https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-q2nu225HA
Video Description:
Longmont City Council – Regular Session – February 4, 2025
The February 4, 2025, Longmont City Council meeting addressed several key issues. The council discussed the 8902 Quail Road annexation, with concerns about high-density housing and community impact. Councilor McCoy moved to reject the annexation, citing lack of flexibility and community engagement. The motion was seconded, and the applicant withdrew the application. The council also considered amendments to outdoor lighting and sign requirements to accommodate public information displays at bus rapid transit stops, which were approved. Additionally, the council emphasized the need for native plants and xeriscape requirements to conserve water and support pollinators. The Longmont City Council discussed the installation of public information displays (PIDs) along the proposed BRT line, set to be operational by 2027. Concerns were raised about durability, light pollution, and maintenance. Lamar Advertising will manage the displays, with 50% dedicated to public information and 50% to advertising. The council approved the installation, emphasizing minimal administrative burden. Additionally, the council discussed a $30,000 allocation for library hold pickup lockers at Centennial Pool, highlighting the need for expanded library services. Finally, the council considered updates to the landscape code to reduce non-functional turf and implement water conservation practices, aligning with state law and local goals. The Longmont City Council discussed ongoing and future development projects, emphasizing efforts to align projects with new codes. They considered legislative bills, including House Bill 2510 44, which supports Vision Zero initiatives, and House Bill 2510 77, which addresses backflow prevention device inspections. The council opposed Senate Bill 2530 due to its unfunded mandate. Public comments highlighted concerns about middle housing, corporate rentals, and water usage. The council appreciated community engagement and thanked staff for their efforts. They concluded with a motion to adjourn into executive session.
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Good evening.
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Welcome everyone.
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I would now like to call the February 4 2025 Longmont City Council regular session to order. The live stream of this meeting can be viewed at the city’s YouTube channel or at Longmont public media.org, forward slash watch or on Comcast channels eight or 880
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Can we have a roll call? Please? Don absolutely
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pardon me one moment.
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Mayor Peck
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here. Council member Crist. Mayor Pro Tem I don’t faring. Council member McCoy, Council Member Popkin, Council Member Rodriguez, Council Member Yarbro here, Mary of a quorum,
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stand for the Pledge please.
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Is one nation under God indivisible
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with
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liberty as a reminder to the public, in accordance with Council’s rules that procedure, the rules for providing public comment are as follows, only Longmont residents and employees of the city of Longmont may speak during first call. Public invited to be heard. You must provide your name your address on the sign up sheet along with your name before the meeting, or I will not call your name. Each speaker is limited to three minutes. Anyone may speak on second reading or public hearing item, and you’re asked to add your name to the speaker list for the specific item before the meeting, anyone may speak during final call, public invited to be heard. Members of the audience shall refrain from disruptive, vulgar or abusive language, heckling or other actions that interfere with the orderly function of the council.
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And regarding the 8902
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quail road annexation item, please be advised of the following public comment on the quail road annex. Annexation is already complete, and the public hearing was closed last week, thus it is not appropriate to allow additional comment at this time. Given the volume of comments received at the last meeting, the public’s comments remain fresh in Council’s minds. All are part of the record of the public meeting, public hearing and will be considered as council proceeds to discuss the annexation. Also, according to the rules of procedure number five, the chair or mayor may restrict redundant and cumulative presentations. So thank you for that. We are now at the agenda revisions. Do we have any agenda revisions?
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I do not have any Mayor. Thank you and submission of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas. I Yes,
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I have one
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I would like, based upon our conversations that Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo faring and I have had with staff over the past two years, I would like to direct staff early, late spring or early summer to have a work council work day to address cleanup in some parts of our city, particularly,
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I don’t know the name of it, but it is the alley Behind Good Will off of 17th,
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and
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that’s my motion. I’ll second that. So it’s been made by myself and seconded by councilor, I’m sorry, Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo faring that we have a staff and, or count Council and or staff workday to help clean up alleys and streets on the north end of town sometime late spring, early summer, at your discretion. Is there any discussion?
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Councilor Popkins, whoops,
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I’m sorry. Hang on. I
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It isn’t giving me the next
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there it went. You’re still not getting it. I’m
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going to try another one.
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There we go. Thank you, Chair, as
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I was not privy to some of those conversations, could you just share a little bit more of the context for your motion there? Sure. Thank you. Our context had to do with pride in our city and some of the North neighborhoods need a little bit more pride, a little bit more interaction with council and with staff.
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Show them that we care. I had approached our transportation project manager years ago that I would like to turn our alleys into
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alleys for trails and make them connecting bike paths for residents and kids to go through our city.
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That was my early discussion, probably in 2018
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and this has kind of morphed. The only reason we haven’t done this is because our workloads, both on council and on staff, has not moved it forward. So I thought I would make a motion to see if we can’t proceed with it this year.
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Great. Thank you. And just one follow up question to that, is there any
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integration of your suggestion there with the transportation mobility planning effort that staff is undergoing right now too? It would seem like, given your explanation there, it might be reasonable to sync those up. Well, it might be, I am going to ask staff that’s a good point. And as staff looks into how we can do this, we have further discussions that might come into it, but I don’t want to put that on their plate if it isn’t possible. Okay, thank you. You’re welcome. Councilor McCoy,
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Thank you, Mayor pick. So just to kind of get an idea of what this about. It seems a little bit of a specific area. And it’s not that, I don’t think that it doesn’t need it, it’s it’s just the thing is, do we want, if we do that this year, is there another area of town that we’ll focus on the following year and that sort of thing, and we’re just going to move this around a little bit so that every year, maybe around the same time, we have a different area of town that we focus on, is that what you were kind of thinking originally or not really, and that would be kind of the conversation after we did it, to see how it works, kind of a debrief, and then that decision can be made later, for future, exactly. Okay, thank you. Council member.
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Yarbo, all right, thank you, Mayor.
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I myself
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agree, and I was on the same page as you. Councilor McCoy, I think it’s also important that we do look at other areas of town that also may need some extra attention and extra love from city council. And also, I’m all for us directing staff, but we also need to communicate with that area to see who all who can help and may want to beautify and their own community. We don’t want to just go in there and start doing stuff without asking what they would like to see. I mean, not like we’re going to do construction or something, but I’m just saying I think it’s important to have the community out there with us, their own neighborhood out there with us, helping and cleaning up. And I I’m also on board with going around the city, not just one area, but I’m pretty sure we have many areas of the city that can need some extra love. So I appreciate that. Thank you,
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Mayor Pro Tem at algo, Ferry, yes, and I wanted to add an other layer of context. So the idea came about in conversations having with we’ve had with N, G, l, a members, as well as on that north main corridor where the businesses are. I have had several little listening tours with some businesses, with some home, you know, some of the apartment complexes setting up and being able to hear what, you know, what is, what is going on over there. I mean, I shop at the King Soopers over on North Main and,
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you know, so I’ve had a chance to interact with folks who frequent those places, who work in those places. And, you know, I’m looking at,
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you know, just the lack of care as far as
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some of the landowners, but also just some of the trash that gets left behind. And,
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you know, one of the things in we’ve been able to kind of have these round table conversations about what are some ways to get community engaged, along with working alongside us, and because we are community and so how we can coordinate those efforts. I know youth council there. So there were members of ngla at that time who had expressed interest in volunteering as well Youth Council connecting us with businesses who might be able to donate items. So it looked like it could evolve into something really big and really helpful that people could take pride I wanted to really centralize on areas that were for the first round, that were more neglected, that don’t have HOAs, that don’t have those
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support systems, you know, that they can get have clean up in and around their area through their HOA.
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And then I think about seeing.
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Who don’t have, maybe the capacity to get out there and start cleaning up trash or moving heavy things. So what can we do to help support and build that sense of community? There’s been a lot of interest in hearing from young folks who who have wanted to volunteer hours. So there’s ways that we can connect with several pockets of our community, and depending on how this goes, you know, we can start branching out. Let’s start looking at other areas that that need that. But I didn’t want this to be a burden on to staff. I really wanted us to, you know, if we’re all in agreement, you know, to take the lead on this and roll up our sleeves and work with community and and kind of build that together.
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I’m looking at Harold because then I also think about, well, there’s litigation, and, you know, someone gets hurt.
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Well, I’m thinking about that. Those are all things that staff would bring to us. That’s what I Yeah. So I must say that Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo, fearing this, she brought it up at least three years ago, because that’s her ward. That’s why that section of town got picked. It was her idea, and I’m just going to help her bring it forward. Thank you. So seeing no one else in the queue for comments, let’s vote that
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carries unanimously. Thank you. We are now on public, invited to be heard. No, I’m sorry. City Managers, report. No. Report, Mayor Council, thank you. There are no special reports or present presentations. So we are on public, invited to be heard first call. And I noticed that a lot of you who signed up are on here because of the quail annexation, some of you. So if I call your name and you are you want to come up and speak like about that, it would be a redundant conversation. So we are not going to do that tonight.
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So just let me know if I call your name, if that’s what you’re here for. The first one is Christopher,
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yes,
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and we’re going to start the
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we’re going to start the timer as soon as you give your name and address
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per Robert’s Rules of Order, or as soon as I call you up, so so as soon as you start talking, yes, okay, I’m Krista COVID, and I live at 4002 Somerset court in Longmont. And good evening, mayor and city council. I just want to say thank you for your service and your commitment here. I know that all the decisions you’re making are not just for today, but for generations to come. So I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak. I’ve been a real estate agent here in Longmont for 24 years, and I love this community. Our strong schools, Innovation Center, are vibrant downtown, farmers market, bike trails and dedication to our local businesses. For years, I’ve probably told buyers that Longmont is one of the most affordable places in Boulder County, but that is changing more and more I feel first time, home buyers and seniors are unable to purchase homes because of limited inventory. If we don’t prioritize home ownership, we risk future generations of being priced out of Longmont unable to build roots and invest in our community. The Federal Reserve’s latest survey in consumer finances shows that the median net worth of home ownership is $396,000
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while renters is just 10,400
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making homeowners nearly 38 times wealthier than renters. Staggering. Why? Because mortgages are paying, paying down the loan and building equity, while renters keep paying rising costs with no return. Someone who buys a home now for $400,000
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in about 20 years, will have equity of $647,000
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that’s because of the appreciation and the loan down payment, while renters paying the similar monthly amount has no ownership at stake.
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I’m losing my spot, but here I am. Rents and affordable homes in Longmont have similar monthly costs,
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yet one builds wealth and the other one doesn’t. I like to tell my new home buyers when they’re looking when they’re renting, you’re either paying your mortgage or you’re paying someone else’s mortgage. So you’re either buying and building wealth or you’re paying someone else’s mortgage to build wealth off of you. So beyond financial home security, ownership provides stability. Apartment renters are also forced to move due to rents, leases changing and landlord decisions, uprooting families and disrupting children’s education and friendships, frequent moves make it harder to establish a sense of.
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Community. A recent Gallup poll also confirms that real estate is the best long term investment. This is against stocks, gold, bonds, gold and bonds. Home ownership just isn’t about where you live. It’s about building wealth, fostering community, and ensuring Longmont remains a place where people can put down roots.
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Let’s prioritize home ownership in Longmont, and let’s keep people thriving and not renting. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Christa Terry Moore, applause,
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Terry, hello. My name is Terry Moore. I live at three birds so place.
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This is my testimony for all of y’all. I came to live in Longmont after a divorce in March 2016
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I could not find a reasonably priced home to buy, even then I had to rent. I found a room only a room
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I could rent. In december 2016 I still lived there after eight years,
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though I am grateful to have a room to rent in Longmont, I keep looking for a home,
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I have been looking for affordable housing, rent or buy ever since, either the rent is twice as high or more as my current rent, or the houses cost so much that I can’t make it on my retirement income, it eats it all.
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We are settling. We are settling what we want Longmont to become right here, right now,
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I live in ward three, across the highway, highway 66 from Walmart, but on the south side of the highway,
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they are still building new apartments up there behind Walmart. I can’t afford those either. I went alone
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with the rent alone would be well over twice what I pay right now.
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Also, I don’t want to live in government subsidized housing.
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In my 72 years here on this earth, I have found that the government money comes with strings. I don’t want those strings.
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I hope no one ever has to live with strings.
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So I will continue to stay where I am for the immediate future, in my one room with kitchen privileges.
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But those young families that are looking to Longmont because they want to live here are in a similar bind.
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Many of them don’t want to live in government subsidized housing. Many want to continue their jobs and put down roots here in Longmont and build a better life.
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Many want to just stand on their own two feet and make their world a better place. Many can’t even afford fixer uppers and begin looking for other places. Because of that, they’re looking for home.
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These are people I want living here in Longmont.
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They should have that chance.
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They are Walmart’s future,
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and that future is being choked off by apartments like the ones up behind Walmart.
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Thank you for your time, your ears and hopefully your brains, but this is home. Thank you. Terry Kristen walls, legal,
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good evening. My name is Kristen wolszegel, 916, hover, Ridge circle. I am a landscape designer who has been practicing in Colorado for 25 years. I am here to ask you to please approve your sustainability planners act blasix request to add more native plant and xeriscape requirements to the city of long months land development code. I have worked on every type of project, from small residential jobs to large scale commercial and real estate developments. I can tell you from personal experience that the wording, in long months code is most often interpreted by developers and sometimes by your own city staff, to mean that significant amounts of sod may be installed, often in difficult to irrigate areas, like right of way strips. This non functional turf is a wasteful use of our precious water,
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the Colorado and Fraser rivers, which supply over 60% of our water, are over apportioned, and Astonishingly, they are drying up. It is risky to assume we can go on wasting water when drought is so common here. But let me make this clear, while our perception is that drought is.
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Simply an absence of rainfall. Drought can also be severely aggravated by a failure to capture and utilize rainfall when it does come. Native plants have deep roots that draw up water and nutrients from greater depths. They store carbon, help build and hold soil and reduce runoff and flooding in a way that compacted carbon losing blue grass lawns cannot in addition to water concerns, we must also consider our dwindling pollinator population when installing new landscapes, North America’s insect population has declined by 50% in the last 50 years. A large part of what is happening is that we exclude our native pollinators from our built landscapes. Native bumble bees and Skipper butterflies require nesting areas at the base of native bunch grasses. 261
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different moths and butterflies, including Tiger swallow tails and viceroys, rely on Western sand cherry and choke cherry. Our insects evolved for millions of years with very specific larval host plants like these, and without native plants, we eliminate 1000s of essential pollinators. It is important to follow the state’s example by limiting saw limiting sod in commercial developments, but please also be creative in pursuing limits to water use and adding pollinator habitat in residential areas. The city of Fort Collins has already taken action for these purposes. Please follow their example and choose wisely when voting on Zach’s proposed landscape code changes. Thank you. Thank you. Kristen Tracy Bell, yes, hello. I’m Tracy Bonas and 1409 Clover Creek drive, and
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I’m learning a lot I agree with what this lady just said. It was very interesting. And I just love coming here, and that kind of leads into what I’m going to say. So first of all, thank you all for listening. I am becoming a familiar face, and I’m actually beginning to enjoy the process of civic engagement. But tonight, I’m here representing several friends and neighbors who had familial commitments. Making time to be involved is difficult, as my husband would probably tell you, as he’s managing the children right now, but
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I’m speaking for myself and others tonight.
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In the last month, I’ve been surprised and refreshed by my ability to connect with counsel and to be heard. It’s been a pleasure.
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This, however, has not always been the case
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from my perspective, and I’m speaking for myself, and like I said, a couple of several other people, the former Ward two representative did not represent her constituents. She did not genuinely want to hear those who had a differing opinion from what she believed. I feel like she had her own agenda and a mission to build the highest density apartments on the most land possible, whether we spoke out against it or not, and it was not always a positive experience for me when I engaged her, but having said that, now I feel like we have an opportunity to change course, a chance to start representing the desires of Longmont residents, and by doing so, start earning back community trust.
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You have had the chance to hear our voices as we caution you to be thoughtful and creative moving forward as we develop the remaining pieces of land in Longmont,
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large, homogenous, overpriced for rent. Apartments should not be the only answer. It’s definitely has its place, but I don’t feel like it’s the only answer. And tonight is your opportunity to listen to the people who elected you. Excuse me, Yes, Ma’am, you’re getting way too close, too close. Okay, well, then I will just say yes. Thank you for listening so far, and it’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. John Pillman,
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John Pillman, I live at 1303 spruce Avenue.
