Longmont City Council – Regular Session – November 19, 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob2Y5U3jA5Q
Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Regular Session – November 19, 2024

0:02
So could I have, can we go ahead and start with, Oh, I’m sorry, the live stream of this meeting can be viewed at the city’s YouTube channel or Longmont public media.org/watch, or Comcast channels eight or 880 could we start with a roll call? Please? I

0:23
Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo, Ferry

0:24
here,

0:26
council member Chris present. Council member Martin president, Council Member McCoy, Council Member Rodriguez here, Council Member Yarbro here. You have a quorum, okay?

0:37
Thank you, Crystal. Let’s go ahead and stand for the pledge, pledge

0:43
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 you.

1:03
Bill so in accordance with the council’s Rules of Procedure and the rules for 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 sign up sheet before the meeting or I will not call your name. Each speaker is limited to three minutes. Anyone may speak on second reading or public hearing item you and you are asked to add your name to the speaker list for the specific item before before the meeting. Anyone may speak in final call, public invited to be heard and reminder members of the audience shall refrain from disruptive, vulgar and abusive language, applause, heckling and other actions that may interfere with the orderly function of the council.

1:57
So if I must ask the audience to refrain from disruptive behavior more than twice, I will recess the council and reconvene once all disruptive parties have been removed from the council chambers. Okay, so let’s go ahead and move on to the approval of the minutes for November 12, 2024, regular session. So may I please have a motion to approve the minutes. And I see, hold on, hold on.

2:35
There you go.

2:37
I just wanted to respond to the minutes. I noticed that, let’s see. I’m trying to find it here. Okay, it’s on page 14. The motion is from councilor Chris, seconded by Joan Peck, to direct staff to implement a 30 day moratorium on the prairie dog extermination at Dry Creek Park. I actually believe it was Mayor Peck who made the motion and i Who seconded it, and I just want to give her credit for that. She was very sympathetic.

3:15
Okay, thank you. And so with that correction,

3:19
okay, move that we approve the minutes.

3:23
Okay, okay. Is there any other discussion on the topic? Okay, so let’s go ahead and vote.

3:39
Say not available. I Okay. It’s not letting me. I refreshed it not available, and you were able to see it. Let me try mine. And I can also give you a hand boat. Oh, here we go. I was able to do it on my laptop.

4:17
There’s nothing. I got blue screen there. And

4:28
it was approved unanimously. Okay,

4:29
okay, thank you. So the motion was approved unanimously, with six to zero with Mayor Peck absent. So let’s go ahead and go on to Agenda revisions and submission of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas. Are there any agenda revisions? Okay, is there any are there any motions from council to add future agenda items? I. Go ahead.

5:04
Mine is in regards to 9k which is on the agenda for this for today, and it’s about the $1,000 set aside for the Parade of Lights float, and I just happen to participate in the Vision Zero Task Force yesterday, and I was reminded that the micro transit will be ready to go by the time our holiday parade occurs, and they’re wondering if the vans could flank our float. And I just wanted to add that to 9k if that’s agreeable to councilor Yarbrough, it was your motion. Yes, yeah. So, okay, thank you. Okay.

5:51
So I guess the motion was to include

5:55
Michael trans advance to flank the Holiday Parade Float, which is part of 9k on our agenda. Okay,

6:04
so, and council member Yaro seconds that, so let’s go ahead and vote all those in favor say aye or aye. Okay, all those opposed. Okay, so the motion passes unanimously with Mayor Peck absent. My tech isn’t working.

6:31
Okay? Well, I’m just going to move along. So, okay, and so now on to the city manager’s report. Does the city manager have a report? Report, Mayor Council, okay, and then special reports and presentations, none. So now we’re moving on to first call, public invited to be heard. So we’ll start with the first person on the list, and you will be given three minutes, and please state your name and address before you begin speaking. So the first name we have is Robert Morris, and

7:19
turn on the mic, please.

7:24
Robert Morris, 170 South Pratt Parkway. Good evening, Council. I’m just, I know it’s very early. I’m just coming here to put on everyone’s radar that the Boulder County, Boulder County, NAACP, will be putting on our Doctor King Day celebration on the 20th of January in 2025 it will be from 10am to 12pm though we will be having a youth event from 9am to 10 that will be directed and hosted by Saint rain Valley school districts, very own Lulu buck, who is an author from the area, so we would really appreciate it if you come out to that. We don’t currently have flyers available, but we’ll get them out as soon as possible, and we’ll return with those. But just wanted to make sure that was on everyone’s radar and invite everyone out. Also we are doing, what we’re doing this year is we’re aiming for a more youth focused event for the Longmont area, for the Longmont celebration, specifically, so if you have kids that you would like to participate, we will be having a we’ll be having a meeting at a later date before where we can get them incorporated into the event as well. Thank you very much.

8:48
Thank you. Next name on the list is Jack Maddox. You

9:08
my printer kept jabbing so I only have one copy. Can I give it to someone? Thank you.

9:19
Good evening and anticipate item 12 on tonight’s agenda. Name and address, please. I apologize. Jack Mattox, M, A, T, T, O, X, 1608, tulip court, I go now yes, in anticipation of item 12 on tonight’s agenda, I want you to visualize with me please the significantly and well documented harmful effects of lead poisoning and noise pollution on our community by the 90,000 yearly operations out of Vance brand airport, that’s about 250 per day, imagine you and a companion are walking around beautiful lake Macintosh, and here comes a low flying and quite noisy aircraft. R. Right over you at less than 6000 feet altitude, measured by an app called flight tracker and then another, all in violation of the city’s own voluntary noise abatement plan, which requires a minimum altitude of 1000 feet above ground. Probably more important is the recently documented october 2023 US, EPA, quote final endangerment finding that leaded aviation contribute gas contributes to air pollution that is harmful to public health. This is the opening sentence in a 17 page report issued last May by the Boulder County Public Health air quality program. The report documents increased blood level concentration of children living near airports. And concludes, quote our findings highlight the value of lead testing in children who live near airports. The EPA 2020, facility level data for point emissions, documents that advanced brand emissions of lead compounds total to 406 pounds of lead that year. And the CDC in Atlanta reports there is no safe level for lead in humans. Does this have to be the case? Do we have to close the airport in order to prevent lead contamination of our children? Not at all because it is well known. There is now available a lead free alternative g1 100 UL, marketed by vital in Houston, currently in use in both Santa Clara, California, county airports. This product has FAA approval. I spoke with Robert Emmett at vital, and he assured me that the g1 100 UL can be delivered to Vance brand. There’s no reason why g1 100 UL cannot be substituted for or added to the polluting 100 ll currently in use. You may hear later, the city has been advised to wait on this pending the resolution of what are called part 13 and part 16 complaints filed against the Santa Clara airports. The basis of the complaints, there is the banning of other fuels. Merely filing a complaint does not halt in usage. I’ve spoken several times with the Santa Clara director of county airports, Eric Peterson, and as recently as yesterday with the airport manager karum, who have verified they have not been told to suspend the sale of it pending. Thank you the sale.

12:24
Thank you. Okay. Next person? Chris Conklin,

12:34
thanks, sure.

12:38
Chris Conklin, 234 Francis Street. I’ve lived in Longmont 22 years now. I’ve never had an issue with the airport. I mean, planes flying, you hear them. It’s like, you know, once in a while it’s loud, maybe like a Harley going by. As of this summer, everything changed. It’s like, I don’t live in Longmont. I lived in another town, these airplanes, and we all know what it is. It’s this flight school that was coming here. It’s unbelievable that I have to stand up here and even talk about this, that this was invented before, how this was going to affect us. These planes are flying day and night. And it’s not just, you know, over certain neighborhoods, they’re flying over the whole city on these touch and go landings. They go out, they touch and go, they come back, they circle over the city. Less than 1% of Americans are pilots. How can this? Less than 1% affect us like this. It’s unbelievable. I’m just going to play you what something that you know over my house. I need to put my glasses on. This was done about three weeks ago. Wait a minute. Of course, I can’t find it. What the hell? And I do it all right. There it is. Listen, I live in old town that was right over my house. All right. I can’t believe this anyway, you know, I’ve heard the argument that we have. The city has nothing, has no control over it. It’s the FAA. Well, don’t take money from the FAA. You know, if the airport can’t sustain itself on the fees from its hangars and from landing fees, maybe it’s time to close the airport and and turn that land over to develop housing, which is a big need in the city, as we all know, not only is this thing a disruptive but another thing, I was raised on a military base. My father was a naval pilot. The military was very cognizant of of the and tried to mitigate pilot they though the, you know, the sound of their jets by not flying. Over neighbors. My father, I remember him talking about not being able to fly over certain neighborhoods. So if the military can do it, the Navy, which is their bread and butter, flying, and they worry about mitigation of sound, what about long Mott? I mean, my God, I hear you know that you have no control over the FAA. Well, don’t take FAA money. I don’t believe it. I think the city has more power than they say. I think that the city, if they had the me, if they had the will to stop this flight school, they could find the means. That’s what we pay you for a lawyer here to find the way. It was one more statement.

15:39
Thank you. I’m

15:40
just getting to the good part.

15:44
Come back at the end. Okay, so next person on our list, Steve Emmett, Maddox.

16:02
Steven I’m at Maddox, 5833 Grandville Avenue. I’ve lived in the West Grange neighborhood near 75th and Nelson for three and a half years. I feel it’s important to speak tonight, because it’s important that my voice is heard. And you realize that the concerns about the airport are not the complaints of a handful of people, but rather are serious issues shared by many in the community. I have a personal and professional connection to small aircraft. Several family members were and are pilots. And my sister in law worked for Cessna for many years. In my previous job at a national nonprofit, I developed a relationship with light Hawk, which nationally flies conservation missions, donating pilots in time, and and have nothing but gratitude and respect for those pilots. I’d like to offer my perspective on lead fuel and noise pollution. Regarding the leaded fuel. It’s well established in the scientific and public health communities that there is no safe level of lead in humans. Second, a recent study in Colorado documented increased levels of lead in the blood of children who live closer to the airports. Third, there are unleaded alternatives to the AV gas that is in standard use. And last, there is precedent for airports to ban, sorry, I lost which receive FAA grant funding to ban the sale of leaded fuel. Given these facts, it is readily apparent that the city should act with some urgency to ban the sale of leaded fuel at the airport. Existing contracts with fuel suppliers may need to be amended or canceled, but it’s worth it for the public health that’s at stake here regarding noise I’ve observed, subjectively, an increase in the number of planes flying over my neighborhood, as well as an increase in noise pollution since I’ve lived there. There is a voluntary noise abatement plan and path that you’re aware of that routes planes away from close by neighborhoods and requires a minimum altitude of 1000 feet. This is routinely ignored. The plan is voluntary. I understand that, so the pilots can make safe decisions when necessary, but both the noise abatement path and the minimum altitude are regularly ignored in all flying conditions. I don’t have the technical savvy, nor the time really, to track the planes that are violating these rules, so I cannot say if these are local pilots or flight schools that use the airport for operations. It’s my understanding that the city can regulate touch and goes at the airport without fear of reprisal from the FAA. Please do so. I’d like you to understand the significant negative impact on our quality of life caused by the frequent low flying aircraft over our neighborhood, our ability to enjoy our homes and outdoor space are greatly affected. I would hope that the pilots and flight schools are willing to step up and be good community members and change their behaviors and when they need a push in the right direction, I would ask and hope that our airport director can provide that push. And I also ask the City Council to take whatever steps you can again without fear of reprisal from the EPA. There are precedents, and please take those into consideration and follow those. Thank you very much.

18:52
Thank you. Thank you. So the next person is Julie COVID. Thank you,

19:11
Julie. COVID, 722 widgeon, drive,

19:14
um, Julie, can you lower the mic a little bit? Thank you so we can show you how’s that

19:19
perfect.

19:19
Last March, the town of Superior and the Boulder County Commissioners filed a lawsuit in Boulder County District Court against Broomfield county commissioners and the Jefferson County Airport Authority. This lawsuit seeks to protect superior residents from negative and unreasonable health impacts caused by certain operations at the Rocky Mountain metropolitan airport in one of the associated exhibits, the plaintiffs clearly spell out a list of general aviation airports similar to Vance brand, who have taken FAA grant money and who have either regulated or banned touch and go operations. Torrance, California, not on the list due to timing of the lawsuit is a part. Poster child for a city that has taken back its Airport last year, they not only banned touch and go operations, they implemented landing fees, while the city of Longmont, people with airport interests and sit and the city hired Kaplan Kirsch law firm will tell you that their hands are tied with regulating flight approved operations advanced brand this is false. I want to be crystal clear. We own the airport, and we have agency over its operations. I have a handout of the list of 39 airports and the actual Torrance California ordinances, banning touch and goes and implementing landing fees. Seek me out if you’d like a copy, and you guys have a copy now.

20:40
Okay, thank you, Julie, okay. Next on the list, Dan, left, left, which

20:56
council members. My name is Dan. Left, which 775, West Grange court in Longmont, the flight school takeover of our airport for touch and go operations is destroying the quality of life in many neighborhoods in this city, including my West Grange neighborhood, I can recount times, even on Sunday, when there were five planes in formation over my house very low. I won’t repeat what others are saying about the damage that’s being done. I think it’s irrefutable. I will focus my comments on the legal issues, because I’m sort of speaking out of turn in anticipation of what Mr. Eric pilsk is going to say about an opinion letter that he’s sent, I think, to the city manager, asking the question, what can be done? Can the city do anything about these touch and go operations? I’m a lawyer, 30 years of complex litigation. Mr. Pilski, even he doesn’t rely on the old argument that FAA has preemption jurisdiction to stop the city from regulating these touch and go operations. Dispose of that argument. Instead, he relies on a single provision in the FAA grants, which are sponsor assurances that give you money and then they get you to agree to these sponsor assurances. This is the one where he says requires the city to ask permission before it can propose regulations of touch and go operations, and then the FAA has a veto over those opera over those potential regulations. I know that’s what the agreement says, But I’m here to tell you that the Colorado Supreme Court says that kind of a provision is void. It’s unenforceable. There’s a doctrine in the Colorado Supreme Court called the reserve powers doctrine, which says basically that that certain core governmental powers, like the police power, the eminent domain power, belong to the city, to the sovereign, and they cannot be surrendered by contract. They can’t be abdicated. One city council can’t bind another city council as to its discretionary use of this police power. So granting a veto to the FAA over your discretion as to how best to regulate for the protection of public health and safety is void and unenforceable. That’s from the Supreme Court. Now also it’s, it’s deemed to be that limitation is deemed to be part of the contract. So the FAA can’t come in and say, Oh, they’re ignorant about this. Okay, they know exactly about this. They just intimidate cities. They use this funding mechanism as a coercion scheme. Now I you don’t have the authority to enter into a contract that binds the city to not exercise its police power. So please this rule doesn’t act to protect the city. It acts to protect the public.

24:00
Thank you. Please respect it. Yes. Thank you. So now we have Jen Huff.

24:14
Hi, I’m Jen Huff, 10619 north, 65th Street, and I’m here to talk about the property value depletion by the what I’m calling the invasion of flight schools, from R, mm, a and I say invasion because it is like living in a war zone when you’re in any part of their path as they’re circling. I recently, in February, had a verbal sale of my home to my neighbor’s best childhood friend who wanted to move home, and my property was perfect. I’m going to read you her letter. But again, the our property values are being depleted by all the activity. The letter reads, dear Jen, thank. You so much for the opportunity to have a look at your place. When I was in town last February, there was there were so many aspects of it that were very attractive and suitable for me, the location near Boulder and Longmont and right across the street from my dear friend X, I absolutely love the size and usability of the lot with all day sun, great fencing, sweeping mountain views, the size of the barn, the arena, it seemed almost ideal. And when I first arrived there, it also seemed like a really perfect setting, peaceful and quiet. But then almost immediately, I became aware of an airplane overhead, and then another, and then another, and soon I realized there was almost constant airplane noise. In all honesty, although I was only there for 30 minutes, I ultimately found it to be disturbing enough that I knew I was not willing to endure that aspect of the property. I am super sorry about this, as I now understand this has become a major problem for you and others in your neighborhood. Hopefully there will soon be a resolution to this problem. If so, let me know I am still very much interested in moving back to my home, or to my back home to my native Colorado. All the best. X, I just think we’re I, I I live out in the country. I have open space to the east between me and the airport. The planes are not supposed to even be close to my property. They’re supposed to, according to the FAA, stay within a mile of the airport for safety reasons, and they choose not to abide by the V nap, even if they’re the only airplanes out there. And I just think it’s tragic that we’re losing not only our quality of life, but our property values. I can’t give away my property right now, so I appreciate you guys listening.

26:55
Thank you. I

27:02
think it says Howard Morgan.

27:09
Howard Morgan addresses 1932, Amethyst, drive Longmont city council members. I hear the noise problem. And let me I’m a 38 year investor in the airport and a 60 year old or 60 year flight instructor. And first thing I’d like to point out is these airplanes are not all long on airplanes, are coming from Boulder. Chef, go for Collins. Erie to practice, take off, the landings. The problem I see that what could help is we see some very poor instructor, student, pattern work. You probably don’t understand what that means, but there is a a standard pattern that should be flown and we’re seeing not very good pattern work. So we can’t tell these other these airplanes that can’t come here, but we can certainly have the airport manager, or some manager, go to these various schools with a airman’s Information Manual. It’s called an EIM, which specifies how a pattern should be flown and if we can get these people to abide by that, it’ll help considerably, because it won’t be flying over out of the city, so

29:02
that something has to be worked on, I think can be, maybe not solved totally, but it can be made A lot better. Thank you.

29:14
Thank you. Tim Cook, I

29:25
Tim Cook of 1074, 1r 65th Street, Longmont, Colorado. You all listened to me last time, and I’m here again, and I’m not going away. As everybody said, our lives are drastically changed in the last year. Why should someone else be able to run a business that destroys our sanity? It’s not fair. It’s not right. You guys probably don’t live near the airport or have to put up with what we have to. You. It’s not right. It’s just like a war zone, plane after plane after plane. I stood in the field the other day and shook my fist at the planes. At the end of the day, they crisscrossed my house. I know they did that, in spite I know they did. I’ve lived there for 30 years. I try to go after the last meeting. I tried to listen. It’s not every day, but the days I get off, I go home, I try to enjoy being out at my house. All I hear is those airplanes. They’re climbing. They change noise right over my house. It’s annoying as can be. Please find a solution. Please. It’s not right. It is not fair. You guys regulate all kinds of things all over town because of noise traffic. There’s got to be an answer to this, and why the people that run the air, schools or whatever can’t be considerate of us. They don’t care one bit about us. They care about the money in their pocket. That’s not right. Thank you.

31:17
Thank you. Andrew gold,

31:37
good evening council members. Andrew gold, 1616, Naples lane, Longmont, Colorado. I’m hearing a lot of, obviously, energy surrounding airport operations here in Longmont, and I’m here to talk about just a few of them, with respect to the the property values and things of that nature. I can say that I live right over the pattern of the airport landing circuit that brings airports in and out when the wind is blowing out of the west. So right underneath that that pattern and I can tell you that developers that have smart investors and deep pockets have done the math and the development in that area of Longmont is explosive. So I can tell you that if it, if it were a negative impact, they know the airports there. They know where the traffic patterns are. Housing prices and housing values in Longmont have done nothing but go through the roof. That includes properties under the airport traffic pattern. So I don’t know who’s sort of keeping tabs on the math, but I see, again, property values skyrocketing around the airport broadly with respect to the unleaded fuels versus leaded fuels. I know it’s been a lot of doom and gloom. One bit of good news is there’s no less than three companies. One was mentioned tonight that are working on alternatives to leaded aviation fuel, and that’s coming that’s starting on the West Coast, and it’s just bleeding its way over from the west to the east, and it’s just a matter of time before the AV gas is Sunset and all the aircraft are moved to unleaded fuels. So that action is being taken by collaboratively by industry as well as the FAA. So the good news is change is coming with respect to 100 low lead aviation fuel. Lastly, as a pilot that flies in and out of Longmont airport, I want to say that we take our relationship with the community very seriously. Every time I land and take off, I try to make sure that cognizant of what altitude I’m flying at, and do my best to reduce any noise impacts on our communities. The reason why we’re seeing such an uptick in aviation broadly is because there’s a global shortage of both pilots and aircraft maintainers. So they’re they’re training all over the place, up and down the front range, from Pueblo all the way to Fort Collins. So there’s traffic increase because you’re seeing an increased demand. Longmont is very lucky to have its airport its part. It’s been here since 1945 it brings a lot to the community, and I understand that there’s there’s impacts with with noise, but once that airport were to be gone, if it were to be gone, we’d be looking for a way to bring it back, and that way wouldn’t be there. So I appreciate you.

34:38
Thank you. Strider Benson,

34:54
thank you appreciate Strider benston, 951, 17th, this discussion is really important community input in a, you know, in a system where we actually resolve and discuss things with public input and accommodation we just had an election two weeks ago where the person who won with 49.9% of the vote claims that our entire system is basically to be abolished. The first thing he said he’s going to deport millions of people first put them in concentration camps. That’s exactly how Adolf Hitler started in Germany, and we if Charles Lindbergh had run for president in 1940 and won the United States would have probably been on the side of Hitler. And what would what kind of a world would we have then? It is that serious. The I thought Marta Marina was going to be here tonight, and the deportation of millions of people, the DACA kids were here in Longmont, most of them are in their 30s. Now, that was 15 years ago, but the governor polis and Governor Pritzker in Illinois are working on, how did the states protect the people from the violence that’s going to come down from from Washington in the next six months to two years. And the what is going, I mean, they say they’re going to destroy the Environmental Protection EPA and and many of the factors, I mean, the weather service next to Noah are to be abolished by our the forthcoming regime. And they we may, if that happened in 1940 we may have exterminated the entire concept of a democratic republic, which we have the last 235 years, with all its flaws. And there are many flaws we have lived under. Let’s continue. Thank you having a democratic republic. Thank you.

38:03
Claire McArdle,

38:14
good evening, council members. My name is Claire McCardell. I live at 10145 north, 65th Street in Longmont. I’m here on behalf of our community to express concerns about the noise pollution caused by small aircraft operating as a part of the local pilot training program. It’s well documented by respective organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School, that noise pollution poses serial health risk, contributing to conditions such as cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, sleep disturbances, stress related disorders and cognitive impairments, including memory and attention deficits. Last summer, the disruption was especially severe with planes beginning as early as 5:30am and continuing until after 10:30pm on some days, this relentless schedule made it nearly impossible for residents to find relief, significantly impacting our daily lives. As a professional sculptor, I spent decades creating a peaceful environment on my property where I hold classes and workshops for students of all ages, I’ve also invited healing practitioners from our community to collaborate and host workshops and classes. These efforts are focused on fostering creativity and offering restorative experiences to people, including those dealing with PTSD. However, the constant noise has severely disrupted instructional time, and I had to cancel my fall workshops entirely because of this impact. In addition to human health, noise pollution significantly affects the natural environment. Wildlife, which depends on quiet surroundings for feeding, breeding and shelter, is highly. Sensitive to noise, their communication, vital for mating, warning off predators and nurturing Young is disrupted, creating stress and threatening their survival. Domestic animals, such as our horses, are also startled by and stressed by this persistent noise, making them very anxious. For 30 years, we have worked to create a place where people can find peace, focus on their creative projects and connect with a sense of well being, but this constant noise undermines that effort. Much of the discussion seems focused on economic justifications for private companies or the city. I urge you to also consider the health and well being of our community, the residents, families and individuals who call this area home, as well as the broader impact on our environment and animals, we ask the council to explore solutions such as revising flight paths, restricting flight hours, and identifying less populated training zones to balance the needs of the training program with the well being of our community and our ecosystems. Thank you very much.

41:03
Thank you,

41:06
Scott Stewart.

41:15
Scott Stewart, Scott store, two, could 9229, Grant Street long month it passed, out a little handout I just gave to Harold and Levi’s got one in the back too. Hey, I think we can agree that the airport could use some additional operating capital and and reserves for the maintenance issues. Implementing a two part non discriminatory weight based landing fee could provide a much needed revenue for the air that the airport is lacking. Gave a little bit of paperwork out. Number one and number two are from the FAA, and they speak about self sustainability. The airport has an obligation to maintain the infrastructure that is being paid for with these restrictive FAA grant monies. Number three is from the Longmont 2024. Approved budget. The air quote, the airport enterprise fund pays for all expenses associated with maintaining and improving Vance brand, municipal airport. End Quote number four, it’s about Grant. Is about grant money. Why are we taking obligated FAA grant money to rehabilitate aprons and taxi ways. Maintenance of this capital improvement is supposed to be funded by the operator number five and number six. Also referenced back to three is an email that helps describe how the airport is not reimbursing the taxpayers or the general fund for the full amount of the administrative transfer fee. Number seven is from the FAA airport to compliance manual. This speaks to the issue of two part landing fees. The airport is growing. It is a growing impact on the city, and the impact extends well beyond the runway. Take time to look at the grant funding for the airport that the airport has received year by year. This is not a lot of money, if you break it down, year by year, these funds could be generated in house and the airport could stop taking FAA restrictive grants. Consider putting a pause on accepting FAA money until there is a better understanding of how we can meet our current grant obligations and how obligated are we? The city would benefit from a more accurate data collection system surrounding the airport. That’s a whole nother topic. Just a note. Much, much of the information that’s found on the city, what website is surrounding the airport, is very outdated, and in some cases not very accurate. And finally, the city built the airport. The airport did not build the city. Thank you. Thank you. Is

44:00
this ek Graf and correct me if I mispronounced it, please.

44:11
City council members. Thank you. Ek Griff 6024, Saint Vrain road, I read the mission statement for the city of Longmont, and it says our mission statement is to enhance the quality of life for those who live, work in or visit our community. The City Council mission statement states that Longmont will be the world’s greatest village where children are most fortunate to be born and raised looking at what is currently happening at the airport, both mission statements aren’t at all in line with what we are experiencing with this airport behavior. Our quality of life is going in the wrong direction. This one first take this one. For example, Thursday, November 14, at 7:14am one plane has already done 23 circles over the Longmont community, one person flying 23 times over the same houses. Absolutely no respect for the people who live here. 23 circles by 714, disrupting 1000s on the ground. It’s crazy and unfair and totally counter to the mission statements that the city has said this summer. This was happening every day. Our next example, eight planes on Sunday, November 3, 8:43am eight planes circling in one small area. Sunday morning, families out, riding bikes, walking dogs, enjoying coffee on the deck, trying to enjoy the beautiful community we live in, and having to deal with this constant disruption, eight planes. Is it even safe? Eight planes, totally unmonitored in a small area? What if there’s an accident? Who’s responsible? Is it the city? Is it the city council? I had no reasonable expectations of the impact the airport would have on myself and my property. The main question I have for you is, who does the city council prioritize the citizens of Longmont who live here pay taxes and expect an exceptional safe quality of life, like the mission statement says. Or is it the 30 or 40 people flying around in circles all day, polluting our skies, disrupting our peace and quiet, and frankly, putting our safety at risk? Let’s roll back the clock eight months to the way it used to be, an airport for the citizens of Longmont, an airport for the businesses of Longmont, and an airport in case we have an emergency, let’s not become the pilot training center of The Front Range. Thank you very much.

47:18
Thank you.

47:22
Jonna, Jonathan Moore,

47:31
thank you all. My name is Jonathan Moore. I live 5740 prospect road. I live west oladerman. That’s the first time I’ve been in front of you guys. So thank you. Didn’t hear about this until about two o’clock today. So excuse my quick notes. I have worked for local governments. I’ve worked for Jeff go Douglas County, but a commissioner in Clear Creek county spent most of my life preserving what’s unique about Colorado. We bought this property for a lot of what you’re hearing about here today. You know, this rural lifestyle, this quality of life. We personally bought it because it’s productive ag lands, because it’s got water rights as it has ditches, because we can run animals on it. All we’ve done since we’ve been there is trying to improve this property. We spend a great deal of time outside on this property. So as you’ve heard from many people here today, it is a quality of life issue. It is. It is an impact that is dramatically escalating in a short period of time. I have never spent any time studying, reading, looking at flight paths. All I can tell you is what we observe, what we see, day in and day out on the ground. For you know, for us, we’re outside eight months a year, we’re still picking lettuce, so we’re outside, and the planes are still flying all the time. I would say, short of prairie dogs, this airport is 100% the most intrusive use and activity on our property. It probably does affect property values. It sure as heck affects our quality of life. My request, with which I’m happy to see many others are saying, is, please be respectful. Be respectful. I like some of the terms. I’ve just been scribbling notes as I’ve been here. Put yourself in our shoes. Put yourself on the ground. Think of equity. 23 flights before 7am I get up in the morning, I sit outside by 530 with my cup of coffee, and they are flying over, and it has escalated last year. So I guess, you know, treat your neighbors like you’d want to treat yourself, is probably the main thing I can say. And then I think what others have highlighted, and again, I don’t have the specifics here today, other than to say, the whole concept of regulating time and use time of flights, flight pass noise ordinances, it is, it is a dramatically escalating and increasing problem, and I would appreciate your help on it. I like one person saying, find a solution. I didn’t like the other person saying, you know, think about who. Prioritize because it is a small number of people that are in those little planes circling a lot of people. Thank you very much.

50:07
Thank you.

50:10
Joanne Burton, can

50:22
Joanne Burton, 713, snowbury, thank you for allowing the public voices to be heard. I have provided you with two documents. So the first document from my closing includes item number 15 in Schedule B, which references Vance brand airport. Think some of you are just picking that up recently, I requested the document referenced in my closing paperwork to better understand this process. Please note this reference document was recorded in 2003 seven years before my closing. You have that document as well. If you look, I am not the signee of that document. For those of you who know what it’s like to be at the closing table signing the pile of closing documents, you may understand how Schedule B 15 did not present itself as significant. I’m not sure how legally binding these documents are, but I ask you, is this how we envision treating our Longmont residents? Thank you.

51:54
Thank you.

51:58
Ellie Schultz, i

52:08
Hi. Allie Schultz, 6078 Saint rain road, I live on a 40 acre horse property. Did

52:19
you lower your mic? Yeah.

52:20
Thank you. I live

52:21
on a 40 acre horse property we bought in 2024 years later, and especially this summer, the air traffic is constant. It’s before 7am it’s after eight o’clock at night, sometimes as late as 10 o’clock, I’m up feeding horses and loving letting them out between 530 and six, and it is. The noise is drowning out birds. It’s drowning out sound of the breeze. It’s it’s a lot and starting at seven, much like that map just showed, there are people doing consistent loops knowing that this meeting was coming and that I was coming to it on Friday, I started noticing, well, why don’t I start tracking all the air traffic that’s overhead? Because when I am sitting inside of my house, which is not a small ranch house on st Vrain road, I can hear the rumble and the constant drone of these planes. There is no place for me to really get away from the noise inside of my barn with a giant commercial sized air filter blowing with the doors closed on a cold morning, all I hear at seven o’clock is the drone of planes constantly overhead, and it does sound like a war zone. So Friday, I started documenting. I started taking pictures. I got video. And it is, it was like the moment I would I would get one plane videoed overhead, there would be another plane going the same thing happened. Saturday, another nice day. Sunday, was a little quieter, and yesterday, Monday, it all started again, like just consistent, consistent, consistent, all throughout the day, to the point where it was like, every 30 seconds there was a plane leaving the Longmont airport and flying West over my property and many of my neighbors. It’s it is something I hope you take seriously, because we can’t sit on our patio on either side. We can’t have a phone call outside. We can’t barely hear ourselves talk outside. If I’m having a riding lesson midday, I cannot hear my instructor. It’s it’s a lot. And thank you for hearing all these voices tonight, and I hope a lot of these. Questions are taken seriously. So thank you. Thank you.

55:04
Okay, so Ezra Gilad,

55:19
good evening. My name is Ezra Gilad. I live at 1511, Mark bunting place. I’m here to discuss the proposed changes to rates and regulations governing electric service, chapter 14, point 32 of the Longmont municipal code related to credit paid for the net metering for distribute from distributed solar generation. I want to highlight the significant negative consequences this decision would have, both on those who have already invested in solar energy and those considering adopting in the future. First, the proposed reduction from 10 cents per kilowatt hour to four and a half cents represents an alarming 58% decrease. This change dramatically devalues existing solar energy systems undermining the financial stability of residents who have invested in the technology. Installing solar panels is not a casual decision. It is a substantial financial commitment. In Colorado, the average cost for a solar system is approximately 15,000 to $30,000 after incentives, with systems taking 10 to 15 years or longer to pay for themselves through energy savings, many solar panel owners are already facing higher monthly costs compared to what they paid before installation. Financing a solar system typically entails monthly payments spread over 25 years. On top of that, there are grid connection fees around $22 per month in Longmont and additional charges for electricity when a system doesn’t generate enough power to cover households energy needs, even the current rate structure this financial equation is a delicate balance. A drastic reduction in the net metering credits will make it nearly impossible for many homeowners to justify the investment in solar, creating a ripple effect that discourages future adoption. Second reducing the net metering credit will devalue properties with solar systems. If potential buyers view solar systems as a financial liability to do to reduce credits and longer payback periods, this perceived value could disappear. Homeowners like myself, who made the investment in good faith could face unexpected financial setbacks should we need to sell our homes? Third, the decision undermines the broader goal of sustainability, grid reliance, resilience and energy independence. Solar energy adoption reduces demand on the grid, lowers carbon emissions and increases resilience during peak usage and emergencies. LPC has emphasized its commitment to renewable energies and reducing strain on the grid. However, this proposed rate reduction contradicts those goals by discouraging residents from adopting technology that directly supports them, instead of penalizing solar customers, I urge the LPC to explore alternatives, alternatives, sorry, alternatives that strengthen renewable energy adoption. The decision you make on this proposal will have lasting consequences for long months renewable energy goals, economic resilience and financial well being of residents. Please reject the proposed reduction in net metering rates and instead choose policies that support clean energy growth, economic equity and sustainable future for all. Thank you for your time.

58:20
Thank you. Just on time. Okay? John bales.

58:34
John bales, 1511, like bonding. Also regarding the reduction of self generation credits, which is more 50 50% decrease the city claims in a like a letter that we got to our house, they say the retail rate ends up costing non solar customers almost $2 million over the next 15 years, and looking at that now, unless the city, for some Reason, is selling our excess solar electricity to other providers at a lower wholesale rate, then this claim seems very misleading. What I think you mean to say is that you want to extort your solar customers of $2 million by reselling the energy reproduced for your profit, rather than treating us like proud of your grid. Instead, you’ll treat us slightly better than the energy corporations. I’ll give you example. Currently, if I produce a megawatt of energy during the day, then I go, then I go to use that like another megawatt of energy at night, then I currently owe you nothing. It makes sense. Give you a megawatt. You give me back a megawatt or even but under the new proposal, what I would only get back is less than half of what what I give you is less than what I half of what I get back. I hand you $1 you give us back 50 cents. Yeah, so now if, but if you must proceed to these changes because of balancing the grid, like you have too much energy during the day, or, I don’t know, it wasn’t explained then, and you want to disincentivize future solar investments, then I ask that you make some additional considerations for existing solar customers. If you choose to proceed alternative solutions so you can grant residents that currently have solar rates and keep their we can keep our rates for 30 years instead of 15 years, as proposed, to match the expected lifespan of solar panels and also to ensure the property values are not degraded and devalued by this change, allow us to pass on this rate to people that buy our homes and maintain the same ending date. That way, we people that aren’t looking at our homes be like, well, I can’t use the rate. Well, your solar is basically useless to us. It will keep you, give us all peace of mind, even though I really don’t want to sell my house. I love it here, but I think it would just be better for to show that faith to your residents. And if there is a problem with residents over producing to get a large paycheck at the end of the year, consider providing wholesale rate just for those that just for the check, but for day to day use, month month use, provide the the retail rate and yeah, we’re your neighbors and residents. We’re not big solar companies. Please. Yeah, keep incentivizing this and don’t betray us. Thank you.

1:01:36
Thank you. Okay, and the last one on my list is Brett, and I’m trying to head, head, head be and correct me. I know I read it wrong. Okay? Is that an L? Come on down.

1:02:00
Well, thanks. Good evening, council members. I think last time I was up here, it was two o’clock in the morning. Oh, yes, very similar topic. And this is so much nicer. Yeah.

1:02:08
So if you could restate your name for my notes, Brett Heitkamp, 1151

1:02:11
winder, Brewer, circle. So I guess there’s, there’s quite a bit of talk about the pattern in the in the airport, and just, you know, as a point that isn’t being brought up, that’s how people learn to fly. I mean, landing is one of the hardest things to do, and it takes student pilots quite a few tries to get that right. I can understand that people are frustrated with it. I can also understand that people would be equally frustrated getting onto a commercial airline with a pilot that really hasn’t landed all that much. So somebody has to learn it at some point in time. It’s important when it ends up being directly affecting somebody taking a commercial flight anyway. Biggest thing was, think the unleaded fuels that is going to resolve itself, like we’ve talked about how the unleaded fuels are being produced. It’s a matter of time before they’re here. However, realize it as a pilot, you don’t pull up to a fuel pump and have a choice between unleaded and leaded and go, Oh, I think I’ll take the leaded fuel this time. It doesn’t work that way. And the airplane itself, the engine has to be certified to burn that unleaded fuel. So right now, we’re kind of our hands are tied. You know, if we had unleaded fuel, we wouldn’t be able to fill with it. We’d go somewhere else, fill up with low lead and then come back to the airport with a full plane. So it’s not like you can wave a magic wand and say, let’s all do unleaded fuel. Everything’s great. It doesn’t work that way. So that’s something else to consider. And I’m sure that Levi will talk about a lot of that later. A lot of this has been covered. So you know, one thing to bear in mind, both airplanes and cars have mufflers. There’s no way to legislate out the noise. The 1000 Foot AGL, if somebody was talking about the planes are 1000 feet or lower. The pattern is 1000 feet. So that’s the altitude you’re supposed to be flying. That’s also a distance from developed properties that you’re supposed to be above. So planes that are under that are like violating rules, and there’s a whole nother regulatory body that can get involved in that. But as far as 1000 feet thing, that’s that’s what that patterns at somebody doing endless laps around it. I don’t know what you guys can do to legislate that.

1:04:27
I mean,

1:04:29
it’s going to be a challenge. So there’s nothing that’s a simple, simple solution. I understand a lot of people are upset about that stuff, but I don’t want us to do so sorry. That’s all I’ve got. Looks like we’ve got 20 seconds left. So thank you all for your patience the last time around, staying up until 230 in the morning, that was amazing. And thank you for doing what you do. So I’m sure you’ll do equally well on this topic. Thanks. Thank you. I. It’s hard to

1:05:03
just really run out. Okay, yeah, yeah. So seeing no one else on the list, I will close public invited to be heard, and we’re going to take a five minute break For technical issues. Thank You.

1:15:04
To call council back. No, she’s right there. Yeah, she’s in the back. Are you done? Okay? Thank you.

1:15:31
Yeah, come on down. Okay, so we are now on the consent agenda and introduction and reading by title of first reading or ordinances, please, so Clerk, can you please read the consent agenda for the record? Yes, Mayor

1:15:49
Pro Tem. Second Reading, a public hearing for all ordinances introduced on this consent agenda will be held on December 3, 2024 Item nine A, is ordinance 2024 dash 84 a bill for an ordinance, approving an amendment to the Vance brand municipal airport hangar. Parcel H 60 lease and authorizing the consent to assignment to Richard F shayden LLC, tenant, Item 9b is resolution 2024 78 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and Regional Transportation District for the Eco pass contract. Item 9c is resolution 2024 79 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and the city of Fort Collins for flex bus services. Item 9d is resolution 2024 dash 80 a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing a developmental agreement between the city of Longmont and diamond G concrete company. Item 9e is resolution 2024 81 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont housing authority to provide funding for the Longmont Housing Authority security cameras project Item 9f is resolution 2024, dash 82 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the second, amended and restated intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont housing authority for support and services. Item 9g is resolution 2024 83 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont housing authority for American rescue plan Act funding for tenant readiness services. Item 9h resolution 2024, 84 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont housing authority to provide funding for this any attendant damages fund. Item nine i One is resolution 2024 dash, 85 a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing amendment to a surface use agreement between the city of Longmont and 1876 resources for the Olander farm, open space. Item nine i Two is resolution 2024 86 a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing an agreement of the city of Longmont and South BB Metropolitan District for the exclusion of Olander farm open space from the metro district. Item 9j is approved contract for audit services. Item item 9k is approve the use of up to 1000 of council contingency funding for a float for the Parade of Lights.

1:18:49
Thank you. Does anyone want to pull any items? Okay, okay, I’m gonna keep going. May I have a motion to approve the Consent Agenda Item as presented. Okay, very good. So the consent agenda has been moved by council member Martin and seconded by council member McCoy. Let’s go ahead and vote. Yeah, any discussion? Okay, let’s go ahead and vote. I

1:19:24
okay this so the consent agenda is approved unanimously, minus Mayor Peck she’s absent today, so now let’s go ahead and move on to Item 10 ordinances on second reading and public hearings on any matter for ordinance 2024, 77 a bill for an ordinance amending chapter 11 of the Longmont Municipal Code concerning utilizing an automated vehicle identification system. Are there any questions from council before we open the public hearing? Okay. Okay, so I’m going to now open the public hearing on or ordinance 2024, 77 if there is anyone. So I don’t have anyone signed up on the list, but if there’s anyone in the public who would like to speak to this motion, you may step forward. Okay, so I’m going to close public hearing. May I have a motion to pass and adopt ordinance 2024, 77

1:20:30
Okay, so the motion to pass and adopt has been moved by council member McCoy and seconded by council member Christ. Let’s go ahead and Would anyone like to discuss? Okay? So let’s go ahead and vote.

1:20:58
Okay, so the motion has passed unanimously, minus Mayor Peck, who is absent today. So we have no items removed from the consent agenda, and let’s go ahead and move on to general business. We have item 12 A, the Vance brand airport discussion,

1:21:27
good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Hidalgo ferry and members of council, Joni Marsh with the city manager’s office. So council had requested that staff come and address many of the questions I know you all have been receiving, and you’ve heard some of that this evening at public invited to be heard. So we appreciate the public coming forward again this evening to make sure we’re firm in those so we do have a couple of presentations. Levi is going to Levi Brown, our airport manager, is going to go over some of the questions that you have been asking around the CIP airport operations. We have a new data system that we have implemented at the airport. So Levi will talk a little bit about that and what we’re going to do with that going forward. And then this evening, we also have Peter Kirsch with Kaplan Kirsch, who is our outside Special Counsel for the airport. And so with that, I’m going to turn it over to Levi. I think you should be queued up here somewhere?

1:22:23
Yes, which sounds wonderful.

1:22:25
There we go. Perfect. Thank

1:22:31
you for your assistance.

1:22:38
Of course, also, if I may add council members, just a note that our airport advisory chair, Harrison Earl, is here along with Melinda. And certainly, if you have any questions of the board, they would be happy to step forward and assist.

1:22:54
Good evening. As mentioned, I Levi Brown, the airport manager, and I have a quick little presentation with some some highlights of the airport and some basic data that’ll hopefully give us some insight into some of the questions you’ve been getting recently. Right airport operations? So last year, we kind of submitted a number to the FAA for airport operations, which, in my best estimate, wasn’t amazing. So we started looking at better ways to start tracking, kind of what was going on at our airport. Going on in our airport. So we actually contracted with a company called airport monitoring systems to start actually physically taking account of all the aircraft coming in out of our airport. This is brand new technology. As of 2018 the FAA started mandating ADSB and aircraft, essentially what that is GPS tracking for all aircraft. So the technology is now at the point where we can actually put out antennas and actually count planes that are coming into our airport. This is great, because all kinds of great data on who’s coming in, when they’re coming in, even down to what they’re doing. So this is just a snippet of our first page on our Power BI interface that we have for that. And this gives a general idea of kind of what’s going on. So as you can see right here, it’s just looking at this year so far, we’ve had 112,000 operations at the airport. An operation is a takeoff or a landing or an overflight at the of the airfield. So it could be any one of those things. So that’s not counting planes. That’s an operation that occurred, all right? And just as little point of data here you can see, you know, it’s a great system that shows that our two busiest days are Tuesday and Wednesday. This interface has a total of 28 pages with tons of data that they’re giving us as the city. It’s great. All right, little review on CIP projects that are going out at the airport. Little bit of look at the past here, starting 2020 we did a big erosion control program out at the airport that used federal funding that was a 500 A 35,000 Yeah, dollar federal grant that we got for that project reloading some drainage around the airfield to get out of the runway protection zone. 2022, we did the Southwest sewer project out there. Therefore that was the first project that I as airport manager, was a part of out here. We are very fortunate to get a 50% state grant for that. Usually the state doesn’t invest heavily into infrastructure, kind of grants like that, and we were very fortunate to get quite a bit of money out of them. That was a total of a $722,000 project. So that was a big chunk of change that we got from the state. Was really nice this year, 2024 we have the wildlife fence completion and the pavement rehab rehabilitation project going on. Pavement rehabilitation is probably going to be pushed into 2025 but the fence, wildlife fence project is moving forward currently. We had the pre construction meeting this morning, went out and walked the lines and finally, yay, we’ll have a completed wildlife fence around the airport. All right. Alrighty. Looking to the future, the next big project for the airport is going to be the taxiway, a South reconstruction. We had to split that into two phases, phase one and phase two, and 2025 2026 that’s going to be about $900,000 per phase. So that’s going to suck up quite a bit of the airports money for the foreseeable future to get that pavement rehabilitated. Unfortunately, in 2028 we do have a master plan planned for now. Our current master plan was done in 2012 master plans are supposed to last about 10 years, so we’re 12 years into 10 year plans. So having to do it in 2028 it’s not too bad, at least we, you know, we didn’t have to do it in 10 years anyway. Good news, right? All right, just a little quick snippet about unleaded fuel. We actually do offer unleaded fuel advanced brand airport. We’ve been offering mo gas for quite a few years now. It is a type of unleaded fuel that you can’t get a supplemental type certificate to run in planes, as mentioned before by one of this the individuals who spoke up here, who was a pilot, you can’t just put whatever fuel you want in your plane. Has to be approved by the FAA. To get approval, you have to tour a different type of fuel. You have to go back to them and apply for approval, pay a fee, go through paperwork, prove that it’s safe, and essentially do it that way. We do offer MOGAs is an option currently where you can do that and get an unleaded fuel. They do offer supplemental type certificates for that for the majority of small private planes that we would see on our field. We are working towards the goal, the 2030 goal, of transitioning completely unleaded gasoline operations. House Bill 1235 this year passed by the Colorado passed by Colorado essentially says that we have to work that way, which is great. It syncs up to the goal we were already working towards with the FAA. So that transition is coming, and we’re planning for it now.

1:28:18
Little quick look at fuel totals have been sold here. Little quick chart here, as you can see, actually the two highest years we had for fuel sales, 2020, and 2021, were a little bit down from those totals, just

1:28:33
kind of little snippet of the fuel that we sell here. So 2023 we sold 144,700 and 100. 44 780 gallons

1:28:50
noise abatement program. Vance brand has a very robust noise abatement program. We’ve had one for years. Again, House Bill 1235 that was passed this year in Colorado, essentially requires airports to have a noise abatement program. I submitted ours with slight modifications to the state, and tentatively already have approval to run it the way it is. So that’s great. That puts us ahead of most airports in the region. We post that on the website. We have monthly communications that go out to our pilot community regarding our noise ama program. We try to do a lot of engaging with it. I’ve been working with the local airports on the front range to try to start doing airport meetings, and eventually I’m hoping to start doing flight school meetings, something that we kind of did pre pandemic, but it’s fallen off over the last few years. Flight Instructor meetings would be another great way to kind of get our the news out about our noise abatement program, speaking to noise complaints, specifically this year so we’ve had two. 264 complaints. That’s down from our 2013 high of 1582 of the 264 that we’ve had this year, 108 came from a single household. The vast majority of those are noise related complaints. There are a few others specific to ultra light, sky diving, touch and go operations, but those were just the ones that people specifically mentioned. Those the vast majority of people just specifically mentioned noise when it comes to the complaints and a few on lead. See, that’s kind of the the totality of my presentation. There are there any questions that you have for me the moment? Okay,

1:30:44
so, yeah, I see you, Council Member Martin, go ahead.

1:30:49
Thank you. Go for it.

1:30:55
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Levi. I have several questions. The first one, I like that, the 2030 goal of being 100% unleaded in terms of the fuel we dispense. Couple questions about that. First of all, it does not allow us to ban planes that are using unleaded fuel or using leaded fuel from landing and taking off. There’s nothing we can do about that. Correct?

1:31:28
Yes, essentially the way setup, and I can have Mr. Kirsch speak more in detail about that in his part of the presentation. But that is true, yes, okay.

1:31:37
The other thing is, I don’t quite understand why it’s going to take us until 2030 I understand that that’s the mandate. But as a couple people pointed out, g1 100 UL is available now, and just about any general aviation plane can get certified without modification for that fuel. So why can’t we do it as soon as we can arrange to have containers for the new fuel and a supplier contracted? Why do we have to wait till 2030

1:32:18
certainly a good portion of the aircraft could utilize that g1 1000, just as they could utilize the MOGAs, which we already do offer at the airport. The FAA Reauthorization Act that was just signed this last year actually states that we can’t ban, or we can’t force the FBO to ban, lead to gasoline until 2030 until the goal. So,

1:32:40
yeah, but that doesn’t mean we can’t offer the g1 100 UL sooner than that.

1:32:47
No, we certainly couldn’t. In fact, yeah, in fact, we’re offering an unrelated version right now, so we already are, so we could certainly offer that or any other. There’s

1:32:58
a lot more. I mean, to be honest, there’s a lot more resistance to MOGAs than there is to g1 100 UL in terms of potential damage to the plane. So if we had to choose only one we should now choose g1 100 UL, I think. And if I’m wrong, you can tell me why, but I understand we can’t. We can’t ban ordinary AV gas yet, until 2030 and then we can. We can stop providing it. But why can’t we provide the good stuff sooner? That’s my question. We certainly

1:33:37
could provide g1 100. We, as the airport, actually don’t distribute fuel. It would have to be a kind of acquired, yeah,

1:33:44
the FBO has to do that. And with the FBO

1:33:47
1000 or the Switch version, also, they make 100 and octane. Also are there’s also Texas racing fuels, I think is the name, yeah, that offers one also.

1:34:01
So, you know, we do have the sustainable aviation resolution, which I would interpret to essentially mandate us to go faster in terms of dispensing sustainable fuels and upgrading the services of the FBO. And I understand that there are efforts underway to upgrade the FBO, and I don’t want to get into the details of that, because I really shouldn’t. But what’s taking us so long? You know, it’s been a couple of years now, more than two years since there’s been a resolution in place that that dictates that we do this. And it’s not really close to happening yet.

1:34:48
It’s, it’s all time it’s transitioning. So it’s, it’s moving that direction. Something else to point out is our current 100 low lead tanks or underground tanks, which were we will need to be phasing out soon. So. That could also fold in well to this transition that we have to accomplish by 2030

1:35:05
Okay, thank you. And I have one more question on the other subject, which is, which is the new tracking equipment, which I don’t know anything about, but the question that I have about that new tracking equipment is included in in, I mean, it obviously, it’s counting flights over, flights touch and goes, and actual landings and take offs. Um, is it collecting data about the specific planes, such as tail numbers so that we could actually bill for landing fees, if we chose to adopt them. Yes, does it collect that much? It

1:35:46
does collect that much data, and it can be utilized that, and has been utilized for that in the past. There’s other obstacles that were kind of in, you know, have to be considered when you’re talking about, you know, landing fees and stuff like that. But that could also be another whole conversation. So yes, but yes, it

1:36:02
could be. Yeah, I understand about landing fees, that it’s not as easy as Scott thinks it is, and it’s also not as hard as perhaps some other people would say it is. You know that, but I do know that the certain municipal, municipal airports have adopted landing fees and had the FAA say, No, you’re doing that for bad reasons, like discouraging student pilots and rescinded the right for us to charge it. So I understand I want to get it out there that this is a delicate subject, but we do have the equipment to do it.

1:36:48
Yes, we are tracking the overwhelming majority of aircraft coming into the the airport now. Okay,

1:36:55
okay, thank you. Um, the the last thing that I would if this is not a question, I just want to point out that many of the people who spoke have the belief that we have a lot more power than we have in terms of what happens at the airport. It can you just confirm that that it really, truly, is mostly regulated by the

1:37:22
end. There is a lot, a lot of federal regulation that we deal with and as mentioned, kind of before, it is a voluntary noise abatement program, because that’s what we’re allowed to do. Even in house bill 1235 that you know, was just passed, it mandates a voluntary noise abatement program, kind of recognizing that Sure,

1:37:42
and in particular, we don’t have to give those student pilots permission to fly over our airspace or do touch and goes on our runway.

1:37:51
No, we don’t it. You know, think of the runway much like a public road. That’s kind of how pilots have access to it. There does seem to be a misconception that I come across quite a bit that that we approve or we schedule flights and we don’t, we’re kind of the stewards of the airport. But it is, you know, it is a public piece of concrete out there.

1:38:12
Okay, thank you, Levi,

1:38:13
Mayor Pro Tem, if I can jump in on the question of fuel, I think the point was made. The city is not. But I wanted to reiterate this, the city is not the fuel provider that is done via contract with the FBO. So if council wants us to move in that direction, we would, and I don’t want to play attorney here, because I’m not, but I would assume that we would have to enter into contract negotiations with the FBO in terms of this other option as we look forward, because we do have an existing contract with the FBO operator, who is a fuel provider.

1:38:55
Okay, thank you. And

1:38:57
I would just like to stick in before somebody else gets the floor, and I realize I sort of gave it up by saying thank you, but we, I, I would like to get the city manager to acknowledge that the when it’s time To negotiate the next FBO contract, the sustainability resolution pretty much requires that we include those in the FBOs contract

1:39:29
correct. And as we’ve had conversations, I think we’ve been very clear in terms of the fact that council policy direction is the sustainability resolution that Council adopted, so that has to be taken into account when we’re looking at other future contracts. Okay,

1:39:47
thank you again.

1:39:49
Okay. Council member McCoy,

1:39:52
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Levi, so the community can understand. Yes, I know you’re on the process, in the process of communicating to these other flight schools. What’s been the flavor of the conversation with our current flight school? Here are they? Do you feel like that? 28 flight you know, touching goes one morning, in the early morning, is coming from that situation, or is that somebody coming from a different

1:40:28
that’s, that’s hard to say. I

1:40:30
mean, I yeah, in that particular instance, I understand it’s hard to say. But is that the largest percentage of

1:40:39
the I was it’s looking in without having the exact data, in fact, right ahead of me, just what I recall from the charts as I was reviewing the for approximately half of our traffic at the airport is purely flight schools, and the other half would be private operations, charter individuals flying their own Personal planes. So there is a high volume of flight training at the at the airport, yes, sure,

1:41:04
but, but do we think the bulk of that flight school is from our our locale? It’s a

1:41:12
split a lot from Denver and from here. Also, we do have a large chunk that’s coming straight from this airport. We do have a large piece that’s coming from from different they’re about comparable. Is

1:41:23
there some sort of requirement that they have multiple different experiences landing at different airports?

1:41:28
They are actually in their flight training. They are required to go to different airports. They’re required to train in different environments, try to do cross countries, travel from their home airport. And

1:41:38
what? What benefit does that do? Just, just familiar you with the the wind patterns, or that was with

1:41:46
anything that else you would train in the, you know, they, they’re looking for a broad experience, you know. So they’re looking for you to, you know, operate from a control tower, looking to operate from a non control tower. They’re looking at your flight planning super so they, they, when they set these standards for students, they do kind of go through all of these things that they want you to know, and and going to different airports is part of that. And certainly that’s part of why we’re we would be seeing traffic. Another reason why we would be seeing traffic is, you know, just practicality, or a close airport to the Denver Metro area, and they would just be utilizing us because we are an airport close to Denver

1:42:24
area. So our local flight school, though, instructors that are local. Do you feel like they’re the better candidates of better individuals that are out there flying close, you know, tighter patterns, so they’re not flying over the neighborhoods and that sort of thing. Or do they get it

1:42:42
now? Now we’re getting into the discussion of, you know, individual pilots and and trying to wrangle all of them to speak from experiences. So I used to actually run a flight school, so I’m familiar with the endless struggle, essentially trying to keep people to standard. It’s like, here’s about the patterns you should be doing, you know. Here’s, you know, the FAA is recommended, you know, work, what you should be doing, ways you should be flying, the altitude you should be at for the most part, with enough work you can, you can keep those standards pretty good. But then there’s always, you know, there’s never going to be 100% control, and at the end of the day, you know, that’s, it’s we can do the best we can for that. If anyone’s breaking regulation, of course, that would be a responsibility of a to regulate that. No, I

1:43:29
understand that our jump skydiver group, that large Twin Otter plane, has been asked to use a couple of different patterns, so that it’s not always flying over the same rooftops.

1:43:46
And I know they’re actually being followed. I know there was, there’s back in 2015 that there was even more talk about their operations here, from my experience, in my observations of them, their their products tend to be pretty professional and very efficient with their patterns. They spend as minimum time as they possibly can, kind of hovering around down low, if you will. Fact, that was one of the conversations we had when we had a meeting with a mile high mccare Flight School and Broomfield and aerosphere here was, was essentially safety spacing operations will get them in and out without having them linger or wait. So yes, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re professionals. They’re pretty good at what they’re doing. If

1:44:28
the the general flying height is 1000 at least, a minimum of 1000 feet, what’s the general, you know skydiving height of when they drop

1:44:44
that I’m unsure about. I don’t have any experience with jumping operations,

1:44:48
okay, so we don’t know where they would typically drop off. People, which level

1:44:53
altitude, I’m not sure. Okay, it is very high, though. Oh,

1:44:58
okay, yeah. Okay, so it would probably be considerably higher than 1000 Oh, yes,

1:45:05
yes, much, much higher.

1:45:10
Hey, I’m just I’m just here to learn. I’m just here to learn. Okay, thank you.

1:45:19
Do we have other council members that wanted to comment or weigh in before I do okay, so I did receive an email from the mayor, so she gave me a list of questions to to ask of you. So I told her I would. But I, you know, I want to address some of the the comments, you know. And I can’t attest, you know, and I don’t live, really, near the airport, but North, you know, near Lake Macintosh and but in the older homes, janky homes. But anyway, so, you know, we are hearing airplanes at six o’clock in the morning. You know, we’re also hearing them, you know, the other night it was, it was close to 11 o’clock at night, you know, so, and I don’t know a lot about flights, you know, and so if anyone from the Advisory Board wants to speak to this, or you can correct me if I’m making the wrong assumptions. But isn’t there some kind of, like, air traffic control that kind of regulates, you know, when planes can come in and when they can’t. Or is it just kind of, if the open space is open, they can just kind of

1:46:30
motor on through. So kind of the best analogy is like a public road, okay, so that is kind of the best way treating it, you know, you can you come and utilize it when you wish, as long as you’re full, you know, following the rules of the sky, if you

1:46:43
will. And currently, we don’t have operating hours. We do not, we do not. So, I mean, that would be something, you know, that’s been kind of lingering in my mind for several, several months now, is, you know, I would like to see operating hours.

1:47:00
And that’s something that Mr. Kirsch is also here, and he does have a whole presentation also kind of in the legal ends of stuff too.

1:47:07
Okay, okay, so I guess we can address some of the legal questions when he speaks Mayor

1:47:12
Pro Tem. I was going to suggest that we probably move into Peter Kirsch’s presentation, because I think some of the questions are now crossing into to this side, so it may help to go through his presentation, and then we can circle that when we get back into some of these questions. Okay, great. Thank

1:47:28
you. Applause.

1:47:56
Thanks again.

1:48:00
Good evening. I’m Peter Kirsch with the law firm of Kaplan Kirsch, it’s a pleasure to be here this evening to talk a little bit about the city’s authority to regulate airport operations and noise. And I’m afraid I’m going to be a bit of the bearer of bad news. I guess I should apologize in advance, but what I want to do is talk through what the city’s authority is, and clarify some of the questions. I think that a number of the members of the audience, as well as city council members, have had about about the issues. So permit me, if I can a little bit of law 101, here, because I think it’s important to understand the context in which the airport operates. So the legal framework for operation of the airport starts with the US Constitution and then federal law, and then contractual obligations. All three of those have effects on how the airport operates and what the city can do. First, under the Constitution, the federal government has complete control over the airspace in the United States, to oversimplify only a little bit, no one else controls airspace. A couple of them, very small exceptions here and there, but by and large, once you use the airspace, you are under federal control. No one else can control now, federal law also imposes a number of restrictions on how airports can operate and regulate airports. In particular, there’s a statute that was passed in 1990 called the airport noise and Capacity Act that says that airports that are open to the public cannot restrict their operations without the approval of the FAA. That has nothing to do with whether you take federal money. It has nothing to do with what you are other than the fact that you’re a public airport, you can be privately owned, but if you’re a public airport, you need FAA approval to impose any restrictions on operations. The third which people focus a lot on are contractual obligations and. When the city takes grants from the federal government, every year, you sign a grant agreement, and that grant agreement has a number of conditions in it. It’s lengthy like any good grant agreement, and among those conditions are what are called grant assurances. They’re a set of 40 different requirements that comprehensively regulate your airport now, if you didn’t sign that grant agreement, if you didn’t take grants, then you wouldn’t be subject to those with one very important exception. When you sign an agreement, you agree that the conditions of the grant will apply for 20 years. So if you stop signing an agreement today, then those same conditions will apply for another 19 years. So if you wanted those restrictions, and we’ll talk about those in a moment, what those restrictions are, if you want to get out from under those restrictions, you would have to wait 19 years. And that’s really important to understand. It’s not every year that if you decide this year you’re not going to take a grant, you’re not subject to those grand assurances. So the city’s authority over over flights, and that’s really what we’re talking about, is the flight of aircraft, as opposed to what goes on on the ground. The FAA, under both federal law and the US Constitution, has exclusive control over aircraft in flight over, flight procedures, flight paths, aircraft, air traffic control, noise at its source, that is engine noise and aviation safety. So that’s a very broad range of issues that the FAA has exclusive control over. Airport owners may propose airport restrictions for FAA review and approval, but the FAA has ultimate authority over whether or not to approve any restrictions at all.

1:51:50
So the city’s legal obligations today, and I’m putting a quote here from one of the grant assurances, part of the grant agreement you signed that says that the city must make the airport available as an airport for public use on reasonable terms and conditions and without unjust discrimination to all types, kinds and classes of aeronautical activities, including commercial aeronautical activities offering services to the public At the airport. The real key words there are that it must be available on reasonable terms and conditions without unjust discrimination, and the FAA, under the terms of your grant agreements, gets to decide what is reasonable and what’s unjust discrimination. Now, there’s a process you can go through if you disagree with the FAA ultimately going to court, but in the first instance, the FAA decides is a restriction, is a is a requirement at an airport, reasonable and not unjustly discriminatory. So what this means is that the city cannot restrict access to or use of the airport without complying with a complex series of laws, regulations, policies and the grant assurances. So you can’t just today say we don’t want touch and go or we don’t want skydiving, unless In fact, the FAA finds that such restrictions are reasonable. So sort of as examples of the kinds of restrictions that need FAA approval are things like curfews and time of day restrictions, restrictions on noisy aircraft, touch and go, restrictions I can keep going here, noise caps, restrictions on flight schools, sky diving and so on. You cannot adopt any restriction on flight paths or procedures as the other ones on this chart. You can ask the FAA for approval. You cannot ask the FAA for approval of flight tracks, flight paths, flight tracks, because that’s exclusively within the FAA jurisdiction. That being said, and I’ll get to this in a moment. The FAA does like to cooperate with airports in trying to find flight patterns, flight paths that are compatible with the community, but that’s entirely up to the FAA, and the FAA makes the decision and enforces that, if it will. So the obvious question is, Okay, how about if we ask the FAA to let us impose restrictions? And the question is, will the FAA approve them? The FAA will very occasionally approve restrictions that are needed for safety and efficiency reasons. A good example, for example, is if Denver International Airport wanted to impose a restriction on hot air balloons, it’s pretty likely the FAA would approve that because for safety and efficiency reasons. At an airport like Denver International probably can’t safely accommodate hot air balloons, but an airport like Vance brand that doesn’t have lots of commercial activity doesn’t have lots of jets, it’s much less likely that the FAA would approve that, but very occasionally they do. It’s important to understand that since 1990 since the airport noise and Capacity Act was approved, the FAA has not approved. Any restrictions based upon noise or motivated by noise purposes. There have been a couple. There have been, actually, probably more than a dozen airports that have tried, but the FA has never once approved it. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t be the first but they have never approved restrictions because they believe that restrictions are unnecessary, and that’s a matter of philosophy, and we can disagree with the FAA on that. We can argue about whether or not it’s appropriate. But the but the current FAA policy, and the policy the FAA for the last 35 years has been that noise restrictions are not appropriate. Changes to flight patterns are more commonly accepted that is the FAA is much more likely to be willing to change flight patterns, so long as they are safe and so long as they are voluntary. An airport, and FAA works with airports all the time to change the flight patterns, to change the way in which aircraft fly in a congested airspace that can be very difficult, and the front range is quite congested. You look around at the number of airports in the vicinity of Vance brand, it’s not terribly easy to change the fight patterns. Not doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but but it is more difficult, and the FAA certainly is willing to consider when the FAA looks at whether to approve any restriction, it looks at the criteria that are on the bottom of this slide, and these are the standards the FAA has used for the last 35 years in finding that it will not approve restrictions. So let me go specifically to the question of restrictions on touch and go operations. And I’m going to quote from the FAA policy, the FAA order on on when restrictions are permissible. And I’m going to read this because it’s long, but I think it’s important to understand precisely what the FAA says in this context, a touch and go operation is an aircraft procedure used in flight training. It is considered an aeronautical activity as such. It cannot be prohibited by the airport sponsor without justification. For an airport sponsor to limit a particular aeronautical activity for safety and efficiency, including touch and go operations, the limitation must be based on an analysis of safety and or efficiency and capacity and meet the other applicable requirements for airport noise and access restrictions that those are the restrictions I just talked about a moment ago. So I quote this because I want to emphasize that at an airport like Vance brand, it’s going to be quite difficult to get, to get the FAA to agree to restrictions on touch and go operations, you know, again, making the comparison if this were Denver International, or if this were Chicago O’Hare, a restriction on touch and go operation might, in fact, be needed for safety and or efficiency and capacity reasons for reasons that may be pretty obvious, but smaller airports like Vance brand, where flight training is a major part of your operations, is much more difficult now. Pattern flying, which we’ve heard a lot about from, from people, from residents here tonight, is is a slightly different issue than a restriction on operations at the airport, and it’s important to understand the distinction, because touch and go, of course, is landing and taking off or or almost landing and taking off again. Pattern flying is when the aircraft go round and around and around and in communities. The pattern flying can be particularly irritating because the flight just keeps coming over and over again. It doesn’t just come and go. It is an aeronautical activity that is, that is when, as part of training, pilots have to learn how to do what’s called pattern flying, flying that pattern around the airport and the FAA aggressively protects its authority to control pattern flying. That being said, the agency is, well, willing, and I would even say, in many instances, eager, to work with the community on changes to the pattern flying to address local concerns, so long as safety is not compromised, sometimes they change how how far out aircraft fly, sometimes how high they fly, sometimes the actual pattern that they fly. But the FAA, not the city, retains that authority, and it’s a matter of negotiating and cooperating with the with the FAA to change those the one thing the FAA will not do is move noise from one community to another. In other words, they will not, they will not stand. Stand at the arbiter that says that community is more important than that community. And so the first thing the FAA will ask, if a community comes them, to ask them to change pattern flying, is show me that there is unanimity. Show me show us that there’s consensus that a particular pattern is better, and that is very much a function of the geography of the particular community. If you have an area that is very low density, or you an area that’s very high density, the FAA is more willing to look at a solution than if it’s essentially a shared problem all around the entire city. So just very briefly. Sort of other related issues in terms of the city’s authority to address noise impacts, and these are ones that are admittedly not nearly as effective, but are things a city can do, and that is controlling the land use around the airport through zoning and otherwise to make sure that there aren’t residential areas too close to the airport. Voluntary and cooperative programs with local pilots and businesses can be very effective. Most of your local pilots are residents. Most of your local pilots and businesses want to be responsible members of the community, and particularly at small airports. These voluntary programs can be very, very effective. Complaint reporting is also remarkably effective, and again, because neither the pilots nor the businesses like to get complaints against them, and so the more aggressive you are about not just get receiving the complaints, but conveying the complaints back to the user becomes very effective. And Levi was talking about your improved reporting, and I think that’s likely to be quite effective. And the last point that I’m that goes back to my previous slide, the design of flight tracks in cooperation with the FAA can be very, very effective, particularly if that’s the source of noise. Let me just talk if I can, switching topics very briefly, to unleaded gas, because unleaded fuel is moving forward really quickly and and it’s not as quick as most people would want, if you asked me up here four or five years ago, I would have told you we’ll never have unleaded fuel. But it’s moved forward very quickly. The real problem with unleaded fuel today is production. That is, the supply of unleaded fuel is very limited. There are only two there may be a third supplier nationwide, and it’s just hard to get it. And the good news is that the FAA is putting a lot of pressure to increase the supply. The market is creating a lot of pressure to increase supply, unfortunately, and the FAA is providing funding to

2:01:58
phase out the leaded fuel product. Federal law as of May prohibits airports from banning leaded fuel until December 31, of 2030 which is the key date that’s been used all along. But I want to emphasize that although you don’t sell the fuel yourself as a city, a number of airports have been pretty effective at developing incentives to incentivize users, incentivize FBOs to sell the unleaded fuel product if it’s available. And those programs have are really very, very new. I mean, literally, in the last year or two, at most, and airports are seeing a remarkable improvement in the use of the of the unleaded fuel product. So that’s moving forward fast. It’s probably not fast enough for people, but, but, but I think the the prognosis is really very good. So that was a lot of talking. I’m happy to to answer questions or whatever, whatever the pleasure of the council is.

2:03:01
Okay. Thank you council member McCoy, and then council member Martin will be next.

2:03:11
Thank you, Mayor bridge, Mr. Kersch, you said that we could barn, you know, like dia they, they probably wouldn’t want a balloon takeoff area or a a glider catapult area for but on our airport we, we could do something like that. Is that correct? It

2:03:40
It all has to do with the kind of airport and the capacity of the airport, yes, so,

2:03:44
so in, in this particular situation, in your experience with the adding of of some aeronautic activities like this, maybe reduce the amount of I

2:04:04
was afraid you were gonna ask that question. Now,

2:04:06
you heard it.

2:04:09
Let me be careful here, because, because I want to be careful how I answer this in a public session, for the following reason, when you look at restrictions on airport operations, your intent is highly relevant. Okay, so something that might be perfectly permissible in one situation, if your intent is to do something impermissible, the FAA will look at your intent. So let me give you an example. Suppose you were looking at the idea of landing fees totally permissible. Nothing wrong with landing fees. But if there is a record to show that the purpose for your adopting landing fees was to reduce operations, that would be impermissible. So your intent is relevant. So let me get back to your question. Now you. And I’m going to be careful, and I think you’ll hear what I’m not saying. If that makes sense, you certainly could allow hot air balloon operations here. Were you to allow hot air balloon operations that might adversely affect the attractiveness of this airport, for pattern flying and for flight training, that might be an incidental effect. Thank you.

2:05:28
Okay, Council Member, Martin,

2:05:35
thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. It takes, sir, if, if we wanted to apply to the FAA to get our pattern altered. So I’m I’m thinking it might be some process like we would based on our land use and the land use of nearly adjacent communities, such as as birthed, maybe even Greely, maybe even bolder, we would look at finding paths that with that traverse within reason, traverse minimum density, population density, housing density, and then we’d have to evangelize that proposal to this other cities first, and then we would jointly make an application to the FAA. Is that roughly what we’d have to do?

2:06:37
Yes, that’s right. It’s an informal process. There is no formal application process, but what you described is precisely what you would need to do.

2:06:46
Okay, so my question is, how much time and money would you expect that the city would have to invest if we were going to do that?

2:06:56
It’s it’s really not a money issue, significantly. I mean, you would need to demonstrate, at least from a technical perspective, that whatever proposal you had was technically possible. So you’d need some technical studies on flight patterns, other flight tracks in the vicinity, which requires an expert the amount of time, because it’s a negotiated process, because it is a matter of discussions with the FAA, it can literally take a couple months or a couple of years, depending on how difficult it is. So it all has to do with your legwork. If you want to seriously consider that approach, your best bet is to advise the FAA. Early on, we are embarking on the following process, the process to change the pattern flying. Here’s what we plan to do. Are you comfortable with that? It’s again, trying to bring the FAA in as a partner in this early on. And they may say we’d really like you to do an airspace study, or we’d really like you to do these studies, or we’ve heard a lot from birthed we want to make sure they’re at the table, and the FAA will generally be very supportive, and frankly, be willing to be at the table if you have meetings with the communities to help find a solution. So it’s a it doesn’t have a defined beginning, middle and end of a process, and it neither does it have a defined budget, but it is far less expensive than some of the other studies that you might do in other contexts. Okay,

2:08:21
I’d still like to have a number in terms of how much the expertise that we’d have to hire that we don’t have any you

2:08:29
know the reason, the reason it’s hard for me to say, is that I don’t know the complexity of the airspace, specifically around Vance brand the air, the airspace in this part of Colorado is pretty complex, but I would be surprised. I mean, just to sort of throw out a number, I’d be surprised. If it’s $100,000 of effort, it’s possible, but, I mean, it’s, it’s going to be smaller than that. It’s, this is not going to be a million dollar study if that’s, if

2:08:56
that’s what you’re asking. All right, that’s, that gives me a ballpark. And I think I

2:09:00
may be sorry I used a number like that, but I but I think it’s, I want to emphasize, this is not, it is not extraordinarily expensive. It’s just, it’s a process of trying to find a solution. And you may find there isn’t a solution, but, right? But it’s a matter of working with the community and the FAA to see if anything works. Yes, and

2:09:20
you know, the public has is going to be disappointed, because they’re hearing a lot of things that we can’t do or that really are not within our power to do. This is one thing that we could do. And so I, you know, I would like them to have some idea.

2:09:36
Yes, it’s very much something you can do. I want to, though, put the caution here that I don’t know enough about the residential patterns, sort of 360 degrees around the airport. I don’t know if there’s a solution. And needless to say, you need to be careful that you aren’t, if you will, pushing all the noise off to another community outside the city, because the FAA will be very sensitive that. So they’ll want to know that you’ve talked. To your neighboring communities, especially those that are not in the city, to make sure that you’re not putting the burden somewhere inappropriate,

2:10:08
yes, obviously and unfortunately, I think that we have a good geospatial group and good city planners that would know that thing, those things not only about us, but are but about birth, etc, so it’s, it’s something that could be undertaken. In other words, thank you.

2:10:32
Do we have anyone else? No comments, okay, so, yeah, so I’m going to come back. So it sounds like so even if we wanted to address the issue of operating hours or flight pattern, or even fees for touch and goes, that could be something that’s taken as that the FAA could review and approve.

2:10:55
Well, let’s, let’s go through each of those, yes, different. You cannot have operating hours without FAA approval, you are open 24/7, now you may have hours when the lights are off, or you may have hours and the FBO is not open for business reasons, but you cannot have operating hours if you want to have changes to flight patterns. That requires an informal arrangement with the FAA, as I’ve just been talking about, other sorts of more formal restrictions would require going through a formal review and approval process with the FAA, and that’s the process that I’ve described that no one has yet been successful at. Okay,

2:11:37
so there were mentions, and then I’m going to pull up the email that Mayor Peck had sent. It sounds like you may have answered a few of the questions, but let’s see. You know, I think one of the things she mentions here is, and I heard other residents speak to this as well as court cases or communities pushing back. So a quote here from Mayor Peck other cities seem to have controlled these operations through regulations without push back through FAA. You know, can you speak to that statement? I can’t add more to it, because it’s not my statement. Yeah. I

2:12:20
mean, there are a huge number of lawsuits, but let’s, let’s, let’s take, get rid of most of them, most, well, not most, all restrictions that are in place today were in place in 1990 Okay, so if there’s a curfew, if there’s a limit on weight, if there’s a limit on the size of The aircraft. Is there limited on hours? All of those predated 1990 and there are lots of them, dozens around the country. Okay. Number two, there are restrictions at private airports. Colorado has probably hundreds of private airports, I would guess, because private airports, the restrictions on their use are not subject to FAA approval. So were this to be a private airport, it would be a different set of situations. There are airports that have taken on the FAA on the issue of restrictions, and have been involved in litigation. I’ve been involved, personally, in a fair amount of that, and none of it is fun. I mean, it’s good for lawyers, but none of it is fun, because the FAA fights this aggressively, as does the industry, and there are precious few examples of successes. And the one that people talk a lot about is East Hampton, New York, which was a public use airport, and they their grant obligations expired, and they thought, This is great, we can impose a restriction. And the courts said no. Federal law still prevents you from restricting operations, even if you’re not grant obligated. And so the city, the town of East Hampton, closed the airport, and they reopened it the next day as a private airport that is being litigated in I believe there are four lawsuits going on right now as to whether that was permissible, whether they will succeed or not. I don’t know. I don’t represent them at the at the present time, but I don’t want to say that litigation is always useless, or fighting the FAA is always useless, but it’s very expensive, it’s very time consuming, and it’s very uncertain. And because I do that work, I don’t want to tell people don’t ever do that, but you have to, you have to approach that with really an open, open eyes as to the complexity and the difficulty

2:14:36
of it. Okay, no. And I appreciate the education, the patients, the feedback, you know, as someone who’s not like this is very frustrating to me. It’s really frustrating a whole lot of residents, and you know, my family included, that are impacted, and this feeling that we can’t do anything about this. We can’t even come to it. You know, what is, you know, I’m a person that wants to be solution based. What are some solutions? What are some some problems? How can we address them? What are the best solutions that we or even a compromise, that we can come together and and meet the needs of our constituents as well as so within the regulations, let’s talk

2:15:23
about a couple things. And I don’t want to get too deep into the specifics, because I haven’t done the kind of study of what would work at this airport, but I’ll give you examples of things that are worth considering. We’ve talked about pattern flying, changing the pattern so that it goes less over residential area and more over commercial areas can be enormously effective. Flight tracks can be very effective. That is when a plane takes off, where does it go? The plane could just go straight, or it could turn one direction or another. And at some communities that can make an enormous difference. And those are often issues that are negotiated with the FAA, but they but the FAA again, to the extent that it is technically feasible, is willing to consider that again, that’s a function of whether the particular land use patterns make that possible. I don’t know here, and you certainly want to be careful about about adversely affecting your neighbors as well. So that’s another thing you can do. One One question that you want to look at is, what makes Vance brand attractive for flight for flight training, and there are things you can do to make it more or less attractive. And I don’t want to go in a public session to talk a lot about those because of the reasons to Councilmember McCoy, I was saying, I want to be careful about not saying here are things you could do to stop flight schools, because that would be impermissible. But airports have been pretty effective at making themselves more or less attractive to particular services. Let me give you one that’s a little bit off, off subject, but, but illustrative, Centennial airport, south of Denver, has made it known that we are the airport for high end jets. They have services that are designed for the high end traveler. If you fly into Centennial with a single engine prop planned, you can land, it’s okay. They don’t make life very comfortable for you. They’re not very attractive. It’s very expensive. Rocky Mountain. Metro has taken the opposite approach. Yeah, we’ll take jets. That’s fine, but we really want to see recreational flyers. And that was a policy that they incentivized in a positive way getting those and they did not provide the kinds of services that the higher end aircraft want. Now I’m oversimplifying to a little to some extent, but it’s an illustration of the fact that you should look and examine what it is that makes Vance brand attractive to this particular category of flying, and are there things legitimately that you can do that makes it less attractive?

2:18:09
Okay, I’m

2:18:10
intentionally being a little bit yeah, no, no, no,

2:18:13
that’s, that’s helpful. I’m just taking notes, yeah, you know. And the other one, you know, in looking at the noise abatement, you know, we hear, you know, we saw the slide that showed, you know, here are the number of complaints, you know. Okay, now what? Okay, so people complain. What happens? Then? Are we allowed to we’re not allowed to fine anybody?

2:18:35
No, but, but, but let’s look at what, however people speed

2:18:39
and you can ticket them.

2:18:41
Well, that’s right, but it’s a different phenomenon. So So complaints are an interesting phenomenon, because most people, including most pilots, don’t like people complaining about them. So the first question, and when you get a series of complaints, is to analyze who’s causing the problem, if it’s being caused by a local pilot who happens to be a resident of the city, there’s nothing to keep you from asking your airport manager to call him on the phone and say, What’s going on here? What are you doing? You know, could you go a little higher Can you be a little less obnoxious? Now, if it turns out these are all folks who aren’t from Longmont, in fact, they’re not even from Front Range. Yeah, it’s gonna be a little harder, okay, but that’s a lot of effort, but it has a really big payoff, because by and large, pilots, by personality, like to comply with the rules. That’s what they do, right? And so if you say you were a real jerk, you know you were really an unpleasant guy. And you know what? 43 of your neighbors know that you’re a real jerk. You’d be surprised how effective that is. Now you want to get you want to turn the heat up one more. Okay, you go into the terminal and maybe Levi has a list of the names. The people who aren’t all that friendly, or maybe just, let’s do it the other way. Suppose you give out an annual fly friendly award, okay, to the pilot, the base pilots who have been most sensitive to your needs. Okay? And you put in the paper. Now you know, is that going to force them, prevent them? No, but, but particularly at smaller airports, these very personal efforts can be very effective. Same thing with your flight school, okay? And again, maybe you’ve already done this. So I apologize if I’m if I’m suggesting something that you’ve done, but go to the flight school and say, listen your your pilots are doing this. If, instead of flying, as one of the residents said tonight, 48 times, you know. How about if you just do a couple here and then take a couple over to Boulder, you know, or a couple over to Loveland. Is that okay? Can you do that, you know, I’ll buy an ice cream cone again. I mean, this sounds silly, but it actually, but it actually does work. It actually works because most of the businesses at the airport are, in fact, residents. They’re they’re members of the community, and they want to be cooperative there. If you say, I don’t want you ever doing flight training again in my airport, no, they’re not going to be help. You got to be reasonable

2:21:16
here. And I can jump in a little bit and say that is actually something that we actively do. So when I track all of the complaints, I’ll track who it is and specifically what they’re doing. And when you start to see and the vast majority of them are completely disconnected, there’s this one particular plane is just one time. But when we do see patterns, we do chase down those patterns. So for example, last year, we had a pattern where we had multiple multiple complaints about the same few ultra light pilots. So we tracked where the complaints were coming from. I made a map, I went to this group of ultra light pilots, and I said, Hey, look, here’s the, you know, the farms that are are complaining most about you. And they said, oh gosh, we didn’t know we were, you know, messing with these people. Yeah, okay, we’ll try to avoid this. Okay, well, we got to fly here to land, but, you know, we’ll try to avoid this area. We had a really good conversation. And over the course of that summer, I had about a 75% reduction from that particular group of complainers. So it is something that we actively do as we we will go out in there. We will talk to pilots when we see patterns and

2:22:13
stuff like that. What one

2:22:14
other tool you can use? And again, I don’t know if this works here or not, because it’s a function of the airspace in the area. If they’re flying a pattern 500 feet above the above the ground, they’re going to be much noisier than if they’re flying at 1500 feet and the FAA again, to the extent there will that they have the airspace available, raising that can make an enormous difference in the noise, because if they’re three times as high, they’re going to have significantly less noise. And we found that to be very, very effective, particularly for helicopter noise. But I think it’s probably also true for the small plane noise, because just that distance makes a makes a big difference.

2:22:57
And that is something we can suggest. You

2:22:59
can suggest. I mean, it did. This is part of prove it. In part, in response to council member Martins point about about the cost of technical advice, you’re going to need some technical advice so that you can look, you know, it may be, and leave it. I don’t leave. I don’t know whether you’ve got a ceiling for for air traffic at this airport or not.

2:23:18
It’s just the standard, okay, 1000 foot. Okay, so

2:23:21
in because, because, once you get up above a certain altitude, you are going to adversely affect Denver International Traffic, or traffic, and route to other airports

2:23:32
keep going to space. No, just kidding. So you know. And then the other, one more thing that Councilman R, that the mayor brought up as well as I’ve seen, you know, it’s been a concern of mine. But looking at Grant assurances, you know, those contracts. I mean, are we what are, what are, you know, we think about the residents, our health and safety, our well being. What are we giving up for these grant assurances? And is the benefit of these brand assurances outweighing, you know, the impact to community and if the two, if Advisory Board wants to speak to this as well, I don’t want to. You know I appreciate your expertise as well. But

2:24:16
let’s, let’s be careful here, because let’s assume for a moment that you decide that the balance favor is not taking grants, a couple immediate consequences, you are obligated again, for the next 19 years to do the same things you were doing when you got money. Okay? So when, if you need to improve the runway, if you need to fix the drainage you’re gonna have to pay for that yourself, rather than the feds, that can get costly. Okay, particularly if you’re talking about 19 years. The second piece is there’s a lot of focus on the grand assurances, and if you read them, it will give you a headache. How many things the FAA is doing, but the things you’re talking about here. Are, are really not affected by the grant assurances as much as they’re affected by federal law. And that doesn’t go away.

2:25:07
That’s, yeah, that’s what I wanted. Okay? So

2:25:09
if there are things you don’t, I can name a whole bunch of things that the grand assurances required, that you may not like that give, give Levi headaches, but they don’t really affect noise and they don’t affect the community. Okay, 19 years from now, when Levi’s getting ready to retire, you know, he’ll he’ll be in great place that he doesn’t have to deal with that but, but it’s not really going to have a lot of significance for you in terms of the kinds of topics you’re talking Okay,

2:25:33
so, yeah, so it’s not advocating our health and safety by tapping into the grant assurances. There’s really other issues that we could be bringing forward for review and approval. That’s right. Okay, I see council member Martin, has this been your second or third time? Second, okay,

2:25:54
go ahead. I have a confusion in my mind about the option of not taking grant assurances. So when people say, stop taking the grant money, and eventually all your grant assurances will expire, then that’s one thing that means, in 20 years after we’re all dead, well, okay, after I’m dead, then the airport could be closed and okay, you know, if you want a long range plant that, then you can do that, but it, But that’s the other side of it. In the meantime, while we’re not taking grant money, we still have to do all the maintenance, and we have to pay for it somehow. Now this is Colorado, and this airport is a Tabor enterprise, which means that you have to pay for it out of airport revenue, and our airport like is barely squeaking by in terms of breaking even according to the Tabor accounting rules, we can’t tax the people and put that money in to maintain to meet our obligations, because that’s not what Tabor says. We could start charging landing fees. But is, is that something that you know the FAA is going to reject because we have a nefarious intent, you know, to use those landing fees to eventually close the airport. What options do we have for increasing revenue? So

2:27:50
let’s look at landing fees for a moment, and I’ll assume, for purposes of argument, that you don’t have a nefarious intent. Okay, let’s just assume you’re legitimate. Landing fees are not always a good idea. Sometimes they are for a couple of reasons. Number one, you have to actually collect them, and that costs some money. You’re going to have to have somebody who is doing all the accounting and sending out the bills and so on. And there are all kinds of automated systems for doing this. But it’s not free, and the amount you collect is is not likely to be an enormous amount of money. And many airports of this size have found that the cost of administering means that your net out of landing fees is pretty small. It’s not zero, but it’s pretty small. I don’t know if you

2:28:35
can actually interject a little prior to actually this discussion about landing fees, I did do a little bit of research into it, just for completely different reasons of collecting revenue. And that’s kind of what I came to at that point. That was a couple years ago now that I came to that. And granted, since then, the technology has changed lot, and it’s easier for us to track the aircraft. But even at that, the margin, you know, we’re tiny compared to what we were spending to what we were

2:29:01
getting. So and your landing fees have to be reasonable in the marketplace. And so if you’re if your aircraft are principally golf stream 650s or Global Express use corporate jets, and you can charge them $1,000 that’s great, but single engine planes, you’re going to be hard pressed charge them more than in the marketplace, 1020, you know, $30 to land. And so it takes a lot of that to to generate, to generate a lot of revenue.

2:29:25
And don’t get me wrong, I I don’t like landing fees myself, but I just wanted to get the intelligence out there that that they are not a panacea in terms of airports. Yeah,

2:29:39
and sometimes they work great, and sometimes they don’t. I don’t want to suggest that they’re always bad, but, but you’re, you’re at your question about raising revenue. There are other ways you can raise revenue at the airport. So you hangers generate revenue. You can build some more hangars. If you have real estate on the airport that’s not developed, you can develop that real estate and that the rentals from that real. Estate will go back into the airport. So there are things you certainly can do if your objective is to raise more money. One of the contradictions that comes about is that if you want to raise more money, the best way to do that is to increase the traffic at the airport. Okay, so I don’t, probably don’t have to keep going down that line. And so it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit difficult. And one of the reasons that most communities that have studied not taking grants have decided to continue taking grants is that when you actually start running the numbers in a very cut and dried sort of way, it’s not always clear that that taking grants is a bad idea. Okay,

2:30:44
thank you. Do we have any others? I think, yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I addressed what hasn’t been discussed through the presentation, as well as honoring what the mayor had asked me to bring forward. You know, I guess I was hoping for something like, okay, let’s we can vote on something. Bring it forward. But you know, it’s gonna, you know, I’d like to sit down and and have a chat with you about some of the things we discussed. This isn’t over, and you know, if the if the Advisory Board has anything that they wanted to add, yeah, come on down, Mayor council

2:31:19
to kind of put a bow on it in terms of talking to answer the question, yes, it would be the general fund that would have to support it. Okay, and in the case that council member Martin brought up, the other thing that I was going to add is, obviously our outside council has had to if council wanted to look at more focused options. Council could request an executive session where we could have that conversation. That’s another option. Some of the things on the FAA request we can engage in that conversation, we’ve tried at different times, and this was before Levi I think part of the challenge is you have dia that changed their flat flight pattern, which did impact this. You have boulder to our Southwest, you have Loveland to our north. And so there are other variables in play in that. So we did try to have that conversation, and that was what was pushed back to us, is the location of the other airports was problematic. Okay? Mayor

2:32:29
Pro Tem council members, Harrison Earl, chair of the airport advisory board. I’ll be really brief, because you’ve heard a lot tonight, and I don’t have a ton to add, but just want to emphasize a few things we have recently added to our monthly agendas, a noise abatement standing item, so that it is constantly discussed. We view it as a way both to hear input. Make sure that Levi is communicating to us what’s going on, as well as it’s a communication point out to the pilot community, so that they are constantly hearing that. So some of the outcomes from recent discussions are new posters posted in the FBO, the fixed base operator, that more clearly outline the voluntary noise abatement procedure. So it’s front and center for our pilots. It has been added to our I always mess up the acronym, but our awas, which is the automated weather system that has a notice at the end of it that pilots are required to listen to the message. And it says, we have a noise abatement procedure so that even visiting pilots are made aware that it exists. We cannot put the whole thing in the recording, but we note that it exists. And Levi spoke briefly about having meetings with other airport managers and other flight schools, which is something we’ve been encouraged been encouraging to share that voluntary noise abatement procedure as well. So I think that’s that’s something that’s really important. On the other revenue side, I was very much hoping that by tonight we would have a completed study that outlines some drainage requirements that have to happen prior to opening RFPs for development on the south side of the airport? We are weeks away from having that answer, but I would say increasing revenue one of the ways we’re really focused on that is increasing development. It is developing undeveloped land at the airport, and so that is front and center for us as a way to you know, help boost financial stability of the airport, regardless of any path taken that the airport, you know has the ability to fund its improvements, can maintain itself in a good way. Okay,

2:34:31
so, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for that. And that’s that’s hopeful to hear that you added that noise abatement to the advisory council meetings, and, you know, and I appreciate the other suggestions, or, you know, things that we can control, and, you know, looking at zoning. But you know, these houses we’ve been around for a while. I mean, the house I’m in is over 50 years old. So, you know, you can’t these people have been here. So it’s not even in any kind of zoning changes going. To alleviate what, what residents are hearing. So I appreciate that we’re, you know, the advisory board is being more proactive and looking at that noise abatement and what we can do to continue the conversation. I would, if council would like, or did you want to, okay, okay, you know, I would like to see if we can get on an agenda, if now’s the time to do it. If not, I can wait till the next meeting to do an executive session on this topic. Okay, well, there

2:35:33
that that actually works. There’s an item that we need an executive Executive Session for to talk to you about, can

2:35:41
we combine this with it? So, yeah,

2:35:43
okay,

2:35:46
what’s that? No, I don’t, when would this executive session take place for the other issue,

2:35:54
it’s, they’re both airport related. Oh, they’re both airport related. Yeah, related to negotiations. And so we’ve been talking about needing to get with you all on that. I just after I said that, I remembered it okay. I will need to look at calendars. I can’t tell you right now what, exactly what dates are available. I think the third is not available because we won’t have a full council. The 10th is the judges evaluation. I don’t know what we have on the 17th, so it would probably be something we would right now. I’m guessing January, just because of the scheduling issues, but I can look at the calendar tomorrow.

2:36:38
Okay, so I would like to the 17th. Okay, so you know, I’d like to get, you know, put on the docket for an executive session to discuss the airport solutions. And council member McCoy has second that. Is there any discussion on this? No, Okay, let’s go ahead and vote. You.

2:37:36
Okay, and then council member, Martin, is it showing up on yours? I

2:37:44
uh, it’s showing up that I don’t have any controls. It’s just It says waiting, and there’s nothing there. I vote yes. That’s

2:37:50
what I see on hers. She voted yes. So Okay, thank you. Okay, so that passes unanimously, with everyone of all who is present and Mayor Peck is absent.

2:38:13
Thank you.

2:38:18
Thank you.

2:38:20
You can take a five minute Break sure getting delirious Over.

2:38:42
You. Okay?

2:48:02
So? Okay. So,

2:48:11
okay, so we’re going to go ahead and move to the second item b in general, business, Introduction to urban design standards,

2:48:21
Mayor Council, this has been something that’s been on our work plan for a while. And as we talked about this, as you know, you all recently approved a PUD for house pad. And one of the things that we were doing is, when we were looking at the urban design standards, was really working through the house pad project as part of a template in terms of what this looks like, as we look at it, in terms of the entire community. This is really connected to a couple of issues. So one, this came out of our affordable housing conversations, and specifically related to affordable housing and attainable housing. When you look at these design standards, and you all saw this when we were working through the house pad project, is density of units is important when you’re trying to manage the price of a home. And that’s a piece of it. You know, one of the things that you’re going to see in the design standards is also related to what this means in terms of natural gas. So one of the directions that council gave us is look at natural gas in neighborhoods. In many ways, what you’re going to see Chris present tonight is really an incentive to do that, because the design standards are different when we look at setbacks. And he’ll work through this process. So this is really our first step to say, here’s what we’re looking at based on the work that we’ve done, and then we’ll need Council direction to continue moving forward in this. Chris Well,

2:49:55
Mayor potium and members of council. I’m Chris Huffer, Assistant Director of water and waste and. I should have just let Harold do the entire presentation. He did the great introduction for me, and just a couple of things to touch on that we wanted to recognize. What work the council has done so far for attainable affordable housing, that you’ve done fee waivers, that you’ve made of this a priority for the city, and that we’re continuing on that through with this. And this is just one more tool to put in your toolbox as we look at further development throughout the city. I just wanted to touch on where the design standards kind of fit in the overall development process. There are three documents that guide development within the city, the first being the Longmont comprehensive plan, which is been updated in 2016 through long envision Longmont that made several changes from what we would consider our previous development from The late 80s, 90s and through 2000s until today. Residential development in previous years looked at larger lots. We had larger footprints for buildings to be set in. We had larger setbacks and those types of things. And the Comprehensive Plan also sets the zoning and sets our transportation corridors, lays out where our arterials and our minor arterials and collectors are, and I’m way over simplifying this, so I asked the forgiveness of anybody from planning. But the second thing that we look at in through development is our development code, which is title 15 of the municipal code that lays out specifics for the way that buildings can be constructed, how they are arranged, what setbacks are and heights for buildings in different zoning districts. And that gets us to the third and what we’re talking about tonight, public improvement design standards and construction specifications. The last update to this document was in 2007 so we’re still working off of concepts and designs that were prior to envision Longmont the design standards are made up of seven chapters. They specify things like the minimum street sections where utilities can go, separations of utilities, what the corridors need to look like, and what easements we need for those so as Harold mentioned, we’re looking at a proposed urban design that changes that. Our current proposal is to add a new section to our existing standards that will help modify or further define what we’re looking at for what we’re calling urban neighborhood and these design standards are written such that any development that comes in that is eight units or greater per acre, we would define as urban development. In the intent through all of this is to reduce that Street corridor, utility corridor, and maximize that developable area. And also an intent is to reduce the review time. So we’ll flip through a couple of slides showing some of the details that are proposed. So in the transportation section, we’re looking at making a modification to reduce design speed on streets. Our standards are based upon national as well as state regulations, and one of those is from AASHTO that sets how we design streets, and one of the basic tenets of that is to generally increase the speed of a street in order to set requirements for site distances, for sag and curves and so forth. So generally, ashto does not address local streets. They have what they call low volume streets that they provide information for, but they do not have direct guidelines for our local streets. So through this design modification, we’re looking at actually designing for the speed of the street, which is generally 25 miles per hour, and we do have the ability to drop it to 20 miles an hour in some instances. Another impact that we’re looking at is our current standards call for eight foot tree lawn with street trees running down the streets. We’re looking to reduce that tree long width or. In some instances, have no trees at all in the public right of way, we would still have requirements to meet those standards on private property. Other things that we’re looking at too are parking. If they choose r if a developer chooses to change or reduce parking, we would require that they have an alternative parking plan that would be submitted with their development for review. The couple other things that we’re looking at in transportation, when two streets come together, then they’re not in line, they’re required to decide a curve. Our minimum curve radius is 100 feet at this point for in our regular standards. And you can kind of see that in this upper left picture, that’s 100 foot curve on a residential street. And you can see that the houses there are a little bit larger. These lots are larger. And so if you look at the inside of that curve, there’s a single lot in that building is set off of that so it’s creating irregular shapes, and it’s dictating where and how that building envelope sits on that lot. And you can see on the outside of the curve that as those driveways come up to the curve, it could create conflict points on the street where they can’t necessarily see very well either direction on that curve. So what we’re looking at is modifying that 100 foot standard down to a 45 foot standard. This what’s shown in the lines down at the bottom is what we would be looking at for 45 foot radius curve that allows still for emergency vehicle access. All delivery trucks can fit through there, and we are specifying setbacks for parking from here as well as limiting drive access. But you can see on the inside of the curve that rather than taking out a portion of Lot, you’re actually creating a square angle. We chamfer it off in order to get the sidewalk in there. But squaring that up opens up more of that lot for building envelopes, and gives the builder or the developer more options and be able to fit more lots in a smaller space. Another thing that we’re looking at is T intersections, where two streets come together in an L shape. Guidance tells us that that’s not a stop situation that most people, if they figure out that they come to just an L shape and there’s no oncoming traffic, will continue just to go roll through stop signs. So it’s really not a advantageous configuration. But if we have development that’s adjacent to this tee that has either a commercial or parking lot access, we can treat that third leg, that private drive as part of that and create a three way stop. So those are things that we’re looking at to help maximize lot area and minimize the Street area. The other thing that our current standards have information about alleys sets a minimum 22 foot wide right of way for an alley. But there’s really no other regulations, or no other regulations for alleys. Section 800 will formalize alleys in their design and how they’re intended to be used. We still have a 22 foot wide alley that can be utilized for primary access to some lots, if it’s not the primary access, we can look at reducing that width to 20 feet, and in the 20 foot alley, we would limit the curvature of that alley to provide more of a straight shot through which still maintains the ability to access to provide utilities through there and maintain that, maintain all of our infrastructure. We also have the ability to reduce down to an 18 foot wide alley that would have ultimately a 12 foot paved section, and that’s shown in the picture on the top right. We do have these types of alleys currently in the prospect neighborhood, and I think it’s taken time for people to. To understand how they function and for the city to utilize them for trash pickup as well as maintaining our utilities through there. But over time, we have figured out that these can function if the right restrictions are put in place.

3:00:19
The next section of the standards that we’re looking at was storm drainage, and we wanted to make sure that we account for the higher impervious area of higher density development. Most of our storm drainage design criteria were created a few years ago and provide tables and charts that do not include the type of density that we’ll be seeing or that we’re trying to encourage. So we’ve outlined different ways in order to make those calculations so that we adequately account for storm drainage. The other thing is utilizing space more effectively, and that could be done through using underground detention. We don’t currently have any standards for underground detention, so in this new section 800 we’ve outlined some of the criteria that we’d be looking at in order to evaluate those for the water and sewer we’re looking at different types of placement in the upper picture that we’re showing there. That’s our really our standard Street. It has two lanes of traffic, one in each direction, and parking on both sides. Excuse me, that’s a 38 foot wide paved section which is adequate to support storm drainage, sanitary sewer and water within the street. Looking at narrower areas or reducing that paved section, we need to relocate some utilities out of that corridor. So what we’re specifying is that streets that have paved sections less than 38 feet would have to relocate sanitary sewer to an alley. So alleys would be required if we have smaller street sections. Other things we’re looking at are meter placements. Currently, meters are required to be placed on private property in an easement. We do have the ability, through section 800 to look at locating those in the public right of way in a tree lawn. They do have to be maintained outside of drive areas, and they need to be protected. So tree lawns, we can space the trees in such a way that we can fit the meters in those locations as well. And then we come to the probably the largest change that we’re looking at is through our electric and communications, through LPC and next light. Currently, we require a seven foot easement outside or beyond the walk and for the location of the running lines as well as transformers and J boxes, and that would be seven feet on both sides of the street. And what we’re looking at is being able to relocate those into the public right of way underneath the sidewalk. Transformers J boxes could be placed on properties just in small pocket easements, rather than having a running easement along the frontages of lots. And so effectively, on a two lane street with parking on both sides, we could reduce the tree long down to five feet, and overall by removing the seven foot electric easement, and generally we have a six foot gas easement beyond that too, by removing those we’re effectively reducing a corridor of 87 feet wide down to 55 feet wide.

3:04:19
And just to touch on other utilities, alleys are required to have five foot easements, general easements on either side of the alley. That’s for General Communications, for cable or telephone, and they could be used for natural gas. I just want to mention that in this section 800 standard, we have not specified an area for natural gas, but developers, if they so chose, could include natural gas in their development, but they would have to work with Excel or the provider and indicate where those easements are, and that would have to be reviewed through the DRC process or the. Development review committee process. Excellent.

3:05:06
So Chris,

3:05:14
I remember, as you were talking the natural gas piece, I think generally that would add an additional six feet.

3:05:21
Yes, in the past, Excel is required six feet, but they also have a standard of eight feet from a building right that goes even beyond that easement.

3:05:30
So the key point on that is, if you came in and you put natural gas, you wouldn’t have the same developable land that you would have if you took the approach where you went in with no natural gas and you went all electric, because that’s just going to add to the width of either the alley or the street. Definitely. Yes.

3:05:52
Okay,

3:05:53
so council member Martin has their hand up.

3:05:58
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem a couple of of innovations in in this flavor of land use that I’m not seeing here. And I’m wondering if you have any provisions for that. The first one is easements for shared wells for ground source heat exchange for heat pumps, electric heat and cooling that might, in some cases, replace natural gas. But the but the dimensions aren’t necessarily the same the requirements. So I’m wondering if you have that. And then the other one is, you mentioned the relationship of Imper the amount of impervious surfaces, as opposed to lawns. But there’s, there’s a third category, which is sidewalks and pavement that is pervious because of new materials. And how does that affect things like underground detention? So if, if you’ve got anything to say about that, I would like to hear it, because I think those are beneficial technologies.

3:07:21
Certainly council member Martin first to touch on the easements for geothermal that would be private. That’s not something that the city would necessarily regulate or include on a plat that would be worked out through the construction of those homes. So we have not considered adding that into the standards at this point in time, if that makes sense. Yeah,

3:07:58
but if, if it’s not private to a particular home, but private to an entire subdivision and part of the design, then that’s going to need to be accounted for in in the setbacks and stuff that you require, even though the infrastructure is developed by The developer,

3:08:20
and I believe council member Martin that that would be designed and installed similarly to, if they had gas, that they would have to work out those easements and where that would actually fall, there is a potential that they could fit within that five foot easement in the alleys as well. Okay? And then, oh, sorry, go ahead.

3:08:46
Oh no, just so we haven’t got there yet, but you’d be willing to hear the story from the developer and work out adjustments, essentially, certainly,

3:08:55
yes, okay. And then to talk about permeable pavements. Permeable pavements for public areas are problematic. I guess I would say. I did work on alley project downtown, where we installed the permeable pavers. They’ve worked fairly well, but they’re very high intensity maintenance associated with them, and if you don’t maintain them, they don’t continue to work. So there would be a trade off there for not that. We would not consider it, but there would have to be a lot of thought and design put into that in order that the city could maintain it.

3:09:47
Okay, yeah, this was proposed to me by a private developer years ago. But it’s a, I guess it’s a question of, how, how, how fast the technology. G has advanced,

3:10:04
I will say council member Martin that working through storm water quality, that there are good uses for permeable pavement in patios and non vehicular instances that work well for meeting your water quality, capture volume, and there are opportunities for that as well. Thank you.

3:10:32
Any other questions or comments? Okay, so in looking at what’s we you do have a request of us, yeah, or are there more? Is there more? Well, no,

3:10:45
I was just gonna Okay wrap it up. Thank you. Summarize that section 800 is really intended to reduce Street and utility corridors, maximize developable area and reduce the review time. Harold had touched on it that house pad had gone through a PUD process, which is fairly intensive for a developer, and I would say that we went through in record time for house pad.

3:11:13
Yeah, it’s still months, but, or it mean from the time you start preparing for that to when we went through probably close to a year.

3:11:22
And a year is incredibly fast, incredibly fast, considering development review. And so when we have looked at these types of things in the past, they’ve come through as exceptions, which there’s a formal exception process, which also adds time to review. So by formalizing these in Section 800 we intend to reduce that review time by not requiring them to go through a PUD or not requiring additional exceptions in order to implement these elements that we’ve shown tonight.

3:11:56
Okay, so for the example of house pad, had this language already been codified, what would have been the the time frame, like, how much you know you’re saying, it was about a year. So

3:12:12
I would hope that we could cut a couple months off. And that’s just conjecture on my part. Yeah, every project is different, and every development is different in the way that the owner and the developer approach it are different. But,

3:12:31
yeah, I think you know as so we were really close to this, because it was really a co development relationship as we went through this, and I think there’s unique components to this, and I’ve seen this, and we’ve been on the housing authority side when we’re involved, you know, it’s certain things, like, don’t submit it until it’s right, don’t, you know, understand the world and what we’re trying to move through. And so in this case, we were very focused on that. And I think that helps once you get into the review process. And so I think the way we went through it, because it was very clear in what we were trying to do, you know, I think you could probably hopefully get a third of the time reduced in an ideal situation. And this was a fairly simple piece of land. It developed. It was Greenfield. It was flat. We already had storm water accounted for as part of the Costco process. So in that case, it could have reduced 50% of the time because there were so many things already in place. One of the things that I often say is not all development is equal, and every piece of property brings its own unique issues into play. And so if you had a property with a complicated drainage system that you had to deal with in terms of storm water retention, there’s a piece that may be able to save you time. If you look at how you have the underground drainage that Chris is talking about. There are cities, I want to say, Lafayette or Louisville has started incorporating some of that in order to gain some some density. So it may be that that solution helps in that particular case, but I think it’s hard to overly generalize that says everybody’s going to have that time savings. But I do think it gives certainty, yes, and when you have certainty and you have this code, you’re then not going through a PUD process that then creates time and uncertainty, because in that process, other things could be put in place on the project that creates other challenges that you then have to overcome. And so what I’ve learned through this process time is money. When we’re investing city dollars in this certainty is really important, because there were. Number of times in that project that the uncertainty almost killed the project, meaning, oh, if you lose two to three houses, it may not pencil financially and and so I think those, those two things alone, if we look at replicating attainable housing and affordable in the way that we approached house Pat, I think it will make it easier. Okay,

3:15:27
so I guess you know, looking this, does anyone have any modifications they wanted to bring forward? Okay, so then can we just make a motion? Or, yeah,

3:15:48
as presented, yeah,

3:15:49
okay,

3:15:53
oh yeah, and okay, so it was moved to bring back required ordinances to adopt section is it? Section 800 800 and that was moved by council member McCoy and seconded by council member Rodriguez. Any discussion, are we ready to vote? Okay? And that passes unanimously of those present with Mayor Peck absent.

3:16:27
Great. Thank you so much, Council.

3:16:29
Thank you. Okay, so we are now at final call public to be heard. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak? Come on down.

3:16:48
Hello. John Grunsfeld, 229 Airport Road. I want to thank the council and the Advisory Board for their attention to the airport very sensitive to the public’s concerns. One thing that was missing from tonight’s discussion were all the benefits of the airport. We’ve had many discussions. I just don’t want to leave that out. I do want to say I was at Centennial on Sunday, Centennial airport, and they are selling unleaded gas there. It does require certification by the FAA to use that in your airplane, but it’s available now at Centennial at Rocky Mountain Regional not just in California. It’s available in Colorado. It’s encouraged in Colorado. And so that is the direction that industry is going. As was pointed out, I think, by city manager Dominguez, that it’s really a supply problem. There’s three different types of unleaded fuel that are going through certifications. Several are certified. But the industry that makes that has not scaled up to meet the demand. I think 2030 is a good target for Longmont, and one that we should be able to achieve at the same time, by 2030 there will be many electric airplanes flying. Cessna has bought a company called pipistrelle. There are orders for many, many airplanes, primarily by flight schools. Pipistrelle, electric arrow is one of those. And the main reason flight schools are buying those is because the cost of ownership, the cost of operation is so much lower than current airplanes, many of the airplanes that flight schools are using are 20, 3040, years old. Will be phased out, and those airplanes are nearly silent and they don’t burn fossil fuel, they can use renewable energy. A third of the air fuel that’s sold at the Longmont airport per or almost half per Levi’s presentation is jet fuel, which is also unleaded. Just to mention that, I want to thank councilmember euro for coming out to the airport and seeing that in person. Earlier this year, we had a great discussion with with several of the airport users. That discussion was interrupted by, no doubt, you’ll guess noise, but it wasn’t airplane noise. We were able to carry on conversations and have a good visit until a couple of motorcycles started up their engines, and we had to completely stop because we just couldn’t hear each other until those motorcycles went off. And because I work at the airport, my business is there. The loudest things that I hear are trucks, motorcycles and dogs at the dog park. And I’m not going to complain about motorcycles, trucks or dogs barking. My hanger is near the dog park. I know there’s going to be dogs barking, but we do have a noise problem. We do have a lot of traffic. I’m challenged in a turboprop airplane making it into the pattern when the pattern is full. One possible solution is a control tower. Thank you. So thank you very much.

3:19:59
Good evening. David Emerson, 1152, twin peak circle in Longmont and the executive director for Habitat for Humanity real quickly here tonight, because I did want to hear the airport discussion. To be clear, I certainly support the airport or just north of there in the greens, and it is my hope that we can coexist. We being the airport and development, in particular its habitat, that’s certainly what we are concerned about. We do see examples of housing and airports coexisting around the country, and given our needs, I think we certainly need to see that. My main concern is it does feel a little bit recently, based on zoning and development discussions, that we’re heading very quickly toward kind of an either or choice as it relates to airport or development. And it’s my opinion that as an affordable housing provider, we really can’t afford to lose large areas within the Longmont growth framework designated for development, when I look at that growth framework map, I see zoning that allows for development, but See those efforts discouraged by the power we are ceding to to the FAA, or more to the point it’s funding, and certainly I recognize, especially after tonight, my head’s spinning on all the information, all the difficulties here. You know, I do appreciate finding ways to coexist. It just seems like there’s a lot of authority given to the FAA to encumber property around it, and I am concerned about that. One thing that we might want to be thinking about is there are opportunity costs and opportunities that are lost that we may not see. Prop 123 is actually great example, right? We do have growth requirements to access prop 123 funding that we have to hit, and if we lose pieces of land, it’s going to make it hard to do that. That may be obvious when it’s funding going directly to the city, but Habitat for Humanity, for example, accesses funding through Colorado Department of Housing and chaffa that we would not be able to access if it was prop 123, in other parts of the city. And of course, the units create property taxes, the homeowners, sales tax, that type of thing. So again, enormously difficult problem. I just encourage you to continue to push for ways to really get both hopefully. Thank you.

3:22:57
Thank you. No, it’s

3:23:02
all right. Just wanted to stop it before the

3:23:04
Hey Scott Stewart, two to nine Grand Street beat a couple of dead horses here. Lead of gasoline would banned vehicles beginning in the model year 1975 good to see that the airport or the aviation community is going to get on board by 2030 reason they’re not getting on board and we’re not selling more MOGAs. And you see that out of the Levi’s report, which is like less than a third of the fuel being sold the airport, those planes just need to go through modifications, and that’s not a cheap procedure. These planes are, as the gentleman said, 40 years, 60 years old. It’s, yeah, we’re running a lot of old stuff.

3:23:59
I find the representation by the airport manager that we’re about, we’re about split on the flight schools that like airport, which has, I believe, one flight school, and the rest of it is sounded like he was saying it was about 5050, as far as use of the airport,

3:24:21
speaking of

3:24:22
flight schools, you know, let’s start with the flight school that’s at the airport. And does that use unleaded fuel. I mean, if they’re consuming half the time, then maybe, maybe we can incentivize them to change to unleaded. They we talked about flight tracks, or changing the flight tracks around, around the airport, or whatever procedures and making sure they’re known they’re actually already in the voluntary noise abatement program. If you read the voluntary noise abatement stuff, it talks about how you should take off, where you should take off, what direction you know in the optimum obviously, once you’re in the air, you can do whatever you want, or you whatever you need to do. Um. Well, I’m going to go back to non discriminatory, weight based operational landing phase. We’re over 100,000 operations at the airport. Are ready? The lawyer that was up here earlier was using a reference point of $10 I mean, I pay more than $10 to get to dia that’s my airport. Um, if you charge $10 sample math, that’s a million bucks in the bank. And that’s that’s just if every plane was a Cessna doesn’t include anything heavier. Um, we spoke a little bit about funds and renting more hangers in order to activate more revenue for the airport. There’s some simple math there. Look at the budget. Look at how much rent you’re coming in with. Land lease for the hangars. The math doesn’t pan out. You don’t need to double the hanger size. It’s insignificant funds. You need to do an operational based, weight based landing fee. That’s non discriminatory, and everybody’s got to pay it. Thanks.

3:26:06
Thank you. Okay, so anyone else? Okay, so we’re going to go ahead and move on. Oh, here we go. Come down.

3:26:19
Thank you, council person. My name is David shank one South Bowen Street, Longmont. Years ago, I built houses and was involved in development in Longmont. At that time, the city council seemed to be much more involved in the process of construction, and zoning, the biggest thing that you can do to cut down on the problems with the airport is to zone the area around the airport for businesses. Businesses are not going to complain, like people living in their house drinking their coffee on their porch in the morning. And modern West is a perfect example of people that are going to complain if that is allowed to go through and and the whole area just needs to be zoned. Much different around there and back in the day, when I was doing it, city council was very involved in that. It appears that now the Planning and Zoning Commission is much more involved in that. Thank you.

3:27:27
Thank you, thanks.

3:27:32
Okay, so we’re going to go ahead and move to Mayor and council comments. We have anyone. Yeah, go for it.

3:27:45
Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, I just want to say that we, most of us, went to Tampa for National League of Cities. And my biggest, not my biggest takeaway. There were several takeaways there. I mean, went Vision Zero downtown Longmont, homeless, homelessness solutions. All of us went to several sessions while we were there. I was a part of a focus group that for UL standards. And one of the things I didn’t realize and know that people who own scooters and electric bikes are not utilizing the batteries the way they should, so they are overcharging them, which can cause them to catch fire. And also they are purchasing batteries from third party and not from the actual manufacturer of the the of the device, which also causes fires, and there have been some deaths due to that. And so this focus group was to figure out how we can educate our community about these scooters and also the electric bikes. So mainly make sure that the batteries that you purchase on Amazon or wherever that they are compatible with your device, your emo mobile device, and then also your electric bikes. And so I want to make sure that we, somehow, I got a lot of information, that we get that on the website, so that people can see that. And then also, I want that to be a part of training for our life skills, fair for our kids here in the city. They they will come from Denver to come down during the life skills fair and teach the parents as well as the students on how to charge these devices, because they are overcharging them. And, you know, electric bikes are very expensive, so they’ve been taking them, they put them in the house, and they especially. If they’re unattended. So they leaving them charged while they’re at work or wherever, and they starting to catch a fire. So this is an issue across this nation. Even our fire marshal was emailed me and told me that there have been fires. So I didn’t have a clue that this was going on across the nation to this extent. So I just wanted to make sure that we are aware of you know, we are seeing these everywhere. Most major cities, you see people on these schools, adults as well as kids. So just please be mindful. Read the directions, make sure you get the right battery for your device, even if you bind up. If it’s not for the manufacture, make sure it has to you the UL little circle thing on the battery, that means they have been tested as being safe. So thanks.

3:30:54
Thank you. Oh, there you go. Yes. Council member Martin,

3:31:00
thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, I just want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed all the general business presentations in this meeting. They were all free, very informative, very much on point, and so I wanted to compliment everyone involved with that, as well as as the the speakers in public invited to be heard, all of whom had something good to say. And finally, Mayor Pro Tem, great job running the meeting. Is this your first time out actually doing a whole one, because I don’t remember another one. I think there was another one, but it was pretty light. Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway,

3:31:48
the mayor didn’t give me time to think about it, so I just feels better. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that, and let’s see, oh, we have council member Crist.

3:32:07
I wanted to inform everyone that we have recreation going at the Lashley Street Station, which is at Clark Centennial Park, and it’s more recreation on the north side of town. And as everybody gets through the holidays and then starts going back into the gym, and you can barely get in there, we have a lot more room up at Lashley station. There’s about eight or 10 classes there. So yoga, movement, breath work, pilates, so come check it out when we when we get back from the holidays. Okay,

3:32:46
thank you for that. So real quick going to the National League of Cities. I did attend several sessions around workforce, early childhood education providers and looking at at workforce as well, and as in addition to housing and unhoused and and looking at how our zoning, how, you know, changes that we can make in our land code can impact and really pave the way to and I, I have to commend our staff and Harold, because so much of these sessions I’m sitting in and I’m like, Oh yeah, well, you know, we’re doing this piece and we’re doing that, and they’re like, What did? So there they were. I felt like I’m sharing pieces of information that helped other municipalities learn about building that, that missing middle, looking at workforce housing, addressing unhoused, you know, addressing the unhoused, not just the the impact to community, but also building that self sustainability among the individuals who are unhoused and that mental health piece, and Looking at a holistic lens. I got to brag about our our core team leads, team the work we’re doing with with public safety and integrating all those with our housing authority. So there’s, there’s a lot that I think we’re taking the lead on income in comparing what with what other municipalities our size are doing. So that was very that’s a very exciting to see. And how do we get that word out there so that people know that, you know it is, and it takes a long time, you know. So I’m my, you know, second term on council, and we have people finishing up their second term, and we’re just now seeing, you know, the the the, you know, the fruits of our effort, and especially staff. I mean, we just say yes, and and kind of guide, guide along the way. But so it’s really exciting, and then looking at the potential we have to address. This early childhood education and the next generation of workforce, and how we can integrate that into into what we’re doing now, in and reflect and improve our practice so. So thank you for that, and I learned a lot. I can’t wait for us to kind of come together in a pre session and be able to discuss what we’ve what we’ve learned and our biggest takeaways. So thanks, and that’s that’s it, city manager. Do you have any remarks?

3:35:30
I wish I could take credit for everything you said, but it’s really an amazing staff that does phenomenal work. And I think again, what I said the other day, it’s really kind of the partnership and how we move forward. And I would say, if you all are ever interested in us presenting, we let us know we can put some proposals forward, because I think it is good for our staff. We get so focused on the do that, and that’s the important piece, is getting it done. But I think we’ve learned a lot so phenomenal staff that does that work. Council member Yarborough, if you can get that information to David, so he can get it to LPC, and then get it to Becky, so she can get it to sustainability. I think those are two areas that we can work on, getting that information out as we look at it. And also wanted to say to Mr. Grumfields, comment wasn’t me that said that. I don’t want people to think I know it was actually our attorney that said Peter Kirsch that said the production on the fuel was limited supply. So again, don’t want to take credit for something I didn’t say, but it was Peter Carson did that. Thanks.

3:36:44
City Attorney.

3:36:49
No comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

3:36:50
Okay, very good. So, okay, yep, so council member McCoy’s moved to adjourn. Council member Yarbrough is second all those in favor, All Those opposed, very good. We are adjourned. Thank you. Applause.

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