Board of County Commissioners Business Meeting - workshop

Good afternoon, everybody. We're here for a study session this afternoon. Let's go ahead and get started with introductions around the room.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner.

Tiffany Bloom, County Attorney's Office. Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office. Rhonda Fields, Commissioner.

Callie Cork, Commissioner.

Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Warren Daly, Commissioner.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner of District 2.

Adam Biegler, Commissioner of District 2.

Yay. Yay.

Yay. Wow. That's wonderful. We've got three, what, four different departments, five different departments sitting in this room.

We sure do. We have community resources drop-ins. Where's community resources? Are you coming?

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you very, very much, ma'am. So excited. All right. So we're here with Lizzie Loomis.

What's that? We have two items. I'm not quite sure which one was supposed to come first. PAB reallocation. Okay, there we go. Thank you, ma'am. It's been a long morning.

You too, mom.

Okay, so we're bringing back to the forward private activity bond funds for the amount of $3 million, which was awarded to a project. And instead of going the 4% route, they went the 9% light tack. So they were willing to give the KB bonds back to the county to award to another project. Great. So we are considering awarding $3 million for 4% LIHTC to our Dove Valley property, which is one of our properties that you guys chose earlier this year. And you won as a special ability partner, which will create more than 200 units. Wow.

Yeah, that would be good. What do we think about that? Are there comments, commissioners? Does Jeff Baker have a... No. Okay. Because I actually saw his hand do something. Commissioner Campbell?

No, just wanted to say that Director Smith flagged this for me in our one-on-one, and I asked, you know, why was this project chosen as opposed to some of the others?

it might be edifying for the board just to know because if we're taking that much money and just like bosh to another project while it has been approved might be at least cursory so the three romanian projects one received private activity bonds from the city of littleton one project is not ready to move forward because they weren't able to roll over pavs from 2023 and the other one will be coming back in the fall when they have a better financial stack Thank you. All right.

Thank you very much. And did you have a question too, Commissioner?

I did. Okay. Okay. I guess I forgot from our PAB conversation that they can only be used in conjunction with a 4% LIHTC. Is that what you're saying?

Okay. I'd forgotten that.

All right. Thank you. All right. Madam Chair. Yeah.

All right, we have thumbs up for the approval of this changing of the private activity bonds. And that will be on your consent agenda. Okay, so we'll put it on consent. Did we get five thumbs up or was it just four? Okay, we got five thumbs, okay.

ahead and listen and the second item i think everyone is excited about this so we are coming to the board to ask for the participation opportunity for the housing colorado 2026 design charrette program specifically for the current public health building off of broadway okay there is a two thousand dollar That's not quite matched or application fee. It's specifically for the food and tangibles for the charrette that the county would provide, as well as additional meeting space. We have spoken to the city of Inglewood and we'll be partnering with them. They will be providing the meeting space.

See the people.

Apply for the thing? Yeah. What do you think? Do you think? Yeah, but Commissioner, we're going to ask a question.

Who all is on the team, the Charette's team? Will that be decided once we find out? We're selected.

So it'll be University of Denver. The College of Architecture and Planning. So they will have students, professors, master's students, and then representation from Arapahoe County and Englewood. We'll lead the Charette's. But it's more geared towards getting the community involved, so it's probably going to be a range of participants. And it's also open to the general public.

So someone from your team is going to be on that? Yes. Good. Okay. Cool.

I am so excited about this yeah so we have how many thumbs up for this one we have five thumbs up or four thumbs and a finger everyone everyone goes that's right that's right so well thank you very much you have anything else for us no ma'am yes like mood just one more thing I did forget so if the county is selected and we go through charrette process there will be

presentation at Connecting Color Housing Colorado conference in October.

Okay.

Cool. Great. This October? This October. It's it's that quick. Uh applications due this Friday and charrettes that take place in the next two months and then we'll be presenting. Oh yay.

Yay. Alright. Well thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you very, very much. I'm excited. I'm excited. Well, that was quick. Mm-hmm. What? Now we have a 1 o'clock drop-in, our IGA between El Paso County Sheriff's Office and Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office regarding incinerator use and restrictions. Are we ready? We're ready. Oh, my goodness. So we're going to go around the room one more time with some introductions since we've had a little change in folks in the room. So, Commissioner Baker?

Jeff Baker, Commissioner.

Tiffany, County Attorney's Office. Michelle Holstein, Commissioner's Office. Rhonda Pierce, Commissioner.

Allie McCord, Clerk of the Quarter.

Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Warren-Gully, Commissioner.

Jessica Hamble, Commissioner of District 2.

Dawn Johnson, County Attorney's Office.

Jeremy Nesvold, Captain, Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office.

Adam Biegler, Commissioner of Technology. Jessica Safda, Finance.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you very, very much. So... You ready?

Yeah.

All right, go ahead.

So we're just requesting permission to enter into an IGA with El Paso County. They basically have a burn building that we can use to destroy illegal drugs, ammunition, and fireworks. We have a free option with a steel mill down in Pueblo. This would just be a backup to that because it did go down for a while and we didn't have an option to get rid of some of that stuff. So this is just strictly a backup option to that.

yes yes commissioner i noticed the distinction of the emphasis in your voice when we said we have a free option um and i see cost per incendiary cycle is 350 so how would this um using this quarterly resulting in a total cost of 1400 and the cost can be absorbed by the current budget. I just want to make sure. So when you guys say that you are anticipating using it quarterly, is that the frequency the Pueblo site has gone down? Is that just sort of kind of guesstimating for budget margins, kind of just making sure you guys have the money set aside within your budget since you'll be pulling this from the budget?

Yeah, it's a guesstimate. Our goal is to use the free one. That works way better anyways. This would just be a backup if that did go down about a year ago for a while. So this is just a backup. So it's truly just a guess on what we might incur.

Got it. Okay, cool. All right. Thank you. I guess, Madam Chiefs, go ahead. Just out of curiosity, since we're slightly ahead of schedule, how... How frequently do we use the Pueblo site? Are you all able to bundle things and kind of go, all right, we're going to take a trip down once a week, once a month, because we say Pueblo is free, but then there's also gas and transportation wear and tear, and so it's not totally free. But, I mean, the travel time.

Yeah, we do it about quarterly.

Quarterly. Oh, okay. All right. Oh, okay. So you do that quarterly. So if you had to do this quarterly, it would be $1,400 a year. Correct. Got it. Nice.

Thank you. Wonderful. Any other questions? Any comments? Dawn, go ahead.

Sorry, I just, is this okay for the sheriff then to go ahead and sign? So this would be an IGA. So under the signature authority resolution, if you approve it or drop it, he's authorized to sign it.

Okay.

Oh, good. That's great. Thank you.

Is that it? Yeah. Okay. So, all right, we have thumbs up.

to approve the sheriff to intern to an IGA with El Paso for incendiary services.

Sounds like a plan. Is that what we're doing? Yep. Sheriff, incendiary. Yes, the incendiary services. Incendiary. Yes, so this will be on consent. He could burn stuff. So we are keeping the sheriff to sign this IGA. And I think I saw five thumbs up. More thumbs and a, no, that was a thumb. That was five thumbs up. So thank you very, very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

We try to be helpful. Thank you. We've got lots of things happening.

And thanks for driving to Pudluck for free. Yeah, for free.

Get one of those sandwiches that are famous now. I know. That's right.

Thank you very, very much. Appreciate that. We have some other people that have come in the room. They look like attorneys. Yes. But you were the wrong one. You were not on my list, so come on up here.

How are you all doing?

Doing great. Come on up. Actually, no, you're not the wrong one. He's the wrong one.

We've got another one coming here. I think he's just a little bit behind me. We're running a little bit ahead of time. No, that's great.

Should we give him a minute or should we just get on going?

Yeah, let's just get going.

Okay. Would you introduce yourselves for the record, please?

Of course. I'm Joel Zink. I'm the Chief Deputy District Attorney and Director of Technology and Innovation at the DA's office.

Wonderful.

Ryan Brackley, assistant DA. I just came to learn from Joel. And also, last time I appeared, I was virtual, and I missed being in person for the thumbs up.

Well, we appreciate that. We appreciate you being here. And always, anytime I can be in the room with, like, primetime dateline, I'm there. So I'm very excited about your presence, sir. Very excited. So, Mr. Zink, let us know what's going on here.

Of course. Well, just to start out, I want to say thank you to you all. And thank you to Phil and everyone with the IT team. We've got Adam right here as well. And just everyone at the county. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate with that department in particular, which is relevant here today, has been phenomenal. And we just want to keep that going. But we want to also kind of move forward a little faster. And the primary reason that I'm here today and that we're here today is really about this Evidence.com contract that we have with Axon. So I'm mostly going to be talking about that, but also happy to talk about the other sort of sub-request here. For Evidence.com, if anyone's not familiar, that's our primary way that we receive evidence from our largest law enforcement agencies, and really all of them at this point. Since body-worn camera statues were passed a few years back, And I think that's a great law to have in place. It protects defendants. It protects law enforcement. It helps us to prove our cases. It also helps us to distinguish when we shouldn't be proceeding on a case. So having body-worn camera, having video evidence on every single case has allowed us to provide a greater level of service to all the Arapahoe County residents. And unfortunately, when folks are interacting with us, regardless of if they're a victim of a crime or a defendant of a crime, it's usually like the worst day of their life. And we want to be able to, earlier on in a case, in the life of a case, make assessments. Is this something we're ever going to be able to prove? Is it appropriate? Is this an extremely aggravated case in which we should pursue a harsher penalty if that's appropriate? Keep the community safe. evidence.com video uploads I'm gonna mostly focus on video we are receiving now roughly 200 hours of video evidence every single workday of the year which is pretty mind-boggling yeah so that's for calendar year 2025 I pulled year-to-date stats on that same thing it's about the same it's a little bit of an increase In order to simply have somebody sit and watch all of that video, not do a legal analysis, not really assess how it impacts the case, just to watch it, would take around 24 full-time employees working eight hours a day every single work day of the year. Wow. and obviously that that's not our attorneys can't do that and they really need to be we really need the tools that are provided by this contract upgrade in order to make those case assessments a little bit better and just more efficiently so right now it's an untenable situation just to be candid we can't review that much video evidence This contract upgrade. So right now we're what's called the justice tier for the evidence.com. There's another tier called justice plus. I don't come up with these names. I think justice is justice. But we really are here to ask you to help us get to that justice plus tier for this contract. It provides some phenomenal cutting edge tools to help us make those case assessments early on. It incorporates artificial intelligence, and this is a secure format of that. I also just want to say I know that the good governance piece in a strategic plan is really, really important, and that's just important anyway. And so, you know, I know Phil and Nikki have done a great job making sure that we have a really robust cybersecurity system, for lack of a better way of putting it, and processes and rules and procedures. And we want to keep working with that. So this would comply with that. What we have already complies with that. So if that was a concern, that's all ameliorated. we would be able to automatically, in a case, identify key moments with this contract upgrade. So if you think about any given criminal case, you're going to have those really important moments like where was the arrest in the video? When did that happen? When was the first contact? How many people were involved? Are there more than one victim? What are the names of all these people? where was there a Miranda advisement? Was there not a Miranda advisement? And then continued questioning where maybe it wasn't constitutionally appropriate. A whole bunch of things that we need to assess really right at the beginning of the case, but particularly for constitutional motions hearings and jury trials. This gives us the tools to be able to find those things more quickly. Right now what we're doing is you have to go in, you just have a list of videos, and they're named a bunch of kind of nonsense. It's like just a long string of numbers and characters. You have to go in, you have to watch each video, and if you're going to trial, you have to watch all the videos. That's not a question. But earlier on, this kind of removes that individual, I got to go in, see if it's this officer, see what this officer's doing, see what this one's doing. We can immediately go to those important, the most important moments in a case. And just as an example, if an officer is violating the Constitution by questioning somebody after or without Miranda advisement, we can say, you know what, we've got a problem here. Or if somebody is, you know, just in a DUI case, stumbling around drunk, we're going to be able to see that more quickly as well. And our DA's caseloads have just exploded. You all I know are very familiar with the domestic violence transition from Aurora to us. We're also seeing an additional caseload increase across the board for other reasons. I think partly at least because the Aurora Police Department has staffed up a lot more than they were previously. There's also a retainment piece here. If we want to keep good attorneys on who want to do a good job, and most attorneys I would hope want to do a good job, if they're not able to really dive into their cases and figure things out, figure all those issues out that we were just discussing, they're not gonna want to work for us because they're gonna feel like they're doing a bad job so there's a whole bunch here I could talk about but that's really that evidence calm piece of this and we also have mr. Mauro here now so I suppose before I hand it over to mr. Mauro If anyone has any, would it be more appropriate for us to talk about the questions for evidence.com before moving to the other piece?

Okay. And we do have a question.

Cool. So how, is it using, I'm just trying to imagine, what technological upgrade would be part of Justice Plus that is not included in the original Justice? And when you say immediately be able to identify things, that sounds like AI. Okay.

It is.

Okay. And so I love the relationship you guys have with AT and you talked about justice as is already being compliant with our cybersecurity. Have you run the use of AI through our through IT in the lens of our AI policy?

So I think Adam might be able to speak to that, but Adam has been in all of these. I'm talking about Mr. Adam Fiegler right over here to my right. He's been in all of our meetings with Axon where we're discussing this upgrade, and I believe that that's been assessed. That's correct.

Come on up to the table so we can introduce. You've got to be on the record, sir. We can't hear you all the way over there.

No worries. Yeah, that's correct. So evidence.com, Axon, we've gone through all of the security, accessibility, and AI assessments for the platform, not just for the DA's office, but also for the sheriff's office, and looking at it for human services as well. So it is a platform that we've investigated very deeply, and it's meeting all of our criteria.

Okay, great. And just to be very specific for the record, that includes the components within the Justice tier, the Justice Plus.

That is correct.

Okay, great. Madam Chair? Yes, ma'am. Okay, the... so when you say there's a there's an immediate need and i think yeah saving this much time i don't have an argument about saving this much time or the value of this program but let's get into numbers real fast on this so this would constitute a 169 000 increase to the contract you say in the bsr that it would start in july of 2027 but then also in the bsr Says the proposed new contract instead calls for the next payment to occur in January of 2027 and that would reflect the. It looks like an intermediary caught like a sort of between cost of what we currently pay and then what the average. would be so can you just unpack that for us does it scale did the cost scale up over time if we don't have to pay till july why are we talking about january i'd be happy to speak great thank you and then the next question just after that would is going to be how will this be paid for

Good question. So right now our payment schedule is in December, prepaying for the upcoming calendar year. So we essentially asked if we could stay on that payment schedule. Why is January and not December? I'm not exactly sure. I think that's because they're giving us the end of the year increase free plus the first six months of 2027 increase free. But they were expecting a payment in December to prepay for calendar year 2027. So essentially, they accommodated our request on that, as opposed to what would ordinarily happen if you got into a contract with Axon, is there would be an initial upfront prepayment of the next 12 months. So we were able to talk them out of a payment now and basically stay on our existing payment schedule, which would have called for... I think it's a $222,000 payment in December. Now the payment will be $222,000 plus $93,000. $93,000 reflects the increased cost for the second half of 2027. You're right, there is a graduation of that cost. So if you were to average it, over the 10 years, it's about $169,000 increase. But you don't pay exactly that increase each year. It's smaller at first, ramps up, and then plateaus.

Great, got it. And then so then the second question, and then I have another one too that we might as well get out of the way, is how is the office planning on paying for this, and why is this coming to us out of cycle?

Great question. Let me take the first question, which is who's going to pay for it? We're asking the board to support paying for it. So it would be an increase to our budget, although I think IT will take over the management. And so I think that would transfer over under their umbrella at the appropriate point. The reason we're asking for it is we feel it's essential and it's less expensive than the human beings we would otherwise need to meet our obligations and keep up with the volume. This seems to be efficient.

As for out of cycle, this was kind of a promo, if you will, from Evidence.com for the free year, 12 months of the increased license.

Okay. So there's no statutory requirement or nothing that is being required from the state that is impacting that says that we must do this now. It's a deal. We got a sale. We got a BOGO.

We got a good deal. I mean, every day that we wait is a day that we don't have the free upgrade. We did talk them into a one month trial turn on with no strings attached. It's kind of a gesture of good faith. So they're gonna do that for us for the month of August. They're gonna turn on the upgrade for everybody even though we won't have an agreement in place by then.

If I can add here, too, there are ongoing negotiations through CDAC. CDAC is trying to essentially do this statewide for all DA's offices. Those negotiations are happening not right now, but we're in the midst of them. If that's going to be happening, we're going to be obligated to, through other mechanisms, do this anyway. We pay dues to CDAC. That's not something we can stop doing. They support all of our case management software. It's essential. And so that's happening anyway. There is an element to this as well of why we're doing this out of budget cycle is we're losing employees right now. I just had two employees put in their resignations because, at least in part, the workload and the ability to be a good attorney feels like they can't do it. And this, I believe, will help to essentially cauterize that.

I want to leave it, but I have a... If CDAC does successfully negotiate to upgrade what would then be the offices across the whole state, typically when you have more offices or a larger service area, they can sometimes get a better deal? And so if CDAC successfully negotiates for something that would then be at a cheaper contract price, would we have access to a cheaper contract price than what this deal even provides? Yes. Okay.

We had negotiated a clause to go into this agreement talking about exactly that so that we can get out of our individual contract and get onto the statewide contract when that happens, which could be within the next year, could be two years. It's hard to say.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Zink, I have a question. So you said 200 some odd hours, which is crazy. How many hours did we have previously?

So what I can say is that for calendar year 2025, we had about 190 hours of video coming in every workday. That's increased at least so far this year when I account year-to-date. And I didn't do exactly apples to apples, so I didn't do January. We're now at 205. And previous to that... It's tougher to distinguish because we have the judicial district split.

Right.

And so when I try to pull a report, it's not going to give me numbers that help.

Yes, that makes sense. That makes sense. Also, my other question is how many I hear you. We're wanting to do the statewide, but are there any offices right now that have already done this?

Yes. Okay. I can name a few off the top of my head, but there are more than these.

And the similar tier?

Yes.

Okay. Yes.

The 1st Judicial District, the 17th.

Can you tell us where those are? Yes, I can. Denver and Jeffco and Adams.

They're more than that. The 20th, so that's Boulder County as well. There are a number of others, but at least those three.

All right, great. Thank you. And does our staff, Michelle, I don't know if you're, does our staff want all of them or there's three of them?

No, I mean I think I think that's a good okay. Yeah I don't I don't trust them like Commissioner warm deli, you know, we taking I'm sure I I'm wondering if we could have maybe Todd come up and talk a little bit about

Just because we want to keep in process with our budget, and it doesn't sound like we necessarily need to be out of cycle of that if we can work out the timing of this. What I'm hearing you say is December of this year. Is that right?

December is our existing payment schedule. So we've got a payment due on the existing contract in December.

So you would need to have the budget to increase by that time?

Yes, although they're not going to give us the upgrade for free for the September, October, November, December if we don't have an agreement in place. They'll give it to us for free, no strings attached, for August. But after that, we need an agreement in place where they're going to turn it off.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Weaver.

Good afternoon. So from my understanding, and these gentlemen and RIT folks have been much more involved in talking to the vendor about the contract. In my understanding, there is no budgetary need for fiscal year 2026. The question is, can they enter into the contract for this upgrade? understanding that the cost going forward will be higher than the cost is currently. So while there isn't a direct budget ask that will need to be fulfilled for 2026, by approving said contract, you've essentially obligated the county to make that payment from whatever means possible. available in 2027 going forward to whenever it may be replaced by a contract through CDET.

Does that answer your question?

Do you have another question? Yes. And our next budget cycle process would be...

So you would not be supplementing anything for 2026. So even with the second quarter coming up, a couple weeks in the beginning of August and a public hearing in September, Since there would be no requirement to pay anything in 2026, we would not appropriate in 2026. This budget request would likely come through the 2027 budget process that is appropriated for January 1st so they can make the payment in January.

So we could ask for you all to bring this forward as a budget request in January. Or, I mean, in the upcoming budget cycle.

For the funding portion of it. I think the question... before you today is on the contracting piece, can they move forward with the assignment?

Right. Right. Right.

Commissioner Campbell?

Yeah, if I can piggyback off that. I think so, since we are newly absorbed, we're still all getting to know each other and how we do this process. One of the things that when I came on in 23 and others have, we've witnessed as a group is that we had all these different supplementals coming through. Stuff was like, People are trying to do drop-ins, and it prevented us from being able to have a holistic look at our budget. To be able to say, what are really the priorities of your office? How do we judge this across the many other needs? I'm sure, well, I sit on IT steering committee, so I can tell you that there are a lot of offices and departments that would like to upgrade their technology. how we do that holistically has helped us both align our budget with our strategic plan and as well as be prudent in the budget decisions that we're making. And so that's, I think, in part why we have a a good a strong emphasis on on the cycle and being able to do that so what I hear though is because we would basically be considering this during the 2027 budget cycle is that we will still that your base basically we would if we approve this today we're making a decision for your office for that's $200,000 or $169,000 a year that is already being made as a decision to be spent for your office from the general fund from 1A. However, we might want to consider where this money is coming from. I was thinking the holistic kind of thing, but if we agree to do this today and allow you to enter into the agreement, that's a budget decision that's already being made to spend money for JD18. and will be competing with the rest of any budget requests that you all make for that year. So can I follow up?

Yes, please do. Thank you. So, Todd, could we... I guess what I'd like to see to follow up on Commissioner Campbell's conversation is when you guys think about your budget that you're going to be presenting in September to the UBC, is this a number one priority?

Mm-hmm.

Because that's kind of what you're asking us to do now, is to make this a priority in your budget. And I mean, I could see that it probably would be, because as you said, it would be saving a lot of time and effort. But what my ask is, Todd, is would we be able to move forward with this knowing that we are obligating these funds? Could we do the contract so you can start utilizing the tool? but request that it is incorporated into your budget conversation, into the prioritization of how you do your budget?

It's in our 2027 budget, and it is ranked as a high priority. We didn't have the specific conversation with DA Patton. If she had to say what is the absolute number one, can we say it's this? But I think we can say this is a top priority.

So financially... whether you decide now because of the timing of the contract or whether you decide the appropriation with everything else. It's coming from the same remaining 1A funds that are going forward. So in essence, anything, whether it be the DA or any department office, you decide that it's an ongoing cost in quarter two or quarter three is drawing from that same amount of money. So it has the same net impact on the budget. Yes.

Okay.

Commissioner Fields.

Thank you. And I appreciate the conversation that we're having. around the rigor as it relates to the timing of budget. But I'm really concerned about the issue that you just raised in reference to the amount of hours that it takes to go through all this. And I can imagine, like you said, you're having some folks do that. It has to be extremely fatiguing to look at this video and then maybe not find what you're trying to search for, and if there is a way to be much more efficient to do this. I remember a case situation where officers were looking at really ugly stuff. I mean, it was really bad stuff. And it's hard to erase those images out of your mind when you're constantly doing that kind of thing. That's a different scenario, but still, we have to be concerned about the well-being and the mental health of our employees. And if there's a way, and I'd like to understand the functionality of it, and like you were saying, it screens it and it can be able to identify a certain period of time that, let's say, an investigator is looking at. Can you just kind of give me a highlight overview of how the technology Justice Plus works and how it would save time and maybe someone's mental health as well?

Absolutely, Commissioner. I mean, you've kind of hit the nail on the head. And what I've described In terms of the functionality, it is really a disservice. And I don't want to waste anyone's time with getting into all the nitty gritty details. But essentially what it does right now is it will take those videos, it will automatically transcribe them. So there's a transcript for each individual video. That can also be done for calls from the jail, which is very important in domestic violence cases, which we have a lot of and more of than we've had before. And we'll also use that for 911 calls, really any audio. And then additionally, if we choose to move forward with using this for documents, so police reports and things along those lines. It will incorporate those. So that's sort of like the memory for each individual case will contain all of those things for that case. The AI, which is the model doesn't matter, but the AI will then be able to automatically, without anyone pressing a button, so you don't have to go in and wait and wait and wait for something like you do if one of us tries to log in to chat GPT or something, which this isn't. It will automatically have parsed through all of that information, identified the key moments based on our parameters that we set. So if this happens, then we want that to be a key moment. If that happens, we want that to be a key moment. That's the term they use. And it will automatically highlight those for the attorneys. So rather than spending hours and hours going through every single... A lot of these cameras are just like an officer standing on the side. and that's not useful for our DA to necessarily do it the initial case review so to be able to go through those key moments there is additional functionality built in as well that can identify all of the witnesses in a case including and it will tell you like what they did and what their involvement was was this a citizen or a resident witness was this a police witness This is particularly important right now because with this volume of evidence that we're receiving on every single case, we face sometimes what's called a Rule 16 sanction in court. If we have missed something, if we don't have a body cam from somebody, you can imagine how hard it would be to parse through with this volume of data to make sure that we have a body cam for someone who is standing on the side. We have to have that, though. And so those Rule 16 violations, if a violation is found by a court, can result in a case potentially even getting dismissed or charges being reduced, which is harmful for our community or our residents, especially in violent crimes where people were really hurt. It's also important that we're held accountable. And that's the reason that that rule exists in the first place. But if we have this tool to be able to tell us, hey, here are all the witnesses that are in every single body cam, every single report, I'm going to be able to just ask it back. Is there a body cam for this person? Is this person in a particular piece of evidence? And then I'm going to be able to more easily comply with Rule 16 and just move forward with the case, which is helpful for the defense because they deserve to have all the evidence as soon as possible, and that's the law. um so to answer one of commissioner campbell's earlier questions to a degree we have to comply with this and we're having difficulty complying with it right now because of the sheer volume so this is in one way a tool to help us comply directly with statutes and criminal procedure rules that's helpful thank you thank you commissioner thank you commissioner baker yeah um

Normally, and I don't want to take away from the financial aspect of it, but the contract, I just read what the title of this was, was a revision of a contract. So while revision of a contract can incur a budgetary we're normally joined by somebody from the county attorney's office to tell us what the next steps if we approve this this goes on consent agenda and would be you know it I mean like I say if you think it should go through the EBC process because there's time to do that I'm just wondering if the contracting part of it one does the DA have the authority to sign a contract at this cost I know that we do delegate signature authority to other electeds and department directors so it might be something I'm just not clear whether Phil would sign this contract as the department director of IT, or would it be Amy Padden signing it as the, and I don't mean to throw another wrench into the works, but that's my curiosity is about the contract, yeah.

Phil, I was just going to ask, you currently have, you currently sign this contract, correct?

I would sign the renewal or the enhancement of the current contract and make approval.

So I think Phil has, the IT director has signature authority to sign these contracts. So I think it goes back to what Todd said is he's going to essentially assign a contract and you either find the money where there's a prioritization trade-off conversation in 27. So I think that's why they're coming, is because it's a little bit...

Horse before the cart.

A little horse before the cart. But he would have the signature authority to do it. So there isn't a... Not that I'm a lawyer. But I don't think there's a signature authority.

That takes that out of the mix, and so we're back to considering what process needs to be followed to make sure. Because I hear that the... the need I hear the and there's some urgency it seems like in order to get your hard work in negotiating to be fiscally rational and fiscally on top of things I'd like to make sure that we can do whatever we can to not lose what you've negotiated as far as deals and stuff like that. It sounds like this is a program that's used by any number of different law enforcement, but also I'm interested about the human services part of that too, because that We all know that your clients are their clients, their clients are not only your clients, but they can be clients of any number of our community resources and even public works maybe even could be clients of in some cases. But maybe that's reaching a little bit commission. but I see the urgency and I see I don't have any question if you say this is the program this is that application this is the platform that is needing to be used and it's only going to get better because we need it to get better then I'm all for that but I just want to make sure we're crossing our T's and dotting our I's on that

Commissioner Campbell, did you have something?

Just a quick, so one of the things that we know about AI and the use is the incredible amount of energy it uses as well as server and retention space. Do you anticipate having any issues with the amount of server space and everything that you all have in either on the cloud or on-prem to accommodate the space that this program will require?

No.

Okay. And then two, I think I heard, and this is just for, again, a little process piece, I referenced IT steering committee. We normally have a portfolio, but this sounds like there's like a turn it off, turn it on thing aspect to this, like access to it or not, so it's not really going to require any IT space. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Great. Commissioner Fields?

Yeah, I just want to mention that, you know, when I think about restoring confidence and trust, in law enforcement and how people really have pushed for these body-worn cameras. And the complaints that I get all the time is they're not getting access. You know, when issues happen with policing or something, there's this pressure from the community, well, why can't we get the data? And I think progress has been made, but when they look at how we solve crimes, because if we can't identify a witness soon enough, people forget. They get unplugged. It's a lot can go on. So in order for us to make sure that we have a system of justice that works for everybody, that this is a way for us to expedite us to be able to solve things that happen to people, like crime. And I think it's the right thing to do. So I'm in support of moving forward on this request, depending on what the next procedure is.

Thank you very, very much.

Commissioner Kim?

The substance of it, I am in support of. I do think because of the size of the money, the amount, that it would make sense for it to go through EBC. I mean, that's the process. I just wanted to make very clear that it needs to be prioritized within the rest of the office's priorities. But I am supportive and comfortable having Director Savino sign the contract. For all the reasons listed here today, from the HR component in terms of employee retention and burnout to the criminal justice and social justice aims of making sure we are solving crime better, faster, and potentially getting footage out to community faster. And then three, for the fiscal responsibility and our desire to be very conservative in how we use our dollars.

But I wanted to go through UBC also. I'm fine. I support any type of technology that we can use to lighten our load and I really do trust the IT department that they've gone through and I know that they're working with Human Services on the Magic Notes and everything that we've been hearing about from Dan. So I'm supportive of that. I would like to see it in your budget and how it's prioritized. As Commissioner Campbell said, that to me seems really important as all the departments are coming forward with requests of additional technology and needs that they have. So that would be great.

Commissioner Baker, you have anything else?

No, I think we've got a good path forward here.

All right, great. Do we have thumbs up? Look, we got five thumbs up. But don't listen, sir. Okay. That's to him, not you guys.

Yeah, right. It's not for you guys. It's just for that one.

Just for him. Just for him. But no, this is, I mean...

Yeah. We don't want people having to look at stuff, you know, 200 hours of stuff a day. No. We want to make everyone's lives easier. And so if this is a way to do it and we have worked out how it's not going to bite us in the butt, you know, a year from now, I'm good. I'm good. So that's good. Thank you very much. What else do you have for us? Thank you. Thank you. Was that it? Do you have more?

We've got a secondary item. Okay, that's going to be a no. We ran it past Director Savino. He likes it. Okay. Problem solved. We've done several meetings with some other offices who have some dedicated programmers or developers who've built some cool stuff that would, along similar lines, expedite things, lighten the load, relax bandwidth. And after each of those meetings, we've been able to confer with our IT business partner, Kevin Ellis, and he's doing a wonderful job for us. And Adam Bigler did a wonderful job for us before Kevin. And I think the reality is that county IT as currently constituted has some developers, but probably not enough to be meeting what we perceive to be our needs on what we would perceive as a reasonable timeframe. I mean, I think existing resources could probably work for us on the 18-month sort of timeframe, and we're doing some projects through the normal project approval process, funding process, rollout process. Haven't gotten to the rollout yet, but that's what we're doing with the victim witness portal, which we're very excited about. But there are a handful of other projects that have been built by other offices that they'll just give to us. But it does require technical expertise on the receiving end. And so we sat down with IT about a week ago to talk about, is there a world in which we could, we, the royal we, County IT, hire a senior programmer and dedicate that individual to our office to be performing some of these implementations that other offices have been able to steal and implement from one another and achieve those efficiencies. What I heard was, yes, there is a world in which we could achieve that. And so that is, in sum, the request is, can we try to get a senior developer hired into county IT, maybe on an existing vacancy, and dedicate that person to... DA office projects, and there are a ton of advantages to having that person be a county IT employee, you know, operate within the existing architecture. And so that's the request.

Well, there's a commissioner behind you with his hand up. That's okay.

When you were describing this, I immediately, my mind went to HS Connects, which is something that we developed in-house and are in the process of sharing with any number of different counties in the state of Colorado pending the state doing kind of their own thing. Yeah, we've done that before where we have been the recipient of the good work done by others. But again, we do have a process through the IT Steering Committee and the EBC as far as getting new people on board with that particular skill. Did you see a connection with HS Connects?

With regards to what, I'm sorry?

HS Connects, what they're talking about is other DA's offices have developed programs and applications and things that they're willing to give to us for either free or what we do with HS Connects, kind of an enterprise sort of thing. I saw a connection there that we've done before.

Yeah, I mean, Commissioner, there's definitely a tradeoff when it comes to sharing of technology, and what the DA is seeing is, you know, they're fresh operations of, what, two years coming on board. They see a lot of tool sets that their sister and other DA agencies have today, one coming from a talented CTO over, I believe, at the first. And they've developed these tools that expedite their processes and make it much more faster and more efficient, and they're looking to have that same capability. Now, there's the question to be asked of interoperability, compatibility, some of the things that those offices may have today. would they work in the same environment possibly but i think what they're asking for this position is the the increase of resource to be able to onboard similar tools or even be able to implement those tools that have already been created my concern is always always one of debt technical debt what happens if the scots of the world are hit by a bus if you're doing custom dev and you're building all these great tools and one person's doing it and they disappear who supports that that's why i tend to lead towards a more enterprise solutions but we do work with them to identify what we can buy off the shelf and what can actually be developed so it's a trade-off But the HS Connects and anything you do from a development standpoint, you build the baby, you birth the baby, you have to take, remember that one? Yes. You have to take care of it. You have to grow it into a child and it goes into a teenager. So that's called technical debt. So if we do a bunch of technical custom dev apps, Those things breathe, and they need to be supported by teams of people. And like I said, if it's one person doing this and they die tomorrow, God forbid, who supports that and that continuation? But what they're looking for is a faster turnaround. They're looking for a resource that can give them dedication to their operations, learn their operations, know their operations, and then work with some of these more feasible tool sets that they'd be able to onboard at an expedited rate. Gotcha. Not so much as a large as the HS Connects, but philosophically the same.

Yeah. Mm-hm, mm-hm. Commissioner Warangale. Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I wouldn't be opposed to having the conversation again. I think it would be one that I would want to have in your priority, Phil. your priority conversations as you come forward to the EDC. I do, I think I remember we designated three full-time FTEs during the transition in IT specifically to the judicial district, right?

Yeah, we increased capacity for their support by three, and we've given them Fred, who's dedicated on-site, who works primarily with all of their hardware. What they're looking for more is a developer and a software person. So this is like a new field-making model of a need. Again, it's to help expedite onboarding of some of these tools, creation of their own.

Yeah, I mean, I think just to be honest, I would... I know that almost all of our departments want you to move faster, don't they?

That is true.

So, again, I think this is a fine conversation to have, but it's probably one that needs more time than right now. But I would definitely want to see it in the bigger picture of what your priorities are. what your priorities and capabilities and capacity are, Phil, for your department? And quite honestly, how does that play in an equitable way with the rest of the departments that also really would love to have a lot of IT support too?

Yeah, I've offered to come to the EBC session when they talk about that particular ask to help advocate for it.

Okay. That's a good idea. Commissioner Campbell?

Yeah, my... My struggle with this one is similar to the conversation around the other, is being able to look at these things holistically. And as an EVC member, remember the conversations that we had about getting FTEs, specifically attorneys, victim witness specialists, and other positions that we've had to say no to because we didn't have those funds last year. And so I would be, one, this is very out of cycle, and now we're talking about FTEs, which puts it in a kind of an even different category than this. And two, even using a vacancy would, I mean, obviously you guys can do with your vacancies what you will because you're allowed at that FTE although this would then require a transfer of that FTE to IT so that that I that FTE would no longer be in the office in your office although I know this position would physically work in the office right and be with you guys but be dedicated to you all and I get what the ask is here what I'm saying is that even using a vacancy that you already have seems to go against the conversation that we had where the da was very insistent and fought very hard including going to the ebc appeals process for every single attorney or victim witness specialist fte that they could get and i understand how it supplements the work of attorneys and victim witness specialists but um and i don't mean to just harp on what was basically a very flippant cool things description I'm sure there's a lot of I can see if we're talking about portals and we're talking about these things how it can expedite the carriage of justice how it could be good for externally as well as internally like I can imagine what this is and what we want this person to do but I need to be able to see that within the whole scope of everything else that the DA will be requesting this year and so Yeah, I would be a, it's a no from me dog on this today, but I would like to see it as an ABC request and be able to have a broader conversation about it. Because I can see the need, but there's a lot of differences, right?

That was quite an American Idol reference. She sounded just like that. Randy Jackson?

I was like... You weren't asking for that today, were you? I don't think so.

We were just having a conversation. You put it in the budget packet for her, right?

You have it in your budget request, right?

It is in the budget request.

But you also just threw out, can we use a vacancy? So I thought I'd just go ahead and address my thoughts on that as well.

I hope I didn't create any confusion. My understanding was that there might be an existing vacancy within the IT department, not a DA vacancy.

okay well y'all better talk to IT but in we are running a few minutes over and but what I wanted to share is I agree with our commissioners I also think that I mean we're all for being efficient and doing good work and being economical but I think we're a little premature in making a decision and we just need more discussions on this and how we figure out how to make it work. And whether or not our director of IT, you know, can see the vision. That's right. So it looks like we're at a, we need to talk some more.

I appreciate that, Commissioner. Our main purpose in kind of adding that sub-topic today was to include you all in the conversations that we've been having with IT thus far. When we talk about cool things, a lot of that in county government comes from IT. So I think we appreciate the opportunity to talk about with IT. We appreciate their support. and their ideas and mostly when Phil was talking about Scott, we're talking about a guy who's a CTO in Jefferson County. We don't need a Scott, we have a Phil.

We do, we have a Phil.

But we do need that technical ability to do some of the things we want to do and need to do. So this was just to include you all in this conversation.

Okay, a little heads up, a little preview, a little teaser.

Yeah, a little teaser. Yeah, we appreciate that. We appreciate that a lot. And just because I can say it, when I hear Scott, you know, I go back to, okay, are we talking about Star Trek? Like, beam me up, Scott. Is that what we're doing? Is that what we're doing today? So I'm looking forward to seeing what we do and how the conversations continue and what y'all come up with. Because we do have a field, don't we? Sometimes. No, we always have a fill. We don't know about you, but we always have a fill. But thank you very, very much. Is there anything else that you really need to wrap up with us right now? Are we done?

Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm glad you all got to come today because I always like it when the lawyers come in the room.

That isn't what you told me.

We're going to change that. And get our update on transit-oriented communities. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Bye, Mike. Who's driving? Yeah, who's driving? Thank you.

If you're driving, I'll let you sit there.

Sit next to you? Yeah. And I see Celia.

Hi, how are you? Good.

you like can you hear us all right make sure you can hear us I'm gonna flip over to the smaller screen give us a hot minute All right. All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. We're going to go ahead and go around the table with some introductions.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner.

Ava Pahaszewski, Public Works and Development. Hi, Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office. Rhonda Fields, Commissioner. Leslie Summey, Commissioner.

Harry Waringully, Commissioner.

Matt Eber, County Attorney's Office. Jason Reynolds, Public Works and Development.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner, District 2.

Gretchen Riceville, Public Works and Development.

Loretta Daniel, Public Works and Development.

Thank you very, very much. And so we are here for our update on transit-oriented communities legislation rezoning efforts. Our presenter is Ava, but should I start with, Jason, would you like to lay the foundation?

I think we'll start with Celia. Wait!

Wait, I'm sorry, Celia. Hi, everyone. That was all my fault. I was wondering what I was missing. And so, Celia Reth-Hammel on online today. So, yes, Celia, please go ahead and set the foundation for us.

Thank you very much, commissioners. So, today you're going to get an update on some work we've been doing for a state-mandated housing goals that we have. And I think as the staff talks through the details, I'd love to just make sure that – you kind of have an idea of the ask that we're going to talk through with you all, because there's some options that we have as a community, as a county, to think about. And so our goals were to have a certain number of housing development around these transit-oriented stations. And so the first option obviously is to just go ahead and utilize the data that we have currently, which is shy of the goals that we had proposed. I don't think staff is encouraging that. But it is an option.

It's nice to know.

It's an option, yes. We're all about giving you options. so the other option is to add additional areas we focused on three different areas as the team will mention and go through in detail so we could add more area to help get us to those goals we could also increase the number of dwellings per acre so that's the third option and then the fourth option is we could look at one of the three areas and do consider a increase in the total height of of a building which would then more than adequately meet our goals. So, Eva, Gretchen, and Loretta are here to talk about the specifics and the subject matter expert part of it. So, with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Eva and let her discuss what we've been working on.

Thank you. Thanks, Sheila. Yeah, we thought Jason wasn't going to be here today, so that's why I was presenting. But Jason is joining us today, so Jason will kick us off with the start beginning slides. Yeah, great. Sure.

All right, thank you. So just by way of background, to set the table, House Bill 24-1313 is the transit-oriented communities legislation, which requires communities throughout Colorado to calculate a housing opportunity goal around certain transit stations. follow through by rezoning areas near transit to meet that housing opportunity goal. We calculated that goal and submitted a report to the state last year and I believe we are short approximately 19,000 units. which we have some good news potentially on that front later in the presentation. The other thing we must do per the state law is create an administrative approval process for parcels that are five acres or smaller. And our proposed zoning districts actually create an administrative approval process for any size parcel within these districts. And finally, implement affordability strategies and displacement mitigation strategies for those areas. And in speaking with community resources, we have already done a lot of that work. There are, yeah, on both of those topics. So with that, I did remember correctly approximately 19,000 units is the shortfall based on our current zone capacity in the areas defined by the state. And what we'll be trying to do through these rezonings is meet or exceed that goal. So there are two districts that currently exist in our land development code. There's R-MF, which we added to the code last year, I think. Yes. Which is a multifamily zone district allowing densities of up to 35 dwelling units per acre. And the other zone district that we already have is mixed use, MU, which does allow a building height of up to 75 feet and a minimum density, if you're doing residential, of 35 dwellings per acre. So under that mixed use, you could do commercial, you could do office. If you're going to include residential components, the density has to be at least 35 dwelling units per acre, which is... I generally think of 35 dwelling units breaker as being about what you see in sort of suburban three-story walk-up style apartment complexes. That's approximately 30, 35.

Yeah, we have some graphics we'll show you. These were the zone districts that you all approved last year as part of our affordable housing strategies and the code updates. So these allow an administrative process without having to go through PUDs and hearings.

I love that work's already done. Yeah.

So, foresight or luck, either way, we're very happy to have the tools that we think we need to accomplish the goal.

Strategy.

Yes. So, we've sought direction from the board previously, and the focus was on the Federal Boulevard Enclave, which is Federal Boulevard just north and west of Highway 285. Sheridan and Denver four square mile area which you know Mississippi and Parker between Aurora and Denver and then the Dry Creek light rail station which is an area that is primarily office nowadays with some residential developments but it's primarily an office area Continuing on with Federal Boulevard, you can see where the enclave is located as I described on the map.

Yep. We are going to go through the three areas and our proposed rezonings in each of the three areas and how many units we think we can capture by rezoning. And so Loretta's going to kick it off with the Federal Boulevard area.

Okay.

So we can move to the next slide. Just a minute, Loretta. Commissioner Campbell has a question.

I'm confused. I just want to kind of clarify something. So talking about rezoning these three areas. would be option three or option four in the Rothamil list of our options of either A, number three would increase dwellings by acre or four, increase the total height. And is that what we're talking about? Why are you saying historically how we rezoned and what's there?

No, this is a proposed rezone. We're gonna show you what we have proposed and we've gone to the community with this. And then we're gonna, at the end of our slides, we're going to tell you how short we are by the goal with DOLA with all of these rezones that would give you the zoned capacity. Okay.

And then the options that Sila referenced. Yes, are in the last slide.

Okay, because there's also the option of add additional areas. Right, which we'll get to next.

Okay, so Loretta, this one you wanted me to start with, right? Oh, Sila raised her hand.

Yeah, so Commissioner Campbell, this is the base work that was done to try to get to that goal. And then the options that I described will be the additional to then try to hit that shortfall that we currently see.

Thank you. So this is the refresh from what we did last year? Correct. Got it. Thank you.

Okay, so I'll start with the area we're calling the Federal Enclave. This is an area that's 45 acres, so it is really quite small. And you can see the existing zoning here. For the major part of the residential is R4 and R5, and these are both obsolete zone districts. And the obsolete zone districts means that those are basically holdovers from previous zoning codes, and they are not in the current land development code. So they're kind of special. They're also, and the reason they're not in is because the current zone districts have some slightly different dimensional standards from the obsolete zone districts. Different setbacks, front, side, back. different height, different densities as well, too. There are also obsolete zone districts, these same districts in the Four Square Mile area, in Byers, and also other areas within unincorporated Arapahoe County. So starting with the R4, which is sort of that purplish color, That allows single-family, duplex, and multi-family with a maximum height of 35 feet and a maximum density of 11 dwelling units an acre. The R5, which is the lighter pink color and it covers quite a bit of the residential area there, Allows multi-family, no single family. Has a height maximum of 50 feet, so that's pretty close to the residential multi-family. And a maximum density of 22 dwelling units an acre. So that's the existing zoning. All the other B zone districts that you see there or the mixed use, they're basically commercial uses right now. So for the next slide. Here is the proposed zoning. So we're simplifying this to the two zone districts, we're proposing two anyway, to the residential multifamily and the mixed-use zone districts with the colors there. There are not that many parcels in this area since it is only 45 acres. So with the 650 dwelling units plus the 566, that's a total of 1,216 dwelling units. sort of an incremental approach to reaching that 19,000 dwelling unit target. But that is basically the area that we're proposing for this area here.

Next slide please.

So this is, as Ava mentioned, we have some illustrations of what the density looks like. 16 dwelling units per acre is basically a townhouse-type development. 35 dwelling units per acre, you're looking at basically a three-story walk-up-type project. So next slide. and mixed use since it starts at 35 dwelling units per acre with no maximum you can see some examples here that we have photographs from 45 units per acre up to 70 units per acre and these could have various parking scenarios where the parking could be tuck in it could be structured It could be a wrap where the residential building is wrapped around an enclosed parking structure. Various building forms like that. Next slide. Next slide. So we did have two open houses. We kicked it off with an open house in February. Oh, who's that? I know her. Oh, hey. So at the February open house, we had 21 people sign in. We offered burritos and we had a pay-per-survey because it was the first time we'd really been out to this community. So we were trying to really see who the people were. We had a lot of people who actually lived in the community. We had 15 people sit down and complete the survey. of which 11 out of the 15 either lived in the area or they had property interests. So it was pretty representative. And generally from that first survey, 69% were generally supportive or neutral, and then we had some people who did not support the rezoning. And the primary concerns were increased traffic, building height, blocking views to the mountains, parking issues, and always this perception of increased prime with increased density, which we know can be not quite correct. So our next open house we had on July 9th. We only had 10 people attend at that one. We did have an online survey rather than a paper survey. We did offer burritos as well. But we have just got, the survey closed on Friday, and I've just gotten the survey results today. We had more responses, but we haven't done an analysis of that yet. So we still have that work to do. So that's where we are with the federal area. We did do a little bit of a tweak to the proposed zoning in between the first open house and the second open house because we heard from one property owner who's kind of representing two properties. They were initially in the mixed use area because they were close to federal on the north side of Girard Avenue. This gentleman requested to be in the residential multifamily. Those two parcels are just right above the avenue in Girard Avenue, and so we included those in the residential multifamily. So we had other concerns, but they were related to height and the type of zoning as opposed to the actual properties. So that's where we are right now with the federal enclave.

Commissioner Warren Gulley has a question, Madam Chair. I do think that I can understand why maybe people in this area are concerned about density. I mean, some of these roads, I wonder how even a fire truck gets through them. I mean, these are really very narrow roads. It's a really old part of this community. Would, I mean, I'm assuming that we would have all sorts of upgrades that people would have to do, you know, in order to deal with the additional traffic. Right.

With any administrative site, they'd still have to do the traffic study, the engineering analysis, and everything else. That's drainage study. everything else in order to be approved.

Yeah, and one great example specific to this area is there are almost no sidewalks.

Yeah, it's a very primitive infrastructure there.

Yes, and some of those plants I think date to the 1920s.

I kind of put my life in my own hands walking on those streets to knock on people's doors. But I think the other thing that is important to know, commissioners, because you know of the work that's been happening here, is right now they do not have fire protection. I mean, this is one of the areas that we're talking about fire protection. Okay. lack thereof so it would be extremely difficult for somebody to get a well serve on fire yeah in this area so just to give you a highlight there the only fire they do have what is it termed fire suppression fire suppression Meaning that if there's an actual fire, Denver Fire would have to come into this area. But if there's any kind of zoning, or I mean any kind of like fire inspection that would need to be made for code, any EMT call, any of that, we don't have that consistently in this area. So we would really need to make sure that With that many people, we want to solve that problem.

100%. And we do send out referrals, letters, too, when we get an application for development to fire, water, sanitation, electric, gas, everybody. And the applicant has to meet all standards before they could get an approval. But for this larger piece, all the state is asking us is to have zoning in place that allows it. And then each individual landowner would have to meet our standards in order to actually get it off the ground.

This would be a wonderful area to see some improvement like this happen, but I just wanted to highlight that because we're working on that.

All right, we're going to go into our second area of work, and this is the Dry Creek area near the Dry Creek Light Rail Station. The Light Rail Station, the Norm Cursor, well, anyway, it's to the west of I-25 from the Orange, or you know where it is by the park. And so, there you go. Thank you. You're welcome. So what we did was we drew a buffer. The state wanted, I think we did a half mile actually, a half mile radius to rezone any parcels within a half mile of the light rail station that they could potentially get to through multimodal. It doesn't have to be walking. It could be biking, scooter, e-bike, et cetera. And as you know, most of the land in that buffer is in City of Centennial. So this area, which we know as Inverness, you guys all know Inverness, right? North of County Line, south of Gettys and Dry Creek. That area is where we focused on. So we had... I'm sorry, I don't know if it's in the slide. I'm trying to jump to my spreadsheet as well. We had, I think, 45. four, 45 parcels in this area, as you see here. And so this is what the existing zoning looks like out in Inverness. As you can see, the vast majority of it is in a PUD zone. It's called mixed use, but not to be confused with our zoning, straight zoning of mixed use. It's a PUD, which means every property has its own zoning document. And as you know, and then there's some industrial and a little bit on the south commercial B5. And then to the east, the green there, that's the golf course. Inverness Golf Course? Yeah. Yes. That's not part of our rezone. Even though you see it in the circle, we'll get to the proposed zoning. The golf course is not in our rezone. nor are any of the condo and townhome owners in Inverness. We specifically did not rezone them as well because they're already part of the neighborhood. They don't need to have their zoning changed. So what we're looking at mainly are a lot of the commercial and office parcels there to the east of I-25, again, south of Geddes, north of... I-25, a lot of its office. Bless you. So there are 46 parcels. We're proposing to rezone them all to mixed use, which has a minimum density of 35 units per acre. So if we start doing the math, we're looking at 20,000. 125 potential dwelling units toward our hog with the state. Again, we don't need to build every single parcel to this maximum. This is just for the state's exercise. And the way we calculated it is This is all averaging out, but we did that math by calculating the acreage by 100 dwelling units per acre. Being that 35 is your minimum, if you had 75 feet height, you could potentially get this amount. Again, this is just fuzzy math. If you just did the minimum, 35 units per acre... based on these you'd get like 7,666 allowed dwelling units. So between 7,000 and 20,000 you could get here to meet our goal with the state. So that's what we proposed. We had an open house on May 6th. Because we were trying to be sophisticated, we didn't do paper surveys. Well, actually, we had a couple, but mostly we did online surveys. So we sent out mailers to everybody. Even though the residents who live in Inverness and those condos aren't part of the rezone, we sent every one of them a letter. And I would say 99% of the attendees were just the residents who were not being rezoned. And they were not happy. They wanted to let us know. So based on the survey, somehow we got 32% online that were either supportive or neutral. So maybe some of the commercial landowners filled out the survey when they got the letter in the mail. But 68% did not support it. And their concerns... As you have heard before, concerns about traffic in Inverness, concerns that all the apartment people are going to park in their townhome neighborhood, lack of infrastructure. maybe no water, increased crime, of course, that perception. So one thing county staff did, we had a little bit of money, we got a traffic study contract with an engineering firm to do a potential traffic study to look at what the impact would be with that level of density in the Inverness area. So 20,000. Yes, and so they are currently working on it, so we don't have that information for you, but obviously we'll have it in a few months as we get down the road. So that was Dry Creek. We did query them in one of the survey questions. Interestingly, like I said, most of this is office property. They all have individual PUDs, and each PUD allows 120 feet of height. None of them are that, by the way, out there. Most of them are about 40, 50. Some are taller, but... And so we said, you know, this rezone would actually have a lower height maximum. How do you feel about that? They were okay with that. We did ask, what are your thoughts about allowing the 100 feet for residential if we did some sort of change to the code, which is one of your questions in the last slide. And I don't think they were thrilled with that one. But we'll talk about it in the last slide.

Commissioner Fields, then Commissioner Warren Gulley. Yes. Just a quick question, because I'm looking at the picture. I see about maybe 13 people there.

That might have been the beginning.

That was at the beginning? Yes. So give me a sense of how many people completed the survey, if you know, because it says 32% out of how many? Yes, yes, yes. And K68 did not support rezoning.

185 responses. How much? 185 responses. Okay.

That's a lot larger than I thought then. And I'm seeing a common theme as it relates to increasing crime. And I know this is a perception. Is it, the perception is anytime there's a development that comes into a community that requires rezoning for affordable housing that there's a understanding crime is going to increase?

So there was a little of that. I think there's a perception that people who rent commit crime. I don't know why. I'm just telling you what I've heard over the years. And so there's that. Put that in one bucket. And then I think there was also a rumor going around, if you rezone it, We can then have all this Section 8 housing here, and you're going to build it. Right. And we said, no, we're not building anything. We're just zoning stuff. So, yeah. We're like, look at these hands.

And so, you know, I'm wondering then, what is the language then? I mean, if you're getting this feedback, how do you then communicate that to the people who fill out the survey? Is there any kind of 360 there, or just take it and you just leave it?

Have we got data? I'm not sure.

I mean. I mean, we can cite studies, that's for sure. I mean, Jason's sort of an encyclopedia of some of the studies on this. But yeah, I mean. There has been a lot of work to sort of discount that perception. And we've stated at the open houses, and I know I've heard Ava say that, you know, that is clearly really not the case, especially given market rate rentals and what market rate rentals are. As much as a mortgage, if not more. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, there are, it just seems to be an ongoing perception, and we as planners have heard this, you know, for years and years and years.

Years, yeah.

Okay.

Commissioner Wargully, and then Commissioner Campbell. Thank you, Madam Chair. We can go to Commissioner Campbell and come back to you.

I was going to address the communication feedback loop, right? When we have these public town hall and kind of feedback sessions is this is kind of this is the loop, right? Is that the staff is there, gathers the public feedback, comes and tells us, and then we take the feedback from the public and do with it what we will. And I think that's where, you know, when things especially go to a hearing or whatever, if they come in public, I typically use my commissioner comments on a specific item to put some data. Or as Loretta was talking about, explain that margarine housing or even at 70%, like AMI, you're talking about nurses and teachers and things like that and try to dispel some of the myths from the myths and the bias from for those at least who are present but yeah I don't I don't know that these this kind of survey is designed to then kind of report back it's sort of like using and then it moves through the process thank you I bring that up is because people that show up are gatekeepers

These are people who aren't really that receptive to change because of the uncertainty about who might be coming in to these areas, and they have certain perceptions that they're trying to influence. My thinking was, well, how do we counter these perceptions when we know that there's gatekeepers that just don't want to see development in their areas. And so that's, I was just trying to explore that because there are people that just say, no matter what, it could be whatever, they're just gatekeepers, they're just like the gates closed. And so I really appreciate that we're still looking for opportunity to ask proposals, we're collecting the feedback, but that's not going to stop this body in reference to maybe making decisions in the future, so.

I finally remember, thank you, Madam Chair. I know just literally one or two stops up north from this. Shay's property just converted an office building into apartments. I mean, is that something that someone could do in this area? Absolutely.

Because I think that... With a site plan review, 100%.

Yeah, and it would count towards our numbers and all that. I just kind of love that. I know it's hard. It's very complicated and hard. It sure is. You get a retrofit. It's kind of cool to see it happen.

Commissioner Baker?

Yeah, and I don't know if this is the time, but I know I'm seeing a correlation here between the survey results and offering burritos.

They were hangry. They were hangry. That's what it was.

We did offer food.

All the TOD you have out there. I will preface that with we did offer food. We did not offer burritos because we knew we were going to expect a larger crowd and that can get expensive. But we did offer food. We had

We had deli food, fruits, veggies.

We had cookies. Yeah, when people were getting upset, we were handing out cookies.

They're just out of frame to the left.

Yeah, they were in the picture. They were just over there. Colorado brownies is what you need. So again, this is just kind of showing you visually what density looks like. So this is the Yale station area project. So that's a five story, 74 feet. Our mixed use zone allows 75 feet. So you could get something similar here. That's 50 dwelling units, so I guess it's about a half acre site, so it's about 106 dwelling units per acre. So that's just kind of visual representation. And from there, I'm going to turn it over to Gretchen, who will show our efforts in the four square mile area for rezoning.

Yay. Four square mile, we're familiar with where it is located, but what I wanted to point out here is is that unlike the other two districts, there are currently 36 different zoning districts. Wow. That's a lot. When we say a patchwork, we're really not messing around. So we're proposing to rezone 370 parcels to the new RMF zoning district and 96 to the new MU zoning district. and collectively it will account for roughly 8,500 dwelling units in those new areas. The MU zoning district, so that's the higher density zoning district, is basically concentrated along Parker Road, along ILIV, and then in that weird kind of intersection where ILF meets South Syracuse and Quebec, yeah. And then the RMF there in the purple is sort of scattered throughout Four Square Mile, but I wanted to point out that as we're talking about this House Bill 241313, Loretta and I are also working on the update to the four-square-mile plan, so we vetted some of the proposed rezonings with our advisory committee, and this is what we all came up with. All right, no, that's good. So we held the open house on June 25th, and again, we had a, it was an online survey, And 92% were either supportive or neutral. We are planning to go out again into the four square mile neighborhood. And right now I forgot the August 26th. Great. So of those responding to the survey, and really that was only 14 people, So take that with a grain of salt. 14 people, okay. Those supporting the rezoning, they preferred to see the mixed-use type housing where the ground floor is commercial, upper floor residential, and then also... townhouse-style development. They did not want to see more apartment complexes in what's referred to as the work units. The folks that were concerned or did not support the rezoning expressed definite concern about increased traffic, noise, parking. Those are common themes in Foursquare Mile even currently. and then insufficient infrastructure, i.e. water, and then the loss of the existing character of the neighborhood. Next slide. Okay. This is our.

Oh, I don't know. We might have.

Well, this is, so this starts our discussion of the options. I didn't know who wanted to kick it off from here. Commissioner came last question.

On slide 18.

The proposed rezone.

Yeah, do you all have a breakout of how many units the RMF rezone would create and how many units the MU would create? Because you just have a total, but on previous slides you had a broken out.

Oh, I apologize.

It's okay.

Let's see. Okay, so it's $6,400 in the MU and $5,100, so that does not add up to anything. Okay. So no, I don't have access to that.

Yes, go ahead. Just one thing, as we're looking at stuff, and whoever I believe in, it's not always what you know, it's how fast you can look it up. So whoever's looking it up, I was just kind of doing the math on some of these. And Federal Boulevard has 73 parcels to RMF, and it creates 650 units. 39 parcels to MU creates 566 with a total of 1,216 units. Or for the RMF, that is 8.9 units a parcel. Or for the MU, it's 14.5 units a parcel. But when you go down to the Dry Creek, and we have 46 parcels to MU creating 20,125 units, that's 437.5 units per parcel. So I'm having a growing curiosity of why those are so different. Also, if maybe there's a typo on the Dry Creek one, I don't know, because that number is just very, very different. So I was just kind of getting curious about how the units to parcels work. It would be so variable between these different areas, and I didn't know if the parcel sizes are different or or whatever, but had a growing curiosity.

It's how we calculated the Dry Creek area differently from the other two areas. So the Dry Creek area was calculated at 100 dwelling units per acre. So that's going to result in a higher number, even though there are fewer. But that's a theoretical number.

The minimum is 35. Right. So at a minimum, we would get 7,666 dwelling units in Dry Creek, just by off the bat, the minimum.

7,000?

666 dwelling units. Okay. So then, like Gretchen said, then we tried to do a theoretical math exercise if you could get 100, no, how many per acre? Yeah, 100 per acre, so.

And which is consistent with the one slide there that showed you the ground floor commercial and but four stories above that. Yeah, the mixed use. That was 106.

Okay, so looking, sorry, Madam Chair.

So just to further my understanding here and make sure I'm kind of closing the loop on this thought. So you estimated the number of units per acre based on the type of development you could anticipate going there or would fit in that sort of area and what the capacity could hold. Okay, got it. Thank you.

The character of the area. So four square mile is, generally isn't of the character that would support the same type of product that you'd see in Dry Creek.

Got it. Yeah, we're thinking because Dry Creek has the commercial aspect of it, so yeah.

And I do apologize, I do not have the breakout and I don't have it in the staff report either.

The difference in what was stated was, like, the information in the slides led to the question and got the question answered. That's what was more important.

Thank you. All right. And Commissioner Warne-Belly already had her question answered. So look, y'all are just, like, answering questions you didn't even know.

Thank you. So here's where the rubber meets the road. We've shown you what we're trying to rezone to meet our housing goals with the state. to get to that magic number of 19,000 zoned units, allowed zoning units. So we have looked at, so in summary, we're looking at, we think our rezoning efforts will get us to 16,847 units, which is just short of 23, 29 units from the state housing opportunity goal of 19,000 and some change. So we need to, figure out a way to get 2,329 more units. So we've got some options for you to consider. That's what Sila alluded to at the beginning. So Jason, do you want me to just kick it off for you? Yes, certainly. So the first option you have is to submit calculations of 35 units per acre for both the multifamily and the mixed use zone districts. If we do the math that way, we get an estimated, well that's where we are right now. Any confusion on the math there?

Yeah, I am.

I'm sorry, just going through the slides and totaling up, if we do the rezones per these three areas as proposed, right, it's $1,216 for Federal Boulevard, Dry Creek is $21,340, or no, Dry Creek is $20,125. Well, actually, it'd be the $7,000.

That's if we just take, so multifamily zone, your maximum density is 35 units per acre. And in the mixed use zone, your minimum zoning is 35 per acre. So we take 35 per acre across the board for every one of these properties we're rezoning. will be short by 20. That's us not doing our fuzzy math with the 100 units per acre. That's just the minimum, okay? We're short by 2,000.

Okay, so the 100 units per acre calculation, is that something we can submit to Meet Our Hog, or is it just based on the 35?

Yeah, that is something we could submit to meet the Housing Opportunity Goal.

So then at that point, we're at 29,877. And we're well over. 47. Okay. And that's number three. That's number three. Got it.

So number one is just show them the bare minimum of density that we could allow with our zoning, proposed zoning. Number two is we could add more areas to the proposed rezone. One idea we had was the Bellevue Avenue, also known as the Taco Bell site. Taco Bell McDonald's.

We did the math.

We added up all the lots that are in the county in that block, and there's four and some change acres, which gets us a womp womp 154 units, but it's 154 more units.

I think the direction we're seeking is should we include a Taco Bell at McDonald's? Should we include a Taco Bell? That's one of our questions.

Somebody call Ron Carl and ask him.

As long as that Taco Bell is still on the ground floor. But also, he moved, remember? That's right, he did. And he's retired. Right. Yeah, must be present to win. Okay.

That whole area is all, it's nothing but retail and apartments. Yeah. I mean, right? Yes. So why wouldn't you?

Well, you wouldn't because you're trying to fix the highway. But, you know. Are we sitting on that?

There's got to be another solution. And CDOT, I think CDOT owns one of the parcels, right? And they approached us and wanted to do potentially some type of very large

high density project there oh see that's it because they have a park and ride yeah yeah yeah and rtd or rtd rtd my bad they're exploring options for the park and ride lot yeah no dwelling units you may recall commissioners that rtd has this charge to like leverage more affordable housing parking lots so it would align yeah if you wanted to include this this would align with a lot of different goals and there would be no parking at the

Yeah, per RTD that lot is underutilized. It's primarily used by construction workers who are helping build the towers. Okay, got it.

But it only gets us 154. Actually, then that's calculated at 35 per acre.

That's at the bare minimum. Oh, that's at the bare minimum. If we start doing our fuzzy math, we could get more. So get another, okay.

How much more could you get?

439.

Well, could, yeah, because that's, yeah, okay.

So that's one decision point we need from the board is would you like us to also include that in our rezone maps? Got one, two, three. I max it. Do you want it to max out? And max it out.

You all can't max it out.

Are we okay maxing it out? We're loading up Camberland.

Let's go. Campbell and Baker, are we okay maxing it out? Yes, ma'am. Okay, just checking. Great check. Okay, the minimum of 35?

Yes. Okay. So number three is option to increase the calculations we're doing. This is that funny math. So when we do our math, instead of doing the bare minimum of 35 units per acre for this whole rezone effort, we would look at 100 dwelling units per acre that we would Do the math to send a DOLA, right, Jason? Am I getting that right? Okay. So we need a decision from the board, right, to do the math that way?

Yeah, we'd be asking to acknowledge that, yeah, you can go that high, and it is also in character with a lot of the office buildings, which tend to be five-plus stories tall in that area. Right.

Commissioner Wong-Gully. If I go next, I think I can remember. Thank you, Madam Chair. So that would still, I'm trying to remember from the slides, that would still be a 75-foot building. What we would say is in this area, your minimum is $100,000?

No, your minimum is 35, but your maximum is 100. And then that gets us from that 7,000 number to the 21,000 number.

Okay, so we would define that you could go to a maximum of 100. But not units per acre.

Yeah, submitting, as part of what we'll submit to DOLA.

To DOLA for the math. Okay, so can I ask a question then? Yes. let's say we start developing this area or a couple of them get purchased and they only do the 35 minimum then would we have to make a different decision down the road to say no the rest of you all have to do the hundred they can build that however they want we we just have to create the zoning to allow and then we sit back and whatever gets built flexibility because the whole thing is that if we do the zoning

come and build them. But we don't have no responsibility to make sure that they're ever built. Correct.

And they still have to meet our standards. Fire, water, trash, aspartame. So they still have to meet all that too. That's good.

But the programs work together. That'll be fine.

Is number three a recommendation of staff?

Yeah, we would recommend doing that because that helps us get over the minimum goal for the housing opportunity goal.

I'm good with that. Okay. So we're good. One, two, five thumbs up. We were getting ready to throw something at it. All right. So the next option, a little more controversial, and this was an idea of Jason's. I'm throwing you under the bus.

But it solves the problem.

For Dry Creek, like I was telling you earlier, they're all in a PUD zone. All those offices out there, it allows up to 100 to 120 feet, depending on which PUD you're in. And so we could create a new zone district. This does take more time for staff, because then we got to go back and do a code amendment, which hearings and all that. Amend the land development code to allow 100 feet in Dry Creek. And that would then change our density calculations for DOLA and give us more density allowances. So, again, it's consistent with the current PUDs that are out there for the offices. It could give us 38,000 more zoned allowed. I will say the residents in Inverness, not fans, not fans of that.

We pitched that at the community meeting.

Or with the airports. Oh, and then, well, the airport is actually changing their zoning as well to allow. Sorry. Commissioner Campbell.

So, let me make sure I have something clear. With one, two, and three all approved, we've hit our goal. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. So, this is one, I mean, look, as coming from Kansas. We don't have these views in Kansas. We have beautiful views, but not that view. Yeah, not that view, no. The soybean fields are remarkable. But I do think that when I talk to people, when I hear from people, and also for myself, Having that view of the mountains and not, and who knows how they're, you know, and if we could stagger it and like. However, so that people can see the mountains as we are building density. And obviously those mountain views get, you know, our higher value units or whatever. But this is 1, I think the building height. Across that whole area would just that would be a lot. and i don't care about the density i'm good with density it just is the height and p and like maintaining that people can see the mountains honestly and we don't need it for the goal it's kind of but i appreciate i have no problem with higher density like more units per acre but the height is a lot okay okay yes commissioner warren galley

Do we currently have buildings in that area that are 120 feet?

No. Okay. I have a spreadsheet.

I think we have some that are in the range of 100 feet, which a couple of the office buildings, or maybe just one.

Well, I guess the reason I ask is that I do, like, I'm just hearkening back to when South Bend was looking at increasing the height. Mm-hmm. And everybody was talking about this concern of, you know, that it will increase the height of this building so much so. And in the end, it really, I mean, it was not that big of a difference. Are they at 100? I don't know if it's 100 or not. Okay.

I guess what I'm saying is that. I have no spatial intelligence. I'm actually trying to envision. How tall is this building?

I don't know. It's a true story. three story above ground, on this side it's three story.

Do you want me to show you some of the, so this one.

That's 75.

That's 74, 75 on the left, 55 on the right. So 100 obviously, quarter of a size taller.

I mean I'm just I'm trying to imagine this area, and I understand what you're saying, Commissioner Campbell, but there's also, like, Ikea's there. It's not very, it's not that tall. The district is going to be built out.

The Jones District, though, how, what are the zones? The Jones District, are they able to go up to 100?

That's in Centennial, I believe, right? Yeah, it's technically Centennial. But it's literally across the street.

Yeah, it'll be right there by it.

I don't know.

Well, as far as you're going behind them, then maybe we want them taller.

well I guess I'm just I'm thinking if we're gonna do this that area to me seems like an area that we would would maybe allow higher density but I want to be respectful to Commissioner Campbell's thoughts around what's too high, and I'm just trying to visualize, I wonder if we could see what centennial stuff is going to allow for, because if they're allowing up to 100, then it's kind of like... It might as well.

Right. Yeah. Sorry, let me just ask a clarifying question. If the PUDs allow up to 120. They could do it anyway. They could do it anyways, correct? So if most of those PUDs could go higher, there's nothing that would prohibit someone from going? Currently. Currently, yeah.

And under the proposed rezoning to the mixed use, that would actually reduce the potential height of some of these PUDs. Because we'd be replacing the PUD with the county's mixed use one.

reducing we Commissioner Baker yeah I just want to existing buildings height of the building for an existing building is going to be different than height of the building that can be considered because of engineering right for a building to grow up that foundation has to be already engineered for an increased height. Sometimes they do build buildings, but it's rare. And the reason is because of cost, initial cost. You're going to only engineer the building to what its current height is nine times out of ten, unless you really know you're going to pop the top on something. and go up higher so you have the added expense of the foundation. We found that with the jail. We can't go up with the jail. That's why we had to go out. And I just want to put that out there that if we zone it for an increased height on an existing building, realistic.

Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Campbell. Thank you.

Okay, did we talk to anybody on the Inverness board about this or that district board or?

The water or?

Inverness Metro District?

We just met with the Inverness Water and Sand District this morning.

Okay, that's different than the Metro District. Right.

They were notified of the open house and of the proposed rezoning, but we never heard back from them.

Okay.

Okay. We would also say staff is not recommending an option for it, or is that right?

Well, I guess here's kind of where my brain is going. We don't need number four to meet the goal, right? Number four would also take time to do a rezoning and do these other things. But if our rezoning would supersede the PUD zoning, especially if we were going to change it or lower it in any way, that would be kind of a lot because I would think that the Metro District probably has development expectations of what they'd be able to do. So I definitely wouldn't want to lower it. But if they can already go to 120, then what is the value of changing our zoning and going through all of that if we don't need the units to hit the goal?

Does a PUD allow mixed use in this type of high density zoning?

Those PUDs don't allow any residential. So that would not allow any of this density.

OK, cool. Then that's the conversation. OK, so here's what I am wondering, is if we approve one, two, three.

Two and three, because one, you're basically taking three. One's a baseline number.

One is folded in. Yeah. Two and three. yeah yeah they're right okay okay one two three we approve one two and three now to get to meet the goal and do all that but I think With the way, I like, I'm a huge fan of mixed use. I think it would make a lot of sense in that Inverness area. But without having been able to stake hold with the Inverness Metro District Board and those people, I would have a very hard time superseding their PUD zoning right in this moment. And since it's a separate, it would have a different process. um because we would have to go through the rezoning and the hearing and all of that it it would be holding us up if we were even trying to use that for our hog it would be holding us up on getting one two and three done because those don't have to happen the same way because we're not creating a new Zone District for one two or three and so so while a little out is that I'm getting is that not accurate we have to But there's more, what I heard are there are more steps to add in the mixed use super plus.

That's a code amendment. It's not part of this rezone.

If you're rezoning property, you have to provide notice and you have a public hearing.

Yes.

But wouldn't that process, yes, but wouldn't the code amendment, because it's not intercode, have more steps to it than the other rezone?

The same steps. It's still planning commission for a recommendation and then board decision. So they could move in tandem? Theoretically, it's a little late now where we have till December 31st to have this zoning in place. Yeah, that's okay It would take longer. I mean I Mean because we would want to do outreach, you know, we'd want to let the public know we're creating a new zone We don't want to just slip this code amendment in right and the entire reason I'm talking about is because I would like to have some conversations with the people who

are in the Inverness Metro District. I can't make that conversation right. trying to help us move as swiftly as possible even knowing that even the rezonings would have to go to a public hearing why don't we approve one two three move those forward so we meet our hog goal that can happen more quickly we've already done the state the outward you know it doesn't add more to your plate right now and then i think we look at number four for 2027. thank you and we have no concerns with that that's the direction that i mean that no that's my

So you would still consider number four? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, but I would want to have conversations first. I need to think about that one. These other ones feel very, yes, but the four and where it's fitting with our timelines and all the other things and the stuff that would need to happen, I feel like it's worthy for consideration, but we don't need it to meet our goal. And I think different, more conversations would need to happen with number four.

Commissioner Warandelli? Thank you, Madam Chair. So we're talking about right now we would lower the ability of a building from 120 to 75 feet. And then we're going to come back and say, can we increase it to 100 feet?

No, what are we changing to 75?

Well, that's what a... Yeah, all of it would be 75.

One, two, and three does.

One, two, and three is 75. I mean, that's why I'm kind of like, I get what we're saying about the timing.

Oh, okay. I get it.

Oh, because they don't have residential in the PDs now. I mean, I would like to consider this because we're already... I mean, we're saying we're going to lower what's allowed here by 20 feet. Not by 50.

I keep forgetting that the PUDs aren't for residential right now. Okay.

Commissioners, I wonder, I mean, is there a way forward to make it so that by December we... I guess the question I would have would be, it sounds like There's two things. One, you want to see what's happening on the other side in Centennial to see if there's congruency. And you want to have a very quick conversation with the Inverness Metro District. One would think those two things could happen in a fairly short amount of time. And we could come even email back that says, here's what we found. but we could still keep moving forward with one, two, and three, and maybe slide something in. We've talked offline about schedule, but September, October, and .

And I think we need to leave that conversation with, and I understand that people weren't happy about that, but we're actually lowering it 20 feet by doing this.

Yeah, we have to, no, I keep . No, we kind of have to do, Yeah, I'm not going to lower it on them.

But the goal could also be, you also say, start working on the MUX zone district, and we do start conversations around it, because the goal would be to maintain what the PUDs already have. In the least. At a minimum. So you'd go to 120? I do. What I'm saying is you want to maintain this height that's already there, you just want to apply it to residential. So I think that might be a different conversation and message back to residents than, but you want to validate with Inverness District and you want to validate with Centennial is what I've heard. So I don't know if there was a way to thread that needle in looking at Jason and but it seems like that's a narrower solution.

And certainly the Centennial is easy enough to check, and I was kind of looking. I'll provide a preview now. Generally, it's zoned Business Park-100, allowing up to 100 feet of height in Centennial within the Jones District. One of the site plans over there was six stories, so they may not be developing to the full 100 feet that's allowed under the zoning code, but that's just an initial check. We'll do a more comprehensive analysis.

And I'll just also say that to talk about the PUD, that's the preliminary, then there's final plans from something that got built, right? The preliminary is like your overlying zoning. While the PDP allowed the 100, the actual final plans for all these offices in Inverness, they're really like 50 feet. I think the tallest one, tallest one was 80 feet. So just to put that into perspective. And one other interesting anecdote, when I was chatting with the neighbors at the Dry Creek meeting, I said, you know, the current zoning allows 100 feet. This would actually drop the height. And they said, I'm okay with a 100-foot office building in front of me. I don't care about my view. I don't want a 100-foot apartment there.

I heard that too you heard that the one renter on the board is their

I'm going to wrap this up.

Sure. So on one, two, and three, we heard a thumbs up. On four, we will check in with the Inverness Metro District and do a little research on what is allowed and currently developing in Centennial just to give you kind of a feel for what's across the highway from this area.

But I think you're hearing a vibe.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, go ahead. So we have to... I feel uncomfortable dropping what they're already zoned for. So... yeah i somehow got this kind of turned around in my head so i i apologize but i don't feel comfortable dropping what they're already zoned for and then we're just basically changing it to allow residential within the same thing then yeah i because they could still do largely commercial it just would also be able to do residential if they wanted so then what i'm hearing you say is there is

more support for doing an MUX zoning to maintain existing PUD with the caveat we have to have more directions and direct engagement with some stakeholders. Yeah.

Yeah, I want them to know what we're doing.

Yeah.

Okay.

But the shared goal of everybody is to maintain at least that 100 to 120 foot.

Yeah.

That would be mine. Yeah.

Why change it? If it's already there, I somehow got that flipped around in my head. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the confusion, Ava and Jason.

So you would like us to move forward with a code amendment on top of this by December 31st?

Is that what we want to do? That was Jason's idea.

We'll begin the drafting.

And we'll check with the Inverness Metro District and also provide some additional information so that we can show we're not doing something that's out of whack with the adjacent jurisdiction.

Yeah, yeah. It's currently zoned with this. It's just now allowing residential. So have we landed this particular topic for the moment?

I think so.

All right. Well, that's great. That's exciting. Are you all ready? Are you all good?

We're super excited.

Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Sheila, very much. Well done. Well done.

So that's mainly trivia, so this is... Based on the state calculation of transit, this is how much acreage each of those contributes.

Do we need lawyers? We have another lawyer. We're trading lawyers. I'm just going to mute us.

Sorry. It was online. I can't tell. It's Julie Franklin. Okay. And Bill Hoff. And Bill Hoff.

Julie and Bill, can you hear us? Yeah, we can hear you.

Okay, great. Great. Then we're going to go ahead and get started with some introductions around the room. Commissioner Baker, go ahead.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner.

Michelle Holstein, Commissioner's Office.

Rhonda Fields, Commissioner.

Callie McCord, Parking Reporter.

Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Waring-Gully, Commissioner. Jessica Campbell, Commissioner of District 2.

What's your name?

Kendra Davis, Commissioner of Office. And then we have? I didn't go yet. Sarah Overby, Commissioner's Office. Why didn't you go?

I can't remember.

And we have two folks online with us, sir. Would you give us your name and who you are? You are on top on my screen. So who are you, sir?

You're probably going to like it better that way. My name is Bill Hoff. I'm our Senior Vice President at LSI. for economic development, and I work with Julie on the Arapahoe program.

Wonderful, wonderful. And that must be your partner. Go ahead.

Yes, I'm Julie Franklin, and I am a senior grant specialist with LSI, and I'm also the engagement lead with the contract that LSI has with Arapahoe County.

Great. Thank you very, very much. So am I turning this over to the director of the commissioner's office, or...?

All I will say on this slide is it's been a year and a half since we launched that grant pilot program following our year of kind of strategic planning work and so we thought it would be great for Sarah and the LSIT to tell you what progress we've made and we've got some of our great partners in the room as well so I'm going to let Sarah tell you where we're at and where we think we're going to be going from here. Great, thank you very much.

Yeah, so we're just here to give an update on the grant program. And then we have LSI here as well because they are our key partners. So just as a refresher, we launched the Coordinated Grant Pilot Program in January of 2025. That came out of the analysis and strategic framework by LSI, and then the feedback we heard from you all, which is that you had three priorities, that we should consistently follow grant processes, that grants should be strategically aligned, and that we should uphold appropriate signing authorization. We have a five-year plan we're working off of. We're almost two years complete in the program and we've finished nearly everything in our short-term action items. There are still a few procedures and policy things that we're looking at, but we've made a lot of progress. One of the key things that we're doing in the grant program is we're matching grant opportunities to potential needs within the county. So we have found grant opportunities for nearly all offices. This does not reflect applications. This just reflects opportunities that we've presented. Julie, would you like to talk a little bit more about it?

Yes. A little bit different than what we've done with some of our other clients, and it's worked really well. We spent some time talking with the departments and the offices and understood what their priorities were as far as their needs for funding. And so as we are putting together the opportunity pipeline each month, we vet those opportunities not only as far as the eligibility for the county, but then also how they align specifically with those department and office priorities. And then we indicate those in the pipeline, which helps as you're looking through that pipeline, it helps people be able to kind of flag the ones that might be most appropriate for them.

And there's a lot of work that goes into the program before we actually submit a grant application, so we thought we would talk a little bit about that. So as Julie said, LSI is vetting in the wide ecosystem of thousands and thousands of grant opportunities, they're vetting those for alignment with our strategies and then eligibility for a county, because counties are not eligible for everything. So in 2025, the blue bars are 2025. The orange bars are the first half of this year. So it doesn't include July, but it's the first half of this year. So in 2025, we presented 140 potential grant opportunities that folks could apply for. This year, we've already presented 97. So if the trend holds, we'll present more. From there, after we present potential grant opportunities, we have strategizing conversations with teams, and that can include talking about a specific grant opportunity that they've seen in our grant pipeline, but it can also be just talking about their funding needs. So it might be that the 4-H team comes to us and says, we need a van. Do you know if there are any grant opportunities open that align with those needs? And then we talk about it. So in 2025, we had 96 of those conversations. And this year, we've had 73. And LSI is included on many. Julie, is there anything you would add?

I was just going to say, I think that's really opened up a lot of discussion and helped us talk with people about how to look at being strategic about the way you look at funding. You mentioned the thing about the van. Oftentimes, someone will come to us and say, I need a van or I need a microscope. It might be difficult to find a grant for that specific use. But if we dig into understanding what they're going to use that for, then we can attach that to a program. um our project and then we can look for funding that fits that and then sort of weave that into a story into a little bit larger um opportunity and it usually opens up more funding as well instead of just buying that van or buying that microscope it opens up opportunity to for funding for a larger project or program that would be um supporting that

Yeah, we've done a lot of education around that funders are here to buy outcomes. So maybe their outcome is that they're trying to get kids outdoors. Our need is a van, so how can we articulate that that van is going to help get kids outdoors, and that's the means to which we're doing so. So then if we can articulate that, then hopefully we can win that grant. Nice. And then, so these are the grant applications, just the numbers. So in 2025, again, blue is 2025, orange is 2026, the first half of the year. So in 2025, we submitted 51 grant applications. This year, we've submitted 38. In 2025, we submitted, or we won 27 grant applications. This year we've won 13, but we're hoping that number will rise as the bar's in the middle, the applications awaiting decisions. As those decisions are made, hopefully the number on the right rises. And these are the values that are attached to those numbers. So in 2025, we requested almost $27 million in grants. This year, we're at almost $20 million in requests. Last year, we won almost $13 million in grant awards. This year, we're at $1 million, but you can see that middle bar, $17 million are waiting for decisions. And we're still, I think there's another point I haven't yet made, which is that sometimes grants operate on a long timeline. So you can see that there are There are actually two grants we're still waiting on decisions for from 2025 that we submitted.

And Sarah, one other point on this is that this also, I believe these numbers represent from the timeline that the date that the grant was submitted. And what we're finding right now, particularly with federal grants, is a very long lag time. And in fact, the county was awarded a particular grant recently that we submitted the application back in July of last year, and it didn't come in until I think March or April of this year.

And then LSI is our key grant writing partner, so they're expanding our capacity, and they are doing a lot of, Julie's great at providing some of those strategizing conversations and then also offering a variety of grant application support, so that can be fully writing a grant application or just reviewing a grant application that someone has already written. Julie, do you have anything you want to talk about?

Well, I just wanted to indicate that, as you've talked about, the partnership with LSI is more than just running and submission support. It is a key component of what we do for the county, and this is representing those particular applications that we provided that support. But it also is one part of all the other things that we're working with you on. And we also find that when the, this is mostly or fully supported, so there have been other writing, other applications that we provided light, limited, or moderate support to as well. But these are the ones where we've really come in and provided comprehensive support to.

Commissioner Baker has a question? Yes, thank you. Our largest office and our largest department are not on this pie chart. The Sheriff's Office of Human Services. Is there an explanation for why that is?

The Sheriff's Office has not asked for support from LSI yet. I've helped the Sheriff's Office on a couple of things, the Congressional Directed Spending Requests. Human Services, we've actually had a number of conversations about potential grant opportunities. And the grant opportunities that we had, we couldn't get them to neatly enough align with their current programs to move it forward as an actual submission. So we've actually had probably 10 or more conversations with some staff in human services. It just hasn't made it to grant application submission. But I think part of that is also that they rely on a lot of non-competitive grants that are based more on formulas.

and commissioners i would just say we wanted to specifically call out the lsi component because we are subcontracting with them and that was money that you provided us so we really wanted to show you um kind of the direct correlation to their work and the return on investment that they bring to the table so that's why we specifically call them out but sarah has helped sarah's really been that primary strateger and bringing in strategizer that's not even a word And helping bring in the right resources when we need to with all of those departments and offices you saw on the previous screen. Thank you.

And then we just wanted to show you the narrowing and vetting that we're doing with the grant opportunities. So again, we provide a wide sort of catalog of potential grant opportunities that teens can apply to. From there, we start having strategizing conversations. Julie is actually very good at talking people out of applying to grant opportunities, which I hope sounds positive.

Don't get me in trouble. I know.

very often there are some that have like funder criteria because again the funders that sort of like they're holding the power in the situation and they might have criteria that doesn't really align with our programs and it would just be sort of an awkward fit and yes and then we get down to applications that are submitted and then grants that are won.

And Sarah one more thing on this I just want to point out that the money that you're paying LSI actually I go back to the funnel There's actually more vetting that occurs prior to this. This is sort of the funnel that you see. You see the opportunity pipeline that we provide to you. But before we even get to that pipeline, we're looking at the thousands of grants that are out there at any given point. vetting them from an eligibility standpoint. And then once we get to an eligibility standpoint, we vet them from a, does it meet your priorities and your strategic plan? And then we vet it from how does it attach to the department office's priority goals as well. So there is a lot of vetting that takes place even before we get you to that pipeline. And then there's stuff that happens once it gets in your hands.

Commissioner Campbell. Can we go back? Thank you. So, $1.9 million awarded. Is this just, is the 1.9? No, this is from August to June of this year. This is just the funds the LSI will be doing. just so but 32 total applications 20 fully supported 1.9 million awarded just from those so when we're looking at this I guess are we seeing a lot of smaller grants like we're just seeing smaller dollar grants because we've won from in 2025 we won about 13 million almost just in 25 alone so just trying to understand you know, we're seeing a bunch of little grants, and then every now and then we land a big dog?

I will add that this data here is countywide, and this data here is just what LSI has supported since the start of the program. So this data is countywide data. There are some of our teams like Community Resources and Public Health, who are very experienced with grant writing and grant management. And so I collect their data just in the spirit of having sort of a county-wide view, but it's not necessarily something that LSI is working on. Okay, cool. Thank you. And I can get you more data if you want.

And what we're finding as we're working, the ones that we're spending a lot of providing full support to are really the departments and offices that don't have maybe as much experience working in the grant application world. And so we're helping build that capacity internally as well. Great.

Thank you. And then outside of the grant opportunities, we're also trying to create a lot of program tools to help departments and offices outside of myself and Julie so that they have access to resources. They can apply to grants following the process. And so there are a number of tools that we've put on the SharePoint site. If you just type in grants, you'll get there. But we provide, obviously, one-on-one grant application support. We have a grant program guide that gives people information about what does it mean to go after a grant, what are some things you might expect that you need to know before you do it, what does the process look like. We also have a state grant guide that's specific to Colorado to help people look at and plan long-term when grant opportunities might be opening from the state of Colorado. And we have our monthly grant pipeline reports that we send out to the grant squad and the e-team. We also have a grant readiness checklist, which is a one-page document that has some questions that folks can ask themselves before or in a conversation about a grant that asks like, do we have the staff to do this? Do we have the time to do this? So it asks a number of different questions to help people think about, is this something that we want to move forward on? And we also host a monthly grant opportunities office hours. That's great. That's amazing. We wanted to go over some key takeaways outside of the data because these felt like really important things to share, and the e-team thought that they were very interesting. So I think something that's really important is that we have learned in implementing the program is that expectation setting early is really important. So I think sometimes folks, they say, oh, I want to apply to a grant, and then they come to us and they think, okay well Sarah and Julie will go do this and I'm going to go and wait for the answer. But actually we need the subject matter experts involved in the application. We don't want a grant writer creating a program. What we want is the subject matter expert to tell us what is your program, What are your needs? What would a budget look like that would align with what you're doing? The subject matter experts are also closer to the community and they have the data about what they're doing. So setting that expectation early I think has been really important just to help manage either frustration or disappointment and then also building off of that I think sometimes folks say like oh I want a grant to purchase this thing but it might be that that kind of grant opportunity only occurs on certain cycles and it's not available now but it will be available in the future and it's something that they kind of just need to stand by and help us watch for. Julie is there anything you would add?

I think that all of that is really important. And it goes back to also balancing. We know that there has been some hesitation from staff going after grants sometimes because they're concerned about it being too honest on their time. And we want to balance that we can bring support and take a lot of that weight off of them but it still requires them to be involved because without them we don't have we're not going to have a successful application because we're not going to have the information that we need in order to put together a good proposal we also know that it's really important our grants that have made it to the submission stage

They are the ones that have director buy-in early, so you have a director that's standing behind that staff person and saying, yes, allocate your time to getting that done, or yes, we should submit a grant application. The ones that we sort of spin our wheels a little bit more on are ones where maybe the director is not, I don't want to say not bought in, but they don't have that very firm yes.

Cheerleading.

Yes. Yes. In support for your time being spent that way. Julie, is there anything you would add?

Yes, and I would agree with you on that. It goes back to the hesitation of going after grants. I think having that director buy-in and the director setting this priority of going after funding and giving permission basically and empowering that staff to Use their time and to go after that some of the grants we've worked on required internal and external reach out to potential partners either across departments or across agencies and So again having that leadership support is also helpful there and then sometimes the the grants require policy issues of the involved policy issues and And so that's really important from a leadership standpoint as well.

Another thing that we're doing in the grant program is we're providing a lot of navigation support of the county at wide. So when we're looking at a grant, a lot of questions naturally arise. And some of them are like, well, how do I hire someone? Or how do you prepare a budget package? Or how do you find out how to implement software? And so a lot of the things that I'm doing while Julie's working on the writing piece of an application is I'm helping to take that person through the county and figure out how we get questions answered and who we need to connect them to. We're also building a lot of connections between staff, so the coroner's office was submitting a grant application, but they needed safe crime safety data, so we introduced coroner's office staff to sheriff's office staff to get the data. We also had a grant application that we didn't end up submitting But it required a collaboration between the district attorney's office and human services. And so we introduced their staff to each other to start talking about whether they could potentially collaborate on something. So I would say one of the biggest pieces right now is actually providing navigation support, just helping people figure things out and making sure they're not on an island alone.

And I'm going to have to give Sarah major kudos for this because and Bill will nod his head because we've talked about this a lot. We work with a lot of clients and now our Arapahoe County really stands out because of the role that Sarah plays and how good she is at it and that internal coordination and that and that helps us be able to provide even more value to you because that's happening internally as well.

You just have to be not afraid to be embarrassed, honestly. Questions or introduce yourself, right? Yes, I knock on a lot of doors where people are ready to close it. But I keep putting my foot in. Yes. We also, we've experienced that there's a wide spectrum of grant experience at the county. So again, community resources, public health, there are a lot of their team members who are very experienced with navigating federal grants and the requirements and doing the submission and the grants management. And then you have, it is not uncommon to get a phone call from somebody who says, hey, I'm supposed to, my boss told me that I need to apply to this grant and I actually don't know what to do and I'm overwhelmed. And I say, you've come to the right place. We're going to figure it out. And then we do. And most of the time, we get a grant application submitted. So we're trying to build a program that's not prescriptive and that serves people across that spectrum. And then the last thing I'll say is that effort spent is never wasted. Because when people are putting pen to paper, a lot of folks say, oh, I don't want to waste time writing the grant application. I don't want to waste your time, their time. But my experience has been When people are putting pen to paper, they are articulating their program, they're learning to articulate their program in ways that goes beyond the grant application or even beyond the grant if they get one. They're learning to put together a budget. They're learning to think through their needs. They're even sometimes, if we don't end up with a grant application that's submitted, we now know more about what it was that they were trying to do. Maybe there was like an idea that was stirring in their head and now it's written down. We also are able very often to repurpose a grant application, whether it's something that we're still waiting on a decision from or we got declined or maybe we even won. You can repurpose that grant application and use it for future grant applications because you collect a lot of data and you articulate a lot about your program in that process. So I would say the effort spent is never wasted. Julie, is there anything you would add?

would absolutely agree with that and I know it's it can be disappointing when you spend a lot of time and effort on a grant application and it doesn't get awarded and in today's environment that is just that could be just because they got a thousand applications and they only have ten awards I mean you know it it could be because they were being they had to be very particular that could be because they were looking at geographic range and they already gave a grant in this part of the world and part of the country so they're looking at how they can be more diverse in the way that they spread it out across the country um and we've seen that there where we um where we have reused um a text um we've used a non-funded awards and funded awards as models for other applications. And there are some applications that we have on our radar screen that we have every intention of going back and reapplying for. And we also are getting, sometimes you get good feedback from the funders and sometimes you don't. And when you get that good feedback from the funders, that really is a good opportunity for you to make that tweak and then to resubmit.

And the last thing I'll say is that we're still working within the five-year plan. We're moving into the mid to long-term actions. We're already working on some of those things. So finance is looking at support systems for grants management. We're developing a grant application resource repository, which has some things like common questions and answers. One of the things that I think can be difficult about working for the county and trying to apply for grants is that very often funders say, but why do you need a grant? You have resources. And so we have some example answers for how you answer that kind of question. And we're also looking at how we can... Have you ever heard of Tabor?

Question mark. Yes.

And we're also looking at how to incorporate AI tools to the extent that it's useful. That's it.

I just want to make one comment, Sarah. I've been working with Arapahoe County now for two and a half years, and it's really been a pleasure to see how this has evolved and how the And I was involved in the strategic framework process and facilitating that and listening to some of the feedback and seeing how all of the departments are starting to work together and this cross-departmental interaction. And the work that you've been doing, smoothing some of that coordination, I can see a difference. And I hope that you're getting good feedback on that as well.

So that's it. Any other questions? Commissioner Warngully?

Did you just put your hand up? I did put my hand up. Oh, okay. I don't necessarily have a question, Madam Chair, but I do want to say thank you. When we all started thinking about this, there were a lot of kind of how would this work? Is this worth the investment? Are we going to be able to do this? And I know that everybody loves working with you, Sarah, and I've gotten a lot of great comments about you and the team. throughout the county and how helpful and supportive you are. So it seems really successful to me. I guess I do have one question, and that is one of the things that we talked about was how it needed to be tied into the finance department and that the finance department sometimes didn't know about a grant.

Yeah.

until after they'd gotten it and then it was like well how do we account for these all that stuff so i wonder if you could kind of talk to that or the finance team could come on up help us know if that's what would happen uh we're so partnered he went to the other side yeah

That's what I get for coming and listening in, right?

I'll say one of the things that I advocate for and one of the first things that we did is we clarified what is the grant application approval process at the county. We have some printed flyers that we hand out to the grant squad and other folks, and we have it on the Grant SharePoint site. To the extent that I am connected, because people, it is not required that people interact with me in sort of the grant application, but To the extent that I am plugged in, I reiterate our grant application approval process, which does require going to finance with the grant evaluation form.

Yeah, I think it's working great. I mean, in addition to hearing from Sarah quite a bit on whether the grant application is going in or we've been awarded grants, Heather's on the grant squad and working with Sarah and Julie. So, no, it's been going great. I mean, we're working on... revising some policies this year. We're working on implementing that grant management module and SAP. So we've got a lot of things, as you saw, that are happening concurrently to the work of the grant squad. And I would say that the grant application process is a lot more organized than it used to be. And I think the advice that LSI and that Sarah bring to the departments and offices looking to apply for grants is very beneficial and yielding results clearly from the slides. So we're excited about it. The only thing I would say is that Just about the time we're all getting really good at this grant thing is when the federal government is not getting good on the grant thing. And there was recently a grant that was awarded that after we were asked some questions by the federal government, the county decided not to accept that award because it was going to require us to comply with some things that would not have made that elected official or this Board of County Commissioners comfortable. So that was turned down. It's good to have a group and Sarah and the grant squad looking at these processes and looking at these grants carefully. We're here to support in any way we can. That is great news. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Commissioner Campbell?

Sweet. two pieces one just a huge like thank you and congratulations and good job like this is there's so many things that you all touched on here that are baked into our strategic plan that were also things that we wanted to implement through this program like training each other and learning, right? Getting out of silos is something that we've been talking about at least explicitly in a plan since 23, you know, if not obviously before, but all of that, getting that, the thoughtfulness of building out the repository, like let's work smarter, not harder. And sometimes that is, as we like to say, go slow to go fast. right it's easy to just be like applications here there but when you go okay let's have because i'm going to assume that there's a you know nomenclature to the filing that we know where to go back to this is in the public health folder and oh yeah that was this and then we can go back and get that language there having the template answers i remember the first law job i had you know it was like a you know i had to write a memo and i was like ah and he goes I know that you want to prove yourself, but also the first question you always ask is, is there a template for this? You know, and just there's so many good things that you baked in. And I love because there's also a like I'm a big fan of TikTok. And so I was scrolling through and. I saw this one that was like five things you can do within a week to like help continue to boost your confidence. And one of them was do something that you feel like is embarrassing or do some, be ready, be okay. Like set yourself up so that you intentionally can be told no. Right. And so just that I like, I think I'm, I'm excited for you because I feel like you, uh, uh, I hope that you've enjoyed this as a person and as a professional. I also, if somebody doesn't want to help you, you can refer them to me.

All right, sweet.

Yeah, because you just remind them, this is a priority of the board. We're trying to get money for people for the county. Yeah. Yeah. We'll let everybody who said no come to EBC. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be like, you cost us $2 million. No for you. No. But I do hope, and I'm sure most people are really good, but they're probably, people are just busy. And they're like, this is, you're asking me to do a thing. Yeah. But I do hope. And so I've got two questions. One, and they're kind of related. One is... How can the board continue to help facilitate and support this program? And two, I see in our mid to long term goals here under cross-functional team structure is transition pilot program to permanent grants division. Where are we going to be seeing that? I mean, LSI, when you have people like Bill and Julie, who just have an incredible amount of experience and expertise, you know, and are working at a firm that is also probably aggregating and pulling information together already, that is very hard. And I'm glad we've got the guides and here's where to go and that kind of stuff. But it's an incredible amount of work. So thank you also for both of you working with our county and helping make this possible it's clear you all are an asset but the goal from the beginning has been to bring it in-house eventually so what kind of timeline are we thinking how many FTE would that be And how can the board support?

I don't know if I can answer your second question, but I would say in terms of how can the board continue to support, I would say continue our contract with LSI. There are a lot of times when I'm able to hand something off to Julie, and after we have that strategizing conversation and figure out that a grant application is a fit, she can run with it and work one-on-one with that person to get that submitted and I get to take it off my head and think about something else like the county fair. For example. Yes, for example. Just as a random example. Just totally random, out of nowhere. So, LSI is I think integral to our success.

And I guess I would just say we've had one year of success in 25. I'd like to see another year, year and a half. We need a little bit more of a track record. I'd like to deepen the work we're doing with Heather and the rest of the finance department to really kind of streamline these policies. I think if we can look at how does it then integrate, then we can have longer conversations about where does it fit. So I think if... There are budget requests for grant writers. Maybe that's a press pause in other departments and offices right now and leverage the system we have so we can evaluate those things. But I would say we're probably a year and a half away from really having that conversation in future budget years. And we need the feds to kind of sort out. So I would just say for now, we're probably a year and a half away if I was to... Don't hold me to that, but that would be my kind of, we need a couple more years of transition. We need to see where the world goes, and we need to continue to work the process.

Commissioner Fields.

Yeah, I just want to kind of add my words of, I guess, gratitude. Because when I think about the structure that's in place to garner more revenue and funds for the work that we're doing, it's just phenomenal, the structure that we have. Because as you know, we're not for profit. And we know that our tax base and the funding that we're getting from the feds is shrinking. And to know that we have an infrastructure already in place that's looking for opportunities for us to build up services that we want to provide to the community is incredible. And I love what I heard that says, okay, no, you don't want to apply for this because there's a lot of grant opportunities, but you don't want to send people through that hustle of what it takes to apply for the grant and there's no match. So you guys are doing incredible work on all ends. I just wanted to say congratulations. I think it's just the right work to be doing at the right time right now based on what we're experiencing with current federal funding. So good job.

Thank you very much. Commissioner Baker. Yeah, just to add my thanks for the team doing this. This is great. As Commissioner Campbell said, if somebody doesn't want to cooperate, if somebody has questions about Because we have all the resources in the world. I'll talk to those folks. Because any taxpayer, first of all, that doesn't see a value in us multiplying the value of their tax dollars at no cost to them. For services, vital services that we can provide, I'd be happy to have lunch with them. Or a combo in the back alley. Educate, yes, educate. And we can have the Sheriff's SWAT team.

No problem. Swing by.

I try not to be a strong arm, and I let Julie be the strong arm. Particularly because I think... As a staff member in the commissioner's office, I don't want to make people feel like if they reveal a vulnerability or something they're worried about, that now the commissioners are going to be angry. And so I like to let Julie step in. She knows very much that I'm like, okay, this is your job today to ask these sort of questions. I like it.

Sometimes it's a little easier for a consultant to ask a question than it is for a staff person to do it, for a team member to do it. I don't mind doing that.

Just a quick piggyback. I think the questions come up on the applications that we don't have resources. And I think the work that we did with 1A and examining our budget and being able to say, no, really, you don't have money. now it's being stripped from the feds and the state and all of that plus by the way let me tell you about our taxpayer bill rights I think is is awesome but I think you know when we were doing 1a conversations and Not only when I was running in 22, but just in this primary also. And talking about, yeah, thank you for passing 1A. Here's what we've been able to do with this money or whatever. That's not all we've done. We've also been going after money. We're not relying just on taxpayers. Like, we're also going after money. We've set this up. And people love it. I haven't had a person at all ever say any of, like, why is... You know? So, I, like... i think it's it's definitely the right toy commissioner fields was saying not just the right thing to do but thank god we got this in place at this time because um it's definitely needed so yeah thank you very very much is there anything else

really that we use we use our work with um arapahoe county as a model when we're talking to other clients work with we love working with arapahoe county and we think that your approach is is one that can be replicated in all other counties and cities if they would just be open to doing so.

Yay. We are number one. We are number one.

Well, thank you for trusting us with this big mask and this lift, and we're really glad that we can make your vision a reality. Yay.

Well, thank you. Thank you. There you go. Well, we appreciate you being here and all of your good work, and thank you for the compliments. We recorded this, you know, so we're going to just, like, show it to everybody and say, look, we're the gold standard here. So thank you. Thank you both very much for being here. Bye. Thank you for having us and you to fall asleep at night so soon. Yay.