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Thank you, council members and Mayor Peck for the allowing me to speak this evening. The reason I’m standing before you now is the growing concern I have that the city council is out of touch with residents concerns over annexations and responsibly managing housing growth. You see, I always thought that the city council was elected to focus on the concerns, needs and goals of the residents they serve. I always thought the city council’s focus was in moving the city forward with an eye towards serving your constituents, rather than a specific or personal agenda. I always thought the city council should actively invite feedback from their constituents. Strive to be a good listener. Use the feedback receive to guide better decisions. Unfortunately, I know.
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See much of that these days, and it’s very concerning, especially when your constituents back up their concerns with constructive ideas such as missile missing middle housing that would effectively manage infill development in a way that takes both existing and future residents needs into account, even when it appears you’re sincerely listening, your actions and votes often do not reflect what the majority of residents are saying.
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So I ask you to please consider you are here to serve the residents of Longmont. You should focus. Your focus should be on representing the residents you serve, their concerns, needs and goals. Because if you don’t come November, I’m convinced that the residents of Longmont will elect candidates for mayor and city council that will actually listen to their constituents and use that feedback to guide better decisions for Longmont. Thank you. Thank you. John.
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Jonathan hoffland,
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I hope I said that right.
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Hi, I’m Jonathan hoffland, 1036 Willow Creek circle Ward two, where I’ve lived for over the past 25 years.
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I’m opposed to the development direction of Longmont.
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Sorry, there
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it’s I’m not I’m not alone in this, as you know, well, know it’s nearly unanimous. Since you’ve heard multiple people speak, I’ll try not to belabor the valid points that have been made about traffic safety, quality of life, density, stability, etc. Now I’m not anti development. In fact, more than that, after more than two decades of working at Seagate, I am now a real estate developer myself. I give this gives me a unique perspective with respect to this issue.
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Integrating infill property into Longmont makes sense, however,
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high density rental units do not. In my opinion, the development in my development in a nearby town is zoned r2 allowing up to 20 multi family units per acre, a project that was previously approved on the property at 19 units per acre, my proposal is 11 and a half units per acre. Why I’m considering fit with the surrounding properties while mixing residential, mixed residential zoning allows up to 18 units per acre. 18 is not a right Council. You have discretion in this matter,
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can the market and infrastructure, studies and infrastructure handle all the approved proposals? Proposed developments, Clover basin, Nelson and schools, etc, are regularly at or near capacity. It was stated last week that Longmont is short 14,000 units really. You know what? I’m going to cut you off because we’ve heard all this last week. No, you haven’t heard everything I’m going to talk about. Talk about because I was here last week, and I know it was stated, and I’m not belaboring those points. Okay, go ahead. Thank you.
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Does the city have valid studies that show it can support all this development? I suggest that the city review market infrastructure studies with a fine tooth comb prior to any approvals. Let’s talk numbers. In a one mile radius of my home, there are already over 2000 existing apartments soon to blow past 3000 Do we really need 4000 in this area,
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this area, that’s only 1/8 of excuse me, I really am going to cut you off. You’re talking about this annexation, no, and the same data that we heard last week. And I specifically said at the beginning, I understand the redundancy
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and this, yeah, public hearing is closed, and that’s what I understand. I’m talking about development in general. Okay, not really. Yes, I am,
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and I’d like to get some my time back too. Okay,
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I I’m. I’ve been a, I’ve been a citizen of this city for 25 years. You won’t let me speak. I did let you speak last week on the public hearing, and that is exactly why we went to our rules of procedure in that we need to get through this, and we don’t want everybody coming up again, telling exactly what we heard last week and in all the emails that we got, I appreciate all of you coming forward and speaking up, but we’ve been there, and so I’m sorry, sir. Thank you very much. Wow.
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Leslie Shane Butterfield,
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my name is Leslie Shane Butterfield for.
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1309, Carnation circle.
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Nice to see you all. I haven’t been here in a while, so it’s nice to be here. I appreciate you taking the time to hear us. I first want to say I’m super excited about the cleanup, and as an educator in the community, reach out to me. I will be happy to support that. Also excited to hear about the bike paths coming back from 2018 so thank you for looking at that again,
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short and to the point it sounds like a lot of people here care about this community. They’ve spoken from the heart, and we just ask that you can listen from the heart and listen to the people who want to know long months, direction, conscientious development. High density has no place and affordable homes so people can live here. Thank you. You’re welcome. Paige Lewis,
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thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Paige Lewis. I live at 805, Nelson Park Lane in Ward two. So thank you. Welcome council member Popkin to the council Great to have you. I moved to Long want in 2011 because it was affordable. Had a great community feel at the time I had a one and a half year old, we were really looking to relocate from Southwest Denver, even then it was not very affordable in other communities surrounding Boulder, so we were excited to find our home in Longmont,
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and had great access to businesses and parks and open space, really everything We were looking for. Since that time, there has been significant additional development,
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multi family housing, additional density. And you know, as previous speakers have said, not opposed to development, definitely in favor of affordable housing. But really, I’m here just to ask that as you consider future development in southwest Longmont, please be thoughtful about the approach that you take to housing
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going forward. Please emphasize affordable, single family housing that is accompanied by appropriate infrastructure upgrades and associated increase in access to open space and recreation opportunities that are so important to quality of life for those living in the community, I haven’t heard any residents in my neighborhoods, in these parts of this part of the community, saying they don’t want any development. And I think many people are very important, very in favor of housing that, particularly the housing that’s missing that you know, missing middle, affordable, single family homes, and also, please be very thoughtful about the associated infrastructure. I think a lot of the concern is that the transportation, the access, you know, the sort of the parks, the schools, the facilities, are just not they’re kind of maxed out. They’re over taxed, and that really is affecting safety and quality of life, both for existing residents and future residents. So thank you. Appreciate your time tonight. Appreciate your thoughtfulness.
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Thank You page. Elizabeth Bailey,
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hi, Mayor Peck council members, thank you for listening to us this evening, and we appreciate this time. Something that I would like to say is in 2013 my family and I came from Connecticut, and we found this great little spot in Colorado where we thought it was the Colorado dream. It was close to everything, but it was far enough out that we had space to breathe and to grow. Now it feels like every last square inch of Longmont is up for sale to the highest bidder. We are about to make some really difficult decisions for our family to leave Longmont
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if we don’t feel like our sense of community can be preserved here.
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I grew up in apartments. I know they have a place. I would love to see people like when my kids, who are about to graduate from high school, fall in love and get married and want to build a home with their partner, that they can do that here in Longmont and right now, I don’t see that in their future here, and I just wanted to share that with the Council. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Elizabeth Gary Hodges, I
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Hello Gary Hodges, 2148 Stewart street. So
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topics the last few weeks has generated some curiosity. So I’ve spent some time learning about the large corporate investment firms that build the apartment complexes that have been springing like weeds in our city and so.
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It’s been a rather enlightening adventure. I was initially curious that the firms hold these assets or sell them. And it turns out, well, they sometimes hold them, but selling them as usual course of action. And so institutional investors, pension funds, real estate investments, trust or other large entities typically end up holding baskets of these types of assets. And as you might have guessed, they are not typically headquartered here. So what kind of money are we talking about? Well, it wasn’t too hard to find typical per unit profit margins. So as an example, a conservative estimate for 300 unit complex yields about $8 million annually, with the number pushing around 1 million for the profit margin. And if you multiply this out by the number of complexes in the city, to paraphrase former congressman Everett Dirksen, a million here millionaire. And pretty soon we’re talking about real capital flight out of Longmont, Colorado. And as rasparo might say, the great sucking sound we hear is Longmont treasure being hoovered up and redistributed to Wall Street entities. So it’s incredibly short sighted to facilitate the building of assets for investment firms that will, forever and by explicit design, extract huge sums of money out of our city. So other nuggets I discovered is that these companies use sophisticated software to set rent prices for maximum profit, and the variation actually can occur daily. And so I thought about that, and it’s like, maybe this is why someone spoke at Coffee a couple weeks ago about not being told the actual rent until deep into the application process. So they might have been using that software based on what person was giving them to figure out what they were going to rent for and because any, any one of these huge complexes is, in reality, a minor asset in a large basket of properties, there isn’t motivation to lower rents in a soft market, the large firms are happy to allow vacancies to rise in individual locations if it suits their investment strategy. So it’s wild. This type of investment, excuse me, this type of development occurs because we’re not clever enough to figure out a way to provide the type of housing the public wants that also keeps huge amounts of capital circulating in our community. So it’s, it’s really, it’s stunning, actually, so especially while staying in the face of such overwhelming opposition. So that’s it. Thank you very much. Thanks. Gary Lance Whitaker,
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there you are. You
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I guess I won’t speak
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on the quail Road initiative today.
43:05
No, you won’t
43:08
My name is Lance Whitaker, 1750 Collier street been a long time resident for 44 plus years today,
43:19
I would like to remind the city and council that today is thank you postal worker day.
43:29
Today is well as Mark Codd also stated, is make a vacuum day
43:39
so he can vacuum up his speech, or you can make your own homemade suit today, because that’s also a day. And finally, it is also national hemp Day, which has no THC in it. Now,
44:00
if you want to discuss THC, we need an appointment,
44:06
I hear your initiative on cleaning up my yard. Date seeming so I live at 1750 College,
44:16
and a lot of trash just flows right into my front yard. So
44:23
yay, on that one,
44:28
bees being in the neighborhood. Well, I’d like to remind you that fruit trees in parks promote bee growth. So again, on the fruit trees. I’d love to see more of those.
44:44
I hear a lot of people want houses instead of apartments.
44:50
The better way to put that is that you have to initiate better incomes if you have high prices on housing.
45:00
So you have to have high prices on income. So I would like to see better promotion of space, jobs and manufacturing, especially with the turmoil that’s going on in China.
45:19
Anymore. I’d like to talk to you about, I guess I’ll hit on final call, public invited beer or make an appointment, or make an appointment? Yeah, I would love to hear, I would love to make an appointment on THC consumption in Longmont.
45:42
It’s I probably misinformed by a lot of council members, including Mayor, on how actually consumption is done.
45:55
But yeah, that’s a longer subject.
46:00
Um, thank you for your time. Thank you dance. Your time is up. Wow, I used all three.
46:09
Damn I’m getting good at this.
46:16
The next person on the list I know I’m going to try to pronounce this name. It’s Barbara.
46:22
Thank you.
46:32
Good evening. My name is Barbara knoblin, would you mind just pulling the microphone over a little bit? There you go. My name is Barbara knoblin. I live at 2293 Spotswood Street in Longmont and the Providence HOA neighborhood on the northwest corner of the city. My husband and I bought her home in May 2024
46:55
having moved here from out of state, we were captivated by the natural beauty of Longmont and its many amenities and friendly people, I’m here to speak in support of efforts by the city to go beyond simply complying with state law. SB, 24
47:13
005
47:14
to help owner homeowners and HOAs adequately install and care for 00 areas I serve on the landscape committee of my Hoa, so I know the struggles that we have with maintaining existing trees, shrubs and native grasses, let alone converting turf grasses to more water efficient plants. I certainly support that. It’s just financially hard for us to do, even though we’re a big HOA. Our HOA would like to use less water, but it’s expensive to go xeric. Whatever the city can do to
47:53
provide incentives or ways for us to do that conversion more effectively would be very helpful. Our HOA maintains 23 acres of open space planted with hundreds of trees, shrubs and native grasses. We think we may have the largest private park in the city, and our walking trails are utilized by many people in the adjacent neighborhoods. It’s a financial challenge just to mow weed and water, all of this, and it takes money. About 75% of our HOA dues go to this end, leaving very little money for pruning or replacement of dead trees and shrubs.
48:36
There’s this there. There need to be stronger guidelines for developers who do the initial installations, the installation of the native grasses in our areas, and of the trees utilized species that are not suited to this area, and therefore we are now contending with the need to re seed the native grasses and to control the weeds. And this money would not need to be spent if somehow developers could be held to higher standards when they do initial development.
49:13
Let’s see
49:15
also, the developer chose many trees that are not native, and we can only afford to replace just a few trees per year. We have 100 rock beds planted with many native plants, but also with many non native plants, and those are dying. We’ve been there seven years. Those are dying, and as they die, we do not have a budget item in our budget to do any Thank you, Barbara, you’re welcome.
49:44
Virginia Schuster,
49:56
Hi, good evening. My name is Virginia Schuster.
50:00
Thank you. I know several of you here, and I wanted to talk about the missing middle housing that we have here in Longmont. So I’ve lived in Longmont since 1980
50:13
my husband and I got our start by getting into a condo that cost us basically nothing. So we owned it, and what I’m seeing here in Longmont is an awful lot of apartments that are leased. So I came up with some statistics, and I’d be happy to share them with you. And part of what is said here is the median income for Longmont is $89,000
50:44
a year.
50:46
Now, this is something that I got off the internet. I’m not completely sure it’s accurate, and I’m sure that you all have studied this more than I have. I’m just presenting it as something for you to think about, because of all the apartment complexes that I see going up, and the median home price in Longmont is around 600,000
51:11
the missing middle income bracket would be between 71,000
51:18
and 106,800
51:22
so the basic rule of 30% rule where your income, you take 30% of it, and that goes toward your housing. That is where you want to see for your the missing middle housing income.
51:41
So on this, I’ve also got to get to the missing middle income housing. If your annual income is around 71,200
51:54
even though it says 89,030%
51:58
of that would be $1,780
52:02
and dollars. That house attainable price would be 265,000
52:09
so here we are long months average price around 600,000
52:14
meaning, if you have 106,000
52:19
which was the higher bracket income bracket, the house that you could afford would be around 405,000
52:29
and once again, I’m pointing out what’s missing here for the middle income housing to have you take a look at it When you’ve got the all these apartments going on, my husband and I owned our apartment, and it was an asset for us, which is what got us going in life, and with all the young people around, I would love to see more places where the younger generation can get In as a free Thank you very much. Thank you.
53:04
Sherry ers Meyer
53:09
ersinger,
53:11
well, I’m close.
53:15
No, you’re fine.
53:21
My name is Sherry ersinger. I’m at 4210 San Marco drive.
53:27
I cross the intersection of airport and clover basin every day, multiple times. And I want to call your attention to trap transportation, no matter what your decision is. Here tonight, I want you to get top of the line consultants who will look at that intersection. Because there are children who are trying to get their bicycles
53:55
on their bicycles to school. There are elderly people who perhaps limp right,
54:02
who are trying to get across that intersection. It’s dangerous and it’s terrible, and it needs active, active consideration in whatever you decide. Thank you. Thank you very much.
54:17
Steve vault, good
54:22
evening. Steve altar, 1555 Taylor Mountain Drive,
54:27
just to add on what someone else was saying, the very first condo I ever owned was an apartment building that had been converted to condos. So I don’t know all the rules and specifications, but if you can take any of these apartment buildings and subdivide them into condos, or do separate meters on gas and electric, whatever. So someday they could be sold as condos. You could be solving the bigger problem rather than just a small one.
54:56
It’s kind of high today. So once America.
55:00
Is not a dictatorship. We are not even a democracy.
55:05
We are a Republic as such. Our elected officials are required to vote on topics as the residents would wish to have happen, not as the council member would like to have happen,
55:20
as per your own survey of Longmont residents, and you can remember this, Gary Hodges is the first one that brought it up. It’s all the information you need and how to deal with these problems,
55:33
as per your own survey in 2022
55:37
the five most critical issues for the citizens are homelessness, traffic, drugs, growth and safety, crime. It’s not a matter of more housing. It’s a matter of traffic and crime and drugs. So you guys should focus more on the problems that the people tell you they’re having, rather than what you think you want to solve.
56:01
Having more high density housing, as I said, isn’t even on the list.
56:07
The city fees on new construction equal approximately 24% of the cost of a resident of a home or whatever is being built. It is the city that is driving prices so high and out of reach, the more you raise in lieu fees, and I heard someone say they’re supposed to go up again in 26 and 27
56:27
the more you raise the in lieu fees, the higher home prices will be. The more you replace inexpensive natural gas with electricity at four times the price, the more expensive home prices will be. I would implore you all to look and see what you guys are doing. There are many cases creating the problem that you say you want to solve. Thank you. Thank you. Steve.
56:53
Kim Mattson, you
57:10
Hello, thank you for your time.
57:13
My name is Kim Matson. I live at 967, hover, Ridge, circle. I want to applaud everybody who has spoken up so far way to go.
57:22
I would also like to support Kristen and her vision for Longmont, supporting the use of native plants. Kristen has graciously spent quite a bit of her time to study and share her experience, to expand the native the natural beauty of Longmont, and to support the life supporting pollinators, and Kristen has a passion and a love for the natural beauty of long months. I have a garden, and I’ve seen more and more residents establishing front yard and backyard gardens, and I would love to see every garden in Longmont produce an abundant bounty of homegrown food, and I think the city supporting and incorporating native plants would show support for the residents in their endeavor to bring this beauty and this nature to their own lives, and that would Be great. Thank you.
58:15
Thank you. Kim Scott Stewart, applause,
58:25
good evening, Mayor Peckham, members of council, Scott store, 229, Grant Street,
58:31
long non policies and procedures grants the city will explore and pursue all grant
58:38
pursue all appropriate grant opportunities before accepting any grants, the city will consider the current and future impacts of accepting any type of grant before accepting the proposed funding or asset. All grants will be reviewed and approved by the city manager or designatee. All grants that entail significant policy considerations will be presented to the City Council for approval, including grants require requiring intergovernmental agreements. The grants I’m talking about are the airport grants. They come with a 20 year obligation. They should all come to you.
59:15
I’d like to say thank you to Christa. Cath, Cath Cath
59:20
COVID, one of the first speakers here, long months about families.
59:26
Apartments aren’t families.
59:29
And then Lance, I love hearing you every week. Keep coming.
59:34
Thank you. Scott, Roger. Roger. Dickens. You.
59:40
Uh,
59:52
good evening. My name is Roger Dickens. I live at 2250 plateau court Ward two. Shout out to.
1:00:00
Um, husband to a saint brain teacher,
1:00:04
been in Colorado since 1996
1:00:07
Longmont since 2003
1:00:10
through lot of years of hard therapy, I’ve learned that it’s it’s better to talk about these feelings. So I don’t feel so anxious, but I’m feeling very anxious
1:00:20
and real fearful
1:00:22
after hearing that you appreciate people being here and speaking and then telling them not to speak. So got a lot of fear right now,
1:00:31
but I’m very pro development for Colorado and Longmont especially. I’m pro development for affordable housing in Longmont and giving opportunity to our citizens. First,
1:00:41
I say that my wife and I moved here and we got an apartment for $600 a month. That was in 2003
1:00:49
that equates to $1,085
1:00:52
today. My understanding is that apartments being built by target are $2,000 for 633 square feet. I don’t think that equates to affordable
1:01:06
what’s out of our control interest rates and what private parties are charging for their residences. What’s in this Council’s control is the development that they allow to
1:01:20
to be built in the city. So
1:01:24
this my first time. I hope I see you. I hope I see you at Metallica. I saw
1:01:30
Metallica on there.
1:01:32
Yeah, really enjoyed this. So this is my first time. I like this. Welcome. Thanks for inviting me.
1:01:38
So again, pro development, pro development and taking Longmont citizens first. Thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you. Roger. Greg Garber,
1:01:59
Hi, my name is Greg Garber. I live at 1507 cannon Mountain Drive. I want to thank you all for your service. I know that you guys don’t have an easy job. Sometimes it’s tough. And everyone here has voiced their opinion. I won’t speak to the thing I’m not supposed to speak to thank you. I will say that my wife is a saint brain preschool teacher. We’re proud parents of a daughter that goes to niwat High School, and my son, we’re grateful that he got in to see you. Boulder, so go, buffs. All right.
1:02:33
We’re proud members of this community, and we’re newer members. We moved here about five years ago. We wanted a more wholesome life for our kids and to be closer to my wife’s family,
1:02:46
but we also fled California and the massive development and the challenges that it brought that was one of our main drivers for moving here.
1:02:57
So I want you to be mindful of the growth and its impact, I’m definitely pro growth. I know growth can be positive. We would love some more new restaurants and some fun new shops here in Longmont.
1:03:11
But I’ve also seen the downside. I’ve seen the downside with traffic, with pollution, with overcrowded schools, with transient folks that did not have a vested interest in our community, and that led to crime and homelessness and drugs and depreciating property values and a diminished community. I saw it in front of my own eyes. I literally when I go home now and I look at my neighborhood, it’s a shell of what it was.
1:03:42
I urge you to listen to the people this community, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Casey Cunningham,
1:03:52
I think it’s Casey
1:03:55
Gary,
1:03:56
I don’t know. 3609
1:04:02
it’s Sunflower, sunflower circle.
1:04:07
I guess that person left, so he was, or he or she was the last person on the list. So I will close final call, public invite. No, this isn’t final it’s first call public, invited to be heard. Thank everyone for their comments. I am going to say two things, from what I’ve heard over and over, is that for all of you that voted for the bond issue for the school district, thank you very much. A huge part of that bond issue was building schools in Erie, Colorado, because a lot of the Erie students are coming here, which is our over some of our overcrowding of schools, as well as the traffic, and the other thing with the traffic, in case you haven’t heard, we have ride Longmont, which is a ride share. It is for seniors, $1 a ride. I’ve taken it three times. I love it for.
1:05:00
Students, and for anyone else, it is no students are $1 a ride as well. And
1:05:06
for everyone else, it’s $2 a ride, no tipping. And for the first month, we had over 4000 people take it. It’s very popular. And last Friday, there were 250
1:05:20
calls for rides. So
1:05:24
we are addressing everything that you’re talking about, but I’m sure that you don’t hear about all of it. So any any other questions,
1:05:34
speak up and you are.
1:05:37
So we’ve been here since six o’clock. So,
1:05:44
does anyone up here need a bio break?
1:05:47
Okay, we’re going to keep going.
1:05:49
So the next thing on this list is consent agenda. We do not have anything on the consent agenda tonight, hooray. The next one is the ordinances on second reading and public hearing on any matter. And this is our
1:06:06
quail annexation 20 2509
1:06:10
a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the 8902 quail road annexation and concept plan, generally located in the northwest quarter of Section 17, township to North range, 69 west of the sixth principal meridian, and zoning the property, residential, mixed neighborhood, R m in and for the record, I would like to note that the staff presentation, applicant presentation and public comment portion of the item are complete and that we are resuming this item at the point of council discussion and any motions. So are there any questions from Council councilor McCoy,
1:06:55
or a comment if that your mic is on, okay? Thank you, Mayor Peck Well, I listened. And, you know, after years of
1:07:07
experience on planning zoning and previous experience on city council and knowing that, you know, the most important thing is to have community buy in and not wanting to see
1:07:20
where we in listening to the developer say, hey, they couldn’t make it work in their performer,
1:07:30
anything less.
1:07:33
And so my as much as I think, you know, we could sit here and try to massage this out and and do this just to have the applicant come and say, I’m out. And there was no guarantee in regards to the Habitat for Humanity is as attractive as it looked. In regards to what we figure out, 36 potential units.
1:07:57
If we were to reduce the number of units per acre, they would probably reduce the number of of Habitat for Humanity units, or even do a fee in lieu to make up that difference. So I just don’t see that that this is the best fit, and we really need to be looking at what’s the best fit for Longmont. It’s critical. It’s important. And we’ve heard time and time again on different issues about how it’s probably time to come back and look at, envision Longmont, that planning document, and try to figure out, you know,
1:08:37
what errors we have in the system that need to be readdressed and, and what potentially certain areas of town should look like and, and what our real goals are, which we heard many of the community members talk about what our real goals are, about getting people into home ownership. And that’s really the critical component here, I like to make a motion that we turn this development down
1:09:07
so that we can turn point of order. It’s not the development to just the annexation down. Sorry, didn’t mean that this annexation down.
1:09:17
And look at some other alternatives for the future.
1:09:21
I’ll second that
1:09:24
now we’re open for Yeah, I see Matthew. I see you, Matthew.
1:09:30
So counselor, the reason that I didn’t call on you is that once the motion is made and seconded, now we open it up for discussion on council, so I had to go first
1:09:45
councilor Popkin.
1:09:49
Thank you, Mayor,
1:09:50
not taking that personally at all. That was
1:09:53
fine. I couple clarifying questions here. First is for staff, actually,
1:09:59
you know.
1:10:00
One of the things we’ve heard consistently, I think, as a theme, is the desire for for sale versus for rent as an option. Here, I just wanted to ask one of the things I learned about relatively recently was what I believe is Colorado’s construction defects law. And I was wondering if someone on staff could briefly explain what that is.
1:10:24
I’ll take this. So
1:10:27
this is really something that comes into play when you’re looking at an attached product. And I’m sure there’s others that can speak more in more detail, but
1:10:39
one of the biggest headwinds when we hear about condo development.
1:10:44
Frankly, no one’s building condos anymore in the state of Colorado, correct? And that is because of the issues associated with the construction defect law. And I believe you have a 10 year window. Eugene, I’m looking at you to see that. I think it’s a 10 year window
1:11:03
where, as claims come up, what you’re finding is that as defect claims come up in the destruction claims come up in the construction what happens is, is when you hit that end of the window, you’re seeing litigation filed. And so we had one developer in town that was building condos
1:11:23
and got caught in litigation and communicated to, I think, Joni and myself that he’s not going to do it anymore.
1:11:31
That also actually comes into play on any attached housing product. So for example, on the true north product that we’re doing where we’re building attached housing product. The insurance cost that we had to pay as part of the first 55 units due to the attached product to deal with this was approximately $600,000
1:11:56
the reason why attached product is a little bit more the risk is more manageable, is because you have fewer units connected with each other.
1:12:08
What we’re starting to see in this world, and what we’re starting to hear on the housing side, is that even construction companies, when they come in and build something, they’re requiring the developer to also agree not to have those as condos because of all the liabilities that are that are coming out of this piece of legislation,
1:12:35
historically, that has been something that the building groups have talked About in the legislative session. I think what you’re seeing now is more communities engaging in that conversation, because it is a challenge on this so when you estimate 600,000 on 55 units, and you start taking that out over, you know, the house pad project, we’re in million. You know, let’s say 1.41 point 5 million, just an insurance cost. That when you look at trying to bring an affordable and attainable project forward, you have to incorporate that within your pro forma, and when your margins are pretty narrow, that that’s a significant headwind in that product. And so that’s, can you just clarify why that’s specifically applicable to for sale versus for rent? Because you’re when you’re saying attached versus multi unit like that would seem to be potentially the same structure. It’s just the ownership it’s the ownership issue, and the fact that when you build a condo, you have individual owners that you’re selling to, versus when you have an apartment complex. Owner is ownership is retained.
1:13:48
Thank you. Harold does
1:13:51
again. I’m still catching up on kind of what the council’s priorities are here, but is that something that the city of Longmont is considering for and maybe I’ll direct it to you, but if any other council member wants to speak up, that’s something we’re going to speak up, that’s something we’re considering engaging on at the state legislative bubble. So we are hearing that there is some legislation that’s going to drop, and as soon as that does, that is an item that we’re going to bring forward to the council to consider.
1:14:15
I want to say we’re not opposed to the fact that people have to be accountable in the product that they’re building. You know, that is a must.
1:14:24
But to be frank, what we’re seeing is what we’ve seen in other states where
1:14:31
there are just issues with do people have the opportunity to repair it? You know, what’s it look like? And in talking to colleagues in other states, their assertion is people know what the insurance value is, and so that’s really what they’re dealing with at the end. So yeah, if I mean, we’ve all talked about this on the housing side,
1:14:54
one of the only ways we can solve it is with this product. But when you look at the cost.
1:15:00
Of housing generally, just to put it into the ground, and then you add this cost on top of it. It’s just another fact. It’s just another headwind in that process. And so that cost there, thank you, is both the upfront insurance as well as the potential risk of liability down the road too. And one, they are not the same thing. One is a risk of cost, and one is the upfront cost that you basically pay to
1:15:25
manage that, to give Council some contact. Yeah,
1:15:29
you all know about the true north product that we’re putting forward. The City Investment in that was $15.6 million now we did have about a 1.6
1:15:39
$1.8 million grant
1:15:42
to build that for sale product,
1:15:47
the price range of those houses, even with that investment, is 300 to 400 upper, let’s say 480
1:15:56
in terms of the sale, sales, price of those homes, and All of these things come into that and hitting that price point,
1:16:05
we have to include the fact that we bought nine acres of land for $3.65
1:16:10
a square foot, and then we bought 7.6 acres of land for $10 a square foot.
1:16:16
If we would have paid market value for the land, we would not have been able to do that project. And so when you start layering all these costs, you know that’s in order to produce that type of product, that’s the investment that was necessary to do it. Now we’re getting better at it. That in a large part, was based on the affordable capital, a deed restricted that was driving a significant amount of that investment from the city to get 55 units in play.
1:16:49
And so you look at the full cost as you’re trying to build your capital stack. But I
1:16:55
just wanted to make sure you all were on the same page on kind of the economics behind this great thank you. Harold. And then I have one clarifying question for the actually, maybe two clarifying questions for the applicant.
1:17:07
I don’t see Tyler, so I’m assuming that’s you today. Thank you. And can you remind me of your name?
1:17:13
Yes.
1:17:17
Thank you. Ryan mcbreen north, design, 244, North College Avenue. Thanks, Ryan. One of the concerns that I heard in recent weeks was on the on the concept plan, on the emergency vehicle access. Piece of that that, I think was very clearly laid out, that it’s emergency vehicle access only correct. A concern that I had is that that sometimes could be circumvented if it’s not gated. Would you have any opposition to a condition if there was a motion to approve this that
1:17:44
confirmed that it was gated emergency vehicle access? No, I don’t believe so. And typically they are gated chain, so I don’t think we’d have any issue. Just wanted to ask on behalf of a few folks, yeah. And then the second question I had for you, it was,
1:17:57
you know, I think we all heard last week, and I heard back at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that there’s another annexation happening directly to the west here. Of this that’s in the process. Sure. Can you just clarify what efforts your team has made to kind of coordinate across those and I know some of that’s in your control, and some of it’s not sure. And I will do my best to answer this question. So I’m a consultant for this project. Tyler had a pre previous hit leave town because he wasn’t expecting this hearing tonight. So I’m going to do my best to answer this question. So I know Tyler and the applicant team, or the developer has been in contact with that developer, that property as part of our concept plan. You’ll see there is an access point on the west side that we’re showing. The city has indicated that they do not want any more accesses to Clover basin outside of the two that we show on the south side, if that makes sense. So they will have to get access to Clover basin. They will have to go through our property. So what we’re showing on the concept plan is the opportunity to connect there. And part of that is that can slide up or down. It’s more of a conceptual Hey, we’re going to provide them access to Clover basin through our property. So that’s the biggest, that’s the biggest thing they’ve we’ve worked with them on at this point in time, too. So I’m sure as we move forward, if we move forward, the design will be further, which you might I’m sorry, sorry. Yep, so to answer that question for you, yes. Thank you. Mr.
1:19:18
Cool. Thank you. Yep.
1:19:21
Just as a comment here, look, we do need more housing of all types, for sale and for rent. As someone who made the jump from renting to home ownership recently, and who has many friends looking at both options
1:19:32
of a generation, I believe many people want to be able to own and move and raise a family here, there are many reasons to buy and many reasons to rent. And I just want to note that for anyone watching or for anyone here like those, decisions are not monolithic, and circumstances do vary widely. I appreciate and agree with all of those who understand that development makes sense on this site, but as I’ve said before, what we build, where we build, how we build, and for whom we build matters. I frankly, have not seen the flexibility.
1:20:00
Policy, the firm commitments on key parts like the affordable housing piece, or the coordination with the adjacent annexation that I would think would be most necessary here
1:20:09
that give me confidence in voting for this proposal. So I will be supporting council member mccoist motion,
1:20:17
Councilor Yarborough,
1:20:20
I
1:20:29
thank you, Mayor,
1:20:31
just a few things. I think almost everybody know that I was the one that continued it to today, and
1:20:39
because of the same reasons that we all had talked about, that you all just got through mentioning there was no flexibility at all, as I asked the developer over and over again, and as you all had emailed us several times, most of you
1:20:59
saying that You weren’t opposed to development is just the kind of development, and so we heard you, and I also want to mention before we vote, that I myself am not opposed to apartments,
1:21:18
because there are people like me who have to live in an apartment, I myself am not opposed to subsidized housing, because I myself have lived in subsidized housing, and I needed that.
1:21:32
So please don’t dish something that you can’t relate to, because there are many people who need it.
1:21:41
So I just had to say that I wasn’t going to leave here without mentioning that I appreciate subsidized housing, and I appreciate the apartments that people can transition into housing, and as many of you have said,
1:21:56
we need it. I’m not saying that we need those apartments, but what I’m saying is, please be mindful that there are people you don’t know where people are. You know we as council, we have to meet people where they are,
1:22:11
as we are with you all. So I just have to say that before we move on and before we vote. Thank you all for all the emails, where is Katie?
1:22:26
Okay, Katie, other half,
1:22:30
you all have done a lot of work, a lot of work. I appreciate you. I really appreciate you and your kindness, because it makes us it’s a really hard decision, and I appreciate your kindness with us and not just bashing us.
1:22:50
So I just wanted to say thank you for all of the hard work that you all have done on this project. It means a lot so, and I won’t be voting for this.
1:23:15
All right, I just want to kind of piggyback on what our city manager said, Is that the reason that the House pad, another reason that the House pad, which he already mentioned, works so well, and that’s 185
1:23:27
for sale deed restricted units that the city partnered with it, is the cost of the land if we didn’t have a generous, generous landowner Who did not sell it for market value at all. We would never have been able to do this, and we are working with, hopefully a couple more organizations in our city to keep our residents who want to buy here. So it is government partnering with private and this is not,
1:24:03
we’re not making any money on this, ladies and gentlemen,
1:24:07
as a as a developer does, there’s no money in this for we have put in money. So you have to please get your mind around the concept that we’re in a different world right now, it is not the same world I bought a house in at all, and I need to the other thing I wanted to tell you that when my husband bought the house we’re in now, our interest rate was 11%
1:24:35
on that mortgage, and we worked our tails off not to lose that house. So even though we may have purchased it, which was expensive for us at the time, the interest rate just about killed us. So let’s not all go back to 1950 or 1960
1:24:56
we’re not there anymore. So seeing no one else.
1:25:00
Wants to talk on this in on council, let’s
1:25:06
applicant on this basis, we withdraw the application. Thank you. You’re welcome.
1:25:13
No clapping, no clapping, please. Thank you. Well, just I want to clarify one point our understanding was, Tonight was a discussion by council on potential conditions that then staff would be directed to speak with the applicant, the current owners and the developer, about there is an openness to have those discussions. It really it depends on what those conditions are right. So
1:25:38
appreciate the time tonight, appreciate those that were here and hopefully the conversation continues. Thank you. That would be great. Thank you. We still need to vote on this motion. Let’s vote.
1:25:50
Oh, you’d withdrew it.
1:25:52
Okay. Councilor McCoy, one last statement.
1:25:56
Thank you, Mayor Peck you know, I didn’t make that statement, just that motion to
1:26:02
then just let it move to a different level. I’d like us to seriously look at at the
1:26:12
whether we make a motion now, or whether we direct staff in some other capacity or way, to maybe look at this as a planned unit development or some sort of thing like that, so that we can try to, I’m sorry, a point of order. Um,
1:26:27
they withdrew, and it’s now up to the owners of that property to decide what they want to do with it at this point. And it is already it’s zoned per the county as well. So, okay, thank you. Thank you. We are
1:26:42
going to take a five
1:26:45
minute five minute break. Thank you very much. You
1:30:40
doo.
1:31:02
Moo, Moo.
1:39:09
So the second,
1:39:24
Point. So the second.
1:39:59
to. second.
1:39:11
The second bill we have on the second reading is 2025
1:39:11
the second bill we have on the second reading is 2025,
1:39:16
10 It’s a bill for an ordinance amending chapter 15.05
1:39:16
dash 10. It’s a bill for an ordinance amending chapter 15.05
1:39:20
section 15.05. 5.140
1:39:20
section 15.0 5.140
1:39:24
point D and amending chapter 15.06
1:39:27
sections 15.0 6.010
1:39:30
point B and 15 Oh, 6.020
1:39:36
of the Longmont Municipal Code concerning exempting certain lights and signs from outdoor lighting and sign requirements. Are there any questions from counselors on this?
1:39:50
You know what it looks like? We have a presentation. So if you would not mind holding your comments and I’ll turn it over to Mr. Chacon. We’re talking
1:40:00
Of Ortiz, that’s fine. Where’s Mr. Chacon,
1:40:07
Mayor? Members of Council. My name is Ben Ortiz, transportation planner. And so tonight, for your consideration, we’re presenting amendments to chapter 1505, 140, regarding
1:40:18
outdoor lighting, and then 15 oh 602, regarding signs, the proposed amendments would give the planning director the ability to exempt and administratively approve certain lights and signs from the outdoor lighting and sign requirements
1:40:36
move that forward. So why? Why are we making this request?
1:40:46
So the the bus, the 119 bus rapid transit system is is rapidly developing, and what the proposed code amendments would do is enable the quick deployment of public information displays or PIDs at bus rapid transit stops. And so these signs would provide real time transit information to riders, including schedules, the arrival of the next bus, etc. In exchange, the displays would display advertising. And so on the left uses an example of a 55 inch display, and then on the right is an example of a 75 inch display. And you can kind of get the sense of of this the size of the 75 inch display in relation to the people purchasing tickets at the vending machine. The photo of the 75 inch display is located at the inline Westlake station in Thornton. A side benefit of allowing these signs is that the PID advertising would pay for the displays and the BRT furniture, including shelters, benches, trash receptacles and bike racks, along with their Maintenance,
1:41:59
so the PIDs would be installed exclusively at the BRT stations. The BRT route map shows the station locations, and there will be approximately 30
1:42:12
I don’t think this is the final configuration, but the numbers are going to be pretty close to what you see here. So most of the stations will have only a single public information display. And from what I am understanding from Lamar advertising, the 55 inch display would be the the one used most, at least in the very beginning.
1:42:36
So there are a couple of issues with the displays, which is the reason for the proposed amendments. The first is that they exceed the present lighting restrictions for signs under the current code requirements, the maximum allowed nits, or candela per square meter is a maximum of 100 nits one hour before sunrise, and 100 nits
1:42:58
up to one hour after sunset, and then 1000 minutes at all other times. And then the maximum brightness of the PIDs is going to be 3000 nits during the daylight hours. And at night, the brightness levels adjust to one quarter the maximum brightness. Another issue is that the advertising could include motion pictures, and presently, the sign code disallows the use of moving signs.
1:43:27
Mr. Ortiz, can I just ask a clarifying question? Yes, would you explain what a knit is? Yes, well, I, I’ll try. Is, I’m not a lighting engineer, but it’s, it’s a unit of measure, and they describe it here as a candela per square meter. Unfortunately, I I’m not really able to to tell what that is. And in in in kind of any definitive okay terms, is just that what they’re proposing is definitely more okay.
1:44:11
So the proposed remedy is to give the Director of Planning and Development Services the authority to administratively approve signs serving a governmental purpose by exempting lighting or sign restrictions, and this would include PIDs, but wouldn’t be exclusive to PIDs. It could include things like street signs, traffic control devices, tourist information signs, et cetera. Applause,
1:44:43
oh, sorry,
1:44:46
the proposed language to be served inserting the outdoor lighting code reads as follows, the director of planning development services or designee may exempt lighting, including displays, from any or all provisions of chapter 1505, 140,
1:45:00
Provided the lighting serves as a governmental federal, state, county, city, transportation district or school district. Purpose is located on property owned or controlled by a governmental entity, and is designed such that they minimize impacts to surrounding businesses and residents to the maximum extent possible. Such Lighting includes, but is not limited, to traffic control devices, public information displays and exterior building lighting. This exemption will be documented in a form acceptable to the Director of Planning and Development Services,
1:45:39
and then the proposed language to be inserted into the sign code read similarly, the director of planning development services or designee may exempt signs from any or all provisions of chapter 15.06 provided the signs serve governmental, federal, state, county, city or district purpose are located on property owned or controlled by governmental entity, and the Signs are designed such that they minimize impact to surrounding businesses and residents to the maximum extent possible. Such signs include but are not limited to street signs, traffic control devices, bus stop and information signs and tourist information signs. This exemption will be documented in a form acceptable to the Director of Planning and Development Services.
1:46:24
And so lastly, it’s proposed that the language shown here and the existing sign code be struck because it requires that signs not include any signs expressly prohibited, and mandates that they be consistent with requirements in the chapter. And so the proposed PIDs would be regarded as signs not consistent with the design standards specified in the chapter, as I noted earlier, and so removing this language is consistent with what we’re trying to achieve with proposed amendments. So that said, staff does recommend approving the proposed amendments to chapter 1505 140 outdoor lighting and 1506 signs as presented. And with that, I would be happy to try and answer your questions.
1:47:11
I’m sorry I didn’t know the answer to your prior. So while we were talking, Mayor Pro Tem
1:47:20
looked it up and she will tell us what a knit is. Great.
1:47:26
Thank you.
1:47:30
So yeah, just the basic definition, knits are the standard unit for measuring the brightness of any display equal to one candela per square meter. Knits are used to describe the luminescence of laptops, phones and other screens.
1:47:45
Yeah, so it’s just the luminous intensity.
1:47:48
So learn something new every day. Perfect. Councilor Popkins,
1:47:54
Thank you, Mayor
1:47:58
Ben, could you throw up the screen that said, how many nits this will be one more time. And while you’re pulling that up, just to clarify, this is for any governmental purpose, right? Not just for RTD or something like that, this is for any Yes, that’s the way, the the way the proposed ordinance reads. Great. Thank you. And so then the, if I’m seeing that correctly, the max here would be 100 nits before sunrise and then
1:48:29
after sunset. So basically, before the day starts, it would be 100 nits before that it could be illuminated, and then it’s 1000 at the kind of mid during the day.
1:48:40
Great. And just to add a little bit more flavor to Councilmember definition for context, 100 to 200 is kind of the average laptop, I believe, and 300 to 500 is approximately the average modern TV in terms of nets. So hopefully that gives a sense of kind of where that falls. It doesn’t seem unreasonable there. And something tells me, Ben, from your research and that of staff that is fairly consistent across the industry in terms of kind of public information dispose.
1:49:08
Yes, I did confirm that with Lamar, and they do have
1:49:13
an ongoing contract with RTD. They’ve had an ongoing, ongoing contract with RTD for actually quite a few years now. And if it be okay to back up to a prior
1:49:26
so
1:49:28
again. So these are during the daylight hours.
1:49:32
And if, if, if either of these screens are reaching the maximum
1:49:38
it would be, they would be at 3000 nits.
1:49:43
And so then again, in the evening hours, it would be reduced by to a quarter of that. And so what, what Lamar advertising is indicating to us is that, what if, if we don’t have those specific lighting?
1:50:00
Levels, these particular signs would not be visible.
1:50:05
Sure. Can you go back to the map for a second on the next slide? I think it was
1:50:10
great. And so this is the proposed location of both, if I’m reading this correctly, it’s both current and future, like bus stations and shelters, as well as the public information displays that are like associated with each of these.
1:50:28
My apologies, so this is the proposed BRT line. So these, these, this particular configuration hasn’t been rolled out yet, but we’re hoping that it will be
1:50:41
fully in operation by 2027
1:50:45
there may be yet some changes to the number of bus or BRT stations.
1:50:54
Maybe there may be a couple additional stations not reflected here, but the final number will be very close to what what is shown here. Great. And then, just to confirm, the PIDs are going to be associated with transit stations, transit stops, right? They were not just going to be like, walking down Main Street and, you know, crossing long speed can be like, oh, there’s a public information display. That’s correct. The intent is for these to only go in the BRT stations. Great. Thank you very much.
1:51:22
Councilor McCoy, Thank you, Mayor pick, been these. Can you tell us a little bit about how durable these are in the sense that, you know, I hate to have these out there, obviously in well lit areas to begin with, and so it and along major thoroughfares the long one, but my concern is about that
1:51:44
how durable they are. Someone comes up and hits them with something we don’t want to have almost every other one down because somebody decides to just walk down the street and whack them. COVID, so it’s great question. I think they would be as durable as your flat screen television. However, these will be privately owned by Lamar advertising. And so in the agreement, we could insist that if there’s damage to the public information displays, that they
1:52:17
repair those immediately or replace them. And of course, it’s in their interest to make sure that these public information displays are operational, because they are making their money by advertising. And so what they indicate to me is that approximately 50% of the time will be devoted to the public information, like the transit information, when the next bus is going to arrive, the schedules, those types of things, and then the remaining information will be devoted to advertising, and that’s how the public information displays will be paid for, as well as all of the transit furniture, including the shelters, the benches, the trash receptacles, the bike racks, etc, along with the maintenance. All right, thank you.
1:53:10
So I think I lost something in this, and I apologize, but at the very first screen, you said that it would pay for
1:53:21
if Lamar is doing the advertising, they get the funding. They’re making money off of that, then how is RTD getting the money to build the bike racks, etc? Like you said on the first one, I missed that. So RTD is, is not party to the public information display agreement. So it would in that agreement would be entirely between Lamar advertising and the city. And so Lamar is, I mean, RTD is simply providing the transit service to the BRT stations, but those particular amenities, the public information displays,
1:54:00
the transit furniture, all of that would be owned by Lamar advertising
1:54:06
and along with the public information displays. But the city benefits is because we don’t have to pay for for any of the any of the amenities, including the bus shelters,
1:54:19
nor the upkeep so Lamar advertising would be responsible for their building all of that. Okay, that’s the part I missed. Thank you.
1:54:30
Councilor Crist,
1:54:33
Mr. Ortiz, are the screens going to be contained in these shelters so that there’s less light pollution to the neighborhood.
1:54:42
Well, city staff will have the opportunity to to have a say on where those
1:54:49
where those public information displays will be placed,
1:54:53
and it will the placement will depend, will be on a case by case basis. Depend.
1:55:00
Upon each particular stop. So I showed you, in this case here,
1:55:08
at least the one here on the right. So you had a road out here, and then you had your parking lot here, and then this is kind of where the the you know, public information displays are and then you have the train station is over here. And so that’s this particular instance. However, we have some along US, 36 that are highly visible to traffic. And so it’s just going to depend on on each individual circumstance. And within the city, is the city staff going to have discretion, or at least some input into where these go? Yes, and we we can have veto power, and we can request that they be removed if we so choose. Okay, so you’re not going to turn long on into Las Vegas overnight.
1:56:01
Okay?
1:56:03
All right. And is this going to be a burden to staff all this administration? Have you? No, no, I’ve been administering the advertising and bus shelter program almost since its inception. There was a little block of time where I changed jobs and wasn’t involved in it. But once it, once we we get the program rolling, it’s the amount of administration is very minimal, okay? And how soon will this be installed? I know the BRT has been is in progress.
1:56:36
So when will this come on board with with the transportation Well, Alden Jenkins is the engineer in charge of the Coffman and eighth project. And he’s stating that that that particular alignment all the way down to Boston Avenue should be complete by, I think he said the end of 2026
1:56:57
so he would like to see some of these amenities in this year.
1:57:05
And so it’s, it’s going to depend, I think, on, on the readiness of each station. Okay, all right, great. Thank you.
1:57:16
Councilor Popkin,
1:57:18
Thank you, Mayor Peck Seeing no other council members wishing to speak, I’m going to go ahead and motion to approve. Make sure I get the number right here.
1:57:27
We need, we need to do the public forum. We do need to do that. Thank you. Then motion to approve, getting to the public forum. Thank you.
1:57:35
Thank you.
1:57:37
Okay, seeing no one else in the queue, I’m going to open up the public.
1:57:45
I just lost my words. I’m sorry
1:57:48
the public hearing.
1:57:51
And yes, anyone that would like to speak, please come on down and Gary Hodges, thank
1:58:00
you. Gary Hodges, 2048, Stewart Street. I just want to say just want to say that on on the knits, like 750 knits is a sunlight viewable screen for a laptop that’s really bright. 3000 is like a supernova, but in the daytime, that won’t really matter. But I mean, 750 is enough to see at night. So Councilwoman Chris comment about like, is this going to cause light pollution? Is well placed.
1:58:27
We pay 1% sales tax to RTD, which is about 12% of our total sales taxes that we pay. It’s just a ridiculously huge amount of our totals, residents, total sales tax burden, and the trials and tribulations of RTD in the city are well documented, so I don’t really need to get into that, but I just think it’s nuts that we have to go to someone that wants to sell advertising to pay for bus stops. I mean, it seems really absurd. I’m not a fan of advertising at the bus stops. I think it diminishes our city. I drive down 21st only to get to my house all the time, and there’s just advertising on the back of those benches that were turned at weird angles where no one would ever want to really want to sit in them, because they’re they got absurdly close to the street for that advertising purpose. So I
1:59:19
I just would like RTD money to pay for these and not, not do it with not do it with advertising and then. But if you do go forward and you allow this change, I wasn’t sure if that was just going to extend for this purpose, but I think if you allow this change in moving advertising and brightness and stuff, we should extend this to every business in the city, not just the bus stop advertising. Thank you. Karen banker is your RTD district representative Gary and she would very much welcome your comments. Thank
1:59:53
you. Seeing no one else, I’m going to come on down. You.
2:00:00
Yeah, Jonathan, Jonathan hoffland, 1036, Willow Creek circle. Couple questions that I want to address is, what can or cannot be advertised?
2:00:11
I think there’s when it’s on city property, city kind of
2:00:18
gets a little dicey. So and then who’s this advertising for? Is it for the bus riders, or is it for the people driving by? And then, again, as Gary mentioned, 750 needs. It’s what they’re talking about at night. Is, remember, this is a density per square meter. So it’s how bright each little part is. So 750 is for outdoor viewing. During the day. I mean, a cell phone typically goes up to about 1000 nits. So we’re talking three times as bright as you can. Put your cell phone up to the highest point. And at night. We’re saying, well, we want that to be 750 which is like three quarters of the way up on your motor, your cell phone. And we’re not talking a little cell phone here. We’re talking
2:01:13
a big screen. So I think you might want to consider that again. Karen Pinker,
2:01:19
but thank you for your comments. Seeing no one else, I’m going to ask for a motion
2:01:24
there is, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you. Yeah, I’m sorry. I fall off a lot.
2:01:31
I’ve been in Terry Moore three Birdsville place.
2:01:35
I’ve been in astronomy for since I was a little kid. And as a matter of fact, we just had a conjunction here the Moon and Jupiter here just a few days ago. It was beautiful, closest I’ve seen it in a long time. I worry about how much light pollution is going to go up in the air.
2:01:53
I don’t want to make it any worse. Right now, our cities are where most of that light pollution goes and it doesn’t affect everything, and it doesn’t look like a lot, but when you turn a telescope up that way, it does make things harder to see.
2:02:10
So I would worry about that. I see this thing here and doesn’t have any
2:02:17
seats.
2:02:19
You know, I want my seats in my bus stop, and I don’t see any place to put a seat in there in this picture.
2:02:27
And also, I recently was helping a neighbor get to her bus stop. So because her car was in the shop for about two months, she had an accident and had it fixed. And during that time,
2:02:44
I often found myself in the morning and in the evening
2:02:49
at the bus stop over by King Soopers at 23rd and Main. And I was amazed at how bad that bus stop has become and having a screen that is just about like a TV, like one of these
2:03:08
that’s going to get whacked and people are just going to do it, just to do it. There’s the bus stop it that I mentioned,
2:03:18
out of the three four panels that go around it make it a bus stop. Three of them are missing. There’s just a pole there, and it’s part of, you know, just people abusing equipment. I don’t want to see that either. So I want to ensure that some way the light that goes up from these things is blocked and that we have plenty of room, and they, if it’s just a TV screen, I it’s it’s easy just to bump those things and they don’t work anymore. Thank you very much. Thank you
2:03:58
so
2:04:02
the come on down. I’ll make
2:04:08
one
2:04:09
real quick. Okay, I’m holding you to it. Working with LEDs.
2:04:15
This is just the wave of the future. LEDs can be really bright.
2:04:22
They’re also done on density, and that’s what
2:04:28
you know. It’s more of a density issue when you’re talking those things.
2:04:35
So welcome to the future and the future of LEDs.
2:04:43
And I’m not for or against them, but I just wanted mayor and council know that it’s not only brightness, but it is also density. So it’s more of a dense wavelength than rather.
2:05:00
A wide wing wavelength, so it has less to do with removal of the stars. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you, Lance one more.
2:05:16
Thank you Council. Greg Morrissey, 1648, Harvard Street. And the concern I have about these signs is the research done to where they will not distract drivers.
2:05:27
They’re going to be switched between advertising, switching between busses, and all the time is coming back forth. How bright are they if I’m driving, and some driver, young drivers, per se, are they can be distracting. Is the research been done to where they’re going to be low? Be located. So that’s not going to happen. You don’t want to give any more. You got plenty of distraction on the roads right now. We don’t need any more. Thank you. Thank you.
2:05:53
So
2:05:55
this is all good information. Do
2:05:58
you want to address this? Ben, do
2:06:20
to No, you’re not going to address
2:06:22
it. Oh, well, I just wanted to know, Ben, do you have anything to say? Because if we vote on this, then it’s yes, my apologies. I didn’t I didn’t hear you. I did pose some of these questions to Lamar advertising, as I had indicated, they’ve had a
2:06:39
they’ve had a relationship with RTD and have provided public information displays to many of their stations, including us 36
2:06:50
they’ve not indicated to me that that they’ve had any sort of accident history related To the deployment of the public information displays.
2:06:59
So I
2:07:03
so I suppose, if we were to look at every single accident report,
2:07:08
would someone indicate, well, that sign was distracting me, and for that reason, I got into a wreck. But that’s not something that they’ve heard okay on the other and then regarding the the lighting. So the lighting will be, will not be shining upwards. It will be shining parallel to the ground. So there, there should not be any issues regarding lighting
2:07:41
upward, upward casting lighting. So I don’t
2:07:45
know if you have any other questions. I do, and then I’ll call on. So if I can jump in with Ben, please do yes. So Well, we were, what I was telling Ben
2:07:55
is, in my previous life, I was in a community that had
2:08:00
digital billboards along a main thoroughfare. And there are standards that are at least at that level, that are applied to the images in terms of how fast you turn, how frequent you turn the images, and what’s on the images to get at that point of distracted driving. So there are some standards out there that actually do kind of get to that very issue. And that was, again, not this, but experience dealing with something else that was very similar.
2:08:31
Ben, have you seen the contract between RTD and Lamar?
2:08:35
We have not begun putting that together yet, because we were waiting to hear what would happen tonight. So I am curious about the maintenance clause in that contract, as far as the signs and these go, because RTD is not going to maintain them, even if they say they are. No, no, we’re not expecting RTD to maintain them. And I’m really glad I got to hear some of the concerns from from some of the folks in public invited to be heard
2:09:08
as as the person who’s administrating the advertising on bus shelter program. Now if I’m hearing if people reach out to me directly and are telling me that there is a shelter that’s been tagged, or that a shelter requires a power wash or that sort of thing, I will relay that up to Lamar advertising and tell them that this is something that they need to to look at and and to be and to toot their horn. They have been very, very responsive to the city when we have raised an issue with them, so I feel pretty good about our relationship with this company. Okay?
2:09:47
One more councilor. Popkin,
2:09:56
Thank you, Mayor Peck I just have one quick comment, and then I make a motion.
2:10:00
Yeah, I
2:10:01
just wanted to say I appreciate Gary Hodges comment, and wanted to note that I too want to see our RTD tax revenue go to productive purposes here.
2:10:09
In this case, I actually appreciate the public private partnership aspect of this, and frankly, have a few other ideas as to how our RTD funds could be spent, and would like to reserve it for that purpose, but I respect the intention there. So thanks.
2:10:23
With that, I would like to make a motion to a approve
2:10:27
ordinance. 2025, dash, one, zero, a bill. Would that just change the screen? Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen that a bill for an ordinance amending chapter 15.05,
2:10:39
do have to read this whole thing. Okay,
2:10:42
thank you.
2:10:46
That’s been moved by councilor Popkins, seconded by councilor Yarbrough. Let’s vote. Sometimes you do
2:11:02
it. And that passes unanimously. The second thing on our agenda was actually something, thank you, Ben, thank you. Was actually on the consent agenda last week, but we didn’t get to it, so it was an item removed from the consent agenda. It was nine, a 2025, dash, oh, seven, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving an agreement between the city of Longmont and the Longmont Humane Society for animal well welfare services for 2025,
2:11:33
Councilor Yarbrough, Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I pulled this last week. Unfortunately, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to get to it. But the reason why I put this, and I think Mayor, you and I were coffee with council when this happened, the information about who was paying for what, and the city, between the city and the county with the Longmont Humane Society. And so when I saw this, how much of the increase compared to what we paid last time, what our contract was. I just really wanted to bring forth
2:12:11
the Boulder County portion. And I know when these animals go to the Longmont Humane Society, sometimes they’re not from the city of Longmont, but yet we’re paying for it, and I just want our community to know that, I think, and I know chiefs,
2:12:29
chiefs tax artist is here in he can confirm. And I don’t want to lie to you and say something, but I believe it was in the 100 1000s
2:12:38
last contract, and now we’re almost at a million. And so I know that they also were taking in animals from Boulder County. And Boulder County is not, wasn’t on in our comms, in this communication. So I just kind of wanted to get just a clarification of the services, what we’re paying for, and so that the community know what we’re paying for. When you we went from 100 and some 1000 to a million dollars,
2:13:10
well close to a million.
2:13:14
Zach artists, public safety chief in the city of Longmont, Mayor Pat Councilman ya correct, we’ve had a long standing relationship with the Longmont Humane Society for many years. About three years ago, we were approached by the Humane Society and informed that we were going to have to pay more to house our animals at their facility, and through three years of ongoing discussions and conversations to understand their billing practices, just their their finances, we were in the neighborhood of about 150 $275,000
2:13:49
that has gradually increased over the last two to three years. Last year, we were about the 700,000 mark. This year, we’re at nine, $965,000
2:13:59
and some change. The services that they provide us have not changed. So really, they are housing our animals for us when they get brought in, and they’re also housing the community’s animals when they get brought in, along with some veterinarian things that they do for us. So the services that they provide change financially the way that they were billing us and doing things in the past with some change in leadership and board, they’ve gone in a different direction, and that’s why we’re at where we’re at today. You had mentioned Boulder County. So the Humane Society is basically a non profit organization that has contracts with different cities or counties in Boulder County, for example, here in the our greater area, the Longmont area, they have since lost some of those contracts Boulder County, for example, has moved on to the city of Boulder, our boulder Humane Society, and has signed a contract with them this year, did not go back with the Humane Society of Longmont, along with two other smaller municipalities, a.
2:15:00
But we are the larger municipality within the municipalities are still existent and partnering with the Lamont Humane Society.
2:15:09
And also, I remember that there was a discussion about the system making sure we that there’s a system where you all can track what animals.
2:15:20
I know I read that, but I just wanted to make sure that was that the system that you all were trying to make sure that you can have information, get access to information. So we do have access, and we do internally track the animals that we bring in. The last numbers that I’ve got from the Humane Society, between us the public, there were about 1000 animals that were brought into the Humane Society from either city of Longmont residents or from the animal control that we we do here in public safety. Last year we were to get that number down to close around 800
2:15:53
we made some internal changes and some equipment that we needed to be able to scan the chips and animals to return them so we weren’t having to board them at the Humane Society, so we did make some efforts to try to reduce that cost. But again, this is getting back to kind of where they’re at and where they say we should be, as far as the operational costs that we’re costing them in order to housing animals, both from the community and from what we bring in and from public safety.
2:16:22
Wow,
2:16:24
that’s a huge increase, okay? And we don’t have a choice, right? And don’t get me wrong, everybody, I love the Humane Society. My daughter volunteered there, and without them, I don’t you know, but from 100 and some 1000 to almost a million dollars. That’s a huge increase.
2:16:45
We have explored other avenues, with other Humane Societies that just don’t have the capacity to take the number of animals that are brought to Humane Society of Longmont into their facilities. So we have explored avenues to reduce that cost for the city. But at this moment in time, as you you’ve stated, We don’t have a lot of options for the animals within our community and where they can go. Okay,
2:17:07
so,
2:17:09
oh, good. You got a question. Okay, I was just gonna go ahead right
2:17:15
there. Sorry, Mayor. I’m sorry. I was gonna just go ahead and make the motion. But then I saw his light on, I apologize.
2:17:24
Point of order. Chiquita, sorry. Councilor Popkin, Thank you, Mayor pack,
2:17:31
thanks, Zach, I just wanted to disclose that 20 years ago I volunteered for the Humane Society, and wanted to just make sure that I don’t have to recuse myself from this vote, it was not the United Society in Longmont. It was in a different state. But just wanted to disclose that for the sake of transparency here, would anyone appreciate me recusing myself?
2:17:53
No, but you can adopt some of those animals that would help us out a lot.
2:17:59
So councilor Yarbrough, I
2:18:02
would like to move
2:18:05
resolution 2025, 07,
2:18:12
okay, it’s been moved by councilor Yarbrough, seconded by councilor Crist, and let’s vote I.
2:18:20
You
2:18:26
that carries unanimously. Thank you, Chief artists.
2:18:30
All right, we’re now going to move on to general business, which is the library hold, pickup lockers. I’ll turn it over to
2:18:39
John Solomon, who is our library director? Can
2:18:45
we just change
2:18:50
the system? Do you have one? Yeah,
2:19:16
and I would just like to say that it is Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo hearing that brought this idea to us.
2:19:26
Oh, can you turn on your microphone, sir, okay, yes, I’m turning this over to
2:19:38
there you go. Thank you, Mr. Solomon, I don’t do this too often.
2:19:44
Mayor Peck members of council, John Solomon, library director, I know you just mentioned that, but I wanted to give you a little background from what council member Hidalgo faring proposed to you to spend Council contingency funds on a whole pickup locker. And give you a little bit more information. I believe you got some.
2:20:00
Between the last time this proposal now, but I figured I would go through this a little bit to give you a little insight into this. So
2:20:07
whole pickup lockers and libraries is a somewhat of a newer concept in mostly public libraries.
2:20:15
I’m sure many of you are familiar with Amazon pickup lockers, or other retail stores that do this where you can place orders and then pick up in a locker for security. So libraries have gotten into this business with holds, and it’s a it’s a pretty low bar, low cost way to expand library services elsewhere in Longmont, adding a real convenience to people. We
2:20:40
place a lot or patrons, place a lot of holds in this library. In a year, we’re talking in the 1000s, probably 20 to 30,000 a year, of holds placed just in this library, and they all come to the main library to pick them up. So having something like this could really benefit that, and again, expand that so they’re designed. The picture you’re seeing here is designed to be an outdoor locker, which conceivably could provide 24/7 access, not restricted to picking up your holds within library hours, but whenever it’s convenient for somebody, right? So just like, just like any other retail locker that’s out there,
2:21:20
the way they work. And anyone with a Longmont public library card can use this
2:21:25
simply placed your hold in this in this model, instead of selecting the main library, which is your only choice to pick up a hold, you would maybe select a locker that’s closer to you,
2:21:36
and then go pick it up there at your convenience. The reason I like this,
2:21:42
at least, for one of them, would be pretty low staff impact initially.
2:21:47
You know, it’s, it’s probably one trip a day to go load the lockers and retrieve things that haven’t been picked up. And that’s about it,
2:21:55
if it were to grow, which I would love to see, that could change. But I think initially, this is a great way to get to get services out there
2:22:03
provided,
2:22:05
as it says here, you know, much needed services elsewhere in Longmont.
2:22:10
You know the approximate cost that I’ve researched there, about 30,000 that’s what you saw before you that would include installation a graphical wrap. You saw an example that in the slide before a year of maintenance, years maintenance beyond that, I would propose in my budget request to support that through the library general fund,
2:22:30
which is around $2,000 a year,
2:22:33
it could be discounted. One of the vendors I’m looking at already provides our automated materials handler for returns that we that we have in library. So there could be some discounts there if I use the same vendor. But there’s a process in the city, as you all know, for how we might acquire one of these lockers,
2:22:55
one of the locations we identified.
2:22:59
Sorry, it’s in this slide here,
2:23:02
the bottom left is I’m facing is Centennial pool we visited. There high traffic area, right? There’s a park. There’s the schools there,
2:23:12
and for many hours the day, it’s actually staffed right, even though, you know, so that that could be nice, but
2:23:19
in a much, much much needed area in town for library services. So low hanging fruit. Get that out there, get people to see library services elsewhere in town. I think it’d be huge for the city in this community,
2:23:33
and there’s ample space there. The image here is outside in front, where you see the bench there
2:23:41
could easily accommodate one of these lockers. And they’re designed to be modular, so if the service is popular, we can actually add on lockers to it. I think it initially comes with about 20 or so, so that could grow, and there’s space here to do that,
2:23:56
future locations, transit center,
2:23:59
things like that years ago, years ago, when I lived in the Bay Area, in San Francisco area, we did a similar concept in all the BART stations. If you’ve ever been to the Bay Area, hugely popular. People could pick up that hold or look for materials, in that case, and then get on the train and go on about their day.
2:24:20
I just wanted to briefly go over another concept here, just to let you know of this kind of service model, only because I included it in the information that I sent last time. This isn’t necessarily what was in the proposal for council contingency funds, but
2:24:35
book vending cabinets. So the concept here is a browsable collection. This cabinet that you see on the screen can hold about two to 300 items, depending what you put in. Again, it could go elsewhere in town, pretty low cost to get library services out there load it with materials that are relevant to the community that that cabinet lives in,
2:24:57
and people have instant access to library materials.
2:25:01
Yeah, so I just wanted to show that to you as
2:25:04
let you know that kind of the future and, well, existing and future of what’s happening in public library land here,
2:25:12
they’re around the same price. They kind of do the same thing from the same vendor. As far as wrapping it, they could pretty much go anywhere in town, again, the same locations, things like that. But I just wanted to quickly go over that the locker is really the question here. I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have about that.
2:25:31
Are there any questions from councilors?
2:25:35
Councilor, Crist,
2:25:38
how waterproof are these materials going to be safe inside? Do you think? Yeah, they’re, they’re waterproof. They’re designed to be outside 24/7, so,
2:25:49
you know,
2:25:51
yeah, there’s, there’s no way materials can get any water damage or weather damage in there.
2:25:58
Yeah,
2:25:59
well, I’m enthused about this. This looks like a really nice product to have, especially at the centennial pool. Yeah, yeah, a lot of traffic there, and we’ve got a lot of people that that don’t make it downtown to get their books so, so thank you for bringing this forward, Mayor Pro Tem and thank you, Mr. Solomon, you’re welcome. Councilor Popkin,
2:26:22
thank you. Chair Peck
2:26:24
John, nice to meet you. You too. Thank you. I think this is a really interesting and flexible way to kind of expand library services. I really like the intention of this. I had a little bit of a question about the location, and it’s not in my word. Come on. No, excuse me the but on a serious note, there, I can you share more of the thought process of why you’re looking at the centennial pool as kind of the starter one, because I look at that and that’s about also on the east side of town, though. I realize the library is kind of south central generally, but that’s about a mile, about two miles walking or driving from here, probably less as the crow flies. So I’m just curious we have if we’re trying to manage traffic flows too, and maybe let people not have to cross some of our busiest streets if they live on the west side of town, whether it’s war two
2:27:11
or not, maybe that’s part of the expansion plan. But I’m just curious why the thought would be to kind of start
2:27:18
relatively close to the library. Yeah. Thank you for that question. I so in I’ve been here just a little over two years, and so far, what I’ve learned here is pretty much anywhere north of the Library is where there are the most needs for library services in this town. So it is north. Yes, it’s relatively close, but again, it’s a high traffic area. The other the other thought about this is,
2:27:46
well, there’s two thoughts. One is, some of these neighborhoods have populations of people that generally need library services a lot, and they won’t come to library it’s just an inconvenience. So if we can get live any type of library service in those areas and expose it. I think that sets the stage for good growth.
2:28:09
So it may be a little close, right, and but, but I don’t I think it’s a starting point.
2:28:14
The other thought there, too is when it comes to these lockers, and the potential for where you could put them city property initially is ideal, because I don’t have to come to agreements and get contracts with other places for that, right? I mean, there’s other places along mine. I love it to be like at a shopping center like Holford and 17th, in that Safeway Center, where there’s, you know, a lot of high traffic there, and another need for library services. But that just presents a whole other layer and of cost probably to do that. So I think to start that’s why I like this idea. And the space is there,
2:28:51
and again, the traffic. So I think it’s a good question, but I hope that answers that a little bit it does. Thank you. And you know, as we further discuss this, I like this as a strategy, and would just love to see maybe, what would be your ideal build out plan, even if we don’t do that, even if we just pilot one initially, like, what would be phase two and phase three of this? If, if this was successful. So you don’t have to answer that right now, okay, but just at some point, would be curious to learn more about that. Likewise, just in terms of location and siting of this, you know how permanent of an installation are these lockers? Is this something that you know, if there is lower foot traffic than expected, or use use there in that location, it could be shifted fairly easily, without much of a service or re installation cost? Are they on wheels? I just, I presume they can’t just be like, rolled away.
2:29:37
There will be some problematic elements of that too. So how flexible, how versatile is the siting of these?
2:29:43
That’s a great question. They’re, they’re somewhat permanent, in the sense that, you know, they’re not on wheels. You know, they’re going to be installed into the ground, or at least placed there. They’re super heavy. It’s not like someone can come in and just be like, Oh, I would like a locker. I’m going to take it home. But that being.
2:30:00
Said it would not be insignificant to relocate it, but it could be done.
2:30:07
Thank you.
2:30:09
Councilor yabra,
2:30:14
thank you, Mayor. I just just two things. One, I just wanted clarification that the purpose, the reason why we’re doing this, and thank you, Mayor Pro Tem for bringing this up, is because
2:30:30
that you have so many people that at the main library that put books on hold, and it will be nice. And I agree with the neighborhood. I agree with that location 100%
2:30:43
so the whole purpose wasn’t like a thought like, well, we should get these lockers, since that’s a huge portion of time I go to the library quite often. And so I see them always putting those books and those, you know, on hold. I see, you know, doing that quite often. So I get that, but is that the main reason why you suggest the lockers is because of the hold? And I just want to know, I mean, it’s a great idea, but I wanted to know the reason why we’re doing this
2:31:15
in part, just everything you said in the other part. I mean, you know, the library needs to grow, and this, this tracks back to the election,
2:31:25
the need for expansion the library we are in, as you might remember at the time it was built, population of the city was 50,000 it was built to accommodate 65,000 we’re at 100 and some. We need to grow and and and to put a major branch in front of taxpayers in the millions of dollars, maybe that wasn’t the right time. How can we grow on a smaller scale? And, and I feel very confident that that exposure will help people
2:31:56
support future endeavors of the library to grow, which is still much needed. So it’s twofold. The holds is just, it’s a low bar. Everyone places holds and it’ll, it’ll hit a lot of people and mean a lot to a lot of people. Okay, yeah, and hopefully we’ll be able to see the progress and get reports and all of that.
2:32:16
The other thing is, I would love for council to think about this. And I mentioned this before to a developer. That was in front of us is they should put these lockers on every developer, development, development throughout the city of Longmont, until we are able to pay for a library. I mean, why not? We’re we’re making developers, not making them, but we’re asking for electric. We’re asking all these things. We can ask them to put $30,000
2:32:49
locker on that property. All they could do is say no, but I’m just saying that’s something maybe we should really think about, because there is a need like what you said over there, Hoover and 17th, we’re building a property over there with a child care. We should have a locker over there.
2:33:12
So that’s something we should think about. I’m putting it on the table
2:33:18
well, more than think about we should do it
2:33:21
anyway. Mayor Pro Tem So, yeah, no, that’s very much in line with what we’ve been discussing. So, you know, I wanted to add a little bit more as the reason why, to the location, including the proximity to schools, skyline and Timberline and the youth center as well. So just the ability for youth who don’t have access to vehicles, bussing, you know, to get out to go pick up books for for education purposes.
2:33:50
So, yeah, we, we did explore other areas. I mean, I really, I tried, I tried to get in ward three,
2:33:57
but, but looking at, you know, just logistics, where do we have city buildings, where we can be the the overseers of this, of this space and, you know, and what the feasibility study, too, had recommended. And every month, when I go to our board there, there are they ask tough questions, like, I’m over here sweating,
2:34:20
Susie, what are you doing? You know, Council says they support libraries. You know, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. So
2:34:28
that that was the reason why I came up with the idea. Well, you know, we have this, this great idea looking at libraries, amenities that future, you know, for the future, and this is something that’s feasible. It’s attainable. They just need a little help from us. So that’s why I decided to bring it forward. So if I can jump in real quick,
2:34:51
I think when council member Yarbrough was talking about a cent on hover, yeah,
2:34:56
I know one of the things that we have when we look at that project and we look.
2:35:00
At the lodge and Hearthstone across the street, and we look at mobility, it probably does make sense for us to have one at that location when we look at how we’re congregating everything. So what I told Joanie is, I think I have, I have some room in my council contingency, and I would probably look at augmenting this to get one at that location, because it does support the housing that we’re putting in at that location, and it also touches another aspect of the community. And so I was curious to see all of this coming together, because these are the things that we’ve thought about when we look at our properties from a Housing Authority perspective, and how do we bring resources to the residents where it’s easier for them
2:35:46
to get it, and we know that some of the residents at Lodge and Hearthstone have mobility issues, so I think we could do that.
2:35:55
Sounds great. Councilor Popkin, thank you. I’ll be quick here just two other quick questions. Do you have a sense of what kind of data or user data we would get from people using the lockers, just if we’re thinking, if we have one as a pilot, what kind of data we’d have on frequency of use or amount of use or returning customers, or, for lack of a better word, that we could use to inform a future build out, if that was so chosen to do? Yeah, thank you for that. There’ll be some standard data we already collect, you know. So just because it’s a locker, we will know the holds placed and the designated pickup and then what is picked up, as opposed to what is left and not picked up, you know, that’s that’s all collected through our library management system software got it so that and that would distinguish between a hold place at the main library and a whole place for a locker, correct? Yeah. And then would you have a way of tracking, like, the approximate amount of staff hours in kind of maintaining and managing the locker system? Yeah, we, I will track that. It’ll be necessary, particularly if this is going to grow. You know, as I mentioned before, I anticipate, initially with one locker we could manage, you know, one, one trip a day, that’s probably one staff member, maybe two. It’s potential, potentially, depending on the system and how streamlined it is, we could employ volunteers to help with that. But, you know, really, generally has to be staff run, but
2:37:22
I imagine one to two people a day, one trip, and then the rest of it’s pretty automated through the software, the library management system. Yeah, I’m less concerned about this one, but more just knowing what information you’ll have as we think about whether we want to build this out further Correct. Yeah, sorry. And I think, yeah, it we will track that. I will track how much time staff time is spent going and coming, for sure, great. And then you mentioned city of Long lot locations were kind of preferential, because you have to negotiate with another entity. I could also see value in, you know, school district partnership or with county facilities. When I think about, like the fairgrounds or something like that, is that something you’ve explored yet or would be open to, or just don’t know what their receptiveness would be. Well, I mean, I’ve explored it all in my mind, you know, but
2:38:08
I think, I think the it’s all wide open as to what really the potential is for a service like this. Yeah, yeah, great. Well, Anything’s fair. Hopefully we can explore that when we get to the next chapter. I appreciate that. Thanks, Mayor. I misspoke. I thought my contingency. I said my council contingency. It’s actually the city manager’s contingency that I have. So I misspoke. So glad that you corrected that.
2:38:39
So I need a motion then to fund $30,000 for life, library lockers out of the council contingency.
2:38:47
Counselor, I’m sorry, I’m gonna call on these people for
2:38:53
council. Yarborough,
2:38:55
I move that we take $30,000
2:38:58
out of our council contingency to
2:39:02
approve the library hold, pickup lockers over
2:39:09
at the location over Bicentennial pool second, all right. Councilor Yarborough made the motion, and it was seconded by councilor crest. And before we vote, I just want to say that we have about $161,000
2:39:23
in our council contingency. So this is great. Let’s vote
2:39:33
where to go.
2:39:40
That passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Solomon and Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo ferry, we are moving on now to
2:39:51
there she is, assistant city manager Sandy cedar for to finalize our city council retreat agenda. You.
2:40:08
You, Mayor Peck members of council. Sandy cedar, assistant city manager, I’m here for two items. I’m asking Harold to resend around the legislative item for your next piece. But that’s not to be confused with the retreat. So I had sent you all a revised retreat agenda, and so I’m thinking maybe what makes sense is for us to review the agenda to make sure that you’re comfortable with that, and then talk about the date, if that works. Yes. So I tried to incorporate the feedback from the last conversation that we had, and just really starting with a communication exercise and appreciative inquiry interview, and then grounding a little bit in the customer satisfaction survey, what the future of that survey is also the demographics of Longmont and what the trends are. Think councilmember Yarborough had mentioned about the senior population, that it might be good for us to just kind of ground ourselves on what what the demographics of long might look like today, and what that’s going to look like over the next,
2:41:06
maybe decades.
2:41:08
And so we also wanted some engagement from you around. How do you want to engage? What else do you want to know on the survey? I think we recognize that our demographics needed some support, and we’ll be working on that kind of throughout the year, instead of just once every two years. So we’d love to get some more feedback from you to help guide that effort.
2:41:28
We also heard about the master planning process and envision Longmont and how do these things work together? So the suggestion from staff, which I thought was great, was to really talk about, you know, what is comprehensive planning? How does it look? How does it feel to you all? What are the kinds of things that you do with master planning?
2:41:48
As well? As we have a whole set of Longmont indicators and dashboards that can show you the progress on envision Longmont as well some of your other master plans. So we’d like to share that information with you. We also have the dashboard from the city council work plan. So first, let’s ground your, you know, yourselves in community, and then ground yourselves in the plans that are and the progress that has been made. And then move into keeping in mind that community profile and where we’re headed, you know, all the things that we have completed, let’s take a look at your work plan and see if we can get some focus on that. Because I know part of the discussion, you know, the question was, how do we make sure that we’re really hitting the things that are most important to this council in the next year? Let’s wrap up some projects. Let’s let’s really focus. I heard a great webinar the other day about, you know, that Steve Jobs used to say, tell me the top 10 things that we’re going to do this year, and that he would cut seven of them so that you would have real focus. And so the conversation around here, are your priorities? What are your priorities? What are the policies that you need to put into place in order to achieve those goals? And what is the focus in each of these areas? A retreat evaluation, and then public invited to be heard. This is a flowing retreat. So you’ll notice at the top the agenda is flexible. May flow over to the next day, although public invite to be heard will be heard Friday at the end of the session, not, you know, not necessarily at four, but once you guys have concluded. So I’ve kind of jammed it into one day. This would be a really tough one day, but, you know, maybe there’s lots of organization and it’s going to go really well, but it’s, it’s, it’s flexible. Can I just add something that I had a conversation with Aaron Fauci, who was the planner on envision Longmont,
2:43:29
telling her some of our challenges with Envision Longmont and the wording in it, and the things that I have personally heard and perhaps the other counselors have throughout the
2:43:40
throughout the year, since this was envisioned, um, is the terms area of areas of change and compatibility. Those are subjectives, and they are interpreted differently by different people. And I think that’s a conversation that not only, councilors should come to some agreement on what areas of change and what is compatibility with the neighborhood actually mean,
2:44:10
and perhaps moving forward that that conversation should be held With the planning and zoning staff commissioners as well, because I think that’s where we get into some of our challenges with the residents as well. So if we could have some input from staff on that, perhaps during that conversation. Thank you.
2:44:38
Councilor, mayor pro team, hydrography, yeah, and that’s very similar to what I was going to bring up around just understanding the lens of how all of us look at Envision Longmont,
2:44:54
not just us and council, but the community. The developers staff to making sure.
2:45:00
We are all aligned on what this terminology means, is this, where the direction we want to go, but also looking at making sure we have a grounding. And I guess that would be part of that master class. I’m not sure where that would fall in if it’s already embedded in this. I think it is part of that, because it’s there for you to be able to ask questions and have discussion about the the idea is to be able to provide education, but also for you all to be able to discuss what you want to see. And I would like to also see, you know, looking at our land code, are there things that we also need to be looking at and tweaking and just making sure that we have staff? It sounds like we’ll have that to be able to answer those, those particular questions as we especially look at development moving forward, thank you.
2:45:44
Councilor Christ,
2:45:50
thank you.
2:45:52
So I’m thinking more down in where we’re talking priorities, policies and focus that I would like to see some brainstorming about how to bring down the cost of living in our city.
2:46:06
It comes before the council almost every Tuesday.
2:46:14
Thank you councilor Christ.
2:46:17
Councilor McCoy, Thank you, Mayor. I just want to echo what the Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo Farin was saying that, you know, a lot of us need to have this revisit and the conversation around this, because obviously there’s been several things from Prairie dogs To to airports to to what we just heard the last two council meetings that need to be,
2:46:48
you know, kind of solidified in our heads about how we look at things and the discussions around envision Longmont, so I like what I see here. And as usual, Sandy, you’ve really done a great job. Thank you. And I think you you probably staff will do a great job of capturing what needs to be accomplished here. So thank you. Let them know how much I appreciate their time.
2:47:14
Counselor Popkin,
2:47:16
thank you. I just want to echo
2:47:19
council member Chris comments as well on the affordability piece of that. Maybe that fits under housing specifically, but I think that would probably homeless merit its own topic if it’s not its own priority there. So if we see it as a subset of housing, great. But just wanted to echo that, could you clarify again, as I’m still getting my bearings, like, what councils authority is? Maybe this is a question for you, or for Mayor Peck, who serves on, I think, the RTD committee as well, what Council’s role or decision making authority is on rail. This
2:47:51
is probably a good Herald question. Whoever wants to take that
2:48:00
one start, I’ll jump
2:48:02
in. Well, um, our decision upon rail, let me explain.
2:48:08
RTD has a partnership with the residents of Longmont, not with the city. It is the residents of Longmont that voted for that,
2:48:20
for the tax increase, both for the base the bus service, as well as for rail. The city did not vote on that. So what is our authority? Our authority would be through
2:48:34
addressing their board for working with our directors, which is why I wanted Karen Victor in there, and
2:48:43
that’s about it, to be honest. Frpr, Front Range passenger rail district. I am on that board, so I have a voice in the authority. But that authority comes directly, as we speak, from the governor’s office. It is the governor’s mandate to build that rail system. The board is there to figure out how we do that. So at some point I would like to give Council an update on that, but it’s not going to be until probably March, because there’s a due date in March that I’m waiting for. Thank you.
2:49:21
Yeah, I think, yeah, that’s it. And I think it’s an evolving landscape. So
2:49:27
to the mayor’s point, when you when you kind of look at some of the legislation that was drafted last year, and you put it in the context of rail, RTD has a piece, Front Range passenger rail has a piece. Ctio has a piece. The governor’s office is involved in this, and I think, really facilitating how all those groups work together. And then when you look at the funding component of it, it really is something that’s rooted at the state level, and then taxes that are collected. And so if you if, as I think about.
2:50:00
Legislation and how they approached it. FISA dollars was a part of this that they talked about. They created a new funding source, car rental
2:50:10
fees.
2:50:12
Then that’s being litigated right now, I think, and so it’s multi faceted, I think, is the best way to say this. Yeah, appreciate that. Both clarifications there. I guess my question here is, just given the the meatiness of multiple topics already on here, is it worthwhile to still have rail as a discussion point or topic here under transportation? I recognize that it’s important for the region, but is it important for council to focus on that? So if I can jump in, there’s some items that are important to council for us to discuss. So we do have a contract with RTD for the first domain transit station, which is connected to rail. Well, that’s on there already, right? So it’s the rail component associated with it, because there are some things that we’re seeing that may accelerate what we have to do and how we talk about that area of our community, so it is probably connected to it, but also understanding, and I think we’ll have more clarity by the time we get here. There may be some things that accelerate some decision making that we have to make locally, and as the mayor and I have been meeting with representatives from the State,
2:51:25
it’s a conversation that they not a long months further ahead when we look on the north, northern part of the state than most communities, but we’re also working with them to facilitate conversations with our partner communities to the north. Is that accurate? Mayor, it is accurate. And
2:51:45
putting out too much information at this point is going to
2:51:51
give voice to questions from the residents that we don’t have answers for, and that becomes problematic in that we look like we don’t know what we’re doing, and so that’s why I said we’re waiting for some the first marker in March, and then there will be a large community conversation that both director, banker and I are putting together, along with where’d she go counselor
2:52:21
to help us with an event. No problem. I appreciate those clarifications. No objection to keeping that on. There just one other, two other clarifications. Sandy, I’m not seeing a timing for the like kind of policy changes section. Is that meant to be after lunch? So I’m presuming like one to three. Yeah. Yeah. So what the this is very flexible. So we would start at 11, is kind of the idea with this whole conversation, and then break it 12 for lunch, and then just continue on. Okay? So it’s just kind of, it’s flexing based on how it goes, okay. And then last, I just want to thank the Council for being flexible on the scheduling, considering I had a previous commitment for the original date. So thank you
2:53:05
to Mary. I guess I’m looking for finalization of the agenda itself, and then we can talk about the date
2:53:10
changes. We don’t need a motion. We just need a consensus on direction. Is that correct? Is there anybody on council who has an issue with this format,
2:53:22
seeing none. I think you have your direction to go. Thank you so much. Thank you help. I appreciate that. We do need to talk about the date of it, as council member Popkin mentioned he has a previous commitment that predates his council appointment, and so Don had put out a poll for everybody just to kind of find out what other time frames might work in there March is a lot of traveling and other things going on, but it does look like most of you felt that Friday the 28th was sometime that might be able to work or and it looked like, nope. Looks like the seventh did not work. So Friday the 28th if you decided to move it one week. Friday seems to work. Saturday does not seem to work for everybody. So I’m not sure if you want to continue to look for dates in April, or how you would like to proceed with the scheduling of the actual retreat.
2:54:19
Me too. We’re checking calendars
2:54:23
after that weekend of the seventh and eighth. You hit the st brain Valley School District
2:54:29
spring break for those two weekends. So you’d probably want to wait until after that if you if you decided to keep looking March
2:54:42
28 28th and ninth saying that we didn’t pull on the 28th and 29th of March, that’s another option. I.
2:55:00
Yeah. Well, it looks the fifth,
2:55:05
yeah. It’s the 13th through the 23rd
2:55:09
that we are going to sister cities to Japan. So that week is out. Two of us will be going to that councilor, McCoy,
2:55:22
thank you. Thank you, Mayor Peck, so you’re saying that
2:55:27
February 28 is that what you say? Yeah,
2:55:31
February 28 did seem to work for everybody. If you wanted to make sure you kept it to a one day retreat, it might take longer you might be able to Yes, because March 1, you have at least one council member that can’t be there on March 1. Okay, so you it would be a very long 28th or you could break it into 2/28, of February and 28th of March. I mean, you could, you could break it up into a couple different ways. If you wanted
2:55:57
to, counselor Yarbrough cannot go on the 28th is there anyone else on the first Oh, she’s, she’s available on the 28th who is not available on the 28th everybody?
2:56:07
Yes,
2:56:11
let’s go for the 28th of February. Okay, try to keep it to one day, and then if you, if you, if you end up rolling over, then we can reschedule. What’s left to talk about, oh, that’s that works, yeah, yeah, and a different or, yeah, whatever works for you all.
2:56:26
Okay, so we’ll plan one, we’ll have lots of food and hydration.
2:56:32
228, very
2:56:35
good. Thank you Mayor, thank you Council. You’re welcome. Are we going to do the legislative?
2:56:41
No, let’s do it. Yes, let’s do that before we do the consideration.
2:56:49
That’s right, it’s okay to go next. Yeah, we’re gonna go to the next one then, which is the consideration of potential amendments to land development codes,
2:57:01
landscape and comment common area standards.
2:57:12
Zach Blazek, good evening. Good evening.
2:57:18
All right,
2:57:21
good evening. Mayor Peck, members of council, Zach Blaze, senior environmental sustainability planner, here this evening to chat with you about some landscape code updates. We We haven’t updated the landscape code Since 2018
2:57:34
and a lot of what we have in the landscape code right now is from previous iterations of the code from long past. So we have recent direction from the state that will require us to spark some changes. But given recent drought conditions, wildfire conditions, regionally, what better time to implement some changes and make some other considerations?
2:57:58
So you know those would be to comply with the state law, but also to meet goals for enhanced water conservation that have been set forth by envision Longmont as well as this board very recently. So I promised Harold I would try to keep this to 10 minutes, so I’ll do my best. Okay,
2:58:21
just just a brief outline. We’re going to chat about state law, SB, 2405 which directs us to prohibit landscaping for certain water conservation practices. Chat about functional and non functional turf as it relates to our context here in Longmont. We’ll talk about our current code standards and kind of some of the things that we have in our codes now that make it difficult for applicants and for us as the city to
2:58:50
do things other than just putting grass in places. And then we’ll talk about some recommended actions.
2:58:56
So last year, the state passed SB 2405
2:59:00
to prohibit landscape practices for water conservation that include placing new non functional turf. Our code currently allow or does not allow for artificial turf or invasive plant species, but we do have a gap here on that non functional turf piece, so we’ll kind of talk about what that means again. That was passed last year. We have until January, 1 of next year to implement the changes that are required.
2:59:24
So I want to talk just quickly about what functional and non functional turf are. Functional turf is turf that’s located in a recreational use area or other space that’s regularly used for civic community or recreational purposes. My favorite example of functional turf in the city is Dawson Park.
2:59:41
You can clearly see this is like a big turf area, right? It’s a lot of grass, it’s a lot of trees, but it’s a lot of grass, right? And that’s a city park. City pays to maintain it and water it.
2:59:52
I use this park all the time. If you ever go here on a Saturday in the summer, it’s packed with people picnicking and pumping up their paddle boards.
3:00:00
And, you know, tossing Frisbee around, whatever, we look at this and we say, yeah, that has a function. It has a use. It’s a community benefit. It’s good for all of us, right? And so all of the changes that we’re seeking to make, that the state is seeking to make, does not affect these types of areas. And I just want to make that really clear, non functional turf, on the other hand, is turf that is not located in a recreational use area or other space that’s used for civic community or recreational purposes. In short, it’s turf that exists only to be green and be watered and serves no other real purpose.
3:00:32
So I have a couple examples here in the city just around the corner from our last example is on 17th and Harvard. So we’re on 17th Ave. You can see you have your busy street, you have your detached sidewalk, and in between you have your tree strip. So you have your trees 30 to 50 feet apart from each other, and you have this strip of grass, right? You’re not like throwing your picnic blanket down and having a picnic on that strip of grass. We’re not out playing catch on the strip of grass. It’s just there to be green, right? But it’s in the city right of way. We water it, we mow it. It’s our cost. So this is just an example. This type of non functional turf in these tree strips is all over the city.
3:01:10
We have some things that we can do to change these areas, but with the new state law, these types of areas would no longer be permitted.
3:01:19
Here’s another example from a recent development that you might recognize.
3:01:23
As you can see, we’re here on Ken Pratt. We have a large buffer area of landscaping that separates the road from Costco. And you can see that within that buffer area there’s trees, there’s shrubs, but for the most part, there’s quite a lot of turf grass, right? And so keep that in mind. This is just another example of here’s a bunch of grass that serves no purpose other than to satisfy the landscape requirements in the code.
3:01:49
Last example, I picked this one specifically because we were in a meeting, and discovered that this particular example has all the sprinklers on. And I felt that it was a good opportunity to show here’s again, this is what our code requires right now. There’s your trees, there’s your shrubs, and there’s grass everywhere it’s being watered. A lot of that water is going into the road, it’s evaporating off,
3:02:11
and it’s going to waste and it costs money, right?
3:02:16
So with all that in mind, I just want to touch briefly on our guiding documents. We have these goals outlined and envision Longmont that direct us to do a bunch of stuff like protect our natural environment, maintain our water supply, use native and drought tolerant materials, enhance our ecological functions of our public spaces. And then recently, as in last month, this board voted to update the water efficiency Master Plan goals in which include reducing irrigated non functional turf on city properties, integrating water efficiency across all our departments and preserving the natural environment in our watershed by committing to responsible and efficient use of water resources. So in all your wisdom, you’ve directed us to do this very recently, and staff feel that this is a great roadmap for us to actually implement some changes in our code. So thank you.
3:03:10
In addition, in the last year, staff hired a consultant to conduct a policy assessment, broad policy assessment, not just of our land use code, but of our comp plan and of our sustainability plan and of the water efficiency master plan of some of our practices, and came up with a wide scope of recommendations. Some of them we can implement at a staff level, but two of them in particular do affect specifically the land use code.
3:03:36
And we’ll talk about what those are. I’m very excited about them,
3:03:40
the first of which is to target this specific piece of the code, 15, oh 5040, C, 2e which reads that irrigated low water, consuming grass or other vegetation or materials suitable for the area, shall be the primary ground cover in areas where hardscape is not proposed. So if you’re wondering why, back on this slide, right, Costco has all this grass? Well, the reason is that our code literally requires that grass is the primary ground cover,
3:04:08
so that, you know, kind of creates a dichotomy that we can’t reconcile with if we’re going to eliminate non functional turf at the direction of the state. So and again, same on this slide, right? This is a residential development at 1901 South Hoover they are required to provide that turf in the street right of way area, because that’s what the code says.
3:04:31
So we are looking for recommendation. We are, as staff, recommending modifications to this code section to expand on our water seating practices allow for other varieties of ground cover. Think xeric, think pollinators. There’s a whole variety of great stuff that we could implement beyond just turf grass.
3:04:51
So that’s the first recommendation we’re seeking your direction on.
3:04:55
The next is to adopt a non essential turf policy and modify drought resilient.
3:05:00
Standards. So there’s a lot of things that other municipalities around have been doing that set a great example. These include doing things like limiting turf to specific areas or amounts within developments, limiting the types of grass that can be installed, or encouraging other again, xeric or pollinator type landscape installations. And then additionally, we want to implement the prohibition of new non functional turf. And this language is straight from the state on commercial, institutional or industrial properties, common interest, community properties, street rights of ways, parking lots, medians, transportation corridors. So a whole lot of different areas within the city. A lot of those areas are within city right of way and maintained by the city. And then these would also apply to all new non residential developments coming into the city. I have a little footnote on here that says you can additionally consider expanding that prohibition to residential construction.
3:05:55
Right now. There is a house bill
3:05:58
that is currently in committee at the state level that targets the exact same language specific to residential development. If we don’t address it now, I’m sure I will be back, so no pressure. But it is, it is something that is kind of in the conversation right now as well. And
3:06:16
then the last thing that I would love your direction on this evening, and this is sort of sideways, related to landscape codes, but not as much related to the water efficiency piece.
3:06:27
There’s an acronym. It’s called septed. It stands for Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and the goal of this is to design and use our built environment in ways that lead to a reduction in crime. Septed applies to a whole variety of different aspects of site development. Includes things like lighting our built design, and there’s this very small subsection of it that involves landscaping. And while we’re on the topic of updating our landscape code, this is a good opportunity to implement some septet best practices into our code. Figure while I’m here good time as any right. So part of it on this one is he’s also here having this conversation.
3:07:07
Because when we talk when, when he started this, I think actually said, Hey, we need to talk about this. Because when we were seeing other issues within our community, one of the things that we were finding is that one of the challenges that we had is that landscaping was making it more difficult for us to deal with issues in certain areas because of the requirements. And I asked them to get with the subtech group so that we could look at what adjustments that can we make to actually minimize the impacts that we’re seeing for up from other activities in these areas. So think of where you see people congregating.
3:07:46
You know, we had an issue with the area in front of
3:07:51
Chipotle on Main Street, where we kind of went round and round, because the individual ended up taking the grass out and putting in rock. Not necessarily what we’d want to see, but it was driven by the activities that we’re seeing in this area, so we thought this is a good time to merge these two concepts.
3:08:12
And so with that, again, looking for direction this evening, staff recommend that you direct us to return to a future meeting with the listed recommends to 15, oh 5040, you have the option to direct us to just return just with changes in compliance with state law, but we’re hoping you choose door number one here. That’s the end of my presentation. If you have any questions, happy to clarify Council McCoy, Thank you, Mayor pick. Well, I don’t know if there’s going to be a lot of discussion about this, but I would move to direct staff to return in a future
3:08:50
council meeting with a recommended, recommend, recommended amendments to
3:08:59
l mc
3:09:02
15.2 15.0
3:09:04
5.040
3:09:07
McCoy seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo faring to direct staff to amend LMC. 15.050
3:09:16
5.040
3:09:18
counselor Popkin, Thank you, Mayor Peck, thanks, Zach. Really thoughtful presentation, and I appreciate the intersection of the septed suggestions as well. At the same time, I think that’s really logical. You had mentioned that there were 14 policy recommendations and that staffs recommended moving forward with two right now from the consultant team that Ada hired. Yeah, certainly. So two of these recommendations had to do with the code itself. Many others included things that we could either implement at a policy level, you know, or may involve other changes to, for example, development, design, standards and construction. That’s a different staff person who will come with changes from those recommendations for me right now, I’m focused solely on.
3:10:00
Code piece, and again, a lot of, a lot of what we were able to implement, I’ll give you an example here.
3:10:08
This is a project that we’ve worked on in the last year to develop landscape conversion templates for individual homeowners who are interested in coming in and converting their turf lawn to,
3:10:21
you know, something’s your pollinator friendly, etc. That’s a recommendation that we were able to move forward with at a staff level in the last year. So it’s not like we’re ignoring the other 14 recommendations. Yeah, no, I was just curious, kind of where they where they existed, and as someone who recently converted my entire front lawn to their landscape, congratulations, the question I had, the other question I had for you is on the so you had mentioned like, one of the other recommendations was to update the code for new developments as well, so that would be separate from what we’re talking about here right now. Yes, that’s correct. So the changes we’d be implementing now would only apply to new developments, and that’s again, at the direction of the new state law, and that’s part of what you’re asking us to vote on tonight, correct? Yep, was there another layer to that that you just mentioned, or that is, we would be addressing the new developments with this. That’s correctly? Okay? That’s good, because there are quite a few.
3:11:18
I take it. There’s no way to make that like retroactive to any projects that are currently in the planning pipeline. Would they be grandfathered into the old system, or would they apply to the new code? How does that work? I will share that projects currently under development right now, I’m doing my best to have them, you know, finish their project in conformance with what these new codes show.
3:11:40
I can’t recommend, or I can’t require them now to meet codes that don’t exist, but I’m doing my best to get projects in line, as you know, as much as I possibly can great. And does that apply to how about projects that are in like the development pipeline, but not being built yet, so that are going through the planning process, to the Development Review Committee, many projects that have already been approved but haven’t started construction yet. There’s nothing more I can add to those, okay, but anything that is currently that has not been approved yet, but is working their way through the development review process and staff and planning Zoning Commission and us that still they would be subject to any update so long as it is approved. Yeah. And again, I’m working with those folks as best as I can now to kind of
3:12:19
prepare them early, cool. Well, I appreciate that, and let’s get this done. Thank you very
3:12:26
much. And I have a comment as well. We can, at a future meeting, consider incentives to already develop projects like Costco,
3:12:40
etc. Anyway, that’s just a thought. No more comment from councils. Let’s vote.
3:12:54
That carries unanimously. Thank you, Zach, thank you, and we’re back to our assistant city manager
3:13:02
these are 2025, legislative bills that are recommended for city council position. Thank you, Mayor. We have a couple transportation ones and one on back flow prevention devices. So just a reminder, since this is the first legislative update of the season, the process that we that the city council has approved, is that I read all the bills and take a look. I send them to city staff for comment. They suggest either changes or let me know whether this is going to be really good for Longmont or really bad for Longmont. And then we bring those to you for an official position. That’s the only official position is the one that you vote on as a city. City staff can certainly speak for themselves in their own expertise areas, but the only people that can speak for the city as a whole is you all after you vote one way or another on these bills. After that happens, then I contact our legislators and let them know your positions, and am always available to them to answer questions and to be able to help in their own decision making process. One of the things about city staff speaking is is is that when you talk about their expertise area, we still look for council guidance in terms of what we speak to so if Council sits the policy directive as staff, we don’t deviate from the policy directive that council said. So I wanted to make sure that’s really clear. Okay, yeah, thanks. Okay, so we have three bills for today. The first one is House Bill, 2510 44 concerning authorization for local governments to generate additional fee based funding for local vulnerable road user protection strategies. So this would allow you to levy your own different kinds of fees on things in order to be able to pay for, for example, improvements that may come as Vision Zero recommendations or other transportation things, particularly for the safety of people that are on the road. Because this supports Council’s direction on Vision Zero initiatives, and basically gives like a new tool to be able to be used. Staff recommends City Council support House Bill 2510, 44,
3:14:59
I.
3:15:01
I I approve the support of HB, 2510 44
3:15:07
been moved by myself, seconded by councilor McCoy. Is
3:15:11
there any discussion
3:15:14
what happened to councilor Popkins?
3:15:20
And while we wait, I want to say that during Dr cog we we discussed all of these bills
3:15:30
and one more that died.
3:15:35
So it’s been moved councilor Popkin and seconded. Let’s vote on this 1044, Bill.
3:15:52
And that carries six to one with Councilor Christ in opposition. Thank you, Mayor Peck. The next one is House Bill. 2510, 77 concerning requirements for individuals who work. Individuals who work on backflow prevention devices, and removing the licensure requirement for individuals who inspect, test or repair for devices. So in 2024 the plumbing Association sponsored and passed a bill requiring licensed plumbers to be the only ones to handle backflow device installation. These are critical this is critical infrastructure for the city to ensure operations, and so when they made that designation, everyone who was licensed as a backflow prevention inspector then was no longer able to do that work. So that’s creating a back blog at this point. I don’t believe that the sponsor of the 2024 Bill had that as an intention. In fact, they’re the ones running this correction bill, but we absolutely support it because we want to make sure that, you know, we would encourage the city council to support it because it would help to reduce the backlog on backflow prevention inspection. So for that reason,
3:16:55
Staff recommends Council support House Bill. 2510, 77
3:16:59
councilor McCoy, I second. I mean I second evening, I move house bill 2025,
3:17:10
1070 as presented,
3:17:14
been moved by councilor McCoy to move house bill 1077 seconded by councilor Chris. Let’s any discussion, seeing none. Let’s vote.
3:17:27
And that carries unanimously. Thank you, Mayor. The last one is Senate Bill, 2530, considering measures to increase transportation mode choice to reduce emissions. This bill is well meaning. The bill requires Department of Transportation to present a statewide mode mode choice assessment, and for the transportation Legislative Review Committee as well as others, to really kind of set what do we want as those goals for transportation and to reduce emission. While, you know, certainly that’s a goal for a lot of us, is to be able to reduce emissions at the same time, it really puts the onus on cities to be able to track and deal with a lot of that. So while the City Council supports the reduction of emissions due to transportation, this bill is an unfunded, unclear mandate, and Staff recommends that city council oppose Senate Bill. 2530,
3:18:15
I move to
3:18:16
oppose Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo ferry moved to oppose.
3:18:21
Let’s see what is this one? Oh, 30, yes, okay, seconded by councilor McCoy. Let’s vote. Oh,
3:18:29
is there any discussion? Yes, that’s you. Councilor Popkin,
3:18:34
Thank you, Mayor Peck just a couple clarifying questions here. So the
3:18:40
the only main, or the primary action of this bill is to
3:18:45
have require municipalities or the state to conduct the mode choice assessment the way it sits right now. It’s probably both, but it does specify municipalities,
3:18:55
okay, so this is basically saying municipalities above 100,000 people, which or above so that would include us,
3:19:05
would be required to create this mode choice plan. We already have a multi modal transportation goals. We have a plan for that that’s baked into envision Longmont. I know we don’t have maybe an updated study, but this would be basically be asking to complete an additional study or assessment on top of all of the work we have already done on this topic. Yes,
3:19:28
okay, just clarifying, then, for folks that like this is something that is important to the city and helps advance our goals and helps reduce traffic. This bill and this assessment may not be additive or a value out of here.
3:19:42
Thank you.
3:19:44
It’s just more work on what we’re already doing. So let’s vote,
3:19:54
and that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. You.
3:20:00
This was a motion. Sorry, this was a motion to oppose. Yes.
3:20:06
Now it passes unanimously. Thank you, Mayor and council.
3:20:10
So we’re now final call public invited to be heard. Is there anybody in the public that would like to address Council?
3:20:22
Just a minute. Lance, hang in. Sorry. Lance. Linda Bitner, 9455 north, 89th I’m one of the people who has been coming to talk to you promoting growth in terms of more middle missing middle housing. And I just want to say thank you very much to each of you. I know you’ve been inundated with calls and phone call calls, phone calls, emails, meetings, etc, so thank you very much for taking all of those and listening to us. Also want to thank the city staff. I know the city clerk’s office and the manager’s office and the planning department have been taking calls and been very responsive, so thank you for that. Also want to say that as a non City resident, you know right on the border, but I know we don’t have the same kind of standing that residents have, and I do appreciate you listening to us. And lastly, I want to counter, counter something I heard last week where an individual seemed to be thinking he was speaking for a lot of other people when he said he didn’t think habitat for housing, Habitat for Humanity. Housing should be in the middle of a neighborhood, you know, it should be pushed off to the side, because people would not want that up against their backyard. And
3:21:40
I’m deeply offended by that idea. I was thrilled when the developer of the quail property said, Hey, we can build habitat, maybe along the north side. And I think that’s great if they could make the whole property habitat. I and I think all of my neighbors would appreciate that. So I just want to counter that notion that people are against that, because not all of us are. Thank you. Thank you, Lance,
3:22:11
mayor and council. My name is Lance wicker, 17.
3:22:16
Can you hold your mic up please, so that we can hear you.
3:22:20
My name is Lance wicker, 1750 College Street. I’m going to make this quick as possible. Thank you, Mayor and council for all your ears. Staff deserves an extra thank you for all their work. They are very nice and generous.
3:22:39
I would like to say that
3:22:44
the boxes for the library being at Centennial pool, and knowing what’s going on at Centennial pool, and you all know what’s going on at Centennial pool, that maybe it could get moved, maybe just a half a block over and move it towards the firehouse. This way it’s still by the schools. But in case we have to do some work at Centennial pool that we don’t have to remove it and then replace it and then put it back. I do love the idea of it being Bicentennial pool, but like I said, with the issues that are going on at Centennial pool, maybe, you know, just temporary housing it at the firehouse would be a good idea, you know, so it stays in that community. Thank you, Mayor and Council, thank you for your comments.
3:23:53
Jonathan hoffland, 1036, Willow Creek circle. And
3:23:59
want to thank Mayor and City Council for listening to the public today, and I just want to continue on with some of what I was saying earlier, and I wasn’t allowed to speak. What
3:24:12
I wanted to say was that
3:24:15
is related to the development direction of the city in general, and
3:24:23
one of the reasons I talked about the area where I live, in the Mile Square radius of my house, with already 2000 existing 3000 soon, that are already approved and heading towards 4000 is that most of the recent and proposed developments in the city are corporately owned rent, corporately owned rent farms that siphon money straight out of town to line the pockets of those in New York or Atlanta and the likes of Blackrock, okay, just like those, and that’s 4000 in one.
3:25:00
1/8 of the town, the 1/8 that I live in. Okay, so just those 4000 units will suck out almost $100 million
3:25:12
out of the city, okay, the city, you know that, and it’s not, and that’s per year, every year, for perpetuity. Okay, that’s just not sustainable.
3:25:25
The city works hard to attract and keep primary jobs in town that bring money into Longmont from outside recently with tax breaks to Smuckers to manufacture their own crustibles. Are you aware that every three to four corporate apartment units approved negates one primary job.
3:25:48
I think we got to think of it in that way. Okay, Longmont has a lot of primary jobs, has lost a lot of primary jobs, including my own.
3:25:57
Think Seagate, Amgen, MAC store. The list could go on recently, it seems like Longmont is taking one step forward and two steps back. There’s a giant sucking sound of soulless corporate apartment complexes, and it’s really turning Longmont into a colonial establishment where the rest of the corporate world is taking advantage of us, and I’d rather see that money stay in town.
3:26:30
Thank you.
3:26:36
Good evening. Jen Morrison, 9569 Schlegel Street. I just want to echo what they’re saying. Just thank you
3:26:44
genuinely for listening. I know sometimes it’s a lot when a lot of people are coming to say the same things, and hopefully that tells you that that people really care about this. And it’s been an interesting being part of this whole process, like I got involved because this is my neighborhood, but, but it became clear really quickly that this was a much larger issue than that. This was not the micro issue that I thought it was. This was
3:27:12
not a single development issue. This was,
3:27:16
this was
3:27:17
a greater question of how we handle development moving forward as a city and and I was really encouraged to see
3:27:25
this community come together to say, like, here’s what we do want to see. You know, here’s not just what we don’t want to see, but here’s what we do want to see in the direction we would would really like to see Lamont going. And so I hope you guys really take that to heart and use this momentum that the community got involved here. And I know you guys are always wanting more community engagement. Use this momentum and keep the conversation going, you know, because this is not the end this, and it’s not even an end for those property, for that those parcels,
3:27:58
but there’s a lot more coming behind it. So, you know, use this opportunity, and I’m happy to help any way that I can, you know, to to foster that, that communication. So, thank you. Thank you, Jen.
3:28:19
Hello. I’m Chris Ennis Blue Mountain circle, and I just wanted to take a moment and stay this late to say thank you. I know there are a lot of others who would want to say the same thing to you, and couldn’t stay quite this late, but we really appreciate that you listened, and it felt like a really healthy model for the kinds of future interactions we might have that. Jen just mentioned
3:28:43
it seemed like a two way street for both communication and respect, and for that, we really commend you. Thank you and I thank everybody for the respect they showed.
3:28:58
Okay. Tracy bonius, where the heck do I live? 1409, Clover Creek drive. You can tell I’m tired, and I know you all too, so I just stayed this late to thank you again. And I know we were talking about repetition, and it means that everyone really believes
3:29:12
it. We’ve all thanked you, and we do appreciate you, and I want you to understand that. And so thank you and peace out. Hopefully I’m the last speaker, and good night. Oh no, I had one more behind you. I will be like I said, I’m new, but I’ve enjoyed these coffee with council, so I have no even dogs anymore fight, but I’ll be there just waving and listening and learning. So nice to meet y’all. Thank you. An
3:29:36
Executive Session. Hi garage, 2148 Stewart street. So I’ve been wanting for a long time, actually, to put together a three minute public invited about water. There is a presentation tonight. There was one a few weeks ago. And when I listen to these, I It’s never clear to me what’s driving the desire to.
3:30:00
Reduce water usage. I mean, I hear people say, you know, it’s like, oh, we live in the
3:30:06
high plains, kind of dry area, and you know, grass uses a lot of water.
3:30:13
But the few months ago, the water department showed a had a presentation, and they had a plot that showed their treated water over the years, and it’s just the amount they’ve been treating has been decreasing. So sure, seems like that we are reducing our water usage. And I also am of the belief that long one has a lot of water rights, and so are we out of those water rights or what’s going on. And really, I would just would like somebody the next time that there’s a presentation, does somebody really explain what’s driving it?
3:30:51
I went to a civics set of speakers and talks in Denver about a year and a half ago, and one of the sessions was on Colorado water. And I came away from that thinking that they’re really in Colorado. There’s not a problem. We don’t have the issue that California has, where they have problems building reservoirs. We can just build more reservoirs. I mean, yes, we do live in a dry area, but I think we can have all the water we want. We just build more infrastructure as as it’s needed. And grass is nice for some people. We have three grandchildren. They’re very young, and it’s nice to let them go out and play in the backyard. The plot that they showed with the xeriscaping. You can’t let children play in that. I understand the motivation of residents wanting that and such. But grass is also serves a purpose for people. And I also think it visually looks good. And so this really desire to rid ourselves of it, I think is a little unfounded.
3:31:48
And again, I just really want, I want to understand,
3:31:52
really the core, the core driving behind that. I’m really encouraged on the retreat that you guys are going to be talking about in visual England is alluded to, or more directly stated, it’s really the zoning and that that I think is causing us so it’s champion green, it was bond farm, and now it was coral road. And these things are just going to keep coming along until, unless we kind of address the fundamental issues. I was a little disappointed you voted to pursue those fees for road projects. We have a point seven 5% tax right now to cover all of that. And so now I’m a little concerned that
3:32:26
some of you might be thinking about stacking some fees and stuff on to bills or whatever for more road projects. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thanks and thank you for that. Someday you’re going to come up here and tell us something we’re doing, right? I can’t wait. No, I ended with a thank you. I’m sorry did that not come through clearly
3:32:47
the
3:32:49
Well, fair point, Mayor pack. Fair point, Mayor Peck. And it is, it is. It’s difficult to listen to complainers all the time. Thank you. Okay, so one more, I really do believe in feelings.
3:33:06
Yeah, it’ll be it’ll be less than a minute. I really do believe in feelings. I feel very embarrassed that I’ve lived in this city for 21 years, as the first time I’ve come to a city council meeting. I’m very grateful that you guys
3:33:18
serve to these high paying jobs to make the decisions for us as citizens. I really do respect that, and very joyful to meet you Matthew and Ward two, so thank you again.
3:33:34
Now that I see no one else coming up, I close final call public invited to be heard, and we’re going to move on to the mayor and council comments. We’re
3:33:44
not done. We have an executive session. I know it’s one thing, Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say happy birthday to Rosa Parks. And many of you did exactly what she did, by coming to city council and standing up for what you felt was right, like Rosa Parks. So I would not want to, I didn’t want to end this without lifting Rosa Parks up and what she did for at least the black people in their community before my time. But I’m so appreciative of those who went before us, and so thank you, and people in the future will thank you for what you all have done. So thank you.
3:34:25
I just want to say I learned how to make some incredible egg bites. If anybody’s interested for the recipe, just let me know.
3:34:36
Oh, that’s why you need egg bites.
3:34:39
So now we’re at City Manager, remarks, City Attorney,
3:34:46
no comments, except you’re adjourning into exact session. As a reminder, can I have a motion to adjourn into executive session? So moved,
3:34:56
it’s been moved by Mayor Pro Tem Hidalgo, faring seconded by councilor McCoy.
3:35:00
Vote, oh, I just shut
3:35:02
everything down. I
3:35:05
We’re adjourned, and we’ll move into Executive Session,
3:35:09
study session, room, applause.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai