Video Description:
Join us live for this week’s City Council Meeting – City Council Regular Session – January 25, 2022
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Read along below or follow along here: https://otter.ai/u/6Q9opIOhfrSrGggk6JUkYidj2Xw
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Good evening, everyone. I’d like to call the January 25 2022. Long month City Council regular session to order meetings are being held remotely due to the note the ongoing novel Coronavirus pandemic to view the live stream go to Longmont colorado.gov forward slash agendas, or the city’s YouTube channel, or Longmont public media.org or the Comcast channels eight or eight ad. Can we have a roll call please? Mayor Peck. Here.
Unknown Speaker 0:35
Councilmember Dalgo? fairing. Here.
Unknown Speaker 0:38
Councilmember Martin. Here.
Unknown Speaker 0:41
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Here. Councilmember waters here. Councilmember Yarborough? Here. Mayor you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 0:51
Thank you. Anyone wishing anyone viewing this anyone wishing to provide public comment during public invited to be heard, must watch the live stream of the meeting and call in only when I open the meeting for public comment. callers are not able to access the meeting at any other time. Anyone wishing to provide comment on second reading or public hearing items should call in at that time and not during first call public invited to be heard. And anyone calling during first call public invited to be heard. With comments about second reading or public hearing items will be asked to call back in when second reading and public hearings are announced. The toll free call number is as it’s on your screen now. Actually, it’s 888-788-0099. Watch for the instructions to be displayed and write down the meeting ID when it is displayed at the beginning of the meeting. Wait for for me to open public comment and direct callers to call in. When I say to call in dial the toll free number into the meeting ID and when asked for your participant ID press the pound sign. Please mute the live stream and listen for instructions on the phone. callers will be called upon by the last three digits of their phone number and Comments are limited to three minutes per person. Each speaker must state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. Once done speaking, callers should just hang up. Thank you. We now need Can I have a motion to approve the January 11 2022. Regular Session minutes. So moved. Thank you Second. Second. It’s been moved by Councillor water seconded by Councillor Yarborough. All those in favor? Please raise your hand. All opposed? That passes unanimously. Do I have any motions for further agenda items from any of the counselors? Seeing none, we will move on to the city manager’s report. I do believe that assistant city manager Sandy cedar will be giving us our update on COVID-19.
Unknown Speaker 3:15
Mayor if I might interject just quickly, we did have one. And Eva Jessica will bring this up when we get there. But item 10 be regarding this Latin commercial center. The Times call had a publication error with that ordinance. So that item, we will need to table the heat and and push that forward. Staff is ready to give presentations. All is ready to go. But we’ll just need to continue that item. When we get there. Eva can direct that I just wanted to make you aware and listeners aware.
Unknown Speaker 3:50
Okay, I do see that it’s going to be continued to February 8 2020. Thank you, Don. You bet. It Sandy.
Unknown Speaker 4:04
Right, Mayor and members of council. Let me share my screen and I’ll share with you the latest COVID data. This is from the Boulder County illness site. Let me just make sure everyone can see me. Yes. Can you see that? Okay, great. Thank you. So this is the overall positivity rate that’s happening right now new tests that are been testing positive. As you can see this number is going down. But I’m going to show you in what that looks like relatively. This is our positivity rate. You may remember that 5% positivity rate is what public health officials have said is the place where hospitals can easily keep up and we’re still at 20.8%. You’ll see the drop in cases here in a moment, but it’s still relatively high. So this is the seven day incidence of new COVID cases by age group. This new box that you see On the right hand side does include a case reporting lag. As you may have remembered from previous reports, we’ve had a little bit of a lag in people getting their test results that used to be, you know, 24 to 48 hours. And now we’re seeing test times as long as five days. But I do believe that, that in the meeting with Boulder County today that that lag is beginning to catch up. So you can kind of see where it evens out and then starts to drop that evening out section is where the where the lag in reporting happened. So we are going down in overall cases for almost all age groups, but it’s still very high in comparison to other months. Let me show you the overall. So here’s the overall. And again, you’ll see that the shaded area is a case reporting lag that Boulder County is reporting so it took a little longer to get results. But we are starting to see a downturn. Dale just let me know also that we’re starting to see that in wastewater, the numbers are still high overall, certainly way over capacity for hospitals, we are seeing a few less hospitalizations. But unfortunately, we are seeing a higher death rate over the last week or so. So it’s it’s important for people to make sure that you’re continuing your precautions, and keeping yourself safe. So this is even though this is showing us sharp decline, some of that is because the case reporting lag, and then part of it is also, you know, still way too high to be able to handle so. So I’d be happy to answer any questions about the COVID data. And then I have another update to share with you.
Unknown Speaker 6:48
Mayor Thank you, Mayor Peck. While the slide was not included for the wastewater readings, I know that’s kind of a seven day leading indicator from at least past presentations. What are we seeing there?
Unknown Speaker 7:07
So when I took a peek earlier, it was not quite ready. I can see if I can if I can pull it back up. This point wood Dale told me let me just find the note when Dale just mentioned to me was that the the loading numbers are down by a factor of about three. So a fairly significant but still relatively high, a bit higher than the Delta surge last November. So I think it is leading in the same direction as we’re starting as we’re seeing with the data that you’re seeing the lagging data. So it is going down. It’s going down rapidly, but it’s still overall much higher than we’ve seen in the past.
Unknown Speaker 7:41
Sure. So regardless of the the lagging data from Bullitt, County Public Health, we are starting to see decline also indicators from from wastewater. So that’s very good to know. Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 7:53
Yeah, you bet.
Unknown Speaker 7:57
Your packet if there aren’t any other questions, and I would love to share also another update. I do believe that the last Council meeting, Council Member Hidalgo fairing had suggested being able to offer something to the cities that were affected by the marshal fire. An opportunity just recently came up over the last week or so where we believe that we could provide some staffing opportunities and staff to be able to assist the cities in their recovery. And so one of the ideas from from Tim whole from our trainees office was maybe rather than you know, writing a cheque or giving giving money directly from one city to another, you will soon hopefully February aid see an intergovernmental agreement between at least the city of Longmont in the city of Lewisville that we are going to be providing some staff support. The agreement is that they will pay us for that staff support. But you could if you want to do and give me direction tonight we could say that the first some amount of money of that staff support would be covered by the city. So that’s just an opportunity for you while we’re drafting the intergovernmental agreement and Harold asked me to share it with you
Unknown Speaker 9:06
Councilwoman Hidaka fairing so, um,
Unknown Speaker 9:10
you know, I, I really liked that idea. I just wanted to show like an act of of good faith and you know, and just some neighborly love to our, to our Boulder County residents, you know, afflicted with the fire. So, you know, I would like to make a motion to to utilize staff to for that for this purpose. Yeah, I do like the idea of waiving some fees, but you know, I really seek your your recommendation on on how much what would be reasonable. You know, I trust you
Unknown Speaker 9:49
with sound sounds good. I think that’s the general direction that we would be looking for. So what we’ll do is I’ll work with Harold because you’ll be seeing that intergovernmental agreement, like I said, hopefully at your February 8 meeting and we’ll we’ll use that the guideline that I think that you had brought up before, right around $20,000 or so in staffing support, so I’ll certainly bring that up to them. And you’ll see that information in the IGA on February 8. Okay, so
Unknown Speaker 10:16
really all you needed from us was to make that motion and then you know, hopefully somebody out there would second it if, if this is where council wants to go.
Unknown Speaker 10:26
It looks like
Unknown Speaker 10:28
yeah, I’m sorry. Motion. It is. Oh, second.
Unknown Speaker 10:31
All right. Thank you, Councillor waters? Um, I do have an amendment, but it’s in the form of a question, probably to Eugene. Can the reimbursement for staff salary come out of council contingency? I don’t know.
Unknown Speaker 10:50
Marin Council UDMA. City Attorney. I believe it can be used for any purpose. Okay. It’s directed by city council and don’t know if our chief financial officer has any other thoughts on that?
Unknown Speaker 11:06
I guess I don’t have any.
Unknown Speaker 11:08
Okay. Thank you. So a Councilwoman Hidalgo flowing Would you accept a friendly amendment to your motion that the IGA is with? Let me see the staff donation. Time donation is a paid for out of the council contingency funds.
Unknown Speaker 11:31
Yes, Mayor. I will accept that as a friendly amendment.
Unknown Speaker 11:35
Okay. Would you second that amendment? Councillor waters? I will. Okay. So, let me see if I can restate that for the vote of Councillor Hidalgo ferry made a motion to donate through an IGA with Lewisville staff time to be reimbursed through our council contingency fund. All those in favor? Raise your hand. Up opposed. That passes unanimously. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 12:12
Thank you, council and mayor pack that ends my report on behalf of Harold.
Unknown Speaker 12:16
Great. Thanks a lot. So we have three special reports and presentations tonight. The first one is going to be a W EE W E F project project. Excellent word where I can’t talk tonight. And it is going to be presented by John Gage in jimang stead I would also like Lim bro atus who is the past president of water environment Federation, please turn on your cameras. And we’ll have that presentation. Yeah, great.
Unknown Speaker 12:48
Mayor Peck members of council it’s really a privilege to be able to provide an introduction for the presentation award this evening. For those unfamiliar with the renewable natural gas project about four years ago, the city started and evaluation to beneficially utilize a resource called biogas. And that’s a valuable byproduct that we generate at the city’s wastewater treatment plant and nearly two years into the operation of this new system. We’re seeing really great success turning that biogas into renewable natural gas a sustainable vehicle fuel for our waste services fleet. We’re offsetting 90,000 gallons of diesel fuel period per year with clean renewable natural gas. We’re reducing our carbon footprint by the equivalent of 200 cars off the road per year, we’re generating 300 to $400,000 in revenue by selling renewable credits really a lot of great successes. It wouldn’t have happened without the input from from our fleet. We services group wastewater staff, and we really believe reporting back on these projects is vitally important. This is this isn’t the citizens of Longmont can know that when they approve the sale of bonds and for its utility infrastructure. There are tangible benefits to the community. So I’m honored to be able to introduce the past president of the water environment Federation, otherwise known as WEF Lin brought us to present the Word of counsel. Well, it is certainly
Unknown Speaker 14:10
my pleasure and honor to be here with you tonight. I come to you from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And it’s a very impressive how well run everything is you’re no wonder it seems to be part of the culture. It’s not just about this award that may be true and all that you do. The water environment Federation is an organization a global organization, although the bulk of our membership is in North America, representing the roughly about 35,000 members who primarily work in wastewater and stormwater trying to keep our water clean for for public health and recreation, fisheries and just basic enjoyment of life. And every year, we give an award a project Excellence Award is presented at our conference, the largest water conference in the world, that takes place in September October of each year, usually in Chicago or New Orleans. And these awards are selected by a committee of peers. It’s a pretty tough competition process, there are more than 16,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment plants in the United States. And then you can magnify that across the world. And any of them can apply for this work. And this year, and we were very honored to be able to give the award the project excellence awards to the city of Longmont for this renewable biogas project. The and one of the really cool things about this project, it’s no wonder that it was selected when you look at the when you look at the project, and how well thought out it is and how well it’s integrated into everything the city does. Its exemplary, and it’s exactly not just because it’s a good project well designed, well executed, useful to the city, but because it really fits in with your sustainability plan. We believe that the wastewater sector has the ability to go energy neutral, there is so much energy is embedded in wastewater, that can be supporting the not just the wastewater processes that we need to keep our water clean, but to go above and beyond and supporting their communities in their sustainability goals. Longmont is an example that will be held up to the world, there’s no reason that other cities can’t do similar projects. And having Longmont as an example for us also look to is is really a gift to everybody. So thank you so much for the work that your city has done. Certainly, yes, there’s the award itself, which maybe that goes in John’s office, I’m not sure where it will hang. But you really should be very pleased with the work of John and his colleagues and those in the other parts of the city departments that that are part of this. And I think it will contribute not just to sustainability, but to public health by getting those diesel trucks cleaned up with renewable natural gas and of course helping the financial bottom line. So congratulations, and and thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being a leader and for supporting this kind of work.
Unknown Speaker 17:27
Thank you for choosing our city. And I personally am really proud of this whole project. It’s a we are kind of the envy of other cities in Colorado for doing this. And that’s great. Thanks a lot, John. And Jim instead.
Unknown Speaker 17:46
Looks like John has the ultimate renewable energy
Unknown Speaker 17:48
motor transportation now looking behind him at his bike.
Unknown Speaker 17:54
I agree. Thank you. Our next invitees. Oh, thank you for traveling all the way to Colorado. zoomed in our next presentation is going to be the Wortman neighborhood park.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
Name adoption.
Unknown Speaker 18:15
I am excited to hear this. The presentation is going to be by Steen Steve rams Weller, David Bell and Adriana Perec. pareja, so would you please turn on your cameras and give us his presentation?
Unknown Speaker 18:30
Sure. Good evening, Mayor Peck council members. My name is Steve rands Weller, I’m a Senior Project Manager and public works for natural resources. Tonight, I’m very pleased to bring to you not only the proposed Park naming but also the Draft Master Plan for the park. I have a slideshow that was going to start with Dallas. I think that’s you or somebody. There you go. Thank you. We’ve been working on this park. Go ahead. Next slide. We’ve been working we bought this property in the early 90s. You can see with the next slide. This is located south uphill road. And east of Main Street. You can see in the upper left of the slide that quill Campus Recreation Center Museum location. There is in green, the future community park which is the sisters property that we have purchased. We do not have any plans currently for permanent improvements on that but the workman site which is just west of that it’s an 8.3 acre sites. That is the sites under consideration tonight. I do add the caveat that we will be building with this workman project an irrigation pond that will ultimately irrigate 99 acres which is the workman site, the sister site and the two school sites that are up to southville Road there. So we are making an effort to use non potable water where we can both for the city projects as well as the school district. That parcel that’s right above The decision community park label is the Innovation Center, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. And then the district partial to the east is a future school site. Right now they are talking about making that a community Montessori school, but I don’t believe that’s been finalized yet. So next slide. Actually, do you mind backing up, Don. One thing that I wanted to mention is that this is the oldest area of town without a neighborhood park or a park itself. Serving it within a half mile without major obstructions. The closest Park to this the countryside village in the quail Ridge subdivision is the Kennametal Park, which is about a quarter or a half mile or three quarter mile to the west, but yet across Main Street to get there. So we’re really pleased to fill in a gap in this part of Longmont, countryside village is an older neighborhood. And we’re really pleased to make sure that we have some recreational opportunities for folks that live there with this future park, next slide.
Unknown Speaker 21:07
So after we
Unknown Speaker 21:08
went through a pretty thorough public process, we held a lot of meetings at Burlington elementary school, I met with teachers and children as well as three public meetings with well, invitees. Some kids came was mostly adults. We heard a lot of got a lot of feedback from the public, came up with three different concepts, brought those before the public and sort of melded those three concepts together within our budgets, and came up with this draft master plan, which includes, as with all of our parks, the standard restrooms, shelters, playgrounds, the interesting thing in the south east corner of the park site, you’ll see that little spiral there, that is going to be a landforms sort of a hill because it’s a pretty flat location. And you can see some of the graphics we’re looking at ground slides for kids to slightly walk to the top of the hill and slide down the ground slide down into the playground at the bottom. Another thing that’s incorporated into this master plan is Pickleball. I’m sure council members have hurtle a lot from pickleball. Community it’s one of the fastest growing sports in the country. And we are showing two courts right now. Our Senior Services staff have applied for a grant from the states there’s a slight possibility we can increase that from two to four. But right now we’re we are budgeted for two courts at this location. As with every park you have a big open lawn space for people to use for picnicking, kicking around a ball flying a kite Frisbee. What have you. As we’ve found with a lot of our parks, people like to walk in circles. So we have a loop trail that loops around that that turf area. We also are making connections over to the blue Vista development to the north. We have included a an off leash dog exercise area, which is similar to the exercise areas we have in blue skies rough and ready and Steven day Park. We’re finding that especially in this area, there’s a lot of people that don’t have yards or they have yards that are very small. This is an area where we can people can walk their dog to the park and let the dog run within this off leash area. So it’s a great amenity for folks that do have pets, that that live in this local area to be able to exercise their animals. One thing we heard a lot from is we are lacking in disc golf. Right now we have disc golf courses at Dry Creek Park, which is not very well used. Miller Park which is heavily used in Clark Centennial Park, which is heavily used. We met with the disc golf community and what their thoughts were were that we would have a youth course we don’t have currently having a Youth Corps it’s shorter holes. And it helps the kids who can’t throw the frisbee as far as well as adults who want to try to hone in on some of their their chipping and putting the shorter holes do have benefit to that as well. So we have a six hole course shown here. There is the possibility that if this takes off, we could expand that into the sisters parcel as we develop that property in the future. So there is some some synergy with future developments make that six hole course an 18 hole course or something along those lines. The in addition to the pickleball we’re including a little basketball area for people to play basketball, and then the besides the typical landscaping, we have some wildflower gardens, and then something we are including in some of the areas within the turf is we found that a lot of communities are doing this putting posts up with eye hooks in them and the people can bring their hammocks and bring their slacklines and come and practice doing you know, well hanging out in your hammock or practice practice slacklining we don’t provide that materials because they tend to disappear, provide the supports is something that other companies have done. And it’s a relatively inexpensive thing to do. And try to encourage people to use our parks for different things that they want to use them for. So, Mayor pack we have the option of either asking council to make a recommendation for whether you’d like to approve this master plan, or make changes to it now, or we can go in the park naming and then you can make your comments after that, which do you prefer?
Unknown Speaker 25:35
Um, let’s go into Let’s complete the presentation, go into the park naming and then give people time to think about what what they would like to do with us.
Unknown Speaker 25:46
That sounds great. Next slide, please. So it’s been a while since we’ve named the park in the city, I think the drag Creek Park was last park we named as counsel may or may not know when it’s included in your packet. ordinance 13.203 o of the city code dictates how we can name our parks. And one of the criteria that is pertinent to this presentation is that public land can be named after a person or family with one of the more of the following being met, has displayed outstanding long term civic commitment and made significant contributions to the betterment of the community has contributed service to the community above and beyond normal has made noteworthy contributions in the development improvement of public land and recreation activities in the community has been prominent in the history of the development of the city, the county or is worthy of public commemoration. The perform acts state or national significance as homesteaded or was owner of the public land property, or is contributed significant funds for this specific public land. So we solicited names from the public, we did that at the public meetings, we did an online request, as well as I think there was an article in the paper that made or gave people that information to contact me and make recommendations. I’ve included the 60 Plus recommendations in your packet. Some are very silly, some are wonderful. And we brought those to the Parks and Rec advisory board in the middle of 2019. And they none of those, those names were jumping off the page at them. And in our discussion with the Parks Board. They realized that there was not any parks within the city that were named after resident or anybody with a Latino heritage. So Parks Board asked staff to just look at the naming suggestions, and figure out where what might be the most appropriate thing to present the council. So that was some direction that wasn’t really comfortable with making that decision myself. So I spoke with Karen Rooney and her staff. And they read they reached out to members of the attenex local Phoenix group and came up with a name you know, Gallo, as I’m sure most of the council members know, know, Mr. Gallow, was a longtime advocate for Hispanic and Latino rights within the community. His daughter is going to be here presenting here in a moment. But Council on January 5 2021, made a proclamation to declare that de Nino Gallo day because of his service to the community. So I think that speaks volumes to what this gentleman accomplished. I’m sorry, I don’t believe I ever met him. But what this gentleman has accomplished within the community. So with that, I’d like to turn it over to Adriana to go ahead and speak some points about her father.
Unknown Speaker 29:03
Hello, everyone. Oh, hi, good evening, council members, Mayor pack and community members. My name is at the end of the day, and I’m honored to be here tonight. On behalf of my family. I appreciate the opportunity to address you all and speak on why this park should be named after my stepfather Nino Gallo. Of course I can talk about his accomplished career of over 25 years, and the many awards that he received during his lifetime. I can speak about his role as a housing manager for Casa De Anza. And how this would be the perfect location to have a park named after him. I could also highlight how January that has been declared as Nino gallotti as an acknowledgement of appreciation for his tremendous positive impact on our community. His list of accomplishments stand alone and are worthy of having a landmark named after him because This park would also be the first park named after a Latinx. Leader, I could also express the significant impact that this park would have on our Latinx youth, and how his name could spark curiosity and inspiration, because as we know, for presentation is power. However, tonight, I would like to talk about who he wrote who he was to our family, and how much he meant to me. My stepfather was an extraordinary man. He was a man who had the ability to connect with people of all ages and backgrounds. He taught me the importance of treating people with generosity and respect. And that at the end of a long day of work, people don’t tend to remember you for what you did or did not do for them. But remember you for how you made them feel. You see, you know, is so much more than an inspirational leader. He was a father, a husband, a brother, a grandfather and a stepfather. He was a family man who loved children and nothing would make him happier than spending time together as a family. The fact that there’s an opportunity to have a park named after him gives me the biggest smile, because I know he would be so honored to know that even after his passing, he still has the ability to bring people together. But having this part named after him, you would not only honor him, but also the community he dedicated his life to. On behalf of my family and the community. Alaska you please consider our humble request to have this future community park be named the Nino gala Park. Thank you so much for your time.
Unknown Speaker 31:40
Thank you. Adriana. Counselors, do any of you want to make comments or changes to this master plan? Counselor, Councillor Hidalgo firing? Did you have your hand up?
Unknown Speaker 31:53
No, I was scratching my nose.
Unknown Speaker 31:55
Okay. Councillor Martin?
Unknown Speaker 32:01
If no one else has any objections? I think it’s a lovely design. And I would like and it’s an appropriate name. It’s appropriate location. And I just like to move the whole package.
Unknown Speaker 32:16
Okay, do we have a second? A second? Second?
Unknown Speaker 32:20
We have three seconds. So that’s good. I would like to say that we will or you will have a plaque explaining, you know, Gallo and his service to the community in the park.
Unknown Speaker 32:34
We hadn’t considered that. That’s a great suggestion. I’m sure I can work with the services to come up with something for that. That’s not a problem.
Unknown Speaker 32:41
That would be lovely. I also have well as I do have a question, but let’s vote on this motion. All those in favor of accepting the masterplan. Please raise your hand. Those opposed? So that’s moves unanimously. Steve, when do you plan on having the construction begin on this? Is there a timeline?
Unknown Speaker 33:03
Yeah, hopefully here the next couple months. I’m shooting for March, April. And it’s about a year long construction. So we should have some sort of a grand opening next summer.
Unknown Speaker 33:12
Great. Thank you. This is exciting. Thank you. Councillor Hidalgo firing.
Unknown Speaker 33:20
So um, you know, I just want to express my enthusiasm and gratitude. The kids that I teach at Indian Peaks Elementary, actually all kind of the majority of them reside in countryside village, we have several students that in Gustus bonanza. So for them to have especially the kiddos who live in Gaza, to be able to to have the to be at this park and see, you know, Guy Gallo, and to have the park named after him. And that what that historical impact it I just feel like I’m all warm inside. I think it’ll be so empowering for them. And, you know, I do a lot of work with the Boulder County, or the history lab, Latino history project, I’m sorry. And, and so we look at leaders in our Latino community, the impacts that they’ve had in Boulder County. And so to be able to, to add this or for students to be able to see this right before them in a park that they they would frequent they could just walk to so that’s very exciting. So you know, I commend you all for your work, and I’m honored to support this.
Unknown Speaker 34:36
Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Hill doggo firing. That was one of the reasons why I reached out to the youth at Burlington Elementary, I had created a good relationship with the principal there when I was working on the left hand Creek flood control project as well as rebuilding Kanemoto park after the flood. And not only do you get awesome ideas from kids because they don’t have any budget for safety things in mind, but it’s a way to reach some fliers home telling people about the meetings so we were able to try to capture some of the families in that area. I think our public meetings but always open to other suggestions.
Unknown Speaker 35:09
Yes, yes. And also don’t forget Indian Peaks because the boundary or Burlington doesn’t see kids at Gus Esperanza or countryside village. They are bused to our school to Indian Peaks. So you know, in the future, don’t forget about us. We’re hidden, but we’re there. Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 35:29
Mayor Pro Tem.
Unknown Speaker 35:33
Thank you, Mayor Peck. He was an incredible privilege to work with Nino a few years back on voter registration issues. And so there were a number of very good candidates that were suggested for the naming of this park. But seeing Nino’s name on there, it just warms my heart and for him to be the first Latina X person to have their name immortalized, if you will, as a park in Longmont. There’s no better person. And so I’m very happy to see this. And very excited. So thank
Unknown Speaker 36:10
you. Well, Steve, I think that everybody agrees this is a great project. And we’re all extremely happy that it’s going to go forward.
Unknown Speaker 36:19
Thank you, Mary. Thank you, counsel. Have a great night. You too.
Unknown Speaker 36:24
So our last presentation tonight is led pays quarterly presentation by JESSICA ERICKSON, who is the CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership. Jessica.
Unknown Speaker 36:40
Sorry that somebody else was turning me on. Good evening. Well, good evening, Mayor Peck and council members. Thank you for your time this evening. As you said, I’m JESSICA ERICKSON president and CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership, and provide our q4 2020 111 GDP Impact Report, and will be relatively brief this evening. We have a couple of opportunities coming up for both you all and anybody who wishes to get some more detail about our 2021 impact in 2022. Outlook both at our quarterly all investor board meeting on the second Monday in February. And then and more notably, and again open to the general public our economic summit event on February 24. So with that, I’ll get into my report for this evening. So I’ll remind you as I always do, that within our I’m sorry, you can go to the next slide. That are the strategic objectives within the scope of services and work plan in our contract with the city include strengthening long months competitive position, marketing Longmont, nationally and globally, supporting the creation and retention of quality jobs, advancing opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation, and advocating on behalf of all Longmont businesses. Next, more specifically, long one EDPs contract with the city and work plan focus in the areas of talent, industry and
Unknown Speaker 38:16
impact.
Unknown Speaker 38:19
So we’ll start with our talent, object goals and objectives from again 2021. Next, with the first one being marketing and recruitment, so marketing in Longmont, again, nationally and globally to recruit new needed talent to our community. As we’ve talked about before, COVID-19 created a shift in how we do that and the markets in which we do that. I have some KPI updates on following slides. And then I’ll just mention we’ve talked about the workforce perception study we are in the process of developing our 2022 workforce perception study, and that will come out in second quarter of this year. Next so going into a little bit more detail on the talent attraction marketing campaign are see yourself in Longmont campaign, which involves a mix of media from paid search to social media advertising, and programmatic and retargeting display advertising. So primarily a digital campaign next. And our target markets based on our market assessment of what we’ve talked about before, which is oversupply of talent. So places that have a significant number of people that have the skills or degrees in some cases that employers here in Longmont would be seeking. And so those markets are Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Orange County and Denver next, and then hoping so we did send an updated version of this report. Apologies that that didn’t make it through to you. I do actually have KPI updates for through December 31 of this year instead of for the first 30 days. So we did launch the campaign in August. And so I’ll read those off to you. So through the September through December, we had 1.4 million campaign ad impressions 5400 clicks from our ad campaign. The top five user locations have bet so far Ben, Kansas, Colorado, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We had over 15,000 website users, averaging 3800 per month, September through December. Our top three ad groups based on the number of clicks have been our general talent acquisition ads, and specific talent acquisition adds within our Business Catalyst and knowledge creation and deployment sectors. Los Angeles, interestingly, is pulling better than all other markets on LinkedIn specifically, which is where we focus more on the career aspects of relocating to Longmont, and has had the highest level of overall engagement, while Denver Phoenix in Orange County have had the highest engagement with ads, specifically across all platforms. One of the things we’ve been asked, I think, by both you and our board of directors is all of these numbers look great and impressive, certainly. And but what are they? But what do they look like in context to so in contacts to other marketing campaigns or to our previous campaigns, so future versions of this report will provide some context that tells you whether or not 1.4 million? Well, it sounds good is really good relative to similar ad campaigns or our previous ad campaign. So we’ll have that with our next report. Next slide. Our second talent objective is development of talent, intelligence, data and infrastructure. And so most notably, this year, we worked on the expansion of our state of industry report, which we released on January 5 of 2022, and was distributed to nearly 1300 recipients with some PR exposure related to that report as well. Hopefully, you all had a chance to look at that, but happy to send that out. Again, if you have not, we had the opportunity to include information about our existing local and regional education and workforce development systems to 20 of our primary industry expansion attraction prospects, as well as main six direct connections between our local 16 direct connections between our local and regional education and workforce development systems. Through the end of last year, as we continue to migrate to our new CRM, we’ll be able to write some more detail and tracking related to those connections, to try to get to some more transactional results oriented data around what happens once those connections are made. Next slide. Next, we’ll go into our industry objectives next. So the first is our first industry objective is really to two primary industry expansion and retention. 1.1 being the use of state and local incentives, and we are actually we have moved work on updating the city incentive ordinance to this year. We weren’t able to get to that last year with all other things going on with city staff and with my staff, we were able to leverage one city of Longmont economic development incentive that was the like that incentive we have a couple others in the hopper, we haven’t been able to leverage any state of Colorado incentives in 21. But we’ll seek to do so where there’s opportunity to going forward generating 50 new primary industry prospect prospects in 2021, we actually fell short of that goal and generated 34 new prospects. One thing I’ll say about that is that we only track vetted qualified prospects. And what’s happening more and more frequently is that we’re getting RFPs and expressions of interest in Longmont, where we don’t have the real estate to be able to respond to those inquiries. And so we don’t count those those as prospects if we’re just getting that information in and sending back information that says that we’re not able to meet your needs from a real estate perspective.
Unknown Speaker 44:23
And then I have some detail are active prospect pipeline report in a couple of slides. But going on to the next slide, talk a little bit about our North Metro enterprise on metrics. So we had 272 companies pre certify and 67 So far, have used have certified and actually use the tax credits that they pre certified for. So we were able to generate nearly half a million dollars in tax credits that were associated with $12 million in capital investment. 87 employees trained $750,000 in r&d investment In 115 net new jobs within the North Metro enterprise on next slide. Right, so this is our active pipeline prospect pipeline. As of the end of last year, we had 24 projects still active within that pipeline, that again, if we’re successful with all of them would generate 4300 jobs with an average wage of just over $80,000 A year and $414.5 million in capital investment. We did next slide. Have a few wins in 2021 with the AGC biologics acquisition of the former avexis former Amgen former AstraZeneca life science campus force the light deck manufacturing facility that’s under construction now. Cool beats ice cream company and Tetra Tech at the retention of Tetra Tech here in Longmont in new office space that they’ll be moving into shortly. That represents just over 600 net new jobs the city of Longmont next second industry objective relates to entrepreneurial development, we were able to deploy at $40,000 and startup grants to innovate Longmont companies. During the fourth quarter of last year. Those companies include winter winds, robotics and aerospace robotics company, momentum optics, a custom glass optics company, UB foods, a company that makes gluten free crackers that are distributed nationally, and indigo, an education technology company. And lastly, we’ll talk about our impact objectives. Next slide. So the first is associated with our advanced on what 2.0 collective impact initiatives, I’ll remind you that we did really realign our collective impact working groups. So we now have working groups force specific strategic initiatives, of which we have six currently active initiatives. So six currently active working groups, we continue to work work on the development of the data dashboard associated with advanced on what you point out to be able to measure our progress against our initial market assessment that informed the advanced on what 2.0 strategy we’ve identified a vendor as a data aggregator and visualization tool for that and expect to launch that by the end of this quarter, this first quarter of 2022. Excellent. And the current initiatives that are active are no wrong door ecosystem for entrepreneurs. The slope project, which is formerly the maker block, accessible and affordable childcare, the River District, the ramp, manufacturing incubator, facility and prosper Longmont are attainable Housing Coalition. Next slide. Our next impact objective was to increase private sector funding for economic development. You’ll see in the next slide that from a traditional fundraising perspective, we did not achieve that. But we were able to supplement those funds were experiencing the same things that all nonprofits across the many nonprofits across the country I shouldn’t say all are experiencing in the wake of COVID, which is a drop in funding throughout the uncertainties. So we were able to pursue and security PPP loans in 2021, totaling $163,000, to supplement the funding that we lost from our private sector fundraising activities. And we have since had both of those forgiven. So those become grants that we are not responsible to pay back. So those were a lifeline for us to get through 2021 in some uncertain times, but we have launched a new fundraising campaign. That has been it’s a multi year fundraising campaign that has been so far at very successful, and we expect it to continue to be in 2022. We will, of course, have updates and reports on our progress throughout 2022. With that for you as well. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 49:13
I did catch a typo here, right before I jumped on that 2021 total number should be 640,000, not 690. So for those of you that I know are doing the math, I look at you, Dr. Waters. I do recognize that that is bad back, and that should say 640. So you can see that we did have continued to have a drop in private sector funding, although there was a little bit of a timing issue associated with that. So it’s not as bad as it looks as we ended a previous fundraising campaign and started a new one now for 2022 320 24. So certainly a drop indeed but not once we look at because we look at it from a cash perspective, we don’t account on an accrual basis. Once we look at the timing issues, it’s a little less significant than what you what this table would suggest. And then our final impact objective is the growth and success of our leadership council or aspire Leadership Council, on which we currently have 30 members, that our representative of primary industry finance, real estate, construction, local business, legal and marketing. So a broad array array of expertise that are coming to the table to provide their both financial resources as well as expertise to some of our more aspirational objectives and initiatives as an organization. One of the things I’ll note is that they I’m sorry, you can go to the next slide. One of the things I’ll note is that our leadership council has provided 100% of the funding through 2021 for all of our national marketing campaign efforts, so none of that is coming out of the city contract funds. And then they have also founded the Aspire Fund, which is a fund that that a portion of their private sector dollars go into, again to support some of our more aspirational initiatives that aren’t included in the annual annual contract and work plan that we have with the city of long ones. So those include things like the technical management assessment project that we did in partnership with the DDA and David Starnes, with civil struct strategy and design. And the seed funding for prosper. Longmont was provided through that private sector Aspire fund, the primary focus areas, I think, not surprisingly, of our leadership council are right now workforce housing and talent. Next slide, and you can go to the next one. So general overview economic indicators. As of the q4 data run from MC, there were just over 55,000 jobs in the Longmont area at the end of the year, which would represent a 1.9% job growth for the year across all industries. This is slightly above national growth rate projection of 1%. And the preliminary employment rate for November 2021, the most current available at the local level, it’s 4%. By comparison, statewide, unemployment was 4.4. Boulder County as a whole was 3.5 and nationally as 4.2. Next slide, getting a little bit more granular and into our targeted industry clusters, knowledge creation and deployment. Our r&d sector has been our most consistent sector as they continue to see growth through 2019 2020. And now from 2020 to 2021, at 1.3% 1.5% annually. Our Business Catalyst sector and the businesses that we say are in the business of helping other businesses do business. So also continued to see growth growth or pandemic and that growth has increased to 2.4% in 2021. And of course, our manufacturing and food and beverage sectors were hardest hit during the COVID 19 pandemic. While our manufacturing sector is starting to recover with growth in the last year with job growth in the last year. Our food and beverage sector I think comes as no surprise to anyone continues to struggle, though. Job losses have slowed over the past year. I believe that’s my last slide. And with that, I would take any questions that you have.
Unknown Speaker 53:29
Thank you, Jessica. Do we have any questions from Council? Or comments? Councillor dewaters?
Tim Waters 53:37
I guess just to say thanks for the report. And to acknowledge Jessica, I think I saw a social media post was recognized quite recently, is one of the most influential business leaders in northern Colorado. Is that correct? Jessica?
Unknown Speaker 53:53
Thank you, Councilman Watters, yes, that is correct.
Tim Waters 53:55
So congratulations on that. And I think it’s well deserved.
Unknown Speaker 53:59
Congratulations. Thank you. Great. Well, that looks like our last presentation tonight. Enjoy the rest of the evening, Jessica. And it’s time now to call in for first first public and invited to be heard first call for public invited to be heard. The information is now being displayed on the screen please mute the live stream and dial in now. We’ll take a five minute break to give everyone time to get dialed in.
Unknown Speaker 59:22
Mayor Peck, we’re about 10 seconds out from the five minute Mark
Unknown Speaker 59:26
Thank you, Dallas. Do we have anybody in the waiting room?
Unknown Speaker 59:36
Yes, we have two callers.
Unknown Speaker 59:38
Okay, let’s get them in.
Unknown Speaker 59:42
Perfect. All right. I will start caller with the last four digits 414 Color 414 Would you unmute yourself that is star six on your device.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Hey caller four one for my en
Unknown Speaker 1:00:05
yes you are in. Can you hear us?
Unknown Speaker 1:00:08
I can. Good evening Mayor pack and city council members Serna, Larry 534 Emery Street. Tonight I want to talk to you about the historic preservation commission, as outlined on the web page hpcs role is to protect, enhance, and preserve properties of historic geographic and architectural significance that also reflect the city’s heritage. And that description of HPC. It also clearly states that they can provide input on other topics of interest. So in 2020, with the possibility of meeting 12 times, the Commission met seven times. But that was with the onset of COVID. So it’s very understandable for the low number of meetings held. But in 2021, again, HPC only met seven out of the 12 possible opportunity, with a commission having zoom down pat, and it also being long on 200 and 50th. Birthday, it was extremely disappointing. So on January 6 of this year, I went to log in on HP C’s first meeting, but it was canceled. So what I would like the city council to do is to encourage HPC the importance of the role they play in long months preservation and the importance of the role they play a citizen serving on a commission, you could direct HPC to provide input on other topics that support preservation. And as a matter of fact, I have a suggestion. The historic Eastside neighborhood has long lines oldest home made with the oldest material, and the majority of the homes were built as one story homes, which cannot stand up to the rigors of a second story. So if a homeowner wants to add a second story to their home, their only option is to demolish it. There’s a perfect example of this that you can do at a 26 Emory Street. Presently there’s a large pit and in the future, there’ll be a new two storey home. I would like HPC to enhance preservation, which is part of their mission statement by investigating and discussing ways to address the unique set of circumstances outside of demolition. The majority of homes within the historic Eastside neighborhood are enlarge, lots and homeowners could expand on the backside of their home. This is a unique way to preserve architectural heritage, while still addressing the needs of the homeowners who need to increase livable space. During this time of extreme housing needs, it’s important that the city has more tools on their preservation belt than demolition. historic neighborhoods are lost one home at a time. So please direct historic preservation commission to meet on a regular basis and with their expertise guide the city on enhancing ideas and code ideas that will preserve long months architectural heritage. I can’t thank you enough Mayor pack in some some members for your dedication to the citizens of Longmont. Thank you, Sharon.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:31
Perfect. And with that we will have color with the last three digits 879 Color 879 Will you please unmute?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:42
Yeah, let’s how many people are in the room?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:45
This is our last caller. Hey, caller 879. I see they’re surprised.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:49
Hello. All right. This is Christina Williams. I talked to you guys briefly last night. You did 117 coil. Okay. Okay. All right. Good evening. Thank you for your service. I wanted to thank Michael for calling me today and speaking with me this afternoon, who answered a lot of my questions about the smart meter rollout. Dome after reading about hundreds of 1000s of smart meter recalls. They’re all recalled for overheating. And about the hundreds of residential fires blamed on smart meters in California, Texas, Illinois, Nevada, and all over Canada. I worry about the safety of the smart meters. The analog meters didn’t have the capability to be switched on and off. And the addition of the switches to the meters is a cause for concern. These switches is what creates arcing and create heat. I’ve heard about Silla noids controlled relays that melted themselves into the on position due to being turned on and off repeatedly. This is exactly what happens when the power goes out. Sometimes it comes on and then it goes back off again and then back on back off again. And so It’s possible that if we’re using these solenoids that could be happening, or if they’re using solid state FETs, then if they’re using solid state Feds if they’re being over overpowered, sometimes they can just pop like a capacitor basically explode. So, a retired electronics professor, his name is Curtis Bennett, is fighting the installation of smart meters all over Canada. For these exact reasons. Will there be a fund for those whose homes have been burned to the ground by these smart meters? Let’s talk transmissions 900 megahertz at one watt, just for a few seconds, every hour or so. Sounds harmless, especially considering the power radiating from all of our cell phones that we use every day. And all the other sources of transmission in my house. But I could turn those off if I wanted to. I can’t turn the smart meter off. And I remind you that electromagnetic waves, they add reflections of waves add. So one watt from your meter one watt from the neighbor’s meter, who knows what hotspots could be created, in my yard or even in my house? The Delta, excuse me, the deleterious side effects of electromagnetic fields are well documented cellular damage, DNA damage, and cancer very well known. There are members of our community who claim that they are particularly sensitive to EMF fields emissions, are we going to deny their health and just in the name of progress move forward? Could we compromise? Would it be possible for the city to set up these smart meters so that they only transmit like once or twice a day? The American Cancer Society published an article admitting that smart meters have not been studied to see if they cause other health problems, like heaven forbid interference with electromechanical devices. Does anyone on the list to receive a smart meter have a pacemaker? For the course of what course of action will be taken up in fields caught?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:09
Uh huh. Thank you. Yes, I do three minutes. And that’s all you’re allowed. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention, and for speaking. Thank you have a good night, YouTube.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:24
And there are no other colors on your pack.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
Okay, great. We are going to go on with the consent agenda. I’m just going to make a reminder to counselors that this is going to be a very long meeting so we can adhere to the five minutes remark and comment rule and I do want you to know that I am not timing. The whole presentation of staff answers that is not part of your five minutes. It is just your five minutes. So with that, can we have the consent agenda read?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:00
Absolutely. Mayor Peck Thank you. Nine days ordinance 20 2204. A bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the river annexation number two, generally located north of Boston Avenue and west of Francis Street and zoning the property NPF public public hearing and second reading scheduled for February 8 2020 to 90 is resolution 20 2207 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving a voluntary alternative agreement for the Chrisman to affordable housing development as satisfaction of the city’s inclusionary housing requirements. Nine C is resolution 2208. A resolution of long City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for the use of the Criminal Justice Information System for licensing application background check. 90 is resolution 20 2209. A resolution of Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the United States of America for Small Business Administration grant funding for shuttered venue operators. Thank you do
Unknown Speaker 1:09:05
any of the councillors want to pull any of these items? Seeing none, can I have a motion to move the consent agenda? Councillor Martin? You’re muted. There you go.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:21
I move the consent agenda.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:23
Do I have a second? Councillor Yarbro seconded that has been Moved by Councillor Martin seconded by Councillor Yarborough. All those in favor? Raise your hand. All those post that passes unanimously. Now we’re going to do ordinance on second reading and public hearings on any matter. It’s okay, I’m just thinking I have to charge my phone. That’s why I edit lapse there for a minute. It’s kind of it’s time now to call in for the second reading to speak on anything on the second reading and public hearing items I would ask everyone regardless of what item you’re going to be speaking on to please dial in now and we will call you when your item comes up so we’ll take a five minute break and we’ll be back to hear your comments Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:31
I’d like to stay to the public that is calling in on the second public invited to be heard that if you’re calling in on the Costco development, now is the time to call in on that as well. Not just the items on second reading
Unknown Speaker 1:13:55
may or may help the public if we shared with him the three items. Sorry, let me turn my camera on are the Winair lease extension is on public hearing. This Latin commercial center rezoning is on public hearing and then Costco is the third public hearing items. So all three of those okay Holly now
Unknown Speaker 1:15:10
Mr. Peck, we’re about 10 seconds out from five minutes. I’m not seeing any callers right now. Would you like to give it another minute since you just made the made the three items to be heard? Or would you like to close this now?
Unknown Speaker 1:15:42
Mayor Peck, we’re at five and a half minutes. Would you like to keep it open a little bit longer? We currently have no callers in the chat.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:50
No, that’s good dose. Let’s shut it down and move on to the ordinance on second reading. Sounds good. Okay. ordinance 022 2201. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to execute a lease extension of real property known as 1140 Boston Avenue with Longmont Winair company, public hearing and second reading is scheduled for January 25 2022. There is no presentation, but Josh Sherman has some information on us. For us on this, Josh. is Josh Sherman on the call.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:36
Good evening, Mayor pack and members of council. But yes, the city of Longmont purchased this property back in 2016 as a part of the resilient st Brain Project. The project subdivided the property, and it’s about one and a half acres. And we subdivided and used about one half acre for development of the St. Brian creek channel and Greenway. And so the remaining parcel still has a building and a tenant in there that which is when their personal space. And so we have, I think over the past several years brought a couple of lease extensions to council for this tenant. And so we do so again the night as the current lease expires coming up in February. And so this is a two year lease extension for this property, which is similar to what we brought previously. And the lease extension includes a 3% annual rate increase. So each year annually, the monthly rent increases 3% annually. So that’s what’s been presented in the packet tonight and that we’re bringing in front of Council for approval.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:55
Okay. Do we have any questions or comments from councillors? No. Can I have a motion for 20 2201?
Unknown Speaker 1:18:06
Mayor? I’m sorry. My apologies. I think we need to technically open a public hearing. Oh, okay. That we don’t have callers.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:15
Right. So at this time, I’ll open the public hearing on ordinance 2020 2201. Is there anyone on the phone wishing to speak on this item?
Unknown Speaker 1:18:25
There are new callers Mayor pack. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:29
So I would close the public hearing. Do we have a motion for 20 2201?
Tim Waters 1:18:37
Move ordinance 20 2201.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:39
Thank you. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tim. You’re the motion was made by Councillor waters seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. All those in favor? All those opposed? That motion passes passes unanimously. The next moment the next ordinance we have this ordinance is not going to be up for motion. We are just going to hear it tonight. Eva has just ski I’m sorry I slaughtered that name is going to give us a presentation. The ordinance is a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the slate and commercial center rezoning from NP e non residential primary employment to PUD planned unit development, generally located at the northeast corner of state highway 119 and sletten drive public hearing and second reading scheduled for January 25 2022. Is
Unknown Speaker 1:19:44
Thank you Mayor Peggy council members Eva jetski Planning and Development Services. Let me just go over the procedure for tonight. I know there’s a little bit of confusion. So you had first reading of this rezoning ordinance back on January 11. And the purpose Public hearing was scheduled for tonight. The planning department mailed out notices of this public hearing to all residents within 1000 feet of this property. And 30 days ago, we gave the required notice to mineral rights owners of this property as well. And we also posted signs on this property more than 14 days ago. So we would know what we’ve heard this afternoon, late this afternoon was that the notice of this public hearing was not published in The Times call in a timely manner. So because of that technicality, we would have to extend your decision and open the public hearing one more time at the February 8 meeting. But nevertheless, because I’ve had so many notices out regarding owners, we thought it would be fair if we do our presentation, the applicants here to do their presentation. And if counsel has any questions, the applicant has brought their whole team here tonight already, that you asked them tonight if you had any questions about this. And then what we’ll do is if you have no other questions for staff and the applicant, we can table this or someone can make a motion to table and then we’ll bring it back February 8, reopen the public hearing from The Times called notification and then you can go ahead, we will bypass staff presentation and so forth. And then you can vote.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:28
Okay, great. Eva. So, do you want to give the present your presentation first or the applicants?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:35
Yes, yes, I will be going first. So Dallas, if you could queue up the staff presentation. That’d be great. Thank you so much. So next slide, please. So I’m just going to give you some nuts and bolts overview of what’s going on here with this application. And all of this was in your packet of materials. But this is a parcel at the northeast corner. Oh my goodness, there’s a typo state highway 119, not 19 and Layton drive. This is the neon colored outlined parcel you see there on the right off of cam Pratt Boulevard on the north side, or state highway 119. This whole parcel together is about 11 and a half acres. And it was brought in back in 1997 and zoned business light industrial. And it was as you know, this whole area is sort of a primary employment zone. We’ve got McLean Western to its west, the big food distribution facility, we’ve got the Smuckers food production facility kind of northeast of this property. We also have the new burrito kitchens food production facility to the east right next door. And so, you know as part of the 2016 overall envision Longmont comprehensive plan overhaul. We called this area primary employment instead of business light industrial. And then in 2018. When we did the big zoning overhaul to be consistent with Envision Longmont, we rezone it to non residential primary employment, which is the same as the light industrial but it just aligns with our comprehensive plan better. It’s also across the street from sandstone, ranch Park and kitty corner from the WalMart super center. And for a number of years, I know a number of developers have tried to come forward to develop this site. But it has had a lot of challenges. And even though it’s a very large parcel, it does present some unique challenges that are not present or were not present with folks like Smuckers burrito kitchen, McLean. And that is the fact that this property again, it has an unusual shape. There’s a parcel if you look on slate and drive, there’s like a little notch into this property like a little square. That’s a separate property kind of so it doesn’t completely go up. It kind of cuts around. It also hasn’t some topography issues. There’s a very steep slope makes it challenging to develop here. In addition, there’s 100 year floodplain on the east side, and also where that neon line kind of swings around that surround spring Gulch number two, which is a city Greenway. So any prospective development here is required to dedicate Greenway and then after you dedicate land for the Greenway. You have the 150 foot riparian setback buffer and so on and so and it’s in the floodplain so as you can see, there’s some challenges with trying to even though it’s a large site, it’s it’s not highly developable. Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:04
Thank you Dallas. And so as you can see on this picture on the right side, the gray, this is the primary employment zoning color. And on your left side where the gray touches the red, this is County Line Road. And then at the bottom, that’s highway 119, or Ken Pratt Boulevard. And so as you can see all of this area is primary employment except those uncolored parcels kind of in the center and those parcels are annexed parcels in Weld County. And as you can see, on the aerial picture on the bottom, this is the same area. But in an aerial picture format. Your McClain Western is there on your left side off of County Line Road. And as you can see the neon outlined parcel that’s this parcel. So if you look directly above it, that’s where it would lie in the gray. And they’re requesting to rezone that parcel from primary employment to planned unit development. So that neon outline parcel would be pink on the zoning map, if you will, if this was approved. And I’ll give you the reason for this. So an applicant came to us they wanted, they presented a market study and they said based on all of these site constraints and challenges, there’s really only about two acres of developable land, and that would be right there along Highway 119. So what we’d like to do is a fueling station, and with the convenience store and then an accompanying restaurant. And what we told them is while the convenience store and the restaurant are both permitted uses in the primary employment zone, the fueling station is not permitted. And so they requested to pursue a PUD zoning to allow the gas station land use and that is allowed. PUD zones are allowed or within accompanying what’s called an overall PUD plan that would be approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission. And so the PUD rezoning. These are permitted in circumstances where would help the city achieve a balance mix of land uses and tax base to achieve our overall economic development goals. And so I won’t get into the details here, because we’re trying to be concise, but the review criteria are in the staff report. And we’ve talked about these challenges with a site which I just outlined to you in the previous slide, which leaves very little area about two acres of really developable land. And the primary employment zoning district is really intended for obviously primary employers, right, large campuses, research and development, right, my manufacturing, and so two acres really doesn’t lend itself to that type of land use. And so the applicant when they get on they’re going to discuss their market study and how they landed on this land use as really the only developable option. Next slide. So Planning and Zoning Commission had a public hearing back in November, they made a unanimous vote to recommend conditional approval of this rezoning after looking at all of the facts. One of the conditions really doesn’t relate to councils item tonight, but the PUD plan, which was accompanying with the rezone, which was in their purview, they asked or not asked they required a six foot privacy fence on the north property line with a certain particular type of material to provide enhanced noise attenuation. And that’s related to the property the residential property to the north. But the second condition does relate to Council’s rezoning request tonight. And it says the applicant shall develop a plan for preservation of the site’s history through incorporation of appropriate reference references to be included with the development of the site with implementation in accordance with the historic preservation commission and city staff. And so again, when the Planning and Zoning Commission reviewed this, they were making a recommendation to council on the rezone but they had before them a preliminary subdivision plat and the overall D PUD plan for the the whole site which included the gas station that convenience store and restaurant. And so they did approve though the subdivision and the development plan contingent on council approving the rezoning. And so the overall PUD plan does propose removal of some existing structures. So I’m going to get to that in the next slide. Next slide please.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:09
Thank you Dallas. So before this went to Planning and Zoning Commission, we took this item before the historic preservation commission, because the PUD plan that was going before Planning and Zoning Commission proposed demolition of existing structures. So the PUD plan that was approved by the Commission contingent on approval of the rezone does propose to demolish these structures. And so the HPC talked about this last summer at a couple of their meetings. This property is the site of the historic Dickens farm homestead which was constructed in the late 1880s. And the house as you can see, from these pictures, there’s a house original house there. There’s a barn as you can see in the bottom right, and there’s a couple other outbuildings there is a garage is a shed, there was another outbuilding that as you can see has fallen over. The existing buildings are eligible for historic designation under four criterion, according to the HPC in the staff liaison, so the HPC made a recommendation that this project not move forward until a better historic preservation plan is in place. And again, as you saw on the previous slide, the Planning and Zoning Commission adopted a similar recommendation, asking the applicant to work with staff and the HPC through the site plan review process. The applicants will discuss this further in their presentation and they will answer those questions. But they did provide a structural analysis to the historic preservation commission estimating that the cost to preserve these buildings would be in excess of a million dollars for a multitude of reasons which they will provide to you. But in terms of processing, if Council were to approve the rezone tonight, then the applicant would move forward with a final site plan review and a final plat and public improvement plans for zaten. Drive and highway 119. And through that process is when the applicant and staff and the HPC would continue to work through some sort of historic recognition of the site. We’re not sure what that is yet. Next slide, please. And so just briefly, we do have Steve rands Waller here from natural resources. He worked with me on the Greenway dedication, that would be part of this development. We have Brian Schumacher, who’s our historic preservation liaison. So if you have any questions about the historic preservation issues, we have Hannah Mulroy from sustainability planning and if you have any questions about conservation, Hannah is here to answer those questions. And then we have of course, Glen van Nijmegen, our director here as well. And with that, I think we’ll turn it over to the applicants. Let them explain some information to you. And then if counsel has any questions, or all happy to answer any of your questions, thank you. And so I think Alicia will be presenting.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:32
Yes. Can you hear
Unknown Speaker 1:33:35
me? Yes. I’m gonna start out with a video. That would be great.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:44
So we just kind of walk everybody through. He did a current condition.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:50
sort of thing. I am getting a bit of echo is anyone else getting echo? on your end, Alicia, okay, just confirming. I will start the video. But yes, if you want to adjust your mic, and when we come back to the presentation, we can. We can continue to fiddle with it. But I’ll load that video now.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:55
That was a great presentation. We have any questions or comments from the counselors about this property.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:04
But I think we need a little bit more. Oh, you do? Okay. I’m
Unknown Speaker 1:37:08
sorry. Alicia, I apologize. It’s, it seems like even your video is flickering on my end. So I’m not quite sure if it’s something with the camera or the mic. Do you have an alternative mic option? It seemed to be fine when we started.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:26
Yeah, I know.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:29
Okay. Let’s see here. Would it be possible for you to call in? So what you can do is call in through your phone and have your audio come through there? Or is there any chance Are your speakers potentially we can start with their your speakers too loud. Maybe you’re getting feedback on that end?
Unknown Speaker 1:37:52
Speakers down thinking that was it?
Unknown Speaker 1:37:55
Right. Gotcha. I would recommend so going down to the mute button there, there’s a little caret and it says switch to phone audio. If you press it, you should if you do that, there should be a number that will have you call in and you should be able to then have your audio come through the phone. Okay. So in your bottom left of the Zoom app, there’s your mute button. There’s a little caret. Next one, so it looks like a little little triangle.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:26
Okay, so in a chai?
Unknown Speaker 1:38:30
Yes. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:33
And then dial in.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:35
Yes. Correct. There should be some instructions and you should be able to call in and use that as your microphone option.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:41
Okay, just one second. Sorry. No problem
Unknown Speaker 1:38:54
at all. Can you hear me? Yes, we can and that sounds great. Okay. Okay, can you pull up the presentation? Yes, I can’t give me just a moment. And there does seem to be a bit of a delay when I’m switching the slide. So if there is a couple of seconds of of hiccup, I promise I am hitting it. It might just be an extra moment of dead air but I’ve got your slides here you can just go
Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
ahead and move to the next slide, I think. So, as Eva sort of have indicated, you know, this particular parcel has been quite a challenge. For many years. It’s very unique parcel, and so we feel that it meets the review criteria where it presents the city with a unique opportunity or appropriate site for a particular type of land use development to help the city achieve a balance of land use or tax base consistent with City’s overall Planning and Economic Development Goals. This particular parcel is 11.5 acres, as indicated, but only actually 1.57 acres of that 11.5 Acres is actually developable. This is a kind of a reflection or gives an indication as to what all the different challenges that we faced with this particular property outside of just the shape and it wrapping around multiple residential properties. The blue is the actual proposed outlet B, which is the spring Gulch Greenway dedication that is required to be completed and that 4.7 acres that will be dedicated to the city, which lines was kind of the comprehensive plan in the vision for the overall city for this particular area. The light blue is the existing riparian area, 150 foot setback that’s required from the actual spring Gulch and so we cannot develop within that area. The green shows the floodplain. So this site is further encumbered by a floodplain that runs through there, which further limits the development area. And then what you see is the orange is this Leighton right away dedication that the development will be providing along with the full build out to connect this to what’s happening on the south side of Blyton road into the Walmart center. The orange is kind of showing the proposed landscaping or 50 foot landscaping, setback or Buffer requirements as well as the one to the North for Mr. Bolen. And so the white is actually developable area. And as you can see up top outlets see kind of north of Mr. Boland property, really no development opportunity there just because there’s Layton right away, what’s left is not big enough to do anything. And then what we’ve got proposed is the area in white is which is actually what is left are remaining eligible for development on this particular parcel. So as you can see, primary employment here is going to be a challenge. And this is far better suited this high traffic corner for commercial retail to serve that primary employment. Next slide, because it’s just pans and a little bit closer to what we’re showing here. In this fuse PUD zoning will provide the developer and city and everyone the creativity worked through some of these unique challenges together, while still ensuring quality and value added development on this prime corner. So we feel that this is a prime candidate for PUD and allows this development to finally move forward and start generating tax revenue and services for the surrounding development as well as the city. Next slide please. This is this particular location sort of has been a target for retail, commercial retail and guessing convenience for quite some time. Mainly big, big reason for that is that the surrounding generators in the area, obviously the traffic along Highway 119 is significant. And there is no immediate services food convenience or gas within five to six miles in either direction. So you have some things that I 25 which is five and a half six miles away, and then you don’t have any other services again, for the people along Highway 119. And in this immediate trade area until you get to Main Street within town within within town itself. On the north side of the site, there actually isn’t any offering for food convenience and services at i 25 currently everything’s on the south side. So we feel this is a primary candidate and play for us to really take this high traffic very prime corner in the city of Longmont that is surrounded by primary employment and really just be a catalyst right here to allow growth to continue and provide those services. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:54
The existing zoning map here Eva did kind of indicate as you guys The Comprehensive Plan and the zoning map is kind of envisioning the two primary employment. The fact that that doesn’t fit right within the space, but it’s surrounded by that we feel that we can activate this corner for development will bring a lot of benefits. And it will actually potentially be a catalyst to the primary employment being able to develop on the rest of this area, or by bringing utilities and some other things that I will go into later. United properties has done quite a few development for we kind of call them next gen mixed use developments where we have a combination of industrial and retail. And there’s been a lot of synergies between those two types of developments, where primary employment type tenants are actually looking for immediate retail convenience food services, offerings in in the immediate trade area. And so that is a draw for them. And so we feel like this could really be some strong synergies and allow this to develop forward. Next slide. Here’s an example of one of the projects that we did. So we completed four of these projects and we’re working on our fifth one in Lewisville. Currently, this is a project 38 And tower so along a major arterial, surrounded by industrial and some similar type of traffic, you know, generators and entities in the area. And so we were able to do a 30 acre rezone and put two industrial buildings in the back and land 10, Percy Lee and sprouts distribution behind that and then we created three retail pads out front with a 711 Irani carwash and a slim chicken. This is a really big successful project for both city of Aurora, the developer and all of the tenants are all doing very well. They’re the industrial tenants love having immediate access to the food and those services 24 hours, as well as the retailer’s love the benefit, right that is created from having those primary employment and employees right in their backyard. Next slide. Here’s another thriving example of a project that we completed at 40 cents Central Park in Stapleton. So we built a million square feet of industrial tenants and planned attendance like breakthrough FedEx, Coca Cola, already I filled this entire center. And then we finished up the last three and a half acres on the corner was retail with Starbucks and a daycare, and some other food users. And so another successful project for everybody where there was some great synergies. And so we feel that, you know, allowing this development to happen, will act as a catalyst potentially to the remaining primary employment being able to be completed in that particular area. Next slide. We feel that it’s also consistent with a comprehensive plan and the purpose of the code and the zoning district because it strives for a balanced mix of residential employment, retail and commercial, which is one of the goals, we feel it’s very compatible with the surrounding community provides immediate food and convenient services for the surrounding residents and workers. So, you know, you see help hospitals for 24 hours. So having a 24 hour service that can be provided for those folks would be good to claim smackers in future primary employment as well will benefit and utilize this development and stone baseball complex, you know, can also utilize their services in the surrounding residents, to me feel it ties in nicely with the commercial retail that’s already happening on the south side with Walmart.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:48
Next slide. This development also allows for the creation of integrated Greenway and Open Space System. So as I indicated, as part of this development as it moves forward, 4.7 acres of the Greenway will be dedicated to the city, which is tied back to the Comprehensive Plan and the overall vision for this. And it will allow me to kind of remember in the video, you saw the trail that’s happening under highway 119, and already started on the east side of the spring Gulch. This will allow for that collective plan to continue forward. And for that trail to be completed, along with the climbing wall that potentially coming there and their outdoor amenities that they’re going to have. This will allow for that completion to take place. In addition, the developer we’re providing $140,000 cash contribution to go towards those future green Greenway improvements on the east side of spring Gulch that can be installed by the city with a holistic CPA identified in the cost hence of plan when that gets figured out. And there’s residential On the west side of springs, Creek Gulch and because of the riparian setback, we feel that those types of improvements are far better served on the east side where the primary employment will primarily be. This also allows for the preservation of existing natural areas wetlands, riparian buffer, and river streams, which is also required by code, an important part of this whole entire development. This just kind of shows you here where you can see the identified wetlands and some of in the actual creek itself. And so we are trying to leave that in its native state and is untouched and really stay away from the creek, the stream and honor that riparian buffer setback in this development allows for that in excess of what’s required. And we can preserve that as well as allow this to go forward and complete the improvements on the side. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:00
The application we’re proposing,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:01
it still is compatible with the surrounding properties in terms of land use site and building layout and design. So we’re creating an open space system, which is outline a, which provides additional buffering from the resident. So we have over 200 feet of buffering for Mr. Bull in there, and we’re putting some enhanced landscaping between us and them, we have enhanced buffering from the spring Gulch Creek. So we’re well beyond what the 150 foot riparian setback requirements are, as you can see, we’re far in excess of that, and relieving it untouched in its native state, as you can remember from the video, it’s, it’s pretty, you know, pretty nice to just not go in there and disrupt that. And then as part of that, we’ll be dedicating 2.81 acres of light and right away his city as well as building that out so that we will make some alignment adjustments that aren’t currently there with what’s happening on the south side is Layton road and add some significant improvements to improve overall the safety functionality of this intersection. Next slide. This is just kind of a pared down version of some of the different amenities that we’re proposing to add with the development. So we’ll be installing a dedicated right turn lane, which we think will be important there along Highway 119 to improve the functionality of this intersection. above what it is today, especially for the residents as well as the commercial, you know, users and customers are providing sidewalk connections to the highway 118 sidewalks. So we’re going to bring that along, lighten up into the development, we’re going to do a realignment of the intersection as I had indicated, make the signals to that before way. And then we’re going to add a right through lane and a dedicated left turn lane on for southbound users will be moving the traffic signal there that is currently in place and going to shift that slightly so that it creates a better flow and alignment with what’s happening on the south side. We’re proposing to put a bicycle repair station and repair stand in there and include bicycle parking to encourage you know, multi modular, you know, customers here, we’re going to install an AVR charging station at the fast charger. Of they’re on the east side of the store that that customers can benefit from, there’ll be an outdoor seating area on the north side because this will be a Laredo taco restaurant as well. And so we’re gonna have an outdoor seating area for both primary employment as well as just any regular customers to be able to have the benefit of seating, you know, outside. The existing trees that are on the east side of the development there that are pretty vegetated and large are going to remain so we’re preserving those. And as well as we’re going to be doing some additional, you know, things on the stormwater side of before we go. Next slide. One thing I think it’s important to kind of point out you know, there is some substantial utility improvements that are required for this particular parcel that includes 1695 feet of sanitary main extension and crossing highway 119. So sanitary connection is all the way across there. So we’re going to be boring under highway 119 As you can see there in the green, bringing it down the right of way on the east to the east side and then up late and so though that entire sanitary that’s a pretty significant cost for one and a half acre development sort of bear. It also sets up that North you know, less corner for future development. as well as development to the north in the future. So that’s an expense that this particular development will bear. But it also benefit, you know, surrounding developments potentially benefit from it. In addition, water is on the south side of highway 119. So we’re going to have to bore underneath the highway two times to get it and complete the water line loop. Because there’s only one point of ingress egress off of lightning drive and we are not able to get access from Highway 119. This particular building has to be sprinkled. And as a result of that, we have to complete the fire suppression loop as well. And so that’s a pretty significant cost. It’s 1155 linear feet of you know, water main, as well as boring under highway 119. That sort of falls on this particular parcel, which further challenge is that outside of just you know, the encumbrances in the shape.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:00
Next slide. So, we’re doing an enhanced landscaping plan. As you can see here, this kind of gives you a visual of what it’s going to look like as well as the landscaping plan itself. Over 65% of the site is landscaping landscapes and that includes the outlot. We also are providing that 50 foot landscaping buffer along Highway 119. The development will be providing 48 trees, 317 shrubs, 80 grasses and 16 perennials on the site. We have 200 feet of buffering from our resident, Mr. Bolen to the north. And we’re working with him on that six foot wooden soundproof fence that we’re proposing to put, and we’re coordinating with him on the placement of that, as you can see up there in the north, in the landscaping plan itself, there’s a pretty significant enhanced landscaping edge along that northern property line between us and Him in addition to the fence that we’re providing, then you got 200 feet of sort of distance, and then we’re creating sort of another enhanced landscaping around that parking run there, just so that it’s effectively you know, we’re mitigating any sort of impact to him as long as as well as you know, creating like I said, that nice appearance along Highway 119 As we enter into the city of Longmont Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:35
So enhance the architecture, it’s very important to us that you know, the architecture was really solid here, we wanted a 360 degree kind of four sided architecture was Layton right away, as well as traveling, you know, westbound into the city, and you know, having residential to the north. So, the building materials are going to consist of cultured stone, fiber, cement, decorative panels and stucco, we have wood truss and shed style roof awning over the customer entrance just to make that elevated, you know, a little bit more in the field canopy is going to be located out from that the canopy columns we wrapped to match culture stone to match the building. And so, you know, we feel like we’ve done a really enhance architecture trying to give you more of a rural character sort of feel as you enhance the visual appearance of from the right of way. Next slide. Lighting is kind of another factor here that we really spent some time on, especially with Mr. Bolen you know, the second LED energy efficient, full cut off lighting, so we had close attention to lighting design, so ensuring that we had zero impact to the residents, the riparian buffer, as well as the spring Gulch. And so you know, led, it’s intended to do what is doing and that’s just focused down and only light the area that you’re intending for it to light. So we have zero foot candles of lighting within 300 feet of the Northern property line. As you can see, effectively, here’s what it’s going to look like at night. It’s effectively Dark Beyond those parking spaces as well as the site itself not out into the riparian buffers. The lights are, you know, foot candles were reduced significantly from the standards and these sort of metrics don’t take into consideration enhanced landscaping. So in addition to this, you have all of that enhanced landscaping that we showed. So I think lighting impact, it’s going to be safe and inviting to the customer but not intensive for damaging beyond the site itself. Next slide. Sustainability is a you know, important factor here and much of our design accommodate that so the building you utilize skylights with an integrated daylight harvesting system that dims the interior lighting levels when natural light enters the space, or reduces the demand effectively for energy to keep the lights within 100% functionality. We have the bike repair standards we talked about to promote multi modular development, we have a rain garden design utilizing the storm drainage system, we have low water usage and native natural landscaping design, we have the EDR charging station proposed, we have low VOC materials to promote indoor air quality and reduce construction mission. The bathrooms are equipped with low flow water efficient toilet, the building is heated by high efficiency a track units that are connected to an energy management system that electronically is managed and monitored remotely to make sure that they’re adjusting for seasonal fluctuations. And the structural walls of the building are sips, which are structurally insulated panels that provide a continuous insulation barrier between the exterior interior of the space. So effect, it reduces the R value of the wall system. And, you know, the energy demand. So those are just some of the efforts that we’ve done within the design to to really make sustainability at the front forefront. Next slide. So if Ava did indicate, you know, this site was identified as having historical significance, because it was at one time in the past one of the farms that was owned by William Dickens and Mary Allen family.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:44
You know, and so we went through a pretty extensive process was going in front of the historical board on two occasions and spending some a lot of time and money and on kind of sort of investigating that, which included going through the process of doing sort of a string of pretty intensive structural historical renovation analysis that was completed by engineering studio, as well as done some other additional digging and things like that. Through that process, it was determined that, you know, we do want to memorialize the historical relevance of the location on the site in some way we have some ideas, but that it will be unable to obtain any of these structures here, and it’s hard to see make out but this kind of shows the existing structures overlaid onto the development. As you can see, some of them are actually in the floodplain. And so that’s problematic in itself. Some of them are collapsed. And obviously, the house is kind of in prime area of the eligible developable area. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:03
This is just kind of further review of showing you building one is the barn, building two is kind of the shed and collapse building, then the building three is the garage. And then you’ve got the house, which is building for this, this is kind of a look of what they look like, an existing location in addition to the video that we showed. And so Dustin is here. Like I said, we did the sort of the engineering and structural design on this, we’re looking one, there’s a structural integrity issues, the barn is sort of, you know, falling in, meaning if it’s in the floodplain, there’s significant structural issues. There’s asbestos and significant environmental issues, as well. As you know, we’ve got some sort of what appears to be like illegal activity and some challenges with failure and some different things that are happening in these buildings, despite the owners best efforts to try to keep them sealed and contained. So we are we did determine and it’s free, it’s somewhere between three to $5 million to even preserve these. And then if we do in preservation state, bringing them up to code standards, and structural standards, they wouldn’t look really anything like they look today. And so we determine that that’s really not a viable path forward. And Dustin is here and he can kind of answer any further questions that you may have on that. And the report, hopefully, I think is in your packet. And so we wanted to sort of go the route of pursuing memorializing, you know, the significance of this on site in some other way.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:51
Slide Oh, that’s
Unknown Speaker 2:04:57
sorry. That’s just showing building for and building Five some of the ideas that we you know, had, we had kind of mentioned potentially some sort of placard along the trail, you know, on the east side of the creek, that didn’t seem to be something of interest that it talks about it. So we potentially could do something where we show and kind of memorialize where the buildings were on the asphalt within the space itself, through decorative concrete, and other elements is one particular option that you know, we are going to talk to continue to work with city staff and the historical board on next slide. That just sort of shows you what that would kind of look like in the location. And other another option, if you want to go to the next slide. We did we worked on a site in Broomfield, where we were actually able to hire a local artist. And there was a prime corner within the actual location itself and in the city of Broomfield that was kind of on the outskirts of the art district. And so we hired a local muralist. And he came up with a design that was sort of specific to the city of Broomfield and we were able to paint that on the building. And so we feel like we could actually paint a pretty nice mural somewhere than the space either creating that out by the seating area where the barn once was for incorporating and into the building on the side of the building or in the space where we could kind of, you know, give tribute to, to that to the Williams Dickens farm throughout the development is another option. I think we’re pretty open to doing what is necessary to do, you know, to memorialize that it’s just a matter of you know, what city staff wants to see what the city wants to see what the historical board would like to see. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:18
Now,
Unknown Speaker 2:07:19
we’ll turn it over to 711. As I said, this is going to be a restaurant to Laredo taco concept, and which is new program for them that they’re rolling out and I’ll turn it over to Larry hill at 711 to speak more about that.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:51
Larry, if you are there would you mind muting please? We were having some issues getting him in earlier. But I don’t believe we should be having any any issues now unless it’s
Unknown Speaker 2:08:15
something on his end.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:24
Larry, I’m asking you to start your video and unmute if you can hear me would you please do that? Should be in the bottom left of your screen.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:47
I’m afraid I’m not getting through to Larry. I can shoot him an email or something. But yeah, counsel, how would you like to proceed?
Unknown Speaker 2:09:05
Is he in the meeting Dallas,
Unknown Speaker 2:09:06
he is in the meeting. But he’s not unmuting or turning his camera on.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:12
Is there someone else on this presentation and we might be able to come back to him?
Unknown Speaker 2:09:18
Hey, Dallas, this is Tanner. I just texted Larry to says it’s not letting him on mute.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:25
Okay, it should I’m asking him repeatedly and I do have the settings open. Later. If you can hear me it should be. Depending on how your settings are up. It should be either in the bottom left or it should be at the top of your screen and it should be the microphone button. Larry, I’m gonna make you a co host. I shouldn’t change anything but maybe maybe there’s something going wrong with the settings and yeah, let me know does that Can you unmute now doesn’t seem to be changing anything
Unknown Speaker 2:10:23
a thing and he sees it but it’s still not letting him on mute. Okay, so Alicia I don’t know if you want to briefly touch upon
Unknown Speaker 2:10:32
this. Yeah, I can. I can. Yeah, I got a cover for Larry sorry about that. But Larry was 711 is on for us. And so you know, 711 is rolling out like I said, it’s a new concept where primarily half the destroys Laredo taco, which is, you know, a sit down kind of sit down offering but order, you know, Mexican restaurant, and the other half will be convenient store. And so, you know, it’s a pretty great concept that allows bring food amenities, in addition to the convenience type offerings that are in the store. You know, 711 already has a pretty big daily fresh food, you know, offering an assortment, they’ve got sandwiches, fruit salad, baked goods and other meals. A lot of people don’t know, but they actually have, you know, commissary, as well as a bakery, and so, the CDC, so a lot of their products are coming into their store on a daily basis, they’re getting fresh salad, fruit, milk, you know, donuts, and all of that made daily and delivered to the store daily. So we feel like for this particular reason, along with the Laredo taco, this will be a really great amenity for the primary employment, UC Health, as well as you know, the apartments and residents within the area. Next slide, I think there might be two sides. This is sort of shows you kind of a visual of what the inside of the store looks like with that. So you go up you order. And you know, get you get your food. And then there’s some seating area, like you said in the store for people to eat their food, as well as Sobia and outdoor seating area as well. So this just gives you sort of an interior look of what that concept looks like inside the store. So I think that is it. That completes our presentation. And so we’re here the whole team here for any questions that you guys may have.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:39
Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Alicia and Eva. So um, do we have any comments or questions from councillors? Seeing none, let’s open up the public hearing on ordinance 2022. Oh, I see a couple you guys who are not fast enough, so counselor.
Tim Waters 2:13:05
Thanks for your peg. I just comment I want to acknowledge I’d met with Alicia, one time a couple years ago when when this she was describing what they envision doing on that site. And she was asking, as I recall for some guidance or reaction. My recollection is I’m sitting here is that I my response was to take a look at the sustainability evaluation system that we were in the process of conceptualizing because of its proximity to spring Gulch in the waterway. But before we get into any more of the hearing, I just want to disclose that I did have a conversation with Alicia about this project. Before I knew it was a project. I know we’re not going to vote tonight, but when that time comes. I don’t I don’t have questions
Unknown Speaker 2:13:55
of Alicia about the project. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:05
Thank you, Mayor Peck. First of all, in the sake of disclosure, I’m the liaison to both historic preservation commission as well as Planning and Zoning Commission. So I’ve heard about this project many times outside of the fact that I also had met with Alicia, I believe a few years ago. So first of all, I would like to say that my early observations were a few years ago that they respect the riparian area setback that we have, and appears by all standards that they have. And they’ve done that to basically the degree that we asked of that and so there would be no question of asking for a variance or anything. So they’ve done a great job with that. As far as being the liaison for historic preservation commission. I understand the challenges there. And anecdotally, Many of those buildings just appear to be loafing sheds, you know, the barn and and the residence maybe, obviously, we know that the garages are not going to be original property, you know, buildings by any standard, people didn’t have cars back then. So we know those are not original structures to the site. But as the liaison to both of those those groups, they’re both very thorough deliberative groups. And so seeing that those conditions were already kind of imposed in a way, I have full confidence that they will be able to work with you in a way that will satisfy those needs. As such, I have no problem with this. In those were my concerns, if you will. And so I look forward to this. Going through the process and coming back again. So thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:02
Any other comments?
Unknown Speaker 2:16:05
Seeing none, I will now open the public hearing on ordinance 20 2202. Anyone on the phone wishing to speak on this item, please hit star nine on your phone to raise your hands. Dallas, do we have anybody in the waiting room?
Unknown Speaker 2:16:19
There are no colors Mayor pack. Great.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:22
Alright. So I am going to make a motion here to continue the public hearing and item to date certain of February 8. Can I have a second on that? I see. Councillor Hidalgo. fairing seconded. So all those in favor? Raise your hand. Opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Thank both of you for these presentations and exciting project. Thank you. Thank you. Now we’re at the Costco development. There are two resolutions and one ordinance on this. This item 20 2203 is a bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities of the city of Longmont for the fiscal year beginning January 1 2022. Public Hearing and second reading scheduled for January 25 2022. The first resolution is 2022 10. A resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing an increase in the loan from fund balance in the city’s fleet fund to the harvest junction East special revenue fund and providing for repayment of the loan from the harvest junction East special revenue fund. The second resolution is 20 2211. A resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing a side letter agreement among diamond G concrete company, Costco Wholesale Corporation and the city of Longmont in furtherance of a development of a Costco membership warehouse facility, affordable housing and additional commercial retail uses. We do have a presentation on this from Jim Golden, and our Dale ramakers. So are you turning this over to you?
Unknown Speaker 2:18:20
Mayor Peck members of council I’m Jim Goldin, the Chief Financial Officer besides myself and Dale is the number of city staff Eugene jimang. state parole are also available. I’ll be making this presentation. They’re available for questions as well as representatives from the other two parties who are also on the line as well. So I’ll try to keep this presentation brief. Dallas, could you pull up the PowerPoint please? Next slide, please. So this here is the property site plan. I think you’re all familiar with the property. It’s on Ken Pratt Boulevard. And you’ll see this is bordering it to the south of Ken prop. Pratt Boulevard. Next slide please. So 13 months ago, in December of 2020, the council approved a p3 agreement between the city and Costco and diamond G which is the golden family, no relation for the planning, design, permitting and construction of a Costco store in the eastern area of harvest junction within the Erwin Thomas annexation. In 2011, planning and design took place and bids were received last month and reviewed since that point in time.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:55
I apologize, Jim, it appears to be cutting out I’m going to keep trying but If for some reason, PowerPoint is not not liking being shared,
Unknown Speaker 2:20:04
if you can go to the next slide, sure thing. Alright, so the original project costs that we brought to you in 2020 were estimates at that point in time. And the changes unforeseen items that have since come up, include the bonus ditch relocation site under drain, additional site grading, earthwork, and demolition. Next slide, please. There’s been price increases for items such as PVC pipe, steel, wood, and concrete, they’ve all escalated by over 30%, some quite a bit more. The Front Range construction market has been so active that it’s led to material shortages, supply delays and labor shortages. Those have all resulted in price increases. So the project team continues to work with the project bidders on refining the project costs. Next slide, please. With the use of local subcontractors, they’ve been able to make adjustments in the following line items that could still see lower costs including grading and earthwork water facilities, sanitary sewer, sewer facilities, site access and roadways and the underdrain system. Next slide. So, as part of the p3 agreement, the city has an opportunity to acquire nine acres for affordable housing purposes. The full property site to be developed is 48.66 acres 17 acres of that is for the Costco site, nine acres for the affordable housing site, and 22.66 acres to be developed by the golden family. So we’re going to have to do an additional appropriation that’s needed to cover the current maximum identified costs to allow for the closing to take place in February on this property in order to continue to meet the Costco timetable. So the current total maximum hard dollar cost to the city on this project is estimated at $15,024,268. And that’s broken out as the Costco project costs being $10,861,534 for the city, and the affordable housing project cost 4,000,162 $734. Next slide, please. So originally, the hard dollar project cost was estimated at 12 and a half million dollars. In December last month, when the bids came in the net costs, maximum costs rose to a little over $17 million. With the adjustments that the team has been able to work on with the bidders, the estimated maximum costs to the city currently is a little over $15 million. So again, that’s made up of 10 point almost $10.9 million on the Costco project, and $4.1 million on the affordable housing project. Next slide. Right, so this I’m sure you can’t see this slide very well. But I wanted to put it in here just to show you it is in the council packet. And so you’re able to see all of that detail. But what this does provide you is pretty much most of the major line items for the project. And it’s broken out. By going across the page columns are showing the cost for Costco as costs, and developers expense costs. And then the three columns in green are the city’s cost for the project. And those are being shown by the source of funding. So the affordable housing fund share of the cost is in the first green column. Then the CD expenses that are going to be paid by sales tax monies is in the second column. And then the third column is a water acquisition fund expenses. Next slide, please. So funding for the project will be coming $2.94 million from the affordable housing fund
Unknown Speaker 2:24:41
$12,083,968 from The Sales Tax generated by the development, and then $481,728 of rebated fees for cash in lieu of water from the Costco property And the affordable housing property. Those will match up to those three columns that I mentioned in the previous slide that are shaded in green. Next slide, please. So, last year or late 2020, I should say council approved for $1,470,150 from the affordable housing fund through a loan from the fleet fund, and that was to be used to purchase the nine acres for affordable housing. And since that time, we’ve been able to we’ve been able to come up with with Arbor funding as a source for the purchase of the property. So we’ve still continued to go forward with the plan for the loan from fleet to the Affordable Housing Fund, which was intended or programmed last year to be paid back over five years at $300,000 a year, and that loan would be for the same amount of $1,470,150. The difference now in this proposal is that we are using that loan to pay for for public improvements related to the Affordable Housing property. Now the amount of public improvements for that property exceeds that dollar amount. So we will also be using $101,222,435 of for from sales tax dollars to to fund the additional side improvements related to the Affordable Housing property. And then also on the affordable housing property. There is a cashmere water rebate of $166,752. Next slide please. So on on the city project, and the Costco project, I should say the city city costs are totaling $11.17 million. Sales tax is going to pay for land costs, site improvements and fees of $8.96 million and will also be used to pay for private site development costs that we’re estimating currently adds up to $1.9 million. And then finally, there’ll be a cash we’ll do a water rebate of about $315,000. Next slide please. So for the funding for the city share the project loans are proposed from the fleet Fund. The 870,150 is loan to the Affordable Housing Fund to be repaid in annual $300,000 payments from 23 through 25. We already had budgeted beginning and 21 $300,000 a year. And so the last the last year’s budget in this current year’s budget already has $300,000 each year from the affordable housing funds. So that’ll be cash paid towards that towards the closing. And then 870,001 50 will be coming from a phone a lot of loan from the fried fund. And then in addition to that larger loan of 12, little over $12 million would be to the harvest junction special revenue fund. And that would be paying for most of the caspo project city related costs, as well as what I mentioned of the $1.2 million of of affordable housing project costs that would be paying from sales tax. Next slide please. So our proposal last year that we present to you on how to to pay this off all these loans were to use sales tax from the development. We were going to and still are planning to designate half 1% of the 2% Nani earmark city sales tax from the new development which would go to the harvest junction special revenue fund to repay the loan for $12.08 million.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:25
The other half of 1% of the non earmark city sales tax will go to the general fund and the public improvement proven fund like it typically does for all 90 and Mark city sales tax at the breakout of 85% and 15%. Next slide please. So the Costco sale estimates for the facility would generate $4.06 million of sales tax in the first year. We are estimating this is around estimate that 25.9% of that revenue will be cannibalization of existing long month sales. Next slide please. So this is a breakdown of that first year of $4.06 million sales tax. And you can see that it first on that, on the green slice of the pie, you see the public safety fund, and the open space fund below that in the streets fund, those are all earmark sales tax dollars. And those the projected amounts from that. And then after that, we have the public Improvement Fund, the General Fund getting this slice of the 1% of the nania marked sales tax. And then up on top of that is the $1.15 million of the 1% of the nania mark that is going to be a designated for repayment of the internal loan. Next slide please. So if our cannibalization estimates are close to accurate, the city could net over $3 million of new sales tax annually. And this here this pie does show the breakout of that $3 million for the five funds that do receive city sales tax. Next slide please. So we use 2% growth estimates which are very conservative compared to what Costco is estimates are for the their revenue projected forward in future years. We did have their estimates last year when we made these these estimates, but we wanted to keep our projections conservative, but you know, if certainly if they’re these estimates are beaten, then all of the repayment estimates that I’ll be giving you in a few minutes here would actually be reduced in in length of time for repayment, the cost Pascoe would generate or $98.6 million of gross sales tax over 20 years, and 73 million of net new sales tax over 20 years. And that’s net of the estimated cannibalization. Again, this is just using the city’s 2% growth estimates. Next slide, please. So this is showing that the breakout of the use of that $98.6 million over those 20 years. With the city participation there. That’s the repayment of the loan projected over about 12 years or so. And then you could see where the new earmark tax on the left, go into those that would be going to the three funds that I talked about. That received earmark tax, and the new nania Mock tax and the gray is for the general fund in the public Improvement Fund. And then the 25.9% estimated cannibalized tax, which we’ll be getting still going into those funds but not new dollars in the sense. Next slide please. So again, if our projections and you’re accurate, I think this first slide, I mean the first bullet is got an incorrect number there but the hard costs of 10.8 6 million for the Costco project is recovered by that the gross sales tax within 2.33 years of opening. It’s recut recovered by the net sales tax within 43 months of opening so the net sales tax again is net of cannibalization. Next slide please. The city investment of 12.0 8 million of costs for the Costco project and the affordable housing project that were funding through the sales tax would be recovered by the net sales tax within 4646 months of opening.
Unknown Speaker 2:34:08
Next slide please. That fleet loans as you may know, we make those fleet loans at the rate of return of city investments. So we’re just making projections on those going forward. The loan to the Affordable Housing Fund of $870,000 would be repaid by 2025. Within three years. The loan to the harvest junction East special revenue fund of 12.0 8 million would be repaid by early in the 12 year after Costco Opie’s Next slide, please. So, again, as as the mayor did go over, we do have three items for consideration. I’m not going to repeat them but those were all here at Staffs here to answer any questions you have on the project or those items. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 2:35:01
You have any questions? Counselors? I expected a lot of a lot of debate on this. So this looks good. So I’m going to ask for a public hearing then on ordinance 20 2203. Ask it anyone on the phone wishing to speak on this item to hit star nine on their phone to raise their hands. Dallas, do we have anybody in the waiting room on this item?
Unknown Speaker 2:35:34
There are no colors. No.
Unknown Speaker 2:35:36
Thank you. Can I have a motion on on 20 2203 This is ordinance 20 2203 to move on
Tim Waters 2:35:46
move orders. 20 2203
Unknown Speaker 2:35:48
Thank you second. Okay, it was the motion was made by Councillor waters seconded by Councillor Hidalgo. Ferring. All those in favor, please raise your hand. All those opposed? That motion carries unanimously. The first ordinance that we’re going to vote on is 2022 10. This is the ordinance authorizing an increase from the fund balance in the city, the city’s fleet fund to the harvest junction East special revenue fund. Do I have a motion for 2022 10?
Unknown Speaker 2:36:24
I’ll move resolution 2020 to 10.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:29
Okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear Who seconded this. Councillor waters. So that motion was made by Councillor Hidalgo. fairing seconded by Councillor waters. All those in favor? Raise your hand. All those opposed? That carries unanimously. The second resolution we have is for the A side letter agreement among the three entities that are entering into this agreement. Can I have a motion for resolution? Excuse me? 20 2211. So moved. Okay. That was Moved by Councillor Martin seconded by Councillor, your dog? Very. All those in favor? Raise your hand. All those opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Jim. And this is this is exciting. It’s really exciting to go forward with it. So thanks for all your work. So now there were no items removed from the consent agenda. So we’re going to go to general business, we’re going to have a presentation on workforce of the future by Joe NZs. JOANNE
Unknown Speaker 2:37:45
Hello, good evening, Mayor, Members of Council, we have been doing a little bit of work since the last time we’ve spoken to you in regard to the workforce of the future. And we’re trying to address a number of different things in our presentation, we are looking at turnover trends, what is happening in the market, what we need to do to be responsive in regard to those different things. And we also are taking a look at what our current policies is and our what our current practices are. So we wanted to come back to this group, give a little bit of a summary of the committee that has been working on these issues, as well as the HR information that we’ve had some market trends, and just give a little bit of an overview and receive some council direction and where we want to go forward in the future. So we do have a PowerPoint presentation, right. And so just to give a little bit of information, we’re taking a look at workforce trends and actions. And really we’re anchoring on that great resignation. What is it that’s happening? Where are our turnover trends coming in? And what is it that we need to do to make sure that we’re responsive and that we’re receiving applications that we’re able to fill our positions, and we’re able to retain talent that we want to be doing.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:00
Next slide, please. This
Unknown Speaker 2:39:04
presentation is designed in a couple of different modes, we’re going to start with an analysis of the current state that we have take a look at what our strengths are, review our turnover trends, and then also take a look at the market trends throughout the nation. We’re also then going to move into our current work that has been going on to analyze our trends and kind of just come up with where we want to be in terms of being responsive. So we’ve been working with a group called the workforce of the future. It is comprised of our employees, our directors, individuals throughout the organization. And so we’re going to present the work that they’ve done as well as some recommendations that they have, and then we’ll move into our recommended next steps and look for some direction.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:48
Next slide please.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:52
To start with our current
Unknown Speaker 2:39:53
strengths, we do have some things that are very attractive at the city of Longmont. We find pretty regularly that the sense of mission that we have is really attractive to employees as well as applicants. And so when we go out in the community, when we’re talking about what it is that makes it great to work at the city, that sense of mission really does resonate both with new employees, our current employees, as well as applicants that might be interested in working with us. So that’s a strength that we really want to make sure that we keep front and center and we continue to leverage. We do have really strong attributes, we have a great culture, the attributes that we have in place were created by our employees, and they’re really anchors that we can use to make sure that we’re moving our workforce forward and creating a culture that people want to work here, we do have a policy of market compensation. And while that can cut both ways, one of the strengths of that gives us the ability to be able to attain a market compensation relatively quickly. So with our policy of paying people at 101% of the market, they’re able to come in and they’re able to be competitive in that salary pretty quickly. And then we also have some strong benefits. And so our benefits are an area that really cuts across all different age groups, all different applicants, all different employees. And so that is an area that really is a consideration for 98% of employees, 98% of applicants, and that spans across everyone. Next slide, please. We do have some current turnover trends that are mimicking the market. So this is some information on the current trends that we see right now, the most recent 12 months, and we pull this as of October. So we do need to get additional data on that for the last couple of months, what we were seeing is 12.73% over that 12 month period, typically what we would see in that 12 month period is about 8%. So we are running a little over 50% above where we typically were a little bit concerning, we are seeing that trend also throughout the market. So it is not something that’s unique to us. So when we pulled market information, over the five months that we were able to find. All industries were showing 19.5% turnover government was showing 7.9, our data over that same five month period was 5.95. So we’re running higher than we’d like to be we’re running a little bit lower than what we’re seeing in the market. We also have in addition to those numbers, we have a high exposure to retirements. And so close to 50% of our employees are eligible to retire. With that, that puts us at a high exposure. And we also have some turnover and key positions.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:40
Next slide please.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:43
To put some of the numbers in context that we’re seeing, we just wanted to get some information out there in terms of who’s leaving jobs, who’s considering leaving jobs. And so this was some information that we were able to find about 25%. In a February 21 survey, we’re saying that 25% of employees have active plans to leave their job. The Human Resource Society said that 52% of employees are considering a job change. The difference between those two numbers is that the considering is people that would say yes, I would be interested in that 25% were people that were actively seeking, those numbers are high. Just to put it in a little bit of a context, they typically are high. So in 2019, we were seeing 47% of individuals say that they were interested in leaving in 2017, which was prior to any pandemic inflammation 46% were saying they consider so consideration is always relatively high. What the difference is, is that there’s a little bit more action on those numbers versus what we would see typically. And that’s I think, for a couple of reasons. One is that there’s more opportunity in the market, there’s more things that are out there that people can go ahead and apply for and get opportunities. There’s also a trend where people are trying to get some simplicity in life and their balance. So that could be that they have children at home, and they really need to be there to be able to care for them. It could be that they’re nearing retirement age, and they just go ahead and make that change now as opposed to waiting where they might have in the past. Or it could be that there are opportunities that are out there that they just wouldn’t have seen in moves before. So with that I think the workforce really is changing, and there’s increased expectations.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:29
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:33
This slide is is really enlightening and helpful in terms of just trying to get our hands around why employees are considering changing. A lot of times we hear different information. The first thing that always pops is compensation and benefits. And in this pie chart that actually is the highest area. So compensation and benefits are something that are really coming out is important. But when you take a look at that slice, it’s not the whole picture and by itself, it’s not even half of it. picture. So some other things need to be taken into consideration as well. Two large slices of that together are even higher than compensation and benefits, or better work life balance, and also a lack of recognition. So when you put those two together, they actually can envelop that compensation and benefits. There are also a couple other smaller areas, company culture is popping up their company values is coming, relationship with peers is coming. And then there’s a miscellaneous category. So there’s a lot of different reasons why employees could be considering changing. And to come up with a strategy to really have some leverage in that you really need to take a look at all different areas.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:41
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:45
The workforce of the future has been doing work in a number of different areas to be able to get at this. So we have a team, that’s the attributes team. And what they’re really working on is making sure that we keep those attributes active and invigorated. They really can be a motivator, we saw that in our strengths. And so let’s make sure that we’re reinforcing that, that we’re executing that and that they really are something that are there and alive. Also, we’re finding additional supervisory training could be helpful for that, especially as we’re having turnover, some may not be aware of those, they might not be as active as alive. So it is something that takes some real work on. There’s an infrastructure team that’s taking a look at our space. And they are looking at potentially doing an RFP and moving forward with that. There is a policy team and they are working on flexible work agreements, they’re working on emergency PE. And they’re working on job descriptions to make sure that we can update those and clarify what work flexibility exists in different positions. And then there’s also a soft skills team. And so they’ve started to roll out the workforce of the future essential supervisory training. And they’re also working on a flexible workplace conversation guide.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:56
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:01
This is a timeline of key initiatives at the bottom are some programs that are going to go throughout this whole time. So there’s going to be a clunk continual assessment of things. Taking a look at those policies, the vacation callback, pay compensation mentoring program, those are a little bit longer. And then in regard to some of the workspace pieces, it’s a little bit more set out in timeline. Next slide, please. Some current work that HR is doing and trying to partner with LED key, we’re taking a look at expanding recruitment efforts, been working on job fairs, partnering with colleges and making sure that we’re going out with some community efforts. We also are a part of the workforce development team for Boulder County. So that encompasses different employ larger employers, as well as the Front Range Community College School District, and even just the University of Colorado in Boulder so that we can come up with a regional approach to make sure that we’re attracting and retaining candidates. And then the city is also set to participate in the LDP initiatives, including housing initiatives, we did just have them present to our full workforce. And we’ll continue to use that for our candidates. And then we also will participate in Indigo is out becomes alive.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:22
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:25
So some ideas and thoughts in regard to how do we recruit and retain the next workforce. Next slide, please. We want to make sure that we’re considering our compensation and benefits package. So we’ve done some work on that our current policy and practices paying at 101% of market, we do have a goal to pay 102% of market. That may be our strategy, it also may be that we want to consider other changes to that policy. So some thoughts could be do we want to lead the market in general? Or do we want to lead the market in certain segments? Do we want to have some considerations in terms of additional experience and seniority? Do we want to pay at a higher level when people hit those levels? Do we want to take a look at our exceptional pay program and make some changes? And do we want to have some potential changes to some of our ancillary compensation, especially where we might not be as competitive as we’d like to be. So some things could be under that such as overtime, phone call pay, call back pay and one time bonuses.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:29
Joanne, before you leave this slide, one of the things that you’re going to see is what we want to do is actually go in and do another compensation study this year. And we’ll talk a little bit more about how these issues are touching each other. But as you look back on the other slides that Joanne presented when you see how many people are considering a change, and the key difference is how many opportunities are there for them to change now and I think that’s been Significant changes that we’re dealing with. And what we’re seeing is a tremendous amount of competition for employees and a lot of people, recruiting from different organizations and really reaching out to people in our organization to recruit to fill some of these jobs. It’s probably the highest that I’ve seen since. Since I’ve been here. I think that’s a testament to a number of things, I think, I think it’s related to what we do as an organization. And what we’ve been doing in Longmont recently, but But it’s definitely picking up. The other interesting thing to this, and I just heard of one recently this week, it’s not just the public sector doing this, we are also seeing private sector kind of reach out for our folks. And so we think that the compensation study is going to be incredibly important for us to really understand, are we at the market, we need to be in order to deal with this situation. But you’ll see that coming also in a later slide.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:09
Next slide, please. Some considerations
Unknown Speaker 2:51:14
in regards to work life balance, we do know that our time for long term employees, our time off is not as competitive when compared to other cities in our region. We are at or above other regions, we did not make changes when we did our most recent changes to our vacation policy. And the reason that we didn’t do that was because we felt like people couldn’t take the time that they already had. But now it is becoming a bit of a challenge for us. Because if there are others that are already granting that, and we’re behind that April, it’s not a situation where we want to continue that. So that is an area that we want to take a look at. We’re also finding that flexibility is really critical. And that is going to be a consideration for employees when we’re looking at work satisfaction. If we’re looking to retain our younger employees, it’s going to be important that we have flexibility in the areas that we can. Flexibility is currently available in most in many of our areas. It is sporadic in some areas, obviously, some areas, it’s a little bit easier to implement than others. And so we want to make sure that we can use it where we can. And we’re being creative in areas where we maybe we can use it, we’re not leveraging it as strongly as we want to.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:29
Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:31
We’re also finding that we might want to take a look at just our vacation time policy in general. So do we want to think about things like PTO time, some of our cities in the region might do things like PTO time others are doing things where there’s a stratified vacation time. So just taking a look at that policy holistically and making sure that it’s where we want it today.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:52
We’re gonna bring some commentary, as she’s moving through these slides. So we can tie in as removing. And so I will say that probably the work life balance and the flexibility is probably one of the biggest issues that we’re facing, based on what people are seeing in the current work environment. And to give you an example, we had an and we’re seeing this in different places, this is probably the most pronounced example, we made an offer to someone for a position, we actually were paying more than their current employer. But one of the things individual one, it was really complete workplace flexibility and being able to work from home, an individual then essentially noticed their employer and said, Hey, we want to take this job, the employer came back matched our compensation immediately, and then said you can work from home all the time. And those are some things that we’re seeing. And it’s really position specific. But it is an issue that we’re seeing in this work life balance. And really what folks are looking for, as as we’re recruiting.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:06
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:09
In regard to employee recognition, what we’re finding is that the research is pretty clear that the baseline for recognition is one to one communication. And so making sure employees feel valued making sure that employees are recognized, there are some best practices and so weekly communication is recommended. And when that happens, there’s a real strong increase in retention and engagement. We’re making sure that people are aware of that as Harold’s going and doing some of those presentations and making sure people are doing that. So that we can use the resources we have we can continue to develop relationships and we can make sure that individuals are getting that communication and that need met. Um, for that to work meetings need to be valuable, they need to be productive. There needs to be a relationship with supervisor and so that’s really that key to satisfaction in that piece of the pie.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:03
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:06
Some considerations in regards
Unknown Speaker 2:55:07
to workforce culture, I’m thinking about can we strengthen recruitment? Can we make sure that we have cultural fit and that there really are clear job expectations. So we’re working to increase our supervisory training for recruitment. We’re trying to make sure that there are some additional support and wanting to put that in for critical times, especially so things like probationary follow up, we want to take a look also for post probationary when people are staying, what is it that our strong performers are saying, are the reasons that they’re saying so as our managers are having those conversations, they really can get some information back in terms of what is it that’s really motivating those strong performers to stay? And how can we replicate that or strengthen that, in addition to some of the things we’re talking about, it’s really important with our culture, that we incorporate some accountability, so that the organization maintains our service levels or strengthens our service levels, that gives us the opportunity to be able to go ahead and increase flexibility, but still do what we’re doing and make sure that we have the best service levels that are out there. And everybody’s engaged in work is not just going to, to employees that are taking it, it’s really being spread throughout that organization.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:22
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:25
Some additional areas for consideration. So this is the workload study that we were thinking about, we definitely are looking to move forward with the compensation study, what we could consider doing is paired without a workload study to make sure that we’re adequately staffed in all of our areas. What that could do is one we already had heard from some of our longer term employees, they can’t take time off. Are we adequately staffed in those areas? Do we have the right staffing? Um, also that could take a look at can we centralize some tasks? Are there things that we should be designing in a different way? In addition to that area of consideration, we also are just thinking about what else can we put in place for some of our critical periods. So things like onboarding, mentoring, advancement opportunities, and just some things that could be in place if there’s a workplace challenge. So maybe if somebody has missed a promotion, or 14 absentee or turnover in a particular area or particular individual, what can we do to try to stem that tide? Next slide, please. housing challenges are an additional area for consideration. We do know that there’s an increased cost cost of housing, that becomes a challenge for recruitment, it can also be a challenge for retention. So we want to make sure that we’re addressing that in some way. We know employees sometimes need to locate further away than we would like. And that’s really motivated by ability to pay some good
Unknown Speaker 2:57:56
doing. Yes. So part of this, what I wanted to throw in here is we’re seeing this at all levels of the organization. And I want to relate it to what you heard from Lonnie Kramer when he talked about what he was dealing with at the hospital. Because when I say we’re seeing it, I’m going to start with when we look at some of our positions in the organization, and specifically those positions that have response requirements, it is becoming harder and harder for those individuals to find housing that matches their income level within that designated area. And so we’re having to look at how do we address that issue. And so when I talk about those positions, you know, I’m talking about our lines, people in our electric utility or broadband folks that have to respond, or water and wastewater staff members that have requirements and, and we’re just finding that push moving further and further out, that really does tie into an item that we’re going to bring back to you soon is really this work on an affordable or attainable housing and how that really works, because it’s forcing us to look at different issues. I think tying it in to what Lonnie said it’s not just at those levels. And what we’re starting to see and I’ll refer what he said to council on this one is it is also becoming increasingly harder to hire people that make really high salaries. And what’s starting to show itself in that and is, is that the housing costs have accelerated so much that individuals are having to go through another thought process to say, Yes, I can maybe make a little bit more here. But when I look at the housing cost where I am with the housing that I’m in, it’s not it’s not a good financial decision for me to make that move in And that’s, you know, a challenge that we didn’t see before. But we’re really starting to see it more because people are looking at their entire life and going, is this a move that I want to make or that I don’t want to make? And it’s an interesting perspective. Because if you look at those that were hired here in the 80s, in the 90s, that really wasn’t an issue. even look at me who I’ve been here 10 years. Just to be frank, it’s a completely different ballgame. And people are now evaluating different issues. And really using that it’s not just about the job, it’s not just about the salary, it’s about what is their entire world look like in terms of making that shift and moving into those markets. And so we’re really now seeing this become a significant area for us to look at at all levels of our organization.
Unknown Speaker 3:00:55
So we do, we’ve started a little bit of work on this, we definitely have rolled out the cornerstone program. And so we presented that to all of our organization in Harold’s last team meeting, will continue to partner with LDP and roll that out. And we also have started with enhancing recruitment efforts. And that sometimes can look like how are we making sure that we’re attracting talent, maybe we go to some areas that are still a little bit higher than us in terms of cost of living. And so we’ve started to take a look in some areas of California to bring in, we’ve also kind of hit some areas where maybe our salaries are a little bit higher, cost of living might be higher, but we might have some some interest. So we’ve started to enhance that a little bit. And just try to segment and do some recruitment in areas that we might be more successful. And we’ll continue to work on that. We do know there’s going to be additional work that’s going to be needed in this area, no matter what we do. Next slide, please. We have a lot of ideas that have been brought in from the workforce of the future and from our workforce in general. And so these are all different ideas that came to us from the workforce. So it’s been suggested that we take a look at our full time work week that we take a look at our scheduling for field workers. So the difference between those two is is not changing. The second one is not talking about changing the work week, but changing how many hours they’re in the field. And so that might be something that could be done with operational changes. There’s been a suggestion for additional city facilities, particularly in North Longmont or central Longmont. There’s been a suggestion for neighborhood gardens. And that is, you know, just taking a look at employee involvement and how do employees get engaged. Next slide, please. Some more ideas were 360 performance reviews, so that there’s feedback from everyone in terms of supervisors as well as constituents as well as peers. There’s been suggestions for consistency in terms of implementing ideas when we do move them forward. Some ideas in regard to emergency pay snow, pay some ideas in regard to PTO, which we started to talk about a little bit in that vacation policy ideas in regard to the city’s use of education and experience. And the thought with that was to make sure that it’s really clear that either education or experience, or both would be something that would be considered in positions when it’s relevant. There’s been some ideas to take a look at employee surveys. So one of the recommendations was this Gallup survey here. Another idea was to take a look at are there other ways to share concerns on the ground? And are there other ways to communicate, we do have a large number of ways to communicate. And so the question was, you know, are there others that we should be considering also?
Unknown Speaker 3:03:51
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:54
So just in terms of the big picture, what we wanted to do is kind of take all of that information, we know that there’s a lot of change in the environment, we know that there’s changes that are going on around us we need to be responsive to. And so in order to do that, we’re going to need to make some future changes, some keys to success, we want to make sure that we take a look at our that when we have an effort that it’s focused and that it’s consistent, and we’re utilizing it and applying it throughout the organization, that when there is something happening, we have an accountable process, a transparent process, and that if we are starting a new initiative or moving forward with something that we do have enough resources to make sure it’s successful.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:34
Next slide, please. This slide really
Unknown Speaker 3:04:39
is talking about what we think we should be taking as next steps and immediate steps to move forward. And the first one is that compensation plan analysis that Harold mentioned, we want to make sure that our comp and benefits are where we want them to be that really is the biggest slice of that pie. And so we want to start with that. We Do we have a flexible workplace agreement that is drafted and we want to share that throughout the organization and get some of those in place for the immediate term? We have started to train on flexible work and possibilities for supervisors so that supervisors can be a little bit creative. And how do they make sure that that’s implemented, that that has already started?
Unknown Speaker 3:05:21
Enjoy on that one. That’s actually one of the classes that I’ve personally teaching to the supervisors as we’re moving through this because I think what we saw when we talked about communications from staff, we were seeing different people embrace that in different ways. And so we really based on the feedback we have from all levels of staff felt like I needed to in conjunction with Joanne Sandy and other members of my leadership team to teach this class so that we can ensure that we had equitable an equitable approach across the organization, the easy answers to just say, I need to talk to you, I’ve had the conversation, I’ve had it, we’re not going to do it. The hard work for a manager has to be that when you look at all the data that we’re seeing, and what’s important to folks for retention and recruitment, you need to have that personal relationship with your staff members and have genuine conversations with them. And really work through these issues, the answer may be no at the end. But if they’re working with you, and you’re communicating, and you have a genuine relationship with them, at 10, that will allow you to move through those areas where at times you can’t do it. But that’s I just wanted you to know how how focused we are on that training piece.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:42
The next to kind of go hand in hand. So what we want to do is take a look at our vacation policy, particularly in two areas. So the first one really is years of qualified experience. So that’s a recruitment initiative, that’s really when we’re looking for hiring somebody that is coming in with significant experience and making sure we’re competitive enough to make to be able to have somebody consider making a move. The second one is for our existing staff. And that’s a retention initiative. And that’s really taking a look at people that have been here for significant years, and making sure that they’re receiving that vacation for those years of service as well. So they go together.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:20
So these two, you know, when we go, so when we look at the comp plan, and now I’m gonna highlight some because some are operational in nature that are very direct with me. And that’s the flexible work in the flexible work policies. There are areas where it is in the council policy per view. And this is where we’re gonna want some input one is moving forward on the comp plan analysis, but the two and vacation are pretty important for us and needing some direction from Council. If you heard me talk about some of the issues that we were having with housing across all the sectors. The other thing that starts showing itself in some of these conversations, is that the vacation at years of qualified experience. And so when folks come into our organization, we don’t, we have a little bit of flexibility, but we don’t necessarily have the flexibility to bring them on at the vacation that they’re probably currently receiving from their current employer. And when you look at what folks are wanting in terms of work life balance and these issues, every time, I can’t think of a single time, where this hasn’t been a point of discussion, in terms of folks wanting to come in at that level of vacation. And we have to really work to figure things out because we just don’t have that capacity to do it fully. And so what we were really wanting on council to see if you are okay with us bringing back an item that allows us to when we hire people, we can bring them on at a vacation level that is commensurate with their and I’ve got an underscore qualified with their qualified experience on the vacation for 15 plus years of service. When we made the adjustments on the vacation Pathfinder squad, what we saw from the assessment was that we were really off kilter on the early years. What we also know in the 15 years of service is that we’re not at the market on the people that we’re competing with. So we want to be able to bring that in using the same market approach or we’re consistent with our competitors. So that you know, those are three things we’ll touch on as we move back.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:47
Beyond that, I think we have a goal to take a look at our overall PTO policy. Those first two are part of that but really, overall we want to get to that as well. Some pieces that will need to come through counsel that are a little bit more targeted, we want to take a look at our own call and call back pay policy. We have seen some other cities where we’re not being competitive with that. And in this environment, it’s really not a good thing to be not competitive in those areas. And these are employees that we want to make sure that we’re recognizing. Same with our snow and emergency pay policy. So those are specific policies, they will have a bit of a financial impact in their areas that we just need to make sure that we’re competitive in. The next one is that workload analysis and staffing. So we can pay everyone great in regard to market in regard to making sure that we’re competitive, if we don’t have the right workload, then we might be overloading them. And that might be another reason that we leave that we see attrition. So it goes along with those policies as well. And then these last three are really more operational policies, as Harold had mentioned. So stay interviews, reinvigorating the attributes and reinvigorating the mentoring program.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:02
Next slide, please.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:05
So, our request here from counsel, we really, were looking for some feedback on those next steps that we just went through, and some council direction and moving forward on those steps so that we do bring the right changes to you to be able to make some of those adjustments. And then we were looking for some feedback as well on some individual action items as we returned to the Council for those final details and approval. So today, we’re kind of looking for some overall feedback, so that we can start to get those policies moving. And then we’ll continue to ask for feedback individually as we go forward with those items.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:39
Before we go to questions, if I could sort of wrap all of this up. We are probably a rare, I think it’s not unique to us. We’re seeing it in all of our local businesses. Right now. If you go by any business, I think you would heart be hard pressed to find a business that doesn’t have job opening sign up on it. It was interesting in just reading some news articles, I think we’re also seeing that within our colleagues in school districts and the stressors are finding on hiring teachers and hiring substitutes. And, and so this is this is a broader issue. I think two years ago, two and a half years ago, we all knew that the retirement wave was coming. And we were working through that. I think what has fundamentally shifted the world was how people were reacting to COVID. And how that really exacerbated life changes for folks, in terms of what we were doing. We are in this is my perspective, in in the time that I’ve been in work environment, I have not seen the issues to this level, they may have been more targeted, just certain classifications. But this is this is a challenge like we’ve never seen. And when we open positions, I can tell you that there are positions across the organization where they’re open for a significant period of time, just because we’re not getting qualified applicants. Or, in some cases, we may have six applicants. And then the next thing you know, we turn around and we have one and we may have 30, it is almost impossible right now to figure out what’s going on and in the job market. And in then even in that process, you’re in immediate competition. I mean, we’re basically now shifting to open until filled in our job postings. Because if you have a specified closing date, we’ve also found that we could lose half of our applicants in that process, because they’re already getting jobs. And so it is pressing us in ways that I think no one could have dreamed of. I think the world that we’re in now, it’s probably the challenge for managers today is it’s not about just getting the work done. It is really taking these in depth management conversations with your folks. And and so I just wanted to provide that as sort of a broader overview to all of this. And so now, we’d be happy to answer questions.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:32
Councillor Martin? Thank you, Mayor Peck.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:37
Joanne,
Unknown Speaker 3:14:38
there’s a word that you use twice on the slides. And I mean, we all it’s a word we all know what it means, but I don’t know what it means in this context and its attributes. What do you mean by the attributes that you need to manage?
Unknown Speaker 3:14:53
We have a list of attributes that our employees have created. It’s 13 different attributes, and they range from fun and enjoyment at work and accountability. And so they’re all of those attributes together. It was work that Harold did when he first came in as city manager. With employees, he took a look at the culture worked with employees, and what is important, all of those attributes came together. And that’s really what the organization has said that they want to make sure that they have in their workplace to make it a good workplace.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:33
As Council considers this, could we see that list of attributes that are important?
Unknown Speaker 3:15:39
So I’ve asked Sandy, Ms. Sandy, for a look at this. And so to a little more context on that when I came in, there were some discussions already occurring. But when I went around and started meeting with all the employees, or all of our team members, but we really found is they wanted to have this broader con conversation in terms of what do we want to be as an organization? How do we want to work together and, and so what we did is we put together a work group. This was not Harold’s idea. This was not even my leadership teams idea. This was the organization’s idea from across the entire organization from bottom to top of the organization. And generally what they said was, the tagline for this is, I can’t pull it up. But maybe Sandy can pull it up and share it as one together we lead. And so what really it’s about is we have attributes that we want to see as individuals, we have attributes that we need to have as an organization, and then we have attributes that we will do together, we can perform as as well as we can. So we will send this to you. It’s, it’s coming up. And just
Unknown Speaker 3:17:01
quickly, let’s Indigo,
Unknown Speaker 3:17:04
Indigo is the new software that led people to go ahead. So it’s a it’s a recruiting software. But the difference between the that and other recruiting software’s like LinkedIn or different things is that they will interview prospective candidates, they’ll get information on what their personality is, and then they will match.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:24
Oh, oh.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:31
Well, she’s trying to a Dallas. So
Unknown Speaker 3:17:35
I would kind of compare it to what you would
Unknown Speaker 3:17:37
say in Joanne, you just cut out for a little moment. We lost about halfway through that sentence.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:44
Okay. Um, so So I would kind of compare it to go to, like, if you went into a school district counseling office, and they really worked with you in terms of what are you interested in doing? And what do you want to do, as well as what your experiences so it’s a little bit more in depth than you would see in a typical recruiting software. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:05
Councillor Yarbrough? Thank you may I pick?
Unknown Speaker 3:18:13
Sell tonight? I just want to be clear. You want us to give some direction tonight? Well, you just let us know what the issues are? Because for me, I know Joanne and I were meeting but I want to know, I don’t know how what? How many weeks are, you know, your vacation time? I don’t know any of that. I don’t know where you’re trying to go with it. It’s just I guess for me, it’s still a little bit. I don’t understand. And I mean, I understand what you’re trying to say, because I’m dealing with that in my own, you know, in my own organization, as well. And so I just kind of want to know where you are already, in order for for me to make a decision and say, Yeah, I think you should do that. Because maybe I can offer some other things that I hear from other organizations that what they’re doing, as well. So I guess for me, I just need a little bit more information. And then also, you know, I had mentioned before that, I think that that’s why we have to implement these interns, these programs, these internships, to have these young people come in and learn about the different departments of of the city, have them come in and intern in different departments and in turn with us as city council members, and learn what the needs are in each department. It does. They don’t have to, you know, want to be involved in government, but learning about planning and development and you know, all zoning and all of the things that entails with the city. And so I think that’s a great opportunity for us to start implementing within our youth. I know that’s not going to happen, right? Tomorrow this year, but I mean, I would love for us as council to really sit down and talk about that, how we can get more youth involved in the city as interns, and implement them in different departments if we can. Um, so I guess my number one question is, is this something we have to decide on tonight? Because that was a lot of information. And I myself don’t know, I think I need a little bit more, you know, information as far as what we are offering now to the employees, and I don’t know if you know, as far as vacation, when you first get hired, what does that look? So?
Unknown Speaker 3:20:40
Well, if I can? I think, if I can answer that question, I think are, what we’re asking for is not necessarily a decision to do it. But are you okay with us bringing back items that are specifically related to vacation, you know, based on experience or increasing vacation, because, as you saw, and this workload is sort of threaded throughout, and if there’s something that you all don’t have an appetite for, I would rather be focused on what you do happen, have an appetite for and then we would bring it back, and go in depth on some of these issues as we bring a proposal to you. So here’s what we’re doing. Here are the things we wanted to focus on. Are you okay with us continuing to work, especially on those policy areas? And then we will start bringing it back. So if we could have been more clear on the question. Closer waters,
Tim Waters 3:21:43
thanks for your pick. It’s probably gonna just be a random kind of role of questions and reflections. Here, as you reflect, or you share what you what you did 10 years ago, when you came into your organization, which is what probably every CEO, you know, has a chance to do one time, right, that’s in your first six months 10 years later, that’s tougher to do. So I’m just curious. Joanne is the is the the are the workgroups or the task force you put together, they try to do what Harold did 10 years ago, in terms of listening to the organization in terms of what will keep us connected, enthused productive, committed to the city. Because you’ve laid out a ton of stuff, it’s a pile of work, a lot of it having to do with compensation and in benefits, which is, which is really critical. But at the end of the day, there’s their selves in the system, right? You got to identify what those are and in who you want to be as an organization going forward. And that’s deep, serious work that goes beyond compensation goes beyond vacation, not that those aren’t critical. And I in there probably aren’t great places to look right now for best practices, because it’s changed so dramatically, so quickly. I they’re just not great gonna be great models. Unless you unless you’ve already identified some I gather glass, random thought is I, the Gallup, q 12, was all based on their conclusions about what great supervision looks like right there. Their conclusion to all the work they did that led to that was that supervision is is maybe more important in many cases than then vacation or other, you know, some of the other considerations you’re talking about. And that’s not one time training that is ongoing work with supervisors to learn how to connect how to listen, and how to help people solve the problems that they need to solve on their own. And instead, this is the kind of like maybe this is the last random thought, but a lot of a lot of what employers or employees, a lot of the decisions they make about their workloads, your higher prefer highest performers are always going to have a workload problem. They don’t know when to stop they are. That’s the that’s who they are. Right? They continue to give and produce and produce. How that gets modeled by this by leadership. Right? The work life balance that the leaders decide are important, sends a real clear message to employees about this is okay. To say I’m not you know, I’m going to carve time for myself to go be a dad watching his son in his last performance, right? I mean, those are important signals to sin. And that’s part of that supervision equation as well. I mean, the complexities here are pretty significant. But the work has to be pretty deep as well. I’m just curious. Whose eyes is it? Is it heralds Joanne the workforce or is it some group you bring into the organization? Though the new eyes on the organization that Harold had 10 years ago, in New Year’s,
Unknown Speaker 3:25:06
I could kind of start to answer that a little bit. The workforce of the future, really, Sandy has been heading up the team. And it’s really been comprised of individuals from throughout the organization. So, directors have had some input, some of our managers have had input, our employee advisory group has been really engaged in it. So we incorporated a lot of what we’re hearing from them as some of these proposals, but then we also overlaid some of the market trends as well. And so what we’re bringing back at this point is a kind of a combination of that. It’s really what we’re hearing from the workforce, and they had gone out, they’ve done surveys with our workforce, they really pushed to make sure that they heard from everybody. And so we, we feel like we have that voice. And then we also feel like we’ve incorporated the market trends. And so that’s where we’re at the beginning of this project. I think you might want to add to that.
Unknown Speaker 3:25:58
Yeah, I think the other thing in the new eyes, it’s also listening to the people who come to our organization and who are new. And that’s a really critical point that you have to do, because I think we get locked in history and we get locked in. This is the way we’ve always done it. And when you have a world evolving as fast as it is, you need those new eyes. And so I would talk to you about, you know, David Hornbacher coming and talking about what he experienced in Aspen, who probably went through a version of this much earlier than we did just because of their own issues. Valerie Dodd coming in and working in the private sector and bringing in some of the components that she said. So there’s a heavy reliance also, both on the people that have been here for a long time, but also on the new people that are coming here. Because that’s, that’s what gives me the new look, is new people coming in and saying, Hey, here’s what we’ve seen, and then really relying on your organization. So when we say is it similar to the work, I did almost the same model where we have representatives from all areas because it also can’t be Civic Center centric, meaning I have to pay particular attention to those departments that are operational departments that are that are facing completely different challenges. And so that’s why we want a broader look. I hope that answered your question, but sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:27:25
Thank you, Mayor. So um, you know what I’m looking, I’m assuming that you were wanting, you know, that we’re looking at the next steps, the slide 20. And so that’s what I’m looking at right now. And so it sounded like Joanne may have already answered this. But the the list was comprised from what the workforce said that they prioritize. Is that am I correct in understanding that or? Or was it coming more from from you all, and leaders in those departments? So I
Unknown Speaker 3:27:59
would say that sec, that last third of the presentation was all of the ideas that we heard from everybody. The very last slide, when we were talking about the immediate steps was kind of our synthesis of that. So it’s not everything that we heard, it’s really what we heard and prioritized.
Unknown Speaker 3:28:15
Okay. Okay. So, you know, and I see a lot of overlap as a public school teacher, you know, working in the public sector, um, you know, and we did our union, as we’re getting ready for our, you know, this year’s negotiations with the district, you know, we have those one to one meetings with members, we went out for building sites, our union team went out and did building sites collected the information and overwhelmingly, and it seems like, I think in any public sector, entity, compensation and workload, so overwhelmingly, those were the two two, so I’m glad that you are looking at an analysis or wanting to, to delve deeper into what that looks like, and how to lessen that, or or make it a manageable workload. You know, for us, that some of the things that’s driving people out of, of the profession, is we have state mandates, we have all these, these requirements that are put, you know, bestowed on us and so I don’t know how, you know, how that impacting city employees as far as what, you know, state mandates, you know, push that we’re giving you all you know, so all these different laws and requirements that are being put and added to the caseload. So it’s not even really taking anything off the workers plates, it’s really just compiling more and more and more. Um, so you know, I, I would really I’m glad that you are wanting to take a delve deeper look into that. And the other thing you know, this was one of the things we talked about on Monday when I met with our team was, you know, we often A recruitment and retention, recruitment and retention, really, we need to hold value for those people who stayed, especially those who are staying through the pandemic. So it’s kind of changing that narrative to retention and recruitment. And while recruitment is important, we have to retain the talent we have right now. Um, so you know, that just really a commentary that I wanted to throw out, throw out on there. And, you know, as far as the compensation plan, um, you know, what is the so, you know, we’re looking at the Consumer Price Index cost of living, you know, one of the real data points that we were looking at housing in Longmont is 30%, higher 37% higher than the national average. And that was in one of the national data databases that we were we were looking at. And so where are wages in this like, are wages keeping up with the housing with the housing prices, we you know, we have little control over what, you know, the market does, we have a lot of we have more control over the compensation. Pay.
Unknown Speaker 3:31:11
So I think that’s part of what we need to look at, because we have a market based approach where I mean, you’ve all seen it, when you dealt with me here in the cities we compare with, here’s what we do. Look at that, because we need to take into account those cities cost of living and how that looks like so many years ago, probably 15 years ago, I did a compensation study, we actually factored in cost of living, but even negative, to really get a sense of what that look like in terms of compensation for people. So if a place had a lower cost of living, you would pull if it had a higher, or if it had a higher cost of living, you would adjust your numbers to make sure that you were really looking at that component and what you needed to do. You know, that’s one of the pieces are you okay, with us working on that and bringing that back to you? Because it may entail a fundamental change?
Unknown Speaker 3:32:08
Yes. Yeah, no, I would, I would support that.
Unknown Speaker 3:32:15
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 3:32:18
Thank you, I just like to chime in very quickly, a few observations. In that I think I heard the same word over and over again, in the presentation, though, was flexibility. And flexibility is definitely what I think is the operative word in a lot of concepts. And be used in all different circumstances such as retention or recruitment. You have people with a lot of experience, great, so we can move out of the one to 1% or one or 2%. And, and maybe look at things, you know, in a flexible manner. Also in the concept of virtuosity as well, is that there may be some up and comer that really blows, blows our hats off our heads with their talent, right. So that’s a couple things to think about. And then the other one that I just want to say is that while I’ve been doing the same job for the last 10 years, and I’m very happy doing that, anecdotally, from I guess a direct secondhand perspective, my wife works in the private sector, the corporate sector, and some things I’ve noticed is that with much of the sector, these days, there’s a lot of competition, and that she’s had some issues where it’s a retention issue, really, they didn’t act aggressively enough to keep her and so she then moved on to another company that provided a better you know, live work balance, better compensation slash benefits. And not that she didn’t like the company, she she left but that they didn’t act aggressively enough to retain her. And so, that’s another thing I would maybe suggest looking at is how aggressive the city is with its retention or recruitment basis. So those are just a few of the observations I have I look forward to a more I guess boiled down group of recommendations when when we really get into it, but thank you very much. I’m so glad that the city is looking at the workforce of the future you know that’s I think an incredibly progressive thing for the city of Longmont to be doing and I hope other cities are doing too.
Unknown Speaker 3:34:45
You have any other comments from councillors? If not I always in Oh, counselor waters.
Tim Waters 3:34:51
Thanks. I was waiting to every for everybody to have their first shot before raising my hand again. The last no last request I Guess I would make is, and this probably only would be relevant to a certain Echelon or level of employees in the city. But if anybody has the courage to speak truth to power in terms of what we do or don’t do, that is part of the problem or part of the solution, you know, part of the retention? Or, or, or what is what makes this the city less attractive and compelling as a workplace, we ought to know that. Right. So it’s not just everybody else, we have a role in this as well, I suspect, it would be helpful to know from the staffs perspective, how you see us fulfilling that role in terms of retention of talent.
Unknown Speaker 3:35:44
Okay, so, um, I have a couple things as we work through this, as you work through this, um, and start to implement things, I know that you’re looking at grandfathering in people who have stayed with the organization, for example, if you are offering to new employees for for retention, a higher vacation plan, I think, I think that needs to be grandfathered in, as well. You don’t want to lose people because they feel that they’re not being valued. So the other thing I was going to say, Have you thought about sabbaticals offering to your executive team and maybe middle managers for maybe taking a sabbatical every five years, I see this as a just thinking of my own son who lost his sabbatical because of COVID. He was really looking forward to taking that month and cycling in Europe. And that is part of the workload, that’s what you work for. And it also might have a positive effect in that if it’s a supervisor, they need to make sure their team knows how to run without them. You know, who’s in doing that? What is the training? How are they talking to them? Our how’s that team pulling together? So they can cover for each other? And and want to, because they know at some point in the future, it’s going to be their turn. So that works well in the private sector idle, something to think about?
Unknown Speaker 3:37:29
Yeah, I think that’s great. And I think that ties in with our succession planning, and what we’re trying to do have a mentor that part of his succession planning was not only were you acting, you sat in his office, because it was a different experience on out. And so I think it’s tying that but to your point, I think we have to be that creative.
Unknown Speaker 3:37:50
Exactly. And then there’s always the daycare component. But that’s another conversation. So do you have your direction? Do you need anything more from us, Joanne?
Unknown Speaker 3:38:05
So I’m assuming that last slide, where we said, here are the things that we want to work on, and we want to bring back to you with more detail. You all are good with us bringing that back? There’s nothing?
Unknown Speaker 3:38:16
Yeah, let’s just raise our hands or thumbs up so that he, they have a real good understanding. Thank you very much. I’m good. I feel for you. This is really a horrible challenge. It For Me, it’s exciting to see where it’s gonna go. But if I was in the workforce, I would be struggling as well.
Unknown Speaker 3:38:38
Well, you know, we have that I’ll end with this. So when we left this conversation, and it wasn’t just my leadership team, it was the people who were part of workforce of the future and from all levels. And I think at one point, someone goes, Man, this is dawning or this is depressing, or I can’t remember the word. And I think what I said was is, you know, what, we know what the challenges are, we know what we need to do. And we know that we need to start taking some steps immediately. And if we can do those things, then it’s how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. And I think we just have to have that. That mindset as we’re doing this. And I think the thing we all have to be cognizant of six months from now, it could change, right? Because the world’s changing that fast. And so I think this will also be evolving over time as the world continues to change. And so you know what, that’s what I said to the group because it’s, it’s tough, but if there’s any place that can do it, it’s this organization and it’s a team members that we have, from top to bottom and across the organization because they’re committed to it. And they’re committed to our community and there’s no other place I’d want to be doing this kind of work than here.
Unknown Speaker 3:39:54
That’s good to hear. But why do you think that Harold so Have you got your direction? That’s great. We are now at the final call public invited to be heard. Let’s just see I would love to do five minutes but we’re getting up to where we’re going to have to make a motion to go past 11. So let’s see if we can not do that. So if you want to call in from Final call public invited to be heard the information is displayed on the screen, please mute the live stream and dial in now. We’ll take a five minute break and be back in five minutes.
Unknown Speaker 3:40:34
Mr. Peck, we are about 15 seconds out from the five minute mark. I am currently seeing no callers in our chat. Okay, let’s close it down. I,
Unknown Speaker 3:45:29
I don’t think we’re going to be having any at this late date. Um, so now it’s time for mayor and council comments. Do we have any comments from councillors?
Unknown Speaker 3:45:43
Nope. Seeing none
Unknown Speaker 3:45:48
would you turn on your camera please? Thank you. Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:45:54
city manager Mark remarks Harold
Unknown Speaker 3:46:04
let me unmute No comments. Mayor Council.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:06
Thank you, city attorney Yujing.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:10
No comments, Mayor.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:11
Thank you. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Moved. Thank you. Second. Okay, it’s been Moved by Councillor water seconded by Councillor Yarborough to adjourn the meeting. All those in favor? Raise your hand. It has passed unanimously. Good night.