Video Description:
City Council Pre Session – December 2023
Read along below:
Speaker 1 0:00
She Marcia Martin city council, Susie Volvo Ferring
Speaker 2 0:03
Mayor Pro Tem Chiquita Jaco city council,
Unknown Speaker 0:06
Joe Peck mayor, showplace
Unknown Speaker 0:08
city council,
Unknown Speaker 0:10
and Rodriguez City Council.
Unknown Speaker 0:14
Eugene a city attorney,
Unknown Speaker 0:16
Diane Chris city council,
Unknown Speaker 0:18
Don Kitana. City Clerk?
Speaker 3 0:22
No, he doesn’t have to, he doesn’t have to. So let’s also remember that this is a discussion among with the counselors and knowledgeable staff into the conversation. Because if you need a one on one with him later, they’re, they’re available. So let’s just start with you much since you’re okay. Well, I
Speaker 4 0:43
only have two to really discuss because because I was out of state, you know, I skipped the board meetings, okay, because I was doing family stuff. But the two the most active boards that I have, are the Water Board and the senior advisory board. And they both have one big topic that was took up most of the discussion of the last thing, and they both are policy matters. So senior Advisory Board, there’s really a lot less discussion. In terms of council policy, although, you know, one of the one of the issues with it is that this is this initiative by the Senior Citizens Advisory Board is, is coming after budget time. And, you know, I guess it’s, you know, they need to be ready to start this in April 1 2025. But they have succeeded in recruiting new people, you know, go confirm them tonight. So, I guess, I don’t think it’s possible to get confirmed. But anyway, a much more people joining will be much more diverse and connected to different communities, than has happened in the past is pretty pretty, pretty much it was like, you know, mostly old white women like Dee, and and not a lot of other people. But this year, we have a, an African American man joining us, who is very active as a volunteer in the community as well. And, and a widely will, Hispanic woman. And, like I said, they’re not confirmed yet. But we’re really excited. And the big deal, the big initiative that the board wants to have is how do we engage the rest of the community, because really, the senior advisory board expends a lot of time looking at who the users are. And the the users of the senior center don’t represent the whole community, they represented, maybe half the community and maybe not the half of the community that could benefit the most from what the senior center does. So one of the big ideas, and this is the after discussion. One of the big ideas was that almost everyone said, and that’s why it was asking those questions on the on the weekend, that the if there could be open times at the Senior Center, like Saturday morning, or a couple of evenings a week that different parts of the community could use make more use of the senior center and make more use of the building. You know, it’s a really wonderful, nicely fighting building. And it leaves me being open, you know, 42 hours a week, or how much it’s how much it’s open. So the staff and the senior Advisory Board are really very much interested in in trying to find ways to do that. And we understand that it’s a long budget planning thing, but it would be great. If in 2025, we had not only more universal programming through the senior center, but more accessible hours for the senior center. So that’s the one. The other thing this was was just Monday, yesterday was the So can use actually called me in advance to so that I could be prepared to talk to the board and the staff about this because they know from numbers that are coming in that we are going to need to raise the fee in lieu for water rights for future annexations. And the staff, and pretty much kind of the board, were sort of thinking, well, we knew know what these new expenses are, our work is done. You know. And so we have kind of a big discussion about all of the policy factors that really influence where we really do set that, obviously, we don’t want to, we don’t want the field do to be at a loss, except possibly, possibly to subsidize affordable housing. But for commercial builders, we don’t want it to be a lot. But there’s also all kinds of other factors like how much we’re willing to bring builders in what adjacent communities are charging, and how many more parcels there are to be annexed. And how deathless how big of a water rights deficit we have, and how big a pool of of annex land that hasn’t paid their fee. And because they haven’t broken ground or or achieved a plaque. So there’s like a really big chunk of data analysis that has to be done. And yes, the council will make the policy decisions about whether we set that but we need to have a full set of quantitative data presented to us in order to make that decision informed. Because those of you who were here long enough, it might just be me and Joe, could be. But you know, the last time we had a big step in the cost of waters to be at this Oh, and Aaron, you there? Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 7:25
But, Tony,
Speaker 4 7:29
oh, Aaron, Aaron, definitely remember. But the public said, what, you guys are leaving all kinds of money on the table, you know, so they held us to account. And we had not enough data, and we had to send the decision back to the staff in order to get the rest of the data. So the idea was, let’s, next year, let’s get it right the first time, so that we can have a good discussion. So those are the two News’s that I have. And on this one again, it would this might be a good time to discuss how we as a new council feel about that policy?
Unknown Speaker 8:17
Yeah, but not tonight? No, not tonight,
Speaker 4 8:19
for long? Because we need the day discussion. The true policy discussion, of course, needs to be habit public. Yes. But
Unknown Speaker 8:32
thank you. That was good.
Unknown Speaker 8:35
Information. Yeah.
Speaker 1 8:36
So for me that the two big ones that I want to report back are the library Advisory Board and the museum advisory board. So the museum we met, we’re not meeting this month, but last month, so I had to pull up my notes from last time. And really, it was just looking, you know, updating the advisory board on the how much they had raised. So as of November 6, it was 6.5 million. That was raised for the capital campaign. And that was prior to the Colorado gifts. So we’ll get updated numbers the next time we meet. So that was you know, that’s that’s exciting news. But, you know, one of the things in kind of piggybacking off of what Marsha had said, so we had to cancel, I think it was our our October meeting for lack of quorum. And, you know, we have one woman whose health I mean, she ended up having to resign from the board because of health concerns. And, you know, just kind of kind of library or museum. Do you see a museum
Unknown Speaker 9:41
advisory board? So
Speaker 1 9:42
that was tough, referring to the capital campaign, which is the extension of the museum Advisory Board,
Unknown Speaker 9:47
from the museum.
Speaker 1 9:48
just clarify. Yeah, no worries. And so that had been kind of, you know, getting people to show up, as well as you know, we haven’t Build seats. So if one person is gone, that’s, you know, we we can’t meet for lack of quorum. And so, you know, really, how can we get people more engaged in this, you know, applying for the museum library, different boards, or you say this before. And so we were kind of, you know, kind of mulling around, you know, I’d made the suggestion, the library board, we do hybrid, we have one member who’s has daycare issues. So we’ve made accommodations to have a hybrid. And that seems to be working, we haven’t had to cancel meetings, and people were able to participate last night, I was able to participate online, still. So that was, you know, that that was helpful, the consensus of the board at the museum board, which did not do that, to keep it all in person. So, you know, we’re kind of kind of mulling around how can we get the word out there for people to apply and be engaged in this in this work and the importance of these advisory boards? So that was a big discussion for that. Library Board we met yesterday. And again, you know, we have, they gave us that resolution, you know, really holding City Council in the city, to, to make that commitment, we said that we value the library. So, you know, Where’s, where’s the money to kind of support that, and, you know, it was very, I mean, I hear over and over again, the members are very disappointed with the outcome of the election. And, you know, people don’t realize the importance of the library, and the fact that our programs are free, you know, and so one of the discussions we had was, okay, then charging for some of these programs. And, you know, that board was kind of split on that. Because we really want to have this be an inclusive, equitable system for for our residents. But these things cost money, and then to throw it on the Friends of the Library, where their whole purpose was to provide extra programming, not the essentials. And so it was we had some hard discussions last night, and it was really, you know, it, a lot of them came on me. And it was like, Well, you know, where’s, you know, you say you, you are committed to the library, city council says they are committed to the library. Where’s the money to show that? And how are we going to make up the deficit, because of waiting for all this free market, people start cutting checks and start building a branch library, but sorry. So you know, we kind of they’re going to be coming to council more often they’re going to be making their their voices heard. And, you know, our biggest concern is that we lose quality people. We have Roulin, who does the bilingual, a lot of the youth programming, and I just, she’s a one man powerhouse. And she’s going out there to all these different events and running these programs at the parks and the parents involved in education monthly, where, and I’ve been involved with pi, the founders, the mode of analysis and advocacy on and I’ve been involved with them in the past for several years. And their daycare part, you know, they provide dinner for families and the kids that came, it was a daycare, it was just babysitting, she has really upped it to provide quality programs. So we have really quality staff, but they’re, they’re stretched really thin. And so that was that’s the concern of the library advisory board is how are we going to ensure that we keep these these staff members who are high quality and might not stretching them to them, but still keep these quality programs available for public? So that was, yeah, that was kind of the gist.
