Board of County Commissioners Business Meeting - workshop

This is wonderful. We're going to go slowly because we are missing a commissioner who will be joining us before we get to the end of introductions around the room, please, starting with Commissioner Baker.

Jeff Baker.

Please spell that for the record, sir.

B-A-K-E-R. Commissioner, I was born in a log cabin. Jim Kotzer.

Public Works and Development, Transportation Division Manager.

Kendra Davis, Commissioner's Office.

Rhonda Fields, County Commissioner.

Leslie Summey, Commissioner.

Quinn Schultz, Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs.

In a new position, yes?

Congratulations. Thank you, I appreciate that. Daniel Hyden, VP of Transportation and Mobility with Denver South. Thanks for having us.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner of District 2 and member of the Board of Denver South. I'm very excited about this because this is my turf. Yay.

Ruthie Goff, County Attorney's Office.

Celia Beth Hamill, PWD Acting Director.

Carrie Warren-Gully, Rockville County Commissioner. Yes.

That was wonderful.

Do we have anybody online that we know of?

I don't see anybody, but no one's there. Okay, great. Well, I am very, very excited about this. Through Celia Reth Hamel, our Acting Director of Public Works and Development, we have Mr. Jim Kosser, who's going to be doing some stuff with Daniel. And so, who wants to get us started?

I thought I'd kick it off if you don't mind.

Thank you.

All right. So I believe we came in contact to you a few weeks ago. I unfortunately was on vacation, so couldn't join. But we have wrapped up our micromobility study. And out of that process, we came up with or started to develop this process, this partnership with Denver South. So this is a great opportunity for the county to partner with a local organization group that's looking at micro mobility and so with that I just want to turn it over to Jim and his team to also I didn't know if you had anything else you wanted to add to it and then we'll turn it over to our partners to share with you the opportunity that they they're bringing forth to us all right thank you Selah and we're very excited for this program it's a pilot program

Doesn't cost the county any money. And it increases mobility.

You're already everyone's favorite person.

So Daniel's not going to disappoint us. He's going to talk about the pilot, what that entails. So Daniel.

Thank you. Thanks, Jim. Thanks. Board of County Commissioners, appreciate you having us today. Yeah, thanks to Jim, Stephen, and the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office for keeping an eye on things out there. Yeah, thanks for having us today. So I wanted to, this is kind of a pitch, but again, we're not really, we're not asking for money. We're kind of asking for, I guess, philosophical alignment on this. So the South I-25 Corridor Microbiality Pilot Program Expansion. So we're calling this an expansion. We've included a couple handouts today. These include some data of the SPIN program that has been running in Meridian and Inverness for the past few years. There's another wing of this pilot, too, up in what we call the Greenwood Entertainment District. In that map, it's the orange zone there, so kind of Fiddler's Green, that area. So as you can see, what we're talking about is an expansion, but it's also just kind of bringing these programs together and making them more contiguous, working with the stakeholders to make that map connect so that people can actually take these to and from these places, as opposed to having these little islands. So those are the handouts. I just wanted to provide that context. Okay. All right, so bio program history. I'll be pretty quick about this. We've been studying dockless micromobility for many years now, quite a few years. I mean, I think dockless micromobility really came on the scene really quickly and pretty fierce back in like 2017, 2018. And we actually put together a study years ago with City of Greenwood Village, some metro districts. City of Centennial was involved in that too, just kind of looking at what a program could look like. And eventually it actually kind of came to fruition, even though we hadn't been running the program, uh, Denver South. Um, so the Meridian really began the Meridian Metro District down in an unincorporated out of county that started in November, 2021. And kind of the program rules have been the same since inception. It basically works as a user who wants to use a scooter or an e-bike, in that case down there, pays a dollar to unlock the device, and then the Metro District picks up the rest of the tab. So that can be like a $8, $10, $12 tab that they've been picking up for years. Which is great, Inverness was really interested, so Inverness hopped on with an expansion, and they've been trying that out, and eventually it made its way up to the Greenwood Entertainment District. So that's included, of course, unincorporated Douglas County, unincorporated Arapahoe County is what we're talking about, but also the city of Greenwood Village, city of Centennial are also now involved with this, as well as several metro districts. So we are coming up on, well, we actually just, we are kind of on, upon the end of this leg of the pilot for the Greenwood Entertainment District area, which ended July 1st, technically. But we are contributing to City of Greenwood Village and City of Centennial for a couple months until September, just to keep things rolling. And then that's what we're really shooting for, for the timeline for this expansion we'll get into in a moment. So we're kind of in this time period where these pilots have done their work, expanded, come together, and now we want to expand them even further is what we're talking about. So what's next? Denver South, really this is at the behest of our partners, proposes to lead a connected contiguous expansion of the SPIN pilot program on behalf of stakeholders, businesses, employees, residents, and visitors of the corridor. Denver South has been a part of this program for quite a while. I mean, we started off with Meridian really just helping with kind of marketing, getting the word out. We have been actively contributing to the program in the Greenwood Entertainment District area. What we're talking about now is managing the program because there's not really another party that can speak for the entire corridor as our organization does. We're being asked to do that. Best part, we're still talking about dollar unlock fee and then the partnership would pick up the rest of the tab. And then, you know, savings for current program partners because it's, we're talking economies of scale. It's more expensive to run it in these kind of pocketed areas than it would be to bring it all together. So the what, why, who, where, and when. What's the plan? That's Denver South's map. That's not, I'll show you the map for what we're proposing here in a moment, and that's in your packets. The plan is to expand and connect the existing service areas like we talked about. RETAIN CURRENT RULES, REGULATIONS, REQUIREMENTS, AND GOALS, WHICH WERE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED BY, YOU KNOW, THE PARTNERS, BUT CITY OF GREENWOOD VILLAGE DID A LOT OF WORK ON THE RULES AND REGS, AND THOSE ARE ALSO PART OF YOUR BOARD PACKETS. AND ELEVATE DENVER SOUTH'S PARTNERSHIP ROLE, LIKE WE TALKED ABOUT, WITH BRINGING ADDITIONAL FUNDING TO MATCH THE METRO DISTRICTS, AS WELL AS HANDLING THE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT WITH SPIN. Why expand? Employer and employee demand, you'll see in some of these figures for at least the southern, I guess, portion of our service areas. Increased demand, it continues. Leverage economies of scale. And in the Denver South Mission Alignment, I believe most of you, if not all of you in the room are aware, Denver South is both a transportation management association and an economic development partnership. So we see it as great for transportation demand management, bringing solutions so people can get to our island, but also get around our island, as listed down here. But as an economic development partnership, we also see this as a great amenity that we're able to advertise when we're attracting and recruiting employers, employees, bringing them to the region like, hey, you can take a scooter for a dollar. We think it's pretty awesome. Who would be involved? So funding partners and Denver South, of course, funding and management, but also the other half of the funding pool for this would come from our metro district partners, Greenwood Consolidated, Goldsmith, Inverness, and Meridian. The only one that's not currently contributing in this program is Goldsmith, just because the new boundaries would include Goldsmith, so into the DTC. They work alongside Meridian and Greenwood Consolidated. While we will be presenting to their boards, we do have commitment from them already if this works out on the city-county side that they'll move forward with funding. There are also a few employers and property owners who are interested in having a piece of the system. We're still trying to work out what that might look like. Whether it be their employees get that dollar refunded or they get some... I don't know. We're still trying to figure that out. But there is interest in privately funding this as well, which is really interesting. Not only demand from individuals and employees, but employers as well. So the jurisdictional or right-of-way partners as we're looking at it. Of course, Arapahoe County is why we're here today. Douglas County, City of Centennial, City of Greenwood Village. And of course, we have the current iteration of the pilots, the program. We already have these partners involved in yeah we hope to continue the great partnership and the operator of the vendor in this case would be spin we've been working with for years and they've been doing a really good job what also makes this unique program is that it's actively managed so there are Folks on staff with SPIN, we contract with them. They go out, they have vans to pick up the scooters and charge them. They have a facility locally in Centennial where they take these things to charge them and maintain them. So it is an actively managed program. Where would it operate? Okay, I had to commit to pretty much everybody we talked to that I would stamp draft all over this map. This is the first of seven presentations to not only the city councils we talked about, but to four metro district boards. And of course, everybody has their own opinion on maps. It makes it really difficult. So we're open to hearing that. The logic behind this map that we put together is, I showed you that Denver South map before. That's our service area. We really don't have a lot of say what happens outside of that. We barely have a say what happens inside of that.

That's true.

