Video Description:
Join us live for this week’s City Study Session
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hello and welcome, everyone to the city council study session of March 1 2022. May we have a roll call please?
Unknown Speaker 0:12
Absolutely. Mayor Peck. Present. Councilmember Duggal Ferring. Here. Councilmember Martin. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Here. Councilmember waters here. Councilmember Yarborough? Here. Mayor you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 0:30
Thank you. Um, welcome everyone. These meetings are being held remotely due to the ongoing novel Coronavirus pandemic. You can watch the live stream any of these ways you can go to the Longmont WWW dot Longmont colorado.gov forward slash agendas. You can also watch it on the city’s YouTube channel, Longmont YouTube Live or via the Longmont Public Media website. Longmont public media.org forward slash watch forward slash and of course on Comcast channels eight or eight at can we have a pledge of allegiance, please? Counselor Yarborough, would you lead us in that? Sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:21
I pledge allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag
Unknown Speaker 1:26
of the United States of America and to
Unknown Speaker 1:31
the republic for which it stands.
Unknown Speaker 1:35
One
Unknown Speaker 1:36
nation under God, indivisible,
Unknown Speaker 1:41
with liberty and liberty. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So I’m for the public. Anyone wishing to provide public comment must watch the livestream of the meeting. And call in only when I open the meeting for public comment. callers are not able to access the main meeting at any other time. You can see on your screen now the call in information the toll free call in number is 888-788-0099. Watch the live stream and write down the meeting ID when it’s displayed at the beginning of the meeting. The ID here is 89493496835 Wait for me to invite callers to call in and then dial the toll free number into the meeting ID and when asked for your participant ID press the pound sign. Don’t forget to mute the live stream and listen for instructions on the phone. callers will hear confirmation they’ve entered the meeting will be told how many others are already participating in the meeting and will be placed in a virtual waiting room until admitted into the meeting. callers will be called upon by the last three digits of their phone number and allowed to unmute to provide your comments. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. Once done speaking, just hang up. So do I have any motions to to direct the city manager to add agenda items to the next to future agendas? Councilwoman Hidalgo fairing
Unknown Speaker 3:29
Thank you, Mayor. I actually have two okay, you know, while you have me have to do one at a time. So the first one I want to mention actually came to I don’t know who all received the email. But it said but I did talk to Harold and Dawn that there were they did receive not necessarily the email but maybe a visit Don correct me if I’m wrong. Somebody did come in to talk to you about the issue in the campaign, the fair campaign Practices Act and then there was a request of changing or adding a word to the ordinance 2.04208 in adding the word Street in address so when it says including name and address is the what the current language says the request from residents were to add the word street
Unknown Speaker 4:33
address.
Unknown Speaker 4:35
I don’t know if you could hear my dogs I apologize. Give me a moment okay, so, um, you know, I could debate or tell my rationale now or have it see if I can have it seconded and then we can begin debate.
Unknown Speaker 4:57
Um, yes, go ahead and make the motion welcome. The second time and discuss it.
Unknown Speaker 5:01
Okay. Okay, so so if I can have a motion or if someone can second greatly appreciate it to share my rationale for bringing this forward.
Unknown Speaker 5:10
Councillor Hidalgo pairing, would you mind repeating that motions a little more so
Unknown Speaker 5:15
it was in currently in our ordinance 2.0 point 204 Or seven sorry, inter disclosures of reporting. The request was to add all contributions received, including to include the name and street address of each person who has contributed $50 or more. So the only change would be to add the word Street. I can explain my rationale for supporting this.
Unknown Speaker 5:49
That’s fine. Okay. Let’s just wait till the discussion point. Okay. We have a second for that, for that motion. Counselor. Yarborough seconded that. So let’s open up the discussion comes through dogfighting? Do you want to give us your?
Unknown Speaker 6:06
Yes, right. So, um, you know, not long ago, and you know, in the work I do with my teachers union, we went in and updated our bylaws. Because these were all pre written prior to the internet. So a lot of things have changed. So, what we imagined what the world was like back then before, and I believe this was written back in 1992. So prior to the Internet, what our phrasing language and our you know, our often our go to expressions are pre were predated the internet. So, you know, we have, I think it is imperative that we update our language to match the turn of, you know, 21st century. So, being really specific on that. Um, the other thing is, I feel like, since this was brought to us, by residents, and it was more than one I felt like as us as representatives of the community, you know, we should be advocating and, you know, bringing things bringing issues forward that were brought to us by the community. So that was one other thing, that is a reason why I support this. And then also, you know, I feel like this is a small change that we could make, that would really help ensure that we have the trust and confidence of our community members. So I didn’t feel like this was very a controversial issue. But I felt like it was a small change to make to one update as to 21st century language, and to to really work, you know, representing the community and to open those, you know, just create a line of trust and confidence among our community members.
Unknown Speaker 7:59
So it’s good, thank you. Do you have any other councillors when I have a discuss this? Or have an opinion? Councillor waters?
Tim Waters 8:12
I’m just Could you clarify what it is that you believe? Is language in the code that adding? How does adding st ID is dressed, bring that into a 21st century setting? As opposed to the way it’s worded right now?
Unknown Speaker 8:34
Mayor can Oh, yes. Okay. So um, so address typically, when we think of address, we think of where an individual resides, like their street address where they were they their residency, what has happened now is with address, it can be construed as being, you know, it can be thought of as email address, so that that technology piece has changed since 1992.
Tim Waters 9:04
So, so just for whatever tour that sounds like, what you want to do is take us back now forward to require a street address and eliminate the use of an email address, which would be more consistent with a digital age than the street address, just just to clarify the connection between street address and digital age or, you know, the dawn of the internet.
Unknown Speaker 9:30
So, um, so I kind of think that it adds more clarity of where the, where the ROM donations are coming from email address doesn’t give a very specific, you know, what was the intent of this, of this organ or this ordinance or, you know, part of being the in the fair Practice Act was to give whoever’s looking through the documents and idea of where these people are from where are they even real people. So The email address doesn’t really get to that. So you know, and for me, I think it was wanting to be more specific. Are we talking about email address? Are we talking about? Or you know, the other option would be to include email address, but I really think there needs to be a definite separating of what and definition of what address means.
Tim Waters 10:19
So I’m, I’m going to vote no, when the time comes to vote on whether or not to bring this for two reasons. One is I think, if we’re going to change or update the, the ordinance, we had, we had to update the ordinance and not piecemeal it with there’s more to or to update. The second would be I’m familiar with the background on this. And in what I think the motivation is it eliminates for candidates in the future who, who who accept or used PayPal, PayPal. Yeah. It eliminates for some the use of PayPal as a way to to accept the donation for a campaign. I think that’s a mistake. So I’ll vote no.
Unknown Speaker 11:01
Thank you, Councillor Martin? You’re muted, counselor.
Unknown Speaker 11:11
I know I am. It’s the spacebar again. Okay. I think this is too small. And if if at some future point, we’re going to go over the language and essential and and update it, then we should we do a language scrub. You know, there are all sorts of similar problems, such as a lot of the a lot of the entities that one pays out of a campaign don’t publish as a physical address, and you have to use an email because it’s all you can get. And the Pay Pal thing is is real, although it it’s you can get the address, stop shaking your head. Mayor Pro Tem, it’s not that you can’t get the addresses, but you but you have to spend a lot more time chasing down the person because PayPal doesn’t require them to provide an address. So we need to decide whether that’s going to be sufficient or not. And that’s what I’m saying. I’m not sure that we should, we should do this as as a little one, one shot deal, but if we’re going to do it, we should do the whole thing. And so maybe council member Otago fairing would like to give the staff a little more time and amend it to be you know, in end to end scrubbed as opposed to just a one word change.
Unknown Speaker 12:45
Thank you, Councillor Martin, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 12:50
Thank you, Mayor Peck. First of all, I would actually agree that instead of taking it as a piecemeal approach, I would recommend that we do look at the the act in its entirety. But as somebody who utilized PayPal in both campaigns, it is not hard to get physical street addresses from folks is very easy to do a required it when asking for PayPal contributions. And also, if somebody didn’t give it to me, I just turned around and emailed him back saying I cannot accept your contribution unless you provide me a physical address. And if it’s unethical to reject contributions based on the fact that it does not provide you a physical address, then I guess that was unethical. It’s not difficult. And for somebody who spends a very large amount of time on social media to say that it’s hard to get a physical address from somebody by directly emailing them is ridiculous. So I can agree with saying that we shouldn’t take it piecemeal. But for anybody to say it’s difficult to get a fiscal address. It’s just absolutely absurd.
Unknown Speaker 14:06
Um, counselor, counselor, Hidalgo, fairing, do you want to?
Unknown Speaker 14:14
Yes, I don’t disagree that I do not want to take a piecemeal approach. I just felt like this was one that could be and you know, Don, correct me if I’m wrong. Can we, you know, make this change tonight? And then but also bring back or would it just be in everybody’s for the sake of time or for the sake of efficiency that we asked to bring back the fair campaign Practices Act?
Unknown Speaker 14:44
For review, you want to answer that dawn?
Unknown Speaker 14:49
Pack. Councilmember double fan. There are a couple other I have a small list going of a couple changes that I’ve noted that would be helpful. So we could certainly bring back I could bring back the ones that I’ve kept a little list of it’s a small quiz and include this one, and then we could put it on the study session and discuss before we’re in the heat of political election season again.
Unknown Speaker 15:18
Yes, yes. That’s why I agreed to bring it up now. And I’m sorry for like the conversation format. But that’s why I wanted to bring it up now. And this one caught my eye, because we are going to be having a special election coming up. And then no, the following year, and other local election. So if we could have these things in order prior to that, that’s kind of why it caught my eye that maybe we could do something now.
Unknown Speaker 15:45
Can I make a suggestion? Councillor Hidalgo hearing? So this is just a motion to put it on a future agenda? Can we amend the motion? Would you be open to amending this emotion to include it with the other items that the city clerk has found that she wants on the to to be included to change the fair campaign Practices Act, and perhaps even meet with the people who are working on this so that we, we are including the public that that is interested? They’re the ones that brought it to you? So it would be good to have a conversation with them to? Do we want to date certain that we would like to see this. We want to just say before the next election, you decide counselor, Dogberry how you would like to work that.
Unknown Speaker 16:43
So I don’t want to put a definitive date. Okay, because I know, you know, there’s a lot of things going on, and you have to kind of take precedence over others as situations come up. So I do want to allow for that flexibility of definitely before the next regular election cycle, you know, if we cannot make it by this special election, understood, but okay, if we could have something codified before, before the next. And really it’s not, you know, the decision now is for us to be able to discuss this in depth as we look at the language and look at implications. So my intent is not to really have that debate tonight, but to get it on an agenda where we can have a thorough conversation on this, on this topic.
Unknown Speaker 17:31
So if I understand you correctly, then you want to amend your motion to put this on a future agenda. I’m including the items that the city clerk has found that she would like to put up for amendment as well, in the fair campaign Practices Act.
Unknown Speaker 17:51
Do I have that? Yes, you? Did. That
Unknown Speaker 17:54
makes sense to you done. Okay. Councillor Yarbro? Would you like to second the amended motion? Alright. It’s been seconded, discussed and amended. Let’s all vote those who would like to see the summit on a future agenda? Raise your hand. That passes unanimously, thank you, Councillor Hidalgo, firing, but you said you had two items?
Unknown Speaker 18:23
I do. And the next one, I didn’t know if when the city manager does the COVID update. If I would be able to bring it up then. So I’m bringing it up now. You know, we had talked about our back when councilmember Martin had mentioned about keeping virtual for the next couple of weeks. Well, you know, so it’s been a couple of weeks. And I’d like to make a motion that we move back to in person. And I can explain my reasoning behind that. If I can get a second. I’ll second that. Okay, thank you. So, my rationale for bringing this forward is the changes in guideline guidance from CDC, the state and Boulder County that, you know, we can go massless I know some of the issues was to be in a meeting for several hours with the masculine was very challenging for folks. You know, we have the vaccine, we have the booster, you know, I understand we are still at a high transmission rate we’re still above that red line. However, you know, from my own personal experience, you know, I’ve been in the classroom this entire pandemic. We’ve recently moved our staff meetings from virtual to in person. So and you know, knock on wood knock on wood, you know, I haven’t gotten sick. Um, but I it seems like we know more about the virus and We have some more mitigating practices in place that I think, you know, it’s time for us to move back. Okay. Plus, I really, I mean, this is hard, you know, my dogs, my husband, it was like,
Unknown Speaker 20:18
I need to be back in person I need to focus.
Unknown Speaker 20:21
Thank you. Oh, is there any other discussion on this? Harold, do you wanna weigh in on that, please?
Unknown Speaker 20:27
Yeah. Um, since we don’t have a COVID update, I can show you a couple of graphs really quickly. Um so this one is the wastewater work that we’re doing. And you can see that we’re, we’re now pretty low, and continues to decrease from a wastewater perspective. And then I’m going to share another screen with you all. And then this one is the caseload. So you can see that we’re getting pretty close to the red line. And then I got an email from the county that said, their numbers are continuing. I mean, the numbers are just continuing to decrease. So that was really the only thing I was going to say, and city manager remarks. If I may make a suggestion, if we look at the 29th is the day that we’re going to come back because we have a meeting next week. And that’s not a lot of time to communicate to the community that we’re going to be back. But then that gives us time to, to get everything shifted over on the 29th. If councils open to that idea.
Unknown Speaker 21:40
Councillor Hidalgo during this is your motion. So would you know
Unknown Speaker 21:43
Yeah, so I would like to add that date on my motion that we return to in person starting effective March Tuesday, March 29.
Unknown Speaker 21:55
I’ll second fact amendment. So its motion has been made by Councillor who double fairing. I seconded it. Do we have any comments by other councillors before we vote? Seeing none, oh, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 22:11
I would just like to make sure that all council members are comfortable with a maskless meeting for both council members as well as the public. Since we are going back into a public meeting, if everyone’s comfortable with that, then absolutely. Otherwise, I’m willing to also require masking for our meetings, if it would be more comfortable for council members in the near term.
Unknown Speaker 22:40
Do any of the counselors want to have any comments about that suggestion? Masked or unmasked? Or kadaga?
Unknown Speaker 22:52
Can I offer the suggestion? So currently, as I’m teaching, I still wear a mask, the majority of my kids, their parents want them to be still be masked. So out of respect for them, I just I continue to wear my mask. So I think to have that option would be very beneficial and kind of seen if if there are council members who would still want to wear masks. I’ll be happy to wear mine.
Unknown Speaker 23:20
So do we does the amendment include volunteering masks, then? Does that? Would that sound like a?
Unknown Speaker 23:29
I would think so i i mean, i My My goal was just since early on, we said that we would be following CDC and Boulder County Public Health guidelines. And it is optional.
Unknown Speaker 23:43
So in the reason I mentioned the word voluntary is because if we are going to the public to announce what we’re going to do, we would have to have the correct wording in there. So they know. They know what to do.
Unknown Speaker 24:00
So yeah, I would say voluntary. Okay, so the motion on the staff to help mitigate those things.
Unknown Speaker 24:09
So the motion is that we go back to in person meetings on March 20. With a voluntary masking of addition to the meetings. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay, all those in favor, please raise your hand post. That passes unanimously. Thank you, Harold for that update. Are there any other motions to add agenda items to future agendas? Okay, seeing none, we are going to move on. Now we are going to have public invited to be heard with three remember public chat in the public that it’s a three minute limitation on your speak your comments So it’s time to call in now the informations on the screen please mute your live stream and dial in now we’re going to take a five minute break to give everyone time to call in Thank you we’ll see you soon?
Unknown Speaker 29:51
Mayor pack
Unknown Speaker 29:52
we are approaching the five minute mark I do see we have a caller waiting But I’ll leave it open for a couple more seconds for the rest of council to return.
Unknown Speaker 30:05
Thank you Dallas
Unknown Speaker 30:11
Okay, I’m gonna drop the slide and still only the one caller.
Unknown Speaker 30:18
Okay, let’s bring him in. Sounds
Unknown Speaker 30:21
good. Caller with the last three digits five to five caller five to five. Would you please hit star six to unmute yourself. And when you speak please make sure that you have the live stream muted and state your name and address for the record. Hey
Unknown Speaker 30:37
there. Can you hear us? I can. Can
Unknown Speaker 30:40
you hear me? Yes, we
Unknown Speaker 30:41
can. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 30:45
Hi, everyone is Brian John Bryan Johnson of nine to six Kaufman. I’m caught in this evening with a request. There was an issue that myself and another gentleman who I didn’t know, we brought up at the last public invited be heard. That was the issue of car stereo noise, particularly along Main Street at certain hours. With spring approaching, that’s when it gets bad. Summertime. You know, with the inclement weather, we’ve had some relief, but you know, even yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t it was bad. I between noon and 130 I count of 67 instances of audible car stereos inside my house and 150 feet off of me I’m a block over. For those that reside along Maine. It’s a constant and frequent nuisance. You know, the city ordinance 10 dot 20.1 100 allows for 25 feet. While that’s unenforceable, I understand. I think we can do something about the ones that are audible from one 200 Even 400 feet, rattle your windows and at certain times, particularly weekends, holidays, nice weather, it can go on for 16 hours a day. About every stoplight cycle you have at least one I’ve spoken with Jeff Sater, the block captains have actually put a lot of effort into this, you know, understand the challenges that they faced, obviously limited police resources. And the fact that very difficult to identify violators from inside of vehicle from outside plainly audible, but a lot of engineering goes into having quiet miss in vehicles, and it’s tough for them to identify them from the vehicle. And so that’s why I’m coming to you guys to ask for some help. They need our help. Citizens, those of us that live near in any major thoroughfare, but particularly Main Street, need your help. And there’s a couple of simple, deep policy options I want to throw out there. Maybe a chance that we could get signs below the existing no cruising signs that are already on Main that read our stereo noise ordinance strongly enforced or something to that matter. Secondly, we made you put out a press release that says we’re going to start enforcing this more. Even better, maybe we could step it up and increase signs a little bit. Perhaps make downtown a quiet zone where fines are doubled. You know, we put a lot of money we put $300,000 into those patios on main street
Unknown Speaker 33:37
a few months ago.
Unknown Speaker 33:39
And it makes it really unpleasant to dine on any patio, particularly ones that are on Main Street. When you have those going by and turns out that the time the prime violations time for car stereos is kind of the prime dining times it’s Friday evenings into Friday night. Saturday afternoon, Saturday evenings Ryan and Sunday afternoon for whatever reason or a bad time. Brian, we bring this to the table. And Brian.
Unknown Speaker 34:05
Thank you
Unknown Speaker 34:07
very much for your comments. You’ve made some great points. So thanks. Your time is up.
Unknown Speaker 34:15
Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 34:21
And without there are no other callers. Mayor pack.
Unknown Speaker 34:23
Okay, thank you. That brings us to our special reports and presentations. We have two presentations tonight. There actually are study session items. The first one is a proposed restructuring of Public Safety Department. And I do think our city manager Harold Domingo’s is going to take us through that.
Unknown Speaker 34:45
Yes, well, I’m going to introduce Zack artists on this to do it. But before I wanted to do this, I know you’re probably going What’s the restructuring doing on this agenda item, because it’s normally an operational piece that we do internally as the charter outlines, the reason we’re bringing this to you is that in order to do the restructuring, there is a funding component that goes along with this. And it’s tied to the funding that we allocated when we were looking at the FPP. A, the retirement switch over with within police and fire. And when Jim golden brought that in, brought that to you all, as part of the collective bargaining agreement, we indicated that we were funding it to the tune of approximately a million dollars, and that we didn’t think we were going, we weren’t sure we were going to need all of that. So the funding source that we’re utilizing in order to do the restructuring, that you saw in the council calm is actually a use of those dollars. And because we when we talk to council that we were going to be programmed them here and we want to move on, we actually wanted to bring that. So the Council could tell us whether they were not whether they were okay with the use of that funding. And so I’ve asked Zach to talk a little bit about what he’s what he saw what he’s looking at what we’re trying to accomplish, so that you all can understand the use of the dollars and that’s really the question on this is the use of the dollars Dallas, would
Unknown Speaker 36:25
you bring up the PowerPoint for me please, sir. All right.
Unknown Speaker 36:33
Good evening, Mayor packin city council members, Zack artists public safety chief for the city of Longmont. I’m joined tonight by Commander James Brown, who will be presenting some information towards the end of this presentation. But tonight, we wanted to bring before Council proposed a restructuring plan for public safety. But just specifically for police service side of things. Dallas, if you go to the next slide for me. Our goal is that the proposed changes along with in conjunction with some other operational improvements will help to address some organizational needs and challenges that we’ve identified in our police services. Dallas, if you could go to the next slide. So when we talk about organizational challenges, the areas where we have the most need is our patrol division. For our frontline supervisors, in particular, when we talk about our sergeants who are first line supervisors, they have many additional responsibilities other than simply just managing and supervising their shifts. As you can see, they have some operational responsibilities. They have administrative responsibilities. They have handled significant events and major investigations that occur on their watches, along with program coordination, and collateral assignments. Dallas next 40 Police. So what we found is when we begin to look at we found that our patrol sergeant spent on average about 60% of their time working on administrative paperwork and collateral assignments, meaning 60% of their time is spent within the office, we’d only gives about 40% of the time to be able to be out on the road, supervising and working along with their shifts. And so some of the collateral assignments that we’re talking about here, we have everything from canine to honor guard to vehicle maintenance, FTO programs, Animal Control, our CSOs, which is our community service officers, community volunteer patrol sergeants apprentice programs, and again, as they operate as instructors for a variety of perishable skills are skills that we have to do every year for training, that’s just to name a few of the things that they have to do. And this leads to challenges within an organization in our organization. It’s led to some challenges. And first and foremost with communication. Again, we’re not able to establish their objectives and directions, and employee development. Again, how do we identify strengths and weaknesses of our employees to begin to help develop them, almost like a mentorship program, being able to find out what their goals are, what they want to achieve, and public safety where they’re hoping to get to, again, organizational efficiency is affected by this. Again, we talked about supervising, if they’re spending 60% of the time in the office handling administrative and other assignments, then they’re only spending a very small amount of time out on the road along with their staff. And then again, are we creating this culture of consistency, accountability and productivity. Next slide, please. Dallas. So when we look at really our tenure of patrol officers, you know, many of you already know when you start a law enforcement. You start on the road, you go into the uniform, you’re the one driving the mark car, you’re answering calls for service with 911. But when we look at what we have, as far as experience coming in, what we find is that we have we’re allowed at 86 officers on our uniformed patrol division, but 27% of them are still within their first year meaning they have less than 12 months on the road. then what we find is that 47% of patrol officers have less than two years with the department. And so that’s a pretty high number of what we have as far as experience. And so what you see on the right hand side is the graph that shows really, when we look at collectively or globally all of police side of things, you can see that for the most part, 68% of all of our folks have less than five years in law enforcement. And then we have 15% have 10 years or more than in five to 10 years is about 17%. I will tell you that when I started here in August of last year, we had 30 openings. And I think we’re down to about seven this year. So we’ve seen quite an influx with 3030 officers into that 86 Because they’re starting on patrol. So this is there’s a great need for our line level supervisors to be available and to be on the road. Dallas or to go to Slide six for me are excellent. So we also want to look at what it looked like for our sergeants tenure, what are we looking like as far as our surgeons across the board. And so what you can see, from a department standpoint, we’re almost 5050, meaning that we have 50% has been here less than three years or even a supervisor less than three years. And then we have those that have been about 50% has been more than three years. But when you look at our patrol, because when you make sergeant, that’s where you start. Here. Just recently, in the past month, we promoted five officers to Sergeant. And so what you find is that we have about 17% that have three years or more as a sergeant. And then we have about 83% that has less than three years. Dallas have to go to the next slide for me.
Unknown Speaker 41:34
So the proposal and organizational changes that we’re going to talk a little bit about tonight, as we go through some slides is what we’re wanting to do is we’re wanting to promote the deputy chief to a police chief position. We want to add three assistant police chiefs, three commanders and 13 sergeants is what we currently have. And I’ll talk a little bit more about what that looks like from an organizational standpoint and why we would like to move towards this reorganization. Dallas, if you’ll go to the next slide for me. But what we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that we looked across the board at other cities, comparable to population size and also the staffing levels to make sure that what we were trying to do and what we were looking to do was consistent with what we’re seeing across public safety, particularly on the police side. And so we looked at cities Arvada boulder really Loveland and Westminister that are typically are close to our size, along with staffing. And as you can see universally across the board, each one of those agencies have a police chief. Right now we have a deputy chief that oversees our police department, what you saw as far as assistant chiefs, also known as deputy chiefs, on average, the department has about two and a half of those individuals, we have one, when you get to Commander, that commander position can be titled a couple of different ways it can be titled Lieutenant or Captain, what you find is it for long, but we have for most agencies are averaging seven. And when you look at sergeants and officers, we’re pretty consistent with what we see across cities that are comparable to our agency and our sizes. Dallas, if you go to the next slide for me. So when I started in August of last year, this is the organizational chart that we had. This is the structure that we had, of course, you have public safety chief, you had a deputy of fire services, the Deputy Chief of Police Services, the deputy chiefs of support services, and then he had a community health and resilience director. And you can see the number of total personnel that each one of those are assigned. So that’s kind of more of a global look at what public safety looks from a 30,000 foot view. But Dallas go the next slide for me. And so what we look here, what we see is this is in August of last year, this is the police service side of things and how things were structured. So you would have a deputy chief of the police, and he has four commanders, or one over two over patrol, one over investigation or detectives and one over special operations. And again, you can see the breakdown of span of control there. So Dallas, if you go to the next slide for me. And so this is what we are proposing this is what we would like to try to move to and what is in oranges are highlighted changes. And these really are only changes in titles, not changes in responsibility or changes in monetary changes simply because they’re already compensated. And they’re already doing the functions as a as these positions. So the recommendation and what we’re proposing is that the deputy chief of fire who would become a fire chief, the Deputy Chief of Police would become a police chief. And then our support services Deputy Chief would become assistant public safety chief. And again, you can see the personnel that are assigned to that the items that are in blue are they are individuals or groups that report directly to me. We public, we a PSU sergeant, we have our data and marketing. Then we have our neighborhood Response Team. There’s two options So that are involved in that. And then when you see LTCC, that is the columns that are the 911. Center that reports to me. So Dallas the next slide for me, please, sir. And so in the orange, this is what we are proposing and we’re requesting that we would like to do. And so what you see is you see the three assistant chiefs, they would be Assistant Chief over patrol, one over investigations, and one over collaborative services that would include community health or resilience, along with other units, such as school resource officers, canine traffic, animal control, that don’t necessarily fit under patrol or investigations. And so what you would see as the responsibility of the commanders that we currently have, those would move up because they’re more of a an executive leadership, they’re kind of big picture working on things. As we move through the three commanders that we have highlighted in orange, there are more of a role of middle management, a lot of agencies use what we call lieutenants, or captains to help with that middle management. And their responsibilities and assignment would basically take all of the administrative and collaborative
Unknown Speaker 46:08
responsibility off of the sergeants, in order for those 13 sergeants to get back on the road and be spending anywhere between 95 to 96% of their time on the road with their shifts. Again, the commander position there will be one assigned the day shift, one was assigned to swing shift, and one assigned to two nights. And that would help and again, there’s 13 sergeants, they all work different shifts, they either work days, swings or nights would be divided among those three commanders to help with that. And so having lieutenants or the commander roles isn’t really something new for the Longmont public safety, or that commander, Lieutenant position. These positions have been in police services before years ago, and had been done away with previous administrations for a variety of reasons. And again, we still see that on the fire side and public safety, we have lieutenants and captains on the fire side, along with assistant chiefs. But I think it’s really built into really a bigger vision of public safety. And that is succession planning and developing our employees. You know, we talked just a few minutes ago, one of the slides that we looked at about 47% of our officers had less than two years on the road or two years at the agency. And then we looked at about 83% of our patrol sergeants had less than three years. And so I’m a big believer that in order to have a successful succession plan, we have to create a culture that embraces and provides opportunities for our talented men and women that work for Walmart public safety, for them to develop into grow. And so that is the goal is again, to help with not only management and supervision, to getting folks back on the road, but also to build towards succession planning and development within public safety. Dallas, if you go to the next slide for me. So our desired outcomes is simply we have to improve it would be improved communication. Again, we talked about employee development, meaning that we’re finding out what their strengths, what their weaknesses are, how we begin to develop the next generation of Officer those coming in to take those leadership roles in the future. Again, it helps to improve organizational efficiency. As far as what we’re getting done, again, improve supervision, because we’re putting those sergeants back on the road to be able to work hand in hand with their folks. Again, it creates a culture of accountability, consistency and productivity goes along with some of the other bigger projects that we’re working on. And public safety, particularly on the police side with with updating our policy, and then moving towards certifications, again, improves the span of control, and again, reduces risk and liability and identifies problems with patterns meaning early on, we’re able to identify behaviors or actions or issues within our community that we can get on top of before it becomes a major issue. And again, lastly, more presence, and community problem solving, which is critical to have that relationship between public safety and the community. Dallas, next slide for me. And so the question is Terrell touched on a little bit is the financial impact and funding for what we’re trying to do on the police side. And I know Harold touched on a little bit, but I want to afford Commander Brown an opportunity to just talk a little bit about the funding, what that looks like, and how that will carry through not only this year, but for the years to come. And so once he is done, be more than happy to take any questions, concerns or comments that council may have regarding these suggestions are these changes. Thank you, Chief.
Unknown Speaker 49:40
Let me get rid of that feedback. Okay, thank you, Chief, as already has been mentioned, city manager meeting as has already kind of covered the funding source. So I just wanted to break down a little bit more detail as to what the actual financial impact of the proposal would be, the net financial impact would be an increase in ongoing funds $275,415. And that does include the addition of one full time position. The way that we are making up the rest of the funding or to get that net number is we are taking one of our our current commander positions, and that would be converted into one of the assistant chief positions. And then we take one of our existing master police officer positions and convert one of those to that assistant chief position. The remainder of what’s left after converting those those positions is the ongoing funds that I spoke about. And again, the fund source from those that identified as the as the fund that senior management has already spoke about, which was the the budgets that were created for the conversion to the fire and police pension Association plan. So that covers most of the funding. So with that, I’m going to go ahead and turn it back over to Chief artists in case there’s any questions.
Unknown Speaker 51:16
Would you mind taking down the slide? Yes. Thank you. Do you have any questions counselors for a chief artists? Counselor waters,
Tim Waters 51:30
I just want to confirm my understanding of the numbers, the $271,000 271,395 That’s money that would have gone into the FPP FPP retirement program. If
Unknown Speaker 51:46
we I mean, kind of explain that we budgeted because we didn’t know how many people were going to move in that entire process. And we’ve gone through that move, and this is what’s remaining after that.
Tim Waters 52:01
So that’s money that’s on the table. unallocated that would be is what would be used to cover the $275,415. So there’s obviously $4,000 and change there. But basically, the additional cost for the staffing scheme or plan that that Zack has laid out the net of all that is basically a $4,000 additional expense between the 275 and the 271. In terms of new dollars, Is that Is that accurate? Looking at Jim and I’m looking at Harold, I’m just looking at the counter communications and the net ongoing cost is I looked at the because you look on whatever page that is. And it gets to the you know what the cost is for additional staffing in the in the roles and responsibilities. And then the conversion of the master police officer position in one commander position, the net of that looks to me like as a cost of 275,004 15, which is what Commander Brown shared. And then the slide I was looking at was the FPP total. And I’m just assuming that, that that that’s a pot of money that used to cover that additional expense.
Unknown Speaker 53:26
So Jay, I’m gonna ask James Smith, because that’s that 275 is his number. But he might be able to answer that easier. James Brown? Sure, let me
Unknown Speaker 53:41
let me get in there and take a take a look. So I think I see where the where the confusion is coming from. And and I will apologize for creating that confusion. The the net ongoing cost of 275 for 15. All of that would be covered by the funds that that are available in the in the contingency budgets we’re talking about from that PPA, the number that’s on this slide. There was there was a mix up there, that number that’s on the slide should reflect that 275 415. So there’s no excess funding that hasn’t been accounted for so that that full balance of the 275 415 would come out of that that those budget funds we’re talking about. Yeah, that’s
Tim Waters 54:28
kind of what I assumed that wasn’t quibbling over the difference of the 275. And the 271. Just just understanding that the as those costs roll as with the reallocation as a cost roll up to the staffing plan, the money to cover those costs is available through what what was budgeted for the FPP retirement program. no longer needed for the FPP. Yes, yeah, that’s I’m good. That’s all I just wanted to clarify, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 54:55
If I can make a want to reiterate a couple of points. Zack mean So to be very clear, when he shared when he shared the slide on the deputy chief and the Deputy Fire Chief and the title of police chief and fire chief, that changes nothing financially, that changes nothing from a responsibility side, it is really to bring clarity to roles and responsibilities. And what people have to do, because I know when we went through the hiring process, they kept referring to the public safety chief as police chief. He’s over every public safety Chief and Council remembers, I said, that’s more of an assistant city manager in public safety, in terms of reviewing the entire body of work in the entire public safety department. There’s some things that Zack has also done in this, and one of the conversations that we’ve really had, is about connecting the organization. And so he’s also moved a couple of inches. And I don’t know, he may have mentioned it, but I want to talk about this a little bit with counsel. He’s moved Sarah Arne and David Kennedy, to where they’re reporting directly with him. And so they’re really working these cross organizational issues. So you’ve seen him on the neighborhood impact team, they’ve added to the neighborhood impact team, but we’re working on some parking issues. But that’s for two poor purposes, stronger, build stronger connections in the community, build stronger connections within the organization and how we work collectively, as an organization with each other. And I will say when we when we, as we’re using this now, it’s been really beneficial. Also want to say a couple of things of why I approve this, in this is because one of the things we looked at the tenants, we looked at some of these other issues, and we were creating compression issues, it was really hard to make it work financially. I will tell you, during my month and a half stint as the interim public safety chief, and what I saw, and I didn’t talk to Zach, about this, but we saw similar things. And it really is about that layer of supervision, increasing the number of people that we’re putting on the streets to support the officers that are there have that direct supervision, and really not have folks in the office 60% of the time doing office work, and in really aligning this in a different way. And so his analysis without I wanted to see what he was going to tell me, based on what I saw it lined up exactly with what I was seeing during this interim period. And so I think it’s what we need to do as an organization, I think it’s what we need to do to support our community, our public safety staff members, build a succession planning, bring accountability in and just I think it’s gonna really take us, again, we talked about how do we take the next step, and I think this is a big part of it. So I wanted you to hear that for me.
Unknown Speaker 58:14
So I want to say I am really excited about the way that you’re reorganizing this, Chief artists, but I also like the idea of putting Sarah and David in the roles that you have had, they’re well known in the community, and through many organizations and, and I do think that the residents have confidence in those two, so putting them more in the public eye is is a good idea. So thank you for that. So excited to see where this goes. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 58:51
Mayor councilmembers.
Unknown Speaker 58:54
So did you need direction from us?
Unknown Speaker 58:56
A motion to allow us to use the funds, the funds remaining from the that were budgeted in the in the retirement account?
Unknown Speaker 59:06
Great. And I see counselor Waters had your hand up.
Tim Waters 59:09
I was just gonna, I thought we did need to get to move to given direction. So I’ll move that we approve the use of the unexpended money for the FPP program. The in reallocate that $275,415 To cover the cost of the reorganization of the Public Safety Department. Gotcha.
Unknown Speaker 59:30
Okay, and that’s been that was Moved by Councillor waters seconded by Councillor Martin. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, our next item is also in the under the steady session items. It’s the 2022 legislative bills recommended for city council position. And this comes from assistant City Manager Sandy cedar.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:03
Thank you so much Mayor, Members of Council, the sandy cedar assistant city manager and I have two bills for your consideration today. The first bill is House Bill 22 111 38, which is concerning the creation of programs to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicle commuter trips by improving access to alternative transportation options. So you may remember last year, there was a bill very similar to this that really required businesses to require their employees to either find alternative transportation or reduce vehicle miles. This is the voluntary version of that bill. And so what it does is it gives incentives for businesses to really get people either on alternative transportation routes, or or helping them to work from home or whatever that may look like in order to reduce pollution and vehicle miles traveled. So since this really does align with this with the council sustainability plan, the staff recommends the City Council support House Bill 2211 38.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:07
So um,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:09
do you want to move at Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez, sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:14
Thank you bareback as the representative for the city for the Colorado Municipal League Policy Committee. I just want to make sure that everybody knows it was, I believe, two weeks ago now, or one and a half weeks ago, we had this meeting where the all the representatives from around the state voted on the CML policy position on these. And this was probably the most controversial of the votes that was taken that that afternoon or that morning, slash afternoon. There’s about four or five hours of votes. So it was there’s a while but So there there is a constituency of I would say kind of Metro Denver slash Boulder County Council members and representatives that wanted to support this that was voted down. The CML Policy Committee decided to oppose unless amended, or, or be neutral unless amended. I can’t remember exactly. It was less unless amended because as large employers, the city, just like Longmont and other cities were concerned that this would be an unfunded mandate. And that kind of goes against CMS policy committee’s general, you know, litmus test on how they look at these bills. So I just want to make sure everyone knows that. The mayor of Lewisville Ashley stoltmann, was for it, argued for it. The council member from Boulder argued for it. It was generally places like Parker, that argued against it. And Brighton argued against it. So I just want to make sure everyone’s aware of what happened in CML policy meeting concerning this, this item.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:11
Thank you mirror to my counselor Martin.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:15
Two things. One, I would like to point out that this is supportive if not entirely consistent of the direction that our incipient conductivity for local transit collective impact committee is trying to add hasn’t gotten very far yet. And second, I’m not certain how a voluntary program can be an unfunded mandate.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:50
Any other comments?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:52
I will just say that I voted with the other Boulder County municipalities, which like I said, died. And so then the opposite vote prevailed. I think Mary Ashley stoltmann from Lewisville provided really good arguments. Why wasn’t necessarily an unfunded mandate. I can understand some nuances where some of the other music in this valley stopped that. But I support the staffs recommendation. So I’ll make that that clear.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:32
So I’ll chime in here. I agree. I don’t understand the unfunded mandate when it is a tax credit. I understand the outlying municipalities, Parker who are having a really difficult time with transportation to begin with. And in the remote areas, the urban areas like Denver, and we are becoming more urban in Boulder have many transportation options for people if they don’t drive so I can understand the argument for it. The last time this came up when it was mandated, I was very sorry to see that leaf. Because sometimes you have to push people to do something they don’t transition or easily. I’m going to support this because if nothing else, we need to start somewhere. And if it’s voluntary, then it will at least help people look for other means of transportation. So I will be voting for it. Do we have any other comments? Okay, all those in favor of supporting this bill, please raise your hand. This ordinate bill, I guess it is. Great. All those opposed. So Sandy, That passes unanimously, we will support that one. Thank you, Mayor Peck.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:51
The second bill that I have for you today is House Bill 2211 51. And this is concerning measures to incentivize water wise landscapes in creating a state program to finance voluntary replacement of irrigated turf. So obviously, one of the things that will assist us in saving water is is changing landscapes. We have xeriscape programs and other things through our water master plan. Currently, our water master plan does not include turf replacement or incentives for turf replacement. However, if the state does end up moving forward with some grant programs, it certainly seems like something that our residents could take advantage of, would certainly save water. It is something that we’re proposing in our parks right now. And so based on all of those reasons, plus the alliance with your sustainability plan, the the staff recommends the City Council support House Bill 2211 51.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:45
Great any discussion? Councillor Martin? Yes,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:50
I would like to add to this, that the resource central organization that come gives us garden in the box and stuff like that, and our sprinkler system calibration program also offers turf replacement, which city city of Longmont does not subsidize it present? This might help us fix that problem. And I have for one have had a number of constituent requests saying why don’t why can’t I use Pepperfry placement from resource Central and so I’m going to support it because my constituents are asking me to.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:32
Okay, anyone else have any comments? Right? I’ve had the same same emails and telephone calls. So our our city wants to go that way. So great. All those in favor of supporting this bill, please raise your hand.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:49
Those opposed? That passes unanimously, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:54
Thank you. Good bills. So now we’re here at the mayor and council comments. Do we have any comments from our councillors?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:05
Councillor waters?
Tim Waters 1:08:08
Thanks for your back. I just want to publicly thank Longmont, Sunshine club, volunteer nonprofit group of a very active women in town for their work with the savory Valley School District principals in a number of savory valley schools, elementary schools, and in probably more specifically, their health clerks. The Sunshine Club does extraordinary an extraordinary job of coordinating with salud and and volunteered dentists in town to conduct a dental screenings in our elementary schools. And then and then the folks from saluted set up opportunities for teeth cleaning dental hygiene, and more serious work if if kids needed it. And all that comes from volunteer dentists in town who volunteer and that work just goes on. I’ve just seen it in the last week. Literally hundreds of phone calls to parents and health clerks working to make certain that kids get the attention they need and all of the paperwork and logistics find that pretty remarkable. So I’m not they don’t I don’t have I don’t have many thanks they get but we owe him a big thanks on behalf of kids who needed the very best of us and, and that’s what this group is doing. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:27
I agree. Thank you for bringing that up. How’s the waters? Are there any other comments? I would just like to share that James Ayman from the Stewart Foundation. The foundation that built her incredible museum is giving the Friends of the Library a rather large donation to buy in 2023 100 books for every four year old in Longmont. So every four year old is going to get 100 books both in English and Spanish, because they totally believe in education, which is why they love our museum. And we keep having educational programs there. And I just, I just, that just makes my heart glad. Because if we don’t keep those kids reading, and we will all pay for that in the end. So thank you to the Stewart Foundation. The other thing I want to say is that we are moving forward with the counselors reading. It’s going to be the counselors, reading club book club up now for a while see how that works. I want to thank Olga Bermudez, who is setting that up. So we will all be hearing from her. And as she schedules that out for the rest of the year. So that’ll be very exciting. That’s all I have. Do we have any comments from our city manager?
Unknown Speaker 1:10:56
Yes, Mayor Council, I just wanted to direct your attention to your email during the last Council meeting, council directed staff to send a letter to cog CC, or to draft a letter to cog CC. Jane Turner has sent that letter to you all for you to see. And then we’ll be working to get that out to them. I think tomorrow if they haven’t already, but I just wanted to direct your attention to that email from Jane.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:23
Thank you. And I want to thank Jane, the detail that she put it put in that email from our air quality monitoring was great. From all the data that she’s been gathering for almost two years. So I want to thank her for that. Um, do we have any comments from our city attorney Eugene? No comments, Mayor. Thank you, Eugene. So that is the end of our meeting. Can I have a motion to adjourn? I move to adjourn this meeting. I’ll second. Thank you. All those in favor? Raise your hand. All those opposed? Thank you, that carries our meetings adjourned. But we’re going to use the same zoom link to log into the Longmont Housing Authority meeting. So let’s take a five minute break. Or do Do you want to move right into it?
Unknown Speaker 1:12:17
Here? We aren’t we on boarded everyone. I think everyone’s already on it. So if council wants to move forward, we can if you want to take a break, we can take a break. It’s counseling. Oh, let’s
Unknown Speaker 1:12:28
just take a short break. We’ve been we’ve been talking for a bit. So let’s take a five minute break and we’ll be right back. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:17:24
Mayor and council do have about 30 seconds left before we hit that five minute mark.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:30
Thank you, Dallas. Everybody come back on screen we’ll get our meeting started
Unknown Speaker 1:17:46
okay, we’re waiting for counselor waters and then we’ll be ready to go. Various. Okay, uh, welcome back to the long run Housing Authority Board of Commissioners regular meeting today, Tuesday, March 1 2022. These meetings are being held virtually due to the pandemic. Um, let’s see, do we have
Unknown Speaker 1:18:13
there she is.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:15
Done. Would you mind doing Roll Call?
Unknown Speaker 1:18:18
Absolutely. Chairperson Peck, present. And then Commissioner Iago very present. Commissioner waters. I’m here. Commissioner Yarbro. Air Commissioner Rodriguez. Here. Krishna. Martin. Here. Chairperson pick you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:41
Thank you. Are there any agenda revisions? submissions of documents anything pardon me? Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:18:54
and we think okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:58
We have a public invited to be heard. Can we add Dallas Would you mind displaying the call in screen for us so the I’m a little hesitating here because it says we were going to take a five minute break but we just took a five minute break. So delis Is there any way that we can keep this screen up and keep the meeting going and you can admit people to the waiting room at the same time?
Unknown Speaker 1:19:28
Yeah, so I I can leave this up and if you are looking to see your other councilmembers by the window that you have opened it should should give you a couple options and Show Grid video would be your best bet to see each other but I will start a timer.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:44
Okay I see all of us so for the public you can dial in now for public invited to be heard the dial to the dial toll free number is 1-888-788-0099. Please mute the live stream and whenever Put in the meeting ID of 89493496835. When you’re called upon press star, the I’m sorry, the pound sign. Thank you. So we’ll keep we’ll continue while you issued them into the waiting room Dallas, thank you for that. For old and new business, we need to review the proposed Longmont housing authority 2022 2026 goals. I would like to invite Karen Roni, on this screen to provide provide this report here and I can’t see you. So I’m assuming you’re there.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:42
Yes, Chair pack. I can see you. So I don’t know. Harold, did you want to make any initial comments on on the goals?
Unknown Speaker 1:20:55
Right now? I’m having technical difficulties. Okay, you can go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:01
Okay. Well, thank you. And because we did have a couple of commissioners that were unable to be with us, when we had our commission meeting on the last Thursday, we decided that we would move the conversation about the Longmont Housing Authority goals to to this meeting. And it’s been so the the draft goals are in, we’re in your packet. And it’s been a while since we looked at these, the staff has taken some opportunity to add a little more information to the the goals, putting together some objectives and action steps and some desired outcomes and and outputs. That is still certainly in a we will continue to refine those. So we wanted to take the opportunity to discuss the the the goals as we have them drafted right now get an additional comments from our commissioners and and then come back with a revised with any revisions to to basically have the Board of Commissioners approved so so I’m just going to hit the highlights of these and and then if there are questions or their comments from the commissioners, we would we would love to have those. So the kind of the first overarching goal is that you see in your in your packet there is is is really to make sure that the the core focus areas of the Lamont Housing Authority, which is really managing our voucher program. You know, developing affordable rental housing for our lowest income households in Longmont and managing our properties to make sure that our work in those areas for the next five years are are basically reflected in housing needs and demographic and housing types information so that we wanted to make sure we had data, the most updated data, about trends about demographics, what’s really needed, that that basically informs the the work that we do in those, those core areas of the Lamont housing authority. And so we we did submit, staff did submit a grant to the Department of local affairs, that grant was funded, I believe we accept that the last Council meeting and and we will be moving forward with the the housing needs assessment that is funded through through through Dola we probably will not need to pursue additional funding opportunities since we were able to get that Dola grant and we’ll be coming back with the with the housing assessment that we will be completing. So I I’ll just stop after that that section and see if there are any comments about the from the the commissioners about that particular
Unknown Speaker 1:24:14
goal area.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:17
As well Mayor pack we’re at the four minute and 32nd Mark currently there are no callers
Unknown Speaker 1:24:24
Thank you Dallas, let’s take this down so I can see everybody that Thank you. Do I have it? I’m sorry. Counselors have any comments or questions for Karen at this point. Doesn’t look like it whoops counselor Martin. I’m sorry counselor waters.
Tim Waters 1:24:42
Um, no, she’s the one with hair. Karen and Harold, how do you want to approach this? I just so the other council members know I because I missed the meeting. I was not going to be able to attend the meeting last Thursday. As I look at that enclosure in those materials, knowing I wasn’t going to attend, I provided some written feedback to Karen and in Harold. So you have my comments or concerns recommendations? Are those How do you want to approach this you want to you? Um, certainly you don’t want to wordsmith stuff? Um, I mean, I’ve already submitted my, my thoughts, and you should we just leave it at that, and you can do with it what you want. And then we’ll decide what in a subsequent draft of these how to vote on that. I mean, I just, I’d like to help, I’d like to contribute. I don’t want to waste time. But I also, I do have some expectations that I want to make certain we at least have a chance to address or discuss if we’re not going to address it.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:52
So if I can go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:56
Well, just to kind of make a statement about that. I would be curious as to what that was. I would like it. I would like to hear what your comments were. So that if we I don’t know, would you ever come with Commissioner waters? No, I, okay. Okay. Is there a way to summarize really fast with those comments were?
Tim Waters 1:26:22
So let me make just a couple of general observations. And I’ll give you an example or two. I have heard, let me just first say I think every all the work that gets that that the staff is doing on this is important work. In fact, I think the most important decision that we will make as a as a commission, this year, maybe for the next two years are these goals and objectives. Number one, I mean, the rest of its operations, you know, we’ll get asked for some policy reactions, or reactions to policy proposals. But I think this is the biggest, most important decision we’ll make. What do we expect the housing authority to accomplish from the get go? Number one, number two, just in terms of the sequencing of this, I think the last one that’s listed, the goal regarding residential life ought to be at the top of the list, just in terms of statement and in messaging to our residents. And I’ll get to what might be more substantive or wait a frame that, but as I went through the the language, some of what were offered as goals, look, I look at and go, that’s a good goal statement. Others, it’s I can’t make it out as a goal statement, just as, as I as as I look at words on a paper and think, What is a good goal statement? So maybe at some point, we got to have some agreement on what are the components of a good goal statement. But but the first one, the overarching goal, there’s a lot of words there. That that I think mean, ensuring Longmont housing authorities core focus area areas, and that would parenthetical voucher management, affordable rental housing development, property management, parent close paren reflect housing needs based on demographic and housing types. I think the words on the left translate into a simple sentence on the right, that I think is clear. And in his act is an actual, it’s not time bound and measurable. There are some objectives that go with that. But as I think as a legitimate goal statement, from that, I would, if I look at the objective, complete housing needs assessment by the end of 2022, that looks to me more like a task. objective would be to deliver a report on anticipated housing needs based on demographic and in demographic and trend data. If I go down to the outputs and outcomes, the planning a grant application submitted to dola, that’s an output. An outcome would be Lhh development priorities, development plan and development schedule will result in housing stock, that accommodates changing demographics, that would be an outcome. So I’ll just stop at that point is I went down, some of them i get i It’s a mix. Some of them are like spot on goal statements and others is like, I look at and think that’s not a goal statement at all. But here would be a goal statement. I think that intends the or is is stating what we would what we’d like to stick with the goal. Anyway, it’s it’s a mix of things. Chairman pack, Chairwoman pack, and so I can go on but you don’t want to you don’t know.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:35
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. But it sounds to me it isn’t what they’re what the statements are saying it is dividing what up dividing, what are actual goals, what are tasks, what are just,
Tim Waters 1:29:54
what’s the goal, what’s your goal, what’s an objective, wants to know what’s an outcome and just be consistent with that. And at this point when there’s a couple of them where we couldn’t I, and I’m certain that just was a matter of time, just kind of ran out of time in terms of stating what the intended outcome is. And when when we can’t state an intended outcome. It’s like, well, we don’t know what the outcome is. We’re not very clear on what the goal is. So I would like to see intended outcomes, preferred outcomes with with goal statements. Otherwise, I don’t think we have a goal.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:28
So. So
Unknown Speaker 1:30:32
I’m Karen, I understand what Commissioner waters is saying. But I look at it just a little bit different in that the goals. If we set the goals, then I I think that the commissioners should be in the conversation as to what is the outcome? Not? Does that make sense? That should be a discussion, here are the goals? What do we expect the outcome to be? Where do we want to go with that? And that would be a discussion that would be interesting.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:02
To have.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:03
So
Unknown Speaker 1:31:06
but so far, I think everything you stated is good. I guess it’s just the way we’re putting your putting it together.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:14
Commissioner Martin
Unknown Speaker 1:31:18
we are are sorry, Chair Peck.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:25
I think
Unknown Speaker 1:31:26
that, that differentiating goals from from other components of requirements flow down process is pretty important. Because it I’m thinking of the process that we that we went through it at last year’s retreat. And I felt that we had set some what I would say were objectives in terms of deliverables, that we were going to build certain properties. And now those properties have been gone. With the exception of the Christmas one, which was, um, but the the authority has has not, has not taken any steps. To what you’re shaking your head.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:32
Man, it’s your statement, and then we’ll let Harold
Unknown Speaker 1:32:35
do Yeah. So what I what my my point was, because, you know, I know there are things that I may not know about that that are going on, but have not been brought before this body. But because what we don’t have is any ability to break the thing down and see what our deliverables are and what our expectations are for this year. And if we don’t have anything, but we want to understand the demographic needs by the end of 2022. Does that mean that we’re not going to make any forward progress on actually creating housing for the entire year? And I don’t want to discuss that. Now. Because we’re talking about goals and objectives. What I want to discuss is, is can we get these statements laid out in such a way that we do know what our expectations are about that? Because they’re based on last year? I feel like we do know, some objectives without knowing the demographics, because they’re so far below the bar of what our actual needs are, that we can feel safe in proceeding with them. And that’s why I think we need rather than listing things that are well, they’re all activity and authority needs to undertake, but they don’t specifically define what needs to be attained in this year. And I would like to feel better about knowing what we expect to attain in this year.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:27
Thank you, Commissioner Martin here. I’ll do you want to weigh in on that.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:30
So I think some of those get fleshed out as we’re digging in later in the document. When we specifically talk about the housing choice vouchers, and we’re planning to do the rental housing development that we’re planning to do, which is which is later in that document. In we work through sunset heights. 55, permanent supportive housing, Chrisman 249 over development 30 And so we can talk about that specific. I think that’s what you’re getting at as, but that’s in a later section of this document.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:12
And Harold, with those developments, is there a timeline that they will be completed? I think that’s, that’s what we were. That’s why I interviewed Commissioner Martin was getting at what are our accomplishments and when will they be completed, which so when your goals,
Unknown Speaker 1:35:34
we can get to that section and when we say establish and implement a plan to develop six new affordable housing communities within the next three years? That’s where we’re specifically talking about that section. Okay, thank you. Well, we say six in three years.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:52
Okay. Commissioner, Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:59
Thank you chair back. Well, I will admit and agree that the document in and of itself is perfect, if you will, I think it does outline a number of actionable items that we can move forward with that I think the housing authority can agree, at least us as commissioners can agree, would be the most likely and most actual items. So I would like to see us continue to move forward. Regardless of the imperfections of the document, such as the director, the acting director of the housing authority, has pointed out and to continue working on the document to make it a more perfect document that does adequately outline goals, objectives, actionable items, be, you know, outcomes versus, you know, goals. So, anyway, my point being is that I think we we should move forward while trying to still perfect the document, and not not consider these things. reliant on one another two to make action happen. So that’s where I stand on it. As far as because I really, you know, regardless, like I said, of the fact that there may be things that are maybe mislabeled, or misappropriated in the document, I think the document in and of itself outlines the great need that we have in the city of Longmont, and the steps forward that are likely necessary in the immediate, and I think that’s what’s most important is the immediate steps that we can take. Thank you, Commissioner.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:01
Commissioner Martin.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:03
Yeah, I actually concur with that. I don’t think I was very clear. But what I wanted, I was concerned about creating too many dependencies, rather than them not enough, you know, that we don’t certain things that are in arguably necessary to become roadblocks in particular, the demographic study.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:27
Yeah, into that, into that point on this one. We’re not letting that slow us down on the construction side. Because the gaps too great. And this is really informing what we need to look at in the future. As part of that, and if Council remember, it’s not only affordable, it’s also attainable, that we’re going to be in part of this study as well. So
Unknown Speaker 1:38:53
so I’m Karen, you did a great job. Just Hey, well,
Unknown Speaker 1:39:02
let me let me comment if if, if that if that’s all right. You know, so So certainly, I appreciate the the input that we received from councilmember waters. And the I’ve already made revisions I didn’t include in the packet. At this point, I figured we will look at additional comments or revisions we get from the commissioners. And it sounds like if I can clarify that it would be helpful to break down where we can some specific target milestones in terms of years. So this is this is set up as a five year plan. And the only area where we have some years attached to it is really when we will be targeting some of the initial initiating some of the developments or the Reese indication of some of the properties and those so we do have some specific target years. For for for tackling those development projects and rehab projects, but it sounds like it would also be helpful that we attach some, some milestones to some of these other areas, so that you kind of know when we’re going to be when we’re going to be tackling those. And I think as, as our interim executive director talked about, we are we are moving forward with a lot of these already. And and so, but, yeah, I appreciate where we’re trying to, we’re finding in terms of clarity around goals and outcomes and objectives. And so that was helpful. We’ll continue to work on that. And we certainly can add some milestones where there aren’t any. And and I guess the other thing, there are a couple of areas for sure, that count that Commissioner waters talked about that, that we have not. So we don’t know what the outcomes are going to be. We’re doing some more research on those. So it doesn’t mean that those are important, but we feel like we needed to do some additional research to help inform what would what’s possible and what could be the outcomes. So we certainly plan to add outcomes in a couple of those areas. But we’re still, we’re still gathering some data to help us define that.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:19
Great. So that was that was a good discussion, I think,
Unknown Speaker 1:41:24
um, do you want us to go over the other components on this? So?
Unknown Speaker 1:41:31
Sure, I do. Okay. Yeah, let’s keep going.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:38
Karen, do you want to take the housing choice voucher, or do you want to go? I’ll jump in? Or how do you want
Unknown Speaker 1:41:43
to do this, I will take the Housing Choice Voucher Program. So um, so So basically, I made up my revised document that I took Council, I took commissioners waters input. So so this this area, this goal is really to to increase the access to rental assistance for Longmont households with low and moderate incomes. And so so the the direction that we got when we received from the commissioners back in July was to look at how we increase those vouchers. By 10%. Year over year, we wanted an aspirational target. And so we included that in the documents. And there’s a couple of things that we that obviously we are working on now, which is how to perfect our understanding and use of the two year planning tool that that had makes available for housing authorities to make sure that we are optimizing the amount of vouchers that we can issue with the budget authority that we have, which is right now it’s 5.4 million is the allocation we get from HUD. And we have to use that to your tool to be able to help define how many vouchers we can issue with that. We call it our sweet spot. But that is really our our guiding document to make sure that we are staying on top that we are spending are 5.4 million, and we’re not overspending it. And so that’s really the the key for us. So right now kind of an update is we thought we have authority to issue up to 513 vouchers, but we don’t have enough budget to be able to do that. So 420 was our target that vouchers, but it looks like we we like last week, we basically move that up to 439. So we are we’re continuing to use that tool so that we can optimize the amount of vouchers that we issue. And right now we are looking at issuing up to 439 vouchers with that 5.4 million.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:08
And I want to explain that change a little bit to you off. Because this one, you’re dependent on other variables. And so obviously we talked about the two year tool we targeted 200 420 Not based on what we’re authorized, but based on dollar amount. And part of that is we have to maintain a 2% reserve in the room at 2% reserve and that’s really important into this conversation is because that’s to handle rental increases that occur. And so if you see the rental market move up on you, that reserve is there so that you don’t take someone who has a voucher and then you’re having to remove a voucher because you don’t have enough money. So that’s an external factor that actually impacts how many We have Karen was talking about is the move to 439 vouchers. We learned that there’s another external factor that impacts this. And was it Medicaid or Medicare or so what was it
Unknown Speaker 1:45:14
get an increase? Yeah, an increase in, in basically Medicaid, Medicare, I think.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:21
So there was a Medicare increase that occurred that actually flowed its way down into our financial analysis that then allowed us to actually issue more. And I think Ken is kindred on with us or no, she is. Kinder can explain it in more detail. But basically what it did is it gave us more capacity. And so as we’re learning through this voucher world, is there there are variables there even outside of our control that can actually take you up. Take you down,
Unknown Speaker 1:45:57
I think, actually was Social Security.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:00
Was it so sick? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:03
Yeah. So can I just ask a question? Well, kinder is probably going to explain it. I. I don’t understand. So the increase in Medicare was to surrender. So it was associated with to the residents. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:19
So it did.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:20
Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 1:46:22
the residents, um, there was a release where Social Security was going to be higher. So as people are getting recertified, they’re having to pay more of a tenant portion. So that release is more hap, for us to release vouchers. Okay, that’s something we monitor as we. So I wasn’t seeing the average rental rate go up. That’s what I was expecting to see to go up because we raised the fair market rent to 100%. So I should start seeing that our average monthly rental goes up, but it wasn’t. So that’s when Ruby said well, they got more social security, there was a release, and so we’re seeing that go down so we can release more vouchers.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:09
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for that clarity.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:13
So I wanted to use that as an example of that context moving. And and that was just an important learning lesson for us that we found out what two weeks ago?
Unknown Speaker 1:47:25
Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:28
Commissioner Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:31
Thank you chair back. So my question is related to people that are awarded vouchers here for the city of Longmont, and then use those vouchers in different municipalities. As that happens, is there a re accounting year by year? Or do we continue to hold those vouchers as part of our portfolio, even though they may be in st Nederland?
Unknown Speaker 1:47:59
So there’s there’s two things. So we have people that port in to the Longmont and we can either absorb them into our voucher program, or they stay as a port in. And we have people that leave our voucher program and go to another housing authority, and that’s a port out. So we keep them as a port out within our structure until that housing authority absorbs them. If they absorb them, then it opens up a voucher on our end that we can release. But it’s all dependent upon their funding as well. If they can absorb us, we have probably about seven that are ported in to ours. And we have not absorbed in there because we wanted to be able to issue that to voucher holders within our waitlist that we just did so.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:46
Okay, thank you. I was just wondering how that affects the numbers.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:52
Yeah, it’s all rooted in the total dollar amount. And some housing authorities that have a lot of capacity. routinely take them in. But housing authorities that don’t have the capacity, you tend to let the people get house and house other individuals.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:21
So I don’t know if there any other questions about the Housing Choice Voucher section.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:27
I don’t see any, it’s very complicated for my mind.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:36
So you know, we’re gonna do some things. We’re going to work to update our housing page as well to make that more clear. Okay. And part of that was, you know, so we, when we opened it up, we had 1000 people. We narrowed that down to 150. Because we obviously couldn’t house the full 1000 within 150 When we look at the vouchers, the only thing that we really had available was what was left at 420. And then the additional amount correct Kindra. And so that really gives you a sense of the demand and what you actually have available.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:17
Yeah, the other thing we noticed this year that we weren’t really taking advantage of is that we might release 20. But then all of a sudden, we have 10 into participation. So we worked it into our process that if we have an end of participation, that’s an automatic release of voucher, get another voucher out there, because that’s so we were never getting above the limit, because we were having in the participations the same time we were issuing vouchers and not reissuing on top of that. So that’s definitely something we learned in the process. And we’ve upgraded our processes in that. Wow.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:57
Interesting. So, Karen, do you have any more on the subject force?
Unknown Speaker 1:51:05
No, I don’t I don’t think so. I think, you know, we certainly understand the commissioners urging is to continue to grow the rental assistance vouchers. And, and certainly our focus in this last year or so has been really to optimize and get as many vouchers out there with the funding authority that we have, so that when HUD releases an opportunity for more funding, that we are in a good position to be able to go after that and be awarded more dollars from HUD so that we would be able to issue more rental assistance vouchers for households in our community.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:44
Great, good job.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:46
So I think the rental housing development Herald Do you want to take that? Yeah, so Molly,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:53
what the council said is implement a plan to develop six new affordable housing communities within the next three years. And you can see the the objectives in terms of what we’re doing. The action steps are really associated with what we brought to you all as part of the ARPA funding. And so invest 3 million in Sunset heights, permanent supportive housing development, 800,000 and Christmann. To develop LH, a owned hoever property for family focused affordable housing of 1.3 million, invest 1.7 million for seed money to do the public private partnership for affordable assisted living 1.5 million affordable rental housing, that will manage as part of a mixed income mixed rental that’s associated with a Costco property that’s already been expended, we’ve purchased that property. And then 3 million to purchase a room remnant parcel with a royal mobile home. And we’re getting ready to act on that. And so what I want to talk about a little bit in this, as you can see, in terms of the outputs and the outcomes. So the 1.3 million in Sunset heights that as we talked about before, was really there based on what happens with the tax credits and the 9% competitive tax credits and what we need. And in that, we’re still in that tax credit component with Element Properties and the state and CHAFA. And right now, today, well, over the last few days, there’s been a barrage of questions that Karen and I still need to connect on in terms of that project. And so I don’t know, Karen, if you have any more recent updates on that issue, other than we’re knee deep in in the finance compound, or the tax credit process right now, on that project,
Unknown Speaker 1:54:02
and most of the follow up questions from the from the Division of Housing are really about how to pay for the tenant support services that are a big component of the permit supportive housing development. So we are we are working through those questions and preparing responses to the Division of Housing. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:54:29
I think when I was nodding my head, I really ruined councilmember Martin said that what I was really getting at in this so Element Properties has come in, they’ve done what I would say is preliminary design. They’ve they’ve they’re digging deeper into the design process of that facility. But they’re also having to lag that a little bit because of the financing component of this. And what I mean by that is if tax credits then the can’t go forward, which is why we allocated this money. And I’m looking at Molly, because if for some reason it doesn’t happen, we take this and then try to bridge the capital stack with this money so that it could function as a 9% project if we had to go in the 4%, non competitive tax credit piece with this. And so to give you a sense of how long this takes, we submitted this application in the first round last year for the tax credits and 9%. We weren’t awarded the 9%. So then we had to wait to the next round, which was February, what was the date? Molly? February one. So we submitted into February one, they’re still moving through that we’re having to answer all of these questions, but everything, then start stalling out. As you’re moving through this, this component on the tax credit side, and it’s really dependent on them in terms of whether or not you get it. And in everyone gets real hesitant in terms of where you move until you get certainty on that tax credit side. So that’s really in terms of Sunset heights, that’s what we’re waiting on, is to get an answer on the tax credit side. And then, depending on what that answer is, then we have to then scramble pretty fast to figure out if it’s not the answer we’re hoping for, then we’ve got to bridge a financial gap in this project to see if it’ll even work. So and in the time sink on, on this point, just to give you a sense is it’s a lot of time when you start getting into this level of conversation with them. I think Molly’s spending hours upon hours as we do this, and that’s just on Sunset heights. The next one that comes in as you see the affordable the $800,000 Christmann. That one’s a little bit different, because we’re going in with a 4% non competitive tax credits, which we know we got, but then the financials in the capital stack, because of everything that we’re seeing in inflation increases, started flipping on us. And so then we had to figure out how to resolve a gap financially. And so two things are happening in that world is that we’re looking at what we have for 800,000. But we’re also having to go back to Department of Housing, they agreed to contribute $20,000 a door to that project. Molly, we’re asking for what now 35,030
Unknown Speaker 1:57:37
to 530 32,000 2500 per door.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:44
So we’re asking for an additional $12,000 a door to make that project pencil itself out, figure out what we’re having bringing to the table, and we’re in that conversation as well. In addition to that, that’s a 4% project. So that’s non competitive, you’re running a parallel track with Doh, to get more money per door to help bridge the financial gap. But then you’re also working with the lenders who have agreed to invest on this project. And so we just signed the LOI with the lender last week. And now we’re moving in with the attorneys in terms of the overall agreement that was actually moving a little bit faster, primarily because it was a 4% product. But for the ARPA funds, we probably are even we’re at a we’re really stopped waiting on this, but because they were granted the 4% non competitive tax credits that gave the developer enough certainty to go into full Design and Development Review process within the city. So so they’ve been in. And they’re I think in the second round of comments, second or third round of comments, we didn’t have very many the last time so now we’re just waiting on the financials to go through. So it takes probably, I would say, you know, if you really fast track the financial side of this, but and this is what we’re learning and trying to build a timeline. The good nine months just on the financial side, to pull all of these things together in the development of these processes. And the more complicated it is, the longer it takes. So you have about a nine month financial process. Once you can get tax credit information, then the development process moves at a different it starts moving. And your goal is to when you’re ready to close and do it the development and the financing has lined up with each other so you can move and that’s probably I’m looking at Molly, a really over overly simplified explanation of how these projects come together. What we’re going to try to do is give you all a graphical representation of the different stages, and kind of show you where we are in each one of these projects so that you get a sense of what we’re dealing with. So you know where we are. In, we’re just trying to figure that out. Because we don’t want to set the expectations up here, when we know in reality, we’re still here at the ground level, trying to get the capital stack pulled together. And so when, when Molly gets a breather. On those two, we’ve talked about bringing that together. What we’re not bringing into the mix, in terms of the development of the new houses, the new locations, here is also the Reese indications that come in for us. And so we also have a Reese indication of. And we probably should add it into this just recent syndication a village place, which is essentially the same financial work that you do on a development project, but you’re just doing it so you can reinvest capital in it. And so that’s going to be going this year as well. In the end, we finished the capital needs on village place, and on lodge in Hearthstone, for conversion of the 202 out of that, and so we’ve got those four going, which is why we’re advertising the development and finance position, because that’s going to be incredibly important for us to start pulling the trigger on these other projects. And so we’re going to get more focused on timelines. But to be quite honest, we’re learning our way, right? I mean, we’re learning through these projects to get a sense of how long it really takes as we’re moving forward.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:49
Krishna, right.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:52
Thank you, Mayor Peck, just a by the by suggestion, when you are doing this, could you also provide us with a glossary? Example. The term 202 I have no idea. And I started, I started my that I didn’t understand too late for the number to be meaningful. But a lot of them went by. And I don’t know whether everybody else, but I don’t know any of them.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:25
And sometimes we don’t either way, learn him through it. But yeah, we definitely need to give you a glossary on this, as we’re moving through it. But so I wanted you to know, some of our next work on this is really to start allocating timelines and dates, and then give you a very basic version of a Gantt chart, in terms of where we are. Just so you all know where we’re setting on this, because without just blowing our minds, three this year to hit this three year timeline, toward the end of the year, we got to figure out how to layer two more in and then next year, I mean, now we’re going to have to start staging these things. And and frankly, right now, we’re just at capacity issues in terms of getting this work done. And so that’s what we got to figure out, get some positions hired.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:23
And I really appreciate what you just walked us through Harold, because it really answers the question is why is it taking so long? Why don’t we have anything here and and the steps are amazing that the hoops you have to jump through to pull it all together. Not only not only the staff, but the developers as well. You know, it has to it has to all come together and it’s a big job. So thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:53
And in the reality if I give you an example, you’re moving this way, yeah, you’ll move back on things like inflationary increases on the cost of goods and services. So on on Chrisman too, we thought we were here, the market got out from under us and we backed up because then all of a sudden you have to solve for all these issues. Then you move forward and then something else hits you and then you move back. And and so it’s we’ve got to figure out a way to show all of that movement, because that’s important to understand these how we’re going to develop these with more specificity for you all.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:32
Great. Thank you. Um, so is that the end of the report for the 2022 2026 goals?
Unknown Speaker 2:04:44
Um, I think we’ve got
Unknown Speaker 2:04:45
or have we gone way past
Unknown Speaker 2:04:49
it I think chair Peck so the so I’m just gonna hit some of the others. So they’re the kind of the the other areas that we had to Tibet was really in developing partnerships. And, and so, so those are kind of toward the end of the end of the document. And, and those are really in the areas of helping to make sure that our older adults that are living in our senior Independent Living projects are developments, that we are able to enhance the availability of supportive services, so that individuals who are in our properties can live there as long as possible before, you know before needing as long term or assisted care long term care. So what we’ve outlined in here is what the you know, what the plan would be, we’ve identified that the supportive services have probably fall into the range of cleaning, home care and transportation to help with independent living, there are action steps are really to look at what are the various partners ships that we can establish, to make those services possible. And again, our hope is that we are able to increase by 5%. Year over year, the number of residents who can access those supportive services, and obviously, we want to lengthen the time that individuals can stay in our lhsaa properties before they need more, more care in order to support them. So that is the one area we are so looking at, and this was identified also in our ARPA funds is, is really to look at the need for affordable assisted living. So when individuals are unable to live independently in our in our properties anymore and need to go to, you know, assisted living, that finding affordable assisted living is has been a challenge. And so this is really about, you know, we’re gonna do some research with a model that the levolin Housing Authority has, has established, as well as looking at a partnership with with to pays for, for people who are met Medicaid eligible for services. So again, we’re looking at how, you know, once people can no longer really be living safely in independent living, how do we have some kind of that continuum with affordable assisted living that would be available for, for our residents. And so those are kind of the and then moving into the next level of partnership was really around one of the commissioners, some of the commissioners talked about, how do we also look for opportunities for, for some of our family housing as we bring that on how to create an opportunity for, you know, either early education centers, or after school programs or those kinds of things in as part of those as far as those developments. So we we do have on the starting in 2024, I believe the Reese indication of the Aspen meadow neighborhood, which is our family housing might be an opportunity when we re syndicate and refinance that project to provide more on site care for our for children who are living there, as well as as we look at bringing on new family developments. How do we how do we think about and encourage opportunities or buildings or whatever for for early child care and youth development builder Housing Partners has done this pretty successfully in some of their models. And this is an area where we have to be determined. So I know Commissioner waters that we’re just not sure what what that outcome is going to be. But we’ll have one, I promise we will have one, that we’re still working on the research around that and then we’ll come back when we kind of know which what might be possible sooner, that we will be able to add some outcomes to that. And then
Unknown Speaker 2:09:19
I think the same thing is it’s the same issue on the you know, really get more specific on the affordable assisted living. You know, is it that we, you know, at the end of the day to the point of the goal is are we going to build a greenhouse, similar to what Loveland housing authority did? I mean, and that’s what we’re still trying to figure out. And so that will come back because we’ve got to get more specific on what that’s
Unknown Speaker 2:09:43
correct. Correct. And that’s the same way with the other area that commissioners asked us to look at was really about how do we establish a pathway to home ownership. So for some of our voucher holders that are paying a pretty large portion of their rent is from their own incomes and their hat payments or housing assistance payment is as a smaller amount, they, they might be ready to transition to, you know, market rate rental housing or even home ownership. And or looking at how we strengthen our partnership with Habitat for home ownership opportunities. So, again, we’re researching what have outcomes a promise. So and then also the same thing with our residential. Our basically our community development, which again, we heard from, from Commissioner waters about, you know, we might want to have that early on in the in the document rather than as a as the end, we are moving forward with, you know, we’ve conducted the individual interviews with around 75 to 80 of our residents that live and all of the various properties that the Housing Authority owns and operates, we, our next step in that process was to take the themes and to go back to the residents through a community conversation, and flesh out just what specifically would be some of their priorities and actions, they would like to see the Housing Authority take. And then we went back into lockdown for COVID. And so we put a pause on the on those community conversations. But we’re back, we have members of the the LA che advisory board that have signed up to help with those community conversations. And again, once we finished those conversations, I would say by the, you know, by mid year, this year, we will be able to add some very specific outcomes based on the additional input that we get from the residents. So that’s that’s the high level. And, and again, I’ve already you know, made some revisions based on what we received from Commissioner waters in terms of really strengthening some of the objectives, when they end goals when they were maybe more squishy, they needed to be strengthened. So we have done that. And whatever, if commissioners have additional input around that, we will no we’ve we’ve taken notes on some things we got here that we received this evening. And we’ll continue to flesh out and strengthen those, those goals and timeframes and milestones.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:44
So I’m gonna make a motion that community service director Karen Rody cannot retire. For a second.
Tim Waters 2:12:56
I’ll second that.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:00
amazing the amount of work you do, and it’s very exciting in the movement forward.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:06
So, you know, I think we’re really excited in speaking for this, the staff that are on this call, you know, it’s, it’s, um, it’s excited to see the work, it’s excited to see the focus. We really haven’t had that before. And, and so it’s it represents a lot of hope for a fabulous future, I think, for the housing authority, and the folks that we are supporting and serving in our community.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:36
I think so to thank you
Unknown Speaker 2:13:41
what we wouldn’t what we want to see by by the end of the year is two projects under construction, if not a third redesign re syndication all at the same time. And I give you a sense, I’m just saying that because I’ve said this to the group, if you would have asked me when we took over the Housing Authority, if we would be talking about development of this magnitude, I think I said we would have I would have thought we’re crazy. This is a testament to the work that everybody on this and the people that you don’t see on this. And what I mean by that is our resident managers or maintenance staff, they are doing things right now that’s freeing capacity to do these things. And this is a team effort. And you all hear me talk about center of excellence and things like that. This is one of those that you bring that group together to take these big, hairy, audacious issues. And you move pretty fast or opportunities, opportunities and you move fast and they’ve done phenomenal work. We know we got more today to tighten this up. In argument minutes, we’ll do that for you all, if you have feedback, send it to us via email. Okay, and we’ll definitely take all of that, and we’ll bring it back to you. And if I could vote on the mayor’s motion, I would love to be able to
Unknown Speaker 2:15:18
Commissioner Martin?
Unknown Speaker 2:15:20
Yes, thank you Chair Peck, I just want to say that, you know, frictions expressed all aside, it is clear the magnet work that’s been done. And, you know, our frustration, my frustration is because of the magnitude of the need, you know, and, and we have so much to do, and it is two steps forward one step back, as as things change. And, and so, I just want to express my appreciation for having developed in less than two years, or actually two years, I guess, the level of expertise in the city organization that makes it possible to do this at all. So thank you, right.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:25
So, um, we have the interim executive directors report, a herald amigo amigos is here, what I’m hearing is that it’s all kind of morphed into one in this presentation. But the aged receivables report,
Unknown Speaker 2:16:43
I’m gonna ask Kyndra and probably Molly, and as Lisa and Lisa, I’m gonna ask Kendra to jump on and talk about the age receivable and the monthly financials quickly. And he said, to talk about the vacancy report and the property updates. So,
Unknown Speaker 2:17:07
when we started this journey a while ago, um, we started an air balance of about $139,000, of which there was about 52,000. That was in prepayment, or hap suspense, with community managers assistance, and my migrated accounting team, along with some write offs that we had to do in December, you know, we’ve brought it down to a balance of 33,000. And only 20,000 in that prepaid. So, I mean, we’ve made great strides and getting the car cleaned up. And we’re in a much better cash situation than we were back in the day. So and that’s, that’s like a full team effort. You know, the reason we’re in a better cash situation is, you know, HCV realized, we could go up to the fair market rent on these PBV units and the HCV units to bring more money into these properties, to help assist with capital needs assessments and repairs. We also had, you know, Lisa, on board, who knew so much about property management, and how to, and how to utilize those tools for those properties to make the best of their dollars. So, you know, we should be able to do some of these repairs on our own, and without getting a third party involved. So we’re in a much better cash situation with with just that, anywhere from 100,000 to $150,000, more in cash than we were at 2020 at the end of 2020. So it’s, it’s, it’s been great to see the strides that at all of them are making, you know, from community managers to the HTV staff, to the leaders on board here. So if anybody has any questions regarding any of the financials, most of its right in it’s still an audit play. Right now. Most of the properties have to have their audits completed by February 15. So I think we’ve reached that goal, and some of them have been finalized. There’s a few out there still and those are the ones that pretty much just got finalized. But we’ll start the LH DC audit and the LH a hot here soon.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:32
Have any questions for Kendra? No, it
Unknown Speaker 2:19:36
looks great.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:39
So um, Lisa, they can see in property reports, property updates.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:46
Good evening. So for the occupancy, I’m just happy to unexcited the state for the first time since I’ve been here. We’ve reached 97% At the end of January. So we’re moving up I positive that’s gonna continue into this month well February that we just closed not too much going on we have a couple of waitlist open right now as of the first we had the two properties which are had 62 and over properties that are subsidized those waitlist opened today and they’re open today and tomorrow there is no maximum amount of numbers that households do have to be over 62 to be put on that waitlist though and we also have village place waitlist open and Spring Creek waitlist open as well. Currently we do have a few units down still due to meth we believe the one at the neighborhood will be back online by hopefully April 1 It’s in its final cleaning and should be good to go we are working with our insurance agent to get the suites one back on board and not too much more around occupancy about any questions based on the report you guys received.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:06
Do you have any questions I do want to know Lisa how many people are on the waiting lists now
Unknown Speaker 2:21:13
each waiting this varies we have a waiting list per property for all of our senior properties a separate one for the suites several one for village place separate one for 202 Because each project is so different and it’s some people may not want Main Street location like for village place but they want to run homestead Parkway so each community maintains their own and those waitlist could be anywhere from 30 to 60 people when they hit a good number then we’ll close the waitlist.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:42
i When you close them I’d be curious and maybe some of the other Commissioners would as well as to how many people are on those wait lists just to get a feel for our community and how many people are in need. Even though we’re helping a lot, how many how many people are out there so just going forward.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:03
Okay, so when we close the next these Expo that are open I will bring through next meeting.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:09
Great because those with
Unknown Speaker 2:22:11
Okay, I’ll move on to the property updates. I don’t want to bore you too much. But as Karen said before, we did have a successful HCV waitlist opening. We have over 1000 people apply for the 150 spots. We brought on the new maintenance tech. We do have a conditional offer out for a Housing Choice Voucher specialist he is supposed to be starting March 7, so that will be growing the HCV team
Unknown Speaker 2:22:46
few great points to point out for Aspen Meadows neighborhood CHAFA the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority did approve us for an employee unit on site. So we will have a manager moving in to help keep eyes and ears on site after hours and help with that neighborhood and making sure everything’s going smoothly even after hours. The Briar wood that we’ve had two units. This isn’t on your sheet but we’ve had two units held for the city funded voucher program. Both households moved in today. So Briar wood is now 100% occupied Aspen Meadows senior SR has also reached 100% occupied we still have a couple of spots open we are looking for still looking for custodian we’re looking and we’re looking for negative maintenance position.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:42
Great thing is Briar wood has historically not been part of the crime free multifamily housing program. And when I talked earlier about the work was Sarah. Sarah is part of the team as well. And so Lisa and has been working with Sarah to make Brownwood part of the crime free multifamily housing program. So at this point, all of our properties will be part of that program.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:06
Correct. Burwood was just inspected last Thursday.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:12
Lisa, what is the acronym HCV?
Unknown Speaker 2:24:14
What is the Housing Choice Voucher?
Unknown Speaker 2:24:17
Oh, of course. Okay. I should know that.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:23
So, so the only if there’s no questions for Lisa So the only other update that I wanted to give you as you all may remember that the Longmont Housing Development Corporation, excuse me and decided that they wanted to dissolve and so we’re in the middle of untangling all of all of that. At the moment. You all know Aspen meadow apartments. We actually did that through the recent occation on on that property. We are part of The HUD 202 transfer is also the transfer that from Longmont Housing Development Corporation to the Longmont housing authority. And then the trying to think what’s left, Molly helped me on this one, the two biggest that we need to work on Spring Creek and Fall River. And that’s because they’re so early in the process that we have to go through and work with the the lenders and other and other folks to get that converted over to the housing authority. And that’s going to take a fair amount of time, I think to move through that process, but not what we initially thought. There’s a fair amount of untangling that’s going to have to occur on Christmann one, two is being brought into the LH a portfolio, we have to untangle Christmann. One in what we didn’t talk about is when you finance these, you get into C corpse and other things in order to make the tax credits work. So we have to start shifting all of that. So we have a team of our accountants, a lawyer, Ben Doyle, and Sarah Bhatt all working with us right now, as we’re converting that over into the housing authority. And at the end of the day, what that also will do is strengthen our financial position as a whole. And as we move into development, I think it streamlines the process. Right now what we’re working through on that is really to understand the choto component to this, which is a community housing development organization. And how we do we want to see if that can fit in play here, because we can’t be a choto. And so we’re gonna have to figure that shows that actually went down because there wasn’t a lot of money for him. And what we’re hearing is or maybe more money, so we’re trying to understand that as we untangle the Longmont Housing Development Corporation and bring it in. So you will probably start seeing that hit you probably want within three or four months.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:14
Yep. So our first steps are to based on our input from our tax auditor and the attorneys. fine tune the priority list of which properties we have to start first, which ones will be easy to pick off which you need to start first? Because they’ll take longer, which, as you mentioned, person, one is Thai on that list for that reason. So yes, we’re working on a schedule and step by step process for each of these to outline it and know what that what what each will require, and the timelines associated.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:51
And the thing that we have to be really careful on as a tax liabilities involved in this because one misstep can create hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars in tax liabilities. And it is you really measured as you’re moving through this, and we’re all learning tax law now. for affordable housing. Any questions about the LH DC move?
Unknown Speaker 2:28:26
You answered mine. I was I was going to ask you. How do you get developers for these properties? Do you put out an RFP but the choda choto? I guess that’s what you said
Unknown Speaker 2:28:38
it? So there are it’s a different question, depending on what it is. And you can do an RFP. Sometimes there are developers that are really developers that are very specific to this type of affordable housing. And so you really, sometimes they’ll come to you. That’s actually what happened with Christmas. And so it depends on what you’re looking at. But I’ll tell you, what you do look for somebody that understands the world of tax credits and CHAFA Doh, because if you don’t have that experience, it can be a tough road and NGL who we’re working with Chrisman to, they’re really strong in that arena. And I think that’s what’s helped us keep this, this project moving forward and frankly, in play, to be honest with you. They’ve done a lot of work. And so we really look for expertise on the development side in this arena. And how they can move through.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:42
Interesting lot of work.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:45
So is there anything else Harold that you want to bring to us about
Unknown Speaker 2:29:50
it? That’s it for today?
Unknown Speaker 2:29:52
It’s it’s a lot. It’s a lot you do great work. So since we’re done with those presentations, We are want to know if we have any commissioners comments before we in the meeting. Commissioner waters
Tim Waters 2:30:11
thanks, Chairperson Peck here. I like chatting with you briefly a few days ago about parking at the village place. I understand this is not a policy question. This is an operations issue. But I don’t know if other others council member slash commissioners have had questions about parking at Village place. If you have a My guess you will, it would be helpful if we could just publicly clarify, where are we and where are we headed with parking at Village place? What can what can residents count on in terms of their need to or not to compete for parking? Space spaces? In is there just something we could get a few sentences that we could be consistent in our responses when we get questions from residents about parking at Village place?
Unknown Speaker 2:31:08
Yeah. So first on the response, Molly and Lisa, since our conversation has provided me with a sent your question based on the call you receive. They provided me with something I need to get with them. There’s a couple of points I want to look at in that. And we will get that to you within the next day or so. Yeah, I think so there’s a lot of things happening right now in parking. I, we know we have parking issues at Village place because of its proximity to downtown. They do have people that park in that location, they have assigned spaces. What we were looking, what we’re looking at doing is we parked and this is not to the parking issues all over. So let’s start there. So we’re partnering with a tow company in we’re going to be putting signs up. And they will be working with us to monitor locations to ensure that the residents who live in the properties actually have the parking spaces, that they’re the ones parking in in those locations. Molly, Lisa, you’re gonna have to help me on this. So that’s how the conversation started. We also then began village place, as I said, has assigned parking. And as we look at the monitoring and these components, operationally, I think it becomes more difficult with the assigned spots. The other thing that we saw in village places that they actually assign handicap spots to people, and you can’t do that by law. And so there’s a legal issue that we have that we have to deal with on those spots. But generally, I think there was an understanding that they were going to have to compete with parking for the DDA in the village place parking lot. And that’s not intended this, the intent of this is to ensure that there are parking spots for people who live in those locations. Lisa also told them that this is not something we’re doing today. It’ll be I think six months is what you talked about based on what we’re able to do. And so we were trying to have that conversation with them ahead of time. Now all that being said, we talked about the recent vacation village place and we know when we do that we’re gonna have construction. We’re going to need to have a place to stage construction. And we will be actively engaging in conversations with the residents of village place as we move into into that area. And so that’s that’s a quick update on that will give you all the specifics in that email. Did I think at least a mine?
Unknown Speaker 2:33:43
Yep. But you’re having it. Well. Thanks. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:33:51
So are there any other comments from commissioners? Seeing none, I think that we need a motion to adjourn this meeting.
Unknown Speaker 2:34:01
I move to adjourn. I have a second. Thank you Commissioner Martin and Commissioner waters. So all those paper have a journeying ratio. Thank you. This was a really good meeting. You gave us a lot of information. Good information. Thank you. We are adjourned.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai