Longmont City Council – Study Session – September 19, 2023

Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Study Session – September 19, 2023

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 11:29
Thank you for your patience we’re waiting for one more counselors come in while you’re ready to go.

Unknown Speaker 12:07
Welcome I would now like to call the September 19 2023 long City Council study session to order. The livestream at this meeting can be viewed at the city’s YouTube channel. It can also be viewed at the Longmont public media.org forward slash watch. Or on Comcast channels eight or eight ad. Can we have a roll call please, Don?

Unknown Speaker 12:30
Absolutely. Mayor pic present councilmember Hidalgo faring Here. Councilmember Martin. Yeah. Councilmember McCoy, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Councilmember waters, Councilmember Yarborough? Mayor, you have a quorum. Thank you. Let’s stand for the pledge.

Unknown Speaker 12:47
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Unknown Speaker 13:06
So anyone that wishes to speak at first called public invited to be heard will need to add his or her name to the list outside the council chambers. Only those on the list will be invited to speak at first called public invited to be heard. And this is only open first call is open to Longmont residents and city employees. Each speaker is limited to three minutes and we need your name and address.

Unknown Speaker 13:31
I would like to make a motion at this time to to I move to amend tonight’s agenda to give a short update on the Front Range passenger rail district project before we go to motions to direct the city manager.

Unknown Speaker 13:47
Are there any any discussion?

Unknown Speaker 13:53
Let’s vote.

Unknown Speaker 14:03
So that passes unanimously Thank you, counsel. The reason I’m doing this is that the Front Range passenger rail district board is I’m on the district board. And it is a rail project to go from Fort Collins or Pueblo to Fort Collins, or perhaps Trinity to Fort Collins as we’re still working on that district map a little bit. We’re moving really fast and it is the governor’s hope that we can get finished with what we need to do and have a vote on their 2024 ballot. So I feel that we need to continually or start to get our residents and our council ready for the fact that this is going to be coming. So I want to give you just a fast update as to what we are doing. We are now working with the service delivery plan. The service delivery plan is something that the board is working on and it is our charge at the board to do many things

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Within that, and it is to design to choose the operator, will it be Amtrak? Will it be somebody else? There are so many operators out there that it is the district’s

Unknown Speaker 15:13
job, basically to choose the operator. And we are also choose the alignment. Where will that? Where would that rail go? It is also our job to work with the Northwest quarter with RTD to see if that alignment is going to go in there to play on the stations, where are the stations going to go along that alignment to the easements, the stations that every single stop, who’s going to have the stops along the way? What is their station look like etc. And once we decide upon that plan, then the FRA will work with us to build this rail project. But we don’t really have the money to do that. So we applied for a grant called the CIDP, which is the Colorado ID plan. And that grant is for $500,000. So that we can work on our SDP.

Unknown Speaker 16:13
We’ll find out in November, whether we get that grant, if we get the grant, according to our trip that we made in Washington, DC, to speak to our senators and legislators, then fra is bound and very definitely eager to work with us to get this project done. So

Unknown Speaker 16:35
the FR a vor. I’m going to read my notes because I I’m going to forget if I don’t. So

Unknown Speaker 16:45
we need the service delivery plan or the SDP. It’s a very official document that we need to have the FR to show the FRA that we’re doing our homework and we’re ready to move forward in the federal planning process. It identifies operators costs, platform operations, cost of either a hydrogen or battery operated engines and alignments, etc. Everything that goes with planning a rail project, I’ve never done this before. So it’s a huge learning curve. But it’s fun.

Unknown Speaker 17:20
Until then, we have a lot of modeling and forecasting we’re doing until we can get the SD P plan going. But it’s not only the Front Range passenger rail district that’s working on this CDOT is working with is a partner RTD is a partner. And we’re having ongoing discussions with all of them about shared services, joint services along the Northwest quarter line, which is from Union Station to Longmont to connect with this Front Range passenger rail district.

Unknown Speaker 17:53
So our route analysis is ongoing. That is where is this train going to go? Who wants it to go the player and we have to decide that right away to be quite honest.

Unknown Speaker 18:04
The routes likely to be the Northwest Rail line there are there are opportunities in the future if it is not that line for the Front Range passenger rail district to add all additional spurs and platform forms. For other municipalities to get out to the rail line. The emphasis is on getting the service up and running within a realistic timeframe and cost to the voters in the district. I want to talk to you a little bit about the financing. We have three different committees. There’s a governance committee, there’s a planning committee, and there is a Finance Committee. The finance committee is working to decide how are we going to pay for this. And all of the original funding sources that we’ve used for years and years are still in there. But the one thing that I mentioned that I am very happy that they put in this is an event fee. They’re going to be looking at that to help pay for the construction.

Unknown Speaker 19:01
See DoD is managing the holes, service delivery plan process for us. But the challenge is with how they see their role in the overall scope of the project. The F we made a huge statement about the Front Range passenger rail board understands that the district per the legislators direction is responsible for designing building operating financing and maintaining the rail line, not C dot and to wrap up. There’s a lot of stuff to be talked about but I don’t want to take much time any more time here.

Unknown Speaker 19:37
We are the Northwest Rail Corridor is going to have the BNSF work plan and analysis next June.

Unknown Speaker 19:47
The Front Range passenger rail district board is working to have our service delivery plan next June as well. So at that time, we’ll come back with real costs, real alignments

Unknown Speaker 20:00
where it’s going to go, what it’s going to look like, et cetera. So I’m pretty excited about this. We are moving very fast. And hopefully I can bring more updates in a more timely manner. But I do want to put out that anyone who’s interested in working and have ideas on this at the Northwest corridor, I would like Resident input. So just meet email me at my council address. And I would really like to speak to people who are interested to find out what they would like in this rail project. So thank everyone and now we’re going to get back to me find my right agenda

Unknown Speaker 20:46
All right, we’re back to motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas do any council members have items they want to add to future agendas?

Unknown Speaker 20:57
Seeing none, we’re gonna go on to the public invited to be heard.

Unknown Speaker 21:03
Remember that you have three minutes and we would like your name and address the first one on the list is and I can already see her smiling is Georgiana Johnston.

Unknown Speaker 21:16
Yep

Unknown Speaker 21:24
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 21:26
Good evening, Georgia Johnston from 320 homestead Parkway long run 80504 So

Unknown Speaker 21:36
I’m receiving from The Times call I went on a rail ride with the senior up to Leadville yesterday on a train and I heard all these situations that people aren’t wanting that we need and that’s the art and entertainment center because we can bring it can help with the city

Unknown Speaker 21:59
with the long chorale the orchestra the schools, different issues when they get it built, I know they’ve got so much money already and and all the different small towns would come and enjoy and help to why do we have to go elsewhere? So I feel like we need to work on that. The sugar factory looks ugly, I don’t understand all what you’re doing. But if you could fix it all fancy and stuff. I think that would be nice. Seriously, myself, I’m all for it. And some of these people that don’t see this they got a problem. I see it every day and the times call I heard it on the bus. But the thing is, I don’t believe in up in a whole lot of taxes either. And I think we’ve got doctors and different people that would donate I know I’ve lived in this town myself so there’s all kinds of ways of doing it. So I’m speaking to you people in the Council on different ones I’m speaking to people that are listening all over the town of long but 100,000 So I hope people are hearing and want good things for this nice city. That’s one thing another thing is we need better stores why should we take everybody have to go out and shop every I don’t understand I thought we had somebody was trying to work on things like that, that they’ve got rid of all of our nice stores we just have Kmart tall, target love those places don’t have good stores. We need better stores. I don’t know what the situation is why they’re disappeared or not. So you all need to work on that and different situations. Also the streets and roads we’re going to be drunk driving Junkers if we don’t get some of this stuff fixed. This is not fun. It’s not fun, Lord help us and I don’t know why what we’re doing with the taxes what we’re doing with the money, why we’re not fixing it with our breweries and marijuana places and whatever. So that’s and better and buffets, we need buffets all we have others are just having certain fast foods, fast food, fast food, not healthy stuff. And we need better things like that. This is all good talk for a good city. And it’s 100,000 so it’s not like it’s little, some little country town. It’s a big city and like our affordable housing also is nice, but also it needs to be not rich and nice and safe and all those things. You know, this is a nice city long but I’ve lived here 70 Some years and the thing is is anyway, Lord bless you precious people for listening. Thank you Joanna Wonderful job.

Unknown Speaker 24:42
So we have the Silver Creek Academy leadership program.

Unknown Speaker 24:47
I think this is Dalia Espinosa.

Unknown Speaker 24:53
That’s different. So can you state your name and address please?

Unknown Speaker 24:58
Hello, my name is Genesis and

Unknown Speaker 25:00
This is Margaret Keenan and Delilah. Our address is for 901 Nelson Road in Loma. We are from the Silver Creek Leadership Academy and we’ll love to invite you all to our leadership Expo.

Unknown Speaker 25:18
This event will take place at Silver Creek High School on October 2 2023, from five to 7pm. This is an event made to celebrate the accomplishments of students. There’ll be a Volunteer Award Ceremony for our fellow FCCLA members and senior capstone projects that will be on display.

Unknown Speaker 25:39
There will be music and an in and out food truck which is a fundraiser for a parent groups tickets will need to be purchased ahead of time and you will not be able to buy anything from the food trucks during the event.

Unknown Speaker 25:54
We would love to purchase your dinner so please let us know ahead of time through our email. There will be games music and overall a good time. This event is open to the public. So come on over to our fall party and celebrate our impactful accomplishments. Thank you. Can you tell us the date one more time? October 2 from five to 7pm Thank you

Unknown Speaker 26:16
Thank you. That was great. Now I have dolly Espinosa.

Unknown Speaker 26:27
Miss Espinosa?

Unknown Speaker 26:30
No. Okay, I

Unknown Speaker 26:37
don’t know this.

Unknown Speaker 26:42
I’m sorry, I can’t read this name. It looks like J

Unknown Speaker 26:51
It’s

Unknown Speaker 26:53
Chelsea. Yeah. Anybody here from for 25. Chelsea court?

Unknown Speaker 26:59
No. Okay. We’ll go on to Steve art Shula then.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 27:08
Good evening, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 27:12
My name is Steve ALTSCHULER. I live at 1535 Taylor drive.

Unknown Speaker 27:18
I’d like to remind everyone that when they took office, they swore to uphold the Constitution. And a couple of weeks ago talking that I shouldn’t be able to say whatever I wanted to is in violation of the First Amendment.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
And that can make a big deal tonight. But in general, I think that needs to be noticed.

Unknown Speaker 27:37
I know that it was like a year ago, but I think the city council is going to be bringing it up soon.

Unknown Speaker 27:44
Considering red flag laws are raising the age of gun ownership is a violation of the Second Amendment

Unknown Speaker 27:53
of our Second Amendment rights, and they’re in direct defiance of our Supreme Court.

Unknown Speaker 27:58
Changing a little bit, our budget for 2024 is $444 million.

Unknown Speaker 28:05
That’s a 20% increase in three years, which is 6% a year, which was like three times the rate of inflation that it was during President Trump. It’s about the same as President Biden right now.

Unknown Speaker 28:19
There’ll be $4,000 for every man, woman and child in Longmont. But kids in lower income taxes. The kids and lower income people don’t pay taxes. So the real price of that 440 million is about $16,000 per taxpayer in Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 28:38
If you had another 100 million for the Rec Center, the YMCA, and 200 unit low income

Unknown Speaker 28:47
housing areas that you’re planning on, you’re up to about $20,000 per taxpayer

Unknown Speaker 28:54
rents and mortgages would be about 20% lower if city council would quit taxing everyone for their pet projects.

Unknown Speaker 29:02
The definition of socialism, a political economic theory of social organization, which advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Unknown Speaker 29:18
The definition of capitalism, an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, which is also called free market capitalism.

Unknown Speaker 29:32
free market capitalism has brought millions more people out of poverty than any other system of government. So I think y’all need to brush up on that and promote more free market capitalism than socialism.

Unknown Speaker 29:47
Low Income Housing if you’re going to do it should be limited for two or three years. I think veterans should be the first to get low income housing.

Unknown Speaker 29:56
In those two or three years anyone receiving low income

Unknown Speaker 30:00
housing should be required to take classes at Front Range. So they can help themselves get more valuable. We don’t need low income housing people for the next 50 years of their life. And if a quarter or 50% of their rent is being paid, there’s an incentive for them not to help themselves. I’m fine. That was fast. It was Thank you. Thanks, Steve.

Unknown Speaker 30:23
We are now at special reports and presentations.

Unknown Speaker 30:27
I see no no special reports. So we’ll go to the study session items immediately. The first one is 2024 proposed budget presentation

Unknown Speaker 30:39
invite Jim golden our CFO.

Unknown Speaker 31:07
Got

Unknown Speaker 31:13
it

Unknown Speaker 31:30
there you go.

Unknown Speaker 31:36
We are packed members of council I’m Jim Goldin, Chief Financial Officer in tonight on budget presentations, we’re going to be covering a number of topics. We have myself as well as some other staff that will be coming up to assist in some of them. So tonight, we’ll be going through briefly the Natural Resources eight five project plan. All the new positions, we have 34 New FTE and the new in the 24 proposed budget. We’re going to discuss incremental development revenue, one time expenses.

Unknown Speaker 32:12
We’re gonna go through the DDA budget and associated budgets that are also overseen by the DDA. And then we’ll have a

Unknown Speaker 32:21
presentation on human service agency funding supporting actions for mental health and early childhood capacity building. And then we’re gonna go through grants and external funding sources. And then finally, the public safety budget. And with the long humains law macmaine Society impacts. So beginning with the update on the aid five program, I’m just going to cover this briefly, this has been was included in an appropriation in August, you did already

Unknown Speaker 32:56
do an appropriation for three parks, we are now going to have a second appropriation that will be presented to you on October 10, for first reading. And that is to include for more parks that need to are going to be added and considered as well. And in relationship to that we are making some adjustments to the 2004 to 2008. CIP, to lower some funding for the Dry Creek community park project so that we can maintain a healthy fund balance in the park Improvement Fund. And so within the communication tonight, there’s a little larger explanation of that. But as well we have two attachments in the in the communication that are new pages that will go into that proposed CIP. So that’s all I had on that. And you can stop me on any of these to ask me questions as I roll through them. But I’m gonna go straight now into the new positions.

Unknown Speaker 33:58
Question.

Unknown Speaker 34:02
Signal one in the queue, Jim, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 34:07
So as I mentioned, there’s 34 new positions that are proposed in this budget. Within the council packet tonight you’ve got a attachment L to a pretty large attachment that is providing metric information for all of those new positions. I’m not going to go through the metrics. I will just briefly summarize the 34 new FTE 13 and a half of them in the general fund. We have 4.9 in the streets fund 4.3 In the Electric broadband fund, four in the public safety fund, and then we’re getting down to two or less in some of these other funds that I’m not going to go through here. We will be

Unknown Speaker 34:49
total FTE in this proposed budget will move to 11 147.815 If these were all to be added

Unknown Speaker 34:59
going

Unknown Speaker 35:00
through them briefly. There’s one FTE redevelopment manager, one FTE device specialist, fixed term all these so far in the general fund, one FTE senior code enforcement, zoning and housing inspector, and three custodians. Tim, can I just seem to run to you that counselor McCoy has a question check on slide six.

Unknown Speaker 35:25
Six, that is slide six. Oh, right here.

Unknown Speaker 35:30
So are any of these where you combine somebody and make them whole? So like, as you add, you know, take

Unknown Speaker 35:39
point five and point four, nine, any of those where you’re connecting them into a computer? So these, as I mentioned, there’s 34, new F FTE. They’re all full FTE, but some of them are allocated across a number of different funds, which is why as you can guess what I thought, seven funds to have percentages type of allocations for some FTE. So they have different responsibilities at different kinds of times in their, in the sense that they’re being supported. The funding is being provided by a number of funds, because they’re for a, an effort that crosses across those funds already something for sustainability related and things like that. All right. Thank you. One more, Councillor Martin?

Unknown Speaker 36:27
Oh, thank you, Jim. Same answer.

Unknown Speaker 36:34
Alright, so then I was moving through these FTE there’s three FTE custodians. In the general funds, there’s somewhat offset as well, by a reduction in contract services. We been using some temp wages for some of those positions currently, one FTE actually two FTE youth program specialists in the general fund, one senior Recreation Program Coordinator, one grounds maintenance technician to, and one park supervisor, and then one senior parks and open space ranger for union reservoir,

Unknown Speaker 37:09
and then a public information officer. And that’s also offset by a reduction in temporary wages from the general fund.

Unknown Speaker 37:18
So do you want to?

Unknown Speaker 37:20
Are there any questions on the position on this page, or the first page, and those role of general fund positions I went through so far?

Unknown Speaker 37:28
Counselor waters, a lot of questions about the specific the specific positions, or the numbers of FTE

Unknown Speaker 37:37
in this just may be my going to my frame on metrics, that that would apply to personnel.

Unknown Speaker 37:46
I do appreciate the closure and the description, the description of what people are going to be expected to do is helpful. But a description is real different than a performance or a whether it’s a performance metric, or a department metrics.

Unknown Speaker 38:01
In in what would be different, right for either clients within the organization, right? If this is one department serving another department, or serving the public in terms of what will be different, the so what is the result of the what right, good description of the what people will be doing? But if I look and go, Hmm, how would I answer the question? So

Unknown Speaker 38:25
what’s going to be different for anybody in terms of reduced response times shorter waits.

Unknown Speaker 38:32
Lower rates, probably won’t be lower rates. But you know, from department to department, and I recently realized some of them are more conducive than others, to those kinds of metrics. I just didn’t see I saw maybe one in one of the descriptions, metrics embedded. Maybe it’s just my, you know, my misunderstanding of how to think about metrics.

Unknown Speaker 38:53
But it would be hard for me to answer a question. So what will be different for me as either as a beneficiary or a client of another department, or as a member of the community because the city added 34 and a half FTE.

Unknown Speaker 39:11
Yeah, and most of those, I know, we go over that when I’m reviewing the budget. And, you know, if you go back to the first page, Jim, just generally when I could tell you,

Unknown Speaker 39:22
so

Unknown Speaker 39:24
next one.

Unknown Speaker 39:26
Excellent, no, forward, sorry.

Unknown Speaker 39:29
So when when you look at this slide with slide seven in the talk about what can we expect with the redevelopment manager, we can really, that’s handling the volume of projects that’s coming and actually letting us move through those projects.

Unknown Speaker 39:42
More on pace with what is coming at us versus having to delay projects based on the staffing. And when we talk about that you go what’s in that mix, first two main transit station, the steam area, and then obviously the sugar mill.

Unknown Speaker 39:57
We’re seeing a lot of increased activity

Unknown Speaker 40:00
And we that’s going to let us deal with it.

Unknown Speaker 40:05
The device specialist is similar about processing our computers in the field and getting this through. And then there’s some unique ones. And so when you talk about the senior code enforcement, zoning and housing, so, you know, one of the challenges we had is that our only housing inspector was the Dane who got promoted to lead that division. But we also know we needed, we needed more capacity to do that. And when we look at what we’re doing on the housing side, in terms of working through those processes, that really allows us to deal with more, but it’s getting them more involved in that process. And in the custodians is really a financial issue, in that what we’re finding is contracting out for custodians, we’re upside, you know, we’ve just seen the contracting world pass by so we’re now hiring those again, internally.

Unknown Speaker 40:52
And it really lets us actually handle more facilities and have more capacity to deal with facilities and night activity. So I know I can kind of go through this with you all. And we can put that together and get that to you before the Council adopts a budget. Because I think it’s important, you know, and then the next two, these are two things that I’ve talked about before. But when we look at the issues that we’ve been having with the youth of our community, and specifically what public safety and Youth Services is having to deal with, both of those positions are very targeted, you see rewinded, one and family engagement and another, it’s actually to increase capacity and our volume of kids that we can work with, to try to get in front of what we’re seeing. So I think we can do that for all of these. And I think it’s more specific to so what I kind of just worked you through, here’s what we’re going to be able to do.

Unknown Speaker 41:47
Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 41:49
Again, I’m not challenging the need, because I know how short staffed we are in places across the city or in departments.

Unknown Speaker 41:59
But even you know, if you and I were to spend 20 minutes together in terms of so you know, what do we estimate now it’s wait times, right? Just redevelopment? What, by what percentage? Or yeah, how are we going to know how are we going to measure whether or not we actually reduce wait times or on rewind? How many kids and families are touched by the rewind program now, with the additional FTE, we would expect to see a 20% increase in the number of kids not who are not who are committing crimes, but who are diverted from the criminal justice system into reward as a way just to kind of measure? Right? Those are pretty simple measures. Yeah. And I, you know, the as we’ve looked at these from time to time, I know some departments, I’m looking at Valerie up there, and I know what a great job she does with metrics in an environment. But but her work lends itself to measurements that are more precise than in, you know, what’s happening with custodians, for example. But even that could be just a measure in terms of dollar savings, or how many square foot feet we clean a week, or areas that don’t that are not on a rotational basis, anything, you know, not anything, but a variety of ways to get more specific. And then at the end of the day, you or another Council this to answer the question, did we make the differences? And how do we know right when we’re building budgets a year from now? So yeah, we can get that to you before adoption, because I know I’ve been a broken record, it’s my last opportunity to get that oar in the water.

Unknown Speaker 43:28
So going back to the ranger for the Union reservoir, Is there anywhere in this budget, because we’ve heard from counselors that there are we have problems with people in parks, for example, a Macintosh where there is no one reminding them of the rules of no drinking, no swimming, and in the water, it’s surface only?

Unknown Speaker 43:54
Do we have that in the budget at all? Or are these going to be rotating Rangers? How’s that gonna work? So the way they presented it is that there’s a different challenge when it comes to union. So what this lets us do is keep that ranger at Union, but then the other rangers that we have can get out into the other areas of the community to deal with those types of issues. In addition, there’s another position that we have,

Unknown Speaker 44:19
that we worked with with that was Zach, Joanie and others, where there is an enforcement coordinator position, that’s also going to help facilitate that conversation and to see where we can bring other resources in to deal with, you know, those types of issues. So that’ll be coordinating Rangers that will be coordinating parking control, code enforcement and bringing more resources to bear versus where we tend to operate in specific silos, but really bringing everything in to try to deal with those positions. So it’s really a combination of a couple of things that we think will allow us to get at those issues.

Unknown Speaker 44:57
Harold, how many Rangers do we have? Do you know?

Unknown Speaker 45:00
Uh,

Unknown Speaker 45:01
off the top of your head. I know we added two last year.

Unknown Speaker 45:06
Where is

Unknown Speaker 45:08
David?

Unknown Speaker 45:11
We can get that for you. But just

Unknown Speaker 45:15
it’s like three or four. We’ve added more in recent years. Because the last time we had the issues at Union, I think we added a couple of rangers in there too. But we’ll get you that number. I’ll look it up real fast. And does that include the the Rangers that we had for the downtown breezeways and that we’re working down there? I know we did that a couple years ago. Yeah, that does not include that. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 45:39
All right, thank you. Let’s see, who do we have here is Councillor Adolfo fairing?

Unknown Speaker 45:45
Thank you, Mayor, I was gonna bring that up, I wasn’t sure if there were more positions coming down the line. And I appreciate Harold that you had mentioned about, you know, crossing over different departments rather than working on silos. So some of the things that have come, you know, to my attention in at McIntosh Lake and plus I walk over there and I’ve seen this people drinking that could be alleviated by arranger kind of reminding people going in the water that water is gross just out that water is gross. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.

Unknown Speaker 46:20
Do you know when what it looks like when the water level just stop.

Unknown Speaker 46:26
So I just I had to get that out. I live near there i I’m frequency all those issues. So that’s something that could be alleviated through Rangers. Parking, parking is becoming a problem. I mean, even for folks who are just trying to drive along Lakeshore drive, the cars that are far away from the curb. During COVID I had to yell at somebody while I was calm. But there was cook hibachi right on someone’s driveway. And it was like move that they you don’t live here, you know, in just the the inconsiderate nature. So that could be something that is public safety, parking, you know, different code enforcement fractions. So the fact just, you know, please make sure that these departments are connecting with each other. So that in that response can happen immediately. I you know, I feel for the people who live across the street from there, it shouldn’t be up to them to have to go out and approach these people. I tried to do that to the start of COVID. And I will never do that. Again. That was probably not the very safest or wisest thing for me to do. But you know, I just I felt just heartbroken for these presidents. So thank you. So here’s the answer your question Yes, seven full time Park and watershed Rangers that we have several multiple seasonal Rangers that we bring in to do the work to your other question. So and that’s from in from Joanie that she got in that includes open space trails, button rock and different issues. And that’s really the point at the coordination because

Unknown Speaker 47:58
can we have parking control assist in the parking issues are can’t how do we interplay with the patrol officers when we’re dealing with this, and it really is bringing that in, because I believe we did buy a boat for our sea do for the park rangers at Union last year. So they could go out and make sure that we’re enforcing the life vest, and other requirements. And so it’s really trying to get the team to surround an issue versus expecting any one individual area to deal with it because it’s really maximizing our capacity. And that was part of the conversation with getting the senior rank ranger to to stay at Union good, then the Rangers that have been having to stay there can then move out in the community.

Unknown Speaker 48:41
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 48:43
Back to Jim.

Unknown Speaker 48:50
Okay, so I will pick it back up. We went through the general fun.

Unknown Speaker 48:57
So the other jam let me before you keep going, what are the positions? I want to talk about that similar to what we talked about with with the Ranger position? And so you’re looking at and if you looked at the sheet that we provided you all where we checked, what does it impact. So when you look at the Public Information Officer that’s related to several positions. And what we were able to do is Zach is looking at some restructuring in his department and doing that. We needed a full time public information officer. So by funding the pilot, full time Public Information Officer, what we’re actually able to get is the enforcement coordinating position that we talked about earlier, and we’re also able to get a neighborhood service officer to come along with it. So by funding one position, he was able to take additional dollars that he had within his budget, restructure some things so we’re actually getting three different components making that structural move that really touches Council’s priorities of housing

Unknown Speaker 50:00
neighborhoods quality of life and those issues, but it was really dependent on the public information officer if we didn’t do that we couldn’t restructure the way we needed to on the police side. Great.

Unknown Speaker 50:13
Okay, I’m gonna pick up here with the street fund. We have one in FTE Neighborhood Resource Specialist, one alternative transportation planner, one senior GIS mapping tech, and one transportation engineering assistant. And then we have a position split between the street fund and storm drainage funnel, it’s an administrative analyst. We have a PMO manager fixed term, which is funded by 10 different funds, which is what we were referring to before some positions. Administrative analyst fixed term is also for PMO and funded by 10 funds.

Unknown Speaker 50:52
We have an outreach victims advocate from the public safety firm, and three firefighters from the public safety foam. And then

Unknown Speaker 51:01
in the

Unknown Speaker 51:03
open space fund, one natural resource technician two for plant ecologist and another one for plant weeds. And then for the fleet fund a master ASE technician too. And then a fleet service coordinator assistant and this is another position that’s offset by some reduction in temp wages. Also in the fleet fund there, we have one FTE home ownership specialist for the attainable housing fund, one data analyst for broadband from the electric and broadband fun in one journey substation worker for electric and electric and broadband fund.

Unknown Speaker 51:40
And then finally, last three positions one FTE energy efficiency and education specialist from sustainability Fund and the electric and broadband fund. We one FTE technical functional analysts for electric in one FTE technical functional analysts CRM and special projects from about five or six different funds, they’re listed. So those are the 34 FTE, that are proposed in this budget.

Unknown Speaker 52:08
One of the things in this when you see fixed term, so you saw a fixed term with the redevelopment manager to the pulling of the metrics, and what are we expecting that’s intentional in the budget? Because

Unknown Speaker 52:20
we know what we’re hoping to see. If we don’t see it, then we don’t need to continue that position in perpetuity based on the capacity and what are we going to accomplish?

Unknown Speaker 52:29
You also saw that in terms of the project management office, so we’ve been talking to counsel about, what do we need to do internally to make sure that we can stay on course with our capital projects? How are we creating the reporting mechanisms. And so this is really the creation of a new function, that camp will come in and work with the entire organization on large projects to really work with us in terms of how we’re building the system out? How are we staying on time from

Unknown Speaker 52:57
power staying on time? And how are we staying on budget and some of the work that we’re starting to see that hopefully, in the near future, we can present to councils are already starting to give me the dashboards so that I can look at it and look at well, what are the major challenges is IT staffing is and I can pick something and then I can look over and see where we are in the with the project. So I can start seeing what’s falling behind understanding why it’s falling behind. So we can be on the front end of making the adjustments we need to, to stay on time and on budget, because time is money. And and so that’s really a lot of what the project management office is going to be doing with strategic integration in Jim’s group and finance is really helping us work that issue out. So that’s all linked to

Unknown Speaker 53:46
really shifting how we approach capital projects

Unknown Speaker 53:52
can now going to move into incremental development revenue. So within this budget, there’s a projection of 750 building permits for new dwelling units. And our current financial policy is that it any revenue from the first 200

Unknown Speaker 54:12
dwelling units is regular operating type revenue and any revenue that we get from anything greater than 200 permits, we considered to be incremental development revenue. And that means what that means is that we can’t be sure that that’s going to be ongoing into the future as development slows down. And so we have used that money from those from that type of revenue to fund

Unknown Speaker 54:40
operating expenses within the general fund, but we’ve considered them to be funded by incremental development revenue. And so they’re subject to being reduced into the future in the future if the revenue drops below 200 permits. So the amount of IDR in this budget is almost $400,000 and

Unknown Speaker 55:00
The position or the expenses that are being covered through this $400,000 are listed here on this slide. They’ve been in place for a while since we’ve been receiving IDR for quite a while. And these are all expenses that were initially identified as being IDR funded at that point in time. So we have 46% of a planning technician, we have an associate planner and a permit technician and an electrical inspector, they were all added, like 1516, and 17. And then for ongoing other ongoing costs, we have temp wages that were added in 2017. And overtime for plan review that was added in 2018.

Unknown Speaker 55:46
And moving to one time expenses, there’s

Unknown Speaker 55:50
we’ve got this detailed with within your council communication, there are a couple of attachments here that give all of the detail that makes up all of the one time expenses for the general fund for the public safety fund. And then for for all of the other funds. This is the general fund total here and we just haven’t

Unknown Speaker 56:12
totaled in subcategories here on the slide. But again, you can find the detail for it within the council communication. So we have $1.6 million for capital equipment, we have $1.15 million for it or technology improvements, equipment, and then $183,000 For non capital, small equipment, supplies, and then 5.4 7 million of one time services or expenses.

Unknown Speaker 56:45
And a good a good deal of that, as we talked about during the property tax discussion, at least there’s 3 million of that that is not designated this time. And we talked about we’ll be talking more about that. Next week when we pick up on property tax again. Can I ask the question back here? Okay. I’m looking at the IT equipment or technology improvements.

Unknown Speaker 57:07
This is I just need clarification. Do we as a city pay for our municipal judges? IT equipment and upkeep maintenance? Oh, Nm?

Unknown Speaker 57:22
Are we responsible for that as the city? Yes, we do that.

Unknown Speaker 57:26
So if they need software update, if they need they come to council, or they come to you should come.

Unknown Speaker 57:36
It should come through our system. We have a technology committee that looks at what we’re doing in terms of software, and how we’re moving through this. So right now where we sit, we have a computer replacement program. We have many different programs that we have in place.

Unknown Speaker 57:54
Right now in terms of public safety. And the court the one thing that we’re working on is the police. Looking at Sandy, the RMS criminal criminal justice system, which is primarily a police system that the court utilizes in terms of how that interacts counsel may remember that that system and the fire system, both were into life, and we had to start accumulating money to do it. So I think the question is, is it really depends on what it is that we’re doing, who’s using it and how it integrates within our broader systems. So I made the decision. A few years ago, we were starting to have problems with computer systems interacting with each other. And so we have some primary systems within our structure. So obviously, Munis that’s our primary financial system. When we look at the geospatial work we’re doing that’s EZRI. When we look at our

Unknown Speaker 58:52
building inspection, that’s Sella. And so we have these core, I call them the mothership systems. So as we’re looking at different software’s, it’s really how does it work? What are we trying to do?

Unknown Speaker 59:04
And we have to be careful of having too many one off software systems because that can start creating different challenges. In terms of the API’s, if we’re trying to have things interconnected, we’ve seen some failures in the system, which is why we have a technology committee that anybody that has a request, they need to put that request into the technology committee, and they’ll start working with them so we can understand what that means. What does it mean in terms of staff time and what we have to do? Who’s gonna support it? How’s it gonna be supported? And what’s the impact of the system? So we do have a process. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 59:37
Thanks, Andy, did I mess anything up on that?

Unknown Speaker 59:44
I was just gonna mention that part of the project that he was talking about was the criminal justice and fire systems. So that does include complete replacement of the legacy court systems that we’re working on right now. Okay. And you said that you’re, I probably won’t say this correctly, but accumulating money in order to

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
But we accumulated money right now. I think they’ve liked the car. They’ve liked the contract and now we’re starting to do implementation. Okay, that’s what I wanted to know. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:17
Okay, at the bottom of the slide, I’m just showing that actually the source source of this 8.4 million, about half of it is coming from really leftovers from operations from 22, where we may have exceeded budget and revenues are saved some expenditure monies. And then the other half of it is coming from one time revenues here. And like I mentioned before, the property tax being a large part of that.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:45
The public safety fund in the one time here we have capital equipment of $182,000, and IT equipment of 372,000, non capital, small equipment of 85,001, time services and expenses of 282,000. Then a couple of CIP projects that are being funded through this is partial funding towards these projects, a $200,000 for the Safety and Justice rehab project, and then 55,000 For the prairie dog barrier replacements

Unknown Speaker 1:01:22
at the shooting range.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:27
And then all other funds these is the breakdown for the rest of the funds in the city 8.9 million of capital equipment 438,000 for IT equipment, non capital 153,000. And then one time services are expenses of 4.3 million. So again, attachment m and n n o are all the pages that where you can see all the detail of those proposed expenditures.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:56
So any further questions on one time expenses before I move to the DDA

Unknown Speaker 1:02:04
piece, I’m gonna start this presentation, Carolyn McKees. Here, she’s also going to join me to

Unknown Speaker 1:02:11
pick it up and finish it. So I will have her jump in here in a few minutes.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:18
So the LDA not only are we looking at their budget, but also at a couple of funds, an entity that LDA manages for the city, including downtown parking Fund and the general provement. District. And then the LGA has a number of its own funds that we’re looking at here quickly. First, with the GID. Budget for a proposed budget for 24 is 189,000 increase of about $25,000 largest source of the increase really is increase in the administrator transfer fee from the city. And that’s going up by 12 and a half $1,000 It’s really based on a lot on the the level of of

Unknown Speaker 1:03:04
service that the council is providing as as the board to the to the GID. And I think it’s also based on issues that have been brought to you on your agenda related to the GID. And I think last year, and this is based on 22 is activity. And the hotel came to you a few times and I think that probably is what was driving this difference mostly

Unknown Speaker 1:03:29
on the downtown parking funds a budget of $128,000 increase of almost $13,000 the most of the increases in Oh nm for professional services, which is including parking consulting, for $5,000.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:46
Then the DDA operating fun, this is funded by their five mill mill levy. It’s a budget of $380,000 for next year, small increase over 23. With there is some increases in personal services and oh nm, but there’s also a decrease in lnM of about 25,000 of one time dollars that were budgeted in 22. For some consulting help with the

Unknown Speaker 1:04:18
increase.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:21
Like we’re just about to talk about this and I can’t remember the name but the TIF increase that we’ll be talking about in a few minutes for that was went through the legislature legislators last few months ago. So

Unknown Speaker 1:04:34
and there’s also for next year a $15,000 increase a one time expenses for computers here.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:42
The debt service fund. So this is where the tax increment financing that is received by the LDA is received into this fund. And then from there it goes out through a loans that the council authorizes

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
to a interfund loan to utilize TIF because has to be freed up through a debt under a state statute. So anyhow, next year, it’s budgeted at $1.6 million here of TIF that we’ll be receiving here.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:19
That’s based on the projection of what we were going to receive in 2023.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:25
In the end of August, we did get a projection of $2.1 million

Unknown Speaker 1:05:31
after the budget was put together, to $2.1 million of potential tiff for 2024. Think, you know, this, of course, is subject to what happens with H H. Proposition H. H. And also I did just recently today actually send a question to the,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:52
to the county to double check this because the DDA TIF schedule, the base year rolls over for the first time in the last 10 years, it moves up a year and will move up one year, annually afterwards, and wanted to make sure that the county caught that because this is a big increase. And it could be possible if they did not roll that base year up, because they haven’t had to do it before. So we are the only DDA that they deal with on TIF. So it would have been the first time they would have had to deal with it. So this could come down because of that as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:32
So what we’re using it for in 2024 is 386,000 that $1,000 To spend to finance, art and entertainment activities. And then another 768,000 to fund construction fun projects. On the art entertainment fun. This is the breakdown the budgets increasing $45,000 next year 12, almost $13,000 increase in personal services 38,004 increase in contract services for events put on in DDA.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:07
And then again, I said to funding and there’s 386,000. So on the ones going back to the TIF again, the construction fund is funded through that tax increment financing. And the way that works under TIF for properties that are within the DDA 50% of the property tax that is levied by any of the taxing entities that is levy within the DDA, the growth in the value over the prior 30 years goes to the DDA annually for funding of projects that support the DDA is master planning and development. And so as I already mentioned they’ll get 1.6 million this year and up to 2.1 next year. And I’m going to now ask

Unknown Speaker 1:07:54
Kimberly to pick it up from here to talk about the projects that are being funded there.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:06
Okay, Mayor Peck members of council I’m Kimberly McKee, Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority here in Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:14
As Jim said, the DDA uses tax increment financing to

Unknown Speaker 1:08:19
implement our plan of development. uses include different projects, as well as capital improvements and investments in Catalyst projects and incentives. As part of our first extension in 2013, council allowed the DDA to keep a portion of the tax increment for infrastructure replacement dollars. So you’ll see that’s about $76 that we’re budgeting for the next year. We also transfer about 4% of the costs into our operation for property manager for project management for staff. So that’s the 20,000 Can I advance us.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:58
And then we also do a number of projects. So we use tip to implement the first two are some of the data sources that we subscribe to. So we can really look at the health and climate and what’s happening or the vibrancy of our district cultural programs. We support for $15,000, some ongoing support of our parking study and to do implementation.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:21
We also are joint funding, hopefully an event trailer with recreation to make the use of our city assets more efficient. So we can kind of share those assets, looking at some joint programming with our economic partners, and then the ongoing lease of the smoke garage that we invested in last year.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:41
And then the major thing that we’re budgeting for this year is $150,000. To help with the micro transit as well as looking at a downtown shuttle option, as we know that there will be some parking, displacement during construction. We want to make sure that people can easily get

Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
To the other parking that we have within our own parking system. So how do we kind of leverage that micro transit to look at possibly a shuttle, also reinvesting in some of the incentives that we have those dollars are going low so we can get some more of those out, and then maintenance of our cameras.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:17
And then in our CIP, that you’ve probably heard about before, as we discussed in January with this council, the board put together another $250,000 for implementation of the Main Street corridor plan. For us pedestrian safety, traffic calming and looking at connectivity is super important. So we do you want to play a role in that funding, that funding brings our total up to about 500,000. Within that CIP.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:45
We’re also going to refresh some of the ally assets that the DDA manages and the LA project that we invested in, as well as implementing our placemaking plan by looking at some enhanced crosswalks on Kimbark.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:59
So as Jim was mentioning, one of the things that was a major change last year, the DDA is in Fort Collins Grand Junction and Longmont worked together to on bill, SB 23 175. This bill would create an additional 20 year extension of our TIF, which would be after the 20 year extension we’re in right now. I would really like to thank Mayor Peck and members of council and city staff for their support. While we worked on this, it was, it was really great. Our first 20 year extension will end in 2033. That is when the extension happens. And if we do have another extension, it will not change the taxes that are paid from the folks that are within the district. It’s just how those taxes are allocated. And so at our last board meeting, our board passed a resolution to ask city council to authorize an additional 20 years of TIF TIFF, it’s really important tool for us to maintain and implement our master plan. We had talked a little bit about the projects and the things that we do. But it’s also for these catalyst projects that we have seen make a real impact on our downtown with Roosevelt Park Apartments, South Main Station in the spoke, and it will allow us to continue to do those things. One of the reasons why we’re asking council to do this now is when these projects come to us, and as we’re seeing a lot of activity in some of the underutilized parts of our DDA district. If we can count on projecting that TIF out for 30 years, it’s much more helpful right now our clock is closing. And so when we look at deals, we can only look at the next eight years. And that’s if they started being built today. And that’s not normally the case. And so by having this extension, it will allow us to look a little bit more in the future. So I appreciate your time. And I’m happy to answer any questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:55
And I’ll just add that so we will bring an ordinance to the Council on October 10 to consider that TIF extension, which is the action that’s going to be required to do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:10
So if we don’t have any other counselor might when we do. Yeah, it’s not much of a question. Kimberly, I just wanted to say that I am always happy when I hear a long range plan. And I think you’ve that the DDA has done a beautiful job in bringing us through a couple Earth several very difficult years. And I’m glad to hear that you’ve got such a strong plan for

Unknown Speaker 1:13:38
getting back to normal.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:43
Thank you, Kimberly.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:45
Okay, so now we’re going to shift here and I’m going to have Christina Pacheco come down and we are going to cover human service agency funding supporting actions for mental health and early childhood capacity building.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:17
Righty

Unknown Speaker 1:14:26
Good evening, Mayor Peck and members of cramp Council Christina Pacheco, Human Services Department Director, and I’m here to talk about the human services items on the agenda, early childhood capacity building, supporting action for Mental Health and Human Services, agency funding.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:48
So I’m gonna go ahead and start out with early childhood capacity building, because we have one of our consultants here, Grace pioneer from delivery Associates.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
To talk about the work that we’ve completed,

Unknown Speaker 1:15:04
talked about the roadmap, where we’re where we’ve been, where we’re going, and we’ll provide a demo of what we have so far. So 800, about $850,000 was carried over in the children, youth and families budget from 2022. A portion of this is going to be used to support the completion of work by delivery associates, we’re going to create a marketing plan with our comms team and launch the public facing early childhood dashboard to clean up to paint a clear picture of supply and demand of early childhood slots. So phase one of the project, the internal dashboard has been completed. And now we are in phase two to be completed at the end of 2023. So I’m gonna turn it over to Grace now, to talk a little bit more in depth of what we’ve accomplished, through our work with them. And then I’ll take it over and finish the Early Childhood pieces and we’re gonna get the

Unknown Speaker 1:16:09
most recent Yeah, yeah, we’re going to

Unknown Speaker 1:16:13
the next slide. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:16
Okay. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:24
Hi, my name is Grace Pennington, and I’m work for delivery associates, which is a public sector advisory firm. And we’ve been working with Children, Youth and Family Services since November of 2022. And I worked with a lot of communities. And I don’t mind saying this in a video that will go on YouTube, but they are definitely one of my favorite teams I’ve ever worked with.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:44
So as Christina mentioned, we’ve been charged with the big task of trying to achieve 100% access to quality early childhood education in Longmont. And we’ve been doing this in two phases. In our first phase, we asked ourselves the question of what are the barriers to early childhood education quality early childhood education? Why are families not able to access this. And once we identified those barriers, which were a lack of awareness, some parents don’t know the importance of early childhood education, accessibility, perhaps you work non traditional hours, and you’re not able to drop off your kids at 9am and pick them up at three. Or maybe there’s not one in your community. Cultural differences, some families prefer to keep their children at home. And affordability, it’s very, very expensive to be able to give your children quality care. Once we had these barriers identified, we then started to go out and look where can we find data on these different barriers, we can monitor how our strategies are doing. Once we got this data on these barriers, we also started collecting data on demand. So how many three to four year olds? Are there in Longmont? Where are they located? The supply getting a lot of information on formal providers and their locations. The quality which we got from the QR QR i ‘s rating system, and then with this information, we’re able to kind of track the enrollment gap. So the gap between supply and demand. And with this information, we’re able to put it on a dashboard,

Unknown Speaker 1:18:13
which we can show you

Unknown Speaker 1:18:15
when we want to get this specific dashboard because it has a great map that we would like you to see.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:37
Not there

Unknown Speaker 1:18:49
it’s just the same one, isn’t it?

Unknown Speaker 1:18:52
Well, we can start there.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:01
Think

Unknown Speaker 1:19:03
she’s pulled up?

Unknown Speaker 1:19:06
Yeah, no, she.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:09
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:11
Perfect.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:15
So we always say you can’t manage what you can’t measure. So we went about how can we start tracking how we’re doing. And so with this dashboard map, we’re able to be able to better understand the supply and demand for care, verify policies, policy decisions, over time, increased transparency throughout teams for using the same dashboard.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:34
And being able to better monitor care scarcity. So you’ll see in our dashboard, we have six different pages. So we have that demand piece that we mentioned, supply quality data on the different barriers and then regional comparison so you can see how long man is doing compared to other communities. And then an FAQ page because sometimes you look at graphs and you’re like, huh, I have a question about that. And so we try to proactively start addressing people’s questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
So how the page is set up, you have the different tabs, a brief description about what you’re looking at. And then different cards that can quickly tell you at a glance, information on these different buckets of data. You can also choose comparisons from different years if you want to see how things change over time. And there are helpful little arrows that can show you if it’s up or down.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:22
We also have population trends, so you can see how things are changing. So we only have census data up to 2021. That’s the only thing that’s been released. However, we do have a light regression. So you can statistically see in this model, as like a prediction of what that population age will be. So you can better inform your supply and how many seats that you will need.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:45
And you can change for other

Unknown Speaker 1:20:47
age groups as well, this will change

Unknown Speaker 1:20:52
which is helpful. And if you want to zoom in on the data, you can as well it’s pretty interactive. So you can better take a screenshot for report if you want to.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:01
And then we also have different information on demographics in case you want to better be able to understand the population that you are serving as well, and how trends have changed over time.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:13
And you can select

Unknown Speaker 1:21:16
different demographics as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:24
We have supplies well.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:27
We have a note that there is a little bit of a limitation to our dashboard, that we only have data on formal care providers. And that we acknowledge that friends, family and neighbors can provide great care. And they’re a really important part of making sure that our kids get great quality, early childhood education. But unfortunately, we just do not have data on informal providers at that at this time. So we do acknowledge that as a disclaimer in our dashboards, so that’s something we would love to have in the future one day. But unfortunately, that data is just not available at this time. So this page is great, because you can see what’s the capacity of seats and formal facilities, how many professionals do you have? How many kids are there are early childhood education professional in Boulder County.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:11
This data should be updated soon. But you can see what year it’s from clearly. And so there are no questions and where the source is from.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:20
And you can also adjust the charts if you want to see how many spots are there just in childcare centers,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:26
or preschool programs. So it’s pretty interactive. And then we also have a chart down here where you can look at different providers that service type they are, where they’re located, what’s their capacity and QRS rating.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:38
As well as just different demographic data on people that are providing this care.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:46
Quality, we’re using QR I S. That’s the best measure that we have at this time. But this could be updated if there are better data sources available to really capture the quality of care that’s being provided to children.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:59
So we have the number of seats at each level of QRS rating. So

Unknown Speaker 1:23:05
they’re 833 spots in a facility that has a QRS rating of four.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:12
And then how many providers there are at each level as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:19
And then, as mentioned, we’re tracking different barriers. So what percent of the population has access within a 10 minute walk of a high quality care center, same within biking distance, and then also just a metric on the average distance between a child and their care center.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:35
And then different information on cost because as we mentioned, it’s very unaffordable for many families.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:42
And on our final page, we have just

Unknown Speaker 1:23:46
different regions that you can compare if you want to compare boulder to Broomfield or Gilpin or the state.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:55
So you can see how you’re doing in comparison.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:01
And then finally, as mentioned, we have the FAQ page, you can access it either through this tab, or on each of our pages, we have a tab that can take you there as well, that just provides more information on why the dashboard a map was created, where the information is coming from the methodology and who should contact if you have more questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:19
And I think if we can find the map, that’d be great.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:30
The other piece that the map that we’re looking for

Unknown Speaker 1:24:35
Maps has some really

Unknown Speaker 1:24:39
great information on

Unknown Speaker 1:24:42
child care, desert Child Care deserts and

Unknown Speaker 1:24:48
Okay, so we can and I can get that information to council later it doesn’t it’s okay. It’s okay. We can we can I can send that information later.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Oh, can I ask a question? How soon will this be available to the public to access?

Unknown Speaker 1:25:06
We’ll talk about that. We’re actually working with our comms team to come up with, what kind of information,

Unknown Speaker 1:25:16
you know, and how to roll that out to the public. That’s going to be our phase two, through December through the end of this year. So by the end of this year, we’ll have the public facing portion of this. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:29
Let me talk about the math a little bit. Yeah, so unfortunately, we’re not able to show the map at this time. But it’s able to provide the locations of each of these formal care facilities in Longmont. And we’re getting this information from the Colorado information marketplace. And you’re also able to see based on the size of the dot how many seats they have, where they’re located, the color corresponds with the quality of the facility. And it’s been very helpful in our end to be able to see where are their care deserts and help potentially inform future investment of if you are going to open up a new center, or if you are going to make an investment, where should it be. And then you’re also able to layer on different demographic data. And then also, with each corresponding location, you’re able to add a filter to see different walking patterns. So how many people are able to access this facility by walking or biking?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:22
So my apologies that you aren’t able to see it just technical difficulties. We’ll see it later. So Grace, I know that you said you didn’t have the data for f f n right now. But does the Boulder County have a list of the registered FF in families in Longmont that could be added?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:43
Mayor Peck, yes, Boulder County does have a list of child care homes. And so they are registered, they would be licensed homes. So the licensed homes are included in what we have. What we do not have

Unknown Speaker 1:27:03
are unlicensed or informal care. So

Unknown Speaker 1:27:09
sister that takes care of of up somebody’s children. We don’t have we don’t have that granular level of

Unknown Speaker 1:27:19
of data. But we do have all of the public information. So where is it on the map? Because when you listed the centers,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:31
they looked like they were in schools in churches and and I didn’t get to read the whole

Unknown Speaker 1:27:39
list. I think that’s another

Unknown Speaker 1:27:42
Yeah, the other supply.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:46
In the PowerPoint, we are talking about the different data sources here. Oh, here it is. Okay, I see. So there is a filter that we could use to filter out the childcare homes.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:01
And those charts are all exportable. So if you wanted to do additional analysis, you can export it as an Excel. Great, okay, I just didn’t see this. And I wanted to make sure that was in there as well. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:15
Any other questions? Thank you for your work.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:23
So this was the first phase of our work. And the second phase that we’re actively working on is that public facing component piece. And so that is the goal of being able to further communicate to the public, why ECC is important. Share where there are care centers available, have a space that formal providers can have more outreach with the public. And then as mentioned, for friends, family, Neighbor Care, because they are so important,

Unknown Speaker 1:28:50
help provide a space where we can acknowledge their, their importance and value as well as share additional training that is provided from different members of the community. Okay, I think Councillor waters has a question, comment. Thanks, Mr. Peck.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:04
And let me just just to editorial comment,

Unknown Speaker 1:29:07
wouldn’t surprise me at all for you to come here. And say at that microphone, that’s the best team you’ve ever worked with? Because that’s probably the best team in any municipality, doing this business anywhere. That’s just an observation.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:22
Christina, I think that compare and contrast this dashboard to a conversation presentation you made in maybe February of 2019. In anticipation of a mayor Summit. I mean, what a what a difference, right?

Unknown Speaker 1:29:40
What you’re able to put your hands on right now in terms of data, compared to where we were then. It’s, it’s very impressive, and everybody’s gonna be grateful for it.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:51
All that said,

Unknown Speaker 1:29:54
we read an article just recently in the Times call.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:59
About what

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
The anticipated

Unknown Speaker 1:30:03
loss, I guess I remember the way to the word of providers nationally that we should anticipate seeing

Unknown Speaker 1:30:13
as soon as October, right as I’m not certain what the rates of spending will be for every provider who’s received ARPA funding, but we know that money starts to dry up at the end of September, and the article we saw projected 70,000 providers nationwide.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:32
Either going out of business, we’re going to who are going to be dramatically affected by the the the expenditure, the loss of ARPA funds as a as a way to subsidize their operations. And I don’t know how I don’t remember the I’ve got the articles at home sitting on my desk, the number of kids and families that are going to be affected. It is it’s going to be devastating to a lot of communities. Do we have any idea in this community of what you’ve what you’ve displayed in terms of providers, where we have deserts or not? The ratings and the costs? I mean,

Unknown Speaker 1:31:06
the loss of ARPA funding is gonna have an effect here. Like it’s had other places, I assume. But I’m curious.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:14
Is that it? Can we factor that in? Not in the dashboard now, but in terms of what we should anticipate over the next, say, six months, in terms of our capacity?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:26
I don’t think it has the capability to be able to predict what that loss will be. I’m not, I’m not looking for the dashboard for that just based on the work you’re doing across the country. Christina, the work you’ve got, you’re in this 24/7 In in what’s going on nationally and at the state level, and then in Boulder County.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:48
We ought not to be blindsided by that

Unknown Speaker 1:31:53
maybe creating another data point.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:57
Or think when you look at ARPA funds, I’m trying to think of what we allocate, they have time I know what again, spend out. Yeah, but it’s coming as soon as October. Yeah. You know, I think what we’re going to have to do is probably or what they’re going to have to do is probably reach out to these providers and go who’s receiving ARPA funds?

Unknown Speaker 1:32:19
You know, I know from the ARPA allocation we have we really tried to be diligent and understanding what we were funding related to a One Time Expense versus an ongoing expense, because we know the danger of that, but we don’t know what other agencies have utilized. And so, yeah, I think that we’re gonna have to reach out and ask that question and let them tell us what they’re receiving. I think it’s data we ought to chase. I saw the number. The average cost was the average, the average cost we saw in one of the slides, you withdrew quickly, a 15,800. And some odd dollars was that the number?

Unknown Speaker 1:33:01
Was 15 180 Something per month? Yeah, it was 21% of someone’s income. So rose up to 18,000 $19,000 a year that was a long month number, right? In includes the entire range from licensed

Unknown Speaker 1:33:17
FFL ins to licensed centers, right. And in you know, in that average, we have some that are way north of $18,000 a year.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:29
So I just want to reflect one more time.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:33
There there is a group that was proposing a way to address

Unknown Speaker 1:33:38
the costs and building capacity that

Unknown Speaker 1:33:43
was denied by Cal Newport Boulder County commissioners do end up on a ballot how it would have fared but I think it’s I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say that group has not gone away. That work continues. That work that group fully intends to take another run at Boulder County Commissioners for no no November 24 election cycle which would make a huge difference if to add that around. This would be game changing for Longmont and for the rest of Boulder

Unknown Speaker 1:34:13
thanks

Unknown Speaker 1:34:17
Do we need a break to try to fit Yeah, let’s let’s take a break. Five minute break.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:35
Because if you have

Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
Microsoft SharePoint

Unknown Speaker 1:35:03
on SharePoint

Unknown Speaker 1:35:05
then opens

Unknown Speaker 1:35:15
Yeah, right

Unknown Speaker 1:42:08
We are back.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:12
I just noticed that the other day, I saw my name.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:18
Okay, we have the ever elusive map on the screen now. So we’ll have grace, go ahead and demo that and then I’ll move through my other items really quickly.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:32
Great. So, as mentioned,

Unknown Speaker 1:42:36
there are different facilities plopped on the mat map for their location.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:42
The color corresponds with its QR is rating. The size corresponds with how many slots it’s estimated to have, you can also click on any of the dots. Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:55
I need to remove this

Unknown Speaker 1:43:00
and see different

Unknown Speaker 1:43:06
care facility information, remove the layers, okay, so it tells you the name of the facility, the estimated care slots, maximum minimum slots, the provider name, and its QR is rating.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:20
We have a drop down here for an accessible area. So as mentioned, you can see

Unknown Speaker 1:43:27
how much of this is bikable 10 minutes covers a lot of the city

Unknown Speaker 1:43:32
as well as drive

Unknown Speaker 1:43:34
and walk.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:36
What I find to be really interesting is the view census data. So you can add a layer for enrollment for three and four year olds,

Unknown Speaker 1:43:45
as well as those not enrolled. But in terms of maybe getting a better understanding of who’s not getting served, you can do different layers like a Spanish speaking household or renter occupied homes.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:59
So you can see there’s a high concentration of Spanish speakers here but not a lot of facilities that are available to them.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:07
And if sometimes if you find the layers a little bit too distracting, like when I was trying to click on the dots to see the name of it, you can just remove those so it’s a little bit clearer and remove long boundaries as well. And then you also have the option to only view high quality facilities

Unknown Speaker 1:44:26
I don’t know if there any more questions on the map

Unknown Speaker 1:44:44
counselor, Hidalgo ferry

Unknown Speaker 1:44:47
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:50
Thank you, Mayor. So this question might be more for Christina as we look at this data, and you know right away I’m looking at you know, some of our

Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
Are Title One schools? Or are

Unknown Speaker 1:45:03
you just a lot of our high fliers where we’re constantly as educators constantly going out to the communities and kind of offering support? And then looking at how little

Unknown Speaker 1:45:15
neighborhood quality and quality care to so, you know, that’s another thing I wanted to ask you as well. But, you know, looking at these areas, you know, what do you envision? As far as like, for me, when I see that it’s like, okay, well, what can we do work in that particular area, to kind of help support community or get somebody on board to, you know, who could be a good talent are interested in offering a daycare facility or something to that effect? I guess, just what do you envision and doing with this data now that we see this? Mayor pic councilmember he toggle fairing? What I envision is, actually I’ll talk about that a little in our in our next slide, a couple of things. One is a partnership with our housing department, in when they are building new developments, how can we have our childcare organizations partner with them to have co located childcare, and, and housing within within their developments? That’s one way that I envision getting, getting more resources into the community. And the second piece is

Unknown Speaker 1:46:33
through our hub facility. So there’s, there’s, we have some ideas that we want to that we want to go to the community and say, exactly pose that question, what can we do to help? What kinds of incentives

Unknown Speaker 1:46:50
do do you need? What kinds of support do you need to open up? Whether they’re childcare

Unknown Speaker 1:46:59
homes, to create more spaces? Or what kinds of trainings might you need, and I’ll talk about that a little bit in our in our next slide. Okay. And then the next one, as you know, as we pull out, all the, you know, just focus on the high rating, you know, you see the number of dots really decrease. So, you know, something that I, you know, I’d like to see in the future is take a deeper Delve with some of the current, you know, what’s going on what what kinds of supports could be in place, different trainings or different

Unknown Speaker 1:47:31
opportunities for people to expand within these daycare facilities?

Unknown Speaker 1:47:36
Because that is crucial to I mean, we’re getting them so the group that I have this year in my class, my third graders, they were in preschool when COVID hit. And it just, it’s really evident and how they interact with each other the social socialization piece, not so much the academics but socialization. And that is so key during those years, those formative years that and when they miss that we saw what happens, and yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I’m physically exhausting, because I’m rounded. rounded up kids. It’s quite a scene. But yeah, so how can we delve deeper into that? I’d love that. Thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:17
Council, Councillor Martin.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:21
Thank you, Mayor pack. I, I may have missed this. But I see the legend for the circles and the daycare ratings. But where’s the legend for the different shades of red and what does that mean?

Unknown Speaker 1:48:38
Ah, renter occupied units percentage. Thank you. Yep. And that can be changed to view different census data. Yeah. Got that. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:51
Any other question? It doesn’t look like it. Okay. So before Christina goes on, you heard me talk about dashboards, what you’re seeing is actually Power BI that’s creating a lot of this. That’s actually what we’re using in Becky’s group and strategic integration to create similar dashboards for other projects that we have. So that it’s very easy to see it, get a sense of status and understand what we’re dealing with.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:16
Great.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:20
Thank you. Now I’ll address some of the questions

Unknown Speaker 1:49:25
in our next let’s see if I can get this

Unknown Speaker 1:49:30
done then I can do this.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:35
Perfect.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:42
All right now, what we’ll talk next is about our carryover funds and how they’ll support the friend family neighborhood component of the Early Childhood hub. So ideas for this include, but are not limited to

Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
Well, as you talked about councilmember Hidalgo, faring training space, options for care outside of normal business hours, using that hub as a central gathering place to access resources, such as recreation, mental health services for young children. And so what we want to do is Children, Youth and Families, along with community partners will be engaging with our friend, family neighbor, component of the care system, in an early education system reboot, so early education summit reboot, excuse me, and this is really a follow up from the 2019 summit. And so what we want to do is generate ideas on how to best integrate the FFM component of the system into this early childhood hub prior to completing its full construction. So what you see in front of you is a rendering of the proposed hub facility.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:00
And it will have early childhood slots, and then classrooms. And then we really want to integrate that FF N piece of piece of care.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:13
And you any questions about that? Christina? Do you have a proposed site for this? Yes, it is on

Unknown Speaker 1:51:22
third, and county line, I don’t remember the name.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:30
There’s another childcare,

Unknown Speaker 1:51:33
childcare,

Unknown Speaker 1:51:36
business right on the corner, I can get that I think it’s just to the south. It’s just to the southeast of the farmhouse apartment development. farmhouse sort of sit back there used to be a bank back there that’s now and existing Child

Unknown Speaker 1:51:50
Care Development, and then there’s some vacant property that’s adjacent to that. Great. So we’ll be working with with Matt Eldred from TLC. On on the summit, the summit reboot in engaging our FFM partners. Great.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:10
Thanks. Just to hear more about that. Yeah. So in addition to the carryover funds in the Cy F budget, other line items that support early childhood initiatives are 25,000 ongoing funds allocated to the 529 jump program, a project program does designed to bring awareness to saving for post secondary education. By utilizing a tax deducting 529 Savings Account 200,001 time funds allocated to early childhood capacity building, where Cy F staff will work with our collaborators to best determine the way to invest these funds in our community. So to your point, Councilmember Hidalgo, fearing that it could be in in training, it could be in a variety of different ways. But again, we would engage our community and partners in the best way to do that. And then finally, 100,000 and ongoing funds

Unknown Speaker 1:53:09
and 201 time funds that were initially directly called out

Unknown Speaker 1:53:13
for counsel and staff and to be you that are going to be used to assist staffed with the cost of childcare, if you’ll remember, we did receive a grant

Unknown Speaker 1:53:24
from the state for $500,000 to put toward the hub development, and in that we will be able to designate some spots for a city of Longmont employees. So it was an employee based Childcare Grant.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:41
Any questions about any of this?

Unknown Speaker 1:53:45
No, but thank you so much for working so hard on getting our vision where we need it to be. Thank you. Thank you. So next, we have supporting action for mental health. We know that there’s work that must be done. In this area, suicide rates have risen for adults by another 2.6% last year. And that follows an overall 5% increase in suicides since 2021. nationwide. We know that there are mental health impacts in our own community, and we recognize that we need to have a coordinated effort to address them. So staff has learned a great deal via the work that we’ve done through our neighborhood impact team. This multidisciplinary Center of Excellence model that the NIT work has undertaken has made a difference not only in providing a safer environment for our community, but also connecting individuals with much needed resources and services. So what we would like to do is take a similar approach with mental health and therapeutic case management that occurs in different divisions across the city.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:56
Since the city of Longmont Housing Authority began partnering

Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
In 2020, it’s become clear that there’s a need to support formally unhoused residents living in cities in the city supportive housing communities with a more robust level of service to support their successful move into housing and self sufficiency. So this is critical, particularly for those experiencing mental health challenges. So what we’re proposing that this funding $275,000 be used to hire additional clinicians, that would be city employees to support the formerly unhoused and provide high quality, community focused, supportive mental health services, and therapeutic case management. Creating a mental health impact team, like the NIT will allow staff to take a broader city wide cross departmental approach to supporting unhoused individuals. This will benefit not only our in house Community Members moving into housing programs, but support employees working in this these programs, because there’ll be working on a multidisciplinary team. And this approach that is collaborative will better support our city and leveraging these collective resources. Any questions about this?

Unknown Speaker 1:56:14
I know that this doesn’t have anything because you were talking about your division in the city. But I also want to know, why do we still have mental health workers going with police officers on domestic calls, that that’s exactly what we’re talking about. So leveraging resources across the city. So we have clinicians in children, youth and families and Senior Services and through our public safety department. And we also have

Unknown Speaker 1:56:45
case management and that takes different forms around the city. And so how can we leverage all of that to and take that nit approach to really provide

Unknown Speaker 1:57:00
supportive services for for those unhoused?

Unknown Speaker 1:57:05
People that come to come to live in in LH properties? And does that portion of our marijuana tax go toward? Thank you? Yes, so part of what you know, you hear us talk about Centers for Excellence and cross functional teams. You know, one of the things that I think we struggled with as an organization first significant period of time is that we tended to take things and work it as our own little group. And you know, what, really probably made the biggest difference in how we’re working with neighborhoods, regarding just general neighborhood issues, but particularly what we were experiencing Atlantian Park and car park with the enhanced community is, we found that when we brought everyone together, and we brought the expertise that we needed in the people that really knew how to deal with the issues, we were able to respond more quickly than we have historically, in the past. It’s a very similar model to what we did when we we didn’t call it this, but we knew it was this, that’s what we did when we pulled in the housing authority. This is really taking the same organizational approach of bringing in the people that really know how to deal with these issues. And we actually flip the model on its head to where they start driving what we’re doing. It’s not people like me, or any of us, it’s the people that are in the mix and understand it, they actually set in team lead roles with an executive group that can help them. And they have the ability to go throughout the organization to get the resources they need, so we can deal with it. And we think this really has to be the first step. And then in the end, I think that leads to the conversation we’re going to have with you on the broader on House conversation is

Unknown Speaker 1:58:47
how do we then integrate our other partners into this because there’s only so much that we can do as a city, but we are also reliant on, you know, the sheriff’s department and some other issues. And I think we have to pull that together to deal with this. But it’s, it’s really about creating a force multiplier within the system that we have, so we can take on more. Okay, Councillor Martin?

Unknown Speaker 1:59:11
Thank you, Mayor pack.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:13
I just am wondering that you sort of answered the question from something Mayor PEXA, that these are

Unknown Speaker 1:59:21
using positions that are already in the budget. But I can getting asked fairly frequently. All right, there’s all these hires. But what did they do and where are they? And so is there going to be a some kind of an explanation of what percentage of a person is within this department and this department and this department to make the Center of Excellence can Yeah, yes. In terms of

Unknown Speaker 1:59:54
as we as we build a team out, yes, we’ll be able to fully identify who’s on the team where they said what their

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
Doing and related to your question of where they are, we can answer what we do from

Unknown Speaker 2:00:07
the clinicians that are in senior service, we can answer what the clinician or what core and lead are doing and where they’re going. What this is going to help us do is actually, to the point on metrics, and how do you evaluate it is, the whole intent of this is to increase our capacity. So what we’re going to be looking at is how are we are we seeing that increasing capacity? Are we seeing them and able to handle more calls? Are we seeing them? Are we seeing a change in individuals that we’re servicing? Because we can surround him with more layers to what we’re trying to do?

Unknown Speaker 2:00:45
Okay, yeah, that’s, that’s a good partial answer, I think are? And I’m, I’m thinking that maybe you don’t have yet. But you’re going to have sort of an overlay org chart.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:00
The neighborhood impact team where it’s fully built, and we can, this is it, we’re on the front end of this process, part of it is related to the budget, because we’re asking to use the 275,000 of the marijuana sales tax for the positions that will primarily be at the suites, but also serve other properties and work with the unhoused community. And if Council passes this, then yes, we will then develop the chart that shows you where everyone will be. Okay, good, thank you. And that office, out the suites and at Zinnia, like jointly. And that’s a little bit different, because part of the Zinnia project is that they actually have funding and we put, you know, we did it in a debt, we funded it in a different way compared to how the sweets was funded, and that we were focused on supportive services in that facility as we’re building it. So they’re going to have services there.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:50
But it’s how we work as a team. And not also just having them there. Because many of the cases that we deal with at the suites actually occur, the issues we’re seeing occur out in the community. And so it’s not an isolated event to the suite. There’s connections outward in the community. So it’s how do we get out and work as a team. So people will be working in different areas and engaging with different individuals. But it’s about maximizing our capacity. It may be that the person at the suites has the right expertise to deal with an individual we see somewhere else will then someone over here can slide over here. And we’re constantly moving to deal with the issues that are hitting us. Real time. Oh, my God, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:39
We’re ready.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:41
So finally, we have human services funding in 2023, that total human 50. And it was allocated

Unknown Speaker 2:02:50
as follows. So about 1,018,000 for homeless, Agnes housing stability services, and that was about 41% of the total funding. And then

Unknown Speaker 2:03:05
59% of the funding 1,450,000 was for human services agency grant funding. In 2024, there’ll be a substantial increase for human service agency funding, an additional 179,176 is available for immediate allocation. And then there’s an another anticipate it’s anticipated that there may be an additional 105. However, as Jim has talked about, this is pending state property tax legislation that will be on the ballot. So given that at this point, total HSA funding is $2,648,046. The chart in front of you, and in your packet represent staff recommendations for the breakdown of the total set aside amount of 2.6 million. So 50,000 and family Hotelling. What we have heard is that there is a drastic increase of our families that are experiencing homelessness 200,000 in homelessness, homeless prevention 520 in navigation

Unknown Speaker 2:04:22
60,000 housing focus shelter,

Unknown Speaker 2:04:27
and 273 and locally controlled vouchers 65 For l there and then the totals are broken down in the last two lines.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:40
Any questions?

Unknown Speaker 2:04:42
Councillor Martin? Thank you, Mayor Peck family Hotelling is an inc is an intriguing number because among the outside the government

Unknown Speaker 2:04:55
discussions about causes of homelessness and whether we’re talking about

Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
People who are sort of, you know, service resistant versus people who fall out of conventional housing, but we’d like to be in it. This family Hotelling sounds like it’s that second group of people who would really like to be housing and just have lost the ability to maintain housing. So I’m interested if you have other numbers, because we do spend a lot and then there are independent agencies as well, that spend money on Homelessness Prevention by giving rental assistance and stuff. So do you know how many families there are that require this Hotelling service now, because, you know, we know it’s catastrophic. If such a family ends up on the street, they lose their children, and they lose all their stuff. And

Unknown Speaker 2:05:50
you know, it’s not like

Unknown Speaker 2:05:52
us a solo person ending up on the street, it’s a whole different thing. So do you have the backing numbers? Mayor Peck, Councilmember Martin, I don’t have the exact numbers, what I do know, from speaking with our senator, is that they have seen a shift in the there trend in who they are, they are serving what they have seen is individuals that are needing longer,

Unknown Speaker 2:06:23
longer term support, and not that one time assistance. And so I Why, while I don’t have the number of exact increase in in in families,

Unknown Speaker 2:06:37
I have other data that I could, that I could provide, in terms of, of, you know, number of of requests that they’re seeing.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:51
You know, I, I believe that the that I could, possibly through McKinney Vento, I could look at their numbers as well, I believe that’s on the state website. I could pull that for you. Actually, that would be wonderful. It really it really does impact

Unknown Speaker 2:07:09
a lot of policy decisions inside and outside the municipal government. Let me look at McKinney Vento and see what’s what’s on the state website as well. Thank you and get some more information from ours, then it’d be great until that question, what we know is probably the longest list that we have from the housing authority standpoint is for family units, in really, you know, Aspen Meadows neighborhood is all that we have, we do have a tax credit application and for family units. I actually had a chance today at the Zinnia groundbreaking to talk to CHAFA representatives about this because I think what we’re seeing this is where the housing conversation is now touching Health and Human Services in that when you see the high cost of rents and everything that is in the market,

Unknown Speaker 2:07:58
really even in some cases, for those that don’t qualify for affordable housing, but are in that attainable workforce rental market, it doesn’t take much for those individuals to slip. It can be a health issue, you know, things that are a common occurrence for most people. And you just draw up one of those items. And then based on the cost of rent, they’re not able to afford it. So now you’re starting to see where the two items are coming together and why we’re trying to focus on fam affordable, attainable family housing, because

Unknown Speaker 2:08:34
we don’t have a lot of that inventory. And what we’re also seeing is a lot of what we do have is what they call naturally occurring, affordable housing. And what that really means is that’s just naturally what’s existed in the community. But as we see houses selling for more and more, what we’re also seeing is that naturally occurring, affordable housing going away. And so now you’re seeing all of these things come together as we’re trying to get the data and put it to justify it to the state and CHAFA as we’re trying to get these projects as to why we need this funding coming into our community. Are you good, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:12
Councillor waters. Thanks for your Peck in the scheme of things. This is really a small expenditure, but the other team does such important work is that $65,000 And one more addition to that team or its collateral resources around the existing elder team.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:32
It’s current its current funding that was added I believe this was this was before I started but I believe it was added later last year preserving the funding for L there that was originally it was grant funded initially grant funded then the agency that was doing it couldn’t do the work anymore. Hope agreed to do it. We dropped in with this amount and this is preserving that at this point. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
So it’s just it’s really maintaining, maintaining a capacity that grow. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:17
Seeing no more questions, thank you very much, Christina. Thank you. And Grace.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:24
Mayor Peck members Council, I just wanted to make one correction. Christina said that there, the additional money from the property tax would be 105,000. That’s what we put in the communication as well. But I’m being told that it’s probably a typo. And we should have been 150,000.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:43
On the other hand, it’s a swag at this point, because we don’t know what the outcome of legislation will do. But anyway, we meant that to be 150. Yes, we are. So that’s a good correction. That’s a good correction. Yeah. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:02
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:04
Okay, so, now, I think Becky is going to

Unknown Speaker 2:11:11
do now

Unknown Speaker 2:11:23
there we go.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:24
Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:11:27
you and I are hitting it. Alright. Hello. Good evening, back and members of council. I’m here with a an update on grants and external funding sources. since we’ve last spoken a few things have changed. Most of the basics, you already know, the bipartisan infrastructure law includes significant funding for infrastructure projects. We are aggressively pursuing funding through bead. And the the broadband plan for the state was recently released. So we’ll we’ll be going through that.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:00
We know that Phil has recently

Unknown Speaker 2:12:04
helped to obtain some raise funding for a large project in collaboration with with other stakeholders. So we have several projects under many of these areas. And we continue to to monitor those that are coming out continually. We also have we’re currently in the process of of applying for the formula grant funding under the energy efficiency community block grant, which is another big oil program. And we will welcome next week.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:37
I think the week after first week of October, a fellow under the Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Fellows program, so a data analyst who will work with us to make use of information that we have coming out of our more advanced software systems related to the electric utility. So that’s how we’re doing so far, keeping an eye on things making progress toward a lot of Council’s goals.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:04
In addition, we talked previously about how the inflation Reduction Act was primarily customer, you know, resident facing, a lot of those things are tax

Unknown Speaker 2:13:14
tax credits and in programs that are available to residents. And so entities that we partner with are starting to come out with more guides and things about how to access that funding, as well. We know that as a a government entity, we don’t usually get a lot of tax credits, but under the IRA, we are eligible to apply for certain direct pay tax credits. So we’re in the process of going through that registration. So that’s that’s what we’re we’re doing today.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:52
That’s the best and shortest

Unknown Speaker 2:13:58
the final presentation tonight is on public safety and also the Longmont. You mean sightings. Zach artists will be making that.

Unknown Speaker 2:14:15
Thank you, Pat. Council members

Unknown Speaker 2:14:19
wanted to discuss just a few things request for the budgets for 2024 for public safety. In particular, I know that

Unknown Speaker 2:14:28
Goldman went over the new positions, but just want to touch base on what those positions are, and how we’re looking to use those organizationally. Want to talk about one time expenses, and then also look at the Humane Society contract that is included in this year’s budget.

Unknown Speaker 2:14:45
For new positions this year, there were three firefighters. When we look at where we were as far as our ratio for population, the national average is one about 1.5 per 1000. And we were just under that at about

Unknown Speaker 2:15:01
So what we do with these additional three positions will now put this one to 1000 ratio, where we’re looking to use these as you can look at the calls from 2022. And the calls from 2023. Most of our calls are not fire related. So they’re not house fires are not those types of things where they are our medical calls. And we currently have a contract with Amr, which provides ambulance services for the city of Longmont. They actually stay in our stations with our firefighters and they work the same shifts. Right now AMR provides three ambulances for the entire city of Longmont. We’ve supplemented that with what we call an Alpha car, it is basically an ambulance to save the city alone, not on it. Currently, we don’t do transports, Amr does all the transports for us. But that alpha unit actually runs those calls also, because it has certain equipment on it. Now moving into 2024, we haven’t agreed with AMR now to begin to do transports to help because we don’t always have three ambulances in the city. Sometimes those are sent to other hospitals to do transport, sometimes they’re tied up on on medical calls. So what we are proposing is with the three firefighters, we are looking to create basically a Stephanus second Alpha car within the city. So now that gives us the capacity potentially to have five ambulances within the City to meet the needs. As we look at the growth of the city. And we look at what’s coming down the pipeline and some of the projects that have been presented and some of the projects that are actually in the pipeline, we’re going to see an increase our medical calls. And so that’s the area that we’re focusing in not necessarily on the fireside, as far as fighting fires, but being able to respond to the medical calls and getting folks here very quickly, to be able to bring that treatment to individuals, and then get them to the areas that they need to go. The other part is the victim advocate. We currently have three victim advocates and one supervisor. So this is a positions that were actually their legislative meeting in the state of Colorado identified X amount of crimes within the state. Usually they’re the more serious crimes that occur, where the victim advocate comes along with the victim, and then walk them through the process of the case provides them services and treatments, or sorry, gives them resources to receive services and treatments. As you can see, we did about 1500 victims last year that we worked with. And those cases can take anywhere from a year or more to go through. So the cases are ended. As soon as someone gets arrested or goes to jail. They follow up and let let the victim know where the defendants at whether or not they’ve been released, what the status of the case is, along with helping them try to get back to a normal life. We actually provided 5000 I need to put my glasses back on but just over. Thank you 5246 services. That means that these victims just didn’t need one service, they needed multiple things, whether it was any type of counseling, or any type of different things that we can offer. And so this position, what we’re seeing again, this year, as we move into 2023 mean going in, and 20 spilling four are seeing about a 20% increase. And so there’s quite a bit of work that we put on these individuals, this other person will allow us again, to be able to keep those times and being able to communicate those victims on a regular timeframe. But also one of the things that did not mention this not in the slide, our victim advocates actually go out to the scene. So if we have a major crime, they’re actually showing up in the middle of the night to meet with victims to start that process right then and there. And this helps share that load of what we’re seeing coming in. So before I move to another slide, I just wanted to make sure and see if anybody had any questions in particular about these two positions, and what the direction is that we’re hoping to do before.

Unknown Speaker 2:18:42
Thank you, Mr. Peck. So I was just curious, in my past experience, having toured and spoken with

Unknown Speaker 2:18:49
administration for UC Health, they have their own ambulance services, the Do they not service long MN and it’s collected all within the EMR system. Correct. So the ASR system, handles all of the dispatch 911 calls and heals all the transports they also do the transfers for the City of Boulder, and also Boulder County. So while UCL does have their own services, they do not provide those nybble one services as far as requesting emergency ambulances or services, they do not provide that facility. Allama Okay, okay. Yes, sir. So this also relates to what Amir Putin was asking, because we have a contract with AMR does that reduce the cost to the patient being transported? Because the default bill for AMR seems to be about $2,000

Unknown Speaker 2:19:41
for transport, does that reduce that at all? As far as if we begin the transports? No, ma’am, it does not. So AMR still handles all the billing, all the setting all the fees for that. What we have been able to do contractually is to keep our price down, meaning that when we have a contract, we don’t

Unknown Speaker 2:20:00
Add services we don’t pay a feat of AMR to provide the service here because we are subsidizing them with a fourth ambulance. So the AMR doesn’t have to put a fourth Emile’s to the city, which would require our contract to go up. And now we would be paying. I will tell you, when we approached EMR about a fourth and was in the city, the cost was about $500,000. Oh, my goodness. So so we are actually basically providing a service by using our resources to do this to make sure that our contract states that neutral. Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:20:32
Okay, seeing no other counselor in the queue. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I want to move on to the smart city Canon camera project. This is something that we approached council back in 2002, for the 2023 budget. And so this essentially what this was, is installing digital video cameras in our parks, along with installing those in the LDA, which just recently happened in the past few months. And then flot cameras, which we would classify as tag readers, so they read the tag of the vehicle in 2024, what we are hoping to accomplish, I’m sorry, the backup, as you can see, what we were able to do is we’re able to put 38 cameras in city parks. Now that’s not every city park because some city parks have multiple cameras in there, depending on the size of the parks, we’re able to put 19 cameras down in our Main Street area and Ltda area. But in 2024, what we hope to do is expand that program to 16 new city parks and open space areas, along with new seven new cameras for the public safety building. As we go through our remodel, those cameras haven’t been updated properly since the building was built. And then finally add additional 10 flat cameras across the city. And in just a moment, I’ll show you a map of where we currently have those and what we’re proposing. And then the new video VMFS, which is a video management system. And I’ll talk about that in just a few minutes on a later slide of why that needs to be replaced and what we’re looking to move towards.

Unknown Speaker 2:21:59
So as you can see, currently, this is what we currently have, these are the 36 cameras that we have in the parks, from car park all the way down to the park facility on Sunset. Then you can also see that we have 19 cameras. Again, we just listed the blocks on there where those cameras are located within the Ltda area. And then those are location for the five lot cameras. What I will tell you is that are not a secret. Miss Erickson actually puts these on our webpage to show you where these items are, and where we have cameras as she updates them as we go as we add cameras to the system.

Unknown Speaker 2:22:35
So moving for 2024 Let me let me explain the map what you’re looking at. So what you see is you see around purple dot with a camera icon in the middle of it. Those are the cameras that are actually located within the parks or Ltda. Now I will tell you I did not put 19 cameras right there above the name of Longmont, but that one camera represents all of Ltda cameras, what you do see is a teardrop and maybe have kind of a reddish color. Those are actually where our tag readers are at located throughout the community. What I will tell you is that when we put the first camera up in lainnya Park, within probably the first week or two we were able to solve a case immediately based on an assault that occurred. And when officers showed up, that story that we got was completely different than what the video shown. And so we were able to make sure we arrested the right individual and charged them appropriately. Since adding these cameras to the parks, including today we had an incident that occurred not at the park but down the street involving a firearm, we were able to identify the suspect see the suspect with a weapon. And within a matter of minutes, we’re able to take him into custody and then later on locate the firearm. So the cameras are saving us hours and hours and hours of detective investigative times to be able to identify individuals very quickly. As many of you know in our community knows we’ve had some serious incidents that occurred. But it’s because of the technology that we’ve been able to identify the suspects very quickly and take them into custody, and then charge them appropriately as we move forward. I do want to just acknowledge that will also remind we do not use facial recognition. The video for the cameras themselves are only kept for 14 days and they roll off. We don’t keep the camera video and the tag reader roll off every 30 days. There are about another 60 I think it’s 50 or 62 cameras across northern Colorado that other agencies use that we do have access to recently you may have seen on Facebook where an individual in a yellow Jeep made a left hand turn and took out a pedestrian. We were able to find that Jeep on our flat cameras and get the information. But before we ran by the time we did that he had turned himself in because we were able to get the information out very quickly. So the technology is there. We are using it for the right reasons and we are using it to get folks into custody and identify them very quickly.

Unknown Speaker 2:24:49
So this is the 2024 Apologize for white shifted like that but this is the 2024 again, icons are the same. They’re just all black. So if you see a camera

Unknown Speaker 2:25:00
An icon that means it’s a digital camera. And what those are going is the parks that you see there on your left everything from Union reserve, all the way down to potential other open spaces and parks as we identify based on the calls for service based on what we’re seeing in the community, based on the need, once you can also see is we’re looking at 10 Flock cameras to the area. And you can see that from most of those are on Main Street and Kim Pratt that we have.

Unknown Speaker 2:25:28
Finally, what I want to talk just briefly on and Mr. Dominguez may have some comments to make on the LTE network, but the future of what we’re doing. So right now the city has been building out with the help of Valerie and next slide had been building on its own LTE network. And so that gives us a lot of advantages. Right now we pay for cellular service for computers and different things that we need to connect back to our RMS systems. And so the LTE network not only gives us a lot of different benefits, from not having to pay for aircards for a camera, or a variety of different digital piece things that we use. But we’re looking to build it out. So right now 55 of those cameras that we have are already on that LTE network, which is a huge savings for us. In 2024. And beyond, we want to continue to build out that LTE network. And before I move to future considerations, I just want to turn it over to Mr. Dominguez, if he has anything he wants to say, yeah, when we can you all hear me? Is this better?

Unknown Speaker 2:26:28
I’ll try it. Okay. So I better. Alright, so when we started looking at how we were going to approach this with the camera system, and frankly, this is a problem that has been plaguing us for almost anytime we look at smart city technology, and what we need to do, whether it’s cameras for the traffic system, or for our operations group for snow and ice, the one thing we always ran into is communications, how do we get the information back into the system. So when we started evaluating the camera project and running different numbers on whether it was a Wi Fi mesh network, the number the cost just kept coming in really high. So in talking to Valerie, we had this conversation because the LTE networks, there’s a system that has moved in that allows different organizations to build their own system. And what we looked at is when we compare that cost versus other existing technology, it was dramatically lower, and you can have so much more opportunity to utilize it. So as we’re building this, and as Zach talked about, right now, it’s for cameras. As we get more of more coverage in our community, we’re going to want to put our RMS systems and our police cars on it. But we can also utilize this for every department within the organization as we’re trying to move in and get smarter in what we’re doing. So at the end of the day, it’s going to give us more capability as we move into more of a true smart city. But it’s also going to reduce our costs because we’re not having to pay a commercial carrier $50 a month for every SIM card we put in every device. And at the end of the day, when a new technology comes, we’re not going to have to worry about communication issues because the communication system has been defined.

Unknown Speaker 2:28:14
I do want to point out, just let me explain the map to you because you may be looking at going well, what am I looking at. So the green dots actually represent the actual LTE site location. So if you’re, if you’re familiar riding around and seeing the cell tower, some of them look like trees now, but those that don’t typically have three antennas on it. And so it’s directional. So what you’re actually seeing as far as the, the, I guess red or orange color, is just go back to the origin point. It’s almost like I guess like a fan. And so that’s the direction that the antenna is facing, that’s the coverage area that it has. Okay, so if you actually had one that had two, three antennas on it, it would actually have almost a 360 coverage. And so that’s what you’re seeing is, is basically the direction of the LTE or wireless network and where it’s headed to.

Unknown Speaker 2:28:58
So future considerations. And I had mentioned previously about the

Unknown Speaker 2:29:02
DMS or the video management system that we had. So we did go with a vendor last year, and we had a two year contract with it. But shortly after going with the vendor, there was some questions raised from our IT department, that there was some concerns that it did not meet what was called NDA, which is the National Defense Authorization Act, and it was not compliant. The simplest terms that I can put that I can explain is there are certain Chinese companies that are designated by the federal government that creates software or either hardware that deals with cameras and video capturing. And they are on basically a Do Not Use list. And so as that became an issue, we found that potentially some of the software components that we had, were involved in that and so we’re in the process this year replacing those, they’re moving away to a video management system that is actually in DEA compliant. So this is the simplest, simplest version I can give you. Right now. We also have a little over 200 traffic cameras across the city. There are a system that

Unknown Speaker 2:30:00
It is basically scheduled to go away. And so the goal and plan is to create one videos management system that everything goes on. So there is a collaboration between the city as a whole different departments to make sure that we’re getting a system that works for everyone. And that we can get everything on the same platform. And so that has been going on. Since earlier part of this year, when we found out we had some NDA compliant issues, to make sure that we’re bringing everything onto one piece, that also includes open spaces, we began to build that out. But also our city facilities as we begin to upgrade those, making sure that everything is on one form, or one platform, and using the same cameras, the same systems, and having the access. So we talked about it, our river cameras and things like that. So you know, the example I give to folks is when we had the flood, we had none of this. And so it’s like we need to see what’s going on. So we had to get somebody to take us up in a helicopter so we could see it. And you all heard the story was, you know, trying to call down.

Unknown Speaker 2:30:59
This is going to give us the ability to deal with so many different issues, whether it’s a natural disaster, or whether it’s a public safety issue, the ability to just have a center, eventually we will have a center where we can respond in in really become more efficient and effective in what we do. And the one thing I was going to add, Zack did talk about the impact to their operations. And we spent some time talking about it.

Unknown Speaker 2:31:27
To put it in perspective. When we look at some of the cases they’ve dealt with, I would say on average it probably a saving us about 150 hours.

Unknown Speaker 2:31:37
And that may be spread across multiple people just on how fast we’re able to, to see and deal with a situation. So everything we hoped it would do. We’re seeing that now.

Unknown Speaker 2:31:49
Any questions before I move on to the animal control? Or sorry, llama Humane Society?

Unknown Speaker 2:31:56
Okay, thank you, Mayor. So finally want to just touch on the limelight Humane Society, as we move into the budget for 2024. We were approached by the LA Humane Society back late part of 2022. Regarding our contract moving forward, so we’ve had a contract with the Humane Society for many years. What the Humane Society provides for us is basically an area to bring our animals to so that they can be cared for taking care of received medical treatment and then potentially be returned to the owner or then be adopted out, depending on the circumstances. Well, we were informed as is that moving forward, the currently existing pre existing model was not working for the Humane Society, it was not financially possible for them to continue to do that and created many challenges. And it was no longer sustainable. So when we were approached in 2022, is right after the budget had already pretty much been finalized. So we began those conversations and 23, we were re approached early part of 2023. For additional funding 475,000 is counsel may remember it was brought back some time about mid summer and asked for that funding to be added we were able to get that and bring that up to 475. So moving into 2024, they’re requesting $734,747. And what we’re expecting and what the conversations are already started is there’s an expectation of probably somewhere beginning around $838,000 moving into 2025. And we expect that to be escalated every year. And so staff is working to try to understand the cost, trying to understand the how is long about being billed. Are we being billed for our animals, are we being billed for animals outside of our agency. And as you saw, there were some questions about the percentage that we were being billed that were not long on animals. And so again, this is still a process that we’re working through, to try to understand and try to get to a true number and what that looks like moving forward.

Unknown Speaker 2:34:01
So we can create the keep this partnership that we’ve had for almost 50 years. So I’m gonna jump in on this one. So obviously individuals have come and talk to counsel about this item. They’ve been at public invited to be heard. One of the things when we started talking to them, you know, from the very beginning, once we started understanding their situation, so

Unknown Speaker 2:34:22
obviously, I think they were impacted by donations going down. I mean, we saw that in a lot of nonprofits. And so when we started having the conversation, the the point that we really took is that we

Unknown Speaker 2:34:35
we need to pay. I mean, if there’s a cost that’s we can attribute to Longmont we need to pay that costs. And so inherently that’s been the question is what’s the cost?

Unknown Speaker 2:34:46
We’ve been able to really look at the data understand some issues. We had a really productive meeting with the Longmont he’s Humane Society to have their board members and their executive director. We did point out

Unknown Speaker 2:35:00
At what we were seeing in terms of data that didn’t make sense to us. But as we started talking about 2024, one of the things that we realized is we need a place to take animals. And we were starting to run a number of different options to see what would we do if something significant happened,

Unknown Speaker 2:35:18
based on conversation that we had with him and the progress that we’ve made. And this is, let me back up.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:27
A number of humane societies are struggling with this issue. The Weld County Humane Society, I think, just merged with the Larimer County Humane Society. This is not unique. And so when we had the conversation, I think there was we all agreed that we needed to look at the data to really understand, you know, what are the where are the animals coming from? And what is the cost associated with the agencies and or individuals? And based on that conversation, and and our agreement to

Unknown Speaker 2:35:59
continue working that for future years?

Unknown Speaker 2:36:02
I did. I do think we need to with the additional funding that we have plugged in this budget, I believe it was 500. And how much is it? Jim

Unknown Speaker 2:36:11
570,000.

Unknown Speaker 2:36:14
I do recommend that we probably to counsel that we move forward with that because we need to place to deal with our animals next year. The thing that did come out is one of the things that we’re going to do and then I’m going to personally do is actually convene a meeting with the other agencies that utilize the Longmont Humane Society, and really talk about what we all need to do to come to the table because they work with Frederick, they work with Firestone, they work with me, they work with Boulder County. And I think all governments that utilize the Humane Society have a responsibility to to help with this situation. And so at the end of the meeting, we agreed that yes, we need to refine the data, we need to figure out what is really the cost of Longmont. And the second piece was that I would convene a meeting with the other governmental agencies to start talking through this and hopefully by then we’ll have the data that really, we can point to them and say, This is what you’re bringing into the system. So we can get a really good accounting of all of this.

Unknown Speaker 2:37:16
So Harold,

Unknown Speaker 2:37:19
we if we put I agree with you, we need to up our ante there with the Humane Society, but you’re still going through the process of figuring out where the errors were, where we could trim it down, etc.

Unknown Speaker 2:37:34
So why are we committing the extra $500,000? Immediately? Are you going to wait until you have this process that you’ve gone through the whole thing? So I think because there’s so many governmental entities that are involved in this, I think for next year, we need to put it into the contract for next year.

Unknown Speaker 2:37:55
For next year. One of the things that we talked about is agreeing to another section in the contract that really outlines everything that we’re going to do to refine the numbers, and what that looks like and convene the other agencies that are part of this. And then that’ll actually inform the numbers for 2024. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 2:38:18
I will tell you that, you know, when we’ve when we’ve run the numbers, and when we start getting closer to it?

Unknown Speaker 2:38:27
Well, just what we’ve seen, so what we’ve seen in some of the numbers to your question is certain animals that were attributed to another community were allocated to us. I mean, so we’ve seen enough that and I think we all agree that we’re going to work through this that

Unknown Speaker 2:38:45
unless we see a significant spike this year, I think we’re, my gut tells me it’s probably close to where we are. But definitely refine the numbers. But this is only a one year commitment until we get the data, right, because we really need to know what their operating budget is before we sign a contract, if we don’t know. I mean, that doesn’t make sense. Correct. And those are things that we’re talking about is we need to understand what your expenses are, what your revenues are.

Unknown Speaker 2:39:15
In the negotiation, I’ve also based on the numbers and the amount that we’re contributing similar to Longmont Economic Development Partnership, where we put about 450,000 into that. I did also say, Can we get a position on the board? Because we are starting to get in with some significant dollars going into this operation. And so that’s more that we have to negotiate. But I think first and foremost is we have to get these data down and understand what really is coming in and and who’s it coming from? Yes. Thank you for all your work on the stack. I know you’ve been working on it a long time. Yes. Well,

Unknown Speaker 2:39:55
that’s that’s the end of my presentation. Any questions before I step away?

Unknown Speaker 2:40:00
Okay, yes, sir. Sorry. Seeing none. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council.

Unknown Speaker 2:40:08
Mayor, Members of Council. Finally, I’m just going to tell you that next week is our our final presentations on the 24 proposed budget. And this is what we have planned at this point is, we need to go through some pay plan changes or corrections that we’ve found, since it’s the plan has been released. We’re going to discuss property tax, which we have pushed off for you as long as we possibly could. But we’ll bring back to you the implications that we need to deal with and how what our plan would be to try to deal with that, as the information becomes available to us. And then financial policies and any changes there will be discussed. And finally, we also will have our first public hearing on the budget. Following week at the study session, we’ll be asking you to give us any final direction for the 24 budget so that we can put that together to bring all the ordinances that are necessary for first reading on October 10. Is there anything that we have not discussed that you still want to hear about that we can add to next week’s meeting? Last call

Unknown Speaker 2:41:18
I know what I want you to look at for next year. I would like to have some kind of cost analysis on what it would how we could get a drone firework show in Longmont

Unknown Speaker 2:41:34
and maybe have some one time funding toward that. So you said that for next for this July 2020 For this budget

Unknown Speaker 2:41:52
next year

Unknown Speaker 2:41:57
2024

Unknown Speaker 2:42:00
So I hear you I understand the timing now I don’t think we’ll be able to become a next week with information as you know depending on the outcome of hh we will have someone designated one time money so

Unknown Speaker 2:42:14
we can well as you look at one time funding I want to keep that in our

Unknown Speaker 2:42:20
thought process

Unknown Speaker 2:42:25
right so that’s it

Unknown Speaker 2:42:31
I see no one else in the queue and all right thank you no thank you this is really interesting and good

Unknown Speaker 2:42:54
yeah, we got to do the

Unknown Speaker 2:42:58
the steam thing

Unknown Speaker 2:43:03
lows were brought low right

Unknown Speaker 2:43:26
so we’re now at this presentation the sugar factory in steams sub area. Plan. Take a deep breath.

Unknown Speaker 2:43:35
There’s some snacks. Oh stairs Yes.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:13
Waiting for

Unknown Speaker 2:44:15
Hello. So we have our planning department here. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. And I know you’ve all been waiting for this breath you breathless. Yes, we will. We will speed things up and get right to it because I think you’re pretty familiar with the sugar factory and steam sub area plan. I’m Glen van Inwagen. I’m the planning director. And to my left is Tony shikonin. Our redevelopment manager so we started out this process I think the end of 2021 when we hired Stantec consulting, we convinced council that you’ve done some great planning work, but maybe we need some kind of umbrella

Unknown Speaker 2:45:00
plan to kind of pull it all together. So we definitely want to incorporate. And this is the area, steam and sugar factory, they do touch, but they’re related and unrelated in a lot of different ways. But we felt, we wanted to spend some time on the past planning that has been done. One of that

Unknown Speaker 2:45:25
example of that is the corridor study. But also envision, Longmont realizes that in the sugar factory area, we have a redevelopment area, and we have a big hole in it. And that’s the sugar factory itself, which is not annex. So we need to do additional planning, and hopefully incorporate that area into the urban renewal area. But we wanted to learn what the community wants and talk to the landowners

Unknown Speaker 2:45:53
identify all those issues and opportunities with this area, and then identify what some of the tools are to helpfully see an evolution of these two areas into goals of the community. So are we on time? No, we are not. We are about a year late. And there’s a number of reasons for that. One of them is we’ve had some real detrimental staffing changes with kind of leadership of this plan. So it was kind of taken over by the two folks sitting at this table. We worked with staff and we did finish with the consultant. But we took it up because we had a number of developers that were now interested in doing things in these two areas. So we didn’t want to make a plan that didn’t meet their vision as well. So I think it was time well spent. We were on budget. I will say that so we didn’t spend more money. But definitely the process has taken longer than we hoped for.

Unknown Speaker 2:46:59
Pushing the wrong buttons here.

Unknown Speaker 2:47:02
So going back to June of I think 2019, the council

Unknown Speaker 2:47:08
implemented a visioning process for the steam which is science, technology, engineering, arts and makerspace. I believe I got all the initials in the acronym Correct. To look at Hotel Conference Center,

Unknown Speaker 2:47:27
performing arts center and education facility and how it may link into our downtown, where we have a transit center already planned. I think there was a number of plans. I wasn’t part of that process. I don’t know if Tony was but certainly a number of the counts were I think this was the preferred plan. But I think what we ended up with with the Sudbury plan supports a lot of the goals of

Unknown Speaker 2:47:57
this process.

Unknown Speaker 2:48:00
And then a year later, we had an opportunity with Urban Land Institute and their Technical Advisory Panel to take a quick charrette style look at the sugar factory. So they had environmental planner, they had a couple of developers.

Unknown Speaker 2:48:16
They had an urban designer and architect, I believe the landscape architect, and I think the sustainability director from CSU was also involved with an economist. They looked at all the different issues in the sugar factory area. And they came up with three kinds of land use alternatives with that process.

Unknown Speaker 2:48:41
With the Sudbury plan, we initiated a very intensive outreach program that included survey data, questions out on envision Longmont, we went to various events in the lower left hand corner was from sample on the slope event, where we asked folks what would you like to see in this area?

Unknown Speaker 2:49:07
In the center of this slide is some survey results of the question from Stantec. At that point, they were talking about a cultural hub in the sugar factory, or the steam or in both areas. So this basic question is what kind of uses you see in a cultural entertainment hub. And I’ll just point out the bottom two is a live music venue or a performing arts center. So I think we’re moving towards that goal as well. And my favorite part of the whole process was working with the third graders with Indian peak school and their teachers here on councils whose guild dog a fairing. A process was run by growing up boulder

Unknown Speaker 2:49:58
where the

Unknown Speaker 2:50:00
his kids really tore into creating a great plan for the sugar factory. We have the developer was involved Charlie Willie. He saw his presentation a few weeks ago. And just some real great dynamic ideas. I think all of them had a underwater ferris wheel, which is awesome. I can’t wait. Charlie committed to building that.

Unknown Speaker 2:50:28
So, but you know, it’s amazing you you are, I probably overlooked these kids. But they mentioned, we need daycare, we need affordable housing, all the things on your, your columns on your goal. So pretty fun process. So I’ll turn it over Tony, he’ll talk a little bit about the challenge opportunities and the recommendations that came out of the plan. Also, I forgot to mention, and I didn’t even pick it up here. We had a number of CEU planning students that also looked at the sugar factory, but the third graders beat them out. I’m sorry.

Unknown Speaker 2:51:09
But anyhow, we need planners. So send those kids our way.

Unknown Speaker 2:51:17
Good evening, Mayor councilmembers. So in the plan, I’m just going to highlight some of the high level elements that were brought up and to be addressed in further endeavors as we move forward in our as development were to proceed and such. So first of all, barriers, I think you all got a good sense of some of the barriers on your tour, I believe you did take the tour. So that was most probably the more immediate and the most costly barrier that we have as the remediation associated with the property and the cleanup.

Unknown Speaker 2:51:54
rail tracks in the sewer treatment plant

Unknown Speaker 2:51:57
in the sugar factory area, pose somewhat of a challenge. You know, the question being is what’s the most appropriate land use is in proximity? And or how do you address barrier buffers between various types of uses and such. And then a few of the other one there, I’m sure development standards, there are a lot of constraints within our current code requirements, whether it be zoning, or our actual design criteria, that are considered barriers to getting some redevelopment done in the area. And then a couple other ones is, of course, infrastructure. There’s virtually none out there at the sugar mill. And then also, there’s a some mining operations that still

Unknown Speaker 2:52:43
can be conducted in that particular area. And then also potential wetlands issue that has to be addressed. So

Unknown Speaker 2:52:51
on the Steam side, the connectivity to downtown. And I think we all know a lot of these issues as we worked through the visioning process. But effectively right now there is no north south movement between Main Street and Martin. So the plan does address those particular issues, environmental concerns, potential environmental concerns. So we don’t know what’s actually out there right now, as compared to the sugar mill, where we know what conditions we have. But we anticipate there are certain conditions that will have to be remediated as development proceeds in that area.

Unknown Speaker 2:53:29
One of the most probably the biggest challenges in steam is potential assemblage of properties, because it has a lot more smaller properties. And so you have to bring a number together to make it a viable development project. And so that’s most probably the most significant obstacle to steam right now. It used to be the floodplain. But the floodplain issue has been remedied. So we’re no longer worried about that.

Unknown Speaker 2:53:55
No, I’ve got it, sorry.

Unknown Speaker 2:53:59
So nice. There are some opportunities that we the plan talks about taking advantage of, and through that, of course, restoration of the historic buildings. And just to let you know,

Unknown Speaker 2:54:10
contrary to what you might see out there, some of those buildings can actually be restored rather relatively easily by virtue of the construction methodology that’s in place on them. So they’re all effectively steel frame and the wall, the brick walls really have no structural value to them, you can actually just rip them down and build them back up. So that’s a really great opportunity because a lot of older buildings, the walls themselves are the structural elements, which is a real challenge to get them repaired.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:43
There’s some open space assets. Of course, the city owns all the property south of the rail tracks in that vicinity there. So there’s great opportunity to figure out how we provide that connectivity through the development.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:57
Of course, the large development partials

Unknown Speaker 2:55:01
railroad and trail enhancements. So we’re actually taught the plant actually talks about what can be done in relation to the railroad storage tracks. They’re not actually Active Tracks, per se. They’re just used to store their cars that aren’t being utilized. And then also the trail is how do we again, the connectivity back to the same brain trail system.

Unknown Speaker 2:55:27
And then we do, as was mentioned by Glenn has the potential to create or bring that property in as an urban renewal District, which gives us access to revenue generation, that then in turn can be reinvested to get through some of these obstacles that we’re seeing in the sugarmill. area. Steam, again, downtown connectivity, we’re looking at our plan the vision, we did incorporate image Street, for example, which was actually in the original visioning document for Steam, because that’s an important connection through down into downtown.

Unknown Speaker 2:56:04
city owns some land out there that can be incorporated in some of the developments. That’s one major difference between steam and the sugar mill, the city doesn’t own any land in the sugar mill area.

Unknown Speaker 2:56:17
And then transit in the multimodal facilities are going to be built in immediate proximity to the steam area. So how we provide that connectivity to the transit facilities, and then build development around the transit facility. So we have development on both the east and west side of Main Street there. And just let you know, that particular areas already within an urban renewal district,

Unknown Speaker 2:56:44
all we would have to do is amend the plan to pursue tax increment capability within that area. So there’s not as much of a process involved to capture that TIF.

Unknown Speaker 2:56:58
So the plan talks about some financial tools to assist in the development of both areas.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:06
Of course, number one is private equity and our financing. So regardless of what the urban renewal authority or city would put into the project, it basically will leverage significant higher amounts of private investment. And I think that’s an important element in the plan. It talks about using the public resources as a means to leverage the private financing.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:34
There is talk in both areas about a creation of a special district, whether it be a metro district GID, that is to be determined. But the intent is to use that district to assist in the installation of infrastructure. And that’s important because no one property owner can necessarily afford to put all the infrastructure in on the front end of the development. So we need a mechanism where it can be shared across the board with all property owners.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:07
And then the urban renewal authority, tax increment, funding or financing will be a critical element in both the redevelopment in both areas. And so the plants explicitly explains that. And then the other the last source we’ve identified is state and federal funding sources, grants and or loan programs that are out there that could assist in some of the redevelopment of this area.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:35
And then I did mention are codes and how they some have some potential impact. And it just gives you a list of some of the more significant ones here.

Unknown Speaker 2:58:49
Most probably the most significant one as it pertains to the sugar mill is the zoning of the property. And currently the most appropriate zoning references housing as a secondary use to other uses. And so that element needs either defining to open it up for more housing,

Unknown Speaker 2:59:14
or to actually

Unknown Speaker 2:59:17
eliminate that requirement as part of the zoning code. So that’s, that’s a potential obstacle for the sugarmill. It’s not so much an obstacle for the steam area.

Unknown Speaker 2:59:27
height restrictions.

Unknown Speaker 2:59:32
Depending we’ve had some of the development community reach out to us asking if they can go higher than what’s allowed per current zoning or code. And that would allow us to get higher densities in some of these locations, by allowing for higher heights want to throw into is we The plan also talks about minimum height requirements in some of these areas too. So especially in the steam area where the concern being is

Unknown Speaker 3:00:00
single storey buildings where it may be more appropriate for taller buildings to be built.

Unknown Speaker 3:00:07
parking requirements, you most probably hear this all the time. But that could pose a challenge. One thing we’re trying to avoid is large seas of surface parking, which I believe Council is still asking staff to pursue.

Unknown Speaker 3:00:22
And then allowance for consolidation of public spaces, and star drainage facilities. So right now under the code, as a development comes in, they have to set aside so much land for like applause or a park. And it just makes more sense when you’re doing the larger redevelopments per this plan, that if we can consolidate those into a more meaningful public space, that would be one of the goals.

Unknown Speaker 3:00:50
And then,

Unknown Speaker 3:00:52
and then the modifications, street design standards, primarily, I note narrower, but it’s all about the pedestrian experience more than anything. And so the current design criteria doesn’t necessarily support that pedestrian safety issue and utilization issue. So again, these are just some of the elements in the plan that it talks about, or recommends to the city council.

Unknown Speaker 3:01:24
And I just want to show you an example of how the additional time did work out well, on the left is we were going down a road of pretty detailed land use planning for the sugar factory area,

Unknown Speaker 3:01:39
then

Unknown Speaker 3:01:41
we start working with Charlie Willie has a much different vision, which is the one on the right. And so Tony actually worked with the original plan to get something that identifies the circulation is being very similar. But the land uses are really dictated by intensity. So it gives us the flexibility to work with a vision of a developer, if that matches our vision as well. So this was something we were able to do in that additional one year time.

Unknown Speaker 3:02:14
So with that council, we’d be happy to answer any questions.

Unknown Speaker 3:02:19
We have not put this on an agenda for a year acceptance. So we’re asking three options, you’re used to either approve as you see it tonight, or direct us to make some changes or don’t direct us to bring it forward. I will tell you that on I think it was August 16. We did a final presentation with our Planning and Zoning Commission. And they did recommend approval of what you see tonight. So with that, we’d be happy to answer any questions that council might have.

Unknown Speaker 3:02:53
Councillor Hidalgo?

Unknown Speaker 3:02:56
Thank you, Mayor. So I do have a question. There look like there was a lot of modifications that will need to happen.

Unknown Speaker 3:03:05
If we move this forward to place on a future agenda,

Unknown Speaker 3:03:09
to

Unknown Speaker 3:03:11
do we need to be looking at those modifications at the same time? Is this something that we can look at can approve and revise later. I was just wondering if it has to happen before we we bring it bring this plan forward? No. The recommendations that Tony went through are are just that they’re recommended recommendations. So we’d have to come back to you with code amendments. Some of them are actually out of our public works manual when it talks about street improvements, that sort of thing. I know that’s an effort they’re working on, but certainly the zoning changes to height. Yeah, we would have to go through a process and bring it back to council. Okay. And it’s not we don’t have to make those changes prior to bringing this plan forward to us. No, no, I see it now. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:04:06
Councillor Martin? Yes. Thank you Mayor pecks. This is something that we know we’re going to be asked.

Unknown Speaker 3:04:14
If we change,

Unknown Speaker 3:04:16
height restrictions for zoning in this area, they would not have to automatically be applied to points west, correct. They could be

Unknown Speaker 3:04:27
South s, you know, a for this particular area, which has a different design scheme than the rest of the city.

Unknown Speaker 3:04:36
Right. There is ways to do that. You’re absolutely right. And we’ve thought through a few things. One might be an overlay district that’s in these two specific areas. You could also do it with a planned unit development, raise the height while the more than one planned unit development or more than one correct right. So there are ways of doing that without it being city wide. Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:05:00
Sure, Councillor waters, just one observation and then make a motion. I read this morning, a piece in The Times call was a guest opinion

Unknown Speaker 3:05:12
offering to the public to vote for the redevelopment project, in order to get a performing Center for Arts Entertainment, you may have read the same, the same. So

Unknown Speaker 3:05:25
it presented these as one project, that if you the vote would be for the redevelopment. And with that vote, you’d also get a Center for Arts and Entertainment. That’s the way the article read. I just want to make it clear to whoever nobody’s listening except the people in this room and maybe the times call reporter or the Longmont leader that was in air, that these are separate projects, there is no public vote, at least not now, on anything related to this unless it moves forward. And you create special districts in which the property owners would then be voting to tax themselves, not other people. Correct?

Unknown Speaker 3:06:06
Yeah, so the funding mechanisms we identified could be utilized towards assisting in the construction of that facility, actually, in either of those two areas that are so in both steam and both.

Unknown Speaker 3:06:23
Because one thing we’re trying to decide or as part, the next steps will be determining, do we have them as separate urban renewal districts? Or do we just have them as one large urban renewal districts with different TIF areas, but neither of them moving forward on either of those has nothing to do with what’s on the ballot? This Oh corral the sources that have been identified in the plan have nothing to do with taxonomy X either than the Metro district which beat specific district area I’m gonna I’m gonna move that we direct staff to place this plan on a future agenda for acceptance as presented.

Unknown Speaker 3:07:00
Thank you. So counselor waters moved that we placed the the

Unknown Speaker 3:07:06
what did you call this whole thing wasn’t just the steam, but it is. Mills, the factory steam area,

Unknown Speaker 3:07:13
the steamer factory.

Unknown Speaker 3:07:18
Just don’t say Sugar Mill. To know. And it was seconded by Councillor Martin, is there any discussion? I do want to say on the code changes though, for me, this is a big deal. And I agree with what Councillor Martin said about making sure that we do not make this a universal code for the every developer that comes into the city says you did for them.

Unknown Speaker 3:07:45
Unintended consequences of what we do really come back to bite us. What usually happens is that you present it and ask for the code changes, and then we have to vote on it that night or give direction. I would like as I would like us to talk about the codes, changes and not vote on it that night. Yeah. So it’d be if we brought anything back would be zero reading concept to give feedback. That would be great. Because we need to really process this. It’s a huge deal. So any other comments? No. Let’s vote.

Unknown Speaker 3:08:24
To change screen. I know.

Unknown Speaker 3:08:33
That passes unanimously, thank you very much. This is actually quite exciting. I do have a question, though, for you. And it had to do with that railroad. And I think it was the Southwest railroad or the Western Railroad? Railroad Company. That track that’s out there. We all need.

Unknown Speaker 3:08:51
I don’t know. I thought it was the

Unknown Speaker 3:08:54
Northwest Rail that you’re talking about in the rail that’s going out in the sugarmill area, that track that’s out there. Great Western, Western, there’s two tracks actually. Oh, there are a group called on me. Oh, I didn’t know that. So I didn’t mean tracks which is actually a subsidy of bro development. Ah, okay. They had bought up tracks around the United States surplus tracks to use in conjunction with their development interests.

Unknown Speaker 3:09:22
Well, the reason I’m asking is that the Front Range passenger rail, no, I’m sorry, the Northwest corridor rail. You probably know what I’m gonna ask

Unknown Speaker 3:09:32
regardless either at the long money and or the Union Station and needs a maintenance station, especially if there are batteries to charge overnight, or just maintenance. And there was Is there still a conversation about that hack happening there? With with possibly a platform as a stop? Well, yeah, so there’s some land north of Sugar Mill Road between

Unknown Speaker 3:10:00
Rogers and Sugar Mill Road

Unknown Speaker 3:10:03
where RTD has indicated that’s their preferred location. My understanding, though, is they have not made initiated any actions or discussions with the property owners regarding acquisition of that property. So we’ll have to see what happens in the future. Okay. Well, I just was going to have that also they’re looking out in Loveland to, for that facility. That would be for Front Range passenger rail, not for the northwest corner, correct? Yeah. So we would need two maintenance facilities, one in each place more than likely, right. Yeah. And if the facility were to go at that location, they’ve also talked about potential for a platform there in conjunction with that, too, because it just makes sense to do that. It’s okay. I just wanted to make sure we’re still talking.

Unknown Speaker 3:10:55
Thank you, Mayor and Council. Thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:10:59
That is it for our study session items. Do we have any mayor and council comments? Or even mentioned Zinnia? I am. Okay. Are you? Are you gonna mention? Roosevelt? Oh, counselor waters. We’re having our own conversation.

Unknown Speaker 3:11:16
So just some questions. I want to real quick for Jim and for Harold, just because I want to ask these questions to clarify.

Unknown Speaker 3:11:25
Since in my understanding, based on some things I heard earlier tonight,

Unknown Speaker 3:11:30
the 2024 budgets gonna reflect how we’re going to spend $444 million of tax dollars of public money right? In 2024. That’s a 7% increase over the 14 $14 million budget we approved for 2023.

Unknown Speaker 3:11:49
How much of that increase is a result of taxes? This council? Right increased arrays.

Unknown Speaker 3:11:57
None of it’s not taxes. Which taxes? Does this city council have the authority to increase on its own? None? Which taxes did the last council have any authority to increase on its own?

Unknown Speaker 3:12:12
None.

Unknown Speaker 3:12:13
We heard from Kimberly McKee tonight about increases to the LD da budget based on TIF financing, and whatever that is going to happen with their assessed valuation.

Unknown Speaker 3:12:25
Who decides

Unknown Speaker 3:12:28
who pays property taxes in Ltda? In that in that jurisdiction?

Unknown Speaker 3:12:36
Let’s based on the fact that they’re within the jurisdiction but how much is based on their valuations, which is of course, who decides that that is a tax that’s going to be applied to those property owners

Unknown Speaker 3:12:49
to create to create that district and tax in this in in levy a property tax? Was that not a result of the business owners or property owners in that in that footprint? The property owners

Unknown Speaker 3:13:04
you’re to tax in my mind here.

Unknown Speaker 3:13:09
I’m not trying to trick here. Well, and then and I the city council did have to take an action to create the Downtown Development, taxing What the what was the decision to increase taxes was a result of a vote approved by the by the property owners. I believe this probably is true. A Councilman Casper waters is that was pre Tabor, though, so I’d have to double check it. utility fees

Unknown Speaker 3:13:37
for electricity and water solid waste removal. Those go up because

Unknown Speaker 3:13:44
well, because of capital improvement, inflation increases, you know, wholesale cost of energy cost of treating the water cost of moving the solid waste right now those fees have gone up, right. It’s a direct reflection of the cost of doing business. That’s not a tax increase. That’s that was that we do get a chance to approve that. But the increases, nonprofit organizations like the Humane Society have benefited from

Unknown Speaker 3:14:10
not the largest, but it’s the it’s the city’s commitment to reinvest in the city. Right. When I came on the council, I think our housing and Human Services grants, I think were like $700,000. We’ve got a couple of other council members who are still on the council at that time. This we’re just we’re going to approve a budget of 1.2 5,000,001 point 4 million in housing and Human Service grants double what we what we did what we reinvested in the community in 2018, or 19 was my first budget cycle. We’re going to double that in terms of reinvestment in the community because of additional revenues and what we committed to as a council a number of years ago under the Tabor amendment or under tables, no longer amendment.

Unknown Speaker 3:14:55
What authority what attacks is do we have the authority to ever to increase without

Unknown Speaker 3:15:00
without approval from the voters?

Unknown Speaker 3:15:04
None currently,

Unknown Speaker 3:15:06
if, if you had a property tax authorized and not levied, you would have the ability to, to levy it. So But currently you don’t have the authorization from the public. Right? Right. So I heard tonight, somebody advised me to brush up on how we budget and where the money comes from.

Unknown Speaker 3:15:28
And in appointed shame, if shame this counsel, at least of what I heard for raising taxes, I just want to say I, I think I’m pretty brushed up on how we build budgets, and where the money comes from. And when somebody comes in, wants to give misinformation to the public about how that happens, my advice is for that, that person to go back and brush up on their own facts about how we build budgets, and what the authority is for this council, versus what we give the public a chance to do. And that is they decide, we bet items on this ballot in the fall, we’re not deciding to raise taxes, if it’s worthy for the public to make to see those investments, we will do it but based on what the public directs us or allows us to do not based on what decisions we’ve made, I hope that you’re listening, is some of that shows up in what happens in the public media or public newspaper. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:16:22
Councillor Havdalah

Unknown Speaker 3:16:24
Thank you. I just wanted to mention earlier today, I had the opportunity, it just worked good with my schedule, to head over to the Zinnia permanent supportive housing groundbreaking this morning. And it was it was amazing. And you know, I think being a part of it from the inception, coming up with the ideas, doing the research, you know, going into the doors project and viewing those what other municipalities are doing to support their unhoused community and I think about, you know, again,

Unknown Speaker 3:17:02
you know, putting it on the free market, putting it on, you know, private people to cover these things. When we invest in our own community, and we invest our our dollars to support the most vulnerable populations, we all benefit, public safety, you know, crime rate goes down, drug addiction goes down, because we have those services in place. 2013 and I’ve been very open about it, my daughter overdosed. And there was nothing here for us to turn to. We felt so isolated and alone. And to see now how much we’ve progressed through the years with changing even how we do policing, with corps with our leads, teams, we have done so much.

Unknown Speaker 3:17:53
Good. We’ve done so much around providing those wraparound services, and it benefits all of us it benefits our future. And you know, and I’m looking at, you know, the funding sources for Zinnia. I mean, we played a portion of the of the funding, but it also light tech, CD GB, he use CDBG. Thank you, thank you, I was on a roll. And you know, so we have these different funding mechanisms that come in these grant sources. If we don’t take up on those grant sources, they go somewhere else, they’ll go to another community and benefit that community. So you know, kudos to our staff for going out there in acquiring these fundings and grants so we can have those these opportunities that benefit the community as a whole. And yeah, so that’s, that was my so I was really excited and very honored to be to be a part of that and got to throw some dirt on the on the little mounds. So thank you for including me.

Unknown Speaker 3:18:56
Councillor McCoy. Thank you, Mayor Peck. Thank you, Councilmember waters, I couldn’t have said it better. And just to tag on to what you were saying before. That same individual implied that the taxes were only collected by Longmont citizens and not people coming in using the pillow tax, not people coming in, that are coming in from outside of our community to use Costco or Sam’s or anyone or the other ones. It’s downright insulting. And they do need to do a little bit of brushing up you know, these national issues are not what are the issues of Longmont and they need to stop doing that now.

Unknown Speaker 3:19:41
So I was at the Xenia groundbreaking as well and I was very proud of Longmont and I told her on that and and the team for what they’ve done the work that you’ve put into this as amazing as well as this council. We’ve been talking about this since what 2019 and

Unknown Speaker 3:20:00
and

Unknown Speaker 3:20:01
is a big deal. And it’s really difficult to figure out how to put all those partners together. Element CDBG. HG grant.

Unknown Speaker 3:20:15
And I also was very happy to see that we were partnering with Boulder County that I know that we did on the spoke, but not nearly as much or in depth as detail as we did on Zenia project. And that is a huge step forward for Longmont and for Boulder County, to I’ve never seen them partner with us on a combined project like that. So that’s huge. But I also Harold, just off the top of your head, because I’m hearing that we have a $444 million budget. How much of that right off the top is for basic services?

Unknown Speaker 3:20:57
No, just just a ballpark. I don’t want anything detailed.

Unknown Speaker 3:21:02
Jim?

Unknown Speaker 3:21:06
No, can I say? We will, we will, we will get you that number because we want to make sure that it’s accurate. Because, you know, when you all of it, if you look at the the item that we attached in terms of our level one expenses are right two and level three, and you look at the positions that we’ve added. And we said well, what is it get to utilizing the counsel graphic?

Unknown Speaker 3:21:33
Almost all of them had a touch to core services that we do, they do. And so when you look at that, you know distill capital down into this. And so we will have that slide for you, we will combine the numbers that we have, but coming up with it off the top of my head is it’s tough, but you know, when you when you I think the number we use Jim for just our general fund

Unknown Speaker 3:21:56
75% of that is

Unknown Speaker 3:22:04
Yeah, so 70% of our general fund

Unknown Speaker 3:22:07
is staffing. Okay. And so when you look at that general fund number and what really comes in I mean, that’s the folks that are doing the work on a daily basis that are out in there,

Unknown Speaker 3:22:19
you know, filling potholes, providing services via our social service platforms, that are police and fire that are out on a daily basis. And so it’s hard because we’re it’s easy there to go. 70%

Unknown Speaker 3:22:35
is really capital intensive, but to the point that all of you have made. When I look at the LPC budget, the majority of that budget is actually purchase power. And then when you look at how much of it is actually what we’re putting in.

Unknown Speaker 3:22:50
And the thing I’ve been talking about on the housing authority side is everything that people are experiencing with inflation.

Unknown Speaker 3:22:58
We’re experiencing the same thing. And in many areas, it’s worse because when you start looking at steel, concrete fuel and those things, those areas have really accelerated so we can well back together, the percentage would be fine, because for me, it’s very frustrating when they hear that our tax revenues have increased x percentage over last year or we have 40 where’s that money go? And I would just like to say 80% of it goes to taking care of the city, period? Well, I think you need everything in our I agree. But some of it some of its one time spinning, some of it is capital improvement projects that aren’t going to happen for a while. I mean, all of it in there is taking care of our city, whether it’s accumulating the dollars we need for Nelson Flanders, whether it’s our water line replacement, or electric line replacement, I would say all of it’s there. And so we’ll give you a really good graph to use to answer that question. I’m sorry to put you through that. But you know, sometimes you have to get down to the granular graphic level with people. So thank you, Councillor Yarbro. Thanks, Mayor. I just want when you were asking that question and to piggyback off off of council waters.

Unknown Speaker 3:24:21
Before I ever imagined being on City Council, I was on the housing and Human Services Advisory Board. And when we had those applications, we probably had about 40 applications at that time. Now it’s around 70. So although we have 1.4 million plus to allocate for nonprofits and providing services for our community organizations,

Unknown Speaker 3:24:50
it’s up to 2 million over $2 million organizations are asking for right. So there are needs out there in our community and it’s rising every year.

Unknown Speaker 3:25:00
I hear. So the needs are there. And so that’s why we have these increases so that we can provide and supply the needs for our organizations who are actually out there doing the work. Correct. But one thing I will tell you so if you remember early in the budget presentation, I made the comment, I’ve had departments go, they’re just now getting to 2008 staffing levels.

Unknown Speaker 3:25:24
In many areas, we’re still trying to recover from what occurred and deal with these issues and, and fun things like the Affordable Housing Fund, the attainable housing fund, and all of these things that really go directly to the residents of our community, and Support the businesses of our community because they’re also saying, we need these things so that we can be strong as an economic engine of the community. So we’ll talk through that, you know, when we have to bring the budget to you to adopt.

Unknown Speaker 3:25:56
I think we’ve all talked a lot tonight. So city manager, do you have anything more to say?

Unknown Speaker 3:26:03
Mayor, council, city attorney. Oh, comments, Mayor, can I have a motion to adjourn?

Unknown Speaker 3:26:10
All those in favor say aye. All those opposed?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai