City Council Regular Session – March 5, 2024

Video Description:
City Council Regular Session – March 5, 2024

Read along below:

Speaker 1 0:00
To the start of the meeting, persons wishing to speak on specific second reading or public hearing items are asked to add their name to that speaker list for this specific item prior to the start of the meeting, and anyone may speak and no signup is required to speak during the final call public invited to be heard. Can I have a motion to let’s see, do we have approval of minutes? No,

Unknown Speaker 0:24
we don’t. Mayor,

Speaker 1 0:25
we don’t. Agenda revisions. Yes. Is this agenda revision?

Speaker 2 0:33
We do we have two agenda revisions. Mayor. The first is that item 12. A has been removed from the agenda at the request of the sponsorship request door. And then we have an addition to the agenda. Item 11. A I provided paper copies at your desks in case you didn’t get a chance to look at that today. It’s ordinance 2024 Dash 23. Okay, we will, we will because it’s an ordinance on first reading. But we want to give you information about it. It is on items removed from consent, if we just proactively removed it. So we will address that item there.

Speaker 1 1:13
Okay, thank you very much. Do councillors have any motions to direct the city manager to put items on future agendas? Seeing no one. We will go on to the city manager’s reports.

Unknown Speaker 1:28
No report, Mayor Council.

Speaker 1 1:29
Thank you. No, we don’t have any special reports or presentations. So we’re gonna go right into the first call public invited to be heard. I do see on this list though, that some of you have not put your name and address on it. So when you come up, please give us your name and address. The first one is Mary Lynn.

Unknown Speaker 1:59
Can you turn that on, Mary? Thank you.

Speaker 3 2:01
Good evening Council. My name is Mary Lynn and I live on Atwood Street in the historic East Side. Thank you for that very and to the staff as well for that very eye opening procession about the tax on groceries. It’s rather sobering to understand more of the workings of municipal finance and to understand that decisions that were made by folks, most of whom were not even here can tie up funds and the public will for decades at a time, there’s simply got to be a different way to manage and thing. I do know of a way it’s the public banking movement. And I would very much like to speak with the city again about the process of starting a municipal Bank, which would allow the city to self fund many things and not put our fates in the hands of New York City financiers. Last thing I would like to say is that I’m excited that the sustainability report is being presented today since I do sit on that committee and I would like to informally announced that I’ve been pleased to see positive discussion about moving the city forward in terms of recommendations to council for passive solar and other life based approaches in zoning to make them easier and more amenable for both new development and existing and that there’s conversations going on with the city staff about agriculture in open space. So I think there’s while these things didn’t show up in the in very much in the report for this past year. I’m happy to say that I do think there’s going to be some exciting ideas for you to consider coming up very soon. So thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 3:56
Thank you, Barry. Camellia Van Horn.

Speaker 4 4:13
Good evening carmeliet Van Horn 1474. Mayfield circle. Thank you, Mayor and council for that very informative pre session. And the gentleman who spoke about fine the finance gentleman I really appreciate that. And I was going to say some different words but now that I have these, this information in front of me, I have some specific things as far as repealing the 3.53% food tax. I was interested in the the bond the bond holders and and I from what I understand from the slide about the food for home consumption 2025 projections it sounds like there’s some a few things on that list that aren’t subject to the The the issues of the bond, the bond holding. And I’m just wondering if if we can consider immediately taking those things, taking the exempting those things from the from the sales tax, since they’re not subject to the bond issues, if that can be considered. And then also on on site five. On site on site five, that refers to the general fund revenue. I understand that portion of the $113 million is for is from sales and use tax. And then the other portion is from property tax. And that’s what I was speaking about when I spoke the first time on January 30, that direct taxes is, could we also consider if I don’t know if it needs to be put before a vote, but perhaps putting more of the of the tax on property tax versus sales and use. So those specific things if if those could be considered, I would appreciate that. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 6:11
Thank you, Commander Edmondson.

Speaker 5 6:22
Hi, it’s Kim Edmondson from bittersweet lane. And I’m here to talk about I guess you’re talking about the sustainability climate reaction report tonight. And I browse through it a little bit. And I’m wondering, you know, you have this plan for 2050 100% of all your city fleet is EVs. How do you plan on financing that and funding that? Is that going to be more grant money? Or is that going to be from the money raised from the overcharging meters? I’d also seen here with your community in different ways to engage the equitable climate action. There’s nothing equitable about any of this. So I’ll just make people equally poor, paying for this because I look through here and a majority of this stuff is funded by federal grant money. And that federal grant money is basically the federal government turning on the printing press, and printing trillions upon trillions of dollars that we’re all paying for right now in the form of inflation. And that’s why people are asking to repeal the grocery tax, we probably wouldn’t be here asking for that. If it wasn’t for all of this. Why are we chasing something that Europe already knows doesn’t work? Germany, who is in the head of everybody in the charge for this technology, they’re back to burning coal, and building nuclear and cutting down they’re forced to heat their homes, they don’t freeze to death, because someone blew up the pipeline they were buying gas from from Russia. So I don’t think that’s going to work very well. It’s already been proven, it doesn’t work. I’ve tried to bring to your attention about the geoengineering impact of our climate. I doubt any of you watch the dimming, or Franken skies or any of those other things that I’ve shared to try to educate you about what’s really driving climate and it’s not my car, it’s not the carbon out of my car. There’s other things going on three states currently are passing legislation or introduced bills to ban geoengineering, that is New Hampshire, Rhode Island and South Dakota, Mexico has an geoengineering over their skies. If you want to do something to save us make a sustainable stop with the cloud seeding when we have seven states paying for cloud seeding operations in the state of Colorado. All of this, you’re basically you’re training your kids future, you’re sacrificing your children’s future for this woke agenda that does nothing. It just makes equal in everyone equally poor, equally broke, equally frozen. There’s nothing beneficial to this and, and speaking about, you know, I’m all about the meters, I put a post about a friend of mine who will be her speaking of her meter, she opted out she got an AMI meter on her house, they swapped it back out for a little bit, but then put on the new meter. So I put a warning out to the community via social media. And a woman chimed in and said since they put the meter on my home, I don’t going to send him some permission to I’m not able to sleep by a terrible insomnia. I told her to contact you. I hope she does. And when that she does, you rectify that situation and you fix it. She doesn’t have to live the rest of her life with terrible insomnia because of a meter that was recklessly installed, despite people like myself. warning people like thanks, Kim.

Unknown Speaker 9:32
Steve Altshuller

Speaker 6 9:39
Steve Altshuller 1555 Taylor drive. I want to talk to you again about the illegals in Colorado Longmont and of course the United States. You all heard last week about a young lady that was murdered at the hands of a Venezuelan he’d actually been deployed worded for different times, and he’d been arrested in different states and release without being turned over to ice for the other crimes that he committed. And this is happening more and more. I have a chart here. I don’t know how much it’ll show on the screen. Basically, right around here have a million and a half illegals coming into America per year during the Bush years, to be honest. And then from a million to 500,000. During Obama. During Trump, the average was 400,000. His last year was the lowest it’s ever been because of the wall that he put up and the stay in Mexico. And then up here, it shoots up like there’s no tomorrow with President Biden. There were 800,000 in 2019. There were 1.9 million in 21. Two point 7,000,022 and 3.2 million illegals last year. We all obviously know this is a huge problem. I understand Longmont can’t solve that problem. But just like Aurora and Lakewood, if one man cared about its citizens, you all could vote to become a non sanctuary city. You could let it be known that if if there’s an illegal in Longmont that’s arrested for a felony he gets given to ice and shipped out of our country. There is no reason on God’s green earth illegals should have more rights and citizens if you or I commit a crime we’re going to jail. Why on earth should an illegal be released right back out into the country to kill someone like the young lady just in Georgia? Last month in Broomfield see me. There was an illegal that had been released from jail four days earlier. He had been there for drunk driving and the judge say oh, you can go on your own recognizance. And four days later, he crashes into and kills a lady and her son. This is ridiculous. You guys have the right the ability to stand up and make Longmont a non sanctuary city. Other cities are doing it too. It’s not punishing the illegals that come here and do no crime. It’s just punishing the ones that commit more felonies, work with eyes, get these people out of our city, out of our state and out of our country, and let them know that they’re not going to get away with free crimes here. And that will reduce the problem. And very quickly. Longmont has roughly 6500 illegals if there’s six people per unit that’s 1000 units that are living in if they were gone have 1000 more empty units to lower rents for everybody. Thank

Speaker 1 12:47
you, Steve. editorial comment, Longmont is not a sanctuary city. Chris doe Kelly

Speaker 7 13:11
Okay, good evening, everyone. I’m Joe Kelly of Barbary drive. And first of all, I would like to thank Michael Villalpando of the law my power company for reaching out to me yesterday by phone to make sure that the Smart Meter installing guys had replaced the Smart Meter they placed on my house in error with a non broadcasting meter. So Michael, Apology accepted if you’re watching and thank you for your phone message. Second, I did not get a good night’s sleep with the new smart technology even off of my house that still close by one neighbor’s meter roughly 50 feet from our bedroom window and others in the alley as we live packed together and conjoined homes. And with today’s edition of more wireless meters in our HOA. Well, we’ll see because last night when I lay down to sleep, all I could hear was the sound of hi slivers and shards of radio frequencies in my head and Alas, no silence. I did not sleep well. And although I do not believe I have tinnitus, I do have exquisitely sensitive and finely tuned hearing. Being a lifelong degreed musician, accomplished singer and vocal coach in these latter years in 2016. With the addition of the wireless next light router in our living room with its five gigahertz frequencies that went off like 10,000 miniature jackhammers on my eardrums. I was also tremendously challenged at least until we could figure it out. That was the frequency creating such pressure in my head. So of course we turned it off, use the 2.45 gigahertz frequency band and got ourselves Ethernet cable into work around to wireless internet in the home as soon as we could. It took two weeks for me to emerge from this nightmare of not knowing where where I would go and how I would survive this kryptonite like attack in Sweden Did you know that what is called electro hypersensitivity is a recognized disability and that Sweden both accommodate citizens with this condition as well as acknowledges that it is the environment that is sick and not the actual people suffering from this. How advanced have them no tinfoil hat conspiracy theories in Sweden on this topic or so I would assume. Now, there is a movement to rename electro hypersensitivity reflect its true character that is microwave injury and yes, for the uninformed microwaves are broadcast by both smart meters and wireless routers alike, as well as cell towers, baby monitors, wireless laptops and tablets and all manner of cellular devices. All the things that some people would rather us be connected by into in a smart city with an Internet of Things. The land is in gear smart meter here in Longmont, the reveler is equipped and ready to go for the internet of things so when you say Longmont is not going towards becoming a smart city, how is that an accurate statement?

Unknown Speaker 16:17
May I say thank you.

Speaker 7 16:18
Do you know about the pre meeting? Having it in a bigger? No,

Unknown Speaker 16:23
thank you. Yep. SARAH SHARP

Unknown Speaker 16:36
Is there a SARAH SHARP here? Oh, I knew you were here.

Unknown Speaker 16:42
I am here.

Speaker 8 16:43
I’m here to talk about zoning for childcare. Okay. local zoning ordinance primarily Can I have your address, please? Well, I’m sorry, it’s Henson drive in Longmont. And I’m with I’m here representing the Early Childhood Alliance. Okay. local zoning ordinances primarily dictate the use and dictate where specific types of facilities including children’s childcare centers can be located. While not directly addressing placement of childcare facilities. Colorado Department of Human Services licensing regulations emphasize providing a safe and healthy environment for children. This would include considerations regarding potential hazards in surrounding areas. So investigation of the areas is really important, but does not need to be prohibiting of moving childcare into non residential areas. I don’t have to tell you, you already know that there’s a crisis in child care you know that the ending of the Child Care stabilization grant funding has exacerbated the problem we’re moving in the wrong direction. So of course the bottom line is we want our children in safe and healthy environments, but time is of the essence so small things even like shortening the permit time would be a step in the right directions thank you

Unknown Speaker 18:15
thank you Chris all did

Speaker 2 18:19
me refine my might interject just for a moment over here the live stream neither of us are working I don’t I just want to make you aware if you want to pause for a few minutes and see if we can sure do we want to try and reboot

Speaker 2 18:38
a five minute break if we could try and reboot the equipment

Speaker 1 18:42
okay five minute five minute break to reboot

Unknown Speaker 18:52
your address

Unknown Speaker 18:54
yeah

Unknown Speaker 18:56
and arenas well

Unknown Speaker 19:05
we require the name and address sorry

Unknown Speaker 19:29
okay, just I think that’s a good point. Is arena with you? So she’s at same address I need her address as well

Unknown Speaker 19:50
no, what are we crazy?

Speaker 1 19:58
Yeah, they should be When he comes up and we just don’t go or Guess what day it is I think a little fun sometimes doesn’t hurt are you arena okay? Yeah no right here okay. Hi, I just emailed you a proclamation oh right yes

Unknown Speaker 20:28
so I don’t feel safe saying my address like we won’t have to say

Unknown Speaker 20:44
give me just give me your street you don’t have to the number

Speaker 9 20:49
six this is still very simple I know you do something that’s just a requirement for everybody it’s just what we do which which I cannot just in case we can speak yeah it’s not a big deal I don’t know what else I don’t wait it’s even better

Speaker 10 21:26
now when Sandy gets here you can sh or dawned on me now because I know I think this is the mouse but then you can’t do anything and do anything if you plug that in and I have no clue what that is evening

Unknown Speaker 22:10
to that you will have stipulate that there’s a set a worst case so I’m trying to remember the answer

Speaker 9 22:37
since we have recently addressed I know we did yeah I’m trying to remember I gotta go

Unknown Speaker 23:16
saw your face

Unknown Speaker 23:22
that’s a way to say that

Speaker 1 23:35
since I’ve actually and I don’t know what to do because

Unknown Speaker 23:42
that’s what was the worst

Speaker 11 23:43
showed up is error you do not have authorization

Unknown Speaker 23:52
to stand on the farm or something you Ecuador I think she was able to get herself and I just went ahead and did all day Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 24:06
So do we

Unknown Speaker 24:14
my

Unknown Speaker 24:23
squad once again

Unknown Speaker 24:37
do this

Unknown Speaker 24:59
right Those jobs are over

Unknown Speaker 25:33
distributed

Unknown Speaker 25:44
appears

Unknown Speaker 26:00
until over the show

Unknown Speaker 26:16
due to technical difficulties

Unknown Speaker 26:30
people just to shoot

Unknown Speaker 26:35
all those pieces back to each other it was awesome

Unknown Speaker 27:04
I just done this person like I can afford to do with what has been

Unknown Speaker 27:25
achieved try trust me because of the finances we have cash

Unknown Speaker 27:43
flows red some guesses

Unknown Speaker 27:59
at the end

Unknown Speaker 28:19
like our chart is 15 Anyway yeah

Unknown Speaker 28:26
yeah we’re waiting

Unknown Speaker 28:39
taking them

Speaker 1 28:52
down ladies and gentlemen thank you for your patience of the livestream is still not working however, this meeting is being recorded so they can view it afterwards we are going to continue the point of the video and having it live stream is transparency for a public meeting but we are going to continue so the next thing on our list is the consent agenda. Oh no, I’m sorry. We’re not done.

Unknown Speaker 29:22
SARAH SHARP.

Unknown Speaker 29:24
I thought we were done because we took a break. Chris All right

Unknown Speaker 29:37
think it’s is it all red?

Speaker 12 29:39
Yes. Okay. Yes, thank you. You’re welcome. Good evening Council. My name is Chris all read it resident of Longmont for about eight years. And first of all, I would just like to say Mayor, Members of Council, thank you for your courage in the year 2022 when you passed a proclamation supporting the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Tonight, we have brought together a group of us from the community to ask for another proclamation, which reads, calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and occupied West Bank, immediate enhanced unhindered humanitarian aid into Gaza, and release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinian civilians. This is a topic that has been troubling for us throughout the community throughout the region. And the most recent news, more than 100 killed 760 injured Palestinians while trying to get food from an aid truck, there’s something seriously amiss here. That should not be happening. Erin Bushnell set himself on fire outside of an Israeli embassy in an act of protest. This reminds me of the Vietnam War, when we saw the the the unjust, constant violence against civilians. And it reminds me of Dr. King’s Speech, the Riverside Church speech when he said, There is a time to break the silence. It is a matter of systemic violence in our own government, that we see this continuing and we we need to be speaking out, we are affected at all levels of government at all levels of society.

Unknown Speaker 31:53
This systemic violence affects our daily lives. So we are reaching out to our local government. And we hope that you will join us in this message for peace.

Speaker 12 32:09
The International Court of Justice ruled that genocide is plausible. That is a call to action for all of us. It must be the priority right now, to de escalate the violence as US citizens, we must be mindful of our privilege and speak out against systemic violence. Please use your voices in local government to empower the voices that are most vulnerable. According to the UN 65,000 housing units destroyed 30,000 killed nearly 2 million displaced. Let’s speak out against this please pass a ceasefire now. Proclamation. Thank you,

Unknown Speaker 32:53
Chris. Thank you, but I need your address. Please remember.

Speaker 11 32:57
Can I make a point of order? Of course. So. Can I Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 33:06
I’m not sure we don’t do point of orders during well. Yeah,

Speaker 11 33:09
I’m just trying to, because I did pull up the can I speak in the mic? Okay, okay. So, yeah. Okay, thank you, Mayor. And I apologize for the interruption. So in looking at our code, or Rules of Procedure, while we do have Longmont residents that are allowed to speak on first of all public invited to be heard and other members of the community at the end, we do collect the address on the form. But in looking at the language, there’s nothing that specifies that they must publicly say their address, as I’m as I’m going through and Eugene, if you know, your infinite wisdom, if I misinterpreted the language, let me know. But, you know, I have it I have it up right now. So, but and we all, you know, given the sensitive topic, and the fact that we have people who are fearful for retaliation who do not want to publicly state their address, I, you know, I would either move to amend

Unknown Speaker 34:23
know the procedure or Yeah,

Speaker 11 34:27
but as I’m looking on here, it doesn’t say that we they have to say their address out loud.

Speaker 1 34:34
And this would be a great topic for discussion, but not at public invited. Yeah, be

Speaker 11 34:42
just for the next few speakers that are speaking. I mean,

Speaker 1 34:46
we have a process that’s in place that council agreed and voted on. So if we want to discuss or amend this later, we need to do it at a different format. So everybody tonight, when you come up, please give your name and address Chris arena Carrick name and address please

Speaker 13 35:21
Good evening Council. My name is ADINA, and I live on Mount Meeker Road in Longmont. I’m here today to express my unequivocal support for the ceasefire. And as the proclamation submitted to the council last Wednesday, on the 28th of February, the ongoing genocide in Gaza affects me personally. Last summer, I returned from Palestine, where I had worked as a humanitarian aid worker for years. In less than five months, the followed brutal seventh of October attacks. Over 30,000 Gazans, most of whom are women and children have been murdered. Over 70,000 injured in the strip. More than two thirds of the population have been forced from their homes, many multiple times and facing severe deprivation of food, water, health care sanitation basic necessities just to survive another day. The health care system continues to be systematically and intentionally degraded. As of February 19, only 12 out of 35 hospitals are still functioning and only partially, we have all heard and read stories about surgeries being performed without any anesthesia, or medication. And there have been more than 370 attacks on hospitals on health care in Gaza since October 7. Diseases are rampant. Famine is looming. Water is a trickle. Basic install of infrastructure has been decimated. Hospitals have turned into battlefields. 1 million children face daily traumas that are far the latest destination for over 1 million displaced, hungry and traumatized people crammed into a small sliver of land have become another battleground. In this genocide. I personally dread the day when I don’t hear from my loved ones. My friends, my colleagues, further escalation of violence in this densely populated area would cause mass casualties to unprecedented proportions. So residents of Longmont, like myself, have been deeply impacted by the situation. Many of us have friends families living in both Palestine and Israel. While a symbolic gesture this proclamation would signal to our Longmont community and across the state your commitment to peace, equality and compassion. Please consider putting this document forward and stand on the courageous side of history. Thank you.

Speaker 1 38:32
Thank you arena. Dana Davitt, Delvecchio.

Speaker 14 38:42
Hi, summer Hawk drive in Longmont. Thank you, all of you for serving on the city council. My parents are both involved in local government for decades. And I know how much work it is. And you probably have jobs outside of this. So appreciate all of you a little bit about me, I’m a mother. I’m involved in sustainability, sustainability efforts, and I work in education. I studied abroad in Israel, and also lived in Jordan from 2015 to 2017, where about 60% of the population is Palestinian. So I have Israeli friends and I have friends in Gaza. As a mother the amount of suffering of the mothers and children has weighed me down quite a bit. I don’t want to duplicate what other people have said, but I think what’s hit me a lot is the pregnant woman having C sections without anesthesia. You know, the baby’s not having access to formula and woman giving birth early and so not being able to nurse and children looking at the sky and literally not knowing if they will be getting bread through airdrops or bombs. And I really want to raise my kids in a city that values all families, human rights, dignity and equality. You might be saying we’re Longmont. We’re just a city. Why does this matter? You know, that’s Congress is responsible for that. But I believe especially growing up a family that has worked in it was attached to town government now to city for decades since I was in elementary school. And I’m 31 I believe change starts with local level. And the more cities that support a ceasefire, the louder message we sent to Congress. That long, long cares, and this has to stop and we can’t keep on turning a blind eye. So I asked you to please consider this. I know it’s hard, but I asked you to be brave and and not let others bully you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 40:36
It. Excuse me? If your name Dana DelVecchio, yeah, that’s me. Okay. Thanks. Yep. Just Giselle Herzfeld.

Speaker 15 40:50
Good evening members of the Longmont City Council. My name is Giselle Hertzfeld, and I am a four year resident of Longmont, Colorado, I do not feel safe stating my address as members of the community are being actively targeted and Docs for speaking out on this issue. So it is a matter of public safety. I come to you today as the descendant of a victim of the Holocaust. My great grandfather was a Jewish man in Germany and my grandfather, who was able to pass his Aryan would sneak food and life saving materials to his father through the gates of the concentration camp. Although it was not enough to save him. My grandmother’s family on my father’s side was Ukrainian and they escaped Ukraine immediately prior to the Holodomor the forced starvation genocide that killed millions of Ukrainians. My mother is Mexican and the blood of the indigenous machico runs in my veins, the same blood that was spilled by the genocidal Spanish conquistadores as the descendant of the survivors of multiple genocides including the Holocaust. It hurts me in the deepest parts of my soul to see my ancestral trauma weaponized to justify the most horrendous genocidal acts being committed by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. You have heard and will continue to hear many compelling reasons for supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. So today, I will focus on the topics of Islamophobia and anti semitism in our own community. I have deep concerns regarding the conflation of the pro Palestine movement or of criticism of Israel with anti semitism. It is dangerous to conflate these two things and it is especially dangerous for the Jewish Palestinian and Muslim members of our community. There is an alarming rise in anti semitism going on there has been a rise in anti semitism long before October 7, fueled by far right white nationalists who have felt empowered by our country’s previous president to be openly hateful, racist, anti Jewish and anti Muslim in a way that they had not previously felt empowered. These hateful ideologues are not part of the pro Palestine movement. They would never join the pro Palestine movement and they would never ever be welcomed in the pro Palestine movement. I consistently see Jewish voices elevated and embraced in this movement. As the great granddaughter of a Jewish Holocaust victim I am angered by how often concerns about anti semitism and the RE triggering of Holocaust trauma are placed front and center as Islamophobia and the retriggering of Palestinian Nakba trauma continue to go unaddressed. In addition to the rise in anti semitism that we hear about all the time, there’s also an alarming rise in anti Islamophobia going on and it’s gone virtually ignored. Why are we ignoring the pain of our Palestinian Arab and Muslim neighbors who are losing family members or can still consistently tortured by the fear of losing family members at any moment? What makes their pain and trauma less important? Why is passing a resolution calling for peace considered too controversial and divisive? But not taking an active stance against an ongoing genocide is considered more unifying? It doesn’t make sense. Please have the courage and morality to stand with your constituents of all backgrounds and pass a ceasefire resolution. I also want to say that I stand in solidarity with our immigrant refugee and undocumented neighbors. They are not illegal aliens. They are human beings and I love them. Thank you.

Speaker 1 43:44
Thank you, so I’m going to try to pronounce this Yukari my Yama.

Speaker 16 44:04
Good evening, my name is Yukari me am I I live in gooseberry drive in Longmont. I have lived in a long amount for over 22 years and more than 30 years in a border County. And I came here today to support my neighbors to proclaim the ceasefire. From this lovely community Longmont, Colorado, long amount of may be very small town in in a bigger picture of the world, but the conscience, the voice of conscience that we have, can reach and change the world I believe Excuse me. I am very, very disturbed and touched by the scale of genocide ongoing because current, the bombardment in the land of Palestine is two or three times larger than the Hiroshima atomic bomb that killed millions of civilians. And my mother was the victim of Nagasaki bombing. She barely escaped. But I have heard all this horrendous the ground view of the war all the way during my childhood, and I am very very hurt by what’s going on. And then I wanted to add my small voice to call for the peace. And I hope Longmont City Council will consider our prayer that can reach to the world peace. Thank you.

Speaker 1 46:24
Thank you very much. Daria Laverne.

Speaker 17 46:32
Good evening. My name is Daria Laverne and I live on the 400 block of Emory Street. Mayor, Council. Thank you for your service, for your attention for your time. Briefly, I would like to say a food tax is ridiculous and should not be even on the table. And I have decided not to get a meter in my home. From what I’ve learned. The first speaker mentioned courage. It is a courageous act that we are asking all of you to proclaim.

Speaker 17 47:16
I want to live in a town that cherishes and honors life. The genocide must stop. And I sincerely hope that this council will raise their voices and their conscious consciences and support this proclamation. Thank you. Thank

Unknown Speaker 47:35
you, Dahlia, Gary hajus.

Speaker 18 47:51
Sorry, I got a little off guard there. Two people in front of me Gary Hodges, 2148. Stuart Street. So this continuing my series of energy, okay, I’m going to wrap it up next week. But I’m wanting to just give kind of a review of where we’re at. So wind and solar power sources aren’t green. They are not renewable. And they are not clean in the way that we commonly describe clean when discussing these kinds of power sources. We talked about this and the reasons why in the last few weeks, EVS electric vehicles in terms of co2 are no different than internal combustion engines. That’s another another truth that’s out there. So it’s not possible to legislate or govern co2 reduction. And it’s not because our elected officials don’t want to. They’re not sincere. Just because of basic truth, we cannot get around the inescapable truths of mineral mineral extraction, and refining. What we end up with is just a co2 shell game, you might change where it’s admitted, you might change when it’s emitted, but you’re not going to change how much is emitted. It’s just fundamental. I said some week or two ago, Les, if if tomorrow we converted 50% of the world’s power stations to nuclear, which is in the terms of way green is described that would be about as green as it gets. It would only reduce hydrocarbon use by about 10%. Globally, okay. California, if California were to convert to 100%, clean in the term it’s described, not possible, but if they could do it, that would be a 1% reduction globally. Okay, that’s 40 million people. Colorado only has about 6 million people. So even if we can do this, which we can’t, it’s a futile effort with the amount of that we’d be reducing it by so like if you went home tonight and filled up a pitcher of water and tomorrow dumped Grand Lake. I mean, you could calculate how much it increased the level of the lake. But in a practical sense, right? I mean, it didn’t change the level of lake at all. Is it cheaper, it’s not cheaper without exception, every city, every state, every country that implements more wind and solar, their electricity goes up by a relationship that’s common across all of those, it will, all it will do is increase cost of electricity. So the only thing we can accomplish by trying to go down this path is to increase long months, electricity costs, we’re not going to reduce co2 at all, it’s not going to happen. Well, it’ll make it less reliable also. So I’ll close this out. Next week, I’m going to I’m going to share some final thoughts on this topic. There just wasn’t room to do it tonight. But I just wanted to give the review of the last five times I stood at this podium, so thank you,

Unknown Speaker 50:52
thank you, Gary. Mary Goodman.

Speaker 19 51:15
I am Mary Goodman. And I’m not going to give out the address because it’s a place of business support, I work and I’m protecting my grandmother.

Speaker 1 51:24
But I’m sorry, the Longmont diagonal highway is not acceptable for an address. And that is people

Speaker 19 51:32
show up there they’re gonna get arrested. 7859 Diagonal highway. Thank you. First morning wood product.

Unknown Speaker 51:43
Thank you, Mary.

Speaker 19 51:47
Hearing tonight, the people I was going to talk about something different. But hearing two sides of two stories on this side. And I hear a story from this gentleman here.

Unknown Speaker 52:03
Get closer to microphone.

Speaker 19 52:06
I work a source where people are crossing the border. Okay. And you know, our country, we have to divide the bad. And from the good. Because these bad guys are coming into this country are making the good people bad, or making them look bad. They’re getting criticized for coming here. illegally. They’re all illegal. But then we have to stop the deaths of children coming across the rivers. You know, these children are risking the life the parents should be held liable for taking these children across rivers. This is life. This is their baby. This is the babies. And just like this young lady here talking about children

Speaker 19 53:21
losing lives. You know, we’re where are we at? And now to bring it up. We’re at a place where sanctuary sanctuary cities are going to start happening. I’ve mentioned this before. And now it’s happening. This is our country. This was my flag. This is what I stand for. And I’m not going to pay for some dumb person coming over a border to rape a young girl kill a young girl for what? I’m not paying for that. I would rather pay for a family that wants to actually work which I have met. Thank you, Mary. You’re welcome.

Speaker 1 54:24
Seeing no one else on the list. I am going to close first call public invited to be heard. And

Speaker 1 54:39
so we’re now at the part of our consent agenda where we have the reading of the the first reading of ordinances. Don Would you mind reading the ordinances into the agenda?

Speaker 2 54:53
Absolutely. Mayor the ordinances on tonight’s consent agenda will be held for public hearing and second reading on On March 26 2024, the ordinance is mentioned here in nine a ordinance 2024 Dash 20. A bill for an ordinance amending chapter 1502 110 of the Lamont municipal code on public and common private improvement review construction and acceptance. Nine V’s ordinance 2024 Dash 21 a bill for an ordinance amending title 15 Chapter 1504 section 15 Oh, table 4.1 Table of allowed uses of the Longmont municipal code on animal kennels. Nine C is ordinance 2024 Dash 2022 Dash 22 Sorry, a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of a 10 foot wide utility easement located at 121 Main Street. Item nine D is resolution 2024 Dash 17. A resolution of the Longmont City Council approving an intergovernmental agreement between Boulder County and the city of Longmont for the environmental sustainability matching grant program. 2024 award notice, 90 is resolution 2024 Dash 18 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the revocable permit and agreement between the city and flight deck grill LLC for food and beverage sales at Vance brand Municipal Airport. Nine F is resolution 2024 Dash 19 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont Downtown Development Authority for support and services.

Speaker 1 56:24
Thank you do any councillors want to pull items off the agenda? Councillor Martin?

Unknown Speaker 56:39
Won’t go for some reason, I cannot turn your microphone on tonight. There you go.

Speaker 20 56:49
Thank you, Mayor Peck. Yes, I would like to pull Item B 2024 Dash 21 from the consent agenda for some questions. And if no one else has anything other than what the city has already done, then I will move the consent agenda minus item B.

Speaker 1 57:11
Okay, thank you, Marcia. Consent agenda has been Moved by Councillor Martin, seconded by Councillor McCoy minus item B. Are there any questions about that? Seeing none Let’s vote soon as they pull this up. And the Consent Agenda passes unanimously. We’re gonna move on to

Speaker 1 57:45
me. Exactly. So we are going immediately to recess as the Longmont City Council.

Speaker 2 57:58
Consent Agenda. Two items removed mayor would be item 11 A would be your first one.

Speaker 1 58:03
Okay. I’m sorry. Um, you written that in? Thank you. So city clerk pulled this item is that correct?

Speaker 2 58:14
This item we placed on the items removed from consent agenda ordinates 2024 Dash 23 is a bill for an administrative ordinance approving the conveyance of parcels of city owned land to the Longmont general improvement district number one generally located in a 300 block, East parking lot. Public Hearing and second reading of this ordinance would be proposed to be March 19. And Joanie has some information.

Speaker 21 58:39
Mayor Peck members of council Jodie Marsh with the city manager’s office. So apologies for the late breaking Council item today. However, as you all know, we’ve been working on moving towards a closing and doing title work for the hotel that will be in the 300 East parking lot. And I discovered that several parcels that should have been conveyed to the general improvement district many years ago, like probably 40 years ago, had not occurred. And so we were able to sort through all of our title work. And before you have a quitclaim deed, which would then transfer five of the 12 parcels in that parking lot to the GID, where they really should have happily been living for quite some time now. So that’s the item before you there is a map attached in an exhibit, which hopefully gives you some clarity on which slots there are. And I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.

Speaker 1 59:34
I think you’re gonna take a minute to digest this, since it’s a brand new item. And can you explain for the audience what that means that they were not in? Explain what you just said. Sure, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 21 59:54
Mayor Peck. So as we looked through the title commitment to We’ll move forward with the sale of a portion of the parking lot, we discovered that there were actually several pieces of property that had been conveyed to the city of Longmont back in the 60s and 70s. And those parcels, as far as we’re aware of should have also then been conveyed to the general improvement district, okay, as part of the sale, so we ended up with a pretty mixed bag of seven lots that were conveyed properly and five that were not. So with this action, we would hope to quitclaim deed the city parcels to the GID. Okay, and then everything would be in the GID. Thank

Speaker 1 1:00:40
you. Probably everybody understood that, but I needed it twice. So thank you. So this is added to our agenda. Does anyone on this council have any other questions about this? Or do we want to add it to the consent agenda and vote to edit it? Can I have a motion? Then?

Speaker 2 1:01:01
Mayor it is it is you would just vote on whether or not to pass this on first reading.

Speaker 1 1:01:09
So can I have a motion for that to pass it? Council Martin?

Speaker 1 1:01:26
Okay, thank you. I’m sorry, I can’t turn on microphones for some reason. So that motion was made by Councillor Martin seconded by Councillor Yarborough, let’s.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
That passes unanimously.

Speaker 2 1:01:54
And then we have the other item removed that Councilmember Martin pulled. Right 90.

Speaker 1 1:02:00
We don’t have items on second reading. It’s it’s really confusing.

Speaker 2 1:02:05
That’s because they’re when the meetings are back to back. We don’t have the two weeks required.

Speaker 1 1:02:09
Right. Counselor mountain. Let me see if I can turn on that. May or

Speaker 22 1:02:15
excuse me, Eugene may city attorney, a comment on the LGI D transfer. So it was posted to our agenda less than 24 hours before this meeting. Under the open meetings law. It’s a flexible standard one way of which you can meet it by posting your agenda 24 hours in advance. The standard is actually full and timely notice, for this matter. Staff made the decision to put this on the agenda yesterday at 4:30pm. And we turned it around in record time and posted the agenda as quickly as we could, which was about 1231 o’clock today. And this is in order to effectuate the development agreement that the LG ID in the city already passed with the Thrash group to build this hotel and to keep the closing on schedule. So there were exigent circumstances that necessitated the urgency of this matter.

Speaker 1 1:03:12
It makes sense. Thank you for that explanation. I am excited about the fact that we are going to move forward on this. So counsel Martin, your mic is now on.

Speaker 20 1:03:24
I know I’m so excited. Okay. So I first of all, would like to thank the staff and Patrick, for turning over this requested zoning update it I think goes to show that when a constituent has a reasonable request, we can be responsive and I am very proud of that. So, I have I have two motions regarding this. The first thing is I do move adoption of item b Oh Dash 2024 Dash 21

Speaker 1 1:04:17
doing a second? Second. So 2024 Dash 21 was Moved by Councillor Martin Martin seconded by Councillor Rodriquez, or is there any discussion? Seeing none Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 1:04:43
That carries unanimously and Councillor Martin. I want to thank you for bringing this forward to council. You’re

Speaker 20 1:04:49
very welcome, Mayor. The The other thing is I just have some few a few questions. I had a meeting this afternoon. Um with both a representative of planning and one of public safety, just so you know who the players are, because we also wanted to look at the feasibility of, of making the permitting process for daycare centers in non residential employment districts easier, because right now it takes about nine or 10 months to get through the process. And, you know, have I talked to a lot of people about where they would prefer to have their daycare sited. And they always want it to be close to where they work, not close to where they live. Because if anything happens, you’re close to your baby. And you can get there fast. And there are other reasons than that, you know, it reduces traffic and all kinds of good things. You know, if if de Clare is close by where you work. So we had a good discussion about that. And the reason that they did not just make that make daycare and a plain old allows use it was because you can you do need to look into whether there are hazardous conditions close by, you know, the daycare center. And we did get in touch both the planners, and some people from the Early Childhood Alliance. got in touch with the state childcare licensing agency? And they said, Yes, we recommend that we, you know, we investigate. But they, they don’t enforce that. So, so anyway, there’s a lot of options for maybe making it faster, and the planners agreed to, to take it back.

Speaker 1 1:07:16
I guess I don’t know where you’re going. Are you making a motion? Aye.

Speaker 20 1:07:19
Aye. Aye. I wanted to ask a question before I made the motion. And I felt that people needed background. So maybe I should have done the background in questions. I apologize. So the question is, could you explain how long the process takes now to permit a daycare center in non residential employment district to us and what the steps are?

Speaker 23 1:07:50
Sure, Mayor Petka councilmembers. Generally, anything that is a conditional use requires a conditional use site plan, is in the realm of several months, it does require both neighborhood meeting notices, as well as public hearing notices to ultimately go in front of planning commission for their determination. So again, several months versus potentially, if you use as permitted by right, you’re looking in the weeks to a couple of months in terms of the differentiation between that timeline.

Speaker 20 1:08:27
So I don’t think we do need to go into a lot of detail with it now. But they have kindly agreed to look into whether between the state licensing process and the city’s existing processes, that timeline could be compressed by a small code change, like for example, being allowed to omit the public hearing. So I would just like to move that the planners bring back suggestions on loosening the allowed use for daycare centers.

Speaker 1 1:09:06
So are you asking to put this on a future agenda? Because at what point are we bringing this back? And where in the agenda is, do you want this

Speaker 20 1:09:16
on a future agenda? And I think basically, we will allow the staff to decide whether it should be a discussion in a public in a in a study session, or whether they just want to bring an ordinance that updates the usage for this kind of district, depending on what their suggestion is. And we don’t have a timeline because we don’t have a business transaction that is, you know, urgently needed. We just, this is part of making it easier to live in Longmont. So I’d like to leave the timeline at their discretion other than in 1994 so that any changes of any budgetary change What can happen in 9520 2525? Yeah, in 2025, I’m an old woman.

Speaker 1 1:10:12
So so your motion is to direct staff to bring back on a future agenda. The conditional the conditions for a conditional use of daycare centers in an MOU, I’m

Speaker 20 1:10:27
not quite suggestions for simplifying or shortening the process by by changing those conditions, because right now it’s a full conditional use process and, and can take a long time, the

Speaker 1 1:10:44
possibilities of allowing daycare centers in an MOU

Unknown Speaker 1:10:50
in a non residential employment, okay.

Speaker 1 1:10:55
And we’ll have discussion on this, if there was a second. And when there’s a second, second. Okay, so, counselor Martin made this motion to direct I’m going to read this to direct staff to bring suggestions for how to compress timeline for permitting of daycare centers and non residential employment districts on a future agenda. And that was seconded by Councillor Roderick, because Councillor McCoy? Thank

Speaker 24 1:11:27
you, Mayor. So Councillor Martin, would this be a something that we could put in as a study session so that we get a lot of public discussion around it so that we,

Speaker 20 1:11:41
yes, if you if you would like to specify explicitly that it come up first in the sub study session, I’m happy to take that as a friendly.

Speaker 24 1:11:49
I would like to see that so that the community understands exactly and has the detail that we’re talking about? Sure.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:58
Is the second okay. Still

Speaker 1 1:12:02
to vote on the motion and then vote on the amendment. vote

Unknown Speaker 1:12:07
on the amendment then.

Speaker 20 1:12:10
We considered it friendly. Yeah, if it’s friendly, we can vote once Right.

Speaker 1 1:12:14
Thank goodness as friendly. All right. I see no one else in the queue for discussion. Let’s vote.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:29
Passes unanimously.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:30
Thank you everyone.

Speaker 1 1:12:32
No problem. So now I need a motion to recess as the Longmont city council, excuse me and convene as the Board of Directors of the moment general improvement district number one

Unknown Speaker 1:12:48
council and convene as the board of directors for the

Speaker 1 1:12:53
second it’s been made by Councillor McCoy seconded by Councillor Chris Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 1:13:03
That passes unanimously. We have on we have as the Board of Directors of the general improvement district a resolution are LGI D Dash 2024 Dash one. A resolution of the Board of Directors of the Longmont general improvement improvement district number one approving an intergovernmental agreement with the Longmont Downtown Development Authority for general administrative services.

Speaker 1 1:13:38
Is there going to be any there’s no presentation on this. Okay, great. Can I have a motion

Unknown Speaker 1:13:50
we approve the resolution.

Speaker 1 1:13:52
Okay. Resolutions are LGI D Dash 2024 Dash o one was Moved by Councillor McCoy and seconded by Councillor Yarborough. Is there any discussion? Seeing no one in the queue? Let’s vote.

Speaker 1 1:14:13
That passes unanimously. Can I have a motion to adjourn as the board of directors. Okay, so that was a motion was made by Councillor Martin to adjourn as the Board of Directors of the Longmont general improvement district number one and reconvene as long as city council and that was seconded by Councillor McCoy. See no one in the queue for discussion. Let’s vote. The next item on our general business is see information on homeowner associations HOAs and I see down planner Don Burchette. Done

Unknown Speaker 1:15:03
There you go, how’s that? It’s great.

Speaker 25 1:15:23
So Mayor pack members of the city council, Denver chat with planning development services here tonight to talk to you, along with my counterpart in crime here, Wayne toMac, who’s the community resources coordinator for the city. We were asked at the February 6 meeting to come back to the city council, and give some information related to homeowners and property owner associations in the city of Longmont, where some of those rules have come from and what kind of the expectations were the city with the creation and the requirement for these HOAs. So tonight, I’m going to go through a few quick slides, give you some general background, and then Wayne and I will be available to answer any questions. Obviously, this could go in a number of directions. So just want to give you kind of the background first, and then we’ll just go specifically into what you have concerns about. So again, the items that we’re going to try and quickly cover here tonight are why do we require HOAs in the city of Longmont? What is the expectations of having these HOAs in new developments? And then what do we hope to accomplish by having the HOAs in the new development, the final two questions really are are going to be covered under one slide and talking about the obligations that we put on to the HOAs. So in the city of Longmont, we do require HOAs. In new developments. It’s a section in the land development code section 15.0 7.070. And the section was included in your council communication, that is in the municipal code. And in general, the requirement is that if you have any of three items that are present within a new development, an HOA is required under our code. The first is ownership of common areas, those common areas could include pocket parks, they could include drainage facilities, they could include buffer areas. The other is that the requirement is that we have a way to ensure that the maintenance of those structures is being maintained by somebody who has the ability to collect a fee to cover the cost for that. If it’s not put into an HOA, then it is either going to be the responsible ability of a property owner, which could be for example, one resident whose home has the detention pond in their yard. Or it could default to the city. If it was turned over to the city, then it would become our obligation and costs. The last item then is limited maintenance of adjacent public improvements. And in the picture on the screen here this is 17th Avenue looking west, the east gate subdivision also called Seattle grass Park, over at County Line Road and 17 just south of gem Han pond, the area in the picture is the arterial right of way that is on the south side of 17. And is adjacent to this development. There are homes that are within the development that back to this area. But under our codes, we need somebody to be responsible for the maintenance, snow shoveling of that area, upkeep of the right of way that’s adjacent to it. This is an obligation as an example that is proof that is put on to an HOA with the development of the property adjacent to an arterial Street. One of the reasons why this comes into play is that our codes do not allow for homes to front on arterial or collector streets as a way to prevent some of the concerns that we get when people have homes that are on busy streets that they front onto with driveways and porches and things like that, that we get complaints about the traffic. So one of the ways that we have tried to mitigate that impact to the people who live in these areas is to have subdivisions that have homes internal to these areas that back to these areas that that are maintained by HOAs. So what are the expectations of the HOAs maintenance responsibility is the primary one. Again, snow removal, irrigation, mowing, repairs to common areas, whether that be irrigation systems, be it Park equipment, benches, shelters, picnic tables, and then also those drainage facilities that we talked about. And then the other expectation, again, is the ability for them to collect monies to pay for these improvements and to keep them up over time. The example that we have on the screen right now is within what I know is the Ludlow property, this is over by the UC Health development Highlands. Something that the highlands, forgive me, this is a example of a townhome project, you have approximately seven units here, that all around individual lots, they have common areas that they are trying to take care of, which would be the tree lawn out in front between the curb and the sidewalk, as well as the adjacent sidewalks, typically in when we look at townhome developments such as this, the HOAs are established to maintain and to keep a consistent feel across the entire property if the seven or eight of us lived here. And we all took our own time to do the maintenance, the mowing, the weed control, irrigation, the difference in the way that all of our yards would look would probably be significant. Most HOAs, when they are put together are trying to keep everything looking consistent from an upkeep standpoint. And so oftentimes, when you see duplex developments similar to what’s up at the Prairie Village Development, that coffin and bro did, those homes are on individual lots. But the way that the responsibilities were set up is that the HOA maintains those, we do not require this. That is a choice of the developer and the choice of the people that move into there. That how this is maintained. Our only requirement is that if there’s a detention pond, a pocket park or an arterial Street, that or an area that does not have someone that fronts onto it for maintenance purposes, that there’s an HOA to maintain, and keep that area up. So this is a choice that that the residents that move in here are making is to have an HOA that maintains these areas for them. Again, here’s some pictures of some of the common areas that we have. We have requirements starting on the right, we have buffer requirements of areas that separate developments. So as you’re one development next to another, you’ll often see buffer areas between them. We also to meet state laws as well as federal regulations. We have detention ponds with water quality features that have to be maintained, which is the example there in the center. And then the common elements, which are the pocket parks on the left, as well as with the benches and other amenities that are put in those for the residents that live there. So some of the things that the city currently requires, like pocket parks like buffers, if those were not requirements, there may be opportunities in some cases where HOAs are not needed, or fees are not needed to be collected. But once you get over an acre in size and a development, you’re going to run into a problem still with your water quality, and your stormwater runoff features and needing somebody to maintain and take care of those areas. This really ends my presentation tonight as to why we have the requirements for the HOAs. And I’m here to answer any of the questions you have about that as well as Wayne and so if you have any questions, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:33
Councillor Martin,

Speaker 20 1:23:33
thank you, Mayor pack. So just to sort of sum up Don. And this was very clear and good. What we’ve really got is an HOA is have two areas of responsibility. They have they are responsible to the city for essential maintenance like detention ponds, they are also responsible to the residence for goals of the HOA which are res represented typically by the covenants which means that your neighbor is not going to be allowed to paint their eaves hot pink, correct. Um, and the city does not care whether the eaves are hot pink as long as they’re painted. But the city does care a lot about the maintenance of common areas and that that essential maintenance. So that’s what we’re looking at.

Speaker 25 1:24:27
There’s there’s one thing I’d like to point out just so that everybody understands, and we don’t do this as much now as we used to do before the last code update in 2018. We used to do a lot more PUDs and in pu DS typically there are architectural requirements design requirements for what homes and buildings within the PUD that would look like and oftentimes the insurance that that was continued to be followed that guidance as to what those homes should look like. The colors, the other attributes associated with the design of those homes ultimately fell to the HOA to enforce. But we have moved away from PUDs, we don’t do those as much as we did. They’re still in the code, though, right? They still are an option. Yes, they are. And so that is something that could fall to them as a requirement of the approval of the PUD. So I just want to make sure that you knew that. Yes.

Speaker 20 1:25:29
And there is you sort of edged up to one of the the things that might be on one side or the other of those lines, and that is outbuildings and in particular accessory dwelling units. Yes. Do we rely on the HOA to and their their prohibitionist? Typically, for accessory dwelling units? To simplify our problems? Are our issues about inspecting and permitting outbuildings in neighborhoods with HOAs? Or does it make no difference at all?

Speaker 25 1:26:08
So from our standpoint, it doesn’t make a difference, we still follow our regulations. But when we know that an HOA has restrictions, we warn that homeowner that property owner before they make application that they should ensure that they’ve received proper approvals from the HOA that they’re a part of. So there are HOAs that we know about that have pretty strict guidelines. And we warn those folks when they come in, they should seek to make sure they’ve gotten those approvals before they apply for a permit. Okay,

Speaker 20 1:26:39
so you I would what, then the answer is really that is the HOAs preference. That’s the side of the fence that that ad use are on and therefore we do not need to be afraid if the state mux with those rules, for example. It’s not going to hurt the city.

Speaker 25 1:27:02
I think that’s a policy decision for the council to make, I don’t know that

Speaker 20 1:27:05
it’s not going to cause an operational difficulty as the input

Speaker 25 1:27:10
from the from ish reviewing and issuing permits, it actually makes it a little bit easier because we’re less worried about finding getting a permit someone starting and then an HOA going in and giving someone a violation letter. Right.

Speaker 20 1:27:26
So to sum that up, the getting rid of HOAs would cause the city terrible trouble. But voiding a covenant that is really for the contract between the HOA and the residents would not cause the city terrible trouble.

Speaker 25 1:27:46
No, it would not cost us any causes trouble nor cost us additional monies to be spent.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:51
Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know, your I appreciate this.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:56
Councillor McCoy.

Speaker 24 1:27:57
Thank you, Mayor Peck. Don, I appreciate your presentation here. You know, so what I’m gathering is that HOAs are here to kind of keep that aesthetic there to keep the snow removal for the safety aspect. In order and to to take care of added value sort of things like tennis courts and pools and stuff like that. The thing I think that some folks have a bit of a problem with is some of the original, rigid aspects around, you know, accessory dwelling units, that sort of thing. And we’ll cross that bridge at some point, I assume. But I think that some folks are having a problem with that, you know, how some HOAs seem to just keep going up and up and up and the price gouging that seems to go on and the in the unexplained cost and expenses that seem to be kind of in their, in their monthly cost to the residence and as we try to maneuver through this idea of affordable and attainable housing. And, you know, we’re doing our part to do that. And it seems like there, there are some HOAs that are more expensive than others. As any of us that have gone out in the campaign recently and talked to folks that were you know, in these neighborhoods, we’ve seen a huge disparity between the cost of one HOA that seems to be almost identical to another one with maybe a pool or tennis court, certainly as much you know, open space area or communal area and, and sidewalks for scraping of for snow removal. I think that the issue is is where do we ever come in and do an audit of something of an A To wait, is there ever a process or a procedure or a trigger mechanism for that type of thing, because I think that’s where the community is grown tired of trying to solve the problems when the HOAs some of them are going out. And I know this because I had a daughter that worked for an HOA, and they seem to have some kind of funny. Pricing. That’s why she got out of it.

Speaker 25 1:30:26
So I’m gonna ask Wayne to answer that for you, please.

Speaker 23 1:30:31
Thanks, Don, Mayor Peck council member of McCoy. So with HOAs, their pricing, their budgeting is entirely up to the HOA, and HOA board. As a reminder, HOA boards are elected members of the community. So any any one who is part of an HOA as required by being a property owner, within their boundaries, can theoretically get on the board and make those decisions. So a to two HOAs that have identical identical amenities, etc. could choose to maintain them at a different level, put different levels of funding into them. Um, if you have a pool, you may have different types of pools, you may maintain it differently. Even having different contracts for maintenance could lead to, to that. So that’s not something that city has ways into at all, it’s entirely their decision. So that’s kind of the first piece of your question on this. The second piece, the the auditing the, the way HOAs are legally set up the Kotori element is at the state level, not at the county level. So the city doesn’t play a role in kind of that regulation beyond what Don outlined with those kind of specific elements. The city doesn’t play a role in regulating or auditing, etc.

Speaker 24 1:31:58
So Wayne do some of the the, like commercial, the apartment complexes and thing, you know, places like that have HOAs that are, you know, pretty much run by a business that just basically does makes all those decisions on behalf of the investors.

Speaker 23 1:32:25
So typically, if you’ve got an apartment complex, that’s probably don’t that may be owned by a corporation or a private entity, but they wouldn’t have an HOA because it would be only one property owner. Okay. So that’s why you need to have multiple multiple property owners. Okay,

Speaker 10 1:32:40
typically what you think what you’re referring to is when you have a commercial development, it’s a different function. And they impose common area maintenance fees associated with their property, which is distinctly different than an HOA, because that’s part of your lease agreement in with whatever that development is.

Speaker 25 1:33:03
Okay. And an example of that would be, for example, where Lowe’s and Best Buy or the harvest junction, north and south both have their own maintenance setup for those because some of those lots are own individually by the corporations that are in those buildings, and others are owned by an investment group. So there’s a mix there, but there’s an association that they pay into a business association that does the maintenance of all the right of way along 119 and handles snow removal and things like that. All right. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:38
Councillor Crist.

Speaker 26 1:33:42
Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Burchette. Because of the common elements to most of the new developments, would we say that all the new developments that the city is proposing and working on right now will have HOAs and HOAs have pretty much been prescribed since 1992. In the city of Longmont.

Speaker 25 1:34:07
Councilmember Chris, I would say that you’re correct. I believe we’re working on very few that are under an acre in size that would not require an HOA so you’re

Speaker 26 1:34:20
okay, so if you’re looking to buy a house in Longmont, the chances are very likely that you’re going to end up in an HOA so you really don’t have a lot of choice. Your choices, which are HOA you end up in. Okay, so, just to piggyback off Councillor McCoy’s comments. One of the things that we’re working on is affordability. And we did talk a lot about affordable housing and being the newest member of the Council, I’m amazed at how many HOA concerns have come through my inbox. And when I you know and then See all different types of issues that people comment about the HOA. But when it comes down to it, what they’re really talking about is affordability. You know, people that say, you know, well, because of this issue, could be trees could be roof could be common area, maintenance, our rates have gone up. And some of the numbers that they quote to me are 40% or 60%. I even read if that we were in a banking situation, we would call that predatory to raise the rate that much in one year. And it does make the fees unaffordable if you’re on a fixed income. And a lot of times these are townhomes or condos, you know, where people are looking for more services, so their rates are higher anyway. So he’s saying like 200, and then it suddenly goes up to 300. That’s, that’s a big jump. So I’m just wondering, I see the need for both HOAs. And for people to have affordable housing. So I’m just wondering how we can get together on this. And some of the complaints I’ve heard are that their rates are being raised? While there’s still.

Speaker 26 1:36:29
What’s the word I want a contingency fund this fully funded? And also, what’s the other one that they do? Can anyone help me here? I should know this. I’ve served on a handful of HOA boards, so I should know. But um, they help keep reserves is what they keep. And so it seems like that should come into play. Rather than keeping that fully funded, they should take the money out of that. And then you know, with the raise in rate, then refund it, which is kind of how the city works. And we work on we have contingency funds that we use for things that come out that are out of the budget. So you know, that are outside of the budget. So I’m just wondering, and I guess this is more towards Wayne, you work with the ngvla group? Is it possible you your group could come back with some recommendations on how to how to come up with a standardization maybe of monthly increases. And I’m thinking 10%, maybe a little bit more than that. We’re talking about inflation. 4% is your average rate of inflation. That’s why we’re so inflated right now. And I get that, but we have to be very reasonable with homeowners.

Speaker 10 1:37:55
So I’m gonna jump in with on that one for Wayne. The challenges and something that Don said is it’s a separate governing body. And it’s under the control of the state. And so the city’s ability to come in and dictate to an HOA, how they work, we don’t have that authority, as I understand it, within the existing regulatory function. That’s really something that the state’s going to have to act on, because that’s in their purview.

Speaker 26 1:38:26
Thank you. I see in the, in the common column, a common interest act, that the state has also received a lot of requests for changes and has made a change in 2021, as well as in 2023. And, and so yes, I’m trying to keep the city out of this and saying, I know we have the ngvla group to coordinate. And I think you’ve talked with a lot of the board members of HOAs Is that true? Mr. Tomek?

Speaker 23 1:39:02
Councilman? Chris? Yes, we do. But I do want to note that the never group leaders Association is a network of neighborhood based community groups not have actual HOAs even though there’s a lot of coordination there, and a lot of participation of HOAs within those groups. They are separate entities. And I wanted to address that the cost increases. There’s a lot of things that we’re hearing a lot of that kind of feedback as well. So a lot of things playing into that including, obviously inflation and things that are affecting all of us. But a lot of what we’ve been hearing of the dramatic increases are actually related. Certainly not unique to Longmont, but related to insurance costs increases that are somewhat related nationally, but especially on cities along the front range, partially really to the marshal fire and those kinds of issues. have caused dramatic increases in HOA insurance rates for all of our communities. The other piece of that that we have noticed is also that we have a lot of kind of older HOAs that maybe were approved in the 90s, for example, that are going through natural aging as part of their lifecycle is a neighborhood. And at that point, a lot of times you have lower income individuals living in those neighborhoods, but the cost to maintain those elements goes up significantly. And so that’s part of the reason why you see cost increases as well.

Speaker 10 1:40:35
So in part of it, what we got into around the flume we had the flood is so when Don talked about there certain infrastructure that the HOAs are required to maintain. There was one neighborhood in particular that they were having issues with groundwater, part of the underground infrastructure. And that’s the under drain system and in the pumps that they had to have the HOA was actually required to maintain that when the issue so at some point in the history of that HLA, it was functioning, and then it wasn’t functioning. And so in order to deal with the issue and what they were required to, many people had moved into a neighborhood not realizing that the HOA was responsible for that work. So the HOA actually had to reengage and charge the necessary costs or the necessary rates in order to maintain the infrastructure that they had been required to maintain over time. So there are occasions and older neighborhoods where you’ll see this evolution of being really active to not active but then when to Wayne’s point, when when the infrastructure needs to be maintained, they will see significant increases to the insurance point, all HOAs are not the same. So anytime you have an attached product, the insurance rate for an HOA that manages attached product is different than an HOA that has single family detached product, because they’re ultimately insuring the exterior of the structure itself. And the people that live in those HOAs. They insure the interior of it. So you have different insurance policies in play. So they all have some unique characteristics, and what they’re having to manage. And, you know, it’s interesting to see, even when you have, I’ll use my neighborhood, there’s two HOAs. They’re not necessarily the same, because the HOA that I’m in actually has a responsibility for the majority of the green space around the neighborhood compared to the adjoining HOA. So the cost structures will start looking different different based on the requirements of who has to maintain what components of green space in it, even though from a distance, they don’t look the same, they look the same. But in reality, they’re not really the same based on the amount of square footage, it has to be maintained.

Speaker 26 1:43:17
These are homeowner associations, but it’s feeling to homeowners, like they’re not part of the association anymore. And I know there’s a board elected, but often that’s a five person board. Occasionally you see a seven person board someone, there’s only five members. And usually it’s one deciding vote that decides, you know, how much how much the increase is going to be. So this has been a very good discussion. I appreciate you bringing all this information forward to us and like to continue it at some point as to how we can support citizens in the city.

Speaker 25 1:43:54
Good. I can add one more thing just absolutely. Before I walk away here. I think the council when you heard from the affordable housing report, one of the items that came up that was talked about in that suggested changes that you’ve directed staff to start looking at was to reduce some of the buffer requirement. As an example, if you’re doing an affordable project, those kinds of code changes can make a significant difference in the cost for these homeowners associations. Another thing that we did back in 2018, when we updated the land development code as we made two significant changes, which I think you might want to consider thinking about whether it’s the next step one, we got rid of required percentages for types of development for open space. We used to have a standard percentage if you came in and you did a residential single family subdivision. zoned r1, you had to do 20% of the ground right off the bat had to be open space. We didn’t care what it looked like. We didn’t care what it was used for. 20% and then You had to provide pocket park on top of it. And we looked at that. And we said, Really, what are we doing other than we’re creating a whole bunch of obligation of maintenance for these future residents. So we got rid of that percentage, we don’t have the percentage anymore that 20%. And a PUD, it was 30%. Okay, so those numbers are gone. The next thing that we looked at was the pocket park requirements, we put in a requirement that says that if you’re within a quarter mile walking distance of a public park, you do not have to build your own park in your development and maintain it. Because the thought was you could walk to the park that the city has provided in your neighborhood, why would we want you to build another park within your development and maintain, but we still have that requirement for any development that’s outside that quarter mile radius of the park. Again, that’s insurance. For that pocket park, that’s maintenance. That’s up keep making sure that that playground equipment that was okay, back in 1999. And now we’re 20 plus years later, and we’re going that isn’t really as safe as it should be, we need to take that out, we need to replace it. It’s a lot of costs. So things that you might want to think about that you’ve already started talking about with the affordable housing side, you might want to think about whether or not that’s something that should be allowed, and should be changed for other developments within the city as well reduce those things that would require more cost for the HOA, focus on the things that matter, focus on the things that we really want them to take care of the detention ponds, the water quality, the snow removal, the maintenance stuff associated with any of those kinds of rights of way, maybe we back off on some of these open space requirements a little bit. It also would open up some land for development for additional housing in those areas as well.

Speaker 10 1:46:56
And there’s an alignment I mean, we’ve talked about it as staff there’s also an alignment with our sustainability goals too. When we talk about water usage and on the sustainability side so I think many of the things don just talked about it’s it touches really more than one area it touches sustainability. It touches housing in terms of if you can reduce some of the capital costs and you can reduce the cost of housing. It reduces that ongoing costs for individuals so if counsel wants us to look at that in more depth, we’d be happy to bring that back to you all.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:32
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 1:47:33
Thank you Don The next thing on our general business agenda is our sustainability and climate action 2023 annual report and I’d like to invite Lisa noteblock up to the podium a little little one yes let’s take a five minute break

Speaker 9 1:48:17
we need a bucket of damage know

Unknown Speaker 1:48:29
what I will make no I can’t do it to this.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:49
This week.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:54
Well, that’s why

Unknown Speaker 1:50:11
Yeah when I when I jumped out the door

Speaker 27 1:50:19
purpose of quantum setup here is I want to come sit up here try to feel so empty my thank you

Unknown Speaker 1:50:43
are it received a why we

Unknown Speaker 1:50:51
call for this

Unknown Speaker 1:50:54
they have to be

Speaker 27 1:51:01
with you

Unknown Speaker 1:51:13
nobody

Unknown Speaker 1:51:21
were general you know fair enough

Unknown Speaker 1:51:36
a frequently asked question President

Unknown Speaker 1:51:44
firmly today that she’s not going to do a proclamation

Unknown Speaker 1:51:51
you were to work from non embarrassingly we’re gonna ask questions now that she’s presiding over short when they wrap up like make a grand entry, like hello

Unknown Speaker 1:52:25
our

Speaker 27 1:52:32
Oh, Ida thing to talk about so many things. They emailed me today and was like, Yeah, I think we’re fine. And then he can help me back. It was like, Wait, what is this?

Unknown Speaker 1:52:46
Like yours?

Speaker 27 1:52:48
I’m sorry. I apologize. My attempt to make all these things go together. made it extra confusing. butchering this one.

Speaker 14 1:53:02
Next one. Hopefully she said she would review the paragraphs, the extensions and then the letters of the word I haven’t heard over the past trip.

Speaker 1 1:53:47
Are our five minutes are up. So we will welcome Lisa nanoblock for the sustainable sustainability annual report.

Speaker 27 1:53:58
Thank you so much, Mayor pagkain members of council. I’m Lisa Knobloch. I’m the sustainability manager with strategic integration. And I’m happy to be with you all this evening. I’m gonna go through a brief overview of sustainability and climate action work and really contextualize that for some of our newer folks who are no may not be as familiar with the breadth and depth of our sustainability and climate action efforts. I’ll review our 2023 Annual Report, and then do some more in depth review of our actions and targets specifically in our major greenhouse gas sectors. I’ll show you our climate risk and resilience map and then we’ll do a short demonstration of our new Longmont indicators platform. Sorry about the formatting on that I’m not quite sure what’s happening with that. Those are not crossed out. Those are supposed to be underlined. But I like to show this slide because I think it’s a good representation of how the work we do with sustainability and climate action is really integrated into a lot of different plans and resolutions and efforts across the organization and how all of these things and this is not comprehensive. But these things really work together and focus across the organization, not just in the sustainability office support and implement sustainability and climate action work. So really envision Longmont the city’s comprehensive plan is our foundational document. And as you know, that was done in 2016. That called for the development of a sustainability plan, which was also done in 2016. And you’ll see in the sustainability plan, and that was 10 topic areas, everything from air quality to water to waste to transportation to community resilience. Within the sustainability plan. Within each of those topic areas, you’ll see the tie to the guiding principles and goals of Envision Longmont, and then they each have objectives, strategies and timelines associated with the each of those topic areas within the sustainability plan called for our first greenhouse gas inventory to really give us a sense of where our greenhouse gas emissions were coming from. That was done in 2018, we developed a set of recommendations and greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets as well. And then, as you know, in 2018, the city also passed the climate or the renewable energy resolution. Then we have the climate emergency resolution resolution and 2019, which called for developing our climate action recommendations report, and the subsequent beneficial building electrification plan and equitable carbon free transportation roadmap. And then our goal Evie resolution and zero waste resolution as well. So all of these things really work together. I wanted to show this also so that you all know that as I get into some of the specific topic areas and strategies, sometimes it sounds like we’re talking about things in isolation. But this is really the backdrop for all of the work that we do, we really work closely in collaboration and coordination across the organization. So all of those plans and resolutions really roll up into our key sustainability targets. So we have other targets as well. But these are the primary ones that we focus on, we really try to organize around, we have our primary target around reducing our greenhouse gas emissions 66% by 2030, and 69% by 2050, or 100% renewable energy goal. Our targets are with regards to zero emission vehicles, so 30% by 2030, and 100% by 2050. And then we have a fleet goal around that as well. Our waste diversion targets 75%, diversion by 2030 95% by 2050. And then our water conservation target reducing raw water by 10% by community build out, and all of these you can find on the new Longmont indicators platform. So as we know, climate action is a key priority for city council. And as I mentioned, our greenhouse gas emissions inventory is really the one of the foundational components of our climate action work, because that really tells us where our primary greenhouse gas emissions are coming from. You can see by this graph here, this is our 2020 2021 emissions inventory, we do inventories every three years. So some of you may have seen this data before, we’ll do another one and 2025 using 2024 data. But this really shows you that the bulk of our emissions are coming from electricity, you can see that in the dark blue. And that’s made above commercial and residential, mostly buildings. And you can see a small sliver from transmission and distribution. This kind of rest color on the bottom, I just want to point out, that’s what we refer to as our additional equity share of emissions. So that’s the emissions associated with our portion of the electricity that Platte River sells on the market, not what’s delivered to Longmont. It’s not actually included in our formal inventory, but we think it’s an important point of information. The next is primary sources natural gas. And you’ll see again, the commercial and residential buildings make up a significant portion of that. And then transportation followed by a couple of other smaller sectors. So this is a graph from lunga indicators that shows how we how well we’re doing in reaching our climate action goals. So you can see in 2021, we had a 13% reduction from that 2016 baseline. You’ll see on the top, the dashed line there that splits is what we call business as usual. So if we did nothing else beyond today, that’s how we could expect to see our emissions to grow. But if we keep on track with implementing what we have identified through the sustainability plan and climate action recommendations report, you can see that we’d be just about reaching our 2030 goal. If we reach that 100% renewable energy goal by 2030. And that you can see we are on track to exceed our 2050 goal that teal colored boxes the stationary energy emission so really the you can see the bulk of that is electricity and natural gas. That’s why you see that big drop in 2030 and the remaining emissions are primarily natural gas from buildings and then transportation So I’m not going to go through the whole 2023 report that you all had in your packet. But I wanted to point out some formatting changes for that from the last year. So we move things around a little bit, we now have this cover page that has more of that history in that contextualization and that tied to envision Longmont. It has Longmont sustainability vision, and then driving folks again, too long my indicators. The two metrics I want to point out to you here is that 81% of our strategies from the sustainability plan and climate action recommendations report on track for implementation, if 52% of our targets are on track, to be met. And and I want to highlight that number, in particular, because there are still a handful of targets that we have that are have been on the back burner is kind of to be determined a couple of our equity related targets, because we’ve just had some difficulty in really figuring out how do we track and report those things. So that’s impacting that number. And then we have a couple of indicators in our energy and transportation sectors, which I’ll talk about in a few minutes that aren’t on track. There’s work underway, but they’re not on track to meeting our participation numbers that we are we’re anticipating to really get help us get to our greenhouse gas emissions reduction schools. So the page on the left, you’ll see it’s that snapshot of those key sustainability targets and how well we’re doing meeting those targets. On the bottom left, you’ll see the ways in which we engage the community, which is a really important part of our work, we know that we as the city can’t do all of this work alone. So we engage with our residents, we engage with the business community, we engage with community based organizations, and this showcases some of that work there. And then we have supporting work in adaptation, resilience, a lot of education and outreach that we do, and then to focus on equity and climate action. And then I’ll just highlight this little climate action icon at the bottom. You’ll see that noted throughout the report, which just shows recommendations that were specifically from the climate action recommendations report.

Speaker 27 2:02:10
And since we know that climate action is a key priority for city council, I just wanted to show how the recommendations from the climate action recommendations report are underway. So on the left, there’s the near term recommendations, you can see all but one of those is underway. The one that we that’s kind of on hold for the moment is the Climate Action Fund. And that’s been on hold largely because we’ve had some staff turnover. But we now have a new grant coordinator, we have a new director of business enablement that’s coming on next week. And we’re hoping that those are the folks that can really help support us in developing that recommendation. And then 2023 was the first year of the implementation period for our midterm recommendations. And you can see we have a lot of recommendations already underway in that timeframe as well. And then when there were a handful of recommendations that staff has had identified as having some components that really needed further investigation before we don’t determine the best way to implement those strategies. But one of them, we’ve been doing some work in terms of education and outreach regarding flood mitigation and preparedness. Those were the recommendations from the Climate Action Task Force that was the group that was really tasked with determining the what do we do to accelerate climate action? We also have equity recommendations from our just Transition Plan Committee, which was a group that met concurrently to the Climate Action Task Force to develop recommendations on how do we go about our climate action work in an equitable way. And they have a series of recommendations that are listed here. And then all of those together, became the climate action recommendations report. And before I get into those technical specifics of how are we doing with regards to things like renewable energy and electric vehicles and whatnot, I want to highlight this component of equity and climate action because it’s a really foundational piece of the work that we do. Everything that we do with sustainability and climate action is done with that equity lens. We do that in a number of ways. We have a really diverse and committed team who has a lot of expertise in equity work has commitment to equity work, we partner with folks across the organization, including community neighborhood resources, who have been doing that work for a long time, both in the city and in the community. And then we have our equitable Climate Action Team. And that’s a group of frontline, predominantly frontline community members. It’s a staff led group, and they help support the implementation of equitable climate action through community engagement and outreach. And then they work with those recommendations that were developed into an equity checklist and discussion guide to help provide feedback on city projects and programs. In 2023, they volunteered at 14 community events and they provided feedback on eight different city projects. So we’ll get into those primary sectors of our greenhouse gas emissions and talk about where we are today. In our work, so first of all is electricity. Our overarching target, again, is that greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, which I mentioned, we reduce 13%, but in 2021, and then we have two supporting targets, the first of which is increasing our renewable energy to 100%. By 2030. I apologize, we don’t have 2023 numbers I was hoping to, they should be ready any day, we’ll make sure to share those with you when we get them. But in 2022, the our portion of renewable energy that was delivered to Longmont was about 48%. And then Platte rivers total portfolio was about 36% renewable. As you all know, Platte River right now is has their integrated resource planning process underway, they’ll be coming to you in the coming months to discuss that further with you. And then they have two additional integrated resource planning processes that they’ll do between now and 2030. With a focus on the school, the other supporting target is increasing our electric energy savings to 2%. through energy efficiency measures by 2025. We are not on track to meeting that target in 2023, that number actually dropped a bit from 2022. That’s due to a couple of factors. There’s population growth in that there’s load growth from electrification measures. And then a lot of our commercial customers or bigger commercial customers in particular have done a lot of the easier kind of low hanging fruit with regards to energy efficiency. And so we need to step up our support with them for the more difficult items to implement to really get us more to that 2%. Electric or that 2% energy efficiency savings. These are the five recommendations from the climate action, Task Force and renewable energy. The ones in blue are the near term recommendations, and the one in that reddish color are the midterm recommendations. And you can see that there’s a lot of work happening in each of these. The one that I’ll highlight here that’s not quite on track is the Climate Action Task Force had recommended to accelerate the AMI installation. And we did not hit that end of 2023 target, but we are on track for that completion of installation by the end of 2024. In natural gas, again, we have our overarching greenhouse gas target with two supporting targets. One is decreasing the utility cost burden for low income households or energy efficiency measures, we are doing well on that. And then again, that energy efficiency savings goal, and you’ll see a number of these recommendations from the Climate Action Task Force are really important in helping us to achieve that energy efficiency savings goal, many of which we are on track for, again, the commercial energy efficiency, like I said, that’s an ongoing program, we need to step that up to see our impact from that program. Similarly, our low income energy efficiency program and residential energy efficiency program both have targets to reach 400 homes by 2025. We are not on track to meet that. But we are trying to shift the resources that we have available and do additional outreach and education this year to help drive up participation in those programs. Our work on the beneficial electrification plan is underway. We have incentives. We’re doing a lot of Elevate education and promotion, focusing on partnerships and demonstrations. And then one of the key things that I want to highlight here that came out of the electrification plan was implementing code recommendations for building electrification, along with EB and solar readiness. The recommendation from the electrification plan was to implement the code recommendations from the northwestern regional code cohort which we have been participating in. That’s a regional group of communities that are working to create consistent code requirements across our communities to help support reaching our climate action goals, as well as create that consistency for the developer and contractor community. Those recommendations were done in fall of 2023. Staff has been evaluating those and then the business services folks will be rolling that into the 2024 code cycle re bringing those to you all for discussion and consideration later this year. In the transportation area, we have a target of reducing our transportation emissions 42% by 2030 and 100%. By 2050. We’re doing pretty well on that we’ve decreased our emissions 26% Based on that 2021 inventory. I will put an asterisk next to that where the trend just note that the transportation sector is one where the methodology for calculating those emissions is continuously changing. It’s very much an art not a science, and we’re trying to keep up with best practices. So some of that number reflects the work that we’ve been putting in and some of that number also reflects some of those changes in methodology are two supporting targets there are increasing zero emission vehicles 30% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. And then we have a fleet target of 25% by 2025.

Speaker 27 2:10:01
We are not on track to meet those goals, I do want to highlight, I don’t have 2023 fleet numbers yet, in 2022, we had about 5% of our vehicles were alternative fuels, I just want to give a lot of kudos to cash John’s who’s our fleet manager, he’s been working really hard. And it’s really committed to this transition. There’s supply chain issues and other things that are kind of out of our control. But he’s been a really fantastic partner in helping us in this transition here. And then as far as city wide electric vehicles, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of factors that are outside of LeMans control, there’s a lot of market forces that play. So we do what we can we provide, we have some Eevee charging rebates available, we do some promotion. And we will do more of that this year to make sure that folks are aware of the federal and state event incentives that are available, kind of myth busting those sorts of things around electric vehicles. But one of our primary opportunities, there’s our engagement with Colorado communities for climate action, or CC for CA, and our membership with that as a statewide lobbying group to focus on statewide legislation that can really help support driving this area through legislation like the advanced clean cars rule. And then we have another supporting target around increasing mode share. This is getting folks out of out of single occupancy vehicles, whether they’re gasoline or electric, and getting folks to be biking and walking more and using transit. Were you doing pretty well on that? Target that one is that data set in particular is a pretty difficult one to really get a lot of accuracy on. So we’re hoping with the update to the transportation mobility plan, that we’ll have some better data around some of that information as well. And then two things that I want to highlight. So we have we have our equitable carbon free transportation roadmap, the recommendations from that are getting integrated into the transportation mobility plan update. And so that will kind of supplant that plan that’s on Longmont indicators. And then we’re still participating in the implementation of the regional electric vehicle plan. And the focus on that this year is information sharing across those communities. Community outreach, so again, trying to standardize some of that messaging, that we’re getting out to the community. And then one exciting thing that I want to share with folks is that Boulder County, with support from the communities that have been participating in the regional ed plan went after and was awarded a pretty significant D O T grant. That’s given given them $4.9 million, plus about $2 million of matching funds. So I think a little over $7 million for installation of EB charging infrastructure across the county over the next three years. So long Mont really stands to benefit a lot from that funding. And then some supporting efforts. So we have our ongoing climate action Sundays that we’ve been doing in partnership with the museum, we’re modifying that a bit in 2024 for greater impact, focused on commercial and residential composting that’s really coming through our universal recycling ordinance. So the recycling requirements of that went into effect this year. And composting requirements will go into effect in 2025. And then we’ve been doing a lot of work in this public health impacts of climate change area. So we just finished up our climate risk and resilience map which I’ll show to you. And then we have two programs that we’ve been doing. The first of which is the whole home health extreme hate program. And that’s in partnership with LPC and housing and community investment. And that’s bringing together health and health and safety measures, energy efficiency measures and building electrification for the purposes of cooling and creating healthy, safe and comfortable homes for folks to be more resilient in as we see more extreme heat days. And we have some funding that we receive from the DoD as well as some additional county money that we’ll be utilizing this year to continue to scale that program. And then one of the things we did last year is real time heat mapping. So we had a set of community volunteers put heat sensors on their cars and drive around on a hot summer day throughout the city, and get real time data on the heat differential in different parts of the community based on different physical characteristics. And then we held a number of community cooling conversations in some of the neighborhoods that were showing as higher for extreme heat risk, and really talk to folks about what they wanted to see as far as cooling solutions in their neighborhoods. And so they identified a number of solutions that we’re now working this year with our parks folks and community neighborhood resources and art in public places to implement those schooling solutions in the Kensington Landon and Spangler parks, and then we’ll continue those conversations with additional neighborhoods this year as well. Some other supporting efforts we have our ongoing sustainable business program that certified 57 businesses last year over half of those were under utilized underrepresented or multicultural business So again, that’s strong focus on equity, our communities neighborhoods Solutions Program, which is run through community neighborhood resources. So Wayne over there. In partnership with long mountain community foundation, we granted $17,000 to five community projects. And then we’re on track for getting 100% of our Longmont schools participating in the Green Star Schools program by the end of 2025. So I’m gonna take you quickly to our climate risk and resilience map. Before I do, I’ll show you kind of three components to that. We have a story map, which I’ll walk you through, we have the real time heat data, which I just mentioned. And then there’s an interactive map where you can overlay all of these different data components, and you can see how they interrelate to each other. So let’s see if this works. There we go. Okay. So this is the story map, there’s a couple of different ways to navigate this, you can just scroll down, or you can navigate across these tabs at the top. It’s available in Spanish as well. There’s an introduction that talks about what is the climate hazard? What does exposure and vulnerability mean? How do we develop our concept of of risk to each of these hazards, introduction on how to use the tool, some limitations on what this map is for, and it’s not some key findings. And then it gets into the risk data. So we have extreme heat, extreme cold, poor air quality, flooding, and then there’s a piece on wildfire. We didn’t map wildfire risk because of the complexities of that. But our natural resources folks, and public safety are doing community wildfire planning this year. So you see this is on a neighborhood scale, you can click on the neighborhoods, and it’ll pop up with information about certain household information and then the risk score for that particular climate risk. And the colors are it percentiles in relation to one another. So you’ll see the colors that are more darkly colored indicate a higher risk for that particular climate impact. And then there’s on the left, it shows kind of what goes into that risk score for each of these. And then on this one, there’s a community story. So we wanted people to be able to say in their own words, how they experience heat in their communities. And we’ll be building those out over time. And then it also links to the interactive map. And then this is where you can go in. In turn on and off each of these layers, you can add your own layers to it, you can save maps, and whatnot. So this is a really useful tool, where you can look at a lot of different things in relation to each other. So this one’s helpful, I think you can go in and you can look at that real time heat data, and how that relates to tree canopy. And you can see the impact to tree canopy on heat. And the purpose of this tool this will be publicly available. But part of the main focus of it is really as a decision making tool for leadership and staff. And to really help inform programs and policies and how we allocate resources to really enhance community resilience to climate impacts. There’s a section here, it goes into the vulnerability data. The county did some research on future climate hazards. So based on different climate scenarios, what might meet we anticipate seeing. And then there’s a section here that we’re calling currently Community Solutions and adaptive capacity. That’s really the resilience component. So we understand that we don’t want to just look at risk, we think that’s a really important piece to understand. But that’s not the full picture. And we don’t want to just look at it from that deficit perspective. But we really want to understand what are the assets and resources that neighborhoods have as well that really enhance that long term resilience? And how do we build up those resources. So we’ll be working with community and neighborhood resources this year on community based asset mapping, which we’ll build out over time to focus on that piece as well.

Speaker 27 2:19:27
All right. And then the last thing I want to show you all is, if you want to go in and point your to constituents to this as well to see how are we doing on all of these things? What are the actions that are underway? How are we progressing towards meeting our goals? And then if you really want to do a deep dive into greenhouse gas emissions, which some of you I know might be interested in doing that. We have our new Longmont indicators platform and we’re really excited about this. It’s a place that brings a lot of these plans together so folks can see really clearly what What are the connections across each of these plans? So it’s currently has the sustainability plan climate action recommendations report and vision Longmont? The electrification plan in the transportation roadmap. It has an overview of our greenhouse gas emissions and how we’re reaching our goals. It shows are some of our strategic indicators and how well we’re doing on those. And then there’s a lot of great functionality here where you can click on this Actions tab. And it’ll pull up all of the actions of all of the plans, if you want to see all of them, you can search by what we’ve called the overarching overarching theme. So what we noticed we get questions, a lot of folks saying, Why isn’t this aspect of transportation covered in the sustainability plan, you all aren’t doing anything on this piece? And we’d say, well, that we are but that’s covered in envision. This is an opportunity where people can actually go in see some of those overarching topics, so say transportation, and it’ll pull up all of the indication, all of the actions across all of those plans that are related to transportation. And then people can pick one of those, they can go into those and see all of the details on what we’re doing with that particular strategy, who’s the staff contact, if you want more information? What’s the implementation timeline, you can also do the same thing for all of the indicators as well. So if you’re really interested in, oops, environmental stewardship indicators, it will pull all of those up, and then you can click on each of these and see where we’re at in meeting our indicators. And then it also shows which other indicators that this is connected to, you can go into any one of these individual plans. So you and envision Longmont, you can see the guiding principles there, clicking on each one of them and kind of go as deep as you wanted to the information on each of these. And then the other component is what’s called the scenario tool. And that’s where you can do a deep dive in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions inventory. So it’ll pull up this graph, it takes a minute to populate. You can see kind of down here at the bottom, what our baseline is, what our target years are the main sources of our greenhouse gas emissions. And then you can go see where did it go. You can go into actions. These are all of our model actions. And you can actually toggle these on and off. So you can see what happens if we decide not to implement any of these or we’re not on track with our goal. So we can say if we turned off, say if we didn’t do anything in resonance in residential and commercial building electrification, you can see what that does to whether or not we’re able to reach our goals. You can turn on and off whether or not we have to hear one that reaching 90% renewable energy and one with that additional 10%. So if you have both of those on it, showing you the 100% renewable energy goal, and then you can go back to that main chart, and it can also graph and it can show you the impact here so and you can go as deep into this as as you so desire. But it’s a really exciting tool that I think really helps us show what are all of our what are all of our sustainability and climate action goals and how all of these plans help us reach those goals and how do they interact with one another. So we’ll be adding the parks and trails Master Plan and the transportation mobility plan and 2024. And then water efficiency plan and hopefully other plans in 2025. So as I mentioned, we’re moving into the timeframe for a midterm recommendations. So we’re looking at those for implementation timelines and budget, and whatnot. We’ll bring you our mid year report sometime in the late summer. And then we’ll continue to bring you project based updates as they arise.

Speaker 1 2:24:21
Thank you, Lisa. Looks like we have a couple of people in the queue. Councilman McCoy.

Speaker 24 2:24:28
Thank you, Mayor Peck. Thank you, Lisa. Beautiful presentation, just so that we can direct our our constituents to this from the main city website where we could we could we go from there and show how to get to this?

Speaker 27 2:24:48
Yes. That’s a great point. Francie, you might be able to tell people the best place to do that. Well let France navigate for a minute.

Speaker 28 2:24:58
Shorter I’m borough mayor and members of council Francie Jaffe sustainability coordinator in about mid March, we’ll have a highlight on the main page. So in the spotlight, there’ll be a spotlight there. But currently, if you each of these different plans are mentioned throughout the website, so if you go to the sustainability website page, it talks about where the sustainability planning link or if you go to envision Longmont talks about adventure, Long Lake, so we kind of put it in different locations where there’s already information about plans. And then again, we’ll have for a little bit of time, a spotlight on the the main page. So

Speaker 24 2:25:40
say that again. So that I mean, so can you show me from? Oh, that’s what I was thinking that? Yes, maybe we could, just so that we kind of walk folks to the where you’re sitting, you’re talking about where it currently is now? Yes.

Speaker 28 2:25:56
So right, this isn’t there yet. But about mid March, we’ll be having a news release go out. And when that goes out, we’ll have a in this spotlight section, there’ll be a spotlight highlighting the long run indicators. Until then, if you navigate over to in community, we have our sustainability section. So if I go here, and then right on this main page, we talk about our plan. And there’s a want to learn more. And right there, there’s a link to long lead indicators. Wonderful.

Speaker 24 2:26:33
That’s what I wanted to see. So that because people will want to know that. And this I see is kind of along the lines that Christine Pacheco is sort of dashboard that, you know, showed a lot of things aspects in regards that their presentation at the National League of Cities city Summit Conference, where it had that same sort of, you know, aspect to it that people will want to know, you know, because, you know, other communities might want to emulate what we’re doing here comes from Martin.

Speaker 20 2:27:17
Thank you, Mara Peck. And Lisa, this is really an impressive dashboard. So I like it, I think maybe on your presentation. I’m thinking slide 11 It was where you had the green and yellow arrows that showed whether you were on pace. This one or not? Yes. Yeah. No, this one is good. So I’m kind of, you know, it’s obvious why AMI installation is yellow, because we had a lot of problems. And it’s taken, like two years longer than we thought it would. But or at least two years longer than I thought it was and one year longer than anybody else thought it would. But the D ers pilot and development plan is showing green. And I wonder how you how you get to that, because here’s how I get to what it ought to be yellow or red. Okay. Um, so right now, the plans that LPC will enumerate get us to about 1.4 megawatts of peak demand that could be shifted, which is the real purpose of D ers. And that’s going to be maybe by the end of next year end of 2025. And PRPs expectation for Longmont is, I believe seven megawatts per by 2030, which is roughly 10% of our protected projected peak demand. And the literature says that we really should be shooting for 20%, especially since P RPA. isn’t going to be at 2030 at 100% renewables. And I personally think that the city should shift load and not buy this stuff when it’s not renewable. From them, so. So with all that preface that I know everybody hates, how do you come to the arrow is green?

Speaker 27 2:29:49
Sure. Yeah. Councilmember Martin, thank you for the question. I will do I will answer with my thought process and then I will say some of your other questions probably would be better were directed to LPC folks to speak to some of those numbers. So the recommendation was looking specifically at the DRS pilot and development plan. That process has been underway. And we have the smart grid roadmap that’s underway that’s set to be completed in the first quarter of 2024. So this progress is more focused on that

Speaker 20 2:30:24
planning works and interim goals than rather than an action no comp outcome. Yeah, those outcome pieces. Yeah, okay. Are most of these really not outcome based?

Speaker 27 2:30:36
It just depends on the recommendation and the way in which they were worded in the climate action recommendations report. So if you remember, on this slide, I did highlight in yellow, those things that we have work happening, I would have put red where we really just didn’t have anything going on. And again, that’s just the way my brain categorizes things. But I put those in yellow, because we do have things happening there. But we’re not meeting those targets that had specific targets associated with them, or we’re not getting to the participation that we know, we need to get us to our goals. So I will admit that those were more of my organizational in my own brain just because of the way that these are set up.

Speaker 20 2:31:16
Okay. So would it help you to have policy goals set by the council, like the 2030 goal?

Unknown Speaker 2:31:26
For the arrival

Speaker 20 2:31:28
of them, you know, building envelope, because it’s, I mean, I was happy to see that your aspiration for this year is 400 homes, low income homes, that’s still a really low number, considering how many we would like to have. Yes. Yeah. And so it would be wonderful to know what that where the need resides, so that we can set goals that allows us that allow us to to declare victory, you know, and yeah, it’s not going to be by 2030. Because it’s really hard to get people to do that. Let alone pay for it, or your you know, or fund us finding money to pay for it. I know, it’s hard. And yet the goals are not very ambitious, either.

Speaker 27 2:32:18
Councilmember Brenda yep, I would say that, I think we have our overarching and are supporting targets. We know a lot of what we need to do to get there. And we’ve identified I think, where, where we have specific participation, numbers or targets, and we have data that’s in the background for us, as far as you know, energy saved in those things. I don’t think we necessarily need additional policy targets to that depth. We have a lot of that background data that I don’t necessarily present here based on that modeling that we have available. I think it’s a matter of having the resources to scale to get that participation that we need in those things. Right.

Speaker 20 2:33:13
And, and reason that I asked is not because I thought you don’t know, but because your goals are against plan rather than against objective. And that that makes you able to do lots of green energy, but it but it also leaves us with a lot of people with drafty houses when it becomes really a problem not to be electric. So I’m just that’s the reason that I’m asking and will continue to ask. Sure. And thank you really, this is this is really very helpful. But I just those green arrows aren’t are not credible to me. Yeah.

Speaker 27 2:34:04
Yeah. Thank you. I understand. Yeah. And that’s also part of again, going to the Longmont indicators that is where there’s a lot of those harder numbers that you add also ticket to Yeah, thank you. And I will say that those those do not represent these targets that have more specificity around them that we are showing whether or not we’re on track for those.

Unknown Speaker 2:34:29
See no one else in the queue. Thank you, Lisa. It’s really good report.

Unknown Speaker 2:34:33
Thank you all so much. Have a good evening.

Speaker 1 2:34:35
You too. We are now at EA which is our 2024 legislative bills recommended for city council Sandy cedar assistant city manager

Speaker 29 2:34:56
Thank you Mayor Sandy cedar assistant city manager as you said We only have one bill for your consideration tonight and that is Senate Bill 159 concerning modifications to process to further protect public health and energy and carbon. What this bill basically does is that creates a commission to adopt rules in order to help with to, essentially to cease oil and gas permits starting in 2030. With a reduction of those oil and gas permits in 2028 and 2029. Given the council’s long standing policy around kind of no drilling in Longmont and the fact that this would help our air quality overall staff is recommending that you support Senate Bill 24 115.

Unknown Speaker 2:35:42
Comes to McCoy.

Speaker 24 2:35:45
Do you need a motion? Is that okay? I would I would move that we support. Senate Bill 24 Dash 159

Speaker 1 2:35:57
Councillor McCoy made the motion to support SB 24 Dash 159 seconded by Councillor Martin. I think this is an interesting bill. Is this Mike foots bill? Do you know?

Speaker 29 2:36:08
I should look that up? I’m not sure. Okay.

Speaker 1 2:36:14
I find it interesting. I wonder how many gas and oil companies are going to rush to get all those permits before 2030. So can be just be interesting to watch. But yes, I support this as well. I don’t see anybody else that wants to yak on about this. So let’s vote.

Speaker 1 2:36:38
And that passes six to one with Councillor Crist in opposing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sandy. So now we are at final call public invited to be heard. Is there anybody in the public that would like to speak? No, signing up. Come on up. Come on up. Gary Hodges.

Speaker 18 2:37:02
Hi, Gary. Hi, just 2148 Stuart Street does definitely was not planning to speak tonight. It’d be a lot of fun to spend three minutes dissecting the Climate report that we just had, but just reflect on some of the things I said supply chain mining. None of that address there. All right. On October 6, there was a ceasefire, right. There wasn’t a war in that moment. Somebody started it. I’m only speaking about this. I wasn’t planning to talk about geopolitical politics. You know, there’s a music festival happening Do you know why that music festival was happening? Does anybody really knows where they there’s they’re listening to music. It was about five miles from the Gaza border. They were there all those young, beautiful young people were there to send loving vibes to Gaza. That was that was the purpose of that festival to try to bring love and peace and just happiness that was rewarded by being raped to death, you know, taken hostage unceremoniously killed, you know, because they wanted to send good vibes

Speaker 18 2:38:22
the idea that is a genocide is just utterly preposterous, that it’s that it’s couched in those terms is beyond disgusting. Alright, and World War Two, the Allies killed around 2 million German civilians that was on top of I think around 5 million military people. Was that a genocide? Were the Allies committing genocide to the people of Germany? No, of course not. It would be absurd to suggest that was the case and it’s absurd to suggest that’s what’s going on now. Last week I went to a talk at University of Colorado Yoram zani it’s where I got some of this information just pulling it out of my head. He’s guys nine children lives in Israel. He has two sons in the IDF. The sons aren’t shooting children. They’re not trying to wipe out these people. It’s the result of an attack. horrible attack. I would like to say things that I’ve heard and read about what these people did, but it is so disturbing. I honestly don’t want to put it in anybody’s head. It keeps me up at night. I mean, it is barbaric, barbaric ism. Unlike anything that you could imagine. One thing I learned the other night was you know, they’re just like anyone, any country. I mean, we have people on the left people on the right and large percentage of the people in Israel that you would call on the left as supported as two state solution. He said today polling shows that except 80% of the people that once supported that are opposed to it. They know what the deal is. It would be wholly disappointing if council votes on a proclamation as it was suggested tonight. I mean, I would just be so disappointed and thank you.

Speaker 1 2:40:18
Thank you, Gary. Anyone else from the public? Steve?

Speaker 6 2:40:29
Steve Altshuller 1555 Taylor drive. Let me talk louder. Okay. I want to follow up on what Gary was saying. I actually have 20 family members may be 21 by now because some of you have been pregnant. Living in Israel, a brother, a sister, brother in law sister in law, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, one of my niece’s, about four or five years ago, her cousin by marriage, was a 15 year old girl that was over at her house babysitting her kids. This 15 year old goes to walk home, as she always did. And a terrorist which is a person specializing in creating terror. A man comes up behind this 15 year old girl and stabs her in the back and kills her. That’s what life in Israel is like. You don’t hear about it all the time. They’re constantly being attacked. There’s anywhere from several 100 to several 1000 missile attacks every year, that are fortunately 99.9% are stopped by the Iron Dome. Israel is under attack almost every single day. October 7. I don’t know the numbers I forget either hundreds and hundreds or a couple 1000. Terrorists come through their tunnels and come out and attack and kill 1200 people, girls, boys, grandparents, you know, nobody’s in the military. Every single one of them was unarmed. And they get raped and they get decapitated. 250 of them were taken hostage to be used because they knew they were going to be attacked back. And they were and they are now. It is Hamas that started this. Iran was finding Hamas with money that America gave to Iran, but that’s a little off to the side. When Israel was attacking Gaza, they were dropping millions of leaflets saying Hey, get out of this section of town. We’re gonna be bombing you tomorrow. Hamas came out with their machine guns and held it to the Gazan head and said you’re not leaving. You’re staying right where you are, how Hamas has built the tunnels and their military outposts under those hospitals that they were talking about. So even though Israel sent fliers saying leave this hospital, they had the bomb that hospital because that’s where the Hamas military have been. So when these people are telling you genocide, I agree with Gary, it’s not genocide. It is war. Israel’s doing everything humanly possible to not kill civilians. Hamas is doing everything humanly possible to use civilians for human shields. Nobody is safe until this is over. You can’t stop in the middle.

Speaker 1 2:43:36
Thanks, Steve. Seeing no one else that is willing and anxious to come talk to us tonight. I’m gonna close final call public invited to be heard. Are there any mayor and council comments? Councilman McCoy.

Speaker 24 2:43:53
Thank you, Mayor break. Just a quick one. Just to remind people that Daylight Savings Time is happening on Sunday the bearer of bad news, I think so. There you go, folks.

Speaker 1 2:44:10
Anyone else? I don’t see anyone else in the queue. City Manager remarks.

Speaker 10 2:44:15
Mayor, one of the things that was talked about earlier on the item that was added to the agenda is bringing it on the 19th. So we can close on the project. Okay, and so wanted to get Council. See if council was agreeable after sending a short meeting on the night that we have the llj meeting for the City Council to act on second reading on that item. If it’s okay with you, we’ll post it appropriately.

Unknown Speaker 2:44:46
Does that have to be a public meeting?

Speaker 10 2:44:48
It will be a public meeting just because it’s posted. Okay, it’ll be we’ll post it appropriately for a public meeting to act on that but it’ll be on the same night that we have now. The majority meeting

Unknown Speaker 2:45:00
sounds good. City Attorney.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:06
No comments, Mayor.

Unknown Speaker 2:45:07
Great seeing your comments can Okay

Unknown Speaker 2:45:20
thank you, we are adjourned

Transcribed by https://otter.ai