Longmont City Council – Open Forum – January 30, 2024

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Longmont City Council – Open Forum – January 30, 2024

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 7:53
don’t have to.

Speaker 1 7:55
If they say something and then they want a response and then they respond to you or whatever, it’s 15 minutes or

Speaker 1 8:06
30 minutes 30 or 40. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for your comments. Good evening and welcome everybody to this open forum. I now call the January 30 2024. Open Forum meeting in session. Can we have a roll call please? Yes. Mayor Peck present. Councilmember Crist. Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo appearing here. Councilmember Martin. Councilmember McCoy. Councilmember Rodriguez. Councilmember Yarborough? Mayor, you have a quorum. Thank you. Let’s stand for the pledge.

Speaker 1 9:16
Thank you, I’m going to call people from the list that were signed outside in the forum. You will have five minutes to speak. And the back and forth with counsel can be for 10 minutes or 15 minutes total per person or less. You don’t need to go to 15 minutes. And I’m going to call the first four people so you can come and sit up here. Actually the first five the first one I call will come to the podium. The other four can sit in these chairs. See, I thought somebody was gonna give me some instructions there. The first person on the list is Bill Gibson. And we have shared No Larry Camilia Van Horn Shaquille the law and Ben Sargent

Unknown Speaker 10:20
the mic needs to go on and five minutes,

Unknown Speaker 10:23
okay

Unknown Speaker 10:33
and you are bill,

Speaker 2 10:34
I am Bill Simpson sensations seven South Harbor, okay. I am here to speak, a Hobbesian understanding I’ve got some new teeth, and heard a speech for repeal of the sales tax on basic EBT eligible food items. Last time we had to harness topics, we never did get an answer of how much money on the lawn not budget is coming from the food tags or EBT eligible food items. So I would like as my wife who is West, his household to get a clear answer of what the revenue is, what kind of money we’re talking about. This red pill with effect. That’s all I had to say tonight.

Speaker 1 11:37
Okay, and if you’ll just give me a second, I pulled that up earlier this evening. And if I remember correctly, a few years ago, there was a group of residents that were getting signatures to put a ballot item to put a belt item on about repealing the food food tax. But they didn’t get enough signatures, so that never made it to the ballot. Well,

Speaker 2 12:05
Your Honor, the city friend into his home is 10% of the voting population. And the amount of time that we were allowed to connect seniors was was like five or six, which is a horrible recession on your ability to petition onto the ballot. So I would also like to change the ballot access rules for a referendum on the ballot to be more like some of the surrounding communities instead of this recession that will have a long month.

Speaker 1 12:46
I am going to check really fast with the clerk I do think is that a state

Unknown Speaker 12:52
or a city as a city? Whose is everything? Do it for months.

Speaker 1 13:00
Okay, um, I am looking at up right now. So this article that was about our food tax was written in 2018. And the amount of money that we received, according to the article in the paper was nine point $41 million. However 9.41 Yeah, and the food tax is 3.53%. If you are on food stamps, then you get the exemption. Or if you were on let me look really fast. I’m sorry, I had this. I had this pulled up and then I closed my computer

Speaker 3 13:53
may or may I help for just a moment? Yes, please. Hello, Sandy cedar assistant city manager. Thanks for bringing this up. Yeah, we do have a grocery tax rebate for pretty much anyone who is low income. So if you’re on food stamps, you take snap, you have leap, anything that income qualifies, you will refund your sales tax.

Speaker 2 14:11
How many people have participated no refund this year? I would expect it’s a small number about

Speaker 3 14:18
800 people so far this year. We’re always getting the word out. So thanks for helping us to get the words Yes. 2020. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 14:28
What you have to do.

Speaker 3 14:30
So it’s just a one page application on our website and you can get rebates on not only you can get it in paper, at our front desk also. It’s a one page application and that can give you rebates for all of your utilities, property and rental taxes as well as grocery tax

Unknown Speaker 14:47
eligibility. What’s

Unknown Speaker 14:50
the Oh,

Speaker 3 14:52
it’s if you if you are eligible for any other program, then you’re eligible for ours. Let me give you some information on your way out.

Speaker 1 15:03
Thank you did that. Thank you, Bill. Thank you for bringing that up. Sharon O’Leary.

Speaker 4 15:18
is okay. Sharon Alarie 534 Emory Street. I’m here tonight to talk about closures of public streets. The city of Chicago colony developed the original mile of Longmont and they sold lots in the boundary lines war, first avenue to nine, and Martin to Bowen. And they did that they designed it in a beautiful grid system, easy to flow north, south, east west, we can all get where we want to get going. Okay, Chicago colony first, then the railroad. The railroad was here, when they develop the Chicago colony. And then the east side of Longmont, specifically historic east side. And it developed first because of the close proximity to the railroad for building materials. And then the third thing that happened was the city of Longmont. Okay, so the historic East Side, organized in the early 1980s, with the boundaries of Emory Street to Martin Street, east west, and third to ninth north, south. So for years, we were very concerned about a quiet zone. And we were always pushing for a quiet zone. And I’m sure it bothered the rest of the city. But it bothered us a bit more because it ran right in front of Columbine Elementary School. And then with the old buildings. We didn’t have air conditioning we had on windows up at night. So for years, were pushing for that, and we weren’t making any progress. So in the early 80s, we organized as a neighborhood before there was ever even an end GLA neighborhood, group leaders organization. So at that point, we had five east west corridors within our boundary. So we had Fourth Avenue, we had Fifth Avenue, we had Sixth Avenue, Long’s peak in eighth. Well, two things happen in the 80s. They closed off Eighth Avenue and a two for one swap with the railroad so that the city of Longmont could develop the east side up by 21st Street, and it happened, so they permanently cut off Eighth Avenue. Then to revitalize downtown, they made a public plaza on Sixth Avenue. And they closed off Sixth Avenue on the west side of Main Street. So from five, we’re down to three. So presently, on a part time basis, due to concerts and craft events, craft fairs and other events Fourth Avenue now is intermittently being closed off. So now we’re down to two and a half east west corridors out of the original mile. Beautiful grid system being demolished. So then came the two for one to keep Boston Street and it was between Terry Street and someplace on the east side. And so the city started having meetings about that. But all of a sudden this two for one was put in a big pot, and it was seasoned with having a quiet zone. And they melded them together. And then they started holding public meetings. So there’s a group of pictures I sent our boundary lines. Okay, so there was a snowstorm in March, this is May 2019. And in March there was a storm so they had to reschedule at Columbine Elementary. I have pictures 15 Elders showed up. It was the 20th due to the fact that the 23rd was the last day of school. So there were sports banquets, honor banquets, choir presentations, so not not well represented. But one of the cool things that came out of that was one of the big posters was crossing options. And they had one that it said at Fifth Avenue. They could close it or do a four quadrant gate. And they also looked at Sixth Avenue and they also looked at Fourth Avenue. So here we are, we’re in the present day and the city of Longmont is going to close Fifth Avenue. That leaves the people who live on the east side of town and the west side but more impacted to the east side of town. One open east west corridor. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t. And I know it’s only going to get worse. Third, in ninth, the traffic has picked up so much that it’s next to impossible to take a left. So all I started thinking about were all our new drivers going to height, you know, going into high school and feeling that pressure to make a left hand turn, or all those families trying to get their kids to the multiple events. I’m asking that communities are some of their choices, you have the opportunity to make a choice, not to close Fifth Avenue, but to put a four quadrant. I also feel like there have been systemic inequalities happening all the time on the east side, and schools. On the west side, it’s not the same. So was that five minutes? Yes, it was.

Speaker 1 20:55
Well, let’s say five and a half. So, Sharon, what is your ask again that you want to Fifth Avenue

Speaker 4 21:02
to stay open? So I sent a letter to the PUC. Okay. And the PUC vacated. The judge vacated the science or put up closure. If you have concerns, write a letter and I wrote a letter, and the judge threw it out, he vacated it. And he said, people need to go back and talk about this. And the point being I so I asked PUC, I said, What is this two for one? And they said, it’s an ask. It’s not. You have to it’s an ask. But the city’s treating it I know it will cost more money to do a four quadrant clothes, where they come all the way down in the crossover. It will cost more but to take away another public street is so wrong when we have documented on Main Street in bronze, the original mile it was always there, but for some reason on the east side. It seems like it’s okay to close streets on the east of Maine so that on the west side of Maine can have what they need Terry st could be closed. Sure, it could be but it’s on the west side. Okay.

Speaker 1 22:15
Is there anybody on council that would like to speak to this with Sharon?

Unknown Speaker 22:22
Are any of you aware of it?

Speaker 1 22:25
I have to be honest. I wasn’t this is uh, this is so wrong. Yep. So why don’t first of all council needs to get more information or the information from transportation and whoever’s working on

Speaker 4 22:43
there carrying through there I mean, the city has been trying to carry through and pause me that you don’t know. I talked to the railroad the railroad says we are only doing what the city of Longmont is paying us to do.

Speaker 1 22:58
Okay, sure. Your contact information is here. Yes, it is. I will contact you I will educate myself on this and and contact you and anyone else that wants to

Speaker 4 23:11
go systemic equality lives on in Longmont if you close another street? Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 23:16
No thank you

Unknown Speaker 23:23
camellia

Speaker 1 23:29
and I didn’t mention that we do need your address. Okay, thank you

Speaker 5 23:42
all right. Good evening, Mayor Council Carmilla Van Horn 1474 Mayfield circle. And I’m also the mother of a lovely four year old daughter. I’m here to speak to you about repealing the Longmont food tax. I’ve got my receipt here. I’m going to talk about that later. With increasing inflation, people pay a far higher percentage of their food budget and total budget in general for food. Grocery grocery taxes are regressive. long months tax of 3.5% is the equivalent of charging approximately one day’s worth of food. Only six of Colorado’s 64 counties have a tax rate higher than Boulder County. And looking at our neighboring cities, like Loveland Lafayette, they don’t have a sales tax on groceries on food. And recently, Loveland was able to repeal theirs. As a result, people like myself who work in other cities end up going occasionally I end up going to places like LA and Lafayette to buy my groceries and I I think that there’s something a little bit wrong with that. And just as a side note, I don’t qualify for any of the government programs. And if I did qualify, I would accept them anyway.

Unknown Speaker 25:10
So on Sunday, I went grocery shopping. And I thought, well, let

Speaker 5 25:15
me take a look at this receipt. And what I see here on my receipt from Sunday is $7.17. That went to this 3.53% tax. And I thought, well, let me take a look at my receipt and see, you know, what on there could have been covered by that? Seven $7.17 So I thought I’d share that with you guys. A large bottle of all purpose cleaner, two boxes of taco shells. 32 ounce bottle of grape juice, a frozen pizza, two bottles of kombucha one package of beef sausages, five gallons of spring water to chocolate bars for my daughter. Three large yellow onions or too large sweet potatoes to contain as a potato chips, also for three large beets, or 12 Mini flax muffins asked for me to grapefruits. Three Romaine lettuces, or three pairs, or seven large carrots, seven bell peppers, seven oranges, or five avocados. Lastly, one of my daughter’s books cost about $7.17 for the city of Longmont stop taking books for babies. That’s all.

Unknown Speaker 26:46
Counter Martin,

Speaker 6 26:49
although I have I agree with you, in principle, that the food tax is a little unusual. I would like your opinion as to what services the city of Longmont should reduce or stop providing

Speaker 5 27:09
a direct tax would be great for those services that you want folks to play for pay for a direct tax like I or if you’re if you’re through the utilities, I pay for utilities, sewer, those types of things, I pay for those directly.

Speaker 6 27:22
So that doesn’t asked answer my question, though. What? What would you prefer to pay for on a fee basis?

Unknown Speaker 27:32
What said whatever,

Speaker 5 27:34
I’m whatever I’m paying for, I’d like to be taxed directly for that service.

Speaker 6 27:41
Such as I’m sorry, but under any tax tells me nothing. You know, the utilities are Tabor enterprises. And we can’t tax you for that they have to be done on pay for those directly. I pay a fee basis. Yes. So what there there are two ways to to because the tax goes into a general fund. Is that right? The sales taxes go to the general fund. Yeah. So what exactly are you? Well, most of the most of the General Fund goes to city employee salaries. Would you think we should cut those? Yes. Good to know. So you would be willing to accept a lesser level of service? Yes, ma’am. Employees. Yes, ma’am. All right. Good to hear. Good to know.

Speaker 1 28:40
Thank you for bringing this up. And I do think it is worth counsel discussing. Thank you. You’re welcome. Shaquille didn’t tell all.

Speaker 7 29:02
She killed a wall to 19 Francis Street. As always, I’m here to talk about the issue of housing affordability. The high cost of housing is a crisis in the city of Longmont. We now live in a community where children people with children can’t afford to live. The average age of the city is increasing and the enrollment in San Fran Valley school districts in the long run boundaries is getting lower. And where families that have lived here for decades are watching their kids leave because young people can’t afford to put a roof over their heads in the city of Longmont. And where it senior citizens can’t downsize to a smaller home after maybe their kids grow up and leave because there’s nowhere for them to downsize to there are no affordable or attainable starter homes in the city of Longmont. And so as a result, those senior citizens are trapped in their giant homes that they don’t really need anymore, because there’s nowhere for them to downsize to. As you’ve heard me say many times before the cost of housing is a choice. It’s a choice that we make as a community and it’s a choice that’s set in our land use policy. CS. I’m here to ask the council when as we as or when are we as a city going to take the issue of housing affordability seriously and pursue a full menu of options for reducing the cost of housing. Right now, 72% of homes in the city of Longmont are single family. This is the type of housing that is worse for the environment and worse for the cost of housing because of the inefficient ways that it uses land. Now those inefficient uses of land are in part driven by our land use policies that require inordinate setbacks and inordinate spaces between different types of homes for no other reason other than to inefficiently use that land and drive up the cost of housing. For decades long been encouraged the construction of single family homes through policies that sprawled the boundary of long run outwards. And this created artificially cheap housing at the cost of our environment, and creating a community that is dependent on cars and where pedestrians die crossing streets, because those streets are designed to prioritize speed over the safety of the people who live in the city. I’m not talking about banning single family homes. What I’m talking about is making options available for people who want to build an adu or a duplex, or make it possible for a teacher or a city employee to live in the city that they serve. Because the truth is that city employees don’t get paid very much. And as a result, most of them don’t live in the city very anymore. And I think that it is a detriment to the city to be to have our city government run by people who can’t afford to live in the city. This is not a gated community. This is a public welcoming environment, and a place that strives to be inclusive that once had a motto that you belong in Longmont, for that to be true, it has to be possible for the people that make this community happen to be able to afford to live here. This is going to require this council to change the land development code to allow missing middle housing types. And they have to be allowed in every single neighborhood in the city. We have a crisis and it is time for us to take dramatic action. So here’s my question and what I’d love to discuss with you tonight. Is this the year that we’re going to get serious about addressing the cost of housing. Are you the council members who are here today as our elected officials willing to be the leaders that our community needs? By making the full menu of housing types available to our community? Are you willing to take the action required so that there’s no neighborhood in the city that can’t have a young family or a police officer or a pair of senior citizens that want to gracefully age in their own home?

Speaker 1 32:23
So I can answer this but if anybody else would like to chime in Go for it. Okay, okay. So Shaquille know that this is not the year we’re going to do that because we’ve already addressed it.

Speaker 7 32:40
You believe that the cost of housing is now attainable in the city of Longmont for the average family? No,

Speaker 1 32:44
because we’re in the process of building it. We just had last week actually. The council okay the developer for our Mustang project, which is at the southern end by Costco. How many homes is that? 184.

Speaker 7 33:03
How many homes does the 65 How many homes is the city needed?

Speaker 1 33:08
I am so I am going to answer this first before you let me tell you what this is. It is a combination of attainable housing for sale attainable and force for rent. As well as for sale deed restricted affordable. For Sale and for rent. We are going to break ground on that this year. And it has taken a couple of years to get the funding together for that. We also have attainable housing in shoot I forgot the what is the next project that we have?

Speaker 7 33:54
Are you possibly referring to the Somerset development which will be 12% affordable

Speaker 1 33:59
while the Chrisman is going is affordable and that is on hover Street.

Unknown Speaker 34:04
We how many units are in that development?

Speaker 1 34:09
I can’t remember how many. How many are in that development, Harold. But we’ve been working on this for quite a few years. And it’s really it doesn’t take

Speaker 7 34:22
it’s not overnight. It I agree it’s not overnight.

Unknown Speaker 34:25
So go ahead here.

Speaker 8 34:27
So we have about 600 units in the pipeline over the next three years. Part of that is a Christmann project, which is affordable it’s approximately 85 units. We also have the 15 is Enya which is the 55 permanent supportive housing units. We just received tax credit approval for a cent Yes. And that’s going to be another add ability around 80 units plus or minus is a few that’s going to be for families. And so that’s going to be one, two and 3123 and four bedroom units for rent, childcare, and that’s going to have early child hood education associated with that. And,

Speaker 7 35:18
Harold, if you don’t mind me asking, Do you believe that the city of Longmont is ever going to own 14,000 units of housing in the next five years or 10 years? So So I think part is that’s what the that’s what the city’s housing needs assessment says it needs. But in my opinion, I don’t believe that it is practical for the city of Longmont to build that many units. This is not an issue of government action. This is an issue of allowing private actors to build more housing in the city, for example, by converting a single family home that is too big into a duplex. That’s just a thing that we prohibit as a city but have no reason to prohibit that is how you get 14,000 units of housing it’s not by and I admire the work that the Longmont Housing Authority and that the city of Longmont is trying to do to build permanently affordable housing and that work does need to continue. But to build attainable housing market rate housing that does not require a government subsidy that requires there to be more housing that is privately available, and that housing has to exist throughout the city. Because the city government doesn’t have enough money. We’re right.

Speaker 1 36:23
So have you. And I don’t know the name of this project. But have you driven on Nelson road and seeing the huge apartment complex that is going up there? Have you? Have you been on Main Street that turns into 119? And at the triangle and scene? I was in new units? Have you seen those?

Speaker 7 36:45
I have seen them and the sum of all the projects that you have have been maybe maybe 2000 units 14,000 is what we need today. Right? If 10 years when the projects that Harold is working on right now and the ones that are in the pipeline are coming through, we’re going to need more than 14,000 units.

Speaker 1 37:05
We’re not going to get 14,000 units today. It isn’t realistic. Shaquille

Speaker 7 37:09
No, we need 14,000 units in the next 10 years. We need 14,000 units today. And then we’re going to need more as the city grows over the next 10 years. And so what I’m asking is if the city council is willing to allow the city to build those units, because right now the land development code prevents that it prevents us from building enough housing for the demand that already exists plus the population growth that the city is also already planning for. That is why the median home in Longmont right now costs $585,000 Because we have a lot of demand and no supply.

Speaker 1 37:40
Shaquille the legislation is working on that at the moment as far as allowing different types of homes. From my perspective. I’m going to wait until see what the legislation comes up with on the stage.

Speaker 7 37:55
You’re referring to the state legislature and the transit oriented development that they want.

Speaker 1 37:59
So I am going to turn it over to Councillor Martin next. And then Councillor McCoy. And then Councillor Hidalgo fairings. So let them weigh in, we have four and a half minutes. So let us speak. And I’m looking for you. They all went off.

Speaker 6 38:29
Thank you, Mayor Peck. I was going to say, you know all of these, the answers that Mayor Pat gave are correct. But except one. And that is the answer to is this the year. This needs to be the year that we give serious consideration to more code changes. And we have already seen that such code changes, if done incrementally are not an excessive burden on the staff. Because the staff is working right now on changing, expanding the allowed use into more types of zones for service industries that have it’s where it’s been a problem for people who commute for example, to not be able to have childcare close to where their jobs are, you know, things like that. And if those those code changes are easy, then there are many more. And yes, the legislature is going to have to do something to allow ad use in neighborhoods that have homeowners associations, for example, that will make a huge difference in the in the amount of infill that we can have. There are many ways to do it. But take Keep making those incremental changes that allow infill housing to be easier and cheaper and multifamily housing to exist in more places is something that we can do this year. And I for one will be looking for those opportunities and voting for them.

Speaker 1 40:21
So we have been bringing as Councillor Martin said, our code changes back incrementally. But the reason one of the reasons we do not have condominiums that we do not have duplexes is because of the construction defects law, there are no developers at this point, we’ll build them. So that has been looked at both on the local levels as well as on the state levels.

Speaker 7 40:43
So but if you rent out half of your home, that doesn’t have to be a duplex. And that’s not necessarily subject to construction defects law, but that is also a thing that we do not allow as a city councilor

Unknown Speaker 40:54
McCoy.

Speaker 9 40:55
Thank you, Mayor Peck, okay, you asked this at the very beginning here, when we were gonna get serious, and I take this very serious as I know, these other folks do as well. And everything that has been told to you tonight has been a pretty serious approach to trying to solve this problem. My question to you is this, when are you going to get serious about not being an activist and focus more on the idea of service to your community? Or have you applied to be on the Planning and Zoning Commission, or the housing authority or anything else like that, because that’s why we need people we need people that are passionate, like you coming forward with that sort of drive to try to see these things through then to try to sit out here and, and be critical of, of what we’re not doing when we’re doing all kinds of positive things to make this community a better place. So in

Speaker 7 41:44
terms of my activism in the community, yet, I agree that sitting on the on the bench isn’t sufficient. That’s why I’ve started a group in town that’s working on housing affordability called Launch London housing. I also am not eligible to sit on the planning and zoning board because I’m already occupied with a different city board and one cannot serve on more than one of them. I sit on the city’s police Review Board. I also am on the board of the LA Hmong community foundation have been pushing the Longmont Community Foundation to take the issue of housing affordability more seriously as well. So no, I’m not sitting on the cheap seats and throwing shots. I am pushing my elected officials on the issues that I think are important and using this avenue among many others.

Speaker 1 42:17
Dalco faring Shaquille your five minutes are up let counselor Hidalgo fairing answer, please.

Speaker 10 42:23
You know, I think some of the stuff was mentioned by councilmember Martin. And the other piece I wanted to also bring up is, you know, he has done you know, I’ve seen the work that he has done and he’s he’s contributed and there are many ways to contribute to your community. The launch housing was one lpm you’ve done work on that. Yes, I wasn’t. And the public. Yeah. So there was there were other other things as well. But I also wanted to mention, you know, during my entire time on council, we have looked at the codes, you know, I learned that it’s it’s a long process. And it’s times it’s very it is very frustrating. But we do have an item at our retreat on February 9 and 10th. Anybody is welcome to come in and out as long as as often as you want to affordable and attainable housing overview. So that’s when we’re going to take a deeper look and have a roundtable conversation about what exactly we need to approach and what our goal is going to be for the next year. Moving forward. We’re chiseling away at it. It’s going to take time, but that is a priority as a renter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:28
And now and now that you’ve brought it up, we will discuss that portion of it have duplexes changing single family homes into duplexes.

Unknown Speaker 43:42
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 43:45
In Sergeant

Speaker 11 43:50
Okay, I’m going to I got a couple of slides and feel free to get a copy of this from work. Okay, so last open forum. I was here and I talked about food security growing, growing food locally regenerative agriculture. So I’m just gonna give a quick update on some things that have happened recently in Boulder County. So there was a program started in Boulder called Restore Colorado, Boulder County that asked farm to table restaurants and other businesses to select to voluntarily collect 101% of their revenues towards a fund that would fund regenerative agriculture. That program has now gone statewide under funding lists. $200,000 this year for to fund projects that fight climate crisis by improving soil health. And sequestering carbon on local farms and ranches. And according to Boulder County’s projects estimated to have sequestered over 4000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to the carbon footprint of 800. Homes annual. So, in other words, Boulder County is taking regenerative agriculture seriously. Fort Collins just announced recently 85 acres to be put into a year round seasonal, year round or seasonal cattle grazing program to achieve ecological goals provide effective irrigation rotation of animals to achieve soil health improvements and reestablish nutrient cycling. So Fort Collins is also getting on board with regenerative agriculture as a way of well, killing many birds with one stone, I guess. But certainly the carbon cycle is an important part of those activities in regenerative agriculture, I’m more interested myself in the food security, I think we should be have a goal of growing 30% of our annual food requirements in in our short truck ride. So local, and hyperlocal. So just really quick, on this first slide, you know what is regurgitation grazing is where you move animals around so that they eat down the growth but don’t damage it. The roots if you only eat 50% before and then move the animals on the routes immediately regenerate that. And it’s so much better for the ecosystem and for the soil and for carbon sequestration. And so, one recent study showed that grasslands are actually a better a more resilient carbon sink than forests. So forests are considered a larger carbon sink, but it’s susceptible to forest fires, which kind of undo the work of the trees. So grasslands, most of that biomass is underneath the soil and protected from fires. So we think that every region should be focused on how to adopt regenerative practices in our region. And we think that Longmont can be doing this so you asked me to come up with an idea on how to use Longmont city open space. So this is this is the first idea. There’s I think we should explore and I’m asking you to create a task force to explore the use of open space and Longmont city or other city on lands to be managed in a regenerative agricultural trial. This would be a three to five year trial. And there’s a couple organizations that that the city could draw on one is called drylands, agricultural research or dar that’s based here in Longmont. And they are showing ways to recover on irrigated range as productive farmland. There’s another broad boulder project that’s underway right now that’s going to bring in city looks like 80 acre at plus 180 acre parcel in Boulder and Boulder, city and openspace combined, that will be bringing in trials of regenerative practices that have been proven in other parts of the world but to see if they will work here in Boulder. And I think that once these best practices can be approved, proven out for here that we can then any farmer around in the region can start adopting these and so I’ve put together some references where you can people that you can talk to to help formulate this task force. Thank you.

Speaker 9 49:36
Thank you, man. So is this somewhat similar to what Lewisville was doing with some of their open space to kind of had they had goats coming around and and eating down some of it for the purpose of kind of fire mitigation, eating out some of the the undergrowth and, and that sort of stuff along with just the overall concept of having your Food, you know, local. Yeah,

Speaker 11 50:02
so the the rent a goat program, and there’s another farmer that’s getting a flock of sheep, that’s also sort of rent a sheep rancher flock. So yeah, those are mostly used for fire mitigation, that wouldn’t really be considered rotational grazing. Rotational grazing is an intensive agriculture, where you’ve got a lot of animals in a small place, but you keep them moving around. And so it improves the productivity rapidly in terms of the soil and improves the soil health rapidly, whereas the fire mitigation use is more like you know, an annual once a year kind of visit from the goats. Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 50:49
Councillor Martin?

Speaker 6 50:50
Thank you, Mayor Peck, I don’t have a lot to say. I just have a suggestion for you, which is David Bell, in the parks organization, you probably know that the city of Longmont manages its agricultural preserved of open space very actively, and, you know, make sure that they’re under cultivation. And, and, and all of that, and, and also, that this, that the parks organization is experimenting with what Native cultivars grow well, and so on. So it is sort of just one small step for the city to engage itself in exactly the kind of agriculture you’re talking about. And we’re talking about 800 acres potentially. Right. So my suggestion is have a conversation with David belt. I know he would enjoy it. And perhaps a good plan can come forward later in the year for the something that the city can do itself rather than just incentivize. Right. Great.

Speaker 1 52:05
So my question to you is, do you want to be on that taskforce?

Speaker 11 52:08
I certainly would be happy to. To Yeah, either as a convener or as a participant. Yeah. Great.

Speaker 1 52:17
Thank you so much. So the next five people are Mary Lynn, Polly Christensen, Joseph montaged, Karen, YEG, yaghi and prudence.

Speaker 12 52:41
Hello, my name is Mary Lynn. And I also live at 777 44 Atwood, which my husband the previous speaker neglected to mention. And yes, I’m concerned that the city seems to be a little over its skis with some of the projects it’s taken on. And I know other people here will speak more about this. But whenever I hear the discussions about affordable housing, I think, but what about affordable food? What about growing our own food? What about the most basic aspects of sustainability which is to grow local, to eat local, to grow the soil so that it is the most effective carbon sink after the ocean? We can’t do much about that here since we’re in the West. And I think it’s worth mentioning something that Ben didn’t mention in his slides, which is that once the soil is renewed, it’s then able to go into Rotation to grow food for humans. I, every time I hear about how we need 20,000 units, I asked who said so? Why has Longmont decided it needs to grow at the rate it’s growing? And why isn’t Longmont also looking with urgency at retaining as much land as possible for growing our food? The average density in the United States is under 100 people per square mile. In the West, it’s lower than that. Why does Longmont have to be reaching 4000 residents per square mile? Why are we growing on the some of the best farmland in the West why we growing houses there rather than food? Which brings me to the one point that I really want to make today which is that we have to have a task force that’s not just looking at agriculture, but at food security and food sovereignty. I I’ve looked at I did a lot of research in the last several weeks and I must say we do We have a regressive food tax. My wife doesn’t have one Lafayette doesn’t have it me doesn’t have it. Firestone and I and Loveland, by a 70% margin majority repealed to their food tax. I know that people here, if you just asked them, they would say, Yeah, we don’t want to pay that food tax. I think that it’s something that needs to go. And we need to be looking at balancing the quote unquote need for growth in housing with the need for growth and food. So my last question is, to follow up on what Bill Gibson was talking about. I think it’s almost a hostile act when you you know, in your bones that people here would say, would vote to repeal the food tax? Why shove this down to a process for a ballot referendum? When the it appears that in this I did not research, it appears that the that there’s a really quite a high onus of signatures. And I’d like to know how long that compares to other cities. And how many ballot initiatives have successfully ended on the ballot? Because I think if the people here and the dozens of people I know who are ready to work on this, went out and gathered signatures, we could gather the number of signatures that Loveland did. They were at the farmers market every single day, we know because we were there at the farmers market as well. But why put us through that? And what actually is the process? How difficult is it? So

Unknown Speaker 56:39
I’m done. Councillor Martin?

Speaker 6 56:43
Yes, thank you, I would just like to point out that the results of the housing needs assessment were not a growth target at all, they did not exclude not relate to expanding the Longmont economy. Rather they they related to increased housing needs for organic growth, that is children growing up and needing their own place for accommodating people who are inadequately housed, like their families, you know, are growing and they need to move into a bigger house and frontline workers who work here but have to commute, which is dirty and ugly and is essentially a tax on individuals because you’re taking their time and their money in addition to requiring them to pollute in order to get to their job and that none of those things would be true if they were able to afford to live in Longmont. So last month’s housing needs assessment addresses those demographics, it is not a growth target. And so I just want to point that out and make sure that we don’t characterize it that way.

Speaker 12 57:59
Okay, and but how about my question about what are we doing about growing local food sustainability as a climate, if you will, as a as an environmental goal, and as a simply the baseline goal for sustaining sustaining human populations?

Speaker 1 58:14
I think what we told your husband is what we because I know David bellows definitely in favor of that of soil sequestration and having a program. But I think that a good thing for you to do also is go to the sustainability advisory board.

Speaker 12 58:34
I sit on that board. fantast, fantastic. There’s been very little interest in this. The every meeting is about electrification. Oh, with a little bit of which, I don’t understand the logic of that either, frankly, I mean, Excel, and P RPA. are building gas plants. But there’s a goal of eliminating. I think the city is way in front of its skis on a number of issues. Kate, Mary didn’t bring that one up today. But

Speaker 1 59:02
and I’m only cutting you off, because you’ve had your five minutes. And I agree with you on the soil sequestration and the regenerative soil. So let’s talk about it more. And see see what we can do.

Speaker 12 59:22
Because I did have one more question about the ballot initiative process. How do we compare to other cities and how many ballot initiatives have made it onto the ballot in the last few years?

Speaker 1 59:34
That’s a great question. And there’s some research that needs to be done for that. So can we get back to you? Yes, thank

Unknown Speaker 59:40
you. Okay.

Speaker 1 59:42
Before you leave, can you leave your email address and I think that Councillor Hidalgo faring would like to address your question as well.

Speaker 10 59:54
Sure, why not? So thank you for your comments. Since the last open forum, I think when we heard from your husband, you know, I’ve been doing a little research and been in contact with one of our county commissioners on this topic as well as I sit on the ark hab the resource conservation advisory board. And that is that is one of the the areas of study. So we have several subcommittees, and that is one that I sit on is around the soil. So it’s composting, but soil regeneration. And I mean, you You hit the nail on the head, when our oceans die, we die if our soil dies, we die. So this is there is urgency at that. And, you know, I feel like, you know, we do have to create a balance and where I feel like one priority is doesn’t take precedence over another. I think as council members, we all have to address all these deeds with great urgency. We have on our in front of us, our goals and our council priorities. And so with sustainability, being something that encompasses all of what we do, so we can’t address housing, without ensuring that we have that balance that we can adequately feed our people, you know, has seen

Speaker 12 1:01:14
nothing happening in that bill. But if you could put together a task force you happy to help recruit and let’s push it. Yeah,

Speaker 10 1:01:20
no, I think that’s just creating actionable items. So I appreciate that and coming forward with that. So thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:27
Thank you. Okay, one more, councillor.

Speaker 6 1:01:36
I’m not opposed to the idea of a task force for sustainable agriculture. But I would like to put a restriction on it. The United States has a Department of Agriculture. locavore ism isn’t or you know, in Santo, even incentivizing it is out way outside the jurisdiction of a Colorado Homerville city. And we should not spend a lot of time on that as opposed to things that are attainable by the city, like carbon sequestration through our agricultural management.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:12
Okay, thank you. The next person is Polly Christensen.

Speaker 13 1:02:21
Hello, Mayor and councillors. My name is Pauline Christensen. I live at 14 Jetson Street. I’m here to thank you instead of criticize you. I’m here to thank City Council for two good housing projects. The Mustang project near Costco and the Xenia project near the suites off sunset when I initiated the affordable housing ordinance years ago, which is called the inclusionary housing ordinance. Now, this is exactly what I had in mind. And I worked at the beyond the beginnings of both these projects, which as we know, it takes a long time to get stuff done. Everybody’s frustrated, but the important thing is that it gets done, the Mustang project will have both for sale and for rent housing at affordable or attainable levels. It is essential that people especially young people have a path to homeownership. The best thing is this project gives writer first refusal to city employees who provide the hard work necessary to provide all our services for long run. The senior project provides affordable housing and wraparound services to low income and disabled people with a developer who really understands their needs and wants to build this kind of housing, which is very rare. Those who say we should leave housing up to the market seem unaware that the market has been in control of our housing since the election of Richard Nixon, in 1969, who turned the building maintenance and management of public housing over to real estate developers such as the Trump family who would not allow anyone non white to live in their housing. The final blow came when the Reagan administration greatly diminished diminished mental health facilities leaving 1000s of mentally ill homeless. We’ve been living with market solutions for nearly 55 years. That is how we got into this mess where 60% of Boulder County households are cost burdened with housing, eliminating zoning and this is a fad right now and limiting zoning and packing people into packing people in like sardines is not the answer. The common the further commodification of our homes and our neighborhoods is not the answer. This is not what other countries do. We need to return and increase government building maintain Owning and managing quality public housing for rent and for sale. Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:05:06
Thank you, Polly. During the discussion on council Okay, this next one is Joseph Minh. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this right Montana.

Speaker 14 1:05:19
Ooh, hello. First, very good, good. If you’re if you’re French, you can say montagny. I’m half French. So okay, anyway, but my name is Joseph Mahtani. And I live at 2973 breakwater drive in Longmont. And I was asked to come speak tonight, and I like to lend my support to speaking before the repeal of the grocery tax, I do believe that the cost of living is becoming unbearable for many people. And every little piece that’s taken out of their pocketbook ends up causing them to struggle more and more for necessities. Importantly, food and rent and all the other aspects energy are just whittling away at our freedoms that way in that regard. So I’m just curious. Also, you know, I’m not really well learned and instead just kind of recently become aware of it. But I’m just curious why so many other surrounding cities, look, you know, localities seem to be able to repeal the food tax. And we, we seem to think, Oh, we’re gonna have to cut back on so many different, you know, parts of, of the city, the city employees and other other needed necessary expenses, it seems to me like we could trim the fat a little to cut this down. And I mean, there’s just so many people are struggling with this, it’s just to me something that I’m really curious why it is that so many other surrounding localities are able to do this, and we’re not, we’re not willing to do this, I think it’s more of a choice. In fact, I’d like to propose that we can do this right now. And I don’t think we should put it on a ballot, I don’t think we should try to put it up for a vote, I think it should be something that we should just, you know, for the sake of humanity, if you will, and living, you know, quality of life. I think people are being taxed to death, in a way. So I think there’s something I’d like to stand up for and speak about, just because I think that we all have tax increases. And it’s causing us to have to make hard choices about feeding our children. And, you know, very necessary living expenses. So I think if we could just repeal this, and I think we can do it without a ballot initiative, I think you as council members have the authority? Am I Am I correct in that or not? You are correct. So I think we should just do it. I mean, let’s just take a stand for the sake of the families that are struggling so many are. I mean, I’m probably the last one that she talks about this I live around like Macintosh, by the way, like Macintosh is an area where you could cut expenses. So you really could because there’s a lot of money that’s put into supporting the the guards and the you know, control people that the walk around like McIntosh making sure nobody violates the no swimming rules and all the other. Have

Speaker 1 1:08:42
you gonna say? Have you seen the people that have come telling us to get people out?

Speaker 14 1:08:49
I probably I probably the last person that should vary. But just for the sake of because I’m a doctor, and I just think that we can help people, you know, with their needs, because it’s better for their health and safety and they don’t have to pay so many taxes. But I would like to hear from you.

Speaker 1 1:09:06
Okay. This is something our council should talk about. I’m going to call on counselor. Right Rodriguez will try him again.

Speaker 15 1:09:21
Thank you, Mr. Peck. First of all, I want to ask a quick question. I don’t know how many members of council remember, we did have a meeting before a council session with our CFO Jim golden on this subject. The last time it came up as far as a ballot initiative that was going around in the public. Was that meeting done an executive session?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:41
I don’t think it was. Okay.

Speaker 15 1:09:43
So, from my recollection of that meeting, we have certain bond assurances that are correlated to this particular tax. Part of our job here is a fiduciary responsibility to the city is to assure that we have a good bond rating you If we start violating bond assurances, by repealing a tax that these bond assurances are tied to, could affect our bond rating, which will affect our ability to borrow for capital projects down the road. So that was one of the items that was brought to us on a reason why we shouldn’t just summarily repeal this tax is because we have certain investments that are based on this particular line of income. And if we violate these bond assurances that would affect and negatively affect our our bond rating as a city. And so that was an explanation given to us by our CFO or our financial our Chief Financial Officer for the City. And so that’s one reason that the city council did not move on it on our own behalf at that time. And let it go to the bow of the petition process. And so that’s just one explanation that I don’t think has been brought up tonight for folks in the audience that I don’t think they were necessarily privy to in that conversation if they weren’t in that particular meeting.

Speaker 1 1:11:09
But it is something that the council can bring back and discuss again, but tonight, we’re not going to make a motion on it.

Speaker 14 1:11:14
So what would what would it take for us to put this issue to vote or to, you know, a discussion? Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:11:23
it would take us putting on it and an agenda. And tomorrow morning, I will ask our city manager. If we can do that. That’s when we discuss what’s going to be on our agenda. So

Speaker 14 1:11:36
if the is the answer, if we can do that, is that dependent on on on worrying? By your use

Unknown Speaker 1:11:46
all depends upon a majority vote

Speaker 14 1:11:49
depends on a majority vote sunset majority might vote not to repeal the tax.

Speaker 1 1:11:54
I don’t have any idea because we haven’t discussed it, we need to have another discussion. It’s been a while since 2018, was our last discussion on this. But thank you for bringing it up again. And I do want to let you know that we will never take salaries away from employees.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:13
Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on.

Speaker 1 1:12:16
I think Councillor Martin would like to weigh in on this. Okay.

Speaker 6 1:12:19
Thank you. There are, I think, some facts that the people in the in the audience here need to know about uses of the general fund. I get a lot of letters, and I respond to every single one. I mean, I have occasionally spoken to someone that I failed to respond to. So, you know, it’s my intention to respond to every single one. But once in a while I lose one. Nevertheless, I would say way up in the top five, and maybe the top one and two requests that I get from the public are code enforcement doesn’t do enough. And the police don’t do enough, we need more. The policy of the city of Longmont is to pay its average employee. Just a tiny bit, May a hole you know, the goal isn’t percent but in fact, it’s less than that over the statewide average for people in the same job description. So, you know, from the Snickers, I heard the last time it was mentioned. I think there’s some idea that the city staff is overpaid. But the city staff is not overpaid. And so what that means is that if we need to cut the city staff in order to for example, untaxed food that we would either be letting our employees fall behind employee employees in adjacent cities, or we would be having fewer of them and honestly, if they fell very far behind, we wouldn’t be having fewer of them anywhere anyway because they would be leaving for better wages somewhere else rather than staying here in Longmont. So I want everybody to understand that and you know the last person I asked this question of could not give me an answer. So I’m going to ask it of you what city services would you like to cut so that we can repeal the food tax?

Speaker 14 1:14:43
Well, I you know, don’t really have a good grip on that but I what I you know, I talked to my wife Debbie about this today, and she ran a preschool here in Longmont for 14 years. And she said that she she has to drive to the Walmart on 119, which is seven miles from our house, rather than the Walmart on Main Street, which is two miles from our house. So I think that people have shop outside the city and drive to get there. And that leads to more congestion and more traveling, you know, pollution that way. So I, I mean, I’m not very good at budgeting myself. I’m horrible at I’m the worst person to budget. But But I think that there must be ways you could cut some fat I mean, just a little Sir,

Unknown Speaker 1:15:29
sir, we will.

Speaker 6 1:15:33
We will discuss that. But I just want to say that cutting the fat is, is a myth that people who don’t like government like to repeat, but if you would like to go and the you know, the city budget is online in excruciating detail. And many years worth of city budgets are online in excruciating detail. You have a consortium of people, obviously, who want to repeal the food tax, I would challenge you to find the fat and come to public invited to be heard in future meetings and talk about the services that you have found that long month doesn’t need.

Speaker 1 1:16:15
Sir, I want to thank you very much for bringing this up. The council will discuss it.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:21
Thank you for your time. You’re welcome.

Speaker 1 1:16:27
Karen and I am is Karen here.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:33
Karen yaghi yaghi Oh, yes. I know. It’s a strange name. No,

Unknown Speaker 1:16:37
it’s fine. I I just didn’t know how to pronounce it. No, that’s all right. Um, I don’t want to What is your address?

Speaker 16 1:16:43
It’s 916 Cory Street here in Longmont. Thank you. Thank you for hearing me I this was a bit of a an impulsive move on my part to come tonight. Right trying to understand Longmont but I have been a 40 year resident in Longmont. And I wanted to I grew up wanting to be part of the solution. So when I want to thank you because I know that the job that you’re doing is not easy. And it’s balancing these forces between so many things. But I wanted to be part of the solution. So my ask tonight I’m going to start with that is just one to raise awareness of a nonprofit that I have started that’s called Community Connections project of Longmont. We are located in on Mountain View and main main street, and I have a it’s a, I’m gonna read something for you here just a second.

Speaker 16 1:17:47
So CCP Longmont offers educational and social programs focused on skill building and leadership in the community. We are building alliances with other organizations and developing programs that encourage participants to get involved in the community in both small and large, as in civic engagement and small ways, completing a puzzle or playing a board game. Our current focus is on building out our schedule of class offerings at our community center, and developing our gardening and farming program. We see ourselves as a support to schools and local businesses, and we want to want our resources to lend a hand to those who might not otherwise have opportunity or purpose. So I just would like for you to again, to be aware of what we’re doing. We is is I have a huge support network people cheering me on, but right now I am a staff of one. So, but we have 10 acres, it’s north of town that we’re developing into a working farm, we would like to put a farmer’s market in front of our building, I rent the tube, a Tebow building, the big blue building for the community center. And I’d like to solicit your support as you are balancing these tensions between urban and agricultural. And the the food security thing is very near and dear to Me, too. We have a I also own a hydroponic lettuce and micro green business. And so and I’m, I failed to say I’m a retired school teacher. So I my initial thing with the community center was to have kids come and be have a place to go. So they’re not just wandering, and then out of that I’m used to working here’s my visual. I’m used to working when schools you know, where you have 600 people population. And so these are the focus areas. When people get tired of playing board games and ping pong, then can they engage in these larger questions of what does it mean to what is permaculture? Ben and I have an alliance. So I’m developing these alliances with people and then trying to get kids and people involved. And so right now I have people that are coming in the homeless community comes in. So and I’m also an owner of six properties. So affordable housing is again, important to me. How can we make all this work? So I applaud all of the things that you do. My last ask is simply what advice would you have for somebody like me now who is trying, I’ve been so busy focused on what I’ve been doing. And now I’m trying to reach out and let people know I exist, trying to get the funding so that I’m not just self funding this? What advice do you have for me to understate understand what is going on in the city that I need to be aware of when I can’t sit on all these task forces? And there’s no more of me left to advise in for, for things. So just what advice do you have for me?

Speaker 1 1:20:49
My first advice would be, first of all, thank you for what you’re doing. It sounds very interesting. My first advice would be to contact the Chamber of Commerce for getting your name out getting joined the Chamber of Commerce. And are you going to be doing as we’ve heard from the other people hear any soil sequestration or rejuvenation? And yes, that answers some

Speaker 16 1:21:19
questions. Yes, and I and our property we have I have kids coming out taking baseline soil samples, wanting to develop alliances with CSU to, to make that and I’m working on those next level alliances of how do we move forward into the 21st century thinking that seventh generation out? And I

Speaker 1 1:21:40
also think a good contact would be the food share? Group? And let’s see.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:52
I do need funding. I do. I just applied and I’m waiting for an answer. Yeah, I’m hopeful. Yes.

Speaker 1 1:22:04
Counselor Yarborough, would like to talk to you as well. Oops, I keep turning that off. But she has talked a couple of times. So I’ll give you the chance.

Speaker 17 1:22:19
Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for all that you your endeavors your initiative. I just want to say I was gonna say the Longmont Community Foundation as well. One thing you can do if this if it fits March the 30th. At the fairgrounds, we’re going to have a life skills. Life Skills fair, and the city along my Youth and Family Services will be putting that on. And so if there’s something that, you know, CSU will be there as well. Somebody’s going to kids who I think from 11 to 17, will learn how to change a tire. I know some of the adults told me they want to be there for that too. But but for the life skills, I know you were talking about skill building. So if that’s an opportunity, something that you can think of in you’re already working with kids, I think it’s maybe a little bit older, something that you want to ingrain in them moving forward some type of skill that they can think about implementing in everyday life, that will be a great opportunity. So I will talk to Hilda at the Children, Youth and Family Services, and talk to them about how you can participate. And you can tell them that you came here for the open forum and I suggested that you contacted them. Anything that we can do to provide more information and education to our youth is very important for our community. So thanks again, for all that you all are doing out here. And we appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:59
Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:24:00
One more thing before I call on counselor Mountain is that you might contact Ken and Mark Guttridge of Olin farms, they’re very well connected with the local farmers. And they also hire interns in the summer to do exactly what you want to do. So perhaps learning what’s working for them and what is not would be a good place to start. Councillor Martin?

Speaker 6 1:24:25
Yes. And I really will keep this short. I just wanted to thank you as well and elevate the two things that we all didn’t emphasize, but that I think are really important. You mentioned civic engagement and a better understanding of how that works, and also giving children a way to participate in the community. And I would say that those are two of my very top right behind housing. Those are two of my very top priorities. So Thank you for such a brilliant idea, because I think that it’s so interesting that it’s going to do both of those things. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:11
Thank you much.

Speaker 1 1:25:12
So the next five, Kim Edmondson. Danna. Oh, come on up.

Speaker 18 1:25:25
Prudence, prudence, that that’s the hardest first name, maybe. But the last name is Carter. Carter. Yes. I used to say like the president, but people really don’t know the Presidents nowadays.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:39
And your address to six foot

Speaker 18 1:25:41
one can molekule thank you on Monday at 501. First, I want to thank the mayor and the council for having this open forum. I think it’s a great idea. It probably shouldn’t be done monthly. But, you know, that would be enough. One of the things I want to say was that I learned a lot tonight, especially about housing. But what I’m going to talk about tonight is kind of what is the role of the city government is what you’re all taken on, which is a lot and failure for the tax all the propositions that failed, as well as prop hhw. So when I think of the city government, I think of roads, streets, bridges, next light, managing water, electricity, wastewater trash, I think of zoning, permitting, residential, commercial, police and fire and safety services, long run Safety and Justice, which is limited only to municipal code violations. I understand code enforcement, Human Resources, Finance for the city’s as well as for internal employees. So when I think of all that, and then I think that the city’s going to take on housing, and I learned a lot about housing from one of the speakers and recreation recreational services. I always think one should outsource golf so we could make money. Library Services, of course, I went to library district, I would talk about open space, but there’s really kind of none left. It’s kind of all paved over. I also want to talk a little bit about sustainability. One of the things I’ve noticed, especially because I’ve traveled around the state is many bills, city buildings, either have heat pumps, there’s an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal today, page 83, which will explain what a heat pump is, and how they all work. Solar energy, passive solar, lots of trees being planted. And I kind of don’t see that happening in Longmont that the city buildings have not become sustainable unless I’m missing it. So please feel free to you know, correct me. And then I about the failure of all the propositions by resounding margins, I wondered strategically, what was the thought process about putting all three on the ballot at once, as well as Proposition hh, which the state was doing, so that to me, I knew that they were going to fail, so I wasn’t sure what the strategic plan was there. Also, I know back in 2023, the government passed that local governments could give temporary property tax credits, or mill levy reductions. And I’m wondering if the council is considering that. I also want to talk a little bit about taxing groceries. I agree with two speakers prior to me who the young woman who read off her grocery bill and the physician who spoke I think that the tax affects the most vulnerable of the population, which are seniors. As you know, the senior population is growing here, as well as the working poor. I know that you can go online and get this form to fill out to get your tax rebate. I can tell you having worked with people in Medicaid, this is not something that is easy. It’s easy for me to do. I can go online, I have the computer, I can fill out a form. But if if you’re living if you’re poor, you have three kids, and you’re in a single parent home. It’s not that easy. So it’s great having a form However, I don’t really think it’s doable for folks. I know, council person was, Martin has said, What would you cut out? That’s really the job of the council. I know that the Boulder County Commissioners recently slashed to 18% of Health and Human Services, because they’d look then saw there were duplication of services. So I don’t think it’s up to the public to say, what don’t we want? I think it’s the job of the council to do that. There we go.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:34
There you go. That was a lot.

Speaker 18 1:30:39
My five minutes I didn’t like that. Public speaking.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:44
Councillor McCoy,

Speaker 9 1:30:45
Thank you, Mayor. Well, I’m not going to hit on all those I just the thing is, is that we have a budget process every fall to go through and to try to figure out, you know, you know, what, where we want to go as a community, and we have these open forums that not this type of open forum, but we have our, you know, times for public to chime in on those topics, and let us know, you know, are we do people feel like there are spots there to help hone us as a council into, you know, identifying maybe that where there might be spots of duplication and that type of thing. I think the community’s tries really hard, you know, our staff and our council tries really hard not have many duplications, maybe somewhere as large as Boulder County, where you might have many entities you’re trying to, you know, give services to, you might find later that there, there’s a lot of overlap there. And that’s, that would make some sense. But, you know, we’re, we’re pretty compact here, and we can kind of see where we’re, where we’re spending the money. And part of the issue is, is just we want to make sure that the services that we provide people are, are the quality that they have an expectation for sure. And so they’re, you know, we, we want our roads to not have potholes, and we don’t, like, our water runs, and we want our sewer to go away, not come back, those sort of things like that, the, these are good things. So you know, those things, you know, have grown in expense, over the couple years, especially after the pandemic, things are sometimes more difficult to find, I think of a business here in town, at Premier members, they’ve had their, their drive through down for literally six months on Airport Road, because they can’t seem to find the part get somebody to get the part to fix the, the the pneumatic tube system there. So it’s things like that, that’s, that’s everywhere. And so that’s what we’re dealing with as well. And so, you know, sometimes things, oftentimes, when we look and think that things have simple solutions, that’s probably the wrong, we’re looking at things because, you know, when people give simple solutions to complex problems, they’re usually probably don’t always, you know, have have a deep understanding of what’s going on the council really tries to have a deep understanding of what’s going on. We’ve got, you know, folks that think that we could, you know, pack people in like sardines, and, and former councilmember Christiansen comes forward and points out, you know, some of the obvious things, it’s pretty naive to assume that you’re going to be, you know, breaking houses into duplexes and, and things like that. I mean, I think we’re trying to come up with some ideas, you know, we’ve got some commercial properties that are seeing vacant, but you know, some of these issues have to be solved at the legislative level, that gives us the green light to conduct our business here. So that’s, that’s some of the problems that we’re dealing with. We’re trying to do the best for the community and be good stewards, when it comes down to the some of these major issues. And, you know, you can’t always build your way out of these problems. And

Speaker 18 1:34:22
I have to say why I keep hearing the word Taskforce. And I have to say, I think of test forces, unless there’s a time limit on them, and there’s a goal, three months, that’s it, like not two years of Task Force, like sometimes I read this and I say to myself, Well, no wonder nothing gets done. And I think that there’s a change in that in our personal lives. Things move very quickly. And what the expectation is, and I can tell you from Having two young children, they want things fast. And they’re in their, you know, late 30s. They’re like, why doesn’t move any faster?

Speaker 9 1:35:08
Just get in my background, I teach US government, students. And I always say to them, when people try to suggest that your Government should operate like a business, they’ve missed the complexity of government and in transparency of government, and they simply don’t. Maybe they need some real reiteration in regards to what’s going on with that. Because the truth is, is that government, you know, does go slow, on purpose to make sure that all stakeholders have some input. And otherwise, you know, if you’re a business owner, you can be a dictator of all kinds of things that go on with

Speaker 18 1:35:47
a dictator of time and be great. Yeah, for sure is

Speaker 9 1:35:51
nice, isn’t it? So? Well, I don’t think that answered any of your questions. No, we

Unknown Speaker 1:35:57
appreciate your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, I think I appreciate. Yeah, I definitely appreciate your thoughts. Thank

Unknown Speaker 1:36:02
you for coming up today.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:04
Thank you. And

Speaker 1 1:36:04
I want to say for the online forums, I’m sure that if someone really can’t get in to get, we would definitely print it off for them. And I personally, I’m not going to speak for anybody else wouldn’t mind taking a form to someone, if they really feel that they can’t get in to get it or fill it out. I would be happy to do that.

Speaker 18 1:36:23
Oh, you know, it’s a whole thing. It’s another coming from a poor family. You know, your life is chaotic. Yeah. As you know, that’s how I was raised. It was chaos all the time. Yeah. So it’s hard to do. Thank you. We’ll fight we can

Speaker 1 1:36:39
find workarounds. Okay. Now I can pull up the next five. Kim Edmondson. Denise Sevenson. Lisa Crawford, don’t Kelly and Tess Enright.

Speaker 1 1:37:07
In don’t forgive us. Don’t forget to give us your address. Please.

Speaker 19 1:37:12
Join me to start sure Kim. I’m commandment Senate 814 bittersweet lane. And as usual, I’m here to talk about your lovely smart meters that I don’t feel that we really need and all of that. And I know Marcia has been giving me a lot of flack online and all over social media about my science. And so I dug up my radiation physics book, from the radiology program, and I read a little bit about like, well, maybe I forgot something wrong. Maybe I need to reread it. About ionizing radiation produces damage and living systems by analyzing removing electrons from the atoms compromising the molecular structure of these systems. Biological damage then begins with ionization produced by various types of radiation. And ionized Adam will be not bond properly into molecules necessary for normal function of an organism. That’s that. And then I came across some more recent information about EMFs. And at its core, it basically reads the same thing. When your atoms are knocked out of place, it destabilizes and this allows that cell to be damaged, and DNA damage to occur. Basically, at its core, in an atomic level, ionizing and non ionizing raishin are the same thing, despite someone arguing with me for years about this. And so I wanted to just bring that up again, that I don’t feel that these meters are safe. Myself and other members of the community who have been speaking to you for like three to four years now are the canaries in the radiation coal mine, we’re here to say this is a problem. It is making us sick. I recently had to be on amoxicillin for an infected tooth needs to be pulled. And my body’s biome got so jacked up from that, I got this full body heat rash, it was miserable, itchy, nothing helped, nothing touched it. And then I thought, Well, I had high levels of mold on my test by functional doctor, I went off a Wi Fi router, and within 30 minutes, my rash started to disappear. After four days of suffering. I can’t imagine what kind of hell that would have been, there’d been a dam meter on the side of my house, they couldn’t shut off power down. And that really disturbs me that despite people like me speaking, you’re going ahead, and you’re not giving people the option to keep an analog meter or to get an analog meter you’d like it’s either this or that. And believe me, I’ve been around and we’ve measured your new meters. And someone in their winter meeting said, well, they only said about every 15 minutes. No, those Hummers pulse about every 10 seconds, sending their RF signal about every 10 seconds. We’ve measured it, we have it on film. So don’t sit there and keep whining to the community about how safe these things are. And I know it’s great. We’re talking about the sustainability stuff with the farming and agriculture. I’m done with that. But when I see things like in the news, San Luis Valley, I know that’s down the road. It’s not here, but there was a rancher with 1500 head of cattle or so. Raising about 89,000 acres he had a lease expired. His grazing lease was outbid by nature. conservancy to preserve what for birds. So there goes the regenerative soil stuff with the grazing that’s gone out the window so much for that carbon sink in the San Luis Valley. And then there’s the other thing about, you know, we need food supply locally. I agree with that 100%. But you know, if we go put these meters on it, it’s going to decimate the pollinators it already is. I have something I wanted to reach her about that as well. If I can find it, a lot of stuff in here marked. And anyway. Here the magnetite in the intestinal tract of bees, when aligned with the earth magnetic grid allows bees to find their way back to hives. However, this incredible increase of ambient cellphone radiation prevents the magnetite from aligning correctly with Earth’s magnetic grid. So the bees get disoriented, never making it back to the hive. The result of this is that the bee populations are rapidly diminishing. That’s one of many factors. And what’s going to happen when we start putting smart meters on every building in this community. Our pollinators are going to be gone. And we’ve brought this up. And we keep telling you that. And then there’s the whole thing with the food. I know our food bill sucks. My husband’s always looking at the credit card bill, why is it so high, then he he breaks up on a grid and like 80% of our bill on our credit card is food, just food. I’ve scaled back on so many other things I’m not buying, doing without so I can feed my kids. And I agree, you know, you can go ahead and foist smart meters on us without a vote without asking anyone, just by your will. Why can’t you just by your will remove this and I know Aaron touched on this. And you’re like, Well, what are we supposed to cut? Hey, why don’t you cut your smart grid? You just had recently posted a position for someone to design your grid for $200,000 a year. Do we really need that guy? Do we really need an ISA Knobloch on the sustainability advisory board can’t those people figure it out a little bit on their own without a college degree sustainability person leading the way and getting a monthly paycheck from the city. I mean, if I were to cut pork, I would cut your sustainability board and all of that and focus on taking care of your citizens here now today. Because you’re not doing anyone favors. And you know, the Wu after that their last meeting in Davos, because you guys are all about following that. They’re like, let’s work on rebuilding trust. And you can do that by getting rid of this food tax, or whatever you want to call it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 1:42:24
The sustainability board does not get paid. about designing your bread 200,000 a year. Thank you, Kim. I see no one in the queue. So we’ll go to Denise.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:46
Oh, people came up there. Oh, we’re just here.

Speaker 1 1:42:50
I know is Denise here. Or is it? Okay, then we’ll go on to Lisa. Lisa Crawford. Not here. Do Kelly

Speaker 20 1:43:15
Okay, well that’s that’s a hard intensity to follow. I know that I share some of that intensity being an electro sensitive person myself, that coming into this auditorium or this whatever it is the council chambers is to a degree difficult. I’ve measured it, I know how it feels I am much better than I was when the next light first came into my living room in 2016. With the wireless router that tipped me into electro sensitivity that really began this whole conversation about smart meters and microwave radiation and non ionizing versus ionizing radiation. So first of all, I want to say that I stand with Dr. Misuse Joe Montana day, on his perspective on the food, sales tax and repealing it. And also I applaud everybody here who’s mentioning life based approaches to sustainability in agriculture. And I think that’s all very wonderful. brings me back to the BS. It brings me back to this whole idea of electrification and of the smart grid and the smart meters. And I just I wanted to inform people here, not just city council, but everybody that there’s a lot of bills going on in Washington DC. And I know that Mayor PAC I reached out to you last summer about 3557. But they’re they they keep proceeding along and some of them get past some donors. Some of them don’t make it out of committee, but there is one that is an HR 6492 that now it’s another preemption of low control over the siting of cellular in infrastructure, and towers. And this particular hr 6492, wants the ability to put cellular infrastructure in all of our national parks and national lands. And those of us who are, we’re not only concerned about the pollinators, the bees, the wildlife, the humans, first of all going to the National Parks is is a refuge for some people who are terribly sensitive to the microwave radiation that is everywhere and ubiquitous in our environment. But the cellular infrastructure are known fire hazards. And that includes not only cell towers, but smart meters and dumb, sometimes smart meters and inclusive on those cell towers. And we know right now that there’s a lawsuit against Excel for the marshal fire for foreign at least being partially responsible for that. So I also I wanted to inform people here that there are bills in New Hampshire being introduced on the health effects of 5g technology that New Hampshire had a commission to study 5g technology and that included the study of smart meters included the discussion about ionizing non ionizing radiation and included bringing in a lot of really fine experts. And they came out with a stellar report, and this was in 2020. And now they’ve come along with a bill on the health effects of 5g. Massachusetts has wireless safety bills in front of its legislature also, that aimed to protect residents against wireless health and environmental risks. And, of course, I’m here to lobby to say that we have an environmental risk with the Smart Meter program and pushing towards the smart grid, and Internet of Things, internet of bodies, internet of underwater things, and all of those internet of things that when the bees die, as Suzy said a minute ago, when certain things die, we all die. But when the bees die, then we don’t have a whole lot of time left unless they get all of the drone bees to do the pollinating work that our bees are already doing. So let me see. I have a lot of words here. For those unfamiliar with ionizing non ionizing radiation, X rays, gamma rays, and ultraviolet rays are ionizing but weaker fields like microwave radiation. And that’s what’s up for discussion here are what smart meters and cell phones and cell towers and baby monitors are all putting out that there’s an awful lot of science that says that it is unsafe. And now as we move into millimeter waves, in 5g that is into another arena entirely that is problematic. So there’s some questions that I just want to ask is about smart meters, would Longmont set up a health reporting system and disseminate it widely to the residents so that in the event, a resident has an adverse effect from a smart or a digital meter, they can report it to the city and have the meter removed and replaced with an electromechanical analog meter? And if not, why not? And one other thing that I think is really important has to do with LED lighting in the city. And that goes along with everything electrification, smart, sustainable, but this is not life based. There is now a lawsuit that’s being pursued against the FDA for not regulating LED lighting, against the harms that is providing for our eyes. And if you drive at night, you will know what I mean, when two thirds of the vehicles out there have LED headlights and you’re blinded by them. So I’d like you know Longmont to be looking into these things into the LEDs for one and also the idea of a program of accountability to the city if people report adverse health effects when they get a smart meter or a digital opt out meter onto their homes.

Speaker 1 1:49:21
Good idea. So Councillor Hidalgo faring.

Speaker 10 1:49:28
Thank you for your comments. This is something I’m you know, learning along the way the Smart Meter. Initiation happened at justice. I was onboarding onto council. So there was already it was already a process it was. However, in a couple of months, we’re going to the National League of Cities conference, so I’m a member of several groups, Hilo, the Hispanic elected officials, organization. education for youth and families is another Oregon position that I’m part of, and sustainability and resilience in ongoing conversations that I’ve had just virtually and I intend to, to further further I, you know, I want to know what, what’s happening. As far as what are other cities finding, the last time I was there, the feedback I got from other municipality and local leaders in this area was that they were not experiencing a whole lot. And so you know, and as time progresses, we can delve deeper and see, you know, really take take a holistic look and looking at what the long term impacts are, you know, I don’t deny that you are experiencing these things. And I, I know other people who have I have relatives who have experiences, sensitivities. And so again, you know, it’s coming back to that, that balance, but also in safeguarding our community as well. So, you know, this is something I am, I’m looking at seriously. And, you know, I don’t want to get other input from what other local, what other municipalities are doing, for residents who are experiencing sensitivities, and how we can, you know, continue with the program, in some means, but while still safeguarding others, and then looking at the impacts to nature and the environment as well. So, you know, I again, I’m, it’s a learning process, and I’m still learning a lot. I’m not as well versed on this and studying this as long as you have. But, you know, it’s, I want you to know that that we are taking it seriously.

Speaker 20 1:51:35
Oh, I believe you, thank you, thank you so much for what you’re doing to try and sort it out and the time that you spend looking into it as well. And asking and talking with people about it. I mean, while people are mentioning tasks force, why not a task force on emf in the city. So

Unknown Speaker 1:51:59
testing right.

Speaker 21 1:52:06
Good evening, I’m testing me live at nine Coronel drive. Sorry, I already lost my time. That was over a dose time. So I really just wanted to come into, out of curiosity to have a conversation about the transportation options for people that commute to downtown Denver. So I work in downtown Denver, I live in long run, I moved back here about seven years ago. And prior to 2020, there was options for us, there was a an express line that used to take us to Union Station, that bus went away during 2020 has not been brought back. The option that we have is the LD one and LD three, there are only two times per day when it goes to unionization and to when it leaves the new station to come back. So there’s really not a lot of options. And I don’t know, there’s three people alone in my part, my department at work that live in Longmont. And so there’s just a lot of discussion, the commute has become increasingly more difficult. It’s really congested. There’s a lot of people moving up here, which I understand they’re trying to get out of Denver. I did myself, I moved out of Denver, and I moved back up here. So I’m just curious if the conversations you guys have had with RTD related to the train, the light rail, I know that that’s something we all wish was here. And we all hope that it will be here one day, if there’s been any discussions about possibly bringing back maybe the express line or adding additional routes to Union Station because I know I’m not the only one who commutes to downtown Denver from Longmont. So

Speaker 1 1:53:32
you’ve hit on a sore spot with me as well. very sore. Yes, that express line was supposed to come back with some of the ARPA money that has not come to our region the way it was supposed to. This is not our TDs fault. I have been to RTD to their public invited to be heard and yelled at them about this what happened to our Alex one? How can we don’t have it? I don’t accept their answer.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:05
What is their answer?

Speaker 1 1:54:08
Let’s their their answer basically, is that they’ve restored the F F buses on us 36 But those don’t come to Longmont unless

Speaker 21 1:54:21
the ones that leave from table mesa. Yes. Or

Speaker 1 1:54:25
from Broomfield Okay. From those stops, but yes, I used to take that bus quite often as well. So do you mind if I just hang on to your name if you want to go yell with me to add RTD I would love

Speaker 21 1:54:43
to yeller. But sure, I will be another person there. I know that that is that someone has said that that’s the route for us to take is to drive to table Mesa and catch a bus there but you

Speaker 1 1:54:54
can’t it doesn’t doesn’t really help. No. It makes it a very long day.

Speaker 21 1:54:58
It does. Yeah. I mean, the commute right now is an hour and 15 minutes. One way. And one way, it’s one way. It’s it’s difficult. You know, but I love my job. And so, and I love where I live. So I can’t I don’t really want to give up either. But I’m, you know, one of the reasons I moved up here is I had that option, and now it’s gone away. So whatever options are available, or if any pressure or leverage can be placed because

Speaker 1 1:55:25
there’s really nothing else. So if you would give your email address to Michelle at the end, okay, and I will email you the next time we go down. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, bring anybody else that you think would like to help. Do we need a bio break up here? Let’s take a five minute break.

Unknown Speaker 2:08:09
Get back in session. The next people on the list are Greg Morrissey. Greg Jensen, Greg Jensen, Gordon Pedro, Gary Hodges and Dan sorrow

Speaker 22 2:08:38
You must be Greg Morris. Yes, I am. Hello. Hi, I’m Greg Morrissey. I live at 16 foot eight Harvard Street here in Longmont. And thank you for having this evening. And what I’d like to do I have brought some pictures to show you because I’m in ward number three. Okay, and can I share these pitches that’s a little bit gross, but you understand why Okay, sure.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:06
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:10
Little gross

Speaker 22 2:09:16
porta potties. That’s correct. I heard the word porta potties. These are endorsing park right there in on the east end of Lake McIntosh. And I called last week, the Parks Department said hey, these things are full. They’re overflowing needs to be cleaned. And the left of my name lifted my number. Never heard anything back. So I went back down again today. There was a people coming there running around the lake had to go the bathroom open the door. I’m not going to use that and backed out. So I’d like to know is it under a city contract that has those porta potties run? And other more porta potties in different places around the city? Are they in the same state? I mean, yeah, they’re in the same you know, they’re not been maintained or clipped or cleaned. Because that this both of those, there’s one’s a big one for a person who is perhaps on a wheelchair and would just want a regular one. And the both the same therefore has been that way for quite a while and they stink. Okay,

Speaker 1 2:10:19
he just turned on. Councillor indigofera.

Speaker 10 2:10:23
Okay. Thank you for bringing that to the to our attention. Yeah. So I handled one back it was at car park over on gay, you’re gay and 21st several months ago, and it so we contract those porta potties. So the contract the people, the company is supposed to be coming out to clean those out or, or exchange them out. I had and I don’t see David Bell Did he leave? He left, okay. But he would be he was the person that I contacted. And he was able to help us remedy that. So you know, I have your information, I will contact him. And we’ll get that taken care of I know, once we handled it with the car park, we were able to remedy it pretty quick. But again, if they’re not coming out regularly.

Speaker 22 2:11:18
So they’ve got a phone number on the side of it, I give them a call and say

Speaker 10 2:11:22
there is a phone number on the side. But I feel like when we when I contacted our city people are and I don’t know if Harold’s coming down or nevermind. I mean, I was able to contact David Bell and he was able to to help. You know get that going faster. Yeah, than just just calling the number. There’s other

Speaker 22 2:11:45
places in the city have gotten this. Yes, I’m going to regular basis, doing the cleaning replacing him in maintenance,

Unknown Speaker 2:11:51
etc. Yes, no, I agree. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 8 2:11:55
So I don’t have the number off the top of my head. I know. Number on our website, call the parks department. I did and let them know. And then they’ll give you that

Speaker 22 2:12:03
month on Tuesday that took that took my name and information, they’re going to get back to me. And I said these things are bad. And then I went down there today. No one’s done anything.

Speaker 8 2:12:13
So we’ll look at that. I will say one of the challenges we’re having with those is that sometimes they do go in and clean them. And then very quickly, they’re in the same shape. So okay, but I will definitely talk to parks about that.

Speaker 22 2:12:29
Because that lady was coming around the park when I was there. She had to go the bathroom. She opened the door. Yeah, so

Speaker 10 2:12:35
no. Okay, well, yeah, then thank you for bringing that to our attention, because then we can kind of go go above and make sure that it gets done quicker on a basis on a regular basis. I mean, maybe it’s just needs to be changed out a lot sooner.

Speaker 22 2:12:47
Just curious. Here’s the contract written is supposed to come out weekly and check them or something like that, or

Speaker 1 2:12:52
Yes. And I think the contractor should also be telling us when they clean and keeping a record, correct. So that one tell us if they did and how often it gets like this. Okay, thank you. So Harold

Speaker 8 2:13:07
was there today. David just told me that they were there today. Okay, cleaning. While

Speaker 22 2:13:12
I was there this afternoon? No, there weren’t a check this afternoon before I came here.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:18
We’ll follow up with a contractor. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:13:21
Wow, you’re you’re our watchdog. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 2:13:26
Thank you for doing that. But they stink. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:13:28
yeah. Absolutely. Greg Jensen,

Unknown Speaker 2:13:36
do you want your pictures back?

Unknown Speaker 2:13:44
I’m sorry. Nope, that was

Speaker 6 2:13:51
oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see it turn red. There is one more thing about the porta potties. Because I’ve handled a few of those myself. I think Susie’s information was later than mine. But the same thing. You know, the, there’s not a competitor. So it’s hard for us to threaten them with canceling their contract. Anybody wants to start a business?

Speaker 1 2:14:31
Okay, we’re having way too much fun up here. Let’s get serious. Hello, Greg. All right,

Unknown Speaker 2:14:35
Mayor Peck, members of council. What I’d like to read from tonight is Greg,

Unknown Speaker 2:14:41
I’m sorry to interrupt but would you mind giving us your address? Yes.

Speaker 23 2:14:43
1318 Grace peak drive. Thank you. 80504. I’d like to discuss something that’s been kind of swept under the rug for a number of years. And we’re finally finally getting some statistics. I won’t go into it. detailing all the statistics that they’re all documented, um, I have these these documented in front of me. This is from the summary of election fraud from 2020 presidential election. And I want to start with a quote that says that which was originally void does not by lapse of time, become valid

Speaker 23 2:15:31
so from the state of Georgia, Georgia was called by 11,797 votes. Not a single ballot purportedly cast during the early person voting was witnessed to and signed off by poll managers as required by the Georgia election rules. Seals were broken memory cards were removed from tabulators as a result of these 315,000 votes, which were printed out on different machines than the ones that tabulated them. This prevented the reconciliation of how many votes were actually cast on each machine. The reason I bring this up, but this is a county issue. Fulton County did not count the same ballots during the original count. And the the machine recount of the 19,504 District ballots that appear on one machine. They did not appear on another machine. Remember 11,779 votes, there was 19,541 votes in question. 88% of Fulton County’s precincts reported a different total number of votes between the first and second machine counts 90% Nine of 10 approximately 1400 148,000 absentee ballots, cast in Fulton County cannot be authenticated. Ballot images for 1000 are 132,284 mail in ballots have no.sh H s h a file which created automatically which are created automatically when the ballot is scanned and used to authenticate the digital image of the vote, lacking evidence that they were scanned and tabulated properly, properly, or even cast by a real voter. None of the 315,000 votes cast during the early voting in Fulton County were witness to and signed by the poll manager and two poll workers as required by state election rules. The closing tapes for these votes were all unsigned showed more tabulated votes than tabulators had recorded as scanned in their productive counters and recorded and probably low percentages for President Trump. For example, President Trump received only point 9% 2.4% 3.7% from some of the tabulators as if he was a third party candidate or a third world country. The the anomalies indicate ballots were not scanned on the tabulators that printed the closing tapes making the closing takes fraudulent. Now, for the sake of time, I’m not going to go over Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan, which all had very similar things that took place. So since this is a county issue, and Longmont is a subset of a county. I’d like to know from the city council, and I know that you don’t have jurisdiction because this goes to state election laws. How is it knowing the anomalies that took place? How is it that a citizen of any municipality, any state any jurisdiction whatsoever can have any confidence that any elected official was actually sitting in a spot that was legitimately gotten by an actual vote cast by an actual person? Since all politics are local and I will say this in closing, I have documented evidence from a postal worker in the state of long in the in the city of Longmont who told a ROB Brandenburg who owns grandpa’s guns, that a Longmont postal worker confessed to him that he delivered 100 mail in ballots to a single residence, a single address. So we want to pretend like this Well, none of This could happen in Colorado. But I mean, you must be crazy to think that there must be something off with our balloting systems. I’d like to know from the city council, how is it that you can assure me or any of the voters sitting in this place, that any person sitting in a position of power had actually gotten there? Legitimately?

Unknown Speaker 2:20:27
Councillor McCoy,

Speaker 9 2:20:28
Thank you, Mayor Peck, this is the whole thing. This is the game plan. This is the concept of spreading doubt, this idea that you’re you’re trying to formulate here that somehow there was some sort of nefarious thing, and that just didn’t happen. There were there were legal cases on this, and it just didn’t happen. You’re, you’re trying to in a very volatile election season trying to gin up the idea of some sort of illegal behavior, and it’s just not it isn’t happening, it didn’t happen. The court, the courts found it not to have happened, you’re you’re trying to make this into something that’s not. And I’m sad to hear that. Because, you know, there’s always somebody trying to make it into something, twist things into something that they’re, that it really isn’t happening. And, and so, you know, then you’re trying to spread doubt on, on everybody here about the possibility of, you know, how they got elected, you know, and, and if somebody is there, bring them forward, bring them on forward, our police chief police would like to have a conversation with him. And this, you know, mail delivery individual, and make sure that we have this thing cleared up, because it’s just not happening. And it’s just this idea, if we can continue to have doubt in our system, then we can go ahead and have people that have no business being, you know, on the ballot. And, you know, that’s that’s what we’re dealing with here. This is, is the old game plan. It’s an old from an old playbook. It was used in the cigarette and tobacco industry to spread doubt that, well, maybe cigarettes didn’t create cancer, and now we’ve heard it, well, maybe climate change really isn’t done by has any impact by humans, or other things like that this is constant railing at at the idea of, if we can spread enough doubt, people will go along with it. So you know, this q&a And sort of conspiracy theory stuff just is not resonating with me, and really isn’t resonating with the American public.

Unknown Speaker 2:22:53
Councillor Martin?

Speaker 6 2:22:55
Yes. I’m not ridiculing people this evening. I didn’t ridicule the EMF people. And the people who know me realize how much restraint that took. But I will tell you that there is an actual answer to the question raised by this gentleman. And that is closer to the election. Go down to Boulder County elections every year. The can’t remember her title director. Anyway, the woman in charge is usually a woman of of elections, holds a tour and a an explanation of how ballots are verified in this county. And in fact, one of the things that you will learn is that if because the voter rolls were not cleaned properly, and a lot of you know there are residences that turn over every year. And so if a lot of ballots were delivered to the same address, either because the postal worker was being irresponsible, or because there were a lot of registered voters that had at one time or another, actually occupied that address. Only the current occupants would be able to cast their ballots and have them accepted. And I am there are two things I was an election judge for five elections, I think, and then I got elected to City Council and didn’t do it anymore. But I was an election judge for four, five elections, and every year, they train us on the processes that are required to me Make sure that in Boulder County, and in Colorado, elections are secure. And they you know, it was a number of years ago now now you have to have a person who is a registered Democrat, a registered Republican and an unaffiliated Election Judge supervise every every time a paper ballot moved from one place to the other. And in fact, no ballots are counted, except if they are on a valid serialized paper ballot, or in the case of the few voting machines that we do have, that are used by people who have either mobility or visual impairments and can’t fill out a paper ballot, there is a paper ticket to match every vote that is cast by a voting machine. And those have to be matched up by that three person team of election judges who have sworn that they are not going to allow the falsification of any ballot. So the I am also a systems engineer what that means is a person whose special career specialty is is in processes accounting for the audit trail behind stuff. And I will swear to you personally that I could not find a way to falsify a ballot in the city of Colorado

Unknown Speaker 2:26:49
it was number six Councillor Crist.

Speaker 24 2:26:54
I too have worked elections, probably 10 years worth. So I think maybe about 14 different election sets. Down at the county. The woman who holds the tours is Molly Fitzpatrick, the county clerk. Sometimes she has an assignee. So if you’d like to go take a tour, that’s great. I think our voting is such an important freedom. That is something that we have to remain diligent. And we should always ask the question, was this a fair election? Did we do everything to create a fair election? And I think that happens more often than not. But there’s always going to be one or two persons that we turn over to the DA, who, for some reason, did something hinky and then it goes to the County DA handles that. So do do your due diligence, go down, watch the process become a part of the process. And I think everyone should make it a priority that we have safe, fair and open elections. And thank you for bringing that today. Welcome.

Speaker 1 2:28:08
Yes, Thanks, Greg. But you have to say that your story about the 100 ballots that is third party at this point gossip, and that mailman should have gone directly to the county and reported it I believe that he did. So thank you. And

Speaker 23 2:28:28
thank you. It’s all fantasy. This is it’s all it’s all fantasy.

Unknown Speaker 2:28:31
The next one is Gordon Pedro.

Speaker 25 2:28:42
Mayor and Council, Gordon Pedro 2639 Felker drive Longmont. And since I don’t have five minutes worth of speaking, I’m going to say thank you for having this forum tonight. I think that you have gotten a wide variety of interests. I understand that your February retreat agenda has time for you to debrief the three ballot measures that were soundly defeated by your voters in November. I would like to share a few thoughts for your consideration during that debrief. I will confine my remarks tonight to what I believe has been and is a critical need in for the community and additional Recreation Center. By an additional recreation center I’m referring to in a modern enhanced version of the one at Quail campus. I find it most unfortunate that city council’s in 2019 and again in 2023 s long month residents to vote to approve authority to construct and operate an additional Recreation Center and each time the issued was defeated by over 60% of the votes. One might take these results to mean resins do not support an additional record racial senator. I believe these defeats mean our residents are smart and only vote for issues that meet real community needs at a scale they can afford. They do not vote for every expensive want that appears on the ballot. I think most Longmont residents will support bonds to construct and appropriate focused and scaled Recreation Center. I hope your your retreat you realistic at least for how to place before the voters a standalone single ballot issue, approving bonds to construct an additional Recreation Center. Please do it soon. Don’t wait another four years. In my opinion and additional Recreation Center is among the community’s most pressing needs. It is not a want. I have heard most city council members of you say that the youth of our community is the future young people, the elderly, and all ages in between need a safe uncrowded place to recreate. It might be easy for as a council member to think the best approach to multiple community needs and wants is put several issues before the voters and let them decide what to support. It there’s a fatal flaw in this shutdown approach. It is unfocused and fails to prioritize community needs. And as it often leads to failed ballot issues. Residents elect you to allow allocate the community’s scarce resources. They expect you to seek input from boards and commissions, friends, constituents and staff experts, I believe, and then they expect you to appropriate the priorities for the community. I believe in the lack of focus by the city council on priorities and scale is why voters turned down the three ballot issues in 2023. And twice within four years rejected ballot issues for an additional Recreation Center. I hope you will engage with your residents and establish a plan B for an additional Recreation Center in Longmont. And as I’ve listened tonight, I wanted to make a couple of comments just very briefly, on affordable housing. I hope you don’t forget that affordable housing or is also has a lack of income component. So you’re talking about minimum wages or you will be I think that supporting minimum wages is one of the ways of dealing with the other component of lack of affordable housing. And I just wanted to mention, I was concerned about so many comments from the City Council tonight, talking as if the legislature was going to be a providing you a solution to affordable housing. You are home rule city that has all the powers that you need to deal with most every issue of the affordable housing that was discussed tonight. And I encourage you to take that approach. So

Speaker 6 2:33:11
I believe that there are two issues that everybody needs to understand the that are blocking some of the initiatives that the city would like to take care of with regard to affordable housing, and they are a nonfunctional construction defect status statute that makes it too expensive for the city or any private developer to invest in building condominiums. And now I’m drawing a blank on the second one. Oh, and homeowners associations. You know, if if 20% of the single family homes in Longmont built at us, we wouldn’t have a shortage of housing. And that’s something else that this that the Home Rule city has no jurisdiction over is the prohibitions that home rural cities do. So let’s keep that in mind. And, and not forget that there are reasons for a city to lobby lobby the state legislature.

Speaker 25 2:34:26
I agree, but I just didn’t see that the most of what was proposed last year under the governor’s pushing has to do with home HOAs or things like that. They had to do with taking away their local control. And I think that that is a mistake if if you support that type of approach.

Speaker 1 2:34:48
I agree with with not supporting taking away home rule but the reason I mentioned the legislative bills that might be coming down is the dollars be behind them that would help developers and long run housing authorities build what what we need. And that is part of the discussions as the the land use Bill 213 has been divided into three different parts. And one of them is about AD use, and construction and defects, et cetera. We want to see if there are any dollars behind that any grants behind that anything to help us build it or to help developers with tax credits, etc.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:37
Just give a lot of money if you’re going to give up your home rule.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:41
We’re not giving up home rule, Gordon. Thank you. Gary hajus.

Speaker 26 2:35:58
Thank you, Gary Hodges, 2148, Stuart Street, appreciate the opportunity, Mayor, council members. So my topic tonight is going to be on energy and the reality of what we call green energy. So since the year 2000, between five and $10 trillion, has been spent to avoid using carbon based energy sources. After that massive effort, financial effort, but wind and solar globally today accounts for about 3% of the world’s electricity supply. So to put that in perspective of burning wood globally is more than three times that amount. So so it’s kind of interesting. So even after that five to $10 trillion effort today, worldwide, sorry, that got the burning wood. And then the US. burning wood is 50% of the energy that we get from wind and solar combined. So there’s no evidence that there’s a meaningful energy transition going on. And there’s certainly no rapid energy transition going on. During that time, that same 2000 Since 2000, there has been the equivalent of six Saudi Arabia hydrocarbon inputs into the system. So what we have are not transitions, but we have energy additions. So even so, okay. Currently, there’s a goal global goal of a net zero by 2050. We also see that on state level, I think it’s 2040, we see a local level, we all done 2030. So to put that in terms of wind turbines and common ones, we know that would have meant to achieve that 2050, they would have had to have built 1000 wind turbines installed per day for 30 years. So it’s it’s not really possible. So Germany’s often looked up as an example, we follow it their energy demand since 2000, has increased 10%, their hydrocarbon use has remained the same wind and solar in Germany increased from about 25 gigawatt to over 100. That’s a doubling of their capacity. So the effect on that was to increase our electric bills by 200%. Wind and solar is not cheaper. We see that in Germany, we can see that and Xcel Energy rates and anywhere you look at where in wind and solar has been put into place, you can see the same, the same relationship of increasing energy costs, okay, so we’re at least reducing co2. Wrong. Renewable is a misnomer. Wind and solar are not renewable. They’re not green, they’re not green. They are machines that have to be built, they have to be maintained, they were out they replaced. So to build these we have to mine we have to mine a lot. We have to refine those minerals. Aviation, excuse mining requires the same energy input as global aviation. Where’s my time go on these things. So we need hundreds of new minds. It’s not happening the metals to deliver a unit of energy from wind and solar requires about 3000 more materials than a combustion source. We could get into Evie EVs, but only state that they are no different than internal combustion engines in terms of co2 release. So transition aspirations do not end hydrocarbons. To give you a sense of how futile it is if 50% of the world’s electricity supply was automatically or suddenly converted to nuclear, it would only have about a 10% decrease on the hydrocarbon energy use that we use. So if the problem was co2, what we are doing what long run is doing it’s not a solution is a decent chance that actually would make that part worse and I get the sincerity. You know, we all want to believe we can you know, we can solve a problem that has been presented to us. I’m not celebrating any of this. I’m just trying to bring truth and honesty to the discussion table and the actions that were taken as a city will only have one result. And that’s, that’s to make electricity more expensive. It’s not going to reduce co2, we won’t have any impact on the global climate is just not possible. We’ve talked about housing a lot today, you know that housing is also includes utilities. We talk a good game there, but then then we gleefully raise raise rates, which makes the cost of living in Longmont more expensive. To lead one’s life using fantasy as a guiding principle is one thing, but to make policy, public policy using the same as a bad idea. It’s just chasing a dream that cannot be realized. And it’s worse than pointless. And so let’s make good choices going forward for the people who live here and not spend our treasure on things that we have no control over. Okay, 11 seconds left. I don’t normally just read but I had so much stuff to say. So I you know, we can talk about this. We could talk about co2, we could talk about climate, all of this is fun. I mean, I you know, there’s a lot I left out, but electrifying doesn’t do what we think it’s going to do. And this because of the reality of mining and the reality of refining, we just shift the input of co2 in the atmosphere somewhere else. And that’s not really fair to the places that we do that to because of the local impacts

Unknown Speaker 2:41:26
it has their customer. And

Speaker 6 2:41:30
I don’t want to have a long discussion, because we would, you know, not get anywhere. But I would like to say that the International Energy Agency, so are these data come from International Energy Agency? Would you please stop interrupting me, Mr. Hodges says that since 2010, the percent the global percentage of renewables in the power mix has increased 10 percentage points since 30%. And those mining data can be cherry picked. But in fact, they don’t say what you think they say. That’s all I want to say. I just didn’t want anyone to take away the idea that what did you say it was again, that the global question, or which comment that the global percentage of generated electricity was surround 3% right

Unknown Speaker 2:42:31
now?

Unknown Speaker 2:42:32
Yeah. Why does the EIA say that it was 30% Does

Speaker 26 2:42:36
their data I heard what you said, and I don’t think what you said is contract conflicts on what I said. You said it was a 10% increase from

Speaker 6 2:42:45
you. You can email me or sources, but they said to 30%. So 30%, worldwide of energy generated now is renewable. Thank you. It’s not true.

Unknown Speaker 2:42:59
Exact we’re going to agree to disagree.

Speaker 26 2:43:01
That’s fine. Yeah. So energy power is really important. And we should just make good choices. And I’m going to be offering all of you a chance to learn more about this in May. And so as soon as it gets firmed up, look for an I’ll send an email. Thank you for your time.

Unknown Speaker 2:43:18
Thank you, Gary. Dan Terrell.

Unknown Speaker 2:43:32
Dan Searles, I

Speaker 27 2:43:32
live it through 28th Earl, that’s okay. The 328 Grant Street. It’s a common way or a lot that I could talk about, but I’m going to stick on housing. And just start here efforts to deal with the acute shortage of affordable and attainable housing in Longmont, as we’ve heard tonight is controversial. But even with the new the current amount of construction of apartments and houses, even with the current amount of construction of apartments and houses, it will not nearly be enough to meet the needed supply to increase attainability and affordability. And for what it’s worth. This is kind of my day job as well. There’s 1200 apartment units under construction, which includes the 55 Zinnia right now. And there’s about 3800 in the pipeline in Longmont. So out of the 14,000 shortfall that we have to take care of about 4000 on it. So we still have quite a shortage even with what’s under construction. long line isn’t the only city dealing with this dilemma. Many cities are facing housing shortages that are that hamstring economic growth and community cohesion. But many of the cities are finding creative solutions, one of which is the elimination of single family only zoning regulations in favor of a more flexible approach that allows duplexes triplex is adu Use another small multifamily units onto lots previous previously zoned for one unit. These are cities across the US and they’re across the political spectrum, from Boise to Berkeley, and from Charlottesville to Austin just to name 204. So you may ask what’s the problem with single family zoning, it’s the American dream, right? Well, first, consider that the single family only zoning has its roots in racism dating back to 1916. In Berkeley of all places, where it was used to effectively exclude Chinese and black people from buying by pricing them out. It continued to be used for exclusionary reasons in places like post war levied towns, which explicitly banned blacks and even Jews from buying. It was during the post war decades or the 50s 60s and 70s. That single family only zoning became the norm, and but at a tremendous environmental and economic costs that is only now being acutely filled, creating a car centric culture that is contributing to climate change. The environmental impacts are ironic, I came across an article on the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard website. Single Family zoning can history be reversed as the article and it discusses the rise of anti growth measures which were intended to limit urban sprawl. Unfortunately, they had the unintended consequences of severely limiting supply of new housing, pushing prices up and affordability down. Sounds familiar, right? Getting rid of single family zoning is one step toward dealing with a limited supply, but by itself, it won’t be the full answer. The approach needs to be holistic, peeling back and rethinking layers of regulation such as minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, addressing hard and fast setbacks, and easing design review to name a few. Done piecemeal, it won’t work. Consider Minneapolis, which did banned single family zoning, but failed to increase the allowable height or size of new buildings. And with the net effect of little change. Now is the time to address our housing dilemma. Llama already has little land left for development and what is being built are more single family detached houses located on the edge of Longmont. When we heard other speakers earlier talking about why are we using farmland? Well, we’re outsourcing our housing from Longmont to places like Erie, and Firestone where they are building on farmland. These locations in the style of build and require build buyers to go anywhere by car adding a traffic that is already aggravating so many lawn monitors. We can solve much of our problem by thinking and acting holistically. Councilman Hill dog a fairing has mentioned the word several times tonight balance that’s what we really need to be looking for. And it won’t be easy, because it’s obviously an emotional issue. But the decisions made on emotions are the ones that come back to bite us the most reason fat based decisions and not so much. I asked that the City Council put this at the top of their agenda. Be proactive. Let’s not wait for the state treat and then react because we’ll already be behind the eight ball. We can set up the infrastructure for right now. And then as the state does whatever it’s going to do, we can take advantage of it.

Speaker 1 2:48:40
Thank you very much. Yes, there are good, good suggestions. And actually we are doing a lot of that in our zoning and codes. So you’re right there more needs to be done and we’re working on it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So the next people on our list are going to be Kira Niehaus Lance Whitaker stand tall Strider Marley’s lash

Speaker 28 2:49:34
Hello, counsel. Nice to see you guys. I’m extremely nervous as I have not talked to talk in front of anybody probably since I was in college. So I was invited to come here tonight. Just because I have a little bit of a different perspective. Although I do agree with a lot of what was said here and the agriculture and the 5g and other things. Oh, do you guys want my address? Yes. Okay. My apologies. 1205 paste street 80504. So where was I? So I wanted to come here because I have I grew up in Longmont. I’m 36 years old, I lived here my whole life. I, currently I have a four year old, and I just had twins. And I am wanting to talk about the housing, mainly because I’m in it. And it took me a long time to get housing, and I really pushed for years with my daughter, I was in a bad situation with her dad, and I needed to get out of there. And I finally I ended up finding out that I was pregnant with twins, and left and went to my mom’s. And I tried to get housing and I tried to get housing. And I specifically remember one of the ladies telling me, oh, you’re white, and you live with your mom. It’s not an emergency. And I was disgusted when I heard that. And I tried so hard for so long, and nobody would deal with me. And during all this, I started identifying as Ukrainian. I put that on my housing application. And I was received a voucher. I’m that is not a lie. And you know, my dad has some of it back in his history. And I asked him if I could use it on my application. And he said, Yes. And so I put it on there. And I finally got a voucher. Thank you, Lord, I’m so blessed. But I just want you guys to know that coming from somebody who had to do it, it is not that easy. And for you guys saying, Oh, these houses are for people who grew up here and you know, are getting older and need to move into homes, it’s it’s really difficult to get into affordable housing. It’s not like just the cakewalk. And so I don’t know where all this housing that’s coming up in who’s moving into it. But it was really difficult for me, it took me almost five years to get in. I was living on top of my parents with my three children. And I just wanted to come here and tell you guys kind of my story so that you guys understood it. And you know, it’s the whole thing is very confusing to me. With the housing what they do. I mean, I got booklet this big when I got my section eight. I mean, it’s like ridiculous, what they do, how many hoops they make us jump through and all this stuff they make us fill out and all those stuff. Like, it’s just so hard. And it’s like, I am a single mom, I live here I grew up here like, why am I having to fight so hard if these are supposed to be here to help? And so that’s, I mean, that that’s what I got for you. I just wanted to tell you guys my story.

Unknown Speaker 2:53:07
I’m sorry, you had awareness.

Speaker 28 2:53:08
Thank you. I just want you guys to know that I agree with you.

Speaker 1 2:53:13
It’s honor us. So I would like to know, though after maybe we can talk what what path did you take to what was the holdup where, so that we can, I would like to be able to address that, to change it. And I know it’s hard on the county level on the state level. Right, even on the local level. So we can

Speaker 28 2:53:40
I work I work from home. But I work for a massage therapist who’s local here in Longmont and I am basically her outsource for marketing and some assistant work. And so she lets me work from my house so I can have the girls home with me. I’m currently still breastfeeding, that’s really important for me to do. And I also the daycare stuff here and a c cap. I mean, I could just go on and on and on about the horrors of all of that. And so it’s just being in my situation and trying to do the right thing for my children and like make the right decisions for them. It’s just been so difficult and you get so pushed into not being there for your kids and not doing that and putting your kids in daycare when they’re six months old and, you know, doing all these other things. And so it’s just been I feel bullied by the system in a sense.

Unknown Speaker 2:54:43
So we should talk offline. Okay. Councillor Martin,

Speaker 6 2:54:48
thank Thank you, Mayor Peck. thank you first for sharing your story.

Speaker 28 2:54:52
It was not easy to get your mic car battery was dead when I went to come and I ended up having to call somebody for a ride. I mean, it was not Trying to get here and getting a babysitter. So I just want to make it happen so that you guys just have a different perspective of Yeah.

Speaker 6 2:55:07
And having having been a single parent of an infant, I can I know how chaotic it is and how when one thing changes it, it upsets your whole routine. And so you have my complete support and sympathy on that score.

Speaker 28 2:55:29
They’re all females, by the way, my children, so for you, Major sympathy.

Speaker 6 2:55:39
I would like to say, well, the city of Longmont only has the capability to audit one of the several voucher providers in the boulder, greater Boulder County area. But I am confident from the knowledge that I have of how our housing authority operates. That although it may seem like vouchers are awarded on something other than, you know, an impartial basis, they’re awarded on an impartial basis, at least in the long run, you know, the ones controlled by the Lamont Housing Authority?

Unknown Speaker 2:56:27
I guess I just wasn’t desperate enough at first.

Speaker 6 2:56:32
Well, I don’t know about that. But you can get pretty desperate because the real truth is that there aren’t enough vouchers. And you know, there’s there’s a tight bottleneck on them. And, and we can only give away the ones that are going to that are real that can be funded. And that money comes from the federal

Speaker 28 2:56:56
I do remember when I first got mine that they called me before I came in and told me that they ran out. After they already told me I could come in and then I was like, what I couldn’t believe it. I felt so it was like heartbreaking. And then I ended up getting the call later. And they were like, Oh, we happen to have a couple pop up. So you can come in but yeah, it was pretty Die Hard to get that.

Speaker 6 2:57:22
And you know, a lot of people don’t know things like you need to reapply every year. You know, a lot of people think otherwise that if they applied once they stay in the queue forever. And so yeah, it is very hard. And I’m glad that you persevered and and got there.

Speaker 28 2:57:41
Yeah. But thank you guys for listening to my story. I appreciate your time.

Unknown Speaker 2:57:48
Thank you. Oh, whoops, we have one more. Kira Councillor Yarbro would like to speak.

Speaker 17 2:58:01
Okay, thank you, you know, you don’t have to you can stay right where you are, I just want to say that I can relate to you 100%. I, myself am a single mom, but all my kids are grown now. So they they will get grown. It’s okay, I have two girls and two boys. But I just want to say thank you for being along monster and stand here. We do understand the hoops and what it feels like I myself was a property manager. And so those vouchers come from the government. Although I know you think a lot of people think that the city have control over what can happen and what doesn’t happen. But when you when you apply for those vouchers, there is a system and they have to follow the city employees have to follow what the government what HUD requires. And so I just want to reassure you that it wasn’t hopefully, I know, it may feel like that when you’re in your know when you need that support. And when you need that help immediately that the city do whatever they can at that time. And so thank you for being the strong one. And getting out of that situation that you were in. And thank you for raising your beautiful girls. And thank you for being brave enough for coming tonight. Stand here the entire time, being nervous speaking up. And I just want to say I hope you come back and speak on other things that may be going on in the city or with that affects you and your family that we need to hear about. Okay. Okay, let’s see. That’s it. That’s why we have this thanking the mayor to have this open forum so that you all can come and speak you what your truth is. And I want to just just kudos to you and thank you for in all those who signed lined up and came tonight, but I know how difficult it is to, to speak up when you really don’t. And it is important for us to know that and hear your story. So I just wanted to let you know that our housing authority is we’re here for you. And I don’t want you to feel that way. But thank you for speaking up about your situation so that our city employees can hear that story and see where the gaps are disparities may have been okay, so thank you so much cure

Speaker 1 3:00:30
the this clerk has a form for you to fill out for rebates on different things that will help you

Unknown Speaker 3:00:43
Lance Whitaker you’re up

Speaker 29 3:00:49
reeking of lung monsters. My name is Lance Whitaker 1750 Collier Street as you all know, Longmont, Colorado been resident 45 years now. I was going in say today is National croissant day. It is also national plan your vacation day. So now that that business is done, I have a game for y’all to play. It’s called what is in Lance’s pocket. Now, this item that is in Lance’s pocket would not be in Lance’s pocket had the government not lied to us about cannabis. And its history. Cannabis has been one of the earliest medications known to man. Not until prohibition was it a legalized and due to reefer madness and the Stamp Act, it was continually made illegal through those actions. But what I have in my pocket would have been environmentally sound not to have. As for the food issue, I have been invited the kid of fruit trees in parks as you all know. And I would love to see the USDA straight down the bond farm as the law residents would like to also see and have you expand Isaac Walton Park, and they get a food sustainable park where we could use that actual farm for farming of fruit trees would also allow us to fish on the other side of the stark pond that we already possess as Isaac Waltons, where we stocked fish. So not only can you get some fruit, you could also do some fishing. Now this ain’t a solution, but it would give residents of Longmont an opportunity to do other things to make their food may be a little cheap. It’s not an elimination of the tax, but it is definitely something that we can do as a community through trees in parks. Thank you have a good day. Oh, plastic bag. That’s what it lands

Unknown Speaker 3:04:03
we needed that Lance thanks, Marley’s Of course. There you go.

Speaker 30 3:04:15
I don’t even know what I’m going to talk about. Now. Of course, I’ve two main issues too. But it’s so much more. It’s actually global. And I realized after everything I’ve heard, first of all, I must applaud you and thank you for even serving in this capacity. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to do the job that you’re doing. Because how can you help a you know the whole community? Because this is not a long one issue. This is a global issue. This is the US EU issue. And it’s been ever since and I’ve been, you know. Yeah. Learning about a lot about, you know, the whole financial system. It’s this whole debt based system. And I remember, I’m fortunate I emigrated at a time after the war like 758 61, husband 58, that we were still able to just live on one regular salary, and be able to, you know, live in a home, I could be homeless, my children, all of that. And I had no idea why all of sudden, early 70s. I remember that. Yes, my friends, did you see I went to the supermarket and read up that much already. Look at this. And of course, only decades later, I learned that spent. Richard Nixon took the gold standard, the rest of the gold standard of the dollar, and that free floated around the world. And they and this is what has been happening. It’s been plant like that all along all these decades, more and more money had to be printed, or the zeros had to be added. And what does it do for the whole population, it just increases everything. So the housing issue, it’s not a long one issue, we know that. That’s why it’s so difficult for you to really do the right thing for everyone. Because there aren’t, they love the food priests over in Germany bear fruit trees everywhere. I mean, just along the highways and the little, you know, roads going into villages, we could just stop, I could bite and pick fruit. And the fruit is the most expensive, because you cannot even get the organic, which is healthy, a lot of it because I tested with kinesiology. So you cannot even trust that. And most people don’t know the same thing. But smart meters, I’m very familiar with that. I’m also very, very sensitive. Actually, when I was sitting in the Oval Office with you know, even touching the mouse, or taking the cordless telephone, I would get like, like electric shock. And I saw like, Spark even, you know, I couldn’t even touch it. And then I found out that was over in Germany by volunteering for a year that there was a police station with all of those, like fights and you know, all the electrification and then the firehouse or two down the street. And that really put a load on to everyone who lived there. And I had a headache from morning till night, until I called my friend who how many people can afford 1000 to $3,000 at that time, to use a technology that would safeguard me, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to volunteer there. So it was gone within two days after he had started that how many people can afford it. But how many people wouldn’t even know what made them sick, or where it’s coming from, most of them are not even aware of it. And that’s the same thing with putting the smart meters and people are not even not notified necessarily. But they don’t even know why it is a health hazard. And it’s a lot more than just us personally. So I just want you to know that even at my age, I’m just I feel so fortunate to have lived at a time that we could, you know, just afford and then sell the house and get a cheaper one someplace out. Or, you know, you can get by, you know, get to Ford, if you move from one state to another, no one that people are usually forced to move only in order to be in a cheaper area. I mean, this does none of that makes sense. But it is if we know about the global agenda. I’m sure there are people all around the role to know about the ones who are pulling the strings. It’s not you it’s not our governor. It’s not even what what do you call the president? I don’t even call him president, whoever, you know, because they’re all puppets, you know, whether it’s into me or anywhere. Yeah, I was. I didn’t time it. I figured you tend to stop me when it’s five minutes. But I tell you, we I pray a lot. I wish you all the best. Because if you really be all needed, we need mainly prayers and believing in the end the gods because I just happen. I’m working with as a volunteer globally with a spiritual healing group and a lot of wonderful movement for the good that is going to come down the pipe. So we like to live in that.

Speaker 1 3:09:58
Thank you. Thankful for messages. Ross, start Steve halt Schuler and Vicki Kirsch. Oh, Stan, well, you guys just get ready. Stand, stand tall. Whatever, stand tall

Speaker 31 3:10:31
Mayor Peck and council. It’s amazing that we’re even still awake. What I was going to do is just first comment, a couple of things that were said earlier. As far as the food tax, and, you know, that’s a very regressive tax, and I’m sure you guys are aware of that. And that what would make a lot more sense would be to make up the money from that would be something like at the property tax, where it’s more connected with the amount of wealth the person has, of course, you know, there’s a lot of pushback for any sort of property tax. But how, what I would suggest how it’d be done is, is to make it that let’s say, you know, I think we have to have votes on this, but a property tax would be directly connected with getting rid of the food tax, and with the information about how much this is going to cost that, let’s say, for the average person, it’s not going to be an increase, but it’s going to reduce the stress on people that are having trouble even affording food. The other thing is, is is I actually had this discussion, when I’ve come up to council before, is that when we have elections, we need to avoid having the most people showing up to vote being the dying, baby boomers, particularly the ones are getting close very, very close to that. If we, if we have our votes on off elections, when very few people are showing up, the people that are going to be showing up are the people that are going to be for the historically be very negative for anything doing in the community because they’re getting ready to checkout, they just don’t want anything interfering with their checkout routine. So so if we can have our things where we want to do things on the main elections, like the presidential election times, the times that we’re have where, quote, people are saving their votes for the big one, which really, I know that that’s the time that your vote is least likely to count. But that’s the time when the young people show up. That’s the time that casual voters that I would like to have this but so that’s, that’s my input on that. This guy mentioned the toilets, and how we’re having to I actually, between being sick and injured at times, I kind of looked into this. And King Soopers had a you know, I noticed that our toilets were really poorly maintained. And I was over at King Soopers when they were doing their bathroom modifications and they had their porta things outside. And I talked to to the professional that was handling fat. And he says, Yeah, we had this company, and it was the company that was handling the line mine stuff. He says they were horrible. So we finally got somebody else now, I made notes. But of course I can’t you know if life intervened it I would suggest contacting King Soopers and find out who they replaced their porta potties people with and so you know, they got somebody that took care they, they were really bad and then they got a lot better. So that’s my suggestion there. The other thing is, of course, we the housing situation, and we need to get rid of a lot of our regulations like some people have talked about. But what I was going to mention to you is that there are people that, you know, they’re going along and all sudden, what’s happening, they get kind of disabled, and they really don’t have income over like eight $900 a month. And so the last thing is, is that there’s a lot of people who can’t be allowed in the shelters. We need to have places for these people. Okay, thank you.

Speaker 1 3:15:47
I wanted to ask you is checking out the same as a bucket list?

Speaker 31 3:15:56
Well, it’s not the same, but it seems like like they don’t want to spend it. Well. Of course you get afraid because you don’t know how long this checking out is going to take. So you want to save every single penny.

Speaker 1 3:16:12
Thank you, Stan. So Ross, oh, Strider, How can I forget you? Come on up. But the other three can come down and sit in get ready. That’s Ross star it Sterrett Steve all Schuler and Vicki, I see Vicki. Steve is no longer here. He’s left.

Speaker 32 3:16:38
Stryker bench done 951 17th avenue of referring to a previous speaker. There’s a pink one and a green one and a blue one and a yellow one. And they’re all made out of ticky tacky. And they all look just the same. That Levittown and almost every one of those communities after World War Two had redlining or restrictions against black people and Jews and anybody they didn’t want there. And that’s kind of how the urinal, modern America got built. And then, after the 70s, then builders would only build mega mansions. So smaller housing got thrown off the map, because all the money went into building mega mansions. But anyway, somebody mentioned the election, then I’ve been on election judge here three times, I believe it is. And I’ve spent my whole life, you know, fighting for democracy and justice. I got knocked out twice on Bloody Sunday, I was right behind John Lewis on the bridge and Selma. First time I registered vote was in Selma. Right after I have, well, a lot of things going on. But, you know, Churchill said, democracy is the worst system except for all the others. And, yes, democracy is corrupt, because corrupt people get in. But autocracy and dictatorship is totally corrupt. 100% And there’s no oversight, and no way to deal with it, because they rule by violence, intimidation. And now what they’re doing is abolishing history, abolishing education. And, you know, I have a master’s in philosophy and history and humanities and political science. So I’ve never been able to have a job, except for heavy labor. Because the people who run the system chose like Vincent van Gogh said, they have other ideas than then than myself. So I’ve never been allowed to have that kind of work. climate catastrophe it’s a difficult subject, but the only way to deal with it is democratically because you put in dictatorships 100% corrupt and they will always go to where all the money flow to themselves is. And that’s that’s how the game works. The in this country, I mean, all right. I’ve quoted before. gerbil bells, Hitler’s propaganda Mooster. Back before he took power in 1928. He advised Hitler he said no power policy, chaos. Chaos is the best policy. And that is exactly what the former President spent. One thing he studied in his whole life and aside from stealing, not paying workers not paying taxes. And all of that is Hitler. He studied how Hitler took power. And that’s exactly what was going on. And what they’re doing now is chaos to destroy the structure of our democratic republic. Franklin said, you know, somebody asked him, What kind of government do you have? He said, we have a republic, if we can keep it. We’re under the greatest threat right now, today, then we’ve been in 164 years since the Civil War. And it’s all intentional on their part, and to abolish the of, you know, human rights, women’s rights, labor rights, environmental rights, all the way down the line. It is formal policy, on the part of the chaos caucus, and their intention is to destroy our parliamentary our democracy, our Congress, and the best, most current facts on writing on that the crisis of parliamentary democracy by Carl Schmitt, written in 1923. And again, in 26, he was part of the five ma Republic. And eventually he gave up and joined Hitler. And then after the war, he came over here, he wrote a book with Leo Strauss. But that is what we’re dealing with right now. And as as difficult as it is, democracy is the only chance we have to survive. Thank you.

Speaker 1 3:22:01
Thank you, Strider as usual, good points. Oh, now, Ross,

Speaker 33 3:22:09
and Vicki Ross stare at 2161 steel street. So I was just gonna talk a little bit about how we have all of this single family residential zoning can’t build anything in it you can’t like from where I live all the way over to Main Street from over domaine, it’s just single family with like, there’s Sanborn Elementary. And it’s nothing I my options to get groceries or walk along over to Safeway or walk, or I could drive but it’s such a short drive that it feels ridiculous. But it’s not comfortable, because it’s over. But you see a lot of people doing it. Yeah. But I think that we could probably do a lot better in building our urban environment. If we let people build, you know, slightly more units on their land, like instead of like, one house, you could have a duplex or maybe like a like three townhouses right next to each other, can allow that in those in that zone can allow like, front yard businesses like a coffee shop, or like a board, game store, stuff like that. Things like that could really go a long way for helping us not need to drive as much it would help people be able to live closer to the things that they need, would bring down people’s daily costs by doing that. And transportation is related to this of course, and sign me up for the go yell at RTD mailing list. Okay, I work in Boulder takes about an hour 20 minutes to get to work in the morning, usually longer at night because bolt gets stuck in traffic at IBM and then the buses Lee. Excuse me hiccup. And like, it’s, this is again yelling at RTD. But like, I had to drive here, because the last bus left eighth and Kaufmann at about the same time we started. So you can’t even like go watch a movie or go to dinner. But by taking the bus you have to drive unless you live close enough to walk or bike. So those are things that we can look at going at RTD again, I know that there’s supposedly some reworks coming I know that there’s going to be projects for the diagonal that are about to start up. Yeah, those are excited about those but like we can really think about, you know, looking at what we have and being like do we need over a mile straight of just single family houses we can consider maybe allowing other things to be there to that. Go with that like groceries and things to do restaurants. I think that that would go a long way towards making Longmont a better place for everybody. And if we’re letting people build more houses on existing land, we can maybe get your NOC Edenton. That 14,000 Missing units. That’s about all I got. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 3:25:25
good suggestions.

Speaker 33 3:25:26
Yeah, nothing super new. But end of the line.

Speaker 1 3:25:32
Sir. Counselor, Chris has something to say.

Speaker 24 3:25:36
I just wanted to make everyone aware that on Thursdays the transportation mobility plan open house at the library starts at 530. And it’s good to hear all this feedback for transportation. Appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 3:25:49
Glad to hear about that Thursday at 530. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:25:52
Thank you, Vicki. No, it has to turn red.

Speaker 34 3:26:01
There you go. Hi, Vicki Kirsch, 1700. Gifford. And I just want you to know that I appreciate you a great deal. I can tell you of kind hearts. And you want the best for your community. And thank you. I know, it’s very complicated. I’m here mainly to talk about the removing the food tax. And this may not be a popular suggestion, but I’ll say it anyway. My idea to raise I knew right away, you couldn’t just drop the tax. So how about raising taxes on luxury items, first time buyers for boats and jewelry and furniture. That’s just an idea. Anyway, unfortunately, I think food is a very great issue right now. And it’s going to become more so they’re talking about food security. And it’s the most disadvantages, of course, disadvantage people that suffer and everyone should have a right to healthy food and not at people don’t even have that right. Right now they’re not even eating healthy. They’re eating what they can. So anyway. And I believe part of it, besides what Marlys spoke about this overall cultural issue, that it’s an inequities in minimum wage and overpriced housing that makes it unable for people to afford adequate food. And so I think that, really, we have to make a really a strong commitment, because I think it will become more problematic in terms of people on the streets and homeless and so on. And that I do believe we could take it on, I think Longmont is in a better position than most places because we do have agricultural land. And we do have possibilities for growing that way. And but I also wanted to point out this thing of taxing that what people don’t understand about taxing is that when it comes to a loaf of bread, so you say we pay the tax, when you buy it from the store, the farmer paid the tax for his land, and the tax for his machinery and the tax for the guests and the tax for this and that and the other, that all goes into that loaf of bread. And then you have the maker of the bread who paid all the taxes. So really, the people are paying an exorbitant amount. It all adds up. It’s not just it didn’t disappear, it became the cost of the loaf of bread. So that’s part of the inflationary process. So it’s excess taxation, and that somehow we have to, to be able to work with that. And anyway, I just wanted to say that I think our efforts should be mostly to focus on being human beings who care for each other and make sure people are on aren’t going hungry. So

Speaker 1 3:29:20
thank you, Vicki. Yeah, if only we

Unknown Speaker 3:29:24
ruled the world. Say no.

Speaker 1 3:29:33
Okay. Yes. Well, for everybody that’s watching at home and those that are still here. Thank you very, very much for your input, comments, passion, and patience for waiting until 1025 at night to talk. Since this isn’t a regular agenda, can I just have a motion? to adjourn to adjourn. Second. All those in favor just say aye. Aye. All those opposed? We are adjourned.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai