected once the prospective employees saw the price of housing in the area their families could not afford to live here.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:33
Our campus is filled with professionals. They come from fields such as manufacturing, computer science, business and engineering. They have expertise in literature, art, biology, graphic design and a variety of different disciplines. Our staff specialize in advising recruitment, Disability Services, and tutoring. They enrich our communities where they live financially, intellectually and culturally. They are all committed to transforming lives through education, but fewer and fewer can afford to live here. I ask of you today to think about and discuss and really ponder how we can achieve more attainable housing in this area. This is a key to our prosperity as a community. The prosperity of Longmont depends upon a plan for more attainable housing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Aparna. Joni Lynch No, I’m sorry. David Emerson is next. Dave Emerson left he’s from habitat. Okay. Thank you, Eric.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:45
Then it is Joanie Lynch.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:54
Hello, I’m Joanie Lynch. I’m the Family Resource director at the our center here in long run
Unknown Speaker 2:15:00
where I’ve worked for the past nine years.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:04
Prior to that I worked at this’ll Community Housing 20 years ago and then for another affordable housing developer in my home city of Washington, DC. I’d like to start tonight by applauding all that the city of Longmont and Boulder County have done to help further affordable housing in our geographic region through acquisition, new construction and rehab of affordable housing through vehicles such as administration of federal CDBG, and HOME funds and the Longmont affordable housing fund.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:39
On the homeownership side, I’d like to thank boulder county’s first time homebuyer classes, downpayment assistance and their pie program.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:49
I applaud Longmont leaders and community members who are open to exploring additional ways to increase density and affordable housing stock. Per the discussion among city council earlier tonight. I’m thankful for the additional pass through financial assistance for rent mortgage and utility assistance provided by the city and Boulder County in response to the pandemic, all of which prevented many hundreds of families from becoming homeless over the past 20 months. There’s so much to be thankful for. But it is not enough. And now we are asking the city in the community to act quickly and decisively to put plans into action to bring forth the additional affordable housing units needed in our community over time. On behalf of the our center, we support the efforts of prosper Longmont to work in partnership with city staff and community members to hold ourselves accountable to what we as a community outlined in the Envision Longmont plan with respect to the development and preservation of affordable housing for the entire continuum of housing needs, including affordable starter homes for workforce housing, as mentioned earlier this evening.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:04
Our center sees every day the barriers created by low household incomes and high housing costs in Longmont. We’ve seen more families having to make the difficult decision to leave this community because they can’t afford to stay. During the pandemic. These challenges have grown considerably, and we expect the recovery to take years. Since March 2020. Our center has distributed nearly 1.6 million in direct financial assistance for housing and utility assistance to keep hundreds of local families housed and current on their rent and utility payments.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:41
We look forward to working with our partners City Leader city staff and community members to assist prosper Longmont and holding ourselves as a community accountable to implementing our affordable housing goals in a timely manner before we lose additional community members, workers and our economic base to other regions. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:18:03
Thank you, Joanie John Creighton.
Unknown Speaker 2:18:12
Good evening, John Creighton 328. Pratt Street, I’d like to reinforce some of the things that you all discussed earlier and share some insights. As a lender with high plains bank. One of the things that we notice on a regular basis is we work with nurses, teachers, construction workers, even bank employees who can qualify for a loan to purchase a home. But the lack of supply that we have of housing has distorted our market and has distorted it really is distorting our community. We regularly see
Unknown Speaker 2:18:51
sellers get 1020 Even 30 offers on their property, often above asking price and often above a reasonable appraisal price. And so what that says is that only those who can pose as cash buyers are able to participate in the housing market. And those who admit that they need financing to buy a home or cast aside from consideration the lending community which I’m part, we certainly can and should work together to mitigate this challenge. However, nothing is fundamentally going to change until there’s an increase in supply. And until we make a concerted effort to have specific goals to increase the supply, we are sending the message to our workforce, as you’ve heard tonight, that they need not apply in Longmont. So we as a community, we really need to decide collectively, whether we’re serious when we say we want the workforce have long might have the option to live in Longmont. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:57
Thank you, John.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:00
Joe Thompson
Unknown Speaker 2:20:17
Thank you council members. Thank you for allowing me the time to speak. My name is Joe Thompson. I’ve been a resident of Longmont for three years. I’m a father of three and a small business owner. After seeing an article about prosper Longmont, I reached out to Eric, for an initial conversation.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:38
I was skeptical at first, thinking this would be another half hearted attempt to provide someone more affordable housing. But I must admit, after speaking with Eric, and learning more about prosper Longmont, I was very much impressed with how they’re trying to overcome a lot of the obstacles.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:59
Overall, I would like to say that as as a father of three, and the attempt that prosper Longmont is is looking at, it’s really encouraging to know that there is a true attempt to make a big difference. And a lot of it seems to revolve around coming up with fresh ideas and really thinking outside of the box and that seems to be the biggest thing as as a family man in this this town, I’d love to stay here but after hearing everything that’s been presented, it seems that a fresh perspective and thinking very far outside the box is the only way we’re going to get this accomplished on the scale that’s needed. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:45
Thank you Joe Polly Christiansen.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:03
Okay,
Unknown Speaker 2:22:05
I’m here to talk about price per Longmont. But I would also like to advise you to reread the May 4 2021 inclusionary housing program report which gives us the goals gives us the deficits gives us almost everything you just asked for.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:23
I would suggest you read it again. Because since 2015, when I first brought the housing ordinance forth, the affordable housing ordinance we’ve gotten countless reports
Unknown Speaker 2:22:35
and they may need to be updated but we don’t need to start all over again and form working groups and get started from scratch.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:47
As I said, I’m here to discuss prosper Longmont, which promotes itself as a housing advocacy group. It is part of and derives its funding from LA EDP long month long month outsource majority public funded economic development organization and as a taxpayer I resent having to pay for a lobbying group formed to undermine Council and city staff policymaking.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:13
It says it is composed of Longmont, residents, business owners and civic leaders on the issue of workforce attainable housing for purchase.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:23
What are the words attainable and workforce mean? They are both terms coined by the real estate industry. Workforce one would think defines is would be defined by people who actually have a job but that’s it’s actually defined by the real estate industry of xos making 80 to 120% of AMI area median income. What does attainable mean? It has no actual definition anything is attainable if you work hard and have good luck.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:53
In contrast, affordable has a very clear definition by Housing and Urban Development. No more than 30% of pre tax income is spent on housing and period. Affordable low income housing for both purchase and rent are what we need. And we’ve been told over and over again, including in this report that the greatest need is for people making.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:18
40% of ama AMI or less preferencing middle class, white married people over desperately poor people is a mistake and a grave injustice.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:36
We are told that the area median income for Longmont is $70,375
Unknown Speaker 2:24:45
that is perhaps a family income but it is not per capita. The per capita income is 36,464 According to the US Census and the American family survey and data USA
Unknown Speaker 2:25:00
People who work 40 hours a week at 1232 an hour which is minimum wage make 25,652 That is where our greatest need is because that is what Longmont is actually making.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:16
Thank you Polly
Unknown Speaker 2:25:17
next up is her main
Unknown Speaker 2:25:22
I can’t pronounce her last name no hear her me know mir sorry, her main
Unknown Speaker 2:25:37
Thank you. Thank you all so much, city council mayor for the opportunity to be here today actually was going to go in a slightly different direction, but I want to
Unknown Speaker 2:25:48
because I’m usually so much on your side. Everything that Polly had to say I want to address a couple aspects of it. I’m part of prosper Longmont. And I generally represent that far left progressive side. And I found such a joy working with the team and the folks that I’ve been able to work with there at prosper Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:14
I’m not getting paid a second, I’m definitely volunteering. I am a business owner here. And I am fortunate because I’m in the service industry, that I can hire a lot of people remote, and don’t have a lot of the struggles that some of the businesses are having that need to hire people to be here physically. Within that I do want to add two aspects. I’m very much in support of lower income and affordable housing. And I don’t know that we’ve done enough in that space. So I’m not going to argue that. But I know also that we have not done enough in the attainable space. I’m not sure. For me, I’m sorry to interrupt you. But would you address the the the chair, please? And not? Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, absolutely. I just love her. Okay, I, um, I don’t know enough about how things are being defined. But I do know, when we look at attainable housing, what I’m looking for is for youth to have similar opportunities that I had, I’m an immigrant to this country, I, you know, started off kind of in a mud hut. And I’ve been able to send my kid to great schools, private schools, graduated from college, buy a home. And now we’ll be able to ramp up at some other businesses because I have equity. Those are the hopes, dreams and aspirations that we’re hoping for is that people aren’t just living in
Unknown Speaker 2:27:42
affordable housing and making that next rent opportunity or that rent check, but are actually creating wealth, and being able to build and have a chance at the American dream. I know that’s a lot to ask for inside the space of what we’re doing today. The second aspect, and I don’t know if I have time I do is as you guys look at some of these solutions, I’m really begging that you consider simplifying the complex when I talk to, and I’ve had the joy of talking to Harold and some of you guys here. I can’t believe how complex some of this stuff is, and how one group will say one thing and another will say the other and they’re completely direct opposites. So as you look at this task force or people to help solve the problem, I’m really hoping that we come from a from a perspective of the solutions, and that we look at things in a way that we create simplicity and look to simplify, simplify, simplify the process within there. That’s it. I really appreciate you affording me this time. Thanks. Thank you for me
Unknown Speaker 2:28:53
Amerasian.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:02
Hi there, I’m Anne Marie Johnson. I’m the director of the east county housing opportunity coalition. And we are not a member of prosper Longmont, but we do acknowledge the identified need for workforce housing. We support prosper Longmont in their desire to set a goal and measure the city’s efforts towards increasing attainable housing in the city. We are not sure that that’s the only problem. We all know that market. The market alone is not going to provide entry level housing for workers in the community. And we know that home ownership is the key to intergenerational wealth building, and that so many have been left out of that opportunity. And we believe it makes sense to measure the need and set a goal and adopt proactive policies to achieve that goal. But we also in our report that we sent to you, maybe five or six months ago now have also identified the need a very low income housing for
Unknown Speaker 2:30:00
People who are really on the margin, and we encourage you not to forget them in this process, as you prioritize housing.
Unknown Speaker 2:30:10
Think about it as a continuum and measuring where we need to be with good data along that continuum, so that we’re not just building to what we think we need. But what we really do need in this country, and in this county, we have a long history of discrimination, and policies that have created inequity. We urge you to be intentional about combating the effects of inequity as you study this program. And by that I mean this. Currently lenders are 40% more likely to reject Latino applicants 50% More likely, this is today, this is not 10 years ago. 50% more likely to reject Asian and Pacific Islander applicants, 70% are likely to reject Native American applicants, and 80% more likely to reject black applicants. Those are formulas that are algorithms, but they’re based on the history. And as you know, our history has been discriminatory towards people of color. So we if we just build more attainable housing, we don’t take steps to make sure it’s used equitably. It won’t be because it isn’t being done that way throughout the country, because there are built in biases. So I encourage you to think about equity, as you do something about attainable housing, and also not to forget those who are currently homeless, or one paycheck away from homeless. And I know the state is doing a lot about that. But I encourage you to tap into those. And we are here as a resource and want to be helpful to you, and anything we can do to try and support you. And as a reminder, one of the things we’re doing since you talked a lot about climate change and emissions. On December 6, we are having a workshop via zoom to look at growing greener, which is how can we build more housing? And do you sell in a way that contributes to the least amount of damage to our environment? So I encourage you to attend that. Thank you. Thank you, Anne Marie.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:18
Well, it seems like there’s one thing going here and it’s all about housing.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:23
And that’s good. I’m very encouraged that so many people in our
Unknown Speaker 2:32:28
in our community are looking at that.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:32
I have so many papers here. I’m trying to wade through them. So the next that we think that we have to do is the consent agenda. So I’m gonna ask Dan, if you would please read the consent agenda for us. Yes, Mayor Peck. Item nine A is ordinance 2021 Dash 71. A bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities liabilities of the city of Lamarque for the fiscal year beginning January 1 2021. Public Hearing and second readings scheduled for December 14 2021. Nine B is ordinance 2021 Dash 72. an ordinance authorizing the refinancing of the lease purchase agreement dated as of August 1 2014 and the 2014. certificates of participation public hearing and second reading scheduled for December 14 2021. Nine C is ordinance 2021 Dash 73. A bill for an ordinance amending chapters 1404 1412 1424 and 1450 of the Longmont municipal code on fees and charges assessed in utility bills. Public Hearing and second reading scheduled for December 14 2021 90. Is ordinance 2021 Dash 74. A bill for an ordinance amending section 4.0 8.040 of the Longmont municipal code on city rebate programs for income qualified residents and affordable housing operators. Public Hearing and second reading scheduled for December 14 2021 90 is ordinance 2021 Dash 75. A bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of a portion of Emory street right of way associated with the 210 Emory 210 Emory street minor subdivision plat and site plan generally located at the northeast corner of Second Avenue and Emory Street, public hearing and second reading scheduled for December 14th 2021. Nine F is ordinance 2021 Dash 76. A bill for an ordinance approving the concept plan amendment for the Daniels annexation. Located at the southeast corner of state highway 66 and alpine streets, public hearing and second reading scheduled for December 14 2021. Nine G is resolution 2021 Dash 121 a resolution of the Council of the City of Longmont, Colorado, finding that the petition for annexation of a parcel of land located in Boulder County State of Colorado known as the river town annexation, generally located north of Boston Avenue and west of Sunset Street at 21. South sensitive street substantially complies with the Colorado Revised Statute section 3112 10719 H is resolution 2021 122 a resolution of Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the state of Colorado for a library grant. Nine eyes resolution 2021 Dash 122
Unknown Speaker 2:35:00
A resolution of the city council approving the agreement between the city in the next 50 initiative for grant grant funding for fire stops at Longmont Housing Authority senior independent living facilities. Nine j is resolution 2021 Dash 124 a resolution of Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and Boulder County for financial assistance to older adults. 9k is resolution 2021 Dash 125 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the business lease between the city and Dennis l Blanca and Carolyn a Blanca for 500 Kimbark Street Suite 1019 l is resolution 2021 Dash 126 a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing the city to apply for a grant for the 2021 peace officers behavioral health support and community partnerships grant program. And nine M is approved one capital improvement program amendment and Mayor staff would like to pull items C and D for a very brief presentation. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:35:58
Can I have a motion to
Unknown Speaker 2:36:01
move this consent ijen
Unknown Speaker 2:36:04
consent agenda?
Unknown Speaker 2:36:08
Okay, that has been moved. The consent agenda has been moved by Councilman Martin seconded by councilmember waters. Let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 2:36:22
okay, that passes unanimously.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:30
So we’re going to ordinances on the second reading and public hearings on any manner.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:36
Item A zero 2021 Dash 65 a bill for an ordinance repealing and reenacting chapters 16.04 16.0 616 point 1216 point 1416 point 1616 point 2016 point 2216 point 28 and 1640 of the Longmont Municipal Code adopting by reference the 2021 edition of the International Building residential mechanical fuel gas, plumbing, property maintenance, energy conservation, swimming pool and spa and existing building codes, public hearing and second reading scheduled for November 30 2021.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:19
Is there a staff report on this? No. Are there any questions for come from Council? No.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:27
I would like to open the public hearing on ordinance 2021 65. Is there anyone that would like to speak on this ordinance?
Unknown Speaker 2:37:36
There’s no public here.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:40
Okay, seeing none. I would like to Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this before I close the public hearing? Seeing no one. I’ll close the public hearing and ask for a motion if a council member doesn’t jump in with this one. Then I’m going to do it. I moved to pass ordinance 2021 Dash 65.
Unknown Speaker 2:38:04
Okay, the ordinance has been passed by Suzy Hidalgo authoring and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez this vote
Unknown Speaker 2:38:18
okay, that carried unanimously
Unknown Speaker 2:38:23
so the next one on the second reading is zero 2021 66. This is a bill for an ordinance repealing and reenacting chapter 1632 of the Longmont Municipal Code adopting by reference, the 2021 edition of the International Fire Code, public hearing and second readings scheduled for November 30 2021. Is there a staff report on this one? Nope. Any questions from Council? Seeing none, I will open up to the public hearing. Anyone from this? Public want to speak on this? Seeing none. I will ask for a motion for council member to move this.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:05
ordinance. Zero 2020 21.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:12
Sorry, that’s okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:15
Okay, that the ordinance has been moved by Councilman Marchionne second Marsha.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:26
I’m so sorry. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:31
Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:37
I’m sorry. It’s like
Unknown Speaker 2:39:41
that’s carried unanimously.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:44
So see is zero 2021 69 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 November.
Unknown Speaker 2:40:00
30th 2021
Unknown Speaker 2:40:02
staff report. No. Are there any questions from Council? Seeing none, I would open it up for a public hearing. Seeing no one from the public. I would ask for a motion. I move ordinance 2021. Second, okay. It has been moved by councilmember Tim waters seconded by Councilwoman Hidalgo fairing Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 2:40:30
That is carried unanimously. The last one on the second hearing is D 2021 70. A bill for an ordinance amending section 3.0 4.885 of the Longmont Municipal Code, adopting an amendment to the city of Longmont, police employees pension plan and trust agreement, public hearing and second hearing second readings scheduled for November 30 2021. I assume there’s no staff report on this. Any questions from Council? No.
Unknown Speaker 2:41:02
I’m opening up the public hearing see no one in the public. I would ask for a motion for council. ordinance 2021 70.
Unknown Speaker 2:41:13
Okay, the ordinance has been moved by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriquez and seconded by councilmember waters. Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 2:41:24
And that’s carried unanimously. So we’ll go to the items removed from consent agenda. Let’s go to first see, is there a presentation on this?
Unknown Speaker 2:41:39
Good evening, Mayor pack and members of council Becky Doyle, Executive Director of consolidated services. And, as usual, cannot talk and pull up slides at the same time. Here we go. Okay, so we pulled Item C and D for a quick chat about what those mean.
Unknown Speaker 2:41:59
So I’ll present on both of them simultaneously. So So first, ordinance 73, which is item C, include some things that are just sort of cleaning up some language in the water, the water chapter,
Unknown Speaker 2:42:15
clarifying that water metering is per structure due to you know, constraints, not not necessarily per residential unit. And that water should not be resold by by submetering at a higher rate than the than the retail rate that folks pay for water by gallon.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:35
And then there’s a further clarification that multifamily units are to pay utility charges on a per dwelling unit basis. The code as it’s written today, really bases the charges for the waste management feed the parking Greenway maintenance fee, and the storm drainage rate on the placement of an electric meter. Historically, most multifamily developments have used a an electric meter per residential unit, whereas primarily water metering is done by building.
Unknown Speaker 2:43:12
So these fees have been connected to that electric meter, you know, as a matter of convenience, but our intention is that you know, that that should be on the basis of the number of units, not the number of electric meters, which you know, has no nexus to the fee.
Unknown Speaker 2:43:28
What we found is that in, in some newer developments, you know, for convenience, or various reasons, that a single electric meter was installed. And thus we had a number of apartments, that were not charged the same fees, as, you know, other other apartments within the city. So, obviously an equity issue there that we need to address.
Unknown Speaker 2:43:52
We first brought this ordinance before you in 2018.
Unknown Speaker 2:43:56
To address that issue, and in that process discovered that we were not aware that there were a couple of other places where we had these master meter developments in the city, and that those were in affordable housing providers. So what we’ve been able to do,
Unknown Speaker 2:44:16
you know, through collaboration with with LSJ, and our housing team is is bring forth also companion ordinance 74. That brings those affordable housing operators into the long run cares program, providing some offsets to the fees and minimizing the impact to utility bills for for those groups. So, that’s, that’s what these are about. Any questions? Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, that’s great. Do I have a motion these have to be
Unknown Speaker 2:44:53
moved separately. So I will move 2021 Dash 70
Unknown Speaker 2:45:00
Three
Unknown Speaker 2:45:02
It has been moved by myself and seconded by
Unknown Speaker 2:45:08
Councilman Martian, Martian I did it again.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:12
You’re going to be the Martian from now
Unknown Speaker 2:45:18
let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 2:45:20
to get my screen back
Unknown Speaker 2:45:28
I had an arrow telling me where it was
Unknown Speaker 2:45:35
I can’t push the little button.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:39
Do you want to verbalize
Unknown Speaker 2:45:44
that is passed unanimously
Unknown Speaker 2:45:50
It has been moved by councillor Mark Waters and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 2:46:06
carried unanimously
Unknown Speaker 2:46:14
where are we?
Unknown Speaker 2:46:16
So
Unknown Speaker 2:46:19
that brings us to
Unknown Speaker 2:46:25
I think we’re at the end of our meeting, aren’t we?
Unknown Speaker 2:46:29
Oh, general business. Alright.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:33
So I need a motion to recess as the Longmont city council and convene as the Board of Directors of the lormet general improvement district.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:42
Right that has been moved by Councilwoman Martin and seconded by Councilwoman Hidalgo firing.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:50
Let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 2:46:52
that passes unanimously.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:59
So I’m going to read this resolution. It’s a resolution of the Board of Directors of the Longmont general improvement district number one, enacting a supplemental budget and making an additional appropriation for the expenses and liabilities of the district for the fiscal year beginning January 1 2021. Do we have a staff report on this? No.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:21
All right. Do we have any questions from Council? No.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:27
No.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:29
2021
Unknown Speaker 2:47:33
All right. This has been Moved by Councillor Tim waters. Seconded by Councilwoman Martin.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:40
Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:45
And that carried unanimously. Can I have a motion to adjourn as the Board of Directors of the Longmont general improvement district number one and reconvene is the Longmont City Council.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:57
Right that has been moved by Tim waters. Councillor waters and seconded by Councillor Martin. Let’s vote.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:09
All right, we need direction for city employee holiday schedule.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:17
Perry members Council Joanne z as Chief Human Resources Officer. I wanted to bring this forth as a request for direction as opposed to an ordinance just so that I could get some guidance in terms of what council would like to see in regard to the Juneteenth holiday. We the reason that we brought this forward is because there is a Council resolution encouraging the city to celebrate the Juneteenth holiday. And so now that it is a holiday, we were not sure how to treat that on the city holiday scheduled for 2022 and beyond.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:51
So our question is, is Juneteenth the holiday that you would like to see us add to the microphone, Tim Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:00
Thank you my back. So first, just a quick question since that, traditionally, as federal holidays have been added, has the city consistently added those as well to their holiday schedule? So we have a very similar holiday schedule to the federal schedule. There are two differences. One of them is the previous Columbus Day holiday, which is now indigenous peoples day. We do not have that on our current schedule. We do have the day after Thanksgiving, which is not a federal holiday. So we have two deviations. Okay. Because this is this question has never come before Council in my four years and
Unknown Speaker 2:49:37
nobody on council. So yeah, if I can add I think the last time this issue came up was
Unknown Speaker 2:49:43
regarding Veterans Day, and the city didn’t have Veterans Day as a designated holiday. And so the council ended up putting Veterans Day on that.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:54
Remove the day after Thanksgiving. That was an issue that we talked to council about in terms of
Unknown Speaker 2:49:59
what
Unknown Speaker 2:50:00
We were seeing organizationally as an issue. And so then Council put that back on. And so
Unknown Speaker 2:50:06
the only add that I’m aware of historically to that is adding Veterans Day. And I think part of this is Council, part of what we brought it to you also Council also directed us to send a letter Sandy was in a letter to supporting the creation of Juneteenth as as a national holidays. So we just didn’t know how you all wanted us to proceed.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:27
I will just give my opinion real quick in the sense that I think that we should as closely aligned to general governmental holidays as possible as a local government. So I would be in support of a Juneteenth city holiday as well.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:47
Councilwoman Martin,
Unknown Speaker 2:50:50
thank you, Mayor Peck.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:53
This is a question for city management. I also support doing this for another reason, which is that in previous discussions of of staff compensation
Unknown Speaker 2:51:11
that we’ve been looking for, you know, that perhaps an additional paid day off would be one of the things that could be done and that we talked about having maybe a floating holiday. I don’t remember whether that was enacted. We have a floating holiday. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:37
So the question that I have is
Unknown Speaker 2:51:42
can the city afford to
Unknown Speaker 2:51:46
enact another day off? Because I before it, if it can and against it? If it can’t.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:53
So Mayor, Members of Council, I do believe in January, we’re going to be coming back with some recommendations in terms of remaining competitive with other employers in the in the area as well as other governments in the area. I think we probably will need to look at additional time off for employees in general. So I think this probably won’t get us there in and of itself. But it will be something that other municipalities are already looking at. I know Fort Collins has enacted it. As we’re looking at other municipalities, it’s going to be something that if we did not do it, we probably would be behind.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:30
So then we’re essentially doing some we’re anticipating doing something that would be done anyway, next year. Correct. I think we’re all kind of running around the same timing with the exception of Fort Collins who has gotten ahead of us.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:43
Okay, that’s that’s what I wanted to know.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:49
Councilwoman Yarborough?
Unknown Speaker 2:52:51
Yeah. I just want to say that I agree with the staff taking their holidays to federal holiday. So I think that’s one that should be implemented as well for staff. And yeah, so I agree. I don’t I don’t know if we need I think all other federal holidays, the those days are paid just like Veterans Day. So I don’t see why that will be a question about Juneteenth either. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:22
So do I have a motion to direction? I don’t know. You don’t need a motion for this? No, I was just looking for staff guidance. So okay, there was we will return with that sounds like when we’re all on board. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:38
So we’re going to suspend the council rule of procedure 25 and approve the first quarter 2022 meeting schedule.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:48
We went over this meeting schedule last time, so we just need to approve this for the trial that we’re going to do in the first quarter of 2022. Correct. Right. Okay. So do we have direction? I think this one needs a motion. Yeah, we need a motion and is there anyone here that would like to make this motion or shall I so I move to suspend the council rule of procedure 25 and approve the first quarter of 2022 meeting schedule.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:16
So it’s been moved by me and seconded by
Unknown Speaker 2:54:21
Councilwoman Yarborough
Unknown Speaker 2:54:24
that’s about
Unknown Speaker 2:54:33
that carried unanimously
Unknown Speaker 2:54:39
so I moved to have a special election to fill the vacant at large
Unknown Speaker 2:54:46
at large council seat.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:51
So it’s been moved by myself seconded by Mayor Pro Tim Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:58
Let’s vote
Unknown Speaker 2:55:00
Do we need to speak on this when?
Unknown Speaker 2:55:03
Mayor, Councillor waters? Do you have a date that you wanted to send me one of my questions? Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:11
Well,
Unknown Speaker 2:55:14
right. Well, so we can discuss the day. Yeah. Well, we have in this
Unknown Speaker 2:55:20
in the council communication and in what we ran the time school.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:25
We have a there is a there is a challenge here, right.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:29
Picking a date is not quite as easy tonight as it might be. If if our county commissioners are not going to manage this special election, then we’re going to our only option that my understanding is to hire to do that. My second assumption would be that to do that, based on what the projected what would be the projected cost done
Unknown Speaker 2:55:54
in the council communication, Mayor Peck and Councilmember waters we estimated roughly 250 Yeah, so my assumption is that would require an RFP
Unknown Speaker 2:56:04
competitive bidding process. It does absolutely and how long it would take to get the RFP, how long giving people or vendors potential vendors a chance to bid. I mean, all that would have to be rolled up it right into a timeframe.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:20
So
Unknown Speaker 2:56:21
I’m going to support scheduling an election. But but I’d like to know, I’d like to have some idea of when we actually would do it, given what it’s going to require to line up the vendor. Along with that. I’m really curious if any other council members are wondering why it is that our can I understand what I read in the paper, I understand what’s in the council communication. The county clerk’s are real focused on redistricting, and what it’s going to require of them to run a 2022 election with new districts. I’m also aware of the fact that we do this every every district to having redistricting happened happens every 10 years. And it didn’t sneak up on anybody. I’m going to the maps, I realized we’re we’re kind of all over the place. Although it would seem to me that there could have been some scenarios given the maps that first came out on on the possibilities. And I’m just puzzled why it isn’t another level of government that manages this for us
Unknown Speaker 2:57:26
simply decides we’re on our own to do this, in what would be the similar circumstances where the city of Longmont
Unknown Speaker 2:57:36
with an obligation to do something for with the with Boulder County would simply say, you know, we’re too busy. That’s our job. But we’re too busy to do our job in service to what the County the county government is doing, because that’s the way it feels to me like, well, we just can’t do two things at the same time. And I want to say I’m I’m I want to be on record. I think that is I have serious questions about the responsibilities that are not being felt met by the county clerk. And why it is we get left holding the bag. And I’m wondering if there any other municipalities in the in the in Boulder County that have special elections? And are they left holding the bag as well? And shouldn’t we expect more from the county clerk?
Unknown Speaker 2:58:24
Can you answer that?
Unknown Speaker 2:58:26
I can attempt
Unknown Speaker 2:58:28
if I may. I don’t work for the county. So I can’t describe the process Exactly. But my understanding is it’s a it’s a challenge of data. The voter data is going to be manipulated to assign new precincts, there’s many layers of
Unknown Speaker 2:58:46
your municipal representation, your county representation, your state representation and all that data has to line back up under the new maps. And so ensuring that that data is is correct in preparation for the June primary. They have to pull it, pull it up, pull their systems offline and manipulate it and make sure it’s right. So I don’t my impression was the county
Unknown Speaker 2:59:10
clerk was very, what’s the proper word? very apologetic. At this scenario, we spoke with both Boulder and weld counties and received the same answer they just can’t help us this time around.
Unknown Speaker 2:59:24
And to the other piece, other other other municipalities. There are in fact we’ve been in conversation with Lewisville, I need to follow back up with them. And certainly we’ve done some talking with vendors to try and see what this world looks like. And there are there they’re getting a lot of phone calls. So there’s a lot of municipalities across the front range and state likely in the same boat
Unknown Speaker 2:59:56
this has this has little to do with this particular one.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:00
decision but but in the broader context of the whole process in this or last election cycle, it was easy to to assume that it would be likely given the candidates that there would be an opening.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:17
And I did it for what it’s worth, I spoke to Don, before I ever declared my candidacy and asked if it was possible that I could resign my word one seat, effective election day,
Unknown Speaker 3:00:27
make that statement and run into you with the county commissioner could could stage a special election in the context of the regular election to save Longmont the cost? Now $250,000 of a special election? The answer was no, I couldn’t do that.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:46
Because because there wouldn’t have been a vacancy declared and you couldn’t schedule that, even though it would be clear what the intent was. And for my who is that I don’t get to state statute, if that’s a charter issue, where I would find that codified, but it seems to me in the in the bigger picture, that ought to be an option for candidates that would prefer not to sit put the city in this position. But but have no choice unless you’re gonna resign six months early, or whatever it is four months early, which would not was not something I was willing to do, I felt like I owed more to the residents of Ward one than to leave that seat vacant. But it would have saved had had I’d been successful, which I obviously wasn’t. But the point is, you could have depending on how these things play out, save the city, the very situation where now along with the expense that goes with it, I just think wherever that is codified, that deserves some review at some point in time. So I would like to
Unknown Speaker 3:01:44
repeat or go or make a couple of statements to what you just mentioned. Number one, if you if they had run back to back elections for one of our seats, you’re in ward three. And I was at large, so it would have been too, too hard to run
Unknown Speaker 3:02:02
two elections. At the same time, however, I did talk to the mayor of lone tree, about the same situation. And she said the way that they resolved it was that in their charter, when we came up with this, we can change our charter to say that we can appoint someone for the duration. We don’t have that in our charter, and it would have been easier if we could have just appointed counsel could have appointed someone to fill the seat until the next election. So that is one way to resolve it without trying to second guess the county’s responsibilities or where they are. So I’m just throwing that out there. Are there any other comments?
Unknown Speaker 3:02:48
And it’s okay, hold on.
Unknown Speaker 3:02:52
Councilwoman Martin.
Unknown Speaker 3:02:54
Thank you, Mayor pack. I just wanted to say that one thing that we can fix if we have to run in it’s an expensive special election
Unknown Speaker 3:03:06
is we can run a charter amendment to
Unknown Speaker 3:03:14
correct the discrepancy between swearing in dates for our elections, and the county’s longer timeline for certifying elections.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:28
So we could at least if we’re going to have to pay this much money, since it’s an at large seat, and a whole a whole city
Unknown Speaker 3:03:39
charter amendment, then we can get a little more bang for our buck.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:44
I don’t know whether that’s a separate motion or whether it’s just direction we need to you can make a motion after we’ve settled this one is perhaps.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:55
So as far as the date goes, I suppose I can specify a date and we can try to find a vendor within those dates. Or I don’t know really how to do that. Can you give some direction? If I might? Yes, in the council communication. I showed an example timeline and showed April 5 2022. And how that might pan out in terms of nomination petition timeframes and those things.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:25
April 5 is a Tuesday. It’s a common first Tuesday April is common for statutory towns is an election day. So many know that as a day. The timeline, as you can see, is super tight for us. But we thought that that could be done. We didn’t want to, quote a time a date because we wanted you all to have the option to set it. If you felt urgency about doing it sooner than we would go back to the drawing board and see how we could figure that out but the RFP takes some time so that was a gentle suggestion.
Unknown Speaker 3:05:00
Yeah, I think we’re we’re saying is April 5 is doable based on the RFP timeline.
Unknown Speaker 3:05:08
If you if you look at the council member, we said maybe we could probably get it in late March. But I think April 5 Is, is something that we can say we can definitely hit. Yeah, I really don’t like leaving it out that late to fill this vacancy. Would it be possible to use the April 5
Unknown Speaker 3:05:26
guideline and in the RFP, see if there is a vendor that can move that up?
Unknown Speaker 3:05:34
worded in a way that that would be our
Unknown Speaker 3:05:39
our latest that we would want it?
Unknown Speaker 3:05:42
How long does an RFP take?
Unknown Speaker 3:05:46
pens on the bidders? Yeah, depends on what, no less, at least two weeks, but preferably, three Mirapex in order to get all the way through contract. It really does depend on what’s going on. I think we could certainly update the council as we go in the process. Don is ready with a scope. So we would release this tomorrow if this is the direction the council gave us.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:06
So I think we’re ready in that respect, I would say two weeks is just posting. So then two weeks for evaluation, two weeks for contracting. I’d say six weeks is about as slim as we go. Yes, I can though. So that would take us into the middle of February.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:24
To get the vendor the vendor give you the vendor correct.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:27
And part of their the RFP is that they would tell you how long it would take them to run this election so we don’t have control.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:37
Okay, so I guess I would
Unknown Speaker 3:06:41
call on who’s number four. Councilwoman Hidalgo? Sorry. Thank you. So really, when I read the the packet I saw, you know, the two options were either we are voting to
Unknown Speaker 3:06:57
get a separate vendor that would give us an earlier voting date, or coordinate with Boulder County to have that election in November. My feeling is November’s too too late.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:11
I would vote for option one. And just if we can get it done as soon as possible, let’s do it.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:20
But I yeah, I kind of didn’t deduce that you could not really provide us with a specific date until we have a vendor. But if we can have something done in the spring, I think that’s that’s a better than waiting until November.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:37
And it sounded like the mail in ballot would be
Unknown Speaker 3:07:42
faster, or is that still up to the vendor?
Unknown Speaker 3:07:46
Totally up to the mayor. That would be a mail ballot election. It would be all about labor to have to be.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:52
Okay, so I’m going to amend my motion to state that we
Unknown Speaker 3:08:02
that we hold a special election to fill a vacant at large seat with November 5.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:09
But what was it April? I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:13
I’m stuck on November, that April 5 be the deadline or the date to hold the special election.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:23
So do you want a second? My
Unknown Speaker 3:08:26
second? All right.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:29
I just submitted it. We don’t have second amendment.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:33
All right. That is the motion and
Unknown Speaker 3:08:39
I think you did Councilman Yarborough. Did you second that you did here? Maybe it wasn’t it’s getting too late a campaign.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:48
Mayor Pro Tim Rodriguez seconded
Unknown Speaker 3:08:52
the amended motion that’s all
Unknown Speaker 3:09:06
and that carried unanimously
Unknown Speaker 3:09:12
really need to look at that.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:15
So now we have the what we’ve all been waiting for. The city council Board Liaison appointments for 2021 2023.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:25
Mayor I can go to the podium if you like or
Unknown Speaker 3:09:28
whatever is easiest for you.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:35
I don’t I don’t think we need you there in my shoes.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:39
This is great. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:41
Whatever makes you comfortable.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:44
So mayor, you’re you have Council appointments, external and internal or city advisory boards. Yes. You all provided me with some preferences, your your favorites, the ones you are most interested in serving on. All I did was click
Unknown Speaker 3:10:00
Turn into a spreadsheet, and try to identify people’s first, second and third choices, and then create some balance. And so there’s really, if you agreed with how those felt fell out kind of naturally in the attachments.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:18
Then there’s just a few discussion points. But if there’s other items you’d like to discuss, let me know. And we can start if it makes sense for you with the city advisory boards. Yes, please. So for airport Advisory Board, Council Member, I have councilmember Martin as as serving on that one. It is not the highest choice there. But councilmember Rodriguez, you’ll see is the competitor on that one, and later he has other higher choices. So if that one’s okay, with councilmember Rodriguez and Martin, especially considering the external boards, yes. Right.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:03
So then art in public places, Councilmember Rodriguez interest indicated an interest but again, in the interest of balance.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:12
You know, my one thought was maybe Mayor pack if you wanted to serve on that one? Or if if councilmember Rodriguez, in fact, likes to have lots of boards, or if anybody else was interested in art in public places.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:24
That’s a question.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:26
I would like to have it.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:30
Exactly.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:32
Okay. It’s so different from transportation.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:36
Mayor Peck or councilmember yarborough’s
Unknown Speaker 3:11:41
quietly offering services as well.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:45
Art in Public Places?
Unknown Speaker 3:12:00
Six,
Unknown Speaker 3:12:02
depending on what happened.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:06
So I will put councilmember Yarbro for now and then we can come back and amend if needed.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:11
The asset forfeiture committee meets quite rarely, if ever, but they do need one person I thought maybe Mayor Peck would be
Unknown Speaker 3:12:20
a logical choice there just in case there’s a called meeting
Unknown Speaker 3:12:24
only only only when required in there called meeting so we wouldn’t know until there was a meeting.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:33
Longmont public media would be councilmember Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:37
The only person interested there golf course advisory council member waters
Unknown Speaker 3:12:43
Stop me if we disagree, historic preservation councilmember Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:48
And then the next discussion point is a highly popular library board
Unknown Speaker 3:12:53
councilmembers waters Rodriguez and Iago fairing all are very interested in that board. So as council member Martin frames at some horse trading and suing
Unknown Speaker 3:13:15
Thank you, so I just kind of wanted to speak so there were a couple of reasons why. So when I was first elected, that was one that interests me just because of my own background in education, working with the library. So you know, I just felt like as a liaison, I could offer stuff to the group as well as
Unknown Speaker 3:13:39
you’re just making a positive impact in that respect. And the other piece was looking at time because I do you know, my report time for school is 415 So anything prior to that is very, very challenging.
Unknown Speaker 3:13:56
So you know, I’ve already had to make special arrangements with the youth council to kind of
Unknown Speaker 3:14:02
to to have me come in at a later time
Unknown Speaker 3:14:06
but yeah, so that was that was why I put that as a as a high interest one for me
Unknown Speaker 3:14:22
we could also come back to it and see where other other boards land leave that one last. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:29
Longmont housing and Human Services Advisory Board.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:33
I suggested councilmember Yarborough that’s not the highest choice but the times would work well and it was her number three choice.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:43
Are you okay with that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:51
Councilmember Martin, or councilmember Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:56
I wanted but I don’t have any time
Unknown Speaker 3:15:06
Well go for it.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:08
Very good. Thank you. The Longmont youth councils the next one Rodriguez and Iago fairing both rang to that high again. balancing my suggestion was the dog Oh, ferrying, sir continue to serve on the youth council
Unknown Speaker 3:15:22
as a liaison or not on the youth council, but as liaison My apologies.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:27
Is that agreeable? Okay. And then museum advisory board again, a tie between Councilman Rodriguez and Iago fairing looking for some balance there again, although it sounds counterproductive, counterintuitive. Councilmember Dalgo. fairing was my recommendation on that one. Although there may be 430s, that’s meeting time for that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:55
But we’re in virtual so.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:00
The Youth Council was one that I worked with.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:05
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:10
Okay, is that agreeable to you?
Unknown Speaker 3:16:13
Mayor Pro Tem. All right. neighborhood group leaders was councilmember dogboe fairing one of your top choices. So my suggestion was councilmember double fairing. The next to where we need someone is the old hire, fire and old hire police pension boards. Those are called meetings. Usually during the day.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:36
Need Somebody available during the day for when those meetings happen a few times a year Jim is that accurate? Four times a year.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:47
Any any volunteers?
Unknown Speaker 3:16:58
They meet together. So you would do if you did one you would do both.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:04
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:06
I will put those under councilmember waters. Thank you very much. Then Parks and Rec Parks and Recreation advisory board. Councilmember waters that that was one of your top choices as well as councilmember Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:20
Again, looking at balancing I suggested waters but you all are welcome to talk about through.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:41
Okay, Councilmember waters It is then planning and zoning is all councilmember Rodriguez. Oh, you
Unknown Speaker 3:17:49
and they’re happy to have you I’m quite sure.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:52
Senior Citizens Advisory Board again looking for balance. Councilmember Martin and Councilmember Rodriguez. So I recommend councilmember Martin for that one continue to serve on that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:14
Very, very good.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:17
Sustainability advisory board was councilmember Martin Martin’s number one. So it was my recommendation, although councilmember Rodriguez indicated interest as well.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:28
Councilmember Martin, okay. Transportation Advisory Board, Councilmember Yarbro indicated that was her number two choice.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:37
And then the balancing. That was my recommendation for that one and the timing to evening. So hopefully that would work well.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:47
So good.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:49
And then lastly, waterboard. Councilmember Martin ranked that just a little bit higher than councilmember Rodriguez. And therefore my recommendation was councilmember Martin.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:08
All right, going quickly to external boards, or if we’re all okay on those.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:17
Oh, we need to go back to the library. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:21
So council member waters and council member Udall go firing
Unknown Speaker 3:19:30
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:33
Very good. That was fast. Thank you. Councilmember double fairing. It is for library board. On the external.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:40
There are quite a few that are mayor, Mayor mayor’s role as mayor, although Mayor Peck did indicate an interest in Denver Regional Council of Governments. So my recommendation was that Mayor Peck serve as the voting alternate for Dr. cog
Unknown Speaker 3:19:59
and
Unknown Speaker 3:20:00
And then councilmember Rodriguez indicated a number three interest I jumped sorry to I started with Mayor which took me straight to Dr. cog so is that when okay that way as mayor as an alternate
Unknown Speaker 3:20:17
would
Unknown Speaker 3:20:21
okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:24
My apologies gonna jump back up to the top so advanced Longmont steering committee was councilmember Martin’s number one choice. That was my recommendation. We okay with that.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:33
Boulder County consortium of city cities we have a voting person and an alternate so the first choice was councilmember Martin. And then the alternate would be a double fairing.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:44
Those were both top choices for both of those. Is that okay?
Unknown Speaker 3:20:49
Okay. And con Boulder County resource conservation advisory board.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:54
Councilmember double fairing that was our number one choice. So it was my recommendation. Keeping that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:00
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:03
Yep, alternate. I will only go if
Unknown Speaker 3:21:08
councilmember Martin can’t go. Correct. If you’re an alternate Yes.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:14
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:16
Thank you. Thank you. CML Policy Committee used to be councilmember Christiansen. Councilmember Rodriguez has indicated interest and was the only willing suspect.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:31
computing solutions also councilmember Rodriguez indicated an interest number one. So
Unknown Speaker 3:21:38
you get that gig to
Unknown Speaker 3:21:42
moving on to Ltda. Councilmember Yarborough that was her number one, as was councilmember Rodriguez. My recommendation was Yarbro. Again, trying to balance things out.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:54
works for you.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:56
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:21:59
Le DP
Unknown Speaker 3:22:02
needs a second liaison council member waters that was his number one. The first person is the mayor. And the second it would be councilmember waters if that works for everybody. The
Unknown Speaker 3:22:14
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez had it as his number two choice but in
Unknown Speaker 3:22:18
keeping things balanced. My recommendation was councilmember waters.
Unknown Speaker 3:22:23
We’re good. Okay. Multi l Mac. Councilmember waters again, that was his number two choice.
Unknown Speaker 3:22:31
There’s a conflict between
Unknown Speaker 3:22:34
those are at the same
Unknown Speaker 3:22:37
between L Mac and LLDP.
Unknown Speaker 3:22:41
Second Monday is correct. Karen 12 to 130.
Unknown Speaker 3:22:48
What’s your first preference of those two?
Unknown Speaker 3:22:52
LDP Okay,
Unknown Speaker 3:22:54
so then
Unknown Speaker 3:22:57
councilmember Rodriguez or if anybody else is interested in L Mack. It’s noon to 1/32 Monday of the month.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:05
You have a hard time. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:08
Mayor Peck.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:12
Very good.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:15
Thank you for noticing that Councilmember waters, Sister Cities.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:19
A couple of you had a higher score, but balancing my recommendation was councilmember Yarborough
Unknown Speaker 3:23:26
and also because of the time not during not during the work day. Is that all right. Okay. The mayor gets her few assignments on Mayor type things. Then on North i 25. Coalition mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez
Unknown Speaker 3:23:42
wanted that one as well as Northwest Rail Corridor Governance Committee.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:47
And then moving down to the end of the road here visit Longmont. Councilmember Waters had that as his third choice.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:55
That was my recommendation on that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:23:58
And then windy gap. The last one councilmember Martin had that as her second the second choice. So that was my recommendation there.
Unknown Speaker 3:24:10
Waters
Unknown Speaker 3:24:13
and if that all works, I will send everybody your lists, we’ll get your calendar mutations. And that concludes that discussion unless there’s anything else
Unknown Speaker 3:24:25
Thank you. Thank you, thank you
Unknown Speaker 3:24:42
so now we’re doing final call for public invited to be heard. Um, I don’t see anybody out there. So mayor and council comments. Do we have any?
Unknown Speaker 3:24:55
Seeing none, we’ll go to city manager Herald
Unknown Speaker 3:25:00
Comments Mayor Council. Okay city attorney Eugene. No comments, Mayor. Right. Can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Thank you. It’s been moved in seconded. Let’s all vote.
Unknown Speaker 3:25:13
Moved by Councilwoman Martin seconded by.
Unknown Speaker 3:25:17
Who are you? All in favor? All in favor say aye. Thank you