Longmont City Council – Study Session – December 10, 2024

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Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Study Session – December 10, 2024

5:41
Bucha, Cheers You.

15:19
Music.

15:25
Hello, everyone. This has been a very busy night for us, and I apologize that we’re late. So thanks for hanging in there. I would now like to call the December 10 2024 long Rock City Council study session to order the live stream of this meeting can be viewed at the city’s YouTube channel. It can also be viewed at the Longmont public media.org, forward slash, watch or on Comcast channels eight and 880 May we have the roll call please.

15:57
Mayor Peck, present council

15:58
member, Crist, Mayor Pro Tem E double fairing, Council Member Martin, Council Member McCoy, Council Member Rodriguez council member Yarbro. Mayor, you have Thank you. Let’s stand for the

16:09
pledge allegiance to the flag of the

16:14
United States of America, which it stands one nation under. God.

16:34
Anyone wishing to speak at first call public, invited to be heard, will need to add his or her name to the list outside the chambers. Only those on the list will be invited to speak at the first public invited to be heard. Each speaker is limited to three minutes, and we would like your name and address. We are now at motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas. Do any councilors want to add items to future agendas? Seeing none. We will move on to, I, you know, actually, I’m going to augment this, and we’re going to add a presentation. I’m going to augment this agenda we had. If some of you, city manager, do you want to make statement?

17:16
Well, no, I was just going to say, I know Phil the transportation was coming. He’s on his way back from across the street. Oh, yes, something else you want to

17:26
Well, the next thing on the agenda, what we’re doing is some of you may have seen in the newspaper this morning that we have the transit company coming in for our micro transit. And there was a picture. Phil Greenwald is the one that has worked on that for about three years. And there he is, so he’s running over. So we would like him to make a statement and explain a little bit about it. And I personally am incredibly proud of our transportation department that we have this in our city now. Take a breath. Phil.

18:18
So good evening, Mayor and members of council. Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city, yeah, running back from across the street was fun. My apologies, but we are very excited that on Monday we did have the launch of our ride Longmont program. It was great to get a lot of few folks out and about to see that happen. So we really appreciate your time with that. This does need a little bit of history, so I do want to talk a little bit about kind of how we got here so, so it all kind of starts with RTD, and we’ve been struggling with them since I started working here, 20 plus years ago, 24 plus years ago. So the first thing that we really talked about with them was how we try to get around the city with those compressed crowds that they have, and so only four routes in the whole city, and we have been kind of dealing with that as best we can. And one of the great things about this slide is telling us that a trip from Redmond lane, which is over by Silver Creek High School, is on the 324 bus. And if we want to get from there to Longmont United Hospital today. And you can do this on your app, if you want to, if you can do it on Google. If you want to do that today, it’s going to take you a nine minutes by car. And so that’s great. That makes sense, an hour and a half by bus. That does not make sense, and that’s not the way I think you’ve been telling us that you want to operate in the city. So we’ve been working with RTD over the years, we’ve been trying. To get it better and better and better, and they’ve offered a couple different ways to help us do that. And one was the flex ride service that is a call and ride on demand. Call and ride service used to be called, used to be called on demand, or, excuse me, calling ride. And so the idea is that you’re supposed to be able to call and set up a ride with them, and they were supposed to be a nice app that worked with that. You’ll see what we got, the information that we got back from people who were talking about this, and the different reviews that they received really needs work. Is kind of the classic wine that we get from them on that. So app does not work a lot of the times. You couldn’t tell where the drivers were. You couldn’t tell the status of your ride. So there’s a lot of different things. Glitchiness, inability to track all those things kind of came up with this. And so really, we went to this whole idea of, how do we improve access, and how do we make it better for the citizens of the United of long months and us here. So the improved access piece was really critical, faster journeys. People wanted a faster route across town. The on demand flexibility piece, where you could really, you know, as soon as you walked outside, you could demand the transit, the transit, and be able to get it, and that wasn’t happening with the other systems, and really a simpler app experience, so that you knew when you looked at it, it was very intuitive of what you were going to get. So we did work through the process of bringing on an on demand operator, and with this we did help, have help from RTD, so I will say that they did come through with what’s called partnership dollars, and so they’re paying about 40% of this cost of this service. So we’re very excited to have that start on Monday. So that was a wonderful thing to start. And just to let people know, it’s pretty, pretty darn easy to use. You just need to go to your basic app stores and whichever platform you’re on, just type in ride Longmont, the app will show up. You download the app, you basically sign up for the service, and then you book your ride, and then you may have to walk a block or two to pick up your ride. It’s just to make it simpler for the whole app, and that’ll come through here as well. So about ride along mount. What is it? We talked a lot about that already. When can I ride? So it really is a Monday through Saturday service from 6am to 8pm so it does turn off at 8pm so I used it today, but I needed to go back and get my car for tonight’s meeting, just in case. So but turns out, I probably could have made it Sundays nine to five, nine to 5pm so it does, does reduce a little bit on Sundays, and we’re working with all those different things. I know there’s been some issues with how the timing works for this, and we’re certainly it says it’s a flexible system, so we just need to see when people are riding it in our city, and then we can make it flexible. We can change it around based on what we hear. How does it how much does it cost? So $2 for a typical ride for somebody, but if you’re 18 or under or 65 and older, or if you have a disability, that price is cut in half, so it’d be a $1 fare for those folks. How do you pay? You basically create that account that we talked about on the app. There’s also ways that you can call a phone number and they can work with you in any language you want. But you’ll call the phone number and they’ll work with you as far as setting up the ride for you the pickup and drop off through a phone call, so you don’t have to be dependent on just a smartphone to use it. And then, can you book a ride in advance? This is really meant to be more of an immediate on demand system, so we’re really asking people that do the the right as it rides in advance piece that they please use the flex ride, because that’s really a subscription service. And though it doesn’t work well for when you need a ride immediately, it does really work well for subscription services, especially for students. So we’re asking people to use the flex ride that is offered by RTD on that and then why do I have to walk to my meet my driver? We really want to cut down on those detours and the in the routing through. So we’re really asking you to walk just a short distance to get to a main, not a main, but an intersection of some kind, so the driver has an easy way of picking you up and getting back on their route. Who will I be sharing a ride with? Well, if there are other passengers heading in the same direction, you may be picked up, and they may be picked up with you. And I, I’ve had a couple of those shared rides. It’s not, it’s one other person with you, so it’s not too bad at all. It’s everybody’s kind of talking to each other in the in the van too. So it’s, it’s kind of nice, but it is something you have to think about. If you don’t, you know, if you’re not comfortable in that situation, we you have to think that through and and also do. Children. We’re talking about younger children too. Anybody 13 years or older, can ride by themselves, technically within the state of Colorado, but it is going to be up to the parent or guardian on whether that happens or not. So we need to be cognizant of that as well. And then our wheelchair accessible vans available WAVs or wheelchair of accessible vehicles. And yes, there are two of our fleet of six. So we’ve got six total cars. We’ve got four that have bike racks on them. So in the app, if you do request the idea that you want a bicycle, you can do that if you always use a wheelchair, you can select that you’re a user of wheelchair always. And so every one of your rides that you request will make sure that we get the van accessible vehicle for that. More about the ride Longmont, kind of area of service. We’ve taken the municipal boundary and gone just a step beyond into our planning area boundary. And so that’s the line that you see around the city there. It includes all the unincorporated parts of Boulder County that we have the enclaves. So we didn’t want to exclude anybody from the system and have people jump over different parts of the city. So we’re trying to serve the entire city there. And you can see the various places that we do serve. It’s a lot of the high schools. We wanted to make sure we got those on there so people understood that. Front Range, Community College, the rec centers, the different high schools again, and then the Innovation Center. And one thing to point out is the mobility hub that’s new out at Firestone, and what’s called the Firestone Longmont mobility hub at 119 and I 25 that now serves the bus thing service you’ve probably been by there and see that it’s been rebuilt. And so that larger mobility hub done by C dot, I need to make sure that I make that caveat is that’s a C dot Colorado Department of Transportation facility that service with the bus staying is available to us as citizens. So we can get out there if we need to, and come back if it’s before they’re going to extend the hours out there for the last bus. So if you were on that last bus, you will get home using the system if you need so we’re just asking please ride Longmont. I really appreciated all the work that the city council members did to get that word out. So thank you very much to a number of you who really took the time to make sure this word got out the great press in the newspaper, I think our our vendor, who is via the other via, we call them, not via mobility that’s in Boulder County, but via the transportation services that’s, that’s kind of worldwide. They were very impressed with our smaller city of 100,000 people, really going to get a lot of folks. We already have 500 people signed up for the app, and that’s more than they really expected. And we’ve, we’ve kind of started out slow. Yesterday, we had about 30 rides total, so or 30 people served, I should say, and then this today, we’ve doubled that. So if we can keep doubling it, that’d be great. So I’m certainly available for any questions if you’d

28:03
like. But thank you. Do we have any questions for councilors Seeing none? I have to say, whoops. Counselor Yaro,

28:13
hey, Phil, how much is a gallon of gas well

28:18
depends on where you go, right? But it’s, it’s almost $3

28:21
right? How much does a cup of coffee? I don’t like

28:25
coffee, but I think it’s a 350 right?

28:28
So what you’re telling me is that I can get a ride all the way from Hoover to UC Health for $2

28:43
unless you qualify for discount, then it’s only $1 but you’re trying

28:46
to say, I look older than 65 No, no, I think it’s a good deal. Thanks for all that you have done to make sure to get this kicked off so and all the staff who participated in this and worked really hard on it. So thank you.

29:05
Councilor Crist, do

29:08
you happen to have the phone number to call for the ride?

29:17
Let’s see I do on my phone. I think

29:20
I just have people that don’t have smartphones.

29:24
970, I know. So, yeah, that’s a little out of

29:32
I don’t think we really concentrated on that part of it. 970-538-9097, and that is on the back of these vehicles as well.

29:43
Yeah, and you’ll see those through town. So it’s nice to see that the vans kind of moving through town. It’s, it’s, it’s been exciting to watch the whole thing kind of progress, correct?

29:52
Counselor, I’m sorry, Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo ferry, Thank

29:57
you, Mayor. So yeah, I actually do have a. Questions. I shared this with members in the school district. We often have students who miss their bus, and they are either absent. I’ve had a student whose parents would

30:12
send an Uber, and

30:15
that’s a lot of money for missing the bus. So in you had mentioned that 13 to 17, they can ride with parent permission. There were some questions that were asked about under the age of 13 with parent permission,

30:36
technically, because of the rules of the state of Colorado, technically, they cannot write alone under 13 years old. But yeah, I know how that works. And

30:46
so then my second quote, my follow up question, because I did have a follow up to that in case that was the answer was no, if the parents rode with them to school and did a turnaround, could that still count as that one trip, or would it have to be considered two trips? No, unfortunately,

31:03
you do have to count that. We do count that as two trips. So you do have to take the vehicle to the school. And we’ve had this happen a lot already, where the parents are just trying it out with the kids and just seeing how it works. Very excited about this as well. So they’re, they’re doing the trip from home to school, and then they’ll, they’ll get out, basically request a ride, and it’s usually the same person, right? So they just go across the street, or they, they, they sit there, and they just walk over to the the van again after they let their kids off. So yeah, there’s a way to do it, but it has to do. It has to be two separate trips. Two separate

31:39
trips. Okay, yeah. I mean, in the in the event of missing a bus, it’s not a daily occurrence, so I’m sure that that’s could be fine. And then the other piece I did see that there’s a drop off, or a station at Skyline. And is that? What was that? Is that a drop off? Is that a

31:59
well from the map to the map. We’re really just trying to identify places that we’re just trying to identify locations that were our key destinations for most of our people in the city got it, aren’t named with with a brand name. So we do, we show Skyline on there, we show a Longmont High School, and we show Silver Creek. We also show the Innovation Center, and we show new Meridian High School. So we’re trying to show these places that we think kids will go. But it’s not to say that that’s, those are the drop off locations or the pickup points. That’s, yeah, the whole city is included, and these places are included. So

32:34
yeah, and, you know, I think, you know, we do get a lot of residents going to Walmart so that, you know, somewhere further north that might be, you know, just something to kind of keep an eye on. And the Youth Center, which is close to, it is close to skyline, but, you know, youth are getting dropped off, you know, so,

32:54
and we’ve made other we’ve made a major effort to get information out to the youth center, perfect. And unfortunately, we can’t get into the high schools without having an electronic copy. So we’re working on a way to get into the school system as well, but that’s going to be you. Thanks. So

33:11
just to clarify, there are no fixed stops, like a bus stop. You can go anywhere you want within the city, but these, looking at future uses, these may be the most used routes, is what we are anticipating. We’re

33:30
just trying to say that these are, these are great destinations within the city that people should think about if you’re, if you’re using any of these destinations as part of your trip, think about using this as getting as getting there. I know parking has come up a number of times in a number of these places right during my career here. So it’s always good to say, you know, if you’re having problem with any kind of parking, we talk about downtown, and we’ve had issues with, you know, perceived issues, I think of parking. And so use this service to not have to find a parking spot and just get to your job or your school or your appointments.

34:04
It’s just another way to address all the traffic in our city. Thank you so much. This is this is really a step forward in helping you again. You

34:24
How do I get out of here? I need to get out of this presentation and go back to my screen, because we’re going to have public invited to be heard next but I do have a statement written on that screen. Come on. Okay, thanks for hanging in there with me.

34:56
Oh, dear, it didn’t come up so before. We have public invited to be heard. I would like to make a short statement. I think that there was some misinterpretation on last week’s meeting that councilor Martin was going to leave at at the after the December 3 meeting, but that timeline by council was only to have her come back in person if she was going to continue to be on council. We had just removed the remote control, remote virtual attendance. So as you can see, Councilor Martin is here in person. And the reason I’m saying this is that I’ve had a lot of emails forwarded to me about a special election, according to our according to our charter, which we have to follow. She is still on council, but will leave at December 31 so that does not trigger a special election per our council, that triggers an appointment. So if anybody’s here wanting to say, we need a special election, per our charter, we cannot do that. So with that, I’m just going to open up again. Public, first call. Public, invited to be heard, and Lance Whitaker is on, first on the list the

36:30
guest, hello, mayor and city council. My name is frog in the throat. There.

36:40
Your name’s frog in the throat. Yeah. Most

36:43
time, Lance Whitaker, 1750 Collier Street, Longmont, Colorado, lived here 45 years now, 46 various different spots in Longmont. Like to mention today, mayor and council, today is one of my girlfriend’s favorite national days, and that’s national lager day. So everybody go out and have beer, not on me. Everybody also remember that there is a Dewey Decimal System, because today is also national Dewey Decimal System. And shout out to all the libraries out there. Thank you for her giving us a great system of filing that should be about it. And your bro, you can come on my house and have cup of coffee for free anytime. Along with the mayor and any of the other council members, I’ll be more than happy to serve you cup coffee for free, and you all know my address. So have a nice day. Thank

38:01
you, Lance. The next one on the agenda is Vic piezo.

38:13
Hi. Thanks, Governor. Our governor. Governor, thank you. Well, I’m getting ahead of myself, yeah. But anyway, Mayor Peck for clarifying this, this, you know what, how you are viewing this situation, but I want to make sure that the city council understands that this doesn’t look this way from other, you know, from the outside, we were told very on, very not, not on a total promise way, but it was stated that, you know, the council woman, Martin, would be leaving on, sorry, on the second or third, something like that, and that there would then possibly be election or whatever after that. Well, that’s now all precluded. Now this is one thing I want to really impress upon you. There’s the the Romans had, Ancient Romans had this picture of something called opportunity as a woman with this big knot of hair on her head, and she’d run by real fast, who’s like an Olympic runner, and you either grabbed it or you didn’t. If you miss it, you’re out of luck. And credibility is a lot like that, and you are jeopardizing credibility with these kind of situations here. Now, it may be legal and all that, but it just doesn’t seem right. And I think you people need to be thinking about that. People are getting really upset about this kind of stuff because it comes across as underhanded. You need to know that. That’s all I got to say. Thank

39:41
you, Bob Colt.

39:55
Yeah, that was the issue that I was going to speak about. But my name is Bob Colt. Yes, and I’m a resident of Longmont, and I was going to request that

40:05
I’m sorry, Bob, would you mind giving us your address? Please? It’s

40:08
five to six Abbey drive. Thank you. So that was going to be my request that city council, the member position vacated by Marcia Martin would be determined by special election, as opposed to an appointment. And the reason is, I believe this gives the people of Longmont the best option for exercise exercising the democratic process and filling the position. So

40:38
thank you. You’re welcome. Greg Morrison, or Morrissey. Morrissey, Morrissey,

40:47
Greg Morrissey at 1648, Harvard Street, good Longmont. And what the last gentleman just said, I was thought to too. I thought, look at the process. And I read through all the documents. When Marshall was going to be leaving, there’s going to be an election, and there, there should be an election, perhaps, that I need some direction there to show to I understand the whole thing critical, because I agree with him. The people in that part of the city need to get out and vote and have their voice heard. I think that’s very important. But going forward, that’s all we get to say. Thank you. Thank you. Steve ALTSCHULER,

41:31
good evening. Steve Altshuler, 1555 Taylor drive, I want to talk about this also. For one thing, I would like to throw my hat in the ring to be considered to take the position for Marsha Martin. I do live in Ward two, with the last election that we actually did have, I was the next highest vote getter of people that ran for office, so I think that would be a reasonable claim on my part to be appointed to the position, since that was a vote of the people, I want to point out kind of what they were saying, also about transparency, because I was here july 23 when there was over a half hour discussion about whether there should be an election or whether there should be an appointment and how this should be operated. The city council went to great lengths to look at the calendar. There’s probably a 15 minute discussion about which date can we give Marcia the final time to decide if she will be on the board, on the council, or not, and not have to do an election. So this is not just happenstance. This was all pre arranged in great detail, so if there would be no free election, and city council could actually do an appointment, and I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s very underhanded. I don’t think that’s fair to the city. The other thing, no matter what you end up doing, I think it’s imperative that the city council look at this entire situation and make a plan for the future. So kind of like if you’re in school, if you miss more than three classes in 10 weeks, they can kick you out. So maybe you say, if you have more than three missed meetings in three months, then you get a warning, and if you missed three more in the next three months, then you have to step away from the city council. I understand this is pretty much the first time this has come up, but it could come up again, and I think there needs to be some specific rules in place so people know how to deal with it. And it’s not just up to that current city council at the time to make the arrangement for anything they want to make. So by July 23 I don’t remember the exact number of times, but Marsha had missed a lot of times. And by the way, we do all hope your daughter is much better, but there have been times that were on Zoom or she hadn’t been here, and that was what brought the discussion up in the first place. So I think it’s important that the city council make laws for how to deal with an excessive number of absences in the future. And again, I’d like to put my hat in the ring. I’d be glad to meet with any or all of you and have discussions so you can see if I what you would think would be

44:30
correct. Thank you. So

44:34
this is for everybody, so Agenda Item number D is going to have the discussion and the process going forward. So if you have the staying power, you can stay for that discussion. I didn’t know item C. I

44:50
didn’t know what that discussion would be if that was just about tonight. No putting your hat in the ring. It’s about the process.

44:55
So hang in there. Cool. Okay, Peggy, else. I’m

45:07
Peggy alt Shuler 1555, Taylor Mountain Drive, and I’m going to sound like a broken record, because I’m here to say the similar things as those that have come come before me, but I do strongly believe it’s of utmost importance that the people of Longmont have a choice in the matter on our city council members. I did spend a lot of time yesterday going through the July 23 meeting, and there was a lot of discussion. Three of the council members wanted to make sure that that date was set so that there could be a special election. Three out of the four in attendance. Two of the four were concerned that the ward two had not had a vote outside of Marsha Martin, and no fault of her own, she ran independently in the in 2021 so in seven years, there has not been an opportunity, you know, other than that, for Ward two to to have a choice. And it is really important that the people of long love get to choose their representatives. Thank you,

46:02
thank you. Peggy Scott Stewart, thank you Scott Gary Hodges,

46:18
thank you Gary Hodges, 2148 Stewart, street. Good evening, Mayor, council members. So tonight I’m also here to speak about the likely upcoming Council appointment. Everybody’s reference to July 23 meeting. My notes. Have a meeting on the July 16, pre session meeting. So maybe I’m wrong on that date, but it was at that meeting, or after that meeting, where we all believed that this situation had at least been resolved so as to ensure a special election. That’s certainly an impression I came away with at that time, but here we are staring down an appointment. It won’t come as a surprise, but many in Longmont believe they are not well represented by the current Council. It’s against this reality that I’m framing my comments here tonight. So I’d like to challenge Council by challenging each of you to consider appointing a person who won’t merely bolster an already solid majority, solid Council majority. So recall, at that previous meeting, there were several council members who spoke against the idea of an appointment, primarily because of the credibility hit council would take, and I think they were right to be concerned about that. So I would offer that appointing a person with an alternative mix of political views and the current majority is not going to change the outcome of any votes, but it will be seen as a credible selection. So ideally, individuals considered will be active participants in our city. This might come by engaging in city activities, or operating a small business property ownership, or maybe providing housing through rental properties. There’s a number of ways someone might demonstrate this. And considering all of this, I suggest Steve Altshuler is an excellent candidate to fill this position. So he checks numerous boxes, and no one would be able to accuse this council of appointing a person who is aligned with the prevailing makeup. It would also be an equitable move that gives voice to so many in this city who are often sidelined in discussions and decisions. So those are my comments tonight. Thank you. Thank

48:23
you. Gary Kathy Reeves,

48:38
hello. I’m Kathy Reeves, 2217, Piccadilly circle in Longmont. Thank you, Mayor and council members. I’d like to address the same situation. It’s my understanding that a council member may attend meetings remotely as needed, as long as he or she has an intent to return according to your own rules. When it became clear in July of this year that Councilwoman Martin may not be returning to Longmont in a timely manner, this condition no longer applied to her, I believe it was stated at that time she was either considering or had already signed a 13 month lease in New York for Councilwoman Martin to delay until now to resign, knowing full well that she would be preventing an election was not in the best interest of the people. Based on the discussion of july 23 she knew that she would not be completing her term of office well before the one year deadline, because it was made clear December 2, if she were to resign by then, there would be an election December. 3, no, it would be an appointment. So everyone knew that three council members made it clear at the July meeting that they would like to see an election of the new council person rather than an appointment. An election is in the best interests of citizens of Ward two of. Which I am one and is what we are requesting tonight. Thank you, Kathy.

50:07
I just want to make a statement about the pre sessions. Those are, we do not make policy. We do not take a vote. It is a way for council can just sit and discuss issues without uh, without going against the Sunshine Law, you can attend, but we don’t make any policy or give direction or have votes at those pre sessions. So moving on, I want to close public invited to be heard, since there’s no one else on the list and we are going to go to study session items. The first one is a zero reading for a bill for an ordinance, amending chapter 6.40 of the Longmont Municipal Code, adding section 6.4 0.40 through 6.4 0.1 100 concerning hotel licenses. Do we have anybody to speak to this? Yes, we do.

51:22
Presentation.

51:28
Which one is it can’t see

51:31
the right one there, that one.

51:42
I mayor, city council staff, thanks. I am Assistant Chief maltrud. We would like to present the hotel motel ordinance. Little background is this started a couple years ago, and we started noticing that we had an uptick in calls for service to some of our local hotels. During that uptick, we were seeing a lot of criminal activity, a lot of drug activity, and we had very little resources that we could do to deal with that. Through that, we executed some search warrants, and as a result, we worked with some state law and with our county partners to shut a couple of our hotels down so that we could get some remediation done and work through some issues with them, to get some of our calls for service lowered, and as a result, you’ll see through Some of the stats that officer Kennedy will show you that we had some positive results. As a result, we looked at some options we could do to spread this process around, to affect all of our hotels, so we could lower our calls for service, create a safer environment for our travelers that come into our community, and as a result, we’d like to present to you guys a ordinance that hopefully will create a safer environment for our travelers and a safer environment for our community.

53:17
Much shorter. Good evening, mayor and city council, I’m Elizabeth Lorena Mills, one of your Senior Assistant city attorneys, and what we’ve brought to you today for consideration is a zero reading on an ordinance for your feedback. Do you want us to proceed? And if so, what should we do? And we looked at neighboring municipalities in the Front Range in Denver Metro area, where how do we address these hotel motels that are disproportionately using calls for service? And so what this ordinance does is has an enforcement mechanism. It is tied to the calls for service that they are generating to the police, for police services, and it is specific to criminal calls. So if somebody is staying at the Hampton Inn and they have a medical emergency that does not count, now if they have an overdose and there’s been drug illegal drug activity, that would count. So we’re balancing people legitimately need medical calls for service and versus things that are generating a police, law enforcement response, and what we’re proposing in this ordinance is an implementation timeline so that every motel and hotel in the city can come into compliance and be bring down their calls for service and have It graduated and give them time to generate that it would be an annual licensing requirement. It would be done through our city clerk’s office and our police department would be reviewing the applications to make to see what are their calls for service and are they participating in our crime free hotel motel program. We have a voluntary program right? Now that we’ll hear a little bit more about that, is generating real positives for the community, and there are other things that their expertise would share with the hotel motels that helps bring down their calls for service and make it a safe environment for everyone who’s in Longmont, whether short term or long term. Dave, you you good

55:24
evening mayor and council members. David Kennedy, Neighborhood Resource Officer with public safety. So the data that you’re looking at here is a six month window in time comparing what these two properties looked like before and after working with these two properties in the crime free program. So what you see there is a comparison in data between 2022 and 2024 and the reason that we jump back to 2022 to compare data is because back in 2023 if you remember, is when the two hotels were shut down due to meth contamination. I believe the Super Eight was shut down in October and lamp lighter in May. So as you can see there, there’s been a significant reduction in police calls for service since that time. When we compare those two six month data sets, about 43% of the Super Eight and 78% decrease in calls at the Lamplighter. So what happened in 2023 is during the closing of those properties, Chief maltreat Sarai, myself and some other public safety staff sat down with the ownership and management of these two properties, and what we proposed at the time, as we proposed that, you know, we already had up and running now for over a decade in the city of Longmont, a crime free program, which was working with the rental housing community, and it had also been very successful at decreasing police calls for service over that last decade. And so the proposal was to roll out a similar in nature program with the hotel motel industry, with the hopes that it would decrease calls for service. So the 24 data that you’re looking at is complete picture of time in which we have been working with those two properties. Both these owner, the ownership at Lamplighter, in the management of both these hotels, both agreed to work with that program, and since that time, every time there’s a police, fire or code enforcement call or animal control call at the property, what my job is now is to communicate what exactly that was in nature to the management, so they’re number one aware, and if and if there is a problem that needs correction, they can go ahead and have that guest move out, and you can see, see the decreasing result. I would like to bring Council’s attention to that 80 number there on the Super Eight, the 80 calls for service number. What that number is? What I like to call a raw number. So when we run our dispatching CAD data, and I run those two dates, that’s that’s the raw police calls for service. And in other words, there, we’ve responded 80 times in that six month period. But one thing that public safety really felt was not fair is that we understand as an agency that not every time the police go to a property, isn’t necessarily a negative generator, right? There’s actually positive generators on occasion when the police are there. And so nothing about this proposed ordinance would be something that we’re interested in trying to deter or discourage any anyone who’s in management, ownership, or even a guest, from calling the police when they do need help. You know, maybe, maybe a good example I could think of a call for service we would exclude would be, say, a medical call, you know, say a guest at a hotel room is having a heart attack. You know, why would we ever consider that as part of this ordinance? Right current dispatch and protocols. They do send a police officer to every heart heart attack call, because sometimes the police cars closer, right, we can start life saving measures until fire arrives. So that, you know, just looking at that one call, we would now take that 80 number and reduce it down to 79 so I did that for all 80 of those calls for service. And from that 80 the reduction, it actually went down to 43 calls for service that were actually crime related. And what that did is that puts their current calls for service ratio at 1.3 calls for service per room per calendar year. If we were to extrapolate the six months of data into a year. You know, by just assuming that that six months of data set would look very similar over the next, you know, six months and, you know, go from 80 260 calls for service. When I ran the numbers for the lamp lighter following the same methodology, their current cost for service rate is sitting at 2.4 calls for service per room per calendar year. We did run another hotel, one that’s traditionally since it’s been built as really not been a high generator of public safety calls. I ran data for the Hilton Garden Inn, which is located near the intersection of camp. Or Yeah, Ken Pratt Boulevard and South Martin Street. The Hilton Garden Room has 105 rooms. They had 49 police calls for service. Once again, I went through all that data, reduced that down to 33 calls for service, which comes out to 0.31 calls for service per calendar year, and that was from a 2023, data set, because that contained a full year data. So the current the current ordinance, what is proposing is setting our ordinance at 1.5 calls per service program per calendar year, and that number came from other municipalities. And so really the question is, is that a number that we could work with? And that’s why I ran these numbers. Right now, it looks like the only hotel that currently is going to be over that 1.5 threshold would be the lamp lighter. However, as you can see, they’ve already reduced call 78% and honestly, Sarah, nice experience in the crime free program is, you know, this is something that does take a little bit of time. And hope, the hope is that with more time, we can get them there as well. So with that, I’ll pass it on to Sarah, who’s going to talk a little bit more about the crime free program,

1:01:08
mayor and council. Sarah Arnie, Neighborhood Resource Officer with public safety, we wanted to wrap this back around for you, relating to the crime free housing program and the success that has been ongoing in our community since 2010 because really this, the crime free housing program is just a small segment of the crime free program to begin with. We’ve worked with other municipalities, as Dave said, once we knew we had an issue here, and and chief mulcher brought this to all of our attention. I I basically brought up. I said, Hey, we, we work very closely with Lakewood police department. They run this program. We went down, visited them, did, did some homework, and brought this back. And so this is why we’re here today. But we wanted to bring to you the the fact that you know, we do have reduced calls for service. This brings community collaboration. What we are not doing right now is that the pilot program is only providing them information. They’re just getting the calls with the full the full pledge for full bore program. I should say they’re going to get staff training, which we do in the housing program, right? We’re going to do a security assess assessment, or a septet evaluation of all the all the hotels and that that, I think will even bolster those numbers that Dave just brought up to you. So the ordinance highlights no application fee at this point, unless we’re given other direction. And then officer Kennedy just spoke to you about the calls for service rate, and right now it’s set at 1.8 to allow them to come into compliance and eventually go to 1.5 and they already discuss with you the medical calls and that and that nature. And you know, we do see the traffic site citations where the property addresses used. We often pull people over in these places, so we’ll have to go through that data and ensure that those don’t count. So Council direction, option one, direct staff to bring back the ordinance as originally proposed today for the first reading option to bring it back with council. Councils recommendation, sorry, recommended changes today for the first reading and option three is we do not proceed

1:03:35
any questions. Thank you. I’m going to open it up to council for questions or comments. Councilor Rodriguez,

1:03:45
Thank you, Mayor Peck Is there any room for some discretion in the sense, as you already enumerated like lamp lighter is down 78% which is statistically a significant margin, right? And I think part part of it is that they have a much more limited number of rooms as compared to some of our other facilities, right? And so just wondering if there’s any wiggle room when you’re working with somebody who, this time, seems very willing to try to get everything under control, you know, as we go forward, or is this just going to be a

1:04:21
hard stop? So I think the idea behind setting it at a per room basis hopefully addresses some of those, certainly not all. I do understand your point, but by keeping a per room, you know, like we look at the lamp lighters only, it only has 23 rooms, and you compare that to the Hilton of over 100 rooms, right? It wouldn’t be fair to just say, put a blanket call for service on each property, because we could really make it fair. Was to do a per room, so kind of held everybody the same,

1:04:52
I think,

1:04:55
oh, one of the intentions is it’s to be a collaborative process. So we are providing that if they are working with the crime free housing program and they’re moving in the right direction and taking seriously the recommendations, it isn’t a, you know, city clerk shall pull the license. There is discretion to allow those businesses that are working on the program to keep in compliance as long as they’re working on

1:05:19
it. Okay, that’s exactly what I was kind of trying to get at. And then one other question I had was, you know, there was a list of the calls for service that would constitute being counted, right? And some of them, I thought, were maybe a little on the margins, such as if a fight happens on the sidewalk adjacent to hotel, that one of the people in the fight may be a guest of the hotel, and maybe the other party is not. This comes to mind, for instance, in areas where there are late night establishments, such as one, one example would be, say, I think it’s called the candle light, and it’s right next to the Buffalo Wild Wings, which is one of the later open establishments in town. And there’s not necessarily all the time, but there happens to be fights in the parking lot and adjacent could be on that property. And so I was just wondering, will there also maybe be some discretion, as far as like, it’s not something that could really be in the management’s control, necessarily, but it still happens on their property.

1:06:24
Yeah, one thing I noticed when I was looking at the data, because it really does require, if somebody is beyond the 1.5 when we run that initial, just raw number, that’s going to require a staff member to actually go in and physically look at every police call for service. Because you’re absolutely right, and I’ll just use the help and garden in as an example. So they back up to the same brain Greenway. And so a lot of those calls that I was excluding from the property is counting against the property, if you will, were calls for service that had nothing to do with the actual property itself. It was problems that were occurring on the Greenway. The reason dispatch uses the address is because the Greenway doesn’t have an address, right? And so what they do is they just use the closest physical address to wherever that call for services. And it just so happens to be that there’s a hotel sitting there, right next to the Greenway, right? So, yeah, it could look, you know, on its face, like something serious happened. It’ll show their address. It’ll show there’s an assault that occurred and somebody got arrested, but it has nothing to do with the hotel. So that’s why it’s going to be very important for staff if we do go over that threshold, then they’re going to have to do a review of every police call for service and then come up with a true picture, because if they do get called in for a hearing, then it can be incumbent upon that officer to show proof in every one of those calls this was related to the property, and not just some, you know, extraneous thing, you know, that happened elsewhere and just happened that fell on this address, okay? And

1:07:53
we also see that currently, with the data that we have for the crime free housing program, a lot of times, any incident could happen the parking lot, an incident could happen, a traffic accident, right? So we go through that data as well, and that is where you know management, there’s nothing they can do with that, right for the most part. So okay,

1:08:13
thank you. I would say that just kind of to my fellow council members as well, just to wrap it up so I don’t have to make any more comments on this item that I really did actually appreciate, starting with the no application fee, especially because we have a number of establishments, and I think you know, it will create more goodwill with them in the beginning stages of this program and and having my questions answered on the calls for service ratio, if you will, really helped me, push me towards supporting moving this forward. So with that, back to you, great.

1:08:55
So what you’re basically saying is that you would like them to move forward with this. That’s mine. That’s yours. Okay. Okay, and you went down, I have one question. When you were discussing this, did you discuss the possibility that perhaps a hotel will stop calling for service with the fear of having their license revoked so that you end up with less calls. They look good, but they really needed to call.

1:09:24
So Madam Mayor, one of the things that we realized when we started communicating with Super Eight and the lamp lighter was the first thing that we got from the owners or from corporate from Super Eight was we didn’t know this was going on. Oh, and I think the big thing is not that the calls for service are being reported, is opening that line of communication, and with crime free, what ends up happening is they’re now communicating directly with corporate and the direct manager of Super Eight, the owner of Lamplighter, doesn’t live in Longmont anymore. She now gets a copy of what’s going. On at her hotel, and this now this isn’t what we tried to create with this was in an us versus them mentality. This was a how can we work on this collaboratively, together and open up that line of communication? And this is what’s going on on your property, if you engage with us. We’re not trying to count the we’re not the bean counters to say, Oh, you’re 1.51 over. It’s okay. You’re reaching this threshold because these people are also causing damages to your property. They’re lowering their because no one wants to stay at that property where it’s the problem, property correct, where you collaborate with us through crime free assessment of your property through working with us and on how we can work through some of these problem tenants, we can make your property more inviting for people to come to. It lowers our calls for service. It helps put our officers back out on the street doing the things that they need to be doing. It helps everybody involved, and that’s where we looked at this ordinance and how this can be beneficial to everybody, not just a punitive of measure. So I think that’s where the benefit really comes in on this, is it doesn’t cause them to, hey, don’t call us, because what we’re going to know, what we know is, in the beginning, we’re probably going to see a little increase as they’re trying to work through how we deal with these problems, and then as we work with them and give them some more skills and how to deal with it, then we start seeing that drop in the calls for service, and we get them to where they need to be, it’s more are you? Are you engaging with us and working to get that taken care of, or are you ignoring that problem, and it’s now getting to this 78% that we got to deal with. Okay, so that’s what we’re looking

1:11:46
for. Well, anything that makes our city safer, I’m in for so I I would agree with Councilor Rodriguez. Councilor McCoy, oh, Martin. I’m sorry. Thank

1:11:58
you, Mayor pack. I just wanted to clarify too, that the call for service does not have to come from the hotel management. It can get the call for service is typically going to come from a guest, right, or somebody interacting with a guest, and the program just gets around to the hotel management, which it otherwise might not do, and they wouldn’t have known, because I heard it stated a different way, or possibly another way. And I just want to clarify that, but that’s how it works, correct, correct, just

1:12:29
like our crime free housing program, yes,

1:12:31
all right, thank you.

1:12:33
And jumping in from the crime free housing program, we’re obviously part of that with the housing authority, and so yes, 99% of the calls are actually driven by residents. We get the reports, and then we work with the crime free in terms of what we need to do. And I think the numbers when we talked about this program really mimic that, right?

1:12:56
So it’s closing the loop, making sure the loop gets closed Correct. Thank you.

1:13:01
But Sarah, or your comments about the fact that management did not even know this was going on, I think was very pertinent. It wasn’t you, Sarah, sorry,

1:13:11
it was the ownership. The ownership didn’t know that was going on. So yeah, so that loop, because they can’t come in and fix it if they got a bad manager, and that was part of the problem with lamp lighters. They had issues with their management, and she didn’t know, and that’s a huge reduction the calls for services. They got a manager there. That’s now a manager,

1:13:35
exactly, and that helps. And I was familiar with that, so that was the point of my question, was that. So thanks for giving me the higher picture. I agree that I would like you to go forward. How about other councilors? Do we have a Do you just want to start with Councilor Yarbrough. You’re a yes to go forward. Option one, option one. One. You have your direction. We all would like you option one.

1:14:06
Great. And just so you all know, we’ve been in communication with Sarah, with visit Longmont regarding and so I met with her several months ago, and actually spoke with her again this morning. And there’s opportunity to talk to the folks that are on her, her, her group, the group that she gathers, right? So she’s going to talk with them this week. Perfect.

1:14:30
Okay, thank you so much. All right, we are going to move on in our

1:14:39
agenda training. Office for this training. So number b is a consideration of our Council resolution establish, excuse me, establishing the fee for cash in lieu of water right transfers. And we have Houston i. What

1:15:17
do you mean?

1:15:22
I Good evening Council, mayor and council members. My name is Ken Houston. I’m the Water Resources Manager, and also tonight, helping me back me up is we have, Wes Lowry, our Senior water resource analyst, as well as Roger Lang, Chair of our water board tonight, we wanted to bring before you our caption, Lou of water rights dedication program. We have a few small changes that were is being proposed, and we wanted to bring that to council before we actually brought a resolution forward. Let me grab that. So really, the purpose tonight of our of our presentation, one is just to provide the public with a summary of what the cash in lieu fee is, and to summarize the history of that cash in lieu fee, then we would like to describe our current cash in lieu fee setting criteria, how, what we’re currently using to establish that fee then we’d also like to describe our cash in lieu fee process, or the methodology that’s using. There are a couple of small changes in that methodology that we wanted to inform the council about, and then ask City Council for direction about that methodology. So first, we’d like to quickly describe the cash in lieu fee itself, whenever property annexes in the city long for development purposes, you’re required, through what’s called the raw water requirement policy, to provide the city with water to for that development that will eventually go on that property. Currently, that’s three acre feet per acre of land that’s that’s annexed, and typically there are two facets of that. One is what’s called the historical water. I water this on the land. When it annexes, it’s usually most of the property around longest farmland. We get about two acre feet of water, about two thirds of that requirement in water this historical and then the other 1/3 of that the development community can normally brings in non historical water there are other water rights that are available that they could bring in. One of the things that historically clear, since the formation of the Water Board 1963 we’ve had what’s called the cash in lieu of water rights dedication. That’s really an optional payment method for the for the development community, in case they don’t want to bring in non historical water in the past that honestly, it hasn’t been used a whole lot. It wasn’t used a whole lot because there was plenty of non historical water. As we fast forward to today, there’s less and less non historical water out there available. So we are getting a little more cash in lieu of water rights, just because it’s difficult to get that. But it is voluntary, so so it’s not required to do so some of the uses of that fee, I’d like to go go, just to highlight real quickly, both the historical uses of that fee, that long months put it to and Then some of our future uses. In the past, we use basically the cash in lieu fee is used to develop new water supply. So that’s a pretty generic description, but there are a number of ways we have historically done this. We do it for water ice change cases, to help pay the cost of water the non both historical and non historical. We use it for our water conservation programs, realizing that you can either get more water or you can save water. And so that works well for us. In the past, we’ve used it for acquisition of union reservoir, some of our original shares in that company. We currently own about 85% of that company. At this point. We’ve used it in the past for the windy gap diversion project. I’ll describe that in a minute here, as well as paying for the windy gap. Farming project, cash financing. When we entered the windigap firming project, we we paid some cash up front what we had, and then we also took out some bonds. And so we’ve had a couple years of bond payments for that. We’ve also, in the past, acquired different non historical water rights, and then we’ve also acquired property around union reservoir for the eventual enlargement of union reservoir that that benefits a number of benefits there. So we’ve used that cash in lieu fee for a number of different uses. What are we going to do in the future as we continue to get additional cash in lieu, this is kind of not an actual priority, but, you know, a rough priority. The first use of that will be to pay the windy gap farming project bond debt and water and continuation of our water conservation programs the we want to make sure that that bond debt for the windigap firming project is paid through, you know, not through water rates, but through there’s really two areas. One is the wind to get surcharge on tap sales, and another on the cash. In lieu, we will also continue for water exchange cases, acquisition for future water property, acquisition for future water supplies, as well as three future projects. One is union reservoir, pump back pipeline. That’s one of our future water supplies. Union reservoir enlargement, which is one of our future water supplies, as well as an occasional water right acquisition. Actually, water right acquisition isn’t our primary purpose for that fee, primarily because we’ve had long months, had a long standing guiding water principle of not going out and trying to buy and drive the farms around town. That’s part of our community, is the farm, agricultural farm lands around the community. So, so just real quickly, how have we based the criteria for setting the cash in lieu fee for many years, from 1963 till 2012 the fee was primarily based upon acquisition costs of Colorado Big Thompson units, partially because we have acquired some of those units over the year, but also it’s got a really good market, so it was really easy to track that worked real well for a lot of years. Unfortunately, in the early 2000s more and more demand on that project occurred, so a lot more of the units were being acquired by other water providers, as well as the fact that as more and more of those units are required, there’s fewer units that are available. And so the price went up in 2000 you could buy it for in the 567, $1,000 range. You know, within 10 years, it was up in the 50, $60,000 range. So what happened for Walmart, when we were looking at that price in 2012 is is both water board and city council said, you know, we’re that’s starting to get away from us, and we knew at that time we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be acquiring any additional CBT. So working with city council, the Water Board came up with the fee that basically from 2013 to 21 we based our fee on the development of new water supply projects. And that was, that was a litany of some projects, some of our future plan projects. But also, at the time, the windigap firming project, but it was the windigap firming project alone. In 2021 council asked staff and water board to review that criteria again, because it was only the firming project, not the entire windy gap project. So in 2022 Council adopted FEMA methodology that utilized the entire windy gap project, and the windy gap project really consists of the original parent project, which was a pump, pumping plant, reservoir and pipeline on the west slope to provide us the water, the water rights, the water, and then the windy gap funding project, which was the project to store the water and and firm that up.

1:24:36
So historically, the city of Longmont, since 1963 has received about $19 million in cash in lieu more of that has been recent because of less non historical water. Right now we’re we’re acquiring about a million dollars a year, and that’s fairly variable. As you know, development is variable. Um. So what I wanted to do is, just for the benefit of those who aren’t familiar with how those two projects, the Parent Project and the firming project, is describe both of those projects, the windy gap, pumping plant project, pumping project, the original project actually low Mott Mayor Ralph price went over the west slope and filed for that water right in 1967 in 1969 six of the Northern Front Range cities went together, formed a sub district through the Northern Water District, worked on that Project and finally broke construction in 1981 finished it 1985 at that point we had a viable pumping project. Longmont took its first deliveries of the windy gap water in 85 and then it was a issued a 30 year bond the project did, and that was actually paid off in 2016 then the other half of that project is the windy gap firming project, which is basically the storage reservoir. This is a picture of the recent construction of that project. That project was implemented first in 1999 when we started looking at sites and started the federal permitting process, we got permits for that in 2014 2017 in 2021 we settled all issues related to the permits in the construction and started construction, broke ground, and that project is scheduled to be completed in August of 2025 so we’re getting really close. It’s about a 350 foot tall dam. And we’re we just did this week go over 300 feet. So it now, now is the tallest dam on the east slope of Colorado. There’s a couple taller ones on the west, but that project is well on its way, and it’s will be will be done this year, and we’re really hoping that we’ll be able to start putting water in it before the end of next year. So here’s some of the specific cash, new considerations, process considerations that water board over the course of setting the both the criteria and the methodology did. The first was we looked at the fact that this is an impact fee, so water board worked closely with our city’s legal department to make sure that the methodology we used tracks with state requirements for state and federal requirements for impact fees, which it does, and we’re pretty confident with that. Then we looked at evaluation criteria. What do we use? That’s really where we came down to utilizing the windy gap project, both the Parent Project and the firming project, as the criteria to set that fee. That is primarily because a good, largest portion of the fee over the next 20 years will go to pay for the bonds for the windy gap firming, and we have paid off the bonds for the Parent Project. And it’s a really good project to use, and we have good data on all of it, the value. Then jumping into the valuation methodology, we actually go to looking at the the cost for the Parent Project. We we’re there are occasional sales of the Parent Project allotment contracts. So the most recent sale was plant River Power Authority sold five units and did it on an open bid, and so that was a good competitive basis, and that’s that’s the criteria we’ll be talking about tonight. And if Council approves it, we’ll come back in January with the actual resolution that’s on the Parent Project, and then the windigap funding project is simply the bid cost, the actual cost of constructing that project. So that’s the methodology we use to calculate that fee. And so we wanted to talk about that a little bit. And then finally, wanted to talk a little bit about the timing of the fee adjustments we have. We always try to listen to what what we’re hearing from our constituents, one of the things we heard from some of the development communities was that it was hard for them to have a fee change at different times of the year and without a lot of forewarning. So we did work. With water board to talk about that one issue, and that’s, that’s really one of the issues we wanted to talk about. Today, we’re proposing a different fee. So really there’s, there’s just three areas that we would like Council input and direction on the cash in lieu fee tonight. The first is changing the cash in lieu fee only once a year in the past, our city code says that water board will review at least on a quarterly basis the cash in lieu fee. And they do do that, and they will continue to do that. What we are proposing to bring back to council in January with a resolution is basically, we will, while we count water board will continue to review that quarterly, make sure there’s no nothing’s getting out out of whack, you know, timing wise, but what we’d like to do is on the quarterly reviews are March, June, September and December, and what we’d like to do is on the June quarterly report review Water Board would make a recommendation to city council for any change on the fee that it would then come to council in August, September, time period. And then, once Council approves that change, we will actually have it effective on January 1 that gives the development community, that gives other people about six months to get ready for that. It can be a little, you know, for some developments, if they’re large, it could be, you know, it’s not uncommon to have, you know, a few 100 to half a million dollars in a cash, a new fee that’s over a lot of units. So it doesn’t per unit. It’s not a huge, huge fee, but it’s still money. So that’s kind of how we came down with some pros and cons on that. The one thing we do want to highlight is in the in the past, when fluctuations of water acquisition go up and down rapidly, such as happened with the CBT water in the early 2000s you know, it’s hard to catch that. You know, you kind of feel like you’re behind. And with our current criteria of using the windigap firming project, though, we actually don’t think that’ll it’ll probably be two years or so before there’s a big change, because there aren’t that many units of the Parent Project and the windigap firming project, as soon as we’re done with construction, you know that price is set, and so that won’t change at all. So we feel at this point that that makes sense, and gives the development community a little bit of time to think about that. The second question, I guess, would be always, is that the option of is the current fee setting methodology that we use both the criteria and the methodology acceptable to council. It puts us it puts us in Well, the next bullet point is the actual price. It puts us around 60,000 an acre foot, so we’re still little bit lower than many of the Front Range water providers, but, but it’s enough. And then finally, after review and using the methodology we we do use the wind to get firming windy gap project, that current calculation would be 59,625

1:33:37
our current

1:33:39
cash and new fee is about 40,000 so it’s a little bit larger increase than we normally get. We’ve only had one in the past. We’ve only had one increase in that kind of range that

1:33:55
would would has

1:33:56
been that large of an increase. So we wanted to make sure Council knew about that, rather than just bringing you a resolution and asking you to pass that large of an increase. We believe, we believe the Water Board’s done an outstanding job of reviewing all the issues and really thinking this through, and we appreciate their effort and their time in doing that. So at this point, staff will plan on bringing back a resolution in January to set the cash in new fee, but wanted to open it up to council if you had any questions or any input beyond what we discussed tonight.

1:34:41
Sitting, oh, Rodriguez,

1:34:46
Thank you, Mayor Peck while the development community may not love the increase, I know one thing that the development community would love is the concept of certainty. They generally can make a lot of things work as long as it’s a certainty. Be Right, and so I’m definitely pro going towards once a year evaluation, whether we raise it once a year or not, as you said, it could be static for a couple years or or so. We’ll see how that goes as the market continues, and that will, because if there’s uncertainty, as you can imagine, sometimes that’ll make a developer go back to the drawing board. Adding time to the project, adding time to a project means adding a lot more cost to the project, versus the certainty of the increase in the cash in lieu fee. As far as the methodology, I think it’s very similar to what we had, and it still stands to reason. As far as you know, very logical and straightforward and fairly easy to calculate. And as far as the actual cash in lieu fee increase, as you’ve stated, it’s still below generally a lot of our neighboring community. So I find that acceptable as well. So I’m happy to say that I would support going forward as written

1:36:01
Council Christian Mr. Hewson, let me compliment you on your presentation, as I was thinking of questions you were answering them real time. So I was very impressed with that. Whoa,

1:36:14
yeah. You don’t get that often,

1:36:18
and I know how very considered this decision was for the Water Board. So I support all three. Actually, I just have one general question. And you you are, you do feel that that new fee of 59,000 is adequate for potentially the next two years, but you want to review it at the end of the year is that correct?

1:36:41
That’s correct. We do feel it’s out of we’re actually what we feel is we’re probably not going to see much of a change over the next couple years. Water Board will still continue to review it quarterly. And so the we do have that assurance that if something happens in the interim, I believe Water Board and staff will recommend we come back and look at it so it’s, you know, we’re not setting once a year in code or anything like that, but we are that’ll become our practice. But, yeah, it, it is adequate be we believe it’s adequate, and would be adequate for a while, because I actually don’t expect any sales of the Parent Project for another year or two, and the windy gap farming project is very close to complete. So we hope, we hope we don’t see any substantial increases in that. So we think we’re doing good.

1:37:37
Okay, well, I support all three,

1:37:41
seeing no one else. I support all three also. But putting this in layman terms, from the questions I know I’m going to get, basically, developers have to, when they have a development, they have to bring water into their development with the water rights that they own. If they own any water rights,

1:37:58
that is, that is correct. All of their historical water rights have to be dedicated, and then if it doesn’t meet three acre feet, they have to provide that, and that’s sufficient water to for the development.

1:38:11
So the cash in not cash in lieu, water in lieu. Why am I saying that so stupidly? Is basically they are buying water from the city for their development. Then that is correct. Very simply, that’s what this does. That’s a simple and that is the the cost of what it what the city pays for. It’s under what the cost that the city pays. Yes, so thank you. Hopefully we don’t have a drought. So yeah, I agree with all three things. Agree, Agree. Okay,

1:38:52
you have your direction. Okay. Thank you very much. We will return in January. Thank you. Applause. You.

1:39:04
So now we are and I see everybody has stayed. You haven’t left for this discussion. So the next one is our city council candidate selection process and schedule for consideration. And I welcome Don Quix Quintana, our city clerk, Councilor McLay,

1:39:24
Thank you, Mayor Beck. I’m just going to suggest a possible conflict of interest in this setting. I think that if we’re picking a selection, you know, getting this information, I think it would be reasonable to ask the word to council member to step aside.

1:39:48
So, according to our rules procedure, the council person can recuse themselves, or it can go to a vote of the. A count majority vote of council. So do you want to address this? Please? Councilor Martin,

1:40:06
yes, I do. Would not like to recuse myself, because I can’t imagine where my conflict of interest would fall and but I am interested in the discussion, and would like to have a few words to say in defense of the council, who I feel has been unfairly represented by the public in this in the discussion so far, this discussion is about minute details of process that will not be undertaken until I’m no longer on the council, so it has nothing to do. I will have no say in the execution of the process, and I will certainly have no vote on the selection of the council. Therefore, I would like to sit here and listen, because I feel like asking me to leave the room somehow implies that I did something wrong, and a council member always has the right to resign when their circumstances force them to make a different decision. I love serving on the council, and I love Longmont, and it is the second worst thing having to leave my seat early that could have happened to me, and the reason that I’m leaving my seat early is the worst thing that could have happened to me. So one thing I would like to say is that the council has not been underhanded.

1:41:40
Councilor Martin, this is just a yes or no, so we can move on to the discussion. Well, I will recuse myself. Okay. Does anybody want to make a motion to have a recruit recused? I won’t second one, but, yep, we’re gonna wait a minute. So, City Clerk will start the discussion when councilor, Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo ferrying comes back, and it’ll be a, probably a pretty short discussion, but I think we’ll hit all of the major points that we need to make. I

1:42:24
so maybe we should take a five minute break. All of us, we’re gonna, we’re gonna take a five minute break. Thank you, Mayor. Hang in. It’s just Five Minutes. You.

1:52:21
We are back in session, and Don Quintana, from the city clerk, will start this discussion.

1:52:31
Thank you, Mayor Peck members Council, Don Quintana, city clerk, here to talk to you about the city council vacancy and appointment process. Our goal tonight is to get direction from you on the procedure and the timeline for filling the ward two vacancy by the time, by the deadline of january 30, 2025 before we do that, I know there are lots of questions. I anticipate the public would have lots of questions, so I just wanted to begin our conversation covering some of the facts and what the charter says, I put on this slide a lot of text. This is charter two, point 8.4, just for public information. I’m going to focus on the first couple sentences because they’re relevant to the information we’re about to review. So a vacancy which occurs less than one year, but more than 90 days before the next regular city election shall be filled by a majority vote of the remaining Councilman within 30 days after such vacancy occurs, when a vacancy occurs with one year or more remaining in a term, the Council at the next regular meeting shall call a special election for the constituency for which the vacancy occurs. And I won’t read all of it to you, but I want to focus on those two sentences. So our current scenario, the vacancy will occur on December 31 2024 as delivered in councilmember Martin’s resignation. Regular city election will be held, according to charter 2.3 on the first Tuesday in November in each odd number year. Therefore our next regular election will be November 4, 2025 when we compare those two dates, we can see that there is less than one year and more than 90 days between those two. And then just a reminder of that sentence in the charter that says the vacancy that occurs less than one year and more than 90 days before the next regular city election shall be filled by a majority vote of the remaining Councilman within 30 days after such vacancy occurs. So I wanted to just cover those pieces of that for you and for the public. Half Council, has the council made appointments before you certainly have this body. Hasn’t? It certainly hasn’t occurred since I’ve been with the City Clerk’s Office or even with the city, but there are six instances since the charter was adopted in 1961 some of those names might sound familiar to you. Who, Roger Lang, was in the audience tonight, appointed in 2000 by the council. So there is precedent. We did look to the process in 2005 and 2000 I was able to find those. And what I will present to you tonight is wash, rinse, repeat. I basically borrowed that that layout to present to you tonight, because it’s been done twice before and worked well so and just a closer look at the past two appointments in 2000 Rick Hogue resigned, effective November 2, November 7, 2000 that was less than a year from the regular election scheduled in November. 2001 Roger Lang was then appointed to fill that seat in 2005 was award two issue. Greg winger resigned, effective January 4. 2005 less than a year from the regular election in November, 2005 and Karen banker was appointed to fill that seat by the then seated Council. Moving our focus to special elections. I do think there’s some confusion about that, like you might have a choice or or when one occurs over the other. So I wanted to take a look a moment to look at special elections, looking back at charter two, point 8.4, when a vacancy occurs with one year or more remaining in a term, the Council at the next regular meeting shall call a special election for the constituency for which the vacancy occurs. Looking back at the past couple special elections in 2000 again, seven, again, Roger Lang won the mayor’s seat halfway into his at large term. So there were two years left on his seat. We then ran a special election to fill that seat, and Gabe Santos was the winner of that election in 2018 Brian Bagley won the mayor seat halfway into his term as the ward one representative. A special election was held in February 2018 and council member Waters was was the winner of that election. And there might be questions, because 2021 and 22 was a little bit wild when Mayor Peck was elected mayor in 2021 she had two years remaining on her at large seat, again, looking back at charter two, point 8.4, the council shall call a special election, as some of you may recall, maybe you all recall, we had numerous challenges with The scheduling of that special election, neither of the counties were available, vendor unavailability. There were high cost, paper shortage. Were beginning to recover from the pandemic, but the council did ultimately set a special election in November 2022 and council member McCoy was the person elected at that election to fill that seat, and then again, ran for a full term. So I wanted to just clarify that in the past, it’s not like you get to pick or choose which which we’re doing. It’s based on each scenario, and the and the charter is is directing us as to what we need to do every time. So I want to just pause there and see if you all had questions there. From the discussion, it sounds like you all are relatively clear, but I’m happy to pause.

1:58:29
Martin, yes,

1:58:31
I don’t have a question, and I won’t be really participating much in this, but I do want to point out that as as Dawn’s history shows, special elections are fraught and uncertain, and you don’t know how long it’s going to be between the vacancy and the and and the certification of the election. And so we’ve had occasions where Award went unreason, unrepresented for a seat went unrepresented for a significant amount of time, and the council appointments are really short intervals, and so I I’m not sure I understand what the aversion is to accepting an appointment of A city council that you did, after all, elect you.

1:59:23
Yes, okay, you can continue. I see no other questions.

1:59:27
Thank you, Mayor. So our task at hand is how to accomplish an appointment by january 30, 2025, so this is what the charter does not specify. How so realistically, you could just pick someone and appoint them. The charter really doesn’t say how you will arrive an appointment. Or you could follow a process like one that you have followed before, or councils like you have followed prior. We did a little bit of searching. We looked at something off of the. Attorney listserv that came from, I believe, the city of Lafayette that was very similar. Town of Windsor has done recent appointments, also very similar. So we felt like that process that has been followed before was a great option to bring forward, but truly, you could just choose somebody to appoint. It’s not specified. We do suspect that a public process is what would be chosen by council, because it’s more transparent, and all of those great things that we like to see in local government. So the proposed overall public process in a in a big picture layout, would be to announce the vacancy in the process applications are submitted by the defined deadline to the City Clerk’s Office. City Clerk would have the job to make sure each person meets the criteria that they are residents of Longmont, etc, etc. Those meeting the criteria would be scheduled for a presentation and interview during an open meeting, council would vote by ballot to make an appointment after this presentation, interview process, and then we would swear that person in. I’m just going to keep going. We’ll come back to questions. I think might help to just keep going. If we dive in a little deeper, the interview process that was followed previously is what’s on the screen. So each applicant that is deemed to qualify to meet the criteria to serve as Councilman would have five minutes in an open meeting to provide a presentation to Council, and the rest of the applicants would be sequestered during that time, after each applicant has given their five minute presentation, the council would vote by public ballot for no more than three applicants, the clerk would tally the ballots right there in that moment, and anyone receiving three or more votes would be asked to stay On for a public interview. Each council member would then we would have a public interview with each person. The applicants not being interviewed at that moment, pardon me, would be sequestered until it was their turn to be interviewed. And then, of course, after interview, they could sit in the audience, but each council member would have one question they ask every applicant. Applicants would have three minutes to respond. So each of those, each interview would last 21 minutes more or less, with a little give here or there. And after that, council would vote on the new member by a public ballot. If no one got four votes, the council would vote again on the top vote, getting applicants until one applicant was declared winner. So this is exactly what was done in 05 and 2000 at first, I thought sequestered was a little extreme, but after reviewing the process, it does make sense they wouldn’t have the benefit of learning something like a job Interview. The question after we look at processes, then timeline, I first laid out the timeline on the left, the holidays are amongst upon us. That makes this a little more difficult, possibly. But I laid out two timelines, one that would accomplish, both would accomplish use appointing a new person by the january 30 deadline. One would do that by january 28 the other would do it faster by January 7, so that you would have a vacancy for for less less time. But really is your preference how quickly you wanted to move or not move. These are just ideas. So with an expanded timeline, allowing more time around the holidays, assuming people might be traveling, might miss the notification, might not have time to submit something, we would we suggested December 16 to start things close applications after the holiday on January 8, on the 21st The suggestion is to change the open forum count to make that a interview session and appointment meeting. It would be an open meeting, just like any of your other meetings, and then we would have our staff orientation for new appointees like you all have gone through with with staff. Such a joy, right? And then the 28th we would swear that new person in which is an already scheduled meeting. So this this timeline doesn’t add meetings to your plate. Allows time for people to get this done, but it also leaves you with a gap with without a seventh person for the month of January, mostly right. The accelerated timeline means we get to work day after tomorrow, accepting applications and letters of interest. We close applications December 19, so one week. Week later, we would call a special meeting for you to do interview session and appointment on the 21st and then schedule orientation after the holiday and swearing in at the first meeting in December. We’d have to do a little schedule adjustment on January 7, because that’s slated as a Board of Commissioners, so we’d have to add a quick meeting there for swearing in, but could be accommodated, if that were your desire. So our question questions are, you have changes to the process, to the interview details and and which timeline, what? What would you like us to do?

2:05:39
Councilor McCoy, Thank you, Mayor pick. Well, I’ve never been a real fan of this. I feel it’s a bit of a anointment. But if we have to, then, of course, if you can go back one slide, Don of course, or yeah, they’re there. You know, I think this process at least, is transparent enough for people to feel at least their voices are heard. You go forward to that six slide, 16 to the timeline, to the timeline. I think they expanded timeline is more reasonable. It allows the community to maybe contact us, make some arguments on behalf of their anybody that might be applying and and then, of course, hearing out this in front of the public is is The critical part and everything

2:06:40
Mayor Pro Tem hid all of hearing. Thank

2:06:42
you, Mayor. I agree the expanded time, you know, in looking at the accelerated, you know, I worry that applicants would maybe miss the be out of town. So this one, I think it gives us enough time to get, to get the word out. And then in looking at what we have scheduled, we have the 17th of this month. We have nothing the holiday break, Christmas and New Year. And then our next one, we have a L, H, A on the seventh and on the 14th is a regular session. So that’s two meetings. The 21st would be the open forum. So it’s just two meetings, and one’s an lha. So I move for the the expanded, you know, I do want to put it out there on the record that I don’t feel comfortable. I would have liked to have seen a special election to give that voice to the people I heard from legal that, you know, in looking at and analyzing our charter and what those words mean, you know, we don’t have a choice in where we’re at today. It’s not my best choice, but I think this having an application process, looking at it as a as, I don’t know, a more heartier version of boards and commission interviews. I think having that and making it as open and transparent as possible. So thank you for for the slide show,

2:08:19
counselor Christ. I request.

2:08:23
Don Do you have any idea how much interest you’ve had in this already?

2:08:30
We have gotten quite a few phone calls people wanting to understand the process or how to toss their hat in as you heard this evening, I would say maybe five people have reached out to our office, maybe more seriously, and we’ve indicated to all to listen tonight, and we’ll know more.

2:08:53
Very good. I also favor the expanded I think it allows for you to get the work accomplished. In case you do have a lot of applicants, and also we’re expecting a long night on the open forum. So it dovetails nicely. So if this is what we have to do, it mimics an election of some sort, and that it’s public Ward two can put through their their best candidates, their best choices, and we’ll definitely give them a good review. So thank you for doing this work.

2:09:32
So I do have a question, Where will the application be? Is it going to be online? Will it be in hard copies that they can submit maybe through the paper. How will that work?

2:09:46
Our plan is we will have an online form that for those that want to file online, but we can always print something if somebody needs a print copy, we always provide that for boards and other things as well. So we’d be prepared for that. We have done a little bit of work to get things ready, but not knowing what the decision would be. Tonight, everything’s on hold, waiting for a decision, so we would get it up on the website and out on all of our news channels, do all of those things. We’ve got the communications team ready to hit the ground running with us, thankfully. And

2:10:23
there’s no limit on applicants, as many people from Ward two only can apply correct so I agree with the expanded we need enough time to get the message out to the public so as to how this is going to work. So I think that you have consolidated direction on this. Councilor Yarbrough,

2:10:50
yes, thank you, Mayor, I would say expanded as well. For the same reasons, my co counselors mentioned making sure that enough people have the time to apply, especially during the holiday season. Thank you for bringing up Ward two, because I know people that were not in Ward two thought that they could apply for this position. So making sure that they have to be a resident in Ward two is very important. And I know that’s the part of the qualification part, but yeah, I think that this process that you, the extended process that you put out, I wouldn’t just choose someone. I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. And of course, with the time frame, and with the charter, with the charter states, we’re doing what we are, what we can do, and so I like the process that have been done previously within council. So yeah, I like that, that process and expand it for me.

2:11:58
And I do want to say to the people in the chamber. Thank you so much for your interest and being part of our community and interest in our city. We really welcome your comments, and you can all apply if you would like to be part of it. So hopefully you have trust in us.

2:12:26
Thank you, Mayor and Council. I have

2:12:31
Yes. Councilor Rodriguez,

2:12:35
well, I was going to suggest that we just do a randomized commuter computer program through everybody it’s, you know, applicable in Ward two, and pull somebody out and volunteer them that they’re going to be on council. Yeah, they’re completely randomized. It’d be work, perfect. No, I’m fine with the expanded and also, as the process is proposed, so

2:13:02
do you have your direct direction?

2:13:03
I do, mayor and council, I did also want to just let you know, as noted in the council communication, we will need to develop interview questions. We do have a draft list, of course, that I’ve borrowed and found elsewhere that will I will send that out to you all, and you can send me back comments or suggestions directly. And then I also just wanted to point out, once we get through this process, I’ve received questions from staff about board liaison assignments, but we’ve got to figure out who the person is, and then we can talk about board liaison assignments if the what shuffle needs to happen. So okay, that will come soon.

2:13:39
And what I would like talking about board liaisons in the next pre session, I would like council to be able to discuss, do we want to redo, rethink board liaisons? How do they work? Are we going to need them? We’ve we’ve never really discussed that. We’ve just always accepted very good as long as you’re sitting here,

2:14:04
I thought I’d give you that I’ve got it. Thank you very much, Mayor, thank

2:14:07
you. You’re welcome. Thank you. Everybody.

2:14:22
Do councilor McCoy,

2:14:24
you need a motion to recess as long as city council and reconvene as long one Housing Authority board and commission. Yep,

2:14:33
it’s been moved by councilor McCoy, seconded by councilor Yarbrough, that we recess as the Longmont city council and convene as the long run Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. The resolution that we are looking at is, Oh, that’s right, I was just going to zip right into it. Okay, let’s vote. Oh, okay, all those in favor. Aye. Aye, All those opposed. Thank you. We are now convened as the long run Housing Authority. Me too. So what we are looking at is resolution number lha 2024, 35 signing authority to enter into a cooperative Procurement Agreement with Omnia partners for the lha security cameras project. We’ve discussed this at the lha meeting, so I’m going to hand it off to you. Harold,

2:15:35
yeah, so as you all know, on the housing authority side, we’ve been trying to get cameras in place, and we’ve been caught. We’ve been going through the federal procurement process, okay? And this was an item that came up in between meetings that we need the ability to sign this agreement so that we can finish the procurement of the cameras to meet the requirements. But nothing else that has changed in terms of what we’ve gone over for you. It’s just a proceed, an administrative approve, or approval by the board, so that we can sign the documents.

2:16:09
Okay, is there any discussion by councilors? Can I have a motion? I move

2:16:18
resolution number 2435, dash, 35

2:16:25
second, somebody. Second,

2:16:27
okay, it’s been moved by councilor McCoy to move number L, H, A, dash 2024, dash, 35 and it’s been seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo. Ferry. Any discussion on that? Nope, let’s vote.

2:16:51
That carries unanimously. Thank you. I move that we adjourn as the Longmont Housing Authority Board of Commissioners and reconvene as the Longmont City Council right? I made that motion, seconded by councilor Martin. Let’s vote.

2:17:12
And that passes unanimously. We’re now at mayor and council comments. Are there any comments by our council? Councilor Martin,

2:17:24
I just want to say once more, it’s been an honor and a privilege, maybe the best thing I’ve done in my life. And bye, guys.

2:17:38
Well, that was short and sweet. Bye. Marcia. Councilor McCoy,

2:17:44
Thank you, Mayor pick. I just wanted to remind people that today is Colorado. Gives day our Library Museum in the Callahan house and local nonprofits are like the arson of the hope. Hope the Community Foundation, as well as the old firehouse Art Center and so many others. Need your help, and this is a direct way of giving back to your community. Please give generously.

2:18:13
So I do have, yeah, that’s what I was going to say. We have the Longmont creative lights in our direction to council was that we have the high schools design and decorate a float for us. That isn’t going to happen. They we did not give them enough time, maybe next year. And then it was suggested that we use our new micromansa Micro transit shuttles, but I wrote in one as did councilor Yarbrough and councilor Crist on Monday. Gosh, that was just yesterday and so long ago, and I realized that they have windows that are shaded, and nobody would be able to see us in there, except for the front seat. So we would have to use all six vehicles and one person sit in each one, and that just isn’t really acceptable. So we’re back to the drawing board on Saturdays, Parade of Lights suggestions from staff, uh,

2:19:24
well, Mayor, certainly during during the Veterans Day Parade, some people just opened their van doors. I know you said that that would be pretty cold, but that’s going to be true of any kind of float. But you could open those doors. We could also see if we could have some other vehicle that that carries you next to that van, so that you’re still promoting the ride piece. If that’s something that’s of interest to you, I do think anything you do might be cold. I hate to say that, but it is December, so I’m afraid that may be a possibility. But you could certainly open those doors. We could certainly, you know, have another pickup truck with you or something to the. An effect so that you can kind of stay with that van. Or I think maybe we could even make the cars available, if that’s possible, roll down the windows and the cars. Those are my ideas. At this particular second.

2:20:11
I know this is so last minute as of yesterday, how many folks are

2:20:15
going to be at the parade? Yeah, I am everybody. Okay,

2:20:20
two vans leave the doors open, one on each side, because both doors open, and we just wave and wear gloves and scarf. And, you know, hopefully nobody

2:20:29
pushes one another, and

2:20:31
then someone, someone can sit in the front and someone can sit in the front. So if there’s two of you on each door and then one in the front, that’s, that’s six of you. So okay, what

2:20:41
do you think Everybody good with that? Are you gonna go?

2:20:46
All right, sorry, it sounds like we can’t have two vans. Hang

2:20:53
on. So, yeah. So inventory council member McCoy said,

2:20:59
okay, okay, right? They can’t, yeah, they can’t take the two vans out of service because they need to use them for the service. I

2:21:07
might use one to get down there,

2:21:10
so if I can jump in. Council member McCoy talked about having some type of bucket truck or something like that, we could potentially do one van. I don’t know if we can get a

2:21:21
I do believe they’re already in the parade, right? David, I do think the bucket truck, Scott Rushey, had already worked out for you to be in the parade, right? Yeah, one in the parade. Plus there is, of course, the fire truck, which I know is tough for some people to get into, but we do have the fire truck also.

2:21:38
So, I mean, we could talk about moving the bucket truck up behind the ride free van, and some of you can get in that, and some of you can do the bucket truck.

2:21:48
I do think that the parade routes are already set and everything’s already been sent today, but we could certainly have council members on different city vehicles that might be helpful. Yeah,

2:21:58
all right, in the micro transit I’m not climbing on a bucket.

2:22:05
Yeah, I was actually going to suggest that since, you know, I kind of think feel so much that that’s your baby, and I think that you should get the credit for it. And so I think it would be nice to have you in, in that van, and then the rest, if want to write in the bucket truck, and like we’ve done in the last two years so far,

2:22:26
so whoever doesn’t mind having the doors open can ride in the van as well.

2:22:33
Very good. Okay, sounds good. So what I’ll do is I will let you know which positions all the city vehicles are in, and you’re welcome to let me know which one you’d like to write on, and we’ll just take it on that way. Sounds great. All right, thanks everyone.

2:22:47
Thank you. Who else does anybody else have comments here? All right, city manager. Remarks. No

2:22:56
comments. Mayor, Council, City Attorney,

2:23:00
Council Member Martin, I just want to say, while you may not have been the easiest person to work with, I know your heart was always in the right place, and I truly wish you and your family

2:23:12
best wishes. Yes, definitely

2:23:16
no further comments.

2:23:19
Let’s applaud. Let’s applaud our city council member Martin.

2:23:28
Thank you with that, I move that we adjourn. It’s been moved by myself, seconded by councilor McCoy, to adjourn all those in favor. Aye, yay. We are We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. You

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