Unknown Speaker 14:16
I mean, we can go into more discussion later.
Speaker 2 14:20
All right. So um, we were I was in Atlanta for LDA so I missed that one. And the next one is tomorrow actually is usually the fourth. So anyway, um, transportation. And I thought we were starting our new boards next year, but I ended up going to Broomfield 730 in the morning for that NATO in a TA What is it northern area transportations? Yes. So I showed up to that and yeah, it was very really informative, although half of it, I didn’t know what they were talking about, I mean, it’s transportation. But you know, some of the things that they have already discussed prior. Basically just continuing on, they really, definitely going to continue to see welfare for us. And they’re looking at, oh, they were talking about legislative, those who are going to, to change legislation and about the employees like the bus drivers and everything who are getting assaulted. And when they press charges, nothing happens to the those who suppose they don’t get prosecuted. And so that’s an issue with their staffing, because people really do not want to be want to work, because they’re scared of people assaulting them on the bus. So in assaulting their operators, so that’s a huge, huge issue right now, which is, of course, employee staffing. And the next meeting is next month on the 25th. So since I’ve went to that, and that’s just a little bit of what I was like, wow, I didn’t, I didn’t know that. Check on that RTD website, they have like six different everything is in six different languages. So I thought that was pretty cool. So yeah, so I’ll switch on over to our transportation, basically. And, Diane, if anything I mentioned were there. So you can definitely update or say she can you forget that. So we talked about the year end report, the 2024 work plan, of course, it could be adjusted and modified. But that’s also that’s on the website. And that’s a huge report. So I don’t need to go over that. There. They talked about, we talked about the main street safety improvements. And the confidence street multimodal improvement project, everything is out today. I mean, everything is on the move. More grant, I believe we got another grant from field had gotten some more money. That field that’s here. Yeah. Yeah. And basically, they just provided all the updates for the multimodal capital projects. Um, housing and Human Services last, my last day was Thursday, right after sister cities, because I will go to Sister Cities and hop on over to and human services will be talked about and there was over a million dollars were requested for funding applications, and every year has increased. And so what we talked about possibly, that maybe they you know, you know, we have our different buckets of what our priorities, maybe we need to narrow down the priorities not being so broad because there are other nonprofits who are already doing some of that work that provide those services. And is it worth the time for nonprofits to only although they gave people a little bit of money, here and there. So if you give $1,000 here, $2,000 there, but you have to ask him for 25,000. Was that worth that time for for you know, especially the grassroot organizations, was it really worth their time to do that application. And that $1,000 Because that person wage costs more than that, for them to sit there and do those applications and the reporting that comes along with that. So basically, that’s what they were talking about. When I came in the latter part of it. Sister cities, they still need maybe a few more students to go. They left it open for a few more students for a rapaho Guzman, and I think we’re for for Japan, I myself will be a chaperone for Japan. Next year. I’m told I’m so excited. They asked me that I want to go as a government official, because they get a lot of perks. And I said, Well, if we all can’t get perks, then no, I don’t want to. Because I want to experience what the students experience. So if it’s a great experience, that they get all the perks that I get, then that’s cool, but I don’t want to be separated from the kids. I want to learn that’s the whole point of me going as a chaperone. So we don’t know the exact dates of that but we do know it’s supposed to be in July that we supposed to know at the end of this month, because their school is year round and so is when they can they want to check and see when it would be a good time for us to be there, but their students in Japan so again,
Speaker 5 19:45
so our CAD and for the discussion in regards to the changing the online aspect of that. So they wanted to do it where they rotate from different places. to places, so, so for you, Diane, just so you kind of know, it’s a multi kind of resource consortium advisory board. So that’s our cap. And it’s just about things like eco cycle and other elements like our eight, one, compost. So fairly late, then the consortium cities, that the big issue right now we were we went to the actual emergency facility where when they have something like the marshal fire something like this, they have a room like three times the size of this room here, it’s got six to seven or more televisions larger than this one here, they’ve got just total command center. And they have the ability to bug out of there, if it were like a, you know, a fire, like Martian fire were to come in into that location. But when they were looking at things for the flood and other aspects, they you know, they went through the whole process of that, and in the fall to fishbones, what they showed how any incident has this sort of Fishbone effect or should do this, then you do this, then you do this. And it used to be that they wanted us as public officials to be all trained in this. And then they realize we just need to be aware of it because we weren’t going to be the experts behind the the screens or anything like that we might help in some way. And I know many of you, when the marshal fire hit, did certain things to help support these other communities, and stuff like that. But it probably wasn’t from a logistics sort of command control sort of situation. So that’s, that’s where they were. And then they ended the meeting, again, with the minimum wage discussion. I sent an email on to Michael Lokman. Who is pushing this right now to ask her has she had conversations with either one of the school boards or their superintendents about this issue, because it would have an impact on on them in the sense of raising minimum wage jobs, like some of their care pros and some of the janitorial staff and things like that. And I haven’t received a response back or has been weakened. So that’s where that board is, is pretty much
Speaker 3 22:32
the intro for what to martes does, and she’s had some personal issues. Okay has not been?
Speaker 5 22:38
Yeah, I think I think getting Markman might, might be handling some of this so I can reach out to him and see what has happened. Because you kind of got to include all the stakeholders in this. If you’re going to start proceeding this way, we want to go down this, I still believe that it’s probably a legislative issue that really probably should, should be handled broadly. But because it has some elements of problems in the sense that if long Minh and was going to Lafayette in Erie, and all this rounding errors come in as a unit. To go with this, what we might see is a bunch of people, you know, having shortages in places like Fort Lupton and other parts just to cross I 25 that people wanted to come here because they clearly get a better wage for doing the same jobs they do, just on the opposite side of I 25. So that’s it. That’s a factor that probably shouldn’t be, you know, pushed more at the legislative level, because that’s kind of the same issue when we’re dealing with some of the gun issues. We know that if you can’t get other communities to get along with change their policies, people will just go there to get their weapon of choice. So it’s that sort of situation to create a despair disparity. And so obviously, people want to want to come where they are going to get paid, even if they have to drive a little bit. There’s probably a class students and some of them. So that’s basically that they still don’t know, outside it was having holding a vote on this. I don’t know where to really go forward with them on that, but I just feel like it still hasn’t quite been enough information, you know, seems like we almost need it, maybe some clarify. Clarification in regards to what that actually looks like. Are they gonna want it? We really want to have But 16 year olds at that. I mean, there’s going to be some question about on the job training and that sort of thing. So it’s it’s a discussion to be dealt with.
Speaker 6 25:14
So, historic preservation commission, I think we’ve all seen kind of the culmination of their work over the last year. Just last week, I believe we voted on initially, the the recommendations that they made to for the code changes as far as demolition, and those kinds of things. Tonight, we have the appeal again. It’s so I think we’ve read about that in our packets. And then also I think everybody has received councilmember Chris probably has received the email. But the one we got from Commissioner Jacoby, that outlined what he thought the Commission’s decision was based on the overlay District, which I know we’ll be having a conversation about that based on the motion of the mayor. And that’s really taken up the vast majority of the year for that particular condition. Longmont public media, you know, they’ve gotten to the point now, where they’ve added so much program, so many programs, to try to get as much participation and memberships and, and things like that, that they’ve gotten to the point now where they’re, they’re starting to reevaluate and see, maybe if some programs need to be leaned. Just, you know, for capacity reasons, and maybe there’s not the uptake of participation that we’re anticipating, but I think that was kind of the right direction was opened up the cornucopia of possibilities, and then see what really is popular stuff. And then, you know, pare back the stuff that didn’t, didn’t necessarily becomes popular. And then with Planning and Zoning Commission, I think they have for the bone farm sessions, I think they got a little bit of a break. I mean, they had meetings, they were not as contentious. I know that if one was the Boston road just by the sugar factory, that was one that they already came to us. And then they wished a fond farewell to Commissioner Josh Goldberg, who had been there 10 years. He had his two five year terms, and he was terrible at it. So
Unknown Speaker 27:34
what do you have for us, Diane? Well, I
Speaker 7 27:36
dropped in with visit Longmont, and we’re starting our first meeting tomorrow, so on with perfect snot as early in the morning. And I’ve learned some things about the airport during our interview process that I think visit ALMA will be interested to hear because there’s some reasons to come here just because of that airport. And that also interviews related a bit to the transportation for which I publicly find it to be heard there. Because they’re talking about having electric bicycles, bicycle stations around town. I mentioned that they might like to have that available. So and then the thing with the master planning for transportation, a lot of it with RTD is going to go more regional. So try to focus on micro transit, just my conversations with the city and realize that we may have to get close to micro transit. So yeah, so there’s a lot of look at the budget, amount that to transportation dollars. Support, a lot of excitement.
Speaker 3 28:47
So before I get knocked down if you want to tell the rest of council what you said about the historic landmark, that presentation or that
Speaker 8 29:01
I will let the planning staff introduced but I believe that that is they’re going to request this postponed to say
Speaker 9 29:09
we were notified today. Yeah, late afternoon, late afternoon with the applicant and is too late
Speaker 10 29:16
to work to kind of fly away and can’t be here. So request to be continued.
Speaker 3 29:24
So, my turn, I had four things that’s going to bring up and I think I’m going to start with only two, four. Don’t make it that’s fine with me. Remember my password. The first one is the ethics code. I I did have a meeting with Eugene which I cancelled because the campaign I needed to take something off my plate during the campaign so that however during that time after the campaign is over in today, I did meet with Marika and II Then from it, and we discussed and they gave me a draft of what a website for complaints would look like. So that we had a place to direct people to go with they had a complaint about a council person or a board member, or commission member. And I will have that draft ready for in January. And Susie has agreed to help me with that. So if she still wants to agree to help me with that, I will throw the draft to her to wordsmith to look at to make sure that it all makes sense, as far as we know, and then it goes to legal. And then it comes back to council to tear apart or look at see if you want to work with it or change it or whatever. The one thing that it needs before they can we can actually go on that website is we need to know who the committee would be. And Harold and I talked about a hearing officers for who’s going to look at the complaints, who did they go to? Et cetera. So that’s just an idea that we will discuss, but that is what I will present because I would rather in previous precisions, Diane, it was agreed that I could just do it if anybody wanted to help and they said no, go for it. So I’m just pulling from Fort Collins code of ethics. She the attorney, they’re giving me permission to use their language. And from Denver’s code of ethics and a little bit from Colorado Springs, so it’s kind of a hodgepodge. But it hits the points that I think that makes sense. But when it comes back, then we can say that’s ridiculous, or no, we don’t want to do that or whatever. So councils input is really important, because it is our code of ethics. So that’s the update on that. The other thing that I wanted to talk about, I was going to update on PRP because it’s extremely important that we all understand what’s going on there. But I’m going to leave that unless we have time, I want to first of all go straight to RTD. And we all have read or heard that from inch passenger rail got the $500,000 grant for their quarter ID plan, which is huge. We were waiting and waiting for that you’re supposed to hear about it in October, and then in November, but finally in December, they awarded the grants and for incapacity we all got one of them. And the reason that’s important is that with that $500,000 grant, it is fra telling us that we have a good plan, they like it, and that they will give us all the help, we need to make it work. So I’m really excited about that. But that means we’re going to work our tails off, because the governor wants the vote for the FRP our district on the November 20/24 ballot. So we’re working on several things on marketing on ballot language. We chose the alignment from Fort Collins to Pueblo, Pueblo, different columns, whatever you want, there’s a lot of discussion about that. And there’s the reason that was chosen was because we are going to use the existing rail. The cost of building another rail or or making a double line is very, very expensive. So getting into it right away and doing the backbone is what we’re concentrating on. That is going to happen, whether we like it or not. I think it’s a great thing that’s going to happen for the front range. However, I have told at every single front page passenger rail district meeting that I am not going to sell to our residents, the idea that we’re going to be in to be kept for two rail districts. I had heard at our retreat that RTD was going to be a player. But then on Monday I had a conversation with the executive director of FRP AR and they are not so our TD is doing their own thing foot range to FRP AR is doing everything totally separate districts. To that end. My frustration is what everybody’s been frustrated about RTD re Hughes is to move the date of the Northwest Rail Corridor from 2050, which puts that 46 years since our vote and over $100,000 100 million would have put into this. The reason they’re putting it 2050 is because they have bonds that are not going to come due until 2050. there but they don’t have any more bonding authority until they pay that off. But the Fast Tracks is solvent, which means I don’t know exactly what that means. Because if we owe dollars for bonds, it means that our dollars are needed to pay off this box. So that is unacceptable to me completely, that we are going to be caught in two different rail districts. There’s no path forward with Northwest corridor RTD has made no plans for construction. They haven’t purchased to me cheap steel and put it in a warehouse because we have money we can start building. So to that end, I want your input. Shall we tonight at tonight’s meeting direct our staff to hold an executive session to discuss an exit strategy for RTDs vast tracts part of the district, the RTD district where she I would
Speaker 4 36:40
support that if there is any possible exit strategy. And I would like a discussion about how the governor expects the RTD the unserved segments of rgpd Vote for another rail district and given the population distribution on thinking capacity without us. So we what we need to do is how much the government governor and the legislature can intervene.
Speaker 3 37:11
And they’re working on that right now. Faith winters, the land use bill that that the governor put out last year, it wasn’t a bill.
Speaker 4 37:21
Concept. Or it was yeah, that he was gonna tell you
Speaker 3 37:28
that he broke it up into three parts transportation, which they’ve winters, Senator face, Dave winters has the land use itself, and then the AP US the the transit oriented development. So he’s got three different sections now, which I think he’s going to run part of his plan, I think. And if the mayors and commissioners meeting, Kyle, and I forget his last name, but he’s the one who replaced Tracy Burnett in the legislature. Kyle Brown. Yeah. Thank you. He came and talked to us and basically said he’s working with faith winters, and they don’t know what they’re going to do. Give me your input. And faith winters, emailed me and said, Give Me Everything, absolutely everything that you think we should do for transportation. So Illinois just filled an email full of stuff. So they’re struggling, everybody’s struggling, but our TD is not going to be part of so and to your point, Marsha, that is the point of the Executive Session, to discuss should we do this? Can we do this in a supportive
Speaker 6 38:55
way, won’t be in support of it. But we’ve had executive session on the subject, which was very promising so
Speaker 3 39:03
well in the executive, but in that executive session and 2020 plugs. If I If memory serves me, right, we basically said, Let’s wait and see what happens. And and that is because FRP AR was just beginning. And at that point in regular practice. I have to follow knows. At the very beginning, the discussion was that we would have a three P, it would be a three part partnership with C dot fopr and RTP. And that’s why I said let’s wait and see. I
Speaker 6 39:42
just remember the legal aspect of not about being able to remove ourselves from the ballot issue that was voted on originally being tenuous at best, but
Speaker 3 39:54
we never gave direction to staff Just to litigate?
Unknown Speaker 40:06
I guess I remember the conversation differently.
Speaker 3 40:09
No, but we never came out of that executive session and said, I’m going to give direction to litigate or not to litigate.
Speaker 6 40:17
Right? Because if I remember the conversation differently, in the sense that in the red light green light, or red light, yellow light, green light concept, we’re nowhere close to a green light from a litigation point. That was my recollection of that conversation. Okay.
Speaker 3 40:40
So I guess I wanted to know if I should make this motion tonight,
Speaker 4 40:47
I would support it. You know, given the the two things that changed, right. I remember that executive session as being well, we as a municipality, or even as whatever, district 11 or 13, or whatever, we’re going to be our TV. You know, even that entity, you have no power to exit. That standing. Yeah, we had no standing. And so to remind Council, those conversations are confidential. Okay. It wasn’t an executive session. So anyway, we I think we decided there was nothing we could do at that point. But we would need the support of the legislature for
Speaker 3 41:29
Can we can we talk about this in an Executive Session? Yeah, that’s the whole point. Okay. This discussion should be happening here. So well support it.
Unknown Speaker 41:42
Welcome to the session.
Speaker 3 41:45
Okay. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you about is the RPA, just as an update to what somebody here, PRP, oh, we had gotten in and I don’t know if all Council God things, but the board got hundreds of letters from groups like Sierra Club, three sixty.org, etcetera, that are not happy that for reliability on TRPA, for our dark calm days, that we are going to have the aero, aero derivative, gas turbines, they don’t want any gas at all. And they said we need instead of putting out an RFP just for tip technology. Just for an aero derivative, turbine, we need to have all sourced RFPs, which means that we would put out a request for proposal or bids, information from all sources of storage and natural resources that could give us the reliability we need on dark competence. So this was a question, this was a good discussion that we had on PRP and tell you the truth. The the board members learned a lot because information came that we had never had before. And between 2020 2020 and 2023, P RPA. That actually put out for all sorts RFPs with 71 responses. So they had information and responses on those RFPs from all kinds of manufacturers that we’re doing storage that we’re doing of solar that we’re doing wind that we’re doing hydro at electric. And our staff went to some of these manufacturers to some of these companies and actually looked at their what they were producing. And out of that there’s one that we’re still keeping an eye on and that is the one in California that is developing 100 Our storage units but they’re nowhere near what they should be for us to use. So in order for us not to have blackout days, for us to be able to be in our manage management like wise and the Southwest energy pool. We have to be able to have the energy that we can sell and buy from other energy utility companies within that. So out of those RFPs was also RFPs came the aero derivative gas turbines. So we had a memory wheeze we signed a an agreement to give her Mission to Eric PRP to start the permitting process the permitting process, which is taking a very long time. The other thing that I learned is that we’re a very small utility. So when we need to purchase something, and it’s now supply and demand, and the manufacturers have all the power, because the demand is worldwide, we’re very small. So if we need turbines, if we whatever it is, we want to purchase, we’re coming up against Excel who is purchasing a lot of them are like Arizona Public Service Company, which they’re buying tons of it. They don’t want, we’re on the bottom of the list. Because we’re small, we’re only four cities. So that is what is holding up some of our moving forward or momentum to move forward. So I think that the public needs to understand some of this when if you hear that we’re not moving fast enough that we’re not doing our job. We’re, we’re I totally have faith in our PRPs doing. And we’re having more in depth conversations on the board, and not just just questioning staff, and a deeper, more meaningful way for us. So that’s it. Those are my that’s it.
Unknown Speaker 46:38
I’d like to add something about pure PA,
Unknown Speaker 46:40
having
Unknown Speaker 46:44
talked to
Speaker 4 46:47
the local activist community and 363 fifty.org and in the Sierra Club, going bonkers over the gas plants. But if you talk to Israel, or if you talk to, you know, the federal regulatory agencies or anybody who does not have an ideological thing behind them one way or the other, and Emeril, Emeril is really pretty much gung ho behind renewable energy. But he RPA is right, and three fifty.org, et cetera, or asking for. So I personally, in the lift with my clean energy industry experience, I have no quarrel with what PRP is doing at the moment, think they’re doing the right thing. And the new gas ask is just not attainable. With the present day technology, not by 2030, no, it isn’t there. So I thought, you know it, because what’s going to happen? I can tell you that that in fact, the way they have that set up that if you weren’t on the PRP a board, you didn’t get those letters, because I didn’t get them as as a council member. But that’s the next thing. They’ll send them to the whole council. And that’s
Speaker 3 48:24
why I wanted council to understand what we’re doing and where we’re going so that you can support the city and support PRPs path. The other thing I forgot to say is that Jenny, who it Ginni is the mayor of Fort Collins, she went to cop 28. Yeah, shoot in Dubai. She went to Dubai for the cop 28 conference and came back and reported to us and said that there were people in renewable energy from all over the world. And no one has an answer, that we’re all struggling with the exact same thing. However, at COP 28, there were also hundreds of oil and gas people. So they were doing their own thing as well. Yeah. But I was glad to hear that because it made me feel that we’ve had people coming to P RPA. Saying that Austin, Texas is doing this. They’re 100% renewable and then Raj pulled up there. There are poll platform of what they’re using. And they’re using coal and gas, as well as some renewable and they are their target is 2035. So we are right in there and working as hard as we can. But I think our board has learned that we need to ask better questions and more questions. So good presentation PRP they did. Really, I was very impressed with them. So the
Speaker 4 50:05
board did a good job. The last the last board meeting, I felt that the Board did a much better job of, of standing up for. It’s several communities that have been I’ve ever seen happen before.
Speaker 3 50:26
Well, I think what happens and it happens on council too, is we get a presentation. But because we’ve discussed it in first ordinance second ordinance, or it comes before we have the first ordinance, we understand it better, and sometimes don’t ask questions for the residents to understand. Because we’ve read it, we’ve seen it, we’ve heard about it. Sometimes we go to staff and get more information. So they give a presentation. And looks like we’re all just sitting there like, okay. So it’s the same thing. It’s the exact same thing. Okay, does anybody want to discuss anything else?
Speaker 5 51:09
Well, I did. Just the Monday before the the election, I went to hope and hope is struggling, they’re struggling in tooth counts, it seems like the, the way they describe it, they might be running a deficit. And the they’re trying to figure out how to cover that. And in with the big with the discussion about on housing, homeless folks in our community, you know, in the fact that they are moving from two different churches and the setup and the teardown every night, and every morning, is really starting to grate on them. And it’d be nice if we could try to find some location, that they can be permanent. And I think that would keep some of their costs down. And I think that’s something that I know that we need to maybe either lobby our legislators and stop giving people tax credits for holding their properties out of the market. Yeah, the market is a little ridiculous. I mean, that should not the tax credit, they should be like, Well, why are you not doing this, we built this, I mean, I see, you know, my understanding, jumping to like Dr. cog, and that sort of thing, where we have these ideas of where we should put certain businesses and industries. And it seems like we have, if, you know, corporate buildings that should be getting filled, yeah, dragged up by 25 and see those exact type of build buildings being built new. And so if those buildings are not going to be utilized, we need to figure out some way of putting it into some sort of way, instead of some sort of aspect of either addressing our issue around affordable housing and attainable housing or, you know, helping the homeless and in house and, and helping organizations like hope that are trying to find this permanent building. So that’s, that’s a, that’s an issue right there that I think needs to be put on the front burner, I’d like to have hope if we could come to counsel me, and reiterate, you know, what their real needs are, because it’s a, it’s a struggle, because they do such a good job in the community with some of the more difficult parts of that community as population that, you know, we need to figure out what we can do to make that happen. And we probably need to hold some of these, these commercial buildings, owners accountable for leaving these things for us to do. The other thing is this. It’s, I’m concerned about the issue of a year ago, before I was on council, just before I was on council, young man got shot 15 and over and Nelson. And that attractive nuisance of that big parking lot is something that if if they’re not going to do something with it, that you know, that’s that’s on now us as a community to police make sure that that Walmart parking lot is is is you know, safe from from, you know, impromptu, you know, meetups for raising and other stuff like that. That’s that’s a problem. And, and if they’re not going to put something there that deters that, you know, some sort of commercial building or some sort of a activity down there to the church that the nets, putting back on the police and safety to have to make sure that it’s not all of a sudden, we’re using resourcing resources. And I feel like that’s something we should maybe discuss about, you know, how do we class some of that resource back? If they’re not going to do something serious about it? That’s, that’s okay. We’re, we’re struggling here to try to make sure you know, other issues or have safety art or not to have to face something that shouldn’t be should have been managed, literally years ago?
Unknown Speaker 55:39
Can I jump in? Yes.
Speaker 7 55:42
So it’s one of the tenements of visions, you know, is to repurpose those, those parking facilities there that we don’t have to build more. So we’re not utilizing an RV exists. Transportation has committed to not expanding on roads into parked cars. So the idea is, perhaps using city services, they’re just beginning to attract other businesses that maybe might be tempted to build or go somewhere else to say, let’s repurpose.
Speaker 3 56:27
That for those initiatives and those tests first all directions. I thought that would be a good discussion to have, especially when we but we have to also look at the aspect that we don’t own those parking lots. And if I remember right, how VW has first refusal on that parking lot.
Unknown Speaker 56:56
That’s a crazy,
Unknown Speaker 56:58
crazy mess
Speaker 10 57:00
property location. That’s partially why it’s so difficult to do anything because they’re a one parcel there’s multiple owners that Walmart buildings torn down because they almost couldn’t agree. Hobby Lobby actually has something to do well they have rights on what’s developed based on the contracts that were signed between them. There is somebody that I think is working through now developing something there but they we spend time with them trying to figure out the logistics of the property that is just crazy
Speaker 5 57:43
services to them for safety and for the safety of our community is not free they need to do something with it
Unknown Speaker 57:54
more foot traffic to finding out what
Speaker 4 58:03
access to that area to this the squirting not dry Oh, can’t ever get out.
Unknown Speaker 58:12
Especially when you want to go to that bakery
Unknown Speaker 58:18
out the same way.
Speaker 3 58:24
So we should probably start thinking about what we want to see on the retreat customers might be asking us
Unknown Speaker 58:31
Yeah, I don’t know.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai