Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Regular Session – September 12, 2023
Read along below:
Speaker 1 13:55
Evening everyone and welcome to our city council regular session meeting. I would now like to call this meeting of September 12 2023. To
Unknown Speaker 14:06
order you can
Speaker 1 14:11
view this livestream meeting at the city’s YouTube channel, or at the Longmont public media.org forward slash watch. Or on Comcast channels eight or eight ad. Can we have the roll call please? Don
Unknown Speaker 14:26
nampak
Unknown Speaker 14:27
here
Unknown Speaker 14:27
councilmember dunkel Berry,
Unknown Speaker 14:29
Councilmember Martin,
Unknown Speaker 14:31
Councilmember McCoy,
Unknown Speaker 14:32
Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 14:34
Councilmember waters, that’s member Yarborough. Here. You have a quorum
Unknown Speaker 14:37
to stand for the Pledge
Speaker 2 14:43
of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty
Unknown Speaker 14:53
and justice for all.
Speaker 1 15:01
As a reminder to the public, we just had kind of a meeting before. We started with our city attorney and city manager, everyone who came to speak on white 50 Francis street annexation, that is going to be as a is going to be a public meeting, I’m sorry. Yeah, public hearing when that item is called up. So I see seven people that have signed up to speak on 150 Francis street. So because when we discussed this before it was at a public hearing. So tonight’s also will be a public hearing on 150 Francis, because it’s a reconsideration of that. So it’s going to fall under the same thing. So I won’t call your name if you’re here to speak on 150 Francis street until it comes up on general business. So each speaker is limited to three minutes and one person may not give or assign your time to others. Only online residents and employees of the city of Longmont may speak during first call public invited to be heard and must sign up on the list prior to the start of the meeting. Persons wishing to speak on a specific second reading or public hearing item, which we just talked about, are asked to add their name to the speaker list for this specific item prior to the start of the meeting. Anyone may speak and no signup is required to speak during final call public invited to be heard. Can we I have a vote for to move the August 22 2023 meeting minutes. Thank you Councillor waters moved at Councillor McCoy seconded it. Let’s vote. That passes unanimously. Do we have any agenda items?
Unknown Speaker 16:56
Revisions
Speaker 3 16:57
there have a couple to note just for the record. Okay. We had two corrections that we published on Monday. One was a correction to the title and resolution number for Item nine I regarding Dickens Barnes now, reflected correctly and was published 24 hours prior. We also had a typo in 12. A in the description of the reconsideration item that was corrected. And then also on your desks tonight is a corrected ordinance for Item nine be regarding backflow and cross connection ordinance. There’s a typographical error on page 10. Line 11 that is highlighted for your attention doesn’t necessarily need to come off consent. Unless you have other questions, we will make sure the correct version is executed. It’s a it’s a very small wording change of the department name.
Speaker 1 17:47
Okay, thank you for that. Do we have any councillors want to make submissions? I mean, the motion is to direct the city manager. I see Councillor waters.
Tim Waters 18:01
Oh, when we were in the early stages of setting priorities that turned into three valid questions. When we talked about the museum, we acknowledged that that was not be a question that would come on the DVD come back to us questions. But we did have some conversation about adopting resolution encouraging a future Council once that’s built out to fund the museum at a level that is least competitive or consistent with a similar entities or facilities across the state. Since they’re going to do their own capital campaign, we’re not going to control that that’s a decision we made once they get it built out. But I’d like to move that we direct staff to bring I’d like to have a chance to vote on that resolution. So I’m going to do I would like to move that we directly have to bring resolution back to us for consideration between now and the end of October. That would encourage a future council to fund the museum at a level that’s consistent with at least comparable facilities across the state. They can use whatever criteria they think appropriate.
Speaker 1 19:08
Okay, that has been moved by Councilman waters. Let me see if I understand this. You would like a resolution. You would like to direct staff to come up with a resolution to continue to fund the art museum at a level that is commensurate with what’s going on
Tim Waters 19:23
with comparable facilities in other municipality. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 19:27
comparable facilities in other municipalities.
Tim Waters 19:32
It would be tough to take if you took the word continue out to find the museum at a level that’s comparable to similar facilities across in other municipality.
Speaker 1 19:42
Okay, did you get that done? Great. All right. Let’s have discussion on this. So that was moved. We need to vote on this first, but I want discussion and the reason I said that is it. Our voting thing came in So can we have discussion on that? It’s been seconded. Anybody have any comments or
Unknown Speaker 20:09
suggestions, Councillor
Unknown Speaker 20:10
waters?
Tim Waters 20:12
Maybe I would just add this, that we know that our groundbreaking this week on Friday. And we’re gonna see we’re going to focus initially on the courtyard, but also the expanding of the Children’s Museum. And once that’s expanded, there’s going to be additional staffing needed. We know that our museum, not unlike the library has not kept up with other activities, facilities amenities, funded by the General Fund, correct and where I can control what a future Council decides. But I think we ought to single given the other things we’ve done with valid questions what what our, what our preference would be, when the time comes to fund the museum when it’s when a future Council, the next council that makes that decision, they will know what were our preferences or intentions were from this council. When we do when we did not put this on? As a ballot question. Okay, we chose not to add a sales tax increase. But at some point, somebody ought to have a count, it’s gonna have to have a conversation about how you fund the museum at a level that it deserves.
Unknown Speaker 21:19
Okay. All right, let’s go.
Unknown Speaker 21:31
That passes unanimously, thank you, Councillor waters. So now we’re at the city manager’s report.
Speaker 5 21:38
Mayor Council actually have a couple of items to talk to you all about. The first is on September 10, the nonfarm item will be coming before council with the recommendation from the Planning and Zoning Commission, October, October 10, sorry, October 10. And when the Planning and Zoning Commission held that meeting, it did last for a while and they started, they actually started the meeting at 6pm versus 7pm. And talking to Eugene and staff counsel doesn’t have to make a decision on it tonight. But we did want to let you all know that under the charter Council does have the ability to start the meeting at 6pm versus 7pm. If we feel that there’s going to be a lot of folks there to talk to the item. So you all can direct staff tonight to start it at six or you can think about it and then direct staff at the next meeting in terms of what you want to do.
Speaker 6 22:40
I think that it would be wise to start at six, I think we need to make sure that the public is heard. And that that all voices feel that they’ve had the opportunity to speak. That can be a motion I move that we start at October 6 At six o’clock instead of seven.
Speaker 1 23:07
Okay. So it’s been Moved by Councillor McCoy’s and you by Councillor Martin that we have the October 10. Is it a study session or regular regular regular session began at six o’clock. Council waters.
Tim Waters 23:21
Thanks for your back. Can we do that conditional. That’s my birthday. Can we do that conditionally upon you have to provide birthday cake or not I didn’t watch
Unknown Speaker 23:36
and streamers. streamers?
Unknown Speaker 23:44
Sick no other people in the queue. Let’s vote.
Speaker 5 23:52
That passes unanimously. I do have one more item for you. A few. A couple of council meetings ago. There was a question from the development community regarding the SES and their ability to submit prior to expending a lot of funds. And they were under the impression that they had to do the full submittal package in order to do that. As we indicated to counsel during that time period. I think there was a motion for us to bring some options back to you all. And we were going to have a conversation with our outside legal counsel and internally with staff last week. They’ve had a number of convert the last couple of weeks staff has had a number of conversations they briefed me. And basically what we found is that when staff told the individual that they needed to have the full package ready in order to go forward with a variance that was a misinterpretation of the ordinance and the way that it was written. Obviously I indicated to you all when we looked at the property that the city owned related to what we would do on an affordable housing project that it would almost not let us move forward because of the amount of money it would take. And that was a concern, you know, wearing another hat. So what we found is that the other variants request that we have, they do require all of that information to be made available prior to it going forward to the Planning Commission. In this case, the ordinance doesn’t require that. And so a developer, the developer, the housing authority, has the ability to bring that forward to the planning commission and with a recommendation to the council, or the council’s decision making process at any time. And again, that the development or the developer, that’s their decision they need to make in terms of when they’re going to bring that forward to make sure that they have enough information in order to present to the city council and the Planning Commission, the rationale for the variance. And so based on that review, what we’ve determined is, we don’t need to change the ordinance as it’s currently written. They have the ability to do that now, before they spend all the money on the final design. And so I wanted to let Council know that because you all have a motion on the table for us to bring you back options. And we’re now telling you, we don’t need to change it. So if council wants to hold to the ordinance, it’s in place and not change it. I need different direction from you all.
Speaker 1 26:29
So let me just clarify something. I heard two things in your statement. I heard that the long run Housing Authority does not have to bring the request for variances. They can do it either be?
Speaker 5 26:45
No, I use the housing authority as an example. Okay. Under the existing ordinance, we have to do what everyone else has to do. Okay. Where my concern, my concern, you know, wearing that hat was that if you have to spend 400,000, to to get a fully designed plan. It’s hard enough to finance those projects anyway. And you can’t come up with the money to do that. That was my concern. When I heard this, that was actually the same concern that was presented by the developer, what we have determined is the way the ordinance is written, we don’t have to do all of that additional work. We can bring it forward to the planning commission and the city council, when whomever it is on a project feels like they have enough information for council to grant the variance. That’s their decision.
Speaker 1 27:40
without putting any money into design, etc.
Speaker 5 27:45
I would think you need to put money into design. So I will tell you from my perspective, if we were bringing a project forward on a housing, and we were asking for this, I would want the environmental study done, I would want a really detailed land use plan that really outlines everything we need. So we can give the rationale for doing that. But that’s up to the person who’s submitting the application. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 28:07
Councillor waters.
Tim Waters 28:11
Thanks for your pack. Let me just clarify one more time. We’re not talking about changing the sustainability evaluation system. Now, we’re not talking about eliminating, removing reducing the 150 foot setback. So we’re not talking about changing any of that good work we did back in 2020. Now, all we’re talking about is signaling that if somebody has a request for a variance, we decided then this is the group that would decide not pnz if somebody feels like they’re ready to present it, and what you’re suggesting they ought to have an environmental study, they ought to have, you know, whatever they think is going to be required to make their case. Otherwise don’t try to make the case. But that’s so so there’s no need to change the ordinance. Is that maybe that’s a legal question. I made the motion. Not to change anything in the SES but to make certain we have a clear process and a clear criteria for decision making. It would it be appropriate Eugene for me to move to rescind the direction that we gave it that time?
Unknown Speaker 29:18
Aaron Council UDMA. City Attorney Yes, I
Tim Waters 29:20
think it would be then I’m gonna move we rescind that direction. And based on what we’ve heard from the city manager,
Speaker 1 29:26
I’ll second. Okay. Okay, Councillor Martin? I mean, I’m sorry. Councillor waters made the motion to rescind his decision or his motion to bring back the SES and the variance ordinances. And that was seconded by myself. Discussion Councillor Martin?
Speaker 7 29:50
Yes, a couple of times. People gave examples. And it’s not for example, Councilmember waters gave the sample of they should have the full exam, the full SCS evaluation, a full land use plan? Well, that’s kind of a lot. It could be. I don’t want any I just want to make sure that nobody is construing this to those to be requirements, because it could be that a developer thinks they have a really persuasive argument for counsel with none of that stuff. Right. So we’re really saying they come with whatever arguments they think are persuasive, and then it’s on them whether they really are or
Unknown Speaker 30:31
not correct. Okay, good.
Unknown Speaker 30:34
Seeing no one else in the queue. Let’s vote.
Speaker 1 30:46
That passes unanimously. That’s it Harold for yours. Okay. We have a special report a 10 years after the flood report. And I would like Molly Donohue, maveo Donahoe, to report on the city’s accomplishments
Speaker 8 31:07
Peter Gibbons and I will be doing this together mayor of Calgary, so he’s gonna kick off.
Speaker 9 31:13
Did you mean Mayor Peck and members of council My name is Peter Gibbons, and I’m the city’s disaster recovery officer. Tonight Maliau, Donald’s Sandy cedar and I present our report to you and the Longmont community about our accomplishments in the recovery process at the 10 year anniversary of the 2013 floods. The report is titled 10 years after the flood and you all have a copy attached in your council packets. In a moment, I’ll hand the presentation off to Molly who will walk you through the details of our accomplishments at this 10 year anniversary. Then Sandy will help us conclude with a moment of gratitude for everyone who made this recovery so successful. With that introduction, I hand off the next part of our presentation Molly O’Donnell, the director of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Investment.
Speaker 8 32:14
Just making sure we have our port visible here. Okay. Good evening, Mayor, Members of Council. I’m here tonight tonight to highlight the stories of the flood and long lens road to resiliency in the last 10 years that this report beautifully encapsulates. 2023 has been a very rainy year and some of us have been biting fingernails with each new rainstorm. Longmont has the past 18 inches of precipitation in 2023. To date. In one week in September 20 1317 inches of rain fell in the foothills west of Longmont. The mighty Saint rain reared its head in the form of a 500 plus year flood event. A cu study estimates that the event eroded up to 1000 years of accumulated sediment.
Speaker 8 33:07
The flood cut the city in half, with only one road providing access across St. Frankrijk for several days. Meanwhile, life didn’t stop. People still had everyday medical emergencies. Babies had to be born, their parents not knowing whether they would be able to reach a hospital. It costs $150 million of damages to city infrastructure 2000 homes to be damaged or destroyed. The list of damages and closures goes on. Notably four or five of long months water supply sources were destroyed, but water service was never disrupted.
Speaker 8 33:48
Along with emergency response crews completed more than 400 rescues and located 64 missing people. Remarkably amazingly, not one life was lost in Longmont. The same can’t be said for our Boulder County community as a whole and this week we join our fellow communities are remembering those lost. The city’s other critical operation staff made swift decisions that save lives, shorten the time to recovery, and ended up saving the city millions in recovery costs. The wastewater treatment plants proactive response meant that safe and reliable water treatment resumed within 48 hours.
Speaker 8 34:27
Evacuations began immediately upon emergency activation and a fully functioning Emergency Operation Center was set up within two hours. I recall the story that in the basement of the Memorial Building was a huge store of props from the bomb shelter era of the 20th mid 20th century. So they were very dusty perhaps but ready. City staff no matter what department they were in or what area of work they were assigned to went door to door fielded calls staff the emergency shelter at the memorial building and helped however they could
Speaker 8 35:03
The transition from the response pace to the recovery phase started with helping people stabilize getting critical infrastructure functional, then assessing the damages. While mobile home park was virtually a total loss, and the st brand mobile home park was heavily damaged, staffed helped to find him temporary housing for displaced residents and set up a Disaster Assistance Center. The power of neighbor to neighbor relationships has echoed through studies of disaster recovery and resilience. And this was on full display as long that residents poured in to support those in need.
Speaker 8 35:40
So much about building resilience is creating systems that live on past the disaster event itself, so that it is ingrained and easily activated in the next event. The flood brought to light what strengths we had in the social fabric of our community, and what we badly needed to prepare for the next one. Our bilingual staff was instrumental in helping Spanish speaking residents understand the FEMA resources available to them. We have since spent 10 years fostering cultural brokers. The key connectors in our neighborhoods, resilient zip para todos identified barriers for underserved communities, and made recommendations that guide us to this day. The city’s long standing HUD funding programs made us the trailblazer for housing assistance and rehabilitation programs. Once we assess the full scope and scale of the damages to housing and infrastructure countywide, the price tag came to $1 billion, far more than the resources that would ever become available. Most don’t think of the seemingly Dr topic of resilient governance by choice at least but in Longmont and the region as a whole. We embraced it as the only way to make it through the tangled web of disaster relief funding and come out stronger on the other side. When HUD CDBG disaster recovery funding was allocated to us, we formed the Boulder County collaborative with Longmont as the lead agency. Together the Boulder County communities decided how and where to target funding so that those most effective and with the least resources were not left behind. The successful multi jurisdictional model has since been replicated to solve complex regional issues such as housing and Human Services. In total, Longmont administered $76.4 million to complete 41 infrastructure projects, Bill 451 new affordable housing units and help hundreds of households with housing supports across the county with one last easement purchase for the resilient same brand project that will happen this month. Right Jim? This month. Such sorry, lastly, please making a joke, every dollar if this grant pilgrim will have been spent by the end of this month. Central Talamantes approach in its pact to its patchwork quilt of disaster relief funding was taken the philosophy than involving the funding agencies as vital partners to solve problems together to meet a common goal, built productive relationships maximized funding opportunities, minimize the risks of recapture and ultimately delivered a higher quality product to our community. Without these partners and the $112 million of funding leveraged through them, long run success and recovery would not have been possible. The city’s FEMA grants were closed out in this 10th year since the flood with a funding retention rate of 100%. When you think about FEMA grantees across the nation that is simply remarkable. Here’s all the city funding. This is not including anything that was direct assistance to individuals or businesses. This is just what filtered through the city. While not quickly prioritized the resilient St. grant project and took the stance off the bat that we would not build a fortified channelized structure to simply convey flood flows. The beneficial ecological recreational and hydrological functions and values would be balanced with flood protection to create a unique and grand and its vision and breath resource for our residents and wildlife to thrive for generations to come.
Speaker 8 39:17
RSVP has bought us a restored sandstone ranch nature area and a new Dickens farm nature area. I should say flood recovery RSVP as well. Think brand Creek through Longmont has better ecological value than it has had since the first development surrounded its banks. Every bridge has been or is slated to be replaced along the length of the creek from the eastern city limits to Overstreet. Once RSVP reaches over more than 800 acres and 500 structures will be out of the map floodplain. The devastation of the flood came with sacrifice, but the silver lining was a once in a lifetime opportunity to bounce forward instead of bounce back. We are here tonight to commemorate that sacrifice and celebrate how far Longmont has bounced forward I’m gonna turn it over to Sandy to give our thanks
Speaker 10 40:13
thank you so much, Molly and Peter. We are so grateful for your work in this recovery work because they both came to Longmont after the flood happened at a point where staff was pretty much unable to do anything more and they were able to carry our recovery to its fruition. Thank you both. Okay. The flood of 2013 was a catastrophic event that affected 1000s of Walmart, residents, businesses and city infrastructure. The impacts continue to be felt to this day, yet the community reacted, the way the community reacted was truly remarkable. As a result of people helping their neighbors, business owners and strangers alike, the city putting together I plan to mitigate the floodplain and strengthen the creek channels and install more effective infrastructure. The city of Longmont is a stronger, safer and better place to live. We thank the community for your assistance, kindness and patience and resilience over the last 10 years. We thank our volunteers, donors, nonprofits, neighboring municipalities, and state and federal partners for their help in this recovery. We could not have been as successful as we were without you supporting us. We thank the city staff and city council both present and past their response and the recovery has been an all in effort and there’s been no department or staff member who hasn’t helped in one way or another we take care of for his leadership and those who gave recovery their absolute all whether they’re still with the city or have retired or moved on we recognize their contributions and thank them for their work and carrying their portions of this recovery we thank each of the city council members for your unwavering support and guidance without your care and leadership over the past 10 years we would not stand stronger today I would like to invite everyone in the room and in honor of those who are not with us as well to join together in a picture together stronger than in Unity my monster Ah come on that means you too
Tim Waters 42:28
stand up doesn’t.
Speaker 10 44:44
there I’d also like to mention that for anyone who is interested in commemorative events, check out Longmont colorado.gov backslash flood for sorry forward slash flood for the events at the museum and to register for tours on Saturday between 10 and one just before Then at Roosevelt.
Speaker 1 45:04
I have a question for you. Is there someplace on the web that people could go check to see all of the incredible pictures that during the flood and the extent of the water and because it was overwhelming, and people who haven’t weren’t here during that time, it’s kind of hard to to figure out what what it is we’re celebrating unless we can show them.
Speaker 10 45:27
So, yes, most definitely, if you go to that website, Longmont, colorado.gov, backslash flood, there’s some information there. But also, if you search for flood or on our YouTube channel for flood, you can see actually the entire documentary that was done about the 2013 flood.
Speaker 1 45:41
Fantastic. Thank you. Yes, thank you. We’re now at public invited to be hurt. Oh, I’m sorry, counselor, your dog appearing.
Speaker 11 45:50
So and I believe the museum as well that there was a period of time where they ran the videos, and I know that they’re putting together photos to bring about,
Speaker 10 46:01
yes, on Saturday, they will be you know, I believe that photo exhibit is free. And so people are welcome to come and take a look at the photo exhibit that opens on Thursday night. They’ll also be some other events at the museum on Thursday night. And then Saturday morning, we’re going to be doing tours in the blue hop trolley, so that people can there’s no beer sorry, but so that people can see the construction and what has happened since the time of the flood kind of trace where the flood was and what’s happened since then. So we’ll be running those tours from 10 to one you can sign up online like colorado.gov the museum will also have their exhibit open at that same time.
Speaker 11 46:36
Yeah, I just I lived between second and third on Bowen Street. So for a week, you know, we have the truck packed all ready to go just you know, just you know, the Levee Breaks, you’re out and our neighbors just south of us. That whole block had lost their homes. So I mean, I really recommend if you’re not in Longmont at that time, look at this and just, you know, this was part of our history. And, you know, I think the resiliency that builds up today stemmed from that piece, I did baby city labor saying we need people who speak Spanish so I went to the mall when the mall was there and, and helped translate. Because there was just, you know, just this pack password and how people just came together with shovels and, and just helped clean clean up each other’s basements and houses. So it was it was amazing. It was true testimony of what a wonderful community we have.
Unknown Speaker 47:31
Truly remarkable.
Speaker 1 47:36
Great. We’re now at Publix invited to be heard. I am just going to call on the people who do not have 150 Princess Street as their subject on here. So the first one is Taylor Wicklund.
Unknown Speaker 47:51
Oh, you are? Raise your hand if you’re
Speaker 1 47:58
skipping Michelle Bennett. Isn’t she first on me? Yes. Michel Bennett. Are you here for the annexation? Great. Fantastic. Come on up.
Unknown Speaker 48:19
Something up here. Hold on. Hey, Don, here we go. Is it CTRL L. It start my timer yet. When I tell you.
Speaker 12 48:42
Hello. Hi, good evening. Council members and Mayor Peck. I’m speaking this evening about good communication. Could you Michelle, would you mind giving your name and address please? Oh, my apologies to the shell Bennett 203 France street 27 years. Anyway, I’m speaking this evening about good communication, not adequate communication. Specifically the public hearing signs of use. There are two examples that are near me, but I’m speaking about the public sign the public hearing science in general. When the bonfire neighborhood was important that the pnz meeting for the development we were told that it would be held in October, we’re going to wait until October. And that’s what we all expected. We did not expect it to be changed. So we thought that was kind of a set in stone kind of thing. Then the date of the public hearing unexpectedly changed to August. I wasn’t aware of that change and after sticking with others who plan to speak in October, I realized that the mouse majority of the neighborhood was not aware that this meeting was going to be taking place in August. So I went over it and I looked at the fine and you can see it up there, the change was made, you can see it an example of one of you have fine the chain was made it was written on a yellow piece of tape and put on there. And that’s what you see the view of the sign from spruce Avenue. So it was very difficult to tell that there was any change in that date. From there, it was just by word of mouth. So I took it upon myself at that time to make my own fine and put it go ahead shop. It’s kind of dirty right now, but this is what I put in front of it, so that everybody who passed it knew exactly what was happening. So in my mind, I did the work that the city of Longmont should have done very clearly. It says right here, sir, very good job. So I took it upon myself to make a sign that anyone could easily read about the changes another example of poor communication and signage between the city and Bartlett citizens is in those pictures in about the 150 Brown Street annexation example number two, as you can see in the example number two the first arrow shows the top of spruce and Francis the sign is all the way at the bottom at the dead end and it’s sitting on a tree behind the trash cans. Nobody except for a handful and neighbors on that street who go to the dead end know about that meeting. So I don’t consider this a valid information at all. So in my my opinion, it should be boarded. Thank you.
Speaker 1 52:03
Thank you Michelle. The next one on the list of dentists I chose
Unknown Speaker 52:14
like go from here I guess
Unknown Speaker 52:19
Thank you Michelle.
Unknown Speaker 52:55
All of them are one in particular
Unknown Speaker 52:58
where the time isn’t an issue
Unknown Speaker 53:12
so then you’ll have to that’s all that’s boring
Unknown Speaker 53:45
listen Oh nice
Speaker 13 53:52
yeah. So there’s a couple of them that will give me
Speaker 14 54:13
back Peck, my name is Dennis etchells. Council members. I’m here today because I’m a resident of the greens that you Creek HOA and the I’ve also Nasr for the NG lay in my neighborhood.
Unknown Speaker 54:26
Hi Dennis. Would you mind giving us your address please?
Speaker 14 54:29
1117 signature circle. Thank you. That was very hot summer this year and our concern is for our neighborhood the greens that you Creek, which consists of 41 tiny homes next to the U Creek Golf Course on the 11th fairway. The dry weather is making us anxious and we are expecting even more dryness and the dying for each village is at all approaches and winter comes on. About 41 homes. There are six homes on the west boundary and 16 homes on the north. Avary 11 fairway rough on the side of the fairway is approximately three feet to 15 feet outside our boundary of our backyards the taller weeds in just a little bit farther that are in the creek. Back perimeter fences of our homes are within five feet so there’s not a lot of difference between us and the fairway at the Creek Golf Course 11 fairway without the seven degrees you Creek landscaping service, which is ours. Perhaps more along the fence lined and most weeds down the golf course also runs a mower once a week to keep the weeds down the same line between the two of them. They know about five feet off of our fence back fence lines to give us a little bit of breathing room every three years or so. During the winter when the knees are in the weeds and the reeds are dry we have weeds out in the way the wetlands there at some of them are as high as eight feet. The Longmont Fire Department burns to the eats in the ditch, they are very cautious and they do a very good job of controlling the burn the golf course at that time also ammonia leads on the rough area and out about areas all the way up to the reach to regret the fire breaking out of the ditch boundary. This is the extent of our protection as of two weeks ago. See this come up
Speaker 14 56:41
this is a shot coming down the back of our fence line as you can see we’ve got leads right out of our perimeter and this is looking from the east end up to the West End.
Speaker 14 57:11
Last week, myself and another owner met with the Ucrete golf course manager who by the way is extremely nice he was extremely cooperative. And he was on time for the meeting that he agreed to set up with us and we discussed the weed and rough grass situation on our North boundary as well as the 12 fairway love which means long paved street. We asked for more tall grass to be mowed down and he graciously complied
Unknown Speaker 57:38
that me yeah kind of Is this your
Speaker 14 57:41
amount of time? Let me finish I got one more paragraphs. Okay.
Speaker 1 57:47
I’m sorry. We have a whole other people that want to speak
Unknown Speaker 57:51
Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 57:53
You’re welcome. Next on the list is Strider.
Speaker 15 58:12
Strive advanced spinning 951. Seven tape. i Some people well that that Congress today decided to start to impeach our current president. And the only charge they can find is that his son for one month illegally had a gun. And the same people are saying every criminal and every mentally ill person should carry an automatic rifle any way they want without any restrictions. That’s what we’re dealing with. And Adolf Hitler’s number one adviser rebels told him when Hitler called him and asked him What should I do about our corruption and we’re getting money from the stealing bankers. Go bells. Tell them chaos, chaos is the best policy. And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with right here. And the I just found this book yesterday, liberalism against itself that you got to pretty much know history to understand what they’re talking about. And the basic idea was that the construction of liberal thought that shouldn’t just go back 50 or 100 years. I mean, Trump’s you know, make a mess. Are congrat again, he says, people think Nike that they know, he meant at 30. Well, really, it goes back to abolish the enlightenment, and abolish history and abolish thinking. And the let me give you a quote from Vincent van Gogh in a journal that I printed 33 years ago. Who said, by I am out of employment for years is simply that I have other ideas than the gentleman who gives places to men who think like they do. That preoccupies me constantly is that I failed myself in pressing, that poverty and skirting from participating. Certain things are beyond my reach, how long my God in our soul, there may be a great time, but no one comes to one himself had it and the pasture die, see only a bit of smoke from the chimney and pass on their way. I’ve kind of been living that 60 years, and let’s keep our democracy working. As long as we have it.
Speaker 1 1:01:23
Thank you. Thank you straighter, stand tall.
Speaker 13 1:01:38
Well, my name is Stan Cole 2001 Terry Street. One not. What I came here to talk about is what are the things that people hear about it, they hear the term woke, and a lot of people don’t quite understand the actual meaning of woke, woke, you know, according to the Webster’s dictionary is being educated and aware of social injustice and racial equalities. Now, so boy walk is actually just kind of be knowing stuff that actually happened. And what’s kind of interesting, a lot of this anti world stuff is actually kind of like, trying to perpetrate falsehoods and lies that are kind of like, what certain people would like to actually be the true. And relating this to actually LOD mine, is to actually be educated and aware of some of the things that have taken place here. Like prior the history of this was actually a Ku Klux Klan controlled city for a period of time. And actually, Main Street was actually paved by the Klan. Now, there was a lot of policies that have shaped the city, actually, for that town time, and are actually still kind of present. And little things like being woke might even be thought of like, checking how we do transportation that as town and like, how, if you’re aware, if you’re educated and aware that we looked to move people opposed to actually keeping people safe. This also applies to our housing, where certain groups of people have kept other people and they’ve enacted laws and regulations to actually help themselves and actually hurt other people. So what I can saying is that we really should, when we look at policies and what we’re doing in this town is actually become woke. No, educate ourselves, what’s going on, and be aware that a lot of times, social injustice, and racial and qualities are actually be perpetrated. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:43
Thank you, Stan. Diane crest.
Speaker 16 1:04:55
Diane Crist 23 for Mount Snapple Street. So why does Longmont not have enough affordable housing? I have three ideas I would like the council to consider. This council probably remembers a product called Cabbage Patch Kids. And that ran rampant and got wildly overpriced, and actually is still overpriced if you’re a collector. And it’s a good example of how demand and drop can drive price. Supply and demand is not a simple concept. And it’s often or can be emotionally driven. So I brought a newspaper with me, that is actually from September 7 of 2021. And the headline reads, rents increase rapidly in state. And it says the same the places we have been seeing the fastest rent growth are the suburbs in the smaller cities surrounding Denver, Colorado Springs are up 22% Since the start. And I say this is driven by the need for more room to accommodate remote work. And let’s see, Castle Rock had the biggest gain in apartment rents 22%, Denver had a loss of rentals by 7%, this is in 2021. Now, this year, 2023, they’re expecting a 16% decrease in Denver rentals, and maybe 20% By the end of the year. So what this seems to indicate to us is that people are actually looking for a suburban experience with more room, and maybe not looking for a smaller apartment in a higher density neighborhood. And that’s just the thought. Second, people come to Colorado for the low property tax and stay for the view that my whole life. Property taxes have become too high in recent years, expected to go up 40% In the next couple of years after the property tax assessment. Okay, so I, as an accountant does have knowledge but I’ll I’ll use average numbers of people who used to rent the $1,200 and make $500 a month off those rentals. And now they’re renting maybe for $1,500 and making nothing which means it’s hard to keep up the property. So I want the city to consider strongly giving maybe a property tax rebate for those who landlords who are independent and that rented marketer below. And that also those who have AD use and do the same because of the offer more affordable more affordability in the city again. Okay, third most high density building has occurred on available land, which is on the outskirts of town and without availability of the 10 needed services.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:02
Thank you, Diane, still bring needed services to
Unknown Speaker 1:08:06
those areas. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 1:08:10
Is there anyone in the chamber that that I missed? That is not here to talk about? The Francis street annexation? If so, come on up to the podium. Seeing none I will close first call public invited to be heard. And we’ll move on to the consent agenda. Don, would you mind reading the ordinances in the record on the Consent Agenda?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:32
Mayor will be going to pause to reboot the
Speaker 1 1:08:35
oh I thank you for the reminder. We need to reboot our system. We’re having some audio problems. So we’ll take a five minute break is five minutes long enough. We hope so. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:45
We’ll start at Five
Unknown Speaker 1:14:52
Yes, Sofia. Thank you It
Speaker 1 1:15:06
looks like we’re back in session. Our five minutes are up get in here
Speaker 1 1:15:21
the next thing on our agenda is the consent agenda. Don, would you mind reading those ordinances into the record? We’re gonna go
Speaker 3 1:15:32
I’d be happy to maybe mayor. The ordinances on this agenda will be heard on public hearing and second reading on September 26 2023. Except for ordinances 20 Oh 2023 Dash 47 and o 2023 Dash 48 which will not be held until October 24 2023.
Speaker 1 1:15:52
Excuse me done. Can everybody sit down or if you want to continue your conversations to go out into the four year it’s a little difficult to hear up here. Thank you.
Speaker 3 1:16:04
I’m just going to repeat that Mayor that ordinance 2023 47 and ordinance 2023 48. will be on public hearing on October 24 2023. Everything else will be public hearing September 26. Nine A is ordinance 2023 Dash 42. A bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities of the city of Longmont for the fiscal year beginning January 1 2023. Nine B is ordinance 2023 Dash 43 a bill for an ordinance amending sections 14.0 6.010 and 14.0 6.030 and repealing and re enacting sections 14.0 6.020 and 14.0 6.0 forro of the Longmont municipal code on backflow and current cross connections, nine c is ordinance 2023 Dash 44. A bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to lease the real property known as 12236 Weld County Road as managed by the Longmont Housing Authority. 90 is in his 2023 Dash 45 a bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to lease the real property known as 12250. Weld County Road five to Habitat for Humanity. 90 is ordinance 2023 Dash 46 a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of two slope easements in one utility easement located within the boundaries of lot of Fairgrounds marketplace final plat, generally located at 10011 North 95th Street, west of South hoever Street and south of Rogers road. Nine F is ordinance 2023 Dash 47. A bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 14.32 On rates and regulations governing electric service. Nine G is ordinance 2023 Dash 48. A bill for an ordinance amending 4.0 8.04 over the Longmont municipal code on city. I lost my place city rebate programs for income qualified residents. Nine H is resident resolution 2023 Dash 73 a resolution of the Longmont City Council supporting an application to the Toyota mobility foundation. Sustainable Cities Challenge mobility for all nine is resolution 2023 Dash 74 a resolution of alignment City Council conditionally approving a gift of real property from UPS Latin retail LLC to preserve a historic barn and homestead barn and nine j is approved Council contingency funds of up to 20,000 for a ballot issue informational brochure.
Speaker 1 1:18:25
Thank you Don. Do councils anybody on council want to pull one of these items? Seeing Okay, can I have a second? Consent agenda has been Moved by Councillor Martin seconded by Councillor McCoy. Let’s vote. And that passes unanimously. So we have ordinances on second reading and public hearings on any matter. The first one is a public hearing to consider action on amendment number 22 Dash 201 and 23 dash O one to the 2022 and 2023 CDBG annual action plans. Is there any kind of a presentation on this? No,
Unknown Speaker 1:19:13
unless you have any questions for us. Okay.
Speaker 1 1:19:15
I would like to open up do other councillors have any questions on this? ordinance? I’d like to open the public hearing on amendments 22 dash one and 23 Dash oh one to the 2022 and 2023 CDBG annual action plans. Is everybody anybody in the public that would like to speak to this? Seeing no one I will close the public hearing on I’ve just closed public hearing. So let’s have a motion
Tim Waters 1:19:49
move approval. I didn’t I can’t see that. You take that down please. I’ll move approve
Speaker 1 1:20:12
Okay. Councillor waters moved the 2201 and 2301 to the 2022 and 2023 CDBG annual action plans. Let’s vote. That passes unanimously. The next one is zero 2023 Dash 40 a bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to lease the real property known as Vance brand municipal airport hangar parcel H dash 52. To Lulu to Talulah aviation LLC. Are there any questions from Council on this ordinance? Or this bill? I’m sorry. Seeing none, I’d like to open the public hearing on 2023 Dash 40 Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to 2023 four dash 40 Seeing no one I will close the public hearing. Can I have a motion to move this?
Speaker 17 1:21:07
I’ll move ordinance 2023 Dash 40.
Speaker 1 1:21:12
Okay, Councillor Hidalgo fairing move 2023 Dash 40 seconded by Councillor waters. Let’s vote. That carries unanimously see is 2023 Dash 41 a bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to lease the real property known as Vance brand, municipal airport hangar parcel H dash 33 A to J and J hangar LLC. Are there any questions from Council on this ordinance? Seeing none, I would like to open the public hearing on 2023 Dash 41 Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to this? Seeing no one I will close the public hearing. Can I have a motion
Tim Waters 1:22:01
ordinates 2023
Speaker 1 1:22:05
Councillor waters mood 2023 Dash 41 seconded by Councillor Martin. Let’s vote. And that carries unanimously. We are now at the most important thing of the night that everybody’s been waiting for. Under general business, it is a reconsideration of 2023 Dash 29 Regarding annexation of 150 Francis Street. I am just going to read this little addition here on August 8 2023. City Council voted to reconsider 2023 Dash 29 and to table the item until September 12 2023 2023 Dash 29 has been copied from the July 25 2023 agenda and added to this agenda to fulfill counsels motion to reconsider. New information on this is reconsideration of a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the 150 Francis street annexation, generally located in the southeast quarter of section four township to North range 69 west of the sixth perimeter. primary, primary and end zoning the property residential mixed neighborhood and I see Don Burchette here is ready to take questions or give us information.
Speaker 18 1:23:38
There we go. Mayor pack members of council dumper Chad planning development services, I am here to answer questions for you, as spelled out in our council communication. The decision is back before the council you have a choice to make whether you want to make a motion and proceed that route or if you want to consider a motion to reopen the public hearing and go back through and take additional testimony. If you were to choose to do that though. You should give staff and the applicant the ability to also present any information that might be relevant to the information that was stated. So the decision really is yours. I think you could ask questions of staff if you want to. And that doesn’t necessarily kick that back into the public hearing. But I’m here to at your leisure. So
Speaker 1 1:24:30
okay, thank you is the applicant in the room? Yes. Okay. Okay, I think we need a motion to open reopen the public hearing for this item. I will. Oh, I’m sorry. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Speaker 19 1:24:49
Thank you, Mr. Peck. Also in recognition of the fact that there was a new piece of information, a letter that was submitted, I do believe it is. It is also pertinent to reopen The public hearing so I move to reopen the public hearing on this item in light of new information that has been submitted.
Speaker 1 1:25:09
I will second that. So is there any discussion on reopening this public hearing? Seeing none Let’s vote
Speaker 1 1:25:28
so that passes with Sean McCoy, Councillor McCoy in opposition six to one. So I think that we should just go right into the public hearing at this point. And the first person on the list is Taylor Wicklund?
Speaker 20 1:25:59
Evening, Mayor councilmembers My name is Taylor Wicklund. I live at 1704 Short place within bond farm. I am glad tonight we get to hear again speaking about an an enclave annexation surrounded by the city. I understand you’ll hear a lot of fear from my fellow neighbors about a conjecture potential development proposal at 150. Frances, the public needs to understand this is not a development proposal. If this land was to be developed, the property would have to still go through planning review, Planning and Zoning Commission and ultimately a council vote. Tonight we’re only talking about allowing an annexation into the city to allow a property to remove their aging septic system and connect to an eventual city sewer in the future bond farm development. As one can assume I’m not a member of the quote neighbors for responsible development because I believe it is responsible to remove a septic system just north of Isaac Walden Pond and connect to a city sewer. I believe it is responsible to allow only one jurisdiction the City Emergency Service Department to respond to emergencies in the neighborhood. I believe it is responsible to allow our fellow neighbors to benefit from our wonderful city services such as trash recycling compost, I believe it is responsible to actually understand the development process and know that this is not a development. I believe it is responsible to annex the entire enclave as this would then allow a city built sidewalk on the south side of spruce and eventually it paved Francis Street. I believe enclave annexations are fiscally responsible to acquire even small amount more property tax revenue toward the city. I believe it would be responsible to request a multi use pathway from the future bond foreign pocket park to our neighbors on First Avenue through 150 Francis and Hildebrand property overall. If the neighbors for responsible development group is truly not anti development, then they need to support the annexation of 150. Frances and allow the removal of an aging septic system. If not, then the group slogan needs to read neighbors for no development. I support the annexation of 150 Frances because I support what betters the city for the future generations long after I am gone. And I’m you know idled Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:17
Thank you Taylor. The next one on the list is Pauline Christiansen.
Speaker 21 1:28:30
Polly Christiansen 14 Jetson st Longmont, Colorado mayor and city council members. Thank you for your I applaud you for slowing down to carefully reconsider this annexation and the accompanying rezoning. There is no rush. The request is to be annexed for a sewer connection to replace the functioning septic system. This could easily be done, as has been the case for over 100 previous residents. The real reason for this request, I suspect is not a sewer connection but a rezoning from residential from to a rezoning to residential mixed neighborhood RMM to make it eligible for development to 18 units per acre instead of the current two small homes. This would be a very lucrative change for the New York investor who owns it or chooses to sell it. The RM zoning that the Planning Department created for this entire area is discriminatory and should be thoroughly reexamined residential mixed neighborhood was not pushed onto Fox Hill neighborhood or any wealthy or HOA neighborhoods. The density Brunt is solely borne by low to middle income areas like this and will displace people if in time. He had all the homes to the north east west and sells in this area or single family except for a few duplexes and quad plexes which fit in quite well, including some built by Habitat for Humanity. It is the perfect example of an an inclusionary and mixed neighborhood. Please pause on this annexation according to the planning department. Planning and Zoning is just an advisory board and city council is the final determiner you can decide not to annex you can decide to annex with the condition that future development be limited to six units per acre or rezone it to single residential single family. You can also decided to reexamine the broad rezoning this whole area of town as RM N created by the planning department and that flawed and vision Longmont plan, which is a an aspirational planning document, not a law. City Council is the ultimate authority and decision maker. And each of you will bear the responsibility for this neighborhood’s future. Thank you.
Speaker 1 1:31:02
Thank you, Polly. The next person is John Pillman.
Speaker 22 1:31:18
Hello, my name is John Pillman. I live at 1303 spruce Avenue. Although I’m not generally opposed to a well thought out annexation of properties along South Francis street, I do question the urgency of this specific annexation, especially given the fact that the owner has an operational septic tank and has indicated no plans to further develop the property for the foreseeable future. Let’s take a step back and do our homework. prior to granting annexation on South Francis Street. I’ve seen the city hold steady sessions in the past. And it seems appropriate here I can see several areas that could be addressed during a study session, allowing the city to make the best decision for all parties involved, including residents in the bond Farm Neighborhood and the property owners on South Francis street. A few of the items that could and should be covered in a study session could be number one, pros and cons of annexing all the properties on sale Frances rather than just a single property 150 Francis has anyone considered approaching the remaining property owners on South Francis to determine if they too wish to be annexed? And under what conditions has anyone considered the cost and benefit to the city with annexing a single property located at the bottom of an unpaved road? Number two review the current RMS zoning indicated in the city’s land use plan along with the impacts of higher density zoning that would govern future infill development and sell Frances is it possible that a lower more compatible density zoning would make more sense in this area. Three, conducted traffic analysis of the projected impact of future infill housing development South Francis, especially given current infill plans in the bond Farm Neighborhood, it can be done. traffic study experts can do these projections for look into the feasibility of a pedestrian path directly west of 1313 spruce, the 13th 13th spruce property from spruce Avenue down the first avenue allowing access to the same frame Greenway. If we can agree there is no real urgency on this annexation. Please consider consider conducting a study session on the best approach for annexing this area on South Francis before making any annexation decisions. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:43
Thank you, John Charles shilling.
Speaker 23 1:33:58
Hello, my name is Charlie Schilling and I live at two to four Francis Street. Thank you, Mayor and council for allowing me to speak. You have a decision and decision to make tonight and we would like you to choose to support our neighborhood as well as most others throughout the city. We’re an organized group that share many of the same concerns and goals of most citizens and other large neighborhoods such as champion greens and those surrounding Kinomoto. Those concerns include compatible infill development and zoning. We understand there’s a strong desire to add housing to our town and we support this. We’re asking you to do this with location and balance in mind so we can all live in harmony. It appears as though the council is back to reconsider another vote on 150 Francis street annexation because the property investors cleaned up the property. Well, I don’t think that’s simply cleaning up a property as a condition of annexation qualifies as a sound responsible decision to annex A property. And despite if this, despite what you heard earlier, if this Property is annexed the owner gets to develop the property at a minimum with minimal guests to develop the property by right with minimal review by neighbors. Please consider this before deciding this annexation. Do we know if the current zoning of RMS is compatible with this annexation, along with remaining properties on South Francis? Before any annexation is approved, we believe careful consideration should be given to annexing this area under a lower density zoning and we believe the surrounding neighbors would be happy with this and more open to annexing the whole area at a density density closer to what they have now. The applicants current concept plan includes two single family homes so we think this is a good choice and would be not a loss for the applicant. I spoke with Tom PICHETTE and he suggested that a change in zoning at 150 Francis would first require an amendment to change the comprehensive plan and land use guide map. We believe it’s prudent that the city delay any annexation until full consideration is given to a change in the land use plan and subsequent zoning that would apply not only to 150. Frances but to the remaining properties in South Francis totaling about five acres. The city council has the authority to make a broad range of choices tonight. Delaying annexation will give Council time just needed to study the issues and develop a fact based decision that will ensure compatibility of South Francis with the existing bond Farm Neighborhood. There’s no rush as you’ve heard before the investor at 150 Francis has a working septic so there’s no imminent need for annexation. If it is election season, and we’re looking for council members to support citizens and neighbors. Your choice tonight should be one of the following stick with your original decision and don’t annex and grant the investor a sewer tap if and when it’s needed, so we don’t have any problems there. The other option is delay annexation, and take time to further understand the impact to local infrastructure and what it would take to change this area to a new compatible zoning density, which would be our preference. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:02
Thank you Charles. Mark Danielson.
Speaker 24 1:37:15
Good evening, Mayor, council members my name is Mark Danielson I live at 251 Lincoln Street. At the second reading of one of the 150 Frances annexation, you’ll remember that dozens of neighbors showed up and 15 or 20 spoke out in unanimous opposition to the annexation. Not a single voice spoke up in favor of it a fact which several of you mentioned in your decision. Hearing that clear community consensus should have been and was decisive. That you are now reconsidering this issue is obviously disheartening and disorienting to the neighborhood. Nothing material has changed surrounding this annexation. Certainly our unanimous opposition has not softened. We all understand that procedurally, you have the right to change your mind. Just as on the larger political stage, individuals have the procedural right to challenge election results. But exercising our individual rights is often not what’s best for our city or country. I’d like to suggest that the invitation at this moment is not for you to exercise rights that can only foster civic cynicism, but take one small step to help restore the public’s confidence in city leadership. The optics after all of councillors is supporting unanimous public opinion while those citizens are in the room, and then quietly doing an about face when that discussion is closed, and they’ve all gone home. That’s hardly a healing narrative for a community. So our appeal to you is to take a breath. At this time of deep distrust of government at every level and leading up to election season. Show the community you have the wisdom and commitment to do this right. The bond farm neighborhood is up against a tsunami of change with the development of 70 homes being proposed adjacent to this property. annexing this now could theoretically add almost 20 more units to that total. But huge questions remain about how we’ll manage the increase in traffic, the drainage issues related to this sloping site, the infrastructure supporting it, let’s take this growth a step at a time. learning along the way, then responding wisely. So we don’t permanently disfigure a neighborhood that has been building organically for 100 years. I respectfully ask that you not reverse your decision on this annexation, but instead give yourselves to study and understanding how we’re going to grow this neighborhood wisely. Let’s cultivate a clear vision for this historic part of Old Town Longmont and then develop in incrementally guided by that wisdom. Thank you for your consideration.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:06
Thank you, Mark. Chris Conklin.
Speaker 25 1:40:15
Good evening Council Chris Conklin to 34 Francis Street. I guess I was a little confused that this that he would even entertain this, because the applicant obviously has a right to, to appeal to ask for annexation, but I don’t think he has any skin in the game. It seems to me that and I don’t know this for sure. But it would seem to be a clear bet that his property is probably doesn’t meet city code. So wouldn’t it be prudent that his property be brought up to code before you even consider this? Just a thought. Next, moving along, have anything one piece of property annex the whole damn place? All right, but don’t turn it to mix neighborhood. You and your letter to us said you’ve got mixed neighborhoods south, east and west, no mention of north which is single family. So that property that whole street could be annexed as a single family. It’s contiguous. You guys can do anything you want. You’ve already shown that. And so it wouldn’t be an anomaly to do this to to annex the whole thing and turn it into residential single family. Obviously, I can’t speak for the people who live there. If I lived there, I probably would seriously consider if I could get city sewer a paved road, but it’s not my decision to make. But I think you should hold off on the annexation of this at least. Especially deciding what it should be zoned. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:00
Thank you, Chris Doug Jones.
Speaker 26 1:42:13
Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Doug Jones. I live at 243 Sherman Street. At the previous reading of the 150 Frances annexation, every single one of the people who showed up spoke and was opposed to the annexation. Not a single person spoke up in favor of it. In fact, several of you recognize that. And you showed wisdom and prudence and refusing to support the annexation choosing rather to let circumstances play out more slowly in the March did growth. Why would you reconsider this decision when nothing has really changed. The Property Investor states that they want annexation only to connect the city sewer as the previous at the previous meeting, this council discovered they can get a sewer tap and if the septic if and when the septic tank shows signs of failure with council approval, the annexation is a likely is likely a strategy to allow the out of state investor to profit handsomely from the hectic dash to double and triple the density of this historic neighborhood. If this is not the case, then just let them know how to get a sewer tap. And if the council members point to a change in behavior on the on behalf of the property owner, like mowing his grass suddenly when he realizes that he’s at risk of losing 100 1000s of dollars. That’s the kind of decision that just makes the neighbors angry. So the obvious is, it’s obviously there’s quite a bit of concern around this neighborhood. And I believe it has to do with a lack of an overall vision of what this unique part of Longmont will become. They’re obviously passionate neighbors alongside eager developers, we all see the particular value of such a great part of a great city. You have the chance here to keep on the path to making it even better. Longmont residents and multiple multiple surveys have cited as one of the top frustrations that the sense local elected leaders are responding are unresponsive to their concerns. Rather than fan that flame I asked you to stay the course support the community and what you’re hearing here and refuse to overturn your original decision. Please continue to tap the brakes on this annexation. Don’t vote for something that will give the community a piecemeal and ultimately diluted solution to this area. Give Longmont and our community the time to discuss and agree on a well considered approach to developing lower Frances Street and how it affects all of the surrounding neighborhood. Thank you for consideration.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:39
Thank you Doug Mark van Wagner.
Speaker 27 1:44:50
Good evening, Mayor pack and council members. I’m Mark van Wagner and I’m the owner of 150 Francis Street. My my wife and I I would like to thank the city council for reconsidering the application to annex our property into the city of Longmont. The first thing I’d like to state is that I’m a property owner, not a developer. I went to high school in college in Colorado and I lived here for 10 years in Longmont. I have 12 family members who live in the boulder Denver vicinity. I’m an artist and I live on Long Island, but I travelled back and forth to Colorado often. I bought the property at 150 Francis in 1998 with a friend and together we spent four months cleaning it up. The property was littered with abandoned tools, toilets, sinks, bathtubs, animal equipment, manure, we renovated and updated both houses in exchange for reduced rents. We have an agreement with our tenants that they are to maintain the landscaping. They fell behind this year due to all the rain as of August 15 And September 7, I hired landscape crew and tree trimming company and along with the tenants we’ve made a conservative effort to clean up the property I will continue to supervise. Back in 2017 We were approached by the previous developer a bond farm to grant an easement for a public gravity sanitary sewer main through our property in exchange for paying the cost to switch our homes from septic to sewer. We thought this a great opportunity to end septic maintenance and become more environmentally friendly. Initially, discussions with Don PICHETTE and Brian Schumacher about acquiring a sewer tap were held in 2018. We were advised by the city it would be more cost and time effective to annex to the city of Longmont ahead of any plan sanitary sewer sewer installation to ensure we had all the paperwork in place for such a connection to be permitted. When the application was initiated in 2020, we had only included the 150 Francis property, but ultimately, per the request of the city, we included the alley to the east of us, which is a county enclave as well, along with a right away for Francis Street and a portion of Spruce Street into the application annexation. There was clearly some awareness. This area is an integral part of the Envision Longmont plan, especially for utility and access purposes. As stated in the annexation agreement, the owner agrees that any non conforming structure shall be removed by the owner upon request by the city. I’ve agreed to that. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that the annexation process has spanned five years of efforts and costs. We have filed all the city’s recommendations. And in February 2023, our annexation application was approved and recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission six to one. We’ve acted in good faith. We hope the City Council recognizes our efforts. Thank you.
Speaker 1 1:48:04
Thank you, Mark. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on public hearing on this issue? Seeing no one I’m going to close the public hearing. Sure, if it’s on this issue, Diane.
Speaker 16 1:48:29
So Diane, Chris 2034, Mount Sneffels. And so it occurs to me and a smart Boulder County Judge once said to me, that people are happier with decisions that they have a part in making. And I think that’s very good advice. And seems like in regards to this bond farm issue, that the council is put in the position of making one side the winner. Excuse me one side the loser. Yes. It’s not about farm issue at all. Okay, well, the Senate the annexation in the bond farm? No. Okay, the annexation of 150 South Francis Street. Right. So it seems like the battle lines are being drawn is where I’m going with this. So I’m just wondering, do you still have time is a to do arbitration, maybe see if there can’t be a compromise between both sides something that satisfies both sides of the neighborhood? And if that is still a possibility. Just some thoughts. Thank you.
Speaker 1 1:49:33
Seeing no Well, no one else in the that wants to speak on bond farm. No, I’m sorry. No, I’m saying it. 150 Francis street annexation. I will close the public hearing before Council has gets to speak on this. The staff have any questions or concerns? Nothing. We need to ask questions if you come up. So we need to Make a motion in order for Council to discuss this
Unknown Speaker 1:50:09
I’m sorry, I’m in the queue.
Speaker 1 1:50:12
I’m going to read this first so that they know what the bill for the ordinance is the wording on it. So it is a bill for an ordinance 2023 Dash 29 conditionally approving the 150 Francis street annexation, and generally located in the southeast quarter of section four township to North range 69 west of the sixth Meridian and zoning the property residential mixed neighborhood. So can I have a motion? Well okay. Councillor McCoy,
Speaker 6 1:50:56
I move that we delay this annexation and have a study session for Ricans for this issue around the reconsideration of the 150. Frances Street. Second.
Speaker 1 1:51:11
Okay. So the motion by Councillor McCoy is to delay this bill for the ordinance until we have a study session and it was seconded by Councillor Duggal fairing. Now I will open it up for counselor discussion. Councillor Martin?
Speaker 7 1:51:31
I think that some very important points were made tonight, especially about good faith. Someone mentioned that they thought that this was a time of distrust of government and elections. I see it as a time of overwhelming conflict between self interest and the common good. And what I have heard tonight is an overwhelming demonstration of people acting in their own self interest against the common good. And they are willing to say things that simply are not true and are definite are proven to be true by the letter that we received, which was read this evening. There’s not a developer, there’s not a conspiracy among developers. And there’s septic tanks, right in the middle of Longmont north of some of our waterways in elevation, I mean, north of some of our waterways, this application has been has already been considered for years, there is literally no downside to doing it. Now. All of the delaying suggestions could be considered just as well, with this property in Longmont as outside Longmont. In the meantime, we need to get hold of ourselves and understand that we are a community that is bigger than a few square blocks, and that community has needs and that the people who live in there that don’t own property are real.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:18
Councillor McCoy,
Speaker 6 1:53:20
Thank you, Mayor Peck. Well, every day code and forcement goes out into the community. They asked people to mow down their tall grass and pick their excessive weeds and cut down the low hanging branches that hang over City Sidewalks, the expectation of of just cleaning up the the property was done quite a while ago that they knew that they had to keep this up. This is a unique situation, this property is something that we really have to look at in the sense of why do we want to go ahead and annex something when a simple sewer tap would have sufficed and secondly, we’ve got a lot of things that we put in as infrastructure and to fix that would have to go in to fix this I I will grant the the the applicant the issue around maybe a sewer, you know, septic system and water situation. But the thing is, is that I don’t think we had to get to this place if we just if they were really putting in just that and it just seems like they’re throwing everything at the wall except for what really needs to be done. And if it’s just a sewer tap then then go ahead and and put that in don’t and the city can help you with that if that’s an grant that to you, but I don’t think that that’s really the issue here.
Speaker 1 1:55:00
who’s next? Mayor Pro Tem might Rodriguez.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:05
My popped up. Okay.
Speaker 17 1:55:09
Actually, I have a question more for you, Jean. I had heard in past references an enclave within an enclave and you know, I pulling up state, the Colorado revised state statutes amendment 31 Dash 12 Dash 119, where it talks about the disconnection of a territory or you know, breaking up. County let me go to the statement that I saw that referenced the Enclave. So notwithstanding any other provision of law county shall not disconnect any land owned by the end. So this is it’s county it’s not County. Oh, or county owned or land owned by the county. It’s in a county. You know, it hasn’t been annexed into the city. So it’s county rezone or county area. unincorporated. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. And so yeah, and then so looking at where it from, so it can’t be an extended essentially, where the disconnection would result in creation of a new enclave. So just I guess I just wanted some clarification on that. Does that have any bearing on the issue that we’re trying to hear right now?
Speaker 28 1:56:29
Mayor and council Eugene, may you city attorney? Can you repeat that citation?
Speaker 17 1:56:33
It was Thank you CRS? Yes. CRS? 31 Dash 12 Dash 119?
Speaker 28 1:56:55
Can I get a minute or do you want to keep going? And we can
Speaker 17 1:56:58
answer other questions. Yeah, it just you know, as I was hearing some conversation, I
Unknown Speaker 1:57:04
just did a quick search of that.
Speaker 17 1:57:07
And, you know, I wanted to make sure that we are also falling in line with state statute. And would this have any bearing on that? That might impact our decision?
Speaker 1 1:57:31
Gina, I think I’m gonna call him Mayor Pro Tem while you’re looking at up. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez.
Speaker 19 1:57:37
Thank you, Mayor Peck. I was in the losing portion of the vote last time. I come to city council, having done my homework. So I’m not rushing anything and I am very well aware of the annexation process. I’m very well aware of this particular property. Its tongue contiguity, which is part of the annexation requirements, which it does meet statutorily. I believe No, I’m not the lawyer but I believe kind of this the statute you’re you’re citing councilmember you dug a fairing is kind of more referring to flagpole annexations where you will have Yes, one piece annex that’s completely surrounded an enclave within an enclave. Right. So I don’t think this would technically meet that. But I’ll let the lawyer speak to that. My concern with the motion on the table is by delaying and adding a study session on this item is that we’re again allocating more staff time and more staff resources to something that I think that we’re all most likely prepared to vote on tonight, regardless of the outcome, so I will be against delaying a decision.
Unknown Speaker 1:58:52
Eugene May
Speaker 28 1:58:55
May mayor and councils I’m looking at 3112 119 disconnection of territory. This is referring to landowners who have annexed have not been served by a municipality and then want to de annex because of the failure to serve more than three years after annexation. So I don’t think it’s applicable in this situation. Okay.
Speaker 1 1:59:18
Seeing no one else I’m going to weigh in here and it was when Mayor Pro Tem reminded council that we would not we voted not to force the annex and enclave and when he wanted the 150 Francis Street to be annexed for me. It is the definition of an enclave. For me the definition of an enclave is the entire property that is owned by another entity. For example, Boulder County, so it is all the land in my definition of what an enclave is, but trying to figure out what this is I read all the state laws and acts regarding the question of whether the entirety Even enclave has to be annexed and not finding anything. I reached out to Nicole Meyers on the stage she is the Managing Senior Attorney and assistant team leader for the Office of Legal legislative legal services. And she said section 3112 106 C R S does not contemplate only a portion of an enclave being annex, or her. Her thought process was I think this section is used when the municipality in intends to annex the entire enclave. My concern with what our city is doing is that I’m afraid we’re going to start piecemealing annexations and I wondering, and I would like is Mr. ppreciate either he is in this annexation, are we also annexing part of Spruce Avenue? And that was not on any signage. And I’m not sure if that’s the case. I’m not sure. I’m not sure that we knew about that.
Speaker 18 2:01:16
Mayor pack members of council Tom Birdshot city of Longmont Planning and Development Services, excuse me, get up my presentation from the last time we were here. The Council last voted to come up. So what you have on the screen is my PowerPoint presentation. Slide three was the map that showed the annexation. So in the red is the annexation boundary. That read of the annexation boundary shows the blue parcel which is the one acre parcel owned by the applicant 150. Frances, the remaining red area, the tea so to speak, includes all of France history right away, and includes a portion of Spruce Avenue along the south side of the right of way that we currently have in our city. There is half of a right of way approximately, that is technically in Boulder County. That is spruce Avenue. And it goes along the frontage of this old subdivision. And we are annexing
Speaker 1 2:02:27
that. So is that going to be part of this? Or is that a separate annexation? No, it is
Speaker 18 2:02:31
part of this. It is all of this. The blue just shows you the property proper the one acre of land that the applicant owes, the red is the boundary of the entire annexation. That’s what this was showing when I did my presentation a month or so ago.
Speaker 1 2:02:49
Okay, and I didn’t I didn’t quite get that. So thank you for re You’re welcome bringing it back up. So I am not going to vote for this annexation. Until Council decides how we’re going to do annexations in the city. I am totally against piecemealing them of bringing in one property on an enclave and giving one property in the neighborhood city services. To me that’s an onerous and it is bad city management. We don’t force annex any anyone. So I think those are things we have to decide as a council going forward. As this comes up again. Whether these neighbors want to be annexed in or not is not the question. For me. The question for me is how does counsel want to handle enclave? annexations and is an enclave the entire property that is in the county? Or is it just one property within that enclave? To me this sets a precedent that is going to come back to bite us as a city. So I Councillor waters I will be voting no on this motion but then making another one
Tim Waters 2:04:17
could you just clarify the what’s piecemeal about this NSA looks like we’re annexing the red T looks like we’re annexing every all the Enclave. No.
Speaker 18 2:04:32
Mayor PUC councilmember waters Give me just a second I will try and walk you through this a little bit. So the map on the screen. as I just noted a moment ago, the red area is the area that this annexation would include. Currently, everything in this subdivision when the hash in the hash marks within side the hash marks is currently older. So that is The Enclave, all of the roughly I think there’s eight, seven or eight parcels in this on the street combined ownerships. So, if in the past the council had given us direction to go out and try to see if we wanted to have enclaves and extend to the city, we started that process. The response we got was very lukewarm. There was hardly anybody that asked we did every enclave in the city of Longmont. This was back around 2018 ish. And we came back to the council reported that was the what happened, and asked if you wanted us to proceed, there was no direction to proceed. So we stopped. So there are enclaves like this within the city.
Tim Waters 2:05:52
So the the implication here is that if we decide we’re not going to annex part of an enclave when it’s been requested, until every property owner in the Enclave requests annexation, which which which would avoid the forced annexation, or if we did all this would be a forced annexation, we would end up annexing nothing, even if it’s in the city’s interest until all the property owners, so it potentially, in this case, I know about this case, works against the city’s interest to put us in a position if it’s a policy position to not proceed with annexation, when there’s a request because not everybody in the annex, agrees with the request,
Speaker 18 2:06:42
I would state it just a little bit different. And when I am certain, you’d be way better at stating what I would say is that it’s a it’s a council decision. Based on the location and the specifics of the area that you’re looking at annexing some areas, the council may make the decision that annexing the entire enclave is to the benefit of the city. You can work, you can plan it all together, you can look and share infrastructure costs, things like that. But we also do annexations of property that are technically enclaves all the time. They’re in but they’re larger parcels and they’re not surrounded by existing development. So that is another policy decision the Council makes when they choose to annex property into the city of Longmont. So it is a policy decision of this council and basing it on the information you have at hand.
Tim Waters 2:07:41
I appreciate your response. I’m not persuaded by what I just heard. I’m gonna vote against the motion as well to for the study session, and then I’ll weigh in or in cast by votes as we move forward. Thank you.
Speaker 1 2:07:56
Seeing no one else in the queue, let’s vote. Don, would you restate the motion?
Speaker 3 2:08:07
I captured it briefly. We’ll see how I did. The motion was to delay on this ordinance or this annexation until a study session could be held to consider all of the information council needs
Unknown Speaker 2:08:23
Okay, thank you let’s vote.
Speaker 1 2:08:37
So that fails. Two to five. Two people counselor donco fairing and counselor McCoy voted in favor and myself counselor Martin Merica, Tim Rodriguez, counselor Yarbro and counselor waters voted against
Unknown Speaker 2:08:59
Councillor Martin
Speaker 7 2:09:03
we having learned that many of of the concerns about non code compliance have been explained and mitigated already, and also observing that if there’s more code enforcement to be done, it’s much more easily done with this parcel inside the city than outside the city. I move that we proceed immediately with the annexation of this parcel.
Speaker 1 2:09:42
Okay, it’s been Moved by Councillor Martin to proceed with annexation of 150 Martin Street seconded by Councillor waters. It’s open for discussion. I will reiterate what I said is that for me it is the definition of what an enclave is. And as we We move forward as a council. And we have other enclaves within the city and one or one property and each enclave wants to be annexed. I think for the good of the city, we have to decide, are we going to annex an entire enclave? Or are we just going to take single properties out of an enclave and annex them? separately? It doesn’t make sense to me on city policy to do that. So I will be voting against this. Councillor Martin? Oh, Eugene, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.
Speaker 28 2:10:37
Thank mayor and council. Sorry for the interruption. I just want to clarify your Are you moving approval of ordinance? 2023 29. Yes. Okay. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:52
Did you want to speak again?
Speaker 7 2:10:53
Yes. I would just I would just like to say, Sorry, I got a little derailed there by not speaking when I expected to. I would like to ask a question about what the current precedent is, because I would expect and believe that when a tract of land has requested annexation, we don’t necessarily consider it anything other than the specific statutes require about what adjacency to the existing cities are required. And obviously, since this was brought forward by the land management, folks, I would assume that this is plenty adjacent enough. So I don’t I mean, my where I’m going with this is I don’t think we need to this to necessarily set any precedents by this vote because I think there’s already a precedent.
Speaker 18 2:11:57
Here Peck councilmember Martin, the annexation meets the one six contiguity requirements as required by the state statute. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:09
Seeing no one else in the queue, let’s vote.
Speaker 1 2:12:24
And that carries with myself, Councillor Hidalgo faring Councillor McCoy in opposition. Councillor Martin County, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and Councillor Yarborough Councillor waters. I have a hard time saying that in favor. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for caring about your city and being vigilant. I do have a question though for I don’t know if it would be for Glinda Nijmegen for Harold or for dawn. But I did receive yesterday in my email, an Adobe document to sign for let me pull it up. And I’ll just read it to you. And now I didn’t sign it. And I need to I need to have it explained to me.
Speaker 3 2:13:32
Mayor if I might the wit our office dunking town and city clerk or office routes those documents to you for signature so we can look at that and see what that is.
Speaker 1 2:13:41
Well, it was a it was to sign for this annexation as though it had passed yesterday. It and it was all signed yesterday. And I thought we haven’t even had the meeting yet or the vote yeah
Speaker 3 2:13:55
we it’s not it’s not completed not executed. We don’t final execute until the day after the meeting. Pending what happens at the meeting so I haven’t attested I haven’t I haven’t finished those so it’s part of the routing process. Happy to look at that particular item. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:14:12
it should be it should have come to us when stick come to me wins come to you Wednesday. Yes. As well as the UPS Latin one came to me yesterday and it was signed by all parties on the 11th but we didn’t have it on the agenda until today. So we will look at that. Please. That was very frustrating to me. Okay, we are now at the 2024 proposed budget presentation
Speaker 5 2:14:52
this is gonna be a pretty lengthy presentation. Do you all want to take a break before we started?
Unknown Speaker 2:14:57
We do. Let’s take a five minute break. Rick
Unknown Speaker 2:15:09
I still think we need to define what it
Unknown Speaker 2:15:19
is We are back. So Teresa Malloy,
Speaker 29 2:22:51
welcome. Good evening mayor and city council Therese Malloy, budget manager. So we do have a few topics for you for our budget presentation this evening. We’re going to cover employee compensation and benefits. And so you’re going to hear from Joanne in regards to our 2024 Pay Plan. And then Jim is going to cover our retirement plans and the health benefit fund. He’s also going to talk about some insurance funds. And then we’re gonna move into the budget summary, high level overview in total, talk about a few revenue projections, the general fund budget summary, general fund reserves, and then the use of general fund fund balance and then finally wrap it up with public safety fund budget summary. So, Joanne?
Speaker 30 2:23:46
Good evening, Mayor, Members of Council, I wanted to talk today about the employee pay plan. And we also have a little bit of additional information in regard to the 2023 compensation study since the pay plan was based on that. So as you may recall, the city did contract with Mercer in 2023, and we conducted a compensation study for the city of Longmont. We did have four different things that came out of that compensation study. So the first thing was the compensation assessment. And the second was a review of our current pay plan. The third was a review of the city’s paid leave. And the fourth is some recommendations for consideration. In regard to the compensation assessment itself, there were 151 jobs that Mercer took a look at to be benchmarked. We were able to successfully come up with a match for 106 of those jobs. So we also did go ahead and back slot 102 jobs. And what that is, is where we had those 106 matches. We took positions that were consistent with those matches, and we then created a benchmark that would align with those original matches. We used a number of different surveys so those are listed here. Those are new surveys for the city, but they are served A’s that are a little bit more widespread. And we think that it’s going to give us a lot better match to the market. We match those positions to the 50th percentile, we wanted to make sure that we were consistent with the compensation philosophy that we have. We also applied a geographic differential because a lot of those surveys were national. And what we’re looking at next year is making sure that we match additional jobs to the Mercer study, as well as the Willis Towers Watson study, which are the larger studies in the country. In taking a look at our current pay plan, which was the second thing we asked them to do, they did determine that we did have a pretty common pay structure, it was actually the second most common used in the market, we did find that it was what we were doing today was an excellent match for what we should be doing based on our philosophy. And so what the structure we have right now does is closely aligns us to mark it. And it helps us to be competitive, it helps us to take a look at our jobs yearly and have them be flexible and be able to realign them as we go. And so with that we had a pretty high level of competence about the pay structure and the pay system that we have now. And so that is why the pay plan looks very similar in terms of the structure this year compared to previous years. The third thing that Mercer did for us is took a look at our paid leave. And so they looked at our current accruals. What we did find is that for employees that have 15 years or less, we do have a pretty competitive with market process right now. But there were a couple areas that we had for improvement. So the first one was for employees that were over 15 years, we could use a little bit more time for accruals. With that, we also have a recommendation for offering parental leave, we did accept that recommendation, we’re working on that recommendation for moving forward. And then the third thing is we have found that there are a lot of competitors, especially other cities in our areas that have started to offer time off when employees start. And so with that, we wanted to make some changes to our personnel policies for all three of those things. And we will be bringing those back to council along with initial time, we’re finding that we need to offer competitive rates commensurate with experience. And those are for positions that are coming in with significant experience to be able to attract those candidates for those positions. So when we do bring the personnel policies back in October, we have recommendations in each of those areas that align. The fourth thing that Mercer did for us is took a look at recommendations. So with our pay plan, the structure is pretty consistent with what we’ve had in prior years, they did recommend that we change the current ranges to be plus or minus 10% on either side. So in the past, we’ve really had it from the 90th percentile to the 107 or 100, and eighth, and depending on what you’re looking at, we’ve now changed that to the 90 to 100 and 10th position to be consistent with that recommendation. They did give us a lot of updated midpoints. For positions where there was below the target market, the target market range, they recommended that we implement a compensation software program to manage the compensation data that we have. We’ve been doing that on a manual basis for quite some time, we actually did go ahead and jump in and implement that recommendation. already. We’ve selected a pay factor software. And we do expect that to be up and running with all of our information next year. They finally recommended that we participate in and purchase robust, published datasets. And we will be doing that going forward. In terms of our compensation philosophy, this has been the city’s compensation philosophy for a while that we will be paying competitive market rates in 2017, what we took a look at is paying up to 102% of market and the reason for that is because we have a workforce that is about the same as other similarly sized cities, but they’re doing more tasks than many other cities because we have different functions in our city that don’t exist in many of those others. So from an alignment perspective, the 102 felt like it was a budget appropriate for the budget, but also to acknowledge that efficiency. In 2024, we did do the compensation study. So we have new benchmarks for many of those positions. We also do have a number of benchmark positions that did not that were not part of the compensation study. And so they have retained that existing benchmark to public data. With the compensation study, specifically, they did identify some a couple of positions that were over market, we took a look at what they recommended. We reviewed it with the directors, we do have five positions that will be frozen as a result of those recommendations because we found that their recommendation did match what the data was. Once the market catches up with those positions. Since they will unfreeze. We had some challenges with our city specific data in 2024. Employers Council has traditionally provided that data for us, they notified us in 2023, that they would no longer be collecting that data. They have moved that information to pay factors, we will have access to that data in the future. We did not utilize that data for this year. And the reason we didn’t do that is because the data was moving into pay factors. It was moving pretty consistently, as we were looking at it. And so we didn’t have any sense that the data was stable enough to be able to use those positions we aged for the pay plan that you’re seeing in 2024.
Speaker 5 2:30:48
Before Joanne goes on, one of the things that that really hit us when we talked about Mountain States, and what occurred is it wasn’t just Longmont that it hit, it was pretty much every city that we work with, that didn’t have that data. And so Gina Purina who’s who’s on Joanne, staff began working with other compensation managers in multiple communities in the metro area all the way up to the front range. And they’ve been meeting on a weekly basis to try our monthly, they were made weekly, weekly now, trying to figure out what they were doing what they were going to do. So every city that had positions with that Mountain State’s data, I think, is taking the same approach of aging it forward and then knowing next year that the data will all come together.
Speaker 30 2:31:47
So that next bullet point is exactly what Harold was just talking about. We did set up those meetings throughout the Front Range to make sure that we were taking a look with everyone. What are we doing with this data? What are we doing to make sure that we have the information correct. We also worked with those cities and counties to take a look at what projection we have for 2024. And so what you’re seeing in the pay plan is 4.64 is a recommendation for increases in the market itself. So taking a look at all of those pieces. The philosophy applied to 2024 is to adjust our new benchmarks. For the positions that we didn’t have data, we age those and we just increase them by that 4.64. We do anticipate as we get that data that we may have additional additional adjustments that we need to take a look at. Recommendation is to continue to pay at 101% of market and continue our exceptional pay budget. Some special recommendations for collective bargaining they do have a contract. And so because of the contract, the recommendation is to go ahead and follow the contract. I guess that’s more than a recommendation we do need to follow the contract. For LPC are step positions, we’re going to continue those on a step rate because the benchmarks in the market is showing step rate. So we just increase those step rates, but we kept the rates consistent.
Speaker 30 2:33:18
For benefits, we’re going to have Kaiser continue to provide our health care benefits. We were fortunate in 2024, that we had a 5% rate cap that we had negotiated in the past. So we will be just increasing that by the 5% approve rate cap. We do not have a projection for future years at this time, we will be taking a look at healthcare next year to make sure that we’re competitive, whether that’s with Kaiser or that’s with another provider. With VSP, our exam only plan had a rate decrease. So we were able to actually increase this benefit to examine materials and just make that a little bit more competitive. With Delta, we were able to continue that at the same no rate increase for that for mines and Associates, we do have a 3% increase. That’s been an EAP. That’s been super helpful for our employees. They just have a lot of benefits for first responders. They come out on site when we’ve needed them for specific incidents. And they’ve been very helpful. So we did lock in a two year rate guarantee with them. For future direction with benefits, we do want to take a look still at employee benefits that are not currently offered. So anything that we have for voluntary benefits and just making sure that we’re competitive in general. We are going to re benchmark those positions that do have the new data sets once we have those three pay factors. And we still have that 102% as the target for salaries as our budget allows and as conditions allow. Questions
Tim Waters 2:34:52
thanks for your peg real quick. Joe, could you go back to slide 10? I just want to make certain I’m clear on yeah Slide 10
It’s not go back, maybe it’s slide nine. It was the 90 Plus, here we are. The current range is plus or minus 10%. Just so I’m understanding, are we talking about being plus or minus 10% of the midpoint of the range? When we think about markets, and whatever that is, then 101%, where we find somebody where they are in terms of their staff or their continuum in their, in terms of their job and their their compensation, when we said, whatever that compensation is, within that plus or minus 10%. A midpoint, it would be that would be that number plus 1%, or 101. Yeah, I just wanted to make certain I was clear, thanks.
Speaker 30 2:35:50
Yep. And what that’ll do, I think in actual practice is it’ll give us 9%, to be able to take a look at exceptional PE, as opposed to in the past, we’ve had seven I got
Speaker 31 2:36:04
anything more on PE, then we’ll jump into the retirement plans. So as many of you know, the city maintains three defined benefit pension plans. Two of those are closed plans, meaning that there’s only a few remaining members that come in as the police police plan and the fire plan. They got about seven or eight members in each of those plans. But those two along with the general employees retirement plan are all invested together in one large master trust. And as you’re probably well aware, 2022 was not a great year for investments. And so the trust, investments lost 13.7%. And the data that I’m going to be showing you here is all based on the end of 22, the first day to the first of 23. So impacts as a result of our investment performance and 22. So on the old higher plans that the police plan has now has an unfunded liability. It’s 92.4% funded actually was over 100% funded the year before, but 22 Put it back to an unfunded basis. The old higher fire plan, though, is still got a surplus, it’s 129% funded, those are all differences based on different experience with the individuals in those plans is because most of the investments are pretty much in the same, same place. So. So for, for 2024, a city contribution is required to the old higher police plan and we’ve budgeted that at a $12,267. We are also recommending that there be a contribution this year, there was nothing budgeted based on the previous year’s actuarial information and the fact that the plan was funded at that time. And since really, there was there would be an actual requirement for contributions this year as well. What I’m recommending is that we transferred $20,000 from the health benefit fund to the old hire police plan. For those of you who may not be aware, we this is a practice that we have used a few times in the past with the general Employees Retirement Plan, when we haven’t been able to make the full actuarial contribution, and to try to make sure we’re meeting that. And so we’re recommending that here as well as with the current plan in a few minutes.
Speaker 1 2:38:42
Can I ask you a question? You bet. So what is that going to do to the health benefit fund, if you
Speaker 31 2:38:47
I will talk about the health benefit fund advocates pension plans, but the health benefit fund can well afford it. So the current plan, I’m not going to get into deep into the history of it. It has a history of being fully funded until the downturn in 2008. And pretty much since then we’ve been taken actions to try to improve the status of this plan over time tried to move it towards full funding, we have over 400 folks receiving benefits from the plan and we are can’t give them a cost of living increase unless the plan is fully funded. That’s a table requirement. Because that’s a multiple year fiscal fiscal obligation. So it hasn’t been funded fully funded since 2008. The last increase I think might have been in 2010 before we reached the finding out about run funded liabilities. It’s it we have made changes to the plan change benefits over time in that URL in about 2012. We changed our funding policy in 2016 All these in trying to help us get towards that full funding, but it’s it’s a long term goal, it’s gonna take a number of years, we are amortizing an unfunded liability over 20 years from January, I’m sorry, 24 years from January 1 of 2021. So under the best case, that would be that we would reach it in, in 2045, which is quite a ways off. When and pension plan is measured. They look at our gains and losses over five years, they smooth them out so that we’re not recognizing and I’m all in one year, otherwise, their contribution requirements would be jumping all over the board. So that what you’re seeing is based on the smoothing of those results over five years, unfortunately, that 22 made a big difference in in those five years. We were actually before this year, we were sharing some of the gains from previous years. And now we’ve got losses that we’re sharing over five years. So we have an unfunded liability and in the Europe of $41 million dollars is 82.8% funding. That’s down from 86.3% funding. Two years ago, we were about 82% funding. So we’re back down to about the level that we were then our contribution requirement is increasing from 14.9% to 15.4%. And we get this actuarial information, even though it’s as of the first of the year we get it in August, we just received it last month. So the best we can do is work it into our budget for the following year. That’s why we have to go to that health benefit fund to try to make up the contribution increases for the current year that we weren’t able to budget for. So what we’re doing for the for next year is we’re increasing the city contribution requirement of from 9% of compensation to 9.4%. And in turn, we’re doing the same with the participants, which we have two tiers of participants based on when they entered the plan. If it was prior to 2012. There are tier one employee and they have to make a 6.6% contribution currently, that would be moving to 7% next year. And tier two employees are 5.6% contributions. They’ll be moving again also 8.4% to 6% next year. And then what we’re recommending is that we make a $700,000 contribution from the health benefit fund to the girl in this year. And any any of these transfers that I recommend for you tonight. I’m not asking for any direction, I’ll be bringing to you a resolution for each one of them next month for you to consider at that point in time. We’ll just bring them to your attention here tonight. So they’re moving off of the general employees retirement plan into the current police and fire participants a couple of years ago, council did approve them moving into the NPPA state system. This is the breakdown of our participation currently. The first four lines there, in part in the table there are made up of participants that were had that opportunity to either stay in the city plan which is defined contribution plan, or move into the NPPA plan, which offers either defined benefit or defined contribution. And most of those folks did stay in the plans cities plan that’s in the first line. But the rest are shown in the following three lines and where they went and got them broken out because there’s different contribution requirements I’ll be showing you for each. And finally at the bottom, those are all the new hires that we’ve had since we got into the FCPA. And they’re all mandatorily have to go to FCPA. So over time, these first four lines in the table, they’ll they’ll go down as there’s attrition in the fire and police departments and the bottom line will continue to arise. Our contribution requirements for 2024 for the city plan will be 12.85%. Anyone in defined contribution plan essentially we have a 12.85% city contribution requirement, those that are in the defined benefit plan. If they’re new in the last two years, it’s a 10% requirement. If they moved in in two years ago, then it’s a 10.95% requirement. Those odd mounts are point eight 5.95 may actually go away that easily be reduced or go away entirely in January FCPA will let us know what that out Come will be but after two years, they were supposed to let us know the how much that that additional amount drops down to. It’s all based on on what kind of actuarial liability, those new new participants brought into that plan. So we’ll be budgeting at these levels. And we’ll see we’ll know in January what we have to actually contribute at it sit on the pension plans unless there’s a question on on that. I’m going to talk about the health benefit fund now. So Joanne mentioned our benefits costs are we have a 5% increase in costs from Kaiser, that’s our major cost and the health benefit fund is our health benefit insurance coverage. We also have other insurance coverages that are paid from this fund. And a few other benefits I’ll talk about in a few minutes that also get covered from here. Our Kaiser costs have increased an average of 3.79%. Since we’ve started to work with Kaiser in 2000 2007. This year, the city’s contribution to the health benefit fund is going to drop from 15% of compensation to 14 and a half percent of compensation. And that’s going to get back to went too far there. That’s gonna get back to the health of that fund itself, the financial health of that fund and how well it’s funded. These are the other benefits that we’re going to be paying we pay annually out of this fun, wellness incentives for physicals for police and fire employees counseling program as well for public safety. We were projecting our health benefit fund fund balance to be 11 and a half million dollars at the end of 2023. A lot of information about that either in the council column or in the budget message. So I’m not going to get too far into the history. But that’s built up over time. It’s amounts that were leftover from when we were self insured for health benefits, and has grown now, over the last couple of years by a few million dollars. We’ve been looking at that closely to try to give me a second here. I’m going to hand it off to Teresa’s because I have a limited copy ability capability to talk to Nate. But anyway, we’ve been trying to figure out how come it’s been growing so much. And what we do is we contribute to this fund based on the budgeted amount of insurance count contributions that we that we put in the budget annually. But what will happen is we have turned over we have some folks who don’t participate in our insurance program. So we are overfunding. That, that fun and compared to the expenses at times. And so what we’re going to try to do now is begin to try to adjust that to more of an actual contribution instead of a budgeted contribution that so we can able to balance our revenues and expenses is better out of this fund. At the same time, the the excess fund balance has come in helpful to us with the defined benefit plans from time to time. But we’re probably we’re about five to $6 million greater than what we started this fun with when the when we got off of the self insurance for for health insurance.
Speaker 31 2:48:37
So now we will now I’ll just touch a couple of other insurance funds that I want to bring to your insurance to your attention. So we have a couple of a number, but three or four self insurance funds. But these are the largest ones that I’m bringing up here today. We we count for these internal service funds in the city. So what happens is all of the operating funds of the city are contributing dollars towards this fun to pull money for our insurance purposes. One of them is for liability insurance for either property or casualty, different type of liability claims auto claims. And then the other is workers compensation. And we’ve been funding those, again through operating transfers that are based on things like the payroll within the different departments and funds and also the exposure that they all are having these two areas and as well as their claims history. So what we found have found in the last couple of years is the liability insurance fund currently has a fund balance of three and a half million, almost a million dollars of claim reserves. Actually this is at the end of 22. The workers comp Fund is a fund balance of close to 7 million with 754,000 claim reserves. So our liability fund fund balances kind of stayed static over time, we’ve been increasing our contributions there, we’ve kind of leveled off and lowered a little bit, our workers compensation contributions are always going to want to make sure we’re contributing this at least enough to cover the amount of expenses we’re having for both premiums and claims in any one year. So we’re not going to go down below that point, we don’t want to live off of the fund balance to pay our claims. Because if we do that, we’ll be in a position at some point where we’re not going to have that funding available to us on an ongoing basis. So but we can’t we do, I do believe what we can do is reduce some of this worker’s compensation fund fund balance, we had claims up around the two and a half million dollar level a couple years ago, what we found is that a lot of them were stale and needed to be removed. And so now that they have been removed, we’re staying down below the million dollar level, our losses are lower as well, over time. And so some of that, I think, admittedly has to do with a change in our, or staff makeup. And as some of our older employees have left the those folks working in the field, we have been replaced by some younger employees. And I think that that has been shown in some of the injuries that we see. But anyhow, what we’re then working with is is really too large of a fund balance in the workers comp fund, is I’m proposing that we transfer a million dollars from one to the other, so that we can at least build up the liability funds. Some we’re seeing, we just actually this week, our our binding our insurance for the next 12 months. And the workers comp insurance is not growing at all from from the last 12 months. But our liability insurance is increasing by 10%. You know, cyber cyber liability has been a big issue for governmental for everyone, but certainly for governments. What we do is we use this liability self insurance fund as the reserve fund to pay our claims. And if for some reason, you know, we had to pay off a large cyber liability, or we had to pay some sort of ransom, we would go to this insurance fund to pay that. And so that’s why we kind of feel like that fund needs to be built up a little bit more. We I’m aware of a number of public entities that have had to deal with that that occurrence. So that’s why I’m recommending that transfer of a million dollars. And then we’ll assess it again next year to see where those funds are at. And with that I’m going to surrender to Teresa. You bet.
Tim Waters 2:52:58
Could you just back up one slide. You just helped me understand the difference between the fund balance in a reserve claim balance.
Speaker 31 2:53:08
So the reserve claims are the we have set reserves for all these claims that are representing incidents or injuries. Is that part of the funding in addition to so it’s in addition to the
Tim Waters 2:53:23
$7 million for workers comp is a fun balance. And then you budget in addition to that the $754,000 for claims that might occur in 2024.
Speaker 31 2:53:33
No, actually no. So we’re we’re so we have a fun in our let’s say our liabilities shelf Insurance Fund. It’s about four and a half million dollars of assets. 918,000 of it is set aside for open claims. And then the rest of it is a fund balance that is basically unreserved on designated but can be used if needed for as I mentioned things like cyber liability and such. So
Tim Waters 2:54:01
it’s not part of it’s an addition addition, it’s your budget, just the way you budgeted. And then the way you label it, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 2:54:07
Okay
Unknown Speaker 2:54:13
So Catherine Mackay.
Speaker 6 2:54:15
Thank you, Mayor. So Jim, go back to that slide, if you don’t mind. Sure, no problem. So, when you’re talking about that workman’s compensation, you don’t we don’t use Pinnacle or anything like that, too.
Speaker 31 2:54:30
So what we do is we have an excess liability. So we’re pretty much taken care of most of our workers comp costs but if we have an extreme case that is say rising, and I think it really depends on different type of of workers have different levels, but it could be 250,000 it could be a half a million we will take pick up the cost anything over and above that. I mean up to that point will pay for and over and above that will be covered by the insurance. So, okay, so it says coverage. All right, thank you
Speaker 29 2:55:15
all right, we’re gonna move into the budget summary. And I did want to bring to your attention to attachments that were with council communication, attachment II, which compares the 2024 proposed budget to the 2023 adopted budget, I fund and attach them attachment F is that same comparison, but we have also included CIP versus operating costs. So by fund as well. So our total 2024 budget is 44.5 2 million. And it is 31.43 or 7.61%. Greater than our 23 adopted budget. It includes 445 individual funds. And many of the large increases or decreases from 23 in those funds is really due to capital expenses. And the budget does include the first year of our five year CIP, which is 63.9 9 million. And, and that was 63.04, and 23. So just a little bit on the CIP. There are some pretty major increases, and then some that are decreases as well. So for the decreases, we are seeing decreases in CIP and the street fund for just under $6 million in the sewer fund, a decrease of about $3.32 million. Sorry, that’s the sewer construction fund. There’s also a decrease in CIP for the park Improvement Fund of 1.8 6 million, as well as the 2.7 million for the park Improvement Fund 1.8 6 million for Conservation Trust, and then a decrease in the Gulf fund of 1.5 million. And then the few funds where we’re seeing CIP increases is an open space, about 5 million they’re in the sewer fund 1.5 million in the public Improvement Fund another 1.5 million, and then in the storm drainage fund, just under 1.3 million. And all of that is laid out on by fund in that attachment F that I just referenced. So moving on to just a few revenue projections in our budget, sales and use tax revenue projections, our performance through July for combined sales in use is 2.5%. That’s made up of 5.1% for sales tax, and a decrease of just under 10%. For use tax, and you have gotten all the information from Jim on a monthly basis. In regards to our actual performance. We are projecting to in 2023 with a combined increase to sales and use tax of 2.23%. So 5.6% for sales, and then a decrease of 14.9 for use tax. And then moving into 2024. We are projecting and our budget includes a 3.49% combined increase. So 3.15 for sales and 5.7 for use tax. And that is across all five of our sales and use tax funds. And then property tax revenue estimates. So as you heard prior, we have a significant increase in property tax for 24 Over $7 million in total. That is included and preliminary evaluations were received in August, but we will not receive our final valuations from both the Weld County and In Boulder County Assessor’s until November. So, the way that we are utilizing that $7 million in our proposed 2024 budget in the general fund is 3.5 Million Little over 3.5 million is programmed to cover ongoing expenses. And then another second 3.5 million will is for one time, pending, assessed final assess valuations and then proposition h h, which is on the ballot for this fall. And that’s why we’ve set aside that 3.5 million and are only using it from a one time perspective. And so of that 3.5 million, we are using 500,000 of it for the first and main transit station. So that is being transferred in the proposed budget, from the general fund to the public improvement fund to cover costs for that project, and then the remaining 3 million, we haven’t done anything with it at this point, it’s just included in our budget as available one time dollars that will can be designated once we know what the final assessed valuations are. And once we know the outcome of Proposition hh, another revenue source in our 24 budget that is actually in in multiple funds, several funds is building permits. And so we have a total combined building permit number of 750, which is made up of single family dwelling units of 50 and 700 multifamily. And then, moving on to the general fund budget summary. And I there is another attachment. And that is attachment G and G and H, which I’ll I’ll speak to as well here. So the general fund proposed budget is 100, or the 2023. General Fund budget was $104.2 million. For 24. We are proposing 112 point 9 million. So a pretty significant increase there. And that’s a point $7 million increase, most of which is coming from the property tax increase. And so general fund, proposed budget is made up of a combination of both increases and decreases in revenue. So our 23 Again, revenues were $104.2 million. We do have some reduction, a few reductions $221,000 of reduction in revenues in 24. But mainly $8.9 million of increases for our total ongoing revenue for the general fund of 112.9. And I wanted to bring to your attention, attachment G which is a presentation of those changes. It’s the details of those changes both from a revenue perspective, as well as expensive perspective and then attachment H is a listing of all non pay related ongoing additions, and it’s laid out both by by level one increases, level two increases and then the ongoing that is associated with one time. So a little bit more about the general fund proposed budget our major decreases and ongoing are from the state marijuana tax of 50,000. We also have a decrease for our disconnect tag fees. Those are used for utility billing, uh, 42,000 and then a combined decrease of just under 40,000 For fines and forfeitures,
Unknown Speaker 3:05:10
Theresa, do you have a minute for question? Yes, Sir Martin.
Speaker 7 3:05:15
I can hold my question till the end. I thought I heard an end coming up. So if this is not the best time, I’ll hold my question till the end. Okay, you. That’s fine. You’d rather get through? Yeah,
Speaker 29 3:05:27
we can talk about it. Now. If if it’s something that I’ve already covered?
Speaker 7 3:05:31
Oh, yes, it is. It’s this. I’m asking because this is a question I get a lot, or I’m about to be be asked for an explanation based on the questions I’ve been getting. I noticed that that there’s a decrease in the amount allocated to the street fund. And I’m getting a lot of complaints about the streets that were really bad at the beginning of the year, still being unfixed. And then I’m also, you know, we adopted Vision Zero. And so I would expect there to be an uptick in residential street rework. Because of that, so what what were the factors that would cause the street fund to go down facing those concerns?
Speaker 5 3:06:25
I think that was primarily capital projects. But if you remember the presentation that we gave you all last week, what you saw in that budget proposal that we’re giving is we’re actually we actually increased the substantial amount of funding for Vision Zero, and the street Fund, which included positions. We also talked about additional dollars, we pushed up the rehabilitation fund to deal with the street issues. And so those issues actually are included in the proposal that we made to you that we covered last week in the presentation in terms of the rehab fund, Vision Zero, and I can’t, I’m drawing a blank on the other items.
Speaker 7 3:07:06
Okay. So those sub line items did go up, as we would all hope and expect. So other things would have gone down like, oh, you know, widening a street or something that’s not released. Vision Zero is how I just want to understand how it happened.
Speaker 31 3:07:25
So let me just start with as far as allocating monies to streets, the street Fund Revenues are going up over $3 million. So what happened is last year, there was a large amount of CIP projects, spending built up fund balance. And so that is going to be that I shouldn’t say that. So this year, and 23. And so compared to next year, there’s not as much capital projects, as there wasn’t this year because of a large spending on capital in 23. But overall, there’s less of a budget there, but the revenues allocated are increasing, the sales tax is growing, just like we mentioned before for all those funds. So that that is covering all of the street expenses, but capital projects are higher and 23.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:15
Okay, I think I understand.
Speaker 5 3:08:17
So for example, we have funding that went into the Boston Avenue Bridge project that’s under construction. And so when you look at the capital projects that are queued up, and when they come in, and we start, you know, constructing them, that’s what’s making some of the changes in the capital expenses.
Speaker 31 3:08:36
So on Attachment AF, if you look up the street fund, you’ll find that the CIP for streets in in 23 is 21 and a half million dollars, but the CIP projects this year in 24, or $15.6 million, so that’s just about planning projects and timing of when they are going to get completed and as the money builds up for it and such, but from all overall resources, that he’s gonna jump in and make it clear I guess.
Speaker 5 3:09:21
He’s gonna send me the fun statement. So I can go over that again. But so I’m going to go over those numbers in terms of where we’re putting it. So for example, another item that we talked about that we presented as part of the street fund was the the money that we put into the micro transit program. So that’s money for something new that we included in this. So I think what I would say is to folks in terms of vision, Vision Zero. Jim talked about in last week’s presentation how we are putting additional money for signal work, we’re doing signal work on Main Street, transit sending the signals they put more money into the neighborhood program. We’re adding the staff. That was really why we started off with the transportation fund. So you could see what we were adding into the budget process to hit Council’s priorities.
Speaker 7 3:10:13
Yeah. I mean, I saw that all the council’s priorities were in that list. Mike, my question was really, given that all those Council priorities are in the list, how did the fund manage to be smaller? The street fund,
Unknown Speaker 3:10:34
it’s the capital projects,
Speaker 31 3:10:35
it’s again, it’s the use of the fund balance, right? We ended 22, we brought we built it up until projects, we will have to catch you that
Speaker 5 3:10:44
list. But okay, so I take you back to so we because of the way we budget, we have to accrue funds over time. And we have to have all the funds in place to then pull the trigger on a capital project and let the project out. So what you will see in all of our fund structures is we start driving up the fund balances because we’re accruing funds to do certain projects. And then when we we let those projects then we start spending down those funds. So it’s the fund balance related to the capital projects that you’re seeing in the decrease.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:26
Council waters,
Tim Waters 3:11:28
given the amount of money we’re just talking about, my question is a rounding year. But in the previous slide, Theresa, you showed fund increases, revenue increases, and then reduction in ongoing revenue and then increases in ongoing revenue. And that could be a little confusing. If you go to the next slide. Are these the are these parts of breaking out part of that turn $21,000. This is this is your examples of what decreasing athletes decrease their free previous like could confuse one, like wait a minute, we got $8 million of increased funds and then decreased funds. And how do I reconcile that so just yet, thanks.
Speaker 29 3:12:12
And then here is the slideshow and the major increases. So property tax of 3.5 sales and use tax of over 2 million administrative transfer fees, which is the fees that the other major operating funds paid to the general fund to essentially pay for support for general fund funded or general fund budgeted staff. And, and that’s a little over a million dollars. Interest income is another major increase of 650,000. And then the natural gas franchise revenues increasing 400,000. So yes, these are the these are the increases, the major increases in ongoing revenue. And then just a few more, we’ve got rec fees that are increasing building permit fees and plan check fees are both increasing. And then the wastewater franchise fees are increasing. And that is due to the rate increases that council had previously
Unknown Speaker 3:13:22
approved.
Speaker 29 3:13:25
And so now we’ll look at it from the expense perspective. So it’s the same 2024 ongoing budget of $112.9 million. And start if you start with 104 for 2023. We’ve got 8.7 of increases, and then just some very minor reductions in ongoing. So I’ll show you what each of those is, is made up of in the next couple of slides here. So the ongoing increases, sorry, decreases. We’ve got the mental health and addiction is decreasing by 15,000. And that is the result of the transfer from the marijuana special tax fund. The projection there is decreasing and one half of that tax get then one half of what we budget in that fund gets transferred to the general fund to cover the mental health and addiction. The other half goes to the Affordable Housing Fund. And then we have a slight decrease of $4,000 in our work comp, expenses. And then on the other side, here’s all the increases. So ongoing level one and just a reminder When we are asking our staff to put together their budgets for the upcoming year, we ask them to clarify or quantify their budget requests based on whether they’re ongoing level one, or ongoing level two, and ongoing level one, are those types of increases that we really have no control over, that we would have to be paying regardless of whether or not the departments were granted the increase to cover these costs. So things like utilities, things like contracts that just naturally go up from one year to the next. Ongoing level two, on the other hand, is those types of expenses that staff does have control over or or can make a decision not to move forward with. And so we’ve got a little over $2 million of ongoing level one expenses in the budget, that’s predominantly being driven by inflationary factors. And 439,000 have ongoing level two in the general fund. There is 13.5 FTE, in being added in the general fund, and that is, right around $1.26 million. And then pay and related benefit increases is about $2.8 million, the fleet loan repayment of a million dollars, so this is the fleet loan for Costco. And then we have an increase of 248,000 for human service agency funding. And that is really being driven. This is by financial policy, we have 3% of of all taxes, that that goes to human service agency funding. So this is this increase is really being driven by two things the property tax increase, as well as the sales and use tax increase. And 150,000 of that 248 is coming from the $3.5 million of property tax that we’ve set aside, or that’s one time, I should say. And so we have asked Christina Pacheco that they wait until we know where our final property taxes will end up. Once we get our final assessed valuations from the county, as well as once we find out how proposition hh does in November. So we’ve asked her to kind of sit on that 150 of the 248,000 until we have a better understanding of where that property tax will will end up. So but a pretty healthy increase to human service agency funding. Additional increases smokers property tax increase of 160,000 long mount public media of 115,000. Those two in that attachment I was mentioning Smuckers and Longmont public media, as well as the fleet loan repayment are classified as level one ongoing increases in that attachment. G I think it is. But here we broken it out just to show you that additional level of detail. We have $141,000 of increases for fleet lease rates as well as 367,000 for ongoing that is associated with one time items, and then a $44,000 increase in the liability insurance. Questions on that before we move into the general fund reserves?
Unknown Speaker 3:19:35
Council waters
Tim Waters 3:19:37
real quick. Earlier in the presentation we projected 750 new housing starts and then I saw a $220,000 revenue for building permits. Is that the result of the the projected housing increase, increase in the number of units to be constructed, or is that set separate?
Speaker 29 3:20:00
So that’s that is a great question, actually 750 new housing units is a decrease from the number of housing units that we have in our 2003 23. budget. I think we have 800. In in 23, what is driving the increase in revenue? So it’s not the number of new permits, but it’s the valuation of those permits that is driving that revenue increase, but it is, but
Tim Waters 3:20:33
those new numbers are tied together the SAR because just just in terms of what are the implications, if you were to say, we’re just not going to have new homes built, the loss of revenue would be to 20. And then obviously, there are implications beyond that, as as people talk about growth and no growth.
Speaker 31 3:20:53
It would be a lot more than 220. Well, that’s, yeah, yeah. It’s yeah. So we’re budgeting over 2 million of revenue from building permits. Altogether, this is just the increase from one year to the next. This is what we’re showing you there.
Tim Waters 3:21:10
That’s what we that’s where I wanted to get to. So yeah, you know, what we never talked about, right? And understand, you know, concerns about growth and paste and all that kind of stuff. What we never talked about is what are you what are the implications in a municipal budget, right? If you if that just stops? Or is it starts to tail, which we, you know, we’re going to have to have revenue sources to fill those gaps. Right. When we get to the when we get to build up,
Speaker 31 3:21:33
we certainly get building permits for more than just that. And so huge part of that two and a half million or so that we’re getting from permits is from other type of workout new construction necessarily, but yeah, good deal.
Tim Waters 3:21:45
remodels, kind of thing roofs. All right, good. Yeah. For use tracks benefited this year from
Speaker 5 3:21:53
before Theresa goes on. It actually is the question, Councilmember Martin, what project it is Kaufman Street, we had Kaufman street budgeted this year. So as all of that starts coming into next year, we’re gonna have to carry funds over in next year’s budget. So that’s what you’re seeing.
Speaker 29 3:22:15
Okay, so moving on to the general fund reserves then. So as as council knows, we do have a financial policy around our general fund reserve, that policy essentially has three tiers. And so what you’re seeing on this slide is where we’re at right now, in 23, with with the reserve. So the first set of numbers is the targets per the policy. And then the second set of numbers is where we are at right now. So as I mentioned, three, three tiers. So the Tabor reserve is the first tier, and that is funded at roughly $5.6 million, or 5.43%. The second tier is the emergency reserve tier. And the goal there is 8%. And it is funded at that 8% For $8.33 million, then, the stabilization reserve is the third tear, the goal is to fund it between 3% and 8% or 3.1 million to 8.3 million. And it is funded at 4.87% or just a little over 5 million. So total reserves is 18.3% and $19 million for 23. And then this slide shows you what we are proposing in the 24 budget for those reserves. Again, the Tabor Reserve of 5.6 million. The emergency reserve of eight 8% is at $9 million for 24. And then the stabilization reserve we are proposing will be funded at 6.8% or $6.8 million for a total of 19.1% which is 21 point 5 million. Did you have something to add to that Jim?
Speaker 31 3:24:45
It’ll probably come up in the next slide or two, but we’re adding two and a half million dollars to our reserves as part of the budgets.
Speaker 29 3:24:57
So moving on to the use of the general fund fund Balance. So the sources of the fund balance in the 24 budget comes from really two places. The way that we ended operations for 2022, there was $4.8 million remaining from those operations. And that really came from either revenues coming in over what we had projected budgeted for 22, or expenses being under what we had budgeted. So this is $4.8 million above what we can what we carried over from 2022 into 2023. That was a additional appropriation you all just recently approved. And so the second source of that general fund one time fund balance comes from projections of how we believe will we’re going to end 2023. And we think we’ll add another $2.3 million from revenues being over, and expenses being under our 2023 for a total of $6.8 million. That is fund balance that was then available to be used for 2024. And then this is how the breakdown on on what what we did, how we program that into our 2024 budget. So as Jim mentioned, 2.5 million we are setting aside to be added to those reserves to build up that stabilization reserve. And $4.3 million used to cover one time expenses in our 24 budget. And that is made up of of two things. We have a a fund balance reserve for union reservoir that is going to cover just under $50,000 worth of expenses. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about one time expenses next week. So we’ll cover what that is covering at that point. And then $4.28 million of and designated fund balance to cover the remaining one time expenses in our 24 budget. And with that, I’ll move on to the public safety phone. This point
Unknown Speaker 3:27:48
I’m not seeing any. Okay.
Speaker 29 3:27:52
So there is one more attachment that I wanted to call to your attention. Attachment my eye is the public safety fund pro forma that was included in the council packet. So the 2024 budget for the public safety fund $17.2 million of sales and use tax and over $1 million of grants and other inner governmental revenue. And and just under 100,000 91,007 11 from the firing range operations, which is actually up from from our 23 revenue. Public Safety tax was approved in 2006. And then at point three to 5%. And then in 2017. It was increased to the point five eight that is included in our 24 budget. We have a total of 115 FTE in the public safety fund. And this is how it those FTE are broken out amongst the different divisions in public safety, as well as city attorney’s office children use youth and families and then natural resources. We are funding half of a graffiti removal, a three quarter time graffiti removal from the public safety fund as well. In the 2024 budget, we are proposing that we add four additional FTE three of those in fire and one in collaborative services. And you’ll hear more about the FTE on next week as well. There is a $1.178 million in one time expenses for both police and fire in The public safety fund. And again, we’ll talk more about what that’s made up of next week. And then I mentioned fire, the firing range, revenues. And this is the expense side of the firing range $569,000. And the revenues are are covering just under 16% of that. And so, in terms of future budgets from the public safety fund, the sales and use taxes, the predominant revenue stream for this fund, and so the the health of this fund really is heavily tied to sales and use tax revenue projections. And the fund does have 78.6% of the total budget is for salary and benefits. So a lot of FTE, mainly covering FTE in this fund. And we’ve the performer that I mentioned as attachment i in the council communication shows you a 10 year projection for the revenues in this fund, and the expenses in this fund, and then the resulting fund balance and it is projected, and we are projecting that the fund balance will grow over time. And we are also projecting that that revenues in this fund will continue to cover the ongoing costs of this fund and that the fund will stay in a in a positive means and throughout those 10 years. So I believe Yep, that is that is it. So questions on the public safety fund. I just wanted to quickly then throw this slide up these this is the topics that we’ll have on the agenda for next week for you.
Speaker 31 3:32:30
We’re going to add the Humane Society to that as well. And if there’s anything that councils hoping to hear about in those budget discussions that you don’t see up there, or you haven’t heard already, please let us know. Because short of what’s up there, we only plan to go through the financial policies, I think, in the week after that weekend. So if there’s something you’re looking for, let us know we can fit it in next week.
Unknown Speaker 3:32:59
Great. Councilman who held Argo fairing?
Speaker 17 3:33:04
Yes. So actually, I do. So on the slide where you had the what the list of countdowns go back. So of new positions, and I think that would be, you know, a time to, to, to kind of look at some Rangers, as far as in some of our parks, I’ve been in contact with a lot of residents over by Lake McIntosh and, and had some conversations with staff around will David Bell, around the, you know, possibly even doing something where during our high peak usage times, you know, some of the suggestions that were brought out was to block off that area, like Union reservoir and, and you know that the way that it’s built, it’s just, it would not be compatible to that neighborhood, you know, to just have these giant bars, as well as the structure of the park itself. But if there are ways that we could hire seasonal rangers to, you know, keep keep an eye on the place. I mean, I’ve been out there I go, I go out there during high peak times or when I’m carrying, and I’ve seen people drink. I mean, I have seen it and you know, and at this point, you know, during early in COVID when people were saying they’re all out there, there are no masks, and you know, I would say things back then. But given the current current climate, I don’t feel safe doing that. And I don’t think any neighbor would feel safe approaching people and saying, you know, you’re not supposed to be drinking over there. You’re not supposed to be swimming in there. But if we had some of, you know, just additional staff out there during those peak weekends or summer months, you know, just something to kind of look at and I would like to see you know what that expense would cost as well as I see supporting action for mental health. And I’m assuming that’s the work that the group is doing. Is that correct?
Speaker 5 3:35:15
So that’s part of what the group is doing. It’s also part of what we’re doing in terms of LEED core, how we’re looking at situations related to our enhanced community, and then also our housing authority, because they’re all intertwining. And so that’s what we’re going to talk to you about there. In terms of the Rangers, I believe, we did add one or two Ranger, a ranger supervisor, because what we’re finding is what really holds the Rangers up is what’s happening at Union. And so we did put a position in to be permanently at Union. But then also connected to that was some of the restructuring work that we did between Joanie and Zach in terms of creating the enforcement coordinator position to start not only tying Rangers together, but tying code enforcement together and parking control so that when we need to deal with these issues we have we can be nimble enough to flex if we need to. So that was part of that is something that you’ll hear about next week.
Speaker 17 3:36:13
Okay, that’s great. Yeah, cuz I think, you know, since COVID, we’re all the people who used to go to Union realize, oh, there’s this space out here, we can still use the same kind of amenities as far as the lake and picnic. But we don’t have to pay to come in. And I have seen, you know, since I’ve lived in the area, I’ve seen a big increase in in usage out there. So I just kind of feel like, you know, we shouldn’t forget about, about that area, as well. And, and thank you for pointing out about the mental health because I was wanting to see how they kind of all coalesce and how they, they intertwine and talk to each other different departments.
Speaker 5 3:36:53
That’s actually what we want to talk to you about in terms of not to steal the thunder for next week. But actually, the mayor and I talked about this, in terms of the mental health issues that we’re seeing associated with our housing group is having folks there, but again, similar to what we’re talking about with the coordination of our different enforcement groups is how do we coordinate in the mental health conversation and start working across the organization and keeping, keeping each other updated and engaged in the issues that we deal with? Because what we’re finding is it’s the same people that different groups are touching. So you’ll hear more about that next week. Perfect. Thank
Unknown Speaker 3:37:30
you. Great.
Unknown Speaker 3:37:32
Councillor Yarborough?
Speaker 32 3:37:33
Thank you. So I don’t know if this is the right time to ask for this. But you said anything that possibly we want to see in a budget and just tell me no, Chiquita, don’t talk about that right now. So you know, in my on my journey of being a candidate, and also running and actually being a city council person, I’m pretty sure 99% of the people that were here earlier would disagree with what I’m about to ask. But where does if I want to propose a maybe put on agenda? Or do we put it in a budget for an increase for our city council, and especially for the ones who are coming on council. Because when I talk to people who want to who are so passionate about our city and passionate about being on City Council, they have kids, and they have to pay for daycare. And you know, it’s not, it’s not enough for supplemental income for them to be on city council. I know people who are business owners who would love to be on city council. And we all know how businesses can be up and down, up and down. So how can we make it to where I used this word before when I talked about decreasing our meeting time. Here we are, it’s after 1034? And what about young parents who want to be on city council and have young kids and those of us who work from nine to five and then be here until 11 o’clock? It’s a service I get it. We love our community. That’s not the issue. But there should be I feel a higher compensation for those moving forward because I’m only on council for the next two years. So what about those if we want a more diverse Council? That’s more of attractive for those who are willing to do this work. Because people talk about what we shouldn’t be doing. But people don’t do their homework as to why we do what we do. So I don’t know the process of that that probably was just too much information, but to just you didn’t stop me so I felt like I was supposed to keep going. So is that the time is that something we put on there? Is that come out of our general are fine. I don’t know how that works.
Speaker 5 3:39:53
So councils I think had this conversation recently and before Me Before You Okay. And I think that’s a conversation that you all need to have as council members. And then if you can come to an agreement on what that needs to look like, then we can put that in the budget. But that’s really a policy conversation that you all need to have. Counselor McCoy,
Speaker 6 3:40:20
we are back and thank you to Councilmember yarborough’s point, that has not changed since I think my father served on here. And then in the 90s, that same amount of for the stipend for council members and the mayor, it would probably to Councilmember yarborough’s point, encourage more people to get involved. So it is something to consider.
Speaker 1 3:40:47
In case you’re looking at what to do with it 3,000,001 Time funding. Just in case.
Speaker 28 3:41:02
Oh, no. Mayor and council Eugene may city attorney. So on the topic of compensation for councilman, it is addressed in the charter. It applies to future not existing, except if it’s mid term, you get the same as the new incoming. And assuming our Muni code is correct. The last time it was changed was 1999. And it’s 1500 per month for the mayor and 1000 per councilmember, so you would just have an ordinance with an appropriate effective date just to implement if Council decides to go that route.
Unknown Speaker 3:41:48
Okay. Thank you. So is that it for the presentation to rescind you.
Unknown Speaker 3:41:56
That is it. Mayor.
Speaker 1 3:41:57
Thank you very much. Very informative. All right. We are now at final call public invited to be heard. Is there anybody in the public that would like to be heard? Saying no one a closed, final call public to be heard. And we are at Marin Council comments. Councillor McCoy.
Speaker 6 3:42:19
Thank you, Mayor back. I had a voicemail earlier this week from a constituent that was asking about when ever we put something up on the website, can we always attach some sort of phone number to it for people that have a difficult time trying to access the any sort of forms or anything like that? in it? And I did forward this on to Sandy, because I think she’s usually the one that handles that type of thing, or at least might have the answer. So
Unknown Speaker 3:43:05
up on the website having a phone number attached to it.
Speaker 6 3:43:08
Yeah, always, always whatever it is whether it’s in our press releases, more like in the sense of a form, if we ever have any forms to have somebody fill out, it sounded like they wanted to have a phone number so that they could also access it through that if they were, you know, kind of not very technologically connected or with the idea of maybe, just maybe they didn’t have the ability to do that.
Speaker 10 3:43:41
Yes, we should. We should be making sure there’s contact information. You sent me some details to look at. Okay, perfect.
Unknown Speaker 3:43:48
Are you sent to the voicemail? Yes, I
Speaker 10 3:43:49
believe that is our normal policy is to put multiple ways for people to reach us both electronically and non
Speaker 6 3:43:55
electron I figured we were making our most sincere effort to meet ADA standards. But anyhow,
Unknown Speaker 3:44:03
yes, thank you. If you sent it to me. I’ll take a look. All right. Thank
Unknown Speaker 3:44:06
you. Councillor Hidalgo. fairing.
Speaker 17 3:44:10
Okay, so, a couple of things. This weekend, I attended a couple of events. One in Lyons, it was the flood, you know, anniversary or you know, commemorate recovery, celebration, commemoration of the of the flood, it was very interesting to hear. You know, it’s just very empowering, not empowering, but just very emotional for me to hear the stories of, you know, these lived experiences and the importance of continuing to share these stories, the the power of storytelling that really shaped and changed how, you know, how our community, you know, where or how our community has, has progressed through the years. The other event I did go to, was the blue sky bridge. They had a moveable dinner and they are a nonprofit. And they do work around Child Child Abuse intervention and education. They are a group that comes out to speak with our third graders around sexual abuse. It’s a very tough topic, but they do phenomenal work. And they engage the parents in this process. And it is a wonderful program. I know they have a lot of they do a lot of work in Boulder, and they’ve done a lot of their fundraising efforts in Boulder. And so this was really like one of the first times of them coming out here and really engaging the Longmont community in this. This is a program I’m personally very passionate about, and I appreciate their efforts. So yeah, you’re welcome to look them up. Blue sky bridge. They do phenomenal work for our youth and, and we make great connections with our public safety so appreciative for their for their work. And then this Friday at 10am. If you are available if anybody’s listening, is the at the Longmont Museum is the groundbait ground breaking event for their campaign kickoff. At 10am.
Unknown Speaker 3:46:18
Think Thank you, Councillor waters.
Tim Waters 3:46:21
Thanks Mayor pack. I just I’ll just ditto, the accolade, or the acknowledgement of blue sky bridge and the great work they do. It’s interesting if you look at the number of families and children with whom they work in the Sacred Valley School District compared to Boulder. And what percentage of their funding actually comes from long run the disproportion. The gap is is is really, really disappointing. But I would add this as you are in conversations in the school district. One of the differences between what happens in the Boulder Valley School District in the same brain Valley School District is in Boulder Valley as they come in to work with Kindergarteners, third graders and fifth graders, parents have the option to opt out of the work they do in the same Green Valley School District they have to opt in. And you have to look at the percentages of children who participate in the same brain Valley District versus Boulder Valley. And just based on the opting in versus opting out. And if you talk with with elementary teachers and other school districts who also have a chance to work with blue sky bridge or, you know, comparable programs and the value that they would attribute to that work. It is a conversation I hope, if I think about the role of the Teachers Association and others might make the case or tried to make the case with the school board that this is worthy of a consideration of policy changes in the St. Vrain Valley School District in opting out versus opting in because far more kids and families would benefit. They would be much safer in this community if it was an opt out versus an opt in approach.
Unknown Speaker 3:48:10
Okay. City Manager remarks. City Attorney, no comments, Mayor. Thank you. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Second, all those in favor. Yay. We are adjourned.
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