Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Open Forum – July 19, 2022
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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Unknown Speaker 21:39
Yes I can you hear me Dallas okay
Unknown Speaker 23:08
hello everybody we’re going to wait just a couple more minutes to let the counselors can settle because we’ve been in executive session since 530 and went over time so thank you for your patience Can you hear me more sure?
Unknown Speaker 24:12
Yes okay. So far I can hear everybody says much better than this time
Unknown Speaker 24:33
yeah I see
Unknown Speaker 24:38
I see the top of your head Sandy all of Dallas’s face We’re recording in progress
Unknown Speaker 25:35
Harold here this microphone when we start the meeting I’m going to call three of you up at a time and you can sit in the chairs to people in chairs to wait in the one of you at the microphone
Unknown Speaker 26:01
like to call the July 19 2020 to Longmont, city council open forum to order reminder to the public that this you can view this on Livestream at www Longmont colorado.gov or on our YouTube channel. Let me have a roll call please done. Mayor Beck. He present councilmember Daga Ferring councilmember Martin era. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez Here. Councilmember waters,
Unknown Speaker 26:34
Councilmember Yarborough? Mayor, you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 26:36
Thank you. Let’s stand for the pledge.
Unknown Speaker 26:42
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Unknown Speaker 26:58
So we’re gonna jump right into the open forum and the first three people I’m calling up are sharing Malloy. Jamie sighs Mo and Rod Brandenberg.
Unknown Speaker 27:22
Good evening, Mayor Peck Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez some members of city council. Sherry Malloy. 20 sorry. 1632 Sherman way here in Longmont. I had not intended to speak tonight but I changed my mind after doing my two hour shift as a natural resources. Volunteer trail Ambassador today, I went to Dickens nature area and I’m pleased to say that I counted 115 people enjoying this special area, and especially the water on another scorching day. I only needed to suggest to one woman with small kids the importance of staying on designated trails. So that was all good to see. Dogs were leashed and people were being respectful of the land in St. Vrain Creek. What wasn’t good to see and the reason I decided to speak is the horrible shape of the trees the city planted as part of the almost $10 million spent on deacons nature area and flood mitigation. There are dozens of trees that are dying or dead because they’re not getting watered. Some have water bags, but it’s obviously not getting filled. I’m not alone in noticing this casualty. Recently, there have been two TC line comments about the deteriorated trees at Dickens and along the entire Greenway. Hundreds of trees have been planted as part of flood mitigation with many 1000s of dollars invested. I understand the Park Department is short staffed. And that’s the reason for this neglect. Perhaps the city could hire a temporary contractor using the empty funds that empty positions leave available. This needs to happen now, or 80 to 85% of tree investment dollars will be lost with lost time for growth and shade and expensive to replace. As you all know I’m a wildlife and habitat advocate and advocate and activist. Tonight Jaime will be speaking for our stand with our St. Vrain Creek group about our recommendation to protect our Rogers Grove bank swallow habitat. We are asking that protection language be included in the storm drainage bond ballot measure to play pay for flood mitigation from sunset to hoever. We want to support this ballot measure but not if it means destroying our rare bank swallow habitat, the only known one in Boulder County. Please ask staff to include preservation language before you vote on this next Tuesday. As a concerned taxpayer and healthy habitat supporter who closely follows the city’s flood mitigation plans along our precious St. Van corridor. I don’t want to see my tax dollars used flood mitigation efforts be wasted by neglecting vegetation and that will destroy our bank swallow habitat. I’m hopeful by bringing these two issues to your attention. Both will be remedied so that all Longmont residents might expand their enjoyment and appreciation of our same for Angel. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 30:23
I did forget to mention that you do have five minutes. Sherry, do you want a conversation with this open forum so we can address your issues? Or if you want someone to talk to this matter? It’s a back and forth? Sure
Unknown Speaker 30:41
I only use two and a half minutes. So I’ll take the other two and a half to hear some responses.
Unknown Speaker 30:48
Okay. Is there anyone here? Or from the city I had heard? Was it David Bell had said that we were protecting that and watching where the bank swallow has a habitat and haven’t seen them come back? Oh, they’re back? The you’ve seen them? Yes. So on the flood mitigation? I would like to have an answer on that. Are we going to preserve the bank swallow with the RSVP?
Unknown Speaker 31:19
My understanding is that the preferred plan the Army Corps has done the preliminary plans would destroy that habitat. And the city has said that they would try to replicate it. But it’s not like an Osprey grass that you just put up a platform. Bank swallow habitat is not replicable. It’s they need Sandy banks, they survived the flood, only to now be taken out by the city’s flood mitigation efforts. It’s it’s a travesty.
Unknown Speaker 31:45
So I personally would like to hear what our plan is. Well, we might as well hear it tonight. So what do you think, Jim?
Unknown Speaker 31:55
Well, the as I understand it, the Bank Swallows are a part of are in in the overreach, area, which we will we have a conceptual layout. We have not yet done any design. So I’m not sure how they will be impacted. But I’ve talked to the project manager on the job, but we are aware that they’re there. Okay. We haven’t started design, it will have a consultant onboard yet. We know the the I’ve talked to share it several times. You know, kind of like, we know there’s a there’s there are there, we’ll do our best and to avoid them. But and then we’d also talked about having engagement early in the process as we get to 30% plans to see what is going to happen, but we’ll do our best.
Unknown Speaker 32:42
Great, great, thank you for that and keep us apprised of what’s happening. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 32:46
So I guess I’m back to you know, we would really like to see some language in the bond because we’ve been told before that we’ll have opportunities to be heard and, and have our concerns. voiced and, and participate and, and that hasn’t, you know, that hasn’t gone well for wildlife and habitat. So so that’s where I’m at, you know, I want to support this and in general concept, I absolutely support flood mitigation voted for the other tax that we had for it. Realize that but you know, a lot of things get considered collateral damage for flood mitigation. And so the main reason why banks flowers are a species of special concern. Also listed in our own wildlife management plan is species of special concern is for two reasons. Flood Mitigation and development. We have both of those things going on. With these with this the only known colony in Longmont are in Boulder County. So I’m the only one in Longmont. And while I’m at it, so some Sunday we’re having a swallow celebration because they are here. So we’ll have some scopes set up at Rogers Grove over where those are. We’ll be meeting at Rogers grove at 9am. I’m hoping to see some of you from Council and the public there to to learn about big swells we’ll have some birders there to help us learn more about them and why they’re so special.
Unknown Speaker 34:11
Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 34:14
And trees so entries okay. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. Well, thank you. Thanks for the engagement. I didn’t realize that was going to happen. So that was nice.
Unknown Speaker 34:22
Good. Thank you. Jamie, Simon. Seema. I’m sorry, I mispronounced your name.
Unknown Speaker 34:31
That’s okay. It’s Jamie SEMO 517 Independence drive. I’m here tonight as Sherry mentioned on behalf of Stan with our St. Vrain Creek Citizen Action Group here in Longmont dedicated to protecting the St. Vrain riparian corridor from damaging development. We have been here before you many times most recently regarding the Brevard County annexation. At that time, we implored you to require as a condition of annexation, that the developer dedicated conservation easement on their property adjacent to Raj As Grove so that the city might use that land for flood mitigation work. This would prevent the nesting colony of Bank Swallows at Rogers Grove from potentially being destroyed during flood mitigation construction. You declined. metaphor we are here to ask that the city come up with some other way to bypass the swallow colony when they initiate work on the RSVP in the vicinity of Rogers Grove, we have several 100 and counting postcards from concerned residents asking the same for those in the audience who are unaware, Bank Swallows are in North America smallest smallest species and insect eating some bird that nests and riverine and coastal embankments. They can’t nest in just any bank. However, they require at least a 70% almost vertical slope and sandy soils free from or nearly free from vegetation. They are colonial nesting species with high site fidelity that is rare and declining primarily due to loss of their specialized habitat, including losses incurred as a result of flood mitigation work, such as bank armoring and channel widening. The small colony at Rogers groove is the only one on Longmont protected land and is one of only a handful of known nesting sites within Boulder County. We have heard that as there isn’t even a final plan for what flood mitigation will look like and the overreach of the same brain. And funding hasn’t yet been secured. It’s too early to talk about measures to protect the banks while a colony we disagree. How to protect the Bank Swallows should be one of the elements to consider at the beginning of a plan, not after one has already been drafted. I would argue it’s too early to look at concept plans for development within the 100 year floodplain until flood mitigation work is complete. And yet these plans move forward anyway. The smallest at least are known and fixed element. You will be presented shortly, likely next week with a bond measure to pay for construction of the overreach on the same frame. If this bond measure goes to voters for approval, we want assurances in writing that our tax dollars won’t go to a project that will destroy this special habitat. I’d like to invite council as well as the public to attend our save as well as event this Sunday, July 24 at 9am at the Rogers Grove picnic pavilion. There you can find out more about these amazing birds and see them before they migrate south. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 37:10
You’re welcome. Hi, does anybody want to address? Jamie? I don’t see any hands up. So thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Rod. And after rod can I bring up Bob Norris? Steve alt shoulder endo Kelly,
Unknown Speaker 37:29
evening Council, Rod Brandenburg, grandpa’s pawn and gun, one on fourth Ninth Avenue. Talk about guns with you folks. Again. I want to address first the 10 day wait with you folks. We ordered our books on in June just last year, sold approximately 260 guns. And five of those customers were new customers. So that means 255 weren’t it was either upon redeem I know that’s a really high number. Not really, but 255 people they got through gotten out through a pawn redeem or through a consignment or through a gun transfer or maintenance. So the 10 day wait in essence penalizes 255 of our customers to wait 10 days to get their own products back. Need to look at that. Yeah, US Constitution says gun ownership shall not be infringed. You’re making them wait 10 days to get their own product back. Time to crime according the FBI. From the time people buy a gun until a crime was committed with his an average of 8.3 years. So the 10 day wait doesn’t really accomplish much here in Longmont. There are nine gun stores within five to 15 minutes from where we stand right now. One in birth ID five east of us three but three east of us before he get tied 25 and five more down into Broomfield Westminister area. So if somebody’s thinking about buying a weapon, they can just travel five to 15 minutes folks to go buy it not wait 10 days. The 21 year old issue. The ninth court circuit of appeals in San Francisco call it unconstitutional. I think that was last month in dealing with contract law, at least in our store. I mean, if the gun is under some type of consignment to transfer, we’re doing maintenance or repairs on it. Or it’s a pawn loan. We are entering into a contract with those people. Several of them are in here tonight. This 10 day wait, you know it’s a government add on attendees. And according to Article One section 10 of the US Constitution government cannot interfere with existing contracts. And that’s the bulk of our business. I want to get some time to interact too but domestic violence is up for under percent so far this year in Longmont, people need to be able to arm themselves. We do that over there. And a lot of them are victims. We’re glad we can sell them again. So consider this time to time I have all kinds of statistics available for you folks and be glad to share them with you. But I would like any you folks have questions for me. I can answer all the questions that were posed at our last meeting. So fire away at me
Unknown Speaker 40:38
do any other counselors want to? Oh, counselor, her dog a fairy? Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 40:45
Thank you, Mayor. I was going to pull up some notes I had, I had met with a gun. They the group I can’t remember the name. That’s what I was trying to find the the email came up kind of fast. So pardon, I’m going to try to look in and ask at the same time. So you know, I really I would like to know your feedback. What What can we do to ensure the safety of our public? At parks at you know, for the longest time we thought schools were safe, schools aren’t safe. I was. My daughter was a week old when Columbine happened. You know, I’m thinking now that’s because she’s 23. And that’s become a way of her life.
Unknown Speaker 41:25
She was 24 years ago. Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 41:29
And so, you know, what, can we do that now? You know, we thought churches were safe. We thought movie theaters were safe grocery stores and everywhere. It’s exacerbating it’s getting worse. It is scary. Um, you know, I’m a school teacher. I had strategically planned my room to have this giant bookcase is not even a bookcase. It’s a giant cabinet that I just with wheels roll in front of the door. I mean, I’ve already had it planned with my husband, if if I get shot in school shooting, I want to open casket because I want and I want people to know what what this looks like and what this means for us. So you know, I just I want to be able to have conversations and come up with solutions that really ensure the safety of our people of our children.
Unknown Speaker 42:17
Is there doors or windows in your classroom? Yeah, you get the kids hell out of there.
Unknown Speaker 42:23
Yeah. Well, I’d like to take you for a tour in my building that was built in the 60s. Yeah, it’s not as easy. I can’t even get fresh air. But
Unknown Speaker 42:34
no, no, something needs to be done. Yeah, I agree. And Councilman waters, Longmont police and two other gun store owners, we had a meeting. I guess it’s two weeks ago, Tim, and we’ve already created a poster that we would be glad to post and the other gun stores that attended, we’d be glad to post. We want to educate the people to I don’t know, form 4473 If Tim or mayor Peck, were going to come in and buy a gun, we are responsible for 59 items on that form. We have to make sure that it’s filled out properly. And it’s not our call. When we sell a gun. We submit the information the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI and through the FBI, nine other agencies, Alphabet agencies, the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, they all are looking at people. And we’ve actually had the cops come in wanting to know where a customer just went, because we just sold a gun to somebody who should not have got a gun. They were approved in error. So there’s the human element. And they can what worked which way they go while they went down the street this way. But that was 20 minutes ago. So we got to figure out that the human error factor. You got 400 cops at Uvalde a couple of weeks ago, wondering what the hell to do. Well go get that guy. That’s what you’re trained for. Sit inside and wait for orders. I mean, people are dying in or Columbine. I know one of the 600 cops that was standing outside, waiting for orders. Go in there and take care of that problem. And I mentioned to Councilwoman, you weren’t here two years ago, but his parents involved in the schools. And I mentioned parent patrols. Have the parents wander around the schools, the parking lots, the halls and the perpetrators got to get past these parents and past the SRO officer if they’re going to cause problems. If you add another element of policing there, and the cops I’ve talked to would welcome that. The teachers I’ve talked to the principals, everybody I’ve talked to so that’s a no brainer. It doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything. Have parents patrol their schools. There’s helicopter parents out there. I was one of them. You know, our kids aren’t in the school system anymore. But that’s one thing you could do. and cost taxpayer anything, and who has a more vested interest in our children’s safety than the parents? So that’s one place to start. Anytime you want to come and discuss that that’s please
Unknown Speaker 45:13
do so even it was Nephi coal from NS
Unknown Speaker 45:16
S F.
Unknown Speaker 45:17
That’s a Shooting Sports Foundation. Yes, he’s
Unknown Speaker 45:20
their national, I’m sorry, Western states governmental affairs director. So I had a really good conversation with him. You know, and I’m really, you know, I want to look at solutions and having meaningful dialogue. I know, so one of the things that came back was arming teachers. That’s not as someone who has been in the profession 20 years, that’s not a solution, that that’s not going to work. And I know that there’s people arguing, you know, would push back against that. That’s, that’s looking at the dynamics. I mean, even the last couple of years, this classroom environment has completely changed. And, you know, there it would not be feasible for us to be able to protect our kids to that capacity. I mean, look at how fast the shootings occurred and great velocity and magnitude and just having a teacher with an arm when we, you know, when our firearm when, you know, we had multitude of police officers outside Uvalde and, and who couldn’t, and wouldn’t do anything. You know,
Unknown Speaker 46:23
we have armed officers here tonight. in uniform, there’s probably a couple sitting out here playing close to their protecting a few of us. Why don’t we have armed guards at our schools? So this is 24 years later?
Unknown Speaker 46:35
Yeah, actually, I’m gonna I want to turn around. I know, I kind of got off on a tangent of bringing it to school. But that video, I wanted to make sure you know, also to the school is one aspect of it. But as city council, we do not have control. We don’t have authority over school legislation. So really, those are conversations for our school boards. And I would really recommend, you know, please, please have those conversations, because I think that’s in that respect. But for us at city council, you know, we’re looking at our public parks or public spaces or parades. Places where a lot of people congregate, you know, what, what are some reasonable? What, what are some solutions?
Unknown Speaker 47:14
Or parks?
Unknown Speaker 47:14
I don’t have an answer for his schools. I do get armed guards out there. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 47:19
Well, I mean, that’s, yeah, we don’t have any jurisdiction over the
Unknown Speaker 47:23
24 years later.
Unknown Speaker 47:24
Nothing’s been done. Nothing has been done. And, you know, we’ve
Unknown Speaker 47:27
got armed guards here tonight. And that’s what what upsets a lot of people is, government has armed guards and we pay for that protection. Why don’t we go armed armed guards at our schools. And I concur with you if a teacher is not comfortable. But I’ll let you know this. If the kids at the student body knows there’s a janitor, a coach, a principal, there are armed people in the school. That’s a deterrent. They don’t need to know who. But law enforcement wants to solve these issues, folks. I mean, and Dan had dad, I know he doesn’t want guns in the schools will have guns outside the schools like a guard. Do you folks know in China, here’s the school system. There’s one way and there’s one way out. And there’s an armed guard there. They don’t have those problems in other parts of the world. Israel, you’ve never had a school shooting. Because there’s armed guards there. But I would welcome dialogues. Tim was there to talk about it. Thank you. I gotta go catch a plane. I’m going out to Nevada to help my daughters.
Unknown Speaker 48:31
Thank you, Rod. Thank
Unknown Speaker 48:32
you very much. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 48:36
Bob, Bob Norris. And can we have Steve all Schuler and Kelley. Come up, please.
Unknown Speaker 48:43
I can’t even comment on that. previous discussion on Bob Norris 530. To write and read to drive. I hope what I have to say makes a lot more sense. Oh, okay. I can hear me. Probably the only one that wanted to. So I’m Bob Norris. I live at 532 Ryder Ridge Drive. I’m bringing up a topic that I’ve talked to many of you about in the past. I really think that a community that knows what the city council has been doing is a much better community. I think every citizen every person, every resident of this community has the right to know what you’re doing. I think you are all better if the members of this community knows what you’re doing, because otherwise they’re gonna make it up, then you probably won’t like what they do. Then there’s the other 99% that really don’t care. Well, not that many, but people don’t care. And I think there’s probably a relatively easy solution. And that’s called a mail merge. You send us all stuff from time to time. And I think you can have somebody write up what you’ve done in the last month or so. In mailmerge. That was some of the things you send it I got a bill. You could stop sending me a bill for my utilities that would be okay. He was, you’re not gonna do that. But we do get the city line and we do get our bills. And I think you guys are smarter about how your system works. But please do that. I don’t know if other communities do that or not. But I really think it’s important. I think we teach our kids in the schools that they need to know what’s going on in their community, and we’re not doing it. And I see somebody over here, it looks like he’s gonna say something. But he never ever says anything at city council meeting. So
Unknown Speaker 50:35
Councillor waters?
Tim Waters 50:37
Are you finished? I don’t want to cut you off. But you’re right. I did want to follow up.
Unknown Speaker 50:42
I was finished a long time.
Tim Waters 50:46
Maybe two of us. So I didn’t want to cut your comments short. But I, because we have talked about this. By Bob is a word one constituent, he’s also a friend and a colleague in early childhood work in an activist in the community. What, Bob for you what would be is it the city line, that’s would be the most effective vehicle for getting that a synthesis of what the council
Unknown Speaker 51:11
is not in the city line that’s too complex. I’m talking about a mail merge. Yeah, you somebody in the city has a good common sense to say these are eight or 10 things most important for people to know you write that up and put it on a piece of paper, and you just mail merge it in that could go out either in the city line, because a lot of people get that. And most of us get a bill, it doesn’t matter. Or you could spend a little extra money and just send it out as individual saying, but I think it’s a good investment in what the public needs to do. And when it comes election time, they’re going to know what you did
Tim Waters 51:49
worry about? It would be it would be maybe helpful. Mayor pack if if we get ask. I’m just curious, what would it take for us to do that. And I don’t know if that’s Marika, or we go or Harold or somebody else in or what we’ve tried in the past, and concluded that it works or doesn’t work. I mean, in terms of the attempt to get more information pushed to the public on what we’ve been up to.
Unknown Speaker 52:18
I think it would be all of the above that you mentioned, my Ryka Herald. What I see is the the interesting thing, I agree with you that we need to be more communicative. But there are so many divisions that are working on so many different things that I don’t know what would be at the top of the list of importance for residents where we are continually working on housing, both affordable and attainable on transportation. And I am going to have conversations with our transportation planner to have a community meeting on where we are on transportation in September. I’ve been trying to have the the mayor quarterly meetings about what we’re doing on certain things. That that is my that’s where I get frustrated with not knowing exactly what it is that you would want to know about it because we’re always working on certain things continually. You mentioned in an email Bob about the doomed hate, you didn’t know when that was going to happen and where et cetera. And that wasn’t a city event at that was communities, or that brought that to the city?
Unknown Speaker 53:45
Well, it wasn’t the event. It was the resolution. You made a resolution on a support. And you made a resolution for about the LGBTQ community. And I agree that that’s kind of difficult. And I know that the newspapers, somebody comes here and leaves at 10 o’clock. And my good friend John fryer, used to put in the paper, whatever he thought he wanted. And so that’s what that’s a problem and the media, the media is a real problem in this country. But you know, you got to start someplace. And as far as housing, we always talk about this. The solution. We don’t talk about the cause. And that frustrates me to the cause. Part of it is early childhood education, childcare, we have only about 60% of enough childcare that we got. So women aren’t working women have only recovered about one or 2% of the jobs they need. The men are getting the other 99% of the jobs, it’s hurting our businesses. And you can’t solve that problem, but you may need to be aware of it.
Unknown Speaker 54:52
And I agree and I have asked not recently but a year ago that we have a presentation by E ACC, to let them know what they’re working on. Where are you? Where are we? Because it is one of our goals, our work plan, early childhood net every every child should be have the right to be educated. And we don’t we didn’t do that,
Unknown Speaker 55:15
then we make some kind of a presentation.
Tim Waters 55:18
There was I think this is this is since then this is a more recent it was yes. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 55:23
Well, it was a more recent week request. So I’ll request that again. Because I agree with you,
Unknown Speaker 55:27
we’ll do it. We’ll do it. Tim and I are both part of that.
Unknown Speaker 55:30
Great. Make it happen, Bob.
Unknown Speaker 55:34
I’ll do my best. They don’t always listen to me like they should. I am now. Okay, we’ll do that. But, but if you don’t get everything, you’re gonna get something. And I think when you start seeing the response from doing it, that’ll give you some feedback of what you do. But we have a lot of things. We need parts. I have lots of complaints. My wife has even more about me, but that’s a different issue.
Unknown Speaker 55:59
Okay. I do think the five minutes is okay.
Unknown Speaker 56:02
Let me just say plagues, playgrounds, interpretation. Lots of things I’ll email you about,
Unknown Speaker 56:08
give me a list.
Unknown Speaker 56:09
I’ll give you less. If you do any of them. I’ll be pleased.
Unknown Speaker 56:12
Thank you. And to Marcia Martin, I cannot see your hand all the time. So if you just jump in if you have a comment you want to make Okay, thank you. Steve ALTSCHULER.
Unknown Speaker 56:28
Hi, my name is Steve ALTSCHULER. I live at 1555 Taylor Mountain Drive. And this might bounce around. But I’ve got some notes. I want to start out by saying we are all blessed. We’re blessed to live in the greatest freest country ever created. America’s Bible is a creation called the Constitution of the United States. I have copies here for all of you. If you haven’t seen it recently, I’d be glad to give them to you. When federal servants like Nancy Pelosi Chuck Schumer, Jared Polis, and indeed, every senator, Congressman and dog catcher takes office, they take an oath to uphold the Constitution. And I believe all of you do that, too. I believe it’s local and federal and everything. So the Constitution guarantees our right to free speech, and the right to keep and bear arms, and of course, many other rights also. But tonight, obviously, I want to focus on the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. on a federal level, this right was designed to protect us from an overreaching government. The first thing every dictator has done is to take away the guns of citizens. Countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Germany and the 1930s, as the first goal of everybody that wants to take control of the people, is to disarm the people. On a local level, guns in the hands of free citizens. And I would say people that are trained, allow us to protect our family and our property from criminals that commit crimes. The definition of a crime is an act that is deemed injurious to public welfare, and is legally prohibited. It’s already illegal for a criminal. It’s already illegal and criminal, excuse me, for a felon to have a gun. It’s already illegal and a crime to shoot and kill other people. Criminals always manage to get guns, even though it’s against the law to sell a gun to a convicted person.
Unknown Speaker 58:45
Even this weekend, a good guy with a gun, killed a mass murderer, and prevented a much worse situation. We have a constitutional right to be armed, and to protect ourselves if necessary. Criminals will always get guns, and they love unarmed citizens. I think that’s one reasons why you’re seeing we’re talking about soft targets. You’re seeing more shootings at theaters and schools and churches, because the criminals know that there is normally nobody there with a gun. And when they are they’re stopped when there is someone with a gun. Criminals are not stupid, they’re gonna go to the easiest place. I have redefined that a little bit. We’re not just talking criminal behavior. With a mass shooters we’re talking about people that just want to destroy other people. They’re gonna go where there’s the least probability of anyone stopping them. And we were talking about teachers arming teachers. No one says arm every teacher in the school. It’s arming a few teachers that are ready, willing and able to be trained to carry a gun, just like anyone else that buys a gun. I have a hunting license, I had to go to hunter safety class, you’ll learn how to handle a gun. And if a teacher wants to do that, they should be able to do that. The ones that have no interest, we don’t want them to have a gun anyway, because they wouldn’t know how to handle it.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:23
So one thing I wanted to mention, in 2019, New Zealand passed the gun confiscation bill. By June 28 of 2020. New Zealand gun crime was at a 10 year high. And just over one year since the confiscation in 2014. New Zealand has gun related death rate of one person per million. In 2020 and 2021. The rate was 2.4 per million, it has gone up 150% Since they took guns away from citizens. A 2008 2018 study in California by two gun control groups showed 0% change in homicide and suicide after the gun control laws were passed. So you’re taking guns away from people that want to be able to protect themselves and it’s not even helping the situation. Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the nation. And we all know they have the highest gun death rate and crime rate in the nation. Almost 1000 gun deaths per year in Chicago.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:37
Thank you, Steve. I do want to make a statement and I’m I don’t know if the other counselors do. We have absolutely no authority over the school district. If you want teachers armed if you want automatic closing doors, whatever you have to go to the school board and convince them
Unknown Speaker 1:01:57
so but I still want to be able to protect my family and my property and
Unknown Speaker 1:02:01
the city council in the city of Longmont are not trying to take away your guns. Okay, make I want to make that very clear.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:09
When I know those discussions, I’d like to be ahead of the curve rather than mind.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:14
We are not going to take away anyone’s guns. Thank you very much. Dale Kelly,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:27
that’s me. Goodness. Okay, well, I was just sitting over here, waiting my turn. And I figure, you know, you guys know me more from my voice then from my face from the last two years, right. But and I’m on about smart meters and in this case about the BS, but I’ve gotten a new toy recently. And I’m sitting over here not doing anything without anything. What wireless live on my person at all, watching this little safe and sound Pro to broadband radio frequency meter dance between high and extreme. And then doubly extreme while I sit over here and people moving around around me with their computers with their smartphones, et cetera, et cetera. A picture is worth 1000 words, if you want to see what it is you’re holding in your pockets and in your hands and what you’re working on in terms of, you know, extreme danger that you put yourself in where do you want your tumor? You know, do you want it here? Do you want it in your back pocket? Where would you like it? This will tell you what you’ve got going on. So anyway, that is my first little bit here and I’m going to turn this guy off but we just had a surge up to 36,400 milliwatts per meter square and the most I’ve seen of this thing is 445,000 milliwatts per meter square going along Canberra at 119 out towards American Furniture Warehouse. I have no idea where that much radiofrequency is coming from. Now, that said, Imagine if you will two to three years down the road. When you go into your garden. What if you find no bumblebees, no honey bees, no butterflies, no wasps, no insects, no swallows no birds. The lady was talking about swallows earlier. This is part of it. And this is already happening. So pesticides are to blame. But what if what if there’s a wireless radiation critical component that we’ve overlooked in our haste to get to 100% renewable? Are we indeed already part of the lobster in a boiling pot scenario? Put a lobster in boiling water and it screams stick it in the room temperature water and Heat to boiling gradually and the lobster doesn’t notice it’s being cooked until it’s too late. Not unlike being boiled alive in the invisible, non ionizing radiation of ubiquitous Electrosmog. 5g will only make things worse. Professor ole Johansson the brilliant and world renowned Swedish EMF researcher has turned his attention to researching the connection between electromagnetic field radiation, such as emitted by smart meters and wireless devices and infrastructure and the massive decline we are seeing in the pollinators. His current work which collaborates with other scientists, scientists has a slogan no BS equals no food equals no children. At our smart, our virtual smart meter townhall in March of this year, Professor Johansson was one of our expert contributors. We have his ear, I have his ear. I’m with him on email every week, he will come here if asked and if we fund him to do so. He’s a very humble man who will speak directly with all of us on this problem, which is also on the radar screen of our state. While EMF may only be a piece of this problematic puzzle of declining essential insects, the contribution that a wireless smart meter mesh network brings to our daily Electrosmog dose cannot be ignored by claiming the technology is safe. Many scientific studies show the exact opposite. We have a world class scientists willing to come to advise us well we step up to the challenge. And lest he remind you should he come to Longmont, Lloyd’s of London won’t insure this technology against liability. What do big insurers know that we the little people do not? No BS equals no food equals no children. So you’ll notice that I’ve got only slogan printed on my T shirt. And it also says, For the BS, just say no to smart meters because I feel very, very strongly about this. And I’m selling them so anybody who wants one see me after the show.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:13
I showed you my toy. Right now we’re standing on the precarious ledge, the disappearance of pollinators and insects in our world. Will we adopt the precautionary principle and pull back from the insane rollout of smart meters? Or will we rush headlong over a cliff like lemmings embracing this unsafe and unproven wireless technology to our detriment? I was gonna sing for you that I see. I don’t have enough time to do it. I’m a trained operatic singer. You know, I wrote a song called colony collapse disorder and I sang it at Fraser Meadows a few years ago. They loved it in my bee suit.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:52
Thank you, Joe.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:54
Mara Peck I have a notebook that I’d like to loan to you, my man bring it to you.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:59
Sure, you can give it to Don at the end of the city clerk. Thank you Beth Khalil. And will Roberto sand of all and Maryanne Niehaus. Come up please.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:32
Take this off. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for your time, counsel. I appreciate it. I’m a new face to Longmont. I’ve been here a couple of years and I absolutely love it. I’m originally from South Africa. I live on corner of hoever and pike, and we’re watching the traffic up and down a very small stretch a road between plateau and pike. I’ve been chatting with Caroline Michael, who’s the public civil engineer from Public Works and natural resources at the city of Longmont. And they’ve done a study. I believe it’s an Ontario I’m starting to learn about the different roads being local arterial. And there’s one more and I’m forgetting the name of it, but I guess whoever is arterial, we’ve got an entrance to the Lobo trail. Right there. We have Olin farms, which is an organic farm. We’ve got the waterfront community and I’m then lucky person that now heads up the HOA they with all these fancy things that goes on. We’re struggling with the speed of the vehicles that pass by we believe it is an arterial there’s a classification for an arterial where speed is supposed to be quick moving traffic from one area to another. We’re trying to encourage people to walk the Lobos trail. We’ve got children on bicycles. We’ve got parents with their kids. We had a school bus stop on Hova. And all the children ran out and ran across the road. Carol Caroline’s study, she did a speed study just the other day. And she gets she was kind enough to give me the results. The 85th percentile speed is what they look at is 70 47% is 47 miles an hour, it’s posted at 35. It’s only going to get worse we have construction going up and people are moving in, which is wonderful. But here we got bikers, children crossing the road, not in any one particular spot. It’s a small stretch between hoever and I’m excuse me, plateau and pike. I live on the corner. As I say, and I get to watch as I said, on my deck, we’ve had one since I’ve been corresponding with Caroline, we’ve had one accident on the road already. We’ve had one little girl that fell over and a semi truck stop just in time in front of it. I’ve been trying to document this as much as possible. I have photographs I’ve been sending them to Carolyn, we’ve got farmers who come out of that. They’re a little older and farmer security to the farm. And he uses his tractor, he’s not quick enough to get into hoever because of the speed of the cars. Two things if I may, it’s posted a 35. If there’s a we’ve, we’ve called the police, they’ve sent cruisers out, they do their job they try they can’t have a 24 hour presence. It’s not possible, we understand that. We know the classification is an arterial, is there any way to look at it and reclassify to a local road? So we can perhaps get the speed limit down? Can we put cameras? We can’t have someone stand there all the time? Could we monitor it in some different way? Can we enforce the speed? At the very minimum? Can we enforce 35 miles an hour? We’d like to see a drop a little lower. Is this something that can be done? Please? Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:00
I would like to save if no one else on council wants to comment. We’re I think that we are all aware of the speed of the different arterioles in our city. And I understand completely what you’re talking about that there are a lot of children that live there. We are as the Transportation Department is looking at different cameras around the city so that we can actually get the license plate of the speeders. And that’s in process. So I know it doesn’t help right now today. But we are working on it and are aware of the problems and the growth, especially on that triangle that is going in on pie right in front of Olin farms will add congestion as well. So thank you for bringing that up. And I do want you to know that we’re aware of it. We can’t work fast enough and hire enough people.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:03
And we appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you Mayor pic I just wanted Caroline suggested I bring it and you at least know it and get it down. And hopefully we can do a little more. But thank you for your time.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:13
Thank you for the pictures. Send them. Oh, you don’t mind? Not at all. Okay, thank you. Councilman, Council Member waters.
Tim Waters 1:13:24
Thanks, man. If I’m gonna direct this question to you probably unfairly, right. So just say I don’t know. Okay, I’ll try. I don’t know where I don’t care. But I’m just building on your request in the mayor’s comments. You know, it’s one thing for us to have cameras posted to track license space. The other and other. The other alternative is photo radar, right, that automatically generate citations. We get a lot of input from the community via email and phone calls about speeding. We have a limited number of police officers, as you’ve said, they’ll come out but when they’re there. People don’t speed. Yeah. So there are communities across the country that have introduced photo radar to more effectively regulate speed for the very reasons that we would you don’t have enough personnel. We have 300 and whatever, 24 miles of streets that have to be to have to be monitored. What would be your React? This is the question. How would you feel about not just security cameras or tracking cameras, but photo radar? Because because we’re that’s been introduced? We’ll if we do this, I suspect we’ll hear a lot of feedback. Like we want you to regulate traffic but not that way. Right? But you have a reaction, or
Unknown Speaker 1:14:46
though I’m a law abiding citizen, I don’t mind if you photograph my vehicle on my face. We have children on the road and it’s a safety issue. And whatever it takes to keep children safe and encourage the quality of life,
Tim Waters 1:14:58
Greg, I appreciate that. Your thoughts? I do think this is a conversation that we’re going to, I hope, I hope we’re gonna be in this conversation as a council with the community soon. And I don’t know about this budget cycle, but if not this budget cycle sooner rather than later, maybe into 2024. But that’s, that’s an option that I, I hope we get serious about pursuing. So
Unknown Speaker 1:15:20
thank you. Thank you for the question. I appreciate it. City Manager, Harold. Oh, can I go? Am I still here?
Unknown Speaker 1:15:26
Let’s let’s see what Harold has to say. He’s our city manager. In case you didn’t know, I’m so uncomfortable. Have a seat. Have a seat, Bev.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:38
So when I did want to say there’s a few things that we’re working on. So obviously, when we look at some of the issues that we’re having at our parks and our intersections, in areas of the community we are, and we’re prepping to give you all more information in the very near future on this, but we are looking at cameras, really as a deterrent to a lot of activities that have been plaguing very various areas of our community. We don’t have enough officers to be at all locations at all times. And then when you layer on priority calls, it changes even more. The Public Safety Department is evaluating speed cameras right now, that was really a derivative of the conversation that we had. And we talked about transportation, and what is the future look like councilmember Martin made a point in the budget requests of how do we use technology to to deal with these issues. So they are looking at that and evaluating it? Right now we’re trying to get through the first phase of the camera where we’re seeing graffiti, where people are vandalizing our facilities and things like that, so we can get the appropriate, you know, video evidence that we need to deal with those issues, but they are working on that. And that is something that we’re planning to bring to you. Because you’re right, when we put an officer there, people don’t tend to speed. But when we have an officer at a location, and we have calls popping, then that’s a different issue that we have to deal with. And I think we’re gonna have to look at this technology to really deal with these areas. Not only are we looking at stationary cameras, but also I know Jeff told me, they’re looking at the moveable cameras. So when you see the speed trailers and things like that, we can use those to tart target specific areas as well. So yeah, we will be bringing that to you.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:26
Thank you, Harold. Thank you, Bev.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:29
Thank you. I’m now leaving.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:32
Okay. Roberto Sandoval.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:40
All right, there we go. Marin Council Great to meet you. Roberto Sandoval 2222 2014, Iranian here in Longmont resident for 22 years, 21 years in Ward one, three items for you this evening. First one is a public parks and open space requests. Ward one is ready for Montgomery farm to be developed, please, I think we’re good. We’ve seen just about all of the population density we’ve seen in that corner of Loma, we saw the development of the apartment complex, just south of 17th. We saw the infill. Within Providence, which is my neighborhood, I think we have one property left, which is that two to three acre lot that’s on Sundance and 66. And we have a lot of residents who are just yearning for parks and open space access within those neighborhoods. Providence, my neighborhood happens to have a trail around all of our open space that all of the surrounding neighborhoods are using today. You know, we’re trying to keep up with all the cleanup and beauty bands to give people trail access to where they can safely distance from each other. You can imagine pathways and all of the expenses that go along with that, and then having a park access. Therefore, what would be young families, a lot of seniors in our neighborhood as well, a lot of single storey housing, it’s amazing. So I would say the neighborhoods in Ward one northeast corner of the city, ready for our equivalent of Steven de Park, whatever that might look like. And anything that you can do towards that project would be amazing. The other two issues that I have our public safety issues. One of them very similar to was Beth I think the intersections of alpine and 66. And Sundance and 66 are a beast. You know, we have that kind of that blind drop that comes off of PACE towards Sundance going east on highway 66. We all understand highway 66 A state highway there’s limited things that the city can do, but we would offer your support and advocating for what would be reduced speeds the ability to take left hand turns from those neighborhoods and access the north part of the north part of the city anything that you can help us to address what would be safety concerns that we have today. As I mentioned a lot of retirees in our neighborhood very difficult to make left turns and access all of the businesses on the north side of The city so anything that can be done in that regard would be highly appreciated. The last one that I have, it’s been touched on a couple of times, but it’s a matter of public safety around safe firearm ownership. It really is. We attacked this one. I think for several years here in the city, we had a pretty good initiative going back to 2018, where a lot of community members participated in that effort down down into near the Rec Center at the museum. I was one of them. I thought there was a lot of positive community input and then kind of petered out. It just kind of stalled out. We’ve heard statistics that are, I will say, foreign during the forum so far, I would love to hear what our statistics for the city of Longmont are, as I prepare for that meeting in 2018. As I as I prepared tonight, I looked at our city statistics on public safety. I can’t find what first response events we had that involved the firearm in the city of Oman. Not you know, it’s like, you know, we see for the city or for the state that runs about two years behind, I think 75 out of 100 gun injuries are self harm. Those statistics go back to 2020. But for the city of Longmont, if our public safety officials if our fire departments respond, how many of those responses involve something where someone attempted self harm, we don’t have to know any of the PII personally identifiable information around us individuals. But did that situation that that first response, put that safety officer in a dangerous situation because the firearm might have been involved in that situation? It would be good to know that as a city. The other thing that I would mention all of this measures from a public safety standpoint, they’re reactive, something’s already happened or it’s about to happen. And we’re now responding or recovering from, to me, there’s still room for the first three phases of good security and safety frameworks, which are identified, protect and detect. And most of those things come from policy and from information exchanges. So I would love to hear your thoughts on those three topics. Montgomery farm would love to see a park, public safety around access to highway 66, from Alpine and from Sundance, and then renewing that conversation on firearm safety and good data driven conversations specific to the city. Not what’s going on worldwide or country wide. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:28
Counselor, waters.
Tim Waters 1:22:32
Roberto, thanks for coming tonight and sharing your perspectives just on the highway 66. I’m looking at Jim x data and he’s he knows where that I was looking at him. I think, Jim, you can confirm this that Alpine and 66 meets warrants for traffic signal is that is that correct?
Unknown Speaker 1:22:56
This is where I get into trouble by telling you you’re wrong. No, it does not me warrants. We are anticipating that will shortly as the some of the construction is completed in the Prairie Village community. To that end, we’ve already started. Earlier this year, we we released a contract to start the design of that signal. So we are underway anticipating it will be the next signal that meets warrants or the next intersection that meets warrants. And then we have to get CDOT approval for that. So we are in that process. And it is underway. We’re close to I think it’s pretty close to the Tyler semi before he left. That’s one of the last things he did and we move forward with it.
Tim Waters 1:23:36
It may be just for the sake of everyone helpful to understand what what are the kinds of warrants that an intersection has to meet just an example
Unknown Speaker 1:23:45
there’s nine warrants, there’s of which to warrant a traffic accident, you need to you need to meet one of those warrants. It is it, there could be Accident history that will generate it. There could be that that the installation of a signal would probably have prevented an accident. There is a number of counts. Very a variety of counts that there’s two or three warrants for counts, proximity to the railroad, proximity to school, those types of warrants. You know, off the top of my head. Yeah, that’s about as good as I’m gonna shoot.
Tim Waters 1:24:15
Thank you. So it’s in, you know, it’s coming. Yeah, the only I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:21
And then Sundance and 66. Based on the information that I recall from one of our last traffic studies. That’s that’s probably never going to be warrants for a traffic signal. Yeah. But we are anticipating the 66 and alpine and we’re working towards that
Tim Waters 1:24:34
end. Right. Thank you, Jim. The only other comment I’d make Roberto is you participated in the World Cafe process. That’s what you’re referring to from 2018. I maybe the only thing I would add just to reinforce what you had to say. I don’t know where we’ll end up with with legislation regarding firearms. I suspect we’re gonna, we’re gonna pass on right we’ve had this conversation where Heads up, we’ll have to see. But I’ve said this multiple times, I’ll say it again, just because of what you had to say that the easy part of what’s common is to change law. Whatever that looks like, the hard part is to change culture. And if we’re going to if we’re going to have a safer community, it’s the culture that we have to address. And we can only do that together, right, that requires leadership, at every level, in every sector of the community to lean in together, you know that better than I, but I appreciate you raise it. And then I, I think there’s going to be a call to action, I hope there is to the community to say regardless of what happens, now, as the mayor said, we’re not going to take anybody’s guns away. We understand the Second Amendment, but we also are committed to reduction of violence, to the degree that we can influence a culture that results in that and we need you to be part of that solution. So thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:59
Anything all Montgomery farms? I?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:06
I don’t I expect you would not. So we have basically so many parks in the city that need to be completed. And we have a queue basically a list of parks and the timelines and the budget on when that can be done. I don’t have that with me at the moment. But if you have an email address, David Bell out there can answer that question for us. Do you want to talk to Roberto alone? Or would you like to? Okay, Roberto, David Bell will chat with you. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. Marianne, and the next on the list is going to be and I’m sorry, I’m going to really make this name. Not not spelled correctly. For me it is I’m saying thinking it’s Hubbard is the last name. Okay, great. And then Chris, I’ll read and Christina Williams, if you want to come up and be ready. Marianne, go ahead. You have five minutes?
Unknown Speaker 1:27:14
Yes. Joan. Peck. Thank you so much. My name is Maryanne Niehaus. I live at 762 Stone Ridge Drive. And I am I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother, I’ve been a resident of Call of Longmont, Colorado 39 years and of Longmont, approximately 37 years, I am a concealed carry. And my husband is as well. And so I want to speak a little bit along the public safety, because I think it’s especially around our schools, I have grandchildren, you know, that will be attending schools at a at at some point in a couple of years. twin girls on the way any minute now. But what I wanted to address, you know, you know, ditto what Steve said ditto what Rob said, and, you know, knowing what the Constitution says, but what I want to share with you is who I am as a mother, as a grandmother and carrying a gun, and the safety. You know, I worked in Dallas, Texas, when I was 1819 years old, and we all went to a safety course, right? I believe that is something that should be implemented either in the school districts or somewhere. And I know we can’t really do that. But what I’m saying is if we had some type of city, facility or something where people could stand up and get self defense, right, so as a woman, I learned self defense, it brought me awareness, when I went to my car, it brought me awareness when I got to my home. And so I think getting awareness of looking around and knowing what’s happening in not only in the community, but in your own personal space. Later, I took my concealed carry, because I travel a lot with my son, I wanted to be able to if I broke down on the side of the road, you know, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. And so I think what we’re kind of missing here is what, you know, being able to carry a gun and having that privilege and I know you said you’re not going to take our guns away. We’re in Boulder County, you know, I don’t know what’s happening over there and how that’s gonna spread over here. And so my concern is, is understanding what carrying a gun means. And I understand that, you know, you don’t feel like teachers should but I think if a teacher wants to do a concealed carry class, right and learn safety, and know what that means, I would much rather be carrying a gun when I became, you know, was confronted in a precarious situation, which I have been and I had a shotgun and that person, all I did was pointed at them, I didn’t have to shoot it, but they left. And so understanding and knowing what a privilege is to be armed in a community, and that’s how I think when you talk about community safety, I think that’s how we’re gonna make Longmont safer is by knowing the people we already know who’s carrying right, or who’s not. But if one of those person people are in the room and somebody walks in with a gun, and they don’t think there’s going to be anybody there to deter them, you would feel much better knowing just like we feel better, that we know that a police officer is here, or there’s somebody around, I’ve seen people say, I’ve been in situations where they’re like, I wish I’d had a gun. Because their safety was being jeopardized by the fact that they didn’t have a gun. So it can also be a deterrent. But it’s also it’s a safety. And so I feel safer, because I carry a gun. And when you have that training and understanding, as a mom and a grandma, I know I can protect my children, and I can protect the people around me. And I would protect you. Should anything happen. And that’s all I have. And ditto to DOE, because she’s all about the bees. And we need the bees because we need the children. I can’t see my time. So I don’t know where
Unknown Speaker 1:31:28
it is you were at five minutes. All right. Well, thank
Unknown Speaker 1:31:31
you so much. Appreciate it. Does anybody have any comments?
Unknown Speaker 1:31:34
I have a comment, you absolutely have the right to have that gun, and that we understand the Second Amendment. My feeling is that we need hard answers to these mass shootings and mass murders. And we all need to figure it out. And that’s what we’re trying to do. So any input other than telling us what the school should do? Right? Well, I just say, I think, yeah, I may respect your right to own that gun.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:09
And I think that’s the thing is we need to support the people that are willing to carry that are willing to be there and do and be the protection, you know, and so I know we can’t, you know, we’ve got to, you know, talk to the school districts or whatever. But signage and like Rob was saying, you know, volunteers, I worked at the school when my son was there, I volunteered. Now, I wasn’t caring at that point. But I would have had that been a situation that it would have bettered you know, the school and so the criminals are the criminals. They’re not the citizens. Thank you. So we need to understand that.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:45
Thank you very much. Thank you. So next we have Miss Hubbard.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:54
Hello there. I’m Jill Hubbard, and I live at 1323 Somerset circle in Longmont and more one. I’m concerned about the issue of the smart meter rollout. And I’ve prepared a statement that I’d like to read. The FCC policy does not recognize EMR electromagnetic radiation as a health risk based on their data, which is from 1996. Interestingly, insurance companies are encouraged to decline coverage against damages to health callbacks caused by cell phones tower antenna or smart meters, if not a health risk. Why deny coverage for damages to health. Meanwhile, the members of the European Union make directives to protect people and the environment from risk of hazardous radiation. Before the EU regulations were enacted for compliance, radiation monitoring was performed, measuring external radiation dose rate of the environment or objects that emit a certain level of radiation, laptop cell phones, smart meters, microwave ovens and Wi Fi routers. The results are then assessed for possible effect of such levels that can impact human health. And the consequent interpretation determines the regulatory law. This was from a directive of 2013 what studies have been done on these risks in Longmont? What is being done in Longmont to protect the environment of living things. And I was curious about who’s paying subsidies to replace the current analog meters, which I have read last for 40 years, with the smart meters that need to be replaced every six to seven years. Are the customers of the city of Longmont solely responsible for the $14 million project through the increased costs of service over the last year and a half. If a customer wants to you opt out are they eligible for a rebate for monies paid for the pending smart meters. For a smart meter that is vulnerable to cyber attack, controlled remotely by the service provider and the consumer rather than the consumer, emit 60 times the US safety limit of microwaves per square meter, and radiation equal to 160 Cell phones of fire hazard when a power surge occurs, causing the meter to explode, subsequently causing a home to burn. How much water and how long a time of dispensing that water is required to put out a burning lithium battery inside a smart meter. How many homes lost to fire in Superior and Lewisville head smart meters was a power surge or contributing factor to the devastation of so many. The benefits to be gained in the rollout of smart meters, such as meeting a 2030 agenda of 100% renewable energy? How does the Smart Meter affect the source of the electric grid? The convenience of remote meter readings with the subsequent loss of jobs for meter readers and remote turn off shut off services seem trivial to the known risks and undetermined risk of cumulative EMF radiation to the health of all living things who does the smart meter rollout really benefit?
Unknown Speaker 1:36:32
Those are all good questions. Do we have any councillors that want to talk to this issue? I’m looking at Councilwoman Martin, are you interested in commenting?
Unknown Speaker 1:36:48
Sure. I would first of all like to say that there’s not a lithium battery in in smart electric meters. That the the statements about the contribution to ambient RF from a radio and a smart meter versus the general ambient RF from all other sources in a municipality is misstated here. But first of all, the contribution of an advanced metering network is essential to the electrification of the city to eliminate fossil fuel emissions from domestic natural gas use. And to enable renewable energy as the main source of electrical power. And so the consumer benefits of meter reading of of budgeting electricity and have an automatic cut offs are the trivial last mile benefits of advanced metering. And before you get that, what you really get is, first of all, understanding your electric grid keeping it safe and reliable as we move from static fossil fuel electricity sources to dynamic renewable electricity sources. And, and then second, after distribution management is man management, where we manage, we match our use of electricity to the supply of renewable electricity. And those things are the things that help us battle climate change. It has nothing to do with turning off your electricity more conveniently. So most of the objections from about smart meters are just logical fallacies. And just sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:59
So you don’t feel like there’s any type of a health risk from your smart meter. No, I do not.
Unknown Speaker 1:39:09
Thank you chill. Chris, all right.
Unknown Speaker 1:39:37
Good evening Council. Thank you very much for your time tonight to hold this forum and have a conversation with the community.
Unknown Speaker 1:39:44
Chris, would you state your name and address please?
Unknown Speaker 1:39:47
Absolutely. My name is Chris alread. I’m a resident of Longmont and tonight I’m commenting on behalf of the Colorado Coalition for prevention of nuclear war. I just passed around a proclamation that was passed by the city and county of Denver on January 22, or no, I’m sorry, this was on March 22 2021. To support the global treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. This is the United Nations treaty. And I’m here tonight to ask if you could please also stand in solidarity with Denver, and support this treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. I’ve been studying nuclear weapons and the US nuclear weapon complex for the past nine years while working with Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and the Alliance for nuclear accountability. Much of this time, I was studying Rocky Flats, which is a former nuclear bomb plant located 16 miles northwest of Denver. They manufactured 70,000 plutonium pits at that location. And the land at Rocky Flats is still contaminated. The cleanup was not nearly sufficient. And the center of that land is still an active Superfund site. Unfortunately, the federal government has opened Rocky Flats to public recreation. And they have gone so far as to invite school field trips to that contaminated land, despite seven school districts in this region who have banned field trips to Rocky Flats, and that includes St. Vrain Valley School District. What’s happening at Rocky Flats is an example of the serious injustice being conducted by the federal government and the nuclear weapons complex. The special federal grand jury called Rocky Flats and ongoing criminal enterprise and that injustice goes further to other communities around the nation. The United States conducted more than 1000 nuclear bomb tests. The vast majority of those were on Western Shoshone land at the Nevada Test Site. There are many sites around the nation that host the nuclear weapons complex and the federal government plans to spend $2 trillion on nuclear weapon modernization over the next 30 years. Among many locations uranium processing in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plutonium pit production is ongoing in New Mexico. And there is a proposal for a new plutonium bomb plant at the Savannah River site in South Carolina to do to do the work that Rocky Flats did, evidently 70,000 plutonium pits was not enough. So but the people disagree, and we are speaking out that we do not want our taxpayer dollars going into weapons of mass destruction. We do not want more contamination going into communities that host these bond plants. The Savannah River site does not need more contamination in South Carolina, and the citizens of the world agree. The UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons thus far has been ratified by 16. I’m sorry, 66 nations and counting. To quote from Denver’s proclamation. The alternative to serious nuclear disarmament efforts is the status quo where countries will continue to develop nuclear weapons programs over time, and we will increasingly face a world that teeters on the brink of nuclear war. I believe Denver has done a courageous service to our nation by supporting this treaty. We must speak out locally to move the federal government to action to de escalate a new nuclear arms race that is occurring presently. Please join in solidarity with Denver and pass a resolution supporting the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:36
Thank you for this proclamation. And since we just received it, we can’t give you an answer tonight. But I’m sure the counselors will read it and we will decide among us if we want to join and sign on to this. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:53
Very welcome. And I’d be glad to follow up by email so that you have a digital copy. Good. Great very much for your time. You’re welcome.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:03
Christina Williams. And then can I have Eric Wallace, Strider and Lane Whitaker come up, Lance. Okay, thank you for correcting me. Christina.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:22
Okay, thank you. Good evening residents and Longmont, city council members, and thank you for your service. When I’ve asked people, why do we want smart meters, and they’ve often told me that it’d be good to go into the future, to move into the future and update those ancient analog meters, those meters? But are those meters breaking down? Question mark? Are they in need of replacement? No. But do we want it but we want to jump into the future? Well, I have news for you. Marconi went public with his invention, and that is that you could transmit information through the air wirelessly in 1897. So all of those newfangled devices you have in your pockets, they’re not new, that’s 100 years old plus. So that means that technology, the purpose of technology is to serve mankind. And there is no service in throwing out systems that still function. This is exactly what you will be doing by replacing analog electric meters with smart meters. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m an electrical engineer. I build, troubleshoot and get production made printed circuit boards. We design products that are very similar to the smart meters. In fact, if you had a problem with your smart meter, I could probably troubleshoot it and fix it. And according to Google, 75% of all the world’s silicon chips are all made in East Asia. There are major supply chain problems right now. And to get some electronics, it’s just impossible. Well, just the other day, at work, we were getting some boards made, we found out there were two components on these boards that were no longer in stock. And the expected delivery date was two years out. So what are you guys going to do whenever the smart meters need repair? Can you get all the parts, I know for a fact that you can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to get the parts three months from now. And so what you can do is keep redesigning the printed circuit board because that’s what some people do to accommodate the parts that you can get. So who’s going to pay for that design work? The citizens of Longmont? And why should we win our analog meters work just fine. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. What my company ended up doing was we bought a few 100 chips from an electronics dealer. And since he knew that you couldn’t get these chips anywhere else, we were charged $36 for each one of them, they would normally have been $2 apiece, who is going to pay for this the citizens of Longmont? Why should we win our analog smart meters or excuse me, our analog meters work just fine. I get the push is to eliminate the carbon footprint. And we want to put a cap on long months carbon footprint by using the smart meters remotely to shut off your power so that instead of firing up another gas guzzling electric generator, then we can just shut off your power. But what effect will that really have on the amount of carbon in the air? When everyone in Longmont runs out to buy a gas generator to power their home during the city’s blackouts because gas generators also make carbon? I’m asking the city council members have you guys looked into and this is a direct question. Have you looked into the documented fires that smart meters have cause so when you overload relays, which you can easily do because you don’t know what people have plugged into their house. When you overload relays, they can catch fire, because they can draw too much current analog meters don’t have relays because you can’t turn the power on and off remotely with them. So $14 million dollars. Let’s see here I make $40 an hour, that’s 350,000 hours. That is 43,758 hour days. There are 2088 work days in a year. So that means that the amount of money you have already spent, you have just given someone a full time job for 21 years. Now keep in mind that that’s money you have taken from all of us, and money is traded for labor. And so you have stolen our labor. The city of Longmont deserves to be asked before we were committed to pay somebody for all of this labor you have stolen from us. Was it broken? Didn’t need to be fixed. will not stop the carbon air pollution. Because natural gas is still used for combustion to make electricity. It will not stop the carbon footprint because when everyone runs out to buy a generator gasoline will still make carbon. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:19
Put this to a vote to ask the city of Longmont if they want smart meters. No on smart meters.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:27
Thank you, Christine.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:29
Do I have time to ask a question of Marsha Martin? Yes, she’s waving her hands. She
Unknown Speaker 1:50:33
is. Councillor Martin. Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:39
I’m ready.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:41
Go ahead, Christie. Okay. Well, okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:50:43
so my question was, I really would like to get to the heart of how this will decrease the carbon footprint and in long launch
Unknown Speaker 1:50:51
by enabling the transition to renewable energy. But you’ve got a number of things staggeringly wrong, the purpose of an AMI and you don’t call me honey, ma’am. Okay. But the purpose of the AMI is not to shut me people’s meters off so that we can have rolling blackouts, it is to prevent rolling blackouts from becoming necessary by doing demand management and making sure that the supply of renewable energy matches the demand that the city is is exerting on the on the grid, and vice versa. So that it’s not necessary to fire up those extra gas plants. And the reason and while the metering systems that we have now is still working to provide one meter reading per month, for every household, the AMI not only provides a meter reading every 15 minutes so that we have a running picture of consumption on our entire grid, and can do the mathematics of balancing supply and demand can find the stress points on our electric grid, so that the variable loads that we will have in the future with electric vehicles with heat pumps, instead of gas furnaces with all of those things, do not destabilize the grid, it’s to make something work that has never been worked before. And that analog metering system that we have now is not capable of doing that task. But we need to do that task that much more complex task in order to stop using fossil fuels. And that’s the truth.
Unknown Speaker 1:52:50
And we will stop using fossil fuels by everybody having solar panels is that what oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:52:55
by by having renewable power sources, including utility scale, solar, utility scale, wind, hydro electric power, and solar panels on our homes, and batteries strategically placed throughout the grid. It is a linear optics optimization problem. And intelligence in the advanced metering system is what enables those different power sources to be optimized and to work properly. You can’t do it with analog meters,
Unknown Speaker 1:53:37
can we get a document signed by you and or the city council promising that you will not have rolling blackouts like they do in Texas and in California and New York?
Unknown Speaker 1:53:49
Well, the rolling blackouts are not caused by the renewable transmission because because Texas and California and other places that have rolling blackouts aren’t having them because of the renewable transition Clark trans.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:07
So Christina, thank you very much. And we are I am on the Platte River Power Authority Board. And we are discussing this it is a transition and we’re all working together. We have never had a blackout with PRP. And we are working very hard to work with the market on renewable energy to not have rolling blackouts. So it’s an assumption that you’re making that isn’t there. And we are working very hard to meet our goal of 2030 have 100% renewable energy by 2030. And so thank you, and
Unknown Speaker 1:54:51
then you don’t need switches in our smart meters then to turn our power off if you don’t plan to have blackouts. Do you know we’re not I feel better about that.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:58
Oh, good bye Oh, we can already turn your power off anytime we want to.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:04
You have to drive to my location to do it. No. Okay, okay. They have a wonderful evening. You too.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:11
So we have Eric is up next. And can I have Deb McClintock Polly Christensen and Rosanna Ginny, before you start here with Do we need a break counselors or bio break? Are we good? We’re all good. You’re on Eric.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:33
Good evening, Mayor Peck and council members. I’m here tonight, Eric Wallace 339. Pratt Street in Longmont. I’m here to call your attention to a report that I just got the final version of in my hands today has been a draft running around. And it talks about land use in Colorado. And I’m sure that we’ll be getting this into your hands quite quickly. It’s, it’ll take take an hour or so to digest. But I really do encourage you to read it. This report is the result of the housing crisis and the way land use impacts it but it was it was started off it says by the Colorado greenhouse gas pollution reduction roadmap, which was released in 2021. And it called on state agencies to work with stakeholders to explore options for how to best incentivize smart land uses. There’s a relationship between greenhouse gases and land use. And it’s it’s super complex, I’m just going to hit a couple of the things that that are in here. And you’ll recognize that it that it is relevant to a lot of the work that’s going on. I know Harold Dominguez and city staff are working on a number of proposals to our development code. A lot of it, there’s a lot of Nexus within this report, and what the city’s working on in terms of housing, housing density, the way our codes and zoning work together and having urban areas of the code and creating the density to make transit work and a bunch of other things. This report also references the Colorado affordable, affordable housing task force report that I’ve talked about in front of you trying to quantify what is the housing gap? This report actually validates that number and if you do a straight interpolation, this identifies the housing up about 7900 units in Longmont over the next 10 years existing gap plus forecast gap. It’s in a couple of sections, it talks about current land use policies and some of the land use challenges. It talks about how land use impacts local government finances and the cost of infrastructure specifically in the way, the more you sprawl, the less you’re able to maintain your infrastructure. So there’s it’s talks about density and infill it, how it impacts housing affordability, how it impacts supply, long commutes, and lack of access to job centers. It talks about how local land use decisions being a Home Rule city in Colorado having an unusual setup with that lots of home rural cities making making laws that in a lot of states, the state does, talks about how it influences commuting patterns, regional socio economic equity, wildlife habitat, trans boundary air pollution, state and regional infrastructure needs. It throws out some reference but there’s a bunch of links in this report. At the end of the appendix, it talks about how Greeley has made significant changes to their development code to downsize minimum lots in low density areas and also medium and high density areas. It talks about how rifle has incentivized infill development through 20% fee waivers. And and they did a study showing that infill development can reduce their infrastructure maintenance costs by 31%. Because they’re also sprawling around the edges. It talks about how Colorado Springs implemented innovative zoning to spur downtown development through changing height limits, reducing parking minimums and addressing review process efficiency and also implementing some form based code changes. It talks about how policies legalize a wider range of housing in more locations. It talks about policies that add housing and mixed use to downtown urban corridors and transit oriented developments. We’ve talked about that in the past. So there’s just there’s a slew of really, really good relevant stuff. And you know, addressing our largest largest challenge, so I’m not going to read you the whole thing. But please, when you get this take the time to read it, because it will be very relevant as we discuss and debate, the development code changes that city staff is going to be bringing to you here in the near future.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:21
Eric, can you tell me who put out that report.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:24
This report, which I got today, is put out by the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Colorado Energy Office, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Department of local affairs and the Department of Natural Resources, and it talks about impacts on all of those different areas that those agencies oversee.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:46
Great. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:50
Thank you, Mr. Peck. And thank you, Mr. Wallace, I very much do look forward to reading that particular report. I do want to acknowledge it. fairly certain council members and staff received an email earlier today on behalf of prosper Longmont. And having read through it, I can guarantee you that conversations I’ve had between city manager and the mayor and some other staff members is is by and large in alignment with the recommendations that were put forward. But there are a couple of things that, as you can imagine, are slightly outside of the jurisdiction of the city council. And one thing this is actually maybe a request on the on behalf of City to prosper, Laura, because it’s something that we’re also going to work on is that we’re still having trouble as far as condominium development, because of current state law surrounding construction defects. And while this is constantly lobbied at the state level by developers, you would probably get a lot more play from somebody lobbying on behalf of, say, an organization like prosper Longmont, as well as the city. And I know that I plan to, as the elections happen in November lobby, whoever is our state legislators, to to really take a look at our construction defect law, in the sense that condos would very much help us meet a lot of these goals. Because right now, the you know, the ideas that we’re looking for to increase density do increase do involve things like smaller lot sizes, and things along those in that nature. But we’re having a hard time with the condo specific piece, which would do very well in talking about mixed use in downtown and transit oriented development and things like that, versus being constricted to paired housing, townhome style housing, and very narrow density or high density, but narrow lot line, single family detached homes. And so it would just be something to maybe take a look at as far as lobbying our state legislature to give us more tools to really meet the need. And so that’s just one thing that I thought I’d mentioned, because I know within that email, it talked about condos, being an important part of the mixture that we need.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:02
I very much agree with and appreciate those comments. I’ve had a number of conversations, this is not my day job. So I’m trying to get up to speed on all of this stuff. And I know that you are as well, and it is your day job. But you guys got to be experts on everything. witness of the diverse conversation today. But I’ve been talking to people that actually do build condos, and getting the specifics on what the actual problems are within that there are ongoing efforts. Still, I am happy to drive down to Denver with you and go lobby at the Capitol and lobby our legislature. Because it is part of it. We are trying to identify developers that do build that kind of thing. And we’ve got a couple that actually do build condos. And there, there are some people that are willing to do it. There are ways to insure against, you know, the lawsuits that tend to come out of these kinds of things. So collectively. You’ve heard me say collective impact collectively is how we solve these issues and I’m certainly willing to lean in and I sounds like you’re willing to lean in as well. Thank you Eric.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:17
Thanks a lot looking forward to that report. Thanks. Who do we have up here Strider? Thank you
Unknown Speaker 2:04:38
Thank you. I thought I got forgot. But what the heck yeah, there’s so many things i i dish on public dialogue and citizen input. There’s four or five topics that would be great for a A more of a more of a gathering and input on both sides. And appreciate the way the council is. Looking at this. I got some things, the guns came up first, and I’ve been talking about that for the last six months, but couple of particulars, there have been close to 400 mass killings in this country this year. And one of them a few days ago, a good guy with a gun shot the bad guy after he had already killed three people. Nobody ever mentioned. A few years ago, there was a teacher in Illinois, that talked down of mass killer before he killed anyone. So you got one unarmed, good person, and one armed good person who each have stopped a mass killing. But the guy with the gun he had, the guy had already killed three people. Well, you’ve all day everyone knew this kid was he had lost it. He had grudges. He hated people. And his name was school shooter. Everyone knew him as a school shooter. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade. And off, and his dad went and helped him get $5,000 worth of guns in one week when he turned, turned 18. So he could come in and kill homeless people. And you had 375 armed police officers with guns and shields. And they were afraid of a man they ran away and didn’t do anything for what an hour and seven minutes. Anyway, that’s that’s the game that we’re having, as long as you have. I mean, they banned machine guns in 1934. It took 65 years before we started having all the school killings. And I think it was 10 years ago today you had the mass killing in the movie theater. Are you going to have armed guards every 10 feet and in the country? Well, you know, the the bush governor, Jeb Bush said if Trump gets in it will be the chaos presidency. Well, it was. And if it comes again, it will be infinitely worse. Adolf Hitler learned that from Gerb else, let’s have chaos. That’s the best policy, and then you can terrify everyone. And then you can have more people with guns. And so the gun industry is actively that is their policy and has been for the last 20 or 30 years. So anyway, let me go on to one thing, the Secret Service system that got serious after the assassination of President Garfield in 1881. And was was getting more and more functional and better up until well, when President Obama Obama was elected, the first White House dinner, the Secret Service slit to unknown people come in to the first White House dinner, an Arab guy in his American wife, and they were letting President Obama No, we can let anybody and if we want to, and you have two little girls who are growing up in the White House, what are you gonna do? Well, then in Colombia, he went to Colombia and they sick, the Secret Service went there two weeks in advance, and they had drunken orgies. And we’re telling the spies and the prostitutes, all of what they were, what who they were and what they were gonna do. Well, so first black president, then you got the Secret Service working on the other side. And one of the greatest statements in American history. I’m no fan of Mike Pence. But when they were going to take him and get him away so they could destroy the government. He said, I’m not getting in that car. And it was incredible.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:28
of the Trump stickers, they were abolishing education. You put Betsy DeVos and she’s to destroy education. Public education never happened in the south until reconstruction. When Black people got in office in the state legislature. They created public education. Now there are moves out to abolish it. Who is running the game? They’re trying rolled back to country to 1783 the Articles of Confederation they destroyed the federal government. All you have left is state power it will not survive and will have chaos.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:13
Thank you. Thank you Strider see who’s next Lance Whitaker.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:22
Yes. Well, hello counselee General men. You guys see me before you know what I’m looking for. You know,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:37
Lou, little bit about me. I live at 1750 Collier, I’ve been in Longmont for over 40 years. I’m looking for a permit. I’ve heard a lot of things today. And apparently everybody here has given me cancer because I’m the only one without a cell phone today. But I didn’t come here to talk about that, or guns. Although guns don’t scare me. But if you go out and buy 1000 rounds of ammunition, sure the hell scares me. The cost of a 36 round is over $2 The cost of 7.62 ground is less than 30 cents. That scares me ammo transparency is might be something that the city could look into as a solution instead of guns. But that’s not why I came here before I came here for mental health. And cannabis use. The current laws of cannabis use is that I can buy, I can smoke, I can have cannabis, what I can’t do is I cannot smoke it on my porch. I cannot smoke it in my backyard and say I have a six foot privacy fence. And there is no social interaction with my cannabis use. Without social interaction, various mental health issues can develop such as low self esteem, depression. paranoia, and other hysteria is a lot of this can be removed by having social interaction, and friends and family. So, again, I plead to you for my permit and open up any other time we have. Oh, I also have a unique perspective, because I’ve also worked in electronics in Longmont, which is probably the reason why I don’t own a cell phone. But that’s for different reasons. And I’ve also been in a balloon crew for the last five years. So I’ve seen you guys develop the area from a very unique perspective. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 2:13:51
thank you, Lance. Does any Do we have any questions for Lance or comments? Okay, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:02
Thank you, Mayor Peck. So first of all, you know, there have been some conversations surrounding this portion of permitting, which would require licensure, right. And so first of all, you know, we were having, I would say very initial conversations with our licensing authority, which in this case is our municipal judge, as well as with our city clerk’s office who does most of the paperwork for said license. So we’re in the very initial stages of exploring this possibility, while also still monitoring the very novel The very new licenses that have occurred in Denver, specifically. So I would say that we’re quite a ways down the road from from, you know, starting to grant these licenses in will While it was a much different city council that settled on the limit of four dispensaries within the city limits, we do know that there are obviously dispensaries in unincorporated portions that are enclaves of the city. And we’ve talked about how to deal with that with both the county commissioners as well with our planning and development department, which is a little bit prior to Mr. Vandy Maga Vandy, Wiggins tenure with us. So these are all things that we have been discussing for four years. And we are very closely monitoring how social clubs are, are, are being dealt with from a regulatory level. And also what that would look like in the city of Longmont as far as what kind of resources we would need to consider such Licensing and Regulation. And so we’re at the very beginning stages of these conversations. So it’s not going to be a fast process. And I’m sorry to admit, but it’s definitely something that’s under consideration.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:01
I’ll just add on to that. Because we did say that we were only going to have four of these stores or retail outlets for cannabis, we would have to change that code. And Council has not had that discussion at all. So cannabis, no, it would I think it would fall under the same permitting process. Am I correct on that? Mr. Van Nijmegen?
Unknown Speaker 2:16:26
I counsel Mayor Glen VanderMeulen. planning director, I was thinking of it more along the lines of chapter 15. The land development code Oh, okay. For a social club, I think we had at a minimum need to amend that. And we did hear Lance and we do have a staff member who’s reached out to the marijuana czar and in Denver. And our idea was we’d give you a sharp white paper of their experience and, and provide that to you as a report basically.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:57
Oh, that would be great. Okay. So there’s your answer, Lance. We’re working on it.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:02
A copy of that report. Awesome. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. And like I said, I have a unique perspective because I’ve flown over so I’ve seen your development.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:16
Okay. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:18
You’re welcome.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:22
I debit clean talk.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:27
Good evening. Good evening Council. My name is. My name is Devin cleantech and I live at 1100 East 17th Avenue. I’ve lived in Longmont for 25 years. I’m also an employee of the same brain Valley School District. And Susie and I actually work in the same school. So I want to address the issue of the mental health. Because it doesn’t seem that all these ordinances or laws or whatever they’re doing against gun ownership isn’t doing anything and people are still able the criminals are able to get guns. And it does it It only hurts mainly the the people that are lawfully owning guns. It just doesn’t seem to help. I think the issue is mental health. And I think doing the World Cafe that we did a couple of years ago, I think was a start. But I’d like to call upon Longmont to instead of going along with the rest of Boulder County to actually think out of the box, like what you started. And I think we need to go back and address that because we met those couple of times, and then nothing happened. And I feel like that we need to revisit that because the mental health is the issue. It’s the drugs that the kids are getting to help their with their depression and their and everything, their anxieties that doesn’t seem to be helping, it seems to actually be making things worse. We have a lot of angry youth, we have a lot of kids that are suffering from being stuck at home during COVID. That is affected their mental health. And this led to issues from that. But I would like to see if the city could get like the churches, the community in general mental health people together and to have, again, some some kind of thing, again, to get us all together and to be thinking about other ways that we can deal with these issues. Because I don’t think any ordinances are going to really help stop anything. You look at Chicago, you look at California, the places that have all these laws. There’s a lot of crime that’s going around going on and there’s a lot The shootings that happen, obviously, it’s not helping. So I would like to challenge the council and people in the community to get together. And let’s have a conversation. Because a lot of it has to do with the person. And I’m struggling with issues, mental issues that they’re having, or they’re in crisis, that there’s nothing there to help them. And I think we need to look at this in a different viewpoint, instead of just saying, Well, we’re going to outlaw this or that or the other thing. So I’d ask the city council to consider I don’t know how you would do this. Councilman Walters, he had the idea, and maybe, you know, working with people within the community, we can do this again and come up with something that will really work. And I thank you for the time.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:59
Counselor, Hidalgo, fairing DEP. We’re going to engage with you. We’re not done with you yet. Get back to Congress.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:16
No, she’s literally we’re in the same wing. So we’ve talked about this a lot. And
Unknown Speaker 2:21:22
then the same issue at the school. The way the windows are, where the doors are? In a safe environment.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:30
Yeah, no, there’s there’s a lot of things that I think, you know, go to the school board. But anyway, going back to here, thank you for bringing up the the World Cafe. So that was something that had started before I got on council. But I really in reading the the documentation, the feed the input into it, I, I liked it. I think that’s a really good start. You know, you know, me, I want to come up with solutions. And I want to be able to hear, you know, what, what are all the impacts for different I mean, we see it in school all the time, somebody’s decision, unintended consequences, and it it negates what we’re trying to do. So my hope is to bring that back, I know, I read in the very end, there was, you know, next steps, and we have not gotten to those next steps, I would really like to to you encourage staff and us to really, you know, take the lead on on getting those next steps out for our for our community. But no, I appreciate you bringing this forward. Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 2:22:41
Councillor waters.
Tim Waters 2:22:42
Thanks, Mayor PAC. Did, let me just expand a little bit on the next steps in that report. It did it. We had two gatherings in the in the museum. The second for those who are willing to come back you might have been in that was wasn’t it was taken a shot. That’s a wrong metaphor for taking and making an attempt to take the four areas of common ground, right that came out of the cafe, reduction of violence, generally in society to do more and better with mental health. Education of all types regarding the use of firearms, safe storage of firearms is what people need to know to reduce risks of either intentional or unintentional harm that could come in the fourth area was advocacy, whether those are the four areas of common ground. Just you know, as I think about that, what we did then, if we were to convene the community today, you know, it was a it was a group of the willing, right, whoever wanted to show up showed up. My guess is if we went through a similar process, we didn’t we come up with the same results. And those are the four areas I think no matter where you are on a continuum, from, you know, the strongest Second Amendment advocate to Moms Demand Action. Those are four areas. I suspect we could agree today. Here’s what happened. When we brought the the who those who are willing to come back. We asked people to kind of pick one of those areas of common ground and then we provided a template for action planning in whether it was a mistake or not. The decision was that, you know, the city supported that the city didn’t sponsor it. Right. The city helped. We had a lot of volunteers in the city. We were this the city allowed us to use the museum at no charge. But it wasn’t a city activity. It was a group of the wheeling right, it was there were some faith leaders and a few others. I’d only been on council a short time and I didn’t have a council hat on I had just a volunteer hat on. And we tried to get people started with the action planning process that was among the next steps. We provided a template for action planning, but we will We were clear at the time that I couldn’t there, you know, the few of us who were part of organizing couldn’t carry that action planning process. We were, hopefully we were blessing it and launching people, you know, to follow up. And I, that just wasn’t enough, there needed to be more support for the action planning process. So I don’t know, you know, we’ve we’ve had this conversation about whatever happens with ordinances. You know, I kind of know where you are not that we shouldn’t, not that it wouldn’t be necessary. It’s just not sufficient, right, or changing the laws may be necessary. It’s not sufficient to reduce your risks, or the risks of every teacher in in child or student in the city, or, you know, in a grocery store, or wherever we are in a movie movie theater.
It is whether it’s those four or something similar, we do need that’s I mean, it’s an opportunity, we may have the be the only community in America, that could pick it up from there. But we but it is going to require commitments of time and effort, imagination, goodwill, tolerance, the willing to listen, you know, Rod was here tonight, he made reference to a meeting of, of proprietors of business that sell firearms, the District Attorney in our police department, I was invited to the meeting, I wasn’t certain why. But I thought, heck, there’s something to learn. And I learned I learned a lot more than I thought I would in that meeting. One of the things I learned is, these were people I don’t know, I they’re not in my work my circles, right? And but I was persuaded that the people that the proprietors in that room wanted to be part of a solution. And they had ideas about about solutions that it wouldn’t have occurred to me. And I have friends who I’ve shared this with who have said, you would invite gun dealers to the table? Well, yeah, if you want to solve the problem, they need to be they need to be at the table. And they need to be actively involved in the action planning with our teachers and with faith leaders, and with service club members and with, you know, every other member of the community who cares about this. So I hope, I hope what you brought tonight, resonates with folks, whether we pick it up from you know where it was in 2000, it was in the fall of 2018, or the winter of 2019, that we did the action planning. We do have an opportunity, and I hope, maybe this is the catalyst, the flame that you know, Sparks, some reinvigoration of what we can do together to reduce risks of violence. Nobody’s ever going to be assured, right? We can’t guarantee anything. But but we might be able to influence the culture right with for healthier kids. Yeah, man. And that’s what you know, that would be my best and highest hope moving forward.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:46
And that’s where I thought because the city could maybe send out like, a survey or something and people that would be interested or churches that would be interested, because what we’re doing is not working in general. I mean, look at you all day. That was heartbreaking. And at least we should attempt to improve the situation, whether it’ll happen or not. I don’t know. But mental health is huge. Because it’s gotten worse because of COVID. And the isolation.
Tim Waters 2:28:22
This is just this just for what it’s worth. I don’t know, if you remember, we actually provided a template. When we brought people back to action plan for action planning, right, there’s a tool. And we provided an example of what that template might look like around one of those four areas in though, and the one area we picked was was mental health and laid out a whole series of action steps that would have rolled up into a ballot question. Right, we could have at least put to our community are you what are we willing to invest more in the mental health of every Longmont resident? And And are we willing to tax ourselves to do that? It never it never got legs, but it just so happens that was the the template or the example that we provided to them in the template.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:06
Right, exactly. So Deb, to to your point, what I what we are doing with the city is putting 1000s of dollars into mental health. Where we’re going to use it is what we need to figure out how we’re going to use it and where the best buck for you know, bang for our buck buck for our bank. But right now, I think that the consensus from what we have to work is for homeless to try to get the homeless people into housing and if they have mental health issues, but that’s not the only place we should go. I personally I’m not speaking for council. I think that the school district needs to do more. And I don’t her dad might not might not like me saying this but I think every single middles school and high school should have a psychologist. And I know that’s expensive, but not a roving counselor who has four or five schools. So if somebody has a real problem on Monday because their family fell apart over the weekend, but they’re not going to see that counselor or that therapist until Wednesday, or Thursday,
Unknown Speaker 2:30:21
and that’s what we see in the schools. Is that right? I need one psychologist that does hurt school. Yes. for middle schoolers. We see it in elementary school issues, you would be amazed that these little kids are dealing with and it’s frightening there they have to deal with right and
Unknown Speaker 2:30:38
support. I worked in an elementary school for years in SPV ISD. And so I do see it, I saw it, it was it’s heartbreaking. And we don’t have enough counselors. So go to your school board. Put out a bond issue for that.
Unknown Speaker 2:31:00
I think it would be helpful to bring in all of the community, not just school board. No, I agree. This, the churches need to step up, whether it’s like afternoon things for the kids, not necessarily with the school district, but just the churches offering, you know, a place for these kids to go or whatever things for them to do or somebody that cares about them.
Unknown Speaker 2:31:25
So the City Council, a couple of meetings ago did give direction to staff to have another community meeting, like like we did, and start that up again. So mental health could definitely be one of the major issues we discussed. And sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Polly Christensen.
Unknown Speaker 2:31:55
Mayor pack and counselors. Only Christiansen. I live at 410 Judson Street. I’m here because it’s about 25 degrees cooler here than my house. So I’m really thankful. That’s the main reason I’m here. But I’d also like to speak on three subjects. I spoke to you last week about the amendments to long man fair campaign Practices Act. There’s one word change that you could make. It doesn’t require going to the ballot because this, the council previous passed a change to the campaign Practices Act. Changing it from businesses being able to contribute three times more than 100 an individual and that didn’t require going to the ballot, so examine what needs to go to a ballot. But if you don’t pass these three amendments now, or at least one of them, they won’t take. They won’t take effect for a year after it’s passed. So they need to be passed now that this will never happen. It won’t happen. Next time there’s an election because it won’t even apply to that election, it will apply to the next election. And people will say well, there are too many things on the ballot. So let’s not do it now. So just get it done. Okay. Second, a new report has just come out a book called homeless on homelessness and affordable housing, written by altern. And Colburn and the the gist of this I’m sure most of you have heard about this is that homelessness is caused by lack of housing. This is pretty obvious. I’m pleading with you to not not rob the affordable housing fund to preference so called attainable housing. Because right now 35 to 50% Depending on where you live, have our housing that is being built, that is for sale housing is being purchased by investors, so we’re just incentivizing investors. By doing this, we need to address that issue of an investor’s purchasing homes that should be lived in by families and and use and renting them out to people who would like to have purchased those homes to live in, but now they have to pay rent for them. So I would plead with you not to do that. The main reason the main main thing I would like to talk about though, is something that I was never able to get any traction with when I was on City Council, which is as as commissioners of the Longmont Housing Authority. Please consider single parent households in your preferences. Next, the single parent households are the most vulnerable and have the highest rate of poverty of any group in the United States, they are next to the Vaughn, the elderly, they are the most totally vulnerable. There are 11 million single parent households. And there are 15 million kids living in them. That makes 36,000 or 36 million people in this country who are living in single family households. 80% of these are single mothers. And of those 30% and more are living in poverty. These households, and this is true for male thing male, single parent households too. But women have a 35% Lower compensation than men, single family, single male households, so they are clearly the most vulnerable, they have no backup, they have nowhere to turn. These are disproportionately black, Native American and Latino. But all of these are people who really need a place to live for their children, because if their children have no kind of security from month to month, they have no life they have no future at all. And so just consider them when as as commissioners of the Longmont Housing Authority. Okay, that’s all I ask. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:45
Polly. Yes. Can you tell us what what you quote what article did you quote that from?
Unknown Speaker 2:36:53
Well, the statistics come from the the US Census and pew pew research. But the other the the book that I cited is called homelessness and affordable housing or colon. It’s not mental. It’s not mental health. It’s not dry. It’s a long subtitle, but it’s about homelessness and affordable housing. That is the premise of the book is that it isn’t a mission issue primarily of mental health and drug addiction. Those play into it but that is often the the way people cope with being homeless in the first place. And because of our housing market, where people are thrust upon the tyranny of the so called free market they can’t possibly even get into the into the market anymore
Unknown Speaker 2:37:54
who who authored that book again?
Unknown Speaker 2:37:57
The last names are alternate Ei, L T, E, R n, and Colborn kayo. CO lbu RM. Thank you just came out. Thank you. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:38:11
So we had a couple of more people added to this list actually three more so we’ll Bill Rodriquez Dwayne, lease and Paul Tiger come up Oh, is she? Oh, I’m sorry. Roseanne Where is she here Sandy Do you want to turn up oh, you’ve got a microphone for great. I should have known.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:06
Darryl, can you hear that? Thank you. Thanks so much to everybody who was so accommodating. To help me get here today. I was fully ambulatory before April 15.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:33
I was at the boulder bus station at 1400 Walnut Street and I was checking Oh, Can folks here. There we go. Okay, so I was just simply waiting, you know, thinking of going for a walk on the mall or thinking of doing several other things and I didn’t look visibly disabled at the time. And in any case, I was just checking schedules on my phone looking at out, and I was outside and it was about 6:15pm, I think. And suddenly, when I looked up, there was this woman, a white female, right in my face. And she ended up grabbing me and forcing me into the pavement and slamming me into the pavement again. And again, the only happy part of the story is that there was a good spirit here. I’m sorry, the only happy part of this story, after this individuals slamming into the pavement repeatedly is that there was a good Samaritan at the station that day. And so he intervened and physically stopped the attack. And his name was Jonah. And he was the one that I think I blacked out for part of this, because I remember going face down and then finding myself on my back. But the reason I bring this up is because it’s obviously something I’ve got to deal with. I’ve never I was previously I had had a number of injuries because I was injured by had run drunk driver a couple decades ago, but I for you know, went through many years of rehab came out of that had a bad spinal cord injury, but could still pretty much do anything I wanted. So, but I do have health concerns. And everybody’s been talking about smart meters. And I’m sure a lot of people glaze over. But I did want to add something about this story, because I feel like I listened to other people. And there were so many threads to pull together. And this woman that attacked me was homeless. And I’ve always had a lot of sympathy for homeless people. Because it’s my, it’s my I, I would contend that any of us any one of us could eventually at some time be a homeless person or a refugee. We can’t quite imagine what those circumstances might look like. But I do believe that could happen to any one of us. And I My impression is that this, this individual is 36 years old and was much, much stronger and bigger than I was was amped up on some drug.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:06
This has really challenged me, it’s kind of a mind bender to now be the victim because usually homeless people who are the victims of attacks, not the perpetrators. But in this case, I’ve got to kind of be on the whole team because it was one that was attacked. And there’s going to be a court case, and we’ll see what happens. She was She also took my phone. So the the assault was basically gratuitous violence because she could have easily gotten my phone without, without harming me, you know. But that’s that, and, but I, I, I am concerned about. So I hope she gets the help she needs I maybe someday I’ll be able to forgive her. But I do believe that she probably needs to avail herself of services of some sort. And I hope that we can become a society where people do get the help they need because, in fact, I’m an example of what happens if somebody doesn’t get the help they need. I think that’s one way I look at it. I don’t know, I’ve never seen any other side of her. But the side I saw that night but but anyway, I was fortunate to survive, but I’ve got a long way to go. And I was very concerned because I I have a history of knowing something about cell tower, especially cell tower antenna farms. I lived in Seattle, and they were both being built on the top of low income buildings. And I became a reluctant, I would say a reluctant activist, because I knew a world war two veteran who just happened to know a lot about radiofrequency radiation, and I knew nothing. I just thought, okay, they’re building an antenna. So what, I didn’t know anything, I just wasn’t trained in this at all. And so, to make a long story short, we happen to be living to one of the country’s major activist activists on the issue in 1996. And his whole he was a pre med student, and he decided this issue was so important that he had filled his whole apartment with all these studies from all around the world, even at that time. So I, I became aware that this was actually a problem. You know, there was a scientist in Seattle at the time, who’s an emeritus professor now named Dr. Henry Lai, who was his partner found, you know, they in the 90s 94, they published a study where they, his, he and his colleague found DNA damage and rats that were exposed to frequencies far less than our cell phones.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:46
So Rosanna, you this is a heartbreaking story.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:50
Yeah, you’re telling me to get out of debt free. Let’s let’s just leave that alone for a minute. What I really wanted to come here for is that I thought I had followed all the protocols to opt out of the Smart Meter, you know, I was grateful that I read the in the Times call that the council did provide a way to opt out. And so I am sensitive to the, to the electromagnetic radiation. And I have, especially perhaps since I’ve been injured, you know, so it’s especially concerned. So I thought, you know, I sent I sent letters to the folks at at the Longmont power and communications. And I thought I, you know, I was talking to one of the people there and I thought I had covered all my bases. But I just was told yesterday that they’re going to do an install tomorrow. And I essentially spent all night trying to figure out what to do. And then all day on the phone, just talking with various people, the city clerk and I learned a lot about a little bit about how the system works. But what I’m hoping is that there is a what I’m trying to point I’d like to make is that an opt out really isn’t that beneficial if it’s not conclusive. If it’s not comprehensive, I should say. Because if the if you are trying to minimize your exposure to non ionizing radiofrequency radiation, you know, and you, what ended up happening is they’re saying we’re not going to put it on, we’re not going to put the water meter on your property, but they’re going to put it right in front of the house regardless. So who
Unknown Speaker 2:46:34
who did you talk to, in?
Unknown Speaker 2:46:38
I talked to two folks that work in the water department, you know, they were, they’re really kind of better, they basically just said, we don’t have an option, we have to put it in the public right away. But to me, it’s still it’s really not an opt out. If if you still have a meter right in front of your home, you know, just maybe a step outs off off of your property, but nevertheless, right in front of your property.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:03
So I see our city manager, Harold Dominguez is here to engage with this. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:47:11
I’m hoping something could happen, because they’re saying they’re just going to come tomorrow. And I’m quite distressed, because it’s, you know, for all of us, our home is kind of our sanctuary. And we all do things to try to make ourselves feel safe. And we all, you know, have various ways that we do that. So I feel that, you know, given that there is, at this point, strong research from all around the globe, especially independent research, like Ken rely pointed out that 75% of independent studies, so negative bio, biological impacts.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:46
So let’s, let’s hear what Harold has to say.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:49
Yeah, so Bob was involved in that conversation. And Bob can probably join us if we need to, but so generally, this is not the AMI meter. So we do have an opt out on the AMI meter. This is not that this is the water meter, which is is not the same technology, it sends a signal to the to the readers for the water bill. Typically when we have these issues, and what they’re what they’re saying they will do is we’re not putting this on the on the property itself, we’re actually putting the water meter pit in the street, in in the city’s right of way off of the property line for this home. And so we don’t have an opt out program on the water meter side, what we do is we put those meters in the street in the city right of way off of the property line. In this case, part of the difference is is the electric meters, outside of the ones that are on the pedestals tend to be on the home, and that was the opt out component of that and you know, the different pieces of it.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:57
So do they use the same 5g technology for the water meters?
Unknown Speaker 2:49:01
No, it’s it’s a it’s a much different signal.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:05
Okay. Does that answer your question, Marian?
Unknown Speaker 2:49:09
It’s it’s Rosanna Rosanna I’m sorry. It’s okay. I guess I I’m a little perturbed because the the letter states you know, we’ve the doctor writes, we respectfully request that the utility opt misogyny out of the installation of any electronic or wireless metering device in or around her residence. Any such installation including a smart meter pit installation would jeopardize your health. It said We request the accommodation that only analog electromagnetic electromechanical meters without electronic or wireless components be used on around her residence. So I sort of feel like that should take precedence in my view over, you know, have been kind of forced to have this. This, you know, it’s sort of like a I don’t know how to describe it, but it doesn’t really feel like an opt out if it’s still there right in front of your house,
Unknown Speaker 2:50:05
but it’s not the technology that the AMI is using the 5g. It’s not that that technology,
Unknown Speaker 2:50:12
I understand that. But, you know, I, I just was reading like an appeal from that was signed, I think by about 240. Scientists all around the world, asking for basically, you know, better, better regulation. It’s called an international appeal, scientists call for protection from non ionizing electromagnetic field exposure, which includes all the kinds of smart meters. And they they say, for example, that medical professionals need to be educated media should disclose experts, financial relationships with industry when saying their opinions regarding health, safety, etc.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:56
So, is this a smart meter? No, no, what technology is being used in it?
Unknown Speaker 2:51:03
Bob, you want to help me? Bob’s coming up, when we mean by smart meter, this is not a two way communication. Okay. This is just reading the the number that is on on the water meter itself?
Unknown Speaker 2:51:20
Is it analog?
Unknown Speaker 2:51:22
It’s not, it’s not analog, because analog would be wired. So, okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:27
Mayor and Council, can you hear me? Yes. So the meters that we use in our water utility are a really our Wi Fi meter, that sends out a really low signal every few minutes so that it can be read, and then recorded. And we record, the data that we mostly record is just the usage. And whether or not there’s a backflow in the meter, it’s a very small battery, in this case, it’s would be located out in the roadway, her home is actually surrounded by these meters, there probably many more of them that are closer to her home, for the other water users in that neighborhood than hers her than the one will install. So this is the problem we have throughout the city is that when we have a request to preclude any kind of electromagnetic exposure to a household, you really can’t do that. And I’ve gone and plotted these in many cases where we’ve had the requests and the meters, the Wi Fi meters, or, you know, Ubik us in the city now. So anything you do wouldn’t have any impact anyway. But what we’re concerned about in particular, is the city’s right of way, has a lot of wireless communication in it. And if we start shutting down the use of wireless in our right away, we’re in real trouble if we want to modernize the city. So in these cases, we do exactly what we did if we generally ask them to, if they don’t want it in the house to pay for the meter pit and move it into their yard. And if they don’t want to do that we generally ask if they have some kind of a metal medical notice or testament that would say that we shouldn’t put it in their yard. And then we do the next best thing, which is to move it out,
Unknown Speaker 2:53:21
put it on the city property property.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:23
Okay, I wonder if, you know, if there’s any way that a person such as myself could be accommodated, as the doctor requested? Because I understand what you’re saying. And but there, you know, I was exposed to a lot of people that were, you know, looking at the science on this. And so, it’s a valid concern. Honestly, it’s not one that it takes quite a while to immerse yourself in it and really look at everything, but there’s a lot there to think about. And the scientists are asking for manufacturers to make safer technology and so forth. So Rosanna at that point, I
Unknown Speaker 2:54:04
perhaps a one on one conversation, sorry about with Bob or Harold would be better. Okay. We have your use of your time.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:16
I I feel that, you know, I’m very concerned about this happening tomorrow. You know, it’s it’s kind of really, it’s been extremely stressful, honestly, because I, I, I want to feel that I’m doing you know, that I have a healthy environment. I’m sure all of us do. And I would want that for everyone.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:36
I think for me, from my perspective, the the challenge would be that we would disrupt the the whole program that we’re putting in place if we individually placed or didn’t place, this water meters to an individual’s expectations. It It’s a city program and project to move us into the future to where we want to go. So, as a council, we have accepted this project and agreed to do it. So I don’t think that we can actually help you here. So I’m suggesting that you can carry on the conversation with staff.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:27
I guess I just wonder if I even have any time to because I feel like I didn’t get much time to try to work something out. It sounds like it’s just like, you know, we’re gonna do this. Regardless of, you know, the letter that I, I sent and so forth, I thought that that was all I was required to do to opt out. Okay. And we’re essentially looking at three smart meters, two from the city, the water in the electric and then,
Unknown Speaker 2:55:56
but the water is not a smart meter. It is not.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:00
It’s it’s not an electromechanical. So analog meter. Bob is, you know,
Unknown Speaker 2:56:06
it has another comment for us. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 2:56:09
I just, I did want to say that. And I enjoyed our conversation yesterday for an hour and 10 minutes. And it was one of about, we’ve have about six hours of time in conversations. And this has been going on since March. So okay, it has been a dialogue. And I, you know, I’m not unsympathetic, I understand this. All we can do is work from what we know. Unfortunately, EMF hypersensitivity is not a medically known and recognized diagnosis in the US. So our regulators say that these meters are, are fine, are useful. If we, if we have some different information, then we would react differently. But we it’s it’s the same thing with our water treatment system, we often hear, you shouldn’t use chlorine, or you shouldn’t use alum because it’s harming my health. And we couldn’t run our utility with that perspective. So I know this is tough. And I know it doesn’t give the answer that people always want. But I’m not sure we know what else to do here.
Unknown Speaker 2:57:21
I think in this case, we’re comedy accommodating to the best of our ability. I think there is, this is not new. So we have been installing these meters, at least 10 years. And so you know, in terms of the water meter component, were at the, the end of end of that installation process. And so that’s why it’s not when we talk about AMI and smart meter technology, this is a completely different system that we’re talking about here. And so, you know, typically, when we get these, these types of situations, because this is not the first time we’ve had it, the resolution typically is that we move it into the street and appear in the street, in the city right away on the city property, to get his foot, get it as far as way as we can from the house, but still deal with our operational needs. And then that’s the resolution they came to, which is pretty consistent in terms of how we’ve dealt with these issues with other individuals.
Unknown Speaker 2:58:31
So Rosanna, I think that I personally support staff here and what they’ve done. So at this point, I don’t know where we can go with this. So I’m
Unknown Speaker 2:58:47
wondering if I could be allowed to speak then the last thing I had done, I guess is to speak to Harold Dominguez, who is right here.
Unknown Speaker 2:58:56
So if you want to take this offline and maybe go to the back and speak that would be better because we do have others waiting to speak. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:59:06
Thank you. I appreciate your time. And I hope that you know, I hope something can
Unknown Speaker 2:59:12
be worked out good luck. Yes. Bill Rodriguez. Okay. Oh, Bill, would you mind if we took short break? Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:59:31
Thank you Ladies and gentleman, we are ready to come back and Bill Rodriguez should be short and sweet
Unknown Speaker 3:03:37
Good evening, my name is Bill Rodriguez. I’m at 1477 Mayfield circle here in Longmont been here since 2018. And I’m currently sitting as a member of the lending subcommittee of prosper Longmont. And just wanted to give you guys some quick updates and some of the things that we’re doing and hoping to bring some value to the conversation. We have put together a coalition of local banks that are very, very interested in this helping to solve this particular issue. As the market forces and dynamics with rising interest rates and market appreciation has challenged many homebuyers. We are trying to encourage local banks to open up their portfolio programs and create create expanded guidelines to serve the market needs of the consumers here in Longmont in Boulder County. We are working directly with Fannie and Freddie to create the variances needed to be able to serve these these families up to 100% financing In some cases without mortgage insurance at a below market interest rate to try and extend a little bit of relief that is very much needed. We are also working with the Colorado Real Estate Association and the Colorado mortgage lenders association to get some legislation passed legislation that was previously put in, in in front of the state legislator, that is a homebuyer savings account. In this case, it’s a revision of this bill that will tie directly to local businesses in trying to address this workforce housing problem and create this homebuyer savings account. Tax incentivize the employer to fund that on behalf of the employees and tie it to their retention for two to three years. So we can add to the stability of the community. So I just wanted to bring some of that to your guys’s attention and encourage more dialogue with us as we are rolling out some of these initiatives and get your feedback and make sure that it is helpful to what you guys are doing.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:28
Thank you. I’m very interested in finding out the results.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:31
Good. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:33
You’re welcome Dwayne Lee’s
Unknown Speaker 3:06:40
Mayor Peck councilmembers My name is Dwayne lease I live at 2686 Pearl Hallett I live actually outside the city limits of Longmont but I own a couple of businesses and, and have been involved in the community for over 35 years. One of the things that is really important is we have campaign financing issues, and transparency, which is really an important aspect of society at this point. We essentially are living in a time when elections and the veracity of our government, and our systems of control as a society are being questioned. And being brought forward with great challenges. I think it’s extraordinarily important that the city council, consider and think about campaign finance issues, because it combines two control functions within the society. One is government and two is finances. And the two of those together can create a positive feedback loop. What do I mean by a positive feedback loop? If you have money, you can affect the politics, the politics can affect the financial position of the people who make the financial contributions into the into the system so that more money can create an environment that will make it more conducive to make more money and also control the politics. We here in Colorado in in Longmont had the issue with Western resources, which was I don’t know, four or five, six years ago, which was a national organization. not local. And then there’s Alec, which is also on a national level. We need to protect ourselves against this. So I would ask you to make changes immediately, as soon as possible. The whole political system is under attack and under scrutiny. Act now, act strongly make it happen. Because one of the arguments is being made as democracy doesn’t work, nothing happens. It doesn’t get done. So it’s up to you. You have the responsibility. You have the possibilities. Me I have my voice. That’s it. I’m here right now to speak to that. So you need to know about transparency. Who are the people who are financing the people who are running for city council as an example or who are backing particular issues on the ballots. And it needs to be something that you can be assured that it comes down to a person, one person, one vote, I own a couple of LLCs or have a couple of LLCs. I don’t know why I should have any more access to influencing elections because I have an LLC, well, what we do that’s money. That’s all it is. It’s a way of controlling your liability flow. So that it doesn’t roll up on you. There are reasons for them and they are good, there are good reasons for them. But when you come down to financing a campaign, you should know who the people are, it should be defined down to the persons and the people, the individuals, one vote, one person, one vote. Do we live in a democracy and you have the you have the possibility to be able to take a stand of strong stand on this. And I can be I can say I’m proud to be living in Longmont or darn near close to it
Unknown Speaker 3:11:27
and having a business in Longmont. And it is a cultural issue. And I I have to agree that like the violence, it’s in our society, there are more ways that violence occurs. Then then physical violence. There can be economic violence, there can be verbal violence, and there can be the violence of a little deeper that goes off
Unknown Speaker 3:11:58
a minute violence. Thank you, Dwayne. Thank you very much, Paul, Tiger.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:10
Greetings, members, Council, Paul Tiger 350 Kimbark. I actually did not come to talk about campaign finance reform I actually talked to came to talk about third and Alpine. But before I go there, I thought I saw some comments that were made earlier. So the the cafe, the world, what was it? I can’t remember, then cafe, give us work. And I participated in I wrote some letters to the editor. And one of the letters to the editor was about safe storage. And so there are people here tonight said, Well, what happened to that we we never did anything after that? No, we did. Legislation came out of that legislation that is safe storage. A safe gun is a gun in a safe. And so I’d say that something did come out of that. We did make progress. I thought it was actually very good progress. You know, I’ve talked here about this before I had gotten stolen. And then I was responsible to keep them safe. And every time I hear of a gun stolen or a crime committed with a gun stolen, I think about those guns. If I’d have been responsible, I’d still have those guns, they wouldn’t have hurt anyone. I came actually tonight to talk about third and Alpine. I had talked with folks from Jim and other folks behind me about a crosswalk. So I had about three or four years ago, I got a chance to look at it Handbook of applications put out by the city as to what kind of a crosswalk might be located there. And I believe it would be a lamp on a cable, or it could be a flasher in the center. Maybe they set it off with Wi Fi. But that’s really what I’m looking for there is on one side of the intersection we have a lots of workforce people living. And on the other side, we have an industrial park. They’ve been asked to walk down to the intersection of Lashley and cross there and then walk back up. People don’t do that they cross the intersection. It’s very dangerous. It can be very dangerous. And that’s really why I’d like to have someone look at that. Earlier in the year. I was told that they’re going to they’re going to pave that repave that so I was asked not to go out there with The rolling pan and a roller but you know me, I’m into criminal mischief. We really though need to have a way for people to safely cross that intersection without going a block away, turning around and then coming the black cup, by the way. There’s a medical clinic there on the other side of the street, and people are not going all the way down and coming back. That’s it. By the way, on Ninth Avenue. There was a crosswalk that was installed. It’s along the Kensington ditch. And it actually has a flasher. And I’ve crossed it a couple of times with my dog. And I, I can’t imagine the number of people crossing there made that qualify, whereas the intersection where there’s an industrial park, it doesn’t qualify, I’d see people crossing the road on foot. So I did actually have one thing to say about campaign finance reform. The the last anyone here on misunderstand, I really am a libertarian, and I don’t want anyone to be limited. Let if people vote with their wallet, and however much money they want to give you if it’s from Longmont and want to give me $5,000 That’s fine. So local, it’s a local gift, right? But I don’t want an LLC, whose origin I don’t know. And we don’t know who’s in that and where it came from. So really, though, it’s reporting, who gave the money? If you gave money to a campaign? Aren’t you proud of it? Aren’t you endorsing that person? Why are you hiding? That’s all. Thanks very much.
Unknown Speaker 3:16:58
Thank you. I won’t be out there with a roller pan, but it could happen. I hope that
Unknown Speaker 3:17:06
Councillor waters.
Tim Waters 3:17:09
Thanks, Mayor Peck. Paul. You gave your address tonight of 350 Kambei. Did you do that every time you speak to so you choose not to share your residence? I didn’t why is that?
Unknown Speaker 3:17:23
So? No, no, it was 2005. I was a Mr. Open carry. I ranted and raved about guns. And then my house was robbed. And so I don’t give my address anymore. Okay.
Tim Waters 3:17:45
So how does that square with transparency?
Unknown Speaker 3:17:49
It’s where’s the privacy?
Tim Waters 3:17:50
So you people who donate to a to a candidate? And I’m I’m down with the the address? Yeah. Now, when we come back around, I should have asked the question last week, I would assume that people with a post office box that would be as good as a mailing address, and we would have gone with
Unknown Speaker 3:18:12
mailing address? Well, well,
Tim Waters 3:18:14
I won’t. That along with the post office box when we get to it. Okay, but the same reason that somebody might be concerned about their address being in the public record, is the same reason that you stand there and give us an address that is made up week after week. I get it. So why, why in their expression of political speech? Would you expose them when you won’t expose yourself?
Unknown Speaker 3:18:41
I get it. I don’t have the answer for you. But you’ve made me think about that.
Tim Waters 3:18:48
Okay, that seems like a real clear, double standard. Good for them, but not good for you. Well, now
Unknown Speaker 3:18:53
here I’m not I’m not running for office. I’m not giving neither are they not? I’m not either other people who are donate giving money. And that’s
Tim Waters 3:19:01
their form of political speech, just like what you’re doing tonight.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:05
No, no, I’m not giving money to a candidate.
Tim Waters 3:19:09
You’re you’re you’re you are actively engaged in political speech tonight exercising your first amendment right, which is what we were here for. Yeah. That’s the same thing that somebody does when they donate to a candidate. Okay. And you’re saying to them, they should be exposed. They might have the same concerns about privacy that you do. They should be exposed to, or don’t exercise their political speech, when you get the chance to stand there without being transparent and exercising yours.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:35
Okay, I like it. You’ve made a good point.
Tim Waters 3:19:39
Well, we’re not finished with it. When we come back and talk about ordinances. There’s more to talk about. I’m just curious what your response.
Unknown Speaker 3:19:45
No, I like I like your point on that. You know, it makes me think that people should have privacy. I have that privacy. I could be given up my address. People can find me. I mean, it’s not so not that hard to find me. So, thanks. All right, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:03
So that is it for our speakers. Is there anybody else in the audience that would like to speak? Seeing none. Marin Council comments. City Attorney, do you have any comments? The city manager? No comments. Can I have a motion to adjourn?
Unknown Speaker 3:20:23
So moved.
Unknown Speaker 3:20:24
Thank you. Moved by Councillor Hidalgo fairing seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Let’s do a hand. All those in favor, raise your hand. We are adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Marcia.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai