Longmont City Council – Regular Session – April 11, 2023

Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Regular Session – April 11, 2023

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Speaker 1 24:49
Good evening everyone, and welcome. This is the April 4 2023 Longmont City Council regular session. I would like to call that to order. You can watch this At the city’s YouTube channel, our at alarma public media Longmont public media.org forward slash watch. And of course on Comcast channels, eight or eight ad. Can we have the roll call please. Mayor pack present,

Unknown Speaker 25:17
Councilmember Hidalgo faring Here. Councilmember Martin Here. Councilmember McCoy, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Councilmember waters, Councilmember Yarborough here. Mayor, you have a quorum.

Unknown Speaker 25:31
Thank you. Let’s stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Speaker 2 25:38
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.

Speaker 1 25:58
And for the public, anyone wishing to call to speak at first call public invited to be heard, will need to add his or her name to the list outside the council chambers. Only those on the list will be invited to speak at the first public invited to be heard. Each speaker is limited to three minutes and we’d like you to give us your name and address. We are now at direction to do any council members have directions to give city manager of place items on future agendas. Councilman McCoy, no ad hoc ferry.

Speaker 3 26:30
Thank you, Mayor. So I did have a chance to briefly discuss with Harold and mentioned it. So last year, we had a joint meeting with our school board. I feel like it is time I think when I made the motion last year or for last year’s meeting. I only did it for the one but not to have it continual. So I would like to be able to have that opportunity for our council to to have another meeting with the school board for this 2023

Unknown Speaker 27:04
year. Is that a motion?

Unknown Speaker 27:06
That is a motion?

Speaker 1 27:08
All right motion to have a joint meeting with the school board SDV ISD school board and city council was made by Councillor Hidalgo fairing seconded by Councillor McCoy. Do we have any discussion? Councillor waters?

Tim Waters 27:21
No. I’m gonna. Okay. Okay. Could take up another topic here.

Speaker 1 27:26
Okay. Seeing no one in the queue, then. Let’s vote. That carries unanimously. Thank you, Councillor waters.

Tim Waters 27:41
Thanks, Mayor pack. I will. I’d like to offer motion direct staff. But I’d like to do it if I could in relationship to item six C on this agenda, which would be out of order, but would make more way more sense to do it. Then. When council members came in, you saw there’s a resolution that that is sitting at your desk. And that resolution is what I would like to take up in relationship to item 60. But I realized I’ll be out of order. Is it okay, that I would take that I could offer something, Dan as opposed to now, because it’s related to item 60.

Speaker 1 28:18
So you want to present your resolution at the study session? I’m sorry. Yeah, the study session item see?

Tim Waters 28:25
Yes. And I would like then to make a motion to direct staff. But I realized at that point, it’s a little out of order. And in terms of the agenda,

Speaker 1 28:32
you know, I’m going to leave that up to council. I mean, to our assistant city manager, Sandy cedar, she said she would address it at that time, since she’s the one that runs that legislative overview. So I think we, we can do a motion at that time.

Tim Waters 28:50
I don’t know if it’s a spin suspending of the rules or

Unknown Speaker 28:53
you have to move to suspend the rules of procedure.

Tim Waters 28:56
What can I then maybe I’ll just move to suspend the rules of procedure this evening to add a second opportunity for direction to staff in relationship to item 61st. We

Unknown Speaker 29:06
need to vote on suspending.

Unknown Speaker 29:09
You could just move the rules the suspension.

Tim Waters 29:12
I’ll just I’ll just restate the motion. I’ll just move to suspend the rules.

Speaker 1 29:17
Later. Let’s do it. When we are discussing item C. at that part of the agenda,

Tim Waters 29:25
if I offer a motion to write staff, am I out of order at that time? That’s my concern? No. Thank you. And I’ll wait.

Speaker 1 29:32
Okay. A little discussion on procedure there. So we don’t have any motions, other motions there. So we’re gonna go right into the public invited to be heard the first person on the agenda. Oh, and I do want to ask that when you come up to the microphone. Can you put that microphone as close to your mouth as you can? Some people who are watching it On the streamline can’t hear you as well. So, first one is Richard Lear. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 30:12
Email.

Unknown Speaker 30:14
Can you turn on the microphone, please?

Speaker 5 30:18
My name is Richard Leer. I’m a CEO of a software company. I’ve been attacked for 20. Some years. I’ve also done 10 years of research on electromagnetic fields and the impact on the human body. Can I have your address, please? My address is 141 Rockledge. I’m in Lyons, but I’m moving to Longmont. Okay, thanks. So I can’t wait to do that. Hopefully, without smart meters, so smart meters, you probably know a lot about them. It sounds like a decision made. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to present anything before then. But the technology behind smart meters is a wireless technology that pulses 1000s of times a day and during your sleep. It disturbed sleep in many, many ways. But what I want to tell you about as I wrote a paper 2016 20,000 people have read it, it’s on ResearchGate and the papers right here, the paper went into chronic disease. It was the 36 fastest growing diseases in the us all more than doubled in 25 years from 1990 to 2015. Everything from Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, erectile dysfunction, things that never happened before it exploded. We saw 400 million new evidence of these kinds of diseases. The core to those diseases we found are seven factors. One is peroxy nitrite at the heart of it, and ih said peroxy nitrite is the smoking gun to chronic disease in 2008. PAL patcher. I’ve talked to him on the paper, it basically a single molecule gets created in the body by something external, something in the environment. And it creates peroxy nitrite, which ignites 107 biological disruptions, NIH says 60 diseases NIH says and I found the 36 fastest growing diseases, all of them had proxy nitrate wireless technologies trigger peroxy nitrite, how the innate immune system is tricked. They believe that we’re being affected by a virus or bacteria. So we release all these things. I won’t go into detail with superoxide, things like that peroxy nitrite is formed in your body and creates health issues. We all have seen and mazing growth of health issues in the last many years. Wireless technology is directly connected to free radicals and peroxy nitrite and 122 studies. In 1972. The US Navy did a survey, they said is by are their biological effects wireless technologies. The Zori Goertz did that paper 132 by effects, 2300 studies, and I’ve met with him he’s now passed away. But the US Navy basically said, and somebody will read them 132 By effects. And guess what, out of the 36 diseases, I found 29 of them were predicted in 1972, that didn’t exist in 1972. We have the connection to wireless technologies. We can’t afford to put anything more on the house, kids, or elderly, older, elderly people are going to be most effective 50 and above, and kids zero to 18. So when you put smart meters on the house, you think it’s nothing. It’s going to take away sleep, it’s going to affect the proxy nitrite in the body, and it’s going to create disease. I think by backing you guys to think about this before you install these meters, because you will have to live with us. Thank you when this becomes very clear to the world in five years that what I just said, is truth.

Speaker 1 33:41
Thank you Kirsch. thickie courage, like no clapping. No clapping not everybody in here agrees with you. We all have our own political views. We need to let everybody have free speech. No, it is. Hello, I’m

Speaker 6 33:59
Vicki Kirsch. I’m at 1700 Gifford. You get my glasses on. I’ve written this letter to share why I do not support smart meters in Longmont nor anywhere else for that matter. Approximately seven years ago, a few months after pooter Valley electric put a smart meter on the side of our house in Boulder County. On a very cold 10 degree winter day. There was a knock on my door and the electric company lineman told us we had to evacuate that the meter had caught on fire and notified them. The meter notified you by your microphone closer. Thank you. Did you hear me? Okay. So basically the meter caught on fire and they asked us to leave. It did not catch the wood house on fire because it was so cold. We did not consent to let to allow them to put a new meter on our house, as there were many stories regarding house fires. And we didn’t want the extra EMF which these devices generate, as they brought broadcasts their data in that area, it’s a system where it’s broadcasts all the time. And anyway, the old meter that had been the analog meter on our house had been there since the 1960s. Without any issues, this was just a few months old, smart meter. An analog meter is safe from toxic radiation, they do not require energy to run, they do not increase atmospheric co2, they do not cause household appliances to malfunction, they do not collect intimate data from households and businesses and they do not catch on fire. It seems to me that analog meters are fine. As long as it has a precious system of making your own electricity and offering this to your citizens. You know how much electricity you’re where you’ll say, How much more do you need to know how we use it. Rather than telling us how we should use it, what we need is education, about how to decrease the use. It’s not that hard to share with people what is ecologically sound in the world. So rather than long mom become what’s known as a spice city, I’d rather have them be educating the people people are wise enough to understand as it becomes more apparent how to help the environment. And for instance, to help the environment do you understand that if all the farms in the world were organic, there would be 70% less carbon emissions? Do you understand that one volcano in Iceland put out more carbon than the whole of humanity for a few years. It’s a much more complex situation people understand if all our lawns were are gone organic, it would be able to stop the overproduction of carbon. We had a friend’s organic lawn company come and attend our lawn. It was healthier, thicker, greener and uses less water requires less mowing and no pesticides. There are many ways to green up America without monitoring how much electricity we use.

Unknown Speaker 37:10
Thank you, Vicki. Yep, thank you, Colin Dieleman.

Speaker 7 37:22
Good evening, my name is Colin Dieleman of 5521 West 5521 100 and Third Avenue of Westminster sorry, new address. If it pleases the council, I would like to inform the city that I have officially submitted my letter of intent to transfer the FBO are fixed based operation airport land leases currently held by elite aviation to fly high flight services a Colorado Limited Liability Company and request that the Council review and consider the proposition or at least table that for the next meeting’s agenda. As of right now, the the airport manager does possess that letter. It is my understanding that the City Hall holds all rights and privileges to the airport land leases and charges the approvals. And I believe that the transfer of responsibilities to provide airport services will bring prosperity to the city of Longmont through tourism and community partnerships. I look forward to working closely with the council. And I’m sorry, there’s more than that. And I look forward to bringing a much needed workforce development to the next generation of Longmont citizens

Unknown Speaker 38:50
or residents.

Unknown Speaker 38:51
Thank you. Thank you, Colin. George Tristan.

Speaker 8 39:06
Good evening, Mayor pack and distinguished council members. Colorado House Bill,

Unknown Speaker 39:13
just one name and address. Oh, I’m

Speaker 8 39:15
so sorry. George Troost in 1703 Whitehall drive I should know that by now. Colorado House Bill 23 1003 would grant a young person ages 12 to 18 the authority to circumvent their parents opposition to school sponsored mental health screenings. Results of screenings would produce a report that would not be made available to parents if the child oppose doing so. These reports would initiate a process that could lead to psychiatric counseling, drug prescriptions, and even medical procedures. Parents be warned. Regardless of what political affiliation you hold your authority and care for the well being of your children will be in serious jeopardy should this bill become law. In China, the government imposed a one child policy led to the forced abortion of millions of children in Africa and the Middle East government imposed female genitalia. mutilation is a common practice. These are but a couple extreme examples of what governments are capable of, if not restrained by the people. Absent abuse or neglect. There should never be any authority granted to the government to come between a parent and a child. Why would our state legislature create a bill designed to restrict parents rights over their own children? The answer is found in the unnatural and unscientific phenomenon called transgenderism. This bill would place the treatment of gender dysphoria into the hands of state sanctioned therapists and prevent parents from opting out of the program. It is well documented that girls suffer from gender dysphoria significantly more so than DuBois. hB 1003 creates a pathway for an ongoing and progressive treatment plan for girls that includes chest binders, puberty blockers, hormone therapy, top surgery, and even genital reassignment surgery. These medical treatments and procedures are experimental and not yet fully studied. Preliminary data reveals that the effects of these medical treatments result in extreme depression, chronic pain, high rates of suicide, the inability to get pregnant, and a shortened lifespan. I doubt very much that any parent who welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world would ever have wished this for their daughter. Please join me on Thursday, April 6 at the state capitol from 10am to 1pm. To peaceably protest House Bill 23 1003 and send a loud message to Democrat legislators that parents rights must be protected. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 42:07
Thank you, George. Diana Chavez.

Speaker 9 42:21
Good evening. My name is Diana Chavez. My address is 1850 Prince’s drive. I’m sorry. Oh, it sounds really loud to me. Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 42:33
I have to get closer to it.

Speaker 9 42:35
Okay. So I’ve been a Colorado resident for 56 years and a Longmont resident for 54 years. I grew up here, I graduated from high school here and raised my family. And I always felt like the council and mayor were overall, working hard to serve the community well. However, I don’t often feel that anymore, I often feel like decisions are made, and are agenda driven rather than service minded. And so I began to question a lot more of what is happening, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But each of you have been elected to your position by citizens in a service capacity. So my opposition is to the smart meters. And although I feel that technology can be used for many good things, it definitely has a downside. And so I, I personally worked for the school district for a number of years. And in my years there, the change in children’s behavior was very drastic, inability to self regulate, lack of self control. And all of these things coincided with the increase in technology placed in schools. And then for I myself, I’ve personally kind of been wondering if my blood pressure and lack of sleep isn’t driven by the electromagnetic field that is being built around us. And I just received this handout from Mr. Leer, I believe it was I hope I’m getting that right, indicating that blood pressure and sleep issues are directly related to being surrounded by an electromagnetic field. And so I feel like this is being driven not as a benefit to the community but as part of an agenda and And I would like to say no to that agenda. I do not want any more technology on my house. And as far as I know, I still do have personal property rights. I thank you for your time.

Unknown Speaker 45:13
Thank you, Michelle call

Speaker 10 45:35
good evening my name is Michelle Cole and I live off airport road in Longmont. I’m going to read from a slideshow given by a well known expert in the field of smart meter technology Bill Bathgate there is a special tool that is used to program the Smart Meter, a malicious actor can easily obtain one of these tools. A physical connection to the meter directly bypasses encryption, allowing privacy to be violated and hacking risk, insertion of code, altering the network traffic and injecting malicious code, there can even they can even shut down the power. The default passwords are published in the meter documentation. The network has a weak link, a malicious actor can send a strong RF broadband signal pointed at this network point blocking transmission, and no readings can be sent to the utility. The AMI meters have tamper protection in them. And when they do not get an acknowledgment back from the utility over a certain period of time, they begin to shut down. You do not need to know the encryption key just block the transmission to the network access point with an overwhelming RF signal. There is a backdoor to consumers data, the ZigBee network. Once access via the gateway is enabled, there is no firewall to block data access. So personal email, video downloads data except excetera can be accessed by utilities and hostile actors. If you if you can get on the ZigBee network, you can observe all this type of data. Any actor with low level technical capabilities can easily hack anyone’s ZigBee 2.45 gigahertz network and see all their information in real time. This is a complete invasion of privacy and a violate violation of our constitutional rights. Did the city council and the mayor of this city office I’m sorry, did the city council and the mayor of the city did they not take an oath of office to protect our constitutional rights? So my question is Who enables the access to the gateway? And why is this enabled? The city has not given full disclosure on all the health and safety risks, including the cybersecurity risks associated with AMI. As a woman living in Longmont, I am demanding for the city to call a halt or impose a moratorium to the smart meter rollout in Longmont until such time as the city can produce expert evidence of their safety. Thank you to everyone who came to speak tonight and share their concerns about what I believe to not be very smart meters.

Unknown Speaker 48:11
Thank you, Michelle Kirby. Yes.

Speaker 11 48:17
My name is Kirby Cole and I live in Longmont. First and foremost, the Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the land. All public servants in Colorado are required by statute to swear an oath to support the Constitution. I accept all of your oaths of office and we now have a firm and binding contract in which you will protect my constitutionally guaranteed rights of use as you have sworn to do. I am the expert on my home, my family and our health and I have seen no evidence that AMI is safe or beneficial in any way to We The People. I have only seen evidence that these devices will trespass on our property, cause harm and force people to pay for electricity that they are not using theft, harm and trespass are against the laws that you have all sworn to uphold. Conducted emissions aka dirty electricity are the noise components that are generated by a device or sub circuit and transferred to another device or sub circuit via cabling conducted emissions must be kept lower, they can propagate through cables and reach other devices causing problems. All smart and the digital opt out meters currently transmit spiked high frequency voltage and magnetic currents backwards onto the home wiring systems, creating a huge antenna amplifying these emissions. None of these devices are in compliance with the Federal Communication Commission rules for conducted emissions for either Class A or Class B devices tests have shown that these meters are producing conducted emissions more than 10 times the FCC limits for Class A and B devices almost continuously. These conducted emissions are causing early failure of household electronic devices to include pacemakers, CPAP machines and other life saving medical equipment. Conducted emissions also cause stress to the human body and have been linked to insomnia, tinnitus, headaches, high blood sugar levels, as well as neuropathy and heart arrhythmias. There is no way to fix the current design with About the addition of a ground wire and a complete circuit redesign for consumers to fix this with a UL approved filter will cost them anywhere from 2000 to $7,000 plus installation. The opt out proposed by Longmont power is a ruse the transmitting distance of these devices is 1400 feet for the irregular AMI meters and 2300 feet for the collector meters even through brick, wood or drywall. So even if I opt out my home will still be blasted by my neighbor’s meters. There have been over 800 Peer Reviewed independent studies not funded by the utility industry that have linked this type of low level non ionizing RF radiation to a group of diseases including brain cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, tinnitus, skin rashes, and open sores. Currently, ami meters record our peak use for a 15 minute window and Bill us for the entire 15 minutes. So if at noon, your refrigerator AC and AC kick on while you’re doing a load of dishes on a load of laundry and they all turn off at 1201. You will still be billed until 1215 As if all those devices are still running, charging people for electricity that they are not using as theft. There was a report called The Navigant report that showed power bill increases as much as 25 to 40%. Higher year over year after the installation of so called smart meters. The University of Twente study in 2016 showed AMI meter inaccuracies of 582%. The components in the AMI meters are only accurate to plus or minus 10%. Thank you. This AMI initiative needs to be stopped immediately an analog meter is restored to people’s homes until favorite technologies are developed.

Unknown Speaker 51:34
Kimberly Robinson

Speaker 12 51:50
Hello, I’m Kimberly Edmondson on bittersweet lane here in Longmont. I’m here again to ask no, I’m actually going to demand that you hold the roll out of the smart meters. Myself and other concerned citizens have attempted to inform me of the potential harm of these meters cause not only to humans, but to all life forms. Yet here we are, and it seems the city still had plans to go forward with this unproven to be safe technology. Despite having been informed there is complete lack of science to prove it is safe, and plenty of science to say the complete opposite. As a mom, this concerns me a great deal. This council is more than happy to add another layer of electromagnetic radiation to blast this entire community to save the planet. When the very technology you want to install on every single building has been shown to cause potential harm to all life on Earth. As an adult, I feel this existing technology impacting my health, I have to wonder what in the world it’s doing to my eight year old twins, who perhaps don’t know how to explain how they feel with precise words. As a child, I never had headaches my kids occasionally complain to them. Sometimes after a long day of i Ready testing on laptops at their school, they can no longer use my iPad or phone. Because they get headaches from it. I have to drive them to a different school that does not give iPads to every student because our local neighborhood elementary school issued students every single student an iPad, that same school refuse to allow me to take measurements within EMF meter, just to see if I felt okay sending my kids into that environment for six hours a day. And now the city wants to install a meter onto my personal property to radiate my children myself 24/7. And if I don’t agree with that, charge me extra for it. Nevermind that according to many sources, these meters never save anyone money and always raise bills. What will the city do for people when they realize the meters are having a negative negative impact on their health? Replace them for free with a fully analog meter pay their medical bills for them? Sadly, most doctors probably have no clue about the effects of EMF radiation. If that doesn’t help remove all the meters within a quarter mile of that house. I doubt it. My neighbor’s meter was only about 12 feet from my house and almost a direct line of sight to my daughter’s bedroom. Satellite can’t tell you not to install that meter. She already does not sleep well. And I can only imagine how much worse this pump will become. And it’s been eight years of me not sleeping. Will it take a lawsuit to halt this madness? How can you go forward after being read letters from leading experts on this topic advising you not to then another EMF sensitive citizen made the effort to reach out to Professor ole Johansen. Do any of you have young children who are suffering? Do you have any clue what parents they’re up against with how much time they spend researching things? In my research I found that EMF radiation causes diabetes causes depression that can lead to suicide. We have a huge mental health problem if you have not noticed that lately. EMF causes increase in cancers such as glioblastomas to the brain, neurological disorders, learning disabilities, and fertility is on the rise. As a result, I had to go through IVF to have my children before you plop out 25,000 Out of Pocket, do a lot of digging into why why is this happening? I thought maybe it was my 20 years in radiology working around non ionizing radiation that impact me, but I’ll never know even non ionizing radiation from cell towers and etc has the impact on your hormones. It turns out

Unknown Speaker 54:59
thank you Kimberly. LS Wilton Fosse?

Unknown Speaker 55:09
I’m sorry, I butchered your name.

Speaker 13 55:10
And that’s why I go by Alice. My name is Alice Selten first or salt and verse and I live at 1913 Tyler Avenue. Thank you, Mayor Peck and city council. I want to say thank you to you I noticed and the times call how inclusive of all you that you are when you speak of the people in your ward. The brochure that I left for you has been updated, and I wanted to come and share that with you. List all the programs that hope homeless outreach has in Longmont for people experiencing homelessness. We have programs that collectively are pretty much 24/7 around the clock. Our navigation shelter is for those individuals referred through Coordinated Entry who have jobs meet with their case managers, and save money towards housing. Our volunteers provide hot nutritious meals and we have showers at the churches where we shelter. We appreciate the collaboration with the city of Longmont to make sheltering happen. We also have to thank the journey church and Messiah Lutheran Church for the space. Our safe lot program encourages people on the streets living in their cars to come to a safe location while we work on housing. Our Street Outreach Program works with the most vulnerable of those people on the streets of Longmont. And I’d like to say that we started out with a list of the most vulnerable top 10 People in 2022. And by the time we corrected that last week, we we had 16 people who were our top most vulnerable, and we helped house 15 of them. Today, we had a shelter It was cold whenever it’s really cold. And there’s the winter elements like it’s been since before Christmas, we try and provide emergency sheltering, and day sheltering. I just would like to let everyone know that so far, we have housed 75 People in 2022. And we’re well on our way to housing more. And I appreciate all of you. Thank you. Thank you, Ellis.

Unknown Speaker 57:20
Gary Hodges.

Speaker 14 57:27
Hello, good evening, Mayor councilmembers. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Gary Hodges. I’m at 2148 Stewart street. So I’d like to just start with a little reflection I was some years ago, I was when I was on transportation board, we were having our joint tab and city council meeting. And I do not remember what the subject of that meeting was. It was probably something about RTD and trains or something. But what I do remember from that meeting, interestingly enough is our former city manager Gordon Petro sat up here and spent a good bit of time railing about something our state legislature had just done, which was limiting long one’s ability to act as a Home Rule city. So with that in mind, I want to talk about a monumental disaster that is brewing in our state capitol and that is Senate Bill 23 Dash 213. it in a nutshell that it removes the ability of tier one cities to self determine residential zoning. It’s quite long been reading the summary of it but in essence, what that means is in any in any residential neighborhood, house could be torn down and duplex or townhomes maybe a four Plex or even a six unit multifamily structure built right next to your house. All comes under the euphemism of middle housing. So as a nice sounding name for that disaster. Another thing it does is removes the ability for cities to limit the number of unrelated people living in a household so basically he’s gonna is codify flop houses in our in all our cities. So maybe maybe some of you guys have homeowners associations, you’re thinking oh, yeah, I don’t have to worry about that wrong. It prohibits homeowners associations from limiting what comes down in the Senate Bill. You know, our houses or neighborhoods, etc. You know, they’re designed for similar similar size houses and you know, imagine in your backyard now when you gotten sitting there, grilling or whatever. Now you’ve got two or three stories structure in your neighbor’s backyard and they’re looking over their balconies at you. Gracious, where’s my three minutes go? Alright, so I’m going to skip some stuff and just say, you know, I wonder if Mr. Pedro was here. I wonder what he would think about this, you know, would he have a similar similar response? And I just We’d like to urge urge all of you, particularly marpac, to join with our sister tier one cities of, for example, Castle Rock, Lewisville Westminster. There’s about 20 of them and get together and let’s write a joint letter. Send to our state legislature, it’s Moreno today, Woodrow are the sponsors of this legislation and just tell them what a disaster this would be. I mean, it’s just, I mean, I don’t know what to say. I urge everybody here behind me to please look at this. I’m not kidding. I mean, this is a looming disaster coming to our state in our cities. So thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Kathleen.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:54
Looks like sands.

Speaker 15 1:00:55
Hi, there. I’m Kathleen sands with Lyons climate action. And I’d like to give my initiative of pesticides a quick plug before I get started with smart meters. And, Kathleen,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:08
can you give us your address, please? 1612, green place,

Speaker 15 1:01:10
Longmont. Thank you. So thank you, Marcia, for working on the pesticide issues in our lovely city and all of the other sustainability things. I’m very proud of the sustainability work and climate work we’ve done here. However, I’m very concerned about smart meters. I have one on my home, because I got solar. And I’m very concerned about what I’ve heard of what I’ve read. And my son’s window. It’s right below my son’s window. And I had just talked to a guy who said, his neighbor, his eight year old neighbor had a brain tumor. And they determined that it was from the smart meter on the other side of her wall, so they had to move it and then she immediately started getting better. So I am concerned about my son, I’m concerned about my family. And I don’t know what to do because they say they can’t switch it out. So we can talk more about the details in the Tech Tech part afterward if you want to. But the research that I’ve I’ve learned another thing that concerns me is that one thing that I’ve read is that bills get 10% higher because of the way that they measure the spikes. And it’s already very, very high, even with solar, paying about 460 a month right now with solar. I hope to get to zero but it’s not 460. So I wanted to read a sampling fallings a sample of biological impacts from wireless signals which are identified across 2308 studies compiled by the US Navy in a survey of the global science in 1971 reported biological phenomena effects and clinical manifestations attributed to microwave and radiofrequency radiation. And that is headaches, insomnia, alteration of heart rhythm, which I’ve experienced over the last year since my smart meters come up, by the way, as well as the sleep issues of fatigue, chromosome aberrations, mutations, manga, lism tumors, depression and potency, anxiety, lack of concentration dizziness sleepiness, I’ve also noticed with my son having some of these issues, he used to be in GT and now suddenly this year he’s not he’s dropped to normal level which is great, but he’s having some, some concentration issues as well, which is listed here. Increased irritability or ability, which I’m having right now. Memory loss, chest pain, hypertension, all of these things were supposed to have increased and in fact, did a current study from 1990 to 2015 130, AD D and HD ADHD have increased by 139%, autoimmune 221, celiac 1111, depression, 280%, erectile dysfunction, 150% Kidney Disease 413, obesity, 260, sleep insufficiency, 165, hypertension, 223, Alzheimer’s, etc. Please roll out the smart meters.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:17
Thank you, Sheldon sands.

Speaker 16 1:04:30
Greetings. I’d like to thank the mayor and the council persons for allowing us this opportunity. My name is Sheldon sands, and I own the property at 1612 green place in Longmont. I am also asking if you I know that the plan is to roll ahead with smart meters if there’s any way to just please put a moratorium on so that there could be more public comment, more research more study. I’m going to read you this the effect of the appeals court ruling on digital meters Paul I see makers working to serve the interests of their communities, and the general public would benefit from the information to follow. policymakers need to be aware that the utilities claims of compliance with the FCC guidelines that refer to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are unfounded due to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision on August 13 2019. Establishing that the FCC is refusal to update their guidelines was arbitrary and capricious. This decision was upheld on August 20 2021, when the court stated, the agency demonstrated a complete failure to respond to comments concerning environmental environmental harm caused by RF radiation. The court found the FCC ignored the numerous organizations scientists and medical doctors who called on them to update limits. To the end, the court found the FCC failed to address these issues, impacts of long term wireless exposure impacts to children, the testimony of people injured by wireless radiation impacts to wildlife and the environment and impacts to the developing brain and reproduction. Thank you. There’s a website with information I’d like to submit this Okay, who had a hand Thank you very much. Indeed more.

Speaker 17 1:06:37
My name is Ingrid more nine to five little leaf court llama. Good evening, Mayor Peck and members of the council. on a happier note. I’m here on behalf of a group called the Colorado foundation for universal health care. They’re part of a nationwide effort to have a not for profit single payer health care system implemented at the federal level. However, acknowledging that this will take a long time in the Congress has pushed many issues to the state level. They’re going through a process to have single payer health care in Colorado. So what’s been done so far? A 2019. Bill called for a study comparing three models of health care delivery using the same criteria for each. The final report showed that one particular delivery method offered clear cost savings while providing first rate health care and covering everyone. It was a not for profit, publicly financed privately delivered model, much like enhanced Medicare for all the savings for the state per year over other systems were estimated to be in the billions. And the projected savings were sustained over the next five and 10 years. So how should this information be used? Well, a new bill titled analyze statewide publicly financed health care is winding its way through the state legislature. House Bill 23 1209 is Item six C on your agenda for tonight’s meeting. And I’m here to ask for counsels support for it. This bill creates a study, it calls for the Colorado School of Public Health to analyze how to implement a nonprofit publicly financed and privately delivered system that covers all Colorado residents. This would be modeled specifically for Colorado. The bill also creates an expert Advisory Task Force. The product will be a report to the legislature due by October 2024. They will look at such things as what could a universal health care system in Colorado look like? Where are the current gaps in health care? Could a single payer system address these gaps? What would be the impacts to the workforce what would be the impacts to individuals and to community health? The City Council’s vision for Longmont residents can only be realized when every resident has access to affordable high quality health care. We know that this vision cannot be achieved with the current dysfunctional model. Supporting HB 23 1209 is the next logical step you can take toward fulfilling your vision. Take it I ask for your support for this bill. Thank you for your time.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:24
Thank you and good. Deal Kelly.

Speaker 18 1:09:47
Because I better put on the specs. Get down here. Okay. Hello, my name is Joe Kelly. I live on Barbary drive. Good evening, Mayor pack and city council. Firstly, As I would like to state in my educated opinion, it would be to the best and highest interest of all concerned were Longmont to declare a moratorium on the coming smart meter rollout. It is not lost on we the public, the topic of conflicts of interest and potentially to do with the smart meters to be rolled out citywide this summer. I applaud Mayor pecks idea of creating an ethics committee for the city to investigate such potential conflicts. I quote from last month’s article in the Longmont leader titled long months conflicts of interest policy is to week, quote, central to City Council’s ethics discussion should be the adoption of a conflict of interest policy in the municipal code for city council and boards and commissions. As it stands now, according to the city’s planning director, boards and commissions are instructed to follow rule seven of City Council’s rules of procedure called abstaining from vote. Rule seven is a two sentence statement which requires abstention from a vote regarding a matter before Council. If a council member a board member or a planning and zoning commissioner has a personal financial or other conflict of interest or appearance thereof, which would affect public concert confidence in any matter to be voted upon, or otherwise officially considered. It goes on to say there’s a loophole to this requirement. It is up to the disclosing council member, commissioner or board member to decide whether he or she has a conflict of interest that requires abstention thereby making it an ineffective policy. So I leave you with this one question based in the above mentioned criteria of an appearance of a personal financial or other conflict of interests, which would affect public confidence in any matter to be voted upon or officially considered. How would we the people know if such a conflict of interest exists on this council on the subject of smart meters? If said council person is the one to decide for him or herself whether or not to recuse I rest my case with this question. Something for you all to think about in light of the decision to bring smart meters to Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:29
Thank you. Thank you, Tara Menza.

Speaker 19 1:12:40
Good evening. I’m Tara Monza I live on Parkview drive here in long lines. We all know there’s a housing problem here in Longmont and Colorado. Our state legislature is considering bills to address the problem of affordable housing, except they aren’t doing a very good job coming up with a solution. One bill being proposed is House Bill 2311 90. The affordable housing right of first refusal, this bill will go down as one of the most egregious government intrusions in our history as it will destroy property rights. This bill will give local government the right to purchase a property for an economically substantially identical offer to another offer that a residential seller receives on their property. The local governments right to purchase the property is limited to preserving or converting the qualifying property for long term affordable housing by the local government or another public or private entity that the local government assigns its rights to or transfers the property to. If this bill passes House Bill 2311 90 will discourage investment in affordable housing, create administrative and financial burdens for landlords limit the flexibility of landlords to sell their properties as well as ensure your neighborhood is not a desirable place to purchase a home. There is zero recourse to the seller and no expiration of the right of first refusal. It dictates the timeframe 180 days or more to close, ensuring the seller could be tied up for months in this process. And if a seller violates the law, they can be sued. I certainly hope Longmont does not feel the need to enter the real estate market by supporting this bill and encourages our policymakers to think of broader solutions rather than eroding property rights from your citizens. On another note, instead of focusing on the crime issue in Colorado, our state legislature has introduced House Bill 2310 57 amenities for all genders and public buildings which ensures all newly constructed public buildings and each public building in which restroom renovations are estimated to cost $10,000 or more that is wholly or partly owned by the state, county or local municipality to one provide a non gendered restroom facility or a multi stall non gendered facility on each floor where restrooms are available. To ensure that all single stall restrooms are not designed for any exclusive use by any specific gender. And three allow for the use of multicast All restrooms by any gender if certain facility features are met under the 2021 International plumbing code, this whole nine page bill essentially makes it legal for grown men and women to use the same restrooms as little boys and girls. And I’m not talking about parents going into restrooms with their children. I wonder how many lawsuits will happen when crimes are committed in these bathrooms because our state legislature was too focused on making sure bathrooms were non gendered instead of focusing on tightening up their soft on crime policy. One such soft on crime policy that is headed to the judiciary committee tomorrow is House Bill 2311 69. Limit arrests for low level offenses. This Bill thinks that will address low level offenses by issuing a summons in lieu of arrest, therefore improving public safety. However, this bill will only seek to increase crime as criminals will be allowed to get away with so much more without any repercussions. Thank you, Terex.

Speaker 1 1:15:52
So it looks like we have a group from nyuad here. I see all of you sitting in the back. But I don’t know what this is about or any addresses. So do you have one speaker or do all of you want to speak? One? The Oh, okay, got it. So I see your names appear. Sorry, Alex Depew. You’re gonna have to correct me on your name when you get up here.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:33
Hello,

Speaker 20 1:16:34
my name is Alex step you taught, and I live at 4901 Nelson road. I’m here today, thanks to the opportunities my grandparents were given by generous Americans after fleeing Ukraine, as Russia invaded in the 1940s. My grandparents and their and their families are given the chance to build a life in America. I’m a proud American with a Ukrainian heritage. My senior capstone project strength for Ukraine aims to support the Ukrainian refugees who are escaping that same aggression today. Approximately 15 million Ukrainians have either left their country or have been forced to relocate to another part of Ukraine. That is twice the population of the state of Colorado. Many of them cannot return to their homes because they have been destroyed. As of today, I have been able to raise over $13,000 for Ukrainian refugees. My largest fundraising event was a dinner and presentation called a night for Ukraine, which raised over $9,000 On Thursday, April 13, I’m hosting another fundraiser at Silver Creek High School. All funds raised will go to local and international organizations are providing direct support to Ukrainian refugees. At this event, there will be guest speakers who have first hand experience in helping refugees from Ukraine, along with the presentation about the magnitude of the humanitarian need. We will also have a recent Ukrainian refugee who will perform some songs to highlight the culture of Ukraine. I have some fliers here with more information. And by organizing these events, I’ve learned a lot about the struggles that Ukrainians are experiencing and the impact our donations can have. With the help of this community, my capstone project can be a part of the solution to give these refugees a chance to rebuild their lives. Thank you. Alex, would you mind leaving at least one we have the whole stack over there. Okay, thank you Henry around

Speaker 21 1:18:48
Good evening City Council. My name is Henry Baroni, and my address is for 901 Nelson Road, Longmont, Colorado. As a part of my senior capstone project, I am working with Africa youth rising or the a yr an organization based out of Ghana, Africa that is working to break the cycle of vulnerability and poverty within Ghana youth through mentorship, special programs and advocacy. Working with my mentor Mandy case, I have hosted several kids night out events partnered with the lions elementary PTO group to fundraise and educate the lions elementary students and staff about a yr and have worked to revamp the Africa youth rising social media page and website. Currently African youth rising is working to start the building process of the disabled child daycare center, a center that will provide free daycare to children with special accommodations and disabilities. Over the past couple of months I have been fundraising with a mango to help facilitate the building of the center taking place on April 19. I’m hosting a dinner event in the in support of the AVR and it’s and it’s disabled daycare center. Open to all the dinner will include traditional gonna food, special guest speakers, a silent auction and a traditional Ghana dance teaching. The event will be at Silver Creek High School and I hope see you all there. Thank you for hearing me speak tonight. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you Adaline foot

Speaker 22 1:20:14
Hello city council members my name is Adeline foot and my my address is 4901 Nelson road Longmont, Colorado. I’m here to tell you about my project, the science behind compassion. Growing up, I always heard about compassion and mindfulness. I never took it seriously or looked into it at all. I’m sure some of you have felt the same way I did, like it was over talked about and it never really applied to everyday life. This was all true until I listened to the book, the book of joy. This is a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the arch fish and Archbishop Bart Archbishop Desmond Tutu Excuse me. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was funny, engaging, interesting, and they backed up all claims about compassion with science. This is where my light bulb went off. When I found out science backed up all these findings surrounding compassion, I knew the project I was going to pick for my senior year with the help of my mentor, Dr. Ashley Puffin, who works at CU in the crown Institute, wellness, or crown wellness Institute. My goal for this project is to educate people about compassion in a way that is unintimidating easy to understand, and using science and scholarly sources to support my findings. So far, so far this year, I have accomplished accomplished a lot of research, and I share my findings on Instagram. Some of my favorite quick facts are Did you know that on a biological level, compassion lowers inflammation, I implemenation in cells is the root cause of cancer, and overall, it makes humans much more susceptible to illness. I also learned that compassion lowers the feeling of anxiety increases the feeling of calm because of this compassion has the ability to create lasting changes on behavior, attitude and overall outlook on life. I also income in collaboration with the project dude be nice run by my classmate cure will help me created and put up a message board full of kind, and uplifting words. The goal of this was to hopefully spread some positivity and kindness and brighten someone’s day. Overall, by the end of this project, I helped to organize all the research I have done onto a website so it’s easily accessible and understandable to anyone curious and wanting to learn more and add a little bit more compassion to their lives. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:29
Thank you, Natalie. I know I’m not gonna say this correctly. Chorus

Speaker 23 1:22:46
Hello, city council members. My name is Cara score Sal, and my address is for 901 Nelson road. I’m here to talk to you about my senior capstone project walks for wellness. When trying to think of an idea for my project, I knew that I wanted to do something that would help students manage the everyday stresses and challenges that we faced, but originally wasn’t sure exactly how to do this. After thinking a little bit more, I realized that one of the most effective ways I’ve been able to deal with these stresses in my own life is simply getting outside. This observation is not true to just me, there’s an incredible amount of research that proves getting outside has a huge positive impact on mental wellness, attention, memory and overall health. For example, being outside for as little as one hour can improve memory performance and attention span by up to 20%. Additionally, spending time outdoors can improve sweet sleep quality, lower stress levels, increased life inspecting, expectancy and more. After I was able to find evidence of the benefits that I had noticed in myself, I solidified my plan for my project. I chose to teach about these benefits and the importance of getting outside on both mental and physical wellness. I thought that it would be most effective teachers in a way that actually got people outside, which led me to the idea of leading multiple hikes throughout the year. During these hikes, I gave a short lesson about the benefits of getting outside and being active before we all enjoy an easy hike or walk. So far, I’ve led four successful hikes and I’m having my final one on Saturday, April 22. Apollo’s crossing, it has been a great it has been great to have the ability to utilize the many amazing outdoor spaces we have in our community, such as McIntosh Lake and Palace crossing. I’m very grateful to have been able to use these places as resources for my project. And I want to thank the town for their support of these amazing resources. This has been a very rewarding project. And I’ve already been able to hear the impact of my project project has had the short interviews I’ve done with some of the participants on my walks. I’ve gotten feedback that this has been a fun opportunity for students at the school to get outside and be able to notice the benefits themself. I hope that my project will encourage more my peers to get outside and enjoy the benefits that nature has to offer for our mental well being. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:52
Thank you Karis. Addison Chevon

Speaker 24 1:25:08
Hi, my name is Addie Chevin. My address is 4901 Nelson road. And I’m here to talk about my capstone project. I project is called Helping harmonies. And it’s in support of the future Arts Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that raises money to donate to schools around Colorado that have had their music funding cut, and they collect instruments to donate to victims of the Marshall fire, and children of teachers and first responders. I chose to do this for my capstone project because music has impacted my life in so many ways. And I want other students that have the same opportunities. To support this foundation, I’m holding benefit concerts in which all the proceeds are donated to the foundation. With the help of my mentor Bonnie Sims who headlined with her husband Taylor Sims and Kyle Donovan who opened the show. I held my first event in December, I lost my public media, which was successful and I raised around $900 for the foundation. Getting to know new people around town and working with Manuel public media was a huge benefit to this project, and I’m so grateful to have been able to use that space. I’m holding my second and final event on April 23, from five to 8pm at La vida Bella that will focus they will feature local artists and ve headlined by Fox weather. If anyone knows local artists who enjoy performing and are willing to donate their time, feel free to reach out as I’m looking for acts. If you’d like to come support a great cause while listening to local music and enjoying great food with friends and family. You can find a link to purchase tickets at helping harmonies on Instagram. I hope to see you all there and I can’t wait to further support this foundation. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:37
Thank you Eddie Quinn Lockwood.

Speaker 25 1:26:51
City council members my name is Colin Lockwood. My address is 4901 Nelson road Longmont, Colorado, inclusion comprehends people’s involvement and empowerment. When people are included, their worth is recognized and respected. This is an incredibly important to me and all of my friends in the special education community. throughout middle school, I always loved to work with these kids. I was an aide for multiple students throughout a variety of classes. This is when I found the importance of including everyone. From then on, I made it my mission to continue this work and make a difference throughout my high school career. Now as a senior, I get to run my capstone project for my community. I started out the silver Geek Week of inclusion which aims to educate and raise awareness of the different disabilities represented in our student body. Throughout the year, I have hosted many events in and out of silvercreek, an attempt to foster a more inclusive community. It started with the end the R word campaign that I brought to my school. One of the easiest ways to include others and be respectful in a multitude of ways is to develop inclusive language. Many people don’t realize the impact that even a simple phrase can have on one person. After that, I started to think about the ways I could venture outside of Silver Creek and spread love and positivity to others. In a joint event with another capstone project, we gathered volunteers to make positive Valentine’s Day messages to those who might need it the most. I focus my valentines towards the Imagine foundation here in Longmont, which provides services designed to incorporate people with people with developmental, cognitive and physical challenges into the fabric of their community. This event allowed me to meet a great organization and plan possible future events focusing on including everyone around us. With all the outside community work put together, I found the best way to run an event within my school to promote the inclusivity. The actual week of inclusion was a type of spirit week that focused on honoring the disabilities in our school system, I was able to host a pep rally for the whole school to showcase our unified athletes through a staffers unified basketball game, and bring awareness to everyone’s differences and how we can accept them. The following week had many different themes and activities for our school to participate in which all linked back to some type of disability awareness or cost. I plan to further my project through more events and create ways for some of my other classmates to participate in. Coming up with May. Our district has the unified Dave champions in which I’m trying to gather volunteers to help run an amazing event. This event is a way for some of our students in the district with varying disabilities to have a fun Track and Field Day at Longmont High School. Overall, I hope I am able to create a more LinkedIn connected community that everyone enjoys. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:09
Thank you Quinn Michael Stevens.

Speaker 26 1:29:26
Greeting City Council My name is Micah Stevens. My address is for 901 Nelson road Loma Colorado. Have you ever watched wanted to watch your peers friends or family school events but wasn’t able to be there to watch in person? Do my capstone project rapper TV it allows anyone anywhere to watch school events such as graduation, musical concerts and sports right to their screen. And with the help of my mentor Patrick de Camilla’s, the athletic director at our school together we have filmed nearly all of the events going on at my school. This allows for friends and family to support and watch their child or friend through our school YouTube channel sch s raptor TV. Not only are the events live stream, but they are also recorded and saved. So it allows for people to look back at previous events even from years past. My project has gained over well over 1000 subscribers. It offers a great opportunity for the community to get involved in the school events happening around them. I wanted to keep and preserve all of the fun events going on at my school. So even after I and many of my friends or peers have all graduated, the school memories and spirit can move on to future generations. I hope to reach even more people about this opportunity and get more of the community involved and aware. Thank you council members.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:45
Thank you mica Sadie Shipman?

Speaker 27 1:30:59
Good evening council members. My name is Sadie Shipman and my address is for 901 Nelson road Longmont, Colorado. This past year I’ve partnered with my classmate Leonie Richardson to run our senior capstone project, put a smile on her senior. We took this project over from last year senior rice score, because we liked the methods, the message that it sends that people deserve attention and love no matter where they are in their lives. With the help of our mentor cherry powers, we’ve been able to pretty consistently can schedule and run one to two activities each month over the past six months at Beatrice hoever assisted living community. Over on Charles drive off North hoever Street and long lat. Miss powers works as a life enrichment director for Beatrice Homer, and has been invaluable bridge between us and the community. She’s helped us plan events around the sinner schedule, which has allowed us to not only stay out of the way of the center’s events, but it’s allowed us to expand the amount of people who come to our own activities. We went from our first meeting in October having only four residents participate, to having 10 people show up to our most recent meeting in March. This may not seem like a very big change, but it’s very gratifying for us see, because last year, Bryce was hardly able to come in and hold activities due to COVID. And we also had a month where it came back and shut down our capstone once more. Luckily, it didn’t last long, and we’ve been able to go back since and have fun with the residents. We hope that by doing things together like learning how to fold origami, making Thanksgiving crafts or dancing to some old favorite songs, we can help the Beatrice Homer community to grow closer with each other, and with Silvercreek students like ourselves who run this project in Oregon. Now I’d like to turn it over to my partner Leonie Richardson.

Speaker 24 1:33:01
Good evening, council members, my name is Leonie Richardson. My address is 49 01 Nelson Road, Longmont, Colorado. And you just heard from my capstone partner Sadie Shipman put a smile on his senior has been a great success this year, and I’m here to tell you about what we’ve accomplished. Last semester, we were able to have four events with the residents, as well as creating Halloween cards with fun jokes and can you touch them that we gave to every resident. At the beginning of the semester, we were able to partner with another stla capstone project, senior sentiments, to hear residents stories and anything else they wanted to share with us. Unfortunately, after this event, Beatrice overwinters COVID locked down for a month, and we were not able to participate in the events with the residents. However, we bought her stla classic car to create Valentine’s cards that we dropped off for the residents of Beatrice Hoeber. When we were finally able to participate in events again, we hold the St. Patrick’s event where we made Reese and we had some students from our school, play fiddle music for the residents. These students are part of Silver Creek High School’s photo group, and played a variety of Irish and Scottish music. When you’re currently in the process of planning your last few events for the residents, which you’re thinking will include a party at the end of this month, hopefully 60s themed. We hope that this project will continue in future years and we have heard from our mentor, residents, children, children’s and friends and even from the residents themselves, that they thoroughly enjoy our activities. And they even kept kept some crashing this year in previous years. This has been a wonderful project and has opened our eyes to how much knowledge can be found outside of our normal social circle. Thank you for your time.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:34
Thank you Leone Mr. Hunt.

Speaker 22 1:34:51
Hello, city council members my name is Emma hunt and my address is for 901 Nelson road. And I’d like to share my capstone project body kind with you. I started this project to bring attention to our community’s growing problem with eating disorders and body dissatisfaction, especially among our adolescent population. 70% of students have body dissatisfaction and the rate of eating disorders among students is growing rapidly. According to subjective data, the hospitalization rate for kids at Silver Creek High School due to eating disorders, has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic, which is far greater than the already high to national increase of 200%. My project tackles this problem on multiple fronts to help prevent body dissatisfaction among adolescents. I’ve worked closely with the nice hamburger, the founder of be real, which is a nonprofit organization spreading body competence across the US through their new high school curriculum. don’t weigh me in school, campaign and teacher workshops. This past year I’ve taught the be real body con curriculum to over 300 high school freshmen. This entails four lessons on appearance bias, compassion for self and others and taking action in the community. After teaching the first and second semester students, students remarked on how relevant the material was to their lives. My own experience teaching the curriculum match the positive outcome of when be real originally piloted the curriculum. These lessons were originally piloted at the Brooklyn center high school outside in Minneapolis, which had amazing results. The University of North Carolina tested and analyzed the findings of the pilot study and submitted the results to an academic journal. In order to prevent eating disorders as a school as a whole in schools. I give an hour long presentation on school based eating disorder prevention to school faculty, and the evidence based presentation we go over 50 years of research on body image and eating disorders, and tie it into five steps we can take as a school to implement preventive and preventative measures. I also discussed my own personal findings from my teachings of the body con curriculum to demonstrate the need for a curriculum on eating disorder prevention and health classes. And how it fits with recent updates to the CDC is health education curriculum analysis tool. In addition to my work with students and teachers, as I’ve also helped grow the real social media worked with Harvard professor Dr. Brian Austin to remove harmful diet polls from over count over the counter sale compiled useful healthcare loopholes for affordable eating disorder treatment in our community, which is now being used by counseling departments in our district, and posted videos answering anonymous questions on eating disorder misconceptions to help D stigmatize eating disorders. My work with the real has allowed me to bring the fight against eating disorders to long one, which is well past due. I hope to continue teaching the body kind curriculum, giving my body confident schools talk and spreading body confidence to the students long on thank you for your time.

Speaker 1 1:37:58
Thank you, Emma. I would like to say that this whole group was from Skyline High School I think. I mean, Silver Creek High School. I knew it was an S word. So I think I made a mistake on my list. There is an entry that just says nyuad Boulder County. So I just wanted to recognize you. Thank you very much, Steve ALTSCHULER.

Speaker 1 1:38:26
So you’re the person nyuad. Boulder County. Steve. I guess he’s first because I did say that but I didn’t. It didn’t make sense for me on my list. It was very confusing. So would you state your name and address please?

Speaker 28 1:38:43
Certainly. My white re 17 Belmont Butte older county here me All right. Okay. So I just I know we’re not supposed to applaud, but I really appreciate the presentation. They’re a great group. Yes. I’m also here for the topic of smart meters. I’m sure everybody’s made up their mind. I’m not here to convince anybody of anything. As well as other topics like fluoride, transhumanism, pesticides etc. This message is here, for those who have been injured or feel they may be injured by such devices and they are seeking a more effective lawful, peaceful remedy then protesting at city council. If you want to contact us, the address is nyuad at Tita dot Casa again nyuad And I wot at Titta t i t a dot Casa c a s a, as in house. Our first step will be utilizing the successful method used by empower.org. To hold actors accountable for their actions in a lawful manner. This requires a small group of honorable, dedicated, competent individuals. So not looking for a large group. It’ll be vetted, sworn in for legal self protection. For those seeking clarity, you can contact us we’ll be happy to respond. Also, for those insiders who wish to share information related to these topics that might not be publicly available. Again, you can contact us at nyuad at Tita dot casa. I thank you. So for your honorable and patient service to Longmont. I don’t know your opinions on these things and I wouldn’t presume I know this is it can be a tedious and unrewarding job and I know you mean, well. Thank you. I hope to see you all in the more beautiful world.

Speaker 1 1:41:18
Thank you. Yes, Steve, I’m sure.

Speaker 29 1:41:27
Steve ALTSCHULER 1555 Taylor drive. My capstone project is protecting our constitutional rights. In the Revolutionary War, we were able to defeat the British because all the colonists were armed. The Founding Fathers realized how important it was that citizens be armed to protect against government overreach. The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In the Civil War, the Republicans from the North were able to defeat the Democrats in the south and stopped slavery because they were better armed. In the 1930s, Hitler was able to disarm and kill millions. Every communist dictator has disarmed the civilians, either right before or right after taking power to prevent any revolution. Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela and more. That said, we must stop school shootings. But we can make schools hard targets. We must have officers in the schools. If someone objects than they can homeschool their kids. They should have one point of entry. Allow teachers that want to be armed and trained to carry at school. Two weeks ago in Denver, a 17 year old broke the law by having a gun at school broke the law by being under 18 and armed broke the law by committing murder. He was such a risk that he was even frisked every day upon entry to the school. He should not have been allowed in school. None of the new proposed gun laws would have stopped him, but they will abort the rights of honest citizens. Last week, a mentally ill transgender woman woman murdered six innocent people in an elementary school. She also broke many laws. The new proposals would not have stopped her either. You have police in the hall protecting this meeting and they are armed. We cannot all afford to have our own officers guarding our homes and family. A few weeks ago at a Chinese restaurant in Longmont, a very agitated person entered and threatened a couple of the workers. A male patron stood up and let himself be seen with his hand on his hip, possibly on a gun handle. The angry man saw him saw his posture and left. Being armed or concealed carrying has the potential to stop many crimes before they even start. Please help honest citizens keep their rights and please punish the real criminals and keep them in jail. Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:44:13
Thank you Steve Lance Whitaker.

Speaker 30 1:44:27
We’re in council. My name is Lance Whitaker live in 1750 Collier Street. As you all know I’m here in support of House Bill 191230. Still running down the rabbit hole looking for hours. Only finding the cat. Anyhow, Today is National Gordon blue Chicken Cordon Bleu de it is also national No hug and news person day. So if we can all line up and give a certain news Person A hug today’s some time, he probably would appreciate it. You all have a good day. And thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:18
Thank you, Lance. Chris Crawford.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:28
Is Chris Crawford here? Oh, there she is.

Speaker 3 1:45:31
Hi there. Yes. Hi, my name is Chris Crawford and I live at 914 champion circle. I am an original homeowner in the champion greens community by ninth an airport. And I am speaking this evening to convey my firm opposition to the proposed townhome community of 57 structures at 8513 st frame road, the parcel of land is adjacent to the west side of our neighborhood, an area that was severely impacted by the catastrophic flood of 2013. The goals and policies of Envision Longmont state that the risks and effects associated with future flood events, or other disasters should be minimized by directing future growth and public slash private investment away from the floodplain prone areas except for the purposes of hazard mitigation or ecological restoration. Just by this measure alone, this project should not proceed. The proposal submitted by the developer requires that all construction take place only through our neighborhood. With access points on the southwest and Northwest sides of our community. This would necessitate tearing down sections of our fence, tearing out mature shrubs, ripping out established sod and destroying the sidewalks alongside them. Regarding driving construction vehicles through our neighborhood Longmont Municipal Code section 1132 10 states that it is unlawful to drive any truck or other commercial vehicle having a total empty weight in excess of 7000 pounds on any public street within the city. Unless the roadway is specifically designated and posted as a truck route. The weights of vehicles used for construction are much greater than this 3.5 tonne limit. If this development were to be approved as proposed and then completed, it is estimated that there would be an additional 114 vehicles flying through our normally quiet peaceful community, which would adversely impact the safety and security of homeowners in our community. This would be on top of the abhorrent conditions that the construction would impart on us homeowners in the first place. With respect to parking, the declaration of covenants, conditions or restrictions of champion greens, states that no trucks larger than one ton, or commercial vehicles may be parked or stored anywhere within our community. So they are visible from neighboring dwelling units or from the street except in emergencies. Our modification review guidelines state that there’s only parking on one side of the street along our Central Park area. And it was explained to me at the time I purchased my home this is done to keep one side of the street clear at all times to accommodate the passage of emergency vehicles through our significantly narrower streets as compared to the residential other residential streets in Longmont passage of emergency vehicles is a very grave concern in our community. Thank you Chris. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:44
Steve lane.

Speaker 31 1:48:56
Good evening, Steve Lane 1013 Neon forest. I’m here as a local citizen and also as a member of prosper Longmont. I’d like to express strong support of the fee waiver program that you are considering tonight, Item six be for attainable and middle tier housing, especially in light of the understanding that we we found last Wednesday at your housing presentation that since the IHO was put into place over four years ago we have seen 10 middle tier attainable units built in the city. Don’t think that’s enough. I also like to express support for commitment to house Longmont workers. I do while you consider this have two asks. The first would be to consider restructuring the fee themselves. Smaller homes on much smaller lots 3000 to 5000 square foot lots have much It’s less of an impact than a large lot type subdivision, on your city services. And so when we cluster those properties, that reduces the physical requirement that you have to provide those utilities, and even things if you think about it down to time to collect trash through the neighborhoods, and so on. So, a denser, more efficient subdivision should actually have a more proportionate share of development fees than a larger. I’d also ask that when you are considering deed restrictions, that you consider those that do not permanently restrict appreciation on the home need to find a balance between keeping enough units in the pool of attainable housing, while still providing owners opportunities to move along that housing continuum. For example, if you could remove an appreciation cap, if an owner resides in the home more than 10 years, there are actually many examples of communities that do this. Especially for example, if they’re employed in Longmont, that’s over two times the average time that a person lives in a particular house. So the more quicker turnarounds, people that move, those houses still stay in the rental pool. But in that kind of situation, everyone would actually win, Longmont would get a stable working population. People that would live here and raise their kids here and work here. Nevermind the transportation impacts and all the other outstanding items, they would be loyal to the area. And the owners would have doors open to them that perhaps many of us have taken for granted. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:50
Thank you, Steve. Eric Wallace.

Speaker 32 1:52:02
Good evening, Eric Wallace 339 Pratt Street. I’m here representing prosper Longmont. I’m also an employer run left hand Brewing Company. And I really I want to start off by thanking you for the progress that we’ve made so far on working our way down for purchase attainable housing, it’s it’s good that we’ve been chipping away at it and we’re making some really good progress and prosper will continue to advocate and support support this. It’s it’s obviously a critical, critical critical issue. It’s the workforce housing is also the hardest type to build in the city. So I think this next step with considering fee abatement for attainable is a really good step, I would encourage you to consider maybe giving Administrative Approval at a higher level than 45%. And, you know, empower the city staff to actually take more of the load off of this body. Obviously, you have a lot of important things to talk about on an evening like this. We’d also like to weigh in on deed restrictions. The prosper has some expertise and experience in other communities on this kind of areas. And couple of them are here tonight to talk they’re far more expert than I and I would encourage you to tap into that. We oppose giving city employees right of first refusal above other people that work in Longmont, we do support giving some kind of priority to people that are actually employed in long lat our employees have a hard time finding places to live in, and over half of them live out of county. And you’ve heard me say that over and over and over again. So but favoring the city employees to the to the detriment of everyone else doesn’t really seem fair or an equitable use of city funds or the the forgiveness for for fees. I’d also like to say that, yes, in my backyard. If we’ve got to, we’ve got to solve this bill that next door to me, I’ve got a four Plex next door to me and I live in a nice part of town. And it’s great. We’ve got to mix it in. We’ve got if we’re going to be fair and equitable to everybody we’ve got we’ve all got to carry some of it. And my last thought in my last 30 seconds is on 213, which will you’ll be discussing tonight. Let’s take advantage of the conversation and the debate and pick out the good and get rid of the bad and actually lean in and propose alternatives to the things that don’t work for us. Because now we have an opportunity. Everyone’s talking about it not just here and everyone every community has to lean in. If we’re going to solve it collectively, if we solve it, we’re ahead of everyone else. Longmont if we solve it and no one else does, we haven’t solved anything. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:06
Thank you Eric Brian Johnston

Speaker 33 1:55:16
I’m Brian Johnston, a nine to six Kaufman and Hi everyone. I’ve wanted to come here tonight just to say thank you. And I’ve been meaning to do this since October. But between just life back injury travel schedule, I’ve been here in person to tell you but the six of you who were on council a time whenever I’m talking about and that was when I came in presented to you the issue of the frequent and very excessive issue with car stereos and particularly the city of Longmont relative to surrounding communities. And I saw the presentation back in October that the officer did when he presented on on the camera, we’ll call it for it. And the he also updated the laws to make it easier for officers to enforce the loud, loud muffler law. And I just want to say I appreciate it. I did want to mention that it hasn’t been bad this winter, the noise along Main Street, it’s been a very cold winter. So there was talk about testing the camera, I just wanted to ask it. Let’s wait before we test it, not in the middle of winter so that we can get good measurements on it. And, um, and also, what I wanted to kind of tie this into another issue has come up recently, and there was a member of council I was speaking about this one night now sort of the street racing issue in Longmont. And they told me they’re like, you know, Brian, most of these people come from other places. And I was like, sure about that. And you’re right. If you look at I know, you know, the last couple of there was a big car meet broken up three weeks ago, and two weeks ago, there was another big one where someone was shot and killed, was not murdered, they were murdered at this car meet. And if you started sort of tracking their Facebook page 4500 members and yeah, if you look at the events where they’re held where they tend to meet up, it tends to be Longmont and that’s one reason I thought this car stereo noise ordinates might help us address and alleviate that problem. You know being you know, having downtown with an atmosphere like the pizza van Demeter Speedway I don’t think is in our vision envision long plan. And it is a real issue here compared to other communities that this is where we were the capital of it for here and Aurora is another hotspot for car meetups and and that and I know that officers have been addressing it and I and and I just again just want to say I appreciate you guys helping us address the problem. You know for those that remember I even had 25 businesses downtown in the five blocks from third to eighth that signed on to this and we’re all appreciative of your efforts because it gets old. It gets old and with my last 20 seconds left I just said he’s not here tonight. I just want to say hi to Strider Benson and tell him I’m happy indictment day Strider miss you buddy. Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:58:09
Thank you, Brian. Paul and I I would like Paul to tell me how to pronounce his last day.

Speaker 34 1:58:30
Hi, Paul D’Angelo. Danzo sorry, my handwriting as well. Um, my name is Paul D’Angelo. I’m with this little community housing. I’m the CEO there my address is 6000 spine Road in Boulder, and also here to be with prosper Longmont and the members of prosper long month to talk about the affordable housing we favor so I appreciate the chance to comment tonight on this fee waivers and offer some support, as well as some suggestions. While I certainly respect the work of the city of Longmont, staff and the team members or right of first refusal for city employees might not necessarily be the best way forward in points or ranking. If a staff member income qualifies, they should be able to apply like everyone else for the development, but maybe without any kind of perceived special treatment. In that development. restrictions to individuals and families working in Longmont makes a lot of sense writing in that preference for proximity to Job is always good. It can take a car off the road. It’s environmentally friendly, etc. Proximity to public transportation could also be considered and be a desired characteristic and the fee waiver program fee waivers 45% is listed. I think it’s great to work with round numbers. My suggestion would be 5075 and 100%, depending on what you’re offering what the developer is offering just better and easier numbers to work with. In addition, state city staff should consider issuing the rebates without approval of city council to take something off your workload If the criteria and the policy is met, there’s a carrot there in general, no developers really like going to city council sometimes I can’t imagine why. But they want to go to City Council’s they can look at that Sen. Karen and perhaps there’s an incentive there to get the affordability you’re looking for without folks having to come into city council. I know deed restrictions for this program are still in development, but a couple of suggestions there as well. Many homeownership programs offer permanent affordability at two or 2.5% sales increase each year, I would suggest suggest staff could consider a tiered rate of appreciation based on the time in the home and to value the individual or family member, as a part of the community, perhaps 2% In years, one through five 3% in year six through 10 and 4%. In any additional years of homeownership or birding, reverting back to the 2% when the sale occurs for the new buyer, or a similar structure. If the individual or family owns the home for 15 or 20 years knowing that most individuals sell within six to seven years, perhaps at that point in 15 or 20 years a deed restriction could be removed and the house could be sold for market. Again, knowing that the House usually sells over six to seven years, you could take advantage of your regular 2% rate. And then that would increase back to when somebody buys the home. So 15 or 20 years after that. It’s a great incentive there and you’re always getting new affordable homeownership opportunities coming online. Hopefully with the instruments you all are offering the community. Always a reminder that severely limiting wealth game potential with deed restrictions, while also arguing that we want our community members to have easier access to economic opportunity and wealth building. It could be argued that deed restrictions can have heavy limits can be similar to urban renewal and redlining like in the past. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:53
Thank you, Paul. Jeff Jones.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:59
Is Jeff still here?

Speaker 1 2:02:03
So not seeing him I’m going to close first call public invited to be heard. Thank you, everyone. Let’s take a five minute break.

Speaker 1 2:11:48
Welcome back, everybody, we are back in session

Speaker 1 2:11:57
we have no special reports or presentations is that correct city? Okay. We’re on to our study session items. The first one is the discussion in direction regarding an ordinance to prohibit camping or lodging on property without consent. And I see David Bell is here with us. And

Speaker 35 2:12:17
yes, good evening, Mayor Council, David Bell, Director, Parks natural resources. We’re back in front of you with a follow up to our camping ordinances really started back in May of last year. That was in response to some of the challenges we’re seeing in our park and trying to keep our parks safe, but being equitable and fair and compassion to those people that are trying to find places to say, as we’ve gone through that process, if you’ve talked to members of our community, if you talk to businesses, private property owners, we have definitely seen some pieces that still needed to be addressed this ordinance is trying to do that. So I’m do what I typically do here is I’m gonna give a quick overview, but I will cast behind me of people that can answer questions after after we go through this, I was gonna introduce them all, but that will probably be a longer than public invited, be heard. So we’ll go through kind of the highlights of what this ordinance covers and then really open up for council to ask questions or how we may be implementing some of those things and what the, the rules really are. So the first thing really was, as we created a rule of reg that addressed activities on public lands, we recognize that we have city properties that aren’t classified as public lands. And so if we saw people camping on North Main Street, behind the Civic Center, and some of those other places, we weren’t able to cover that under the Public Lands piece. We also saw people camping on public on private property. So the first real change to this ordinance is really to give our rangers and our police officers ability to manage those areas that are city property, but not considered public lands. And Phil wants to jump in here, feel free. The next piece was again, as we start looking at how we’re trying to manage this in a way that tries to get people served as they need but recognize that these are the places that people need to live. We had to find camping as having anything other than clothing that you were wearing. So the tents, sleeping bags and blankets were disallowed. We have looked at that and said that we know that people need to have shame around the area and how we’re trying to manage this in that way. The next one is really giving the the director of parks natural resources, the ability to make rules and regulations that have still some transparency and ability to come in for the public process, but to make it a little bit more nimble. So as we see things that come about as far as court cases, we saw that Colorado has given a whole lot of guidance from the 10th circuit court but our attorneys have looked around and said we’ve seen stuff in other areas in Boise, the Ninth Circuit, they really have provided guidance, we may as well learn from that. So in that one, what we have done is we’ll be able to allow the direction make rules and regulations that will say we are not going to be issuing tickets citations if there’s no beds available within our local Boulder County housing programs. So that’s one area that the director can make that the other piece we talked about is some of our more high value natural resource areas that if people were camping there and we have nesting Eagles or things that we have habitat that needs to be protected, we can work those individuals make rules and regs to make those areas they’re not able to be camped into. So it just makes us a little bit more nimble with those, the village for the director to make those rules and regs changes. But again, it will be posted, it will have noticed, and there will be opportunities for people to know that without having to come in from counsel that make a new ordinance. And I believe that is what were the biggest changes within this ordinance. The other thing I think we’ll be looking for by the end of this is some direction, if we want to come back with it as is if we’d like us to look at it and change it or modify it, or if you have any other directions for us. So with that, Liz, we have any you’d add are.

Speaker 1 2:16:04
Great. Do we have any questions from Council? Seeing none on cue, I do have a couple of questions. First of all, there’s a lot of camping on I like the ordinance, first of all, and I will vote for it. But as far as private property goes, Can a resident or a business owner post a no trespassing sign this is private property on their property.

Speaker 36 2:16:35
Thank you mayor and city council Elizabeth Laurita Mills, Senior Assistant City Attorney, and people can currently post their property for no trespassing. Now under the law currently, if a private property owner has a no trespassing sign and someone pitches a tent in this camping, we still could not charge them camping under the law, because camping is not prohibited there. They could be charged with trespassing.

Speaker 1 2:16:58
Okay. Is that is a different ordinance though, is that correct? Correct. Okay. And the reason I asked is that I’m getting calls from people that say they’re on, you know, they’re on my business they’re on and I tell them, they can make a complaint? Is that correct? If they are on private property?

Speaker 36 2:17:17
Absolutely. And we also encourage businesses to file what we call trespass affidavits with the police department. That way they know anytime of day, when people are not allowed on that property, and that allows police to charge them with trespassing. Okay, if the elements are met, of course,

Speaker 37 2:17:33
so as a point of information for the community, when I get those calls into me, actually connecting with Sarah and David, and then they reach out to the property owners work them through the trespass affidavit and then talked to him about posting the signs in and that’s part of what they help us with, I think it’s the two of you, I don’t know if it’s any, but that’s the process they need to go through. Because I think that’s what people don’t realize in the process. So when they then call us and we go out, we have to issue the warning and start going through the process versus if they do that work, it makes it easier for the officers to respond. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 2:18:12
Thank you. I see. Councillor Martin.

Speaker 38 2:18:15
Thank you, Mayor Peck quick questions. One is do we publish the process of filling out a trespass app affidavit and, and posting your land? Anywhere? Because some people like to look on the internet first.

Speaker 36 2:18:36
Councilmember Martin, that is in the works to post it on the public safety pages of the website. It’s not there yet. I will check on that as soon as possible to make sure it’s posted.

Speaker 38 2:18:45
Okay, great. That’s a that’s a good idea. The next thing is, I’m not very much in favor of punitive activity by law enforcement or the courts. But there needs to be consequences to change behaviors. And, you know, during the last series of very public camping and one particular family group that that would come back with a smaller and smaller town to after getting trespassed off or moved off. The people were pretty irate about that. Because they felt that it made their community look bad. And so what do we what do we do to change that behavior? I know that this is not a we’re gonna throw you in jail and throw away the key kind of offense and I don’t want it to be, but but how do we keep people from just coming right back?

Speaker 35 2:19:54
Mr. Peck, Councilmember Martin, I’ll start that with kind of the first steps that maybe Harold or others can can jump in. But it has always been that process. If we make these contacts, it’s trying to gain voluntary compliance. It’s giving them information that they can’t be there opportunities for other resources within the city, asking them to move on. And then coming back and following up with the follow up conversations. As those conversations goes, the next piece that the Rangers that often do is typically the ticketing for that. And then that then can turn into the next consequence piece. We typically in the parks natural resources, don’t deal with probably the attorney’s office in the PD Well,

Speaker 37 2:20:34
yeah, we’ll probably have to get some folks from behind me that actually are out dealing with these issues. But if counsel will remember when we presented this to you all the last time we we made reference to the term compassionate compliance. And so that that’s really what we’re looking at as we’re dealing with these issues, and that it’s not like you just want to go out and immediately, you know, go 100% aggressive, they’re working with them and having conversations to the point where I’ve personally seen them when I’ve been out with them, where indeed, someone may be disabled, and they need some kind of transportation, and they’re making calls to try to get people assistance. And so there’s a lot of that work going on, in order to deal with this situation, Sarah?

Speaker 39 2:21:19
Yes. Councilmember Martin Council. Currently, David and I work with elder and we have weekly meetings with mothers, city staff, as well as we are going out with our lead folks, right now bi weekly to basically contact around house to find out their needs currently and making sure that they have everything on the end of how lead can help them. It’s been pretty successful, I would say so far. Some, some non success stories, but I’d say that the lead caseworkers are definitely making sure that these folks are being followed up with on a weekly basis as much as possible with their their phone services sometimes. Not so great. But that’s what we’re currently doing.

Speaker 38 2:22:03
In at least one case, the activity that’s going on is self described civil disobedience. And that means that they are happy to be using up public safety resources. That’s it’s their objective. Is there anything to be done that to change that behavior? Again, you know, it’s civil disobedience is kind of a right. But it makes a lot of people in the community really unhappy to do Do we have a solution or a protocol for that case?

Speaker 36 2:22:51
Council, it is a difficult one, right? Because it’s always our goal, to get housing for people who want housing. That’s not always possible. And so at that point, once our efforts at connecting them with services are not successful, citations are issued, and then as a part of the court process, and it’s outside of Public Safety’s hands, it goes through the process, they have their constitutional rights, any case has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It is slow. And so oftentimes, the public won’t see immediate results, even if tickets are issued. I wish I had a better answer for some of that for you.

Speaker 38 2:23:30
I understand. I just was getting it on the record.

Speaker 40 2:23:39
I don’t know there’s anything to add to what it says. Councillor Martin, I think the answer is no. Again, we tried to take the humanitarian approach, try to find the necessary resources that we have within the city and within the community to provide that in individual other opportunities and avenues before there’s ever an enforcement phase. And ultimately, and unfortunately, sometimes that is only the solution that we’re left with as a government agency or as public safety. And so that is all that we have. But I will assure that we have taken a humanitarian approach and approached it in a way to try to resolve the issue before it gets to the enforcement phase.

Unknown Speaker 2:24:17
Counselor waters.

Tim Waters 2:24:18
Thanks for your PAC. l there. Is that the right acronym? I know we’ve had staffing issues with L there how many people are currently on the other team? Which when it’s fully staffed because I think three was the number one on the outset so it is fully staffed. And are we have can Is it safe to assume the other team is either out there tonight or was out there today? seeking out those unhoused members of our population to make certain that they are they are housed tonight or at least have a shelter a roof over their heads. Just come up with Need some more chairs?

Speaker 41 2:25:02
Mayor and Councilman waters? Yes. So they opened the emergency shelter. So we put out notices and our communications, but also elders out there. And lead is also out there. And as you said earlier, some of these situations, you know, when they celebrate that they were able to get someone identification, or into the Coordinated Entry. And they’re saying this individuals been in the house for 10 years, that just really goes to show what it takes to really connect them to the resources, but they are out there and they are going to all the places visible and invisible.

Tim Waters 2:25:41
I understand there are is many reasons why someone who’s unhoused and chooses not to engage or or commit to the to navigation services and those kinds of things. An understanding that how many of our unhoused population tonight or people who are on the street tonight, are there by choice, as opposed to by circumstance, that there is no place for them tonight.

Speaker 41 2:26:13
So on a cold weather night, like tonight, usually there, they will even make additional space for folks. So they, they do their best not to really turn anybody away. And on nights where it’s warmer or even in the summer, there has been on average availability of beds. So it’s not so much that it is an issue that we don’t have availability of night shelter, it is the choice of the

Tim Waters 2:26:39
people or not. I just think that’s an important to be reminded. I know, options are limited. It’s slow, but it is frustrating. And I know there’s a narrative in the community at times that that somehow the city’s not doing anything about this. He’s doing a lot within the constraints of what the law allows, including the fact that tonight there isn’t anybody in Longmont who has to be sleeping somewhere without a roof over their head. Because resources are available. Is that fair? Switch

Speaker 40 2:27:18
sorry about that. Zach, are the public safety chief fitting along with Dr. Waters. There’s a there’s a lot of pieces in play and Carmen and her staff l there are a lot of folks who have come to the table. Recently, we probably within the last year or so it had major conversations on how do we address some of the things that you’re bringing up. And a couple of things we did no hope director of Hope was here earlier tonight. And she spoke, one of the things that we have done and we have worked without air on is that when we have a situation where the weather drops, to really extreme and dangerous temperatures, public safety and law with city staff, about I guess six, eight months ago, filled in the gap, we were able to open up a show a second shelter because hope did not have the staffing to do it. Public Safety has agreed that anytime that that situation occurs, that it will step up and fill the first 24 hours period of that to allow for the city to pull in additional resources to help help in those situations to make sure that the folks in our community who are experiencing homelessness have an opportunity to get off the street, something we’ve done routinely is when there was weather dropped down, we actually have our patrol units go by and check on folks. Again, some of them refuse to go, and some of them choose to go. And so we helped transport them to those shelters in those facilities. So there’s a lot of pieces that are working and people working behind the scenes to ensure that we try to find the solutions. We truly believe that the goal to resolving the addressing this issue is creating that one on one relationship with folks that are on how to trust is a huge right to try to determine exactly what their needs are and be able to address it that way. But for temporary solutions when we have situations where we have weather issues, we do put things in place. We do have agreements in place. And we do have mechanisms that will kick in and we’ll do those types of things that come along and help support hope and other agencies of that nature. And

Speaker 37 2:29:07
I think to answer to provide you with some more information to really add on to what Zack said. So there are groups that meet on a regular basis where they’re all serving similar clients. So I know that David and Sarah meet with L there meet with the case managers Zach’s repurposed to focus on this. They bring in VCP. In in other provider groups, so they’re all talking on a regular basis. I think that’s a piece that people don’t see that occurs so that then when you look at what Zach talked about in terms of public safety, filling those spots, the officers may be bringing folks to location but based on what we were seeing at the time. We used one of the city vans and fleet services provided a driver so they’re taking them from one location to another location. Everybody’s trying to support the individuals, you know, during that point when it was really cold. So there’s a lot of pieces that are coming together as part of this conversation. And I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about when we look at the housing units that we have at the suites, which are permanent supportive housing units, that is designed, you know, for folks coming from an in house situation, that’s part of the group that moves into it. And as we talked about what’s coming online in the future, we’ve talked about it as part of the housing authority that we have Zinnia, that’s going to be coming on, that’s going to be going under construction, which is going to be an additional 55 units of supportive housing. So you can see, there’s a lot of different folks working on different issues. And and when we talk about permanent supportive housing, it really is focusing on on that part of our community.

Speaker 1 2:30:59
Thanks. So I just want to give a shout out to all the work that’s been done. Harold and his staff have been updating us for for a long time. And I do think that this ordinance, no camping ordinance that we’re looking at tonight, along with residents and businesses, being able to put up No Trespassing signs. I know it sounds like a bit of a squeeze, but I think it will help people unhoused make a decision, make a decision unless they’re totally mentally ill and can’t. So I don’t see any more discussion. So you the direction you need is do we want to go forward with this.

Speaker 37 2:31:41
So this is the zero reading on an ordinance and we need to see if there’s direction from council to bring that back for first reading.

Speaker 1 2:31:50
So I moved that we bring back the no camping ordinance for first reading. So I made that motion seconded by Councillor waters, although Well Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 2:32:18
And that carries unanimously. Second, I wanted to thank you for bringing up help. As someone who does incredible outreach in our community. They’ve housed several several people 70 For last year, and I think they’re up to about 16 this year. So everybody’s working together. And I think that I applaud you for that

Unknown Speaker 2:32:47
now we’re at the attainable housing Fee Waiver Program.

Unknown Speaker 2:33:13
Molly O’Donnell is going to walk us through that.

Unknown Speaker 2:33:29
Just rearranging everything real quick.

Speaker 42 2:33:38
Okay, Mayor and members of council, and Mollie O’Donnell, the Director of Housing and Community Investment, shift a little so I can see everybody. We’re going to be talking tonight about the attainable housing fee waiver program that is proposed for your consideration. So the intention of this presentation, just kind of give an outline of where we’re going to go tonight. We really do want to talk about the why for housing and housing for all specifically, then we’re going to share where we are on some of our attainable housing initiatives. And we’re going to propose the fee waiver code adoption for attainable housing. And we’ll get into the details of that. And then we’re going to be looking to lay out what we need future direction on because there’s several trickle down elements that really round out the housing incentive program overall. So the why the why for housing. We really wanted to bring this forward, especially ahead of talking about attainable housing, because we’ve spoken about affordable housing for years and what the benefits of that are for outcomes for people in our community. But we really, as our market continues to shift rapidly. We really do want to recognize that housing for all is something that is important. And it really is They have all about allowing all people in Longmont to live in housing that’s affordable to them regardless of their income, their circumstance or their stage of life. We want the diverse housing stock to be able to meet all of those needs, and have everybody be able to live here that wants to. So national data is coming out all over the place. There’s studies studies coming out constantly about outcomes from housing. So housing is the key to all of these features here. And this is across the spectrum of income. This is some of this is more expected for affordable That conversation has been had, but it really is now bleeding into as market conditions continue to rise, bleeding into housing for all that’s our our goal of this part here. Reducing intergenerational poverty, increasing economic mobility, stability to allow children to thrive in school, allowing children to access opportunities that could change the course of their life, maintaining community diversity, being able to live and work in Longmont, job creation and retention of jobs, attraction of primary employers, maintaining high quality city services, which you wouldn’t expect necessarily, but when we have critical services that a city provides, and those employees can’t live here, that becomes an issue, boosting the local economy. And then reducing commute times traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. These are just the off the you know, the the tip of the iceberg for the community outcomes that really are all tied to housing stability. So based on the community survey results that that was presented to you several months ago, we really found that as a as a city staff, housing and really more than housing, it’s everybody in this room that staff has been touching housing along with many more people. I think every department and division has touched our housing programs trying to improve things. I want to say that the team, the Center of Excellence team that helped worked on this attainable program. Caitlin Whaley here is our inclusionary housing project manager. And she really did lead the way on doing the research for this fee waiver program. But all together the whole Center of Excellence team and everybody that’s touched housing in the city, we really understand that we need to have an educational campaign on what is the importance of housing, what it can do for our community, how it affects everyone, even if you’re not the person that’s living in affordable housing or next to affordable housing, how it affects your life in the daily sense. So in an effort to start that education process, we did want to start with what is affordable housing, to set the stage for the attainable discussion that we’re going to have. So if you can see here, we’ve got two definitions of affordable housing. Affordable little a, this really just means that housing should be available in Longmont for people of all incomes. And so this means that according to HUD, no more than 30% of your gross monthly income should be spent on a housing payment in order to not be considered cost burdened for Longmont covered affordable housing programs, we use the 33%. And that’s to reflect our more our our higher market conditions here. So that’s really for everyone. And when I see the community survey results, this is when I think of where I’m thinking everyone wants access to this affordable housing with a capital A now that’s programs that are specifically set up to provide subsidized assistance to households that have incomes below 80% of the area median income. So that’s Ami. I’m not talking about the other AMI tonight that was mentioned in public invited to be heard, but I will be referring to AMI going forward. And that’s really about median income. That’s what we want to do an educational campaign on as well just to so that people that meet those income thresholds, just a snapshot of those are here really know what we can provide as a city to help. So moving into what we’re calling attainable housing. So this is for city subsidy programs that are affordable to households making between 80 and 120% of the area median income that is currently defined in our middle tier section of our inclusionary housing code. It’s just a kind of a shift in terminology. But just to give a couple of examples here of what types of folks or employment positions put people into this category. For example, that one person had household City firefighter paramedic might be in this 80% of AMI category, a two person household with a city customer service representative and maintenance technician would be fall in about the 100% Ami category. A St. Vrain teacher with a master’s degree and a city accountant with a four person household would sit in that 120% Ami category. And just to refer back to affordable. There’s a lot of examples there for four incomes as well. But just to put it together, really a single parent, that’s a lead preschool teacher, that person would fall in the 48. But based on a recent job description I just found released in the city of Longmont for a preschool 45% of area median income. So that qualifies for rental subsidy. And then if you’re looking at our firefighter paramedic, that might be straddling that line may be qualifying for the affordable housing subsidy at 80%. Or below or just above in our attainable category. Just want to be able to put a face to this. Because a lot of times when we see the sales prices that you’ve already been presented that last October that are in reflecting these incomes, it doesn’t always seem to connect. But we really want to make sure we put a face on to these categories of folks. So here’s the problem that we have. So what you can see here is the blue line is a detached median incomes in 2022. The orange line is attached median I’m sorry, not income sales prices for all of Longmont and 2022 attached is shown in orange line. And then below you can see over time the income needed to afford those median home prices. And I’ll just give you the highlights since I know that’s a bit small. And a family at 80%. Ami has not been able to afford the median detached sales price since before 2020 12, and hasn’t been able to afford an attached home since 2014. And 2022, the median income was 125,400. And the income needed to afford the median detached home sale price was 132,500. The median attached home in 2022 was affordable to households at about 90% area median income. So this is the problem and affordability. And there’s another piece of the problem in regards to our market and construction pricing and why we’re not getting the very many new builds because we have existing stock that might contribute to some of these prices. But when it comes to new builds, we’re not getting that much inventory in this these levels. Really it it is a very, very tangled web has a lot of factors that come into play. Harold, did you want to touch base on some of those? You’ve been chatting about them?

Speaker 37 2:43:01
Yeah. So I think if you look at the price points here, where you say, here’s the median home price, there’s there’s something interesting that I don’t think that we’re seeing in that when you look at it compared to other communities, you can Okay, what we’re not seeing is when, and we’ve seen this in some data that we’ve received before is that when you don’t have affordable stock at certain income levels, what we’re also what we’ve talked about is somebody may come in and buy a house for 400,000. And they may buy it for cash, they may put two or $300,000 in it to get it to where they need it to be. And it’s that not necessarily a flipping market, but it’s they’re moving into lower price points, because that’s what’s available. And that’s what they can afford. But they also have the ability to put more money into the house. So it’ll be really interesting to see when we get some of the housing data, if it can really tease some of that out. When we lacked when we actually look at the construction piece of this. And you all know that we have created an attainable housing fund, and we’ve been looking at some projects and really what what can we come up with, you know, we’re learning a few things. The price of land is so significant that when you start out with a market rate price for land, that in its own right almost shifts to pro forma where it becomes very difficult to deal with. We were going through some work on a project that we were looking at. And so when you take that piece and you take the cost of the horizontal infrastructure that has to come into play for these homes, and you look at the price increases that we’re seeing in concrete asphalt pipe, it’s adding it’s adding even a more significant burden to this and in when we look at attainable and affordable we’re setting some target pricing based on the data that we’re seeing. And what we’re finding is you’re more Horizontal infrastructure and your land cost, it doesn’t care whether it’s an affordable or attainable house. And so you have to load those costs into the product. And if you’re trying to get it into a price point that we have in the affordable or the attainable category becomes very difficult when you’re bringing those two components and that are so expensive. And I think our eyes really got open on Friday, was it Friday, or Thursday? The meeting Friday, when we started seeing the pro forma coming together? And really what are the variables that are in play? Because it’s, you can’t just go like you would on a market rate house and go, Well, we’ve had a $2 million increase in infrastructure. So we’re gonna divide that by the number of units and just apply it across the board, because what it does is it shifts you out of those price points. And so it’s a really tough piece to crack. You know, as we’ve talked to other people that build affordable for for sale capital A, you know, we’re finding that they’re reliant on the reliant on free land, or the land that the cities that cities give them. They’re reliant on fee waivers. But what I don’t think any of us understood is they’re bridging gaps with donations. And that’s playing into the mix, too. So I guess the point is that, you know, we’re seeing this number here. But when you start looking at new construction, it’s a different number. When you start applying land cost at market value current infrastructure costs, it really starts shifting the needle in the direction that we don’t want it to go.

Speaker 42 2:46:43
So I’m gonna give an update of where we are in our attainable housing program development, so you can see our progress to date. So we in May 2012, is when we were directed to, to start developing this attainable housing program discussions had still been been had before that point as well. We including our sales price, updated our sales price Mac and maximums for the inclusionary housing program in October that included these attainable price points. We have the attainable housing fund that became in effect in January, with the new budget year, the financial security changes were presented. Well, it’s not last month, February. And then here we are in April, presenting the fee waiver program. We know that in June, we’ll be bringing the housing needs assessment results to you. And then we have several things that are in progress and bleeding in with all of the efforts as they thread together, the financial securities ordinance, we’ll be coming back for consideration. We do want to make program guidelines for use of that affordable housing fund, I’m sorry, attainable housing fund updates to development standards, doing work on the attainable deed restriction and what that should look like. And then working on a housing website redesign which really is part of that educational piece and trying to direct people to resources in a much better way than we have now. So how we got to this point, really, it was an all hands effort with the Center of Excellence, which I mentioned a little bit already. And really maneuvering all those variables, part of which Harold just mentioned with market conditions and pricing. And then revenue considerations for the city when we’re looking at at permit fee revenue. And then making sure that we’re constantly calculating against what we have with the inclusionary housing program, and other fee revisions that might be in the works to make sure we’re right sizing everything to work together best. So going into the proposed fee waiver program. So this is our existing code infrastructure for few years, it is dedicated for affordable housing units, chapter 4.79 of the municipal code is where this is allowed. And this is what we would be looking to modify to add in the possibility for attainable fee waiver. And this would for those units. Currently the planning director, this is the language that’s in the code, you’re allowed to base the amount of fee reduction upon a set of factors, including several things, deepness of affordability, whether or not they’re deed restricted serving special needs populations, and there’s a host of other things that are included in that application process. So the parameters for the attainable housing fee waiver program that we’re proposing, defining afford attainable housing in this section of the code, four 80.1 So above 80 to 120% Ami households. That would have to be added. We also would make sure that the fee rate waiver would apply only to an attainable unit just like The affordable fee waiver it currently is it wouldn’t apply to the whole development. And we’re not proposing a fee offset program at this time. That’s really because right now the attainable fund is geared towards competitive gap funding, which we know that gap funding is a true need in this in this arena. But we’re still developing those guidelines. And then finally, I wanted to just clarify that rentals are not included at this time. We really don’t have all of the data yet to show us if there’s a true gap in rentals. We do know that our market rate rentals are falling at about 80% ami. But we really want to see where we sit between that 60 and 80%. Mark. And that’s what our housing needs study will show us and then we can make some more decisions at that point, depending on what that data shows.

Speaker 1 2:50:54
Molly, can we ask questions in between? Sure. Okay. Can you go back to the last slide you just had? I need this explained. You said that the fee waiver would apply to attainable units only if they are building an apartment building? Would it be affordable and attainable? So the affordable units have different types of funding available to them? That’s okay.

Speaker 42 2:51:17
Yep. You could mix and match you would. The idea would be the application for fee waiver would have an affordable section and attainable section, you could do a combo you can do one or the other. But each unit would have its own fee waiver criteria and, and amount applied.

Speaker 37 2:51:39
A little bit as Molly stated, this isn’t for rental. This is only for homeownership opportunities. So I wanted to clarify that. Because it wouldn’t necessarily apply to apartments. I mean, if you had condos that were for homeowners that had homeownership or something like that, that’s what we’re talking about, because what we know is that when we look at capital A and little a there’s not much being built in the community for homeownership.

Speaker 1 2:52:06
And that’s what I want clarified the apartments versus homeownership. Thank you. Councillor Martin?

Speaker 38 2:52:12
Thank you, Mayor Peck, this will be quick. I just was not sure what a fee offset is. Could you explain?

Speaker 42 2:52:19
Sure. So currently in our affordable housing incentive program, we offer fee waivers. But we also offer fee offsets for those fees that are not allowed to be waived. And that is paid out of the affordable housing fund. So our affordable housing fund has the $1 million of general fund transfer plus marijuana tax revenues plus fee and lieu revenues. And so that’s a bigger source of funding. And we have more flexibility to add in multiple mechanisms. For the attainable housing fund at this point, we’re only proposing competitive award for gap funding, not necessarily an offset program.

Speaker 37 2:52:59
And this actually underscores when you say how big is the team that worked on this. So they had to work with Becky Doyle and all the right folks to understand what’s the impact of the funds, working with the finance staff on what is this mean for the general fund? Because you’re you’re trying to look at it in both sides. How do you reduce the cost of the home, but how do you not sacrifice the revenue stream at the same time? And so there’s multiple variables that everyone was trying to wrap their hands around.

Speaker 1 2:53:26
So when we set up the attainable housing fund, I thought there was a conversation that the Affordable funds went to affordable housing, not too detailed, correct. So the offsets only went to the affordable side. Okay.

Speaker 42 2:53:42
Totally separate. Thank you. Okay, so moving into the the basic process for this fee waiver program, it would be an application process, just like we have very affordable, there’s minimum criteria that we propose to be met. Restricting the sales price is encoded in accordance with those ih sales price maximums that you all approved in October and updated annually. Income qualifying the buyers and then having a written agreement with the city, which we currently do for the affordable housing Fee Waiver Program as well. And then the city staff would evaluate make sure that the minimum criteria is met and then rate those evaluations based on rank criteria that I’m going to come in here and show you next

Speaker 1 2:54:30
councilor waters Do you had your light on? Okay, okay.

Speaker 42 2:54:35
So there’s just a reminder, this is our sales price maximums that that you have been seeing since October, just to give an idea of well, this is one of those minimum criteria that would have to be met, and it would update annually. I know it’s a big table, especially for a PowerPoint but it’s just a reminder that this is what we’ve decided already. So moving on To the scoring criteria, so if a project has met that minimum criteria, then the idea was not to burden the program with too many requirements, but still meet our minimum goals, but then incentivize the some other methods that we have here, in order to allow some flexibility for having a fee waiver that’s in the low level, if you don’t want to do very much, or opportunities to go up to a very high level, if you’re really thinking about some sort of transformational project that that hits a lot of boxes. So here’s the proposed scoring, whether you a deed restrict attainable units, and there is I’m gonna come back to that deed restriction. So right now, it’s just the mechanism is being put in place if this is approved in this direction, and then we would flesh out that requirement with what a deed restriction actually looks like. Offering a right of first refusal, this is on the first sale for city employees. So this is I heard some questions in public invited to be heard. To clarify, this is really one of those. One of those items that we expect some of the the larger transformational projects that really want to hit a lot of the boxes for this type of program. And it would generally come with other city investment if there was some sort of partnership development partnership agreement. And so this one really is geared towards the projects that would have City Investment, and not necessarily require a right of first refusal for city employees for any attainable project that’s getting a fee waiver.

Speaker 37 2:56:51
So kind of to dig into this a little bit, when we talk about what are the funding sources that may come into play in this, obviously, if we’re setting aside for creating an attainable housing fund, those are general fund resources that are coming into it, but we’re also looking at enterprise fund resources potentially coming into play. And so I think having that connection to the funds to say it’s proportionate to your investment, really gets to you know, they’re here to do the work. And the fact that one of the challenges that we’re having now that Molly mentioned, is that we’ve had to make adjustments to our response times for some of our operational crews, because they can’t afford to find homes that are affordable. So really getting a Nexus into the fund, and how does that fund benefit from it if, you know, we can get Pete Lyons people or somebody like that to proportionate based on the sheriff, you have electric funds coming into it, I think it does have a clear Nexus. But at the end of the day, it’s also about providing those services to the community that we need, very quickly. That’s a piece of it. But I guess the overall point on this is it’s proportionate to City Investment, meaning it’s not all of them have to be first right of refusal, refusal, it’s, it’s proportionate to what we invest. But at the same time, you don’t have to do that when you look at the point structure. There’s other ways that you can accumulate points, too. So it’s not a solo requirement on this.

Speaker 42 2:58:21
So I wanted to just quickly on the deed restriction, I meant to mention this, that the intent of our deed restriction that we are weighing is to balance the city’s investment and ability to revolve through you know, and, and stay attainable for future generations, but also allow those families to build some generational wealth as well. That’s one of the key components of of housing for all. And so just to let you know, when that was speaking about that deed restriction, that is something that we are weighing in that eventual language that will come out. Okay, I’m gonna go back to where we were. The next one is that option for a right of first refusal or a some, you know, there’s what should it be a restriction most likely a right of first refusal is is the most logical for this one for people that work in Longmont. So if you’re willing to offer that you get an incentive, extra incentive. And then the next one, we really wanted to value higher the lower AMI is especially that 80 to 100% Ami range is the hardest one to accomplish. And so that would get extra incentive. And then this exceptional benefit to the community. This is really what we’ve called the Choose Your Own Adventure. We’ve built flexibility into our ih program. And here we have the opportunity to do so as well. This is if you’re really meeting the city’s sustainability goals. If you’re looking at transit, mixed income communities, providing your affordable units on site, doing a pilot or a prototype project trying to really hit those community outcomes. And then this is kind of that opportunity to go above and beyond.

Speaker 37 3:00:06
And we struggled a little bit with this because what we started thinking about, well, we want mixed income neighborhoods we want affordable and attainable. And the best way we could put it in is, let’s say you were building 100 units, and let’s say 50, were affordable for sale and 50 were attainable for sale, getting into that price point with, you know, 50%, affordable and 50% attainable. That’s a pretty significant project. And in terms of what you’re providing to the community, in terms of for sale, housing, also very difficult to do. And so that section really takes that piece into account in terms of the overall mix. That’s one example, if you brought in the sustainability components that we talked about, we all know that adds cost. And so that you have to value that in some way so that there’s a different opportunity.

Speaker 42 3:01:00
So overall, the goal with this proposed scoring criteria is to incentivize deeper affordability in that 80 to 120, range, and then also certain characteristics that really result in those positive community outcomes. So here’s the proposed scale for the affordable and attainable so affordable is is just shown here for reference, it’s not proposed to be changed at this time. But just so you can see how it pans out, and we lost a little bit of our gridlines. So I’ll try and walk us through this. So here is our affordable fee waiver here on this side, this is how we have the program set up currently. Basically, if you meet certain minimum requirements, then you automatically get a 50% fee waiver. And that’s all administratively approved, and then all the way up to a 75% fee waiver. And so this is for for sale affordable, you can do a 75% fee waiver that’s administratively approved only if you reach that 75% level, and want to request council approval for more than 75 up to 100, you can do so under our current program. And so what you could see as the affordable release scales from 50, to 100. And so for the attainable, we wanted to have a pretty wide scale so that some projects that just wanted to hit some of the boxes and help still get this kind of housing stock in our community, you could get a smaller amount, or you can really go for it with those exceptional benefit projects and, and try and do a really transformational project and try and go up to 100 as well. So with the proposed scale here, we have Administrative Approval up to 45%. And then council approval required after that, because most projects that are reaching this point, have some more of those community outcomes that you’re you’re weighing what the value of that is to the community. And then if you score up to 75% fee waiver, or are eligible up to 75%, then you could also go to council and request that 100% fee waiver. And we do see that happening for pretty exceptional projects at that at that level. So I also wanted to make sure that we recognized that this does scale with the Affordable program. We’ve got the point scales are a little bit different. We tried to make it pretty simple at 100 points for attainable, it’s 21 points were affordable, we have some room to adjust that. But generally I want you to consider where those administrative approval levels are. And the maximum fee waiver levels are and the council approval thresholds are for later discussion. The ability to request the 100% Waiver for attainable we are considering keeping the same criteria. Well, I don’t want to say criteria and confuse it with our our scored ranking. But basically to request 100% waiver, you have to get the maximum number of points, which puts you up at 75. And there is a compelling need for in the community for that project. And the project must be economically unfeasible without additional fee reduction. So that’s the same requirement that’s on the affordable right now to come and request 100% waiver. special considerations. So all projects seeking more than 45% The administratively approved level would be required to enter into a development agreement with the city and that the key part of that is open book so we can see that the fee waivers being provided are resulting in either more attainable units or deeper affordability or really being used for that purpose. And then to deed restrict the attainable units once you’re getting past that point as well.

Speaker 37 3:04:57
Part of it when you say a while by 45%, when you really hit that point and significant local dollars that are coming into it, the interesting piece that we’re starting to learn as you’re, as you’re looking at how these are built is, you know, you could say I’m putting x amount in this bracket x amount in this bracket, but you can really push them to the, to the, to the higher end of the bracket. So you’re not really supporting the entire 80 to 100%, ami. And so those are the things that we’re going to want to see and have a discussion on as part of the open book process, to make sure that we’re really providing the housing that that we need in our community. And honestly, when you’re putting that kind of fee waiver into a project that we can look at the City Council, with a straight face and say this is providing what we need, but more importantly, look to the community. And go, you know, this is really worth that investment, because we’re getting X amount of units.

Speaker 42 3:05:56
Next, I wanted to highlight that this, we really tried to build in flexibility to mix and match options, especially to result in mixed income communities. So having, you might need market rate to help make the attainable or the affordable happen. And having those all together, which is a community benefit. We do still allow this that we didn’t, you know, change anything about ih requirements and meeting that for this program, you could still select fee in lieu as your option for meeting your affordable requirement. But we do not want to allow developers or builders to change that ih election once that attainable fee waiver agreement is in place because that really, it it gets very complicated and very challenging to go back and redo work, basically. So those are the kind of some of the things that we want flexibility, but also keeping it simple administratively. And then we do need to consider how to tie into future attainable housing program refinements. So I’ve mentioned the deed restriction. And then also, we need to consider the inclusionary housing middle tier option which is shown here. Basically, it’s a reduced requirement to provide affordable in exchange for middle tier attainable units. And so we need to see how that would fit if it analyzed whether it is basically a doubling up of incentives, or if they could be paired together, we need to do some analysis. And then really, for now, what we’re trying to accomplish at the moment is getting the basic infrastructure into code to allow developers of attainable housing to request fee waiver. But we do have more work to do. So what does success look like? This is perhaps an aspirational goal. But we really would hope to see a 20% increase in the number of new construction homes, homes, homes sold at these prices. And then having a replicable model to create transformational mixed income neighborhoods, let’s we want to be one of those Front Range communities that gets this right and is on the cutting edge of doing this. We know that a lot of mountain communities are doing this, but it’s a very different picture here on the front range. But we want to try and get some projects out there that work and then have other developers feel comfort that it could work as well. This would allow us to gain middle missing missing middle housing stock, which is would be a benefit to having those diverse housing stock neighborhoods. And then of course, meeting those community outcomes that we described in the beginning. So for our what we’re looking for tonight is feed with feedback on the fee waiver criteria and those thresholds for approvals or thresholds for the amount of waiver. And then we want to look at making sure that that fits well with the Affordable fee waivers and if the scaling seems like a right fit. And then for our next steps, if we’re directed to implement the fee waiver program, we would bring forward an ordinance to make updates to allow that mechanism for requesting the fee waivers. We also want to conduct some stakeholder outreach. We want developers to tell us if they would actually utilize this program if it would be beneficial, and also allow housing advocates to tell us you know what they know from other communities or what their advice might be for making sure that we do scale our programs all together. And then we need to discuss our the rest of our housing program refinements so the deed restriction language, get more nitty gritty on the right of first refusal language, what that would look like and address that middle tier option. Okay,

Speaker 1 3:10:00
Very good presentation, take a deep breath. So I would like everybody to weigh in on this. So let’s just start this in with Councillor Yarbro. Do you have any questions or on the fee waiver on the deed restricted on everything? So don’t just turn off.

Speaker 43 3:10:26
You can go. Okay, here we go. Thank you, Mayor. So I just want to make sure that the direction that you’re asking you want to know. So you’re going to put this together and then bring it back to us. Okay. Yes.

Speaker 37 3:10:50
If that is Council’s direction. So that’s one question. Do you want us to bring this back in an ordinance?

Speaker 43 3:10:56
I mean, I would me personally, because this is a lot of information, especially with all the numbers and everything. The other thing is getting a little bit more clarification on the deed restrictions between for the attainable, I think you and I had talked before, it’s very important to understand when you are purchasing a home, I guess I just need a little bit more clarification on the deed restrictions when one is we’re talking about generational wealth, right? And so making sure we have clarification on the extent of those D, the restrictions of those deeds, if that’s, am I saying that? Right? You understand what I’m saying? Okay, so for me, that’s very, very important. Yeah, I would like to see it come back once you get it together. And I really want to make sure that outreach for the stakeholders and also talking to the developers, that’s very important, I believe, before we even can say we’re gonna make a decision on anything, because it’s important to make sure it’s feasible, and that they’re willing to do it. I think that everything that you’re doing, you’re working towards is amazing. And I believe that we can do it, but we want to try to get it as close to right as possible the first time, you know, instead of coming back and forth, back and forth, 15 times. So for me, I would like for us to the next steps is actually going through to the stakeholder for outreach and housing incentive program refinements. I know other councillors probably have more feedback on the waiver criteria and thresholds. Yeah, I would like for you to bring it back. That’s me personally, I probably said too much.

Unknown Speaker 3:12:52
I think that’s a yes or Chiquita.

Speaker 37 3:12:54
Part of what we’re asking the question, you know, and Molly said, there’s about 400 hours of work we really have to point of, all right, are you? Do you all, like where we are? And do we keep going? Because there’s a lot of work coming, and we didn’t want to get so far down the road? That it’s like, no, we don’t like any of it. And then we have to start all over.

Unknown Speaker 3:13:15
Council McCoy.

Speaker 44 3:13:16
Thank you, Mr. Peck. I like what I saw here, and I felt that this had a lot of the aspects, you know, for a long time. Maybe back? Well, not a long time, but maybe 2021. You know, when this was coming up and discussion about affordable and attainable, is it fair felt like some folks were trying to just come up with a new way of saying it, but now I see where, where we’re going with this. And, and I see that, you know, we do want to be able to establish some generational wealth and people’s ability to, to, you know, recoup something on their investment. I like that. I do like the idea of giving some sort of bonus to people that work in Longmont. I don’t know what that looks like, specifically in regards to people that are not specific ly employed with the city or the school district. Because do we have to recheck that every couple of years just to verify that that’s actually continuing? And wasn’t just a six month fluke of, of that sort of thing. Maybe there’s something that needs to be mechanism that needs to be put in place there. We don’t want to stifle anybody’s opportunities either. So we certainly want to, you know, keep in mind what and what needs to occur. I do like your idea of of just, you know, giving people some choices, developers some choices of what they can do. I do also like the idea this wasn’t in there. That At when Harold, you were pointing out 50%, let’s say 100 100 units, and 50% was attainable and 50% was affordable. I also liked the idea of of houses that are at market rate being intermixed in there because we don’t want to silo communities. And so that’s important to me that that’s not something where we just have, oh, you live over there opposed to this is a whole community. So I support what you’re doing. And I would like to see this come back with some sort of ordinance if we can.

Unknown Speaker 3:15:37
Counselor huddle, Hidalgo faring.

Speaker 3 3:15:39
Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I did. I, I liked what I what I saw. You know, I do have a question about. Molly, you had mentioned there wasn’t enough data to determine as far as rental to determine was it fee offset?

Speaker 42 3:15:58
Well, that’s a waiver to determine if we have a gap in our community rentals in that affordability range.

Speaker 3 3:16:04
And so then would this be something that it would be remedied by having a landlord registration? Or

Speaker 42 3:16:16
we expect our housing needs assessment to tell us okay, okay. With that could happen as well. But that’s a that’s a fair amount of of rentals out there that we’d have to tie it to affordability levels. Yeah. Because that they wouldn’t the landlords wouldn’t necessarily know what affordability level they tied to they just know what they charge.

Speaker 3 3:16:39
They know what they charge. No. And, and that’s okay. You know, I think, you know, the ultimate goal is for people to be able to purchase a home, you know, I think, you know, it was very disheartening, looking at what the person needs to make in order to afford. You know, it’s like, wow, I guess I’ll be ready for

Unknown Speaker 3:17:01
that forever.

Speaker 42 3:17:03
Certainly, the one of the main points, is that, really that that suburban detached home, that’s no longer attainable for most Lamotte families? Yeah, that’s what it is.

Speaker 37 3:17:15
Yeah, I think when we say how’s it tie in, we didn’t really talk about it. But we are talking about a more urban base design with more density, because you need more density in that urban base design in order to get the price points to where you need them based on the infrastructure that you’re putting in. And so, you know, what we’re seeing is, it is a different model, in order to hit the price point, still single family detached, but it’s something that you would see almost in the Stapleton area, we’ve looked at different communities around the nation. One of the things that we said last Thursday is that it almost goes back to that pre war style of housing, in terms of where you had the long narrow houses, the brownstone kind of concept concept, versus what we’ve seen post warehousing, which is this more separation with the neighborhoods with the large

Speaker 3 3:18:07
yards? And then there was another question that was like, right on the tip, and I got sidetracked. But no, I think it was also the first right of refusal that that component, so let’s say, there was, you know, that person decided, you know, I don’t I don’t want to add that they could technically still gain that fee waiver without without that component. And so, you know, and I think I, because I do like that, that idea of having that option available. But you know, not necessarily that that would be the part of the component that would break an opportunity to, to get get the waiver. So, no, I did. I did, like what I what I saw, I don’t think, you know, and that was, you know, one of the things when councilmember McCoy had mentioned about the attainable versus affordable and looking at that, and I’ve had some very, you know, intense conversations with, with folks around, you know, that attainable peace and it’s really, for our working class people, we cannot afford market rate homes, and we make too much to qualify for any kind of subsidy. So, and it’s becoming a larger group of us that, that that cannot attain that. So, you know, I want to be able to, you know, Claire, you know, let people know that this, this is a need in our community, and it’s not impacting or taking away from the affordable the inclusionary housing, is that correct?

Speaker 42 3:19:49
That is correct. Yes, they can be paired together or done separately, but they do not,

Speaker 3 3:19:53
they do not conflict with each other. So, you know, I think both of those are very important.

Speaker 37 3:19:57
And to that point, when we kind of talked about what We were seeing in the cost components, making a pro forma work on 80 to 100% Ami, is not much different than when you’re looking at that sub 80% ami. That’s what we’re starting to see. And my gut tells me, you know, and this is what every city is trying to figure out right now on affordable and attainable housing. And you’re seeing this the chaff is now lending up to what 160% ami. So you’re seeing the Lin, you’re seeing people starting to shift because of the need. And I think if we don’t start doing something in this attainable realm, and 510 years down the road, we’re likely to be talking about 80 to 100%, ami in the same way that we’re talking about below 80% ami. I mean, that’s the church. If you look at those graphs, that’s a trajectory that we’re heading to. And it’s interesting that Molly mentioned the mountain towns, we’ve looked at a lot of the mountain towns. But as you dig into the issues that the mountain towns are dealing with, or we’re dealing with, we’re now seeing the same issues now on the front, right and not to the same magnitude and what they’re seeing in the mountain towns, but it’s the same issue. And that’s when you just start seeing this domino where people keep pushing further out, because they’re searching for that, you know, that attainable or affordable home?

Speaker 3 3:21:25
Okay, thanks. So, yeah, no, I’m, I’m in support. So

Unknown Speaker 3:21:28
maybe Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.

Speaker 2 3:21:38
Thank you, Mayor back. So it was cited earlier earlier in the presentation that two of the biggest obstacles are land cost, as well as the horizontal infrastructure to be able to hit certain price points that fall that between an 80.1 to the 120. So my question, because we didn’t get a lot of numbers, which was probably a nice thing in this presentation. But um, when we talk about fee waivers, how close are we talking about bridging gaps to hit these price points per unit that we’re looking at here? I mean, let’s just say that we’re up at a pretty high level, like 60 70% fee waivers? Like how close are we actually getting, say, per unit to get closer to that unit price that we’re looking for? I’m just wondering, you know, I know that there’s a lot of variability there. But how much of a chunk is this really making? How much good is this really doing?

Speaker 37 3:22:35
Per unit? I think the pro forma that we looked at is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to $30,000 per unit

Speaker 2 3:22:42
per unit, at what price point, let’s say, like, you know, percentage of 25 to $30,000 of $300,000. Okay,

Speaker 37 3:22:55
well, that’s, that’s when you look at I mean, so you have impact fee, I mean, you have these fee structures that are in place. And so in many cases, you know, when you look at it, it’s a three person household generates the same it, you know, outside of becoming more dense and reducing the street miles and things like that. Some of the fees that are in place has the same impact, whether you’re in a market rent home, or an affordable home. And so if you’ll give me a second, I’ll pull that pro forma have

Speaker 2 3:23:26
very good because, you know, I think it all looks good on paper to a certain degree. But really, that’s I think, where some of the stakeholder outreach will come in handy. Is this really going to move the needle for those people who are actually building those, those units? And

Speaker 37 3:23:42
it depends on that depends on the specifics of the project. Yeah. And that’s where it starts moving a little bit in that if you are bringing more market rate in to Councilmember McCoy’s point, let’s say you are diving in and you’re bringing above 120% Ami into the project, that gives you some flexibility in terms of how you spread some of those other costs out. So it may be a lower number that’s really needed to bridge the gap. But if you’re really trying to hit attainable and affordable, it’s going to be a higher number because you just don’t have the luxury to spread that cost out amongst all the properties. Sure, but yeah, give me a second and I will find that.

Speaker 2 3:24:26
And so just real quick. In general, I am for the fee waiver criteria, or for the fee waiver program. And I do think that it the affordable fee waivers do need to be adjusted. So there’s either additional incentive or however you want to look at it, where there’s some, you know, some sort of equal basis to judge whether or to incent you know, the capital A affordable because we know that’s all whole different ballgame. And that also comes with different funding mechanisms as well be it like tech or you know, some other things? Well, I thought, I mean, we can talk about the deed restriction portion, but I thought that was gonna come back separately. So, I mean, I think we’ve heard concerned about the right of first refusal proposals. You want to when we talked about deed restriction, you know, I do understand that having the 2.5% cap or whatever, on deed restricted properties for a while, leads people to think that there is no wealth being, you know, accrued. But I do believe that just the general house payments alone, carries equity in and of itself, you know, instead of losing that as a rental payment, you know, you still are building some equity. And if you do stay in for a longer period of time, say 10 years or 15 years, though, you know, the various ones that were thrown out tonight, that, I think it becomes more feasible to say that the deed restriction can come off a at that point. But I’d be happy to have larger discussion about that when that actually brought before us.

Speaker 37 3:26:11
So if I could give you an example. And this just based on some work that we’ve been doing, if you had a house that was selling for 290,000, again, the fee waivers move based on the cost of the house and what you’re looking at, I think that may be in the ballpark of 25 to 30,000. If you look at one that’s in the 399 range, we were looking at potentially 30 to 35,000. And then if you’re at that upper limit, let’s say at the 600, you’re looking at that same 30 to 35, based on square footage and some of the other pieces. So that’s generally what this model is looking at.

Speaker 2 3:26:54
But it seems that there’s not a huge range between 25 to 35, ami. So even though there’s a much larger price range from 290 to six,

Speaker 37 3:27:06
and that depends on what our fees are and where they’re set, you know, if we raise fees, that numbers are going to shift, but that’s generally what’s built into this one,

Speaker 2 3:27:13
at least that gives somewhat of an idea of what the true effect of the fee waiver program could be. Thank you.

Speaker 38 3:27:21
Thank you. I’ll be quick. I just want to say I like the idea of tiered deed restriction, when, you know, working that in so that we get some serious wealth building for people who stay put and work here for a long time. And I also would like to come on, as always happens when I’m trying to be quick. I O makes making sure that the writer refers refusal, if offered, does not create a bureaucracy that ties up a property for a long time. And that’s all I got to say otherwise, you know, proceed.

Speaker 37 3:28:10
Well, that’s a good point. Because in this you’ve got to sell this property fast, because that adds to the carrying costs. Come to water waters.

Tim Waters 3:28:19
Thanks, Mayor Peck. Like others. I’m going to be supportive of I’m certain where we end up with this. I have a lot of questions as we go along, on on what we do with deed restrictions and reflecting as as creative approaches we can take that allows people to build wealth and get into home but in all the options for you know, keeping our costs down, but I do have a couple of questions clarifying questions on the presentation. Molly, you did that you offered the definition or difference between big a small a in every time you made reference to affordable housing in your presentation. It was in a small way affordable.

Speaker 42 3:29:01
It was when we’re talking about a fee waiver program. It was big A affordable because that is a a subsidy program and assistance program that the city offers.

Tim Waters 3:29:11
So when we talk about 50% attainable and 50%. Affordable. Talking about subsidized 50% of the unit subsidized

Unknown Speaker 3:29:21
yes, they’re either

Tim Waters 3:29:23
heralded that reference I’d like to hear his

Speaker 37 3:29:25
answer. So I think so let’s back up so when we talk literally in capital A little 80 to 120. capital A is below 80.

Speaker 42 3:29:36
Officially little a is all incomes affordable for your income, so attainable would fall in there. So when

Speaker 37 3:29:43
we’re talking about the attainable fee waivers, we’re talking literally when we’re talking to the affordable definition that we gave you including up to 120% ami.

Tim Waters 3:29:55
Alright, so when we as we go along Yeah, it’s gonna be really important for me to be really clear You’re because when I hear 150%, affordable and 50% attainable, I’m thinking and you’re talking about pro formas. We’re talking about attainable housing for purchase. Right? Which is below 80%. Ami. No wonder it’s hard to pencil like, that’s not what you’re talking about.

Speaker 37 3:30:16
No, I’m talking when I say attainable. I’m talking 80 to 120%. Ami. Yeah, literally.

Tim Waters 3:30:22
Yeah. All right, clarity as we go on, on, on what kind of housing stock that were or price points we’re talking about, it’s gonna be really important. If if I were to go back to slide 16, which you don’t need to go to, but that was the that was the slide where you were identifying points, and what points would be awarded for I understand the interest in making certain that the folks who are on call for the city, you know, you got a lot of reasons why you want city employees living in the city, we got a lot of reasons why we want childcare workers living in the city, a lot of reasons why went nurses live in the city, a lot of reasons why we want teachers living in the city. So I have to say, I’m going to be a little dubious about as much as I appreciate the staff and the reasons for it. Because if I’m on if I’m on that side of the conversation, and you’re talking about what that City Investment, I’m gonna say, where’d that come from? Wasn’t that didn’t that come from the taxpayer Longmont? So to say, we’re going to take your tax dollars and create a preference for city employees will get hammered with that? It should? Right. Yeah, I understand the rationale, I’m just saying we ought to be and I think that’s maybe where been where Councilman was coy with McCoy was going with categories of employee employees or people in in in salary ranges or whatever, regardless of where they work for as long as they’re working for somebody in London. So I do want just in terms of if we’re going to get back into this at some point in time, I suspect is a what we did with the IH the inclusion housing, inclusionary, housing, housing ordinance, and the 12%. And, and what the fee in lieu payment is, right? At some point, because that is that’s the pool of money, the you know, the fee in lieu our general fund and what was the third, marijuana, marijuana tax things. When we did that, as I recall, the dollar per square foot, the per square foot cost or value we placed on on the 12% of developed residential property, the value we put was $7.80 a square foot as I recall, it’s also in my memory, whether I remember this correctly or not, that that was going to increase with the cost of living, right. So we didn’t have to come back and deal with that it was going to just continue to so I don’t know what it would be today. But between that day, and tonight, one of our what I think one of our real stand up, developer slash builders in town said to me was, you know, Tim, if you guys, if you really want to see housing stock, you really let the development community off the hook. And I’m certain if there were any, I’m here tonight, they’d say, Are you crazy? None of us said that. But I’m telling you in confidence, or privately, one said, you should have that number should have been a lot larger if you want it housing stock. Right? If you if you wanted to cash, then you probably hit the right point, right, Mark? Because you’re gonna write your checks rather than build housing stock? And I know, isn’t that all one way or the other? But I do think that’s a question we ought to answer in this discussion. I know we’ve made great use of both the General Fund says allocation of a million. You know, we’ve we’ve heard that from consultants, I think there’s great evidence of how effective or how effectively our staff is use that money. But I do think we ought to be really clear eyed about what are what what’s most important to us is to have housing stock developed, because we’re getting some incoming email on that, right, at least I am. Why in the heck, what good does it do to have money go fi and logo into a fund if people can still can’t get affordable housing, and it takes us a long time to get there, right. So I do think we ought to at least put that in a parking lot and come back and talk about it. You know, before we’re finished with this conversation.

Speaker 42 3:34:23
So the housing needs assessment is including a look at our fee in lieu and where it sits in the scale of other Colorado communities. So when we bring that to you in June, we could have some good data there about where it sits and how it how it scales.

Tim Waters 3:34:41
The last thing I would say is when it the end of the day when we’ve done all the good work we’re going to do here, we still need to answer the question, what are the implications for the rest of the city’s budget? Right? Correct. Because there will be one Yeah, I mean, a huge percentage whether people appreciate it or not understand or not a huge part centage of that $414 million general fund or, or 2014 budget that we approved comes from fees of all kinds, but a lot of them development fees. So that’s gonna leave a hole in the budget. And the question for me will be how are we going to fill it? Are we going to fill it in? What are the implications if we do so? Thanks.

Speaker 1 3:35:20
So it’s been a good discussion both from staff as well as council. Just echoing on caliber Councillor Waters said I mentioned this to you actually, Harold about the fee waivers when we came out of the LDP meeting is that what is this going to do this as income to our city? And so I would like you to look at that as well. I, as far as the right of first refusal for city employees, if I understand that correctly, as well as the second one that for people that work in Longmont. This is because we as a city have made investments in this one project. And the city employees also pay taxes. So it’s not like we are not building for everybody. There’s right of first refusal. It depends on how many units we eventually get built anyway. So I don’t have a problem with that, to be quite honest, because we’ve heard for over a year since 2020, basically, that city employees who are our first responders is sitter can’t live here. And, you know, for the safety of our community, we’ve got to have some kind of preference for that. I also would like I liked a little bit of what Steve Lane said about the deed restricted. However, I don’t think because this is what happened to our inclusionary housing stock years ago is that when that was lifted, it all went for market value. And we ended up with no housing stock for affordability. So making it if it’s tiered, I don’t think it could ever be at market value. But other than that, I agree with everything. But I think we need a motion on this. Or just I just think we

Speaker 37 3:37:17
need direction of yes, we’re moving in, then we’ve got work to do to come back. Okay, bring that. So keep going.

Speaker 1 3:37:24
I heard consensus. If nobody else feels that it should come back. Now’s the time to say no. So I think you have your direction. Thank you very much. Good job. Thank you. So we are now on to the legislative bills. And counselor waters, you wanted to make a motion to suspend the rule of procedure, so that you can give your resolution as well as making a motion. Sure.

Speaker 45 3:38:03
Which is the first one on your list? This is good timing. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 3:38:06
no, no, wait, wait, Sandy.

Speaker 45 3:38:09
So let me explain a little bit about House Bill 1209. So this is concerning the analysis of a universal health care system as I believe in grid more explained during a public invited to be heard, I sent this to our city staff for comment. And from our HR department. Basically what I heard back was, you know, it’s certainly great to do a study and to learn more about universal health care what that looks like from an employee years standpoint, as the city to some extent, we’re sort of agnostic as to whether that happens or not, because we do provide benefits for a large number of our employees, we would want to make sure that anything that comes out of that study and therefore implemented, the next steps would not be lesser benefit than our employees enjoy today. And that really is kind of the only concern on the staff side. So they were relatively neutral about this. The reason that you’re seeing this today, generally, the bills that I bring have some sort of significant change. But as I’ve mentioned, before any of you can ask to put any bill on here for consideration. And so this is one that Councilmember waters asked to put on, based on I think some of that community conversation that was coming from community members. So from a city standpoint, I would say that city staff was neutral on this bill, it really is a policy decision for the City Council to consider. So with that 1209 really is a study to determine whether universal health care makes sense and how it might be laid out.

Unknown Speaker 3:39:36
So Councillor waters?

Tim Waters 3:39:39
No, I’m prepared. First of all, I hope we I hope we I hope we support I hope we vote to endorse this piece of legislation. It what it funds. It’s a $270,000 fiscal note to conduct the study is what it does. If there’s a bill that comes back behind that well I’ll have a chance to consider that bill. But I will say this in in October 2018, I brought a resolution to the council specifically asking for this for the actually for the study that was done that let that was the the precursor to this, which was encouraging to see not they didn’t do it because of our resolution, but I did think they did it because a number of municipalities passed similar resolutions. So two things, I hope, well, I’m gonna move that we support this. I understand the city’s the city’s lack of a position on this, but we have I don’t know what percentage of residents in in Longmont are without health care, or health insurance. It’s a large percentage, I’m reasonably certain. And this is a step toward in the direction of ensuring that all of our residents would have health care and I think that is our responsibility. If we can help make it happen. So I’m gonna recommend we support this legislation. Can

Speaker 1 3:41:00
you Okay, all right. So that’s been Moved by Councillor water seconded by Councillor McCoy does support resolution? What was that number? Again?

Tim Waters 3:41:08
This is the bill I have I have a motion on the resolution in a minute.

Unknown Speaker 3:41:11
Yeah.

Speaker 1 3:41:14
I’m sorry. What was the bill? This is House Bill 1209. House Bill 1209. Is there any discussion on this bill? Seeing none Let’s vote.

Unknown Speaker 3:41:39
That carries unanimously,

Tim Waters 3:41:41
can I can I offer a motion now on a resolution?

Unknown Speaker 3:41:44
You need to make a motion to suspend the rules. First

Tim Waters 3:41:48
I move we suspend the rules. Second.

Speaker 1 3:41:51
All right. Moved by Councillor waters, seconded by Councillor Martin to suspend the rules of procedure. All those? Well, let’s vote. Are there any discussion? Seeing none Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 3:42:29
So voice vote. Okay. Everybody’s voted yes. So that carries unanimously, Councillor waters, you

Tim Waters 3:42:37
have the floor. Thanks for your peg. So parallel to are compatible with House Bill pro nine regardless of what happens with it. I brought tonight a resolution that’s labeled draft that’s sitting in front of you. If dippin this would be a test how many of them whereas in this, have you seen before? You don’t have to answer that question, because it would answer would be a bunch of them. Not all of them. A bunch of them. In the preamble to this is real similar to what you saw in 2019, at least members of the council who were serving on the council at that time, there were three of us, four of us who were on that council. It was just prior to that election and the election 2019. And at that time, a city council, a former Council passed a resolution to support basically what this Colorado Colorado legislature did. That led to House Bill 2009. While while nearly all of the for the preamble is very similar, but we just recently updated the vision so this is the updated vision. What’s what’s different in this resolution and I’m not going to argue it tonight. I’m just want to point out the difference and then move that we would bring it back for consideration. What’s different is the now be there now therefore result is more specific to an outcome. And I don’t argue the outcome tonight, but I would like at least to pay to for you to pay attention to to point out that’s what’s really different in this and I’d like to move that we direct staff. That’s why we asked for the suspension of the rules to direct staff to place this on an agenda for council consideration to approve or not approve. Were supported, not approved support this resolution.

Speaker 1 3:44:24
Okay, so the resolution. What do you call this? Resolution 23x X made by Councillor waters Moved by Councillor waters seconded by Councillor Martin. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, that’s about it was to bring this back on a future agenda for consideration

Speaker 1 3:44:54
it is tired. So let’s, let’s have a voice vote. All those in favor. All those opposed? That carries unanimously?

Speaker 45 3:45:06
Thank you, Mayor. The next bill that is on your list is Senate Bill 23 178, concerning removing barriers to waterwise, landscaping and common interest communities. So currently HOAs really can’t prohibit zero scape, in particular, residential areas and in private property. That was something that was changed a few years ago. But there’s a little bit of a loophole that’s left in there. Pardon me, where, pardon me where an association can adopt and enforce design or aesthetic guidelines that would regulate the type number and placement of drought tolerant plantings and hardscapes. That may be installed on a unit owners property or in the common areas. So this is creating a situation where it’s kind of against what the original legislation was there to do, which was to be able to allow for water wise landscaping. So this this, obviously, this bill, support of this bill would further the City Council sustainability goals. And I’ve given in the brief some, you know, some different pieces that it would actually specifically require. And so staff recommends the City Council support Senate Bill 23 178.

Speaker 1 3:46:17
Certainly discussion? Nope. I move that we approve Senate Bill 23 178. So that has been moved by myself seconded by Councillor McCoy. Let’s vote.

Unknown Speaker 3:46:41
That carries unanimously, thank you.

Speaker 45 3:46:43
Thank you, Mayor. And then the last one on your list is Senate Bill 23 to 13, which you heard a little bit about tonight in public invited to be heard. This is the big land use bill from the governor’s office that really talks about the desire to provide housing and transportation and sustainability and climate goals, which are all things that are on top priority for the City Council. But the way that the governor is presenting to do this as by pre empting, local control around land use, and obviously that’s something that is very near and dear to every municipalities, you know, local control sensibilities, and so it’s not the fact that he that the governor is in the sponsors of this bill are interested in helping with the housing issues. We agree with that, that housing is a regional issue and needs, advice and support. But we would certainly support more of an idea around providing some of this guidelines and some of these requirements and tying state dollars or grants or incentives or those kinds of things to this kind of legislation as opposed to this giant stick of pulling away local control from professional planners who have dedicated their lives to this work. If housing was easy, we would have already done it. For one. And so for the state to offer some suggestions are great for them to think that they know better how to plan this community than you do, to me is a complete overreach. And so the city the city staff is recommending that council oppose Senate Bill 213.

Unknown Speaker 3:48:08
Councillor Martin?

Speaker 38 3:48:11
Thank you, Mayor Peck, I have a statement that I’ll try to make quickly. Because there are a couple of things that local control can’t do for us. And so I want to talk about finding a way to get rid of most of the odious parts of this bill without but keep those couple of things. I believe with Sandy that SB 23 112 13 is deeply flawed and will create a horrendous bureaucracy and slow down the process of equitable urbanization for progressive cities like Longmont, which have already traveled far down that road. However, it’s important to acknowledge the bill’s aspirations for land use reform to cure Colorado’s housing prices. Better structured, less burdensome state level regulation could do things for Longmont that we can’t do by ourselves. Specifically, the structure of the relationship between HOAs and Home Rule cities is a continual frustration, whether it’s water conservation pollinator sanctuaries, or accessory dwelling units. Long mounts aspirations have frequently been thwarted by independent HOAs within our municipal boundary. Today, too many of the registered residential neighborhoods with large shards, multicar garages and plentiful street parking are governed by HOAs. These are places where adding ad use and duplex conversions would be easiest, but the HOA is have covenants that prohibit it. This is a form of exclusionary zoning that HB 23 to 13 would end we also acknowledge the benefits to our local economy and workers when people with jobs in long run I can afford to live here. It reduces commuter traffic and increases worker prosperity because of reduced by drive time and vehicle maintenance costs. But if Longmont is the only city within commuting distance that lowers housing costs to make the live work dream come true, then Longmont resists risks becoming a bedroom community for cities like Boulder with less land and more jobs, that’s already happened to Longmont once resulting in the sprawling suburbs that we have. Now. If the surrounding cities must meet the same land use goals, Longmont does, that it won’t happen to us again, we’ll be free to become the tight knit well planned community we envision HB 23 to 13 needs to be structured with fewer prescriptions, but more TIF we don’t need to be shown the way but with the state holding our hands, let us design our city to high level standards, informed by the state and enforced by the state based on only by complaints by residents and watchdog agencies, if needed, without all of the state level bureaucracy. I move that council oppose SB 23 to 13 unless amended to allow cities to implement needed reforms each in their own way. Second,

Speaker 1 3:51:30
so opposition to Senate Bill 23 to 13 was Moved by Councillor Martin seconded by Councillor Hidalgo. fairing. Do we have discussion?

Speaker 45 3:51:40
unless amended? Yeah, just it’s a slightly different motion. Right. So

Speaker 1 3:51:43
unless amended. So I have gotten information backround CML, who are opposing this bill. And also the Metro mayors are in discussion. And both of them have stated that it’s almost too late to make amendments in the legislative session, that it should probably be tabled. Because there is no, there’s no time to amend this. The other thing and Harold, I’m going to call on you because I won’t state it correctly in our discussion that led up when you talked about the water issue? Because I think that is a huge proponent of this.

Unknown Speaker 3:52:29
Yeah, I can’t find it. Now. It’s not coming. Oh.

Speaker 1 3:52:33
Well, basically, if I can recap that the reason we’re in this spot is because of now I’m not recapping in my head of the no growth policies that some cities put in starting way back with the Danish plan, which is why I’m in Longmont. Thank you, Danish, Paul Danish. So I think it gives it gives a deeper value as to why we should oppose this

Speaker 45 3:53:15
still trying to look it up. But, you know, I would say historically, you’re right, Mayor, that there have been some communities that have put growth caps on that have done things in order to ensure that the ideas that you all have and have been pushing are, you know, are prohibited in their communities. Yet at the same time, you know, to say that that’s going to be the right answer for everybody. Right definitely is,

Speaker 1 3:53:36
I think it’s why it’s why our problem with housing is exaggerated because Golden’s 1% growth is making people leave, developers can’t develop their in the amount of time that they want to develop. And I think it was Thornton that has suburbs and not enough water. So part of this bill is that we should all share our water. And I’m not sure if we want to do that in Longmont, after we worked so hard to keep our water supply. If they’re building suburbia, they should build within their water capacity. So

Speaker 45 3:54:15
one other thing that is attached to the bill positions is an analysis by planning development services director Glenn, then the Mulligan, which really lays out here all the different things that are different between your code and what the state is asking for us to do. And so I see both sides of this. I’ve had this discussion about oppose, oppose, you know, if amended, you know, back and forth. It’s so ingrained, it’s tough to say that there’s any way to amend it. And yet at the same time, I think we’re all trying to reach the same goals or similar goals. But there’s so many things in this bill, that it’s it will be tough to amend it not that that’s a bad position. Because certainly, like I said, the goals are things that you’re interested in. It’s the manner of doing it. That’s not not okay through

Speaker 1 3:54:59
everything. but the kitchen sink in here, and it’s too much, it’s too went too far. The one thing that I didn’t like was that ad use that the owner of either the main house or the adu doesn’t have to live there. And that is problematic, I think, for our city. So anyway, is your current code? Exactly. So Councillor Martin, one more statement?

Speaker 38 3:55:25
Yes, I, I agree that probably this bill is going to die because it needs too many amendments. And even the people who favor it, say it needs too many amendments. So the reason that I wanted to make this oppose unless amended, was to make the statement that we need density targets for other cities to keep our city hold. And also that we would like to reclaim the land that our HOAs are bogarting right now, and get rid of that. Essentially, the HOA structure takes local control away from us too. And we’d like it back, please. So those are the two points that I’m you know, would like to get across. And, and I think that the rest of its gotta go, which is what I mean that, you know, a less amended to allow cities to implement needed reforms in their own way. So that again, that’s why I am asking that we vote for it this way. It’s gonna die anyway, let’s get our message out.

Speaker 1 3:56:44
HOAs are statutory with ordinances on their own, though. So I personally think that that would be a different bill to change the statutory bill on HOAs. So these are two. To me. They’re two different subjects that were lumped in the same bill and this purchase. Exactly. That’s why I

Speaker 38 3:57:08
write my letter to the sponsors. about changing them. But the bill the state has the power to change the HOA power and and the bill that’s before the committee tomorrow. So this week anyway, does take that power away from HOAs. So we need to speak for it. It’s not a separate subject right now.

Unknown Speaker 3:57:44
Okay, I don’t see anybody else in the queue. Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 3:57:57
So that passed unanimously. We are in opposition to this bill.

Speaker 45 3:58:06
That was the motion right. oppose unless amended. Correct. Okay. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 3:58:16
Did the first thing Okay, we are at the end of our meeting. Marin Council comments. Councillor McCoy.

Speaker 44 3:58:30
Thank you, Mayor Beck. I just wanted to thank the citizens along mine for allowing myself and counselor Hidalgo faring counselor, Rodriguez and Yarborough to have the opportunity to go to Washington DC and lobby our members of Congress and attend the National League of Cities congressional conference. I always learn a lot from these things, bring back a lot of these things, all recent emails on to members of staff and and feel that it’s been a very positive thing. But you got to you got to think that I think our community for valuing it as much as we do.

Speaker 1 3:59:18
Seeing no other people in the queue, city manager remarks.

Unknown Speaker 3:59:22
No reports. Mayor Council.

Speaker 1 3:59:24
Thank you, city attorney. No comments, Mayor. Great. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Second? It’s been moved and seconded that we adjourn by Councillor waters on the motion, counselor Martin on the second. All those in favor say aye. We are adjourned

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