That's why we have to ask permission for everything. But... So our logic here, the best we can do is, yeah, this is our service area that includes City of Greenwood Village in green, but light green up there, yellow for City of Centennial, red for unincorporated Arapahoe County. and then dark green for unincorporated Douglas County. And as you'll see, you see a few cutouts in there. That's residential. As you all are probably also aware, I believe, we partner with the Southeast Public and Metropolitan District, which is based on commercial property. So we don't actually get mill levy or tax or anything from residential. It all comes from the commercial corridor. When would the pilot launch in and right now September 1st 2026 through August 31st 2027 we have identified funding for that So that's no problem, and we imagine it would be popular into the future and better South would continue to be involved But we don't want to over commit you know in terms of any of our funding partners So that's what we're saying for now will be a one-year kind of pilot expansion That's the high level.

Can we go to the next slide? Okay.

Oh, there you go. Okay. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was on there. Yeah. Excellent.

That's something. Thank you, Daniel. Daniel will be here for questions. I will. Please stay around. So like Daniel mentioned, the public works staff sees similar or the same benefits of micro mobility as what Denver South does. So we have this great light rail system that runs through Denver South area. And that first and last half mile solution is really important. And this micro mobility study will help support that light rail system, getting people to and from that system. So increases transportation choices, So mobility is going to be increased. It's a sustainable option with these scooters. And it's removing those vehicles that make those short trips during the day. So we see a huge benefit to the area. And people are asking for it. As Daniel mentioned, there's employers that are touting this as a benefit to their new employees. Come work for us. We have scooters. I wanted to mention... Daniel, gloss over it quickly. There's existing micromobility services in unincorporated Arapahoe County. I did not know this until we were exploring this. So Inverness Metro Improvement District has expanded from Meridian into the Douglas County portion of their business park and also into the unincorporated parts. And talking with our attorney's office, there's nothing that prohibits them from doing this. We just don't have any oversight of that. So this will put us into the driver's seat, if you would, on what's important to the county. Pay attention to that spin. So we're really looking forward to this opportunity. As it relates to Arapahoe, Celia mentioned that earlier, Arapahoe identified this area as one of the top locations for microability services within the county. So that's very good. It supports the need for this pilot and those that are asking for it. So that study is supporting this effort. Arapago has money for a pilot project. So if Denver South implements this project, Arapago wouldn't have to contribute money to a pilot project to explore how micromobility would perform in this area. So this is a great addition. We kind of see this as an extension of the Arapago study. but just Denver South is leading it. So it's very excellent there. The county's goals here of the program would be to give oversight, but work with the sheriff's office, talk with Bureau Chief McClim and with the attorney's office on how best to do this. So we definitely want to coordinate with other departments here. and offices in the county and implement the service to address, you know, choice of mode, first and last half mile, providing better access to the local amenities. So we're very excited. We'd also like to use this pilot project to give us data and experience to expand in other areas or to sharpen our pencil and do it better in this area. So that's some of our goals out of this pilot project. Can you go to the next slide? So we'd like to of course open this up to give Daniel an opportunity to answer any questions and then Anything we'd like to hear back from the board on what your concerns would be on this micro mobility study. As you gear up those questions, the next steps for the study would be, or for this pilot to go live, is Daniel's going to present to Centennial and Grunin Village, have those conversations and get buy-in from their elected bodies. So that could delay the project, or it could just reality, I guess, because of the concerns. And then the county would ask Ben to draft a license agreement for the county. We would provide some comments to it, coordinating with the attorney's office. And then we would bring it to the executive session to the board an executive session and have a conversation And then eventually on consent agenda to get past The public works director does not have authority to sign this type of a license agreement And so we would bring it back to the board in a public meeting to get So with that

Commissioner Baker thank you madam chair so just a question it seems like the expansion is geographical in nature and not service so scooters no plans to go to bikes or anything like that it's a very good question and so there have been the blue you're looking at here Commissioner

So that program started off, that area, with I think it was 50 devices total. It was 25 scooters, 25 e-bikes. It has since upped to, I believe it's 90 scooters, 25 e-bikes, about that. They've found over time, and it shows it in the data, that e-bikes just aren't as popular. E-bikes are pretty popular for private ownership. The majority of people buy them, but when it comes to sharing and renting, people prefer scooters. Yeah, which is interesting. The Orange area, we are now up to 50 scooters. It started off with 25 in that area. So the way things have been going, if there's a special request by this group or the city councils, we could certainly entertain e-bikes, more bikes, but we're trending more towards e-scooters as being... The primary option is easier to manage the fleet. If we have special requests, we can always look into e-bikes, but it's probably going to be scooters. And so right now, I think we're sitting at a total of about 160 devices. We will be upping that to 210 total to kind of fill in. So not like a tremendous amount more, but a few more to make sure we have coverage.

Commissioner Warren-Gleith? Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, it sounds like it's currently really successful, so expanding it, and I like that they would be attached at that point then. I'm curious if the sheriff's department or any of the police departments in those areas have identified particular areas of, we probably need to do some improvements to make it safe, or how... Do we give suggested corridors or, like, what does that look like? Can I see? Yes.

I'm here, ma'am.

Yes. All right, Chief McClellan.

Hello. So I had some conversations with my peers at Greenwood Village who had a little more experience with this. and then contacted our own folks. I literally got one story about deputies, I think it was two guys on the same incident who had to jump over one of these while chasing someone. That was the only... concern out of you know 130 people so and we've had the same conversation with the city when they reached out about any concerns we have so I think the way that these are the way they work the fact that you have to you do have to pay to unlock it everything about this system we haven't really had any problems at all even from a traffic safety my other concern was how many of these folks have gotten run over and we have zero

Wow.

Some of these areas are kind of congested.

So that may obviously change with expansion into other areas. We'll have to see, but we have no reason to object and it seems like a pretty good idea.

Thank you very much. Did you have anything else you wanted to add on top of that?

No, I mean that's what we've heard from all the parties as well is no major incidents to their knowledge. It does help Yeah, that it is an actively managed program. We do have folks on the ground. In other markets, Denver, for example, although their new provider, I think, is a little more actively managed, but when these things first came out, if you remember, you would It was basically gig work. You'd have people come out in their pickup trucks and charge them. So it was more of a free-for-all. I think it does help that they get picked up every day. They get rebalanced, put in the right place. So from a clutter perspective, that helps. Yeah, I mean, there is, you know, like anything with bicycles as well, with anybody roller skating or skateboarding, it's crossing some of these arterials is difficult. And so we're working with Spin to... really highlight those areas where there could be conflicts. But, you know, at the end of the day, it kind of falls on personal responsibility.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Commissioner Campbell?

Cool. So I was thinking about the bikes as well and about the proposed district. And I think this is, so first of all, I live in, I think I live in the, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

the orange box and there are a lot of times when like a group of friends of us we're crying we want to just kind of not have to take a car kind of whatever and go right or go west into you know go to one up go to kind of stuff just across the highway and kind of be able to connect this whole area and hit more places and so from a user and like like resident perspective this continuity is Awesome. Also, I will say, and I will just say for the record, these are a bunch of like 30, you know, from 25 to 45, we'll call that group, and they're looking to not drink and drive, right? And so it's great to hear that there haven't been those kind of incidences, and I'd rather somebody fall over on a scooter than run into a traffic pole that costs a million dollars in a car, you know? Keeps people safe. And so from a safety perspective, from a convenience, environment, sustainability, like I have been very excited about this for a long time. I was looking at those numbers on the bikes and was kind of thinking about it as well. Unless you're going from tip to tail, which at this current point you couldn't because the service would cut out. Yeah. But once you're kind of in that Park Meadows area you kind of need like for bikes You kind of want some space you like you need kind of more time to really make it worth it And this is setting me up for maybe pilot expansion v.3 is what we talk about constantly is that east to west right and I think that figuring that out could be really cool for a future Program because then you've got you've got some north-south and then you've got east-west which has been a huge conversation at Denver South as well as here So just sort of throwing that out there for future consideration The other thing that I know that some of these apps do is they can put on either preferred routes or like a bike route but when you're when we're in DC and you're taking these and You can go like bike lanes. Yeah, okay when when we're in DC and I take these I There you can put bike routes and different things like that So that would be something as you're kind of working with the planning departments and the different divisions or traffic Pulling those and then feeding them into the app and I think highlighting that if they can't get so sophisticated and I know we have this data and I know Centennial has the data on tricky spots at different times or where you know kind of a collision could occur yeah that but I think if we just map out the the bike route or there are preferred route that that could solve a lot of it The other thing is when Kotzer, you said this will put us in the driver's seat. Does that mean just the license agreement, it gives us a little bit more authority? Okay, cool. I just wanted to clarify with that.

I can add to, yes, there's a license agreement, which I think is very important. Denver South too in taking this over would we bake this into so every month we have our technical committee meetings we meet with our public works directors planners engineers from the cities and counties throughout the corridor and some metro districts and we need to talk about projects programs that's where we distribute vision 2035 funding so the governance structure is we would bake this into those meetings of kind of leadership staff at our cities and counties they would get to hear about the data talk about the program and then of course Denver South reports out to the board of county commissioners every year so we would build this into that presentation we could also come back and present more frequently too if that's of interest and there's a couple license agreements that we can springboard from Greenwood Village has one with SPIN and then VAO has one with Denver

and they're revocable, so if you don't do what we say, adjust or we're gonna suspend.

Cool, okay. So you're going from 160 to 210, but you're also, I don't know if that is a proportional increase to the geography, but looking at this fill-in right here, it feels like it's a more than proportional increase to, as in the population you're gonna be increasing by that will have access is greater than the proportion with which you're increasing the devices. Is there a, when you're going through TAC and you're going through this review process, Is there an option to increase the number of devices as we go through even just the annual pilot? Yes. And do we have any data on unmet demand? I see we have data on app downloads. Do we see how many people kind of want to find one and then aren't able to find one?

SPIN does have that data. I didn't report it on this. I mean, we could provide that. But it hasn't been such an issue here. I think there's been enough supply currently where it's not a big issue. But, yeah, now that we're going to see, I would say, plenty of induced demand with more people getting excited about this, that's something we certainly need to keep our eyes on. It's a good observation.

I think it's also awesome just to see, and this is what we talk about with RTD a lot too, is the continuity of service. So I'm really glad for Greenwood Village and Centennial to kind of be taking this on in these interim months because continuity is huge on this kind of thing. I love seeing it go up. I love also going like, oh yeah, January 2023 was constantly snowy. Like I just remember some of these specific dates. And so I think I also put here, no winter. The numbers didn't go down a lot this winter. And I think this is just a really great opportunity to, I just could not possibly be more of a fan of this. And very excited for us to hopefully opt in And to make sure we're being helpful in whatever we can do. And yeah, I like kind of the piece by piece of this as well. So that we're growing, it's change management, it's sustainable growth in terms of behavioral change, which is I think ultimately what a lot of what we want. And the more these are accessible and the more it can be continuous and connect. Yeah, I wanna be able to scoot over to Target. I can walk to Safeway, but I'd like to scoot over to Target. I think this is awesome and will prove a success case so that we can keep sort of growing where it makes sense and I imagine and what it would be interesting on the east west which we've talked about at Arapago and Denver South is where are people kind of coming from right so you could see like a parker like kind of a thing like that you know and I think it'll just be very exciting I love the sustainable growth and the plan that we have for this

Appreciate that, Commissioner. Yeah, that's, you know, it's great about having a contract with SPIN, too, is that we do own the data, which is nice, and that's why, you know, I'm able to present it, because they have to share it. It's not just that they want to. We think SPIN does good work, and they're good to work with, but to be able to see that data, make informed decisions into the future, we think it's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, cool.

What do we think about this idea, Commissioners? by thumbs up to expand service and through a pilot project in Centennial Greenwood Village and unincorporated areas within the county. So, thank you.

Thank you. Excellent. Appreciate it.

Come back anytime. Okay, yeah.

We will be back. We'll report data.

Okay.

Thank you very, very much. Boy, oh boy.

I know they're taking a break.

Well, yeah. So we'll get going here. Okay. Don, can you hear us?

I can, yes. All right.

Thank you. All right.

Okay, do we have, we don't have to go around the room again. So may I have a motion, please, to go into executive session?

Madam Chair? Yes, Commissioner Baker. I move that the board go into executive session pursuant to section 24-6-402, parent 4, parent B, and E of the Colorado Revised Statutes to develop strategy and instruct negotiations, negotiators, and receive legal advice regarding the following. One, Eduardo Barraza case settlement demand. Two, settlement authority on the Anna Finger notice of claim. And three, update on FOP negotiations and pursuant to 246402 of the Colorado revised statutes to receive legal advice regarding the Azarte case.

Is there a second? Second, sure. Yeah, cool. It has been moved by Commissioner Baker and properly seconded by Commissioner Campbell to go into executive session. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Wonderful. We are in executive session. Thank you very much.