Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Regular Session – June 11, 2024
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Okay, I would like to I would now like to call the June 11 2024 Longmont City Council regular session to order the live stream.
Unknown Speaker 0:10
The live stream of this meeting can be viewed on the city’s YouTube channel, or the Longmont public media.org watch or Comcast channels eight or eight ad. Ken, can I have a roll call please?
Unknown Speaker 0:25
Absolutely. As you can see, Mayor pic is absent. So councilmember Crist present. Mayor Pro Tem indigofera in here, Councilmember Martin.
Unknown Speaker 0:34
Here. Councilmember McCoy, Councilmember Rodriguez Here. Councilmember Yarbro. Mayor Pro Tem you have a quorum. Okay, let’s stand for the pledge.
Unknown Speaker 0:47
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
Okay, so,
Unknown Speaker 1:06
in accordance with the council’s rules of procedure, the rules for the following providing public comment are as follows only Longmont residents and employees of the city of Longmont may speak during first call public invited to be heard. You must provide your address on the signup sheet before the meeting or I will call or when I call your name. Each speaker is limited to three minutes.
Unknown Speaker 1:29
Anyone may speak on second reading or public hearing item and you and you are asked to add your name to the speaker list for a specific item before any meeting. Anyone may speak on final call public invited to be heard. Members of the audience will refrain from disruptive vulgar and abusive language, applause, heckling and other actions that interfere with the orderly function of Council. The Chair may recess or call to adjourn the meeting if after three attempts to maintain the orderly function of the council are ignored.
Unknown Speaker 2:03
So we have now on our agenda, the approval of minutes for the May 28 2024. Regular Session. May I have a motion to approve the minutes?
Unknown Speaker 2:15
Second, okay, so, we, the minutes are moved by councilmember Yarborough and seconded by councilmember Crist. Are there any discussion on the minutes? Okay, can I have a vote please?
Unknown Speaker 2:37
Okay, the minutes passed unanimously, with Mayor peck out. So do we are there any agenda revisions?
Unknown Speaker 2:50
Mayor Pro Tem I just point out that we did provide a revised agreement for item let me find the number item nine F.
Unknown Speaker 3:00
And I emailed you all about that. So that was replaced yesterday afternoon. Okay. Okay. Thank you, John. And then are there any motions from council for future agenda items? Yes, Council Member Crist.
Unknown Speaker 3:22
I just wanted to make everyone aware that next week on Tuesday, I’m at CML. Likely I’m scheduled until 630. So likely will not make it back for LA che next week. So just an announcement.
Unknown Speaker 3:37
And we don’t have to we don’t have to act on that. So no, we’re good to go. We’re good. Thank you. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:46
So does the manager have a report?
Unknown Speaker 3:50
Mayor Council, I do have a report. I don’t have a report. But tonight on consent agenda. There’s two items related to the youth council. And we wanted to take this opportunity to let the youth council candidates introduce themselves to you all so Jenny, do you want to
Unknown Speaker 4:09
kick it off?
Unknown Speaker 4:22
push the right button Jenny.
Unknown Speaker 4:32
Good evening City Council.
Unknown Speaker 4:35
Right but
Unknown Speaker 4:40
the other right.
Unknown Speaker 4:41
There we go. Okay, here we go. Good evening, city council. Thank you for having us today. And thank you, Harold for offering this time for us. So I would like to bring up Catherine kuh who will share a little bit about what youth council has been up this year.
Unknown Speaker 5:01
Hello, I’m Catherine scre, and I’m the president of our Longmont Youth Council. So our youth council is composed of enthusiastic young leaders from various backgrounds dedicated to addressing youth related issues in our community. This year, we witnessed record participation with 26 members representing different areas of the Longmont community. And after increasing our youth council membership almost threefold, it became crucial to enhance our team dynamics through activities focused on team building and leadership development. These experiences have not only nurtured growth as a cohesive team but also empowered members to become more effective leaders, enabling them to drive meaningful change in our community more effectively, more efficiently. Our notable achievement last year was managing the million dollar youth grant program, allocating funds from the metro district grand fund for youth activities in Longmont. After rigorous training on equitable grant distribute distribution members awarded grants to 43 projects out of 53 applicants enhancing our community’s youth programs significantly through the following focus areas, health well being and mental health, education skill building and life skills, sports and the promotion of physical activity, and arts, nature science, technology, engineering, math, and eSports. In addition to grants being engaged in several service projects, for instance, in our Halloween for the hungry event, we collaborated with Timberline pre K to eight, collecting 187 donations for the round pantry while creating a safe space for local children to participate in a trunk or treat. We volunteered for the Longmont lights event by dressing up as characters and helping spread holiday cheer. We also promote literacy through book package assembly and distribution through the Longmont City Council book club. We deeply appreciate the City Council support and are proud to represent long months youth. We look forward to acknowledging outgoing members and introducing you to the members who will continue creating positive change in our city. Should city council members have any questions or require additional information please contact Jenny Diaz Leon at 303-774-3754. Thank you so much for city council support.
Unknown Speaker 7:28
Thank you, Catherine. All right. What I would like to do next is invite the outgoing members to step forward. So we have
Unknown Speaker 7:38
and I’m going to read all of the students so we have Raj John Bucha Ali John. Greatest Ouch. Uma champ, Rowan Keller, Reema Bashi ohm Singh, Jenna Valenzuela, Kaushik, Shawn, Donna and Braden Saunders.
Unknown Speaker 7:56
Now for our reappointed members, hopefully, our candidates, we have Brooklyn bomb, Brooklyn Goldstone, Catherine, Mary Yash, Estella Mendoza, Catherine butcher, Alexa Mesa, Rehana, querque,
Unknown Speaker 8:16
Molly riddle allophones of Paris
Unknown Speaker 8:23
Bridget ermotti Gabe Cardenas to Lisa and Rica’s
Unknown Speaker 8:29
Alexandria. Javier risky well Barrios James Noel Dasia, Madeleine Bonilla, Matilda Garcia Stevenson, Ter Ramirez, Dan Pham Paxton Zoo.
Unknown Speaker 8:43
Devon Nicholas Melton, Angel Co. Nearly Kano Montes, Ariana Nicole Bara Bay berencana Palma, Renee Thornhill, Emily June torn Hill and Claire Jensen. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 9:11
Thank you, Jenny and the youth council.
Unknown Speaker 9:17
Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, city manager. So now moving on to special reports and presentations. Our first presentation is from the senior citizens, Senior Citizens Advisory Board for their 2024 presentation. Do we have any members of staff or the advisory board coming to speak? Mayor Pro Tim, I apologize for interrupting we are having a technical issue in the back. Could we take a five minute technical break before Ronnie Maness and his team get going? Sure. Thank you. Apologize.
Unknown Speaker 9:53
So we call for a five minute break to five minute five minute break. So thank you
Unknown Speaker 16:47
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 16:50
Okay, so it looks like the technical issues were resolved. So we’re going to come back, partly resolved. So we’re gonna go ahead and continue with the meeting.
Unknown Speaker 17:00
So we are now at item seven special reports and presentations. Senior Citizens Advisory Board 2024 presentation.
Unknown Speaker 17:38
Good evening Council. My name is Ronnie Maness. And I am the Senior Services Manager for the city. I’m here tonight as the staff liaison for the I’m sorry for the seniors.
Unknown Speaker 17:51
For the Senior Citizens Advisory Board, I’m here tonight to introduce Dave brenum. The chair Dave is here tonight to present the board’s 2024 annual report and recommendations. At this time, I’d like to invite David Brenner.
Unknown Speaker 18:11
Alright, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
Turn on my timer.
Unknown Speaker 18:20
Before we get started, I want to make a confession that I am very hard of hearing, as my board members, fellow board members know. So I have a microphone right here. So I’m going to turn it on.
Unknown Speaker 18:35
There we go. And I’m gonna put it right here. And that helps me here to hear resign. So with that out of the way, oh, it’s not quite everything. As long as I’m here. I thought that I’d advocate for the hearing.
Unknown Speaker 18:51
Disabled a little bit, it would be really nice if the technology exists to put closed caption up on those monitors, because I’ve been at these meetings before, and I can’t hear half of what goes on. And that’s why I watch TV. You know, just as I watched a closed caption, so just a thought for you to consider.
Unknown Speaker 19:16
I’ll start by saying that.
Unknown Speaker 19:19
I think it’s fair to say easy to say. I’m confident to say that the board members all support your council priorities, particularly transportation, housing, and equity. Now we think of equity as being a little bit differently maybe than you do. But when we say equity, what we’re talking about here is making sure that all the services and programs are available to all the seniors in the community.
Unknown Speaker 19:50
They do a pretty good job, but we’re not quite sure where they’re 100%
Unknown Speaker 19:58
Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 20:04
If you think there’s a, there’s an advisory board, that doesn’t work hard, you’re wrong about that. The members of the board, work their butts off all, especially on a couple of committees. It’s been a lot of hard work for everybody. I just want to say that about the board.
Unknown Speaker 20:23
Customer Service survey, we were wondering about how satisfied people are with the services that they receive at the senior center. So we did a survey. And we had 551 responses. And we asked three basic questions. And they were about classes and resources that might be available to them.
Unknown Speaker 20:48
What are your needs? And are your questions answered? And did you get the information that you want it? Results were very variable favorable, we got about a 9495
Unknown Speaker 21:00
satisfaction rate. And so that was good information, at least for moving the right direction.
Unknown Speaker 21:09
I don’t know if you folks are a fan of 60 minutes.
Unknown Speaker 21:15
Last fall, I think it was fall. Maybe it was summer.
Unknown Speaker 21:19
The
Unknown Speaker 21:21
60 minutes had a piece 1520 minutes on the Arapaho.
Unknown Speaker 21:29
The Arapaho, really horse race. And it was very good. If you watched it, we had a board member that went to that
Unknown Speaker 21:37
relay. And it was part of the Sister Cities initiative with the Arapaho elder with the appro Arapaho tribe. I understand it was absolutely a blast. I’m sorry, I missed it. But I think it went a long ways to establishing the foundation of that Sister Cities relationship with the Arapaho
Unknown Speaker 22:00
tribe, and their elders and our elders, and new staff, recreation program coordinator. We helped advocate for that last year. And we did manage to get a recreation program coordinator, bilingual, I believe. And so she’s been on board for several months. And so that took a fair amount of time to put the information together for it to support a recreation programs coordinator, the board membership, I don’t know if you know, but this year, we went from eight members to nine members, although we have a vacancy right now.
Unknown Speaker 22:42
For the first time in a long time, we have four men and five women, although as I say, we’ve got a vacancy. And they come from all kinds of different backgrounds. And I think the good thing is that we have a real diverse board that I read, I think reflects the composition of the community.
Unknown Speaker 23:04
And so we get all kinds of different viewpoints that way.
Unknown Speaker 23:09
We did another community survey.
Unknown Speaker 23:12
We didn’t do it. But the city marketing research department section, whatever it’s called,
Unknown Speaker 23:21
did a survey for us and we had over 900 responses to that survey. And we found that we’re trying to get there as it says its participation, how many people actually come. So of the 900 people that responded, we had two thirds had been to the Senior Center during the last year.
Unknown Speaker 23:46
That’s I think that’s pretty good. Their big issues were the things that they inquired about the things they wanted to know about, or classes or participated in or classes, fitness exercises, always big
Unknown Speaker 24:01
day trips, and it wasn’t quite as high but counseling. Caregiving are also big items. And the biggest barrier.
Unknown Speaker 24:11
You probably I don’t know if you would have guessed this, but the biggest barrier to the services that they wanted was
Unknown Speaker 24:20
weekends,
Unknown Speaker 24:22
evenings and weekends.
Unknown Speaker 24:24
So Ronnie has taken action to expand the hours and that’ll certain September
Unknown Speaker 24:32
and so we’ll be
Unknown Speaker 24:37
have more people
Unknown Speaker 24:40
with access to the center may know the younger seniors.
Unknown Speaker 24:45
And then the last one the focus subcommittees where you did form some sub committees last or last summer. And
Unknown Speaker 24:55
they were we didn’t really call them sub committees. We call them working groups, I guess
Unknown Speaker 25:00
can’t really call them subcommittees could be, they weren’t three member working groups or one or two member working groups. Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 25:15
This is really shortening it and summarizing it But aren’t we see our job is to provide input to you. But it goes the other way, too, we would like to see some input from you. Whenever you have something you’d like to know about some program or service or characteristics of the demographics, we’d be happy to put that together, you can put you can
Unknown Speaker 25:38
communicate that through, obviously, Harold or Christina, Ronnie, whoever, support management, support management and staff. Now, technically, that’s not our charge our charges to be advisory to you. But on the other hand, we can’t help but feel that we need to support staff.
Unknown Speaker 25:58
We want to support
Unknown Speaker 26:02
the staff, they’re getting all the resources that we can from any place. And so that’s what that that’s what we tried to do. Get them, get them the support so they can provide the services that the seniors in the community need.
Unknown Speaker 26:17
Our research focus has been housing, transportation and outreach. We’re going to talk about that in just a second. But there’s one new one that that’s not on there. And that is food insecurity. We’re considering pursuing that one.
Unknown Speaker 26:34
I don’t know if you know, and I saw this statistic from one place.
Unknown Speaker 26:40
And I think it’s supported by other sources. One of the 13 seniors is food insecure.
Unknown Speaker 26:49
I mean, that’s a lot. That’s really funny, you know, country as wealthy as this, we have that kind of statistic.
Unknown Speaker 26:56
So anyway, that is a working group that we’re probably going to establish, and probably have some recommendations for you extra.
Unknown Speaker 27:09
And then the last major thing is to is to make a annual report to the city council.
Unknown Speaker 27:16
Next slide.
Unknown Speaker 27:20
Now I’m going to introduce the Vice Chair. That’s Lonnie Dooley and she has been working on another person. I’ve been working on housing for the last several months. And Lonnie will let you take care take it from here.
Unknown Speaker 27:40
Hi, my name is Lonnie Dooley.
Unknown Speaker 27:43
Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and council members. I am the vice chair as as David said of the Senior Citizens Advisory Board of Longmont. Our board’s job is to help determine the needs of older residents in Longmont and to advocate for those needs. Some ways that we do that is we by supporting the management and the staff at the Senior Center. And by reporting back to council what we find out I chose housing is an area of research because I live in village on Main an LH a property
Unknown Speaker 28:19
Longmont, I spoke to staff members to research the housing situation, city staff, Senior Center staff, community leaders, community groups and other shareholders. We determined that Longmont needs more affordable housing, which would include older of all age groups, which would include older adults and veterans.
Unknown Speaker 28:45
Here’s some of the reclamation recommendations we make.
Unknown Speaker 28:49
We recommend the continuation of low cost housing properties co sponsored by La che BCHA city of Longmont and private developers. We recommend affordable housing living facility, possibly in partnership with the city and a private developer that would accept Medicare and Medicaid.
Unknown Speaker 29:13
For those who don’t know, the projection is by 2030 that the senior population, excuse me, the older population of Boulder County 65 and older will be 20% of the population or more, and we need to prepare for that.
Unknown Speaker 29:32
We also suggest a program where shared housing or cohabitation opportunities for our underserved communities, such as older adults, veterans and the unhoused be prepared. If there was a program where they could actively share housing or cohabitate without losing any of their benefits. It may encourage a lot of people and it may help a lot of people
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Mmm to get ready to get permanent housing.
Unknown Speaker 30:03
We also recommend the return of safe slots, which is the program where our churches parking lots were opened up. And
Unknown Speaker 30:12
we’ve possibly we recommend possibly being funded by the city and door private organizations. I personally had experience with safe lights because I’ve volunteered at WestView Presbyterian Church. And that’s where one of the safe let’s programs was, it was a safe place that they could park overnight. They could use the building, they could use the facilities take showers, prepare meals, and they also got counseling. There were staff members there overnight to help people with suggestions help anything they needed. I thought it was a very successful program. However, they lost their funding. So we recommend looking into bringing that back to Loma
Unknown Speaker 30:53
We also recommend a review of the current zoning laws to allow for duplex and higher density housing. And the last one is we recommend the addition of daycare programs for older adults. And the reason for that is because take older adults only have three options, independent living, expensive assisted living, or long term care. If there was a place that they could go during the day, and check in and get checked on and have activities and be kept busy, they may be able to stay in independent living longer than they may have been otherwise they would have been able to.
Unknown Speaker 31:34
And that’s the end. Thank you very much for everybody from thank you for the Council on your time and your attention. If anybody has any questions, we’ll answer them at the end I guess.
Unknown Speaker 31:52
Right, went ahead of me. All right, transportation.
Unknown Speaker 31:58
We can cover this fairly quickly. I think everybody agrees that there is a need for transportation. There’s a lot of activity going on in the city right now. We know that.
Unknown Speaker 32:09
Older Adults need more options to get around. A lot of them have problems with doctor appointments, personal care, worship, whatever. And transportation problems if you’ve ever worked with this, with people that have these kinds of deeds,
Unknown Speaker 32:27
you know that they, they compound. If you have a transportation problem, you can’t get to the doctor, if you can’t get get to the doctor, you get sick. And if you get sick, it can’t work. And it just it just kind of snowballs. And it gets worse and worse and worse with some people. So
Unknown Speaker 32:45
we need as many transportation options as possible to overcome some of the limited mobility, health issues income and other issues.
Unknown Speaker 32:57
We fully support the micro transit system, the Firestone, a Firestone login, wound, hub, local buses, RTD options, really anything that helps the seniors get around.
Unknown Speaker 33:14
Fill
Unknown Speaker 33:19
up
Unknown Speaker 33:21
yeah, it fell Greenwald has briefed our committee a couple of times.
Unknown Speaker 33:25
It’s very good. And we’re following that closely. And we support all of this stuff that he does. And as a matter of fact, we have one of our members is on the transportation mobility, workforce or task force, whatever it’s called.
Unknown Speaker 33:41
And our bottom line here is that
Unknown Speaker 33:45
actually, some people can’t even afford bus fare. Some of the lower income people, they just have a hard time getting around by any means. Therefore, we support we fully support discounted not necessarily pre rates for older adults.
Unknown Speaker 34:03
Excellent.
Unknown Speaker 34:06
staffing.
Unknown Speaker 34:10
I don’t know if you have been to the senior center talk to a resource specialist. But resource specialists early on unsung heroes of the of the senior center, I think their key. They coordinated assessment and referrals for over 1300 seniors that means that I had 1300 people, they sent different directions, all kinds of different sources. There’s all kinds of sources within the community. But you have to know what they are. They have to know how to get to them. They have to have that technical technical expertise to help them that way.
Unknown Speaker 34:46
We had, we had quite an increase, increase of 132 to 220 or a 63% increase in the last few years. And I don’t know exactly what all the reasons are, but I think you
Unknown Speaker 35:00
COVID might be part of it, population increase might be part of it.
Unknown Speaker 35:05
I think the economy differentially affects different parts of our local population, medical costs have gone up. So there’s probably a variety of sources.
Unknown Speaker 35:18
That increased volume has resulted in a wait time of four to five weeks. It used to be more, it used to be six to eight weeks. And
Unknown Speaker 35:29
that’s, that’s no good. That’s unacceptable. So that’s why our top that’s one of our top priorities as far as recommendations. Therefore, we recommend an additional two resource specialist and one administrative assistant. I talked to a couple of the resource specialists last week. And we they were very good. And I got a feel for the kind of problems that the deal with and I said, How do you feel about all of this. And she said, we are absolutely bursting at the seams that are just beyond, you know, what, what they can handle. So as part of the reason that we feel it’s really essential that you consider additional staff for those kinds of services.
Unknown Speaker 36:24
I showed up so that it’s not just the activities dealing with the people themselves, but there’s lots of related support activities that go on. There’s background research, contacting agencies, clerical work, paperwork, all of that stuff, it all adds up. And that’s why we think an administrative assistant would be necessary. So I’m going to leave you with this.
Unknown Speaker 36:56
After I talked to those resource specialist, specialists, I started thinking, Well, you know, what would I do? So imagine, if you’re 75 years old,
Unknown Speaker 37:08
you had diabetes.
Unknown Speaker 37:11
And you had a spouse 75 years old, with dementia.
Unknown Speaker 37:17
And you’ve been caring for your spouse for who knows how long.
Unknown Speaker 37:21
And she’s he or she is getting worse. You have a house or apartment you’ve been living in for 10 years.
Unknown Speaker 37:29
And you can’t afford it because you’ll the only income you have is Social Security.
Unknown Speaker 37:34
So
Unknown Speaker 37:37
it’s a situation that gets intolerable. So you decide, I’ve heard that the Senior Center can help.
Unknown Speaker 37:46
So you get you get on the bus, you get on to the Senior Center.
Unknown Speaker 37:50
And you talk to the people at the front desk.
Unknown Speaker 37:54
And they said, Oh, we’d love to help you. We have all kinds of resources. But you’re going to have to wait five weeks, because we’re overwhelmed right now.
Unknown Speaker 38:05
That’s no good. Can you imagine being in that situation and having to wait five weeks.
Unknown Speaker 38:12
So that’s why it’s one of our top priorities.
Unknown Speaker 38:16
And we challenge you to think about that.
Unknown Speaker 38:20
And thank you for your time.
Unknown Speaker 38:23
Any questions? Thank you. Do we have any questions from Council?
Unknown Speaker 38:28
Okay, well, thank you very much. It was very informative. I appreciate the written report as well.
Unknown Speaker 38:37
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 38:41
Thank you. So the next item, item be the LE DP quarterly report quarter for from 2023 So we have Aaron Fosdick coming up any any other staff?
Unknown Speaker 38:56
Because I need just you Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 40:03
Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Hidalgo farine, and members of council I’m Erin Fosdick. With the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. We’re here this evening to provide an update to you. You may recall that we update Council quarterly, the last time we had an opportunity to speak with you is actually at your retreat. And so tonight, we just wanted to provide some information on activities and efforts that we’ve been focused on over the past several months and obviously answer any questions. Tonight’s a little different. I don’t have all the slides that were included in your packet, but I’m happy to answer any and any questions that you have. But I thought it might be more informative for council if we just talk a little bit more about the things that we’ve been focused on.
Unknown Speaker 40:43
Just as a quick reminder, we partner with the city and really appreciate our partnership with the city and our other economic development workforce and education partners, we’re really focused on leading a comprehensive collaborative economic development strategy that’s really all about promoting and supporting the economic health of Longmont. So we are a public private partnership, we do continue to rely on funding from the city and other public entities as well as private investors. But really what we’re focused on is bringing together community leaders to help identify issues, solve problems and recognize opportunities. And so we’re really focused on that vibrant and inclusive local economy and making a dent in issues and again, recognizing opportunities through collective impact. So since we’ve last spoken and over the course of my tenure in the last year, we have been focused on reestablishing and strengthening some of our partnerships. We have a lot of new folks in the community leading some of our partner organizations, you’ll hear from visit Longmont here in a bit. But we’ve been really working on bringing our advanced Longmont ecosystem back together and thinking about all the ways in which we can identify areas for collaboration to make sure that we’re making the most of our limited resources, and that we’re moving the needle on the important economic issues in our community. We’ve also been working closely with our partners at the chamber and the Downtown Development Authority to better understand what are our Where does our Where do our policies and strategic plans align. So again, that we can be moving the needle on issues that are important to folks in Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 42:17
Just a quick reminder, our economic development strategy is centered on five focus areas. And these are identified in advance Longmont, 2.0, which I know Council is familiar with. We are really charged with leading on industry and talent. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what some of the work that we’re doing. visa vie our contract with the city. But also want to point out that we do Lean in and support our partners at the city, the DDA and other organizations around place conductivity. And again, really looking at how do we have the greatest impact? How do we work together to solve problems and to unite organizations to make sure that we are making a difference.
Unknown Speaker 42:58
The city does contract with us. And again, we really appreciate the partnership with the city really excited. The city has a new redevelopment manager Laura moody, so we’re really excited to start working more closely with her and I know Council will have a chance to to meet with her. I won’t ask her to come down today. But we’re really excited about that additional staff partnership and seeing what we can do. But really, we are charged with overall strengthening our competitive position within Longmont making sure that we’re marketing Longmont both nationally, and increasingly so more globally, supporting the retention and creation of quality jobs and making sure that there’s opportunities for our residents. And we particularly work in four key industries, but also focus generally on advanced industries. So we’re really focused on aerospace life science, food and beverage as well as information technology. And we’ll talk a little bit about some of the things that we’re doing.
Unknown Speaker 43:52
We also continue to look for opportunities to advance entrepreneurship and innovation. I think this is an area where we can really lean on some of our other partners within the Workforce Education and other economic development organizations to to figure out how we can better support entrepreneurs in Longmont. And then finally, you know, at the end of the day, we’re all really working to advocate on behalf of Longmont businesses, as I know, counsel is.
Unknown Speaker 44:16
So a couple of things I want to talk about relate to marketing. One of the things that we’re really excited about that just launched this year is the Colorado hub for health impact.
Unknown Speaker 44:27
Have a couple notes here.
Unknown Speaker 44:29
We are a partner in this campaign that really is supported by the Colorado bioscience Association. They’re leading the efforts to bring together Life Science promotion in Colorado and we’ve joined with 22 other economic development organizations and industry partners to really promote Colorado. We know here locally that we have great access to talent, infrastructure and opportunities but we want the rest of the world to know that. So we’re promoting ourselves as that ideal destination for talent, investment and industry.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
location. And so this is a national marketing campaign that we are supporting. And we’re really focused on six areas. And you can see those here. Those are talent inclusivity, capital and growth, location and real estate, lifestyle and culture, community and infrastructure and cost and incentives. And so the reason that we’re focused here is because Colorado already has a lot of assets, we have the number one concentration, for example of biomedical engineers and bio engineers in the country. These are folks that can help fill these jobs. We have a lot of investment in life sciences, we’ve had several years running where we’ve raised over $1 billion in life sciences investment, not we LLDP I have not done that. But the state as a whole. As you know, we have five stellar research universities, we have 30, over 30 federal labs. And this is really the kind of environment that these companies want to locate in and that this talent wants to locate. And so we’re working with our partners to continue to promote the state the region, but also promote us locally, we have some really great real estate resources. For example, the newly renovated Max Tech Center, we have great partnerships with the St. Vrain Valley School District and some of their P TECH programs and other work based learning programs. So we’re really excited about this opportunity.
Unknown Speaker 46:13
Also quickly talk about some of the work we’re doing to support the Semiconductor Industry Council passed a resolution earlier this year to that was the first step in US forming a chip zone in Longmont. The Economic Development Commission of Colorado designated the Longmont chip zone earlier this year, and we’ve been busy promoting this. So as you can see, our chip zone complements the already formed enterprise zone in Longmont. That’s what’s shown here in purple. And we already have a number of great companies located in the chip zone. And so this program will really provide tax credits not only for businesses that are existing and want to expand like micron, but also can be an attraction. And so we’ve had the opportunity to work with our partners at the state to talk with folks that are thinking about locating in Colorado, either from somewhere else in the nation, or even more commonly, folks from outside the United States. So we have a delegation from Taiwan that’s coming to Colorado in the next couple of weeks. And we’ll have an opportunity to to promote Longmont the Front Range and the state to them. And these are some of the tax credits that semiconductor industries are eligible for because we have the chip zone. We’re also working closely with Oh edit, we applied for a marketing grant. And so we’re hoping that we can get funding to do something similar to what we’re doing for Life Sciences. But really to talk about the infrastructure, the talent, the industry support that Longmont has for semiconductor companies
Unknown Speaker 47:36
want to touch quickly on Prospect activity. You know, we are really the agency that works closely with the city to bring industry and to support existing industry and expansion. And so we work with a number of different sources on that our regional partners at NoCo ready Metro Denver EDC, our state partners at Oh, edit, and then our local broker community is extremely important. And so prospect activity seems like it’s ticking up a bit, we have 22 prospects that we’ve received this year, eight of those we’ve responded to, and we have about 18 in the pipeline currently. And if you’re wondering how that math works, some of them are multi year. And so it takes it can take a while for accompany. Um, you know, we have some that are international, some that are locating from other states, and then some that may be local, more local to Colorado, also have been having some good conversations with the city and folks that are part of the development Review Committee and the planning team, about how we make sure that we are able to respond quickly and efficiently to these prospects. So that we can be included when these folks respond to companies.
Unknown Speaker 48:45
This is more of a plug. But just to let you know, we spend some time every single year collecting survey data from long months primary employers and so we have about 300 folks that are on our list. We try to collect information about the company about their workforce needs, what challenges might they be having with regard to training and development, recruitment and retention, which can inform how we partner with some of our workforce and education partners? What are some of their business operations? Are they seeing revenue go up or down? What are they looking at with regard to export? What kind of assistance might they need? What are they planning for in terms of their site and facility growth? Are they looking at expansion? Are there things that we need to do to support that? Does their existing facility can it accommodate that? What type of questions or increasing needs are they going to have with regard to utilities and how can we support that? And then really, overall, what is the business climate? So what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing business in Longmont? What are those things that maybe we want to get in front of and help if we’re identifying an issue?
Unknown Speaker 49:51
So just to give you a quick glimpse, some of you saw a more in depth presentation of this at our economic summit in February, but
Unknown Speaker 50:00
We always ask what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing business. So here you see the advantage that the top advantage, we’re doing business, which I don’t think surprises any of us as long that has an incredible quality of life. This is something that always is strong and was really strong in 2023, with about 80% of people identifying that, obviously, amenities cost of doing business and access to customers. When we look at the disadvantages, probably not surprising availability of housing cost of living access to labor. These have been things that have been identified for the past several years and have really informed the work that my organization as well as our partners, and obviously the city have been focused on. So we’ll get a chance to see how people are responding in 2024. If you are a primary employer, or if you’re talking with primary employers, we would love to have them complete this survey. And that will be open for about the next month or so. And I’m happy to provide some links.
Unknown Speaker 50:55
I’ll quickly close with just some general data. We are happy to provide economic and housing data to the city. I know you guys have a really robust data program. But here’s some information on economic indicators. I’m not going to necessarily go through all this but the takeaway message here is employment is still strong, we have high labor force participation, relatively low unemployment, and I think that’s what we’re seeing when we have companies tell us they still have access to challenges with access to talent. And so those are some things that we keep watching.
Unknown Speaker 51:31
When we look at residential real estate, our partners that bolo Realtors provide this data to us monthly. Again, I know you’ve spent a lot of time talking about housing, so I won’t go into detail. You can see the median price in Longmont is sitting at about 630,000. We haven’t seen that fluctuate a ton in the data that we’ve seen. I will say it was interesting when we look at this data from April, we have seen the number of homes sold as well as the inventory increase kind of across the board. So that may be due to time of year. Obviously some of you probably have some thoughts on that. But it maybe is a good sign that there’s some more movement in the housing market.
Unknown Speaker 52:07
And then finally, looking at non residential real estate. For the first quarter this information comes from costar, we can provide some more detailed reports if counsel is interested. The takeaway here a is that this is not vacant square footage. I noticed that after I had sent this presentation to dawn, but didn’t want to make a stink. So this is our total space in industrial and office. When you see that third bullet, we have seen that
Unknown Speaker 52:38
our industrial space, we do have quite a bit of vacant industrial space. And some of that is concentrated at some pretty large campuses, the max innovation at Boulder County, I think that’s actually a really great opportunity for us because those have power, they have water, they have parking, they have some pretty great spaces that that property owners are investing in. And I think that gives us an opportunity to attract companies. Those are some of these large projects are located within chip zones or enterprise zone. So we look at that as a real opportunity. I will note that we’re seeing rents go up a couple percent 2% in industrial and about 1% in office over the last year.
Unknown Speaker 53:19
And office vacancy has decreased slightly. So with that I will close and take any questions that council might have.
Unknown Speaker 53:28
Just council have any questions?
Unknown Speaker 53:32
No.
Unknown Speaker 53:33
Councilmember Martin? No.
Unknown Speaker 53:36
You know, actually, I do have one
Unknown Speaker 53:41
question and it was in regard to the survey that had listed access to skilled labor as one of the top three have a distinct disadvantage.
Unknown Speaker 53:52
You know, in looking at how many businesses in Longmont are open to apprenticeship and working with youth and and building that capacity in certain industry,
Unknown Speaker 54:04
you know, has do get a high
Unknown Speaker 54:07
interest in having businesses taken apprentice and interns. I think there does continue to be interest in internships and apprenticeships. And certainly, we are very fortunate to have our partners at the same brain Valley School District to obviously as you know, have some pretty pretty innovative models to look at. How do we prepare the students of today for the jobs of tomorrow? I think there does continue to be some challenges particularly with high school students and age requirements in some of the advanced manufacturing work. There are a lot of conversations through our regional economic development partners or sector partnerships and with our partners at St rain and front ranging about how do we continue to expand internships and how do we stand up apprenticeships, so there’s some really innovative
Unknown Speaker 55:00
programs, some of the things that we’ve been talking about is, are there ways we can kind of model and intern an apprentice program for adults in the community? And what might that look like? And how could we train and upskill folks that are already here to take advantage of these jobs?
Unknown Speaker 55:17
There’s a lot of focus throughout the state and some really exciting funding that’s coming to Colorado, through the Colorado, Wyoming engine and some other different programs that are really going to be focused on internships, apprenticeships, work based learning and training local folks, for jobs in, you know, climate and green tech aerospace. And so I think figuring out how we continue to support that and plug that in. But yes, the long really long winded answer to your question is there’s a lot of interest in internships and apprenticeships, and just figuring out how to scale that how to scale that, yeah, and how to how to navigate that, you know, last spring, when I was at National League of Cities, there was a unite hear from different departments saying that there’s a lot of grant opportunities for folks who do tie in that apprenticeship into their, into their scope and goals. So, you know, I know that there’s money out there that we can tap into to support that and say, rain was the recipient, this was a little bit before my time, but they were the recipient, I think of maybe still the largest opportunity now grant that’s really going to stand up kind of an apprenticeship center and focus on keeping kids through, you know, not not ending them at their senior year, but kind of content being able to continue that support. And so I think that’ll be an incredible partnership with an opportunity with industry. Oh, that sounds great. Thank you. And then I see councilmember McCoy.
Unknown Speaker 56:48
Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, dog, erfahren. Ms. fossick, I’m very pleased to hear this and to kind of piggyback on what Mayor Pro Tem is talking about in regards to internships as a high school teacher. And as a career and technical teacher, a
Unknown Speaker 57:04
lot of my students will return it year later, there are freshmen going on sophomores are sophomores going on juniors in college,
Unknown Speaker 57:13
is there any way that we can create a some sort of clearing house some sort of connection there so that when they’re leaving school, their teachers can kind of say to them, Hey, you know, if you reach out to the, you know, the Economic Development Authority here
Unknown Speaker 57:29
and work with them on on this, you might be able to get some of those, because many of them are coming home, they’re coming home to,
Unknown Speaker 57:37
to cut the costs of being away at school, and to have their family support during the summers. So that that’s, you know, kind of a critical time. And so I hear them, you know, I’ve had many students returned in they’re doing an internship with different groups like Northwestern Mutual, and others like that, if they’re going into like a business degree or some sort of thing like that. So is that something that we can try to get working, because if we are really trying to establish, you know, we’ve got people that are already ingrained, and see this community is a great community, they are happy to graduate from the high schools, they were happy to participate as students here, and their families have made this home. So you know, and thinking of, you know, my own children, the fact how nice it is that have them close by, you know, we are trying to as parents say, hey, this pretty great community to live in. And we’d like to somehow figure out some way of you coming in here. And being able to work here, when you’re done with your career, you know, you know, developing your career at college, or wherever. And so that’s something that I’d like to see if we somehow could do because if we’re really serious about creating this stuff that then I’m also worried I always get a little worried about internships, making sure that businesses understand what an internship really is not just getting coffee, that sort of thing. Because some just simply do not understand that that’s not
Unknown Speaker 59:06
that sort of thing, it’s really important that they are getting some sort of learning otherwise, it’s just kind of slave labor, and in the worst sort of way. And so we really need to focus on on what that is, when we do a clearing house, we need to make sure that the businesses that are taking on people understand how serious it is, when they do take an intern on and that it is something more meaningful to them. Yeah, I think those are great points. And I think it’s worth a follow up conversation with Dr. Hat ad and the school district. You know, they’ve done a really incredible job with again, as you both know, the P TECH programs, and really having those industry partners and being very deliberate about the types of internships that they set up. So it is that entree into work. You know, and having that be meaningful. I do think that the work they’re going to stand up with the opportunity now grant is essential.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
We’re going to do what you’re talking about. That was just that was a grant that was a little before my time. So I can’t speak eloquently to that. But I’d be happy to get that information and provide it to Harold and then he can share it with you. Because I think the intent is that, you know, you don’t graduate and then you’re out of the system. It’s that continued kind of cultivation of the student and their skill set in that internship and being able to provide that bridge until maybe it becomes you know, instead of an internship or apprenticeship, you’ve now been hired full time. So yeah, I’ll try to collect some more information on that and get it over to you.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:36
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:42
So, next on our agenda we’ll be hearing from visit Longmont staff.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:19
can use this or this whichever you prefer.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:25
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:30
Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and city council members. My name is Sarah Leonard. I’m the CEO of visit Longmont. And I just want to note that it was almost a year ago today that I first introduced myself to you all and moved to Longmont almost a year to the date.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:48
But tonight, I’m here to share with you a major report on visit Longmont activities. I’ll highlight our city contract deliverables which are captured in three major buckets, community and visitor engagement, visitor profiles and economic impact and marketing and branding, which is core to our mission.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:10
I’ll start with our continued assessment of how we deliver visitor information here in Longmont. I want to spend a little bit more time in future slides on economic data that we’ve recently invested in as that information informs all of our planning and marketing.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:25
But first, we are continually researching potential new stations for Visitor Information size sites based on research showing us visitor and resident ratios through Gilo geolocation data. For example, we have brainstormed mobile visitor centers using a retrofitted vehicle that could get information to those visitors where they are at once they arrive in Longmont, along with permanently placed selfie stations or visitor center stanchions in places like village of the peaks, McIntosh lake and the airport potentially all places that we see visitors are going to through this geolocation data.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:03
Also in February and March visit long lat hosted two listening sessions with tourism businesses, specifically focused on our hotel partners. The listening sessions explored a tourism improvement district district as a new sustainable funding model. After receiving generally positive feedback from Hotel partners, the visit Longmont Board of Directors approved continuing the discussion and investing in this next six month phase of a potential Tod formation. You’ll be hearing more about that in the next couple of months.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:36
And we continually monitor visitor and resident sentiment through our social media engagement organically. We also added a couple of questions about visitor satisfaction included in this most recent study that we just concluded, which I will talk about next. And finally, through the community poll, we have a final design for Monty the long monster mascot which we are in production right now are producing that mascot literally as we speak. There’s a little graphic of Monty
Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
snow on under the research when I first met you a year ago, I said I hoped to invest in research so that I can come back to and report some highlights on economic data and some visitor profile information.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:22
So we partnered with a research consulting group called future partners to complete an EC and just that an economic analysis and visitor profile study for the calendar year 2023. It included a visitor profile study and economic impact capturing this information on the slide from travel motivations to booking windows, to numbers of visitors and spending data. Future partners gathered key data points through three sources, an online survey of Longmont visitors that year, we distributed that same survey to our own audiences these were visit Longmont email contacts and mobile
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
geolocation data analysis. This data was used as inputs into their custom economic model using their IMPLAN. And the goal was to target a sample size of 400 visitors, we reached 351 survey respondents.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:17
And here are some of the highlights we learned about visitors to Longmont that year. In 2023, nearly 600,000 visitors traveled to Longmont, they infused over $205 million into the city through direct spending. Visitors contributed overall indirect induced indirect spending 277 million for total economic impact for Longmont and 3000 plus jobs are supported by the tourism industry in our community.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:47
Visitors lean we found out also information about our visitors to Longmont, so visitors lean slightly female with an average age of 49. They’re married or have a partner. The majority have a graduate or higher degree and are currently employed with an average income of just under 100,000.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:06
What I thought was a really compelling data point is that $7,000 I’m sorry, in the absence of the tourism industry, every household in Longmont would need to spend an extra $7,000 to keep the local economy operating at the current level.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:22
Tourism supported a wide variety of local businesses, especially those associated with with food and drink our local restaurants and eateries, as they accounted for the largest share of visitor spending, you can see about almost 30% And then the other. The next largest spending category was accommodations at 20%. And here were the other sectors of local businesses that contributed that to that $205 million economic impact.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:52
We also know that Longmont delivers on our visitor experience 96% of our visitors say they were satisfied with their overall experience on their last trip to Longmont. When we asked how well Longmont delivers on this set of attributes, we had a whole list of questions around attractions and experiences in the survey. Visitors considered family friendly experiences, Park access and outdoor recreation is top activities. These are also the top reasons or motivators, visitors are traveling to Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:24
through other responses, we know there are opportunities to enhance the visitor experience around accessibility, the art scene and historic and cultural sites.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
My last couple of slides have focused on our current marketing and branding efforts which include media in market a new look for visit Longmont targeted e newsletters. We’re updating our official visitor guide and reimagining visit longmont.org which is our main traveler and consumer website.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:58
So this year, we are investing $100,000 in digital and social media alone. We started in May with Google ads and social content. And then we’re going to ramp up in the beginning of July and through the end of this year. Our media plan consists of display banners through digital display banners through a platform called Edge Edgenuity. Were also placing native banner ads and retargeting messaging and doing sponsored articles on colorado.com. That’s the state’s main traveler consumer website. So there are visitors already with an affinity towards choosing Colorado for their vacation. So we’ll be leveraging that connection through colorado.com.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:44
Ie target media is a platform that provides custom email list targeting to our top markets. And we’ve we know from the visitor research that our top in state markets are Denver, Colorado Springs and then an outside city market of Chicago.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:00
We’re doing Google text ads and Facebook and Instagram we manage
Unknown Speaker 1:09:06
posting images, videos and carousels.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:10
We also continue to provide monthly newsletters to potential traveler contacts of our over 35,000 email database that Longmont manages those are from visitors who sign up for the visitor guide which is in hardcopy, which you’ve probably seen and also digitally. We also launched a new E newsletter targeted to the business community called in the know and this inaugural newsletter received a 55% open rate which is pretty good for first newsletter to an email list of over 325 business contacts in the Longmont community and this
Unknown Speaker 1:09:46
this newsletter signup list continues to grow.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:50
I mentioned we’re updating our official visitor guide and we’re still distributing last year’s guide. But our big effort this year is reimagining visit longmont.org which we began
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
At the beginning of the year, it’s a comprehensive, really a comprehensive effort including an a content audit, which we’ve completed with our agencies, stakeholder feedback, updated designs, a whole new look and feel, all with the goal of launching before the end of this year.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:20
We obviously continue to watch closely long month lodgers tax, which is behind year over year through April.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:30
And although the margins are getting closer each month as we get that information from the city, the years after the pandemic were such boosters, I see that nationally in meetings and from my national colleagues that people really were craving vacations and traveling a lot after the pandemic ended. I think that this year, what we’re seeing is sort of getting back to normal levels. We’re also seeing more US travelers choosing to visit international destinations, as those places up open up more and more. And these external, these big external factors, they do trickle down to small destinations and communities like ours in Longmont. Hopefully, we will flatten out or maybe even end up stronger this December with some of the marketing we’re doing in partnering with our hotel partners.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:23
Then looking ahead, we will continue our social and digital media through the year. We have several new efforts that I’ve mentioned that we will complete this year including we’re gathering new images, image assets and video from working in partnership with local photographers. Actually this next week, we’re updating our visitor guide we’ll have Monty the long run store mascot and we’re reimagining our website.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:52
So those are the highlights I want to thank you very much for your time. I’m happy to answer any questions and my only ask for you is I have on some new Longmont ball caps to give to you to wear and help us promote Longmont be advocates for travel to our community. Thank you for your time.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:10
Okay, thank you. Do we have any questions from Council? Okay, nope. Well thank you very much. That’s great.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:35
Say there there is no public and
Unknown Speaker 1:12:39
no one signed up.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:42
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:45
Okay, so we are now at the public invited to be heard the first person on the list is Dan Woolford.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:55
Yep. So, and the next person if you want to get ready Lance Whitaker. So you have three minutes please state your name and address before you begin speaking.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:15
Mayor Pro Tem councilmembers My name is Dan Wolfert, I live at 18 15/3 Avenue in Longmont. I’m actually quite excited tonight to be here.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:25
The reason being is nearly a quarter of a century ago I stood in this exact spot in front of Mayor Leona stacker and the likes of Councilman McCoy’s father, Tom McCoy.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:39
I was on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board member coming to council requesting Council support to place an open space sales tax
Unknown Speaker 1:13:49
on the November 2000 ballot, with the leadership and then the support from that, that council, the open space sales tax passed in November of 2000. It was for two tenths of a percent or two cents on every $10
Unknown Speaker 1:14:06
in November and therefore the open space program itself started on January one of 2001.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:13
Without Council’s leadership and support as well as subsequence councils, the city wouldn’t have such wonders open space properties.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:24
Daniel
Unknown Speaker 1:14:26
Cassidy will present many of those properties tonight to you later on in the open space updates. But some of those wonders places include like Mackintosh
Unknown Speaker 1:14:37
Dickens Farm Park, I think you’ve heard both of those names already tonight, and the economic updates and some of that kind of stuff, the diverse and unique riparian and wildlife habitat along the same vein in the areas of sandstone ranch and many many more. But today I’m here to represent a different group that have the stand with our St. Vrain. And as many of you are
Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
All aware. We’ve been working diligently for probably over the past year to collect a variety of signatures from citizens
Unknown Speaker 1:15:11
and members throughout the community who support the permanent extension of the open space sales tax. We’ve worked diligently at a variety of events throughout the city including rhythm on the river pride fest, Artwalk Earth Day celebration and even read most recently the children’s Water Festival and Dickens Farm Park. Again,
Unknown Speaker 1:15:32
the community supports this process is we’ve collected, like I said, I believe, over 1000 or nearly 1000 residents signatures. So we would ask that, you know, this
Unknown Speaker 1:15:44
November, the open space sales tax extension to be permanent be on the ballot. A critical factor for this in the success is the fact that this is not a new tax. It’s an existing tax that’s gone on since 2001.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:02
Stand with our St. Vrain is in the process of soliciting letters also of support from your advisory boards, including the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, which met last night and unanimously supported this. We’ll be talking to the sustainability advisory board the Water Board and transportation board. Council should be very pleased for the success of these things. And I will say that we will be back in two weeks. Thank you. Yep, we’ll see you
Unknown Speaker 1:16:29
when we have a full counsel. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:32
I do have that. Thank you. So next on the list is Lance Whitaker.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:41
And, and then Mike Sandoval after
Unknown Speaker 1:16:50
Well, hello, Mayor Pro Tem.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:55
My name is Lance Whitaker. I live in 1750 Collier street Longmont, Colorado. I’ve been a resident for a whole 44 years.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:06
I know what he was talking about. We did approve that. And we definitely got a nice skate park out of it. It sounds stone ranch. And I would like to thank you for your help on that.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:19
Aaron was also right in pointing out that our industrial area is a ghost town compared to what I was used to in 2000. Just looking back at my resume from back then we had hundreds now we’re down to four
Unknown Speaker 1:17:40
I believe in the industrial area so yeah the area has become a very big ghost town for our industrial
Unknown Speaker 1:17:50
back to my main business. Today is National for glyphed Safety Day. National Call your doctor day probably should do that.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:04
National making life beautiful day I’m pretty good at that one. National German chocolate cake day any cake days good cake day to me.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:17
National Corn on the cob day. And don’t tell anyone but tomorrow is National Red Rose and Colette will be getting one. Thank you you all have a good day
Unknown Speaker 1:18:36
next Mike Sandoval
Unknown Speaker 1:18:41
and then Steven all Schuler after
Unknown Speaker 1:18:50
LA City Council, Mike Sandoval 242 is Mountain View. Oh, I grew up here in Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:58
I’m just talking about the seniors talk tonight. So I wanted to talk about some of the people I know here in Longmont and some of their lives
Unknown Speaker 1:19:09
right now the seniors I guess the Social Security is around increases around two to 3%. Okay, so I talked to my VA veteran buddy and he’s living in housing here senior housing here in Longmont. His rent isn’t real high, but however they’re going to have meetings in the next couple of months. And the rents can increase and like why is a randy increasing well ones mill levies going up 19% drop from 20 to 19%. So they’re bragging about a 1% decrease? Okay, property taxes are up 35% I talked to the assessor here long mieten He says he has a two bedroom or three bedroom house in his ranch going no his mortgage is going up $300 a month.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:57
So I’m looking at my V
Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
Have some people I know who are seniors. And they have dental, a lot of health care issues. One is Dental. One of them has to replace their teeth. Dental insurance isn’t really good. So they replacing two implants on their teeth, they get it plus spend $5,000 to talk to another person, they want to replace all their teeth. That’s $30,000. Okay, well, if they only have Social Security,
Unknown Speaker 1:20:27
I mean, there’s some people who have homes and they could sell them and they can’t afford to pay things off, but others cannot. And we heard some of the senior center tonight. Talk about that.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
So, what I’m looking at Jerome Powell, the Federal chairman said he only wants inflation at 2% at a national level. So then why are mill levies up 19% They should be 2% for seniors, property taxes, up 35% They should only be up 2% For seniors, or cancel all property taxes and mill levies for seniors so they can use their funds to pay health care costs and survive instead of being at risk of being homeless. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:14
Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 1:21:16
Steven all Schuler
Unknown Speaker 1:21:19
and the next one on the list is for us. gerar. But are you wanting to speak? I got.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:27
Are you wanting to speak during public hearing? You’re speaking on item 10. A. So you can either wait or you can come after?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:38
Something to think about? You have three minutes.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:42
Okay, go ahead. That assumes I take all my time.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:46
Steve ALTSCHULER 1555 Taylor drive.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:51
I would like to agree with a lot of what the man just said it was Mike. You know, just looking at property taxes alone, if they went up 35%. I’ve got a couple of rental properties. And that means I have to raise everyone’s rent about $100 a month. And that’s not in counting, counting insurance and utilities and other things. So the expenses for renters are going up a lot. I just want to point out, it’s not necessarily the landlord’s fault. So a lot of City Council’s a lot of people all around, tend to take the assumption that landlords are being greedy. But with property taxes, and like I said, utilities, everything else. Our costs are going up and we have to pass it through. Anyhow.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:39
When he was talking about the chip manufacturers, I wanted to point out that the people that would move here to work at
Unknown Speaker 1:22:47
places like micron and other high tech industries, they have no interest in moving here to live in high density low income apartments, which is 90 to 100% of what city council seems to want to build. So if you want to develop that part of the industry for Longmont, you need to realize that they’re gonna want to live in homes, and they’re gonna want to live in 15 to 50 year old homes, they’re gonna want to live in newer high tech homes, they’re going to have yards for their kids to grow up and play in.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:19
And I just think this council needs to think about that and not cut off your nose to spite your face just because you have so much of a desire for low income housing.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:29
Last month at a coffee to council, Marcia Martin stated that she doesn’t see any single family housing tracts ever being approved again in Longmont. So there is a conflict. I think you need to be aware of that before you low income, construct yourself into a corner. And that’s it not even my whole three minutes. Thank you have a nice evening. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:53
Did you want to speak now? Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:02
Before I go, I just like to separate the issues. Just I’d like to also speak when on 10 A when it comes to the here. Sure. I like to separate to two. Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:16
Hi.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:18
Thank you. My name is Ross gerar. I live off North 75th Street in western Longmont, Colorado. And I just want to bring up a great point that Mr. Brenna brought up. I believe it would be a great idea to put closed captioning on the speech on the screens.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:38
Simply because
Unknown Speaker 1:24:42
if somebody requests if I’m not mistaken, and you don’t provide it, and I could be wrong, but I fear that you’d be in violation of the American Disabilities Act of 1990. So please make considerations for this. And also it’s just the right thing.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Do not so along with providing for our elderly or our older community, those that are disabled and
Unknown Speaker 1:25:09
the need assistance with hearing and
Unknown Speaker 1:25:14
visual aids.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:16
I think it’d be
Unknown Speaker 1:25:19
Yeah, great idea. That’s all I got. Thank you. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:25:29
so there’s see no one else on the list. I will close public invited to be heard. And so now we are on number nine of our agenda, the consent agenda and introduction and reading by title of first reading ordinances.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:46
So Don, can you please read the consent agenda into the record? Absolutely. The second reading and public hearing for the ordinances introduced on this agenda will be held on June 25 2024. Item nine A is ordinance 2024 Dash 42. A bill for an ordinance amending chapter 11.16 of the Longmont Municipal Code. Concerning incorrect model traffic code references discrepancies with appeal and review deadlines and timed parking enforcement. Nine V is resolution 2024 Dash 34 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving amendment number one to the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health for original contract number 24 ib EH 183792 for finding an upgraded database for Lamont Public Safety’s lead in core programs through the criminal justice early intervention grant SB 196. Nine C is resolution 2024 Dash 35 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the revocable permit and agreement between the city and LRC Raceway for remote control vehicle racing opportunities at Union reservoir. 90 is resolution 2024 Dash 36 a resolution of the Longmont City Council modifying our 99 Dash 18 Concerning the Longmont Youth Council. 90 is resolution 2024 Dash 37 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the agreement between the city and the AR Group LLC for code of ethics and hearing officers Special Counsel services. Nine F is resolution 2024 Dash 38 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the agreement between the city and Matthew Sura LLC for energy environment and carbon management Special Counsel services. Nine G is approved Lamont Youth Council appointments and nine H is approved the 2024 2025 water supply and water shortage implementation plan.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:38
Okay, thank you. Is there anyone who wants to pull an item?
Unknown Speaker 1:27:43
Okay, so may I please have a motion to approve the Consent Agenda?
Unknown Speaker 1:27:49
The Consent agenda as presented.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:51
Okay, so the
Unknown Speaker 1:27:53
councilmember McCoy made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda. Seconded by councilmember Crist, any discussion? Let’s go ahead and vote.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:12
I’m just not seeing councilmember Martin’s vote. Mayor Pro Tem if she could. Councilmember Martin, could you give a voice vote?
Unknown Speaker 1:28:22
Or thumbs up?
Unknown Speaker 1:28:24
You’re on mute.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:31
So, Council Member Bart we can’t hear Can you give me a thumbs up if you approve? Awesome. Okay. So the Motion carries unanimously with Mayor peck out
Unknown Speaker 1:28:49
Okay, so now we are moving on to
Unknown Speaker 1:28:54
here we go up item 10. So ordinances on second reading and public hearings on any matter
Unknown Speaker 1:29:07
and this is for ordinance 2024 Dash 40.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:12
A bill for an ordinance establishing a charge of $1.25 for month per month for emergency telephone service 911 for Wired wireless or VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol subscribers in Longmont for the calendar year of 2025. Do we have anyone speaking to this?
Unknown Speaker 1:29:35
Okay, are there any questions from council before I open the public hearing?
Unknown Speaker 1:29:41
Okay, so, so now I will now open the public hearing on ordinance 2024 Dash 40.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:55
Let me reset that and you’ll have three minutes to speak. Cool, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:59
Bye
Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
Good evening again is me again froster are from North 75th Street in western Longmont, Colorado, and on ordinance 2024 Dash 40.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:13
I would like to ask
Unknown Speaker 1:30:16
why. I’m just wondering, forgive my ignorance, but to my untrained eyes, this looks like an additional tax of some sort. I apologize it and do my due diligence and read on it. I just got notice of this today of the agenda. Is there something wrong with our budgeting for
Unknown Speaker 1:30:37
it? Longmont public safety? Is there an increase? I understand we want to support our first responders, police and firefighters. But again, this is seems like a tax. And I know a few weeks ago, the mayor talked about, you know, how we want to govern, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:31:01
with impartiality, meaning with fairness, but there’s just not, this doesn’t sit right with me. So I would like to think the fair thing to do is if somebody could briefly explain to me
Unknown Speaker 1:31:16
what the dollar 25 cents a month for 911 calls on these
Unknown Speaker 1:31:24
different types of services
Unknown Speaker 1:31:27
is going to go towards just so we can get clarification.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:34
Thank you. So I’m going to go ahead and call our public safety chief or someone to speak to that. They can articulate it a lot better than
Unknown Speaker 1:31:44
Thank you. But yeah, we’ll have you.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:48
He’s coming down.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:51
Yes, thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:32:00
Mayor Pro Tem councilmembers Zach, artist, public safety chief for the city of Longmont. If you recall, we came back to you in March and discussed Beretta which is the boulder regional, basically telephone authority that manages the 911 fee that you pay both for your cell phone and your landline. It’s not a tax, it’s a fee that’s already included. Beretta already collects those funds or the state actually does. Right now the fee is 75 cents for Boulder County has gone up to $1.25. There hasn’t been a rate increase for the fee, I think since 2014. And so as we discussed this really is to help cover the cost of operating the nine one centers. And what it does not do is does not require tax dollars to be used, versus the state dollars that are paid to Beretta to be fun for the different dispatch centers.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:51
So, but I’m happy to talk to that gentleman a little bit more, and run through a little more details with him. But just wanted to refresh counsels memory about what it was and why the increase was needed. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Okay, so, so I’m going to go ahead if there’s anyone else wanting to speak on this item. So I will now close public hearing. May I have a motion to pass and adopt ordinance? 2024 Dash 41.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:23
Okay, so we had a motion from councilmember McCoy and seconded by councilmember Yarborough
Unknown Speaker 1:33:31
Okay, so let’s go ahead and vote
Unknown Speaker 1:33:40
Okay, so the motion cat carries unanimously minus Mayor Peck
Unknown Speaker 1:33:51
So, we are now on the next
Unknown Speaker 1:33:55
item on second reading, and it is ordinance 2024 Dash 41. A bill for an ordinance amending section 14.0 4.330 of the Longmont Municipal Code regarding temporary water permits for construction water.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:15
So are there any questions from Council? Is there any presentation for this? No. Okay. So, I’m going to go ahead and open up the public hearing. Is there anyone who would like to speak on ordinance 2024 Dash 41 Okay, so see no one wanting to speak. I will now close public hearing may have a motion to pass and adopt ordinance 2024 Dash 41
Unknown Speaker 1:34:41
I move ordinance 2024 41.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:44
Okay, so the motion was there was a motion by councilmember Rodriguez seconded by councilmember McCoy. Let’s go ahead and vote
Unknown Speaker 1:35:01
Okay, so the Motion carries unanimously, with Mayor Peck absent.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:09
So now we are going to general business.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:13
And this is the bi annual customer service satisfy a customer satisfaction survey. And we have a staff presentation
Unknown Speaker 1:35:23
by Becky Doyle.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:36
Presentation, there’s no question. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:39
Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of council. I’m Becky Doyle, Executive Director of Strategic integration, I am joined by our data and analytics manager, Lin yami. And also our data in innovation analyst over my right shoulder here, Anna Castro, who have been working hard on giving our 2024 customer satisfaction survey out to customers, we don’t have a formal presentation, we just wanted to let you know that we are going about this survey in a new way. Which is actually really exciting for sort of our whole program of how we receive feedback from the community. Rather than having a firm come in and do that that survey as we traditionally have in the past, we’ve invested in some software, that’s going to help us be able to listen to the community across platforms and opportunities throughout the year. You know, we can do ad hoc surveys, we can combine information from, you know, web
Unknown Speaker 1:36:44
web surveys, as we’ve been accustomed to seeing on web pages, from engagements that we have, from phone calls that we take, and from these larger research based surveys that we do with the community. So we’re really excited to partner with Qualtrics is the name of the software that we’re implementing to make that change. And we think that it will be also more accessible to the community.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:11
We’ll be doing a little bit of monitoring as we roll this survey out this year to to see if we’re, if we’re ready to go kind of digital first, maybe next time, this time, we are going to be mailing the survey out to a
Unknown Speaker 1:37:27
randomly selected sample, really similar to the way that that we have done that in the past. So we’re here to answer questions that you have about how the survey will be conducted this year, as well as to solicit any thoughts that you have for a small number, maybe two or three of policy questions that we often include in that survey. So any thoughts or questions? We’re here for you?
Unknown Speaker 1:37:54
Does anyone have any questions? Councilmember Rodriguez?
Unknown Speaker 1:38:02
So with this new contract with Qualtrics, will that stop some of the emails that city council gets from Qualtrics? Because they’re incessant?
Unknown Speaker 1:38:14
I will look into that for you. Great question.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:20
Okay, so see no one else? Thank you very much. That was a very quick presentation.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:27
I do actually I do have a question. If there’s something that we as council want to submit to you what when would be the drop dead deadline?
Unknown Speaker 1:38:37
If we could discuss kind of the general topics now and refine the questions over the next couple of days, we would very much like to have the survey mailed out in the first week or so of July. So we may not have an opportunity to come back to a council meeting to complete that. So if the last call.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:58
Just throwing it out there. Go ahead. Councilmember McCoy. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem dog fairing, Becky, I don’t really have a question. But when we start talking about adding questions to this, I think they we really need to look about look a little deeper about what we’re really asking and how. And if, if we’re going to add questions, I think it should come probably in the next week or by by Friday or Monday or something like that. But then we’re not going to have a chance as a Council to discuss it. So wait a week.
Unknown Speaker 1:39:38
What
Unknown Speaker 1:39:42
we can do is if Council can submit the questions, then what we will do is look at the next. So next week is housing authority. I think the week after that is a council meeting and we can bring those questions that council submit or one question do you all want us to look at because you all will have to as a body
Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
To decide what questions you want to include.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:04
And also, I think we want to be a little bit mindful on length. So when we’ve done this before we’ve, we’ve talked about how many questions we’re going to add
Unknown Speaker 1:40:13
surveys. Fatigue is, what is my point?
Unknown Speaker 1:40:17
So if there’s questions, that council is interested in us asking if we can get those to Becky, as soon as possible, that way we can get an agenda item for the next council meeting, then I think that’ll only delay us when we can have maybe, I mean, thank you, if we don’t see something by that, like, say, a drop dead date of Monday or something like that, or Tuesday?
Unknown Speaker 1:40:45
Can she proceed without? Correct, it says something that we can all agree to? I mean, if counsel is content with us, if we receive no questions, we’ll proceed, then. That’s the approach we can take. What I will say for those of you all new to the council that haven’t seen this, there are a host of questions that we ask that we have consistently asked from the beginning of the survey. And so that’s really what we’re monitoring on, it looks at everything from traffic service to library service. And so there will be consistent questions that we’re moving through, because that’s what we’re assessing. Yeah, it takes some analysis to really put that in there. So it’s not you’re not getting the redundancies or, or the the survey fatigue, that is their date. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Here’s the other option with this that Becky mentioned, is before we tended to be limited, especially from a scientific survey, and that, you know, a random sample size, we were historically limited as to when we could do that, because we were reliant on the outside contractor to do that. The that’s what we were so intrigued about with Qualtrics is we no longer have that limitation. So if there’s things you know, let’s say we’re moving down the road and counsel goes, we want to see what kind of random truly random survey looks like on this issue. We can do that. And we can do that internally. And that’s part of our strategic integration department in what we’re doing. So also, I would say don’t feel rushed, if you if you have questions, because there will be opportunities throughout the year for us to come back and potentially do more focus survey and some some point we can do some stuff digitally and things like that. So that’s, it sure. Sure improves things. And when you’re, you get that into in real time response, in terms of disait data based decision making, this is probably the most significant change that we’ve seen in quite some time. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:48
Councilmember Crist.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:52
Becky, is this the survey that’s gonna go out?
Unknown Speaker 1:42:56
It is it is based on the surveys that we’ve done historically. So we’re keeping that trend data, we’ll be able to adjust more of the survey as we move forward in future years. Okay. I just have one correction for you. Oh, great. Yeah. If you could also send that via email. So we’re sure that we get that
Unknown Speaker 1:43:15
correct. That would be Yeah. And then I’m just going to say who are our top items that are on our priorities here are things that maybe we should consider asking some focused questions about, you know, transportation housing
Unknown Speaker 1:43:33
that we think might be useful
Unknown Speaker 1:43:42
thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:43:47
so the next slide, so I don’t we’re good. You’re good to go. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:43:55
Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the long presentation of the Longmont open spaces an overview of our past present and future
Unknown Speaker 1:44:07
come on down
Unknown Speaker 1:44:15
a break
Unknown Speaker 1:44:21
Yeah, it’s the last thing
Unknown Speaker 1:44:31
you
Unknown Speaker 1:44:41
No.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:43
How about now?
Unknown Speaker 1:44:45
Good evening, council members. I’m Danielle Cassidy. I’m the open space manager for the city of Longmont in the Department of Parks and natural resources. Also with me tonight is Jim Couric, who is our ecosystem management
Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
manager. So he, he and his staff also work on open spaces. They’re out in the field doing the operations and maintenance. They’re the natural resource technicians, wildlife biologists plant ecologists.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:15
So, I have a informational presentation for you tonight about open space,
Unknown Speaker 1:45:22
per Suzy Hill doggo fairings request, I believe back in January or February. We’re finally here. So
Unknown Speaker 1:45:31
I’m excited to let you know about open space.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:39
So I can’t do a presentation about our city’s open space without our land acknowledgement starting off the presentation. This is the only slide I’m going to read to you in full tonight. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, ute and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken, and to educate our communities ourselves and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen. So this is this is part of our past when we talk about the past of open space. This is where we start.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:25
And why is open space important to us today.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:29
These lands preserve
Unknown Speaker 1:46:33
quality of life and promote conservation and stewardship.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:39
And now we’ll get into much more detail. This is our golden ponds nature area here pictured.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:46
So this is the or the open space ordinance from our municipal code. And it gets a little further into all the things that the open space program is.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:58
It is our job to do preserve preservation of natural areas, wildlife habitat and visual corridors, Agricultural
Unknown Speaker 1:47:07
Preservation of trails, streams and open space conservation of natural resources
Unknown Speaker 1:47:14
greenways and open space policies, policies and strategies and urban shaping buffers.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:21
So in the past, and you heard a little bit of this from Dan Wolford in the public invited to be heard our Longmont open space sales and use tax passed for the first time in 2000. We’re a relatively young open space program.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:38
As far as programs around the front range, we’re here in Boulder County and they’ve got their open space program which is 50 years old. We’ve got the City of Boulder nearby and their first open space tax passed in 1967. So
Unknown Speaker 1:47:57
ours was approved. Our tax was first approved in the year 2000 and dedicated in 2001, for acquisitions and multimodal transportation connectivity. So regional trails are part of our open space program. The program longlines program began in 2002. So we’re just past 20 years old at this point. The first things we did as a program in that year were right, our open space and trails master plan. And we purchased our very first open space pictured here. This is Boulder Creek Estates. It’s a 218 acre property. It encompasses the confluence of St. Vrain, and Boulder creeks. And we had no idea at the time that now 20 years later, it would be an essential piece of helping us complete the Eastern phase of our st frame Greenway trail phase 13 which will connect sandstone ranch into St. Friend State Park and continue east from there. In 2007, voters approved renewing the open space tax. And so that’s what we currently find ourselves under. That is set to sunset in 2034.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:20
So like I’m saying the open space program is still young. But the Longmont community has consistently identified parks trails and open space lands is highly valued. We heard it in the economic report from Aaron Fosdick and her colleague earlier that many of our visitors I believe they said 79% Come here for the outdoor opportunities. I think I saw like Macintosh pictured in one of their slides and that’s one of our open space nature areas.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:52
Also, the open space program aligns with five of seven Council priorities and I’ll point these out later
Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
later in the presentation, and here they are.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:05
So now a series of maps to really illustrate open space for you. Here you’ll see Longmont and the yellow line is the Longmont planning area. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:50:19
inside the Longmont planning area you’ll see the green our parks which are not open spaces as well as nature areas. So Dickens farm nature area, McIntosh Lake nature area. These are open spaces within the Longmont planning area. But as you can see, they’re relatively small. But then when you get outside the Longmont planning area, this is where we purchase our bigger open spaces. So the map starts to fill in outside the Longmont planning area. The dark green is city of Longmont open spaces, you can see them mostly on the east side of the map. And that sort of lime green is boulder County’s open spaces.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:02
And then when you layer on conservation easements, which is another protection mechanism for agricultural properties and, and open spaces, you see the map fill in a little bit more. And then finally, if you layer on other public lands, you can see birch Lake lands filling in around McIntosh Lake, those are other city properties. So those are owned by other funds. So although they have open space values, they are not technically open spaces, there are other city lands because they are funded by other departments, sanitation,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:41
water, etc.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:44
So now into some of the beef of what open space funding supports and what the open space and the ecosystem management workgroups do. We do a lot of planning,
Unknown Speaker 1:51:56
management plans, management plan updates,
Unknown Speaker 1:52:01
and CIP and long term planning. And then in terms of acquisitions, we have been in acquiring open space since the inception of our program in 2002, I told you about our first purchase Boulder Creek Estates.
Unknown Speaker 1:52:17
We never set a goal in the beginning, when we wrote our open space and trails master plan. And when we wrote our open space management plan to say, we have a goal of buying X acres of open space, and then we’re going to be done. We never set that goal. But if we wanted to take a look and think about the maps that we just saw and say, Where are we are are we going to get to a point where we’ve bought all the open space we’re going to buy and we’re going to turn all our attention now to just stewardship of the lands that we own. I tried to guesstimate that for you. So with the fee and the conservation easements that we have currently
Unknown Speaker 1:53:00
purchased, I would say we’re about at 70%. Of of where we want to be with our acquisitions. So we’re not there yet. But we’re getting we’re getting there.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:13
And then in the next three to five years, I currently know of five properties that we are interested in looking at could be potential deals for us. And together, these add up to 280 acres and would cost $6.2 million just for the land. There may be important water rights associated with those which would
Unknown Speaker 1:53:38
up that price. also identified is 450 acres of conservation easements totaling six properties, some of which need to be completed on our existing open spaces. We completed the purchase of the old lander farm early in 2024. And we are we are working to put a conservation easement over that property per city council’s direction and 2016 to encumber all of our open spaces with conservation easements for the additional protections that they provide.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:12
Other acquisition priorities for the open space program include water,
Unknown Speaker 1:54:19
we have an open space water portfolio and we use it for our agricultural properties. We use it to keep water in stream so in stream flow rates, and it’s I wouldn’t call it strong at the moment we do need more water and that costs money. So that’s something that our that our division is focusing on. And then another important aspect of the program is the multimodal transportation piece.
Unknown Speaker 1:54:50
The open space program works on two of the eight and five projects that are coming up the st Vrain Greenway phase 12 So these
Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
there’ll be the last phase of the Greenway, going west from our golden ponds property and then connecting into boulder County’s trail system. And then the union reservoir interim Trail, which will be built in the interim before the Indian reservoir master plan improvements are put in place.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:20
And that that project is got a cost of $1.5 million.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:26
And then we’re currently in designed for the same frame Greenway phase 13, which I mentioned,
Unknown Speaker 1:55:32
as well as the county road multi use Trail, which will connect union reservoir to St. Vrain. State Park and go through our go through our Adam farm property that we purchased in 2022.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:48
This is an example of some of the planning we’ve done in the past. These are stream reach corridors with in the planning area. So you know, open space does work on planning efforts,
Unknown Speaker 1:56:03
not just on our open space proper.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:07
And then this is an illustration of our primary greenways in Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:13
Those that are complete and those that are still being worked on. They’re 11.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:18
And then, in terms of open space funding, the stewardship aspect of our program, something that gets talked about maybe a little less than the acquisition aspect of our program. But this is actually a quite expensive piece of our program, stewarding the lands that we have in our portfolio, the annual operating cost for for the staff and
Unknown Speaker 1:56:45
to do that is $2.1 million
Unknown Speaker 1:56:48
and
Unknown Speaker 1:56:52
100 acres.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:55
We estimate that on an annual basis, we are stewarding 1500 acres of our open spaces property. And that is not to mention properties that are not open spaces. And it costs between seven and $10,000 per acre to do that in the uplands and even more when we’re talking about creek channels. So I put some estimates in there. So if we’re going to
Unknown Speaker 1:57:25
stay stored 1500 acres of our open spaces in a year, that’s $10.5 million for the uplands. And then if we’re going to do, for example, on spring Gulch to two, we had to pare down what we wanted to do there, we were just doing channel reshaping, that’s $1.5 million. And there are other things that we could have done, but that would have increased the cost. Then we work on paying our annual water assessments for our open space portfolio. Conservation easements, and
Unknown Speaker 1:58:01
this is just we get a return on investment for our open spaces. They do sequester carbon, and I missed Harold’s meeting that day, but there was a presentation that talked about and gave a stat on that. I can’t remember
Unknown Speaker 1:58:17
it. Yeah. So and I don’t want to, I don’t want to give somebody else’s stat when I wasn’t even there, but there was a per acre
Unknown Speaker 1:58:27
co2 sequence sequestration. So that’s an important piece of open space. Another return on investment from our program is the open spaces volunteering education program. So in 2023, we had 69 events, we could have had 18 More but we had rain. If you remember, last spring, lots and lots of rain, it canceled 18 of our events are events, and yet we had 1000 over 1000 volunteers, which added up to 4500 service hours. We’ve 24 community partners in that program. So it’s very popular, and they’re bringing back a value of $144,000 into the into our community
Unknown Speaker 1:59:12
and the kids fishing program, which is educational and fun for the community. We’ve over the years, we’ve passed out 5000 fishing rods.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:22
That’s a very fun program. And then in terms of agricultural open spaces and stewardship, we have costs associated with infrastructure and deferred maintenance. We’re working with various tenant farmers to do center pivot irrigation systems. Those have a cost associated with them. An example also is doing the deferred maintenance. So on our Bogart farm, we’ve got a drain tile install, that’s $15,000
Unknown Speaker 1:59:50
Other things that we fund our agricultural lease management. So here you can see in the orange I’m putting some of the council priorities next to these
Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
Again, the multimodal transportation and recreation are extremely important pieces of the program. We’ve got in there, we’ve got our ranger program. And so they’re patrolling our open spaces in greenways. We’ve got the recreation pieces at Union, reservoir and McIntosh lake for example, we’re constructing greenways. I showed you those primary greenways earlier, and again, our water portfolio gets at the climate action, council priority. And then just in general, open spaces are important green spaces for wildlife habitat and travel corridors, nature areas that are nearby to our residents within the Longmont planning area, and riparian corridors and in stream flows, and
Unknown Speaker 2:00:50
they serve a purpose, especially the open spaces outside the Longmont planning area to shape our community and keep us separate from the nearby our nearby neighbors. So when we bought that Overlander farm earlier this year, it it was
Unknown Speaker 2:01:07
it was austere Mead, and we we purchased it and then we shaped our community up in that corner and did not get a meat development happening in that area.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:19
However, it was a dry farm that we bought. So we were not able to purchase the water rights with that farm. So we are looking to buy water to make that farm whole and operating.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:34
So some of the future challenges and then future opportunities. And then we come to the end. Rising costs is a challenge with the open space program. Because as I’ve illustrated acquiring and maintaining open spaces is getting more expensive every year. And we see that when we have an opportunity to buy an open space, and then maybe the deal doesn’t go through and then five years later, we have an opportunity again, for example, the Oleander while the price has gone up, it doesn’t ever go down.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:05
So the open space sales and use tax funds the program in terms of ongoing funding, so it pays for the majority of everything that the open space program does everything I just talked about. So it is needed now and beyond 2034. We also have other sources of one time revenue, but these are temporary and fluctuating oil and gas revenue.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:33
partner relationships, we can leverage grant dollars
Unknown Speaker 2:02:38
Longmont open spaces get heavy use. And so we’re always determining how to best manage, maintain and steward these open spaces.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:50
We you know, we’ve heard a lot about this tonight growth in housing.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:55
And as long as it continues to grow, the importance and the impact of open spaces is also increasing. But the importance of having these open spaces here for our community is also as important as it ever was. And so some opportunities
Unknown Speaker 2:03:11
are open space program turns 25 In a few years, maybe an opportunity to celebrate, bring attention to our program. We love to collaborate with partners when we do our work.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:25
Education and Engagement
Unknown Speaker 2:03:28
is an extremely important part educating our community and it’s it’s becoming a bigger, bigger part of our volunteer program and all of our events are filling up with waitlists filling up people people are really appreciating that piece of our program.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:48
There’s room for improvement, flood mitigation improvement, hazard management on existing acres, restoring I’ve talked a lot about we’ve got open spaces that have passed land management on them and will take time and effort to restore.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:07
And so without increasing but securing ongoing and expanded funding for the open space program, we can continue to do our work
Unknown Speaker 2:04:18
to steward and coexist with wildlife protecting habitat corridors, building regional trails and multimodal transportation, supporting Soil and Water Conservation and regenerative agricultural practices. When we when we protect an agricultural open space, we’re protecting our history and our heritage. And when we get the water rights associated with that we’re protecting historic
Unknown Speaker 2:04:47
water rights.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:49
That’s all I have. Hopefully I went fast enough that there’s a little time for questions if you would like thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:56
Thank you. This was great. And I had to go
Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
back and think about, okay, why did I bring that up? And I just hearing, it came, not long after we had a discussion on housing, in council and hearing from residents who were concerned about that balance that were just growing and growing and growing, and we don’t have these spaces. But then when we look at that map, I mean, it’s, it’s really showing that yes, there, there are these spaces and
Unknown Speaker 2:05:29
you know, something that was very informative to me was not just the acquisition of land, but that ongoing sustainability and maintaining of that, that property, like we just, we just don’t acquire it and leave it. So there’s, there’s money that needs to go into taking care of that, that land. So I do see councilmember Martin’s hand up. So I will go ahead and defer to you.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:56
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem,
Unknown Speaker 2:06:00
I
Unknown Speaker 2:06:03
lower my hands, so I don’t get it. Okay. Um,
Unknown Speaker 2:06:08
I think as as you pointed out, the this income stream, this revenue stream has two really important per purchase purposes. One of them is acquiring new land for open space. And the other and in my mind, more important is is the stewardship of the land. But making it available to residents for recreation, making the agricultural lands make sure that they are working form farms that that do things like sequester carbon.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:45
And I, in in, you know, minor land use skirmishes that have gone on over the time that I’ve been on council, we have, I’ve had the opportunity to see what happens when land held by other open space aggregators is perhaps not maintained, as well as it could be in stewarded as well as it should could be with the result that it is not doing what it’s supposed to do, in terms of preserving agricultural land or or providing nature preserves. So I don’t want Longmont to ever, ever be guilty of that. And I think that that is a reason why I would certainly support the the continuation of the funding that is necessary for the stewardship of long run portfolio of open spaces. And we need to look at that very carefully. On the other hand,
Unknown Speaker 2:07:53
I also think that we need to look at the
Unknown Speaker 2:07:59
proposed new acquisitions. And what are opportunities to do about that are, you know, on them, we don’t want as as the example you gave, we don’t we don’t want Mead coming up on our eastern boundary of our planning area, we definitely want to have open space in between, on the other hand, are there
Unknown Speaker 2:08:28
are there land acquisitions that could be used to be annexed into our planning area on the eastern border, rather than being open space? And
Unknown Speaker 2:08:40
is I guess what I’m saying is, is that when we bring this forward,
Unknown Speaker 2:08:46
I would like to see some analysis around how much of the remaining unhealed land must be open space acquisitions and which have it could be used in other ways
Unknown Speaker 2:09:01
to reduce the amount of land that we have to maintain in perpetuity and possibly may also be able to host other amenities and housing for the city of Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:14
So, is that being you’ve got a good picture of of
Unknown Speaker 2:09:20
I think everything except the proposed acquisitions, and where it goes where it sits with respect to adjacency to the planning area. And and before we vote on it, I would really or refer the referred I guess it’s we’re referring the new the continuation of the tax to the ballot, is that correct?
Unknown Speaker 2:09:43
No, I’m just here for open space education tonight. I’m not asking anything of no not Yeah, not tonight. We’re not doing that. But that’s gonna happen. Right. We’re that’s what we’re asking for. Just jump in. I think there’s two things here.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
happening on this one in public invited to be heard, we did have members of our community that indicated that they would be coming forward with that request.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:10
In two weeks,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:13
when we have the entire council there, I think tonight, what Danielle is going over is really a state A, you know, the past present and the future of open space. I think the common theme between this is the fact that
Unknown Speaker 2:10:32
when we look at what we purchased from open space, and we look at the operational requirements and those issues, and look at the opportunities for open space, for example, there may be some areas where it may be along a river, and it’s a floodway. And but it’s still that buffer and some other. So think what we’re saying is, and as I look at this operationally, and you look to the future, there’s a sunset provision on the open space tax. And when we’re looking at how do you fund the ongoing maintenance of the open space that we’ve acquired over time and look at these targeted acquisitions,
Unknown Speaker 2:11:11
there’s an issue coming at us in the future in terms of, we’ve got to pay for it some way. And
Unknown Speaker 2:11:19
and we’re even now in budget processes when you know, this is more getting into what you’re going to see.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:26
But when we look at the operational piece associated with this, you know, there’s requests coming in. And we have to be really judicious because we also know when that sunset is occurring. And in terms of operational items that we put in ongoing dollars versus one time, we’re pretty careful. And then sometimes we do bring in general fund dollars just to assist with that in terms of the management if needed. So I think what you heard and in Danielle’s presentation is, you know, this is the first time we’re telling you in this, yes, the operational issues are coming, and we need to start thinking about how we’re going to deal with deal with that in perpetuity.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:06
Yes, thank you for clarifying that, Harold, because that’s exactly what I was driving at.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:13
And I was
Unknown Speaker 2:12:15
hoping that we could see some quantified scenarios.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:21
Because I would like Longmont to plan to be good stewards of the land we hold whatever that turns out to be as open space in perpetuity. On the other hand, I’m not averse to putting different limits than our projections, and which again, are they’re not really statutory at this point, what what the limits or goals are to our acquisitions? Is that Is that correct, Daniel,
Unknown Speaker 2:12:49
that we never actually set specific goals.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:54
If I understand you correctly, Councilmember Martin, I believe that is correct. Okay, but yeah, but we do have parameters that we look at when we’re considering
Unknown Speaker 2:13:07
purchasing open space, if they’re meeting that the tenants of our program, and if it’s an appropriate purchase?
Unknown Speaker 2:13:18
Yes. And, and again, because of because land is at such a premium. And because we do want to be sure that we
Unknown Speaker 2:13:29
can be good stewards of what we hold without overtaxing the public. I’d like to see those two issues separated out and the amount of acquisitions that are necessary,
Unknown Speaker 2:13:43
in addition to what we hold to now better quantified, and,
Unknown Speaker 2:13:50
and
Unknown Speaker 2:13:51
how, how big the tax needs to be just to maintain what we have at the level of quality that we do. Okay, if, if I could respond to that Councilmember Martin a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:04
It’s difficult to bring potential acquisitions to a public meeting, because there’s a lot of
Unknown Speaker 2:14:14
part of the process that needs to go on before it can be made public.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:20
So that’s going to be and then, you know, things come up and can be planned on in the next three to five years, like the five properties I mentioned. But then there are things where we’ve been, you know, landowners approached us 15 years ago, and then they call us up one day and they say, Okay, we’re ready, you know, and then that’s not something that we had planned for or budgeted for necessarily, and that’s coming up. And so those types of things happen in our acquisition day to day as well.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:57
I understand that and I very
Unknown Speaker 2:15:00
very much understand why we can’t, and don’t want to list specific parcels that have we’ve set our sights on, because that increases their price. But
Unknown Speaker 2:15:13
But what I do want to understand is, is specifically the cost of maintaining what we the projected cost of maintaining what we already hold. And as you had this rough
Unknown Speaker 2:15:26
estimate of, of 30%, more above what we already hold, and without naming specific part parcels, I would be real interested in
Unknown Speaker 2:15:40
putting some rails on that and, and, you know, could it be as little as 10%? Could it is, you know, because the way you’re describing the process,
Unknown Speaker 2:15:51
you know, it would
Unknown Speaker 2:15:54
allow us to acquire land on the other side of me, for example, which probably ought to be off the table.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:01
And so I just, you know, it’s it’s very open ended the way you describe it now. And if if we are going to be hearing
Unknown Speaker 2:16:13
it referring to the ballot attacks, a continuation of this tax than we should know what it’s going to pay for. So let me jump in Danielle, I think a couple of things. One, obviously, we heard that a group is going to be bringing that request to the council. I think once that request comes to the council, then we can take these questions and refine it. I think I looked over at Eugene and and you said what I was about to say is that when we’re looking at the acquisitions, we don’t necessarily want to talk about those in public, because that does impact price and competition for that. So
Unknown Speaker 2:16:51
I think once we get to that point, we can work with Danielle and team and and break it into buckets that are also generic enough. And one of the things that we’re not talking about in this is when you talk about acquisition, one of the strategies that we’ve used since I’ve been here is actually utilizing a debt strategy where you also issue debt to do that, so you’re
Unknown Speaker 2:17:14
minimizing your revenues in terms of you’re not just acquiring cash basis, you’re utilizing debt, which then allows more money to go into operation. So there’s also different financial strategies that we can utilize.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:29
Yes, thank you. And that’s I’m just trying to foreshadow all of that.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:35
Thank you. So I do see councilmember McCoy.
Unknown Speaker 2:17:41
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, Hidalgo, fairing. Danielle, you’ve done a wonderful job of presenting this, I want you to know, you know,
Unknown Speaker 2:17:52
just about a year ago, June 22, my father passed away but one of the things that he was most proud of was his involvement with open space. And, and we talked about that over and over again. And as an intern for Ron steward, and a Boulder County Open Space commissioner at one point myself, I can tell you that this is probably one of the most important things. And as we heard tonight from the LA DEP.
Unknown Speaker 2:18:18
And from visit Longmont, how important
Unknown Speaker 2:18:23
the recreational aspects and the commercial aspects of, of, of connecting this and seeing that, you know, why people want to move here, their businesses and their and their lives and everything to Longmont and just keeps coming back to that quality of life that open space provides. I think of all the people that walk every morning around Macintosh and and and paddle and, and play and Macintosh and then union reservoir. And I you know, it was one of the first
Unknown Speaker 2:18:57
park rangers out of union years and years ago when it was first acquired. And so I I really know,
Unknown Speaker 2:19:03
this is one of the things that we are, you know, it’s one of our crown jewels of our community. And so
Unknown Speaker 2:19:12
I think the group stand with our st bring Creek, you know, there’ll be coming forward with their proposal, and I think we can have these other conversations like Harold was indicating. But, you know, I think
Unknown Speaker 2:19:28
the group was only really talking when they presented last night to preB about the idea of maintaining it and just making it permanent, not trying to micromanage it or trying to create something that wasn’t there or confused the public on something that
Unknown Speaker 2:19:47
that indicating somehow it was more
Unknown Speaker 2:19:51
there than than that actually meets the eye. So I think we just need to stay focused here. We’ll wait and hear what they have to say
Unknown Speaker 2:20:00
You’re on the 25th. And, and thank you again for everything you presented tonight. Thank you. Thank you. This was great. And I’ll probably see you this Friday for the field. True. Thank you for that segue. We talked a lot about what it takes to steward and restore open spaces. And there’s still time to sign up for our open space to her on Friday.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:24
The open space tour starts at 10am. Right, starts at 10am. We’re meeting at the upper parking lot at sandstone. And we’ll take the tour from there. I think we’re scheduled to get you back at 1pm.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:38
Thank you. Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:45
Okay, so we are now at final call public invited to be heard. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak?
Unknown Speaker 2:20:53
Come on.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:05
Good evening, again, third time
Unknown Speaker 2:21:09
for Asrar from Western Montana, Colorado of Los Angeles. And I just want to say that I
Unknown Speaker 2:21:19
happy
Unknown Speaker 2:21:20
to be to be how do I put it?
Unknown Speaker 2:21:29
I’m glad to say this. I stand corrected on the agenda 10. A
Unknown Speaker 2:21:37
No, it was not a tax. That was my ignorance. It was a fee step set by
Unknown Speaker 2:21:46
foreign companies and the state decades ago in the 80s. Since 911, was developed in Alabama, a good for you Dixie. Anyway.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:57
And it’s beyond a worthy cause. It’s for emergency services. So the only gripe anybody wouldn’t be having is with increase in the rate. And that’s like a student inflation.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:11
Just a quick note about open spaces. Well, yes, begrudgingly I’m
Unknown Speaker 2:22:18
not. I’m reluctant on taxes and everything.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:22
And everything that would have to go to their services in our city, I would have to say,
Unknown Speaker 2:22:32
I would support worthy causes, like open spaces, because I believe we got to protect our open space. We got to protect our farmland and my old line for saying this Indian country as well. And while yes, costs are very important, and it brings up a dilemma. Thank you, Councillor Martin for bringing up these concerns. While I have to say you’re not wrong.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:00
One thing I know we touched on a little about the space is water.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:06
What are we going to do about the shortage of water? There’s water scarcity. I pray to God every day that our farmers get water for our crops, and that Lake Mead in the Colorado River system is replenished. Because I’m scared that we’re going through a drought and we only have so much water in our community, nevermind your planet. So I just feel like with open spaces,
Unknown Speaker 2:23:30
rather than expanding rapidly with housing development. That’s the best way to preserve if not grow our water or source to life.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:42
So I guess that’s all I got for tonight. Thank you. Great. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:50
Okay, and do we have any cow?
Unknown Speaker 2:23:54
Oh, yeah, come on.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:58
Looking Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:02
Dan Wolford 18 15/3 Avenue.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:05
What I saw was tonight, at least in visit Longmont, you saw many of the slides that had wildlife, you know, and much of it was local wildlife. One of the I think Danielle did a great job and Jim great job of providing the presentation. One of the elements that I believe was kind of missed was the urban wildlife management that the open space program does. The Jim’s work staff is responsible for the management of prairie dogs throughout all of cities, public lands, as well as all the fisheries and all our lakes and ponds coordinating that with Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife. The wildlife biologist is monitoring
Unknown Speaker 2:24:43
40 Raptor nests throughout the city and managing that as well as beaver control when the beavers were damming up our ditches and riverways so a lot of time is spent by staff, doing planning master planning wildlife
Unknown Speaker 2:25:00
Management Plan working with CPW on pebbles, metal jumping mouse plans. So that’s an important element.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:07
Finally, I would strongly encourage you to attend Friday’s meeting of the open space and see the beauties that you’ve preserved over time. And again, I greatly appreciate your support of the open space program and the support that you would you provided me over my career here with the city of Longmont. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:25
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:27
Okay, so now we’re going on to council comments, anyone? Okay, so let’s see. So the first one seats six. That would be councilmember Chris stopes
Unknown Speaker 2:25:40
first popped on.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:43
Well, it’s topical for tonight, I have a constituent who would like to speak to Council. She is almost completely deaf. But she was a hearing, hearing enabled person during your life and lost your hearing due to age. And so she doesn’t sign.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:04
She’s most able to talk through a translator or what we might call closed captioning. She also needs a little bit more of an intimate setting to where she can see faces to see if she’s speaking loud enough. And,
Unknown Speaker 2:26:19
and so I’m throwing this out here because I’ve had conversations with her through a translator.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:26
And she wants to talk about aging in place and the
Unknown Speaker 2:26:31
issue she’s having, particularly with her disability and her age and the changes in the neighborhood and the changes in in the cost of living. So
Unknown Speaker 2:26:43
the things that staff has come up with is maybe one on ones with each
Unknown Speaker 2:26:49
counselor, or maybe just in a smaller setting, say at a pre session when we’re in the study room. And if we can figure out a way to put some translation on the screen for her. So I just want to make you aware of it not asking for any action. And we’ll just that we’re working on it to be determined.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:12
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:14
Councilmember McCoy. Thank you, Mayor for Tim Hidalgo Ferran.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:19
Tonight, we heard from the Senior Citizens Advisory Board, and that one of the issues that came up was the closed captioning. And I’m always a little bit hesitant on that, because it’s oftentimes not closed captioning, but close captioning. And that’s a little concerning, because sometimes that can be, you know,
Unknown Speaker 2:27:40
say the wrong thing up on the screen. So I think we have to look and see a
Unknown Speaker 2:27:47
little bit more carefully about in chambers, closed captioning. And that just because of the fact that it does sometimes end up being more like close captioning. So so if I can jump in real quick, one of the things I didn’t want to remind people is we did upgrade our system here in terms of the headphones that folks can wear when they’re when they’re in session.
Unknown Speaker 2:28:14
Yes, we have been testing that and it is not always accurate. And so but one of the things to the point that Councilmember Chris brought up is, when we know about these issues, we do have connections with
Unknown Speaker 2:28:31
a it’s an it’s an accessibility issue, which we’re obligated to work through. And we work with different groups in terms of managing those exibit accessibility issues. So the more time we have, the better we can plan so that we can ensure that we’re assisting those individuals in the best way possible.
Unknown Speaker 2:28:54
So now it’s up to you. Do you have any other comments? City Manager?
Unknown Speaker 2:28:59
Thank you, city attorney. No comments Mayor Pro Tem Okay, so, okay, wonderful. Second, okay. Very good.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:08
All in favor?
Unknown Speaker 2:29:11
Opposed? Okay. There we go. Meeting adjourned.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai